I think Darwin is still open source, and WebKit is still open source.

You gotta have more empathy for the average person.

If the average person cared about binary size in terms of bloat, then being that smartphone apps are almost all statically linked, why are smartphones the most popular computer in the world?

To them bloat would feel more like apps you can’t delete, or say ads in a key gui component.

The bloat most people will care about in terms of Linux is facing down a software update prompt with 1000 packages and feeling anxiety over the last such dialog box destroying the use of their favorite apps.

I’m glad there are hundreds of successful distros, their complexities will serve well the hundreds of Linux desktop users.

Yeah, there is definitely a delineation between system and user, and like most things the line will be fuzzy.

But in that end-user software space, 300mb is a pittance to pay for a minor system package update not breaking their favorite application, or a user not being able to use software because their distro is one version behind on libfoo.

What if who cares?

When I used to build app packages internally I also built packages for our own python and ruby versions for our in-house software. The motto was: “system packages are for system software”. We weren’t writing system software, we were writing business software and shipping it, so why be dependent on what Redhat or Debian provided?

Universal packages are just an extension of this philosophy, and is why things like docker and app stores are such a success. Burdening the user with getting system dependencies right is worse than the DLL hell of the old windows days.