sigh.

The reason almost everyone's using X is there's a massive barrier to getting a basic working solution for an alternative. Lots of difficult drivers to write. EDID data to handle. Lots of really difficult event handling code to write. Then you've got to get lots of applications to support drawing onto you - or support the X protocol, which is a huge amount of work. All for something that's reasonably transparent to the majority of users and for most users doesn't greatly affect their day to day workflow.

Writing a simple working alternative desktop is child's play in comparison.

So let's say you get your way and there's "one linux desktop". Well, I don't like it because of reason xyz. So I go and write a different one with a couple of buddies. Bam. There are two linux desktops.