Linux will never reach year of the desktop even with this kernel release coming up. In a lot of ways Linux right now in various distro's such as Ubuntu and variants like it kind of remind me of the Windows 3.x and 95 days. You might have decent driver support for most hardware but come time to upgrading the kernel more often then not you break the official closed source nvidia drivers along with your nice GUI boot screen that usually hides all the normal boot messages from the kernel as it's loaded up until you see your fancy login screen. Same goes with the god awful support of AMD video support in Linux both with official and open source drivers and more often then not your network and ow wi-fi settings might be hosed or you may not even have the WI-FI driver needed and then it's a mad dash off to the official Ubuntu forums for help.

And applications need to be improved too in some area's. There's really only one half assed decent CD/DVD/BR burning program and thats K3B that actually won't produce messed up unreadable discs. Wheras in Windows you have the excellent free CDBurnerXP or if you like bloatware "one does it all" package the commercial Nero Burning rom. Video players in Linux suck too when you don't have much choice been mplayer and it's front ends and VLC. Gnome Mplayer as a front-end example can't even jump to a specific point in hours, minutes, or seconds in a video if you want and won't allow you to save bookmarks.

VLC on the other hand DOES allow you to jump to a specific time, but it sure as hell can't save bookmarks at any point in a video until you use a workaround of saving a bookmark into a playlist file, and not too mention that when playing audio files VLC will absolutely ignore embedded artwork in say Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files and by default will try and download cover art that's garbage in quality or completly wrong.

When in comparison to windows xp/7/8 you have K-lite media codec pack and the great Media Player Classic HC (MPC-HC) that not only has more modern video renderers such as Haala and MadVR but can also use newer LAV audio/video decoders for much better picture and sound quality compared to VLC, and if you don't want to use LAV decoders you can use ffmpeg included with k-lite instead and STILL get better picture quality. Oh and also no problems playing DVD's either when even with restricted-extra's packages in Ubuntu and variants and some other stuff installed to play dvd's you still find the occasional DVD that will not play because of it's copy protection garbage.

Image viewers and editors aren't much better. Irfanview and Xnview are great to use but all you have with Ubuntu is the newer XnviewMP (Multi-Platform) which is really the only decent image viewer on Linux these day's that isn't retarded. For editors sure you have GIMP on Windows, Linux ETC but Adobe Photoshop still has a fair amount of features that GIMP doesn't have. Audio players in Ubuntu suffer too when the only decent audio player is Audacious but in comparison to Foobar2000 on windows which does so much freaking more it's like night and day.

Overall in a lot of ways windows has better apps in some areas or has more development in some area's towards audio and video quality in playback. It's just that for the most part a lot of people are dumbasses and don't take precautions of running ONLY Firefox as a browser with Adblock Plus, Noscript, Cookie Controller, Ghostery (or DoNotTrackMe if you prefer) and Socialfixer (to fix whats annoying as hell on facebook) and don't actually read each popup from an installer asking if you'd like to install "X toolbar" or "X program" and automatically default to YES until you click no or refuse to avoid getting malware and viruses and browser hijackers simply because people are too stupid to read and in a hurry to always click through every screen. That and people who still to this day launch attachments from emails.

Linux is no better either these days with some newer malware packages showing up and with all those so called wonderful Linux help sites with really long command lines using sudo in the terminal, some people will blindly copy and paste it into the terminal and run it without verifying what they copied off the site actually matches what was pasted into the terminal before hitting enter and entering in your password then wondering how linux malware got on the machine.

So overall the point i'm trying to make here and hope i've made is until the applications are improved or better alternatives become available for linux it will never reach the year of the desktop, especially not when you have to live in fear each distro and kernel upgrade if it's going to hose your network, wi-fi, or video driver or your boot/login screens, or god forbid something else. And yes I am aware of WINE if you want to run the majority of Windows programs in Linux but it's still not 100% with all apps out there.

