Hi, I’m Charles, also known as ‘charm’ (a joining of part of Charles and the first letter (m) of my last name), or more recently ‘chaslinux.’ I’ve been a part of a not-for-profit computer refurbishing project for over 20 years, 16 of which I’ve been fortunate enough to do full-time.
I am happily married, a slightly wicked step-father, and constantly learning. There are plenty of challenges in life and while I’ve never made the kind of bank an average programmer would rake in I’ve been blessed to know and help all kinds of people overcome challenges. A number of volunteers who’ve worked with me have gone on to successful careers in IT, programming, graphic design, and fields outside of the realm of computers.
Some people love music. While I enjoy music Movies have played a larger role in my life since my early twenties when I started collecting VHS tapes. At one point I had a pretty big VHS collection. Times change and the collection changed to DVDs and Blu-rays. Around mid-2013 I wrote a short book for Packt Publishing called Instant XBMC. The book was a quick guide to setting up XBMC (now known as KODI) using a custom Linux distribution that was known as xbmcbuntu (the distribution no longer exists). About the same time I also wrote articles for a free Ubuntu Linux magazine (which still exists and is well worth a look) called Full Circle Magazine. I still use KODI today and many of the articles I plan to write for this blog will probably deal with some aspect of KODI.
One of the biggest changes at work since COVID-19 is that our refurbishing project stopped participating in the Microsoft refurbishing program. Microsoft has made a number of changes to the program over the years and not too long ago changed the program again. After this last change we decided to switch gears and do something a bit different: support people using free and open source software. This is the other big topic you’ll see on this web site.
I believe anyone can learn Linux. There are a lot of opinions around Linux. Most recently some big Youtubers have had a lot to say about how difficult Linux was for them to use. As someone who has helped people adopt Linux for 20 years now I’ve helped people from 13 to their mid-80’s use Linux. There are always going to be people who say Linux isn’t for beginners, but I believe if you’re willing to learn something you can do it.