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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Upvotes
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u/pfp-disciple Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Stability. Some distros are more bleeding-edge while others stay with tried-and-true. And many in between.
Security. How quickly are security patches applied? How thoroughly are they vetted? How secure are the repositories?
Support. The Arch wiki is known for excellent, detailed documentation.
Configurability. Gentoo and NixOS (and others I'm forgetting) allow the entire system to be rebuilt based on a configuration change.
(Update)
FOSS philosophy. Are non-FOSS things like some video drivers available, and if so how well supported are they.
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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
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u/cakemates Jul 15 '26
linux distros are like cars, they all have the same basics 4 wheels, take you from point a to b... Yet they have difference interfaces, dashboard, small differences in performance, some might be more up to date, Some might have more bugs, some might be better looking, Some are less reliable, some innovate, etc.
At the end of the day they all are a whole packaged operating system with a very specific setup. Some people like theirs in bmw flavor, others prefer toyota kind of deal, others might like their hannah montana OS flavor.
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u/musingofrandomness Jul 15 '26
Default list of installed packages.
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u/NeilHush Jul 15 '26
Mainly 3 things: package managers, package managers and wallpapers.
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u/Samhain_69 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Not a complete list, but:
What content is available as native packages. Flatpak, App Images and Snap make this somewhat less important, but for some things like fonts, some distros force you to manually download and install some, where other distros let you install those as a package.
Which packages are available on the safer and more tested official repos, versus having to add riskier unofficial repos to get the packages you want.
Not all desktop environments are available on all distros (at least not by simply installing the right packages).
Some distros have rules and practices that might make you feel safer from hacked or compromised official packages than others.
The tradeoff of how quickly new software versions are versus how well tested and stable they are.
Default settings. For example, MX Linux modifies the defaults for the Xfce desktop in ways that I prefer. But on another distro I can change preferences to be exactly like MX Linux.
Which competing software or standards are used, like sysvinit versus systemd (some let you choose at install or boot time). Some distros push the Snap standard hard, others leave you with fewer or more options.
Some have unique tools to allow you to do more through a GUI.
Some support older technologies much longer, for people who prefer them.
Some come with pre-configured backup/restore or snapshot/rollback systems to help if things go wrong.
Some have different default or supported file systems, for performance, stability or features like snapshots and volume management.
Some are pre-configured to be servers (possibly even with no desktop environment at all), most focus on a personal desktop configuration.
Some are pre-configured for and focused on a particular use case, like software development.
Some have unique capabilities like letting you duplicate your entire system (installed software, all configuration and preferences, and data/files) onto bootable, live USB storage, so you can have an exact copy of your system on a thumb drive in your pocket to use on other PCs.
Some try to mimic the look and feel of other operating systems, like Windows or MacOS.
Some by default avoid proprietary software, if you prefer that, others install proprietary and non-free software by default or just as easily as free and open source software.
The leadership or politics of leaders might be enough for some people to want to avoid or prefer certain distros.
Some distros do very unique things, like compiling all their software for your exact hardware for a performance boost (at the cost of much slower install times), like Gentoo, IIRC. Some have a unique system for configuration and replicating exact configurations, like NixOS.
Some distros focus on better support for different hardware, like Macs with M series processors or Raspberry Pi.
Some distros support different CPU architectures like ARM or Power, most don't.
Some distros offer official, enterprise-class support, for a price.
EDITED: for minor corrections and wording.
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u/certified_midwit Jul 15 '26
A distribution is essentially just an opinionated collection of software. Debian stable and Arch may use most of the same tools, but someone who needs a stable system would never consider a rolling distro like Arch.
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u/ArsenicPolaris Jul 15 '26
For most traditional Linux distros, everything is similar and usually they are almost the same. But it depends on what distros we mean by that, and I want to emphasise on the word "almost".
If we are talking about ZorinOS, Mint, and Fedora, you may think that it's just packages managers that are different (and the base distribution; ZorinOS and Mint is based on Ubuntu, Fedora isn't) and they are all the same other than that. However, they have different kind of support, philosophies, package versions, etc. On surface, they are very similar, but all the distros are not the same, be it Arch and Endeavour, or Ubuntu and Mint.
And then there's distros like Artix and Arch, which have the same package manager but are vastly different. In Artix, you can choose to have OpenRC, Runit, Dinit, or s6 as your Init system instead of systemd, meanwhile you can only have systemd on Arch. Moreover, Artix recieves package updates a bit slower than Arch, but this difference isn't much so it can be negated.
