DistroWatch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DistroWatch is a popular Web site which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open-source operating systems such as OpenSolaris and BSD. It now contains information on several hundreds of distributions.

The site maintains extensive comparison charts detailing differences between the package sets and software revisions of different distributions. It also provides some general characteristics of distributions such as the price and the supported processor architectures.

1 Accuracy
2 Example data
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Accuracy

It was originally published on May 31, 2001, and is maintained by Ladislav Bodnar.^[1] Despite Bodnar saying "I'd like to believe that there is some truth in the figures, but in all honesty, they really don't mean all that much and should not be taken very seriously"^[2], DistroWatch's statistics are often cited as a guide to the popularity of various distributions. Its "page hit counter" has been called "the best 'barometer' of Linux distributions on the Internet" ^[3].

It has been pointed out that DistroWatch's system is prone to ballot stuffing, and certain distros have been accused of attempting this^[4].

[edit] Example data

Top 10 Distros (updated on the 23rd of March 2007)
Major Distros	Last 12 Months	Last 6 Months	Last 3 Months	Last 30 Days
1. Ubuntu	Ubuntu	Ubuntu	Ubuntu	Ubuntu
2. Mandriva	OpenSUSE	OpenSUSE	OpenSUSE	PCLinuxOS
3. OpenSUSE	Fedora	Fedora	PCLinuxOS	OpenSUSE
4. Fedora	MEPIS	PCLinuxOS	Fedora	Fedora
5. Debian	PCLinuxOS	MEPIS	MEPIS	MEPIS
6. Gentoo Linux	Mandriva	Mandriva	Debian	Sabayon
7. Slackware	Debian	Debian	Sabayon	Debian
8. Knoppix	Damn Small Linux	Sabayon	Mandriva	Mandriva
9. MEPIS	Slackware	Damn Small Linux	Damn Small Linux	Linux Mint
10. Xandros	Knoppix	Slackware	Knoppix	Damn Small Linux