LINUX Unplugged - 335: Practically Perfect Predictions

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Find out what's happening in 2020 before it happens. Our crew returns from the future with predictions so perfect you could bet some Dogecoin on it. Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar and Brent Gervais.

You all laugh at me when I talk about using Vivaldi, but I don't know if you saw this the other week. They took to their blog, and they're campaigning for Windows 7 users to switch to Linux. Wow. Come on. I support those.

This is a great browser. First of all, if you want something that uses the Blink rendering engine that's based on Chromium but rips out all the Google stuff... I should use Edge? No. No. No, Wes.

Hello, friends, and welcome into the Unplugged program. My, you have chosen quite wisely. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. I say that because you can listen to this episode and then go home. You're done for the rest of the year. We're going to tell you everything that's going to happen in 2020 right here. Can you believe I'm even saying that? And to help us get it right, of course, the judge returns.

Hello, Joe. Hello. I'm going to be even sterner than last time. Oh, good. Oh, good, because that turned out so well for me. And this time, adding their predictions into the pile is Alex, Cheese, and Brent. Welcome back, guys. Hello. I'm so nervous. I didn't know that was the homework.

Well, Brent, I'll let you just slide in. I'll come to you last so you can pontificate as we put our hearts and souls out there. How are you feeling, Wes? You got your predictions ready? You know, I've spent a lot of time preparing since the last episode, so I think I'm going to do better this year. All right, well, something I wanted to do from time to time is check in on the old Arch server that we set up.

So get yourself an SSH connection there, Wes, because for I think what feels like the 400th time since we've installed this Arch box, we have an update to the Linux kernel, to Linux headers, to Node.js. Alright, we're on 5.4.3 right now. Are you ready, Wes Payne? Go ahead and install the latest updates. I am SYU-ing

right now. Now, this of course is our commitment to the audience. We're going to run an Arch server in production, so you don't have to. Don't do what we're doing right now. But we're going to install these updates and reboot right here on air and see if it works. Installation in progress. Now here's the thing. You notice on that list, did you notice what's missing?

I don't see anything about ZFS on here. Exactly. No ZFS DKMS modules. I see it building right now though., really? Okay, good. Good. All right. That's a good, that is, that's good. I also see some Snapper pre-snapshots. Also what we want to see. I'm kind of loving this server. I really hope it comes up after this reboot because this will be a pretty good, this will

be the third big series of rounds of updates we've done. Is it just me or is Pac-Man just pretty? I mean, I realize it's not the most sophisticated package manager out there, but the output is so clean and just what you need to know. I love it. And you can get little helpers that add lots of different little colors and all kinds of stuff. It's been a lot of fun.

There is a hidden flag in etsypacman.conf to turn the little update bars into Pac-Man eating. We should do that on the server. You're right. It's appropriate. Yeah, so it's a little Pac-Man eating the dots should do that on the server. You're right. It's appropriate. Yeah, so it's a little Pac-Man eating the dots as it installs packages. It's adorable. Where are we at there, Wes? We are currently installing the new ZFS modules

as built by DKMS, so that's happening right now. So it is rebuilding the ZFS modules, even though there isn't a package update for ZFS. That's good. That means we have a good shot Of this thing Booting up correctly We still have A wire card to go I hope that

Goes as seamlessly Oh my gosh Especially since After this We're done And we're gonna be remote So we really need Access to the studio

We really need This to work Oh we're getting A new Node.js too So that's good Yeah Will that affect Net data

Hmm Depends a bit I think on how We have installed it. Okay. So are we going to wait in real time while the server reboots? Yeah. We're going to find out what happens.

Then that's all we got for the show, folks. Yeah, that's it. This is the show. That's installing Arch updates. We'll come back to it. I mean, we're not going to sit here while we wait, but we are going to do this in the show. You know what I mean? Is it still going over there?

Yep, still going. Okay. All right. So check in on that. In the meantime, while we wait for that to are going to do this in the show. You know what I mean? Is it still going over there? Yep, still going. Okay. Alright, so check in on that. In the meantime, while we wait for that to complete, which we will come back to, so brace yourselves, why don't we do ourselves a spot of housekeeping? I have great news. The internet's

one and only daily Linux news podcast is back. Linux Headlines is back. Three minutes or less, find out everything that's happening in the world of Linux and open source. Boom. I missed it when it was gone. It's really nice. It's a good team effort, good team working on that.

Linuxheadlines.show. Right? Yes. Is that right? Linuxheadlines.show. Okay, good. I couldn't. I wasn't sure. And then. You only do it Linuxheadlines.show. Okay, good. I couldn't. I wasn't sure.

And then... You only do it twice a week, so... You know, I know. I'm just one of the hosts. What would I know? And then also, something that Alex and I put together recently, really, it was all mostly Alex, is a cheap do-it-yourself LED light strip using two open-source projects video.

It was a self-hosted live hack. It's up on our YouTube channel right now, and we'll have a link in the show notes. It's really worth checking out because there is this really awesome firmware you can flash on a device. I should let you tease it a little bit, Alex. So we teased in SSH8 a new firmware called WLED, and that lets you take any ESP8266 or 32 device and flash a firmware on it that requires no coding, no Arduino code, flashing, that kind of stuff. It's really slick. If I'm the referee for this episode, I'm not going to allow you to call it SSH.

Call it self-hosted like it should be. Wow, wow. It's getting a little power hungry over there, Joe. Yeah. Check out the self-hosted podcast, though. I'm really enjoying some of the recent discoveries. And as it turns out, Alex is in the process of getting a new home, and that makes for fantastic content for our podcast. And like a maniac, I have launched a personal project called Project Off Grid, and we're talking about both these huge projects in the Self Hosted show. Self Hosted

dot show. As you listen to this, Alex should be in his new house. Oh my gosh. That's pretty exciting, buddy. Congratulations. Alright. There you go. That's the housekeeping. So, Mr. Wes Payne. I have no updates for you. We're still chugging away.

