LINUX Unplugged - 286: Ell is for Linux

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

We're playing Robin Hood with the content, and a new member of our team joins to tell you all about it. Plus some hard details on the Librem 5, we visit the Canonical Corner, and a big batch of great Linux picks. Special Guests: Brent Gervais, Ell Marquez, and Martin Wimpress.

Oh, hey, Mumbleroom, before we get started, this is going to be an official thing we do in the show, but I just wanted to introduce you all to Elle, who has just joined the Jupyter Broadcasting team. Hey, Elle. Hey, Elle. Hello. And what will Elle be doing? This is Linux Unplugged, episode 286, for January 29th, 2019. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that actually isn't having too much caffeine.

I don't know what's going on. My name is Chris. My name is Wes, and I'm plenty caffeinated. Don't you worry. Good, good. I'm just like fired up today. It's been a really good day. We did some live streaming and today on the show I have an opportunity to introduce a new member of our team who's been working on a super secret project for about the last month that we get to announce on the show today.

So I'm pretty, pretty amped. But on top of that, we have some fantastic community news for you Firefox users, pretty significant update on the Librem 5, and the PureOS store actually has some details, a new Kodi, a little details in the canonical corner we'll get to later on. And then we'll do that introduction with our new team member, tell you about what we're going to be working on, what's coming down, and the new study groups that we're launching, which are going to be awesome. And they'll be right after Linux Unplugged,

starting next week, involving our virtual lug and taking questions directly from the training architects that make the course material. We'll be telling you more about that. I'm just very excited. It's going to be something, just a little thing we're doing. And it's going to be just something totally free.

Not even part of the show, just something we do for for the community it's pretty exciting to get to do that kind of stuff but i'll tell you more about that i'm very excited so before we get going before i spoil everything let's bring in our virtual lug time appropriate greetings mumble room hello hello this is this is a show and we've got brent is in there, Bruce is in there, Dar's back, Elle's in there, I-Bitten, Eric, Mini, Mech, Sean, and Mr. Wimpress returns. It is good to see you again, Wimpy. Hello, sir. How have you been? Yeah, I've been very well. You know, busy, you know, Christmas, New Year, and then off to South Africa and back. So I haven't been around much recently. Well, I'm glad to have you back. It's good to hear your voice. And Mr. Payne, what do

you say we kick things off with some Firefox news? Version 65.0 is out. And sort of great timing with the messaging on this one. One of the headline features enhanced tracking protection and improved performance and web compatibility, including the WebP image format. But I want to talk about stack smashing here for a second, because this is the big headline

for us Linux users. Enhanced security for macOS, Linux and Android users via stronger stack smashing protection, which is now enabled by default on these platforms. What's stack smashing, Wes? What is this?

So really, it's just been compiled now. We've got some new defaults on Firefox so that, well, stack is a region of memory that programs can use to write to that's sort of pre-allocated. And there's various techniques that you can have bad assumptions made or just common errors in programs, especially low-level programs like you might find in a browser, these compile time protections

make sure that it's a lot harder for people trying to trigger untrusted input triggering bad actions that might harm all your precious files. I knew you'd have the answer. I knew you'd know. There's a few other new features as well, aren't there? Oh, yeah.

Easier performance management. They've got a revamped task manager pane that's just over at About Performance if you want to go take a look. And an improved pop-up blocker to prevent multiple pop-up windows from being opened at the same time, which, you know, that doesn't happen to me very often, but I imagine I would be very annoyed. And it's worth noting for you, enterprise users that are deploying Firefox, there's now 32-bit and 64-bit MSI installers for easier enterprise deployment. And iBitten in the chat room is pointing out

that the Android and iOS versions of this will be released on January 30th as we record. Only the desktop versions were released today. Thanks, Bitten. That's a good clarification. So version 65.0 of the little browser that still can and hopefully still will for a very long time. There was a scathing article recently suggesting

that Mozilla should just dump Gecko and switch over to Blink and just stop fighting the tide, stop fighting that wave of change from WebKit over to WebKit. And instead, embrace it and attempt to impact its development. And their core argument, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, Wes. Their core argument really was that the web is becoming more like a runtime now. It's more of an applications platform. And the applications can be much, much better

if they can be built, assuming you're using one rendering engine. And he argues that it's not like Internet Explorer because unlike Internet Explorer, it's all open source. And people can participate in the development of it. They can have their own forks of it, et cetera. What do you think of that argument?

There's certainly true things in that argument. There's lots about that. And you also see that particular platform often having stuff first or implementing test APIs that end up getting supported. You know, you and I sometimes use some stuff that requires Chrome in order to function properly. And so you can sometimes build some really rich experiences. And they're right that,

yes, it's open source. It's not. It is not. It's fundamentally different than Internet Explorer. But, you know, I think we need multiple implementations and we should be coding against a standard and not just the, you know, what becomes ossified in the default implementation of the web. Right. Right. Yeah. Otherwise, what's the point of standards? Yeah. Otherwise, it's just whatever, you know, whatever this one project does is all we have as an option. And I think the thing that was frustrating me about the core of the argument is it's an interesting idea, except for we've been there, done that, and it was horrible, and the web stagnated badly when Internet Explorer 6 and et cetera were dominant. et cetera, were dominant. And it, I think, set the web back many years. And it wasn't until we started to see that monopoly over the web get cracked by Chrome and Firefox that the web started to get better. It's still crap, but it got a lot better. And so it's sort of a failing to learn

from past mistakes kind of argument, I think. I have actually an even more pragmatic view on this. So, yes, Internet Explorer did mean that we stalled innovation until we got some competition. But I don't want to have a meltdown of the browser, you know, or a specter of the browser. And it's just more likely if you're always using the same. I mean, even Microsoft's browser is going to be using Chrome as a base. So, yeah, we kind of have enough Chrome around. It's everybody, really. Let's have one that is not. Yeah, please.

Speaking of maybe not learning from past mistakes, but we just don't know yet, we have some firm details from Purism on the libram 5's hardware and this is pretty nice because they haven't given details on some of these things and some of these things we've known for a long time and it's looking like it's gonna have a pretty competitive feature set it will have 802 11 bg and end wi-fi the display will be 720 by 1440 with a high DPI screen that's glossy, 3 gigs of RAM, could be subject to change, micro SD card slot, a loudspeaker as they put it, a headphone jack, one SIM card slot, a camera front and back,

replaceable battery, tools required, and a smart card reader that is OpenPGP compatible. And the key detail is the CPU, the Nxp imx8m quad or quad mini cpu now i saw some feedback that came into linux action news i believe it was where we were looking at an image of the development board and we noticed that the developer of postmarket os had rigged a way to get a fan over the cpu to cool it. Now, he wrote in and clarified a little bit that the CPU does run extremely hot right now, even using the standard tools. And so that's an area that likely is going to be tweaked over time or hopefully be tweaked over time.

