Linux OS Families

All Linux distributions rely on certain types of utilities for basic work, things like package managers and service managers. As distributions fork from other distributions a lineage is formed. Therefore we can rely, to some extent, on families of distributions typically using the same basic utilities as their parent. Outlined below is a non-comprehensive list of distributions and their decedents

Red Hat Family

The popular enterprise flavor of Linux, Red Hat is developed by Red Hat, Inc. It is probably the distribution with the most built in and compatible tools for managed networks. Uses the YUM and DNF package managers.

graph TD;
	B(Fedora) --> C(CentOS Stream)
	C --> A[Red Hat Enterprise Linux]
	A --> D(Rocky Linux)
	A --> E(AlmaLinux)
	A --> F(Oracle Linux)
	A --> G(ClearOS)
	click A "https://www.redhat.com"
	click B "https://getfedora.org"
	click C "https://www.centos.org"
	click D "https://rockylinux.org"
	click E "https://almalinux.org"
	click F "https://www.oracle.com/linux"
	click G "https://www.clearos.com"

Debian Family

Debian is actually less popular than its most popular descendant, Ubuntu. Uses the APT package manager.

graph TD;
	A[Debian] --> B(Ubuntu)
	A --> C(Kali Linux)
	A --> D(Linux Mint)
	A --> E(PureOS)
	click A "https://www.debian.org"
	click B "https://ubuntu.com"
	click C "https://www.kali.org"
	click D "https://linuxmint.com"
	click E "https://pureos.net"

Alpine Family

The Alpine distribution is most often used as a base for light weight container images, due to it’s minimal size and the performance benefits of its design to run entirely in RAM. Uses the apk package manager.

graph TD;
	A[Alpine Linux]
	click A "https://alpinelinux.org"

Arch Family

Created with the objective of being a minimal Linux distribution, Arch was loosely based on another minimal Linux distro called CRUX. Arch uses the pacman package manager.

graph TD;
	A[Arch Linux] --> B(Manjaro)
	A --> C(EndeavourOS)
	A --> D(Garuda Linux)
	A --> E(SteamOS)
	click A "https://archlinux.org"

Suse Family

Suse is one of the oldest Linux distributions still in active development, and is geared towards an enterprise environment. This was the OS I built my first hypervisor on back in 2013, using its built-in virtualization environment. Uses the YaST standard package management system.

graph TD;
	A[SUSE Linux Enterprise Server]
	click A "https://www.suse.com"

Slackware Family

A special mention to Slackware, another very old Linux distribution, and the first Linux OS that I installed. Extremely minimal and package stable, this distro aims to be very trimmed down. Available today with a desktop manager preinstalled it used to be command-line only. It was a fork of Softlanding Linux, back around the dawn of Linux.

graph TD;
	B(Softlanding Linux System) --> A[Slackware Linux]
	click A "http://www.slackware.com"

Read more about the history of Linux, which began with Unix, in this article from The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/27/opinion_column/