LinuxScreenshots.org Closes. All Screenshot Tours Released For Downloading (linuxscreenshots.org)

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LinuxScreenshots.org Closes. All Screenshot Tours Released For Downloading (linuxscreenshots.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 10, 2016 @07:34AM from the coming-soon-to-BitTorrent dept.

A new announcement on their web site reads: LinuxScreenshots.org is closed. An archive of all screenshot tours from this site has been made freely available to the community, which consists of 2300 releases from 580 distributions. You may download this archive for fun, or to start your own Linux screenshots website. Please help seed torrents. I contacted the site's owner, who confirmed the news, saying their goal is to let the community take control of the screenshots. The archives are available on Dropbox and BitTorrent.

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Nobody by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 07:36 · Score: 0

will ever need more than 640K
-- Bill Gates
1. Re:Nobody by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 07:55 · Score: 0
  
  should have to keep enduring that old stale joke ever again in our lifetimes.
2. Re:Nobody by JustOK · 2016-09-10 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  or at least no more than 640K times.
  
  --
  rewriting history since 2109
3. Re:Nobody by zrobotics · 2016-09-10 17:34 · Score: 1
  
  Personally, I think I had already seen that joke 640k times by the mid 2000s.
I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by jfdavis668 · 2016-09-10 07:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Pictures of Linux desktops? Why was someone even collecting them in the first place? At least pictures of cats are funny.
1. Re:I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 08:15 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah! Don't eat cheeseburgers! Eat catburgers, they're healthier for you and the environment.
2. Re:I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by NotInHere · 2016-09-10 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  If not for meat production, the animal wouldn't have been born in the first place. As long as you treat the animals well where should be the problem?
3. Re:I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 08:46 · Score: 0
  
  It's necessary in order for me to have quality cheezburgers.
4. Re:I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 09:05 · Score: 1
  
  Killing an animal when it is not necessary to do so is treating them well?
  Not letting it live in the first place is better? Are you saying that denying the animal its birth is preferable? In all cases? Why?
5. Re: I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 09:27 · Score: 0
  
  Not very Christian of them is it
6. Re: I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 09:46 · Score: 0
  
  Not very Christian of them is it
  Good point. A true Christian would stone the animal to death, but only if said animal was caught laying with your wife.
7. Re:I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Hylandr · 2016-09-10 15:34 · Score: 0
  
  Good Idea, lets start by eating hipsters instead.
  The only problem with that is the irony-rich blood would give constipate me.
  
  --
  ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
8. Re:I Can has Cheezburger? is more important by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-11 02:39 · Score: 0
  
  The only justifications for eating meat in the developed world are habit, taste and convenience - none of which justify killing an animal when it is not necessary to do so.
  Hipster much? Your opinion != fact.
  You made me hungry, time to go get a burger!
Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 08:21 · Score: 5, Informative

You don't remember how it was back in the day... aesthetics does matter; you don't want to work with on a desktop that hurts your eyes. Back around 2000-2005, the quality of linux desktops varied widely. Some of the KDE centric ones would render GTK stuff all wrong (Mandrake, for example); some of the Gnome centric ones were just uglier than sin. All of them had something wonky, so the only way to know if you would likely be able to live with a distro's wonkiness was to take a look at.
Now, back in the day, you didn't just download an image of every distro to come down the pipe (there were way more of them 15 years ago) and install it in a VM, like you can do today. It took all day to download a distro, and usually ate up a big chunk of your bandwidth cap. Then, in order so see how it would really behave you had to install it on the real hardware you were planning to use it on.
So, instead of installing it or looking at a youtube video like you do today, you'd look at linuxscreenshots.org to see if you thought a new distro was worth a shot. I agree that today in the world of standardized desktop software, fewer distros, fast internet connections and lightweight VMs on overpowered desktop hardware it's kind of lost its purpose. Which is why they're shutting down.
But back in the day, they had a purpose and I'm happy they filled it.
1. Re:Ah, a newbie by willoughby · 2016-09-10 08:48 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Yeah, I remember going there to check out the differences between Windowmaker & Afterstep.
2. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 08:49 · Score: 0
  
  Appearance always has and always will matter. Screenshots are the first thing people see when reading news about a new release or distro even today. Images are part of marketing and archiving them lets someone compared and/or show evolution. Stop asking stupid questions.
3. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 09:41 · Score: 0
  
  Ah yes, I remember that website well. You will be missed.
4. Re:Ah, a newbie by darkain · 2016-09-10 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  "fewer" distributions... LOL. https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
5. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 11:41 · Score: 0
  
