I just read Louis Gray‘s post titled “On the Web, If You’re Not Growing, You’re Dying.” It gave me a chilling realization about web services. Like everything else, what goes up must come down. This must apply to Linux distributions too, right? So, what’s happening with Linux? Which distributions are growing? Like Louis Gray, I’m going to use data from Google Trends. People searching the name of Linux distributions on Google can be considered new users. After all, wouldn’t experienced Linux users already know where the websites of the big Linux distributions are?

Let’s start out with Debian. I’ll note here that if you want to see the Google Trends search results, and not just the screenshot, you can click on the images.

Debian is slowly declining. Has its time passed?

What about Red Hat and Fedora?

Both Red Hat and Fedora are declining, but Fedora has some huge spikes on new releases.

I’m a big OpenSUSE fan. How’s that doing?

While the name SuSE is being searched less, the name OpenSUSE is growing. Searches of OpenSUSE should overtake SuSE pretty soon.

Now, I remember going to Slackware after trying OpenSUSE 11. How’s that doing?

Of course, I didn’t really expect Slackware to be growing.

Now, I’ve been saving the best one for last. What does Ubuntu’s graph look like?

Of course Ubuntu is growing rapidly. What else would you think? But here is where things get shocking.

That’s right. Ubuntu looks like it’s almost ready to overtake Linux as a search term.

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.

So? What’s going to happen to the distributions like Debian and Slackware? I’ll leave that to you.

i80and’s EDIT: While it is true that Ubuntu is increasingly becoming Linux to many people, DistroWatch.com shows that not all is doom and gloom for the “classic” distros; Slackware had been on a rise for the past 6 months as of 07/01/08, as has Debian. However, broadening the statistic query to the past 12 months unsurprisingly shows a generally more neutral growth, with Debian still gaining H.P.D (Hits Per Day) whereas Slackware falls.

possible248′s EDIT: I knew that I was going to get in trouble for using the word “dying” in my post title. I did not mean to say that Debian was going to be wiped off the face of the Earth. What I was really trying to point out was that it was the newer ones that were being searched for, and that Ubuntu is growing at a shocking rate.

Sorry for all the distributions with positive trends that I didn’t cover. I’m also aware that Google Trends isn’t the best place to get data on this topic. My original intention was to show you some of the more interesting parts of the data from Google Trends and then leave you to your own conclusions. Clearly I did not do that properly.

I would also like to thank everybody for their input. We were seen on:

• Digg (222 diggs, 25 comments)
• Reddit (56 points, 63 comments)
• Tuxmachines (529 reads)
• Linux Today (6 talkbacks, 3478 reads)

UPDATE: The reason why there is not a scale on the Y axis is because I took these screenshots when I wasn’t logged in. Sorry for the confusion.