Join the Linux Journal Crusade

Doc Searls — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 07:52:00 +0000

Linux Journal has been reporting on Linux every month since version 1.0 in April 1994.

Through the nearly 25 years that have passed since then, Linux has come to support approximately everything an operating system can, while Linux Journal has maintained its status as the leading magazine covering Linux and all Linux does (or at least as much as we can fit into more pages than ever).

Here is where Linux currently stands among the world's operating systems (stats via the Linux Foundation):

#1 Internet client (Android).
82% of the smartphone market share (Android again).
100% share of the supercomputer market.
90% share of mainframe customers.
90% of the public cloud workload.
62% of the embedded systems market.
#2 to Windows in enterprise.

Linux is also at the base of countless open-source software stacks, which in turn support vast sums of productivity and economic benefit to countless verticals. Telecom, retail, automotive, energy, transportation, medicine, networking, entertainment and pharma are just a few of the big familiar ones.

Linux Journal's coverage has ranged just as widely, but we've also kept faith with the serious developers who made Linux a success in the first place and are still our core readership.

Our monthly issues are big. Where in print we were limited to less than 100 pages per issue, now we tend to run around 160–170 pages. Each issue also features a Deep Dive section, devoted to one topic in-depth, which is like a new ebook within each issue. And although we used to charge for our extensive archive (again, going back to 1994), we now provide access to all paying subscribers. The same subscribers also will get a free topical ebook with each renewal. (Currently it's SysAdmin 101 by our own Kyle Rankin, but we change it regularly.)

After we were acquired (by the parent company of Private Internet Access) early this year, we completely overhauled the LinuxJournal.com website, taking it from Drupal 6 to 8 and redesigning it to maximize simplicity and responsiveness. Our constant aim with the website is to make all our editorial matter (which we won't demean by calling it mere "content") easy and enjoyable to read on all devices. This may be one reason our subscriber base has grown nearly 20% so far this year.

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Now What?

Doc Searls — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 19:11:16 +0000

by Doc Searls

Linux Journal was a print magazine for 17+ years, then a digital one for the next 7+. What shall we be now? That's the Big Question, and there are many answers, some of which are already settled.

For example, we need to remain digital, true to Linux and maintain a journal (or journals) of some kind (or kinds), but those are among the few givens. We can be many other things too. Here's a sampling of suggestions vetted by the few of us internally and the many of us externally (for example, on IRC and in the comments under Carlie's Happy New Year post):

Video
Blogs
Podcasts
Reviews
Tips
Email newsletter(s)
Techmeme-like news aggregator(s) or river(s)
Events (of our own, plus participating in others)
Doing more (or less, or other, than what we're already doing) in "social" media
Stuff for wizards, full of code
Stuff for muggles, full of stuff other than code
Expanding coverage (in various media) of topics overlapping with Linux (such as privacy/anti-surveillance, personal agency, tech policy, cryptocurrencies and distributed ledgers, mobile, languages, business/models, gaming, protocols, standards, system administration, IT, IoT, AI, ML, VR and other two-, three- and four-letter acronyms)
Becoming more international
Becoming multi-lingual (also -cultural in several senses of that word and others like it)
Returning to print again (with the magazine, books or whatever, at intervals tbd)
All the above
Some of the above
None of the above

That list probably ought to be a matrix, perhaps in four dimensions (meaning in no particular order, top to bottom, right to left, front to back, forward through time).

We want and need thoughts and ideas of all kinds, especially from subscribers who have kept us alive long enough to be revived. (Already we've been called "zombie overlords" in comments. Good humor is a good sign, and so is the airing of old and good complaints.)

In the coming days, Carlie, myself and others on our still-small staff will be raising questions here and also answering comments below (and also in our IRC channel at freenode, now a sister of ours).

So please weigh in. We'll be taking copious notes and responding as best we can.

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Linux Journal 2.0

Join the Linux Journal Crusade

Now What?