Linux Journal 1999 Readers' Choice

Carlie Fairchild writes "Linux Journal opened its polls for its fifth annual Readers' Choice Awards. The polls will be open until October 15, 1999. It's your opportunity to vote for your favorite Linux software, hardware and companies." Seems like there are quite a number of options in each category this year

Comments

Re:Uhhhh.....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto. Where should i put that salt?

I'm at a loss here..

[mountain]

For the life of me I can't find any mention of this on their webpage.

I'm taking for granted this is a real-world dead-trees thing? (the blurb thing wasn't terribly clear about it)

Re:I'm at a loss here..

[mountain]

Oh. Now. Don't I look foolish. It's the link right under the front cover.

Re:I'm at a loss here..

[mountain]

Does anyone but me find it odd that under "favourite linux webpage" slashdot's the only one to not have a link to it?

Re:I'm at a loss here..

[seeken]

Don't laugh, but for the last 9 months, my bookmark was to www.slashdot.org, which caused me to be logged in on the front page, but not on any interior pages. I switched it, and now I'm like moderating and stuff...

Surfing the net and other cliches...

Re:I'm at a loss here..

[pen]

Because everyone already knows the URL... :)

--

Re:I'm at a loss here..

[Uart]

Slashdot has a link....

The question is, should I vote for it...
Hmm, well, it'll make my descision a lot easier if about five points of negative karma disapeared, ehem, Rob Malda, ehem.

meanwhile, I'm enjoying the "comments" space. I get to tell them why i'm voting! Whoo Hoo!

Readers Choice Awards...

[smoondog]

Readers choice awards rule. /. for everything! Except best distribution. :)


-- Moondog

We're not scared of the LJ effect

[Roast Beef]

Anyone else notice they linked to everyone else but Slashdot in the best website category? Is this retaliation for the inevitable Slashdot effect the site's going to be getting in a few hours, or are they just being nice because they don't think Slashdot can handle the LJ effect?

Re:We're not scared of the LJ effect

[Bill Currie]

Nah, they probably assumed that if you don't know slashdot's url, you don't know nuffin, and it ain't your favorit:)

Audio Tools, where did xmms go?

[draven]

I mean, xmms is pretty much the best audio tool on the linux platform, and we don't get to choose it? The only mp3 player I noticed is mpg123. Is this because the lj guys doesn't know better, or is it a secret plot to destroy peter, olle and the rest of the swedish mafia? :)

Re:Audio Tools, where did xmms go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps xmms is the "standard," if you can get the damn thing to compile without a fuss. I've had a much better time getting mpg123 along with gqmpeg going and enjoying my mp3s in no time at all (under FreeBSD, Slackware, and HP-UX).

Re:Audio Tools, where did xmms go?

[draven]

heh, well.. they *do* supply rpms, and I've never had any problems compiling xmms.. but I guess some it's considered hard for some people.. come over to #xmms on efnet and we'll help you :) The developers hang there as well, and they are rather friendly

Re:Audio Tools, where did xmms go?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like to use RPMs since its database is incompatible with those of Slackware and FreeBSD's. When I compiled x11amp for my Slackware distribution, I had to patch XFree86 due to the amp player requiring threads; and when they re-released it as xmms, I didn't want to bother anymore when I switched to FreeBSD. Trying mpg123 along with gqmpeg is rather nice although there are some libraries that need to be installed, but most of these compile right "out of the box." mpg123 does use more CPU than x11amp did but that's a small price to pay since gqmpeg and mpg123 follows the traditional UNIX-way of doing things.

Re:Audio Tools, where did xmms go?

[Jaq]

I mean, xmms is pretty much the best audio tool on the linux platform, and we don't get to choose it?

I thought there was more than that - there were several categories where my favourite wasn't one of the choices. I suppose they can't list everything, but for example for mailers there are a lot more around than they have on the list. Did anyone else find themselves just filling in the comment box for each category?

Call me insensitive...

[trims]

But I HATE these stupid "Reader's Choice", "Editor's Choice", "Best of 19xx", and all those other "awards" that magazines (in particular, but not exclusively) dole out on an annual (or even more frequently) basis.

They always seem to miss several major contenders for the "award", and often are nothing more than a popularity contest. Even if they pretend to be based on merit, it's the opinion of Editors that get the choices in front of you to begin with.

