Wouldn't a small amount of these phones flood a wireless spectrum? It would not take many people in an area until the speed is chopped down significantly.
Or do they have poor range and expect femtocells everywhere? But why not just WiFi at that point?
You're not alone.
Though, I also like FirefoxOS on its own merit. It's a great idea and it has a great interface. I also refuse to spend over $250 on a phone so it's also great to have my budget catered for.
I really want a phone that gives me CalDAV and CardDAV out of the box with no app in-between (ala Android). I looked in the simulator and CalDAV is already there - just give it the URL, user name and password and Bob's your aunty. I would even help implement CardDAV support if I wasn't so busy with uni work. I haven't check out the email client yet.
On the subject of privacy: it's sad that people assume that if you want privacy you're a conspiracy nut or a criminal/terrorist.
So, why is Google winning?
Good hardware support allowing any manufacturer to have a stab? Well FirefoxOS bases off Android so it has all that hardware support down pat - and the rest of the OS is similarly open. App support? Well which has more apps - the web or Android? So Firefox has this down-pat (porting existing web apps is trivial).
FirefoxOS is also choosing not to take Android head-on in the first-world market but rather edging in via poorer countries. So it's not so much fighting Android off rather than pushing Android aside.
I for one welcome FirefoxOS because it already supports CalDAV out of the box, and I expect CardDAV is not so far off. It already has pretty much everything I ask of a smart phone (though no word on Pebble support yet).
Your experience was completely self-inflicted. Who knew pointing a loaded gun at your face and then pressing the trigger would result in injury? If you do a dirty hack (and you did, there's no uncertainty) then you deserve what you get. It's analogous to using some type of unofficial installer for software in Windows or OSX, and then being surprised when the installer screws with all the other software in your system while it is at it. Also just because a package/program *can* run in your OS - doesn't mean it is actually intended for your OS.
Packages without repositories is silly and in this regard Windows and OSX are the same. Repositories are set up explicitly for your OS - so programs and libraries will always be built and configured correctly. With repositories you do not need stupid updaters for each program (which, by the way you're entrusting your system to -- fucking retarded) and you do not need to worry about dependency location, management and updating. Also you can fairly safely assume programs in official or at least well managed repositories (like RPMFusion) are non-malicious due to initial inspection and continuous oversight - this is far better than Googling for random programs and then just *hoping* they're OK when you install them. The lesson is: stay within your package manager and trusted and maintained repositories. If you stray outside - expect to be burned. If some silly Ubuntu tutorial tells you to do something which disobeys this then don't proceed unless you're prepared to clean up the mess and manage the ongoing brokenness.
You mention half-baked uninstall - this is another thing that repositories and real package managers solve (simply making all packages "self contained" doesn't solve all problems) because you have a mechanism that is overseeing the installation and removal of packages and making sure that things go in and out cleanly and configuration being re-jigged - as opposed to things just being there one second and gone the next.
Actually, that doesn't require the CLI. You can do that with a GUI, it's just that you don't seem to understand how.
If you read the commands and understand what they do, you can do the same thing through the GUI. Hint: the names and arguments of the commands generally refer to what they do. On that page, they're all adding PPAs (software repositories), refreshing the package manager to make sure everything is in sync and then just installing the required package. Installing stuff in Linux is usually as easy or easier than Windows - but you get a no-bullshit install and automatic and seamless updates thrown in.
You can just emulate the commands manually in the GUI by going to the thing to add PPAs then entering the address and then searching for the name of the indicator in your GUI package manager.
Of course, just copying and pasting those 3 or so lines of code into a terminal is much easier and quicker but if you really want to make things hard and do things the difficult Windows/OSX way, knock yourself out!
I deplore Ubuntu and refuse to use it, but my point holds true for most distributions.
You're asking if Adobe Creative Suite (ACS, I assume) runs on Windows? That's funny because I nearly always see it running on Windows, once or maybe twice I've seen it on OSX. If this is actually an important tool for you I really doubt you'd ask this question as you would have seen examples and documentation relating to Windows. I think you're feigning ignorance.
I think there was a time where multimedia programs did not work well under Windows, but at least since XP things have gotten very usable (and acceptably stable with 7+). In fact, although I will kick and scream in anger if you try make me use proprietary software - I'd rather use ACS on Windows because then you at least get a logical interface and usable file manager (without resorting to BASH in OSX).
I'll probably blow some people's minds here: not all design tools under Linux are bad. For some areas of design they can actually be used seriously - Scribus for layout and Inkscape for vector graphics. There are even many professional places that use Blender for 3D modelling (though Blender can do other things too). There are also some proprietary design tools which run under Linux too, but they're of little interest to me so I can't comment.
As an aside, with the amount of times I have heard ACS for Linux requested by professionals I am really surprised Adobe has not gotten their act together and taken the opportunity to make a bunch of money from re-selling their products on this platform.
"I sometimes use torrents to move several GB of data, especially when pushing large bundles to multiple destinations."
Which, to my knowledge - Bittorrent achieves better than any in your list of 10. If I had to guess, the part about pushing to multiple destinations is the first part of the main reason Bittorrent was chosen. The second part is that once data is uploaded to another node, you have *two* links to supply uploads to further nodes - and then three, four, five... When moving data across a non-uniform network topography this is useful.
Yep, you're not in marketing clearly.
I think you'll find that for businesses that rely on strong ties to their customers. For many businesses one off sales don't cut it, particularly small businesses and so social networking is an essential tool. It may shock you to hear that social networking is merely the new phrase for "word of mouth" with some extra bells and whistles to help along repeat business (the whole "following" mechanic).
Not far from where I live is a pie shop called "Piefection" - I thought it looked interesting when I travelled past, but that wasn't enough to actually get me in there. Somebody I know shared a picture through social media of their latest special and I was in there an hour later in "shut up and take my money" mode. I follow their social media page and now when I see something particularly good I drop around to pick up dinner.
By the way, this is something not unique to me - I think you'll find it is what many "normal" people do these days.
Get off my lawn you old fart.
Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
