I agree, Cinnamon would have been the obvious choice. But that other article talks about that city in Germany choosing MATE too. I wonder what the impetus was for that.
I think that they remain pretty tough for developers still too. Although a more traditional Linux desktop will be great for that. Mint, OpenSuse or Fedora make awesome development workstations.
Find it odd you have GNOME at the bottom. Again though, I haven't given them enough or really any time as of late, to have an opinion. GNOME at least was my favorite but they could have ruined it in recent years.
I tried moving us to a TS environment about 4 years ago - I couldn't get past the thin clients 'flashing' on websites that used Adobe Flash. When moving between screens on our EMR of the time the whole window would flash white before going to the next screen. I posted about it on SW... someone posted a reason why (can't recall now). Never had the problem when using a Windows machine as a terminal into the TS.
In the end it worked out since our current EMR strictly forbids TS.
Would they look a little and feel a lot different on a touchscreen device? Yes. But for initial stages that would be awesome.
What benefit do you see to Android on a non-handheld device? It's a handheld focused OS. It's purpose is mobility. Putting it on a desktop just seems like a horrible desktop experience. What's the draw?
