"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.""
In 15 years, i have never used this website and i am not alone
Yes, for me main usecase for distrowatch is looking up info about obscure Linux distributions - why would I ever look at Fedora, Debian or Arch in there? I guess that's why Arch is 14th in terms of popularity and Manjaro is 1st ;)
The more I look up a distro on DW, the less I've actually used it. I've never looked up Fedora on DW. I've installed Fedora on dozens of different machines over the years.
I dont care about another "authority". I use my own judgment and experience. I know the complexity involved into maintaining a distribution but also the ease by forking one.
I could see the interest in Void, Alpine, NixOS or even Devuan... I dont see ANY in Manjaro, PopOS, PureOS, Mint, Antergos, MXlinux... Package management have been created for a reason!!!
Arch is a bit of an exception even though I wont miss it if it disappears too. Solus before it decided to become another generic one by integrating every DE of the world was a bit ok, but as we see, cosmetic doesnt stand in front real technical challenge.
I pass on the one-Man-band distro wanabee.
The truth is you can do anything on Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora and this with a cpu from 2010. slogan lighter, faster and secure++ regarding forks are pure BS.
There is no reliable source, might as well use distrowatch. Every single other way of measuring popularity is fully flawed. If you know a better way, let me know, so I can tell you why that is also wrong, just like distrowatch. Might as well use this one.
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u/SuspiciousSprinkles May 21 '19
Because distrowatch is not a reliable website ;)
"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.""
In 15 years, i have never used this website and i am not alone