LINUX Unplugged - 431: Command Line Love

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Is the true path to mastering Linux fully embracing the command line? Why it's time to change our mindset about the terminal. Special Guests: Martin Wimpress and Neal Gompa.

Hey, you know what we ought to do in the pre-show is document right here for eternity the fact that Wimpy broke our Mumble server this week. So we're using Jitsi. You're welcome. Do I even want to know what you were doing? Do I even want to know? I just pasted the bomb emoji into the comment and hit save and it blew up the Mumble server. It was beautiful. Ah! Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris.

My name is Wes. And my name is Brent. Hello, gentlemen. Anchor down, because it's a windy day in the Pacific Northwest, and I don't want either one of you to blow away, because we've got a lot going on in this episode. But first, I must say it's brought to you by CloudGuru, the leader in learning for the cloud, Linux, and other modern tech skills. Hundreds of courses and thousands of hands-on labs. Get certified, get hired, get learning at acloudguru.com. So coming up on the

show today, it's our episode where we defend the command line. In this particular week that we are recording, the command line is coming under attack, and we're going to hunker down and defend it. In fact, I may even attempt to argue that the command line could be new user friendly. And I think everyone who is discouraging learning or using the command line is actually burying their head in the sand and they're doing a disservice

to Linux adoption long term. I think we should be teaching people the command line, not avoiding it. That's key to future Linux user success. So we'll talk about that and why I feel that way so strongly. And then we'll round out the show with some great emails, some pics, and more.

So before we go any further, I'm going to bring in our virtual lug. Hello, Jitsi Room. Hello. It's got its pros and cons compared to Mumble. You know, I think Jitsi's a pretty cool tool. And I like seeing some of you. That's very nice.

But it doesn't quite have the same smoothness handling audio from everyone like Mumble does. Yeah, WebRTC just can't compete. Yeah, Mumble is really kind of good at that. And plus, we can have structured rooms with permissions and stuff. And, you know, it's not so with Jitsi, at least not yet. Yeah, but so far, Wimpy hasn't figured out how to break Jitsi, at least I don't think. Oh, no, I have. I'm just not going to do it. I don't want to torpedo the show twice in one evening. I appreciate that. So before we jump into the community news and whatnot today,

Wes, I think it's time for maybe the very last time we do an Arch update. Ah, dang it. I thought you'd forgotten. I think this is it because a lot of things are in motion. We have parts in route. We have more things happening this weekend. And I thought maybe for one last time we should officially check in because you never know. This could be the one that breaks.

This could be it. I mean, it could be. Yeah. And I'm going to miss these when they're gone. I know. It you never know. This could be the one that breaks. This could be it. I mean, it could be. Yeah. And I'm going to miss these when they're gone. I know. It's been fun. So tell me what we're looking at because it's been a minute. Ooh-wee.

127 packages. 652 megs download. Only 63 megs net upgrade. But there's some good packages to upgrade in here. ButterFS. Cockpit. Container D. We weren't using that.

Docker. Docker Compose. Yes, weerD. We weren't using that. Docker, Docker Compose. Yes, we're getting a new Linux LTS kernel. Update to Snapper, SystemD. And, of course, a new ZFS DKMS module. Oh, boy. And that's not even to mention the fact that there's a new SSH server, new Samba. This is a huge update.

So I guess hit the go button. Let's start the downloads. And we'll come back and see what happens. Wish me luck, everyone. All right. And then while you do that, I have the pleasure to announce something very special coming soon. It's the 2021 Tuxes. All right, so the nominations are open.

You can go vote for the best free software projects, Linux distros, text editors, the big impactor of the year, server distros, and a lot more. What really stood out in 2021? Head over right now to tuxes.party. We've only got a little bit of time, tuxes.party, or I'll have a link in the show notes, of course. It's not too many questions. I tried to refine it. Thanks to some help from the virtual lug before we started the show,

we kind of whittled the list down a little bit, and I think it's going to be pretty quick to answer. Not everything's on there, because if you think about it, we could rabbit hole this thing like a million different ways. So we tried to just kind of keep it concise and do something that we could build year on year data. So maybe after a few years of doing the tuxes, we'll have some trends and interesting things that come out of it. So go to tuxyStopParty and go vote. We are trying it out with NextCloud forums too. So Wes stood up a new NextCloud server for this. Because we honestly didn't want to make our precious NextCloud

servers, which we have two of, available to all of you. Well, now we have three. Now we have three. So go over there and vote and let us know what you think. And then towards the end of the year, just pretty much like maybe one of our last few episodes of the year, we'll announce the winners.

And the winners of last year received not only our accolades, but some of them that I could track down also received a little Tuxy trophy. I think this year we'll do something else pretty special for them too. So go try it out. And I guess this is our big test

to see how NextCloud does, performs. It's going to output all the data as a CSV file, right? So you're going to have to massage that a little bit. Yeah. You know, I mean, I totally tested it with one entry in there and that network, so it should scale to the size of the audience, right? I want to mention our friends at A Cloud Guru have a Linux web services course that might be right up your alley. Learn about the various software tools and utilities to configure web services on Linux. And yeah, that means the differences between Nginx and Apache, setting up Squid and reverse proxy, figuring out how to do HTTPS and SSL and load balancing, getting metrics out of Apache.

