Agreed that I haven't really been hit by any problems with different programs using different desktop environments.
I'm using XFCE, but with it I am only running GNOME programs yet it's running them far faster than Gnome does and they blend in perfectly. (Since it seems that they both use the same library for skinning, or something...)
It would be nice if those desktop environments shared a single smart library for stuff like the main menu, panel / desktop applets, panels, etc. , though. Adding GNOME applets to an XFCE panel involves adding yan XFCE applet that hosts GNOME applets, which is very tiresome to do.
As for programs not always agreeing on what to use... Apt is a great invention.
My eMail program and my web browser use different libraries? Who cares?! (I sure won't notice, since it all installs automatically anyway unless a bunch of sponge-brained rhinoceroses screwed up the repositories).
It could be said that these numerous libraries is a space problem, but that isn't true. Also thanks to smart package management, every unused package is removed (and this even includes stuff like installed XFCE applets that aren't attached to any panels). No packages are installed twice, so I save space.
The Democracy Video Player takes up about half as much space in Ubuntu as it does in Windows, for example.
Standards are there, in the form of popular packages such as DBus, and of course that wonderful application management thing which usually only breaks if a user (be it yourself or the repository people) has done something stupid.
I doubt Linux will ever have a huge number of standards, because that would go against its open-endedness. If everything was tied down to the same method of communication, there wouldn't be as much innovation such as what is being attempted by Project Looking Glass. Abstraction layers and the like are definietly good, though, to keep things from going out of date. For the most part it doesn't matter since everything seems to talk to everything else just fine. (And when it doesn't work, it just doesn't work; nothing cataclysmic happens).
Edit:
I'm going to back up the package management joy with this thread here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=326700
This is using the Ubuntu Feisty (7.04, I believe) development release, and I encountered a complete disaster with packages. Every single package installed had mysteriously disappeared, only one (very old) kernel was booting (nice that I have the selection, though!), though everything seemed to run fine (for example, the web browser which the package manager claimed was not installed and not installable was working fine) except that apt was moaning at me and the system seemed to start being clattery after a while.
This, obviously, was very bad. The solution was also very bad, since the package manager decided that the best way was to remove even more packages, then install everything again. (Except losing me a bit of my software). I did it anyway, and it all worked flawlessly; I dug the computer out of an enormous hole, reinstalled 80% of my programs (essentially the whole operating system; no, these were not all user-space), and even installed something new while I was at it... all with the OS (in its full GUI glory) still running from start to finish with only a single restart suggested at the very end. It all ran perfectly again, even before I restarted.
With Windows, this would have definitely meant a complete reinstall; no questions asked. In Ubuntu, I just pressed a few buttons and watched as the thing somehow fixed itself.
(Of course, probably neither Windows or Mac OS would encounter such a package management cataclysm in reality, but that's beyond my point and this was a development version so these things are bound to happen).
I'm using XFCE, but with it I am only running GNOME programs yet it's running them far faster than Gnome does and they blend in perfectly. (Since it seems that they both use the same library for skinning, or something...)
It would be nice if those desktop environments shared a single smart library for stuff like the main menu, panel / desktop applets, panels, etc. , though. Adding GNOME applets to an XFCE panel involves adding yan XFCE applet that hosts GNOME applets, which is very tiresome to do.
As for programs not always agreeing on what to use... Apt is a great invention.
My eMail program and my web browser use different libraries? Who cares?! (I sure won't notice, since it all installs automatically anyway unless a bunch of sponge-brained rhinoceroses screwed up the repositories).
It could be said that these numerous libraries is a space problem, but that isn't true. Also thanks to smart package management, every unused package is removed (and this even includes stuff like installed XFCE applets that aren't attached to any panels). No packages are installed twice, so I save space.
The Democracy Video Player takes up about half as much space in Ubuntu as it does in Windows, for example.
Standards are there, in the form of popular packages such as DBus, and of course that wonderful application management thing which usually only breaks if a user (be it yourself or the repository people) has done something stupid.
I doubt Linux will ever have a huge number of standards, because that would go against its open-endedness. If everything was tied down to the same method of communication, there wouldn't be as much innovation such as what is being attempted by Project Looking Glass. Abstraction layers and the like are definietly good, though, to keep things from going out of date. For the most part it doesn't matter since everything seems to talk to everything else just fine. (And when it doesn't work, it just doesn't work; nothing cataclysmic happens).
Edit:
I'm going to back up the package management joy with this thread here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=326700
This is using the Ubuntu Feisty (7.04, I believe) development release, and I encountered a complete disaster with packages. Every single package installed had mysteriously disappeared, only one (very old) kernel was booting (nice that I have the selection, though!), though everything seemed to run fine (for example, the web browser which the package manager claimed was not installed and not installable was working fine) except that apt was moaning at me and the system seemed to start being clattery after a while.
This, obviously, was very bad. The solution was also very bad, since the package manager decided that the best way was to remove even more packages, then install everything again. (Except losing me a bit of my software). I did it anyway, and it all worked flawlessly; I dug the computer out of an enormous hole, reinstalled 80% of my programs (essentially the whole operating system; no, these were not all user-space), and even installed something new while I was at it... all with the OS (in its full GUI glory) still running from start to finish with only a single restart suggested at the very end. It all ran perfectly again, even before I restarted.
With Windows, this would have definitely meant a complete reinstall; no questions asked. In Ubuntu, I just pressed a few buttons and watched as the thing somehow fixed itself.
(Of course, probably neither Windows or Mac OS would encounter such a package management cataclysm in reality, but that's beyond my point and this was a development version so these things are bound to happen).