Distrodle

How Distrodle Works

Pick a difficulty, then guess the hidden Linux distro in as few tries as you can. Every guess is graded across 12 attributes.

• Goal: turn every cell green. That means your guess matches the target on every attribute and the round is solved.
• Difficulty sets how deep the pool goes by minimum popularity:
  • Easy — Very High and High popularity only. A handful of well-known distros.
  • Medium — adds Medium popularity. A noticeably bigger pool.
  • Hard — also includes Low popularity. The default.
  • Extreme — the full list, including Very Low popularity and discontinued distros.
• The 12 attributes: Distro name, Paid, Init system, Release model, Parent distro, Package manager, Difficulty, Year released, Desktop, Popularity, Architecture, and Category.
• Reading the cells: green = exact match, yellow = partial match (the values overlap, e.g. a shared category or family), red = no match.
• The Year column is special: the number is followed by an arrow — ↑ means the target was released later, ↓ means it was released earlier. Use it to home in on the era.
• Hints: every 5 wrong guesses the game reveals one attribute of the target as a toast. Spend them when you're stuck.
• Discontinued is a separate toggle on top of difficulty. It adds retired distros to whichever pool you picked.
• New Game at any time skips the round and shows the previous answer. Skipping after guessing counts as a loss.
• Distrodex (in the options panel) is a searchable family tree of every distro in the game.