Linux Installation Date: How to Discover Your System’s Age

Linux terminal showing the command 'stat /' being run and it returns information such as File / Size 4096 Blocks 8 IO Block 4096, followed by some different dates such as Access, Modify, Change, and the date called Birth which is 2020-12-22 02:14:44

Have you ever found yourself pondering the age of your Linux system? Perhaps you’ve inherited a computer or are curious about when you first set up your trusty Linux machine.

In the linked article, they show you a straightforward and efficient method to uncover the installation date of your Linux system using just a single command, as well as a few other options too.

One of the most universal methods is to use: stat / | awk '/Birth: /{print $2 " " substr($3,1,5)}' or you could even just type stat /.

My system is Manjaro Linux, so it has been rolling along for a while I see, from 16 June 2017. I realise too why it was that date specifically, as it was the start of a long weekend in South Africa, so I’d probably allowed myself a clear 3 days to set it all up before going back to work again after the weekend.

Since 2017 I had changed my main boot drive to a SSD drive, so I must have just cloned the Linux drive to the SSD (not being Windows this would just work without complaining about hardware changes).

See https://linuxiac.com/how-to-find-linux-os-installation-date/

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