Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I’m sick of seeing all these stupid argument claiming that Linux has forked worse than Unix ever did. They claim there are too many distros, and too many desktop environments, and too many photo-editors, and too many word processors, and too many media players, etc.

The first thing to remember (and I’m old enough to remember) about the Unix forks was that each vendor’s version of Unix was different, and while some programs were compatible from one Unix to another, most were not. There were different compilers, different kernels, different filesystem layouts, different command-line tools, etc. The Unix vendors were commercial and wanted to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. This isn’t happening in Linux. There are more distros coming into existence all the time (giving more choice) and they’re all using the same interchangeable parts. I don’t know of any distros that are using custom-coded non-Torvalds kernels. They all pull kernels from the same place. They’re all running the same OpenOffice, and the same choice of desktop environments (more or less). They choose different versions, perhaps, so that they can choose to be cutting-edge (exciting and up-to-date) or trailing edge (safe and stable), which seem like good reasons to have different distros. Some of them specialize in being very small and fast (DSL, Puppy, Peanut) others try to be full-featured (Ubuntu, RHEL, etc) and some strive to be very flexible (Debian, etc). There are reasons that people should be able to build a distro from the common parts store that will fit their own purposes. This is not a problem, it’s just an embarassing wealth of options.

Remember that Microsoft world has fewer because nobody has the option to make their own. What would happen if you decided that you wanted to make your own extra-glitz Windows version for high-level gaming PCs and distribute it to your friends? The lack of choice is artificial and enforced. Likewise Apple. In Linux, there is no barrier to creating your own. For instance, I use XUbuntu which is Ubuntu redistributed with XFCE4 as the desktop environment. KUbuntu is Ubuntu redistributed with KDE as the default desktop. Ubuntu chose Gnome. They’re totaly compatible, but have different preferences. You can do this here. When there are millions and millions of users, why not have thousands of distros to choose from? Restriction means that some people would not get what they want.

Desktops: my XFCE4 desktop runs the same programs that I can run in Gnome, KDE, FluxBox, and Enlightnment. This is a compatibility-driven world, unlike the old Unix wars.

So use the distro your friends are using, or try a bunch of them and enjoy the distinctions. It’s all the same stuff, built from the same parts, so there is no forking problem. Just pick one or two. I regularly use two or three, and I can hardly tell the difference between them. It’s not a hardship for me, and I’m hardly a genius.

Finally, forking is not a bad thing. It is also known as “experimentation”. Say I want to try a new way of handling file systems or device drivers. I can fork the kernel (legally, and with blessings) and hack it to do what I want. If I turn out to have some great ideas, then the kernel team can incorporate my work (unlike the Unix wars) back into the standard kernal that all the other distributions are using. If it is a failure, then I hurt nobody. So a fork is just a development branch, a way of avoiding problems instead of a problem in itself.

So there are hundreds of distributions. Many of them are tiny fringe distros and special-purpose customizations. How does that hurt you? It doesn’t hurt Linux. It doesn’t even bother me that you don’t use XUbuntu or that you actually *like* that pathetic Red Hat Package Manager. It doesn’t affect us Ubuntu and Debian users. We’re not in any way impoverished by this fact.

Finally, take a moment to look at the Linux Foundation and the LSB. Compatibility across non-experimental distributions is very important, and there are serious projects making sure that distributions maintain that compatibility.