Why so many distros?

[Game master pro]

I was talking to my friend (who is like 60 and knows lots about linux) and he was saying the one thing that stops most people from installing linux is because there are too many of them, in windows, there is only one latest version, when theres an update, everyone gets the same one. If you buy a modem or something, there *might* be a driver of it for say redhat linux. But what if you dont have redhat, what is you have gentoo? you can't use your modem, but in windows, you have a driver, you install it. My point is, one of thebiggest things that stop people from switching over is, which distro? i know theres tests and distrowatch but still. If there was only 1 main linux that everyone uses, won't it make it easyer for everyone?

[dylunio]

One word: Choice

I understand where you are comming from, but many people leave Windows for the choice many linux distro's bring. I couldn't stand it if, say there was only RedHat linux...I'd go insane with the package managment
I like gentoo, and the things that come with it such as portage and etc-update...these don't come with RH, so I'd most likly feel mightily pissed off with linux and go off to buy a Mac or something.

The reason we have so many distro's is that people have liked a few aspects of existing distro's, but then added and subtracted from that to make a distro that they like, as example is that Mandrake (now Mandriva) started out as RedHat, but with the KDE desktop, or Ubuntu is debian, but with a much more single user ideal behind it.

If linux had one distro i't be as bad as Windows since we wouldn't have choice, it'd be just the same old boring distro comming out every 3 months or whatever, and the things we didn't like, we could remove, but we wouldn't releas it as a distro since there were to be only one distro.

As for which distro newbies should go for, they should pick one which they are attracted to, and if they don't like it they can try another, and so on...it's all choice.

[techieMoe]

If there was only 1 main linux that everyone uses, won't it make it easyer for everyone?

No, and this sort of thread has raised hackles in the past, so I'm going to have to watch it carefully. Basically, dylunio hit the nail on the head. There are many different Linux distributions for a very good reason: not everyone agrees on what an OS should provide, and there needs to be a choice.

To answer your question, "wouldn't one distro make it easier for everyone?" Absolutely not. Think of Linux like cars. Do people get overwhelmed by the number of brands and models of vehicles there are available these days? No, they narrow it down to the make and model that interests them and take a test drive. That's exactly what folks need to do with Linux. Treat it like you're buying a car. The upside is that Linux is a lot cheaper and you don't have to pay to mod it.