Well, there is another reason for optimism: Wayland is supported in ChromeOS and WSL2, and it seems to be the base for any modern integration with other operational systems (macOS ARM maybe?).

> The sad thing: I've been hearing/saying basically this for decades.

I don't think Linux distros will ever be popular compared to the commercial OSes, since for one thing to be popular nowadays you need to invest money in many things like branding and marketing so something is mainstream.

But looking in another way, in the past I would say that desktop Linux was dying, and nowadays it is more live than ever, so this is something.