Which Operating System to Choose? Version 2.0

Which Operating System to Choose? Version 2.0

Almost two years ago, we wrote about choosing an operating system and provided statistics on the usage of various OS among our users. Let’s see how the situation has changed now.

Recall that previously CentOS led by a small margin — at that time it accounted for 39% of installations, with CentOS 6.x being the current version. In second place with 32% of installations were Debian 6 and Debian 7, while Ubuntu was used in 16% of cases. FreeBSD 8 and 9 were chosen by about 10% of our users. Visually, the choice of operating systems in February 2014 looked like this:

• FreeBSD: 10%
• CentOS: 39%
• Debian: 32%
• Ubuntu: 16%
• Other OS: 3%

Has the situation changed now? Yes, undoubtedly. Let’s recall some significant changes in the OS market — new versions of CentOS 7, Debian 8 have been released, Ubuntu has grown to the new LTS version 14.04, support for FreeBSD 8 has ended, and the mainstream version FreeBSD 10 has been released.

As for the choice of operating systems by our users, the current picture is as follows:

• FreeBSD: 3%
• CentOS: 43%
• Debian: 33%
• Ubuntu: 19%
• Windows: 2%

Looking at these numbers, we can draw the following conclusions:

• CentOS, as before, leads. A good choice — a stable OS, convenient package manager, proven versions of used applications.
• The level of Debian installations has remained stable. This distribution has a large number of loyal users. A worthy choice!
• The number of users who chose Ubuntu has grown. This is affected by the large amount of documentation and the use of the latest versions of both application and server software in this distribution.
• The golden age of FreeBSD, unfortunately, has passed. An excellent, very stable operating system, with great capabilities and outstanding performance — but losing popularity to Linux.

How are installations of “new” and “old” versions of operating systems distributed? By “new” we mean Debian 8, CentOS 7, Ubuntu 14, FreeBSD 10, and Windows Server 2012 R2 — these account for almost 30%. Of course, installations of “old” operating systems are numerous — CentOS 5 and 6, Debian 6 and 7, Ubuntu 12 and 13, FreeBSD 9, Windows Server 2008 R2 are used in more than 70% of cases:

• Old Brew: 71%
• New Blood: 29%

Certainly, we regularly receive questions about which operating system to choose. In our opinion, you should just choose the distribution you know how to work with, that you prefer, and that best fits your specific task. Want to experiment? You can always do that on our SSD VDS or dedicated servers — at any moment in the service control panel, you can start the installation of any of the available operating systems, perform tests, and choose the best option for your task. If needed — we are always here to help.

Join us!