For Linux to ever have a shot on the desktop, it would have to stop being Linux. Namely it would have to get some standards beyond the kernel.
Bwahahaha!! You mean, like Microsoft and Apple follow desktop standards? C'mon. See freedesktop for your desktop standards.
it is a rich experience that comprises, well, everything you find on a Windows or MacOS disc.
Oh, look at that, Debian releases desktop-specific disks. If I do nothing during install, I get a full-feature GNOME desktop. If I select options clearly presented, I can have KDE, XFCE, LXDE appear like magic when I reboot. I tell you it's MAGIC!!!!
And since when does microsoft release a full-featured set of applications with their minimal installed OS? Apple? A default Debian desktop install gets you a very good image editor, very good "office" suite, PDF ripping, audio and video playing desktop, great web browsers. Apple and Microsoft cannot make the same claim.
Along those lines it would have to do away with having source be something a user had any idea existed. No distributing programs as source, no recompiling the kernel to make something work, all binary all the time for users.
1999 called and they want you back when this claim was possibly valid...