Touch-based (and by extension, NUI-based) OS'es and mobile applications are the future. Windows always sucked. Mac OS always sucked. Every desktop OS ever built sucked because it is a horrible way to use a computer. Nobody ever really wanted to use these terrible desktop metaphor systems... they only ever did because they had to.
I guess the desktop environment was just a random choice of "this works, so just leave it in" from whatever distribution they started with.
Granted, browsers aren't without their security holes, but then again, neither are operating systems. Given the amount of effort being put into browsers to make them secure (especially Chrome), my money's on that.