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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."
People who I suspect don't know what Linux is, are now starting to talk to me about this cool "whole computer thing on a CD". When you ask a few questions, it turns out it's Knoppix they're talking about.
I've got no idea if they're ever going to actually switch to Knoppix, but it has a coolness about it that's pretty impressive to a whole lot of people. That's what getting distributed in magazines will do for you. In fact, reading those magazines the month after they bundle a Linux distro, there's always a bunch of reader's letters talking about how great "this Linux thing" is after all.
Red Hat -> Lots of enterprise and business users
Suse -> More of the same, except mostly in Europe
Mandrake -> Fast growing with non-techies and some businesses too
Fedora/Old Red Hat -> Fast growing with home users
Debian -> Growing with home users Slackware/Knoppix/Gentoo... -> all have niche audiences
http://www.distrowatch.com/ has a ranking of people downloading each distro from them at the lower right of the page.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I read a review of about a dozen distributions and being only familiary with very early Slackware and RedHat (from v.4) was supprised at how different they are. I just recently downloaded Knoppix and I see a real niche for it. I have some old equipment and want to know if there is a distro that will perform less sluggish than the latest RedHat 9 (either through a default config options or ommisions of unnecessary packages).
However, I have found value in going with the popular thing (how often is the majority wront?) sometimes so yes, after all this "useful?" speak, I see some value in these kinds of things from some angle.
Magic Eight Ball: Outlook not so good., Hmmm, how about Excel and Word?
Does debranding redhat count towards redhat's count? PNNL added 1900+ CPU's to a de-branded redhad distro. If they get credit for that, then they grew quite a bit.
timw077
http://mscf.emsl.pnl.gov/ for some more info.
There are a number of other distros not mentioned that people should defintely keep an eye on. JDS (Java Desktop System) which is based on Suse I believe. JDS I believe will be a strong contender in the corporate market as it has Sun behind it (all the bosses have heard of Sun). Then there is Gentoo for techie home user (Gentoo's my personal fav). It provided ultimate flexibility - you want the 2.6.2 kernel you just go ahead a compile it.
----
The fastest growing distro could only be Mandrake . Distributions can increase in popularity or number - but technically they can't grow like a plant or animal. A bit pedantic but what the hey...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
would be to see a growth rate rate-of-growth comparison. I mean, it'd be some use for all this calculus crap I'm using. And we'd be able to predict (guess) the future by looking at the trends!
With IBM's Superbowl commericals, and them pushing Redhat (somewhat..mostly..):
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/va_4010.shtml
I'd say Redhat will pick up and start growing fast, and soon! IBM is the big player here, and if they support Redhat, people will listen. More people trust IBM, than Microsoft!
Mod +5 Drunk
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Of course an article/posting on debianhelp.org is going to say that its the fastest growing distro. Relying on that information is like relying on the Microsoft TCO numbers from an "independant" research company.
####
touche,
but more importantly there *is* some signifigance in that it was in the google first "I feel lucky" spot/rank.
In this case, I'm calling google the authority (somewhat tongue and cheek). At the very minimum it means people are talking about debian, fastest growing linux et al in the same sentence/page/context AND linking to the page/site I referenced earlier, with similiar text in some sort of quantity and/or quality.
*shrug* but you knew that, right?
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Finally Debian is getting its due! RedHat is fastest, as the first post noted, but shrinking. Debian's security is LEGENDARY. Spinoffs of Debian such as Xandros only help to entrench Debian as a secure OS.
.sig. More info at my homepage.
ANYONE making a secure and stable Linux distro deserves props. Debian leads the pack. Xandros puts out a different GUI. Props to them all.
--
To find out about people leeching off Debian, and exactly how to stop the cancer that is attacking Linux, click the link in my
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
I think the influx of new users I notice moving to FreeBSD (often coming from RedHat or such) is sorta the same effect.
We might be heading for "Open Source" vs "Open Source Inc" becoming the great divide after MS goes down or during the same period.
Who would have thought...
