I won't even pretend to have any insights what might be causing the psychological compulsion to constantly abandon and reacquire operating systems - but just from a technical perspective, do you need to completely reinstall the OS instead of just maintaining a multi-boot setup?

That does not sound healthy. It sounds like it is having a significant impact on your work.

I have no idea what could be going on. But it sounds like you are chasing dopamine, all else be damned.

The reason for these switches doesn't seem to be worth the effort of switching so it seems kind of irrational and driven by ...something. Euphoria? Compulsion? Maybe it is an impulse control thing? I'm not a psychologist so what do I know.

I think a less impulsive approach would be to evaluate the pros and cons of the options, even if briefly, and decide once and for all if a major switch in OS was needed. Or if there were a more measured approach like installing windows on a separate disk.

It sounds like you're just kind of burning the house down and rebuilding on a whim and as a result can't get anything done.

Aren't you worried you're going to get fired when they ask you what you've gotten done in the last month and you tell them, "nothing except changing operating systems a dozen times?" (He asks, as he is blowing off work again today... We all got our issues I guess)

I’ve tried pretty hard to search for relevant examples of this online, but I can’t seem to find the right search terms for any of this. The closest I’ve seen is “object permanence” in the ADHD research, but I’m pretty cautious to start self-diagnosing as I’m not a professional.

So, there's always going to be the "script kiddies" of the psychology world out there, who throw around words and jargon without actually understanding what they're doing or playing with. Just like there's know-nothings in tech who do the same with IT stuff.

But if you're a measured and logical person, you're not immediately going to become one of them if you start looking deeper into psychology and mental health stuff. You'll start out as a newbie, sure, but your brains aren't going to suddenly leak out your ears just because you're wondering if you have this or that, and in your case you literally told us in your post that the issues you are having are affecting your work and mental health, which, to me, suggests you wouldn't be researching to be trendy or to look cool, but because you're hurting and in distress and want to figure out what's going on.

That's a very valid reason, IMO, to start researching this stuff. You're hurt, you're in distress--time to research, even if that might on a superficial level make you look like you're chasing trends. (But I don't think you would be, necessarily.)

Anyway, your whole post makes me think researching the mental health stuff is actually a good direction to go. What you're doing with tech (not committing, searching for greener pastures) reminds me a lot of some of my mal-adaptive habits.

I grew up in a traumatic home, and I figured out (eventually, ha!) the reason I (for example) restart video games instead of playing to the end is because my stress response is messed up, and my solution to a fun game going sour is to "reboot" and seek a redo (just like how I left home, or quit some jobs to get away from stressful people!).

And I have other habits that were once useful for managing anxiety in fear in very high-stress environments, but which work poorly once one is in a more normal environment. It's very easy to pick up an adaption to stress or to something else in your past that is useful initially, but then starts misfiring when you unconsciously apply it to a totally different part of your life.

Therefore, as others have suggested, I think it might be good to take a look at the rest of your life. Are things stressful with your parents? Any boyfriend/girlfriend issues? Is work or school being a dick to you? If you are getting stress from those areas, you might be immersing yourself in tech stuff (and vacillating back and forth) as an unconscious reaction to that outside stress.

I'm a writer and I often submerge myself in writing when I have other stressors going on. So I look super-productive and happy to people who like to read my stuff, but it's usually masking everything else going to shit. When I was younger, I did something similar when making webpages and learning tech. Stuff was stressing me, and I found relief by throwing myself into learning something new. Set up entire websites and message forums just to get away from IRL stuff that sucked. The more going on at home, the more I was trying new things with my website.

One skill I found to be VERY useful to develop when trying to figure out my own psychology is learning how to kind of...stop and identify and name what I was feeling when I got out of sorts (anxious, fearful, upset, irritated, angry, hyper, manic, etc.). Try to name it and follow it back to its roots. WHAT am I feeling? Can I actually name it? And WHY might I be feeling it? What happened just before I suddenly felt this thing and switched tracks?

It's not going to be easy at first, it's a skill you have to develop like any other. But I found once I started being able to stop myself in moments when I was doing something impulsive/avoidant, I got a better handle on what I was feeling, and why, and that sort of gave me the opening I needed to control it, instead of letting it control me. Once you can touch and name something, it's easier to make it work for you instead of being hauled along by it.

