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Distributions were never meant to describe distinct OSs. The term literally describes a collection of packages: or “distribution of packages” to be more precise ;)

The point of distros was never about a limitation of abstraction at the kernel level. It was about different ways of packaging or user space tools; or about what tools came pre-configured as part of that particular package of Linux+tools. This is as true in the very early days of Slackware and Debian as it is now.

Personally I like the variety out there, I call it “choice”. I don’t like Ubuntu Desktop - I’m not taking anything away from those who do but it’s just not a platform I feel at home on. If the choice were “Ubuntu or nothing” then I’d probably be running FreeBSD. But because we have choice it means I can run whatever opinionated flavour of Linux I want and you can run whatever opinionated flavour you want - even if our opinions differ - and thus we all still run Linux.

The whole “Linux on the desktop” argument doesn’t make much sense anymore. We now have WSL, Chromebooks, Netbooks, Android tablets and GNU user space tools that run on OSX via homebrew and/or Docker. Not to mention various hardware vendors who do take Linux compatibility seriously on their laptops (even if they may not always ship Linux “out of the box”). Plus many of everyday GUI tools we use these days are now web applications because of how platform agnostic the wider computing landscape has become. So while we haven’t seen a surge of GNU/Linux desktops in the traditional Windows sense, I do think Linux / open source has already won in terms of breaking up the Microsoft monopoly.