[Linux4christians] Hello all!

[Samuel Clough]

Thanks for sharing Josiah.  Like you I was brought over to the "grey
side" :^) in that my Macbook Pro has taken over desktop duties, but I
still swear by Linux server side.

It's great to others with a drive to see believers work together on
technology that can help enable missions.

On 4/22/08, Josiah Ritchie <josiah at ritchietribe.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 10:10 PM, John R Puhalski
> <john.puhalski at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Hi all,
> >
> >  I think it would be great to see it get going a little more too.  I kind
> of
> > forgot about it since there wasnt much going on anymore.  I remember when
> I
> > first found the website and mailing list i was excited about using linux
> > from a christian standpoint.  One of the things I've been working on for
> > some time is content filtering and parental control.  I posted on here
> late
> > last year and got some ideas but still have area's that need to be
> > addressed.  So hopefully there will be enough interest to get things
> going.
> >
> >  I like Todd's idea below also about email introductions, it would be good
> > to see who's out there and we could also find out what others interests
> are,
> > disto's being used and other and levels of expertise to help in answering
> > questions and solving problems.
>
> I'm Josiah Ritchie. I moved to the Lehigh Valley of PA about a year
> ago to start my work as a missionary with Fellowship International
> Mission (Allentown, PA) where I have the great privilege of being
> responsible for anything that plugs in at the home office, but also
> supporting over 150 missionaries in 30 different countries. Actually,
> I just released a video that gives a 5 minute overview of my job:
> http://missions.ritchietribe.net/node/349 Prior to that I worked at
> Washington Bible College for 7 years in their IT department. I've been
> using Linux as my main office & home desktop OS for many years.
> Started with RedHat back in the years before Fedora was anything but a
> hat. I moved to Gentoo when I saw incredibly impressive performance
> improvements and then moved a few years ago to Ubuntu because it was
> just so easy to maintain, but I could still get in and tweak when I
> wanted to. Gentoo still rocks, but I can't justify the time spent
> compiling anymore. :-)
>
> I was recently gifted with a MacBook Pro to which I enjoy, but there
> are things about Linux that I really miss. My wife won't let me
> install Linux on it because my last Mac notebook (an old Lombard w/
> 4Gig HD and no wireless never recovered from my attempt to install
> Gentoo, details available upon request). I've been finding a number of
> our missionaries moving to Macs. They fit their needs more effectively
> as they try to do newsletters and media presentations.
>
> I run Samba, IPCop, LAMP and various other Linux/Open Source solutions
> to needs here at FIM. I'm convinced that the open source model of
> software development is a matter of Christian stewardship. I recently
> wrote a blog entry about an opportunity within the world of mission
> software called Centrallix. http://missions.ritchietribe.net/node/346.
> I'm not a coder, but I've been known to write documentation for
> projects like this. I'd like to mobilize more coders, testers, and
> documenters to get under projects like this. If this idea catches your
> attention, I'd love to meet you at ICCM this year
> http://iccm.gospelcom.net. The money spent of software that Centrallix
> can/will be able to replace each year in the mission world is in the
> millions (and often enough that software does a poor job of solving
> the problem without any chance of making it work better).
>
> After reading Linc's testimony, I'm reminded of one of our
> missionaries. http://www.christiananswersforthenewage.org/ is a
> ministry teaching the church about the dangers of new age philosophy.
> I've been working to slowly encourage Marcia to break onto the
> Internet more, but she doesn't have the time to really invest with her
> travel and speaking schedule. I've managed to get Google Analytics
> setup on their website and the volume of traffic they get for what is
> a static and rarely changing website with no marketing of any kind
> aside from word-of-mouth has been pretty incredible to me. I could see
> someone running a corollary site as a full-time faith-based
> missionary, cultivating a community around the materials and having a
> seriously effective ministry that changes lives.
>
> JSR/
>
> --
> Our Mission
> Technology and Hospitality for God's Workmen
> http://missions.ritchietribe.net
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