Purpose/Philosophy of Linux Distros

[Netopia]

Hey all....

As an analogy, if one wants to get several translations of the Bible, one can get the NIV (which translates to the closest meaning) or the KJV (which translates to the closest EXACT word) and there are others with their own philosophies of translating.

I was wondering if there was a page out there that describes the different distros, why they were created and what the philosophy of each one is? When simply downloading live CDs or installing distros to test, most of them seem more or less the same from the surface level... perhaps different eye candy or a slightly different installer, but they seem to be basically the same.

SO... I wondered if there was a site that would let people know what all the distros were actually about, so that one could make a decision based on more than "this one's cool" or "this one's really popular" or such.

Any idea if a page like this exists?

Joe

 

[xSauronx]

check the sticky in the OS forum for the Linux Beginners FAQ

it'll give you a few pointers, and send you to Distrowatch which provides information on a per-distro basis usually describing what each distro is about, what its goals are, and what its similar to

 

[kamper]

And if that fails, each distro will probably have a decent blurb on it's own website. However, whatever the developers of each might say, I suspect most of them were simply forks because their authors had some small, unimportant things they disliked about the distro they were using, thought it would be cool to maintain their own and the original differences are long since forgotten.

 

[Netopia]

Hmmm.... sounds like a project that tracks as many distros/philosophies as possible might be useful. I think I'll ponder the idea of doing it myself (time permitting). You guys have given me a good place to start though! Thanks.

Joe

 

[Nothinman]

Anyone can fork just about any distribution so chasing them around trying to figure out what each person was thinking is going to be a huge waste of time, IMO. I personally pretty much ignore all of them except for the big 3 of Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora and SuSe.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Netopia
Hmmm.... sounds like a project that tracks as many distros/philosophies as possible might be useful. I think I'll ponder the idea of doing it myself (time permitting). You guys have given me a good place to start though! Thanks.

Joe

As stated, this is pretty much what distrowatch does.

 

[Netopia]

As I highly regard both of you, I think I'll cut my losses before I start and not even bother!

Nothinman, I note that use clump Debian/Ubuntu together. Do you feel the same way about things like CentOS/Fedora, or is the D/U unique because of the huge following?

Joe

 

[Nothinman]

Nothinman, I note that use clump Debian/Ubuntu together. Do you feel the same way about things like CentOS/Fedora, or is the D/U unique because of the huge following?

I probably shouldn't lump Debian and Ubuntu together because as time goes on they are diverging more and more. I would obviously lump CentOS and RHEL together, but not FC because FC is a lot faster moving and doesn't have much in common with them beside heritage and probably some developers.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Nothinman, I note that use clump Debian/Ubuntu together. Do you feel the same way about things like CentOS/Fedora, or is the D/U unique because of the huge following?

I probably shouldn't lump Debian and Ubuntu together because as time goes on they are diverging more and more. I would obviously lump CentOS and RHEL together, but not FC because FC is a lot faster moving and doesn't have much in common with them beside heritage and probably some developers.

Eh? I would say FC is akin to RHEL/COS in almost exactly the same way as Ubuntu is akin to Debian. FC is basically a faster moving release of Redhat and shares many of the same developers, just as Ubuntu is basically a faster moving release of Debian and also shares many of the same developers. Yeah there are differences, but essentially the goals of Ubuntu and Fedora are the same, as RHEL/COS and Debian goals are the same.

Fedora and Ubuntu are meant to be cutting edge with the latest software packages and new features. RHEL and Debian are meant to be more of a rock, something you can rely on to use stable software, be consistent in it's configuration, and supported with security and bugfix updates for a long time. Then, of course, CentOS is just a release of the compiled binaries from RedHat since RedHat is being jerks and only releasing source code to those without an rhn subscription.

Ubuntu does bridge the gap a bit though, with it's LTS releases, which are meant to be more of a rock like RHEL and Debian.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Netopia
As I highly regard both of you, I think I'll cut my losses before I start and not even bother!

Have you at least checked out http://www.distrowatch.com to see if it is the answer to what you are looking for?

 

[Nothinman]

Eh? I would say FC is akin to RHEL/COS in almost exactly the same way as Ubuntu is akin to Debian. FC is basically a faster moving release of Redhat and shares many of the same developers, just as Ubuntu is basically a faster moving release of Debian and also shares many of the same developers. Yeah there are differences, but essentially the goals of Ubuntu and Fedora are the same, as RHEL/COS and Debian goals are the same.

Well technically Debian is faster moving for me since I use sid. =)

 

[kamper]

The other backwards part of that analogy is that fedora and debian are more community based while redhat and ubuntu are a little more corporate. Or at least that's the idea, Ubuntu probably still has more community than fedora...

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: kamper
The other backwards part of that analogy is that fedora and debian are more community based while redhat and ubuntu are a little more corporate. Or at least that's the idea, Ubuntu probably still has more community than fedora...

Technically, Ubuntu is not corporate. Canonical is corporate, and they have purposely kept the two entities seperate. Ubuntu is a non-profit, free and open distributor of a linux distro, while Canonical is a for-profit provider of support for a specific linux distro.

 

[kamper]

I was just sort of comparing them to Debian which is less corporate. I knew it was a bad comparison even while I was making it

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: kamper
I was just sort of comparing them to Debian which is less corporate. I knew it was a bad comparison even while I was making it

Well, I just don't think it's fair to lump it in with RedHat just because I'm a little angered by there business model. They may be abiding by the terms of the gpl by providing the source packages for all their software, but they are violating the "spirit" of the gpl by refusing to privide compiled packages to any but paying customers and threatening people like the CentOS project for compiling their source packages into distributable isos.

I would guess that the seperation between the Ubuntu project and Canonical was meant particularly to avoid this sort of situation.

 

[kamper]

Well that doesn't have anything at all to do with what I was saying, but while we're on the topic, I think Redhat is sticking precisely with the spirit of the gpl by giving away code but not the services. You should still be able to take the code and do whatever you want to it but I don't see there being any obligation for them to provide polished binaries for free. In the long run, it's the code that matters, and they are producing plenty of it. Insofar as I like linux and the gpl, I think Redhat is pretty cool. Well, threatening CentOS doesn't sound very cool, but I don't know anything about that.