Why so many different Linux programs?

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As covered in my other thread, I've finally made Linux Mint, with the help of several kind members here, the only program on my computer. I completely erased Windows. It's gone. As I explained in my other thread, I'm a novice when it comes to computers.

So my question is: Why are there so many versions of Linux programs? For example, why is there a Linux Mint, and a Linux Mate. What's the difference? What is Gnome? Fedora? What can one do that another one can't. I'm sure to a computer literate person it all makes perfect sense. To me, not so much.
 
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The reason there are so many versions is that different distros are for different things or even different layouts. If you check out distrowatch as it shows different versions and what they are for. There is a version called Tomato firmware for Broadcom routers. Some are for tablets, movie production (Ubuntu studio) etc.
 
google can be your friend.
I am fairly tech savvy but a relative linux noob... those are pretty basic questions so I will take a stab at it.
I dont promise 100% correctness
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Mint is a distro.. maintained by the "linux mint" people
The combination of different software programs packaged with the installer that you just installed.

Fedora is a different distribution of linux maintained by different people.

Mate and Gnome are desktop environments (there are quite a few others)

Basically what you see when you are at the desktop.. they all look different, and have different resource requirements.

For example one might run better on a 10 year old laptop, and another might LOOK much better on a new modern computer.

There are also commercial versions of linux with commercial support(mainly for business use) that cost $$$

There are also specialized use variants.
for example one that is ready to go as a router software, or one with Graphic design software all ready to go.
One that is designed for use by children.
another that is for use as HTPC (computer hooked to TV to watch shows etc)

This might be a good link to read it at least partially answers the questions you asked in easier to understand language.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whats-the-...useof-explains/
 
I can't answer your question, but I can tell you that I have used Fedora first mostly because I was using Red Hat at work and it's supposedly the closet thing to it. Using Ubuntu now.
 
Linux is open source, and can be tuned or modified at will.
Consider it this way. Ford builds Mustangs, the driver puts his personal spin on it.
You chose a good one with Mint. I run that on a 10 year old Vaio, extending it's life.
My music server, OTOH, runs Watt. Super small footprint, no unneeded stuff for it's purpose to consume resources.
 
As the Mint shows... there are many different "flavors" of Linux
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These are because Linux is open source, and therefore can be geared to be more adept at certain things. I don't frequently use Linux, but some are geared for legacy equipment so they use very little resources, some are loaded with special code to do specific tasks, emulate old console games, etc. The beautiful thing about Linux is that because it is open source, if you decide to learn coding, you can add or modify whatever you want with the code to make it "yours". The other beautiful thing is that even though it is open source, hackers generally pay it no attention because only a small fraction of users utilize Linux, so there is less incentive to write malware code.

Plus the best part of all - it's generally FREE for plenty of usable distros!
 
A bit of clarification; Linux is just a kernel that controls the resources of the computer; all the other stuff like MATE, GNOME, KDE, are desktop environments (user interfaces) that run on linux. They are available with the same 'free' license that linux uses. You can download the source code and modify as you want

People have done this and share their work with others; that is why there are multiple distributions.

It is completely satisfying seeing a xWindoze user 'struggle' (in a good way) with choice.

Gnome, KDE, Unity, MATE, Enlightenment, Openbox, XFCE = desktop environments
Fedora, Redhat, Ubuntu, Suse, Arch, Gentoo = distributions (collections of software packaged for easy install)

Keep in mind that even tho distributions may tout a particular desktop environment (ubuntu is gnome), others people have come along and modified Ubuntu to use KDE (Kubuntu) or XFCE (Xubuntu)
 
It is anarchy. Without one central authority controlling property, you and anyone else are free to do as you wish. You can make an OS that is suited for use as a server, or desktop. You can make it super boring and stable or use bleeding edge versions of software. You can make it work on modest hardware or use the latest, resource-heavy 3D whiz-bang graphics. You can choose to abide using strictly open-source software or you can include some non-free stuff.

It's FREEDOM. And therefore rather chaotic. Also note that no one is profiting from you. There is also no over-arching authority demanding adherence to anything so disparity between distros can be prohibitive to support.
 
As I've said in the past, most linux users 'look forward' to the next version of their distribution.

Most Windows users try to avoid it
 
Mint is a very user friendly and ready to go version of Ubuntu which is also a very good flavor of Linux.

But there are thousands if not millions of servers in the world running Linux without a graphical desktop environment. Just a blank command line with text only interaction, but still just as capable and functional. In this case, the reason for running a certain flavor of Linux has more to do with enterprise support or the specific needs of the server.

And as others mentioned certain consumer devices like routers and phones and security systems run their own version of Linux.

If you become advanced in Linux, try out Gentoo sometime. Their philosophy is that software should be compiled on your hardware to give you the best performance rather than to just install precompiled binaries.
 
Sierra048, glad you ditched Windows. I am not that computer savvy, so not having dual boot computers has made my life easier.

From personal experience I have found Mint XCFE my go to distribution instead of Mint MATE. I like the way it performs on my Pentium computers.

Linux reminds my of my what my teacher taught repeatably in the monastery.

"Take what you like and leave the rest."

Linux is choice and finding what is the best for your needs.

Windows is take what we give you, whether you like it or not.
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Originally Posted By: Reddy45
But there are thousands if not millions of servers in the world running Linux without a graphical desktop environment.


I'd bet my boots that this very web site runs atop what we call a LAMP stack: Linux, the Apache web server, MySQL database and the PHP programming language.

