LINUX Unplugged - 585: Choosy Moms Choose Ubuntu

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Wes got Mom a new Linux laptop, and he lets her pick the distro. Plus, we take a look at the new Ubuntu 24.10, and why we think this release might be a good sign for the future.Sponsored By:Jupiter Party Annual Membership: Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices! 1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FMUbuntu 24.10 - Oracular OrioleUbuntu UnityAMD Framework 13Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!imagegenius/docker-immich — Monolithic (Single) Docker Container for Immichrramiachraf/dumb — Private alternative front-end for Genius.qdm12/gluetun: — VPN client in a thin Docker container for multiple VPN providers, written in Go, and using OpenVPN or Wireguard, DNS over TLS, with a few proxy servers built-in.SCaLE 22X Call for PapersSCaLE CFP Feedback Livestreamcli-ai — A simple command-line AI assistant that translates natural language into shell commands. Supports all Windows and Unix-based systems (Linux, MacOS).

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, we've been running Ubuntu 2410, and we'll tell you what we think, what we liked, and what we didn't like. And then we'll find out about the new computer Wes built for his mom and just set up for her. It's a Linux box. We know that.

But we don't know anything else about it. So we'll get those details, and then we'll round it out with a great pick, some great boosts, and a lot more. So before I go any further, let's say time-appropriate greetings to that mumble room. Hello, Virtual Lug. Hey, Chris. Hello. Hello, Brian. It's kind of funny.

We've got Jeff and Minimac in our on-air channel, and then we've got a whole bunch of people, like 10 other people out there. You know, they are following your advice. Yeah, that's true. It is a low-latency Opus stream right off the mixer. Open source. Full stack is open source. Why not?

Also, a big good morning to our friends at Tailscale. Tailscale.com slash unplugged. Go get it for free. Up to 100 devices and three user accounts. Not a limited time deal. And it's a great way to support the show. It's Tailscale.com slash unplugged. You can build out a flat

mesh network protected by... That's right. The best VPN in the biz. Replace your legacy VPN infrastructure with something so much better in just minutes. Doesn't matter the device or the architecture. If you've got five minutes, you can

probably get Tailscale installed on two or three devices and then you're up and going and getting to work. It's fast, too, like really fast. Check it out. We love it. We use it for production and personal stuff. Tailscale.com slash unplugged. The cone of silence.

Okay, so before we go any further, we probably should have had this little meeting before the show, but quick production. Well, you have the cone. We abuse it. It's fine. I know. That's what it's here for. So just don't tell the audience. Episode 600 is 14 episodes away.

Oh, wow. Oh, no. I feel like 500 was just yesterday. I know. I know. I feel like we just tossed the LUP 400 beer because the refrigerator died last week. Time to make some more. Yeah, it is actually. It is.

It was sad, but I have the gear. So if our math is right, that means episode 600 of Linux Unplugged is going to be February 2nd, 2025. Wow. So here's the part I wanted to float to you boys and see what you think.

Since we have a little bit of time, I think we have the time to pull this off. What if we help the community organize a series of meetups? So instead of us doing a meetup somewhere, which we still could, maybe we do one here. The community does a series of meetups all around the world on Sunday, February 2nd, 2025. And then we have them connect back in and we say hi to them and give them a shout out for episode 600. I don't know. What I think it would take is it would take like a local meetup chief to be the person

to like organize and herd the cats in their area. So we'd have to suss out if there's interest in this idea or if you guys are interested in this idea. So in short, it's like a bunch of remote community meetups. The audience gets together in their local area and listens to the show live on Sunday, February 2nd. And then we set up like a Jitsi meet or a video ninja and have them pop in if they want and say hi or they can jump in the mumble room. Maybe that's even easier. That fun idea i like that yeah i mean part of the mumble room a big part of the show i mean you don't have to listen live and you can be a you know most people don't but it's kind of part of the secret sauce that makes this show what it is so i think that honors that and seems nice what

do you think brent episode 600 we try to try to encourage a bunch of community meetups around the world to listen to the show live together. Yeah, I love the idea. When I was in Berlin, I mean, we had a bunch of people listening in live. If you remember, they were shaking that bus that I was trying to record in. So I'm picturing something really similar to that, just kind of spread out a little bit everywhere. That would be really amazing. And we could facilitate, you know, by making matrix rooms to make that a little more seamless. So if we can help out and make that happen, I think it sounds great.

