When Linus Torvalds first developed Linux back in August of 1991, the operating system basically consisted of his kernel and some GNU tools. With the help of others Linus added more and more tools and applications.

With time, individuals, university students and companies began distributing Linux with their own choice of packages bound around Linus' kernel. This is where the concept of the "distribution" was born.

Today, creating and selling Linux distributions is a multi-million dollar business. You can buy a boxed version of Linux from companies such as Red Hat, SuSE, MandrakeSoft and others. You can also download Linux from any number of companies and individuals. There are distributions of all types and for practically any kind of computing endeavor. There are versions of Linux that will give you a firewall, will boot the entire operating system from a floppy disk or CD-ROM or can be used to power TV "set-top" boxes.

Below we offer you a "menu" of sorts so you can get more information about Linux distributions developed by individuals, groups or companies. Most are freely downloadable. If you are thinking of downloading and installing a Linux distribution and you have little or no experience with Linux, we suggest you read our section information on downloading Linux.

Distributions Select items from one or more fields to narrow down the list of distributions. If you don't select any criteria, you will get a long list of all distributions. Language All matches English Swedish Spanish Chinese Japanese French German Italian Russian Estonian Finnish Portuguese Turkish Thai Hebrew Arabic Serbian Croatian Bosnian Ukranian Belorussian Polish Bulgarian Norwegian Hungarian Catalan Danish Czech Slovak Category All matches Mainstream/General Public Security enchanced Embedded Minimalist Red Hat based Debian based Runs on MS Windows Power user Personal Slackware based Mandriva based Game Console Live CD Fedora Core based Platform All matches Intel compatible PPC Alpha Sparc Itanium Mainframe m68k Other 64 bit Include unmaintained?

Where to get Linux Find the distribution you are interested in by using the form to the left. Each distribution has a link to a list of locations where it can be downloaded. Linux books, many of which contain a free CD-ROM Vendors selling Linux on CD-ROMs Vendors selling computers pre-installed with Linux Linux Kernel Source Code