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Distrodle narrows the answer pool in two ways: a difficulty setting that filters by minimum popularity, and two independent toggles (Beyond Linux and Discontinued) that add extra families of distributions on top of whatever difficulty you picked. Difficulty is the main dial; the toggles are add-ons. If you want a fast, famous-distro round, stay on Very Easy with both toggles off. If you want the widest possible pool, pick Extreme and turn both toggles on.

Difficulty levels: a minimum-popularity filter

Each difficulty sets a floor on how popular a distro must be to appear as the hidden answer. The site describes them as follows:

Two things are worth noting. First, Hard is the default, so a new player who never touches the setting is already on a fairly deep pool. Second, Extreme is not just "Hard plus a bit more" — it explicitly pulls in router operating systems and very obscure entries, which changes the character of the game from "name a distro you've heard of" to "reason from attribute clues about something you may never have seen."

The practical consequence: difficulty doesn't change the rules or the 12 attributes you're graded on. It only changes how likely the target is to be a household name. Lower difficulty means your prior knowledge does more of the work; higher difficulty means you lean more on the green/yellow/red feedback and the year arrows.

The Beyond Linux toggle

Beyond Linux is a separate switch that adds BSD and UNIX distributions to the pool — the site names FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, and AIX as examples. It works on top of whichever difficulty you selected, so it expands the pool rather than replacing it.

Turn it on when you're comfortable with the Linux catalog and want the extra challenge of distinguishing, say, a BSD from a Linux distro on attributes like init system, package manager, or parent. Leave it off if BSD and UNIX are unfamiliar territory, since those answers will otherwise feel like guesses with no anchor.

The Discontinued toggle

Discontinued is described as a separate toggle on top of difficulty that adds retired distros to whichever pool you picked. It is independent of Beyond Linux, so the two can be combined.

This toggle matters because a retired distro can be famous yet absent from a modern pool — turning it on reintroduces names you might know from history but wouldn't expect in a current-distro game. If your guesses keep coming back red on release year or category, a discontinued target is one explanation worth testing by enabling the toggle in a fresh round.

How the settings combine

The three controls stack, and the pool is the result of all of them:

• Difficulty sets the popularity floor for Linux distros.
• Beyond Linux adds BSD/UNIX entries to that pool.
• Discontinued adds retired entries to that pool.

So "Extreme + Beyond Linux + Discontinued" is the largest possible pool, and "Very Easy with both toggles off" is the smallest. There's no indication that the toggles override difficulty — they extend it.

A concrete example

Suppose you're on the default Hard setting and keep guessing well-known Debian-family distros, but the feedback stays mostly red and the year arrow points to an earlier era. Two adjustments are worth trying: raise difficulty to Extreme to admit very-low-popularity entries, and switch on Discontinued in case the target is a retired distro. If instead your guesses fail on attributes like init system or package manager in ways that don't fit Linux conventions, enabling Beyond Linux is the better test.

Choosing a setting for your goal

• Learning the Linux landscape: Very Easy or Easy, toggles off. You'll see names you can actually place.
• A standard challenge: Medium or Hard (the default), toggles off.
• Maximum difficulty: Extreme with Beyond Linux and Discontinued on.
• Stuck on a round: rather than changing settings mid-round, note that every 5 wrong guesses the game reveals one attribute of the target as a toast, and New Game skips the round and shows the previous answer (skipping after guessing counts as a loss).

If you want to study the pool before committing, the Distrodex in the options panel is a searchable family tree of every distro in the game, with category filters — useful for seeing what a given difficulty and toggle combination can actually produce.

Distrodle grades every guess across 12 attributes, and you solve a round by turning all 12 cells green — meaning your guess matches the hidden distro on every one. The attributes are: distro name, paid status, init system, release model, parent distro, package manager, difficulty, year released, desktop, popularity, architecture, and category. Each cell is colored green (exact match), yellow (partial match), or red (no match), so the grid works as a process of elimination rather than a single yes/no answer.

The 12 attributes at a glance

How the comparison actually works

Each row compares your guess to the hidden target attribute by attribute. Green means the values are identical. Red means they don't match at all. Yellow is the interesting case: it signals that the two values overlap rather than being equal — for example, a shared category or a shared family/lineage. The site's own help text gives "a shared category or family" as the example, so treat yellow as "you're in the right neighborhood, narrow it down."

The Year column is different

Year released doesn't just go green or red. The number is followed by an arrow: ↑ means the target was released later than your guess, and ↓ means it was released earlier. Use the arrow to bracket the era before you worry about the exact year.