What would we do? Where would we go? We have that meetup.com self-hosted open source alternative that Jeff, you tried out. What's it called, Jeff? Gathio. Yeah, Gather.io or whatever. Gathio. So maybe we set that up.

We host that somewhere. I guess what we need to do is suss out if there's interest in people being local chiefs. So, all right. Thank you, boys. The cone of silence. Okay. Well, before we get into the show, we do have a little bit of housekeeping. For no particular reason, we're looking for folks that might be interested in helping us organize meetups in your location. So if you think you would be willing to, I don't know, organize a meetup page, figure out a venue, figure out a way to facilitate listening to a live stream, things like that, please boost in or email us at the contact page or contact us on Matrix and let us know. We're looking to see if we can find a few meetup chiefs out there for no reason.

No, no reason. No reason at all. for no reason. No, no reason. No reason at all. So 2410 came out as we were playing around with Meshtastic, and that's okay. It gave us a little extra time to try it. And it's also kind of a special

release because it's the 20th anniversary release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 4.10 Wordy Warthog came out in October of 2004. This is officially your moment to feel old. If you remember that very distinctly and it still feels like the new distro,

you are old. Sorry, I'm right there with you. I think one of the fun things about this release, before we get into all the features and stuff, is Canonical included a collection of retro touches, you know, color themes, backgrounds, stuff like that, sounds. So if you do want to get your nostalgia on,

you very much will like this release. I mean, I could take that old retro startup sound really on any of my Linux boxes. I know. I love it. I should have it on the soundboard. I'm looking at the soundboard right now thinking, why don't I have, like, a whole Ubuntu soundboard, Wes? You know, of all, like, Ubuntu's greatest hits.

And, you know, hearing it, honestly, I mean, not only did it kind of bring me back, but I don't know, it feels like a nice community touch in a way, even if you're not necessarily a day-to-day Ubuntu user now. I think many of us, maybe most of us have been at least for some time in our Linux history. And I don't know, kind of brought me back to that. Yeah, it felt like a nice acknowledgement of, I don't know, kind of brought me back to that. Yeah, it felt like a nice acknowledgment of, I don't know, of history. There's the question. So 2410 makes a few notable changes, boys.

It defaults to Wayland on devices with NVIDIA GPUs for the first time. That's a big step. That's incredible. Yeah, it's nice to see. And X11 does remain an option at the login screen if you've got problems. App 3.0 is included in 2410. This old dog has a few new tricks. There's some definite UI and output changes in package installations.

Also, output of packages is now ordered by priority. It's just slightly cleaner. If you blink, you might miss it, but if you've stared at a lot of app install screens over the years, you're definitely going to notice a few formatting changes. Seems good. Nothing particularly jumps out at me from an end user standpoint other than that. There's also a new app from Canonical in here, or at least one that got a little more work.

It's called the Security Center app, and it's now pre-installed in 2410. It's got a cool icon. It doesn't do a lot right now, but you can kind of see it's one of these apps. You can see where the puck's going on this one. It lets you right now toggle, say, like if apps can request permissions all Android style or snapped. But more is planned. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the, you know, was one of the theoretical advantages that they could do in terms of just being able to make changes and move quickly,

having their own packaging format that is in-house. So it's nice to see them at least trying to deliver on some of those things. It's a little bit, maybe at the same time, sad that it kind of only works in this part of the ecosystem. But I do think it is genuinely useful functionality for the Linux desktop that helps us be competitive with the other big desktops. Do we know if the Security Center app is written in Flutter, like the recent apps? I'm virtually positive. I'm not 100%.

