Linux

Hi, Why is there many different Linux names and SO instead to be only one? What are the differences?
Paul Weinstock

Same as asking, "Why are there so many different car models".

Different cars have different uses. Some are better than others, in some ways.

Linux is open source, so I can take any version of linux and "Fork" the linux i take and make it do thing "I" think is more important to me and name it what ever I want.

You ask whats the difference? See DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

It will explain some of the differences and where to get them

Linux is not what you see and use when you install a distro. Linux doesn't have a web-browser built in, or a graphical environment, or even a console. In the end, Linux amounts to one single file that your computer loads when it turns on.

Linux doesn't really change that much from distro to distro -- everything else does. Mostly because you can only get some things at the expense of others. A wonderful system for programmers would by necessity be very tedious for casual users, while a wonderful system for home-users would, by necessity take quite a bit of control away from an experimenter.

And take something completely alien like OpenWRT. It's a linux distro that runs on wireless routers! That pretty much has to be a its own distro.

The reason, as has been mentioned, is that Linux is not a product from one company. It is free, both as in "costs nothing" and also that you are free to change or modify Linux in any way, as long as you provide the technical differences back to the community that gave you the ability to use Linux in the first place.

There are, as such, multiple distributions of Linux. They take the same basics and then package them into distinct operating environments.

Think of it this way. If you were to go to a store and see Maier's Bread, Wonder Bread, Stroehmann bread and "Generic" bread, all containing the same basics of wheat flour, but tasting slightly different due to texture, recipe, etc, you would see that while they may not be necessary, they are distinct and different.