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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I would say, that from most important to least important components are:
what do u mean by important? like 'essential to the system', or 'important to consider when choosing a distro', or what?
I mean "something out of ordinary about it affects your experience with this distro the most".
i see
Wouldn't the c library be more important than the init system?
You are probably right. It is probably even more important than kernel.
Not really.
I'm surprised you put shell so high when it tends to be less impactful in my experience. Like I care a lot more if my distro is using GNOME instead of KDE a lot more than if it's using bash instead of zsh. Plus it's easy to install and use a different shell
It is easy to install another shell indeed, but it is quite difficult to configure it. While installation of DE is usually done with just one command. And you can use linux without DE, but not without shell. Many distributions even do not install DE by default at all.
Okay but unless you are spending a lot of time in the command line, one (POSIX compliant) shell is as good as another. Like yes every distro needs a shell, but I don't much care which shell it is.
One thing I don't know: if C is a compiled language already, what exactly does the C library do?
it is a dynamically linked library, meaning its not in the compiled binary, but its assumed to already be on the system. as opposed to a statically linked binary. this lowers the file size of the binaries, because most will use the standard library.
edit: this may not be 100% correct, but its the general idea
Most C binaries usually do not contain everything needed for their execution. It would make them too platform-specific. What most c programs do is that they use standard c library from platform for low-level things and communication with the system like memory allocation or stdin/stdout things, for example.
The logo.
You pretty much got it, except for the fifth point.
A desktop environment ("DE") is separate from the compositor (X11 or Wayland), but can't exist without it.
At the end of the day, a DE is really just a "window manager" with a bunch of bundled applications, like taskbars/panels, a file manager, an app menu, etc. It's as minimal or as feature rich as you want it to be.
The window manager dictates what to draw on the screen and where, but the compositor is what actually does the work. One is kind of useless without the other.
Hopefully that makes sense, I'm not a rocket surgeon.
Systemd has gone way and beyond what was supposed to be a replacement for init.rc.
Most important thing... not ALL Linux distros include systemd as the default init system. That's the beauty of Linux (and POSIX in general), you can choose.
The list is generally correct but these days, systemd has made quite an impact also. If a distribution uses systemd, it has one software to handle everything from booting (instead of grub), handling start and status of all system services etc. Its probably the largest change to the Linux ecosystem in a long time.
X11 and Wayland are desktop protocols, so things like desktop environments and window managers depends on one or them to be installed. Without them, you don't get any graphics except for the console. It's all built on top of one of those.
It's easier to think about Linux on the context of what an individual application needs to run. Pretty much everything you do will have these components.
That's really it. If something isn't working, it's pretty much exclusively going to fall into one of those categories. What that means is going to vary significantly from app to app but understanding this is how literally everything works makes the troubleshooting process a lot easier.
A biggie you miss is the toolchain: the compiler/binutils/linux-headers/libc/libstdc++ combination. The libc and usually libstdc++ are key components of any install. The other parts usually don't make it to non-dev-desktops, but the distro couldn't be made without them, so they're virtually always available as packages.
Only exception is if the entire distro is cross-compiled or it's made exclusively for containers, but those kinds of special distros break every rule imaginable anyway. Some might not even ship a bootloader or a Linux kernel by themselves.
The "BTW"
Elitism
Package manager needs to be higher since Linux distros are software distribution projects mainly.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about how the OS works. If you're very ambitious, you could try to install Arch in a virtual machine environment: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
Installing Arch for the first time taught me a lot about how my system works, since you have to choose all the parts that make up your system yourself.