What Makes a Linux Distro

      Linux, or GNU+Linux, has been around as an operating system for every type of device, phone, server, desktop, since the early nineties. Because of the free nature of the software, countless different distrobutions for all sorts of applications have sprung up over the years, some highly specialised, others more capable in different roles. Some popular ones today, such as Ubuntu or Red Hat, have a several concurrent releases at a time: a server and a desktop. Conversely, other projects like Debian and Arch produce a more generic release for end users to build up how they see fit, providing merely the framework. A Linux distrobution in general terms is a design philosophy behind a project; in technical terms it is the software suite included with the Linux kernel.

      There has been an ebb and flow to popular Linux releases for decades now, as each one brings something unique, or percieved as unique by the developers, to the table. Some of the more common names in Linux are there because of what they provide the average user: a familiar desktop with all the tools that make a computer useful. Ubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora could fit this description with their desktop releases. Alternatively, the Arch project is one of perhaps dozens of others that are attempting to produce a barebones operating system for all sorts of reasons. Tinycore wants their users to build up their suite from little more than a network stack, Lubuntu strives to provide a resource-light version of a very popular desktop system. Perhaps not a full-fledged distrobution, but the Linux From Scratch team provide the documentation and resources to compile and design ones very own system from the absolute bottom up. These minimal systems are not all objectively small: some would consider Lubuntu too light to be useable daily, while others percieve it as as bloated with software as the distrobution it seeks to replace. These are but a small selection of well-known examples of projects with differing design philosophies; maintainers configure their software releases to match those guidelines, in order to fill their niche in the landscape.

      It is not solely the concept behind a distrobution that makes it different, in the same way that a version of Windows or Mac OS is different than the last: the software and features are different. As mentioned previously, not all Linuxes do the same thing, some are for embded devices, such as a fridge, while others run whole cloud infrastructures. Kali, the network and pen-testing orientated release has some different purposes and therefore software than Proxmox, the open source virtualisation server. Kali will come with its specialised packet monitoring and analyzing tools, while Proxmox has to have all the virtualisation technologies that enable it: KVM, LXC, etc. These two distrobutions are markedly different, because of the intended purpose and actual binaries included. Proxmox has much of its unique functionaility stem from the large amount of custom written software created for the release; the Proxmox team created a full-featured front-end built on free software. OpenMediaVault, another server distrobution, built a unique framework for their release. These purpose built releases contain different software from what a more generic release might have, even after it was built to do the same job.

      While some distrobutions contain different software to achieve different purposes, others do the same job with different tools. Linux Mint is a very popular Ubuntu-based setup geared towards those new to Linux, but there is another version of Mint: Linux Mint Debian Edition. LMDE was created to keep the project alive in case the original Ubuntu base were to disappear or values diverge too much from the Mint developer’s own interests. The two versions have the same user interface and identical repositories, but some of the lower level software is different. One source of controversy in the Linux community is over the value of the scheduler systemd, and whether it is in line with the overall Linux design philosphy. Some large projects such as Debian and Arch have embraced the systemd program as an advancement, while others such as Alpine Linux use alternative schedulers to run the operating system. These very low level differences make little difference to some users, and the whole world to others. Having an operating system that uses free software from top to bottom, while others would take some addtional functionallity over the knowledge of freedom, which is why some choose Parabola over Arch or vice versa.

      Diversity and individuality is a core tenement to the Linux community, and has resulted in a very large number of options for these people in almost any choice in the computing space. This number is a direct result of what makes the open source enviornment appealing: if one does not agree with something, or needs something better, fork it and improve, or start again. That is why there are so many diverse distrobutions, and why so many large names have faded away: something came along to replace it. In the shifting space of Linux, distrobutions are shaped by the design philosophy of the teams behind them, and those philosophies shape what software and features a release supports. The names known today could be gone in five or ten years, and new ones could take over. The adaptability and fluidity is what makes GNU+Linux such a powerful and crucial part of the computing space of yesterday, today, and certainly for the future.

#Thanks for reading! Wrote this up myself as a copy-paste answer for questions about distrobutions. Any questions, contact me below.