this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Recently came across this magazine from the Linux Format on a second hand vintage shop and obviously had to go for it! These magazines are still produced these to this day btw. However, when I went to linuxformat.com after receiving my magazine to check out some of their other ones, I saw that they were in fact just celebrating their 25-year anniversary and have put out a digital version of the very magazine I bought - for everyone to view digitally!

Their announcement:

25-years ago in this month of May, back in 2000 (just after the giant Y2K meltdown that flipped every plane upsidedown) Linux Format was first published. To help celebrate and remember this momentous pinnacle of publishing prowess (and while we still have server access) we'll be popping out a few classic issues of Linux Format in PDF format. As we already have it to hand here's issue LXF001 with a very young looking Nick Veitch.

The magazine can be found digitally at: https://linuxformat.com/files/pdfs/LXF001.pdf

Either way, I had no idea of the timing but thought it was a fun experience and worthy to share here. Enjoy a step back into memory-lane!

Have a great rest of your day!

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[–] 0101100101 2 points 16 hours ago

What were the 'popular' distros at the time of the magazine?

[–] 0101100101 2 points 16 hours ago

Memory unlocked! Those blue zip drives were awesome! So much free space to put your rubbish on to. And the 'disks' had those funky grey hexagon pellets inside which mesmerised me!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I’ve heard people say things along the lines of “the Linux revolution never happened”.

Utterly false. Linux is, by a huuuuuuge margin, the most popular OS kernel in the world. It’s the most popular kernel for mobile phones. It’s the most popular kernel for servers. It’s the most popular kernel for SBCs. It may be the most popular kernel for embedded applications, but it’s hard to know that. The only place it’s not the most popular kernel is desktops/laptops.

[–] 0101100101 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

It's the most popular OS for toilets. And toasters. And fridges. And those display boards above drinks dispensers in supermarkets.

[–] refalo 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would argue TRON OS and its variants are in more devices on the planet than Linux is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

Maybe, but it’s hard to know that. Something running in the firmware of a chip in an embedded device is harder to identify than something powering the whole device. There’s also no reliable, publicly available statistics on embedded OSes I could find. So yeah, Linux might not be the most common kernel for embedded systems.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

cover story was "this is the year of the linux desktop"