Something that pretty much everyone in the world wants to see happen, but still faces a few technical hurdles, is much more likely to ever happen than something that is already possible but not enough people want, it seems to me.

Achieving ubiquitous nuclear power is more like achieving ubiquitous electric cars than achieving ubiquitous flying cars. It’ll probably happen any decade now, vs maybe never.

I think I grok what you're referring to when you say "political" but if anyone Dell came closest to fixing the financial problem with their Ubuntu laptops wouldn't you say?

Has Linux desktop caught up technically to Windows yet? The last time I used it there were still problems like double clicking a jpg from the Firefox downloads list opening an "open with" dialog pointed to /usr/bin or something. And it seems like where Windows will put things in places that might not technically be a perfect categorization but are convenient and make some sense, like monitor/video/screensaver properties from right clicking the desktop, this seemed to happen a lot less in Linux DEs. Aside from them seeming somewhat less responsive in general and lacking equivalent GUI system utilities to things like "Computer Management" or the device manager.

In response to the comments you're getting, it seems HN doesn't have a working irony detector.