The Sinister Moose

I love open source software. I think it's an outstanding concept and the way forward for our computing future. Basically it gives any Joe Q. Public the ability to take an existing flavor of Linux and modify it and call it his own.

But this also causes me another problem: To many Linux Flavor Rage!

If you hit DistroWatch.com you will find a listing of the top 100 out of thousands of different flavors of Linux. This is great, it means that a lot of people are taking enough of an interest in developing Linux that it furthers the over all cause. It improves the breed to a degree, but unfortunately it also muddies the waters for end-users.

At this point, I can't help but think that if the entire community of Linux distribution creators would come together, and create one solid, all-encompassing distribution of Linux, they could possibly put a dent in the Microsoft Sales figures. But unfortunately that is one of the disadvantages of open source software. It is entirely impossible to get more than three developers in a room and come out with one cohesive solution.

Developer A, feels that the kernel should be version X

Developer B, disagrees and strongly suggests using Kernel Y or he'll leave the project.

Developer C, says both A and B are wrong and Kernel Z is the only way to procede, and if the other two don't like it, he'll take his toys and go start his own all encompassing linux project.

Every step of development of a complete package of linux will encounter this same problem, and it will happen with every single decision along the way. Right down to the color of the logo, or how the name of the distribution is to be spelled.

To be honest, it's infuriating. Linux could have flushed Microsoft down the drain with a single system, but bits of code were used from this, chunks pulled from that and in the end it's a Frankenstein's Monster of scrambled together ideas that are then disassembled and offered up in different colored packages.

The Fedora Project, a splinter faction of Red Hat, has some good ideas, but are completely unwilling to work with the Ubuntu project because of philosophical differences. openSuSe, once just SuSe was purchased by Novell, who has since been purchased by Attachmate who has sold over $450 Million dollars worth of patents to Microsoft. There goes that neighborhood, because any of the openSuSe software that was patented by Novell for openSuSe was just sold to big brother and will eventually be Closed Source, I assure you.

There are the BSD people, the PCOS people, the Linux people and those are just the core operating systems which don't include the Desktop Environment. You have plenty of choices for Desktop Environment as well, and for my tastes, there are again too many. Gnome, KDE, LightBox, NexStep, BlackBox, Sawfish, blah blah blah. Yes, the customizability, the choices and the seemingly free-for-all in Desktop Environments help to improve the breed, but until one becomes the gold standard, no software manufacturer like Adobe will ever create a version of their Creative Suite to run on Linux, because every installation seems to be slightly different.

It saddens me to think of the damage that Linux could have done to Microsoft or even Apple, had the community ever been capable of getting it's act together. DistroWatch.com lists a couple of "new" distributions per week, which unfortunately only add to the confusion and muddy the water further. Most of this stems from the lack of "ownership" of linux in it's myriad of flavors, since they are mostly open source, and don't have one "owner" per se. But that doesn't excuse the fact that Linux isn't sticking it to Microsoft or Apple.

Truly Linux is a better operating system, but major software manufacturers like Adobe, Intuit, or even game makers won't get behind it, because of it's complete lack of standards for how the operating system should work.

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