Linux Journal Ceases Publication (linuxjournal.com) 123
Not too long after Linus Torvalds wrote his own Unix kernel, which he called Linux, in the summer of 1991, a magazine was founded by enthusiasts to focus on the operating system. For more than two decades Linux Journal has been an authority magazine on all things Linux, often cited by mainstream outlets, but it is now shuttering doors. In a blog post, Linux Journal's Carlie Fairchild writes: It looks like we're at the end, folks. If all goes according to a plan we'd rather not have, the November issue of Linux Journal was our last. The simple fact is that we've run out of money, and options along with it. We never had a wealthy corporate parent or deep pockets of our own, and that made us an anomaly among publishers, from start to finish. While we got to be good at flying close to the ground for a long time, we lost what little elevation we had in November, when the scale finally tipped irrevocably to the negative. Thanks for all the fish.
cry cry cry (Score:5, Insightful)
what a loss...
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I'm surprised it didn't fork...
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It did. There's a giant fork stuck in it.
Welp (Score:5, Insightful)
Another classical magazine succumbed to the advancement of technology it itself promoted.
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Another classical magazine succumbed to the advancement of technology it itself promoted.
Yes, it succumbed to the advancement of freely available information. While it's a shame that good people lost their jobs, the magazine offered nothing above what was already freely published. The same thing happened to Linux Magazine. Linux is one of the best documented operating systems ever made, and there is nothing that a fee-based magazine can offer to top that.
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That's not exactly true. Firstly there is peripheral information like interviews with interesting people, or project overview articles. Second, Magazines are a repository for information - you don't need to google it, it comes to you. Thirdly, magazines are edited - tested for correctness, spelling, good prose, etc. I'm sure there are more reasons, but these are the few I can list off the top of my head.
Re: Welp (Score:2, Insightful)
Blogs and other web based publishing methods have all sorts of metrics and numbers to gauge interest. Article comments even give you insight into the reaction of a publication, which maybe even lets you gauge public relations.
So you have a high supply of low cost, high t
Re: Welp (Score:2)
Re: Welp (Score:2)
Everybody is a publisher, and there is little to no verification, or publishing standards to hold a person to. Things are not vetted, they are simply shared. A significant portion of information is now essentially gossip.
Sure there may be some established content creators, but news on a feed somewhere is not required to come from a well established conten
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Another classical magazine succumbed to the advancement of technology it itself promoted.
Yes, it succumbed to the advancement of freely available information. While it's a shame that good people lost their jobs, the magazine offered nothing above what was already freely published. The same thing happened to Linux Magazine. Linux is one of the best documented operating systems ever made, and there is nothing that a fee-based magazine can offer to top that.
No. It offered a curation of items (obviously freely available in the wild), organized and cataloged, in addition to interview and editorials. There is information, where is everywhere, and there is knowledge (what you get and create out of raw information.)
That is was not valuable enough for consumers to keep it going, that is a different argument. But to argue it offered nothing above what was available for free, that does not make any sense. At. All.
Re:Welp (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays it's easier and cheaper to go to one of many free websites with thousands of articles and technical questions answered and indexed, than looking for a solution in an old magazine rack.
It is sad such a thing happened for the people making a living out of it, but it's good for Linux there are so many information sources nowadays.
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Another classical magazine succumbed to the advancement of technology it itself promoted.
Linux Journal was "classical" in the 1990s, but they failed to really transition into anything meaningful in the new millenium.
I remember when they sent me the notice that they were discontinuing their print edition and migrating everyone to an "online only" edition. There was maybe 1 month's advance notice of these changes. I asked for a refund of my remaining subscription fees and took my business elsewhere.
Over the years I remember:
* Linux Journal page counts slowly declining.
* Shawn Powers got stra
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Of course linux is full of libtards, go back to BSD already.
systemd forever!!!!
Too bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Phil Hughes started LJ and eventually gave it to Carlie Fairchild when he left for South America. I believe that Bob Young was a seed funder but I don't think the journal ever had that big a capitalization. Running a magazine about Linux in the face of the torrent of information about it on the Internet was never an easy thing. It's incredible that she was able to keep it going this long, and I wish Carlie luck in her future endeavors.