For you, I think it might be worthwhile to do a bit more reading on ADHD, but also look up OCD (it's not about being a "neat freak" in practice, it's more about people having fears and anxieties and coming up with rituals in an attempt to control the fears and anxieties), and also look up maladaptive perfectionism. Even if none of this actually applies to you, becoming more informed doesn't hurt, and sometimes by following links from one topic to another you can stumble upon something that actually does help or apply to you.

You sound like you're in tech, maybe a programmer, and I've noticed several of my friends in this realm struggle with maladpative perfectionism, btw. (I do sometimes too, but to a lesser extent).

Basically, due to having parents that expected much of them, or their own internal sense of competition, folks can end up kind of breaking their "learning mechanism" or their ability to complete projects because tiny humdrum "mistakes" trigger the same sense of failure as true disaster. Things turn black and white--either everything is absolutely 100% perfect, or you've failed and you're going to burn in hell with all the other failures!

Like, for someone with maladaptive perfectionism, sometimes ANY mistake is a world-ending nightmare emotionally, and stress-wise. So one ends up being hugely stressed when small errors happen, stressed and anxious out of proportion to what's going on. And when you have that shit going on inside, that can snowball into other behaviors. Some people stop learning and stop trying new things (if you don't try, you can't fail, basically). Some people avoid things (if I don't engage maybe it'll go away). Lots of different ways people can respond, but it's often in order to get away from the pain or stress that happens when a "failure" happens.

It seems possible to me, from reading your post, that you might be switching back and forth because you're scared of settling on something imperfect. But--I could be VERY off-base. Which is why you should dig a bit more on psychology topics yourself. See what YOU think, given that you know your brain and history much better than any of us do.

Anyway. I don't know if this will help at all, but I hope it does.

If you take anything away from this, I'd say you have this random internet person's "permission" to go look up articles on psychology and things like ADHD or anxiety or the like. You won't magically turn into an idiot because you looked up a topic once or twice.

The ADHD (maybe depression?) concern shouldn't be dismissed if you have decent insurance | live in a decent country get that checked out.

Personally I maintain a dualboot environment.

Windows for multiplayer games and Microsoft office.

Kubuntu LTS for everything else.

I find debian is fantastic for server stuff, but mediocre for a desktop experience, esp related to drivers and games.

I think you should describe this to a therapist. It sounds like a lot of stress and instability added to your life. I hope you figure out how to address it

I am not a doctor and I'm not going to pretend to be one on the internet. However, it sounds like you may have some mild esoteric form of obsessive compulsive disorder or something adjacent to that. One of my friends and coworkers (in IT) had OCD and it's no joke. He was part of a support group for it. I'm not trying to scare you or anything but you may want to talk to a therapist. If you do have something like that, it is manageable.

Focusing on the tech side: every piece of software, hardware, or tech is going to be a collection of compromises designed by a committee and implemented by a team of highly flawed humans. In constantly seeking an optimum setup you are falling into the ancient trap of "perfection is the enemy of good enough".

Maybe gamify this and try to spend more time with your current setup. If you give in to the compulsion to change it again, try to challenge yourself to stick with the new one even longer than the previous one. And, most of all: try to relax and accept the fact that all of this tech shit is always going to be a hot mess! That's why they patch it and update it constantly. It's just the nature of the beast.

It definitely sounds like it could fit into the ADHD / Autism spectrum.
I am diagnosed with ADHD and have a very similar compulsion, but with Linux distros. I used to keep switching between Debian Stable and Arch.
For me, the driving factor was that I wanted my computing environment (which is where I spend most of my time) to be absolutely perfect and "clean". Quitting the distro-hopping was like quitting an addiction. I made a conscious decision to stick with Arch and deal with all problems that arise without switching back. Getting involved in community service and charitable work also helped. I simply don't have several hours of uninterrupted free time anymore to reinstall and set everything up again.

You might want to redirect the impulse towards three things you can reasonably control, all of which I now employ:

