Letters to the EditorWrite Access |
I am a UK subscriber to Linux Magazine. Is it possible as a current subscriber to download full back issues (at this point in time, I would like to download the September 2004 issue for the articles on spam and email security)?
Ewan Slater, United Kingdom
You don't have to download any issues from 2004 because they are all included on this month's DVD (see page 18).
For future reference, we usually put all articles online that are older than 5-6 months. That way, everybody in the Linux community can benefit from our articles.
You can access these articles here: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Magazine/Archive.
I would like to make some comments on Linux Magazine and DVDs. My only access to the Internet is on a slow telephone modem (no ADSL in my area). Therefore I rely on CD/DVD releases of distributions.
I am an ancient female Unix hack who learned to program in the Sixties. When I switched from Unix to Linux in the mid-nineties, I started with Slackware and then migrated to Debian. Later, I have been investigating switching to Gentoo to be able to get more up-to-date software without having to wait for the next Debian stable release.
I am a multi-disciplinary scientist and I like to work in the traditional Unix way, i.e., extremely efficiently. The kind of packages I use are:
The list above represents an extremely versatile collection of high quality professional software that any Linux expert can tie together with a little perl programming to do pretty well anything in the most efficient way.
Most of these packages get missed out on magazine distros. What are the chances of Linux Magazine putting together a Gentoo DVD, containing all the source packages in distfiles for the latest version of Gentoo, along with the necessary bootable level 1 and Portage?
If you can produce such a DVD, I would be eternally grateful. And then I would ask for a full DVD of DeMuDi complete with the source files so I can dual boot my best PC for recording work... :-)
Helen McCall, United Kingdom
Thanks for the suggestion. Watch for a Gentoo DVD sometime in the future. We should point out, however, that we have had other recent DVDs that contained the applications you mention. You say, "Most of these packages get missed out on magazine distros," and you may be correct for some magazines, but not for ours. Our DVDs almost always contain a complete distribution. As a matter of fact, our Issue 49 (December 2004) Suse 9.1 DVD contains packages for all of the applications you mention, and our Issue 50 (January 2005) Fedora Core 3 DVD contains most of these applications.
Thanks for the suggestion regarding DeMuDi. We are very interested in DeMuDi, which is developed by the AGNULA project (http://www.agnula.org/). According to AGNULA, DeMuDi is a Debian-based Linux distribution "devoted to professional and consumer audio applications and multimedia development." Watch for a review of DeMuDi or a DeMuDi DVD in future issues.
I have been reading your magazine and have been impressed so far. I like your reviews, and your HOWTOs have really jumped-started me on Linux. Now I have a question: Can you focus one of your issues on multimedia?
For example I have Suse Linux 9.1, and it refuses to recognize my sound card. This is driving me crazy. I tried it with a Suse Linux 9.0 Live CD, and sound worked. So should I switch to 9.0?
Also I seem to be having trouble installing codecs on my computer. I go through the process of installing Xvid and it goes smoothly, but I don't know how to make the program recognize them. Thanks for listening, and keep writing a great Magazine.
Matthew Barton, by email
Expect to see some articles on Linux Multimedia in next month's issue, which will feature a Multimedia cover story
As for sound card, have you tried removing the KDE mixer and using kamix instead? This is an approach that has helped many people.
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