Some of the community members of Ubuntu are working to put together a monthly magazine. The magazine will eventually go up at http://www.fullcirclemagazine.org. For now, the conversations and details of it are being hashed out on the Ubuntu Forums and the articles will be posted on the Ubuntu wiki while being edited. It will also be distributed in PDF format and you can preview it on the forums.

Initially, I wondered if it would make sense to publish an Ubuntu magazine at all. It seemed like a lot of people get their information on the web, so whats the benefit of doing a magazine that might not contain the latest and greatest information available?

Don Dodge is Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team. Yes, yes, Microsoft, but hold on. He has an interesting post about how magazines aren’t even close to dying, yet. Looking at the subscription numbers from the Magazine Publishers Association, and ignoring AARP and AAA magazines (since they are a side benefit of other services), there are still 164 MILLION subscriptions for the first half of 2006. Don is probably right that younger generations don’t consume information the same way, so the number of subscriptions will just dwindle down. But, it shows that currently a lot, if not most, people still prefer the magazine format.

While there are no plans to print the Ubuntu magazine at the moment, its imperative that the average joe have access to information in a familiar format. With Ubuntu’s user base growing everyday, a magazine will provide a mainstream channel for potential users to get to know Ubuntu.