Welcome From The Chief Editor

WOW! It's hard to believe, but this issue marks a couple of milestones for The PCLinuxOS Magazine. First, it was four years ago this month that The PCLinuxOS Magazine was "reborn." Second, this month marks my four year "anniversary" as the chief editor of The PCLinuxOS Magazine. During that time, we have managed to produce and maintain a monthly publication schedule, and we have produced a number of "Special Editions" of the magazine. We accomplished this after my predecessor reduced the publication of the magazine to a quarterly publication schedule (he said there wasn't enough to write about ... huh?) and after he tried to "kill off" the magazine during a period of time when PCLinuxOS was going through some turmoil.

Also during that time, I've overseen The PCLinuxOS Magazine website's move to a new server, a complete redesign of that website, the closure of the magazine's separate forum, a redesign of the magazine's layout, and the addition of many new columns and regular features in the magazine. Some of those new and regular features in the magazine include a monthly Game Zone column, ms_meme's Nook, ms_meme's Forum Foibles, YouCanToo's PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner, and the PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions puzzle pages, to name a few. The journey hasn't always been a smooth one, but we persevered and overcame whatever "obstacles" came our way.

I am proud of what we have accomplished, and I believe that I'm dead-on target when I say that the staff of The PCLinuxOS Magazine is also equally proud of their achievements. We only hope that you've enjoyed the journey spanning the past four years as much as we've enjoyed bringing it to you.

OK ... now don't go reading anything into what I just said. Nope. I'm not planning on going anywhere for the foreseeable future. I don't think Meemaw is, either. Granted, a lot of work goes into the production of each and every issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine. The end of month has become known as "crunch time" for those of us who put together the next month's issue of the magazine, each and every month. For us, it's our way of contributing something back to the best damn Linux distribution out there ... PCLinuxOS!

In "other news," June saw the return of the Gnome 2 desktop, in a way, with the addition of the Mate 1.6 desktop to the PCLinuxOS repository. Texstar was successful in compiling a fully functional Mate desktop that users can now install on top of a PCLinuxOS MiniMe or PCLinuxOS LXDE installation. Unless the end user removes the LXDE or KDE desktops and applications, the end user can switch back and forth between the different installed desktops, including the Mate desktop. After all, Linux is all about choice, and now PCLinuxOS users have yet another choice to add to all the other choices that are made available to them.

Also ... less than two months remain until the arrival of our new baby! After seven years of trying, to say that we (my wife and I) are excited is the largest understatement of all time. So, until next month, I wish you all peace, happiness, serenity and prosperity.