I don't think desktop Linux's competitive disadvantage had much to do with mp3s, given its tremendous deficiencies elsewhere. I say this as someone who contribu

I don't think desktop Linux's competitive disadvantage had much to do with mp3s, given its tremendous deficiencies elsewhere. I say this as someone who contributed to KDE back in the 3.x days and has been running Linux since 1997. But that's just an opinion - I guess it's possible a lot of people were put off by the hoops necessary to install an mp3 player, although to be honest I don't recall it being a problem for a good decade or so now.