DistroWatch is a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

that provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s as well as other

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s. It now contains information on several hundred distributions and a few hundred distributions labeled as active.

History

The website was launched on 31 May 2001 and is maintained by Ladislav Bodnar. Initially, Bodnar also wrote the Distrowatch Weekly (DWW). In November 2008, Bodnar decided to step down from the post of editor for DWW. Bodnar said he would continue to maintain the site while the DWW would be written by Chris Smart. As of 2017, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$47,739 to various open source software projects since the launch of the Donations Program in March 2004.

Features

The site maintains extensive comparison charts detailing differences between the package sets and software revisions of different distributions. It also provides some general characteristics of distributions such as the price and the supported processor architectures.e.g. see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux page on the web site https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redhat There is also a Distrowatch weekly (often abbreviated DWW) that comes out every Monday "as a publication summarising the happenings in the distribution world on a weekly basis". Distrowatch has a monthly donations program, a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software. The database consists of hundreds of different open source distributions, mainly

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

but also

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

and Solaris. It also has a small number categorized as "Other OS", namely

ReactOS ReactOS is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source operating system for i586/amd64 personal computers that is intended to be binary-code compatibility, binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers developed for Wind ...

Haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...

, KolibriOS,

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

and Minix.

Page rankings

Distrowatch itself affirms that its page rankings are "a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality, and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more." '' PC World'' has written that "the page-hit counts on DistroWatch give some indication of which distributions are drawing the most interest at the moment, of course, but such measures can't be assumed to gauge who's actually using what or which are preferred overall".

Facebook

On January 19th, 2025,

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

began taking down posts that included "DistroWatch" on the basis that "Linux is malware". DistroWatch's Facebook account is currently locked. In a later statement, DistroWatch indicated that Facebook had lifted the ban. Facebook stated that the censorship of Linux groups and topics was "in error" and that the mistake and the underlying issue had been rectified.Facebook admits that the Linux topic crackdown was 'in error' and has been fixed, https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/facebook-admits-that-the-linux-topic-crackdown-was-in-error-and-has-been-fixed

Notes

References

External links

* *
DistroWatch popularity rankings
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Reviews

* * * {{Linux Danish news websites Internet properties established in 2001 Linux websites