We've seen plenty of "Best of the Decade" lists around, but not one is related to Linux distribution. So it's only fitting that we will give credit to the best Linux distros that dominated the last decade (2000-2009), or most part of it.
One of the best ways to measure a Linux distribution's caliber is to look at its popularity. Since Distrowatch is the only site that religiously measures the popularity of distros through its "Page Hit Ranking" system, let's take a look at first at some of its data gathered from 2002-2009.
Distrowatch Distro Rankings (2002-2009)
2002
1. Mandrake (Mandriva)
2. Red Hat
3. Gentoo
4. Debian
5. Sorcerer
6. SuSE
7. Slackware
8. Lycoris
9. Lindows
10. Xandros
2003
1. Mandrake
2. Red Hat
3. Knoppix
4. Gentoo
5. Debian
6. Yoper
7. SUSE
8. Slackware
9. Lycoris
10. Xandros
2004
1. Mandrakelinux (Mandriva)
2. Fedora
3. KNOPPIX
4. SUSE
5. Debian
6. MEPIS
7. Gentoo
8. Slackware
9. PCLinuxOS
10. Damn Small
2005
1. Ubuntu
2. Mandriva
3. SUSE
4. Fedora
5. MEPIS
6. Debian
7. KNOPPIX
8. Damn Small
9. Gentoo
10. Slackware
2006
1. Ubuntu
2. openSUSE
3. Fedora
4. MEPIS
5. Mandriva
6. Damn Small
7. Debian
8. PCLinuxOS
9. Slackware
10. Gentoo
2007
1. Ubuntu
2. PCLinuxOS
3. openSUSE
4. Fedora
5. Sabayon
6. Mint
8. MEPIS
9. Mandriva
10. Damn Small
2008
1. Ubuntu
2. openSUSE
3. Mint
4. Fedora
5. PCLinuxOS
6. Debian
7. Mandriva
8. Dreamlinux
9. Sabayon
10. Damn Small
2009
1. Ubuntu
2. Fedora
3. Mint
4. openSUSE
5. Debian
6. Mandriva
7. Puppy
8. PCLinuxOS
9. Sabayon
10. Arch
With a rough estimate based on the Distrowatch rankings, here are the best Linux distros from 2002-2009:
1. Ubuntu
2. Mandriva
3. openSUSE
4. Fedora
5. Debian
6. Mint
7. Gentoo
8. Slackware
9. Damn Small
10. MEPIS
You may also want to see this graph from Google Trends:
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