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Are tablets and smartphones considered computers?

AC #48369023 was probably referring to desktop and laptop computers. True, some people abuse a tablet with a keyboard as a laptop, but you'll probably get similar usage share percentages if you consider computers whose OS includes 1. a GUI with a window management policy allowing multi-window and 2. an approved way to install applications without asking he operating system publisher "mother may I?". This is a useful approximation of computers suitable for "work", which the post-PC FAQ defines as "focused activity".

"Linux on the Desktop" is called Chrome or Android and the "desktop" is wherever we are instead of a jumble of wires connected to a monitor.

Perhaps "Linux on the multi-window desktop" or "Linux on the desktop in a focused activity setting" is a more precise of what some people mean. The Android ecosystem, from the CDD on up, is staunchly opposed to rich window management, instead preferring a paradigm of all maximized all the time that makes it hard to work on one document while referring to another document.

This article about post-PC devices separates computing into "work", which it defines as focused activity, and "relationship-centric computing", essentially the digital version of social grooming. Phones and tablets are purportedly better for "relationship-centric computing", while PCs are better for "work". It appears Surface Pro is intended to be portable enough and to have a mode simple enough for "relationship-centric computing" while being able to shift to "work" as needed.

I too am curious as to whether Microsoft still holds monopoly market share. Can someone dig up figures for Microsoft's market share and installed base among computer operating systems with multi-window window managers in the United States? This market includes Windows, Windows RT, OS X, X11/Linux, and Samsung's recent versions of Android with multi-window mode. I chose multi-window multitasking as a rough metric for whether an OS is intended for focused activity or for play. I'm no Windows fanboy, but I do know that Windows RT, unlike iOS and stock Android, lets the user "snap" an application to a strip at the side of the monitor as wide as a smartphone.

Is it fair to blame Ubuntu for all the issues that come with building a computer from scratch? [...] It's the fact that distros just don't put in ( or have for that matter ) the resources necessary to "polish" the OS.

You appear to have answered your own question. Yes, we can blame Canonical for not having put in the effort to polish Ubuntu to the point where PC makers other than System76 are willing to preload it.

We know Linux can do this because we use Android phones, and they work just fine for most users.

Gorilla arm Linux with a calculator app that fills the screen no matter the size of my device's screen has taken off. Linux that's comfortable for hours of work (meaning focused activity) at a time where I can see both what I'm working on and what I'm referring to, not so much.

Even if it's easy for you to remember what you were working on when it has disappeared completely from the screen in favor of a flashy launcher, it would be even easier if it did not disappear.

Even if? You mean you actually have this problem where you open an application and simply because it opened fullscreen you forget the reason you opened it? Really?

Phone applications run in the full screen because a phone's display isn't physically big enough to show much information in a window.

So all of a sudden your problem disappears simply because the phone's display isn't physically big enough? Or is that statement irrelevant?

Besides, phones aren't typically used for the sort of focused activity that would require the use of two applications for one task.

Of course they are! In fact on a phone or tablet it's even more common to be moving between fullscreen applications because of the lack of screen real-estate (which you yourself already pointed out). The most common workflows almost always switch through various fullscreen media pickers at the very least, do you have the problem you specified in that situation too?

I have over two letter-sized pages worth of space on a 23" monitor connected to a desktop PC; why should a launcher require all of this space?

I never said it should and I'm not arguing it does so I don't see why you're trying to derail the topic.

So you're doing a task which requires another application, you switch to that application and you've suddenly forgotten what you're doing?

Even if it's easy for you to remember what you were working on when it has disappeared completely from the screen in favor of a flashy launcher, it would be even easier if it did not disappear.

this would be happening all the time on phones and tablets with people starting applications and then wondering what they started them for.

Phone applications run in the full screen because a phone's display isn't physically big enough to show much information in a window. Besides, phones aren't typically used for the sort of focused activity that would require the use of two applications for one task. Applications for iPad and tablets running stock Android run in the full screen because the operating systems were designed with assumptions rooted in their heritage in phones. People use full-screen applications and full-screen launchers on iPad and tablets running stock Android for the same reason they did so on PCs during the MS-DOS era: because full-screen applications and full-screen launchers are all that are made available to them. If tablets can do better than that, PCs can certainly do better than that. I have over two letter-sized pages worth of space on a 23" monitor connected to a desktop PC; why should a launcher require all of this space?