Differences between linux distributions

[Guest snOOze00]

I'm new whit lnux and im tired of windows.. but when i look at all the distribution every linux seem to be the same i dont know wichone to install. They all use KDE and Gnome (Some diference whiut the version but...) I just see icon change... what is the big diference between mandriva, fedora, yellow dog and suse???

 

 

[moved from Other Linux Distributions by spinynorman]

[scarecrow]

All of them are virtually the same under their skin- excluding Yellow Dog which is for MAC machines-only.

Your first pick should be the prettiest skin, and later on you can review the spiritual charms of each distro! :D

[solarian]

KDE, Gnome and other Desktop environments and Window managers, like Fluxbox, IceWM, FXCE, etc...

But the difference isn't between the looks, because you can make Slackware and Mandrake desktops look identical.

 

The difference for the most part is in how distros manage and install software packages. There are 3 main camps: .rpm (Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, and others) ; debian style (Debian, Ubuntu, Kanotix) ; from source (Gentoo, Arch (?) I'm not sure about arch).

 

Each has its' pros and cons, it's for you to decide which suit you best.

 

Then there's a big difference on how you administer the system, i.e., what tools you use and how much knowledge you have to have.

 

At one end there are the idiot-proof Windows wanabee clones like Linspire, Xandros, and, dare I say, Mepis,

and, while easy, for the most part they are annoying for people who know what they want to do, but the limited GUI config tools don't let them or are just getting in the way.

 

Then there are generally easy to use, but not restricting distros like Fedora Core, Mandriva, Ubuntu (Mandriva being the easyest of these, imo).

 

SuSE falls somewhere in between the previous two (YAST, I'm looking at you).

 

The other extreme is Gentoo, Arch, Slackware where most things are done by hand through config files (I haven't really looked at slack for a long time).

 

Of course there's a whole lot of other distros with specific purposes in mind,

those that you can boot from floppy, live cd's, diagnostic distros, router ones, multimedia, etc, etc

 

p.s. I haven't used Yellow Dog, so can't answer.

 

 

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disclaimer: These are my personal views and any fanatic of a specific distro that is going to attack me because of something I said in my post I'm going to hold back with a heavy stick.

Edited April 3, 2006 by solarian

[arctic]

Basically, under the hood, all these distributions are more or less the same, as they ship x86 and x86-64 solutions (as said, except Yellow Dog). The difference is mainly the way in which they handle things, the tools they offer you for administrating your system and the version/selection of some apps they ship on the CDs. One interesting thing is also that some distros (like Slackware) still prefer a 2.4 kernel over a 2.6 kernel.

In Linux, as said, there are general purpose distributions like e.g. Fedora, desktop oriented distributions, like e.g. SUSE and Mandriva, server oriented distros like e.g. Red Hat or Novell and many other specialized solutions (usb-distros, firewall, routers, penetration testing,...).

[scarecrow]

; from source (Gentoo, Arch (?) I'm not sure about arch).

 

Arch is a binary, i686 optimized distro, using modded tarball packages (unlike Slackware the Arch packages do hold dependency information). But it also has an advanced build-from-source system, named AUR, which can be used Gentoo-style to easily build packages from source. For example,

aurbuild -b nonsence

...will download sources for the program "nonsense" from the net, build the packages and install them in one go, PLUS all missing dependencies... which is exactly what "emerge" does in Gentoo.

[solarian]

Thanks for the fix, scarecrow

[Qchem]

All of them are virtually the same under their skin- excluding Yellow Dog which is for MAC machines-only.

 

[pedantic]MAC is either cosmetics or the MAC address of a computer, Mac is an Apple Mac computer[/pedantic]

 

Yellow dog is for PPC machines, which includes most of the computers made by Apple in the last few years (but not the new Intel based ones) along with a few others.

[Gowator]

Basically, under the hood, all these distributions are more or less the same, as they ship x86 and x86-64 solutions (as said, except Yellow Dog). The difference is mainly the way in which they handle things, the tools they offer you for administrating your system and the version/selection of some apps they ship on the CDs. One interesting thing is also that some distros (like Slackware) still prefer a 2.4 kernel over a 2.6 kernel.

In Linux, as said, there are general purpose distributions like e.g. Fedora, desktop oriented distributions, like e.g. SUSE and Mandriva, server oriented distros like e.g. Red Hat or Novell and many other specialized solutions (usb-distros, firewall, routers, penetration testing,...).

 

Debian ships quite a few ports http://www.debian.org/ports/

Slackware also does S/390 arch's ...

 

just for information :D

[tyme]

But it also has an advanced build-from-source system, named AUR, which can be used Gentoo-style to easily build packages from source.

IIRC, AUR actually is that Arch Users Repository. The build system is ABS (Arch Build System). The aurbuild command is actually a combination of AUR and ABS, grabbing the PKGBUILDs from the AUR and then compiling them via ABS.