Distro hopping, the act of ditching your old Linux distribution for a new one. People do it because of various reasons. Mine were always “pure”: to learn, to explore, to experiment and especially, to show off. My latest hop is more than worthy of a victory dance and a show-off. So here I go.
First, lots of boring history
My first ever experiment with any Linux distribution was a bit of a screw-up. This was back in around 2002 or 2003. I got my first ever PC only 2 or 3 years before that, and I was around 14 or 15 years old. I barely knew what a computer was, let alone understand what operating systems are for. That computer came preinstalled with some 9x version of MS Windows, and back in those days I only used it to play Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem. Good times.
But everything changed, when I got my hands on a copy of Chip Magazine, which had a CD inside. Just previously I’ve managed to convince my parents to buy me a CD drive and I left that disk in it once. When I started my computer the other day, poof: Slackware text-mode installation menu. I knew a bit of English even back then, and as an arrogant little teenager, I thought I could handle this all on my own. Two more menus later and I’ve wiped out my entire machine, and didn’t know how to restore it or install a new operating system. Had to ask a proper adult for help.
A year or two and a bit of education later, I was experimenting with Linux distributions on purpose. Debian was the main distro for human beings, but I was still a total noob and had some issues installing it. But then Ubuntu appeared on the scene. It looked gorgeous. Even for those days. It was cool. Most importantly, it was super easy to install and use. I was too attached to my games to ditch Windows altogether, but now I could multi-boot Linux and Windows on the same machine. Gradually, even that went away. Specifically, somewhere around 2008 or 2009 I ditched Windows altogether and never looked back. I started living the dream and being proud of it.
Back then, I’ve tried almost every possible Linux and BSD distro there was, and I could never decide on a favorite. I was distro-hopping almost weekly. Granted, it wasn’t just because I was curious. Missing device drivers and experiments going AWOL were great motivators. Can’t hear a thing? Install something else and hope it has sound card drivers preinstalled. Deleted the wrong thing? Try rebooting with a Live CD and start from scratch. Some other issue? Hop to a different distro. Knoppix, Fedora Core, openSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware, various derivatives of Debian and Ubuntu, various incarnations of FreeBSD. You name it, I’ve probably tried it. Some for longer periods of time, others just until they got installed. But I always found myself coming back to Ubuntu, or a flavor of it at least. It was just too comfortable to forget. It usually just worked out of the box. Not only that, but the software repositories were impressively large.
Life changed. Finished uni, got employed, and didn’t have the luxury of free time anymore to distro-hop as I pleased. Settled on Ubuntu, but still had to reinstall it every year or so to keep using the latest version or more often to get a taste of the real KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXQT, Unity or whatever experience. It never became a chore, it remained a hobby, but now I had to find the time for it. A few years later, I started to forget about all other distros and desktop environments, and started to update/upgrade the one I was using. Not all upgrades went well of course, and inevitably another reinstallation was the only remedy to those hiccups. By this time, I was backing up my home folder regularly, and I was starting to become a power user.
And recently…
I got sick and tired of hearing and reading about distros that were always on the cutting edge because they applied the rolling release model in contrast to others that didn’t. It started to become an itch I couldn’t avoid scratching anymore, and I felt like I was missing out on the big party. I wasn’t masochistic enough to try Arch or something that bare bone just yet, but I did try Fedora Rawhide and openSUSE Tumbleweed. Not bad, I was starting to get the idea. The latest and the greatest apps have new sexy features. But couldn’t stop there. Those two distros were never intended for the cool kids. Traditionally, you had to wear a tie and always be serious to look good while using them.
Enter Manjaro. It’s very much “rock and roll”. And am I satisfied? Very much so. At least so far. If my computer explodes or if I ever hit a brick wall while using it, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I can show off just how cool my desktop looks and behaves, because I’m finally using the latest version of my favorite desktop environment and favorite apps. Won’t tell you which are my favorite ones, because it doesn’t really matter. When you use the latest and the greatest, you get to play with features other users only dream about. So don’t be afraid to change. It’s worth it, and there’s always a Linux distro out there specially tailored for you. You just have to go out and find it, and live happily ever after.