LINUX Unplugged - 344: Our Week with Windows

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

We load up Windows 10 with WSL2, the new Terminal, and give it a go to see what it does better than Linux. Then we dive into the deep end and attend the first-ever WSLConf. Plus the big new feature coming to Ubuntu, why Chris is going to Denver, and more. Special Guests: Alan Pope, Brent Gervais, and Martin Wimpress.

I know you were looking into how to migrate off of Silverlight, Wes, and I've got great news for you because a team of experts came together and created OpenSilver. Finally, a modern, plug-in-free, open-source re-implementation of Silverlight just in time. That's great. I finally don't have to move on to learn any sort of new HTML5-based technology. technology.

Hello, friends. Welcome in to Linux Unplugged, episode 344. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Wes, this week, your weekly Linux talk show ended up running Windows 10. What? It's been quite the week. We figured to round out last week's episode, it'd only be fair to take a look at Windows 10 and load it up with the latest and greatest that

Microsoft has to offer, and how perfect it happened to coincide with us both attending the very first WSLConf, the Windows Subsystem for Linux conference. It's really showcasing how people can get work done on Windows in Linux.

Or, another way to put that is showcasing some of the work they'll be able to do soon. We'll tell you a little bit about that and what our experience has been like at a Linux event that has put together like a canonical Microsoft joint effort. It's been something. Oh, yeah. We've been attending this morning, and we'll tell you all about that. Of course, we've got community news and some app picks. But first, I've got to say

a hearty afternoon to Mr. Bacon. Hello, Cheesy. Hello there. How are you? Oh, you know, pretty good. Been up early. We got in at 6 a.m. to do the WSL Conf because it's, even though it was a Pacific Coast event at Microsoft, once it went virtual, they opened it up to the world. And so they made it East Coast time. And so it started really early for us. It's 6 a.m. this morning? Yeah. You boys have been podcasting since 6 a.m. Is it still going on? Yeah, it's still going on right now, but we hit the old pause button

to do this, and then it continues tomorrow, and we'll be attending. So definitely still time to catch it, sign up, go check it out live if you want. Yeah. And also a huge time-appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello. Hello. Yeah. And also a huge time-appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Howdy. Well, howdy to AceNomad, Brent, Byte, Carl, Computer Kid, Frank, Colonel, NeonPopie, Stefan,

Stewin, TechMav, Tyler, and Mr. Wimpy. Hello, you all. It's so good to see you. What a crowd. We've been,

have you been WSLing, Poppy or Wimpy? I've had it on the background while I've been doing my otherpy, hello you all. It's so good to see you. What a crowd. Have you been WSLing, Popey or Wimpy? I've had it on the background while I've been doing my other work, yes. Yes. I've actually been sitting here and paying quite a bit of attention to it and cutting some clips and whatnot, which is one of the nice things of it being virtual is it's actually pretty easy for us to get audio. A lot less work. Yeah, probably the easiest conference I've ever attended. Yeah, but we'll get to that in a moment.

First, I want to cover something that Jim Salter posted about over at Ars Technica, and that is the ZFS snapshot support that is landing in Ubuntu 20.04. This is something you and I have been speculating a lot about. Where is this going to go? And we've gotten some indications over the last few months about snapshots getting built into the package management system of Ubuntu. So that way when you install a package, before that package is actually installed and the change is executed, a snapshot is taken. Right. I mean, this is functionality we've been experimenting with.

Totally different world over with ButterFS and Snapper. It'd be nice to have it just built right in, though. And the user doesn't have to worry about it. It's invoked by the package manager. Exactly. So Jim dugoked by the package manager. So Jim dug into how this works exactly. He says, when you first get Ubuntu installed, there aren't any fresh snapshots on the system yet.

But if you do, say, apt-get install gimp, you'll see that ZSYS has taken a snapshot of every dataset present in the R pool. And there's a lot of datasets. Ooh, yeah. Thankfully, though, having a snapshot taken prior to installing any new packages means that something should go haywire, which, I mean, doesn't happen that often on Ubuntu these days, but it certainly can. You can easily revert the system back to its prior state before you had that package installed.

Yeah, that's nice. Carving up the system into so many different data sets means, in turn, that we can roll back only those parts of the system affected by the package manager. You don't have to snapshot your entire root partition because you've got these data sets parceled out, and that means you've got a lot more granularity and control. So it's a little more complicated by having more

data sets, but it's less complicated from a restoration standpoint. And the idea, in theory, is that ZSYS is going to be managing that for you, so unless something goes really wrong, you don't have to worry yourself about how many data sets there are. Yeah, that's kind of the whole thing that's nice about it, is it's essentially transparent to the user until they need it.

And DidRox tweeted back to Jim and said, by the way, you can actually revert the system state from grub too, which is a way for a user to actually just from a GUI revert back. Jim had some questions around, okay, I can see how you can take a snapshot and trigger that all to happen, but how do I actually go back and restore that state without having to go to the low level and roll back each data set individually? Didrox is sort of explaining, actually, we're planning to use grub for that.

Huh. Popey, I know you've been playing around with 2004. Have you played around with any of this stuff? Did you do the experimental ZFS support or did you go extended for? So I did go ZFS on my main ThinkPad, so the machine I'm on right now. And every so often I have to install something. Because it's clean, I've got to go through and install a few things. And I do that on demand as I need them. Every time I do that, I see the little line that says saved system state and I'm thinking, ooh, that's nice.

I haven't actually had to revert anything yet. And I think Didrox is right to point that out. The whole grub thing is supposed to be the user facing part so that whole, oh, my system is broken. What on earth do I do? Well, you just reboot and choose a different snapshot and then you're back in the game. It's brilliant. I love it.

Kind of makes sense. Instead of having to troubleshoot from a possibly broken system. Yeah. I think Jim's coming to it as someone who is deeply technical and very much a ZFS expert, whereas we're trying to pitch it towards people who don't care about what technology is under the covers. They just know that if they need to go back in time, they can do.

Right. They might not even know it's, or likely don't even know it's CFS. Right. It's just happening. That's fascinating and totally makes sense for a broader audience. Wimpy, I'm kind of curious if you have thoughts on where the future of this stuff could go? Well, for 2010, it's going to be all about encrypted ZFS. Oh. That's great.

And of course it would make sense to do that in the 10 release. That's awesome. I think I'm going to do it. So we put Windows 10. I was actually, so I was going to go to 2004. I'd already even made the USB drive for you. Yeah, yeah. Like I was going to do it after the show,

but then we were like, we should really round out our experiences learned from macOS with our experiences learned from Windows and give it a real fair shake. Try to remove as much bias as possible. Try to take our time setting it up right. Use the new Windows subsystem.

Actually try to get work done with it. Try the new terminal. Yeah, all that stuff. And I didn't end up on Ubuntu as a result of that. But once I take Windows off, and hint, yes, I will be taking Windows off, I'm going to go with 2004.

And I think I'm going to do it. I'm going to do the ZFS. It's neat to see some of this happening, too. I think we all speculated, all right, is this going to be an area that Ubuntu explores

down the road when ZFS wasn't announced, you know, as built right in way back when? It's finally here. I mean, it's nice to see. I agree.

