More Free Linux Materials ReleasedPRESS RELEASE — 5 JULY 1999 GBdirect, Europe's leading provider of Linux training, today announced the release of more free Linux training materials. GBdirect became the world's first commercial training company to give away their lecture notes (at www.linuxtraining.co.uk) when they released four modules from their Linux Systems course as part of a project to create a comprehensive collection of free Linux training materials (on 16th June, 1999). The overwhelmingly positive response to this initiative produced thousands of downloads and many offers to write and/or translate course modules. Needless to say, these offers are being actively pursued. The staff at GBdirect were, however, so enthused by the reaction that they have managed to release a second tranche well ahead of schedule. New modules in the current release cover:
Previous modules covered an overview of Linux, the filesystem, the command line interface and basic tools. Each module consists of 20-25 pages of bullet-pointed lecture notes followed by graduated exercises. In the interests of good citizenship, the modules are distributed in low-bandwidth, open-source, formats. GBdirect's initial motivation for giving away these notes was to ensure a wide distribution and to `give something back' to the community which created their office software. Whilst this may have surprised their competitors in the commercial training market, the folk at GBdirect are now even more convinced that they are following the path to solid commercial success. Like many software houses before them, GBdirect have found that sharing their knowledge brings in hard cash and blue-chip business partners. As a result of their first release GBdirect have now established partnerships which will allow them to deliver and/or re-sell training packages throughout the world. As the managing director, Mike Banahan, put it: "We knew that the open source method could deliver the goods commercially, we have only been surprised by the speed and scale of the uptake." Close observers of the training market will be intrigued by Mike's comment that "our competitors may already be worried by our interpretation of the `free market', but they will be utterly astonished by what we plan to do next". For further details contact GBdirect at the above addresses, or ring Dave Fisher on 0870 200 7273 |
CSS/XSLT/XHTML Design at The RegisterGBdirect staff recently completed an overhaul of the content management system (CMS) and website design for The Register. Every user should notice the aesthetic improvements, but we hope that most will also experience significant improvements in usability and performance as a result of the shift to open standards compliant HTML, CSS and XSLT. A brief description of the technologies involved is available and you may be interested in this rather approving account from The Web Standards Project. Journalists and editors are already noticing a dramatic improvement in the usability of the content management system. If you are interested in a similarly high usability, standards compliant, website design please contact our development team at development@gbdirect.co.uk. If you would like to learn how to do something similar yourself, take a look at our website design training course and our Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) training course. |
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West Yorkshire Office
GBdirect Ltd
Training: 0800 651 0338 Please call between 0900 and 1700 (UK time) on Monday to Friday South East Regional Office
GBdirect Ltd
Training: 0800 651 0338 Please call between 0900 and 1700 (UK time) on Monday to Friday Please note: |
