LINUX Unplugged - 499: 'velopers Choose Snap

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Ubuntu makes its anti-Flatpak stance official, while KDE and GNOME team up to turn Flathub into a universal Linux app store. Plus, we try the Intel Arc GPU. Could this new hardware make Linux bulletproof?

I'm having a good time. You know, it's nice to have our buddies in studio. Jeff and Brent are here with us today. Hey, guys. Hello. Hello. Well, hi. Hey.

It was interesting because Brent was coming from somewhere in Canada and Jeff was coming from California. And the question was which one of them would get here first. Both had to go through like a little bit of winter wonderland for a bit. And somehow, actually, and I don't really know how the math worked out on this bread got here first i actually choose to lie when i leave uh so that way i have this slick advantage yeah yeah those californians that's what it was jeff i know how you drive too so you i mean you're kind of like you go go go go and then you stop for emergency body functions and gas yeah that's it yeah yeah so like i thought i actually had my money on you because here i am like stopping and taking in the columbia river

and slowly taking a jaunt and like just kind of taking it in if brett wasn't lying he was three hours ahead of me and then all of a sudden i was an hour ahead of him but then he got here 10 minutes before me it's pretty great i tell you keep them guessing you know what you do i like it and it was nice because i was already here at the studio um it was a saturday but we were we were hanging out here at the studio and i hadn't told any i hadn't told levi that brent was coming and when that door opened up and brent came walking through levi was so excited to see him. He's jumping all over him.

Oh, sweet. Yeah, I got both ears licked. Not anybody gets that. I know. You know, see, that's why I'm saying, Wes, you got to lick both ears. Hello, friends, and welcome into your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. And my name is Brent. Hello, gentlemen. And we have a special guest in studio.

Hello, Jeff. Hello. Hey, buddy. Welcome in. Coming up on the show today, we're going to share our thoughts on Ubuntu and Flavor's officially removing Flatpak and taking a pretty clear stance. And we'll also talk about the recently announced efforts by GNOME and by KDE to turn Flathub into the universal Linux app store. And they're throwing some serious money behind the effort as well. And it's finally arrived, guys.

And it's finally arrived, guys. After weeks of waiting for Linux 6.2 to ship and Mesa, we have the Intel Arc installed in studio and tested. We'll tell you about this dedicated Intel graphics card with fully open source drivers. And we'll talk about if this could be the ticket to truly unlock a rock solid Linuxux desktop we'll share our thoughts and some tests that we've done and then we'll round it all out with some great boosts some pics and a lot more so before we get there let's say good morning to our friends over

at tailscale tailscale.com y'all it's a mesh vpn protected by wirecard it's a flat network that you can get up in moments. We love it. It'll change your networking game. Go say good morning to our friends over at Tailscale and try it for free for up to 20 devices at Tailscale.com. Before we get into the show, though, I got to say time-appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room. Welcome in.

Hello, friends. Good evening. Howdy. Hello, hello, everybody. So nice to have you here. Jeff, you and I are on the other side of the Mumble Room. Yeah, I. Good evening. Howdy. Hello, hello, everybody. So nice to have you here. Jeff, you and I are on the other side of the Mumble Room. Yeah, I almost said hello right there. Traitor.

It's slowly happening. Last week, we pulled in Casey. This week, we've got Jeff. Coming for you. Next is Mini Mac. Yeah, Mini Mac. When are we going to get you in here? Yeah, just a little trip.

Yeah, we got to get Dan out here eventually, too. This is something we got to make happen. We got to make that happen. The Mumble Meetup. Ooh, that's even alliterative. I like that. I tell you. Well, until we get there, we do have the in-person meetup. We're kind of celebrating a little bit for Linux Unplugged 500 next week. So the day before,

Saturday, March 4th, 4 p.m., we're going to get together at the 192 Brewing Company in Mount Vernon, Washington. Yeah, I know, it's a weird spot, but you know what? I love these guys, and I want to give this company some business. It's a little local brewery in my hometown. So come celebrate episode 500 with some brews. They got indoor, outdoor seating.

They got kid-friendly stuff. My kids are going to be there. And the venue also has food. Dog-friendly, too, I think. It is, sir. It is. That's meetup.com slash jupiterb Broadcasting for the LUP 500 details next weekend. Rumor has it the Bitcoin dad will be there, too.

Oh, great. Oh, that's fun. Yep. Yep. I'm glad. And of course, you guys are all going to be there, too. I'm actually quite excited about this, and I can't believe it's happening. Like, how is it?

Yeah, I don't think I fully processed 500 episodes either. It's a weird thing wes though is totally non-phased by it west like it's just a number i can tell come on wes give me excited give me all hyped up about it i'm looking forward to episode 1000 personally yeah you know it's like the next order of magnitude sort of thing i know i agree i agree if anything i wish we could just do more shows and get there faster you know that's how i feel about it but um come celebrate if you can and if you can't maybe join us consider joining us live next sunday we will be doing episode 500 live sunday at noon pacific 3 p.m eastern over at jupiter.tube. And if you want to send us a message to celebrate episode 500, boost in with at least 9,529 sats

because we're at 9.5 years of the show. You're welcome to boost more. You just didn't have to tell me it's for episode 500. And then we'll set all those boosts aside and read them on the big 500, which is kind of a special moment to get your boost read on episode 500.

And I have to say, although it's fine, but it would be a special treat if we got a couple of baller boosts and we got to the top of the charts for episode 500. To see 500 at the top of the charts would be really something. The challenge is the amount of sats is getting up there now

because it's taken off. And so some big boosts are landing on these other shows, which is great to see. But it just means it takes a little bit more to get to the top of the charts these days. But these other shows which is great to see but it just means it takes a little bit more to get to the top of the charts these days but it would

be a nice treat to see 500 at the top now with Linux 6.2 that came out last Sunday as we were recording the show a lot of really good stuff landed so much stuff that we almost just wanted to

try to pack it all in but we realized we couldn't but some great improvements to ButterFS both in in performance but also in raid 5.6 capabilities and a lot of patches to get us closer to apple silicon graphics and and uh internal chips and um even closer to like wi-fi and all that stuff working really solid really great to see the just sort of the upstreaming work done by the project as they said they would do. It's getting there guys. It's getting there.

It's really nice to see. And so six, two is a big deal for those reasons, right? But for us here, we were really excited about Linux 6.2 because that meant that the Intel arc graphics would go from experimental to officially blessed and without having to do any weird flags or anything like that on your system and PPAs or whatever you might do

to get special versions of Mesa installed. Without having to do any of that. If you have Mesa 22.5 and later and Linux 6.2, out of the box, the Intel dedicated ARX graphics works. And it's a big deal. So much so after the show last week and just

after 6.2 dropped i was pressuring you to just put it in right before that you were like smartly you're like no no i'll do it after coder that's true although you know i almost did do it i was like yeah i kind of want to but i should wait to make sure coder gets out so i've been i've been sort of just standing on pin breaks over here waiting to hear how yeah yeah i'm i'm i'm really thrilled and i think you know i should just give a little bit of a mention that intel creating its own dedicated graphics card has an interesting and windy history they've tried this before and people were skeptical that intel would even ever ship the arc but it's here it's real and it's glorious um i have it installed on my system it's not a crazy system it's a like a 6gen i7 it's not a necessarily

blow away box and the experience was really truly exactly what i was hoping for i wanted to be able to put a graphics card in and i want to turn computer on and I want graphics working and that's it I don't want to do more work than that and that's what the arc gives me and it means full Wayland compatibility it means full open source driver stack so I'm running plasma 527 on Wayland using all open source video drivers on the Intel arc and all I had to do was have Linux 6.2 and Mesa 22.5. And the desktop feels snappier and just more responsive than it has in years. So that part is all like really good news, right? That's like, I'm happy to report, if your benchmark is you want a really nice,

solid running Linux workstation with a fully accelerated desktop and an accelerated browser and things like that, I'm here to report with Linux 6.2 and Mesa 22.2, really, maybe you should think about 22.5, and later, it's here. However, there are some caveats. I knew it. Couldn't be too good. No, in fact, the first ones you brought up, Wes, is a lot of the stuff that we're playing with these days, like stable diffusion, whisper for transcription, they're really focused on the NVIDIA cards and stuff like that.

