But what's the problem with having choice?
in 2019, my wife finally got fed up with windows 10. she used no software that was 'windows-only', so she asked me if i'd help her begin the move over to gnu/linux.
i made her live-drives of several different distributions, and showed her how to boot into them on her machine to play with the live environments. iirc, she messed around with ubuntu, solus, mint, and elementary.
she liked the fact that she had so much choice available to her. she eventually settled on mint cinnamon, as it has an environment she is familiar and comfortable with, and that was that. she's been running it ever since. and, keep in mind, my wife is someone who doesn't live and breathe computers like most of us here do.
i know there are the people out there who have disdain for the amount of choice we have in the linux desktop space ("fragmentation!"), but most people appreciate the amount of choice on offer.
Most people don't even think that far though, they just want a name brand they can trust and understand. So the most popular desktop Linux is probably ChromeOS.
That's because GNU/Linux isn't an OS. The distributions are distinct OSes. They just have a lot in common.
> It adds complexity, especially for new users and even more for corporations. There's maintenance burden as different DEs fall out of favor, things become incompatible, and you have to migrate.
Corporations can easily mandate whatever distro and DE they please on their internal systems. Not an issue.
The maintenance burden is on the distros and they can choose which DEs they support. They don't have to offer them all. In fact some distros come with a single DE only.
I know the wishful thinking that Linux would be a single system that would make it big with consumers. But if that happens, people that love Linux now will absolutely hate it. It will be unrecognisable. All the power and control will be gone because consumers don't want that. They must want to pay someone and trust them.
Case in point: ChromeOS. It's exactly that: Linux for the masses. How many Linux fans actually use that because it's Linux?