1. Virtual machines. Virtualbox lets you set up a little Debian instance(which can be made in a lower storage/memory footprint by sticking to a 32-bit version and XFCE desktop), and it can talk to the host OS and share stuff either using the Guest Additions functions or through networked apps like SyncThing. Windows can also be accessed in this way. Your urges to have both are therefore tamed by...literally having both, and as many instances as you want. Having the config "bottled up" like this can even be more important than having the work task run quickly, because configuration really does take a huge amount of time.
2. Paper notes. Use these to transcribe your work and "do the real thinking" while engaging in rote, relatively mindless copying of whatever you just did or whatever documentation you need to use. Computers give you wrong answers infinitely fast, is the mantra. Sometimes the only thing to do is to literally make a process that slows you down. The beauty of traditional materials for that is that the experience is basically similar everywhere but with countless variations. Just with the paper alone you can use fancy pocket journals, cheap subject notebooks, three-ring binders, sketchbook paper, index cards, etc. And then with the pens and pencils you can explore several broad categories(wood pencil, mechanical, lead holder, ballpoint/gel/roller, marker, fountain, dip) and get color and line style variety to mark up your notes into artworks.
3. Hobby hardware/software. I have a project now where I am building some Forth libraries for 8-bit games on Agon Light, a new single-board retrocomputing device. The point here is not to have the best "productive" tech environment, but to have one that feels artistically in tune with you, and that can means putting your foot down and allowing some DIY and "slow computing" in your life. The Agon design is open, very clean, very hackable. It's something I could sink years into in a satisfying way, and working in Forth lets me "own" that since Forths are very detail-oriented - you're supposed to make exact designs with them. There's no "missing out" because there's nothing to miss out on - there's only one way to really make it my way, and that's to get it through my hands.

You might just enjoy the process of setting things up. Or if you are like me when my mental health goes bad I tend to organize home/computer/collections and it’s got to the point when I see myself doing it I stop and evaluate myself. How’s you mental health doing?

i've had this issue when I wasn't using my computers for anything serious, and haven't had any sunken cost into complex configurations

but now that im on a second year of uni, and we're actually starting to work on serious shit, i no longer have time to ponder about greener grass, much less hopping between operating systems to reconfigure them back and forth

so, yeah. try finding something that "ties" you to your setup, and focus on that. eventually you'll just start to ignore your os

What about using dual-boot or stick with whatever gives you better results? I don't see the point into constantly changing OS..

Yes and I thought I was alone. It took having two different devices with different OS’s to satisfy me and even then I still get the urge to switch things up. I feel like I did it because I was trying to do too much that I didn’t know how to do in Linux and it got me frustrated. I would follow written walkthroughs with screenshots and things just wouldn’t work and I couldn’t figure out why or troubleshoot so I would go back to Windows. I’ve been doing alright with my two machines and I feel way more comfy using Ubuntu now that I’m not trying to do things in the terminal and just using it on the surface level unless absolutely needing to change things using the terminal.

I never thought to reach out to anyone for help though. I’m the only person I know that uses Linux regularly and I’m not a super social person…

If i had to take a guess your anxiety issues are tied to tech because that's what you like/is good at/excites/entertines/distracts you ? Anyway its hard to say from the given info also may i ask if there is a period of time where you really want to do it and some time yoy don't likefor an anology sometimes you really wanna piss then sometimes you don't ? Also how is other things going on in life ? Does your schedule change like do you push things back for this ? I am not saying its definetly mental it could just be that you are a nerd chasing the next best thing .

I treat all the tech I own as tools or appliances, their aesthetics are of little interest to me, they are not status symbols, just a means to an end. So I look for the thing that will do the best job reliably at a reasonable cost, and keep doing so for years. I have a laptop that must be getting on for 8 years old, a phone in its fourth year. I use them until they wear out or become too difficult to use - my phone has several cracks on the screen, a few trim bits have fallen off my laptop, making it even lighter, and one of the USB ports has died. The TV in the lounge os over ten years old, the stereo dates from the late 90's.

I dont change anything until I have to - once I have something that just works I work it to death. I dont care about the whole Linux vs Windows thing, nor the IoS vs Android thing, its all about function and value for money. When it comes time to replace something I never buy the best, or the cheapest either, but something somewhere in the middle, good enough to do work fast but not the flagship product either.

TLDR Its just a tool, treat it as one

I was a bit like that. You're getting overstimulated about things, and becoming a tweaker. Focus on what matters, that is to get the job done and on mid to long term goals. There is no need to seek a diagnosis as that only will put you into drugs.

Personally I just deleted Windows from everything I have. I also just picked one Linux distro since distros are basically all the same anyway, and if I need to make something work, I always try to do it within the confines of that distro first.

Shift your compulsion for tinkering from distrohopping to tinkering within a given distro. That way you create some semblance of stability. I mean, unless you're happy with the situation you've described. It definitely sounds ADHD and I say that as being one myself. I enjoy hopping between interests and fixations pretty regularly, but I don't do it with my OS because the OS is a platform for me to hop between my fixations, not a fixation in and of itself.

I might use "Tech Permanence" to describe my exact opposite experience to yours.

