DAWN OF THE ÜBER-DISTRO

Dear Linux Magazine Reader,

Many years ago, when Linux was still a new experience

we were all trying to understand, a friend of mine predicted that someday, when all the dust had settled, there wouldn’t be all these parallel and separate Linux systems. “Eventually,” he said, “only one will be left standing.” The prediction seemed unrealistic. No one really knew what was happening (in all honesty), but it really seemed like the General Public License, with its protections to ensure that all code would be shared, would prevent anyone from cornering the market. What company would invest so much in something they couldn’t control? And who but a big corporation would have the money, the global reach, and the management savvy to launch an operation capable of overwhelming the competition?