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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."
Has got to be RedHat.
For commercial market share, Red Hat and Suse take the cake (and Red Hat gives the recipe for the icing). But there are a lot of people using Debian in a dizzying array of roles. You can't really measure the commercial rollout of Debian though. If you're just talking about home use, there's no way to tell.
When you purposefully discontinue distribution to half of your customers!
Likewise, logically, from a purely differential standpoint, the fastest growing distribuion atm would have to be Fedora, since it gained (what?) half of Redhat's customers in the course of a single day (when Redhat told that half of its customer base, guess what, you're now a Fedora customer).
I think it has got to be Knoppix. I mean it is the best option for newbies and has inspired so many sping-off's. I think it definately qualifies as the fastest growing for that reason. It has introduced more people and is helping more people to come into the Linux World.
Debian based distros seem to be generating a lot of buzz just now. Reviews of Lindows, Lycoris, Mepis, and all the Knoppix-varients seem like they`re everywhere.
Part of this I attribute to Redhat`s less-than graceful move away from the desktop (I know that`s an oversimplication...). Fedora is there, but I think Redhat made it too obvious that users would be leaving Redhat and moving to something else. People thought, "Well, if I`m leaving Redhat anyway, maybe this is a good time to try something else." The biggest "something else" to Redhat is Debian.
Another cause might be the brilliant success of Knoppix. It`s easy to try, and easy to like. Of course, it runs a little slowly from the CD, but a hard-drive install is easy. And what do you do after you install? Atpget update.
Of course, the commercial distros are actively working to get people to use and buy their product, but I`m not sure how much that really has to do with it. Right now these companies are benefiting from the Debian buzz, and they will contunue to benefit until they do something to antagonize their customers.
Mandrake has always been very popular because of its ease of use.
But Gentoo has stepped out of the shadows and now is talk of the town among geeks (although it has yet to gain a lot of popularity under "Linux laymen".
I'd say it's a toss-up between Mandrake and Gentoo. RedHat IS shrinking, for obvious reasons, and Fedora just isn't that popular. Debian isn't as "big" as Mandrake, Slackware... I haven't heard much about that in a while... and SuSE, while up there, seems to have been more popular two years ago than it is now.
The fastest-growing LiveCD linux obviously is Knoppix, which really is its own class apart from the desktop/server environments.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
1. What is the best distro for servers?
:)
a. ease of setup up
b. security
c. ease of upgrade
d. longevity of support
e. remote management ability
2. What is the best distro for the desktop
a. speed of setup
b. has the apps I need
c. ease of upgrade/patches
d. supports my hardware
e. ease of use for newbies
3. What is the best of both worlds (1 plus 2)
Just because something is the fastest growing doesn't mean it's the best. While I've read tons of reviews most have such a bias as to be laughable. I'll keep using my tried and true redhat/debian/mandrake/fedora box for now
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Might not be the best for most newbies - although it was my first distro - but I hope it stays strong and that Patrick will keep up the good work.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
This article sucks. Doesn't include many of the bigger distro's out there. Gentoo, Knoppix, Slackware, etc aren't even included. They should just stick with Linux as a whole, and make everyone happy.
Ban Reality TV!
I've mentioned this before, but I'd sure like to know how other *nix variants (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc.) rate in terms of percent growth, not just market share. Example: if FreeBSD was found on 750 servers, and then n month later 1000 were found... 33% increase.
That is more interesting to me than market share, and I'd expect the BSD variants to be growing more raidly.
I have othing against Linux. I'm just an old Linux user (since 1994) who was recently won over by BSD.
Gentoo, however, is more for the techies. Your average Joe is becoming more and more interested in Linux, but your average Joe doesn't understand or like long compiling times. It's more for the hardcore geeks who like having well-optimized systems.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
pissing contest.
Seriously i don't care who is growing at what rate. i care who is going to be there tomorrow....was hoping to use RedHat for many more years, i'll not be doing that now.
Businuess practices are more important than pissing contests.
does it matter how much some particular distro is gaining market share? Is the software gonna be there that allows people to use it for office work, gaming, or whatever else people do with desktops is what we should be concerned about. Is linux becoming more useful to the average joe? Is it even becoming more useful to the average programmer? You got the leaders of all the distributions together and the best questions you got to ask them is who's growing faster? give me a break.
