 So I'm angry. I'm mad. I'm angry and I'm getting pretty close to being drunk off my ass. And the reason is in the last 24 hours, I have distro hopped eight times on my main production machine. Now some of this is my own fault, you know, trying things maybe that I shouldn't try on a main production machine. But I had been running Arco Linux for the last year and a half on my main production machine. And I love Arco. Before that, I ran Manjaro on my main production machine for like a year. Before that, I ran Mainline Arch on my main production machine. I like arch based distributions. And I've always known this, that when it comes to what Linux distributions are rock solid stable and dependable and, you know, you can put on a production machine and you can depend on that distribution. There's really two distributions, Debian and Arch. And distributions based on Debian and Arch, which about 90% of the Linux distributions out there, they're based on either Debian and Arch. And there's a reason for that. And being that I've ran so many Debian based distributions in the past, and here recently that I've ran so many arched based distributions in the past, you know, I needed to wipe out my Arco Linux install that was getting kind of old and crusty. There was a lot of packages installed on the system. I no longer used it was bloated, because I test so much software for the YouTube channel. So I wanted a fresh install, but I didn't want to take the easy route and just reinstall Arco. No, no, no, let's try something different. Since I want to reinstall anyway, let's do a distro hop. And my requirements were, it couldn't be Debian based and it couldn't be arch based. We're going to do something different. Oh boy. So it was about six or seven o'clock yesterday evening that I decided to do the distro hopping. And the first one I wanted to try, I really wanted to make this work because I've done a lot of content about this particular distribution lately. GNU Geeks. And it's running on the laptop behind me that Lenovo Thinkpad Wi-Fi doesn't work because the hardware is not compatible with Geeks on that laptop. But I wasn't sure about the hardware on my main production machine. So I got the ISO, got Geeks on a USB stick, and I ran through the installation. The GNU Geeks installation is pretty straightforward. As soon as you boot into it, it asks you for language and keyboard layout, locale, ask you for a username and password. And then you get to the part about picking your drive, you know, doing the automatic partitioning or do the manual partitioning. And when I got to that screen, I chose the automatic partitioning. And it kicked me back all the way to the very first step of the installation, which was picking your language. And then I had to set the keyboard again, the locale and choose a username and password. I got to that part of the installation again about partitioning the drives. And I knew the automatic partitioning, it didn't like something there. So I was like, you know what, I'll just manually partition my drives. That's no big deal. So I chose manual partitioning, boom, kicked me back to the very first part of the installation process again. And I did this a few times, half a dozen times and trying various things on that partitioning page. It didn't matter. I never could proceed past that section of the installer with Geeks. So I don't know if the installation is broken, the installer is broken. Maybe it just doesn't like my equipment. Maybe it couldn't detect my drives. I don't know. But I spent an hour or two with Geeks checking documentation, trying to figure out if there was a fix for this problem. See if other people had this problem. And I finally gave up on it. You know, after a couple of hours, I was like, you know what, let's move on to the next distribution to try. Now I didn't want to get away from trying a free software foundation approved distribution because good new Geeks is a 100% Libre distribution. It is 100% free as in freedom. And I really wanted to give one of those distributions a shot here on my main production machine. So I went to the free software foundations website and I picked another FSF approved distribution. And the one I picked was parabola. Now parabola does break my rules. It is arch based, but because it uses the Linux Libre kernel and it's 100% free as in freedom, it's certainly a different kind of distribution. Well, parabola wouldn't install correctly for me either parabola. Actually, I couldn't even boot into it. I burned the USB stick, plug it in, load it up. And I guess when it's trying to boot into the live environment, nothing ever happens. It's just a black screen. And it locks up. I can't even get to a TTY inside parabola off the USB stick. So complete fail. Like I have nothing to do there. So there's no way for me to even begin to fix that problem. So I'm like, where do I go from here? So it's getting very late in the evening. It's nearly