LINUX Unplugged - 509: The Next Gen Desktop

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

The first new desktop environment in a while that has caught our attention, and it promises to unlock the full power of cutting-edge Linux. Why we think every desktop will copy ideas from Hyprland soon.

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 the show today. The first brand new desktop environment that's really caught our attention in a while has taken hook, and it promises to unlock the full power of cutting-edge Linux technology. We're going to look at Hyperland and why we think just about every desktop environment will be

ripping a few ideas off from Hyperland in the near future. Plus, we're going to tell you about a great community experience that we had this week. Get into some feedback, some boosts, some picks, you know, all the things that we do. So let's go say good morning to Tailscale. Tailscale.com. Our friends over there are making a mesh VPN protected by WireGuard, and you can use it up to

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And a big time appropriate greetings to our virtual lug who have joined us in mumble. Hello, everybody. Hello, Chris. Hello, Brian. Hello, Brian. Hello. Hello. Hey, everybody. Thank you for hanging out with us it's always nice lugs are great and a virtual lug nothing better than that because you can do it from anywhere

our mumble room is open every single sunday that we're live you're always welcome to join us over there so we want to talk about hyperland this week it's a dynamic yes tiling wayland compositor based on wl roots that as it says doesn't sacrifice on the looks and the reason why we wanted to talk about it is it's kind of peak modern linux stack it needs wayland it uses pipe wire it's accelerated and it's beautiful really beautiful if you're willing to put the time in and set it up and it's beautiful, really beautiful. If you're willing to put the time in and set it up and it flows in a way that the way I described it to Brent is the, the UI flows together in a way that it always should have. I've been waiting since 1985 or whatever for computers to look nearly as cool as they do in the movies but in a way that's actually practical and usable and hyperland gets us there finally after like you know 35 plus years

of waiting i actually think we're here and it's using a beautiful linux stack i think the biggest caveat i have to put up front is it is kind of a DIY thing. There's not really a distribution. There's several like things you can kind of try, but there's not really like a distribution you can go download that showcasing a beautifully pre-setup hyperlens desktop. It's really kind of a DIY thing. Now that is, I think a pretty fun aspect of it,

but yeah, you're not going to get sort of a, you know, like a gnome like experience right out of the box. Genome, excuse me. Yeah. Get it right, get it right. But that may have been true of every desktop we know and love in their infancy.

So I think the hype I've seen around at least seems like it's getting a disproportionate amount of excitement considering its relative youth, maybe. You will kind of need to be on something of a hipster distro to try it out. They say Arch, NixOS and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed are very supportive. So here's why I think it actually makes the most sense on those distros. When you're running on the leading edge of Linux and you're on Wayland and you're on Pipewire and you're using the latest kernel stack and all of that, you really want kind of a minimal Linux desktop environment. And when you can purpose build it by choosing your own window manager, your own launcher,

your own terminal application, your own file manager application, you pick all those things and you keep it to a real minimal stack. i find that to typically to be the type of setups that last the long haul on a rolling type or aggressive leading edge distro a little more minimal we're kind of in some ways we're reducing our expectations from the desktop environment but we're gaining sort of a consistency and stability through a lot of updates and a lot of changes as something's rapidly developing and it can work pretty nicely i think if you don't you know you don't have a super complicated workflow or asking a whole lot or if you're willing to put in the time to you know play with your configuration and get things just set up but it's a little more of

the you know build something that suits the way you work instead of kind of molding yourself into a predefined workflow and you know i think that I think the lead developer of this is, is, I mean, I say this in a good way. I think they're opinionated about what this desktop should do and what it shouldn't do. They've recently introduced a plugin system as well to extend it. And it does it, you know, in a much more complete way than say like something like genome extensions do. Not to do a direct comparison but i think you know the hyperland implementation is a much more serious implementation where they're more directly involved and you know it's sort of an opinionated but i think well-built implementation there and i like that and what you get is this desktop that is kind of like a Lego set that you put together, but it's so smooth.

My sensation was, oh, this is how Linux should be for like years now. This is what I've always been waiting for. I have all these open source drivers. I have all this latest stuff. I have everything set up. Why isn't it always this smooth? It's kind of neat to see something reimagined.

Not that there haven't been some, but something that's getting more popularity. You know, the stuff reimagined. Not that there haven't been some, but something that's getting more popularity. You know, this stuff reimagined in the Wayland native world. We've kind of mostly talked about it with, you know, Mutter and

KWIN and sort of the traditional desktops moving over to Wayland. I know we've dabbled with Sway and things a little bit, but even there, it's sort of

inspired by stuff that came first in X. Hyperland feels a little more Wayland native than that. You know, I think it started with Hyper, and that was like a tool that you could use on top of an X11 desktop and then I think the developer thought to themselves

well if I really want to do this right and I really want it to work the way I want I need to kind of create the entire environment and if you can use Wayland as a spec you can write to that implementation it's actually conceivable especially if the user is bringing things like the launcher or the application switcher or something like that. And because it is relatively low complexity in terms of installation, Wes, you found you could actually like download the binaries directly, put them on the right place in the file system. Yeah, that's actually what I'm doing here. I had a partition installed still with OpenSUSE

