The biggest change for 2013 is that microsoft is throwing PC gaming under the bus and trying to move all gaming to the consoles. Evidence, you want evidence:

1. Gaben and a bunch of other people says it's true (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-06-gabe-newell-rig...)

2. MS is no longer supporting cross platform (xbox/pc) development and is killing XNA. (http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/147289-microsoft-kills-xbo...)

Also steam supporting linux has significantly increased the number of linux games. Android linux compatibility is a big win for casual games on linux.

As a developer I find Linux very annoying to use. I have tried Ubuntu on different boxes, even on powerful gaming computers, but it doesn't seem as stable as Windows 8 does. Launching programs, or switching between windows has sometimes a little bit of lag (and I'm on an i7, 8gb of ram etc...) I hate having the slightest bit of lag. For me it would be easier to work on linux, but its just not as nice to use as Windows 8 is.

3D desktops are not at the responsiveness level of Windows or OS X despite improvements over the years.

As a result, there is still a significant amount of Linux users using 2D desktops. For example, I'm using Gnome 3 fallback (i.e. classic mode) with xmonad. I know quite a few running AwesomeWM with no DE, and others using Ubuntu 2D.

That being said, setting up xmonad or AwesomeWM requires a higher initial investment but you gain more control and efficiency in the long run. It's the same argument for using vim/emacs over notepad.

Or then you have a super fast, super productive desktop with no distractions. Depends how you configure it. Here's mine. (the configs can be stored to github, of course)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/Screenshot%20from%202013-02...

It's not doable on OSX or on Windows. It's damn fast on my own macbook (2008 edition) and on my work desktop (i5, 16 GB, SSD)

Don't you want to make blog post about your setup or something?

I love Linux, but I don't like Gnome Shell or Unity (or KDE or something), and on Desktop it's easy, you just install awesome and run with it. But for a few years I had only laptop, and I was always afraid that things like sleep, or volume and brightness control keys woudn't work, because they seem to be tied with Gnome for some reason.

If you could share some more about your setup, that would be great.

Oh, you can start the gnome-settings-daemon with your WM and you get the sleep, the keys, the nice fonts etc. from Ubuntu.

Most of the stuff is here. Sorry for the messy emacs configuration, I'm just studying it after ~10 years of vim.

https://github.com/pimeys/dotfiles

Also, two branches: work and macbook. The screenshot is from the work branch.

You might want to try Xmonad. It's a tiling window manager that's extremely extensible and very fast/clean to use.

Here's an old demo of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyNkBLhIpQk

I'm in that screenshot! How weird is this?

Looks like you're using Xmonad. I use it as well; it's the reason I switched to linux. It's unbelievable how nice it is to stop fussing around with overlapping windows! Combine that with all of the extensibility and you've got an incredibly productive environment (assuming you don't get caught up yak-shaving your xmonad.hs).

Weirdly enough whenever I have tried to use a minimal tiling WM the Window redraws become horrifically slow, whereas Unity with all the eye candy cranked up is smooth as silk.

Not for me :(. I like having eye candy, even though it does give a lot of distractions.

Depends what's eye candy for you. For me it's pure solarized colors and lots of terminals open... :)

What desktop environment are you using? That can change things a lot. I find the default Debian Gnome3 to be pretty good.

Ubuntu is now by default Unity and not Gnome. I like both, both didn't find one that doesn't lag for me, maybe im doing something wrong with the drivers :/

There's work underway to make Unity faster. I expect Raring Ringtail 13.04 to have a lot of improvements in that area.

What you're saying is reasonable, but I'm amused by the fact that the standard template for this discussion is NOT "it's the year of the Linux desktop, I just know it!" but rather:

"Is this the year of the Linux desktop now?"

"No, that's a cliche. But Linux is getting better and Windows is bad as ever."

"Next year will be the year of the Linux desktop!"

Android is linux.

The goalposts are moving. That's not what the article claims.