It's a bit strange you blame this on Linux, instead of e.g. Microsoft. The PC (more or less accidentally) started out as standardized hardware. Everyone could

It's a bit strange you blame this on Linux, instead of e.g. Microsoft. The PC (more or less accidentally) started out as standardized hardware. Everyone could write an OS for it. Then things like sound cards, network cards, advanced video were added on top, but standardization here was incomplete to nonexistent. All kinds if programs had drivers, e.g. games for sound cards etc. As an example, I had to install a printer driver in wordperfect 5.1, a word processor under DOS. Windows centralized these drivers. Games could talk to the sound API. Word processors to the printer API. Hardware vendors could stop writing drivers forceach program. But note a fundamental shift here: No more standard hardware spec, only a standard driver spec. Microsoft didn't ask for this, but didn't fight it too hard either. History accidentally gave them a moat, and they liked it. They could easily have pushed hardware specs harder, like they did for USB with HID and Mass Storage. There is no sane need for individual printer driver, for example. A standard way to push a bitmap, to read some specs( DPI), to control buttons, toner levels and lights gets you mostly there. We would have 1 stable high quality printer driver for each OS instead of the crappy mess we have now. In fact, IPP getsvus partially there. But you need a big player pushing for it, and Microsoft has everyone working for only them right now, so why would they change anything. Linux wrote its own drivers until it got big enough to get some love from some big hardware vendors. But I see no way for it to push hardware standardization.