the worst that can happen is that it will turn to be "This is the year of the Linux tablet- or smartphone-top".

Personally i was satisfied with Linux desktop on 386 sx33 back in 1995 (Slackware/XFree86/olvwm) and no desktop/etc... since then has beaten the experience yet (my at work quad core Xeon 3.2 GHz with windows 7 seems to be agile enough to provide rich experience of still painting the animated wait cursor (which cursor has much visually improved since windows 3 - no questions here) when i click to close the empty (!) Excel instead of just immediately closing the damn thing)

It's been the year of the Linux server for quite some time now. The near future seems bright for Linux smartphones, tablets and other gizmos too.

The only non-Linux device I carry with me is my iPod. Both phones (personal running WebOS and work running Android), my notebook and my e-reader (a Nook, but a Kindle would be no different) run on Linux.

Is there really any shame in linux not "owning" the desktop? I try to use Ubuntu, I really do, but almost every day I fire up vmplayer.