3 ms·
But basically the situation would have become more like android, instead of people getting their distributions from debian or redhat every PC manufacturer would
by nullflux 15y ago
But basically the situation would have become more like android, instead of people getting their distributions from debian or redhat every PC manufacturer would have created their own distro.
Upvoted for a very intelligent reply and extremely insightful comment. The "Linux desktop -> Android" bit oddly resonates with the way things feel today.
Is this really worse though? Distros themselves technically work as the vendors in this case with "crap pre-installed" (Unity, anyone?) , depending on how cynical you want to be and your choice of distro. Install Fedora Core 9 and Ubuntu 11.10 side-by-side to see that difference in play.
- SaltwaterC 15y agoThing is that these "vendors" don't have the same level of hardware bias that Android has. Unlike "something Nexus something", people can't (usually?) run a vanilla Android. PS: if you pine for those days of manually fixing things, there's always LFS that has all the knobs and switches. I guess it's even more hardc0re than an old RH9.
- jiggy2011 15y agoI think it could be quite a bit worse. Sure we have fragmentation today with distros doing their own thing but these are mostly due to differences either in ideology , philosophy or technical goals. Having this controlled instead by OEMs run by MBAs who are more interested in kickbacks and splashing their logo on everything could be a worse experience. GNU/Linux has a great deal of flexibility which is great for hackers, but is also great for those who would seek to abuse it.