The Great Linux World Map

N1ckR writes "Mrk has posted a fun Linux world map including 'The Suse Lake,' 'Noob Desert' and the 'Forbidden Land of Gentoo.' He said, 'The Great Linux World Map is a fun endeavor trying to portray the world of the Linux desktop as a sort of a Typus Orbis Terrarum. The map is no way representative in terms of actual market share usage or popularity. It's just a wild envisioning of how I see things, more or less.'"

Comments

Don’t get it

[Anrego]

All they did is give geographic-ish names to the various distros and randomly place them on a world map. Very little about the placement, and really not much about the names, is specific to the distros, and there are no distro specific features added and as is said in the summary this isn’t showing popularity or any other statistic. Ok, so Fedora is touching Red Hat,. the noobs are in ubuntu.. haha?

Am I just being thick and missing the point/humour here, or is this really just a dud?

Re:Don’t get it

[0racle]

I think it's a dud to generate traffic. By the summary itself, it's not based on anything but wild imagination.

Someone is trying to be xkcd.

Re:Don’t get it

[YodasEvilTwin]

Nope, it's verifiably stupid. Nothing to see here folks, move along

Re:Don’t get it

[bananaquackmoo]

I found it amusing, so you must be missing the humour

Re:Don’t get it

[Anonymous Coward]

All they did is give geographic-ish names to the various distros and randomly place them on a world map. Very little about the placement, and really not much about the names, is specific to the distros, and there are no distro specific features added and as is said in the summary this isn’t showing popularity or any other statistic. Ok, so Fedora is touching Red Hat,. the noobs are in ubuntu.. haha?

Am I just being thick and missing the point/humour here, or is this really just a dud?

yeah, weird placement and stuff that's straight wrong...if they connect fedora & red hat, they should link debian & ubuntu by land.

Where's the SuSE breakoffs?

Re:Don’t get it

[SethBaker77]

I would have imagined Debian to have more acreage. Centosia is clever but I too miss the point.

Re:Don’t get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone is trying to be xkcd.

Exactly. But Randall at least uses data to backup his maps (to decide their relative size and position). These just seem randomly placed.

Re:Don’t get it

[tboulan]

I think you summed it very well. The map is pretty, but devoid of content.

Re:Don’t get it

[kvvbassboy]

If you have been following Dedoimedo, you would know it doesn't need to generate traffic. ;) He is a damn good writer about games, security, Linux and other OSes.

More likely it's a new Linux user who found "the forbidden lands of Gentoo" funny.

Re:Don’t get it

[Bloodwine77]

Debian is one of the most secure and stable Linux distributions. I haven't used Debian in years, so I don't know if their software is still a bit out-of-date (instead of being bleeding edge, they have been notorious on holding back app versions for the sake of stability). I suspect Debian has a decent install base on servers, but probably not too much on desktop machines ... at least not compared to the likes of Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. These days CentOS seems to be the front-of-the-pack server distribution. I'm not talking about which distributions are better, just their popularity. I feel bad for Debian, because Ubuntu outsources all their heavy lifting to Debian and Debian doesn't get the recognition it deserves. It is funny, though, that Ubuntu is one of the most bleeding-edge and unstable Linux distributions and it is built on top of Debian which is rock solid stable, but behind-the-times.

Re:Don’t get it

[Anrego]

I suspect Debian has a decent install base on servers, but probably not too much on desktop machines

I hate Debian on a desktop, but yeah, on a server it's golden! A debian install without graphics is pretty damn solid. All that spaghetti of scripts and symlinks works great if you don't play with it...

Ubuntu is one of the most bleeding-edge and unstable Linux distributions

I think I'd give than honour to gentoo (which is what I use on my desktop).

Re:Don’t get it

[Hatta]

Yeah, it's not that funny. They didn't even map an ARCHipelago.

Re:Don’t get it

[Dcnjoe60]

Too bad the called Ubuntu a communist state. That plays right into the hands of Microsoft and proponents of closed source programs

Re:Don’t get it

[RabidBear]

There's bandwidth I'll never get back...

Re:Don’t get it

[DerekLyons]

Nah it's really just a dud, and worse yet a dud that directly copies XKCD's style without any of his insight or creativity. Dedoimedo is pretty much ready for Hollywood - he's got their modus operandi down cold.

Re:Don’t get it

[dogmatixpsych]

I installed Debian in a virtual machine recently to try it out. The current release looks a lot like Ubuntu (before the Unity interface). In fact, without looking closely you could just assume it was Ubuntu.

