DistroWatch

DistroWatch is a popular website which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open-source operating systems such as OpenSolaris and BSD. It now contains information on several hundred distributions.

The site maintains extensive comparison charts detailing differences between the package sets and software revisions of different distributions. It also provides some general characteristics of distributions such as the price and the supported processor architectures.

Distrowatch has a monthly donations programme, a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software[citation needed]. Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of $17,283 USD to various open source software projects.

Accuracy
It was originally published on May 31, 2001, and is maintained by Ladislav Bodnar. Despite Bodnar saying "I'd like to believe that there is some truth in the figures, but in all honesty, they really don't mean all that much and should not be taken very seriously", DistroWatch's statistics are often cited as a guide to the popularity of various distributions. Its "page hit counter" has been called "the best 'barometer' of Linux distributions on the Internet".

It has been pointed out that DistroWatch's system is prone to fraudulent statistics, and certain distros have been accused of attempting this, such as Freespire.