The problem with Linux as a desktop is that all the money and investment goes into server use cases. There really aren’t many companies investing into the desktop. I think Valve might he the only big company with a major interest in it, but they’re mostly focusing on their own closed ecosystem. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.

So if magically we see desktop usage go up, investment will go up, and we’ll see much more momentum.

Regarding viability though, I think that’s not going to be solved with more investment. The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility. Unless that changes through regulation or something (since it’s clearly anticompetitive), I don’t think the hypothetical linux desktop wave will survive very long.

Adobe, Autodesk, and a few others are also at fault for not supporting linux, but that’s a different issue. They’ll go where the money is, and if Linux usage goes up, they’ll have to support it or risk losing their strong market positions.

It’s all an annoying chicken and egg problem.