big player + (standard) linux desktop may well be coming, but that means losing the semi-anarchist bazaar mentality. Will the standard be gnome or KDE or XFCE or ...? If gnome, version 2 or 3? Firefox or chrome as the default browser (or derivatives like waterfox or plain chromium ...)? AI integration?

The moment you're developing for people with no IT experience and no CS degree, you're going to have to make tradeoffs like Microsoft or Google or Apple have to make today, and somehow deal with the "curl ... |sh" problem.

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1718627440 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why does there need to be a standard application for everything? Is there a default pencil vendor? A default printer vendor? Paper? Car manufacturer? Taxi company? Just let people buy/get whatever vendor/application they like. I rather see more interoperational standards.

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red_admiral 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I guarantee you, in a large enough organisation, there will be exactly one approved pencil supplier. That's how corporate purchasing works.

There's a lot of cases where this actually makes sense for compliance, support, and service level agreements between your org and the vendor's among many other cases. It just gets annoying when you absolutely cannot buy coffee beans from shop B on the team consumables budget because we have an exclusive contract with shop A.

In a governmental organisation, you might even need a public bidding process for any supplier contract big enough to cover printers and their ink/toner, as well as a support contract if something breaks.

	▲	1718627440 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, and this is fine. This is basically what I meant, a company can just select and potentially make a contract for a specific application. That's how it works for everything. My point was that there doesn't need to be the unique single global vendor/application a priori.

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fao_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> but that means losing the semi-anarchist bazaar mentality.

The places you mention are already receiving huge doses of industry funding funnelled through the Linux Foundation. Honestly, it looks like the standard is going to be KDE. Even microsoft is copying it for their next DE: https://www.webpronews.com/microsoft-windows-ripping-off-kde...