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Cinnamon, the popular desktop environment featured in Linux Mint, makes more sense as a distribution-agnostic package.
[...] Since time immemorial—or, more likely, the late 1990s—the intractable problem of “fragmentation of the Linux desktop” has been debated on the internet. While some contend that the wide variety of competing distributions offers more choice to users, that choice can also be overwhelming—making it too difficult for new users to decide on a distribution, or leading them to choose a distribution that is poorly-built or unsupported, providing a bad first experience.
While these arguments have merit, they ignore a critical problem: The infrastructure and developer attention needed to maintain a distribution is extensive, and difficult to justify. Long-running Linux distributions have stopped operations due to a lack of resources, and it is time for Linux Mint to consider doing the same in order to prevent developer burnout, while transitioning Cinnamon into being a fully platform-agnostic desktop environment.
[...] CERN withdrew from Scientific Linux in 2015, beginning a migration to CentOS, with Fermilab announcing their own migration to CentOS 8 as part of the transition from their own distribution.
[...] Likewise, the Arch-based Antergos distribution announced plans to shut down, as the developers "no longer have enough free time to properly maintain Antergos," and that "continuing to neglect the project would be a huge disservice to the community."
[...] Ultimately, the benefit of Cinnamon can be realized as a truly distribution-agnostic desktop environment. Most of the work is already done: Fedora already has a Cinnamon spin, and can be installed in Debian, OpenSuSE, and Arch (among others). Transitioning Linux Mint development efforts to make Cinnamon an Ubuntu Flavor—adhering more tightly to Ubuntu's infrastructure and release timelines, rather than operating independently and running the risk causing package conflicts—would deduplicate a great deal of work, providing more time to further improve Cinnamon, and ease the strained schedules of Clem and other Linux Mint contributors.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday May 31 2019, @07:21AM
Everytime I see this objection to Linux, I want to puke on the submitter. Too many choices? Seriously? "If only we had only one consistent desktop interface, like Wenderloss, or Appal!" No, we do not want that. We want free software, and we are not disturbed but a plethora of choices! (Notice how I snuck in the word "plethora" there; locus classicus, "The Three Amigos", where El Guapo asks his no2, "would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?") Yes, it takes quite a bit of resources to maintain a distro, but it takes even more to resist the forces of evil. Debian has fallen, one of its founders assassinated. Ubuntu was always suspect, and SuSE explictly sold out to the Dark Lord. And Red Hat, not many know that the source of this name was not a fedora, but the CIA's code name for Russian Military officers that defected during the Soviet Era, but they have spawned Poettering and the systemd. The horror, the horror!
So anytime I see anyone calling explicitly for the demise of a distro, I know I am facing a Microsoft shill. Please go and have a blue screen of death you anti-technology marketing undead types!