I think it has the potential. It always had. Android already turned the mobile market upside-down.

The advantage of Linux is that you can take the pieces that suit your needs, replace the others with your own modules and presto, you've got an OS.

Then you can build the hardware for it and bam, you've got a killer machine meant for consumers.

Android may be a bad example here, but think of Tivo. Think about it, suddenly every PC maker can assemble some hardware together and call that a games console.

The missing piece for Linux was always the software, like games and Adobe Photoshop and MS Office. If Linux gets the support it needs for the games that people love, then I could see its popularity going through the roof.