Tumbleweed I've been keeping up to date and I figured yeah why not try it there if it's quote unquote very supported yeah you can just you know zipper install it and that works just fine but I figured why not try it you can go download a tar.gz file off github you do need to make sure you kind of got all the you know the right other system dependencies that aren't shipped in that tar but otherwise you copy hyperland you copy hyper ctl which is a sort of ctl type client that goes along with it and you copy the bundled um wl roots library do an ld config kind of you know go from there launch it in a tty and you've got hyperland

yeah yeah it's both very straightforward and also a lot to set up, isn't it, Brent? Well, let's just say I learned a lot about myself and my preferences this week trying to get this going. But yeah, I think it matched my expectations of what tiling managers, you know, these standalone tiling managers are like, which I learned for my journey. I struggle with at this point because it was super easy to get going. But then the configurability of it is, I think, a place where maybe I'm not opinionated enough to make some decisions on, you know, which launcher I want to have installed and use and will be compatible and work really well. And so I kind of got to the point where it was like up and running and I didn't quite know what to do with myself. You're kind of like, okay, good enough, but I

don't really have the energy to, to finish it. I think it's one of those things where you just got to give it time and you have to dive in like head long into that ecosystem and learn as much as you can. So it, it reminded me of, maybe a modern type of journey you can do. Like, you know, we used to, you know, build Gen 2 and run it somewhere, maybe on a server, Chris. But these days, maybe you could just take something like Hyperland and dive in there

and learn a ton about Linux in a slightly limited capacity. And I think that's a journey I need to be doing. This week maybe wasn't that time for me. Yeah. Wes, do you feel like it might appeal to folks that find NixOS appealing? Because you're kind of defining your operating system with something like NixOS. And then the way you configure Hyperland, you're kind of configuring it all through a configuration language.

Like if you want to do dual monitors, and it has some really cool support for assigning individual workspaces to a specific monitor and setting the orientation but it's all done in a config file and you have to kind of follow their syntax which looks like it's fairly bulletproof like it would probably solve some of my multi-monitor issues i've had worth trying right since 1985 right so you can see the advantage but it it's also like, oh, man, I got to figure out how to map all of my individual things to this particular syntax. And I really would just like something that scans my hardware and sets up a default for me. But some people, I think, prefer just spending the time writing all the config out and then they kind of have a system locked in there. You feel like this is kind of the right demographic for Hyperloop? Well, yeah then they kind of have a system locked in there. Do you feel like this is,

kind of have the right demographic for Hyperloop? Well, yeah. I mean, sure, there are downsides. You got to spend the time to go configure it. But once you've configured it, I mean, it's documented, it's saved, you can push it up to Git, you can share it too.

So you can go find, I mean, already you can go find folks who are sharing their config files and go try that on for yourself, especially if you're using something like an XOS, where it'd be really easy to just, you know, slot that in, replace it, try again. Yeah, they really, that's it.

That's just, it's like, if you find that approach appealing, then this is, this, I think HyperLens is a whole other level of awesome for somebody. And I don't, I don't mean. I see what you mean. But it's, you know, for me, it was like, oh, this is a whole weekend of setting this up.

What I really wanted was like a live environment to see what's it, what's possible. But because there's so many people that are really sharing their setups up there, you can get inspiration pretty quickly, like you're saying. So it does help you get going. And we'll have links. There's a, you know, GitHub style, awesome Hyperland, uh, GitHub repo. And yeah, it's got a lot of nice things linked, a lot of things written in Rust, it turns out, as well as C++ and, you know, and the usual assortment.

But it can help you if you want to get a bar set up, different, you know, display integrations, plugins, maybe you need launchers, it's got recommendations there. And then they've got a Hall of Fame as well that shows off some of the things that are possible. So yeah, you probably got to spend some time thinking about how you want your desktop to work, what you might want it to look like. Learn what even are like the dimensions that are possible. Yeah, because there are a couple of gotchas at this stage right now. Like I think if you're using GDM, you're probably not going to have a great time. You might just want to start it from the terminal. Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Yeah, yeah. The nice part about it is I've got it running along with Plasma at the same time. And so, you know, I can pop back over there if I'm not comfortable doing anything over in Hyperland yet. Or I just am used to that workflow. I'm trying to get some work done and not playing with a new DE. That's cool. Well, now I think that's where I should be. Yeah, that's what I would like to do.

I've been doing this wrong this whole time. Yeah. Wes is showing us in studio right now switching between Plasma and Hyperland. That is, all right, that's compelling. That's another reason to maybe just launch from the TTY. So I thought, you know, using this, there are some really clever ideas about the way applications interact, about when something's floating versus when it's tiled, that really, I think, advance the idea of tiling just yet another step forward. And I wonder, but seems likely to me, but I wonder if you guys agree, there's little things in here that I feel like some other desktop environments might borrow from in the future. Especially as tiling type modes and playing with the fuzzy middle ground between the various paradigms, that seems to be more popular. There's this feature, Chris,

you and I were kind of admiring where you can click and drag where you create the new application that you want to open. Yeah, so with the mouse, you just click and drag a square. And then like in this case, the terminal just opens up

in that exact box that you drew on the location and the size. That's a neat concept. It's such a great idea. And I think that's a perfect example of something that, I mean, if Plasma picked that up for console, I would absolutely turn that on.

So, you know, I could see that kind of thing. I think it's really worth trying, especially if you're on Nix and you have Home Manager already because you can get this thing up and going in minutes, and it's a decent config out of the box, and of course, it's so easy to just roll back like nothing ever happened.

And it's also, it is packaged in Nix. But if you do just the package in Nix, I discovered, you don't get like all the accoutrement around it that actually makes it a complete experience. I got like the most bare bones Hyperland possible. And I was like, oh. It's what you asked for. Yeah. So you got to watch for that too. And I think it's, I've also heard it's super easy to get working in uh arch uh blumen strong wrote in and he wrote i just had to tell someone how

amazing arch is i've been using the latest i3 sway clone that all the cool kids are talking about hyperland it's installed from the aur for a little while and one day i was doing my compulsive Pac-Man SYU. Yeah. As we do. And noticed that a Hyperland was part of the upgrade. So I went and checked and sure enough, Hyperland had made it into the community repo for Arch Linux because the AUR packages are installed with Pac-Man. It picked it up and it's now managed through the community packages without me having to do anything.

Just another reason why I think Arch Linux is one of the most important Linux distros that we have. Kind regards, Bloomin' Strong. And this is something I wanted to point out because I think both Arch and Nix and to agree for you too, Tumbleweed have proved to be good platforms to just try something for a little while and

then switch back with pretty low repercussion. Although I guess you're doing it on Ubuntu pretty well right now, right? So. Oh no, I'm running Tumbleweed at the moment. Oh! How many distros do you have installed on that laptop? Well, it's the show laptop. It's here to be experimented on.

