How Does a Linux Distro Focus
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@scottalanmiller said
Linux Mint is a full distro, like CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuse Leap, Ubuntu, etc. It is a distro that focuses on desktop usage rather than server or mixed. But it is a distro. The desktop of Mint is Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, etc.
How does a distro "focus on desktop usage", exactly?
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Same way that Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 do... different sets of tools, different installation assumptions, different settings and tunings, different packages, etc.
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Let's take two extremes. CentOS / RHEL is server focused. Linux Mint is desktop focused.
CentOS puts all research and engineering into the needs of a server. The assumption is GUIless deployments and almost all tools are server ones.
Linux Mint assumes desktop only usage. All of the design and engineering effort goes into making a modern, sleek, smooth desktop experience with all GUI tools. They go so far as to develop two of their own desktops just for Mint (Cinnamon and Mate.) Pretty much all packages maintained for Mint are desktop ones for end users to use, not server products.
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So Mint makes Cinnamon and Mate. Both of which are just desktop GUIs?
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@BRRABill said in How Does a Linux Distro Focus:
So Mint makes Cinnamon and Mate. Both of which are just desktop GUIs?
Correct. Mate for example is a fork of Gnome which is "just" a Desktop Environment running on X11/Xorg or Wayland.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Does a Linux Distro Focus:
Let's take two extremes. CentOS / RHEL is server focused. Linux Mint is desktop focused.
CentOS puts all research and engineering into the needs of a server. The assumption is GUIless deployments and almost all tools are server ones.
Linux Mint assumes desktop only usage. All of the design and engineering effort goes into making a modern, sleek, smooth desktop experience with all GUI tools. They go so far as to develop two of their own desktops just for Mint (Cinnamon and Mate.) Pretty much all packages maintained for Mint are desktop ones for end users to use, not server products.
Good example, would put that in a dedicated thread in your Linux tutorial series. Maybe with a title like "Linux: About distributions and flavors"
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@BRRABill said in How Does a Linux Distro Focus:
So Mint makes Cinnamon and Mate. Both of which are just desktop GUIs?
Correct
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And the Distribution is really about what program/features are included in the base install?
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@BRRABill said in How Does a Linux Distro Focus:
And the Distribution is really about what program/features are included in the base install?
Distro = Operating System (based on Linux)
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All operating systems, including Windows, include the base kernel, shell(s) and support applications and, in some cases, extra stuff like Solitaire and such.
Each Linux distro is the same. It is a full operating system on its own and includes all the same kinds of things.
