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Debian Fastest-Growing Distro, Says Netcraft
Oskuro writes "According to this story at news.netcraft.com, Debian was the fastest growing distribution in the last 6 months, closely followed by SuSE and Gentoo. RedHat, while still reigning, has started to lose sites in Netcraft's survey after they announced the end of support for their desktop releases. The survey is based on the stats from webservers which include the distribution name in their webserver's header." Maybe it would grow even faster when Java issues are worked out -- read more below on that.
adamy writes "For people like me that use both Free/Open Source software and Java, the two have come together with two major exception: The Java Virtual Machine and the Base Libraries. Seems the folks trying to get Java packages ready for Sarge could have listed the issues. This is an interesting example of dependency tree pruning: Several packages are orphaned because they depend on Ant, which depends on Swing. Swing has been lower priority for the Classpath because most of the java pacakages are server side or lack a UI componenet."
"Debian has been the fastest growing Linux distribution when measured by counting active sites which contain the name of a Linux distribution in the Apache Server header... A distribution name is present in a little over a quarter of Linux based Apache sites."
To me it says that 75% of the Apache administrators on Linux boxes have tought about security.
Sure, it's an Apache server, but do you really need to show which distribution you are using ?
Debian would be the one. It has the ring of solidity that characterises a lot of open-source stuff. For people actually *using* Linux rather than playing with it, reliability's a big issue.
:-)
I'm not saying the others are unreliable, I'm saying that the perception is that Debian is more true-to-the-roots, and therefore more favourable. Perception is all - a statement that can mean two distinct things, and be simultaneously correct
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Namaste
It's easy to be the fastest growing when you have a tiny market share.
--
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American Weblog in London
I've been a long time Redhat user, both on the server AND desktop (yeah, that's right, desktop).
After Redhat's new policy on Redhat Linux was announced, I knew I had to switch. Why? Redhat had made it clear it didn't want me as a customer.
I need patches and that's it, I don't need hand holding and I don't need a 5 year plan (if that really turns out to hold). I'd gladly pay for patches, but the Enterprise options are why too expensive both for my current workplace and me personally. Fedora sounds like a good idea, looks good for messing around. But serious server work? No thanks.
I read you load and clear Redhat, so I'm moving on.
I looked at all the distros and kicked the tires. Gentoo is promising, but not mature enough (portage needs some work and not just technical). Slackware, well, I started with Slackware and I just can't go back. Debian (stable mind you) takes a little getting used to, but it's heart is in the right place and I look forward to being a contributing member of the community.
Anything is possible given time and money.
This survey kind-of depends on distros putting their name visible in the apache version string, something slackware doesn't.
I for one manage a couple of slackware servers, some of them running apache with public reachable sites.
However slackware, is to put it in slashdot-terms, dying. I still love it because of the ease of use and how easy it is to mold into what you want it to be. I even managed to convice the phb at my previous employment to commit to slackware instead of more "commercial" and buzzword distros like redhat et al.
Unless swaret or other apt-ish application turns into a huge thing, I guess slackware will remain a distro for people with special needs. It's just not simple enough anymore to go out and look for packages or even compiling your self when all you friends are typing "apt-get install blah" and that sorts everything out.
With signed-debs the security argument doesn't really hold anymore, and gentoo (with other deficits) provides pretty much custom-compiled applications the custom-compiled argument doesn't hold anymore.
It's finally a matter of taste rather than functionality.
[If it's not obvious: italic text comes from the parent post, which has already been modded into oblivion.]
;-)
I like Debian because it works on my Powerbook (big-endian non-x86 architecture with slightly odd hardware) just as well as it does on my (ordinary, mainstream) PC, and because it also managed to work on my friend's mutant box-of-bits (Cyrix 500MHz cheap-knock-off CPU, ancient AT keyboard port, USB mouse due to no PS/2 ports, serial and parallel ports on an expansion card, graphics card that didn't do VESA... the thing was extremely dodgy).
I also like
- the fact that the packages are made by control freaks (in the nicest possible sense of the words...) who care about consistency and things working nicely together to a sufficient extent that they have formal policies for large classes of packages, but package things in such a way that you can apply local hacks if you don't like how they did it, and make a great effort to preserve local changes to configuration
- the way the development process is usually as transparent and open as the source code of the packages themselves
- the fact that they've built a complete operating system out of software held to standards of freedom and openness high enough that even the Free Software Foundation's "Free Documentation License" doesn't qualify.
- the fact that no one entity controls Debian, so as long as someone's interested in developing for it, it won't go away
- the social contract that sets out the principles Debian will work by.
Debian sucks because
Debian rocks because
* Out dated packages, even in unstable
* Packages are tested (and compiled on more architectures than I care to imagine), and even unstable is actually usable
* Buggy and hard to use installer, people are told to use 3rd party installers because the developers cant be assed to fix it
* A text-mode installer which doesn't blithely assume that graphics mode works properly, or even that you *want* graphics mode (very handy if your hardware is bizarre, like my friend's old PC which couldn't do some of the standard VESA video modes)
* More security flaws than any other distro
[To parent: Really? Please provide links to back that up, I'm interested]
* A transparent mechanism for security updates and bulletins which doesn't introduce new and untested code at the same time, and takes all reported security flaws seriously
* Contains too many redundant and legacy apps
* Contains a huge choice of apps
* All the people who actually used Debian have fled to other distros such as Slackware, Gentoo and Fedora. Only the eleetist pricks are left now
* um... how to answer that one... how about "I actually use Debian, you insensitive clod?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everything. Being "free" doesn't preclude software from being considered part of the market. If it did them Microsoft/SCO/et al wouldn't be bothered by it.
Trolling is a art,
Netcraft rates servers. Debian is being lauded as a replacement for Red Hat servers aggressively (like Server Beach did while I was with them). Debain stable is a good replacement on the server, so expect these numbers to continue to climb a bit (the whole Red Hat thing probably shook up a lot of people and left a big opening for a wholly OSS, stable solution).
I've seen a few posts mentioning their favorite distro scoring suspiciously low, but remember: Mandrake [yours here] is a distro mainly targeted at the desktop, not the server.
Quack, quack.
Just use Gentoo and spare yourself the disappointment.
First, have you used slackware? It's been traditionally the fastest distro since its inception 10 years ago. Gentoo doesn't beat it on speed, and isn't likely to.
Second, Gentoo does a lot of things in interesting but non-standard ways. Slackware users like tgz's, standard startup scripts, the usual directories, manual installs, etc. Basically, slackware is as close to unix and BSD as linux gets.
I'm not saying Gentoo is bad - I'm thinking about trying it just to see what all the fuss is about - but it's not right for every possible situation, which a number of gentoo users try to imply. For people who want a stripped-down, screaming box that does exactly what they want and absolutely nothing more...well, that's a job for Slackware.
You can install Woody with 2.4.18 by using the "bf24" kernel disk. From the CD, just type "bf24" at the isolinux prompt.
Unstable is actually quite usable though; most Debian developers run it on their desktops. I've been running it for 3.5 years without ever needing to reinstall.
You can't say which distros own which percentage of the overall market by looking at server numbers alone. Doing so completely ignores workstations (for that matter, it also ignored embedded Linux as well, but let's not quibble) - and presumably there are a lot more (potential) workstations to run Linux on the desktop than (potential) servers to run Linux.
Get off my launchpad!