It's the "...on the desktop", i.e. that the general public would have a stated preference for Linux because it served them better than proprietary OSes, putting

It's the "...on the desktop", i.e. that the general public would have a stated preference for Linux because it served them better than proprietary OSes, putting their makers out of business, that makes it funny. Linus even said "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." in a NYT interview back in '03. Much like "640k ought to be enough for anyone." and "There will be a market for only 5 computers in the world." (only in this case Linus is actually on record saying it), it's a testament to the overweening hubris of the early FOSS movement. The things that you list matter only to a small number of nerds and the general public wouldn't care a bit if they were all replaced by FreeBSD, Fuchsia, or TempleOS tomorrow. Even for the consumer applications, Linux is being primarily chosen just because the hardware manufacturer didn't want to pay money to license another OS to benefit their profit margins as much as anything else. So, yeah, the joke is still funny and it looks like it will be funny for the next few decades too.