OSNews

I found the article to be an interesting read - but consolidation is a bad term to use - standardization is more appropriate. Observe:

1. "the company's [microsoft's] focus on a limited number of operating systems has allowed it to successfully market and develop these programs"
Microsoft only has one desktop/server OS: 'Windows" which it customizes and then renames - there is no difference between this and linux distros.

2. "The goal of a consolidation should be to "trim the fat" and make funds and brain power available to those distributions which need them the most".
With the exception of major companies that fund linux development most individuals that work on linux and linux apps are doing it as a hobby. No one should tell them what to do with their free time. If they choose to work on Fedora-OK, Ubuntu? OK! their own distro? sure! your time - you choose what you want to do.

3. "Severely limiting the number of distributions available could be catastrophic to Linux's growth in the future, but if this is done reasonably the distributions which are currently the most fit for survival will only get stronger."
Apparently this author does not frequent distrowatch. This is already happening by a darwinian (pun intended) process of natural selection. linux distros that don't have a following get dropped by their developers. 100+ distros are abandoned already since the inception of linux as an OS (and there are probably more that are unaccounted for)

4. " While this is the strongest argument for the preservation of the current number of distros it is also proof of the limited scope of many of the varieties."
You really don't need a one distro fits all mentality - are they limited some of them? yes - so what? If the linux is "StrongARM linux" - will it work on an itanium? - duh:)

5. ".... in the same way that FireFix is a threat to Internet Explorer"
Just pointing out that a spell checker needs to be used before you submit an article


6. "...the best attributes of each can be brought forward and used in the successive versions."
Remember "united linux" ? They just had version 1.0 and the it crashed and burned



Now, some further comments:
What linux needs is not consolidation. They need a standards body (and if they already have one, they need to get off their arses and do something). If you have standards, developers can develop to those standards. For starters you need the ability to use any package with any package handler - this means that a DPKG can be read by the RPM package manager and vice versa so that things are easy to install. (dare I say a "FAT package" ?)

Additionally - there should be a clear cut way of fixing what is affectionately known as "dependency hell" Each app should be able to dynamically determine what it needs, if it is installed, and if not installed ask the user if s/he would like to have things installed for them (and of course optimized and configured).

Developers, especially the ones that do it for free, should not be told what to do (unless the willingly are part of a team of developers) and they should never lose their creativity - this is what drives linux - BUT there should be standards.

Now as I said there is no need for a "one linux distro does it all" but potential users need to have a local "market" where every active linux distro is listed, with all of its information so that users can make a comprehensive decision - something like distrowatch but more in depth (much more) - with more search options to determine architecture type - strengths and weaknesses of the distro and so on.

just my 2 cents