1984 happened. Literally.

Since I've given up on using Linux on the desktop, choosing Debian is pretty easy for me. Ubuntu Server doesn't provide me with any features that Debian stable does not, and I quite like the extremely conservative nature of Debian for my simple uses.

On the desktop, I would still prefer Ubuntu (or Xubuntu/Kubuntu/...), mostly just for being so extremely mainstream. If you need something stupid to work, be it binary blob drivers for graphics cards or experimental research projects, chances are someone decided to either package it directly for Ubuntu or they made a how-to specifically for Ubuntu. Distributions like Arch and Slackware provide this strangely satisfying experience of setting up your system exactly how you want it, but continually tweaking the system is a very addictive time sink.

He's probably referring to the popup's after you close a game, showing you new games available on steam. They can be turned off in preferences.

Yes, security is all about layers, but more layers wont matter at all, when what you're trying to protect is in the outer layers. In this case, the user data is all that anyone cares about. If you loose that, it doesn't matter. The extra layer will then save you from spending a couple of hours reinstalling Windows, assuming you trust the rest of the system to be clean? I wouldn't.

GP actually had pretty reasonable advice, but I guess it wouldn't be slashdot unless good advice was modded down in favor of folklore about swap partitions.

Isn't it obvious? Because you like the design of the hardware, and feel that the price difference is worth it. It's precisely the same reason someone would go buy a ThinkPad or similar upper-tier laptop and run Linux on it.

How could this not be a good idea? This is an optional feature, that rewards websites who display unobtrusive ads, while still blocking the annoying ads. If you don't like it, you are free to disable it at any time and control your own whitelist.

You need to define what you mean by loudspeaker in the context. In the strictest sense, it could be any box with the sole purpose of reproducing sound. You could also interpret it as being any device with the purpose of producing sound given electrical input, in which case my laptop has two, my washing machine has one and every pair of headphones has two (more if it's one of those fancy 'surround' headphones).

You do realize that
1) Ubuntu 11 does not exists, it's 11.04 or 11.10
2) Ubuntu uses Unity by default, not GNOME 3

Also, couldn't you just search for "terminal"?

I'd like to live in my current timezone, but without having to bother with daylight savings time.

Why?

But if you care about price so much, why would you want SLI in the first place? There's nothing stopping you from running a single NVIDIA card on an AMD platform.

Well all that doesn't matter if they're never really intending to use the data to catch bad guys

This isn't really about security at all, it's all just a security theatre, a show for the crowd. It wont help them catch bad guys.