Full Circle is a free distribution Portable Document Format magazine that was founded by Ronnie Tucker in April 2007. It is released on the last Friday of every month in PDF, EPUB ebook format and also on the Issuu electronic publishing platform. The magazine is an independent publication and is not affiliated with Canonical Ltd., the sponsors of the Ubuntu operating system. It relies on volunteer writers for most of its editorial content.[1][3][4]
The publication is aimed at users of the Ubuntu operating system and all its derivatives, including Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, as well as others like Linux Mint and its derivatives. It focuses on product reviews, community news, how-to articles, programming and troubleshooting tips. The latest issue is currently available in 23 languages but that number changes depending on community members willing to translate to their native tongue. The first edition was produced in English, Estonian, Romanian, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Galician, Dutch and Indonesian.[3][5][6][7]
A number of Full Circle Special Editions have been compiled by contributors Robin Catling and Jonathan Hoskin. These group together article series for easy download by readers. Currently there are issues for Inkscape, Python, GIMP, Scribus and LibreOffice.[8]
History
Issue 0 April 2007
The publication was initially proposed by Tucker on 29 March 2007, as a posting on the Ubuntu Forums. Forum participates quickly contributed proposed logos for the new publication.[9]
Issue 0 of Full Circle was released in April 2007 and featured stories about Ubuntu's history, features including desktop effects and new Linux games. This first edition was 17 pages in length, in portrait format.[2][3]
Issue 1 came out in May 2007 in English, Chinese, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian and Spanish.[10]
Issue 4 saw a switch to PDF landscape format, for easier viewing on computer screens. By Issue 25 the magazine had grown to 28 pages.[1][11]
In December 2007, the Full Circle Podcast started. After two episodes, the podcast stopped production, due to the host unable to dedicate time to the podcast. In March 2010, the podcast was re-established by Robin Catling, along with Ed Hewitt and Dave Wilkins, with an entirely new format. Each episode, the podcast covers news, round up of the latest issue of the magazine, interviews, reviews and feedback from listeners.[12]
Issue 40, published in August 2010, saw the magazine update to a new logo from German designer Thorsten Wilms and switch to using Ubuntu font.[13][14][15][16]
In 2010 the publication started partnering with Ubuntu User, a quarterly paper magazine. Each publication provided banner ads for the other, seeing the publications and complementary to each other. Rikki Kite, the Associate Publisher of both Ubuntu User and Linux Pro Magazine wrote, "Ubuntu User magazine and Full Circle are working together to help promote our publications. Full Circle is a monthly online magazine, whereas Ubuntu User is a quarterly print publication. We think that many Ubuntu users will want to read both magazines, so our agreement with Full Circle to cross promote our products seemed like a great way to connect to the growing Ubuntu community."[17]
In 2012 the editorial staff worked together to create the Official Full Circle Style Guide, which gives guidance to contributors to standardize the writing style for submissions.[18]
In July 2012 Les Pounder and the BlackpoolLinux User Group took over hosting the podcast, starting with episode 29.[19]
In early 2016 Tucker started the Full Circle Weekly News, a short audiocast. Each episode has up to 20 news items, originally read by Tucker. The hosts changed several times and since June 2021 is hosted by Moss Bliss.[20]
In September 2019 Tucker issued a published plea for more material to be submitted by volunteer writers to keep the magazine going. He indicated that a number of long time columnists were coming to the end of their work and other writers would be needed if the publication was to survive.[21]
Staff
The production staff consisted in 2019 of:[22][4] Editor Ronnie Tucker, Webmaster Lucas Westermann, the editorial staff include Jim Dyer, Mike Kennedy, Gord Campbell, Robert Orsino, Josh Hertel, Bert Jerred, Emily Gonyer, and Podcaster Les Pounder.
WPS Office is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and HarmonyOS developed by Zhuhai-based Chinese software developer Kingsoft. It also comes pre-installed on Fire tablets. WPS Office is made up of three primary components: WPS Writer, WPS Presentation, and WPS Spreadsheet. By 2022, WPS Office reached a number of more than 494 million monthly active users and over 1.2 billion installations.
