Stop the Hop | Five Reasons to Stop Distro Hopping

In the Linux world there is a lot of talk about Distro Hopping, but I want to make sure people realize distrohopping is not always a good practice. This video outlines five reason why someone should not distrohop.

Related Videos:
To Hop or Not:

Tips for Distro Hopping:

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[williambaldwin]

Linux Mint 19.1 here on my computer. Working perfect, playing youtube, then some Steam games.

[aristotelispapageorgiou]

I love distro hopping! It is great fun. I have 10 VMs and a bunch of older systems that I change all the time.

[warhorse]

I've tried a couple others, but fell in love with Linux Mint 19.1 . Got it on 5 of my computers and will stay with it.

[aitchpea]

I made the switch about a dozen years ago, distro-hopped for a few months til I settled. I don't hop any more but I do keep a small partition free for playing around with distros that catch my eye.

[worldhello]

@2:11 That is a good reason if your system just works and does what it supposed to. Even if you wanted to, it is the wrong timing. Time could be spend wiser.

[cnewtonc]

Excellent Video.... The best way to try a new distro (as you know) is on a VM or an old machine that is not made for production.
Most programmers are too busy supporting real production environments to distro hop for no reason.

[lsatenstein]

For 11 years, I was faithful to Gnome. Then Gnome changes started breaking the Gnome extensions. Suddenly Gnome was blahh.
With the same distro, I installed KDE alongside Gnome, and got familiar with KDE. Then I installed Deepin, which I find that has a smarter design than Gnome.
All three are chosen via one gear icon at the logon page. It is one Fedora installation, not three.
One home folder for all three. One update updates all three. YES, not distro hopping but interface hopping.

I do have Centos 7.18 Gnome version installed as a second installation. I wanted a distro where the Gnome version with the Gnome extensions of which I made good use would be stable. Centos is for me as the default power-on boot.

[WRND]

It's good to showcase some of the different aspects of the different distros and GUIs so that someone can better find what might suit them for what they're looking for. I appreciate you 'Tubers taking the time to show them and give your thoughts. I've found some newer distros this way that I quite like using on some machines. Manjaro especially comes to mind, and I quite like it on some newer laptops, even though I've been a big fan of Debian for quite a while, and of course still enjoy using it on some systems. Cheers.

[JosueC]

I have already stopped the hopping, I'm already using Linux mint for everything most of the time. However that doesn't mean I don't test and try installing and multibooting other distros. Mint aside, I have tried Ubuntu, Debian, Manjaro, Arch and I'm planning to do even more!

[Coopertronics]

Such a good point. There is so much choice that it's always tempting to try something new. I started with Open Suse years ago after I had got a new laptop with Windows Vista and got a cover disk with the live Suse on it. After that I got into it a bit more and found Ubuntu, and then was recommended Mint. Lately I have been using plain Ubuntu on a big machine and Trisquel Mini on my old laptops and desktops, also introducing new Linux users to Mint. It's all about what works best for you at the end of the day.

[worldhello]

@8:57 On MX Linux I had funny discoloration in games which I did not have in Linux Mint but the gaming performance of Linux Mint was poor compared to Kubuntu and I did not want to spend time integrating the complete KDE Plasma desktop into anything, therefore I opted for Kubuntu. AFAIK KDE Neon is the rolling release of KDE Plasma with a pretty old version of Ubuntu underneath and Kubuntu is more like a LTS version of KDE Plasma with up to date Ubuntu underneath. I did not know that back then. ^^

[TennesseeFrank]

Until I learned how to use VirtualBox I use to Hop quite a bit. Now I've landed on Kubuntu 18.04.2 LTS and I'm going to stick with it for the foreseeable future. I did give Manjaro KDE a try a couple weeks ago but Simple Screen Recorded didn't work so I moved back to Kubuntu. Of course I do have 2 desktops, 2 laptops an 2 Netbooks so if I bork one system I have a few others to fall back on. That being said when I do find a Distro that I like the majority of my computers get it installed on them. That way I have some consistency. I'd like to see a "5 Reasons to Hop" video if you not mind making it.

[KuittheGeek]

I was running Ubuntu for several years, and when I upgraded to 18.04 I ran into some issues with some of the customizations I made breaking things. I started my hop then, and I was moving around until I found something that was stable and I liked the UI. I am now on LInux Mint for my productive needs, but I still distro hop some because I am a computer enthusiast, and it is fun to break things and fix them. I recently installed Arch on an old chromebook, and the thing is now faster then it was with ChromeOS or any other Linux distro out of the box. I might be a convert now.
And personally, I am not a big fan of the active border on your videos. I find it distracting. Just my thoughts.

[washingtonradio]

I have one computer with the distro I install for others while my production computer has a different one. I find having a box with the same distro allows me to look at the specifics of that distro when needed.

[raphel]

Thanks - that's a good video!
I've been Distro-Hopping too and got from Linux Mint to MX-Linux (with Sparky and Manjaro inbetween).
My heart still beats for Linux-Mint but Sparky is very underestimated but Manjaro had one (?) program that was missing and ... I guess I didn't find my mounted devices quick and easy enough. Anyway - years ago I switched from SuSE to Ubuntu ... AANNDD I used a Live-CD to put my HOME-directory into position ... AANNDD I had to do this as ROOT!!!
Wow, that was fun! Afterwards I had to tell every single file and directory, that it is "user" instead of "root" (via MC) . . . this took me HOURS!!!
At least ... if your not TOO familiar or did NOT inform enough about a specific Distro .... do NNOOTT hop !!!

[Canadian]

I stuck to one, tried a few people raved about. Didnt stick with them though. I might go to Gen2 if I got a little better with Linux. However, I don't have that much power in the linux universe. Debian is super easy. Gen2 would be nice to learn.

[Shadoww-lvbj]

good points. I recently got a radeon VII, had to go back to manjaro because mint didn't have the microcode yet.

[CrazedPerformanceRepair]

I actually kinda enjoy the hop, not sure why though??? Recently I tried out Manjaro KDE and was so impressed I plan to change all three of my main workstations to it. I will continue the hop on my non critical other computers though because it is fun for some strange reason to me lol

[wiredelectrosphere]

There is pretty much no cure for distro hopping. You first start with something like ubuntu, then you try ubuntu variants (pop, mint, kubuntu), then you might try fedora. You probably played watch dogs and after that you install kali, then you really have an urge to see arch logo in your neofetch but not sure if you can handle it so you install Manjaro instead. After you start to feel how arch works, you go for arch. And after dozens of xorg config crashes you go to something stable like debian or probably Ubuntu again so the cycle repeats. And the worst part is that you could actually have some real work done, but instead you are constantly screwing around with other distros or configuring your rice setup all day

[anthonyfmoss]

A great deal of common sense here. Good stuff!