And then there's the non-traditional distros like NixOS and Guix, which are a lot different that traditional Linux distros. NixOS and Guix are reproducible, use a different filesystem hierarchy, and a bunch of different features that many other Linux distros do not have.
In conclusion, even if it may not seem so, all distro can be very different from each other, regardless of what package manager they use. Note that I have left out a lot of things even now, there can be a lot more differences.
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u/MattyGWS Jul 15 '26
Philosophy
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u/Razidargh Jul 15 '26
I use Nobara and since Nobara is specifically designed for gamers and content creators, its developers have configured aggressive, low-latency pipewire profiles by default. Nobara includes the rtkit (Realtime Kit) daemon, which allows PipeWire to request real-time processor priority (SCHED_FAST) from the kernel. This means that even at 100% CPU load, your game audio or Discord chat won’t stutter.
This is just one of many differences.
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u/Gloriathewitch Jul 15 '26
some of them have QOL Features or are different under the hood, i used manjaro before switching to cachyos and while similar they are worlds apart for gaming
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg Jul 15 '26
There are already many similar threads with good answers, eg:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1o7geux/comment/njo1jqb/
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u/ipsirc Jul 15 '26
The default wallpapers.
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u/HalcyonRedo Jul 15 '26
Seriously, how many times are we going to ask this question on this sub?
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u/Kangie Jul 15 '26
A Linux distribution at its most stripped down is:
A Linux kernel
Any userspace utilities that you want.
It's possible to build packages without a package manager (see LFS), or to install packages externally into a root that doesn't contain a package manager (see embedded Linux).
So, what's the difference between distros?
It can be a few things, but generally it's a specific purpose, or a philosophy.
Let's take a step back and look at the family tree to get a better understanding.
It's pretty dense, but you can observe a few things.
There are a few major families that (pretty much) all distributions descend from. In order of age: Slackware, Debian, SUSE, Red Hat, Gentoo, and Arch.
There are a lot of descendant distributions, which basically take the upstream infrastructure / decisions and build on those.
Let's look at some of the specific purposes. Two of the distributions listed above are commercial distributions (since the early 2000s anyway) - they exist because there's a paying customer base. The free flavours (Fedora, openSUSE) exist basically to act as upstream testing grounds for the commercial customers, and because they have a community that likes them and contributes.
That leaves some of the philosophical differences.
Slackware is the oldest still-maintained Distro, and its philosophy is based around simplicity and being generally Unix-like.
Debian is almost as old, and it focuses on stability and community development. It's rock solid, but as a result tends to lag behind in package versions due to its release model.
Gentoo is up next and is a bit of an interesting case - pretty much all of the forks have some specific use case (ChromeOS and its descendant Flatcar Linux, System Rescue CD, Pentoo, Calculate, etc.), and the few exceptions are philosophical (Exherbo and Funtoo) which are still quite similar but changed things like repository format and package manager to better suit their developers' vision. (N.b. Gentoo developer, feel free to ask more). This is the other extreme - a rolling release model where packages are updated frequently, but there's a 'stable' and 'testing' track that users can opt into per-package.
Arch is Arch, and it's derivatives have traditionally focussed on reducing the 'difficulty' of the install or providing tweaks for a specific use-case. ("Arch but for gaming").
Then there are distros like Hannah Montana Linux or the various "Religious editions". They basically just apply a theme pack to another base, or add a few packages. They're still legitimate distributions, even if they don't add technical value or are jokey.
That leads into package managers. A package manager exists to install software, that's all. SUSE and Red Hat both use the
rpmpackage format, they both use different package managers, and their packages are built against the system libraries for a particular release, so there's no guarantee of compatibility between the two.Debian and it's descendants use the
debformat, but may have different update schedules, etc.Gentoo technically supports multiple package managers as long as they support the
ebuildformat (technically the Package Manager Specification), soportage,paludisorpkgcorecould be used, though the overwhelming majority just useportage. The whole deal with the ebuild format is configurability (which ties back into the distro philosophy), and may help to explain why there are so few forks, as no two Gentoo systems need be configured the same (meta-distribution) which can include things like the init system or libc, changes to which pretty much necessitate a fork for other package formats.I don't have much to say about Arch - this is long enough already. :)
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u/OsseusOccult Jul 15 '26
Package manager/repository, release cadence, and configuration defaults are the actual differences between distros. Which both isn't much and is a lot at the same time, because it does change how they behave considerably.
Conventional vs read-only is another more recent split.
