Linux Journal December 2012

by Shawn Powers (editor), Doc Searls (Editor), Kyle Rankin (Editor)

A quick overview of what's in this special Readers' Choice * 2012 Readers' Choice Awards * the Open-Source Client for Google Drive * Get Started with Raspberry Pi * A Look at the New Features in GIMP 2.8 * Nexus 7Detailed Data, Data EverywhereWhen I was younger, I read a lot of books. Although they've fallen out ofstyle, some of my favorite books were of the "Choose Your OwnAdventure"variety. The only downside is that three or four nested page-turning decisions into the book, I'd run out of fingers to hold my place. See, I didn't wantto commit to the wrong choice. (I may have missed the point of those books.)Based on feedback from last year, I suspect most of you read "Choose YourOwn Adventure" books in the same way. After last year's Readers' Choiceissue, you wanted more data! This year, we obliged and are are giving you the full results, down to tenths of percentage points. (Those writing in for moreprecise numbers will get *such a pinch*!)Normally with the Readers' Choice issue, I feign laziness andclaim that readers have done all the heavy lifting. This issue, however,is chock full of interesting articles. Reuven M. Lerner starts off withhis annual book roundup. I always struggle with which books are worthmy time, and Reuven aims to help with that problem. Dave Taylor, on theother hand, gives a lesson in stdin, stdout and stderr. If you'veever been confused about adding 2>&1 to the end of your cron jobs,Dave will enlighten you.Kyle Rankin takes us to the depths of system administration with hisreal-life data-center problems (his own data center). There's no way tolearn Linux administration quite like doing it, so follow along withKyle and his escapades, and be sure to take notes. I follow Kyle withmy Open-Source Classroom column and reach for the opposite end ofthe server the Raspberry Pi. Although the RPi can do countlesscool things, when it first arrives in its tiny little box, it can be abit overwhelming. I do my best to make your first taste of Pi a littlesweeter and show you some cool things along the way. If you bought aRaspberry Pi, but don't know where to begin, I can hook you up.If you follow me on Twitter, you know I whine rather regularly aboutwanting a Nexus 7 tablet. Although the gift-giving fairies at Googleapparently don't subscribe to my tweets, Philip Raymond helps a littlethis month with his review of the Nexus. The downside is that now I wanta Nexus 7 even more, and since Google recently has released an updatedmodel with cellular options, I'm hoping Santa Claus reads my tweets!Speaking of Google, if you're a faithful fan of its products,yet feel abandoned by the lack of a native Google Drive application,Mehdi Poustchi Amin might soothe those wounds with his introduction toGrive. Grive is an open-source implementation of Google Drive, and it aimsto bring Google's latest feature to the penguiny masses. Google stillpromises that a Linux native client is in the works, but Grive is open source,and it's available now.Although it's a bit of a spoiler, the GIMP has won favoriteGraphics/Design Tool in our Readers' Choice survey once again. That's not likely a surprise to anyone who ever has edited a photo in Linux, butin light of our readers' votes year after year, we've included Shashwat Pant's introduction to GIMP 2.8.

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 2, 2012