I say that because it has the kind of look and feel of all the others. I mean, why not? Which is fine. You've got it pinned down. Yeah, it's not bad. It seems fine. And I know they have some plan functionality for firewall config options in there. I'm almost totally positive you'll be able to subscribe to Ubuntu Pro in there. You know, they're going to make that a thing.

I do think it means, like, just between that, like, networking stuff and, you know, how there's NetPlan involved. Is it the slow march of Ubuntu continuing to feel, differentiate more and more from sort of a Debian style base? And I think the Security Center app is one in particular to watch for the next couple of releases. I bet by the LTS, we see that thing pretty flushed out. Yeah, you have that, right? And then under the hood, obviously, snaps and then app armor is a big part of all of that. Let's talk about snaps for a second. So we're looking at a lot of

snaps now uh out of the box firefox is a snap as we know the snap store the store itself is a snap the firmware updater is a snap a bunch of core utilities are installed via snap now um almost three gigs worth of snaps out of the box now on Ubuntu S. SnapD itself is a snap. Yeah, I was just curious, you know, because again, I'm not a regular Ubuntu user. I mean, I've got systems here and there, but like I'm not, you know, it's not on my workstation. Yeah, I don't know. So it's only really feels like one non

sort of core Ubuntu or canonical app. That's one way to look at it, right? They've snapped Firefox, but the rest of it is all kind of stuff that they're choosing to ship as part of shipping you Ubuntu and shipping you snaps in particular. Yeah, it is all their stuff with the exception of Firefox, isn't it? Yeah. Well, there's some GTK stuff in there, but I think that's more like dependency. Right, and kind of provides some Core 22, provides some common base stuff that you're going to want anyway.

You know, we're going to get into my mom's laptop upgrade a little bit later. But as part of that, I had her try Ubuntu 2410. And, you know, first thing out of the gate, it's like, well, let's it advertises after, you know, your first run experience in the system. Hey, do you want to go to the app center and try installing some stuff? So we did just that. It's pretty nice, you know, I mean, it works. It's searchable. It was quick.

Yeah. Except it's kind of that same old problem. I think we were just installing Telegram as the first run kind of example of, you know, the UI and everything was quite nice and snappy. But there was just a lot of, I think, snap sort of dependencies that ultimately would be shared that were getting pulled down as part of that Telegram process. So one of your first applications was a major install. And took quite some, yeah, kind of longer. And you didn't necessarily get a great feel for like,

how long is this going to take? Yeah, yeah. But after that, it was just fine. What did mom think over all of the interaction with the system? I mean, you've got, you know, very much a standard Ubuntu mainline flavor has, you know, that dock on the side that's very much their style. How did all that work for her?

Well, she was coming from an ubuntu mate system so she's had probably a bar at the bottom uh actually i think we put it into their mock unity configuration oh perfect okay yeah so she actually already had the bar at the side which was great um to be i think it was i i think it went pretty well uh i was just kind of curious to see what you think, particularly, you know, GNOME 47 and all the little tweaks and changes. I kind of ran her through just like, here's how the desktop functionality. So including virtual desktops, which she was interested in, and especially by the dynamic desktop function. And it's like, oh, I have three now. But she seemed to get that. She kind of likes keeping a non-cluttered desktop,

so I think it may be having a little more availability to have different activities could be useful for her. One part that did strike me is I was showing her the various touchpad functionalities, and it just makes me realize we don't have apps that train you to do that. In terms of the physical side of it, I'm used to swiping and she got the three finger touch aspect but there's sort of like um you know there's like an art to it yeah the gentleness and the curve solitaire can play a role here i think you know because you got to drag those cards you know maybe solitaire could be useful yeah i mean and she totally got it it was but it's just kind of interesting to see you know exploring a new yeah ui right especially one that has all these hidden gestures once you start to figure it out.

