The Tale of the Dying Distributions

There’s no doubt that the popularity of Ubuntu has been nothing short of overwhelming with Linux geeks and newbies alike. It’s constantly on the number one spot on DistroWatch.com, and new releases are treated like the second coming for many eager Ubuntu fans. But some shocking news accompanies its success.

Though their means of deduction are far from scientific (unless you consider Google Trends terribly reliable), CodingExperiments took a look at the rising and declining search trends for the major distributions. In short, Debian, RedHat and Slackware seem to be declining dramatically, while openSUSE and Fedora seem to either have spikes during releases, or are showing some growth.

It gets interesting when we come to Ubuntu’s history. You might have guessed that it has been growing more than any aforementioned distro, but its trends also show that it will overtake Linux as a search term. In time, this could mean a few interesting changes in the methodology and relevance of separate distributions in the Linux community, but it’s too early to make any drastic predictions.

So, what does this tell us? First of all, Ubuntu is pretty close to being considered the face of Linux. Second, it’s the newer distributions like Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora that new Linux users are going for. Of course, it’s mainly Ubuntu, but I believe that there could be plenty of new users arrinving at the Fedora and OpenSUSE communities if both distributions work hard to become more user friendly.