Honestly, when you say

are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software?

— I have to wonder what you think is so trivial about keeping your system current with latest bug fixes and security updates?

I don't need or want a distro to radically reinvent itself with every release. I had enough of that fuckery with Windows, way back when — incidentally, also a direct reason I quit that OS. And seeing "big changes" like Ubuntu deciding to functionally deprecate deb packages is... unappealing to me as well.

There are probably sexier updates going on in DEs, but (insofar as a distro isn't wedded to one particular desktop environment) I'm fine to let them hog that glamour.

Some of them add bugs disguised as features, like Ubuntu’s snap

Since adopting a Flatpak and containerized workflow, the choice of distribution matters a lot less to me now than it did 10 years ago.

The majority of apps that I use everyday can be run from any host. And I can install fedora, arch, debian, or whatever I want as a container, whenever I want it, without any thought to my host system.

Ideally, Flatpak's UX will continue to improve, and upstream app devs will continue to adopt it as an official support channel, which will improve overall security and confidence of the platform. Image-based, atomic distros will be further streamlined, allowing for even more easily interchangeable host images. At that point, traditional distros will be little more than an opinionated collection of command line tools and programming environments.

A distro is composed of:

• an installer
• base system (bootloader, filesystems, service runner, DE, basic apps, settings)
• packet manager and packaged software
• an updater between releases

The biggest things you notice are updated packages. Many of the base-system differences aren't even pushed to updated installations. Most of what the user sees as °the os° is the DE anyway.

Since I started using the Nix package manager and switched to NixOS, the notion of a “Linux distribution” faded into little more than “A bootloader + the Linux kernel + some userspace programs”.

It's kind of in the word distribution, no? Distros package and ... distribute software.

Larger distros usually do a quite a bit of kernel work as well, and they often include bugfixes or other changes in their kernel that isn't in mainline or stable. Enterprise-grade distributions often backport hardware support from newer kernels into their older kernels. But even distros with close-to-latest kernels like Tumbleweed or Fedora do this to a certain extent. This isn't limited to the kernel and often extends to many other packages.

They also do a lot of (automated) testing, just look at openQA for example. That's a big part of the reason why Tumbleweed (relatively) rarely breaks. If all they did was collect an up-to-date version of every package they want to ship, it'd probably be permanently broken.

Also, saying they "just" update the desktop environment doesn't do it justice. DEs like KDE and GNOME are a lot more than just something that draws application windows on your screen. They come with userspace applications and frameworks. They introduce features like vastly improved HDR support (KDE 6.2, usually along with updates to Wayland etc.).

Some of the rolling (Tumbleweed) or more regular (Fedora) releases also push for more technical changes. Fedora dropped X11 by default on their KDE spin with v40, and will likely drop X11 with their default GNOME distro as well, now that GNOME no longer requires it even when running Wayland. Tumbleweed is actively pushing for great systemd-boot support, and while it's still experimental it's already in a decent state (not ready for prime time yet though).

Then, distros also integrate packages to work together. A good example of this is the built-in enabled-by-default snapshot system of Tumbleweed (you might've figured out that I'm a Tumbleweed user by now): it uses snapper to create btrfs snapshots on every zypper (package manager) system update, and not only can you rollback a running system, you can boot older snapshots directly from the grub2 or systemd-boot bootloader. You can replicate this on pretty much any distro (btrfs support is in the kernel, snapper is made by an openSUSE member but available for other distros etc.), but it's all integrated and ready to go out of the box. You don't have to configure your package manager to automatically create snapshots with snapper, the btrfs subvolume layout is already setup for you in a way that makes sense, you don't have to think about how you want to add these snapshots to your bootloader, etc.

So distros or their authors do a lot and their releases can be exciting in a way, but maybe not all of that excitement is directly user-facing.

You should use Arch, btw

I think you are looking at work horse distros, like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.. That by now are heavily used for productive work, not personal use. So they favor stability and minor quality of life improvements over shiny new updates.

There's plenty shiny new cutting edge distros out there that are innovating, e.g. Nix, Silverblue, VanillaOS, all the container focused ones CoreOS, Container OS, Flatcar Container Linux and probably dozens more newer ones I am not aware of .

a shortage of meaningful innovation

Well... a distribution IS a selection of packages and a way to keep them working together. Arguably the "only" innovation in that context is HOW to do that and WHICH packages to rely on. For the first, the "latest" real change could be considered immutable distributions, as on the SteamDeck, and declarative setup, e.g. NixOS. For the second... well I don't actually know if anybody is doing that, maybe things like PrimTux for kids at schools in France?

Anyway, I agree but I think it's tricky to be innovative there so let me flip the question, what would YOU expect from an innovative distribution?

I guess if you want exciting new features you can just switch to a different distro nowadays or add them yourself. Why should distros add more stuff making them bloated or change stuff turning users away that like how things are currently? For general use you really don't need a lot of fancy new stuff.

I mean that is kinda the point of a distro. If they’re good the work gets merged upstream and benefits everyone. They collate and bug test and conflict resolve (It’s more involved than that, but for the sake of simplicity)

The role of a distribution is to curate packages - select the right combination of versions and verify if it works together. Providing package repositories is also a big one, imagine if you had to compile everything on your machine yourself on every update (khm gentoo khm).

Other than that there isn't really a lot of space for innovation. After you have a kernel, some base packages, package manager, and maybe a DE, you can install everything else yourself.
The main point of differentiation these days in on the package management side - do you want a rolling release, or a more conservative approach.

There is one point of innovation left, but it highly technical and somewhat risky for everyday users - libc alternatives. The C standard library is one of the few core packages in a distro that can't really be replaced by the user.

I think distros at least do some stuff beyond repackaging the latest software, namely default configurations (or lack thereof).

For instance, technically Debian has the packages to do SELinux, but it's Fedora (and OpenSUSE, I think?) that actually come out the box with them.

They are also continually improving, if slowly, their package managers to improve the experience of sourcing new software, as seen with work on apt and dnf.

You are right overall that new distro releases have little meaning any more. If anything, I think they are a good method for managing the upgrades to new software; when a release comes out, breakages can be addresses all at once and solved for a couple of years, whereas rolling release requires a person to be vigilant and repair breakages more often. That is not to pan rolling - I use Debian Testing on my desktop. As much as I like newer software, though, I am thinking of staying on Trixie after it becomes stable, as I get tired of applying updates all the time and then something breaking that is incredible difficult to diagnose.

no*, no, and no.

*not the ones i'm interested in using.

the deployed architecture of linux is still evolving right now and there are lots of distros experimenting with different approaches

• how the basic core OS is structured - immutability, A/B partitions, versioned rollback
• how third party applications are executed - containerization, compatibilty, virtualization, bare metal
• how software is updated and stored - package management (apt, pacman, nix, flatpak)

i'm sure i've missed other features of new linux distros. this is all really important stuff but has nothing to do with the apps you actually use day to day

This reminds me of Rob Pikes paper from the year 2000.
http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html

No. Kubuntu now has a non-broken KDE Plasma. Fedora 41 has a slightly improved Plasma 6. CentOS Stream 10 with EPEL 10 will have Plasma 6 too, which is a huge step in "being something I could consider switching to".

they shouldn't. everything should be rolling.