LINUX Unplugged - 297: Release the Dingo

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Ubuntu's new release is here, and this one might be one of the most important in a while. But is it worth upgrading from an LTS? We review and debate just that. Plus some great picks, community news, and more. Special Guests: Alan Pope, Brent Gervais, Ell Marquez, and Martin Wimpress.

I was thinking about dropping the coming up on this week's episode of Unplugged. You know what I always like? Coming up on this week's episode of Unplugged. The little pre-tease. It just feels old. You know, now that we got chapter markers and stuff, like, I don't need to tell you what's coming up. It's all right there. Yeah.

You know, we now live in a post-chapter marker reality. So I think I'm going to drop it. We'll see how it goes. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 297 for April 16th, 2019. Welcome into Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's gearing up for the big Ubuntu 19.04 release. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes.

So I'm not doing the whole coming up this week thing. We're skipping doing it anymore. We're skipping it. We're not skipping it anymore. We're going to get right into the content. So to achieve that mission, let's bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. What a lovely bunch. Look at that. Look at that over there. We got Brent. We got Elle. We got McMittitus, Mini-Meg. We got Neon Burner, which looks like Neon Burger from where I'm at. M. Mason's in there, TechMav, the project manager. Turth and Wimpy in there, all repping our virtual lug. And of course, joining us on a direct studio line is the one, the only, Mr. Bacon.

Hello, Cheese. Hey, guys. How's it going? Mumble Room, everybody? Pretty good. I'm pretty excited today about Ubuntu 19.04. Wes and I have been running it for quite a while and have many thoughts to share. And I have arrived somewhere that I don't think any of you will expect. I'm just going to put it like that. We'll just get there.

But what do you say we start with some community news? We've got to. We've got to, Wes, because that's what we have lined up so far. I thought maybe we'd do a couple quick service announcements and then get in. Normally, we've been starting with birthdays, but we're out of birthdays, unless we missed one. Did we miss one? Raise your hand if so. It's not anybody's birthday in the mumble room, right?

Happy birthday again, Wes. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, there we go. No, let's start with just a couple of bits of, like, this is going to matter, but not a lot of conversation needs to be had. First up is Red Hat is announcing changes to their certified engineer program. Currently, the RHCE is a Red Hat Certified System Administrator, RHCSA. Jeez, I have these acronyms. Elle could explain this better than I could.

Who possess additional skills, knowledge, and abilities required in data center services. In the updated program, we are shifting the focus to automation of Linux systems, like administration tasks using Red Hat Ansible Automation, and we'll be changing the requirements for achieving an RHCE credential. Yeah, all right.

So in the next set of this stuff, there's going to be a new course and then a new exam. So Red Hat System Administration 3, Linux Automation, which is basically designed for Linux system administrators and developers who need to automate provisioning, configuration, application deployment, and orchestration. Basically, you learn how to use Ansible. It makes a lot of sense, right?

In the age of the cloud, in the age of automation, data center knowledge is important, but this seems to have maybe a wider scope. To me, it feels like what Red Hat is saying here is having a comprehensive understanding of the automation tools is just as important as having a comprehensive understanding of the operating system. That's the implicit statement. That's a big statement.

It's true. I mean, I think the market feels that way. But it's Red Hat kind of updating their really well-known industry programs to reflect that. I mean, you just have a lot of systems that you probably have to take care of, right? It's not about one Linux server or two in an HAPR. It's about all the ones that you have in various data centers and cloud programs. While we're talking about big corporations using Linux, this is kind of an interesting one that folks have noticed on the Google I.O. schedule. There is a Linux for Chromebooks secure development track. Learn how Chrome OS gives you a secure, safe sandbox for the web,

Android, and Linux through Chrome OS design principles. Yeah, that's right. Ah, ha ha. This session will also cover ways to handle challenges to high performance and trade-offs with safety. Well, that's something to watch. So they're really going all in to position this thing as a development platform. I mean, they've slowly been piecing it together, right? Every week it seems like one little new piece is added to Chromebook Linux app support. Wimby, I don't think I've heard your thoughts on Google's moves here

to clearly turn this thing into kind of a Sputnik competitor. Probably. I mean, yes. Why not? I mean, we saw from the OpenStack developer survey that came out last week that there is 20-odd percent of developers using Linux. So wherever you can provide Linux to developers is obviously going to be popular with developers, I think. This is maybe my normal default reaction for Google stuff like this, but I am sitting a bit uneasy after our conversation last week about what makes desktop Linux really. Yeah. I'm less enthusiastic about this. Yeah. I'm less enthusiastic about this. Yeah, I'm conflicted on this.

So we obviously had that conversation last week. And there's a class of Linux devices where you don't want to be able to do all of those things that we described, which is, you know, you express the ultimate flexibility of the Linux desktop by being able to download, compile, and boot off the kernel that you've just compiled. That defines the true heritage of Linux distributions in my mind. However, if you're building IoT devices, for example, you don't want to expose that kind of flexibility to the device manufacturer. You want to lock that stuff down and provide them with you know a secure updated environment and there's an argument to be made for having a desktop environment that kind of mimics that as well if you're only ever going to be developing android applications do you need all of the

flexibility that we see as an advantage do you just need the ability to install the development tools that you need to create the development environment that you need to get your job done and then to go about the business of creating android apps or whatever it might be does that type of developer actually need all of the flexibility that we we hold so dear right i mean the same stuff when we talk about the windows subsystem for linux right and i think already too many developers linux is a tool that you run on your servers, right? It's an environment that I make for my application, especially if it's going to end up in some sort of container or virtual machine.

So it's not necessarily the thing you play with or are embedded in. So I'm being a little bit of devil's advocate this week. I'm playing the counter position. The other thing is maybe it's just easy, and then they're like, oh, this Linux stuff's pretty handy. I like how it can do more stuff than it can do in the outside application. Maybe I should explore.

But that's going to be a tiny percentage realistically. Once again, RMS was right. I've never installed GNU slash Linux. He just deploys it as a container and good to go. So there is some buzz around a video that the Linux, the Linux, oh my God, I'm that guy. Oh my God, I'm that guy. The Linus Link. Juniper Broadcasting, is that it again? I just, I never really said it out loud. The Linus Link Tech Show, is that what it's called? Linus Link Tech Tips? That's what it is. Linus Tech Tips? Okay, okay.

