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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

> Would be a huge win for open source!

Just keep in mind that widespread Linux adoption means it will lose something special it has had from being relatively small on the desktop. This would be another Eternal September ... including a massive influx of entitled users and all that.

Because of that effect, I think there needs to be one or more for-profit Linux OS vendors prepared to absorb all the support and feedback needs (and contribute upstream, of course), and OEMs should only use it/them for anyone besides "advanced users and developers" or similar verbage.

SteamOS maybe?

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I've never understood why Red Hat never tried breaking into this space. People clearly don't mind paying for an OS and RHEL is pretty much as polished and well supported as you can get. A fork of RHEL geared towards home use would be fantastic. I know Fedora exists but it isn't backed by RH the way RHEL is.

Getting people to pay for an OS when the mainstream alternatives come bundled with hardware seems like a big lift.

If they could work with system 76 or something maybe yeah

Just like other companies, home users do not make much money compared to enterprises. No home user will pay $10,000 annually for example and think nothing of it.

Enterprises is where the money is, that is also why a company like Cisco do not make consumer devices

they were. before RHEL, red hat linux was sold as desktop operating system to consumers. as was SUSE and a few others.

Ah, I didn't actually know this! I wasn't around for the early days of Linux so I don't know much about it.

the problem is really that selling operating systems just doesn't work. people buy devices with the OS preinstalled. the only way to change that is to make that practice illegal, and force people to choose and pay for an OS at the time of purchasing their device.

There is money to be made on consumer level OS.

The reason people buy RHEL is because you can get support for any problems. Consumers are not gonna get that so they might as well just run CentOS Stream for example.

  > This would be another Eternal September ... including a massive influx of entitled users and all that.

Isn't that Ubuntu?

Jokes aside, I'm not too worried considering the plethora of distros. There's always been a range of them that target different subgroups. Which I think is where a lot of the magic comes from. Realistically, the kernel is about making an environment that everyone can build on top of. You can't make a product that meets the needs or desires of everyone, but you can certainly build environments which can be transformed to meet any needs. (Actually, I think that's the magic of programming and something we kinda lost sight of. Too focused on making "products" instead of environments)

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