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General Linux Gazette Information

1. Where can I find the HTML version of the Gazette?
2. Which other formats is the Gazette available in?
3. Which formats is the Gazette not available in?
4. How can I subscribe to the Gazette?
5. Is Linux Gazette available in Spanish? French? Chinese? Italian? Russian? German? Japanese?
6. Why is the most recent issue several months old?
7. How can I find all the articles about a certain subject?
8. May I copy and distribute the Gazette or portions thereof?
9. You have my competitor's logo on the Front Page; will you put mine up too?
10. Is there a generic URL to the current issue?
11. Do you publish announcements about Java products?
12. How does the rsync server work?

1. Where can I find the HTML version of the Gazette?

• The main web site-- www.linuxgazette.com.

• Mirror sites in 47 countries, some with translations in other languages.

• Indirect mirrors, including Linux Documentation Project mirror sites.

• In the Debian/GNU Linux distribution, as ordinary *.deb packages.

• On CD as part of a Linux Journal archive CD-ROM. There may also be other companies that include the Gazette on their CDs, but we don't currently have a list.

2. Which other formats is the Gazette available in?

• As a single HTML file. Every issue includes a TWDT (The Whole D--- Thing) file containing a copy of all the articles in one file. This is primarily intended for printing, but you may also find it useful if you have a slow modem. Hyperlinks inthe TWDT version are not guaranteed to work. Look for the "TWDT" link near the bottom of the issue's Table of Contents page.
• As a single text file. This is a text-only version of TWDT. Look for "TWDT" near the bottom of the issue's Table of Contents.

• Via FTP. Each issue is available as a *.tar.gz file, containing both the ordinary HTML files and the TWDT files. See ftp://ftp.ssc.com/pub/lg/README for details. Other FTP sites are listed on our mirrors page.

To unpack *.tar.gz files on Unix, do either of these:

tar xzvf FILENAME.tar.gz
zcat FILENAME.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Windows users need a program like Winzip. Macintosh users need Stuffit Expander. These programs do recognize *.tar.gz files even though their native formats are different. Winzip and Stuffit Expander are no-cost but closed-source, and Stuffit requires registration. If anybody knows of open-source GUI alternatives, let us know.

3. Which formats is the Gazette not available in?

Other archive formats. We need to keep disk space on the FTP site at a minimum for the sake of the mirrors. Also, the Editor rebels at the thought of the additional labor involved in maintaining more formats. We have chosen the formats required by the majority of Gazette readers. Anybody is free to maintain the Gazette in another format if they wish, and if it is available publicly, I'll consider listing it on the mirrors page.

Other printable formats. (These are listed only for people who specifically want these formats. The easiest way to read the Gazette is through a web browser, and the easiest way to print it is through the browser's Print... option.)

PostScript

Netscape's "print to file" routine will create a PostScript file complete with images.

PDF

I know Adobe and others consider PDF a "universal" format, but to me it's still a one-company format that requires a custom viewer--not something I'm eager to maintain. If you can view PDF, can't you view HTML?

If you really want PDF, you can convert Postscript files to PDF using ps2pdf in the Ghostscript package. Thanks to Mark Kuchel for pointing this out in his 2-Cent Tip.

Word

I'll be nice and not say anything about Word....

E-mail. The Gazette is too big to send via e-mail. Issue #44 is 754 KB; the largest issue (#34) was 2.7 MB. Even the text-only version of #44 is 146 K compressed, 413 K uncompressed. If anybody wishes to distribute the text version via e-mail, be my guest. There is an announcement mailing list where I announce each issue: go to http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo/lg-announce to subscribe. Or read the announcement on comp.os.linux.announce.

Subscribing with "nospam" in your From: address or "dot" instead of "." is not going to get you subscribed. It just makes more work for the list administrator, who must deal with the resulting bounce messages and then unsubscribe the address.

If e-mail really is your only option, some organizations operate FTP-via-mail servers you can use.

On paper. I know of no companies offering printed copies of the Gazette.

4. How can I subscribe to the Gazette?

You can't. It's not a subscription magazine. What you see on the web is what you get. See above for the other formats Linux Gazette is and is not available in. There is an e-mail announcement service if you wish to receive an announcement when each issue is posted.

5. Is Linux Gazette available in Spanish? French? Chinese? Italian? Russian? German? Japanese?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. See the mirrors page.

6. Why is the most recent issue several months old?

You're probably looking at an unmaintained mirror. Check the home site to see what the current issue is, then go to the mirrors page on the home site to find a more up-to-date mirror.

