If anyone (who isn't very young) says they still like exactly the same stuff they always liked, I'll call them either weird or stubborn to a fault, or both.

Oh, and my answer is yes. My tastes and interests have changed over time. As a 20-something I enjoyed spending my days tinkering with my computers, and now that I haven't been 20-something for a very long while, I do that a lot less. I used to run Gentoo for a few years, back when it was a lot less user friendly in the early noughties, then slowly went through the usual suspects before eventually landing on Mint. It works as I expect it to work with minimal hassle. I do run the latest stable kernel and Mesa, but setting those up took minutes so that's a non-issue for me.

Hardware-wise, these days I stick to AMD for the CPU and GPU. And I didn't always love AMD/ATI on Linux. Fglrx was a pain in the backside. My preferences here are pretty flexible and pragmatic. I like to do my research and buy whichever HW fits my needs.

As for gaming, I still have a soft spot for some genres I enjoyed in my teens and I've picked up new ones over time. The only constant is that I've pretty much always preferred single-player games. For me it's not a social activity, but something I like to enjoy at my own pace. The only real exception was Rocket League back when it was native Linux, played it for hundreds of hours (casually) with a group of GOL friends. That ended after they dropped support for Linux and I refunded the game. And I suppose playing the GOL Dirt Rally leagues was a kind of online multiplayer, even though the only thing shared between players was the leaderboard.

I also notice I don't really play strategy games these days. I used to enjoy them a lot more.

I never thought I'd ever like racing games, but nowadays I'm playing DiRT Rally 2.0 daily. Turns out what I didn't like was the other cars getting in the way of me driving my best.

I've also kinda lost my taste for platformers, Crash 4 It's About Time is a really great platformer which a 15 year younger me would have absolutely loved; but I'm just too rusty to get into it.

I'm running Pop_OS on my secondary PC. I ended up using it after I was distro hopping, when my hopping stopped at Pop_OS for no reason other than I felt like stopping. I ended up liking it and admiring System 76 as a company, so I stuck to it for my secondary.

For games, as a kid I was only interested in games that involved blowing shit up and shooting stuff. As an adult, my tastes have definitely broadened, though I still do enjoy my childish ways as well. I was never able to appreciate a game like Tetris as a kid, but I absolutely love it now as an adult. I took it for granted, and thought it was just a lame pack-in game with the Game Boy. Fast forward to the 2020s, and I now understand why it's such a legendary game. It's so simple, yet endlessly entertaining with an infinite skill ceiling. And to think, during the last years of the Soviet Union - a once revered empire - during a very turbulent decade of its own invasion of Afghanistan, and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown, in its last dying breaths it coughs one of the best video games ever invented. This is a perspective I would've never been able to see as a child.

I'm definitely far more into fantasy genre stuff than I used to be. And also more into RPGs than I used to be.

While first person shooters and action games is still something I love, I have broadened my taste significantly. I also enjoy story-driven games a lot more these days.

Would also say my music taste has changed. I'm no longer as obsessed with stuff being obscure vs mainstream.

I mean we're all humans, so yeah, of course we change! Distros change constantly all the time, and I like trying new stuff, so I don't ever marry myself to one in particular. I like trying new and different things a lot! Currently loving cachy, but wouldn't be against trying something different. Just happy with what I have, for now.

As for genres, kinda similar to @tuubi. I pretty much 90% of the time stick to single player games, because gaming time is ME TIME, and also my favorite genre is crpgs and I'm a slow-explore-every-inch completionist, which gives me great satisfaction. I've always loved crpgs since I was a weee littlun, and I still do to this day, but that's probably the only genre that hasn't changed. I'm now getting closed to middle aged, so my reflexes aren't what they used to be, and I CAN TELL. So ... stuff like competitive fps and things I just can't do, it's frustrating. Actiony twitchy things also. Driving games used to be one of my fav genres, but I can't do time trials like I used to, so again: it's just frustrating to know I'm just not as good as I used to be. So I'm really more now into mostly just rpgs. Which is completely fine with me. Now with kids of my own, I have such little time, I'm okay with it.

crpgs are just so rewarding because of two primary things: the development of your characters themselves, their stories, their friendships, romances, infighting, etc, all of it! ... But also power creep. NOTHING ELSE does power creep like a good crpg does. You start as a confused lvl1 scrub barely capable of just staying alive and moving from one place to another, all confused about what's going on, who are these people, where do I go? And then you end as a living god capable of unspeakable feats. FPS' can kind of do this a little bit but it's nowhere near as close as doing a turn based battle in a good crpg with max lvl chars. Snipers who can't be seen, wizards who alter spacetime, barbarians who ragemurder anything that breathes, and your friendly overhorny bard just playing music all along.

anyway: I think I'll probably be playing some good rpgs until the day I die, but my distros, other genres, other hardware will change dramatically over time which is allllll good :)

Not really distos for me what I didn't think I would be using was niri since I always looked at auto tilers and thought thats a neat idea, but I don't want to learn the key bindings or have deal with having limited space for applications but niri fixes the space issue by just scrolling and I just sat down and learn the keybindings niri letting you use the scroll wheel or trackpad is no nice.

