Voting for Round 2 will be open until March 12
Distro Madness- Round 1 Wrap-Up
So Round #1 of Distro Madness 2021 is in the books. Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote.
Before we open the voting for round #2 let’s recap the results of round 1. Here is the updated bracket with voting tally’s and the winners advancing to the next round.
Many of the results were predictable thanks to the seeding system which kept the most popular distributions away from one another, however other results were a little more surprising. Here are my takeaways from round #1.
Every distribution received votes
With 64 distributions to complete the bracket I clearly had to include a number of niche choices. Heck, Rocky Linux is still in beta. Despite this however, every single distribution listed received votes. A common refrain from users lamenting the lack of Linux desktop uptake is that “there are too many distributions” but clearly the efforts of developers are still appreciated by the community.
Mint Mate received the most votes
This was surprising to me. Slax is a pretty cool little distro that has 32 bit and 64 bit versions and can be run directly off of USB. It is incredibly lightweight and flexible. The latest release was 2019 so part of this might be a case of “out of sight, out of mind” but I think that this result is more about people’s love of Linux Mint Mate. It has to be considered an early front-runner in DistroMadness.
Close call for Manjaro KDE
I think that most people would consider Manjaro a top tier distribution and the KDE version of Manjaro the “flagship” at this point. Despite this, it struggled against PCLinuxOS and only advanced by X votes. I know that many in the Mintcast Telegram have been stung by a Manjaro update but this was still surprising to me. Is there just a love for PCLinuxOS out there? Other close calls from Rd1? Endeavor OS edging out Kali, and Kubuntu by 1 vote over Bodhi.
CentOS survives a Rocky challenge
I think that you can probably see what I was trying to do with this round #1 matchup. I was curious how people would vote after the PR disaster that was the transition to CentOS stream. In the end, CentOS still advanced, albeit in a close match. Perhaps the fact that Rocky is still in beta was a deterrent. Or perhaps the Jupiter broadcasting damage control campaign from the past few weeks has been effective?
Slackware upset
Round 1 included few results that I would consider “upsets” but Ubuntu Unity handily winning over Slackware probably counts. Not too long ago Slackware finished second in a poll of best distros on LinuxQuestions.org. Clearly this is a different audience. Feren winning over Redhat might also be considered an upset on first view.
There is interest in this
Finally I want to thank everyone for their participation and kind words in the chat. I started this on a whim and wasn’t sure quite how it would go, but having almost 40 participants makes this worthwhile.
Now, on to Round #2
Where the feature matchup has to be Ubuntu Mate vs PopOS,