I don't know why I'm trying to justify my choices. lol. I'll stop after this post.

For the record, the machine isn't remote in the sense that it's outside my house, only that I'm essentially using my desktop and laptop as a thin client. The Linux box is right next to my desktop. I can just plug in a screen, keyboard and mouse and I'm coding fully locally. It's all just semantics at this point now though. It works for me and I'm not changing it unless I find something better.

I have no idea what you're getting at. It's no different to developing on the machine itself. All projects are in GitHub and that machine has better and more frequent backups than my desktop and laptop.

I use it because of the Remote-SSH plugin. I have a Windows desktop and a MacBook but all my development is on Linux (PHP and Python mainly, some C++ and a little Java).

My desktop and laptop only have VS Code and the Remote-SSH plugin installed. All other plugins are installed on the Linux machine and they use the tools (git, gcc, make, python, php etc) that are already on the Linux machine so no extra software is needed on the desktop and laptop. Intellisense and the debuggers worked with very little configuration required.

There may be a better editor or IDE that can do all of this but VS Code works well so I'm not actively looking for it. That doesn't mean that I'm not open to changing to something better though.

Agreed. I live in an urban area and make do with a 16GB phone. I stream music (urban use) and save playlists to my phone (rural, train or motorway use) for day to day use but put up with carrying an iPod Classic when I'm away for any length of time, especially when going abroad, or for long train journeys. Carrying the extra device doesn't both me for the sort of trips I use my iPod for.

Who are these non-technical people who switch so easily to Linux-based OSes? I haven't met a single one.

My dad is fairly non-technical. He also go fed up with Windows. I've tried several times to see if he wants to use a Linux distro instead of Windows but something always got in the way whether that was specific Windows-only software (MS Office and it *had* to be MS Office, some video editing software that didn't seem to have a Linux equivalent at the time) or he wanted my sister's kids to be able to play games that wouldn't work with Linux. He ended up on a Mac for video editing and keeps a Windows machine for the grandkids.

My girlfriend had Ubuntu on her old laptop for a while but needed Windows put back on it to run some Windows-only software.

My mum got used to OS X eventually and won't change (even to Windows). If she goes to anything other than a Mac it'll either be a Chromebook or an iPad.

Everyone of my friends has something that prevents them from using Linux, usually some Windows or Mac only software or a device that doesn't work (iPods and iPhones that need iTunes etc).

My local cinema only has 2k projectors and I don't know whether they get 4k content or specific 2k content. Their files work out to 100GB - 150GB per hour so I'm guessing they're getting 2k.

I don't want to sound picky but my local theatre doesn't use DVDs for it's digital content. It uses heavily DRM'd files supplied on a portable HDD or beamed in via satellite. The keys are sent separately as and when needed and expire in anything from a week or more. The files can be 200GB+. I'm not saying it's impossible to get a digital copy from a theatre but it's not easy.

I've been thinking about doing this for ages. I have a machine that I run as a server. It runs SSH already. I have no problem with it not being automatic and using a SFTP client to upload and download files. I do have some reservations though.

1. I have to open the machine up to the Internet. Running the server completely behind my router means I can be a bit lax in some aspect of security but I wouldn't want to allow access to it from outside without rebuilding it to allow for that. To allow me to do it how I'd like it set up would require me spending some real money.
2. I don't have any redundancy my server. I have backups but if it dies while I'm away (which is a lot) then I lose the machine. It would cost some real money to add the needed redundancy (or better yet, replace it with a better machine that's more fit for the purpose).
3. My Internet connection is a typical home connection i.e. very asynchronous. I can't remember what my upload speed is but it's a hell of a lot less than my download speed, even when I'm away, and this speed will be my download speed when I'm away. I could improve the situation but at the cost of some real money.

Dropbox is shit from a privacy and security standpoint but I've always assumed it is and treated it as such. I'd be quite happy to put the files in my dropbox on a public web server. It's just useful to have certain files always available and automatically synced. I have 3GB of space for free on Dropbox and it's plenty for my needs. When I weigh up the DIY costs against Dropbox it's unfortunate but Dropbox wins for my use case.

They want the riff-raff to get the numbers up and lure people away from facebook. Someone's friends have to move wholesale or they have to be prepared to use 2 SNs until most of their network is on G+.

I really like G+. It's way better than facebook so I want to use G+ instead and there's enough twitter like functionality that I may stop using twitter. What Google need to overcome is facebook's momentum.

I have around 35 RL friends on facebook but only 3 have come over to G+. They're the ones who don't mind using G+ and facebook and twitter or don't have enough invested in facebook. Another 2 are on G+ but don't use it because the rest of their friends are on facebook and won't move over (I remember the comment of one such non-techy person when G+ was mentioned: "Who cares?"). I've already stopped posting to facebook and only go there now to comment of friends posts. I've made the decision to use G+ and if my friends don't want to move with me then sod them.

As for the celebrity thing, I can't understand Lady Gaga (I barely know who she is) but some celebs are worth following. Steven Fry often has something worth saying and I can find out what he's doing (new series of QI etc). I've been able to engage with some minor celebs of twitter so it can work as a tool to break down the barriers between celebs and us "normal" people.

The bottom line is, Google should do whatever they need to do to make G+ a success. It's not like I have to ready the inane ramblings of the celebs or riff-raff so I don't mind.

They may well be able to do all the things a low end laptop can do, as observed by the netbooks running Windows XP, but that doesn't mean that that's how they should be marketed. The 10" models and the WinXP models are blurring things a bit though.

I maintain that they should be set up and sold as a cheap machine mainly for Internet type tasks (email, web, chat, etc), somewhere between a smartphone/PDA and a low end 'proper' laptop. A customised Linux OS would be perfect for that and when marketed in that way people wouldn't expect Windows and could be happy with a Linux OS.

I don't know how big the market is for something like that but if someone buys one expecting to run Office or other Windows software they may be better off with a cheap 'proper' laptop anyway. I can't even imagine how usable an office suite is on the 10" 1024x600 screen on the latest Eee PC.