Welcome From The Chief Editor
December 2010
Wow! It hasn't seemed like enough time has gone by, but another holiday season has burst upon us with a fury. Closer to "home," PCLinuxOS has seen updated ISOs released, along with a couple of more "mini" releases. Texstar is working on a 64 bit version of PCLinuxOS. KDE 4.5.4 has reached the testing section of the repo, while reports of the first beta of 4.6.1 has made its way from the KDE developers. The Xfce developers are making some progress towards the much anticipated Xfce 4.8. LibreOffice, which has absorbed Go-OO (the version of OO.o used by PCLinuxOS), has entered the third beta phase that will lead up to its inaugural release. More details are coming forth about the much anticipated Gnome 3.0. Novell gets bought out by Attachmate, with significant sale of certain intellectual property rights to a consortium of software companies headed up by Microsoft. (Don't worry. The early reports are that Novell, as a subsidiary of Attachmate, has retained its ownership of Unix patents.) With so much going on, it's no wonder that the holidays seemed to sneak up on us!
This month, The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine starts a series of articles looking at e17, a.k.a. Enlightenment. We'll dig into e17 much in the same fashion that we dug into KDE 4, Xfce and LXDE. To kick things off for our look at e17, I've written the e17: An Overview article that takes an overall look at e17, where it comes from, and where it may be heading. I've also written the e17: Beginner Desktop Tweaks article to help you to start tailoring your e17 desktop. Finally, Meemaw digs deep into Shelves and Drawers, in her e17: Shelves & Drawers Explained article.
Meemaw also finishes up her series of articles on OpenOffice 3.2, with her OpenOffice 3.2, Part 7: Letters & Labels article. Darrel Johnston takes another look at yet another free, open source alternate operating system, with his Alternate OS: Kolibri, Part 1 article. Gary Ratliff, Sr. returns with another installment in his programming languages series, with his Computer Languages A to Z: Tcl/Tk article. Daniel Meiß-Wilhelm (Leiche) returns this month, profiling another of his creations in the PCLinuxOS repository, with his Repo Spotlight: PCLinuxOS FLV Player & Converter article. Pete Kelly returns with another helpful article, with his Monitor Your System With GKrellM article.
Meemaw has also reviewed yet another game for this month's Game Zone: Hotei's Jewels — Relax article. I continue my look at Firefox Add-ons, with my Firefox Add-ons: CoLT article. ms_meme has graced us with two different ms_meme's Nook entries, plus another installment in her Forum Foibles column. Mark Szorady is back, with his monthly Double Take & Mark's Quick Gimp Tip column.
Be on the lookout next month for a new masthead design by Timeth. Starting with the January 2011 issue, we will be dropping the NEW portion of the magazine's title, shortening it to simply The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Only the name changes. I, along with the rest of the magazine staff, are still here, and we're still going to strive to bring you the wide variety of helpful articles that we have done for the last 18 months.
Until then, I hope everyone enjoys the holiday season. I wish peace, happiness, serenity and tranquility for each and every one of you.
