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Linux Journal Ceases Publication

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Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#41

Post by fractallyte »

sitkack wrote: post #28
exikyut wrote: post #19

PSA: I found an archive link amongst the comments ( http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-ceases-pub... ) It's being sold for $11.99. Here's the purchase link: http://lj.mybigcommerce.com/linux-journal-archive-1994-2017/ Apparently it's HTML-format. No mention is made of whether it includes images or how big the download is. My suspicion is that it's pure-text, which is really sad. If anyone wants to look…

I made the mistake and never bought the Doctor Dobbs Developer DVD and it isn't available anywhere. I even wrote the new owners of Doctor Dobbs, they had no original. http://www.drdobbs.com/tools Luckily the Internet Archive has nice collection, but it isn't the same as the content of the DVD. If you are in Seattle, the living computer museum has a small nook sized library with some really old issues. https://archive…

I have release 5 right next to me... (And my email address is in my profile)

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#42

Post by Anthony-G »

exikyut wrote: post #19

PSA: I found an archive link amongst the comments ( http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-ceases-pub... ) It's being sold for $11.99. Here's the purchase link: http://lj.mybigcommerce.com/linux-journal-archive-1994-2017/ Apparently it's HTML-format. No mention is made of whether it includes images or how big the download is. My suspicion is that it's pure-text, which is really sad. If anyone wants to look…

Thanks for the link to buy the archive. I haven’t read Linux Journal much but I’ve read a couple of Kyle Rankin’s articles and got a lot of value from them (he’s also very responsive to feedback). As it’s only $12 to purchase the archives, I figured I’d take the chance.

I can confirm that it’s totally worth it. It takes only a minute to purchase the download. I used my Paypal account and made the purchase as a Guest as I didn’t want to create yet another account on the Internet. Within seconds, I received a download link in my email.

After unzipping the download, there’s a shell script which starts a web server and opens your web browser at the Archive index. You can then either navigate by selecting an issue by year and month – or by using the search feature provided by the Archive web server. I’ve tried a number of search terms (“docker”, “ansible”, “mutt”) and can confirm that it works well; the only issue I’ve had is that the search results list the articles by the name of the column, e.g., this article [1] is listed as Hack and / rather than the more descriptive sub-title Take Mutt for a Walk.

I’d also confirm that the articles are not in plain text – they use HTML and include images (where appropriate). Best of all, there’s no visual clutter, e.g., distracting advertisements. The format reminds me a lot of the CDs with collections of digitised books that O’Reilly used to publish.

In my opinion, the archive is excellent value for money – and I’d highly recommend it.

[1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10858

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#43

Post by sitkack »

exikyut wrote: post #34
sitkack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the mistake and never bought the Doctor Dobbs Developer DVD and it isn't available anywhere. I even wrote the new owners of Doctor Dobbs, they had no original. http://www.drdobbs.com/tools Luckily the Internet Archive has nice collection, but it isn't the same as the content of the DVD. If you are in Seattle, the living computer museum has a small nook sized library with some really old issues. https://archive…

Some quick poking around found - http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/rpn/biblio/ddj/Web... - https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22ddj_dvd6%22 and - https://www.mail-archive.com/cctech@classiccmp.org/msg02278.... I'm unsure if this is what you're referring to though.

I think that torrent hasn't had any seeders in a really long time.

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#44

Post by sitkack »

Anthony-G wrote: post #42
exikyut wrote: post #19

PSA: I found an archive link amongst the comments ( http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-ceases-pub... ) It's being sold for $11.99. Here's the purchase link: http://lj.mybigcommerce.com/linux-journal-archive-1994-2017/ Apparently it's HTML-format. No mention is made of whether it includes images or how big the download is. My suspicion is that it's pure-text, which is really sad. If anyone wants to look…

Thanks for the link to buy the archive. I haven’t read Linux Journal much but I’ve read a couple of Kyle Rankin’s articles and got a lot of value from them (he’s also very responsive to feedback). As it’s only $12 to purchase the archives, I figured I’d take the chance. I can confirm that it’s totally worth it. It takes only a minute to purchase the download. I used my Paypal account and made the purchase as a Guest…

The LJArchive2017.zip is a 741039880 byte file with a

$ shasum -a 256 LJArchive2017.zip fbf20d2a1708bb6ea37265c601b543266dd6a4f4f37221597f1e6683d07f7fe8 LJArchive2017.zip

A list of the contents is available https://gist.github.com/anonymous/e77e8558835bc0a6ff30a81c6a...

