[arch-general] OT: "Major distributions" (WAS: Re: [arch-dev-public] Migration to systemd)

[Oon-Ee Ng]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 12:39 AM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
> That's about it. As you see, I included Arch up there. As far as I can
> see, after Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and openSuSE (in no particular
> order), Arch has been number 6 on the list of "major Linux
> distributions" (excluding professional stuff like SLES or RHEL) for
> several years.

Reminds me of some of the sports in the Olympics (or even the major
football leagues in Europe). The gap between the top X (in this case,
the threesome of Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora) and the rest is VERY
large. Based on number of users, number of developers, FULL-TIME and
paid developers, and brand recognition.

> What I am trying to say is: It no longer suffices to say "we follow the
> major distributions" when making a decision, as Arch itself is a major
> distribution now.

Depends on your definition of 'major'. As a 'true' community-driven
ie. no consistent funding and volunteer-operated distro Arch will
probably never be in the position to define the terms of conversation.