Video Linux Voice is a New Magazine for Linux Users — On Paper (Video) 72
Video no longer available.
This is an interview with Graham Morrison, who is one of four people behind the shiny-new Linux Voice magazine, which is printed on (gasp) paper. Yes, paper, even though it's 2014 and a lot of people believe the idea of publishing a physical newspaper or magazine is dead. But, Graham says, when you have a tight community (like Linux users and developers) you have an opportunity to make a successful magazine for that community. This is a crowdfunded venture, through Indiegogo, where they hoped to raise £90,000 -- but ended up with £127,603, which is approximately $214,288 as of this video's publishing date. So they have a little capital to work with. Also note: these are not publishing neophytes. All four of the main people behind Linux Voice used to work on the well-regarded Linux Format magazine. Graham says they're getting subscribers and newsstand sales at a healthy rate, so they're happily optimistic about their magazine's future. (Here's an alternate video link)
Marketing geniuses (Score:4, Funny)
These Einsteins sure know their audience!
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A paper magazine. How quaint! I guess it appeals to the hipsters who buy their music on vinyl?
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No it doesn't. Ever heard of atoms?
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No it doesn't. Ever heard of atoms?
Processor speed has nothing to do with resolution (Planck lengths). Atoms? No, you need to ARM yourself for the future of Linux.
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Re:Marketing geniuses (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly I miss the paper magazine thing.
Yes by all objective measures it's an inferior way to distribute and access data, but much like watching television vs streaming/on demand, it has it's charms and nuances that haven't been reproduced digitally.
Linux Voice specifically doesn't sound like my cup of tea based on reading the snippets on their site, but I can see where they might find an audience.
Re:Marketing geniuses (Score:4, Insightful)
I cancelled my subscription to another Linux magazine when they dropped paper. I figure I get fresher news from my RSS feeds and more up-to-date and more detailed technical info from blogs and project websites.
I truly do love my tablet for reading fiction and even the occasional reference manual, but the ability to randomly flip through a dead-tree magazine and idly learn about something that may someday become important is something I treasure and an e-reader just doesn't do it for me.
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Is that true, or is it really about some old people not being to adapt to newer and better technologies? Printing on dead trees and sending them to people via snail-mail just so they can get a nostalgic feeling is terribly inefficient. Magazines don't even offer basic features like moving pictures or keyword-search.
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It's not a matter of adaption, it's a matter of, as you said, nostalgia.
And it goes way beyond the media itself. A magazine as an information source plays much differently than the internet.
If there's a market of people willing to pay for the nostalgia benefit, this could work. As in this context it's ultimately a luxury item (similar to a beer or a vacation), any arguments about wastefulness and inefficiency become silly.
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Honestly I miss the paper magazine thing.
Yes by all objective measures it's an inferior way to distribute and access data, but much like watching television vs streaming/on demand, it has it's charms and nuances that haven't been reproduced digitally.
Linux Voice specifically doesn't sound like my cup of tea based on reading the snippets on their site, but I can see where they might find an audience.
My local (provincial government) library carries two Linux magazines. One from the UK (A4 paper size) and the second from France( in French and also A4 size) I look forward to reading both. The one from France has a very large readership and produces "specials", which are add-on publications that can be described as books. For example, a special about python. We are not looking at 9 pages, but 90. we are not looking at overviews, but indepth use and examples.
the library maintains the back issues.
The Eng
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I like the *IDEA* of Linux, mind you. But actually installing it and using it is just too much.
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These Einsteins sure know their audience!
That also goes for the author of this submission: An Adobe Flash video about a Linux Magazine, when Adobe no longer makes Flash updates for Linux?
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And their logistics. I'm still wondering how they solved the "we need to distribute this magazine to people all around the world at acceptable costs" as well.
Already there are forks and bickering (Score:2)
And it just launched!
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Linux Voice Mint is better!!
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You subscribe to Linux Voice? Those sellouts? The real Linux community subscribes to Voice of Linux.
