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Should I Use DistroWatch?

distrowatch.com·Analyzed 2 hours ago·Based on 12 sources

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions

Worth it

Worth it

Free and worth using if you're choosing or tracking Linux/BSD distributions — deep news, release announcements, and comparison tables.

Free Linux/BSD news hub, great for comparing distros; ignore its misleading page-hit 'popularity' rankings.

Confidence: Medium

3.5/5

SmartCustomer rating

4 reviews

2.65M

Monthly traffic

visits per month

$0

Price

Free, ad-supported site

$47,739

Open-source donations

Cumulative as of 2017

Value for money5

Completely free site

Ease of use3

Users complain about dated interface

Feature depth4

Deep distro data, search, feature tables

Support quality2

Review moderation and acceptance complaints

Security posture3

HackerOne disclosure policy; unconfirmed incident reports

Pros

  • Free, long-running news and feature lists for Linux and BSD distributions¹
  • Called one of the best resources for people exploring Linux³
  • Has donated $47,739 to open-source projects as of 2017²
  • Search covers even small and obscure distributions⁷
  • Has a vulnerability disclosure process via HackerOne10

Cons

  • Page-hit rankings don't measure actual distro popularity⁵
  • User reviews accused of AI-generated responses⁶
  • Review moderation opaque; one user's review unaccepted for months⁹
  • Users report outages and 'not secure' errors
  • Blocked by ISPs in some countries, notably Turkey

Gotchas

  • highRankings count page visits, not installs — never base OS choices on them⁵
  • mediumReview moderation is selective; critical reviews may never appear⁵
  • mediumRecurring downtime and country-level access blocks reported11
  • lowFree but ad-funded; operations subsidized via Patreon donations

Best for

  • Linux newcomers comparing distros
  • Open-source news readers
  • Admins tracking package versions
  • Distro maintainers watching releases

Not for

  • Anyone reading rankings as real popularity stats
  • Enterprises making OS procurement decisions
  • People wanting trustworthy, well-moderated user reviews
  • Windows/macOS buyers — simply irrelevant

Pricing

Free site

$0

  • News, rankings, feature tables
  • Ad-supported
  • Optional Patreon support

Patreon supporter

Donation-based

  • 89 exclusive posts
  • Funds site operations

Security

No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

What users say

Longtime Linux users value it as a news and comparison hub but widely dispute its popularity rankings and question review moderation.

“Distrowatch doesn't measure popularity and doesn't even aim to.”
— Reddit, r/linuxquestions
“Use Distrowatch to explore the many Linux distributions that are available.”
— ZDNET
“DistroWatch reviews have AI generated responses.”
— Reddit, r/linux

Alternatives

Compare DistroWatch with each alternative.

DistroDB

Community-built alternative distro database with cleaner interface.

Full analysis

Based on 14 public sources (Reddit, forums, Trustpilot, ZDNET, Wikipedia, HackerOne)

Sources

  1. DistroWatch.com official sitedistrowatch.com
    official
  2. DistroWatch - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
    news
  3. Site review: Distrowatch.com - Linux.comlinux.com
    news
  4. ZDNET: There's a right way and a wrong way to use Distrowatchzdnet.com
    news
  5. Reddit: Is distrowatch even legit?reddit.com
    review
  6. Reddit: DistroWatch reviews have AI generated responsesreddit.com
    review
  7. Trustpilot: DistroWatch reviewstrustpilot.com
    review
  8. SmartCustomer: DistroWatch reviewssmartcustomer.com
    review
  9. antiX forum: Distrowatch reviewsantixforum.com
    review
  10. DistroWatch Vulnerability Disclosure Policy - HackerOnehackerone.com
    security
  11. Tor forum: Distrowatch.com broken or just me?forum.torproject.org
    security
  12. Kochava Media Index: DistroWatch trafficmedia-index.kochava.com
    news

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