Guess who's right behind Ubuntu at Distrowatch

[Phil Meyer]

gilpel at altern.org wrote:
> Of course Distrowatch's stats don't mean much: it's only how many click a
> distro received. But I doubt that Fedora users, contrary to Ubuntu's users
> maybe, go to Distrowatch only to give the counter a ride.
>
> Here are the figures:
>
> 1  	Ubuntu          2003>
> 2 	Fedora 	        1605>
> 3 	Mint 	        1226<
> 4 	openSUSE 	1171>
> 5 	Slackware 	940>
> 6 	Debian 	        926>
> 7 	Mandriva 	913>
> 8 	PCLinuxOS 	822<
> 9 	Arch 	        767<
> 10 	Puppy 	        713>
>
> Not bad for a so-called bleeding-edge expert-only distro!
>
>   

There are two very distinct types of Linux Admins:  Those who prefer 
BSD, and those who prefer SYSV5.

Those who prefer BSD enjoy working on Debian or Debian based distros 
(Like Ubuntu) and provide base level tools and administration likely to 
please the BSD centric crowd.  The problem is that BSD and SYSV5 both 
had very rudimentary packaging tools, with the SYSV5 pkg tools being 
best of class for the time.

I don't mean to create revisionist history here, just point out that 
after Linux became popular, as in usable, the package management issue 
came front and center, and the two camps remained divided.

The BSD camps chose deb (for the most part) and the SYSV5 camps went 
with RedHat's package manager, rpm.

It is still that way.

The other major split in the camps/distros has been installation tools.

In the old days of just UNIX in the data center, there was the Solaris 
Jumpstart installation manager that really ran away with the ball.  
Nothing else was close for automated, customizable installs.  I 
personally installed Solaris over 1500 times, on at least 30 different 
configurations, on a wide variety of hardware, without ever leaving my desk.

Today, the RedHat anaconda/kickstart tools are as good, or better than 
the Jumpstart tools.  For data center use, there is no comparison to any 
other install tools available for Linux.

It is the interactive user controlled installs that most people see, and 
which the UBUNTU (Canonical) team have really spent some time on.  Red 
hat does both, with emphasis on data center tools.  Therefore, the 
installer that end users of Fedora generally see may not be as polished 
as some of the others.  But underneath, it can play tricks and offer 
features you may never have dreamed of.

In the end, the automated installs are important to professional 
installers and system admins.  The interactive installers are the most 
important part of first time users experience.  This is where distros 
generally differentiate.

As they say, first impressions stick with you.  For me personally, my 
first test of any distro is with automated install tools.  That is why I 
am still here. :)