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.
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. :D)
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
I have to admit. Once i was tempted to run BSD, but could not convince myself to actually do it. I got scared about re-learning everything again and fight with drivers. I think i am missing the kung-fu for nerds to be doing that.
Have you read →the article about the differences of BSD compared to Linux? There are some, but when you are used to unixoid systems anyway, you will most likely manage them well. Try FreeBSD, it is focused on desktop usage an fairly easy to install. If you have enough RAM, you can always have a quick look by setting up a virtual machine before actually installing it on your HD (I use VirtualBox, which isn’t hard to use either).
gropiuskalle wrote:
> Try FreeBSD, it is focused on desktop usage an fairly easy to install.
There is a BSD version based on FreeBSD which is even more focused on
desktop use. openSUSE users will maybe feel somewhat at home because it uses
KDE as desktop and has some additional tools for software installation. http://www.pcbsd.org/
Since it is a full FreeBSD under the hood and not a fork you can use all
previous FreeBSD knowledge with it.
–
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
i would not say " jump"
It is more a move to.
getting exp in different things I used fedora 4 through fedora 11 with CentOS 5.3,5.4,5.5 installed as a second os
with Arch installed on a second computer
Now it is OpenSUSE 11.3 and Scientific Linux 6
suse IS a bit different that fedora . Right now i am debating about staying with suse 11.3 or getting back on the fedora roller coaster .
Or something different ( though i DO like SELinux )
Well, I actually was about to edit my last post, which is not possible here - FreeBSD is actually not focused on desktop usage. In fact, many servers use FreeBSD, but it’s easy to install it with the idea of a classic home PC system in mind.
Anyway, I do understand the idea of PC-BSD. It comes very close to a regular installation as we know it (resulting in a ready-to-use system right after the initial install), which is indeed quite nice. However, I’d like to emphasize that it’s not hard work to create the same with FreeBSD. For example KDE is included in the DVD-version of FreeBSD or can be installed via Ports (when having installed the base system only). Anyway, thanks for the hint, I’m downloading PC-BSD right now and will give it a shot.
Haha… but i thank you for the link. I was very much interested in the beginning as i started out to use Linux. But it seemed too complicated at the time.
I will, too, give it a shot. I was, however, never really interested in how other Linux distros are. Though i tried out a couple. Namely Fedora and Ubuntu.
I was a distro hopper. Maybe I will do it again in the future. In the beginning of my Linux life, I was sticking with Ubuntu, but besides that, I also hopped a lot: Fedora (9, 10, 12, 12, 14), Mandriva 2009, Sabayon, Debian, Linux Mint… and as I realised that Ubuntu is a dead end for me, I also hopped again and ended up with openSUSE.
I did it because I wanted to see what the other have to offer. I always hoped that one of these systems have features which are some kind awesome. So it was the search for “awesomeness”
Anyway, there were always drawbacks in the systems which forced me to hop again.
Now I am with openSUSE, because it is perfect for what I need, although I still have a lot to learn. But for now, it is the distro I sticked with the longest time, besides Ubuntu.
I use vanilla ubuntu 10.10 as my “stalwart” distro… so when/if anything goes wrong with my other installs i always have a fall back… (i keep all my media/documents/etc on a separate partition i share between partitions).
opensuse was my main distro for a long while, but 11.4 for some reason (probably user error) ran really slowly on my laptop and became frustrating…
but now i have been using Arch for a while and am extremely pleased with it…
JoergJaeger wrote:
>>:) now it may be your fault if we all switch.
I hope not
To also answer the question of the poll:
I do not think I am a distro hopper. From time to time I look at other
distros just to see what hppens in the rest of the linux universe and also
the BSD universe (looked also long ago into opensolaris). Sometimes I help
someone to setup a system and then it is not always openSUSE which is
chosen, but what fits best for that person and for the hardware in question
(the latter is less often a restriction).
For my own use I ‘hopped’ two times in my life.
First time was around 1998 or so after I started 1995 with linux from
S.u.S.E. (which was a slackware at that time, not rpm based) and was
interested in other distros, so till 2000 I played with different linux
flavours. In 2000 I came back to SuSE (version 6.4) and since then I stayed.
There was one exception, for a few months I switched to Linux Mint when
openSUSE 11.0 and 11.1 gave me too much headache and switching back to 10.3
was not an option for me. After some quick experiments (Ubuntu, Mandriva,
Sabayon …) Linux Mint was my temporary choice, I was very sad and knew I
would come back as soon as possible but I needed to work without much
trouble. I Came back when 11.2 was out and was happy.
So in the last 16 years with linux (where you can say the last 6 years even
without any windows as dual boot, I did no longer need anything from it and
ditched it in 2005 on my private PC) I was more than a decade with S.u.S.E,
SuSE, openSUSE and most likely it will also be my main linux distro in the
future.
What I would call a distro hopper are
people who never become familiar with a certain flavour of linux or bsd
and jump over board as soon as there is a little problem,
or
the experimenters which want to test and see everything and have no need
to use their computer for any daily work.
–
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
I can’t exactly answer the poll as it stands. See, I am fine and fairly content with openSUSE and have been since 9.1. I do, however, like to try out/experiment with other distros, i.e. Gentoo. I do this to increase my knowledge. I also do this to get ideas on how openSUSE could improve. I don’t like running virtual because it’s not true. It doesn’t give the same results, the same experience, and running it for real does.
