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?
Archlinux. Many years ago, not sure exactly when, but more than 10years. Last distro I really used before Arch was ZenWalk, slackware based. Arch was the only one that after many tries and over the years remains the most consistent, simple and reliable that I can manage without much effort.
After using on my personal computers Arch I still tried and used on the work machines Ubuntu lts releases. It gave so much problems that I just now use Arch everywhere and anytime I get a new work machine it’s what gets installed too.
I have to say that I was a serious heavy distro hoper back in the days and tried basically everything that existed. Just not gentoo. But fedoras, mandrakes, mandrivas, knopix, slackware, bsd, suse, etc, I regularly spent time with them all and was changing a lot and tried many new releases. The longest I’ve been with a distro was ZenWalk, more than a year or 2 and then Arch appeared on my radar and once I jumped ship, never got the need for anything else.
Edit: Checked some math I think I use arch more than 15years now.
That’s the first mention I’ve seen of ZenWalk. Yes, I used that in the 2007-2008 timeframe. I actually cleaned out of storage some old computers and found one that still booted ZenWalk last summer.
I liked the philosophy. As a distro, it died for a few years, and then was reborn a few years ago.
It really was solid and a pleasure to use at the time. The philosophy of it was really nice and felt clean. After transitioning to Arch I didn’t keep up with its changes, so I didn’t know it died for a while😔