this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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This might be my misunderstanding but when you say mainstream distribution what do you mean. My understanding is mint is built on Ubuntu similar to how nobara is built on fedora. So for example if something broke or I wanted to something on mint I can follow Ubuntu instructions (kind of) and follow fedora for nobara? Sorry if this is dumb question
It's not a dumb question at all, and there is no "agreed upon" definition.
For me the most important characteristics of a "Mainstream Distribution" would be the size of their maintainer team - though that is also inaccurate if we are talking about distributions that are built on top of other distributions - as in your example.
Another indication is to check who is sponsoring a distribution's development. If there are plenty of commercial sponsors, then chances are that the distribution is well maintained. Similarly, if the distribution is created by a commercial company (Intel, Canonical, RedHat,...), as those companies also have an interest in keeping their product in a good state.
Age of the distribution might be another indicator. If a distribution has been around for a long time, chances are it isn't bad either.
However, I am lazy and would not actually check any of this by hand. Instead, the thing I would actually do is to just go to https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major and read through their list. ๐