I’m sitting on a hill overlooking the Old City in Jerusalem. The hill right next to us is blocked — we wanted to go see a few sites on it, but they aren’t letting anyone through. I have been hearing explosions and I see smoke to the west. I have been wondering what could make this beautiful country such a difficult place?
Fighting.
Sniping at a eachother.
Needing to be right.
Caring more about a cause than about peace.
This may sound hippie-esque (I am not a hippie) but peace and love are a lot more fun than the destruction that I see in front of me. It is so devastatingly sad to see good people die, especially when their deaths are random.
I still do not understand the causes of the war and all the intricacies of past political actions in the area (I am not sure anyone understands it) but I did learn something by actually being in a war-torn area. I got a great take-away lesson.
Here is what I hope to carry over into my roamings in LinuxLand: Let’s not fight. Let’s respect each other’s distros. Let’s focus on the core goal — computers that just work (or whatever your distro’s core goal happens to be). Who cares if other OSs are flopping? Sniping at them only distracts us from building a better kernel, better apps, better user experience, the works.
