On a slightly more serious note, the Golden age of desktop has passed and is never coming back.
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So get a laptop 
The original ScreenSavers that was on TechTV is what got me using Linux long ago. There was an episode with Kevin Rose featuring xoblite, which is a Black Box shell replacement for Windows. I really liked it, did some research, and found that Black Box was a linux window managerâŚthen I figured, I should start using Linux and use the real Black Box. 
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I miss TechTV so much.
Unscrewed was the shit.
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The fact that people think we arenât in a golden age as it is is a massive joke and a shit on linuxâ doorstep. We have the leading hardware support, Windows is trying to copy us, and now steam has made proton to make gaming an actual thing. I was playing dark souls 3 earlier at native performance on high no issues. ATM we are seeing window smove its development tools to linux and weâre seeing the NT based windows itself start to kill itself. I still think its quite possible that we will see windows turn into a linux in the next 10 years, in which case I would actually use it if it had XFS and amdgpu.
Linux isnât catching up, everyone else is trying to scramble ahead of us. Theres no year of the linux desktop, we had that in 04 when linux was in the news, and in 07 when that dumbass chick was on the news being braindead about ubuntu. What we need now are actual sales. Dell needs to get off its ass about linux machines and make it a main sales line with everything else. Not just for developers, but for everybody. Now itâll take choking them tno near-death to make it happen, but it will in due time I think. Theyâve seen sales on their linux machines skyrocket in the last year or two and are getting more and more push from people to put them in stores so they are easier to get acess to.
Been saying for years, to get the starting market with college students valve needs to integrate wine into steam. Well, they finally read my emails and did it. Thank fuck. Now hardware sales need to happen. Windows is about to neck itself with that desktop as a service BS and its not going to go over well when mom and dad canât install turbo tax offline on a DVD they got from walmart. M$ is ignoring a giant part of their market right now in favor of the 15-35âs that live in cities and always have internet. Thats not that many users, at least in the US. I can say that asnn a smalltown resident that lives on the outskirts in the woods and sometimes our internet is gone. And because of a lot of that, and because of a lot of problems my mom had on windows, she asked me to show her how linux worked years and years ago.
Guess who is learning gnucash right now? Mom.
So no, linux wonât have a golden year in the future. Weâre not losing, weâre not behind. Weâre about to pull an AMD as long as manufacturers are going to be on board to try pushing linux installed on laptops. And laptops is where it will make sense first, not on everything. ATM weâre seeing linux creep into chromebooks through snaps / flatpaks. Next weâll get either schools adopting linux in the EU or in the US and weâll see more push for normalized hardware.
Weâre already good man. IDK why people are discouraged.
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If we want a linux âgolden ageâ the linux community need to start âskating to where the puck is GOING to beâ.
The desktop is done.
AR is the next big thing.
The linux community need to focus on AR, and they need to do it yesterday.
Microsoft and Apple are both heavily invested in it, linux is nowhere.
Thereâs no point having the ultimate linux desktop if (in say 3 years) anyone doing anything serious with a computer is probably doing it via AR.
Things like data entry are dead jobs. Why go do a stock take and put the results into a pc when your AR unit can do bar code recognition or NFC and automatically GPS tag and enter the stock into a database for you, just by looking at it, touching it, or being near it.
Thatâs just one example.
Computing is going to move away from the desk and back into the real world. If the linux community donât get a start on that immediately theyâre going to be left behind.
I remember people saying that same phrase ten years ago.
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and 10 years ago, microsoft had conquered the desktop too. today? same thing. next decade? same thing. they are entrenched.
The desktop IS and HAS been done for years. Itâs time to recognise that and concede that there will never be a âyear of the linux desktopâ.
Moving forward, the desktop will be relegated to niche users. Most people are ALREADY doing most of their computing time on mobile devices, and once someone releases an AR headset that isnât packing a full PC inside it, and runs wirelessly off a tablet or phone (guess what the Apple AR glasses will do?), AR will take over from that within 3-5 years.
Trying to build the worldâs best desktop at this point is like building the worldâs best coal fired power plant. And really, the last 15 years of Linux desktop development has resulted in basically nothing of value vs. what I could do with KDE1.0 or KDE2.x back in the late 90s/early 00s. The problem isnât that the desktop isnât good enough. The problem is there is no reason to switch from the market leaders. âGood enoughâ (or rather âjust as good!â) is not âgood enoughâ. There needs to be a compelling reason and there just isnât.
Yes, some people will continue to need a desktop. But 95% of the population already donât need one. Some just havenât realised it yet.
As @anon36666293 stated, itâs the platform that matters. And ARkit is probably the leader (in terms of development and device support) at the moment followed by whatever Microsoft is doing with the hololens. Linux is nowhere. Linux needs an AR platform and it needs it yesterday.
Otherwise, you can pretty much repeat the exact same market situation we are in today, for AR. Linux will be starting out from a point 10-15 years behind where the competition started and have basically no influence.
Like people realising they need a steam box, ouya or oculus rift, but have yet come to terms with it right?
I donât think AR will be the next best thing. There has to be something else.
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Just wait.
Anyone who works in production, mining, engineering, construction, manufacturing, medicine or maintenance will be all over AR like a rash as soon as something good is available.
I work in a mining company. We are already playing with AR/VR in house for underground mining applications.
I stopped trying to predict tech long ago. It just doesnât work.
You have no clue what might happen even in the next 12 months. Iâve heard so many predictions over the years and the ration of correct ones is close to 50%, or luck.
I just work with what is here and what is sure. And today and here, i still spend 100% of my computer time at desktop/Laptops. As do 99% of our Customers. I donât see john from Plumbing Company A doing his Spreadsheets on an iPad. Might change, but no one knows.
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Same thing was said about bitcoin solving the worlds currency problems.
well, come back to this thread in 2023, and weep then.
Yeah, people said the same about VR and Gamers. Didnât happen either. I hope compact affordable AR will come. But trying to predict that is reading in the glass bowl.
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Thing is, VR is shit.
Itâs trying to divorce you from reality but the tech isnât there yet.
The tech for usable AR is definitely available. Itâs just a matter of size and cost now. And size and cost of electronics gets better at a very, very fast rate.
There are real world practical business applications for AR, TODAY and we havenât even scratched the surface yet with decent gear being used and developed for by normal people.
Apple know this and are betting the farm on it.
Microsoft know this and are betting big on it.
By the time the linux crowd notice this, the battle will be won. Because as demonstrated in this thread, heads are firmly in sandâŚ
Couldnât have said it better.
Reading that again it feels wrong. Using English sayings as a non native speaker is haaarrd 
See: star trek
There are real world practical business applications for AR.
Maybe, but there are also Business applications for Car assembling Robots. This doesnât mean i need to care or have one at home.
Emerging tech âOverestimate the short term and underestimate the long termâ. See: History.
@domsch1988 I knew what you meant haha
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