That's a little concerning. Yeah, and he says different people with different dev kits have rigged different ways to cool that CPU. Yeah, and he says different people with different dev kits have rigged different ways to cool that CPU. He just rigged up some stiff wire and got like a little tiny, like 20 millimeter fan or whatever, just even smaller than that. Just one of those real noisy suckers right over the CPU to try to keep it cool, like when doing software builds and stuff. It's early days though, right? I mean, that could probably get fixed. I feel like out of the group here, Wimpy probably has some of the most experience with this.

Have you seen this picture, Wimpy, and are you following any of the Librem 5 news? I did look at this picture weeks ago when it was first out, and I'm following along with the Librem stuff when podcasts cover it, but I've not followed any of the blogs myself. I think you know my position. I'm very skeptical that they'll ship a device this year. They feel like they're a long, long way off, and perhaps we'll see this in 2020. Yeah, I follow it with some interest, mostly because I still see the Leave Room 5 mentioned

almost on a daily basis online as a possible solution to all of our woes. There's a lot of hopes and promises that are being pinned on this. And I think Purism is pretty aware of that. And they're trying to message, they're trying to keep that interest up. They're trying to actively communicate. And one of the things they've been talking about is the PureOS store. So of course, if you're going to create your own phone operating system, you then also need to create your own phone operating system, you then also need to create your own store. And they're giving us details on that. It's going to be based around flat packs. Oh, yeah. So they announced the PureOS store. You got to have your own store.

That's just that's you're right. That's how it has to work. But there's no other way to do it. But at least they're going to use some sort of the underlying technology we're all becoming more familiar with. Now, they've already got a very first application, and that're going to use some sort of the underlying technology we're all becoming more familiar with. Now, they've already got a very first application, and that's going to be Lollipop. The Lollipop application is, of course, a GNOME music player. Yeah, that's not a bad first choice, I suppose. And I can see why Flatpaks makes a good choice for them

because they can have a self-hosted repository that they manage and curate and have like that can be the the backend to their own store. It seems like a, I don't know, it seems like maybe not a format that was specifically designed for this kind of use. But if you're going to be so GNOME heavy as they seem to be, it kind of makes sense. I mean, it might be an interesting thing to reflect on, right?

We'll see how well this goes and how well Flatpak meets that need. Yeah, and it may be a great highlight of some nomaps that do really good at refactoring their screen sizes or their application window sizes and whatnot. So yeah, there you go. There's a little Librem 5 update. I know there's a lot of interest out there, so I wanted to cover it.

Still not backing it myself, but if they do get a shipping sellable product that I can buy, yeah, I think I will. Now, something that I'm all in on, though, is Kodi. Love it. Love it, especially since they released an Android version that runs on Android TV set top boxes like the NVIDIA Shield. Just such a great open source media center.

And after another long development period, this week, the team has released Kodi 18, long development period. This week, the team has released Kodi 18, immediately available on all of the supported platforms, approaching nearly 10,000 commits, nearly half a million lines of new code and nearly

the same amount removed from the project, 36 open source contributors, many, many, they say quite literally many, cases of beer and wine. Well, I mean, that's pretty much just what it takes, right? Especially when you're developing an open source project. Quite literally. Now, okay, one thing I was really curious to see, and it is a pretty big feature release, they've now got support for gaming emulators, ROMs,

and controllers to go along with those games. Yeah. Like retro game playing built right in. Right from the same interface that you're already using for your media center. One of the more controversial things they've added is support for digital rights management decryption. Uh-oh. Which, that's, you know, that is, that's a real contentious topic with our audience. And one that I have very many mixed feelings around. But it seems like in the set-top TV market, you have to because every other single application on that device supports it.

So you would literally be the only video playing app that doesn't. And that's just a really tough position to be in. Right. And when you're making something that then just can't play content that a lot of people want, it doesn't look good. Speaking of Android TV, Kodi can now show its library contents on the main screen. And this is kind of a neat feature that Netflix and Plex and other apps take advantage of. You get these ribbons of content, and it's a great way to quickly restart a show.

So I watch Deep Space Nine quite a bit, and it's always right there. The next episode is always right there on the front of the Android TV screen. So I don't even have to launch the app. I just click it. It launches the connected app and starts playing that episode. So not only are they introducing that support, but they're also introducing full voice functionality. This is a big aspect to these things is the Google Assistant is baked in, and you can use that now to search for content, like whatever you want, or to fill in the on-screen keyboard, and it will search in Kodi and play it.

Pretty, pretty nice. And I also noticed they have some updates in here for improved RTMP stream support. Yeah, right. That's one thing about Kodi is, like, it doesn't matter what you're trying to play. They probably already have support or a plug-in to support it. So you just throw whatever media you want at it and you can watch it.

Yep. And I think that is looking like a very solid update. I'm going to make sure I have that updated version as soon as I get home. Let's head over to the canonical corner for a moment. I just can't quit 1904. I've been running the daily now for weeks since after Christmas, and I mostly wanted to just soak in the new GNOME

and see how it handled my multi-monitor setup on my ThinkPad versus Plasma, which was causing significant performance issues on my vertical 27-inch screens. And moved over to Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo and installed the GNOME desktop. And, oh, man. Oh, man, have those have those monitors. They were butter smooth.

And I've only I've only been able to use it a little bit because I'm in Texas right now. But man, has it been good. And so I haven't been able to quit it. I thought I would actually nuke and pave and put Fedora on there and give the Fedora implementation a spin and maybe try out Pantheon because I've been told by Neil that if you're on Fedora Rawhide, you can install Pantheon on Fedora. And I thought, that might be fun. But I can't quit. I can't quit 1904.

So I feel like, just a super, super quick take, I feel like I'm right back where I was ages ago when I used Ubuntu. And one of the things that kind of made me move to Arch, and I'm so frustrated and yet happy to have goodies. And the issue simply is that Canonical is back to making each point release compelling and makes me want to jump off of an LTS, off of a beautifully well-supported LTS onto the latest release that has, you know, much less support cycle simply because the new goodies are irresistible. Yeah, that does keep happening, right? Because for a while, the LTS is still so fresh and it does have that nice taste of stability. You're back in the mode of trying

to just get work done, and it's perfect. And then suddenly the grass really does grow greener, and you want the shiny new thing. That's the problem. The grass is greener. It is actually greener grass, and I like green grass. Wimpy, you're asking if the fractional scaling has landed yet. I don't actually have high DPI on the T480.

I opted to just avoid that problem for a while and went 1080p. But I'm wondering how 1904 is shaping up from an Ubuntu Mate perspective, if it's a very radical change for you guys, if it's business as usual, that kind of stuff. Well, for Ubuntu Mate, it's business as usual um hopefully the new version of mate desktop upstream will land in time that we can ship that so i'm just looking at that at the moment building the interim development snapshots so that will be the main change uh should it uh should it all come together but most of my focus is on debian at the moment because debian buster's just around the corner and i'm helping the mate guys in debian get a new version stitched together

there but um yeah i was talking to will a couple of weeks ago and in gnome for 1904 you'll find fractional scaling but also fractional scaling in X.org as well as Wayland sessions, and also being able to scale monitors independently of one another, regardless of whether you're running Wayland or X.org that will work in both display servers now. Oh my goodness. Did we suddenly hit the future? What's happening? That is fantastic.

