When can you say that a distro is based on another distro ?

ychaouche · 11-15-2019, 09:18 AM

And when does one distro diverge so much from the distro it branched off that it can no more be called a fork of it (or based on it) ?

uteck · 11-15-2019, 09:39 AM

I guess it becomes apparent when the base makes changes that are not incorporated in the decedent, or when the branch makes so many changes it not totality compatible any longer.
Most Ubuntu based distros still use it's repos for updates, so once using them starts to break things you are at the threshold.

fatmac · 11-15-2019, 01:18 PM

When they deviate from the originals package management system.

ehartman · 11-15-2019, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatmac

When they deviate from the originals package management system.

That isn't always true as i.e. Suse (and openSUSE) and Mandriva/Mageia are making use of the rpm format and program, but are not based on Red Hat. In fact quite a few other distro's package the rpm program too, as it has become a standard package format.
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager.
I would rather say that "when they still can use the master distro's repositories" is a rather good sign of descent.

fatmac · 11-16-2019, 04:44 AM

Well, what I said is, if they can't use the original package management repos, because of deviation, that is when it becomes a distro unto itself.

ondoho · 11-16-2019, 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ychaouche

When can you say that a distro is based on another distro ?

And when does one distro diverge so much from the distro it branched off that it can no more be called a fork of it (or based on it) ?

It's a matter of discussion entirely.
Even the term distro is not properly defined, and the term "based on" isn't properly defined either.
FWIW, some people claim that Ubuntu is not based on Debian anymore because it has evolved so much that debian packages aren't compatible anymore.
But AFAIK Ubuntu still uses Debian as a base.

So, bikeshedding yee-haa!

rokytnji · 11-16-2019, 10:45 AM

Like so for me

Code:

harry@biker:~
$ cd /etc
harry@biker:/etc
$ ls
<snip>
harry@biker:/etc
$ cat lsb-release
PRETTY_NAME="antiX-19 Marielle Franco"
DISTRIB_ID=antiX
DISTRIB_RELEASE=19
DISTRIB_CODENAME=buster
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="antiX 19
harry@biker:/etc
$ cat debian_version
10.2

The cd /etc and the ls command will help you find thse files in terminal. cat command is to read the contents in the file.

Debian is a systemd default distro. We are not.

I won't answer diverge scenarios.