Components
A typical desktop Linux distribution comprises a Linux kernel, GNU tools and libraries, additional software, documentation, a window system, window manager, and a desktop environment. Most of the included software is free software/open-source software which is distributed by its maintainers both as compiled binaries and in source code form, allowing users to modify and compile the original source code if they wish. Other software included with some distributions may be proprietary and may not be available in source code form.
Many distributions provide an installation system akin to that provided with other modern operating systems. Some distributions like Gentoo Linux, T2, and Linux From Scratch include only binaries of a basic kernel, compilation tools, and an installer; the installer compiles all the requested software for the specific microarchitecture of the user's machine, using these tools and the provided source code.
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Famous quotes containing the word components:
“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)