Earlier in the month we made a call for contributions, and we had an overwhelming response. Hopefully we’ll be seeing some new articles from OSNews readers in the near future. I’d like to announce that we’ve set up a mailing list for those readers who might be interested in contributing articles and reviews. I’d also like to make a public apology to those people who I mistakenly added to the list. “Read more” for details. If you would like to join the mailing list, please do that here. Over time, I expect it to be a moderate volume, strictly-business mailing list where people can announce an interest in writing on a particular subject and get feedback from list members.
As for the apology, I made a little mistake that soured the debut of the contributors mailing list a bit. I’d like to say that I’m sorry to those people who found themselves surprised when they checked their email and found a flurry of email from a lot of confused subscribees. What happened was that I had made a note of everyone who had expressed an interest in contributing, and instead of sending out an email to them all inviting them to join the new list, I just added the bunch. It was a momentary lapse of reason on my part, and I’m sorry for it.
What I definitely wasn’t anticipating was the flurry of emails to the list members by confused people, and for that I’m extra sorry. Even when people thought they were sending me an angry email asking why they had been added to the list, it went to everyone, and a flamewar ensued.
Hopefully, it will all die down by tomorrow. So join the list if you’re interested in taking part in the contribution effort, and if you don’t want to be on the list, accept my humblest apologies, and read the instructions in the first email about how to remove yourself from the list.
By the way, to those who were or are concerned: The mailing list is a private list, with no public archives. The email address of the list will not even be published on the web site, to keep spam spiders from getting it. If the list ever starts to receive spam, I’ll take it down and start a new one. I’m also going to try my best to keep it business-only and flamewar free.
How about a refresher on where all the alternative operating systems are in terems of usability (besides major ones likes the various distributions of Linux? I also mean usable as in, eh, usable, not just GUI design btw. I think it would be interesting to see how far along some of the “alternative alternative” OSes have come, and how they stack up compared to each other.
I’d like to see a greater emphasis on applications for other (non-MS) operating systems, especially as they compare to their MS counterparts. The lack of quality applications for alternative operating systems is one major reason why I have so far been unable to switch from Windows.
After all, what good is the best OS without them?
jbm, you must realize that the GUI is one of the most important part for a desktop OS. When you are reviewing a *bsd for example, the “GUI” isn’t important (you probaably don’t even load X at startup anyway). So when someone reviews a desktop oriented OS (say, Windows, Mandrake, Mac OS X) the GUI is probably the most imprtant thing after the stability and functioning of the kernel.
So, please, stop whining about reviews being GUI-specific, for certain OS it’s hella important.
@Thom
The GUI isn’t important with *bsd….hmmm, their are a lot of people who use for example FreeBSD or NetBSD as their primary desktop OS…i would say that the GUI on *bsd is as important as it is on GNU/Linux systems.
“So when someone reviews a desktop oriented OS (say, Windows, Mandrake, Mac OS X) the GUI is probably the most imprtant thing after the stability and functioning of the kernel.”
Exactly. It’s the most important thing about an os.. AFTER the stability and functioning of the kernel. So how about some details about those 2 things? That’s exactly what I was ‘whining’ about. Of course there is some importance to the gui, but it isn’t the only thing, and it isn’t the most important thing, as we seem to agree on.
So please, stop being childish and making accusations of ‘whining’ when I have a perfectly valid point.
Sorry, sorry, you’re right, I kinda got too irritated (but hey, I just failed my driver’s test
). It’s just that I hear that a lot: The reviews focus too much on the GUI.
Sorry for the offence
I love the idea of the list, in fact I think it makes the process of reviews and articles more streamlined, I was going to suggest a list like this myself but David beat me to the punch.
Thank you for the explanation. I was one of the persons that was confused about being part of the list.
Please make sure that this doesn’t happen again. What you just did is the normal way of starting of a mailing list, i.e., by pointing people to it and letting them decide whether they wish to join, but it seems you have realized this and your apology shows that you actually care enough about your readers that they might stick with you even after this major hiccup.
you should have invited people to join the list rather than signing them up and discovering that they recieved 50+ emails on their work account. Thanks.
David,
No big. Hopefully everyone will get over it soon. I think the list is a great idea. However, word to the wise, maybe you should set the list up to have OS News Contributor as the FROM line instead of the contributor’s name – leave it up to the contributor to sign the post. This way people will be less likely to hotly reply.
Will
…when it comes to Linux. Almost everything else is fairly complete. Linux makes a great web/ftp/anything server, and has been “enterprise ready” for some time. Occasionally Linux lacks functionality on traditionally unix-based architectures (remember when SMP was limited to 8 processors?), but when it gets such functionality, it gets reported here.
The big drive now is to give Linux a good GUI.
Mandrake Linux 9.2 has been released, we are all so happy!!!!
For the love of god…please no more “Why linux is ready for the desktop” articles. After your last call for articles we had a glut of them. Talk about irritating. I want to see a focus on actual technologies not some linux afficiandos opinion of why he thinks his desktop should be everybody’s desktop.
I agree. There have been way too many articles on that subject. We want a wide range of topics for articles, not just a million articles going back and forth about linux on the desktop.
We should have short reviews about every major desktop distribution release, but I agree “Is Linux ready for the desktop” is not a question reviews should ever ask–they should just report their experiences and feelings without any comparison or analysis.
I think a lot of people would love to see a very basic introduction to using linux as a home web server. this is a good way for geeks interested in linux to get into the technical side of the operating system
I agree, applications should be equally reviewed even though this is “OSNEWS”. As far as MS equivalents, are you monstly talking about MS Office applications equivalent or would you extend it more generally to SOHO apps?
If contributors are to write for the site, it should be done as “news” hence the name OS NEWS.
Let the other sites take care of the OS Opinions