I agree. And going to be fun to play around with. Something to look forward to. I'm trying to think of ways in which I can break my system so I can test this because it's pretty boring at the moment. Nothing's broken. So yeah, it's a bit of a challenge to see if I can exercise this thing. You just need to write a quick script that deletes random files and, you know, share

that with everyone. Yeah, there you go. I think it's a pretty great idea for a workstation. I mean, obviously it's good for, I mean, I think when we talk about this, we're often talking about servers and updates and stuff like that. But I think it's really nice for a peace of mind from a workstation. Just to be able to roll back and know like, okay, maybe I'll go deal with why that upgrade failed later.

Right now I have work to get done. Yes. Oh, yeah. You know, like, okay, maybe I'll go deal with why that upgrade failed later. Right now, I have work to get done. Yes. Oh, yeah, you know, like last night. I should never do this. Don't do like Chris does. Oh, boy. But I have a problem. I'm having a problem with my Home Assistant app on my phone.

It can't connect to my Home Assistant server. The web page works fine. And the system, like, has needed rebooted recently a couple of times, so I thought, you know, I'm just going to do a full update. It's been a little while since I've updated the Raspbian install on this box. And I'll get the latest Docker image and

reboot and see if everything just works. Maybe I don't need to try much further than that. You know, just basic troubleshooting stuff. Right. Update and see if I fix it. Until it's like bedtime and I'm getting up super early to get in here to do WSLConf. So I'm trying to go to bed early and it's still taking forever to write the packages because of the slow SD card. And I think to myself, if this breaks, I'm going to be up all night fixing this. Like it's a very important system. It's those things where like, I know I shouldn't do it, but normally it works. So I'm just going

to take the risk and do it. And then it did work. It did work. No, everything was fine. It rebooted. Everything was fine, but the thought I had was, oh man, I wish I had a snapshot right now. I wish I would have done, because like last week I was talking, or the week before I was talking about making an image backup of it, which I still haven't done. And I was really regretting it, but

everything went fine. But those snapshots will just give me a little bit more peace of mind. Alright, you're not allowed to watch anything new on Plex until you've got those backups. What about existing shows? Picard's on. Picard's on. I got to watch Picard. I know.

It's ridiculous. And to make matters worse, I'm heading off to go to Denver. So it's not like I'm going to have time to do it anytime soon. Wait. You're going to Denver? I'm going to Denver, Wes. So it's been kind of like one of those, should I go, should I not go?

But when I saw how successful the App Center for Everyone campaign was for the elementary OS guys, 190% funded. They raised $19,000. They're going for $10,000. And I started thinking about what it is here that's so appealing. And I mean, there's the

factor of elementary OS is a proven project that has delivered results for years with a steady progression in improvements. But they've also delivered on these sprints in the past. So there's that aspect of it that makes it pretty much a sure bet. But my time on the Mac that just wrapped up was so freaking like perfect because it showed me how necessary a healthy third party app ecosystem really is and how important developers actually paying to eat and feed their families actually plays a role in them staying committed and creating great software. And I think I was starting to buy into, well, we can have just everything that's a free ecosystem. It's a utopia and it's going to be fine. It'll just take a while.

And then I tried a few apps that are so far and above better than anything that I have used in years. I really had to have a think about it. And then this thing lands, and it's so outrageously well-funded. I realized this could be the spark that sets off a very important fire. Because this is a cross-distribution payment backend system done by a proven project. And if they're successful, there'll likely be others that crop up to compete with it. And we'll have multiples in the market, but somebody has to prove it out that it's worth it. And somebody has to make something that is easy for developers to digest. And these guys also have a track record of doing that. And I think I want to be there

for whatever happens. If it's a huge success and it kicks off a new revolution of desktop Linux software, I want to be there for that moment. If it's nothing more than just watching a well-organized project execute on something that their community finds important. I want to document that. And if it's an utter failure, I'd like to have insights as to why. So I am packing up lady jupes. I'm getting out of the COVID-19 hot zone and I'm heading to Denver to document this thing. I'm doing it on my own dime and I go into the rationale and all of that in the Chris Last cast at chrislast.com slash nine. I'm going to go there, I'm going to document it, I'm going to talk to the guys,

I'm going to wrap my head around what they're doing, because I think, especially after my recent time visiting the Mac, this is so important. And this is the first step. If they're successful, others will follow, and then we will have ourselves a real functioning system that it gives developers a path to modernization to create high-quality software

that can run on top of our free operating system. And I think there's something amazing about that, that this free operating system could become a viable economic platform for people to feed themselves. I want to see it. So I'm paying for it myself. It's not a work function. It's not really something that I think work probably is very interested in. It's not really in the core area of their interest, but I think it's important. Hey, I'm glad. I'm going to live vicariously through you. Because you're right. I mean, the Elementary Project and Dan and Cassidy as developers and creators

who obviously love the Linux platform and are trying to build things for it, they get those problems of, well, how do I get money? What framework do I target? How do I even build an app that's going to work with all the things that I need? I think they're a great team to try to take on this challenge. 100% funded on day four, 619 backers when I checked. That's pretty big. And this is the only way we're ever going to beat the Mac. If you want to become a popular platform for the average user, you got to get there. I think it you know, I think it's a cliche to blame marketing. To say that it's a lack of organized marketing that has prevented Linux

from getting adopted to the marketplace is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes the market move. It's wishful thinking that that's all that has to be solved. The reality is, is this has to be solved first. Well, and I think that there's a ton of great apps already available in the App Center that are, in my opinion, on a different level than a lot of the free apps that you would get from any other distribution. Right. Namely, like Quilter. I love, I don't know if you've tried that one or not. I think the developer is asking like nine bucks for it. I gave them 10.

But it's a Markdown editor. for it. I gave him 10, but it's a Markdown editor, super clean, super efficient Markdown editor with a preview toggle and a Markdown toggle. I actually picked it up from the JB Telegram. I was asking for an awesome Markdown editor and I think it was Shikin who had suggested it to me. So I've been using that one. Cassidy's got some pretty cool apps out there. Palette is a pretty cool one that he's made. But there's tons of apps that are already out there. They're excellent. And I think that going forward, what they're starting to create is an environment where I can purchase these apps and then I can reload my whatever laptop and download all the apps that I've already purchased previously. I don't mind giving to that developer again, but, you know, if that

app ends development, at least I've already got that purchase locked down. I try to make some examples of what I think are apps that just could not be replicated on the Linux side in that Chris Lastcast. So if you think I'm wrong, I first encourage you to check out episode nine because I think I make the case of applications that are the prime example of things that you could only have if there was a monetization path forward.

Well, and it's the stability too. It's monetization and knowing that this platform is going to be around. I can put effort here and I'll get some stuff back. Yeah. And it's not all going to change out from under me. I can build a long-term customer base. That's really important.

There's a culture shift that has to happen along with that, and that is that Linux users are willing to pay for software. But it's a chicken and the egg problem right now. And the advantage that the elementary OS guys have that I see over previous projects, and I'd like to get Popey's take on this here in a second, is they are well-liked throughout the community. They have good standing, and they're creating something that is going to be generally available.

