Nomenclature

Parabola

Parabola
The name of the project. Frequently used as shorthand for the current Parabola operating system.
Parabola GNU/Linux
The former Parabola operating system; used a patched version of the "Linux" kernel.
Parabola GNU/Linux-libre
The current Parabola operating system; uses the "Linux-libre" kernel.

Arch

Arch Linux
The operating system that Parabola GNU/Linux-libre is based on. The name is a misnomer; it is a GNU/Linux distribution, but lacks GNU in the name. Not to be rendered as "ArchLinux"; there's a space in there.
Arch
Acceptable shorthand for "Arch Linux".

Policies

(GNU) FSDG
(GNU) Free System Distribution Guidelines, the set of guidelines that Parabola follows.
DFSG
Debian Free Software Guidelines, the set of guidelines that Debian follows. It is mostly equivalent, but is neither a superset nor a subset of the FSDG.

Packages

Package name suffixes:

-libre
"X-libre" is a fork of "X" created for the purpose of complying with FSDG. They are created by the Parabola project (such as "Iceweasel-libre"). For information about creating -libre packages see Creating -libre packages.
-dfsg
"X-dfsg" is a fork of "X" created for the purpose of complying with DFSG; these packages are developed/maintained by the Debian project. For example, isdnutils-dfsg is Debian's fork of isdnutils (known to Arch Linux users as "isdn4k-utils"). Because of the similarity between FSDG and DFSG, it also addresses Parabola's policy problems with isdnutils.1 See Building packages from Debian.

Footnotes

  1. ^ However, at the time of this writing, Parabola still lacks the isdnutils-dfsg package. This is because of technical issues with compiling the package on Parabola, we are trying to add it.