> Trading one lock-in for another?
Not at all. You seem to misunderstand
what a "distribution" is. To illustrate, here
is the source code for the LibreOffice Office suite for Linux. LibreOffice is
open source, there is only one source code available. This means that
LibreOffice for Linux is essentially the same for a Linux distributions.
What
Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, do is they take this source code and
compile and build it with a build environment for that particular distribution.
They package the resulting binary in a format suitable for use with the package
manager and repositories of that distribution. They put the packages in the
distribution's repositories, and make it available for users to download. These
binary packages are generally not suitable for use on any other
distribution.
But there is absolutely no lock-in, because the exact same
source code is taken, compiled, built, packaged and distributed by other
distributions as well. LibreOffice for Linux is the same application no matter
the distribution. There are not different versions written for different
distributions.
Now if you don't like LibreOffice, there is now an emerging
alternative Office Suite targetted at the KDE4 desktop called the Calligra Suite. There is only one
source code for this suite also, and any distribution can distribute it,
although you would probably only find it offered by a KDE4 distribution. This
alternative suite uses the same file format (OpenDocument {ODF} 1.2) and is
completely interoperable with LibreOffice.
So applications are
interoperable, and shared amongst distributions. Even the distributions
themselves are based on one another. For example, Blue
Systems, the company which now sponsors the Kubuntu distribution, also puts
together the Netrunner
distribution, which is based on the same code, and can use the same binary
packages.
You can run LibreOffice or the Calligra suite on any of these
distributions, and any of them will run on any system (including the ODROID-X)
which runs Ubuntu, or Debian, or any other Linux for that matter.
So where
is the lock-in? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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