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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Been on Manjaro for about 4 years for my gaming PC but been running a Debian flavor for servers since Woody.
Right, it’s since woody for me as well. I’ve periodically interacted with Redhat for particular work tasks, but for my installations it’s been Debian stable for servers + machines that are vital for me, and sid for personal or development machines, for over 20 years. This whole question is a little strange to me. Do people really replace their OS of choice more often than a few times per lifetime (when they discover something better than they knew about before)?
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’ve been on Yggdrasil Linux since 1993. Now, get off my lawn, you punks!
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
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
I’ve been on Fedora for about 7 years. My server flips between Ubuntu and CentOS every couple of years.
