The tipping point will when/if a major OEM starts offering a large quantity of their products with a Linux distro as the default OS (i,e you have to specifically select Windows).
Realistically Steambox would seem to be the most obvious place for this to start happening. Of course how much the Steambox will be a "real" Linux computer vs just a kernel+whatever the minimal software stack is required to get Steam running remains to be seen.
I wouldn't hold out much hope for an Office for Linux regardless of what Phoronix thinks. Porting office to Linux would be a tantamount to MS admitting they have given up on Windows and would probably hurt their stock price significantly.
From a technical point of view the biggest thing that would make Linux a viable choice for the majority of desktops would be a WINE layer that provides at least as good compatibility as Windows XP for Windows software thus allowing legacy VB6 etc stuff to be moved over.
Realistically Steambox would seem to be the most obvious place for this to start happening. Of course how much the Steambox will be a "real" Linux computer vs just a kernel+whatever the minimal software stack is required to get Steam running remains to be seen.
I wouldn't hold out much hope for an Office for Linux regardless of what Phoronix thinks. Porting office to Linux would be a tantamount to MS admitting they have given up on Windows and would probably hurt their stock price significantly.
From a technical point of view the biggest thing that would make Linux a viable choice for the majority of desktops would be a WINE layer that provides at least as good compatibility as Windows XP for Windows software thus allowing legacy VB6 etc stuff to be moved over.