What most Linux advocates hate to admit is that the abundance of distributions discourages software makers from supporting Linux. Because then they will have to deal with bugs specific to each distribution, desktop environment, window manager, x.org or Wayland, and thousands of other variables. Imagine having to spin up a different virtual environment for each use case. It’s a nightmare that isn’t worth it for them.
I don’t think that’s the main problem, as on the inside (meaning backends) most things are rather standardized (ignoring legacy stuff) and any distro not adhering to those modern standards can be - purely from an economic aspect, NOT a nerd or enthusiast aspect - safely ignored. I do concur that choice paralysis indeed is a problem though.
The modern stack is pretty straight-forward: Flatpak and Snap for distribution, GTK4 (opt. with or without libadwaita) or Qt6 for the UI, Gnome and KDE to take care for proper integration, and stuff like Wayland, Pipewire and the XDG specs to focus on in technical aspects. All the documents necessary to work on fully functioning apps to publish via both Flatpak and Snap are there (not saying everything is perfect, just that it’s properly working). Distro-specific bugs will also be either prevented by the new sandboxing or are to be fixed by the distro in 99% of all cases, not the app author. What’s really missing right now is a way to sell it through those hubs.
Eventually there’ll be sufficient pressure on all sides so common technical necessities will be defined that distros will have to adhere to if they want to receive app support (which is very much possible given the sandboxing around Flatpaks and Snaps). Until then every company keeps freely defining what they support. Right now they usually go two or three big ones, namely Ubuntu, RHEL+Fedora and perhaps SteamOS. Some also go for OpenSuse, probably because they use SLES for their own machines.
Meanwhile commercially developed distros - meaning stuff like Pop!_OS (System76 devices), SlimbookOS (Slimbook devices), Tuxedo OS (Tuxedo Computers) - all use Flatpaks, and as they all integrate it as intended apps work on them as they do on any other distro that uses the modern stack. So customers don’t have to think too much about it.
tl;dr…
Don’t give new users too many options (avoids choice paralysis) but 1 or 2 modern ones or whatever a hardware vendor offers, and don’t expect developers to target distros that do not want to fully support either Flatpaks or Snaps. Then we’re already on a good way.
What most Linux advocates hate to admit is that the abundance of distributions discourages software makers from supporting Linux. Because then they will have to deal with bugs specific to each distribution, desktop environment, window manager, x.org or Wayland, and thousands of other variables. Imagine having to spin up a different virtual environment for each use case. It’s a nightmare that isn’t worth it for them.
I don’t think that’s the main problem, as on the inside (meaning backends) most things are rather standardized (ignoring legacy stuff) and any distro not adhering to those modern standards can be - purely from an economic aspect, NOT a nerd or enthusiast aspect - safely ignored. I do concur that choice paralysis indeed is a problem though.
The modern stack is pretty straight-forward: Flatpak and Snap for distribution, GTK4 (opt. with or without libadwaita) or Qt6 for the UI, Gnome and KDE to take care for proper integration, and stuff like Wayland, Pipewire and the XDG specs to focus on in technical aspects. All the documents necessary to work on fully functioning apps to publish via both Flatpak and Snap are there (not saying everything is perfect, just that it’s properly working). Distro-specific bugs will also be either prevented by the new sandboxing or are to be fixed by the distro in 99% of all cases, not the app author. What’s really missing right now is a way to sell it through those hubs.
Eventually there’ll be sufficient pressure on all sides so common technical necessities will be defined that distros will have to adhere to if they want to receive app support (which is very much possible given the sandboxing around Flatpaks and Snaps). Until then every company keeps freely defining what they support. Right now they usually go two or three big ones, namely Ubuntu, RHEL+Fedora and perhaps SteamOS. Some also go for OpenSuse, probably because they use SLES for their own machines.
Meanwhile commercially developed distros - meaning stuff like Pop!_OS (System76 devices), SlimbookOS (Slimbook devices), Tuxedo OS (Tuxedo Computers) - all use Flatpaks, and as they all integrate it as intended apps work on them as they do on any other distro that uses the modern stack. So customers don’t have to think too much about it.
tl;dr… Don’t give new users too many options (avoids choice paralysis) but 1 or 2 modern ones or whatever a hardware vendor offers, and don’t expect developers to target distros that do not want to fully support either Flatpaks or Snaps. Then we’re already on a good way.