Because I personally work with Linux, I often visit Distrowatch. This page is an online catalog of Linux distributions. Thus you can search for the distribution you are interested in and discover whether it meets your needs. The website is updated daily with new releases of distributions as well as open source applications.
To Hit Ranking now that it uses Distrowatch is a method of evaluating interest for the distributions hosted on the website. Essentially the service counts the clicks each distribution receives, highlighting those that interest the most users.
Until recently, the list of the top five Linux distributions for the last semester included the following:
1. Mint
2. Debian
3. Ubuntu
4. openSUSE
5. Manjaro
It should be mentioned that 4 out of the 5 distributions are LTS (provide long-term support), and 2 out of the 5 have (also) Rolling Releases, that is, rolling versions. Of course, we are talking about openSUSE Tumbleweed and Manjaro, which is a fork of Arch.
openSUSE also has an LTS version called Leap.
The first upset appeared in the top five, as Manjaro managed to overtake the established openSUSE distribution.
Thus, the list of the top distributions in the last six months was formed as follows:
| Rank | Distribution | HPD* |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mint | 2770 |
| 2 | Debian | 1811 |
| 3 | Ubuntu | 1422 |
| 4 | Manjaro | 1395 |
| 5 | openSUSE | 1357 |
Personally, I think the above results justify the “new” Manjaro distribution, as I believe it is worth your attention and holds a lot of promise for the future. I use the distribution (basically I use both openSUSE Tumbleweed and Manjaro) , I find it very stable, and I would highly recommend it to users who want to move away from Canonical’s operating system.
Let's see, however, what has happened with the rest of the Distrowatch list. We will see the first 12 distributions.
| 6 | Zorin | 1109 |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | elementary | 1045 |
| 8 | Fedora | 1023 |
| 9 | deepin | 861 |
| 10 | Antergos | 807 |
| 11 | CentOS | 792 |
| 12 | Arch | 728 |
If you are also a fan of Fedora, the list will especially disappoint you because the visually superior Ubuntu-like elementary has overtaken a distribution with a long history.
Also, Zorin in the 6th place may not please me as a friend of the classic operating system, but it makes me think that this particular distribution is used more by newcomers to Linux from Windows, and so it doesn't bother me much, especially since it could mean an increase in user inflow from Microsoft's user database.
In the 13th position there is CentOS, a distribution that I consider among the most reliable for server and desktop environments. The 13th position for such a reliable distribution may indicate the community's need for the latest software releases and new technologies, something that is not offered.
