From someone considering doing the same, what (if any) issues or even nuisances have you come across in your switch?

You're missing the point. It's a matter of which factors are most important. There are many times when it's more convenient to use a non-free tool, but it is still reasonable for someone to decide that the loss of freedom outweighs the gained convenience.

I use Linux because I care a lot about my freedom and privacy. Why would I subject myself to such an OS/product in stark contrast with what I care about, and as a developer, create things to encourage others to do so too? Come back when you care more about freedom and privacy than about maximum profits.... see you never.

That's a very fair criticism, but I think they've taking the right approach (not necessarily on gimmicky features) but by generally accepting that to many people the browser might as well be the operating system (see Chromebook for proof of that). It'd be nice if there was a lean-n-light variant in addition to the kitchen sink, but if they only have time to make one of those, I'd say they chose correctly for what people use browsers for these days. Now if only it was free software so some people could make such a trimmed-down variant ;)

Vote against politicians that don't understand technology (ie the world we live in now). All this sad/funny behavior is a result of bad laws created by our (depending on where you live) elected officials.

Oh crap. Matrix is retro now? I guess old age just kind of comes out of nowhere. I'm off to see about getting a social security check.

I had not heard of this game, but went to read about it on Steam, expecting Windows-only. I was happily surprised to see it runs in Linux. Thanks Colossal Order!

You should be happy. This will likely mean Gmail won't get the types of changes you don't like, as they'll end up in this "Inbox" thing instead.

Wouldn't there also be a group of people (not the government) that might want those secrets out? This gives them a reason to kill you with a guarantee that they get what they want.

I'd be interested in seeing completion rates if people had to pay (put some skin in the game). The free concept could still apply too. Pay up front, if you complete the course with anything better than failing, you get your money back. It's a security deposit against yourself.

It seems that every day these little pocket computers can do more and more stuff!

Yep, that's it exactly. It's great to have a nice place to share things and have meaningful conversation with specific groups of people and not broadcast crap all over the place. That said, I suspect a lot of people prefer the broadcasting-crap system because it lets them feel like other people are reading their stuff and then everyon gets to feel good. So, I'd consider g+ a fantastic success for that it is. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that the majority of people don't use social networks for that purpose. Hopefully they keep it around for those of us that do though.

Things will get much, much better. They are already well into the negatives for anything privacy related, so if they go further the integer will wrap and they'll find themselves well into the positives. This was a brilliant move by Facebook and should make the users very happy. Users will just have to hope they're using 32 bit integers instead of 64 or it could take a while longer.