Many of the ideas are taken from XMonad which is also used by people who like it and at the same time is also an excellent example of how monadic window management works. LISP is like that, everything in LISP is just a DSL so it is scriptable.

You are right before that Linux is becoming professional. It has been far too successful in too many areas to want to keep the hacker culture that existed 20 years ago. Of course the BSDs still have that. But you like hacker OSes go with something much more interesting than a UNIX. House / HaLVM (also Haskell) are pretty cool extensions for the modern world.

As far as tiling window managers for Wayland they already exist and I'd assume will get more sophisticated with time: There is Velox which is a varient of XMonad and Orbment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It seems like as things currently stand most of the pieces to do this exist. X does remote display. PulseAudio does network audio (though I am struggling to make that work). There is USB over TCP/IP support in Linux but you have to go to the commandline and tell a client to share a specific USB device

Wayland does Audio and Video now and can keep them unified. usb device redirection is part of the protocol so GTK/Qt should be implementing controllers that work within their respective desktops.

Anyway, implementing all of this.. if remote support is fragmented across toolkits, possibly non-existent on some lesser used toolkits.. that sounds even harder than it has ever been!

No it is far far easier. GTK, Qt, wxWindows, Mono... all understand that USB and sound exist so no hacking. For example Gnome -> Gnome can pass off intelligent information about streaming and buffering so remote sound is both good and responsive even if the lots of jitter on the network. USB of course requires device driver virtualization and the toolkits, already support that. Etc... This all becomes almost trivial.

Once you start trying to use Wayland the way it is meant to be used this becomes easy.

I think there would be a lot to gain if thin-clients were to become more mainstream.

They are mainstream its called remote desktop. That is in 2015 people using thing clients aren't remoting the video but remoting the desktop. The reason is that is doesn't cost much to add some CPU and video to the local machine and it makes it much more responsive. So the local system has a thin base OS. It loads toolkit information from a server when it isn't being used. When it is being used the server just passes it specifics about what's running. This is the model that can go on top of RDP which is what Wayland is implementing.

Wayland doesn't make thin client less practical but rather makes it vastly more practical because you'll be able to thin the client down to something like an Android device and thus have the base OS built in. Microsoft is way ahead of Linux on thin client, because of how naive is about toolkits.

That's interesting, I didn't know about Macrovision buying the Rovi name, apparently.

I've often appreciated the Rovi movie summaries.

My Happy Hacking Professional 2 keyboard has a control key in the place where a caps lock key usually goes.

Of course, checking how often Mac users use the right mouse button would really skew things, would it not? Besides, popularity and usefulness are not the same thing. If a two men were standing on a street corner handing out money and one was handing out free $20s while the other was handing out free $10s, which would be more popular? Probably the one giving out $20s. Does that mean the $10 bill isn't useful?

The reality is that there are some very good use cases for the caps-lock (as others have pointed out). If it isn't hurting anything where it is, then why move it? What other key would you put there that you would want to hit with your pinky to do something else, that most people would find as a useful improvement? Right now if I accidentally hit the caps lock, I get capital letters -- a nuisance but not terrible. What if you replace it with the ctrl or alt key as some have suggested? There could be far worse ramifications.

Regardless, popularity does not dictate usefulness. Chances are, you will never have to use the flotation device on an airplane or the oxygen max. Based on frequency of use, they must not be very popular. However, for the right user case, they are very useful.

Or chose "all caps" font.

I'm using CapsLock as a layout switching key, lots of other people use it as a second 'esc'.

And why would you remove it, anyway?

Mechanically, it's mostly already consolidated down to three - the ANSI, ISO, and JIS keyboards.

It was reverted because, as computers started systematically replacing the typewriter in businesses (instead of being a specialist machine, like terminals), secretary-typists and the typists in corporate typing pools complained about the location of the Caps Lock key not being where they were used to it. Keyboards for computers intended for general business use accordingly swapped over, since the people who typed the most and had the strongest opinions on keyboards in the early 1980s wanted it that way.

People don't seem to understand the point of typing multiple capital letters in a row, as they hold shift with a pinky to type COBOL or UNIX. Chromebooks put that useless search button where capslock goes.

