Why are there so many different linux distributions and how do they really differ from the users perspective?
In: Technology
Different distributions exist because everyone thinks they can fix whatever problems thye had with the distribution they were using. They just end up either not fixing it or just creating new problems/limitations. Fundamentally they all run the same software. They just have different defaults and update/upgrade schedules. They usually spend effort polishing a particular desktop environment. For example, one might focus on KDE while another focuses on GNOME but generally you can still technically install whatever you want. The fact that there even are such a wide variety of desktop environments just adds to the confusion.
It’s a huge mess, if you ask me. It’s unnecessarily confusing for users and makes targing and testing software for Linux a nightmare from a developers perspecitive. What’s worse is that Linux desperately needs to move away from Xorg to a more modern display manager. There’s Wayland, but there’s not enough centralized control to push 100% adoption of it. THere are some populare distributions that refuse to commit to even making Wayland the default.
The advantage of freedom is that people can make their own choices. The disadvantage of choices is that there’s so many ways to choose. Someone said “what if Linux was different?” and made their own version of Linux with blackjack and hookers. A hundred times over.
Here are some practical ways in which the Linux distros differ from the user’s perspective:
1. How fast does the distro approves new versions of programs? Some distros approve new versions of programs pretty much as soon as they are available, so you always use the most cutting edge version of everything. Others will cap you to a certain maximal version, and you will not be able to upgrade past that (not with normal means anyway) until the distro releases a new version of itself. How often do the distros release new versions? Depends on the distro. A distro like Debian moves at a glacial pace, so you can expect to be constantly behind the rest of the world in terms of the programs you use. A distro like Ubuntu is quicker, releasing a new version about every 6 months.
2. What is the distro’s philosophy on non-free software? Some distros make it easy to install proprietary drivers and codecs. Ubuntu will outright recommend them to you as part of its installation. Other distros choose to be a pain in the ass and ban proprietary software, or just don’t do anything to help you get it.
3. What is the distro’s favorite desktop environment? There are many desktop environments in the Linux world: Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Mate, etc. You can usually install whichever you want, but often distros have a clear favorite, and naturally the user experience there will be more polished.
4. Do you have a niche use case? Some distros are designed to be as user friendly as possible, while others are designed to make the user manually configure every aspect of the distro (Gentoo is a good example). Some distros target weak computers, so they make their software decisions with the goal of lowest resource usage. Some distros are designed to be run from a flash drive, and will try to be as small as possible. Some distros aim to focus on security, and will enable kernel and desktop environment features that are often not enabled.
Linux is like a building . We all know the concept of a building, but we have different vision for a building. Buildings for business, warehouse, dwelling, etc., come in different shape and sizes. This is the same for Linux. There are distribution for general tasks and special tasks, like video editing, machine learning, gaming, etc.
There are a few different major families of Linux distros (distributions), which differ on what package management system they use. The three big options are deb, rpm, and “everything else”.
The Debian package management system is used by Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Mint, Trisquel, and many others. RPM is used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, openSUSE, and many others. Other systems such as Gentoo, Arch, or NixOS do their own thing.
Package management is how system software is installed. Two different distros that use the same package manager can take advantage of work that people have done for the other distro. For instance, Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian — but the maintainers of Pop!_OS also take out some pieces of Ubuntu that they (and their users) don’t like, and add other features to support things their users do need.
—-
Another big difference between distros is whether they lean more towards commercial software or purely free software. The Free Software social movement was a big inspiration for Linux systems to take off in the first place. It focuses on making sure that users can legally share and modify the software that they use. In contrast, proprietary commercial software is sold for profit and users typically can’t modify it or share it with others.
Debian is built by a nonprofit organization and volunteers, but Ubuntu (built on top of Debian) is built by a company that wants to make money from it. So Ubuntu leans more towards commercial software than Debian. In contrast, Trisquel is even more free-software-oriented than Debian, excluding some software that doesn’t strictly adhere to free-software political principles.
Users who care about using commercial applications or games are more likely to want a distribution that’s more friendly towards proprietary software. In contrast, users who care about Free Software principles will want one that deliberately excludes proprietary software.
—-
Still another difference has to do with the general user interface that you get when you first install it and log in. There are different desktop environments that run on Linux, and different distros are optimized for different ones. Even though you can switch desktop environments on most distros, people care about which one is the default.
And then there are also distros that don’t have a graphical environment at all, because they are built for use on servers. If you’re running a server in AWS, GCP, or Azure (the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cloud server services) then you don’t care about desktop environments.
—-
Some particular distros exist to serve certain purposes. Kali Linux is specifically built for security testing, and comes pre-installed with tools for that purpose. Tails is a system built specifically for anonymity, for users who need extra privacy protection; every time you reboot, it deliberately loses all your data!
There are many components to an operating system, the part that contains the drivers and other programs to fully integrate the software to the hardware it is installed on is what Linux is.
The absolute vast majority of Linux distros are essentially the same operating system as a whole (GNU + Linux) and they change a few features, mostly, how much open source code is used in drivers, how the system boots up, audio and video processing, different package managers that control what is installed and how it’s installed and organized, and the surface level stuff like the desktop environment.
For the average user all of the surface level stuff is what is most noticeable provided the hardware setup allows it, otherwise, there’s some extra tweaking needed deeper in the Linux kernel.
Development of the Linux kernel and all the other stacks of software that make up the operating system has made it so that the user experience can be 99.9 percent the same across two seemingly different distros yet change only in how often the system is updated, and that’s enough to make the user pick one over the other.
Also, the reason there are so many distros is simply because anyone with basic skills can reuse an existing distro, change one little thing like the wallpaper selection it comes with and what web browser it comes by default and call it its own.
Linux is just the kernel, the core part of the operating system. A linux distribution is everything that sits on top of it and actually makes it useful.
The reason why there are so many different distributions is because linux is open source and free to download, modify, and use it pretty much however you want. There are some legal limitations on what you can do with it, but most of that is focused on respecting copyrights, attribution, and the open source nature of it.
Because linux has such a high degree of flexibility, there are tons of different frameworks, programs, and applications that have been made for it, and many of these are incompatible with each other. Building a distribution is a matter of figuring out which parts you want to put together and use. But some people have built and currently maintain pre-packaged distributions that are relatively easy to download, install, and use for someone who doesn’t know linux well enough to build their own from scratch, or just want something simple that works out of the box.
One of the biggest components that stands out in most distributions is the desktop environment. There are a lot of different options here. Some use a very windows like interface, some are touch friendly, and some don’t have a desktop environment at all and leave you with a simple command line interface.
I would compare it to the combustion engine. All combustion engines function is mostly the same way.
The use case for the engine varies though. Some people need a lightweight car(alpine), some just want the standard car(Debian) and some want to make their own car (Arch)
So how they differ is really down to how people want it to differ.
Latest Answers