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If you knew the entire saying you're failing to quote. you'd understand how silly your premise is. Selling information that people want to give away is a pretty good way to go out of business. People continue to want to give away Open Source software because they feel it's much nicer than being your customer.
A damn shame. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Byte downwardsspiral (Score:1)
Subscribed to those same three. It was sad when Byte abandoned the hobby readers by going all Windows and commercial.
Re:A damn shame. (Score:5, Insightful)
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[Linux Journal] took a political turn to the left, and that's why I dropped my subscription.
When? How? Was it a systematic editorial policy? Or an article or two that offended you?
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Doc Searls decided to rant about the election, and since he's an editor ...
Sounds like you're much more of a snowflake than he ever was.
What if the "political turn" had been to the *right*?
I hope you didn't switch to Linux Magazine - after all, they let Jon "Maddog" Hall publish his coming-out story in 2012
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I suspect the Publisher might not have wanted to keep that ship afloat if the cost was appeasing you.
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The publisher's "nonappeasement" decision was an ultimate win for conservatives.
The liberal tripe is no longer in print and the lefties running the show are out of work.
Re:A damn shame. (Score:4, Interesting)
But if he had made a pro-Trump rant it would have been fine, right?
Nope. I don't subscribe to technical journals and magazines for politics of either kind. I subscribe for the technical information. Political commentary that wastes space on the page I'm paying for is a waste either way. You might note that I didn't say which way he ranted, because it was truly irrelevant.
If I want to waste my time reading political commentary, there's plenty of places I can get it for free, which is a bit more than the commentary is worth.
For those of my traveling contingent who think my comment was flamebait, nope. I simply made an observation of how the magazine had drifted away from its intended purpose. If that upsets you, well, sorry. I didn't say he had no right to do that. I didn't even say he was wrong. Just inappropriate for the medium he was using.
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How dare he express opinions you dislike. We should put him in Gitmo for such a grevious crime.
Re: A damn shame. (Score:1)
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It's especially silly when you resort to name calling and childish games with someone's name. "Internet troll"? No, sorry, he's not an internet troll. ("Twitter" isn't "the
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Doc Searls decided to rant about the election, and since he's an editor ...
Yes, he ranted about the election, but he was not a shill for Hillary. Here's his editorial. [linuxjournal.com]
TL/DR: you may agree or disagree with his editorial, but it seems to me to be a sober reflection on the electoral campaign and the result. One important point he makes early on:
Disclosure: I'm a political independent, and not a fan of Hillary Clinton, though I thought she was the only sensible choice, given Trump's shortcomings, many of which should have disqualified him, flat out.
Read the rest of it yourself, but for those who are curious, his piece ends with the following (bold emphasis is his):
Here's the Linux connection: we need to hack news back in a logical direction, and away from the fact-free, misleading and emotion-stirring ways that news is made today. The mainstream media is beyond fixing. So is the newstream media, so long as it remains dependent on surveillance-based advertising, clickbait and fake news of its own.
I don't know how we do that, but we've hacked the world before: with free software, Linux and open source, just to name the Big Three.
Time to do it again.
Re:A damn shame. (Score:4, Insightful)
but it seems to me to be a sober reflection on the electoral campaign and the result.
Had he stuck to that it would have been a much closer call. It became name calling, and that was too far.
Here's the Linux connection: we need to hack news back in a logical direction, and away from the fact-free, misleading and emotion-stirring ways that news is made today.
This is not a "linux connection". It is much bigger than linux. It's a social issue that neither linux nor Linus can fix, and it has been going on for a lot longer than today. Just because web hosting services may be running linux servers doesn't create the linux connection. It was a problem even back when Sun was the internet. It is likely to still be an issue when the next big thing replaces linux.
