As part of the contest that was conducted a while back, I got around 200 responses from the geeky readers who choose their favorite Linux distributions.
Based on this data, the top spot in the best Linux distribution list goes to…
Ubuntu
My personal favorite was Ubuntu for desktop (#1 in this list) and Red Hat for servers (#5 in this list).
If you are new to any of the distros listed in the top 5, read the rest of the article to understand little bit more about those distros and find out whether your favorite Linux distribution made it in the top 5.
Fig: Favorite Linux Distribution Voting Results
1. Ubuntu
Like most of you, Ubuntu is my #1 choice for desktop Linux. I use it both at home and work. Ubuntu is the #1 in the Linux desktop market and some use Ubuntu for the servers also. Ubuntu offers the following three editions.
- Ubuntu Desktop Edition
- Ubuntu Server Edition
- Ubuntu Notebook Remix
Additional Details:
- Home Page: http://www.ubuntu.com
- Ubuntu Download Page
- Created by: Canonical Ltd., (who also provides commercial support, if you need it)
- Used As: Desktop and Server
- Latest Version: Ubuntu 9.04
- Read more about Ubuntu Distribution at wikipedia.
Refer to our Ubuntu Tips and Tricks article series.
2. Debian
Debian is also called as Debian GNU/Linux, as most of the basic OS tools comes from the GNU Project. Lot of other famous distributions are based on Debian, which includes our #1 distro Ubuntu and many others — such as Knoppix, Linspire, Damn Small Linux etc.,
Additional Details:
- Home Page: http://www.debian.org/
- Debian Download Page
- Created By: Ian Murdock
- Latest Version: Debian 5.0.1
Read more about Debian Distribution at wikipedia.
3. Fedora
Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat. If you are interested in experimenting with the the leading technologies, you should use fedora, as the release cycle is very short and fedora tends to include the latest technology software/packages in it’s distribution.
Additional Details:
- Home Page: http://www.fedoraproject.org/
- Fedora Download Page
- Created by: Fedora Project (sponsored by Red Hat)
- Latest Version: Fedora 11
- Based On: Red Hat Linux
Read more about Fedora Distribution at wikipedia.
4. CentOS
If your organization does not want to spend money on purchasing Red Hat support, but still want all the benefits of the red-hat distribution, this is obviously the best choice, as this is totally based on the red-hat enterprise Linux.
As you can imagine the Nort American Enterprise Linux vendor mentioned in the quote below is Red Hat.
From the CentOS website: CentOS 2, 3, and 4 are built from publically available open source SRPMS provided by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS is designed for people who need an enterprise class OS without the cost or support of the prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.
Additional Details:
- Home Page: http://www.centos.org/
- CentOS Download Page
- Created by: CentOS Project
- Latest Version: CentOS 5
- Based on: Red Hat Linux
Read more about CentOS Distribution at wikipedia
5. Red Hat
This is my favorite server distribution. If an organization doesn’t mind spending dollars on purchasing the red-hat support, this is always my #1 recommendation to any organization who runs mission critical applications.
On a side note, one of the reason I like Red Hat Linux for mission critical production application is that Red Hat tends to take some of the new features from Fedora, which is well tested by the community.
Additional Details:
- Home Page: http://www.redhat.com/
- Red Hat Download Page
- Created by: Red Hat
- Latest Version: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Read more about Red Hat Distribution at wikipedia.
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My name is Ramesh Natarajan. I will be posting instruction guides, how-to, troubleshooting tips and tricks on Linux, database, hardware, security and web. My focus is to write articles that will either teach you or help you resolve a problem. Read more about 
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RE: Top 5 Best Linux OS Distributions
Linux Mint, a distribution based on Ubuntu didn’t make the top five. Where did it place in your survey?
Regards,
Ken
Gentoo is best for me.
I also think Linux Mint should be between the top five.
i think that we should do the survey separately
for servers and desktops..
i do hands on 2nd,3rd,5th as per ranking as i spend mostly on servers
never tried other ditros
on server front which is best i wanted to know..
