LINUX Unplugged - 462: One Cosmic Collaboration

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

From skeptic to buyer, why the HP Dev One is the best Linux laptop yet. This is the one review you don't want to miss.

You'd think I'd know that I eat three times a day and that I'd plan for that. And you'd think I'd plan for a pre-show because I've only been doing this for like what? Oh, we're going on eight years now? You think maybe? I kind of doubt you eat three meals a day. I am just so distracted. See, behind the scenes, there's a big production issue with the show. We don't have a ritual getting started song figured out yet.

That's true. And it's just consuming a lot of cycles. And I don't want to blame anyone. No, you shouldn't. In particular. No. But it's just thrown off the pre-show. I think that's what it is, right?

Well, all our energy is focused elsewhere. So we're not giving the pre-show. Because we're still trying to figure out what song to have before we start the show. I think maybe later we got to take the pre-show out to dinner. Maybe kind of apologize. Try to get on good graces again. Yeah, we better pick up flowers too. And you know, those are going up in price right now. Sure are. 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. Coming up on this week's episode, is there a new king of Linux laptops? We've got the HP Dev1 in studio right now. We've been putting it under a battery of tests. And I'll give you my most in-depth review of a laptop I've ever done in 15 years of podcasting yet.

Even if you're not in the market for some Linux hardware, I'd like you to keep listening. I think you should probably be informed about this laptop and maybe keep in the back of your mind when you or someone you know is looking for Linux first hardware. And then after we talk about that, we'll round out the show with some great boosts, some picks, and some more. I think you just said I have to hide my wallet for this episode. Yeah, I know, right? Or find yours, maybe. You've got it right there in front of you right now, Wes Payne.

That's right, yeah. So you be careful, because once you start using it, that's when it... I should have brought like a decoy laptop I could have set here, and then you just wouldn't notice for a couple days until I'd left the studio with it. I think a funny thing about this laptop is it's not great at first impressions. It's once you get to know it that you start to like it.

And we'll talk about that and why. And then of course, of course, we can't do a show without having our backup crew, our virtual lug. Time appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello, Chris. Hello, Wes. Hello, Brent. Hello, darlings. I'm actually shocked we have this many people in there our virtual lug time appropriate greetings mumble room hello hello chris hello west hello brent

i'm actually i'm actually shocked we have this many people in there because we started an hour early we didn't tell anyone until like the day of i mean that's some charitable rounding but yeah you know we started early yeah yeah well we would still be uh shooting the s traditionally so we're doing a double up recording because I'm leaving. I'm taking the little family to Montana for some good swimming. And so I'll be gone for almost two weeks, about a week and a half. So we won't have a live show next week, but we will have a released episode. And of course, we'll have something for our members. But this weekend, I was trying to get my Starlink game all figured out because you guys know I've I've got this ongoing saga where I had a Starlink motor fail on me.

So my antenna didn't work. Tragic. And then I replaced it with a round dish. I got another round dish and that dish didn't work. And now they've sent me a brand new square dish. And so I've been kind of re gearing up around this and I've've come up with this wackadoodle flagpole mount system you guys so i got this cheap flagpole from harbor freight and on etsy i bought a like six dollar after shipping it was like 30 a six dollar adapter that's 3d printed that lets the starlink dish mount at the top of the flag

oh nice and then i got some clasps to connect that flagpole to big industrial suction cups that i'm just going to right to the side of lady jupes this is going to be very fun and then i'm going to get the antenna up above the rv because the big thing I've now learned with Starlink is you got to have complete clearance of the sky. And you got even around the edges, some blockage, you're going to get lost packets. And when you're trying to like live stream or something,

that doesn't work. Right. You're not just browsing the web here. You're running a network. Although on this trip, I will not be podcasting. So even if it's just decent, I'll be happy.

So this is like a setup where like after you've, you've like found your spot for the night, you've parked, you get, get this out and just pop it onto the side. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the idea. The other one, the other amount I got is the flagpole can mount into a hitch adapter. So I put a flagpole mount into the hitch and then the flagpole sits in that. Smart. Now, okay. Question. If we were to get ourselves say a Jupiter broadcasting flag, could that still be attached yes you can keep your flag

yep and have your start yeah oh we got to do that now now we got it now it's anybody who designs flags get in touch linuxunplugged.com contact a vexillologist yeah i know random knowledge okay i don't want that i don't want that i don't want to know that but if that's you we want you yes that's true yeah that is true yeah we'll you. Yes, that's true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, we'll see. Because the spot we're going to stay in Montana, we typically have no cell coverage. At least we haven't for like the last five years. And so this may be the first time where we have internet connectivity.

For better or worse, we'll see. Or maybe I'll just never get around to mounting it. Sorry, kids. I hope the suction cups really work out. Because as you're describing it and as I'm trying to imagine you out there with this contraption, all I can picture is like Wile E. Coyote trying to, I don't know, manufacture some kind of Acme device that's going to work for him. So hopefully it works out for you. I thought maybe a roof mount would work, you know, like sandbags and I get a roof. I don't want to get up there with those people I was reading on forums are like, no, it doesn't work.

Those sandbags are such a pain in the ass to take up the ladder. I'm like, oh yeah, that would get old. Plus the roof is probably not designed for all that weight sitting on there all the time. Yeah, the biggest challenge with the roof is that it's rubber and that you can damage it with a lot of things. It's rubber.

I would have never expected that. Yeah, you can actually sit up there. You know, you can lounge up there if you want. Just got to be a little careful. Yeah, don't step on the damn solar panels. Damn it. Those are expensive. Yeah, but this is going to be my attempt.

We'll see while I'm in Montana to see if I can get Dishy working. Because now I've got a fully working setup. I got a little crate that I got for it. I took all the bits out of the box that it shipped with. And I built a little crate for it to sit in. A go-rig setup for it. I just really don't want this one to break you know like it was a long process it took almost a month for for all this to get resolved but i do want to say every time i interacted with starlink support it was really good and one time they even called

me just to like expedite everything because they knew i had been waiting oh okay nice and so i really got to give it to him like the downside is it took almost a month, but the upside is they were really reasonable to work with. They didn't, like, I could just tell them, yeah, I pinged this or I checked this, or yes, the PoE injector has power. Like, and they just believed me and they didn't, like... You didn't have to go through a bunch of rigmarole.

Yeah, yeah. And it's so cool. It is really just such a neat setup and those things run on Linux and all that. I just, I love it so dang much. I'll put a link to some of the mounting options I considered if you are also out there looking for this kind of thing. But let's talk about the dev one. It's quite literally. Well, it's not an elephant because it's kind of svelte, but it's right here in the room with it. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Give me a quick weight check there. What would you say? Average weight there? More or less than the ThinkPad? Probably a little heavier, a little heavier, but it's got a because it's got a nice kind of density to it.

