The beautiful thing about Linux is that you can actually get to know it. I’m writing my own Desktop Environment right now so it should be really great.

1. First your computer runs whatever it finds on ROM, usually it is your firmware (BIOS/EFI)
   
2. BIOS contains the Boot Sector Loader. What this does is it loads the first 512 byte sector (Master Boot Record at address 0000:7C00) into your RAM. It is a very small program that loads the rest of the boot loader. Since it’s small size,

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camorri:
Each distro is a custom version of linux. In fact a distro is a linux kernel plus a lot of other linux programs. The installer may check for pre-req's ( or may not ). Each distro tests to a greater, or lesser degree compatibility. If you look into the code, you will find various releases of every component that exists. So the distro people have to decide what release of each piece of the package will work with the application that is to be installed. They bundle the pieces into a...