This is not to say that Linux is going away. Hardly. If anything, the sheer pervasiveness of Linux is what’s fueling the trend to which I refer: the rise of more specialized distributions with one or a few major objectives that stand apart from the idea of an all-in-one operating system.
This outcome was inevitable, really. The modularity of Linux as a kernel and operating system has fostered a steady stream of appliances devices and software platforms for some time. Whole businesses have been created (yeah, looking at you, rPath) just for the creation of custom software appliances. SUSE Studio is a tool that puts appliance creation in the hands of users. Indeed, the whole concept of platform as a service (PaaS) is basically hosted Linux-based software appliances with some nifty cloud management software thrown in.