I literally thought that would never come to X11. I had just given up hope. Yeah, so I know that Marco has been working on that, and that's all submitted upstream and is in review, but I believe that we're going to be carrying that as vendor patches in 1904, if it doesn't land upstream in time. Right. That would be very interesting.

I've been following it. I may still try Fedora out for a bit. I want to give the Rawhide experience a go. But like Wes said, the issue has been is now I've got it set up, I'm getting work done, and I still have all my machines except for this one on Plasma. However, I really have not had very many troubles, but I never really do on an all Intel setup where everything's Intel and I don't have a

whole bunch of crap installed. I just have my basic work tools installed. I haven't tried to make it into a mobile audio production mixing workhouse yet, right? It's usually when I start going off into these edge cases that it starts falling apart for me. So if I just kind of keep it simple and just using the Intel stuff, it's been fantastic. So we'll see what happens when I hook it up to the NVIDIA dock. Maybe that's the key to a long-term GNOME for you, Chris, is we just got to have one system that you use for nothing else but light work.

Maybe, maybe. Speaking of upgrading to new Ubuntu releases, some news on the 25th of this week that Ubuntu users can now keep PPAs and third-party repositories enabled when upgrading to newer versions. Oh, yeah. I mean, so it's kind of – there's a couple things here. One change in particular, make sure that third-party repositories support the release to what you're actually trying to upgrade to. And then optionally, if it doesn't, disabling the repository if it doesn't support the version

that you're about to be at. Now, there's another option that just sort of allow keeping PPAs and third-party repositories installed instead of the old way where they would just disappear. So it's basically Ubuntu growing a little smarter at doing this, trying to hit the right balance between not wanting to break your upgrade, which can be something of a dangerous process, but not confusing end users who suddenly find that they no longer get updates

or just don't have access to a whole bunch of software they'd already installed. It's kind of nice to see them giving it a go. And it's already going to be available for Ubuntu 18.10 users that go to 19.04. That's kind of cool. And it looks like they're also proposing it for 18.04 to 18.10. Not landed yet, but it is in the proposed repository. Expect to see it on OS near you. Yeah, and then right before we get out of the canonical corner, why don't we talk just

about why everybody needs to update their rigs this week if you're on Ubuntu. There's several security issues that were discovered in the Linux kernel and on 1804 Bionic Beaver affecting all of the derivatives based on 1804 too. It's quite a bit. Do you want to break some of these down for us, Mr. Payne? Yeah, all right. Okay, so 11 total. Mr. Payne? Yeah, right. Okay, so 11 total. They ranged from just like a use-after-free and

sort of standard buffer overflow to some kind of more dangerous out-of-bound writes that could allow attackers to maybe execute arbitrary code or just crash your system and cause a denial of service. A lot of these involved problems over in our favorite EXT4

file system. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't that? Like, that's the vector here. You know, some of these are kind of interesting. So if you are, one, make sure you do update, but two, you know, just go see kind of the day-to-day fixes that have to go happen to keep the kernel secure. Like there was a race condition

in the VSOC address family implementation, which could also cause use after free condition. So they're all just little things. There's also some updates over in KVM, which could also cause use after free condition. So they're all just little things. There's also some updates over in KVM, which that's good. We want KVM to be secure. Yeah, Mr. Wu's name is on a lot of these bugs. He's been really cracking. He's a Chrome developer.

And Jan Horn of Google's Project Zero also discovered an issue in the kernel's PROC FS file system implementation. And so that's also in this fix. Like these aren't necessarily Ubuntu specific bugs, but these are bugs that will impact anyone on 1804. And these are the fixes that Canonical is shipping for now. And I think it's probably worth pointing this out from time to time because I just had somebody write into the show and argue the case for the studio systems never being updated. And they just basically said,

install them, install all the software once and never install updates. And it was, you know, they tried to make a compelling case for it. And I just, I can't wrap my head around that. I feel like if you, if your operating system can't handle these important updates and there's something wrong, I'm not saying that is the case with our studio systems, but like this just right here shows you why you need to stay up to date. And I mean, if you're, you know, if you're using the LTS, you don't have to update kernels that often. You know, you're not doing this every other day. So you could have a little, it's okay to reboot your system down again. And actually you should just test that it's going to power on again. Yeah, that's a good validation test right there.

So links to all that stuff if you want to know more, if you've got to manage some boxes in the show notes. Nothing too unusual there. So why don't we do a bit of housekeeping? The cone of silence. Alright, this is obviously stuff we don't want anybody to know. We're only telling you guys. Super secret. We should probably whisper while we're doing this. I know. Well, we're in the cone of silence stuff we don't want anybody to know. We're only telling you guys. Super secret.

We should probably whisper while we're doing this. I know. Well, we're in the cone of silence. We don't need to. Oh, perfect. Let's yell then. Yeah, that's why. That's the way to go.

That's why the cone of silence is so great. So just a really quick mention. We are going to be at Scale 17X March 7th through the 10th. And there's some great talks going on, including one that we're going to tell you about from one of our own team members here in a few minutes, as well as our buddy Stuart Langridge will be giving a talk called Privacy Could Be the Next Big Thing.

And the whole Bad Voltage crew, at least some of them, if not all of them, will be doing a Bad Voltage live. And we have links to all of that stuff linked in the show notes if you want to go check that out. And I'll be there. And Wes, I think you're going to go too, yes?

Heck yeah. Yeah. So come say hi to Wes and I. We'll be down there. We'll talk more about what we're doing at scale when we bring on our new team member. But I'm pretty excited about that. So yeah, check that out. And then also just a little public service announcement here.

Two things to know about that are coming down the pipe. Number one is over the next, I don't know, who knows what these things could be a month or more. We're going to start rolling out artwork updates for the shows like the album art, not really going to impact anything else. It's just the look of the album art and stuff like that. And that's because we're part of a larger organization now and they have a design team. So we can go to them and say, hey, can you create us something really cool? And they're working on it right now. And, you know, we're going for something that's clean and easy to read and something bold and classy and not over the top so far. That's kind of like the general direction. And it feels like a small thing.

And in some ways, maybe it is. But I think also to us, it's kind of a big thing because we put in a lot of hard work trying to make other aspects of the show. And for a long time, this wasn't one that we had easy direct control over. So it's nice to be able to put some shine on it. Especially when you don't have a lot of extra capital to spend on hiring designers. And to get it right, it's got to be designed. And we're, we're, we're finally there as part of Linux Academy and it's exciting to have them work on that. So I just want to make you aware of it that way you can prepare yourself because there

is one, there is one universal truth about new logos. Nobody likes them. Nobody likes them. Nobody, nobody likes them. Nobody does. And then they grow on you, and over time, they just become normal, and then you learn to love them. In some cases, I mean, I shouldn't say nobody. In some cases, of course, they click with people. But it's very common for people to have a strong negative reaction. And so I wanted to prepare you for that. So when it does roll out, you're not shocked.

