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What's The Fastest Growing Linux Distro?
darthcamaro writes "What's the fastest growing Linux distro? This really solid article on InternetNews.com contains interviews with the Debian Project leader, the founder of Mandrake, SuSe, Red Hat and TurboLinux to get their take on who's the biggest and who's the baddest on the distro block.
Also includes some interesting insight into the next round of releases."
It seems to be Gentoo to me, it's always suggested when someone asks for a new distro(I won't say where though as I'm afraid of being laughed upon ;)), and everyone seem to be using it. I'm happy with Slackware and FreeBSD. I really should check our Gentoo, it might just work on my crappy 5 year old Wintel machine...
And BSD is not dying!!
Red Hat isn't shrinking. It's not growing at the same rate but it's still growing. It's overall market dominace is shrinking but it's still growing. It's no longer the M$ of linux.
Evolution or ID?
You could get a feel for the number from
http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.php
Selling 1 license last week and 2 licenses this week would be a 100% increase. Selling 0 licenses last week and 1 license this week is an infinite percentage increase. I hope you pay somebody else to compute your taxes...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
According to DistroWatch.com, ranked by hits per day on their website:
Mandrake 991
Red Hat 696
Knoppix 643
Debian 567
Fedora 518
Gentoo 477
SUSE 460
Slackware 423
and the list goes on and on
Of course this is very limited sample and probably doesn't include any enterprise use.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
White Box Linux. All of the functionality, security and stability of RHE3 without any expense.
It also makes a snappy desktop distro with a 2.6 kernel. There are even apt-repositories if you're an apt-rpm type admin.
It's not a desktop distro, on the other hand, I look forward to not having to crossing my fingers and praying that an upgrade works for another five years or so.
The article says it has had the slowest growth rate, not that it is shrinking.
"RedHat has a far greater number of installations at 1.5 million, but a slower growth rate in the six-month span at 17.8 percent; "
It is still growing, just not as fast as the other distros.
The article ranks only Web servers. So it's hardly going to provide useful numbers on desktops.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The article says: "RedHat has a far greater number of sites but a slower growth rate, and actually fell this month"
I sell distros through my website, fastdiscs.com. I sell more copies of Mandrake GPL than all the other distros put together. It's quite phenomenal.
Distro of the week though? MEPIS. Try it, it's fantastic!
James
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
scripsit SoTuA:
Actually it's not:
Note that Woody==Stable -- that's 2.2.2-14.7. Sarge (Testing) currently has 3.1.3-1, and Sid (Unstable) has 3.1.5-2.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.
Certainly an important point! Many people in the US Astronomy community used RedHat in the past (those running linux that is... Solaris is still popular). However, people are being turned off by RedHat's policy change. We actually use Linux for productivity in a desktop environment, and need it to work without a lot of system admin. That essentially means:
1) A distribution that installs 'out of the box' (ftp,nfs,etc) without a lot of tinkering and screwing around getting hardware setup.
2) A distribution that provides bug patches and updates in a easy to use interface.
3) Something that can easily be figured out from a user perspective and is not overly complicated. Many faculty are not the most savey of computer users. I know one who got a new laptop with Windows and couldn't figure it out. He had though been (and still is) using VMS since its beginning and understands that fine.
I recently installed SuSE on my laptop and am quite pleased with it. I'll probably switch my other RedHat machines over to Suse in the near future.
Just my 2-cents from a community that uses linux daily.
Maybe for personal use, but fedora basically is redhat without th support is it not? My cousin just went and bought a magazine about linux cause he wanted to try it out (he doesnt get cable where he lives only 56k) but i think that stuff thats easy for people to obtain will help it grow, my cousin probably doesn even know how to burn a iso.. if peopel want to experince/ try out linux cause the realized MS sucks paying 80 dollars for suse or redhat at bestbuy may become a trend..
There always has to be at least one person having a dig at Hurd ;)
Funny... except that by definition, GNU/HURD is not a Linux distro.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Where do you get off saying that? Personally I don't know a whole lot of former Slackware users who aren't of the "must try the new version of this or that distro as soon as it comes out" group. Yes, there are a lot of former Slackware users who now use Gentoo or Debian.
Here's the shocker. I'll bet you they still use Slackware on some things.
Here's another shocker. I know a lot of Slackware users who are former Debian or Gentoo users.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
However the parent was talking about how Red Hat cut off half there customer because they stop producing a free downloadable and boxed set version of their operating system.(Which really was just draining money doing so, because the number buying it didn't outweigh the money involved in making it). Once they cut the dead weight, Red Hat is now actually turning a profit, and their stock has risen over 100% since. (Though that could just be do to them filing a lawsuit against SCO).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/35588.html But the real security problem in Xandros is precisely the Windows affliction: too many networking services are enabled by default.
da'covale d'Rie Bolmdahl
The Debian people are rewriting their installer right now for the upcoming release. One of the big goals is improved auto-detection of hardware. I'm not sure if they are pulling things from Knoppix, but hopefully so for the x86 platform.