It's not just distribution-specific here. And I think maybe that might be some of the fundamental difference here. Popi, what do you think? Yeah, they also have a solid developer story, which we've got some experience of making a paid app store in that we did it back in the 1204 days. And we didn't have a solid developer story. It was, you know, build a dev of anything and submit it to the store and we'll review it and maybe it'll go in, maybe it won't. And while there were paid apps in there, it was a mishmash of basically awful applications. There wasn't anything really

compelling and i think because the elementary guys have set their bar quite high for their expectations and they've set their documentation is solid and they've made opinionated choices about what you need to do in order to be accepted in the store i think they're going to end up with a bunch of beautiful functional applications that developers will get paid for. Whether they get paid enough and whether they get enough apps is the thing we can only tell by doing this for years and looking back on it. I agree. I think that's the yet to be seen. And if it will be enough to stop the natural momentum towards just publishing things as an Electron application,

which seems to be where we're building momentum to and is functional and will be generally accepted by those that just need to get work done, especially those in an enterprise environment. But it's not ideal in all cases. I think it's fine for some applications, but I don't think it's ideal for all applications. And that's why I really would like to see

a healthy native application ecosystem. Even if we could only point to a dozen to 30 semi-healthy applications that have been monetized. Like right now, when I think about applications that take direct money in the traditional sales transactional sense, I know I'm wrong on this, but the only commercial application I can think of

off the top of my head is Crossover, where you download it on Linux, you get a 30 implemented in the store. So you pay a monthly fee for Spotify or you pay a fee for Slack or Skype, but they all have their own ways of taking their funds out of you, which doesn't benefit the distro. Whereas what elementary are doing ensures that it's sustaining the distro as well as the developer. Great point. Yeah, services have really kind of brought a whole new wave of applications to Linux because when you're monetizing as a service, you want to bring on as many users as you can. So that shift in monetization strategy has actually benefited Linux users to some degree,

but I'm sick and tired of it. I'm so sick of subscriptions. I've been thinking, like, Hedena, when we get back from Denver, we're going to have a culling where we just sit down and look at all those subscriptions right now and cancel stuff. It's like you need some subscription service to manage all your subscription services. There is one. I saw it advertised on Twitter. There is one. We'll give that a try. Yeah, just, you know, just needs access to everything real quick to do that. So no bigs, right? No bigs. Anyways, I'm very excited about it. One of the things that we haven't really talked about, and it's kind of a concern to me,

is how the community itself is going to react. Obviously, I hope that this is kind of a change in which the community doesn't always have to have something that's free, that they can actually, you know, donate to something, donate to a project and help push these developers forward instead of, I guess, expecting it to always be free. I think there will be a negative reaction, though, from a portion of the community. And I think that's one of the reasons I want to go. So that way, when I'm having a conversation about it, I have that on the ground insight into this.

I'm having a conversation about it. I have that on the ground insight into this. Plus, I think it's just really good to just reestablish, you know, in, in person connections with this team and with all of the events getting canceled, like there won't be an opportunity likely this year to actually,

you know, go see Dan and Cassidy. Get it while you can. Are you really just going down there so that you can get your hoodie early? I know. Yeah, they better have them. Swag pickup.

Right. Yeah. I suppose, them. Swag pickup. Right. Yeah, I suppose, full disclaimer, I was a backer, but I think I said that earlier. So we'll see where it goes. I think it's still going to be good for me to do it, and I'll talk about it here on the show and let you guys know how it went. I'm excited for them, though. I think it's pretty tremendous that they got $19,000, and it didn't quite make their next stretch goal, but I think they'll still be able to put that money to really good use. And one of the things that I think also was a takeaway – oh, I want to mention this too.

I know I'm going on about this, but I think there's a lot to learn here. I think there's things for other distributions to pay attention here that are working for them. Think about this. for them. Think about this. How many distributions do we know that have a couple of full-time staff and have these successfully community-funded sprints where they get together as a team and then produce something? That sounds like Ubuntu. It sounds like it's Ubuntu. And Fedora has Flock and there's some, but they really have figured out a recipe here that I think other distributions could look at as a pathway to success. And part of it is because of their special sauce.

But I think there's things to learn here. And that's another reason I want to go is I think there's things for other distributions to learn here. And I want to learn what it is. And you just like Denver. That's true. That's true. Although when I'm going through Wyoming, it's supposed to get really cold. We're going to be up at like 8,000 feet and it's snowing right now. So I'm really going to be watching the weather very closely for that.

It's not a great time of the year. You wanted an adventure, right? All right, well, let's do a little housekeeping. You know what I just realized? This is the best turnout we have ever had after Daylight Savings. Fantastic. You all did a tremendous job. Usually there's like four of you in here after Daylight Savings.

No one's shown up grumpy and confused late in the show. Yeah. I was going to make a special reminder about Daylight Savings has happened now in the U.S. And so it'll take a little while before it changes everywhere else. And typically it messes up everybody's life schedule. But look at this rocking, like it's such a great showing that I didn't even cross my mind until we got to the housekeeping. So thank you, everybody. We do this Tuesdays, jblive.tv.

If all goes as planned, I'll be live streaming from Denver next week. I'll be remote at Denver in Lady Jupes. There is an RV park called the Flying Saucer that is right next to right by where they're having a sprint so just park up right there

do my shows get my work done head over to their place do interviews it's going to be great it's just so it's jblive.tv on a Tuesday

if you want to watch that train wreck in real time because that one's going to be tricky show up next week yeah definitely a live one yeah jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar

for your local time zone. So far, still chugging right along. Foss Talk Live, June 20th at the Harrison, which is near King's Cross in London. Some of your favorite Linux-y podcasters get together and have themselves a night. As far as I know, it's a go. Popey and Wimpy, I believe you're going to be there.

I don't know otherwise. Apparently it's going to be there. It may change. Who knows? Just need to figure out what the show is going to be. Small matter of that. But other than that, yeah. Plenty of time.

Pandemic pending. It should be going June 20th. Tickets are on sale now. Pay what you want for that. And I hear that the Ubuntu podcast is always one to catch live. Set expectations there, thanks. We've been bumped up the billing list this year. I hear if you can only catch one show in the year, that's the show.

This is the one. And we need everyone to go. I mean, we can't make it, unfortunately, so go in our stead. Go and tell us. Come back on the mumble room on podcast, and give us your full review. Also, a plug for Linux Headlines, linuxheadlines.show. Every single weekday, in three

minutes or less, you get the news. And it's great. It's a great way to stay up to date. And then last but not least, join us on our Telegram at telegram.com slash, no, no. It's probably something like that, but it's jupiterbroadcasting.com. Have you heard of that?

Oh, yeah. Slash telegram. Have you heard of that, Wes? Oh, yeah. You're familiar with that? Yeah. You know, headlines is no joke. I try to stay up on the news, but already twice this week, I've learned things from headlines.

I know. It's quite the system. Things I needed to know. All right. So our ThinkPads have Windows 10 installed on them. Now, you have a dual boot, right? Oh, yeah, of course I do. I went all in.

I did it 100%. And then what I was thinking I might do later is when I go 2004, just resize the main partition. It's a nice way to handle, too, see how Ubuntu's installer does with that. Yeah, exactly. And what do I care? I mean, it'll handle it great, of course. Well, and if it doesn't, could not care less. Hey, I installed that.

