this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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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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basically there's the big 3 (debian, arch, fedora) and everything else is just them with presets (ui, drivers, etc)
debian uses apt, arch uses pacman, fedora uses dnf for packaging, so packages (app executables) aren't intercompatible and so you usually have some apps that aren't available on on or the other
usually debian had everything, arch has everything with workarounds, idk about fedora
anyway the tree is like:
debian
fedora
arch
with DEs you should see which ones you like by testing them out, if you get the debian netinstaller you can select however many you want in the install process and you can switch between them at boot with the dropdown menu in the login prompt
Awesome. Thank you. So I understand why a debian package wouldn't work on Fedora, but are there Kubuntu packages that wouldn't work on Lubuntu? Otherwise is there "Kedora" and "Ludora"?
debian packages will work on debian based distros usually, etcetc
fedora calls their kedoras and ludoras "spins", but I haven't used fedora so can't say how good they are
They're great! Only sticking point for some spins is you sometimes have to enable non-free stuff after installation. Most spins, though, have that enabled ootb.
Just to add for new users, find this info easily by typing "what to do after installing Fedora" into your search engine of choice, there's many articles about it (and all of them have the same information for the most part).
The package file, no matter if it's rpm, deb or something else, contains few things: Files for the software itself (executables, libraries, documentation, default configuration), depencies for other packages (as in to install software A you need also install library B) and installation scripts for the package. There's also some metadata, info for uninstallation and things like that, but that's mostly irrelevant for end user.
And then you need suitable package manager. Like dpkg for deb-packages, rpm (the program) for rpm-packages and so on. So that's why you mostly can't run Debian packages on Fedora or other way around. But with derivative distributions, like kubuntu and lubuntu, they use Ubuntu packages but have different default package selection and default configuration. Technically it would be possible to build a kubuntu package which depends on some library version which isn't on lubuntu and thus the packages wouldn't be compatible, but I'm almost certain that on those spesific two it's not the case.
And then there's things like Linux Mint, which originally based on Ubuntu but at least some point they had builds from both Debian and Ubuntu and thus they had different package selection. So there's a ton of nuances on this, but for the most part you can ignore them, just follow documentation for your spesific distribution and you're good to go.