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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What are the differences between linux distributions? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey guys! Trying to understand what developers actually do to create a yet another distro, or what are the differences between existing distros. Lets say we have ubuntu and fedora. What are the differences? Excluding DE, Installer, theme, installed packages/libs and package manager. They both are FHS compliant, both running systemd what else?

Just wondering if there could be a way to "simulate", lets say ubuntu on fedora. For example providing every program that should be present on ubuntu in fedora. Would it be enough to be able to run .deb packages on fedora? Im not gonna do that though, just curious about this question.

Thank you!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The main difference between Ubuntu and Fedora is the package manager. Most of the rest is just selected default values for configuration and cosmetics, and what helper scripts are or aren't present on the system. They're both mainstream distributions aimed at the general user, and they're shaped by their goals.

To see how different distributions can be, you need to compare the mainstream distributions to stuff that's decidedly not mainstream, like Gentoo, Alpine, and Nix.

Just as a trivia note: Gentoo does package a couple of other distros' package managers (app-arch/rpm and app-arch/dpkg), for use in installing otherwise-unavailable commercial binaries, although I suspect app-arch/rpm2targz sees more use than either of them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

NixOS, Alpine and Gentoo are also pretty popular, but yeah, Fedora and Ubuntu it is the distros the regular person is associating linux with. Or doesnt know what is linux at all :)

Btw i use NixOS