It's got to be at least three. Somewhere between three and six would be my guess. Plus Kexec and Infinite. Yeah, because I'd imagine some of them are just like... Yeah, there's some temporary space that gets shuffled around. Maybe a VM image here or there. I've been trying to keep open SUSE around just to, you know, launch it, evolve, keep doing updates. Not that often, but sporadically.

But do you notice how he can't give you a number? I don't think he knows. He doesn't know. I think it's more than that because you've had the laptop for a long time. And I think you probably do one or two a quarter at least. So I think it's probably getting up there. Oh, maybe four. Oh, I think it's four getting up there oh maybe four oh i think it's more but i don't know i don't know if i'd boot i don't know if i would best bet any sats on it

i wouldn't uh but i think it's up there anyways i think this is definitely worth consideration we'll put a link to all the details including if you just want to check out how everybody gets their desktops configured if you ever see the unix porn subreddit one of the coolest this is always one of the coolest desktops going by. People are really excited about this. It's really been going strong for about a year now. Yeah, I'm impressed. I mean, there are more folks working on it now,

but it seems to be primarily driven by a solo developer who is amazingly productive. And you get a sense there's a lot of, like you said, there's a sense around what this should and shouldn't do. And then I think also some taste in the programming as well. It's all written in C++, or at least primarily. Down at the bottom of the repo, they have a special thanks section. And I think it just kind of says it nicely.

We've got WL Roots for their amazing library. Tiny WL for showing how to do stuff. Sway for showing how to do stuff the overkill way. Vivarium for showing how to do stuff the simple way. And DWL for showing how to do stuff the overkill way. Vivarium for showing how to do stuff the simple way. And DWL for showing how to do stuff the hacky way. Linode.com slash unplugged. Go there to get $100 in 60-day credit and check out Linode now part of Akamai.

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You know, we've been using them for years. We deploy everything over there and we think it's the best in the business. Linode.com slash unplugged. Well, last week we touched on our meetup that we had here in our local area. But this week we kind of benefited from that in many ways we could have never planned or expected. We met Dom again at the meetup, who we met at the Linux Unplugged 500 meetup, which was amazing always to see kind faces again. And Dom's been a listener since 2009,

he told us. I just can't believe that when they tell us those things. But it turns out Dom is an expert at irrigation. And Chris, you've had this like hankering for some automated irrigation, which we touched on a little bit in Self Hosted recently. But you saw this as like a massive value for value opportunity. What an incredible value for value opportunity. Dominic saved us also at the most important time. We were in the process of setting up a much larger garden this year. important time we were in the process of setting up a much larger garden this year and we realized too late because i just rushed into it didn't think about it properly that the water was going to be extremely expensive and we would just be using a lot of water for the size of it

and we were trying to come up with a way to automate that with home assistant and sensors because we're big nerds and you know our know, our first thought is, well, let's get some data. And so Brent and I started looking at ESP32s and soil sensors, and we started thinking about building out a network of them throughout and monitoring the beds and the different plots and then bringing that in and automating the water with a relay and a solenoid. And Dom showed up and, you know, after doing introductions and kind of giving us like kind of the game plan for the day, he's like, okay, Chris, I got to be be real with you i listen to self-hosted i think you're overthinking

this we're just gonna do a i have with me just a hose timer like a basic turns on at such time runs for four or five minutes turns off run four or five times a week however many days that that you wanted to go yeah the you can get more complicated with what we do, like irrigation valves, 24-volt irrigation valves that you can do a header with and then come off of those. But now you're getting into, you're going to need a backflow device in order to be in compliance with county and city and state water laws to prevent backflow from going into the city water line. So we'll need to run a main line, we'll put in a backflow device, run multiple valves,

and then come out of those as a manifold into the multiple areas that you want to be able to water. We can squeeze by using just a hose timer. And he brought the timer as well. So he brought the gear. He didn't just bring his time and his expertise because he runs an irrigation business with his brother, but he brought the equipment and the timer and, you know, worked with us. And it took us, what would you say, Brent, about six hours of digging?

Yeah. Somewhere around there. Interspersed with, you know, breaks to chat about all sorts of other things. And eating chili and whatnot. That was nice. We had, I'll give you the layout. So listeners, I'll give you a picture in your mind. We have three plots.

Uh, we have some plots that are just some raised garden beds. They're pretty small, but they need watering. We have some sheds in between, uh, those raised plots. And then another much larger plot that's going to have potatoes and

tomatoes and beans and peas and all that kind of stuff and then we have a very very very large plot that's going to have your squashes and your corns and that's a third lot so it kind of spread out between where lady jupes parks and where some sheds are at that we have where they juice parks and all of that and it seemed like a massive job we weren't even sure how to run some of the water, but once we got going, I think Brent and I had it. I don't even know. I don't even know if we actually needed Dominic's help because we're pretty much experts. So we got a full operation going right here. Brent is trenching, right? I have this. I've never used one of these, but trenching shovel. I think it's called, I think it's called a hoe. No, this is not a hoe.

Oh, sorry. It's excellent, though. I think I might just get one. And you're trenching along here, and we're going to lay down some water pipe around the beds, out to the big bed out there, and then there's another big bed on the other side of those sheds.

Dom and Dylan are setting up the pipes for us right now, some of the connectors. It's going pretty well. What are you doing i'm documenting obviously yeah clearly i mean i do technically have a hoe a leaning hoe it's not a hoe you just called it a hoe no but you tricked me and you know brent wasn't kidding in that clip when he was like seriously impressed by this tool he's like i think i might go get one of these he actually went out that night went to the pawn shop and got himself well you know when it's fresh in the mind yeah he acted on it but uh you heard there too that my son dylan was helping out right so dominic's a father of four and so he just took right to like

hey dylan would you like to help me out and connect some of these connectors and of course dylan always wants to help out. Right. It was a full family operation. My wife's dad came over and helped us out. And so it was we had a crew. We were really multiplexing the work out there. It felt good to go out and do some physical activity.

