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You can get you free version at DistroWatch

From Distrowatch: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ferm i

"About Fermi
Fermi Linux LTS (Long Term Support) is a site distribution based on Scientific Linux, which is in essence Red Hat Enterprise Linux, recompiled. It is Scientific Linux with Fermilab's security hardening and customised configurations to allow an administrator to install Fermi Linux and have the machine meet Fermilab's security requirements with little or no extra configuration. Since Fermi Linux LTS is based on Scientific Linux, it shares it's goal that if a program runs and is certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, then it will run on the corresponding Fermi Linux LTS release."

For a list of distros based on RH and not RHEL, but it also lists RHEL derivatives:

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=All&ori gin=All&basedon=Red+Hat&desktop=All&architecture=A ll&status=Active

Just tested Mathematica 5.1 (64 bit) on Fermi X86_64 and it works like a charm - (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 recommended by Wolfram)

From Distrowatch: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ferm i

"About Fermi
Fermi Linux LTS (Long Term Support) is a site distribution based on Scientific Linux, which is in essence Red Hat Enterprise Linux, recompiled. It is Scientific Linux with Fermilab's security hardening and customised configurations to allow an administrator to install Fermi Linux and have the machine meet Fermilab's security requirements with little or no extra configuration. Since Fermi Linux LTS is based on Scientific Linux, it shares it's goal that if a program runs and is certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, then it will run on the corresponding Fermi Linux LTS release."

For a list of distros based on RH and not RHEL, but it also lists RHEL derivatives:

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=All&ori gin=All&basedon=Red+Hat&desktop=All&architecture=A ll&status=Active

Just tested Mathematica 5.1 (64 bit) on Fermi X86_64 and it works like a charm - (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 recommended by Wolfram)

I've not used any, but from what I hear CentOS is a very popular choice.

I've not used any, but from what I hear CentOS is a very popular choice.

"And people make fun of Linux names!"

• Ubuntu - Humanity for others - in my OS?
• Gentoo - I know there's something about a cow involved
• Mandrivel (Mandriva? Condrake?) - Ok, Mandrake was at least a cool name, but come on
• Slackware - at least they're honest!

Note I didn't even get to any of those lesser distributions with funny names...

Even better, those are the names of the distributions - some have funny names for their versions, too!

So, yes, people make fun of Linux names.

--LWM

get sarge or sid.. or http://distrowatch.com/kanotix/

If you're looking for a good distro to run on PPC, might i recommend Yellow Dog Linux to you.

it is a distro aimed at PPC users, and is very user-friendly. I'd put money down on the fact everything "just works" when you put it into your PPC machine.

If Ubuntu is killing Debian it is like saying the is the "parasite is killing the host" (excuse the strong analogy). Don't get me wrong, I personally use Mepis (which also depends on Debian) however I think it sad that though these distros and loads of others are benefiting from debian's flexible packaging mechanism and debian's voluntary community, they aare not contributing the patches and fixes back to debian.

From Distrowatch you can see http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independ ence that there are 129 distros based on debian (including 50 based on knoppix) witch use debain packages and update them over the debian infrastructure. The other distros come nowhere close on these stats.

I believe distros like Ubuntu, Knoppix, Mepis, Xandros, etc all definitely have a right to exist as customizations of debian to serve different tastes and needs, however I think anything beyond customizations should be contributed back to debian packages (e.g. patches, fixes). This means also that not just debian but the 128 other distros can benefit too.

IMO Sarge should only be released when it is as rock solid, secure and stable as Woody otherwise you are violating debian's release standards, but really more important than Sarge is the number of packages the debian community maintains. I fell the debian community is not getting the recognition it deserves as none of these other distros I mentioned could exist without them.

please correct me if I am mis-informed..

Seen the Distrowatch ranking?

I only saw this site for the first time when you pointed it out -- it looks as if they generate the stats from unique-within-a-day visitors recorded in their own server logs (and mirrors).

Are stats from a single website worth much, particularly when its focus is providing news on distros and ranking Linux their popularity? It does seem likely to be somewhat biased to me.

