Distributions in 2005

Arguably the most exciting event of the year was the announcement by Novell to open up the development of SUSE Linux to public participation. Popular as SUSE has always been, the creation of the openSUSE project has clearly won many new users who have found the attraction of free ISO images, combined with SUSE's reputation for ease of use and excellent administration tools, irresistible. More importantly, many developers, beta testers and volunteer contributors have flocked to openSUSE and several SUSE-based subprojects were born on the project's Wiki-style web site. With reviews overwhelmingly positive, the new SUSE Linux 10.0 can safely be declared a winner in gathering most media attention, as well as attracting many new users in 2005.

Another distribution that has been marching from strength to strength is Ubuntu Linux. Although the project has only just celebrated its first birthday, the success of Ubuntu has demonstrated two interesting phenomena. Firstly, if done right, even a newly created distribution can become enormously popular - without the need to spend a single penny on advertising. Secondly, Linux users aren't particularly attached to a distribution and are quite willing to switch to a new product - if it fits their needs better. The credibility of Ubuntu was also boosted when its sponsor, Canonical Ltd, announced the creation of the $10 million Ubuntu Foundation; the upcoming version 6.04 will be enterprise ready in a sense that security updates will be provided for a minimum period of 5 years.

In contrast, Fedora and Mandriva, the two traditional power houses of the Linux distribution world, have had a relatively quiet year. Partly responsible for this is the fact that both distributions have extended their release cycles - from 6 months to 9 and 12 months, respectively. The September release of Mandriva Linux 2006 attracted mixed reviews in the media; perhaps a victim of its own success and its reputation for being one of the most user-friendly products on the market, the expectations are always high and even the slightest inconsistency or lack of attention to detail tends to result in harsh criticism by the reviewers. And although Mandriva remains a popular and much appreciated operating system, its long release cycle and the increasingly commercial nature of the product will undoubtedly result in some of its more advanced users drifting towards one of the non-commercial, community distributions.

Similarly, the Fedora project has also lost some ground this year, especially on the desktop. The lack of beta testing excitement that used to characterize the third quarter of each year and the relative calm on the project's mailing list (even after the recent release of the first beta of Fedora Core 5) are an indication that some Fedora users might have started looking elsewhere. The project's next stable release of is due in late February, which means that, unlike Ubuntu, which has essentially synchronized its releases with those of the GNOME desktop, it will just miss GNOME 2.14 (scheduled for release on March 15, 2006). That said, Fedora Core 5 will form the basis of the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, so it is expected to be one of the better tested releases, without too many experimental features.

The traditionally more server- and geek-oriented Debian GNU/Linux and Slackware Linux continued in their development work, even producing an odd stable release, which, in case of Debian, is a fairly rare achievement. By some accounts, Debian is the fastest-growing server distribution available today - perhaps a tribute to the project's legendary quality control and stability of the operating system. Both Debian and Slackware stayed with the tried and tested 2.4 kernel series (at least on the i386 platform), while Slackware remained the only major distribution shipping a vanilla kernel with its product. But despite its unusually conservative nature, Slackware continues to have surprisingly strong following, thus confirming that adding extra (and sometimes buggy) bells and whistles might not necessarily be the best way to increase the Linux user base.

Besides the above-mentioned main distributions, dozens of smaller projects continued fighting for the market share with the big boys. We keep getting very positive reports from users of PCLinuxOS and KANOTIX, two free, user-friendly distributions designed for the desktop. Those who wish to bring an older machine or a laptop back to life might consider trying Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux, two small, incredibly fast and light-weight operating systems. And if you ever get tired of Linux, it's nice to know that several exciting alternatives were born during this past year, including Nexenta, a project that attempts to marry the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU and Debian utilities, and PC-BSD, which is building an easy-to-use installer and graphical administration utilities for FreeBSD.

What can we expect in 2006? While Fedora will be the first distribution with a new release in the new year, both SUSE and Ubuntu are already deep in the development of their next versions - expect two new releases from each during the course of the year. Among the commercial projects, Linspire 6.0 and Xandros Desktop 4 should feature in the headlines sometimes during the first half of 2006 as both companies continue in their quests to remove the last barriers of Linux acceptance among non-technical computer users. Mandriva's next new release is only expected in the third quarter of the year, while Debian's current plan is to complete the development of "etch" just before the end of the year. On the enterprise Linux front, both Red Hat and Novell are likely to announce major new releases. With the current trend in municipalities and government offices to migrate parts of their IT infrastructure to Free Software, both are well-positioned to take advantage of these new opportunities.