Do you have a favorite OS or distribution with an upcoming release? We’d like you to do a review and publish it on OSNews. We can usually contact the company and get you an official copy of the release to use for your review (usually ahead of its official release, and mostly true for Linux distros). Aren’t comfortable with your writing skills? As long as you’re comfortable doing the review, an OSNews editor can assist you in making your observations readable. If you’re interested, read more.We’d expect you to do a clean install or upgrade of the OS software, give your feeback on the install process, make note of changes since the previous version, take some screenshots, evaluate the benefits of the new features and capabilities, and perhaps give your impression after using the OS for a couple of days, if that’s possible.
Reviews don’t have to be long, as long as they’re thorough. We’re interested in reviews of new versions of major OSes, major releases of niche or hobby OSes, reviews of groundbreaking software that’s important in the alternative OS world, reviews of new computer-like devices (e.g. new PVRs, internet refrigerators, game consoles), or anything else that might interest OSNews readers.
We’d also like to publish book reviews. We can get free books for review, but in order to keep on good terms with the publishers, we have to be very sure that if they send us a book, it is read and reviewed.
If you’re not a native English speaker, or you’re just a bad writer, don’t worry. If you write the review as best you can, I’ll edit it, or even re-write it for you before it goes live.
If you need some ideas, some upcoming releases are: Mandrake, Fedora, SuSe, Panther, Zeta, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Java Desktop System, while recent releases involve Lycoris and Windows Server 2003. If you’re interested in one of those, or any other, please email us as soon as possible so we can make arrangements to have an evaluation copy of the software sent to you, while other OSes are free to download (if you don’t have the bandwidth to do so, we can burn and send a CD to you).
If you have any questions about OSNews’ general submission policy you can read it here. It is highly suggested you read this document before you submit your review.
Note: To ensure real-world testing, operating systems should be installed and reviewed on real partitions and not via runtime engines/emulators like VMWare, Bochs, VirtualPC or Mac-On-Linux (except if you are reviewing the emulators themselves of course).
and get a free version of Panther because I want to write an Article on it!!!
ohhh sweet 🙂
I would need a Macintosh to with it, too. I don’t think that’s asking too much. 😉
Sorry, I don’t think we can get press copies in time for Panther, but I suppose we can for Linux distros. I modified the story to reflect this detail.
However, after you get your hands on Panther, we would love to host your review.
so that is a plus for me 😛
the only problem is that I don’t think I would have the time to write up a nice review, I don’t want to be a slouch and submit a half ass write-up.
well, I will attempt to do a write up when I get my copy of Panther…I get half off any way for being a poor student 🙂
Sounds nice. Whilst I could be interested, I wonder if this offer is for residents in the U.S.A. only? I’m living in Belgium, Europe. Not sure if it’s handy if OSNews needs to send over packs overseas?
Also, would that need to be a ‘desktop’ review? As far as Linux is concerned, I have some experience with server setups, but rather limited experience with Desktops.
Also, could you perhaps give an idea on what kind of “deadline” we ought to write a review? Meaning: if you give me a couple of weeks, no problem. If I e.g. only get 8 days, I can’t promise you’ll get it on schedule…
> I wonder if this offer is for residents in the U.S.A. only
I don’t think so.
>Also, would that need to be a ‘desktop’ review?
No. Depends on what the reviewer has experience with.
>As far as Linux is concerned, I have some experience with server setups
Perfect.
>could you perhaps give an idea on what kind of “deadline” we ought to write a review?
From the moment you receive the package, you have 2-3 weeks to write the review. However, if you get a world exclusive copy, you will need to swift and deliver the article in 2-3 days.
Sounds like osnews will have some good quality reviews coming up
Trev, that’s a nonsense comment.
It are, in the end, the users that matter, they actually USE the OS. It wouldn’t be fair, for example, to let Lycoris be reviewed by a linux diehard.
On the other hand, it also doesn’t make sense to let a Linux nono review Slack.
So, I hope OSNews sends the right OS to the right kinda user.
By the way, my email is on the way
Well, if you encourage a SuSe diehard to review version 9, I wonder if you’ll get a positive review ?
That’s like asking Bill Gates to do a review for Office 2003 
It’s a nice idea. Hope we can see some good reviews in the future!
Too bad, if osnews.com were a german website (of cource in german language) i would love to do some reviews (SuSE). But my english is much to terrible
And i’m only a home user without professionell experience.
Does this mean we doesn’t see any more reviews from you, Eugenia?
Yeah, or your local Refrigirator Vendor review the new fridge running the Linux 2.6-freeze-0.33
>Does this mean we doesn’t see any more reviews from you, Eugenia?
Pretty much, yes. I don’t have the time anymore to do full reviews in a time-scheduled form. Last March I did 3 big reviews in 5 days (red hat, suse, mdk) and it was hell. Same last October when I did 3 world exlcusive reviews in 2 weeks (because the 3 big linux distros want to release on the same dates pretty much). Too much work.
