![]() ![]() It aims to be a technology testbed for Red Hat’s commercial Linux offering, where new open source software is prototyped, developed, and tested in a communal setting before maturing into Red Hat Enterprise Linux Fedora, a community distribution sponsored by American company Red Hat.Elementary OS, an Ubuntu-based distribution with strong focus on the visual experience without sacrificing performance.Trisquel, an Ubuntu-based distribution based on Linux-libre kernel composed entirely of free software.Supports multiple desktop environments, among others GNOME Shell fork Cinnamon and GNOME 2 fork MATE. Linux Mint, a distribution based on and compatible with Ubuntu.Ubuntu, a desktop and server distribution derived from Debian, maintained by British company Canonical Ltd.Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) uses Debian packages directly (rather than Ubuntu’s).Knoppix, the first Live CD distribution to run completely from removable media without installation to a hard disk, derived from Debian.Debian, a non-commercial distribution and one of the earliest, maintained by a volunteer developer community with a strong commitment to free software principles and democratic project management.Most distributions come ready to use and pre-compiled for a specific instruction set, while some distributions (such as Gentoo) are distributed mostly in source code form and compiled locally during installation. ![]() There are commercially backed distributions, such as Fedora (Red Hat), openSUSE (SUSE) and Ubuntu (Canonical Ltd.), and entirely community-driven distributions, such as Debian, Slackware, Gentoo and Arch Linux. Because of the huge availability of software, distributions have taken a wide variety of forms, including those suitable for use on desktops, servers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones and tablets, as well as minimal environments typically for use in embedded systems. Beside glue components, such as the distribution installers (for example, Debian-Installer and Anaconda) or the package management systems, there are only very few packages that are originally written from the ground up by the maintainers of a Linux distribution.Īlmost six hundred Linux distributions exist, with close to five hundred out of those in active development. The software packages are available online in so-called repositories, which are storage locations usually distributed around the world. The software is usually adapted to the distribution and then packaged into software packages by the distribution’s maintainers. A Linux distribution may also be described as a particular assortment of application and utility software (various GNU tools and libraries, for example), packaged together with the Linux kernel in such a way that its capabilities meet the needs of many users. Usually, Linux distributions optionally include some proprietary software that may not be available in source code form, such as binary blobs required for some device drivers. Most of the included software is free and open-source software made available both as compiled binaries and in source code form, allowing modifications to the original software. ![]() Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices (for example, OpenWrt) and personal computers (for example, Linux Mint) to powerful supercomputers (for example, Rocks Cluster Distribution).Ī typical Linux distribution comprises a Linux kernel, GNU tools and libraries, additional software, documentation, a window system (the most common being the X Window System), a window manager, and a desktop environment. A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection, which is based upon the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. ![]()
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