Almost exactly 21 years ago, in June 2005, at a mere 20 years old, I took over the managing editor role at OSNews from Eugenia. I had already published a few articles in the years prior, and had given Eugenia enough confidence to suggest me as her replacement. It was, and is, a great honour.
In those 21 years and more than 20000 posts, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things. Linux grew from a curiosity among nerds into a popular desktop operating system, and often a better choice for gaming than Windows. The BSDs flourish steadily, growing into even stronger and capable alternatives to desktop Linux than they already were. On the commercial side of things, new offerings challenged the hegemony of Microsoft and Windows. While Android and Chrome OS are at best merely tolerated, the idea that a newcomer would produce not one, but two operating systems that would successfully take on Microsoft and Apple seemed unimaginable when I started in 2005.
While many alternative operating systems of the early 2000s faded away, we’ve also seen success stories there. Haiku evolved from an unusable, unstable promise on the horizon into a stable, daily-drivable operating system. The unique Genode Framework and Sculpt OS keep exploring and redefining the boundaries of what a general purpose operating system should be. Redox has exploded onto the scene, and keeps making massive strides almost every month. OS/2 is still actively updated, maintained, and sold. The Amiga will outlast us all.
Internet culture, too, is changing, and while things definitely look bleak right now, there are sparks of hope and joy. The general attitude towards the big technology companies among the general public has shifted from admiration to mistrust and dislike, corporate social media seems to be crumbling, and the youngest generations absolutely despise the latest hype, “AI”. All is certainly not lost, and sometimes I feel shimmers of hope that the pendulum may swing back to a more people-focused web, a web we’ve been part of since 1997.
In those 21 years and more than 20000 posts, I’ve also seen a lot of hypes come and go, hypes that if I didn’t embrace them, I’d surely be left behind. The “pivot to video“, the cryptocurrency mania, NFTs, virtual reality and the metaverse, “AI” – all technologies and concepts I recognised for the hypes that they were, and consequently ridiculed and ignored, much to the dismay of many believers. I’ve got the angry emails and comments to prove it.
This illustrates something about OSNews that I value and hold dear: OSNews doesn’t jump on bandwagons, doesn’t frantically try to follow the latest trends, doesn’t cave under the pressure of big money interests. OSNews is constant, stable, deliberate, patient. Since 1997, we’ve covered the technology industry with interest, excitement, and wonder – tempered by a healthy dose of skepticism. When you follow this industry for almost three decades, you learn to spot the patterns and see the threads before anyone else does.
That’s not to say we haven’t gone through changes. The most significant changes to OSNews happened in recent years, where instead of working on the site on a mostly voluntary basis with a pittance of ad revenue coming my way, I’ve turned my work for OSNews into my job. As part of this change, I removed all advertising from our website, morphing OSNews into a fully reader-funded endeavour. No ads, no corporate interests, no media network breathing down my neck. OSNews is a truly independent technology news website, a rarity these days. I don’t have to keep corporate overlords or advertisers happy, and you’d be surprised to learn just how rare that is on the modern web.
The OSNews website itself is fairly unchanging too, having gone through only a handful of redesigns since its founding in 1997. We’ve been using our current design, developed by Adam Scheinberg, for as long as I can remember (10-15 years?), and thanks to our independent, ad-free nature, any possible future redesign would only make the site simpler and even faster than it already is. There’s no redesign in the cards at the moment, but rest assured, if it ever comes, we’ll buck the trend of websites getting ever more complex and demanding and make OSNews lighter and even faster.
And yes, despite commenters making up far less than one percent of our readership, I’ll always opt to keep them. We might be a site of lurkers, but comments are a core part of OSNews. Even the annoying ones. Especially the annoying ones.
That being said, there’s going to be a small change to our design, rolling out today (it might take a few reloads for it to appear). To mark my 21 years and 20000 posts, OSNews is getting a new-ish logo, which combines the classic, intertwined beveled “O-S” from the early 2000s with the modern logo we’ve been using over the past 15 years or so. The O and S are intertwined once again, highlighting the continuity and stability I want OSNews to bring in this chaotic industry (I can write corporatese if I want to). Fun fact: this “new” logo was actually designed like 20 years ago, and we’ve had it in our back pocket ever since. Why create something new and of the times, when you’ve got something great sitting right there?
