An email I received from a college student

SilverBear · Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:07 pm

I wanted to share a communication I got from a college student who is taking a course on Linux.
The purpose of my sharing is to show how well IMO, we as a community have organized ourselves over the past 2-3 years. There have been a number of people who have put in a lot of work, a number of people who have put in some work, and so on. . . but it seems to me it's added up to a pretty good division of labor according to individual strengths. (Except that Jerry could use more help on the Manual since I slacked off as his assistant :sad:

)

Nobody can do it all. But when we organize in teams, and have some kind of functional structure, we all can get most of what we need to do done. Here is the text of her letter:


	Quote: Hello John, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to answer my email and for the wealth of information you sent to me. It helped me out tremendously. I let my instructor know that I had been in contact with you and he stated that I was only the second student he has had in 3 years to actually get a response-not necessarily from MEPIS-but from any of the Linux distribution communities. I told him that is was because MEPIS was truly "user- friendly" from the technology to the people behind the technology! So I thank you again for all the information you sent. . . (snip: some irrelevant pleasantries). Sincerely, Karen

Her original email came to me through my mailbox as project director of MepisCommunity.org, requesting information about the distro:


	Quote: Hello, My name is Karen and i am currently taking a Linux class through a local community college in (town name withheld in this public post), and was asked to write a report on one of the Linux distributions. I chose your distribution because of the fact that it appears to be very user friendly for those who currently use Windows OS. I know that you are probably a very busy person and would greatly appreciate any input you could give me on the core functionality of MEPIS and who the principle parties are in the development and maintainance of MEPIS. I thank you in advance for your time. I'm a single mom going to college, so I know how valuable time is and I'm sure you are just as busy-if not more so, than i am, so I do truly appreciate any input you could give me.

Well! You all who know me understand that the beauty of our whole MC.org setup is that her last sentence is absolutely, positively mistaken! Since the original community website project finished development and went online, I hardly do anything. Peregrine and Jerry do all the work, and the other "departments" of the community --like repo/packaging, Forum admin, artwork, etc, all have dedicated people managing those aspects. They're the folks who are "as busy if not more so." I just sit around enjoying my $1,000 a month salary from Mepis :rofl:

thinking up ways to annoy people :poke:

who actually make things happen around here.

So answering the occasional email that comes to me is not a serious burden on my schedule. I just get to annoy Rich a little less that day. Except this time it was Warren's turn, i had just thought of a way to bother him and. . . never mind. The point is that Mepis is getting a good rep because we have somebody like me around doing basically nothing.

I hereby move we double my salary and grant me a new timeshare in Hawaii so I can get away from the pressure for at least a few weeks every year.

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An email I received from a college student

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