Comment by lloydde

I don’t doubt it, but the post does not lay out the timeline. Those events likely aligned the business interests to what the designers were already wanting to make happen. From what I recall, by 2004, Linux on Desktop designers were already looking to move on from mimic and displace Windows to win on their own terms. There seemed to be a lot of energy do something new and different by 2005. It seemed like there was a lot of wireframes and prototypes in both GNOME and KDE camps. Also around 2005, touchscreen tablets were also having a moment. I think I remember a popular Nokia model. 2006 had Sugar UI for interactive learning on OLPC XO.