Linux

A couple years of dependency hell with an RPM based distro in the mid-late 90s. Changed to Debian around 2000 maybe. Spent a year or two distro hopping when Gentoo first came out. Spend maybe a year with Arch. Then went back to Debian because it just works, is solid as hell. It's been Debian for the last, oh, 15 years or so.

Gentoo cured me of distrohopping back in 2009. Before my computer died in 2018 I was still running the same install for 9 years. My current Gentoo install is only 3 years and change old, though.

My longest was when i went 100% linux full time on my main machine (no dual boot), I stopped distro-hoppping. I Installed Debian stable when it first came out (Jessie) and stayed with it until it shifted to "old-stable" which was a little bit over 3 years.

A lot of people give Debian stable a hard time but i found it worked well. Most software that i needed to be a little bit newer i could get from the backports repository. It was only at the end of it's lifecycle that i started running in to software being a little to old for what i wanted to do. Then i went back to distro-hopping for a while until i found my next home. :-)

I only ever run Debian on my servers (around 15 systems) since about 2010, and I run (a modified version of) Ubuntu on my desktops. Although my desktop decision may change pretty soon if they keep pushing Snaps. Although I run ubuntu, I am thankfully Snap-free...

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.

I've been on Gentoo since late 2005, so almost 18 years.

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.

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.

Started with Ubuntu for just a year on desktop and Debian on server for nearly 10 years. Desktop switched in this time from arch to Debian, back to arch, and finally to Fedora. This will never change. Debian - server, Fedora - desktop.

I tested some others in VM: elementary, SuSe, Archcraft, kubuntu, lubuntu, xubuntu, PopOS, manjaro. None of these passed my expectations for a bare metal install.

On phone: mobian, manjaro, postmarket and the winner danctnix-arch. But I want to give postmarket a second chance.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

I've never really used non-Linux distros apart from testing for fun.

I've been on Mint for about a decade now

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

i think that was only a year and it was ubuntu

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!

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.

I’ve been on Fedora for about 7 years. My server flips between Ubuntu and CentOS every couple of years.

I think I started using Linux a bit over 4 years ago. I've been using Bedrock Linux for almost that entire time, around 3 and a half years.

I think my longest distro I stayed on in the past was probably a dual boot windows / Linux mint LTR back in 2015- it lasted about 1 year

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.

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.

Whatever the LTS Ubuntu server version is for the last 8ish years and Arch as my desktop for the last 2.

Fedora 30 to 38. Whatever that amounts. Staying on Arch indefinitely.

Debian. Since hmm... 1.3 I think?
A bit hazy on that one, but I think it's correct.

Of course I've tried plenty of other dists over the year (most of them I guess), but my "daily driver" (work computer/laptop) has always been Debian.

Servers.. it's been mostly RedHat, Centos, some Ubuntu. Don't think I've ever installed Debian "in production".

Still using Slackware on various iterations of hardware since '06.

@unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org i am a chronic user of Ubuntu and Debian. I tend to stick with the distro for decades.

Depends on the system. I've run my Pis with PiOS exclusively since I started with Linux at the beginning of 2020. I ran a media box on PopOS for a year and a half before switching it to Mint XFCE after having some issues. It is also just a media box so it would really be fine on headless Debian or Ubuntu Server.

I finally got around to switching my primary machine to Linux (Mint specifically) just three months ago. I'm comfortable with Debian/Ubuntu based distros at this point and don't feel the need to play with something else. I might end up with a different desktop though as Cinnamon gets a bit wonky on my machine from time to time.

Mandrake/Mandriva 2002 - 2006

Xubuntu 2006 - 2007

Debian 2007 - 2015

Ubuntu 2016 - present

So I was with Debian the longest so far.

I think probably Ubuntu, that was my first daily driver Linux, and I didn't really change it much because I was still learning how Linux worked and didn't want to mess with things too much. I was probably on that for close to 10 years. Then I eventually tried Manjaro which didn't last for too long and then I went full Arch BTW. So Arch will probably end up being the longest running one eventually because I really have no desire to change over to anything else now.

Used Fedora for like 3 years on my laptop, haven't really found any other distro that interests me

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.

Linux Mint since 2018. Everything has worked so smoothly, I've never felt the need to change.

It either has to be my current arch install or my Debian install before that. I might head back to Debian (sid) since it was close enough. I might swap over to Debian stable on my laptop over the current Ubuntu install though.