More than anything else, the industry needs a unification of the Linux operating system, with one purveyor that can control the details of the operating system in such a way that you do not have all these confusing distros. The current flavor of the day is Ubuntu. In a year or two, it'll be another distro. Years ago there were good reasons for this internecine battling — a form of tribalism — but they are no longer valid. Linus Torvalds could make this happen overnight.

The market share for operating systems is still led by Windows XP, at 83.5 percent, followed by Windows 2000, with 3.9 percent. The Mac OS comes in third, with 3.7 percent, followed by Vista, with 3.5 percent. Linux as a desktop OS is still moribund, ad 1.3%, the same as laggards such as Windows 98.
This does not bode well for Linux on the desktop. There needs to be a rigid Linux standard or reference platform. Too many people have too much gear that simply doesn't work with Linux; either no drivers exist or the gear is just incompatible. People do not want to put together an elaborate system only to find that their printer doesn't work or that their system doesn't recognize the hard drive. Some sort of seal of approval list that covers the top 10 Linux distros and what works with them should reside in one place. Right now this information is scattered. It needs to be sensibly consolidated in one site with someone handing out "Approved Stickers."
Of course, the likelihood of this happening is zilch, since there are too many anarchists in the Linux community. Not that that's a bad thing.