Linux Distribution Chart
For this LJ distro chart, we selected distributions and categories based on suggestions from Linux Journal editors and readers, and gathered the information from each distro's Web site and DistroWatch.com. Linux Journal readers shared their comments, favorite distributions and thoughts about each distro's best use in our readers' poll on LinuxJournal.com. We include a few readers' comments here with the chart, but be sure to visit www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-each-distribution-best and www.linuxjournal.com/content/which-linux-distribution-do-you-use-most-frequently-0 for many, many more comments and to add your own feedback—we're sure we left out at least a few people's favorites! Note that under the “Best for” category on the chart, all distributions were voted as favorites on both desktops and servers, so in the interest of avoiding repetition, we left those out. Also note that in the on-line readers' poll for “Most Frequently Used Distro”, 2% voted for “other”.
| Distribution | Latest Stable Release (Date) | First Release | Release Cycle | Support Lifecycle | Based on | Developed by | Sponsored by | Package Format | Package Management | Default Desktop Environment(s) (Version) | Linux Kernel | Default Filesystem | Official Ports | Derivative Distributions | Most Frequently Used (Readers' Poll) | Best For (Readers' Poll) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arch Linux | 2009.08 (08/10/2009) | 03/11/2002 | 3–4 months (follows kernel releases) | None (rolling releases) | None | Aaron Griffin & Community | None | tar.gz | Arch Build System, Packman | None (user selected | 2.6.32.3 | None (user selected | x86, x86-64 | None | 7% | Ease of upgrade, education, older hardware |
| CentOS | 5.4 (10/21/2009) | 12/2003 | 2 years (follows Red Hat Enterprise Linux) | 7 years | Red Hat Enterprise Linux (open-source SRPMs) | CentOS Project | None | rpm | RPM, YUM, up2date | GNOME (2.16) | 2.6.18 | ext3 | x86, x86-64 | None | 2% | Ease of installation, proprietary hardware support, security |
| Debian | 5.0 “Lenny” (02/14/2009) | 08/16/2003 | 2 years (beginning with 6.0 “Squeeze”) | 3 years | None | Debian Project | None | deb | dpkg, APT, Synaptic | GNOME (2.22), alternate CDs: KDE, Xfce, LXDE | 2.6.26 | ext3 | x86, Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, SPARC, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, Itanium, HP PA-RISC, s/390, AMD64, ARM EABI | Ubuntu, Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Linspire, Maemo | 9% | Ease of upgrade, getting support, security |
| Fedora | 12 “Constantine” (11/17/2009) | 11/05/2003 | 6 months (approximate) | 13 months (approximate) | Historically: Red Hat Linux | Fedora Project | Red Hat | rpm | RPM, YUM, PackageKit | GNOME (2.28), Fedora Spins: KDE, LXDE, Xfce | 2.6.31.5 | ext4 | x86, x86-64, PowerPC | Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, Moblin | 9% | Ease of installation, new users, security |
| Gentoo | None (versionless) | 03/31/2002 | Rolling releases | None (rolling releases) | None | Gentoo Foundation | None | ebuild | Portage | None (user selected) | 2.6.32 | None (user selected) | Stable: x86, x86-64, PA-RISC, PowerPC, SPARC 64 bit, DEC Alpha; Development: MIPS, PS3, SystemZ/s390, ARM, SuperH | Sabayon | 4% | Education, older hardware, real-time apps |
| Linux Mint | 8 “Helena” (11/28/2009) | 08/27/2006 | 6 months (follows Ubuntu) | 18 months (follows Ubuntu) | Ubuntu | Linux Mint Team | None | deb | dpkg, APT, MintInstall/MintUpdate | GNOME (2.28); Community: KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox | 2.6.31 | ext3 | x86, x86-64 | None | 7% | Ease of installation, multimedia, new users |
