Nearly every year for the last decade I've heard some pundit or vendor proclaim from the rooftops: This is the year of the Linux desktop. Yet, year in and year out, the proclamations don't materialize.

Whatever you do, 2009 is looking to be a big year. That no exception when it comes to Linux. Applications and large projects continue to develop and make major releases multiple times per year.

Every year since 2004 has been touted as the year of the Linux desktop. That year where Linux of some flavor makes huge inroads into the home and work desktop scene. Every year these predictions have fallen short. Now 2008 being the year of the Linux desktop stories are already making the rounds.

2010 is going to be a good year for Linux on the desktop. No, tens of millions of Windows users aren’t going to see the light and suddenly switch. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Linux will continue to make steady gains.

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.

GNU Radio had a pretty good year in 2010, and we are already on track for an even more productive year in 2011. While we only produced one release in 2010, a large amount of work went into our source repository to improve the quality and stability of the project, and we are on track for a new release soon that incorporates many of these fixes into a new stable release.

I love the illustration for a Linux Haxor story, Obligatory Year-End Positive Linux Predictions. It features Bart Simpson at the school blackboard, which is covered with "Year of the Linux desktop." I understand all too well how people can tire of endless predictions that this (fill-in-the-blank) year will be the year of the Linux desktop. There's only one problem with all these predictions.

It's become a tradition (and a bit of a running joke) for bloggers and tech pundits to declare that this year (whatever year you're in) will be The Year of the Linux Desktop. So in following with that tradition, I'm here to declare that 2010 will be The Year of the Linux Desktop, but not in the sense that many other bloggers have stated.

Until a few years ago, hardly a day went by without an article being featured on Linux Today about how “the year of Linux” had arrived. Every Linux user with a blog was willing to bet, year after year, that this was finally going to be “the year of Linux.” This was going to be the year when the public got wise, quit paying the Microsoft tax and moved over to the obviously superior Linux.