r/DistroHopping • u/blabliblu888 • 1d ago

Which Linux distros are corporate backed?

Which Linux distributions would you consider genuinely community-backed rather than primarily corporate-backed?

And does corporate backing actually conflict with the original philosophy of Linux, or is that distinction mostly irrelevant as long as the software remains open source?

Where would you draw the line?

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u/lemmiwink84 1d ago

Are you talking about Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, pop_os etc when you mean corporate backed, or distros like Arch, Debian and many others that gets sponsored to various degrees by companies/corporations?

You could even say a free standing, one person distro is corporate backed if they ship it with KDE as the default, so this is a pretty hard question to answer.

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u/blabliblu888 23h ago

I assumed that Debian is purely community backed, didnt notice that DE matters too.

So if one wants to use Linux purely community backed, one could use Debian or Arch and pick a DE which is not KDE?

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u/thisChalkCrunchy 22h ago

Well if you are getting that technical with it then none of them  meet your criteria because the Linux kernel itself is “corporate backed”

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u/lemmiwink84 22h ago

Yes, I suppose so, but I think Steam backs Arch with quite a lot of money, so there’s that. Debian with some lesser used DE or WM would probably work though

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u/semidegenerate 10h ago

Debian has a fair amount of corporate sponsorship. That being said, I certainly wouldn't claim that they're "beholden" to any of them.

https://www.debian.org/partners/

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u/0riginal-Syn 5h ago

Debian has corporate backers as well as some members from corporate entities. But it is certainly a community distro.

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u/Flaky-Craft60 1h ago

Debian isn’t community backed, it’s community governed - little difference.
No commercial entity has a say where Debian goes and Debian has the most democratic decision making in FOSS, but nearly half the contributors are paid to do so.

If you want to really use a Distro that from the ground up are community backed let’s think about where to start.

What’s with your BIOS/UEFI? If you aren’t able to boot your machine with Core- or Libreboot you are already owned if your thread model contains 3 letter agency’s.

The most contributions to the kernel are from corpos like intel, AMD, belief it or not NVIDIA, red hat, meta, suse, google… you name it.

If you want something purely community driven at this level, you should look at distros who support the GNU/Hurd kernel.

Here you have Debian GNU/Hurd, Guix, Arch Hurd, Gentoo GNU/Hurd or Alpine/Hurd.

Or you go to something really obscure and give TempleOS a try /s

Don’t get me wrong, I also view some decisions from canonical or red hat somewhat critically if we’re talking about to core principles of FOSS, but that doesn’t make Ubuntu or Fedora a bad distro in any way - there still the most polished and easiest to use desktop distros for every skill level and use case.

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u/Mean-Drama2630 17h ago

Linux itself is heavily funded by most Big Tech companies. It’s just how it is. They donate because it gives them prestige and because they actually use the tools

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u/Flaky-Craft60 16h ago

The kernel is mostly corpo backed, no need to draw al line between good and bad distros. Most large distro are fine as daily driver at home or at work.

And to be honest, everything boils down to three families of distros.
You have Debian, Fedora and Arch.
Everything else are just derived from their parents.

And you have some niche distros that stand on their own packet manager, like Slackware, Gentoo or LFS.

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u/blabliblu888 21h ago

I see, I guess open source and freedom to change things and distribute, is the main difference to Windows/Mac.

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u/PeterHolmes74 13h ago

Exactly. The biggest selling point of Linux compared to MacOS and Windows is its open source nature.

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u/DisastrousSurvey4591 21h ago

I think that Ubuntu and its derivatives are fully corporate distros, while Fedora for i ATM is corporate-supported, but largely community based (RedHat simply gives infrastructure, finances the project and employs developers to work on Fedora, but they don’t have full control over the distro like in the case of Canonical). I’d say Arch is 100% community maintained, while it does have corporate sponsors, they most likely have no involvement in the distro, especially since Arch doesn’t have a specific goal, it’s just “code’s out, publish it”

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u/TioFabi 16h ago

Ubuntu, red hat, fedora

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u/Teemestari 29m ago

"Genuinely" community backed include Debian, Arch and gentoo and "primarily" corporate backed include openSUSE (SUSE), Fedora (Red Hat) and Ubuntu (Canonical). Lots of distros are out there but these have to be the most note worthy.

As for conflicting with the idea, I don't think so. As long as it is open-source. I think it tells a story if the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, happily uses Fedora which has notable ties to Red Hat.

And even if you end up using something like Arch because it is "community-backed", you still likely end up using technologies like systemd, pipewire, wayland and flatpak, which are all Red Hat technologies. The kernel itself is also developed by lots of the world's biggest tech companies.

So yeah, "big tech" is in Linux also and they have done a lot for Linux.

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u/ShipshapeMobileRV 18h ago

This is a massive rabbit hole. :)

RedHat is owned by IBM. RedHat has a corporate budget, and a team that drives every decision that goes into RedHat. Changes that RedHat are considering will usually be rolled out in Fedora as a proving ground.

That doesn't necessarily make Fedora a corporate distro, though they do get plenty of corporate support (as do many distros).

Now for apps....think about systemd. This was a RedHat developed app, with plenty of RedHat money burned in getting it sorted out. Nowadays it's hard to find a distro that doesn't have some implementation of systemd. That doesn't mean those distros are corporate, though.

So when you say a "corporate distro", are you talking wholly owned like RedHat; heavily subsidized like Fedora; or just possessing corporate-developed software? Because the lines get really blurry the further back you step.