12 years ago, I (re)installed Linux on my machine:
$ head -n 1 /var/log/pacman.log
[2011-07-07 11:19] installed filesystem (2011.04-1)
I believe that was the day when I switched from i686 to amd64. It was on an Athlon 64 X2 4200+. I bought it in 2006 and I could have run amd64 right from the start but didn’t, for some reason. I was pretty late to the party.
Since then, just rolling updates. It’s not the same machine anymore, the system has been moved to/through various hard disks and SSDs over time. Quite a long time and this stability still surprises me.
(I wonder why I never followed that approach during my days with Windows. It should have worked, I think? But for some reason, completely wiping the disk on every Windows update or major hardware upgrade was “the way to go” back then … Or did I try and everything broke horribly? 🤔 I honestly don’t remember anymore.)