And then last but not least, if you've got time next Tuesday, February 5th, after Linux Unplugged, almost immediately after Linux Unplugged, we're going to hold a study group with our virtual lug. We will stream the visuals on jblive.tv. People in the virtual lug in the Mumble Room can ask questions and participate with us. And I wanted you to know about it now. We're going to talk about it again here in just a moment. But I felt like it was important while we're in the housekeeping section to tell you about that. So that's what's going on in the near term. The scale coming up soon. Some friends that are giving talks will have links in the show notes. If you're going to scale, a couple of recommendations for you to check out. Our new artwork is coming down the pipe. And the study

group, February 5th, that'll be streamed after Linux Unplugged. And maybe that's where we should start now. So let's talk about something pretty exciting that's going on that has been in the works for about a month now. And I haven't really been able to talk about it because I didn't even know how the hell any of this was going to be possible. Because there's so much going on. And I already have quite a bit that I'm responsible for. And it required somebody who knew how to dig through the company, ask the right people the right questions, get information that we needed, and then just take action and come up with ideas of theming it and integrating it. And it was just all stuff that I just didn't have the mental CPU cycles for,

but it's been something since I joined the company I've wanted to do. And that is release some of the Linux Academy content for free to the community. Stuff that's behind a paywall now, take a look at some of that stuff and release it free. But I hadn't clicked with how I was going to actually physically pull that off until a new member joined our team. And so I want to take a moment and introduce you to El Marquez. I've been dropping hints for weeks because I'm really excited about a new team member who's joined the community department. That's what Jupyter Broadcasting is within Linux Academies. We are the community department and we do things for the community.

And there's someone inside the company that I think if she had been hired after we had a community department, she would have come directly here. But it gave her a chance to do a bunch of other great things in the company, which I'll let her tell you about in just a moment. It gave her a chance to do a bunch of other great things in the company, which I'll let her tell you about in just a moment. But I'm super excited to officially welcome Elle to the team. Elle Marquez, welcome to Linux Unplugged and welcome to Jupyter Broadcasting. Thanks so much. I'm excited to finally be something more than that other team member that you keep referring to in the last couple of weeks. I've been slipping it in. I have. You've actually been super busy, though. So we were going to kick things off kind of at the beginning of the year, but we started a few other projects and you were

wrapping up a course that's actually launching this week at Linux Academy, which is the Docker Quickstart, right? Yep. I don't know how it happened, but somehow I just got a little bit obsessed with the container world and was lucky enough to get involved with Docker specifically. So I got to do Terry's course. If anybody's done the Linux Academy courses before, Terry is one of the most famous course authors, and he gave me a chance to redo his Docker quick start course. But like I was saying, Elle is really perfect for this role because she travels more than I do, which that's really saying something. You're going to events all the time. What are the next couple of community events you're going to in just like the next few months?

So I get to hang out with you guys at Skill. And after that, I have talks out to both the OpenStack or now it's the Open Infrastructure Summit and DockerCon. So that's going to be a really hard choice. Yeah, so that's going to be pretty great because we're trying to up our game at events and stuff. Elle is pushing all of us to go and give talks at these events. So we're setting up a Jupyter Broadcasting LinuxFest Northwest track where several of us now, including Elle,

Elle's giving three talks. I'm giving one talk. Wes is giving a talk. Alan is going to give a ZFS talk, of course. And same at scale, like Elle, you're giving a talk at scale too. Yeah, I get to talk at the container days portion of scale and teach people what containers are, like not anything specific, just open source technology and container basics. So I want to talk a little bit about one of the things that you and I have been working on that's kept you busy before we've gotten on air together. And that is releasing new courses and some really great beginner courses for free at Linux Academy. Now, I want to back up here for a moment. This isn't a plug. Nobody's asked us to

talk about this. Elle and I have, this is something that we've just been working on that we wanted to share with you guys. And it's pretty exciting because we are now, the community department inside Linux Academy, are taking charge of releasing content for free on a regular basis. And we're refreshing some of the courses that will remain free and introducing some new ones, some courses that I am personally really excited about because I've taken them and I know they're really good.

It's not an advertisement. It's just something that we've been working on that we think is a great opportunity for Linux Academy to give back to the community. So with all of that sort of preface, whatever preface, whatever it is, I wanted to get out of the way. I want to tell you about what we're doing

and what you can expect. We are adding a series of free cloud training and Linux essentials training and many more. We'll tell you about them here in a moment. Two Linux academies, free community edition. Each month, additionally, we'll be kicking out new content for the community. And this is all Elle's idea, but I love it. We are going to do a study group after Linux Unplugged.

Initially, we're going to start with YAML essentials. What happens if you're working on YAML and you've broken something? How do you fix it? That kind of stuff. We'll be bringing on the training architect. They're volunteering their time. They're volunteering their time. They'll come on after Linux Unplugged. It's not part of the show. We're not, at least currently planning to release it, but they'll join the Mumble Room and they'll hang out with our virtual lug and they'll teach a subject. We're going to start with YAML Essentials just because YAML powers like so many things. It's like the config language for so, so many things. And it's just getting more and more popular. And the data at Linux Academy shows us people like that course too. So we're starting

with that one as our study group. But then after that, we're going to open it up for vote. We'll have a link in the show notes this week where you can vote on what you would like to have a study group on. And if we get enough votes, we'll do another study group and we'll connect with that training architect and ask them to come on and chat with us a bit. But Ellie, you came up with a really great formula of like different types of content for beginners and intermediary and experts that we're going to be releasing. Plus we've got some of the stuff that's always going to be free. Why don't you talk a little bit about your formula that you came up with? So one of my ideas was, you know, the big message that I always have is that it's okay to be have is that it's okay

to be new, that it's okay to tackle new technologies. However, people see that as someone who is just new to the tech sector, perhaps new to Linux. But we can have somebody who's had, you know, like me, five years worth of Linux experience, or even more, who has never tried AWS, or who's never even attempted containers. So in that sense, they're new to that technology. And I thought that if we broached a bunch of different subjects, we talked about AWS, we had some Azure training, we had container, and we had Linux fundamentals, we could reach a broader community than what we might be doing otherwise. Yeah. And some of this stuff is just great for people that want to have a basic understanding.

They don't even need a full-fledged membership yet, but they want to learn some essentials. Like getting started with Git is going to be one of the courses that comes out, an Ansible quick start guide. But I want to take a moment, and Elle, you just touched on it here. that Kenny did is kind of special because it goes into the history of operating systems and it goes into the history of the GNU user land and you could even show it to somebody who doesn't know what an operating system is. They're not familiar with the concept and by the end of it, they'll understand Richard Stallman's contribution to Linux,

they'll understand what the Linux kernel is versus the rest of the stack and the other Unixes and UnixIs Richard Stallman's contribution to Linux will understand what the Linux kernel is versus the rest of the stack. And the other Unixes and UnixIs that existed before Linux was the dominant one. And it's like an hour and a half course or something like that. I mean, it's just, it's a gem for anybody who is self-taught like I was, where I missed certain gaps. And this filled in a lot of things, even things I'd kind of known, but it was good to hear again. And it's going to be free. And this is the kind of stuff that we're going to be working on to keep like these kinds of courses we're going to be watching for and trying to release them to the community as much as we can. You know, one of the things that I really loved

about that course being free is I have so many people that don't understand what I do, whether that be family members or people that I went to school with. So I think I'm just going to be sending them links and going, watch this. This is what Linux is. And that's what I do for a living. Yeah, right. The other one that's coming out for February is one that has been super popular and it just launched. And I'm really impressed that we got this in there because, you know, I mean, they just got done investing all of the time and money to build this whole course out and we're releasing it for free and it's subnetting fundamentals. And I thought, okay, you know, I mean, they just got done investing all of the time and money to build this whole course out. And we're releasing it for free. And it's subnetting fundamentals.

