What are the MAJOR linux players?

[Josh]

OK, so I know there are several hundred linux distributions available. My question is this. Which of them are considered the MAJOR players of the linux community? I mean, is fedora in there? ubuntu? slackware? What are the differences among them? I am considering a format/install path between either vista 64 or a linux distro, however, I am trying to compare options first. Any input is appreciated.

[f0dder]

Humm, major players? I guess it depends on how you define "major"...

Slackware, redhat/fedora, centos, debian, suse, ubuntu, gentoo... those are some of the big and/or old players. If you want "easy desktop usage", there's probably other to consider instead. The name pclinux springs to mind, but I have no personal experience with it.

Personally I run an oldish slackware on one server, archlinux on another, and will most likely be doing gentoo when I build my fileserver. Ubuntu doesn't seem like a bad bet at all if you want a desktop.

[Renegade]

*nix is kind of funny in that there are a lot of distros that are better suited for different things. So it's kind of a matter of "what do I want to do?"

If you want to run a dataserver with 100% uptime - Solaris. (That stuff is CRAZY! You can swap hardware like a motherboard without shutting down!)

If you want to run a DNS server with a high load - BSD. (TCP stack is just uber-tight.)

If you want to... etc. etc. etc.

Ubuntu seems like the major up & comer for desktops.

Suse seems like the major player for interoperation with Microsoft (.NET that is).

OSX is BSD under the hood (well, a long time ago).

Red Hat, CentOS and a few others are big in the server space.

I'd say figure out what you want it for, then ask around to see what people doing the same thing are using. Most likely you'll end up with "Vista" as the answer, but if you specifically want a *nix box, then...

[Armando]

These links are good reads :
http://distrowatch.c...s.php?resource=major
http://itmanagement..../article.php/3701421
http://wiki.linuxque..._Linux_distributions
http://en.wikipedia...._Linux_distributions
http://futurist.se/gldt/gldt76.png
http://photos1.blogg...Linuxupdatedw4.0.jpg
http://distrowatch.c...on=packagemanagement

IMHO the most famous, popular and well maintained distributions are probably :
Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Knoppix, Mandriva, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, RedHat, Slackware, Suse, Ubuntu, Xandros.

For overall EASY Desktop usage, my top 3 picks are (in that order) : Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva. They provide easy proprietary codec and driver installation and offer a polished environment.

- Ubuntu works, is polished enough, is well documented and has a huge user base. I’d first go with that. There’s a new release every six months. Enormous repositories.
- PCLinuxOS offers a nice user experience, but I’d be worried about its long term life (I also don’t like the fact that it doesn’t offer a gnome version). I also don’t like that there’s absolutely NO release plan.
- Mandriva is great, but it’s not exactly free if you want full access to support etc. Release schedule is not as strict as Ubuntu’s, but better than PCLinuxOS.

Suse is fine, but I find it bloated and I don’t like its package manager. Fedora is too unpredictable : some releases are just terrible. Debian is great but not as user friendly as Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS. Etc.

Then there are all the distros more suited for old computers. Like Vector, Slax, Damn Small Linux, Zenwalk, etc.

[Deozaan]

That stuff is CRAZY! You can swap hardware like a motherboard without shutting down!

-Renegade (November 24, 2007, 11:03 PM)

How the carp do you swap a motherboard without shutting down?

First of all, you'd have to worry about electric shock frying you or your components.

Second of all, to swap a motherboard you'd have to remove power to everything since you'd really just be removing everything and putting it onto another motherboard.

[housetier]

Josh, get what your friends have. They'll be the ones helping you get started, so you will want to have a distro they are familiar with. It does not matter so much which distro you have, as it matters how good the support/help is.

Ask the next linux or *bsd user what they use and if they would help you get started. Be prepared for disappointment...

[f0dder]

Deozaan: hot-swap of motherboards and CPUs obviously require special hardware components. I'm not if there's x86 solutions that allow hot-swap of mobo or CPU, but hot-swap of pci-x (and prolly pci-e) should be possible - but obviously requires support both from the motherboard and the device. Hot-swap of harddrives is the same. PSU hotswap is possible as well.

But once we're talking memory, cpu or motherboard, things become messy, and I don't know much about that stuff. One of my friends was talking about hotswapping CPUs on a big server, but I'm not sure whether that was one of the high-end x86/Opteron thingies, or some special HP/SUN/whatever iron.

[Carol Haynes]

I presume hot swapability would only work on a distributed system where you can shut down parts of the system and keep things going elsewhere. You can't hot swap a motherboard and keep stuff running if it is the only motherboard in the system!!!

[Lashiec]

This thread could prove useful for you when it comes to choosing a distro, Zaine and Gothi[c] posts are quite interesting, and that PolishLinux site is excellent.

[Armando]

Josh, get what your friends have. They'll be the ones helping you get started, so you will want to have a distro they are familiar with. It does not matter so much which distro you have, as it matters how good the support/help is.

Ask the next Linux or *bsd user what they use and if they would help you get started. Be prepared for disappointment...

-housetier (November 25, 2007, 06:40 AM)

I understand the logic behind that advice, but IMO choosing a well supported distro, with strictly scheduled releases, a strong user base, a good package management and current hardware detection is even better than going with what friends choose. For instance, most of my Linux friends use Debian, CentOS or Slackware variants. But they're all programmers, run servers, etc.

So I decided to run Ubuntu, the most popular distro at the moment, and found all the support I needed on the web. Anyway, most Linux distributions are close enough so that an expert cans help a "newbie" with problems (regardless of the distribution).

One thing to really check before trying one of the major distros is hardware compatibility (video card, Wifi, printer, scanner, ...). Live CDs can be handy for that. They give an idea, but even if problems arise, these can sometimes be solved after installation (and most live CDs can be intalled to the HD — there are some exceptions, like Suse DVDs).