Ubantu sounds like a great distro from what I've heard of it, but these stats could be equally consistent with Ubantu users simply spending a lot more time visiting this site. Being a relatively new distribution that has a significant following, Ubantu's high rating on DistroWatch shouldn't really be surprising.

Perhaps DistroWatch or the DistroWatch ranking itself is publicised more on the mailing lists and websites that Ubantu users visit, for all I know. It could be the same people visiting day after day, either to see how far their distribution has risen up the ranks, or to read other new things on DistroWatch.

The rankings would be more representative if stats were collated from a variety of sources whose visitors aren't likely to be as biased given the website content. Hopefully it's also a reasonable assumption that a choice of distro won't hugely affect someone's web usage in general.

They have the actual rankings on their popularity page.

> For some time, Ubuntu has been number 1 on Distrowatch's hit list [..] Can someone explain this?

The latest Distrowatch Weekly explains it with "Of course, there have been concerted efforts by several Ubuntu user communities around the world to drive their favourite distribution to the top as fast as possible, so take the new ranking with a grain of salt."

Seen the Distrowatch ranking?

It has alreay been taken! Mandrake with windows art and look&feel.
http://distrowatch.com/mandows

I'm sure glad they didn't pick some wimpy combination of Mandrake and Conectiva. Now the three top distros at Distrowatch (choose last 3 months) will all have great-sounding, easy-to-pronounce names:

1. Ubuntu
2. Mandriva
3. Mepis

I haven't tried White Hat. But I can show you the list of major packages it has. But very quickly, it comes with KDE 3.3.1 and Gnome 2.8.0.

Just what we need to increase confusion. Look - I agree that there some justification to put this out, but do we *really* need yet another distro? A few well placed distros, each appealing to a market segment would be much better than this helter skelter rush for every man and their (yellow) dog to have a distro.

Wouldn't it be better to have 3 distros, one for techies, one for desktops and one for servers with paid with support. I know that those of you who use distro 'X' will yell "But {Debian,Mandrake,RHEL} doesn't quite match my requirements". Those 3 key distro's are very good, and I'm sure if theres some feature on some other distro, it will be available on one of these when all that hacking talent goes to just support them.

I'd rather we were all talking about and backing 3 very very good distros than over 100quite good ones.

The problem that I at least have is that there are too many Debian-based distros to choose from

AFAIK, Ubuntu is the only major one that contributes heavily back into Debian proper and has a community development model. The others are either largely one man shows or commercial distributions with proprietary tools that they keep to themselves.

I'd love it if just one Debian derivative would come out way ahead of the others in terms of popularity, to the level of Fedora, Suse, Mandrake, or Gentoo; then I could feel confident that it will stick around and stay up to date for the long haul.

If you look at the last month on DistroWatch, one seems to be pulling far ahead of the others, even above the distros you mentioned.

I've had the best luck so far with Fedora, but I hate the fact that a full system upgrade is due twice a year.

With Ubuntu, there are two releases a year, but all you have to do is replace the name of the release in your repositories and "apt-get dist-upgrade".

As for Debian itself, well I used to use it (on a Sparc 10), but to have an up-to-date desktop I had to run "unstable", and occasionally things (like DNS - that was fun) would break for awhile.

Ubuntu also has an unofficial sparc port.

Actually some newer packages are in Ubuntu Hoary that are not even in Sid like X.org, GCC 3.4, Gnome 2.10 and several others. So it looks like Ubuntu is already developing and testing some packages separate from Debian. Compare Ubuntu Hoary to Debian Sid

Actually some newer packages are in Ubuntu Hoary that are not even in Sid like X.org, GCC 3.4, Gnome 2.10 and several others. So it looks like Ubuntu is already developing and testing some packages separate from Debian. Compare Ubuntu Hoary to Debian Sid

In other BSD news, the FreeBSD 5.4-BETA1 is out as well.

Let me explain before the flames arrive - with windows during install there is one GUI (with themes), one notepad, one calculator... That means few questions and you are up and running straight away. Sure there are other choices for almost every utility, and once you are up and running you can look at the others.

With linux you have to select between 3 or 4 GUIs (at least on Fedora) and a gazillion versions of most other tools.

