Forgive my English, I hope you understand what I am saying. I frequently change distro from one to another one, because each distro has advantages and disadvantages, sometimes I miss the +s of a distro, I install it; later I missed the +s of another distro or bored with current distro’s -s, I change to another one.
So the oldest Opensuse install is the install of Opensuse that you use for the longest time without changing other distros. This more or less reflects the stability of user and the goodness of the distro.
Technically it wasn’t called OpenSUSE until 10.1 (I think) so nobody has any install older than that. 
But I know what you mean. I have only used two distros on my personal machines, Redhat and then SUSE. My belief is that you should try to tough it out with your chosen distro, and learn to make it do what you want, rather than give up when the going gets tough.
That doesn’t mean I don’t go near other distros. I have probably used or maintained machines of every major distro out there. Even BSD and OS/X. I always learn one thing or another from seeing how software is put together in different ways in other distros.
SuSE 8.2 - still working in a corner as a home nfs fileserver. That reminds me to check it out.
More interesting would be the question “Which is your oldes install still using a recent version obtained though updates”?
Having installed an OS XY years ago, putting the machine in the corner forgetting about it is not really special.
Rumor has it, distribution upgrades on SuSE “would not work” (which is complete FUD IMHO), so an installation, which has been upgraded through several release cycles, is the more interesting thing.
On my older laptop I installed SuSE 9.1 and the same installation was gradually updated to 11.0 (9.2 -> 9.3 -> 10.0 -> 10.1 -> 10.2 -> 11.0), which is still running on that machine (until it will break, I only use it as a little fileserver, as the graphics card is slowly dying).
Updating by booting off the install media has worked for a long time. It’s updating a live system using zypper that’s new and supposed to work correctly from 11.1 onwards.
Isn’t that like the “original” axe that has had five blade and seven handle changes? 
Another interesting question is what file created by you on your system has the oldest date. I have a .lessrc from 1993, I wonder if it has any effect. I probably have some older sources from Unix systems somewhere:
-rw-r–r-- 1 me users 114 1993-11-24 12:22 .lessrc
I’m aware of that (unfortunately most people making my above mentioned statement don’t seem to know it).
BTW:
The last two or three (not 100% sure) updates on that box were so called “hot upgrades” in running system and they also worked without bigger problems.
My longest openSUSE installation was 10.2, it’s about one year more several weeks, start right from I first get in college until I get part-time job as class assistant, and I get it in the third semester.
my earliest was 9.3 and i’m glad i’ve stuck with it^_^
Hi
Mine was 9.3 too
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Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.19-3.2-pae
up 1:02, 1 user, load average: 0.30, 0.23, 0.27
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME
I am a complete newbie…OpenSuSE 11.0 installed it like ummm a week ago. O:)
On 2009-03-16, hzxu <hzxu@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> So the oldest Opensuse install is the install of Opensuse that you use
> for the longest time without changing other distros. This more or less
> reflects the stability of user and the goodness of the distro.
MMy oldest release was SuSE 6.2.
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Elevators smell different to midgets
The first SuSE distro I seriously used for any length of time was 7.x (it wasn’t called OpenSuSE then).
Then came 8.2, followed by 9.1, which I used for a long time.
Then Novell took over SuSE and I changed to Ubuntu.
Eventually I came back to OpenSuSE 10.3, which is still running on one machine.
My other machine runs OpenSuSE 11.0, the last one to support KDE3.x. This one also is due to stay with me for some time. Eventually I may update the Kernel, though.
my oldest is SuSE Linux 9.0>:)
Noticed an 8.2 on the network the other day.
Longest for me was Opensuse 10.3 the full 8 month course, then installed 11.0.
Running SUSE 9.1 Pro on a local server, uptime: 2.5 years without reboot
Still enjoying opensuse 10.2 from October 2007. Opensuse 11.1 just wont fit to my hardware. But still moving on with many tasks. :Z
I still have an old Dell Celeron 400 with 8.2 on it. It used to be my router, now I just boot it once in a while to see if it still works.
I manage one that’s still running 9.3 with no single update applied…Machine goes 24/7 since install, max uptime 732 days.
9.1 back in 2004, I hated it, lasted a week…
9.0 back in 2001