So, from now on, I will only review OSes that I just install and have a play for myself without having to answer back to companies and their marketing departments.
For example, I will be doing a MorphOS article next week, and maybe a Zeta one in the future and maybe a Panther one (just maybe). But I don’t really see doing much more, I prefer going out more. As I have said many times, OSNews is just a hobby for me.
I guess the OSNews staff can distinguish fair reviews from fanboyesque ones.
Hey… I wouldn’t mind writing a review of Zeta if I can cross post it to BeGroovy. I don’t really have the connections or resources to go about getting the prerelease of zeta… but I do have the hardware and knowledge (and ability) to review it.
Anyway, let me know if you guys want me to have a go.
say write more stuff about Apple and maybe less about MS but i know it would get no where with the first and get double helpings of the second.
>if I can cross post it to BeGroovy.
Sorry, no cross-posting, at OSNews we have made clear we only post “original” articles from third parties. At least not for the first 30 days (and after this time, only after special arrangement with us).
I would love to do a thorough apple review too, But it seems that everybody allready volunteered.
I would love to get a good feeling of it, what the unix underpinnings are like, what the HIG is doing etc.
I am always ready to get a new hard disk and do a linux review too.
I’ve sent you an email and i hope you’ll respond.
I’d be willing to review Zeta, Sun’s Desktop OS, or the new SUSE, as well as any linux based PDA.
My background includes experimenting with various distributions perviously.
I have sent my email to you regarding this.
I would do a review of any MacOS X version if someone provided me with a free Apple machine
so, will you still do Mac World SF?
I love it when you go and send back updates in a day and a half…really nice reading.
anyone have a mainframe at home to review the next release of IBM’s linux for mainframe?
>so, will you still do Mac World SF?
Yeah, I guess so.
I have a tiPowerbook G4/400 which I currently dual boot between OSX and Mandrake PPC.
I would be willing to install Mandrake’s latest PPC release, or some other companies PPC version, and write a review.
So what happens when someone sends you a very long but utterly crappy or a very biased review? Would you reject it?
My main fear in this case is that random people will be sending in random ramblings about random things and OSNews would publish them. Many articles by contributors in the past have been somewhat “raw”. Mystileef’s article about user-friendly Linux for example. He made much better points about the subject over e-mail.
Hey, here’s an idea. How about paying people for articles? Or if somebody contributes N amount of articles, they get a free OSNews t-shirt? Or a free subscription? I’d go for the shirt personally.
OSNews needs good writers and that’d be one way to attract them.
> I would be willing to install Mandrake’s latest PPC release, or some other companies PPC version, and write a review.
Make sure you email us then in the email address provided in the article. don’t just post here, because we won’t have you file for review.
>How about paying people for articles?
The reviewers in most cases they will be getting a full/retail version of the OS, so that is a payment in its own. In cases that the OS is free and the reviewer have downloaded it by him/herself, we might schedule something up, like a free subscription or something.
I think that this is a great idea. This is a fabulous way to get this software out to the people who actually use it and to get solid/unbiased reviews of products. I think that the companies who make the software should consider doing this same thing. It may not always produce results that they want to hear, but would make their products a lot better. (in the long run)
Anyway, GREAT IDEA OSNEWS.
> This is a fabulous way to get this software out to the people who actually use it and to get solid/unbiased reviews of products.
Hmmm…
I currently have a dual boot redhat/winXP on 1 hard drive. When I was setting up the partitions I tried making an unused one I could mess around with OS in. However I was stuck, I reached some sort of arbitrary partition number limit due to the 2 OSs and boot sectors…. Is there a way around this? A viable option is the purchase of an additional harddrive, but at the time I was setting up my comp it wasnt.
Hahahaha… Okay, maybe a little bit over-zealous, but I think that this idea is a solid one. It allows people to review and write about these products and actually get to keep the products they wrote about as payment. Maybe, there will be some strong bias towards these products, by some people, but oh well… I like to read articles that show good and bad points of software before I buy myself.
To all the nay-sayers, I feel that by emailing OSNews, you are in a way, ‘applying’ for the position. A person who sends a short email saying “Dude! I will review Macs! Send me the G5 and I will review it!!!” will most likely NOT be accepted.
I am sure they aren’t going to accept everyone that applies, but I am sure that they people they do pick will be intelligent folk.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have applied.
What I would like to read about, are reviews about corporate deployments. Places where Open Source based OS’s are being used in concrete in small, medium or even large businesses.