Whats yours? Its a fair bit of effort to go through the entire installation process and some people like bare bones while other like everything to be automatic so the amount of people doesn't make it the best for anyone else. Ford sells more trucks than Chevy, that doesn't make Ford better, its more of a marketing issue than a quality indication.
Knoppix is what introduced me to Linux in the first place. And it's utility goes far beyond that of a simple "drop in and load" distro. The hd installer works quite well and it would allow anyone who can do so much as partition a hard drive to go from Windows to Debian based apt-getable goodness in one fell swoop. It is most certinally a distribution in its own right.
I will tell you what; if you set up Gentoo a few times, you'll truly understand the Linux boot process and associated configuration.
Thinking outside my Head
But Debian's Michlmayr also noted that governments and schools are sweet spots for the project's momentum in 2004. Its next release, code named Sarge, is expected by summer and will include the 2.6 kernel,
Is Debian really going to release an stable distro with 2.6 that soon?
It doesn't sound like Debian at all, since they released woody with kernel 2.2 as default instead of 2.4
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
First, I don't agree with the criteria here at all. I don't think any decient admin cares about speed of setup. How often do you set up machines as opposed to maintaining them.
Either way, I disagree about OSX for everything. See inline.
# Server:
#a. ease of setup up - OS X hands down.
Knoppix-Drop in a CD and it works. No setup necessary.
#b. security - check the stats, OS X hands down
OpenBSD-Say what you will about Theo, it's been the most secure since Apple was in it's OS# days.
#c. ease of upgrade - Once again, OS X no question
Debian-OS X is a close second, but so are a lot of others. Debian has a lot more options in it's upgradability.
#d. longevity of support - Apple's been around far longer than any Linux company. OS X again.
Debian-Yes, Apple's been around for longer, but it doesnt' supports OS2 anymore. Debian, on the other hand, still seems to support (and provide) packages that were written in the mid 1950's. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but so of the packages in Debian stable go back -quite- a while.
#e. remote management ability - Has all the best open source tools (X, ssh, etc) plus all of Apple's brilliant ones not available for Linux - OS X again.
I think this is too close to call. It really comes down to administrator preference. Personally, I don't like Apple's remote admin features. I'd rather have ssh which is available on almost anything these days.
Ok, here's will Apple will really shine.
#Desktop:
#a. speed of setup - OS X installs and runs flawlessly on all Apple hardware. OS X wins.
Knoppix-Just boot. There's no way you can compare anything that needs to be copied to a disk.
#b. has the apps I need - OS X has thousands of commercial apps not available for Linux and can run all open source apps that Linux has. OS X again.
This completely depends on your Application. OSX does very well, but doesn't support "all open source apps that Linux has". And for the ones that can be built for it, often packages aren't available. Against, the comes down to end user needs.
#c. ease of upgrade/patches - Do you even need to ask? OS X again.
Debian-See above.
#d. supports my hardware - OS X supports all modern Apple hardware perfectly. OS X again.
OSX hands down. Exactly as you say.
#e. ease of use for newbies - Pfft. This one's a given. Anyone who has used OS X for any length of time would probably feel sea sick using Linux afterwards. OS X wins again
OSX again. This is the place where Apple really shines. Their usability is amazing. It's years ahead of anything else on the market. Except for the Dock. I hate taskbars.
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Mike
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
In the very begining of the article the author states that gentoo is the 3rd fastest growing distro at 19%. Then they never mention gentoo again. I found that really interesting since, like other have mentioned, I have always seen gentoo as a niche distro. I only recently installed it at home to play around with it. I thought I was all cool and cutting edge but now I read this and find out I am just one of a huge herd of sheep.
I swear PowerPoint is going to be the downfall of higher education in western society.
when exactly did Slackware loose "The distribution with attitude" feeling?
.deb, .rpm, or the wonderful .tgz.
... Your friendly neighborhood slacker
Slack... attitude?
I think you're sorely mistaken, my friend...
Slack has no attitude, and is IMHO very apathetic.
It doesn't really care if you want to use
On top of that, it doesn't care about dependencies, or really anyone else's upgrade path.
It (Pat) does the things it wants, when it wants, and it does them well.
But 'attitude'? Nope, try again.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what's the big difference between a Fedora customer and a Red Hat customer, except the name? What are people so excited about? From what I can tell both RH 9 and Fedora are still free (as in beer) and all still get security updates (now from a corporation supported community instead of just a corporation). Red Hat is still pouring a lot of effort and money into the community. Are people upset because they don't get phone support any more or something like that? Seriously, what makes people feel sold out?
