LINUX Unplugged - 527: Framing Brent

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Brent's new Framework laptop has been torn apart and put back together again. We'll find out if it's up to his standards. Plus, we're kicking off a new build.

I have to be honest, if we're placing bets, I don't think I would have bet that Brent was going to be the first of us to get a new laptop. No, I mean, you buy one approximately every other month, and I've been due for a new one for a while now. You really have. And I think you have been thinking about getting the framework since the very first model. Yeah, that's right. And they've just made it more and more attractive ever since. And here you are, Brent, out of the group. You've got your new machine.

Are you on it right now? I am group. You've got your new machine. Are you on it right now? I am not. What? Yeah, I know. Oh, you could have, if you could have, if you would have, if you would have gotten that laptop set up for this show, I would have had to eat my words last week. You know, that was my main goal today. And I got so sidetracked by a bunch of other lovely things. And I'm, you know, quite disappointed by, you know, proving you right. 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. Well, coming up on the show today, indeed, Brent got his new Framework laptop, and he's already taken it apart and put it back together again. So we'll see if it holds up to the Brent standard, and, of course, we'll hear about his nerdy adventures in Berlin filled with Linux. And then we're kicking off a new build project here on the show,

and because we are who we are, we're going to debate every little nuance of this thing because I want to get it just right. So we'll tell you about that in a little bit. And then we'll round it all out with some great boosts and picks and a lot more. So let's say good morning to Tailscale. Head on over to tailscale.com slash Linux Unplugged. That'll get you 100 devices for free, not a trial. You get them for free for 100 devices. And it's a great way to support the show.

You'll build out in minutes a mesh VPN protected by WireGuard. No inbound ports for you anymore, my friend. I self-host so much. You guys know it's ridiculous, and I don't have any inbound ports because I use Tailscale now. It's the best, and they've got a suite of tools that make it even better, so go try it. You'll see what I'm talking about and why we rave about it.

Tailscale.com slash Linux Unplugged. Now, before we get into the show, we've got to bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello, Chris. Hey, Wes. Hello. Hello, Brent. Hi.

Hello, everyone. Howdy. Nice to see you all in there. Hey, Carl. Hey, Neil. Hello, Mini-Mech. Hello, ByteBitten. Hello, Conan. I already said hi, Neil. Hello, Mini-Mech. Hello, ByteBitten. Hello, Conan.

I already said hi, Neil, but that's Conan. And, of course, Dan's in there as always. And up in the quiet listening, we've got a small little group today. Sometimes we've got a big group. But we have a small set of folks that joined us on Sunday. We do the show live at about noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern over at jblive.tv. And even if one of us is in Berlin, it happens so that's right rent uh how is it going over there are you uh doing all right i see you're in the next cloud office again i am yeah i'm here

uh thanks to next cloud again of course i guess we have a conference coming up next week on the 16th and 17th you can join remote if you're interested there uh i'm speaking at the conference and doing a bunch of cool things so i would invite anyone who happens to be in berlin like just drop in um i'm there on the weekend the 16th and 17th but also there's like a developers sort of i don't know we're bringing the whole development team together the whole community and just hacking on a bunch of stuff so if you're in berlin during the week which is not sort of officially the conference part, just also send me a message. I'd love to, like, I don't know, say hi, at least just come join us. Um, the thing is you can join remotely,

which is always an option. Um, but I'm also here doing a bunch of JB meetups. Well, I say a bunch one, it feels like a bunch cause tons of amazing people showed up and that happened what what are we sunday that happened two days ago on friday and i think i made a mistake guys because i booked the meetup the day after i landed in germany and uh i was wondering about that the uh the location or the you mean like the meetup.com page well you you're just talking about the like travel for crazy amounts of time and then do a meetup the next day somehow i thought that was going to be okay but um you know we invited folks to show up at around six o'clock here at the next cloud office and around 6 20 i was feeling like i could fall asleep and uh thankfully you know there's some great people and the conversations kept me awake.

And we had some definite excitement, which we'll get into in a little bit. But yeah, it was just an amazing time. And Berlin is Berlin. I'm having a great time. Well, that's always nice to hear. And you're still showing up for the show. Look at that.

Yeah. Even though there's a rave going on downstairs. Nor would we want to. So I want to hear the story because I know you got there. I know it's been a very Nix OS heavy visit. And I know it's ultimately ended in you tearing apart your framework and putting it back together again. I love that, you know, we clatter on so much about Nix here. And then, you know, he goes a world away and he still can't escape it.

It turns out, you know, it's just everywhere. Once you learn about Nix, it's with you forever. And the people that use it, they're everywhere. I figured maybe I should give a little bit of context on why I thought I needed a new laptop. Nixcloud was kind enough to offer me one when I first started. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I got this dev one. I love this machine.

And it's doing great for me. It's performant enough. I think it's a great travel laptop. Chris, you like this thing too. I think a long-term review is just, you're loving the thing. So it just started giving me problems, not anywhere except for just the hinges. And I, up to this point, have prided myself on, you know, having my laptops for many, many years, as you know, those thing pads that I probably kept for way too long. And the hinges just kept getting looser and looser. And I attempted to fix them myself, which again, I've fixed plenty of hinges in the past of all sorts of different types of laptops. And I just never quite was able to get to it without feeling like I was going to damage the thing. So I felt like doing some traveling, I probably should have a backup laptop at the very least.

And one I can call my main traveling laptop that's reliable before I fix the dev one. So Nextcloud was kind enough to somehow be okay with me getting a framework. They do tuxedo computers here for the most part, which I've heard really, really great things about. I haven't actually had a new one in my hands. I did see an old one and it looked in great condition. So I'll try to get my hands on one of those. But the framework was something they were willing to give a shot. So I had it shipped to a friend here, actually a listener who you will know well. There's a wonderful clip coming up in the show, but it just was sort of a super last-minute thing.

So I had the framework shipped to listener Tomas, who was kind enough to get it while I was still in Canada or actually halfway traveling there. But he brought it to the meetup, and that was really the first time I got to see it. But before I even got to see it, I got to see a bunch of new and old friends. And so I, as usual, there were some stories to tell. Okay, as you could probably hear, we're here at the meetup here at Nextcloud. You two gentlemen, though, I met before the meetup because I was in the grocery store and I saw a Linux Action Show shirt and I thought, that's probably a person who's coming to the meetup. Tell us who you are and where you got this shirt. I'm Thor.

I've been a long-time listener and I bought the shirt probably when it was on the show or whatever, years and years and years ago. I'm not exactly sure how long I've been listening. Probably like 12 years, maybe more. I don't know. Yeah, several years. And you joined him as well.

We met in the grocery store. Where did you travel from? I traveled from the south of Berlin. And yeah, I'm actually really new to the podcast. I got through the podcast through Tor. And he came here to visit me, to come to the podcast. And so I had to listen to the podcast. And it was like, yay, this is a really cool podcast.

I want to join. Oh, that's very sweet. And you traveled here. So tell us where you came from. Norway. I live in Oslo right now. Yeah. So how long was the journey? A little bit longer than initially anticipated. The train station was entirely stopped in Oslo. So I had to like take a taxi through a lot of traffic and stuff. but I just luckily made my plane and the plane ride was like an hour and 40 minutes or whatever and then yeah, it was nice. Amazing.

And is this your first meetup? No, I was actually, I met up with the self-hosted show in London because that was also a relatively short flight. So being your first meetup, what's it like? How does it feel? You feel at home? You finding your kind of people here? I actually really enjoyed it it's not my first meetup in total the first meetup I attended was a talk and afterwards everyone was awkward

and everyone left and it's not like that here it's like we arrived here everyone was right away up to talking to each other we all had the same idea of how things should work and especially with a new laptop thing everyone was like we want to dig into this he mentioned new laptop i may have gotten uh myself a laptop that we played with here uh this is your second meetup i imagine you'll come back uh that's the plan, you know, as long as time and money afford it. So, yeah. I mean, if you guys want to do a meetup in Norway, that'd be really cool, too. It'd be a whole lot easier for me to travel.

