Evans Research Survey Says 77% of Linux Developers Prefer Red Hat

By Michael Hall,
LinuxToday

Research firm Evans Data has released a survey of Linux
developers indicating that the majority of those surveyed selected
Red Hat Linux as the most likely distribution for use with web
servers or web application servers. The survey involved over 300
Linux developers interviewed in January of 2001, of which 77.2%
chose Red Hat Linux. 3.5 times more than the number two choice of
distributions.

Behind Red Hat were:

• SuSe Linux OS and Mandrake, tied for second with 21.8%
  each
• Caldera Open Linux third at 21.4%
• FreeBSD at fourth with 20.4%.

The survey compared 15 different distributions including Debian
GNU Linux which garnered 17.7%, Slackware with 12.5%, TurboLinux
with 11.2%, and Corel Linux OS with only 7.8%.

According to the company, developers were allowed more than one
choice for this question, and the average respondent selected
approximately 2.3 distributions.

The Linux Developer Survey consists of over 300 in-depth
interviews with Linux developers conducted in February 2001. This
survey series covers such issues as what languages and Linux
distributions they are using, what type of apps they are creating
for servers and for clients, how many Linux apps will be released
next year, what are the major obstacles to Linux and to OSS, how do
they rate different types development tools for Linux and how tied
into the OSS movement they are.

The complete table of contents for the survey is located at
www.evansdata.com/Linux01TOC.htm