I totally agree with you with respect to distribution fragmentation. Fragmentation there is much worse and definitely harmful at this point.
My above statement was specifically about the desktop environments, and DEs actually fit into your scenario. There are only 2 major DEs which have most mindshare, followed by handful of smaller ones. So there is not a bad fragmentation in that area (at least historically, there is now more diversity compared to 5 years ago), and the major ones have been with us for many years, AFAIK since late 90's? That's not only plenty of time to turn both of them into kick ass desktops, but also create wonderful ecosystems around them with high quality applications. Yet all we see is rewriting or porting everything every few years.
My above statement was specifically about the desktop environments, and DEs actually fit into your scenario. There are only 2 major DEs which have most mindshare, followed by handful of smaller ones. So there is not a bad fragmentation in that area (at least historically, there is now more diversity compared to 5 years ago), and the major ones have been with us for many years, AFAIK since late 90's? That's not only plenty of time to turn both of them into kick ass desktops, but also create wonderful ecosystems around them with high quality applications. Yet all we see is rewriting or porting everything every few years.