Linux and Linux Distributions

Usually people understand Linux to be an entire package of developer tools, editors, GUIs, networking tools, and so forth. More formally, such packages are called distributions. You may have heard of the Linux distributions named Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, and Caldera, which have received a great deal of press and have been purchased for thousands of installations. Noncommercial distributions of Linux such as Debian are less well known outside certain technical circles, and while they have many happy users, they haven’t reached the same scale of popularity as the commercial distributions.

What’s interesting about all Linux distributions is that almost all of the tools with which they ship were not written by the companies themselves. Rather, other people have licensed their programs, allowing their redistribution with source code. By and large, these tools are also available on other variants of UNIX, and some of them are becoming available under Windows as well. The makers of the distribution simply bundle them up into one convenient package that’s easy to install. (Some distribution makers also develop value-added tools that make their distribution easier to administer or compatible with more hardware, but the software that they ship is generally written by others.)

So if you consider a distribution to be everything you need for Linux, what then is Linux exactly? Linux itself is the core of the operating system: the kernel. The kernel is the program acting as Chief of Operations. It is responsible for such tasks as handling requests for memory, accessing disks, and managing network connections. The complete list of kernel activities could easily be a module in itself, and in fact, several books documenting the kernel’s internal functions have been written.

The kernel is known as a nontrivial program. It is also what puts the Linux into all those Linux distributions. All distributions use the exact same kernel, and thus the fundamental behavior of all Linux distributions is the same.

What separates one distribution from the next is the value-added tools that come with each one. For example, Red Hat includes a very useful tool called redhat-config-xfree86 that makes configuring the graphical interface a very straightforward task. Asking “Which distribution is better?” is much like asking “Which is better, Coke or Pepsi?” Almost all colas have the same basic ingredients—carbonated water, caffeine, and high-fructose corn syrup—thereby giving the similar effect of quenching thirst and bringing on a small caffeine-and-sugar buzz. In the end, it’s a question of personal preference.