Is it the WireGuard modules? No, we're still doing ZFS. Yeah, that's a big build. Even with 24 cores, that's a big build. I found the name of the Pac-Man setting that has, it's called Candy. And if you go in Pac-Man Conf and look for Candy, you can enable Pac-Man eating pieces of candy. We're going to do it. We're going to put a link in the show notes.

LinuxUnplugged.com slash 335. You know, Wes, you've got to come up with a way to do these faster. I mean, if I'm going to make you do it live on the show. You're right, I need to expedite. You've got to buy that Mac Pro. Callback. Callback. All right, should we check in in a little bit. You've got to buy that Mac Pro. Callback, callback. All right, should we check in in a little bit?

You want to check in? All right. We could hammer out a few predictions. You keep an eye on that. Give me the old thumbs up. Don't hit a reboot, though, because I want the reboot to be captured live. Yeah, absolutely. All right, okay.

All right, well, I was trying to stall a little bit because after last week's episode, I took such a beating on my reviews that I have been completely humbled. And I changed my approach for this episode. For this episode, I'm going more pie in the sky. I hope to thrill a little bit with the idea and maybe I'll get lucky. I feel like I'm going to have the same chances as I did when I really thought about it. And then for my serious predictions, the ones where I actually am trying to get competitive with Joe, I'm going to put those in Linux Action News.

So many predictions. It's probably out by now. All right. So I'll start with one of mine, and then we'll go around the horn, and we'll each do one. I think we'll do three each. Okay? That sounds good. So pick one of your—I've got more than three.

Is the judge ready? I mean, we've got to make sure we hone these in, and then, of course, lock them in. If we have the judge's approval, I will begin— I will reveal one of my first predictions. The honorable judge. Yeah, let's hear it. All right. Thank you, judge. I appreciate that. Now, one thing to keep in mind, we will be stating our predictions such that we have to lock them in because we have to be accountable next year. So we'll probably talk through them and then I'll probably ask each one of you to state it clearly for the lock-in, which will be followed by the official lock-in sound, which means you can't change it after that. That's it. No going back.

So for my first prediction, I predict in 2020, after Ubuntu 2004 is out the door, One of the interim releases in 2020, which would be the one in October, will switch to Wayland. What do you think? Is that like default? So you install it, you boot up, you're in a Wayland session. Is that an admissible prediction, Judge?

Or is there any quabbles with that particular one? Well, you're saying specifically it's going to be an Ubuntu 2010. I think I am, by process of elimination. I could make that clear in the prediction. I think I just have to. There's no other interim release, so. Alright. I'll make it now. I'll lock it in.

I predict in 2020 that Canonical will switch the Ubuntu release over to Wayland in their 2010 release. Locked it in. I feel good. I've just realized that these Ubuntu releases

are going to be very confusing. We're going to be thinking they're talking about years gone by, 2010. It's too confusing. It's actually already confusing me because I have a small mind. No reboots yet, Wes? Nothing over there?

Do we have a... Oh, we're building ourselves a new In-N-Rama Fest, so that's a good start. So we're getting really close. Do you want to try to squeeze in a prediction before it... Yeah, okay. Well, so I had some reasonable luck last year about your personal preferences. I'm going to try that

again. I think that in 2020, by this time, by the end of 2020, you will be on Manjaro. You may have dabbled, you may have switched away, but by the end of the year,, you will be on Manjaro. You may have dabbled, you may have switched away, but by the end of the year, you'll be back on Manjaro. Okay, Judge, I feel like he's got to be specific on at least what machines, or at least a category of machines, but I'll leave it up to you.

ThinkPad, workstation upstairs both count in my mind. Now, you're saying I may go away, but at the end of the year, by the end of the year, I'll be on Manjaro. Yeah. I think we need to specify exactly what we mean by the end of the year. So by the time we record the predictions review episode. Yeah, that sounds good. All right. All right. Lock it in there, Wes. I predict that by the next predictions episode, you, my friend, will be on Manjaro. All right, it's locked in. That's really an interesting idea because I have been thoroughly enjoying my time on Manjaro. It's a bet for stability.

That may go wrong knowing you, but we'll get a chance to reflect on it next year. You get stability along with access to the AUR. And then all of your packages update with one tool. Plus, you're so hooked on containers, right? So you have the ability to get all the stuff where you want. Huh. And I got snaps. And I got flat packs. And sometimes you're just lazy.

Thanks, Wes. But what desktop environment, Wes? Bonus prediction. Oh, yeah. Random, random extra credit. What do you think? Plasma. Really?

I don't know. I'm watching the Gnome Shell Mudder blog and I'm looking at some of the improvements they're doing, and I'm thinking, that's speaking to me again. But of course, you give me another cycle. Yeah, there's a long time here. Yeah. They're going to remove some feature that you're using.

That's probably true. That's probably a safe prediction. These extra credit predictions are probably going to turn out right. How's that server update looking? Are you feeling good? We are ready to reboot. Okay. Let's do it, Wes.

Let's reboot our production server. Now, will this disconnect? Because it's also doing DNS. So if we lose you guys, we'll pick you back up. No, we should be fine. All right. Kick it off, Wes.

Let's do this thing. Well, let's get our ping going over here. Goodbye, sweet server. I hope you come back. Oh, no. See, you got to type your studio password. That's how that works. And reboot in server. I hope you come back. Oh, no. See, you got to type your studio password. That's how that works. And reboot in progress.

I got to say, that super micro we have in there is so solid. Buying from Unix Surplus was one of the best tips that Alan Jude ever gave me. It's really just been great for us. Yeah, it has. All right. The only problem is that it's a legit server, so it takes forever to reboot. My Raspberry Pis boot faster than that thing. You know, if we had an LTS distribution,

we probably wouldn't have to update kernel so much. We wouldn't have to reboot so long. Was that? Oh, huh. You know, there's this live patch service I hear about. Oh. Yeah. That's sounding real attractive right now. You know what Arch ought to do is come up with a live patch service.