You can measure the commercial rollout of Debian for home use by the number of spinoffs and their success rates. The two distros with the largest market share are Xandros and Lindows. Xandros is a killer spinoff. Lindows needs to be killed.
For more info on doing just that, click my sig. For too much information, click my homepage.
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
As with most IT articles, the objective seems to be a good headline rather than a factual appreciation of the facts.
.0000001% of the market - so what.
From the article, RedHat seems to have the most numbers out there, AND Debian has the fastest growth as a platform for Apache. No conflict there.
But which is the fastest growing distro? Who really cares. If I sold 1 last week and 10 this week I may have the fastest growing distro, but with
However if Sun really start shipping the Java Desktop (Suse based version) to all those chinese sites then it would likely win
Because of the nature of Linux and FOSS, it's very hard to know exactly how much deployment any particular distribution is getting.
Sales figures are one thing, but users able to install the same CD on multiple machines mean that the number of installations could be higher.
Worldwise, subtracting new MS licenses from total new x86 hardware sales doesn't account for unauthorized installations of MS software on those other x86 machines. It's not all going to Linux and the *BSD releases. But MS probably has a better idea than anyone about the prevalence of piracy, so they may well have the most accurate figures about Linux installations, better than Gartner, IDG, and the other consulting firms.
Then there's folks like me that have bought several releases of SuSE, but only run the latest one.
And there are people recycling old Win98 boxes into single purpose servers on Linux.
Finally, a few distros might "phone home", but the user is permitted to modify this behavior, so that's not a complete measure either. It might be a good lower bound.
There's just no really accurate way to count installs.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
>Mandrake 991
Lots of ex-RedHat users are shifting to Mandrake instead of playing with the Fedora Core. Mandrake is a lot like RedHat, especially if you're used to downloading compiled RPMs and such. Not to mention Mandrake is usually recommended to new people because of its installer and overall GUI-ness.
Can someone tell me why Slackware hardly ever gets a mention in these sorts of articles that purport to be written by journos with their fingers on the pulse?
Slackware is used by a LARGE number of sys admins so though it may me small fry in the home market its anything but in the server arena. Perhaps these writers should get a bit more clued
up about whats really going on out there rather than just finding out and waflling about distributions that their mates have mentioned to them.
Knoppix is definitely gaining popularity. After all it's a coaster you can give to anyone with a computer and they can give it a try without ever installing a damn thing, everyone is trying it and there's a definite coolness factor involved
;) ) clusters in their companies? Dumb terminal boxes? Small network servers? Web servers? I think Knoppix will be hard pressed to compete there.
But if it's not popularity you are looking at (well, the original article is, but let's be a bit broader here), but rather functionality or what different "roles" or market niches the distro is filling, then the answer is definitely not Knoppix. What distros are people putting in their (Beowulf
But for the desktop, Knoppix's future looks really bright if they keep up the great work they're doing.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
When you leave school and enter the real world, maybe you'll realize that package management is absolutely essential when maintaining multiple machines.
I would argue that avoiding package management and doing a "./configure make make install" for all software is more noob-ish because it's quick and easy, but eventually will hose the system (at least any system that uses package management).
You've got it dead-on. That describes me perfectly. I've been using RedHat almost exclusively since RedHat 5.1.
So I'm trying Debian on a spare P3 600. Trouble is, the video card in it is an nvidia geforce 256. I simply cannot get X working. (I haven't had a problem configuring X with RedHat since 6.0, on a system with an intel i740 [iirc] graphics chipset...)
In fact, coming from the RedHat world, Debian is very confusing over all, X issues aside. I'm trying Debian because I hear how easy it is to upgrade. The whole "I installed Debian in the kernel 2.0 days; now I'm running 2.6 without re-install" thing. I want to run:
- kernel 2.6
- KDE 3.2
- ext3 filesystem
Since this is a spare system, I'm OK with trying "testing" or even "unstable". Starting from "stable" woody, its been difficult to get anywhere. I'll spare the details, but I've specified using the "testing" branch, run the apt update/upgrade stuff, and I still can't tell at all how to go from 2.2->2.6, KDE 2.x->3.2, ext2->ext3. And still no X.Maybe I'm completely spoiled by how easy RedHat has always made things, but... I'm about one more wasted days' effort away from ditching Debian and giving Fedora a try. Looks like Debian might be a bit more, ah, "configurable" than this particular geek has any need for...
Sorry about the rant... but if Debian were my first attempt at a Linux installation from running windows, I'd have given up days ago, when I couldn't find any "official Debian" install ISO to download... I want to get this system running but this is just too much hassle. Looks like I may be waiting for Fedora Core 2 after all... :(
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Much like a newborn puppy...
windows reigns king.
life's a bitch, ain't it?
this too is not a troll - just pointing out the blatantly obvious..."better" doesn't always have everything to do with it.
Aside from that - OSX requires particular hardware, whereas you have a bit more of an option with linux as far as platform flexibility.
I couldn't agree more. IBM is clearly cozying up to Novel/Suse. They certainly have to support rh because they're the big dog in the US but IBM doesn't appear entirely confortable with rh from what I can see.
I 've tried RedHat and SuSE but I loved Slackware! ;-)
Its simple but not oversimplified. Its easy, but it doesn't try to do anything. You can configure it in 30mins flat, and if something goes wrong, you DO know what has been done, you cannot blame any not-so-clever-finally configuration utility.
Oh, and Pat is a really cool guy
As someone said: Slackware is for newbies who don't want to remain newbies.
"Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler"
Btw. I included "Linux", to remove irrelevant hits. Hopefully, it scaled down evenly.
...test as many as you can and take your choice. I've tested out Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake and Slackware but I want something "in-between" Slackware and SuSE - advanced but usable for non-Linux gurus so I'm going to buy some CDR's of Debian from a cheap Linux distributer when the 2.6 kernel is default
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
Once you get it running (which is remarkably easy), it's very much like Debian on the inside. KDE comes nicely preconfigured, desktop setup I find to be excellent (FAR superior to recent Mandrake releases on utterly basic issues like default font readability). MEPIS also works well as an easy-setup, no-fuss personal server box. I wanted a Debian-based server for my Asterisk system, but didn't feel like dealing with a time-consuming install, and wanted something I could test for hardware compatibility right away with a bootable CD. Most critically, I wanted something that came with out-of-the-box support for NVidia motherboards to avoid the hassle of having to separately download and burn to CD all the NForce (and NVidia graphics) drivers so you can compile and install them to get your NForce2 motherboard working properly (no ethernet until you install them, makes it hard to get online to fetch the drivers, and pain-in-the-butt ensues). MEPIS worked out of the box, Mandrake took a couple of hours of compiling and installing different versions of the NVidia drivers to get things working perfectly.
The only thing I don't particularly like about MEPIS is that it lack the sheer volume of documentation that other distros have. Luckily, you can almost always do things the standard Debian way - but trying to figure out if there's some lovely preinstalled KDE tool for package/configuration management or whatever to handle some particular issue is just not as thoroughly addressed as it is with Mandrake, for example (which is still the king of a good GUI tool package out of the box, and there's TONS of info on distro-specific HOWTO stuff). It took me half an hour to figure out how to make sure the SSH daemon was getting started at startup before I figured out the Debian way to do it is dpkg-reconfigure ssh (I am a RedHat guy by background, and a Mandrake user in recent years, so this stuff is not obvious to me, as the Debian init system is completely different). Oh yeah, and MEPIS is a shitty name. I think they'd be growing even faster with a less lame sounding name - something you could be proud to show to your friends. Knoppix - that sounds cool. So does Red Hat... Debian is alright... MEPIS is just terrible.
Knoppix has been around for a while now. Aside from being a live CD distro it is also known as an "easy Debian".
Its GPL
Why can't the Debian folks just cobble all of the good stuff Karl Knopper did into Debian?
Steve
Package management isn't even to avoid hosing the machine.
It's so it's remotely possible to figure out what is ON the machine.
