It has simultaneously been the Year of the Linux Desktop (tm) and the Year of the Death of Linux on the Desktop (tm) for several years now.

The only thing that is new is these stories are hitting HN, instead of just Slashdot like usual.

That's what I was thinking. I've seen this headline on a few sites in the last few days and the commenters all seem to be talking about Linux in the past tense. Apparently I didn't get the memo because my laptop with Ubuntu on it is still working fine and the projects that I make use of haven't missed a beat. That's some kind of "dead".

Indeed. I've also become converted (finally) to Unity on a single screen. Still have a hard time with multiple moniters, but whatever.