In the Linux Journal 1997 Buyer's Guide, SSC announced the formation of GLUE—Groups of Linux Users Everywhere. GLUE was implemented to provide a world-wide member group for Linux User Groups. Since three months have passed, I felt an update would be in order. Complete information about the advantages to GLUE membership can be found at its web site, http://www.ssc.com/glue/.
Lydia Kinata, SSC Product Specialist, tells me there has been a good response to GLUE from both user groups and vendors. At the time I talked to her (May 1), SSC was in the process of setting up an e-mail list server for use by the groups. Lydia was particularly excited about the decision by Enhanced Software Technologies to provide a free copy of the BRU 200 Backup and Restore Utility to each GLUE member group, as well as a 10% discount on the BRU software to individual members of the user groups. Enhanced Software (http://www.estinc.com/) is located in Tempe, Arizona and recently became a corporate member of Linux International.
As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, in April The London Times printed an article by David Hewson 1 which trashed Linux and the “geeks” who use it. I just reread that article to determine if I needed to respond to it in some way. Frankly, after reading through phrases like “nasty piece of digital scurf”, “that old computer donkey known as Unix” and “a certain breed of bug-eyed computer user”, I was laughing too much to take it seriously. However, I did find the notion of “Bill Gates quivering in his boots at the idea that Linux will ... kick Microsoft Windows off the everyday desktop” rather appealing. At any rate I found Hewson's rantings amusing and, most certainly, nothing to incite a flame war. (The Sunday Times - 20 April 1997, Sounding Off: Linux, the PC Program from Hell, by David Hewson, http://www.the-times.cp.uk/news/pages/resources/libraryl.n.html?1032133.)
From January of 1996 through June of 1997 Linux Journal has been printed by R. R. Donnelly in Senatobia, Mississippi. Beginning with last month's issue, it is now printed by Century Publishing in Post Falls, Idaho. One reason we made this change was to have a printer in the same time zone. More importantly, we wanted a printer closer to us so that we could reduce the lead time in producing the magazine. Century fit both these needs. Century is also known to us: Century was the first printer for Linux Journal, and SSC has continued to use them for printing the SSC catalog.
The new subscriber will be the main beneficiary of the shorter lead time—he'll get his first issue sooner. Other benefits will include later deadlines for articles and advertising materials.
We believe this change to be a positive move on our part and look forward to a long and harmonious working relationship with Century.
Our next couple of issues will be focusing on Education and Training Using Linux and Linux as a Development Platform. We'll round out the year with another Graphics and Multimedia issue, then focus on System Administration in December. We have a lot of good articles being written for the first three, but commitments for system administration articles are lagging. So, I'd like to remind all you authors that we keep a “wish list” of articles on our web site, http://www.ssc.com/lj/wanted.html. Check it out, and if you find one you're interested in, write us at info@linuxjournal.com.
For some time now, we have wanted to run a cartoon each month. Although we have someone who can draw cartoons, he knows nothing about Linux. Send your favorite one-line Linux jokes to info@linuxjournal.com, and if we can, we'll turn them into cartoons.