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LinuxLinks has looked at 15 distros that were popular back in 2006 and looks at where they are now in 2020. These were the ones ranked in the top 15 back then by DistroWatch. The only ones still in the top 15 are Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. Some others like CentOS, Slackware, and Gentoo are still active and have strong communities but no longer listed as high in DistroWatch's somewhat arbitrary1 ranking. Others, like several Ubuntu-based distros occupy the rest of the 2020 top 15.
Back in 2006, Distrowatch ranked the following distributions in terms of page hit ranking1. The top ranked distro was Ubuntu. The other places were taken by openSUSE, Fedora, MEPIS, Mandriva, Damn Small, Debian, PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Gentoo, KNOPPIX, FreeBSD, Kubuntu, VectorLinux, and CentOS.
It's interesting to see how these distributions fared over the past 14 years? Are they still going strong, are they outclassed by other distributions, or are they only remembered like fingerprints on an abandoned handrail?
[...] 1It's important to remember that the page hit ranking has never been an indicator of the popularity of a specific distribution. For a start, it's easy for malicious users to manipulate Distrowatch's page hit ranking. Just as important it cannot possibly reflect the usage of any distribution for many reasons.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zugedneb on Thursday October 22 2020, @02:32PM (2 children)
Back in the days, some longish time ago, sligthly after the time of creation, i was sitting with a P3 that i have looted from a dump somewhere.
These days, the university run SUN or minimal Win XP machines without CD writers, so i could not burn distros there, and i had no internet at home.
I downloaded Vectorlinux (for reasons) to a USB, and used the above mentioned P3 with its resident windows-something to burn the distro. I think it was 95 and Nero Burning Rom, but could have been other...
Anyways, I booted the new CD clicked through the menus, and install started...
Initially the CDROM was busy, then it died down, with the intstall continuing.
After about 15 minutes, I was able to log into a fresh install of Vectorlinux, without the CDROM making a sound, it stayed dead silent after the initiating install menues.
I was so fascinated that I installed it 1 or 2 times just to do a realitycheck.
I was mesmerized, felt religious even, and hopeful, since this was happening some years after the first Matrix movie...
The old computer had no bios option to boot from USB, and the distro was not imaged, it was just an iso file on a FAT filesystem...
It eventually struck me that for reasons of saving time and sanity during testing, the developers might boot from the CD, then let the install continue by opening the iso on a local bootless HDD...
So I installed again, just to check, and alas, the USB stick was faithfully blinking, in the slot on the back of the computer...
. . .
Now to the soap...
While I was doing the install above, I was watching Cowboy Bebop on other computer, while tanking huge amounts of coffee, and smoking like a chimney.
I hade to visit the toilet now and then, and since the good upbringing has not faded yet, I still used to wash my hands.
I had a sligthly clogged sink, and a very thin slice of soap.
I was planning to upgrade the soap anyways, so i threw the soap into the slowly draining water in the sink.
Next time, after taking another piss, i fount the soap standing on edge in the sink...
Yet again, i stood mesmerized, hopeful and curious what the face of god looked like, since i deemed the natural occurrence of such a thing extremely unlikely.
But then, IQ struck again, and I could almost see the soap taking a dive with edge downwards after being thrown into the water at a certain angle...
After some experimenting, with the water depth and angle, i found a configuration where I could plant the now fading soap on its edge 3 out of 4 times, or so.
Slightly disillusioned, I went back to the watching of anime, while drowning in coffee and smoke...
PS. yeah, its not the most fascinating shit u have read, but neither is the OT =)
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday October 22 2020, @03:11PM
I think i just got some second hand smoke high from reading that!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2020, @02:40AM
Looks like the surface of a waffle.