Web review: One site to link you to all kinds of Linux information

– by Tina Gasperson –
I remember visiting the LinuxLinks page a while back, and it was OK. I went back today, and a wonderful transformation has taken place. I’m going to use this site every day to locate all kinds of information about Linux.I guess it really has been a long time since I visited LinuxLinks, because according to the site, it was redesigned back in November 2000. They did a good job. Knowing the kind of work that goes into link aggregation, I can tell you that it took a lot of effort to put together such a vast collection of information, with very few bad links. They’re keeping up with what is a never-ending job.

On the front page, 24 categories of links, all very much related to Linux, greet the visitor. As you click through, each category is sub-divided further. For instance, “Publications” is further divided into “Humor,” “Non-English Language,” “Online,” and “Printed.”

Since I’m an interested party, I clicked through to the online publications sections, and there reside no less than 46 links to Web sites dedicated to reporting about Linux and Open Source. I was sad to see that NewsForge wasn’t among the chosen — but hey, we’re still newer than a lot of the sites.

Here are the other categories: Beginners, Books, Community, Companies, Distributions, Docs, Embedded, Events, Foreign, Hardware, Kernel, Links, Networking, Newsgroups, PDA, Ports, Projects, Reviews, Security, Software, Training, Usergroups, and Web. Underneath these are hundreds and thousands of links.

LinuxLinks has added some cool functionality too, like the ability to bookmark individual links and/or entire categories, and you can customize the look of the front page, picking and choosing which links and information you’d like to see when you’re logged in.

You can recommend links, modify existing links, and search the entire site to find exactly what you’re looking for. There is also a nice page for newbies, actually a part of sister site FirstLinux, that answers questions like, “Where do I start,” “What is the best Linux distribution,” and “How do I download Linux?”

LinuxLinks is one of a small handful of very useful sites that don’t get enough attention. This one might even be worthy of a “home page” designation.