Linux Journal

All the old news stand favourites are struggling or have gone. Its a tough time to be in niche market publishing.

Anybody remember ETI (merged in to Everyday Practical Electronics) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroni … ernational
Computer Weekly (still alive, but online only) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Weekly
PC Plus – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Plus

.. and many others too numerous to mention. Some survive, for example Elektor, but it is always a little sad when when one of the old stalwarts gives up the struggle.

We still have “Australian PC” (APC) over here, but I only read it in the library, as most of it is just reviews of graphics cards or keyboards or get another first person shooter game (yawn)

I got suckered into buying another magazine while on a weekend break, (I forget what its called), and found it was by the same publishing company with the same editor, and re-hashing stories from APC magazine

So that was a waste of a fiver UK ($10 AUD)

I think its good that Elektor is still going, but its projects all used to be a bit too complex for me, and I have enough self generated projects to last a lifetime 10 x over.

sad, i’ve been a keen follower, it is one of the earliest journals on linux
before android came to being, there is linux and android runs on linux

the other thing i missed much as well is dr dobbs
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and … /240169421

DDJ was always a bit highbrow for me
also had to get Smiths to order it for you, sad intro to the $1 ==> £1 conversion rate.
there was a time LJ was the same, then i subscribed for some years for postal, when it went digital. then it seemed to lose something apart from the paper.
i’ve still got all my LJ from 1 onwards, in all honesty condition would be poor, aka exceedingly well thumbed
stephen

A tear shed and life goes on…

I was trained in UNIX System 5, so that shows my age. At that time, AT&T controlled UNIX. It is easy to write about something when there is only one color to describe. But with Linux, there are many colors and the distributions are fragmented along multiple architectural lines: Puppy to Raspberry Pi. Trying to captivate a diverse audience with enough reading material to make everyone happy is simply not economically; which is to say, some readers will feel cheated if their flavor of Linux is not well represented and will not renew their subscriptions. Eventually, it is a downward spiral as the subscriptions diminish there is less revenue and less opportunity to generate quality articles.

The price for advertisements and the entire ecosystem around adverts and cash flow is the magazines circulation numbers.

I certainly do not have a crystal ball and my Gypsy consultant has moved on to reading palms in downtown Atlanta, but I would venture to guess that published-on-paper magazines will continue to collapse: publishing on paper is not environmentally friendly and materials, printing, and distribution costs are on the rise and while this old goat used to love to sit back with a cold beer and read a technical publication, I have evolved to get my techno-buzz from online sites… not a single magazine is delivered anymore. When put in prospective, the wife no longer harps on my stack of magazines in the living room so in some respects not getting paper magazines has improved my life. Plus, beer is more expensive than ever so the money saved on subscriptions helps to offset the increase cost of my brew.

Ray

perhaps it’s time to invest the|some savings into home brew equipment ?
srp

[zmemw16 – Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:25 pm] –
perhaps it’s time to invest the|some savings into home brew equipment ?
srp

Yea … that thought has come to mind more than once …

there is something common between linux, arduino, stm32duino
and it is actually more than open source
the first time when i installed a linux distribution on a *386* pc using *floppies*, the most amazing and fun thing then is that ‘i’ve my own (un*x) os’, back then un*x used to be run on expensive dec, sun, apollo and sgi workstations, having linux (un*x) on a pc is ‘disruptive* it changed the status quo. no longer is windows and ms dos the only (public) desktop os. i can run my own mail server, domain name server etc, back then in the windows world it is a privilege of the ‘servers’ unless of course one downloads and run shareware / freeware versions of those.

back then and for a long time connecting to diy custom peripherals is pretty much rs232 16550 uart etc. then come usb, and for the longest time there is no ‘user custom-able usb’, vlsi are expensive short of buying in bulk. many resort to usb-serial converters. today comes leaflabs maple, stm32duino it is ‘disruptive’ in a similar light, user customizable usb is now a reality. a blue pill, maple mini’s role can be simply re-defined uploading a sketch or firmware. in a sense stm32 could just ‘spoof’ any usb vid/pid and mimic whatever device one deems fit. similarly with things like nrf51822 makes bluetooth le ‘user customizable’. i’m not sure how long this niche trend would last, but i’d guess this is part of that ‘iot’ hype along with the RPis, beaglebone blacks, arduinos, micro:bit, and all that n variety of mcu boards and single board computers.

but i’d guess ‘iot’ is simply a buzzword to the ‘average’ man on the street probably ignored just as the ‘average’ crowd seemed pretty happy with the notion that computers runs windows, phones runs android or ios, while things like linux, arduino (etc) simply co-existed below the ‘noise floor’

OT: on a side note things like stm32duino could literally outdo the million monkey theorem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
with the help of things like AI, deep learning etc, stm32duino could simply mimic a 3 in 1 device usb serial, keyboard, mice, it receives ‘AI’ instructions over usb serial, spoofs as the keyboard and mice and conjure the works of an other worldly william shakespheare

I just read the closure announcement on the initial link and noticed that it now has 578 Likes. I am still trying to figure this out!!!!????????

