There now. FTFY

Don't mind me, I'll let you get back to designing that infinity drive powered fusion anti-matter sparko-manoflap thing. Or whatever "important" stuff you and you're computer happen to be doing.

I'm more of an alt-tab (and for that matter, I use a gnu screen for multiple vi instances) kind of person rather than clicking on the taskbar so what you're going through there isn't really an issue for me. FWIW though, when I get 10 or so windows open on my desktop I start to appreciate the task grouping behavior. I checked to see if you could turn grouping off and it doesn't look like it. If it's really killing you just install fbpanel and run it ignoring the Unity panel.

Makes it so you can see more of the window title. When you need the menu, mouse to it. I dig it when I'm browsing with a bunch of tabs and want to see the entire tab title at a glance. But that's just me I guess.

That I can pretty much agree with. They have some minimum requirements but 700 MHz seems a little low to me. Anything under my purview ranking lower than about a 2 GHz P4 gets the Openbox treatment.

Or it would have us debate these things on actual merit rather than the hysterical hyperbole often seen when the timeless window manager/DE of choice discussion pops up.

Choice quotes on this very page:

And on and on and on.

Sure they do.

Not sure what your definition of "real work" is but I somehow manage to get a few things done here and there with pretty much equal ease switching between Gnome 2.3 on my Debian box, Unity on my Ubuntu clad laptop, and Openbox pretty much everywhere else. What is it specifically that is giving you so much trouble if I may ask?

Maybe it's the cynicism growing on me but I don't get the constant bitching and moaning over desktop decorations. Back in the day I used KDE3.x and it was fine. Then I used Gnome 2.x and it was fine. Now I use Unity and it is just fine too. On my low-end tinker-boxes, I use Openbox and Fbpanel. And it's all fine. Alt-f2, Alt-tab, Alt-f4, and Alt-Space work everywhere. Focus on your applications, fellas; that's what's important.

Which Android client supports all of these things? The only thing on Android that can do video/audio/3D with aplomb while offering a consumer accessible server component is Splashtop and a couple also-rans nobody has ever heard of. For printing and other USB support, I haven't seen anything on Android in a remote desktop package.

Average broadband speed in the US last I checked was 6.7 Mbps. Couple that with pings of 20 to 30 ms to Dell's servers and vnc would work quite well for anything short of video and gaming. I use vnc all the time on a similar connection and after fiddling with the encoding/compression/quality knobs, latency is practically non-discernible. I'm very sensitive to that kind of thing too which is why I eschew Splashtop as while it slings video great, there's just enough inherent latency to make me not use it. The typical consumer would probably not even notice it. For reference, I vnc into a Comcast business connection with 21/5 Mbps from a home with 5/.5 Mbps with avg ping of about 20 ms and it works fantastically. When I use nx on my laptop from here to there, latency is undetectable. As in I get a desired response faster than I can lift my finger off the key I just pressed. And that's me just throwing some stuff together and getting lucky. Surely Dell can do better.

I'm a fan of Splashtop myself. That and Chrome Remote Desktop are the only consumer accessible client/server combinations I've seen that can truly deliver when it comes to video and gaming over the network. I assume it's the video style encoding server side and subsequent decoding on the client versus older stuff like rdp and vnc. That said, one thing I'm not crazy about is no matter how close you get, there's always that seemingly inherent half tick of latency that bugs me. With vnc, nx, or rdp, this isn't an issue as long as the network itself is up to the task. That would be why I'm using vnc from my Galaxy Nexus to my desktop to post this rather than the Splashtop client I could be using.

Worried you wouldn't be taken seriously so you figured dropping the old stereotypic racist comment at the end might bolster your credibility some? Did it work? Are you homophobic too? I'm sure a faggot joke would make a great encore you fucking worthless, mouth-breathing, shit-for-brains, jackass. Go ahead, douchebag. Let's see what you can dig out of the shit that's so old it wasn't even funny the first time Moses said it joke scroll. Of course, if you're feeling real froggy, you might surprise us all and point that collection of 200 odd neurons you try to pass off as a brain in the same direction for once and actually come up with something original. I know that's asking a lot so just baby step it and start by shitting out an insult that's honest to Goddamned funny!

Please do.

But can't I do both? I've thought about the whole closed source binaries running on top of the open platform quite a bit since I've been using Linux on the desktop for a number of years now. My conclusion? Better an open OS with a few proprietary applications to fill the cracks than a closed OS and everything being the other way around. That's a personal choice though and I don't try to force it on anybody else. I may politely recite the as seen by me virtues if it comes up but that's about it. Besides, Linux had proprietary shops writing applications for it a looooong time ago so that ship has pretty much done sailed for anybody keeping score. Not only that but Valve produces a tiny fraction of the games on Steam so, whoever's offended, be sure to spread some of that ire around while you're huffing and puffing. And don't look now but the Android Market is full of closed source apps and sure as shit, Android is a Linux to the core. If you think Dalvik is reason enough to beg to differ then I'll direct your attention to the vast quantity of well known apps that are compiled from native code with the NDK making them Linux binaries.

To conclude my repost, some of the previous paragraph is predicated on a presumption made by you that isn't even true. Whether I agree with them or not, people that are sincere in their preference to resist the encroachment of proprietary software on the Linux landscape don't even remotely qualify as trolls. I used the "t word" for the simple fact that I believe the "donotwant" tag on this submission was put there by an actual troll, that is, someone with an axe to grind and not as a representation of a sincere belief. It's an opinion. Deal with it.

While that may or may not be true it certainly isn't what I was saying. The guy I responded to asked a loaded question by presuming it was cynicism that led to the "donotwant" tag. My opinion is much of the anti-Steam/Valve/Gabe Newell is simple troll rabble-rousing. Note the fact that this is the comment section of a tech blog not a deposition. Opinions are welcome.

It's called trolling. Ask for it by name.

Sure you could but then you either need a prescription or a good street connection. Schedule 2 drugs aren't as easy as you might think to get a doctor to just glibly sign off on. If you go the street route, to get the same effect you get with a gram of meth from something like Adderal or Vivance will cost you several times the cash. Also, meth can be smoked, snorted, IV'd, shoved up your ass, or swallowed so it's a lot more flexible than the pharmaceuticals. It all adds up to meth if you're serious about amphetamine use.