And they don't even run out of the box on the Intel stuff, do they? No, there's some things you can do, but you have to, you know... It was really nice to see some of these open-source tools where they had, you know, little communities that have sprung up around them, have got just slick little setups. You run a script or you pull down a Docker container and you've got access to this without having to understand Conda or how to install the right packages

to get acceleration working besides maybe making sure you pass in a, you know, a graphics card device to your container. Sure, sure. So these are containers that are kind of already set up, like, with the Intel PyTorch stuff, or? Well, yeah, and I mean, we've seen them used. There's, like, a couple different options

for, like, easy web containers with Whisper, or there's all kinds of web UI's for stable diffusion, and the Docker stuff handles, like, getting the models and standing everything up and making it a really easy process that's quite accessible. And I think that's where you're going to run into some issues if you're hoping that'll just all work with the Arc.

There are something called the Intel extensions for PyTorch. So if you have a PyTorch or TensorFlow model, it looks like you can use those to sort of optimize the models, either for Intel CPUs, but also for Intel GPUs. And Shufflebox, over in our Matrix chat, did some benchmarking

and was playing around with it and getting it to work with Whisper. So it seems like it's pretty easy. You kind of just got to go install the Intel extension for PyTorch, load it, and then add a couple, two or three lines of code

that goes and says, like, hey, make sure we optimize this model for the Intel GPU. Okay. So I think these are things that you should be aware of because it is maybe a little extra step or two to get it working on an Intel graphics card than it might be if you had an NVIDIA card in your system. It does seem like that there's some hope of that changing, at least on the open source stuff.

You know, I've seen a lot of open pull requests or issues discussing like how might we do this i did find something called stable diffusion dot open vino which seems to work and run accelerated on intel gpus so it's coming online it's just like not going to be quite as easy as maybe you're used to if you did some dabbling on an nvidia system but don't you get the sense that this is just early days that it because it is open source because it's just integrated into the system eventually these things are going to update and it's all just kind of going to be supported like neil points out in the chat room that fedora 38 for example is going to ship with 6.2 and and a later mesa and so it just means on a fedora 38 system arc's going to work out of the

box and isn't that just kind of going to be the way all this open source stuff will work is inevitably you won't have to run the intel version of this to make it go i mean it does seem like there's a lot of incentive there because it is easy to change it is open right people can start submitting requests and do some of the legwork to make it happen and then also i think there's something about the the right price point and functionality of this card and interest like you have maybe you don't need like a super beefy thing you want something to accelerate your your desktop but it would be nice to also maybe run you know do a little acceleration on the side seems like a lot of people are picking them up which will further help you know have motivation for people to actually make them compatible slowly but surely right i mean that's kind of as people get it and

that kind of thing i hope so uh i all right so moving away from do you want a rock solid desktop and you just want all your desktop applications to to work great and be well performant for a reasonable price? Moving beyond that, let's talk a little bit about gaming here. And I should mention, because I think this is definitely worth considering, is I have, thanks to listener Nev, the Intel A380. This is a budget-priced card. You can find this card for under $200 right now for a dedicated GPU in a market where GPUs are crazy expensive, right? So I just want to make that aside,

that this is not meant for high-end performance gaming. This is budget oriented. And to that end, I experienced pretty lackluster gaming results. I have to say with a few exceptions, um, a few like open source games, like,

uh, um, a couple of open source first person shooters that work pretty well that are based on the quake three engine. Uh, yeah, those worked fine. But even older games like Batman Arkham As asylum or no man's sky were no go no man's sky and batman

arkham asylum they work they load you can move around but the frame rate's just kind of unusable but they do actually load so the reason why that matters is because it means all of the vulcan driver stuff is working all All the acceleration stuff is working. It's working with steam. It's, you know, compatible with proton. All that stuff matters. I think if I got a higher end arc, I would have had better results. But what I wanted to set out to answer was, could this be a good production card?

Something you throw in a machine that's your workstation, that is a machine that's at a job site, something like that. Because I have over here this Thalia with 13th gen Intel CPUs in it. And I dream of a world, not because I'm some sort of Intel fanboy, but because of the practicality, I dream of a world where it's all Intel, Intel MVMEs, Intel CPU, intel chipset intel network card intel gpu and it's a dedicated gpu and that has to be a stable stack because intel for better or for worse you know maybe you can i'm really not happy with the software unlocking of the cpu stuff i have to put that aside because they are good reliable upstream open source contributors and their stuff just gets built into the kernel. And that makes a difference.

So I really am pretty quite impressed with the Arc 380 if you have all of the prerequisites. If you want to try it on a system that doesn't have Linux 6.2 and Mesa 22.2, you're not going to have a good time. But you just cross that threshold. And now I'm over here living it up on Wayland because I was able to replace a system that was NVIDIA and X11. And now I'm on Wayland. I got Plasma. It's so smooth on Wayland. Everything is nice. My screen tearing is gone. You know, I'm very happy with it. So for a budget, for a budget car to just run your desktop applications, I give the A380 the unplugged thumbs up. And I'm kind of excited to be talking about this in 499 because it feels like a new era. If Intel sticks with this for a while and people

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Sign up today at linode.com slash unplugged. Get the $100 in 60-day credit and support the show as we almost round 500 episodes. linode.com slash unplugged. Well, you may have seen a recent post over on the Ubuntu discourse making the rounds titled Ubuntu Flavor Packaging Defaults. I thought it was probably appropriate for us to have a discussion here. And let's just start with this little TLDR. Quote,

As part of our combined efforts, the Ubuntu flavors have made a joint decision to adjust some of the default packages on Ubuntu. Going forward, the Flatpak package, as well as the packages to integrate Flatpak into the respective software center, will no longer be installed by default in the next release due in April 2023, Gunnar Lobster. All right, so we have our date, and what's changed here is that the flavors have agreed to comply, and they will also be removing Flatpak by default on any of the Ubuntu flavors, which is now considered the standard, quote, Ubuntu experience. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I wanted to give everybody else a chance to jump in

first. I do want to note, as they say here, users who have used flat pack are not going to be affected. Like if you went and set up flat pack, they're not going to remove it. This is just new defaults for fresh installs. And it's also worth pointing out, obviously, flat pack remains available in the repo. You can install it yourself. Yeah, it's the same. Install flat pack, Flatpak remains available in the repo. You can install it yourself. Yeah, it's the same.

Install Flatpak, set up FlatHub, you're good to go. So let's talk about, though, kind of the message that this sends. And also to kind of make an announcement about it and all of that. I'm curious, Brian, if you have any thoughts just on the top of your mind. I wanted to give you a chance to jump in here on canonical kind of working. I don't think it's fair to say in hand with the flavors because the sense that i have from multiple flavor maintainers is that it's more like comply or else kind of a situation how do you feel about that well that approach itself feels a little

uncomfortable to me because it you know i don't have any experience developing anything as a flavor but the sense i got as a user was that they were kind of offering a difference in some of the philosophical choices that the you know vanilla ubuntu was was giving out and so to make their own decisions seemed like the feature set of flavors ah That's a great point. In other words, you want to remain Ubuntu compatible. You like the Ubuntu ecosystem. You have a skill set there, but perhaps you don't align specifically with Canonical's vision. Yeah, and a lot of flavors we see have different desktop environments,

but that's not their only distinguishing factor. There are a lot of other decisions that get made that make it that they have a strong user base, have different desktop environments, but that's not their only distinguishing factor. There are a lot of other decisions that get made that make it that they have a strong user base that likes those opinions of the choices that they've made. And so I wonder if this is starting to, I don't know, hint at the breakdown of that kind of nicety of having flavors even. You know, if it's just all going to be forced opinions and choices then why even have flavors right it kind of it does give it a sense of uh well you can be

a flavor so long as you do everything we want and then if you don't we won't give you any kind of support or infrastructure wes what do you think about this move? Canonical clearly has a long-term strategy with snaps. In my opinion, I think this is the signal they're never giving up on snaps. Right? Like with Mir and with Upstart, we did see them reverse course. And there were signals that maybe they would do that. We see certain signals around ZFS right now. We're seeing them right now.