So I think we should start with WSLConf, because that's going on right now as we record. And then we should loop back, and I think talk about our Windows 10 experiences, because a lot of it's centered around WSL. Yeah. Which is, of course, as you guys probably know, the Windows subsystem for Linux.

And starting with version 2, which is rolling out on the Insider builds right now. So if you want to go get all up to date, you can grab an Insider ISO that is already at a build number high enough now that you can just install WSL2. The key thing, and there's a lot to it, but the key thing about WSL2 to take away is it's much faster, and it's a proper tiny Hyper-V VM. And to that end, the different distributions and projects that ship on WSL have been working to take advantage of some of these improvements. And it's in a really good position right now. And so Wes and I were extremely curious what it's like

to go attend a Linux event at the Redmond campus. However, because of the current corona concerns, it transitioned to a Linux event at the Redmond campus. However, because of the current corona concerns, it transitioned to a virtual event. Very quickly, which, I mean, that's difficult for any conference. Side note, when all of this is over, I would love to invite Hayden on the show and get the scoop from him on how the hell he pulled it off. Because the amount he must be working

and the whole team behind this event. Unbelievable. To convert an in-person conference at the Redmond campus into a virtual event with presentations and hundreds of attendees. Way more viewers now. I gotta get the story on that.

But I figured I wasn't even going to ask him right now because he's just trying to get through the event. It's still going on right now. And I was very impressed because they pulled it off and they ended up using Red Hat's BlueJeans for it, which is the first time we'd ever used BlueJeans. And so I get into the studio this morning, I bring it up here and I started recording some clips

so that way we could share a bit of it with you. And we start with an introduction and a bit of history of the subsystem. Okay, we are live. Welcome everyone to the first WSL Conf, now virtual. Welcome attendees, welcome speakers who are joining us, and welcome our friends from Microsoft. Thank you for your participation and your support for this event. And of course, this is Hayden Barnes from Canonical. Thank you attendees for coming out. Some of you from very

far-flung time zones, we appreciate it. Speakers who have been flexible with us at this time, adjusting from in-person to virtual to shifting time zones, we know it's been a hassle, and we appreciate what you've done for us to bring us everything you're going to show us. Thank you to Canonical for sponsoring this live stream, and to Microsoft for creating the WSL platform that we build on. We have come quite a ways on WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux. Those of you who may recall, Microsoft first announced Bash on Ubuntu on Windows in 2016. And then in 2017, it became Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL as we know it today, with a growing ecosystem of distros on the Microsoft Store.

Two years later, Microsoft announced WSL 2, and that was the version of WSL with a live Linux kernel. And we are looking forward to that shipping in April of 2020. Just coming up here soon might coincide if we make it with Ubuntu 2004. Now, of course, when you go from a physical event to a virtual event, you are still subject to the very things that many virtual events are subject to, like microphone issues. Craig, we're having issues with your audio, I think. And like so many presentation applications, they can be buggy. Plugins can crash. Hello. There we go. Let's try this again. There we go.

I had a plugin crash. Hello, there we go. Let's try this again. There we go. I had a plugin crash. Okay, so thank you so much, Hayden. So one of the things, and then he crashed again. But one of the things, once Craig got going, he's a program manager for WSL. And Wes and I had this conversation about another program manager who also presented.

These individuals at Microsoft really know these products. I thought when I heard the term program manager, I thought, oh, that's a fancy PMO. They probably don't know all the technical details. No, these individuals, they know the nitty-gritty details. That's just it. You can tell that they've worked on computers for a long time. They understand what the technology is. It's not just someone who's part of the business mechanics behind the scenes.

Yeah, and I'm not just trying to blow smoke here. I have had this impression when I work with Microsoft individuals a couple of times that these people, they know their job in a way that is not typical in corporate America, if I could make that statement. Somebody that's maybe not actually hands-on the code generally has a pretty high-level abstracted understanding of the product, whereas these individuals truly understand the product.

And so Craig begins to explain a bit of what he does in WSL. So my name is Craig Lowen. I am a program manager here at Microsoft working on the Windows subsystem for Linux. And I wanted to say welcome on the behalf of the Linux community here at Microsoft. We're going to be here. Did you catch that part?

He says welcome on behalf of the Linux community at Microsoft. During this presentation, something else that struck both of us was that some of the individuals of Microsoft are of an age where they maybe have not worked there before Microsoft was all in on both embracing and I would say monetizing open source. They've only been there since Microsoft existed in this state. They were not there in the bad old days. This is the only Microsoft they know. And there's something just that really strikes me about that because it sort of shows like a new era of people that have entered the company in the last five years

because this has been almost an eight, nine year transition now. And people that have joined in the last five day years have existed in this giant organization in its current state. In force and in the chat as well as listening to you, if you have any feedback, we are also at linuxatmicrosoft.com, so you can send us an email there and talk to us. And thank you so much for coming out. We're really excited for this event,

barring the technical instructions that we just had. And we're here to talk about the Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL. This is something that I work on directly. I handle a lot of the feedback and talk about WSL all the time. So for me personally, it's awesome to be here and to hear exactly what you're using WSL for, what your feedback is, and how we can improve it. And we're excited to be talking about all the new stuff coming out with WSL, with WSL 2 coming out soon and all of the details with that as well as all the exciting new features coming up with WSL. In fact, as different contributors added what they are changing,

like Docker, for example, maybe some of the most significant changes are coming to Docker. Docker on Windows is transitioning to using the kernel that's built in WSL2 instead of shipping their own kernel now. That's massive. It's a huge reduction in complexity. It's a big architecture change, yeah. It's a big reduction in complication is what I was going to say, but it's also, it means Docker is no longer responsible for shipping their own kernel.

They'll use the built-in subsystem stuff, which will have obvious performance advantages. As Craig wraps up, he added, And I kind of wanted to give a Microsoft showcase or highlight reel of the Linux activity going along inside of Microsoft besides just WSL. And he goes off a litany of projects that they're working on that are open source

and individuals that are using Linux inside Microsoft. And then he wraps up with a bit of a shout out to the Linux community. So that's kind of the Microsoft core ecosystem of people that are building directly on WSL. There's also tons of other stuff going on with the WSL community, beyond just what's going on here at Microsoft specifically. There's all the distros that are running on it. Thank you to all of our distros, like definitely Canonical, as well as OpenSUSE Alpine, Penguin, Debian, and more who allow all of your Linux binaries to run on the WSL platform

and Kali for sure. As well as WSL Utilities, Docker Desktop, which is building an experimental engine that uses WSL 2 into their Docker Desktop, which is building an experimental engine that uses WSL2 into their Docker Desktop for Windows client. These are all people who are directly innovating on WSL. Yeah, a lot of software that makes it so simple to develop software for Linux, but you never have to leave the Windows environment. Yeah, it's a little scary, spooky almost. I mean, we were watching a presentation about C++

where they've just turned Visual Studio into an integrated GDB-enabled debugger. It's like the best visual interface to GDB you could ever want. Oh, you want to use GCC and CMake? That's fine. That's no problem. You're empowered to target Linux from these very powerful Windows tools. And you see some of Microsoft's competencies, I think,

that we on the Linux side have kind of, maybe not ignored, but didn't interface with directly because that was for building Windows things and we weren't interested. And suddenly those are all just unleashed to target our platform. What triggered me and really struck me is when I realized that the example they were given where they were building an application, they were building a Linux-only application in Visual Studio. Wait, what?

