Technical variations of

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available. These tables compare notable distribution's latest stable release on wide-ranging objective criteria. It does not cover each operating system's subjective merits, branches marked as unstable or beta, nor compare Linux distributions with other operating systems.

General

The table below shows general information about the distributions: founder or producer, maintainer, release date, the latest version, etc. Linux distributions endorsed by the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

are marked 100% Free under the System distribution commitment column.

Technical

The table below shows the default file system, but many Linux distributions support some or all of

ext2 ext2, or second extended file system, is a file system for the Linux kernel (operating system), kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed ...

ext3 ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaling file system, journaled file system that is commonly used with the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions but generally has been supplanted by ...

ext4 ext4 (fourth extended filesystem) is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3. ext4 was initially a series of backward-compatible extensions to ext3, many of them originally developed by Cluster File Systems for ...

Btrfs Btrfs (pronounced as "better F S", "butter F S", "b-tree F S", or "B.T.R.F.S.") is a computer storage format that combines a file system based on the copy-on-write (COW) principle with a logical volume manager (distinct from Linux's LVM), d ...

ReiserFS ReiserFS is a general-purpose, journaling file system initially designed and implemented by a team at Namesys led by Hans Reiser and licensed under GPLv2. Introduced in version 2.4.1 of the Linux kernel, it was the first journaling file syst ...

, Reiser4, JFS,

XFS XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993. It was the default file system in SGI's IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3. XFS was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001; a ...

, GFS2, OCFS2, and NILFS. It is possible to install Linux onto most of these file systems. The ext file systems, namely ext2, ext3, and ext4 are based on the original Linux file system. File systems have been developed by companies to meet their specific needs, by hobbyists, or adapted from

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

, Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems. Linux has full support for XFS and JFS,

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

(the DOS file system), and

HFS HFS may refer to: Businesses and organisations * Croatian Film Association () * Hellenic Fire Service, Greece * Hospitality Franchise Systems, US Computing * Hierarchical file system, a system for organizing directories and files * Hierarchica ...

, the main file system for the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

. Support for Microsoft

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

NTFS NT File System (NTFS) (commonly called ''New Technology File System'') is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. It was developed to overcome scalability, security and other limitations with File Allocation Tabl ...

file system has been developed and is now comparable with other native Unix file systems. CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs' ISO 9660 and

Universal Disk Format Universal Disk Format (UDF) is an open, vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660. Due to its desig ...

(UDF) are supported. Unlike other operating systems, Linux and Unix allow any file system regardless of the medium it is stored on, whether that medium is a magnetic disk, an optical disk (CD, DVD, etc.), a USB flash memory key, or even contained within a file located on another file system. Similarly, many C compilers (mainly

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a collection of compilers from the GNU Project that support various programming languages, Computer architecture, hardware architectures, and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes ...

(GCC)), init systems (mainly sysvinit), desktop environments and window managers are widely supported.

Instruction set architecture support

Linux kernel portability to

instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...

s other than

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

, was an early feature added to the kernel.

Package management and installation

Information on features in the distributions. Package numbers are only approximate. Some distributions like Debian tend to separate tools into different packages – usually stable release, development release, documentation and debug. Also counting the source package number varies. For debian and rpm based entries it is just the base to produce binary packages, so the total number of packages is the number of binary packages. For Arch based entries, it is additional.

Live media

Security features

Apple Silicon Support

Notes

References

External links

Linux free distros
(

)
Repository tracking

The LWN.net Linux Distribution List
– Categorized list with information about each entry.
Distrowatch
– Announcements, information, links and popularity ranking for many Linux distributions.
Linux Distros
– Information and ISO files for many oldest Linux distributions. {{FOSS

Linux distributions A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel (operating system), kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply distribution (marketing), product distribution pe ...