this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's surprisingly stable for a rolling release distro.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

How long? I remember seeing some people have used it since the mid-2010's on the same install.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I've been on Yggdrasil Linux since 1993. Now, get off my lawn, you punks!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Workstation: Ubuntu approximately 18 years. (2004)

Servers: Debian approximately 25 years. (1998)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

About two years, running Manjaro KDE. Runners up are Linux Mint, every major flavor of Ubuntu, and I briefly tried elementary OS. Manjaro has been my favorite for a while now!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Been disto-hopping a lot before ending up in openSUSE Tumbleweed (with KDE Plasma desktop). Now using it for about 6 years as my main desktop/laptop distro.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

3 years on EndeavourOS and no end in sight

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My one desktop is 5 years on Manjaro now.

But I've had a freeBSD file server for at least 20.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure how long, but I bet Mint is my longest distro. Next would probably either Manjaro or SUSE.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ahhh, when did Windows 10 come out? I've been on mint since then, though I've tried live discs/drives of the major distros here and there. I like mint, it works for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I was on Debian from around 1996ish to 2019.

Been on Pop OS since then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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 :/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've been on Fedora Linux for almost a year now. Considering that I started using Linux when the pandemic started, you can figure out that it's my distro of choice now. Also, I like that Fedora is, for the most part, quite developer friendly and had great packages and software installed when I first started using it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

MX and Opensuse

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I started with Linux like many, I guess, by distro hopping. My first experience was with Knoppix in the late 2000s (because I didn't know what a live CD was), then I tried OpenSuse, went on to Fedora (is SELinux still such a pain in the ass as it was back then?) and then to Kubuntu.

If I remember correctly I switched to Arch some time after Plasma 4 came out. About 11 years ago. It was, back then, one of the only distributions that shipped the newest stock KDE that "just worked". Actually that might be wrong, but I didn't know what I was doing with Linux anyways and somehow I liked Arch enough to stay. I used it at home, for work (software development) and at college. And it serves me well in all those areas (minus some minor hiccups).

It's still fulfilling my needs but lately I've been flirting with NixOS. I might change my daily driver once I get a new laptop (still rocking a Thinkpad T430 from 2012 but it's starting to show its age).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

First one was SuSe, but I've been with Ubuntu since the early days... Sometimes I'll install another distro to have a peek, but I always revert to Ubuntu after a short while...Only time I felt the urge to change, was when they shipped it with unity as default...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@unix_joe fedora and arch. Because anything Ubuntu based kinda sucks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

20+ years on openbsd and debian evenly spread out on different machines, also 5+ years of arch usage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've been on Gentoo since late 2005, so almost 18 years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Been on Manjaro for about 4 years for my gaming PC but been running a Debian flavor for servers since Woody.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I used Arch for a few years before I really got sucked into distro-hopping. Finally settled on Debian for 2 years, last year I moved to Gentoo, and I swapped to NixOS just last week. I am feeling like NixOS has the potential to stick around for the long haul, I am a big fan of the declarative nature of the distro. Still ironing out some bugs, though (I also recently switched from i3 to Hyprland, so the X->Wayland swap has been an additional hurdle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I only ever run Debian on my servers (around 15 systems) since about 2010, and I run (a modified version of) Ubuntu on my desktops. Although my desktop decision may change pretty soon if they keep pushing Snaps. Although I run ubuntu, I am thankfully Snap-free...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

On the desktop side, I used Slackware for about 7 years, then switched to Ubuntu for another 15 years, and recently years used Debian and Tails (after suffering several government-level hacking operations). I basically use Ubuntu for servers, I'm thinking about Debian or OpenBSD.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At least one of my primary use boxes has been running Fedora since 2003 (and Red Hat Linux RIP before that, going back to... 1996? since fedora was the successor to Red Hat Linux, I'd say I've got 25 years on "Fedora" at this point). I have rotated a variety of Debian derivatives on other boxes used in parallel, particularly Debian itself. What keeps me coming back to Fedora is its "stable plus really really fresh", consistently, for a long time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Debian (testing) at least since 2018 and I don't plan to switch. Before that I was hopping a bit between ubuntu based distros and manjaro. On servers I always use debian stable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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 😛

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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 😉

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've been using OpenBSD on my desktop since about 2006ish.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've been using openSUSE since it's early days when it was S.u.S.E. I started using it in the spring of 1998... so what, 25 years? I've used other distros on a second machine, but my main machine has always been SuSE in some form or another. Today it's openSUSE Tumbleweed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think probably Ubuntu, that was my first daily driver Linux, and I didn't really change it much because I was still learning how Linux worked and didn't want to mess with things too much. I was probably on that for close to 10 years. Then I eventually tried Manjaro which didn't last for too long and then I went full Arch BTW. So Arch will probably end up being the longest running one eventually because I really have no desire to change over to anything else now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have been 11 years on Fedora.

Before 2009 I was getting used to Linux with Ubuntu. By 2009 I switched to Fedora. Since 2020 I'm on Manjaro. Inbetween I payed many other distros a visit such as Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian and Puppy.

On servers I am for no specific reason on Debian and Ubuntu.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@unix_joe: I've been using SUSE with KDE since SuSE Linux Personal 7.0. So, 20+ years?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fedora 30 to 38. Whatever that amounts. Staying on Arch indefinitely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

head -n1 /var/log/pacman.log

[2014-10-11 14:33] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -r /mnt -Sy --cachedir=/mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg --noconfirm base base-devel'

Almost 9 years it seems

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Archlinux. Many years ago, not sure exactly when, but more than 10years. Last distro I really used before Arch was ZenWalk, slackware based. Arch was the only one that after many tries and over the years remains the most consistent, simple and reliable that I can manage without much effort.

After using on my personal computers Arch I still tried and used on the work machines Ubuntu lts releases. It gave so much problems that I just now use Arch everywhere and anytime I get a new work machine it's what gets installed too.

I have to say that I was a serious heavy distro hoper back in the days and tried basically everything that existed. Just not gentoo. But fedoras, mandrakes, mandrivas, knopix, slackware, bsd, suse, etc, I regularly spent time with them all and was changing a lot and tried many new releases. The longest I've been with a distro was ZenWalk, more than a year or 2 and then Arch appeared on my radar and once I jumped ship, never got the need for anything else.

Edit: Checked some math I think I use arch more than 15years now.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

When Mint had a KDE version I used that for almost four years. Then went to KDE neon and found that to be unstable. Hopped hither and thither, finally made it back to mint.

Having used Linux for 15 years, I just want stable now. Even user cinnamon mint was getting glitchy and updating too frequently. So I've been using the mint Debian edition for more than a few months and love it. IF I had to switch now, I'd just go to Debian.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've been staying with Arch for a while now, maybe a few months. Might switch to NixOS in the future but right now I'm happy. I used Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, etc before that.

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