In a recent article on Desktoplinux.com, Kevin Carmony, former CEO of Linspire, reported that he has switched to Ubuntu. In the same article he also said that as Linux becomes more mainstream there would be a consolidation of Linux on the desktop. By this, I presume he meant that only a few of the big Linux distributors would be vying for the desktop space through OEM deals.

In order to determine when ‘the year of the Linux desktop’ arrives, we should look back in history and determine when ‘the year of the Windows desktop’ arrived and under what circumstances.

KDE 4.5 brings to the table plenty of useful, functional, innovative features. One of those very features is the Desktop Activity. The KDE Desktop Activities feature is a great new desktop metaphor that takes the Linux desktop to new levels of organization.

IBM Rational's "free radical" talks about the enduring difficulties of software development, his advocacy of open source and Second Life, and his license to kill. "The OS wars are largely over. Let's decide on a common platform. Therefore, Linux makes sense," said Grady Booch.

For many computer users, the desire to find something more cost effective than Windows has been growing from a low growl to a loud roar. Obviously not everyone is a great candidate to make the switch to the open source operating system. Once you are able to better understand some of the strengths of using the Linux desktop, however, you too might find that migrating makes a lot sense.

Quite a few reviews of new Linux releases these days try to determine if a distribution is "ready for the desktop." I myself have probably been guilty of using that phrase, but I think it's time we officially retire this criterion.

The Linux desktop reminds us of a dog humping a table leg. It's both fun and disturbing to watch, but ultimately there's very little payoff from the exercise.
Linux advocates, however, refuse to quit hoping that the leg humping will evolve into something spectacular. So we find yet another desktop panel discussion taking place at this year's LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco.

"This week's release of the Fedora 9 Linux distribution makes putting a full-fledged desktop on a portable USB thumb drive a three-click affair. Even better, you don't need Linux installed to create it, you can leave the data on your thumb drive untouched, and any files you create or settings you tweak remain in place the next time you boot up."

Look around your organization. What does your end-user desktop environment look like? Windows-based PCs? Docked laptops? Some combination thereof? Look around your organization five years from now, and the desktop landscape will appear very different.