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But it's lousy for a desktop environment, especially for the typical home/business computer user.

That depends. I setup most of the computers used by my relatives, varying from elderly doing simple email and web, to a small business owner, to a serious multimedia artsie type, to a serious teenage gamer, to a production email server and a production web server. I setup Mac, Windows and Linux, depending on their needs.

If someone wants to use Quicken or Taxcut/Turbotax, I set them up with Windows. If someone wants to play the latest games, I set them up with Windows. If someone wants simple email, web and plain text documents, for the lowest cost, I set them up with Linux. If someone wants the finest in multimedia production software or the slickest end user interface, I set them up with Mac. If someone (like myself) wants to develop software for embedded or supercomputer Linux systems, I set them up with Linux. If someone wants an email or web server, I set them up with Linux. If someone needs to interoperate with systems at work running Windows, like my cousin who just passed his bar last week and has a new job at a law firm, they get Windows.

Depends.

Long term trends are not always easy to see, but some show up. Mac is resurging. Linux is taking over the embedded space strongly. Supercomputers are moving from proprietary Unix O.S.'s to Linux. Windows is holding strong in the game, typical home computer, office and business department server spaces.

The next trend, if Google succeeds in its long range plans, could dramatically change things, but I am not sure how.

From Don Dodge's column:

GYMA (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL) will be important players in the next generation of the web, sometimes referred to as Web2.0. It really is a whole new thing. The idea of SaaS (Software as a Service) is to move computing resources off individual PCs and onto the network. To do this you need high bandwidth connections. Nearly everyone has that. But, if you can get data storage near the network access points and a computing infrastructure there as well...Wow! This changes the dynamics significantly.
We could be on the verge of another web innovation cycle reminiscent of 1995. Some entrepreneurs have spent the last two years building products and services in anticipation of this wave. The fun is about to begin.

These Google trucks are running Linux, by the way, not Windows. And the leading commercial database, Oracle, is making a big push to get on Linux. IBM continues to spend big money to get Linux to have features currently found on their mainframe operating systems.

I generally agree with your comments (especially about Google) - except for this part -

If someone wants simple email, web and plain text documents, for the lowest cost, I set them up with Linux.

I'd encourage those folks to use Macs instead. Although the initial cost of desktop Linux is slightly lower, it's usability as a desktop machine is inferior and it requires more expert maintainence.

Google trucks???

When did that happen?