I personally am excited that a OSS-based company is starting to succeed and is creating a winning business model in the market place. OSS helps the market by increasing competition. I'd better get used to OSS companies needing to make money somewhere, if I want to see them take market share from proprietary companies. It seems such corporations make in-roads into the market more easily then a less organized community. Red Hat's success, its relationship with IBM, and IBM's increasing dependency on OSS is a great thing, IMHO.
Mandrake is a lot like RedHat, especially if you're used to downloading compiled RPMs and such.
;-).
And haven't heard of urpmi yet
While I don't contest the stats in the article, I just wonder if web server stats are valid for "Fastest Growing Linux Distro", even if they are valid for "Fastest Growing Apache platform".
...
...
Unless you assume every corporate/SME file/print/authentication server and all desktops run publicly accessible webservers, this is a really bad metric
IDC stats aren't much better either
Of the > 30 machines running Mandrake that I have installed (ranging from corporate authentication servers to firewalls to laptops), only one has a publicly accessible web server.
One of the old UNIX giants (IBM, Sun, SGI, etc) is bound to come out with their own Linux distro sooner or later.
When this happens (if done right), their distro will take over almost overnight. The only reason I don't think IBM is doing their own distro is that they can really force the companys like RedHat and SUSE to include specific software/drivers/options...
the real question here is how much has a distro(or even linux as a whole) penetrated the overall desktop market? We always knew Apache + RH was a good combo.Even if it was'nt web server admins have enough knowhow to install,configure and run most distro's.But are normal desktop users moving to linux? If yes whats the distro they find easy to migrate to, from their Windows boxes? That should something interesting to find out.
Lord of the Binges.
Hit the bookstore. Look for the Publishers edition of Caldera Open Linux. It is a whole lot cheaper than $699 and gets past any legal challanges from SCO. They sold it. How can they after the sale try to collect?
I have two copies. No worries except I feel let down on support, patches and updates.
The truth shall set you free!
So many people miss the point of Debian.
What's on the CD is usually hopelessly out of date. It's enough to build a working system. Once it's going and online you use apt-get to upgrade either individual packages or the whole system, including the kernel. This can take a long time, particularly if you have a slow connection.
Once the system is up-to-date you continue to update packages using apt-get indefinitely. There is no 'next version', you never need to burn/buy CDs and upgrade or rebuild.
If you are running servers this is very good. If you are running a desktop machine and you're used to Windows, MacOS or other Linux distros this is, as you say, very confusing.
Now wash your hands.
Oh wait, that came out MONTHS ago.
#d. supports my hardware - OS X supports all modern Apple hardware perfectly. OS X again.
OSX hands down. Exactly as you say.
That's kind of a bogus answer really. I think every Linux/BSD distro has flawless support for hardware created by the same people behind its development.
But when you talk about MY hardware instead of THEIR hardware, OS X fails miserably. MY hardware is all ia32.
After RedHat (from 5.1 to 6.2) and Slackware, I decided to switch to something better, much better. I strongly dislike idea of Debian, and I don't think Gentoo would be my choice. I build my own Linux From Scratch.
Sure - it's not updating itself. There are no official packages at all. But from the other point of view - you are not limited at all. You don't need to find balance between your needs and what distribution gives. You don't need to worry how many users your distro has, because there is only one distribution like yours. Because it is your own installation of Linux. One and true.
Seriously though, invest in Ram. Compiling c++ apps blows out your memory. If you have anything less than 512MB, you are spending most of your life in the swapfile when you burn KDE or OpenOffice.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Any of the large distros which wish to gain further market share could benefit by ensuring that at least one boxed set is on the shelf of the university book store. This is especially important in areas with poor connectivity or with out ethernet in the dorms.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Its a tool to build your own distribution. The one I use at work and at home has been affectionately dubbed "Seanix." It's not really Gentoo. I regularly hack the portage tree to unmask packages I need the latest version of, I write my own ebuilds for stuff that isn't in the mainstream distro.
If you just want to comparison shop, Gentoo isn't for you. If you want a box that you build once and incrementally keep up to date for eons, Gentoo is a great starting point. Where you end up is a matter of taste.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming