[twblalock]

> What can the Linux Desktop ecosystem learn from this?

Fundamentally the problem is lack of alignment between all the different people working on the Linux desktop. Nobody is in charge promoting a single vision and herding all the cats to achieve it, and nobody ever will be, because the Linux community won't accept it.

That leads to fragmentation, and because there are so many moving parts that aren't developed in alignment, users need to tinker with their desktops to get the outcomes they want.

The problem is, some people seem to think Linux on the desktop can become popular with the general public despite the fragmentation and tinkering needed to make it work. That's not going to happen. The Linux community cannot have it both ways: fragmentation and success on the desktop are incompatible.

For a while, it seemed possible that Ubuntu would overcome that contradiction by offering a curated Linux desktop for normal people that would become so widespread it would end up being the de facto Linux desktop, and anything else would be a special flavor for people who really wanted to tinker. But that hasn't really panned out, and a lot of the opposition to Ubuntu comes from within the Linux community.