Again, that's mostly related to maintaining multiple machines, but I've gotten to the point where I just build a Debian package for anything custom I do, just so I can replicate it and it's dependencies on other machines in a sane manner.
...or look at XFCE4, it's the most IMO. if you *need* KDE you'll have to compile all the BLOAT that comes with it. Trust me, you don't *need* it, so if you want it, you'll just have to live with it compiling for 4 days.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Geez, I tried installing OS X on my lil' ol' i686 box here, and I can sure tell ya, installation is not easy! Darn near impossible I'd say. Support? Everytime I call Apple about it, they hang up! Well, I guess it is pretty secure...haven't met a hacker yet who can even get it to boot! Ease of use?! Give me a break! Even the so called experts can't even get it started! ;-) They just seem to shake their heads and walk away...frustrated I guess...but then as they get further away, they seem to be howling in laughter...=) OS X you say? I think not!
I have considered using MEPIS, but one of the things I wonder about is how much it is like knoppix. Knoppix has some things that make it diffent from Debian that can make it eventually hard to administer if you want to upgrade the kernel and such. Anybody have any experience with this on Mepis?
I maintain 2 web servers, and they're on Gentoo. I also maintain 7 Gentoo desktop PCs, with another 20+ LTSP terminals hanging off 2 more Gentoo servers. ('Maintain' is a silly word, they don't crash anyway.)
Gentoo is the bees knees as far as I'm concerned, and I used Red Hat for years. The biggest problem I had with Redhat was inter-related dependancies, their own version numbering and revisions (eg. does Redhat's Apache 1.3.15b dated 23/4/2001 include the latest fixes from 1.3.25 or not, etc), and the eventual need to upgrade one major version to the next, just to keep current.
Gentoo is organic, you feed it daily like a house plant and it keeps growing on your system. (Gigs and gigs of source code, usually!)
Leaving aside work environments and servers, I like my main PC to be completely up-to-date. 0-day versions, if you will. Gentoo gives me that with a simple emerge -U world (Or I use my own script called 'emergebeta' which lets me grab masked packages instead)
The gentoo forums provide all the help I need since many others are running new packages before I do, and they've already spotted and fixed the bugs.
So, I wouldn't call Gentoo a 100% geek thing. Yes, it's best on fast PCs, and if you play 3D games all day you don't want Gentoo compiling in the background all the time, so another distro would be in order. However, it suits me perfectly.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
I'm getting less than 3M total Linux installations in the article. How can that be if linux accounts for 29 percent of all server installations?
Gentoo has all those theoretical benefits like speed increase and such, but for me the main reason to try Gentoo - and be very happy with this choice, unlike my previous choices of RedHat and Mandrake - was that I know have a very complete idea of what all is installed, /where/ it is installed, and even what everything is supposed to do (thanks to the superb documentation).
I've been _using_ Linux for years, but despite being as much of a geek as anyone, I never really managed to wrap my mind about what all was there. Never had the time to attack the massive amount of stuff installed by default by other distros.
Five days after first popping in the gentoo livecd, I now have a system which is prettier and more responsive than ever before, and _understand_ it all.
Gentoo might not be the ideal distro for clueless users, but for any geek who doesn't yet have a grip on linux, but _wants_ to have such a grip, it definitely is.
Your URL is incorrect, that should be slackware.com it's a .com, not a .org. Incidentally, Patrick Volkerding, the sole owner of Slackware, likes to point out that it's the only Linux distro that's always been in the black. :-)
According to this article[1] on InternetNews, Netcraft's January survey
counted over 24,000 Gentoo installations on active web servers, showing
almost 20% growth over 6 months. Also, as we've reported in the past,
Gentoo has been getting more and more recognition from various sources
recently - while Gentoo Linux did not win the award, it was a finalist for
a Product Excellence Award at LWE 2004[2], and has been featured in
publications like Linux Journal[3] and Linux Weekly News[4]. Here's a
shout out to all the developers and community members who keep making
Gentoo great.