Linux is also the kernel atop which Android runs; and pretty much every internet-enabled device (thermostat, security camera, fridge) uses the Linux kernel.
 
Originally Posted By: Reddy45
If you become advanced in Linux, try out Gentoo sometime. Their philosophy is that software should be compiled on your hardware to give you the best performance rather than to just install precompiled binaries.


"Advanced in Linux" means you have a neck beard, no girlfriend, and the sun hurts your eyes. It's a slippery slope. :^)
 
There are so many 'flavors' of Linux for (more or less) the same reason there are so many different brands of motor oil, cereal, soda, etc..

.. People want variety, and other people want to provide something that they feel the market is missing. There is demand.
 
Originally Posted By: SirTanon
There are so many 'flavors' of Linux for (more or less) the same reason there are so many different brands of motor oil, cereal, soda, etc..

.. People want variety, and other people want to provide something that they feel the market is missing. There is demand.


To underscore that point, consider that many large institutions, governments, school, etc. develop their own distro and simply make that available publicly (good example: https://www.scientificlinux.org/).

There really is no "market" to respond to as there are only 2 or 3 distros that charge money for support contracts (and they all make at least their source code, if not clones or compiled binaries available for free, too: Red hat has CentOS and Fedora, Canonical distributes Ubuntu freely and SUSE has OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap). A lot of volunteer-based distros make their own distro to their own preferences and could not care less what you think of it!
 
I'm writing this on my very old, very underpowered Acer Aspire 5515, which I think was a renamed E-Machines laptop which Walmart decided to throw on the market about a decade ago. When I ditched Windows for Ubuntu 12.04 (even numbers and .04 means the long term, not cutting edge distro in Ubuntese--the source of your Mintyness), my Win 7 distro was taking over a half hour to fire up. Notice that Ubuntu began to get slow when 14.04 so went through a number of lighter and lighter distros before loading up Peppermint Linux.

Peppermint Linux was started about 2010 by two guys who met in a bar in Ashville, NC and decided to make a browser centric operating system. No office software installed, but I'm free to add some if I want. Sort of half way between ChromeOS (which is also kind of a really stripped down Linux) and what you installed. The graphical environment is sort of a mishmash of Lubuntu, the lightest Ubuntu flavor, and XFCE, the second lightest. I like it, because for this secondary computer, Mint, even the lighter MATE flavor, would be a bit slow-- although it would probably run fine.

All of this stuff is free, and if I decided to update my Peppermint 7 to Peppermint 8 or anything else I wanted to try, I could do it in fifteen minutes. My choice. Everything's free. Everything's fast as I want to make it--there are tons of very light distros out there.

In a month or so, I'll back up all my files and switch my main machine from Linux Mint Mate 17.3 to Ubuntu Mate 18.04. If I don't like it or am tempted by Linux Mint Mate 19 when it's released, I can simply back up all my files and switch back.

See why this is so much more fun than getting stuck with Windows upgrades?
 
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A short time ago there was a post about the downfalls of buying a $200 junk computer. That's Window's thinking, because Windows will outgrow the hardware in a short period of time, leaving you with a doorstop--- or a perfectly good Linux computer which you can keep going for a decade. Same thing with Chromebooks. Got a perfectly usable Lenovo Chromebook that hasn't slowed down a bit since I bought it. Same model number with a letter descriptor was also available in Windows 10 for roughly the same price. Bet a lot of those are gathering dust or sent to Good Will....or hopefully a Lubuntu rebirth.
 
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
A bit of clarification; Linux is just a kernel that controls the resources of the computer; all the other stuff like MATE, GNOME, KDE, are desktop environments (user interfaces) that run on linux. They are available with the same 'free' license that linux uses. You can download the source code and modify as you want

People have done this and share their work with others; that is why there are multiple distributions.

It is completely satisfying seeing a xWindoze user 'struggle' (in a good way) with choice.

Gnome, KDE, Unity, MATE, Enlightenment, Openbox, XFCE = desktop environments
Fedora, Redhat, Ubuntu, Suse, Arch, Gentoo = distributions (collections of software packaged for easy install)

Keep in mind that even tho distributions may tout a particular desktop environment (ubuntu is gnome), others people have come along and modified Ubuntu to use KDE (Kubuntu) or XFCE (Xubuntu)


This sums it up extremely well!
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You can also do LFS - Linux From Scratch, which is, as the name implies, build your own Linux distro. You download the kernel, install it, then download all the libraries you need...etc and you build your own system from source tarballs. It's an extremely drawn out and complicated affair and really no better than doing Gentoo, which somewhat automates that process, but it IS fun, if you like that kind of thing
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I was a Gentoo user for many, MANY years, after being a Slackware user for many years before that, with some Redhat tossed in there as well, before it became Fedora
 
Great information. So if I have this right, all of the numerous programs ("distros") basically do the same thing but just do it a different way, and different visually?

Quoting csandste, "Mint, even the lighter MATE flavor". I've read this statement in several articles when Google searching Linux Mint. What do they mean by a "lighter version"? Does this mean that Mate can't do as many things as Mint can? I'm getting the hang of Mint and feel confident that it will do everything I could do with Windows. Just for curiosity's sake, would Mate have been a better choice? Not that I'm a speed freak but would Mate be faster than Mint? These maybe corny questions but I'm just trying to get and understanding of this new environment I've entered into.
 
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