LINUX Unplugged - 548: Uncomfortable Linux Truths

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Some uncomfortable truths about using Linux, and then we introduce a new segment: Will it Nix?

Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. And my name is Brent. Hey, gentlemen. Well, coming up in this episode, we're going to discuss some uncomfortable truths about using Linux. And then, we're going to introduce a new segment called Will It

Nix? And this week, we're throwing NixCloud in the Nix Blender. We'll tell you all about it, and then we'll round the show out with some boosts and picks and more. So before we go any further, let's say time-appropriate greetings to that virtual lug of ours. Hello, Mumble Room! Hello.

Hello, guys. Hello, friends. Shout out greetings to that virtual lug of ours. Hello, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello, guys. Hello, friends. Hello. Shout out. Shout out to all of you. We got the mascot in there. We got Dan and others that are in Fosdum right now but hanging out in the Mumble Room with us while they're at Fosdum Live going on. Pretty great quiet listening and all that.

D-Tates at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash mumble. That's where you can go despite how I say it. You know what I do say and I say it with pride? Tailscale.com slash Linux Unplugged. If you haven't tried this out yet, I'm going to have to start judging you. It's kind of, like, really not good. I mean, don't tell me if we meet in person. Just pretend like you've tried Tailscale, because I don't want it to wreck my day.

It's so good. You know, it's like you've tried Tailscale because I don't want it to wreck my day. It's so good. You know, it's like quintessential software. It is fundamental connectivity that makes it possible for all your devices to connect directly to each other wherever they are, all secured by Wiogap. That's right. Uses the noise

protocol and it's really, really fast. You can use it initially for VPNs, but then pretty soon you realize you're just building your own mesh network that rides on top of the internet, crosses data centers, lands, carrier net, and all of that. It is intuitive, fast, and great. Go try

it for 100 devices and support the show at tailscale.com slash Linux Unplugged. Well, we're getting pretty close to scale. We are five Sundays until we hit the road. That's coming up quick. Yep.

All right. And I just, you know, I basically put that line item in there for Brent. Thank you. So he knows how close we're getting. My anxiety just went up for some reason. I don't know why. You know, I just got to get everything finalized and then you won't. When I tell you how many Sundays and you have everything figured out, you'll be like, oh, that's great.

Break it to the cats now. I'm seeing some excitement about NixCon North America on the general internets. It's getting around. People are asking about live streams and whatnot. I don't know exactly what their plans are, but we have some live stream plans that we're going to talk about for our trip down there. So we are leaving in about five weeks. And when we're on the road, I want to do a couple of live streams.

So on the 12th, the 14th, the 15th, and the 17th, we're going to have different streams. I'll get them all figured out on the calendar and whatnot, but I tell you that now so you can go get a podcasting 2.0 app because they're going to be lit live streams, and we'd love to have you there. So our idea

is to kind of capture the moment on the drive down before we get to scale. We'll do a live stream and hang out with everybody. And then the morning before NixCon, I'd like to capture our thoughts, take any questions people might have, which also be before scale, just to kind of capture the state of the mood and all of that. And then on the 15th, which will be, we've gone for a couple of days, you know, our day, we've seen it. We've got an idea of day one and day two,

what that's like. We'll do another live stream in the evening to kind of give everybody our first impressions of how Scale and NixCon are going. And then we'll do another live stream on the 17th for Linux Unplugged itself from Pasadena, perhaps from Scale. And we'll put that all up on the calendar soon.

And then, of course, we've also got our lunch, which is going to be on Saturday the 16th. Meetup.com slash Jupiter Broadcasting for all those details. Yeah, I've seen some folks coming in there. Looks like it should be a good turnout. Good. Yeah, the Yardhouse is a great facility for that. So if we can get an idea of how many folks are going ahead of time, we'll call them up and give them a heads up. So that way they know.

But it's a big facility and it's going to be during lunch. But, you know, I just want to take a moment to thank the audience. We reached our goal to make scale possible, which is just incredible. Thank you, everyone. We did a little celebration after the boost a couple of episodes ago, but I just want to take a moment and say thank you again. And you're absolutely welcome to continue to send those boosts in to get us to scale because we'll either put it towards the trip if the price – I kind of expect the price to dip in March myself because the bank short-term lending program goes away. And I think that's going to be kind of rough liquidity-wise and I think it's going to cause Bitcoin to go down in price.

So you're welcome to continue to boost in. We'll put it towards there. Either way, if price doesn't go down, we'll put it towards the trip. And boost any questions you have you want us to answer about nix nix con scale anything like that and then last but not least one more thing to make mention of we do have that scale matrix chat so if you're going to be in pasadena if you're going to be at scale we have a link to a matrix chat room for people to organize i guess whatever you do in chat rooms but hopefully nicely nicely. A chat. Oh.

In a chat room. How about that? And to mention it again, we had some listeners meet up from FOSDEM. We have a nice little matrix room where folks have been organizing. And I woke up to some lovely photographs of people who met. Our dear friend Carl was there as well and met up with some folks. dear friend Carl was there as well and met up with some folks and listener Freak VH I think sent a message that I thought describes it really well. So at the meetup earlier today, he says it was great to meet everyone. Although I have no idea who all of you are now. I forgot to match

the online handles to the faces. Now here's how he describes some of them. Thank you for showing up a red backpack guy, bearded UK neutrino guy, Romanian entrepreneur, Danish offensive but in a good way guy, and Codeburg cheap UPS guy. Oh, Dutch bow tie and sent to us guy as well. And freak was then described as dandy Dutch guy with whom I'm totally not jealous of his outfit. So if you're interested in some Fosdum videos, they have that up as well, which I would say they've got a processing status page, which is like, okay, they know what they're doing. So I think we can see those videos soon. It's a serious operation. I always am much better at remembering everyone's online handle than I am their actual names.

Very much so. And so I will probably, if I meet you in person, call you by your handle if that's how you introduce yourself. That's what crystallizes, right? That's where you started building the relationship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, on my tombstone, I would like it to say he was slightly offensive but in a good way. How do you become that guy? That seems like how you want to be described, right?

Because that means you're pushing it a little bit, you're making people think, and it's a good thing. I feel like that would be a goal for me. That's aspirational. Let's shift gears. We get so excited about all of the great things in development in Linux. And, you know, BcacheFS and Pipewire and NixOS are just, to name a few,

that we think have so much potential in this landscape that we've talked about just semi-recently. But with everything we love, it is not so perfect that it cannot be criticized, as a wise man once said. And there are uncomfortable truths about using Linux full-time that you will have to deal with and be okay living with, in my opinion. And some of them are the ones that hit me the hardest. And I wanted to share them with you guys today, and maybe we could just have a little group sesh. I'd also like to know if the audience has any that they think are just, I don't know if compromise is the right word, but it's kind of what's on my mind. It's like this uncomfortable thing you just have to live with to use Linux.

I really feel like still today, despite everything Valve has done, gaming on just actual desktop Linux can be not always great. And when it gets you, it can get you at the worst time. So this Friday, Dylan text messaged me. He said, Dad, I'd love to get some time to play some CSGO. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I'm not going to say no to that. And I said to him, on your way home, stop by the studio. Have Hedia drop you off.

And we'll hang out here for a couple of hours. And we'll play some CSGO here at the studio. So bring your laptop. And OK, great. That sounds fantastic. So he gets here. And as soon as I tell him to come, he's about 25 minutes away. Coming from school, he's going to stop by the studio.

I open up Steam. I start downloading CSGO. And sure enough, lots of updates, right? Lots of updates. And it runs and it runs and it runs. And then it has to rebuild the shaders. And then I, you know, so I go through that a couple of times, actually. And he gets in, and we try to get into a match, and it fails to connect.

We get in the lobby together, and we try to get in, and it fails to connect. Okay. All right, well, let's try a deathmatch. All right, we'll go into a deathmatch. Okay. This is working. Great. Okay.

We're in. We're finally playing this. We've been wanting to do this for weeks. It's finally happening. And I go to turn, you know, just to turn my perspective. And as I'm turning, and this is in a full screen game, my mouse leaves the window and goes to my second monitor and I click. And now I'm clicking on my second monitor.

Oh, no. Which then takes the focus away from CSGO, which causes CSGO to minimize. And now I'm clicking on my second monitor, which then takes the focus away from CSGO, which causes CSGO to minimize. And now I'm just sitting at my desktop getting shot. So then I, you know, I'll tab back into CSGO and I go to move. And this time my mouse goes off into the other screen and you can't move more than, you know, 30 degrees before my mouse goes off the screen. I try turning up mouse sensitivity, but that's only kind of a temporary workaround because inevitably your mouse sort of drifts and it's off the screen. Of course.

All right. So I look it up. Seems like some people are having this issue on Wayland. Oh, okay. It's a Wayland issue, I say to myself. That's what I get. All right. Log out.