And I thought, okay, you know, it's kind of a dry topic, you know, learning network subnetting. But it's, again, it's a pretty short course. And the early data and feedback from students has been like, this is super crazy great valuable. And so we looked at that and we thought, well, let's put that one out there too. People, you know, you've got to deal with networking in all kinds of circumstances if you're working with Linux and computers or trying to set up a home network. Why not understand the basics? That's great. And then there's a couple other classics in there like Jenkins Quickstart, Vim, a Vim guide if you want to learn Vim or LXXT. There's a whole bunch. We will have a blog post linked in the show notes that outlines all of the courses that are coming out

because there's a bunch. I mean, I think it's, is it 20 almost now? I think we've gone over 20. We just keep giving things away. And it's going to be our job now is we're going to watch this kind of stuff. And anyways, again, I know it sounds like an advertisement.

It's not. This is just something that Elle and I are really passionate about. My story, I don't know, Elle, I want to ask you yours. I want to talk about that a little bit, but my story is I took a really meandering path to get where I'm at today. I started, um, working at a school district in education, doing IT. And I, I, I liked that work because I felt like, and I thought about it frequently, even when I was young, just out of high school, I thought about how when I fix a computer lab, like I enable classes full of students to learn. And like, I make a direct impact by knowing computers, I can improve lives. And that felt really good. The problem is, is that it was

horrible pay and it was grinding bureaucracy. And it was really good. The problem is, is that it was horrible pay and it was grinding bureaucracy and it was all the things that just drove all the other characteristics of my personality absolutely crazy. And I bailed and I went into the private sector. And then over time I became a podcaster, but I still talked about Linux. Like it was still Linux that I was, when it was in the schools or when it was in the private sector or when I became a podcaster, it was all about Linux and open source. But when I, and in podcasting, I thought to myself, well, I'm kind of making a difference in people's lives by spreading the word and information about open source. Maybe, maybe I'm getting people excited to try this stuff. Yeah. Maybe

that can change lives a little bit. And we've gotten emails that people say, yeah, you know, you got me excited in Linux and I got it. I got it as to a career. But it wasn't enough, really. Like, it just wasn't quite that same direct connection that I had when I was working for a school district and I could fix a student's computer and that student was enabled to learn. And somehow now I've ended up back in this role here at Linux Academy where I can do things like work with L to release content for free to people and make shows about these things that are free for people. It's a whole new way to combine the two areas of interest

that I've had my entire life, really. What about you? You seem super passionate about this, too. I'd like to know that story. So not to go too far down the rabbit hole with my origin story, but I think, you know, one of the reasons I started working at Linux Academy was the mission value or the goal that we change students' lives. And when I found out about Linux, like I went through a program

called Linux for Ladies. And at the time I was in a place where I didn't have a job. I had a degree that I couldn't use and I was about to lose my home, leaving myself and my kids, you know, living out of our van. And through Linux and being able to become a Linux system administrator, I completely turned our lives around. And, you know, in that I was able to start mentoring other moms who were looking for career changes. And eventually it just became mentoring people as a whole. And so when I talked to my mentees and they start telling me how they went from making $7 an hour to now making six figures in, you know, one or two years, it's just astonishing. You know, you really can change

not just someone's life, but a whole family's future. Yeah, that is pretty powerful and pretty motivating. There we go. There was, we got deep here on the Unplugged program for a little bit. But again, I'm just really excited because not only are you and I going to work on this stuff, but you're going to be joining us on the shows from time to time because like Elle just said, she's got a background in this stuff

and she's active. She's very active in the community. So she's going to join Joe and the gang on User Air this week. And I think that's going to be on Friday. I think that comes out. So I don't know what you guys are going to talk about, but I always love User Air. So that's going to be really good. You're going to be at events. You and I will be at a lot of the same events, which will be cool. I'll have a travel buddy. And you'll get to come hang out with L&I at LinuxFest Northwest or Scale.

But even more immediately, next week, February 5th, immediately following, well, immediately-ish, following Linux Unplugged, we're going to hold a study group on YAML Essentials. We're going to kick off that first study group. They're going to get two L's for the price of one there at the study class. I get joined by L Prime.

Yeah, the YAML Essentials course author, right? So yeah, immediately following Linux Unplugged, both L's. And hopefully myself, although I'm remote, and Mr. Payne will be joining whoever from the virtual lug wants to join us next week. So come for the show or come after the show and you can just hang around and we'll have, I think what we're going to do is we'll have a little classroom section

in the Mumble. So just get Mumble installed, get your audio set up, and join us. You can hang out for Linux Unplugged next week and then stick around and learn YAML essentials. And then go over to the show notes for this week's episode. You can do it right now. You don't even have to wait for next week. Just go to this week's episode and go vote for what you'd like to see us do future study groups on. Linuxunplugged.com slash 286. For that, we have the link in there. I also just dropped it in the IRC chat room. And, you know,

Elle, one thing we didn't talk about was how you are currently doing, I think you're still currently doing the elementary OS challenge that Jason Evangelo has been running. And I'm curious, how is that going for you so far? It's been an adventure. I think I maybe feared from the challenge because I did cheat and start using the command line. It's kind of my saying, it's not Linux if I can't actually install things through the command line, right? Fair enough. I actually completely 100% agree. I mean, I'll do credit to App Center, which is fantastic.

Just something about seeing the packages that I'm updating and whatnot on the command line, it makes me feel better about the whole process. So Jason has launched a new podcast with Joe Resington called Choose Linux. And I saw you and he were tweeting back and forth about the next challenge, which is going to be OpenSUSE. I know you've ran OpenSUSE plenty before. Are you going to take that challenge? So I'm still not convinced you didn't have a part in this. OpenSUSE was what I was running right before I moved over to elementary OS and I took the challenge because I managed to kernel panic OpenSUSE twice and that's twice within a one-week period. Now were you doing something, I, were you doing something like with a virtual machine

or crazy with the graphics? Like, what causes open SUSE? I haven't seen a kernel panic. I can't even remember. I mean, it may have been many years now. So I actually wrote a blog post about it that I'm sure we can share where I took a picture of the screen because I'm still not convinced I did anything to cause it. But that's everyone who causes a kernel panic. I think I got just a little bit too curious with

installing different package managers. And I think I may have, you know what? I don't know. I think I may have installed packages that maybe contradicted one another, but I guess I'll get to learn when I re-kicked OpenSUSE again in a few days. Well, there you go. I, you know, one thing I know sometimes that got me in the past was I just ate up a lot of disk space with all of the snapshots that happens when you install packages and stuff. Oh, that's a cheap shot right there, taking some of their best features there. No, no, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying you got to plan for it. Like, you got