Aside from the new logo, I’ll be running a big fundraiser to mark this occasion early next week, with some silly incentives at various thresholds. If we reach the ultimate goal – a euro for every story I’ve posted – I’ll overcome some very deep-rooted fears and anxieties, and tattoo the OSNews logo on my body, as my very first tattoo. OSNews has been part of my life for more than two decades, and I have every intention to add at least another two – having such a core part of my life immortalised on my body only makes sense.
I’ve written about my anxiety disorder and how it affects me here on OSNews, and it’s been preventing me from getting various tattoos I’ve been wanting for decades (and not for the reasons you may think – it’s not the pain or the needles). No better way to get fucking over it by making a public promise to tens of thousands of people. You can start donating today, but I’ll publish a proper post about it on Monday.
Of course, OSNews wouldn’t exist without all of you, our hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you donate or not, whether you comment or not (you probably don’t!), each and every one of you contributes to making OSNews the steady success it’s been for almost 30 years. Few websites can boast such an uninterrupted lineage, and it’s thanks to all of you who keep coming back, every day.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. ❤️
Congrats. Even though you can be a sanctimonious bastard sometimes I applaud your dedication. I have been reading this site and basically lurking since the 90s, back when we all used Usenet and/or Slashdot! the just donated 5 euro and I will definitely contribute towards the tattoo fund next week. Tattoos are great.
And wow, Scheinberg did this design? He wrote the Songfish software that runs many of my favorite jambands’ music sites (songfishapp.com) and is on the Mockingbird Foundation’s board. Huge Phish fan. :-). THAT ONLY MAKES THIS SITE EVEN COOLER.
Thanks always Thom. I know I’ve been quiet but OSnews is still my main news site even after all these years. I see you’ve finally decided to adopt my lowercase-n styling for the name I argued for back in 2008 😛 I’ve not really replied on the site much since the move to the new platform because the WP login is too much of a pain and the site just doesn’t feel snappy and comfortable like the old web 1.0 one
Kroc,
WP has taken over custom websites everywhere. As someone who used to build them, I lament the fall of custom websites, now it’s just wordpress with custom themes, but it is what it is, I’ve had to accept it.
Threads are a bit awkward went they reach the thread limit. Anyway, it works.
Regarding the osnews login, I’m not trilled about being forced to open a link at a sendibt3.com to login. This is operated by SendinBlue, a service that does email tracking. I’ve brought it up before and didn’t get an answer: was this change actually intentional or was an extension added without anyone realizing it did this?
Agreed, WP is powerful for what it is, but it’s way too heavy for most people who just need a small blog or a few pages. And I say that as someone who uses it for my own (sorely neglected) site out of pure laziness; my excellent web host specializes in WP and it’s so easy to just spin up an instance with them that I did exactly that years ago and never looked back. I really need to take the time to switch to a simpler blog software or just skip the frameworks and hand code it like it’s 1998.
I do miss the old site. It Was compliant and compatible with… Everything! It effectively became my test website for any system, including cli ones
I know we are in a “modern age”, but when I occasionally dig out an old device or phone you always knew OSNews would work.
I’d definitely support a campaign to rebuild OSNews to be a completely compliant (and open source) implementation.
Aside from the enormous cost of building a completely custom site with a custom CMS and custom commenting engine that also needs to be able to import our existing stories, users, and comments, *maintaining* such a project would also be hugely expensive and time-consuming.
It’s just not realistic.
Thom Holwerda,
You’re talking to people who do this professionally and It’s not really that expensive or time consuming. I do data migrations all of the time and most of the overhead is in bureaucracy and meetings, haha. Custom websites have become “unrealistic” in a world where you can get FOSS software that’s ubiquitous and free. However before being displaced by free, there was a time when custom websites rulled the world – a realistic option for the majority of websites including osnews. Ultimately I concede these died off. There just isn’t much sense in paying for a platform when wordpress is free and good-enough. I’ve seen this happen with most of my clients.
A new website isn’t in the cards, but what about improvements to this site? I don’t think it’s ever been acknowledged, but some of us have been offering to help build features. Even the fix for the notorious scrolling bugs in January went unacknowledged, 🙁
https://www.osnews.com/story/144290/i-dont-want-using-my-computer-to-be-like-a-game-of-russian-roulette/
Anyway, my point is that osnews has tons of skilled resources right here. I probably need to take the hint that it’s unwanted. But if you don’t want to make changes to the main site, then what about a sister site where experimentation is more welcome? Would they be any interest in that?
