LINUX Unplugged - 441: Planet Incinerating Technology

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

We make some last-minute changes to our server setup and catch up on a bunch of thought-provoking feedback. Special Guests: Martin Wimpress and Neal Gompa.

You know, I just noticed you actually still have the Intel sticker on your laptop. Yeah, I suppose I do. So you're not like a sticker remover, but you also, you haven't added any more stickers in that general region. You do have the stickers on the lid, though. Yeah, I mean, it's been a while since I've collected new stickers, so I haven't thought about it for a bit. What about you, Brent? Are you a no-stickers guy, or are you a some-stickers? Do you take off the stickers the machine comes with? I traditionally did, because I didn't want to have all that.

It's the difference in texture that got me, but I'm looking at my laptop now, and I'm embarrassed to say there's actually a Windows Pro sticker on the bottom of it. Oh, no. Brent. I know. Do you still have that license key? Hey, you never know. I'm sure I do.

Maybe it'll come in handy one day. 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. You know, coming up on the show today, we thought, oh, boy, we've done a lot in the last few weeks. We have the tuxes. We rolled out a new server.

Oh, boy, we've done a lot in the last few weeks. We have the tuxes. We rolled out a new server. And we chatted about ways that might be a little bit outside the box to fund free software. And we realized we need to take a minute and catch up with everything you've been writing in. There's a ton of feedback that's coming in, some really good, deep thoughts. People have spent some time. They've really wrote some compelling arguments.

So we want to give it all a little bit of a fair share and take the counter perspective in, talk about those things. And then we're going to round out the show with some picks and some, I don't know, do we actually have any picks? I don't actually, I mean, I have some surprise picks. We could do a surprise pick. That could be kind of fun. Yeah, okay. We should think about how we can make that fun.

Also, we got later in the show, we got to do a check-in on our new server. There is a new kernel, and it's time to upgrade. Uh-oh. Yep, we're going to see how that CFS array holds up. So before we go any further, we've got to say time-appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, mumbling Jitsi room.

Hello. Hello, everybody. Thank you for being here on a Sunday on our new time. Since we've moved to Sundays, we've been co-running a Jitsi room, which we're still working out. But it's also a very interesting technical challenge from like a Jack audio routing side to have mumble, Jitsi recordings, and all of that on one box.

So it's been a fun experiment. You can hang out in there and get the video feed, which is pretty much just the chat room, which you could just pull up on your own. Maybe a random Brent shows up on screen from time to time. I bet so. Or you could just come here and maybe you'll see him in person. Although maybe not. This is Brent's last day. Oh, well, not tomorrow, I suppose, is the day I try to get out of here. Not last day in general. You're not dying. You're not leaving. Right, right, right. Well, we don't know how his travel is going to go. I mean, it was pretty rough getting here. So

I saw you guys whispering back and forth earlier. I don't know. Maybe you're conspiring to have me stay. I don't think the shackles arrived in time. We're just trying to find somebody that could just maybe take a test for you. We don't necessarily need to get you sick, but we just want the test to fail so they won't let you leave. That's all. Yeah.

So that's coming up. But it's been fun. You know, there's been some construction projects. The studio has a new door and a new floor around the pooper upstairs. That's been pretty great. We're really getting this place ready because on the 30th, we're having our meetup and hangout. We're going to do a live lup.

We're going to open up the door to the audience, have you come over. We'll show you the hard work that Brent did. Probably not, because it'll be covered up. But you can still come out, hang out. I can't guarantee Brent will be here, though. Well, you can never work that Brent did. Probably not. But, you know, because it'll be covered up. But, you know, you can still come out, hang out. I can't guarantee Brent will be here, though. Well, you can never guarantee that. No. But I think you're going to be here. I'll be here. Probably a pretty good guarantee of that. Yeah, definitely.

Probably, you know, Levi will be here. So that's really all you need. So meetup.com slash jupiterbroadcasting if you want to come. Ciao. Bring your favorite meal. If your meal isn't courage, you don't have to. We'd still love to have you. But, you know, it'd be nice if you brought something. I'm not your mother.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, unless she's into Linux. Yeah, actually, bring your mom. That'd be great. I'd love to meet her. So we have put out a couple of fun episodes. And I say that legitimately. You know, sometimes people say, oh, they're fun.

No, they actually were a lot of fun because Brent and I kept the microphones rolling during our road trip this summer to Denver. We captured some good stuff and we just published two episodes from that series. One is just kind of our memories of the road trip and what some of the harder moments were like and some of the hashtag RV life moments that Brent had to learn. I had to learn them the hard way and the quick way. Yeah. I think that was a pretty fun way to do it, if I remember. I got to say, we must not have wrecked you because Brent spent the night last night at Lady Joop's. And it's like coming home, right?

And the slide was working this time. Right. So it felt like 30% bigger. I don't know. That's great. Great stuff you guys are doing. Isn't that nice? Yeah.

Oh, it's just high fluting. I don't know. That's great. Great stuff you guys are doing. Isn't that nice? Oh, it's just high fluting. And then the second episode we just published, we actually recorded while we were on the road. And we've been waiting to release it. And it's all of the tech that we used.

So from internet connectivity and VPNs and how we use the audio equipment and how we did all of that. I mean, it's just the whole range. Plus the automation stuff I do in the RV. That's all in that Extra. Am I ever happy we recorded that when we did? Because you and I were trying to remember all the tech that we used, and it was a mountain of tech to make all of that happen. I was impressed, for sure. Yeah, I remember how you just kept doing all the shows pretty much right on schedule while you traversed across the West.

Yeah, and we even held up in Tucson, which was really putting it to the test. So that's all over at extras.show. And there's some more in the pipelines. You can always subscribe to that. It's not a very active feed, so we're not going to spam you with a ton of shows. We are trying to do a little bit more in there just because we like to hang out as a group.

And sometimes we like to do that online. So we thought maybe we'd try to capture that more often. And now that we're doing the show on Sundays, Tuesday has kind of opened up. And it's not something we're going to do long-term that we're doing the show on Sundays, Tuesday is kind of opened up. And it's not something we're going to do long term, but at least for the short term, we're kind of hanging out. And sometimes I'm releasing kind of the best bits from that in that feed as well. And, you know, it has to be of a certain bar. I'm not just going to throw anything in there unless, you know, unless I got nothing else.

I mean, let's be honest. I think the fun quotient is really how we're measuring it. Yeah, it was a good time. It was a good hang. So go get, you can grab that at extras.show slash subscribe. So let's, let's just kind of make a whole episode out of everything that people have been writing into the show about. And let's start in our feedback grab bag. Simon wrote in with some feedback about the tuxes.