to go in making sure you got the space for it. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, prune in your old snaps. Yeah, of course. That's true. Yeah. Well, I'm really looking forward to the three of us getting to hang out at Scale. That's gonna be a ton of fun. And then Elle's gonna fly up here for LinuxFest Northwest. Up here. I say up here as if I'm in Washington. I mean, you're

honorary. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. That's where my heart is, Wes. That's where my heart is. Now that I got a fish tank in the studio. By my heart is now that i got a fish tank in the studio by the way everybody i got a fish tank in the studio it's pretty great it's a little boy it's just a little tiny little fish tank little little sucker just a little one but uh it's it's pretty cool because it's it sort of floats on a stand and anyways it looks neat right i mean i'm not just tooting my own horn here a mini ocean oasis yeah it's got some nice lights in there too so just kind of a quiet, calm, collected focus point. I got to dress it up now, you know,

because I don't want Elle coming over and seeing the studio without a fish tank. That'd be embarrassing. So I had to dress it up a little bit. So I got a fish tank. I figured that would make up for the eight-year-old carpet and the horrible state of everything else. Elle, you're already making us set higher standards for ourselves here.

So thank you. I'm classing up the joint. I like that. That's true. I mean, you kind of are, though. Like, we've always kind of known in the back of our minds that, you know, maybe we should be a little more active at these conferences we go to. Like, maybe we should give some talks.

Um, and I have been going to Linux Fest Northwest for, I think, um, I think 19, 19 years or so, maybe 20 years. I may have gone all 20 years, but I know I've definitely solidly in the 17 year. And the reason why I know that is because when I first started going, I went with my high school teacher who was, uh, Jim Bassett, just a great guy, great teacher and a great computer teacher and a software developer as well. And he was into Linux and I was one of the kids at the school that was into Linux. And so we're like, well, let's let's go to Linux Fest. And that's how I started when I was still in high school. I started going to Linux Fest. So it must have been it must have been towards the end of my my last few years of high school, considering how long I've beenest. So it must have been towards the end of my last few

years of high school, considering how long I've been out. And this is their 20th anniversary, so it's going to be a hell of a party. So Elle's flying in. I am hoping and praying that Wimpy and Popey make it. Signs seem to be yes, Mr. Wimpress. It seems like things are trending in that direction. We're working on it. So Ubuntu became lanyard sponsors this week, and somebody's got to mule the lanyards to LinuxFest Northwest. And we've, Popey and I have both submitted talk and workshop proposals. So we'll see how that goes. You, by the way, are welcome if you want to, we're thinking about having a room, and we have a track already. And if you want to be in our room, you're welcome.

And you can put yourself on that track if you like. You don't have to. But if you would like the luxury of the Jupyter Broadcasting arrangements, you are welcome to. Is it big enough for all of the crowds we're going to attract? Well, I suppose they will determine the size of the room based on the amount of talks. I think it could be a good setup, too, because we'll have enough people to man the booth from time to time,

and they can be sending people over to the room to tell them where we're at, and the room can be sending people to the booth to get, like, swag and stuff. And I think we might keep some one or two exclusive swag items in the room, too. And then we'll just have a day long of talks, basically, I think. I don't know.

It's all still kind of forming, but that's sort of what we're thinking about going all out this year. And we wouldn't be doing any of that if it wasn't for Elle. I mean, we've wanted to do it. We might try to up our game a little bit just because it's a big year for us. But doing all of the talks and stuff, if it wasn't for Elle showing up and being like, I'll submit three talks right now, which totally set the bar for everybody else. So thank you,

Elle. That's been something we've needed to do for a long time. No, I love it. And I mean, we're at a point now where I'm trying to get us to organize our own conferences. This is going to be great. Yeah, that could be. Yeah, we'll talk more about that. And one last little plug for the study group. You just need mumumble if you want to talk. But if you don't want to participate, if you just want to watch and learn, you can just go to jblive.tv. We will be streaming it. There will be a visual component on the JBLive TV stream, which will also be simulcasted on the other places that we stream. And you can join the Mumble room, be part of the virtual lug, and you can ask questions to the Ls directly about YAML,

which is a very, very useful skill set to have these days. So check that out. And L, welcome again. It's great to have you aboard, and thank you so much for all of your hard work so far on freeing that content. And don't forget we have a blog post too linked in the show notes, linuxunplugged.com slash 286, that outlines the

over 20 courses now that we've been able to free including oh man i can't believe i almost didn't mention this including that linux essentials course that i've talked about before that that just teaches you the history of linux go check that out go go go check that out it's so good uh and kenny's an awesome dude and i believe he's going to be at Linux Fest Northwest too. Boom. So we're going to have, we're going to have a heck of a party. God, I'm just so excited about this. This is something I've been working on since I started here. And one of those things that isn't really about making a podcast isn't, so it's not like something that is audience facing. So it's just one of those things that we tool away at that nobody really knows about until it's here.

And so I had to take a moment to talk about it. And with that, before we go, it is way, way, way past time for us to do some picks. I've never installed GNU slash Linux. Yeah, well, if you do install GNU slash Linux, you need to install some apps. You know, you want some stuff. You want some stuff on that Linux box. And in the spirit of Wes Payne fixing our jblive.fm stream,

fixing it up real good, too. I'll say this. Real top-grade work there, Mr. Wes Payne. Tell the folks now what's so odd about the auto transitions and the high-quality streams. Just tell them a little bit about it. Oh, yeah. I mean, so before it was pretty slow when it did work.

It was pulling off something that had already been restreamed several times, then transcoded, then sent over to an Icecast server. Now it's just a lot shinier. It's a lot faster. So it's got push whenever anyone updates anything, whether we're streaming here on the studio, maybe we're doing a live show from a conference somewhere, or Alan's doing one of those crazy BSD Now streams, doesn't matter. You can always find it or some reruns at jblive.fm. Yeah. And so that plays right into our first pick. It's called Shortwave. And it is a remake of a online radio stream player for the GNOME desktop that is written in rust because gotta rust all the things these days and you need you need your streaming player to be rock solid so you can uh

pop uh jblive.fm in there and um yeah they all wow look at this they talk about this is what i'm talking about here like right here in their faq for shortwave. The question, will shortwave be compatible with the Librem 5? Yes! Exclamation mark. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's everywhere. It really is. Yeah, buzz, man. They have managed peak hype with that.

I'm impressed. I don't think you could really expect more at this day and age. And now something that may have felt a little bit like a hole in Firefox's heart. The one thing that Chrome makes stupid easy, and if you've ever bought a Chromecast, you know what I'm about to say. It's sending things to your television from Chrome. And it is, more times than I'd like, very, very useful. And it's one of the reasons I've kept Chrome installed on my machine. That was until one of us, I can't remember now who,

might have been me. It was both of us. Was it? That happens very frequently, you know, and that's good. We have good coverage and every now and then very frequently Wes will find things that I didn't find and I'll find things he didn't find and it's great. And this one is one that everybody should know about.

