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Journal of Linux Technology -- first looks
This is a quick review of the Journal of Linux Technology, JOLT in
short, that VA Linux has launched together with O'Reilly this month.
You can find more info about it at http://jolt.linux.com/.
I was first attracted by the name. Finally it was looking that there
would be a Linux publication that instead of concerning itself with
the sum of the ASCII values of "Bill Gates III", would bring us some
technology news and articles that interest people who are
technologically interested in Linux. The TOC also looked promising;
the theme of the month is clustering, and the articles talk about
cluster monitoring and management.
First, a few things about the registration process and the journal
itself. You can subscribe to the journal on the website, but it goes
over regular HTTP and not HTTPS (which I noticed only *after*
subbmitting my application, shame on me). I personally don't think
it's a big deal, but it's very uncommon these days, so I was a bit
surprised.
Today I got the first issue (February). I wonder, has O'Reilly done
monthly publications before? (Is TPJ an O'Reilly publication?) You
can see right away that this the the first issue -- it's still pretty
much amateur. It arrived in an enevelope (quite uncommon for
magazines). It's also somewhat small, featuring 40 pages (as opposed
to LJ's 100-odd), center-stapled together like a thin notebook. The
format is very simple -- a TOC, the "letter from the editor", and then
four plainly laid out articles, one after the other, interrupted by
full-page advertisements. As one might expect of the first issue,
there are only advertisements for VA Linux and O'Reilly. All in all,
pretty plain and simple.
Now to the articles. The first one is titled "Network Monitoring for
Clusters", and describes VA Linux's VACM (VA Cluster Manager) system
which allows one to monitor a Beowulf cluster and automatically
respond to events. Yes, a not-so-subtle self-advertisement on the
part of VA Linux, indeed. :-) Although since the software is free,
it's forgivable. The second article talks about the management and
the organizational side of running a Beowulf cluster. It's written by
the author of the "Building Linux Clusters" O'Reilly book (it's only
fair that the second article would be a self-advertisement for
O'Reilly ;-) ), and he describes there a database-based software
system for administration of a Beowulf cluster (such as tracking
users, groups, jobs and resources).
The third article describes the TurboLinux "Clustor" product and its
applicability to "parametric" computing problems. The fourth article
talks about the problems of supercomputing on an international scale,
or in other words harnessing the power of computers connected by
high-latency limited-bandwidth networks. It also describes two
supercomputing projects that were deployed on wide networks, and how
they dealt with these problems.
Basically, the journal lives up to its name. It delivers long,
strictly technical articles with very little fluff. (Consider --
there are 40 pages in the magazine, 31 of which are fully dedicated to
the articles, of which there are four, yielding in 7.75 pages per
article on average! That's not your average LJ column.) There are no
why-my-computer-doesn't-work "technical support" sections, pointless
"numbers" columns, yet-another-why-don't-you-get-over-this-already-
for-heavens-sake distribution comparison charts, and tell-me-
something-I-don't-know Linux advocacy articles. Just technical stuff
for those who like it.
I think JOLT has a very strong niche to fill. If you're not a Linux
newbie, and you're interested in Linux technologies, do subscribe. If
you don't want to submit your credit card via the net unencrypted, you
can call them (which will go through the telephone network unencrypted
just as well, but for some reason many people are more comfortable
with this). It's quite expensive ($53 -- that's more expensive than
LJ), but IMHO it's worth it.
--
Alex Shnitman | http://www.debian.org
alexsh@hectic.net, alexsh@linux.org.il +-----------------------
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