General Linux Gazette Information

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

• The main Web site - linuxgazette.net.
• Mirror sites in many countries, some translated into other languages.
• Indirect mirrors, including the Linux Documentation Project mirror sites.
• In the Debian/GNU Linux distribution, as installable *.deb packages.
• On Linux Format's monthly cover DVD, as part of their LDP snapshot.

2. Which other formats is the Gazette available in?

• As a single HTML file. Every issue includes a TWDT (The Whole Damn 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. Look for the "TWDT" link near the bottom of the issue's Table of Contents page.

• As a single text file. We used to maintain one, but generating one from HTML is trivial - simply retrieve the TWDT via Lynx (there's a Wind0ws version as well as the ones for normal OSes :), links, w3m, or any other text-mode browser.

• As a single PDB file. For those who like to read their LG on a handheld device (e.g., a Palm.) Linked from the index page of every issue.

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

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

# If your version of 'tar' doesn't support '-z' (gzip compression)
gzip -dc filename.tar.gz|tar xvf -

# If you use a modern version, e.g. GNU 'tar'
tar xvzf filename.tar.gz

There are also graphical decompressor front ends for Linux/Unix such as LinTar and Midnight Commander.

Windows users can use a program like Winzip or 7-Zip. Macintosh users need Stuffit Expander or Mac-gzip + suntar. These programs do recognize *.tar.gz files even though their native formats are different. Winzip and Stuffit Expander are no-cost but proprietary ("closed-source"), and Stuffit requires registration, whereas 7-Zip and Mac-gzip/suntar are true open-source. If anybody knows of other open-source alternatives, let us know and we'll be happy to list them.

3. Can I get the Gazette via email?

The Gazette is too big to send via e-mail. Issue #44 is 754 kB; one of the larger issues, #34, was 2.7 MB. Even the text-only version of #44 is 146 kB compressed, 413 kB uncompressed. If anybody wishes to distribute the text version via e-mail, be our guest, but we simply can't support the bandwidth. There is an announcement mailing list where issues are announced as soon as they're released: go to http://lists.linuxgazette.net/mailman/listinfo/lg-announce to subscribe. Or read the announcement on comp.os.linux.announce.

Note: 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 unsubscribing the address.

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

How about on paper? I know of no companies offering printed copies of the Gazette. For a free, volunteer-run 'zine with a readership as large as ours, the economics simply do not work in that direction.

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. There is an e-mail announcement service if you wish to receive an announcement when each issue is posted.

5. Is there a version of the Linux Gazette in my language?

Maybe. :) See the mirrors page; the "Translations" section is right near the top. The last time this section was updated, there was a German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish version in existence; there may be more by the time you read this.

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 listed mirror is seriously out of date, please let us know (drop an email to .)

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 many of 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: the updating process is fairly arbitrary and highly sporadic, pending our finding a volunteer to do it on a regular basis.)

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

Certainly. Linux Gazette is freely redistributable under the Open Publication License (OPL). 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 copyrighted by its author. We also request that you provide a link back to linuxgazette.net.

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

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

http://linuxgazette.net/current/ is now a symbolic link to the current issue. Please do not bookmark any article through it. The bookmark will obviously go dead when the next issue is published, or could end up pointing at the wrong article. Instead, change the "current" to the real issue number (e.g., "104") in your bookmark.