Re:Don’t get it

[TheCycoONE]

I'd give it to Arch, much more bleeding edge than Gentoo, at least if you compare stable to stable. I'm sure someone else is going to come here with a distro that updates even faster than Arch though... and some might consider Fedora with it's ton of backports.

Re:Don’t get it

[geminidomino]

And I'm pretty sure Slack should be up at the top by Arch and Gentoo rather than off the coast of Ubuntu... unless Pat's been doing some crazy stuff lately that I've been missing.

Re:Don’t get it

[shadowknot]

I thought the same. There should be some rocky sea features between the Ubuntu/Fedora hemisphere's and the Gentoo, Slack, Arch etc area. Also the Slack island should be a fair amount smaller (and I say that as a _long_ time Slack user).

Re:Don’t get it

[dominious]

there isn't anything to get. It is a fun map. I found it fun..

Re:Don’t get it

[Bloodwine77]

You have to understand my frame of reference. For the past decade I have mostly used FreeBSD and CentOS. I also dabbled with Slackware and Debian. The new crop of desktop-friendly Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE are unstable as heck compared to traditional Linux distributions. I currently use Ubuntu at home on my desktop, and I haven't too many complaints, but it does have more issues than any Linux distro that I have ever used. I understand that is the down side, and the up side is a lot of the basic tasks in Ubuntu is braindead easy and drivers are cake. Ubuntu may have its issues, but at least I don't have to spend hours manually tweaking X config files and researching carefully the values I need to not fry my monitor. Linux has come a long way, but compared to headless server-oriented distros Ubuntu is unstable. They experiment with trying to make the user experience more streamlined and easy, but under the hood things don't always go to plan. My biggest complaint is that under-the-hood Ubuntu does some things in a very weird way compared to more traditional distros which causes additional headaches and work when doing more advanced tasks and maintenance. Overall, though, I don't bash Ubuntu and I appreciate the big steps distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE have made towards making Linux feel more natural on the desktop.

Re:Don’t get it

[Grishnakh]

This map is a good idea for some Linux humor, but it really falls short.

For one, it's missing some important distros, namely SUSE, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon, and a few others. Secondly, it doesn't do a very good job of relating them to each other based on popularity, derivation/relation, etc.

The author does say he's accepting suggestions for version 2.0. Here's my suggestions:
1) Separate the "world" into two very large continents. One continent is the Debian continent, the other is the Red Hat continent. There should also be some much smaller continents/islands, for Gentoo and Slackware and other independents like that.
2) On the Debian continent, one small corner is Debian, separated by mountains from the rest which is Ubuntu. Ubuntu's part is further separated into a few breakaway republics like Mint. PCLinuxOS should probably be a breakaway republic between Ubuntu and Debian (I believe I read recently that they used to be based on Ubuntu, but went back to Debian some time ago). Mint should also be positioned so that it can do this, as Mint has already released a Debian-based version, and might eventually dump Ubuntu.
3) On the Red Hat continent, it should look sorta like N and S America, with a small land bridge connecting the two. One part should be Red Hat, along with CentOS, and the other part should be SuSE. Mandriva should probably go in here somewhere as well, as I believe it's an RPM-based distro, so maybe make 3 sub-continents joined by a small land bridge.
4) Slackware, Gentoo, and Arch should be on the map somewhere, but I'm not sure how, so I'll let someone more familiar with those distros comment. Maybe they can be separate islands, sorta like Greenland or Galapagos.
5) Windows should be on here as well. It should be off in the corner, with high mountains completely surrounding it, with a big warning on it. For reference, look at Tolkein's map of Middle-Earth and look at the land in the lower right-hand corner.

Re:Don’t get it

[Grishnakh]

The problem with the idea that Debian is "stable" is that this assumes you're using some old hardware with no graphics. That doesn't work for desktops. Just try installing some old version of Linux, with an old kernel, on a brand-new laptop and see how well it works. It probably won't support a lot of the hardware, and then it won't support it that well. For new hardware, you need a pretty new kernel with the latest device drivers and bugfixes for those drivers.

This isn't much of a problem on most servers because they don't really have a lot of hardware; just the CPU, some ancient 2D video chip, SATA/SAS controllers, etc. You don't have all the weird USB devices, Wi-Fi radios, webcams, 3D graphics chips, etc. that your typical new computer has.

Re:Don’t get it

[Grishnakh]

GNU isn't a continent on there, in case you didn't notice. The continents (and islands) represent Linux distros. Other features are named for various things, but not Linux distros. GNU has an ocean, since it was rather instrumental in making Linux popular by providing a lot of the userland tools and libraries needed. There's also some other things, like "RPM straights", a reference to the RPM package manager used by Red Hat and Fedora.

