Welcome From The Chief Editor

Halle-freaking-lujah! Some may be tearful, but not me. Adobe announced that it was pulling the plug on support for the Linux version of Adobe Reader. Can I have an AMEN?! I seriously doubt that Adobe Reader will be missed on Linux. In fact, I seriously doubt that Adobe Reader would be missed on ANY platform, should it disappear entirely.

There was a time when Adobe Reader was the ONLY way to view PDF files. But those days are long, long gone. Today, there are enough programs to fill a country bushel basket full that can read PDF files. Granted, this is largely due to Adobe making the PDF format an open format. But in the end, it has made Adobe's own PDF viewer irrelevant.

The other part that made Adobe Reader irrelevant is Adobe Reader itself. I guess you could make an argument that Adobe's decisions regarding Adobe Reader might also be responsible. Throughout its history, Adobe Reader has been riddled with as many security vulnerabilities as Windows has been. At least under Windows, it went through a very long period where it was bundled with every piece of crapware and malware known to mankind, or at least it seemed. It wasn't a good situation trying to get rid of the browser hijackers and other *ware that was being forced down your throat.

The only thing that would make me happier would be to see the painful and inevitable death of Adobe's Flash. Thankfully, it's looking like it may be on its way out, as well. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when HTML 5.x supplants Flash as the predominate means of streaming video content. When that day comes, the death bells will toll for Adobe Flash, and it will be relegated to a sour footnote in computing history. That day cannot come fast enough.

On a more positive and upbeat note (and it's hard, from my viewpoint, to be any more positive than witnessing the death of an Adobe product), YouCanToo has come through again for the PCLinuxOS community. He has started a live IM service called PCLOS-Talk. You can access it via Kopete or Pidgin. We'll cover it in a LOT more detail in the December 2014 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Meanwhile, you can sign up for an account by heading over to http://pclostalk.pclosusers.com. The list of online services YouCanToo provides for the PCLinuxOS community is hard to keep up with. Let's see ... pclosmail ... myphotos ... LinFX ... the magazine server ... the master repository for PCLinuxOS ... the PCLinuxOS Knowledge Base ... and I'm certain that I'm leaving something out of that laundry list.

I think I can speak for the PCLinuxOS community by saying thanks, YouCanToo, for all that you do for our favorite Linux distro. Somehow, just saying thanks doesn't seem like near enough.

Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity and prosperity.