I do. It also made me really reflect on just how far the GNOME settings functionality has really come, you know, because that was really easy. As one aspect was I was kind of showing her fractional scaling. And, you know, if the UI looks a little too small, here's how you can easily adjust that or change it around. And the settings app was just super easy to go through it was logical it made sense i could tell her i was kind of explaining the windows key uh magic you know whatever we call it these days functionality to summon up and be able to type to search as a way to like interface it's like the way if you want something start here and then she could just go right into the settings and all the settings were clearly to you know there and so i don't know it was a nice way to be able to just quickly run

someone through how to operate their computer and and get fresh eyes on on gnome which is interesting the one embarrassing part is i was going through like the sort of theming and tweaking parts and like the accent colors but they're just it doesn't show up very much you know what i mean like i had to go try to find different places. I couldn't even find a button. The best I got was like some outlines on like the folders and then the little like radio boxes, you know, or the real dialogues on off switches. Yeah, it's pretty subtle. We'll get to that actually. So, you know, I think the headline feature of 2410 is GNOME 47.

You know, I think the headline feature of 2410 is GNOME 47. Shout out to Kubuntu, which Kubuntu is shipping Plasma 6.1 with Wayland as the default. Yeah, that's a big upgrade. That's really cool and something I'm going to spend more time with later. But I was actually pretty excited to spend a week with GNOME 47 simply because I have been on Plasma now for so long that I was ready for like the most recent fresh GNOME. And 2410 is one of the fastest ways to get that right now. And what I discovered is instead of experiencing GNOME 47 completely, I got the full Ubuntu. I haven't felt the full Ubuntu in years. When Ubuntu switched back to Gnome years ago now, some of what made Ubuntu unique, some of its differentiating properties, some people hate them, some people love them, they were lost. And making it their own once again, much like it was back when they had Unity, which was really unique because they had, you know, unique theming, unique branding. And of course, they have their own desktop environment. Well, now with Gnome 47, I think they're back there, but in a more upstream aligned way.

It's the full Ubuntu, but in a good way. You know, they've got their own installer. It's great. They've got their own installer. It's great. They've got their own apps. They're totally acceptable. They've got their own software distribution mechanism through snaps, and they're pretty much a first-class experience now. All their little touches combined with GNOME 47, I think, mark a special moment in the Ubuntu recipe, as in they have sort of reached, I believe, the full Ubuntu. And now what we're going to see is this refined upon and incorporated upon for future releases.

Like the building has been working. They've been working on this for years. They have arrived. And this is version 1.0 of what they have always dreamed the Ubuntu GNOME desktop would actually be like. We're finally there with GNOME 47 and 2410. Now, the nice thing is you mentioned upstream accents. Well, that's now using the upstream code, right? The accents before were patched in.

Yeah, right, stuff that Ubuntu was shipping that you got to experience there, which was nice. Yeah, I mean, they've been doing it since 2022, I think, which is cool, but it's nice to just see them swap over to the upstream solution once it's ready. Yeah, and that's kind of one of the things you have to watch, right?

Like when Canonical decided to start using GNOME again in Ubuntu, there's sort of been a question of, you know, how well does this sort of open source upstream type relationship work? What gets adopted and what doesn't and what things do they do differently forever or just sort of for the short term? Some of that stuff like triple buffering may never get fully integrated. You know, GNOME 47 is a treat. We'll probably talk about this more with Fedora in the future. But some of my favorite features are Nautilus can now be used as a file picker for opening

and saving files. Yeah, that feels like one that was just kind of missing, and it's really nice to see. And the dialogue boxes in GNOME 47 have sort of, I don't know, they've pepped up on older hardware. So if you got on a system with a bad GPU or something, they're peppier. I really appreciate

that. This is speaking to you. It is. You know, really uh it's overall just a great implementation the ubuntu doc has got to be one of the best docs out there now it's lean mean it shows progress bar for app updates i love that you know the way the badge counts work has always been weird because it's based on the gnome notifications so say you send me a message and i go into our messenger app and i read the message and it's marked red in the application. The dock icon still shows an unread count badge because I haven't yet cleared the notification about the notification in GNOME. And that's what's triggering the dock icon.

