forks, aimless

I saw a posting on a mailing list where someone said he used “Gentoo linux” and wanted to know how to do something in a different OS (OpenDarwin). I wondered, how many linux distros are there? I have always thought there were too many, so I put the question to Google.

Opinion: There are too darned many Linuxes:

By my count, there are one million, two hundred and seventy thousand, and four hundred and seventeen Linux distributions.Nah, I’m kidding. There are only, by my quick count, one hundred and forty one Linux distributions. Currently shipping. For the Intel platform. In English. Is it just me, or is something wrong here?

Though opinions differ:

Currently, there are a total of 386 Linux distributions and 9 BSD distributions in the database. Of these distributions, 50 have been officially discontinued, or the distribution’s web site (or product information) simply disappeared, or became inactive (i.e haven’t released a new version in over 2 years and their web sites don’t give indication of work in progress). These are: Aleader, Antomic, Ares, Beehive, Blue, Blue Point, BYO, Caldera/SCO, Corel, DemoLinux, Dynasoft, Eagle, Eridani, EvilEntity, Happy, HP Secure, Immunix, JAMD, JBLinux, Kondara, LASER5, LGIS, LinuxInstall.org, LinuxPPC, LRs, Luminux, Madeinlinux, Merdeka, MUMi, Neat, N-ix, OEone, Polar Bear, Red Office, Shabdix, Slackintosh, SmartPeer, Spectra, Stampede, Storm, SuperRescue, TrX, United, uOS, Virtual, Virux, Voodoo, WinBi and Zeus). These distributions will not be included in the statistics that follow. That gives us a total of 345 Linux and BSD distributions for which facts and figures have been compiled.

What’s up with that?

I couldn’t name the 9 BSDs (I only know of Free, Open, and Net as extant). But what’s with all those distinction w/o a meaningful difference distros in the Linux world? What are the reasons to fork yet another distribution in an increasingly crowded (and not exactly competitive: do any of these charge for anything but media?) marketplace?

What it the point?