Help Puppy Linux get a higher hit count on Distrowatch

[6502coder]

That ranking of best distros that run in ram that JASpup linked to says that Puppy is becoming obsolete. Exactly the same way Damn Small Linux did some years ago. See https://www.slant.co/topics/1837/~best- ... ely-in-ram

Putting an xfce or lxqt Puplet on the main download page as a fully supported version would address this.

That review concedes that Puppy on desktop PCs is great. It says laptops are less relevant because of the difficulty of upgrading their hardware -- whether or not Puppy runs on laptops isn't even at issue.

Their allegation of obsolescence is based solely on Puppy not running (it says) on portable devices like tablets and Chromebooks. In what way would alternative desktops like xfce or lxqt address this issue?

[benali72]

@6502coder, you're right. I've garbled up my message here. I'll try to explain better about the interfaces.....

One of Puppy's biggest "markets" has always been its ability to run on "old computers."

I'll define "old computers" as those computers people are tossing out in large numbers (often just because they won't run a current version of Windows). A big drawing card for Puppy is that it makes those old computers very useful.

When I started using Puppy back about 2006, Puppy's JWM/ROX interface perfectly targeted what were then "old computers" (P-IIs, P-IIIs, early P-IVs).

But today, "old computers" means early dual core boxes (those from 2006 to the early i-series). Today's old computers can run a full desktop environment (DE) that is more user-friendly than a windows manager. From the standpoint of people who aren't power users, this is what they'd prefer.

JWM/ROX does a good job serving many needs, we should definitely keep it. For power users, us hobbyists, longtime Puppy fans, really old computers, etc, it hits the spot.

But it's no longer what most people today choose to run on their old computers, now that today's old computers will support a more user friendly interface like xfce, lxqt/de, etc.

It would probably take some extra work to maintain a DE Puppy on the download list. But given that experts like @mistfire, @peebee and others have already developed appropriate puplets, we're perhaps 90% of the way there.

Thanks for listening.

[bigpup]

How in the world is the desktop interface of Windows 10, better and easier to use, than Puppies JWM and Rox pinboard?

[6502coder]

@benali72

I'm no expert on the technical requirements of desktop environments, so I wondered if perphaps xfce or lxqt might be in some way be more adaptable to the tablet-type devices, and I was just curious.

I fully agree with your points about taking advantage of the power of newer hardware. I run Puppies on all my old machines, but I prefer to run LXLE (an Ubuntu respin using LXDE) and MX-Linux on my machines that have enough power to do so.

[wizard]

First, I agree a xfce Puppy would probably attract additional users. From my prospetive, having used other lightweight DE's like lxde and xfce I find no practical advantage vs Puppy with JWM/Rox. Looking at internet post on windows managers vs desktop environments, even the authors have some difficulty. I think this quote from linux.org defines it well:

In summary, a window manager is just a window manager. However, if a window manager comes bundled with other packages or the package contains a window manager, then that is a desktop environment.

When you look at the software components of the DE's and compare that to the software components available in Puppy, there in nothing missing and in fact newer Pup's like fossa64 9.5, Puppy offers more. Many of the "cons" listed for windows managers (alone) don't apply to Puppy since the developers have provided gui programs that do all the work. Fossa64 in particular has integrated all of the configuration programs into one interface.

So, Puppy's developers have in effect supplied a "desktop environment", it just wasn't a bundled package.

wizard

[JASpup]

First, I agree a xfce Puppy would probably attract additional users.

There is no if.

The deal is one can't just make it. It has to be fostered and promoted. E.g., the X-series are as good as their Mainline equivalents, but if top users don't care and one has to dig for them, it doesn't matter.

From my prospetive, having used other lightweight DE's like lxde and xfce I find no practical advantage vs Puppy with JWM/Rox.

There are two main practical XFCE advantages (explaining why top users don't care). One is aesthetics. The gui is just richer and more refined at a low-overhead price. The other is the time it takes to get up and running, my user-friendliness mantra.