Actually I’m somewhat surprised that Ubuntu would be considered the “top” among the geeky readers. Most of the comp sci “geeks” I knew before liked their flavor of Linux for the geek-niche factor and their ability to esoterically modify everything about it. So, I would hear about gentoo or RedHat or some other type of Linux a lot but not Ubuntu because it seemed too easy, too watered-down and too popular.
@Joshua, Maybe it’s because we are getting older (my first true Linux install was Debian 1.3 back in the mid 90s) I used to enjoy spending days working on a new install to get things to work right, install all the apps I needed and tweak things to my taste. But now I need my computer to do work and can’t have it down for days while I get it working properly. Ubuntu installs easily, has large repositories and I haven’t had to struggle with any hardware issues for quite some time. Plus if I recommend this distro to a friend to try, I can easily help out if they have a question since I use it on a daily basis.
…from http://www.userfriendly.org
Pitr [thinking]: What?! The Chief is havink Debian runnink on his machine?! outrageous! Nothink a disk wipe and a Suse install will not be fixink.
Chief: Pitr, What are you doing?
Pitr: Installink Suse on your machine, boss man.
Chief: But why? What difference does it make what flavour is on my machine? The shareholders don’t care, my machine doesn’t care, and I certainly don’t care!
Pitr: You see, boss… every time you are clickink mouse in Suse, you feed small hungry child. Every time you clickink mouse in Debian, God, he is killink a kitten.
Chief: Oh my Lord. I had no idea!
Pitr: Just thank gods that you did not use Red Hat! Clickink mouse each time creates new Linux distro!
…as for myself;
I would have picked ubuntu 8.1 but I up/down graded to 9.04 and I have spent as much effort testing/degugging the O/S as I have spent actually doing my own work. I don’t even have any blacklisted hardware in my machine. But Intrepid Ibex was difficult to find fault with.
Anyway, by definition, this is a poll which indicates what our favorite distro is, as opposed to which distro is actually better. That would require a lesson in software metrics from the ACM. : )
…but it could be done.
After all, we’ve always been able to objectively compare apples to oranges when it comes to windows and linux, right? ; )
So why not bust out the hard/soft/derivitive metrics for a distro comparo? There would be no voting involved, sad to say, cause I do love a good online poll, but it would be an incredibly geeky thing to do.
What I can state, based solely on personal experience, is that Knoppix has never (ever) let me down. Using Knoppix for recovery purposes has saved my data everytime.
Knoppix +1 YAy
@All,
Here is the full listing of all the distros that were mentioned as favorite by the users in the contenst.
1. Ubuntu 81
2. Debian 31
3. CentOS 18
4. Fedora 18
5. Red Hat 12
6. Arch Linux 11
7. SUSE 10
8. Slackware 8
9. Gentoo 6
10. Mandriva 4
11. Mepis 3
12. Sabayon 2
13. PCLinux 2
14. Backtrack 2
15. Damn Small Linux 2
16. Mint 1
17. Knoppix 1
18. PrestoMyPC 1
@KenW, Rafael,
As you see in the above ranking, Linux Mint came almost at the bottom. Just both of your votes would’ve pushed it up in the ranking.
@Srinivas,
I agree. I’m pretty sure that most folks who voted for Ubuntu are using it as desktop. Probably a separate server for desktop and servers may show a different results. We’ll conduct such survey in the blog very soon. Thanks.
@Joshua,
Like Scott has mentioned, it is just too easy to set it up and running. Moreover, Ubuntu is the famous distro among the newbies. Since I didn’t separate desktop vs server distro in the contest, it is no surprise Ubuntu came on the top.
@Scott,
You installed Debian in mid 90’s? mm.. You are definitely as wise as Master Yoda. In mid 90’s I was playing around with Solaris. You are absolutely right about Ubuntu, for some of my non-geeky (read it as — Microsoft, self proclaimed geeks) friends, who wants to know what is all the hype about Linux, I recommend Ubuntu to them.
@cronjob,
Very hillarious discussion between Chief and Pitr.
You are absolutely right. This list shows only the favorite disto. But technically may not be the best.
It would be interesting to create a poll where every disto can be rated based on features, technical-aspects, functionalities. What are the different technical-aspects you would consider for every distro to be rated, if we have to create such poll?
