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The Media Linux

Linux Voice Passes Its Crowdfunding Target 57

Posted by Soulskill from the congrats-to-all dept.
super_rancid writes "The team that quit Linux Format magazine to launch a competitor that pledges 50% of profits back to the Free Software community, plus the release of all its content as CC-BY-SA after nine months, have hit their ambitious £90,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding target. The campaign now includes endorsements from Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the Gnome Foundation, Eben Upton, Founder of the Raspberry Pi and Simon Phipps, President of the OSI, with the first issue promised for February 2014."
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Linux Voice Passes Its Crowdfunding Target More

Linux Voice Passes Its Crowdfunding Target

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  • Readership (Score:4, Funny)

    by simonbp ( 412489 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @11:19PM (#45657805) Homepage

    I'm sure all eight people who still buy physical computer magazines will quite excited.

    • print - for nerds want news more timely than /. (Score:5, Funny)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2013 @11:44PM (#45657927) Journal

      If you get a monthly Linux magazine in the mail, you can read your nerdy news two weeks before it's on Slashdot.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zemran ( 3101 )

        Is delivery really that slow?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        uh man, even if slashdot is 1 month late it's still 1 month earlier than the printmags are.

        android studio ide from google? available in june and mags had the "reviews" in august.

        the mags don't even try to publish news anymore so prepare for fake readers questions about using awk and mencoder, about how to use your raspberry pi as a mediabox-wifi-router and how to setup yet another wordpress blog. YEEHAAAW!

        • Another problem with print magazines is that they tend to consist mostly of advertisements. It makes you wonder what exactly you were paying for.

          • Another problem with print magazines is that they tend to consist mostly of advertisements. It makes you wonder what exactly you were paying for.

            Not Linux magazines. In the case of Linux Format magazine there are just a few ads for cloud services and hosting. Consequently the mag is expensive - £6.49 a month, but there is a lot of editorial content.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fisted ( 2295862 )

          available in june and mags had the "reviews" in august.

          Well, with Android Studio becoming available in June, it can't possibly be reviewed in the magazine's 'June' release, for it is actually released at the beginning of April.
          It can't possibly go into July, since Android Studio wasn't available at the beginning of June.
          It went into the August release, and therefore was on time.

    • It's not so much that since it will be available on the web but my question is what will be better about this? Linux Format is well known to be a quality publication and this new magazine is supposedly authored by many of the same people. What was so wrong with Linux Format that this new Linux Voice will rectify?

    • That they got £90,000 in Indiegogo funding as rapidly as they did suggests that even taking donations by orgs into account, there's got to be a hell of a lot more than a handful of people interested in reading it.

      My decision will depend largely on how much issues cost here in the US...It sounds like it would be interesting to flip through when taking a break from electronics (Itry to do that for a while each day), but Ifrankly can't afford the high prices I've seen other UK-based Linux magazines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TyFoN ( 12980 )

      I resigned my Linux Journal subscription the moment they went away from paper.
      Geek news is in abundance on the internet. Having a tablet in the toilet just is not a substitute for a magazine.

      • +1
        I subscribed to LJ, Linux Mag and Linux Format in print. I stopped renewing LJ when they went PDF only. Still miss the BASH tutorials. I stopped renewing Linux Mag when I left corp IT (it's very business oriented).

        Which leaves LXF. The magazine and the podcasts are informative, insightful and entertaining. And they represent both Free software enthusiasts and Open Source pragmatists, debating technology and politics without just looking at the cost/economic side of things (software as products for consume

    • Christ, even the Linux *magazines* inevitably end up with everyone squabbling and forking.

    • So, who are the other 8?
  • I like linux and all but I cant see the point of a magazine, is this for people who have no internet tubes in their impoverished nation? and can afford reading material...and can read...

    • It's a digital magazine, not just print.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Fair enough, though still not sure they've fully embraced the digital bit, since the whole concept of an "issue" is based on having to consolidate information to a publication to minimize printing costs.
        Why not just post each individual article when they've been completed and edited (OK, I admit the concept of "editing" an article also appears to have gone by the wayside given the quality of a lot of online articles)

        • Perhaps I want to be able to read it when I dont have internet access? Which I disproportionately dont when I want to read.

          I suppose HTML storage can limit the importance of issues, and a custom app can too, but having a chunk to download and read is something I won't mind. I dont stream all my podcasts either, and appreciate a regular weekly release date rather than some here and some there.