It's not, you know, annoyingly heavy. It's just it feels sturdy. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's a really solid, really solid. In fact, if you press on it there, it doesn't really flex much at all. No, not much flex. I'm holding it just by one corner and it's not really, you know, whipping around like a madman and not worried about doing it like, yeah, not yeah not gonna hurt it so i want to give a little context to this

review this isn't a paid review this is a review unit but there's been no transaction for services or anything like that i did have the opportunity to join a joint call between hp and system 76 with my co-host michael dominic from coda and ask some questions. But I've owned a lot of Linux machines, so that's the experience I'm bringing to this. I mean, I'm literally the first public customer of System76. I've probably bought six laptops from them somewhere in that ballpark over the years. It's been a little while. I've owned two Dell XPSs as well. In fact, I owned the Dell Tower desktop that was launched before they even

did the Sputnik line. I still own it. It's out in the living room, actually. I currently have a ThinkPad X1, and I bought that when it shipped with Fedora. So I'm bringing a lot of history of machines that I have personally paid for that were Linux-first computers to this review. Safe to say you've been around the Linux laptop scene. And on top of that, like this unit, we've probably had literally over a dozen review units sent into the various shows over the years. So every new laptop that comes out that runs Linux,

I generally have an opportunity to get my hands on, and I sometimes pass, sometimes I don't. So that's the background in which I am bringing to this review for this laptop. That's why when I say right up front, none of them are as good as the HP Dev1, I hope you'll take me seriously. And I hope you will give me the time in this episode to justify that statement. So let's start with the funny thing that caught my attention about the Dev1 and why I was interested in reviewing it. And I think that is the fact

that this thing ships with Pop! OS. Out of the box, it ships with Pop! OS. How the hell did that happen, right? It's a little surprising. I mean, you know, Fedora is a new entry, but we're kind of used to seeing Linux laptops shipping with just Ubuntu. Yeah, a lot of the laptops out there traditionally

that are focused at developers, quote unquote, are just shipping with vanilla Ubuntu. Yeah, a lot of the laptops out there traditionally that are focused at developers, quote unquote, are just shipping with vanilla Ubuntu. And when we interviewed the team behind Sputnik, remember, we were down at Dell. We literally got a tour of Dell and met everyone on the team that was available. They said that in their research, developers wanted vanilla Ubuntu

and not like something like they had shipped on the desktop tower I had bought. That was a few years ago, though. And I think maybe things have changed a little bit. So I asked, how did this happen? How did HP and System76 get together? So it seems like HP had done a bit of analysis of this market and looked at this as being a viable segment. You mean sort of like a developer-focused laptop running Linux? Yeah, yeah. Something for the enthusiast crowd. It's kind of a hyper-focused machine that tries to balance sort of things like performance and portability and price, and can kind of compete in the XPS MacBook range of machines, which is not an easy thing to do. And so HP did some surveys, they did some research, and that research

led them to Pop! OS. And they discovered Pop! OS, and by discovering Pop! OS, discovered System76. And then the Dev1 team reached out to Carl, CEO of System76, and he ignored their email. And then they reached out again, and he ignored their email. And then they reached out again and he ignored their email. And then they reached out again and he answered their email and was very skeptical. And I mean, this may not be exactly accurate, but this is the characterization I got. It's really seemed like HP realized they needed a topic expert. Like they had the hardware figured out, but they didn't have the customer figured out. And they needed a topic expert.

And so after that back and forth with Carl, Carl said that he realized they were eye to eye on a lot of goals. Quote, HP is doing the right thing with this laptop. He said to me, and since that kind of started, they've seemed like they've actually become pretty good partners. It was really co-led.

That presentation was co-led by both of them. And it seemed like there were opportunities where system 76 kind of stepped up and did a little extra because they could like they this this laptop ships with an optional mouse it's a pretty good mouse actually and system 76 created a gui configurator for that mouse oh that's a nice touch yeah so they kind of they kind of also had an opportunity because hp has relationships that go deeper than system 76s and so hp was able to put an amd engineer in the room with system 76 and hp and then they started doing things like working with amd to optimize the battery life via some firmware tuning they collaborated with amd to get suspend and resume

working properly with this n3 architecture and all of that's already been upstreamed suspend and resume working properly with this N3 architecture. And all of that's already been upstreamed. So that's already upstream. I like to see that, dang. Yeah, you do, right? So I asked, you know, what is in it for System76? This is, you know, aren't they competing? Carl just said really bluntly,

this was an opportunity for them to get Pop! OS on a tier one vendor hardware, right? Somebody that builds their own machine directly. It's not necessarily like a Clevo that's been rebuilt and re-firmware. And also it means that HP has dedicated QA staff now doing QA on Pop! OS releases. Isn't that interesting? And that benefits System76. Yeah. And Carl noted that it's a sort of a rising tides lifts all boats sort of thing. They didn't create Pop! OS just for System76.

So, you know, if they're going to use it, why not, you know, work together on it? Yeah, isn't that an interesting component? Just kind of thinking about when Pop launched, right? Sure, we tried it on other things, but it kind of shipped first on the System76 hardware. That's where you saw it the most, at least when it, before it kind of, you know, became more of a hit outside of that niche use case. And here's the next stage of that journey. Definitely.

And, you know, when it came out again with Pop! OS, I was pretty critical. I didn't think it was a good idea. I criticized System76 on several of our shows, but I think retrospectively you can see it was pretty necessary because HP laid out reasons. And one of the things they like about Pop! OS is that the only thing Pop! OS does is a desktop. I guess to them, when they're shipping a desktop, they don't like the idea that the vendor might actually be a little more focused on the server side. They want the vendor to be 100% focused on the desktop side. Here's another thing. I actually, I have the still from the presentation, and on this slide where HP was talking about why they wanted Pop! OS, they list the Pop! Shop, but below the Pop! Shop, one of the things they liked about Pop! OS is that it has flat pack support out of the box, and regular Ubuntu doesn't. And that actually played a bit of a factor in their decision making. They also really like the auto tiling. They think that's anything that was the first thing that HP touched on was

the auto tiling. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So there's that element of it as well. So there was certain aspects of Pop! OS that drew them in there, but sort of just came together. But let's talk about the hardware. Let's talk about this laptop and why I think it's probably the best yet. And what I mean by that is not only currently it's the best yet, but I mean, it's the best execution of this idea that I've ever seen yet too. So it is both best, the best current laptop you could buy that runs Linux and in my opinion, and it is also the best execution of the idea. It has a 14 inch 1080p display, LED backlit at a thousand nits. It's extremely bright. On average, I probably run it at 35%. Wes can like blast himself. He's got it right now.

Yeah, this is very bright. Yeah. You can turn it up. You can actually use it outside. It can get so bright. So it's a very solid, just great screen, which gives you a really nice impression out of the box. The overall design, and this is why I say it's not great at first impressions. I think HP had a certain appetite for risk. They're a big company. It makes sense, right? And their appetite for risk was in creating a relationship with System76, kind of creating this product category and trying to sell to this new customer base, right? That was their risk appetite. Which is, that's a lot of new things. And where they kind of played it safe,

in my personal opinion, is the design of the hardware. It doesn't blow you away. It's fine. It's above average. It's a magnesium alloy that feels really good in the hands. It's definitely a better build. It's a tier one build. But it doesn't blow you away, right? Yeah, it's not going to stand out in the crowd necessarily. I mean, it's a nice looking laptop, but it's a nice looking laptop.

