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Debian Software Businesses Red Hat Software Linux

What's The Fastest Growing Linux Distro? 530

Posted by simoniker from the everybody-wins dept.
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."
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What's The Fastest Growing Linux Distro? More

What's The Fastest Growing Linux Distro?

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  • The fastest shrinking distro (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HuguesT ( 84078 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:32PM (#8298546)
    Has got to be RedHat.

    • Re:The fastest shrinking distro (Score:5, Funny)

      by filtur ( 724994 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:36PM (#8298599) Homepage
      I see that Redhat has been in the pool......

      • Re:The fastest shrinking distro (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DebianRcksLindowsLie ( 752247 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:48PM (#8298770) Homepage
        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.

        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 .sig. More info at my homepage.

    • Re:The fastest shrinking distro (Score:4, Informative)

      by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:36PM (#8298603) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • Re:The fastest shrinking distro (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:40PM (#8298655)
        Actually acording the the article RedHat added twice the number of installs over Debian. Percent growth is kind of a stupid number, since the "fastest growning" distribution could be one that went from 1 install to 2.

      • Re:The fastest shrinking distro (Score:4, Interesting)

        by discogravy ( 455376 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @12:16AM (#8301560) Homepage
        "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. [debian.org]

        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.

    • Well yes, that kind of happens (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:37PM (#8298613)
      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).

      • Re:Well yes, that kind of happens (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The Analog Kid ( 565327 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:05PM (#8298987)
        I wouldn't consider half those people actual customers because they aren't buying anything. Sure there was a small amount buying the boxed set, but really it was pretty small compared to those just downloading it off the internet.

        • Re:Well yes, that kind of happens (Score:5, Insightful)

          by globalar ( 669767 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @11:09PM (#8301067) Homepage
          I get your point, and from a business perspective this is right on. But the end users have their own perspective, and that controls what they buy and how they spend their money.

          Linux is basically free. At a base price of nothing for the core components (and with alternative distros like Mandrake), it doesn't make sense to try to sell a distribution without allowing someone to preview it. What you are paying for is support (especially easy updates), to get hard copy documentation and media, as well as to support Linux in general. Note: I bet a lot of people (percentage-wise) bought Redhat to support Linux. Those users downloading the OS can translate into customers and at the very least may influence others (their employers and friends) to buy or use. The bigger the user base, the more influence you have, the more brand recognition, the more people will actually shell out cash.

          Big point being that Redhat got its reputation with those freeloaders, some of which became into customers. The net gain was Redhat's growth and popularity, which somehow found a place in the business world with marketing direction. Basically, no one paid for the OS upfront, but rather tried it and then paid. So the customer pool comes from freeloaders, directly or indirectly that is why Redhat is purchased (because someone uses it for free to begin with).

          Redhat wanted business contracts, because those are stable and there is a growing market (not to mention good money). Redhat took its good name, and now sells it to businesses. But that name became popular largely with the aid of freeloaders.

      • What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jay9333 ( 749797 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:13PM (#8299593)
        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.
    • Not trying to bash redhat but dropping support for = redhat 8 does not seem like a very wise decision. People got upset at the mention of MS dropping support for Win98 and that is 6 years old now.

    • Re:The fastest shrinking distro (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nihynjahs ( 680486 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:08PM (#8299552) Journal
      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..

  • I know! (Score:5, Funny)

    by GonzoDave ( 743486 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:32PM (#8298547)
    It's SCO Linux

  • Better set a minimum size... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:34PM (#8298565) Homepage
    ...or the fastest growing one would be the one that went from 1 to 5 users last week ;)

    Kjella

  • Gentoo (Score:5, Funny)

    by alanoneil ( 749691 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:35PM (#8298582) Homepage
    Gentoo would be rated higher, but they're still waiting for the results to compile.

  • depends on what demographic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pyros ( 61399 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:36PM (#8298593) Journal
    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.
    • 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 distributi

  • Definitely... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HungWeiLo ( 250320 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:36PM (#8298594)
    SCO. They sold one license last week. Up 100% from the week before.
    • Actually in this case it should be infinite growth for SCO Linux. Till last week: 0 licences sold Last week: 1 licence The Growth of their customer base in percents is (1/0)*100 and lim[(1/0)*100]->infinity :)

    • Re:Definitely... (Score:5, Informative)

      by El ( 94934 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:49PM (#8298785)
      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...

  • From what I gather... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Leffe ( 686621 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:36PM (#8298595)
    It seems to be Gentoo [gentoo.org] 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 [slackware.org] and FreeBSD [freebsd.org]. I really should check our Gentoo, it might just work on my crappy 5 year old Wintel machine...

    And BSD is not dying!!

    • Re:From what I gather... (Score:5, Informative)

      by MikeCapone ( 693319 ) <skelterhell @ y a hoo.com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:48PM (#8298764) Homepage Journal
      I really should check our Gentoo, it might just work on my crappy 5 year old Wintel machine...

      I wouldn't recommend it unless you don't want to actually work on that box.

      I mean, sure you could save on the compile times (good luck compiling KDE/gnome, Mozilla and Open Office on a "crappy 5 year old Wintel machine") by getting binaries, but then, why not just use Slackware or Debian...