Maybe it's in the AUR. So with VFIO, I actually end up having to rebuild my kernel relatively often, and I found quite a lot of success in switching to the Arch LTS kernels. Why didn't we do that? Yeah, that's a nice option. Why didn't we do the Arch LTS? When we did this whole minimal Arch install, how did that not cross our minds? There's ZFS LTS packages.

Well, we could investigate switching. Maybe that will be on a future episode of this show. Yeah, we should definitely try. We should definitely try. All right. Well, why don't we do another prediction? We'll come back and see how this is going. What do you say?

I'll rudely interrupt as soon as it's back. Yeah, just give me the signal because it does take a little bit. And I bet, Cheesy, you might be able to get one of your predictions in here. So why don't you start? Yeah, so I predict in 2020 that Linux becomes a viable option in the mobile space, whether that be on a tablet or more importantly on a phone. more importantly, on a phone. And to measure that, I say that UbiPorts will gain at least 1% market share in the mobile space operating system world. Whoa, that's pretty specific. Are you thinking the Pine phone here is going to play a factor? I'm thinking the Pine phone. I'm thinking the Librem. I'm thinking there are going to be other devices that may come out later in the year

that we're not aware of yet. Have you used UB ports lately? I have. I've used UB ports on a Nexus 5 that's practically falling apart. It's come a long way. We've had bings. We're back alive.

Alright, Cheesy, why don't you lock this in? What do you think, Judge? You got any clarifications you want before he locks it in? Are you sure you don't want to say 0.01% instead of 1%? You know, I thought about the 0.5 or the 0.5, but I'm just going to go bold. I say I'm doing it too. Let's go for the thrills, Cheesy. Lock it in.

Yeah, so I'm going to lock it in and say that Linux becomes a viable option in the mobile space. And to assert that, UbiPorts gains at least 1% market share in that mobile space. All right. I hope that one happens. That would be incredible. That would be really incredible. Now it's time to find out if all of our applications are dead and if our ZFS pool came back online and if WireGuard is viable at Westpain. We're back up and running.

That's it? That's it. Isn't there some sort of drama, like Arch failed to do something or rolling caused some sort of horrible disaster? Nope. We're just on the latest kernel. It's fine. Okay. That was very unsuspenseful. So far, that's how it's been.

Yet, I have still gotten really anxious about every major kernel file system WireGuard update. Every single time, I'm still getting anxious. I have, like, range anxiety. I think we do need to do a test run of our, you know, rollback strategy. That probably would make me feel better. Yeah. Because otherwise, I'm feeling pretty confident about it. Yeah.

And we have been staying very current. So that's good. And I think that's keeping it easy. Both of us are just always SSHing and updating. That's how you admin, folks. It's pretty funny that that Frankenstein's monster of a server reboots no problem, and yet my Ubuntu LTS-based NAS box, often it'll reboot, and my EXT4 volume is just read- only and i have to reboot again so maybe there is

something to this arch business i'll tell you what too this thing's no slouch it's it's got a dozen or so different containerized applications running on it maybe more because next club pulls in like it's all about the containers not the os now mr alex let's say you get yourself an opportunity for a prediction. Which one are you going to go with for your first prediction for 2020? I predict that there will be a consumer grade 20 terabyte hard drive available in 2020. Wow, that's pretty specific, Judge. That is specific. Are we talking an internal SATA one? Are we talking USB or what? Three and a half inch SATA consumer grade spinning rust spinning rust hard drive yep 20 terabytes you're going to tell us how much you think it's going to

be could be an extra bonus prediction uh okay so yes I'll do a bonus we'll do an addendum prediction um 14 terabytes just now at Best Buy went down to about $210. So I would say $250 maybe? I would have gone $380. I think I would have said $380. Well, it depends if they get in the easy store or not because if they do, then Best Buy will sell them for cheap. If they don't, then they'll be in that $300, $400 range. All right, we'll put together your primary prediction

in a nice soundbite and we'll lock it in. There will be a 3.5-inch hard drive available to consumers of at least 20 terabytes in capacity. I hope that's true. I really do hope that's true. Because that would be nice to fill the NAS up with those, you know what I'm saying? Okay, very good. Very good. Now, Brent, I'm going to come back to you in a little bit unless you're ready to go, but I was going to give you some time since you were

surprised by the work today. You didn't have time for homework. I've been inspired and I've been scribbling, so I think I got something. Okay. All right, Brent, then why don't you lay on us your first prediction for 2020? I predict that in Q3 2020, we will see the Librem 5 be released just sort of publicly. None of this falling apart business. Sort of their main phone available for anybody, Q3. The final production unit available for purchase or just shipping? I think there's a difference. They may finally get it out, but they might wait.

I wonder if they'll make a... See, my concern there is there might be a different version that ends up for general purchase than there was the one that was crowdfunded. Do you want to make a call there, or is there a way we could word it where you think it includes both? Well, that would be too easy, I mean. The final production grade version of the Librem would be shipping in Q3. Yeah, I mean, the problem with that when you go with the crowdfunders is, is it ever, you know, what is production ready? So I think the public one ready for purchase for public is easier to define, even though it wrecks my chances, most likely. It is a little more limited, but it's also bold. I think if you're going to be specific, you should say something along the lines of, you can buy it from their website and have it delivered to you in the U.S. within a week.

That time frame, though, might get you, because they can't really... Oh, Amazon's going to get them. All right, okay. A bonus question on that is, how much do you think that device will actually ship for when it's all said and done? They did just raise the price, I think, $100 or something like that, didn't they? Isn't it going to be $2,000? No, that's the U.S. version.