Booting Tahr and X-Tahr, X-Tahr gets more use, but I've spent a lot more time customizng Tahr.

I am making a logic argument less trying to make anything different, supplying the obvious against inertia.

[Mike3]

I dunno. What's the point. The OS got enough users to have a vibrant and helpful community.

Being big is overrated when it's not commercial in my opinion. Being small is great looking at from several perspectives, like less attention, less problems with spyware and the like.

Also I get why it ain't bigger. Atleast when I got into it it was kinda hard to set up, kept crashing when installing certain apps and the like, a problem few other distros have. I got it working and a lot of people in the community were like: "don't change it when it's working...". So, just my opinion and stuff.

[mikewalsh]

Some interesting points raised here, though I still do - and always have - questioned why people worry so much about the Distrowatch rankings!

@bigpup :-

People want the operating systems, to all work the same way, so they do not have to learn, a different way, to do things.

Cynical, perhaps, but totally true. 99% of people alive today not only don't see the need for, they don't want to have to learn new ways of doing anything. Learning something new involves expending effort.....

----------------------------

@Grey :-

Use a "highly polished" system... it's so boring

Who else is able to remember, then remember what kind of romance there was once - six months to think about how to set up the menu (or whatever you have there) and then what pleasure came. Although it happens to me even now

Heh. You're like me, mate. I'm the sort who derives immense satisfaction from figuring out ways to make stuff work the way I want it to in Puppy. Users of mainstream distros not only take such things for granted, indeed they appear to see it as their God-given right to expect to do everything with absolutely no effort required on their part....

-------------------------------------

@benali72 :-

Puppy's user interface is antiquated. We need an XFCE or LXQt Puppy on the master downloads page, where the casual user will see it listed.

Hm. Another XFCE fan. You and @JASpup both.

You would obviously like to see Puppy directly compete on a level playing field with some of the 'big boys'. Fair comment.....though I sometimes wonder what the true 'cost' of all this 'polish' equates to. And it IS a fact that your entire argument throughout this thread has concentrated exclusively around the DE and general appearance. I agree first impressions count, but I'm not so sure I agree with this... And why those two DEs specifically?

Myself, I experimented with ALL the DEs during my 'distro-hopping' days.....and rapidly came to the conclusion that I didn't really like ANY of them, because you're too 'tied' to somebody else's 'vision' of how things should work. JWM/ROX takes a lot of getting used-to, initially, but I find it 'grows' on you, and is almost infinitely customizable, once understood; I've got so used to the combination of JWM & the ROX-pinboard, that I honestly cannot see myself using anything else ever again. But that's just me.

-----------------------------------------

@dimkr :-

I think Puppy needs to re-focus, because the "old" vs "new" dichotomy is becoming irrelevant. Instead of emphasizing small size and resource consumption at all costs, I think the focus should change to responsiveness, better out-of-the-box usability and lower resource consumption compared to other distros with similar functionality.

(Couldn't agree more, actually.)

PCs haven't changed that much in the last decade. Many computers from 10 years ago already had respectable amounts of RAM (>= 4 GB), and sometimes it's OK not to use a super lightweight but inadequate application instead of the mainstream application in the category. Most 2010 computers can run the latest Firefox/Chrome with PulseAudio and Blueman just fine. And Puppy's network wizards can be replaced with a heavier but friendlier solution like ConnMan or NetworkManager, which works much better, because most Puppy users have enough RAM for that. And the huge VA-API drivers, that make Puppy bigger, greatly reduce CPU consumption because they allow browsers to use the GPU to decode video. Is it worth it? Probably yes, because extra storage is cheap and easy to add, and most people can afford a small increase in Puppy's size, while the CPU is pretty much impossible to upgrade, and CPU consumption/battery life is much lower in other distros because they do have these drivers. Sometimes, smaller is slower, and bigger is faster.

dimkr (or iguleder, call him what you will) is, as always, spot on the money. He's always had a way of cutting through the general forum waffle & crap and getting straight to the meat of the matter.