We see certain signals around ZFS right now. We're seeing them right now. But it seems like with snaps, this is the signal that they're never capitulating. They're never going to go along with what the community wants. You think this is that the wrong framing even? No, I mean, it's just entertaining to hear it phrased that way. I don't know about never. I do think it at least signals a continued investment for whatever,

you know, near to semi-far term. It's a little sad for me personally, I guess, just because I've spent a lot of time using Ubuntu systems. I'm using an Ubuntu-based system to do the show right now. But they're feeling less and less relevant to the kind of setup that I'm doing on my desktop these days. I mean, between all the NixOS stuff, wanting to play a little more and see sort of updated, you know, fundamentals in the operating system, and then just sort of distancing. I don't use snaps. Flatpaks really have become the sort of dream of the universal package. I mean, you know, there's fine details, it's not perfect, there's a lot of messiness, but it's come such a far way that it's, it's really, you know, we distro hop a lot. We try

all kinds of stuff. And the first thing I do is set up flat hub if it's not already set up by default so I can get all my flat packs installed. And it's just a little, I don't know, a little sad to see Canonical not sort of embracing that. Yeah. Neil, I want to let you jump in here because doesn't it seem like with elementary OS and pop OS and obviously Fedora and Silverblue and even me over on Nixland, flat packs are a more critical part of my desktop setup than ever. And I think they're more part of every desktop other than the canonical Ubuntu ecosystem strategy going forward. It seems like a really big differentiation. It seems like a differentiation in packaging. What are your thoughts? There is a philosophy around branding, that there are two major philosophies, a house of brands and a branding house. Now, in the old days,

Ubuntu was largely a house of brands. So you had Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Zubuntu, Lubuntu, and so on. These were all independently managed, and they were all largely like sharing common infrastructure, but doing their own thing and making their own choices. But the past 10 years, Canonical has reasserted their ownership over the trademark of Ubuntu and basically have been pushing towards a branded house. So you have Ubuntu Bajie, Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu Gnome. Well, not Ubuntu Gnome anymore, but like, you know where I'm going with this, right? Like, so they're asserting that Ubuntu is the primary brand that matters. And that part is fine and all.

And as part of that, there is a level of experience consistency that they want to have across all the flavors. To be fair, Fedora has a similar assertion. stuff like that. But the extent of our requirements for consistency is a bit looser than than canonicals is because Fedora is a community project and the stuff we actually requires mostly around visibility rather than necessarily technology. But we also don't allow people to do things like do weird things to the Fedora word. And like that, that's a thing that Ubuntu did in the beginning and they don't anymore. That sort of thing. Now, coming back to Flatpak versus Snap, it is incredibly important to recognize that Canonical has spent almost, I don't know, 12 years investing in in what eventually became the Snap technology.

And many of the people that have built Sn and may and develop the technology are now in very senior leadership at canonical and to them it is a basically all or nothing affair when it comes to their idea of what ubuntu is intended for and you can see this with ubuntu core and you can see this with how they're transitioning things towards snaps in Ubuntu itself, both in the server and in the desktop front. And I think that's just going to keep happening. And as a flavor that is part of it, like, you're kind of subject to what they expect from you. And if you don't like it, i don't know if i can really have

a whole lot of sympathy left uh unless you want to just i don't reverse takeover or something like that like i don't know what you would do in a circumstance where where you as a flavor maintainer were being told that like from a brand and consistency and experience perspective, this is something that we care very much about and you don't. I don't know what you would do. So from that perspective, I think the flavor maintainers probably agreed in principle and probably voluntarily once it was explained to them what the situation basically is. But from our side, on the outside, it doesn't necessarily look good. And I don't think there was a way to make this look good. There's just no winning a message like this.

Now, Neil, I have a question for you. And I know you can't necessarily speak to, you know, internal Ubuntu and flavor stuff necessarily. But is there another example of a technology that the flavors have been sort of strongly suggested to integrate by default, for instance, like a similar situation that's happened in the past? Upstart was. When Canonical adopted Upstart, they strongly suggested that everything that was going to run in Ubuntu on across the flavors should use upstart jobs and integrate upstart technology rather than relying on compatibility and interfaces for system five in it and stuff there were technical reasons for doing that

it was not a bad decision but it was mostly driven by this is what we're using in the primary flavor this is what we're supporting please get on the train so that we can actually like do this cohesively. Mirror was a different situation because Mirror was designed as a toolkit, admittedly a full fledged toolkit, mind you. But in order for it to work, you had to go to upstream projects and like actually plug Mirror into everything. And that was not an easy challenge thing to do. And most of the flavor maintainers are not programmers. Saying that you should replace your sysv and its scripts with upstart jobs is probably a reasonable ask saying you can't you should probably not include the flat pack packages preceded on your on your on your media and having snap seeded on there if you want to have a tech at all is probably a reasonable thing to ask.

But asking them to, like, write code and change things and whatever in the upstreams is not reasonable to ask. And they've never asked that, as far as I'm aware. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's bizarre where the line gets drawn. There are certain packages that get installed that probably 0.07% of Ubuntu users ever use, but that's in the default installation. You know, and it's, when you just look at it from, I don't know,

just kind of an old school point of view of popular free software gets packaged by a distribution maker. So that way it's easier for users to use the desktop. It just would be a foregone conclusion to package Flatpak. And so it's clear that there is a overall strategy tax

that Ubuntu is now subject to, which means that the Ubuntu experience has been degraded simply to comply with the strategy tax of Ubuntu. And I have a lot of respect for the project and I have a lot of respect for what Mark Shalderworth has done, but I'm a little disappointed to see that because i'd like to see what snaps could do if they

competed head-to-head with flat pack and if snaps can't take the heat i'd like to see them fix so they could take the heat instead of this kind of maneuver but you know what it is their desktop system it is their ecosystem and they work really hard to make it so this is the decision they are absolutely willing to make just like you this is the decision they are absolutely willing to make. Just like you as a user, if you want an Ubuntu environment that has no problems with Flatpak, could switch to Pop!OS. We all have the choice. I'm suddenly quite grateful for Debian. Really, no kidding. All right, Brent, I wanted to give you the final thoughts before we jump into kind of at the same time, there's a whole other aspect, a whole other element to this opening up. Yeah, when I was reading this,

I think many of our first reactions we've kind of given already. But then as I kept reading, I thought, well, if I take the perspective of other distributions who've done kind of the opposite, many of them have Flatbacks installed by default and not snap installed by default and so that has seemed very natural in the other case and so i i think really that's a fine decision and it shouldn't be controversial but maybe it's just the approach that they've taken and at this specific time instead of maybe i don't know a year ago or maybe the communications breakdown what do you think do you think it's coincidence that this announcement comes out and then the next day, was it?

The next day, I think? Maybe two days later? KDE and GNOME jointly announced that they're seeking $100,000 to turn Flathub into a store for the Linux desktop. They say they want to promote diversity and sustainability. Seems like either very bad timing or there's some stuff going

on behind the scenes there. Yeah, right? Don't you get the vibe like maybe Canonical knew this was coming? You get a weird vibe about it. So what's happened here is the Genome folks have sponsored work to add donations and payments to Flathub via Stripe, as well as a way for Vel...

Nope, not Velopers. It's the hip new thing to say. That would be cool. You know, we don't say devs anymore. It's Velopers. And they're also introducing or have introduced a way for developers

to verify their identity so that way you know you're getting a package that's actually from them directly. So they are working together with the company behind KDE and they have a goal

to essentially increase the reach of FlatHub and to make it more of a general app store for all. They feel that FlatHub is uniquely positioned to offer these app store services in a vendor neutral way. They also acknowledge that the Snap Store is likely their biggest direct competitor. the snap store is likely their biggest direct competitor west pain your thoughts i think you and i both had a sense this was coming i even made this one of my predictions you sure did and now here we have it they want to put it all out there they want they want to take it even further and i got my cards on the table i am 100 behind this idea i'm curious what your thoughts

are though i'm excited i who knows there's a lot of you know there's a lot of ways maybe this could go not as we want but as i said earlier i install flat packs all the time i like supporting uh open source projects it just seems like it would be a super convenient way to actually have a good mechanism it's i'm not against spending money but it's you know you have to figure out different ways. There's just so many different... Yeah, it's too much. And if it's an easy way, it's there. I can do a subscription,

or I can just pay and get access to apps that I have paid for. Yeah, that's the thing. Sign me up. Right, like if they added the feature to keep track of what you've paid for, so that way when you're loading a new system, you could just come back to My Apps

or whatever it is, and you could just boop, boop, boop, boop, boop and reload everything. That would be really chef's kiss there. You know, just backing up a little bit. I want to know what you think about this goal for Katie and Genome to come together to create this universal app store, because that has been tried. They even mentioned the click and run store, which I really appreciate as an OG. You know, and our friends over at Elementary OS have their app center where they really tried to give this a go. So this idea has been tried a dozen different times. So I keep that. That's question one. And then question two for you is, do you feel like this is all kind of getting ready for the immutable future?