Jonathan Edward James Bacon is a writer and software engineer, originally from the United Kingdom, but now based in California. He works as a consultant on community strategy.
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: Desktop, Server, and Core for Internet of things devices and robots. All the editions can run on the computer alone, or in a virtual machine. Ubuntu is a popular operating system for cloud computing, with support for OpenStack. Ubuntu's default desktop has been GNOME since version 17.10.
Puppy Linux is an operating system and family of light-weight Linux distributions that focus on ease of use and minimal memory footprint. The entire system can be run from random-access memory (RAM) with current versions generally taking up about 600 MB (64-bit), 300 MB (32-bit), allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system has started. Applications such as AbiWord, Gnumeric and MPlayer are included, along with a choice of lightweight web browsers and a utility for downloading other packages. The distribution was originally developed by Barry Kauler and other members of the community, until Kauler retired in 2013. The tool Woof can build a Puppy Linux distribution from the binary packages of other Linux distributions.
Kubuntu is an official flavor of the Ubuntu operating system that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop instead of the GNOME desktop environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems. Kubuntu shares the same repositories as Ubuntu and is released regularly on the same schedule as Ubuntu.
Openclipart, also called Open Clip Art Library, is an online media repository of free-content vector clip art. The project hosts over 160,000 free graphics and has billed itself as "the largest community of artists making the best free original clipart for you to use for absolutely any reason. Openclipart claims that all of its content is public domain due to expired copyright, failing to reach the threshold of originality, or being deeded into the public domain by its owners.
Edubuntu, previously known as Ubuntu Education Edition, was an official derivative of the Ubuntu operating system designed for use in classrooms inside schools, homes and communities.
Xubuntu is a Canonical Ltd.–recognized, community-maintained derivative of the Ubuntu operating system. The name Xubuntu is a portmanteau of Xfce and Ubuntu, as it uses the Xfce desktop environment, instead of Ubuntu's Unity and GNOME desktop.
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose to include proprietary software such as multimedia codecs.
LugRadio was a British podcast on the topic of Linux and events in the free and open source software communities, as well as coverage of technology, digital rights and politics.
xmonad is a dynamic window manager (tiling) for the X Window System, noted for being written in the functional programming language Haskell.
OpenGEU was a free computer operating system based upon the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, which in turn is based on Debian. OpenGEU combined the strengths and ease of use of GNOME desktop environment with the lightweight, and graphical eye candy features of the Enlightenment window manager into a unique and user-friendly desktop. While OpenGEU was originally derived from Ubuntu, the design of the user gave it a significantly different appearance to the user, with original art themes, software and tools.
Ubuntu releases are made semiannually by Canonical Ltd, the developers of the Ubuntu operating system, using the year and month of the release as a version number. The first Ubuntu release, for example, was Ubuntu 4.10 and was released on 20 October 2004. Consequently, version numbers for future versions are provisional; if the release is delayed until a different month to that planned, the version number will change accordingly.
Lubuntu is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and uses the LXQt desktop environment in place of Ubuntu's GNOME desktop. Lubuntu was originally touted as being "lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient", but now aims to be "a functional yet modular distribution focused on getting out of the way and letting users use their computer".
Ubuntu User is a paper magazine that was launched by Linux New Media AG in May 2009.
Ubuntu Unity is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, using the Unity interface in place of Ubuntu's GNOME Shell. The first release was 20.04 LTS on 7 May 2020. Prior to the initial release it had the working names of Unubuntu and Ubuntu Unity Remix.
Linspire is a commercial operating system based on Debian and Ubuntu and currently owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC. It had been owned by Linspire. Inc. from 2001 to 2008, and then by Xandros from 2008 to 2017.
Emmabuntüs is a Linux distribution derived from Debian and designed to facilitate the restoration of computers donated to humanitarian organizations like the Emmaüs Communities.
LXLE is a Linux distribution based upon the most recent Ubuntu/Lubuntu LTS release, using the LXDE desktop environment. LXLE is a lightweight distro, with a focus on visual aesthetics, that works well on both old and new hardware.
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