The Glitz and Glamour of maintaining an OS

[Moltke]

Speaking of DistroWatch, having given their rankings a brief glance, I do not think it is the greatest point of reference for picking up an OS to use. Not because I am using Linux Lite and think everyone should do the same. Infact, I encourage people to do the exploration on their own behalf. Perhaps then we could confront our observations eventually, if to maintain constructive thinking. But some of the options pointed by DistroWatch as the most popular, do not really seem to myself as being generated by spontaneous popularity among the casual audience. Unless there is no 'casual audience' in Linux.

According to what I've read on the web, Distrowatch's distro ranking system is based on clicks; that is, how many clicks a distro's link gets on their page. If you go to DW, have a look at the list, click on any distro name, then click to the distro's page from within DW site, that click is being counted by their system, they don't know if you actually downloaded, installed and are using it, just that you clicked that distro's name on their page, so I agree with you to some extent that it doesn't reflect which distro is the most used, noticed that I wrote "used" not popular, since at least in DW "popular" means most clicked however, having a look at DW does give people some reference and reading through the comments helps too.