Here's a test: you are a beginner and you are offered the choice of: Gnome, KDE, XFCE, TWM, ... - which do you choose? What I did the first time was install them all - holy crap what a mess that made. And dont get me started on the 50 different text editors all slightly different. Not to mention picture editors, dev tools... Of course, this is after you have managed to figure out which distro you should run.

Now, linux-heads love choice and more power to them for that. BUT such up-front confusion with linux is not the way to win over the general public.

Now lots of people are going to point to their favourite distro and say "but mine makes it **really** simple". Crap. Ubuntu, Novell, Mandrake, PCLinuxOS all say the same thing. In my opinion Linspire or Xandros have the best shot, but they disappear under a sea of confusing and conflicting marketing. Another question: how many distros are there right now? Let me list the ones I know of: Debian, Fedora, RHEL, Gentoo, Knoppix (+ a few variants), Suse/Novell, CentOS, Slackware, Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire, MEPIS, DSL, Yoper, Puppy, Turbo, Devil, Yellowdog... (actually, I just found a site that lists the top 100). what a mess

People say Linux hasn't forked. Technically that may be true for the kernel. But in the minds of the public it has, and they are the people who create marketshare.

I don't see what the big deal is. If other distros can become so popular without supporting everything and build a very strong community around that streamlining concept I don't see what is wrong with Slack doing the same thing. Pat is making the right decision in only supporting one DE.

PS: yes I know some religious Gnome fan boy will come and try to comment on my post and say that I'm just a KDE fan spewing his views. Except I'm a gnome fan too.

What exactly is the problem?

If you're happy with your distro X, you need not be concerned with distros A-W, Y, and Z.

If you are not happy with your distro X, go to DistroWatch.com and find out about some other ones. They have a nice big list on the right, and short descriptions on each distro pages with links to reviews and homepages.

It is very true that there are way too many Linux distros out there, but staying informed about the top 10 is normally a good idea. Just go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ and check the list. Not that UserLinux is in the top 10, but still a good idea.

I did read it...I know some run in windows and some are mini linux distros that require bootable USB drives. He linked to puppy linux in the article (RTFA yourself) which does require booting from a cdrom or a bootable USB drive.

Maybe you should read the article more carefully next time. linux usb drive distros

One of the huge advantages of USB drives is ability to save configurations, files, etc. Now though that unionfs is coming out on a few live cds having a computer with a cd burner will provide basically the same functionality as the USB linux distros do.

Yeah, that caught my eye, too. "Distro of the year"? According to DistroWatch, Arch barely cracks the top 20, is about 1/5 as popular as the top distros, and is even on the way down over the last month.

My only complaint is that Mandrake comes from France. It's not that I hate the French people (I love their fries ;-), but rather that the language and time barriers sometimes make it difficult to interact with them.

People aren't leaving Debian for greener pastures. They're leaving Debian for Debian derivatives. If the last three months on Distrowatch are any indication of how much each distrbution is being used, then Debian is the most important distro out there. Ubuntu is #1, Mepis is #3, and Debian itself is #6. The Debian project has obviously doing something right if some of the most popular distros choose to base themselves on it.

On the other hand, the fact that derivatives are necessary is a sign of Debian's shortcomings. I haven't used Mepis in over a year, but the last time I used it, it was basically Debian installable off of a live CD with easy to use configuration tools. That says that Debian proper is hard to install and lacks user friendly configuration tools. The former problem has been fixed, but I'm not sure the latter has been. Ubuntu is Debian with a shorter release cycle and paid developers to add polish. This shows that users obviously take issue with Debian's long release cycles, and once again, the administration tools. Anyone who is running the development version of Ubuntu right now knows how easy it is to keep things up to date. The newer software also takes advantage of advances on the Linux desktop, such as Project Utopia. I can plug in USB devices, and they just work. It's nice, and Debian proper misses out on things like that because of the age of its packages.