The problem isn’t a lack of skilled people; the problem is cost. OSNews’ income isn’t even enough considering the hours I put in every day, so there’s simply no money left to pay anybody else to develop and migrate to a completely custom website, CMS, and commenting engine. Now add in the burden and associated costs to maintain all that custom code for at least a decade, and it’s just not realistic in any way, shape, or form.
As for helping out in smaller ways – that’s not my wheelhouse, but I can hazard a guess. We’ve had countless people enthusiastically come up to us to help in that department, only to lose interest in weeks, or even quicker, as the complexity of working on someone else’s code (Adam’s) dawns on them. Hell, we’ve even had well-known names in the WP community offer to help us out, only to vanish after we agreed on what needed to be done, a timetable, and the cost.
I’ve been investigating alternatives to WP – lighter, more focused things – for years, but they all have considerable shortcomings and flaws that make them unsuitable for a site that publishes multiple posts every day, has tens of thousands of accounts, and has comments. The answer I always get from e.g. static site people is “just use Discus [sp?] lol”, at which point I roll my eyes and move on. We’re obviously not going to use trash like that.
For now, OSNews works quite well. It’s fast, it has the features we want, and maintenance is, at this point, very easy, with the number of actual user-facing bugs over the past decade or so being in the low single digits. That’s quite a feat, and no other solution will be able to offer that, especially not any opinionated custom ones.
Thom Holwerda,
I know the code base had exploits…things like that are in my wheelhouse. Obviously the decision was made and that’s that, but to your comment, I’d like to think I would have followed through…even if the time had to come out of my comment budget 🙂
WordPress, prices are all over the place. A lot of the companies selling these services are actually outsourcing work to other contractors (like me) and the gap in price between what the front company charges and what the contractors make can be quite substantial. I can absolutely see how it is frustrating to find experts to do work. I face the same thing in other industries like automotive mechanics. Hiring experts is stressful because you don’t know who’s qualified and who’s going to screw you over. A couple months ago we got ripped off by the car dealership because we didn’t know any better.. The father of one of our friends is an appliance repairman and he causally brags about ripping his customers off. He says it doesn’t matter because if they don’t know any better then why not?
I didn’t realize you were investigating alternatives… I think developing a new platform could actually make for a cool article series adding features every week or so and the ultimate product at the end of the series could be a new working website. It would cover everything about the platform including how to migrate data into it. It would be educational and useful! Is this crazy talk or what? 🙂
Even in the context or wordpress, would you incorporate some of the ideas, like the chronological comments proof of concept I worked on? It’s a feature I sorely miss from the old osnews and doing it dynamically in javascript is an improvement on the original feature.
http://vocabit.com/osnews/sort_comments_2.html
I also miss comment searching. If I submitted code for that, would you add it?
How about a WYSIWYG editor? I’m often pasting code and formatting by hand is a bit frustrating.
We could create a list of desired features and vote on improvements people want to see. I’ll have to respect your choice, but I’d like to convince you implementing these is not an unrealistic goal. If there’s a will there’s a way. I promise not to bug you anymore about this if you truly are not interested. Maybe next year I’ll make a better case for it.
I also want to thank you for keeping osnews running all these years. Without your work we wouldn’t be here.
Is that long already? I’m not sure if OSNews was the first blog I started to follow, but it has been a constant in my life too, even though most of my comments are from around 2005, I think. But. I’ve had more VMs inspired by OSNews articles than I remember., and love being kept up-to-date by OSNews about them. Thanks!
Wow! Time really flies, I have been around this site since ages, (Digg, SlashDot, Google Reader,..) and I am happy for you and everyone who keep coming back to this space. Congrats on your new/old logo too! =)
The truly annoying ones calling your BS tend to mysteriously disappear.
I’ve been here since the beginning, my original username is lost to history, but Thom and I crossed paths on some online project (SkyOS?). I generally agree with Thom with what he posts but I will call him out sometimes.
