this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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As you see, there are 1000 different opinions, heh.
My take is it’s about user patterns.
Every distro has different maintenance expectations, different tolerance for bugs and keeping stuff up to date and working. That’s the flavor difference: it’s all the same packages just served to you a different way.
As an example, Arch Linux has an expectation for the user to pay attention to maintenance. Read their excellent wiki. Update frequently, and pay attention to errors and warnings when you do. There is one version of Python, so update your stuff to work with out. The “reward” for being so hands on is stuff getting automatically fixed quickly.
CachyOS is just a preconfigured version of this, with presets and experimental features tailored for gaming. But it’s largely not divergent from the underlying Arch system: you could switch from an arch install to CachyOS packages with zero fuss.
Contrast with Ubuntu. It is meant to be more “hands off” with staged and delayed updates. There are many versions of Python present in the same system, so old stuff works without changes. But the consequence is you may have to live with certain problems you run into, or risk breaking your system trying to fix them.
Fedora is somewhere in between, with the addition of an emphasis on free software. And a consequence of that is, for instance, no first party support for Nvidia. Bazzite builds on top of that by expensively modifying it into a stable platform for gaming, but you’re also dependent on a relatively small group of maintainers.
So I guess one question is how involved with your computer do you want to be?