On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 12:39 AM, Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org> wrote:
That's about it. As you see, I included Arch up there. As far as I can see, after Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and openSuSE (in no particular order), Arch has been number 6 on the list of "major Linux distributions" (excluding professional stuff like SLES or RHEL) for several years.
Reminds me of some of the sports in the Olympics (or even the major football leagues in Europe). The gap between the top X (in this case, the threesome of Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora) and the rest is VERY large. Based on number of users, number of developers, FULL-TIME and paid developers, and brand recognition.
What I am trying to say is: It no longer suffices to say "we follow the major distributions" when making a decision, as Arch itself is a major distribution now.
Depends on your definition of 'major'. As a 'true' community-driven ie. no consistent funding and volunteer-operated distro Arch will probably never be in the position to define the terms of conversation.