Perspective of a Thinking Human Being.

Hi, long time no write? Well, I’ve been so busy this last couple of days. Well, I wanted to inform everybody that the Arch Linux newsletter will be delayed further. I will try to release a newsletter by the week of December 17. Still, I won’t promise anything. University is very hard at work this week, since this is the last week of the term.

 Also note, that I said I would not write anymore on blogsome, but my other blog has given me a lot of trouble configuring to my likings, so I will be stuck here for some time.

 Oh, yeah, and the interview with Judd Vinet will be featured in the next release of the newsletter.

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.

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

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, 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.

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.

I will like to thank the vast majority of people for the great supportive words, making me see how my efforts weren’t done in vain. I work my best to give you the best. I have to say, almost everything turned out the way I meant it to, a few things to pint out are, that we have a great new style, more  and better content that is, hopefully, judging by your comments, entertaining. This is just a sign of good things to come. But, it has come to my attention that some people noticed bad grammar in the newsletter, and I do see the valid point they have. I must say, I am not one to give up at the sight of problems, and will keep doing the newsletter for as long as you guys want me to. So I will address this problem and fix it.

As many of you know by now, English is not my first language,  in fact it is my third, Spanish and Gibberish are my first two, pardon me for the bit of a joke on the latter. Anyways, being that the case, writing in English is quite more difficult for me, in the sense that I have to get rid of the grammar rules of the Spanish language and adapt to those of the English language. In the case of this newsletter, the real problem relied on the fact that I finished it just a few hours prior to publishing, giving me no chance for proofreading. But now, Is my promise to look at this particular problem for the next newsletter issues.

Thanks a lot for the great compliments so far, and as well for the constructive criticisms. Thanks for reading this public apology, and thanks for supporting me and my work.

The Arch Linux newsletter has been sent, it took me a lot of time to do the work, really I just finished like 30 minutes ago. But, is now up for Jason Chu to publish it on the Arch Linux main site. As much as I liked the old newsletter style, I thought it was old and needed a refresh. So the mailing list has been branded like all other Arch Linux projects, having the same style and quality you’ll expect from us. I really appreciate the community, you guys are doing an awesome job at making the newsletter be what it is now. This week was very though on making the newsletter, but since the format is done and the first one is going to be out with the new format, it will hopefully take less time with all the others to come.

What can you expect on this newsletter? New sections, improvements, html code clean up, better style, removed tedious and irrelevant sections. I hope the new style is one that is easy to read for all of you, and you find it comfortable. If for any reason you feel the style can be improved, please feel free to send me an email, I will gladly look at the suggestions.

 Now, for the future, I plan on making evolutionary improvements rather than revolutionary. With this newsletter I felt the hard work that goes into revolutionary improvements. But sure, expect even better quality newsletters as times passes. Thanks for reading, I do appreciate your time.

As I announced yesterday, the newsletter were undergoing a makeup operation, and now it’s done. Thanks a lot to Elliot (Cactus) for this awesome work. It is now better looking than ever, I’m so happy about this, I just can’t stop to think about how much you guys will like this new style.

I’m pretty much tight on my schedule, family, university, girlfriend, job and the newsletter, but nonetheless I shall see to it that the newsletter is given quality time as the other more important shores does.

Thanks to the awesome community of Arch Linux, every expectation I had for the newsletter is becoming a reality, adn there are just great things to come. I’ll keep you posted.