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Netcraft: Red Hat Still Top Linux Server Distro

Posted by timothy on from the playing-with-numbers dept.

darthcamaro writes "Looks like Red Hat is still the #1 distro according to Netcraft stats cited by Internetnews.com. Gentoo is now the fastest growing, replaced Debian which was the fastest growing distro just six months ago...and as we all know, and as the article rightly points out, the stats aren't accurate cause most webserver admins disable version reporting...right? So if all version were known, what would be the #1 distro for hosting? Read the Netcraft stats (without the context that they're BS) here"

3 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Also Note: Cobalt Growth Increses After Opening... by weston · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's another netcraft article tying cobalt gains to opening the ROM source.

    Especially interesting in the context of the fact the product was discontinued.

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    Tweet, tweet.
  2. Probably still RH/Fedora... by Etcetera · · Score: 5, Interesting


    So if all versions were known, what would be the #1 distro for hosting?

    Probably still RedHat/Fedora. It's quick, easy to set up, well supported, has decent-to-good administration tools, and gives good Karma to both you and your boss.

    We use Fedora for both our dedicated servers (to be leased/rented to clients) and for internal use. We theoretically offer FreeBSD installs as well, but no one has ever taken us up on that offer (I wonder why)...

    RH's kickstart and anaconda features are godsends, the text-only and curses utilities are more than adequate when needed, and with Yum I know longer have to care about RPM dependancy hell.

    Gentoo? Give me my three days back, please.

    Debian? I suppose... but something smells "stagnant" to me and it's not just the water.

    *BSD? Too complex for most customers, and a headache I'd rather not have to deal with on our production machines. There's very little that the BSDs can offer me (for the time invested in learning all the "oddities" (from my perspective)) that's worth it for me to move over.

    Your mileage may vary, but mine stays pretty constant.

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  3. "Gentoo is now the fastest growing" ... uh, no by chunderfest · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Gentoo went from 0.7% to 1.0% share. SuSE went from 10.9% to 11.8%. i.e. SuSE's market share grew 3X as much as Gentoo's did.

    Don't be fooled by that last column. It's pretty much meaningless to compare the ratio "july/jan" for each distro; it's the tiny "jan" value for Gentoo what makes its "6-month Growth Rate" look impressive, which it's not (looked at on a number-of-installations basis).

    Basically RH lost a %, SuSE gained one, some others gained fractions of a %. Nothing terribly interesting.

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    Ah, bitter dregs.