Log into X. Here we go. Fire up CSGO under X11. And now my no menu bar is flickering along the top the entire time. Flicker, flicker, flicker. Flicker, flicker, flicker. And the frame rate in CSGO is probably 12. Okay, all right.

So if I go into the settings and I put it in windowed mode and I put it back into full screen mode and I apply it both times, then I can get the GNOME flicker to go away and my frame rate returns. Okay, that's solved. Mouse problem? Not solved. Oh, no. Not solved. So now I just have more problems under X

than I had under Wayland. And I'm looking up all these things people do. I try these different fixes and different commands. Nothing solves it. I'm on current GNOME with multiple monitors to the right and left of the top using Waylander X11 with an AMD Radeon like 580. It's like an old ass video card.

And this, it just can't be done. I have legit disabled screens before in a similar situation and just been like, well, I'm playing this game on one screen and I guess I'm turning the rest off. It's one of those moments where I'm like, I don't think if I was on a Mac or on Windows, I would be doing this. And it's really sucks because it really makes it a first person shooter unplayable and so i'm sitting here fighting with my linux box does that mean dylan won well he just had to keep on playing without me you know and it's like well this was our moment to play uh and i never really all i could do is just i turned up the mouse sensitivity a lot and just tried to keep it in the center of the window.

That's some discipline. It was not great for me. It was not great for me. And I just – I have the worst luck. And what I've realized is Linux works great if it's an appliance for gaming like the Steam Deck. But on a desktop, in my opinion, on a machine you use for like work, if you don't game regularly, these things just kind of atrophy. And if you game on the regular, you kind of fix them as they come up but they accumulate yeah right if you don't game you need to be on that rolling release or you'll just get overwhelmed yeah you basically

i just keep up with it you know game every week or something like that and i game on that machine once every six months and every single time i sit down to do it something doesn't work and that's just for me you know that's my that's my experience there's a lot of edge cases and i and every single time I sit down to do it, something doesn't work. And that's just for me. That's my experience. There's a lot of edge cases. And I think it's tough there too, right? Because in a lot of our Linux software,

I don't know, we have so much choice and we kind of get to pick and that's one of the things we love about it is we get to assemble our system together and decide the cool software. We have a lot of nice options. Right, and perhaps if I'd gone Plasma, maybe that weird GNOME menu thing or maybe even the mouse wouldn't be a problem, maybe it's a gnome thing only i don't know

right but with games i don't know you unless you're just playing games that you're picking and you're happy you know ignoring some games you're at the mercy of uh yeah you know yeah your friends what other people want and so it can go really nicely sometimes when they pick games that are super well supported and other times it's real awkward. Yeah. You're stuck and you're like, well, I couldn't, I didn't know you wanted to play that. So Fortnite came up and Fortnite has anti-cheat. And I was really proud because Dylan figured out how to install the Heroic installer.

And then he figured out once Heroic was installed, how to link it to his Epic account. And then he figured out how to install Fortnite. He got his Fortnite completely installed and then he figured out how to install Fortnite. He got his Fortnite completely installed, and then he hits the play button, and it launches and crashes. And he's like, Dad, what did I do wrong? And I'm like, nothing. They just rolled out Anti-Cheat recently, and now you can't play.

And so I set him up with GeForce Now streaming, because I already had that. I have some grandfathered legacy account, which is super dope sweet, because it's at low price and has all the video cards. That's great. So he's playing on that. But, you know, of course, when he's in full screen, the plasma menu is sitting there flashing

at the bottom of the screen the entire time. It doesn't kill his frame rate. But it's not flawless. And it's like, I'm sorry, dude. You know, yeah, I know it's annoying. I'm sure. They do offer like a chrome web app you can install so i did that for him thinking maybe that would do better because then he's not doing it from the web browser uh which maybe it would i don't know but the play button doesn't work in that one on linux it works on mac os and windows

but on linux when you click the play button in their web app, in their NVIDIA GeForce Now streaming web app, you click the play button, nothing happens. So he's doing it through the browser. It's just these little compromises, these little ugly truths that are just not as smooth as you'd like it to be. And, you know, it is what it is. It's not the end of the world, but it's a reminder of, you know, if you want to do these kinds of things on Linux, and maybe this would be a problem on Windows too, like this, you don't game for six months and you fire it up and it's broken. I don't know.

I have never used Windows long enough to know. But maybe, you know, maybe I should just stick to the Steam Deck. You know, maybe I should just stick to the Steam Deck if that's what I want out of a machine or stick to a Nintendo or switch to a console. Yeah, I mean, they have taken time to solve a lot of those problems

or at least anticipate them. And then also they kind of manage making sure it stays together consistently for you if you're not doing it yourself. This is a particular targeted environment, right? Yeah. And then the other thing that I think is an uncomfortable truth that I want to talk to you guys about, and I bet you not everybody in the audience is going to agree with me on this. But I think there are times like right now when a new product comes along like the Apple Vision Pro and Linux users can feel a little FOMO. Because if you've got yourself a nice Linux desktop and maybe you've got yourself a

Graphene OS, I'm just describing myself here, but you've got yourself a Graphene OS phone and you're kind of bringing it all together with things like NextCloud and Image for the images and you've rolled your own cloud solutions. Something like the Vision Pro comes along. And if you were to spend that $3,500 and get that piece of kit because maybe it would change the way you work, you kind of have to roll all that stuff back

because the way you get data into devices like this is through iCloud and the Apple ecosystem. So then you kind of need to be in the Apple calendar system. And you kind of need to be in the photo system system, and you kind of need to be in the photo system. You really can't really sync with Graphene OS, and you actually need an iPhone even to use. So you're kind of going to need to roll back to the iPhone, right? And it kind of rolls back all of these sovereignty moves.

You can't just adopt the device. You've got to adopt the ecosystem. Yes. Yeah. And I think that leads to a bit of FOMO because the Linux user, your option is to now participate in this ecosystem if you're not already or miss out. And once you start participating in this ecosystem, it's sticky, right?

I mean I have a Graphene OS device. I still have an Apple Watch on my wrist. It's a very sticky ecosystem. And I think it's – I think also we feel a little left out when it happens. I don't know. What do you think? Am I off on this one? Has this crossed your mind at all as all this hype around the Vision Pro and all that?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it'd be really neat if it was just like a generic device that you could interface with, even if you had, I don't know, less functionality and I could just bring in my Linux screens or something like that. I'm obviously, you know, if the convenience if the you can do real workloads it would be very compelling but it feels totally inaccessible without a large a large switch until I mean I could I guess I could just get a MacBook but it would feel incomplete if I didn't also then as you're saying like have the rest of the services have photos I could look at on there easily or would I be trying to second-class it?

But it's already difficult on an iPhone, and it's going to be probably more difficult on the Vision Pro, at least for a while. Brent, have you felt any of this? I bet not, but maybe you have. Well, I think I've gotten used to missing out, actually. Because for those of us who really try to stick to what we believe in in terms of privacy and the Linux ecosystem,

you just get used to missing out on all these things. And eventually it comes around. There are some applications on Linux that have totally beat its commercial competitors, but it usually takes a few years, right? And when it comes to some special hardware like this, sometimes it just never comes, despite the efforts, the best efforts of community members and different businesses and stuff.

I'm thinking Linux phones. How long have we been waiting for that? So oftentimes it feels like that's part of the compromise that we have to do to really stick to some of our ideals. And it sucks. Can I make a weird comparison, Brent? And you'd be the authority on this. It feels a bit like a restrictive diet sometimes as a Linux user. Maybe that's why I'm so cozy with it.

Right? Like there's certain items that you just are kind of going to have to just restrict from your tech diet if you want to stay as much with Linux and your own sovereign tech stack. Yeah. And that way you're kind of making an active choice at times. You're like, well, I could get interested in that. I could dabble and maybe I won't. This is an area that's hard for me because I'm big on potential where things could be going kind of stuff that's fun to play with before it gets there. That's a, that type that tingles for me, but also I live in such a small space. That's something that could give me virtual screens seems extremely compelling,

but I've done the math on this and I just, I don't want to roll back my transition to graphing OS. And I feel like you can't even really use this thing. You got to scan your face with the iPhone. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. It's Yeah. I think you did nail the metaphor though, because like, I feel like my life is better with those compromises, but I don't get to have like the ice cream Sunday, you know, which is some of this new fangled tech and, and maybe pushing the envelope of how I work, how you work, you know, in the RV would be better with some of this new technology, but you're giving up. You're necessarily giving up something. Sometimes it's just your bank account. But other times it's like some of the deep privacy concerns we've been talking about for years now around the Apple ecosystem and Google ecosystem and all of that. So it's such a hard decision to make

because as geeks and nerds, I think we get super excited about this new technology and the possibilities and just what it can do. But, yeah, sometimes choose to just get left behind, which is sad. I don't know. There's a few different facets of, like, is it a new gadget? What exactly are you doing? I think the most awkward part or most difficult part is when you know that the Linux path is not going to present like the simplest or most efficient solution.

