this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
607 points (97.6% liked)

Linux

48314 readers
715 users here now

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MajinBlayze@hexbear.net 3 points 5 months ago

It's not quite that simple.

Each package can choose one from a handful of runtimes to use, each of which include common dependencies (like gnome or qt libraries), and if multiple flatpaks use the same runtime, that runtime is only downloaded once.

It is less space efficient than your typical package manager, but brings other benefits like sandboxing.