I have always been a Linux user (save the first few years of my computerized life before the first version of Linux came out). The first Linux installations were whatever I managed to get my hands on. There were no public internet yet to download whatever you wanted back then.
After getting connected the things got interesting. There were so many options and the technology was moving so fast it was hard to keep up. Especially if you resorted to the stable releases.
For years I was running self compiled Linux with all the bleeding edge packages, sometimes pushing that edge forward myself too. New hardware in particular was basically impossible to find support from any stable distros. You had to get experimental builds to get your things working.
Over the years I got tired of that constant race and turned back to more stable distros that required lot less work to keep updated. Looking back to those most "wild" years when I might have been rolling a whole system anew my current setup is already 5 years old! That's a lot for me, but it's also a lot for a stable distro release as well.
I was never looking to keep this system for so long. By now I expected to have a new laptop already and I could have just installed an up to date distro on it and not have to worry about it for several years.
Now my trusty old system is facing an end of life and I should finally upgrade it. Maybe it's a good time to get that new laptop as well at the same go.