But the totally compromised that you can't trust version is, I just think, raised up to $700. Isn't that the implicit statement? If you have two versions, isn't the implicit statement that the other one isn't secure? I just think that's a weird statement. All right, but anyways, I think it's great that one of us

is going to make a prediction around this because it's anyone's game, and I think we'd all like to see it actually ship. So Brent, do you have a lockable version of that? I predict in Q3 2020, the Librem 5 phone will be available to purchase on their website and shippable for anyone in the public, not crowdfunders. For a bonus, it'll be within the $800 to $899 price range. All right, it's locked. It's locked, Brent. Good. I like that.

Why did you pick Q3? I'm interested in that. Because it's a long time from now, but not to, not completely at the end. It seems, yeah, it's pretty reasonable. Okay. I remember they've put out a lot of news

in Q3, not so much in Q4. Are you ready for one of my little sillier ones, but I would love to see it happen? My prediction for 2020 is that Plasma Shell on Chrome OS will become available somehow, either officially or hacked, including potentially the Plasma Shell release that's in a Docker container, which there is one already. I think KDE Neon releases in a container. What does it mean? I mean, so unofficially, how do we,

I mean, is this one person who has like a build up on GitHub? Yeah, but it's reproducible. It has to be like you and I could set it up. So you get a Chromebook, you install the Linux environment, you run this script, boom, you got PlasmaShell. Well, I've got a Chromebook, so you could say that Joe has to get Plasma running on his Chromebook. But then will I

deliberately fail to do it just to spite you? I wonder if the issue would be like you have to have a GPU KWIN supports. So that could be tricky. And if it's in a container,

you'd have to get a container that Chrome OS would run. And it doesn't necessarily mean the things would get passed through. So this has a lot of ifs, ands, buts, maybes. However, I just am in love with the idea of an alternative free desktop getting loaded

on top of Chrome OS for some reason. I was going to say GNOME Shell, but then thinking about it, I thought, no, it's probably more likely with the modularity of Plasma they could get different components working with different workarounds it's going to be more flexible easy to sort of hack it in

yeah so I think that's my prediction now do I need to tweak it a little bit? I don't know if I'm going to say like your machine specifically because that could be GPU limited but I could get all the way there except for that one issue

it's too limiting I think I think I think. I think essentially what has to have happened is there has to be a reproducible method to run the Plasma Shell on Chrome OS by this time next year, which is late December as we record. And if it's via a shell script on GitHub or a full-screen VM environment. I don't know, but it'll happen. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's reasonable. All right, I'll try to see.

How can I summarize that? I need to tighten that a little bit because it's kind of a little floaty, right? Yeah, it is. All right, I'll give a shot at it. Tell me what you think of this. I predict in 2020 that by some means it will be possible to run Plasma Shell on top of Chrome OS before the end of the year.

All right, I mean, it's a little tight, but I'd love to see it. You know, I just, I mean, if I could get a Chromebook for a couple hundred bucks. Yeah, I mean, I think if you get desperate enough by the end of the year, sometime in early December, you're going to buy a Chromebook and start hacking away on it. Well, funny enough is I thought for sure by this time last year I'd have a Chromebook, but it just never really quite came up. Joe ended up getting the Chromebook, so go figure. All right, Mr. Payne, are you ready to trot out another one of yours?

We're going to do three each, so this is your second pick. I've enjoyed playing around with Stadia with you, and unfortunately for this prediction, I think that by this time next year, Stadia will be on its way out. Sunset, maybe not totally offline, but plans announced that it's going to be discontinued. That fast, huh? Wow. I wondered if one of us would make a Stadia prediction.

That was on my list of possible predictions because it's so up in the air. And I think, Joe, you and I were spitballing possible predictions, and Sadie came up in that batch too. Yeah, I think that if by the end of this year they do announce that it is going to go away, then they're going to have to also announce that people are going to get refunds for their games. Otherwise, people are going to be up in arms. It seems clear to me, and I don't have any insider info, but the game publishers must be setting these prices because they're all over.

As much as $99, $60, $40. They're all over the place. So it would, I think, be up to the game manufacturers to do those refunds. I think Google's going to just have to swallow it. I think that's too soon, Wes. You know, Google like to have a long tail before they retire products. So unless it is a genuine disaster, I think you're premature. Although they are kind of transitioning to a kill fast and kill often culture where something doesn't work, they pull

the plug more and more. You know, knowing Google, I reckon they'll probably launch a competitor to Stadia. All right. I think you could lock that in, Wes. I think that's probably admissible. So go ahead. It doesn't make me happy to say, but I predict that by the end of 2020, Google will have announced the sunsetting of Stadia. The sunsetting, not necessarily the end, but like a timeline. Very good. Very good. Very good.

All right, Mr. Cheesy, you got two more to pick from. I know you got a few. So what's your number two prediction for 2020? So my number two prediction for 2020 is that most Linux desktop environments will have high DPI support out of the box. And a metric to measure that is that XFCE will have high DPI support in their next release out of the box. All right. Because you could argue Gnome Shell, Plasma, and Pantheon do. Right.

But you're right, there's still, what about things like LXQt? Because I know you can turn it on there, can't you, in LXQt? Here's the question, Cheesy. By default, do you mean that if I'm on a high DPI display, not only will it support high DPI, but it will actually be turned on?

Or it's just available? I will, but it will actually be turned on or is just available? I will say that it would actually be turned on by default. The desktop environment will recognize that you're using a high DPI monitor and will switch into high DPI mode. Just works. It's risky. That's risky, although it's got a lot of hope in the Linux desktop. I have heard of a couple of different desktop projects that are working on that,

and Pantheon already does it. Right. Proved it out. Hmm. Hmm. All right. What do you think, Judge? Well, I think that XFCE kind of has that already. It's not quite fully baked yet, but I think this is probably a dead cert. So lock it in if you want want but you're not going to

get much credibility for saying it the idea that xfce will actually release yeah in the next year see i think that's it i think that's where alex and i are it's like it's possible that it's on their roadmap they're getting close that doesn't mean it's going to be shipping in a year yeah but you've got gtk3 already and so with a point release you could have this potentially not an nabun 2 lts or whatever but in arch certainly i think it's still up in the air i think he'd definitely nail it with plasma gnome shell and a few of the others that like especially the ones based on cute but when you throw you throw XFCE in there, I don't know, man, because they've already got GTK3 support and they haven't done it yet.

