About Linux-Magazin

Linux-Magazin

The Linux-Magazin is the German monthly magazine for Linux professionals, published in Munich by Computec Media GmbH. First published in October 1994, it is among the oldest Linux magazines in the world, appearing just seven months after the American Linux Journal. With its slogan "Die Zeitschrift für Linux-Professionals", it addresses the IT professionals who work with Linux and open source: system administrators, developers, DevOps engineers and decision-makers. The magazine appears on the first Thursday of each month, traditionally with a DVD-ROM carrying a current Linux distribution, and its international sister editions, published in English, Polish, Spanish and Portuguese, make it part of one of the world's leading Linux media families.

Overview

The Linux-Magazin is a professional IT journal in the classic German Fachzeitschrift tradition, serving the administrators and developers who run the world's servers, clouds and embedded systems on Linux. Its readers are the professionals: the system administrators who maintain the infrastructure, the developers who build on open source, the security specialists who harden the systems, and the IT managers who decide on the platforms. The magazine's programme combines the practical with the strategic: hands-on tutorials and workshops alongside analyses of the developments that shape the open-source world.

Each issue appears on the first Thursday of the month, a rhythm the magazine has kept for decades. Traditionally every issue includes a DVD-ROM, usually featuring a recent version of a Linux distribution, a signature of the title from the era when downloading gigabytes was impractical and the DVD was the reader's software supply. The November 2026 issue illustrates the current editorial programme: a focus on vector databases for artificial intelligence, with a practical comparison of Chroma, Qdrant, Milvus and LanceDB for versatile AI storage solutions, alongside articles on Laravel AI, multithreading with Rust, kernel socket APIs, sovereign office suites as Microsoft 365 alternatives, security hardening with Foreman, OpenSCAP and Ansible, and free weather data evaluated with Python.

The international dimension distinguishes the Linux-Magazin from most German IT journals. The English-language sister magazine Linux Magazine, published for the American and Canadian market, together with the Polish, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese editions, reaches Linux and open-source IT professionals and decision-makers worldwide. The German edition is the mother ship of this family: the Linux-Magazin (ISSN 1432-640X), published from Munich, with the English edition carrying the ISSN 1471-5678.

The publisher is Computec Media GmbH, the Fürth-based media house that acquired Medialinx AG with its titles in 2014. The magazine's website, linux-magazin.de, extends the monthly print rhythm with current news, the issue archive and online articles.

History

The first German-language issue of the Linux-Magazin appeared in October 1994, seven months after the first issue of the American Linux Journal, as the information paper for DELUG, the German Linux user group. The founding company was Articon GmbH. The timing placed the magazine at the very beginning of the Linux story: the Linux kernel was three years old, the distributions were in their infancy, and the community of German Linux users was small enough to organise in a user group.

From these beginnings the magazine grew with the open-source movement. The Linux-Magazin Verlag continued the title from 1996, and the Linux New Media AG, founded around the magazine, became the world's largest content provider for Linux and open source, active with its own companies in Germany, the USA, Great Britain, Poland and Brazil and publishing more than twenty print and online media in five languages. In 2012 the Linux New Media AG became the Medialinx AG, based in Munich, and in 2014 Medialinx AG with its titles was acquired by Computec Media.

The magazine celebrated its twentieth birthday in 2014 with a jubilee issue, by which time it had become an institution of the German IT press. The deputy editor-in-chief Markus Feillner noted on the occasion that together with its English-language sister, the Linux-Magazin reached IT professionals and decision-makers worldwide with its editorial content on Linux and open source. Through three decades the magazine has documented the rise of Linux from the hacker's operating system to the foundation of the global IT infrastructure: the web servers, the supercomputers, the smartphones and the clouds.

The DVD tradition, maintained issue after issue, is a reminder of the magazine's roots in the community: in the early years the DVD was how readers obtained the distributions, and its continuation honours the readers who value the tangible. The magazine's slogan, "Die Zeitschrift für Linux-Professionals", has remained constant through the ownership changes, expressing the title's professional identity.

Content and Sections

The content of the Linux-Magazin is organised around the professional practice of Linux and open source. System administration is the core: how to install, configure, secure and maintain Linux systems, from the single server to the cloud infrastructure. The workshops and tutorials provide the hands-on knowledge: step-by-step guides that readers can apply directly in their environments.

Development topics address the programmers: new languages and frameworks, as in the November 2026 article on multithreading with Rust's Rayon library, kernel programming, and the APIs that shape performance. Security is a constant: hardening guides, as in the Foreman, OpenSCAP and Ansible workshop, vulnerability analyses, and the practices of secure operations. The AI focus of recent issues reflects the profession's current transformation: how to run AI workloads on open infrastructure, how to store the data for AI applications, how to keep the stack sovereign.

The magazine also serves the strategic information needs of its readers: analyses of the open-source industry's developments, the licensing debates, the cloud strategies, and the question of digital sovereignty, as in the article on replacing Microsoft 365 with open office suites. The community dimension, inherited from the DELUG origins, connects the magazine to the user groups, conferences and projects of the open-source world.

Publisher and Organization

The Linux-Magazin is published by Computec Media GmbH, the Fürth-based media house that has owned the title since the 2014 acquisition of Medialinx AG. Computec Media is one of Germany's major publishers of IT and gaming media, and the Linux-Magazin fits its portfolio of specialist technology titles. The magazine is published from Munich, where the Medialinx operations were based.

The international editions extend the brand worldwide: the English-language Linux Magazine for the American, Canadian and British markets, published by Linux New Media USA, LLC, alongside the Polish, Spanish and Portuguese editions. This international family, inherited from the Linux New Media era, makes the Linux-Magazin part of a global Linux media network.

The business model is that of the specialist IT magazine: subscriptions and newsstand sales to the professional readership, supplemented by advertising from the IT industry. The readership of Linux professionals, administrators, developers and IT decision-makers is the precise target group of the hardware manufacturers, software vendors, cloud providers and training companies that advertise in the magazine. The DVD in each issue, the online archive and the events and learning activities of the publishing group round off the offering.

Digital Presence

The website linux-magazin.de is the magazine's digital home, extending the monthly print journal with current news, online articles and the issue archive. The site is in German and serves the professional community with the daily information flow between the monthly issues. The international sister site linux-magazine.com serves the English-language readership.

The digital strategy complements the monthly print rhythm: the website provides the current news and the searchable archive, while the print magazine provides the monthly depth, the workshops and the DVD. For a professional readership that lives online, the digital presence is essential, but the print magazine retains its function as the curated, in-depth monthly briefing. With more than thirty years of publication and its international family of editions, the Linux-Magazin remains the German magazine for Linux professionals, in print on the first Thursday of every month and online every day.