Year of the Linux Desktop: Linus Says Chromebooks and Android Are the Future

Year of the Linux Desktop split image showing chaotic Linux desktop distributions on left versus clean Android and ChromeOS interfaces on right, with Linus Torvalds quote and timeline 1998-2025

Since at least 1998, the Linux community has been declaring “this will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.” Twenty-seven years later, we’re still waiting. Meanwhile, something interesting happened that the Linux evangelists missed entirely: The Year of the Linux Desktop became the decade of Google everything.

While Linux enthusiasts argued about systemd vs. init and whether GNOME or KDE was superior, Google quietly conquered the world with actual desktop Linux adoption through Android and Chromebooks. They just didn’t ask users to compile kernels or edit config files to make it work.

Even Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux itself, agrees: “Chromebooks and Android are the paths towards the desktop.”

What Linus Torvalds Really Said About Desktop Linux

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Nobara Linux 39

Nobara Linux was first released on 7/10/2022, obviously quite new, and it is being developed & maintained by Thomas Crider ‘GloriousEggroll’ – a “Software Maintenance Engineer @ Red Hat. Wine-Staging maintainer. Tinkerer.” Apparently, in his spare time he developed Proton-GE. 😉

I have followed it fairly closely – did two reviews – 11/7/2022 (Nobara Linux 36 – ‘New modified version of Fedora Linux’) & 1/15/2023 (Nobara Linux 37 – ‘Keep an Eye on this Up & Coming Linux OS!).

What is the Nobara Project?

The Nobara Project is a modified version of Fedora Linux with user-friendly fixes added to it. Some of the important things that are missing from Fedora, especially with regards to gaming include WINE dependencies, obs-studio, 3rd party codec packages such as those for gstreamer, 3rd party drivers such as NVIDIA drivers, and even small package fixes here and there.

Less Terminal & more Mouse: ‘we want to be more point and click friendly, and avoid the basic user from having to open the terminal … for new users, point and click ease of use is usually expected.

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Ultramarine Linux 39 – ‘Based on Fedora®

Fairly new Linux Distro, and second time I tested it. Very easy to use. Desktop Options are Budgie Desktop (Flagship), GNOME, Pantheon (elementary OS), and KDE Plasma Desktop (my favorite). What is Ultramarine?

Ultramarine Linux is a Linux-based operating system designed for your own personal workstation (or battlestation). It is designed to be as easy to use as possible, and stays out of your way. Ultramarine Linux keeps up with the latest and greatest software in the open-source community, while trying to be stable and secure. Ultramarine is for everyone, from the beginner to the tech enthusiast, and even Windows dropouts!

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Alpine Linux 3.18.4 – Small. Simple. Secure.

Alpine Linux caught my eye the other day, in this article: Looney Tunables: New Linux Flaw Enables Privilege Escalation on Major Distributions. Other major Linuxes were found to be vulnerable and exploitable to Looney Tunables, with Alpine Linux being the exception of those tested.

Alpine Linux, which uses the musl libc library instead of glibc.’ I did a post on Linux security flaws – Here. Then decided to do a post on Alpine Linux installation. Mainly an instructional post on how to install it, which is long, so I won’t have a lot of info on the inner workings of Alpine Linux.

For more info, Jack Wallen has a good article on – What is Alpine Linux?

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Manjaro Linux KDE Plasma 22.1.0 – “Plasma is a Desktop”

Cinnamon is my favorite Linux desktop environment (DE), but the Cinnamon DE of Manjaro is a “Community” project ‘n hasn’t remained as steady of an OS as I prefer. At one time, Manjaro Cinnamon did offer the root user login option, but then suddenly stopped one day. Tested it again yesterday, but it still doesn’t offer me the root user login option ‘n I won’t use an OS that seeks to ‘cOnTrOl‘ what the computer user can & cannot do on their own computers — I am the Root User on all my computers ‘n refuse to be ‘cOnTrOllEd‘ by some Linux ‘Nanny. 👎

However, as an ‘Official Image‘ that is maintained by the “Manjaro Team” – Manjaro Linux KDE Plasma has remained steady for me, and I looking to move Manjaro Linux KDE Plasma 22.1.0 up into Tier Two of my Top 10++ Linux Distros. 👍👌👏

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