The issue was never that Linux wasn't ready for the desktop. It's that the average user was never ready for the desktop. Perhaps evidenced by the fact that as

The issue was never that Linux wasn't ready for the desktop. It's that the average user was never ready for the desktop. Perhaps evidenced by the fact that as soon as they were given the alternative of handheld computing appliances, they stopped even owning desktops in droves. Don't worry though; those appliances are all powered by Linux or BSD at the end of the day anyway. If there's somewhere Linux isn't quite ready for, it's the enterprise office environment...and it probably never will be, unless Microsoft really screws the pooch and Active Directory falls apart. With AS400's and DB2 still widely used across a variety of industries, I think it's plain to see that corporate America doesn't change much once it has a computing system established without having a REALLY good reason to do so.