2011-09-25

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 September 18

There were two posts that got a handful of comments this past week, so I'll try to repost most of those.

Star Wars and George Lucas's Overreach

Reader T_Beermonster had this explanation: "It seems fairly straight forward, George Lucas really likes money. I and many others really like Star Wars. If George Lucas wants to sell a 1080p immortalization of my happy memories in a format I can watch (so not blu-ray obviously because only a handful of people on earth own or want a blu-ray player) then I'm more than happy to hand over some cash. On the other hand if George Lucas wants to sell me a high-def mockery of my childhood enjoyment in a format nobody except a sony executive wants to give house-space to then screw him. I can spend my money on beer instead. If he's too smug about pissing on my cornflakes maybe I'll even torrent a copy of his new abortion, seed up to 1000 then delete it unwatched."
Commenter Shergill Games agreed: "I can't imagine what goes on in that guy's head. He just keeps messing around with things that don't need fixing and making the movies progressively worse. If he'd just stop, create a restored cut of the original movies without any other changes and release it in 1080p he'd make a ton of money and keep the core fans happy. I don't understand why he doesn't."

Review: Linux Mint GNOME 201109

Reader 3d Beef said, "Great review, though I have to disagree with your Firefox comments. Mozilla has adopted a silly release schedule that isn't based around security or stability. Its more about catching up to Chrome in terms of version numbers. The idea that a release is supported for only 6 weeks is asinine. Asking the Mint development team to match that foolishness doesn't make sense. Beyond that, I appreciate your work."
An anonymous commenter, in response to another anonymous commenter's question about why Debian-based distributions seem to run lighter and faster than Ubuntu-based counterparts, explained, "Ubuntu wishes to run on a lot of computers... therefore, it needs a lot of drivers, patches and so on in order to do so. This means a heavier kernel, a higher memory usage. That's why it sometimes seems a bit bloated."
Reader JB had this positive experience to share: "LMDE Gnome has been on my laptop and tower since the first release, 2010.09. In that time I had 2 update related breakages where I had to re-install. Both were prior to the 2010.12 respin and could have been fixed if not for my "linux newbness" at the time. During this past year, I have found LMDE to be my main "go-to" distro for stability and just getting things done. I tried the update packs at first, but quickly went back to straight up Debian Testing due to boredom from lack of updates! As for Gnome 3, I hated it until I started messing around with it. By adding a few extensions and some tweaks, I have somewhat replicated the Gnome 2 experience with themes, application menu, and even taskbar on the bottom, in my Arch install. If a slob like me can figure it out with a web search, imagine what the Mint devs can come up with. Otherwise, Gnome 3 has a couple more point releases to be decent OOTB, my opinion."
Commenter Travelinrob countered, "I tried to install the new release on an HP Mini 110 for a friend. I could not get a lot of things to work, like wireless and video drivers (there was no Additional Drivers section or popup - and I even asked for help on XChat) and eventually gave up (because of invested time). I resorted to installing Mint 11 Main Edition which worked flawlessly, including desktop effects. Albeit, requiring more RAM at idle."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I plan to have a double review out, but I don't anticipate writing about much else. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!