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Comment by wavephorm | Hacker News Reader

The entire "desktop computing" paradigm is coming to an end. Overlapping windows, buttons, icons, cascading menus... it's over. We're entering the next phase of computing, touchscreen, voice, hand gestures, AI.

No, Linux desktop is no longer relevant.

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I take it you don't work in an office of any kind. Do you really think all office workers are going to switch to tablets for the daily grind?

I'm betting my startup idea on it.

It'll just be another inflection in the long-running cycle between thin and thick clients. I think the last time it reached this pitch was mid-late 90s, when Microsoft, Yahoo, @home, AOL, etc. were trying to make their online services and portals the be-all of the mainstream's Internet Life.

Yes, the desktop is a thing of the past for youtube/facebook/news/casual gaming/light email. Tablets can handle these tasks (content consumption) imo much better than a desktop.

It is a completely different story for photoshop/maya/visual studio/solidworks/nx/matlab.... These programs are not designed for the type of mulch-touch input that tablets are able to excel at. XP is supported until 2014...

photoshop/maya and other graphical tools can be repurposed without the Windows-style buttons and menus.

Programming tools are already being ported to the web (cloud9 ide).

Google Docs and Office 360 are already being targeted at replacing MS Office.

In a few short years very few reasons to still use a Windows desktop UI will exist.

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