Yes, you are way behind. Ext3 became part of Linux eleven years ago and added journaling to ext2. Some of us have been using superior journaling file systems like Reiserfs3, XFS, JFS and Reiserfs4 for many years. Journaling is a good idea for all file systems because it allows much stronger metadata and sometimes data consistency guarantees. In other words, though hardware failures and unexpected shutdowns can cause data loss on any file system, journaled ones are more likely to know which data are corrupt and which aren't. Btrfs improves on that by also checksumming everything so no corruption can ever go unnoticed. This is increasingly important as disks get bigger and errors become more likely. Another thing that's perhaps especially nice for desktop and laptop systems is that journeled filesystems can generally be checked for consistency very quickly, meaning you much less oftend need to do a lengthy fsck.

The problems with Pulseaudio were partly caused by buggy drivers, partly by buggy programs and partly by distributions switching to Pulseaudio before the other problems were sufficiently addressed. There were plenty of audio problems before it came along and neither keeping things as they were nor using jack for everyone would have been trouble-free. Jack developers have never advocated it for ordinary desktop users. My experience on both desktop and laptop has been that after a couple of problematic releases of Ubuntu, audio became much less painful overall. Now, dealing with audio is generally much easier than before Pulseaudio came along.

Checksumming is useful to anyone who doesn't like corrupt data. Transparent compression is useful to anyone who likes to fit more stuff on their drives and access it faster. Btrfs is technically superior to ZFS though currently less mature. For better or worse, Btrfs is largely developed by Oracle employees so they do own part of it. Oracle could simply stop paying people to develop it but they can't take it away from Linux. Both ZFS and and Btrfs are available under Free and Open Source licenses though the licenses are are not compatible which is the primary reason ZFS cannot be included as part of Linux.

I currently use Firefox most of the time, but I don't think there's anything wrong with people using Chromium. Competition is good. Mozilla took on Microsoft while they were complacent and helped improve things for everyone. I don't think Mozilla was ever as complacent as Microsoft, but the increased competition from both Google and Microsoft is now pushing them to try new things. It may not always look pretty, but I think the end result can only be higher quality Free Software for everyone.

I'd agree if I thought the project was worthwhile overall. However, I don't see much point in "installing" a web app in a platform-dependent way since that's antithetical to the basic concept of a web app. I think a better area to work on is more general management of browser sessions, processes and profiles. I can currently launch Firefox with a different profile and have independent sessions going on but it's not as convenient as it should be.

The reign of the lizard is dead. I, for one, welcome our shiny synthetic overlords.

I don't think the issue is the existance or basic functionality of a "marketplace". The Linux support is for "installing" web apps so they appear to be native. I don't think the app itself behaves any differently regardless of whether it came from a "marketplace."

There is no need to discuss forking since Mozilla is already working on it. It's simply that the Linux support has been given a lower priority than OSX and Windows. If you want it to happen more quickly, contribute to the already existing Mozilla project rather than talk about forking.

It does fire the entire foam dart.

The issue is hardware support. If you buy a Mac, Apple has made sure the hardware works with their drivers. Machines sold with Windows usually work well because either Microsoft or the manufacturer has made sure the drivers and hardware are compatible. If you installing an OS on a machine which was sold with a different OS, you can never expect the same level of hardware compatibility. Try installing OSX on a machine sold with Windows. Installing Windows on most Macs today will work, but some of the devices like internal video might not be fully functional.

If you buy a computer from a vendor that supports Ubuntu or other GNU/Linux distribution, it can "just work." I convinced my sister to buy a Dell laptop with Ubuntu and she saved a lot of money compared to similar hardware with Windows. It hasn't been perfect in every respect, but there have not been problems with driver compatibility. Also don't forget about the millions of Android phones that "just work" without their users even knowing what Linux is.