But I am glad Eugenia is long gone, toward the end of her tenure she was pretty hostile to the readership and I even emailed the site owner about it and he basically just shrugged it off. OS News is much, much better without her and under Thom’s guidance has flourished..
your sentiments on the “trends” are mine exactly. remember curved and 3d tvs? wow that didn’t last. I am always amazed how with all the marketing data they have sucked up and all the AI to train in it, they still miss the mark. so much is a solution looking for a problem.
keep up the good work. As much as anyone might have their criticisms which can be warranted, they also have no idea on the day to day on your side of the keyboard and what it takes to keep this site alive, for them to have their options on.
Cheers from the shadows.
Congratulations… It has been a long journey
I still remember the old times when Eugene was still around, and the site had a custom, clunky but homey user interface.
Wish a happy next 10 years
Have been reading this site since 2004 and it’s my 1st news site on the list. Not so many good tech web sites are left.. You should run some forums on this site, that would be awesome 🙂
*raises hand* I really need a T-shirt with this on it and an arrow pointing at my face. I’m probably the most annoying person here!
Morgan,
I imagine I’m on the list for some as well. The account was deleted but I think HollyB. might hold the top spot for comments containing harassment and sexism.
I will say now that I dreaded when you (Thom) made a completely off-topic post, and immediately disabled comments on it. Please don’t do that again.
At 2005 I was listening to AC/DC and also read OsNews. Today I keep with both so this site is, at least IMHO, as good as AC/DC. Great job!
Happy anniversary. I first visited OSnews in 2001, if memory serves correctly and still visit daily.
It would be great if OSnews would drop WordPress again, I think the site look&feel of OSnews 2.0 was peak.
Congratulations on 21 years, Thom! I’ve been here for between 16 and 18 of those—not sure exactly—and never had cause for complaint. (Well, I had a small thing about blockquotes that I think you fixed at some point.) The world really could use more people like you. I wish you nothing but success and prosperity in these times of AI boosters worshipping at the altar of hyper-capitalism.
Its been so long that I’ll need to explain to my kids that I lived in a world Before OSNews (and Google) existed!
Congratulations on the legacy!
Congratulations! Independent news, thinking, opinions and commentary is what we need more of.
OSnews provides some of that.
Wow Thom. This is one of these pieces of information that make you reflect.
21 years! I was still under the impression that the transfer of ownership from Eugenia to you was a pretty recent event. I was an invested reader way back and I remember that it was a “big thing” for OS News. How time flies. In this time, my entire life changed in a major may. What didn’t change is my love for obscure OSes, pieces of weird techno babble and an appreciation for an editor that dares to be independent and express his views without censoring opposing ideas.
Thank you for your hard work. I deeply appreciate it and visit your site every day.
Payment sent. Keep going!
Hi Thom,
Huge thanks to you (and Eugenia! I think I started reading before she resigned, and but only registered in 2009 and made 3 comments since then…). I _really_ appreciate that this site is independent. Unlike most of the other news sites it is actually readable. These are the actual news for nerds and stuff that matters 🙂
Here’s to 21 more years!
Happy blog-birthday! an old reader here, keep going!
Congratulations! I arrived here because of Eugenia’s husband, JBQ. At that moment, I was an android engineer, and I wanted to gather as much information as possible about the new platform. I’ve been here on and off, and while I often disagree with the author, I find many topics interesting.
21 years! It seems like so long ago…
Congratulations! 😀 I have so many good memories here.
My favorite article is still when Thom explained why CDE is the best desktop environment.
https://www.osnews.com/story/18969/pt-vii-cde/
Time flies. Spent so much time on this site over the years. A bit less so recently, as my interest in OSes has waned a bit. Thanks Thom and everyone involved. Here’s to the next 21…..
Congrats! I’ve been reading regularly since 2006. Thom, you cover things that other tech news sites don’t care about. I’m no longer professionally in IT, and I was never a hobbyist or a real developer, but I’ll always appreciate learning of all the cool side projects and OSes that are often ignored.
wow… congrats… I’ve been following since circa 2003, maybe even 2002. I don’t remember exactly where I discoverd OSNews, but I think it was at the old “customize.org” when the deskmod scene was still on full hype. And is very good to see OSnews still alive, while most of the old deskmod sites are offline… I really miss that early 2000s old style (the old logo included, that one would serve well as stickers souvernirs). Thank you for maintaining this site online all theses years.