LTT. Yeah. And I do actually watch from time to time. I don't know why. I guess I've never had to say it out loud before. There's a lot of buzz, though, around a video that they did recently around gaming on Linux. The title of the video is Microsoft Should Be Very Afraid, A Noob's Guide to Installing Linux Gaming. It's actually a pretty well-done video, which is a nice change of pace in general for this kind of stuff. But they really made a pretty good sales pitch for both Manjaro and Pop! OS in there. But I would say they really kind of sealed the deal right here towards the end of the video. For Pop! OS and Manjaro, and actually for a number of other

distros we didn't cover today, the steps basically boil down to install the OS, install Steam or Lutris, and start playing. That's what makes these distros especially enticing for gamers. But while Manjaro is set up well to cater to gamers out of the box, it's not going to be as stable as a distro like Ubuntu. And that's why Pop!OS and others like it try to bridge that gap with updated drivers while still retaining excellent community support and stable packages, which makes them a good choice for getting your feet wet. So Emma, I'm curious what System76 has seen as response to this video. So we've had thousands of gigabytes of data downloaded. We had, since then, we've had 18,000, almost 18,000 downloads of Pop!

OS. It's very exciting. Are you seeing higher than average, like people sticking around now that the video has been out for a little bit? Like are the downloads still remaining high? Yes, we're seeing about 2000 per day. The first day was about 5000. And each day after has been 2000 or more. So wow, congratulations. That is an achievement right there. That is fantastic. And I think, you know, overall, the last few months, I've seen more and more people talking about Pop! OS, using Pop! OS.

It's becoming more and more of a well-established distribution. Well, thank you. You are almost enticing me, I have to admit. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a lot of effort that's been put in there to tune some things. And I think people are talking about that and other people are picking it up and be like, oh, I want that. Why doesn't my computer do it already? Yeah. And I've heard rumors that there'll be a new installer, that the new installer will support CFS soon and things like that.

So there's other advantages that start to make it appealing besides just a few other things like maybe a new theme or a different way to encrypt the hard drive. But there's other things that have been coming along that really seem like a pretty good innovation or at least a nice value add. In a case like this, easy access to Steam and whatnot that got the attention of the folks over at Linus Tech Tips. I got it. Good job. Thank you.

And I'm really happy to hear that you guys have gotten some traffic from it. And I'd be curious to know what the Manjaro project has seen. Because the Manjaro got a fair amount of mentions. They lean Pop!OS, though, towards the end. And I think for good reason. Especially for the type of user. Yeah, for the video and the audience they're aiming for, that's probably the best advice. But the title, Microsoft should be very worried.

All uppercase very. Very worried. That's pretty good. That all uppercase very, very worried. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Pretty, pretty good. So that's cool to hear, Emma. That's really cool to hear that you got some downloads from it. Hello, Mr. Popey.

I see you sneaking in there under the wire. Oh, hello. How are you doing, sir? I'm good, thank you. It's like when you sneak into class and then the teacher calls you out for sneaking in. I saw you see me out the corner of your eye. I know you were just getting the corner of your eye. I know you were just getting back from the DevWon conference,

and so I just wanted to get your report at the first ever DevWon conference and how it went. Wait, what? I thought you'd just go with it. Oh, man, I actually feel a little bad about giving these guys such a hard time. At least I did until I read this blog post. But before I read this blog post, I was starting to feel like maybe I should go easy. Like they've actually got some genuine... I mean, it's not like there's a problem.

They're not hurting anyone by... And they're finding a market. If there are users and people who are happy to develop and use the operating system, then all the better for them to do so. It starts out, the blog post starts out pretty good. It starts, the conference took place in Amsterdam in one of the rooms of a building that is floating on the water and looks a lot like an anchored submarine.

This white submarine gives us home to offices of DINE.org, D-Y-N-E.org, a non-profit foundation dedicated to free software, art, and sustainability. All right, okay, they got some pictures of food. They say each day was filled with lots of interesting speakers and intermittent hack sessions where participants got the chance to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and plan future steps regarding their role in the open source community. But things kind of take a turn to the left or to the right, however you, I don't know.

They just take a turn for the worse. They go right, however you, I don't know. They just take a turn for the worse. They go down a different route, Wes. It starts around here. There was an omnipresent feeling that the people attending the conference were superheroes finally being able to put on their suits. That's one of many things that are in this post that are very, very hyperbolic. Now, I get what they're going for. I get what they're going for, but it starts to really kind of go off the rails

in the language here. And I think this is why I originally gave them such a hard time, is the way they say things. Yeah, I like this. The submarine-looking building gave home to an event gathering open-source superheroes and all sorts of magical creatures

because, to quote the first DevJuan docs print, software freedom your way. We must apply thought and attention to software development. We share responsibility as users and developers of software systems to foster values of cooperation in the spirit of science, human cultures, and the diversity of life. That's pretty bold. They got a mission there.

They're a project with a mission. I can't really argue with any of that, though. I mean, they just, they're really grandiose in the way they talk. And if you're going to do something like this, if you're going to fork Debian and make a system-D free version of Debian, you've really got to have some fundamental beliefs to be willing to put yourself through that kind of hell and torture. I will also say, whatever salad that they're having there looks delicious. Yeah, I see a lot of cilantro. I think it's like, I think it's like a nacho thing, Wes. I don't know if it's a salad.

Look at that melted. That's melted cheese, right? Okay. Yeah, I think it's a salad. Look, they got the plates with the cilantro on them. They're really big on the cilantro over there, apparently. I'm down with that. Yeah, I don't mind a little cilantro. So, speaking of ZFS, it appears that work is in way

for Ubuntu 2004-ish, and gentlemen, correct me if you know anything differently. Michael over at Pharonix writes that the ZFS undertaking is a huge effort. And we really haven't heard much about it, although I was actually sniffing around and I did see some status updates about like testing and restoring stuff.

