Jim Lynch

Technology and Other Musings

The dark side of distrohopping

I’ve been a distrohopper for as long as I can remember. What is a distrohopper you might be wondering? Well, it’s a guy or gal who loves using different desktop distros and who frequently hops from one to another. I wrote a column called The Psychology of a Distrohopper a while back that explores what exactly goes on in the minds of distrohoppers.

As fun as distrohopping is, it’s not all wine and roses. There’s a dark side to never being able to stay with one distro, and that’s what I’ll talk about in this column.

Before I go any further, I want to encourage folks that are new users to check out these helpful books about Linux on Amazon. They will help you understand what this great operating system has to offer and how to get the most out of it.

A never-ending flow of distros

If you’ve ever spent any time on DistroWatch, then you know that distros are constantly being updated. There’s a constant flow of new and exciting distros, and also updates to existing distros. Distrohoppers can find themselves continually downloading stuff every time DistroWatch has an update or new distro posted.

If you’re one of the unfortunate people stuck with a download cap (such as Comcast’s 250 GB limit), you can burn through a lot of your allotted bandwidth by downloading some larger distros. Distros can vary widely in download size. Some are very modest, even tiny in terms of size. But others can bloat up to four or five gigabytes or more.

Which distro to use?

The never-ending flow of distros can also be perplexing in another way, which ones should you try? All of them? Just a few? This question is particularly hard for newbie distrohoppers that are just getting into Linux. Many of them are coming from Windows and the freedom that Linux offers can be intoxicating.

Some people are overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices and don’t know where to start. This is quite understandable, given the enormous range of options available to Linux users. There is a distro for everybody out there, and it can be confusing to newcomers who are used to Windows or even OS X.

Other newbies leap right in and don’t look back. These folks can easily morph into compulsive distrohoppers. One download can quickly turn into an addiction as they begin experimenting with various flavors of Linux, always searching for that elusive “perfect distro.” These folks often don’t stay with any distro since they are so jazzed up by using Linux that they careen from one distro to other with reckless abandon.

If you’re a newbie distrohopper, I recommend that you concentrate on getting used to some of the more widely known distros such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, and MEPIS before trying some of the lesser known variants. This will at least let you get your feet on the ground and give you a foundation of experience through which to view other distros.

Where did I leave that file?

Sometimes distrohoppers hop around so much that they leave necessary files or folders in one distro and then realize they can’t find the file while using another distro. This can be especially bad if you use VirtualBox and have a ton of distros installed. This has happened to me more than once, and it’s a pain in the ass if you’ve created a document and then lost track of which distro you created it in.

Of course, the most natural thing to do is to adopt a “Main Distro” and leave your valuable data there. Or better yet you can also use cloud-storage services to keep your data somewhere where it’s always accessible no matter what distro you are running. Google Docs is great for documents, but other cloud services can be a big help in accessing data rather than leaving it lost in a haze of distros.

Distro deficit disorder?

Attention deficit disorder is defined as the following:

A syndrome, usually diagnosed in childhood, characterized by a persistent pattern of impulsiveness, a short attention span, and often hyperactivity, and interfering especially with academic, occupational, and social performance.

I’ve often wondered if some of us distrohoppers have our form of this called Distro Deficit Disorder or something like that.

Is part of our distrohopping because we simply can’t focus on any one distro for any length of time? Perhaps our version of attention deficit disorder should be added as a sub-disorder? Maybe the pharmaceutical companies could come up with a pill for us that might help us tone down our distrohopping.

A reviewer whines

I look at a lot of different distros as a reviewer. One of the problems with reviewing so many distros is that sometimes things begin to blur in my mind. I start trying to remember what I saw in one distro to compare it to another distro, but then I become confused as I can’t remember which version of the previous distro I’m thinking about. Was it the latest version or a previous one?

I call this Distro Amnesia and I suffer from it frequently. Sometimes I can’t even remember my own name after messing around with distro after distro.

Sometimes people will ask me about this feature or that feature in a particular distro, and I will sometimes draw a complete blank. My mind then tries to filter my thoughts backward through various distro releases until I can locate the feature, bug or another issue. It takes a while sometimes as I try to work my way through so many different versions.

Final thoughts

Distrohopping can be fun, there’s no doubt about it. There are always some cool, new features to play with in an updated or new distro. But that doesn’t mean that you have to always be on the move. You can opt to slow down a little bit once in a while.

Rather than careen from one distro to another like a pinball, it might be a good idea to savor each distro a little bit before moving on. Try to limit your distrohopping to no more than three to five different distros per day or less. That way you can enjoy each distro without moving on too soon or making yourself suffer from Distro Amnesia or the Distrohopper’s Lost File Syndrome I mentioned earlier.

Moderation in all things is a good idea, even for us distrohoppers.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, you are welcome to buy me a coffee. Thank you in advance for your kindness and support.

