💾 Archived View for commacat.xyz › posts › tech › linux-distros.gmi captured on 2021-12-05 at 23:47:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
23-03-2021
Linux, the open source desktop operating system, was conceived and developed in the early 1990's, in tandem with the nascent internet and world wide web. Finnish engineer Linus Torvalds developed the first Linux kernel, which forms the heart of the OS. Despite small market share, Linux has continued to attract a loyal following of users to it's free and easily customizable platform.
Early iterations of Linux were really experimental, unstable operating systems that bred innovation, only used by computer geeks, hardware engineers and software developers. This began to change in the 2000's, with the launch of commerically backed Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu, which accelerated Linux development, boosted their profile and made them more stable and consumer friendly.
Today there are hundreds of different Linux distributions, or distros, as they are known. The majority are based on three main families, Debian, Red Hat and Arch Linux. Debian dates to 1993, and is used today as the base for many popular distros such as Ubuntu, Mint and others. Debian based distros are famous for their stability, and are commonly used as cloud servers.
Debian distros use the DKPG and APT package management systems, and debian packages can be recognised by the .deb file extension. Ubuntu is the most popular of the Debian based distros. Although commercially backed by Canonical, Ubuntu is free to use. Ubuntu ships new long term releases of it's OS every two years, with a support guarantee of five years.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), as the name suggests, is aimed at commerical clients. Although the operating system is open source, RHEL is not free, and offers professional support to it's clients. Other distros in the Red Hat family include CentOS and Fedora. CentOS, a community based distro, is Red Hat without the logo and licensing fee. Recently IBM owned Red Hat announced that suppport for the latest CentOS 8 would cease at the end of 2021, effectively killing the project.
Fedora is a more cutting edge, rolling release version, that is less stable than RHEL or CentOS. It features the latest and greatest updates and enhancements that allow more experienced users to test and experiment, and many users are encouraged to contribute to the platform through bug reporting and bug fixes. Red Hat based distros uses the RPM package management system.
Like Fedora, Arch is rolling release, meaning that users are always running the lastest and greatest version of Arch; there is never a need to upgrade the system. This can introduce small problems such as bugs and glitches, as the latest updates are not always thoroughly tested. Like Fedora, Arch users are typically experienced users who enjoy the freedom and challenges that Arch brings.
Nevertheless, Arch is quite stable and well maintained by a dedicated team of experienced volunteers and developers who advocate a DIY approach to personal computing. The Arch Wiki is one of the best online Linux guides available anywhere. The breath and detail of content is unmatched, and many non Arch Linux users delve into the Wiki for solutions to their computing problems and challenges.
Arch has an excellent package manager called Pacman, and the Arch User Repository (AUR) offers a huge range of packages for easy installation. Beginners to Linux normally use a distro that's stable and is easy to install, and Ubuntu is one of the most popular in this category. Once the user becomes more experienced, Arch and Fedora are common 'distro hop' destinations. That's the beauty of Linux. Free and opensource.