TechRepublic Article Concerning Distros Shutting Down
 

Scientific Linux and Antergos are shutting down: It's time for Linux Mint to go

Good summary article. The article reviews the issue of "fragmentation". Fragmentation is positive from the perspective of innovation and providing choice. However, there is also an unfortunate downside. The article notes: "The infrastructure and developer attention needed to maintain a distribution is extensive, and difficult to justify." Distro consolidation may take some of the excitement out of introducing new features to Linux, but it may also lead to an improved more "standard" operating system with greater acceptance by the public.

Except that Linux Mint is not a "distribution". It is essentially a desktop and some packages for Ubuntu and based on Ubuntu which is in turn based on Debian. Whether it exists or not is immaterial to the author or anyone else, except those who want to use it. If Mint were to abandon their own derivative and trust to the major distributions to be a platform for their project, they would be placing all their eggs in one baskets and trusting their fortunes to the likes of Red Hat and Canonical, both of which are commercial entities, mainly invested in gnome and present on the gnome foundation advisory board.

If you look at gnome foundation's 2017 financial statement, the advisory board are paying most of the bills. But and I quote, "The Advisory Board has no decision-making authority"...

It was friction inside and outside the gnome project, due to ever increasing corporate meddling and the introduction of "gnome-shell" and it's "my way or the highway" deal, that instigated the creation of the mate and cinnamon "forks" in the first place.

People within the gnome project made it very clear back then as to what direction the project was going in:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipe...ne/007335.html
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnom.../msg00110.html
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnom.../msg00116.html

If that kind of thing looks familiar - it's because it is. It's one of the guiding principles of proprietary GUI design. Microsoft for example have a familiar UI which the end user cannot customise beyond changing a theme or maybe moving the taskbar, the same with Apple. Beyond that, there is little you can do to "personalise" what's on offer - in some ways gnome took that even further.

And now we have a tech press journalist, who mostly writes about Apple and Microsoft, talking about "fragmentation" and how they should just stop what they're doing to remove 0.0001% or whatever of that "fragmentation", to please whom exactly?

As a Linux Mint MATE user, Mint ain't just about Cinnamon. ;)

Linux thrives through the large number of distros constantly developing their own ideas and approaches. Not only do users benefit from having more choice and more likelihood of finding a distro that suits their needs, but the rest of the community get to see what works or doesn't work in other distros and jump on aboard or avoid with a bargepole accordingly. That's the organic Linux ecosystem and I for one am happy with it.

Honestly, it looks like another one of those very, very stupid OH MY GOD THE SKY IS FALLING THERE ARE TOO MANY DISTROS ALL BUT A HANDFUL OF DISTROS SHOULD BE DESTROYED FOR THE GOOD OF ALL OF LINUX WHAT RIGHT DID THEY EVER HAVE TO EVEN EXIST takes.

And the first distro they nominate to be sacrified is Mint. I don't think I need to spell out why I disagree with that.

A real distro is the one that compiles all the programs - all others are really just spins. :)

(Debian, Redhat, Slackware, etc.)

Well then, let me correct that list for you.