Thanks for the link to buy the archive. I haven’t read Linux Journal much but I’ve read a couple of Kyle Rankin’s articles and got a lot of value from them (he’s also very responsive to feedback). As it’s only $12 to purchase the archives, I figured I’d take the chance.

I can confirm that it’s totally worth it. It takes only a minute to purchase the download. I used my Paypal account and made the purchase as a Guest as I didn’t want to create yet another account on the Internet. Within seconds, I received a download link in my email.

After unzipping the download, there’s a shell script which starts a web server and opens your web browser at the Archive index. You can then either navigate by selecting an issue by year and month – or by using the search feature provided by the Archive web server. I’ve tried a number of search terms (“docker”, “ansible”, “mutt”) and can confirm that it works well; the only issue I’ve had is that the search results list the articles by the name of the column, e.g., this article [1] is listed as Hack and / rather than the more descriptive sub-title Take Mutt for a Walk.

I’d also confirm that the articles are not in plain text – they use HTML and include images (where appropriate). Best of all, there’s no visual clutter, e.g., distracting advertisements. The format reminds me a lot of the CDs with collections of digitised books that O’Reilly used to publish.

In my opinion, the archive is excellent value for money – and I’d highly recommend it.

[1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10858