Pope Francis: An Assessment of His Pontificate

When Pope Francis passed away, some people asked me for an evaluation of his pontificate. A few days have passed since. Our Catholic friends finished their mourning period, and the conclave starts tomorrow, so now I think it’s the right time to share my thoughts.

Keychron K4 v2

Back in mid 2019, I was on the market for a new laptop. My old laptop was plagued by issues that, while farily minor, where a deal breaker for me. Thus, I got a shiny new Dell laptop which seemed to fit the bill just right. And it did… mostly. Enter 2020 and the pandemic. Most work I had to do was from home, and that meant using my laptop. Thus, that poor Dell laptop’s keyboard got quite a beating. Again, I wrote thousands and thousands of words as part of my daily job. The laptop soldiered on, but at some moment the keyboard began to act up. What could I do? I considered my options.

Stopping Jerks from Abusing the Church

In my last piece, I examined how there is a species of creature known as the jerk, someone inclined to grab power at organizations with no regard to the cost meted out to other people. Churches, unfortunately, are often the targets of these people. In this essay, I want to consider historical approaches to balancing power in the church and how they may grant insight into protecting churches from jerks.

When Jerks Abuse an Organization

When I read the article by our Editor-in-Chief, "The Hidden Danger of Peacemakers," the other day, the dreadful actions that were told in the article sounded eerily familiar to me. I am not acquainted with the Peacemakers (they are not active, or so it seems, in my home country of Paraguay); but the actions depicted reflect the almost uniform sorts of behavior that appear when jerks -- that kind of person that has no trouble abusing others as long as he or she can seek their stated goal -- take control of an organization.

The Stealth Desktop Part IV: Removable Drives and Scanners

I would like to thank our kind readers for the encouragement and the appreciation. This time, we turn to issues more related to hardware. First we will see how to enable removable drives in our Slack installation, with especial attention to floppies; and then we will examine how to setup new hardware, using our scanner as an example, since its setup was tricky.

Perspectives on KDE Multimedia

Multimedia has now become an essential part of every computer, including those within the enterprise. While aRts was, for along time, hailed as the answer for multimedia within KDE, it fell out of favor as it became obvious that it was hopelessly inefficient. Associate Editor Eduardo Sánchez sits down with Scott Wheeler of the KDE Project to find out where the KDE multimedia department is headed in general, and concerning a replacement for aRts, more specifically.

The Stealth Desktop: Managing Users, Fonts, and Printers

In the third installment of the Stealth Desktop series, Eduardo Sánchez builds upon the previous steps of Part I and Part II. Continuing where those parts left off, he introduces the subjects of user, font and printer management in Slackware.

Five Points for KDE

I think that Tim Butler’s article, “Why GNOME’s Got it Right,” raises some serious points worthy of consideration by every KDE user and advocate. However, I would like to add the following points that should also be considered.

The Stealth Desktop II: Sight and Sound

I hope that Part I of the Stealth Desktop series was a good start for our series about using Slackware as a desktop. I would like to thank our kind readers for the feedback, encouragement and suggestions.

The Stealth Desktop Part I: Finding a New Distro

The issue of GNU/Linux as a desktop operating system is hot these days. You can hear here and there about someone switching their proprietary desktops, or considering doing such a thing, to GNU/Linux. Most of these stories refer to some desktop-oriented or mainstream distribution, such as Mandrake, Red Hat/Fedora, or SUSE. However, there is one distribution you would seldom hear about and yet, it is uniquely qualified for heavy-duty desktop usage. I would like to show you how you could use this GNU/Linux distribution for desktop fun and profit.

Update [July 9, 2004]: thanks for all the feedback. Some minor corrections added. --Eduardo