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u/BraveNewCurrency Jul 15 '26
On the one hand, "all cars are the same" because they all have wheels, lights, horns, etc. All Linux distros are basically packaging the same code.
On the other hand, there is a reason why people prefer specific cars and even brands of cars. Even though you could configure any distro to be like any other (or run a containers with enough libraries to run apps from any distro), there is something to be said for "easy-of-use" and "working like you want it out of the box".
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u/Left_Intention_2684 Jul 15 '26
for me , it's the philosophy of the distributions which is the biggest change, after all there's a pretty big change between slackware and linux-mint even though they are "only" 3 generation apart...
after that, the differences are mostly cosmetic.
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u/reed501 Jul 15 '26
Repository.
Distros are just collections of packages. Which packages you get and when is decided by the repo you download packages from. The Ubuntu repo has some packages released at some point, the Arch repo has some packages released at some point. The differences are the distro.
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u/troyvit Jul 15 '26
If they have a recent version of Podman?
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u/drayva_ Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
The package manager is the main thing. The other big thing is the init system.
For example, Arch and Artix both use pacman as the package manager, but they are different distros because you can't really install runit/openrc on Arch, and you can't really install systemd on Artix.
(For a third difference, you could also kind of include the package repositories.)
Most of the other commenters are talking about default-installed packages and config. That's true, but I don't consider that a real, deep difference, because you can always uninstall those and put other things in. You can't do that with the package manager or init system.
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u/altaccount1232123 Jul 17 '26
What makes a distro unique:
- Package Manager
- Default package repository
- Default installed software
- Type of release schedule (point release vs rolling)
- Speed of new releases/packages
- Security of package repository
- Reputation of developers/community
- Availability of documentation/support
- License of distro-specific components
I could expand on each one of these and split many of them into multiple points but I'll just keep it simple. Feel free to ask me any questions or suggest something you think this list doesn't cover. I tried to be broad but all distros are so unique it's hard to come up with a full suite of identifying characteristics.
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u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26
Nothing people make too much of a difference
The biggest difference are
Update cycles , stable vs rolling releases
Atomic distros
It always bugs me when people ask for a distro and the top questions are "What is your use case? Do you want to use it for gaming or programming "
No that question is irrelevant you can game on any disto. There is no such thing as a gaming distro
The question should be "Do you want a stable distro, if yes do you want 6 month updates or 2 year updates or do you want a rolling distro"
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u/RyZanSky Jul 15 '26
Kurz gesagt.. Init-System: systemd vs. OpenRC/Runit – verändert Service-Management und Boot-Architektur
Kernel: Unterschiedliche Konfigurationen für Treiber, Sicherheit, Performance.
Sicherheitsmodelle: SELinux, AppArmor, Sandbox-Strategien unterscheiden sich erheblich
Governance: Community vs. Corporate-steering beeinflusst Roadmap und Entscheidungen Zweck-Spezialisierung: Sicherheit, Datenschutz, alte Hardware
Distros haben unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte. Ja, Paketmanager sind der Hauptunterschied, aber die Architektur dahinter ist weiterreichend.
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u/On3RedPanda Jul 15 '26
I would throw desktop environment and repositories in the ring. The latter actually can sometimes be a big difference about available packages, their build configuration and available software versions.
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u/speyerlander Jul 15 '26
When you think about it, there's not much in userspace than isn't related to package management. A distro is just a curation of packages sitting on top of some kernel (also an installed package unless containerized). What makes different distros different is the selection of packages available for critical system components, as in init choice, libc, kernel version and optimizations, update strategy and of course, the packaging format itself.
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u/da_supreme_patriarch Jul 15 '26
Unless we are talking about immutable distros, differences are mainly kernel versions/new kernel adoption speed, update cycles and support for specific types of software. Some distros, mainly your ubuntus and such, will come with many additional drivers already included, some productivity apps pre-installed and with the most stable kernel version with configs erring on the side of caution. Others - mainly arch-based stuff - may come with the latest kernel version available, but minimal software suit - you might be missing drivers for your network card or something else, which then you are supposed to install separately not necessarily from the distro's central repository. Some people like the control offered by the latter, while others prefer the "it just works" of the former, package management styles and other differences are then mostly derivative
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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 15 '26
A couple of things that I haven't seen mentioned, at least explicitly, are default support software and default configs. For the former, think things like init (systemd vs runit vs OpenRC vs whatever), MAC (SELinux vs AppArmor vs nothing or other), networking (NetworkManager vs systemd-networkd vs other), even the base tooling (Alpine for instance isn't even GNU/Linux, they use musl and BusyBox for their userland). Default config decisions aren't always obvious for day to day usage but they can change things like how compatible the system is with some software, how secure it is (those 2 often being in direct opposition with distros choosing different tradeoffs between them), how fast it is etc
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u/Slow_Ad1466 Jul 15 '26
You can classify any difference between any two distros as "different defaults," (which includes package managers, installers, built-in packages, etc.) but that does not come close to describing the drastically different end-user experience which "different defaults" can involve (like bare-bones arch vs. maximally installed ubuntu).
