Are you a distro hopper?

**JoergJaeger** · 18-May-2011, 21:49

Well, i always wonder why people hop from one distro to another. Today Ubuntu, tomorrow maybe OpenSUSE?
What makes people jumping around? Are they not happy with the distro they got?

Of course everyone has the choice to try out something different, but sometimes i think that people are looking for something better than they have.

Not sure if am right. I just never felt that way and stick with what i have. I tried Debian (complicated), Ubuntu (easy), Fedora (pain) and OpenSUSE (just right).
I know some people that swear on Arch. Although i never felt that i need to try it out.

So are you a hopper?

**ken_yap** · 18-May-2011, 22:24

I'm not a distro hopper, I'm a distro dancer. (Once saw a sign saying take lessons to distro dance and mistook that for disco dance.

)

Anyway I like to keep up with what other distros are doing so I play around a bit, but I stick with one distro for a long time on my main machine if only because it would disrupt my work to change. I also feel that once past the getting to know Linux stage, it's more worthwhile to stick with one distro with all its faults because you learn more that way. If you hop around, you will be constantly unhappy because the next revision may bring about some changes you can't cope with, and then it's off the the forums to whinge about how bad distro X is and leaving for distro Y and what not.

**malcolmlewis** · 18-May-2011, 22:32

Hi
Not really, just use openSUSE, SLED and SLES, I do have three solaris SPARC systems, but guess I need to build a SPARC version of openSUSE.....hmmm

**gropiuskalle** · 18-May-2011, 22:45

I do test other distributions and sometimes run them parallel to openSUSE for some time. I have been using Gentoo for two years, Slackware for three, but oS was my first PC-system ever and has always been the main one. These days I also use FreeBSD (since two years), as I find the →different concepts quite interesting - I am not looking for a different system, though, as I am very happy with oS. I am just curious.

**hcvv** · 19-May-2011, 04:34

I only use one distro. I follow the rule: never change a running system. Therefore even updating to the nexty openSUSE level is not a good idea for me.
Experience confirms this, not openSUSE strickt as OS, but KDE most of the time let us (specialy my wife) fall down with changed functionality/user interface.

**beli0135** · 19-May-2011, 10:34

I am not sure what to answer... I answered yes.
When 11.1 appeared, and 11.3 appeared, both didn't work at all on my laptop(s). In period of waiting for 11.2 (11.4), I was hopping a lot.
Only ones I liked were: LMDE, Mint and Sabayon

**nrickert** · 19-May-2011, 11:01

Once I find something that works for me, I stick with it.

I used slackware for a while. Then I went with solaris (for work related reasons). When there was no longer a reason to use solaris, I went with suse/opensuse (since around 2004, though with some overlap with solaris use).

**techwiz03** · 19-May-2011, 11:59

Yes and no. Have many machines and each has the distro that worked the best for that machine. So I hop hop hop till I get a distro that does install and configure on a particular machine.

**FlameBait** · 19-May-2011, 17:46

I am all about stability over the longer term. I stay with what works so I don't change distros.

I have a Test box that I do run other distros on as well as the latest stable release of openSUSE. Right now it has Debian stable on it. I tried the most recent version of Ubuntu and it was complete **** so I installed Debian stable. I have a spare drive for that machine that I intend to instal mageia on as soon as they have a stable release.

It pretty much has to be KDE for me. Debian and Ubuntu have been the only exceptions. I really need to much hand holding to do experimentation.

**yasar11732** · 19-May-2011, 17:56

I go to periods of search and stay. In searching period I go out changing distros every 2-3 day until I finally like one of them, then stay period starts. Then after a while, I get bored of my current distro, and search for a new one or go back to some distro I have used some time ago and liked it. I also change distro's when my experimental stupidities ruines my working system. When that happens, I just install the distro which I have install media at hand.