With regard to hardware abilities, well; the number of community members still attempting to use ancient (2007 or older) hardware has dramatically decreased in the 7 or 8 years I've been a part of this community. More & more often, folks are mentioning having 8 GB, or 16 GB RAM as standard, usually coupled with far more capable CPUs, frequently SSDs, and as often as not dedicated GPUs, too. Puppy's original 'raison d'être' is nowhere near as relevant as it once was. Such hardware still exists, of course, though is more than catered for by the sheer number of older Puppies/Puplets/re-masters/respins Ally already has available over at archive.org.

I have to agree about the VAAPI drivers. I've found, since packaging the 'Ungoogled-Chromium-portable' package, that CPU usage drops quite a ways if you have the

Code: Select all

--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder

...'--switch' enabled in the launch wrapper script. ('Marmaduke', the guy who produces these builds I use for the portable has, amongst several other nifty features, compiled the VAAPI use ability directly into his Chromium 'binary'.....so if you have a discrete GPU - or indeed a halfway decent on-die GPU - it IS noticeable. Because my Nvidia card can now take over the video decoding, when watching YT or NetFlix the CPU is cranking over considerably slower.....and the GPU temps are definitely a few degrees higher than 'normal'. I have no problem with this; why have a dedicated GPU if it's not going to earn its keep?)

-----------------------------

Food for thought, most definitely. JASpup's reply to @Clarity 's observation about cloud usage/time spent online was probably correct - it's always about money, when it boils down to it - but Clarity's definitely got a point. I myself spend more time than ever online, and have many 'desktop apps' set up to start from their own Menu entries which are essentially 'webapps' running as dedicated separate windows from an already-running browser instance. And from time spent on multiple other fora, I'm definitely not the only one....

I'm probably like most other Puppians. Initially, I ended up here, via recommendations, because I had elderly hardware that I wasn't ready to throw out, yet which was having real problems with Windoze.....and mainstream distros were just a bit TOO 'heavy' for comfort. And upon obtaining some decent, up-to-date, reasonably powerful hardware, I've stuck with Puppy.....because for me, she does everything I could ask of her, and I know her as well as I need to for day-to-day running. I'm not wedded to any specific software, have no specific requirements to do things in an official, 'approved' manner, and am thus free to experiment and, for want of a better word, simply 'play'.

Let's not get bogged-down in the usual asides, off-topic commenting & usual distractions which have always been a hallmark of this otherwise wonderful community of ours. If we really & truly want to drag Puppy very firmly into the present, I think it's high time we had a full-on, community-wide debate about this.

Who else agrees with me on this? Am I the only one who thinks such is long overdue?

Mike.

[bigpup]

Is anyone doing what the subject of this topic is about?

[rcrsn51]

Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive

If the objective is to give Puppy greater credibility, the first step should be to update that statement.

[JASpup]

Being big is overrated when it's not commercial in my opinion.

That's the point. No one wants a social improvement without profit.

There are a lot of responses. One of them is how both in capital and non-capital models, the best ideas will not come to the fore for sundry weak reasoning.

A Chrysler engineer has an idea for an electric sports car. The control handlers come up with 15 reasons why things have to stay the way they are instead getting the obvious. The obvious is a revolution initiated by one man who coincidentally becomes the world's richest.

And Chrysler goes bankrupt, receives a government bailout, and is bought by a hedge fund.

My whole life it's been like this. I am not smart enough for a Tesla, probably a Paypal. Barry probably could have done it, but what the world really needs is more people using pure Linux instead of Windows or ChromeOS which is eating market lunch.

Linux's share of the pc market is pitiful because it's largely a technical clique. You need them, but a broad non-technical user base is foundational strength.

