The OP explicitly asked for linux based IDE.

Because of the uncertainty principle, they're still arguing about the exact location and the mass of the goods needed to calculate the duty

As you've already said there are better solutions for people who need more. Google is providing something optimized for those who DON'T need more.

Most users don't even know what to ask for, be it a web browser or standalone software. They just need a good way (whatever it is) to achieve their goals e.g. email, reading news, watching videos, listening to music, etc... Web-based computing is one of the many ways, and it happens to be the way Google chose to bet their entire business on. So they're doing whatever it takes to improve it. In terms of user experience it's ahead of desktop computing in some ways and lagging behind in others. I'm sure the engineers at Google know that and are working hard on those weaknesses.

But Oracle's lack of R&D commitment can cause user disinterest.

There is a Vi bindings plug-in for Netbeans
http://netbeans.org/kb/55/vi-integration.html

Netbeans isn't there in terms of industry backing and support (which is what we hope Oracle will provide). As far as the software itself is concerned I find it to be at least as good if not better than Eclipse. It's been significantly improved over the last couple of years from version 4.x to 6.x. There are two things that I like it better than Eclipse:
- it's 100% Java and runs fine on anything that has a JVM (Eclipse's SWT has platform specific dependencies which prevented me from using it on 64bit machines, it took ages for it to have proper x64 support)
- better developer experience because of a cleaner and sensibly chosen set of plug-ins that all work out-of-the-box with no dependency hell (Eclipse plug-ins is a mess unless you pay for commercially packaged versions like MyEclipse)

Compared to all those CSS, Javascripts, images, multimedia contents currently being downloaded alongside webpages, it doesn't seem like a nightmare. In some cases it may actually save bandwidth (coz otherwise the text would have to be made as images).

Give browser developers time and things will improve. The implementation is still relatively new and less mature.

That's the responsibility of the web developers. The spec allows for multiple failover fonts that if used properly should provide graceful downgrade.

Then blame those incompetent web developers, not the enabling technology (otherwise you can blame HTML for allowing the use of colors). Look at it from the other side it provides a standardized way for competent developers to improve visual quality of text. It's fine if you want web technology to stay as it was in the 90s but the rest of the world will continue to move on.

Developers can specify both local and remote fonts. Only remote fonts need to be downloaded and they will be cached just like images, CSS, etc...

Spend some time understanding something before bashing.

again it's a race between hackers and browser developers... Same thing happened to HTTP, HTML, Javascript, etc...

There is always a risk when processing any data from the net. It's impossible to make something that is 100% secure. But when something gains popularity and is being depended on heavily, the effort going into the implementation will naturally grow and the security will improve.

ain't those things what HTML5 is aiming to address?

Picasa doesn't have a monopoly like Windows

True, but a counter argument is that if you want larger DOF, the sensor size advantage of the 5D will be offset by the need for a smaller aperture which puts pressure on either the sensitivity or shutter speed.

Mike Rayfield:

And how is Windows CE/Mobile any better in that regard? I would think it's even worse.

If you just want to run a standalone web forum, then Google Wave may not offer much more than a ajax php forum. And if you just want email, then SMTP+IMAP/POP is surely good enough.

The power of Google Wave comes from the unification of various communication and collaboration paradigms, it's federated nature, it's extensibility and it's open-standard and web-centric approach. In the old model if I want to participate in a forum I'll have to register on the web, go back to my outlook to get the verification email, and then go back to web. I'll also have to subscribe to email alerts for new posts, then go back to the web to reply. All these context switching is totally unnecessary and can be frustrating when you have say 10 different web forums, 5 social networks, 3 photo sharing sites, and 2 IM networks and 1 blog. And there is no practical way to for me to search and browse through my entire communication history in one place.