January 21st, 2017

It’s ‘Best Linux Distro’ Time Again

Who’s going to get bragging rights this year? Last year it was Arch. The year before it was Ubuntu. Call out the troops and get bragging rights by making your favorite our “Best Linux Distro.”

The FOSS Force Readers’ Choice Awards Poll

Update: The voting on the first “qualifying” round of our Best Linux Distro poll closed on Saturday, January 28. We have replaced that poll in this article with the Best Linux Distro final round poll. Results from the first round of polling can be found on our Completed Polls page.

It’s time to start the process of choosing the FOSS Force Readers’ Choice Award winner for Best Desktop Linux Distro for 2016. This is the third outing for our annual poll, which began in a March, 2015 contest that was won by Ubuntu, which bested runner-up Linux Mint by only 11 votes. Last year we moved the voting up to January, in a contest which saw Arch Linux as the overall winner, with elementary OS in second place.

Just like last year, this year’s polling will be a two round process. The first round, which began early Friday afternoon when the poll quietly went up on our front page, is a qualifying round. In this round, we’re offering a field of 19 of the top 20 distros on Distrowatch’s famous “Page Hit Ranking” list. Those whose favorite distro isn’t on the list shouldn’t worry — your distro’s not out of the game yet. Below the poll there’s a place to write-in any distro that’s not in the poll to be tallied for possible inclusion in the second and final round of polling to follow.

Our admittedly unscientific poll is basically a fun way to add a little good natured competition between the distros and their users, as the grand prize basically amounts to bragging rights. This isn’t to say we don’t learn something in the process. Last year’s win by Arch, for example, spoke to an incredibly active community around the distro.

Which of the GNU/Linux distros listed below would you choose to win the FOSS Force ‘Best Desktop Distro’ Award for 2016? Arch (20%, 1,621 Votes)

elementary (15%, 1,251 Votes)

PCLinuxOS (10%, 857 Votes)

Slackware (8%, 678 Votes)

Solus (8%, 616 Votes)

Linux Mint (7%, 576 Votes)

Manjaro (5%, 431 Votes)

Ubuntu (5%, 393 Votes)

Debian (4%, 327 Votes)

Fedora (4%, 296 Votes)

Antergos (3%, 274 Votes)

openSUSE (3%, 242 Votes)

Ubuntu MATE (1%, 118 Votes)

MX Linux (1%, 113 Votes)

Xubuntu (1%, 99 Votes)

KDE neon (1%, 98 Votes)

Gentoo (1%, 92 Votes)

Devuan (1%, 53 Votes)

BunsenLabs (0%, 27 Votes)

OpenMandriva (0%, 14 Votes) Total Voters: 8,176 Loading ... Loading ...

It was evident to us almost immediately after the first round of voting began that members of the Arch community were making a considerable effort to get the vote out for their distro — meaning that last year’s win was in some ways a testimony to the distro’s strong community support. The same was true with the second place winner, elementary OS, where the community got actively involved in the voting process.

Here’s how it works: The voting for the first qualifying round will end at noon eastern time on Saturday, January 28. On Monday, January 30, after counting both the votes from our poll and the separate write-in votes, we will publish a second and final round poll which will include the ten top vote getting distros from round one to determine the FOSS Force Readers’ Choice Award winner for Best Linux Distro of 2016. The final round poll will close February 6 and the winner will be officially announced the next day. There will be no write-in votes in the final round of polling.

We will be attempting, as much as we can, to limit the voting to one vote per person. Our polling software will automatically limit the vote by IP address and the use of a non-tracking cookie. However, because the software we’re using for the “write in” votes isn’t equipped to limit voting in this manner, we will filter the write-in votes by IP address before counting, and only count the first two votes from each IP address. This means that voters in a group write-in campaign should vote from separate locations instead of all voting at a central location like, say, the workplace.

Voting rules and other information: To vote in the main poll there is no need to fill out the captcha. Simply mark your vote and click on the “Vote” button. Write-in voters must complete the captcha after typing the distro name into the text box. Write-in votes for distros that are included in our poll will not be counted. You are allowed to vote both in the poll and to submit a write-in vote if you desire. Write-in votes must be for a traditional GNU/Linux desktop distribution. Votes for BSD operating systems, Android and other mobile operating systems, or distros designed to run only on single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi will not be counted.

Let the voting begin…