It's called FX Cast. It's Chromecast for Cast. It's Chromecast for Firefox. It enables Chromecast support and you can cast things like Netflix or the BBC iPlayer, HTML5 video. There's just one little thing you got to know. It's like a two-parter. It's an extension that connects to a software bridge that you have to install. Now, they do make an RPM and a DEB available, and it's all open source, so you could probably build it. Oh, it's available for MacOS?

Macoos? That's one of those proprietary operating systems. I'm not sure if you're familiar. Yeah. And then, no, you cannot use it for Windows, which, I don't know, you can't. How can you run anything on Windows? It goes in your house. Yeah, okay, so cannot use it for Windows, which I don't know. You can't. How can you run anything on Windows that goes in your house? Yeah, okay.

So they got it for Mac OS. Oh, geez. I did not mean to download that. And they got it for Linux as a dev and an RPM. And this is just a thing of beauty. This has been a hole in my Firefox usage, one of the things that's kept me going to Chrome from time to time. And now it's here.

And it's kind of nice. Did you have a chance to try it, Mr. Wes? Oh, yeah, I tried. I just saw that right after I first saw it. Did you? Because I'm in the same position as, you know, Chrome's fine. I do use it for some things. But I love Firefox, and I use Firefox for most of my browsing.

But I watch a lot of content on the Chromecast just because, I mean, like, everything interops with it these days. They've been around for so long, most of my friends and family have Chromecast so it's just kind of ubiquitous. Unfortunately, FXCast, and you should know this, there's no public release yet. It's all just sort of pre-release beta version and is definitely a little buggy.

So I've only got it to work a couple times. It's not quite reliable. It can find that their backend program but the connections up to Firefox and getting it to work on all the variety of sites that you might actually want to use it on, not quite there. So your mileage may vary, but that doesn't surprise me at all that it's still very early. This is like their very first release. It's got a little while, and there's probably some finessing to make that work pretty good.

But they're doing good work over there, and it's really nice to see it. Oh, yeah, and it's exciting. And, you know, as with so many of these projects, give it a little time to bake, and soon you'll be relying on it. Yep, that's exactly how it works. Okay, and then, you know, we here at the Linux Unplugged program, I'm just going to make this claim. We say it's okay to use the terminal.

The terminal doesn't have to be scary, especially when you can make it a little more user-friendly with things like the fish shell or Nano, not Vim, but Nano, which is the best text editor on Linux. I'm just going to go with that. Don't even argue. But what about what your face hole is looking at? Wouldn't it be nice if you could make that a little more fun? We've talked about this app once before, and they just had a great release after a nice long while. After many months, cool retro term 1.1.1 is out, and it's combining two years of upstream Qt widget work,

so things that just make the terminal look nicer and resize nicer, big performance improvements, lower resource consumption, new shiny frame, literally a new shiny frame. And they now support your system fonts and they make it all look like you're using a old CRT, old style terminal. You can actually, there's all kinds of different looks you can play around with. And there is also an app image available if you just want

to get started. And there is some Ubuntu packages in the works right now. I think we should be clear, you know, the effects are really pretty astounding.

That's why I like it. I mean, I thought it would be a little too distracting to use for, you know, kind of all the time stuff or even just like regular work. But no, it's so pretty. They've gone to a lot too distracting to use for, you know, kind of all the time stuff or even just like regular work.

But no, it's so pretty. They've gone to a lot of work to make it really shine. Yeah. And maybe you wouldn't use it for everything just because it's like you don't need something that's even eating, you know, half of a percent more CPU usage than your terminal needs to be. That's not the job of the terminal is. But like there is times where you just want your machine to look really badass and awesome. And, you know, you bring this up and then you put H top on there and I can confirm that looks badass and awesome. And there was there

was times when I would swear I was looking at an old, old system that I used to have that would hook up to a monitor over coax and the image would look just like this retro term that that did with a little bit of a little bit of that uh snow in the background just a really light uh sort of wave that goes through it every now and then i mean it just nails it it's like when you smell something and it brings you back or you hear a song this was like one of those visual experiences for me so i think it's a lot of fun. We'll have it linked in the show notes. And if you've got a really good app pick, tweet it at us, or go to

reddit.com slash r slash Linux unplugged and submit it there. Because we try to keep the app picks up, but we want high-quality picks. You know, we're not just trying to do low-budge picks. We want high-quality picks, so we don't always have the picks unless it's something that's sort of noteworthy. We want, you know, well, only the good stuff. And speaking of the good stuff,

go check out Choose Linux. The new show turned out really great. First episode is out, chooselinux.show and go listen to episode one. It started right at the beginning. It is pretty awesome. Jason Evangelo from Forbes switched to Linux about six months ago, and he's just going through that new experience, that rush you get. And he's extremely intelligent, and he's very articulate. So it's a great experience, and it's a great show because you have Jason, who is going through this, and it has that new love feel of everything. And you have Joe, who's been a Linux user for a decade. He's kind of been there, seen that, and they really balance it out really well. It's a clean format. It's an easy listen, and it's about 30 minutes. And it's totally, totally worth checking out. Choose Linux.show.

Go give that a play. I think you're going to love it. We are so excited. If that wasn't enough, we have recently introduced a new full-time co-host with Wes. So Wes Payne does TechSnap. And Jim Salter, a writer from Ars Technica, has joined as Wes's co-host. They've just put out their first episode over at TechSnap.Systems. And it's great. It's so, and then it's just, it's so good. That's why it's going to be a really great Linux Fest, Wes.

Because it's, like, things are happening at a level they've never happened before. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's so, and then it's just, it's so good. That's why it's going to be a really great Linux Fest, Wes, because it's, like, things are happening at a level they've never happened before. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's hard to keep up. It's just flying by. There's so much stuff getting made all the time. It's true. That's true.

All right. Well, that will bring us to an end. The Ubuntu podcast is on season break. Will they come back? We don't know. But in the meantime, you can go check out their back catalog at ubuntupPodcast.org. I have a little exclusive about the Ubuntu podcast.

Oh, go on. There will be a short podcast released this Thursday. So what I should do is I should go subscribe. So that way, when it's out, I have it immediately. That's what I should go. Yeah, it's an exciting announcement. So yeah, everyone needs to subscribe to the Ubuntu podcast to hear the short episode, which is being published on Thursday.

There you go. Very good. Hot tip, hot tip right there for Mr. Martin Wimpress, one of three presenters on the Ubuntu podcast. And I will have links to Elle's social media profile information and the blog posts that cover the content that we're releasing now in February, as well as the study group voting sheet where you can vote on the next study group.

