I am currently using Fedora, and i have used Red Hat 7 before it. In pakistan not much people use linux. I have no idea what Debian, SuSE, Mandrake and other distributions looks like and whats the difference. Can anybody explain me a little about the difference and specialities of these distributions and difference in look (interface). And difference in functionality and usage. If there is a difference, which is the perfect for programming and why???

Hi. How are things in pakistan. I'm in australia and not many people use linux in my part of australia either.

There is not a lot of real difference between the distibutions. In the end it's KDE or gnome or whatever that gives linux it's look. You can program the same in any of them, and the KDevelop and such is part of KDE, and the gcc and such is with all distros. The only difference really between them is the configuration utilities and package types like rpm or urpmi or apt-get and so forth.

amosf is right, the GUI (Graphic User Interface) gives the look. Never the less there are big differences between the different distros, in both tools, and idiology.

idiology - debian is free, red hat you pay for, etc; Also, SuSE pro is for servers, SuSE standard for desktop, etc.

the tools differ, but this needs to be qualified, KDE tools are the same on any distro, because they are a part of KDE (version numbers asside of course). same with other tools. BUT, distro specific tools exists, such as rpmdrake (which is MDK specific) or the SuSE control panel (similar things exist in other distros) or Xconfigurator on RedHat (though i don't think they use that still).

There is another difference, come to think of it, and that is that difference distros have files in different places or under different names. Unfortunately this sort of difference is very subtle, and can be frustrating but odds are if you can't find the file, you are looking for in the place it should be, you can google it or ask here. Unlike in SuSE, you can't run rpmdrake because it doesn't exist (unless you are really keen).

Distro's vary, but the overall thing is the same. for an Illustration, check out "Linux Administrator Handbook" (can't remember the author, it's got a horrible picture on the front and is green) where they list the tasks and the differences between SuSE, Debian and RedHat, and although they exist, it's something that, if you are aware that a file may have a different name, odds are you'll find it, because usually it isn't that different. Alternatively it may just be in a different place.

One final thing, Slackware as well as other distro's use run level 4 as the default GUI run level. SuSE uses 5. It's little things, but odds are if you are in there playing with that, you know to read the comment that explains that it is different .

Yes, the different ideaologies behind the distros give them some differences, tho generally they still contain most of the same major tools. Some are more cutting edge, some go for older more stable components, some are fussy about using non gpl software and some are strickly free only and so forth. This is true, but they all have a linux kernel, they all tend to use gcc, XFree or Xorg, all the same driver modules, all some version of KDE, gnome, blackbox, etc. Simply they are all the same, just different