Recently came across this magazine from the Linux Format on a second hand vintage shop and obviously had to go for it! These magazines are still produced these to this day btw. However, when I went to linuxformat.com after receiving my magazine to check out some of their other ones, I saw that they were in fact just celebrating their 25-year anniversary and have put out a digital version of the very magazine I bought - for everyone to view digitally!
Their announcement:
25-years ago in this month of May, back in 2000 (just after the giant Y2K meltdown that flipped every plane upsidedown) Linux Format was first published. To help celebrate and remember this momentous pinnacle of publishing prowess (and while we still have server access) we'll be popping out a few classic issues of Linux Format in PDF format. As we already have it to hand here's issue LXF001 with a very young looking Nick Veitch.
The magazine can be found digitally at: https://linuxformat.com/files/pdfs/LXF001.pdf
Either way, I had no idea of the timing but thought it was a fun experience and worthy to share here. Enjoy a step back into memory-lane!
Have a great rest of your day!
It was pretty niche, most magazine racks in a corner shop would only carry a few of them.
There was a sort of rule at the time, for people with cd burners in their PCs. You would charge people for the 3-4 CDs which e.g. mandrake came on, but wouldn't charge them for the time or software itself. So you'd "buy Linux" from your friends friend for a few quid.
That's odd to read; during the very early years of my exposure to Linux, a lot of what I learned was learned by going to my local Barnes & Noble and browsing the 2-3 Linux magazines, primarily this one, they had prominently displayed in the periodicals section.
I mean Linux magazines in general were pretty niche, not all corner shops had them. I had to go to larger newsagents and decide which one had the most tempting cd on the cover that month.
Fair enough.
Was that in 2000? My own vague memory was that Linux started picking up some steam in the early 2000's and then branched out to a new audience shortly after Firefox and Ubuntu hit the scene around 2004, and actually saw some adoption when Windows XP's poor security and Windows Vista's poor hardware support started breaking things.
So depending on the year, you could both be right.
Honestly, I don't remember for sure, but probably approximately then.