Help Wanted

Even though I do want to help individual entrepreneurs like me produce something valuable in your own home office, I always thought that other individual entrepreneurs would see what I was doing and join the adventure.

Right now, I wish someone with an interest in computer science would join me. It would be nice if you knew more about computers than I do, but that isn’t really necessary. We could all be learning this together. Having teammates that specialize in each of these specialties would be really helpful:

• Business Manager
• Marketing Specialist
• Computer Programmer
• Sound Designer
• Digital Artisan

I want to be able to describe the details of how your computer starts. How and where does the electricity flow to on your mother board. Where is the Linux kernel stored when your computer is off and how and where is it loaded when you turn your computer on? And things like that.

I’ve read dozens of manuals and articles and websites about Linux. They all seem to presume that the audience understands computer programming and they usually describe how to work on giant multi-user, corporate computers.

I’m writing stories about how individual entrepreneurs can understand the Linux on your own personal computer and use it to produce something valuable in your own home office, which you can then trade in our one global cloud of artificial intelligence.

I would actually like to build a multi-screen desktop from scratch, along with a small network of laptops and smart phones, which I can use in my own holistic home office, while teaching you how to do it in your own home office. That costs money.

Plus, I really want to be doing this full time, instead of part time, while being distracted by my day job. It’s very frustrating to get into the flow of working on a project and then have to stop and go to work at my day job. I usually start a new project the next time I get some time off, rather than continue the project I was working on before.

I suppose I could cultivate some kind of system, using one of these computerized day planners, like KDE’s Kontact, to remind me of what I was working on earlier and then continue doing that. How to be productive working in your home office part time, would actually be a great subject to write about.

Computer Science

After an Introduction, describing how the electricity flows and the hardware works, I would probably introduce Assembly and then the C programming language, since they’re the languages that Linux is made of. Then, the Linux kernel. systemd. Wayland.

I’m pretty sure I want to stay focused on the KDE suite of tools. Those KDE GUIs make it a lot easier to get started learning how to use Linux. Learning about the Qt tool kit and QML is a great way to get started in computer science. Learn how to build applications that run on your computer natively, rather than in a browser.

There will definitely be a section about, learning how to be a full stack web developer. I think I like Python better than PHP. Python is more versatile. You can use it to build all kinds of native and web applications. PHP is faster and far more popular for web applications. homeoffice.studio is a WordPress website, which is written in PHP.

I definitely want to include a section about licensing and the philosophy of Linux. The whole reason I started using Linux was to get away from Microsoft owning the software on my computer. Of course, NO! I do not accept that.

Private property is a good thing. When I buy a computer, I want to own the software on it, I do not want to lease or rent the software. I do not want any corporation owning or controlling the software on my computer.

No one owns Linux. It’s free and open source software. It’s actually kind of communistic. The advantage of that is, we all get to use the same operating system. Our computers will be compatible with each other. Plus, we will not need to reinvent the wheel every time we want a computer detached from the military industrial complex, or a new widget for our desktop.

I think the best way to govern how Linux and other free and open-source software is maintained is with a nine-person spiritual assembly that consults together to make collective decisions. Use the Baha’i model of consultation and leadership.

I like freedom, equality and justice for all. I do not like the culture of dependence that our academy is teaching, big business is selling and the state is enforcing. I like capitalism and free and open-source software for the same reason, free enterprise. Real free enterprise.

On the other hand, these computers are powerful weapons, as well as versatile tools; and freedom is lawful, not lawless. Our global cloud of artificial intelligence does need to be well governed. I have a Windows desktop computer and I will probably keep the Windows, because many cloud services only work on commercial operating systems.

Use Linux to build your own private enterprise and use the commercial software to connect to the commercial cloud of web services. Figure out how to connect the two systems. Networking is a valuable skill. Work on getting Windows cooperating with Linux.

Applications

Then there’s the applications. Konsole, Falkon, Kontact, Krita, Kdenlive. This is where Qt and QML come in. You can use them to work on improving the KDE applications and for creating new ones. For example, you can clone Kontact and start working on building a high-performance personal information management system that connects your desktop and all your laptops, tablets and smartphones into one all-purpose communications center, and then contribute your improvements to the community.

Use Linode to build a centralized filesystem that you can log into from any computer and work on your projects. Build you own custom GPT 4 Turbo instance of AI. It comes with all the OpenAI apps available on one dashboard, so you don’t have to switch back and forth between ChatGPT and DALL-E. It is also bringing out text to voice and voice to text and other capabilities.

