The only areas where proprietary drivers work worse than Open Source drivers

What about kernel mode setting? Can I adjust the resolution, or plug in an external monitor, on my Linux Mint KDE system with the proprietary Nvidia driver, using the KDE tools, or do I have to use some shitty proprietary program which isn't built into KDE?

Right now, with my Intel system, I can plug in an external monitor and I don't have to do anything at all to use it. Does the proprietary driver do that? If not, it's unusable.

Unlike most lazy Americans, I do a fair bit of hiking. I'm sure I wouldn't have any trouble.

What "base case"? Plugging an external monitor into a laptop is not a rare, niche application, it's a common thing for people with monitors to do. In fact, it's an absolute necessity for anyone who works at a corporate job: you have to be able to take your laptop into a conference room and plug in a VGA or HDMI cable so you can use the room's projector. For home use, it's not uncommon for people to plug their big-screen TV into their laptop.

Intel hardware works just fine unless you're playing high-end games. For things like watching video (which includes hardware decoding), and for not-so-high-end games, it's perfectly adequate, plus it has lower power consumption than external GPUs, which is a very important thing on a laptop.

If you're having problems walking around, you really should see a doctor. That isn't normal unless you're elderly (80+). Just look at Harrison Ford; he's in his 70s and still in great shape. Not exercising isn't going to help anything.

You might also want to see a podiatrist and make sure your footwear is keeping your legs aligned properly.

If you have places that are spread out over a city, you'll get between them much faster on a bus or in a taxi. Segways are not particularly fast, they just free you from having to walk.

Serious comments are useless when the discussion is being drowned in comments from paid shills.

This discussion has made it obvious that Slashdot has been completely taken over by shills, and serious discussion can't be done here any more.

Why would those scientists you mention need to use FOSS drivers?

Because they're not playing games, they're using the GPUs' computational power, and the proprietary drivers don't work for that presumably.

Restarting X is unacceptable in this day and age. I don't have to do that shit with the open-source Intel drivers; everything "just works". If I plug in a new monitor on my laptop, it's instantly activated and configured, and I can just move windows to it.

No, Linux gaming is not absolutely dependent on open-source drivers. However, open-source drivers work much better on Linux systems than proprietary drivers; the proprietary ones usually take extra work to install, they break on updates, etc. The Linux desktop ecosystem just isn't set up very well for proprietary drivers (by design).

No, he's absolutely right. It doesn't matter if her examples have been debunked or not, or if they've been completely made up. What people believe is what's important, not objective reality, and people's beliefs are shaped by things like media coverage on the harassment she received. So basically, the harassment made everyone take her side, even though she may be (according to you) wrong. If she hadn't been harassed that way, and the critics focused only on the facts, this probably wouldn't have turned out this way.

not same inteligent person (only low-IQ people would share their private data with Slashdot or Facebook, and have account on those sites)

You're an idiot. Slashdot doesn't know anything about me besides my handle. All anyone knows about "Grishnakh" is that he's an orc captain who was stepped on by an ent.

In any decent country, those patent problems aren't an issue.

If you're obese or out of shape, I guess. For the rest of us, a walking tour is good exercise.

Exactly. This lackadaisical attitude towards security is par for the course with them.