Like if you were just motivated purely by trying to do X and for the cases where Linux just isn't the natural choice, I think those are always the places it's like the most give. And, you know, if you're busy and the busier you are, you kind of just need that to work. Just want it to be a solved solution. Yeah. I mean, you can often do those things on Linux and then sometimes there's advantages where you end up learning more about how all the pieces fit together because you've had to sort of tweak them and understand the pieces to even get it to work at all.

But you can't do that for every task all the time necessarily. But I feel like it's not – we're not always losing with Linux. Like there are many examples where we do win first, and I feel like we shouldn't be too sad in this conversation because oftentimes we get some technologies and some utilities on the Linux desktop, but also just on Linux in general that is years ahead of what other platforms get.

So we should be careful not to get too sad about this. You know, you give something, you get something. Warp.dev slash linux-terminal. Yeah, the Warp Terminal is coming to Linux. You know, it's only been available for the Mac. It's a modern Rust-based terminal that has AI built in, and I've been watching from afar, wishing we could have it on Linux,

because it is really sweet. And a little birdie tells me it is coming to Linux later this February, and there's a waitlist you can sign up. Warp.dev slash Linux dash terminal. There's a launch party. There's going to be some Linux sticker pack swag. It's a modern command line interface that has tooling you need, like AI built in. So when you forget a command or you need like a little refresher, maybe a template, you can smash that hashtag and the AI, the warp AI will suggest the right command for you. It is also built on top of Rust. And, you know, we love that.

It's super fast and performant. It has a modern text editor right there. So you can edit your next config or your YAML file or your Python script. And it has a collaboration feature. So when Wes has to save the day, that makes that really straightforward. And then also there's this warp drive feature that I think could be really great

because you can save your parameterized commands. Like, you know, Wes, what was that exact command to get the free space on ButterFS, the actual free space? You could just share that with me, and I can run it later. You can share it with Brent and I because there's a team feature as well. It's a great user experience. It's also great for developers and engineers who have to work in the terminal and they want something modern with things built right in. And they want it built on top of a really robust infrastructure.

That's warp terminal. And that's why I'm really glad it's coming to Linux. At least that's the rumor. Go find out. Something tells me a little bit later this month, you'll have the answer. warp.dev slash linux-terminal. Great way to support the show and check out a brand new product coming to Linux. They're really trying to reach that Linux user base. And this is it. It's warp.dev slash linux-terminal. Our dear mini-mech in the mummer room has an uncomfortable truth for us. Yeah, my problem is often with complicated PDF files where you have some formulas where they have fill-in stuff and stuff like that. So they mostly work, but often the most important things don't work.

So I'm really struggling with that. Yeah, integrating with that business world. I have been using with fantastic success, Alex on Self Hosted found this. And I don't know if somebody recommended him or what, but it's called Sterling PDF. You throw it together in a quick Docker compose on a VPS or wherever. You throw it together in a quick Docker Compose on a VPS or wherever, and it does, I think, dang near everything like the Pro Acrobat stuff does in a web app, including it'll do OCR text detection. It can do editing. It can add remove watermarks.

It can split PDFs. It can convert things to PDFs. It can adjust the colors. You can edit fields. You can remove change metadata. You can add page numbers. I mean, you can crop it. You can compress it. You can remove change metadata. You can add page numbers. I mean, you can crop it. You can compress it. It goes on and on.

Oh, and it started as a 100% chat GPT-made application. No way. Really? That's what the readme said. Well, it's a pretty lean, mean Docker compose. And what I've done is I now put all of my Docker instance or whatever images, whatever containers, I put them directly on tail scale now. Right on the mesh. Yeah.

So I have a – in my Docker compose file, I have a tail scale service container that starts first and then I start Sterling PDF. And I have Sterling PDF's network mode set to use my tail scale Docker container for all the networking. And then the host name for that tail scale node is just called PDFs. mode set to use my tailscale docker container for all the networking and then the host name for that tailscale node is just called PDFs so in my browser for all my wife's systems, all my kids' systems, my systems, in our web browsers we just

go to http://pdfs and it takes you to the Sterling PDF app I don't have to set up anything in reverse proxy, nothing in Nginx config. It's just that node goes directly on the tail net through that service container and exposes the application as PDFs. And anything else that's on the tail net can just go to http://pdfs and access and make

modifications on their phone or on their desktop. So it's a really nice way to solve that problem. Because I've been there. Okay, I'm going to have a look at that. What about you guys? I mean, I know we're all hardened Linux users now, but do either one of you have kind of like an uncomfortable thing on the day-to-day you live with?

Being the weirdo with a different OS? Yeah. And that being blamed for any defect? Like it always feels like it's personally your fault that you use Linux and therefore process A doesn't work. Whether or not that process is at fault or not, like it's just the default assumption you're wrong. Absolutely true. Boy, have I lived that. I have lived that.

Brent, do you have one? Well, it totally touches on what I've been thinking about for the last few days around this topic. Brent, do you have one? Well, it totally touches on what I've been thinking about for the last few days around this topic. And I, I knew there'd be a lot of like technical issues that we would run into, but I, I started, man, I started thinking about the philosophical ones. Like sometimes it just feels lonely being the only person, I don't know, at your computer club or like your friend circles, or like even in your family using the one like strange

ecosystem that nothing, you know, oh, nothing's supported on there. Why are you even using this thing? And I remember, like, I think those of us who are connected to the podcast right now or even listen, you know, at home are pretty lucky to have that sense of community. But man, I remember when I was first getting into Linux, just feeling like I was the only person in my entire city who, you city who was trying to run this thing. And so I would say as an amazing solution to that, like just try to find some people anywhere like a conference or online or there's many options now.

But that sense of loneliness and isolation hit me hard back then and sometimes still does. I very much have felt that in environments where I'm working with a bunch of other people that are on Windows or on macOS. And it's, oh, the Linux guy. That's not going to work with Linux guy. And now I'm considering cracking on this. I don't know. Thankfully, I totally broke Dylan's ability to boot into Windows when I installed Nix.

The Nix installer did not detect the Windows install like everybody says it does and set it up, and I have not bothered to go back and figure out how to get that going for him. I may have even accidentally nuked the Windows install. I don't quite remember. Accidental. Yeah. But now I kind of regret it because I can overhear his friends saying

like, dude, why don't you just get Windows? We just want to play with you. Just get Windows, you know, and get on the Xbox chat with us, you know, and all this stuff. And I was like, oh. I've sort of made him like the outsider in his friend group. Now, with the streaming, it kind of fixes that, the stream. But I felt kind of bad because I remember going through that, too,

and feeling like, oh, come on, man. Just play on Windows with us. It's like, come on. Let, just play on Windows with us. Let's just play. We want to play Medal of Honor. Let's just put it on Windows. You know, it makes me think of sort of audio workflows, audio editing, making music.

You can certainly do it on Linux, and there can be some really neat setups. We do lots of fun stuff with Linux Audio. Super grateful that things like Reaper, and we've got more options than ever. It's getting really good. Yeah, but I don't know. If if you were just gonna sit down and do it and you wanted to use be assured you had access to all the popular plugins and workflows the only way it worked is because we kind of did it all as a group yeah like i don't know yeah you're right recommend it to others unless they were really dedicated to like a linux solution yeah we kind

of figured it out together and some of it's really fun, right? Like, and you learn stuff and you got to like set up line and figure it out. But it's not necessarily simple. Props to the Bitcoin dad because he has sort of figured a lot of this all out on his own

as he's also kind of been distro hopping at the same time. And you know how tricky that can be when you're in a new, you know, you're going one day you're in Fedora, the next day you're in Seuss and you're trying to stand up

the same exact audio environment. There can be benefits. I mean, I think we've seen like the studio setup here has been quite stable and, you know, it just keeps working. We don't have to necessarily be at the whims of a service provider that's changing out from under us. But the cost was a lot of rigging. Roderick points out too, well, you know,

there's just an uncomfortable truth of using Linux that we've gotten really used to, I think, is there's applications missing. Like for him, there's just an uncomfortable truth of using Linux that we've gotten really used to, I think, is there's applications missing. Like for him, it's reason. That's better than ever. Yeah, like I have to make like a little thumbnail for our live streams. And, you know, for a year now, I've been just making that in Photopea. And I generate the image now with stable diffusion where before I used to have to create it from scratch.

