10 years of Linux and Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike) is the best OS i have ever used

Re:10 years of Linux and Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike) is the bes... by nullflux on Thursday March 29, 2012 @02:24AM (#3769940)

But basically the situation would have become more like android, instead of people getting their distributions from debian or redhat every PC manufacturer would have created their own distro.

Upvoted for a very intelligent reply and extremely insightful comment. The "Linux desktop -> Android" bit oddly resonates with the way things feel today.

Is this really worse though? Distros themselves technically work as the vendors in this case with "crap pre-installed" (Unity, anyone?) , depending on how cynical you want to be and your choice of distro. Install Fedora Core 9 and Ubuntu 11.10 side-by-side to see that difference in play.

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Re:10 years of Linux and Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike) is the bes... by jiggy2011 on Thursday March 29, 2012 @05:59AM (#3770453)

I think it could be quite a bit worse. Sure we have fragmentation today with distros doing their own thing but these are mostly due to differences either in ideology , philosophy or technical goals.

Having this controlled instead by OEMs run by MBAs who are more interested in kickbacks and splashing their logo on everything could be a worse experience.

GNU/Linux has a great deal of flexibility which is great for hackers, but is also great for those who would seek to abuse it.

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