To distrophop means to switch linux distributions frequently. Either whenever anything new and shiny comes along or whenever problems occur with what you’re currently on.
Some four-ish years ago I heard Alan Popey discourage the practice on the Ubuntu Podcast. Instead of running from one thing to another, you should settle down, engage with the community and the documentation and help solve whatever problem you had for the good of everybody, not least others with the same issue.
This is immensely sensible and grown-up advice – and so distrohoppers, by contrast, look immature. Like spoiled children with too many toys, unable to focus on any one of them.
So, as someone fixing to leave my current desktop distro, EndeavourOS, for pastures new, I figured I had better come up with a good defense.
At the risk of sounding like someone writing to an agony aunt, I have to start with: I tried. I really did. I searched for forum posts, and I wrote forum posts detailing the specific issue I had. I followed responders’ suggestions and reported back with what they requested. I tried different kernels, rollbacks, etc. I even, gods help me, asked ChatGPT to analyze the pacman upgrade I suspected had fouled things for me. Nothing helped. And the responses to my issue starting drying up.
However, there is a bigger picture here. When I look back at my distro history, what I see is not a bunny rabbit zigzagging and hopping wildly to and fro. It’s more a pendulum swinging back and forth. From the stable and boring to the fresh and dangerous. From Ubuntu to Arch and back again.
Sometimes I feel the need to be free and take responsibility for making and fixing my stuff; sometimes I just want to trust somebody else with the responsiblity of making my stuff work. The timing of the pendulum will vary with age, with spare time, with tech, with how believable the promise of It Just Works is, with how exciting the cutting-edge stuff is. But it will inevitably swing, sooner or later. Neither promise is ever really fulfilled 100% but that’s beacuse they are just promises.
Nothing in that contradicts what Alan said. He’s absolutely right about contributing and that you should feel grateful and obligated to the people and the community that gave you that distro. And do whatever you can to help others. I think I do and I have.
As long as I can say that, I think moving on is fine. You know, just, nothing to excess.