If a mirror is seriously out of date, please let us know.

7. How can I find all the articles about a certain subject?

Use the Linux Gazette search engine.

Use the Index of Articles. A link to it is on the Front Page, at the bottom of the issues links, called "Index of All Issues". All the Tables of Contents are concatenated here onto one page. Use your browser's "Find in Page" dialog to find keywords in the title or author's names.

There is a separate Answer Gang Index, listing all the questions that have been answered by the Answer Gang. However, they are not sorted by subject at this time, so you will also want to use the "Find in Page" dialog to search this listing for keywords. (It's not up to date either: it's still called The Answer Guy even though it's now The Answer Gang.)

8. May I copy and distribute the Gazette or portions thereof?

Certainly. Linux Gazette is freely redistributable under the Open Publication License (OPL) (http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/), version 1.0 or later. You may copy it, give it away, sell it, translate it into another language, whatever you wish. Just keep the copyright notices attached to the articles, since each article is copyright by its author. We request that you provide a link back to www.linuxgazette.com.

If your copy is publicly available, we would like to list it on our mirrors page, especially if it's a foreign language translation. Use the submission form at the bottom of the page to tell us about your site. This is also the most effective way to help Gazette readers find you.

LG's official copyright statement is at http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html.

9. You have my competitor's logo on the Front Page; will you put mine up too?

If you would like more information about sponsoring the Linux Gazette, e-mail sponsor@linuxgazette.com.

10. Is there a generic URL to the current issue?

This link was added for the convenience of those wishing to download the current issue to their PalmPilot every month.

11. Do you publish announcements about Java products?

Occasionally we publish these in News Bytes: Software News, if there is a specific Linux connection besides simply the fact that it runs on a Linux server. (Because all Java programs can supposedly run on a Linux server.) A zine that specializes in Java would be a better resource for this.

12. How does the rsync server work?

Rsync was installed May 2000 as a convenient way for LG mirrors and others to keep their copies of the web directory and the FTP files up-to-date.

Our system administrator writes:

1. You need rsync. See http://rsync.samba.org/

2. Some useful applications of rsync:

   rsync -az rsync.ssc.com::lg/ /tmp/lg

   synchronizes everything (tarballs and the web directory www_root to /tmp/lg (your local directory)

   rsync -ptz 'rsync.ssc.com::lg/*' /tmp/lg

   gets just the tarballs

   rsync -az rsync.ssc.com::lg/www_root/ /tmp/www

   gets lg/www_root/ to /tmp/www/ but skips the tarballs

3. The trailing slash in the "from" field is important!! Otherwise you will get a subdirectory named lg or www_root inside your destination directory, and everything underneath that.

4. Add 'v' to the option string to see more of what's going on. There are many, many other options. For more info, 'man rsync'.

Ewen McNeill <ewen@catalyst.net.nz> uses:

rsync -rlHtSz -v --stats anonymous@rsync.ssc.com::lg/ /dest/dir/

This is build up using environmental variables and a script.

The following was written sometime before June 1999 by LG's then-Editor Marjorie Richardson, and is presented here for historical interest.

Statement of Purpose

Linux Gazette, a member of the Linux Documentation Project, is an on-line WWW publication that is dedicated to two simple ideas:

• Making Linux just a little more fun
• Sharing ideas and discoveries

The basic idea behind these two concepts is that Linux is one cool OS, whose price for admission is a willingness to read, learn, tinker (aka, hack!), and then share your experiences. The Gazette is a compilation of basic tips, tricks, suggestions, ideas and short articles about Linux designed to make using Linux fun and easy. LG began as a personal project of John M. Fisk, and grew to include contributions freely provided by a growing number of authors. Linux Journal is now publishing the Gazette using material contributed by outside authors (note to potential authors). Without these authors there would not be a Gazette, and I thank them all. Drop a note to the author of anything that you find helpful or instructive -- the author's e-mail address is included for this very purpose.

Thanks to Matt Welsh and Greg Hankins of the Linux Documentation Project, for graciously bringing the Linux Gazette under the auspices of the LDP. The material included in these documents is covered by a designedly liberal copyright. For information regarding copying and distribution of this material read the Copying License.

A special thanks to Michael J. Hammel, our Graphics Muse, for the wonderful new logo designed using the GIMP.

Thanks to SSC, we now have our own domain name: linuxgazette.com.

Have fun!

Marjorie L. Richardson, Overseer Linux Gazette