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

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.

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.

I posted this on the Mandriva CEO, blog: [edited, so read it again]

To the people saying:
“Once you sold something, and [y][o]u got your money, I am not sure how can [y][o]u blame anyone. I mean the PC is their’s now, they are free to install whatever crap they want to… [d]on[’]t you think…?” [edited for bad grammar] [still, way to many uses of the dot]

You surely are an immature unthinking person like Steve Ballmer and Microsoft in general, the believe of, "just care about the sales not the people nor quality", is a common Microsoft saying. Just think about how they celebrated selling 88 millions copies of an Operating System that is on beta quality status and lots of people are disliking. In the other hand, François obviously doesn’t care about the money that much, he cares for the people, this is actually a good ethic behavior. Steve Ballmer, is, and has always been but a joke, just a puppet which Microsoft uses to show they are immature, unthinking people. Steve is actually the face of dumb in Microsoft, do you believe he actually controls anything?, I mean he is the greatest joke ever in the IT world, just as the word inept can be  easily associated with Steve Ballmer from Microsoft.

But, is good to know Microsoft fear Linux that much, and is scared to death about the progress it is making. The coming generation, is what Microsoft fears the most. Just think about it, the children’s of all this thousands of open source enthusiasts, that will use Linux since their early years, that sure is frightening to you, isn’t it Microsoft?

I read the letter, from François,  and thought, man, this really comes from the heart of a person that do love what he is doing and care about his business in a passionate and professional way, not in a "let’s forget about everything and everyone opinions" way, like that, which is common on Microsoft. Even though I’m not a Mandriva user, I do recommend it to friends above Ubuntu openSuse and Fedora. And will keep doing it, since I know this is a quality distribution, I tested the 2008.0 release and is the best so far. If you haven’t give it a spin, but if you are an Arch Linux user, just have both installed.

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.  

I have changed the theme of this web log, to make it look and feel better, simpler and professional. I hope you all like it. It makes me for more at peace with my environment when I visit the web log myself.

In other news, the Arch Linux newsletter are going through some kind of revamp to make them better for the community, stay tuned for more, and there is even a surprise for all of you, in which you will get involved in some part of the next newsletter, I will announce it shortly after I make this post, or tomorrow morning in the Arch Linux forums.

Is good to feel how, even though my time is limited, even more with the fact that I’m in the process of starting in a new job, I still feel great about it. I mean, since I discovered the open source world I never thought I would be so involved and that it would be so rewarding. Let me explain, when I work, at my pay job I get the satisfaction that I’m earning money, so I’m being paid to help the people and be kind to them. But, when I work on lets say, making the Arch Linux newsletter or helping the open source community in general, I get the satisfaction that I’m helping someone without getting paid, I’m giving without waiting to receive, even though what I receive is of more value to me than money, the kind words from the people that enjoy what I’m doing.

 That is what life is about, our hearts are made in a way which we feel satisfied by helping others. That is the why we, in the open source community are so kind on giving, we make everything with a sharing spirit, and in that way we become better persons overall. As Judd Vinet once said when stepping down as Arch Linux leader: "The community left me some very kind comments and it warms me to know that I’ve left such a nice impression on so many people. I guess that’s the best reward for stepping up and making something that you can’t really charge money for — the payment comes in kudos, pride, and a boost in self-confidence." Inspiring words they are, hope you all agree with me. Thanks for reading.