I think that's anyone's game. I don't know, though. If you want them to make it more specific, you're the judge. Let me say that I believe that XFCE will have it enabled out of the box, and as we spoke to before, it will recognize your display and enable it if you do have a high DPI display. That's a big bar too. All right, Cheesy, put it up in a nice soundbite and lock it in.

All right, so I believe that Linux desktop environments, including XFCE, will have high DPI support out of the box and will enable a high DPI display by default if it's connected to your system. We have a brand new XPS 13 in-house for review right now. Wes and I have been testing it over the last few weeks. We'll have a review coming up soon, and it's got a high DPI display. It's so gorgeous. I always say that, but they really have just nailed it. Yeah, it's really nice.

It really is great. Okay, Mr. Ironic Badger, a couple of more predictions available. These are your last two. What's your next one? My next one is about WireGuard and specifically that because it's going to be included

in kernel 5.6, which will miss the Ubuntu LTS release in April, that release will find a way to ship with WireGuard baked into the kernel. I see there's a second part of this prediction too, a slightly bolder aspect to this prediction. The second part is that PFSense will ship WireGuard. Boy, that'd be great. That would be really great.

I can see it. I mean, we're going to probably see it most certainly, but not for sure, mainline towards the beginning of the year. So it'll be in the main kernel, probably within Q1. And then maybe Q2. And then it'll be, I would imagine,

getting baked into all kinds of things. So the specific prediction here, Alex, just so I've got it, is WireGuard will find its way into 2004 even if it misses the kernel window and PFSense will ship WireGuard. So you're saying two specific products will ship WireGuard in 2020.

Yes, and specifically, I think what I mean with 2004 ship WireGuard. So you're saying two specific products will ship WireGuard in 2020? Yes. And specifically, I think what I mean with 2004 is that it won't be a DKMS module. Right. But are you saying it'll be before the point release, before 2004.1? I'm hoping. I'm hoping here. You know, reading Jim's article about it on Ars Technica the other day, the developer for WireGuard is offered to do a bunch of work with Canonical to get it into the LTS release before the kernel ships.

All right. Why don't you sum it up and log it in? So I predict that Ubuntu LTS 2004 will ship with WireGuard, not as a DKMS module, and also as a second, like, half prediction that PFSense will ship with WireGuard. I hope that happens. Oh, I hope that happens. Brent, have you been inspired with a second prediction by this time?

Well, I thought of one that touches on my hopes that came up last year in January. We had a hopes episode, and so I'm going to, unfortunately, it didn't happen, so I'm going to throw it out there for this year. I predict that Dell, this year, will make available a main Linux distribution on either, as a standard option, on either their XPS or Precision line

on their website in the US. They go Pop! OS style. Yep, but they're not baking it themselves. So not a developer edition, you mean? Not a developer edition. I mean, you can go to Dell.com, click on the Precision button, and it's an option. Oh, I see.

I thought you meant they're going to make their own Linux distro. No, sorry. That's way too crazy. So they're going to make their own Linux distro. No, sorry. That's way too crazy. So they're going to open it up beyond just the developer focus in 2020 is what you're thinking. Linux will be kind of a configurable option when you purchase a laptop from Dell.com. You know, what's interesting, Brent, is I could riff on that a little bit because I had a rough prediction that didn't make it into the show. And that was in 2020, Linux would become the bring your own OS of choice to workspaces for developers and DevOps and system administrators and people working on cloud native. And I think much like the Mac revolution was really started by individual employees wanting to use their own iPhones or their own Macs. That's what really got Apple into the enterprise. I think that's the same trajectory over 2020 that will accelerate for Linux.

I just didn't have a refined. But what Brent's kind of on the other end of it, he's saying it's going to go into consumer space. It's perhaps bold. It is. It is. But I could see them also wanting to hedge their bets, potentially. Do you think you could sum it up into a lockable prediction? In 2020, Dell will make available on their US website, dell.com,

Linux as a configurable option on their standard either precision or XPS line of laptops. I love some of these. If even just a few of these kind of semi-hopeful predictions happen, that'd be great. Okay, so for my next prediction, this is my last one, and I have three additional ones written down,

and I need some help picking. So I'm going to throw out my three, and you guys tell me which one you think I should officially lock in, okay? Number one, I have noticed a plethora of projects cropping up attempting to solve synchronized network audio playback. And I've recently solved this problem myself in the RV. And holy snowballs if it isn't actually just really great. And I could definitely see synchronized network audio becoming a table stakes kind of any serious open source media playback solution will have some sort of baked in support for synchronized audio playback, whatever that might be. That was like one of them.

The other one was Home Assistant becomes the next free software is Kodi. How do you measure that? That's the trick, right? Devices become sold like home assistant boxes start getting sold like Kodi boxes. So like pre-configured little setups. Maybe with like Haas.io and different crazy add-ons pre-installed, some of which may or may not be all that legit. But none of them let you stream piracy, so they're not going to be popular.

Maybe. And then my third kind of pie in the sky, but could possibly totally happen, was a classic, Seuss gets sold again. That's always here. You know, so those are my three. I guess you're safest back there. I know, right? It is.

My three are synchronized network audio playback, home assistant goes the way of the Kodi box, or Soos gets sold. Which do you think has the, like, I need a win. I think Soos, also, it's the easiest one to sort of measure, right? I think the other two, we have some work ahead of us if you choose. Well, okay, what if the synchronized network audio was measured by it coming to Kodi somehow?