Because the reason why I have become a lot more serious about my Flatpak usage is I really like the idea of a rolling immutable base. So my base system is constantly updated. But it's separate from my user space applications, which get updated by the vendors when they have updates. And it's totally detached from my kernel, my Mesa stack, like all of that stuff that I'm always, always going to keep updating. I love this idea. And I feel like this is going to become kind of the norm on the Linux desktop in a few years. And I think FlatHub is getting ahead of that. So it's two questions

there. I know it's a lot, but what are your thoughts? Well, seeing KDE and Gnome come together is refreshing. Sort of a little heartwarming. It seems like they both recognize the position they play. It's a lot of camaraderie to this sort of effort. It's nice to see, isn't it? Yeah. Again, early days. Who knows what's going to happen here?

There's a lot that maybe doesn't happen at all. Yeah, that's true. So let's not promise the moon. here there's a lot that maybe it doesn't happen at all yeah we yeah it's true so let's not promise the moon but promising and those are i'm loving where both of those projects are at right now and where they seem to be going so yeah it's very exciting time to be a linux desktop user yeah brent uh the thing that i like about this is that it feels like flat hubs already delivered right they've proven to be a good community resource here. And so I trust when they say they want to take it a little bit further. And this whole like app store for all

the different Linux desktops has been tried probably a half a dozen times. But do you think maybe this is the group to do it finally? Is it possible? Well, I wonder if it feels like the first time that we've had a technology that actually spans all of those in a really cohesive way. And it feels like maybe that answer is yes. Right. It's not dead. It's not RPM this time. That's it.

It's not like a distro-agnostic format that we're trying to push to everyone else. It's like a format that was meant and designed to be used by everyone everywhere without being strictly controlled by, you know, one company. So there's, that's promising. That's a difference, isn't it? Yeah, it is sort of the different, and it could have been app image. I don't, the reason why I don't feel like it could have been snaps is when you read this and we'll have it linked in the show notes.

When you read this pitch over and over again, the, the takeaway I have is that vendor neutrality is pretty important. Now, I don't know, is Red Hat somehow involved in this? Maybe. Flathub has so far, I think, been a good actor in vendor neutrality. And I have seen no indication that Flathub has favored any particular distro over another. any particular distro over another. And so, you know, I actually do believe them when they say they're going for vendor neutrality because their actions have so far seemed to verify that.

I mean, it seems like Flatpaks run well. Flatpaks you get from Flathub run well on pretty much everything we try to try on the show anyway. And they seem to be quite happy to add instructions, right? They've got a little like, oh, here's all these various distros. Here's how you get up and running with Flathub. You know, Wes, I mean, the moment Reaper, our recording application,

starts getting packages of Flathub, I'll seriously consider it. It's been great. Also, you can check out where they're going by going to beta.flathub.org. It's a new UI. There's new options there. There's a lot going on. And you can check it out when you go to beta.flathub dot org. It's a new UI. There's new options there. There's a lot going on. And you can check it out when you go to beta dot flathub dot org.

I'm here for it. I'm looking forward to it and I'm going to look for ways that I can support it. I think it's a good effort and I like the idea. I've always liked the idea. I would have been okay

with App Center taking off. I would have been okay with even Click and Run back in the day. But you know what? This is even better. So I hope it pans out. Bitwarden.com slash Linux. That's where you go to get started with a free trial right now at Bitwarden.com slash Linux. Bitwarden, quite simply, friends, is the easiest way for yourself, a business, or a team to store, share, and sync

your sensitive data. It's what Wes and I use to move around any kind of data that we would consider confidential, anything sensitive, passphrases, even certain bits of data and text. We use Bitwarden. And Bitwarden has a really slick process to be able to share that securely with somebody else if that's the direction you want to go. And everything in your vault is end-to-end encrypted. Zero knowledge encryption, even the metadata. And if you have an existing password manager that you're not very happy with, like just personally, I personally switched from LastPass a few years ago. And if I had known then just how straightforward the migration was, I probably would have done it a few years earlier.

Check out bitwarden.com slash migrate. It's ridiculous how quick they make that process. You're going to love how quick it is. I wish, like I said, I wish when I knew I would have done it sooner. And Bitwarden is open source, so you know that that helps, right? Because you've got millions of eyes on the source code. Teams and organizations, of course, can also do internal audits if they like. That's powerful. And again, one of the reasons why we trust it for our sensitive data.

And Bitwarden has account switching supports. You can move between business accounts and personal accounts or your account and the open source project that you're participating with. And they've made that so good and so slick. It's just zero friction to do that now. And just recently in February, they've added login with device to more clients. So now you can quickly log into Bitwarden without having to use your master password in the browser or the web vault or the mobile apps or the desktop app.

And it's just slick because you're using an existing already logged in app, like on the mobile or on the desktop. And of course, they're constantly iterating on their security, making it better and better. February saw a nice round of updates there as well. I recommend it. I think you should suggest it to people that maybe you know in your life, in your world that could updates there as well. I recommend it. I think you should suggest it to

people that maybe you know in your life, in your world, that could use this as well, because this is one of the low-hanging fruits to make yourself more secure online. A unique username, a unique password, and a unique email address for every site, service, and app you use. That's powerful, and it makes a difference. So if you know somebody out there that could use this, support the show and send them over to bitwarden.com slash Linux. That just feels like a whole lot of winning for everybody involved to me. And if you yourself haven't made the switch yet, let's do it and support the show.

Let's go right now. Bitwarden.com slash Linux. I know it took me a little while to make the switch too, but man, I'm so glad I did. Bitwarden.com slash Linux. I want to say thank you to every listener. bitwarden. We'd love it. Lostin wrote in, and I'm going to feature what they wrote in, Jupiter Party member here from Southwest Florida.

I've been listening since late 2019, right before the world went a bit more crazy. Thank you for all the shows and creating this great community. Just wanted to second the wireless performance issues that I've heard Chris mention in Linux Unplugged 497. I purchased an 11th Gen Framework laptop a few years ago, and I have run into similar issues with Fedora and wireless, just like Chris. I was first jumping around to a bunch of different distributions, trying to figure out which one I wanted to keep, and noticed every time I was on Fedora, my wireless would just not work at its full capacity.

I did stick with Fedora as it has the latest kernel and allows some functionality and everything, even when the issues with the wireless would crop up. It has gotten a little better, but there are times when I still see issues with the wireless. Ah, well, isn't that interesting? So, yeah, I was really impressed that the ThinkPad folks wanted to jump on this issue,

and they're testing it. But I never felt like it was a ThinkPad issue. And I suspect I need to do more testing. But I kind of feel like maybe I did have the issues again recently on Plasma. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, well well that is what i was told would happen um you updated your bug report though right yeah i you know what i did is i i closed the machine and i've set it aside and i have i've just i'm i don't i don't have time for a computer that can't do wi-fi but i will pick it back up in probably about a week and I'll go through the

whole thing. I'm going to respond to the folks at Lenovo and, you know, do all of it. I will do that. But it is when, you know, you're in the middle of things,

it is so frustrating. And then unfortunately, and this really actually does suck is my neighbor came over. She knocked on jupes and she says, I'm switching ISps and uh i have i'm trying it out i have like a 30-day window because like t-mobile's doing like this nationwide push and i have like this 30-day window to try it for free and all of my devices you know she's got two televisions she's got a phone and a printer right here a printer and a microsoft surface

and all of her devices are working great. She's getting like 200 megabits down. Oh. Except for her Microsoft Surface running Windows 11 is dropping packets. It makes my ThinkPad with Nix look like it's doing great. It's just horrible. Like, she'll get one ping back total. I wanted to help her, and I wanted to help her and i wanted to test it i

wanted to try it out and i realized i can't really count on the wi-fi here i i don't know if the results i'm getting are actually real results or not and that really sucks um so i do need to address this and i am going to work on it but i have always thought i don't think it's hardware i think it is something to do with software because when I switched to hello system, it was fine. And when I switched to older Linux kernels, it's fine. Like really old, it's fine. Like old distros, it's fine. So it is something to do with modern Linux. Which means it's coming to the BSDs eventually once they rebase on the latest stuff from Linux. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They'll get in a few years. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what? Just listening in our live chat says I was having the same wifi issues with Nick's on my think pad X one, but he says I added networking.networkmanager.wifi.powersave equals false to my configuration. Nick's in problem solve. Just listening. I'm going to follow up with you on that. That's interesting.

It's something I absolutely believe it has something to do with power management. I tried that for mine with network manager. because you can tweak this as well in there. So the problem I wound up discovering is that as soon as I turned off power saving to make this work, the firmware crashed on a regular basis. Fun. God, I'm just actually, I feel really vindicated hearing you say this, Neil, because I do too. And I love the Intel wireless stuff.

