What is a(n)...?

This page contains definitions for a lot of common terminology found on this site, it will be linked back to frequently.

Distribution

Or "Distro", as you will often see it written as.

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Package

General term for a program or application on Linux systems.

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Package Manager

How your Distribution distributes its packages.

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Update Cadence

How often does your selected distribution update and what kind of updates does it have?

Versioned

Security and minor feature updates are provided through the life-time of the major numbered release of the distribution.
When a new major version is released an upgrade process must be followed to move up a version.
How long a release is supported for is dependent on the distribution and its maintainers.

Some distributions have an "LTS" build that releases less frequently than normal major releases, but is supported for much longer.

Rolling

Security and feature updates are released in tandem, your operating system will update continuously as updates are released by the maintainers.
No "major versions" exist and no upgrade path needs to be followed.

Sandbox

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Describe sandboxing in relation to isolated programs, AppImages, Docker, Flatpak, etc.