Absolutely. And since programmers can do what they want with it, they also share a lot of what they create to address a variety of needs. 

So ¨many distributions¨ means almost any special needs case can be aptly met with one of these. I had no idea how helpful that would be for me when things started breaking down and I could´t drop everything to replace hardware. 

 My HD / disc burned out so I couldn´t boot . Needed a new HD or another computer. 

So I downloaded it.  
(porteus thumb drive OS. Who needs a disc drive anyway?)