Desktop Linux market share had a growth of about 50% last year according to the recent data by NetMarketShare. If we look at the data for year 2010, there was no growth at all. However, in 2011, starting from 0.96% market share in February, desktop Linux market share ended at 1.41%.

Good looks was never supposed to be a priority for Linux apps. It wasn't so long ago that we seemed to be struggling to get even basic eye-candy such as anti-aliased fonts to work on the Linux desktop, but things have changed almost beyond recognition. It's now fair to say that the Linux desktop is at the forefront of visual effect, a cornucopia of eye-candy overflowing on to your desktop.

For years technology fans have been fighting over one of the most foolish mottos ever mentioned by the Linux community: “the year of the Linux desktop.” So rather than continuing the usual arguments any further, I want to instead take an honest look at where today's desktop Linux distributions are from a casual user perspective.

A complaint you hear quite often is that the Linux desktop environments, which mostly refers to KDE and GNOME, are trying too hard to be like Windows and Mac OS X.

I have heard every year predictions of each year being the year of the Linux desktop. I've got some bad news for you. It's not coming soon. Not this decade, probably not the next. The good news? We don't need a year of the Linux desktop.