And then the presenter, she was like, and then we could also, if you wanted to target Windows, you can. And it's like, wait a minute, wow. And I thought, well, this just makes it possible to do all your Linux development and you never have to run a Linux desktop, ho-hum. But I actually don't think these were ever people that were likely to switch to the Linux desktop to begin with.

There is, and we all know this to be true, an entire world of free software, open source, and Linux that exists that people make lots of money off of that doesn't involve the desktop world. You could be employed to write free software and never run desktop Linux. In fact, presenters who are contributors to multiple distributions like Gentoo and Kali Linux were running macOS and they were just running everything under VMs and Docker containers.

Yeah, I think it's a sort of pragmatism we need to be more comfortable with. You know, there's things we kind of want to reactionarily... There's things we want and there's the way things actually are. Right. Yeah, exactly. Here's reality. And I can also imagine it's useful to, I mean, just for people that, you know, you might have Linux at home, or you have a Chromebook that you use on your couch, but your work

machine's Windows, because that's what IT provides, and you just have more abilities now, regardless of the philosophical implications. Yeah, you do have. And for people that were never going to be able to switch to Linux, they can now write software for Linux. And I guess that means we worry that we lose a little bit of leverage, right? We have less of a way to say like, well, you got to switch to Linux because we've got all these tools. And now more and more of those are available on Windows.

But you're right. I don't think that was really that big of a lever to begin with. And it's kind of a gross way to do things. that big of a lever to begin with. And it's kind of a gross way to do things. You also saw different projects trying to tailor their particular project to the subsystem. So like, example, the Penguin folks

seem to be pivoting very hard to graphical environment, getting X applications and XFCE and Qt applications. With some impressive results. Yeah, that seemed to be a big focus for them. So that's, and then Kali Linux did a presentation about essentially doing your penetration testing from the subsystem, from your Windows machine. Which how many corporate guys and gals

that are forced to run Windows... Right, or you might even want to run Windows to run some Windows-specific tooling to target a Windows network. It might be easier to run the subsystem than a whole Windows VM. Obviously, this event is about the subsystem. But there is another star that is shining very bright in all these conversations. And it's something Wes and I used the hell out of in this last week. And that's the new Windows Terminal. You've probably heard about their new open-source Windows Terminal. It's got retro term effects, all of that. Well,

the program manager, Kyla Cinnamon, joined us to talk a little bit about that. So just a quick introduction. My name is Kyla Cinnamon, and I am the program manager on Windows Terminal. So I work with Terminal every day, working with the community, working with developers, and we just want to make the Terminal

the best command line experience on Windows. And boy, is it just in every single demo. And I've been using the crap out of it, so I want to talk about your experience with the Windows Terminal a little bit more. But it's so obvious how this plays into their overall strategy for developers now. What they're doing almost wouldn't be possible

without this new Windows Terminal. It's such a key strategic piece of software because one of the essential things it does is this tab system allows you to jump right into a system. So for example, on my machine, when I start the Windows terminal right now, it starts in an Ubuntu Abash environment, which is just fantastic. This is another area where is it suddenly easier to develop for multiple Linux environments from Windows than it is on Linux? I mean, you can set up cheroots and all those things, but

this is on Linux. I mean, you can set up cheroots and all those things, but this is a tab. It quite frankly is. I have three different Linux distributions installed and I have each one of them in a tab. I mean, isn't that something? So Hayden comes back on in a bit and talks a little more about Ubuntu on the subsystem in 2020.

On Ubuntu on WSL, we are moving towards Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa. That is the next major Ubuntu LTS long-term support release. And those are the Ubuntu releases we release for WSL. You've probably seen 16.04, 18.04. Well, 20.04 is coming next. That's in April of 2020. 18.04 under WSL 2 is what I was using for this week.

But Hayden shares a little bit of the roadmap. And you can get a feel from his statements here how seriously Canonical is taking the Windows subsystem for Linux as a target for Ubuntu. Ubuntu on WSL is now part of the official Ubuntu desktop roadmap. So this is very much part of the fabric of Ubuntu now. Ubuntu has been staffing up its WSL efforts, including the addition of Suhini Roy, the product manager, myself, and engineering staff. Since we had to bail a little early, I don't feel like I have a complete take on the event,

and it's going to continue tomorrow. I think overall, though, it had less technical issues than you would expect if you've ever been in a company meeting where people are sharing and they have mic issues. I mean, they changed presentation software like a day before, and it's working. It did work. I had to remind myself to participate in the chat because there was no hallway track. And I'm typically the guy that just watches and I never say anything. I never leave a comment. I never enter anything in the chat. And I had to remind myself, you got to say something because this is the hallway track.

That's all you're going to get. Which I guess I feel like it was a, the information was conveyed, but the spirit of the event was a little muted. Because it's different when you're presenting at your computer with a webcam and a headset than when you're up in front of a room full of people. Right, you don't have, you know, 40 eyes staring at you. There's a different energy for better or for worse, quite honestly. And there's just a different cadence. Like there, you know, maybe was more time in the schedule than necessary because everybody didn't need to move around and didn't have to swap out presenters and set up laptops and get projectors working.

Everybody just pretty much for the most part just clicked on and started talking, which was great. It felt very low key, but very informational. And it felt like it was definitely targeted at the right crowd. People were getting a lot of good stuff out of every presentation. And I got a good sense of just how rich this ecosystem is.

I think seeing the demonstration of Kubernetes and Ansible on WSL, it started like, oh, this is, once this gets on Windows,

and by the way, those demos were on Windows Server. Once this gets wider deployed on Windows Server, this could be a big deal. It's really becoming a legitimate target, not just for development.

Yeah. We'll see how tomorrow goes, but I feel like I've learned a bit. Now let's talk about having actually used it. Because having actually used it, I'm not switching away from Linux anytime soon. It felt like something I would use if I didn't have any other option.

I mean, here's the thing. To use it, you have to first use Windows. And you can't get around that. Let's start there. I didn't enjoy this as much as I was hoping I would. I thought maybe the time away coming back, I'd kind of like it a little bit more. First and foremost, the first thing that I always have to deal with on a Windows machine after I set it up is there's just way too many power options. Just way too much going on. The defaults are dumb it up is there's just way too many power options. Just way too much going on.

The defaults are dumb. And then there's different sleep modes. There's sleep. There's hybrid sleep. There's hibernate. There's suspend. There's like fake shutdown fast boot stuff. Yeah.

It's too much. And I just hate having to fiddle with it. And the control panel is a freaking dumpster fire. However, the search has gotten pretty good, so if you just search for stuff, you find most of it. That is a nice surprise, really, is I can just adopt

the Linux workflow I have of Windows key and whatever I want to run. I was impressed how front and center the Linux stuff was in the Microsoft store. There's a whole Linux section.

It's right there. Linux. All the Linux stuff. And I was like, whoa, they got like a big old logo, a banner for it. Like they're really embracing it.