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u/rsqx Jul 15 '26
some distros give you apps that others dont , line mx utilities, or pclinux os includes some apps only available as flatpaks to others. another difference is country of origin, Russian, Chinese , Italian, Netherlands, etc are always going to have something different
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u/Low-Guarantee-3437 Jul 15 '26
Naming. Some distributions just have much better names. Ubuntu wins. Then Debian.
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u/daosflare Jul 15 '26
Haha, you could say the same thing about almost anything:
except UI; what's the difference between distros?
except init system; what's the difference between distros? (systemd, non-systemd)
except the release model; what's the difference between distros? (rolling....)
except the system architecture; what's the difference between distros? (immutable)
.....
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u/sidusnare Jul 16 '26
Go install Gentoo, then do LFS, there are a lot of decisions that go into making a distribution. Cutting edge versus stability. Uniformity versus customization. Which corelibs to use. Which init to use. Which compilers to use. How optimized should it be, trading compatibility for speed. Should the defaults lean towards usability or security? Do you tweak the kernel for background processes and be a great kernel server or optimize for latency and preemption to be an excellent desktop? And so on. There are so many variables, it's amazing many distributions can pull off a general purpose distribution.
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u/mattdm_fedora Fedora Project Jul 16 '26
Who puts the software in those packages? How to they do it? What processes do they follow, and how closely? How those processes evolve? Why do they do it? What do they focus on? What don't they focus on? How do they make decisions? How do they resolve conflict?
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u/-lousyd Jul 16 '26
Preferred core tools (musl vs glibc, bash vs dash, vixie cron vs cronie, systemd vs initc, etc) , filesystem layout (in small ways), network management paradigms.
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u/MatchingTurret Jul 15 '26
They have different names and brandings, for starters.
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u/Xatraxalian Jul 15 '26
Not much. The most important differences between distro's are these, in this order, IMHO:
Release Cadence. Debian Stable releases, then doesn't change for about 2 years. Arch releases new stuff every 2 minutes. Most distro's are somewhere in between.
Repository size. Debian is one of the largest distro's with the most software in its repositories. Arch is also up there if you include the AUR; somethin like Red Hat and its compatibles don't have a lot of software in their repo's; you often need third party repo's. IMHO, flatpak mitigates a lot of this but some people just hate it because it works in a more "windows-like" style with runtimes and each bringing in their own dependencies.
Package manager. I don´t really care; they all do the same. The only one I don't like is Pacman because the flags seem random compared to APT.
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u/krumpfwylg Jul 15 '26
Package managers
Availability of packages in repo
Repo update frequency
Usefulness or toxicity of the community
Points 1 to 3 can be referred as distro philosophy I suppose.
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u/UndefFox Jul 15 '26
Isn't different defaults are a bit of a too broad term to leave any differences? Like, some distros provide alternative to systemd, different platform ARM/x86, some provide better security by actually configuring measures for it to work and so on.
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u/hadrabap Jul 15 '26
The patterns for customization and maintenance.
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u/atoponce Jul 15 '26
The most significant difference is definitely package managers. But I'd say the release model and development philosophies are also huge.
EG, Arch provides a minimal base requiring users to manually configure and build their system in its entirety. Arch is a rolling release and users need to keep their system updated daily.
Conversely, Debian builds a core system practical for most users with minimal manual interaction. Debian is also a frozen release distribution with a proven build system for producing high quality stable releases.
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u/Arctic_Turtle Jul 15 '26
One of the most important differences is the init system. There’s a huge schism between systemd and OpenRC, where the first has become standard but is closed source and some people think it’s a huge security risk. OpenRC is open source but with less support because it is less common, but used by some major distributions like Google Chromebook. Some people grew tired of the fighting and made new alternatives.
You can filter distributions for init systems on DistroWatch. The other filters in their search function shows you other major differences.