  There are fewer distros today? I'm not denying your statement, but I wouldn't have reached that conclusion looking at distrowatch. How did you compare available distros then and now? I wouldn't know how to do it.
6. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 11:55 · Score: 0
  
  Bandwidth caps?
  I don't remember using a mobile connection
7. Re: Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 11:57 · Score: 0
  
  my ISP 15 years ago didn't have data caps either
8. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 12:18 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  For those thinking of installing Windows 10, here's the screenshots website: http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/
9. Re:Ah, a newbie by jfdavis668 · 2016-09-10 13:52 · Score: 1
  
  My "back in the day" proceeded Linux even existing. I still don't see the point behind LinuxScreenShots.org.
10. Re: Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 14:22 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, same here. They either charged by the minute (because you were dialing in to a bank of modems), or you paid a flat rate (because it was cable internet or DSL, or you were ultra-lucky and lived near a Uni and got someone to tie you into their network).
11. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 14:44 · Score: 0
  
  Pretty much although I remember the pretty boxed sets that had pictures in the back. Plus changing desktops at the drop of a hat was so easy.
12. Re:Ah, a newbie by zrobotics · 2016-09-10 17:43 · Score: 2
  
  They didn't have caps, but I was billed per minute. Ah, the joys of rural living, paying exorbitant amounts of money for a 56k connection that in reality was closer to 14kbps. Oh, and the line was such poor quality that it would fry modems and cordless phones regularly. We never were able to get that fixed, I just kept a spare modem around, and we went back to basic analog phones that would likely survive a nuke blast. Dial-up tones cause my eye to twitch to this day.
13. Re:Ah, a newbie by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-11 00:45 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe it's due to the fact that being such an old fuck, you've forgotten the definition of "fun" by any standard that normal human beings would measure.
  The reason you're having such trouble seeing the "point" of a desktop screenshots site, troubled, bitter old man, is simply that there wasn't one to see in the first place. It was just a site of like-minded people posting pictures of their desktop customizations. That's it. People were entertained by it and obviously, the site owners felt that those people who visited over the years might have some sentimental attachment to it all, even if there was no, angry-old-man utilitarian reason for the stuff to exist in the first place.
  I think we know what the real problem here is, anyway. The problem is you, not LinuxScreenShots.org. The problem is your "back in the day" was so long ago that there's barely anyone left alive for you to relate to, and when you're gone? Much like any incapable retiree, you'll be afforded whatever social care your given country is willing to pony up for, but apart from that you've outlived your usefulness. There's no reason for anyone to invest more in you, you're outdated, no longer willing to learn, utterly useless.
14. Re:Ah, a newbie by swalve · 2016-09-11 10:32 · Score: 1
  
  True. Installing operating systems is universally acknowleged as objectively fun. Kill yourself.
Re:Desktop screenshots were neat in 1999 by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 08:54 · Score: 1

Not all of us are little kids like you.
Mirror? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 09:25 · Score: 0

Fsck dropbox. Links are down. Torrent is crawling with 1 seed.
In Case Anyone Was Wondering by boudie2 · 2016-09-10 09:33 · Score: 4, Informative

It's a 47 gigabyte download ... you'd have to be really dedicated to get that one.
1. Re:In Case Anyone Was Wondering by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 18:43 · Score: 0
  
  Would fit on a single dual-layer blu-ray disc. Not overly large. :)
2. Re:In Case Anyone Was Wondering by Zontar+The+Mindless · 2016-09-10 18:47 · Score: 1
  
  Eh? That's 7GB less than all 4 seasons of The Man from UNCLE including the DVD-only extras.
  
  --
  Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
3. Re:In Case Anyone Was Wondering by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 23:10 · Score: 0
  
  Dedicated? I use a BananaPi as a NAS/Torrent/DHCP/DNS server, as I have an always-on computer, it doesn't take much dedication to torrent it. I also have 100Mbps down on my net connection, so could be done in a day if there are enough seeders to provide a good rate.
4. Re:In Case Anyone Was Wondering by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-11 03:56 · Score: 0
  
  Well somebody has a e-penis issue...
5. Re:In Case Anyone Was Wondering by eWarz · 2016-09-11 15:13 · Score: 1
  
  meh, would take me 3 minutes to download the entire thing provided they have decent seeds.
In Case Anyone Was Torrenting. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-10 14:52 · Score: 0

Torrent gives 43 peers so a lot of people DO want it.
Flckr? by grumpy-cowboy · 2016-09-11 02:33 · Score: 1

Is it possible to simply drop it on Flickr?

--
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Sorry, but this was too obvious... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-11 08:05 · Score: 0

Don't eat cheeseburgers! Eat catburgers
Are you saying we should all be eating pussy, then?