If they put HURD on there, it'd have to be some kind of mythical sunken land like Atlantis, where no one knows where it is, and most people don't even believe it ever existed, and it certainly doesn't exist now.

Re:Don’t get it

[hitmark]

http://futurist.se/gldt/2011/04/05/gnulinux-distribution-timeline-11-4/

Re:Don’t get it

[AnujMore]

You're Ok with Windows being on the map but not BSDs and Haiku and other UNIXs?

Re:Don’t get it

[Grishnakh]

Whoosh!

Re:Don’t get it

[AnujMore]

Haha. That was just an opinion though.

Re:Don’t get it

[Grishnakh]

The Windows bit was just a small joke. Maybe all the other UNIXs could go on a separate small island, off in another corner

Possible source data???

[davidwr]

Maybe this or a Linux-specific version of the same thing for mappable data.

Re:Possible source data???

[Anrego]

I'd love to see that in an animated form .. like maybe have the points represented as bubbles... and split/merge back together as appropriate.

Maybe add some animations in there based on the nature of the split/merge

Re:Possible source data???

[kvvbassboy]

Not exactly what you are looking for, but shows a neat timeline: Linux distros timeline.

Re:Possible source data???

[praxis]

No Gentoo!?

Kingdom of Slackware Cold War

[Bloodwine77]

Due to extremely different ideals, I suspect the Kingdom of Slackware and the Great Communist Empire of Ubuntu are engaged in a cold war with their respective fingers on the red buttons.

Re:Kingdom of Slackware Cold War

[IrquiM]

For the first time in years, I'm proud to call myself a royalist!

Re:Kingdom of Slackware Cold War

[dragonturtle69]

yes

Funny, but a flamebait

[spaceplanesfan]

It once again associates Linux with communism.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[Bloodwine77]

I didn't take it as that. I think the tongue-in-cheek "The Greek Communist Empire of Ubuntu" is due to its sheer size (and the USSR was massive geographically-speaking). Ubuntu has a massive install base, especially on desktop machines.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[cide]

Perhaps its the artist's comment that Ubuntu, like the USSR, is doomed to failure?

Soviet propaganda from the 1960s and 1970s actually had artistic merit, yet the state still imploded under its own weight. Seems just like Unity. Hmm.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this and the artist was just randomly throwing political titles in front of proper distro names, concentrating only on getting the spelling right.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[Bloodwine77]

You may be right. I like the "Rogue State of Mint", because Linux Mint has come out and said that they have no plans on using Unity and will be diverging a bit from the path that Ubuntu is currently taking. The Gnome 2.0 hills dividing them is a nice touch.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[Anrego]

Tell you the truth, I think it kind of is...

The idea being that everyone gives a little by submitting patches and software they write for their own purposes such that everyone benifits, and everyone gets a full blown OS with a huge collection of software.

Don't see why the association is a bad thing. It may not work as a government, but seems to work ok as a software model.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[SteveFoerster]

The association is bad because they're not the same thing. When government reassigns scarce physical resources, someone else must lose each and every time someone else wins. With software there's no scarcity, so there's no losing required. That's also why referring to copyright as "property" instead of as an entitlement is such a scam.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[shutdown -p now]

Then government reassigns scarce physical resources, someone else must lose each and every time someone else wins.

There's no scarcity in communism by definition (Marx and his followers described communism as "from everyone according to their abilities, to everyone according to their needs". It was supposed to be the society that socialism would transform into after scarcity is defeated by rapid technological progress. In that sense, the analogy is very apt - there's no scarcity in FOSS, and with copyleft, the above description of communism is implemented practically to the word.

While Westerners have historically referred to Soviet Russia, China etc as "communist", the countries themselves have always maintained that they are "socialist". To remind, USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Communism was always something on the horizon, with a floating date - they were saying they'd have it by 1940 in 1920, and by 1980 in 1960.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[SteveFoerster]

There's no scarcity in communism by definition (Marx and his followers described communism as "from everyone according to their abilities, to everyone according to their needs". It was supposed to be the society that socialism would transform into after scarcity is defeated by rapid technological progress. In that sense, the analogy is very apt - there's no scarcity in FOSS, and with copyleft, the above description of communism is implemented practically to the word.

Hmm. There's a difference between saying that there's no scarcity because the cost to produce and deliver a desired good or service is negligible, and saying there's no scarcity because people have embraced a culture in which they do not want anything that they do not actually need. For one, a true lack of scarcity would mean no problem obtaining the things that do need.

