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22+ Years of Women in Tech
Tux Machines was set up over 22 years ago by the partner of the person who had founded PCLinuxOS. Her name was Susan. She had worked in various types of job, including in the private and public sector. She wrote about it.
Susan discovered GNU/Linux and installed many distros. She wrote reviews about them. She became quite "famous" (in relative terms) that way. As far as I'm aware Susan was never receiving online abuse for running this site.
In 2013 Susan let Rianne run the site. Susan was getting remarried and was already running low (or out) of time to look after the site. Updates and additions had become more scarce and sparse. She passed the baton.
Rianne has always enjoyed running this site, but malicious, nasty abuse against her intensified around 2022 or 2023. At that point she had to escalate matters to the police. The police was more or less helpful; at one point it gave her advice on how to tackle criminal abuse from a nasty man from Canada.
The abuse did not stop however. Rianne and this site are subjected to a campaign of hate and misogyny, facilitated by misogynists and racists.
This site is about GNU/Linux, but given the circumstances it also must combat misogyny. Women in tech can only ever feel welcomed if all of us - men included - resist misogyny. █
Image source: Plant on the Brick Wall