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?
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 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.
I’ve been on Yggdrasil Linux since 1993. Now, get off my lawn, you punks!
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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.
I agree on pretty much all of this. I love Pop, so psyched for COSMIC DE. I now run it on all my machines (except for Raspberry Pi OS on my RasPis and EndeavourOS on my old PC).
Package Management on Arch is not my cup of tea. But EndeavourOS is great for what I need it to do (make old PC feel like slightly less old PC).
Mint is awesome. If I have to recommend a distro to someone who is not that knowledgeable, I give them Mint and a quick rundown on how it works. Mint is awesome.
Can I suggest you DietPi for your Raspberries? It’s basically Debian, but it’s tweaked to not consume your SD card too much.
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. :)
Going on year 3 of Manjaro. Looking forward to many more.
Manjaro here as well, just hit year 5. Started using it in 2018 and never really looked back.
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.
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).
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.
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 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 think I just killed file indexing back then
It kept coming back, thing was like disabling telemetry on windows
Been on Manjaro i3wm edition since 2018
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
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
EndeavourOS is more or less Arch with an installer. It uses the same repos has Arch, Manjaro has their own repos that they delay the packages update.
I really don’t have data to prove it, but EndeavourOS seems to run smoother than Manjaro.
But just use what works best for you.
Oh okay for sure, so if i can install arch than in your opinion should I just use arch instead of Endeavour?
Sure, why not. I choose Endeavour at the time because I couldn’t be bothered (lmostly lack of time) with the installation and configuration of Arch. Now Arch comes with an install script, that takes care of that for you.
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.
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!
