In theory, any Linux OS can be more secure if you know what you’re doing. Just write all the software yourself and don’t write any bugs!

This repo, made in response to another repo, has this bit:

Artix Linux | Developers are openly transphobic

When attempting to click the link to see for myself, I still find that the artix forums are inaccessible, and so I can’t see for myself. I remember seeing something mentioned on a reddit post or forum somewhere about the same sort of thing, which makes me think it’s true. So I placed Artix in the Dubious row to represent my unwillingness to recommend it.

When researching the distro, I came across articles like this, this, and this detailing the many unpleasant aspects of the dev’s character, including racism and transmisia. So I placed Omarchy in the Dubious row to represent my unwillingness to recommend it.

Omarchy was getting a lot of attention when first released. The two major issues are that the guy that made it is very right wing (the term fascist was thrown around, I have not read up myself so do not now the details) and although it looks good it has a lot of technical issues, this blog post goed into more details if interested: https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/

If you’re talking about the distro in the third row from the top, that’s NetHydra, which is similar to Kali Linux but is not owned by a corporate entity. The full list of all distros is included in a spoilered text box thing in the main post.

From wiki/Tier_list

A tier list is a ranking system where items are subjectively arranged in tiers from the best to worst.

…

When I saw that, I was like “wait, is Knoppix still around?”. A quick search revealed it hasn’t been updated in some time.

Back in the 2000’s Knoppix was a life saver more than once, but once other distros gained the ability to run live from the install media, I didn’t really need Knoppix any longer.

Sad, knoppix was the goat for me back in 2004. Ran several scrap yard computers for months at a time from the live disk.

When I’d previously gone searching, I remember having seen some posts on reddit and forums about how Professor Klaus Knopper had paused development for a while but indicated that he’d eventually get back to it. I can’t seem to find those posts at the moment, but I’m pretty sure that still holds true.

As for the problem of iso files containing malware, that seems unrelated to the actual distro itself and more to do with re-shares of it. Though people should definitely be aware of such problems, as well as the problem of running out-of-date or end-of-life distros. It’s mainly in the list as a nod to its historical significance, with the hope that it gets a big update one day.