So there is actual work underway. And it looks like it'll probably land for the user installer in 20.04, the LTS for next year. Feels far away, but really, it's not that far, and there's a lot to get right here, and you don't want to mess it up.

Well, I've seen some stuff at company sprints, but I'm not sure if we're going to land this for 20.04. Really? I'll have to go away and confer with my colleagues to be absolutely certain but I think this is due to land after 2004.

Now the ZFS stuff or something else like a new installer? Both of those things I believe. I see. Okay. But the work has already started and I've definitely seen some prototypes working and I don't want to give too much away, but there's some very interesting strategies

that are being used to deploy this, and it's pretty nifty. I will say that the time it takes to install is radically reduced using this mechanism. It's pretty impressive. Ooh. Okay, now I'm properly teased. Boy. I also wanted to give a little plug-a-skis to TechSnap,

techsnap.ystems slash 401. Wes and Jim did everyday ZFS, just really, really good information about ZFS, especially for everyday use cases. Busted some myths, covered some of the license and legality stuff. You know, Jim just lives and breathes ZFS, and it's kind of a TechSnap tradition, so I thought we should have our take on it. I was going to say that. It is a TechSnap tradition, so yeah thought we should have our take on it. I was going to say that. It is a TechSnap tradition. So, yeah, TechSnap.systems slash 401. If you want that.

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I did, too. You guys make a good team. I miss doing the show, but you guys make a good team. Well, that's the community news. Pretty brief today. It was pretty brief today, so I think we should move on.

Move on with the rest of the show. Let's get into a little housekeeping. And for fun, I'm going to do it with a little music this week. Yeah. Yeah. Just to kind of keep it going. Just to kind of keep our house clean. We do have a couple of things to talk about in the housekeeping this week.

Yeah. Get out. Get it tidy. First of all, big, big deal. Linux Academy is doing a 299 year promo right now. It's a 33% discount. That's great. Go take advantage of that by going to linuxacademy.com and sign

up. It's in effect for about a week or two. I don't know. It started yesterday and it's a limited time offer, so go check it out. Divide that by 12 and you'll be like, okay, yeah. That's a good deal. Very good deal. Plus they're launching a bunch of content right now too. Now Friday, Friday on the jblive.tv stream, we're doing a little hangout.

We'll be doing it at 2pm Jupiter Broadcasting time, that's specific. You can get it converted to your local time at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. Just hanging out. We wanted to do some community interaction stuff. We'll do like a week in review. We'll review some of the show clips, expand on a little further,

hang out, chat with the crew. We're going to try to have a lot of the Jupyter Broadcasting crew participate as they can. Just a little hangout session, jblive.tv, 2 p.m. Pacific this Friday, and hopefully next Friday when we'll have people in town. Oh, yeah. People in town can stop by while they're in studio and hang out with us on the Friday stream. Always a good time to join live, join the IRC room too. Totes.

Speaking of LinuxFest. Oh, it's coming up. Yeah. And if you're coming and you're going to hang out at our LinuxFest parking lot barbecue, if you're driving, consider bringing your own chair, please. We'll have some chairs, especially for those of you who are flying in, because I can't expect you to bring a chair on the airplane. But if you're flying up and you have the room, you might bring a camping chair, too, with you.

Everybody likes to sit, right? Everybody likes to sit. And last but not least, very awesome. Our community is self-organizing in the Linux Fest Telegram group right now for carpools from the airport. Jupyterbroadcasting.com slash Linux Fest. Angela has made a spreadsheet that people can put their names in and time of arrival and all that date stuff, and then people can organize and give each other rides. That's happening right now in our Telegram group, jupiterbroadcasting.com, Flash, LinuxFest. And last but not least, Mr. Bacon's here with the job report. We've got a special community job posting, don't we? Yes, we do.

We had one of our community members, Jacob, reach out to me this last week on our Telegram, which you can find a link to that. If you go to jupiterbroadcasting.com, up at the top, you'll see a Telegram icon. Click on that and you can join us. But he works for a company called Simplot. They're an agriculture company. So they do a lot of work with farmers and such. company. So they do a lot of work with farmers and such. They're currently looking for an infrastructure engineer three to work in their Boise, Idaho office. They go into talking about what you'll need to do. And we'll have these, these, this link posted in the show notes, but you'll provide rock solid platforms to run workloads such as MySQL, Apache, WebLogic, Tomcat, HANA, Docker, OpenShift, Hadoop, all of those things, obviously, you can get training for on

Linux Academy. Maybe we have some Linux Academy students out there that might be interested. This would be a good place to apply. I've talked to Jacob, and he said that the team is a really awesome team to work with. So if you're looking for a job, this might be for you. There you go. Combining farming and Linux together. Amazing. That'd be pretty good. We'll have a link in the show notes. Go check that out. Thank you Mr. Bacon for the job report there. And that,

ladies and gentlemen, is the housekeeping. See, we got through. Good job everybody. Got through that pretty fast actually. I'm so proud of us. I felt good. That felt really good. All right. Well, I think this is why we're all kind of in a rush today. This is what we're really— There's a lot to chew on.

This is what we're here for today. Very, very much, very much so. Looking forward to talking about Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo. The new 1904 release is a really big deal for a non-LTS release. In fact, I'd argue it's one of the bigger deals for a non-LTS release in years. In fact, even bigger than 1710 was, which was the first version that switched to GNOME. bigger than 1710 was, which was the first version that switched to GNOME. And to give us some context, while I feel this is sort of a big deal, is I want to go back in time for a moment. Let's go back almost two years right on the nose when Noah and I were standing at Dell headquarters covering the news that Canonical was dropping Unity. So Mark Shuttleworth just sort of changed the Linux landscape in a big way.

And I say that once we get into it, I think you'll understand why I say that. But what was announced was that Canonical, starting with, was it 1804? Right, next LTS. The next LTS, they're going to switch to GNOME by default. And they will be de-investing efforts into Unity 8. They will be sunsetting Unity 7. They will be shipping GNOME by default on the next LTS Ubuntu, and the ramifications of that are ginormous.

