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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 the 'base' of various Linux distributions? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been using linux desktop for a year or so now. One noteable thing i keep seeing is that one person will say I dont like XYZ distrobution because of its base. But I am still a little unsure what is meant by it. I am assuming the main difference between each base is the choice of package management(?). But what other factors/aspects that are important for the average user to know about each 'base'? This is probably quite a broad question to a rather technical answer, but appriciate any answers, and i'll try my best to understand and read up :)

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (4 children)

When they say base, they're talking about the distro it's built off of(Debian, arch, slack, fedora, Ubuntu, etc.). As an example, Mint is built on the Ubuntu base, Bunsen is built on Debian, etc. These are often called flavors as they're not considered distros but rather something built on top of a distro.

The major visible differences in distros are the package managers and tools provided for it but they also have different goals. Debian aims for rock solid stability, fedora puts FOSS first, Arch is designed to take up your free time by making you build everything from scratch and pointing you to a wiki when you're stuck (I kid).

The flavors then customize the experience, usually muddying the distro goals in the process. For instance, someone might take a fedora base then pack it full of proprietary software and release it.

I wouldn't say what you use is irrelevant but you can truly make every base look and perform the same if you do some work. People that don't like a particular base usually don't want to do that work, they want to use it. I'm one of those people. Where I used to love tinkering in Linux, now I just want to get it up and running so I can do my stuff on it.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Great comment, but something I'd disagree on:

As an example, Mint is built on the Ubuntu base, Bunsen is built on Debian, etc. These are often called flavors as they're not considered distros but rather something built on top of a distro.

From my understanding, those would generally still be referred to as distros in their own right. I've always understood a flavour to be a variant of a specific distro. For example, kubuntu is the KDE flavour of Ubuntu.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Correct, they are derivative distributions.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Arch is designed to take up your free time by making you build everything from scratch

That's a weird take, arch provides repositories ootb and is meant to be used with pacman, you're maybe confusing with gentoo?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I think they meant build as in configure your environment, not build as in from source. If that's the case, they're not exactly wrong. But once you get the bulk of it to your liking, it's mostly fun little tweaks and accidents. It's just a lot at first.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

(I kid)

No, you don't

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Debian aims for rock solid stability

To be clear, Debian "stability" refers to "unchanging packages", not "doesn't crash." Debian would rather ship a known bug for a year than update the package if it's not explicitly a security bug (and then only certain packages).

So if you have a crash in Debian, you will always have that crash until the next version of debian a year or so from now. That's not what I'd consider "stable" but rather "consistent"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, in fairness, I didn't name it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're right. There are multiple definitions of the word stable, and "unchanging" is a valid one of them.

It's just that every where else I've seen it in computing, it refers to a build of something being not-crashy enough to actually ship. "Can't be knocked over" sort of stability. And everyone I've ever talked to outside of Lemmy has assumed that was what "stable" meant to Debian. but it doesn't. It just means "versions won't change so you won't have version compatibility issues, but you'll also be left with several month to year old software that wasn't even up to date when this version released, but at least you don't have to think about the compatibility issues!"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I agree. I used Debian for a very long time but found a move to Sid for fresh packages to be a frustrating experience so I just moved to an ubu based system.