I've been using this program for over a year first in Windows XP and now in Lubuntu and it's really really good to manage books on my Kindle Paperwhite. There's even a quality check plugin that has an option titled "Fix ASIN for Kindle Fire" which fixes it so that the book cover actually shows up on my paperwhite instead of a generic one. :)

Really? My lubuntu install plays audio just fine with no problems. Just because you have issues doesn't mean everyone does.

I've been quite happy using Audacious in Lubuntu compared to say in the past when i've tried Clementine and Amarok and I found they both felt bloated almost like iTunes for windows.

Some people just can't handle concentrating on multiple tasks at once such as driving as well as talking into a phone let alone texting. Even if you have your cell phone linked by bluetooth in a newer car and can answer a voice call via a push of the button on the steering wheel or another method of answering it you're still making most people focus more on a conversation as to what to say and less on the road and driving. My former boss was like this when he'd take me home on occasion in his brand new Honda 4 door from 2012 and he'd answer calls from co-workers and his family and there was a couple times he did get distracted and almost caused an accident or wasn't as steady on his driving as he should be.

I've even almost once been killed by a person who decided she had to grab her cell phone and reply to a text message. Thankfully she's my ex girlfriend but back in 2007 she was doing around 110 km/h (or 68 mph or so) on a two lane road outside of Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada) and she took both hands off the steering wheel and damn near made the minivan almost swerve off the road into a ditch. To put it mildly that I was pretty pissed off and screaming at her was an understatement.

Why bring back an old magazine title when it will end up being more full of ads then actual articles? 10+ years ago I used to read Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Scientific American all the time and it was worthwhile reading. Now in the last 4-5 years i've noticed in the above mentioned magazines there is literally twice as many ads with the majority of them being 3-8 page ads trying to hype some product, car, etc, the usual two page ads, and so on. Plus, a lot more mail in cards that everyone basically rips out and tosses in the trash anyways.

I know the magazine publishing companies whine they have to survive in this era to keep making issues but keep a lot less ads in the magazines and way more articles and stories and you'll get more subscribers who prefer magazines that aren't 85% ads and 15% articles.

And this is why I tell friends and family to run Adblock plus and keep it updated so you have a lot lower chance (if any) to see ads from websites you *believe* are safe delivering malicious code via ads.

Agreed. It's not an active memory scanner but it's good for when you need it to do the occasional scans of programs or program updates you download. Along with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scanner, and finally a lightweight firewall such as Privatefirewall it does help a lot. Also, using Firefox along with Adblock Plus, Noscript, Ghostery, Cookie Controller, and Social Fixer (Facebook) you basically eliminate a good 99% of all that wonderful infested malicious code in ads on various websites since one can only assume most servers that serve up ads are already compromised and serving up all that garbage.

I run two older Intel dual core machines here (1.86ghz 6300) with 1gb of ram using Windows XP SP3 (one for myself and one for my fiance) and even though they both have Intel Q965 integrated chipsets using 256mb of that ram I wouldn't dare bother with on demand scanners from any company, period. I did leave MSE scanner on my fiance's machine though as she's somewhat of a computer ludite and all she does is go on firefox to watch Netflix and go on facebook, and if she accidentally clicked on something she shouldn't have, at least I have several Linux live CD distro's available to boot from just in case along with a dual boot of Ubuntu on that machine in case she somehow manages to hose her Windows install bad enough but miracousely doesn't damage grub!

Come 2014 I may just end up switching my machine at least to Linux Mint XFCE or Xubuntu because of microsoft not patching Windows XP anymore.

Only thing that pisses me off with Linux though is that Adobe can't be bothered to have flash properly use graphics acceleration you literally need to install Google Chrome in your favorite distro unless it comes with it already, and use the built in flash in that browser to actually GET the same flash performance you do on a Windows machine. But then you come across a catch 22 in that yea google chromes built in flash runs faster on linux then adobe flash in Firefox but then you're missing out on the most needed extensions such as Adblock plus (Crippled in chrome compared to firefox), and Noscript.

