Reading through the cartoonishly long list of existing Linux distros, the sundry flavors and the off-shoots of off-shoots all start to blur together. To remedy that, we’ve gathered a few distros that truly stand out from the crowd.

These aren’t necessarily the most popular distros, but they serve special purposes or appeal to niche demographics within the Linux community. These are also all distros that, as of this writing in July 2021, see active development. Hannah Montana Linux is long dead, and so is the joke.