Yeah, it's an above average design, but it's not a risky design yeah it's a it's an above average design but it's not a risky design it's not like the xps and i think to its detriment the xps has gone really bold with its new look they just released a new xps it doesn't run linux yet but it's got two ports and they're one on each side right it's got it's got that kind of butterfly style keyboard it's a beautiful machine but it's not fully practical and functional. Right. You'd be the one you keep in your bag when you travel, maybe, but not the one you can take to every job site or really get a whole bunch of work done. Or one that like feels particularly high end and nice, which is sometimes it's just nice to have something that feels good in your

hands. And the ThinkPad's on the other end of that spectrum. It's very utility. It's a workhorse, but it's sort of at the other end of the design spectrum. And this kind of fits in the middle between the XPS and the ThinkPad design language. And I think it kind of strikes the balance pretty well. It's got two USB-A ports, it's got two USB-C ports, it's got HDMI out. It's got a barrel-powered connector, and it also can be charged over a USB-C, and has a headphone jack, of course. And it has a nice large trackpad, again, an again an above average glass trackpad on this thing

where i didn't really start to kind of become impressed by it until i really started throwing things at it when i decided all right well this is going to be my work machine for the rest of the week and the weekend in the next few days and so like i do i go over to flathub i get a list of about 20 applications. I throw them all at once, you know, at the system. I do the FlatHub install and I just paste like all of the apps on there at once. Just go, go, go. Then I get like about 100 things queued up and apped and I fire that off and I have app get installing things at the same time.

And then I switch over to another workspace and I queue up about 15 Steam games and I get them going. And then once one Steam game gets loaded, I launch the first one and I get the Vulcan shaders rendering and I get all of that going while I also have Slack and Element going. And this is how I use a computer. I was going to say, yeah, this is not a special stress test. This is just Chris's new computer.

This is the table stakes that a computer has to do. And I'm throwing all of this at it and I realize about 20-30 minutes into it, I'm not hearing the fans. In fact, this thing is taking everything I throw at it. I'm not even feeling it sweat. This thing's taking it. I think, all right, that's interesting. That's a good sign. And then I start using it and I'm just really happy the way it all came together. You know, I think there's a lot of value in what

Pop! OS has done with some of their key bindings and the auto-tiling stuff. I had to really wrap my head around it, and I found a cheat sheet on Reddit, and I printed it out, and I put it on my desk, so I had the new key bindings map. Once you start to learn that, you can move around really quick, and it works really well in that resolution. but the performance was really impressive and so when i fired up my first game that was sort of like taking things to the next level and really trying to really test it get an idea and get a sense of where this thing is at and and really get an idea of how it performs under load and figure out if i needed to replace pop os so that's where i really kind of started to take things next lino.com slash unplugged. Go there to get $100 in 60-day credit on a new account, and you go there to support the show.

So it's Linode.com slash unplugged. That's it. It's simple as that to get that $100. MVME storage, super fast CPUs, 11 data centers around the world, best support in the biz. I mean, I could go on and on. In fact, I often do.

And you know what? It's still to this day, two and a half years later, when I need to deploy something, I go to Linode. I go to Linode because I've had a great experience. Honestly, the performance, it matters to me. But they're also just great citizens in the Linux community. That's actually how I found Linode originally. I was at Texas Linux Fest,

which feels like 100 years ago. Texas Linux Fest was having a bit of a rough year, and most of the vendors just weren't even really trying. But Linode was there with a smile on their face in the best booth, making what turned out to be one of the most influential Linux Fests in my lifetime possible.

And I made a mental note. I wasn't even looking for sponsors back possible. And I made a mental note. I wasn't even looking for sponsors back then, but I made a mental note that when it came time, I was going to look up Linode. And while I waited, I tried them out as a customer. I became a customer first, and I was so damn impressed. You know, they've been doing this for nearly 19 years, so it makes sense that you get it right, but that doesn't mean every company does that. There's a lot of places you can host things, but no place quite does it like Linode with the performance, the support, and just the continuous improvement.

They just expanded their managed database offering, which was just MySQL back in May. Well, now they're offering Postgres and MongoDB, which is huge for us. I'm probably going to move our matrix Postgres database over to this. I mean, why not? Why not take advantage of the expertise that is Linode's staff and their infrastructure to run the database? The part of running a matrix server I kind of don't like anyways. I think it's pretty great. And I'd do it too if I was using MongoDB or MySQL. I'm ready to jump in though, I tell you what. They've also released a new ebook, which you can get for free,

which helps give you a high level understanding of database and database architectures and different deployment methods and what methods might work best in the cloud possibly. Or when you're working with their crazy fast storage or their AMD EPYC processors. AMD really has some great CPUs. And you know what?

Linode was down. They were down. They put them in some of their high-end... We've got a system with AMD EPYC processors in it. I just... I love it. I love the flexibility. I love the distribution choice. I love the support and all of it. Plus, it's a great way for you to try something, for you to learn something, to get that $100 and support the show. So just head right over to linode.com slash unplugged. Get that $100 for 60 days on a new account, kick the tires for yourself, and support the show. So just head right over to Linode.com slash unplugged. Get that $100 for 60 days on a new account, kick the tires for yourself and support the show. Linode.com slash unplugged. All right. Well, I should probably be paying attention to the show right now, but I noticed you hadn't installed Race the Sun on here yet. I've got that fixed and it's

working just great. I have not heard the fans yet though. And that was kind of the point of this. Yeah, it really is nice. It is nice to have performance and have it be quiet. So let's talk about the hardware and then talk about gaming in there because that is what gets the fans going.

So this has a Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U processor. That's based on the AMD Zen 3 micro architecture. It's got eight CPU cores and 16 threads total with a boost at 4.4 gigahertz max with a 1.9 gigahertz base clock and an L3 cache that clocks in at 16 megabytes. The APU, that's the integrated graphics processor, is based on the Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics processor. So that is to say, decent graphics performance, but it's not going to compete with a dedicated gaming laptop, and it's definitely not going to compete with a PC with a high-end graphics card. But if you're a casual gamer,

and you're interested in a work laptop that can play games, modern Steam games, when they come out, it will do that. I've played No man's sky on there i've played elder ring on there although there was some bugs with that that are not the hardware's fault i played a whole slew of different games on their cs go they're all very very playable you might have to tweak some of the settings but at the end of the day you're working with a 14-inch screen so even if your favorite game maybe has to get cranked down a little bit it's a 14-inch screen. So even if your favorite game maybe has to get cranked down a little bit, it's a 14-inch screen.

It's not that big of a deal. You probably expected a little compromise and a very portable little laptop, right? This really gets to the point of where they strike the balance. And just a note on that, you know, the reality is with my ThinkPad, I've never been really quite happy because it's all Intel. And that has been super nice for compatibility, but it has meant that i spent you know two grand on a laptop that i can't play games on and linux has gotten to be

an awesome game platform and if i only get three or four chances a year to play games i'd like my computer to be able to do it when i do want to do that but i'm not gonna have a setup or a special gaming rig that oh you didn't bring with you to Montana. And yeah, right. And maybe I don't even game enough to justify buying a video card, really. So there's that. And the other way to go would be to get a bigger laptop with an integrated graphics card that is heavier, that uses more power, that produces more heat, that has more fan noise. And I have to screw with like the NVIDIA driver problems or something like that.

And with this AMD Ryzen platformzen platform again this strikes the balance it's got a graphics processor in there you can actually play a current game on but it also has a very fast desktop class almost not quite processor that does your regular computational stuff really well without killing the battery again it's a it's a hard balance. And then when you factor in the price that it's basically $1,100, $1099, and they've managed to kind of strike that area, I think it starts to become more compelling. There's a few other factors in here too that I think are really nice from a hardware standpoint.

