An ROS distribution is a versioned set of ROS packages. These are very similar to Linux distributions. The purpose of the ROS distributions is to let developers work against a relatively stable code base until they are ready to set up forward. Each distribution maintains a stable set of core packages up to the end of life (EOL) of the distribution.

The latest recommended ROS distribution is Kinectic Kame, which will get support up to May 2021, however, the latest ROS distribution is Melodic Morenia, which was released on 23rd May 2018, and will be supported up to May 2023. One of the problems with this latest ROS distribution is that most of the packages will not be available on it because it will take time to migrate them from the previous distribution, so we do not recommend this.

The list of distributions to use can be found on the ROS website (http://wiki.ros.org/distributions):