There's a personnel ramification within Canonical. Right. And we actually ended up seeing it shipping before 1804. It ended up shipping in one of the point releases ahead of time. And I think it is unquestionable that it has really changed the Linux desktop in the last couple of years. It has been a couple of wild rides. And why I believe 1904 is a bigger deal than your average bear is because it is truly the release that is the full net result of this new focus. 1710 was the first go. 1804 was a stable shot at it. You know, let's make sure we're conservative here. But there's a lot

to consider for an LTS release. So this, you know, one more past that. And now with 1904, you've got GNOME 3.32. You've got Mesa 19.0, Linux kernel 5.0, and the new default Yaru theme, which gives it its own unique look again. So Ubuntu looks modern but unique again and still. And so I think it was these reasons perhaps that you and I were... I guess it wasn't just these reasons, but it's these reasons amongst also all of

the work that's gone into Gnome Shell by Canonical, by Red Hat employees, by Endless that have really made it much, much more performant. And we had been watching the development of that. You and I were like, we've got to try this. There's just so much going on. It kept feeling like it kept getting better and better. Yeah. And we've been on Plasma at that point for nearly a year.

A long time, yeah. Almost, yeah. And at least for me, yeah. And nearly a year for you. And it was just kind of time to like dip our toe in the GNOME world again and see, okay, how does 3.32 really shake up? Like, is it better? And you could just instantly, instantly, within moments of logging in, notice a performance difference.

Animations were clearly smoother. It just felt snappier. Most of it is the things that you don't see. It just is snappy. Things happen quickly. It's almost like there's, you know, the Joe style no transitions anywhere effect. Yeah. And I thought, okay, well, let's give it a go on Fedora Rawhide, right?

Because that's supposed to be a real GNOME showcase. So let's give it a go over there and see what 3.32 is like on Rawhide. And it was pretty great. It was quite great, actually. Yeah, I remember you telling me that you were doing that. Honestly, I know you. I know how much you like Fedora. I expected you to be sitting out there on Fedora for a while.

I did, too. But I will say this. There are a few vendor modifications to the GNOME shell that Canonical makes. The combination of their dock and the Yaru theme and the performance fixes that I think they've implemented that aren't necessarily on Fedora yet kind of came together to make make the GNOME 1904 experience superior, in my opinion. And after running Rawhide for a couple of weeks, I switched back to 1904 and just went all in. And I found the performance to be noticeably better.

Wow. And that is impressive. It's funny to think about that we had, you know, two years ago when we were first talking about this, we were kind of wondering about what the future investments of Canonical into the desktop might be, right? Switching to GNOME, was this just going to be, we were like, is this going to be a stock GNOME, or are we really going to see something that feels like Ubuntu? And I think now we can say, we can answer that. Yeah, in fact, going back in time again two years, you and Noah were sitting here on this very show while I was driving up from Dell.

You lazy schmuck. And we're pontificating on what this might mean for future Linux users. I think that it's going to be a really great thing for Linux as a whole to have the biggest manufacturers of the desktop Linux operating system, that being Red Hat and Canonical, both of them working together to form a single desktop environment. And I think it's going to be really good for the end users because they're going to have more freedom to go from one to the other. And it's all going to look the same because, hey, they're starting with GNOME. And this idea that we'd see some real improvements with everybody focusing on one desktop environment

was theoretical at the time. But here we are two years later, and it's clearly had some great improvements for GNOME. It's not 100% yet. It has still crashed on. Right. I'm going to say you've spent quite some time on this here show talking about some of the problems with GNOME. And you had some shell crashes in 1904 as well. Yeah. Admittedly, I was kind of pushing things to its limits.

I might keep Plasma as my audio workstation. But the rest of the time, it was super pleasant. And kind of, I might prefer that, honestly. I might just like GNOME as everyday browsing. It's kind of perfect for just, you know, maybe a terminal. Yes. A couple of Electron apps and a web browser. Where it doesn't need to be a mission-critical workstation.

It's not bad. No, I really, it's snappy. It's easy. It's very intuitive. And I like that I can just mostly, especially on 1904, I can run the default. I don't need to spend that sort of plasma investment time of tuning everything. Right. It just works.

I got to give you a ding on that because that is a big differentiator. I just got right to work. I really did. I think I installed one or two extra extensions. I like having the ping indicator up in my thing. Yeah, that's right. I like did. I think I installed one or two extra extensions. I like having the ping indicator up in my thing. Yeah, that's right. I like that. And that might have been it.

That might have been it. Yeah. And I was good to go. But 1904 isn't just the default release. It is a ecosystem of flavors. And I kind of wanted to turn it over to the Mumble Room and talk with Mr. Popey and Mr. Wimpy about their thoughts on the 1904 release. Mr. Popey, I'll start with you. Are you even trying out the betas anymore, or are you just sticking on 1804?

I was so excited about the performance improvements in 1904 and other UX improvements, I might get an opportunity to mention that i upgraded two of my machines i've got a thinkpad x 220 and um an intro where athena which is quite a beefy machine so i've got two ends of the scale one with an nvidia gpu one with an intel gpu so i wanted to be able to see how this thing performs on different chipsets at different ends of the scale. And I love it. It's really great. It's so much better. And I feel fine upgrading away from an LTS. I'm usually the kind of person who sticks on LTSes on those two machines.

I've moved. That's the ultimate benchmark. In fact, I want to come back to that very question here in a second. But you said two things I'd like to circle back to. Number one, I'm curious to know what the performance difference is like on Intel versus NVIDIA. And then I'm also curious what those other UI improvements are that drew you in. So I don't notice really a lot of difference between the Intel laptop and it's a few years old. It's like a 2012 Sandy Bridge i7. So I mean, it's not a slouch, but it's still it an intel gpu and it's not a top end brand

new one um and the nvidia gpu is a 960 mobile device which is relatively common you know and it's again not the top of the range i'm not like wimpy with like 1070 ti's coming out the wazoo 1070 i'm not a peasant. Triggered. Oh, man. But the performance is comparable across them. It's just the same. It's the applications that are the problem now. It's the shell isn't the problem anymore.

