[KLUG Members] Favorite Linux Magazine and other tech magazines

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> I'm looking to get a magazine subscriptino for linux and and other open source technologies. I have occassionaly read Linux
> Magazine, Linux Format and Linux Journal, although I haven't been partial to one or the other. Anyone here have a particular
> favorite, and any reasons why so i can make sure I get the best bang for our buck? Thanks,

I wouldn't waste my money on any of them.  I subscribe to both the Linux
Journal and Linux Magazine and did subscribe to that other one that went
belly up (name? Something 'Maximium'?).  They've degraded significantly
in the past couple of years and are getting worse pretty rapidly now.
Both LJ and LM have run basically duplicate articles back-to-back
several times now - I'm talking about the EXACT same material being
covered by the magazines in subsequent months.  So why subscribe to
both?  While the content of LJ has always had a bent toward the esoteric
it seems to just be getting worse. [i.e. clusters, embedded systems,
building a silent computer;  to what %%% of the readership are these
topics relevant?  If it is >0.5% then I'll eat my hat.  They are
neat/interesting in a technical sense and maybe some geeks really get
revved by reading this stuff, but the information is really not USEFUL]
And now that is 'complimented' by Peterly The Petulant as the editor of
LJ whose texts read like a rant/diatribe that would be of dubious value
of a LUG mailling list but has no business being in a professional
publication (relating things to a "disease", calling things crap,
etc...)   And then, [can there be more?] you have the self-appointed
Pope-Of-All-Things-IT Doc Searls.... ugh... please, go write some code
already, it might bring you back down to earth (no offense intended to
the actual Catholic Pope who seems like a much more humble guy than
Peterly or Doc).

Beyond that there is a NON-STOP stream of BLOG, WIKI, MP3, BLOG, WIKI,
MP3, BLOG, WIKI, MP3.... articles.  [Dude, if you haven't figures out
how to play music with your LINUX desktop yet....].   These *DO* seem
like articles that might be useful to 'Joe Six Pack' but not in these
quantities.  Linux/Open Source is a *VAST* arena of material,  they
really should be able to do a better job of selecting.  The magazines
respective Websites *DO* have better content - why isn't the Open Office
Unleashed series in the magazine for example?  Undoubtably useful to
just about everyone. and clearly beneficial to Open Source adoption.

It pains me to say this but I've gotten more USEFUL content from recent
issues of Microsoft's TechVenue magazine that I have from either LJ or
LM neither of which I will be renewing my subscription for.

And then there are three recent article series which really painted by
wagon read:
1.) The SSO series featuring MIT Kerberos and an *ancient* version of
OpenLDAP.  I pity the sod who actually goes through the trouble of what
that three or four part series prescribed.  Come any upgrade time and
his life is going to be a schema fixing dependency resolving *HELL*.
2.) The rather nice groupware article which mentions the content in the
next issue.... which wasn't there.
3.) The 'Introduction To SuSe's Security Features' article which I
opened to with expectation of information of... you know... SuSe's
security features.  Only to have about two and a half pages of how to
install SuSe, and a couple of paragraphs about what you can do with
iptables????  Does any even proof these things to see if the content has
ANYTHING to do with the title?

You can get better stuff, for free, on the web.  You can buy a rather
nice printer and some three ring binders for the cost of subscribing to
these rags for a few years.  When you find something useful just print
it yourself.