A Linux distribution is like a religion. If you’ve ever tried to suggest to another person that his or her choice of a distro might not be the best, then you know what I mean. Even if you haven’t, you have probably come across a “distribution opinion war” on one of the mailing lists or public forums. But that’s OK. We should be passionate about things we love, even if it’s just a mass of programming code. What follows are facts and figures about Linux distributions. Personal opinions may vary, but facts are a lot more difficult to dispute… See Linux Distributions – Facts and Figures (mirror-au, mirror-hu, mirror-us) by DistroWatch, one of the main Linux distribution news sites on the web.
“Linux Distributions – Facts and Figures” http://www.osnews.com/stats.php : 404 Error – Page not found!
It’s fixed now. Ladislav submitted the wrong link (it was leading to ./ that is local on his site) and I didn’t really checked it out.
It’s incredible that Mandrake has been on top for quite a while. Go Mandrake:)
That was FAST! 🙂
The above OSNews stats link does not work, should I be looking elsewhere for browser stats, Eugenia?
I realise my last comment makes no sense!!
What is the page with browser stats (completely unrelated to the story, sorry!)
Great work Ladisslav! I love the breakdown of the data – very informative.
someone smack me with a spelling stick!
Here is today’s browser stats:
http://66.181.171.71/2/42699/400/?date=0
However, IE has usually more hits than Mozilla on this site, but last night we got linked from many Linux-oriented sites for the Red Hat interview.
BTW, this month is our biggest ever. We are targetting on serving more than 3 million pages!
http://66.181.171.71/2/42699/7/
Thats what I like to see, 10’s of thousands of viewers of potential news stories ~:]
Anyway, back to the story. The daddy of all Linux distributions is easy…its Debian of course, although to be honest I have scrubbed it off my hard drive and finally put BeOS back on. Its just too damn unreliable for me. I will stick to XP for serious use, BeOS for developing and Syllable for hacking! Anyway…don’t want to start a flame war.
What really amazed me from this story is the spread of linux, it pretty much covers all countries on all continents, a true international OS if there ever was one. Having been involved in projects before I still find it amazing working with people around the world, the different viewpoints and techniques they bring. Scandanavia comes to mind with Linux/Syllable/SkyOS from there. And I can’t be the only one here who thinks KDE “feels” german whereas Gnome “feels” N.American.
Anyway, I am chattering here. Good article to link to.
Lycoris is doing well – yay for them!!
That’s a fairly comprehensive article.
But what about the “other” people (who I am assuming outnumber the ones who do) don’t “hit” distrowatch on a regular basis.
Since the “interest” towards a distro is basically dependent on number of hits it gets I mean.
actually i dare you to repeat that debian is the daddy afaik slackware is older.. and slackware is based on SLS linux (one of the oldest) .
ah the good old days of pioneering..
as far as windowmanagers and user enviroments go i prefer enlightenment even more.. its more responsive than kde/gnome.. but then again i use beos… ;D
I meant it is the “daddy”, a phrase here in England to mean the best.
Of course I know SLS and Slackware I used them both years ago!
And I can’t be the only one here who thinks KDE “feels” german whereas Gnome “feels” N.American.
You aren’t ! KDE’s ugliness and bad taste is definitely a sign of German graphics (goes back to the 80’s, Amstrad demos…). On the other hand, some points in Gnome could be French, hehe :-))
(but Jimmac is Czech – I fear the spelling is wrong, sorry)
I know there might be a few more such compilations of distros out there, but this one seems to be a lot more comprehensive. Its nice to know that the information is depicted in such an excellent fashion.
nice, now thats sorted.. .. how bout a pint of lager?
And I can’t be the only one here who thinks KDE “feels” german whereas Gnome “feels” N.American.
Probably the feeling comes from the letter “K”. Many German words start with “K”, which makes it look “German”. BTW, on-Germans outnumber the Germans…..
Tn: You aren’t ! KDE’s ugliness and bad taste is definitely a sign of German graphics (goes back to the 80’s, Amstrad demos…). On the other hand, some points in Gnome could be French, hehe :-))
Wow, not only have you insulted a very good project, but a country too! (So since Xandros have some pretty ugly icons, is it a sign of Canadian graphics?).
Until recently, the icons made for KDE are made based on strick usability guidelines, many of them trickle their way down to GNOME 2.0. While you may see it as ugly, it is entirely usable (unlike GNOME 1.x).
When KDE 2.0 came out, BTW, I remember a lot of GNOME guys coveted the looks (it was really good looking compared to GNOME 1.2, Windows 98, and Mac OS 9…)
Besides, as you said, GNOME’s graphics don’t come from N.America, and KDE’s graphics don’t come from Germany.
