As far as
free operating systems go,
Debian GNU/Linux has a long support lifecycle.
For example, the support for Debian 3.0--which was released in July of 2002--only recently ended in June of 2006. That's nearly 4 years of product support.
Debian's next release after 3.0 was 3.1, which was released in June of 2005. That's nearly 3 years from the release of 3.0 to the release of 3.1
And Debian's latest release after 3.1 is 4.0. This was released in April of 2007. That's nearly 2 years from the release of 3.1 to the release of 4.0.
Contrast this with Ubuntu for example, which releases about every 4 months or with Fedora which releases about every 5-6 months.
In the linux world, Debian is considered to be one of the most conservative, slow-moving, security/stability focused distributions.
I personally dual boot between Debian 4.0 and Windows XP (for games).
Great post, you’re one in a million around here. That is impressive for free software, to provide support for 4 years. But Microsoft will have supported XP for over 12 by 2014. Free software is usually trying to catch up too much to ever sit on a single version for that long.