I'm deeply invested in the Apple Ecosystem and find it both a benefit and a hinderance. There are so many things that Apple does great but, increasingly often, they change one seemingly small thing that can disrupt a workflow I've invested in for years. Specifically, I'm thinking about tweaks to Safari and the latest WatchOS UX change (causing me to ditch Apple Watch for the first time since it was initially launched).

So, that's to say there's a permanence to this technology in my life that I find difficult to shake off even when it's working against me.

What this is resulting in for me, over the past two years, is eliminating technology from my life where I can. I'm falling back to more analog and wired and simple things (ex., iPod, books, records) that aren't threatened with software updates or subscription price increases or just generally aren't bringing me joy ("smart speakers" can fuck right off).

How I would relate this to your situation is that I'd suggest we both have a maybe-unhealthy relationship with technology; bordering on an addiction. I was in my early twenties when things like the iMac and iPod and PalmPilot and Napster were new. This exciting world of gadgets and technology was incredibly addictive to me (and a welcome way for me to evade dealing with my insecurities and poor social skills). Although the debt I took on at a young age was problematic, I wouldn't change the experience. It's with this experience that, now in my mid-40s, I have a certain perspective about technology that I can share with others. I certainly would not have the job I have today had I not invested so much attention in these emerging technologies as a hobby.

We're the kind of people who have a relationship with technology that most others do not. As with all relationships, you need to be aware of its benefits and how it might be holding you back.

I'm not sure that changing your operating system every week is something that would generally be considered a "healthy" hobby, though it's not particularly unhealthy either. I mean, I say this as someone who was accessing Mac OS on a Palm Treo via VNC - it's fun shit!! As long as you're enjoying something and it's not detracting from other aspects of your life, including your mental health, I see no problem. However, if you're reaching out to others for help, it seems you've realized there's an issue and you need to reconsider this relationship.

I'd encourage you to consider taking steps to minimize your time with and reliance on tech and invest your attention in other (unplugged) things that might be more productive and less stress inducing in your life.

Technology, by its very nature, is always going to change. It's always going to have pros and cons. Personally, I've spent too much of my life trying to fit shiny new tools into my life that I didn't really need. The vast majority of these tools have been bought or killed or upgraded beyond recognition or accessibility. It can be disheartening, depressing, and disruptive.

New stuff is exciting. I get it. Dopamine addiction is real. But I think a lot of us would benefit by rejecting this addiction, this need for a jolt of newness every week or every five seconds (looking at you TikTokers), and consider how our whole lives, our future lives, are being affected by this addiction. Are you moving in the direction towards the person you'd like to be? If the answer is yes, then don't let any of what I'm saying discourage you. I would just suggest that you have a game plan in mind. Why are you doing this and how can you turn it into something more productive and less stress inducing?

I agree this sounds like ADHD to me, but I'm curious and a bit concerned. You say you're doing this to your work computer? Most places I've worked were committed to one flavor of operating system, so I'm a little curious about what you do [which is something you don't have to answer, obs].

On the work side, however, this constant tinkering with your operating system has got to be affecting the amount of work you can get done. If this isn't a job you care about, fair enough. If it is, I'd likely survey my coworkers and use whatever OS they're using - at the very least, it increases the chances of confrere "tech support" when something goes wrong, plus the ability to share tools and methods.

If you're not willing to dual boot, is there a chance you could set up a second PC, running one for each OS? You could get a KVM switch to swap between "instances" and save yourself this endless OS reinstallation process.

WSL + Debian == I regularly build and test Linux components to our core product on Windows.

Idk if you watch Explaining Computers on Youtube but his most recent video about his desk/workflow is pretty relevant: https://youtu.be/aOK108FHZ_s?si=1Cfa0I9fvyy3OeGQ

Basically, he separates the computing environment that he works on from the computing environment that he tinkers with (aka the stuff he makes videos about). He keeps his work environment as stable as possible, going as far as using a 20 yr old monitor and a Windows XP-era version of Microsoft Office inside a virtual machine.

For years, I did work on a powerful Windows desktop and did casual computing stuff on a cheap laptop with Linux installed. The latter was my "what if I used Linux?" sandbox, until I became quite comfortable with it and Windows devolved to a point where I was ready to switch.

You definitely get enjoyment out of getting things to work and that is a healthy trait that you should not try to get rid of. You just need to find ways to not let it get in the way of getting other kinds of work done.

I've been using Linux and Emacs since forever and they haven't changed that much. Phones are more of a problem. Re your work related windows issue, it sounds like you need two computers. Problem solved?