Linux Distributions

Many people are curious about various Linux Distributions available.Some of the widely used Linux Distributions available in market are given below.Its worth reading about Red Hat distributions, enterprise and open source versions both.

• Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/
• CentOS http://www.centos.org/
• Scientific Linux  https://www.scientificlinux.org/
• Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/
• openSUSE http://www.opensuse.org/en/
• Debian http://www.debian.org/
• Mandriva http://www2.mandriva.com/
• Linux Mint http://linuxmint.com/
• PCLinuxOS http://www.pclinuxos.com/
• Slackware http://www.slackware.com/
• Gentoo Linux http://www.gentoo.org/
• FreeBSD http://www.freebsd.org/
• openSolaris http://www.opensolaris.com/

Also vist http://www.distrowatch.com  for information on several hundred distributions

DistroWatch is a website which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions 

RedHat Linux,Fedora,RHEL and Centos

• Red Hat Linux

Red Hat Linux, assembled by the company Red Hat, was a popular Linux based operating system until its discontinuation in 2004 Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994. It was originally called "Red Hat Commercial Linux Red launched various other version like 2.0 3.0...8.0 and Red Hat Linux 9, the final release, hit its official end-of-life on 2004-04-30. Since 2003, Red Hat has discontinued the Red Hat Linux line in favour of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for enterprise environments.

• Fedora

Fedora, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat, is the free version best suited for home use. Red Hat Linux 9,the final release, hit its official end-of-life on 2004-04-30, although updates were published for it through 2006 by the Fedora Legacy project until that shut down in early 2007.

Fedora Releases

• Fedora Core 1–4
• Fedora Core 5–6
• Fedora 7
• Fedora 8
• Fedora 9
• Fedora 10
• Fedora 11
• Fedora 12
• Fedora 13

Fedora Core v/s Fedora 

Starting with Fedora 7, there is no more Core, and no more Extras; there is only Fedora.That is the biggest difference between Fedora Core 6 and Fedora 7 was the merging of the Red Hat "Core" and Community "Extras" repositories,and the new build system put in place to manage those packages.This release used entirely new build and compose tools that enabled the user to create fully-customized Fedora distributions that could also include packages from any third party provider.

• CentOS

CentOS(Community ENTerprise Operating System) is a community-supported, mainly free software operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform.CentOS developers use Red Hat's source code to create a final product very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat's branding and logos are changed because Red Hat does not allow them to be redistributed.CentOS is available free of charge. CentOS provides Technical Support through official mailing lists, web forums, and chat rooms. 

•  Scientific Linux 

SL is a Linux release put together by Fermilab,CERN and various other labs and universities around the world. Its primary purpose is to reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base for the various experimenters.This product is derived from the free &  open source software made available by Red Hat Inc., but is not produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat. Specifically, this product is built from the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions, under the terms and conditions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux's EULA and the GNU GPL.

The base SL distribution is basically Enterprise Linux, recompiled from source.Main goal for the base distribution is to have everything compatible with Enterprise, with only a few minor additions or changes.It allows easy customization for a site, without disturbing the Scientific Linux base. The various labs are able to add their own modifications to their own site areas. By the magic of scripts, and the anaconda installer, each site is to be able to create their own distributions with minimal effort. Or, if a users wishes, they can simply install the base SL release.