[sf-lug] Linux distros

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Justin Noor (justinnoor.io at gmail.com):

> Hey Bobble off the top of your head, roughly how many Linux distros do you
> think exist?

Distrowatch over the past month has tracked 306 distros that it deems
active.  https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

However, there's a definitional problem.  What do you deem sufficiently
distinctive and substantive to count?  Consider:

Step 1:  Download the latest release of your favourite distro.
Step 2:  Make some trivial change.
Step 3:  Declare the result to be the 'Noorix' Linux distribution.

Most distros now deemed real, distinctive, and substantive started
pretty much like that -- but continued to develop and be maintained.
But how distinctive and substantive (and how active) such a named effort
must be before it's deemed something more than a novelty one-off fork,
ah, now that's a judgement call.

Many would nonetheless opine that a sizeable percentage of Distrowatch's
306 distros _are_ just novelty items, and not worthy of taking
seriously.

Why do you ask?