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?

    • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Gatsby@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        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

    • michael@kbin.social
      3·
      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.

    • Jure Repinc@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Nerdfest@kbin.social
    3·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      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)?

  • jerstopholes@kbin.social
    2·
    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!

  • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk
    2·
    1 year ago

    On servers I’ve stuck with Ubuntu LTS’s since 2017. They’ve always been rock solid, even if the 2-4 year upgrade can be time consuming, it’s not often enough for me to try something else. The support and documentation is excellent. I find it hard to think of a single reason to even try something else.

    On the desktop I probably have spent most time on Ubuntu, or Ubuntu derivative like Kubuntu, but I now use EndeavourOS and I have no plans to switch or hop or try anything else. So I’ll likely end up on Endeavour far longer.

  • KelsonV@lemmy.world
    2·
    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.

  • pinchcramp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    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).

  • Jure Repinc@lemmy.ml
    2·
    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.