Getting KDE onto commercial hardware

It's a long shot, but Linux really needs a success story in graphical consumer devices outside Android. I think that the potential is there, one moderately successful Linux-based device business can set the ball rolling for many more and from then on, there would be no stopping it.

The state of Linux desktop is that things mostly work, but it's not rare to experience subtle driver- and display stack bugs. Due to lack of resources, bug reports often languish, making it a bad time investment to even report such bugs. Whereas if these bugs were critical to a business that's selling devices, they would find the means to improve the situation.

One such success story is Valve's continued investment in improving the Linux 3D graphics stack and Steam experience on Linux. (Well, success story for Linux at least, not sure about Valve's business). Besides their direct involvement, I think they also play a significant role in AMD's recent renewed interest in upstreamed open source Linux drivers and probably other knock-on effects. The end result is that gaming on Linux went from a horrible experience a few years ago, to a viable gaming OS.

Valve's Steambox hardware, unfortunately has not panned out so far. Similar to so many other attempts, like Ubuntu for tablets, Openmoko and probably many more. Dell's preinstalled Linux offerings, System76, Purism etc aren't faliures by any means, but have not brought mainstream attention to the platform.