Well, now you're tempting me. I think we'll do that next. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Not a problem. Thanks. Thank you for having us. I'm getting a picture of a room full of geeks looking at this framework laptop now, right? Because of course it's going to be like one of the coolest rigs in the room.

You know, the thing is, they were literally during that clip looking at it without me. Like they just kind of like, I unboxed it, you know, this big thing, which was really, really fun. Actually, I've never had such a fun unboxing. My cats are not that fun, you know? And then I just, you know, got talking with people and got busy. So it just sat there, but it was amazing because out of the corner of my eye, I could see, you know, one person would sit down, take a look at it, kind of check it out. At that time it was in pieces. And then that person would get up and another person would sit down and like come and play

with all the pieces. Really, really fun. Actually. I didn't, um, I didn't know it was going to be kind of a central part of the meetup. And a conversation piece, I can imagine. Yeah, I thought, you know, I'm sort of coming to the party with the frameworks. You know, a lot of our listeners have them and have enjoyed them. And so I thought it was going to be old news. But it turns out, nope, show and tell time. So that was really fun.

I mean, new hardware is new hardware, right? And it is a new model. It is an update, and it's the 13-inch version, too, not to spoil it. So that's also very interesting. Yeah, I did give listener Thor the award of being the very first JB listener that I

spot out in the wild. It may have been a block away from the next cloud office where the meetup was being held, but to see a Linux Action Show shirt out in the wild was like, I don't know, a real proud moment for me. So yeah, that was really great. Not only is that a great thing, just, oh, I know that that person's, they're on my, they're on my team. But also those shirts, we sold those a long time ago. So you got to respect somebody who can keep a shirt in condition like that because not me. I mean

unless I don't wear them. If I don't wear them then they're fine. But if I put them on I inevitably wreck them. You know they must use a clothesline or something. Maybe. Maybe that's what it is. And Thor's shirt was in like great condition. I mean like looked like it had just been purchased condition. So kudos

there. Maybe he keeps it behind glass and, you know, break glass in case of meetup. The nice thing is I got to see familiar faces as well. Listener Kenji, who I've seen on every trip to Berlin and taught me a bunch of stuff at the NixOS meetups at CBase. He just kept teaching me new things about Berlin, Germany, and NixOS and more, and so I figured I'd share that with you guys too. Well, Kenji, you've been to, I think, many of our meetups now,

and you introduced me to CBase the very first time, or at least gave me the tour, and when I've been back, you've always been there. I've learned a ton from you so thank you for being here again yeah I'm glad I couldn't be here again and that you are hosting this again it's always a very good group here and a very awesome energy yeah I agree completely I mean it's not my doing it's all of you just combining into a beautiful energy, I think. You're too kind. But you, well, you're a little bit of an expert in NixOS,

which is what I learned from you last time I was here in town. But this time I just learned that, given I have a new framework that I just unboxed here at the meetup, you know a little bit about the framework as well. Do you think I made the right decision? I hope so. I personally had a good experience with my framework. I have it for almost a

year now, also the 12th generation. Actually, my graphics chip was defective and it got significantly worse over the first two months of usage. I contacted support. They sent

a replacement motherboard and I replaced it it was with their with their instructions it was about 20 minutes and everything was fine after that I am super happy with it and I am very confident now

like in the beginning I didn't know how well it would support now. Like in the beginning I didn't know how well it would support maybe replacement parts in the future but no matter where I go I see framework laptops everywhere. So by now I'm very confident that I will be able to get

replacement parts also in the future which makes me happy. I think I made the right choice and I think you probably made the right choice too. Well, that's good to hear. You also, last I heard your name, you were at CC Camp, which is like, well, I don't quite know what it is, but it seems really interesting. Can you give us a hint of what it is and what it was like to actually attend?

Yeah, so it's the Chaos Communication Camp. It's every four years. This time it was in Mildenberg. It was also their last time. You know what I found really insightful about that is Kenji gave us kind of a longer-term perspective, having owned a framework with some technical issues that he sorted out.

So that's nice. But then, Brent, he touched on something in there that I realized was one of my very initial concerns with the framework project, and I think we're past it. And it's probably worth recognizing, and that is it seems, although it's hard to really know, it seems like this has had enough success that we're likely to have access to parts and accessories years and years after you buy a unit. When they announced that first unit. Right. You don't know. Are they just going to put this one out there?

A small user base adopts it, and there's no secondary market. There's not a lot of interest. Where is announced that first unit. Right. You don't know, are they just going to put this one out there? A small user base adopts it and there's no secondary market. There's not a lot of interest. Where's it going? Yeah. And I think he makes a good point. Like this thing's seen some success. There's a lot of people using it now. There's going to be parts on eBay or whatever for a long time. Yeah. What I find most interesting when I introspect about the framework is that, yeah, we heard, you know, when it was first released and the concept and that hit all the right buttons for me. But I think you guys know this about me probably sooner than I knew it about myself is I'm not really an early adopter. I don't like to jump into text really, really quickly for those reasons you just mentioned, Chris is like, I don't know, maybe I'm just skeptical or I don't want to be the first one to fail or something.

I'm not sure. So that was kind of my emotions with the framework early is like excitement, but not wanting to jump in. And I felt like now is kind of the right time. Having heard that, you know, they shipped what, like three versions of the motherboards now. They're coming out with the new AMD Ryzen ones shortly. They're on pre-order. And so it feels like, yeah, the concept that they promised has come to fruition and a couple of times and that

replacement parts are available. The repair guides and just like the tear down videos that we're seeing all over the internet are like really great. And so I feel like they've sort of met most of the promises and that got me kind of quite excited when I started looking at what the options might be for me to get a laptop, especially short, you know, uh, short notice. And somehow this was an option that I, I think it's actually really perfect for me. And I'm, I'm looking forward to kind of diving into it a little bit more that said, um, Tomash Lister and Tomas, who we've built an amazing relationship together these last few trips. He knows much more about the framework

and he helped me, you know, they got shipped to his place and he helped guide me into picking the right model and everything. And I thought we could hear it from him and just hear why I did this. Well, Tomasz, we've spent quite a bunch of time together now. We've gone on multiple bike rides where you've made me suffer greatly. You've had me swim in multiple lakes. I think we're going to a new one tomorrow, I think, right? I'd say innocent until proven guilty.

I do not recall any suffering happening at any point in time. I may have had my eyes closed, and that's why I haven't seen it, but you never know. You can't prove it. Well, this time around, I don't think you're making me suffer. You're helping me because you sort of really helped me get this framework laptop. It actually got shipped to your place. And we did a little swap of some components.

You want to walk us through what we did and how it went? Yeah, so I basically divided this scheme to get you to replace your old defunct dev one that we all knew was just going to go the way of the dodo one way or another. And to kind of con you out of your high performance to a 13th gen intel motherboard and accept my old one but no so basically um because of the timing of your trip here it was not possible for you to get the replacement laptop from framework to be shipped

to canada so i offered we ship it to my place because I work from home anyway I'm always there and I can pick it up and to Sweden the deal since you were on the fence about it because you wanted the AMD board I said if you get the 13th gen Intel I will buy the board off you for the price difference between 11th gen and 13th gen so that you can have a daily driver laptop now with the possibility to upgrade to AMD at a later date so you eventually get your framework now and don't have to wait for the AMD board which will only be available early next year and yeah you can just upgrade down the road and as a bonus you already know how to swap the boards because we've just done it so it should be easy for you now and what was nice is that the framework this time around

you know I got the unconstructed version and it actually was totally unconstructed and we had to build it from scratch yours I think came partly constructed so was it nice for you to see that difference or was that a bit frustrating or what do you think? no it was interesting

I'm quite happy that they are modularizing it to the point where they can you know just send you the parts the replacement parts as they come if you just order the parts on their own this means they're making the processes more efficient and hopefully it means they are not basically doing the building and unbuilding and then shipping you a built product anyway. So from what I understand is the initial batch, because I ordered mine as soon as they became available in Germany, because I was waiting for that.

