“At first, ranking GNU/Linux distributions seems alien to the
spirit of free software. After all, free software is all about
choice. What should matter is that your distro suits you, not how
others judge it.“Yet, in practice, community members judge distributions all the
time. They don’t use a single metric, and at times a distro’s
appeal is as simple as the fact that it is new or has released a
new version. Yet, whenever community members choose a distribution
to download or to build their own distribution upon, or to borrow a
tool from, they are making a verdict on it…”