The three men I admire the most,
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
They took the last train for the coast
The day the music died.
~from American Pie by Don McLean
To paraphrase Mr. McLean’s wonderful lyrics, the three men I admire the most regarding Linux are Linus Torvalds (Linux creator), Patrick Volkerding (Slackware creator), and Bruno of Amsterdam.
“Bruno who?” some of you may be saying, while many others here may actually know Bruno. Of the three mentioned above, Bruno has taught me the most. He’s also the only one of the three whom I can actually call “friend”.
Here’s a little background for you…
When I first came to Linux a few years ago, a board was recommended to me as being one of the friendliest and most informative for new Linux adventurers, which was what I was at that time. There would be no use of the term “newbie” at this forum nor would anyone ever tell you to “RTFM”. Bruno made sure of that. So I went there to seek learning and knowledge.
Which forum you ask? Well, the board is Scot’s Newsletter Forums –> http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?, which is owned and operated by Scot Finnie, the Editor in Chief of Computer World –> http://www.computerworld.com/. One of the sub-forums, the one I’m talking about here, is called All Things Linux. Actually, it’s been recently renamed to Bruno’s All Things Linux in honor of the man this blog post is ultimately about.
We were recently given some bad news by Scot at the forum –> http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?showtopic=31556 telling us that we may soon be losing our teacher and friend… Bruno, the All Things Linux senior Administrator. Bruno has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He will never give up or give in, but he has been saying his good byes in preparation for his unknown destiny.
To honor the man, my friend, I wanted to post this here where many folks from the Linux community would see it. If you know Bruno, if he’s ever helped you in any way, if you’ve ever learned something useful from his website: Tips for Linux Explorers –> http://www.brunolinux.com/, please stop by Scot’s and maybe post a good bye to our friend. Or post a comment here, Bruno will see this too.
And lastly, I want to make a personal appeal to the Linux.com community… if you find anything at Bruno’s website that is useful, educational, helpful, etc., please consider a small ($2?) donation –> http://www.brunolinux.com/Donations/Donations.html to assist Bruno’s family to keep the site up and running for a few more years.
Thank you for your time,
~Eric, the Nocturnal Slacker
Asst. Administrator Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux
