For how long have you had your current installation?

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1

Hi there!
Ive heard that tumbleweed (which Im now successfully running by the way) is a great OS, in which you can update forever. But fellow tumbleweed users, for how long have you really been running it? My earlier Linux experiences has always ended with the system not working after a while. I have btrfs so that should in theory be impossible, but I doubt it… How long have you really been running your current tumbleweed install?

Windows seems it can update forever without breaking, but I use Linux because its more interesting.

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@StaffyStar More of a general chat topic, so moved there :wink:

My first Tumbleweed install was 2019, that lasted until 2021, not because of any issues, just wanted to move to a bigger NVMe and new hardware, split a few directories out…

That has been running until now (well still is… if I plugged the NVMe back in) :wink:

I’m just in the process of a fresh install on a new NVMe device (it’s x4 64 Gb/s as opposed to x4 32 Gb/s) and a lot has changed both from a hardware setup (Intel ARC and Nvidia T400) so busy updating my root and user scripts… I’ve also swapped from btrfs (no snapper) to ext4 for a change.

I expect this to last for some time (it’s a development box) as I plan on moving more desktop type stuff off to my July 2024 Aeon install (which is using Tumbleweed repos).

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According to:

$ stat / | awk '/Birth: /{print $2,$3}'

I installed Tumbleweed on this computer in March, 2020.

1 Like
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We had our four TW machines/ installs for over four years (no doubt longer, but memory is soft these days), then we switched to Leap (15.6 now).

5

Impressive, thats far longer than Ive had any linux installation. :slight_smile:

Ive only had Tumbleweed for like two weeks now.
Yesterday I got my first problem though. (Chrome woudnt start) It was easily fixable this time, but its encounters like these that makes me think having tumbleweed(or any other distro) for years will be pretty hard.

So very interesting to hear your experiences :slight_smile:

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Hi openSUSE Slowroll installed in September '23 was my longest-running linux. I had it installed in virtualbox vm and inexplicably deleted during a virtualbox upgrade in September '24

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I’ve been on TW since June 4th this year. Usually every dup I do has been with little to no issues. Only one time was one month where there was a bug in the kernel firmware package for my gpu, causing it to not display my DE.

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$ stat / | awk '/Birth: /{print $2}'
2023-06-28

I very much prefer rolling release over 6-monthly or “when it’s ready” updates. I ran Arch from 2009 to 2023 and only installed it three times during that period, moving the disk from box to box as I upgraded: Initial installation, fresh installation on a new disk due to hardware failure because I only backup data files, and a fresh installation on a new disk when I got a box with a UEFI BIOS. I only moved to Tumbleweed due to increasing age making me less interested in doing the necessary periodic system administration.

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This seems to be about Tumbleweed. Nevertheless I dare to show from some Leap systems.

The system beneden was installed with Leap after it was bought:

mgi@beneden:~> stat / | awk '/Birth: /{print $2}'
2022-07-06
mgi@beneden:~>

The system boven

henk@boven:~>  stat / | awk '/Birth: /{print $2}'
2016-12-21
henk@boven:~>

Most probably also direct after buying it.

The last one is a bit special it is a text only system:

mgi@backup:~> cat /etc/os-release 
NAME=openSUSE
VERSION="13.1 (Bottle)"
VERSION_ID="13.1"
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (i586)"
ID=opensuse
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:opensuse:opensuse:13.1"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.opensuse.org"
HOME_URL="https://opensuse.org/"
ID_LIKE="suse"
mgi@backup:~> ls -l /etc/os-release 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 262 Oct 23  2013 /etc/os-release
mgi@backup:~>

Thus even before Leap.
( and stat gives no Birth on this system).

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Soniy seems at least 3-4 years is possible with Tymbleweed.

May I ask what you do with a text only system @hcvv ?

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3 laptops with TW here, resp 5, 3 and 1 year(s) old. Installs are the same age

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I let it copy and store files that I want to have backups of off the other two on a regular base. Thus it makes backups of all in e.g. /home (obvious for all user’s data), /etc (system configurations), /srv (running a LAMP server on one).

Log in through SSH. Starting the backup script (based on rsync). Occasionally retrieving files using FTP. No need for any GUI there.

BTW, because only contacting local systems, no routing to outside the LAN configured. Which increases security of course a lot.

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My current installation of openSUSE tumbleweed is one year old. I started using it because the laptop I’m currently using was too new at the time, so getting newer kernel versions as soon as possible was beneficial to me.

It does break from time to time, but not in an unbootable way, mostly just some feature stops working for some reason, which then gets fixed in a few days/weeks.

I might switch to a more stable distribution later, now that I don’t need the latest kernels possible, but for now tumbleweed is still good enough for me.

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@StaffyStar I have three (3) Raspberry Pi 3’s on SLES and Leap, they have been running since 2018, two are for Pihole and one is a GPS based time server for the local network. I have another Leap system which is a kubernetes compute node with a Nvidia Tesla P4, then I have a ADS-B system that’s on new hardware so only been running since Leap 15.6 came out…

Then I have a RISC-V system which is still new (Tumbleweed RISC-V factory and 6.12 kernel) , so video, pcie or usb are not even working at the moment… use Minicom and Serial cable or ssh…

All of those above are command line only…

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I’m also on Leap with all my machines. On my home server, I’m dup-ing since 2018, Leap 42.3 according to my zypper history archive:

2018-02-11 18:45:21|install|apparmor-docs|2.10.2-14.19|noarch||openSUSE-Leap-42.3-0|96fed810cefa83f907772cc79a38e4173a99e693|
2018-02-11 18:45:21|command|root@install|'/usr/bin/ruby' '/usr/lib/YaST2/bin/y2start' 'installation' '--arg' 'initial' 'qt' '--noborder' '--auto-fonts' '--fullscreen'|


kasi@lanserv:~> stat / | awk '/Geburt: /{print $2}'
2018-02-11

My “historic” home server is still alive, due to my permanent lack of time:

kasi@lanserv:~> inxi -M
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: GA-790XTA-UD4
    serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Award v: F2 date: 12/03/2009
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Late June here. More or less had to reinstall after my btrfs partition became an irrecoverable mess (again). Although I rode the broken system a while after due to laziness… Related thread:

I’m hoping for better luck with xfs, but after enough years passes it’s really anyone’s guess, lol.

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Some days now on my main machine installed like 2-3 days ago immutable version KalPa and I have been running multiple openSUSE variants 6 months on testing laptop multi boot setup

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It took about three years. I mainly use Tumbleweed, and the need to use btrfs snapshots is relatively rare, so the overall update is relatively stable.

19

TW install lasted less than a month. :smiling_face_with_tear:
Been on SR for close to 8 months now. :smile_cat:

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well, we have to admit that the average is much less than the Windows counterpart.

with that said, I think the linux desktop has come a long way since I tried it last time in 2005.

sad to hear that brtfs isnt as stable as I thought. Its still btrfs however that gives me hope that I can run this for a long time.