While Westerners have historically referred to Soviet Russia, China etc as "communist", the countries themselves have always maintained that they are "socialist". To remind, USSR stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Communism was always something on the horizon, with a floating date - they were saying they'd have it by 1940 in 1920, and by 1980 in 1960.

Fair enough. And their theoretical end goal doesn't actually sound like a bad way to live, provided that people go into it willingly. But it's extremely difficult to get real people to yield political power, so it's not surprising that, like any other mirage, communism from socialism would always recedes as it's approached.

Re:Funny, but a flamebait

[shutdown -p now]

Hmm. There's a difference between saying that there's no scarcity because the cost to produce and deliver a desired good or service is negligible, and saying there's no scarcity because people have embraced a culture in which they do not want anything that they do not actually need. For one, a true lack of scarcity would mean no problem obtaining the things that do need.

It was meant to be a combination of both. On one hand, an industrial powerhouse that would fully supply all the basic needs of the population, and then however much could be made on top of that (luxury items, but also what's needed for industrial and scientific advancement etc). On the other hand, people were also supposed to have "evolved consciousness" such that they wouldn't all rush and ask for personal castles and sports cars - basically realizing that every ask to produce something like that - which would be fulfilled if resources were available, as it'd be assumed that the asker has a rational need - detracts resources that could be used for something more valuable by this person, or someone else more in need; say, a scientist needing a costly device for an important experiment. It's a bit like libertarianism - everyone is supposed to be a rational thinker for this to work - except that it's altruistic rationalism (everyone constantly thinking about how their choices and actions affect others, but assume that others also do the same for them and therefore trust outside judgement implicitly).

Needless to say, this needs a very major change in the mode of thinking of the supermajority of population - it can survive a few leeches here and there (waste of resources, but tolerable), but not when, say, one out of ten does so. Soviets claimed that the primary long-term goal of their rule was to ensure that this change happens, by educating the older generations and upbringing the new ones in "communist ethics", while ongoing socialism would provide social justice and a platform to develop industry to prepare for such a society. This didn't work out so well in practice - the industry was far from the powerhouse of abundance even at the best years (largely due to pumping a lot into military), and social justice (and with it, any prospect of properly forming that future altruistic "communist ethics") was a goner as soon as there formed a stratified caste of Party officials who bought better goods in special member-only stores, and had other perks not attainable by population at large - not by virtue of their merit (which would be seen as "just" by most), but by virtue of their position alone.

Copyleft ecosystem comes much closer to this - albeit in a very limited area - than Soviets ever did. There's no scarcity with code at all, so everyone can feel free to take and use what they need for any, even the wildest projects. "Thinking about the others" is sharing your code (not just derived works of code you've taking, as the license requires, but all new code you write as well). Social justice is implemented as lack of any hierarchy on the large scale, with small freely associated communities - usually meritocratic in nature - formed on as-needed basis.

!XKCD

[numb7rs]

It's like XKCD, but without the funny.

Re:!XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just like xkcd then.

Re:!XKCD

[Elbereth]

XKCD isn't funny, either.

References to pop culture don't make you funny. Being funny makes you funny.

Re:!XKCD

[partyguerrilla]

There are two types of people in the world: 1. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

Re:!XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

You're no fun.

Re:!XKCD

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

And being a bitter, begrudging old curmudgeon makes nothing funny at all!

Re:!XKCD

[Nixoloco]

XKCD isn't funny, either.

References to pop culture don't make you funny. Being funny makes you funny.

Humor is highly subjective.

Re:!XKCD

[idontgno]

Actually, that's not entirely true. I find bitter, begrudging old curmudgeons uproariously funny. Coming across a particularly dried up old prune and mocking him mercilessly can turn my whole day around.

Re:!XKCD

[M8e]

Humor is highly subjective.

It's so high that it might even be jective.

Re:!XKCD

[interkin3tic]

XKCD isn't funny, either.

citation needed.

And counterpoint: yes, it is. Citation: I laughed at it many times. QED, XKCD is funny.

References to pop culture don't make you funny.

To get semi serious for a minute: Have you read more than one strip? Because I can't think of any off the top of my head that simply boil down to references to POP culture. There were a few that boiled down to mere references to Enders Game, but not pop culture.

Being funny makes you funny.

I can't argue with circular logic, I guess you're right. By extension, XKCD is not funny because it's not funny.

Show and tell

[UnknowingFool]

Thank goodness. Now I can show my kids where I had wandered through the n00b desert learning how to decipher the sacred man pages. ;)

Re:Show and tell

[jhoegl]

I am wondering where the Patent Troll Pirates are and the Corporate Shame of Closed Source.

