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Linux Software

New Linux Subsection on Google 86

Posted by CmdrTaco from the seek-and-seek-again dept.
randombit wrote in to say that Google has a new specialized Linux search. As an aside, I keep getting conspiracy emails about Google having banner ads. Never ceases to amaze me how worked up people can get about some things. Anyhoo, I did several searches with mixed success, but it seems to do a pretty good job of searching for Linux stuff.
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New Linux Subsection on Google More

New Linux Subsection on Google

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  • Actually, Google has had this section open for a while. They just never p1mp3d it before.

    "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  • Google has had a Linux search since I started using it, which was a few weeks ago at least. I know for a fact that the Linux search was present before Slashdot's story about Google finally getting out of beta. Oh well.
  • This is great, nice to see a good search engine taking particular interest in such a cool subject. :) But, when Google crawls, it crawls alot. Over a couple days earlier this month Google went over my site 4-5 times which slightly skewed my stats. (I don't have a robots.txt file...)


    -- Moondog
  • They've been doing that for months, at least. I use it a lot for Linux-related info. The Uncle Sam search is new, though. Hmmm, maybe it can find all my money old Uncle Sam made off with...
  • Banners makes the net go round

  • This was news last August (Score:4)

    by Roast Beef ( 2298 ) on Thursday October 21, 1999 @10:03PM (#1595384) Homepage
    Check it out, Slashdot: Google Does Linux [slashdot.org] dated Aug 6, 1998. Google had the link to the Linux search on their front page at that point, then they moved the link; now it's on the front page again. It has always been there. *sigh*
  • I have an email in my saved mail dated 8/25/99 advising someone who was asking about installing pcmcia-cs drivers for an ambicom 10/100 card about that they should search through www.google.com/linux -- it's long been the first place I go for linux searches, seems a lot more comprehensive than the google search on RedHat's site.
  • I don't know what this is about Google and banner ads, but if people hate them that much, stop whining and filter them out!
  • Slashdot has banner ads too. Shouldn't people get worked up about that too (just to be consistent, I mean).
  • There's also a Stanford search at www.google.com/stanford
  • No kidding.. For those who don't know, you can filter out banner adds by appending something like the following to whichever you have of \windows\hosts or /etc/hosts:

    127.0.0.1 adforce.imgis.com

    127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
    Feel free to add any other ad servers to your own.

    ------

  • Not new, but GoogleScout is (sortof) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The linux search has been around forever. GoogleScout is pretty cool, it finds pages related to your search results. For example, GoogleScout for Slashdot [google.com] finds a bunch of linux pages.

  • The Best Search Sites for Linux? (Score:3)

    by Wooly-Mammoth ( 105587 ) on Thursday October 21, 1999 @10:49PM (#1595393)
    I'm not sure how the google.com/linux is different from a regular search on just google.com.

    What are the best places to look for linux info? I personally do

    1) deja.com first, extremely useful for hardware and troubleshooting reports

    2) altavista, with a +whole +bunch of +pluses to make sure the word is included.

    3) Google - the trouble with google is that it gives the same site 20 times in a row on the first 2 pages, whereas altavista has better distribution, but lower relevance.

    4) redhat.com's mailing list archives - I used to try here a while ago, but I guess my iterative mechanisms have changed habits.

    5) The linuxgazette.com [linuxgazette.com] search engine. Actually this is one I would rate 2 or 3, but I don't want to change the numbers after all this typing, esp. since I'm getting used to the aftereffects of the hair dryer thawing....

    Hmmm...are these pretty typical of the /. crowd? Or did I miss a kickass search site?

    The Wooly Mammoth.
  • The main guys behind [google.com] Google are/were Stanford grad students. They included specified google searches of their favorite subjects. Linux [google.com] and Stanford [google.com] are the only two I know about. Anyone else have any more? (Aside from the obvious uncle sam [google.com], of course.)
  • maybe it's from the post-and-post-again dept.

    (perhaps this finally proves aliens have taken over the commander's brain)

    okay, but this is funny [theonion.com]
  • This hack just gives the wrong IP address for some domains. And it won't stop ads stored on the same server as the pages you are vieweing.

    Consider junkbuster. It can lock out domains and subdomains, as well as sub-directories on each server.
  • This hidden subsection - www.idsoftware.com/pr0n [idsoftware.com] - at idsoftware is probably the funniest umm...hidden subsection of any major web site. AFAIK, it wasn't pimped by id either, but in the spirit of things, it started circulating among die hard quake players.

