What are Distro Forks, Flavors & Clones? Explaining Confusing Linux Terms 

Please don't because I can almost garauntee he'll get it wrong.

Hello there, thank you so much for watching and commenting. C. I don’t use those terms because patent and child suggests a relationship between the projects but that’s not always the case. However it is a good way to break it down. Maybe I should have used that to explain. D. In my opinion, there aren’t 8 major families. For example, Gentoo and Slackware are not used widely enough to be considered a major family. Sure, they are families but they aren’t major because there are very few derivatives of both and they require extensive experience to use lowering them to a minor family. D.Part2. Ubuntu and Debian are the same family. Yes there are separate derivatives for Ubuntu but it’s still the same family. Also “not based on the others” is not a family. These are independent distros but they aren’t a family because they aren’t based on anything. D.Part3. If major families were to be listed in my opinion it would be Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE (sorted alphabetically) and that’s it. The rest are still families but they aren’t major families. E.Part1. This is incorrect. The parts used is a wide variety of things and cannot be broken down to specifics because every derivative retains different things. E.Part2. For example Linux Mint and elementary OS are both based on Ubuntu but neither of them use the Distribution Upgrade that Ubuntu has. There are endless amounts of differences between derivatives and base distros so this simply can not be defined at all. E.Part3. PCLinuxOS is another good example, they forked from Mandriva so they use RPM but instead of using an RPM package manager like DNF, they use APT which wasn’t originally made for RPM. So even the package manager isn’t necessarily going to stick around either. E.3.B. Not all derivatives will use a repository from the parent distro. For example, Linux Mint and Trisquel are both based on Ubuntu. Linux Mint directly pulls from Ubuntu and even users are directly using Ubuntu repos. However, Trisquel users only pull directly from Trisquel and never Ubuntu. E.3.C. This is not a requirement either, there are some remixes that dont have their own repo and just offer a different default configuration. F. yes those relationships between distros are correct but like I said earlier in the comment Debian > Ubuntu > Linux Mint is all one family G. I do not believe so. I think there are only 4 major families and I addressed 3 of them in this video. However, I only briefly addressed it because going into detail on this topic is just too much for beginners. I think the concept is enough for beginners and most people dont need more than that. I also think it is just too complicated for beginners to be a helpful topic beyond what I addressed in the video. In order to cover this topic you have to go very far in depth on the subject otherwise the video will have to make a lot of generalizations that are often incorrect due to exceptions. H. I do not. I think it will help them to know what family the distro they use is in. If they use Linux Mint it would be helpful to know that they are in the Ubuntu/Debian family and that could help them solve issues but I see no value to the average user for them to know the relationship between Arch and Endeavour if they are using the Ubuntu/Debian family. I. I think it is very robust and nicely organized. :D When I first saw your comment and how long it was, I considered not responding because its a lot but with the organizational style it makes it very simple to reply to a specific section. I like that. J. I will continue doing what I do, thanks so much for your kind words.

Hoping it's Linux Mint Debian Edition....

Mint is good. Stay away from Arch 😈

Thanks for the comment, much appreciated. In my opinion, saying everything is a fork adds confusion to the term because a fork is a specific term to describe a full diversion. Everything else can be debated I suppose but I think this video is valuable in that it breaks down the differences that exist and I do suggest eliminating redundant terms as well. I think saying everything is a fork is kind of giving too much credit to the projects that are not doing much. If someone takes a distro and makes something where they simply change a theme and the name and nothing else then I wouldnt call that a fork because it would diminish the term for projects that do something significant.

@@michael_tunnell your term for fork is wrong. Most of the time the fork stays close to upstream, and differs only slightly. When upstream updates - the fork merges their changes with the update (If necessary). What you meant is probably the hard fork - when you fork a project, dissociate from it, and go in your own direction. You also use forks for OSS development - fork a project, implement something, and merge it back.

