Active Sites Developer November 2000 Percent December 2000 Percent Change Apache 5770634 59.95 6218326 59.54 -0.41 Microsoft 2483691 25.80 2615133 25.04 -0.76 iPlanet 247976 2.58 278724 2.67 0.09 Around the Net Linux distribution trial of force Competition between the Linux distributions has been particularly fierce since the release of Red Hat 7.0, which has provoked a great deal of controversy, initially because the C compiler produces binaries incompatible with other Linux distributions. The argument has escalated to a point well beyond a difference of opinion over the technicalities, with part of the Linux community suggesting that Red Hat is using its leading position in the market to marginalise the other distributions, while Linus Torvalds [1]called Red Hat 7.0 "idiotic", "broken", and "unusable as a development platform". It poses the question whether the Red Hat brand and market position is strong enough to withstand this kind of assault. On a crude count of Linux Apache sites found by Netcraft where the Apache signature has been branded by the Linux distribution company, Red Hat currently has 69%. SUSE and Debian are the closest challengers with 9% and 8% respectively on a worldwide basis, though SUSE is the leading distribution in German speaking countries. Critically, Red Hat is established as the standard install at most well known dedicated server companies and Linux hardware vendors, is the base distribution