I think that's probably a pretty good place to start. Yeah, Simon wrote, hey gang, really love the Tuxes show. Thanks so much for that. Just one comment. Not sure I agree with the two-year Hall of Fame bit where the winners are not involved next year. So for example, when Plasma wins next year, it'll be a bit of a hollow victory. I think Gnome should be able to fight to keep their crown. I think Simon touched on something that I was really conflicted about. Right. GNOME is a great example

because GNOME is the default for so many popular distributions that it just has this massive advantage in the marketplace. We don't want it to always win, right? That's boring. Right, exactly. So like the idea is

if it wins a couple of times in a row, you can assume this is a people's favorite. And now out of what's left, what do the people like? That was sort of the philosophy. But I'm not sure it's the right solution to the problem. And I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on it. Yeah, it does seem like the implementation has a few issues. And we have time to figure it out. I mean, maybe there needs to be a higher bar. Do we just not do it? Do we need better categories?

I think that's fair. Let's imagine a world where you don't exclude Gnome because it's been a two-time winner. The day that it does get dethroned is more significant because whatever replaces it or surpasses it, it's a well-earned accolade at that point. How do you strike the balance and still make it interesting and not just have, well, Gnome won again this year? Like, how do you get that right? Well, I think it's more interesting to look at how the ratios work out year after year. So, for example, Plasma and Gnome have been closing the gap over the past two years, even though Gnome won twice. I think it's pretty fair to say that something that's an interesting trend was the gap between GNOME and Plasma for the viewers has closed. What happens, you know, the day that that flips is going to be a very interesting day

indeed. Yeah, that's a good point. I agree with that. So like keeping the options on the table also lets you fairly judge how people are feeling about everything on a year to year basis. And that gives you more reasonable, more useful data over time to judge trends. Like if you remove GNOME next year, then you're basically saying by default, you accept that GNOME is going to be number one forever more until it comes back into the list. And so these are all jockeying for number two. I think that's an unfair

position for people to have. And I think that's somewhat flawed because you're also changing the way people think about their choices. And so you don't necessarily know if they're actually voting for number two or number one. So it throws into question what the value of the data is year over year when you're trying to figure out what the trends are. All right. So I think it sounds like the solution is to keep it, not do the Hall of Fame, but for us to kind of watch the difference in the numbers and in the proportions to the votes. If something's pulling ahead, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And have have a podium. So, you know, each year there's a, you know, first, second and third place. And then you can talk about how the movement has been affected in that

top three position because you can see potentially who the up-and-comer is and how they're performing against sort of the incumbent and maybe at some future date when they you know surpass it so yeah i think track the data podium finish and then you know you've got a more accurate reflection of like how trends move because you know there was a time when you know, you've got a more accurate reflection of like how trends move, because, you know, there was a time when, you know, Ubuntu would have been at the top of everything. And that's not the case anymore, because there's many high quality distributions out there. And they're all doing different things. And people's interests are reflected in the way that they vote. I feel like part of the answer is also to ask the right questions in the form of the categories. You know, we can

formulate the categories in such a way that it might hint at the up and comers as well and bring those to light. So there's, there are multiple ways. All right. Well then meeting adjourned, feedback has been taken and we will make the change to the tuxes. I like it. I knew it felt kind of weird to me, but I was trying to come up with the right solution, but I like this. It also feels like this is the strength of feedback. Like, we love when you challenge us on our ideas, and then we get to change for the better for everyone, so thank you.

Absolutely. All right, how about our next one? Yeah, Max writes in asking, is Apple helping Asahi? Mid-last month, Apple, perhaps inadvertently, helped the Asahi team by adding raw image mode for kernel files. It was a minor thing, but according to Hector Martin, it's actually a pretty big deal for them. Do you think that Apple will continue to help the Asahi team in little ways, or at least

stand aside and not interfere? Or do you think that as the chip transition completes, there's a possibility of them introducing some major roadblock? Hmm. I have some conspiracy bacon in this regard. Oh, get that frying pan out, buddy. I think it's possible that we might be seeing maybe a bit of a movement internally at Apple from the engineers. put, I think the Apple engineers realize there's some areas where they can make modest improvements and it doesn't really get noticed by upper management because it's so low level in the stack and it makes it easier for Asahi Linux to have future updates. And according to Hector Martin, he's really pretty convinced that there's no benefit to Apple directly by making this change.

pretty convinced that there's no benefit to Apple directly by making this change. It simply helps Asahi Linux. And my thought is really simple. If I were making badass system on a chips that had great performance and had a bunch of specialized processors that were exactly the kind of processing load you'd need on the kind of cloud that I have, like the photo cloud, I'd be wanting to run these in a rack. You know, no stupid casing, just like Google does, just motherboard on the rack, running as many of these M1 boxes as possible. Oh, a beautiful Mac rack. And I'm not going to want thousands of Mac OS systems. That's ridiculous.

I am going to want thousands of Linux boxes. And it's in Apple's best interest to have this community do all this R&D for them. And if an engineer can slip in how it handles a boot image and make a little tweak to make it easier to run Linux, so that way a year down the road,

they're popping Linux onto their boxes. I think it's a no-brainer for them. And it's not like anybody's going to notice that up the stack, right? From the work I've been doing on QuickMU, I've got quite acquainted with the macOS internals and certainly tracking the way that the I.O. support has been increasingly added to and improved over several macOS releases. My feeling is macOS do now have a very desirable

silicon platform. And particularly when you look at where nvidia is dominant and where intel and amd want to compete with nvidia it's in the compute ai ml arena for data centers and apple have got a silicon platform that could enter that world in a meaningful way but not running mac os so I can see that Apple would be interested in seeing how they can further improve the way that they can deliver their hardware platform into the data center for use for those increasingly popular workloads. And also the main driver for developer-orientated laptops, you will notice, are always equipped with high-end GPUs. That's like an absolute staple and a given.

So I can see that Apple, this may look innocuous and maybe benevolent, but I think there's a method to the madness. I fully anticipate that we'll see a return to blade-like devices from Apple going into data centers rather than racks and racks of Mac minis in rather cumbersome and awkward aluminum squares. I hate those things.

But I also think that there's another aspect to this, right? So Apple runs their own private cloud infrastructure for their services. And they probably want to be able to run it on the Apple hardware platform for themselves. They are almost certainly blocked from contributing their internal Linux spring up into the upstream projects. But if a Sahi does it and it just happens to work enough, then they get less work on their front and they can run Linux on ARM internally for their infrastructure.

And that also has the knock-on effect of making Linux virtualization on macOS smoother. Because right now, if you do Linux virtualization on macOS on an M1, it, air quotas, works. But it is imperfect and a lot of stuff just doesn't work quite right because the current platform assumptions are wrong. And so a lot of what this is going to do is make that even smoother. And then eventually bare metal Linux on M1 platforms will be or M2 or Apple arm or whatever you want to call it will be a thing. Maybe they will do X serve back from the grave and start doing like server arm platforms. I'm not holding my breath for that. But what I do think they're going to do is they're going to do it for themselves.