      • Re:From what I gather... (Score:5, Informative)

        by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:27PM (#8299205) Journal
        I wouldn't recommend it unless you don't want to actually work on that box.

        While not very usable on a single 5 year old box, Gentoo can be used on such hardware. I manage a small network of systems that run Gentoo. Some are 5 years old. One of the systems is used to compile and build binary packages. All the other machines install or upgrade from these binary packages. Some of the other machines also participate in the compilation process using distcc.

    • Re:From what I gather... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "And BSD is not dying!!"

      Of course it isn't, it's already dead.

    • Re:From what I gather... (Score:5, Funny)

      by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:05PM (#8298989)
      It seems to be Gentoo to me, it's always suggested when someone asks for a new distro
      The main problem with Gentoo seems to be that it is also always recommended when nobody did ask for a new distro.

    • Re:From what I gather... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NixLuver ( 693391 ) <stwhite&kcheretic,com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:20PM (#8299135) Homepage Journal
      I started with Slack, years ago, then switched to RH when I started doing commercial Linux stuff (at approximately 5.2, around the libc5/6 controversy time); now I use Gentoo on my workstations, because it kinda brings back that old Slackware ("The distribution with attitude") feeling; it's the distro for ubergeeks or distro weenies that either like to get their hands dirty on the internals, or people who like to say they like to get their hands dirty on the internals.

      I will tell you what; if you set up Gentoo a few times, you'll truly understand the Linux boot process and associated configuration.

    • Re:From what I gather... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MobyTurbo ( 537363 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:26PM (#8300680)
      Your URL is incorrect, that should be slackware.com [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. :-)

  • I'd think it's Knoppix (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:37PM (#8298610)
    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.

    • I agree to a point (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Walkiry ( 698192 )
      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

      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

    • I agree (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sarastro_us ( 745933 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:16PM (#8299103)
      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.

  • Fastest growing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by s4m7 ( 519684 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:38PM (#8298623) Homepage

    My debian distro grows every day. not sure how fast though.

    apt-get update
    apt-get upgrade

    30 new packages installed, none removed and 2 held back.

    • apt-get dist-upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

      by zonix ( 592337 )
      30 new packages installed, none removed and 2 held back.

      Emphasis mine.

      Then run an apt-get dist-upgrade. Perhaps there are some packages that need removal because of changed dependencies, etc. :-)

      z

  • If you consider it a distro (Score:5, Insightful)

    by barenaked ( 711701 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:38PM (#8298627)
    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.

  • Stats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:39PM (#8298637)
    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/ [distrowatch.com] has a ranking of people downloading each distro from them at the lower right of the page.

    • Re:Stats (Score:5, Informative)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:50PM (#8298803)
      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.

      • No surprise its Mandrake (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:59PM (#8298910)
        >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.

  • obligatory post of article text *g* (Score:4, Funny)

    by Marvin_OScribbley ( 50553 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:40PM (#8298647) Homepage Journal
    "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."

    Debian Project Leader: "The faster growing Linux distro is Debian."
    Mandrake Founder: "No, its Mandrake."
    SuSe Founder: "Guess again, it's SuSe!"
    Red Hat: "We feel the faster growing distro is Red Hat."
    TurboLinux: "Our title says it all - we are the faster growing distro!"

  • Debian based (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sanctimonius hypocrt ( 235536 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:40PM (#8298648) Homepage Journal

    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.


    • Re:Debian based (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ContraB ( 18852 )
      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.

      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 chipse

    • Re:Debian based (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) * on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:50PM (#8299413)
      I'll throw in a quick plug for MEPIS [mepis.org]. MEPIS is actually a rather fast growing distro, hovering around number 10 on the distrowatch list. In many ways it's similar to Knoppix, which I will disclaim that I don't have any real experience with. MEPIS comes in bootable CD format, and makes a fabulous rescue disk. But it's not presented or pitched as _primarily_ for bootable CD use, whereas Knoppix is as least shown around that way. It's remarkably easy to take MEPIS, get it running from the bootable CD, and then run the Installer to install to your hard drive.


      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.

  • Most popular distroes... (Score:4, Informative)

    by rqqrtnb ( 753156 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:40PM (#8298653)
    You could get a feel for the number from

    http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.php [li.org]

  • WINDOWS 2000 - THE OPEN SOURCE EDITION (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:40PM (#8298654)
    Has only been in distribution for a couple of days now and it's doing pretty well. I'd say it will surpass lunix by the end of the year.

  • Either Mandrake or Gentoo (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LordK3nn3th ( 715352 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:41PM (#8298668)
    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.

  • Somewhat useful... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chamilto0516 ( 675640 ) * <conrad.hamilton@ ... Dl.com minus bsd> on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:41PM (#8298669) Homepage Journal
    This type of information is interesting to know but is less useful than Linux as a whole (all distributions) and how it compares to competitors. This info could be made more useful if it is broken out by Sales vs. Free (as in beer) downloads and company/group for business use vs. hobbyist for personal or educaiton use.

    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.

