Sorry to hear that, I'm certain you will find something worthy of your skills.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,
I whole heartily agree! Eric's organizational skills are there. Look at Slackware Doc Project that was a very necessary project that has helped the community with information to aid new & old Slackware users. His other projects are self explanatory with his detailed work throughout the project.

I come from academia and find his skills are in depth with each project. Thorough and detailed information to aid the world Slackware community. Great skill set!

From my perspective Eric's skills will transfer to a good company that decides to hire him thus providing a great support resource to their community. His abilities to communicate worldwide are a plus when communicating with others.

I have been here at LQ for over ten years and find Eric's involvement very valuable to LQ & Slackware community. My initial reason for originally posting this to LQ was in hope that the community would show due support and encouragement which has surpassed my expectations.

Eric, I do think any potential employer that references this thread will see the true feelings of support freely given to this community by you and the community reciprocating their wishes along with experience with their interacting with you.

I truly believe that that you will find the best fit for you within a good company that recognizes your skills, attitude and commitment to others.

7 members found this post helpful.

Eric,

You have done an incredible job assisting PV and the community. I for one consider you an integral part of Slackware, and to think that you have not met PV in person, further attests to your integrity and ethics! Major loss for IBM and a major gain for someone else.

Hmmm, perhaps the stars are aligning for Slackware to grow and have full-time staff/developers along with PV. Just throwing that out there. Regarding RedHat or Suse, I would look at Suse especially in your geographical area, and because I like their product better, however, not better than Slackware.

2 members found this post helpful.

OT: I don't think the money flow is sufficient to do that. I'd be really happy to be wrong with that assumption (and PatV would be even happier, come to think).

All the best Eric. We are the same age so I can appreciate the issues you are facing...

1 members found this post helpful.

Best of luck to you alienbob in finding new work that's at least on par with what you have to leave. It's a sad day that you're leaving Slackware because of this but all you've done is very much appreciated and here's to hoping that sometime in the near future you can return and jump right back in with both feet.

2 members found this post helpful.

Many thanks to Alien Bob for all the work he has done on Slackware.
I certainly agree with all the positive statements in this thread, but I don't believe he is "leaving." IIRC, he said he won't be able to spend as much time on Slackware as he has in the past, until he has found and settled into a new career position.
Again, thanks to Eric for all his hard work.

3 members found this post helpful.

I'll echo the statements here. You've been an invaluable member of this community and Slackware wouldn't be where it is without you (especially since you got the 64bit version rolling). This, of course, is to not dismiss Pat's amazing work as well as the rest of the Slackware dev team.

If you want to forgo sending out a resume, just email them a link to your vlc SlackBuild That thing is a work of art!

7 members found this post helpful.

Maybe AB could post the 5 most relevant packages/projects that he least has time to attend to and we could take them over.
God knows I've used his libre office builds over the years and most recently over the weekend when x64_current broke them.

I think most of us could say something similar about his work & repository of packages. It'd be sad to see it become a graveyard
of out of date stuff.

While there is always slackbuilds as an alternative, there's also value in keeping alive something that has worked well for a long,
long time.

It's nice to have an alternative to slackbuilds as a hedge in case one or the other dies or goes haywire. Keeps options open, and,
as with VLC, his repository is a collection of damn fine builds as well.

Thoughts?

.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks a lot Eric, for all the excellent work you have done in all these years. I hope you find a good employer soon. My skills are no match for any kind of technical work you have done, but, should there be one, I will be happy to join any community effort which would make you feel our support behind you and your work.

2 members found this post helpful.

I'm not a KDE guy at all (fluxbox here) or a fat desktop environment user generally
To each their own on that score. Never was my cup of tea.

But for many years I have used AB's packages for:

libre office
ant
openjdk
ffmpeg
vlc

more recently:

handbrake

I don't know what packages take the most time or cause the most trouble.
In my experience, multimedia programs & libre office seem to be quite "breaky" or break prone
in /current (mostly due to upstream changes at their respective projects, slackware, less so..).
Stable is as the name implies, generally, stable. Maybe the /current branch draws
the most time & effort? Keeping /current packages up to date would provide the most for slackware's
future. I dunno. Just throwing thoughts out there. I don't know what would help most.



.

1 members found this post helpful.

I've never actually used Slackware, and even I have heard of the tremendous work carried out by Eric.

Wishing you all the best, Eric, and hoping that you find a suitable position as soon as possible.

2 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

I encourage everyone to look at the comments at; http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/priorities/#comments

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

2 members found this post helpful.

Spot on. I have not left; I am not leaving; I just need more time to work on refreshing my non-Slackware technical skills for a new job. Which obviously means that less time will be available for Slackware related work (packaging mostly). Plus, if my new job limits my online time during work hours, I will be forced to spend less time here on LQ answering questions.

I am not "transfering" the building of certain packages to other people. Feel free to use my scripts to create and share newer packages for VLC, LibreOffice, Chromium etc... but they will then not be my packages.

I will still do all of these packages, but I may not be "hot on the heels" of the developers when they release new tarballs.

And bug hunting will suffer most. You can not imagine how much time goes into SlackBuild updates sometimes... when compilation fails from one version to the next without any obvious reason. For instance, Chromium 53 for which I have packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current, refuses to compile on Slackware 14.1. For reasons unknown. I have spent only limited time on debugging the build yesterday and the night before. Which means I am now 3 days into trying to create that package. Something which would not have happened if I would have spent all my free time on it.
That's how it is currently - and I foresee that this situation will not change at least until after November 1st and maybe it will last longer.

4 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

I appreciate your openness and feedback to date for this issue. Understanding the re-training/refresh of one's knowledge for such an ordeal can be troubling for some but I am sure that you will succeed at this endeavor. I remember my times at University and my involvement with keeping things fresh for my duties there on top of having to maintain my current positions and responsibility were trying and bare a lot of pressure both physically and mentally.
Energies spent were tiring but rewarded by my extended abilities.
That is encouraging and hopefully someone will pick up some of those tasks. I am sure your involvement will continue but in a limited sense.
I know you will have the strength to continue in your endeavors to expand abilities to enable you to support your family in any field that you retrain/extend your knowledge base within; All the best too you for the future that awaits you!

Have fun & enjoy!

2 members found this post helpful.