How would Linux success have been accomplished without integration into the current platforms de jour? This is a specious argument, to be sure. You are saying 'Linux did not succeed on its own because it required hardware vendors to pick it up and push it out there' - well, how else would it have succeeded? Linus building a hardware company?

The intention behind the developers of the Linux kernel have always been: build it, use it, let others use it if they want to. There has never been a 'commercialized Linux effort' that didn't involve some vendor capable of making its own hardware - and this is what happened with the mobile take-up.

>We all know that the goal was for Linux to take the desktop.

Linux has been a very viable desktop for over a decade. And besides that - Chromebooks are not a desktop to you?

>Linux isn't something people want, it's something they use without being aware of it. Is that a victory or a tragedy?

Its a victory of course. Linus didn't start a fashion company - he started a kernel project. That kernel powers more devices than any other kernel out there at the moment, across a more diverse range of product types.

And I rate that total success, personally .. but then I've only been using Linux since the day it was available on funet.fi ..