midnight, probably at this point. I was like, you know what, there is a really unique GNU slash Linux distribution. I've been wanting to try on my main production machine for a couple of years. I've tried it out on my test laptops. I've tried it out in VMs many times. I've done some videos on this distribution a few times on the channel. Void Linux. I downloaded the Void ISO. I downloaded their LXDE ISO and ran through the Void Linux installation. Now having installed Void a few times on test equipment, I kind of know my way around Void. It's a command line installer, but it's pretty straightforward. Got Void installed. I don't know, 20, 30 minutes after I burned the USB stick, rebooted and it rebooted just fine. And I launched this gorgeous LXDE desktop. LXDE is no longer in development. So it's a blast from the past. And I kind of really liked it. LXDE is not a bad desktop environment. Uses the open box window manager. I love open box. But then I ran into a problem. I decided to pull up a terminal. It's like, we better update the system. The ISO is kind of old. Let's update the system. So I fire up their package manager XBPS and, you know, try to do an update. There's no internet. I try to ping Google. Of course, the ping doesn't work now. I'm just a double check. Make sure there's really no networking going on. There's not. You know what? This isn't that big of a deal because a lot of minimal installations, things like Arch and Gintu server installs, oftentimes you have to manually go in and start the networking service, DHCP, you know, play with that kind of stuff to get your ethernet working. So the first thing you need to do is find out the name of your interface, you know, F0 or ENP6S0 or whatever the name of my ethernet connection is. So I pull up a terminal and I type IP space ADDR to get my IP address. And it should list every device. And the only device listed was LO. The loopback doesn't even detect that I have an ethernet cord plugged in or what that device is. I've never had that happen on any Linux installation before. I don't even know what the hell is going on with Void Linux. It's an old ISO. It was running kernel 5.3. something. Maybe it was a kernel problem. I tried to look up some documentation on Void to see if other people were also having networking issues, trying to install Void and a few people were. So I don't think it's just a me problem. But I couldn't even begin to figure out this because again, it's so weird that it didn't even detect that I had ethernet even an option on this computer. So three strikes. So I started 6, 7 in the evening and we're like 1am last night, you know, because I failed at Geeks, failed at Parabla, failed at Void. I had a backup plan though. I had Arco Linux Xmonad on a USB key just for this situation. I was like, Arco takes 15 minutes to install. So I installed Arco Xmonad back on my machine because it's a 15 minute install. Now I didn't plan on keeping Arco. I still wanted to hop, but I needed to be able to boot into something to check my email, maybe watch some Netflix before I went to bed or something, whatever it is I wanted to do on this computer because I didn't really have another computer. Not one with working internet because remember the laptop Wi-Fi doesn't work on that because it's running Geeks at the moment. But I took 15 minutes to install Arco Xmonad on the machine one o'clock in the morning last night just so I could do some stuff on this computer with the understanding that in the morning I was going to continue the distro hopping. I was going to install a couple of more distros. So the Free Software Foundation approved distros. They're not going to work Void, the ISOs are old. It didn't seem like it was going to work and didn't detect the Ethernet. Like let's keep moving. I kind of wanted to try out some sourced based distributions. That's partly why I chose Geeks, partly why I chose Void. Let's keep going with some source based distributions. So how about some Gen2 based distributions? Gen2 itself gets a lot of love. I mean people know Gen2, but not too many people know about the various Gen2 based distributions out there and there are several. One of the Gen2 based distributions I briefly considered because I looked at it on the channel a couple of years ago and that was Clover OS. Nobody really runs Clover OS. It's kind of a meme distribution. It's a meme because it was created by somebody that hangs out on 4chan as the official GNU slash Linux distribution of 4chan basically. But it's a very quick installation. It's like a 10 minute installation of Gen2. It's very minimal though. Well after you install it you don't really have anything. You have the FVWM window manager. You do have a graphical environment to boot in but no other programs installed. So you still have to build all of this stuff from source. You know you're gonna have to the compile times take forever on Gen2 based distributions. But that's okay. I