So it's nice to have, but it's not perfect. But it works. You know, it's clean. The App Center updates are great. Not a lot of huge changes. Features, a couple of things a little bit nicer so they get better placement in the App Store. It has a much nicer software management screen that looks really good that helps you manage existing installed snaps and applications. It fits in nicely. It kind of feels like it's always been there. I don't think you would, you know, it's Flutter.

No. It's always been there. I don't think you would, you know, it's Flutter. No. Besides that, I mean, it's kind of got a clean, minimal, but modern look to it. But I like the way the Flutter apps are looking on the Ubuntu desktop. Yeah, I think they're looking good. I think they're looking good, Wes. I do.

And I think they perform well, too. I think they're looking good. And I think they're performing well. I'm not really complaining either way. And I can't tell when they're snapped. I can't tell when they're native. At least it's not Electron. And then last but not least,

because I don't want to hog the mic here, I wanted to throw some gaming at it. This was Jeff's suggestion. Producer Jeff, PJ. You know, because 2410 is in a long line of Ubuntu releases where they have been making very steady progress on the gaming experience.

We've heard them talk about the Steam Snap and game mode and all of this, and we know it's an area that they've been focused on. So I thought, let's see how 2410 does as a gaming experience. You want to recommend a gaming desktop OS, Linux desktop to somebody, can you recommend 2410? Well, the Steam Snap is easy to find and easy to set up. It's boom, it's right there in the App Center. Yeah, and you really can't tell you're using a Snap at all. And Steam Games ran. Native and Proton launched as expected. I was like, okay, this is boring.

Well, I probably don't even need to bother since this worked so well, but I'll go try Lutris and Heroic Game Launcher and just see how things work outside the Steam ecosystem. Oh, boy. Really? Oh, yeah. I thought both times I thought it was going well until it didn't. I actually did not get Lutris working fully on 2410.

It was trying to create Wine64 prefixes or bottles, and it would never successfully create them for the game I was trying to create wine 64 prefixes or bottles and it would never successfully create them for the game i was trying to play heroic games launcher worked better but still had a handful of games that just totally failed to launch with no reason even the same games using proton on steam oh no i had a feeling with heroic though if i spent like half a day or a day looked at some error messages got the right versions of pro you know i have I have a feeling with, with heroic, I could have got it working. And I would imagine in a couple of months, they're going to have everything updated. All the scripts are updated.

All the dependencies are updated to the new versions and all that kind of stuff. And it's probably gonna work even better as of today outside steam. It was a little rocky trying to get games to work. I think it's totally doable, especially if you're competent in that area. But if you're looking for a, hey, I need somebody to recommend me in a Linux distro because I've heard you can play Steam games now and you want to recommend Ubuntu,

I'd still probably recommend the LTS. I think you're probably still going to have a better time. But 2410 is compelling for gaming because it's got a brand new, freshvidia and mesa stack in there and they've got a lot of patches in there that should make it decent and playable on wayland so it'll get there it'll be a good gaming experience just not 100 yet it's nice that the steam is snapped up there makes it easier to install but you know getting heroic and and particularly luchrous running they tend to rely on what steam pulls down. And if they can't

see what's in that snap, that's what you're going to run into, right? I wonder if grabbing the Steam dev or getting it in a different means would have made things a little bit better. Sure. Might have installed some other dependencies that those games would pull in that would be available on the whole system. Well, I have some random observations, if you guys will have it. Yeah, let's hear it. I don't know if this was your experience, but I thought the installer was super snappy.

I didn't mean that. But like it installed, I don't know, twice as fast as I was expecting. Was that your experience? Yeah, I'd say it installed pretty dang quick. Yeah, I mean, especially compared to like, oh, what did we install recently that took forever on the B-Link? Oh. Something.