It's been, it's been great. It also affects Windows people for what it's worth. I had to deal with the same problem with my parents when I visited them. So it's like, oh, wow, this is like something is actually wrong with Intel wireless. And I don't know what's going on here. And I don't have enough data to prove anything. But this is where I've gotten so far. I don't know if I ever want here and i don't have enough data to prove anything but this is where i've gotten so far i don't know if i ever want to have an intel wireless card again right give me

that broadcom baby i know it i know i want give me all the real techs oh give me the real tech real tech this might just age out for a next generation of laptops they won't be using intel wireless they'll be using qualcomm for a little while that's great that's That's great. Actually works out great. Cause you know how I love just throwing away perfectly good computers that have years of life left into them. I just love throwing them away. So I, yeah, I love that too, Chris. That's why, that's why I would just pop open the laptop and pull the module out and replace it. Yeah. One of your hobbies. Yeah. Yeah. So you might want to look into getting a, maybe see if you can, they're not that expensive. Buying one of the PCIe or M.2 or whatever standard that your laptop's actually using for the wireless module. Buy one that's a different brand, like Qualcomm. If it works, then basically I think you have enough information to give Mark. We should say Mark from Lenovo.

That it's Intel's fault. I can imagine his position, right? And as an Intel partner, like, if you're going to go to a partner and you're going to say, hey, man, your stuff's messed up, like, you've got to come with the data. So I get where they're coming from, and I do want to get back to them. We do have more feedback. So continuing on, Brent. Chris, I think for this one, we might need the cone of silence.

Oh, are you sure? Well, I have a somewhat production question on this one. Can you I think for this one we might need the cone of silence. Oh, are you sure? Well, I have a somewhat production question on this one. Can you give it to me? Yeah, you got it, buddy. The cone of silence. Watch your foot. Can Jeff in here? Yeah, oh, wow.

Oh, it's like, gosh, this thing stretches in a weird kind of way. I'm glad you put deodorant on today. So Nick wrote in with this lovely little piece of mail here, and I just realized, he says, I had a question for episode 500. Did we ask folks to send in, like, beginner questions for episode 500?

You sure could. Do we want to give a teaser one, maybe? I think we should. I have a teaser boost, two for 500. I think we'll do a teaser feedback. Yeah. You're good? Uncone, please. The cone of silence. Nick sent in this great piece of feedback. He says, hi, guys.

I started listening in the last year and have been enjoying the shows tremendously. I had a question for episode 500. You recently mentioned that you would explain things for noobs like me. I think I get most of the fun sounds that you've been playing along with the boosts, though I did have to look up that one about the rich lobster. But I'm curious about the bell tone. It seems that in most episodes, somewhere near the end, you insert a little bell tone. To me, it seems random, but i was wondering if there's some

sort of code word or time alarm thing happening i would love to know do i start do i hit the bell more often in the later latter half of the show you may yeah yeah i can see that i can see that i like the idea that you're just i mean have you just decayed to the point that you're just, I mean, have you just decayed to the point where you're battling a random nail? No, it all has a theme. You know what this email could be? Is tell me you don't have ADHD without telling me you don't have ADHD. This is for all my friends out there who have trouble focusing. Because it gets your attention. Is that a post-hoc rationalization? It could be. It's a Pomodoro timer, I think. No, what it is, is it's kind of like it's a signal to pay attention to something, is what it is.

And I wouldn't be surprised if I just subconsciously start dropping it more as the show goes on, because your attention might be fading, and I want to make sure that you tune into this. Like, I could see that. And so that could be what's happening. We also kind of hit some of the heavier points sometimes in the, you know, that's true. Later part of the show where the big topic is. What I feel like is where you become a bell connoisseur is when you can determine the difference between the actual bell and the digital bell,

which is sampled from the actual bell. So that's, that's, you know, that's next level bell is when you become the connoisseur. See, but I think Chris, what Nick's getting at is what's the history behind the bell?

Like, how long has it been with you? How long has it been in the studio? Where did it first appear? Wow, well, the bell first got introduced when I had a podcast called SciByte. And when SciByte started, that was the first show I ever did where I didn't host the show, I was the co-host and so um i wanted to

be able to come up with a way to emphasize a point that my remote host made without interrupting her because of latency and so something like a little bell every now and then when she stopped for a moment i could i could insert the bell as like a that's a great point or this is something new or something like or pay attention to this without me actually speaking and making her have to stop because of the latency. And then I just kind of kept with it because of the whole ADD thing. Well, Nick continued with a little note here. P.S. Love the important discussions about the Enterprise theme. I've laughed out loud so many times.

Perhaps you should set up a boost code for playing some of the theme on the show. Yeah, yeah. All right. I'll think about that. Because I feel like if we're going to play the trumpets or any of the Enterprise themes, it's got to mean something because it's personally meaningful to me. So I'll have to give that some thought. In fact, I'll probably give that an inappropriate amount of thought over everything

else I should be considering, but I will be thinking about that. Booster Graham. We do have some boost to get into. In fact, check this one out. We got a lot. We got a rich lobster right here.

Raving grab boosted in with 110,000, 118 sets. Yeah. Lobster. Frozen 118 sets. You lobster. Hey, rich lobster. They're right. I've been listening for a couple of weeks now. Love your stuff.

First of all, listening for a couple of weeks and sending us 110,000 sat boost. Or a mistake. Who knows? Humbled by that. I've been thinking recently about the boost amounts. And that is, I've noticed that we've had a couple of brand new listeners and they're coming in at the a hundred thousand mark. And I, I really, really appreciate that. Um, there is just a lot going on in the broader sponsor space right now. And, uh, I really feel encouraged by the value

for value adoption. Uh, he continues. I love your stuff. And I wanted to show my support from Vancouver, Washington. Hey, I can't make it to the meetup though. I've had a question for a long time. All right. I'd love to have you at the meetup,

but I understand. He says, I tried Linux back in 2012. I couldn't stick with it because of gaming. I returned in 2021 and I haven't looked back, but I have to ask why has it taken Wayland so long to get properly supported? And do you think it will ever fully replace X11 in a true one-to-one space? philosophical answer here about the process of open source software and how long it takes. Do you know where I'm going with this, Wes? The development of Wayland is maybe the best example of the strengths and weaknesses of free software development in some senses.

Yeah, I think I can see what you're saying. Yeah. The important thing to think about is public free software development is extremely painful. And I can think of two very visible examples of this, which have burned their respective creators and their respective development teams. The first is Wayland, and the second is ButterFS. Yes. Both of these projects started very publicly, very early. And the downside of being public and early and out there

is people can try it at every stage of growth. The problem with that is that people can try it out at every stage of growth. Oh, God, Neil, you are hitting it. This is the most important moment of the show right here. Yeah. And they will form their opinions based on that, they will they will try and they will they now they have like they know this technology and they will then base years of opinion off that or base i still can't trust pulse audio right yes you still hear pulse audio is the butt of jokes today

and pulse audio has it right and because of impulse audio and av Avahi and SystemD and all these other things, right? Like all of them have growing pains. But the downside of everything being developed in the open is that somebody can try it as soon as they see it. And the problem with that is that nothing is ever ready until it is ready. And in the open source world, you will never know what that is. That basically never becomes a thing until after it has happened. So you won't know that Wayland is ready or ButterFS is ready or Pulsatio is ready or Pipewire is ready until after it's done and people are using it. This is why you tend to see people developing stuff privately and then doing a lot of

work behind the scenes. The old over the fence kind of thing. It's always ecosystem evolution, and it's ready when the people who have been working on the old thing and the new thing stop working on the old thing. And sometimes incentives align, and you see things like Pipewire take off significantly faster than things like Wayland. But honestly, one of the reasons and you see things like Pipewire take off significantly faster than things like Wayland. But honestly, one of the reasons why things like Pipewire are taking off is because Wayland support is a driver. It is becoming a driver for these kinds of things. It's a focusing point for open source projects. It just took a long time. And we don't really know how long these things take inside proprietary companies, but we do get insight when it is free software. Codehead UK boosted in with 2,600 sats.

And he says 2,600 sats in honor of Captain Crunch. That's delicious. I could go for a bowl of Captain Crunch, a little show energy. He says, I've been, I'm boosting it with some hack the planet sats to celebrate my 10 year anniversary as a Jupiter broadcastingter Broadcasting listener.

Hey, yo. Very nice. Wonderful. Wow. That means you've been listening longer than one of my kids have been alive. How about that? That is, in measured in human years, impressive. My commute is two hours every day.

Wow. I listen to a bunch of tech podcasts in the car to make better use of that time. I understand that, man. That is totally like, why not, right? Why not take advantage of that downtime? And I keep up with the news that way. I'm currently about four months behind due to an extended spell working from home during lockdown, but slowly catching up. Keep up the awesome work.

