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?

    • michael@kbin.social
      11·
      2 years 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
      6·
      2 years 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.

      • Glome@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I used it on my gaming rig for about a few months before giving up due to frustrations with nvidia 😔. I guess it’s not considered distro hopping because I was forced to hop back to windows. Never had any other issues besides nvidia. I’ve only ever used rolling release distros and the problems I had to deal with on Arch for example never came up in Tumbleweed.

    • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      4·
      2 years 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·
        2 years 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

        • Spunky Monkey@lemmy.world
          4·
          2 years ago

          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.

          • Gatsby@lemm.ee
            1·
            2 years ago

            Oh okay for sure, so if i can install arch than in your opinion should I just use arch instead of Endeavour?

            • Spunky Monkey@lemmy.world
              1·
              2 years ago

              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.

  • sunaurus@lemm.ee
    133·
    2 years ago

    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 😛

  • k-tec@kbin.social
    10·
    2 years ago

    Lets see. Debian since 1997… so 26 years. Back then you had to order 12 CDs through the post.

    • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      Wow. Yeah I remember having to use something like CheapBytes to download the Slackware and FreeBSD install sets. I didn’t start using Linux until 1998.

      • k-tec@kbin.social
        2·
        2 years ago

        I also remember the joy(!) of trying to work out which CD-ROM to insert for the package I wanted to install. Mostly trial and error.

  • PanaX
    9·
    2 years 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.

  • Nerdfest@kbin.social
    9·
    2 years 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.

    • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      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.

  • tristramr@lemm.ee
    9·
    2 years ago

    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.

    • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      4·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • ILurkAndIKnowThings
      1·
      2 years ago

      Once I fully embraced the DontBreakDebian way of doing things, I haven’t looked back. I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops on cycles of testing, stable, and testing again depending on the current state of the testing distro. Debian + Flatpak meets most of my needs. Also, not having the latest, shiniest version isn’t always a bad thing. I have only had one major item break in testing and it was fixed within 3 days.

  • SpaceCadet2000@kbin.social
    9·
    2 years 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

  • Lissa
    101·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • s_s@lemmy.one
    8·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • jerstopholes@kbin.social
    8·
    2 years 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!

    • Laser@feddit.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      Similar here, but 15 years. My first post on the forums, I had already used Arch for a bit there.

      I recently switched away half of my machines about 2 months ago, only the servers remain.

      It was a good run, but all good things must come to an end.

      I initially switched to Arch because there was a third party repository with optimized and modified KDE 3 packages. This was after the 4.0 backlash that I experienced on kubuntu. Arch didn’t ship the latter though IIRC. It was a different time for sure though with rc.conf

    • skilltheamps@feddit.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      Same but not quite as long, a bit over 10 years. I think for many Arch is/was the final destination in the hopping.

      Until recently, where we now have a new paradigma: immutable. I did not think I’d do another hop, but I did and it is Silverblue.