Now I generate it with stable diffusion, and I edit in Photopea, all in a web browser on my Linux desktop. It's pretty wild. But things are getting better. You know, video editors are probably still an area where you can make yourself a nice workflow and there's good solutions and products,

but you're not just going to pick one of the big ones and go with it. Yeah, you still have to put together the right hardware. And if you're trying to do like you found a local class in your area and they are teaching this solution, you're probably going to have to get another OS. Yeah, definitely if you're going to a school or you're trying to get tutoring,

somebody's going to know. They're going to have the Adobe Premiere workflow or whatever. They're not even going to give Linux a thought. I feel like when we're shopping for hardware, it's still a huge consideration as well. How often are we super excited when there's a new audio interface that supports Linux pretty well? Even I was looking at mice,

and some people were complaining that it wasn't working with Linux. It's like, oh, come on, really? Are we still dealing with this? Yeah, fair enough. I definitely feel that a little bit with NVIDIA hardware still. The NVIDIA, anything that's AMD NVIDIA hybrid still feels really kind of rickety for me and brittle. The Intel NVIDIA hybrid seems a little more solid if you're going to go that route. But the AMD NVIDIA, like I get weird artifacting and I can't really pin it down.

But I'll be in Plasma, I think under X in this case, and I'll move the mouse cursor and I'll get like boxes around the mouse cursor every now and then. Just boxes. Just as I'm moving a box in a box. Why is that weird artifacting happening? How do I even reproduce it? And I don't have it on any other system.

And it's like, you know, that Asus ROG G14 wasn't bought for Linux. It was bought for, it was meant to run Windows and it runs Linux today. And you have various

different degrees of success with that. And with that, I think it's on the edge of success with that machine still to this day. It's on the edge of success. But then you have systems like that Mac trash can from 2013, the Mac Pro. Well, flawless.

Flawlessly runs Linux. Flawlessly. Like from the moment the thumb drive goes in that Mac Pro trash can. Flawlessly running NixOS. Like you would think the thing was built by System76. I am just loving this rekindled relationship you're having with it. One of my favorite computers right now. It runs Linux so well.

It detects thermals. It detects both of the AMD GPU cards in that thing. It's quiet. It boots in like eight seconds. Born to run Linux. It's born to run Linux. And you would never, and it's a 2013 Mac Pro trash can with Xeons and ECC RAM and all of that.

And it works perfectly, better than that Asus ROG G14 that's from like two years ago. So, you know, it's just hit and miss with it. It's just hit and miss with it, boys. But these are the uncomfortable, there's probably many more. We'd love to hear your uncomfortable truths. I'm sure you have them and we've probably just scratched the surface.

And I actually think there is utility in us talking about this because it adds realism to a show where we're generally really focused on the very positive things. And I think people should go into using free software in Linux with all of the information. people should go into using free software in Linux with all of the information. And so if you have any Linux uncomfortable truths, uncomfy truths, boost them in and let us know, and we'll read them in a future episode. Collide.com slash unplugged. Go over there if you're in IT, if you deal with security, if your company works with Okta, you have all of these things coming at you all the time these days. And it's not necessarily their fault, but a lot of it comes from the end user. That's been a reoccurring pattern over the last few years, especially as bring your own device has exploded both for good and for bad.

They don't mean to play a role, but often employees and staff and contractors can accidentally play a role. Unpatched software, out of compliance even, or just phished credentials, that's a real problem and it's not getting much better. The technology has kind of failed them. Collide comes in as a solution for end users and a solution for you at IT and a solution for management if they need to see reports. Collide ensures only secure devices can access your network and your cloud apps. Say goodbye to compromised credentials. Say goodbye to systems that are out of compliance and end users having to nitpick at IT for every little thing. Collide solves all of that by checking that before they connect and then working with the end user directly to solve the problem using your processes, your procedures, your communication style, etc. It empowers employees to enhance, fix, resolve their own issues.

It deburdens IT. It kind of takes away that confrontational relationship there. empowers employees to enhance, fix, resolve their own issues. It de-burdens IT. It kind of takes away that confrontational relationship there. And best of all, I think, because coming from this from an IT angle, is it also gives you a resource dashboard where you can manage everything on a single pane of glass, Windows, Linux, macOS, get your reports, make sure everybody's compliant, all that stuff you need to do. It's really a great solution.

Go experience it firsthand. Go to collide.com slash unplugged. That's K-O-L-I-D-E dot com slash unplugged. Get a demo, get some insights into how this works, support the show. They got a video over there that really kind of makes it all click. That's collide.com slash unplugged. Unplugged. Well, ladies and gentlemen, today we are introducing a very new segment here on Linux Unplugged, Will It Nix? This is exciting. Obviously, everybody's been waiting a long time for this.

No, no, no, of course not. Now, this is something we came up with, though, as maybe a way to see if maybe things aren't always better the Nix way. There's very common and popular ways to host lots of different typical well-known open source projects and software. Lots of good ways to install things. And we want to compare and contrast the typical widespread common ways to do things with how you might do it on Nix. Then we'll look at the pros, the cons, which was actually a little bit easier, which ones may be going to last longer,

be easier to maintain, sustain, kind of try to figure out the benefits of each approach. And then we'll kind of come back with our conclusions and how we're going to run that software in the future, if we'll go with the Nix way or the typical widespread way to deploy that piece of software. And we thought, up first, why not see if we can nix Nextcloud?

Something we depend on, run a lot, also convenient to have a quick recipe for if you, you know, maybe you want one for work and one for personal. And one that I have commented mostly on our members feed that I think it's, there's too many ways to install Nextcloud. And I would love to come up with one that is truly our official way to install NextCloud. And then maybe we go and deploy this on our server here. Just something to think about.

Right? So the question we're really trying to answer is, does it work better if it's NextUp? But we have to know, what is the next way for some of these? So this is something we're going to ask you this episode. We're not doing this right now. We're going to put the question to you, the audience, if you've ever installed Nextcloud on Nix, how did you do it? But also, how do you have your Nextcloud deployed right now? We want to know, we need to collect data on both sides. We need to know what are common, typical ways you out there have deployed Nextcloud. And we also need to know what ways people out there have nixed up NextCloud.

Do you build it from source? Do you run it with a snap? Do you put it on Kubernetes? I don't know. Yeah, and if you're doing it on Nix, are you doing it as a flake? Is it a module? Are you just doing a Nix config?

Boost in and tell us how you're doing it, regardless of which way it is. And if you're listening now, please try to do it soon because the earlier we can get the data in, the sooner we can start putting this together. So the more results we get before we record next Sunday's episode. So boost in how you would deploy NextCloud, both on Nix or on any other distro.

We need to collect and compare all the common ways, collect that feedback. Then we'll make our decision and try to deploy it. And then we'll come back and tell you how it went and see if you truly can Nix it up or not. I think one of the important questions we should try to answer in this segment as we go as well is, once we have nixed it up, is it worth switching

from older methodologies? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Would it just be a lot easier to just do a Docker compose or do the all-in-one, the snap?

You know, Brent's been running NixGlad forever, so I'm curious what he'll think. Well, I feel like I'll probably learn a few things and migrate. We'll see. I'm going to want to pick your brain about how we have it deployed right now in production. And then, of course, I have mine deployed at home, which is using the Linux server I.O. stuff. Oh, yeah, right.

So we each have different approaches. I feel like we also want to get some feedback about what you want to see us try in this segment as well. Like we have some of our favorite software that we're excited to implement, but maybe there's something that you use or want to see Nixified. And if so, please give us the challenge. We're starting with NextCloud a bit out of necessity. And also because I feel like I've brought it up many times. It's tricky to deploy Nextcloud depending on which route you take, so it seems like this is a good one to start with.

And I kind of love the idea that if we did come up with something we could share, other people could then use that as well, assuming they understood it. So there could be an advantage of if we do nick something, we could publish how we nixed it to the config. Yeah, right, or at least the reference we used, the tools, the end product. I also like the idea that this isn't NixOS only. I like the idea that you can apply these

strategies that hopefully we come into some successes on any Linux system, really, if you just install Nix. So it might just be useful for everyone. To give people an idea, Wes, you went out and you collected a whole batch of ways people are doing this right now. I mean a whole batch of ways people how they're nixing up Nextcloud. Did any of these stand out as like if you were going to pick one right now? Okay, so if you want to take a little live look, check out the Holy Grail Nextcloud setup. Okay. Made easy by NixOS.

And see what you just read through and see what you think. All right. Okay. First of all, it it's clean it's really simple and straightforward it's like one big code block but it's all just right there isn't it they're pulling uh the next cloud app from from some cookbook on github oh that was from their github from next cloud's github and they have backups accounted for? That's interesting. I think this looks like a pretty viable way to do it. What? Why?

No, no. I mean, it's just, it's delightfully concise. Yeah. What I like it. It's got, you know, it handles doing let's encrypt and an Nginx proxy to the application. It sets up Redis for you. It sets up a Postgres database for you. Sets up only Office apparently as well. Look at that.

And it sets auto-updates to true. That's how I like to roll. All right. So I think one area we'll probably have to get into is apps, right? Yeah. So like you can see here there's one version where they're – Defining only Office right here. So like that's essentially an app, right?

