BillDietrich
commented
2 years ago The current situation does hurt us. A software or hardware manufacturer who considers supporting Linux looks at the mess of distros and DEs etc and gives up. Or they pick just RHEL and Ubuntu, and half of the Linux community gives them hate for not supporting their favorite distro. A new user who considers moving to Linux looks at the (somewhat) lack of hardware and software support (such as MS Office and Adobe), looks at choosing among 50+ distros, looks at the choices involved in a fresh OS install (something few Windows or Mac users do), and gives up.
I would like to see the leaders of the major projects and distros focus more on consolidation and commonality.
For example, suppose Canonical modified their installer so that all the flavors (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc) could become just install-time choices of a single Ubuntu*, not separate distros with separate brands and ISOs etc. Encourage derivatives such as Mint, Zorin, Elementary to join in too, merging source-trees and repos and bug-tracking.
Suppose the leaders of freedesktop, KDE, GNOME, Snap, Flatpak, Electron, Mozilla worked together to store all UI settings and themes the same way, and make/encourage all their apps obey those settings and themes etc.
Suppose the owners of the various package managers worked together to try to come up with one or two common package managers and formats, and gradually phased out the old/other managers and formats.
Each of these would increase commonality across Linux, increase code-sharing, make bug-fixing and new feature development faster.
Nothing in this would FORCE people to stop making new DEs or distros or package managers. But if the major projects all moved to adopt these changes, they would become the norm. Sort of like systemd has. Probably with a similar amount of kicking and fighting.
litLizard69
Why I Hate Most Linux Distributions
Having Fun with Technology
https://christitus.com/hate-linux-distributions/