I have noticed that there are two different terms being using for conceptually the same thing. On this page http://drupal.org/project/installation+profiles installation profiles and on this page http://drupal.org/node/326175 the same thing is referred to as distributions. On the second page an installation profile is even called a "customized 'distribution'...". Why not just use the term distribution which conveys something familiar to a lot of people and avoid the confusion of using these two different terms in a seemingly interchangeable way?
Furthermore, the content of these two pages overlaps. They both include lists of distributions/installation profiles and not much else. If one is to serve as a list of what already exists why not put all the content relevant to such a page in one place? And where is there a page with a general overview and guidelines for creating an installation profile/distribution? Someone who does not know much about a distribution but is thinking of creating one would greatly benefit from such a document rather than having to learn just from looking at what others have done. Not only would improved documentation make creating distributions easier, but it would also help to make sure that they follow the principles of the Drupal community.
To this end, I have begun working on and have sections of documentation for someone new (or not new) to Drupal who is thinking of creating their own distribution. I would like to know if I missed something and this actually already exists somewhere. If it does, where? If it does not, where should I create this page?
P.S. I was not totally sure whether this was supposed to be a issue report or forum discussion although it appears maybe it was supposed to be an issue report. If someone has the ability he/she can remove the forum post http://drupal.org/node/552876 .
Postponed: needs info
Correction/Clarification
Used in Documentation issues for documentation of distributions
Not all content is available!
It's likely this issue predates Contrib.social: some issue and comment data are missing.
It has been 9 years since there was discussion here and one of the references pages is a 404, so it isn't possible to confirm that the problem exists or not.
Is there anything to do here?
I think the debate about installation profile versus distribution is outdated: Drupal.org no longer supports creating distributions, which have been replaced by recipes.
@avpaderno, thanks for that.
Therefore, closing as outdated.