Actually, I didn't actually overdo it. So I'm not even sore today. Which I really have no right because I'm so out of shape. I should be. But I got lucky. It seems like this garden will be good for keeping you in shape. That is true. It does. It does keep us more active so after talking with dom uh what we've decided

is we're going to walk back the scale of our automated garden operation and what we'll probably do is uh some soil sensors but not nearly as many just to kind of keep an eye on things and i i also kind of wouldn't mind a flow sensor. Oh, that would be fun. And I think we'll just kind of use that to make sure the timer that, that Dominic gave us is doing an adequate job and that we don't need to like run it for a little bit longer,

a little bit more frequently. The thing that was really nice about having Dominic there is he really is an expert. Like he shows up and he's like oh yeah that type of grass is a crab grass right there you're gonna want to get rid of that he's like he knows the individual blades of grass and their type right and he gave us a real education along the way and this is something that i think the community is so good at we're so good at helping each other and when somebody wants to come up to speed on a topic there's so many

people in the community with if it's a linux topic or it's like something like our nix nerds room is such a great example of this stuff you'd never find or would take a really long time you know to get expert enough to know all the places to look that you know the things you need to just get it done yeah yeah and and so he shows up you know, he really gave me an education on how to really properly grow plants and that is soil, take care of the soil. And with the drip system that we put in, we're going to be watering the roots, you know, so it's not an over the top system. So it's, and it's going to, going to encourage these plants to get deep roots. And he gave us some tips for our type of soil and gave me tips for the clover I'm growing. It was a real education, you know, just the whole thing on how to do the irrigation was also very educational. It's a humbling kind of value contribution, to be honest with you. And he drove all the way up from far away, too.

So it's really awesome. And you know what's crazy? His day-to-day job is irrigation. He's not a day-to-day Linux user, right? And he's interested for sure, right? And of course, he's a geek,-to-day Linux user right and he's right I mean he's interested for sure right and of course coming to the meetup yeah he's a geek like let's be honest but still pretty cool I thought to to have that experience and uh we'll link to Dominic's business in the show notes so if you're in the area and you want to work with somebody that lives and breathes this stuff and really knows it inside and out we'll put a link link to his, him and his brother's business.

He can connect with the sprinkler geeks, but thank you, Dominic. And boy, just quite the experience. And now we have such a huge project ahead of us. And I, I'm still looking forward to all the little geeky sensor things and all of

the ESP devices we'll build and all that. So we're still going to have lots of fun. I'm sure we'll talk about it on the show too. We can't help ourselves. Yeah. It's going to have lots of fun. I'm sure we'll talk about it on the show too. We can't help ourselves. No, it's going to be a good time. Bitwarden.com slash Linux. Head over there right now to get started for free with a big enterprise or with just yourself. It's bitwarden.com slash Linux. It is, I think, the low-hanging fruit of the world of security. Like you could pluck this delicious apple from the tree of security

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mobile app support. It has fantastic features like quick account switching. If you want one for your business stuff and one for your personal stuff, Bitwarden handles all of that. And the thing is, Bitwarden is always getting better too. It's just obvious. So go try it out and maybe recommend it to a friend, family, or workplace that isn't using proper password hygiene. You know what I'm talking about. Bitwarden.com slash Linux. And now it is time for the boost. We got some fresh baller boost coming into the show just as we were setting up this morning.

Wood Carver boosted in with 115,000 sats. Hello, sir. this morning woodcarver boosted in with 115 000 sats hello sir uh rock and pod verse spread across two boosts uh boosting in live one time and then a second time saying chris has truly taken the narrow path and created an independent podcast network without the horrible automatic dynamic ads and clickbait headlines. Oh, preach it sister. Hate that stuff.

Had the weirdest dynamic ad insertion experience. Oh, just crazy. He goes on to say, we shouldn't take this kind of content for granted. Now that times are tough. So everyone please chip in by any means possible. I one prefer the glorious decentralized way.

Keep it up. You know what I really appreciate about Woodcarver's boost here, even though it's a lot of self-aggrandizing, which is not my favorite, but I do appreciate the sentiment because I don't want to freak everybody out about the rest of the year. But it is not good.

And you will notice that some of my friends will switch to ads that don't really fit with the genre. Selling, you know, mass produced things that shipped in a box and just not necessarily things that really fit with the content. My pledge is I will shut shows down before I cross that line. And the more shows that get audience support. The more shows that will survive. But I do warn you. Just to be fully transparent.

As I think part of Value Value should be. I am 90% positive at least one if not more shows are going on hiatus. For the remainder of the year. Pretty soon. It's not exactly clear which ones yet. But when will probably be the end of the year pretty soon. It's not exactly clear which one's yet, but when will probably be the end of the quarter. The shows that remain are going to be predominantly survivors based on audience support and the ads we could sell. And what we'll do is we'll go into sort of a survival mode for a while

and sort of a hard time to live life lean. I have to be honest with you, the timing is not particularly great. There may be consequences for me for that, but, um, I'm not going to run, you know, some crappy mattress ad or some crappy box product ad that you don't need. I'd rather the show survive on the ones that the audience deem worth saving and the ones that good advertisers are still willing to advertise on but you will see podcasters struggling for the remainder of the year so i really you know this is this is life and death for me right this is how i feed me my kids my wife so it matters a lot to me and so i think about a lot so i appreciate that woodcarver kind of zoned in on that without me having to go

on and on about it in some sort of panicky tone because i've really been struggling a lot recently to think about how to communicate the direness of the situation and and and part of me is also a chaos monkey and i kind of welcome it so uh for new listeners because i know we've gotten a lot of those recently who new huh listeners what what would be the best ways to support the network you know if uh yeah i mean it's the boost and the memberships are the direct ways right um because otherwise it's like kind of more directly removed supporting our sponsors is probably another like the third tier which is also very much appreciated and then spreading the word of the show like just letting people know so we can just sort of grow and continue to grow and get that network effect. Find more ears. And you know, there's other ways too, right?