And speaking of anti virus scanners I'm suprised no one has mentioned that there actually is anti virus scanners too for Linux such as avast, bitdefender etcetera. But again probably active scanners slowing down your linux machine.

It could be worse! If they got Bey or Abrahms to do it then we'd see more lense flares and ultra fast fight scenes and no story followed by more lense flares and more female terminators with big boobs that open up to be machine gun cannons or flame throwers.

A lot of people are bringing up the whole malware/viruses issue alongside performance issues as well. What I haven't seen mentioned much is that *IF* Linux were the mainstream OS on the desktop you would see a lot more malware and viruses for Linux distro's. I mean hell Android alone has been hit so hard with malware and viruses it's become more of a joke then anything especially when some of it comes from the official google play store hidden in various apps. Same applies to Mac OS/X which also has seen an increase in malware and viruses the last few years.

Hell even MS-DOS back in the 80's and 90's were affected by viruses when that was the mainstream OS and when Windows 3.0x and 3.1x releases came about we started seeing more viruses affecting them and then it took off with Windows 9x releases and so on and so forth. Heck let's even say if Microsoft and IBM had decided to play nice years ago and kept co-developing OS/2 together and had released that in 1990 instead we might have been in a world of Microsoft OS/2 today and still dealing with viruses and malware.

Part of the problem is that Microsoft encouraged bad computer user habits for the average user that unfortunately still exists today for most people who have no interest in learning how to defend yourself from the vast majority of shitware and viruses out there. Automatically clicking on file(s) attached to e-mails if using Outlook, downloading various free, trial, or even commercial programs, especially from CNET, where it's bundled in with so much adware/scareware/crapware/malware you name it, that you have to uncheck several boxes and click through more prompts to confirm that, yes, I do not want this toolbar or this search engine or this software installed. Even now some uninstallers try to install more adware/malware when you remove the original program which is just downright nasty.

Then we wonder why so many people are (or should be using) programs such as Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and at least a half assed decent anti virus like Avast if you need realtime scanning, or Clamwin AV if you just feel the need to scan executable files you download along with a decent firewall such as Privatefirewall or, god forbid if you like buggy pieces of shit firewalls, Comodo or Zonealarm. And linux users arent immune either in that sometimes people who arent familiar with the terminal will randomly copy and paste sudo command lines from various "Linux help sites" to install this program or that and don't verify that what they are copying and pasting is actually what it says on screen. I mean hell you could have it say onscreen "sudo apt-get netflix-desktop" but when pasted into terminal a user in a rush might not realize it says "sudo apt-get malware-sucker-package" and boom your linux box is now targeted for god knows what.

Same goes for the browser too. Too many people still use Internet Explorer which for over a decade now has been so full of security holes its no wonder windows systems get fucked up so hardcore. Using firefox along with Adblock plus, Noscript, Ghostery (or DNT+ if you prefer) goes a hell of a long way on windows to stop a lot of the "visit said website or get re-directed to a website and have software installed without your permission" often through something as innocent looking as flash ads, banner ads, or sites insisting you have to "download codec to play video" when you don't need it to do so.

And finally for performance it's easy enough to tweak in both Linux and Windows. Disable services and startups you dont need in both operating systems, honest to god de-fragment your hard drive in windows once a month even with free programs like Defraggler, keep the registry clean and learn what the hell is running in both operating systems at boot time, and what you have installed. I still have friends who don't bother to learn how to tweak windows or linux, how it all works, how to keep it operating smoothly and malware/virus free especially when browsing even if you use firefox and or chrome and don't have critical plugins/extensions like ABP and Noscript to give you better control, and then wonder why they have tons of toolbars and popups in firefox and chrome, and several toolbar and other "apps" in control panel and why windows 7 or 8 is running like a piece of shit exhausting RAM and swapping to the swapfile like a mofo slowing it all down.

