2013, the year of ARM Linux on the desktop?

Welcome back, Morgaine.

I don't think it will be the desktop, but rather the laptop.  With a desktop, you have enough cheap electricity available so that Intel's superior performance wins over ARM's superior power consumption.  OTOH, on a laptop lower power translates directly into longer battery life, which is why it's an ARM-only mobile phone and tablet market.

I think the most promising news along these lines is Samsung's Series 3 XE303C12 Chromebook, which has a Dual-core Cortex-A15 Exynos 5 SoC, 2GB RAM, and 11.6" 1366x768 display for US$250.  It's cheap enough to provide a portable near-instant-on way to do Internet stuff, so you only need to turn the desktop beast on when it's time for serious work.  While it normally runs Chrome OS, you can run various GNU/Linux distros without much trouble.

RasPi is a nice little toy, and makes a nice cheap GNU/Linux brain for experimental gadgets especially when you can actually get a Model A for US$25.  It's also dandy as a media center, given that it has exactly the same processing power as a Roku 2.  But I think people are finding that RasPi is pretty limited as a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer, and it won't cost much more for an i.MX6 Wandboard or Exynos 4412 Cortex-A9 Quad ODROID-U.

I'm not sure about TI.  Didn't they decide to give up on competing at the OMAP level with Samsung and Qualcomm, instead opting for industrial application processors like the AM3359 used in BeagleBone?

Welcome back, Morgaine.

I don't think it will be the desktop, but rather the laptop.  With a desktop, you have enough cheap electricity available so that Intel's superior performance wins over ARM's superior power consumption.  OTOH, on a laptop lower power translates directly into longer battery life, which is why it's an ARM-only mobile phone and tablet market.

I think the most promising news along these lines is Samsung's Series 3 XE303C12 Chromebook, which has a Dual-core Cortex-A15 Exynos 5 SoC, 2GB RAM, and 11.6" 1366x768 display for US$250.  It's cheap enough to provide a portable near-instant-on way to do Internet stuff, so you only need to turn the desktop beast on when it's time for serious work.  While it normally runs Chrome OS, you can run various GNU/Linux distros without much trouble.

RasPi is a nice little toy, and makes a nice cheap GNU/Linux brain for experimental gadgets especially when you can actually get a Model A for US$25.  It's also dandy as a media center, given that it has exactly the same processing power as a Roku 2.  But I think people are finding that RasPi is pretty limited as a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer, and it won't cost much more for an i.MX6 Wandboard or Exynos 4412 Cortex-A9 Quad ODROID-U.

I'm not sure about TI.  Didn't they decide to give up on competing at the OMAP level with Samsung and Qualcomm, instead opting for industrial application processors like the AM3359 used in BeagleBone?

Hello all and best wishes for the year ahead.

2013 mght be a bit optimistic imo, but as a rule tech-types have always made woeful futurologists...

What does ARM bring "to the party" (horrible phrase, but there you go...)?

1) High energy effeciency

2) low cost

As John says the energy part still isn't that much of an issue with desktops yet. It should be, obviously and it's just plain nice to not have one's ears assaulted by whirring fans. But laptops do seem a reasonable future pitch for ARM - a device that lasts all day on a charge, but doesn't weigh a ton / toast your knees, yet has a generously sized screen / kb and enough processing power to do grown up stuff.

But how many laptop consumers require their laptops to be truly standalone? Most of the "ordinary people" I know with laptops have them tethered to *something* much of the time. They're a desktop replacement, not a mobile solution. ARM is appealing on a purely cost basis, but if low cost is the only motivator for your customer, then that isn't overly appealing for manufacturers. Market share does not necessarily equal profit - consider the netbook fiasco. Which kind of brings me to the point of my ramblings:

Trying to fit new technology to an old paradigm might just be completely missing the point. We're also completely disregarding the software interface in all of this too. Low cost implies an operating system that isn't spendy either and with the possible exception of Ubuntu, it would appear that G**gle have things pretty much sewn up in that department, which is a depressing thought. Of course they want everyone to participate in a remote "cloud", because it gives them so much more personal data for their bots to sniff through. [/tinfoil hat mode]

Manufacturers of *whatever* next generation hardware would do well to start bashng out a few standards to make it possible for devices to become part of a modular whole imo. Your generic smartphone could become a low powered desktop by placing it next to a screen / kb combo, so you could reply to those emails on a "proper" keyboard, or edit those photos you just took, but without having to physically "dock" it. Perhaps if you needed a bit more cpu or external storage then you could (seamlessly) call on the beige box that pipes the interwebs into your house, because it has dualcore whatnot and SSD. Oh, and it's your media server too. It all just works together and doesn't mind if your tablet is manufactured by a different company. And it doesn't require hours of sawing away at the terminal to make it all work.

There is no "one device to do it all" (although the x86 desktop has served pretty well in the past. so long as you didn't have to carry one too far). ARM is ideal for multiple devices with tightly focussed  functionality, so lets hope that hardware and software manufacturers start playing to these strengths, because it's all in danger of becoming a fragmented race to the bottom right now.

Edit: Oh, and the whole desktop paradigm (sat in a chair whilst glaring at a keyboard and monitor) just perpetuates the existence of badly designed operating systems and software that demands user intervention at every junction. This might seem acceptable to old timers like me who grew up with this kind of chaff, but modern customers may disagree. Poking about in the guts of something is an essential option for the inquisitive, but it should be optional. It's about time that stuff just worked, even if it means paying a reasonable premium for that privelige. I guess that brings me back to the whole "race to the bottom vs quality" thing.