[wizard]

@bigpup
@mikewalsh

Might be good to spin this off to a new topic like "How Make Puppy Easier to Use". There we could identify areas that could improve the casual/new users experience. I can think of several.

wizard

[wizard]

@bigpup
@mikewalsh

You are both correct about the nature of the casual users. Many years ago I volunteered on a charitable project that refurbished computers and donated them to schools, churches and non-profit organizations. Not all of our computers had valid Microsoft licenses and that's when I discovered Puppy Linux. We soon found that the users just wanted to do their work/task and doing so had to be quick and easy. If it wasn't, they would quit using Puppy in frustration. Took Puppy 1.04 and made it look, feel, and work as close to Windows XP as possible. Desktop icons and menu items were renamed, Abiword became Write, Gnumeric became Spreadsheet, etc. and their default save formats changed to MS equivalents. My-documents and Downloads folders were placed on the desktop and all appropriate apps were pointed to them. A document named "Installed Applications" was placed on the desktop and it listed all the main applications by function, category, menu location and a short description of capability. Last, a Help directory was added to the desktop that contained instructions for how to accomplish the most common task.

The adoption rate changed dramatically.

wizard

[mikewalsh]

Is anyone doing what the subject of this topic is about?

Not really, no.....'cos although yes; it's a bit of fun, frankly, it's pointless. It isn't going to achieve Jack S**t by doing so, except to drag more users into the community to complain about the way Puppy does things. Too many recent noobs expect a free, lightweight version of Windoze, and are very disillusioned not to find it.

I've resisted adding my two-penn'orth to any of these discussions about Puppy's 'direction' for long enough, but it's got to the stage where I honestly feel we, as a community, need to face the whole issue head-on and try to address some of the common complaints we get from newbies. Although @wizard is perfectly correct when he says that Puppy does effectively provide a DE.....just via a different route than is normally taken. And many of Puppy's GUIs extend that capability far beyond what you'd normally get from the likes of the Gnome devs, for example.

A lot of relevant points have been raised during the course of this thread so far, with contributions from several of the more gifted members of our community who definitely know what they're talking about.....@dimkr in particular.

---------------------------------------------

IF we, AS a community, are really serious about doing something to finally counter all of the grumbling, then we have to thresh every bit of the wheat from the chaff, and decide, as a community, how Puppy should face the future, what sort of demographic segment we want to appeal to, and the best way to achieve that.

Bear in mind that Pup's original reason for existing - while still there - is no longer AS relevant as it once was. Have a good think about what that really means.....and how it relates to the present day. Bring your thoughts to the table, and let's PLEASE have a sensible discussion about this, guys.

Mike.

[rockedge]

For me it's a lot about the "frugal" install capabilities and the speed at which the system operates.

[bigpup]

Well, I tried to get something going with producing a community produced version of Puppy Linux.
Posted topics about doing it several times, asking for Puppy developers and others, to get together producing it.
No takers!

All they wanted to do, is similar, to posts in this topic.

If I had the needed knowledge and experience, building a Puppy version, I would do it!

So, stop talking about it and do it!

The forum section "Puppy Projects" is the place to make a post.

Ok, I will try it again.
But I will be surprised if anything happens.
viewtopic.php?t=4525

[Grey]

Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive

If the objective is to give Puppy greater credibility, the first step should be to update that statement.

This is the most correct sentence in the topic.

I was in the village on the weekend. This is an ordinary Russian countryside, well, there are fields with wheat, combines, tractors and everything in the same spirit.

But even in the village there has been no such equipment for a long time - CD ROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks - it seems even the elderly gray-haired watchman guarding the field does not remember what kind of devices these are

I have a few 5.25 floppy drives and a lot of floppy disks for them, but this is my ZX Spectrum

[bigpup]

The big question is who actually has the ability to make the changes, to the info, at DistroWatch????
Best I can tell is you have to send them an E-mail request.
I would think the Puppy Master (01micko) could do it, but he never seems to care about what is on DistroWatch.

[Geek3579]

For me it's a lot about the "frugal" install capabilities and the speed at which the system operates.

