The Tux Reports Network

A penguin’s guide to our world.

The Tux Reports Network is a 20-year old service intermittently publishing articles about national and international current events.

Purpose

Tux Reports Networks shares descriptions of and information about current events.  The network publishes stories of interest with priority given to primary sources.  The intent is to focus on the facts of events and to minimize speculation and hyperbole.  We’ll leave the interpretation to you.

Background

Many news organizations embrace crowd-sourcing and hyperbole. While this garners immediate attention and linking, the published works do not fit the definition of journalism.  Michael Shudson argued in the book The Sociology of News that journalism and authority are individual based and no longer institution based. Therefore this site is built on a core tenet to verify information and provide sources for further reading.

Why do we use a penguin?

The baby Tux logo is from the original Tux Reports site, a linux news and review site. Honoring the open source movement, and wishing for the free flow of information, Tux Reports Network embraces the view of the penguin.

How many domains are in the network?

As of December 27, 2013, Tux Reports Network owns 189 domains.

As of December 29, 2014, Tux Reports Network owns 187 domains.

How do you know which domains are active?

A dedicated page is now available for the active domains.

Historical Overview

The Tux Reports Network was formally established after bringing together several independent sites originating as far back as 1995. Numerous attempts were made over the years to gather up the websites. This latest version of the network includes users, comments, and forum posts from the major sites but older posts no longer relevant to today’s world have been removed.

1976

In the spring of 1976, Loren and Layne Heiny took a programming class at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. A PDP-10 was shared with Dartmouth.

1979

Loren completed his first computer. The keyboard was carved from wood. After tuning down MIT, Loren headed to Georgia Tech with a “personal computer” under his arm.

1982

Loren completed his first robot, Mr. E.

1987

Ein Stein’s Computers opened in Yuba City, California.

1995

The first website (esc-ca.com) was built as a plain text price list of motherboards and DRAM.

1996

Kevin H. Devin improves esc-ca.com in January by adding a logo and multiple hand-coded HTML pages. We placed an 800 number on the new website a few days later.

Lora, Bob, and Joan Heiny form ESC Technologies.

The esc-ca.com was modified to a customer support website and esc-tech.com, esctechnologies.com, einsteinscomputer.com were registered as sales websites.

esc-ca.com 1996

esc-ca.com 1996 2

1997

Domain name whatisnew.com is registered.

1999

LinuxTests.org was registered. This site name was later changed to KillerTux then Tux Reports.

LinuxTests.org

2002

TuxReports changed to PostNuke midyear. It’s clear the “Where Penguins Fly” was expanded to suggest non-members (visitors) as flightless birds and registration was earning wings.

tuxreports.com - 2002

2003

TabletQuestions.com domain name was registered on September 21, 2003.

November 2003: Loren starts blogging as Incremental Blogger.

2004

The Tablet PC Comparison Chart was published.

Tablet PC Post was established.

tabletpcpost.com

2005

A Tablet PC Message Board Discussing News, Reviews, and Commentary

Members: 1,442

Threads: 4,409

Posts: 17,771

2006

  • TabletQuestions.com forum expanded while Tablet PC Questions blog started
  • TabletQuestions and MobilePCQuestions were merged.
  • UMPC Buzz started.

2007

  • Started the year with “Threads: 52,318, Posts: 262,632, Members: 3,582”
  • Ended the year with over 7,000 registered members (several member purges removed inactive members)
  • NotebookQuestions added to the domain list.
  • Over 5 million visitors found the site in 2007.

2008

Tablet PC Questions, TabletQuestions, and UMPC Buzz were merged into Technology Questions.

2009

October 20, 2009: Site converted to WordPress, converting 800+ stories written in vbDrupal was done manually and a few mySQL scripts.

2010

Installed Pligg 1.03. This CMS was the front page for about a month and moved to a directory in February.
Installed BuddyPress to test adding a community to the website.

July 25, 2010: Loren died of colon cancer.

2011

  • Forum layout changed to match major categories defined in the WordPress area.
  • BuddyPress techstream becomes major area.
  • Added “Submit a Guest Post” section in June.
  • Q & A section tested in May, expansion started in June.
  • Merging of ALL Questions sites onto Technology Questions began in June.

December 27, 2011 we changed the forums from vBulletin to XenForo software and installed the WordPress to XF bridge.

2012

Built the network using subdomains of tuxreportsnetwork.com. Merged 123 websites into this network.

2013

The network built on TigerTech servers (subdomains) was moved to Digital Ocean. More websites were combined to remove redundancies. The network was changed from subdomains to subdirectories. Not all domains are housed on the Digital Ocean droplets.

March 2013

Moved TabletPCPost into the network on March 26, 2013.

August 2013

Server testing on a Digital Ocean droplet started.

Greater details are in the Tux Reports Network 2.0 thread.

December 2013

Moved to NGINX rather than Apache.

2014

January: XenWord site and sales started. Shop built with WooCommerce.

April: WordPres 3.9 installed

July: XenForo 1.3.4, XenForo Resources 1.3, and XenReviews Beta updated

December: Site moved to four servers: nginx.tuxreports.com, fpm1.tuxreports.com, fpm2.tuxreports.com, and mysql.tuxreports.com; Site upgraded to WordPress 4.1 and XenForo 1.4.3.

2015

Our 20th year.

May 3, 2015
Moved the network to MattW Services.

More announcements may be found in the forum.