They're not hiding it at all. Right. I mean, you heard in one of those clips, thanking the distros for showing up. They're clearly excited about this ecosystem. It's if you want to go with WSL2, it's still a little rocky.

It's clearly not fully released yet. Like I installed Ubuntu, but I didn't have WSL2. So then it didn't activate properly. So then I had to install WSL2, which didn't link me to the right information. I had to search for it myself. And then I had to rerun Ubuntu to get it all working. Had to be pretty dedicated to getting WSL2. That's basically it. I was like, okay, I'm really doing this. But once you have it up and installed, you got something kind of special. Like you combine that

with the Windows terminal and you tell it just to jump right into the Ubuntu system. And the terminal takes longer than I'd like to launch, but once it's launched, it's fine. You know, those integrations are impressive and just something you can do when you control the whole stack that we don't always see on Linux. You know, you're just like, oh, right, you designed both parts, and so they work really well together.

So I was thinking about why I didn't enjoy it as much. Because the Mac, I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. This is better than I expected, right? And what my experience so far, although it's been less time with Windows, has been this is exactly what I expected. And I had to think about it like I like to do these days. You know, I was on a walk with the old dog. Levi helps me work through these things better than you.

It's always good to think about what you're going to say before you say it. It is. I find that does fine. And also, Levi's a really good listener. You know, I get good feedback from him. Great questions. So Windows has really good big apps. You know, big enterprise apps, big commercial apps like the Adobe stuff.

It's got all of the standard work apps you'd need to participate in a workspace. It's got your outlooks. It's got really good big apps. And I think if that's your need, it's sort of the champ there. And that's just something that Linux can't compete at right now because there's just not that same range of apps. But the fun little third-party tweak at utilities that I was popping like pills on Mac OS don't really quite exist the same for Windows. There's some, but they're like more like fiddly little odd ones that look like Windows

apps from a hundred years ago, or they're laced with totally wicked wild UIs. And they don't feel so much like clever tools that take advantage of built-in hidden API features that are ingrained into the OS, they feel more like hardcore tweaks that are altering the way Windows works. Right. I mean, you're like, this is kind of a hack, isn't it? It works, but it's kind of a hack. And they're just, they're not

as fun. I know that seems silly, but so on the Mac, and like it is when I distro hop every single time, and I think that's one of the reasons I like it, it's like a fun exploration of, oh, I can do this. Oh, I can do this. Like every time I switch back to a desktop environment that I haven't used in years, when we recently tried Cinnamon, for example. Yeah.

I was like, oh, yeah, I can do this. Oh, this is great. That's not how I feel in Windows. In Windows, it feels like a damn task. Like, oh, I've got to do this. Oh, now I've got to like a damn task like oh I've got to do this oh now I've got to do this oh now I've got to do this and then once I get through all that crap

I have it and it's okay it's fine it's got multiple virtual desktops now which I think is pretty good it's got I could slam Windows into corners using the keyboard commands it's you know it's it's a funny enough it's pretty good at doing Windows

Windows are fast it pops them right up on the screen they've had that nice snapping support for a long time now the keyboard commands. It's, you know, it's a, funny enough, it's pretty good at doing Windows. Windows are fast. It pops them right up on the screen. They've had that nice snapping support for a long time now. Yeah. So once you get it,

once you get through the slog, well, all right, okay. Right. I mean, like, the updates are still unpleasant.

So much hasn't changed and if anything, the settings and, like, control panel stuff is worse now. Yeah, and the file system's underwhelming, which it does matter to me. It doesn't matter to most users, but it matters to me.

So I was trying to think of what I could learn. What I learned on the Mac experience was that Linux needs a healthy third-party app ecosystem if we want to avoid an Electron future. And I was trying to think, okay, well, what am I learning from the Windows experience? And what I'm learning from the Windows experience is we need to be a good tool for people. We need to provide a good utility that is predictable and reliable. But I think we're going to get there in our own way with things like snapshots and the different kind of like improvements that we're seeing to the desktop environments,

especially Gnome Shell and Plasma. Right. And some of the app picks we're about to talk about. We're going to get there. But we're getting there in sort of the Linux way, where Windows sort of started from that point.

They started as a business purpose OS. And when you look at it from that way, when you look at what the whole point of the NT desktop was, it was to be a

business workstation. And it makes a little more sense, especially when you consider the history of XP and how long it was around. Yeah. I don't know how we compete with that other than just trying to make our tools better, trying to make it a better and better workstation.

Right. And, you know, there are those users that see already Linux can get out of your way a little bit more than Windows can. And it might become more popular. So Bytebin, they have a pretty decent multiple desktop, virtual desktop implementation, don't they? Yeah, but I find myself not using it that much. I'm more a guy of multiple screens and use it that way.

I think when I just use Windows, I kind of don't think to use it. So I intentionally put some of my chat applications on different desktops. So that way I had to move over to see them. Get used to it.

And my terminal on a different one. So I think I could build the habit up just like I have on other desktop environments. And it's nice that it is built in. And it is a very quick, it's high performance. You know, thinking way back to Windows, I will say it is, you know, it feels very stable. There's no weird lag in Explorer anymore, you know, random problems. We both are using fresh installs, though. That's a caveat.

Okay, yeah, true. One week's not really enough to dirty the thing out. If we were doing this, if this was a year-long thing, which we could not survive, but if it was, there's no way it would be as performant as it is, right? Isn't that just sort of, isn't that still true with Windows? I guess we're going to have to find out. Well, I mean, you'd have to use it.

I don't want to. I don't know. Do we have any volunteers from the audience? There must be people out there. Can you confirm if Windows 10 still suffers from that? Because I think it's just inherent to how Windows is designed, but what do I know? I guess here's another way to reframe this whole conversation

that is also sort of reflective of my experience of WSL Conf so far. If you were always going to be on the Windows platform, it is a better experience than it's ever been. And I say that as a bit of a Windows critic. But when you look at the work they're doing, their browser is competitive again.

Their terminal is competitive again. The subsystem for Linux is looking like a really good piece of kit. Docker is really working on supporting the hell out of it. So essentially anything you can run in Docker, you can run on the subsystem. Canonical is focusing on it as a primary target for the Ubuntu platform. Kali Linux is targeting it as a primary target for them.

It's clear that there is an ecosystem already building around this thing and they haven't even gotten the second version out yet. So it's better than it's ever been for Windows users. And I think that's going to lead to more Linux software. I think we will actually see more contributors to open source and free software because people won't have to leave their comfort zone or their mandated operating system to contribute now.

I mean, it's got to be better if more people are aware of Linux, right? You know, you start working on these Windows tooling, Linux is suddenly an easy, available, marketed option for you, and you're naturally at some point at least going to wonder, oh, maybe I can use this in other areas of my life. Maybe you suddenly deploy a Raspberry Pi running Linux at home or explore the Linux desktop a little bit on that spare laptop that you have. Yeah, and you're already more familiar with the command line,

so you've got an idea of what some of the commands are. Colonel, you have real-time follow-up on the Windows lag issue? Yeah, so due to college classes, I'm required to use Windows for certain things. I keep it in a VM, but even so, every time I run updates, it just seems to get slower and slower. I've actually taken to having a gold image that I then, it's the fresh install, and I run the updates on that, clone it off and use it. And I snapshot that so that every time I go to run updates, it's coming from a fresh install. Otherwise it starts slowing down like crazy. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I have a pretty recent build because I'm on the fast track and I got the Insider ISO.

