December 26, 2012, 8:29 PM — Between the new innovations that emerge practically every day and the fairly constant rate of change in general, things never stay the same for long in technology.
Case in point: DistroWatch's page hit rankings for Linux distributions. I've covered DistroWatch's top 10 at the end of each of the past two years, and the differences never fail to be striking.
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In September 2010, the top 10 looked like this, as I noted in an article at the time:
1) Ubuntu
2) Fedora
3) Linux Mint
4) openSUSE
5) PCLinuxOS
6) Debian
7) Mandriva
8) Sabayon
9) Arch Linux
10) Puppy Linux
The rankings in 2011
A year later, it was already a very different picture. In late December of 2011, DistroWatch's top 10 looked more like this:
1) Linux Mint
2) Ubuntu
3) Fedora
4) openSUSE
5) Debian
6) Arch Linux
7) PCLinuxOS
8) CentOS
9) Puppy Linux
10) Mandriva
Fast forward to late 2012, and the rankings have changed yet again.
Top 10 for 2012
It should be noted, of course, that DistroWatch lists are simply page hit rankings and therefore are not necessarily indicative of usage or real-world popularity. Nevertheless, as one of the few measures we have here in the Linux community, they're particularly interesting for the changes they reveal over time.
Without further ado, then, here's where things stand in DistroWatch's six-month rankings at the end of 2012.
1. Linux Mint
