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PCLinuxOS Dutch Community:: PCLinuxOS.nl


Reprint from the August 2009 issue

Most of you will know the Netherlands as the country where Dutch is the native tongue, but Dutch is also spoken in the northern part of Belgium (Flanders). A total of 20 million people speak Dutch, so our community is an international community of 550 members with Dutch and Belgian admins, mods and users.




How It All Started

In November 2006, Mike (NewMikey) and Jos (DutchWolfie) set up a forum to support Dutch speaking PCLinuxOS users, and NewMikey rolled out a localized PCLinuxOS remaster. It may seem strange to some Linux users, but quite a lot of people have problems with English-based software and the localized remaster was a big success. Success means more users, more users means more support and since the release of PCLinuxOS 2007, the Dutch community has grown significantly.


What Do We Do Nowadays

The core business is of course maintaining an active forum and proving the much needed info for new users. Alain J. Baudrez (Wamukota) created a Dutch 'Get started with PCLinuxOS' tutorial, along with some basic Linux tips on the Dutch website. DutchWolfie added a Google Map so that new users can look-up a nearby PCLinuxOS user if help is needed. Wim (JohnW_57) is known as mod on the regular IRC channels, and both he and Jan (Smurfslover) are also known for their outstanding support on these channels and in testing for development. Both are team members who joined us very early on, since last year we added two new members to the PCLinuxOS.NL team. Ed (DeBaas) and Oliver (Oli4) have expanded the Mods, and are regular visitors of the international PCLinuxOS forum, acting as a go between for those users who don't speak English. NewMikey created a special remaster aimed at the photography fan (http://www.dfpe.pclinuxos.nl/) [inactive link].

There is no need to create a localized Dutch version of the 2009, thanks to pinoc's AddLocale tool. He created a great piece of software, and it helps us a lot. Thank you, pinoc.

As PCLinuxOS is broadening its horizons with Gnome, XFCE, LXDE and other community remasters, we recently opened new forums for them.


Our long term plans

We can state that our community has finally mustered a crew of enthusiastic PCLinuxOS users, so that we now have a solid base to expand our activities. The first new item is the translation of the PCLinuxOS Magazine to Dutch and to get a "video" handbook out on our site as well.



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