I have started using Linux recently and have been enjoying the open-source nature of it. I was browsing a website called [distrowatch.com](http://distrowatch.com) that has hundreds of Linux distros. All of them are free to use (ubuntu, debian, Kali, Quebes, Tails, etc.) How are they maintained if it doesn’t cost anything to download and install them?
Thank you.
In: Technology
For most of these distributions, maintenance is deferred with one distro being upstream from another. For example, Ubuntu is upstream from Debian. The Ubuntu team leverages all of the hard work of the Debian team.
This allows anyone including a single person with just moderate spare time to make a well-maintained distro. You can make a few modifications for whatever makes your distro different and useful and publish it as its own distro. This means that the level of effort needed to adequately maintain a distro can vary significantly.
Additionally many distros are simply poorly maintained and are built off of dangerously outdated releases.
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