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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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Base Community Distros (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by floppyslapper@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Since Red Hat made their recent decision, there has been a lot more talk about people wanting to focus on communiy-based distros instead of corporate-backed distros.

I was trying to think of how many active, stable, user friendly base community distros I know about. When I say a "base" distro, I mean a distro that's basically the base for its ecosystem. For instance, Debian would be a base distro because it's the base of its ecosystem. A community distro based on Ubuntu wouldn't fit what I'm talking about here because Ubuntu is a corporate distro.

So, there's Debian.

Arch is a base community distro but it's not user friendly to install, but there are more user friendly varieties of Arch available like Manjaro and a few others.

All of the other base distros I can think of are either corporate, or aren't particularly user friendly to install. Care to add your thoughts to the list?

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[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 5 points 1 year ago

If you use a standard package-manager-based taxonomy, there are five base distributions: Slackware, Debian, Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS (I'm unclear on which of those is currently the lowest rung), Arch, and Gentoo. There are also a handful of singletons, like Puppy and Void, which evolved independently (or from long-dead predecessors) but have no family to speak of. I think the only one of those that isn't community-driven is Red Hat.

However, most base distributions are set up because their founder wants to try Something Completely Different, and that "something" is generally not user-friendliness. Even in Debian's case, the core distro philosophy is about software licenses; its user-friendliness is almost a historical accident. Descendant distributions with a premise of "[distro], but user friendly" are not uncommon, though.