Not sure if this is problem of distro or grub, but once installed then it works on /dev/mapper RAID drives just fine including failover. But I still believe the setup is so complicated that it easily result in unbootable system

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/997414

I am not sure what was your point. We were not discussing tax revenue of goverments or how to balance budgets. We were dicussing take-home pay of people in IT industry. There the tax rates really matter. It is not unseen to have effective tax rates (after all the deductions, etc.) in US for upper middle class (where many of the IT people are) in 10-12% range based on information shared with my friends in US. Compared that to 40% rate my friends in Germany IT industry talk about.

How about you factor taxes in and then we talk :-) How much taxes do you pey on 100+/year after all deduction? Now take a look at effective/actual tax rate in US in this category.

Full disclose as well - Our family uses Linux on all our home computers for 5+ years for most things including productive office type work, school (both elementary and higher level education), multimedia and development. We have Windows for rare gaming. We use iPads for mobile/entertainment/gaming, etc. I use Linux and Windows at work. I have never consistently used OS X.

While I do agree that the impression is that Linux "can't compete with Windows in terms of "Productivity Software for Average People"" the reality is that the gap is getting much smaller all the time. Just one random example of Corel purchasing releasing Bible Pro and releasing it as AfterShot Pro establishing legitimate competitor to Apperture and Lighroom" and Valve confirming Steam for Linux (still vaporware).

In any case, my point was that if OEMs are squeezed by Microsoft from their established markets (Windows based PCs and HW) they may be pushed to position to make additional resources (money, marketing, support) available for non Microsoft solution. This may change the established impressions about such non MS systems. Using the "Live by the sword, die by the sword" analogy, the OEMs if pushed may become Microsoft undoing. Microsoft succeeded to avoid OEMs and challenge established vendors using their XBox and it assumes it can replicate the same success in tablet market.

Actually I believe this is too bad for MS, they chose wrong time. Now the OEMs actually have an options (Android, Ubuntu and co.) to deliver compeling use experience without MS. The one who can actually loose here is MS, since it can have hard time to compete with gazillions of generic lower priced offerings on the bottom end and iPad on the high end.

Add these PPAs

https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa

and you will get 4.9 as soon as it becomes available.

NP. Look at the very first icon here

http://www.samsung.com/us/2012-smart-tv/#hub

It says Web Browser.

Then it is a possible problem of TV capabilities and not Samsung limiting what you can or cannot do. E.g. the D8000 has full featured browser available.

You can look at any website, not sure what you are talking about.

If your company give you stipend, use it. Get both DSL and Cable so that you are not cut off when one goes down. Thats what I did. Do the same with phone, have cell phone and regular phone so that you are reachable.

Games force me to have one computer dedicated to Windows. I do have couple of games on Linux but majority of my legacy and new games are for Windows. If Steam ever decides to create Linux client and motivate developers to support Linux, I wouldn't probably look back.

On the other hand all other computes in our household were switched 4 years ago to Linux and we never looked back. The main reason is that for our main family computer we are running 3 way multiseat configuration (1 computer, 3 displays, 3 keybords, 3 mice) and this is not possible with Windows (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MultiseatX). When we switched 4 years ago my wife who was graduate student at that time haven't even notices. She was using OpenOffice before and that still worked the same way on the new system. We use KDE which has proven to be extremely usable and stable with very fast learning curve.

Thank you. Now I just need to learn checking my spelling better, sorry for all the typos (e.g. mdam instead of mdadm).

I have a four tier strategy, based on the fact that discs are cheap. I call it 6666 as in 6 inches, 6 feet, 6 miles and 6 thousand miles. I developed it based on a need to backup several hundred GB to few TB of data with respect to the privacy but still allowing sharing with my family.

Tier 1: 6 inches
RAID 1 in my desktop All important files that cannot be duplicated are stored on RAID 1 disk array. If a disk fail I have a local copy immediately available for restore

Tier 2: 6 feet
Local online backup. Each important file is duplicated between my desktop and my file server. On file server the files are stored on a RAID 1 array. If my local desktop break completely (e.g. motherboard burns out and takes the disk controller and disks with it) I have the file server immediately available for restore. The replication is done on a scheduled and manual basis.

Tier 3: 6 miles
All important files are from time to time copied to a portable hard disk that is stored in a safety deposit box. This disk is updated every few weeks/months. If my house burns down I have majority of my data locally available for immediate restore. The data which are not present are restored from the remote backup in tier 4.

Tier 4: 6000 miles
All important files are remotely copied to a file server at my parents house on a different continent. It servers, two purposes. If for some reason my immediate locality is affected by natural disaster (fire, flood, tornado), my files are safe. Also if my parents wants to see my HD videos of my kids, they have them locally available and I don't have to share it with them. The replication is done on manual basis.

I have experimented with many different technologies how to implement this strategy (CrashPlan, HW RAID, SW RAID, rsync, etc.) and this is what I have settled on since it is foolproof, non proprietary and can be implemented (in case of remote backup) by non techie.

Tier 1: SW RAID using mdam on Ubuntu 64b Desktop encrypted using LUKS
Tier 2: SW RAID using mdam on CentOS 64b Server encrypted using LUKS. Populated manually using rsync every time I upload new pictures and videos to server. Home directories and documents are rsynced automatically every few hours.(Before I used CrashPlan)
Tier 3: Truecrypt on portable HDD populated using rsync manually to review changes.
Tier 4: PogoPlug modded using http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=pogoplug+arm+linux&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 to provide remote ssh server and local Samba server. Data are copied manually using rsync every time I update tier 2. The local Samba is used for local sharing of the multimedia (pictures, videos) at the destination. The beauty of this solution is that is is completely plug and play and my parents don't have to know anything about technology. I gave them 2 pieces of hardware (pogoplug and hdd), they plugged in 4 cords at their location (1 network, 1 usb, two power) and I configured their router.

Cost
Tier 1: 1 extra internal HDD (assuming desktop computer is already present)
Tier 2: 1 extra internal HDD (assuming you are already running filer server for your household)
Tier 3: 1 portable HDD
Tier 4: 1 Pogoplug ($30 on sale) + 1 portable HDD

If you start with 3 TB disks in each computer. This solution required 4 extra 3 TB disks + 1 pogoplug and little bit of manual effort.

I quite don't understand people bad mouthing PSP. It is not about size, hardware, performance, but about having fun playing game on the go. I used to be a PC game player. Never had a console. I bought PSP last christmas, just because they are now quite cheap (new ~130, used ~80) and have large selection of good games (for adults), can be used as media player on trip and also go online if needed. Now months later I played it almost every week, multiple days at a time, had tons of fun, own more games than I am able to regularly play and not having need to try different console or put it down any time soon. Whats more, I just bought another one for the family to share for watching movies on trips. From my standpoint PSP is really really good. Very nice hardware, very nice price, very nice games, who cares what other people are saying and doing.

What I want to know is, what open source code was worth such risk of being accused of inappropriate behavior.