I’ll put it this way, I think that a successful Linux on the desktop would not be something a lot of the people that advocate and love Linux on the desktop would embrace. It would be a lot more like Chrome OS (and Google is writing their own kernel, which just blurs a lot of the lines even more), meaning purposefully obfuscating the Linux bits, using custom or highly-customized desktop environments, being tightly configured with close-sourced backend cloud services, and being very difficult to use custom libraries or app repositories. I think Proton is a good example of this, actually. Valve has done some great work with compatibility and its great to see the work they have done to improve the gaming situation (tho people who claim that Windows and Linux are equivalent in gaming, as far as the desktop goes, are being disingenuous imho) and desktop Linux as a gaming platform is certainly superior to Mac, in terms of library. But Valve’s primary motive is to create a front end for their storefront and to do it in a way so that Valve can avoid paying various licensing fees. Gabe has been very upfront about that from the beginning. Steam Machines were a massive failure (I was at the launch party in Las Vegas the CES they were unveiled) and although I personally preordered a Steam Deck, I don’t think we really know what the actual market is for that kind of device. It could be on-par with consoles or it could be a lot less. But everything we’ve seen from that shows that the experience is very much designed to mimic a console experience — albeit with a lot more freedom for nerds like us. I don’t think that is at all the same thing as Linux Mint or even Ubuntu being the primary desktop OS for end users. Or that if Steam Deck is successful, that we will see computers sold with traditional Linux distros pre-installed at Best Buy (and the developer edition XPS and Lenovo machines aren’t what I’m talking about).

And that doesn’t touch on the still existing consumer software issues on Linux — getting developers like Serif (makers of Affinity) to target the Linux desktop (I’m not even going to try for Adobe) or for existing commercial software to come over.

Now, some of this ceases to matter because the web won and the web runs everywhere. But keep in mind that you’ll need to use that proprietary version of Chrome on your Linux desktop to watch HD Netflix or other DRM content and to access other stuff. The web winning doesn’t mean that software freedom has won.

As I said in my OP, I’m a diehard macOS user and I certainly appreciate the POSIX underpinnings and the fact that the OS has some BSD roots. In fact, it’s a huge part of the appeal for me (like many nerds in their late 30s, I embraced Mac OS X in the early 2000s because it was kind of like Linux but pretty and had Photoshop). But most Unix purists I know don’t like macOS (especially these days) for a variety of reasons and would rather use OpenBSD or pine for the days of Sun OS or Solaris.

So yes, despite the many notable efforts that have been made, no, I don’t think the Linux desktop as I think you define it will happen. If it were to happen, it would look and act a lot more like Windows and macOS with everything good and bad that that entails.