Hey there,
this is something that' has been bothering me for a while so I just decided to finally ask about it.
I've been a Windows guy pretty much all my life, but I have always been somewhat interested in Linux. The problem is that I know .. well, not a lot about Linux. I know my way around Windows pretty well by now and as Logan once said I just wanna get shit done, and that's what I do on Windows since I know it the best.
Now for the actual question, there are what it feels like around a billion Linux distributions out there and while I know it's a the Linux kernel I never really got the hang of it what the differences really are.
Now I know each distro comes with different pre-installed programs, GNOME vs. Xfce vs. Cinnamon vs. Unity vs. whatever, OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice, Chromium vs. Firefox, whatever Messenger vs. whatever other Messenger etc. But I could install all of them on my own (like I need to do on Windows anyway, or had to for the longest time) if I had too much time on my hand, right?
So are those pre-installed programs all there is to it? Or are there changers that go deeper into the system/kernel? I know there are different packages for a lot of distros, but more and more distros share the same packages now anyway, right?
For example Logan said he is using Ubuntu, but didn't actually want to use Unity, so he installed GNOME. But what's the point of Ubuntu then, couldn't he have gone with a different distro with GNOME preinstalled? It is still the same Kernel right? And I doubt he was too lazy to install the most basic programs himself.
So yeah, this has been bothering me for quite a while.
Would be nice to know what's up with that already :)
PS: I don't want to start a discussion about "what is the best Distro" since there will be a million different answers and all are probably correct in their own regard...