Now that we've opened the floodgates to anyone and their brother putting their "news" online, it is impossible to go back -- without authoritarian control over what gets published. Somebody will have to be in charge of deciding what is "right" and what is "fake" and stopping the "fake" from being distributed somehow. Sadly, a lot of those who think they can decide for others what that "right" stuff is tend to think opinions that don't gibe with theirs are "fake". Facebook thinks they can do it for their "news feeds", but that doesn't seem to be highly successful. Twitter is going after "Russian connected accounts", but that's not going to solve anything.
Every game of whack-a-mole for fake news misses most of the moles, and it creates someone who thinks it is their job to whack what they don't believe. The US first amendment was based on the idea that silencing objectionable speech was not the solution; commercial censorship is based entirely on the concept that it is.
The result will be an internet that nobody likes, and even having linux on every desktop won't make it better.
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In his EOF column Doc Searls wrote:
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This caused a shitstorm of complaining letters and cancellations. Quite astonishing to me,
If you read /. on a regular basis, you might believe that computer people can do nothing but resort to name calling when an election doesn't result in their favorite as the winner. It should not be surprising that a large part of the population doesn't really want to see personal insult in everything they read and pay for.
Cancellation was not the right action, since that just results in lost money. You've already paid for the magazine, you might as well get the issues you've paid for. And maybe, just maybe
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you treated Japanese like Nazis treated Jews
Interment camps Concentration Camps - just one difference, we kept families together. Another, we didn't send countless Japanese into gas chambers, and stripped their body of hair, gold, glasses, and any other valuable before sending their corpses to incinerators that rained down ashes on nearby cities.
But hey, why am I explaining this to you, in Germany - I'm certain they covered all this in your German History classes.
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Hats off to you, Ken! I am so tired of the constant U.S. bashing by people in Europe who've had to be rescued by the U.S. from their own TWICE last century!
Dropped After Dead-Tree Printed Version Ended (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to have a subscription (I think I had it for 6-7 years), but when they went only to an electronic only version and dropped the dead-tree, I did not renew.
I wonder how many other people did the same thing.
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Still complaining about that after all of these years, huh?
Even though I was disappointed, I stuck with the magazine and don't regret it at all. I can't say that I've seen other publications handle that type of situation, but I thought the way LJ handled it was very good. They were careful to explain the reasons behind it and were on top of subscriber feedback--positive and negative. I doubt anyone could have done better.
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Yup, me too. I had jumped on a deal shortly before that where you could extend your subscription by 100 issues for $100. When they stopped mailing it, I never logged in to read it. I occasionally will find an old article when searching on some topic, and it's almost always a great source of information.
I got my first Linux ISO from the coverdisc (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't have a 'fat pipe' nor a fast one either, back in the day.
It's incredible that she was able to keep it going this long
And sold with physical media (cd or dvd) off the stands!
Plus all the tech articles it was filled with, that outnumbered the ads. It will be missed.
It was a good run. Best of luck to the people who made it all work and muchas gracias.
Larger, not better. Maybe owed $10 million (Score:2)
> Why couldn't downsizing be an option? Surely the magazine now is in much better shape, financially or organizationally, than when it was started out as an enthusiast operation.
It's LARGER than when it started out. Very likely not in BETTER condition financially. If it's big and "no longer financially viable" that likely means "owes a bunch of money to suppliers", and maybe even to employees and the IRS. Having $6 in the donation plate is better financially than having $20,000 in the bank and a tax bil
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Why couldn't downsizing be an option? Surely the magazine now is in much better shape, financially or organizationally, than when it was started out as an enthusiast operation.
You imagine Linux Journal had exactly how many full-time employees when they turned out the lights? I suspect the staff numbered in the several - remember, at the end, it was essentially an advertising-supported website, little more than that...
Accepting payment in fish? (Score:3)
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Maybe it was herring, so that they could feed Tux?
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A shout out to Linux Weekly News (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember reading Linux Journal while flirting with the cute cashier at a local Tower Records. Today, Linux Journal is gone, Tower Records is gone, and that cute cashier is my friend on Facebook. At least the best element of that part of my life is still around...