All of that stuff is in A Cloud Guru's course. So I'll have a link in the show notes or go over to a cloudguru.com and search for Linux web services. Again, that's a cloudguru.com and the course is Linux web services. We'll have a link in the show notes. But one of the big stories over the weekend is that System76 is reportedly developing their own Rust written desktop, is reportedly developing their own Rust-written desktop, not based on GNOME. It all really stems from a couple of comments from a System76 engineer on Reddit. I mean, this whole story just blew up from just a few comments about some challenges with what they were experiencing with, I think, maintaining Cosmic. And I didn't really know how legit this story was.

Because when you read through some of the articles, you can see some frustration with the engineer. Like one of the things that he wrote in the Reddit comments is, what are you expecting us to do? We have a desktop environment that has a collection of GNOME shell extensions, which break every GNOME shell release. a collection of GNOME Shell extensions, which break every GNOME Shell release. Either we move towards maintaining tens of thousands of lines of monkey patches, or we do it the right way.

We make the next step of fully fledged desktop environment equal to GNOME Shell. And that just took off like wildfire. And so I emailed Carl, the CEO of System76, And I said, you know, is there smoke to this? Is there fire to the smoke? I guess is the saying, you know, how legit is this? What do you guys, where are you at? Where's your heads at? What's going on here? And of course, I asked, why not plasma? Oh, good man. Yeah. I mean, right. I mean, isn't everybody thinking how amazing would it be if a well-resourced vendor came along and got their hands on Plasma and really gave a go at doing a deployment of Plasma. And we all want to see what would happen.

But that is not this day, my friends. Carl writes, we are designing and writing codes towards a cosmic desktop environment. Both are experimental and intended only to test the tech stack that we will eventually land on. to test the tech stack that we will eventually land on. I think it's likely this will result in a new desktop environment, but we have other questions to answer before that's official. The investment we're making in POP is large regardless. We're putting similar resources into the 2023 version of POP that we put into the factory. The desktop environment is only one part of the story.

There's more to come. And then in regards to when I asked about Plasma, he says, cute is C++, and it doesn't have Rust bindings. We considered KWIN and had the same problem. Our team's expertise is in Rust. Most of all, we're spending more time adapting upstream than adding value for our customers. Building and maintaining the desktop environment

will be considerable, but at least it will work towards our vision for the future of a desktop operating system. So what I took away from this email from Carl, and I'm curious if this is

what you take away, Wes, is this is a direction they're heading, but it's in the R&D phase right now. Yeah, I mean, we haven't seen a whole bunch of fanfare, as you pointed out.

I'm definitely maybe a bit skeptical on one hand, just because I think that's the default whenever you hear about a new desktop environment coming out, I think. But I have enjoyed watching what they've been trying with Cosmic. And yeah, I mean, it seems like the way they've done it so far, there were just going to be some limitations. And if they're really hitting up against those,

you got to do something else. I kind of want to go around the horn on this one. I'm looking right now because I have video with Jitsi and I'm seeing Neil's eyebrows go up. And of course, I've got questions for Wimpy. So I'll start with you, Neil, and then we'll go around the horn from there. What was your initial reaction? Because I think it's pretty easy to have a knee-jerk reaction of, well, we have too many desktop environments. Why do we need another one? But it seems to me that System76 could be in a unique position where they do have a very tight feedback loop with their customer base. They sell a physical product that is going to come loaded with whatever they end up creating. And if things don't work, they're going to hear about it from

those customers who are working through support. And in a way, they have kind of a tighter feedback loop than just about any free desktop environment has right now. Does that give them a special position to create something here? Absolutely. It certainly does. Like, fundamentally, free software is all about creating projects that solve your own problems. And their problems weren't getting solved with the way Cosmic was being done now

with the extensions layered on top of GNOME Shell. And I totally get where they're going with this from the perspective of what Carl Richel was saying about them creating their own desktop gives them better control to focus on their vision. I can totally see that viewpoint. It makes a ton of sense. However, it is already difficult to get people to do stuff on desktop Linux as a whole.

And the more splintering in actually advancement of desktop technologies to support various users, the more difficult it is for the Linux platform as a whole to succeed. Like already today, for example, accessibility and internationalization are really, really not in great shape in all the desktops except for GNOME. That's because 20 years ago, Sun Microsystems put a buttload of effort into making that happen with GNOME 2.0. And GNOME has reaped the benefits of that in the 20 years after. And with KDE Plasma, for example, because you asked that of Carl, I think the real reason that KDE Plasma doesn't really go further is because there isn't somebody doing that tight feedback loop

and has the correct incentives to stick at it and drive it forward. But I also think that the reason why they're doing this is because their experience with GNOME was painful enough to turn them away from doing this again. And so I understand what they're feeling from that perspective. With that in mind, where I kind of almost feel like there's some echoes of falling out that we saw with Canonical when they decided to launch Unity. And so, Wimpy, is there a parallel there that you see? And then the second question I have for you, on top of whatever else thoughts you might have, is when you look at System76's products as an option in a marketplace,

isn't it a pretty big risk to hit the reset button on a desktop environment right now when there's some really serious competition out there? So the first thing I'd say is there's a quote, I forget who said it, and it's people that care about software should make their own hardware. And it seems to me that System76 are kind of coming at this the other way and coming to the same landing place which is they care about their hardware so now they're caring about the software that they ship on their hardware and i think that that's that's a good place to be like you say they know their customers

they know what their customers are looking for they know what they want to give to their customers and if they're not finding that with the available options, then, as Neil says, yes, the whole point is that they've got this, you know, massive tool set of amazing software that they can use to put something together. Now, there's going to be some significant effort to actually create something of their own. But why not? Well, you know, we shouldn't resist people's desire to be creative and make something new. This conversation is the first time I've heard about this. I didn't see any of the discussion on Reddit. But yes, on the face of it, it does sound similar.