There's participating in other ways too that can help take a load or something like that, right? Like, you know, Dom coming out and helping us with the garden saved us probably about $1,000 in cost, roughly. Not to mention the time to research and hopefully get some answers. But he just showed up with all this expertise and he's like no no in this situation you got to do this i got this special tool yeah and i have these special clips and like so he just showed up with like decades of knowledge customized farm starter plan a listener kyle uh sent in a massive switch big old boy that we're going to use for our server rack you know i mean I mean, it's like a brand is like a five grand switch and that's just not gear we can

afford to get right now. We won't be able to afford probably until middle of next year. Right. It's going to be, it's going to be a while because it, you got, it takes a bit to recover after living really lean too. You kind of dig yourself into a hole and I'd rather dig myself into a hole

than run advertisers that, I mean, I just can't i can't picture myself walking into this room sitting down in this chair and reading an ad about some crappy product that i can't stand just so that way i could do my podcast that you know but you love that new toothpaste there you go that's true i actually do have an electric toothbrush i love doug boosting with 75 000 sats uh maybe it's not the new hotness and maybe it's a bit controversial but i want a native client for evernote can you

point the crew to and he'll give us a link that we'll put in the show notes and it is a early access to test out a evernote linux client he's thinking maybe if enough of us sign up maybe they'll actually do something with it. See, I'm super interested, Chris, to hear what you think about it. Is this just a little too late for you? Because you used to love Evernote. Or you're switching back. I'm going back, baby.

Well, I don't know, guys. I'm still struggling so bad. It's rough. So, you know, I went all in on Joplin, and I used VS Code as a front end. And that's been working real good until on a couple of my systems, the VS Code integration just quit working. Nothing I can do, apparently. Can't get it to work again.

Oh, no. And I just don't have. And the Joplin UI is slow. Slow. So slow. So, I don't know. I'm really. It's a big old strug sesh and i i got notes physical notes stack it up that is not good i know i don't know what to do it's just damn it

it's such the thing that evernote did so brilliantly too is that ocr of pictures and stuff just automatically and then you just you put it in there and a couple minutes later you can search for it it It's just glorious. Files copying came in with 70,000 sats, and he's emptying the old Fountain wall to test out Podverse. Thank you for thinking of us. Of course, with the Lightning Network, you could send those sats to Fountain. Right.

But I appreciate thinking of us when you're moving between. I, which I still think Podverse is great because it's the GPL cross-platform app, but I've been back on Fountain for the last couple of weeks. Is that right? Yeah, you know, they're both just updating all the time. Yeah, you got to keep fresh. It reminds me of distro hopping back in the day when one distro would add this thing that I wanted to try. And so I'd switch over to that distro for a while. And then, you know, the other one would do something and I would switch back to that one for a while. I like that framing. It does make it, I it i mean it is pretty exciting we're seeing innovation and

change new stuff in podcast clients oh it's unbelievable the rate of improvement and changes and like if you try one of these apps and then try it back try it again in six months there's like so many improvements and changes and and honestly it's all trending in the right direction i think user 35 came in with 31 500 sats just saying crushing it thank you for the generous boost and there's a birthday cake in there wes i think that might be a birthday boost as well thank you active shadow boost in with 25 000 sets i'm behind on episodes but i wanted to comment on the note-taking and to-do app I use. It's a Bash application on GitHub called NB. I especially like it because I can actually use it to write entire work documents

and then convert them to PDF using Pandoc via a custom plugin. Anyway, it's been good to me for sure. Now, Chris, this strikes me as maybe something you'd be interested in because you're complaining about the Joplin UI. How about something that works like on the command line as a TUI? Generally not a laggy UI when you're on the command line. Right, no. Generally not a problem you have.

It looks like it has encrypted files and it will do Git versioning and syncing. That's pretty nice. It does have a GUI web front end as well. Supports Markdown, Org, LaTeX, ASCII doc. You can write notes using Emacs, VS Code, I suppose

Nano if you wanted to. Actually, the command line UI, as far as command line UI goes, looks pretty good. Look at that. If you've got a terminal that supports emoji, it's all in. Huh! You know, I'm constantly impressed how many note-taking, like, A, applications, but also paradigms there are and keep being created. Like, every month there's a new one that we're trying to explore.

It's insane. Check this out. It's also a powerful bookmarking system. Locally served text-centric, distraction-free bookmark browsing in Terminal or a GUI web browser. Local full-text search of cached page content. Filtering and listing Internet Archive Wayback Machine Snapshot Lookup for broken links. Oh, that's slick. Yeah.

Wow. We need that. Yeah, we definitely need that. That happens to us, like, frequently. Yeah. Wow. We need that. Yeah, we definitely need that.

That happens to us like frequently. You know, I am convinced there are as many note and to do apps as there are ways for people thinking. And so we just keep seeing more because we keep discovering there's more ways and different ways people think. Which is hopefully great then, right? I mean, we all kind of all find the ones that work well for the way our brains think. So thank you. Thank you, Shadow.

That's I'm definitely going to check it out. We'll put a link to NB in the notes. You can, of course, find it on GitHub if you want to search around for it, but we'll put a link. Gene Bean boosts in with 5,444 cents. Hey, Gene! I hoard that which your kind covet. The EcoWit weather station connects locally to Home Assistant

and has an optional soil moisture sensor that can be added to the station. I got mine on Amazon. And by the way, you can skip the online account setup and app related to EcoWit completely if using Home Assistant. You can do everything in the web interface. I've heard from a weather gentleman that I follow. I think he's a gentleman on YouTube. He loves this station as well. I love that it talks locally to home assistant we have been looking at esp powered soil sensors but so many people say these soil sensors die after a while now they're you can get a bag of them for like 10 bucks but they die you got to keep replacing them and yeah this looks a lot more robust hmm okay that's something i'll take a look at. It's definitely a little more expensive than what, because our total cost of parts is like 15 bucks tops maybe.

