[lug] Most widely used Linux distributions?

[cool at eklektix.com]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2000 at 11:30:31AM -0600, Brian Jarrett wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> My company is needing to test some of its software for Linux support.  Right
> now the developers have been working with Red Hat because it's common and
> with Corel Linux because we have had specific needs for it.  I want to focus
> the test lab on the other common distributions used.  Do you know of any
> surveys that have been done to see which distributions are used the most
> worldwide?  
> 
> I'm thinking that the top ones would be (in no particular order):
> 
> Red Hat
> Debian
> Slackware
> Caldera
> Mandrake
> Suse
> 
> TIA,
> Brian Jarrett
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
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Numbers off the Tucows mirror sites give some data in that direction,
though obviously not 100% accurate, since there might be a different
user profile between Tucows downloads and other popular download
sites.  We provided links to a couple of Tucows download reports
(regularly listed in the LinuxJournal) in the 
May 4th LWN Distributions Summary:

    http://lwn.net/2000/0504/dists.phtml

It is not broken out by US/international downloads but includes
Red Hat, Linux-Mandrake, Corel, Debian, SuSE, Slackware and Caldera
among top downloads.  Other distributions that make it onto the
charts occasionally include Yellow Dog Linux and Stormix.  From
other information I have that looks at non-US downloads specifically,
LinuxPPC, Phat Linux and WinLinux are other distributions that show
up with significant download activity.

Note that download activity for a given month is always biased
towards recently released distributions and therefore biased against
distributions that do not release as frequently.  Lots of other
biases can creep in as well, such as distributions that provide
their own good mirroring system (such as Debian) are less likely
to be represented well in general download sites, etc.

Anyway, I hope the information above is somewhat useful.  Your
note reminds me to prod Tucows to send along information from more
recent months.

Good luck!

Liz Coolbaugh (for the LWN team)
cool at lwn.net