So Kodi media playback or Plex, some sort of... Home Assistant, how's it built in, you know? I did not know that, really. Of course it does, I love it. Seuss sold obviously would be the easiest, but I actually don't know if it's as likely. I really don't anymore. But of course I haven't understood why it's been sold the last couple of times.

So what do I know? Maybe it will. It kind of depends on what stage of the market hype Kubernetes is in. And I think it's in a kind of a cooling and consolidating stage now. Not that it's not being used, absolutely, but that it's just sort of maturing a little bit. And so putting Kubernetes is about as effective as putting blockchain in your name right now. I think. So I don't think SUSE's

got a strong play that makes it super valuable other than a really solid great customer base with some important people in the industry, which is very valuable. But I don't think

it's likely to sell yet. They probably want a nice return on that. I don't think they're there yet. I think they need to invest a little bit more for a little bit longer. So that leaves me with synchronized network audio or Home Assistant. We go on the way of the Cody box. I think the Home Assistant seems the most hopeful. That would really change the game for a lot of people. I don't know, you've kind of hoped this happened for a while. So that's where my vote lays. So rather than making it about Home Assistant, maybe it should be about this news lately around competing smart home standards. You know,

there's consolidation in the market around Zigbee and Z-Wave and MQTT and all these different things that Apple and Google and whatever are releasing. There's consolidation in the home automation market or something like that. Sure, sure. And Apple just announced that they're open sourcing part of the HomeKit development kit. Is that right? Yeah. So they're open sourcing aspects of HomeKit, which is mind-blowing,

because that's actually my favorite home automation standard so far, since it's all over the land. I was sad to see that. That was going to be my prediction. And then they went and did it in 2019. So the thing about Home Assistant is it solves a problem that has a lot of momentum already in the marketplace. So even with all of these open standards, which will probably make things, if at all

best case, better in the future, today people have bought a bunch of crazy different little devices on their Wi-Fi network, or they might have older Z-Wave devices. And Home Assistant is just honey badger. It brings it all together. You can have a proprietary TP-Link adapter. You can have a GE Z-Wave adapter. You can have a HomeKit device. It just doesn't care.

It brings it all together. It reads the smart electric meter on the side of my house. You know, it plugs in with literally everything. Sort of like how Kodi just will play any file. It'll play it over NFS, Samba. You can do a Plex add-in. It's that same kind of flexibility that makes it attractive to third-party installers to make it a product. I've honestly fantasized about creating a business around an appliance home assistant kit.

And I even made one for a family member as a gift just because it's so simple with the Raspberry Pi. And I put it in a little flirt case and it looks like a legitimate product. So I think I want to go with the Home Assistant one. I'm talking myself into it. And I think the way I'll make it specific is there's going to be

some box you can buy either officially from the Home Assistant project or a third party that loads like Haas.io or Home Assistant. And you can buy that and it's called like a

Home Assistant box or something. I don't know what they'll call it. All right, I'll start selling those boxes, or you can slip me a tenner later. What do you think, Judge? Is that admissible? Yeah, it's so-so. All right. In 2020, we will see the introduction of a Home Assistant box,

either by the project directly or a third-party bundler that creates a home assistant appliance. Nicely done. I think that should happen. Somebody should take that idea and run with it. No chance. Thanks for the optimism. All right, Wes.

I think people underestimate this project. It's so great. Okay, Wes, it's your last prediction for 2020. What do you got for us? Well, I'm trying to decide if I should, you know. Do I want to play it safe here and try to get something I think I might have a reasonable chance of? Get a solid win? Right, or do I just,

you know, keep on having fun? I know, it is a lot of fun to just kind of go for the pie in the sky. But I think I'd like to be consistent here, and I'm just going to take one from last year's. I think BcashFS actually makes it this year. Okay. Into the mainline tree, you know, Linus pulls it in. I don't know if it'll actually make it out in time to make it, you know, to a distro ship or a kernel ship by Ubuntu or so,

but it'll be in the main kernel tree. Yeah. Hmm. I'd love to see that. I think that would be fantastic for those of us that have MVNE drives. N-V-N-E. N-V-M-E. Am I doing it on purpose now? All right, what do you think, Judge? Is that admissible? Yeah, I'd say so. All right, Mr. West, lock it in then. I predict that in 2020, BcashFS makes it into the Linux kernel mainline.

I hope that's a slam dunk. Fingers crossed. Now, Cheesy, there's a couple left on your list. Which one do you want to pick as your final 2020 prediction, sir? Well, I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to pick two. One is I don't believe that Chris will learn how to pronounce N-V-M-E in 2020. But since I'm not going to win any of these, and since none of these are going to work out in my favor, I'm just going to go with the pie in the sky here. are going to work out in my favor.

I'm just going to go with the pie in the sky here. And I'm going to say that Amazon or Google will launch a consumer-based robot assistant akin to a butler or something a little more than a robot vacuum cleaner. But I think that one of the big players will launch a consumer-based robot assistant. I was thinking of that exact sound effect, Chris. Yep, it's Rosie the robot.

Absolutely. You know, that'd be semi-compelling. There was a third-party assistant robot. And ironically, there is a really sad documentary on YouTube about the life of this robot. It entered into families' homes, and then the cloud service that powered the robot was shut down in this weird, awkward way, in such that the robot slowly died and lost certain functionality. That's so sad.