I don't want a popularity poll. I can get that from marketing material. You know, 4-color glossies? I want more, in-depth, substantive reviews of stuff. I want to know how to make stuff work together (something you hardly ever see anyone write about). I want to hear about stuff that I might not otherwise, so I can check it out myself.

I'm not going to trust people I have no idea about as to the relative worth of a product that wins some "award". I'm going to talk to the 2 dozen friends and collegues that actually do the stuff to find out what works.

Leave the "awards" to the Entertainment folks. That's about all they're good for.

-Erik
(feeling a bit cranky and crotchety)

Re:Call me insensitive...

[gimpboy]

of course the miss people/programs/etc...

thats what the "Other" catagory coupled with the "Comments" option are for.


john

Yeiks

[sdt]

No xmms in the Audio section. Freshmeat.ORG instead of Freshmeat.NET (no, they are not the same. No Freshmeat.ORG is not likely to be anyone's favorite Linux site ;). And no BB in the demo section! BB is probably the most amazing demo I've ever seen (simply because it's in textmode ;).

Sure, they offer a lot of choice, but miss out on some important stuff. And the freshmeat.org thing is just plain funny :P.

(oh and this is meant to be *constructive* criticism ;).

LJ must have been reading after-y2k

[Bill Currie]

under favorite platform they had abacus. 'Course, I had to vote for that, spefifying Linacus:)

Awesome!

[pb]

Click on the 1999 Reader's Choice thingy.

Favorites:

Distribution: tomsrtbt!

Development Tool: where's 'as'?

Shell: where's sash, or lsh?

Text Editor: where's ed? Ed is the standard!

Web Browser: lynx! Much better than arena, lynx handles tables and frames better without crashing!

Linux Book: why don't they just all read the man pages?

Web Page: Slashdot! Note that they didn't link to us: that won't save them from The Slashdot Effect!

Linux Game: Angband! Well... just because I'm addicted.

Platform: abacus! It'd have to be a pretty big one to run my turing machine, but I bet they've ported Linux to the abacus.

Mailer: telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 25

X-server: Xvfb -- it has the best interface.

Window Manager: Who needs a window manager? (see previous)

Database: cat > new.db

Backup Utility: dump

Audio Tool: cat foo.au > /dev/audio

Programming Language: Machine Code! Hex? Does ed have a hex mode now? :)

Demo: Does it use curses? Come on, now!

Disclaimer: this survey does not necessarily reflect *anyone's* opinions. I hope.

Vote 1 for XTux

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply the best Linux game ever!

Re:Vote 1 for XTux

[Profound]

(slips him $20)

Here's the homepage:
XTux

Isn't this a bit overdone?

[nakaduct]

... I mean, I like Linux and all, but doesn't this look like they're purposely puffing up the list of things you can use with Linux, just to justify even having the survey in the first place? If you want to know what columns I read the most, just /ask/; there's no need to dress up your reader survey as some gala awards thing.

"Favorite Communications Board?" Why not have "Favorite Font" and "Favorite Jumper Style" ("I love the half-height blue ones, but those full height black ones suck!!")? Most of the categories aren't substantive enough for me to even have a favorite, much less take the time to vote for it.

Oh yeah, and in most every other field of endeavour, it's common for Reader's Choice Awards to feature choices which _weren't_ available last year, and the year before that, and ... you get the gist. 95% of those products existed last year -- they could just reprint the outcome of the 1998 voting.

That is all. I'm sure this will now be moderated into oblivion by those who see all Linux-related criticism as heresy.

cheers,
mike

You know it's time to upgrade...

[Chris Siegler]

when your choice for Favorite Linux Game is BattleBall

Uhhhh.....?

[cswiii]

:Favorite Text Editor or Word Processor

Is 'OR' truly an appropriate operand in this case?

Re:Uhhhh.....?

[Uart]

That one should be two separate categories.

Agreed-- people only vote for what they use

[jsm]

Most people who vote in "Readers' Choice" polls simply vote for the product they use, so it turns into a measure of product sales. Few voters have actually evaluated and compared many products in a class.

Actually, I'd love a Reader's Choice poll where all the voters had fully evaluated the field, taking advantage of collective opinion. Unfortunately, that's not what normally happens.

in response to poll choices..

[Elvii]

They seem to have updated their poll... not freshmeat.net is there (not freshmeat.org) and slashdot is in there as a choice... they might've updated others choices too, I just noticed those two errors/ommisions in a quick skim through the comments.

no, i don't use preview...