Perspective of a Thinking Human Being.

As some of you may already know, I study and work. And I am at the end of this years term of University. Being that said, I have to do a lot of assignments, and have to study hard for the final exams. I am maintaining good grades so far, but the assignments are really getting on my nerves, this has always been my weak point.

I have already talked to Aaron Griffin, Jason Chu and Dusty Phillips about this, to see their opinions, and yeah, they agree that I should delay the newsletter a bit. My current plans are to delay it and schedule it for release on December 10, this of course if everything goes as expected.

Now, off topic fun; Dusty said, "of course you could delay it and send out something that’s low quality too and we’d call it ‘vista’". I laughed hard at that.

Now, on topic; in fact the delay is going to happen because I don’t want to deliver a low quality newsletter, you guys are expecting more, judging by the previous two releases of the newsletter. And my girlfriend reads them so I can’t let you all down.

Thanks,

Eduardo "kensai" Romero

As you may already know, Judd Vinet is the creator and former leader of Arch Linux. I have the great honor of interviewing him. But, I’m not going to ask the questions, you, the community will be the ones. I have created a forum thread for this, here. So, if you want to participate, asking Judd Vinet a question, feel free to do so on that thread.

Thanks a lot for the support so far. Remember, you can help make the Arch Linux newsletters even better, just send me an email with suggestions and/or actual information I can have included. If you have found something interesting, send it my way, I might include it. So don’t hesitate, you know where to find my email, on the latest newsletter.

Yeah, thats right, goodbye blogsome, and thanks for having me. But, my needs has grown far beyong what blogsome can offer to me.

 I have changed my blog to http://kensai.team88.org/ so everybody is welcome to change your bookmarks, rss feed, etc…, for I have to dedicate my time to just one blog. Thanks for your support.

 MY NEW WEB LOG.

Hi guys, I’m writing to inform you that the Arch Linux newsletter is on its way to be published. What can you expect on this newsletter?

• Interview with Jason Chu.
• A message from Aaron Griffin to the community.
• Some changes under the hood, for code cleaning.
• Coverage of Arch Linux in the media.
• More humor

I read an interview with Bill Hilf, yet another Microsoft puppet. He states "When people buy commercial software, really what they’re buying is a guarantee. You’re buying a guarantee that what you have will perform, and has been tested and there’s someone you can call up, and if things go really bad someone’s liable if something doesn’t work. You’re buying this ecosystem of accountability. One of the challenges of open source and really the challenge with the open source business model is: it’s hard to replicate that ecosystem of accountability and that guarantee."

Please, don’t make me laugh, the people who bought Windows Vista, bought a product guaranteed to work and they were assured the product was tested right? Then how come so many people are having problems with Vista?

Well, I know Microsoft don’t care, they sold a lot of copies of their faulty almost non-Operating System. But, then Bill Hilf jumps and say, "One of the challenges of open source and really the challenge with the open source business model is: it’s hard to replicate that ecosystem of accountability and that guarantee." If this is the case then, that we don’t have this "guarantee" in the Linux world, I want to stay without it, so far my Operating System, which I paid $0 for, Arch Linux, is working perfectly, I couldn’t ask for better quality, and what irony, this all comes "with no guarantee".  Using this Operating System I have a normal life, I study a bachelors degree in the area of Networks and Telecommunications, and although challenging I have all my work done on Arch Linux, and live this normal life without, Microsoft Office, Windows or its so-called "guarantee".

I have come to the end of my "rant" against Microsoft’s false advertisements. Thanks for reading.

PS: At least I got a good laugh this morning because of this interview.

Note: I edited this post, so read again, if you care.

Hi,

     As you may know, I am pro community contributions, and although I make the newsletter I appreciate when the community sends to my email what they think might be good for the newsletter. For example, some people have emailed me with links to subjects in the mailing list that they think might be interesting and should be included in the newsletter. Also, I have had some people write me humor emails that I can include on the humor section. An area of help might also be the Application to Improve section, you use an application on Arch Linux and feel needs more attention, lets say in the wiki entry, or if it is from community it needs a maintainer or an update, etc… write me an email about it.

Have you found any news that might be worth posting in the General Linux News section? Do you think a forum thread might be worth a highlight? Have you found a tips & tricks or tutorial that should go on the Expand your Knowledge section? write me an email, I’ll appriciate it. I am sure that with your help, we all contribute to a better Arch Linux newsletter. I really don’t like being naive, I want to include what the community like, not what I like.