Published by

Jim Lynch

14 responses to “The dark side of distrohopping”

  1. Ed LaBonte Avatar
    Ed LaBonte

    One way to prevent losing files is to always keep your /home directory in a separate partition and never format that partition when installing the new distro. The only time this won’t be possible is if you are experimenting with one of the bsd distros, or your /home partition is formatted in a file system that the new distro won’t support.

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  2. Kabamaru Avatar
    Kabamaru

    LMFAO !! 😀 😀 😀

    That “no more than three to five different distros per day” line almost made me spit my coffee on my laptop screen.

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  3. Brian Masinick Avatar
    Brian Masinick

    Jim, you do know that you can download a whopping 60 distros that are each a whopping 4 GB each and you will still have burned through only 240 of the 250 GB allotted on a system with restrictions similar to Comcast. That still leaves you with 10 GB worth of updates and other stuff. I never get close to 60 distros per month, nor do I frequently download 4 GB sized distros. That argument is rather weak. If you have a 5 or 10 GB monthly limit, I’d be more concerned, but that is still plenty to do quite a lot. Few distros worth using are over 2.5 GB, though there are a few monsters in the 4 GB range. If I had download capacity to worry about I would ignore them as wasteful, but as it is, this is rarely a problem, at least for me.

    I think a more serious issue, whether as a distro hopper, a social networking junkie, or anything else, where obsession with the activity leads to an unhealthy balance of activity, is something much more important to raise concern.

    Experimenting and trying out different systems, either to learn, hunt for the best option, or look at changes and trends in technology are some valid reasons for distro hopping. Using it as a social escape because you don’t have other social outlets, getting obsessed with it, (or anything else for that matter) are reasons for alarm and concern.

    I find a few people “over the edge”, but it’s not something I see often. A few of us probably get slightly out of balance from time to time, but then we find other activities and interests and get back on the right track.

    Distro hopping can be educational, it can help locate features in systems, comparing them to learn about how one works versus another, it can provide some socialization, discussing it with others, and in moderation, these things are all worthwhile. It’s when we climb over edge that I’d raise the questions. If you do burn through 250 GB a month downloading distros, movies, or other miscellaneous material, why? What areas in life are lacking? That seems like way too much. What technology consumes such a data hungry number?

    I use the computer many hours a day, both for business and for pleasure, and I doubt that I’ve ever crossed 100 GB a month, and probably 20 GB a month isn’t often exceeded. Sometimes I AM on the computer too much, and when I am – I find other outlets, as I did for most of the day today.

    The warnings and concerns would apply to those who can’t get through a day without downloading ten distros and ten movies. To such people, there are beaches, walking trails, parks, friends, family, and much more. Life does not begin and end with button pushing devices. We are not slaves to them – or at least we don’t NEED to be. That’s a choice, and unless those buttons serve a useful function, perhaps a nice day in the sun would be a better option – it was for me today.

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  4. marvinudy Avatar
    marvinudy

    Jim,

    I’m a long time obsessed, blatant distro hopper with no regrets. Every new distro brings excitement and joy to my heart most of the time.

    A dedicated ‘home’ directory and multiple, spacious drives ease the pain of remembering what is where as long as you keep a chart of what distro is where. Every new install reinforces discipline or the pain of a fool’s suffering.

    Over the years, I’ve arrived at a few distros that have semi permanent residence on my system and span the spectrum across ‘basic’ to ‘kitchen sink’ variety.

    Partitioning methods, file system selection, partition size, partition schemes, boot managers, window managers, desktop managers and basic command line grasp become intimately familiar by simple repetition.

    My favorite gui based distro is Mint. ArchBang is my core ‘basic’ favorite. Ultimate Edition is my winner in the ‘kitchen sink’ category. Gentoo represents my ongoing abject failure. Available gui forks of Gentoo don’t seem to hold my interest for long.

    Developing a habit of immediately placing critical files on a backup drive prevents future headaches.

    Distro hopping is in a way a type of learning one experience at a time.

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  5. GreyGeek Avatar
    GreyGeek

    If you are “overwhelmed” by choices than you shouldn’t be distro hopping. If you are “overwhelmed” by choices you shouldn’t be customizing any distro you’ve settled on. In fact, if choice “overwhelms” you then you should use an OS that doesn’t offer many choices, and charges heavily for those they do offer. After a few grand have chosen to flee your wallet perhaps you’ll understand the beauty of choice.

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  6. Blu Knight Avatar
    Blu Knight

    What you write may be true but you forget at least one category of distrohoppers: the never really satisfied by any distro. They go distro after distro with the hope to find the good, the best, distro, the less bad… They seek perpetually as never something is enough good, and often with good reasons…

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  7. Zorklat Avatar
    Zorklat

    I’m not so much of a distrohopper. For the two years I was playing WoW in Linux, I probably tried a dozen distros, tops (if you count each release of Ubuntu and Mint as a separate distro), always looking for a way to eke out one or two more frames per second from my rather elderly and behind-the-curve desktop system. I’m now off of the reinstall treadmill, using PCLOS for 95% of my desktop computing, and win7 and Lubuntu Natty (preferring Lubuntu) on my laptop (which I don’t use all that much). But because of an issue mentioned in this week’s DistroWatch, I’m now curious about XFCE 4.8, and looking around for a distro for that.

    I’ll probably just add xfce to my kde PCLOS system, and maybe run it with openbox instead of xfwm.

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  8. D-Hopper Avatar
    D-Hopper

    If it’s all FREE, and you have time to experiment, you’ll try EVERTHING eventually.

    There is NO psychology there, except maybe boredon, OR, u’re one of those reviewers’ “biased” towards the “advertiser” that pay$$$ the most.

    Oh, and herein’ lies the proof: “Distrowatch” is advertiser-based therefore we’ll never get the “real” picture honestly, on which distro is the actually “most-used” worldwide.

    To do that, you’d have to have a script to send daily/weekly/monthy of what distro everyone is using, to a “TRUSTWORTHY database -and unfortunately, that alone is a joke today – lmao.

    And, becuase 80% of most firewalls(corporate,…) and users prevent that, then we will never really know.

    I’d say definitely thet Ubuntu is one of the top used ‘fer sure, but hey, I don’t use Ubuntu anymore, I use Arch, and that most-definitely does NOT mean it’s the best for your wants amd/or needs.

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  9. Richman Avatar
    Richman

    Four to five distros per day? are you insane man. I thought I was ditro crazy downloading maybe 50-60 in the past 2 years. I havn’t even reviewed them all. I maybe used 25-30. I have probably not messed around with more than 10-12 in a month. What I do is read the reviews and get a sense or general consensus on which ones are popular, cool, stable, appreciated, less buggy and then stick to the better ones that have the highest ratings because I don’t have time for them all.

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  10. GuiMaster Avatar
    GuiMaster

    Great to see articles like this, because this is actually a problem for some people. Too much choice can actually be a problem for some, believe it or not!

    Back in the day I used Windows 98. It was the only OS I had access to. Distro hopping wasn’t an option. With Windows, distro / release hopping isn’t an option because once you spend the kind of money Microsoft charges, you are happy to stay put. In fact, I really wish I could be using Microsoft as my main OS today. Unfortunately Microsoft is evil – in many ways – and so I feel like I can’t use it as my main OS.

    So in 2008 I downloaded Ubuntu to replace Windows 98. I’ve since purchased XP and Vista as secondary OS’s. I got 7 on a Netbook that I bought. I was very happy with Ubuntu as my primary OS until 11.04 was released. When I realized that Unity was the future of Ubuntu, my distro-hopping nightmare began!

    And what a nightmare it has been! I’ve installed and partially configured almost every release of Linux Mint and Ubuntu. That’s KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Unity, Cinnamon, Mate, you name it. I’d have tried Elementary Luna by now if it would ever get out of Beta. I also tried Mint Debian and OpenSuse

    Finally I reached a point last year where I felt sure that I am done my distro hopping ways, after settling on Kubuntu 12.04 LTS. But now the urge is coming back! I’ve spent hours configuring this OS and suddenly I have a desire to go back to Unity, even though I hated Unity!

    Argh!!!

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    1. Anderson Felippe Avatar
      Anderson Felippe

      I totally get you, bro. Since I decided to move to Linux definitively and wipe Windows out of my life, I’ve been a distrohopper. At the beginning it was much fun and I learned a lot, but now it’s become an issue. My laptop is my workstation and every time I do a clean install, I have to spend 2 hours or more to get it settled and ready to be used, installing tons of packages, tweaking, etc. So far, Ubuntu and Mint have met all my expectations, but I don’t know why I often get excited to try a new distro, such as Fedora, OpenSUSE, Luna, Pear OS, etc…
      I wish they had a pill for that ?

      Great articles about us, poor tormented distrohoppers, you have here, Jim!

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  11. ScionicSpectre Avatar
    ScionicSpectre

    See, I thought I might have a problem since I do this between Arch, elementary, and Ubuntu every few months- then you said ‘three to five a day or less’. I think that makes me sane- right?

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  12. Priyojit Avatar
    Priyojit

    “Try to limit your distrohopping to no more than three to five different distros per day or less” ………God! 3-5 distros per day ? Frankly I haven’t become that crazy yet. I cant call myself a Ubuntu user coz I distrohop every 2-3 months and I don’t like Virtualbox. For me trying a distro has to be on real hardware. The main cause of my frustration is that I cant stick to any distro till its EOL.

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  13. Linusux Avatar
    Linusux

    The correct name for this is actually GUIhopping : KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXDE, Unity, Cinnamon, Mate, etc ! You are trying to find the BEST GUI, but you cant stick with one ! I’d personally say : Try Windows, and then search google for some skins, there are skins for the aforementioned stuff too !

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