Hello,
I noticed that some members have distro icons displayed on their avatars, such as Ubuntu, Arch, and Ubuntu MATE. I have looked through my account preferences and the available groups but have not been able to find a way to enable or request one.
Could you clarify how these distro avatar icons are assigned and whether regular members can obtain them? If there is a specific group, setting, or eligibility requirement involved, I would appreciate any guidance.
Thank you for your time.
Good question, thanks for asking. Placing this in the site help category in case anyone else has this problem.
First, you can request to join any of the available groups here.
Next, once approved, usually a few hours, you can select the group’s flair in your profile preferences.
If you have any issues you can follow up here, happy to help!
Can there be 3 or 2 groups?
Yes you can join multiple. Many of us use multiple distros so that’s fine.
But you can only display 1 flair at a time.
Ok, great, thanks for your help, I will adjust it to the Linux I use, Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Fedora (4 OS in 1 device)
Oh yeah, why is there a moderator in every group what is that?
They lead the groups. Will have to setup a guide for groups and pin to this category.
For now you can get a better idea here:
I think that is because each Group has its own perspective on what should/shouldn’t be allowed for their group.
For MATE Companions (a.k.a. ghola of UbuntuMATE Discourse), we are trying to keep our hands off unless something truly egregious warrants stepping in, as a means to revive the spirit and interraction of the old UbuntuMATE Community.
When we came over, the small crowd that we formed kind of “swamped” postings and seems to have stimulated some re-thinking of how the site originator (Hayden) had organized it and “flavoured” it, which according to him was something that was needed and somewhat overdue. So, I think our arrival here has been a positive influence on the whole Community, not just the individual Groups.
Your own contributions seem to have evoked some welcome discussions as well!
If you join a Group, each group has an offering of “Flair” that can be selected by Members. After joining a group(s), you can see those when you go to Profile/Preferences, and look for the drop-down where selections are offered.
@Jakarta2 welcome to the arch linux group 
Thanks for the added helpful details @ericmarceau
On the moderators, yes, each group leads itself and sets its own tone, that’s by design.
While we’ve had distro groups here since April of last year and had already outlined plans in our internal roadmap to add subforums to each, when the MATE group found our forums and Eric emailed me with the request, it was a no-brainer, regardless of how active the group was going to be.
And as it turns out everything positive Eric had to say about their group in his initial emails, has turned out to be true, and then some! 
And so with the immediate addition of the @MATE group and MATE Desktop category, we used the opportunity to also fast forward the existing community roadmap of adding distro categories along side the other exisiting groups.
One of the core purposes of this community is to bring together people who share a passion for Linux.
Unlike forums centered around a specific product or service offering, which tend to generate more activity through support requests. This community exists as a place where like-minded members can connect solely to share ideas, learn more, and engage in open discussion and debate.
@Jakarta2 The idea behind groups as well is that most of us have a favorite distro (and DE) and it’s cool to be able to wear that flair proudly. It will be interesting which flair you end up chosing. I know you have expressed much love for @Fedora
Edit: nevermind I see you have gone with Arch Linux flair. 
