I have great respect for anyone who undergoes a big project. So I am sad that this project is coming to an end, and I hope his future endeavors go well. But.

I have great respect for anyone who undergoes a big project. So I am sad that this project is coming to an end, and I hope his future endeavors go well. But. From my perspective as someone who keeps going back to Linux and trying to use it every 18 months or so, the #1 problem today is that there are WAY too many distros -- and as a result, all of them are broken. What really needs to happen is for the Linux community to put a great deal of elbow grease into a small number of distros. Because I only try Linux every year or two (and give up on it every time), I see isolated snapshots of how usable the OS is, and from my perspective, it's gotten less stable and less usable over the past 5 years. (Six months ago I had to try 4 different distros before one would even install correctly on one of my two test laptops, for example). In terms of mainstream distros that are actively trying to appeal to end-users (not counting fringe research projects), how many is enough to provide good variety? I am thinking 3-5 maybe? Instead, this is the situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions Does anyone think that is an efficient way to produce quality results? Edit: It's also worth keeping in mind that the Wikipedia list is sort of the minimal list of versions. For example, if you go to the Linux Mint homepage, you get 4 different versions to choose from: http://www.linuxmint.com/ http://www.linuxmint.com/