A “distribution” is a variant of a “ready made” linux installation with predefined packages.
There are many different distributions which fit different users dependent on the desired purpose of what the user wants to do in linux.
Most popular distributions
- Debian
- Ubuntu
- Knoppix
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
- CentOS
- Fedora
- Arch
- Android
On the example of “Ubuntu” you can see, that this distribution is based on another distribution – “Debian”.
You can see the immense amount of different linux distributions in this SVG (Source: Wikipedia).