When I read through the release announcements of most Linux distributions, the updates seem repetitive and uninspired—typically featuring little more than a newer kernel, a desktop environment upgrade, and the latest versions of popular applications (which have nothing to do with the distro itself). It feels like there’s a shortage of meaningful innovation, to the point that they tout updates to Firefox or LibreOffice as if they were significant contributions from the distribution itself.
It raises the question: are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software? Are they adding any genuinely useful features or applications that differentiate them from one another? And more importantly, should they be?
Maybe I’m just old, but I thought a distribution is literally just a package delivery basically, just like you speculated. Making software work together nicely is actually already hard enough IMO. I don’t think anything is wrong. Valid question though
I was thinking that exact thing lol. I’m like, yes ‘distributions’ are distributing new softwares with the new kernel.
And the improvement in desktop environments does feel like a good improvement considering the user is interacting most with it.
Or maybe I’m just apathetic to these things because most things I care about my distribution are that it provides me a good package manager for external and self made programs. And everything else is just programs installed through said package manager.