Distro Zoo – Original vs. Derivative Distros

The saying derived from the Gospel of Matthew, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" [1], could easily be applied to distro development. Very few distros are designed to be monolithic in the traditional sense of the word, except those created for novelty purposes (Justin Bieber Linux comes to mind). Instead, the Linux development process typically focuses on fixing past bugs, introducing requested features, and improving functionality rather than trying to anticipate future troubles.

Arguably, this process goes much more smoothly when the development team uses a well-established distro like Debian as its base. This is the case for Lilidog and ParrotOS, which we're covering this month. Nevertheless, KaOS Linux, while drawing inspiration from Arch, has been developed from scratch. The site FAQ explains that if an existing OS already fulfilled everyone's needs they would all be using it, so, in short, no other distribution offers what those behind KaOS want to do.

NuTyX is using Linux From Scratch (LFS), which isn't a distro per se, but a type of Linux installation (and the title of a very engaging book) designed to guide developers to building their own OS from source. You can question the extra levels of complexity this introduces, but you can't deny the advantages. NuTyX, for instance, has a homegrown package manager. KaOS still uses pacman, but effortlessly blends the Noctalia desktop with the Niri Wayland compositor. The end result is a thing of beauty that's more than sufficient compared to the slew of Arch derivatives already available.

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