The Future of Distro Delves

A̵f̵t̵e̵r̵ ̵t̵w̵o̵ ̵y̵e̵a̵r̵s̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵t̵h̵r̵e̵e̵ ̵s̵e̵a̵s̵o̵n̵s̵,̵ ̵D̵i̵s̵t̵r̵o̵ ̵D̵e̵l̵v̵e̵s̵ ̵(̵a̵s̵ ̵a̵ ̵r̵e̵g̵u̵l̵a̵r̵l̵y̵ ̵p̵r̵o̵d̵u̵c̵e̵d̵ ̵w̵e̵b̵ ̵s̵e̵r̵i̵e̵s̵)̵ ̵i̵s̵ ̵f̵i̵n̵a̵l̵l̵y̵ ̵c̵o̵m̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵t̵o̵ ̵a̵n̵ ̵e̵n̵d̵.

Update: As expected, Distro Delves returns with a new Season!

What is Distro Delves?

Distro Delves is the Linux Distro non-review web series on YouTube examining different Operating Systems just for the fun of it.

The Distro Delves Show was a series of videos I uploaded to YouTube as a seasonal (yearly) show.

The premise of the series was to review operating systems in a more standardized and critical way than other Linux distro reviewers on YouTube were doing at the time.

When Did Distro Delves Get Started?

Distro Delves started in September of 2019 with this video:

The original plan was to start a season with a “baseline” Linux Distribution and compare each distro (in terms of specs and benchmarks) to the baseline.

This was a bit too cumbersome for me to maintain (even for a monthly schedule) and the format changed to a more traditional “review” format in Season 2.

The series started out with one episode per-month but switched to a per-week schedule in Season 2 and then to mostly live streams in Season 3.

Why Did The Series End?

The final Distro Delve was Episode 3 of Season 3 in 2021. It was a “special” episode for openSUSE Leap 15.3.

The main factor for ending the series was that there simply wasn’t much interest in produced episodes anymore, from both myself and from the audience.

People would ask for more episodes in comments, GitHub issues, and other places but when I would produce one, the views and engagement numbers just weren’t there.

Doing reviews as benchmarks like in Season 1 was kind of fun but the format switch in Season 2 really took the joy out of it for me. And by Season 3, I just wasn’t interested in it at all.

What About the Live Show?

Moving Distro Delves to a live stream format made it more enjoyable but it created a new problem: I started running out of content.

How many GNU/Linux Distributions can we review before they all look the same?

I tried gimmicks like “let’s destroy the file system!” to make things a bit more fun but even that got dull. How many times can we watch a rm -rf run on the root file system?

I also looked at non-Linux OS’s like Open Indiana and Haiku but honestly, I’d rather to tinker with those on my free-time instead of during a 2-hour long live stream with dozens of people watching.

Will Distro Delves Ever Return?

As much as I want to say No, I know that at some point I’ll start remembering episodes that were fun to produce and want to make more.

Having it be a seasonal (annual) thing sounded like a cool idea at first but I’ve realized now that it was pretty foolish on my part and led me down a road of Linux burn-out.

So, will the show return? Yes. I don’t know when but I am sure I will get the hankering to make another one some day.

Distro Delves is Open Source!

As I wind this post down, I want to make it known that the idea and format of Distro Delves is Open Source!

If you are a content creator, you are more than welcome to fork the Distro Delves repository on GitHub and do whatever you want with it, including producing your own Distro Delves! ❤️