There are very few theoretical approaches dealing with the prediction of drop size distribution in spray, and it is still impossible to evaluate this important spray characteristic from theoretical considerations only. However; for the past 10 years the use of the maximum entropy formalism for this task has opened new directions of investigation. Unfortunately so far, applications of this formalism to predict drop size distributions have nel er made use of theoretical information only and required measured mean drop diameters. To overcome this problem, the drop size distribution is here determined from a formalism based on the maximization of the entropy, the required information of which is brought by the classical linear theory. Thus, a procedure to determine drop size distribution in sprays from theoretical considerations only is suggested and tested for a set of four swirl atomizers used with water. The agreement found between calculated and measured volume-based distributions is very good.