this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
78 points (95.3% liked)
Linux for Leftists
138 readers
1 users here now
A Community for all leftists wanting to join and being part of a community that talks about Linux, Unix and the Free Software Community
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
When you say arch-based, is there like a tree of distros? Where a popular distro will then be redesigned by separate devs? Or are they different at a deeper level? I assume they're all Unix-based at heart?
The common bases of linux distros are:
Debian: known for stability but not fully up to date, uses apt-get as a package manager.
Ubuntu: Based on debian, but more up to date, and supports more proprietary hardware and software (not that debian can't do what ubuntu does with a little tweaking).
Arch: Bleeding edge up to date, can theoretically be unstable. uses pacman as a package manager.
After the base some people differentiate from the base os by changing the default programs installed (often this is including or excluding proprietary software), desktop environment (gnome, KDE, cinnamon, xfce), have different programs in the repository, or have a different installation experience.
This is all very helpful, thanks.
yes, the vast majority of distros are based on another distro (which may be based on another, and ...)
Linux is not Unix-based in the sense that it's a fork of Unix (the latter is proprietary), but it's certainly based on Unix's design, just like the various BSDs
That makes sense.
I didn't realise Unix was proprietary. It's amazing what you can't find out when you don't realise that an assumption is even open to challenge. I never thought to question this but now i looked into it a little, things are clearer. This article was useful: https://www.howtogeek.com/182649/htg-explains-what-is-unix/.
Thanks for the info.