I REALLY don't think you will like my answer. Back in the eighties when, ten years after the rest of my family I started getting interested in computers, there were three types of Computer Users. MacUsers (a.k.a. MacFascists) were usually well heeled and had BFA's or Humanities degrees. As far as they were concerned, the rest of us were barbarians. MS-DOS users were a catchall group I should probably mention last, but I have a point in this. On the one hand MS-DOS had, at the time IBM behind it and IBM was trusted by the suits. On the other hand one advantage it had over the Macintosh was it was more open to direct access to the hardware, which was fairly standard, so things were both faster and more reliable than on the Macintosh (though the latter was the machine with the GUI). Finally there were the Unix geeks. Hands down, these were the most arrogant people I knew. One of them ACTUALLY YELLED AT ME for doing a drawing in his presence with burnt match sticks. I should have gotten some "real" art supplies. Dork. (admittedly I only have a BA in fine arts, not the tougher BFA). They for the most part knew what you use a computer for, they said -- and this and that. Even the computer press said that Unix geeks were more arrogant than the rest of us and I believed it.
With Windows, of course, Redmond proved that they felt they knew what you use a computer for, and were and are determined to control it. The Olympics will be available on the Internet here in the US only if you have Silverlight installed. When someone on GrokLaw commented on that and added Adobe was safer to play footsie with -- meaning their products involve vendor lock-in too, all I could think of and I commented on was that with their contracts with various commercial printing companies like Pantone, the difference was with Microsoft you were locked into one vendor, with Adobe, at least three, maybe more. He seemed to think I was criticizing him. I'm really just horrified by what Microsoft is doing to our installed knowledge base as they try to replace EVERYONE's standards with their own.
Jobs went into exile for a while to NeXT computers, and returned to spread the gospel of Unix at Apple, and a subset of Unix geeks came up with Linux, which over the last fifteen years has become the last resort for everyone else. Ubuntu Linux is an Ubuntu gesture. dyne:bolic is RASTA software, and the National Security Agency has come up with SELinux -- while Red Hat/Fedora has become something very strange I don't necessarily think should be compared to other distros.
I'm sorry to have to tell you this but Linux is a transmongrified Unix. It fulfills the same function MS-DOS used to play in the eighties, yes, but in essence it was designed by and for engineers and the consumer modifications are merely ONE development of this.
And the Old Unix Geeks are still around. And they still have their opinions about what makes sense from an engineering point of view (and some of them use ball point pens. Yuck).
We aren't going to settle these arguments and we aren't going to supress them without disrespecting people who DO deserve our UTMOST respect if not agreement. Donald Knuth recently revealed he mainly uses an Ubuntu notebook.
So no. No truce. vi against emacs, Gnome vs. KDE and for that matter the console vs. GUI (console RULZ). And of course Novell paid Miguel de Icaza to put that HORRIBLE Mono in Gnome. You walk into most Linux User Group meetings and you won't hear many arguments -- Novell made a deal with the Devil and we should boycott OpenSuse. This is probably being READ by OpenSuse users.
The differences will not go away, and suppressing them will cause more harm and disrespect than good.
EDIT: I stand by this answer. The past is STILL HERE. WHO ARE YOU TO TELL IT TO SHUT UP?