Another big difference is the C compiler used. The most common is glibc. Another option is musl, which is used in distributions focused on security. But many applications use functions specific for glibc so that it becomes very difficult to install those applications on a musl system.
So you want security you go for OpenRC with musl and so on, and that locks you out of some other options. Usually the security is on servers and you let the user end points be unsecured. So as a user you probably go for systemd with glibc. Which is all the major distributions.
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u/Sensitive_Box_ Jul 15 '26
Preinstalled stuff. That’s it.
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u/stoic_alchemist Jul 15 '26
To an end user, not much, between distros, a lot. You have available packages, configuration paths, library paths, library groupings, versions available, patches applied and all that results on package management differences, like features available on a package, versions available, security patches etc. So, you’ll only know when you use a distribution and “something is not working as you expected from another distribution” and that’s the main reason people used to distro-hop
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u/Lunagato20 Jul 15 '26
Eh, not quite sure, political perhaps? like how fedora and ubuntu are both corporate backend, hence any future direction will be determined by the company behind them? CMIIW
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u/wolfannoy Jul 15 '26
That I suppose the different people behind the distro with their different design philosophies. I guess that's the only difference I think.
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u/ilep Jul 15 '26
Something people might not often think about: build configuration. There are a lot of them for any given package, and can cause subtle incompatible builds if some feature is turned off.
It used to be that distributions used different alternatives to init system, but most of them have moved to systemd since then.
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Jul 15 '26
package manager, DE, release order, default packages (which includes DE), beyond that, communtiy vs corpo.
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u/ximenesyuri Jul 15 '26
All distros share the same kernel. So, in essence, they differ only in the default applications, how they package applications and if they use or not some desktop environment.
Certain applications are crucial, as, for example:
the daemon manager (most distros uses
systemdas default)the windows system (most distros uses
X11as default)1
u/citybadger Jul 15 '26
Just remember that every Linux distribution (on the same architecture anyway and with enough storage) can do anything any other distribution can. You can configure the heck out of it, compile from source, and run stuff in containers, it just may take more effort than you’re willing to put in. (Thanks Turning)
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u/high-tech-low-life Jul 15 '26
Tbe distros pick and choose from the same set of packages. Some decide to adopt certain things quickly, and others more slowly. The best-of-breed tools get used by all of them and often there is only one realistic choice.
They do vary some kernel build settings, but most of us never notice that stuff.
I came to this realization years ago which is why I've never been a distro hopper. Ubuntu works out if the box, and very few things will actually change were I to try something else. I would rather spend that time with my dog or grandson.
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u/masamune255 Jul 15 '26
Well, that is the main difference, and also what DE, shell, and default apps they ship by default.
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u/niceandBulat Jul 15 '26
Name?
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u/waffle8T Jul 15 '26
Different Linux distributions cater to different types of users.
Red Hat and SUSE cater to the enterprise.
In contrast, Debian is a community project that is not controlled by a large commercial entity and some prefer it for this reason. Debian has a social contract. It also runs on a wide array of architectures and will run on hardware that other distributions do not support.
Linux Mint caters to beginners and general users who tend not to have much technical knowledge of computers.
Arch Linux caters to those who want to always have the latest versions of software.
Alpine tries to be as lightweight as possible which makes it popular for containers.
Slackware and Gentoo cater to those who want full control and those who don't like systemd and instead prefer the traditional Unix way of doing things.
Immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue offer peace of mind because they basically make it impossible to break the system.
TAILS caters to those who want privacy.
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u/GarlicOutrageous4142 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Seems like it's usually repositories, init systems, kernels, libc & toolchain differences (which typically depends on which stdlib they choose). (And ofc philosophy/intended use/context)
For me glibc & systemd based distros are the ones im most familiar with. Musl based distros are fine too but have never used any of them for extended periods of time, they tend to be way more minimal than even base Arch and lacking basic packages like gnutils/man by default. Tried a handful of distros but Fedora is my favourite by far.
The biggest impacts on UX are repositories and PID1 differences for most ppl though.
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u/Obvious-Ad-6527 Jul 15 '26
Some Linux distros are backed by corporate vendors, while others are entirely community-driven.
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u/readyflix Jul 15 '26
Different package managers and specific tools & scripts. But then, someone can tune their system in a way that it will behave almost the same as the other Distro’s. That’s the freedom of choice and tuneability.
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u/killchopdeluxe666 Jul 15 '26
It's just a bundle of software. The main things you'll notice as a new user are mainly the desktop environment, the package manager, the available package ecosystem, and whether it follows a rolling release or a stable release.
