So, you're not happy with a closed binary drivers on Linux, but happy to use a completely closed computing device, i.e. a smart tv?

ZOTAC NEN, while not entry level at €900, was quite capable at that time with an i5 CPU and GTX 960 and good luck putting such hardware into a box the size of Mac mini, just thicker. I have it and two years later it still handles well any Linux-compatible game I throw at it. It's quiet and unobtrusive.

Having SteamOS preinstalled, preconfigured and tested on a capable, quiet and tiny system was definitely worth its price. BTW, I have a self-built desktop PC with dual booting, a RAID and whatnot, so it's not that I couldn't build an ITX SteamOS PC - but it would still be like four times bigger volume than ZOTAC.

However, I agree that the niche of tiny gaming PCs is tiny, it's fully occupied by ZOTAC and with the price tag it's definitely not "console replacement".

The fix could be quite easy: let's remove all particle filters from plants with high emission. Grey skies will be back, less light week reach the surface.

What is either a coincidence or perhaps a trend, both CDPROJEKT RED and Flying Wild Hog are Polish companies.

Piracy used to be rampant in Poland, partially because people were too poor to spend $60 on a game, but partially because some games were never published in Poland and thus unavailable legally. Publishers of localised versions were using most outrageous DRM solutions - as a result many games I bought 10-15 years ago are unplayable today.

Guys running game companies in Poland today suffered these issues when they were kids, which might explain their stance.

You seem to confuse SteamOS with Steam runtime. Steam runtime is, as you noted, a common set of libraries, while SteamOS I'd a distribution, so it unifies everything, from the kernel, through libraries, a compositor, to the unified user interface.
Yes, just having a standard set of libraries is not enough, this is why Valve removed Tux icon or the whole Linux platform support concept from their store: they just cannot guarantee that a game will work on any weird Linux setup out there. Even Ubuntu (ie the only officially supported distribution) proved to be a moving target.

Digital software distribution could be big, too. A game purchased on Steam can mean a couple hours of saturated broadband.

You're right about MMOs, but there are AAA games on Linux, e.g. Alien Isolation, Shadow of Mordor, Witcher 2. What is more important, quality of ports increases steadily.

I've recently reached the point I can live without Windows-only games as I have enough to play on Linux.

And how is car production different from today software solutions? Microsoft or myriad of open source developers create an OS, Oracle or someone provides a database, someone else an integration toolkit, somebody else designs a schema and a frontend and finally a hosting/SaaS vendor puts it all together and configures the whole package.

I am sure there are quite a few modelling enthusiasts among slashdotters, but there are many forums dedicated to model railroading, with subforums focusing on automation and landscaping/structures, complete with video tutorials of cool tricks (some of them really simple).

If you have a chance to kickstart your collection, I would definitely suggest investing any saved money in DCC equipment - it makes many things simple which would be a chore otherwise.

My advice though is similar to the one I would give to someone getting into programming, electronics or any other hobby: don't overengineer, start simple, but with options to expand, be ready to discard everything you created initially and to start again from scratch. Maybe start with some flat but elaborate layout to practice control of points and trains? Or quite the opposite, start with a simple loop, maybe with a siding or a passing loop, but surround it with interesting terrain? Trying to get your first layout to have both complicated track layout and elaborate landscape features may result in a disappointment. You obviously have some fundamental questions to answer too (shunting or mainline? A standalone diorama or a module? etc.)

I'd say: yes, if you look under the hood. How many of us started with editing save files using hex editor?

Modding, creating bots and cheating (all three often overlap) are a great first step. You learn how games are structured, you learn some scripting (Lua, Python, etc. depending on games), even some AI programming for bots.

RMS is a todays hermit. He thinks that conveniences of modern life are enslaving him, so he learned to live without them and sees it as liberation. What he does is not different than refusal to use money (seen as Mammon), or many rules by which Amish or orthodox Jews live.

Good enough is perfect.

You can endlessly polish your elegant solutions for decades (see Hurd) while the rest of the world happily uses "technologies that are just barely able to solve the problem".

Under communist rule maximum detention time was 24 hours, 48 in some countries. It was mainly a tool for harassing opposition. Thousands of people were being repeatedly detained, without any charges. Some were held for 24 hours, then released only to be captured 2-5 minutes later and detained for another 24 hours, rinse and repeat.

Sad to see the UK following such example.

Google Chrome shapes into a really nice OS, it just lacks a decent browser.

Others already commented, but the fact is that a flashlight is rarely used for more than 15 minutes and temperatures in whole Europe and most of North America (especially Canada) are almost all the time and everywhere significantly below body temperature, especially when/where a flashlight is needed (e.g. at night or in a basement).

I agree about batteries, but they have a very bad habit of running out of juice just when they are most needed. And it is difficult to look for a replacement battery in darkness ;) This thing is zero-maintenance, so a perfect emergency source of light, not a whole-night-march-through-woods source of light.