      • It's a digital magazine

        Ah, well then. A digital magazine is *so* much better than a web site, because... er.... well it just is.

    • It's like one of those "build your own boat" magazines, first issue only $0.99 *

      Each one comes with a tiny bit of source code that you must manually type in to lovingly craft your own linux distribution.

      * Future issues $99.99

      • perfect, like that Mad magazine with 2 pages of basic code to draw Alfred's face... I never got that one working, but I suppose I was only 10 or so. it could have been a massive troll I guess. next I want the raspberry pi mag where I get an arm cpu with the first issue and have to build a toaster oven to get it stuck on the board which comes with issue 99

    • Re:There is a linux magazine? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheSeatOfMyPants ( 2645007 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2013 @02:11AM (#45658443) Journal

      Believe it or not, there's still hobby-specific magazines of all kinds... There's 3-4 general Linux pubs, a couple devoted to distros or environments, and then in the general tech-geek category, 2600: Hacker Quarterly, Make, Maximum PC and a bunch focused on other hardware/OSplatforms. That's not even taking the magazines focused on general science, specific scientific fields, weird shit like Mental Floss, or non-STEM topics.

      If someone can use Linux, they presumably can read. They might be, as Iam, too poor to pay the high cost of most (or all) Linux magazines (they're high in the US, at least) Personally, I always buy 2600, plus sometimes Writer's Digest, Renaissance Faires & Culture or something else that catches my eye. I was quite excited to score a bunch of old 2600 back issues last year at a garage sale, too. :)

      The reason why someone with Internet access would read a periodical in any form is that the writing is usually of much higher quality, which means that the information is presented more coherently & concisely, letting us learn more about the subject (or at a more in-depth level)with less effort than we would from most online publications. Many of the popular web-only publications -- Salon, Slate, HuffPo, TechCrunch, TechDirt -- are like that, managing to turn even important subjects into mental fluff that probably won't stick in our minds any longer than it takes for us to comment. (I say "many" because I know of a very few sites like Ars Technica that soar above the rest.)

      As for why anyone would buy them on paper, there's a number of reasons. One is that we can then read with full-color illustrations without having to use a backlit screen, which is great for problems like temporary light-sensitivity (e.g. due to a migraine) and chronic insomnia. Another is that many people still find it much more physically relaxing to read on paper, and/or find that they're mentally sharper after a long session of paper-reading than they are if they were reading... There's also that while tablets (for those that can afford them) have gotten much better at taking & referring back to interline/margin notes, many people still don't find it as convenient or intuitive to flip back through the device as with a paper copy or to refer to it when working.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Threni ( 635302 )

        "The reason why someone with Internet access would read a periodical in any form is that the writing is usually of much higher quality, "

        Citation needed.

      • I honestly cant say I've seen any linux mags in New Zealand before, any other NZ'ers out there seen any?

  • Elsewhere in the world of dead tree consumption: White Elephant [indiegogo.com]

    • I wonder if I could get funding for 'the pink nosed elephant' - that's the one where you pull your pants pockets inside out for the ears and flop out your... well you can probably figure out the rest.

  • Typical... (Score:3)

    by p4ul13 ( 560810 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2013 @01:29AM (#45658339) Homepage
    ...more Linux fragmentation. :P

    • If the mag promises to cover various flavors across the gnu linux landscape, and the technologies and people surrounding it, then I would love to hear your reasoning as to how this is fragmenting the community.

  • Congratulations to them (Score:3)

    by TheSeatOfMyPants ( 2645007 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2013 @02:20AM (#45658477) Journal

    Congratulations to the Linux Voice team... I'm really surprised that kind of money could be pulled together so quickly, so I'm guessing you've got a nice solid base of support out there -- Ihope the publication process goes as well as your Indiegogo campaign did.

  • Don't know about the magazine itself, but the project's indiegogo FAQ is worth a read, http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/linux-voice/ [indiegogo.com]. Some interesting info describing the cost associated with producing (not including print costs) a magazine these days. Some back of the envelope math suggests that they've raised enough to produce... But not print... One year worth of content. Not bad considering that they can still draw on subscription fees and advertising.

    • Since they were the ones getting advertisers and distribution for the LXF mag (Future didn't do all this, check out Everard's interview on Linux Action Show) they shouldn't have a problem getting the wheels turning.

      Raising this kind of support and publicity surely won't hurt either.

      I'm just sore about not being able to afford the lifetime subscription..

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