    Warning - R rated, but NOT advisable for office viewing. OTOH, nothing too....well, just see it for yourself. :)

    Wooly Mammoth.
  • Google started as a grad project for the owners .. and is based to run on Linux boxes .. and as a linux section was one of the search options right from the start.

    most people that used google when it was still on the stanford site know that .. and when it moved to mainstream and google.com domain the linux section moved to /linux

    I still use it as my main search engin for linux stuff .. and will prolly never move.

    10 out of 10 for the google boys :))

    now how about a NON-PORN section that auto-removes all porn sites from your search results *smile*

    bain
  • Google has had that Linux search since their alpha days. I believe they also had a Stanford search. They just put it on their front page now, along with one on government documents.

    --
    grappler
  • That would MAYBE be the web(the net is a little more than just the web), and banners in general are annoying. Just make your own google search, like the one you can put on the /. main page, that at least makes your google banner free.

    //rdj
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Try searching on google for "More evil than satan"
  • On the topic of Google... I guess it is well-known by now that if you search for "more evil than satan", Microsoft will turn up as the number one match.

    Is this feature pre-programmed into Google, or is it merely a matter of its wonderful new indexing technology?
    --
  • I could be wrong, but last time I checked, there were banners on /. Jeremy
  • Oh, its not new in the way that they've been trying to get to it for a while, but the Martha Stewart and Pauly Shore section had priority.
  • Yes, and last time I checked, google was banner free.

  • I think its RTFM time; you forgot to use the "" signs.
  • I have to admit, I've never done a Linux search on northernlight, but whenever I want to find out about some governmental/law/social thing I hit northernlight.

    I don't know why I've never done a Linux search there. Probably because I've been able to find things on the Linux sites so easily.

    Should I dislike northernlight because they've patented their custom search folders? They really really help a lot, I've found.

  • When you search for "more evil than satan" guess what you get ? http://www.microsoft.com incidently the disney is the third !

    Cheers
  • Is this feature pre-programmed into Google, or is it merely a matter of its wonderful new indexing technology?

    Pre-programmed, I think. The search for just "more evil" (no quotes) also turns up www.microsoft.com as #1. But, "more evil than Donald Trump" does NOT turn up www.microsoft.com.

    Interestingly, "most evil" does not turn up anything Microsoft related.

  • That said, you should consider whether it's a good thing or not to block banner ads - regardless of the web's "everything is free!" illusion, without banner advertising or other support lots of sites would suddenly have no money and wouldn't be there any more. I dunno whether slashdot's included in this, but it's worth thinking of what would happen if everyone did this - it does actually cost to run a website, and you need to get the cash together somehow...
  • Hmmm...I've never tried northernlight either. BTw, they were profiled in a story as being the search engine which has indexed more of the web than any of the others (altavista was 2nd, I think). Even at that, it was really small, something like 12%.

    It makes you wonder why such a big % of the web isn't registered in engines. Don't ppl want visits? Odd.

    w/m.
  • There are so many search engines around that I sort of lost track. My favorites have allways been Yahoo and Altavista until I discovered the paralel search engines like Inference find [infind.com] which basicly submits your query to more then one search enginean and gives you a very nice formatted result. After discovering that I hardly use the 'single engines' anymore.
  • He said to make a form on your own personal page.
  • If you really want to filter porn, there are some search engines that will allow you to do that. However, they usually are very eager. (They'd filter out this page for example. (Yeah, I know this is excluded by /robots.txt, but the static version isn't.)) They'll often filter out what you really want. Better to just accept that you'll sometimes have to see a porn site's meta tags.
  • is the way they have white papers about how their search engine works.

    It is hosted on the original (stanford) google site at http://google.stanford.edu/long321.htm and is really intersting if you are into that kind of thing (I am).

    There are a whole lot of great papers on there, which in unique, because all the other search engines keep their crawling strategies etc very secret.

  • The #1 result on Google has a special bonus: you can click the I'm Feeling Lucky to be redirected straight to it. I'm troubled, then, that Google has a system to artificially insert a top result based on your search. The only reason I can think of for slowing down each and every search like this is selling keywords to the highest bidder.
  • Try a search for "evil software"
    Evidently the guys at Stanford have quite a sense of humor.
  • Try searching for the above term on Google. It's amusing. Slightly offtopic, but it IS a Google feature and quite amusing.
  • Well I've just had to create myself a login so I can reply to this. If you can't understand why people get annoyed about banner ads, consider those of us (such as Europeans like myself) who have to pay for internet access and can equate time spent loading banner ads to money going down the drain. You may well argue that we all receive junk mail through our letterboxes and we all walk past advertising hoardings on our way to work ([ "$HAVE_CAR" = "yes" ] && s/walk/drive/) but we don't pay for the privilege. Any adserver ip address that isn't shared with the webserver goes straight into ipfw add reject tcp from any to $IP 80 if I'm at home or ipchains -A output -s 0/0 -d $IP 80 -p tcp -j REJECT at the office. Surely the worst offender is the otherwise excellent freshmeat, the only site I visit daily. If you're going to waste our bandwidth advertising something, at least advertise something that we haven't all got. And isn't the point of advertising to make money? Who makes money out of advertising Apache? It's free for God's sake.
  • This is nothing new. You could always go to www.google.com/linux and get there. Its great to see it listed on the front page now though!
  • Google is the search engine for me! Literally! I searched for my name and it came up with most of the projects/pages that I have been involved in for the years.

    The Linux search does leave something to be desired though. I personally prefer news groups or in the first instance the MAN pages before I'll go and look on the web. This has been true for all the occassions that I have required Linux info except one - Installation on a Dell Laptop. I can't remember the URL but I found the origional link right here on /. !
  • This wasn't inserted, it's a natural consequence of the way Google works. It ranks pages higher when referring pages contain the keyword. Turns out many sites use the word "evil" and link to Microsoft. Hardly news :)
  • Now my favorite search engine is /.'ed!!! Criminy!! I depend on this to get work done!
  • Ever since they delisted my ISP and all the pages hosted there (including mine), I've been down on Altavista.

    It seems that someone put up a web page with a recursive Babelfish interface to repeated translate and retranslate entered text until it converged. Once the /. effect had worn off, Altavista decided that my ISP has spammed them by submitting too many URLs and they delisted all of our pages and will not allow anyone to submit new ones.
  • Google plans to add advertisements to their web site (http://www.google.com/advertisement.html)

  • Re:IMHO (Score:1)

    by Otto ( 17870 )
    Google is the search engine for me! Literally! I searched for my name and it came up with most of the projects/pages that I have been involved in for the years.

    I must admit, I was impressed with the number of references to my name it came up with, but the one that really threw me (because the middle inital was correct) was this one:

    The Samuel J. Wood Library
    The C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center
    The Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University
    1300 York Avenue
    New York, NY 10021-4896

    Wow.. I had no idea. I'm going to have to go to NY now.. :-)

    The other "Samuel J. Wood"
    ---
  • If 4-5 extra hits a month skews your stats, you have bigger problems to deal with (ie. promotion). :>

    Still, 4-5 isn't so bad. It's nice to have something up to date at least.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

  • Re:hardcoded search terms? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not necessarily hardcoded results by Google programmers. One of the neat things about Google is that it also indexes linking text with a page--that is, if I link to Microsoft with text saying "banana cream pie" then a search for "banana cream pie" could turn up the Microsoft page. (but with all the links Google is considering, it won't come up very high.) This is actually a very nice feature: once I searched for "British patent office" and Google correctly pointed me to http://www.patent.gov.uk/, despite the fact that the word "British" appears nowhere on that page, even in the source HTML! It came up because other people had called it the British patent office in linking to it. So if a lot of people have links to microsoft.com calling it the worst operating system in the linking text, it's no surprise that it would come up in such a search.
  • Some news site somewhere talked about this. There are a number of other fun things to try. You can also try other things like:

    "Best Operating System"

    This gives you the "Linux home page" as the top match.

    Oddly enough, if you type "Best Operating System in the World", you get Microsoft.com, followed by the "Linux Home Page", a FreeBSD link and a Debian link.

    All this is just a consequence of the way the system works. Interested parties should check out this [scientificamerican.com] article in Scientific American.

    I suppose it is only a matter of time before site authors start trying to influence all this.
  • hehe.. google rocks..


    click here [google.com] :)


    smash

  • Personally, before I discovered google, I used Metacrawler exclusively (of course, saying that one uses a meta-search engine exclusively is somewhat of an oxymoron, but you know what I mean). Rather helpful, it even tells you which hits came from which engines.

  • You can do a no-porn search on altavista:

    # of results for search "+girl": about 6,889,657
    # of results for search "+girl -xxx -porn": about 3,774,758
    Speeds things right up!
  • If you use google as your homepage as I do, you may want to use this link instead. It loads faster and looks cleaner than the page they have up.

