There are a few gaps. Seems it's not being as diligently updated as once was.

There are even some old distros I failed to find on it.

... Didn't there used to be a text-searchable svg version of it?

If you know how to edit a comma-separated-value text file and how to submit a PR on GitHub, you could make the image larger.

Either 2025 was a horrible year for linux or the image needs an update.

WebOS was made by Palm Inc., one of the earliest and quite successful manufacturer of 'personal digital assistant' devices, aka smartphones without the phone part (and later with that too). They originally developed and licensed their own OS, PalmOS, but needed an upgrade for multitasking and such. webOS was thus intended for those PDA devices, and Debian would of course be a ridiculous choice for the task.

I have warm memories of PalmOS: i was snappy as heck with the 16 MHz CPU, but that's largely because of the 'single-tasking' and quite limited app functionality.

The Gentoo wiki is pretty good too

Actual reenactment:

It says something about how sad of a state the world is in when I can't tell if this is satire or not.

Void Linux+Gnu

Uhh, it's GNU SLASH Linux actually

Edit: this is satire, I clearly interact with these people far too often to have done this good of a job.

Imagine if The Onion had to say this.

Your target audience understood, the people downvoting probably are Ubuntu users anway.

Arch is utterly inferior because of its use of the Systemd “init” system, which is a bloated mess that completely disregards the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, and shouldn’t be forgotten for its sins and heresy.

So... do arch without systemd. (And not listed there, because its live-installer iso comes with systemd, is parabola linux, which does let you install with any of many init systems).

Or as you say, any of many other distros that offer init-freedom.

Though I'm not entirely sure if I'm replying to an instance of poe's law, intended to mock those of us who see things largely like you depicted. n_n Which is fun.

PS,

history of forcing their woke Wayland Display Server (Even though Xorg worked just fine, suspicious much?),

Yes. Actively inhibiting development of Xorg. The tighter they squeeze the more of us slip through their fingers. Now there's XLibre (a Xorg fork, to continue (otherwise actively inhibited) patching and developing), and even Pheonix (a from-scratch implementation of the X11 protocol written in zig! ~ give it a couple years). Exciting times.

Frankly I'm not even keen on the idea of pulse audio either. Funny how all this "Lennartware"'s so contemptable... from Lennart Poettering, who then went to work for Microsoft. Funny eh? Funny how it's almost like it's following the same ruthless dastardly insidious method of unscrupulously building a monopoly, via "embrace, extend, extinguish". Not a fan of pulseaudio, systemd, and wayland. Much prefer free software stays closer to being in human reach, so more of us can make use of the 4 freedoms of free software. So it's not just "free software" in name only, but in practice too.

Exactly 69 upvotes - as it should be.:-P

Problem is that Mint and Zorin don't take security as seriously as they should, and so I'm worried about the risks that would pose.

Plus Zorin is a bit problematic for other reasons.

Fair point. Just remember that almost everyone that's in the Linux Desktop space has formed a subjective opinion based on past experiences, and the popular hate for Ubuntu is there for a reason. Sometimes it's a silly reason, sometimes it's a valid reason.

Anyway, if I'm recommending a distribution for newbies it's going to be (1) something KDE-based (or possibly LMDE if they're a Mac convert) and (2) something as far away from Canonical's shenanigans as possible.

Frankly, the right answer is that pretty much any non-specialized distribution (e.g. don't use OpenWRT, a Linux distribution designed specifically for very small embedded devices) will probably work fine. That doesn't mean that they all work the same way, but a lot of the differences are around things that honestly aren't that big a deal for most potential end users. Basically, nobody has used more than at most a couple of the distros out there sufficiently to really come up to speed on their differences anyway. Most end users can adapt to a given packaging system, don't care about the init system, are aren't radically affected by mutability/immutability, can get by with different update schedules, etc. In general, people tend to just recommend what they themselves use. The major Linux software packages out there are packaged for the major distros.

I linked to a timeline of Linux distros in this thread. My own recommendation is to use an established distro, one that has been around for some years (which, statistically, indicates that it's got staying power; there are some flash-in-the-pan projects where people discover that doing a Linux distro is larger than they want).

I use Debian, myself. I could give a long list of justifications why, but honestly, it's probably not worth your time. There are people who perfectly happily use Fedora or Ubuntu or Arch or Gentoo or Mint or whatever. A lot of the differences that most end users are going to see comes down to defaults

like, there are people in this thread fighting over distro because of their preferred desktop environment. Like, Debian can run KDE or GNOME or Cinnamon or XFCE or whatever, provides options as to default in the installer, and any of them (or multiple of them) can be added post-initial-installation. You wouldn't say that a car is good or bad based on the setting of the thermostat as it comes from the dealer, like.

The fanboying to the point of blinders is maddening to deal with among Linux users.

Alien who has arrived on Earth: "I've heard that you humans drive motor vehicles to get around. I should get a motor vehicle. Could someone tell me the best type to get?"

Human A: "You want a Prius."

Human B: "No, that's for tree-hugging, probably-homosexual hippies. You need a proper truck, a Ford."

Human C: "Actually, Ford trucks are trash, what you need is a Chevy truck."

habe noch keine German influence gesehen

haven't seen any German influence yet.

Got it.

Gentoo – Arch but it takes longer

Supports full binary versions since december 2023.

Slackware? – for old people

Aka people who know what they're doing and what they want, noted.

• Void - the most BSD Linux (according to BSD people)

Slackware

Gentoo really has nothing to do with arch. Gentoo in my opinion is more like Debian with compiling and rolling release.

And what about Fedora? Last I checked it was wildly popular.

Alternatively: when you want to not worry for two years.

The popular Debian based distros are up to date. That said, core Debian stable is indeed boring, but sometimes boring and stable is what you need.

Definitely a brick of an operating system, boring as hell, but reliable and has been that way since ancient times.