Linux Distribution in 2007 overview

farishaziqi

It's that time of the year when DistroWatch looks back at the past 12months and asks: what was it like to be part of the open sourcesoftware community in 2007? Was it the year of Linux on the desktopyet? Were there any unexpected surprises? And did Linux or other opensource operating systems help you accomplish your computing tasks? Orwas there something that could have been done better?

Perhaps the most fitting description of 2007 would be "the year ofincreased polish of desktop Linux". While in previous yearsdistributions seemed to concentrate on delivering exciting new featuresand grand enhancements, the last 12 months were somewhat more sedate inthis department. Instead, all major distributions focused onincremental improvements of existing features, small usabilityenhancements, and general desktop polish. Ubuntu was the obvioustrend-setter as it continued to attack the desktop, but Fedora alsosurprised a few people with its sudden dedication to impress users withdesktop art. Most other distributions also made an effort here and thewords like "beautiful desktop" are now a standard item on the featurelists of all major distributions.

                Ubuntucontinued its determined march towards world desktop domination. As ithad promised, it published two stable releases (7.04 "Feisty Fawn" and7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon") and, towards the end of the year, it also startedworking on its second LTS (Long-Term Support) release, version 8.04"Hardy Heron". Both of its 2007 releases were well received by thereviewers, although some end users still complained about variousissues when trying to upgrade from one version to another. Qualitycontrol seems to have improved as well - the project has avoided thekind of bad publicity it suffered in 2006 when a simple security updaterendered many computers unbootable. The popularity of Ubuntu was alsoreflected by an increasing number of derivative distributions.

                The openSUSE
project had a mixed year. It only produced one release (version 10.3),which was a definite improvement over the package management fiasco ofsome of the earlier 10.x releases the previous year, but the end usersstill reported a rather high number of bugs. Nevertheless, openSUSEremains one of the best-loved distributions on the market, which itdemonstrated by finishing second (behind Ubuntu) in the annual DesktopLinux.com survey, while on DistroWatch.com it is the third most often used open source operating system (after Ubuntu and Debian).

               
Fedora was perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the year. Its two releases(versions 7 and 8) were well-received by reviewers and end users alikeas it continued on its well-established, but highly innovativedevelopment path. Its new artwork team in particular deserves highmarks for its work, but the effort spent merging the "core" and"extras" repositories before Fedora 7 and the growth of the volunteerdeveloper community were equally impressive. The well-oiled Livna.orgrepository, maintaining a large quantity of non-free software andpatent-encumbered media codecs, continued to deliver what Fedoracouldn't. But despite all these positives, the distribution still failsto attract first-time Linux users who sometimes complain about the lackof a central configuration utility or the overly technical nature ofthe operating system.

               
Mandriva seems to have finally turned the page. For once, the headlinesfeaturing the French company were less about the lay-offs and financialtroubles and more about business deals and new products. Like Ubuntuand Fedora, it too published two new releases - Mandriva Linux 2007.1was a minor update over its previous version, while its version 2008was a brand new release. Concentrating less on features and more onpolish, this latest release was a winner among the new and intermediateusers, while the company continued to make advancements simplifying itsweb site infrastructure and product line-up. The old Mandriva Club thathad split the community is all but history. Mandriva Linux, once adominant desktop distro, made a major progress towards regaining theusers' trust in 2007 and if it continues on this path, we might seesome interesting distro usage shifts in the coming year.

                Debian
GNU/Linux had a quiet second half of the year after the release rushleading to version 4.0 "Etch" in April 2007. This was a majorbreakthrough for Debian as it was the project's first releasedefaulting to the 2.6 kernel series and the first one that included agraphical installer. On the negative side, despite the fact that allthe bickering over the Dunc-Tank experiment subsided in the second halfof the year, the excellent Debian Weekly News failed to return to life.Next on the project's agenda: Debian "Lenny". Scheduled for release inSeptember 2008, talk about freezing the testing tree has alreadystarted. Will we finally see an orderly Debian release in 2008?

                As for other main distributions,
Slackware Linux continued its quiet existence - little changed during the 15 orso years since it was conceived. It made just one release in 2007(version 12.0), which was reflected by the solitary(!) news update onits web site. Luckily though, the Slackware "Current" changelog keepsmoving as fast as ever. In the meantime, Gentoo Linux had another disappointing year. It was the first time in theproject's history that it managed just one stable release in a calendaryear (assuming that no new version shows up before 31 December), whileits news page offered only marginally more updates than Slackware's.The excellent Gentoo Weekly News was quietly abandoned in the secondhalf of the year. Once a highly respected and rapidly evolvingdistribution, Gentoo Linux is now increasingly a niche product -technically excellent, but nowhere near as enticing as it was just afew years ago.

                Which of the smaller distributions shined this year? Enough has been said already about PCLinuxOS
,an unlikely distribution that ends the year 2007 on top ofDistroWatch's Page Hit Ranking statistics. Perhaps one distributionthat arguably deserves most the "biggest mover and shaker" title of theyear is Linux
Mint
. This unpretentious project achieved more in one year than many better established distros in several, especially in its ability to attractless technical computer users and convert them to Linux. Granted, LinuxMint is mostly Ubuntu with a new face, some desktop enhancements and ahandful of administration tools, but the sheer enthusiasm of itsdevelopers and community make up for any shortcomings of the smallproject. The second operating system worth mentioning here is
PC-BSD;like Linux Mint, it has grown by heaps and bounds in terms of work thatturned an ultra-geek operating system into a real BSD desktopalternative.

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[ Last edited by  farishaziqi at 18-12-2007 07:29 PM ]