Round #2 of Distro Madness is now complete and it seems to be gaining momentum. We had more responses and much more competitive voting for most of the matches. Here is a quick recap of where we stand.
Here are my takeaways from round #2.
A more competitive round
Because of the seeding, round #1 had a number of matchups that weren’t terribly competitive. However with the popular distributions advancing the matchups were much more competitive in this round. Only two distributions received fewer than 10 votes and 6 matchups were decided by 4 or fewer votes. Hopefully round #3 will bring more of the same
Mint Mate continues strong performance
Mint Mate was the darling from round 1 winning by 31 votes. In round 2 it was given a stronger challenge from Ubuntu Unity but it still received the second highest total votes with 28. Only Mint Cinnamon received more votes with 32.
Debian GNOME edges Elementary OS
I’m going to take personal credit for this because I voted for GNOME but this was a very close matchup that changed leads several times throughout the week. I’m really happy that Debian advanced and stayed in this competition but it faces a daunting task with Mint Mate up next.
PopOS! takes down Ubuntu Mate
To me this was the matchup of round #2 and it didn’t disappoint being decided by just 2 votes. I will admit that I am a little surprised to see PopOS! advance. I thought that Mate would advance on the popularity of Martin Wimpress in the community but it is possible that there are a lot of system76 fans or gamers amongst our voters.
Incomplete votes abound in round #2
The survey is set up such that voting on each individual matchup is optional. Interestingly, many voters are being selective about the matchups that they are voting on. I think that the most likely explantion is that voters are avoiding voting on matchups when they aren’t familiar with the distros involved. This is probably for the best (every vote we are receiving is an educated one) but it is worth noting so that readers aren’t confused by the different vote totals across the matchups.
There is still interest in this
Once again I want to thank everyone for their participation and kind words in the chat. To see the interest grow in this from round #1 to Round 2 was quite gratifying.
Now, on to Round #3
I’d say that the feature matchups are Ubuntu vs LMDE and PopOS! and MX Linux vs Xubuntu. What about you?
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