We’re going to go off the beaten path a little bit here and start with Joe Walsh — the musician, not the politician — of all people.
In his latest album, Joe proclaims he’s an “Analog Man.” He’s an analog man in a digital world, and that’s something to which I can clearly relate. Here’s why: Until yesterday, all of my non-Macintosh hardware in the “Jungle Room” — I call it a lab because it’s filled with hardware, though I really don’t do anything in this room that remotely resembles research-and-development — is of 32-bit vintage.
In comes a castoff ThinkPad T500 from a friend in Seattle and I’m now in the 64-bit club.
I get the advantages of the better/faster/stronger processor capacity, obviously: From Computers 101, say it with me, “The number of bits in a processor refers to the size of the data types that it handles as well as the size of its registry. A 64-bit processor is capable of storing 264 computational values, including memory addresses. This makes it capable of accessing over four billion times as much physical memory than a 32-bit processor.”
Let me be clear, for those GNOMEistas who might just have their proverbial knickers in a bunch: GNOME has been a remarkable FOSS citizen providing a better-than-adequate desktop environment for many FOSS users, perhaps even a majority of FOSS users. I just don’t happen to be one of them. Further, I will say this for GNOME: Unity should be more like GNOME. Compliment? You decide.
Most times, any concern expressed is coming from the parent. Of course it would be. Their minds are locked into doing things one way. 
It also seems to fit with one of the underlying philosophies of the distro. Mint is famous for being a desktop that anybody can use. Updates on the dash is a concept which a new-to-Linux Windows’ user can understand, maybe even without having to go to the forums for help — and a piece of cake for experienced free software users. In my case, the only problem I had is that I misunderstood the severity numbering scheme, figuring one to be most severe instead of the least, but I easily managed to patch and update my system.
A biennial tradition in the San Francisco Bay Area, MeetBSD 2014 uses a mixed unConference format featuring both scheduled talks and community-driven events such as birds-of-a-feather meetings, lightning talks, and speed geeking sessions. MeetBSD can be traced back to a local workshop for BSD developers and users, hosted annually in Poland since 2004. Since then, MeetBSD’s popularity has spread, and it’s now widely recognized as its own conference with participants from all over the world.
Here’s what I want to know. Is replacing a well known application in Linux with a crippled version acceptable when it’s done in the name of stability? I’ll go ahead and place myself in front of you for scorn and castigation by admitting that I’ve been a member of the Slashdot community since 2002. Everyone has a sig line, right? Mine was thoroughly honed to be as concise a possible: