I wasn't talking about 'Project Portland' (I honestly had never even heard of it). I was referring to the simple fact that you can seamlessly and without problems run a KDE application in Unity or GNOME, and vice-versa run a GNOME (or more correctly GTK) application in KDE. The same goes for the minor DE's, e.g. running KDE apps in XFCE.

You said "users get inducted into a culture of always worrying about which DE and major version a prospective app uses", but this is a problem that doesn't even exist, hasn't for many years and certainly doesn't need some new project on the horizon to solve it.

The point is not that you'd want to run it on a decade old PC but that it uses less system resources, leaving more for applications you want to run. The Firefox slowness was a recognised problem to do with not optimising the build for Linux (Mozilla developer's blog entry http://glandium.org/blog/?p=1975). The "Libreoffice is slow" thing sounds anecdotal and a quick google shows just as many Windows users complaining about it.

Users don't need to worry about which DE a program uses, programs which use another DE's toolkit work seamlessly in whatever DE you happen to be using. It's been this way for many, many years so I can't imagine people are being turned off Linux by it.

" I was comparing a modern Linux distribution to Windows XP because the feature set is comparable"

It's a nonsensical comparison. Ubuntu with Unity is more comparable to Windows 8, in that it's an attempt to merge the desktop and tablet interfaces - whether it's a real success or not remains to be seen but there's nothing even close to it in XP. Kubuntu provides the more traditional Windows 7-style desktop, with all the new features including 3D effects etc.and still needs a minimum of only 384MB RAM. I'm wondering what these critical features missing from Ubuntu are that only make it comparable to XP?

How about comparing like-with-like instead of new software with software from 10 years ago:
Ubuntu 12.04 (released 2012): 384MB minimum
Windows 7 (released 2009): 1GB minimum for 32-bit, 2GB for 64-bit
Windows 8 (released 2012): 1GB minimum for 32-bit, 2GB for 64-bit

Plus the minimum requirement for XP was 64MB, with 128MB recommended (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865), not 32MB.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuDesktop#System_Requirements
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/system-requirements
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements

That's the kind of answer that should be '+5 informative'. I'll keep using Unison as I only have 2 devices I need to sync between at the moment, but consider this for the future if I get an Ubuntu Tablet or something like that.

Exactly, but Unison doesn't have those problems - it handles where changes have happened on both ends and flags conflicts. I can use my desktop and laptop as much as I want without having to remember which files I modified on which and then simply run Unison to sync my home directory between the two devices.

What does this bittorrent one have as advantages over that?

FFS the plural of 'aircraft' is 'aircraft'. Yeah, yeah grammar Nazi and all that. But it doesn't change the fact that having basic grammatical errors repeated over and over in the summaries makes slashdot look terrible.

The problem is that this doesn't standardise DRM in any way, it just provides a hook in HTML5 for "content providers" (or whoever else) to insert whatever unspecified DRM schemes they want.

I absolutely agree with the idea that they're supposed to work. But the guy you replied to was saying not to throw the baby out with the bath water and dump the whole KDE DE because of problems with Nepomuk, Akonadi and Kmail. You can disable Nepomuk easily in KDE System Settings, ignore Akonadi and use Thunderbird instead of KMail and still take advantage of KDE.

Opening bugs is the best thing to do in most cases with Open Source, but I get the feeling that in the case of Nepomuk and Akonadi especially it's the fundamental design that's the problem. The developers are unlikely to change that for similar reasons to why the GNOME 3 developers won't change their fundamental design decisions despite user complaints.

I was using Mandriva at the time and I can assure the early KDE 4 releases were just as unusable. I can't see how it was the fault of the Kubuntu maintiners, KDE 4.0-4.2 was half-baked, alpha quality software, full stop.

Luckily it's improved out of sight since then, but it's a worry that the KDE developers still don't acknowledge their mistake in releasing those early versions as releases, and not alphas or betas. I really hope they don't make the same mistake with KDE5.

" Look up the hospitals in your area, many of them probably have "Saint" in their name."

Indeed, but I reckon it's the tax money from me and the other 62 million odd people of the UK that keeps it going rather than anything 'Saint George' has done.

Yeah, it's a problem with KDE but they are working on it:
"The best part of all this is that users won’t be exposed to the KCM very often, because connecting an already-known monitor will configure it and place it automatically depending on the last configuration. Connecting a previously unknown output should pop up a simple window/dialog..."
http://www.progdan.cz/2012/09/display-management-in-kde/

Britain is officially metric but in reality is stuck in a weird limbo between metric and imperial.

So road signs are in miles and yards, but petrol is sold in litres and car fuel consumption often quoted in litres per 100km.

In all shops, whether a market stall in the street or a large supermarket, everything must by law be in metric. However they are allowed to still have the imperial size printed alongside the metric one and even to produce products in the old imperial sizes. E.g in the supermarket they still sell milk in pints, so instead of buying a 1 litre milk carton like you would in the rest of the world (except the USA) you get a 1.136 litre* milk carton or something like that.

*UK pints are different from US pints

It may not help in your case but people in the EU can send anything ordered online and delivered by post/courier ('distance selling') back without having to give a reason within 7 days (14 in some countries). So there's no reason you can't buy online and if something about the keyboard, screen, Linux driver support or anything else isn't to your liking just box it up and send it back.

I did this with a 1000 Euro ultrabook in Germany that when it arrived I realised had very poor wireless range, in both Windows and Linux. Something only a few of the reviews mentioned and obviously something I couldn't test until I had the thing in my house. I ran the recovery DVD, boxed it up and sent it back to Amazon. Money was refunded a couple of days later (cash in my account, not gift vouchers or any credit) and I bought a different Ultrabook.

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/cons_int/safe_shop/dist_sell/index_en.htm
"Consumer's right to cancel the contract within a minimum of 7 working days without giving any reason and without penalty, except the cost of returning the goods (right of withdrawal);"

Good to hear fastmail has an emergency plan, it's been very, very reliable for the last couple of years and I hope it stays that way :)
I'm begginning to realise how reliant I am on email - today I got an invoice by email that if I hadn't seen it straight away would've costed over 100 pounds extra due to not cancelling something early enough.

BTW the new Fastmail interface is great!