Very interesting DistroWatch Weekly this week, with a ton to chew on; if you're not familiar with DistroWatch, then you're missing out on quite a bit. It's a site that is run by a single individual, Ladislav Bodnar, who does a stellar job of keeping track of all the active distros, new releases, all the packages (and version numbers) for each respective Linux distribution (distro), as well as links to a number of useful Linux-related sites, podcasts, and so on.
In this week's issue, he brings up the topic of distro-hopping, or switching between various distros to find out what is new and exciting, or simply to find one that is the right fit for you.
One of the commentators this week points out that people who read DistroWatch on a regular basis are likely at the forefront of those who engage most in distro-hopping, and that Linux users typically go through phases, from the more unsettled--have to try out a bunch of different flavors, to the more settled in--deciding on one (or two) distributions and customizing those to your specific needs.
This brings to mind a discussion that is going on over at Ubuntuforums on what your Linux origin is. Quite illuminating to get a feel where people came from in their introduction to the open source movement.
Sadly, I'm still in that unsettled phase, as I scan the latest releases, often several times in a single day. Whenever I think I'm ready to move on to the more settled phase, I see some new shiny distribution, and have to try out the liveCD. It's really a testament to how far Linux has come in just the last eight months or so when you don't have to actually install a single thing, but can quite a good idea of what a particular Linux distribution has to offer by using the liveCD, and the fact that just about every distribution these days has a liveCD, that doubles as an install CD.
This is a fairly recent development, and when you factor in that most major distributions have some sort of virtualization either built in, or easily added through vmware-server or the like, you get a sense of just how much developers are constantly improving what there is on offer. Additionally, virtualization is now being implemented at the kernel level, so that it will only get that much easier in the coming days to run virtual machines of Linux distributions, or other open source OSes such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and the like.
Ladislav also points out that now is the 'shoulder season', a period of time when there will no new releases of the major distributions until the fall, though there is still plenty to be excited about in Linux and open source OSes; it gives one time to try out all those backlogged in your must-try list, either in a virtual machine, liveCD/DVD, or direct install.
I was fresh out of ideas until I read this week's weekly wrap--and with having tried three new distros in the past four days, needed a bit of a respite. I though it would be fun to list my Linux origin, as well as the Linux distributions that I have hopped, and any that I have yet to try, but are still quite curious about. Feel free to add to this in the comments, if you so desire, or just anything Linux, open source, or tech-related.
My own origins were in OpenSuse 10.1, which lasted all of about a month, mainly due to hassle of getting wireless to work on a broken down old laptop I inherited from a former Windows (now Mac OS X) user; that and the fact that the package manager for Suse in 10.1 was basically broken, and Zenworks slowed things down to a crawl.
From there I went to Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), then Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10) and finally Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04). Actually, at the time I was using Suse it was with the KDE desktop environment, and so when I initially switched to Ubuntu, it was really Kubuntu.
I got sick of how slow KDE was on that old machine, so I bought a new laptop (a Lenovo Thinkpad) to use; after mistakenly downloading the Ubuntu version of Edgy Eft I became a huge fan of the GNOME desktop environment, and haven't switched back.
Along the way I tried a bunch of Ubuntu derivatives as well as those based on Ubuntu, my favorite unquestionably being LinuxMint. That was my longest venture outside of pure Ubuntu, apart from a brief few weeks using SabayonLinux, Debian Etch, PCLinuxOS, and now Fedora 7.
There are still a bunch of distros that I have yet to try; I'll likely fill these pages with what my experiences are with those in the near future. For those who are new to this, it's helpful to actually click through some of the links; here is another rich source of information. Or you could just drop a question in the comments, or alternately, take a look at some of the other diaries on this and related topics.