As for an example, check out this paper, which isn’t exactly a review, but gives about an idea where I’m heading.
http://www.turku.fi/tieto/Linux05052003ENG.pdf
We hear more and more about companies switching to Linux. It would be a good thing to read about the concrete stuff: how they did it. Not in the very technical detail of course (altough I wouldn’ bother) but at least concrete enough to give ideas, to share the knowledge and maybe to give some background on convincing the suits 😉
Anyway, existing papers like that are difficult to find. I you know any, don’t hesitate to post the links!
you will need a MBR with a boot loader, i assume you are using the redhat boot loader for both xp and redhat. you only limit with partitions is 4 primary or 3 primary and 1 extended. I would look into getting / setting up lilo, grub, freebsd, or any other MBR boot loader. there should be a setting in red hat for this.
good luck
Mr. Bagdadbob of —.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com wrote:
>anyone have a mainframe at home to review the next release >of IBM’s linux for mainframe?
Unfortunatly, it doesn’t run on the old XT/370s or 7437s so no reviews on the actual hardware for me!
However, I’ve been thinking about doing one for an instance of mainframe linux on Hercules when I get a bit more spare hardware…
Yours truly,
Jeffrey BOulier
OSNews is awesome and I read it every day, but also check out Techrepublic as they often have real world Linux stuff – above and beyond reviews.
Disclaimer: I write a lot of stuff for Techrepublic on a freelance basis, but DO actually read the site daily.
Is there any restrictions/recommendations about the form of the review? I mean should it be in HTML-on-one-page, or HTML pages, or PDF or OpenOffice also accepted? Or anything else “syntax rule” we should pay attention during making the reviews? (I know they can be converted to each other w/o much problem, but it’s better to know it from the begining, eg i think HTML pages would be good/conviece for me, but is it okay for you too?
Read our article guidelines as linked from the article. It is all explained there.
My only computer currently is a pentium3 450mhz, with a very flakey motherboard and video card(read: overheating and random freezes). SO I don’t think I could possibly write a fair review.
Too bad though, I’m a decent amateur writer and OS enthusiast.
My email is on the way.
B. Smith
I’d love to do a review of the Java Enterprise Desktop System (previously codenamed Mad Hatter), and the slant I would like to put on it is a usability comparison to Sun’s Gnome 2.0 distribution for Solaris. Would it be possible to get a copy for this purpose?
My main fear in this case is that random people will be sending in random ramblings about random things and OSNews would publish them.
…which would lead to too much random randomness
I am a hugh fan of Xandros, and I would like to try Lindows (don’t flame). Either of those distros I would write a review for. Contact me via email if you want to set something up. I live in Missouri, USA.
> Contact me via email if you want to set something up
No, you email us in the email address provided in the article if you want to set something up. We had more than 90 requests so far, and we are filing them up. So, if you want to be among these people, you need to email us, not reply here.
E,
I am currently investigating the effifacy of replacing our redhat 7.3+ servers with slackware 9.1 and writing up a report of my impressions for my boss.
If you are interested I can submit a copy to OSNews as well.
The main focus will be on management and maintenence of the system, reliability in a server environment, community support, and custom package creation.
I know there have been a number of slackware articles recently, but none have really been from the custom server-centric perspective that I require.
Q.
Hi Quinkin, I can only encourage you to submit this kind of article!
Is there a minimum review / article to do per month or is it free ?
i use Linux for a while but i am only user, not guru :p, is it ok ???
Slackware is a brilliant Distribution. Not as flashy as some of the other “majors” but I find it to be much more robust and efficient. Even as a desktop….use Dropline Gnome. Its is absolutely perfect.
-NixerX
the last thing i want to read is repeated review after review of linux distributions.
Does Zeta fall into this? I would love to do a recview of that OS.
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com
I currently use yellowdog/OSX on the mac and suse 8.2/jamd 0.0.6 on the pc
I would like to do a side by side review between ppc and x86 version of the same distro, suse for example
A lot of reviews I read always seem to end with the installation and all they do is tell you how good or bad the installer is.
For example reviews of FreeBSD and Debian always seem to focus on the ease of installation or lack of it and not the real day to day usage of the OS like stability, package management, ease of configuration, upgrading, custom kernel compiling, etc.
e.g. A review of FreeBSD might say “FreeBSD didn’t configure my soundcard,printer or X for me.” Of course FreeBSD doesn”t configure anything ‘for you’, you have to do it yourself.
Could we maybe see a bit about the quality of support.
E.g. How helpful is the documentation, how useful are the mailing lists, what are the best forums.
Also the quality of the packages available e.g. does the distribution alter the software making it harder to use or unstable or use stupid compilation options.
I agree with you.
A lot of reviews tend to stick to the stereotypes for too long. They ramble on about, for example, Debian being very hard/easy to install, and then the pro’s/cons about the installer, and then tey add one paragraph about the actual usage of the OS.
I think the text is still a little vague… it sounds like “Hey we can give you a free full copy of XYZ and everything you have to do is writing a review!”. Hmmm… I sent a mail anyway.