GNU’s Emacs is an all-in-one text editor, that comes with all the bells and whistles, including the kitchen sink. There are several custom configurations that you can customize further, including Doom Emacs and Spacemacs. While I’ve installed Emacs and Spacemacs and looked at them, I’ve never really used them for anything.

Work on making Konsole, Kate, Krusader and Falkon applications run in Kontact. And make it attractive, fun, easy to use and rock-solid stable. Make it work fast, by adding GPU acceleration. I like the idea of Konquerer, the KDE web-browser combined with a file-browser, but I do not like the name and not very many websites trust the KDEWebKit rendering engine and so it is practically useless. Falkon uses the Chromium format which is universally trusted.

Investigate Alacritty and Kitty. Kitty has the Tmux tools built right into it. Alacritty with Tmux is another option. All the options have learning curves. Some are steeper than others. I like using the KDE tools, but the GPU accelerated Alacritty/Tmux and Kitty are faster than the KDE tools running on the CPU.

And then there is Vim and now, Neovim. I like Neovim, because it is maintained by a team of maintainers, instead of one so called benevolent dictator. Plus, it is written in the scripting language Lua, instead of VimScript, which makes it a lot more efficient. Vim/Neovim has a steep learning curve, but once you figure it out, you can work a lot faster. Vi was originally invented when computers had a lot less memory to work with, so it was extremely efficient. If you can get through the learning curve, you can learn to be a very high-performance code writer.

Use some kind of centralized database, such as NextCloud, to build a platform that you can log into from any appliance. You’ll have to decide whether you want to host it yourself, or use a commercial hosting service, such as Linode.

Kontact is already a pretty good tool. It could definitely be improved. Converging KDE Connect and Knotes with Kontact, to work on developing a calendar, scheduler and note taking system that runs on all of your machines, would be a very valuable tool. I’m not sure if, or how well, Akonadi and Kontact would sync with Linode and NextCloud.

Kate is my favorite writing tool. I write a lot of content for my websites, and Calligra and LibreOffice are way too bloated for website development. It adds a lot of metadata to stories, which clogs WordPress’ Gutenberg editor up. I do most of my writing in Kate and then copy and paste it into the website editor.

Brave is my primary web-browser, for now. It runs on the block-chain and blocks a lot of the tracking and advertisements. Inkscape, Gimp and Darktable are other great free and open-source tools. There are many more. Learning how to use these tools to do your research and to create digital art are very valuable skills. Teaching other people how to use them is another way to add value to the marketplace. I can use all the help I can get.

I’m definitely open to learning new tools and techniques. I’m willing to teach anyone interested in learning, everything I know. Teaching is a good learning technique. And having a group of people working on the same problem, would speed up the learning process for the whole group.

My phone number and email address are in the footer of many pages of this website. Anyone interested in learning and working on this project is welcome to call. We can set up Github repositories for working on various projects.

If I had a physical store, I would sell computers with Linux installed on them and other free and open source software. Sell literature and other paraphernalia about computers and free and open source technology.

Doing so here in Seattle, the headquarters of two of the biggest tech companies in the world, Microsoft and Amazon, may or may not be a good idea. You’ve got a lot of computer programmers here to work with.

On the other hand, both Microsoft and Amazon are notorious for their anti-competitive practices. Actually, I should say they are ruthlessly competitive and aggressively suppress any competition.

I really just want to create an online portal that I can work on, no matter where I live. I am a shaman, a holistic healer and teacher, and my websites are my classrooms. And, I am working on turning my computer into a cash machine, pumping money into my bank account. Turn your computer into a cash machine, pumping money into your bank account.

Right now, I’m working on building this Holistic Home Office website. Once I get the story fleshed out, I’ll compile some of them into a book and sell the book. Then, I’ll build other websites focused on digital artistry, holistic healing and one world unity, etc.

If you can see the value in teaching people who are struggling to prosper, how to improve themselves and increase their productivity and prosperity, I welcome your donations. Tell your friends that there is a very advanced, entertaining education on this website and in the book.

I could introduce you to the free and open-source tools or the website development technology, in exchange for your knowledge and experience with the business tools, like setting up your financial documentation with the LibreOffice Calc or Microsoft Excel.

If you are interested, I can teach you a lot about computers and home office based business and human nature and civilization. And then, you can teach me what you’ve learned.

Photo by Bob Mccoy, Holistic Home Office
Photo by Galeanu Mihai, iStock
Photo by Bob Mccoy, Holistic Home Office