What are the major components of any Linux distribution?

perishthethought@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 119 points –

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!

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I would say, that from most important to least important components are:

  1. kernel
  2. init system (systemd, openrc, runit...)
  3. C library (glibc, musl)
  4. filesystem
  5. coreutils
  6. shell
  7. bootloader
  8. package manager
  9. x11/Wayland (if any)
  10. sound system (if any)
  11. WM (if any)
  12. DE (if any)

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'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.

Wouldn't the c library be more important than the init system?

You are probably right. It is probably even more important than kernel.

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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.

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