Linux Journal:
The Monthly Magazine of the Linux Community

Linux Journal is now a year old. It is an attractively presented publication with lots of colour, devoted solely to the Linux operating system. The April 1995 issue ran to 64 pages and contained the following (a fairly typical mix):

• the front cover, a graphic representing the "port tour" article (1 page)
• an announcement that Linus will be speaking at US DECUS in May (0.5 pages)
• using Xfig (2 pages)
• building shared libraries (4 pages)
• a report on the International Linux Symposium in Amsterdam (2 pages)
• ethernetting Linux (2.5 pages)
• the ELF object file format (3.5 pages)
• setting up tcp/ip services (3 pages)
• a tour of the various ports of Linux to other architectures (4 pages)
• review of the December 1994 Infomagic release, with some interesting comments on the different distributions (2.5 pages)
• a novice's guide to installing X windows (3 pages)
• letters (1 page)
• Linux in use as a server at the Texas Agricultural Extensions Service (3 pages)
• part two of an article on plan 9 and its tools (3 pages)
• non-root floppy mounts (0.5 pages)
• two book reviews (1.5 pages)
• a list of BBSes world-wide with Linux resources (0.5 pages)
• a guide to on-line Linux resources (1 page)
• an advertisers' index (0.5 page)
• call for participation in an OSW Linux track (0.5 pages)

The remainder of the magazine (a little over a third) consisted of advertisements. These are actually quite interesting, as they give a good idea of the range of applications now available for Linux. Although some of the articles are aimed at novices to Unix/Linux, most assume prior experience, and some of them are quite technical (the material on ELF binaries and shared libraries in this issue, for example). Some of the articles are relevant to Unix in general: the pieces on xfig and plan 9 in this issue are examples.

Linux Journal maintains high quality in writing, editing and layout, and I normally read at least half the articles in each issue.

April 1995

Related reviews:

- books about computing
- other journals