Changes at LJ

In an amazing act of prestidigitation Phil Hughes waved his hands and Gary Moore and I traded positions on February 1. As a result, Gary is now SSC's Technical Editor and I am Managing Editor of Linux Journal. This is one of those win-win situations—Gary gets to spend more time editing and I get to tell everyone what to do. I love managing things. I suppose I have a strong controller streak to my psyche.

I have worked with computers for over 15 years now, mainly programming scientific applications in Fortran for geophysical (oil) companies. I also did a lot of technical writing in the form of software documentation. The writing was always the most fun, so I've enjoyed my work here at SSC and expect to continue to do so as Editor of Linux Journal. Since coming to work for SSC, I've done editing of reference cards, such as Java and HTML, as well as lots of copy editing for Linux Journal. And of course, I made sure that Linux Gazette got posted every month. Actually, it was the time spent on LG that convinced me that I could handle the job for LJ. I have retained custody of Linux Gazette. I have too much fun with LG to give it up, and I intend to have just as much fun with Linux Journal.

The project led by Alan Cox for Linux users to sponsor a penguin at Bristol Zoo in Swansea, UK is now complete. The sponsorship was done in Linus Torvalds's name as a 1996 Christmas present. Details can be found at http://penguin.uk.linux.org. Sounds like a fun project for user groups.

The first virus able to infect a Linux system has been found by McAfee Associates. The virus, named Bliss, has spread to Linux systems, as many Linux users play Internet games while logged in as root. To learn how to avoid this danger, check out this month's article “Safely Running Programs as Root”, by Phil Hughes.

If you have a spare Linux CD to give away, you can list your e-mail address at http://emile.math.ucsb.edu:8000/giveaway.html. Those people who need them will contact you, send you a self-addressed stamped envelope and then you can send them the CD. If you would prefer to lend a Linux CD locally, you can also sign up to do that at the site. This is a worthy project that should help to spread the word about Linux.

This month our focus is on Linux ports, and we have several articles on different ports including Alpha, Mac and the PowerPC. Also, thanks to Alessandro Rubini, Kernel Korner has returned to our pages.

Beginning with this issue Linux Journal will have tar, gzip files containing the listings for our articles. You can grab the files for this issue from ftp://ftp.linuxjournal.com/lj/listings/issue37. As time permits, we will add files containing article listings from previous months.

Next month we'll focus on networking. Planned are articles on multi-platform networking with Linux, on communicating between home and office and on setting up a Sun SPARCstation.

Send me any ideas or suggestions you might have for articles or Linux Journal in general. My e-mail address is ljeditor@linuxjournal.com. —Margie Richardson Managing Editor