I think a lot of what Linux Journal stood for is alive and well with Linux Weekly News [lwn.net]. Yes, it's paywalled, but quality content costs real money to make, and the paywalled articles are made free to read after about a month.
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You should watch the documentary "All Things Must Pass" [imdb.com], currently on cable - it's a great documentary by Colin Hanks about the meteoric rise, and rapid decline of Tower Records.
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I am a subscriber to LWN, but you definitely can read it for free, only, with one week delay.
And honestly, once you get used to reading it, you'll be considering subscribing...
How could this happen? (Score:2)
They died when they stopped doing physical magazin (Score:2)
I was a subscriber for many years. One day they told me my print subscription had been converted to an esubscription and I wouldn’t get a refund. I never even looked at the esubscription and never renewed it. I would probably still be a subscriber if they hadn’t done that.
TIL (Score:2)
There is/was a Linux Journal.
Fire sale on the CD Collections (Score:5, Interesting)
That leaves, what? Linux Format: the 400 Lbs Gorilla of Linux reading material, with a price to match, Linux Magazine and distro-focused publications like Full Circle?
I do hope they get a chance to make a final run of the back edition PDF collection [linuxjournal.com].
Many of the columns, such as David Taylor's work the shell, are timeless and quite useful.
There is value even the Letters to the Editors where smart or at least smart ass people suggested better or alternative ways to implement the various little projects detailed in LJ.
I also enjoyed the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) summaries and discovered Reuven Lerner's python series through the magazine.
And there are always the Geek Guides.
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It's heartwarming to know that people read and enjoyed my articles! Thanks for the mention.
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I also. Reading short squibs on the Internet is one thing, but reading an article is something else, particularly if I might want to be using my computer while doing so...but also if I'm not at home.
It's too bad, but electronic media are barely tolerable, and usually unusable. And it's not like they hadn't been told that before they made their decision. Perhaps I'll someday get an e-book reader, and that might solve at least part of the problem, but tests have shown that even under optimal conditions peo
Sad, but interesting (Score:2)
Very sad for me, as an author/columnist (Score:2)
It's nice to see all of these comments.
Here's my side of it, as a columnist since 1996: http://blog.lerner.co.il/sad-d... [lerner.co.il]
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Your columns were one of the reason I kept my subscription....
Re:Game over, Linux, game over. (Score:5, Funny)
Are you talking about the same Minix that's embedded in each and every Intel CPU since almost the last decade or so?
Windows is the loser OS, you have to install it. Only losers install an operating system.
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Because when we talk about operating systems it always seems to be about markethsare.
Minix being in 100% of the Intel-powered computers made in nearly the last decade, it has a higher marketshare than Windows, macOS and Linux.
Intel without Windows vs. AMD with Windows (Score:2)
Minix being in 100% of the Intel-powered computers made in nearly the last decade, it has a higher marketshare than Windows, macOS and Linux.
Not necessarily. If there are more Intel computers without Windows than AMD computers with Windows, then Intel Minix outnumbers Windows. Otherwise, Windows outnumbers Intel Minix, and the numbers are Ryzen.
However, the term "Linux" encompasses a number of different kinds of systems: GNU/Linux (the environment designed to replace traditional UNIX on workstations and servers), embedded Linux (which uses uClibc and BusyBox instead of GNU), and Android. The sum of these three may very well exceed Intel Minix.
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Because Minix gets on Intel chips through osmosis?
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No it’s not. It’s stored on a parition of the SPI flash used by the Quark CPU that runs Intel ME.
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Are you talking about the same Minix that's embedded in each and every Intel CPU since almost the last decade or so?
That seems like a win for the microkernel over the monolithic. ;-)
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No, Unix-based operating systems with a better UI are what rule.
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No, Unix-based operating systems with a better UI are what rule.
So, Linux? Or, well, anything running X11 as its native windowing system?
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Well he did specify with the better GUI, so that limits it somewhat.
I also assumed he meant rules in the Linux r00ls sense, not the rather dull marketshare sense.
And yes I am being obtuse. I think X11 is the best. I don't like OSX much, or Windows.
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