I respectfully disagree with your assessment. I don’t know what you based the statement that forks stay close to upstream on but it’s not the case. Fork is the duplicating of a project regardless of what kind of project it is. A hard fork is complete trajectory change without resyncing and a soft fork has resyncing. However this is always upstream to downstream and is not relevant to whether or not the downstream contributes back upstream. If someone makes a fork on GitHub they are simply making a duplicate. If they never even touch a single line of code, it’s still a fork. Merging anything back is irrelevant to whether or not a project is a fork. Essentially, fork is just another term for Duplicate. Clones are also forks but a distinct type of fork which is why they are classified differently.

@@michael_tunnell this contradicts your previous comment, where you said that fork means a so-called full diversion. Also, you say more-or-less what I said, and I find this weird - just as weird, as the formal speech we use 😅

Furthermore I would like to submit additional evidence to the matter at hand with video documentation which has been reviewed and is playable above . . . translation = oh yea my bad, I said something weird in my earlier comment but at least the video had it right LOL

Hey there, glad I could help with some info but I’m curious, why wouldn’t you use it as your main PC?

This video is about explaining the concepts behind distribution relationships, it’s not about any distros in particular

@@michael_tunnell ah fair point, i just found the difference in the distros chosen to explain distro relationship fun to see xd

Oh that's an interesting question, I would personally classify them as Soft Forks, almost Flavors but not. It is a Soft Fork because it gets updates from Arch. It is almost a Flavor but not exactly. Arch Linux ARM was given permission to use the Arch Linux name like a Flavor would but it is a completely separate project and Arch Linux does not promote the ARM project as something to download. They recognize it and allow it to use the name but thats where it ends so I would say it is close to being a Flavor but is really a Soft Fork. As for the Arch 32, I dont know much about how that one works but I suspect similar situation as ALARM

The overall history of this is complicated but basically yes, Fedora was a spin-off of Red Hat because originally Red Hat was a single workstation product. They switched to enterprise and turned the desktop side into Fedora. Later they rebased RHEL on top of Fedora because Fedora moves faster and can innovate easier.

This is true and a good note. I felt I said that but maybe I just implied that with the Soft Fork section. Thanks for commenting

I like your pfp

I can’t mention every distribution of Linux, I don’t want to make a 2 hour video on this 😆

@@michael_tunnell 🤣

I gave a few examples in the video like Debian and Ubuntu or Fedora and Red Hat

Most distros are forks, yea

This is a problem and by the time I’m done with this series I hope to have broken it down for as many people as possible. This is the first installment of my series Linux Explained

are you kidding? the guy has been using Linux for longer than Arch has existed. He even used to contribute to Arch and other Arch based distros.

Why doesn't he talk about it? Did they break up badly?@@abrandguru7472 ☺

@@user-mm6ec8bw6q Because Arch is a learning tool aimed at advanced users rather than one of the base distros.

@@user-mm6ec8bw6q This video started with the sentence "are you new to Linux?", so he is talking to beginners and thus Arch Linux is not relevant in this video because Arch is not for beginners. Besides, he talked about Arch in the previous video right before this one.

Hmm, I appreciate wanting to keep the image pristine 😎 but why do you think I’d get it wrong? I’m curious

I think Debian is a great distribution for being a platform for other distros but it lacks in a lot of ways when it comes to being a daily driver. It even lacks in the security area by default so I would recommend derivatives of Debian over Debian itself. MX Linux or Lubuntu are good options for really lightweight Debian based distros

@@michael_tunnell I'm doing a lot of VMs, don't want 6, 7, 8G installation each. Somehow all of them refused to offer a custom option, in the name of ease of use or something. Ubuntu has a barebone version in the next major release? Or someone else, can't remember.

​@@michael_tunnellDebian is great as a daily driver if you know how to navigate it.

Ubuntu can be installed with the server edition or the network ISO to get a barebones setup but those won’t have a desktop included.

“If you know how to navigate it” you could say this about anything. If someone knows how to use something then it is easy to use it but that doesn’t make that thing easy to use. Arch users who know how to navigate it can use it as a daily driver but of course that doesn’t mean it should be used as a daily driver. Same thing applies to Debian and a lot of other distros.