Linux Foundation Purchases Linux.com 231
darthcamaro and several other readers have noted that the Linux Foundation has bought Linux.com from SourceForge Inc. (Slashdot's corporate parent). The Linux Foundation (employer of Linus Torvalds) will take over the editorial and community stewardship for the site; SourceForge will continue to supply advertising on it. "[Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim] Zemlin says the Linux Foundation wants to build a collaborative forum where Linux users can share ideas and get information on the Linux operating system. A beta of the site will be released in the next few months. ... Linux.com is being redesigned as a central source for Linux software, documentation and answers regardless of platforms, including server, desktop/netbook, mobile and embedded areas." What do you think should be on Linux.com?
Ummm (Score:1, Insightful)
Why didn't Sourceforge Inc. ask us this before they sold the site? Then they'd actually be able to follow-through on the answers.
A redirect (Score:5, Insightful)
A redirect to .org seems to be an appropriate option.
Role of linux.com? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's to some serious improvement! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes! (Score:4, Insightful)
A centralized source of Linux info would be GREAT! Especially if it had a search function that pointed you to a good complete answer to inexpertly phrased questions. Right now, pointing newbies at Google is one of the big linux turnoffs for them.
You cannot get more centralized than Google. And it also has a search function! Also, maybe there is no "good complete answer" that will work for everyone.
The main reason it's a turnoff is "Google it you moron" vs. "Have a look at http://www.google.com/search?q=nvidia+direct+rendering+slackware [google.com] and see if someone already solved it". See the difference?
Re:LinuxAppStore (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one good idea.
So, an App section, a Knowledge Base, a What-is-Linux? section, a News section, a forum, hmm. I don't know whether it would be worthwhile to reproduce or relocate the information from kernel.org, kernelnewbies.org, and/or distrowatch.com, but it seems like all of those websites have sprung up because linux.com was being used for other purposes.
I'd want all of those websites to be conglomerated into one source, but I don't know what problems that could present.
Re:What do you think should be on Linux.com? (Score:5, Insightful)
If your guys can't even get the name right of the guy who pretty much wrote Linux, it's time to make some changes in the editorial department.
Re:Here's to some serious improvement! (Score:1, Insightful)
With such an obvious name, linux.com is where many newbs go first.
The days when people typed "whatever.com" into their address bar are over (and have been for a while now). Today they type "whatever" into google.
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
People who know the hardware in their computer, the specific distro they run, and what the problem is related to don't need the help. Well, they do, but they might already be serviced by Google.
You need to give the help to the people who ask, "hey, last week the doohickey worked with the internets thing, but now the button doesn't go anywhere and the doohickey disappeared!" That's a substantially harder problem, and if you could solve it you'd have one-up on Microsoft and Apple.
Re:A "face" for Linux. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my CHRIST! You're right, I didn't even believe it.
The text, when you visit http://linux.org/ [linux.org] reads:
Incorrect Site
For comprehensive information about Linux please visit our proper site, www.linux.org.
Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site.
What it should read is something along the lines of:
Duuuh
Despite Linux's popularity, this site is run by people who aren't smart enough to point linux.org and www.linux.org to the same page. (It apparently worked in the past, but we broke it.)
Please update your bookmarks and any links you may have to this old site, because we pointlessly and broke all our own links when we broke our own site and probably slaughtered our own pagerank in the process.
I agree wholeheartedly with the parent. It's amazing that a site like this still exists in 2009... heck I'd much rather see http://linux.org/ [linux.org] just 404 or time-out then give you this crap. "Proper site!" Unbelievable.
games (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you think should be on Linux.com?
Linux games.
Re:Those who dont learn from history... (Score:3, Insightful)
> So why did Sourceforge let Linux.com go essentially dead at the turn of the year?
Lack of money, most likely.
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Its a shame the "best source for information" keeps dying and being replaced, a good wiki is all thats needed. Hell play about with mediawiki and you could probably put up one wikipage with tabs to display distro specific details underneath a generic guide to the software.
Re:Here's to some serious improvement! (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree, good forums are a "must". I'd also like to see different distros getting their own little corners and niches to foster more inter-distro competition and cooperation (IE: debian.linux.com). It would be a good place to consolidate developer blogs - if possible this would include hardware developers like intel and nvidia their own little sub-channels.
Re:What do you think should be on Linux.com? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think humbled is the antonym of what you're reaching for...
Re:What do you think should be on Linux.com? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes Linux is Linux and GNU is GNU but what this website will contain is GNU/Linux.
Unless they only focus on the choice of linux kernel in the different distributions and server/desktops
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose that the idea is to get newcomers used to getting called idiots early on.
Re:What do you think should be on Linux.com? (Score:3, Insightful)
They've identified that while the Linux community have a tendency to complain that consumers are too dumb to use their OS, the community also has a self-destructive tendency to almost go out of their way to do things that deter the general public from using it. There's a tendency to present Linux as a computer hobbyist platform, a thing with funny names and in-joke abbreviations and prefixes, that needs specialist knowledge and tinkering to get it working and maintain it, along with occult information gleaned from specialist sites, and all sorts of funny skills ("compile a distro"? WT...?).
Windows is a brand. Apple is a brand. Linux is a geek archipelago.
That's what the new use of Linux.com is trying to fix. It's to provide a single on-ramp for anyone interested in Linux. They go to linux.com. Sorted. The existence of the branded .com site tells them that perhaps this is a finished product, and that perhaps its aimed at People Like Them. It reassures.
Now, if you call it gnu/linux you destroy the whole purpose of the .com project. What's GNU? Most people don't know. Most people don't care. They Don't Want To Know. They aren't computer enthusiasts, their skills and interests lie in other areas, and they just want something simple and reliable that they can install that'll let them run useful software to do the things that they actually //want// to do. They recognise the penguin, they've heard that the penguin is good, and perhaps they want to try the penguin ... And you're presenting them with some sort of cow thing. Confusion ensues. What does the cow do? Can they get the penguin without the cow? Is the penguin better than the cow? Who makes the cow? Should they be getting the cow //instead// of the penguin? Perhaps this penguin stuff isn't as simple as they thought, and they should come back again in another two to five years once all these cows and penguins have sorted themselves out and decided who's the winner.
At this point they've already lost their initial gleam of enthusiasm and are in a descending spiral of uncertainty and doubt. The G in Gnu stands for Gnu. It's an acronym for Gnu Is Not Unix. But without the "I". So now they're worried that they need to know //why// GNU isn't UNIX. And they don't want to learn about unix or the history of mainframe computing, they just want to use office apps and play MP3s and transfer the photos off their camera. They want something easy that does its job and gets out of the way, //without// them having to take a course in operating system history.
If the linux community aren't smart enough to realise that the consumer mass market consists of people who really don't give a damn about operating systems as long as the things work, then perhaps linux still isn't quite ready for the mass consumer desktop.
But the Linux.com initiative is a very, very good sign. It suggests that there are some people out there in LinuxLand who actually understand the task ahead, and have a good idea how to set about achieving it. If you really want Linux to have a chance of displacing MS on everybody's desktops, then this is EXACTLY the sort of thing that needs to be done.
Well done to those involved.