Back then, they did not have a good process for testing all the components without actually having them build the full laptop. So they will build the full laptop so they will build the full laptop anyway at which point they might just leave it like this and since i ordered a diy model that didn't come with ram and and ssd they just plop that out from the test rig close it up so yeah mine came basically in one piece just with the missing two components but yours you had a separate bezel box you had a separate top lid with the keyboard of your choice because you had a different language keyboard from mine and yeah it was nice that they're streamlining it and hopefully this means that going forward they'll have even more flexibility in what they ship and like

configurability because the one thing that, for example, you cannot configure right now is you cannot opt for a glossy screen. It's all matte screens now, if you go DIY. And I think it's the same with the hinge, because they have two hinge models. As far as I'm aware, every new framework

is shipped now with the heavier hinge. So if you wanted to swap it out, I think you just have to order the hinge extra and swap it out yourself, which is not a big deal. It's just a waste, right? Because it could have just come pre-packaged as an extra component.

But it's just nice to see that they've gone from, they basically have to ship you the whole thing because they're just, you know, a startup that only just started the operation and they just have one process for everything to now they're hopefully flexible enough where they can give you the customizable experience that they want to or they wanted to from the beginning

but weren't able to, right? And you've had your framework, I think, for quite a while now i think has it been yeah it's actually not as long as i thought it's only a bit over a year because the frameworks on the u.s market were available for almost two years but they only came to europe a little bit while later so it's actually quite funny because at the time when I ordered mine, shortly after the 12th gen came out, and I was wondering if I've made a mistake ordering too soon, but then, actually, no, it's a framework. I can upgrade at any point,

and they promised that motherboard upgrades will be available, and they delivered. Already a year after I bought mine, and I could have upgraded to the 12th gen, 13th gen, soon AMD. So I don't know. I just like the thing. And I am very, let's say, ecology conscious and I just like the fact that nothing goes to waste, right?

I don't need to buy a new chassis, keyboard and a screen for a perfectly good laptop if all I want is a bit of a performance boost over time for a slightly aging motherboard right you just keep using the same stuff it's like we've discovered this new thing that have that like existed in desktops for decades and all of a sudden like wait what if what if all electronics can be modular. Like, wow, what an idea, right? I'm curious, in that year that you've had yours about, has it been meeting your expectations on quality of construction?

Because being modular is one thing, but will it last? I'm like, what, half a day, not even. I'm a few hours into having one, so I can't speak to that. But do you think you could? Yeah, so bear in mind, this is not my work laptop, right? I actually spend more time on my work laptop than on my personal laptop. This is a laptop that I do some coding, home labbing, blogging, and light entertainment stuff on. I use it daily. I basically use it every single day,

but not as the main like device and i don't know so far it hasn't let me down on anything i do not like travel extensively and i do i do work from home i am usually homebound so the battery limitations that for some people are a bigger pain point don't really affect me and i think this is the most common question I had today as we were rebuilding and switching the stuff. It's like, oh, how's the battery? Everyone says the battery is not so great. Yeah, it's not like market leading. But that's not why I got the framework.

The chassis, the aluminum chassis is great. I was actually super surprised that apparently a bunch of people really hated how the original framework top lid is very soft and flexible i didn't think so i didn't realize that's a problem for anybody but framework has actually released a stiffer lid so your lid i think is already the stiffer lid it just has a little bit more material like aluminum i don't know maybe call me wearing rose-tinted glasses because I just like the concept. But everything works. Ubuntu works on it out of the box.

Debian works on it pretty much out of the box. Fedora. So if you are okay with the vanilla experiences, these experiences are verified. And for anything else that's lacking, the framework forum is really good. And the developers themselves chime in and help out. So as far as daily driving Linux on it, I've not had any problems with hardware incompatibility. Yeah, I don't know.

Do you have any more specific questions about use cases? I have one question. Now that you have the new motherboard, does it feel nice, considering you have your old chassis and a new motherboard? Well, the first thing I noticed was that my estimated battery life was longer. But I don't know how much I can trust the GNOME battery estimator or whatever. It's probably all bogus. It all is going to come out in washing.

I mean, it's definitely nice going from 8 threads to 16 threads. We got to see. I mean, we got to see. The only thing I'm noticing right now is the temperature measurements are not really showing up for all the cores, but I think this has something to do with the way they do the temperature measurements for different core complexes because they have this big little E-Cores, P-Cores thing. So maybe that has something to do with it.

I only just swapped the motherboard in, so I don't know. I got to read about it. Well, maybe we'll check back in in a month, see how it goes. And I'll have a longer review then, too. Well, thank you for your insights and telling me how not to build it when I was making mistakes and such. I really appreciate that. I was just trying to save you and your machine.

Well, you succeeded, so thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for the chat. It's fantastic to get his experience. I mean, how often when we're talking about a new piece of hardware do we get to talk about it in the context of first impressions and long-term impressions at the same time? And the meetup made that possible. It's just really cool to get both.

And, of course, I know, Brent, as we go on, you're going to be keeping us up to date on how it is or isn't doing. Yeah, I certainly will. What is your time with it now? Three days or so? Do you have any new impressions you want to leave us with? Have you actually gotten to use it? Have you got a sense of the performance or the fan noise and that type of stuff? Okay. The first thing I noticed was fan noise. Cause you know, Chris, you and I were sensitive, you know, I will say it's been silent for the most part like i haven't i haven't really pushed the thing it's been mostly in my bag so i will say like active time on it i've got

probably an hour so you know super insanely early days but in that time you know you get a feel for the keyboard you get a feel for the build quality you get a feel for the build quality, you get a feel for the fans, of course, and the monitor as well, things like that. And I will say, I'm kind of really loving it. And I have it here side by side beside the Dev1, which I just admitted that I also loved. But I'm tempted to say the framework might just be winning me over. It's a slightly different form factor, as I mentioned. It's 13-inch, and the monitor itself is a different ratio than I'm used to. It's like a 4x3, I believe.

Oh, I think I would like that, actually. I think I would really like that aspect. Yeah, I pictured this as a travel laptop, and actually it's really perfect for that. The keyboard as well has been really nice. You know, keyboards are a personal thing. It can be tricky on laptops, especially. I will say the trackpad compared to the dev one trackpad, um, feels like it, you know, it's brand new, but it feels like it's resisting my movements a little bit more. I don't know if it's a friction thing or what, and it doesn't, maybe you'll wear

it down. That's the thing, right? It's like our number two that i'm on this thing so you know maybe i need to put a little bit more time into this but initial impressions are very very high and uh i gotta say like the you know the ports are modular as well and i was able to just switch them wherever i wanted it's like the things you didn't even think were possible are possible with this laptop, which is such a nice thing. And, uh, but I gotta say, it was my most favorite receiving a new laptop experience. I mean, you guys, you know, sat down with me with the dev one, which is a specialist experience as well. Uh, but the framework trumps it because I had 20 of our, you know, Berlin listeners sat around me helping me not screw up building this thing because you know, that it is not the place to build, uh,

parts for a laptop and construct it together and swap motherboards into a different laptop. But, uh, Tomash and I got through it and having Tomash there just like, as a as an expert in comparison to me, just helping me route cables and like the little, you know, knowledge pieces was super, an amazing experience. I want to say thank you to everybody for being a part of that. And as a little bonus, they put little spare screws in the laptop there for you, just in case, you know, you got slippery fingers and you lose the screws while you're building it. So I really love that. Linode.com slash unplugged. Head on over there to get $100 in 60 day credit. And it's a great way to support the show while you can really kick the tires. And they've got some exciting news. Linode's now part of Akamai. All the tools that we love, like their beautiful cloud manager, the well-documented API and the command line client that I find super handy, it's all there.

