Linux Distro Ratings for 2023

[jackkileen]

From DistroWatch (https://distrowatch.com/) based on 50 or more ratings. Mint has the highest number of ratings 613. MX Linux is next at 533.
Big Linux has the highest average rating.

[Hoser Rob]

If you're going to link to the site please link to the actual article rather than their home page. DW's site is not the best organized. But I'm not really sure if any of their ranking means anything anyway.

[jackkileen]

If you're going to link to the site please link to the actual article rather than their home page. DW's site is not the best organized. But I'm not really sure if any of their ranking means anything anyway.

No article to link to, just stats from their ratings.
Here's several links to their different ratings...
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ranking
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ratings

[Hoser Rob]

If you're going to link to the site please link to the actual article rather than their home page. DW's site is not the best organized. But I'm not really sure if any of their ranking means anything anyway.

No article to link to, just stats from their ratings.
Here's several links to their different ratings...
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ranking
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ratings

OK. The 3rd one I don't find useful. The 2nd link is popularity judged by the number of hits to a particular distro. That's a meaningless test to me. The reader ranking one (the 1st) is the only useful thing there, I think.

I actually mostly use distrowatch to find links to reviews of distros. Dedoimedo's are good, to name one source.

[rickNS]

Yeah, I think it has been said many times DW numbers do not paint a true picture of the distro's actual users, only how many may be looking for some information about another distro.

I "think" a better metric is how many members a particular distro's forum has.
Here are a few (rounded to thousand);
Ubuntu 2,174 K
Arch 124 K
Debian 44 K
Mint 40 K
MX Linux 15 K
Puppy 3 K

Distro Watch puts MX Linx as #1, but Ubuntu has nearly 150 times as many forum members, I strongly believe it has more users.

[jackkileen]

I "think" a better metric is how many members a particular distro's forum has.
Here are a few (rounded to thousand);
Ubuntu 2,174 K
Arch 124 K
Debian 44 K
Mint 40 K
MX Linux 15 K
Puppy 3 K

I'd say that's a fairly accurate metric.
For Reddit...

Arch 247K
Ubuntu 222K
Mint 85K
Debian 73K
Manjaro 69K
MX Linux 7.2K

Linux Questions 245K
Linux 1M