Yes, for sure. I can't remember the exact figure, but their contract that they agreed with AWS a couple of years ago, it was an ungodly amount of money that they committed themselves to for their AWS sort of committed usage. Now, Apple are not short of money, but nevertheless, you don't become one of the richest companies in the world by spending frivolously. So yes, I could absolutely see what Neil's explaining where they create a private cloud environment

and they run Apple on Apple. Well, we know how much they like having, you know, full control of things up and down. Well, and they do have those, I think they have what? At least two ginormous data centers in the United States that are just monsters. So yeah, we could see it. I think that's definitely likely.

It's an internal effort to just keep it going. Now, unfortunately, that probably means they're not going to be super motivated to, like, make the GPU easier to get working. Well, the GPU is a function of the CPU itself. And the way that their hardware platform is designed, the operating system driver in macOS is intentionally super dumb. And that means that a lot of the smarts happen at firmware initialization time rather than operating system initialization time. At least that's what Hector Martin said in one of his live streams. It's also kind of funny that I think there's some subset of us that are just, there's this fear, right?

Like, I don't know, it just seems like to me it's one of these things that if it happens, it happens. But like Hector's incredibly clever. The community is incredible. So we'll deal with that when we get there. Exactly. I'm not going to fret about it right now. happens, but Hector's incredibly clever, the community is incredible. We'll deal with that when we get there. I'm not going to fret about it right now. I want Pycrash to get the last word, then we should probably move on, because Pycrash, you point out, it may also be some other element of this. There could be a legal

aspect to this. Yes, so if I can press a conspiracy vague on myself, it could actually help them with antitrust issues. If they say, hey, Apple is blocking us, and they get an underdraft lawsuit, they can say,

hey, we don't, and show an internal memo that they allowed Linux to continue or something like that. I like that idea. Look, here's this email thread where we encourage our developers to support this. That would actually be really clever because they'd never have to produce it unless something came up.

I can see that. Last week on the show, Wes wasn't here, Wes, but we ended up talking to Dave Jones from the Podcast Index. And in there, Dave talked about monetizing podcasts with the Lightning Network. And then after the show,

as we do, or after the interview with Dave, I started thinking, what if this is a way, something, you know, what if this is one of the ways to monetize free software development, to help developers pay for their work? Because one of the things that's interesting about the Lightning Network is you can send very small amounts very quickly. You can also run your own node, so you can avoid sort of a middleman.

But you can also, if you're in part of the ecosystem and you have an open channel you can also make a little bit of money from that too so a project could but it would have a like a channel fee and then after the show like i think it was like the next day i mean it feels like it was forever ago now as we record but like the next day i think we found out that the developer of faker js and was it colors js yes. That he kind of like just totally, totally flamed out, you know, put malicious code in there that caused a loop. And it was a big story. And it really, once again, put a spotlight on this. We've really got to figure out how to pay these developers. And there was just another story just a couple of days ago.

I'm drawing a blank on the developer's name. I mean, it's a, if you listen to Coda Radio, I mean, you guys are talking about this perennially. Yeah, and we all know it. We've been honestly kind of enjoying sort of this world of software abundance that we kind of just type in a command, we get the thing we want,

and all of the dependencies that it needs, and it's up and going, and we don't think about like the fact that each one of those packages has a person behind it. And, you know, I think we have some worries too that there's this sort of subset of software that interacts with what these large companies, what their goals are.

And those tend to be well-supported in service. But then there's other, you know, we as various communities might have other goals. And that's not always, doesn't have always the resources we might want. Yeah, oh boy. This is something that you guys know about here, but we've just had a lot of struggles. Just even, even when we wanted to pay a developer, definitely like had a lot that just refused

to work with PayPal. And this was a bigger problem when we were part of a larger company because larger companies really don't even want to touch something like PayPal. They want you to invoice them. They'll pay you that way, either write a check or do an ACH or a wire payment. All of those require access to the Western banking system, which is also something we've run into issues with multiple times, is that people just don't have access to that. And so I have had more failures trying to pay free software developers than I have actually

been able to pay them. And it's to the point where like, we don't really talk about like, let's do a fundraiser on the show because my nightmare scenario is we raise like five grand and then I can't get it to somebody because I've run into that so many times. And I know it's frustrating for these developers because I've been told a lot that they just don't even bother asking for donations or contributions because it's such a pain in the ass for them to deal with it. Now, there's no universal solution to this, right? Like this is a really complicated problem because there's a lot of countries involved with a lot of laws that don't necessarily work with other countries' laws. So I don't want to make it sound like it's an easy problem to

solve. But as time goes on, I start to feel like it might be an urgent, desperate problem to solve because we do see these developers flaming out. But in background, we get so much more like there's so much more, I guess it's common knowledge in the free software community that just about everyone is totally burned out and everybody is kind of overtapped. And it's kind of, it's just, that's the starting point. And people that are in the community that speak with these developers, it's just common knowledge. But maybe those of us out here consuming things via like a Linux distro package manager or NPM, we don't really kind of have that exposure to it.

And so we don't really appreciate how bad the problem is because we're not really exposed to it. We kind of have a luxury of just getting to consume it at the top level. So it was sort of after listening to Dave talk about ways to monetize content with this lightning network, I started thinking, what if there was a way, because all of the technology is there, the ability to send payments around the world, the ability to automate it, maybe you do a pull request, you have a wallet that automatically has a few SATs set aside,

and it sends a developer a contribution, you set the amount, kind like a pay for what you want model. That's how they're doing it with the podcast index. And I thought, man, it's all there. And on top of it, it's all free software. But we definitely, you know, we touched a nerve because it's considered a third rail topic right now, like so many things have become. And I think a lot of it comes from a good place. The concern comes from, honestly, people have just kind of had it with inaction with climate change. And so they see these blockchain technologies, and there's two kinds. And one is the proof of work style, which is what Bitcoin is, that just grinds it out. And I think people have the view that that's sort of like the world's on fire and now Bitcoin is coming along and it's throwing fuel on that fire.

You know, like we're at a point where we can't add anything more. And I definitely appreciate that because I know multiple friends who have chosen not to have kids because of the climate impact that having children has. So I totally can appreciate like how strong people care about this. And this is probably the number one thing that I heard about. So as we as we kind of cover this, I just I have a couple of things that I want to mention. And then we're going to get into the email and we'll just kick it around. Consider a world where crypto automates

large swaths of the financial services. Just does things, basic contracts, financial transactions, paying for goods. It just does that. And it does it in an automated fashion. If you look at the banking system, I don't know if people that listen for a while, you might recall I used to work for a local bank.

