Did Linux miss its moment again?

This morning's news includes a note that preorders are available for Spark, the open KDE tablet. To which the tech press, behaving like political reporters responding to the next not-Mitt,  proclaims that ebruary seems to be shaping up to be the month of Linux tablets.

Um, no.

Unless you think that two Linux tablet announcement is a big deal.

Linux users have been saying for years that this is the year that companies and civilians will adopt Linux for desktop systems.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Google Trends for Linux desktop"][/caption]

Even with new, slick renditions of Linux from Ubuntu, Mint, and others, it just never got the respect or traction that Linux advocates sought. It's too bad. Linux is a very good, solid, secure desktop operating system. It runs well on older, less powerful systems. It just never made it to your aunt's computer.

And, then came the iPad. The tablet runs a deeply proprietary operating system from Apple. It owns the mind share, even if its market share is slipping. Some forecasts suggest that tablet sales will pass desktop/laptop sales within three or so years.

Android, Google's tablet and phone operating system, is Linux-based and open source, but the interface is defined by Google and the hardware manufacturers. There are options to load various custom ROMs on tablets, of course. All the same, it's all still the province of hackers and hobbyists.

Linux still owns the server environment, including pretty much everything that makes the web the web. The story remains, however, is that not only did Linux miss the chance to claim the desktop, the desktop computer itself may be moving to the back of the pack.

Miss a minute, miss a lot.