From The Chief Editor's Desk

As hard as it is to believe, summer in the Northern Hemisphere is giving way to fall. The hours of daylight are becoming increasingly and noticeably shorter. Temperatures, especially at night and during the early morning hours, are becoming brisk and cooler. Leaves on the trees are starting to turn colors and fall. Before long, it'll be time for cool weather jackets that will eventually yield to warmer winter jackets, in most Northern Hemisphere locales.

Sadly, Rudge's trusted four legged companion, Molly, departed her human family recently. I know we've all had pets that are special to us, but Molly's exploits were retold over and over again in the PCLinuxOS forum by Rudge. Molly was, in a way, a special member of the PCLinuxOS family. Molly's photograph even graced the cover of this magazine in July 2013. Our pets are a very important part of our human families, and when one of them takes their leave from us, it leaves a deep and sad hole in our lives. Our thoughts and hearts go out to Rudge and JRex as they work through their loss of Molly.

Meanwhile, just as we (me and Meemaw) started to do the PDF layout for the October issue of the magazine, Meemaw's laptop developed problems (the AC/charging port was loose and would no longer keep her laptop powered up or her battery charged). She ended up buying a new laptop, replacing her seven year old one. Now, she's trying to wrap her head around GPT, UEFI, EFI and all the other "new" things that have come along in the past seven years, just so she can get PCLinuxOS installed on her new laptop. Just as I'm writing this, she was able to finally get PCLinuxOS installed on her new laptop, with some help and reassurance from a PCLinuxOS forum member who wishes to remain anonymous. I'll let her tell you all about her new laptop (along with her adventures in getting PCLinuxOS installed) in a future article.

It's easy to become somewhat complacent about our trusted equipment. Under Linux, especially PCLinuxOS, it just keeps working and working without any issues. Things just run and run, without any noticeable slowdown. There are no ever-expanding anti-virus definitions to show things down. Of course, there's little to no worry about viruses, either. In fact, things run so well that we rarely think about the "newer" technologies that we might be missing out on. Instead, we trudge along with our trusted computers that continue to perform, day in and day out.

But then, that trusted computer dies ... or becomes seriously "ill." At that point, we usually have a decision to make -- fix our trusted computer, or look among a now-foreign sea of new equipment with new features that weren't available when we purchased our last computer. It can be overwhelming, to say the least -- and Meemaw had to confront it head on.

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