> "we need our own HMI to differentiate our integrated product offering" I don't think it's so much about differentiating. It's about funneling resources towar

> "we need our own HMI to differentiate our integrated product offering" I don't think it's so much about differentiating. It's about funneling resources towards innovation. Some distros have become pretty conservative over time. Don't get me wrong, i like that my distro doesn't just apply thousands of random patches introducing subtle bugs. But at the same time, System76's PopOS appears to be among the few spiritual descendants of Mandriva's user-friendliness: if these few corporations who have a few bucks to spare are not investing in bettering the desktop experience, who will? I'm personally unconvinced by current desktop environments: they're either too complex/opinionated and ridden with bugs (GNOME/KDE) or too minimal and not packaged with user-friendly apps (i3/openbox). Those that aim for the sweet spot in the middle usually don't have enough resources to iron out all the bugs (MATE/Cinnamon/Budgie/LxQt...), and rustc compiler is pretty good at ironing out all the bugs you write before they end up in a "usable" binary.