1. http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/
2. http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/linuxworldny/V40/in
3. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?thold=0&m
4. http://lwn.net/Articles/59138/
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
My low power mini-itx board (533MHz Eden C3) took 2.5 days to complete "emerge kde".
/etc, it doesn't make backups. One of those files updated was /etc/fstab. A few people on the mailing list found they could no longer boot because etc-update overwrote /etc/fstab. Luckily I just happened to have my /etc/fstab memorized.
That was after it spent about 8 hours rebuilding gcc due to a bug in the GRP gcc not removing some cruft which caused some stl issue.
And don't even get me started on the problems with package conflicts that kept me from installing the binary version of KDE from GRP.
Then I made the mistake of running emerge -u system several days back, and yet another bad gcc ebuild forgot to run "ldconfig" after updating libstdc++ which caused python to break. With gentoo, if python breaks, portage breaks, and if portage breaks you have no easy way to get a fix in an automated way. You have to hit the mailing list and see if anyone else is having the problem. Until you find the fix, your system is essentially hosed because lots of stuff requires a working libstdc++.
When I got libstdc++ working again I found out that if you let portage update any files in
I really like Gentoo, but it has the least stable "stable" branch of any release out there. (Even mentioning the problems at this point is probably moot, because those problems with the portage tree are now fixed and new ones have replaced them... there's a systemic problem of not enough testing involved moving things from testing to stable)
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
"Redhat's not shrinking, it's pining for the fjords."
Redhat's been bleeding users -- by attrition if by nothing else. Yes, these are people who would not have otherwise paid for the distro. That's fine and dandy but it's not going to stop the users going away. This includes corporate users who were sucking off the RH teat.
People want their linux free, and if they're not going to get paid, on-demand support for it anyway, they'll go with something with a strong security record and a strong policy of "let's not fuck with the customers". Oh, Hello.
Unless RH does something to increase their numbers -- things like, oh, not forcing upgrades every 6 months. I personally know companies that still use and deploy redhat 5.2. They're not going to change their product just for the hell of it.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Yep, clearly you haven't tried Slackware recently. I've tried so many distro's (of which Mandrake used to be my favourite) but they all tend to make it either as easy as possible (Deadrat,Mandrake etc..) or they tell you what you want and how you want it or they give you so much freedom (gentoo) that the endless possiblities might confuse some people or it might not work that well in a non-networked environment. I still believe it's a matter of choice and I will never dis anyone for using a certain distro.We're all GNU brothers after all... But Slackware IMHO really stayed true to what it used to be all about and I still prefer building my system the way I want it and if it takes me a week to get my X and sound to work properly then so be it, but the enjoyment of doing it myself rocks my world.I can understand that people are fond of gentoo. I tried it as well, but with limited access behind the firewall at work it gave me lots of headaches..:-( Slack will probably never be the biggest or fastest growing distro either, but it will always have its followers.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
As far as etc-uptate not making backups? You have to TELL it to replace your old files, it won't do it automatically.
/etc files are equally weighted. Overwriting /etc/fstab will almost certainly stop you from booting. Portage should handle that case far more delicately.
When etc-update says "I need to update 50 files" and you see a big list of various X11 font stuff, it's pretty easy to miss "/etc/fstab". Not all
Making no backup of a file for which replacement is almost gauranteed to stop a normal boot is really bad procedure.
I haven't ever had the major problems you have had. Sorry to hear you've had bad luck..
Fortunately it isn't just me, so I can usually find the fixes by reading the gentoo-user list (Look for a topic like "portage borked" a couple weeks ago and you'll see all the commotion the bad gcc ebuild in the stable tree caused)
The problem with the GRP gcc build preventing kde (arts specifically) from building is so common that portage itself handles it as a special case and asks you to re-emerge gcc (see bug #26183 and all of its dupes)
If you have a halfway recent PC (you know, 533Mhz is getting a little slow these days, with all the processors being rated in Ghz now..) then it's a non-issue.
This machine serves a very specific purpose. Its only moving parts are two, mirrored, 160GB ultra-quiet hard drives. It's a great home server.
