LinuxPlanet: .comment: Not Forking But Branching

“What if Linux distributions were to specialize? We’ve already
seen that the attempt to be all things to all people — to produce
incompatible distributions that otherwise do pretty much the same
thing — isn’t working out all that well. What if distributions
would instead target a segment of the market and go all out for
that segment, and leave other segments to others?”

“Here’s what I mean: Caldera is going after the enterprise. So,
in their way, are companies such as IBM, to whom the Linux desktop
means nothing. It’s not as if there will be no competition there —
just that not everybody will be competing there.”

“Why not broaden this approach? There could, and I think should,
be a few distributions aimed at the desktop user. These would have
subtle but significant differences — the one that has the very
latest stuff, the one that puts stability and security above all
else, one in the middle. These distributions would not install all
kinds of servers that do nothing but open the machines to crackers;
that’s one significant difference over the current crop of
one-size-fits-all distributions.”

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