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