We had at one point 115, 120 servers for our 40 branch operation, right? We had a mainframe, we had a data center, we just that one little bank, right? And there's so many of those kinds of banks in the United States, not to mention MasterCard and Visa and your Bank of Americas and your Wells Fargo. It's currently estimated, although these numbers are hard to track and they don't really like to publicize it, but it's currently estimated that the footprint of the global financial system is about 3% of all emissions. And it's estimated that Bitcoin is 0.1%. And I think there's a common misconception that if Bitcoin was doing more transactions, it would use more power, but that's not how the network works.

Bitcoin uses the same amount of power for one transaction or for a thousand transactions. That's how the system works. And when it comes to the environmental impact of these kinds of things, things have changed recently. China changed the variables this summer. China kicked out all Bitcoin miners and they were getting to be a large part of the Bitcoin network. People are a little uncomfortable about that in the Bitcoin community. It was getting close to like 70% of the capacity was in China. And China kicked them all out. Also, anecdotally, just 50% of the coal consumed in this last year was consumed by China for their power. So they have a real problem over there, right?

So they had to shut this thing down. The vast majority of that mining power moved to the United States, but they did it in 2021, where the environmental impact is a big concern. And these are businesses now. These are data centers, right? These aren't bros with mining rigs in their mom's basement that are hooked up to the wall, right? Each rig starts at $15,000 and they need thousands of them, right? These are companies, they're public companies now, and they have an image and they also have a bottom line. And for their mining operation to be profitable, they have to chase cheap renewable energies. So as that business moved over to the

United States, they did an interesting thing. They played it really smart. For example, there's a mining facility now in Niagara Falls and they buy and sell surplus energy from the plant right there hydropower right there at the facility they previously were coal powered in china and so they can buy energy cheap from the power plant and if the power plant needs that energy back they sell it back and they shut down their mining so they still make money because they sell the power back and they spend down their mining operations so there's more availability and there's also a huge explosion in 2021. This just happened since the summer. So this is new stuff,

but there has been a big utilization of what they call stranded or flared natural gas. And this blew my mind. In just North Dakota alone, 20% of the natural gas is what they call stranded. It's too difficult to take care of it. So they just burn it. Have you ever seen one of those big smokestacks that has a flame at the top?

That's a byproduct and it's natural gas and they just burn it because it, yeah, it's kind of hard. So they can now build these facilities with these miners there. And because these are data centers that don't require high speed connections, like maybe a Google data center, they just need to get the blockchain. They can be out in these miners there. And because these are data centers that don't require high-speed connections, like maybe a Google data center, they just need to get the blockchain. They can be out in these remote areas. And they're unique business partners with these operations

because they optimize for the lowest kilowatt hour. And so they're kind of this energy of the last resort buyer, the kind of junk energy. And when people get really kind of fired up about the energy use of Bitcoin, it's kind of the first flag that maybe they don't really understand how the energy market works. There's a bunch of this wasted energy that hasn't been monetized.

And there's also a category, this is happening in Texas, and some people are dismissing it because Ted Cruz has attached his name to it. But if you set that aside, if you don't collapse this down to a single variable, Ted Cruz, and you look at what they're doing, they're stabilizing the renewable grid so that there's consistent demand. Because there's a massive efficiency loss when they have to ramp these operations up and then ramp these operations down. And it's not like they have like a big bank of Elon batteries where they're storing this stuff. So these mining operations work as a bit of a computational battery that absorbs the load that makes the renewables profitable. So these rich who are never going to make renewables a thing unless they get rich off of it are now making money. They're now getting paid to use renewables and they're making these renewables actually profitable. They're making them acceptable

to the market. And this is obviously to the best interest of these mining operations as well. That's the market dynamics here. And if we figure this out, if we figure out a way to kind of leverage this junk energy, this burn-off energy, then not only have we solved a problem that may make renewables easier to adopt,

which is great because a lot of people are going electric with their cars, so we need a better grid. The power use problem is coming one way or another. So what would be great is if we could kind of find a way for the industry to work together. And here's my thinking on the problem. Blockchain and the Bitcoin stuff, no matter how much you hate it, it's not going away. And if you shun it, and if the Congress creators fight it, and you shame people for using it,

it'll just go into the shadows. It's never going away. For better or for worse. So why not direct it in a positive direction? Something that can help everyone. And then if we solve the market dynamics around renewables, we've also just got this incredible blockchain technology that has a secure decentralized transactional system that also provides sound hard money.

The upshots of this are so enormous. And the entire reason we say let's not do it is because we're concerned about the possible environmental impact, the possible energy use. So we're saying let's not do something because of what might happen. Instead of let's figure out a way to make this work, and we'll deal with the problem. And we'll innovate our way through the problem, like you're seeing the industry start doing since the China crackdown. You're already seeing it happen.

You're seeing the market incentives drag them in this direction. It's because that's what makes them money. So if we could somehow harness that greed for better, and get all of this incredible decentralized blockchain technology, everyone wins. Now, Ben wrote in. He said, you talked about how the blockchain isn't audible on a public ledger, but the podcast index does not have any public governance documents or finances. I agree that there's a problem with 501c3 organizations, but as a private organization, the podcast index has no requirement to release anything. And as far as I can tell, they haven't released any finances or governances.

I believe that the folks in charge are currently on the top or on the up and up, but if they leave, that could change. I just don't really necessarily agree with the point that they need to release that information. I mean, they're just a small LLC company. I think we could use something better for these kinds of things. And maybe we're building those tools right now. But I just don't necessarily agree that in order to run a useful index for podcasting that isn't managed by a mega corporation, they don't have to be the absolute opposite and be some sort of, I guess, what would that be? A charity, I guess, maybe? Where you'd be fully transparent? I guess, what would that be?

A charity, I guess, maybe? Where you'd be fully transparent? Yeah, or a commercial interest corporation. Sorry, community interest corporation is what we call them in the UK. There's an awful lot to unpack in what you've said there. There's several shows worth of discussion topics. Indeed. Tucked away in there.

