 Whether you're a brand new Linux user or you've been using Linux for a very long time I know a lot of people like to distro hop and I've been on the record for a long time saying that if you are new New to Linux distro hopping is one of the most important things that you can do because how else are you supposed to find the perfect distro? If you haven't tried a lot of distros, right? There's always a possibility that the one that you land on is very good But maybe there's a better one out there and the only way to know for sure is to try Many distros so what I wanted to do today Was talk about five tools that every distro hopper needs in their tool bank things that are essential For people who want to switch to a new Linux distribution whether you're doing it just for one time or if you're planning on Trying multiple distributions. It doesn't really matter. These tools are Very essential so the first one on the list is going to be The one that you probably have already heard of and that is Belina etcher now basically what etcher does is Just burn isos to USB keys and that's really all it's meant to do now It does have some new features that I've never tried before like cloning disks and stuff like that But for the most part the idea here is that you give it an ISO you feed it an ISO and you tell it the Drive that you want it to burn to and then you hit the go button and it goes, right? That's really all it's meant to do and it's very very quick. It's very very easy to use and You don't have to do any fiddly bits when it comes to things like you might have to do if you're on windows And I think one of the best parts about etcher is that it is cross platform And that means that if you're on windows and you're thinking about switching to Linux You can use etcher on windows to burn your ISO of your first distro and then you can be off to the races Now if you are more of a nerd and I don't blame you I are one as I as I like to say DD is an option now DD is called this destroyer for a reason so don't use it unless you know what you're doing So just keep that in mind But DD does allow you to burn isos just like etcher does but in a more nerd like living on the edge Dangerous way so that is an option if you're more interested in burning isos in the terminal The second one is probably the most important one on the list and that is our sync or timeshift now I've listed both of these depending on which direction you want to go There's a third one also called gr sync or something like that It's a gooey front end for our sync and in the b-roll what you're going to see me do is run an our sync command Because I don't have b-roll of timeshift But basically the idea here is that you need a tool of some kind to Back up your system before you go distro hopping because obviously you want to be able to save your data Now this tool here is not just for distro hoppers obviously You should always have a backup and I don't want to preach on the whole backup thing because of course you should have a backup That's just kind of obvious So these tools can be used by anyone, but if you're going to be moving between distros You obviously want to have a good backup and our sync timeshift and gr sync are good tools for you to be able to Back up now one specific note about timeshift is that it does default to butterf s So if you are on a butterf s system, you're obviously going to have a much better time with Timeshift then you will if you use our sync, but it does still have our sync capabilities So you could use timeshift as a front end for our sync as well and it works very well It's very very simple very easy to use whether you're using butterf s or our sync Capabilities in timeshift so just know that you'll have to choose between those two if you use timeshift So that's the second one in the list the next one on the list is probably my favorite tool for distro hoppers And I think it's probably the most important one even though technically the backup ones are the most important ones This is the one that I have has just kind of blown my mind and completely changed the game It's the game changer right and that is ventoi now. I've made a video on ventoi I will leave a link to it in the cards and in the video description Basically what ventois allows you to do is take a whole bunch of isos download as many as you want as many Can fit on your USB key put them all on your USB key after installing ventoi and then you can boot into your USB key and switch between those isos just like you would if you were choosing between different items in a grub menu and That means right now like for example I have maybe 30 isos on my little USB key it has like 256 gigs and I can switch between them. I can load it into my laptop Get into the boot menu It will load up the ventoi screen and then I can choose between any of those isos that I have on there And I can boot into it into the live environment. I can install it I can do whatever I want with it. It's fantastic. It's so so damn good And if you are a distro hopper and you're not using ventoi, I Don't even want to know yet. Yeah, I say seriously It is so so damn good and you should definitely give it a try if you haven't already because it's just it's fantastic the fourth one on the list is a separate home partition now this is not so much a tool as a method of living I should say and Basically what this means is when you've installed When you install a distribution what you should do is keep separate root and home partitions And what this allows you to do is that when you install your next distribution You can point that new distribution at your old home partition