So who uses Debian stable? From the things I hear, it's people who want a long release cycle. Woody users have been getting security updates for however long it's been since the release. People like that. Ubuntu is supported for 18 months after a release, which is likely to be too short for some people. I don't see how Debian loses out from desktop (and some server) users using the derivatives. Ubuntu is the main derivative, and all its work goes back into Debian proper. When etch is getting ready for release, the job is going to be much easier to do, since Ubuntu has already done much of the work ahead. Sarge has been in some sort of a freeze for most of the time Ubuntu has been around, so they haven't been able to reap the benefits of Ubuntu's presence. People getting paid to work on Debian is a good thing, not something to be angry about, which is the sense I get from some posts on Planet Debian.

So if Debian shortens its release cycle, where does that put it in the Linux ecosystem? I doubt they will be able to support security updates for multiple stable releases, which is what they would have to do with a short release cycle to maintain the current length of support. As much as Slashdotters like to poke fun at Debian, it plays a very important role. Does it really need to change?

Debian developers, thanks for making such a great distribution. There are lots of Ubuntu, Mepis, and Debian proper users that appreciate it.

It's already in DistroWatch. Check it out for a quick overview of package versions.

Netcraft doesn't look at Ubuntu's stats. It's been rising like crazy over the past year, poking its head up to the top of DistroWatch's average hits/day list for the last 3 months and last month. As to the last 6 months (netcraft looks at this period), Mandrake seems to have the top seat.

Looking at percentage increase, Ubuntu probably beats the pants off of Fedora, rising from an average hits/day of 300 in 2004 to an average hits/day of 1916 in the past month; that's a 638% increase. Using the same math for Fedora, we see a LOSS of 8%.

Of course, this is just a measure of people's interest in DistroWatch's stats on distros ... far from complete. However, it shows that increase in Ubuntu is massive. Perhaps bigger than Fedora. Then again, both are very young and very successful; a massive percentage increase should be expected.

• Lineox released 4.0 on 2/25.
• Piebox released 4.0 on 2/28. No free binary downloads.
• White Box, no 4.0 yet.
• Scientific Linux, no 4.0 yet.

• Lineox released 4.0 on 2/25.
• Piebox released 4.0 on 2/28. No free binary downloads.
• White Box, no 4.0 yet.
• Scientific Linux, no 4.0 yet.

The Linux and Macintosh sytems were installed out of the box without any additional security patches. Windows SP 2 automatically downloads the latest security patches from the Microsoft website.

The Linux and Macintosh sytems were installed out of the box without any additional security patches. Windows SP 2 automatically downloads the latest security patches from the Microsoft website.

Here.

Check out Skolelinux (Distrowatch page) (Linux for schools, Norwegian name). Made to work perfectly with LTSP, and based on debian stable. On the install cd you can choose to install the Skolelinux server or thin clients, or a standalone install. Plenty of educational software availible. The thin client install runs fine on older hardware. Give it a try.

The best thing to do is to just *try* all these things. SuSE isn't free, but there is an FTP install that should cover everything you need for gaming (the commercial extensions wont help you here and the drivers for nvidia are downloaded at install time or during a later online update).

Actually you can get Suse for free now too w/o the pain of an FTP install.

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02238

Enjoy!

Apparently there is a gentoo linux live CD. It's available here... http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=01550#0

Follow the link at the bottom. With Gentoo Linux, download options vary greatly depending on your architecture and installation method, so we will only provide a link to the Gentoo Universal LiveCD here: install-x86-universal-2004.1.iso (674MB).

He also says it crashed his system twice, which hasn't happened to me yet. I wonder what he tried to do.

Also, my guess is that the author of the OSNews article was influenced by distrowatch, since FreeBSD (and the other *BSDs) is listed there, along with all the linuxes, so he might have gotten confused (he doesn't seem a whole lot knowledgable about their differences)

You're a nitpicker. :D a) + b) + c) + d) + e) = me not know, and can't really be bothered doing the research for you. It was the last distro i saw posted on distrowatch so i think its starting to get some coverage now. If you want to know more check out the distrowatch page: http://distrowatch.com/02317

Sure they have a choice.

Live CDs like Knoppix would be good to mirror. At 100-700 MB each, the extra bandwidth would help everyone. If in doubt, the Distrowatch rankings aren't a bad place to start.

I think it unlikely a link deep in the comments will generate a slashdotting. I've clicked on lots of links in earlier comments and the sites all seemed snappy. Anyway, you can safely link to Distrowatch's Kanotix page.

