Linux distributions are numerous and diverse, and choosing between them can be a complicated process; it is often useful to compare Linux distributions. Each distribution is different, and the project goals address varying vendor and end-user needs. Broadly, Linux distributions may be:
1. commercial or non-commercial;
2. designed for enterprise or for home usage;
3. designed for servers, desktops, or embedded devices;
4. targeted at regular users or power users;
5. general purpose or highly specialized toward specific machine functionalities, for example firewalls, network routers, and compute clusters;
6. designed and even certified for specific hardware and computer architectures;
7. targeted at specific user groups, for example through language internationalization and localization, or through inclusion of many music production or scientific computing packages.
Well-known Linux distributions include:
* Ubuntu, a rapidly growing desktop distribution maintained by the company Canonical that is derived from Debian, and currently the most popular distribution among desktop users.[45]
* Slackware, one of the first Linux distributions, founded in 1993, and since then actively maintained by Patrick J. Volkerding
* Debian, a non-commercial distribution maintained by a volunteer developer community with a strong commitment to free software principles
* Red Hat, maintained by the American company of the same name, which also provides a community version in the form of Fedora Core
* Mandriva, a Red Hat derivative popular in France and Brazil, today maintained by the French company of the same name
* SuSE, originally derived from Slackware with the system management software borrowed from Red Hat, maintained by the company Novell
* Gentoo, a distribution targeted at power users, known for its FreeBSD Ports-like automated system for compiling applications from source code
* Knoppix, a LiveCD distribution that runs completely from removable media and without installation to a hard disk
* Linspire, a commercial desktop distribution based on Debian, and once the defendant in the Microsoft vs. Lindows lawsuit over its former name.
That multiple Linux distributions peacefully coexist severely limits the possibility of anti-competitive lawsuits comparable to those filed in the United States v. Microsoft and European Union v. Microsoft trials; these lawsuits exposed the danger to a sole company that extends its monopoly through vendor lock-in by controlling not only an operating system installed on the vast majority of computers but also an important collection of software that runs under that operating system. One inconvenience of this system is that the definition of a Linux operating system is somewhat unclear. Linux may be seen as either an operating system unto itself, or a family of operating systems, one for each distribution. The important point is that most Linux software is compatible across all major distributions, even at the binary level, and that only distribution-specific software will not work with another distribution.
