this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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There are other costs, too. Someone has to spend a LOT of time maintaining their repos: testing and reviewing each package, responding to bugs caused by each packaging format's choice of dependencies, and doing this for multiple branches of supported distro version! Thats a lot of man hours that could still be used for app distribution, but combined could help make even more robust and secure applications than before.
And, if we're honest, except for a few outliers like Nix, Gentoo, and a few others, there's little functional difference to each package format, which simply came to exist to fill the same need before Linux was big enough to establish a "standard".
Aaaanyway
I do think we could have package formats leveraging torrenting more though. It could make updates a bit harder to distribute quickly in theory but nothing fundamentally out of the realm of possibilities. Many distros even use torrents as their primary form of ISO distribution.