I used to publish a hobby magazine myself and when I finally gave up the unequal struggle I got deluged with messages of support like they have — much of it from people who had been “meaning to take out/renew a subscription” and would certainly do so if I restarted the magazine. People just don’t value these things until its too late.

[ag123 – Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:03 pm] –
there is something common between linux, arduino, stm32duino
and it is actually more than open source
the first time when i installed a linux distribution on a *386* pc using *floppies*, the most amazing and fun thing then is that ‘i’ve my own (un*x) os’, back then un*x used to be run on expensive dec, sun, apollo and sgi workstations, having linux (un*x) on a pc is ‘disruptive* it changed the status quo. no longer is windows and ms dos the only (public) desktop os. i can run my own mail server, domain name server etc, back then in the windows world it is a privilege of the ‘servers’ unless of course one downloads and run shareware / freeware versions of those.

back then and for a long time connecting to diy custom peripherals is pretty much rs232 16550 uart etc. then come usb, and for the longest time there is no ‘user custom-able usb’, vlsi are expensive short of buying in bulk. many resort to usb-serial converters. today comes leaflabs maple, stm32duino it is ‘disruptive’ in a similar light, user customizable usb is now a reality. a blue pill, maple mini’s role can be simply re-defined uploading a sketch or firmware. in a sense stm32 could just ‘spoof’ any usb vid/pid and mimic whatever device one deems fit. similarly with things like nrf51822 makes bluetooth le ‘user customizable’. i’m not sure how long this niche trend would last, but i’d guess this is part of that ‘iot’ hype along with the RPis, beaglebone blacks, arduinos, micro:bit, and all that n variety of mcu boards and single board computers.

but i’d guess ‘iot’ is simply a buzzword to the ‘average’ man on the street probably ignored just as the ‘average’ crowd seemed pretty happy with the notion that computers runs windows, phones runs android or ios, while things like linux, arduino (etc) simply co-existed below the ‘noise floor’

OT: on a side note things like stm32duino could literally outdo the million monkey theorem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
with the help of things like AI, deep learning etc, stm32duino could simply mimic a 3 in 1 device usb serial, keyboard, mice, it receives ‘AI’ instructions over usb serial, spoofs as the keyboard and mice and conjure the works of an other worldly william shakespheare

As someone who’s a bit more in between, i have some linux devices and don’t mind interfacing with them, but usually uses windows, i think the problem with a lot of open source programs for “normal people” is that people also value their time (and in some cases sanity).
Open source still seems to have very little motivation to make things usable to everybody. And usually when asking around, everything is possible with open source software, until you actually try to do it, and end up having to compile your own recent drivers, messing around with version hell on certain components, getting stuck for hours in obscure config files and getting 3 different tools to work together somehow, and then giving up because it’s all just falling apart (may or may not reflect some of my past experiences).
I have a certain interest in linux/unix, but until i actually want to learn/investigate it as a hobby, it’ll just be what’s deep down in my android phone, NAS servers, raspberry pi, and i’ll just use it very superficially with things i know work well, not trying too fancy things (which i know i can easily achieve on windows).
It also depends on how you like working, i know people who adore CLI interfaces, hack everything together using scripts, etc… if that’s your thing, go for it . i grew up with ms dos -> windows 3.1 -> windows 95. and for me it always felt like an improvement, and i like where it is now .
And for all the goods & evils about microsoft etc… There are some obvious evils, but so far they haven’t bitten me too much yet (and luckily in europe the EU fights back when corporations go too far). Some of the goods i like is that they are very driven to make things usable, compatible across the entire system, great backwards compatibility, and a lot of effort in continuous improvement of their ecosystem.