When Canonical had a vision for what they wanted to deliver to their users on the desktop, and that deviated from Gnome's vision's vision then canonical ended up going their own way and that's fine too you don't always have to you know use something existing it's a big undertaking though you know uh just maintaining a desktop environment is a significant effort actually creating something new and then building it that's uh that's a ton of work. Any significant software project you should look at as a 10-year endeavor. So, you know, if they're going to go this way, it will be an interesting journey and one that I will enjoy following. I don't think they will be alone in doing something like this. We've already seen, you know, Josh Strobel put out sort of, not a manifesto as such, but, you know, he wrote up that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And, you know, I know from my time at my past employer that, you know, things are in the works. That's all very insightful, Wimpy. And I'm struck by this also sort of opens up the Ghanon project to just push forward on their vision and collaborate with people who are on board and people who are not on board can focus on their own vision. It actually seems like long-term it's going to be better for a lot of projects. But Brent, there was something Carl said in that email that jumped out at me. And I wonder how you interpret. He said, we're going to invest in this. I think he said in 2023, like we invested in the factory. And, you know, you've been there, you've seen what that factory, what that means is staffing.

It means equipment. I mean, it means a lot of things, but where do you think that could go? Like what's your interpretation? Well, I think what we all saw when we got our really, really fascinating tour of their factory recently is that when they jump into something, they jump full steam ahead and they try to get some of the best talent to work on that. And so it's not a 50% effort from them that we see. It's sort of 100% plus plus, you know? So what I would really love to see maybe in, you know, he said 2023, is if they take that same idea of innovation that they applied to something like the launch keyboard. You know, we had some pretty fascinating discussions about what went into even the starting phases of implementing those ideas

into what is a keyboard that we sort of assume was optimized already. But they threw in some innovations that weren't necessarily obvious, but now seem really fascinating. And they even told us they had to scale it back a little bit to make it a bit more approachable. So I'm really curious, similar to Wimpy, to see if they jump full in as they tend to do, where will that take the desktop? And will they implement ideas that are maybe a little bit different than what we're seeing out there already? Right. You could say obsessive, and that would be an understatement. So, Wimpy, I know you have a wrap-up thought. Go ahead.

As we were saying, they are not alone in having feelings of disenfranchisement over the current situation. sort of disenfranchisement over, you know, the current situation. I wonder if System76, if they move beyond what sounds like sort of prototyping and experimentation, if they move beyond that into actually scoping something, whether they'd be up for approaching, you know, individuals and teams of people who probably feel the same as them, and trying to sort of, you know, bootstrap a project that they can sort of lead. Because I feel like there is a community in the making, you know, behind something else.

That's a really interesting question. Yeah. Can they form a new locus of community around this? Because that was my other thought, you know, we were talking about there can be this tight fit with their customer base and the people they support. And that just made me wonder, like,

well, how well does that map onto the general wider community and do we lose out on some of that? But if there is something of a new consensus forming around that, maybe it does have something broader in its reach.

Well, I know we have more thoughts, but I want to move forward. So save them for the post show because we have one more news story to cover. It's been nine years since the steam beta rolled out. Take that in everybody. I still can clearly remember putting together the research and trying to verify some of the rumors that Larble had printed on Foronix about the beta potentially coming to Linux one day. I still clearly remember the effort of trying to reach out to contacts and sort all that out.

I mean, this couldn't be true, right? How could it be true? It just seems impossible because that must be like 10 years ago now. seems impossible because that must be like 10 years ago now that's it's unbelievable and it in a way it feels like it's built more momentum in the last three to four years than it had for all nine of them i mean we're just on the precipice of the uh steam deck being released and we also just got updated from battle eye the the anti-cheap folks that looks like support is in good shape with the new Proton experimental version. And I don't know if it's actually shipped to people yet,

but the takeaway from it is truly that BattleEye... And what was the other one? Oh, Easy Anti-Cheat? Yeah, so both BattleEye and Easy Anti-Cheat have done their updates. You know what? I'm pretty impressed. And then last but not least, we don't need to spend a lot of time on this,

but I just think it's totally worth a mention because of the incredible effort that's been going into a brand new calendar application. I know it's not, you know, it's not like, it's not super, super exciting, but Calendar, spelled with a K, is out, and this is really looking great. I mean, Linux needs a solid native calendar application.

There's some out there for sure, but something that's really competitive and this honestly looks like one of them. And I mean, you guys, listen, I wouldn't be putting it in the show unless it actually looked really legit. And I've been following the development since the very beginning

and I've been waiting to give them their plug and they just put out, I think it's actually 0.1. I may have miss, uh, misnoted it, but either way, they have a release now and I want you to go check it out.

If you need a calendar on Linux, the node.com slash unplugged, go there to get $100 in 60 day credit on a new account. And you go there to support the show. Linode's how we host everything we've built since going independent. And I think it could be a secret weapon. See, I'm as part of these reads, I'm telling's how we host everything we've built since going independent. And I think it could be a secret weapon. See, I'm, as part of these reads, I'm telling you how we do stuff. You know, you get to peek behind the factory, but you can have Linode as your secret weapon. You can go out there and have 11 data centers, have 40 gigabit connections coming into

your servers, have brand new NVMe storage rolling out to your block storage, have object storage, it's S3 compatible that you can rely on. I mean, that's actually how I kind of think about Linode now is I think about it as my infrastructure. It's how I'm going to build everything going forward. I've seen the light. And the knock-on benefits, once we've gone all in, have been just fantastic team-wise.

Everybody knows how to use the Linode dashboard. We can build automations using their API. And as we start talking about approaching the JB infrastructure as if it were code and using things like Ansible or Terraform or probably not Kubernetes, but I know some of you out there

would want to use that. Well, of course, Linode works with all of that. So it can also be really part of a multi-cloud strategy as well. You get 11 data centers to choose from and every single service level is backed by the absolute best customer service in the business. And I just underscore that because for me, I'm running my business on Linode. I mean, it matters too when it's your personal blog or a gaming server or

something like that. But man, when it really matters, it's so great to know they've got your back. Every step of the way since 2003, Linode's asked themselves, how do we really use Linux to accomplish this task? They've really innovated in that area, starting with the early days of virtualization in Linux to networking and user interfaces and so many other things that really have,

we just kind of, we take as obvious now. And Linode was at the very early steps of that stuff because they're geeks. They're into this stuff. I can really kind of connect with that, that, and the fact that they're independently owned and independently funded. That's huge for me. So head over to linode.com slash unplugged, go get that $100 in 60 day credit and try this stuff out for yourself. See what we've been talking about. See why so many listeners of the show have been trying it out. I mean, think about that for a moment. You think Linode would still be here if people weren't still trying it out and sticking around?

Thousands of Linux Unplugged customers have signed up for Linode and are loving it. Go see what you think and get $100 and support the show. Linode.com slash unplugged. what you think and get $100 and support the show. Linode.com slash unplugged. Well, the video we've all been waiting for, dreading maybe, it's finally here. The latest on Linus' adventures with Linux.

Yeah, it's titled Linux Hates Me, so you can probably guess how it went. It's Linus and Luke over at Linus Tech Tips. We've been really resisting the urge to talk too much about this on the show because, you know, it doesn't it's not going to have much impact beyond day to day life right now. But today, as we record the day, the video dropped. And there's a theme that's in the video. And there's actually a theme that Linus and Luke touched on in their WAN show that I want to expand on here. You might be asking,

if you're not familiar with these guys, why are we talking about this? Well, they are in the top 10 channels on YouTube. So they have a very large audience and they are the number one tech channel on YouTube. And they are doing potentially up to a five-part Linux challenge in front of their ginormous YouTube audience. So it's a pretty big milestone for Linux

in terms of tech coverage and new potential audience. So there's a theme in there that I thought, though, I'd like to pull out. Because I think if you watch this first video, it bit Linus and it caused him to sort of rush through something and end up actually wrecking his Pop! OS install. And we've all heard it before. Once you go command line, you've gone bust.

I have a quick example from a recent WAN show. So my bottom line on this, my take, and you can hate me for it, is that the Linux community needs to stop relying on the command line as a crutch. For? Creating user experiences that are actually usable. They can't just say, well, the GUI doesn't need to do this because it can just be done in the command line.

Because until that attitude changes, I'm never going to be able to get my brother-in-law using Linux. And I think it's pretty understandable why people outside Linux would be sort of, I don't know, what's the right word? Anti-command line. They'd be sort of skeptical of using the command line. There's a

whole vocabulary on the command line that you have to know. You have to know how to even start to invoke things. There's really no reference point where to start. Just a scary blank black box, right? What do I even type into this thing? Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's not obvious, is it? Especially if you've never used a command line before. Yeah. And you, you know, you compare that to the sort of default discoverability of a lot of GUIs, right? Where you sort of just like, well, all right, there's a file menu or there's a whole bunch of buttons. Now you still may not know what they do exactly, but you can at least see that they're there as an option to use. And I think also there's an appeal to the idea that something can be automatically done by a wizard or you check a box. And there are benefits obvious to a GUI when you're looking at the settings.

It's great to see the check boxes and the drop-down menu with your different choices, and it gives you an idea of what is capable. So there's clear advantages to the GUI. But I think what we should do is try to build a culture that embraces learning the command line over time. I think what we need to work out is this. Once you go command line, you go broke. Once you're gone command line, you've lost. We have to get this mentality away because there's a couple of realities when dealing with Linux. And that is that GUI interfaces change frequently.

And the command line syntax changes much, much, much less often. Some command line syntax doesn't change for like 20, 30 years. And so when you go look up a guide online or a how-to article, the command syntax, even if this article was written in 2008, is probably still the same. But if that article was written in 2008, 2015, even 2018, 2019, and it's telling you how to do something in the GUI in Linux, there's a very good chance it's out of date. Or you're using a different GUI, because there's a lot of GUIs. Yeah, this thing doesn't even mention

Flutter. What am I supposed to do? Right. And maybe I'm on Plasma, but the guide was written for GNOME. The other thing about the command line, the command line syntax can be spoken. I can say do ls tack lh. It's a little bit harder to actually walk you through how to sort your file manager by date if somebody's completely new to it. Additionally, the command line can be copy and pasted. So if you're doing remote support for somebody, you're in a telegram session, a chat session, whatever, you could send them the command or they could look up a command. And the reality is the command line is actually one of the very best things about Linux. I mean, the command line is what sold a lot of Mac books back in the day when they switched over to Mac OS

10 command line is a lot more approachable when you're doing any kind of remote session. Command line is a lot more clear. It can be spoken. It can be read. It can be typed. It's consistent, right? There's no like trying to, you've all probably, I imagine most listeners of this show have had to try to walk somebody through doing something in a GUI when you can't see their screen. And then there's the realities of Linux to me. And I mean, this is an area I'd love some input on, but it doesn't seem like we're ever going to have a GUI tool for everything. It moves fast. Linux and all its tools and abilities come quick.