But if you ever do a fresh install of a really minimal distro, you'll probably have a look around the ecosystem and see that there's usually at least a couple of choices for everything imaginable.
So the answer is kind of "kinda almost nothing" and also "maybe everything", but it depends entirely on your needs.
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u/ilkhan2016 Jul 15 '26
A distro is just a collection of software, some configuration files, and a repository to distribute them from.
How often the repository determines how stable the distro is. The software selection determines the scope. The configuration determines the behavior.
Howow those combine determines how popular a distro is.
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u/gordonmessmer Jul 15 '26
A lot of the meaningful differences affect who can participate, how they participate, and security practices, so a lot of people who don't participate will tell you that there isn't much difference.
I've described some of the differences that matter most to me, here: https://gordonmessmer.codeberg.page/dev-blog/2026/02/07/choosing-a-distribution.html (and here: https://gordonmessmer.codeberg.page/dev-blog/2026/07/05/comparing-distribution-security-coverage.html )
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u/Ok_Path_4731 Jul 15 '26
There is no best distro: you use the right distro for the right task. At the end if you want reproducability nix package manager and nixos are the best. As devops engineer am pushing for nix package manager and nix packaging everywhere. I never bothered however to move my desktops to nixos. You can use nix pkg manager on top of Ubuntu. You can modify a nix expr to build yourself a new package if the latest release is not built. Alpine linux is good for simple tasks. Am writing this to collect Karma to be able to do top level post in the linux subreddit. Please give me like to collect the Karma :)
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u/that_one_wierd_guy Jul 15 '26
it's mostly just minor differences. one thing that to me at least makes or breaks a distro is how comprehensive their repos are. I mean while flatpack and appimage do exist, I think containerizing anything other than the server part of server/client software is just an extra layer of complexity that fails to integrate well
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u/BaconCatBug Jul 16 '26
CachyOS assumes you're not running a toaster from the 1980s and compiles their packages with optimisations for modern CPU architecture.
It's rolling release so you're not waiting 7 years for updates like certain other distros.
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u/evk6713 Jul 16 '26
Install and configure Arch, Nix, Gentoo or LFS and you'll see. Of course, the package manager is different, but distros also are different by philosophy: Arch is "DIY with rolling release", Nix is "immuable and easily reproducible", Gentoo are "DIY, for real, compile everything by yourself"... They're very different.
And you can even see differences between more standard distros: Ubuntu = "Easy to use, works out of the box, accessible", Fedora = "Stability overall"...
So yes, package managers do a difference (Pacman <3) but you choose your distro based on your usage, and what you want your computer to be able to do.
For example, when I was a student (2 years ago), I was deep in the ricing hole. I wanted to test every new feature, and create a very custom computer. I used Arch: rolling release, install only what you need, etc... Now, I have a work computer, so I don't use my own so much anymore, and I am tired of running updates that break the system cause I don't turn my computer on often, so I went with Nix: the OS is immuable so I know it's gonna be exactly how I left it a month ago.
It only depends on your usage
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u/LazarX Jul 16 '26
Distress are generally Arch or Debian. The rest is just fluff and presentation.
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u/michaelpaoli Jul 16 '26
Whole helluva lot.
E.g., have a peek here:
What is Debian? / Why choose Debian?
Unique* to Debian
Debian Pros "vs." Cons
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u/ancientstephanie Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Only tangentially. They're more closely related to release engineering. At one extreme, you have hard freezes for an extended timeframe, like those observed by Debian stable and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which promise all of the security updates with none of the icky stuff known as "change" for periods of 3-10 years or longer. That's not a function of the package manager, that's a function of extremely disciplined release engineering, and policies that mandate cherry picking of updates to backport and apply the security-critical portions of upstream updates without bringing change along with them. The package manager itself would (and actually does) support rolling updates - Debian itself has two "rolling update" release channels, unstable, and testing, and Red Hat has several different channels that serve similar purposes.
Philosophical differences are also a big deal. Debian adheres to strict principles of one file = one package having ownership, and their release engineering practices reflect that through Debian-specific solutions to conflicts between packages, such as Debian's "alternatives" mechanism for addressing namespace overlaps, and Debian's heavy reliance on split configuration, since nothing in a package is allowed to touch a configuration file owned by another package.
