I have a server product. I do packages for RHEL and Ubuntu LTS, plus a Docker image.

I used to do SLES as well, but the major customer who wanted it moved to RHEL, so I dropped it.

A different world than for desktop apps, I guess.

I distribute the source on github, and let the distros pick them up.

But how do you get the distros to pick them up?

It's been a while since I made a new project with the intention that it be distributed, so maybe it's changed, but if your projects requirements are available in the distribution, and it's easy to build (./configure.sh, make and make install and no other BS) then someone will pick it up if it's usable.

It used to help to do a "release" on sourceforge, maybe it still does, or do a release on github.