From The Chief Editor's Desk...

Undoubtedly, June 2025 is going to go down in the PCLinuxOS history books as the absolute worst month that there ever was. In short, June 2025 was a DISASTER.

No, seriously. Just about everything that could go wrong, did. Maybe we should give it a name, like “The Great June Calamity.”

So, where do I start?

Things certainly started off well enough. From June 13 to June 22, Ryan and I attended Scout camp at H. Roe Bartle Scout reservation in Osceola, MO. Yep. 10 days and nine nights of camping in a canvas tent, sleeping on a canvas cot … and LOTS of walking. Ryan earned his Scout rank, completed most of the requirements for Tenderfoot Scout, and earned three merit badges: Swimming, Leathercraft, and Geology. It was a great (but very tiring) time for us.

But after I got home, things seemed to explode. I started by trying to weed through over 1,000 emails in my inbox. That took me about a day and a half to weed through.

Then, YouCanToo/The CrankyZombie experienced a fire at his house. Now, if you didn’t already know, he hosted PCLinuxOS, the forum, the magazine, PCLOS-Cloud, PCLOS-Talk, pclosmail, the PCLinuxOS Wiki, and ImagStor on servers in his house. His house experienced a significant amount of water and smoke damage. He lost his servers. He lost all of his cameras and lenses. He and his dog were able to get out without injury, but the fire brought almost everything related to PCLinuxOS crumbling down.

I got an email from YCT/TCZ to tell us what had happened. The ONLY thing I could initially find still up and running was the PCLOS Debian forum, so I headed over there. I made an announcement over there about the magazine site, mentioning that all of the other “services” that were being handled by his servers were also down.

Within about a day or so, Texstar set up a temporary forum for PCLinuxOS users. Within the intervening few days, I've witnessed a steady influx of forum regulars showing up in the new, temporary forum. If you haven’t already visited the temporary forum, you should run right over there and sign up for your free account.

In an email update, YCT/TCZ informed me that he wasn’t interested in providing web hosting after this calamity. So, the magazine site is looking for a new web host, and just as soon as we find one (we’re close) and can get the domain transferred, we’ll be back up and running again. Meanwhile, Texstar is looking to possibly move the PCLinuxOS site to another server that he has space on.

We’re still wading through a LOT of unknowns at this point. Like, are the servers totally destroyed? Did the server hard drives survive the fire, smoke, and water damage? Are the backups he made still available? Repairs to YCT/TCZ’s home are expected to take six to eight weeks to complete, so information regarding those questions may not be known for a while yet.

We have been notified that TerryN has backups of the PCLinuxOS Wiki Knowledgebase, and it is currently being hosted here. Just as before (when the Wiki went down during the ransomware attack), only the articles that TerryN has contributed to the wiki are included. As for PCLOS-Cloud, PCLOS-Talk, and pclosmail … well their future is far less certain. Just keep in mind that these services might never return, and if they do, it may take some time before they do (if they do).

2004                                          January 2005, holding his daughter after she was born

Shortly after establishing the temporary forum, Texstar received word that one of our Global Moderators in the PCLinuxOS Forum, Archie Arevalo, had passed away sometime in May. (Texstar has since re-established a more permanent forum here.)

Archie was a loyal PCLinuxOS user, and loved the KDE desktop. Not hearing from him for extended periods was not unusual, so no one thought that anything was amiss when we hadn’t heard from him for a while.

Born in the Philippines, Archie lived in Changchun, China. There, he met his wife, and they had a daughter in 2005. He was 65 years old. Living behind the “Great Firewall,” it took a while for news of his passing to reach us.

He was also passionate about playing the guitar. Back in 2009, during the “Great Upheaval” in PCLinuxOS’s history, Archie spearheaded a movement to revive The PCLinuxOS Magazine, and tapped me to be its Chief Editor. Archie and I worked closely for a considerable time to put this magazine back on the right path. During that time, he and I became good friends (despite never meeting). Like all friendships, we didn’t always see “eye to eye” sometimes, but we always overcame our differences.

In February, 2024, Archie was in a car accident. He suffered an intracranial hemorrhage, and was hospitalized for about a month. I chatted with him in PCLOS-Talk a couple of months after his accident. He was concerned about his progress … or rather, the lack of progress … in his recovery. He didn’t provide a lot of information about the accident or his prognosis, but did provide enough information to “pick my brain” about why he wasn’t healing as rapidly as he thought he should (because I worked in a hospital). I assured him that injuries to the body’s nervous system were among the slowest to heal.

Knowing Archie, I’m sure he didn’t tell me everything … just the things he thought I needed to know to be able to answer his questions. So, there’s a real possibility that he purposely didn’t reveal the full extent of his injuries. And, having already had an intracranial hemorrhage, there is a heightened risk of another one somewhere down the road.

But the truth of the matter is, we simply don’t know what happened to Archie. He tended to keep a lot of his personal details private. All we really know is that he has passed away.

Archie leaves behind his wife and daughter, the latter now enrolled in college.

Unfortunately, with the PCLinuxOS Forum being down, I can’t access all the usual information that I normally can when we lose a forum member. Still, Archie’s passing deserves attention. He was a kind and compassionate soul, and his influence and insights will be missed in the PCLinuxOS Forum. For Archie, the PCLinuxOS Forum was the house for his second family. His dedication to PCLinuxOS was second to none. R.I.P., our good friend.

This month’s cover is a composite of two separate images from Pixabay. The background image of the brick wall is by Michael Laut. The circus poster image is by José Augusto Camargo, and was modified by Meemaw to customize it for this cover. And, to be completely honest, I didn’t know at the time that I designed the cover (early June) how much of a circus things would become with PCLinuxOS.

Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity, prosperity, and continued good health!