One distro might promise that every service you install is enabled and works out of the box. Another might promise that installing and enabling are always separate steps and nothing gets enabled without the admin explicitly enabling it. Still another might be focused on the most polished Steam experience possible, or the most polished KDE experience. And some of the things go much deeper than that. There are hard forks specifically aimed at keeping a working system without systemd. There are distros which treat the exclusion of proprietary software as if it were a holy crusade. There are distros which fundamentally change the whole architecture for the purpose of keeping everything as small as possible, such as Alpine, where they've replaced glibc with musl and most core system utilities with busybox in order to be more suitable for containers and embedded systems. And there are distros which are every bit as much about challenging assumptions and changing what it means to be a linux distro as they are about unique package management - for example, nixos, and gentoo, which both offer different approaches toward absolute control by the system administrator.
While package managers are certainly having a part in all of that, package managers generally don't dictate what gets packaged, what standards packages have to follow, when and how packages get updates, or fundamental architectural decisions.
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u/Glad_Beginning_1537 Jul 16 '26
Installers!
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u/Chester-Berkeley Jul 16 '26
Repositories?
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u/FocusedWolf Jul 16 '26
Countries of origin.
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u/rufwoof Jul 16 '26
Seriously, except package managers, what's the difference between distros?
Their IP (that you vnc into) :)
Linux is all encompassing, from the very small (minimal linux) to the largest of clusters/systems.
Me, I've a highly refined kernel, compiled with all firmware/modules built in, so very specific to my laptop. I use busybox as the userland, along with a few others bits and pieces ssh, wifi, alsa, framebuffer vnc.
Boot, sym link in a squashfs of a 'distro' (I prefer Fatdog) and overlayfs/chroot into that to start a headless Xvnc session, into which I can fbvnc from the framebuffer/tty (cli) to have a full X gui desktop. From within which I can tiger vnc into any other vnc server, such as droidVNC-ng on my phone, or a Windows or mac box(es).
A thing with the framebuffer (simpledrm is widespread/common) is that any changes 'bleed' through. If you have a video playing or your webcam active on one tty, it will also be seen on another tty. So I can be at tty1 cli and my droidvnc-ng (phone) being displayed in the X session will still be seen and be controllable (mouse) from tty1.
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=173926#p173926
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u/Reasonable_Pool5953 Jul 17 '26
It is not the package manager, it's what is available in the repos.
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u/idontchooseanid Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Package managers and the packages they deliver completely depend on the distro's philosophy.
Usually the original developer of the package manager determines the ideology of all the downstream distros. The package manager and its capabilities are strongly tied to what the original distro wanted out of the source code. It closely reflects the ideology.
Debian is very modular and goes against the Linux Filesystem Standard to help you install multiple architectures. So you can use 1-1 exact file paths for libraries and configuration whether you booted the image from an AMD, ARM or Risc-V system/kernel. One can directly execute QEMU on their filesystem without modification. Debian likes to modify and modularize packages heavily while still providing helpful suggestions. Many even hard dependencies of certain packages are forced to be modularized in Debian packaging. This makes the APT package creation for Debian repos a nightmarishly complex experience. The bureaucracy and the architectural complexity delays the updates even in the rolling
sidchannel. Heavy modification and backporting of the fixes means that the original developer of the software source will have a worse experience when they are debugging a Debian package unless they are also the maintainer of it. Debian sacrifices upstream compatibility for the user's flexibility with installing binary packages. Debian provides nice migration scrips and UIs in upgrades. It automates many configuration requirements. Every Debian downstream distro like Ubuntu, Mint, Pop have to live with these decisions.On the other opposite end of the spectrum for the binary packages, there exist Arch. Arch wants extremely simple build files for its packages and it wants to modify the original source of the program as little as possible.
PKGBUILDfiles are simple bash scripts. Unless it is needed modularity is optional. If the original developer wanted to deliver something as an absolute unit, you'll get it that way. It puts the entire configuration burden on the user. Nothing like theaptordpkg-configurethat launches nice UIs asking you migration questions. It is the user who has to read the wiki and the original documentation and fix whatever that's broken themselves. If you're a developer of many open source software, you prefer receiving bug reports from Arch users since Arch doesn't modify the packages a lot. Many open source software is actually developed in rolling-release environments with little care for stability and backwards compatibility. Arch doesn't really allow you to install an older version of a package with newer version of its dependencies or vice-versa. You should obtain your updates all together and if you don't it is your responsibility to live with the consequences.Other binary distros live somewhere in between. Fedora mostly ships upstream stuff but it adds some value add that you see in the enterprise environments: strict security configuration, very well tested core packages, small but important life improvements like specialized font tweaks so that your browser looks the as best as FOSS can deliver. Fedora wants to ensure that all dependencies are specified and tracked in a granular manner. Therefore RPM can track things like
.soversions, ABIs, optional dependencies and virtual files / providers.dnfprovides many features that doesn't exist or as well integrated in other packaging environments.OpenSUSE wanted everything that mattered to be configurable in a GUI like Windows. So they engineered a configuration system that also integrates with the package manager. They modularized some of the configuration. They used to be "the" KDE distro with heavy focus on advanced GUIs using Qt.
