Testimonial 1
Today at 2:15 pm, Ohio, USA time, I was in the waiting room of an imaging firm for an interview. A Partner of ReproMax (Digital Imaging & Storage.) The secretary went into the back office to let the Production Manager know I was there for the appointment. Well as usual, as I'm waiting, a rush of calls and walk-in customers come in and the Production Manager was in a meeting with the General Manager.
I'm thinking, "Oh boy, great timing for an interview" with all heck breaking loose. A younger than I, but older than most in the forum, sits next to me. She gets on the phone and asks her husband whether the art work was on her lap top or a disk at home. That's right, all she had was the "paper" art work, all by hand and not sure of the color. The office let us know it was going to be at least 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour.
As we talked, she showed me her art work, and now this is where my PCLOS Adventure has brought me to as of this day 08-08-08. My remaster of MiniMe 2008 with GIMP and Fonts was in my binder so I used her laptop and showed her a few things I have learned from some of the incredible, friendly and knowledgeable people in The PCLOS Forum. I whipped up what she liked for her poster in just about 20 minutes. She used this art work to get what she wanted made, while I was still waiting for my interview. Now please be patient... I said I had to share..... and yes, one of the associates did see my work and I was hired and the young lady well, she was nice...
This is the second time Fate and PCLOS have crossed in my professional life. This is also where I just run out of any words I could use to describe my experience with being around and working with the PCLOS Distro.... I can only tell you the truth, how all of these good-willed people from around the globe have guided, helped and influenced my usage of not just Linux, but what has turned out to be part of a journey that Texstar and The Ripper Gang started so many years ago. I am humbled by the people I have met here.
I felt lucky when I found PCLOS around .090 I think... now I'm a lifer, and it was FATE. I did not anticipate getting this position, with all of the younger talent with degrees in the market. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I just never imagined it....
By the way I'm no longer just upper management............now it's "Digital Imaging". (I almost forgot; she flipped me a $20 for gas...)
This is my story and I'm sticking to it! T H A N K Y O U!
RadOH
Testimonial 2
Hello!
My name is Paul Browning and I've been using PCLinuxOS for roughly a year. Recently, I discovered I had made a terrible mistake and ended up 'flat-lined' with a system that wouldn't come back up. (This was due to my clicking multiple repositories in the Synaptic package manager and then doing an update. Several major packages became casualties and the root directory checked out.) Now, with my lack of Linux knowledge, I really began to panic. Did I just lose everything? The scope of the situation I was in began to raise my blood pressure so I ran to a second system that was in the house to begin looking for answers.
First step, jump into the "#pclinuxos-support" channel on freenode.net using an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) program. (I needed LIVE help and wanted to make sure that I was down a minimal amount of time if possible.) While there, I pleaded my case and was told pretty much that in order to fix the situation, I was going to have to re-install PCLinuxOS. (What!?! No!!! Did I just lose everything???) It was the one thing I did NOT want to hear. There seemed no way around it. I began to feel distant from Linux. I began to second guess whether I wanted to continue on the Linux side of things. Mostly because I didn't want my lack of knowledge to put me in this situation ever again.
Then two people stepped up and began asking me more questions. "Did you put your Home directory in its own partition or on another drive?" I told them that I had put it in its own partition. Then, in a very nonchalant way, they said, just reinstall the OS and just don't format your Home partition and you'll be fine. Fine?!? Was that HOPE that I just heard? Was that "a second chance"? Everything changed at that moment, knowing that all may not be lost.
So, I was told to get the "MiniMe" flavor and start with that. My situation was turning around, and rather quickly too! Those two guys in the chat room were literally walking me through recovery. (Something I can never repay them enough for.) To make a long short story -(sorry about that), I was up and running like nothing had happened in about an hour.
I had learned a VERY valuable lesson that day and that was WHY you put things in different partitions. Before that incident, I typically put an operating system with all the other stuff in one big partition on one drive. NEVER AGAIN. I had done the 'correct' thing this time, only because someone included it in a recommendation for installing when I had originally started off with this flavor of Linux. I just never realized how important that one step was.
OK, at this time, the world should know who these two individuals that helped me so much back when my world was on the verge of ending were. SlippJigg and Clarjon1 should be commended for taking the time to help someone they've never met and may never meet. I wanted to publicly thank them for going the extra mile. They've given me something that will help me out in the future. Something that will 'keep' me more grounded in the notion that 'all is not lost' when something goes wrong. I'm still a Linux noob. But I don't plan on being one much longer. These guys have just taught a man to fish and I thank them both for everything they did that night.