Boah!

This is soooo so so boring. No life, no race to the top, no frisky action inside the 5 top ranked Linux distributions. As you know I’m one of those people who prefer boredom over exciting shit. Buuut, why is it so quiet in the hitparade? I mean, those top 5 distros are at their places for reasons; MX for being supposedly the pinnacle of Debian development, EOS for being pure Arch Linux without the installation stress, Mint for being the best system for the people, Manjo for being the Mint of the Arch world, and Pop for being almost as nice as Mint. To be honest, I really don’t know why Pop is in the Top 5 at all. Must’ve done something right.

Anyhoo, they all seem to be frozen in time and place. Like the pyramids of Gizah* or the Rolling Stones.

Why is that so?

One thing I mentioned already, they all supposedly mark the best of the crop in their special field. MX, although I won’t ever use it, is regarded as better than its momma Debian, and likewise for EOS and Manjo, Mint and Pop! And also … they aren’t static! Which means all of ’em are under steady development by strong dev teams. Yes, even the static Mint and Pop get new versions, dunno, every 6 months or so. And even the posterchild of immobility (experts call this special sort of autism “stability”), MX, experiences a new release every now and then and is at version 21 already. So it develops a helluvalot faster than its mothership Debian.

But for realz, Deb, Ubu, Arch – is there no other game in town?

Oh yes, there are a bunch of other base distros and their forkoffs. But they be risky, uncomfy, geeky, masochistic, ultraspecialized, while our top 5 are allround systems. Operating systems for everyday use, to be used by normal human beings. Don’t forget how lazy, uninterested and blasé we are as a species. Creatures of habit, everyone of us. And we’re easily duped by marketing tricks. The only reason for why Microsoft’s Windows is still so far ahead in terms of user base: Got a “free” Windows preinstalled with your new computer, why swap it out for something different? Thinking for ourselves? Bah, datz too much work and responsibility.

But this is the ultimate truth about why there is no movement inside the top 5 and the top 10, and hardly any earth shattering revolution going on in the top 20 – 50 neither: Remember how often I wrote about Linux Maturity? Mhm, all the Linuxes at the top have reached a remarkable level of exactly that; they are mature. Like good cheeses kinda. And since GNU/Linux is Free and Open Source Software, the mature stuff is used by most of them. And if one of them, say Mint, comes um with some cool new toy/tool, say Warpinator, and it is good – you see it used by all the others, too. Have a peek at your Android phone: Oh yes, you’ll find the Warpi even there! And in Steam Deck and even in Windows. A very private French hobbyist in Ireland with 2 helpers comes up with all the fancy stuff, releases it in Mint … and sooner or later you’ll find it everyfuknwhere!

See, when Manjaro appeared on the scene it was an immediate hit and made a skyrocketing rise to the very top in a couple months. Like Ubuntu years before, it took a cool, but unusable mothership distro and transformed it into something for the people. A complete operating system. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Always a wining recipe.

Apart from that you’ll find all use cases covered inside the top 5 as well: Server, desktop, geekstuff, who needs anything else? Nobody! That’s why we won’t see any new Ubuntu/Mint, MX or Manjaro anytime soon. If ever.

Look everybody: That YouTube guy that got so much flak lately made a video that touches my topic as well. And although he’s a guy and cares about stuff that is just meh! for me, his findings are weirdly congruent with my own.

* Interesting fact: Did you know that for Cleopatra the pyramids were already as ancient as she is for us?