and keep the vast majority of your data Now this is going to be obviously have some exceptions because a lot of your applications aren't going to transfer over because those are stored in the Root Gregory, but a lot of your most of your personal data will still be there anything you have documents pictures and things like that Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a backup You should definitely still have a backup, but it will keep you from having to transfer over everything from your backup back to your main disk Because it should already be there. So this does take some pre-planning So every time you install Linux or whatever operating system You should definitely go through and make sure that you have set it up So that you have a separate home partition that way when you change distros next time You can take advantage of having this feature if you didn't make that Choice when you do your partitioning installing your current operating system. You're kind of out of luck There's no I mean you'll have to just do a regular backup as you should anyways and then Pre-plan for the next time by creating a home partition in your new distro Now the last one on the list is one that I also consider pretty important But it's not necessary for everyone you can go to a distros website and just download their ISO That's the way probably most people do it But it's not the best way to do it because when you go to say Linux Mint's website And you just download their ISO and use it from one of their mirrors or whatever You're taking bandwidth away from Linux Mint They have to pay for that in the most cases or they've gotten people to volunteer that bandwidth either way that bandwidth costs somebody money somewhere and Obviously, you don't want to be a burden on your distros So the best way to actually download an ISO is through a bit torn So in order to do this you actually have to use you actually have to have a bit torn client And there are many good ones out there Transmission seems to be the one that's kind of the universal one that can go across any desktop environment or distro But there are several others out there k-torn is out there a QT torn I think is one of those so there's several different bit torn clients out there and there it's not just for downloading Illegal movies. It's also for downloading isos from distros and the great part about this is that you can give back For reasonably cheap costs, right? It doesn't really cost you much to upload a couple gigabytes of stuff to random people and Share that ISO with other people That's the way the ISO system works when it comes to bit-torns because you share it Someone shares it with you you share it with someone else and it's kind of a good way of giving back for free It also saves your distribution some bandwidth costs. So that's another good way of kind of Giving back to Linux and open-source software. So those are the five essential tools for distro hoppers And I think that if you are a distro hopper, you've probably used a couple of them But maybe you discovered one on this list that you haven't tried before I like seriously I I know how important backups are but when I say ventoy is good And if you haven't tried it you should I really really do mean it So head on out there install ventoy cuz it's it's astonishingly easy like it's I always thought like I've heard I heard about ventoy for a long time and Didn't give it a try because I thought it would be hard. It's not hard at all It's really really simple like you download it you click a button point it towards the right Disc that you want to use it on and it goes and does the thing that's literally all there is to it. It's really really good So I will stop being a ventoy fanboy never I will keep preaching how about it forever and ever ever Anyways, that's it for this video if you have thoughts on tools for distro hoppers You can leave those in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash still in this cast links for libera pay and YouTube will be in the video description Before I jump into thanking everybody who does support me on page I just want to take a small moment out to talk about my camera situation If you noticed in the last couple of videos my camera looked supposedly better I thought it looked a little bit more like I was a loompa loompa But apparently the colors were more vibrant and whatever, you know, and you know I got used to it for a little while and basically what I was doing was I was using droid cam and recording off my phone But droid cam just does not like me for whatever reason it keeps making me reinstall a plug-in for it And even then half the time it doesn't work. So I'm back to the old camera. I am Considering getting an actual like camera camera and we'll see how that goes So if I mess around with video quality over the next few videos, just know that I'm experimenting So I just wanted to kind of put that out there. Anyways, that's it for this video Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube because you're all absolutely amazing without you The channels was not anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very very very very much for your support I truly do appreciate it. That's the second video in a row. I got stuck on the word very I don't know why I just kept going I'm going and going going going It's really weird. Anyways, thanks everybody for your support. I said the word everybody that time really well Thanks, everybody. And then I did and I F it up again. Thanks everybody for your support and thank you everybody for watching. I'll see you next time that You need to retire. That's really bad