What effect does a dist have on packages in linux?

Question

Does it matter, for instance, if you download a package that's say 'file-x_64-suse', vs one that's 'file-x_64-fedora'?

Answer 1

For some higher level packages, it won't make much of a difference. For some lower-level things, or things that use a large amount of scripts, it could cause major breakage. For example, Debian and Ubuntu have the same package format, and most application binaries are inter-compatible. However, Ubuntu uses a very different kernel, init scripts, and administration tools.