Hi ALUG,
Did anyone else notice that Linux User had disppeared from the newstands? No, neither had I. But they've recently published a re-launch issue, now under Imagine Publishing.
Don't know if anyone else has read it and has any opinions? Just thought I'd voice some of mine. The features seem to be quite good, but some of the tutorials and reviews are dreadful.
The hardware reviews go into no detail whatsoever. So they reviewed several netbooks in this issue, and all they did was to tell you the basic specs, tell you how they found OOo to work, and tell you what it's like to hold the thing. No objective benchmark testing or anything.
But the software reviews were even worse. So bad, in fact, that I've quoted this passage from a view of Mono 2.4:
"Mono 2.4 was released in March of this year. The Mono project and the DotGNU project are based on similar ideas. The fact that you can just download it and do anything with it makes it attractive to a lot of people out there who don't want to be tied down by an NDA or some other legal straitjacket which prevents them from realising their goal in writing a certain type of application. The General Public License, which is the most successful software license ever produced by any organisation anywhere, and the MIT X11 license make all of this possible."
He manages to convey almost as little information in the remaining 500 words of the review.
It's good for a laugh if you have a spare £6 (I still think they should drop the 'free' DVDs from these things). Though I should say again that the features (Shuttleworth interview, Jon 'Maddog' Hall on OpenMoko, Gerry Gavigan on grass-roots marketing of FLOSS) were worth reading.
Best, Richard