Hi all - I am learning about Linux and want to see if my understanding is correct on this - the list of major parts of any distro:

  1. the Linux Kernel
  2. GRUB or another bootloader
  3. one or more file systems (gotta work with files somehow, right?)
  4. one or more Shells (the terminal - bash, zsh, etc…)
  5. a Desktop Environment (the GUI, if included, like KDE or Gnome - does this include X11 or Wayland or are those separate from the DE?)
  6. a bunch of Default applications and daemons (is this where systemd fits int? I know about the GNU tools, SAMBA, CUPS, etc…)
  7. a Package Manager (apt, pacman, etc…)

Am I forgetting anything at this 50,000 foot level? I know there are lots of other things we can add, but what are the most important things that ALL Linux distributions include?

Thanks!

  • @just_another_person
    10•1 year ago

    The major parts of any distro are just bootloader, kernel, init, shell, and package system. The filesystem isn’t “part” of the distro, it’s just an abstraction layer to work with data on the drive, and should be considered independent of the packaged distribution itself.

    With the above, you can run the basics of Linux on a device. The DE is not needed, and included packages and libraries are at the discretion of the maintainers. The included choices of all the above is the only thing that differentiates each distro.

    If it helps in your understanding at all, back in the day, in order to install something like Slackware, you had to build each layer of these things manually like so: format and partition disk from disk in DOS, copy bootloader to newly partitioned HDD, boot to single user mode, compile kernel, add entries to bootloader, reboot from disk to Linux kernel, open TTY, set user and shell, reboot again, compile DE, set init level and basic services, reboot to DE, and then you had a Desktop.