This is kind of the anti-distro hopping thread. How long have you stayed on a single Linux distribution for your main PC? What about servers?
I’ve been on Debian on and off since 2021, but finally committed to the platform since April of this year.
Before that I was on OpenBSD from 2011 - 2021 for my desktop.
Prior to that, FreeBSD for many years, followed by a few years of distro-hopping various Linux distros (Slackware, Arch, Fedora, simplyMEPIS, and ZenWalk from memory).
How long have you been on your distribution? Do we have anybody here who has been on their current distro for more than a decade?
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s surprisingly stable for a rolling release distro.
Yes, I was a distro hopper up until I tried Tumbleweed for the first time. Been using it for two years now, hopped around for a year prior.
Couldn’t agree more. Probably because they have some automatic QA going on on their CI and if some package does something wrong that this QA catches the package does not get included into update until it passes. Also if there would be something that would go wrong you still have automatic BTRFS snapshots created before and after and update and a boot entry automatically added to GRUB so you could simply reboot into old working state in such an unfortunate case.
How long? I remember seeing some people have used it since the mid-2010’s on the same install.
My main desktop has been upgraded continuously from RHL5 (no E) in ~1999 to Fedora 38 today.
Well, almost continuously. I’ve done at least one fresh install, when I switched from 32-bit to 64-bit hardware.
Edit: I have used a lot of other distros on other boxes, both physical and virtual - I’ve just stuck with Fedora on that one.
3 years on EndeavourOS and no end in sight
I switched from Manjaro to EndeavourOS more or less a year ago and I’m not leaving any time soon.
What are the selling points on endeavour over Manjaro? Or endeavourOS over arch?
I’ve been on Manjaro a hot minute, and if I were to switch, I think I’d just go to arch. But I don’t personally know anything about EndeavourOS
Workstation: Ubuntu approximately 18 years. (2004)
Servers: Debian approximately 25 years. (1998)
Wow, probably the winner. 25 years is really cool, such a long time for one distro.
In 1998 I tried Red Hat 5.2, but then switched to Slackware, and ended up on FreeBSD since it was like a better Slackware. I must have been all of 12-13 years old.
I admit I never even tried Debian until Lenny, and then went back to OpenBSD.
I distro hopped quite a bit before I settled. Now been running Arch coming up a decade. Before my current PC build, my previous continuous install was 6 years old.
I’ve DE hopped a number of times throughout that time though. Now been using KDE for several years and happy to stay.
My one desktop is 5 years on Manjaro now.
Before that I had Ubuntu for 8 years across several installs, although I also dual-booted Windows back then.
But I’ve had a freeBSD file server for at least 20.
UFS? Or did you migrate to zfs at some point?
I migrated to ZFS with FreeBSD 7.0 --2008ish, I think
I’ve been on Yggdrasil Linux since 1993. Now, get off my lawn, you punks!
Been using Ubuntu, or more recently, Kubuntu since 2006. Not sure that counts as a distro change. Can’t say enough good things about KDE these days though.
I distro hopped a lot since installing a retail red hat box bought at the store in 199something.
It’s now more than 10 years that I basically only run Debian (on all my servers) and Gentoo/funtoo (on my workstations). For my partner and relatives, I install only Mint because it lacks all the cool gadgets, but it’s stable as a rock, especially on notebooks, and still reminds them of Windows.
I tried Arch, btw. Nice wiki, horrible package management.
I tried Pop_OS, it’s fun, it’s fine, it’s fresh, but tends to self-destruct if I push it too much.
I loved Elementary OS, it’s really promising but always gave me the feeling to run a beta OS.
Sams Teach Yourself Linux in 24 hours. Christmas 1998. Red Hat Linux 5.2.
I upgraded a struggling 486 from Windows 95 OSR2.1 to Red Hat and Afterstep, and never really looked back.
Afterstep
Oh man that was such a cool UI, the best clone of NeXTStep for Linux. But configuring the menus by hand was annoying. :)
openSUSE Tumbleweed since 2019, it never breaks and if you break it you can easily roll back. Yes, there are a lot of updates, but I have a secondary system that I upgrade only once every six months and it works like a charm!
Same, Tumbleweed GNOME since 2019
I’ve been on Ubuntu ever since I switched to Linux 7 months ago, tbh I don’t understand distro-hopping. I’m not any tech wizard, and Ubuntu fulfills all my criteria: worked out of the box, worked faster than Windows, hasn’t broken yet 👍
All I do is run Firefox and Steam on my laptop anyways :/
Lets see. Debian since 1997… so 26 years. Back then you had to order 12 CDs through the post.
Wow. Yeah I remember having to use something like CheapBytes to download the Slackware and FreeBSD install sets. I didn’t start using Linux until 1998.
I also remember the joy(!) of trying to work out which CD-ROM to insert for the package I wanted to install. Mostly trial and error.
@unix_joe fedora and arch. Because anything Ubuntu based kinda sucks.
Ubuntu from 2006 right up until they replaced the firefox deb with a mandatory snap, whenever that was. Then I was on Pop OS for about 6 months, and now Fedora, which I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon.
I’ve been using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) as my only operating system since 2016. No dual booting.