There's no Internet Explorer, there's no MS Office, etc. The default browser/e-mail client is Mozilla. Open Office is the office suite that comes with Linspire. The only way you'd see an MS ap running on a Linspire machine is if the user has loaded Wine or WinforLin and then an MS application on top of it. Please take a look at the Distrowatch page for Linspire. There are no MS applications that come with this distro. I'd be interested to learn what IP theft and GPL violations were found. Maybe there are some, but I'm not aware of them.

I will give you partial credit on the security issue, but even as it comes without any adjustments, it's still a LOT less prone to the usual attacks against consumer machines with respect to the sorts of malware that infests over 80% of Windows machines connected to the Internet.

Again, my disclaimer that I have no interest in Linspire other than as a user who thinks they are trying to do the right thing in offering an easy to use alternative to the vulnerability plagued Windows OS and make a buck in the process. I've also been using/evaluating Xandros recently and like them very well, too. I'd not hesitate to also recommend it to people looking to break the MS lock.

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lind ows

I disagree, I think that would be out of scope. I think it would have been far more effective to list the legal uses and focus on the positive. It's possible to violate copyright with a lot of different items - cameras, CD Burners, pencil and paper, a photocopier, a scanner, etc. But - that's not exactly "newsworthy", is it?

Also, is there any way to list metrics of exactly what people are downloading via BitTorrent? If there isn't, it's only an opinion that BitTorrent is used primarily for copyright violations. I could argue that the legal uses are numerous, and I can think of a number of sites like this one that have numerous, legal Torrent links, and looking at the traffic stats, Distrowatch gets a lot of hits.

Debian:

"Stable". Apt-get is beautiful. jsut type in what you want ot get and you ahve it. Dependancies are always wonderful with this because it deals with it automaticly. The problem is if you use the stable package, be prepared to wait years for a new version of your software. I usually say testing for my install, so my things are relatively current, but not totally buggy. Not really for a total linux newbie, but if you are smart enough to understand basic computer things, you coudl get by.


Mandrake:

URMPI is like apt get, but from what I noticed, not with as many packages. Its my distro of choice at the moment. Things (NFS, SMB, SSH) just work, with minimal setup. If you are migrating, it's the best for that.


Redhat:

Good for enterprize. If you want basic office stuff, this is the distro for oyu. If yu want something any more then what is already on the disk, be prepared for dependancy issues (I knwo there is apt-get, but package selection is limited). Circular dependantcies are a pain in the ass (you want to install A, but can't because oyu need B, but you can't install B because oyu need C, and you can't install C, becasue you need A)


Something else:

Lycoris is another "mirgration" type of linux. The install even has a solitarie game for oyu to play while you wait. It's all dumbed down...I found that to be very limiting.

Slackware was my "first" distro when I was a linux virgin..and I sure promise yo if oyu make that your first distro, you will feel like a virgin. Pain in the ass. I lost many harddrives due to it. Lucky for me, the drives were small 500MBish drives on a 486.

KNoppix. TRy it first. If you can familiarize yourself with knoppix, it helps reduce the risk to your system from a bad install, and you can muck around with it without killing anything important.

Gentoo. Ricer jokes aside, it's a good distro if oyu need a special custom configuration...say if oyu have a 64 bit processor or something, otherwise, be prepared to spend hours and hours compiling linux. (I haven't used Gentoo, but this is what I heard).

There are other distros out there, you will probably install linux several times before oyu find the one that works for you.


http://distrowatch.com/ has a more complete list of distros.

Here is a nice review.

"Developed by Joerg Schirottke, KANOTIX is a surprisingly powerful distribution that has managed to improve on its famous parent by including new features and adding several interesting tricks."

website

...live Linux discs that do almost the exact same thing. Some do it better, some worse. I like FIRE and Knoppix-STD, I'm giving Whoppix a whirl right now.

Go here, hit Ctrl-F, and search for "forensics" or "recovery" - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Not quite. Non-RPM distros comprise seven of the current top ten downloads on Distrowatch (http://distrowatch.com/.) Positions 4, 5 and 6 are Debian-based.