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GreenDance
December 24th, 2011, 12:58 PM
I was just wondering, what would you class as a significant (important to the linux community) linux distribution, I'll start,

ubuntu (of course :)), debian, redhat/centos

BC59
December 24th, 2011, 01:03 PM
Here you have the list of the most important Linux Distributions with comparison data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions

Alwimo
December 24th, 2011, 01:04 PM
Yeah. Debian, Red Hat and Ubuntu are probably the most significant.

I think PCLinuxOS and Mandrake used to be in Ubuntu's place.

EDIT: Oh, perhaps Red Flag Linux is significant as well.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/red-flag-linux.html

Morbius1
December 24th, 2011, 01:59 PM
In order of the people who pay the bills to keep the kernel developed:

Red Hat - SuSE - IBM - Intel

IBM and Intel are not Linux distributions of course but they have a vested interest in it's development.

collisionystm
December 24th, 2011, 02:07 PM
I would say

Red Hat and Debian.
And then Gentoo and others that compile from source.

whatthefunk
December 24th, 2011, 02:13 PM
Arch would be major in a way. It doesnt have as many users as other distros, but the users it does have are some of the most active in the linux community. The Arch wiki is one of the greatest linux resources out there.

jjex22
December 24th, 2011, 04:36 PM
I was just wondering, what would you class as a significant (important to the linux community) linux distribution, I'll start,

ubuntu (of course :)), debian, redhat/centos

I'll be nit-picky and take cent os out of that list lol! I love that they port red hat to the opensource land, but in terms of development, community etc I wouldn't class the project as one of the most influential, due to the nature of having to rebuild and test what red hat put out, most of the community's resources are needed just to get the release out - hence the near year delay between RHEL 6 and Cent 6.

I think it's really important to remember Fedora - after all it is red hat's testing branch; the features come thick and fast.

Ubuntu - yes of course it's always trying new things and "pushing the envelope" but it's real influence is usability - it's brought so many new people to the community I think it's biggest asset is it's drawing power.

other than that I agree with what's already been said. I think because SUSE's been slipping a bit of late against Ubuntu, people tend to forget the importance of Novel.

davidvandoren
December 25th, 2011, 02:00 AM
EDIT: Oh, perhaps Red Flag Linux is significant as well.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/red-flag-linux.html

Where you are forced to run as root? No separate user?

That stinks like Chinese government.

Alwimo
December 25th, 2011, 02:39 AM
Where you are forced to run as root? No separate user?

That stinks like Chinese government.
And it might have as many as five times more users than Ubuntu. That's enough for it to be significant.