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.

Newsflash people. There is no “Year of the Linux Desktop”. There will never be one. Before you start looking for sharp rocks to throw at me, let me start by saying I am a Linux user. I worked with all major distributions, roamed in Slackware land for about two years, tried to get accustomed to Red Hat’s RPM hell in a time when Linux was a wasteland and there were only a bunch of people that were using it.

What are Red Hat, Novell and Canonical going to have to do in 2008 to in order to dominate the desktop and server Linux market?

There have been a couple of thought-provoking columns that have been published recently that I wanted to add my own two cents. Not that the authors of these missives were completely wrong in their conclusions, But I think some added perspective is needed to highlight that their points, while having some validity, still fall short of where Linux is right now and how it's going to move forward.

I've been hearing the phrase "This is the year of the Linux desktop" for 10 years. For me, it's been a true statement for each of those years, because GNU/Linux has been my primary desktop operating system since 1997. But for most people around the world, this is the year of the the Windows desktop, same as it was last year and the year before.

You know, I've been hungering for some good old hard numbers to provide a major motivational kick in the butt and scream: "Yes, you ARE making a dent!!!" And I think I found my butt kicking leg: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6427/4/

This past month has seen a flurry activity from a number of players in the Linux desktop space. Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu, Dell, Lenovo and even Intel white box system builders are getting into the act. Is the year of the Linux desktop finally upon us or is this just another flare up generated by the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco?