I made a Linux distro guessing game.

[-]

TampaPowers@reddit

A MUTE BUTTON WOULD BE APPRECIATED... MAWP.... MAWP....

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

right click on the browser tab, mute tab

[-]

jermygod@reddit

Popularity is ... questionable at best.
Kali - high, but cachyOS medium?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

its hard to get accurate estimates haha, if you want feel free to change it in the repo, ill merge your pull request :)

[-]

Maybe you can put an external source. Also if is not accurate, at least there is no discussion. For example you can put DistroWatch popularity as a field. We know is not accurate but I can try to think where distro are ranked in DistroWatch.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

for that id have to write a crawler for distrowatch probably, i dont think ill do that (maybe in the future)

[-]

awildboop@reddit

Not necessarily - it's not as if the data changes frequently, you could simply scrape it once a week. It may also be worth reaching out to them to see if you can get a raw JSON or see if there's an API endpoint you can use.

For what it's worth, I really like it. It's one of the few wordle-esque games I like.

[-]

Permafrostbound@reddit

Nor are a few others (guix for example, also raspbian)

[-]

jort93@reddit

I think if you ask random people in the street, more people will know Kali Linux.

I feel like almost all people that know cachyOS will also know kali. The other way around not so much.

[-]

jermygod@reddit

"almost all people that know cachyOS will also know kali"
naaah
cachyOS today is a choice for a normies/gamers
so i'd say it's exactly the other way around

[-]

Chownio@reddit

That is super fun. How many distros do you have loaded in there? I got Slackware in 5 guesses.

[-]

pitourofagos@reddit

Man this is good

[-]

MichaelTunnell@reddit

This is pretty cool! I played three times and got two of them in two tries, the other one was basically impossible because it had OpentWrt as the distro and that is a very specific appliance distro so it is unlikely people will think that is included as an option. Fun game though.

[-]

themirrazzunhacked@reddit

Quick question, where are the servers located? The connection is really slow keeps dropping for me.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

poland, also theres a lot people using the website so maybe thats why its lagging

[-]

themirrazzunhacked@reddit

Both of those would explain it (I'm in the US)

[-]

pantokratorthegreat@reddit

Debian and Kubuntu in 3rd try, but I couldnt guess something based on arch - not manjaro, endeavour, cachy, garuda nor steam. I gave up.

[-]

MettaSuttaVegan@reddit

Goal: guess the hidden Linux distro.

Guess from what? From nothing?

[-]

VOID401@reddit

Yes, type a distro, it'll tell you how close your guess is, then you guess next one. Lower amount of guesses better.

Just like wordle

[-]

MettaSuttaVegan@reddit

How close my guess is in relation to what? There is no information to guess from

[-]

digsmann@reddit

Looks interesting, mate... :) will you be adding more OS's in there?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

yes, you can also make a pull request adding OS's

[-]

child_in_a_basement@reddit

Idk if it's intentional or whatever. but console literally prints the target. I can just open console in inspect tool and see the answer

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

i used that to debug the previous answer, ill accept it

[-]

Lukainka@reddit

Well this is addictive, nice game!

[-]

oxez@reddit

Seems to be missing an old one:

https://sourcemage.org/

I am not an active user, but it still is being updated and I keep an eye on it for learning purposes

[-]

Swooferfan@reddit

this is a fun game, thanks!

[-]

DanAsInDanimals@reddit

This was super fun! Linux from scratch was the only one that stumped me at 7 guesses

[-]

shoh1808@reddit

Why is "Desktop, Gaming" category is right but "Gaming, Desktop" category is wrong?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

lmao sorry lol ill fix that

[-]

IlCande@reddit

Pretty fun!

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

Not sure how this works, when I open the page (on mobile) there is just the "./guess ..." Prompt with correct/incorrect/... And some input box. How does this work?

[-]

redundant78@reddit

it's wordle-style - you guess a distro and the colored boxes tell you how close your guess's properties are to the hidden answer. green = exact match, yellow = close, red = wrong. so you use that info to narrow down your next guess. basically process of elimination.

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

Thanks, that actually makes sense. Never played wordle-style games, so it was just confusing.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

green means that part is correct, yellow means that its close/partially correct and red means wrong

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

https://ibb.co/B54MBxWZ

But there is nothing to guess?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

type a guess, any

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

https://ibb.co/MyYLpM8t

And now? Can't click anything

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

with that information you have to try to guess the distro that it is, the correct one has all green squares

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

Okay so you type the distro name and then try to guess which distro you typed 😵‍💫

[-]

MettaSuttaVegan@reddit

It doesn't make sense at all

[-]

STSchif@reddit

Reading again, I think you somewhat misunderstood: the PC picks a distro you need to find when you load the page. You need to narrow down on it with your inputs.

