It can't be easy being Fedora, overshadowed by Ubuntu
For the past 12 months Fedora is ranked 4th, for 2006 it was ranked 3rd, for 2005 it was 4th, for 2004 it was 2nd - whereas Ubuntu has been top for quite some time.
Just look at the Google trends results for this time
It makes for grim viewing comparatively:
You can clearly see Fedora as king through 2004 until Ubuntu (the plucky chap in red) started his rise to fame. Towards Q1 of 2005 Ubuntu surpassed Fedora as the most searched Linux distro and it's stayed there.
But Fedora is awesome, right?
I don't have *that* informed a decision on Fedora right now; I have Fedora Core 7 waiting for me at home for whenever I have a free few days to toy with it but I'm told that Fedora is an amazing distro. Powerful, stable and reliable. In my place of work both the previous Technical Manager and the current one claim Fedora is the best release they've tried.
Ubuntu is suffering Googleitus
As with all things that spiral into popularity they experience a strong 'push back' from many users who are jaded by it's newfound popularity. Linux can be as much about the image as it is the freedom; if it becomes popular it stops becoming cool and I think Ubuntu is starting to feel the backlash of the long-standing community.
Although the backlash from the community is certainly less than the new-user adoption.
I don't *really* like Ubuntu
It just doesn't sit well with me for some reason. It's genius and I love the way they've made complicated things really rather obvious but I just can't sit comfortably with Gnome and Kubuntu isn't really the KDE equivalent. This means that I'm still on the quest for a distro to champion. I've always been a big fan of PCLinuxOS so when that reaches full release I'm hoping I'll have something to shout about.
There's so much happening in the Linux world right now, it just sometimes looks like Fedora is being left behind, but stay tuned because I'll be giving FC7 a good old review in the coming week and we'll see just how much life this old dog has.
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