I like the historical stuff, it makes the rest of the movie have a greater sense of importance, and explains how stuck up everyone is on who is and is not human, and what that even means.

I also wish David Lynch had made a Battlestar Galactica movie and gone full Mormon crazy with it.

The first time I saw Dune was this cut on TV when I was in grade school and I loved it, even bought a bunch of Dune toys because they were being blown out at prices so low even we could afford them (nothing huge, but some toy weirding modules and stuff - all of which were defective out of the box and got returned, which I regret to this day in retrospect of course - still got the Sand Worm, though, sitting on one of my stereo speakers right now).

Years later in high school I rented it and was hsocked that so many of the best scenes of sandworm combat and weirding training and Baron Harkonen being Baron Harkonen were missing.

Is there a extended cut of that hot chick giving the history lecture?

Adapting any piece of literature on this kind of epic scale unfortunately requires at least SOME prologue. I think the theatrical cut version (with Princess Irulan briefly explaining things then mysteriously basically never being seen again the movie) handled it as well as you can without it turning into...whatever this is.
Also the brief little narrations by Paul helped a bit. Clumsy, but you kind of have to do it. Personally, I think Dune is underrated. It isn't perfect by a longshot and the problems Lynch had with production are painfully obvious, but it's not bad at all and Frank Herbert himself was generally cool with it. Some of the writing is clumsy in how it tries to alter or sum-up the book, but eh...I think the visual design and treatment of the universe makes up for it.

I was pretty impressed when LOTR came out with how well they managed to do a quick, well-made condensation of the set up without going too out of bounds, but then wisely sprinkling in some of the extended mythology in the intros for the other movies. The big mistake they made, though, was of course never explaining WHY anyone would wear a Ring of Power if Sauron was just going to control them but I guess *that* story would also have been too long to go into.

Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles.

I like how the Atreides pug was around even in the concept art.