sometimes bigger is better

There are lots of great one-man Linux distros out there, and lots of great distros with small development teams. In the end, though, I've found that I usually prefer to go with well-established distros with large, strong dev teams.

For just two examples of what you might get with a one-man distro, look at Mepis, which is still waiting for a final Wheezy-based release from Warren Woodford nearly six months after Debian 7 ("Wheezy") was released; or, SalineOS, where it seems that Anthony Nordquist is no further along with a Wheezy-based final than Mr. Woodford is. In each case, the community doesn't really seem to know what's going on -- the developers aren't saying much.

Then, there's SolusOS; see this announcement from developer Ikey Doherty: Closing Doors. Sad news about a distro that seemed so promising.

I'm enjoying using distros like CrunchBang, Bridge Linux, Chakra, and ArchBang, but will they be there in five years? If so, what will they be like? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that Debian, Ubuntu, and openSUSE will still be around, and that those distros will still continue to have the same general philosophical approaches that they have now. Especially Debian -- which is one reason why that's my "primary" distro.

Small or one-man distros are great for the Linux world; they bring lots of new ideas to Linux and give users lots of good and interesting choices. But there's always the other side of that coin.