All the stuff we used to build and deploy is still there. But now it's combined with the power and global reach of Akamai. And they're expanding their services to offer more computing resources and tools while still giving us that reliable, affordable, and scalable solution for ourselves, for businesses, for projects, whatever it might be. Over the weekend, I spun up another Minecraft server. It's been years since I've done this, but Linode has a one-click deployment in their marketplace where you answer some of the basic questions, and then it deploys an Ubuntu LTS Minecraft server, kind of just ready to go.

And then you can SSH in and tweak it if you need to. It's pretty neat. The whole system's pretty great, and it's been a while since I've set all that up for the kids, and they love it. And they've got a whole group of friends playing on there now. And, you know, it's for things like that, And it's also things for like the back end of your entire enterprise. Anything that's public facing, we put on Linode. And what's kind of unique about our

user load demand is they're really large assets and they kind of all hit around the same window of time within the first few days is the majority of the traffic. So it hits hard and people want a good experience. And so Linode has scaled to meet that. And we've been able to increase the investment into a machine and make it even more powerful if we need to, or scale it back and save a little bit when we don't need that kind of infrastructure. And the great thing is part of Akamai's global network of offerings, they are expanding their data centers, giving us more access to more resources to help you grow your business, your project, whatever it might be. So why wait? Go experience the power of Linode, now Akamai.

Visit linode.com slash unplugged to learn how Linode, now Akamai, can help you scale your applications from the cloud all the way to the very edge, like wherever Brent's at seems to always be that place. And it still scales. Go get that $100, support the show, and see why I choose it for personal stuff and business. Linode.com slash unplugged. Well, we've got some exciting news about LinuxFest Northwest that conference we're very excited about and is quickly approaching.

It is, and there is official swag. We'll have a link in the show notes for the LinuxFest Northwest 2023 hoodie, and it's a little bit of a fundraiser kind of a thing. So you could actually just donate without getting the hoodie, but what I like about it is you have options to get it on site if you want instead of getting it shipped. That's kind of nice. If you're going to be there, pick it up.

And the fundraiser will run from, well, it's going right now, until September 20th, and you can get a hoodie, or there's a shirt, I believe, a t-shirt. You can get get both you can just send a little bit of cash towards lennox fest northwest to help them might be one you want you know this could be the first lennox festival whole new era or let me let me pitch you guys an idea okay so uh listener mike and i have been kind of uh we call him olympia mike here on the show we kind of been kicking around uh each other some inspired ideas i guess you could say like he had came up with something, I came up with something, and we've kind of been kicking

it back and forth. And the concept is a minimum viable garage PC or like a notes machine, something that you can get dirty, something that's on all the time, something that's or it's instantly available. Obviously, it should run Linux. It needs to be ideally something very cheap or in my case i want to use hardware i already have whatever it might be and listener olympia mike has a pretty nice setup and he has he's been really kind of i've been watching his twitter feed as he's been talking about it and he's really had me kind of thinking

i want to do the same thing in the jupiter studio and so i asked him to kind of thinking, I want to do the same thing in the Jupyter studio. And so I asked him to kind of describe his inspiration for us. I'm a web developer with three young kids at home. I don't always get a chance to get into my office and I don't really like doing a lot of coding sessions from my laptop. So I needed a workstation that I could just jam into the corner of my garage. It was super cheap and low maintenance and I wouldn't care really if something fell on it and broke it. And so what I ended up with is this little Beelink PC. It's just a four-core Celeron with eight gigs of RAM. It's like $150, $160. I paired it with this 22-inch 1080p $70 Spectre monitor, a $7 Amazon just USB optical optical mouse and then probably the most expensive

part of the whole setup was my system 76 launch light because i mean you got to have standards sometimes uh i love this setup it's fantastic it's running nixos of course and just running the cinnamon desktop with all of my services, everything. I don't even have Flatpak enabled because I wanted to keep this setup as light as possible. I could switch the sway if I wanted to go even lighter, but this setup works fantastic on just Cinnamon. So I can anytime just go into my garage, pop into my computer, and get some really serious coding done. It's been just a great workstation. I've had it going for months now.

So, thanks so much for the recommendation. I want to do the same, but for notes. So if I want to capture something, or I'm working on something, I can just walk right to that machine and I can instantly start capturing. Go look something up, or take it down before you forget. Yeah, almost like, if you were to reduce it down to one thing,

boot to Obsidian. I mean, obviously I want to use Linux, but I want to open this up to the audience, so we're going to discuss a few ideas, but this is an open build idea, and so please boost in or email in your thoughts. I'm of a couple of minds. I could see buying hardware, say if I wanted to spend money, and do this with an Odroid,

barely do SSD, almost no moving parts at all, if any. I could see repurposing an old Yoga ThinkPad that I have. It's kind of old, but not doing much right now and runs Linux just fine. And then I would have the keyboard and monitor all taken care of. Or I could see doing something a little more interesting, like maybe a thin client, or maybe something that network boots, and it's just kind of a dumb terminal on the garage machine,

because the idea is something that's so stupid reliable and sometimes could go weeks or months of neglect, and then the moment you want it, it's available instantly. It just works. Yeah, okay. So it's already peed into a VM running on some server that you back up. Maybe. Or maybe it's pixie booted off of a machine and I've got like a base config on there.

And it just sort of builds when I've turned it on. But it'd have to be pretty quick. So I'm feeling like this is an Xbox. I was going to ask, are you even considering other options? You know, you could do a different immutable thing, like a silver blue or... If somebody made a compelling case, I would consider. Because at least for, I don't know what else you're going to want on there, that was going to be a follow-up question,

but at least for Obsidian, it seems like you'd have a wide range of options. All you really need to do is boot, auto-login, and start an app. Yeah. Use Kinoite. Yeah? Okay. Okay. What would be the advantage there, do you think? So, and start an app. Yeah. Use Kinoite. Yeah? Okay. What would be the advantage there, do you think? So a couple of advantages. One, unlike the Nix setup,

you would have the ability to server-side compose. You could put a central box somewhere and actually compose the updates chain and be able to replicate it to any machine you'd want, not just the one of them. And it would be instantaneously deployable. So I'm thinking like if I was going to build this today, it doesn't need plasma or genome even, although you could do a stripped down version of one of those. I mean, can you know why it's already a stripped down KDE in the first place?

Yeah, I could see maybe, you know, a lean mean plasma isn't that bad. And then it would be available to do other stuff. Wes, I want to hear what your thoughts are on this, because I know we've been kicking around this idea behind the scenes for a little bit. And if Wes Payne was tasked to build this note station today, what stack would he use? Because I look at this and I think I hear what Neil's saying. I like that argument a lot. I could see also doing, like I said, a thin client. Maybe it even connects back to a cloud instance because then I could get to my notes anywhere in the world, Wes.