And GUI tools, especially ones that are good, move slow. So there will always be gaps. There are always going to be things that roll out that only work on the command line. We'll have a lot of good tools, but we can't have everything. So I feel like we ought to try to change the perception in some way about command lines. They are user-friendly. They are new user friendly specifically. They just, we have to make them less scary. Am I off the mark here? What, what are, give me, everybody give me your thoughts. Start with you, Brent. So tell me, We have to make them less scary. Am I off the mark here? Everybody give me your thoughts.

Start with you, Brent. So tell me, what are your thoughts on this? I have several, and they don't necessarily all agree. One of them is my experience a long time ago with macOS. I think many of us would agree that the Mac user interface is pretty friendly, and a lot of people who aren't power users using that pretty successfully. But the best thing about the Mac for me was the ability to go from using the visual tools to growing as a computer user and then being able to access the command line stuff to play even more and accomplish things that the visual interface

had never intended me to be doing. Now, that's one of the reasons I got off Mac OS for to Linux, but I think it's a nice transition into being more of an adventurous user. If you're interested in the inner workings of computers and stuff, I think the explicit nature of how the command line works is great for understanding the underpinnings of how your computer works. I think visually there's a lot of obfuscation of how all the stuff that's happening in the background where the command line sort of exposes that in a really nice way, at least for my brain worked really, really well as a teaching tool and still does every day. And I think a point I take away is even the commercial operating systems, you end up using the command line from time to time. It's not like this is only a Linux problem. If you want to edit some plist on a Mac or you want to do something on Windows that requires

reloading a service, the quickest way to do it is from the command line. So, Byte, I wanted to give you a chance to jump in. I have a friend that as soon as you tell him he needs to open a command line, he goes hyperventilating. He goes almost in shock by, oh no, the command line, I don't know what to do. Well, I think that's actually what happened to Linus in this video.

He's trying to install something, and he kind of goes into a fugue state and just rushes through the command line experience because he just wants it over as fast as possible. We've been there, right? I mean, I've definitely been there. And it's also that with the command line, you usually need to know what the syntax is,

what your options are, in what order. And with a graphical user interface, you get that all handed to you. You get only your available options. You have just the options in front of you at that moment in time. And the thing is that with the terminal user interfaces, those have evolved quite a bit

because if you're looking at some setups for terminals, those are usually quite graphical for being in a terminal. But yeah, being open source, it's also, again, there are many forms of that. And there isn't a baseline in there except the command line itself. Standard. Yeah. I wonder too, Wes, could that be an area where some distros could kind of push forward a little bit is take some of this stuff that makes the command line a little slicker, that auto figures out what you're trying to do a little bit. Is that part of maybe the solution? Yeah, I don't think any of this is to say that we shouldn't have intuitive GUI systems.

And at the same time that we can't improve the command line user experience, right? Like there's a lot that can be done better. You know, like we were just using NC do in the studio the other day, Chris, and that's a, you know, a thing that happens in a terminal, but it's a lot less scary than some of the other options. But it doesn't need maybe the same complicated maintenance that a whole graphical GUI does to do the same task. So I think there might be some sweet spots in between where we can have some better methods

to introduce people to the command line, because there's that part where, you know, you're almost having a conversation back and forth with a computer. And in some ways, it can be simpler. I agree that we could have as good a desktop experience on Linux as, you know, people that are super familiar

with Windows or macOS have on those platforms. But I don't think we should pursue that and forsake, you know, the command line in the process, because the command line is the super users killer macro feature. And it's also Linux's USP, we have that nobody else does. And that's why Linux runs the world right now, because it isn't bound to a graphical user interface. So I think we should keep it and we should make the terminal experience better and we should have more terminal utilities and tools to supercharge our experience there. But there's no reason why we can't have a slick UI on top as well. Yeah. I want to encourage people to look at the command line a little differently. And I've been

trying to think about legitimately how we could do it on this show. And I think talking about tools like NCDU or just talking about that kind of stuff a little more frequently might help a little bit. And so, Wimpy, if I could get your permission, I'd like to continue on the command line love segment from time to time here in the show to sortpy, if I could get your permission, I'd like to continue on the command line love segment from time to time here in the show to sort of inspired by the Ubuntu podcast, carried on with respect and love and feature a command line tool

from time to time here in the show to try to not push people, not be pushy, not do that kind of thing, but just walk people through cool stuff you can do on the command line and say it's out there if you want it. That well is very deep. You are never going to run out of love on the command line and say it's out there if you want it. Yeah, that well is very deep. You are never going to run out of, you know, love for the command line. No.