Yep. But there's some subset of apps like is often with nix right where they are nix packaged right but there's probably some apps that aren't and you're also going to want so there's like an example here of a custom app installation so how much of a pain is that how many do you have are you willing to manage them this way what's it like to manage them outside of this if you are doing it with nix that doesn't look too bad. So this guy's pulling in the CokeBook app, which is fantastic.

I mean, that's not really not that bad. We're definitely going to play with that if we go this route, because there are a couple of apps we'd want to pull in. All right, but if you were going to deploy it tonight... It seems like a strong contender. So let's put that link, the holy grail NixCloud setup made easy by NixOS, created

by Carlos. We'll put a link to that in the show notes too. But we want to know what everybody would use because, you know, for us, this is a whole new territory. The Bitcoin company. So you might be wondering, how do we go from boost to going to scale? Well, that's the Bitcoin company. You convert sats into gift cards really quick over the Lightning Network. And right now, for a few days, as when you hear this, so probably about seven days or so, they're having a deal on prepaid Visa cards with extra sats back.

Because that's one of the perks of the Bitcoin company is when you purchase, you get sats back. And if you use our referral code, Unplugged, or our affiliate link that we'll have in the notes, you'll get a little extra $5 in-app credit once you've spent over $21. $ is a special number to Bitcoiners and a thousand sap bonus. Plus we get a little kickback, like a thousand sats to our account as well, which we'll put towards our trip to scale. We have a link in the show notes. It's

thebitcoincompany.com referral code unplugged. That's how we're getting to scale. They're super great, super quick and already on the lightning network, so you can zap your stats over there super cheap at thebitcoincompany.com. Promo code unplugged. Now, this week for feedback, we wanted to actually have a community conversation around our friend Mitch Downey, who works at Podverse, has been doing that full time for a few months now. And, well, I wanted to read some messages that he shared. Hey, sorry, I've been off grid so long, folks. I've been busy with a combination of making money so I don't have to go back to a day job. And to be frank, Podverse is pretty overwhelming to keep

up with. And it gets more overwhelming with each day I let things fall behind. I've been working on Podverse for 10 years now. I didn't even know how to code when I started, and I absolutely love what we've accomplished. But I had always hoped we could have a thriving open-source community by now. by now. I honestly don't know what course of action can convert Podverse from being this 10-hour day labor of love for me into a reasonably managed business with adequate resources to keep development always moving forward and high quality customer service. The truth is as Podverse has grown more popular, it has become more difficult to keep up with. We have many generous supporters, but the money we make is far from being able to pay someone a full-time salary. Accepting VC money would go against

everything Podverse stands for. The entire reason for Podverse's existence as an open source, ad-free app, but it's easy to see why people do it. Anyway, I just wanted to be transparent that I'm having a hard time keeping up with everything. Unless there were an increase in steady open source contributors, I can't see how as a common thread with a lot of GPL maintainers, the GPL apps. And this is also occurring in the backdrop when you're seeing Fountain 1.0 released and they've crushed it and they're doing phenomenally well. Truefans.fm just came out, which is a brand-new podcasting 2.0 app that is really, really cool because it has some additional ways to earn sats.

2.0 app that is really, really cool because it has some additional ways to earn sats. And then additionally, we just saw that Apple has adopted another podcasting 2.0 standard, the transcript tags, which is massive. Yeah. Massive. It's massively validating for podcasting 2.0. It's huge for transcripts. It validates the direction.

It's going to be a first class feature now, right? Yes. It validates that when Apple's looking to add a new feature, they're looking at what podcasting 2-2-2 is doing, and they're going with that, and that's good for RSS, and that's good for podcasting in general. They could have done their own proprietary thing. And so that is a validating thing for these podcasting 2-2-2 apps, and yet Mitch is, well, he's having a hard go of it right now,

both from a financial standpoint, but also just from a development load standpoint. I mean, as you're saying, right, with like GPL and similar apps where it's wonderful, anyone can use it. It can just spread like wildfire, but there's not a direct mechanism to adding folks actually helping keep it going, lifting, and, you know, there's surely going to be growing needs, like more support issues. I really wanted to boil this down to one question to you boys and to the audience. When you're in a situation like this, where it's a small team, one or two people mostly, is there some logic in just ignoring the support issues, ignoring the requests,

ignoring the bugs, and just focus on what you do and just let the other stuff go? Because, I've been doing this for 19 years. It's been a business now for 13, 14, 15 of those years. for 19 years. It's been a business now for 13, 14, 15 of those years. And the last couple of years, like I think if, if we were going through this ad winter five years ago, I would be an absolute mess. I would be so, so stressed out and anxious because it'd be existential because it'd be like, my business is about to collapse. Um, everything's about to fall apart. This is how I survive. This is how I put food on them. You know, but as I've gotten older and I've lived through it a few more, it's like, I know ultimately it's going to be okay. Whatever happens, it's going to be okay. And it's not, you know,

what's existential are more immediate things like car accidents and health incidents and stuff like that. But this kind of stuff, it's, I'm not, I'm not in it for the short term, right? I'm in it for the next 30 years. So if not everything gets fixed today or if the profits aren't perfect today. So some aspect of taking on what you can chew at the time and maybe having to figure out how to scale that back for periods where you need to. Setting different expectations. And I think what's helped me too is having some things in real life that anchor me that are also important.

So this isn't the only thing that's important to me. It's very important to me, but it's not the only thing that's very important to me. Yeah, otherwise then you just, your entire... Yeah. See, that's harder, that's easier said than done, but I mean, even if it's video games, for God's sakes, just, you know, stack, it's like I always like to say, w somewhere else stack a w somewhere else i know it seems

counterintuitive because you're taking focus away from the thing that you're already drowning on but if you stack a win somewhere else then you you can take that momentum and you can go attack that thing that you've been avoiding because it makes you super anxious and just the concept of even dealing with it is so much that you tune it out that's what stacking those Ws does is it gives you that momentum to go get that thing. And then I think at the same time, you got to tune people out. You know, like I have an issue on Mondays that is pretty annoying and on Sundays where I just get a lot of DMs and alerts and notifications. And Sundays and Monday mornings, I'm really busy prepping either Coda Radio or Linux Unplugged. That's a live stream season.

Yeah, there's mornings where if you send me a message on Sunday morning or Monday morning, I might not get to it until 3, 4, 5 o'clock that day. And that's just the way it's got to be because I've got a job to do and I've got to focus. And I think it's really easy to get overwhelmed by notifications. And I noticed this even with just switching from iOS to Graphene is I started feeling pecked to death again with Graphene because I had mastered the iOS focus modes and I had to kind of come up with a new notification approach for Android. And you have to watch out for that because there's always somebody that needs something. And if I see that unread message, it's like a background process that's stealing my CPU. So I think you've got to find a way to get momentum outside the project. You've got to come up with ways to tune out some of the requests,

focus on what you know you need to execute on. It's got to be hard, too, right? When you have so much communication, you don't get to really set up pre-filters very easily and um as we know there's a sort of inbuilt bias where you don't you don't reach out and remind mitch how great potverse already is all the time but you do maybe make a lot of suggestions about stuff that could be fixed or improved and it can be tough to hear especially from a long you know for a long time person who's invested so much because for me it's always like he's seeing a list of stuff that's not fixed

yet, and then people are asking for more stuff. And in open source, the ideal thing would be like, hey, I think this would be a good idea, and I have this initial patch set. That's really the way to do it, and otherwise you're just asking for somebody to do more work. And I think this is, again, a common thread we see through a lot

of open source software and the maintainers that make it possible. So, Mitch, you're dealing with something that is, I think, a classic problem. And I wanted to open this up, A, because I think perhaps there's folks out in the audience that have some insights they could share. Mitch does watch the boost because we send a percentage to him. So you could boost in with those. But also what we see here is so common that I think there's probably we could zoom out as a community and just be a little more understanding about these situations. And if somebody out there does have free time, knows a little React, maybe you're an Android developer or something like that, iOS developer, this is a GPL cross-platform podcasting 2.0 app.

And it could use some help. And maybe we could show up with some patch sets out there. We've had some folks step up before and do it. Maybe some more folks could do that. And we could help Mitch out directly that way too. I know we felt very similar to this as the podcast network back during the lockdowns of 2020. And I remember, Chris, we were thinking about it like, what's going on? It really boiled down to us not being able to interface with the community one-on-one in person.

And I wonder if Mitch might consider just doing a small, I don't know, even a dinner or a small meetup. I don't know exactly where he's located, but hopefully he's got some like super fans who'd be willing to, I don't know, go bowling or have a dinner together. Cause that every time we do it, it just motivates us in a whole different way for months. And I've seen that over and over again. That's why I'm so drawn to trying to throw meetups everywhere I go for our community, because everyone who shows up gets that same feeling back. And hopefully that could help and get some new connections to the project as well. Yeah, that making those in-person networking connections.

