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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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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.
I've been on Ubuntu ever since I switched to Linux 7 months ago, tbh I don't understand distro-hopping. I'm not any tech wizard, and Ubuntu fulfills all my criteria: worked out of the box, worked faster than Windows, hasn't broken yet 👍
All I do is run Firefox and Steam on my laptop anyways :/
I've been using OpenBSD on my desktop since about 2006ish.
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.
MX and Opensuse
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).
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 originally started with Knoppix in 1998 used that unitl i9 switched to ubuntu warty warthog and following versions until unity came out in then I switched to mint as unity constantly crashed my machine. stayed with mint for like 5 years, then moved to fedora for a year, switched to tumbleweed because I got tired of the SELinux in fedora causing issues.
Been on endeavourOS for a year now, and if i do decide to migrate a gain I will be going full vanilla arch.
What would be the difference between endeavor OS and vanilla arch?
Just the setup, or is there more to it?
I've been on Fedora Linux for almost a year now. Considering that I started using Linux when the pandemic started, you can figure out that it's my distro of choice now. Also, I like that Fedora is, for the most part, quite developer friendly and had great packages and software installed when I first started using it.
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?
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.
openSUSE Tumbleweed since 2019, it never breaks and if you break it you can easily roll back. Yes, there are a lot of updates, but I have a secondary system that I upgrade only once every six months and it works like a charm!
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.
Sams Teach Yourself Linux in 24 hours. Christmas 1998. Red Hat Linux 5.2.
I upgraded a struggling 486 from Windows 95 OSR2.1 to Red Hat and Afterstep, and never really looked back.
Ubuntu from 5.04 to 18.04. The memory usage and Gnome redesign got too annoying. I switched to Arch and KDE.
20+ years on openbsd and debian evenly spread out on different machines, also 5+ years of arch usage.
Linux Mint for AMD, Pop_OS! for Nvidia. Former is workstation, latter is gaming.
Almost there with OpenSUSE, 9 years and counting. A new machine is running Manjaro for 2 years. I don't think I'd spend a decade with Manjaro.
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.
I'm pretty new to Linux, committed to it 2021 and last changed to EndeavorOS (basically an arch installer + a few quality of life packages) around one and a half years ago. It recently broke on my desktop (btrfs disk full, though it didn't show as full, during update. And my snapshots were setup incorrectly). Looking into trying out NixOS on it now, my Laptop will stay EndeavorOS for the foreseeable future though.
Ubuntu since Warty.
I've been using openSUSE since it's early days when it was S.u.S.E. I started using it in the spring of 1998... so what, 25 years? I've used other distros on a second machine, but my main machine has always been SuSE in some form or another. Today it's openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Manjaro ended my distro hopping itch +10 years ago. I occasionally test distros in VM, but nothing has made me want to switch so far.
I started out on SuSE back in 94 and spent a while checking out rpm-based distros like Mandrake, RedHat, etc. Even stuff like m68k Linux, Slackware and the BSDs. Debian at that time was a pain to use. Used Gentoo for a while until I switched to Mac. After that I used Ubuntu, Mint, Antergos, Manjaro, Arch and Fedora.
And then I started noticing a pattern that I would always get frustrated with whatever I was trying out and go back to Fedora. So now it's been around five years I've stuck with Fedora for my gaming machine and my desktop.
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.
Two years, Arch. Idk why but it feels comfy. Rolling release for the most up to date bugs + the AUR 👌🏼
Been on Artix Linux for about 3 years. Occasionally there’s a package that breaks, but nothing serious. Been very happy with a minimal environment using Bspwm/sxhkd and the st terminal mainly.
Well there's one I haven't heard of yet. I last used Arch Linux about 15 years ago, before systemd was a thing. I assume this is a continuation of what Arch used to be?
I only just started using linux on my laptop like a year and a half ago, I hoped around at first but then around a year ago landes on Fedora with KDE, and haven't used anything else (besides SteamOS) sense
Probably Debian for six or seven years, but my time on Manjaro must be close by now and I see no reason to change
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.