Will 2015 finally be the year of the Linux desktop?

It depends on who you are...if this is the year of Linux on the desktop.

For Brandy Maldanado, the year of the Linux desktop was 2008. For Precia Gomez it was three days ago. For Renaldo and Chris Baker, it was 2012. The one commonality here is that they sat down at their own computer for the first time in their lives. If it had not been for a robust and free operating system, it's doubtful if they would have obtained a computer before their first year of college. It's almost as doubtful that it would have happened then. These kids also shared another situation. All of them lived in crushing poverty.

Those computers are powered by Linux and the global community that supports it. To each one of these kids, their computer became The Important Thing in their lives. Brandy is in her second year at Johns Hopkins university, studying Bio Medical Engineering, striving to bring the next generation of prosthetic limbs to everyone.

I don't think Desktop Linux will ever achieve parity in the tech market. I also don't believe that anyone will ever be able to put a number down that represents the real Linux usership. For every young and new Linux user, the influence of that one new Linux user has powerful opportunities to introduce others as well. I'm in the unique position to see just how powerful those opportunities are.

And they are powerful indeed.

For me, the year of the Linux desktop was 2001... If someone wants to declare another one, that's fine. But 2001 was the year I celebrate... And that year is different for all of us (mostly anyway), and the kids Ken is helping... You're right, Ken, that IS what matters,... that there is a free and open operating system to power the computers that help people liberate themselves from whatever force or forces that are keeping them from achieving their goals...

great way to look at it. so for my grandma the year was 1994 :-)

i for one believe that Free Software will succeed in taking over the desktop, but also that legacy Windows support will not go away. so for me personally i'll declare the year of the desktop when Microsoft admits that Linux has at least 10% marketshare, because whatever the real number is, it must be higher.

greetings, eMBee.

Year of the Linux Desktop: 2001 also. Slackware 7.1.

Well, I suppose it depends on what the determining factor is.

The year I started using Linux on my desktop: 1999

The year I started using it more than Windows: probably 2000

If you ask me what year I stopped dual booting Windows except as an afterthought, I'm not sure--perhaps 2003. I do have a dual boot of Windows 8 on my desktop right now, though it's not working right (I think the hard drive Windows is on is going bad). I rarely boot into Windows though, even when it's there, and I have several other machines that simply don't have it. My brother uses it for certain games. If he's just getting on the computer to use the Internet, though, he boots into Linux.

I'll guess... July 12, 1998.

I started using Linux in 1994. I went with it as my primary desktop in 1998 when I saw the direction Windows 98 was heading. The only reason I still keep Windows around at all is that I need it for work.

I used Windows 2000 Pro. I liked Windows 2000 Pro. If current Windows were basically that operating system except with internal updates, I'd probably still use Windows. I started dual-booting much earlier than that because I was curious about this "Linux" I was hearing about, and at that point I didn't really consider GNU/Linux as something I would use full time. It was more a matter of wanting to learn something new.

When I heard where Microsoft was going with XP, it was a revelation (in a bad way). Up until that point I had an MCSE, I paid for MSDN out of my own wallet, and generally was a Windows user. I wasn't a blind evangelist, I was just a loyal user. I had never heard of the Halloween documents, and I hadn't really paid any attention to Microsoft's other shenanigans. I knew they had royally screwed over Netscape, but I sort of turned a blind eye towards that.

The thread that started with the XP activation nonsense led me to finding out what I had ignored and it disgusted me. It disgusted me so much that I went out and purchased a copy of SuSe 7.3 (I think...) at CompUSA and I've never had Windows on a computer of my own again.

Funny thing is that I came to GNU/Linux because I wanted to not be a part of what Microsoft represents. But I've since learned to prefer it for the freedom and empowerment.



Unfortunately I have to use Windows at work whether I want to or not.

Exactly as I said, two and a half weeks ago.