Take care, thanks,

Eduardo "kensai" Romero

Well, what I have to say, finally I’m working again, this time at a technology retail store, one of the big players in the USA. I’m actually happy with this job, but still very lost, I have just started the past week.  But, hopefully I will catch on faster than I might think. I always like to put all my efforts at whatever I make my job, no matter if is paid or volunteered. Is a different experience working at a retail store, you have to do so much more than what you once thought this people do. I actually thought working at retail stores was an easy job and you haven’t had to do much, but now I realize and respect the hard work of everybody in this job position.

Now, there is also my major in Networks and Telecommunications I need to focus on. I’m doing well, the grades are good, and every professor is, in my opinion, pleased with my work. But, I’m actually not putting University in top priority as it should, in fact I have always had this problem, but I really have to organize everything so I have University as a priority again. Is just that studying doesn’t give me the joy that my current priorities do.

About the newsletter, I am working on the next newsletter and I’m actually happy on the outcomes. I have new things that are going to be added that haven’t been mentioned yet, maybe later in the week I will write about it, so keep posted, but still I don’t promise anything. I wanted to ask you to send me anything via email which you find interesting and can be added to any of the sections in the newsletter. You know where to find my email. Thank you for reading and for your support.

Well, I’m already working on the next issue of the newsletter, I am really happy about how things are turning out. The community is very supportive and Arch Linux is moving forward at a nice step, bringing exiting news of things to come in the near future. We are at the expectation right now about the new Arch Linux logo, the contest has already been closed and the developers are ready to make the votes. Now, you should look forward to this very closely, since this can be a huge PR movement, even though Arch Linux is not seeking a commercial deal, we always welcome the new users that come from changes like this to a Linux distribution.

It might sound crazy, but in fact this changes play a role in the minds of some people. For example, I had never tried FreeBSD before the logo and main page remake. Why? Well, it has always appealed to me that FreeBSD was a good, solid Operating System, but when I visited the web site, I just read almost everything but never felt motivated to actually download it. When the change came, I saw how friendly and professional everything looked, this way I couldn’t help it and downloaded FreeBSD without thinking to much about it. I see this is going to be the case with Arch Linux, if everything happens to be timed right we might enjoy the excitement of the moment and on the other hand, attract some new users.

I wrote some weeks ago, in this blog, that I was going to install Gentoo and Arch Linux side by side, because I the Gentoo installation for gaming and Arch Linux on another hard drive for all my other works. This idea came to me when Enemy Territory: Quake Wars released its Linux demo. Because of Gentoo’s reputation, a well earned one, for the fact of customization and performance.

Before this, I was a Gentoo user since 2004, and has always enjoyed using it, until now. This time, although being my first Gentoo Linux install in months, almost a year, it didn’t even lasted a week on my system, I  came to realize that, my once beloved Gentoo had dumped all its quality at once, and there is not much that remains of what a good distribution it once were.

Gentoo is divided in two branches, stable and testing. But, between this branches there are some problems worth noticing. The recent problem with the stable branch is the outdated applications, and even though they are outdated they are not stable enough, as one would expect. And the problem with the testing branch is that though it is a bleeding edge branch, some applications I use are outdated, packages fail to compile often, and most are unstable once they do compile. I think that above all the biggest problem in Gentoo is the lack of direction, and I feel this is hurting the community in a big way.

Because of this and some other issues, I have decided since  October 21, 2007, that this only Operating System I have installed, Arch Linux, is going to be definitively my main Operating System for everything I need. I know this is a challenge , even more when you are studying at University and most of the work they ask of you have to be done in a Windows machine, but is possible, I just do that work on the University machines to make sure mine doesn’t get contaminated.

The next Arch Linux newsletter is scheduled for release on November 19, 2007. Here are some things to look forward in the next newsletter:

• New featured interview. I have taken the job of interviewing a different Arch Linux developer or team member for every Arch Linux newsletter.
•  Some Arch Linux stats will be provided.
• Take extra steps to ensure everything is quality and coherent writing.
• HTML code cleanup.
• See if the style needs any particular improvement, and if needed improve it.

I guess those are the most important things I need to highlight. Hope you guys enjoy this next newsletter more than you have enjoyed the previous ones. Thanks for the support.