Nobody is forcing anyone to go through all the different DE offerings.
Sometimes, innovation springs out of reiteration. You find out new ways of doing something, with its own set of tradeoffs, by pursing different avenues.
So please direct this energy towards something productive. Maybe write your own DE, or your own IDE. Who knows what would come out of it. Certainly something better than wasting energy on aimless ranting, that is for sure.
> Nobody is forcing anyone to go through all the different DE offerings.
That's not quite right. Laptops purchased with Linux will come with a DE chosen by the vendor, and in many cases it is something custom. System 76 puts PopOS on their machines (is it a Gnome? is it something else? the screenshot looks like Gnome; but the name says Cosmic; I don't even know anymore). Tuxedo installs Tuxedo OS, which, I believe, used to be based on Budgie (they've since switched to KDE last time I heard). Anything with preinstalled Ubuntu comes with Gnome. And so on. So yeah, there is an element of forcing customers into a particular DE, unless they are determined enough to just wipe the laptop clean and install a system of their choice.
I kind of agree with the GP, mostly because I feel like if we could focus the efforts of the various DE communities on a single project then we could finally get a Linux DE that has as much polish as Windows and MacOS.
Why do you think that all these different DEs exists? Because all those people that currently work on all those different DEs wouldn't be able to agree on anything if they were all working on the same DE. Lets also not forget about the mythical man month.
Not GP, but (all else being equal) the more people that are using the same DE as me, the better off I am. The more DEs that exist, the less likely a person installing linux will use the same DE as me.
