Debian admin here. Even Debian gets regular kernel upgrades that like a reboot afterwards. Security updates are more important than uptime. Also regular testing for clean recovery after a reboot is a must so a power outrage doesn’t bring any new surprises with it. Also test your backup restores regularly.
So, you never update the kernel?
Mine’s not connected to the internet so I’m utilizing the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it strategy.
Heard of tuptime? I’ve been using it for a while now, I think I like it.
System startups: 151 since 18:00:05 10/11/15 System shutdowns: 137 ok + 13 bad System life: 9yr 223d 1h 27m 47s
Longest uptime: 106d 5h 34m 28s from 14:17:10 26/03/22 Average uptime: 23d 4h 32m 0s System uptime: 99.81% = 9yr 216d 12h 31m 51s
Longest downtime: 4d 23h 30m 48s from 10:36:53 14/09/23 Average downtime: 1h 2m 46s System downtime: 0.19% = 6d 12h 55m 56s
Current uptime: 25d 0h 34m 25s since 20:25:37 15/11/25
This is why we have UPS ;-)
My father was an HPUX admin that had a server with an uptime of >12 years
I was introduced to homelab by trying to figure out how my uncles setup. It ran for 4 years after he died, 11 years uptime. The estate probate prevented anyone from touching the equipment for the legal fights, and I get a kick out of thinking of how smug he would have been about it.
At some point when I am less busy again I think I am gonna swap back to a debian based system because my experience on arch and red hat systems just hasnt been as good (this may be because I started on Debian based systems and keep trying to use commands that dont work on the other ones out of muscle memory)
I get bored every so often and move all the important stuff to an external drive or a separate internal one and completely change my os
I am on manjaro but I have also run arch, red hat, void, mint, Debian, Ubuntu and a bunch of others that I either put on laptops or something similar as messing around with devices
Tails and slitaz have to be my favorite to run from a USB but peppermint isn’t the worst
I just did the contrary. Moved from debian to arch. After the update to trixie my network stack completely died somehow, so I’m going back to arch.
I have had minimal issues from my manjaro desktop but I just dont like it as much as my mint based systems because everything feels wrong and I can barely remember how to update my graphics drivers on manjaro vs mint where I am confident I could run my entire system mostly command line from installs to updates and random other shit that I just can’t remember how to do through arch systems because I dont run them as hard for some reason