| Mandriva | 2010 (11/03/2009) | 07/23/1998 | 6 months | 18 months (base updates); 12 months (desktop updates); 24 months (server updates) | Historically: Red Hat Linux | Mandriva S.A. | Mandriva S.A. | rpm | urpmi/rpmdrake | KDE (4.3.2), GNOME (2.28.1), Xfce & twm | 2.6.31.12 | ext4 | i586, i386, x86-64, PowerPC, MIPS, ARM | PCLinuxOS | 6% | Ease of installation, education, new users |
| Mepis | 8.0.15 (01/12/2010) | 05/10/2003 | Unspecified (6 months to 1 year) | Unspecified | Debian/Ubuntu | MEPIS LLC | MEPIS LLC & Community | deb | dpkg, APT | KDE (3.5) | 2.6.22.14 | ReiserFS, ext3 | x86, x86-64 | SimplyMEPIS, antiX | 2% | Ease of installation, new users, olderhardware |
| openSUSE | 11.2 (11/12/2009) | 03/1994 | 8 months | 2 releases + 2 months | Historically: SUSE Linux | openSUSE Project | Novell | rpm | RPM, YaST, Zypper | GNOME (2.28), KDE (4.3.1) | 2.6.31 | ext4 | x86, x86-64 | SUSE Linux Enterprise | 11% (with SUSE Linux Enterprise) | Ease of installation, new users, proprietary hardware support |
| PCLinuxOS | 2009.2 (06/30/2009) | 11/2003 | Unspecified | Unspecified | Historically: Mandriva | PCLinuxOS Development Team | None | rpm | APT-RPM, RPM, Synaptic | KDE (3.5.10) | 2.6.16 | None | x86 | None | 4% | Ease of installation, multimedia, new users |
| Puppy Linux | 4.3.1 (10/17/2009) | 06/18/2003 | Unspecified | Unspecified | None | Puppy Community | Puppy Foundation | .pup, .pet | PetGet | JWM/IceWM | 2.6.30.5 | SquashFS (ext2) | None | None | 1% | Ease of installation, new users, older hardware |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 5.4 (09/02/2009) | 03/26/2002 | 18–24 months | 7 years | Fedora | Red Hat | Red Hat | rpm | RPM, YUM | GNOME (2.16) | 2.6.18 | ext3 | IA-32, x86-64, PowerPC, i386, ia64, s390, s390x | CentOS | 1% | Getting support, proprietary hardware support, security |
| Slackware | 13.0 (08/26/2009) | 07/16/1993 | Unspecified | N/A | Historically: Softlanding Linux System | Patrick Volkerding & Community | Slackware Linux, Inc. | txz/tgz (tarball) | installpkg/upgradepkg (pkgtool) | Blackbox, Fluxbox, FVWM, KDE (4.2.14), WMaker, Xfce; Community: GNOME | 2.6.29.6 | ext4 | x86, x86-64, IBM S/39 | Slam64, SLAX, VectorLinux | 4% | Education, older hardware, security |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise | 11 (03/24/2009) | 03/1994 | Major: 24–36 months; Service Packs: 9–12 months | 5–7 years | openSUSE | Novell | Novell | rpm | YaST, Zypper | KDE (4.1), GNOME (2.24) | 2.6.27.19 | ext3, JFS, ReiserFS | XFSIA-32, x86-64, PowerPC, Itanium | None | 11% (with openSUSE) | Getting support, proprietary hardware support, security |
| Ubuntu | 9.10 “Karmic Koala” (10/29/09); long-term support “Hardy Heron” (04/24/2008) | 10/20/2004 | Biannually (April/October) | 18 months; long-term support: 3 years for desktop, 5 years for server | Debian | Ubuntu Community | Canonical | deb | dpkg, APT, Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center | GNOME (2.28) | 2.6.31; long-term support: 2.6.24 | ext4; long-term support: ext3 | x86, x86-64, ARM, SPARC | Kubuntu (KDE), Edubuntu, Xubuntu (Xfce), Ubuntu Studio, Linux Mint, Crunchbang, Ubuntu Netbook Edition | 31% (any flavor) | Ease of installation, getting support, new users |
| Yellow Dog | 6.2 (06/29/2009) | 1999 | Unspecified | Whichever is longer—1 year from launch or 3 months from new version | RHEL, CentOS | Fixstars Solutions | Fixstars Solutions | rpm | YUM | Enlightenment, GNOME (2.16.0), KDE (3.5.4) | 2.6.29 | ext3, JFS, ReiserFS | XFSPower | None | 0% | Gaming, older hardware, proprietary hardware support |
Reasons I use Arch:
Rolling upgrade.
Up to date packages.
Awesome community/documentation.
Great performance.
Minimalist design.
Simple from top to bottom.
Teaches me as I go.
