Let’s spend a few paragraphs celebrating the small bloggers who write about FOSS and GNU/Linux. If you’re like us, you probably have a favorite blogger or three you like to read.
Let’s be clear; we’re talking blogs and not every website is a blog.
In other words, we’re not talking about the big websites that cover GNU/Linux and the FOSS world. We’re excluding popular Linux aggregators such as LXer, Linux Today or Tux Machines. Also excluded are the big all-things-to-all-people tech news sites, like ZDNet and CNET, that do as good a job covering FOSS and Linux as they do covering all other tech sectors. We’re also not talking about the great Linux information sites such as Linux Magazine, Phoronix, LWN and too many more to mention. Sites maintained by GNU/Linux distros are, too, not part of this discussion.
But enough about who we’re not talking about.
All of these sites are great, and we’d pretty much be lost without them. But today we want to celebrate the guys and gals who maintain a site and write FOSS and Linux blogs out of love. Let’s give these unpaid and often unsung Linux bloggers some respect.
The FOSS Force “Best Personal FOSS or Linux Blog–2013”
The race has begun. You get to decide which FOSS and Linux blog gets the honor of being the first ever winner of the FOSS Force “Best Personal FOSS or Linux Blog.” The nomination process starts now with our qualifying poll.
If you’ll notice, our poll is populated with nine pretty darn good Linux blogs, by our estimation. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg in this round of voting. We’re expecting the “Other” option to win, and win big, because that’s where you can go off-list to write-in your favorite personal FOSS or Linux blog.
You can vote for one or two blogs of your choice. If one of your choices is “Other,” you can write-in one blog and one blog only in the provided text entry space. When more than one blog is written-in, the first blog listed will be counted and the others will be discarded. Also, since you can vote for a listed blog as well as “Other,” any write-in for one of the nine blogs listed in the poll will be discarded as a possible duplicate vote.
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This qualifying poll is going to run until Monday, August 12th. We will then take the 20 to 25 largest vote getters and run a one week “first round” poll to whittle the list down to a field of ten blogs. Those ten will compete in a final poll to determine what Linux blog get’s bragging rights as the “FOSS Force Best Personal Blog–2013.”
Before you go running off to vote for your favorite blog, let’s look at what it takes for a blog to qualify to be in the running.
A blog site must be the personal site of a single writer/blogger. We will accept sites that post the work of guest bloggers, as long as the overwhelming majority of the posts are by a single blogger. We also only accept blogs that have been online for at least six months. The site must also be active, with at least one post per week on average. The decision as to whether a site qualifies is at the sole discretion of the FOSS Force staff.
In our poll, each of the nine listed blogs is actually a link to that blog’s site. We encourage you to to check out any of the blogs that are unfamiliar to you. We also encourage you to use this article’s comments to campaign for your favorite blog. If you’re rooting for a blog not listed in the poll, feel free to post a link so people can check out the blog for themselves. Be advised that if there’s more than one link included in a comment, the comment will be automatically held for moderation, which could take a few hours or longer, depending on how busy we are, time of day, etc.
If you have a blog, you’re welcome to encourage your followers and visitors to vote for your site in our poll. Indeed, we’d love for you to have plenty of fun with this poll. After all, the whole purpose of this competition is to help bring some attention to small bloggers who pour sweat equity into the task of writing, providing us with information, insight, inspiration and entertainment. We’re hoping that by the time this is over we will have succeeded in sending some traffic your way, exposing more people to your writing. Hopefully, some of them will become followers.
Larry and Robert are very good, and Katherine Noyes and Steven Vaughan Nichols and others are missing.
I’ve been following Pamela Jones’ Groklaw almost since it began, and in this day and age where FOSS is under legal attack from all the big dogs, from Microsoft to Oracle (and let’s not forget SCO), keeping track of the players (not to mention the legal technicalities of it all) requires a good scorecard. IMHO, Groklaw is that scorecard.
Lawrence Lessig, Simon Phipps
The best thing about polls like this is that there are some blogs named that I didn’t know existed which means I now have more blogs that I can read.
I have just been reading Martin’s blog. Very good.
My favorites:
Dedoimedo – http://dedoimedo.com/
OStatic – http://ostatic.com/
FOSS Force
FOSS Advocates – http://fossadvocates.org/
Linux User – http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/
Linux Insider – http://www.linuxinsider.com/
I don’t really follow any of the listed blogs, but I usually read Martin Graesslin’s and Helios (when linked from LXER for example) so I voted for those.
I also voted Aaron Seigo’s blog in “Other”, this one I follow and like very much.
Jeff Hogland’s (from Bodhi Linux fame) is another personal blog I like, and read from time to time.
Definitely above-mentioned FOSS Advocates blog.
Groklaw and Techrights.
There is simply no better page to find out what is happening in Linux, FLOSS, etc than the Techrights News Roundup links page… none. Not even close.
Its updated regularly and its very nicely organized so if I want general Linux news or want to see whats up with KDE or servers or lets say kernel, I can just scroll down to see what is happening on taht subject throughout the net.
Keep this link handy
http://techrights.org/category/news-roundup/
and you will be able to quickly finding dozens upon dozens of links to various sites and blogs.
If someone knows anyone else who does such a good job, Id be more than happy to take a look.
The problems with the Techrights news roundup is that it can take up A LOT, I mean A LOOOOOT of your time and just reading the small writeups is sometimes more time than I have in a day so it helps me find teh ones that I can afford to read when time is scarce.
You know how I found this article?
Yup, its in the Links for 31/7/2013
its the 4th link (out of god knows how many) and this was the text that he had that brought me here:
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What’s Your Favorite FOSS or Linux Blog?
In other words, we’re not talking about the big websites that cover GNU/Linux and the FOSS world. We’re excluding popular Linux aggregators such as LXer, Linux Today or Tux Machines. Also excluded are the big all-things-to-all-people tech news sites, like ZDNet and CNET, that do as good a job covering FOSS and Linux as they do covering all other tech sectors. We’re also not talking about the great Linux information sites such as Linux Magazine, Phoronix, LWN and too many more to mention. Sites maintained by GNU/Linux distros are, too, not part of this discussion.
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I thought it was interesting and clicked on the link (the mouseover shows me what the site is).
i dont have any loyalty to any blog (i am subscribed to Seigos excellent youtube videos and that bearded guy who does TWIL but I skip most of his stuff while I listen and relisten Seigos when I just rip teh youtube and play it again on my mp3 player) because not everything is great and most big sites are just not worth it all the time.
this way allows me to be able to scope whats out there all over rather that go to each site individualy. it saves a lot of time but like I said… even reading just the link headers is time consuming.
Several of the sites mentioned by people in the comments (probably most, actually) don’t meet the criteria laid out in the article. One blogger I see is not there or in the comments and I thought I might mention is Steven Rosenberg (http://blogs.dailynews.com/click/).
Another name missing from the list is Jim Lynch. He has several blogs “Eye On Linux” and “Desktop Linux Reviews” and now does a summary write up on IT World.
Long live to DarkDuck; greatest thanks for all the information Duck provided to us!