The Psychology Of A Distrohopper
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There’s a unique breed of Linux user out there these days and they’re called “distrohoppers.” What the heck is a distrohopper? Well according to the Urban Dictionary, here’s the definition of a distrohopper:
“A distrohopper is someone that keeps switching from one Linux distribution to another, not with the intention to just test a certain Linux distribution, but with the illusion to find the perfect Linux distribution that suits all his/her needs and to install that as his/her main Operating System. Of course that distro does not exist.”
Of course sometimes less charitable words are used to describe these folks including the always nasty “distroslut.” While I certainly don’t subscribe to the idea that distrohoppers are “sluts” of any kind, I do find their mentality rather interesting as I see them sometimes on my Linux reviews blog.
Actually, I shouldn’t say “their” mentality as I must confess that I too am a distrohopper. I started out ages ago playing with different Linux distributions and just kept right on going with it. To this day I get excited when I see that a particular distro has a new release coming out. I usually can’t wait to get my hands on it to test it and see what great new stuff is in it.
So with that in mind, let’s proceed with the rest of this column.
Distrohoppers change their distros more than Tux changes his clothes!
What Makes Somebody A Distrohopper?
So what exactly makes somebody keep switching around to different Linux distributions? I don’t think it has anything to do with a natural tendency toward distropromiscuity. Rather I think that it has everything to do with a non-stop quest to investigate new possibilities and find new options in desktop Linux.
Distrohoppers have a compelling need to monitor the progress of desktop Linux by installing the latest and greatest distro. What’s changed? What new features are available? What about the theme? The icons? Distrohoppers are innately curious and have an insatiable need to keep up with the development of desktop Linux.
Distrohoppers are not content to simply read a review, they want hands on experience with a new version of a distro and that’s what makes sites like Distrowatch so popular. Every time there’s a new release of a worthwhile distro, you can bet that distrohoppers will swarm the site looking for info and download links.
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I haven’t been a distrohopper for several years now, but at one time it seemed like a good idea. So many distros, so little time.
As time moves along, though, you figure out how to add/remove/configure/use programs on your own, and changing whole distros to get a different installed load right from day one loses its allure. At its heart, Linux changes little, if at all, from one distro to the next. So, it becomes more important to learn how to use the operating system than to play voyeur to those that have. After all, the OS isn’t the end, and it’s barely the means. It’s the foundation that supports the tools you use to get work done.
Good point, KG.
Have you considered using VirtualBox though? That makes it pretty easy and fun to play around with new distros while still keeping one as your current/main choice.
Work? Um…no. The whole point is to have fun playing with the OS.
Jim,
In the interest of full disclosure, you should really come “out” and admit that you are actually a “Mac Slut” which is the real reason why you use virtualization to test Linux distros. Not there is anything wrong with this approach, it just might help to clarify things. After all, OSX “is” just another distro.
As for me, I am a “whatever works best slut”, be it OSX, BSD, Windows, Linux, etal… Right now that happens to be Windows Vista with Linux running in Virtual Box.
There are several distros that I like but the main reason for changing is Skype. In some distros Skype will not work at all, in others it is very difficult to set or or works only partially. For a while PCLinuxOS really worked the best for me and those I communicate with by Skype. Presently Fedora 11 works the best with little problem setting it up. Unfortunately this isn’t true for Fedora 12 where it takes a lot of fiddling and even then only one earpiece on the earphones will work.
Tlmck,
The base operating system doesn’t matter to distrohoppers. It may or may not be Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.
What matters is getting the latest & greatest distro running on that computer either via virtualization or through partitioning the actual drive and installing it.
Distrohoppers hop regardless of what their underlying operating system happens to be on that particular day.
I was a distrohopper myself until I landed in Debian.
Man, that was love at first sight and it happened 3 years ago.
I just installed Mandriva 2010.0 I have been using Ubuntu since 7.04 but still try Mandriva, SuSE and Fedora releases. I install them on a partition. I think Ubuntu 9.10 made a poor choice staying with Grub2 beta. Mandriva stuck with Grub legacy. Much nicer. Also the Mandriva installation is much more flexible, for example choosing user ID 500, my ID since Fedora Core 4. I haven’t found a perfect distro. But using a Data partition and links to common files like Firefox’s places.sqlite it’s easy to float between distros and still share bookmarks etc.
Sometimes I am distrohopper…I play with ubuntu but if their is something new going on with linux, I will be first one that turn op-side down my notebook,netbook and pc… its just pure curiosity to try something new especially the hardware. One time I was going so far that I was installing during traveling until my batteries gave up…It has a different feeling of curiosity like how far can linux go because there is allot of suprises if you finished with installing.But I have to honest I am satified with Ubuntu but still their is always new distro’s.. Lets say like this Linux comes with flavors,colours and different shapes it like icecream and if somebody offer my a new kind of icecream I will never refuse it. Dont you agree with me….I am still a kid…..
Over the years I have found that too often the latest and greatest distro is simply not stable enough for me to use. While the rapid Linux development cycle is predominantly a blessing, it can also be a curse. Case in point. The first distros offering kde4 were extremely unstable. Early on installing a distro with kde4 was a waste of time and effort. Beyond the curiosity aspects.
There is also the matter of package updates designed to improve a distro. But sometimes updates negatively impact applications. So there are always questions as to which packages to update and which to leave as is. It has been many moons since I was a distro hopper. If my curiosity gets the best of me there is always virtualization. The exception for me is my netbook. I have indeed hopped around looking for my ideal netbook distro. But I settled with Puppy.
Actually, I have several different computers of various types, from old PII to AMD 64. I tend to enjoy playing with the different linux distros, especially Debian net installs, Arch installs, and I’m looking at Gentoo next. Of course, I like running the different ‘buntus as well. One computer, however, I keep as my “main” box, usually running Ubuntu, Mint, Simply MEPIS or whatever seems easiest and most popular at the moment.
Yes, I am a glutton for punishment. Don’t judge me…