Too many distros

From time to time I come across a popular idea, “The problem with Linux is there are too many distros”. My guess is that is not a problem at all. Of all the distros out there, there are perhaps 5 viable choices. The rest are niche and one offs that hardly capture anyones attention. Is 5 too many? Perhaps, but think it through.

First, let’s decide which distros are the 5 that matter.

1. Ubuntu (Hands down the most popular distro at the current time)
2. RedHat (Has good name recognition)
3. Suse (Has somehow managed to get it’s name out there, despite it’s inferior product)
4. Debian (It doesn’t take one long to run across Debian these days, especially since most of the one offs, Ubuntu included, mention somewhere that they are Debian derived)
5. Gentoo (Despite what some people think about Gentoo, it remains quite popular…I would suggest for good reason)

The only time having too many choices is bad would be when one is first starting out. The person hears about Linux and decides to give it a try. Depending on the persons mind set, the choices are limited yet again. 1. They are afraid that it will be hard, and will beat them. Those people will probably migrate toward the top of my list. 2. Those that are setting out to prove themselves would probably migrate toward the bottom.

Now the list is either 3 distros long or 2 depending on mind set. For the timid, I think a short perusal of the web will lead them to conclude that Ubuntu is the clear choice. For the latter group it’s a little more muddled, but ultimately it’s a choice between TWO distros…not 350 as it is sometimes couched. That person, will likely cruise the web, look at the sites of the two…decide Gentoo is more hardcode and try it. That person will either succeed or fail, and then the choice becomes one distro. Failures go to Debian, successes go to Gentoo.

All in all, overwhelming distro choice seems like a red herring.

Note, I AM NOT SAYING ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE DISTRO. I am trying to walk through what I think would happen if I wanted to start using Linux today.

This necessarily leads us to the question “Well then, what the hell is wrong with Linux?”. Another post perhaps.