i’m not really anti-(ms) windows for that matter, just that i find that linux, un*x apparently seemed suitable for different purposes / use cases.
when one tries to build scripts / have some simple batch automations etc, i tend to find linux , unix shells and tools more versitle.
for a programming environment e.g. with eclipse, arduino etc i tend to find various open sourced tools well developed and suited to the linux environment e.g. dfu-util which we used to flash the sketches. it tends to ‘work out of box’, my guess is in part it is built around libusb which is pretty much a mature single library in the linux world. in addition, for development, linux distributions comes with a rich set of tools such as make files etc which simplified things before IDEs become commonly available on linux as well. the open sourced environment also tends to ‘hide little’ between the hardware and os (pretty much close to bare metal), you could pretty much observe the logs out right e.g. running lsusb, checking dmesg etc when troubleshooting connectivity problems e.g. with a blue pill / maple mini etc. i’m thinking that on windows, sometimes it isn’t as easy to troubleshoot and diagnose usb connectivity issues as the logs/hints may not be there or may be rather obscure.

there are other use cases such as intel compute stick, on windows it pretty much works as a ‘tiny desktop’ computer.
it is actually rather inconvenient if u discover that to use the compute stick you’d need to hook up a monitor, keyboard, mouse, a usb hub (it has only one port) and power to basically use it as a little desktop pc.
with linux i turned it into a remote device in which i can remotely control and run pretty much anything over wifi
https://liliputing.com/2015/07/simplest … o-far.html
and with some of those dlna clients
https://elinux.org/DLNA_Open_Source_Projects
or kodi
https://kodi.tv/
i could stream videos to it just like a chromecast dongle

a strange thing i like about the internet is a quote from somewhere
“censorship is interpreted as damage and is to be routed around”
ok probably not totally true anymore.

i remember being on the phone for guidance whilst doing the 3.5 hr kernel compile and also the 15 3.5″ non floppies to install slackware and i think a 0.98 kernel, 386sx16 over clocked to 20, 2mb of sip, hercules graphics card. £1317 istr, someone at the time crowed about getting his £10 cheaper.
the guy distributing it had to do the copying them quietly in the student computing area of Aston Uni and i had the train journey to wait for and collect them.

something about linux hardware, wait and it will work; bit like censorship in the above
where’s my barcode reader, anyone remember Tandy … … yes it did eventually and that was enough for me !

stephen

i’m not really anti-(ms) windows for that matter

Well, I am… anti-MS. I spent many years as a MCSE Windows-role architect and have thousands of Windows automated installations under my belt and years of 3rd and 4th level engineering support.

… Rick’s screwed up royally. … he went to reply and inadvertently edited instead .. I’m so sorry Ray
Nah… no problem Rick… beware the edit icon

… To elaborate in a weebit less words than the original: Wife’s PC broke Jan 2016 and I bought a 2nd hand refurbished notebook and installed Linux Mint 17.x on the box. She had 23 years of Windows experience at work and she move to Linux @home with no issues… I did not get yelled at even once. :mrgreen: She edits WP and spreadsheets in Open Office and moves files between Windows 8.1 and Linux Mint without any concerns.

Here is the punch line:
If my 66 YO wife can move from Windows to Linux, anyone in this forum can too. Just bite the bullet, convert, and stop all the rediculous bla, bla, bla excuses … or, would you like everyone to know you were passed in the techno fast lane by a granny?

Just do it.

Ray

oh well, either way, it’d seem m$ and even the os itself is going the ‘cloud’ route these days, a trouble is many commercial s/w vendors still continue to do ‘windows only’, and oh yeah, they’d basically support 1 h/w platform and maybe even 1 os level (say windows 10), if windows 11 comes along good luck or maybe u can buy another new s/w package from them (‘upgrade’)

[mrburnette – Wed Dec 06, 2017 5:54 pm] –
i’m not really anti-(ms) windows for that matter

Well, I am… anti-MS. I spent many years as a MCSE Windows-role architect and have thousands of Windows automated installations under my belt and years of 3rd and 4th level engineering support.

… Rick’s screwed up royally. … he went to reply and inadvertently edited instead .. I’m so sorry Ray

Ray

I read your full post, and i see where you’re coming from. Luckily a lot of the things you’re mentioning have improved (it also reflects how the pc industry evolves). Windows 10 runs great on older systems etc… not like the windows 95 -> windows vista era where every consecutive windows indeed basically required a new pc…

someone said

Well, I am… anti-MS

work wise didn’t have much choice, then someone said want to build a test rig and i sold them linux for the license fees.
linux boxes, kernel, isa & pci device drivers AND i get paid.
system unit was pretty much a display, mouse and keyboard less laptop, take home and connect … …
back in next day and connect … …
best 5yrs, even better i was able to carry on using a linux box.
seems some people thought i’d be bored senseless with one on my desk.
they didn’t quite get the unix do one thing well and pipe approach, aka divide and conquer, i almost got fond of Perl5; they still favour monolithic c++ app approach.

stephen

… tools that live in the Windows only world can almost always run in a VM.