I think a couple of the interesting points I want to touch on, aside from the crypto, so rewarding open source contributors and open source contributors burning out, flaming out. If you're working really hard on something and you're not receiving any compensation for your time and effort, then the motivation to flame out and stop working on it is higher than if you found a way to get some compensation for your, you know, the effort that you've invested in something. So that's kind of a catch 22, because I know from personal experience, it is hard to put the necessary legal and financial frameworks in place to receive financial contribution for your projects and effort that then becomes a continuing motivator to keep those projects and what have you alive i've i've been through that it is difficult i'm currently going through a tax assessment at the moment because of things to do with the ubuntu podcast even. You know, we had a crowdfunder for that for 18 months

and that shone a light on me from the tax authority in the UK and I've had to do an additional tax assessment just from, I don't know, £170 or something. You know, so it's a lot of, you know, personal investment to take a relatively small amount of money for, you know, something that, you know, somebody thinks I'm giving a couple of pounds to, you know, a podcast that I like. So that's difficult, but overcoming that then creates a feedback loop for developers to then get some reward for their effort and then be motivated to continue working on something and not get burned out by it because they're getting

something in return for their effort. Hopefully, something that is equitable. That's the bigger challenge to solve is what is reasonable return on your time and effort. Now, the other thing you talk about is the way that the energy markets work in relation to vast compute resources. And what's interesting in this country is the largest data center providers in the UK now are the energy companies. So it is the energy companies operate the largest, most cost effective data centers in the UK. Years ago, when I started working on data suitesites bandwidth was the premium thing that you used to pay for and energy was just something that was racked and monitored and you would pay for as you go but today bandwidth is in air quotes free and it's all about your energy consumption and also

more importantly your ac, your cooling requirement. It's all about energy delivery. So the economics of the data center have been completely tipped on their head in the last sort of 15 years. And here in the United States, our ancestry for data centers goes to telecommunications rather than to energy companies, though energy companies have always been part of it. So from pretty much the very beginning, bandwidth was considered basically the cheap part of having a data center. So the way that it works in the UK now is basically the way it's always kind of worked in the United States. You pay for space, you pay for HVAC, and you pay for energy. Those are the primary things you pay for. The bandwidth is like minuscule compared to all the rest of it.

But when it comes to some of the other things that you said, Chris, like you mentioned the 501c3 thing, like the correct thing for something like this would probably be a business association. I'm not financial expert or lawyer or whatever, but like typically organizations like that one would be organized as a 501c6, like the Linux Foundation is that one would be organized as a 501C6 like the Linux Foundation is. It's officially organized as a trade association or a business association as a non for profit. That gives you considerably more flexibility than a organization for the public interest, which is what a 501C3 is legally defined as. And so that's a thing. From the funding perspective, I want to kind of echo a little bit about what Martin said about how difficult that, you know, that initial

hump is difficult, but then after you're there, it's probably smooth sailing. Like, it's still a bumpy ride all the way through. But like, regardless of what country you're in, like, I've told you before about like, why I don't take money, because it's's it's not that I'm not set up to do it. I used to do freelancing, so I do actually have the experience to set up a structure to take in money for donations and whatnot. But it's a bunch of extra work. And the IRS or your equivalent in whatever country you're in, they will spend an inordinate amount of effort to audit you for so little money. And it is such a waste of everyone's time. And this problem doesn't go away when you switch to cryptocurrencies. In most countries, cryptocurrencies make it worse, not better.

If you take a tiny amount of money in crypto, like the IRS flips out at you like super hard. So like, it sort of depends on the attitudes of the individual regulators, the countries where they live, how things are structured. Like most countries are not El Salvador who have decided to recognize a cryptocurrency as an official secondary currency. That is a huge pain in the butt area right now. I kind of take a like a five, 10 year view of those sorts of issues because you are starting to have like the mayor of New York and the mayor of Miami are now getting paid in Bitcoin. So there are fairly public officials that are starting to do this. So it's going to move this thing forward here in the States. I think that when I'm reading

through Ben's email here, what kind of struck me was he's just a, he says he considers himself a blockchain skeptic, which that seems pretty fair. But he says, you know, when we're talking about the climate impact of Bitcoin, one of the things you have to consider is like, I don't think this has been, he says, I don't think it's proven itself to even be necessary or justified. So like, what are we getting in return? And see, that's an area where people who maybe aren't familiar with what's going on, because it's such a dense community with all these different terms and languages. That's a pretty reasonable perspective to have. But I've been looking at this and I'm very impressed. There's a lot of different things from different access to financials that are maybe available to people that don't have the

best credit or really bad credit. That's something that's becoming more common using decentralized technology. And it's still very early and risky right now. It's now possible also for people to take loans out against their Bitcoin, giving people access to some financing that maybe have bad credit or maybe have maxed out a credit card and they're in a tough situation. Like myself, I have no medical insurance. If I were to get in a car accident and I had a big bill, I would take a loan out against my Bitcoin. It wouldn't be something I'd want to do, but that's the situation I find myself in. It may save my life. It gives me that kind of access. Every piece of equipment in the studio that we're using right now to record, with the exception of the mic Brent is using, was bought with Bitcoin.

And, you know, I turned it into something that then I used to make a living off of. So I think there's some uses there. But there's a fascinating area of development because one of the things that's complex about this is there's lots of different blockchains and all these different things that are happening. And one of the things that's interesting is there are types of blockchains like Chainlink that are bringing in outside information that's verifiable and secure and providing it as a feed to the blockchain. So an example of this is they've partnered with AccuWeather and they've partnered with some ground sensor stations and some satellite sensor stations. And I'll have links about this in the show notes if you're curious. And what they are able to do with this information is they are now providing, through a series

of different decentralized exchanges and funding methods, and some companies they're working with, they're providing insurance to farmers in countries that have no insurance framework, where their land perhaps suffers some kind of disaster, some sort of climate-related disaster, because it is provable. Was there rain? They're using seismic sensors. They have satellite data that's coming in via these oracles into the blockchain. They can see all of this, and it's not like a disputable thing.

So they are able to provide insurance to these farmers now that have no access to insurance. Now, you zoom that out, and you think about where something like that could go and that blockchain that blockchain is using it was called proof of staking so it doesn't it doesn't actually use the intensive cpu gpu mining either uh it's a very environmentally friendly so you zoom out where there's different types of technologies it's not all just one thing and they're able to offer things that it could be

possible that in 10, 15, 20 years, we have alternatives that are just simply never been available to people like people that have never had access to banking. Maybe they've never had access to insurance. Maybe they've never had access to credit and loans. That would be me on all three counts. And I'm sitting here in the Seattle area living a fairly comfortable lifestyle. And I still have those problems. And it's just getting worse, not to mention people all around the world. So they have legitimate uses today, right? There's people that are in this virtual room right now that have paid for their home using Bitcoin. There's real value to that. That gave wealth to the middle class

during a time where we've had a dot-com boom, a 2008 recession, and now we have the financial issues and the supply chain issues and the inflation issues that are going on now. And it gave the generation, my generation that's coming up during all of that, access to wealth.