So, I mean, it's inspired, I admit, completely by the Ubuntu podcast. The command line love segment was great. And so from time to time, I should have thought of one for today, but I was just thinking about this. I guess we'll make it NCDU. But just something we could do to put a focus on great command line tools so you can give us some of your ideas

at linuxunplugged.com slash contact. And, you know, maybe tools that we already have that we could just use a little better. Things we've forgotten about

that still need a little bit of love. There's a ton of that stuff. Speaking of things we've forgotten about, we have a couple of new options up at jupitergarage.com. Some random swag bags are back, including old swag and some new swag from the road trip,

some new stickers, some old stickers, bonus road trip swag items at jupitergarage.com. The swag bag is back. We also, for $5 more, have a random swag bag with the Jupiter Journal. So it's the same great rando swag bag, but we also are including a limited edition JB notebook. It's got the rocket pressed in on it. It's really nice. It's a good size. And we'll include that in the swag bag with journal for $5 more.

Or you could just go grab the journal if you want. You pay a little bit for it. Well, not really. It's like $7 or $8. It's like seven or eight bucks. It's pretty much what the cost is. But you can pick your color if you just buy the journal by itself because there is a blue version and a gray version. It's nice. It's great for taking notes.

It lays flat. I love it a lot. And then just for fun, because it's the winner, I've also added a bearded tux bomber jacket. It's pretty nice. it's low key it didn't want it to shout that you're a geek but i wanted a nice subtle low key where you could still fly your geek flag without without making a big fuss about it and so the bearded tux bomber jacket is also up at jupitergarage.com so two new random swag bags there's not a ton but we have at least enough to do 10 right now, I think. And they'll go quick. And then we will ship out what we've got. We'll check both. I got two different swag caches that were sent to me since the road trip. So we ended up with a bunch more

so we can do some more swag bags. And the journal just, it turned out great. It's something I set up a while ago and I've been waiting for the right moment and it just seems like now's it. So if I were you, I'd spend the extra five bucks and get the one with the journal or go grab a journal directly. There's not a ton of any of this stuff because we're not a big warehouse.

So go to jupitergarage.com and go grab some of that stuff because I like all of it a lot, including that jacket. It might be all I'm wearing right now, as a matter of fact. And we'll do a little housekeeping. Go check out Linux Action News 214. We busted some thick Red Hat FUD this week.

And we chatted about a new Ubuntu desktop tool in the works, a brand new tool written in Flutter for the Ubuntu desktop. Covered that a little bit. And don't miss self-hosted 57. Alex is building a self-hosted Notion notes replacement. He's just getting that started. And it's awesome. And he also shares the story of how he accidentally deleted his server disk setup. Uh-oh. I got him to share that on the show. So that's selfhost setup. Uh-oh.

I got him to share that on the show. So that's selfhosted.show slash 57 if you'd like that. Thank you to our members at unpluggedcore.com. I'm going to go there after the show today and plug in the member discount. Same promo code as before so you can take a little money off our original swag items. The bags, they're just sold at cost, but the jacket and whatnot, the new original swag stuff,

members get a little bit off that merch, unpluggedcore.com. You also get two feeds to choose from, a full live stream edition. We run it through some compressor,

but that's about it. It's just everything uncut. Every mistake, everything. Or you can get a limited ad feed. Nice, tight production, just less ads. And you support the show.

UnpluggedCore.com. And we'd love your feedback at LinuxUnplugged.com slash contact. And LinuxUnplugged.com slash matrix for our matrix community. And last but not least, join the Leplug this Sunday and every Sunday at LinuxUnplugged.com slash mumble for details on that. It's at noon Pacific. JupyterBroadcasting.com slash calendar for that. We have some feedback this week, quite a bit of it. Axelly got tired of the Windows 10 update and gave Linux a try. He writes,

Here's a very long, enthusiastic ramble I wrote about Linux and I just really wanted to share. To start, I'm not completely new to using Linux, though, since I installed my first Linux on my Xbox, the classic first one. I've also tinkered with it every now and then with my other devices, but never really fully committed to it. That changed this summer. I was tired of Windows 10 updates, but most importantly, I read all around the internet that games are now working better and better on Linux. Now, I like gaming a lot, and I also like making games, and I felt like it's now or never. I gotta try this. I got myself a Kubuntu ISO and did the switch, although I left my Windows 10 installation on my other drive. Probably good thinking. Yet, here I am almost six months later,

and I haven't touched my Windows installation at all. I've rediscovered my enthusiasm for computers due to being able to actually look inside of everything to see how things work. I can fix my issues myself. As an example, myself and some others on GitHub figured out how to fix the GSP670 headset to make it work properly on Linux. And now that fix is in

the kernel. On Windows, I would have had to wait for the manufacturer to fix the issues, but on Linux we just rolled up our sleeves and began to figure things out. All the games I play, from EV Online to Quake Champions, work really well thanks to Steam, Proton, and that it's big for me. Sure, there are some issues sometimes, but then the community for the game will either butt heads together and figure things out or work with the developers if they're chill enough, and soon we're back to gaming. On the game dev side, I've felt way more productive too. Unity works really well on Linux. I started learning how to use NeoVim. I really, really love it. And my open source game project is much,

much easier to work on in Linux since C development is much easier to set up. He has a link to his game called XMO game. He continues, I also created a tool for Elder Scrolls online players, a native GTK app that downloads add-ons for the game since the semi official tools don't really work with Wine. It's not as feature rich, but it makes the add-ons for the game, since the semi-official tools don't really work with Wine. It's not as feature-rich, but it makes the add-on updating way easier. That's ESO Linux Add-on Manager. We'll link to that. And he continues, just being able to contribute to a community of computer enthusiasts like this, just doing things and helping each other. I hope I can contribute to the Linux community in the future too, and my future games will be made Linux first. All in all,

I'm super happy that I switched to Linux. I haven't had this much fun using my computer for a long time and I think it's pretty much all thanks to gaming being way more possible

on Linux now since it is a very big part of my life. Oh, that's just great. You know, I love that sentiment that you have this fun and excitement

and discovery as you're trying out Linux. I mean, you can have the bad sides too, right? And maybe this LTT video is some of the dark sides of that that you have this fun and excitement and discovery as you're trying out Linux. I mean, you can have the bad sides too, right? And maybe this LTT video is some of the dark sides of that when you have to do that and you haven't really opted into it. But the upsides are, yeah, if you're interested in this stuff, you know, in the Linux world, it's all exposed for you to learn about if you want. Yeah, just enjoy the process, right? Don't rush it.