But you know, if this is more robust, that's definitely worth a look. Thanks. Thanks Gene Bean. Thanks Bean. Bean also mentioned a fun fact to go along with some closure banter that Wes loves so much.

Puppet server and puppet DB are also written in closure. Oh man. Wes, you must have a giant list of things that you prefer simply because ofetDB are also written in Clojure. Oh, man. Wes, you must have a giant list of things that you prefer simply because of the languages it's written in. I don't know about that, unless we're excluding Rust. Do we have a bunch of Clojure geeks in the audience? Oh, no. I hope so. Oh, gosh.

Sophie boosted in 9,000 sats. For some clarification, 9220 is indeed denmark specifically it's alborg's university region tuning in with a postal code boost also from denmark well thank you denmark thanks for checking in i really like getting the towns you know that's i feel like we should like whenever you write in if you're comfortable you should give us your town just because we like to know you know you know what we really missed in this process is it would be sweet to have a board yeah you know where i was going with this yeah there's so many things like that like we still need to get together the gosh darn

geocaching page but like you know it's the mapping stuff is kind of tricky too but i agree we always could go back because we have we keep all the boosts even the boosts we don't read on air we keep them all in the show doc so every episode you're like you're in that week's doc if you boost it in so we could go back and find these zip code boosts in trace the lineage zip code boost and then show up at their door we show up at one random listener's house to do the show. It's a crazy Linux unplugged challenge. That would be chaos. You know it.

We'd knock on the door. We got like one hour before we're live. What's your upload like? You got Ethernet in your living room? Mick Lang boosted in 7,182 Satoshis. Congrats, you found the spot. By the way, one origin story for the place name is that it comes from Sammy. Language, word, ooh, Chris, you got this one.

Oh, oh, uh, Stenjavari. Oh, nice. That is supposed to mean reindeer mating place. But which literally means Penis Lake. No wonder Hedgehog won over when map makers were recording the place names. I think we ought to start a campaign to go back to the heritage to the original name. We should not culturally oppress Penis Lake. Daja boots in with 4,747

sats. Heyo! You guys mentioned locally caching Tidal tracks. Well, not exactly that. There's a tool called Tidal Media Downloader that includes Tidal DL and a GUI that sits on top of it. Super handy for locally pulling down things from Tidal. Ah, of course

Tidal being well known for having excellent quality tracks. Yeah, Spurious Tom Tidal being well known for having excellent quality tracks. Yes, Spurious Tom came in with 5,000 sets. If you're using Tidal and want an offline archive, also recommends Tidal Media Downloader. And notes their Android app has the ability to sync things offline as well, though has personally had mixed results with it. Good to know.

Thank you for the experience. The Golden Dragon is back with a row of ducks. Long time no boost swapped job positions it's a little tougher but hopefully that long trip and that dream includes kck kentucky oh that makes me hungry or wichita great show you know i have been to the original kfc with alex we went to the very first KFC. It's a dark, wild, twisted story, my friends. You would not believe how much

allegations of murder and rampage are associated with the founding of a fast food restaurant. Yeah. It's a story. Kansas City, I think, is what they are. Oh, what did I say? Kentucky? Yeah, like an idiot. Of course, KC, of course. Scott came in with 2,000 sets. I've deeply enjoyed boosting shows, but I can't seem to explain it to my friends. I have one friend who loves podcasts, but he still doesn't get how it offers anything new compared to Patreon. Could you guys please give me a short rundown of how boosts are different and why they have helped the lug? It would be nice to send him an audio clip of a more professional explanation.

I saw this boost come in live from Scott, and I had a lot of thoughts, so I wrote them down, and I might just publish this as like a pastebin document in the show notes. So, Scott, you can review it later. But I think when you think about boosts versus Patreon, if you would indulge me for a moment because i've been thinking a lot about this recently and i think it has ramifications on free software and other podcasts and other media think about it first for this particular

case from a small business angle and think about something that is a purpose-built business to focus on content maybe it's like a family-run business. And maybe it's something you want to run for the rest of your lifetime. And you want to own the relationship with your customer or your listener as much as possible because you're planning to do this for the rest of your life. And I'm already 18 years into this. So it seems conceivable that I could go for 30 years because I'm not slowing down right now. And the booths provide a direct relationship. There's not a company, an organization, or a middleman. There's no PayPal between

your message and me. There's no Patreon that can make policy changes and decide say something like the earn it act or the restrict act were to pass jupiter broadcasting's public platform would be against those acts passing now imagine for national security reasons those that oppose the earn it act needed to be a little bit quiet i could see patreon taking action to suppress somebody who might be advocating for everyone including terrorists and whoever else to have access to encryption which i would be it's very easy as time goes on especially when you're looking at a 30-year timeline it's very easy for my opinion and the norms out there to not match up all the time, even if they do right now. And if Patreon or Stripe or PayPal or Visa or MasterCard even, or a bank, is in between me and you, they at some point could decide they don't want us to have a connection.

