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View Full Version : Thoughts of a Former Distrohopper



iamjiwjr
January 15th, 2014, 12:51 AM
I've been a total Linux user, as has my wife, since 2002. All the men and women who held my hand while I, assuredly not a coder, learned my way around were saints. ](*,) What a trip it's been.

And now another milestone. I'm experiencing something very weird. For the first time my never ending impulses to distro-hop are gone. Poof! Ubuntu is enough. No urge to trash the hard drive and start over. And, in spite of my professions to the contrary when it first came out, shock of shocks - Unity is now my favorite desktop.

Life is full of surprises! :D

Habitual
January 15th, 2014, 02:11 AM
while (true)
{
SelectDistro($distro);
$boredOfDistro = false;

while (!$boredOfDistro)
{
ScrewUp($epicFail);
SolveProblem($solution);

if (NowBored())
{
$boredOfDistro = true;
$distro = FindAGoodDistro();
}
}
}

craig10x
January 15th, 2014, 04:05 AM
You are under the Ubuntu with Unity "spell"...you will never distro hop again! :D

help_me2
January 15th, 2014, 10:05 PM
I used to "distro hop" all the time until about 3 years ago. I finally realized that nothing works as well as ubuntu. I don't even check out other distros anymore, as there is no point.

Habitual
January 15th, 2014, 10:11 PM
Personally, I stopped after I installed Slackware.

Don_Stahl
January 15th, 2014, 11:47 PM
@Habitual: :p Nice.

I don't hop much, but I do have a few OSes on thumb drives. Puppy, TAILS, android. I guess just being able to boot something different is enough, and I'm satisfied to leave Ubuntu on my main machines.

sffvba[e0rt
January 16th, 2014, 06:52 PM
I have to type fast because more often than not my posts get interrupted by me nuking partitions switching to another dist.... phew almost ;)

anakai
January 16th, 2014, 09:09 PM
I stopped hoping between distros when (k)ubuntu 12.04 got released. Today I have a minimal installation of ubuntu and using kde 4.12 on it. I have virtualbox installed where i still have an arch install and trying other distros sometimes. But I really like the lts releases and will never change....hopefully

Linuxratty
January 17th, 2014, 12:43 AM
I hopped till I hit Meerkat...That was for me the cream of the crop! I've used Linux for ten years.
Will i every hop again? it's hard to say.

neu5eeCh
January 18th, 2014, 04:51 PM
I've installed SolydK (an offshoot of Mint Debian) so that I don't have to distro-hop or re-install (cause it's rolling release) on my netbook -- which I only use for email, writing and browsing.

But I'm like a crow. I love all things new and shiny -- and will risk getting run over. So, on my upper-end laptop, I've got to have those PPA's. It's all about package management. Since I've never warmed to Unity (though I'm going to try 14.04 and see what I think) I'm presently using NetrunnerOS. I've switched to KDE, much to my shock, after a couple years hopping through different Xubuntu distros. (XFCE is going through an awkward transitional phase right now.)

sammiev
January 18th, 2014, 05:21 PM
I'm not sure what this makes me:confused:

DuckHook
January 18th, 2014, 06:15 PM
You're just getting old.:p

buzzingrobot
January 19th, 2014, 12:00 AM
Personally, I stopped after I installed Slackware.

I began, more or less, with Slackware. Something like the 3.2 release, I think, so it's been some time.

Slackware is still Slackware. But, having been there and done that, I'm more than happy with taking the path of least resistance.

We should not discourage distrohopping. It's important to know what you like and don't like, and why.

WinterMadness
January 19th, 2014, 04:18 AM
I got over distro hopping a while ago. I have my favorites, but I tend to stick with Ubuntu based distros simply out of convenience. I really liked Mandriva back when that was a thing. The only distro I can see myself going to is Arch because I like bleeding edge.

Soon after I got into linux, I started distro hopping to be pretty disappointed by the fact that most distros arent very different. Linux is linux so now I just kind of do my thing.

monkeybrain20122
January 19th, 2014, 04:22 AM
You sound like you want to find a wife or a husband. :) Why hopping? You don't have to be an OS monogamous. I use a few distros. I just can't stand Windows. :)

vasa1
January 19th, 2014, 04:33 AM
... (XFCE is going through an awkward transitional phase right now.)
Care to elaborate?

neu5eeCh
January 19th, 2014, 04:58 AM
Care to elaborate?

