Think Linux is just ? Think again. Canonical's distribution may still be No. 1 on DistroWatch's list, but there are many other active players. Here are just a few that have been refreshed in the past few months since .
1. Tiny Core Linux 4.0
As a 10MB graphical Linux desktop, is billed as "the world's smallest Linux distribution." Originally a fork of Damn Small Linux, the software runs entirely in memory and boots extremely quickly. Users, meanwhile, have complete control over which applications and additional hardware they want supported. Released just today, version 4.0 of this diminutive distribution updates numerous libraries as well as switching to Linux kernel 3.0.3, among other improvements.
2. Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2
It was just a few weeks ago that I covered the of , or "Oneiric Ocelot," and late last week the second beta version arrived. Among the improvements are that GNOME was updated to version 3.1.92 on the way to GNOME 3.2, the Linux kernel is based on version 3.0.4, and OneConf was integrated into the Ubuntu Software Center to help keep your installed applications in sync between computers. Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 also improves support for installing 32-bit library and application packages on 64-bit systems, and a new set of community-supported ARM architecture images will be available between now and the software's release.