Linux Distributions

Since Linux is free and most of the software for Linux is free there has to be someone to put the operating system and the software packages together. Red Hat is currently the most popular company that makes a Linux distribution, but there are many more. Some of the more common ones are Red Hat, Caldera, Debian, Mandrake, SuSE, Beowulf, Peanut Linux. Many of these distributions can be found on more than one processor chip. Supported chips include: the Intel 86 line, Sparc, MIPS, Alpha, PPC, m68k, etc. While there are many distributions, the one thing that they have in common is that they all use a Linux kernel. Basically the only real difference between the distributions is the software that comes with Linux and the default settings. You can find many of the popular distributions at http://www.cheapbytes.com/.