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Here's yet another permutation in the perennial struggle to reconcile the overlapping but not identical principals of open and free software with a practical ne
by RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Here's yet another permutation in the perennial struggle to reconcile the overlapping but not identical principals of open and free software with a practical need to deliver an OS that does what users want and expect.
This is the double-edged sword of Linux: the necessary side-effect that comes from the freedom to create a diverse set of distros that support different communities' values and needs is the very fragmentation that keeps potential adopters too paralyzed by the lack of a clear choice to move forward.
Every new distro that doesn't unify the community (and what distro could possibly do this?) simply fragments it further. Yet clearly the search for a distro that everyone can settle on is still ongoing, which means the Linux community will continue releasing new distros.
In the meantime, most desktop consumers will continue to respond by falling back on the familiar.
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoThis is closer in spirit to someone slipstreaming Service Pack 2 onto the XP install. It no more fragments the Fedora user base than letting users change desktop backgrounds or install applications.
- Zak 17y agoI've found that to be untrue. Ubuntu managed to largely bring together the desktop Linux community. There are plenty of other distributions around, but there has never been a clearer default choice for new users and OEMs.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoUbuntu managed to largely bring together the desktop Linux community. In my preparation to respond to your comment, I tried to find some statistics - any statistics - on Ubuntu's marketshare among Linux distributions. Maybe my google-fu is having an off day, but I just can't find anything empirical (searches for Ubuntu in Google Trends don't count, since they don't necessarily correlate with installs). Does anyone know of any research into this?