Here's to the next 10 years. Wow. Okay. Wow. I mean, you're not even going to hear this for for months but i have to imagine he cannot be the only one right codehead uk has got to be like other listeners out there that were doing work from home and now catching up maybe maybe that's why the numbers went up we have been trying to put together why the hell are i mean i i definitely think it was part because our baller boosters got us onto the top of the fountain charts and that helped and i think you know covering nicks and stuff

like that but i've been trying to figure out like why our numbers just skyrocketed recently and maybe it's people going back to work i don't know what it is but let us know boost in and tell me what's going on deleted comes in with 53,545 sats. Another fantastic boost. Thank you very, very, very much. This old duck still got it. I didn't get a chance to do this earlier, but this boost amount is my zip. Are you looking it up right now?

I sure am. Is that what you're doing? We need to start a database or something. This is a postal code in Rock County, Wisconsin. Oh, okay. I love it. How do you do postal codes from like Canada and other European countries in here?

That might be difficult with sats given the letters. You could just tell us the town. Oh, that's a simple approach. Thanks. But you have to come up with your boost amount on your own. Rotten Mood boosted it with 25,000 sats. Thank you, sir. As someone who runs their own server with the domain

Usa4? I don't know exactly how you're supposed to say it. It's Belter. Elsus4? I don't know. I'm 100% in agreement with Drew of Doom on using Expanse terminology. All right, well, we've got to have some clarifications with that one. By the way, if you don't know what the Expanse is, I didn't know either until a few years ago.

And I tell you this as a 35 year long star trek fan uh the expanse is some of the best sci-fi that's ever existed it's like it's it's like what might actually happen in our future it is it's because the thing i love about it it's the solar system is big enough for an entire series to exist. The solar system is huge. And the Expanse, it takes place in about 100 years or so. That's not true. And it's all in the solar system. And it's such a good show if you haven't watched it. Martin DeBeur boosts in with 10,000 sats.

Hey, Chris, Wes, and Brent, I'm reporting back on my use of Podcasting 2.0. Oh, we got a Podcasting 2.0 check-in over here. Okay. New sound effect. I use Podverse on Android. The app is great. I have a membership, as do I, as I like to mark episodes as complete. Yeah, there are some stuff that's member locked.

I didn't really appreciate that because I just signed up as a member. The sync feature is also fallacious. Oh, okay. I want to pause here. So I use Podverse on my desktop and on my Pixel 7, and I effing love, love, love that I can pause in the car, walk upstairs, and hit resume in the web player, and it gets it.

I love that. Anyways, he says the sync feature is flawless. One thing I run into, Anyways, he says the sync feature is flawless. One thing I run into though, is certain podcasts on the podcast index are not updating every week. While they do update every week and say like the Google or the apples or the Spotify apps. I don't think I can blame pod first for that, but I have now two, I have to use two different podcast apps to get every episode every week. Best regards,

Martin. What do you think? Doesn't this sound like maybe like a podcast index might be looking at like a feed that doesn't get updated as often or something. I was wondering cause I've, I've run into that too. Oh, you have? Yeah.

What do you mean? Just like they don't have, they didn't have the most recent episodes. They had like all of them up to a point, but then just like, just like not after that. That's got to be like the, the, whatever the podcast index is looking at has got to be a feed that's not

getting updated as recently. Right. Cause it's just check the feed and import it. Right. It's not like it's, but if you submit the wrong feed to the index or something like that, I could see that being an issue. Yeah.

Let's see. I'm trying to, I'll have to like actually find a case and reproduce it. Now I'm a little more curious. I kind of written it off cause I was already using multiple podcast clients. Yeah, let's see. I'm trying to, I'll have to like actually find a case and reproduce it. Now I'm a little more curious. I kind of written it off because I was already using multiple podcast clients because I'm horrible like that.

But yeah, I wonder if there's something, or I wonder how, if this is an easy way to say like, hey, can you please refresh podcast index? Because otherwise, the podcast index is so great. It's great.

It's easy to just go find the RSS feed. It's easy to check. Well, I know one way you can get it to update is through Podping. But I suppose if that podcast isn't using Podping, then it would just get up to a manual refresh. Maybe that's it. We should dig into it. We'll look into this. Forward humor boosted in with 5,000 sats with a simple location shout out from Web City, Missouri. Oh, all right. Web City with

two Bs. Chris, that's right at the top of your list of places to go, I thought. Let's look it up. Okay, so Web City is in Jasper County, Missouri. A population of 13,000, according to the 2020 consensus. A Web City has a police department, a fire department, and an animal control service. So it's safe for Brent. You updated his tags, right? Yeah. Make sure he's got good shots and all that.

Before I send him any town, though, those are the things I check out. It's currently 57 degrees with wind around 13 miles per hour. And it looks like they're actually warmer over there than we are here today. Okay. Well, now we know about WebCity. I love it. And that's Chris with the news. True Grit's boosted in with 17.01 sets.

Hello! It's been a bit since I've boosted in. Been going through some personal stuff, so I've continued listening but have slacked on my boosting. Thanks for listening, True Grits. Yeah, it's good to hear from you. True Grits did continue with 17.03 sets. You should definitely do a Linux Unplugged 10-year anniversary episode. I've been listening since episode one.

Wow. And I don't think I've yet to miss an episode. True Grits, I don't know if I have put together thus far that you were such an OG. Man. And, you know, True Grits, when I think of the when i think of the enterprise boost it's you i think of you you started the enterprise boost thing and you've been an og to love that's pretty awesome and we actually don't know if we've we have fully formalized episode 500 here's what i can tell you behind the scenes i have been doing something i hate very very very much

do you know what i'm about to say iss install Behind the scenes, I have been doing something I hate very, very, very much. Do you know what I'm about to say? ISS install? I do hate ISS. Internet Information Services, you mean? That's what I mean. No, I've been attending meetings for something that may or may not materialize in 500. Everybody's working very hard to make sure that it does happen, but humans.

And, uh, can I say anything more than that? I don't think you can. It is possible that I may not discover if we have our content for episode 500 until Friday around 6 PM. It's possible. What? Yeah. For next week. And it's the craziest thing that I can't talk about right now. That'll all make sense if I can talk about it

at some point in the future. It's just the wildest thing. And we may have nothing for 500. Or we may have the most important thing that Jupiter Broadcasting's ever done. So show up, mobile room and live audience, because we're going to need you. It's going to happen live one way or another. Well, I guess I've got to

make sure I should be there for whatever this is going to be. It's 500, dude. Yeah. Come on. Of course I was going to be there for 500. Yeah. All right. You know, it turns out, Chris, True Grits did continue with 1705 sets.

What? I seem to be missing some memories. I remember being a Linux user when Steam on Linux came out. I thought I had heard about it on the Linux Action Show. But that clip you played in LAN recently clearly was Brian, and I started listening during the Matt Hartley days. The only other place I read about it would have probably been OMG on Ubuntu. So actually, True Grits, your memory is accurate. It's a complicated, long story of the Steam client coming to Linux. And it actually started first with rumors about maybe it would happen.

Maybe it would be released for Linux. It was two years of rumors, if I remember right. Yeah. It was a long saga. Like, Veronix would keep talking about it with like a mike uh larabelle would like say well over beers or whatever and have like a picture of yeah you would just do this like absolutely asinine like blog post photos and and talk about that for like oh gosh i think it was like almost three years and then it came out it's like what yeah that's essentially it is there was years of rumors and um then there was the beta period as well which lasted a long time and

the thing about the beta period that we don't think about today but was absolutely a factor was it was ubuntu only well technically right it was it was a was Ubuntu. Nobody listened to the Ubuntu-only part. But it was really built for Ubuntu. And that, of course, today, we don't even think about that. But I'll play a couple of clips. We played these in Linux Action News episode 280. And I feel old for being around. But here is our initial take back in Linux Action Show about Steam coming to Linux. Man, everything coming out of Foronix dealing with Valve is so fast and loose.

It's like I don't... Maybe. I get so excited about the idea of Steam coming to Linux. I'm starting to believe it a little more just because they did hire a well-known Linux kernel developer. This guy did test a performance bug fix for GL. You know where a lot of Linux kernel developers work? Microsoft. Well, okay. I mean, they work all over the place. I know. There's Linux kernel devs at Microsoft.

And there's been rumors that Valve's working on a hardware box based on Linux. Maybe like an on-live competitor kind of thing? You know where there's other people who work on Linux? Amazon. Yeah. It doesn't mean anything. I so much want this to be real.

