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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Something that often gets missed is the difference between packaging conventions between distros.
For example, Debian has Apache httpd packaged as "apache2" and has wrapper scripts for enabling sites. Fedora/RHEL has "httpd" and includes conf.d from the main conf. Arch also has "httpd" but doesn't have a conf.d out of the box. Of course you can pretty much configue Apache to your heart's content and have an identical setup between all three distros.
From what I've read, Debian tends to patch and change software to fit more into their overall system whereas Fedora and Arch tend to be more upstream.
RPM and Arch both have group packages and metapackages. Debian just has metapackages AFAIK. Debian also has "recommended" and "suggested" levels of soft dependencies, the former which is enabled by default. RPM has the capability for weak dependencies but AFAIK most RPM distros don't use it. Arch doesn't have soft/weak dependencies AFAIK.
When you install a new system daemon on Debian, it's generally enabled and started by default, whereas RPM-based and Arch don't do that.
When I think of the base of the system I tend to think of some of those more subtle idiosyncrasies that tend to spread around the ecosystems, like Ubuntu and Debian behave quite similarly for instance.