some thoughts on DistroWatch rankings, coverage of lesser known distros, & desktop environments

[Brad Morrison]

Hi DistroWatch, Flatpak/Flathub, & CoreBoot,   

I wanted to follow up on my email from February 2025 (below) about the
DistroWatch rankings/coverage of lesser known distros & desktop
environments by reiterating my ideas that some consolidation in the open
source software/Linux distro world might be helpful with limited
developers & financial resources.  

https://distrowatch.com/packages.php - this is DistroWatch's coverage of
Linux packages, but they are not numbered, so I can not easily tell how
many packages DistroWatch tracks. Do you guys know how many there are on
this page?  

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=package-management - this is
DistroWatch's page on package management options, but it does not note
when it was last updated. It also seems that Flatpak/Flathub is not
covered at all, while Snap is, which seems surprising.  

https://flatpak.org/setup/ & https://flathub.org/setup - Flatpak &
Flathub list setup instructions for over 40 Linux distributions on these
2 webpages.  

https://www.coreboot.org/ - DistroWatch also does not seem to have any
coverage of the CoreBoot project, so I do not know how many (if any) of
the Linux distros that DistroWatch covers know about and incorporate
and/or recommend/refer their users to use CoreBoot instead of their
stock/default BIOS firmware.  

https://doc.coreboot.org/distributions.html - this list of CoreBoot
"Vendors" is divided into "Hardware shipping with coreboot" such as
ChromeOS, Purism, StarLabs, & System76 as well as "After-market
firmware." 

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity - I believe that
if DistroWatch were able to inform their audience (it appears that there
are now 322 Linux distributions are listed) about Flatpak/Flathub &
CoreBoot, more of those distros might try work together to incorporate
such options.  

---
Thanks, 

Brad - https://www.facebook.com/brad.morrison.12327/ &
https://nextdoor.com/profile/01mP46jj8KCzj3sP4 &
https://norcal.social/@BradMorrison 

On 2025-02-24 02:22, Brad Morrison wrote:

> Hi DistroWatch, 
> 
> https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20240603#qa - "Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith)" - "An overview of Linux desktop environments" 
> 
> I was rereading the article above and thought some more about media coverage of Linux desktop environments, such as: 
> 
> 1. https://www.tecmint.com/top-best-linux-lightweight-desktop-environments/ - I like this article the most because it is specific about the components of the various DEs that it ranks.  
> 
> 2. https://www.vps-mart.com/blog/linux-desktop-environments 
> 
> 3. https://www.techradar.com/best/best-linux-desktop 
> 
> Browsing these made me wonder if DistroWatch was interested in ranking DEs, in much the same way that DistroWatch ranks Linux distros - https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity (although after reviewing that list of 270 distros, it would be awesome if someone at DistroWatch could contact the bottom 50 and suggest that they might want to narrow their open source efforts to an existing desktop environment, package, project, or component and retire some of those very little known Linux distributions). 
> 
> It would also be great if a DistroWatch ranking of desktop environments include the components that each DE uses and the version numbers, much like DistroWatch does for the enormous number of Linux distributions that it tracks. 
> 
> Reducing the enormous number of unique Linux distributions would reduce this burden for DistroWatch and might free up some time & energy, as the 270 listed at https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity is staggering! 
> 
> That is why I thought it might be a good idea to gently encourage the bottom 50 distros on that list to consider redirecting their attention towards helping another existing distro, desktop environment, package, component, and/or project, and slowly deprecate some of those very little known Linux distributions. 
> 
> -- 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Brad - https://www.facebook.com/brad.morrison.12327/ & https://nextdoor.com/profile/01mP46jj8KCzj3sP4 & https://norcal.social/@BradMorrison
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