It's all these big fat applications I'm running on top of them. Sure. And were there other, you said there was some UI improvements too. Yeah, I've personally complained, and I know many of our users did, about some of the UX of application switching and the way NumShare does application switching. The alt tab and alt, what's that key above tab?

In Unity land, we used to call it the key above Tab. Yeah, it's Tilda, but it's not on a Mac. It's Grave. Yeah, but it's not a Grave. It's a key above Tab. Oh, God. It's... Sorry.

But the improvements to the way switching Windows is massive for me because I often have multiple windows for each application open. And what I hate is alt-tabbing between two applications and being punched in the face by lots of windows coming to the front.

I only want one of them. And having to do a dance with multiple alt-tab and alt-grave is just bizarre. So we fixed that in 1904. The desktop team fixed that in 1904. I'll admit to being confused at first because I got pretty used to the old,

admittedly, unintuitive method. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the sound panel is easy to use. So it's a lot more intuitive. Oh, I just love the new system preferences. It's gotten so much better since I've used GNOME. Yeah, GNOME Upstream have done a really good job with the redesign of the setting stuff. And, you know, we're consuming that pretty much as it is. It's great. Now, what about you, Mr. Wimpy? What are your thoughts on

the 1904 release, both from a Mate standpoint, but also just, you know, what you hear around town? Well, there's obviously, you know, being a flavor, there's obviously a number of advantages that you get to inherit just by being based on top of Ubuntu. So there's a couple of subtle things, you know, this time round that are probably worth pointing out that you might not notice unless you had it explained to you. So everyone may have heard of or be familiar with WPA Supplicant, which is a tool to manage your Wi-Fi. And the new hotness, maybe, is a tool called IWD. So in Network Manager in this release,

you can optionally choose to use IWD to manage your network authentication, which is good. And that could well be a default in the future, and that's one of the reasons why it's here for playing and testing with uh and then a simple thing uh in the um boot uh manager these days you'll find the safe graphics mode so for all of the different boot options you'll find a duplicate entry which says safe graphics mode and that automatically sets no mode set and anyone not familiar with what that does that effectively sidesteps the drm driver modules so if you have a gpu what isn't which is not well supported by your kernel

by default you can use that to get installed using a basic frame buffer and then install your drivers after the fact to get a working system and that's a you know a small thing but it's a it's a nice little change so you know that's something that all of the flavors get to, um, get to benefit from, um, in terms of Ubuntu Mate itself, it's a bit of a dull release for us. Um, it's just bug fixes and, uh, finessing. Uh, one of the reasons being I work alongside the Debian packaging team. They've got a release coming up. Debian 10 is just around the corner. And I've been doing all of the package uplifts for Mate in Debian.

So we kind of put things on hiatus because we've done this in the past and made the right horlicks of it where we get this split of the versions of Mate in Debian and the versions of Mate in Ubuntu and it all becomes a big pickle that we have to sort out. So I've stuck alongside the Debian and the versions of Mate and Ubuntu, and it all becomes a big pickle that we have to sort out. So I've stuck alongside the Debian versions that are going to be in Debian Buster. I've committed all of my changes to Debian Git last week for the new version of Mate,

including all of the fixes we needed to do on some third-party modules to get that stable. So when we enter the 1910 release, we'll hit the ground running with Marte 122 from day one. Now, I've been testing all of the flavors, and I would just like to put a little hat tip out there to the Ubuntu Budgie team. That is a really, really nice implementation. I was seriously impressed. Yeah, a great way to have a modern desktop and run some GTK applications without using a shell. Completely agree.

Yeah, it's terrific. It's really, really good. I mean, it's been a while since I used it. I think I last installed the 1804 version, which was good, but this version seems really bob on, really good. So well done to the guys over there. Congratulations on a fine release. You should be very proud of yourselves.

You know, I'll also give a shout out to the Zubuntu release. So I obviously spent the vast, vast majority of my time on the Gnome Shell implementation of 1904. majority of my time on the Gnome Shell implementation of 1904. However, I have found it to be, it being Gnome Shell, to be particularly challenging when I go beyond two monitors. When I get into three and four monitors that are like a DisplayPort over a USB-C specifically. Yeah. That sounds complicated. Right.

And so I grant you it shouldn't be perfect, right? I mean, it should be, but I understand why it's not. But you complicated. Right. And so I, I, I grant you it shouldn't be perfect, right? I, I mean, it should be, but I understand why it's not. But you'd like working. Gnome Shell really kind of gets sporadic about like what monitor it's going to turn on when I boot up and which ones don't get activated and what orientate,

because some of them are vertical. And so what orientation is the screen? And like all of that basically changes every time I boot. And I never know what I'm going to get. And maybe there's a method to the madness, but I can't figure it out. So after getting my feet fully wet on Gnome Shell and really enjoying it,

I think my inner Joe came out. Everyone has one. And I ended up installing the Xubuntu 19.04 desktop. And I have to say... I'm kind of imagining you clicking over to the download page and sneakily not admitting it to yourself as you click the download ISO button. And I have to say... fast it uses a tiny amount of resources all these things don't really matter i mean that wicked fast matters but the resource is not as much but matters um and yeah you know there's things

about it that are old school like setting up my panel feels old school and stuff like that but once i have it set man like if it isn't just set it and forget it and then just use your computer and just it's everything i got at a gnome shell but just use your computer and just, it's everything I got out of GNOME Shell but just straightforward and simpler. And I really feel like it's a great recording workstation desktop or a great workstation

desktop. I will very much be considering just switching my desktops over to Subuntu. I mean, it makes sense. It's been around. Nothing needs to have changed except there's just made steady improvements. Now, the question is, are there, and maybe Wimpy,

maybe you have an answer to this, are there as many compelling reasons for me to use 19.04 if I'm using Xubuntu or should I just stay on 18.04

and use Xubuntu? Because I don't think the XFCEs, I mean, I didn't really check. I mean, it feels like with XFCE, it doesn't really matter.

