Some of you may remember a previous blog entry I penned that looked at Linuxworldexpo.com. In that entry, I discussed the fact that the website linuxworldexpo.com for the LinuxWorld Expo 2006, one of the largest Linux trade shows in the world, is powered by Windows Server.
Some comments on this article when it hit the newswires at Lxer were that it was spotted previously by a site member. I revisit some articles from time to time just to clean up appearance and layout (since I’ve migrated site themes, been doing this quite a bit) and I noticed that Linuxworldexpo.com isn’t the only website that is powered by Windows. LinuxWorld leaves many of its sites to be powered by Bill and the gang:
- Linuxworldexpo.co.uk (previously reported by theregister)
- Linuxworldexpo.com (netcraft report)
- linuxworldexpo.com.au (netcraft report)
- linuxworld.idg.se (netcraft report)
- linuxworldchina.com (netcraft report)
- linuxworld.dk (netcraft report)
- Linuxworldsummit.com (netcraft report)
Some of these sites above aren’t live… but most of them are from the same netblock, Level 3 Communitcations, Inc. Some side info to note: Level 3 is having SEC problems currently and the Yahoo Finance Boards are a hoppin with various messages with some predicting a huge fall and others comparing it to Worldcom. Now back to our subject. We’ve identified the netblock, but let’s get a bit deeper and find out other information.
A quick “jwhois linuxworldexpo.com” yields the following information:
| Registrant: International Data Group, Inc. (DOM-373431) 5 Speen Street Framingham MA 01701 US Domain Name: linuxworldexpo.com Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com Administrative Contact: Created on…………..: 1998-Sep-30. Domain servers in listed order: DNS1.EMARKMONITOR.COM MarkMonitor.com – The Leader in Corporate Domain Management |
A quick lookup on markmonitor.com and we see that it’s not really a host per se…but a domain management service provider. I did a quick search for Linux on their site which yields no results. This quick search doesn’t really tell us if LinuxWorld has a choice in the matter of hosting…it seems they’re given a platform on which to run via MarkMonitor.com through the Level 3 netblock. Taking a look at NetworkWorld, their parent company, we find a Linux Host? That’s a bit odd. Their old parent company IDG.com was always running on Windows but it seems they should have a choice for themselves (Linux and Windows hosting platforms) since their parent company is powered by Linux right? Are they letting their services purchased expire? Are we set to see mad changes for Linuxworld domains? Who knows. We can only comment on the current.
So one would hope that LinuxWorld would have the ability to ‘choose’ what platform to run on. It seems that this may not be the case. As stated, some of these sites don’t resolve aka they have no public face and resolve to nothing. If you’re an avid Linux enthusiast and think that any Linux News site should ‘walk the walk’ when they ‘talk the talk’ then LinuxWorld might be one of the places you avoid…at least until they can show that they deserve to wear the Linux name by hosting on Linux. Afterall, what would Microsoft.com hosted on Linux be? A laughing stock one could bet.
I do recall a time when LinuxWorld was one of the only magazines and sources for enterprise Linux news. It seems they’ve gone downhill quite a bit…according to alexa.com, their traffic has dropped through the floor during the past year. Not only that, but since the relaunch around the first part of June 2006 in which they were put under new ownership from Network World, they’ve had little activity on their website. For example, look at their <sarcasm>wildly active forums</sarcasm>…spammers don’t even try hard to post there…and why would they? Is anyone reading it?
Interestingly enough, macworldexpo.com is also running on Windows, which is silly to me as well. Oh well, life is full of conundrums right? Perhaps LinuxWorld being powered by Windows is meant to be? Who am I kidding! Roast those turncoats! lol.
Devnet
It means that almost all big linux portals are held on windows servers?! Hm, strange and funny
You won’t feel so bad after you check out this story about the Office 2007 demo from Microsoft running on Linux: http://www.kerika.com/blog.html...
As the brand VP for LinuxWorld at IDG World Expo, I thought I’d give you an explanation for our operating system usage.
IDG World Expo runs a bunch of events, most prominently Macworld, and has developed various IT systems to run our events. LinuxWorld uses the same systems, many of which are legacy and pre-date the development of LinuxWorld in 1999: this includes the proprietary database-driven expo website linuxworldexpo.com.
However, where we have a choice we go Linux: including the registration site behind linuxworldexpo.com, run by RCS.
Our news portal, linuxworld.com, is now run by Network World (not our parent, but a sister division of IDG), on a LAMP stack. (Prior to June 2006 that url and the LinuxWorld Magazine name was licensed to Sys-Con.)
Like most of the IT shops of our attendees, we (IDG World Expo) run a heterogeneous environment. But we (LinuxWorld) do choose Linux when we have a choice.
MK
Thanks very much for your input on this. I often get curious about such things. For example, earlier this year when MS Office 2007 was hosted on a Linux server…I found that amusing.
Thanks again for clearing this up for us.