You know that your editresse is a huge fan of GNU/Linux OS for various good reasons and usually promotes the use of Linux for everybody, for all the boiz n grrlz and for granny and gramps, too.

But sometimes … look, just 5 minutes ago, on my daily patrol of the reknown Linux hub DistroWatch I stumbled upon this release announcement of wattOS:

So, a new release “the first in several years.” Really? Ok, we all know Debian’s development speed flows like molasses but for a distro, to release their Debian 11 spin, like, a year after the mothership came out with its own, and all the other Deb-based distros had released their spins relatively close to that date, this is just poor form. 😐

Ron Ropp, it’s nice you found a hobby in dabbling with Linux distros and spun your own Debian spin. Nothing wrong with that. In fact are most Linux distros hobby projects, even the most famous ones, like MX, EndeavourOS, Mint and Manjaro. It might be a cool pastime for you. But you seem to be a one-man circus while all the others have developer crews and are team efforts. Who knows, maybe you’re physically handicapped and not able to tinker with boats, cars or motorcycles. So nice to have found another way to keep yourself busy.

But why release your own personal fork to the public?

See, I like most Linux users, had thoughts about trying my hand in making my own distro. But I didn’t coz on second thought I knew I don’t have the skills to pull it off, and I’m a bushfire, totally into it today, can’t be bothered tomorrow. Also what could I possible add to any base distro that’s not already been done by other, much smarter and more dedicated – but less sexy – people?

So I buried my stupid idea and left it to rot.

wattOS is the kind of amateur hour distro that gives GNU/Linux a bad name in computing circles.