Are Git and GitHub Desktop completely independent applications?

Question

Some months ago, I installed GitHub Desktop (Version 2.8.2 x64) for Windows on my Windows 7 machine. I used GitHub Desktop to manage versions of my thesis, written in LaTeX, between my local machine and the GitHub cloud.

Now, an educational workshop on Python/Shell/Git I'm attending in a few weeks instructs me to install Git for Windows ( gitforwindows.org ).

Is it true that "Git for Windows" ( gitforwindows.org ) and "GitHub Desktop for Windows" ( desktop.github.com ) are completely independent applications? Will installing "Git for Windows" now, months after installing "GitHub Desktop for Windows" cause problems/interactions?

Answers to this previous question seem somewhat contradictory. This answer from 2016 seems to say that the two applications are independent of one another, but I want to make sure that five years later this is still the case.

Answer 1

git is a command-line tool that manages git repositories. You can invoke it from the command line and it will modify your git repository as you want to.

GitHub Desktop is a graphical application that provides a GUI for some git operations. You can commit, push etc using GitHub desktop but it doesn't have the whole functionality of git

GitHub desktop uses git under the hood in order to perform those operations. It is a graphical wrapper for those operations. You can even look at the git installation inside of GitHub desktop .

But from a users perspective, git and GitHub Desktop can be seen as different applications for interacting with git repositories.