This is devolving off-topic... why does a comparison about Linux distros invariably turn into a hate-fest against Windows?
Respectfully, this is why you need "207 distros." With Windows, you are stuck with what Microsoft implemented.
Riiiiiight, that's why there aren't any proprietary applications people can buy to run on Windows -- because consumers are stuck and Microsoft wouldn't dare let third parties create applications. And as far as choices, I guess we should overlook the fact that Microsoft released too many distinct versions of Vista for the market to bear (more even than the official Canonical releases of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu...). You know Microsoft wouldn't dare release Windows in any language but American English, so I guess you have the localization thing to hang onto. And thank goodness none of the open source projects cater to Windows, either, because that would mean people could run Windows AND open source applications and you know Microsoft wouldn't let that happen.
Oops, snap... even that one's fail:
http://www.opensourcelist.org/oss/suggestedapplications.htmlLet's recap (counting GNU-style so as not to offend anyone):
0. Linux can be customized. Windows can be customized.
1. Settings in Linux can be tweaked. Settings in Windows can be tweaked.
2. Linux can be localized. Windows is localized.
3. Linux has access to open source applications. Windows has access to open source applications.
4. Linux requires learning things to get the most out of it. Windows requires learning things to get the most out of it.
What was your point again? Oh yeah, that you need hundreds of variations of Linux to get less than 2% of desktop marketshare compared to the "handful" of Windows versions (not XP versus Vista, but Home Premium versus Business Premium) that still make up >90% of consumer and enterprise workstations. Because <2% needs to be liquidated into tiny fractions of per-distro marketshare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systemsI concur with tclfan that fragmentation hasn't served Linux adoption well. Neither have all these misguided attacks on Microsoft, which more often than not are total BS. (I don't consider myself a big fan of Microsoft but I'm also not a reflexive hater of Microsoft, either. OpenOffice.org, texlive, emacs, vim, gimp, firefox, thunderbird, etc., all run the same on Windows as they do on Linux -- they're OS-agnostic.
Back on-topic for a moment: Most people are OS-agnostic, too, but want to stick with what's already familiar to them. That comfort zone thing also applies here since TinyCore is quite unique compared to what people expect when installing and using a Linux distro. They've come to expect -- and now demand -- Windows-like installation and operation. They freak out when it requires learning something new or different from what they already know, and thus they want "pre-configured TinyCore" -- which is no longer TinyCore since it moves the entire discussion from building to suit personal tastes to trying to achieve some kind of "standard" or ideal about what a Linux distro should be or do -- images, etc. The question is whether they should be catered to and to what extent. I used to say this a lot somewhere else: if you want a Debian-like system, just install Debian. There's nothing wrong with that. But TinyCore isn't slitaz or Puppy or anything else. It is TinyCore and what makes it so unique also makes it not so universally acceptable. If a moderator wants to strike this post for being off topic, at least leave this part.)
Linux distributions can pick a target audience and customize for its needs. There are heavily localized distributions for various countries, distributions for easy use by children, distributions for clustering, or distributions for firewalls (try that with XP) for example. Windows is "one OS to rule them all, one OS to find them / one OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them / in the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie."
Oy. Comparing Linux to XP? Well, if you do that then it's fair to compare Windows 7 (or Vista even) to kernel 2.2 and KDE 1. Sure ya wanna do that?
FWIW, Microsoft makes more than one flavor of each operating system and it separates its products with respect to workstation and server -- has since way back in the NT days. Some Linux distros don't even do that so you end up installing server software on a workstation and workstation software (like X, haha) on a server.
If you take the time to search for Windows Server Firewall... well, never mind. This is already way off topic and I think I've made my point.