I now have a sustainable business because early on, I warmed my studio by GPU mining Bitcoin. That's something. And that made a difference. And now I provide for a family with that and everybody out there. So these things are how they have real uses and it's just getting more and more adoption, but it's really early days and there's a lot of risk and there's still a lot of scams. There's a lot of things are going to go wrong. There's still a lot of scams. A lot of things are going to go wrong. There's still a lot of regulation issues that are going to come up. But I feel like there's actually more opportunity

with some of this. And it's kind of thrilling that it's free software. Brent, you've been kind of exposed to a lot of this recently. And I know that you've kind of come around a little bit on this subject too. You probably came into it a little skeptical, I would imagine.

Yeah, I got to say this trip has totally informed me in this area. I didn't, you know, I was always interested in Bitcoin, but it seems like such a thick pool to jump into. I would imagine. I think you mentoring me through some of the jargon, but also some of the concepts and some of the problems that this is really solving, it's really made me realize that the future seems a bit bright in many ways. Many of us would probably be interested in the technology that goes into even making these coins possible. I mean, it's a fascinating landscape of mostly open source technology, as far as I understand. And the fact that we could run that

on a little node on an old computer upstairs and really participate in a low level, like it's almost like you have a little bank in your computer upstairs. It's super fascinating. And so if anyone's not really sure about all these concepts, dig in. There doesn't need to be a risk to dig in and read a whole bunch. There's some fascinating podcasts even. I want to mention only one. It's called What Bitcoin

Did. There's some amazingly intelligent people who are on there from all walks of life that are very informed in these topics and have come often from the traditional world and are suggesting the value of what Bitcoin and related technologies can solve. And so I've been just super fascinated to the point, Chris, where you have to say, no, no, no, we got to focus on Linux content too, not just Bitcoin stuff. And I think that drives a little bit of this conversation, but I think it's one that many of us who are interested in open source technologies and desktop Linux, even that's kind of the stuff that got us excited in the first place to dive into this realm. And I think Bitcoin and all of the cryptocurrencies can be fun in that same way of sort of discovery and solving real world problems with some alternative technologies.

Yeah, it feels very much like we are at the stage with this technology where things were right before the dot-com boom. We are leading up to the dot-com boom for crypto and there will be a kind of a pop at some point could be i don't know how many years and then there will be a few obvious valuable contenders that remain your amazons right you'll have your pets.com and you'll have your amazons and your ass jeeves and your googles and that's what we're going to see shake out over time and it's just super early days but wes what do you think about this idea though that you know it hasn't really necessarily proved itself and the potential bad seems seems bad enough that we probably shouldn't even attempt it? Yeah, I'm not sure I find that super compelling.

I mean, I think I can understand the argument, but I think we're just going to see. I tend to agree with you that once these sort of genies are out of the bottle, I mean, not that we can't put them back in, but that just goes against a lot of human nature. that we can't put them back in, but that just goes against a lot of human nature. And, I mean, it seems like a lot of this stuff is going to end up, especially, as you say, after Babel's, after this, you know, the hype cycle we're obviously in right now, we'll see what sticks, right?

Like, I think there are some valuable concepts. Maybe the current implementations aren't the thing that we need, right? But we're lowering barriers to entry. We're making things more programmable. There's a lot of excitement, I think, Brent, as you've need, right? But we're lowering barriers to entry. We're making things more programmable. There's a lot of excitement, I think, Brent, as you've seen, right? And yeah, okay, maybe a lot of this,

maybe most of it doesn't go anywhere, but I think we need to remind ourselves that it's useful to be open. And I think we can, you know, as long as we've set up the appropriate guardrails and such, and that's a whole other thing to debate and talk about. But Technology Connections on YouTube

just had a great video. It's about can openers nominally. But just talking about how not open we can be at times. And look, I don't know that this can take over everything. But some ideas might stick around. And it's worth letting ourselves explore. I think, too, one of the things that Brent and I found fascinating when we were sitting on the couch and we're doing deep dives

into these different communities, so many parallels with the linux community yeah brent's over there shaking his head like yeah totally like uh i sure am just all of like the types of conflicts that they have and the ideals there's some groups that that are like you know how in the linux community you have like people that are like really extreme about the gpl and and really the you know strict definitions of freedom well in in the cryptocurrency communities you have people that are like really extreme about the gpl and and really the you know strict definitions of freedom well in in the cryptocurrency communities you have people that are like super super opinionated about decentralization right it's like they everything has to be hyper decentralized or it's garbage and then you have other people on the other end they're like no

centralization is efficient right and it's this it's this whole it's just a different debate but it's the same exact dynamic and you have all of these open source projects some of them are managed like a clown show and some of them are like professional operations and you can kind of look at them from like that kind of standpoint and there's a lot of parallels there um i agree that just because it's open source doesn't make it necessarily good but i think like all tools it just really depends on how we use it. And in a way, pushing against it seems counterproductive and trying to figure out how to work with it seems proactive. But maybe we're about to get more information in just a couple of days. There is a hearing that sounds a little hostile because

it's called cleaning up cryptocurrency. But there is a hearing in sounds a little hostile because it's called cleaning up cryptocurrency. But there is a hearing in the United States government on January 20th, 2022. They're going to have a hearing on the energy use, and they're going to specifically look at proof of work, which is the style that Bitcoin is. So there may be more information there. My, you know, my expectations are set to low, to be honest. But perhaps in the show notes, though, if you're curious about this topic and really we're not trying to go on about this, hopefully this is the last word for a while. I will link to a incredibly good report. It's a little jargon heavy because they're deep in the industry.

But this guy really knows his stuff. It's a PDF. It's like 160 pages. It's quite the report on this ecosystem. If you want one definitive resource to kind of come up to speed on things, that's the PDF. And then also I have the Cambridge University's Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, where they're doing a real-time monitoring of the, you know, comparatively to some industries. think they left out banking but if you want some numbers on the current energy usage as we know it and where it's all distributed that is in the show notes as well and with that hopefully we're done talking about this linode.com slash unplug head on over to linode and get yourself a hundred dollars for 60 days on a new account and you support the show linode is fast and reliable cloud hosting you should really try it for yourself.

Maybe your next project, maybe the next thing you want to try out. They have CentOS Stream 9 on there now. Alma Linux and Rocky Linux are all available on Linode. If you've been wondering what that user experience is like, why not create an account, support the show and try it out. And with $100, you could actually deploy some really nice systems

or mess around with some serious storage. In fact, they've been rolling out MVME PCI storage. So you're going to get fantastic performance on those systems. They have some super high end CPU rigs as well. So if you're a performance hound, there's definitely some stuff over there that you're going to love. If you're also, I guess, would it be called a value hound? I don't know if that's a thing, but if that's what you do, Linode can be 30 to 50% cheaper than the big hyperscalers. And these big hyperscalers, you know, maybe they're going to try to, like, pull you in with their offers.

