Data Bus Articles by Chris "CJ" Fearnley


Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. PACS' Editorial and Copying Policies
  3. Annotated Index
    1. 1997 Article
    2. 1996 Articles
    3. 1995 Articles
    4. 1994 Articles
    5. 1993 Article
  4. Author Information

Introduction

In the fall of 1993 when PACS's Unix SIG needed a new leader, I stepped in even though I had only been using Unix (in the form of Linux) for a few months. Since PACS is a volunteer effort with a volunteer editor, some of these pieces are weak (I even forgot to run ispell(1) on a few). I have tried to make the articles usable to the general Unix reader (though there are many references to SIG business and what not, of course). I've included an annotated index for your convenience.


PACS' Editorial and Copying Policies

Reprinting Policy

Material may be reprinted freely by nonprofit users without requesting permission if credit is given to the source. Authors retain all individual rights and can be contacted through the PACS mailing address. Contributions are encouraged, but no payment is made.

Editorial Policy

Views expressed in The Data Bus are those of the author and do not necessarily express the views of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society, its officers or membership. Editing guidelines include restrictions regarding: sexism, racism, religious or libelous overtones. In addition, articles will be edited for grammar, spelling, space availability and overall appropriateness of the material.

The Data Bus
Philadelphia Area Computer Society


Annotated Index

1997 Article

January 1997 Article I announce my resignation as UNIX SIG leader at PACS and state my reasons (I mention the Philadelphia Linux User's Group as an alternate venue for Linux support in Philadelphia). Then I go on to write a long essay on "Web Authoring". I conclude with an update on the Yggdrasil CDs from last month's article. And then I say "fairwell".

1996 Articles

December 1996 Article A comparison of the Yggdrasil Winter 1997 Linux Internet Archives and the September 1996 InfoMagic Developer's CD sets.

June 1996 Article A tale from Rags to Riches. This is the story of the success Linux has played in my life recently. I document how I went from income below the poverty line to moderate success with a lot of hard work and Linux.

March 1996 Article Notes from my attendance at the First Conference on Freely Redistributable Software in Cambridge MA. Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Dr. Gregory Wettstein's talks are mentioned among others.

February 1996 Article Very short article mentioning another Linux code freeze.

January 1996 Article Miscellany. Including comments on Linux development, differences noted between gawk and mawk (both free implementations of the AWK programming language). And a comment on the new group PLUG (Philadelphia Area Linux User's Group).

1995 Articles

December 1995 Article "Debian GNU/Linux: The User-Community Developed Distribution of Linux". A discussion of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It's very ambitious, it's very good. Announcing the formation of the Philadelphia Area Linux User's Group (Philly-LUG) which has become The Philadelphia area Linux User Group (PLUG).

November 1995 Article "REVIEW: Red Hat Commercial Linux 2.0". Red Hat's good, but not that good.

October 1995 Article A discussion on the changing Linux distribution market provocatively entitled "The Rise of Red Hat; The Demise of Slackware?"

September 1995 Article Some notes on "Programming X11 with the Tcl/Tk toolkit".

July 1995 Article An interesting piece entitled "WWW, HTML and the Principle of Markup Languages". And a review of Larry Wall's book "Programming Perl".

May 1995 Article Tidbits about Linux 1.2, dosemu 0.60 (which is reported to be able to run some Windows apps under Windows in the emulator!), a few notes on bash(1), concluding with a brief explanation of "NetNews".

April 1995 Article Linux '95 (a.k.a. Linux 1.2) is released March 8 1995! And concluding with a brief blurb on IRC (Not a noble conclusion for my Internet series).

March 1995 Article Brief discussions on fdutils 4.1 and git 4.3.4. Then an introduction to the World Wide Web.

February 1995 Article Beginning a series of pieces on the Internet. This one was entitled: "Cruising the Information Superhighway with a Unix Shell Account". Concludes with some miscellaneous Linux blurbs.

January 1995 Article "Highlights from the D.C. Linux Conference" which I attended in December 1994. And concluding with a "funny" quoted from a Linux Journal interview with Linus Torvalds.

1994 Articles

December 1994 Article Writer's block hits again :( But I did manage to list several sources of information/support on Linux including a book list.

November 1994 Article Various and sundry Linux notes (most of which are extremely dated and some of which are of interest only to PACS members - where to find linux files on the BBS). Includes a discussion of some problems encountered when installing Linux on a friend's system.

October 1994 Article A now dated piece entitled "A Survey of Linux CD-ROMS". Concludes with some notes on support for Linux and khoros.

September 1994 Article This month's article includes: several blurbs discussing a few programs I've tried out (selection, sendfax, and ftape), a "humorous" paragraph about "Linux arrogance", a longer tutorial on "Upgrading your Linux Kernel" (actually not too bad, though recently several much better pieces about this have been published), and a discussion on "Who Should (and who shouldn't) Switch to Linux?" (also not too bad, but dated).

August 1994 Article A little blurb expounding the virtues of reading news.answers. Then a longer piece on "The Free Workstation" (based around Linux, of course).

July 1994 Article An update on Linux at PACS and a listing of the features of Linux from Michael K. Johnson's "the Linux Information Sheet."

June 1994 Article An introduction to vim, Vi IMproved, my favorite editor (to this day).

May 1994 Article An introduction to fvwm, a wonderful window manager for X11.

April 1994 Article Featuring a general introduction to the X Window System. Note: Linux 1.0 is released!

March 1994 Article Yea! I'm actually beginning to write "real" articles! This month I managed to write an introduction to the Awk programming language (with examples).

February 1994 Article A beginning ftp tutorial (obligatory for any aspiring Unix/Internet author :).

January 1994 Article Another short article. Mentions my transition from SLS to Slackware Linux.

1993 Article

December 1993 Article My first article and a brief introduction of Linux to PACS.


Author Information

Contact the author at cjf@CJFearnley.com. View the author's home page at http://www.CJFearnley.com.