It's got 16 gigs of RAM from the factory, but it's user serviceable. And you can put up to 64 gigabytes of RAM in there. Oh, excellent. Hard drive it's user serviceable. And you can put up to 64 gigabytes of RAM in there. Oh, excellent. Hard drive is also user serviceable. Ships right now with a one terabyte M.2 PCIe 3. But you could put your own drive in there. These days, that feels kind of refreshing that you can do upgrades. It seems like everybody's dropping that concept.

When it was in the prototype stages and it wasn't a product yet, the very first version that System76 got came as parts in a box. And System76 assembled it from parts. They are experts at that. They are. Yeah, right. But the reason they mentioned that story was to kind of underscore the serviceability here. The upstream HP laptop that ships Windows that this has been forked from, that has a 10 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit.

Wow. So the serviceability is pretty good. Again, it's really striking that balance, right? Right. But still, it's not big and bloated. Have you been tempted to get a screwdriver at it? Have you done that yet? I want to, yeah.

Yeah, I want to. I think I will. Are you allowed to on a unit, a review unit? That's another question, perhaps. You know, sometimes when it comes to these reviews, Brent, you don't really ask so much as maybe you apologize after the fact. There's only like a one in four chance he breaks it. Yeah. Yeah.

We won't mention it publicly or anything, right? I mean, hey, you said it was serviceable. You said. It's got a decent keyboard. I think probably the more notable thing about it is that it has that chiclet look without that butterfly feel it's got a pretty it's not super clicky but it's not too soft it's sort of just an average but pretty good keyboard i i'd say the keys are easy to find wide enough to you know decent travel yeah not bad it is backlit led backlit that's nice that really you know i think i'm i

think i'm done i could handle it for a while but i think i'm done with non-backlit keyboards oh yeah also it has the track point in the middle i knew i was forgetting something also a nice touch yeah that is a nice touch that is tracks you have both i would take those on just every laptop i had if i could yeah yeah it's not just a thinkpad thing anymore so that's that's a great thing about it but the other thing i couldn't really get like super solid details on this but it has what they call a spill resistant keyboard so in theory you could spill an amount of water i think your chances go down if it's a sugary beverage or alcohol but if it's like water maybe coffee something like that a little rain gets in your bag yeah it has what they call a spill-resistant keyboard.

That's pretty nice. And I already said the trackpad's fine. It's a glass keyboard. It's a good trackpad. It's probably the best trackpad that ships on a Linux machine. But the part that surprised me the most on this laptop, can you guess? You might be able to guess because I already mentioned it to you. Full-size HDMI.

That is sort of surprising in this day and age. But no, the speakers oh they're much better than i anticipated uh when i see a thin laptop with thin thin speaker grills in the pc world i have very low expectations assume you won't ever use them and move on i do i i do in fact i had to check myself because i'd realized it wasn't until i started a game i realized i hadn't even tested the speakers because i just saw the small little speaker grills. I was like, all right, fine. But then the game started and I actually had that reaction where I was like, I looked around the room like that.

Is that this laptop? Is that coming from this laptop? Yeah, I did that thing. I mean, they're pretty good. They're not like they're not like going to like, you know, blow your ears off. I did a range test and like they don't really go below 100 hertz so you're not gonna get like real lows or anything but i'd say they're as good as the macbooks right before the m1 so pretty good competitive in the industry especially on a laptop that size which is better than yeah pc laptops

usually get yeah and it's got a 720p webcam that does the job i haven't tried that part yet yeah i tried out the battery in there is i, going to be the weakest thing about it because, to be honest with you guys, spec-wise, 53 watt hours. And I thought, okay, well, how good is this going to be? But the firmware tuning they did with AMD has paid off. You get a range, depending on what you're doing. In my testing, I got somewhere between five-ish, six hours, and three hours, depending on what you're doing in my testing i got somewhere between five ish six six hours and three hours depending on what i was doing like playing games or benchmarking when i was really pegging the gpu and cpu i got about three hours they say 12 hours depending on what

you do for like you know remote terminal work and working in a text editor and stuff like that they say 12 hours. And they do this thing called HP fast charging with this laptop. You get 50% charge in 30 minutes. And I took a look at how this works in Gnome Power Statistics. And what they do is for the first 50% of the battery or just a little bit over, they pump about 44 or 45 watts into the battery and get it up to that 50%. and then it kind of clocks down to about 23.7 watts for the remaining charge which is about another half hour or so and the rate of what it can put into the battery will also depend on what you're doing on the laptop so that varies as well but you can look at this in real time and gnome statistics in fact a whole suite of hardware

sensors i don't know if you look but there's a I have a GNOME extension there that has like the temperatures or the CPU cores and stuff. Yeah. If you go in there, 4.7 volts right now. You can see the voltage and the wattage of the CPU, the GPU.

You can see the fan RPM. Zero RPM over here, yeah. Yeah, zero RPM at the moment. It's pretty quiet. All the different sensors. I mean, this thing has a full suite of sensors that are supported by Linux out of the box.

And so you get a lot of data. Sensor one and two. Yeah. You get good data to work with as a tester and a reviewer. I really appreciated that. And one thing I definitely noticed is the GNOME battery life algorithm is struggling to figure out the battery life on this laptop. So you couldn't go by the hour estimate. You had to actually clock it. I don't know if that's going to get better with usage. It might. It has on other laptops. But yeah, I'd peg it at six hours if you're doing your regular work in a text editor, in a web browser, in a terminal, and chat. And I'd probably peg it at three hours if you're playing video games on battery, which you probably don't want

to do. Another nice thing about it is it does have that barrel charger, but it does also charge over the USB-C ports. And surprised by this, charges slightly faster over USB-C. When you charge, yeah, when you charge with USB-C, you get around 50 watts of charging instead of 44. So, you know, I didn't expect that, but that's pretty great. So I was, I was really happy about that. And I was happy I had the option to do both. Yeah, that is kind of nice. I mean, I don't know that I would ever like want the barrel added, but once it's already baked in, like, why not? Right. Maybe that's the one you leave at your desk that you talk to because you're using USB-C for other things or, you know, a lot of flexibility. And the USB-C ports, they are USB-C 3 whatever super speed and it has display port and it does power delivery. Of course, they are not Thunderbolt. That's just not really a thing on the AMD laptop platforms.

But future generations of AMD laptops are going to have USB 4. Yeah, shiny new USB 4. And that's basically Thunderbolt. So it is coming soon. You know, I think it was like a year ago, maybe eight months, we were getting quite excited about the Lemur Pro. And I wondered how you thought this compared to that. And I think the follow-up question would be, what is System76 thinking about the comparison between those two? Did they use what they learned

on, you know, the Lemur to apply to this? If I'm going out to buy one, which one should I choose? I know that Lemur Pro is not quite available right now because they're coming out with a new version. And I just, I wonder how that's going to compare. That's a huge question I have. Well, I think your question actually gets at the root of why I think this might be the Linux laptop. Now, there's always going to be edge cases for different use cases and jobs and price points. You got to fit your situation and all that. But when you're talking about a laptop that's $1,100 that you can safely recommend to anyone that wants to be a Linux user that wants

a Linux first machine, I think this laptop fits the bill. And also one of the things that I know this sounds silly guys, but think about it from like audience members email in and they want to know where to go to get a Linux computer. HP dev one.com. It's just simple, right? You don't go to like Dell and search for the Linux machine and go through that really crazy ass complicated configurator what'd you say it was called sputnik yeah and with this it's like there's one option and you buy it it's like you click it check out done right it's a very simple process and then to get to your core question about how it compares to something like the lemur and this is my honest opinion hp is a tier one hardware vendor This is my honest opinion.

