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Linux.com to go Live Tonight
Chip Stillmore writes
"Just read this news.com.
Apparently Linux.com is
supposed to be going live today. " The page simply says
tonight. I've seen what they're doing over there. It isn't
at all what I really expected when they announced that
they had bought the domain, but it ain't bad. As long as
it covers the newbie stuff though, I'm happy. As of 2300 Eastern, it's live!
A bit off-topic, but if you want to filter out ads and irritating things on the web, there are filter programs out there. I'm happy with InterMute, free trials at http://www.intermute.com. I use the Win version, but they have a harder-to-set-up Linux version as well. Highly recommended...my web-surfing frustration went way down after installing this. It acts as a proxy server, and lets you optionally knock out ads (based on a configurable database), animated GIFs, background images, spawned pop-up windows, and other things you may find annoying. (No affiliation with 'em, just a happy customer :-).
I have to say for a company with so many great people involved and also so much money, this is not at all better then linux.org. My biggest complaint is that it is worthless for a new user. The resource links to a busines section (gee i wonder if va is trying sell machines) and the suport section offers no original advice, just pointers to the howto's and a few (good) new linux support agencies.
I certainly would like to see the site grow and will give feedback to them, but considering that this is supposed to be the cream of the crop of the linux community again i think this site is rather weak.
I'm really proud to see companies like VA Linux Labs giving back so much to the community. VA seems to be donating a lot of hardware to different projects, obviously doing linux.com, providing bandwidth to free projects, and all that other stuff.
I really do like living in a world where companies want to see how they can help the world much more than in one where companies just try to make as much profit as possible (although in terms of profit, I've started buying from good companies). I'm glad to see VA joining the crows.
linux.com is a really nice site; an order of magnitude more professional than Linux.org. It's a slight bit cluttered, and would look a little better on my 1024x768 if it had less stuff horizontally, but it's still a lot better than most anything else out there.
Keep up the good work. I'll try to buy my next server at work from VA (I work in a lab standardizing on Debian).
It's true, portals are usually scary. They tend to be money and therefore ad-driven. How else can they support themselves?
However, Linux.com is different. VA is backing the site but not interfering with its content *or* using it as an ad platform. Linux.com won't have banner ads and it won't preach "VA". No biases, no commercialization.
Crazy you say? The same was said about a 'free operating system' once upon a time...
Why filter the ads? We have an option right under user prefs to turn them off if you really want. (We thought it would be a good idea, since most of us don't really like ads much ourselves, generally)...
Of course, on Linux.com, it's different -- the "ads" aren't really ads in the traditional sense. There's nothing really to sell. The "ads" are just graphical links to community sites. Turn off the ads if you like. Personally, even though I know the option is there and REALLY support the use of it, I think in this case allowing the ads is actually supporting the community. Honest. Under my user prefs, I have the banners turned on.
If you have any other concerns with the site, don't hesistate to e-mail us at feedback@linux.com, and we'll try our best to cater to your suggestions.
Posted by d106ene5:
In the "comparative review of OSes", every OS has a disadvantage listed except for linux.
I thought the linux community was supposed to be above FUD?
Okay, so this is probably me just being picky - but for something that's mean to serve the Linux community, which is WORLD WIDE then putting up a banner saying "...please wait coming this evening..." seems a little short sited to me. There are people outside the US (I know, I've seen some of them).
A small point, but I don't want this to be a trend of not looking further than linux.com's back yard.
-- Dougal
It's about time. One of the biggest paradoxes in the Linux community is the argument over how to "sell" Linux to the mainstream. Nobody wants Linux to commercialize and to many, that means no selling, but sales is more than just making money. I, for one, am quite glad that VA Research, a highly respected company in the Linux community is taking responsibility for selling Linux and rather than do it through marketing or gimmicks, they're doing it through the one thing that Linux community actually has over its competition: community. One of commercialism's great knocks on Linux is that you can't expect good support from something written by many different individuals. Well, hopefully a site that coalesces and displays our community's greatest asset (it's knowledge) will start turning doubters into users.