I totally agree with rockedge. This last week I've built a Bionicpup64 on a USB-HDD with VirtualBox and QEMU as centrepieces. I can now take my virtual machines anywhere. Boots anywhere, runs fast and if it should crash, I'll just build another. I have anther USB dedicated to audio recording. And so on.

What I have found, however, is that it is very difficult to get newbies interested in Puppy Linux. They just want a system that works. So Mx-Linux and similar gets the attention, for a lot of good reasons. I wonder as more people use Linux and become familiar with it ( especially installed on a USB ), that the benefits of Puppy Linux will become more obvious.

[mikewalsh]

Well, I tried to get something going with producing a community produced version of Puppy Linux.
Posted topics about doing it several times, asking for Puppy developers and others, to get together producing it.
No takers!

All they wanted to do, is similar, to posts in this topic.

If I had the needed knowledge and experience, building a Puppy version, I would do it!

So, stop talking about it and do it!

The forum section "Puppy Projects" is the place to make a post.

Ok, I will try it again.
But I will be surprised if anything happens.
viewtopic.php?t=4525

@bigpup :-

As per your request:-

If you are not going to put your name in and commit to this DO NOT POST ANYTHING!!

.....you definitely won't be seeing ME over there. I have neither the compiling skills, the coding skills, the organizational skills nor the 'building' skills required for such a project.

The folks we DO need to see over there are the 'regular' crew; 666philb, peebee, 01micko, mistfire, radky, josejp2424, dimkr, fredx181.....people of the very highest calibre. (Even Barry, should he wish to get involved!) Will they be prepared to work together to create a showpiece Puppy that will meet 'current' Linux-noob expected standards?

As you're well aware, I'm basically a 'packager'; if anything, a re-packager, and a pretty mediocre one at that. The few times I've tried to do anything original I've usually made an absolute balls-up of it, and had to be 'rescued'.....further betraying my total lack of skills. (I sometimes think the only reason y'all tolerate me is because you're too nice to say otherwise..!)

Be that as it may, this is why you'll not see me over there.....because IMHO, I don't have anything to contribute. So I won't contaminate the thread, since it needs to be a thread purely for the top Puppy men to show what they can do together.

It's a good idea. I hope something worthwhile comes of it.

Mike.

[rockedge]

I have a very good friend who is now 70+ in age, who really was at Woodstock when Jimi played the anthem and lives life as a drummer and street performance juggler. His computing skills and any interest in these machines did not really happen until he was over 60. Started small with Windows 7 and a 64 bit machine which was rare at the time for using email and listen to music. Then discovered the world wide web and YouTube and Facebook. Over time and me showing him how he learned some basic network diagnostics and could get the machine back on line most of the time if something went poof. He could use different browsers if one could do one thing better than the other. But the machine aged and the net card failed then the power supply.

So I gave him on of my dumpster laptops, a decent DELL that ran Windows 7 then Windows 10. I got for free when it stopped working...I replaced the RAM cards with 4 G of new ones, re-formatted the 500 G HDD to 512 M Fat32, ext4 and a swap partition thereby getting rid of any trace of Windows. I installed a Bionic64-CE, named so since I built it with woof-CE and customized a small bit the desktop icons. And this laptop is up and going strong.

All I told him was "go ahead and try stuff, click away, you can't break it and you never have to see an update notification again"

So he tried stuff and Puppy Linux for his purposes worked beautifully. No confusing update notifications with their dire consequence rhetoric. The machine just ran and ran doing Facebook and YouTube music, particular videos featuring drummers from around the world. Best feature was how fast the programs started and how responsive they were when running. He buys new desktop and after a week I set it up to dual boot Windows 10 and Puppy Linux Fossapup64 because one day he goes to check the email and Windows goes into an update that took hours. 2 months later moved the Fossapup64 to a usb stick, reformatted the desktop HDD to the Fat32-ext3-swap partition arrangement. Copied the Fossapup back over to the ext3 HDD partition. Started right up.