That's fine if you are a hobbyist. Maybe you're only doing this for a couple of years. Maybe you're part of a larger group and that's not your goal. You know, it's not the business's goal. So it's not that everybody should be using Boost necessarily, although I think there's benefits to a hybrid system. But depending on the type of business that you want to do, it's more important to have that be independent. And you want it to be an open source system that you're building your business on top of. You want it to be a peer to peer platform that you're building your business on top of. Not, I don't want to build

my business on top of Stripe's API. That's crazy, right? If a third of my income came from Patreon, I'd be terrified. I don't do YouTube because I don't want my income source to come from YouTube. It's, it is, it's sauce from, it's manna that you just can't say no to once that money starts coming in. And, and the great thing about boosts is they can be any amount. They can be large boosts. They can be a penny and they can still traverse the lightning network and everybody can afford the you know a certain amount like this whatever value they feel and some people want to pay more and some people can't and boosts include a mess they include a message and that's pretty great because again we can build tooling around that we can automate it that all

the boosts that are in this week's episode were all automatically grabbed by a fantastic set of closure scripts that Wes has been writing for us. And in the early days, there wasn't a system in place for this, right? And we're now in the early days of this system. We're kind of like at the stage when JB started podcasting.

We're at the stage, it was in its infancy. Linux, when JB started 18 years ago, was in its infancy, right? I lost credibility because I promoted Linux to my clients. I lost business. But I knew it was a stack I could build a business on long term. And I think there's something to that, that when you're thinking about something that you could run as a family for a long time, you think about it differently than you might as a hobbyist. But then there's also the angle of the audience, which I think is the most important one. And then I'm done. And then I'm done. But value for value and the boosts create a connection between the host and the listener that I've never really seen before. And I've been doing this for a while. And the beautiful thing is, is once it's set up, it's so easy to use. It's a pain in the butt to set up initially. But then once it's set up, if you use like a new podcast app, it's a button. You just

push a button in there and you can send your message and then you get to hear us read your message. And that's fun. I know that because I boost into a bunch of shows and I love hearing my message read. And the community has built memes and themes and contributed to that show like you would an open source project. The row of ducks, the zip code boost, the Star Trek boost, the over 9000 boost, all of these other little memes. We didn't create them. boost, the over 9,000 boost, all of these other little memes. We didn't create them. The audience did. And now they're part of our show. And that's incredible for a Linux podcast. Think about that. We're actually implementing the open source ideals in the very production of the world's largest Linux podcast through this platform. We've never even seen anything like this before. People don't even know what they're seeing right now. This is just kind of the beginning of what value for value

brings you and boosts. The more you think about this, the healthier it is too as a host. Like you're thinking about things in a new way and the audience starts thinking about things in a new way. And I think that makes for a healthier media landscape long-term. And then lastly, we just make more money than we would with Patreon. Right. And there are weeks where the Bitcoin dad pod brings in more Satoshis than Linux Unplugged does, which has about 55,000 more listeners or 60,000 more listeners than that podcast does. And he will still sometimes bring in a larger total sum that's not possible with advertising advertisers won't even talk to a podcast the size of the bitcoin debt it's a system that kind of entrenches the established large shows and disadvantages the new shows until they just

grind it out for years until they get enough listeners where they can go to an advertiser and say please will you sponsor me please but with boosts if you do a great episode and somebody sends in a baller boost you go to the top of a chart and now you've got thousands of listeners all of a sudden and in this one episode you know we may make more money in boost than others do in Patreon. And that's more critical right now than ever, because we're barely going to make it if we make it. It's never been more tenuous. And if I didn't have this avenue of boosts and memberships right now, I'd be totally panicking. But I know that we can trust fall into the arms of the audience and we've set up the

avenues for them to support us and they will catch us and it's going to be the difference between survival and death and a lot of podcasters can't even cover their run costs but if you start taking boosts you do a good episode you make good you satisfy the audience, you can make a little bit of money, you can pay for your hosting, maybe more. I mean, this has got to be something, this struggle is something that contributes to podcast fading, is this struggle, this very struggle right here. So I'm excited about it, and I think it's a much bigger deal than anything like Patreon. I think Patreon can be an avenue, but I wouldn't want to build a business on it. I'm sorry that was so long, but I feel like it's a message people need to hear.

And Scott, thank you for asking. Open source accountant boosts in with 2000 sats. LogSeek sounds awesome. I left Evernote for standard notes. Is there a comparison? Oh, have you ever used standard notes? No, not really. I was taking a little peek at it, though.

I think LogSeq is pretty focused on the whole graph and connecting the blocks that you make. It does have a lot of different things for flashcards and whiteboards and tasks. Standard notes seems a little more, I mean, I think you've got to pay if you want markdown support, whereas that's just right built into LogSeq. It does seem to be very focused from the get- go on the security, the syncing, the encryption and log seek has options for those, but sort of standard note seems like maybe it focuses

on that first. And then the note taking is kind of a secondary concern. That's my 1000 foot view. Never tried it. Sure. I think I've kind of limited some of my considerations and options just because I want to be able to self host that stack. But I don't know, as the members just because I want to be able to self-host that stack. But I don't know.

As the members just got to hear, which got probably cut out from the main release show, there are downsides to that as well. Not always great. But open source account, you might just have to give it a try and see which one fits your mind and workflow a little better. We'd be curious to hear back. I would really like to know because I've got to solve this problem. Bug-eyed Stormtrooper boosts in with 5222 sets these are the podcasters we're looking for a wink i listened to the members feed and wanted to suggest a pump-up song it is a youtube song so not ideal but still worth a listen when stars and salt collide by the piano guys.

Nice. I think we should wrap the stream up with that this week. Thank you. I love the suggestions. Bear454 comes in with 10,000 sats. I love this. Bear, thank you for boosting in. Bear's a longtime listener. He writes, hey there, I didn't get the deal with boosts. Why would I want to go through the whole crypto headache? That's a great phrase, by the way, instead of just dropping a few dollars your way. But now I see that the splits are a really unique feature that couldn't automatically be implemented any other way. So maybe it's worth the headache. I got to say, I didn't even touch on the splits in that last whole the whole thing I went around.

