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If Gnome transforms their product into it's own operating system, not only will the Gnome environment itself become more monolithic and less modular but the dis

If Gnome transforms their product into it's own operating system, not only will the Gnome environment itself become more monolithic and less modular but the distribution they produce will suffer that same fate. It's not a given, but it's easy to imagine the non-negotiable dependencies for the Gnome OS growing over time and becoming even more obscure than which init system is used. Personally, I like being able to make some of these choices about the components that make up my operating system. On the whole, I think modularity is feature that I find more compelling than the sort of tight integration that some other OS vendors (like Apple) are providing.

Someone 15y ago
I agree that having a bunch of Lego bricks that you can combine at will is nice, but the disadvantage of that is that what you build with it always will be less streamlined (in software, there will have to be code to handle slight interface differences), and may fall apart easier (if there are zillions of ways to combine parts, the probability that your way to combine them has been tested can rapidly go to zero) There must be an optimum somewhere in the middle. Big question is: where? For some things, the answer seems clear (sometimes after a couple of decades of experimentation). For example: - there seems to be consensus that pluggable file systems are a good idea. But even there, there is no consensus on the interface, as shown by the VFS vs ZFS discussion. - Pluggable printer drivers? I have never heard somebody argue that was a bad idea. On the other hand, there may be room for consolidation here, just as has happened on the terminal front (how many different terminal protocols are in active use?) - Pluggable windowing systems? On Linux, it appears that X has won (for now). For others, there is no agreement: - Pluggable schedulers? At least a few years ago, there was disagreement about the question whether that was a good idea. - Pluggable window managers? From what I read on the internet, these seem popular, but I think there is some selection bias there. - Pluggable GUIs? I think that is a bad idea. You can build a system where, say, gnome apps and KDE apps and Java apps all look more or les the same, but I have never seen one where the Lego bricks did not shine through. - Pluggable character sets (aka code pages)? Unicode has won that battle (because it is the best of all the abominations we can choose from :-)) In summary: I like flexibility, but I also think you cannot get a nice coherent system without limiting that. Designing is making choices. If I wanted to create a Linux system for the general public, I would probably have to sacrifice a lot of flexibility to get such a system in a reasonable timeframe.

Someone 15y ago

I agree that having a bunch of Lego bricks that you can combine at will is nice, but the disadvantage of that is that what you build with it always will be less streamlined (in software, there will have to be code to handle slight interface differences), and may fall apart easier (if there are zillions of ways to combine parts, the probability that your way to combine them has been tested can rapidly go to zero) There must be an optimum somewhere in the middle. Big question is: where? For some things, the answer seems clear (sometimes after a couple of decades of experimentation). For example: - there seems to be consensus that pluggable file systems are a good idea. But even there, there is no consensus on the interface, as shown by the VFS vs ZFS discussion. - Pluggable printer drivers? I have never heard somebody argue that was a bad idea. On the other hand, there may be room for consolidation here, just as has happened on the terminal front (how many different terminal protocols are in active use?) - Pluggable windowing systems? On Linux, it appears that X has won (for now). For others, there is no agreement: - Pluggable schedulers? At least a few years ago, there was disagreement about the question whether that was a good idea. - Pluggable window managers? From what I read on the internet, these seem popular, but I think there is some selection bias there. - Pluggable GUIs? I think that is a bad idea. You can build a system where, say, gnome apps and KDE apps and Java apps all look more or les the same, but I have never seen one where the Lego bricks did not shine through. - Pluggable character sets (aka code pages)? Unicode has won that battle (because it is the best of all the abominations we can choose from :-)) In summary: I like flexibility, but I also think you cannot get a nice coherent system without limiting that. Designing is making choices. If I wanted to create a Linux system for the general public, I would probably have to sacrifice a lot of flexibility to get such a system in a reasonable timeframe.