You know, I feel like it'd be the same XFCE regardless. I think you're doing a little bit of a disservice to XFCE. I know they are making the sort of steady march to GTK3 only future. And more of the component technologies that make up their, you know, desktop offering have been moved over to GTK3. So that work is their you know desktop offering have been moved over to gtk3 so that work is you know ongoing um so and there's you know when if you follow simon's blog this is a different simon simon quickly obviously um you will find there's um regular updates on the improvements and new features that they're adding to their suite of applications so you know

they're going about their business very methodically. And not upsetting, you know, the Apple cart in terms of, you know, how it looks and behaves. You know, I think Joe said, you know, it was comfortingly familiar when he installed 1904. It is truly a fantastic power user experience. It is so simple. It is so straightforward. In fact, not even for power users, but just

all the things I appreciate about a desktop. It is that. And no one complains that they're removing features. I was very, very, very, very impressed. So that brings me to the question that Popey alluded to earlier. Is it worth switching from an LTS 1804 to 1904 and

getting back on that upgrade train where you have to upgrade every so often. And I'm wondering what your take is, Wes. Is it worth switching out, say, your laptop here, which has Kubuntu on it right now, 1804? Would you consider replacing that with 1904? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for my personal workstations,

at least for ones that I touch every day, let's say, or nearly every day, that's reasonable. It's a good reasonable amount of work. It serves as a good, you know, good making sure that I have documentation about everything that I know and need to install on a workstation that I'm using. And especially in the case, you know,

this time around with the GNOME improvements, I like having up-to-date packages. I used Arch for a long time. I've been using Ubuntu more recently, but I'm still that same Wes. It is just getting to that age where it's like, I could useto-date packages. I used Arch for a long time. I've been using Ubuntu more recently, but I'm still that same Wes. It is just getting to that age where it's like, I could use a couple of new packages. You do have to balance that, right?

Especially if you have maybe a lot of PPAs that you have to wait until they've got packages supported. Now with Snaps and other systems, that's less relevant, but it's still relevant to me. Yeah, the PPAs are the only pain point. Thank goodness there's so many workarounds around that now. That's my line, too, the line you just drew right there. It's like if it's my daily driver and I'm on that machine as my main workstation, I actually think it is worth the upgrade.

Normally I would say, no, hold off, but in this particular case, the machines I'm going hands-on all the time, I'm upgrading. And the machines that are more appliances, like the ones here in the studio, I'm going to leave on 1904. Usually, if you upgrade at least one machine, at some point you'll figure out, is this really enough better that I'm frustrated at the LTS release now? And if not, just leave it. I am a little annoyed because when I came back to Ubuntu,

I just wanted to stay on one version for five years because there's this weird part of me that really envies people that just like stick to an LTS for like the full five years because LTSs, in my opinion, go through like this life cycle. 1804 is just cresting the boring period of the life cycle. And then it'll, you know, it'll ride that for a while and that sort of like curves down and gets more and more boring. And especially as like as 1910 comes out and stuff stuff like that 1804 is going to seem really boring and then when night when 2004 comes out like boy 1804 is going to seem like a cow but then it's sort of like it hits it

hits rock bottom around 2004 and then when 2010 comes out it kind of starts to get interesting again and then it's like back up we're like.04 and like where 16.04 is right now. And it's like still people love it. There's people that are still running 16.04 and it works great for them. And you know what? They've got all their stuff set up, all their PPAs work, all their custom configs work. Yeah, when you're still in the support cycle, for the most part, it just works. I wanted to be that guy.

Shall I offer you a hook to tempt you back to 18.04? Yeah, when you're still in the support cycle, for the most part, it just works. I wanted to be that guy. Shall I offer you a hook to tempt you back to 1804? Yeah, do it. So those performance improvements that you've been able to observe in 1904, you're enjoying that, right? I am, especially the non-shell stuff. Right. So just to be clear, for the benefit of the listeners, this is not work that Canonical are doing and holding to our chest they're not sharing this is all work that's going back upstream however some of those patches haven't

completed peer review yet so aren't merged into the upstream gnome project and that's why we're carrying them as vendor patches within ubuntu so we can take advantage of those things now. That said, all of that hotness is in 1904. We have already backported it to 1810, and those patches will be landing in 1804 soon. How is that possible? It's a totally different version of Gnome Shell. Well, it is a different version, but Daniel VanVoe is a magician and he's making it happen. He is fixing multiple versions of GNOME Shell.

Yeah. And this is not uncommon within the desktop team, right? If you look at some of the applications that we carry, we have multiple versions across the current supported releases, and they will be making patches that are different patch sets in order to deliver the same functionality across versions of applications. So they're not going to just upgrade 18.04 to GNOME 3.3.2. They're going to patch the version, like what is it, 3.3.0 or whatever that shipped with? Yeah, I forget what it is.

Was it 3.26 maybe, 3.28, something like that? That kind of boggles my mind a little bit. That is some work. That is some serious work. But it's important because people like sticking on LTSs. And depending upon the LTS and depending upon which non-LTS you're looking at, I've mentioned this before,

it's between 10 and 20 times the number of people stick on LTSs than non-LTSs. And if we said to everyone, hey, it sucks to be you on the LTS, we're over here enjoying better performance in non-LTS land, then our LTS customers would be very unhappy, or, you know, 10 times more of them very unhappy. And so it makes total sense for the patches that can be backported,

and not all of them can, as Martin said. Some of them are too intrusive and too structural and can't be backported to an older release of Gnome Shell or the underpinnings of Gnome Shell. But those that can will be. And so you don't have to look with envy at the 1904 users who get all of the performance improvements. You'll get some of them as well.

Somebody ought to send this episode to management over at Apple and tell them they could backport some of their fixes and old versions of Mac OS. Okay, but Minimac, you get what I'm saying though, right? Like there are people that really benefit from just sticking with the LTS for like a really long time. I believe you're one of them. Yeah, in fact, I have one computer, it's my working horse desktop that I rarely upgrade. So it's still running 16.04 within an Enlightenment E22 desktop and I run with

Enlightenment some snaps and PPAs and that's working really really great. There's a sentence you don't hear very often running Enlightenment. That's great. We should get the Minimac review of Enlightenment. Totally should. I haven't used that yet.

I will change my setup probably during this year and then I can give you a review of enlightenment desktop. For me I think with a multi-monitor setup it's still one of the best desktop environments you can have.

