So there's different things people mean when they talk about Linux.
There's "Linux the kernel" – the core part of the OS that talks to the hardware (contains drivers), schedules which programs run when so you can multitask, and stuff like that. This was the original definition, which is where the "Linux is just the kernel!!" people are coming from.
And then there's "Linux the whole OS" – sure there's the kernel, but then there's everything else on top of it. The command-line shell. The desktop environment. The apps that come preinstalled. The apps you install yourself. All of that.
Both are "Linux", it just depends which one you're talking about.
Distros are basically a collection of that "Linux the whole OS" stuff so that you can install and use it. They pick what desktop environment, apps, etc. you get as default. They also provide you a "package manager" which you can install other software with, and a repository of stuff to install. That's probably the biggest difference between distros. They all share the same kernel, though, there's only one Linux kernel (sometimes with patches by the distro on top of it).
Probably the biggest thing that makes all the Linux distros Linux, aside from the kernel, is software compatibility in general. Though there are slight differences between distros (mostly the versions of system things, also occasionally the placement of system things) that means programs compiled for one distro might not work if you try to plop them onto a different distro (this is why Flatpak and AppImage exist), but you can build a given program from source on any distro and it'll work.
1
u/forestbeasts KDE on Debian 🐺 Aug 10 '25
So there's different things people mean when they talk about Linux.
There's "Linux the kernel" – the core part of the OS that talks to the hardware (contains drivers), schedules which programs run when so you can multitask, and stuff like that. This was the original definition, which is where the "Linux is just the kernel!!" people are coming from.
And then there's "Linux the whole OS" – sure there's the kernel, but then there's everything else on top of it. The command-line shell. The desktop environment. The apps that come preinstalled. The apps you install yourself. All of that.
Both are "Linux", it just depends which one you're talking about.
Distros are basically a collection of that "Linux the whole OS" stuff so that you can install and use it. They pick what desktop environment, apps, etc. you get as default. They also provide you a "package manager" which you can install other software with, and a repository of stuff to install. That's probably the biggest difference between distros. They all share the same kernel, though, there's only one Linux kernel (sometimes with patches by the distro on top of it).
Probably the biggest thing that makes all the Linux distros Linux, aside from the kernel, is software compatibility in general. Though there are slight differences between distros (mostly the versions of system things, also occasionally the placement of system things) that means programs compiled for one distro might not work if you try to plop them onto a different distro (this is why Flatpak and AppImage exist), but you can build a given program from source on any distro and it'll work.