 I've got something that's been bugging me. It's been on my mind for a little while, and I wanted to talk to you guys about it because I felt like it's something that we needed to talk this through. I want to talk about the Linux distributions that we, the community, choose to highlight and choose to showcase on camera or in print. For those of us that are content creators like myself, for example, I do video content. Often I do these Linux installations and first looks of distro releases on camera. Many folks on YouTube do these kinds of distro reviews or distro first looks, those kinds of videos. There's probably thousands of us that do this kind of content on platforms like YouTube, as far as video content. Of course, thousands of people also do this in print form or online journalism, online media, as far as articles and blogs and things like that. And I think we need to be a little more careful about the distributions that we put out front. We need to be a little more responsible as a community, the distributions, especially that we promote in such a way that maybe new to Linux users actually give these Linux distributions a try because some of these things honestly are not going to be around for very long. And I think we're setting, especially the new to Linux user, we're setting that person up for failure when they install some of these distributions that are here today and gone tomorrow. And I'm talking about within a matter of months, some of these distributions, they put out a brand new release and they never put out a second ISO, they put out that very first ISO and then they're gone. I see this all the time. I get recommended by you guys, Linux distributions to try out all the time, distributions I've never heard of because they're brand new. I've got a list of distributions I keep as far as potential future content that I may cover on camera. And of course, because I've been recommended so many of these distributions to check out, sometimes it will be months, sometimes maybe even a year or two before I finally get around to checking out some of the distributions that you guys recommend to me. And by the time I get around to it, the distribution you recommended me to try out six months ago or a year ago or whatever it happens to be, it's no longer around or it's still around, but I go and the ISO that they have is ancient, right? You can tell the project is essentially unmaintained, it's been abandoned. And again, I think we need to be more responsible about, you know, like if I, if you recommend me a distribution that's brand new, it just came out, you should try this out on camera DT. I typically don't do those. And one of the reasons I don't do this and I hope other people are not doing this as well is we have no idea how long for this world some of these distributions are going to be. For example, I don't want to pick on, you know, any particular distribution. But here's one that I came across. It's on my list of distributions to check out and, you know, Axol OS. Somebody recommended this to me like, no, at least six months ago, maybe eight months ago, I've had it on my to-do list. And the other day I thought, you know what, let me finally go check out this Linux distribution. It's an arch-based Linux distribution that's got some tallying window manager additions. I go to the download page. Let's go to the download page, which is on their GitHub releases. The last release was August of 2022. That's six months ago for a rolling release. That is ancient. Now, matter of fact, that's long enough that for a rolling release, you know, I'm thinking it's probably been abandoned. The one before that was four months before that was April of 2022. And it's only been around, I think since 2021. There's a couple of releases in 2021. What if I go to the issues on their GitHub? Because I'm thinking, man, that's an old ISO. I'm going to see if other people are asking this. The last issue posted is, is this OS alive? No new builds. The old builds cannot log in, which I'm not even going to try to install it. Once I saw it was a six-month ISO, I already know the chances of that thing installing properly are almost zero. So I didn't bother downloading it, but apparently this person did. It doesn't build correctly. He hasn't got a response. He opened this issue five days ago. So I'm assuming that Axl OS is probably not with us any longer. Now let's go to distrawatch.com because here is one of the things, because distrawatch, of course, has to deal with this all the time. And I kind of like the way that they deal with these brand new distributions. So distrawatch, most people go to distrawatch for their release announcements and for the page hit rankings, which are garbage. I've, right, this is not a real measure of popularity of Linux distributions. But right now, distrawatch has about 300 Linux distributions listed on their side as far as active distributions that they have a dedicated page for. But that doesn't mean that there's only 300 distributions out there. If you actually go to find submit distro here and go to waiting list, there is the waiting list for all the distributions that are not currently listed on distrawatch yet. You can see projects, waiting evaluation. There is probably, I would say, 30, 40, probably about 40 distributions that they haven't even evaluated yet. They haven't even gotten around to taking a look at this distribution. And then they've got another list, projects not ready. I guess they've taken a look at these and some of these are just not good. And it's not ready for prime time. So we're not even going to list it on distrawatch. And I can understand because looking at this list, I know several of these distributions. Some of them I've taken a look at, I can see five of these distribution, six of these distributions that's going through the list. I've taken a look at on camera and I would agree they're not quite ready for prime time. So they've taken a look at these distributions and decided, you know what? We don't want to actually promote you by giving you a distrawatch page. So until probably you fix certain problems right now, we're just not going to list you. And then you've got projects with locale language or trademark concerns. So I guess some legal issues or language issues and accessibility issues, whatever it happens to be, these aren't quite ready for prime time either. And then down here you've got projects which are ready to be added pending a new release. So everything with these