So the documentary covers families that are experiencing the degradation of their little friendly robot. It's really something. But it has been done. It had a screen. It had eyes. It could follow you around. It could roll around like a little R2 unit. So I could see it cheesy, especially with all of the investment that they have to put

into something like this. Now, are you picturing something that's like Roomba style mobile or is it in one room? Is it walking? Is it more like an R2 robot style? Give me a mental image. So I don't think it will be bipedal. I don't think it will be walking around. I think it will have some sort of a motor system and wheels, but I do believe that it will be able to go- Like a tank. From room to room and assist you in different ways. Tank, set a timer more than just a specialized kind of robot but but something that can actually assist you in the home

have you seen the boston dynamics robot that can do parkour now i have i have and not like and not like one of these 70s robots where they actually just put a little person inside it just rolls in on its little tank treads while your family's sleeping and murders everyone and It's not like one of these 70s robots where they actually just put a little person inside of the robot. It just rolls in on its little tank treads while your family's sleeping and murders everyone in their sleep. No, I got you. Well, that's only if you tell it to. Guys, I've just put into the chat a little YouTube video to show you what is possible with high-end robotics these days. It's incredible.

Boston Dynamics. Yeah, it's pretty freaky. So as long as you don't install the murder skill, though, right, Cheese? That's right. Yeah, the murder container freaky. So as long as you don't install the murder skill, though, right, Cheese? That's right. Yeah, the murder container, I think is what it would be called. All right, so Judge, what do you need from this to make this a lockable prediction? I need specifics. I don't know.

There's a lot being said there. How can you boil that down to be something specific? There's a very, very, like, scary future that Cheese could possibly be predicting here. It's listening, and it follows you around so it can capture everything. And there's no way it runs open source. What do you think, Cheese? Can you nail it down a little bit? Give us a couple of specifics we can sink our teeth into.

Maybe ask your robot to nail it down. I don't feel like it's that crazy because they would get even more data into their systems if they're watching you all the time. So, could happen. I would say more specifically that Amazon or Google will launch a consumer-based robot that is mobile in your home to assist you with various tasks, including getting you a beer from the refrigerator. Okay, Alex, it's your last prediction for 2020.

What do you want to throw into the pile? I predict that Brent will never switch laptops. That's an easy one, Judge. I mean, how long ago did you buy that thing, Pat? Over a month? How have you not switched yet? Come on, but you got LinuxFest Northwest to think of. If nothing else, it'll happen at LinuxFest.

All right, let's do a real one. Okay. I predict that Plex will continue to alienate their core user base, and as a result, one of the open source replacements, such as MB, Jellyfin, or Olaris, will become a viable alternative by shipping apps on a major platform, such as Roku, Android TV, or Apple TV. Hmm.

Seems like Roku should be pretty doable for Jellyfin or MB. As well as Apple TV, you just got to get it in the iOS app store, which you'd probably want to get it on iPads and phones too. Well, I mean, Plex is already available for the Roku, so. This feels like two different predictions to me.

This feels like prediction number one is that Plex alienates core users by doing more things people don't like. And prediction number two is that MBb or jellyfin end up on a commercial device but the selection that plex have in their latest free movies thing like their their leading movie poster was the terminator i mean that what does that tell you it tells me that's a great movie i'm in retro. Retro goodness, yeah. Okay, one good movie. I actually did watch one.

I did watch one, and it wasn't that bad. It was some old cheesy sci-fi movie. I totally think this is possible because Plex is in an absolutely impossible position, and that is they are number one with a bullet in enabling streaming piracy from your own hard drives, but they make it really easy to not pay for any of these new streaming services. And as Disney+, and Apple, and NBC, and HBO, and of course, all of the ones that have been around forever start to really get serious about streaming,

they're going to look at the tools that enable people to steal. Just like the Cody boxes were targets, I kind of wonder if Plex as an organization that enable people to steal. Just like the Cody boxes were targets, I kind of wonder if Plex as an organization won't become a target. And what is their business model? At the moment it's selling Plex Pass, which is $5 a month, I think, or sometimes it's on sale for $90 lifetime.

And what is the core feature of Plex Pass? Offline sync. Offline sync, and there's also some streaming. Easier access to all your pirated stuff. Yeah, it just makes it easier, and it's also very easy to stream and play Plex content from other people's servers, so you don't even have to do the pirating yourself. You can just have a network of friends that have done the pirating

and use Plex to watch it. So I could see them, because of this, because of the optics of this, having to just launch more and more into sort of commercial, legitimate streaming services to make Plex from the outside look like a brand that's based around streaming internet content. Because if you look at this year, they've added Tidal, they've added podcasts, they've added the free movie streaming thing.

None of those things are things I want from a server that's playing media that's stored locally for me. Yeah, that's why I really do think this is Jellyfin's game to have here, other than its UI is atrocious, just like MB's. And that's where Olaris comes in for me. That thing is beautiful. Yes, but really starting all over again in a brand new product

when Plex is getting mature and feature rich and you've invested all of your time in organizing your library, that's a tough sell. It's hard, but then again, these guys making these open source alternatives know that Plex is a captive market to AMAT. And so they can

write tools to pull out the metadata from your Plex library so that watch status and that kind of thing just comes over no problem. Not everyone cares about that. I don't care about that at all. I move them back and forth all the time. If you're starting from a very small batch or

from scratch, it doesn't matter at all, I suppose. I think you're right, Alex, in that the real kind of tell would be if you could get this on a Roku or an Apple TV or an Android Google Play. So I think we've got to whittle this down to kind of a more specific prediction. And I fire you. I'd go for the Jellyfin or MB one, because I think that's really what you need to see. And then Plex will lay its own bet.

All right, so I predict that MB or Jellyfin or Olaris will become a viable alternative to Plex by shipping apps on one of the major platforms such as Roku, Android TV or Apple TV. That's solid. Nice. That's another one I'd really like to see because that's really what it would take for me. Import my library metadata, make a

great streaming application, have it support auto bitrate adjustment, and let me have at it. I think that'd be pretty good. Brent, you don't

happen to have one third last prediction for 2020, do you? You always steal one you like from the doc that hasn't been used. That's true.