Hints fill in attributes for you

Every 5 wrong guesses, the game reveals one attribute of the target as a toast. That revealed attribute is effectively a free green cell — spend hints when a particular column (often parent distro or package manager) is stalling you.

A quick worked example

Suppose your guess shows green on Category: Desktop and Package manager, yellow on Parent distro, and a ↓ on Year. Read it as: you're in the right desktop/package family, the lineage is close but not exact, and the target is older than what you typed. Your next guess should keep the green columns fixed and pick an older distro from the same family — not a random new one.

Practical tips for reading the grid

• Lock in greens first. Once a column is green, only guess distros that preserve it.
• Use yellow as a family signal. A yellow parent distro or category tells you the answer shares lineage or purpose with your guess.
• Bracket the year early. The ↑/↓ arrows are the fastest way to shrink the pool before you burn guesses.
• Check the Distrodex. The searchable family tree in the options panel lists every distro in the game, so you can look up parents, categories, and release years instead of guessing blind.
• Remember the pool depends on your settings. Difficulty and the Discontinued / Beyond Linux toggles change which distros can be the target, so the same clue can point to different answers across modes.

Distrodle is a browser-based Linux distribution guessing game with a terminal look, inspired by Pokedle and Loldle. You pick a difficulty, type a distro name, and each guess is graded across 12 attributes until every cell turns green. The same site also hosts Distrodex, a searchable catalog and family tree of the Linux and BSD distros used in the game, so it works as both a game and a reference lookup. You play in the browser with no account or download mentioned on the page.

How a Round Works

1. Choose a difficulty in the filters panel. The default is Hard.
2. Type a distribution name into the guess field and submit it.
3. Read the color-coded result for each of the 12 attributes.
4. Repeat until all cells are green, or use New Game to skip and reveal the answer.

The 12 graded attributes are: Distro name, Paid, Init system, Release model, Parent distro, Package manager, Difficulty, Year released, Desktop, Popularity, Architecture, and Category.

Reading the Feedback

The Year column works differently from the rest. The number is followed by an arrow: ↑ means the target distro was released later than your guess, ↓ means it was released earlier. Use it to narrow down the era rather than expecting a plain match.

Difficulty Levels and Toggles

Difficulty controls how deep the pool goes, based on minimum popularity:

Two separate toggles sit on top of difficulty:

• Beyond Linux adds BSD and UNIX distributions to the pool, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, and AIX.
• Discontinued adds retired distros to whichever pool you selected.

Hints and Skipping

Every 5 wrong guesses, the game reveals one attribute of the target distro as a toast notification. These are useful when you are stuck between a few similar candidates.

New Game skips the current round and shows the previous answer. Skipping after you have already guessed counts as a loss, so treat it as a reset rather than a free pass.

Distrodex: The Reference Side

Distrodex, found in the options panel, is a searchable family tree of every distro in the game. It offers a tree view and a card view, plus filters by category. The categories listed include Desktop, Server, Gaming, Security / Forensics, Enterprise, Router / Firewall, Minimal / Embedded, Privacy, Container, Source-based, Mobile, and Live / Recovery.

This is the part of the site to use when you want to look up a distro's parent, package manager, or release model outside of a round — for example, when you need to confirm whether a distro belongs to the Debian family before your next guess.

Who It Suits

• Linux newcomers can start at Very Easy and use Distrodex to learn families and package managers as they play.
• Experienced users can pick Extreme with Beyond Linux and Discontinued enabled for a much wider pool.
• Anyone needing a quick lookup can skip the game and search Distrodex directly.

The page does not state pricing or login requirements, so treat access details as unconfirmed beyond what is described here.

Distrodex is Distrodle's searchable Linux and BSD catalog and family tree, opened from the options panel. It lists every distro in the game and shows parent relationships, so you can look up a distribution's details or trace its lineage before or during a round. It is a reference tool, not a separate game mode: using it does not change your score, and the page does not describe any limit on when you can open it.

What Distrodex contains

Distrodex is described on the site as "a searchable family tree of every distro in the game." Two things follow from that:

• Coverage matches the game's catalog. The same pool that feeds rounds — including the obscure entries unlocked at higher difficulties and the BSD/UNIX additions behind the Beyond Linux toggle — is what Distrodex indexes.
• Parent relationships are visible. Because it is presented as a family tree, you can see which distro a given one derives from, which is exactly the kind of information the Parent distro attribute tests.

The catalog also carries category labels. The filter panel lists these categories: Desktop, Server, Gaming, Security / Forensics, Enterprise, Router / Firewall, Minimal / Embedded, Privacy, Container, Source-based, Mobile, and Live / Recovery.

