The Register

Every distribution named anywhere on this site has a row here: when it started, when it last shipped, what it was built on, whether it is still alive, what claims to have replaced it, and the date each of those was last checked. One table, maintained by hand, updated whenever a status changes rather than whenever an article is published.

It exists because “this distro is dead” is the single most repeated unsourced claim in this subject, and because a claim of death with no date on it is gossip. A row here forces the date.

How to read this table

• Status is one of four words. Shipping means a release or a sync happened recently enough to be checkable. Ended means no release and no successor activity under that name. Renamed means the work continued under a different name and the old name stopped. Hobby mode means it still works but nobody has promised you anything.
• Verified is the date I last looked, not the date the fact was true. A row that has not been re-checked in a year is a row you should distrust, and the column exists so you can tell.
• “Not established” means I have not checked a primary source for that cell myself — including where the answer is common knowledge. Common knowledge is how errors get laundered, so it does not qualify here. Those cells are listed below with the piece that will close them.
• Colour is never the only signal. Every status carries its word as well as its square, so the table reads identically in monochrome, in print, and to a screen reader.

Open cells

What is missing, why, and what closes it:

MocaccinoOS — base

The November 2020 announcement moved the project from Gentoo to Funtoo; 2026 coverage describes it as Gentoo-based. Either the base moved back or the coverage is careless. This site will say which, or say it could not determine which. It will not split the difference. Closed by MocaccinoOS: the successor, or the estate?

matrixOS — last release

Announced February 2026 with continuous image builds rather than numbered releases. What counts as a “release” here needs settling against the project’s own artefacts before a date goes in the cell.

Funtoo, Redcore, Gentoo — first release

Three dates that every wiki agrees on and that I have not personally checked against a primary announcement. They stay open until I have.

Not yet listed

Calculate Linux joins the table with the comparison piece it appears in. Anything else named in a future article arrives with that article. A distribution never appears in a sentence here without appearing in this table.

Found a wrong cell? editor@lxnaydesign.net. Corrections to this table are logged on Corrections like any other, because a reference nobody can audit is a reference nobody should use.