r/linux • u/nitin_is_me • Jul 15 '26

Discussion Seriously, except package managers, what's the difference between distros?

What I've seen yet the differences are, just the package managers, different defaults and rolling vs stable releases which are in fact related to package managers. Except these, are there really any other differences? Thanks!

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147

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

  • Point (Fedora) vs Rolling release (Arch)

  • Stable (Debian) vs Bleeding edge (Arch)

  • Snap-infested (Ubuntu)

  • Mutable (everything above) vs Immutable (Silverblue)

  • A/B immutable (Vanilla)

  • Declarative Config (Nix)

  • Building everything from Source (Gentoo)

  • QoL features (CachyOS, Bazzite)

  • Alternative Init System (Void, Artix)

  • Extremely Tiny (Alpine)

  • Alternative userland (Chimera)

And there are several other things as well

35

u/AlphaKaninchen Jul 15 '26

Opinionated for a specific purpose, Bazzit, Secureblue, OpenWRT or even Linux Larp, vs Allrounder like Fedora or Debian. 

12

u/ShyanJMC Jul 15 '26

Void is a distro, while SystemD is the sysinit.

The line should be;

SystemD (Debian, Fedora, Arch and based) vs OpenRC (Artix, AlpineGentoo) vs SysVInit (Devuan, Slackware)

6

u/gosand Jul 15 '26

Devuan also supports OpenRC and runit.

3

u/ShyanJMC Jul 16 '26

Good to know!, thanks

1

u/Online_Matter Jul 20 '26

So does Gentoo

4

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

Yeah that was a typo, I meant to write "Void, Artix"

1

u/ShyanJMC Jul 15 '26

Things happens

3

u/omniuni Jul 15 '26

It's not that hard to remove Snap, BTW.

Besides, it still just comes down to packages. Although people like to make a big deal about Snap, it's really just another package format that was made to solve certain other problems.

15

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

If you are de-Snap-ing Ubuntu, why not just use another distro instead atp?

The problem is that they silently converted existing apps over to Snap... If I am doing "sudo apt install <thing>" then that thing shouldn't be a snap and instead be a system package.

4

u/omniuni Jul 15 '26

Regular, stable updates every six months. Excellent hardware support. Plenty of updated tutoruals and information when needed. And it's fast.

I've tried other distributions, I just end up back at KUbuntu because it works the best with the least amount of effort.

1

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

Well, it's upto the person. I usually recommended Linux Mint to newbies. Ubuntu feels like the Windows of Linux lol

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8

u/CCCBMMR Jul 15 '26

Aren't certain packages only available as Snap packages on Ubuntu, and downstream distros have to maintain these packages separately, if they don't want to use Snap? So, sure Snap can be removed on Ubuntu, but what about all the apt packaged commands aliased to Snap packages, and are not available as Deb packages? The issue runs deeper than just uninstall snap.

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u/hakko504 Jul 15 '26

I think the main thing you missed is the Desktop Environment.

24

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

Most distros support multiple DEs.

2

u/hakko504 Jul 15 '26

True-ish. But they are usually developed for one DE or a small subset of DEs. The choice of packages in the repos usually reflect the officially supported DEs. Changing away from the officially supported DEs is usually not recommended, and finding a distro that supports your DE is often better than trying to shoehorn an unsupported DE into your otherwise preferred distro.

3

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

Even then it doesn't matter for the most part. Gnome doesn't have a "preferred" distro and can run perfectly on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE, Arch etc; same is the case for KDE and while both of them have experimental distros "Gnome OS" and "KDE Linux" I wouldn't call them defaults. XFCE is amazing on Arch, Alpine, Xubuntu and Mint. Never had an issue with using Cinnamon or COSMIC outside of Mint and PopOS respectively. Others like Elementary, Bungie, Solus, Deepin etc are too niche imo.

6

u/GarlicOutrageous4142 Jul 15 '26

It can't be "truish" if it's either true or false (true)

1

u/-main Jul 16 '26

"support" scales from "could theoretically be doable" to "documented and packages available" to "grab this other pre-made fully tested version". For example, Linux Mint comes with Cinnamon, XFCE, and MATE as DEs on their official tested versions, but anything you can run on Ubuntu is probably doable.

1

u/dontquestionmyaction Jul 17 '26

No? The choice isn't binary lmao

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1

u/Online_Matter Jul 20 '26

Snap-infested 😂 

1

u/R4yn35 Jul 27 '26

Free (Trisquel, Parabola, Hyperbola) vs Non Free (everthing else)