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January 1999: Linux Based Robotics

Editorial

by Ismael Ripoll

In the beginning, I joined the LinuxFocus project because I thought Spanish speakers needed a free GNU/Linux magazine. At that time all the articles received at LF were originally written in english, and most of the work was to translate them to Spanish. It was not easy to foresee the great welcome it was going to get from Spanish and Latin America people. Success was backed by the high number of collaborators (currently more than 90), the great number of readers, and the technical press recognition.

Before starting LinuxFocus, projects like LuCAS (Linux in CAStilian) or SLUG (Spanish Linux User Group) already made Linux documentation in Spanish. Their main goal was, and still is, to translate the documentation produced by the the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) to Spanish. Our goal is similar in the sense that we produce documentation about GNU/Linux in Spanish, but from a pedagogical point of view. We think that not only the technical contents of the articles are important but also the way the information is presented.

LinuxFocus is more than a hobby and a source of pleasure to all the people that collaborate in the project, it is also a way to open up new professional areas. Authors, translators and reviewers are always training and showing their skills and knowledge. This kind of knowledge is what is required by most enterprises.

LinuxFocus is a cross road of people with knowledge who want to share their knowledge with others, and readers who want something more than just an introduction to the wonderful world of Linux.

Welcome Back

After a long time away Esperanza Sepulveda joins the LF family once more. She will use her expertise not only to provide high quality illustrations to the magazine but also to reduce the download size of the images.

She is a graphic designer, major in Arts by the Facultad de Bellas Artes de Madrid. She attends the same school as graduate student and takes part of a research project on digital media and art. Works for a corporation in the graphics design department and has experience with digital retouching and design. An interest on the internet as a communication media has brought her to collaborate with LinuxFocus.


Contents

Hardware Review

  • point An autoguided Vehicle Based on Linux by Vicente Egea, Jorge Garrido, Roberto Guzmán, Ranko Zotovic
    The field of mobil robotics has experienced an enormous growth the past few years. Many Departments of Robotics, Mechatronics, and Artificial Inteligence have focused part of their research to the study of autonomous vehicles. Until now, the high costs in R & D have limited their use in aerospace, military and nuclear power industries. However the current fast pace of development in the field is allowing the introduction of this technology in commercial areas like agriculture, industry, services, mining, medicine, and others. It is a strategic sector with a great potential for growth.
  • point Happy Hacking Keyboard by Miguel Angel Sepulveda
    Happy Hacking" is a keyboard made by PFU American Inc. and submitted to LinuxFocus for review. Here are some of our impressions on this sturdy and versatile keyboard.
  • point Installation and Configuration of a RAID System by
    RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) consists of a series of systems to organize several disk drives into a single entity that behaves as a single virtual drive but making the various disks work in parallel thus improving the access performance and saving the information stored from accidental crashes.

UNIX Basics

  • point File Access Permissions by
    This article is divided into two parts: The first part (Basic file access permissions) is a very short introduction to the basic file permission concept under Unix. The second part (T-bit, SUID and SGID) covers more advanced features of Linux that go beyond the basic "read-write-execute" flags.

Development

  • point Java. Part II by
    This is the second instalment of the Java series. The author continues with the study of data types, variables, control statements, etc. This will lead to the most important topic which is classes

Software Review

  • point PG2CGI Access to Databases from the Web by
    PG2CGI is a program that interfaces databases and cgi scripts. The author in this article gives a brief presentation of the design of the program and how it works. This is a very interesting article for those information system users and webadministrators.

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