How to open and navigate it

1. Open the options panel on the Distrodle page.
2. Select Distrodex. A panel titled "Distrodex — Linux & BSD Catalog & Family Tree" loads.
3. Choose a view: Tree for the hierarchical family layout, or Cards for a flat, browsable list.
4. Use the search field to find a distro by name.
5. Narrow the list with Filters by category, and use Reset to clear them.

The panel also shows a count of the entries currently displayed, so you can tell how much a filter has narrowed things down.

When it actually helps

Distrodex pays off in two situations.

Before a round, when you want to learn the landscape. If you can name the big families but not their members, browsing the tree shows you, for example, that a long list of desktop distros descends from a small number of roots. That is the mental model the Parent distro column rewards.

Mid-round, when a guess comes back yellow. A yellow cell means partial overlap — a shared category or family. Opening Distrodex and filtering to that category gives you a shortlist of candidates that share the trait, which is faster than guessing blind. The same applies to the Category column: if your guess matches on category but nothing else, the category filter is the natural next step.

One caution: Distrodex tells you about distros, not about the hidden answer. It cannot confirm which distro the round picked, so treat it as a map rather than an oracle. The in-game hints — one attribute revealed every five wrong guesses — remain the only direct information about the target.

Where it fits alongside the rest of the game

Distrodle grades each guess across 12 attributes: distro name, Paid, Init system, Release model, Parent distro, Package manager, Difficulty, Year released, Desktop, Popularity, Architecture, and Category. Distrodex is most useful for the attributes that describe lineage and classification — Parent distro, Category, and Desktop — because those are the ones a catalog organizes naturally. For Year released, the game's own arrow indicators (↑ for later, ↓ for earlier) do the work more directly.

If you are new to the game, the practical order is: read the how-to-play help, pick a difficulty, and keep Distrodex open in a second pass once your first few guesses have told you which attributes you are close on.

Type a Linux distribution name into the guess box and click Guess. Each guess is graded across 12 attributes, and your goal is to turn every cell green — meaning your guess matches the hidden distro on all 12. Green is an exact match, yellow is a partial match (the values overlap, such as a shared category or family), and red is no match. The Year column works differently: it shows an arrow, where ↑ means the target was released later and ↓ means it was released earlier.

Setting Up a Round

Before your first guess, choose how deep the pool goes. Difficulty is set by minimum popularity:

Two toggles sit on top of difficulty:

• Beyond Linux adds BSD and UNIX distributions (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, AIX, and others) to the pool.
• Discontinued adds retired distros to whichever pool you picked.

Pick the difficulty that matches how much you know. If you can name the famous distros but not the obscure ones, start at Easy or Medium rather than Hard.

The 12 Attributes You're Grading

Every guess is compared on these columns: Distro name, Paid, Init system, Release model, Parent distro, Package manager, Difficulty, Year released, Desktop, Popularity, Architecture, and Category.

Read them as a process of elimination. A green cell locks that attribute in — you can stop thinking about it. A yellow cell tells you the two values share something (a category, a family) without being identical, so the target is nearby but not the same. A red cell rules the value out entirely.

Using the Year Arrows

The Year column is the one place where the number alone doesn't tell you everything. The number is followed by an arrow:

• ↑ — the target was released later than your guess.
• ↓ — the target was released earlier than your guess.

Use it to bracket the era. If you guess a 2004 distro and see ↑, every future guess should be newer than 2004. Keep halving the gap and the release year narrows quickly.

Hints and Ending a Round

Every 5 wrong guesses, the game reveals one attribute of the target as a toast. Save them for when you're stuck rather than spending guesses randomly — a revealed attribute can eliminate a whole branch of candidates.

New Game skips the round at any time and shows the previous answer. Note that skipping after you've already guessed counts as a loss, so use it to move on, not to dodge a bad start.

Checking Candidates in Distrodex

The options panel includes Distrodex, a searchable family tree and catalog of every distro in the game, with filters by category (Desktop, Server, Gaming, Security/Forensics, Enterprise, Router/Firewall, Minimal/Embedded, Privacy, Container, Source-based, Mobile, Live/Recovery, and more). When a yellow Parent distro or Category cell narrows the field, look up the family there to see which distros share it before spending another guess.

A Quick Example

Suppose you guess a distro and see: Init system green, Package manager green, Year 2004 with ↑, Category yellow, everything else red. You now know the init system and package manager exactly, that the target came out after 2004, and that its category overlaps your guess without matching. Open Distrodex, filter by the shared category, and sort mentally by release year — then guess the oldest candidate after 2004 first, since the arrow will tell you whether to move forward or back from there.