Oh, translation mistake on my side. Is the word "desktop" really still in use for tower computers? π€ I only know it for the kind of computing, not the device type.
Anyway, can't quickly find proper statistics for that. I once read an estimate done by what I think was Valve, that's obviously scewed towards the gaming bubble though. Still, I think it "only" was about 50-60% desktops over laptops and "other". They won't vanish anytime soon though, you can't squeeze highest performance into a laptop and game streaming only works very selectively.
I'm really curious how it will shift in the future given Linux becomes more and more popular, and that ecosystem is already offering a synergy approach (not just the way SteamDeck does, but also with both GTK and Qt apps able to shift depending on display size and touch capabilities).
It was somewhat of a special situation back when Gnome 3 dropped. Ubuntu & flavours of it was still regarded as the go-to distro by many and KDE still had a somewhat damaged reputation due to KDE 3 (even though 4 was already available, however that also had some issues). Many environments we know today didn't exist yet, so lots of people were rather distraught when Gnome broke with a lot of concepts and dropped what arguably was a horrendous DE.
Many of our current DEs are Gnome 2 or 3 forks (MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, and back then also Unity), made exactly because of this whole debacle.
it's nothing but config files you have to edit from the local console shell
Some people seem to love that, as well as the total lack of any kind of access control or security. I mean, look at how many people are still arguing that "Systemd is destroying Linux", clinging to initd with all its bash scripts and no nice way to prevent race conditions and such.
To roughly quote someone from a talk (not sure where I heard that, was about systemd as well I think):
"We nerds are very good at change when we're the ones proposing it, but very bad when it comes from the outside."
Reminds me of an old story about the game director Chris Taylor. He wanted to make a second iteration to bis game "Total Annihilation" since he promised to do so to his fans. However the current rightsholder, Atari, refused to sell the rights to him and instead took it as a business opportunity. They announced they'd do it themselves (without Taylor). The project got immediately canceled after the public reaction exploded in their faces (this was before social media).
Taylor still didn't get the rights to his creation back and proceeded to do it anyway with a new name, "Supreme Commander" (with great success). Atari only lost both money and public good will. This still worked though since there wasn't that much of a public mass manipulation machinery. With social media Atari could've potentially gotten through with it.
I mean, that's a whole different topic. Documents and info material everyone should have access to need to be inclusive so even your average Fox News viewer can read it.
The project will either die through lack of interest or over-availability of cringe. There's no way for it to succeed with this MAGA nonsense and threats plastered all over it, they'd have a hard time finding enough devs even without alienating everyone except Fox News viewers. Meanwhile they'll feel confirmed in their worldview due to all the rightful criticism flooding in.
If the project survives this initial phase of antipathy we'll probably get years of cringe from it.
I thought you said healthy.