Me....

[jmd_akbar]

I come from Mandrivaland in peace....

xkcd knockoff?

[compulord155]

Anyone else notice that it looks strikingly like xkcd maps from the past? Of course with much less wit, organization and forethought.

Re:xkcd knockoff?

[Xupa]

Exactly. Way to rip off a great idea without bothering with any of that bothersome methodology.

Channeling Lloyd Bentsen...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read xkcd, I know the xkcd maps. You, sir, are no xkcd.

You make Randall Munroe cry

[Anonymous Coward]

Comic Sans ? No relation to real data (at least from Distrowatch !) ?

Seriously !?

Re:here we have the extremes of nerddom

[Anonymous Coward]

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Apple!
Apple who?
Apple tree!

HAHAHAHAHA!!! ...What do you mean my joke isn't funny, and you're annoyed that I wasted your time on it?!

Just shut up and laugh, and get that stick out of your ass!

Not Funny, Not Clever, Not Accurate, Not Original

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

So it's a rip off of many of Randal's maps. Except his are usually clever and funny and in many ways actually representative of what he's mapping. There's just no reason for this map to exist. I'm not saying someone couldn't make a good Linux distro map, this is just not that.

From one comment to this story: "shut up and laugh, and get the stick out of your ass". I would love too laugh... except it's not funny. Why must I be uptight with a stick up my ass just because I don't find this submission to be funny? And why is Ubuntu labeled as "Communist"? I get the whole GPL==communist thing, but other than Red Hat, Ubuntu is about as commercial as it gets. It would make way more sense if a geological feature relating to the GPL, GNU, or even Debian had the "Communist" moniker. Also, I see there's a "Mount chroot"... Why is chroot a mountain? It would have been funny if chroot were a small enclave with fewer and smaller features than its surrounding nation. If anything, sudo should have been a mountain, instead of a cape.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.. woo woo woo!

[CFBMoo1]

Thank you! Now I have a modern day version of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zs7jKcGDg#t=3m4s

Would've like to see historic distributions here.

[cswiii]

I think there's plenty to be critical about this map, but I'm not going to take it seriously enough to blast it.

However, it woulda been neat to see some representations of linux distributions/efforts that have disappeared along the way -- maybe as piles of rubble or something. Midori Linux, anyone? Perhaps a dot in Linus Bay...

Re:Where is ...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Better yet, a C++ monster.

Isn't that redundant?

In Soviet Ubuntu...

[Bytesahoy]

sudo apt-get install YOU!

Greetings from The Forbidden Land of Gentoo!

[Katyrnyn]

Greetings from a user living in "The Forbidden Land of Gentoo!"

While there are times when prebuilt packages (such as this map) are beneficial, I suspect this is not one of them. We, the Gentoo userbase, encourage you to compile your own maps! Only then will they be most accurate and most efficient for your local implementation!

Happy Emerge-ing!

Katyrnyn / Cydonian Monk

(Resident of "The Highly Efficient (yet occasionally broken) Free State of Gentoo" since 2002.)

gNewSense

[calagan800xl]

gNewSense is missing in the Stallman Sea. It's unfortunate, considering that gNewSense is the only distro RMS recommends.

Re:Where is ...

[msclrhd]

Don't you mean a C monster :)
And the blue area could have the label "The C".

Missed a great pun

[zanian]

FTA: I hope you like this! If so, feel free to spread the word!

Something missing...

[soup]

Sadly, he didn't mark out the huge Caldera on the ocean floor...

Re:Where is ...

[CannonballHead]

No, it's two monsters.

Puppy Linux island?

[D4rkn1ght]

Where is the Puppy Linux island? ÊâÊ

Re:Tough crowd

[Orffen]

Why, exactly? This comment is seen on the internet constantly, yet the logic behind it still baffles me. If I see a bad movie, do I need to set up a movie studio to say the movie wasn't any good? I'd like to share my thoughts on this "Great Linux World Map". Where do I start- graphic design school, or a cartography class?

Re:Not Funny, Not Clever, Not Accurate, Not Origin

[Synonymous Homonym]

I see there's a "Mount chroot"... Why is chroot a mountain?

It's a pun, about as clever and funny as the rest of the map.

How did they Know that Canada is Fedora land?

[lsatenstein]

Subject line says it all.

Re:Not Funny, Not Clever, Not Accurate, Not Origin

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

It's a pun, about as clever and funny as the rest of the map.

Then I don't get the pun. Wouldn't "Mount /dev/sda1" make sense and actually be funny?