“There are hundreds of Linux distributions. This handy reference guide includes the ones we think are especially interesting for desktop Linux users – from Arch Linux to Zenwalk – and we plan to update the list on an ongoing basis. Whether you’re looking for an easy Windows-to-Linux migration distro, one for home use or serious enterprise workstation use, a free one, a commercial one, a tiny one to fit alongside Windows 98 on an old underpowered laptop, or one aimed at educational institutions, we think you’ll find something suitable.”
Another similar effort is Distrowatch…
http://www.distrowatch.com
Distrowatch is much more comprehensive and detailed, though. Still, if you want a five-minute guide to the 25 most popular, this is pretty good.
If you need some more detailed information on popular GNU/Linux and BSD distros, you can also check out our http://PolishLinux.org vortal (for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet – it’s not just about articles). The summaries of the popular OS-s are those links on the left sidebar, and here: http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/ is a comparison table (still in beta) which tries to compare main features of different Linux and BSD flavors.
Edited 2006-09-22 14:21
Strangely enough, DesktopLinux.com seems to have forgotten Debian from their list. After all, Debian became second in their own “2006 Desktop Linux Market survey”.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=archive&…
That’s really sad too, as Debian is what I’ve finally decided is the best distro for me. It’s mature, stable and geeky enough without the legacy issues of Slackware, and I fell in love with apt-get after using Ubuntu for the past two years. Ubuntu has always been too slow for me though; for some reason Debian is more responsive overall, even in GNOME.
Freespire, Linspire, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix but no Debian? How incredibly odd. Oh, and the Linspire item says that Linspire ships with no proprietary software which is quite wrong. Overall, Distrowatch has nothing to worry about.
+1 complaint for not including debian…
I’ve been using unstable for a year; I’ve been trying many other distros but my /home always stayed (and still stands) in debian’s fstab.
I see Ubuntu growing with every release, but how is it possible to forget about the mother of almost half of the listed distros??
Edited 2006-09-22 17:57
As da_Chicken would say:
‘Strangely enough, DesktopLinux.com seems to have forgotten Slackware from their list. After all, Slackware became third in their own “2006 Desktop Linux Market survey”.’
Actually Slackware doesn’t come in as #3.
OpenSuse is #3, Gentoo is #4
and Fedora is #5, Mandriva is #6 and Slackware is #7.
But still.. quite a few large distributions are missing, and quite a few very small distributions are included.
It seems very incomplete.
Yeap, I tried to be more sarcastic than accurate in my comment;
the fact is that a lot of people started with Slackware, uses Slackware now and, though it does not has the hype of Ubuntu or Suse, it is still a big distro.
Maybe it’s out of topic of the article, but would have been nice have *BSDs in the lists also.
Personally I always enjoy seeing the BSDs thrown in with Linux on lists like these. For me, it’s more important to list/review good alternative OSes overall than it is to gripe about GNU/Linux vs. BSD vs. Solaris etc. I see three classes of OSes out there: Bad commercial OSes (Windows), good commercial OSes (UNIX, Solaris, OS X, BeOS) and free/open OSes (Linux, *BSD, FreeDOS).
Debian and Slackware missing from the list.Anyway,distrowatch does a better job in gathering information about Linux distribution.Any distribution,that is. Using Slackware for about 6 years now.Still going strong.
Debian can be all things to all people, all the time…
Yet somehow it gets left out?
and included Arch, so they’re cool with me.