HP is a tier one hardware vendor and their build is better than what Clevo does. And the Lemur, while it's a good machine with good performance, it's not necessarily manufactured by a tier one hardware manufacturer. And there is a difference in the build quality. And this has a really great arrangement of performance and price. You know, not everybody wants a 14-inch screen. Not everybody wants an AMD system, although I think the experience is just fantastic. And the fact that everything is supported out of the box by the kernel means that it is a trouble-free experience. It doesn't, and it's not necessarily just a pop OS thing.

I think so because of that, I feel like it's a notch above the Lemur. I think it's even better option than the XPS because the XPS is the Intel architecture with the Intel graphics and sort of the limitations of what Intel can do right now. Now, they are doing the 12th gen in the latest XPS, but that's not available with Linux yet. I don't know how that would stack up. But I know that the AMD stack in a laptop

is what I've been waiting for. The Zen 3 architecture with its APU, I feel like I've been waiting for it for years and it's all in one tight tier one package. That's the difference. So it's a good question. I don't know how System76 feels about it. I mean, I hope that they're making a little bit off every sale or something and I hope they can use this as ideas to build their own hardware one day. I'd love to see that. Yeah. They, they teased that a little bit when we were there and that would be fantastic, but I'm sure it sounds like the connections that they made at AMD would be really good long-term connections. And I'm sure everyone on every team learned a little bit about

this whole process. What do you think the dev two should have that this one doesn't have? You know, are there any features that you're like, Oh, I would really love this. You know, maybe core boot is one of those things that would be nice. Core boot would be probably a number one. That's the biggest one that was sent in by the audience too. I did ask, uh, the answer I got about core boot is not in this version. It was initially on the to-do list, but it's a big job and they just didn't have another year to work on it. However, it's probably better to have a good experience. As you mentioned before, right, you're doing a certain number of new things.

And if that was going to make like battery life work or like maybe suspend was worse or something, that's not worth it right now. However, they would not commit to this. They wouldn't even come out and directly say this. But you do this long enough, you get a sense of these things. The idea is that if this is a successful product, there will be a line of dev ones, future dev one version two, and core boot is on that list. You know, I'll tell you in using this, I like a lot more about it than I don't like, but there are a few things I don't like.

tell you in using this i like a lot more about it than i don't like but there are a few things i don't like the things i don't like is i have had twice now some kind of unsettling wi-fi issue the real tech wi-fi card in there and at one point when i was just installing software like a madman and i was uh installing steam's games and stuff the wi-Fi just kind of dropped out. And I brought up D message and I saw some messages in there about power saving. So I went into the menu, turned off the Wi-Fi, turned it back on. It fixed it. Problem solved. Then this morning when I arrived at the studio, I brought it out of sleep. It had been in sleep, you know, since about yesterday at dinnertime.

It just didn't seem to find the wi-fi i brought up the wi-fi networks and it just sat there spinning it's been on the wi-fi before so i shouldn't have to connect and i never found any open networks so again i brought up d message and i got a mac power on failed and failed to power on mac failed to pull messages just kind of looping reboot fixed it i probably could have fixed it another way. I just decided to reboot. I think maybe it's power management. It might actually be something that's specific to Ubuntu

because I have had other situations where Ubuntu-based laptops are very aggressive on the Wi-Fi power saving. And maybe where Fedora doesn't do it that way by default. And I've had that experience. So I don't really know. And I haven't had a chance to track it down because it literally happened this morning before the show.

You mentioned it was serviceable. Is that one thing you could swap out so I don't really know. And I haven't had a chance to track it down because it literally happened this morning before the show. You mentioned it was serviceable. Is that one thing you could swap out? I'll have to check. That's a good question. Battery life jumps around a lot. That's my other criticism. Just the estimator and GNOME. I don't know.

That could be a firmware update fixes that. It does get firmware updates over LVFS. So check that box. Yeah, yeah. And that may be something that gets resolved with time, or perhaps it's a Gnome update, or perhaps just as it gets several charge cycles, which is really what I suspect. When it gets several charge cycles under its belt, it's only had a couple. I've been really slamming this thing, so I haven't really had a proper

charge and discharge cycle with it. When it gets a few of those, I suspect it'll probably sort itself out a little bit. So those are are my criticisms and that's a pretty short list because i think both are solvable i think they're both actually software problems um but i'm not positive if the dev 2 could have could have a bigger battery that would make me tempted to want like a 2k screen or something maybe you know i would be maybe a little hesitant with the current battery size because i get that that's one of the major trade-offs. You know, I got a 2K screen on my ThinkPad, and I won't do that again.

Is that right? Yeah, it's just not the right spot for Linux. I don't know why, man. It works great on the desktop with a 27-inch screen, but on a 14-inch screen, it's murder. And you end up having to use, like, I have to do it all the time. You go in there, scale up the fonts. You have to scale up everything. It works best if your desktop supports fractional scaling because 200% is way too much.

Right, right. It hasn't been great. I really think you either go 1080p. That's the best experience. So what you want to do is optimize for the best display at 1080p because I still think that's where Linux is at its best. Or you go 4K. But or you go 4k but when you go 4k there's a lot of performance trade-offs and there's also a lot of ui trade-offs still unless you're living in a totally gtk4 or gtk3 and later kde world uh there's a lot of issues

like you open up things like reaper or mumble it's true yeah they may not scale nicely yeah so whereas 1080p you don't have that. And you can actually scale down a little bit if you want and get a little more screen real estate. So I've kind of gotten back on the 1080p bandwagon. So I don't know if I'd actually tweak that for the version two unless the broader Linux landscape had gotten better. But I'd like to have the option, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Could see that. A few more options. I'd like to be able to build it with more Ram at, you know, just from the factory. You know, you don't have an option right now to do that. Yeah.

Right. So, you know, your, your normies won't be able to customize it. I guess we can. And I think the biggest negative that I can think of, and the biggest thing they either need to change as soon as possible,

or definitely with version two is it's US only right now. And I think that's such a shame. Yeah, because I think this is the best Linux laptop probably ever made. And it's a damn shame that it's limited to the US. And I can't believe the pricing for this thing, especially these days. And the other thing, the shipping on these things is ridiculous they're shipping them out in like two three days so it's the upside to not having a configuration right like and being a tier one to go yeah and they can afford to have some inventory but you know

when you're a business that matters like if you want to get equipment for a new hire it's nice to be able to get it within a couple of days so i think that's fantastic i'd love to see a fingerprint reader in there perhaps as well and the other thing that I would probably tweak is I would probably move the power button. You see where the power button is? Yeah, it's right above the backspace and kind of next to a row where you've got your delete and home and page up and page down on the far right-hand side. Uh-huh. But where is it again, Wes? Between backspace and delete.

Yeah. Yeah. I can see hitting that accidentally, maybe kind of often. I haven't yet. I also have not yet. Yeah. And what happens if I do hit it? Okay, now at the end of the world, at least on pop, it just brings up, hey, do you want to turn this off?

