Confessions Of A Distro Hopper

Picture a meeting where several people are seated in a circle, in silence. One man gets up and says "Hi, my name is GR Gaudreau, and I'm a distro hopper." The people seated around him clap and say "Hi!" You've seen seen the first meeting of DHA: Distro Hopper's Anonymous, and the speaker is yours truly .

Yes, I'm a distro Hopper. Every time I see a new distro in the Linux world, I feel a strong urge to try it out. The problem is that for years, I have not been able to settle on one distro. I'd get the itch whenever I'd visit DistroWatch, or SoftPedia Linux, and I'd feel the thirst coming, the relentless urge to install a new distro.

I started using Linux back in the days of Redhat 4.2; that was my first distro. Back in those days, I really wanted to make Linux work. For one, because one of my friends was a Windows fanboy and always put down Linux, and for another, I really liked the idea of free (as in freedom) software. I French we call it "logiciels libre", i.e., software you are at liberty to do with whatever you wish. What a concept!

But the more I tried to get Linux to work with my hardware in those day, the more disappointed I was; the more disappointed I was, the more I hated Micro$oft; the more I hated Micro$soft, the more I wanted to try yet another Linux install. I just didn't like the fascist attitude that Micro$oft exhibited where its software was concerned; just as I didn't like Apple's fascism about its hardware.

Linux was the answer, I knew that, but boy was it frustrating when it didn't work! I kept trying until one day I happened upon the very first Ubuntu offering, Warty Warthog. At last, I thought, a Linux that works... well, not quite, but it was promising.

In the years following Warty, I stayed pretty much with Ubuntu, only venturing to try a new distro when I got the itch, because I'd seen something new, something bright and promising, only to have my hopes dashed to the rocks, like a dying wave on the ocean's shore. Oh well...

But I didn't give up, I tried new ones until one day I came upon Manjaro Linux XFCE. It was a distro based on Arch, a Canadian project which I had wanted to try, but was just too lazy to work so hard to configure. Hey, I never said I was perfect.

I had wanted to try Arch, but, well, I kinda like it when stuff is set up for me in advance, so I can start using it. So, I downloaded my very first copy of Manjaro XFCE, and I installed it. The install was easy and straightforward--dare I say it? "User-friendly."

But here's where Manjaro won my heart: after spending literally a couple of years trying to configure my Brother DCP-7030, copier-printer-scanner, and failing, I finally had a distro that a) had the precise driver for my printer--not the DCP-7020, or the DCP-7025, but the exact driver, the DCP-7030, and b) that actually pointed me to documentation on how to really get my scanner to work.

On the suggestion of a post at the Manjaro forum, I went to the Arch wiki, typed in "DCP-7030" and there was: not only the way to get my precise driver, but a way to configure this machine so the scanner would actually work... AND IT DID!!! on the very first try! Ah, the sound of satisfaction, the sound of a scanner scanning an image I had inserted. Beautiful! Bye bye Windows... sucks to be you!

I have tried many different versions of Manjaro since, but I've come to especially like two of them: the Cinnamon and KDE editions. I just can't make up my mind which I like most. But I've stopped distro hopping and I'm home now.

That doesn't mean I won't try other distros, for fun, but my working box will be running Manjaro Cinnamon edition or KDE edition. Maybe in the future I'll settle on one of those two, but for now, I'll settle for having found a place to call home.