[SOLVED] Why did you pick a distribution?

scasey · 07-13-2020, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GPGAgent

My question(s)
Do you hop from distro to distro?
How long have you used a distro?
Why did you pick a distro for long term use?
TIA folks

No
Red Hat/CentOS since 1999
Took over a server running Red Hat.

DavidMcCann · 07-13-2020, 11:18 AM

I used to keep a spare partition and install distros to review, but I've never been a hopper. On my main computer, for the last 20 years it's been
1. Shoestring, a port of Red Hat to the Motorola 68060, which came with the computer.
2. Fedora, the first distro I installed for myself, when I switched to a PC.
3. CentOS, when Fedora's rate of change began to leave me feeling like a hamster in a wheel…
4. PCLinuxOX when my desktop died and CentOS didn't have Xfce or Mate ready.

hazel · 07-13-2020, 11:32 AM

I see myself in a mirror here. Most of my distros have belonged to the Debian family. I suspect that, for a lot of people, having a familiar package manager is important.

rtmistler · 07-13-2020, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

I see myself in a mirror here. Most of my distros have belonged to the Debian family. I suspect that, for a lot of people, having a familiar package manager is important.

I'm most familiar with aptitude, however things like xx-pkg, such as dpkg, opkg, I've used them, so long as they have a similar sort of interface, "install blah-blah', then I have no complaints. I don't prefer to use applications to update packages. I don't prefer to perform distribution upgrades using any tools, instead I'd install fresh.

Timothy Miller · 07-13-2020, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GPGAgent

My question(s)
Do you hop from distro to distro?

Yes, and no. I have distro's that I'm loyal to and use regularly, I also have distro's that I teset and hop.

Quote:

How long have you used a distro?

Debian approaching 25 years, Arch is over 15. Most others are under 5 years that I've been using them (if I even will keep them installed more than a month or 2 to test), even if I first tried them out >15 years ago (here's looking at you, Ubuntu)

Quote:

Why did you pick a distro for long term use?
TIA folks

Because it works.

rokytnji · 07-13-2020, 02:02 PM

well. I don't hop. But.

Code:

harry@biker:~
$ cd Isos
harry@biker:~/Isos
$ ls
Bohdi  exton_e17_debian11  Knoppix  Multiboot  MX
harry@biker:~/Isos
$ inxi -S
System:
  Host: biker Kernel: 4.9.193-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64 
  Desktop: IceWM 1.6.6 
  Distro: antiX-19_x64-full Marielle Franco 16 October 2019

I get a itch and scratch it once in a while. Otherwise. I would not know anything.
Being one of those types that needs hands on to learn.

Lately.

I have a Enlightenment itch. It helps to brush up on shelves and other odd names I am not used to. Besides. I have kept conky for e17 in my pastebin.

Daily runners, though , are the distros I am team member of. MX & antiX.
Because they taught me most everything I know

If wondering about the exton iso. I grabbed that from sourceforge. Debian 11 is not even out yet. md5sum is good though.

How long? About 2008 or so.
http://www.techie7.com/threads/57933/

rkelsen · 07-13-2020, 04:10 PM

I didn't choose a distro. It chose me.

Been using it for so long that nothing else makes sense. I try others, usually in Virtual box, but nothing has ever swayed me.

Meow1234 · 07-13-2020, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GPGAgent

I've been using Mint for 15+ years

Did you beta test Mint? Linux Mint released in 2006. 15 years ago is 2005.

JeremyBoden · 07-13-2020, 07:09 PM

Used Ubuntu for a while, but got fed up with their silly tricks.
Unity was the last straw.

So I moved onto Mint for a while - but Mint is built on Ubuntu...
So I switched to LMDE - which is Mint built on Debian Stable and excluding Ubuntu.

Decided I really can't stand Ubuntu.

fido_dogstoyevsky · 07-13-2020, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GPGAgent

Do you hop from distro to distro?

Only at the start, when I was deciding which one to use full time. Got to a 3-way competition between Debian, Mandrake and Suse - Suse (later OpenSuse) won.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GPGAgent

How long have you used a distro?

Used Suse/OpenSuse for about 9-10 years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GPGAgent

Why did you pick a distro for long term use?

About six years ago I became uncomfortable with systemd and decided to jump to OpenBSD. I decided I didn't know enough Unix to smoothly transition from Linux to BSD for personal and business use, so I started using Slackware to learn Unix (having heard Slackware is the way to learn Unix instead of learning a particular distro). Turned out I found Slackware simple enough and reliable enough and easy enough to stick to for as long as possible. Still sometimes think about OpenBSD but I'm in a comfortable spot at the moment.

Which is a long way of saying I didn't actually choose Slackware for my long term distro for long term use, it just ended up that way.

GPGAgent · 07-15-2020, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meow1234

Did you beta test Mint? Linux Mint released in 2006. 15 years ago is 2005.

Must have been 10 years or so I guess - good spot