KDE have worked a lot already splitting application core and UI in many components and thanks to Nokia's past ownership Qt turned into a first grade mobile framework with technologies like QtQuick. With QtQuick it's even possible to write adaptive UIs rather easily: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2MjFw_Pewg

Complete desktop support for QtQuick will still take a while (Qt 5.1 or 5.2, depending on progress) but with the modifications KDE already made throughout their stack one QtQuick-based UI for mobiles and one traditional QWidget-based one for desktops is already possible, as can be seen in Kontact - Kontact Touch, Calligra Suite - Calligra Active, etc.

The other DE projects seem to try to find a compromise and make one UI that works on both device types (see Nautilus and the removal of not touch-friendly features) which is IMO the completely wrong approach.
KDE's approach with separate UIs and shared back-ends seems more logical.

Wii U has only a CPU and no GPU? It is already a known fact that Nintendo's approach is to use the GPU as co-processor.
I looked a bit of info up about the 4A Engine. Turns out that it's extremely bad designed. It only runs on a single thread (therefore even multiple CPU cores are unused) with NVidia PysX technology as only exception.
Xbox 360 has a relatively strong CPU and PS3 has a NVidia GPU. If PS3 had a Radeon-based GPU, PS3 would have been in exactly the same state as Wii U.
As a result, even PC gamers without a NVidia GPU one will suffer.

4A Games was either too stupid or received sponsoring money from NVidia to only support PhysX.
If 4A Games had done vendor-independent GPGPU programming (via OpenCL) from the beginning, not only would the Wii U probably run etro Last Night just fine, the other platforms (esp. PC owners with Radeon GPU) would benefit as well.

And how is it DDG's responsibility how Mint is configured? DDG makes a search site and nothing more. They don't develop a web browser or an operating system.
Go and bitch at Mint if configuring it is difficult but this story is not about Mint.

From DDG it's totally easy to search via Google: Either select Google from the drop-down menu or add !g in the search field.

The quality of every developed search engine obviously varies over time.

Seriously: It's discovery seems like a break-through and no one thought about catching a few alive ones to study them in a laboratory?
I mean, "Oh, shiny! Let's catch a few!" is so obvious...

Personally, I disagree that's it's everywhere. Yes, it's here and there and usually in applications that are either very new (=incomplete in general) or remnants of KDE3. But there is an initiative that works on ironing them out:
http://www.sharpley.org.uk/blog/extra-mile-1

Never experienced that (openSUSE with official NVidia drivers here). Either these are those infamous (K)ubuntu-specific bugs or they are related to the GPU driver.

Global key shortcuts may be a case for Extra Mile. The others are things the distributor should decide for his user base.

There are several 3rd party ones available. No idea how good they are because system monitors are useless bling for teenage boys IMO.

It makes sense and you can remove it. One of Plasma's goals is not to rely on right clicks which is why common users should not be able to completely break their desktop. It's not a GNOME-like "Settings confuse users" thing but imagine a user who uses a touchscreen and first turns off the cashew and then accidentally removes the task bar. Without the ability to right click the desktop would be completely broken until a mouse is attached.

As for removing it: It's possible and has always been possible. Technically the cashew is just another Plasma widget. Personally I just move it behind a panel but there are tools to regulate the cashew's opacity or even remove it completely, eg http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Py-Cashew?content=147892

Remind me: Which was the thriving BSD-licensed fully featured C/C++ compiler before Apple came and released Xcode?

Last I checked it was Apple who got behind an obscure university research project named LLVM, made it real world-usable, and developed Clang on top of it and gave the FreeBSD project for the first time in its history a BSD-licensed default compiler.

Actually it is. PC-BSD is just FreeBSD with a GUI installer and changed artwork. The core is unmodified FreeBSD.

Even techies may want a simple desktop.

Don't include me in your "we all" family. While I'm a KDE user (Plasma Desktop and many KDE apps), IMO Gnome 3 is the second best DE in existence (after Plasma Desktop, of course). I definitively find it way ahead of Gnome 2.x which essentially followed the GUI approach of Win95.

