Ok I think i get where you’re coming from now (I’m not the one who downvoted you btw).

I think tbh its not impacting the user uptake as much as you worry it might. As you said most mainstream users aren’t even aware of the difference as they’re sitting up in GUI-land and barely notice those kind of changes under the hood.

Those aren’t the kind of people who are really even going to be effected by these kinds of disputes - or even really be aware of them. And i think there’s plenty of workpower available atm that its not really drawing efforts away from other concerns.

There’s always going to be a group of people who obsess over something more than others, and thats what i think is part of the power of these kinds of tools, that they can be tailored to specific needs.

You are right that having a unified system does come with various advantages, and there are also use-cases which don’t suit the one-size-fits-all approach.

I really don’t think the plethora of distros, bootloaders, WMs, shells, and inits are detracting in a meaningful way from anyone’s effort to build a unified system.

Tbh while on the topic of standardisation, i think interoperability is very important too. That is the kind of thing I think could really help solve alot of these problems simultaneously