Forum Down? What Will You Do?

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

On August 25, 2014, the PCLinuxOS forum went down for seven or eight hours. That's right. On the 23rd birthday of Linux, the PCLinuxOS forum went AWOL. While the reported cause was a power outage, early speculation included everything, including a DDoS attack.

Oh my! What do I do with my time?

Fortunately, I've come up a dozen ideas on things you can do while waiting for a forum outage to be rectified. Unfortunately, most of them aren't as fun or fulfilling as visiting the PCLinuxOS forum, but they will help fill the void left by forum withdrawl.

1. Reacquaint yourself with your spouse or significant other.


2. Talk to or visit with your kids.


3. Continue your PCLinuxOS family fraternization with your fellow PCLinuxOS users on the PCLinuxOS IRC channel. This channel is purely for chit-chat. Direct all of your support type questions and discussions to the PCLinuxOS-Support IRC channel. Feel free to drop by the PCLinuxOS Magazine IRC channel, too, while you're on IRC. We'll talk about anything and everything. There's not too much that's considered "off limits." If you hit those limits, we'll give you a kind warning before giving you the boot.


4. Start scratching things off of your "honey do" list. I don't know about you, but my list has become a book. Of course, you'll stay out of the proverbial doghouse if you actually do the things on your list -- not just scratch them off.


5. Find -- and read -- a good book. You do remember what a book is, don't you?




6. Teach yourself something new. Learn how to use commands on the command line. Learn how to write bash scripts. Learn some new GIMP or Inkscape skills. Follow one of Meemaw's fine graphics tutorials.


7. Do something kind and unexpected. Do the dishes when it's not your turn to do them. Clean the bathroom. Run the vacuum cleaner. Make dinner (but not right after cleaning the bathroom). If you're not the culinary type, take a friend or your significant other out for dinner.


8. Organize your graphics files, or your music files. If you're like me, they do get jumbled ... despite the best of intentions to keep them organized.


9. Catch up on a television series that you've always meant to watch, but could never find the time to watch.


10. Search out and watch videos of interest to you on YouTube. With an average of 100 hours of videos being uploaded to YouTube every minute, of every day, you'll be hard pressed to NOT find something to pique your interest on there.


11. Go to The PCLinuxOS Magazine website, and download all of the PDF versions of the magazine. We have every issue ever produced available as a FREE download. So, make sure your collection is complete.


12. Monitor Texstar's Twitter feed to get the latest info on when the forum will be back up.

Undeniably, spending time in the PCLinuxOS forum has become a significant part of many PCLinuxOS users' day. BUT ... there are other things to do. I'm as guilty as anyone else. At the time I wrote this article, I have spent over 112 days in the PCLinuxOS forum during my tenure as a PCLinuxOS user.

Whatever it is you decide to fill that void of time with, just be sure to come back to the forum when it comes back online.

See y'all in the forum!