Yeah, but don't you already have a sort of robust sync system? I think that's where it comes down to, where it gets a little harder because it depends. Your options depend more on what your existing infrastructure is. How much are you willing or want to build out to support this new effort? And are you going to like move other things towards this model? Or are you just trying to like, you know,

repurpose some old hardware you have and make it easy? You would ask. You would go like zoom out and be like, well, let's talk about the long-term strategy here. But obviously I'm going to say, since you've been doing more NixOS, it seems like it makes a lot of sense, especially since you don't actually need that much, so it should

be a pretty simple configuration, and it'd be easy to back up and restore from down the road. Yeah, that's true, and it's pretty anti-brittle, so I'm not likely to break it. My only concern there is that it would get stagnant. You know, if I didn't use it for a few weeks or months at a time, and then I sat down, it's fine that I

guess it is, but it'd be nice if it was sort of a self-updating, maybe I could do an auto-update, auto-reboot. It's fine that I guess it is, but it'd be nice if it was sort of a self-updating, maybe I could do an auto-update, auto-reboot. It also depends how are you planning to install Obsidian. Have we talked about that? No, I haven't thought about that. What are your thoughts there? Like, is it going to be Flatpak

or some other containerized format or directly on? Because then that might affect your, you know, what do you really need in the basic system? I mean, I'm surprised you're not already in the Flake sales pitch right now, to tell you the truth. Surprised we're not already in the Flake sales pitch right now, to tell you the truth. Surprised we're not already talking about Flakes in this conversation. He's building to that, Chris.

I know, I could feel it. I could feel the Flakes. I hadn't really gotten that far yet, because I hadn't really picked the base desktop software stack. But it would be ideal to have it all just installed at once. Well, and I don't know what the options are, because I use LogSeq, and I'm not currently an Obsidian user, so I don't know what all options are available to get that work. Oh, I not currently an Obsidian user so I don't know what all options are available to get that work. That's generally how I use it as a flatpack.

It seems like then if you have a flatpack what are you worried about getting stale on the base OS? You probably don't as long as you can have it upgraded and still have flatpack in the runtime. I suppose it wouldn't matter. I'm curious, what does Brent think? Is he going to make a tumbleweed pitch? No.

Actually, I was going to go the complete opposite direction and ask Chris. You just kind of made an assumption that this would be a Linux box, but I wondered if, you know, do you have an old phone around that you might be willing to, like, throw a Bluetooth keyboard at and it could just be something like that? Or, like, one of those mini displays that you just plug in? Or a tablet, I yeah maybe you know i'm like the real like crazy fringe i was thinking steam deck on a dock whoa okay let's hear more about that you're not gonna get

any car work done with that i know i know i know i know it's just you know when you're looking for a robust sort of appliance-like system, you slap the Obsidian Flatpak on that thing, you put it in desktop mode with the HDMI out or the USB-C to video out. I don't know. I mean, if I weren't using the Steam Deck for other things. I like that in the way that Mike was using it too. Then you go out to the garage to get some work done. Yeah, I'm going to go work on the car, which is really my code for Grand Theft Auto, I suppose. It's like the ODB port needs a lot of work, so you got to...

So I was picturing, to be honest with you, I was picturing either an Odroid, really, realistically, but it just doesn't, I don't know, I'm not sure, or something like the Pi 400 with Sway, or something really simple is sort of what my thought process was. Do you find Sway simple? I guess you would be using it a lot, but I was just wondering in the context of a machine that's not your workstation that you're just kind of coming back to and otherwise you're not using the rest. Would you forget shortcuts or how intuitive for occasional access do you find it?

I really just would like something to put a window up on the screen forget shortcuts or like how you know intuitive for occasional access to you well I mean I'm not sure if I really just would like something to put a window up on the screen and might as well use Wayland if I'm on something that has native Wayland support and my thought was with Sway although I don't know very well my thought was I could probably define the basics of the Nix config of just what I want working and then just always have that through all the upgrade cycles and whatnot yeah that's compelling I don't know if that's true, but that was my assumption on it. So let me tell you what I'm thinking about hardware-wise outside of the platform. I'm also thinking I probably want a pretty decent keyboard.

I'd like it to be Ethernet connected if possible and not use Wi-Fi because the Garage has decent Wi-Fi actually, but it just... It's one more way to keep it simple, right? Yeah. Just less things to fail. Always working. So ultimately... It does give you more pixie boot options so right now i'm i'm really leaning towards odroid with a monitor and a nice physical keyboard and i'm thinking only a keyboard no mouse

potentially with this setup but where i that's where something like sway maybe comes in yeah really nicely so this is my or or a virtual session on a server that I remote into from a thin client. Those are like kind of my two paths right now. I'm not quite sure on what the windowing environment should be. If I'm on a virtual server, I think it's going to be probably quite different than if it's physical hardware. But I feel like I'm at a crossroads, and this is where I need the audience's feedback. Linuxunplugged.com slash contact or please do boost in. If I go the virtual route, that sort of limits my choices in the desktop environment and how that's going to be constructed. If I go the

physical route, it sort of limits the robustness and access to it. So I'm looking for insights from other people that have built like a garage PC or a dedicated note station or if you've dreamed of a build like this, let me know your stack because what I want to do is kind of a build like this let me know your stack because what i want to do is kind of collect that over this week and then kind of come up with the definitive build potentially next week's episode or something like that so we'll probably have a pretty quick feedback loop on this so let us know collide.com slash unplugged if you are in security or it and you use octa this is a message that is for you. We all

know the problem. End users' machines get compromised either directly through old software, phished credentials. It's not something they're generally trying to do, but yet it's where we see all of the major exploits come from recently. The problem isn't really the users, though, is it? It's inadequate preventative measures. The tooling has just really not been up to snuff until now well that's where collide comes in collide is the solution to this problem so for those of you in security or it that work with octa what collide does is it ensures that only secure devices and credentials can access your cloud apps so you say goodbye to compromised credentials and the hassle of managing diverse operating systems because Collide will stop something if it's a phish credential.

Collide won't let you log in if you're not up to what the requirements are. And Collide supports the Linux desktop, Mac, and Windows all from a single dashboard. And it gives employees direct information in a really smart messaging system to help them fix the problem directly so they don't have to burden IT. It's taking advantage of the tooling that your company already has, but they they don't have to burden it it's taking advantage of the tooling that your company already has but they just don't use to its full advantage you can go experience this firsthand if you go to collide.com slash unplugged they set a demo up there for you all to give you kind of insights into how this works and it's a great way to support the show while you're checking out the system so it's collide k-o-l-i-d-e.com slash

unplugged go check out the demo. See if this might be a fit for you because it could save IT time and hassle. It's collide dot com slash unplugged. We're going to keep feedback short this week since, well, we've had a lot of clips, which is the whole episode has really been very feedback focused. Thank you, everybody. But something really neat has come up. Last week, we talked about value for value music, which has been great. I've been hearing from a lot of you who are thinking about participating in that.

If you do, send us a link to your track and play it on the live stream sometime. But in that same vein of value for value kind of encroaching into other areas and expanding, a new app has come out called Zap, and it's an executable for developers to install on their machines. And then during development, you can use the Zap command to send or boost maintainers of your dependencies over the Lightning network with Sets. Oh, interesting. That's kind of a, that's like the second version of this I've seen.

How do you go, how do you play in that? I assume it's like to receive, you got to register your stuff. I think it's like some weird Nostr connection. So you got to have like a Nostr account too. And this is like a different take on this. The other one I saw didn't have Nostr involved, but people are building and experimenting, which is pretty cool. I mean, we clearly need something.

And then really neat to see in our own community, the show mascot, the Golden Dragon and the Bearded Tech, they have been working on bringing value to value and boost to blogging. And this week they've launched the blog index. The Bearded Tech's been working hard on this. It's a brand new initiative to kind of do what the podcast index does for blogging. And it's pretty exciting. It's coming from our community and they've got some initial traction right here.