In short if people would stop actually learn more about how to use Windows and various linux distrubitions safely and practice safe browsing to defeat all the ads and drive by viruses/malware that comes with those ads to begin with, and not drink the microsoft kool aid that tries to convince you Bing and Internet Explorer are the "shiznit" of the web, we'd all be better off. But because a lot more apps have been made over the years for MS-DOS + 16/32/64 bit Windows apps then any amount of native linux apps combined we will all be pretty much stuck using various version of windows as a main desktop, using virtual machine solutions to run software that may be 10 to 30+ years old, or dual boot systems even.

Safeway for example at least in the USA and Canada was or still is using OS/2 to operate the tills. As recently as six months ago I remembered watching a manager reboot a till and on a 17 inch LCD screen it looked like OS/2 rebooting then bringing up their own till software.

Ogg vorbis support is needed to be supported a lot better then it is now. Currently if you want to play Vorbis music files you have to transfer the files manually to your iDevice and use a different music player that supports the format. However, I doubt the chances of this happening may unfortunately be slim to none. Ogg vorbis IMHO is a much better format then AAC but god forbid Apple supporting it on the devices and in iTunes.

Steve should have fired the team that makes the Windows version of iTunes. That software is in the same league as "The most shittiest software in the world" such as Samsung Keis. iTunes especially is just so much junk.

You forgot to add they will eventually add in their own versions of so called popular games from facebook such as Songpop and Candy Crush. Hell they even did their own version of Plants and Zombies and all just to get a very annoying singing pet that you just want to squash into oblivion and an achievment.

I would resub as well if TBC was going on too. Vanilla, TBC, and WOTLK were a lot easier on system requirements especially with older computers and video cards. Didn't want shadows enabled that would be a huge fps hit on older systems? Turn it off and you could have an enjoyable playing experience. But since the Cataclysm and MoP expansions they permantely forced shadows on and with MoP all of a sudden recommended dual core or better cpu's for an almost ten year old game?

All they did was just add more glitz and shine with fancy effects that newer video cards are capable of with no slowdown but if you weren't able to upgrade your pc or video card blizzard just basically told you "Ah well you're screwed bye bye"... I used to raid with guys back during TBC and WOTLK that at the time were using -10 year old pc's with old school AGP graphics cards and it was playable.

Have to agree with you here too. On the american server i played on (Alexstrasza) it wasn't always the best or greatest server but like every other server on the old message forums blizzard ran there was lists of good people and bad people, assholes, jerks, and honest players. You basically HAD to not act like a prick on your server to get anywhere. But again with LFR, LFD and CRZ boy oh boy did it ever bring out the pricks en masse for bad behaviour because they knew they could get away with it until blizzard finally got forced into adding a method to report players even though it doesn't do much.

And then remember all the fun with LFD first came out in WOTLK and the problems they had for months on end with instance servers being full and you'd physically go to the entrance of a dungeon and see dozens of people clustered around the gate constantly trying to push into it to get in.

Death Knights to this day are pretty much the king of soloing old school raids. Stuff that used to be 40 man or 20 man is now in MoP so easily soloable it just makes you sad. There's literally dozens of videos on youtube of DK's soloing some of the most toughest raid end bosses from TBC, WOTLK, and even Cata because of how the runes system works with DK's and if done properly you pretty much could do anything.

They actually used to do a lot more free transfers years ago and more often too.

Agreed it should not be for gear progression. It just encourages more solo playing by yourself with no guild and in a way being a hermit doing dailies for months while not associating with anyone else.

But overall I agree with everything you've said 100% but unfortunately you and me and everyone else knows Blizzard will not listen to anyone while they will introduce new pets, mounts to buy online and I really do suspect eventually fancy looking gear addons/pieces and one day the auction house system from D3 that deals with real money.

They are going to milk WoW as much as they can until there's under one million subs left at which point it'll be closer to SWTOR with under 1 mil subs and maybe then it'll finally die off.