was willing to give Clover OS a shot. But when I went to the website Clover OS didn't have any recent ISOs. Their last ISO was like six months ago. That is a pretty old ISO for a sourced based rolling release distribution. I didn't want to waste my time on the chance that that wouldn't work. I had already wasted so much time. I was like I'm not going to download that old ISO for Clover OS. So let's move on to some other Gen2 based Linux distributions. And one of my favorite Gen2 based distributions has always been Sabion. I've tried it out many times on test equipment and NVMs. Never ran it on my main production machine while doing this YouTube channel though. So I run through a minimal installation of Sabion. I download their daily build for their minimal install. Which installs Xorg and it installs the Fluxbox window manager but not much else. That's great for me because I'm going to install my own window managers and my own configs and everything. So that's fine. And the installation for Sabion goes well. It's like a 15 minute installation. It's a graphical installer. It's the Calamari installer. It's Gen2 with system D. And the installation goes great. And I reboot the machine. And when I reboot the machine I get a grub menu. I was like yes. I hit enter. And then I get the splash screen for Sabion. And it's this beautiful penguin foot. With the three toes on the screen. And it just slowly shows itself on the screen. And it's really neat. I was like this is going to be great. This is going to be awesome. And right after that splash screen of the little penguin foot. Get a black screen. So no Xorg. Nothing. It's just uh-uh. I was like okay. Not totally expected. Right. But at this point nothing shocks me anymore. It's like do I want to take the time to fix this. I didn't waste that much time on Sabion because the installation is pretty quick. But I didn't really want to waste much time going forward either. I was like you know what we'll just pretend like this didn't really happen. I only wasted you know half an hour at most downloading the ISO burning the ISO and then running through the installation. 30 minutes of my time wasted. No big deal. We'll just forget Sabion ever happened. Let me move on to the next distribution. So I went and grabbed the ISO for Calculate Linux. Calculate Linux has a number of different ISOs out there. And kind of like I did the minimal installation of Sabion I wanted to do a minimal installation of Calculate Linux. So they have Calculate Linux the Scratch Edition which is Calculate Linux with Xorg. Nothing else. And that works fine for me because after that I'll just compile whatever programs I want to install. My various window managers or whatever. The Calculate Linux Scratch Edition installation. It's a command line installer but I read through the documentation. Calculate Linux their documentation is pretty good. Got through the installation and the installation again. It's pretty straightforward. I reboot the machine. Reboots just fine. I get a command prompt because you know until you actually run StartX you're just in a TTY. Not a big deal. So let me run StartX. Errors nothing happens. It's like okay well let me see what's going on here. Now I know typically when you StartX and you don't have a window manager installed Xorg actually comes with its own window manager. Tom's window manager TWM. It's built in to the X11 packages though. It should already be there. But I think one of the requirements for you to actually StartX and get into TWM is Xterm. I think Xterm is actually one of the root windows when you launch StartX. At least that's been my experience in the past. So I did a quick search for Xterm on the system. Where is Xterm? Xterm's not installed. Okay let's emerge Xterm. I install Xterm. Run StartX. Still doesn't work. I'm the root user trying to StartX. I did create a normal user DT. So I switched over to the DT user. He can't StartX either. So I went and tried to read the error logs because Xorg does write to an error log you know when it fails to start. I really couldn't tell what was going on there after you know spending a little time on Calculate Linux their scratch edition. I didn't want to waste too much more time because at this point it's okay. I wasted an hour maybe an hour and a half with Calculate. It took me a little longer to do it than what Sabion took. But I didn't go through the trouble of emerging a ton of packages. I didn't emerge any window managers. I didn't emerge a web browser and LibreOffice and all that stuff because that stuff could take hours. And I already know until I actually check the internet and until I do StartX and see if I can actually get into an X session I'm not going to waste a couple of hours emerging a bunch of packages. So thankfully I didn't waste too much time on Calculate Linux's scratch edition. So I went back to the Calculate Linux website and I downloaded their LXQt edition. Now the LXQt edition