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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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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?

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[–] albatross@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

At least one of my primary use boxes has been running Fedora since 2003 (and Red Hat Linux RIP before that, going back to... 1996? since fedora was the successor to Red Hat Linux, I'd say I've got 25 years on "Fedora" at this point). I have rotated a variety of Debian derivatives on other boxes used in parallel, particularly Debian itself. What keeps me coming back to Fedora is its "stable plus really really fresh", consistently, for a long time.

[–] owatnext@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I've been using Void almost exclusively since ~2019.

[–] boblemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

On the desktop side, I used Slackware for about 7 years, then switched to Ubuntu for another 15 years, and recently years used Debian and Tails (after suffering several government-level hacking operations). I basically use Ubuntu for servers, I'm thinking about Debian or OpenBSD.

[–] silent_clash@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I was on Manjaro for several years at one point. I like Mint for now but I'm not in love with Cinnamon. I kinda want to rapid fire test a bunch of DEs in VMs to see what I like nowadays.

[–] Thorned_Rose@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I distro hopped quite a bit before I settled. Now been running Arch coming up a decade. Before my current PC build, my previous continuous install was 6 years old.

I've DE hopped a number of times throughout that time though. Now been using KDE for several years and happy to stay.

[–] Fredol@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Arch. I can't stay for very long on non-rolling distros. I'd only run Tumbleweed but due to the lack of users or popularity, if often lacks documentation and everyone forgets it exists in the first place. I couldn't get Rocm working on Tumbleweed because of that for example.

[–] plexnose@geddit.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Started on Mint properly in about 2019, but hopped around a little via Manjaro, Garuda, Endeavour and finally came back to Mint full time. These days if I want to try another distro I just install on a separate disk and leave my Mint as my every day install. So full time on Mint since about 2021.

I have been trying Fedora as my secondary too.

[–] RedditExodus@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I downloaded Ubuntu 5.04 and have mostly stuck with Ubuntu for almost 20 years. I've tried other distros over the years but I've always come back to Ubuntu.

[–] scorpiosrevenge@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[–] Grangle1@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I used the same Ubuntu install since at least 18.04, possibly back to 16.04 (can't quite remember if I upgraded to 18.04 as a fresh install), up until my upgrade to 22.04 from 20.04 failed. I took that opportunity to try a different distro, which eventually led to my current KDE Neon install.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Probably Debian from 2014 to 2019, when I switched to GNU Guix System. I don't really intend to switch any time soon though so I'll stick with Guix for the foreseeable future.

[–] PAPPP@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I dabbled with Linux/Unix (Suse, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Arch, NetBSD, a little Solaris, a couple of those long-dead floppy/livecd/liveusb systems... and some less-unix things like BeOS) starting in about 1998 and slowly moved fully over to Linux as the daily driver. My usual distro for personal machines has been Arch since about 2004, though I've typically had *buntu, and/or CentOS (starting at cAos, now migrating to Rocky) machines for some things I do professionally, and at least one personal Debian server.

I did a lot of environment hopping early on, but settled on XFCE from about 2007-2017, then KDE from about 2017-current once Plasma5 got its resource consumption under control. I've been playing with Hyprland a little bit recently, just because it's the least-broken way to fiddle with a Wayland environment I've found, but I like floating+snapping better than tiling so I doubt it'll become my daily driver.

I think my first Arch install was off 0.2 or 0.3 media in mid-2002, and there are probably only a month or two in that time that I haven't had at least one Arch box, so that's two decades.

[–] guigs44@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Two years, Arch. Idk why but it feels comfy. Rolling release for the most up to date bugs + the AUR 👌🏼

[–] scarcer@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I've bounced around Fedora, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint over the years. I've been on Zorin OS going on two years and I'm eagerly waiting for 17 to release. I don't see myself hopping anytime soon.

[–] sab@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I stayed on Ubuntu on my main computers for 14 years from 2007 to 2021. Ran into some dependency problems and switched to Fedora on my main device, it has been working as a charm.

[–] theshatterstone54@feddit.uk 1 points 2 years ago

Honestly, about 4 months, and it was Arch. I've been using Linux for over a year now. Currently I'm on NixOS trying to make things work the way I want them to, but there's still some minor issues that are difficult to deal with.