I could see that being a little annoying, though. Yeah, I mean, just, you know, that's, again, that's the laptop they forked this from. That's where it is. So speaking of that awkward question how well does it run windows you know what if you're gonna dual boot this thing i assume fine right because it's forked from a windows line i would think so funny enough i assumed when i got this out of the box on office hours it arrived live while we're doing office hours so i unboxed it on office hour six i think i said in that episode i'll have like fedora on it by sunday i think i said something

like that but i haven't and i was i it by sunday i think i said something like that but i haven't and i was i didn't even think to try windows on there pop is pretty good where it falls down in my opinion is apt just as a quick aside i decided to install steam from the pop shop i don't think i'll do that again ah i had a bad time well or i'll change it from the flat pack because by default installed the flat pack version of steam, which I was fine with because that's worked great for me on Fedora. And then I launched steam and I get this error message that, um, like I can't steam hardware,

steam accessories, or some steam package is missing. And it tells me to apt get install, or it tells me, you know, to basically install this. And I knew right then and there I was in trouble because I figured, all right,

this probably exists. It's just locked up in a flat pack or something, or the flat pack is sandboxed and I can't see it or whatever. But I'll go along. I'll do what I'm told to do because this is what a regular user would do. So it tells me to install this package. So I install that package on the command line like it tells me to. And, of course, that package pulls in Steam, the dev, as a dependency.

So now I've got two copies of Steam on this machine. That's too much Steam. You never know which one you're launching. Neither one of them is aware of each other. And yeah, you don't know which one you're launching when you just type Steam into the very nice cosmic launcher. Thankfully, you know, you can remove a flat pack with a scalpel, unlike a lot of times with apps.

So I just removed the flat pack, but it's things like that. I described it to my co-host, Mike, that apt feels like 90s technology that we've just dragged forward because it for so long was better than anything else we had and now it's not and you know when you look at what happened to linus tech tips when they were trying out pop os it again was an apt issue if i was not familiar with the linux landscape and i was just trying to get steam running on this laptop as a reviewer, I just would have hit an issue there. And I would have had a messed up thing, you know, with my gaming setup.

It's just that kind of stuff. It's no one's fault in particular, really. It's just sort of the world of apt-get right now. Yeah, right. And kind of where some of the curation ends in the experience. To Pop's credit, they do have pretty good Nix package support, and they will even do auto-Nix updates and stuff like that. That's right.

So it's not like they're not thinking of this, but I'm just saying, like, right now, that's where things are at. I got a question that came in. Does it run a mainline kernel, or does it need closed-source blobs to take full advantage of the hardware? I know some laptops require blobs for certain power management features. I'm hoping this is 100% mainline. It is.

And I asked this question directly because HP and System76 are doing QA on every firmware, kernel and major Pop!OS update that will go on the dev one. In fact, Carl said on the call that they are going to indefinitely QA Pop!OS on the dev one.

They have dev ones there and they're going to do indefinite QA. That's impressive. That's another reason why I think maybe it's worth sticking with Pop because when you first install it, they say, and they're very clear about it. I think you'd like this, Wes. They ask you if you want to submit analytics to HP. And when, if you say yes, they actually show you the JSON.

Oh, that's great. They're going to send. So you can just read the JSON file. Yeah. Okay. I'm okay with this or not. Yeah. And so you can choose to do it or not. It's to send. So you can just read the JSON file. Yeah. Okay, I'm okay with this or not. Yeah. And so you can choose to do it or not.

It's not by default and you can choose to opt in. And what they said what they're going to do with that data, because I asked, is that they are planning to do continuous improvements to Pop! OS and to the drivers in the firmware based on the data they collect. And they're going to try to see, like, are people upgrading the RAM? Is that something we should offer? That kind of stuff. Interesting. That's what they're using that for. But you don't have to do it. And they're going to try to see, like, are people upgrading the RAM? Is that something we should offer? That kind of stuff. So that's what they're using that for. But you don't have to do it. And yes, everything is being mainlined.

And they are doing the QA before they mainline it. So that's pretty great. Is it upgradable? The website says it supports 64 gigs of RAM. How would you compare it to the XPS 13 came in from Grant? Yes, it is upgradable, Grant. And I think the XPS 13 is a better looking machine.

It's a more aggressive design. I think it's trying to kind of compete more with the MacBook Air. I think this is kind of a mix of the XPS and the ThinkPad in kind of a more utility design, but skewing a little bit nicer because it is that magnesium alloy. It does have a real nice profile when it's closed. It does feel really solid and well-built in the hand. It doesn't feel plasticky. I wasn't sure exactly what it was made out of at first.

Yeah, I could see it being metal or like a really nice plastic. Yeah, but it is magnesium alloy, I was told. And then when you buy it, you have the option to get it with the HP 935 Crater wireless mouse. That's an $80 add-on. It's actually not a bad mouse. They sent it in as well. 12 weeks of battery life. Okay.

Here's what I liked about it. As you can see, I'm using the USB-A dongle. I just like that. But it also does Bluetooth. And it comes with a USB-C charging cable, and it charges over USB-C. See, that's nice. Yeah, modern. Yeah.

And it's got a bunch of cool buttons, including buttons that can basically do macros. Whoa. I could use this for like doing multiple things. Yeah. Changing shots, perhaps. Yeah, exactly. And they, System76, created a graphical configurator to set all that stuff up on the mouse. They also offer the launch keyboard for 285 because HP said they just wanted to offer a keyboard they knew was good that worked with Linux that developers would like.

I know 285 for some folks seems crazy for a keyboard. I know a guy that's got a $1,000 keyboard, though. So, you know, to each their own, I suppose. I mean, we spend all day on it, so it seems to make sense. Yeah. Hey, man, you're talking to a guy who's literally got one right here. So, yeah, I bought that with my own money. Why don't they make them with padded keys or auto type

you just think things and it types for you oh wouldn't that be cool then you wouldn't need a keyboard i guess yeah although you'd probably need a neural interface so there is that so i think as i used it as i continue to use it i have begun to like it more and more and more and it's actually been a long time since i've come on air and said, this is the laptop I recommend. But this is the laptop I recommend. You know, I started very skeptical. I've never really liked an HP laptop. I have owned one. I have owned one. And I've also supported hundreds in IT. And that's where I really kind of built a disdain for them because Windows and HP hardware and corporations were always trying to buy like the cheapest

laptop possible. And so I came in pretty skeptical, you know, because the design, too, didn't didn't blow me away at first, too. Like I wasn't immediately drawn to it. And so it's one of these situations where I kind of started on the all right, this can be one of those where Chris goes on air and has a rant on HP. And I talk about the years of, you know, issues I've had with HP. And then I used it and I used it and I used it

and then I benchmarked it, which I will have links in the show notes to some open benchmarks if you'd like to compare it to your system. Super easy to do that. And now it's my, I think it's the best Linux laptop ever made. And it's my totally do recommend laptop.

And I think the price is totally fair. I think this is easily a $1,500 laptop going for, you know, $1,100. Are you going to try some new distros now that you've had some time with Papawas? Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I think so mostly just because I really like Fedora and I really like Nix on laptops now. But if you've got any questions, feel free to boost them in or send them at linuxunplugged.com slash contact. I'll try to get them answered.

