“Ask any Linux aficionado, the platform’s primary strength lies
in its flexibility and versatility. While the most obvious example
is how Google built the Android mobile operating system on top of
the Linux kernel, there are many customized operating systems that
are dedicated to specific types of hardware or platforms that have
Linux at their core. Some distributions are also specifically
designed to target certain types of users or to solve a very
specific task. While the well-known ones, such as Canonical’s
Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Mandriva are great
server and desktop distributions and can probably handle most
conceivable system administration tasks, some people just prefer
having an operating system that does one thing and does it
well.There are Linux flavors dedicated to multimedia editing, network
monitoring, security testing, and basic system administration
functions. Many of these are based on Debian or Ubuntu, but others
have been built from scratch. For this slide show, eWEEK has found
some interesting specialized Linux distributions that can make the
IT administrators’ day a little bit easier.