Yo dawg, we herd you like timelines, so we put a timeline in your timeline so you can browse a timeline while you browse…. OK, OK, I’ll stop already.
Here’s a graphical evolution of the GLDT from it’s inception up to now.
As the years pass, distros come and go. Some withstand the test of time, some perish quickly, and here we want to spare a moment in order to honour those who have survived this cruel process of selection: PNG, SVG and TAR.BZ2.
First the explaining …
Since there were several queries about the meaning and significance of the connector lines, especially concerning S.u.S.E/Jurix and Maemo+Moblin/Meego, here’s a small legend.
… and then some observing
Comparing the GLDT with the recently introduced BSDT further down, there has been a remarkable explosion of diversity in the early nineties – when internet access started to become ubiquitous.
Also, looking at the latest version of the GLDT, we can observe gradual shifts in forking activity, starting with Red Hat and moving to Debian, then Knoppix, with a burst of Slackware derivatives in 2004 and finally Ubuntu taking the lead particularly in 2007.
Another less joyous observation is how the Knoppix family tree is slowly thinning, with no new additions in recent years. While Knoppix itself releases regularly, a lot of its offspring seems to have been less lucky.
Gentoo on the other hand appears to have more stable derivatives, albeit similarly rare in recent years, yet the distribution itself may have lost quite a bit of momentum.
I conclude with the remark that while Fedora’s subtree of direct forks looks comparatively small, keep in mind that a lot of Red Hat based distros have switched to Fedora (and Red Hat itself too, actually), as seen by the large number of connectors in the full GLDT.
Playing around a bit I’ve decided to make a simple BSD timeline, including the 10 most popular distributions.
Here are the usual PNG, SVG and TAR.BZ2.
Since we don’t have any intention of maintaining it (i.e. adding lots of BSD derivatives), the timeline is up for grabs for those willing to extend and build upon. We will of course offer helpful tips and support.
So anyone can download it, alter it in any way they see fit and publish it wherever they want.
You can also just leave a comment lamenting about how the dark background is ugly.
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