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Raspberry Pi's Linux-Based PIXEL Desktop Now Available For PC and Mac (betanews.com)
From a report on BetaNews: If you own a Raspberry Pi, you're probably familiar with PIXEL. The desktop environment is included in the Raspbian OS. The Raspberry Pi Foundation describes PIXEL as the "GNU/Linux we would want to use" and understandably so. It offers a smart, clean interface, a decent selection of software, the Chromium web browser with plug-ins, and more -- and from today it's available for PC and Mac. The version of Debian+PIXEL for x86 platforms is described as "experimental" but having taken it for a spin, it seems pretty stable to me. To run PIXEL on your PC or Mac, download the image, burn it onto a DVD or flash it onto a USB memory stick, and boot from it. The desktop environment will load ready for use.
No, the reason it's never the "year of Linux on the desktop" is because of the toxic combination of no standard system GUI and the GPL's viral nature when involved with proprietary source code. You'll never get a critical mass of pro applications, so you'll never get a critical mass of pro application users.
It's the year of Linux as a server OS, a niche OS, and a hobby OS. It's almost always been that year. It'll always be that year unless the anti-commercial application types stop steering the policies that underlie Linux in general.
No sane large-scale developer wants to try to support some random, always mutating selection of desktop managers; none of them wants to take the risk of even going near GPL'd software; any lawyer worth their weight in pennies will, quite correctly, tell them to look elsewhere. That's just what the anti-commercial types want to happen, and that is what keeps Linux from being taken seriously in this particular context.
That's why both OS X and Windows kick Linux right to the bottom of the stats when it comes to your average desktop user. You want "the year of the Linux desktop", then it will have to be made attractive to the majority of commercial developers, large and small. It has to be able to generate revenue, and not put the IP behind that revenue at risk.
If your answer is, as is often the case with Linux fans, "we don't need no steenking commercial developers", okay, then fine. You won't get them, either, so all's good in Linux-land, right? But when that whole "year of Linux on the desktop" desire comes up, you're really saying you want the "year of Linux stepping away from its rabid anti-commercial stand."