But a game development shop? I just want to believe, Brian. I want to believe. I just... Yeah. Anyway, I really want to believe it. I feel like Pharonix's strategy is say it enough times into the universe, and it'll just happen. I hope so.

I hope that works. And I just... I just... Yeah. I just don't buy it. enough times into the universe and it'll just happen i hope so i hope that works and i just i just yeah i just don't um also apparently uh valve is hiring uh linux developers right now they have positions open for linux developers we'll see we'll see you're not saying it's impossible you're just saying skeptical brian is skeptical right well i'm saying that there's absolutely no reason to think that it's happening other than pharonix declares that it is and valve will not confirm and my dreams and your dreams that's true and honestly chris's dreams are pretty much powerful i know right ironclad i know too bad i always just dream about

traffic and then a little bit later on uh it actually happened it became a real boy and it was announced for ubuntu of Of course, the top story on the news docket this week is last week, Monday, after the big show came out, Valve posted on their blog an official announcement that they were developing Steam for Linux. And they called it Steamed Penguins. This was also the announcement of their new blog. Big Things Have Small Beginnings was one of their titles. Now, of course, we talked about this on the show last week, but it turned out it was all true. And someone who's been following the story from the very beginning, from what I call- Which is notable because that was a decade ago, just as about a week ago. Isn't that something?

Gosh, Chris, you gave me memories and a heart attack all in one. Politics unplugged. Yeah, that's what we do here. yeah that's what we do here but what a memory you know and what a time to be to the possibilities were endless and remember valve very early on went hard on steam machines and then steam controller and then they kind of kind of they they sort of pivoted and they they they de-emphasized hardware and they started focusing on proton and working with collabra and kind of building that infrastructure to create Steam Play. And then they came at the hardware all over again with a totally different approach after they'd invested years in the software.

And a decade later, I absolutely love my Steam Deck. That's where we're at now. Smash boosted in with 2006 sats. Bro, I heard you guys struggling with remote access with Wayland. Here's my solution that works and is highly secure. First, install Apache Guacamole in an LXC container that proxies to remote hosts over SSH, RDP, or VNC. remote hosts over SSH, RDP, or VNC. Then put the guacamole behind a Cloudflare tunnel,

and then protect that domain name with Cloudflare Zero Trust, which is free for 50 users. You can control any system through your browser on any platform, and Cloudflare Zero Trust ensures that the world cannot bang on that guacamole login. Smash out. That's not bad, Smash. That's not bad at all. I like that a lot. I also like hearing Brent that guacamole login. Smash out. That's not bad, Smash. That's not bad at all. I like that a lot.

I also like hearing Brent say guacamole. Guacamole. Taco Strange boosted him with a row of ducks. What do you think about a boost to skip sponsor segments featured in the podcasting 2.0 apps? I don't think it would be something too difficult to implement in, say, Fountain or other 2.0 apps. I don't think it would be something too difficult to implement in, say, Fountain or other 2.0 apps. Maybe you could just set it and forget it and never listen to sponsor spots again while also contributing to your favorite podcast.

You know, the way I could actually, this is a great thought. My first thought is, Taco Strange, is it's going to have to be a lot more than a row of ducks, buddy. But my second thought is, you could just do this if it was a podcasting 2.0 chapter for the sponsor, and you could just have a little budget set up like streaming sets today that just says auto-skip, right? That seems pretty doable. I have no problem with that because we have a very large audience, and the majority of them are listening to the sponsor spots. If you were a smaller operation,

maybe that would be a little more challenging, though. I'm not sure. So I would love to hear other people's opinions on that. I think that's a great question, though, Taco. Gene Bean also boosted in a row of ducks. Just dropping a note to say I installed Copia on my laptop and am initially doing backups to an external NVMe drive. Setup was pretty easy, and it seems to do well after about a week, and I plan to add BlackBlaze as a destination.

I'm glad y'all are continuing the chats about backup options. Well, I gotta say, Copia looks pretty nice, and going to MVME, man, that's got to be the fastest backup ever. Like cloud backup and tape backup. That's my background. This guy's going to an MVME. Gene Bean, you are the craziest guy. My week doesn't feel complete unless I hear from Gene Bean, like Golden Dragon, and a few others. I don't have a complete week. And Gene Bean, I love hearing from you. Thank you very much. It's another row of ducks, but this time from Anonymous. Writing, one of the nice things about ZFS Send is that, and I imagine ButterFS might be able to do this as well, you can just pipe it over SSH. Then on the remote system, you can do something like ZFS allow to permit that user to manage your ZFS things

instead of having to use something like a root login. That's definitely a recommended setup. Another row of ducks from Anonymous. The nice thing about ZFS and OpenZFS being more prominent on Linux systems these days, especially in things like the Ubuntu installer, is, well, it gives you sort of ease of access to load a ZFS drive from the Ubuntu live ISO. True.

So you can just worry a little bit less about not having a way to access your data. Yeah. Yeah. Facts. Although I get a sense Anonymous doesn't listen to Linux action news. Yeah, that's a good point, though. It is really nice to see it get more ubiquitous. And that's one of the reasons I think that I did really appreciate Ubuntu taking that step forward of integrating CFS. And it's also one of the reasons why we really like ButterFS, because it is just, in fact, built in. The Muso boosted him with 5,000 sats. He says, with regards to using file system snapshots for backups,

and this is something I got a lot of feedback in the matrix on, I prefer the workflow of ZFS snapshots over ButterFS. ZFS snapshot workflows feel more seamless to me and let me focus on what I'm wanting to do. I particularly like the ZFS dataset rollback functionality. Then it continues with another 5,000 sets. I'm looking forward to ZFS 3.0, which will support ZFS on S3 object storage. Since I've started using ZFS Snapshots as local backup,

I've never quite enjoyed using any third-party backup tool to back up at the file level off-site if i mess up a file i always turn to my back-end backed up snapshots to retrieve the data and as experience and workflow i have to say it's less complicated and he sent us a link to a zfs on object storage talk on youtube which we have in the show notes yeah we will stay tuned and find out because i'll give it a try magnolia my ham boosts in with 7 400 sats coming in hot with the boost i am so far behind ironically days after the bitcoin dad called where i live a third world country our our politicians tried to panic ban kratom something that saved my best friend's life i had to go to war because of that.

So I haven't been able to catch the JB shows in the recent weeks. Okay. You got your own thing, Mayhem. I understand. So I have no clue what I'm supporting here, but hey, have some sats anyways. Here's what struck me about this boost. First of all,

every single one of our listeners has a lot going on in their life and yet they still manage to listen and some of them manage to spend a little time with us or send some value in or do you know share the show or something like that and then he got folks like mayhem here who just like even when they can't listen they want to make sure the show continues on man if that isn't the peace of mind you know as a small business owner who's got to feed his who just like, even when they can't listen, they want to make sure the show continues on. Man, if that isn't the peace of mind, you know, as a small business owner who's got to feed his kids by doing this and by somebody who's just looking

at the sponsor environment thinking, oh God, you know, like when I see that, I just think we're going to be all right. You know what? We got some really awesome listeners out there. And Magnolia Mayhem's showing up over in the Matrix too. So it's a little crazy here. Like we're talking out of sync via the show,

but then we're seeing like sync things over in the Matrix. Anyway, all of this is amazing. The Golden Dragon boosted in with a row of ducks as well. Fantastic show, guys. Here are some sats for drew and his amazing audio work you're here to that thank you drew thank you uh golden dragon too for making sure that from time to time we take a moment to appreciate drew's hard work i i know that that every now and then people think of drew but you know he he's a big part of this show, and he's a silent member often. I mean, he's been on the show, obviously,

but he's kind of a silent participant. Yeah, and he's helping shape the final show that actually goes out. And if you've ever appreciated those chapter markers. Right, the chapter titles are all Drew, but it's not just that, too. It's like he helps each one of us make sure that our audio sounds good.

He knows us individually, and he is able to respond to us on our individual terms in a way that is insightful and helpful and also kind. And he cuts us when we say dumb things. That's true. Yeah. That's also really great. That's very true. He's also quite handsome.

Yeah. Yeah. And a nice guy and also fun to hang out with. I miss him. Yeah. Pooh Bear boosted in

with 8,343 sets. Coming in hot with the boost. Hey, are there any updates on the GB Geocaches? I have a spot in mind where I'd like to set one up. Demographics are I live in Redding, California.

