Changelog

What's new

It's been a busy stretch. We redesigned the homepage, plugged in real-world popularity data, and - behind the scenes - moved our entire foundation to a new home. Here's everything that changed.

A fresh first impression

The homepage intro has been redesigned from the ground up. It's cleaner, faster to scan, and does a better job of telling you what DistroDB actually is in the first few seconds you're here.

Popularity, backed by real data

Ever wondered which distros people are actually running? Now you don't have to guess.

• We've added a Popularity rating pulled straight from the Steam Hardware & Software Survey
• Ratings reflect real usage numbers, not vibes or forum hearsay
• You'll find it alongside the other distro stats, right where you'd expect it

It's a small addition that answers a question a lot of you have been asking.

Under the hood: goodbye JSON, hello CMS

For most of DistroDB's life, our entire dataset lived in JSON files baked into the codebase. Every fix, tweak, or new distro meant a code change and a full redeploy.

Not anymore.

• We've migrated our data layer to PayloadCMS
• Content — distros, changelog entries, roadmap items, and more — can now be added or edited on the fly, with no redeploy required
• This also means fixes and updates can ship a lot faster from here on out

You won't notice much of a difference on the surface, but it changes a lot about how quickly we can move.

Self-hosted, top to bottom

DistroDB is now fully self-hosted. We've moved off third-party platforms and onto our own infrastructure, giving us more control over performance, reliability, and — fittingly, for a Linux database — how our own stack is run.

Analytics, without the tracking

Along with the move to self-hosting, we've added self-hosted analytics. This lets us understand how the site's being used without sending your data to a third party or relying on invasive tracking scripts. Same insights, none of the baggage.

What's next

With content now flowing through the CMS instead of static files, we're able to move faster on new features and distro coverage. If something looks off after all these changes, the Suggest a change button is always there.

What's new

You no longer have to download an ISO, spin up a virtual machine, or dual-boot just to see what a distro feels like. Starting with this release, supported distributions can be launched right in your browser — one click, no install, no commitment.

Try in browser

We've teamed up our database with DistroSea, which boots real Linux distros in the cloud and streams them to you.

• A new Try in browser button now sits next to Download on every supported distro page
• We've also added it as a quick link in the sidebar, so it's there whether you're skimming the specs or ready to dive in
• It's live for 56 distributions so far — Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Mint, Debian, openSUSE, Manjaro, Pop!_OS, and many more
• Distros that DistroSea doesn't host yet simply won't show the button, so you'll never hit a dead end

It's the fastest way to answer the question everyone actually has: "but what does it look like?"

A tidier distro page

While we were in there, we took a hard look at the buttons crowding the top of each distro page. Three equally-loud buttons next to each other turned out to be three too many.

• Download and Try in browser are now the clear, primary actions
• Compare and Suggest a change have been quieted down into subtle utility buttons, with proper icons so they're still easy to find
• The whole row breathes a lot better now, on desktop and mobile alike

Under the hood

• Each distro can now carry an optional DistroSea reference in our dataset, so adding browser support to more distros later is just a one-line change
• Contributors: if you're adding a distro DistroSea hosts, you can now wire up the test drive yourself — see the updated project notes

As always, if a distro you love is missing its browser button (or anything else looks off), the Suggest a change button is right there waiting. Happy distro-hopping.

What's new

This update delivers a major overhaul of the screenshot gallery on distro detail pages and manual review on three most viewed distros.

Gallery

Desktop controls:

• Toolbar buttons: zoom out, live percentage indicator, zoom in, reset/fit, close
• Mouse wheel zooms toward the cursor; double-click toggles 1× ⇄ 2.5× at the cursor
• Click-drag to pan when zoomed; arrow keys navigate; +/-/0 for zoom/reset; click background or Esc to close

Mobile gestures:

• Pinch to zoom toward the pinch midpoint, with simultaneous two-finger pan
• One-finger pan when zoomed, edge-clamped to image bounds
• Horizontal swipe (at 1×) navigates prev/next past a 60px threshold, follows the finger, snaps back otherwise
• Swipe-down-to-dismiss with progressive backdrop fade + image scale-down; closes past threshold, snaps back otherwise
• Axis is locked on first movement so vertical/horizontal/pinch don't fight each other; tap on background closes

Distros

• We've carefully reviewed and updated the screenshots for the three most viewed distros: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Debian.
• Updated descriptions and tags for these distros to reflect the latest changes in their respective releases.

What's new

First public milestone of DistroDB. This release establishes the core infrastructure and content that the project builds upon.

Database & content

• Initial database of Linux distributions with structured metadata — package managers, init systems, desktop environments, release models, and architecture support. For now we just added 99 distros.
• We added popover system and glossary for all tags and terms used in the database, with anchor links to definitions from every page.
• Asset structure standardised under public/repos/[slug]/ for community contributions

Pages & features

• Landing page with full-text search and distro grid with advanced filtering (package manager, init system, desktop environment, release model, difficulty)
• Distro detail pages at /distros/[slug] with full metadata and screenshot gallery (many of them still missing, but will be added in future releases)
• Side-by-side comparison at /vs/[slug-a]-vs-[slug-b] with highlighted winners
• Distro Wizard at /wizard — 6-question interactive quiz that scores and recommends distributions from the local dataset
• Resources at /resources — curated external links by category

Project pages

• Roadmap page at /roadmap tracking planned features with done / in-progress / upcoming / planned states
• This changelog at /changelog
• About, Support, Contact, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service pages

A word for the future

It's been a long way to get here. As you see, the project is still in its early stages, and there are many features and improvements planned for the future. The quality of the content is still not perfect, and we will continue to improve it over time. We are also looking for contributors to help us with content curation and development. If you are interested in contributing, please reach out to us via the contact page.

Even tho there are a lot of other projects that aim to provide similar information, we believe that DistroDB is unique in its approach and vision uniting and creating one centralised source. It's a looooong way till there, but we are committed to making it happen.