That's true. Drew has a couple of good ones in there. He wasn't able to make it, but you could pick one of Drew's in there. Well, okay. I'm going to crowdsource this one then, since I'm delinquent and don't have the doc in front of me. Can we go through Drew's and decide collectively which one I should go for? All right. A major hardware vulnerability near the scale of Spectre is found in ARM.

Oh, good one. AMD continues to gain against Intel, surging to more than 50% market share for the year. Ooh. So that's just probably, he means probably the year sales. That seems possible. And finally, a major voice assistant, Alexa, Google, Cortana, or Bixby, that's his list, has an exploit seen, quote, in the wild. Ooh.

Define exploit. I think something, hmm. quote, in the wild? Ooh. Define exploit. I think something, hmm. Yeah, what does that? Probably eavesdropping, right? That would be the ultimate exploit is to enable third-party eavesdropping. Isn't that what they're built for? Right, because is this like an exploit on the device locally or is it like another exploit in the cloud service?

Are those the same? I think one and the same. I think I read this as if you could enable this to do malicious actions, that's an exploit. So if you're taking advantage of the cloud service or what would really be awful is if you get on the LAN, turn on the microphones and not turn on the lights, because a lot of these are wired in such that when the microphones are active, the lights turn on. So you'd have to be able to do it really in a way that really fooled the consumer. That's a tricky one to pull off, but doable, I imagine.

Anything's possible. A major hardware vulnerability, that was his first one, in ARM. Like that's like Spectre class in ARM. That seems possible. You got to imagine people are looking. They got to be looking. And then number two, AMD gets a 50% sales in that year, in this 2020. So brand out of that batch.

You got AMD getting great sales for the year. You got a major vulnerability in ARM, and then you got perhaps an exploit of some type, quote unquote, in the wild, he adds, for one of the major voice assistants. Yeah, it touches on like data breach stuff. I kind of like that topic. So I think I'm going to lean there. Do you want to try to sum that up and lock it in? I believe in 2020, we will see one of the voice assistant platforms, one of the Pepsi or Cola, get a malicious exploit that is active in the wild. Nice. I like that we drafted one of Drew's. That was perfect.

That was great. Well, there you have it. It's pretty much indisputable at great. Well, there you have it. It's pretty much indisputable at this point. We've laid it down. There's no going back. And now all we have to do is wait a year to find out how bad we did. Wow. I hope it's a long year.

I have a whole batch of audience submissions that I think we'll do in the post-show. So why don't we just take care of a couple items before we get out of here? How's that sound to you? Yeah, let's do it. You know, one thing, one thing that I would like to hear is if our judge for this glorious episode has a prediction for next year. That's the whole point of being the judge. I don't have to make any predictions. Well, well played, sir. Well played. He's going to do it in land for sure. Do you have any that you've saved, Joe? Any crazy ones that you don't actually care if I write it wrong?

All right, well, I'll give you an absolutely crazy one. Chrome OS will add ZFS support. Wow. Nice. That's exactly the kind I was thinking of. Very nice, sir. I love it. You know what?

Go ahead. I'm going to lock that in. And that kind of brings us to an end. We're just about done here. No more holiday episodes. We go back to our regularly scheduled shenanigans. How do you feel about that? You ready to be live again, Wes?

Oh, I'm excited. Get that virtual love going again. It's been a nice little break. Yeah, it has been nice. By now, we've been off for the longest time in the history of the show. We'll be coming back fresh or really hungover. I'm not sure which. Probably both.

So I've got some more predictions that we'll get to in the post show. So before we get to that, I'll just mention a little bit of business. Number one, you can find all of our live times at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. You can join us live at jblive.tv. We do stream it on Twitch, which is one of our lower latency streams, twitch.tv slash jupiterbroadcasting. And we have the JBLive FM stream up again. Audio only. Audio only. If you're on the go, it's up again. Audio only. Audio only.

If you're on the go, it's a great way to listen. But join us live. That Mumble Room's open. You can be part of the lug. You can get in that irc.geekshed.net pound Jupiter Broadcasting chat room. We'll see you back here next Tuesday. Get it out of here. Well, I can promise we've got a couple of listener predictions here for the post show.

This one came in from TinTin. TinTin predicts that Canonical will go public and Microsoft will buy a big chunk of the shares, one of the big initial investors. There was also Hayati. I think that's how you say it. Probably not. Microsoft will buy Canonical. How about this one? Deep Grewal says Microsoft will put

Windows as a official Linux distro by swapping out the base with Linux and listing on distrowatch.com. Wouldn't that be the day? Never going to happen. KDE and GNOME will produce a unified compatible desktop environment. That seems almost less likely than the Windows. Yeah, that's what Nash? Never going to happen. KDE and GNOME will produce a unified, compatible desktop environment. That seems almost less likely than the Windows. Yeah, that's what Nashim says.

I know. Byte Bitten says that Intel will introduce a legitimate ARM competitor. Don't know how they're going to get it, but they're going to get there. Also, Byte predicts that Photoshop for Linux will ship likely a stripped-down version of Photoshop. Could be an Electron application. Hey, the Adobe Suite is never coming to Linux, I can assure you. Well, I mean, I thought that too, but then they made it for the iPad. I'm thinking to myself, are there more desktop Linux users than iPad users?

Maybe. But Apple kind of caught them a fat check for that. Wasn't there a survey a while ago that went out asking this kind of stuff? Was that two years ago? It's never going to happen. Hey, but Byte says it's going to happen. We put it on there. Wasn't there a survey a while ago that went out asking this kind of stuff? Was that two years ago? It's never going to happen. Hey, but Byte says it's going to happen. We put it on there.

Nick at the Linux Experiment on Twitter says that he thinks that Microsoft will bring another Office application over to GNU slash Linux. And here's one that I put in LAN. He says that NVIDIA will open source their drivers and start contributing to NUVU directly. NUVU. Never going to happen, Joe.