iX magazine Launches English Test Issue

An anonymous reader writes "The German iX magazine is probably the one targeting the most knowledgable audience of system administrators and 'IT professionals.' They focus on Linux, UNIX and Windows NT. For all those who are interested in the magazine but don't understand German, there's now a free English pilot issue available online."

Comments

Highly recommended

[doc modulo]

Sister magazine of C'T (Computer Technik) which is in German and Dutch.

C'T is the highest quality computer magazine I've read. Proof of German "grundlichkeit" (thoroughness). Not only in-depth but an amazing amount of reading material every 2 weeks. I don't know how they do it.

Anyway, if C'T is any indication of iX's quality, you should buy it if you're into networking and servers. It may be a bit dryer to read than C'T but that's because I wasn't into servers when I read 1 edition a long time ago. Also comes with the territory of servers I guess.

At least check out the free edition.

Contents, to know whether the download is worth it

[Phouk]

COVER STORY:
- SQL:2003: including XML and administration of external data

TESTLAB:
- Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9
- Middcor.Net: .Net cooperating with J2EE and CORBA
- Server Management: Tatung's TUD 4010 and Fujitsu-Siemens-Computers' BX 600

REPORT:
- Programming lightweight, powerful clients
- Software components in the .Net framework
- ITIL for better IT

KNOW-HOW:
- Schema language Relax NG
- Jakarta offshoot Slide

HANDS-ON:
- Doctype switching decides rendering of (X)HTML
- Hard disk management under Linux

Some NEWS, mostly conference reports
(Siggraph, Linux fair, 60th IETF meeting,
KDE Community World Summit, CHES 2004 Crypto-conference)

P.S.: I read iX only from time to time, because it's not my main area of interest.
But the articles are IMHO of good technical depth and detail, and thoroughly researched.

This is dead-tree magazine is worth reading

[larkost]

I have been borrowing issues from a German friend who has them shipped over here to the US, and I have got to say that it is a good magazine. Good solid reviews, and the articles are worth reading. They are linux and MacOS X friendly (but the focus is still Windows), and I did not get the feeling that they were swayed by any of the companies they reviewed (unlike say, CNet...). I would actually consider getting a dead-tree edition of this magazine in print form, which I never thought I would do for another computer magazine.

Fantastic, but more and more soft core

[Nice2Cats]

There is no question that c't is one of the best computer magazines on the planet in either German or English -- can't speak for the other languages (no pun intended), but I would be surprised if there is anything on the planet quite like them. In fact, I would rate them right up there with the best in terms of journalistic quality: They pull no punches, are thorough, well-written, and you can use their backgrounders as textbooks. These people seriously know their stuff and I for years I have been following their hardware recommendations without being disappointed once. If you ever needed an excuse to learn German, this is it.

Another thing that should be mentioned is that c't are just about the only magazine in Germany that publishes science fiction short stories. In a country where science fiction is considered to be Trivialliteratur that educated people should be ashamed of wasting their time with, this is especially noteworthy.

However:

Incredable as it might seem, c't has been slowly dumbing down its content and focusing more and more on test and reports instead of the hands-on stuff that made them famous. It used to be that they would lead you through the steps to build your own bloody computer, do cool coding things in assembler (these were the eight bit days), and stuff that would send most of their current readers screaming. They once started a Java course, but stopped it after a few episodes.

Given this hard core background, c't was amazingly slow to take Linux seriously and in fact just about ignored it right up to the point where people like me found it was not worth the price. In the old days, they would have been jumping all over the kernel, explaining all the juicy little techniques to their users and showing them how to change stuff themselves. No go: The Windows crowd is probably just larger and their ads pay more.

It is nice to see that there is an English edition of iX. However, what they really should do is launch a Linux spin-off. I can't believe I am the only one who misses the good old c't, and the Linux community should be easily large enough to make it worth their parent company's time.