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.
How long? I remember seeing some people have used it since the mid-2010’s on the same install.
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.
I stopped having time (or inclination) to mess around with multiple distributions after getting out of college and into real life. So… Since at least about 2002, with Debian.
Wow, more than 20 years on the same OS.
I would have stayed with FreeBSD or OpenBSD but eventually my requirements outgrew what they could provide.
Now I’m on Debian. You chose … wisely.
Once I fully embraced the DontBreakDebian way of doing things, I haven’t looked back. I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops on cycles of testing, stable, and testing again depending on the current state of the testing distro. Debian + Flatpak meets most of my needs. Also, not having the latest, shiniest version isn’t always a bad thing. I have only had one major item break in testing and it was fixed within 3 days.
Thanks to this post i just realized I’ve been using arch for 9 years. I did hop DEs a bunch up till about 3 years ago when i settled for plasma on Wayland (on? with? Idk), but the arch ecosystem has proven the perfect balance of flexibility and stability (yes i find arch very stable). Before arch i distro hopped almost annually since about 2006.
I was on the same distro for ~10 years, roughly 2010-2020, before I got pulled into the “Apple ecosystem”. (Still use Linux on all my servers, though!)
I use(d) Arch, btw 😛
Let’s not downvote the poor guy just because we lost him to Apple. The comment is on topic and people are allowed to make different choices/mistakes 😉
I can’t imagine going back to that style of window management.
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.
5 or 6 years using ArchLinux, I’m very happy :)
I’ve got about a decade on arch. Just never saw a compelling reason to switch once I hit it. Now it’s on my laptop and 4 raspberry Pi’s around the house. It’ll be on my gaming rig as soon as I get around to ditching windows.
Linuxmint here for 14yrs or so. Hopped around a lot but have been using LM as my primary OS and daily driver for personal, work AND gaming. (proton is a god send)
EDIT - to clarify I’ve been consistently on LM now for about 3yrs, not too bad.
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 remember trying and liking the last KDE with 3.5x around that time. There was a .deb to install the Kickoff menu from openSUSE. Solid, ruined by the 4.0 transition. Good times.
I used Kububtu between 2008 and around 2013, then got so fed up with KDE4 bugs I switched to Xubuntu, and am using that ever since.
So that’s 10 or 15 years depending how you count.
When I want to play, I start a VM, base OS needs to be rock solid.
KDE 4 really, really set the Linux desktop back for years, at a time where we could have made a strong push into the mainstream market.
Yeah, it looked really modern and was great when it worked, which wasn’t too often.
Been on kubunu since 2008 on LTS versions. Rock stable 99% apps support and most have a ppa. Other distros nowhere near as stable and no package repos. Flatpak is changing that and not a big fan of snap though. We will see what might break my streak.
KDE4 was stable for you? You have hit the jackpot, then, for me it froze pretty regularly, I’ve had artifacts, and of course there was Akonadi with high cpu and disk use.
I’m pretty new to Linux, committed to it 2021 and last changed to EndeavorOS (basically an arch installer + a few quality of life packages) around one and a half years ago. It recently broke on my desktop (btrfs disk full, though it didn’t show as full, during update. And my snapshots were setup incorrectly). Looking into trying out NixOS on it now, my Laptop will stay EndeavorOS for the foreseeable future though.
I originally started with Knoppix in 1998 used that unitl i9 switched to ubuntu warty warthog and following versions until unity came out in then I switched to mint as unity constantly crashed my machine. stayed with mint for like 5 years, then moved to fedora for a year, switched to tumbleweed because I got tired of the SELinux in fedora causing issues.
Been on endeavourOS for a year now, and if i do decide to migrate a gain I will be going full vanilla arch.
What would be the difference between endeavor OS and vanilla arch?
Just the setup, or is there more to it?
I’ve been on Yggdrasil Linux since 1993. Now, get off my lawn, you punks!
I’m on Debian since 2012 and before that it was Ubuntu from 2008 to 2012
Did Unity/Mir run you off?
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.
Same here. Arch for over a decade, I remember when there was controversy about arch not gpg signing packages. My current install is from 2018 and has survived 2 cpu and mobo upgrades.
I’m using kde now, after being a long time mate/gnome 2 user.
Two decades.
Nice, which distro?