These study groups are kind of a work in progress. turns out to be well attended and well liked and we get a decent amount of votes on future study group topics, we'll start scheduling these maybe on a monthly or more basis. We're just kind of going to gauge what the audience interest is and then we'll, we'll kind of build it out from there. So I'm pretty interested to see where this goes because we have a lot of source material to work with and it's really kind of nice because you could show up, I mean I would love it if you showed up for Linux Unplugged just hung out with us in the mumble room

or in the chat room and watched the stream and enjoyed the show and then hang around for the study group and learn some YAML basics it's just, I think so awesome, I think it's an awesome opportunity and I'd love to see more of it so I hope you guys love it and I hope you can make it next Tuesday, you can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com

slash calendar to get the start of the show times converted to your local time zone if you want to ask questions in the irc we will have that going irc.geekshed.net pound jupiter broadcasting to get in that room the live video stream will be at jblive.tv and if you want to join the mumble room just google search jup Jupiter colony mumble. And there is a setup guide right there that you can follow to get in that mumble room. We'll do an audio check to make sure you're using push to talk. You have headphones and we can hear you. Okay. And you pass those checks and you are in our virtual lug wherever you are in the world. You can be part of a lug and we have literally people from all over the world in there and you

can be part of that. And now you can also learn with all over the world in there. And you can be part of that. And now you can also learn with us too. All right, Mr. Payne. I think that just about checks all the boxes for this week's episode. What do you say we get out of here? Are you ready to conclude? We managed to do it.

There was so much content that I didn't think we would. We've got Elle now. Maybe she can help us get out of here. Yeah, Elle, why don't you say, see you next Tuesday. All right, guys. I guess I'll see you next Tuesday. Boom! That's nice. Couldn't have done it better here. Yeah, Elle, why don't you say see you next Tuesday? Alright guys, I guess I'll see you next Tuesday.

Boom! That's nice. Couldn't have done it better ourselves. Yeah, I mean, she might not be here. She can. She's welcome. But we will. In fact, I think I will be on the road back to Washington by the next episode. That's going to be pretty crazy. I'll be attempting to pull that

off from the road. Although, at this point, the RV is basically a mobile studio. So I should be able to manage that. It should be a successful broadcast. Tune in next week to find out how good his LTE signal might be. Yeah, if he can pull it off. Thank you very much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Unplugged program. And like Al just said, we'll see you next Tuesday! All right, I already know what title I like.

I've already ice-bited the title that I think I want to go with. Thank you, everybody. No way. No way. Yeah, you know which one it is, too. Elle, yeah, I was thinking, like, I didn't mean to, like, say you had to be on the show, but then I realized you are going to see them next Tuesday because it's the study group. So that's happening. Yeah, that's what I thought you were referring to.

I was like, yeah, I'll be here. I'm slow. I'm slow to my own schemes, I suppose. It takes me a little while. You'll get there eventually. Yeah. I mean, Wes can teach them'll be here. I'm slow. I'm slow to my own schemes, I suppose. It takes me a little while. You get there eventually. Yeah. I mean, Wes can teach him YAML, I'm sure. Do you have any YAML skills? I mean, how do you avoid YAML?

Like you said, you can't. Of course, everyone has YAML skills. It's like essential for creating snaps. Therefore, everyone knows YAML. You know that was part of what played into the decision. I was like, you know, this is something that's happening more and more. Snaps are using YAML files. Yeah, let's do YAML. You know that was part of what played into the decision. I was like, you know, this is something that's happening more and more. Snaps are using YAML files. Wise. I think really

Wes probably has, you know, like one of the things that Wes doesn't really share much on air because it doesn't really come up topically is he's a pretty big math nerd. He's also quite a reader. I mean, would you say voracious is overstating it, Wes? But you're a pretty consistent reader, too.

Oh, yeah, of course. It's a big part of my life. Yeah, these things Wes never talks about. We never get a chance. That's why I need to have a show every now and then where we just talk about absolutely nothing, and nobody would listen. But we would at least get it out there on the record.

JB Radio Hour. Yeah. Mr. Wimpress, it's been a little while since we've got an update on the hardware situation. Any new changes on the workstation front? I have hand built my own desktop workstation for the first time in 15 years over Christmas and New Year. What made you decide to hand build? Because I mean, as you know, tons of pre-built systems, pretty solid these days. Are we going for something special? Well, you know,

I've been doing the whole NUC thing, an gpu thing and i was curious i wondered how much performance i was giving away by going with a small form factor and there's lots of interesting technology around at the moment around the pc space and i thought you know it's time i refresh my skills and and build a pc from scratch. And budget plays a part in this because I did look at pre-built systems. I was really taken by the Corsair One. But then when you go and look at what you can build yourself, then it gets a whole lot cheaper really fast.

So I decided to build it myself. So what did you build? Well, it's based around an i9-9900K CPU. Oh, all right. And I've gone with a gigabyte Designere motherboard, which has a couple of interesting properties that I found appealing. Oh, yeah? Such as? The two NVMe slots on it, the M..2 slots are directly connected to lanes on the cpu they don't go through the pch chipset so they're super fast yeah that's great yeah so uh yeah all

the storage is fast lined and uh this particular motherboard has full-blooded Thunderbolt ports on it, so I don't have to give up on my external GPU dream, which sounds a bit strange, you know, because I've got a desktop and I've got the GPU on the board, but for the first time I can do objective comparisons of the same GPU in the same computer on the PCI Express bus internally and in an external enclosure and actually accurately measure what the performance cost is. So I'm going to have some fun playing with that.

But yeah, I've water-cooled this one, and I've been doing a bit of overclocking for fun and lols. Making us drool. You went the whole water cooling overclocking route and stability's been good? It must have been a bit of finessing to get it right. Actually, I was dead surprised. I put it all together and because of the build

and water cooling and what have you, I kind of had to assemble the whole thing and then turn it on and it worked first time um and turns out overclocking on linux is way way easier than overclocking on windows so um uh with not messing with the bios at all um you just switch the performance governor on and uh immediately you get 5 gigahertz all-core turbo with no messing about. So it was really easy to get loads of performance off the CPU. And I've been overclocking the GPU as well. So I've been playing around with overclocking NVIDIA GPUs on Linux.

That does sound like a good use of holiday time. Yeah, it's lots of fun. Yeah, that's nice. So how much storage total did you end up in this system? I've got two and a half terabytes of NVMe. I've got a one terabyte, two and a half inch SSD and six terabytes of spinning rust. And so did you take

the GPU, is that the main GPU from the enclosure for the Thunderbolt enclosure and did you put that in the workstation case for now? Yes, so I took the 1080 Ti out of one of the enclosures and that's inside this chassis.

The Vega 56 is still in one of the external enclosures, so I can still tinker with that. But I'm going to get a 2080 Ti soon, so I can do some testing with that. Well, I can't wait to hear how that goes. That's great. Yeah. So yeah, I'm in full PC enthusiast mode at the moment. I'm having lots of fun tinkering with stuff and even overclocking the memory and all that sort of thing, which doesn't get you all that much gain, but it's fun to tinker with.

Any stability issues or anything like that? No, it's been rock solid. So I obviously run it without all of the performance tuning as my day-to-day workstation, although I have got a permanent overclock so the the cpu will boost to 4.3 gigahertz by default and i've i've changed that in the bios to go to 4.7 so that's a 4.7 default boost um and then i've uh i've just got a little toggle in my uh in my panel to turn on performance mode, which ramps up the GPU and the CPU overclock.

And that's enough to make a considerable difference. I've managed to get my 1080 Ti performing just shy of what a 2080 can do. Get it out of here.