I agree that everyone should be on linux! But 20+ years in, the Linux desktop is still a fragmented mess, that even seasoned computer professionals shy away from.

With windows, 99.9% of problems are a matter of getting the correct drivers, the correct setting in a menu, or in extreme cases, perhaps a registry change. That's it. Download a program and double click. Done and we're up and running.

With Linux, good luck trying to do the simplest of things without days of research. Want to install a program? OK, Do I go to software manager? Package manager? Use Snap? RPM? Do i download the Deb file? (you can but it's out of date) Do I use apt? apt-get? aptitude? (are they the same? who knows??) yum? pip install? curl? git clone and compile? Good grief. Try to install even simple applications and you're liable to wade through pages of commands and dependencies and config file changes that don't even work half the time, if you can even figure it out.

Ok so now I've got it installed, where is it? Why doesn't it show up in my menu? Why is the scrollbar all screwed up? Which GTK config file do I edit? 2.0? 3.0? In which directory?? Why doesn't the config file already exist?? Why does it have the wrong permissions?

And on and on... Why doesn't my usb 3.0 port work? Why doesn't my graphics card work. Why is my standard usb mouse acting funny? Why is bluetooth not working? Why is my sound all screwed up? Why is x.org taking over my CPU? What is Caja and why is it lagging when I open a directory? Why isn't there a simple menu option for this simple config? Which desktop do I pick (cinnamon, mate, kde)? Which distro do I pick ("try them all! see which one you like!!")?

Uggh. I don't want to spend my life trying to get a basic desktop to work; a computer should be a tool- not a lifestyle. Linux is great. But the desktop and home user solutions are a fragmented mess. Sure, give a choice, have the option to support legacy. But make it the exception! STANDARDIZE ON SOMETHING! Put a GUI on top of the config file. Software and drivers should be a pre-compiled binary I can click on to run! I don't care whether it's Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, MX, Arch, whatever. I think the distro that manages to solve these problems AND get major companies/hardware vendors on board is the one that will ultimately win. But until then, it's going to be the same story of the last 20 years- a fragmented mess!

This! It seems like game sales were a big missed opportunity with the original Wii. When you have an install base of 100M+ for the console, why in the world aren't you creating new versions of your flagship titles for years? Where was Super Mario Bros Wii 2 and 3 (like with the original NES), or Mario Kart 2? The answer of course is that they were trying to use those sequels to push hardware sales of the Wii U, with extremely limited success. There's a lot of hype now around the Switch; it will be interesting to see if this sales rate actually holds up. My guess is that it's not going to break out to the casual crowd like the Wii did and console sales will taper off much quicker.

There's a fascinating Planet Money story about this involving the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes, and the American representative Harry Dexter White (who apparently annoyed Keynes and was later accused of being a Soviet spy). Basically at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, the nations were discussing Keynes' proposal for an international currency to facilitate trade. The Americans wanted something similar but backed by gold (since they had most of it). It was suggested to just replace the theoretical currency in all the documents with something more tangible for clarity, so White, heading the technical committee, changed it to the dollar at the last minute. No one really understood the significance at the time; but apparently the idea stuck.. So now everyone holds US dollars to conduct trade.

Read or listen here: https://www.npr.org/templates/...

I'm curious your thoughts on why Linux hasn't grabbed more laptop/desktop marketshare from Windows and MacOS over the years? It seems that with the privacy concerns around Windows 10 and Apple's lack of focus on MacOS there may be a huge opportunity in the near future. What things need to happen in the consumer marketplace and within the OSS community for it to really take off? Can 2017 be the year of the Linux desktop?

This! Nintendo's first party content is their largest untapped source of revenue because for some reason they keep trying to use it to push a new system. This is the problem with making a profit on console hardware: no extra incentive to develop games people want. Where was the follow-up to Super Mario Bros Wii or Mario Kart Wii? You have a huge market of Gen X'ers and Millenials with money burning holes in their pockets to relive the video game nostalgia of their youth. I likely would have bought every Mario sequel at $50-60 a pop. (What were the top 3 grossing NES games? Super Mario 1,2, and 3 of course... history says do this!) Heck, they could probably release them now and still make a killing. But asking us casual gamers to lay out $350 for a new system just to play the next Mario installment.... no thank you. Maybe when the WiiU drops to $99 in the bargain bin I'll take another look, but by then they'll have moved on. The marketshare of the Wii was amazing, and sure they made a lot of money, but not nearly what they could have with more first party sequels for their best selling system!

Agree about the issues with updating software and UI. However, UI isn't holding Linux back, or at least hasn't for a long time since the days before KDE and Gnome. What's holding back the popularity of Linux on the desktop is that even technical people get tired of dealing with the same problems that we've had for years. Hardware compatibility and ease of software installation/upgrades are easily the #1 and #2 reasons for the failure of Linux to reach even a fraction of desktop marketshare. Combine that with lack of general intuitiveness for solving problems (no standard control panel, dependencies, lack of documentation) and this is where it falls flat. Even technical people get tired, and just want something that works!

With the disaster Windows OS has become since Win7, Linux should have a shot, but until there is a serious effort to fix these issues (or even try to standardize across the most popular distros) this is a pipe dream. Standard hardware like the RasPI has helped in a few niche applications to solve the hardware issue, but something like this desperately needs to happen on the higher end. As for software, I'm not sure what can be done without a huge overhaul which will likely get bogged down for the same reasons you mention for UI changes! It's a mess all around, but maybe someone will figure it out...

Sure, there's a lot of science one can do even with a handful of pixels. The spectra tells us the atmospheric composition and the way the pixels change over time can tell us the size, orbit, rotations, perhaps even weather patterns or if the planet has any moons and the composition and size of those.

...Sigh

Without classics we wouldn't have architecture or democracy.
Without philosophy we wouldn't have logic
Without art we wouldn't have beauty or elegant design.
Without religion we wouldn't have modern science or medicine...of course you wouldn't know about the Medieval monks or the Golden Age of Islam if you hadn't studied History, but I suppose that is another 'irrelevant' humanities study.

Certainly there are plenty of classes out there with questionable value. It's a shame that you missed out on good ones. But by and large, humanities are the difference between learning a trade, and getting an education. These are the foundation for how our modern world and modern science came to exist through the thinkers of the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment. Some of the biggest scientific and technological breakthroughs come from those who are able to look outside their specific field of study for inspiration. That English lit you found such a waste of time...I suppose then Mary Shelley's Frankenstein wasn't worth writing? After all, who cares about one of the first Science Fiction books .. a genre that has inspired millions of STEM graduates to work on great things? Dismissing humanities as useless is a failure to understand where we came from and how we got here.

Prett sure it shows cached images. One or the news sites in mine shows headlines over a day old

Besides the overuse of white space on the page, the single biggest thing they could do is copy the current commenting system. I want the same threshold controls I have currently. I want to see more than two comments fit on the screen at a time. I want them to take up most of the page width. This should be the #1 priority... comments are the lifeblood of Slashdot. Rarely does anyone click on the articles. Screw up the comments and you kill Slashdot.

The biggest thing I'm going to miss is the community here. Where else is there to go? Reddit?