Right. So I haven't had to experience a lot of updates because it came pretty fresh. I have not this go around played with Chocolaty. But Chocolaty is, it is like brute is to the Mac. It is a package manager for Windows. And last time around, I did a Windows test like two, three years ago. Maybe it wasn't even that long ago. Maybe a year ago I tried out Chocolatey and I was really impressed by it.

Yeah, I installed it almost just out of habit. I kind of think to myself, okay, Windows, let's get a package manager on there. And is there something like a go-to package that you install after you load it, or is it just you want to have it because you know you might call upon it? It sort of helps complete the picture, you know? Like, I just expect that to be a part of an operating system, and I hate the sort of traditional, like, am I going to go around and, like, go grab all these things individually?

No, I can't do that. I'm not going to do that. And the default command prompt feels so just basic. I mean, they had to. That's why you needed this new terminal. Yeah, they really had to do this. I will say, using the new terminal, and I was trying to like, I did play around with the subsystem, obviously, but I was trying to use PowerShell 2 just because

we're using Windows, right? I had to use it a little bit just to get WSL2 working. It does. I mean, it is modern. Even though there is plenty, especially in parts of the UI that has that Windows legacy, the command line is starting to feel

first class. Yeah, I agree. And their new terminal adds some nice search features that are similar to how you would search for something in a web browser. It can search back through your whole command line log. And then they've added silly things like the cool retro term.

And then, of course, you can open up a terminal and have a tab that's in Ubuntu, a tab that's in Debian, and a tab that's in OpenSUSE, and a tab that's in Kali Linux, and a tab that's on the Windows command line, and a tab that's in PowerShell. It's pretty crazy. You could be running three or four Linux distros simultaneously. And you sit there and go, wow, that's something that's even hard to do on Linux itself.

And look at Microsoft shipping it. Didn't really kind of make me go, well, all right, I'm done with Linux then. I'm going to switch this. I'll do all, I love the Linux command line. I'll run it here and I'll use the Windows UI and have all my Steam games. I thought like there was a risk of that for me

because it'd be kind of nice to just have a really great desktop that has a... Everybody talks about the Mac, how it's a great desktop with a real Unix terminal underneath. Well, here's a desktop with a Linux terminal underneath. Now, it still doesn't do it for me. It's the whole package. There's still

too much Windows, and there is still weird Windows cruft lurking. You didn't have to go through the installation part, but I did. Yeah. I mean, that's just unpleasant. The weird magic, the strange quids everywhere. It's just such a foreign ecosystem.

And I'm really grateful I don't need it. I'm glad that it's becoming more useful. That just seems like a good thing. Yeah. But the dynamic is clear because we're Linux users coming to Windows and we're going, oh, this stuff's all different. But if the situation was reversed

and we were Windows users first coming to Linux, what they have now is so much more functional and it would be so much more appealing to me. I think for their customer base, for what they're targeting, they have freaking nailed it. And I'm not worried about it taking away Linux users because I think ultimately it will make people more familiar

with the Linux command line, and it will result in more people contributing to software. And I think ultimately it will lead to more Linux users because the Windows experience is still very much Windows, but this just shows you how much more power there is out there. And when you can tap into that, when you get involved in the communities, it's actually, it's just going to be one more thing that draws people in. Kind of actually think it's a great thing overall. And I had a note that I wrote down, like I do now on my old paper tab here,

and I thought to myself, the way to explain what Microsoft is doing here is, The way to explain what Microsoft is doing here is they say they love Linux and they love open source. But what it is is as a business, they've come up with a very clever way to monetize. It's a cliche thing, but if you want to understand Microsoft's motivation, it comes down to one classic American cliche. And that is they are selling the picks, axes, and shovels to the gold miners. That's what they're doing. That's what Azure is. That's what VS Code is.

That's what WSL is. They are tools for people that are in the gold rush, which is writing web applications and modern open source software. They are providing the tools. It's a brilliant strategy. It really is. And the whole thing, especially attending WSL Conf, is there wasn't a lot of discussion about licenses or philosophy.

It's a pragmatic attitude. And sort of the change at Microsoft was dropping that anti-Linux philosophy and just realizing if we support more platforms, that's more places to sell our languages and our tooling and enterprise support contracts. And that's what they've done, and it's been very successful. Yes, and so their motivation is to continue this. That's their motive. And that's why it's not some secret plan to take over the Linux desktop and lock down everything.

It's simply they want to sell as many shovels as they can while the gold rush is in full swing. And they want to capture that market. And by the way, have you tried Azure? You know, because there's some long-term revenue possibilities there and all this just plugs in real nice. I think it's a good strategy and I think it's pretty easy to understand. And I think really the conversation around what's Microsoft's motivation

and why are they doing this needs to come to an end. We just need to move past this and realize this is the new reality because there are individuals that work at Microsoft now that have only ever worked there since it's been this way. Think about how that will, over time, change a company culture. It's pretty wild.

For me, I mean, maybe I'm getting old, but I just, I remember visiting the Microsoft campus back in the late 80s, right after Windows 98 was released. Things were on fire, and Microsoft was on top of the world. And they are now in a totally different position, and they've really figured out how to make it work for them. I'm looking forward to see what WSL Day 2 has.

Oh, yeah, I think there's a lot more to come out of this conference and the Microsoft and Linux ecosystem. Yeah. And in the meantime, I'm just going to take advantage of all the great new software that'll run on Linux and be grateful for that. And when I do have to run Windows,

first thing I do is get the subsystem going and get the latest Ubuntu environment installed. And I'm sitting there doing a hap to update. And you know what? I can tell it's a little slower. It is a little bit slower, isn't it, Wes? Did you notice it's a little slower? Yeah, okay, a little bit.

Yeah, it is a little bit slower, but it's there. That's how you tell it's not real. I'm curious of the overall impact on the Windows host when you're running all of these WSL environments in the new terminal. Like you were talking about, you were running Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, and all these distributions.

How does that impact the system itself? Do you notice a significant slowdown? Do you notice some herky-jerky action going on there? So when they're just sitting there idle, and Kelly was the other one, when they're just sitting there idle, it's pretty much just whatever memory bash takes. It's very, very low impact. If you start doing a lot of things, like you start spinning up environments inside there, you start actually adding a lot

of software and things like that, it seems like the performance kind of starts to drop off a cliff a little bit. And that was definitely prevalent in the demonstrations we saw today too. Like when they were spinning up Kubernetes clusters inside WSL, things definitely slowed down. Right. Or if you launched all of those WSL environments and updated each one at the same time, I'm sure that would significantly impact the host.

But to that end, like when I launched the terminal and those tabs preload, it just almost happens immediately. It's not like you're sitting there waiting for them to spin up. And I know Microsoft's done a lot of work to sort of craft a well-integrated and super minimal sort of Hyper-V setup for WSL2. Yeah, yeah. And I think you're going to see a lot of projects that will shift support over for it and get serious about it.