Sure, they got their offers. But once they got you, they really got you in their own ecosystem, right, with their own vernacular, their own dashboards, the whole thing. And it's once you're in, man, you're really in. Leno's not like that. It's just a nice, clean user interface, like really kind of the apex of what you'd want when you get to use a cloud provider's dashboard. Simple to understand, but you can go deep when you need to. They have a fantastic API and a command line client that works great, too. So it's just like that nice package. So, you know, it's also a great option maybe if you want to do something like a multi-cloud setup, you know,

tie it all together with a little Nebula backend. You know what i'm saying go try it out linode.com slash unplugged get a hundred dollars for 60 days on a new account and you go there to support the show linode.com slash unplugged okay so we have a little tradition here on the show where we run a rolling server because nobody should ever do that. And we thought, let's do it so you don't have to. And also just to kind of make Wes sweat because nothing really, you know, bothers Wes. You got to put him really on the spot. We thought, let's own our updates right here, live on the air.

And it's our first time for the tumbleweed. And we have we have a new we have like a new theme. We have like a new kernel, the new theme. We have a new kernel. The whole thing. So let's do it. Okay, Wes Payne. We've got a brand new kernel, plus we have our ZFS packages. What are we looking at in terms of update work here?

985 packages to upgrade, 3 to downgrade, 7 new, and 67 to remove. That's an overall download size of just over a gig. After the operation, an additional 300 megs will be used. Okay, not quite the arch numbers we're used to seeing, but I'll take it. And it looks like we've got Linux kernel 5.16 rolling in. Oh, alright, is the download kicked off? No, I'm ready. Alright, let's do it.

Alright, and hey, you know, Zipper does handily note here, a system reboot is required. Ah, good. That'll be fun. We'll see how that goes. Alright, here we go. We actually have some feedback to this, too, that we're going to get to a little bit in the show. So we'll come back to this. We'll let the updates run. So stand by, Wes. Let it go.

And then maybe after we do a few more server emails, we'll check on it, okay? Fingers crossed, everyone. All right. So while that goes, there was a few bits of email about how we configured the server. And I think it was Joe, listener Joe, who wrote in about our ZFS setup. And he said, you're really not going to want to do your VDEVs that way. So he wrote, I just finished listening to episode 439. And I was really sad. Oh, we made listener Joe sad, Wes.

I know. I think this is really sweet, too, because Joe obviously cares about our data. I know. Seemingly more than we do. Perhaps. And he says, I was really sad to hear about the Zpool design. With 20 plus disks, you should have at least two if not three VDEVs to help for all the reasons you mentioned, which is the rebuild, the resiliency, and honestly just ZFS stability.

ZFS has a history of not handling 15-plus drive VDEVs well. And then they provide a handy TrueNAS link. I can see people nodding their head in the chit-sit room. I warned you. I know. I know. And so we've been debating it back and forth, and I'm open to this. I don't love it because we're going to lose some

storage that's why right right we're storage maximalists here and we just wanted uh all of the storage but i also don't want to have a problem child you know like how much is it you do want the server to work i wanted to stay up like if it's actually going to affect stability all right now you got my attention that's where where I draw the line. Risk of data loss? Okay, maybe, because we were going to have a clone server. And so in theory, we'd have a mirror. But when you start saying the server's going to be crashing or going up and down or I'm going to have issues.

Yeah, that just drives you crazy. Yeah, I don't want that. We should at some point, Chris, off to the side, have a dedicated discussion about your storage configuration, what you actually want to do, and what your actual options are for your current storage plan and your growth plan. Because I think we just haven't seriously thought through that for your server storage design, because I think you'd kind of take it, you're kind of assuming that nothing is going to change,

and we should really seriously think about what it would look like if we change some of those knobs and and and thought about like what you actually would like to get to closer to an ideal state for your storage setup all the storage all the storage that's what i'm trying to get the storage is not exactly a well-defined option so we should we should figure that out like at some point you know because i know, because I do a lot of this like professionally and personally. We should, you know, spend some time and like actually sit down and like maybe make diagrams and charts and stuff of like figuring out what your options are. So we can actually do some proper planning here because once you fully initialize this and you start like you don't have a backup system to shift data around to be able to reorganize your storage, you're basically stuck. So we have this really small window where it's like, you're going to regret this choice. We can fix it.

But like once you start piling stuff on, we can't fix it anymore until you get another machine. Stay a while and listen. We had a fork of the road, son. Okay. So, all right. Okay. Let's slow down. Brent, we got some other server. We got a lot of emails about building a rack and about what we can do

with these Dell servers. Let's maybe start there while Wes has updates. How's your updates going? In progress. Okay, all right. So, Brent, do you want to start with maybe our first one

in that regard? Then we'll work our way down the list. Shouter in our Matrix room suggested a few things about the new server, which will inform our server rack build.

So here we go. He says, Dell 12th Gen is fresh air compliant. So it was built to operate at up to 113 Fahrenheit ambient temps. I think that might help us in that garage. For a given number of hours per year without losing warranty. Perfect for Jupiter hosting garage colo. All right, let's load it up. So I was originally under the assumption, because last August when you and I were leaving

on the trip, it was darn hot in that garage. So I even remember doing a few band-aid solutions in the ceiling and stuff to try to keep the temps down. It may have even got as high as 120. Well, that's it. And I wondered, Chris, do you have any data recorded on the temperatures in that place? No, I should get a sensor in there. I really should. I think you have the means. Alex, I can see him listening, just shaking his head.

I just don't want to set up a Z-Wave network. But, you know, the other thing that's tricky about that, right, is sometimes in the summer, you pull in there with a hot car, too. So there's that as well. Yeah, so I wondered, you know, he suggests that 113 for a number of hours per year. But this could be, you know, a few months at a time. That is impressive, though. Strong argument for doing nothing? All right.

You got another one. Keep going. Keep going. All right. He says number two, Podman. Awesome. Please produce some content around networking, root lists, and handling PID, PGID is different

from Docker. Some comments around Linux Server I02 and how you'd apply a multi-service user setup for Jacket, Torrent, Plex setups, and VPN WireGuard slash Swag setup with the networking namespaces and routing between pods.

I'm already regretting that we did it. I am. Because twice in the last week, you know, there's been times where I'm like, oh, all this documentation assumes only Docker, or this easy try this script only assumes Docker. And it's just like I ended up setting up blank systems just so I could run Docker and not run it on my super nice new server. That's what happened.

That's maybe a small backfire. Because the idea was, I'll figure it out. I'll try it and I'll get it working. It'll be awesome. We'll talk about it on the show. And the reality was, I just want to get this going because I got five other things to do. And this isn't what I sat down to do. I didn't sit down to solve this problem right now.