One of the distros we tried recently. Was it Omiku? No, I don't think so, no. But yeah, I think the installer, it seems like it's pretty quick. Basically, it feels like by the time you're done filling out the information, it's only like a couple of minutes after that, and then it's done installing. basically feels like by the time you're done filling out the information it's only like a couple of minutes after that and then it's done installing well i wondered do you remember we kind of i don't discovered or at least talked about like a year ago how if you chose the minimal install it would actually install everything and then uninstall the things that you didn't

actually ask for which yes yes that's not a very efficient method i wonder if that got addressed i think so and now it's default. Yeah. So I was super happy to see that. I was really, really impressed by that. And also I got to say, I got a little distracted from our assignment this week. Oh, you. Well, it's a bit of a nostalgic release, right? 20 years. And I kind of got nostalgic, I will say, because sure enough, I've spent quite a bit of time with Ubuntu, but I definitely was looking at the flavors and got a little tempted by Ubuntu Unity and spent, I don't know, half of my testing time in Ubuntu Unity, their flavor. And I got to say, it's nice. So if you're looking for a nostalgic experience, or at least you've never played with Unity before, they're doing a good job in that project.

So I think that's worth looking at, if even just to, you know, bring on the heartstrings. UbuntuUnity.org. And yeah, it's still going. And they've got one based on 2410. I love how they have a section on the website that clearly says, well, why should you upgrade from 1604? And they list a bunch of reasons. 1604. You realize that's 2016, people. 1204 was the last good one.

Everyone knows that. Oh, I see. So the reason why people love 1604 is because that was the last version with Unity 7. Yeah, exactly. Makes sense. But we have it now in, like, modern Ubuntu. You can still have your Unity 7 and Ubuntu fresh. Well, that's fun.

I also, a couple of releases ago, so it's been about a year, tried the Unity edition, and it is nostalgically great. And you see, I kind of feel bad because I feel like Canonical got a really hard time for Unity the entire time that they were shipping it. And then you go back and use it and you're like, this is actually pretty good. They were on to something. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of, you know, to go back that far, the Linux desktop was worse in a number of different ways

that we probably failed to remember, but we had it pretty good over there. Pulse audio was bad back then. Those things were rough. The Wi-Fi stack was still really rough. Drivers in general were a lot more sparse. We had a lot less. I remember having Unity going with three

DisplayPort screens. It was working great. Okay, so I had a question for you boys, and I'd love to rotated. It was working great. Okay. So I had a question for you boys, and I'd love to have the audience answer this too. Is Ubuntu 24.10 a good or a bad sign for the impending next LTS? So as you probably recall, every fourth release occurring in the second quarter of even-numbered years, is designated as a long-term support release. So we've got a couple of more of these in-term releases. In a way, this is canonical kind of kicking off that cycle with 2410. What we see here today is the very beginning of a development cycle

that will ultimately end up as the next LTS. So Westpain, and then I'll ask you, Brent, do you think 2410 is a good or a bad sign for that LTS? Because they've still got time to right the ship if something's wrong. Yeah, I'd say it doesn't feel like a radical release, but they are pushing out some new stuff. That's kind of what you want to see during these interims, I think, right? Because you've got to get in things you want to be able to test before you're going to commit to them to the LTS. So I don't know.

It doesn't give me a strong sense of the next LTS in terms of what's really going to differentiate it. But I like the course they're setting. What about you, Brenly? What do you think this good suggestion, bad sign, good suggestion, whatever for the next LTS? good suggestion whatever for the next lts i think it's a good sign actually i remember i think it was either exactly a year ago or even two years ago when we were in this part of the cycle again uh and they did a dot 10 release and we were all kind of a little bit worried things were really rough and unpolished and seemed a little hurried but this release for me felt like the features they did squeeze in uh were pretty polished and

