I have heard of some compatibility issues between GTK+ versions. But my impression is that one area that GTK+ 3.x improved much was the multi-backend stuff. For example, the X11 backend is no longer mutually exclusive with other backends. And there nowadays seems to be a proper OSX backend which, in my opinion, gives a much nicer user experience than what you'd get with GTK+ 2 on X11 on OS X.

Of course it is possible that the X11 backend eventually gets abandoned when it is not deemed important enough to continue spending resources on its maintenance. But currently it is there and it even is likely the backend that gets the most attention, given how it is the default in most distros. I would not expect the X11 backend to suddenly disappear even after Wayland has possibly become the default display server in some GNU/Linuxes.

Most Wayland-compatible applications would likely not render things by directly communicating with the Wayland protocol. Instead, they will likely use a higher-level UI toolkit. Toolkits like GTK+ and Qt are able to switch between Wayland and X11 based on which server they detect to be available. If you need to run a Wayland-compatible application from a server to which you are logged in via ssh, you would likely be able to do so as long as X11 compatibility is retained. As long as there is no convenient way to use Wayland over network, it might well make sense to keep using X11 in that role even if otherwise the default in some distros ended up being Wayland.

On the downside, the user might encounter some uncommon bugs due to using a non-default backed. But in my experience, the situation already is that there are bugs that mostly exist in cases where X11 is used over network. Differences in performance and feature availability between X11 over network and local X11 server is quite large, so already continued availability of remotely usable GUI applications depends on people testing for and fixing issues that are specific to the over-network use case.

If it is free software, you should have the possibility of altering the program so that it does not ask for money and you are permitted to distribute such versions.

Jues FYI, even on a systemd-using system, it is possible to install a traditional syslog and have it maintain plain-text logs for you. At least CentOS 7 seems to even default to a configuration that runs rsyslog producing plain-text logs and with journal files only in non-persistent store under /run.

I have very little experience of the logging functionality of windows. During the small amount of looking I did, I did not find it similar at all to using journald. And on the other hand, with journactl, the way the log content is usually presented in syslog-like plain-text form inside less. Which basically is the same as what I'd use when dealing with a system that uses plain-text logs. So I guess that someone who has not tried journalctl might get a pretty inaccurate view of how it is like, if he just hears somewhere that it is like the windows logging system.

Also I have not really noticed systemd making things impossible to debug. I can agree that there are things that are harder, but there is also stuff that become much easier than with systemd. And in my experience, debugging problems on a systemd-using system is usually basically the same as on one that has no systemd.

I have no actual experience of administering a windows system except in the common personal desktop system scenario. But as far as I can tell, there is little reason to claim that GNU/Linux with systemd would be closer in experience to Windows than GNU/Linux without systemd.

Just as a small correction, Fedora has never shipped a release that includes the proprietary Catalyst drivers by AMD.

I am not familiar with the climate of Boise, but at least according to Wikipedia, it sounds pretty reasonable for cycling in the winter: "Winters are cold, with a December average of 30.7 F (0.7 C), and lows falling to 0 F (18 C) or below on around three nights per year." In my experience, -18 C is not as comfortable as some higher temperature, but still easily manageable. And likely most of the time in Boise in December, it would be way warmer than that.

More like Android/Linux.