No way Gnome 3 is anywhere as bad as PulseAudio which even after eight years of development can't even play music without occasional stuttering on my Core 2 Duo system. (Plain ALSA works just fine here.)

The minimal installation size of LibreOffice...

Nepomuk and Akonadi are optional at compile time -- have always been and there are no plans to change that. Distributors choose to compile and ship them enabled because they feel that their target audience will find them convenient to use (and most people actually do not complain).
If disabling them is not enough for you and you really like to save the handful of MB disk space they consume because you use a PC from the 1990s, get on https://build.opensuse.org/ , branch the KDE repo, change the build settings yourself and after a day or so of building install the packages from your OBS home repo.

Activision Blizzard is a single company and the market leader. So yeah, it's very representative.

What I wrote are numbers released by the publishers themselves. Before you make a fool of yourself again: Better read what you post. The infographic says very clearly that the 2011 and 2012 numbers are predictions by a 3rd party source. The infographic onlycompares PC vs. consoles but ignores the entire mobile market (I just wrote that 5-7% revenue are PC games, not that the remaining ~95% are consoles). They are not actual data.
The infographic also explicitly includes browser games that are already Linux-compatible. Was there a rush of FarmVille players to Linux? No.
So if we include browser games in a discussion about AAA game publishers, fine: My argument was that Windows users have an irrational emotional attachment towards Windows and the installed base of PC Linux will not change via further availability of games, as the free Linux ports of id Software's and Epic's games -- and by your will also availability of browser games -- already proved.

To repeat myself: Linux is great and it's the main platform I use. I'm not bashing Linux. All I did was countering the claim that Steam on Linux will suddenly lead to a mass migration of Windows users to Linux.
We had AAA games on Linux in the past. It did not change a thing and Steam will not boost PC Linux from 1% installed base to a 30, 50,or 70% installed base. It just won't.

PC has a niche in MMORPGs and strategy games but the overall majority of revenue is generated on other platforms: Consoles and mobiles (iOS, Android, NDS,...).
Valve's ambitions on Linux have nothing to do with PCs. Valve wants Steam with its big picture mode to run on "livingroom hardware" (=smart TVs) with Linux as option to run on them. See http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/ncis3o/gt-tv-valve (after 3min) for an interview with Valve's boss who confirms that. The Valve games announced for Linux (TF2, L4D2, and Portal) are not high-end games like Battlefield2. Smart TVs capable of Full HD playback are powerful enough to run them.

Really, READ THE INTERVIEW! Quote: "Research showed that it can reach that rate for some specific or popular PC games, and that number often varies depending on the territory. So we are not saying that it applies to all PC games for all territories, and we’re not saying that the same situation would apply for any game."

To keep it simple: 90% piracy = isolated incident, 5%-7% PC gaming revenue = global data (and this also applies to Activision.

And even if your stupid calculation was right: All those non-PC gamers didn't switch to Linux.
Your attempts to distract from the original claim (which was Valve on Linux = mass migration of PC gamers to Linux) just do not work. PC gaming on Windows is not what's keeping PC Linux at 1%. Both id Software and Epic Games in the past provided Linux binaries for their games. That didn't have a measurable impact on PC Linux' installed base and Valve won't do anything either.
Valve isn't targeting PC Linux anyway. They target "livingroom hardware" (probably smart TVs) with Linux as option to run on them. See http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/ncis3o/gt-tv-valve (after 3 minutes).
Valve's lower end games (TF2, Portal1, L4D) could easily run on platforms powerful enough for full HD video decoding and playback.

The average mainstream PC Linux distribution is easier to use than Windows, especially Win8 which I had the chance to use and see for myself.

I'm the word's laziest person. I use Linux because it's easier. If Windows was the easier route, I'd never left.

Click on the link before asking stupid questions already answered.

Actually no, because market means that the games must be bought.
That said, before making stupid calculations, just read the interview.