Alright, I want that. I want that. I want you to do that. I totally want that. Okay, promised. Promised. Excellent. Alright, so that. I totally want that. Okay, promised, promised. Excellent. All right, so that's the big question. And it sounds like, I mean, both Wimpy and Popey are kind of telling me I don't need to upgrade. And I think we need to, I would like to give an answer to the audience. Is it worth upgrading from LTS and getting back on this upgrade train? And maybe it's not.

If you're willing to wait around and wait for those, I mean, it'll take time for those things to get backported. But it sounds like maybe it's not worth it yet, unless you really are a GNOME shell enthusiast. There's pros and cons to staying on the LTS or jumping on the interims, right? listening to this are, then running the latest stuff is always sort of compelling and what you want to do because you want to play with the latest technology and learn it and tinker with it. But by the same token, you don't need to do that. And there are benefits to staying on the LTS because the LTS is well supported out in the wider world. Outside of our bubble, those people that are producing software for Linux will absolutely produce packages and software for you for the current LTS version, not so much for the interim

releases. So it really depends what you need to get out of your machine. If you don't need to listen to us for advice, then yeah, okay, upgrade. I would say, I think the consensus is stick with the LTS unless you have a compelling reason to upgrade. If you're a performance hound and you really really care about the perceived performance of your desktop, I will

say, out of the box, the 19.04 implementation is clearly faster. And I have been doing for about 48 hours a little side-by-side GNOME boxes. I just did a base 1804 install out of the box and a base 1904.

That's a good little experiment. Yeah, it was the most up-to-date daily 1904. No updates, though, installed on either. Just installed them, rebooted once, got back to the desktop, and then let it run for 48 hours. And without a question, I mean, it's clear just by looking at the charts, the 1904

version out of the box uses less RAM and continues to use less RAM the longer GNOME Shell runs. And I'm talking like it's a difference of about 500 megabytes of RAM right now difference, just sitting there running. Yikes. Yeah, so it really, you know, there is clear advantages to the new release.

Now it sounds like some of that will be coming back to the older versions, maybe not all of it. And if you want it today, then you basically have to go to 1904. That's what it comes down to. If you're willing to wait, then you're good. Or if you're like me and maybe just going to switch to XFCE or Ubuntu, it doesn't matter. I was, I just can't believe it. I just, you know, I thought I wanted something sexy. I thought I wanted a desktop that was like plasma, that is very, very modern.

I think you're making a transition here. I think I am. You know? I think that's what it is. You're approaching the desktop a little bit differently. I think I am. It's going from like the computer is my video game to the computer is my tool. And I want my tool to be as effective and efficient and at the best of doing just what I want it to do.

And XFCE is really good for that. There's one other feature of 19.04 that might be worth touching on. Yeah, tell me about it. It's a feature in the installer. So when you run the install now, one of the tick boxes, it used to be where it used to say install third-party codecs and that sort of thing oh yeah uh that bit of text now says um install um third-party hardware drivers for graphics and wi-fi if you have an nvidia gpu and you tick that box it will install

the proprietary nvidia drivers uh for you so that you've got NVIDIA out of the box on your first boot. That's great. That is slick. Wow. Yeah, it's a good release. It's a really good release. I mean, you know, it's not an LTS, but it is a really good midterm release. The Yaru theme is sharp.

I really like it. I installed GNOME Tweaks. I used the dark mode of it, dark version of it, and I think it looks really good. I really like it. I installed GNOME Tweaks. I used the dark mode of it, dark version of it, and I think it looks really good. I just left it. I mean, this is probably the least tweaking

and modification I've ever done. I spent a lot more time setting up XFCE than I did GNOME Shell. Mm-hmm. So, of course, now my XFCE is, like,

super dialed in. It's really awesome. You can get, I mean, once it's tuned, you can make it very lovely. All right. I believe for one last time. I'm about to do it. Got this old, it's there. You can make it very lovely. All right. I believe for one last time. Everybody do it.

Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro.

Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro.

Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro. Gastro.

Gastro. Yeah, congratulations to the Canonical team. They got a great release, and now we look forward to other distros that are shipping at GNOME 332 and see how their implementations stack up. There will be a lot of – this is probably one of the more exciting release cycles that we've entered in a while because in a way we're entering a golden age of GNOME development now. And I'm really curious to see what the other distros do with it. What do you say, Wes? What do you say?

A couple of picks before we get out of here. Let's do it. We got two picks. I brought one to the table today and Wes brought one to the table. And let's just say, please, ladies and gentlemen, this next pick that we're about to cover here on the show, please, please do use it responsibly because you need to be a good Internet citizen. need to be a good internet citizen. It's called Party Loud, a simple tool to generate fake web browsing traffic and mitigate tracking by essentially

blasting web trackers with a lot of noise. Oh, yeah, that's right. You had a chance to give it a go. In fact, we'll have a link to an ASCII video in the show notes if people want to see Wes's, what do you call this, a spoof session? A Party Loud session? Yeah, exactly.

There's a previously, there's a script out there that's kind of popular, noisy.py, which was the inspiration for this. But, you know, that's Python. It's a little more complicated. Party Loud has the advantage of being pretty much just a simple bash script. You can and should read it yourself. And then otherwise, it has a list predetermined. You can add your own of websites, queries,

and then it basically just goes, spins up a couple of threads with your resolvers, goes out and pulls a bunch of websites and walks around on the various URLs that they offer and it's like you're doing your own web browsing session. Nicely too, it does display it for you so you can see what it's doing. It's not just off lurking in the background. That's why I mentioned the ASCII video. It's pretty cool actually watching it go go on and like knock on the doors

of all these trackers and be like, I'm over here, I'm over here, I'm over here, I'm over here. It might be convenient too if you just need some sort of

simulated HTTP traffic for a while. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, yeah, for testing I suppose. Just be careful where you use it because it could be

kind of network intensive I suppose. Its default configuration wasn't crazy. It was like every two seconds and it had four or five sites but yeah, I'm sure you could. It was like every two seconds and had four or five sites. But yeah, I'm sure you could tune it to be prettier. Okay, four or five sites.

