The Linux Foundation Turned Linux.com Into an Advertising Site

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2020-06-17 06:15:07 UTC
Modified: 2020-06-17 06:15:07 UTC

Linux.com used to be an actual journalism site, but not anymore (Linux dot commercials)

Linux.com front page
The LF 'trash heap'; shameless self-promotion and other garbage, not journalism (screenshot taken minutes ago)

Summary: One year after the management (or Board) of the Linux Foundation decided to lay off all the writers and editors the site known as Linux.com has been transformed into a laughable marketing apparatus, not a source of original news or even meaningful commentary

IT IS no exaggeration to say that the Linux Foundation (LF) totally ruined Linux.com, a site with a tradition two decades old. It simply became a marketing site, having gutted all the real journalists and left in tact only the one doing promotional puff pieces for LF sponsors (see the brochure; those are all scripted). The site is still riding its past momentum (and subscribers; what's left of them), but those too will be lost if this current trajectory is followed and the current style carries on.

It's truly a shame that what many people out there will be left to assume is the "official" site of Linux (because of the authoritative domain name) is a pale shadow of its former self and an utter embarrassment. Unlike Linux itself. There was so much potential to it; the LF had the budget.

Like TFIR.io, which became a marketing/spam site after its rebrand (it used to be Muktware, TheMukt and LinuxVeda), Linux.com nowadays has nothing to offer but PR noise. Sponsored, 'prepared', shallow pieces. Sometimes it's even being leveraged to funnel traffic (money) to TFIR.io (same editor), which says a lot about ethics... look who writes the official blog posts.

"It's truly a shame that what many people out there will be left to assume is the "official" site of Linux (because of the authoritative domain name) is a pale shadow of its former self and an utter embarrassment."Linux.com has become the failure TFIR.io already was. Half of the videos produced in recent months hardly exceed even 100 views (which means many "subscribers" are zombies or fake). But the real goal is marketing, reach isn't what's important. Information is a side concern, an afterthought.

Well, at least we know the direction Linux.com is going... ⬆

TFIR Nadella

Let's Hope GNU Makes it to 100: Can GNU still be in active use in 2083? Maybe.
GNU is 40, Linux is Just 32: Today it's exactly 40 years since Richard Stallman sent a message regarding GNU
GNU/Linux and Free Software News Mostly in Tux Machines Now: We've split the coverage
Links 27/09/2023: GNOME Raves and Firefox 118: Links for the day
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch: Links for the day
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More: Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards: This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family: Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware: They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up): There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software: Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware: There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site: This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation): Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism: There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back: We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links: There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging: We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site: We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding: some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows): The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies: SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux: It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025): We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered: Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products: Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window): They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash: Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful: We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware): Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot: Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either: the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers: In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer

The Linux Foundation Turned Linux.com Into an Advertising Site

Recent Techrights' Posts