linuxoid.ru was a website about free operating systems and an online store for Linux, BSD, and other open-source distribution discs. It ran under the slogan "Penguin in High Flight"; the earliest snapshot of its home page in the web archive dates to May 1, 2001[1]. Both a city directory and a city contest counted the site as part of Nizhny Novgorod Internet: linuxoid.ru was listed in the Nizhny Novgorod site directory on nn.ru, in the "Projects: Computers and Software" section, with a rating of 47.9[3], and it took part in the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote in the "Best Author's Site" category[4]. The surviving copies of the home page name neither the owner nor an address or phone number[1][2].

Library and news: the 2001 site

The early version of the site was above all a reference resource. The menu held the sections "For Partners," "Links," "News," "Jobs," "Club," "Humor," "How to," "Store," "Kylix," and "Forum"[1]. Most of the space was taken up by a collection of Russian-language documentation: general questions and HowTos, "Myths About Linux," the "RuLinux FAQ," materials on installing Mandrake and Slackware, "From DOS to Linux," system tuning and optimization, sound and printing, burning compact discs, working with hardware, XFree86, MySQL, security and viruses, choosing a distribution, and programming (the Kernel HowTo, the Hackers HowTo, "Kylixoid's Corner")[1]. Separately, the site hosted books as downloadable archives: "Installing Linux and First Steps" (261 KB), "The Linux User's Guide" (145 KB), and "The Programmer's Guide" (88 KB)[1].

The software catalog was split into seventeen sections — from graphics and multimedia to emulators, tutorials, and drivers — and the list of distributions included Red Hat Linux 7.0, Linux Mandrake 7.1, 7.2, and RES2001, Black Cat Linux 6.02, Corel Linux SE, ASPLinux, muLinux, FreeBSD 4.2, Solaris 7.0, BeOS 5.0, and Borland Kylix[1]. The site ran a mailing list on Subscribe.Ru[1]. Alongside serious material such as "Linus Torvalds's Latest Interview, Now in Russian," the home page also carried deliberately jokey items: as the home page put it, "Breaking news! Bill Gates now works in Linux OS!"[1].

Disc store: the 2006 catalog

By the mid-2000s the home page had become a store price list, divided into the sections "Linux," "BSD," "Other," "Soft," "Archive," and "Games"[2]. On offer were Mandriva 2006.0, Slackware Linux 10.2, ALT Linux Master 2.4, SuSE Linux 10.0, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Sarge, Ubuntu and Kubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger, Gentoo Linux 2006.0, Fedora Core 5, ASPLinux 11, CentOS 4.3, Scientific Linux 4.2, MOPSLinux 3.1, as well as small builds — Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, VectorLinux, and SystemRescueCd[2]. The BSD section offered FreeBSD from 4.10 to 6.1-BETA2, OpenBSD 3.8, NetBSD 3.0, DragonFly BSD 1.4, PC-BSD, and DesktopBSD; "Other" offered Solaris 10, ReactOS 0.2.8, BeOS 5.1 DANO, and BeOS Zeta 1.1; "Games" offered Doom III for Linux, America's Army, and LinuxCenter compilations[2]. Discs were sold both individually and in sets — up to eight CDs or two DVDs per item[2].

The store greeted its customers informally: as the home page put it, "Dear visitor! Linuxoid welcomes you!"[2]. An order had to be put in the basket, confirmed via a link from an email, and then the buyer would wait for the "parcel within two weeks"[2]. Shipping went out across the country, but with a caveat: "don't order air delivery to Moscow or central Russia — that's for the truly remote regions of our vast Motherland"[2]. Right there was also a warning that the new version of the site "is undergoing testing, so errors are possible," along with a promise to add new distributions and articles every week[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In April 2002, in the "Projects: Computers and Software" section of the Nizhny Novgorod directory, linuxoid.ru held a rating of 47.9 — noticeably lower than its neighbors in the category: the AGDB collection of old games had 5721.33, the "IT Specialists' Club" had 844.23, Intercomp had 603.46, and "Home Networks of Nizhny Novgorod" had 107.42[3]. For how this indicator worked and what it meant for local sites, see Counter.nn.ru and Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, the site was entered under number 195 as "LINUXOID.RU — Penguin in High Flight — a site about free operating systems" in the "Best Author's Site" category[4]. It collected 67 votes by email and none by SMS, finishing sixth among thirty-seven entrants in the category; the winner was "Nizhny Novgorod Extreme on the Internet" with 156 emails[4]. For a site about free software, this was the only public measure of its standing in the city.

How it closed

The surviving materials do not name a closing date. The last snapshot of the home page with substantive content is dated October 14, 2006[2]; a later archived copy turned out to be a blank placeholder page. A check of the domain on August 7, 2026 found no content: linuxoid.ru returns a blank page, and the site about free operating systems no longer exists at that address.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod site directory on nn.ru, section "Projects: Computers and Software", 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)