I think the next step for them is probably to reach out to others in these communities. You know, get other people outside of our little ecosystem excited about it. Yeah, find some folks with some good blogs and bring them on board. Also, a little bit of interesting details for everybody. I thought this put things in perspective for us. So two years ago, as we record, just a little bit before we started taking boosts on here on the show, we started taking boosts on here on the show on day on the daily average of transactions for boosts over the lightning network 60 000 in total sats were being sent two years ago every day 60 000 was like the daily average sats being sent total 60 000 and now two years later 60 000 sats is

often one single boost and it's it's really grown now to sometimes some days as much as a Bitcoin. I mean, it's a lot is getting transferred to that network. And another little bit of stat that indicates a lot of really interesting growth is if you survey all of the RSS feeds from say the big platforms like Spotify and Anchor and all the open

RSS feeds that we can find and you really bring them all together, 25% of the active podcast feeds are now using aspects of the podcasting 2.0 namespace. 25% is legitimate, real adoption of these namespaces. It's really cool to see that. Right. That's the kind of stuff where, I mean, it's a good way to lobby that it makes sense for

a lot of clients to have support for them, right? Like if they're out there in the feeds, start using them. Now, Chris, I heard you have a question that you'd like to throw to the audience that we have support for them, right? Like if they're out there in the feeds, start using them. Now, Chris, I heard you have a question that you'd like to throw to the audience that we want to get some feedback from. I wonder how many of you out there use a dynamic IP address and you're hosting services? And how many of you have a static IP? And why or why not, if you're hosting services, do you have a static IP? I've been seeing an interesting conversation in our matrix room of a lot of listeners who are getting static addresses for their home hosted services. I don't know how common that is.

So here's the question. Do you own a static IP? Maybe it's at some system or maybe it's at home. Why or why not? And if you host services with a dynamic address, how's that working out for you? Boost in and let us know. address. How's that working out for you? Boost in and let us know.

And we're also soliciting feedback on if you'd like a long-term review of the Steam Deck now that I've had it for a while. You could also boost in and let us know about that. We appreciate it. Boost to Graham. And we got a baller boost from Brunswick Brewer who sent in 214,011

sats. Responding to last week's episode, hey guys, first time long timer, I'm listening to your take on the kernel team GPL code blocking the NVIDIA driver. What's the point? I'm wondering if it matters if the NVIDIA driver is open source if the GPU compute world

runs on CUDA? CUDA is a proprietary API from NVIDIA, so even if the NVIDIA driver is open source, developers still need to on CUDA. CUDA is a proprietary API from NVIDIA, so even if the NVIDIA driver is open source, developers still need to use CUDA to write code that runs on NVIDIA GPUs. And, P.S., yeah, that is a zip code boost minus the first two digits the year I started listening. Oh, Wes, did you bring the... Oh, good, you brought the map.

I sure did. Well, firstly, I guess it sounds like they started listening in 2021. Ah. Welcome aboard. Glad to have you. And this would appear to be a postal code in Cumberland County, Maine, which, yes, includes the city of Brunswick. Ah. Oh, is our Booster Hero Brewer in Brunswick, perhaps? Oh, well, I'd like to find out. We have to go to, obviously, we've got to go. Let us know what you're brewing there.

Well, hello, Brunswick, Maine. Thanks for boosting in. And that's a zinger of a question. What is your take, Wes? Does it matter if the, yeah, I think it does matter, right? It matters that the NVIDIA driver is still open source, even if everybody's in the industrial world using CUDA. It still matters, right?

Yeah, I mean, it feels like it's a step in the right direction. It's not the full thing. It's not going to solve all of our problems. But if it goes well, perhaps it'll be a better state than we are now, where we keep having to talk about the drama over the NVIDIA kernel module and the kernel community, or all the steps you got to do to just get that working properly. If we can improve even that even that still seems like a win you know how here's how i think about it brewer it's like if if the nvidia driver is open source

it is just that much easier to get the base linux system up and fully functional and then if you have to install proprietary crap on top of that so be it but you didn't spend an hour or 45 minutes or whatever it might be 10 minutes getting the nvidia driver functional on your linux box before you could use it for what you bought it for. So I think it's still useful. And it's not a dice roll anymore to upgrade. Yeah, that's a good point, too. That's a good point.

Twin number two boosts in with $55,555. Hey, Rich Lobster! Is this you, Brent? Is this my brother? I don't know what's going on here. Hey, Chris, Wes, and Brent. You've been following the development of BcashFS for some time. What are your thoughts on the recent pushback from Linus?

And they go on. You guys big because somehow you finally got me to try out NixOS. And, well, I love it. I'm thinking seriously about using it at work now oh that is the serious that is like the getting married step right there that's moving in uh you know i'm actually glad this boost got boosted in because we almost covered this in the show because yeah wes and i have been enthusiastically watching watching bcash fs for about 122 years and it's so so close that you can smell what's cooking in the kitchen now

and you're getting hungry for dinner. And unfortunately, Kent got a bit of pushback from Linus because Linus basically was upset that certain basic protocols and rules of submitting things upstream weren't necessarily followed and his concern with that is that if these aren't properly followed, then we are not going to be able to properly maintain BcashFS if you were to move on one day. And once it's in the kernel, it needs to be supportable by a team.

And Linus says, quote, this means very much not continuing. I'll just do it my way. Quote, you need to show that you can work with others, that you can work within the framework of upstream, and that not every single thread you get into becomes an argument. This, by the way, is non-negotiable. If you feel uncomfortable with this basic notion, you had better just continue doing development

outside the main kernel tree for another decade. The fact that I only now notice this, you never submitted this to Linux Next, is obviously on me, my bad, but at the same time, it worries me that it might be a sign of you just thinking that your way is special. I think my main takeaway

is I sort of thought Kent had more of a sort of knew more about the, like, getting stuff in it, you know, like, and working with the kernel community, and, you know, whether you attribute some of this stuff to like him just going his own way, or it looks like, you know, he had a reply, like, he doesn't seem like he fully understood the expectation

that it needed to be in Linux Next, or, like, had asked about it and didn't get a clear reply, because everyone else thought, seems to think that, oh, that was super clear, like, we just assumed that was going to happen. Just either way, it's, you know, it's just some more stuff we have to get through to get to the promised land on the other side. That said, I mean, things keep seem to keep going. Obviously it's not in six, six,

but let's, let's hope by six, nine. Yeah. And these are, these are the things that have to happen. This is the process, you know,

and you've got to do it the Colonel's way. And, uh, uh, they have reasons. Right. And I do get it right. Like here,

Linus is going through and trying to like review this stuff and look through it and the kernel doesn't build. And you're like, well, I can't even, I shouldn't even get started with this. It's not ready. Yeah, yeah. Kernbug boosted in 27,567 sets.

Pew, pew, pew! And this one I believe is a continued thread from the last two episodes. They write, Ha! Close but a loss. I believe is a continued thread from the last two episodes. They write, ha close, but a loss. No cigar.

Helsingborg is close ish, but not the correct location. So repeating again, the code two, seven, five, six, seven. And by the way,

Nick's glass is getting under my skin. Yeah. I would be down for a, we can't mention Nickix for an episode challenge. Of course, that's not going to work next episode, but I'd be down if somebody wants us to do it. They just got to boost it and tell us. What do you got there, Wes? I got nothing.

I mean, I might need a little more time on this one. Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, the map's only so big. That's right. I think we probably shouldn't have bought our map from the dollar store. I think that's where we went wrong.