of Calculate Linux has a graphical installer. It's not command line only like the scratch edition. And it's a pretty straightforward graphical installation. It takes about half an hour to run through the install. I get it installed. I reboot the machine. And what do I get? Well I get the splash screen for Calculate Linux. Very nice splash screen. It's very similar to what happened with Sabion. After the splash screen it was black. It was a black screen. And I couldn't, could I drop to a TTY with Calculate? I can't remember. There were a couple of these situations where I couldn't even get to a TTY. With Calculate I think I could get to a TTY. But at that point I'm back to the same situation I was when I did this scratch edition. I'm in a TTY prompt. But do I really want to take the time to try to, you know, debug this and try to figure out what the issue is and try to get it fixed? At this point I've spent two days. A 24 hour period basically from late last night into early this evening running through all these installations. At this point I'm frustrated. I just want a working machine at this point. The idea of distro hopping is over. So I still have the USB stick of ArcoLinux, their Xmonad edition. So I put ArcoLinux back on my main production machine. So hopped distros about eight times in 24 hours and ended up on the same distribution I started with. But what I learned is, and I've kind of always known this, I've always known there's not something better out there. You know, Debian and the Debian based distros work. Arch and the Arch based distributions work. You know, those other distributions out there, they are, they're unique. And I don't mind going and checking out things like Geeks and Gen2 and stuff like that. But I'm done hopping. I'm done distro hopping. And when I need to clean up a machine, because every couple years a fresh install is good, but no more of always looking for something better. You know, everybody seems to always be looking for that next best thing. You know, I'm gonna find a better desktop environment. I'm gonna find a better distribution. I'm gonna find a better something as far as computer and technology related. When a lot of times, if what's working for you is working for you, what the hell are you changing your distribution for? And even if I would have got one of those seven other distributions that I hop to before finally coming back to Arco in the last 24 hours, even if I would have got Geeks working, you know, I was going to be so frustrated with software availability on that distribution. Same thing with parabola being free software foundation approved. Same thing with void, because I have played around with void on test equipment, the repositories are not great. I mean, some of the software that I use on a daily basis will not be in the void repos. Sabion and calculate their software availability is a little better because they're 100% compatible with Gen2 and Gen2 has a ton of software available. But at the end of the day, none of these distributions offer the kind of software availability that Arch offers. They just don't. I would have missed the AUR. I know that. But I was going to do it just because of the experience, right? Just trying something new. I knew it was not going to be better in many ways. I was going to make my life more difficult running these other distributions. But I was just doing it for sake of the YouTube channel. And I don't know why I was going to put myself through that anyway. Because of my experience in the last 24 hours, especially I'm I'm really glad that these installations failed as hard as they did. Because what if one of them half ass worked? And I spend the next six weeks struggling with broken packages and, you know, abort system in some way. And I'm missing days of making content or my content's not turning out right because videos not working, audio is not working right and things like that. In many ways, I'm kind of glad all these distributions failed just so I can go back to what I know. And that's Arch. So the next time you guys hear me talking on a video or in a live stream or in social media about maybe thinking about distro hopping on my main production machine, I want you guys to tell me three little words. Don't do it. Before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Nate, Corbinian, Mitchell, entropy, UK, John, Devin, Arch 55, 30, Chris, Chuck, DJ, Dylan, George, Louis, Omri, Paul, Robert, Sean, Tobias and Willie without these guys, I probably still would have distro hopped eight times in the last 24 hours. But without them, I don't know. It wouldn't have been as fun. So I want to sincerely thank each and every one of these guys. I want to sincerely thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because we have no corporate sponsors here. This channel is sponsored by you guys, the community. If you'd like to support my work, you'll find DT over on Patreon. All right, guys. Peace.