“I use CentOS simply because of its reliability. It's also flexible, and very light—with it being light leaves more resources to actually do what you want. Hence, that's why I use it for all my servers.”
“I've had nothing but utterly awful experiences over ten years with RHEL, despite its high cost. I can see the point of CentOS if you need RH without the cost, but it's just revolting to work with and the documentation is terrible too, so I'd never run either by choice.”
“Debian combines great sysadmin friendliness with a terrible release policy; Ubuntu takes its great design and adds sanity.”
“I now use Fedora because each successive version of Ubuntu caused different problems with my 3.5-year-old laptop (camera, sound, wireless, graphics). Each version would fix some problems and cause others. Fedora has been stable, fast and less trouble to set up than Ubuntu.”
“I like Gentoo for its extremely useful control over the system and love the flexibility. It appeals to the tweaker in me! All my systems, including laptops, run Gentoo! That's five systems in total! I have tried other distros, but nothing comes close to Gentoo. I loved portage so much, at some point in time, I ported it to Solaris. Now, with prefix support, anybody can use portage on Solaris, BSD or Mac OS. The Gentoo community is exemplary!”
“I've been using Windows for a long time, since Windows 95, and I've been an IT professional for about 9 years. Through it all, I've always been turned off to Linux. I didn't have time to try anything new. I was just trying to keep up with the changes in Windows. Just a month ago, a new coworker gave me a Linux Mint CD. I took it home and ran the live CD on one of my IBM laptops. I've been hooked ever since. I even changed my wife's laptop from XP to Mint. The bottom line is, Linux just works....I'm sold.”
“I use openSUSE because it always has just worked for me. It has a large selection of software available in repos and through the build service. Information is easily found on-line in the wiki and forums.”
“I love live CDs, but liked PCLOS Big Daddy so much, I felt the need to install it with a dual-boot of Windows at the time. By the time PCLOS 2007 came out, I'd gotten a newer computer and erased the Windows partition to put the exclusive Linux desktop on it. I haven't looked back since. I no longer dual-booted. The other people I know who have PCLinuxOS tend not to be techie types that you see at work, but more like teenagers and housewives and early-adopter-gadgety folk around here—not the Computer Crowd, as much as the people with lots of cool toys. They don't dual-boot either. When VirtualBox came to Synaptic repos years ago, I put my Windows XP install disk in there to test it out and made a video of Linux running Windows better than Windows. I ended up taking the virtual Windows off though, because I never used it. PCLinuxOS rules.”
“In the lightweight division, we have used Puppy Linux a lot of the time, installing it to HDD on a half-dozen of the same GoBook P3 laptops and giving them to kids as gifts. At around $50 each (well used), this was affordable.”
“Don't forget SliTaz though. I have it on my old 433MHz Celeron machine, and it is fantastic. If you need a lightweight Linux distro for old hardware, I would take this over Puppy Linux any day.”
“I prefer Slackware because it's very simple and stable. It gives me the power I need to get things done very efficiently.”
“I think most distros are a lot more polished and user-friendly than they were a few years ago, but I'm going to go with Ubuntu. I used to use Kubuntu from 6.06 to 8.04, but the transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4 hasn't been the smoothest. I gave regular Ubuntu 9.10 a spin and have been really impressed, since it's probably the first GNOME-based distro I've actually enjoyed. There are practical reasons for going with Ubuntu as well. Canonical has done a great job getting it out there and making it known, as well as presenting it as an OS for everyday users and not just networks and servers. And, the fact that it's such a popular distro means there are lots of users posting how-tos and solving common problems.”
“I wouldn't say that 'Ubuntu is the most easy Linux for everyone'. I definitely would agree that it is the one with the catchy-hard-to-forget name, in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray vein. When you put that aspect with the fact that it is free, then you get the 'World's Most Popular Linux Distro', whether it's the easiest one or not. Lots of people who don't particularly care about 'free' don't care about Ubuntu—especially the learning curve required to 'fix it'. These people, willing to pay for quality software and OS, are an admitted minority in the Linux camp, but they do exist. I don't, however, think that these people give a fig about Linux 'touching the masses' and all the underlying tones of cloying that phrase implies. They just want an easy-to-use and efficient/intuitive OS that works without hassle. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux one, but not the easiest Linux one.”