Example:
cypress_linux_tools – Tools to build and flash cypress PSoC Creator projects under Linux. … gengetopt; make; wine (to run cyelftool when using makefile); An arm toolchain (arm-none-eabi-). In order to build and install …

Simple Win32 API stuff often runs under Wine which is often part of Linux base installations.

When all else fails, dual boot…

Ray

ot again: on a side note, i’m wanting to try to make arudino make files that’d build my sketches in linux with or without eclipse.
it is one of those ‘projects’ that i wanted to do but never seem to be able to dedicate time to it.
linux distributions normally has all the tools for a make file based build. on windows i’d think u’d at least need to get things like visual c++ or some c based compilers and packages. and i’d guess normally ‘IDE’ seem to be the norm these days on windows and makefiles are ‘delegated’ to the linux / un*x world.
the benefit of make files? copy the whole project change a few lines in the make file and different sets of libraries gets included, all the default defines and includes could be pre-defined ‘arduino ide’ isn’t needed for that
and building a binary/sketch is simply ‘make’

[ag123 – Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:00 am] –
ot again: on a side note, i’m wanting to try to make arudino make files that’d build my sketches in linux with or without eclipse.
it is one of those ‘projects’ that i wanted to do but never seem to be able to dedicate time to it.
<…>

https://github.com/sudar/Arduino-Makefile

This is a very simple Makefile which knows how to build Arduino sketches. It defines entire workflows for compiling code, flashing it to Arduino and even communicating through Serial monitor. You don’t need to change anything in the Arduino sketches.

Features

Very robust
Highly customizable
Supports all official AVR-based Arduino boards
Supports chipKIT
Supports Teensy 3.x (via Teensyduino)
Works on all three major OS (Mac, Linux, Windows)
Auto detects serial baud rate and libraries used
Support for *.ino and *.pde sketches as well as raw *.c and *.cpp
Support for Arduino Software versions 0.x, 1.0.x, 1.5.x and 1.6.x except 1.6.2. We recommend 1.6.3 or above version of Arduino IDE.
Automatic dependency tracking. Referred libraries are automatically included in the build process. Changes in *.h files lead to recompilation of sources which include them
Installation

Through package

Using apt-get (or aptitude)

If you’re using FreeBSD, Debian, Raspbian or Ubuntu, you can find this in the arduino-mk package which can be installed using apt-get or aptitude.

sudo apt-get install arduino-mk

I also think Rick or another Linux member posted about Linux make

Ray

[mrburnette – Wed Dec 06, 2017 5:54 pm] –
i’m not really anti-(ms) windows for that matter

Well, I am… anti-MS. I spent many years as a MCSE Windows-role architect and have thousands of Windows automated installations under my belt and years of 3rd and 4th level engineering support.

… Rick’s screwed up royally. … he went to reply and inadvertently edited instead .. I’m so sorry Ray
Nah… no problem Rick… beware the edit icon

… To elaborate in a weebit less words than the original: Wife’s PC broke Jan 2016 and I bought a 2nd hand refurbished notebook and installed Linux Mint 17.x on the box. She had 23 years of Windows experience at work and she move to Linux @home with no issues… I did not get yelled at even once. :mrgreen: She edits WP and spreadsheets in Open Office and moves files between Windows 8.1 and Linux Mint without any concerns.

Here is the punch line:
If my 66 YO wife can move from Windows to Linux, anyone in this forum can too. Just bite the bullet, convert, and stop all the rediculous bla, bla, bla excuses … or, would you like everyone to know you were passed in the techno fast lane by a granny?

Just do it.

Ray

lol XD
couple of years ago when my parents’ pc was having HD issues, i temporarily booted it with a ubuntu live cd so we at least could browse the internet on it.
I think it took my ~60YO mother a full 10 minutes to get stuck on firefox having opened a tab full screen, without address bars or any kind of window controls, and not knowing the firefox shortcuts myself i came close to having to reboot the computer to get out of it XD (i think i ended up logging out & back in, nearly as bad XD).
it’s ofcourse a silly first experience, but it’s the kind of thing that leaves people with a very bad feeling if they’re ever suggested to move to linux ^^’.