Bitwarden.com slash Linux. I'll try to get them answered. Bitwarden is fully open source, trusted by millions of users. You know we trust it. You guys know we use it as our password manager. You know that. Part of what made me choose that is Bitwarden's open source. It's what Wes and I use to manage our passwords, our two-factor codes, and other sensitive data. And we're finally getting Brent on board, too. You know we've achieved something there. And I love the support that Bitwarden offers. If you get stuck, if you have a family member or a friend that you've recommended to Bitwarden, they got you covered there. On top of that, they're always rolling out new features.

They just added a new quick account switcher to Android. This is absolute fire, you guys. You're sitting there trying to fill out a password. Oh, crap. That's a business login, not a personal login. Oh, you know what? Tap an icon, switch over to the other account. Boom.

Now you're filling that out. They've recently introduced a new username generator. So that way you're using a unique username and a unique password when you're signing up for a site or a service. Man, is that not super great? And they've also now begun working with certain email relay services like Firefox Relay or Non-Addy or Simple Login or more. You can just put in your API key, and then when you go create an account now at a service, you know, like an app or a website or whatever, it'll generate the password, it'll generate the username and it'll give them a unique email address

and it makes sure you get all that stuff, you keep track of all that stuff and it all still gets back to you. That right there, killer feature right there. And you guys know this, but maybe someone you know, maybe a family, a friend, maybe the place you work,

maybe they really haven't gotten the religion of good password hygiene. And I just, I got to just say, like, there are so many things you could do, but there's really one thing you must do to protect yourself online. And that is using a unique password at every website, every service, every app. And now you can combine that with a unique username and a unique email address and keep it all in Bitwarden and get access to it super quick. On my iPhone, I have it set up with Face ID. So when it's time to fill out a password, I pull my phone up.

It scans my damn face, puts it right in there. Boom. You know what? Next thing you know, I've unlocked the site or whatever. It's so easy. I can't believe people aren't doing it all the time. I feel like I want to like parachute down and give people Bitwarden to save them from some password mess they're probably living in. Maybe just be easier if everybody went to bitwarden.com slash Linux and tried it

out for themselves. Or your business, you know, maybe you got an open source team that could use some good password hygiene. Any of that, go try it out, share it with a friend, tell somebody about it, and support the show. Bitwarden.com slash Linux. Some quick feedback this week, Greg wrote in about us trying out this new fangled video thing when we're doing the live stream. Oh, no. Oh, wait. I put my shirt back on. Brent, you put cameras in the studio again? You know, we're always consuming illegal substances while we podcast. You can't do that. You know, last time I was there, I did that, and I thought, I'm just going to wait a few months before turning them on. They'll never notice.

Greg writes, I just watched Linux Unplugged 4.6.0. I want to add my thumbs up for the video version. I really miss the video versions of Lass and TechSnap and Stoked. Thank you for the great shows. Well, thank you, Greg. I don't have a lot of thoughts on it because we're trying to be really low-key about the fact that we're doing video.

It's true. We're not making a big deal. It's not a big deal. We're not going to put too much effort into it, and we're not going to ruin the audio shows. It's just a little bit of extra fun on the side. It's really just because so many dang people are working from home now and sitting at their desks,

and we can do it, too, and it's something that I kind of wouldn't mind easing back into the right way and taking our time. So if, if someone maybe would want to check it out, wherever they go, Chris,

if they wanted to see some, uh, some of our video stuff, great question. Jupiter dot tube. Jupiter dot tube is where the live streams will be. And the archives of those plus other specials that we upload stuff like that. Jupiter dot tube.

That's a, that's a great question, isn't it? Look at that, Brentley. I think we may have also mentioned it on the latest Office Hours, if you want to check that out. OfficeHours.here. And now it is time for Le Boost. Limiting Factor wrote in with a thousand sats about Tumbleweed.

It always feels like discovery in GNOME software is an afterthought to the distro, not just tumbleweed, but especially tumbleweed. Yeah, I think that's because it sits on top of package kit, which then sits on top of the actual package manager. There's a lot of layers going on. A lot of sitting. You think I might be part of it? It's kind of impressive that it works at all some days. Yeah, I think this is in reference to my mentioning how I was having a hard time with Discovery kind of hiccuping with trying to help me solve the problem last week

on my Tumbleweed install here. And I think that's a pretty accurate description of how it felt. It was like, oh, yeah, this just isn't going to work for me. If you're doing the one use case, which is like updating your system

and everything's going really well. Perfect. But as soon as something goes system and everything's going really well, perfect. But as soon as something goes wrong, it's not really that helpful. But then again, maybe you shouldn't be running Tumbleweed if you're that kind of person. Maybe. Although, Tumbleweed can be for everyone. Boosting in with another row of ducks. That's my house, I love you.

2,222 sats six days ago. All this Nix talk and the new graphical Calamari's installer makes me want to switch to Nix on a system or two. Hey, more power to you, Golden Dragon. You got this. Let us know how it goes. I love it. The road ducks always makes me smile. It always does.

User 309 boosted in two days ago with 5,000 sats. Hey, Chris, long-time listener and supporter, User 309 boosted in two days ago with 5,000 sats. Hey, Chris, longtime listener and supporter. I wanted to boost you up and give you some unsolicited advice. Well, first of all, I think when I ask you to boost, that is solicited advice. So love the video content, but stop dicking around and get Brent a proper setup for his house. Calling you out right here on the show. Calling me out.

Calling me out. You know, I think that's because Brent was grousing on office hours, right? So now the audience is coming to his defense. I tell you what. Sorry, Chris. But you know, Wes and I were talking about this before the show. We really, really think it's time for Brent to get a new computer. That's part one, right? It's bandwidth two, but it's also his computer. And so Wes and JB are going to go in on a brand new HP Dev 1 for Brent. We haven't told Brent yet. So surprise, Brent, you're getting a new computer.

That's amazing. I really like, I like the Dev 1. So you're getting one. It's going to be your podcast machine. Holy jeez. So that'll help with the compute. You'll only have to use one computer now. There you go.

I'm really excited to find out how you managed to break it. Well, I promise to find a way. Yeah. Well, that's just it. Actually, you are JB's chief QA man. You are the QA chief. And honestly, why not? Why not throw a little Brent QA at this thing? Because HP actually has dedicated staff just for the dev one. Oh, so I can call them up and tell them they need something to do. You're saying Brent can whip them into shape. Right. They got to justify keeping them around.

I think we know a few people at System76's QA who would love to hear me come in with a few little maybe challenges for them. And I really think this is, first of all, I think this is a laptop that people are going to be skeptical about. And I think they have some justification in being skeptical about it. They could be skeptical about pop or they could be skeptical about HP or what are their skepticals about? I think there's going to be some and I think it's probably going to be somewhat justified. But I think as time goes on and more people get

their hands on and you're going to see a whole bunch of reviews dropping over this weekend or the next few days because everybody's finally getting, you know, they've been doing the work. I think you're going to see that that opinion shift and so i would like us to have a long-term picture on this as well so that's part of it is you can help us qa and test this thing you know i mean if you stop doing the show you might have to give it back too so maybe maybe that's maybe we yeah then we keep around make that a rule yeah there you go ah i think i'm strangely okay with that it'll only take a couple of days so i don't know how we're going to get it to you because it's probably going to arrive while i'm in montana but it'll arrive at the studio we'll order it tonight. It'll probably

be here by Monday or Tuesday. You want me to house it at the studio. That's really where you're going with this. But no, I want you to QA it for us and we'll give you a better base to do the shows with. So, you know, User 309 was right. Well, that's sweet. Thank you very much.