I might have tried a more refined GUI driven distro for my friend, but why? When all those choices just confused him and were responsive as Windows was and if it broke (inevitable), a real hassle to fix.

[Mike3]

SO the whole idea here seems to be to try to promote puppy by getting it ti a higher ranking at distrowatch than it already has.

But I mean isn't that cheating a bit? A bit like when music artists or record labels buy their own record in order to climb the charts.

Just sayin. Doesn't it naturally get the ranking it has by how many people visit that particular page about puppy? If so why tryin to make it look more popular than it is.

But sure isn't linux like maximum 2 % of PC users and probably alot of them in more professional environments so to speak? And the puppy ranking at 19:th place among linux distros, sure ain't many users.

But why does that matter really?

Then this thread turns into a speculation on why there ain't more users and why people like puppy. I mean it's not a popularity contest.

[rockedge]

most of the backbone of Internet is running some form of Linux or Unix

[mikewalsh]

@Mike3 :-

Some folks on here have a real bee in their bonnets about 'Puppy MUST move with the times, it MUST compete with the 'big boys''. As a mod, I'm more than happy for them to have their discussion, and who knows.....something really good might come of it.

Between me & thee, Puppy is plenty up-to-date enough for my liking. It's good enough for MY rig, and that's good enough for me. But then I've been running her for so many years, I can do most stuff I need to in my sleep by now.

It's the same in any community. You've always got the 'movers & shakers', and then you've got the rest of the 'herd'. Try as you might, you'll never please "all of the folk, all of the time". Of course, for those who aren't satisfied with what's on offer they CAN always go off and do their own thing. That's the beauty of Linux.

You try doing that with Windoze and see how far you get.

And, er.....I completely agree with you about Distrowatch. I've never understand why folks place so much stock in the lists & tables. The entire thing is driven by visitors and clicks; it's not a true reflection of user demographics at all.

I also suspect the true number of Linux users is considerably higher than that "official" 2% figure. Many that use it don't admit to doing so.....and the thing that really skews the figures is the fact that 'Linux' is NOT a 'brand name', and it's NOT 'controlled' by any one single entity (in the way that MyCrudSoft & Crapple do). So true figures are rather awkward to come by. But, we live in a world that's dominated & driven by marketing & statistics.....and folks do so LOVE having numbers they can point to.

Mike.

[stevie pup]

There have been some brilliant, sensible comments on this thread, most of which I agree with. But Distrowatch generally, I don't take an awful lot of notice of the rankings. I've just had a look and I see that Endeavour is in 2nd place, so as it's one that I know nothing about I decided to have a closer look at it. So I assume that will count as a hit? All I've done is read about it, I haven't downloaded it and I certainly haven't used it. What do the rankings really tell us? Nothing in my opinion. And when you come to read the reviews for any distro, no matter how many scores of 9 or 10 it gets, there will always be someone who gives a 2 or 3. Which I suspect is often purely down to somebody's personal preferences and not a true reflection of how good or not the distro is.

A lot of people do just want something they can switch on and use, with a familiar desktop, they can't be bothered to "fiddle about". I suppose I'm fortunate in that I have 4 machines, so I can reserve two for general everyday use and play around with the other two. But it's unlikely that somebody with only one machine is going to start messing about with something they don't really know much about.

Bigpup's idea of a community built Puppy I think is great, but it's highly unlikely I'll be able to contribute anything, I'm not that clever. However I would like to make a couple of suggestions. Firstly, would it be an idea to maybe have some sort of vote, in order to get an impression as to what to include and what to leave out? Or is that likely to produce a string of arguments? Secondly, if you read reviews on Puppies, and it get's to pros and cons at the end, the business about software compatibility is often listed as a "con". I think this needs to be thought about.

[benali72]

Everyone please vote in the Poll on this topic located here -- https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=4535

Thanks.

[wiak]

...

