LSB. FHS. A standard packaging API (or equivalent). Standardization of configuration files.

All distribution should have a "compatible mode" that would fully respect those standards. However, to not throw away the benefits of diversity, distributions might *add* their distro-specific tricks. It would leave the choice to the user. Isn't that what we all want?

Just a thought...

i think the real issue is some kind of standardized dependency notation so that a third party can create a kind of metapackage or something that can then be turned into a full distro package by reading the dependencies files and incorporating that into whatever package manager is being used by the distro of choice.

this preferably by said metapackage being doubleclickable by the user (but should not be a binary program or script file, but rather a file type linked to the package generator for that distro).

NO. Ubuntu has not worked for me. I have tried it on 3 different computers, one Intel two AMD. I have tried Kubuntu too and other flavors of it like MINT and PCUser, if they installed they all crashed before the week was over. I have on MY drive openSUSE, MANDRIVApowerpack2008, SABAYON3.4e, PCLos, SUSEsled, installed and am able to log to either of them work and update.Other people only use UBUNTU especially the magazine writers. ONE single DISTRIBUITION will not work. LINUX is a multitude of IDEAS that cannot all be contained in a workable solution. LINUX is DIVERSITY.

petez

What a stupid idea. I can't believe your editor let you submit something like this.

What's next? Too many OS's? Everyone stop using Linux and go back to Windows?

It's all about the right tool for the job. I use Ubuntu on one of my notebooks, simply because it's the only distro that "just works" on this specific notebook. In general, my distro of choice is, and always has been, Slackware (I even have a pipe-smoking Tux tattoo on my ankle), but I just don't feel like tweaking it for this one notebook. I use Mythbuntu on my DVR. Most of my servers run Slackware, but my firewall runs Debian. I've also run RedHat on one of my servers because it was supported by the hardware vendor while other distros left me on my own.

the distro standardization is a very bad idea, but the standardization of some components is good.
for example the standardization should consist in where the configuration and the shared libs are installed. i've seen ubuntu doing some stuff, gentoo having the config managed in different way and opensuse in another one, the shared libs installation is also a little different between the various distros. so, the best thing to do is to standardize some base stuff like this one so that a stuff that is able to install on rhel could be able to find its dependencies also on gentoo for example. one example of this is oracle db that is a pain to install on distros different than the ones officially supported.

While I'm aware of the advantages of a single distro I say it also couldn't be done, not practicably and it doesn't fit into "our communities ideology".
It's all about choice as you know, and you can't forbid someone making his own distro.
5 years ago Ubuntu wasn't popular, it was Red Hat who ruled the enterprise, and guess what ? we didn't have more programs then now.
As long as we got the source, every program could be made to work with any distro.

No, no, no. I think the fact that there are specialized distros for different uses, such as Scientific Linux, is a huge plus for linux. Plus I like having the choice that linux distro's offer me, and don't want that taken away - if I wanted one choice to choose from, I would have stayed with Windows or Mac.
Besides the kernel, the only other thing that I think that would be better off with standardization, is package management. It would surely simplify installation of software for everyone involved from the creators of software to the end user.

If you do then you move from "something for everyone" to "nothing for anyone"

Ubuntu all but completely ignores KDE, has had numerous buggy releases, is pretty fanatical about free-only packages, and gives the user very little choice.

If the Linux world standardized to that distro alone, they'd destroy most of the advantages they hold over Windows.

I don't think we need hundreds of distros, and I'd love to see more consolidation and cooperation, but certainly not one distro.

I'd like to see the entire community support say RHEL/CentOS for server purposes.

I'd like to see Fedora/SUSE combine and work together towards making the best desktop RPM-based distro, with strong support for both Gnome and KDE.

I'd like to see Debian/Ubuntu/Mint combine and work together towards making the best DEB-based distro, and wake up to KDE. Kubuntu is pathetic.

There are some other niches, such as Media Centers, or DSL, source-based distros, etc. However, hundreds of distros are a bit extreme.

Yes, standardize. Things are too complicated, and I'm getting old. I say, why stop at Linux? We should have one type of car, one type of ice cream, and one type of $thing_society_argues_about.

Beyond that bit of sarcasm... there's many different types of people. There's always going to be many different ways of doing the same things. Name 10 things you did today. I bet if I did the same 10 things, and we compared notes, we did them completely differently. Our environment, our upbringing, and other daily factors helped us decide on how to accomplish those 10 things.

So there's always going to be many Linux flavors. The RedHat way to do things, the Debian, way to do things, the Ubuntu way to do things.

Think about perl. Plenty of people can write the same perl program many, many different ways. If you're a perl programmer (I'm barely one), and I recognize you're better than I am, we'll settle in our pecking order... you'll convince and influence me your ways may be better, and there are reasons why.

I think it's a good thing Linux interest is growing. The multitude of different distributions is a tribute to that.

-- FLR or flrichar is a superfan of Linux Journal and can be found goofing around on the LJ IRC Channel

Yes in the sense that the current gaggle of Linux distributions has no merit for end-users. For hobbyists, yes, for users with specialist requirements, yes, but not for ordinary desktop users (the vast majority of PC users). It's annoying, confusing, and it keeps Linux down because it keeps Linux fragmented.

I hear that Linux as an OS has finally matured enough that it can recede into the background. Great! If Linux is to achieve dominance on the desktop, it must offer a good end-user experience (especially for dumb end-users who do not want to see a command-line prompt anywhere and who never read any documentation). Mass-market appeal in other words.