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

No it doesn't pick one

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

Yes it doesn't, we have to type manually 🤷🏽‍♂️

[-]

STSchif@reddit

Of course it doesn't tell you straight what it picked or it wouldn't be a riddle. 🙃 When you click 'next round' it shows you what it picked and what you would've found by guessing and narrowing in on the hints.

Maybe op needs to add some kind of better visible, collapsible instruction text for people not familiar with these kinds of games.

I think it would also be nice to have some kind of auto complete or drop-down picker for the included distros so we don't have to guess completely in the dark.

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

Then how the fu*k one is suppose to guess, it's basically like throwing stones in the air without any aim. This soo called guess game is making me go mad 🤯😵‍💫

[-]

McDonaldsWitchcraft@reddit

what dobyou think the colors mean????

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

What about the first guess? It doesn't even give any hints or clues 😑

[-]

McDonaldsWitchcraft@reddit

have you never played wordle? wtf, you're noy supposed to get it first try, you use the first try to narrow it down...

[-]

FellTheCommonTroll@reddit

funnily enough I did get it first try on my first go and have been having absolutely no luck since

[-]

STSchif@reddit

I wonder if you are running into some kind of bug, because on my end it's really not that difficult.

You guess 'Ubuntu'. The fields below show how accurate your guess was. let's say you got everything right except for the desktop environment, so that is the only red box and the other ones are green. So you think about which distro might fit in there, just with a different DE, and type in Kubuntu, which is the one the computer chooses so you get a popup saying "you won in 2 tries!"

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

yeah ill add that

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

it does

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

Did you update it? Because when I wrote my initial comment it didn't, hence my comment and the confusion

[-]

McDonaldsWitchcraft@reddit

in your screenshot it does, do you think the colors are random??

[-]

STSchif@reddit

I wonder if they have weak red/green visibility. Happens a lot and would probably hurt the understanding here a lot.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

i dont even know what color pallete i should use for that, if someone can help ill add it as an option

[-]

STSchif@reddit

I think you'd be looking mainly for protanopia and deuteranopia accessible pallets. The blue, green and yellow from the Tol-palette seem promising.

[-]

McDonaldsWitchcraft@reddit

yeah I did write that in a different comment. Maybe you're right, this seems to be a decent explanation as to why people somehow can't figure out this game.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

its like pokedle, imo it makes sense, but you need knowledge about what parts make a distro / what a distro is used for :)

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

Bro I'm really not getting your game 😭 what's the guessing part?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

Ok maybe the instructions arent good

So its a bit similar to wordle, where you pick a word and you get which letters are right and which arent

Basically the server thinks of a distro but its hidden, and you have to guess what distro the server is thinking

To help with this and so guesses arent just random, on each guess you will get information about if that specific thing about the distro you guessed is similar/the same as the one the server is thinking

So, if the server is thinking Arch Linux and you guess, say Ubuntu, then it will show the init system as green (systemd) because its the same, but the package manager (APT) red since it doesnt match Arch Linux's (pacman)

I hope this explanation helps

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

Okay but what about the first guess? How is one suppose to guess for the first round? It doesn't even give any clue about the first distro which you are supposed to guess

[-]

bstock@reddit

That's how these types of games work. You start with something random and go from there.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

its almost impossible to get it first try, completely random (on first try only)

[-]

STSchif@reddit

It does, it's just a game. In my opinion a hard one, as I'm no expert in recent distros, but it's still fun.

Reminds me a bit of the zoologic guessing game Metazooa that walks the tree of life and shows the youngest common ancestors of your guess and the searched life form :D

[-]

Visual-Row600@reddit

That's what, probably it's vibe coded 🧟‍♂️

[-]

McDonaldsWitchcraft@reddit

No? You try to guess the correct one that the computer has chosen randomly.

In the screenshot above, the guy got "void linux" wrong and is given the hints that void linux has another init system than the mystery distro, has a different package manger and a different release model.

[-]

AdministrativeCold63@reddit

I did enter "Void" btw, so it's showing the properties of Void?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

yeah it shows right there on your screenshot

[-]

Ciberbago@reddit

I did it! Only took 9 guesses :P

https://imgur.com/NKni11F

[-]

zhoopin@reddit

Fun! I think it should check multiple variations of the name like any of redhat, red hat, etc.

[-]

zhoopin@reddit

Data contains both centos linux and centos stream. User may just input the centos, if it maches only one it may be used, and if not options will be asked?

[-]

KlePu@reddit

Nice!

Some ideas: add a "random guess" button (maybe for the first guess only?) and/or "start with your actual OS".

[-]

gordonmessmer@reddit

I guessed "CentOS Stream" and the game thinks it's a rolling release distro, which it definitely is not (it's a release model very similar to Debian), so I wonder who has verified the game data.

[-]

gordonmessmer@reddit

I entered "Fedora" and the game thinks the parent distribution is "Red Hat", which is not a distribution. Fedora has no parent distribution, it is "independent."

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

Fedora Linux^([8]) is a free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. It was originally developed in 2003 as a continuation of the Red Hat Linux project.

(from wikipedia)

[-]

gordonmessmer@reddit

As I am a Fedora maintainer, I am aware of that.

"Red Hat" is not a distribution, it is a corporation.

In all other contexts in this game, "parent" implies a branching relationship, not a branding one. Fedora does not branch from Red Hat Linux, it is more or less the Red Hat Linux distribution, rebranded and opened for community contributions.

If Red Hat Linux is the "parent" of Fedora, then it is also the historical parent of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But it's more accurate to say that either Fedora or CentOS Stream are the parent distributions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, because RHEL branches directly from CentOS Stream, which branches from Fedora.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

well i had no idea about all that, if you correct the info and make a pull request ill happily merge it

[-]

gordonmessmer@reddit

It's not that simple. I think there are structural problems with the data.

Is Fedora the parent distribution of RHEL, or is CentOS Stream? Both are accurate answers.

Was Fedora released in 2003, or 1995 (because it is essentially a continuation of Red Hat Linux)? Both of those answers correct.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

then ill just keep it like that

[-]

gordonmessmer@reddit

For some reason, the game lists i686 and x86_64 as different architectures, but ARM and ARM64 seem to be just "ARM".

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

i686 is 32bit only, to avoid confusion ill just remove that

[-]

gordonmessmer@reddit

For some reason, "MIPS" is listeded as a Debian arch, but nothing seems to list "risc-v", or "s390", or "ppc64".

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

for gentoo the archs wouldnt even fit, which is the only risc-v distro there afaik

[-]

Glitch-v0@reddit

Right in 3 guesses...definitely beginners luck on my part!

[-]

Th0ught09_@reddit

incredible idea, loving this game!

[-]

snapphanen@reddit

This is my bug report

I lost a game

Then I won a game

1/1 = 100% win ratio

Refresh page

Correct 1/2 = 50% win ratio

GL & HF debugging

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

ill try

[-]

thephotoman@reddit

I started with some ancient distros: Softlanding, MCC Interim, and TAMU (pronounced “Aggie”) Linux.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

those arent added hahaha, sls linux is ball knowledge tho

[-]

thephotoman@reddit

Some of us are old.

[-]

STSchif@reddit

Got all green on cachy except for age. Damn I'm not up to date with the latest releases.

Bazzite is not included?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

i just added bazzite

[-]

STSchif@reddit

Nice!

Was thinking it would be nice to have a list of aliases (eg lfs for Linux from scratch) as part of the definitions. Might pr it later if I have time

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

lfs is the only one that needs an alias, ill just name it Linux From Scratch (LFS)

[-]

20Naturale@reddit

Amazing

[-]

Thunderkron@reddit

I can't believe I found Slackware in two attempts

[-]

Interesting-Layer580@reddit

pretty fun, had one round where the answer ended up being Bazzite but it wasn't included in the list so I had no way of winning lol

[-]

PossuTryffeli@reddit

I like this project. I have contributed by changing some fields and adding Ultramarine Linux to the list.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

merged

[-]

Lluciocc@reddit

Its very fun !!

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

thanks!

[-]

Yousifasd22@reddit

i guessed Arch and solved it first try XD

[-]

MettaSuttaVegan@reddit

Not sure how this works... I opened the distro.fedesiteo.me, and it asks me to enter a distro, i tried EndeavourOS, and i press the button "Guess" and it just returns a sequence of green, red and yellow boxes already filled out with information but i didn't even get to guess any thing?

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

you need to get all boxes to be green

[-]

spookwav@reddit

got alpine in 2, hah

[-]

Apolitical-Account@reddit

Yup, very difficult when you only really know one Linux distro, for some reason. Got it in 28 guesses 😁

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

hey atleast you got there

[-]

jort93@reddit

Pretty fun. Got rocky Linux in 3 guesses.

Great ui as well

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

thanks!

[-]

Valefoth@reddit

4 guesses, this game is fun

[-]

qwesx@reddit

I guessed Gentoo and solved it in only a single try 😎

[-]

fabolous_gen2@reddit

Had LFS first try 😭

[-]

Old-Moose-9920@reddit

i keep getting round changed, please try again

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

i didnt code it to support multiple people at once, now it should be fixed

[-]

HighRelevancy@reddit

To support multiple people...? Is the guess happening server side and you didn't do any session management?

Bruh.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

indeed i have a massive skill issue with websites

[-]

Thamagorian@reddit

Android was the answer for one of the games, and it gave me correct for the package when I guessed alpine, but APK for android and APK for alpine are not same.

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

youre right, i didnt realise it was a coincidence lol ill fix it later today

[-]

xz3phyr@reddit (OP)

yeah i have to fix it lol

[-]

Broad_Chapter_8631@reddit

I wonder what the answer is…