Linux Journal Ceases Publication (linuxjournal.com)

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.

Comments

cry cry cry

[no-body]

what a loss...

Welp

[war4peace]

Another classical magazine succumbed to the advancement of technology it itself promoted.

Re:Welp

[Anonymous Coward]

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 stranger and stranger over the years, and he admits to working for a school system somewhere in the Midwest!

* Doc Searls got more and more political and libtard over the years. He lives or lived in Santa Barbara, CA and/or "the Northeast" as mentioned in the magazine.

And the content simply became more and more "me too" rather than "innovative" or "interesting". By comparison, I consider the former Linux Voice magazine to be both interesting and innovative. I still find Linux Pro magazine to be worth my subscription money.

I will not miss Linux Journal and I have not missed them since I asked for my subscription refund. May Linux Journal die quickly & quietly while fading into obscurity.

Re: Welp

[Monster_user]

A magazine is static content with low levels of user feedback and input on article quality and interest. The production values, and expected print form releases increase costs above most of their competitors, and now above market value.

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 traffic sites handled by enthusiasts who are willing to work for the love of the job, and are happy with almost any peanuts or profits thrown their way. Then you've got a high cost competitor who's job is to reduce that supply to a manageable influx of interest to their demographic, and add some polish and refinement to the articles. This additional work takes time, which their target demographic will have likely already spent sorting and refining the information on their own. So the magazine publisher ends up dishing out old news, or just peddling the same content as thr enthusiasts/hobbyists at the same level of quality, but more expensive tools.

A damn shame.

[Major_Disorder]

I always like Linux Journal, it wasn't dumbed down, like so many things are these days.

Re:A damn shame.

[zeugma-amp]

True. I've been a subscriber for long enough to remember their (Monty) Python special issue. This is really sad that they couldn't keep it up even in an all digital format.

Re:A damn shame.

[Obfuscant]

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.