User 309, thank you for inspiring Chris. Chris, thank you for inspiring me. They also noted that we should be putting chapters in the damn live show. Thank you very much. User 309, thank you for inspiring Chris. Chris, thank you for inspiring me. They also noted that we should be putting chapters in the damn live show. The supporters deserve it. To be fair. To be fair. We did try that last week. We did, yeah. We had a bit of a technical failing in that, but we gosh darn tried it. Yeah.

And we're going to try it again. I don't promise a lot of chapters, but if you want to skip past to, if you want to skip past all the shenanigans, well, you could just get the ad free version, which is just a nice tight production. You got two options, but we will, we will, we're going to try to start dropping some chapters. We're kind of a rigging up a whole new backend for some of our live stuff. So yes, that's one of the things. And then number three, he says we are restricting the growth of the network substantially by not making the video content available to the enormous tech YouTube audience. Take the plunge. The views will be there. Best of luck. Snapdragon. I disagree with Snapdragon on the YouTube thing. I love YouTube. I love watching me some YouTube as a viewer. I enjoy YouTube. As a content creator, I think YouTube is a dark path and I'm not really convinced that I want to bother with it. And I also don't really care if thousands of people don't watch the video. We got Jupiter too, but I'm not totally like

dead set on that. I might consider it one day. I don't know, but that's where my views are at right now. And I don't want us to fuss with it too much. I want us to stay focused on the audio. Yeah, that's fair. Make sure the audio is great. But it's... Yeah, we don't have like a super compelling video product at the moment. And yeah, you're right. If we go down that road too far, that's a whole rabbit hole. Woo-wee. Chris, a little credit. I mean, he threw us into his like KDE setup and he's got the... Which application am I sitting in? Is that a terminal? Yeah, I put you in console. You're getting there.

It's pretty creative. Yeah, I mean, we've gone from like zero to 60 pretty darn fast. Don't get me wrong. It's just that, you know, we don't have like, I know Chris's standards. And like, if he's trying to make like, you know, like a YouTube production,

he's going to want to be competitive with what's out there now. We're going to need a few more boosts, Snapdragon, to get there. Now, if you send us a boost and you didn't hear it on this show, B-O-O-S-T, don't worry. We're going to do another batch of boosts in the next episode. We're doing a double today.

And so we wanted to spread them out a little bit. And we do appreciate your boosts. You can send us one in by getting a new podcast app at newpodcastapps.com. Pick one that's right for you. I like to use the Strike app to grab my sats. But if you don't want to switch the Strike app to grab my sats. But if you don't want to switch podcast apps, you can also grab the Breeze app at breeze, B-R-E-E-Z dot technology. And then you can send a boost and keep your favorite podcast app.

Now, speaking of podcast apps, we do have a pick that I've really been enjoying recently. I was looking for a podcasting 2.0 app that supported things like chapters, live streams, because that's something they're working on that I think is going to be super cool in the podcast. And we're going to want to play with. I really had this mindset of I want to consume the same content

mobily that I do at my desk. And Podverse fits in that really well. It's a podcasting 2.0 compliant. It has a web version that's really nice. And it has an Android and iOS version that's really well. It's a podcasting 2.0 compliant. It has a web version that's really nice. And it has an Android and iOS version that's really nice. It syncs across all of them. It'll do OPML imports. And of course, it supports value for value. If you want to send a boost, it supports cloud chapters, it supports transcripts, it supports alternative tag enclosures and it supports live audio and video streams for podcasting to do apps. It's all in there. And it's such a nice app. And on top of that, Brent it, that kind of stuff and why they publish an F droid and all of that. And I just really,

I support more apps that are this license with this kind of release scheme that do the play store that do iOS and do F droid. You can just get it everywhere. And it's podcasting 2.0. So I will link in the show notes to pod verse. It's pod verse.fm. And I will also in there link directly to Linux Unplugged on Podverse as well as Office Hours. Well, you've sold me. I think I'm going to give it a try.

Yeah, just kick the tires a little bit, see what you think. I know people have been pretty happy with Fountain, but not everybody has. And so there's a lot of options out there. And the fact that this one is FOSS is just so great. And GPL3. I could do with more of that. We really could. And they've published components of it as open source as well, including the web player. That may be coming

as an embeddable piece in the future. Is that right? Yeah. An embeddable web player that supports all the podcasting 2.0 standards. It sounds like our website,

future website, might need this. I see where you're going. I see that smile on your face. I love it. I love it. My understanding is you like open source software. Yeah. I'm kind of a fan. So I'd be you're going. I see that smile on your face. I love it. I love it. My understanding is you like open source software. Yeah, I'm kind of a fan.

So I'd be good with that. I'd be good with that. All right. Well, if you've got questions about the HB Dev 1 or topic suggestions or another piece of hardware you'd like to have us look at, send us an email. LinuxUnplugged.com slash contact or send a boost into the show. We'd love to hear from you. Now, we will not be live next week. So this is normally the spot in the show where I'd say same bat time, same bat channel.

But that ain't happening. I don't have a next bat time, next bat channel. I mean, we got to assume you make it back from your adventures. Yeah. Who knows? I might get over to Montana and the price of gas might be so much cheaper. I might just stay there. I'm still thinking you might end up going north through picking up rent in Canada. Hey! Who knows? That's an idea.

Hand-delivered laptop. I like it. Of course, Linux Action News rolls on. There's always more going on in the world of Linux. You've got a LinuxActionNews.com for that. And, of course, we'll be out at our regular release time. If you subscribe, like 98%, 99% of everybody out there, you just get the show on the regulars.

But you can get the links to what we talked about today at linuxunplugged.com slash 462, right? 462. This doesn't seem possible, Wes. I still feel like we just did 400. I still got some beer. Well, we're about to do 463, so prepare yourself. All right. Well, with that bombshell, that wraps up this week's episode of the Unplugged

Program. We'll see you right back here next week. So so Sounds like your studio winged beast just took off there. You might want to close the window next time. The pet eagle. I know. I know. I tried to get Wes to take it home, but it poops all over everything. Yeah.

And I'm still a little worried, you know, it might attack my small dog. Yeah. Well, there's that. It does try to eat the dogs, but. Oh, watch out, watch out, watch out! Whoa! You got to dodge that thing. You got to watch out.

I know. I've got some talent scars. I asked you not to mic it, too, but you put our last good wireless mic on that damn eagle. I just don't even understand it. You know, for the Colin show. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So, Chris, I'm curious.

Are you going to bring this laptop on your trip? I'm debating that right now. Because that's kind of a defining factor. If you do, then it's like, oh, yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So, Chris, I'm curious. Are you going to bring this laptop on your trip? I'm debating that right now. Because that's kind of a defining factor. If you do, then it's like, oh, wow. Well, I thought I could. But then I thought I could also have Wes take it for a week while I'm gone. Ooh. And try it out, too.

That's interesting. Yeah. And, you know, that could be. I mean, I don't know if you'd like to, Wes. I think that might be. I mean, I wouldn't mind taking it, too. But at the same time, I'd like to get I think that might be I mean I wouldn't mind taking it too but at the same time I'd like to get

you know your experience with it as a developer and you know somebody that's not me trying it oh yeah

it could be fun to try to set up put a vidya game on there too and I don't know what you'd do you know just to keep it clean

does Kexec work on that thing I can find out