| URL | www.distrowatch.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Registration | No |
| Available language(s) | English, Hindi, Tamil, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Persian, Dutch, Turkish, Hebrew, Vietnamese |
| Owner | Ladislav Bodnar |
| Launched | May 31, 2001 |
| Alexa rank | 11,889 (January 2012[update])[1] |
| Revenue | Advertisement |
DistroWatch is a website which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems such as OpenSolaris, MINIX and BSD. It now contains information on several hundred distributions.[2] It was originally published on May 31, 2001, and is maintained by Ladislav Bodnar.[3]
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.[4] There is also a Distrowatch weekly (often abbreviated DWW) that comes out on Monday "as a publication summarising the happenings in the distribution world on a weekly basis".[5] As of 17 November 2008, 51/2 years and 278 issues later, Ladislav has decided to step down from the post of the editor for DWW. Ladislav says he will still continue "bringing you the latest release news and to keep all distribution pages up-to-date"[6] while the DWW will be written by Chris Smart.[7]
Distrowatch has a monthly donations programme, a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software. Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of $24,478 USD to various open source software projects.[8]
Despite Bodnar saying "I'd like to believe that there is some truth in the figures, but in all honesty, they really don't mean all that much and should not be taken very seriously",[9] DistroWatch's statistics are often cited as a guide to the popularity of various distributions. Its "page hit counter" has been called "the best 'barometer' of Linux distributions on the Internet".[10]
Many of Distrowatch's own reviews are not updated for prolonged periods of time and are thus outdated.