For video games from highschool, to about 2 years ago I was a die hard for Esports. I used to play alot of competitive games CS:GO, LOL, Smite, Overwatch and OSU exception being monster hunter. Now I play alot more single player games and osu still if my wrist will let me. Only competitive game i like playing is deadlock since I love movement shooters but I'll only play with a friend, Having an end to a game has been so nice it felt so good to complete stellar blade and clair obscur last year. Those 2 were the first games I have complete since childhood and I didn't expect to completely fall in love with stellar blade I could gush over the game for hours having beaten it 3 times.

On the hardware side I wouldn't have guessed I would have a large console collection PC Engine, Sega Genesis, Saturn, 2 Dreamcasts, Playstation 1,2,3,5pro, 2 PSPs, OG Xbox, Xbox 360, Vsmile, Vsmile motion, my childhood 3DS Wii, Wii U (UH WHY DID I TELL MY FRIEND IF ONE EVER APPEARED DOWNTOWN I WOULD BUY IT), OLED modded switch lite, a normal switch and a hacked switch. And I have 5 CRT TVs I really only need one my families old living room TV but I just happened to get lucky at getting 3 of them for free, one off the street, one from my aunt and one from her mom. last one was from a pawn shop for $40 dollars which I thought was a fine price.

Distro preference hasn't changed. Still rolling with 13 year old Arch Install. I don't like UI changes tbh. I need my muscle memory to work when i do stuff at computers. Thatswhy i also still run MATE desktop. It works the way it has always worked without any regressions or issues. It basically hasn't changed design wise since its release, which i like.

Now gaming is different beast. Over time i just understood that chasing the latest hardware isn't really worth it anymore. Just have fun playing older games more than the modern "slop" anyway.
These days i also don't like to tweak things anymore, unless there's a really good need for it.
Just keep on rolling!

I have also become a creature of habit. I cannot deal with GNOME, I'll be sticking with the traditional layout in KDE Plasma until the end of time at this point. Fedora KDE just keeps on rolling over nicely for me, so it continues to be my top choice.

Quoting: Liam Squires-HandI have also become a creature of habit. I cannot deal with GNOME, I'll be sticking with the traditional layout in KDE Plasma until the end of time at this point. Fedora KDE just keeps on rolling over nicely for me, so it continues to be my top choice.

I am pretty much done with Gnome as well. I don't think I'll ever move away from KDE due to how customizable it is.
XFCE is my go-to for older PCs too.

Oh, yes, my interests in video games has changed over the years. Video gaming in the eighties was just a hodge-podge of every genre.

In the nineties, I started working in the retail computer industry. I mostly played first-person shooters and action games because they could be played in short sessions. I tended to avoid cRPGs back then because they required a lot more time commitment (so I missed out on a lot of the greats). I did dabble in the occasional RTS games like Warcraft and Age of Empires but Command & Conquer never interested me.

In the late nineties and early 2000s, I found I couldn't overcome the vertigo and nausea of first-person shooters anymore and discovered ARPGs via Diablo 1 and especially Diablo 2 and, then later, Dungeon Siege. I was a manager and business owner by then and didn't have a lot of time for video games. My staff talked me into trying Neverwinter Nights and that started my current interest in cRPGs.

One day, I heard this repetitious annoying drum-like beat coming from the Xbox display unit. Initially I found it annoying but then I started noticing the beautiful music that played after that thumping noise. I became curious and that was when those same employees introduced me to what would cement my enduring passion for cRPGs and ARPGs. They described it to me as an offline single-player cRPG, but with an open-world similar to a MMORPG. It was The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I could play it because of the third-person vanity mode. I have played both successors and other games since but Morrowind remains my first love, both for playing and modding.

I stopped chasing the latest hardware after Skyrim. I prefer to focus on the great old games that will run on my current hardware.

Quoting: Luxuria

Quoting: Liam Squires-HandI have also become a creature of habit. I cannot deal with GNOME, I'll be sticking with the traditional layout in KDE Plasma until the end of time at this point. Fedora KDE just keeps on rolling over nicely for me, so it continues to be my top choice.

I am pretty much done with Gnome as well. I don't think I'll ever move away from KDE due to how customizable it is.
XFCE is my go-to for older PCs too.

The more I work with XFCE, the more I find I prefer it as my desktop environment. It's very customizable and, more importantly, it is fast and responsive.

Quoting: tuubiIf anyone (who isn't very young) says they still like exactly the same stuff they always liked, I'll call them either weird or stubborn to a fault, or both.

I think you just summed up what'll be on my tombstone. Haha.

I am weird. I am stubborn. I like what I like, and I will die on various hills.

My favourite distro continues to be Arch (despite it's continuing decline). Gentoo has a special place in my heart as my first Linux distro as an unwashed teenager, but I can't justify building everything from source all the time when I can mostly get by with pre-compiled packages from a central source. Pacman remains the best package manager (and accompanying build tools) that I have ever used. Gentoo's emerge and ebuilds a close second.

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Luxuria

Quoting: Liam Squires-HandI have also become a creature of habit. I cannot deal with GNOME, I'll be sticking with the traditional layout in KDE Plasma until the end of time at this point. Fedora KDE just keeps on rolling over nicely for me, so it continues to be my top choice.

I am pretty much done with Gnome as well. I don't think I'll ever move away from KDE due to how customizable it is.
XFCE is my go-to for older PCs too.

The more I work with XFCE, the more I find I prefer it as my desktop environment. It's very customizable and, more importantly, it is fast and responsive.

Agreed. XFCE can't be beat in terms of responsiveness and it is extremely customizable.