I've listened for about eight years. I listen to all the JB shows typically every single week, and I normally listen when watching and answering tickets at my desk. That's a great question. That is a really great question. Hey, Jeff, I have another thing for our to-do list that we were building this morning. I'll put it on the list. I think we should add, like, create a geocache email account or something that people could email and we could start

collecting these now. What should the email address for that be? Do you really want to set up an email address? Yeah, well, because here's the idea is I think we need to start collecting where people want to hide stuff. So get an idea of interest. Because if you think about this from a building a product standpoint, if we could just pre-launch with a few addresses already in there before people even send them in, that could be actually kind of helpful. So what I think all we need to do is start collecting now. Because my thought with the geocache stuff has been, let's just hit the pause button until spring and then start building it in the spring when people are getting out and about. When the ground has thawed. Yeah.

But when we do launch something, it would be good to have some stuff in there and not launch it with an empty database. Might I suggest that maybe our GitHub is a better place? Yes. I know where there have been some discussions around how to solve this geocaching problem and how to create kind of a JB geocache platform that we can use.

So I am tempted to steer people towards some issues that we've had there discussing this very fact. The GitHub, maybe we could put a link in the notes. Can do. And then also, Jeff's going to join us on Office Hours. Let's pick this up on Office Hours and talk about a little bit there because I think that's probably the appropriate venue for that. All right, let's keep going then. I wanted to include this boost. It's below our minimum threshold, but I thought it was really nice. Gorp Brown comes in with 500 sats. Happy 500, y'all. I started listening a couple of years ago, a bit before episode 400, and I've been having a lot of fun learning about all sorts of cool Linux-related things from you guys.

I'm curious, what made you decide to start podcasting about Linux and technology or just in general? So this kind of felt like a 500-ish episode question. So I wanted to get it in as our pre-teaser to 500 because this is a story I've told a few times. So it felt like this would be one to be okay to lead with. So that way we keep it fresh in 500. When I was a younger man, I was driven by pushing back against common misconceptions. Wes says so much with a smile. I swear to God, it's so funny because he knows he knows where i'm going like immediately because he knows me um and you know i i have actually i have drifted from this but

in my early 20s and mid 20s and late 20s and early 30s i was i was a really strong passionate linux advocate an evangelist you might say. And I evangelized Linux to my clients through my businesses. And I was an IT person that really focused on solving problems where Linux could kind of come in and do it cheaper, better, faster than Windows or Unix or whatever. And I was discovering things that Linux was capable of that nobody was talking about, especially here in the Pacific Northwest, in the backyard of Microsoft. Nobody was talking about some of this stuff. And I was having some hands-on experiences where Windows just couldn't scale. NT back then, to be honest with you, is NT4.

And then Windows 2000, which is really NT5, could not scale. It just couldn't. It could not do it and linux could do it without even like breaking a sweat and it was like you know as a technology person you're like wow this thing is free i didn't have to put in a cd key to install it and it's not even breaking a sweat and it's like handling it and then over here there's like this windows thing it can't even keep up with it i have to like buy it. And then over here, there's like this windows thing. It can't even keep up with it.

I have to like buy it. I have to put in the CD key and then it crashes all the time. It was like a night and day difference. And I, I needed a platform to just espouse how incredible this was and try to convince the world that they were on the wrong track with windows and commercial software. And they needed to try Linux and they needed to try free software.

And my buddy Brian was down to talk about that stuff, and he knew more about the audio stuff than I did, too, and he had his own set of thoughts, and he was a provocative thinker. He remains a provocative thinker, and he thinks about stuff deeply. And so it made for a great time to sit down and talk about something that was new and just really kind of rich in a full tapestry of things to talk about. And then little did I know what it could develop into. Right. And it just kind of from there exploded.

And we've been doing it ever since. I mean, honestly, we really started podcasting back in 2005 before it was podcasting. We experimented with different technologies and then we really kind of got the wind under our wings in 2009, 2008, really 2007 that those years. And then from then it's just been every week nonstop. And if you want to boost in for our 500th episode, you can boost in with at least 9,529 sats. Of course, you're welcome to boost more and see if you can help us on those charts. Just mention it's for episode 500. I'm setting all those aside for the big 500 next week.

Now, how do you boost? A couple of different options there. You can get a new podcast app if you're ready to go all in on podcasting 2.0. Just go to newpodcastapps.com. I love Podverse because it's GPL and it's cross-platform. I think Fountain's pretty neat because you can earn sats just by listening.

And Castamatic's fantastic because if you're an iOS user, they're focusing on the iOS experience. But I love Podverse, GPL, and they use Albi, which is fantastic because you can then boost from the web with Albi. You can boost from other apps. And eventually, when Antenapod comes around, eventually, you'll be able to boost from Antenapod with Albi as well. A lot of options

there. There's links in the show notes. We have a boost page on our website as well. If you've been hearing us talk about this and you need an excuse to try it, maybe it's episode 500. Give it a go. You know what? I promise your dick won't fall off. It'll be fine. Go give it a go. Let us know what you think. And I'd like to know the experience too, because each path you take, depending on which route you take, much like Zelda, depending on the route you take, either it is excruciating

or it is exceptionally easy. So let us know how that goes as well. Now our pick this week, well, it's kind of obvious because if you're messing around at all with any kind of GPU, be it the Intel Arc, be it an NVIDIA card, GPU Viewer is just one of those apps that is a must-have. It'll give you all the details about what's going on. And if you're curious about, like, what your system supports, what protocols and standards or whatever, API, whatever you want to call it, I don't care. You don't care. But you want to know if your computer supports it? GPU viewer.

That'll tell you. Now, you can get it any way you want. I have linked it in those show notes to the beta page for Flathub. So you can get a little taste. I see what you're doing here. Get a little taste. Look at that callback. Yeah, buddy.

Go try it out. You notice, actually, for GPU viewer, they do have a donate button. You suppose that's going to tie in with Albi? Oh, PayPal. And it looks like it's some sort of currency that sucks a lot more than my currency. So anyways, but they're working on that, right? They're going to integrate with Stripe. That's what they.

I noticed, Chris, in our Matrix room, Dan Johansson is the maintainer of GPU viewer. Wait. AUR package. Dan, you are? Yeah. Oh, and Arch? Yeah, the AUR package. Dan, you're doing the people's work there. I appreciate that. Now, why did you choose, out of all of the things you could spend your time on, why GPU viewer?

I was actually approached by the maintainer of the software. Oh, plucked. So you were hand-picked, and you were just doing it out of theer of the software. Oh, plucked. So you were handpicked, and you were just doing it out of the goodness of your heart. I thought maybe you were going to tell me, like, you had this crazy NVIDIA card, and you were trying to solve a problem with GPU viewer, and you were so motivated by this moment that was influential in your Linux experience that you now are the maintainer.

But what it is is that you're just a good guy, and you're donating your time because somebody asked you to. Yeah. That happens a lot. Thank you from all of us. Yes. Thank you to Dan and thank you to everybody out there who does that kind of stuff.

It makes the difference, right? I mean, as Linux users, it just makes it a really fun experience for us. We really, really appreciate it. Episode 500 will be live next week at noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern. See you next week. Same bad time, same bad station. And you can watch it on our self-hosted PeerTube instance at jupyter.tube. Time in your local time zone at jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. What do you think, Wes? Should we tell them about Linux Action News?

Oh, we might as well. They would have already heard those clips. Yeah. Yeah. And we blathered on a little bit more about 6.2. Yeah. That's up your alley. And Plasma 5.27.

Oh. And of course, as GNOME 44 gets close to release, it'll be included over there at Linux Action News. Plus, anything that impacts the industry. So if you're working in the industry day-to-day and you need to know about it, we cover it at Linux Action News. But as for us here at Linux Unplugged you need to know about it, we cover it at Linux Action News. But as for us here at Linux Unplugged,

well, you can find everything we talked about at linuxunplugged.com slash 499. Thanks so much for joining us. See you right back here next Sunday. Thank you. All right, JBTitles.com. Let's go boat.

Last moments to get your title in. What? What was that? We use the matrix now. Oh, you're right. Every time you mention it, everyone's like, JBTitles isn't working. Is it in the doc? Is it in the doc? No. No, it're right. Every time you mention it, everyone's like, JV Titles isn't working? Is it in the doc? No, it's not. I gotta get out of here.

I need to retire, dude. I need to retire. Can we just fix this already? Can we just fix this? We could just forward it to the Matrix invite. Here's what I think we've all assumed would happen, is that I would figure it out. I haven't? Most of the website is built on the fact that you haven't figured would happen is that I would figure it out. I haven't.

Most of the website is built on the fact that you haven't figured most things out. We just make it work.