From The Chief Editor's Desk...

In late June, 2025, YouCanToo/The CrankyZombie experienced a fire at his place of residence. Inside his residence were the servers that ran all of the “services” that PCLinuxOS users came to rely on. That included the forum, PCLOS-Mail, PCLOS-Talk, PCLOS-Cloud, this magazine’s website, and the PCLinuxOS Knowledgebase Wiki.

Even though his residence experienced significant smoke and water damage from the fire, YCT/TCZ found that the backups he had made of the magazine, wiki, and cloud site were intact. That meant that it was only a matter of finding a new webhost for these sites. Texstar had already started a new forum. He is still figuring out a format for the main PCLinuxOS page.

We found a new webhost, and with the help of YCT/TCZ, we managed to move the domain to the new webhost fairly quickly (same address … https://pclosmag.com). YCT/TCZ, TerryN, and I worked tirelessly to find a new webhost for the PCLinuxOS Knowledgebase Wiki (note the new URL).

Then, YCT/TCZ managed to find a new home for PCLOS-Cloud. His efforts resulted in the cloud storage site coming back online in the latter half of July. With PCLOS-Cloud, all of the user login credentials and files were intact, so despite the brief interruption of service, PCLOS-Cloud users should now have full access to their files stored there.

The “jury is still out” on whether PCLOS-Mail or PCLOS-Talk will ever come back. Still, if that’s all that the PCLinuxOS community loses from this calamity, it’s remarkable that all of the other services have returned as quickly as they did. And they did so with a LOT of behind-the-scenes work from many people.

Unfortunately, YCT/TCZ lost all of his camera equipment, but found a light at the end of that tunnel when he found out that his insurance on his home was going to cover the loss of his camera equipment.

During the month of June, my son Ryan and I spent 10 days at H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation in Osceola, Missouri, where he earned three merit badges and earned his Scout rank. Then, he and I went on a troop campout over the weekend of July 18-20. There, he completed his Tenderfoot rank, and he earned his horsemanship merit badge. Not too bad for only being in the “big” troop (crossing over from Cub Scouts) since March, if I do say so myself. Now, all of his attention is going to be focused on banging out the requirements for his Second Class Scout rank.

This month’s cover image was produced by Bing Image Creator, and shows Tux enjoying a typical summer night around the campfire, making Smores with friends. My image creation “text” was “Linux mascot Tux sitting around a campfire making smores.” Bing Image Creator is powered by DALL-E 3.0.

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