Linux Mint 4.0; first impressions

Installing it as a VM in Parallels, following these instructions as if it were an Ubuntu distro (which it is). I am pleased to say the following about Mint:

• It shaves several steps off my standard Ubuntu post-install procedure because Mint's maintainers think in similar ways
• It comes with a better selection of themes
  
• Single taskbar instead of two
• Genuine attempt to merge Gnome and KDE paradigms
  
• Its simplified "software portal" package finder is actually kind of cool
• No goddamn brown/orange color scheme. There's no polite way to tell Mark Shuttleworth that an OS color scheme can't be based on the color of shit.
  

Never trust a computer that weighs less than a box of Pop Tarts.

The MacBook Air is new and cute, but it's also a different animal than other MacBooks, much less other PCs. If you plan to get one, be aware of the following issues:

• USB hubs are not your friend. The SuperDrive will only work directly plugged into the sole USB port, because its voltage requirements necessitated Apple and Intel overvolting that port. In fact, the SuperDrive will not even work on non-Air MacBooks.
  
• The Ethernet adapter also does not enjoy being run from a hub.
• The out-of-the-box version of Parallels works poorly with flash memory, causing kernel panics whenever Windows does something disk/network intensive. Go to their forums and get build 5592 or later which is optimized for the Air's solid state storage.
• The corollary of the above two is that you'd be better off using Disk Utility to make a disk image of your install media and let Parallels use that instead (it'll be faster, for one thing).