    [google.com]
    http://www.google.com/search?q=

  • If you visit the google.stanford.edu site, you can find links to several papers which describe the technology and architecture which powered the original Google. They have a list of their research papers [stanford.edu] available. Some of them are moderately technical, but some are quite readable, including the www-based architecture overview paper [stanford.edu].

    So, the short answer to your question is, "I don't know." However, when google had only indexed about 24M webpages, their database was 53G compressed (at about 3:1, or 140G uncompressed).

    It's pretty fascinating stuff.

    -Dave

  • > "Best Operating System"
    > This gives you the "Linux home page" as the top match.
    > Oddly enough, if you type "Best Operating System in the World", you get Microsoft.com, followed by the "Linux Home Page", a FreeBSD link and a Debian link.

    So, Windoze is the Best Operating System in the World, but, of course, Linux is the best, period. Everyone already knew that.

    Note that Disney turns up #3 in More Evil than Satan... ;)
  • Slashdot has banner ads too. Shouldn't people get worked up about that too (just to be consistent, I mean).

    People did, when Slashdot first started putting them on. I still see an occasional post mumbling about how wonderful junkbuster is at filtering out 'Rob's damned banner ads' or somesuch.

  • If you'd look closely at google's site you would notice that they ARE planning on having advertising in the near future.

  • Steps for a good laugh on Google:

    1. Enter "more evil than satan" on the main page.
    2. Once done, go back and go to the Linux Search page.
    3. Type in "cmdrtaco".
    4. Hopefully, you'll see a recommendation at the top from Amazon.com; "The Story About Ping".
    5. Click on it to find that it's the wrong one.
  • Personally, I am surprised that /. does not have the following:

    1) "square" banners running down the left edge of the screen. There is wasted white space there.

    2) "Interstitials", micro-banners stuck right in the middle of the content.


    Now that I mentioned it, kudos to /. and Andover for not doing these things.
  • At least remarq.com can put a bunch of articles together on one page - making it much faster to read through a discussion thread on remarq than on deja.

  • That page [google.com] might load faster, but it doesn't have a document.f.q.focus(); like google's front page [google.com] does. you have to hit tab 3 times or click on the field (yuck!)

    as for a start page.. i use a page on my local computer with 8 single line forms on it (altavista/askjeeves/google, hotmail, angelfire login, webster, babelfish for spanish-english, and amazon search) plus a link to my home page and to slashdot. each thing has an ALT-key combination, so i can hit alt-s enter to get to slashdot very quickly.
  • how does google decide what sites are "linux-related" sites? assuming that they don't have humans selecting the sites, does it take a long time to set up the separate /linux search, or would it make sense for them to let you enter other areas like this:

    area:javascript onload
  • That page might load faster, but it doesn't have a document.f.q.focus(); like google's front page does. you have to hit tab 3 times or click on the field (yuck!)

    Wierd how I never noticed that. That is a bit of a pain.

    as for a start page.. i use a page on my local computer

    I used to do that, but I use so many computers I kept losing the file. I should set one up on my own homepage, but ....sigh... I'm so lazy. :)
  • Gimme a break. It's not that funny. It's about a PG-13.
  • I'm sure this is way past the point where anyone will see it, but Google is relatively immune to this sort of thing. The beautiful thing about their engine is that, in the background, it's all extremely mathematical and immune to interference.

    One of several strategies is to place a value on each page in accordance with how important the page is to other users. One way of determining this criteris is by analyzing the links between pages. It is assumed that important ones are linked to more often than the non-important ones. In turn, documents that important pages point to are deemed as being more significant than ones linked to by, say, my home page.

    As time goes on and the engine develops a more accurate representation of the networks, it is able to evaluate these kinds of interrelationships in useful ways. All the end user sees is that the page at the top of the search list was the one they were looking for, but in the background there are a lot of powerful mechanisms to make that happen.

    I've spent the last year or so working on a search engine as an academic project, and have come to really admire what Google does for the users. Take a look at some of the research [stanford.edu] that went into it some time, it's quite impressive. These people thought of everything and much more besides.

    I could go on but am a little too tired right now to be more coherent. Rambling and asskissing aside, the point I've so studiously skipped around is that there aren't really artificial mechanisms to insert results anywhere in Google. It does a lot of work to make sure that doesn't happen (no cheating on <META> tags, or adding "sex sex sex sex" 1001 times in white on white text in order to fool the engine -- Google sees right through that nonsense). And it doesn't rework this information for each search: the data creates it all in the background, and you perform the query on the database as it exists at a snapshot in time. Very elegant design, all around.

    Maybe I can talk them into hiring me after this...



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