Distrowatch -- If it didn't already exist, somebody would have to invent it

How Distrowatch's Ladislav Bodner does what he does is a complete mystery to me. Like LXer, the organization, leanness and general programming genius behind the Web site itself makes Distrowatch an invaluable resource not just for what's currently happening with just about every version of Linux and BSD, but also for the packages and people that go into making up the many hundreds of operating-system software distributions that Distrowatch tracks on a daily basis.

And "not just currently" also means that you can select a distribution and go back in time, following the news all the way back to when Distrowatch first began publishing on the Web, May 31, 2001 -- eons ago in "Linux years."

Whenever I write about a distribution, looking backward on Distrowatch is essential in order to get a picture in my mind of how far that distro has come and when the milestones in its development happened.

Distrowatch sums up the activity for the past seven days in the DistroWatch Weekly, at the bottom of which you will find what Ladislav is keeping track of. It's staggering. For this week, here's the tally:

* Number of all distributions in the database: 557
* Number of all active distributions in the database: 357
* Number of discontinued distributions: 125
* Number of distributions on the waiting list: 218

That's a lot to follow, and without Distrowatch, we'd all be in much worse shape. If there's any justice in the world, Ladislav is making a mint off of this site.