Distro Hopping
Posted 10-31-2012 at 11:50 AM by scorpioofthewoods
We all do it at one time or another. At some point(s) the urge hits you for whatever reason to try another distro. So lately I have been distro hopping.
I was happily using Debian Sid some time ago for quite awhile. But then my time became limited and things got a little crazy when Gnome 3 started rolling in. So at that time I switched to Ubuntu. Ubuntu is great when you don't have much time to play with your OS and just want things to work (for the most part). I have used it for awhile but as always there are things about Ubuntu that tend to bug me. This time though it is mostly Canonical, the company that brings us Ubuntu.
With recent changes in the direction of Ubuntu, namely the need to search Amazon whenever you do a search from the dash on your computer, has left a bad taste in my mouth. It is easy enough to avoid, I think, by just not using Unity. However, it makes me wonder what else they might do in the future, or soon without telling us. Basically it is just a smear on trust. It seems very odd to me to have a Linux distro do something like this.
So while I have not completely removed Ubuntu I have been looking around at other distros. I tried Fedora 17 for awhile. I really like Fedora, but like a bleeding edge distro it does have its quirks. Still it is a nice distro, especially for those that like Gnome Shell. However I didn't feel quite satisfied with it.
Now I find myself running Debian Sid again. Things seem to have calmed down and Gnome Shell is running nice. It is nice to be back on Sid. Though it is the unstable branch it has almost never been unusable. Unstable is as in always changing, not (usually) unusable. Plus I really like the rolling release as opposed to having to pretty much do a reinstall every 6 months - 2 years. I think I will keep Sid around for some time, most likely as my main distro.
The fate of Ubuntu on any of my computers ... that remains to be seen. I find Debian, in all of its branches, to be more stable and faster than Ubuntu anyway.
I was happily using Debian Sid some time ago for quite awhile. But then my time became limited and things got a little crazy when Gnome 3 started rolling in. So at that time I switched to Ubuntu. Ubuntu is great when you don't have much time to play with your OS and just want things to work (for the most part). I have used it for awhile but as always there are things about Ubuntu that tend to bug me. This time though it is mostly Canonical, the company that brings us Ubuntu.
With recent changes in the direction of Ubuntu, namely the need to search Amazon whenever you do a search from the dash on your computer, has left a bad taste in my mouth. It is easy enough to avoid, I think, by just not using Unity. However, it makes me wonder what else they might do in the future, or soon without telling us. Basically it is just a smear on trust. It seems very odd to me to have a Linux distro do something like this.
So while I have not completely removed Ubuntu I have been looking around at other distros. I tried Fedora 17 for awhile. I really like Fedora, but like a bleeding edge distro it does have its quirks. Still it is a nice distro, especially for those that like Gnome Shell. However I didn't feel quite satisfied with it.
Now I find myself running Debian Sid again. Things seem to have calmed down and Gnome Shell is running nice. It is nice to be back on Sid. Though it is the unstable branch it has almost never been unusable. Unstable is as in always changing, not (usually) unusable. Plus I really like the rolling release as opposed to having to pretty much do a reinstall every 6 months - 2 years. I think I will keep Sid around for some time, most likely as my main distro.
The fate of Ubuntu on any of my computers ... that remains to be seen. I find Debian, in all of its branches, to be more stable and faster than Ubuntu anyway.
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