SBLinux.org

Not much activity here during the holidays, but here's hoping things will pick up again.

I'm Richard Holt. An oil field drilling fluids technologist from Louisiana who found computers at age 40 in Venezuela. Now going on 35 years here. Currently doing EN<>ES technical translations from time to time, co-leader of OpenOffice en Español, manual translator at sidux and helping my wife in her pre-school in Ciudad Ojeda.

Been playing with small computers since 1984 when I got a Commodore 64 and OmniCalc.
The friend who sold me the C64 convinced me to buy a Kaypro2 with C/PM because he could get a better price if he bought 4. From there to learning Basic, dBase II, WordStar, etal. A really great machine. Bought a Radio Shack PC with 640MB RAM but sold it because the KayPro10 w/64MB RAM was faster. TurboPascal was a dream-come-true for me on C/PM and MSDOS. Built a couple of sizeable apps with it but that is a young man's game. Fun, though.

Then on through the DOS's and Win3.11/95/98. I found StarOffice in 1998 which solved a crashing problem in Excel 97. Began learning about open source and Linux. Learned a bit with the floppy based muLinux. Bought SuSE 7.2 about 2001 which worked fine and had good manuals but I couldn't get online -winmodem problem. Mandrake 8.1 got me dual booting. Everything worked out of the box. An external serial modem was the key. Booting Linux first since Jan-2002. Today WinXP is in a virtual box -a great place for it.

Left Mandrake 10.1 when a friend gave me Mepis 2003. I stayed with it until about 3.3 when I moved to Kanotix then sidux in 2006. In September last year, I switched to preferentially track "testing" along with sidux repos. I guess my quest for adventure has calmed, although I use aptitude for *all* package management against the advice of sidux devs. Been working great for me for several months. Just don't mix with apt-get or synaptic due to the database problem.

Been following Mepis news over the years. Installed the M8rc1 on my main desktop, originally for the OOo3. Thanks to the Mepis forum archives everything is working fine.

Still have sidux-2008-04 on a Lenovo 3000C200 and an Acer Aspire One (ZG5) both tracking testing. Doing the Spanish translation for the sidux manual has been a great way to learn.

Looking forward to helping with Mepis in whatever ways I can.
I think I'll be staying awhile.

Hi, Richard!
And welcome aboard.

My first computer was also a Kaypro, but I got it in '86, after they had switched to MS-DOS. I still have it up in the attic, but it's been quite a while since I've tried to boot it!

You've got quite a history with the "diabolic digital devices"! [Personal computers] If you have an inclination, we accept submissions for articles for the main SBLinux.org website on a wide range of tutorial, help and Linux review topics. Since I've been working on the Mepis 8 User's Manual, by own writing for SBLinux.org has come to a standstill. So it would be good if others want to present material. Also, if you want to write Mepis-related material, you could register for a blog at MEPIScommunity.org. We just started enabling blogging there.

Yes, it's been quiet here in the last month. There are two Forum sections that are invisible to the general membership, as they are the working/coordination forums for Mepis projects that are viewable only to members of those projects. They've been largely completed, though, and with Mepis 8 getting close to release, most of the Mepis people are posting over on MepisLovers.org right now. But here we have a number of other Sidux users besides yourself, as well as an Arch Linux cadre. All distros are fair game for discussion: pros, cons --and especially how-to info.

Glad to see you "starting off right" by posting here in Who's Who. And I hope tpo see more of you in the other forum sections.

--SilverBear