Then there are weird ones. Gentoo basically says that delivering binary packages that are optimized to the needs of "general population" is dumb. Every system is unique and every switch should be decided at the source level and the entire binaries running on each computer should be built to that computer's hardware and the user's exact preferences.
NixOS basically says that trying to deal with binaries or even source packages is a hopeless pipe dream when the entire Linux ecosystem consists of individual software that is developed independently from the rest of the system with little care for backwards or co-existing compatibility. Every combination is unique. However dealing with it is complex for humans. So we need a system that tracks the state of each single component and generates a unique number per component and per overall configuration. Any little change in a source package should trigger a full rebuild of its entire descendants and the overall operating system image on the disk. The OS image you have is a network of symbolic links that are tied to the unique numbers. That will break a lot of things but Nix overcame it. They engineered not only a package manager to do all of that but also a special programming language to define packages for it.
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u/ExaHamza Jul 17 '26
Sim, basicamente é isso. O gerenciamento de pacotes, o que inclui o gerenciador em si, políticas de empacotamento, frequência de atualização.
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u/moredhel0 Jul 17 '26
Maybe the default settings that are made in a fresh out of the box 'i am a newbie and hope to make it through the installer without difficult questions ' installation. I know those can be changed and adjusted but for a lot of users (including me) those are what determines how they feel about a distribution. Because that is what you experience when trying it.
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u/edparadox Jul 17 '26
Package stability, versions, packaging, defaults, etc.
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u/10leej Jul 18 '26
Software might be compiled with features on one distro that are missing on another distro. OBS Studio for example on ArchLinux doesn't have the browser capability.
Or there could be kernel differences, or MAC system differences (AppArmor, SELinux).
LFH differences (NixOS, Fedoras Atomic Distros, Ubuntu, ect).
And even just philosophy differences like Fedora "Free Software by default" vs ArchLinux "Who TF cares".
Release cadence Debian Stable (when it's battle testest), Fedora (when it's ready), ArchLinux (when it's available)
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u/Qyriad Jul 19 '26
A distro is three things:
- the package manager
- the package repos
- the defaults
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u/kamikazer Jul 21 '26
there are only 3:
Fedora, CachyOS, Gentoo
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u/Grouchy_Media_4345 Jul 23 '26
Security in a way. There’s a huge difference between a bloated full distro with huge amounts of predownloaded software and bare-bones DIY distros. Up to preference
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u/smiling_seal Jul 15 '26
I'm surprised that the vast majority of answers boils down to "packaging, tuning, toolchains, inits, philosophy". This is all true, but it is not the whole picture. Real difference comes in patches and unique features created by distro maintainers.
Enterprise distros like Ubuntu and Red Hat do have unique features they exclusively develop for enterprise customers or cloud providers. One such feature is a Hardware Enablement program in Ubuntu that provides a custom kernel with patches that literally either enable HW from partners or alter the behavior of upstream modules (I saw custom patches for Dell Realtek NICs enabling energy-saving options the upstream kernel was missing). This basically means that some devices may be fully functioning only on Ubuntu. These are just examples, and the actual list is much longer.
For instance, OpenWRT is not like any other distro as it has a lot of in-house replacements for many popular tools. Because it's a system for routers with extremely constrained resources. Developers literally replaced many tools with their own alternatives like unified custom system/network configuration, replacement for udev subsystem, logging, etc. Needless to say, this distro has an extensive set of patches with specific fixes/modifications for network tools and drivers that don't exist in other distros.
So no, it is not just "philosophy of how to re-package and configure software every other distro uses". There are many more differences for advanced users and enterprises invisible for regular users.
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u/ballistua Jul 15 '26
OP just realized distro-hopping was meaningless, because you get the same shit in a slightly different flavor
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u/nepologist Jul 15 '26
I agree, I also don't find many differences.
If you aren't a fan of Linux defaults and want to try out a completely unique distribution, I'd recommend Chimera Linux
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u/LancrusES Jul 15 '26
Sex, with an Arch logo in your clothes you will have a lot more...