Picking an OpenStack distribution

OpenStack is developed like most open source software projects. The code is available at http://openstack.org, and it can be downloaded in the package format from: http://tarballs.openstack.org. As of the Queens release of OpenStack, there were over 700 inpidual projects available for download. That's a huge number of source repositories for an engineering team to sort through and manage, hence the development of the OpenStack distributions. Most of the OpenStack distributions are put together by the same groups that put together Linux distributions. For example, the three major distributions available are part of the Ubuntu, openSUSE, and CentOS Linux distributions. Each of these distributions maintain installation guides, which are available at: http://docs.openstack.org. There are also distributions available from companies, such as Suse, Mirantis, and Red Hat, which are part of commercial support agreements. These distributions are certified by the OpenStack Foundation, and a full list of them is available at: https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/distros/. In addition to these options, there are also companies such as Rackspace, which provide managed OpenStack deployments.