It's not going to be too bad. It's not going to be too bad. All right, well, tell me about, tell me about, did I, wait, or no, I found this one. Oh, I thought you found, what? Maybe we both found it. Maybe. Oh, maybe, oh, that's what it was,

is you linked it to me. And then I added it to my bookmarks and then I took credit for it. That's what happened. It's called NC Spot and it is an NCurse's Spotify client written in rust.

I heard all those things and it just screamed Chris to me. That had to go in the show, right? It's Spotify on the command line. What else do you need to know? If you've got to use Spotify, this is the way to do it. This is so great. And Anchoress is wonderful.

I don't know how you found this, Wes. I have not tried this one yet because I don't know that they have a release. I think you have to actually have a Rust toolchain installed, and I don't on this laptop. I just can't. But I'm sure before long that will change, or maybe you can just get Michael Dominick to compile it for you. I do actually think this would be perfect for the studio.

I already want it, yeah, for playing music. We just put my credentials in there and just let it connect to my Spotify account. Yeah, that's not bad. That's pretty cool to have it on the command line. And I'm a sucker for any kind of end curses you want. They're just simple, functional, and they look good. Yeah. Spotify on the command line.

I can't even. You know, we ought to get some pics from the audience. We haven't got, I don't think we've got any for ages. Help us out. Linuxunplugged.com slash contact. You can send us show feedback, but also pic suggestions, or you can tweet Wes or myself at Chris Elias for me, at Wes Payne for him.

I've got a pic. Yeah, oh, you do? I'd love to hear it. I do. Um, now don't everyone groan when you hear the name, just hear what it does after I tell you the name. Okay.

Uh, this is called electron player and it's among other things. It's a, uh, Linux desktop net Netflix client. Oh, can you drop a link to that? And chance we threw on the show it's

snapcraft.io forward slash electron player um i uh spoke to the author a little while ago and it also does youtube and float plane and a couple of other streaming services but it's got all of the drm modules baked in so you can unclutter your browser and dedicate some screen space to a desktop client video player. That's brilliant. That's great. Oh, I love it. I'm giving that one another ding. Good pick. Yeah, we'll throw a link

to that in the show notes right now. You know what? I'm going to take that, Electron player. That's a great use for Electron right there, right? Because you're using web streaming services anyways. That's a great use case. It kind of just makes sense. It does kind of just make sense. Go check out the Ubuntu podcast. Go get more Popey, Wimpy and Mark2 over at UbuntuPodcast.org.

You guys want to tease anything for an upcoming episode? Anything in the works? Next episode's out in a couple of days. We're apparently planning an extravaganza for Foss Talk Live, but I've not been completely looped in on this extravaganza. The other two I've got planned.

So I'm looking forward to finding out what that's all about. And, of course, both you gentlemen will be at LinuxFest Northwest in just a few days. We will. This time next week we'll be on a plane or something, I think, Popey and I. Yeah. I should be having stern words with him about GPUs as well. That's right.

Make sure he never gets that wrong again. Yeah, when you get here, you've got to stop by. Maybe we'll do dinner or something. Telegram me when you get in. I'll be waiting, watching your flights, tracking you. You cannot escape him. We'll turn tracking on for you, Chris. Very, very good.

All right, well, that brings us to the end of this week's episode of the Unplugged program. Links to everything we talked about are in your podcast player of choice or over at linuxunplugged.com slash 297. You can also get the RSS feeds for the show there, linuxunplugged.com slash subscribe. What else should we plug? The Friday wrap-up stream. Mention that again. Oh, yeah. Come join us live on Friday, 2 p.m. JB time.

That and this are like the two times I get to see people live, so come say hi. You can also hang out here over at jblive.tv. We do this on a Tuesday. Go to jupiterbroadcasting.com to get that converted to your local time. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll

see you right back here next Tuesday! So, Cheese, I'm curious, what do you think about Linus Tech Tips getting into Linux coverage? This is like the third or fourth Linux video they've done in a year. They're doing it more and more. Yeah. What do you think, Bacon? You know, it's kind of interesting. I have some friends that game on their desktops and use Windows primarily. And this past week, I guess they caught the video.

I didn't plug it to them or anything, but they caught the video and they were asking me, what's up with Linux? What is this? What's this all about? So I had to kind of give them the quick two-minute rundown. Look at you, ambassador to Linux. Yeah, right? Well, and I've been telling them for years, man,

that they need to look into it. But, you know, until it revolves around gaming, I guess it doesn't matter to them. I am both very excited to get more Linux coverage and get more users over, and both that and a little nervous that's like, I don't necessarily know if gaming is the real hard sell we want to make. Come over and emulate your Windows games. I mean, I know I'm being harsh there,

but I just feel like it's not the strongest foot forward. You want to come over and be a system administrator or developer or learn to develop educational stuff? Like, that's great. I think Google's saying that with Stadia, right? Yeah, it's just, as Proton adds compatibility with more Windows games,

it naturally opens it up to a larger audience. It's just, it's sort of selling Linux on something it's getting much, much, much, much better at, and has gotten much better at. But it's not selling it on its absolute strongest, strongest case. That's all. And I just, hmm, hmm. Right.

It's hard to be like a really enthusiast evangelist when you're like, but also just to clarify, this has been a weak spot that it's getting better at, so it might not be perfect and a lot of stuff doesn't work great. And when you play that network game that uses DRM, it's probably not going to work quite right. And those kinds of things, it's like, at the same time, I'm like, anything that gets people interested and has them checking it out and downloading an ISO

and giving it a go, maybe for every thousand, for 50 of them to 100 of them, it sticks. Even that would be good. Yeah, absolutely. And MSS, they're seeing a bunch of big downloads, so that's great, too. And, I mean, gaming has come a long way on Linux, so it's probably good to talk about it a little more.

And it's also interesting to hear people outside the quote-unquote community talk about the distributions, like the way they talk about Ubuntu and the way they talk about Manjaro and the way they talk about Pop!OS. I find that to be really interesting too it's sort of like getting to observe like a scientific experiment right as they

discover and learn and explore let's observe the humans as they try out Linux yeah they're gonna be so happy