That too, with my actually wondering indeed why there are so many Linux distributions, how all those editions helps someone outside the operating system make a choice. The multitude of choices are admittedly overwhelming, but they're for
Karen Lewellen via talk wrote on 2025-01-07 13:37: people *inside* the ecosystem to get what they want from their computer. Those outside the ecosystem do have difficulty finding a starting point, but they just are not used to having any options what-so-ever. As for why there are so many, a few reasons. * Computers are complicated, so there are many ways of interacting with them. * Some people just want to experiment and make their own * ... At the root of all the varieties are basically only a few to consider: Debian / Ubuntu RedHat / Fedora Arch and niche distros like: Gentoo Slackware And those are just the bases upon which one selects a desktop environment, all of which differ on an even greater scale. I've surely missed something, but I think the first 3 distro families cover > 90% of Linux installations and are really all a newcomer needs to evaluate.
what motivates you to prefer your distribution of choice?
I choose KDE because it's the most customizable and powerful desktop environment, and Ubuntu because of it being what I learned first and it hitting the right balance of reasonably up-to-date but stable. Hence, KDEneon, the only rational (& correct) choice. /That ought to incite some responses...