Yeah, that making those in-person networking connections, it seems to give us energy in a way that you wish you didn't need, especially me. I wish that stuff didn't affect me positively. I wish I could go on and have the same level of energy and motivation without those meetups. But I must also succumb to the meatbag that I actually am. We all must. Yeah. It's just, and it took me way, way, way too long to learn that connection is protection and networking is one of the best things you can invest in in your entire life. It just took me way too long to figure that out. I think what Brent was saying too, I don't know. It almost sounds like a pod verse needs a party.

Deserves one. Certainly. Yeah, sure does. Yeah. So pod first. FM is the web version. You can also find it in ios supply store or f droid and it's a great app truefans.fm is a brand new app just came out as

well it's a progressive web app that does work offline but they're just saying no thanks to the app store they're just going to go truefans.fm and then fountain FM has been incredible. Oscar and Nick and the whole team over there are crushing it release after release and 1.0 is amazing now and they've reached a whole new level of user base. And then to have Apple come along and adopt

the podcast transcript namespace from podcasting 2.0. Also they adopted the people one a while back but it's just huge. Especially you know just like that's one more reason to bring in and have that namespace available in the feed already. And then, you know, right there also are the rest of the podcasting 2.0 features waiting for you. Yeah. And why not? You know, the more people that use these apps, the more pressure on Apple and Spotify to adopt these open source standards and not implement their own way of doing things,

which is how they've done it. There are, in RSS and in podcasting, there are iTunes-specific tags that even we have to use because they just got there first. And everyone expected them. Now Linux podcasts have iTunes-specific tags in their RSS feeds. It's gross. It's gross. And now it is time for Le Boost. Indeed.

And The Dude Abides is our baller booster this week. He comes in with 143,456 sats. Hey, rich lobster! And that first boost, as you might expect, it's a Spaceballs boost. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 sats. So the combination is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6. So the combination is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life.

That's great. He says, thanks for the episode. Although I've never listened to audiobooks, perhaps it's time I give it a go. Do you have a similar recommendation for e-books? Maybe collaborate the way to go? He says, by the way, I'm currently on my way to Fosdum. Too bad Brent won't be there.

That's so sad. I want it to be. Maybe next year we'll all be there. Maybe. You know, Audiobookshelf will do e-books quite well. Yeah, it wasn't like my absolute favorite reader on the phone, but I like that you had the web interface too, and the reader was fine on the phone. I think it had the essentials there,

just not as nice as some of the premium ones that have come to exist on that platform. If you only wanted books, probably Calibre would be a good way to go. Or Calibre, however you say it. But if you want audiobooks and e-books, I think probably... A one-stop shop for books. Yeah, then I give the nod

to Audiobook Shelf. Thumbs boosts in with 123,456 123,456 123,456 Yes! That's two, three, four, five. Yes. That's amazing. I've got the same combination on my luggage. I thought this Nix episode was very helpful,

talking about 546, what you're missing about NixOS. I'm still a Linux beginner, but curious. You guys have always made Nix seem intriguing, but things like Flakes and Home Manager make it seem a bit daunting. I'm excited to try Snowflake. It seems like a more approachable starting point. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I, I agree. Um, I think home manager does seem daunting at first. I think for me, what, what I had a really hard time understanding and I still need to do more practical on hands

experience with is modules and overlays and flakes. It just didn't, you know, I just didn't go that route when I got into Nix. But with Snowflake, you will kind of start there in a more smooth on-ramp style, perhaps. It might not be so bad. And it seems like you're already doing this, Thumbs, but, you know, engaging in any way, you know, getting a bite, the first bite of the Nix stuff from whatever direction it is, flakes, Home Manager aside, you know, getting a bite, the first bite of the Knicks stuff from whatever direction it is.

Flakes, home manager aside, you know, just whatever works for you. You'll learn and expand from there naturally. Let us know how it goes, Thumbs, and thanks for the boost. Get your thumbs dirty. Mick ZB boosted in with 42,000 sats from Castomatic, saying, Vegas meetup. Never been, but tickets are cheap and quite direct as well. The answer to the ultimate question.

Brandt, yeah, do a Vegas, well, maybe next time. Maybe next time. We'll all go. We'll go in the warm weather.

I had deeply considered doing it because how much fun would that be? But then I figured that would just be torture on my family, dragging them to one of our meetups. Maybe next time. Maybe. Maybe. Or you just get really drunk first. Then everybody

will have a great time. That's what you do in Vegas, right? Indeed. Hybrid Sarcasm comes in with 42,000 sats. The answer to the ultimate question. He says, I discovered this week how easy it is to implement rootless Docker on NixOS. Once I wrap my head around flakes, i can be

one of the cool kids you already are hybrid sarcasm you already are thank you for the boost cultivator booth sin with a double boost of 12 345 sets coming in hot with the boost and one two three four five yes that's! I've got the same combination on my luggage! I was able to install NixOS on an old corporate discard desktop I had, and even managed to install a couple of packages. After this podcast, I got excited to

try out Snowflake, and maybe try to learn the Flake way of doing things. Unfortunately, the motherboard failed. So now I'm trying to work up the nerve to install it on my main machine and give it a real go. I feel like this podcast enables my tendency towards risky behavior, and I love you for it. High praise, thank you. And the second boost here.

Okay, so it turns out the Dell in question must have been in hibernate when I unplugged and moved it. And after removing the RAM and performing a very strict ritual involving some animal sacrifice, I was able to get it to boot. Now on to Snowflake OS. Hey, congratulations. That's quite the thrilling story. Yeah. I mean, the nice thing about the Dells is you can put in the service tag on their website and it will tell you specifically which animal you have to sacrifice. So that makes it really easy to look that up. Distro Stew boosted in with two, three,

four, five, six Satoshis. I recently stumbled on Vnote app.vnote.fun. It's an open source Markdown note taking app. And though I love Obsidian, I've been looking for an open source alternative and this just about hits the marks for my needs. Of course, since they both speak Markdown, I'm not locked into either app and can use them somewhat interchangeably. Also, see you at scale. Hey, hey, cool. Thank you for this.

This vnote.fun, app.vnote.fun. Looks nice. I mean, it does look pretty good. It's a native C++ and Qt application, so it should be light and snappy. I have to say when I... First-class Linux support, which is always lovely. When my eye strays from Obsidian,

where I land is actually QO Notes. An old favorite. Is an old favorite and also works great with Nextcloud. Yeah, but boy, that looks really good. App.vnote.fun. Thank you, Distro Stew. Appreciate you. Jordan Bravo comes in with a row of the McDucks. Things are looking up for old McDuck. 22,222 sats.

Says thanks for the shout out to my Nix workshop. Here's the recording of the live stream in case anyone's interested. Part one focused on the Nix on non-NixOS systems, like, you know, Nix on Ubuntu, OpenSUSE. And then part two focuses on NixOS systems like, you know, Nix on Ubuntu, OpenSUSE. And then part two focuses on NixOS. I'll boost in with the recording link when it's all over and share it in the NixNerds Matrix channel. Excited for y'all's coverage at NixCon. We'll put that YouTube link in there.

Oh, these have been very heavy Nix boosts. And it's funny as we did audio bookshelf, which was we took a week off from talking about Nix. But then we did Snowflake, of course. Everybody's catching up um and i love it i'm not complaining at all it's there is something special happening here and i'm going to be very proud to look back in five years and have this show have really been at this leading edge of covering this i think it's going to be really great we've already you know clearly entered

the next era the only question is how long it lasts right Right. Ooh, that could be a topic. Nev boosts in with 10,000 sats. Hey-o! As a Gen 2 user, I think rather than a source-based challenge, I'm going to go with a GNU Geeks challenge instead for a month. I'll boost in with updates as I go. Geeks February 2024. So we need to have a little team meeting about this source-based challenge. I think the thing that has me a little like, how do we do this, is the upcoming trips.

Right. Because I don't know if we have time to do it before, and I don't think we want to do it during the trip. No, we probably want to be a little more focused. So I think we just got to have a little tactical planning session. Okay. Maybe after the show, we'll do a little tactical planning. Also, good luck, Nev.

I've been curious about Geeks before. I haven't really tried it yet, but you know, sort of Knicks-inspired, but with Guile involved. seems like it could be pretty nice. So please do let us know. Yeah. And thanks for the boost. Tux M boosted in two boosts for a total of 17,222 sets. Make it so. Nice. Hello from central Virginia. Constantly learning about NixOS. It's on my laptop and desktop.

Constantly learning about NixOS. It's on my laptop and desktop. I like to optimize NixStore to reduce space usage, trim generations, and run garbage collect on NixStore frequently. My small 110-gig hard drive went from 97% used to about 60% used. Sweet. Yeah. So you definitely want to clean up your disk,

because I do get a little filled up on my laptop sometimes because it's only like a 256 gigger. Yeah. You know, Nix is great and there's a lot of nice things about it, but minimal disk space is not necessarily one of them. Yeah. Yeah. And you can, if you keep all those generations, which you can revert to, guess what? It's going to take space. So there are garbage cleanup commands.