... Unlike XFCE, LXDE, MATE, GNOME and KDE where their DE, file management, and hotkeys was almost the same as MS Windows so the transition to linux was easier. Providing official Puppy with alternative DE will do the trick. ...

Accurate if we want it to be easier for users, no matter their backgrounds, to step into PUPs and begin use without any eye-rolling of lacking behavior changes.

Maybe, the WoofCE current investigations as they continue incorporating Wayland will lead to the new DE environment to can be worldly consistent. OR...Maybe not. We'll see.

Somewhat concerned to note that I haven't seen any post by Clarity since above on Nov 7th, and have had no reply to a PM I sent. Hope all is well.

wiak

[rockedge]

concerned to note that I haven't seen any post by Clarity

I've noticed as well. Hopefully it's a fluky Internet connection

[JASpup]

If Ubuntu flavors are listed as independent distros, is this really an apples:oranges comparison?
(Hits Per Day data after the distro name)

Rank Distribution HPD
1 MX Linux 3480>
2 EndeavourOS 3154>
3 Manjaro 2227=
4 Mint 1989>
5 Pop!_OS 1533<
6 Ubuntu 1335>
7 Debian 1315>
8 Garuda 1253>
9 elementary 1077=
10 Fedora 981=
11 Zorin 903>
12 openSUSE 754<
13 KDE neon 693>
14 antiX 604>
15 Solus 597=
16 Slackware 529>
17 Lite 523>
18 PCLinuxOS 498>
19 Arch 461<
20 Artix 434=
21 Kali 413<
22 ArcoLinux 409=
23 Q4OS 394>
24 Puppy 386=
25 SparkyLinux 378>
26 CentOS 371<
27 Rocky 369>
28 FreeBSD 337=
29 Kubuntu 335>
30 Devuan 332=
31 Alpine 327>
32 Void 323=
33 Lubuntu 311=
34 AlmaLinux 288<
35 Tails 286<
36 deepin 281<
37 Mageia 274=
38 EasyOS 273=
39 Bluestar 255=
40 PureOS 255=
41 Peppermint 252=
42 RebornOS 250<
43 GhostBSD 248>
44 Xubuntu 246=
45 Linuxfx 242=
46 Kodachi 237=
47 Feren 233=
48 Nitrux 222>
49 NixOS 221=
50 Android-x86 215=
51 Gentoo 215=
52 Mabox 208=
53 KaOS 206=
54 Voyager 202=
55 Absolute 201=
56 Kaisen 197>
57 EuroLinux 195>
58 Parrot 191=
59 Ubuntu MATE 191=
60 Red Hat 190=
61 Endless 188>
62 Haiku 188=
63 4MLinux 184>
64 Bodhi 184=
65 Lakka 184<
66 ExTiX 177=
67 ReactOS 177=
68 Trisquel 172=
69 Redcore 171>
70 Gecko 168=
71 Emmabuntüs 167=
72 Super Grub2 162>
73 Qubes 159=
74 KNOPPIX 156=
75 SteamOS 156=
76 JingOS 155<
77 BunsenLabs 150=
78 RasPiOS 150=
79 Snal 149=
80 OpenBSD 147=
81 Archman 143=
82 Elive 143=
83 Ubuntu Budgie 143=
84 Ubuntu Studio 142=
85 AV Linux 139=
86 Tiny Core 137=
87 DragonFly 135=
88 ALT 134<
89 Proxmox 134>
90 ROSA 133=
91 Clear 131=
92 CloudReady 131=
93 Robolinux 131>
94 Septor 131<
95 UBports 131=
96 MakuluLinux 127<
97 FuguIta 123>
98 NuTyX 122>
99 Oracle 122=
100 SystemRescue

http://distrowatch.org/ 6 months data span on Sunday Dec 5, 2021

[BarryK]

concerned to note that I haven't seen any post by Clarity

I've noticed as well. Hopefully it's a fluky Internet connection

Clarity is also known as GCMartin I think. I received an email from GCMartin on Dec. 6, so he is still around.