It still astounds me to here people praise BeOS. I cannot think of an OS that had more potential, but yet never even came close to being a usable OS. Even when BeOS was at it’s prime, it really did not offer anything of any value that could not be found elsewhere. Yes, it had potential, but to use it now is beyond hopeless. It’s like talking to a ghost, just let it go….
I actually meant the feel of the DE rathe than the look. Kde has always felt german in its completeness and thoroughtness. Boring but solid. PS. I like Germans, I lived there for 9 years.
Whereas gnome always seemed very flashy!
I don’t want to make any enemies here, its just a casual observation. I *like* cultural differences, who wants to all be the same!
I do not limit myself by commiting to one distro. I started with Mandrake (8.1), then Lycoris (crap), then Mandrake again (8.2), then Debian (didn’t work), then SuSE (8.0) and at the moment I am downloading Red Hat (also 8.0). I am considering Slackware and also maybe LFS when I have the time.
I’d like to request that you increment netscape 1 and decrement IE 1 because squid rewites my user agent to deal with pesky websites:
fake_user_agent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
🙂
But that’s OK. We should be passionate about things we love, even if it’s just a mass of programming code.
———
Or in Linux’s case, MESS of programming code.
*puts on flame-proof armor*
Let BeOS go
 By Not Important (IP: —.client.attbi.com) – Posted on 2002-10-11 06:33:59
It still astounds me to here people praise BeOS. I cannot think of an OS that had more potential, but yet never even came
close to being a usable OS. Even when BeOS was at it’s prime, it really did not offer anything of any value that could not
be found elsewhere. Yes, it had potential, but to use it now is beyond hopeless. It’s like talking to a ghost, just let it go
——–
honestly if we use this sort of argument we could also say the same for amiga qnx linux bsd and so on ad infinitum..
what you need to understand is that everything has its purpose, for instance
i love unix as a server os , but not on the desktop
beos is very gullable as a media/productive (as in office tasks) desktop os
windows has its uses (i mainly use it to game on)
i believe they use qnx on some teller machines in canada (and it does RT perfectly)
BeOS still holds promise and hasa wide support, ok, not as wide as the linux movement
has … but mind you linux didnt either at the beginning.
but please dont come with these sort of arguments they bear no other puspose than to troll.
also i noticed something rather funny, thats the same host as eugenia’s ….
So what OS do you suggest as an alternative? I am sure it is an OS that suits you very well. BeOS just happens to do everything that I need and more. Not forgetting to mention quickly and efficiently. I am very happy with BeOS and am learning to program so that I develop it further into something I can call my own.
Thank you for your comment, and I wish you happy times using the OS of your choice. I will definitely have fun using BeOS no matter how many times i hear “Let BeOS go”
Sincerely,
Jeremiah Bailey
a.k.a. drimmeeper
Hmm.. it works for me, i can develop for it, get new software, drivers etc… surf web, mail, watch movies, chat, listen to the music, play small games, etc.. so why do You tell me to let it go? For me BeOS is the best OS out there for everyday use (i also tried some Linux distros, Windows, QNX, MenuetOS and AROS). If it’s not for You don’t use it, but please don’t tell me to drop it.
To sum up this tangent from the topic…
Why work yourself up when someone (whom happens to use an OS other than your own prefered system) is happily discussing (as opposed to dissing) the OS that you use and hold dear? This seems to me a prejudice which was unprovoked. Flames to /dev/null please.
Live and let Be.
(paraphrase:Please Live happily with your OS and let others Be.)
Jeremiah Bailey
a.k.a. drimmeeper
…and now back to your regularly scheduled thread. Apologies for the interruption.
Stop being off-topic, or you will all be moderated down. Save your “BeOS is un/dead” comments for a BeOS story, not a Linux one.
Ahh, that cleared a lot of things. I don’t really care about flashyness, as long it works. I especially hate eye candy if it gets in your way ala Aqua.
I would happily discuss linux topics in linux threads and beos topics in beos threads. But when a comment is made about the os that i use originates in a linux thread and is totally unprovoked by the beos community, I will respond to it in the thread where it originated.
I am quite frankly a little insulted that you tell the beos community to stay on topic when we were not the ones that got off topic to begin with. As for being on topic, i personally run Debian as my distro of choice.
It never fails to amaze me how some people feel the need to rag on someone because of an OS choice they make.
If you’ve got a wild hair up your ass about BeOS, why don’t you keep it to yourself? No one’s forcing YOU to use it.
Hey, I’m still using OS/2, so I’ve got no room to judge anyone who’s still using BeOS.
Peace.