Opinion: There are too darned many Linuxes

What gives Vaughan-Nichols the right to lecture the community about what to work on? I think we have too may people spouting their opinion and we would be better of consolidation this effort. Pravda was a good example of this consolidation effort. One paper is more than enough and it is easier on the environment as well.

If we're not careful, we all might just learn something by rolling our own Linux distribution. Learning... what a waste.

The author of this article does not understand (doesn't understand learning, experimenting, taking risks and how fun all that is). He needs to review his articles before posting them. Nothing he said made any sense.

cj: He's really a very good author. He's a Linux guy all the way. He's what sports guys call a homer.

I can excuse his opinion.

I actually agree with the general gist of his story, their are too many linuxes, but i'm hoping Darwins evolutionary theory's will cut in eventually and only the fittest will survive and hence thin the ranks or maybe i'm just being optimistic.

In fact i find myself usually agreeing with Vaughan-Nichols an awful lot nowadays is that a bad thing?

Ali

Not a bad thing. He's a Linux guy. Have you seen many Linux users agree anywhere about anything other than they love Linux?

Actually, one might consider the positive voicing of opinions healthy. It opens our eyes and gives us new insights. I agree with both points of view. CJC has a good point, you can learn an enormous amount rolling your own distribution. Even rolling a live CD at Morphix is a major lesson.

And, I can see that people less inclined to dig deeply into techncial issues don't need the confusion.

At least it's free software.

From the standpoint of what's good for Linux, there are indeed too darned many Linuxes. From the standpoint of the individual, I'm sure that creating one's own is quite satifying and educational. Then again, contributing to an extant distro can also be satisfying and educational.

What I get from the article is that it makes sense to carefully consider the relative benefits of both alternatives before deciding that the world needs "Bergmanix". Though in open source, the needs of the one are, of course, usually going to outweigh the needs of the many.

Which leads me to the conclusion that Linux might do even better on Vulcan. ;-)

Choice, Choice, Choice. That is what Open Standards mean. The ability for anyone who can to choose to work with someone else or work on their own version of Linux is what its all about. Are there too many? so what. If there really are too many then some will go away all by themselves. The ones that work for the most people will move on. Just like it has in the past, I for one think that if there is a distro for every Linux user out there, good, it means that people have taken control of their computers and have decided that they should be in charge. That is what having a choice is all about.

The only way to stop Distro's proliferating is to have a Law saying NO MORE.

Pretty unlikely as it goes against the freedom inherited from OSS.

Why not write an articles "there are too many darn Text Editors"? "too many darn Digital Image Manipulator", "too many darn CD players". or "hey too many cars!" too many radio stations , "too many people" !!

Even if the top 3 distros (Suse. Mandrake. Red Hat) were to coalesce (pretty unlikely) Nothing would stop the birth of new distros; for whatever N reasons.

Sharkscott -

Choice is definitely a good thing.

Vaughan-Nichols didn't disagree.

But maybe, just maybe, when you're getting ready to bring out YetAnotherLinuxDistributionItsCreatorAndBestFriendWillUse, you might consider using that power of choice to dig in and find something that will satisfy you AND contribute a little more usefully to the community at large.

OTOH -- If you gotta do it, you gotta do it.