Open source software

The idea of free and open source software is inherently connected with Linux and there exist a lot of open source software written to be run on Linux systems. As the name suggests the source code of such software is available. However to actually use such a software it has to be compiled and installed. Often a software is not self contained but depends on many other softwares such as libraries. So to actually use a particular software all its dependencies (usually in particular versions) have to be installed as well. So while in principle available, it might be very cumbersome to actually install such a software successfully. To some extend all these problems are solved by Linux distributions.

Linux distributions

A Linux distribution is a set of software which makes a complete usable system. It is a well chosen and maintained choice of the many alternatives in the open source landscape. They all start to build upon a Linux kernel and the community or company behind a distribution maintains many applications which are chosen, installed and configured in a compatible way. Usually the distributions have a packaging system to install further software. These packages are already customized to the distributions needs and are available for download from so called repositories (very much like an app store). This makes it easy for users to use and extend their systems. More over the distribution maintain updates and security fixes.

Famous examples are: Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Suse or Arch.