I think that if you aren't a technical Linux user, and/or don't have a machine powerful enough to handle the compiles, then you shouldn't use Gentoo.
Well, I agree with the first part - gentoo is truly a distribution for the more techie linux user. Not sure I agree the machine qualifies as "not powerful enough". Though I would have liked to have had the option to use the binary KDE ebuild that came on GRP. [bzip2 got moved from sys-apps to ummm, sys-arch or something like that. fixpackages doesn't tell the GRP kde to look for bzip2 in its new location, so you either have to inject it (meaning you know portage very well) or emerge the latest kde.] I prefer to build the important apps from scratch (kernel, samba, apache, postgres) and not build the less important ones (kde).
I get irritated with problems with the portage tree at least once per week. But I still use gentoo because the average 20% increase in performance is non-trivial to me, and I have enough technical knowledge and sufficient obstinance to find solutions to and/or fix the problems.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
From the way you're describing it, you hit the -3 option and told etc-update to go ahead and replace everything w/o letting you check each one first.
/etc/fstab was hidden among a list of 50 files in /etc that needed updating, most of which were related to updating the font server. Pretty easy during that process to miss that one of the files in the list doesn't belong.
/etc/fstab before I had to pull out the knoppix CD and rescue my gentoo installation.
/etc/make.conf, /etc/fstab, /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow... all those are backed up and an email is generated if my cron-run script detects that the md5s don't match anymore. That way I have good odds of fixing a problem before a rolling blackout causes the problem to show up when I don't have physical access to the machine to fix it (ever tried walking your non-technical wife through a system rescue? even with knoppix it isn't pretty.)
If this is the case, shame on you.
Well for starters, the update to
I disagree with "shame on you." Portage should *never* overwrite without backup a file that will almost certainly cause the system to become unusable. Fortunately I happened to read the troubles another person was having after running "emerge -u" and investigated my
Now I just do it the easy way...
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
I know everybody makes jokes about compiling gentoo, and frankly they're funny. But your comment is ridiculous. I've been quite happily running gentoo on a 700MHz duron, and can recompile the entire system overnight while I sleep. Secondly, If you install kernel 2.6, you can upgrade the system in the background and have a responsive desktop anyway. Thirdly, you don't have to upgrade the entire system at once, and you certainly don't have to upgrade every day. This leaves plenty time to actually work on the box.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I only wish that apt would take advantage of the plain-text databases by enabling the use of diffs to update the package database instead of requiring complete file downloads to sync up.
Having to download 6 MB of testing and unstable package databases every time I might want to upgrade a package that could be as small as 10 kb by itself is quite frustrating over my dialup. Even for people with faster connections, it surely increases the required bandwidth unnecessarily on the debian servers, too.
If diffs were simply provided for the previous week, it would allow most people to update with minimal effort in a cron job or an ip-up script.
Debian also has the larger website: "debian site:debian.org"
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,230,000. Search took 0.14 seconds.
> And if FreeBSD can compile the c library, the c compiler,
/bin, /sbin and some games (bind and sendmail
if you want them). Other stuff too which I can't remember.
Everything in the base system which you can browse in
cvs.
;)
To be fair too I've got a Celeron (one of the good ones)
with a L1 cache addressed at the full clock speed of the
chip.
> kernel, xfree86, qt, kde, python, perl, and many other
> packages in 2 hours on a p2-300 w/160MB RAM and a slow hard
> drive, then I would be amazed.
3 hrs! C compiler, C libs, kernel, perl, openssh, openssl, nntpd and everything in
So you're right, we're not strictly comparing like with like - especially since I've got 192MB RAM and a Samsung 32GB IDE HD so my machine will obviously leave yours for dead
Apologies for the broken links. Try reading about the makeworld process here.
For upgrading userland stuff, most FreeBSDers use portupgrade which makes things pretty easy and painless.
Anyway, give FreeBSD a try one day. It would be interesting to compare it with Gentoo and see which bits of each system are better. I think you'll find the performance a lot better which is important when you're on low end hardware and building all your stuff from source.
The Machine stops.