  • Distros to watch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:43PM (#8298691)
    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.
    • It provided ultimate flexibility - you want the 2.6.2 kernel you just go ahead a compile it.

      Funny, I did that with my debian box and my fedora box at work. Guess what? With ANY distro that has the tools, you can just go ahead and compile it!

  • The questions I would ask would be different (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:44PM (#8298710) Homepage
    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 [angrypeoplerule.com]
  • 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.
    • 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"

  • IBM & Linux -- The Superbowl. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DR SoB ( 749180 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:46PM (#8298748) Journal
    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!

  • BSD, etc.? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by read-only ( 35561 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:47PM (#8298758)

    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.

    • Re:BSD, etc.? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:32PM (#8299258)
      Frankly, why do you care?

      I'm a FreeBSD user as well, I use it both on servers and on my personal desktop, but it is clear that it is way less popular than Linux. And Linux is mostly irrelevant as a dektop OS.

      It doesn't matter how many people besides you use the same OS, or how fast its adoption grows. Just use it as long as you personally feel that it is the best choice for you, and when you begin to think that another OS is better, switch to it and be happy because the usefullness of your system improved. The output of "uname" does not matter. Software is a tool, not a religion.

  • It's a move towards non-corperatized distros (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ricin ( 236107 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:49PM (#8298784)
    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...

  • Fastest Growing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by renelicious ( 450403 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:50PM (#8298799)
    Come on its gotta be Fedora, I remember just a few versions ago it all fit on 1 CD, but this weekend I had to download 4 DAMN discs to make the new version run.

  • GoogleFight! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ebilhoax ( 609649 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:52PM (#8298816)
    Redhat vs Debian [googlefight.com]: RedHat wins!
    Redhat vs Slackware [googlefight.com]: RedHat wins!
    Redhat vs Gentoo [googlefight.com]: Redhat wins!
    Open Source vs Closed Source [googlefight.com]: Open Source wins! ;p

  • WBL (Score:4, Informative)

    by einer ( 459199 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:53PM (#8298837) Journal
    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.

  • Confusion Reigns Supreme (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tonyr60 ( 32153 ) * on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:56PM (#8298876)
    As with most IT articles, the objective seems to be a good headline rather than a factual appreciation of the facts.

    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 .0000001% of the market - so what.

    However if Sun really start shipping the Java Desktop (Suse based version) to all those chinese sites then it would likely win

  • Still in the Dark (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:58PM (#8298894) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • Soldi article? Really? So where was Slackware then (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:00PM (#8298919) Homepage
    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.

  • Hard to say (Score:5, Funny)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:05PM (#8298988)
    But for certain, the slowest growing Linux distro is the SCO "All your code base are belong to us!" Linux.

  • Debian Sarge (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:23PM (#8299157) Journal
    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

  • Yggdrasil, of course (Score:5, Funny)

    by kerskine ( 46804 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:30PM (#8299237) Journal
    ...all other distros are for wussies

  • Google riding (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sokk ( 691010 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:35PM (#8299289)
    I had some time to play. I did a google on the following distros, and sorted the hits:
    "Red Hat" Linux.. 4,290,000
    Debian Linux..... 3,820,000
    Suse Linux....... 3,320,000
    Mandrake Linux... 1,860,000
    Gentoo Linux..... 1,130,000
    Slackware Linux.. 1,030,000
    Fedora Linux..... 686,000
    Knoppix Linux.... 490,000

    Btw. I included "Linux", to remove irrelevant hits. Hopefully, it scaled down evenly.

  • Basic Flaw (Score:5, Informative)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:45PM (#8299360) Journal
    The article ranks only Web servers. So it's hardly going to provide useful numbers on desktops.

  • And I thought I was so cool (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stylee ( 253307 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:49PM (#8299404)
    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.

  • What I don't understand about Debian (Score:5, Interesting)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:51PM (#8299424)
    Is the comment in the article that Debian is working towards making the distro more friendly.

    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

    • Re:What I don't understand about Debian (Score:5, Informative)

      by nestler ( 201193 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:28PM (#8300699)
      Debian has to support around a dozen different platforms. The excellent hardware detection in Knoppix is unfortunately x86 specific, so its not a drop-in replacement for what they need to have.

      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.

  • It's Mandrake - No Doubt (Score:5, Informative)

    by terrencefw ( 605681 ) <`ten.nedlohsemaj' `ta' `todhsals'> on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:56PM (#8299468) Homepage
    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

  • MY distro is the fastest growing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:00PM (#8299503)
    2 months ago, no one was using my distro.

    1 month ago, I created a distro, which was remarkably similar to Red Hat, but with a few extra configuration files specific to our computer lab. My distro had one user -- me.

    This month, I installed my distro on 10 other machines in the lab. Yes, that's right -- in one month, my distro's userbase increased from 1 to 11, or an increase of 1000% That's an annualized growth rate of 10^12, or over ONE TRILLION PERCENT!

    So, please either acknowledge that (1) my distro is the fastest growing, or (2) "fastest growing" statistics are really dumb.

  • Fastest growing, or most popular web server (Score:5, Insightful)

    by buchanmilne ( 258619 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:26PM (#8299697) Homepage
    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.

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