MonkeyPondDev came in with 24,444 sats from the podcast index saying, hey guys, first boost. I wanted to zip code boost to the podcast index, but the Albie amount shown in sats didn't match up. Is this normal? I love the JB shows. Keep up the great work, especially the work with value for value. So Monkey, what Albie does is it shows you a prompt for each split once you do it once you're like oh yeah okay that makes sense right uh but the first time you see you're like what is it doing and my plea to the albie development team would be just to consolidate it onto one prompt right because you're kind of getting a negative user experience when we want to include

people in our splits which is a positive thing so i feel like if they consolidate it would be better and monkey did follow up and say oh yeah okay i see now they're just broken up into several confirmed pieces it did have the total amount correct uh how how is uh how is this going to work though because these numbers don't add up to a zip code yeah i think maybe we're going to get a future zip code oh okay i look forward to it i love the zip code boosts, I think maybe we're going to get a future zip code boost on this one. Oh, okay. I look forward to it. I love the zip code boosts. MCZP boosts in with $22,222. Things are looking up for old McDuck. Thanks for the coverage on Value for Value Music Podcasting.

I've been looking for this. Can't wait to get involved and start listening. There's a new top chart, too, coming out. I'll try to put a link to it in the show notes that shows the top songs getting played across all of the value for value music podcasts because they can just look at the RSS feed and they can look at the time value splits

and they can see what songs are getting the most entries in podcasts. And so there's a top 100 across all the new music shows index site. And it's pretty great because it's not just like it's not just based on the amount people got boosted but it's also the amount they're getting played in all the different podcasts and stuff like that so i'll drop a link for that in the show notes if

i can dig it up because it's really neat seeing it take off just since the last episode it's grown to a whole new size i'm very excited by all of it. Moon and I boosted in 5,000 sets and said, well, nothing. So thank you Moon and I for the Satoshis. That said, Gene Bean boosted in with a row of ducks. Really interested to see where Canonical takes things. A new or revived focus on Ubuntu desktop is exciting. It's nice to see, isn't it? Gene Bean did follow up with 4,444 additional Satoshis to say,

curious question, have you all tried ZeroTier and its self-hosting option for the coordinator like aspect? So a robust peer-to-peer networking with multi-cloud mesh infrastructure. Wes, have you? Yeah, I've dabbled a little bit in Xeroge here, but not recently.

And no, I actually didn't realize there was that self-hosted component. Neat, though. I mean, it's always nice to see services offering something like that. Bon also came in with a row of ducks, but no message. And Erock came in with 4,444 sets. And he's talking about the GPL block again. He says, philosophically, I do agree with the decision to thwart NVIDIA's usage of these symbols.

They should play by the rules. Realistically, however, just let NVIDIA do what they have to do. Don't punish the end user over a philosophical argument. You'll never win with one of the largest firms in tech. Though they sure are large right now. They are high on the hog right now over there at NVIDIA. And yet the kernel team don't care. They just don't care. NVIDIA might be having their day in the sun right now and kernel team don't care. Well, the important thing is that the NVIDIA needs the kernel team more than the kernel team

needs NVIDIA really at this point. And if you think about it, the pressure needs the kernel team more than the kernel team needs nvidia really at this point and if you think about it the pressure that the kernel team has put on literally everyone at this point yeah i think it's part of the reason why we started seeing nvidia buckling and doing things like actually adopting gbm and making wayland stuff actually work properly moving towards a more open driver model. It also just feels like, you know, you got to set a precedent, right? Maybe it's hard this time around, but if you set it right, then everybody's going to have to fall in line later. If you K for NVIDIA, you K for everybody.

And I think also it may be worth just reminding ourselves that this isn't technically just an NVIDIA move. Right. No. They're the ones that obviously get impacted the most. They were the ones that were brought up in discussions related to this patch. They were actually specifically named, but it affects others as well. Yeah, pretty much everybody who's doing those accelerator cards, right? Like the AI accelerators, that's a whole new mess that everyone's trying to grapple around. Well, we have our Linux unplugged proprietary kernel module.

Oh, we don't talk about that. Oppie1984 sent us a support boost with 4,000 sats. Ben the Tech Guy said, x86 emulation on ARM is getting better these days with a row of ducks. Projects like FEX and Box64 actually pass through native versions of important libraries like LibC and OpenGL,

so they don't have to be emulated anymore. He says you can run x86 games directly on them pretty fast another cool thing is that box 64 about it is that it can run almost any architecture not just arm it already works pretty well on risk 5 oh okay well that might be something we have to play with got to get that risk i'm you know what if somebody had a goodV machine, that might be a decent node station too. Complete Noobs sent us a Karma boost with 11,000 sats. And our last boost this week came from Complete Noobs who sent us in 11,000 sats. B-O-O-S-T. Thank you, everybody who boosted in above the 2,000 sat cutoff. Our totals this week, we made it to our goal.

We got 386,887 sats total. We were looking for 300,000 sats. Thank you, everybody! That was from 17 different boosters across 19 booths total. If you'd like to boost into the show, the funnest way is to get a new podcast app. PodcastApps.com

Fountain, Podverse, Castomatic. There's a lot of fun Fountain, Podverse, Castomatic. There's a lot of fun things happening and JB is rolling out some of the features that take advantage of the new podcasting to-do standards and it's a lot of fun

in those apps. So you could always go to podcast apps, grab one of those if you're ready to try something new. If you want to keep your app, maybe you really like it.

I understand. We all get in some serious relationships with podcast apps. At some point, they'll keep it and then just get Albie and you can boost from the web. You go to getalbie.com. You top it off either with a cash app directly or anything on the lightning network because it's an open network and sats are sats. You top it off and you go to the podcast index. You find Linux unplugged and you boost us in there and we'll read it on a future show. You can support the

direct productions. The idea is if you got a little value from a conversation and made you think about something or you just want to see the show stick around is if you got a little value from a conversation and made you think about something, or you just want to see the show stick around, you can send a little value back. Another way to participate of course, is in our community by joining live or maybe going to a meetup and taking apart Brent's laptop and sitting down for a long discussion or like Mike from Olympia who early this morning recorded us a voice memo.

So that way we could, you know, actually get his take on his system in here. Those are also ways to contribute value back to the show or recommending it to somebody. We appreciate all of those. Speaking of, we talk about the boost, of course, but there's also folks streaming Sats to us.

That's right. We appreciate that, too. We do. Thank you, Sats streamers. We'll probably in the future be giving you guys specific call-outs, but we do see you out there, and they come in on the dashboard. So we appreciate everybody who streams those sats. All right, I think this pick is a 80% recommendation pick this week. I love F-Droid so dang much on my drafting device,

but I might love NeoStore a little bit more. It considers itself a modern and feature-rich F-Droid client for everyone. It's got an interface that's focused on empowering users with fast repository sync times and actually kind of works alongside with F-Droid, I suppose, so I have them both installed right now. But the UI is definitely a step up, and it has different apps that are in the main afteroid repositories i've also been discovering new apps that i didn't know existed outside the play store

and brent i know you've been recommending on and off neo store with some some caveats i've had it recommended to me in the matrix room you probably have the most experience with it so what do you think of my neo store pick i think it's probably the right time with the yes, asterisks and the caveat that it feels, I don't know. I actually don't know how old the project is, but it still feels kind of sort of early days in the sense that yes, it's fast. Yes, it offers a bunch of repositories. Yes, it offers a really nice interface. But my experience has been occasionally there are some rough edges here and there. Like for instance, it just gets under my skin. The searching occasionally can be really slow and I'm not too sure what that's about. It kind of comes and goes. That said, I haven't

uninstalled it and I kind of try it from time to time and they get some updates. So I feel like it's one of those things that right now, if you install it, you might just stick with it and see how it progresses in the next few months or year even. And that's always a fun process. My early experience is I like it a lot, except for last night, it seemingly just was in an endless loop trying to update the Tailscale app. Just looping and looping and looping. I have that installed from F-Droid. It picked it up. It picked it up that I installed that from F-Droid and just started taking it over.

