Penguins form queue to peck INQ hack to bits
I NOW HAVE NEARLY one hundred 100 flame-mails about PCLinuxOS, most of them questioning my parentage, one or two of them trying to explain what happened, most of the writers sort of hinting they are part of the distro team.
The emails run the gambit from things I cannot say in print, to personal offers for updates if I need them. Sure. If they have an installed user base of one, providing personal updates seems workable.
Well, there's the rub. This is a big reason for resistance by the masses. With this, and many other distros, there seems to be no "go to guy". All the rabid flamers more or less claim to be speaking for the distro. Come on now, who is the real voice? Who is the leader?
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no facts please, just the hits
Tex said he wrote him, stated who he was, and explained, but the guy apparently isn't interested in facts - only what will get him the most hits.
re: INQ Reporter
It seems to be run by a mob of flaming fanbois."
LOL - by reading both this site and PCLinuxOS's, I know a little bit more about the backstory (i.e. Tex), but from a outsider that finds PCLinuxOS very polished, but too focused on the desktop for his own personal taste (plus the Duke Nukem Forever take on meeting release dates or deadlines), I can see the reporters point of view.
Like the Borg - any resistance or less than undying love shown on the support forum is meet with swift and unflinching fanboy attacks.
Once again, OS's (even PCLinuxOS) is NOT a religion, but a tool. I'm always amazed at how people get so attached to a mere distro (I hate to imagine how these people name their screwdrivers and let their hammers sleep in bed with them).
Trust me, although I (mostly) like and use Fedora/RHEL/CentOS. the second I find a better product, I'll join the "Redhat Sucks" crowd without shedding a tear or looking back after several years of valuable service. I use linux to run my business - not worship Fedora or Linux (or in this case Tex) at the alter of distro-greatness.
This was my reply
Firstly I will apologise if any of the users of PCLinuxOS have responded to your earlier piece about the "death" of PCLinuxOS in an non-constructive manner. It was not the best journalism in the world, but I can see where you got certain wrong information from. You seem to have taken the word of a user who didn't actually know what was happenning.
For the record, I AM a member of the development team, and, along with a supporter who uses the name "Merlin", I took on the question of
sorting out a temporary forum.
The temporary Notice Board, at this address:
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/04230921465548081248/BDSJaSwoQjPG8odch
was set up using my GMail account.
If you visit the site http://distrowatch.com you will see that PCLinuxOS is consistently one of the top-rated Linux Distributions, and for exactly the reasons you discovered in your original article.
This is both because and despite the lack of big-money funding. In relation to us having to use cheap hosting solutions which lead to our current problems, "despite" fits. In relation to the attention to detail, the fact that the distro does not get published until it's ready, the fact that the main developer, Texstar, will not be rushed by deadlines, and is not under the instruction of bean counters, then "because" fits.
You have mentioned in your article the question of the community coming up with cash. Well we have had a real boost to our finances over the last two days, from donations from ordinary users. We have also had a number of hosting offers, we will probably come out of this with solid hosting at a price we can afford.
You will no doubt have confirmed for yourself by now that the outage of our repositories at ibiblio.org was due to a hardware failure there, and that other repositories around the world are still up and working. All but 6 distros went down at ibiblio, 6 more are back up, expect us to be back up soon.
Talks are going on to sort out a new host. All the data from the old one is backed up and can just be transferred when ready. But as we have a temporary home we will not be rushed into another provider that will let us down. Texstar has realised that the project has got far bigger than he ever expected, and hopping from one cheap host to another is no longer an option.
Meanwhile, the next Test Release is being prepared, and, as with the last one, you will probably find it is more stable and user-friendly than most "full releases".
Hopefully, all this nonsense will soon be a non-issue, and the only thing that will matter is that PCLinuxOS will be the distro you wrote such good things about on 9th April, with vibrant, helpful forums, and up to date software from solid repositories. The only difference being that we will be able to cope with the surge in interest and popularity that has occurred in the first part of this year.
Anyway, I'm still hoping to see you eat your words . Feel free to
contact me.
Best Wishes
davecs
There. I've made it clear of my role, named the Main Developer, and so on. There is nothing he could possibly interpret as a rant or a flame. He emailed back demanding my real name and confirmation of my role in the Dev team. Well Dr John didn't. "Wibble T. Kat" did. And he wants my real name!
I just advised him to contact Tex, and that everything I had written was easily verifiable. Last I heard.
re: This was my reply
There just isn't a lot of journalistic integrity on the web anymore. They hide behind anonymity and have no accountability. All that matters is the quest for advertising dollars. Just goes to show, you can't really take everything you read to heart.
"Dr. John" clearly didn't do his homework
I don't even run PCLinuxOS (although I've installed it a couple of times in the past) and, unlike Dr. John, even I know the 'nym of the lead developer. This "reporter" clearly didn't do much, if any, research before spouting off. At the very least, he should have contacted Texstar. (Can you say "Wikipedia entry"? Can you say "IRC channel"? I knew you could.)
Can't say I blame fans of PCLinuxOS for taking this guy to task for spreading rumors. Go get 'em, boys. He deserves it.
i guess he's right at the end
indie distros should get more support from its users, or chances of things like this happening is inevitable.
What's this all about?
I missed the original article so I have no idea what the second is about. Can someone provide a link to the original article?
In the meantime, I should make another contribution to the costs.
re: all about
This was sorta a follow-up to this article. And then of course this one today.
Thanks - another Chicken Little
"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" The good doctor just went into panic mode. I hope everyone responded the right way by donating. Reading the PCLOS bulletins, it seems that the forum ran into a problem of overuse of its MySql database/s and the distro's website host had a hardware problem. A nasty coincidence.
There are two donation points (both can be used to get PASS access) - one at amazon, the other at google. (Hope it's okay to post the links.)
re: Chicken Little
There are two donation points (both can be used to get PASS access) - one at amazon, the other at google. (Hope it's okay to post the links.)
If you mean with me here, then yeah, sure, it's great. Glad to help get them as many donations as possible.