[–] kaladininskyrim@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I'm not using it currently but I have used Manjaro for a long time.

[–] JRepin@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

[–] shut_up_linux_nerd@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I've stayed on Endeavour with XFCE for a good while now. It just works and is out of my hair. I use it on any system I want Linux on now and I've stopped hopping.

[–] dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Probably ubuntu from 05-16. Switched to arch around then, and been on manjaro since 2020.

[–] mosthated@feddit.nl 1 points 2 years ago

Why did you go from Arch to Manjaro?

[–] mosthated@feddit.nl 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I have only gone full-linux for two years now. Before that I was on Mac for 10 years and before that Windows. I have had various machines that ran either Ubuntu or Debian that were not my main machine, but mostly backup or file servers.

I am generally happy with Ubuntu, although sometimes I feel like a more bleeding edge distro could be nice when I am looking for more up to date packages with the latest features. It is somewhat annoying having to go beyond the main package manager to install these newer packages, because installation instructions are not always available. E.g., a make file is available but there are no instructions on dependencies. At this point I am not/no longer looking to switch distels.

[–] mya@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

i think that was only a year and it was ubuntu

[–] fxttr@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago

Probably 6 years, on FreeBSD. (Not a Linux distro, but I count that). Now I'm 3 years on NixOS, but I'm booting FreeBSD here and than.

[–] SpaceCadet2000@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 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

[–] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 1 points 2 years ago

I've been using Ubuntu LTE for over 10 years now for servers. However, for personal machines I've been distro hopping every few years. Currently using Manjaro on both desktop and laptop now. My only gripe is recently it took them longer to release the latest gnome version than Ubuntu (it's usually the other way around being a rolling release distro).

[–] raktheundead@fosstodon.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@unix_joe: I've been using SUSE with KDE since SuSE Linux Personal 7.0. So, 20+ years?

[–] unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 years ago

Are you a tumbleweed user now? I used tumbleweed off and on for a few months for KDE.

What do you think of their pivot towards Gnome on Aeon/MicroOS/whatever the replacement for Leap is going to be?

[–] reallychris@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

this run on xubuntu i think. when i first switched to mint (xfce) a few years back i'd reinstall every month or so because i broke something, yes with enough misguided tinkering linux mint can be broken. then i'd spend a week-month on other distros, mx linux, peppermint, all the ubuntus, then manjaro that got me on to minimal installs, then arch btw, then endeavour, with my own awesome or openbox config. i thought i'd settled down for 6 months or so, but the threat of a bad package was always there (even though it never happened). when i got my latest laptop i installed mint again, with my openbox config. after a while i started noticing things weren't running quite right, so i just thought "instead of changing everything, just change what i need to" and went with xub for slightly more up to date repos. turns out i can get pretty much all the functionality i had with openbox out of xfce. so i've managed to stay on one install for about 18 months!

[–] ryanmr@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

My dad used to hope distros constantly. He would read distrowatch and want to try the latest and greatest out.

I've been with Ubuntu server since 1404. Not always the smoothest road but it's worked for me. Snap is ridiculous though.

[–] Czele@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I've just picked Fedora 33 and never had any urge to distro-hopp. Now Im on F38 and Im still happy. Maybe in some day I will transition to Silverblue

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I tend to stick with one distro for a while but use it across multiple uses (my home PC as a separate boot partition to Windows, and within Virtualbox as a guest in windows and also in linux itself). I find it easier to stick to one Distro and get used to the distro's paradigm.

At the moment I'm using Mint and have done for a few years. I used Lubuntu before that. I'll be sticking with Mint until I next decide to refresh my PC and will revisit what's available at that time; maybe stick with Mint or move to something else if something is appealing.

[–] coralof@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I used Ubuntu from 8.10 until the introduction of snaps (2017, 2018?). And since then I’ve just stuck with Debian. :)

[–] ngmi@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Linux Mint for some years now, generally in the ubuntu ecosystem for a long time

[–] jellyosaurus@cyberfurz.social 1 points 2 years ago

@unix_joe fedora and arch. Because anything Ubuntu based kinda sucks.

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