That's the thing. There are so many features that it's like multifaceted. Yeah. Right. It's, it's a huge deal. There's so much complexity behind the scenes, managing sponsor relationships and contracts with hosts on their take of the sponsor. And all of it is completely completely completely opaque to the listener they have no idea any of it they don't know who makes what or how much of what they make or what their cut is or anything like that and that's fine because that's always the way it's been in media so you're used to it you don't even think that it should be any other way because you've never seen it any other way i get it but the reality is as somebody who deals with it, 80% of my off-air time is spent dealing with that stuff at least once a quarter,

sometimes for multiple weeks. That's what I spend my time doing. That's what I do. And if you just do the splits, it's all out there in the open. You see exactly how much Brent will make. You'll see how much Wes makes. You see how much I make. You'll see the network take. You'll see how much we're contributing to other developers and projects with every time you boost in. And it's all right there in the RSS feed. And it's also visualized on the podcast index, even graphically with little bars. It's all out there. It's all transparent.

And there was no backroom negotiations that need to happen or anything like that because it just comes in as you boost. And everybody gets their cut. And it's a great way, I think, to support software development and media production. So thank you very much, Bear, for pointing out the splits. They're a massive part of this, and when people do boost in, we send a little love out to some other projects as well as a thank you. Bear also mentioned a second part here. One quick note on notes.

I sync my local notes folder to my NextCloud server, and from there I use NextCloud notes on Android, paper on my Librem 5, and Obsidian on the desktop. The metadata varies quite a bit, but the Markdown-based notes are synced across all my devices. That's okay. Boy, there's more solutions than you can shake a stick at, but that's, that's, that'd be, the nice thing I like about that is I'm using my Nextcloud instance there. And I think given all of the pieces, there are just so many permutations.

So it's like maybe on one device, you prefer something else than Bear does. And you just choose whatever you want, Chris. You nailed it. Didn't he just nail it, Wes? Nailed it. I'm so proud of him. I love watching him nail things.

Menno boosted in 16,046 sets. Hey-oh, thank you. With two boosts. Linux Unplugged is one of my favorite podcasts, and certainly my favorite Linux-related podcast. We gotta work up that list just a little bit more, but I'll take it. Aside from the great content, the combination

of your personalities brings a certain energy that is rare to find, and just works. Keep up the great content, the combination of your personalities brings a certain energy that is rare to find and just works. Keep up the great work. Well, thank you. You can really thank Wes, though. He supplies the Red Bull before the show. Someone has to. Also, the boost amount is my postcode.

Oh, Wes, did you get a chance to track that one down? We got a location. It looks like it's Christchurch in New Zealand. Well, there you go. Hello, New Zealand. Thank you for writing in. Appreciate you. Thank you, everybody, for boosting in this week.

There's a bunch of people that boosted in that either didn't have a message or they were streaming sats or, you know, maybe it's below the 2,000 sat. Cut off. Either way, we appreciate you out there. And, of course, we appreciate our members. You know, you really are our foundation. We do all of this knowing that you're out there. And Linux Unplugged is one of the more well-supported, but we could always use a little bit more Unplugged core.com or you can support all the shows at jupiter.party.

And we got a pick this week, and I think it's a doozy i am really loving this find it's called vod to pod rss and what it does is it converts a youtube or twitch channel into a podcast feed really easy to get up and going it creates a podcast rss feed that can be listened inside your podcast client of choice. It'll transcode. It'll do the download, make it an MP3, and then put it up in a feed. And it says no storage server is required. And you even get a little web UI to go along with it. And I think this is so great because YouTube's trying to bring podcasts onto YouTube.

I say take YouTubes and bring them into your podcast player. Flip the script on them. VOD to pod-rss. What do you think, Wes? You like my pick? Yeah, I really do. This looks super handy. It does note that if you don't set up like a YouTube API, results are limited to 15.

That might work. Also says it works flawlessly even on a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4. Oh, cool. Nice. And did you note? Mostly written in Rust. Of course. Yeah, of course.

You like it, Brent? Did I do good? Did I do good? Look at your smile there. I think you did good. This is a bit of a theme that we've been touching on the last couple episodes of bringing, you know, creating your own RSS feed in various ways. I do know this is like a video formats thrown into an RSS feed. So I'm guessing it's taking audio only,

which to be honest, most of the stuff I ever take off YouTube, that's what I want. Anyways. I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be for the YouTube videos that are like basically podcasts that they're putting up on the tubes and you just want to listen to it.

Cause you know, audio, you can take it anywhere, but video is a little bit more restrictive and not everybody has the background playing. But if you don't, and you're on Android, you should get more restrictive and not everybody has the background playing. But if you don't and you're on Android, you should get NewPipe because it'll do the background playing for you. So there's a second pick.

It's NewPipe. We'd love to have you hang out with us in our virtual lug. If we break for a production reason or we're hanging out in the pre or post show, we're always chatting it up in there. And of course, the mumble room's open, so you can tag me and get your thoughts into the show live. And it's also just a low latency way to listen to the show. It's our live audience for the show. They're right here with us. It's like having, yeah, it's as close as it gets. We could not fit that many people in the studio.

So it's as close as it can get. We have to do some stacking. Hmm. Yeah. Maybe if we planked and stacked. When the show is live? Well, that's a good question. You can find out at jupiterbroad stacking. Hmm. Yeah. Maybe if we plankton stacked. When the show is live? Well, that's a good question. You can find out at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar.

And then we stream it at jblive.tv every single Sunday. And we do it right here at noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. See you next week. Same bad time, same bad station. I got a pro tip for you, too. If you want to know what's going on with the latest Linux kernel or what's happening with Asahi or I don't know what our thoughts are on the new Ubuntu release. Well, then you should be checking out Linux Action News, LinuxActionNews.com. Wes Payne and I are doing a pod over there every single week.

Breaking it down. Nice, lean and mean. Just what you need to know. Get you in, get you out. You feel like you learned a little something on the way. LinuxActionNews.com for that. Links to what we talked about today are over at LinuxUnplugged.com slash 509 and a great network of shows over at JupyterBroadcasting.com,

a community-built website from the ground up. Thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Unplugged program. See you back here next Sunday. Thank you. you