Popular distributions
Well-known Linux distributions include:
- Arch Linux, a minimalist rolling release distribution targeted at experienced Linux users, maintained by a volunteer community and primarily based on binary packages in the tar.gz and tar.xz format.
- Debian, a non-commercial distribution maintained by a volunteer developer community with a strong commitment to free software principles
- Canaima, is an open socio-technological project, built and developed in Venezuela, based on Debian.
- Knoppix, the first Live CD distribution to run completely from removable media without installation to a hard disk, derived from Debian
- Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is based directly on Debian's testing distribution.
- Ubuntu, a popular desktop and server distribution derived from Debian, maintained by British company Canonical Ltd.
- BackTrack, based on the Ubuntu operating system. Used for digital forensics and penetration testing.
- Trisquel, A fully free software system without proprietary software or firmware and uses Linux-libre kernel.
- Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu.
- Linux Mint, a distribution based on and compatible with Ubuntu. Supports multiple desktop environments, among others GNOME Shell fork Cinnamon and GNOME 2 fork MATE.
- Xubuntu is the Xfce version of Ubuntu.
- Lubuntu, the LXDE version of Ubuntu, is advertised as a lightweight distribution.
- Fedora, a community distribution sponsored by American company Red Hat
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is a derivative of Fedora, maintained and commercially supported by Red Hat.
- CentOS, a distribution derived from the same sources used by Red Hat, maintained by a dedicated volunteer community of developers with both 100% Red Hat-compatible versions and an upgraded version that is not always 100% upstream compatible
- Oracle Enterprise Linux, which is a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, maintained and commercially supported by Oracle.
- Mandriva, a Red Hat derivative popular in several European countries and Brazil, today maintained by the French company of the same name.
- Mageia, a fork of Mandriva Linux created in 2010 that recently had a quick rise in popularity.
- PCLinuxOS, a derivative of Mandriva, grew from a group of packages into a community-spawned desktop distribution.
- Gentoo, a distribution targeted at power users, known for its FreeBSD Ports-like automated system for compiling applications from source code
- Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, founded in 1993, and since then actively maintained by Patrick J. Volkerding.
- openSUSE a community distribution mainly sponsored by German company SUSE.
- SUSE Linux Enterprise, derived from openSUSE, maintained and commercially supported by SUSE.
- Univention Corporate Server, enterprise Linux distribution with an integrated management system, maintained and supported by the German company Univention.
- DistroWatch attempts to include every known distribution of Linux, whether currently active or not; it also maintains a ranking of distributions based on its own site's page views, as a measure of relative popularity. Whereas other measures of popularity such as Linux Counter use survey data.