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I only subscribe to Linux Vorbis.
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Unfortunately, Voice of Linux only has versions for Windows 8 and OS X Mavericks.
useful given my recent experience with the linux (Score:2, Funny)
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to i
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It's almost as if their post is facetious...
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This troll is at least 10 years old. Kinda appropriate given the article really!
While we are off topic, I just gave beta a legit try. Still hate it. Main page is much better, I'll give them that, but the comments page still sucks.
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I still don't understand why they're so hell-bent on eliminating the ability to follow older discussion threads in the comments section. Am I missing something? Is taking away our ability to see replies to our old comments somehow such a vital fucking part of Dice's new marketing strategy that it must be defended with their very lives if necessary?
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Obvious ignorant (as in not knowing) M$ shill -
Volunteer project - professional full fledged development team
lacks support for any type of journaled filesystem...
I don't have to show any more, this AC is an obvious M$ paid shill.
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Just re-read & noticed this - I'm surprised I missed it before...
> having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming
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This is an old troll. If you google snippets of it, you'll see it has been posted on a variety of sites going back to like 2002.
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Yeah, anybody knows that for kernel programming in 2014, you code in Open Office Macro.
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Troll? He's a comedian, and a pretty good one!
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Just re-read & noticed this - I'm surprised I missed it before...
> having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming
Especially since 8 years before WIn2K would place him someplace around VB3, and SMP was supported around NT 3.5 that way before this. And Reiserfs did exist at theat time. XFS and JFS were already available albeit as patches, and that filesystems technically are not supported in the kernel in either Linux or Windows. Or at the time Fortune 500 companies were using mostly mainframes and Suns for servers.
Someone should tell Satya you "get what you pay for" and tell him to pay more for their trolls. This guy
Awesome interview... (Score:1)
Too Expensive (Score:3)
Way too expensive, even in the UK.
I would be interested but I can't afford to get one way communication that doesn't compete with the utilitarian Internet for 100 pounds a year.
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Most computing/games magazines in the UK are expensive nowadays.
5.99 UK Pounds is a lot of money for a 116 page magazine, but it gives a higher per-page value than Linux Magazine (100 pages for 5.99) and Linux Format (100 pages for 6.49).
Linux Voice is a good magazine, though it has distribution issues. You can only find it in the town/city WH Smiths, rather than the railway stations where I buy most of my magazines. It's also difficult to find a copy with an attached coverdisc, since the glue they use is a
Not enough? (Score:3)
So
Linux Magazine [linux-magazine.com]
Linux Format [linuxformat.com]
Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com]
Linux User and Developer [linuxuser.co.uk]
Ubuntu User [ubuntu-user.com]
weren't enough paper Linux magazines?
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Most of those are European magazines. Your comparison and point is stupid.
Sysadmin Magazine (Score:1)
can't buy a #1 (Score:4, Informative)
There's so much third-party crap required on their website that I cannot buy a #1. Too bad. I like print, but won't expose my systems to the unknown (beyond tracking) consequences of off-site APIs.
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Sorry to hear that. We use Tictail for our shop, a Swedish company that focuses on small businesses. It's not evil. We'd like to handle payments ourselves (that's the plan at some point) but it's a huge job, and we're just a small team focusing on the magazine itself. If you really don't want to buy online, it's in newsstands around the world (Barnes and Noble at the end of the month).
Thanks.
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Tictail may be OK (perhaps a bit of info in an "about us" page, to help us sort the good from the bad, and why you need them), but who are cloudfront.net? I shouldn't need to keep running queries through noscript.net just to buy a magazine with some confidence.
This video shows exactly why Linux is not ready... (Score:1)
On topic, I really wish these guys well. Been listening to their podcasts for a while (back when they were TuxRadar) and they are knowledgable and fun to listen to.
Liked their work on LXF and look forward to getting my hands on a copy of LV - still hasn't hit newsstands here in New Zealand.
crowdfunding... (Score:1)