In order for that to happen, the current "divergent" development effort (where you get lots of GUI experiments and radical changes every 3 months or so) needs to turn into a "convergent" one (where *one* approach is selected as "best practice" and honed to perfection). We have seen this happen in the kernel, we are seeing it in the window managers (KDE and Gnome), and it's about time we start seeing it in the distributions.

I think that those who oppose such standardization on grounds that it makes Linux too easy to use ("I'm fed up with you newbie Linux users trying to turn it into Windows") should be ignored as the hormonal teenage boys they are.

Windows dominates the desktop because it's good enough for 90% of people, fairly user-friendly, quite uniform and ubiquitous, and of course because it comes bundled with the hardware. The "Windows" experience is determined first by the applications, and only in second instance by the OS. As a case in point, I personally install Total Commander (a Norton Commander clone), Qedit, and Mozilla, as the first programs on any new Windows computer and from then on never have any dealings with "Windows Explorer" or "Internet Explorer" anymore, and I only use Windows to start my applications and to drive the clipboard. I think that puts the OS in its proper place: out of the way.

Linux may win on price, freedom, reliability, resistance to malware and hacking, but it still looses out because you can't _count_ on thoughtlessly installing package xyz on distribution abc by downloading and then double-clicking on it, and then expect it all to work. Despite all the package managers.

That's an unforgivably poor user-experience which ensures that end-users (meaning people who start up their PC to accomplish something, not teenagers who have nothing to do except play around with the OS) will get irritated. On Windows it just works (well ... by and large). That's the difference. As long as that persists Windows has the advantage.

In addition, on the application front, you have the "let's try something new" school of programming. A most worthy attitude, and one that may well result in improved software.

However ... when I use Linux, I always install Mozilla as my browser, I stay away from KDE- and GNOME-specific browsers. Simply because I think Mozilla is good enough, and I don't want to have one IDE here and another one over there. This is an even more dangerous fragmentation than the fragmentation of the distributions.

An insightful comment by earlier posters is that you might be able to make do with API-standardization. That would mean *one* directory structure, *one* place where software can find out everything that's installed (In Windows that's called the Registry). Then you could standardize on *one* package format and *one* installer. And make those work intuitively and flawlessly across *all* distributions.

Sir, the final point of your list of arguments for standardization is specious. Whether you know it or not, Tux already IS everybody's logo.

*cough* Uh, how about BSDs...? What advantages have they provided, and disadvantages incurred? Seems like a unified linux distro looking-glass to me...

I agree with many of you, we need some sort of API standardization. Standardizing the APIs does not mean each distro has to be the same, but each distro would meet a minimum standard. Setting standards would help upstream developers assure their products would be usable with minimal tweeking.

An example of meeting minimum requirements is the 802.11 wireless standard. Companies like Linksys, Netgear, Cisco, Belkin, etc.. meet the standards of this specification, but they add there own twist and features to the products they sell. Doing so, allows end users to feel comfortable any wireless product they use will work with any other wireless product on a basic level. The advanced features of each product is what sets each product appart from the other.

the only two real reason people think about having a single distro are because of interoperability and gaining market share. standards take care of the first and pcs with preinstalled copies of linux are the the answer to the second. all the hurdles to bringing linux to the masses would be solved with these two solutions. if linux is preinstalled on pcs, noobs don't have to hassle with getting hardware and their mp3s to work.

slackware rules

"A select few individuals at the top would control the present and future direction of Linux."

Is not that what the kernel mantainers are?, a select few individuals controlling the present and future direction of (the) Linux (kernel)?.

If this is what we have. It's not a disadvantage, it's a working reality.

"There would be no internal competition in the Linux community. How sad would it be if we only had Windows and OSX to compare ourselves to?"

How this pathetic sorrow is any argument?

And the thing about the lack of internal competition is just not true. There always gonna be moaners complaining about everything and screaming like hysterical offended nitpicky ladies about the most infimous bug or missing feature, they will pull the car. XDDDD

"We lose the ability to choose, which is a fundamental part of everything Linux stands for."

No.

The ability to choose is not a consequence of the distributions ecosystem but of the liberty provided by the GPL. As long as the software keeps the GPL you don't loose anything: you have the right to modify everything under GPL.

With a unified GNU/Linux OS you just move that decision in time, to choose after everything is installed. Like in: "it has KD'N'ME by default, well, throw that shit away and push in some G-NODE love".

"We become a monolithic, bloated, close minded, inbred, operating system with no hope for innovation, and no motivation to think different."

Yes... well, actually no.

Let's put it this way: With the adveniment of the standarization of Windows95 the OS industry became a monolithic, close minded, inbred, operating system with no hope for innovation, and no motivation to think different.

You can change w95 for any other OS, even mac system whatever.

As you see this sentence is not true for any case in history, and nothing makes this imagined "unified linux" OS any different (well, the GPL does make it different, but it pulls just in the opposite direction). Reality is just like a wall of stone in the middle of an open field: it's quite disgusting to find one if you're running blindfolded.

And besides with the GPL the energy of the innovation and the ability of people to do what they please will not stop until everybody: Every. Single. One. Stops moving. As someone else said before: a free software project is not dead until the last copy of the sourcecode has been erased from the last hard drive of the last user (or something like that). And that's thanks to the GPL (again: not to the distro ecosystem).

Regards.

PS: Damn you LJ. Because you allow em and i tags but only cite and not blockquote in the comments, your CMS Manager (does it exist such a position?) will burn in a hell of computers infested with Windows Millenium Edition and rebooting from BSOD's for the whole eternity (none the less). ;)