A search for "linux ready for desktop" brings millions of results on any search engine. The phrase "Linux Desktop Year" has been around 5 years now. Over the years, the question on its validity has been asked again and again. Fundamentally what does one mean by "Linux Desktop Year"?

A recent story at NewsForge made the point that people have been over-using the phrase; "ready for the desktop" a lot for the Linux desktop lately. His point, besides the fact that it's gotten to be one tired phrase, is that the real question is: whether "the OS is ready for your desktop? "

Every few months, a pundit asks, "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" The implication, of course, is that it hasn't been -- at least, not until very recently. Yet those who actually use a GNU/Linux desktop know that the operating system has been ready for some years.

Nobody questions whether Mac OS X is ready for the desktop. With GNU/Linux, however, the story is different. For over a decade, columnists and bloggers have been explaining how GNU/Linux isn't ready for the desktop -- and, despite all the progress in the operating system over the last ten years, the arguments haven't changed much.

Many people now believe that Linux represents a viable alternative. Today, with mainstream hardware vendors like Dell offering Linux installations and some folks thinking a major shift is about to happen, it's time to take another look at Linux on the desktop.

Linux as a Desktop has been a work in progress for years now. After being flamed for complaining about it’s weaknesses, I decided to give it another chance to be fair.

It is interesting now. If you do a search for Linux and “not ready for prime time” you get a few people (presumably Linux fans) who will even question the term “prime time.” Rather than address valid concerns in the Linux community (by non-Linux users), they question what does “ready for prime time actually mean?”

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.

Is the Linux desktop ready for mainstream users? The developers behind the latest KDE Linux desktop release would probably say yes, that it lives up to the promise of the first KDE 4.0 release a year ago. KDE 4.2 is the second major point release for the KDE 4.x desktop. Its codename, "The Answer," also telegraphs its goals.