And that's just human nature, I suppose. So don't do like we do. Stick with what you know. And he also calls for us to post some of our information on Git. Maybe we'll get to that point. I don't really think we want anybody using what we're using right now. I'll tell you what. All right, that's a lot of feedback.

Are we good? Are we good on the feedback? I think I feel good about that. And I just want to say thank you, everyone, for your feedback. Yeah, absolutely. Making us think this. We have so many

wonderful audience members who know so much more about this and have much better ideas. Yeah. We got to be grateful for that. And we got some of the most pushback we've got in a while,

but they were all good conversations. LinuxUnplugged.com slash contact. Thank you very much. We'd like to hear more. Yeah, keep them coming. Now go refill our inbox.

You know, that's what happens next. All right, so here's a pick that's really only going to be great for you Plasma users. But you know how I've gone on and on for a while about how tiling would be best for me if I could designate some virtual desktops or some desktops as tiling and some virtual desktops as just free-floating. Yeah, right, like partial, but desktop separated. Yeah.

So like I'd probably have like my email and chat app as a tiled desktop and maybe like a terminal and, you know, but then maybe I want my browser and my notes to be free floating. Well, I think it's called Bismuth or BySmuth. I love this part of the show. I know. It always comes time to pronounce something for the first time out loud. And it is a KDE Plasma extension. It lets you tile your windows automatically.

Oh. You manage them via a keyboard, just like a regular tile in desktop. And it lets you apply it to only one particular virtual desktop. Chris, you seem to say all this like you wish you knew this like a year or two ago. Oh man, this is so great. This is exactly what I was talking about. And I like the way it does it. And this is, I'd love to see System76 support this in their Cosmic desktop.

I think that'd be so great. This does look, okay. Yeah. I'm trying this after the show. This extension seems familiar. Yeah, I forget who sent this to me. We had some feedback that suggested it, I think, a month ago or so.

Oh, Nev says it's not so great, though. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, now I remember because I think I mentioned this to you like six-ish months ago as a Wayland-compatible alternative to, um, what's that one that everybody used to talk about

for, uh... Wayfire? Um, Cronkite. That's it. Oh, Cronkite. Bismuth is forked from Cronkite. I suppose if you're a connoisseur of these kinds of things, it may be lacking.

So we'll have a link to Bysmith. Bismuth. Bismuth. Bismuth. Bismuth. Barksmith. Barksmith Forge for Plasma. You know, I realize it's not for everybody, but, you know, maybe give it a go.

See if it works for you. Links to all that kind of stuff are at linuxunplugged.com slash 441. Remember, we do get together every Sunday at noon Pacific. We get going around 1230 Pacific. And well, this week we got going a little bit late. Well, sometimes we just like to hang out. And if you're a member, you get access to what was essentially an entire show that we did before we sat down to record.

Sometimes several shows. Yeah. But this week it was definitely at least one show in the pre-show. So you can go to unpluggedcore.com to support the show directly or if you'd like to support the entire network

that's at jupiter.party then you get all the shows ad-free. That's pretty sweet. Brian, it sure has been great having you down here at the Studes. Thanks for being

such a great host. You're definitely leaving it better than you found it. Yeah. That's what I try to apply to every place in my life. Although that bathroom's in rough shape but I think we got it from here. But's what I try to apply to every place in my life. Although that bathroom's

in rough shape, but I think we got it from here. But, you know, I'm just noticing, like, the lights are down, the floor is missing. Just a disaster up there. There's a giant monument

to Brent installed in there now, too. Yeah. And it's sturdy. Is that copper? One of the kids actually wrote, good luck, Brent,

on the wall, and then we painted over it, so I'm there forever. That's true. That'll always be there. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode. You're always welcome to join us live or just grab the feed at linuxunplugged.com slash subscribe. Always appreciate you downloading, listening, and sharing the show with anybody.

That's also really nice. Word of mouth is really how podcasts grow, so we really do appreciate that. All right, that's it. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you right back here next Sunday. Well, one of my predictions may be coming true faster than I expected. It looks like the FlatHub community is looking at ways to pay developers in 2022. And they have a whole thing here about it. I'm really pleased to see this. It looks like FlatHub's getting serious in 2022.

They got a whole outline of stuff that they have for ideas on growing the FlatHub community. And we'll link to it in the show notes. It looks great. The most important thing is that they're going to set up a foundation through the Linux Foundation to make it so that there's somebody who can take the money. Like, the reason FlatHub couldn't do it before is because there was nobody to take the money. Hey, we're ready for update over here. You know what? Good thing we just put one more thing in the power of the Linux Foundation. That is great. Update complete. We're ready for update over here. You know what? Good thing we just put one more thing in the power of the Linux Foundation. That is great. Update complete.

We're ready to reboot. Let's do it. Let's kick it off, Westpain. This is going to be a long reboot, too, because it's got all them disks. What distro is it? Tumbleweed. Yep. This is our first big upgrade since we switched to Tumbleweed.

We've been waiting to do it on air. How long between updates? Well, two, three weeks. New kernel, and we are using ZFS. So the ZFS is the wild card here. Hey, Chris. Yeah, yeah. Just to let you know, I was running Tumbleweed up until yesterday,

and I applied probably many of these same updates that you're installing now, and it actually broke my system and broke the kernel. Where were you at the start of the show? Oh, man, couldn't you tell us that before we hit reboot? For what it's worth, I knew about this because other people had told me about it as well. All right. Oh, no, are you saying there's a deal breaker in here

that's known? Like, is this something we should have... Is this like an Arch check the news page? We never did that, but it didn't ever bite us. He did not watch the Leplug Room in the... He doesn't watch Leplug anymore. I was just there. I was just there. Watching the Leplug Room, if you just watched that,

you would have seen me complaining about how I tried open-sus. Tumbleweed is the one distro that I really want to run, but the distro just really, really, really hates me because I can just do like a simple desktop installation, just run an update, and it breaks.

I am reasonably confident that your upgrade will succeed because the conditions in which it will fail are not present on your system. Well, I have good news. It is booting right now. I see the system coming up. It's mounted. Because the condition in which it fails is that you have the NVIDIA driver installed. Oh, okay. Alright.

Because NVIDIA driver is not 5.16 compatible yet. Hey, look at Wes. Wes, I think we got a console. Let's see if we... Oh, I've got some pings over here. The IP didn't change. Now you gotta check to see if ZFS came online. Yeah, that's the win.

If the ZFS is there, it's a win. I thought we were doing ButterFS. ButterFS for the root, but we don't have to worry about that. Oh, yep, here we go. Levi is on the end. Take that, everyone. It passes its first on-the-air upgrade successfully. Let's see how long it keeps that streak.