I like BSD , Linux , unix ... but I would be even more happy, If they are all the same.

Would that be nice if fans could concentrate more efforts on the same one ?

I'm sure i do not like M...S.. because it kept changing all the time, and waste a lot of time from a whole buch of smart people!
Why can't amature just focus on one os? Don't let the comercial benefit currupt the good idea.

Well, I like where you're going. I think it would be better if the community was more unified. But if everyone went for the same distro, wouldn't we have the same problem we had with Microsoft, e.g. one monolithic entity dictating which devices are supported under which window manager, yadda yadda?

Embrace the differences. I like *BSD too, but I like it more for X-less servers, whereas I think Gentoo is a great desktop Linux distro...so for workstations I use that. Learning more than one system gives me a certain degree of flexibility too and helps expand my mind.

several distros provide several ways of doing several things...everything cannot be dumped into one package, no matter how hard you try. and because there are so many developers, so many wishes, so many needs, isn't it quite obvious that there are so many distros? and why would you be unhappy if there were many distros? I don't see any real problem in that...we've already seen what "one OS" philosophy does, thanks for MS. it just gets all the problems in one place, which means that if somebody wants to wreck it, it doesn't ask for much to do it.

I prefer multiple different flavours of OSes since they just give people the freedom to choose..if I compare "one OS" principle to "multiple OSes" principle, I cannot see too many good reasons to support just one. ok, it might gather much wisdom into one piece, but it would also gather much problems...and because there are so many different devices, peripherals, users and so on, the whole thing would grow too big trying to satisfy everybody. better to slice it up into multiple flavours, from which everyone can choose their "best" one..this is my opinion

Great idea. Please focus on the one I prefer and make the changes I desire.
That is the problem.

2damncommon, hehe...just as I thought

Another way to put it is that when multiple opinions are involved, multiple choices is the answer - not the problem.

Well different OS's serve different purposes and philosiphies. I can't see having one OS doing much good.

One thing I do like about the BSD's is they have a committee that controls how the OS is coded and the direction it is going. Anything that gets submitted for that OS has to be checked by the committee (if that is the right word)... But it's still open source and free.

In the USA here, I've seen SuSe packages for $90--------meanwhile
you can get a win XP upgrage for ------$80 .......LOL-- who is corrupted now.....

I don't want just one OS, then I get no choice. There are wrong ways to do things at both extremes. One wrong way would be a single monolithic OS that is so bloated and requires so much concensus to make changes, that it would be unusable. The other wrong way is what Linux is currently doing with over 300 different flavors! People start new distros all the time, not because they have good ideas, but just because they want to. Of course, many of the people starting new Linux distros simply don't have enough talent to work on the team of one of the more established distros, so it's not like they're bleeding the talent pool (they're just muddying the waters and causing confusion).

A much better way would be like the BSDs, where there are essentially 4 BSDs and each concentrates on something different: Darwin (Apple's version in OS X) concentrates on being a highly usable desktop, FreeBSD is driven to deliver the highest performing i386 server platform, NetBSD supports more platforms than any other OS and allows you to cross compile for different platforms, and OpenBSD of course is fanatical about security and correctness.

It makes the choices simple: If you want a great desktop, get Apple/OS X; if you want every single machine in your datacenter to have the same OS and be able to cross compile apps and OS updates for them on a single machine, go NetBSD; if you want the absolute highest stability and performance with commodity i386 hardware, go FreeBSD; and if you're some kind of paranoid security kook like me, you go OpenBSD.

Practically speaking, there's no way you would ever get even 10% of current OS developers to work on the same OS project. There's just no way that many people would agree on that many things. Also there's no way they would be willing to give up being"star" members of a team in order to be relegated to a small entry on a long list of credits. The idea might sound good in theory, but in practical fact it's just impossible (and not a very good idea).

yeah I don't understand it neither...hehe here where I live you have the choise to either pay or not - linux distros can be bought from different places (data-shops, other people who download & burn them for you and so on) or just get freely (download & burn yourself, borrow from a library or some other place) so it's just what you want to do. but if you want a Windoze here, you'll have to pay for it, and it's not a small amount of money we're talking about :P

that's enough for the off topic...now back into business. I don't completely agree with chort (partly yes): it might confuse people a bit if there are hundreds of linux flavours, but who says everybody has to use or even know about them? I mean, it's good if people can do their "own" linuxes if they want to, but it really is not a problem. let's say a guy manages to build up a new distro for himself...now when he has a problem with it, he quite surely can answer to it himself because he's built it. if he can't, it's his matter to search for the answer..but it doesn't force anyone to help him out. plus, smaller distros that aren't born to survive, will disappear as the time passes: this very same thing happens in nature you know (some species disappear, others pop up) - it's called evolution by some.

I'd say it's better to have 300 different flavours of linux than one flavour of it. if even 10 out of the 300 are good, working and satisfy people, the success is greater than that of the gigantic one OS if you understand what I mean..and the rest 290 distros that aren't that good, disappear if none wants them. but this won't harm anyone..just gives choises, opportunities. and if a newbie doesn't know which one to choose out of the 300, (s)he can just check out which ones are the 10 most popular and start off with them, knowing that they have made a lot of people satisfied...and when (s)he learns more, the road is open to be walked to the rest of the distros.

you need a choice or els microsoft has a monopoly

Different horses for different courses.

IMHO The fact that there are so many Linux versions is an advantage. Each has its own strengths/weaknesses and can be used/learned from accordingly. For example configuring X used to be a real pain for me I use a lot of odball /donated /found in the trash equipment and specs are not always readily available. Now when I have a problem. I pop in a Knoppix or Mepis disk and use the data from the autodetection features and presto! no more headache. Another example : I wanted a hardware firewall.
Solution: One old machine, Smoothwall and about two hours of work problem solved. In the process of all this I have learned a lot about Linux that I don't think I would have learned if there were only one monolithic distro.
Finally, no matter what the distro command line is still command line so even though you are not familiar with a particular distro, you can still use it.