Everything else was like five or six other apps updated fine, so I closed and then force quit the Neo store and I went into F-Droid and updated from there and updated instantaneously. Not quite sure what that's about. That's the only kind of little snafu I've run into so far, but I'll keep using it. See how it goes. But I do like the ui a lot and it does feel a little snappier can i add

a bonus pick in here yeah do it at about the same time i started toying with obtanium which is a bit of a different concept from f droid it attempts to allow you to use Optanium as like a central repository for various developer native approaches to downloading applications. So for instance, if you have an application that you love that isn't packaged up in F-Droid, or even if it is, this allows you to reach to its, let's say, GitHub repo directly. And so you go directly to the source of the developer for maybe a more direct, trusted relationship. And it just coordinates those updates and things for you direct from the source. And I kind of like that concept. And I think it's worth playing with. I would be happy to hear

reasons why it's not a good idea or reasons why it's a great idea. But I've been fairly happy with that experience as well, I would say, in the last two months. So that's maybe another one worth playing with. I'm way behind. I got to get some of these new fancy stores installed. I'm still just using regular old F-Droid. Yeah, Wes, come on, man.

Actually, F-Droid's great. I don't want to kid. I think it's actually pretty great. Well, we look forward to seeing everybody at Linux Fest that's going to make it. And don't even want to kid. I think it's actually pretty great. But we look forward to seeing everybody at LinuxBest that's going to make it. And don't forget, we'd love to get your takes on that NoteStation build if you've got any in there. Brent, I'm curious, if your build's similar for your framework, similar to the one I put together while you were talking today,

I went with the DIY edition. They had the i7 processor available. I may have gone with a smaller processor if it was available, but it's 5 gigahertz. And I topped it off with 32 gigs of RAM. I put kind of a mid-level 2 terabyte MVME in there. And I put a USB-A expansion card, an HDMI expansion card, an Ethernet expansion card, an audio expansion card, which I thought I took off actually, because I actually like the idea of a laptop with no audio sound card, because I always use external audio.

Oh, sure. Yeah. That's why I even have a sound card. And then I put two USB-C dongles on there. So I got a handful of the expansion cards, and I got two terabytes of storage, and I got an i7. And my grand total was, and this is also, I think, the 13-inch edition. My grand total for this rig build in U.S. greenbacks is $1,820.

Do you know if that sounds about what you paid for your rig? Or is it a little cheaper? Well, I did a very unique thing, which I'll explain in a moment. But how do you feel about that price i mean honestly um it's doable for two terabytes with a high-end two terabytes of mvme storage a high-end cpu and 32 gigs of ram where i feel like i you know the ethernet was 40 bucks hdmi was 20 bucks and the usbc dongles are 18 bucks each so that kind of added some price there but not horrible i think it's within an acceptable price range for that kind of rig. Yeah, so my setup is, I think as Tomas sort of suggested, is a unique situation.

And, you know, leave it to Brent to do something strange. But to make all this happen, I decided to get a DIY edition and to get the upgraded, the I seven, the latest gen, the 13th. Um, so it's the I seven 1360, which is, I think the mid range of what's offered there. Uh, really that's what Tom Ash wanted. Uh, and the reason is I, if you heard in the clip, I didn't necessarily need the latest motherboard. Uh, I think as a travel machine, I'm fine with having a slightly older motherboard with the intention of upgrading in the near future to an AMD board. Maybe in the next six months as it becomes available. I didn't want to... That soon?

becomes available. I don't, I didn't want to that soon. Well, it really, it really depends on the back orders. Cause I don't necessarily need to be one of the first to get it. You know, I've got a working framework right here on the desk with me. So I'm not in a rush in that regard and I needed a laptop right away. So this was a bit of, you know, some strange compromises going on there. But the other thing that happened is, uh, Tomasz was also upgrading some of his SSDs. So he threw one in there for me as part of the trade for the motherboards. And I brought my own RAM, which I had from the Dev1 that we upgraded, that listener Jeff upgraded for me. So I had RAM that honestly only had like an hour's time on it. So it was brand new.

So I figured I would bring that as well. Yeah. And so it was a bit of a Franken framework, if you will. Uh, but I'm actually, you can do that though. Well, that's, that's exactly the point is it's a uniquely amazing that I can even do that, you know? So my build that said was the DIY edition with literally nothing configured. I did get some expansion cards, of course. I decided, which seems crazy now, but I decided not to get the Ethernet because I already kind of have the USB-C dongle thing,

and it's going to be a travel laptop anyways. And I figured... You're dead to us, but like, no big deal. I'm judging you definitely oh i'm judging but i as well but i figured worst case i could just order one if i really am missing it right yeah and that's yeah that's the beauty of these expansion slots is you it's not the end of the world if you order the thing with you know not quite the right one now listener tomash of course knew the framework way more than i did and chris you just

made the same mistake as i did which i thought i needed an audio expansion i was like i can't not have an you know an audio jack in this laptop that's like number one i need it but it turns out the 13 inch one just has it built in you don't even need the expansion card where the 16 inch has more expansion cards so that's one of the ones you need to include, but it has more of them. So if you don't need it, then you can do something else, which is really, really great. So this thing is a unique thing. I mean, the motherboard already has some history, which I kind of like, actually. I'm like getting someone else's.

That's a nice thing. So leave it to me to do something unique. That said, mine was 1,429 euros,, for us North Americans is 1,530 USD. That seems like a pretty great, that's a little better price than mine. I went a little too far, but I like that. Good job, Brent. Well, if you out there also have one, let us know what you think about it. And of course, you can always join us live next Sunday.

I'm going to be remote, so it should be a real crazy one to watch live. Not one to miss. See you next week. Same bad time, same bat station. Noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern over at jvlive.tv. Links to what we talked about today, they'll be over at Linux Unplugged. Linuxunplugged.com slash 527. And did you know there's a whole network of podcasts over at jupiterbroadcasting.com?

That's right. Got that self-hosted show, those office hours over there, and that Coder Radio. You got to listen to that Coder Radio. What's Mike up to? Find out. Jupiter Broadcasting dot com. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning this week's episode of the Unplugged program. We just love hanging out with you and we'll hope you join us right back here next Sunday. you know i didn't really want to mention in the show but uh i'm gonna be throwing on this thing i think this think this is the opportunity. This is the time.

What? I just assumed it was going to be Tumbleweed. I didn't even think to ask. Currently it's on Tumbleweed. No! Currently it's on Tumbleweed because, you know, I'm on the trip and there's a few things happening. And at the meetup isn't, well, maybe it was the right time to choose something new. But anyhow, I figured it would be kind of poetic if I went to the NixOS meetup at Seabase on Tuesday and installed a fresh, you know.

Wipe it. Yeah. Wipe it. And you could always get a help if you help a little thing go sideways. You're amongst friends. That's what I'm saying. It's exciting and scary because, you know, once Brent starts examining NixOS, well, Brent's going to find all kinds of little things and then I'm going to have my new baby challenge

and it's going to be an emotional journey. Here we go. You were already on that journey to begin with. Okay. You know, Chris, I will admit, the only reason Tumbleweed is on here is that I thought I could beat you and install, get my things moved over to beat you in the challenge.

But since I lost already, I mean, let's go all the way. You do have like 200 open windows to move over, which that's got to take time. I mean, if you think about it, this rebasing is probably going to reset the clock and my bet, it's still going to hold. We'll see. Wait, how long did you say? Two weeks? I think I could swing it.