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#45

Post by jasonkostempski »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #38
muxator wrote: post #9

The publishing situation is so bleak, and the saddest part is that the higher the quality, the deeper the problems. Does anyone know how lwn [0] is doing? It's one of the latest very high profile publications remaining as of now. [0] https://lwn.net/

> The publishing situation is so bleak ... And yet we cheer at every progress made in Web technology.

If web standards had prevented the tracking abilities advertisers currently have, i think there would have been plenty of money still in paper based ads because they wouldn't be any "worse" than web page ads. Things seem to be slowly moving towards preventing some of it without users having to be proactive about it. That's progress I can cheer for.

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#46

Post by tyldum »

lovelearning wrote: post #26

Did they ask for contributions before going bankrupt but not get much, or did they never ask? I feel these tech magazines should be more open and transparent about their finances and horizons, so that people who feel like contributing can start doing so at the right time.

When they went from paper to digital only everyone knew it was just a matter of time. My paper sub had like a year left at that point and I was granted a multi year digital sub instead. It didn't have time to expire even. They played very nice with paper subscribers, and that might ultimately have killed them. To be honest I kinda stopped reading when they went digital as the content at that point felt geared towards newbies and not tech people.

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#47

Post by billpollock »

sitkack wrote: post #29
Crontab wrote: post #6

Publishers have it hard but tech publishers especially so - considering all of the free sources of information on the Internet. Between online documentation, blogs, forums, and tutorials, one can generally find the information they are looking for if they seek it hard enough. All that said, there is something to be said for a well written article or book by someone with a command of language and a love for teaching.

Lots of data, but not much information. Before, tech books were an oasis because there wasn't much of anything anywhere. Now it is the opposite, too much of everything everywhere, I need someone to condense it down into a form I can use.

That can change; it depends on the publisher's perspective and goals. Our goal is always to publish fewer better books. (I stole that line from Prentice Hall. They forgot it years ago. :)

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#48

Post by billpollock »

Crontab wrote: post #6

Publishers have it hard but tech publishers especially so - considering all of the free sources of information on the Internet. Between online documentation, blogs, forums, and tutorials, one can generally find the information they are looking for if they seek it hard enough. All that said, there is something to be said for a well written article or book by someone with a command of language and a love for teaching.

I definitely agree. Book publishing, in my opinion, needs to shift to meet the changing needs of readers. Many tech book publishers continue to publish the way they have for the last 20+ years but the world has changed. We don't need more, poorly written and poorly edited documentation. We need better books.

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#49

Post by billpollock »

muxator wrote: post #9

The publishing situation is so bleak, and the saddest part is that the higher the quality, the deeper the problems. Does anyone know how lwn [0] is doing? It's one of the latest very high profile publications remaining as of now. [0] https://lwn.net/

This is sad news. Years ago we developed a Linux Journal Press imprint but it didn't really go very far. Many great authors have written for Linux Journal and I've enjoyed many excellent articles over the years.

Re: Linux Journal Ceases Publication

#50

Post by vram22 »

sitkack wrote: post #28
exikyut wrote: post #19

PSA: I found an archive link amongst the comments ( http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-ceases-pub... ) It's being sold for $11.99. Here's the purchase link: http://lj.mybigcommerce.com/linux-journal-archive-1994-2017/ Apparently it's HTML-format. No mention is made of whether it includes images or how big the download is. My suspicion is that it's pure-text, which is really sad. If anyone wants to look…

I made the mistake and never bought the Doctor Dobbs Developer DVD and it isn't available anywhere. I even wrote the new owners of Doctor Dobbs, they had no original. http://www.drdobbs.com/tools Luckily the Internet Archive has nice collection, but it isn't the same as the content of the DVD. If you are in Seattle, the living computer museum has a small nook sized library with some really old issues. https://archive…

>Doctor Dobbs Developer DVD

What does / did the Doctor Dobbs Developer DVD contain? I used to read DDJ back in the day, when it was available (didn't have access to it in India, used to buy used copies at second-hand book shops, or sometimes read full articles standing right there in the shop, ha ha. Thankfully the shop owners never prevented me from doing that, maybe because of seeing my genuine interest, and I did buy copies once in a while). And I remember DDJ issues used to have ads about things like DDJ's CD-ROM of Alternative Programming Languages, and other such interesting stuff. Perusing the contents of such ads might even have been (not sure) how I got to know about Python, for example, which I use to this day :) A pity they had to shut down. I remember that the quality of the articles was very good, as was that of CUJ (C User's Journal). I also used to grab and read issues of these two magazines (and a few others, like VBPJ, Java Report and others) in the libraries of bigger companies where I worked some time later (the small one where I worked earlier didn't have much of a library, though it was not zero there either).

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