e good news is that open source has become the leader on the desktop. The bad news is that a single desktop is not the leader, and that leadership on the desktop may no longer matter.
Obviously, the first statement needs qualifications. It clearly does not refer to the number of users, since officially Linux has yet to break 2%, although, depending on your logic, the actual figure might be several times higher.
Rather, the statement refers to development and innovation on the desktop. For years, open source desktops struggled to equal Windows and OS X, but today that is no more true than the belief that Linux requires ordinary users to use of the command line extensively.
The truth is, some time between 2005-2008, the open source desktop caught up to its proprietary counterparts. Since then, it has been the major source of innovation and excellence on the desktop. However, neither of these transformations has attracted much notice, and many people continue to talk as though the conditions of fifteen years ago still applied.