Linux.com under new management; still boring
by schwim on May.14, 2009, under Software
I got a notice this morning that Linux.com had been completely revamped(and it has). Now under the control of the linux foundation, they’ve removed the focus of being a half-assed news site and concentrated on being a half-assed news site with a half-assed community feel.
I logged in and looked around. They’re method of trying to keep people active is by awarding karma in the form of guru or geek points. The biggest gurus at the end of the year get laptops with linux on them. (I guess the elephant in the room is that they’re all going to wipe linux off of them once in their possession so they can install something with working wireless).
So, that’s the business model. You’ll stay at linux.com as opposed to the 4 billion other sites because of a site ranking system that makes you feel special and you might get a laptop out of the deal.
I checked the forums and of the 27 categories, there was not a single one that could either be considered to have a community feel or pertaining to site suggestions, problems or comments. There was a category specifically for kernel development(because it’s such a hot topic, it would overflow a parent category) but there wasn’t one to say hi, introduce yourself or post your latest exploits with vi. As is the case with 95% of the linux communities out there, they’re not a community. They’re a support forum.
Because, you know… we didn’t have enough linux support forums.
May 14th, 2009 on 10:32 am
It’s a decent site but, like most, gets a little D&B after awhile.
I just use “news ticker” in KDE with tons of feeds and click on the ones that seem interesting. They load up in Konqueror so as not to disturb my FF session.
BTW: Really good read here if you haven’t seen it:
http://torrentfreak.com/the-war-on-sharing-why-the-fsf-cares-about-riaa-lawsuits-090513/
May 14th, 2009 on 8:34 pm
Thanks very much for the link, Rick. I hadn’t seen it before.
Even if it weren’t fully applicable, we should be happy that the FSF is willing to pursue this as the only people that are going to be able to fight back and gain ground are a group as fanatical as the FSF. Unfortunately, when the majority don’t care, those that do have to fight hard enough to make up for the lost numbers.