Move supported distros list to docs (#2162)

4 files changed, 49 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index ce6eeff3..c2197d54 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -35,13 +35,10 @@ If you need additional help consider reaching out with one of the following opti
 
 ## Distribution and cloud support
 
-Below are a list of the many OSes and clouds that contain and ship with cloud-init. If your
-distribution or cloud is not listed or does not have a recent version of cloud-init, please
-get in contact with that distribution and send them our way!
-
-| Supported OSes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      | Supported Public Clouds | Supported Private Clouds |
-|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| --- | --- |
-| Alpine Linux<br />Arch Linux<br />Container-Optimized OS<br />Debian<br />DragonFlyBSD<br />Fedora<br />FreeBSD<br />Gentoo Linux<br />NetBSD<br />OpenBSD<br />openEuler<br />OpenCloudOS<br />OpenMandriva<br />RHEL/CentOS/AlmaLinux/Rocky/PhotonOS/Virtuozzo/EuroLinux/CloudLinux/MIRACLE LINUX/MarinerOS<br />SLES/openSUSE<br />TencentOS<br />Ubuntu<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> | Amazon Web Services<br />Microsoft Azure<br />Google Cloud Platform<br />Oracle Cloud Infrastructure<br />Softlayer<br />Rackspace Public Cloud<br />IBM Cloud<br />DigitalOcean<br />Bigstep<br />Hetzner<br />Joyent<br />CloudSigma<br />Alibaba Cloud<br />Huawei Cloud<br />OVH<br />OpenNebula<br />Exoscale<br />Scaleway<br />CloudStack<br />AltCloud<br />SmartOS<br />HyperOne<br />Vultr<br />Rootbox<br /> | Bare metal installs<br />OpenStack<br />LXD<br />KVM<br />Metal-as-a-Service (MAAS)<br />VMware<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />|
+The majority of [clouds](https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/datasources.html#datasources_supported)
+and [Linux / Unix OSes](https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/distros.html)
+are supported by and ship with cloud-init. If your distribution or cloud is not
+supported, please get in contact with that distribution and send them our way!
 
 ## To start developing cloud-init
 
diff --git a/doc/rtd/reference/datasources.rst b/doc/rtd/reference/datasources.rst
index 36f8372b..04568001 100644
--- a/doc/rtd/reference/datasources.rst
+++ b/doc/rtd/reference/datasources.rst
@@ -28,6 +28,8 @@ exceptions, one can override datasource detection either by configuring a
 single datasource in the :ref:`datasource_list<base_config_datasource_list>`,
 or by using :ref:`kernel commandline arguments<kernel_datasource_override>`.
 
+.. _datasources_supported:
+
 Datasources:
 ============
 
diff --git a/doc/rtd/reference/distros.rst b/doc/rtd/reference/distros.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..59309ece
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/rtd/reference/distros.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+Supported distros
+=================
+
+Cloud-init has support for multiple different operating systems.
+Currently support includes various different distributions within the
+Unix family of operating systems. See the complete list below.
+
+* AlmaLinux
+* Alpine Linux
+* Arch Linux
+* CentOS
+* CloudLinux
+* Container-Optimized OS
+* Debian
+* DragonFlyBSD
+* EuroLinux
+* Fedora
+* FreeBSD
+* Gentoo
+* MarinerOS
+* MIRACLE LINUX
+* NetBSD
+* OpenBSD
+* openEuler
+* OpenCloudOS
+* OpenMandriva
+* PhotonOS
+* Red Hat Enterprise Linux
+* Rocky
+* SLES/openSUSE
+* TencentOS
+* Ubuntu
+* Virtuozzo
+
+If you would like to add support for another distributions, start by
+taking a look at another distro module in ``cloudinit/distros/``.
+
+.. note::
+
+    While BSD variants are not typically referred to as "distributions",
+    cloud-init has an abstraction to account for operating system differences, which
+    should be contained in `cloudinit/distros/ <https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/tree/main/cloudinit/distros>`_.
diff --git a/doc/rtd/reference/index.rst b/doc/rtd/reference/index.rst
index 4d1dc6af..5295b264 100644
--- a/doc/rtd/reference/index.rst
+++ b/doc/rtd/reference/index.rst
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ matrices and so on.
    faq.rst
    merging.rst
    datasources.rst
+   distros.rst
    network-config.rst
    base_config_reference.rst
    datasource_dsname_map.rst