@Scott Evans, Hi,
I agree with your take on their being 'too much choice'. But this is a symptom of our freedom, as open source developers or users, to take something other people have made, and if we like, change it or make it better, and make it available to others. So it comes down to an individual flavour standing out for whatever reason. Somehow that is what I think canonical has done with Ubuntu. Who actually says 'Ubuntu Linux' ? They don't market it as 'Linux', and though it IS obviously linux, based directly off good ole' debian, for one hearing about it from various blogs or online news reports, one might completely miss the fact that it IS in fact linux. In this way, through their marketing, they are standing out. I run Ubuntu, and often when I need to lookup a fix for something, I use the search term 'Ubuntu' and not 'Linux'. And certainly through this meld of commercial (the services company canonical) and open source software, there is more support of the product in general. I certainly can't remember a repo 404'ing. And most of the time, the software I need has been updated. What I think linux (in general) needs more, is a united Desktop and window manager! A joining of Gnome and KDE. Something that provides the best of both worlds, in terms of the functionality and look and feel, and configurability of the desktop environment itself. Now THAT would be fantastic. There are so many times I've needed software only to find that it doesn't exist (or not a suitable choice) on gnome, but does on KDE. Likewise, i think the same happens the other way. Unless I really have to, I usually don't want to install the large libraries of the other manager. What would be the benefits of merging the two? a) greater choice of better software. As software would be available for ALL linux users not only half (roughly half (my appologies if Xfe actually has a greater share)). This would mean the available software would be better maintained. Better tested, with fewer bugs. With more people using and needing the software. We would end up with better software. b) smoother desktop environment. For the same reasons i think general software would improve. Big question. How could this 'merge' happen?
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