3 Linux distros that ruled the world until they were suddenly abandoned by their creators

Published Oct 19, 2026, 6:30 AM EDT Arol is a tech journalist who currently works as a contributor at How-To Geek since 2022. He first began writing online for the short-lived portal of Spanish-language gaming forum Emudesc in 2013. Years later, in 2017, he got his true start in tech journalism working for a small Google-focused site called Pixel Spot. He transitioned to a news and feature writer role at XDA Developers that same year, where he worked until 2021 before making the jump to other websites. Arol brings nearly a decade of writing experience, and the occasional hot take, to his writings. While he's a technology lover at heart, he holds computer hardware and smartphones particularly close to heart. You'll normally find him covering news, although he has also written the occasional deal, buyer's guide, how-to post, and round-up. He's also written for Android Police and MakeUseOf. He's also a Political Science student at the Central University of Venezuela, and a proud member of student movement Àgora UCV. When he's not writing, you'll probably find him hitting the gym, trying to ace a new hobby, reading his textbooks, or traveling. You can reach him at me@arolwright.com. Linux history is full of projects that thrived for years before their stewards walked away. Some faded quietly, others ended abruptly, and all left devoted communities behind. Unfortunately, many maintainers barely get paid for their work, so it often becomes a passion project. And passions fade. Here are just some examples of that. CentOS How a free RHEL clone lost its long-term future CentOS was born in 2004 as a community-built rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, using the source code Red Hat is required to publish and stripping out its trademarks. The result was a free, binary-compatible alternative to a costly enterprise product, and it spread fast. Hosting companies, universities, and small businesses adopted it for web servers, and control panels like cPanel built their support around it. For years, it was one of the most common operating systems running public websites, prized for its stability and its slow, predictable release cycle. The project’s co-founder, Gregory Kurtzer, steered it through its early growth, and in 2014 Red Hat officially brought CentOS under its umbrella, hiring core developers and promising continuity. Many users saw the deal as a safeguard. Few expected what came next. In December 2020, Red Hat announced that CentOS Linux would be replaced by CentOS Stream, a rolling-release distribution that sits upstream of RHEL rather than downstream. CentOS Linux 8 would reach end of life on December 31, 2021, roughly eight years ahead of the schedule users had been counting on. Administrators who had deployed it for long-term production work felt blindsided, and the backlash was loud. CentOS Linux 7 stayed supported until June 2024, but the line that made the brand famous was effectively over. The reaction reshaped the Linux server world. Kurtzer announced Rocky Linux almost immediately, naming it after a late CentOS co-founder, Rocky McGaugh. CloudLinux released AlmaLinux, and both aimed to fill the exact niche CentOS had occupied. Today they are the usual answer when someone asks for a free RHEL-compatible system. CentOS Stream still exists and serves developers well, but the original promise of a dependable, no-cost enterprise clone is now carried by others. Mandrake From beginner-friendly favorite to liquidated company Mandrake Linux arrived in July 1998, when French developer Gaël Duval combined Red Hat Linux with the KDE desktop and a friendlier installer. When installing Linux often meant editing configuration files by hand, Mandrake offered a graphical setup, sensible hardware detection, and a polished desktop out of the box. It quickly became a favorite for newcomers, and by the early 2000s it regularly sat near the top of the DistroWatch rankings and was one of the best-known names in desktop Linux. Its business side was less stable. The company behind it, Mandrakesoft, struggled financially despite the strong user base, and it went through a court-supervised reorganization in France before emerging in 2004. A dispute over the Mandrake name, which was tied to a comic-strip magician owned by Hearst, also complicated the brand. In 2005, the company merged with the Brazilian distributor Conectiva and rebranded the product as Mandriva Linux. The rebrand never recaptured the original enthusiasm. Duval was dismissed in 2006, followed by a string of layoffs and management changes. Ubuntu, launched in 2004, was winning over the same newcomer audience with a free, well-funded alternative. In 2010, a group of former employees and community members announced Mageia, a fork meant to keep the distribution alive, while OpenMandriva grew from another community effort. Mandriva S.A. itself went into liquidation in 2015. Mandrake’s legacy lives on in both successors, and in the idea that Linux could be approachable. Distributions like it popularized much of what people now take for granted, such as guided installers and automatic hardware configuration. The company that built it could not survive, but the design philosophy outlasted the corporate wreckage. Crunchbang A beloved minimalist distro ends with one blog post CrunchBang Linux, usually written #! and pronounced crunchbang, was the work of Philip Newborough, a British developer who released the first versions in 2008. It was based on Debian and paired it with the Openbox window manager, resulting in a fast, minimal desktop that used very little memory. Its dark, tidy default look and its pre-configured tools made it popular with people who wanted control without building a system from scratch. It ran well on older laptops, which mattered a great deal to hobbyists reviving aging hardware. Though it never matched the raw install numbers of mainstream distributions, CrunchBang held an outsized place in the community. It regularly ranked among the most visited pages on DistroWatch, and its forums were known for friendly, knowledgeable members who shared configuration files and screenshots. For many users, it was the distribution that taught them how a Linux desktop fits together. In February 2015, Newborough published a short post announcing that development would stop. He explained that he no longer had the time or motivation to keep it going, and that the gap CrunchBang had once filled was shrinking as Debian and upstream software improved. He framed the decision as a way to avoid leaving users with a poorly maintained system. The community did not let it vanish. BunsenLabs, a continuation project, appeared almost immediately and remains active, while other spin-offs such as Crunchbang++ also emerged. The original’s design influence is visible in many Openbox-based setups to this day. It is a rare case where an abandoned distribution found a direct heir, thanks to a fanbase large enough to carry the torch. Popular Linux projects can vanish when stewards walk away CentOS, Mandrake, and CrunchBang each reached enormous popularity before their creators or owners stepped aside. Corporate strategy, financial trouble, and personal burnout ended them, yet communities forked each one, proving open-source projects can outlive the people and companies behind them.