DistroWatch.com has a list of Linux distros and ranks them based on popularity. Currently, Mint is the distro of choice for many Linux users followed by Ubuntu and Debian. There are hundreds of distros available and you can’t possibly use or play around with all of them. Most of these distros are just offshoots of the more popular distros. If I were to narrow it down to just a few distros, I would go with these magnificent seven.
- Mint – since it’s popular desktop. It’s based on Ubuntu.
- Ubuntu – it’s my current favorite Linux server.
- Debian – since Ubuntu and numerous others are based on Debian.
- Fedora – it’s based on Redhat.
- Centos – it’s basically Redhat without the support.
- FreeBSD – Unix-like OS based BSD.
- Slackware – it’s been around for a very long time.
About 25% of Linux users use arch or derivatives as Manjaro or Antergos, and it is more as more experts are at the sample, that have contributed a lot with their easy installers to this grow. and 50% are debian based, basically Ubuntu, but you do not mention it.
Sabayon (Gentoo based) or Kaos and Chakra are other interesting distros or the Elementary OS (ubuntu based) with its beautiful Pantheon DE.
And any of them have more users than Free BSD that is a great OS but it is not Linux.
Also there are special distros for security as kali and others or music as KX Studio, Musix and Ubuntu Studio, or gaming as Steam OS
So I do not understand how this can be written at this date under the current events at the Linux distro world