VA Research and the Advisory Board should be commended on their efforts (international considerations or not) and the Linux community should be given a pat on the back for showing that people can get together and produce both good software and ideas.
Rob, how can it not be what you expected? According to this you're on the board of directors for the site? Hadn't heard that.
Anyway, I hope they keep up a good archive of projects being worked on. Thats the thing I miss the most about linux.com -- these days I can never find various projects when I want to. freshmeat.net and the (almost as useful) linuxapps.com are good, but have a lot of fluff in them, and aren't really project-based.
LinuxHQ.com is gone because the original creator of the site took back the domain name, and pulled it offline. As somebody who volunteered to run the site for 2+ years, I'm disgusted.
As for me, I didn't go to work for VA a few months back. I did start at Pacific HiTech, but I decided not to stay.
Cheers,
- Jim
http://linuxhq.jimpick.com/
That should work as a temporary fix.
Cheers,
- Jim
Well - I don't know what exactly you're expecting, but I can say that it's
fairly dynamic. I've been looking at it for the past
couple of days - they've got some big plans for the site, and
they've put a lot of work into it. (you should see the hardware
driving the site at the ISP)
I do know that a lot of people are concerned about the whole
"VA-run linux.com" but really I think that VA has done a pretty
good job of just hanging back and making the occasional comment
(besides being the ringleader of the group of volunteers that
have been working on the site).
anyways, that is my two cents.
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
Live from the IRC launch party, this looks REALLY nice, guys, kickass work on the design, and kudos to the admins for putting together a cluster that didn't crack under the load. I've been browsing it ever since it went live, and nothing noticeably lagged for this particular modem user. More kudos for putting together some content, too. Now all we need is a picture of the machines, and the switch (is it smoking yet?)
I remember when the bidding for this domain closed and the guy said that Microsoft had placed a bid in there. It says a lot about the guy who owned the domain that he didn't sell it to them, because they surely had piles more money than anyone else who bid. I've always really liked the integrity in the open source community, and I think that action there embodied quite a bit of it.
Despite all that, I'm still a little afraid of seeing this mega-portal site, though. Portals are always filled with advertisements and classified ads and all kinds of filler that bug the hell out of me, and I just don't want to see the site brought down to the lowest common denomitator like that.
I really hope they're not lopsided towards one distribution or another. I'd especially like to see LinuxPPC newbie help.
-----BEGIN ANNOYING SIG BLOCK-----
Evan
rooooar
On the front page they have a news service with news from themselves and LinuxToday. This doesn't really give much since I pick the news up elsewhere anyway, but once they start inserting their own news into the stream, this might improve the looks of it.
For some reasons, we're seeing lots of news cropping up at Linux sites. We have linux.com featuring linuxtoday, Red Hat featuring Slashdot and more. While having up-to-date news stories might be good, I think they'd both be better off focusing on their own news. People won't go to linux.com to read Linux Today, they will come there to read whats hot around linux.com.
Then they fail to mention the GNU Project, or even the FSF, anywhere. This is a lossage that I think should be corrected.
The Linux@Work place will most probably evolve to be terrific! It'll be a portal to all that you need to know about Linux@Work. This is a most welcomed addition.
We now go to the Linux.Com Live section, namely an IRC channel on OpenProjects. Thats all good and well, but will the questions that are answered there make their way back to Linux.Com for others to read? I don't think so, but that might be something to think about for the future. Having a bot online that records conversations and having someone go through it once a day shouldn't be a major task.
The LUG database will help you get connected with many other Linux users near you through a local LUG. Unfortunately, the only way to read the database seems to be to search it. This is a lossage because what if the LUG I'm searching for doesn't match the search query I entered? Searching is good, but there should probably also be a way to browse the LUG Database, perhaps broken down by country/state or something equivalent to that.
Their support section is also rather good since it contains links to most of the support centers that you need to know about as a new GNU/Linux user. They should find ways to interconnect this with the Linux.Com Live section, such as I suggested above with bringing answers back from IRC to the Web regularly.