Don't make it a challenge where you give yourself a timeline. Don't do that stuff. Well, and it sounds to me like it's building a community behind these games of a very different sort than just players, but also developers. And that's kind of really fascinating to me. So we got a lot of folks, like a handful, a bushel of that wrote in and said we should try out Silverblue or Kino Knight. So that is on our list of kind of to-do. We kind of have a list right now of items because we also have our server that we need to work on.

We have the router, firewall, VPN box that we still need to build. We got projects, baby. Yeah, we do. And it's just parts that are coming in slowly but surely. They are arriving right now. And so we may, you know, maybe after that, we may revisit Silverblue or Kino Knight. I could see that. People thought, you know, maybe after that we may, we may revisit Silver Blue or Keto Night. I could see that people thought, you know, give it a real go is what they was the general

sentiment is, you know, don't just, don't just look at it, but really give it a go and live with it for a bit. Uh, which I, I would be down for that when the time was right. I had a discussion with George Castro along those lines on Thursdayursday or friday last thursday last week where we were sort of saying you know this is where people need to be setting their minds to what the future of you know the linux desktop looks like and we were looking at um fedora silver blue and then using containers for all the messy stuff that we do you know software development playing games and all of that sort of thing. So yeah, Silverblue plus Toolbox is a fairly potent offering. I'm very

keen on NixOS for similar, you know, for similar reasons. Yeah. I am happy to hear you say that Wimpy, because that has been my observation as well. And, you know know we kind of watch this stuff and i feel like there has been a lot more chatter about silver blue with the fedora 35 release than in previous releases like it seems to me awareness is really picking up and i think a lot more people are starting to see it the way you see it wimpy and seeing it as this is probably the way things need to go for a really robust workstation. And so I get that, which means we probably should give it a really solid go. I also saw an Ubuntu effort along this line that's also using OSTree. I don't think it's using Ubuntu Core has launched. I don't know.

I don't think it's official, but I don't know if you saw that go by the internets. We also, as a last bit of feedback for this week, we got a little letter from listener Chris. He writes, Chris, I love Macedon, but it's not clear to me it's right for you. You've repeatedly said your goal is to reach your audience and Twitter in the large or Matrix up close and personal may be your best bets for that. I love that it's the Wild West. I was temporarily banned from Twitter for saying don't shoot yourself in the foot, as allegedly this promoted self-harm. Macedon reminds me of the 90s internet. Wild, woolly, and full of all kinds of people with an equally diverse range of beliefs and opinions and a whole bunch of outstanding technical content. But you have to be willing to invest the time and seek it out and engage with it. Is that for you? I'm not sure.

Thanks for all you do. He also says, P.S., maybe consider giving the KDE Spin a try in Fedora 35. Well, see our last episode for that. And thanks for listening. That's right. I think that's a pretty good take, listener Chris. I appreciate that. And I am finding my feet.

I was really bad about Matrix this last week. I kind of messed up somehow in Element. I don't know where I went wrong, but every room I join, my notifications are on by default. And so I look at my phone sometimes and I'll see, like, I have 30 unread notifications. And I just can't bring myself to open it. That doesn't make you want to check them. No. But I got that.

I caught up. I'm back current again. And I do like the conversations I see happening in that matrix room. Yeah, me too. There's some really good just organic community discussion about neat tech stuff and a lot of stuff I might miss otherwise. Yeah, it's interesting how it's sort of shaking out right now. otherwise. Yeah, it's interesting how it's sort of shaking out right now.

And I don't really know how many days are left for our IRC room because it seems like it pretty much goes to idle except for when we're live now. But the Matrix and Telegram are popping along

all day long. So we'll see. We'll see. I mean, I just don't know if I could, why shut it down when you could, well, we can't bridge it

because of GeekShed, I suppose. Right. Put a user in there who just links to the matrix a lot. Hey, they're over here. Hey. Every five minutes. Brentpot.

So we have a cut. Well, it's like a pick pack. It's a pick pack for you this week. A whole pack of picks? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. A really, really, really awesome but complicated backup tool for GNU slash Linux is Borg Backup. Yeah.

Talked about it on TechSnap forever ago. Yeah, you're familiar with it, Wes? I sure am. Borg Backup is a really solid, comprehensive, old-schoolish backup solution. And today I'm going to tell you about Vorta. And Vorta is a desktop client that simplifies Borg backup into a pretty easy interface. It gives you a lot of the same power, but walks you through setting some of it up. A great example of where a GUI can take something to make it discoverable, as a matter of fact. It helps you manage your encrypted backups. It does deduplication. It'll compress the backups. Of course, it's all open source, works even on macOS if you want to back up your Macintosh-based system. And it's available on Flathub if you want a quick install, or there's packages available for your distro of choice,

V-O-R-T-A. Do you recognize the name, Wes? Oh, I sure do. Look at them keeping the Star Trek references going. I mean, I was already pretty fond of this tool, but now I'm definitely giving it a go. Yeah, yeah. I encourage to go over to, if you can, go over to Flathub and search for Vorta and just look at the screenshots of it. It's really straightforward.

