Excellent analysis of the problem. Universal config parsing, UI/ux consistency, and text stream support are foundational to a unified Linux. I would like to see a concerted and organized effort to unify coding progress in a similar direction... Sounds a lot like a software development team, that would want money

As much as I will never touch the DE ever again, GNOME's reliance on simple text files made it an absolute joy to use with Nix home-manager. I would be 100% on board with using gnome settings infra across the board.

I would argue the fragmentation is a feature, not a bug. Part of the “free” is to be able to do whatever you want. There’s a price to pay for it but unifying requires discipline and governance. And governance requires authority. And the whole point is we can write whatever the hell we want.

Why, Windows itself ships with multiple Windows desktops these days.

Typical xkcd 927 case.

The problem is that Gnome/KDE/XFCE and others aren't strictly-speaking Linux-specific, but support other Unix-like operating systems. This makes possible standardization much more comlpex.

Isn't the beauty of Unix the amount of options in FOSS built specifically for it, at this point? Why would you restrict anything in this space