distributions is good. We just need a new ISO from you sometime because right now we're not sure when you're going to put out a new release is your project essentially dead is what they're asking. For example, the first one here, security onion, I've never heard of it. If I go to it, let's see, is there a download link? Actually, it doesn't even really talk about being a Linux distribution. I'm not sure what this website is about. So, yeah, this is the kind of stuff, obviously they get recommended all these distributions that are just not ready. Right. And distrawatch, I do think is very responsible doing what they're doing as far as just not just not giving this stuff the time of day as far. I'm not even going to go through the hours of work to create a dedicated page for your distro on distrawatch.com because honestly, it's just me putting in all of that time and effort is probably not worth it because your distribution is probably not going to be around for very long. And I think more of us need to do that, not just the online content creators as far as print, but also those of us that do video content. I know I tried to do that. I don't actually review a lot of distributions that get recommended to me because once I start investigating them a little bit, it becomes pretty obvious, sometimes very quickly that some of these distributions are just not ready for prime time or they have a very small development team. And until I see until I see some kind of track record where you have on a regular basis released a new ISO over at least a couple of years, right? It's hard for me to tell people to go and install that Linux distribution because most of the people I talk to on camera, right? And most of the people that watch my Linux installation and first look kind of videos, they're probably newer Linux users, novice Linux users or intermediate, maybe, but I can't tell them to go install this distribution if this distribution is going to be dead in six months, right? It's one of those things that I tell you this my personal machines. I would never run a Linux distribution personally on any of my work stations or my home desktop or anything like that that doesn't have a serious track record as far as they have a team that has regularly put out new releases consistently over a number of years. Because I don't want to install something, you know, this brand new distribution. X, Y, Z, O, S just came out and their very first public release. They've got to their first ISO is available on the web. I go and stall it. They never put out another ISO, right? And then I've got to distro hop, you know, to find a new distribution. Well, if I just installed something that I knew would be around in the future, I could have saved myself so much heartache. And again, because I personally wouldn't do that. I can't recommend these kinds of distributions that I wouldn't run to you guys. That would be disingenuous. Now, having said all that, just because a distribution has been around for a number of years and put out a bunch of regular releases, doesn't mean that it can't die. Many distributions, you know, that were around for 10, 15, 20 years eventually died, right? As some of these distributions, they just have a shelf life, right? But you're much less likely to run into this problem if you actually stick with the distributions that do have some kind of track record. Right? I again, I personally don't recommend anybody installing like the latest meme distribution. But by meme, I'm talking about the one that's getting a lot of press. It just came out. You see it in articles. You see, in some cases, a lot of videos about it because a lot of these things are just not around in a few years or in some cases, even a few months. I remember this new desktop environment. Everybody wanted me to take a look at just a few months ago. Cutefish, everybody was making videos about cutefish. Everybody was writing articles about cutefish, all the Linux websites. They were talking about how cutefish, this this awesome desktop environment. I don't know anything about it personally because I never got a chance to try it out. The reason I never got a chance to try it out is because it's no longer actively maintained. So I'm not going to try it out because I would never recommend you guys to go try it out, since it's not being actively maintained. That would be irresponsible for me to do, but I'm really glad I wasn't one of those people that jumped on it when it was kind of new. When a lot of these things, especially, they get some steam behind them, right? All of a sudden, it's like everybody in the community is pushing this new thing. And a lot of it is because, you know, human emotion, a lot of people hope especially is a very powerful human emotion. And they hope this new desktop environment that shows some promise is actually going to actually be something or a new distribution that just came out that's doing some interesting things. It's showing some promise we really want this thing to succeed. So we're really going to push it hard. And the truth is, no matter what we do in the community to promote something, unless we, the community, are also going to help out in the development and maintenance of some of these projects, you know, just giving it lip service on a video or, you know, in print media or whatever it happens to be, are we really doing that project a disservice by giving it all of this attention that quite frankly, many of these projects are just not ready for? So how do we solve this problem? As a matter of fact, what exactly is the problem? I don't know. I'm kind of, this is kind of a rant video. I'm just kind of meandered all over the place on this video. But again, these are some thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for a while now. And I just wanted to speak it out, right? Just to talk through it with you guys, I needed to talk to somebody and I hope you didn't mind listening to this. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. And of course, I'm talking about Gabe James, Maxim Met, Mehmet Mitchell, Paul Royal West, Armored Dragon, Bash Potato Chuck, Commander Ingrid George, Lee Methos, Nate Erion, Paul, Peace Archive of the Door, Polytech Realities, for Less Red Profit, Roland, Tools Devler, and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This little rant of mine, it wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. Peace, guys. This is why Emacs is my operating system. It's been around since the Stone Age.