You're in luck. Ubuntu uses Xfce.

Randroid as opposed to the iRan?

Mostly mobile ISPs and ISPs in less-industrialized countries. See what happened a few years ago when Wikipedia blocked the proxy that the whole country of Qatar was behind.

Then it'll keep clicking and clicking and clicking...

Personally I prefer Cookie Clicker. After the first few minutes, once you've bought a farm and a few cursors, most of the stuff is automated, and you only need to look at it once every few minutes.

Doesn't help people who own a Wii and a PC, or a PS3 and a PC. Or people whose only gaming PC is stuck on a desk in another room.

Which is why I asked for stats on Big Picture uptake. If I were to believe people like adolf, nobody is willing to build a second PC for Big Picture. But thank you for your list of titles.

I think it might have been a pun on Square Enix, the company behind Rad Racer and Chocobo Racing.

This is true of games sold as Windows Store apps because DirectInput isn't part of Windows Runtime. But I was under the impression that some PC games sold as desktop apps still supported both DirectInput and XInput APIs.

Different methods of sending instructions are better at sending different kinds of instructions. For example, a mouse is better than a joystick at sending a sequence of positions, but a joystick is better than a mouse at sending a sustained velocity. Imagine how you might play something like Mega Man or Castlevania with just a pointing device, such as a mouse, a trackball, or a mobile device's touch screen. And good luck sharing a keyboard between two players if both players learned how to play the game on a keyboard rather than a gamepad.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is like rhythm games such as Dance Dance Revolution or Rock Band: a specialized controller is part of the gimmick. The majority of games don't have that luxury. Instead of playing games designed for a standard gamepad on PCs, I'm told that most people prefer to play games designed for a standard gamepad on consoles even if it means forgoing all PC-exclusive games. I'm not claiming to be an authority; I'd be grateful if you could prove me wrong by citing reliable statistics that people buy Xbox 360 gamepads for use with PCs instead of Xbox 360 consoles.

Not everywhere. From this page: "Buses do not operate on Sundays or the following Holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day."

Not I in particular, but yes, people can and often do buy particular platforms for exclusive games. And I'm under the impression that among well-known video games, more are exclusive to iOS than to Android.