Distributions
A distribution is a Operating System created with the Linux kernel and a selection of application software maintained by a community or a company.
A graph of the many dist. variants and its origins can be seen here:
Linux Distributions Timeline (wikimedia.org)
There are two main families of distributions:
| Debian variants | Red Hat variants |
|---|---|
| Software is managed by .deb packages and dpkg, apt, ... | Software is managed by .rpm files and rpm, yum, dnf, ... |
| Ubuntu, Kali, Mint, MX Link, etc. | Fedora, CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc. |
| Honorable mentions: Suse, Arch, Manjaro, ... |
But why exists so many distributions? Each one is made and optimized for a specific purpose and includes only the desired software packages. So it's important to know how to choose the right distribution.