Today I published my 300th Linux news story! Having reached this landmark and approaching Linux Loop’s one year anniversary, I decided to share some stats and a quick look at the future of this site.

First, some stats (all stats are according to Google Analytics):

• This site has received over 120,000 unique visitors and almost 190,000 page views.
• The site has been visited from every country in North America and Central America, all but one country in South America, every major country in Europe (meaning every country that you can easily see on a map), Australia, and many countries in Africa and Asia.
• Over 50% of visits to this site came from Windows machines (sheesh…) with Linux in the #2 spot at not quite 40%.
• Firefox is the top browser used to visit this site at around 74% with IE at around 12%.

Now, a quick look at the future:

Currently, this site uses a combination of static HTML and WordPress. I like WordPress a lot, but it is not designed for sites that are more than just a blog and trying to manage a combination of static HTML and two WP installations is really, really annoying. My idea is to move to a more full-featured CMS (content management system) such as Drupal that could handle the whole site.

This would largely just mean a new look for the site, but it could also mean some change in content, since it would be much easier to publish non-news articles. If I decide to go ahead and move to Drupal, I will probably put up a poll about what type of content you are most interested in (news, tutorials, reviews, comedy, anything else you can think of.) If you have any thoughts, of course, I am happy to hear them now, too, though.

In short, the site is continuing to grow, though it is still relatively small, and the future looks great!

Hope you continue to enjoy the site and the content!

I am reviewing OpenSuse 11 right now! It is over, but you can still see the replay.

On an earlier post, I discussed the idea of doing a live, interactive distribution review. Well, we are doing it. Here are the details:

I will be using a live distro review. I will be installing and starting to use OpenSuse 11 and posting my thoughts - live. Hopefully others will join me and post their thoughts as well.

The event will be taking place on Friday, June 20 (the day after OpenSuse 11 is released) at 3:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time (12:30 PM PDT.) To find out what time that is for you, click here.

You can find a link to the event at live.linuxloop.com or go directly to the event page.

Please let me know if you plan on coming!

We are doing a live group distro review of OpenSuse 11 on Friday June 20 at 3:30 PM EDT.

Most reviews work something like this: a reviewer plays with a product or piece of software and writes what they think of it. Particularly with something like a Linux distribution where the artwork can be a big piece of it and where one person can have some random issue with their hardware, the old method of reviews does not really work very well. That is why I am planning, if there is enough interest, to try a new type of review. I am planning to live blog an upcoming distro release (probably OpenSuse 11) and while I am installing and playing with the distro, viewers (hopefully you) can also install and play with the distro and give their comments, which can then be published into the live blog.

The idea is that the distro will not just be reviewed by one person, but by as many people as wish to contribute. Instead of publishing a review and then being told why I am wrong, I can be told why I am wrong, or right, in real time.

As I said before, though, this will only work if there is enough interest. If you would be interested in participating in a live, group review of OpenSuse 11 on June 19 or the day after, please vote below. You don’t have to commit, I just want a general idea of the interest level.