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?
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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 :/
Been on Manjaro i3wm edition since 2018
I’ve been using OpenBSD on my desktop since about 2006ish.
I’ve settled on Ubuntu in 2008, but jumped between Gnome, KDE, Unity and LXDE. Then I got a Steam Deck last year and it became my main machine, so now I am not only with its Arch based OS, but I a secondary Arch SD card that I occasionally boot, if I need something not immediately available in SteamOS.
Servers? Debian Since 2019.
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.
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.
MX and Opensuse
My main desktop computer had been running Ubuntu for 7 years until I had to do a full wipe and decided to move to arch to check it out. I never got the point of distro hopping myself really.