I mean, Docker Desktop looked really good. And Penguin, for example, making it super easy with an incursus. So it starts, you get in the Penguin environment, there's an in-curses prompt to get X11 working, and you can get a full Qt development environment going with X11, XFCE. It's pretty nice. And it all just walks you right through it. You don't have to be an expert on getting that stuff going. I'm very impressed by what the different projects are doing to stay competitive.

I think I heard that Ubuntu will officially support their distro for WSL 2. Yeah, that was something Hayden touched on. It's on their roadmap now, and it's an official target. Speaking of which, I need to get Ubuntu installed on this laptop now. Maybe rather fast. Yeah, we've got some work for after the show. Okay, so we have two picks to cover before we go.

Number one is if you have been lured into using Google Photos, that handy, super useful, incredible tool called Google Photos. I mean, it is. It's so handy and easy. And if you're a pixel user, they just give you storage.

Your friends are on there so you can share albums really easily. It's the best search. Christmas tree and dog. And like it shows me all the pictures with Levi in front of the Christmas tree. I mean, it's just something. RV. I just searched for RV.

All the pictures of Lady Joop just come up. It's just like. So, but you know, it's Googs. And maybe you want to switch off, but you got to get all your photos out of there. Or maybe you just want to have your own. For when eventually they shut it down. You want to have your own stash? Yeah.

They're going to shut it down. Or you just want your own copy. Well, you can safely backup your Google Photos with our app pick this week. It's really simple. You can install it as a snap too because our buddy, Mr. Popey snapped it up. It's called

gphotosync. It's probably in your repo or it's a snap. It's gphotos-sync. Photos with an S-sync. Just snap install gphotos-sync, photos with an S, dash sync, just snap install gphotos-sync, and then you run that and it pulls down all your photos right off the old Google Photos. You know, he's got a great post written up

about this tool. My only issue is we didn't get any fun photos. Yeah. He did have one in the tweet about it. That's actually, he had a picture of his cat made me click it. Okay, he knows what's going on. He knows what's up for the tweet. And then our second app pick this week is, you know,

we talked a lot about Docker and WSL integration and how Windows is doing all this. Well, let's show them one better. Let's show them how Plasma does it. So this is a Plasmoid for managing your Docker containers. Now listen, I know not all of you use Docker, but this is really nice because it's a little menu right there with a graphical environment that shows you the status of your different containers. Now listen, I know not all of you use DACA, but this is really nice because it's a little menu right there with a graphical environment that shows you the status

of your different containers. I don't know where this accent's coming from, but it won't go away. And you can start and stop them right there. You can jump into an environment. You can take notes, edit them right there. What do you think of that, Wes? Isn't that nice? Yeah, I tried to get it installed before the show. On your Plasma? Uh-huh, but

it needed a couple build dependencies, and for whatever reason, the KDE store links weren't loading. Damn it, Wes. But hopefully by the time you see this, you can give it a try, because I was curious, and especially if you're only running a couple containers, you don't need any complicated management, that's perfect. I think it is. I think it's, I don't know, we'll put a link in the old show notes

if you could use one of them two tools, that's where you'll get them. Check it out. Linuxunplugged.com slash 344. It's right there. Links to everything we talked about today. Well, Wes, what do you say? You about ready to pack it up and go install Ubuntu on our machines and go back to the conference? More than ready.

All right. Well, we will be live, hopefully, if all goes as planned. I'll be from Denver. I'll sneak out. I'll be down there for like one day. So I'll probably spend the morning with the elementary OS guys and sneak out to do a lot. Maybe I could bring one of them with me back to the RV. Take a prisoner.

I should, right? That'd be fun. So check out that at jblive.tv, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar for the lifetime. But, of course, as we always do, we'll release the edited version with the audio all cleaned up, as our excellent editor, Mr. Joe Resington, does every time. Go to linuxunplugged.com slash subscribe to get the feed

and get the episode every single week. Go get more of Westpain at techsnap.systems Oh yeah! At Westpain. Check out my projects at chrislass.com Sites over there, as well as the Chris Lass cast. And I'm at chrislass.com sites over there as well as the Chris Lass cast and I'm at Chris Lass on the Twitter. Thanks so much for tuning in this week's episode of

the Unplugged program. Oh! Go check out the Ubuntu podcast. Rumor has it's coming back soon. Go get subscribed over there. And we'll see you next Tuesday! Thank you. The Unplugged Program. 344. All right, jbtitles.com. The bot is up and running, and we've got lots of good title suggestions, so let's go pick our title.

Go vote! Brent, how are you holding up there in the north? Is it snowy? Is it cold? Is it all right? There's lots of snow and it's always cold. But it's always all right. Is it at the point where it's getting pretty old? At least you're honest.

Can you enjoy it at all? You know, I will say this time of year, I really appreciate it because it's longer, sunny days. Oh, yes. I actually prefer this part of winter, you know, January. And so it's kind of depressive. But man, it's so sunny and there's still snow everywhere and it's just beautiful. So I actually decided before Linux Unplugged that I would go for a hike afterwards. So once we hang up here, I'm going for a hike.

Nice. Good for you. I also have felt like the longer evenings have made a huge difference. Like I was just saying, I was barbecuing last night for the first time this year, I think. And there's something about the sun being out. I sort of think to when it's going to be hot in the summer and it suddenly feels very refreshing now.

Yeah. Oh, God, it was so nice. It was 50 degrees last night when I was out there barbecuing and it was no wind. You know, like the kind of wind where a light you can, you can, your light doesn't even, you know, it just stands of wind where a light, you can, you can, you're lighter, not, it doesn't even, you know, it's just. Just stands straight up. And barbecuing and, and sun setting. It was so nice.

I was thinking to myself, why the hell am I driving to Denver? This is so nice right now. Wyoming's going to be just miserable. How many miles does that drive to Denver? Ah, I think 16. I'm on it, I'm on it. Thank you, thank you. Far. That's the answer. A'm on it. Thank you. Far.

That's the answer. A lot of gas. A lot of gas. Thankfully, the oil market is crashing right now, and my trip will be slightly cheaper as a result. And I'm paying for it out of pocket, too. So I'm very much watching the gas prices. From the studio, 1,334 miles.

There you go. Do you get snow chains? I do not. That's what I'm the number one concern with an underline I have is that we will get somewhere that requires chains. Now, last night we did a route sweep. We looked at all the webcams. We looked at all the route advisories and everything right now is does not require chains, but obviously that could change any day. And that is a huge thing that I'm concerned about. And because we'll have no option but to turn around and so uh i'm really hoping that doesn't happen but it just depends on the weather

you said 1334 yeah i think we should round that up to 1337 and i'm going yeah that's right and i'm going from uh like sea level to 8 000 feet and then I'll be going down to like 5,200 feet ultimately. Yeah, 11,000 is your delta in feet. That's crazy. Make sure to keep up on Wyoming 411. I-80 had a huge, oh my God, 100-car accident last week and was closed both ways. That's the exact kind of shit I don't want to have to deal with.

You still got the tracker going, the rover? No, the subscription expired, so I want to have the tracker for this trip. I know, and I went to go check it last night, and their whole webpage is broken and busted, so I couldn't even work. Just make sure you get stranded somewhere with Wi-Fi, okay?