You know, it's a little more old school in terms of backup, but that might be what you're looking for for this kind of tool. Well, yeah, you know, and Borg's already something that like I felt comfortable using, but maybe unless I was totally managing the process, you know, it might not show up on some of my supported systems of family or friends or something, but this adds a new layer on top that might push that into the next category. Totally, totally. So go check it out. We'll have a link in the show notes. All of that,

everything we talked about today is linked at linuxunplugged.com slash 431 you can get all that good stuff right there you'll find links to like you know our profiles over there as well we just sort of put it all there it's makes it easy you know and then really all you have to remember is when we do it live because you can always go get everything we talked about from the website but but when do they do it live when do they do it uh 6 a.m well yeah where it must be 6 a.m somewhere right we here we'll do a little uh what is it called like neuro luing guest going gwisty neural lasagna uh i'm not sure what it's called neuro linguistics something like that i think's called neural lasagna. That sounds right. Where we will program your brain by associating it with something else. So when I say join us live Tuesdays, noon Pacific, and then you hear. same bad station. Now I'll do that over and over again for the next three years. Every time you hear that, you'll think, ah, Linux Unplugged, Tuesday, noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern, jblive.tv. I admit it's going to take a little while, but I'm committed to it. I'll eventually have everyone

saying it. My plan, my ultimate plan, it's been revealed. I think it's going to be a huge success. Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of the unplugged program. We'd love your feedback, your comments, your ideas, your picks, your command line tips for some command line. Love at Linux unplugged.com slash contact.

Go there, send them in and we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Hey! So I meant to fit this in the show, but I forgot. I do have a slight minor Starlink update. Number one, with a bullet that is bugging me about Starlink is I have to say it's really unfortunate that the ethernet cable does not detach from Dishy. It is permanently plugged into Dishy. It's baked in? Yeah. So like when I'm packing up, I have to like bring in a wet dish with a wet hundred foot ethernet cord and when i want to run it out my window and all it's just it's not ideal it'd be really nice to be able to you know plug it in like

an ethernet cable um the other thing is is you need to shut it down in the app otherwise you have to kind of forcibly collapse the leg down and it feels like you're breaking it uh but yeah that's that's neither here nor there you just got to remember to shut it down before you pack it up. Not many people will be moving it around. And then the last little thing that I have just sort of as a follow-up is you really do have to update your service address when you move. I tried to move within the 30-mile radius and see if it kept working, and I was just getting poor, poor, poor results.

Went and updated my service address, which I was a little nervous to do because I was worried it would say, sorry, no availability, but it updated just fine. And then within about 15, 20 minutes, my service has been great, even with some blockage from tree leaves. So it's been really good. And other than those little minor things, I'm still really enjoying the Starlinks. It's been, the Starlinks to the internet has been fantastic. All right. Did I stall long enough? Do we have an Arch update? Oh, we're ready to reboot. All right, let's do it. Rebooting.

It looks like JBot's having problems connecting to Geek Shed. All right, well, we'll see how long that takes. I'm getting in position to start the pinging. Ping's in progress. Oh, man, I should have mentioned Encoder Radio this week. I did a takedown of Craig Federici and this horrible talk that he gave at a web summit

about how dangerous and scary sideloading is. And the Mac press has not talked about it. I mean, they announced that it happened, but nobody's really talked about the contents of his speech. And it's so cringey. And it's clearly Apple's new position on sideloading or firm position. So I recommend you do actually listen.

So I'll be in Coder Radio tomorrow. Oh, oh, oh, are we back? Did we actually ever stop? That part I'm not sure about. Is it still shutting down? Is it just taking a long time to shut down? Because I don't think it actually stopped. Ah!

I tell you what, Wes, this is stressful. It is stressful. I was thinking maybe I could jump on the Jitsi and I could go out in the garage. You should do that anyway. Right. I mean, this took a little while when I rebooted before for ZFS. Hey, whoa, it's Chris. Chris got a rocking beard, too.

Yeah, his beard's looking great right now. I don't have any lights out here at the moment. Is it booted, Wes? No pings yet. Okay, I'm going to open the garage to get a little light. And I'll go to the console. We'll see. This actually works way better than how it normally does,

because you can see Chris's trepidation here. All right, I'm bringing it up. I've got my remote hands if I need them. Uh-oh, that doesn't seem good. What's it showing on screen? So what it says is that the monitors for new snapshots has failed. It's a snapper dependency service. But I think it is booting.

I think it's. Yeah, so it started up. Most likely what's happened is that it failed to create a snapshot. Yeah. All right, good. Good. No biggie. Just in time for this server to fall apart.

Yeah. Right, just time for the snapshot to quit working. Oh, I'm getting pings. So is it accepting connections yet? Yes, it is. It is. I'm in. I'm just about to do a Docker PS here and see what we got going for us.

I'm about to do a mount. Oh, yeah. I see a lot of ZFS stuff mounted. Yes. Sweet, Wes. You know what I think that is, then? Good job, Wes. All our containers up and going. Hello, little friends.