I don't need to use it to know that it isn't a OS made for me. I've been using GNU/Linux exclusively during the past 8 years and I love it. Besides that, I developed powerful skills by using GNU/Linux which would be lost by using another completely different OS. Again, I'm happy and I have absolutely no curiosity or interest in using latest version of Windows.
Now I know Windows RT behaves a bit more like iOS. But then again, I don't have any tablet, and for now I do not have intentions of buying one. One day, *if* I find the need to buy one, I would probably go to Android (or the Ubuntu tablet if it ever shows up) because it is a platform that is the most compatible with GNU/Linux. I'm not going to buy a tablet only to have problems syncing contacts or even simple things as transferring files between the devices (yes, Windows Mobile I'm looking at you). I also have absolutely no interest in creating a Microsoft Live/whatever account or using any of their services.

If the surface or Windows RT were such great devices, then explain me the ridiculously low sales?

I like the iPad OS, but it is not something made for me. :)

You forgot to say "in my own opinion". In my own opinion the surface has a shitty operating system which cannot be replaced, so it is a no-buy.

.. oh and by the way, when I say people, I'm excluding myself; because in that case I would prefer to have a single mainframe serving the entire house - but that is just me.

I think you are still missing the point. My Windows Mobile brick also tried to be a phone and a computer at the same time. Guess what? It was the most horrible device I ever owned.
People prefer devices designed for specific functions, otherwise we wouldn't have stereos, tv's, dvd players, etc.. We would just have a single computer.

There are cases where you can merge functionality (for example mp3 players into smartphones [1]) but NOT in the Surface Pro's case.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9741910/Smartphones-wipe-out-sales-of-MP3-players.html

You are so wrong. Pretty much all conferences in diverse domains of Informatics and Computer Science (at least sponsored by IEEE and SPIE) provide a template .tex file. Contrary to what you say, you submit the compiled pdf file to peer review, not the tex. And so you know, I can tell the difference from a pdf produced with (eg. latexpdf) from one produced with Microsoft Word; the one produced with latex has a clear superior quality (substantially more polished). Not only that, often people writing research papers with Microsoft Word seem unaware about vectorial graphics formats because they use raster images all the times, giving result to crappy plots which you can't even zoom without getting abusive pixelation and blocking effects from JPEG compression. Maybe Word compresses the images using JPEG by default, idk.

While I'm no OSS guru, I certainly have my share of OSS contributions. I can personally tell you that collaborating with all sorts of people and projects is very educating.

What about you stop imagining what "joining the OSS" would be and you actually try to contribute something? Really, it is a no-brainer! Just follow some project you like/use a lot and when you have a chance, submit a patch with a bugfix or feature - that's it. Don't be a pussy and treat all criticism as a way to learn and educate yourself. If your patches are worthwhile, you will be noticed and eventually someone will ask you to join the project. However, just because you are not part of the core team of a project, it does not mean you didn't "join the OSS community", whatever that means.

For starters, the quality of the extensions is lower than Gnome 2 applets - specially the system monitoring extension. When a single extension crashes in Gnome 3, the whole panel goes MIA, unlike Gnome 2.

Wow Planetary Annihilation looks awesome, I can't wait for it!

There was this time I was playing against a single friend in a huge map. As usual, I started building a massive wall of air and land defense and sending small waves of land forces to distract the enemy. Guess what? Around the time I had my Big Berta almost built, suddenly all my base got covered with enemy bomber and fighter planes! I could not believe it, I couldn't see anything else than air planes flying! It turned out that my friend spent the whole game producing airplanes into a remote map area and at the end even "reclaimed" his land defenses and other infrastructure to give room (TA has a limit on number of units) for more flying units!
It was fun to lose against him :)

I don't remember if I played the multiplayer using wine or VirtualBox. I think it was VirtualBox with Windows XP.

Finally! Someone who likes Total Annihilation. I still play it though, it works great using wine!

At least that one had proper directional keys.. Even if I grew up using them, I never got used to it. :P

Pretty cool! One question, do you still have your programs? I always wanted to convert my tapes to flac audio files but I never found the time..

I started when I was around 12 years old, on a Philips VG8010. I believe my friends had 386 PCs at that time. I did not have a lot of games on tape so I started reading the computer user's manual (which teaches programming). The book was a really good introductory material because I managed to learn pretty much everything by myself ... well except sprites, which was only a few years later that I actually managed to understood how they worked :P

Nobody else here starting with a MSX ??