Linux distro (distribution): One of the operating systems in
the Linux family (i.e. using the Linux kernel)
OCI: Open Container Initiative; a project for open-source
standardization of containers
Containers: An isolated environment to run programs, great
for avoiding conflicting dependencies and for ease-of-use
Container image: The base filesystem of a container
OCI image: The OCI's standard for container images, used by
essentially all Linux container platforms
AUR: Arch User Repository, a repository for Arch Linux
packages which are maintained by users. AUR only hosts
computer-readable instructions and related files (via
PKGBUILD files) for creating the packages, not the
packages or programs themselves
Filesystem: The system which keeps track of how data is
written to disk, like NTFS, FAT32, or ext4. Some filesystems,
like ZFS or btrfs, have extra features like redundancy or
compression.
Git: The most common version control system by far - keeps
track of different versions of files, can be used to resolve
conflicting changes, etc.
Forking: Copying a Git repository and optionally and making
changes to it. Can be simply to contribute the changes back to
the upstream project later, or to use something as a base for
your own project.
Branches: Different "chains" of versions of code, which can,
well, branch apart, merge back together, and so on. Different
branches don't necessarily have to be related whatsoever, but
they usually are made from other branches.
Repository: Usually refers to either a Git repository (i.e.
a Git project), or a server hosting packages to be installed by
a package manager.
GUI toolkit: A set of programs used for making graphical
interfaces
Qt: A GUI toolkit with an appearance similar to normal
Windows interfaces; pronounced "cute"
GTK: A more (literally) rounded GUI toolkit, hated by some
for its programs usually having highly excessive whitespace and
poor design (though there are some exceptions)
Window manager: The program which keeps track of and
determines where each program's window(s) go.
Desktop Environment: A window manager, programs, and
configurations, all wrapped up into a bundle, providing a
comprehensive desktop.
GNOME: A popular GTK-based extensible desktop
environment.
Virtual machine: A virtual computer.
Partition: A part of a disk. For example, modern computers
have a small boot partition and a big partition holding all the
actual data.
GParted: GNOME's partition manager - and my favorite
partition manager.
sudo: Super user do; runs a command as
root, Linux's admin account.
Tarball: An archive of data, preserving its file and
directory structure. Not compressed, though its tools come with
options to compress it after generation.
apt: The package manager for Debian-based Linux
distros.
blendOS: "Arch Linux, made declarative, immutable and
atomic."
Akshara: blendOS's system rebuilder/updater
pacman: Arch Linux's package manager, also used
by blendOS
PKGBUILD: A file defining how to build a
package which can be install by pacman.
iso file: A disk image file, can be "burned" to
a USB flash drive (or any other disk) and booted off of, often
used for Linux installers and/or live images.
FUSE: A filesystem interface used for running filesystems in
userspace (i.e. not in the kernel)
Kernel: The very core of an operating system, with all its
most essential functions, like filesystems (aside from those
using FUSE). On Linux, device drivers are usually in the kernel
directly, rather than being installed separately like on
Windows.
Shell: The program which is the command-line
interface.