1mo ago

Anyone here rocking the Linux Format magazines?

Believe this is one of the few vendors left making and distributing Linux magazines still(?). Would be interesting to hear what peoples feedback on these are, whether its this one or another. Seems like a fun monthly delivery to get!

Source; https://www.magazinesdirect.com/az-single-issues/6937009/linux-format-magazine-single-issue.thtml

36 comments

Used to buy these religiously every month about 15 years ago. They used to come with distros on a disc and I had pretty rubbish internet at the time so they were pretty handy for distro hopping.
They also did a really great podcast at that time too!
Glad to see they're still going!
- Those were so relevant at the time. Especially when installers started getting smooth and streamlined it made things so accessible. Arguably more than now, where every distro needs you to download an iso and use some third party software to make a bootable external drive on some device that already works, then manually boot into it.
  Back then you'd just buy a magazine at the shop, pop that CD in and your PC was up and running, which was a process every Windows user was familiar with anyway.
  I remember running down to the nearest store to see if I could find a live CD on a magazine cover being a non-trivial troubleshooting option there for a while when you were trying to fix some computer that wouldn't boot but you needed to rescue some files stat.
  
  For sure, and even on my own computers, the amount of times I used one of their Ubuntu isos to fix my broken grub was non zero! 😅
  
  You don't need any third-party software to create a bootable USB. On any Unix-like, you can simply write to the flash drive per-byte with the dd core utility.

They are advertising Brave as a safe alternative in June 2025? Maybe it was fine for print to die.
I'll be honest, I thought this cover was from sometime in the early 2000s. Once you format the subjects anachronistically you realize just how long the highlights in the Linux community have been the same. Live USB, easy dual boot and Ubuntu "blasting off". That takes me back.
- Not that I use Brave, but out of curiosity why do you deem it unsafe?
  
  Beyond just being a Chromium skin my impression of it these days is that their entire business model seems to revolve around tacking on AI and crypto features, and they've been caught messing with URLs in weird ways.
  I have no specific technical reasons related to privacy, but for whatever part of software privacy is trust in authoring, Brave sure seems like the same browser you already hate rebranded by the worst techbros you've ever met. It definitely seems weird to highlight it that prominently among that lineup, given some of the omissions.
  And just in general their specialized feature set is entirely irrelevant to my use cases and actively annoying, so even assuming it's on equal footing with every other entry on and off that list it'd be the last one I'd choose to highlight.

I loved Linux Voice back when it was still published. They had a series of articles on writing your own kernel in x86_64 ASM that I followed and ran on QEMU back when I was a philosophy student. It really cemented my interest in tech and now I do that for a living.
Edit: Linux Voice folded into Linux Format sometime around 10+ years ago
- Yeah, I was following the Linux Voice team from when they launched their own magazine.
  Kinda really read the mags because of the team trying to make it work, but it was (is?) good content.
  Then they merged into Linux Format and my career kinda moved from OS stuff to Cyber stuff so I dropped away...
  
  I never enjoyed Linux Format as much but neither magazine was all killer no filler.

Wish I could afford these...
- It's 2025. I wish I could afford food....
  
  Damn right
- Here is every copy of Linux Voice in pdf format https://archive.org/details/LinuxVoice/Linux-Voice-Issue-001/
  
  Ah thank you
- It's free on libby if your library has access to it
  
  Good shout! Though its quite a "different" feel to have a physical copy imo.

I used to read them, they often had good in depth tutorials. The Format branding has been going for a long time, I can remember reading Amiga Format.
There were a few other Linux magazines as well, Linux User, Linux Magazine, Linux Voice. I think there’s still a Raspberry Pi magazine as well which covers a lot of Linux stuff.

I used to love magazines, with their coverdisks full of goodies.
But the internet banished them. I stopped buying once I realised I was reading things I'd already read about online 2 months ago...
Monthly print can't really compete with instant.
- Yep, that's what's killed them for me too. I like having a physical magazine, and I like reading about things that I might otherwise miss, but the news is always old, and the guides tend to be spread across several issues that cost upwards of £6 each.
- Not to mention, they don't have comment sections to provide context or tell you why it's bullshit.
- I wouldn't get a magazine for news.
  I still get paper thrasher for the pictures and the interviews for example. It's not about latest and greatest.

We have linux-magazine delivered to the office.
The articles are easy to read, I can't remember having to look up background knowledge but I've been using Linux for decades now. The articles generally teach you something practical. I don't read all of it but what I read I often like. Just lacks depth from time to time.
Most people don't visit the office often I think, but it's there. I tend to take some home and bring them back.