And what I've done on my kids' computers is in the Nix config, I've just gone ahead and turned on auto garbage collection, and auto garbage collects anything older than seven days, I think. So they basically get a week of generations. They don't generally have a week's worth because one of them is set to never update, and one of them is set to update daily, but the computer has to be on at the right time and all that. Yeah, of course. He seems to, so far tracking it, he seems to auto-update about four times a week.

Which is totally seamless to him. He's never even commented on it, which is incredible because when he turns that thing on, he just hits the gaming right away and is somehow still doing it. It's just auto-updated in the background. Of course, it helps when you're playing games like Roblox and

Fortnite. They're not super demanding. But yeah. Jittering Blender comes in with 5,000 sats. He says, thank you for devoting this episode to Nix. This was our snowflake episode. I'm in favor of the source-only challenge mentioned by a previous booster. I see it as an experiment to see if source-only can improve application performance. I agree.

Of course, you would have to add the compiler flags, whether it can reduce bandwidth on an average compared to binary distros, too, I'd be interested. I also like the idea of reducing the attack surface by reducing the reliance on any binary cache. Finally, congrats for raising enough funds for

scale. Alright, another vote. I guess we have to do it, huh? Yeah. Those are interesting points right there. So I think the key takeaways that I'm getting, Blender, from your boost is you're curious to know if compiler flags, if you can get performance out of it. Be curious to know if it's more or less bandwidth used than, you know, updating a binary system. And then there's that discussion around you're kind of reducing that third-party risk that the maintainer or the repo hasn't been compromised and the binary isn't. Yeah, how do we feel about the whole, you know,

whatever we do, how do we feel about the security? Yeah, yeah. Those are really good thoughts. Thank you, Blender. Gene Bean boosts in with 10,677 sets across six different boosts. Hey, it's Gene. B-O-O-S-T.

Can we also get a Dux in here? Sure. Because we got some D ducks in here? Sure. Because we got some ducks in here. We archive from Audible mostly for fear of things disappearing, like happen on streaming servers. Same. We can also then easily lend books to one or two friends, just as you might do with paper books. That, Gene, was why I set up Audiobookshelf in the first place. Because the guys were over and I wanted to share some books with them.

And they're audiobooks. I'm like, well, how do I solve for this? Right. I archive select podcasts in Audiobookshelf as well. And I also archive any podcast I guest host or speak on, which that's a nice idea. That is. That's fun. Good idea.

Continuing on, Gene Bean says, I've heard some zip code boosts from my fellow georgians in and around atlanta any chance you'd add a room for us to gather in and uh maybe just maybe plan a meetup okay our atlantic meetup sounds pretty fun yeah we should have a uh i need a good name though for it that's a big requirement because we did the scale room and i'm still sad that we didn't come up with a good name yeah Yeah, Chris and I failed at that one. And it's been two weeks. Yeah, so I need a really clever name like Georgia Groupies or something like that.

But yes, absolutely. The Georgia Gang. Then maybe we'll get it rolling. Yeah, maybe if they're okay with that. But if we can get a good name for it and get it rolling, I think that's step one into an actual official JB meetup, right? Yeah, totally. Okay.

Continuing on. If you haven't already, be sure to add the audible ASIN. It helps a lot for finding metadata for audio books. That's a nice little tip. Okay. And Jean says that they're looking forward to meeting us at NixCon and Skate.

Nice. Oh my God. We're going to meet Jean. I'm a little nervous. That's so great. And a little prod saying, Wayland and Firefox on Nix with both GNOME is working great for me. Firefox also works great under Hyperland for me.

My setup is on a 2017 Dell XPS 9360 13-inch machine. Maybe I've just got the right hardware combo. You know, I've stopped complaining because it's working. So I haven't, I don't know if my cameras are working. I't checked that yet but uh i don't have the firefox crashing issue anymore which is massive and i did also have a chrome issue where my extension menus would be really really narrow but what i've learned is that if i drag the width of the chrome browser to almost the entire width of my monitors then the chrome extension menus menus are fine. So I've solved for both. What was the fix in the first case?

The Firefox fix was they did an update, and now Firefox has native Wayland support. Well, great. Yeah, yeah. That was really great. I don't know about the cameras. I'll have to figure that out. I need to play around with that.

But we'll see. We'll see. Thank you, Gene. And I'm really looking forward to meeting you at scale. Thank you for all those boosts and all those ducks. Lego feet boosted in 8008 Satoshis from Fountain saying simply juvenile number humor. That if you spell it out on the calculator, that's funny. I get it.

I get it. Thank you for the boost. Purple Dog comes in with 5000 sats. I've been using audio bookshelf for about a year now. Oh, all right. Some boots on the ground long-timer reports here. I'm getting my books from Audible. I've got a script that uses Audible CLI, had not even heard of that, to download new books

and then converts them to MP3 with all the correct metadata for Audiobookshelf. I'm running that in Docker right now, but I'm working on packing it up in Nix. Bless you, Purple Dog. If you do, Purple Dog, will you shoot it my way? I'd love to repackage it up in Nix, too. Sounds neat. So the thing that I noticed you're doing here is MP3. I am doing the M4

Bs still, because everything I use supports that M4 B support, and I think it's AAC. That would make sense technically higher quality um and has all the chapters in line and stuff but i think mp3 is probably still a pretty pretty safe way to go nacho linux boosts in with 5 000 cents jpl long live the copter yeah shout out though to tim who told us that there's still a Linux box running on the actual rover still. Hanging out on Mars.

So, you know. Also, I don't know if maybe Tim could, if he's listening, he could tell us, but there's been some online chatter about spinning it up for science and letting it go wreck itself and to kick up dirt and stuff. And, you know, the cameras might land somewhere where it gets a cool picture. You could actually use it for a little low-key science stuff. Tim, if you're listening. One more flight. Yeah, right. One more act for science.

Part of me is like, don't. Just let it sit. Because then one day when we land there, we could go put like a little cube over it and make it like a monument out of this little copter. And I'd like it to be in the best shape possible. It does have two chunks missing from two different blades. So it's going to get covered and it's also going to get covered in dust. So there might be some logic to having a little last

minute science. DPG boosted in four, five, four, five Satoshis to episode five, four, four. Ah. Hey guys, I tried the 32-bit challenge of sorts with my beagle bone black has an arm v7 one gigahertz single core cpu with 512 megs of ram and uh it was painful i managed to run some

telegram bots but it seems things are sunsetting 32-bit arm as well I'm curious to see what happens to these old single-board computers in the future. And, well, I love the show. That is a great question. I've been wondering the same thing, DPG, and thank you for the boost. What happens, and is there going to be maybe some last distro that gets us as close as we can and you can still use them for something useful? We'll see. Only time will tell.

The Golden Dragon came in with a row of ducks. He says, welcome to otter brain. If you're looking for anything in the public domain, use LibreVox. While I won't be at scale, I'll be there in spirit in a couple of other ways. Hopefully one day we can all get back together and do a brunch with Brent or

similar missing the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. Dragon would be great if he made it out for Linux fest and we're going to do live streams. I will be publishing the calendar, but also because we're going to do them as lit live streams, they will just be in the RSS feed in your time and all that.

So if you're using a podcasting 2.0 app, you can jump on right as we go live because you'll get notified within 90 seconds when we're on the road. And the reason I mention it is I'd love to bring folks in that can't make it and try to bring them in on it as much as we can. I think the dragon mentioned an important correction here too. I, I, during our intro mentioned that I was using project Gutenberg for audio and that's actually the written,

uh, open formats for books and LibriVox is actually what I was using. And I remember throwing a few LibriVox files on my old Palm Pilot back in the day when I was, you know, riding the buses. Nice. Nice. Zack Attack boosted with 6,543 sets. Hello, Zack. Snowflake OS wouldn't install at all in a VM, so instead I went back to my Nix config files I've been making over the last few months,

retested them one last time, and if all goes well, they will be on my ThinkPad by the time the episode airs. I'll keep you posted. I hope so. I'd love to know. I definitely had the install bomb on me when I tried to add app image support, and then when I went back and just unchecked app image support, the install finished just fine. So I don't know if that was, you know, what was up there. But early days, it's very much alpha.

But good for you. I love the idea of having just a whole set for your ThinkPad. I love my ThinkPad with NixOS. I should really consider that. Hey, there's Faraday Fedora. He's got a row of ducks. Test boost. I think Albie is S-ing the bed and it disconnected me from podverse well that's a great way to test support the show oppie 1984 boosts in with 12 000 sats across three boosts after having three books i paid for

removed from my audible account i bought a license for open audible and have been downloading everything i buy and storing them in cold storage. Yeah. I keep meaning to set up audiobook shelf and then getting sidetracked. I mean, we all know how that goes. Thanks for reminding me. I still need to get that done. I also need to start researching audiobook vendors that allow DRM-free downloads.

