FAQ

LinuxLinks: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Last Updated on July 29, 2022

1. How did LinuxLinks start?

LinuxLinks initially began as a private home page. Back in 1994 Linux was beginning to take off and our bookmarks had become increasingly disorganised. Over time, demand increased from other users to list the Linux sites on a more formal basis. Linux Links was then created.

As the internet grew we saw the need to register a domain name, to make it easy for people to find the latest Linux links.

Our goal is to make it simple for all types of Linux users, whether they be a complete beginner or a UNIX wizard, to find the most useful Linux software and sites on the internet in the least amount of time.

LinuxLinks has come a long way since then. We currently publish Linux related articles, reviews, and Group Tests on a daily basis.

2. How do you rate software covered in your Group Tests?

We use an in-house algorithm to determine the overall rating for each application. Factors that we take into account when scoring software in Group Tests include, but not limited to:

  • Features.
  • Ease of use.
  • Performance.
  • Installation.
  • Development activity.
  • The quality of the documentation.

Each factor is given specific weighting.

For some categories, other factors will come into play. For example, for games, we’ll give greater weight to the gameplay, graphics, and longevity.

Factors that we don’t take into account:

  • The license that the software is released under. While we recognize that some open source licenses are more restrictive than others, this factor is not relevant for our Group Tests.
  • There’s no bias towards any specific desktop environment, or whether the software has a GUI or runs under the command-line. Naturally, some tasks are better served with a GUI and/or the command-line.
  • As the vast majority of software featured in the Group Tests are free and open source, value for money isn’t a relevant criteria. But some of the software we recommend is proprietary open source software. The rating score doesn’t take into account any purchase cost, unless specifically stated in the Group Test.

3. Why doesn’t every Group Test have a rating graph?

When we introduced Group Tests, we didn’t offer specific ratings for the software featured. In light of visitors’ requests, we now provide ratings for new and updated Group Tests. As we update Group Tests, we’ll add a ratings chart. In time, every Group Test will include a rating graph.

4. How do you generate your rating charts?

Most of our charts are written using the R programming language and generated with ggplot2.

5. Do you have a news feed?

Yes, our news feed is available here.

6. Comments

Your comment may be an insight, opinion, suggestion, idea or feedback that is relevant to the subject of the article. It’s not an opportunity to sell, promote, or advertise any product or service. Keeping your comments concise will increase the chances that other people will read them. We generally don’t allow hyperlinks in comments.

7. Contributions

If you’re a developer and have written open source software that you’d like to share with the community, or an end-user that’s passionate about Linux, we’re happy to accept guest author submissions.

Please do not contact us asking if you can make a guest submission. You won’t receive a response. Instead, simply send us the guest submission. If it’s good quality, original, and relevant to Linux, we’ll publish it.

The article should have a minimum 500 words, be factual in content, and preferably provide screenshots or videos of the software in action. Video formats accepted: MP4 (.mp4, .m4v), QuickTime movies (.mov), Windows Media Video (.wmv), Audio Video Interleave (.avi), MPEG (.mpg), Ogg (.ogv), 3GPP (.3gp) and 3GPP2 (.3g2).

Contact Steve Emms (sde@linuxNOSPAMlinks.com) for any questions. Remove NOSPAM from the email address.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
gazoo
gazoo
5 years ago

Man… when I saw this on my feeds I was afraid that you guys were going to give us some bad news: like a site closure. One of my (few) fav sites, great place for software discovery and reviews.

Patrick
Patrick
2 years ago

How do I get the far right side of the tab to show on the screen?