Tuning Linux was mediocre at best. This is a situation where you probably should have thought about adding more content before making it public. It's a fair chance that people will watch it, see that "this is just old news", and never return. They should add more in-depth Linux tuning material here. As usual, this will probably come with time.
The one really positivt thing with Linux.Com that I found was their Weekly Columns, we've been seeing a few of those around on other sites aswell, but I find them really nice to read and most of the time also very interesting.
Their interviews could also become interesting with time. I think the interviewer needs more experience so that he'll know which questions to ask. I would recommend adding a function so that a week before an interview, you can see who they'll be interviewing and be able to add your own questions to the spool. Then they would get a better view of what the readers would like to know and can ask questions that better responds to that.
Summary: Linux.Com is a good site, but where's the content?
Cheezers - so people aren't allowed to discover things later than you ol' grandaddies who've seen it all and done it all eh? Commercialism sucks of course, but now it's here, it ain't ever gonna go away.
Get used to the hype daddy-o. You can maybe set up a #linux-grandads channel to reminisce about the old days, or maybe one of those modern web-based BBS thingies.
What the hell does it matter that other people are making money from Linux? You guys work in the computer field maybe? Use you *nix skills at all to earn a penny? Different strokes for different folks. If you choose not to contribute further to Free Software, so what - there's plenty folks who will. Just don't come over the martyr about your contribution, or get off your backside and do your own self promoting.
I used to think the way you guys do about music. My favourite small bands were always getting big and then becoming commercialised - but then I realised, hey - this probably means that I've got pretty good taste and at least those guys can afford to eat now.
Anyway, that's my rant out of my system. Just my 2SEK worth.
A little planning goes a long way...
I am not sure how you came to this conclusion, but I can assure you that 100% of the Linux.com development took place on a Linux box. The only 'tools' we use to make our html and PHP are vi, vim, and emacs. Any tabification of the source is done by human hands.
IIRC, Van Kempen scooped up the linux.com domain to prevent any one Linux distribution from taking the domain and thus the crown of "The One True Linux". One of the reasons he responded to the VA Research bid is because it's in VA's best financial interests to be distribution-agnostic.
--The basis of all love is respect
The important thing here is for people who don't know too much about linux and who stumble accross linux.com will have a GOOD impression. (period) A well designed site, with GOOD answers in english that my mother, father and girlfriend will understand.
Good Job guys!
That isn't FUD, that's advertising, to a point. I mean, this site is in some ways analagous to say www.microsoft.com, or www.be.com (in function I mean). It's not going to treat Linux as if it were on equal ground with all other OSes, it's going to treat Linux as if it were the best OS there is. This is really what people expect, when they go to "www.linux.com". If they want to hear how good FreeBSD is, they'll go to its site. Obviously they're expected to be true to the facts, but I don't think this is exactly a forum for equal consideration. They're not just trying to _inform_, they're trying to _sell_ people on Linux. This isn't FUD. This is something that Linux needs done, if you want more people to use it, which I won't get into.
As for the site itself, I think it's an excellent design; far better than www.microsoft.com, which, through almost all of its incarnations, can be used as an excellent example of how NOT to design a web page. www.linux.com is the best new website I've seen in a while. It's pleasant to see, it's professional, and it has _content_. So far I'm impressed. Keep up the good work, linux.com people.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Anyone else notice that www.linuxhq.com's DNS doesn't exist anymore. I can only guess that www.linux.com will have the same stuff and more. Didn't the maintainer of linuxhq.com start working for VA a few months back?
Hmm, "linux" and "com"mercial... I hope they host things like the Linux Business Solutions Project. I realize it looks like PHB fodder, but I've found that page useful in the past myself.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
im trying to cater to the linuxnewbie both from the mac and intel side. actually, im trying to create a site for newbies of all unix related OS's...see if you can get some questions answered there. hope it helps. http://www.linuxnewbie.org
http://www.icalledit.com - Predicting the future, one post at a time