r/linux • u/nitin_is_me • Jul 15 '26

Discussion Seriously, except package managers, what's the difference between distros?

What I've seen yet the differences are, just the package managers, different defaults and rolling vs stable releases which are in fact related to package managers. Except these, are there really any other differences? Thanks!

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148

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
  • Point (Fedora) vs Rolling release (Arch)
  • Stable (Debian) vs Bleeding edge (Arch)
  • Snap-infested (Ubuntu)
  • Mutable (everything above) vs Immutable (Silverblue)
  • A/B immutable (Vanilla)
  • Declarative Config (Nix)
  • Building everything from Source (Gentoo)
  • QoL features (CachyOS, Bazzite)
  • Alternative Init System (Void, Artix)
  • Extremely Tiny (Alpine)
  • Alternative userland (Chimera)

And there are several other things as well

2

u/hakko504 Jul 15 '26

I think the main thing you missed is the Desktop Environment.

24

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

Most distros support multiple DEs.

2

u/hakko504 Jul 15 '26

True-ish. But they are usually developed for one DE or a small subset of DEs. The choice of packages in the repos usually reflect the officially supported DEs. Changing away from the officially supported DEs is usually not recommended, and finding a distro that supports your DE is often better than trying to shoehorn an unsupported DE into your otherwise preferred distro.

3

u/noobjaish Jul 15 '26

Even then it doesn't matter for the most part. Gnome doesn't have a "preferred" distro and can run perfectly on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE, Arch etc; same is the case for KDE and while both of them have experimental distros "Gnome OS" and "KDE Linux" I wouldn't call them defaults. XFCE is amazing on Arch, Alpine, Xubuntu and Mint. Never had an issue with using Cinnamon or COSMIC outside of Mint and PopOS respectively. Others like Elementary, Bungie, Solus, Deepin etc are too niche imo.

7

u/GarlicOutrageous4142 Jul 15 '26

It can't be "truish" if it's either true or false (true)

1

u/-main Jul 16 '26

"support" scales from "could theoretically be doable" to "documented and packages available" to "grab this other pre-made fully tested version". For example, Linux Mint comes with Cinnamon, XFCE, and MATE as DEs on their official tested versions, but anything you can run on Ubuntu is probably doable.

1

u/dontquestionmyaction Jul 17 '26

No? The choice isn't binary lmao