The end for Mandriva

However, that was just one example of upstreams working on what would previously have been the work of a distribution. More generally, much of what a distribution would traditionally have done as "integration", such as making programs work together or use consistent appearances, has now been done in many upstream projects. Not perfectly, but to a degree that drastically reduces just how much distros need to do.

Similarly, Linux is much better about working with hardware out of the box, and many other pieces of software Just Work without needing changes.

There's still work for distributions to do, but it's much less than it used to be, and doing that work alone doesn't create something uniquely valuable.