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:

Redcore — 2402 “Unukalhai”

DistroWatch lists a 2402 release dated 2025-03-21 and third-party reviews of a build under that name exist, but the project’s own news index announces no stable release between 2401 (2024-01-25) and 2601 (2026-04-23). The “last release” cell therefore records what the project announced, and this discrepancy stays open until a primary source settles it. Raised in The five candidates for “Sabayon in 2026”.

Redcore, Gentoo — first release

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

Codecs and proprietary drivers on first boot

Not a column here yet, and it should be: for Redcore, Calculate and MocaccinoOS no project page consulted on 2026-08-04 states whether a fresh install preselects them. That was the defining Sabayon property, so the answer belongs in the table once it can be sourced.

Closed

MocaccinoOS — base (closed 2026-08-04)

Answer: Gentoo. The desktop is seeded from a Gentoo stage3 autobuild pulled from distfiles.gentoo.org and layered with a pinned snapshot of the gentoo/gentoo ebuild tree, per the project’s own build definitions. The Funtoo move announced on 2020-11-20 was pursued in a separate repository by one developer and abandoned by the project on 2021-12-06. The same two build definitions, read at the commits that were current when the two alpha images were tagged in October 2021 and February 2022, already named category: "gentoo" and github.owner: gentoo — so no tagged image was built on Funtoo either. Worked in MocaccinoOS: the successor, or the estate?

Funtoo — status and first release (changed 2026-08-04)

The status moved from Hobby mode to Ended. The project’s own front page has said the project has ended and the community project has been disbanded since a statement stamped 2025-09-05, and no repository in the funtoo GitHub organisation — the default source for ego sync — has been pushed to since 2025-01-29. The first-release cell now records that Funtoo never had a numbered release, per the project’s own history page, rather than reporting a date I had not checked. Worked in Funtoo announced its own death and then took it back.

Not yet listed

Calculate Linux joined the table on 2026-08-04 with the comparison piece it appears in, as promised. 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.