The 5 Most Important Linux Projects of 2012

It goes without saying that my list would be different that Carla's. Lists like these are subjectives. Having said that, the case she makes for each of her five choices is a good one and she makes good points throughout.

I was particularly pleased at the way she accurately described Red Hat's place in the community. So many focus on their corporate/business/enterprise direction and treat them like a proprietary software vendor that is somehow only slightly less evil than Microsoft. I really like the fact that Carla covered the business aspect but also their commitment to openness, their role in Linux development, and the fact that their code remains freely available.

Red Hat has been a model FOSS business almost from day one, which is somewhat surprising given the leadership changes over the years. Other than their (understandable) reluctance to devote any resources to consumer level Linux desktops, there's been almost nothing to complain about.

I agree with everything on Carla's list except for the No. 1 entry.

Instead of Mageia (which isn't on my radar at all), I'd slide Linux Mint into the No. 1 spot.

I'd also like to make room for:

GNOME and Unity (love or hate them, everybody has an opinion) Cinnamon and Mate (community reaction to the previously mentioned DEs) Fedora (still an innovator, getting better all the time, with a much better corporate-community relationship than that other big distro) SolusOS (rapidly rising in popularity, also a reaction to GNOME 3) Stella (an emerging project that makes CentOS/RHEL much more usable on the desktop) SystemD (new init system out of Red Hat)