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View Full Version : All OpenSource Operating Systems , Unite ?

alket
June 13th, 2009, 08:22 PM
Why all Linux Open Source OS don't unite and make a "perfect" OS, since they're Open Source ?
JordyD
June 13th, 2009, 08:26 PM
They all have different goals. One wants ease-of-use, another wants speed, another wants to be as minimal as possible. They would clash, forks would ensue, and you'd be back to normal.
MasterNetra
June 13th, 2009, 08:29 PM
Because everybody's idea of what "perfect" is differs ^.^ Though granted if people focused on one OS (and produced versions of it for business, normal, open source only, servers, & gaming usage) instead of a million of them, more would probably get done ^.^ But everybody has there ideas and wants to push them. ^.^
Viva
June 13th, 2009, 09:55 PM
Because that would be against the very definition of opensource and software freedom.
arcdrag
June 13th, 2009, 11:10 PM
They all have different goals. One wants ease-of-use, another wants speed, another wants to be as minimal as possible. They would clash, forks would ensue, and you'd be back to normal.

Exactly. What makes one OS "perfect" in one person's opinion annoys the hell out of another person. Thus, in order to have the "perfect" OS for all types of people you need 100's of different OS's which is the path that Linux takes. If there's no distribution that specifically caters to a certain demographic then someone makes one for it.
Mr. Picklesworth
June 13th, 2009, 11:40 PM
They are united. There's just a whole lot of different front-ends :)
JordyD
June 13th, 2009, 11:48 PM
They are united. There's just a whole lot of different front-ends :)

Yes, I'd have to agree with this, too. All the applications that are developed for Ubuntu are sent 'upstream'. So other distros can take them, improve them, and send them 'upstream', too. This way all the distros are really working together and giving different user experiences at the same time.

The only real difference between distros is how they are packaged.
sertse
June 14th, 2009, 12:06 AM
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=328824

77 pages of reasons spanning way back to 2005!
aysiu
June 14th, 2009, 12:33 AM
They are united. There's just a whole lot of different front-ends :)
Very succinctly put.

Anyone who has tried to get a bunch of people to agree on something knows that too many chefs in the kitchen leaves you with no food on the tables, and just a lot of angry, frustrated diners (and chefs!).

Think about it.

If you had 2,000 chefs, which would you think would get you better recipes?

1. You have all the chefs work together on one recipe. Once they've all agreed on the recipe, they can release it together as a group and then move on to the next recipe to agree upon as a group.

2. You have all the chefs work on separate recipes, but every recipe's details must be available to all the other chefs so that they can use those recipes and improve on them, giving back any improvements to the original chef.

Good luck with scenario #1. Scenario #2 is what I would bank on as being more productive, and that's how open source works, too, except with programming code instead of recipes.