Hello Ramesh:
Thanks for putting the onus on the customer. : )
Have you ever worked for IBM? ; )
That’s a nice push back though Ramesh. I ask for metrics, and you ask me to get some. lol
(In all actuality, I like the fact that you respond to the geeks that frequent this board. Many such boards put out the info but, give no clue as to whether or not there is anybody who cares on the other side of the web site.)
Anyway, I will start digging.
tayl
Hi
what you told is right. But what happened to linuxmint.
Ubuntu really tops in desktop edition and it is really easy to use than other linux edition
@cronjob,
I never worked for IBM. But, I’ve worked closely with IBM/KPMG/E&Y consultants on different projects. Sometimes putting onus on the customer may be a good thing, which gives the opportunity for the customer to think about their business.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to push that back onto you. I’m really interested in finding out what kind of metrics you would be interested in seeing. Thanks for start digging on it. Let me know what you find out.
@Vivek,
Thanks for the comment. Like I’ve mentioned to “KenW and Rafael”, Mint got only one vote and just three of your additional votes would’ve pushed Mint from the bottom to a reasonable level.
Please tell me what is different between each of distributions?
Fedora is my personal favorite, then Arch, then Backtrack.
GENTOO IS BEST
Ubuntu was with i started off with like 3 years back… like one fine day, i had my Windows machine go kaput on me and i was actly tired of the constant reinstallations… so those three days in which i didnt bother to touch my computer, i introduced myself to Ubuntu.. and my word, was i hooked..
i had used Red Hat and Fedora in college. But i didnt know their capabilities.. still dont..
Now around a month back, i have started off exploring Sabayon 4.2 . it looks great, plays great, media and devices work outta the box.. but a lot of the deal is like totally messed up, you can get to points where you end up in dead ends. i want to try something else now… tired of what sabayon is offering.. is it back to ubuntu for me or can you guys suggest me onto something?
For a light-weight distro that runs fast and does most anything people do on a laptop I would say GOS. It’s Ubuntu based but the performance is much faster.
For a full brown distro Ubuntu is nice because it has so many users, great forums, very stable. This is an opensource distro however and you need to add proprietary software to get some common desktop/application features working. Mepis is a really nice distro out of the box that performs most of what you would do on a computer without modification. Suse is stable and easy to work with. Its a bit bulky however and has performance issues on older machines. Fedora is nice but not the most user friendly distro. Mandriva is comparable to Fedora in terms of user experience in my mind. Sabyon is interesting, very cutting edge but a bit unstable and has more hardware compatibility issues than other distros.
Whatever distro you choose perform a search for “distro name perfect desktop” and you’ll find guides to customize the distro (for major distros). http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-gos-3.0-gadgets for example.
http://distrowatch.com/ is a good source of information on Linux distros.
Good luck and thanks to the many developers, hacks and geeks that provide us so many great choices.
I’m a lifelong Windows user that was just recently introduced to the world of Linux. I’m glad there is a FREE alternative the the $400 for upgrades Microsoft is demanding for a product key for Windows 7…
Anyway, I’m currently using Xubuntu, which is a spinoff of Ubuntu with the Xfce desktop environment. I like it a lot. I tried Mint, Fodera, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, SUSE, and a couple of others. For me, Xubuntu was the easiest, most flexible, and most customizable. Or, I finally got the hang of Gnome by the time I got to Xubuntu…
I’m a newbie on linux. Any advice on what distro should I use on laptop?..
My vote for Ubuntu.
At Ijes16: I would DEFINITELY recommend EITHER Ubuntu or Mint. Both are extremely easy to install as a dual boot (if you choose to keep Windows or OS X on your computer), both are plug-n-play (hardware drivers are automatically detected and loaded, so your stuff just… works), and both are beautiful OS’s with highly customisable GUI’s. Have fun and let us know what you decide and how its working out for you.
I’ve gone thru a vigorous search for the best linux distros 2010 regarding ease of use and functionality as well as its looks. for any windows users especially, who wana try out wat linux is, i recommend the following:
1. JoliCloud ( I loved its concept, its like using iPhone with big tabs and icons.)
2. Linux Mint 8 ( easy to use and pretty)
3. Pardus 2009.1 (best KDE desktop so far and stable with nice collection of software)