The popularity of individual Linux distributions has always piqued the interest of the Linux community. Every year, new ones emerge, with some gaining popularity at the expense of others losing it for various reasons. In other words, the popularity of different Linux distributions is dynamic and challenging to track metrics.
For many years, Distrowatch has been used as an example in measuring this factor. However, the metric used there, unique page views of a specific Linux distribution, is hard to accept without reservation, even though it provides a good indication of popularity.
So our team decided to take a new approach, using publicly available data on the number of Reddit (subreddits) community members. It is the world’s leading social news aggregation platform, with around 430 million users.
Users can join a specific community of interest, and we focused our attention on the communities of individual Linux distributions. Therefore, the indicator that a user has explicitly stated an interest in joining one of the many Linux communities available can be used to compare the popularity of particular Linux distributions with high confidence.
The Most Popular Linux Distributions, According to Reddit’s Communities Data
The results, which are accurate as of January 1, 2023, while expected, surprised us slightly. So, without further ado, let us share them with you.
Our research showed that Arch Linux is the most popular Linux distribution on Reddit, with 226K community members, followed by Ubuntu, which has 209K users. Moreover, these two distributions outperform everyone else, with a more than 50% difference to the third, and so on.
When it comes to third place, the huge surprise is that it is held by the Tails subreddit with 91K members, overtaking names like Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian, etc. It is a privacy-focused Linux distro intended for security paranoids looking for maximum personal security and anonymity on the Internet. This indicates how much privacy matters to the Linux community.
The table below ranks the top 30 Linux distributions by the number of Reddit community members.
| Linux Distribution | Members | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arch Linux | 226K |
| 2 | Ubuntu | 209K |
| 3 | Tails | 91K |
| 4 | Fedora | 76.3K |
| 5 | Linux Mint | 72.7K |
| 6 | Kali | 69.1K |
| 7 | Manjaro | 67.7K |
| 8 | Debian | 60.9K |
| 9 | Pop!_OS | 58.5K |
| 10 | Red Hat | 29.5K |
| 11 | openSUSE | 24.3K |
| 12 | elementary OS | 23.1K |
| 13 | Gentoo | 21.7K |
| 14 | CentOS | 16.4K |
| 15 | SteamOS | 14.9K |
| 16 | NixOS | 11.9K |
| 17 | Solus | 11.2K |
| 18 | Void Linux | 10.4K |
| 19 | Kubuntu | 9.7K |
| 20 | EndeavourOS | 8.5K |
| 21 | Rocky Linux | 6.5K |
| 22 | MX Linux | 6.3K |
| 23 | Zorin OS | 5.7K |
| 24 | KDE Neon | 5.5K |
| 25 | Lubuntu | 5.1K |
| 26 | Xubuntu | 4.9K |
| 27 | Slackware | 4.7K |
| 28 | AlmaLinux | 3.8K |
| 29 | Ubuntu MATE | 3.6K |
| 30 | GarudaLinux | 3.6K |
We’re sure you have something to say regarding the data presented here. So, your comments are always appreciated in the section below.
In addition, we recommend you to read our articles on the best desktop and server distributions for the year 2022, as ranked by us.
Arch Number One!
No it’s Android
Here is a link to the Reddit post with a link to the spreadsheet with the full rankings: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/100s7dr/distro_rankings_by_reddit_popularity/
I’m using Linux since 1998 and tried so many flavors 🙂 Now I’m an happy Arch user since 2017 and for sure my hop and back for trying different distros is over!
You wrote “Arch is the most popular Linux distribution based on the number of members in individual Linux communities on Reddit”, well it only shows for me that Arch users are those who want to understand the most their OS, not that Arch is the most popular. Arch users like to understand what’s under the hood and tweak or repair — does it broke? — their OS so they are more incline to ask the community. Unlike other users, Arch users prefer to understand their OS than the desinstall/install/reeinstall paradigm for nothing…
In that order of thinking, Debian is the most used.
If you include the flavors (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Mate), it adds up to 232.3K. This would make Ubuntu the most popular distribution, since those flavors are inherently part of the distro. Granted, there are probably a few thousand people who are members of both one of the flavors and the main community, so this is probably not valid.
When you add the Ubuntu derivatives (Mint and Pop), you get 363.5K. Arch and its derivatives (Manjaro, EndeavourOS, and Garuda) add up to 305.8.
Also quoting:
“In that order of thinking, Debian is the most used.”
Steam Os is an Arch derivative.