Not particularly.

I don't want to get into a distro-partisan tit for tat (and I also don't have a dog in the hunt). I like XFCE. But one example would be XFCE's handling of GTK3. There are also a variety of components that need to be retired (or their bugs finally dealt with) and while new features are being added, other useful ones (frequently having to be added via PPA) are being spottily maintained. None of the issues can't be solved, and probably will be, but I'd call the current growing pains "transitional".

malspa
January 19th, 2014, 05:22 AM
Why hopping? You don't have to be an OS monogamous. I use a few distros.
Same here. I don't think I'll ever be tied down to any one distro. Too many advantages in running more than just one.

leclerc65
January 19th, 2014, 10:13 AM
In the last few weeks the weather in North America was brutal.
I got bored staying indoor, so I resumed that bad habit.

QDR06VV9
January 19th, 2014, 07:15 PM
I've installed SolydK (an offshoot of Mint Debian) so that I don't have to distro-hop or re-install (cause it's rolling release) on my netbook -- which I only use for email, writing and browsing.

But I'm like a crow. I love all things new and shiny -- and will risk getting run over. So, on my upper-end laptop, I've got to have those PPA's. It's all about package management. Since I've never warmed to Unity (though I'm going to try 14.04 and see what I think) I'm presently using NetrunnerOS. I've switched to KDE, much to my shock, after a couple years hopping through different Xubuntu distros. (XFCE is going through an awkward transitional phase right now.)
Tried SolydK but space was slim KDE is my Secondary DE don't seem to want to part with it:)use it a lot
Down to Ubuntu-Gnome and Suse-Gnome

malspa
January 19th, 2014, 10:33 PM
In the last few weeks the weather in North America was brutal.
I got bored staying indoor, so I resumed that bad habit.
Weather's been great here. :)

I run several distros here, but I don't think of myself as a distro-hopper. I mainly stick with the same handful of distros.

slooksterpsv
January 21st, 2014, 09:24 AM
elementary OS has actually satisfied my craving for a different distro. I need to install it on my Toshiba, cause this working purely on the Windows variant of my game is irritating me, I get so distracted and way too easily. It's sad =(

Roasted
January 22nd, 2014, 06:46 AM
elementary OS has actually satisfied my craving for a different distro. I need to install it on my Toshiba, cause this working purely on the Windows variant of my game is irritating me, I get so distracted and way too easily. It's sad =(

That's about where I'm at right now in terms of elementary OS. I've ran on the top 20 most popular distros for some degree of time in the last 1-2 years. I really like Unity, but like anything else I have some issues with it. With Unity in particular it's undoubtedly the chaotic dash design. I have some deeper, borderline moral issues with some other decisions they've been making, and I found myself having difficulty using a distro that I wouldn't even necessarily recommend to other users. As a result, I began hunting around again. My most recent endeavour ended up with elementary OS and Ubuntu GNOME. Ubuntu GNOME is great because it provides me with Gnome 3 and Ubuntu. What's not to love? The UG team is small but I have my eye on them. As far as elementary OS, it's just so clean and logically laid out. It's based on Ubuntu LTS releases, which is very appealing to me. I like knowing it'll run on any hardware I have from barebone netbooks to substantially more powerful rigs as it's very lightweight. Their team is great and growing at a decent rate. I have some frustrations with it, but like any other distro I have to hash out the pros/cons and make a decision on whether that's a route for me to take. So far, I'm sitting pretty nicely with eOS Luna, but I do hope some of my few frustrations with eOS get addressed in Isis, the upcoming version based on 14.04. Fingers crossed.

slooksterpsv
January 22nd, 2014, 08:28 AM
Funny you say that. When Gnome2 went bye bye (I still think 10.10 was perfect) and they switched to Unity, I tried all sorts of distros, even tried KDE with KDE 3.5 from a PPA, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc. but nothing felt right and I kept reinstalling every 15-45 days. Finally Elementary has been on my machine for months

linuxyogi
January 29th, 2014, 06:47 PM
Since 2010 I have used Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, Archbang, Tinycore, Microcore.

Now I am too tired to even reinstall. So I have chosen Manjaro as the host coz its rolling and stable. I am using Ubuntu in Vbox.

As you know no distro is perfect.