Hi,

there were defenitely more distributions before (probably they 
started to count then and then the number started growing as reports 
of distis came in), I am shure I could proove there were more than 
20 by April 1999.

For this thread we should care about the ones with significant 
changes from each others (not counting the "special" editions like 
Tomsrtbt, a single 3.5" disk with a complete OS with various net and 
scsi drivers different keymaps, about 100 file-, network- and 
diskrepair utilities and editors like vi and a reduced emacs). 

What I meant was that no matter where I get a NetBSD  CD, the 
various configuration files and structures were to be found at the 
same places in the filesystem thus making e.g. scripts work 
everywere or descriptions/Howtos will work. 

mike

On 29 Feb 00, at 11:23, sL wrote:

> Short history: there was around 20 distribs in April 1999, then a big
> "hop" during summer 1999 (76 distribs by the end of August!), and
> since then, the rate of growth is around 0-3 new distribs *per week*
> (weekly news...). To be fair, most of the increase is caused by
> translating (one language = one distrib), mixed with some "specific &
> friendly install tool", and, a quite new tendancy, "focused distribs"
> (security, conviviality, ease of use, server, geek-oriented, dead end
> users, etc.).
> 
> However, note that this number *does not* take into account the
> different
> versions (freely downloadable, boxed edition, "pro"-edition, etc.) of
> a same distribution (i.e. "RedHat" counts for one).