Maybe I'll make a blog post listing the vendors I'm able to find. But we'll see. Speaking of blog posts, on the value for value audiobook subject, I wrote a blog post listing the vendors I'm able to find. But we'll see. Speaking of blog posts, on the Value for Value audiobook subject, I wrote a blog post on my idea for that very same thing. At the time of boosting, it's the latest post. So if you're interested, just go to oppie1984.com and see the post titled Value for Value Audiobooks. Oh, and we got an update.

Five hours later, Audiobookshelf is set up on my server and the Android app is connected and working. Well done, sir. I'll stick with my current setup for podcasts for now, but otherwise, I think I'm in love. That's my take. And I'm using it every single day. I'm keeping my podcasts in Fountain right now. I bounce between Fountain, Pod pod verse and true fans like a distro hopper would but my audiobooks forever now i'm never gonna have the audible app installed ever again it's so great it feels so good and i i would never want 400 books on a physical shelf it's just that's not me i have no place for that heaven forbid you move i love though that i have

400 books in the digital space. It feels good. You know, it feels good. Well done too, Oppie. Well done. And we'll put a link to that blog post. Now we got a special boost from Sir Lurks a lot with 7,575 Satoshis over two boosts. Hello, Sir Lurks. There he is. My favorite way to listen is on PeerTube, but I can't seem to stream sats or boosts, at least not on your version. Yeah. Aside from PeerTube, I generally listen to the shows on the Jupiter All Shows feed so I can stream, and then I'll go to the member feed to catch the pre- and post-shows since they don't support podcasting 2.0 features. Well, good news there. We're rolling out the 2.0 features to the members feed, and we're testing it to see how that goes, getting some feedback,

and then we're rolling out from there. So if you listen to or subscribe to the live members feed in a podcasting 2.0 app now, they're getting 2.0 features like transcripts, chapters, and boosts. Now, SirLurks' second boost says, Here's a happy birthday boost for you, Chris. boost now sir lurks's second boost says here's a happy birthday boost for you chris once upon a time i sent a million sat boost when it was worth around 100 us dollars and today that same boost is worth 420 ha i trust your hodlin stay humble stack sats don't forget your towel and above all don't panic much love i hoard that which all kind covet this is one of my favorite things

about the boost too is we can kind of have the optionality um you know in some cases like for the scale boost we're going to spend those sooner than later but we do have the option to also hodl the boost and i love that that means that if sometimes it's the opposite effect too but sometimes it also means your boost is doing more for you today. And it's a way for a one-time contribution to kind of like continue to contribute back in the sense that we could put that as an asset on the business's books and it could make Jupyter Broadcasting look financially better if we need it alone. But it also just gives us an asset that we can sell if we needed to like fall back on a little bit of money if cash flow gets tight. And we have the optionality of when to do that. Thankfully, for the most part, we really haven't. But with the ad winter, it is what it is. It's really nice to have that optionality right now. We don't ever really know where the price is going to go, but

we're not really in it for that. And so we sit on it till we need it. And if something comes up, like a scale trip or something like that, then we can sell a little bit. And I think it works out pretty nice. And yeah, you got to pay capital gains tax, but that's because there was a gain and that's how it works. If I got a paycheck, I'd have to pay taxes on that too, right? So I don't really look at that as a negative aspect to it. It's just all part of the process and the optionality when you're running a business and things you got to think about. Thank you though, Lurks. Nice to hear from you. Appreciate you. Anonymous comes in with 15,000

sats saying, check out Libro FM. Great for audiobooks. He also likes bookshop.org. Says it works well. They have a subscription model. But the credits never expire. Yeah, that is nice. After you buy a book with credits or currency, you can then immediately go download it as DRM-free MP3s or M4Bs, depending on which one the publisher provides.

This is great. This is really great. He says, you guys mentioned Audiobookshelf Consort and Manager Podcast, but did you know it can also create RSS feeds for your audiobooks? On an admin account, go to a book page. Click on the three dots, and then click on Open RSS Feed. It will generate a random set of characters, which you can change, for a feed after your audio bookshelf URL, so then you can easily listen in your podcast app if you prefer. Wow. That's a great tip, Anonymous.

Thank you. I'll do just that. That's a great tip, Anonymous. Thank you. I'll do just that. That's great. That's so cool. I did remember hearing the less you generate RSS feeds, but I hadn't grok that meant I could put it in my podcast catcher, which has got great playback controls. boosting in for a well-earned shout-out to editor Drew and the entire J.B. crew across all shows for consistent and high audio quality and content quality. Listening to other podcasts really contrasts how well the production value is for the J.B. shows. Yeah, Drew really cleans it up. I often refer sending the files to Drew to send them to the wash because they come out in a way better than they went in.

They really do. He does. And if you ever listen to the bootleg version, the live to Drew, send them to the wash because they come out in the better way, better than they went in. They really do. He does. And you know, if you ever listened to the bootleg version, the live members feed, then go listen to the published version. There are members that believe it or not, they don't listen to the live version. They listen to the ad free version because it's got all of Drew's touches. It's a, it is all worth it. 3,333 sats came in from NNFTS.

Just saying, yo. That's it. Thank you. Appreciate that. 5,432 sats from the idiot you yell at says, I just discovered Libro.fm. L-I B-R-O. Libro.fm for DRM-free audiobooks

just before listening to this episode. I'm going to give that a shot after the show. There's a couple ones I've been wanting lately, and I haven't bought them yet. Thank you, everybody who boosted in. We really appreciate it. We had 25 boosters this week, lots of great engagement, some good discussions and tips, and we stacked 547,059 sats.

And we very much appreciate that. That goes to us. It goes to Editor Drew. Cut goes to the Podcast Index and to Podverse. We really appreciate all of that. And we also thank you sat streamers out there who just set those sats to stream and listen. It's so much fun to open up our dashboards and just see those coming in. Well, often when we're doing the show live, we'll open up the dashboard and see who's listening to the previous episode while we're recording the current episode.

Yeah, look at Eric Nord and Rod Edmund earlier today. Yeah, there you go. There you go. So thank you, everybody. Also, shout out to our members. The Unplugged core contributors are the absolute best. And we make a special extra content members feed for them. And we also have the ad-free version.

We have that linked at our website. I think it's also linuxonplug.com slash membership, but I'm not positive about that. But I do know we have it linked at the website. We very much appreciate it. For our pick this week, I'm going to call an easy one. Please do forgive. But with us doing live streaming for scale and about to roll out transcripts and embrace more features,

and with Podverse having a tough time, I'm going to give a plug for Podverse.fm. Go check out the Podverse app. It's in Google Play, F-Droid, and the Apple App Store. If it doesn't fit your needs, also give Fountain FM and True Fans FM a go. But we're rolling out transcripts. Apple is rolling out transcripts. There's more and more features coming, including 90-second notifications from when the episodes are posted and live streaming inside the podcast app. So if you're just subscribed to our RSS feed and we go live, it's just there as one of the options.

But the other thing that's really nice is we can mark a show as pending. So you'll open up the feed. You can say, oh, Linux Unplugged is going to be live in a day at this time. And you know ahead of time. And you don't have to go to our calendar page. You don't have to go to YouTube or any Google property or any Amazon property. You just listen in the native podcast experience you already enjoy. Right from us to you.

Yep. So I'm going to give a plug to podcastapps.com and specifically Podverse because it's the GPL app out there. I mean, it's 2024. You deserve a podcast client that can take advantage of all the stuff we've got to give you the best possible experience. Yeah. You know, if Apple users are getting this stuff, it's time for you to get this stuff, right? I mean, if the Apple users on their built-in Apple podcast apps are getting this, It's time for the rest of us to get this. And we see you guys out there.

We know you're listening. We appreciate you. And don't forget, we're also looking for your ways that you host NextCloud. How are you giving it a go before? Not a bad idea to tell us how it's working for you, too. And also, we've got to know if you're nixing it up and which way you nixed it. Any links, much appreciated. And then any tips for GPL developer burnout, like Mitch,

any tips you have around that please boost those in we really appreciate that and of course you can also go to linux unplugged.com slash contact i think we're live at our regular time next week right all that stuff's normal nothing really changing we're kind of just locked in for a bit i think so same bat time bring your next cloud setup and we'll see you there yeah see you next week same bat time same bat station. Yeah. I think it's,

it's going to be a few weeks of, uh, of regular times and productions and then we're off on the road. Catch them while you can. Yeah. Now Coda radio is going to be on Tuesday live this week. If you want to join me over there, we put that at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar.

And then this shall be back on Sunday at noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. Of course, of course, at jblive.tv. Eastern. Of course. Of course. At jblive.tv. Links to what we talked about today, that's at linuxunplugged.com slash 548. You'll also find our RSS feed, the membership links, the mumble links, the matrix links.

It's all over there. It's a website with links. And they're useful. Thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode. See you right back here next Sunday. Thank you. you