In my opinion, Microsoft is an extremely badly managed and abusive company. I see these issues as supporting that widely shared opinion:

One effect of "upgrading" to Windows 10: Windows Media Center will be deleted. Microsoft is also apparently trying to kill Windows Media Center software in other versions of Windows, without notice, by stopping providing the TV program schedule (EPG, Electronic Program Guide). That affects hundreds of thousands of users. The issue is not who uses Windows Media Center. The issue is that apparently Microsoft is operating in a sneaky fashion that is extremely anti-customer, and that shows Microsoft is trying to take even more control over its users.

Microsoft and thousands of customers are blaming Rovi. Notice, for example, how many times Rovi is mentioned on this Microsoft web page:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/Feedback

This Microsoft web pages says the TV Guide has been "Updated":
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3078428,
but many Windows Media Center users no longer have a TV schedule, making Windows Media Center worthless because it is very difficult to record without the schedule.

Microsoft is apparently deliberately destroying Windows Media Center, and letting Rovi take the blame. For example, a new installation of Windows Media Center on a fully updated Windows 7 Ultimate computer has several flaws, not just the lack of a TV program guide.

Another loss in Windows 10: Windows Updates will be forced, in some versions. Will there be other lost features, now or later? Will Microsoft extend its control over Windows in other hidden or complicated ways? Online comments say that Microsoft will try to move Windows to a model that requires monthly payments. The issue is not whether technically-knowledgeable users will be able to stop forced updates; the issue is that most people won't know how to regain control over their systems. That control is important because often Microsoft has issued poorly designed updates that have caused problems on user's systems. See this Slashdot story, for example, Windows 10's Automatic Updates For NVidia Drivers Causing Trouble.

More about Microsoft releasing buggy software: The Slashdot story, Windows 10 Launches, says Windows 10 is "buggier than Windows 8.1, 8, 7, or Vista were on their respective launch days" and "During my testing on a variety of hardware, I've run into a lot of bugs and issues -- even with the version that will be released to consumers on launch day".

(At present, the best way to update Windows 7 is to use Autopatcher, because Microsoft's anti-customer "updates" are avoided.)

Firefox: Embraced, "Extended", soon to be Extinguished? Mozilla Foundation now gets most of its money from Microsoft. Microsoft pays Yahoo. Yahoo pays Mozilla Foundation to make "Yahoo search" (actually Microsoft Bing search) the default search engine in Firefox. Most people don't have the technical knowledge to know how they've been manipulated, or how to restore the default search engine to Google search.

Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Composer GUIs: Damaged, apparently deliberately. Every time you do a file save, the newer versions of both ask for a new file name, and don't suggest the last one chosen. The damage was reported several months ago, but has not been fixed. Is that another example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? People who feel forced away from Thunderbird may choose Microsoft software to replace it. Is that what Microsoft is trying to accomplish?

Microsoft is amazingly badly managed. The company apparently survives only because of having an unregulated virtual monopoly that allows it to charge full price for each new version, and to alternate good and bad versions, so customers pay twice for new versions. (Windows 98, good, except later when there were file system problems; Windows ME, bad; Windows XP, good, after several years of patches; Windows Vista, bad; Windows 7, good; Windows 8, so bad the next version, Windows 10 is "free".)

"Monkey Boy" The cover of the January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.

Worst CEO: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

For comparison.....

The US used a 57mm towed anti-tank gun in WW2.

You forgot the word "fortunately." I don't see how it's "fortunate" (in the post you're responding to) that most of Europe is not allowed to defend themselves from home invaders.

So? That has nothing to do with it. You think it's less creepy for nerds to spy on a 17 or 18 year old with a drone?

The Capslock key inherited the position occupied by the Shift-Lock key. Some keyboards still mark it as shift-lock. In the old mechanical typewriters, the shift lock actually moved the entire framework holding the rack of all the levers that held the letters. It required considerable force to push.

I suspect the big change we'll see trusted computing. Features like Samsung Knox but for PC. Microsoft was too chicken to go all the way and take all the heat when they were leading the effort along with Intel. This way Intel and Microsoft have just enabled it, there will need to be other 3rd party software but it will be the hardware OEMs that actually deploy it. Lots of pieces and no one but the security vendors doing more than enabling.

As far as the general fear of blocking other OSes, I doubt it. Microsoft has been generous, supportive and and cooperative with Linux vendors in terms of getting keys to work. Those vendors have been supportive with more open players.