Linux Gazette: the 1995–2011 e-zine and where to read Linux news now

Updated November 2026

Linux Gazette was a free monthly web magazine about Linux, "making Linux just a little more fun", that ran from July 1995 to June 2011. Around 2000 its issues were mirrored at this address as part of the Linux documentation collection. The magazine has stopped, but its archive is still online; this page explains what it was, where to read it, and where to follow Linux today.

What Linux Gazette was

The first issue, dated July 1995, was a personal project of John M. Fisk, published as part of his "Linux HomeBoy" web pages. It mixed shell aliases, mounting CD-ROMs and floppies, and a section on compiling your own kernel, written by someone who had installed Slackware from a pile of floppies about a year earlier and wanted to share what he had learned. That tone stayed: Linux Gazette was written by its readers, for other readers, and the first issue already announced that it had joined the Linux Documentation Project.

As it grew, other people took over the editing. For several years it was published by Linux Journal and had its own domain, linuxgazette.com. It later moved to linuxgazette.net, which carried it until the last issue. Regular features included:

Mirror sites around the world carried it, and volunteers translated issues into other languages. The last issue on linuxgazette.net is June 2011 (#186); no issue has appeared since.

Reading the archive

Everything is still at linuxgazette.net:

The Linux Documentation Project also keeps a copy at tldp.org/LDP/LG, but that copy stops at December 2003 (#97). Use linuxgazette.net for the later issues.

Articles are under the Open Publication License unless an article says otherwise; the copyright stays with each author. See the copying page before you republish one.

Old advice. Most Linux Gazette articles describe Linux as it was between 1995 and 2011: 2.x kernels, LILO, XFree86, ipchains and iptables, SysV init scripts. Read them for ideas and history, but check commands against current documentation before you run them. On this site, the Kernel HOWTO, the Firewall HOWTO, the ipchains page, the boot loader page and the display HOWTO cover what replaced those tools.

Where to read about Linux today

No single magazine plays Linux Gazette's role now. Instead there are a few reliable sources, each good for something different.

LWN.net

LWN.net (originally "Linux Weekly News") was started at the end of 1997 by Elizabeth Coolbaugh and Jonathan Corbet and is the most thorough news source for Linux and free software. The front page carries news as it happens, and the Weekly Edition sums up the week (see the archive of past editions), with sections on the kernel, security and distributions. LWN is funded mainly by subscriptions: new Weekly Edition articles are for subscribers first and become free for everyone one week after publication. The kernel index is one of the best ways to learn how a kernel subsystem works.

Kernel Newbies

Kernel Newbies is a community wiki for people learning kernel development. Its most useful page for everyone else is LinuxChanges, a human-readable changelog for each kernel release (for example Linux 7.3), with a list of all versions.

kernel.org

The kernel.org front page always shows the current releases. As of November 2026 the mainline kernel is 7.4-rc1, the latest stable series is 7.3 (7.3.1), and the long-term kernels are 6.18, 6.12, 6.6, 6.1, 5.15 and 5.10; the last two are due to reach end of life in December 2026. The releases page explains the kinds of kernel and gives the projected end-of-life dates. Development discussion happens on mailing lists archived at lore.kernel.org.

Your distribution's news

For changes that affect your own machine, follow your distribution's official channel:

Official news from major distributions
DistributionWhere
Debiandebian.org/News; security advisories at debian.org/security
Ubuntuubuntu.com/blog, Ubuntu Discourse, and security notices
FedoraFedora Magazine and the Community Blog
Arch Linuxarchlinux.org/news (Arch asks users to read it before upgrading)
openSUSEnews.opensuse.org
RHEL and clonesRed Hat security updates

For the Ubuntu family, Full Circle is a free, independent monthly magazine that is perhaps the closest thing to Linux Gazette's spirit still being published. DistroWatch tracks new releases of hundreds of distributions and is handy for spotting what is out, though it is not a source of technical detail.

Writing for others

Linux Gazette worked because readers wrote down what they learned. That still works: a clear blog post, a fix to your distribution's wiki, or a correction to a project's documentation helps the next person. The guide to writing Linux documentation explains how to structure it, and getting started with Linux is the place to begin if you are new.

Sources