My point is that, the perceived "wasted effort" is actually learning and re-thinking the desktop. Many novel approaches to simpler OS's and package managers have risen, due to the diversity of the FOSS ecosystem.

Just like Darwinian evolution, many projects spawn into existence, only the fittest survive. The projects/distro's that don't survive were not a waste, they serve to prove which ideas work/don't work. Making all projects better off.

> "Just look at the tons of distro configurations that a software vendor needs to test for"

True there's many distros, but there's no reason to support them all, only the biggest. It's similar to translating books into other languages, you would translate a book to [1] Dumi, as it's the least used language on Earth.

Most Vendors only support the top OS's which are probably Windows, MacOS and Ubuntu.

> "Perhaps the reason the Linux desktop has failed is because of the lack of a standard desktop or common SDKs other than the Linux kernel itself."

This is a real point, and is something snap, flatpack etc. are trying to fix. Maybe one day a Linux desktop will unify on a standard...

[1] https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/rare-languages-spoken/#....