Is there any real reason why people need to remember what subforums exist or what order they are in? Random-ish seems fine to me.

Hi, tuxdev.
The answer to the first is that several official vendor support forums are hosted here, some paying, some not.

The second part is that it easier for new folks to find a forum if they were in a recognizable order. When one has a problem, one doesn't like to navigate through a series of phone button pushes, or have an additional problem to solve by scanning all the way through the sub-forum list ... cheers, makyo

As mentioned - not a single one is paying. I have no idea where this perception is coming from. We have never taken money to create a distro forum and we have absolutely no plans to. As for the order, we have no plans to change it at this time.

--jeremy

Hi, jeremy.
Apparently I read too much into this:
Best wishes ... cheers, makyo

I'll clarify that in the thread.

How's that?

Regarding "dead distros", in order to minimize the chances of newbies selecting a long-dead, defunct distro (in particular "Redhat 9", aka "Shrike") could either the "Redhat" sub-forum be relabelled to "RHEL", and/or could the LQ ISO page for "Redhat" include a sentence or two explaining that it has been succeeded by Fedora?

For readers who may not already be familiar with Redhat's history, what used to known as Redhat Linux was split back in 2003 into two separate entities: the non-free, commercial Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product which is mainly marketed to corporations, and Fedora Core (FC) which can be downloaded for free, and for all practical purposes has replaced the original RH9 project. Furthermore, "Redhat 9" officially hit its end-of-life in April 2004, and hasn't been officially supported since then. In its day it was a leading distro, but today, I would recommend that people be actively discouraged from using it (hence my sig block) due to the fact that it is obsolete and unsupported.

None of this is meant to be taken as criticism of Redhat in any way, but my concern is that due to Redhat's prominence in the Linux market and its brand recognition level, when newbies decide to take the Linux plunge and are ready to download their very first distro, chances are pretty good they will want to choose something they've heard of before, and they'll choose what appears to be the latest version of that distro -- in other words, Redhat 9 (indeed, as of today RH9 is the second-most downloaded distro over the past 30 days on LQ ISO). Newbies might not any idea at all that RH9 is so horribly out of date, and as a result they unknowingly end up doing themselves a huge disservice by having their first impressions of Linux be shaped by such an old and out-of-date distro. Overall, I would hate to think that someone who's decided to check out Linux ends up concluding that it's seriously overhyped and just not ready for prime-time due to the severe lack of features in RH9... RH9 doesn't include any version of Firefox, has crippled mp3 support, probably will have trouble dealing with USB devices, etc. Just my 2 cents

BTW the sticky thread is excellent.

I'd like to throw my vote in for alphabetized ordering of distros. This should save time for people posting new threads, even if a few seconds. Add that few seconds up for every user, then multiply it by a few years worth of posts. Human time is valuable, let's not waste it.

Hi, XavierP.
That states the situation clearly. Thanks for doing that ... cheers, makyo

No probs - clarity is all

I beg to differ. We could probably get into a large political type debate about how human time is valuable but we'll save it for the General forum.

But if anyone hadn't noticed, the subforums are listed on the main forum page. There are currently 25 specific distro forums, they all fit perfectly under the description. I can scan the list in probably less than a second as most people who are fluent with English no longer need to read words but you just know it by how it looks. So to me, if someone is going to post a thread to ask a question, they could save time by looking from the main forum page and link to the specific distro they want to post their thread in. And I also believe that when someone posts, they should take the few extra seconds or minutes to post it properly to do it right, because even if your using Redhat, your question could be better suited in the Networking forum.. or Software forum.. etc.

I'll have to admit, the Distributions forum is probably the only forum where there are rarely any requests to have a thread moved cause it was not suitable for that given forum.

I vote to keep it how it is. Alphabetical order would make no difference in my opinion.

I vote to keep it the same. That probably due in part becuase I pretty much have the location of my favorite forums memorized. Also even if it was alphabatized how much time would you save. A mere two to three seconds. Not a big gain for the work required.

IMO, you shouldn't be so arrogant as to think everyone has these same practiced skills as yourself. (word scanning and being fluent in English)

Basically, "Even if its for a better tomorrow, I don't want it because it will temporarily push me out of my comfort zone". No offense, but that sounds like the same reason most people still use Microsoft.

I want this change for the same reason that I come to LQ and make posts. I'm willing to sacrifice a little discomfort for myself today, to help out many in the future.

Hence the reason I stated fluent in English portion.. it's not being arrogant, it's just the truth as there have been studies that claim if you can read any language, once you learn how to pronounce a word by reading it, the mind recognizes it by just simply looking at the word.

I don't see a reason to alphabetize the list, it wouldn't save anyone any more time than those that actually should take the time to post in the most appropiate forum, which it seems oh so many do cause they don't carefully read the forum they are in, or just click the first one they see in the list anyways.. trust me, being a moderator here for over 5 years, you start to notice a particular pattern in behavior. Placing the distro's in order would gain nothing but rather make Jeremy lose a minute of his own precious time because some members are picky in the looks of a forum..

You claim it wouldn't save "anyone" any time. I claim it would save lots of people time.

Personally, I'm mainly trying to speak up for the elderly members. (A part of our community who are rarely even thought of.) In many cases, they simply cannot 'scan' words at half the speed of someone younger. Even worse, sometimes having to go over the list twice or more.

OTOH, Elderly people are usually quite capable of recognizing patterns, and could easily recognize an alphabetized list. Alphabetizing the distros would be a gain for everyone, but I think it would help the elderly the most.