the ones that were kind of a little bit experimental were noted as such like there's a snap permissions um security dialogue now that you can enable that clearly says, you know, it's an experimental feature. This is one of the only things that's in the new security center. And it clearly says, yeah, this is experimental if you want to try it. But I thought the really nice touch was just under it based on it being an experimental feature. They had links to like, you know, file an issue and give us some feedback and things like that. So I thought that was a really nice touch and well thought out and like had the user in mind. So even though it's a point release that's only going to be, you know, supported for, what is it, nine months,

it's still super usable. And the features that are new are very usable and polished. So I think that for me was a really nice sign for the next couple point releases that are going to come out towards the LTS. I'll take the other side then. I'm going to say it's a bad omen for users like us because this is a pretty boring interim release. We've seen Canonical do some wild stuff. What we're looking forward to is like the applications they've introduced. We're looking for them to get better and get more features, which they probably will.

But there's nothing that's blowout crazy. Just as an example, they would never do this, but there isn't some sort of checkbox to allow me to auto-deploy my user file system on bcachefs and things like that, or butterfs even, or any kind of

out-there feature like integrate Nix packaging. I know these are all my Or ButterFS even. Or any kind of like out there feature, like integrate Nix packaging. I know these are all my crazy little pet projects. Or like even like more movement and stuff on their ZFS. Anything. What I'm trying to talk about, what I'm trying to imply is like, I don't see anything cutting edge that's going to make this like a,

oh, you got to run Ubuntu LTS on your workstation. You're ditching the Mac. You're coming from Windows. You're a cloud developer. You're working on AI. Yeah, you got to run Ubuntu LTS on your workstation. You're ditching the Mac. You're coming from Windows. You're a cloud developer. You're working on AI. Yeah, you got to use Ubuntu. Like there's nothing in there right now that says it's like I don't see anything that's like going to be the thing that's appealing to that user base. However, that's not exactly what LTS is going after.

We're looking for boring. We're looking for regular. We're looking for just works. We're looking for boring. We're looking for regular. We're looking for just works. We're looking for supportable. And if this is where we're starting, this early in the cycle, man, that LTS is going to be a rock. It's going to be really great because they got a great base already. They got a great foundation already. And then now it's just a matter of working on their special sauce stuff and adding the features to that.

So I think, you know, as far as an LTS, it's going to be a really great one. But as far as a workstation LTS, I'm not seeing anything here that really blows my skirt up yet. But maybe as more of this stuff comes together, maybe the sum of all of it together will be very impressive. Well, Chris, I am going to take your hook here and I'll give you even more to go on. I was expecting a lot more from the Ubuntu core desktop. I was hoping to see maybe another sort of preview

of that because they've got a bunch of time to work on that towards the next LTS and why not go in that direction considering they've been working on it. I know it's a huge massive project but that has been one of the most exciting things in the Ubuntu ecosystem, at least for me. And we're not hearing anything about it.

All right. All right. There you go. But otherwise, I mean, those are small complaints, really. They're not even really complaints. They're just observations. As far as a day-to-day driver, it's a pretty great release. And if you're an interim user, you're going to be really happy with this.

I have had a few reports of upgrades from the previous Ubuntu release to this not going super smooth. So you may want to consider a clean install. And with that said, I have a question for you, listener. What distribution have you now spent the most overall time with and why? I'd be curious to know if it's still the distro you're running, too, if it's not. But I'd just like to take, I guess, an informal poll. Boost it and tell us which Linux distribution you have spent the most time with. Is it Ubuntu? Whichever distro it is, why has it been that distro?

Let us know. 1password.com slash unplugged. That's the number one password.com slash unplugged. That's the number one password.com slash unplugged. Do your users always use company approved devices and applications and only store their data in a company approved location? Probably not. I mean, it's kind of impossible for them. There's just about every software as a service and cloud company out there advertising to them directly telling them their new app or AI service is going to solve all of their productivity problems. Can you blame them? new app or AI service is going to solve all of their productivity problems.

Can you blame them? Your employees are using their own devices now because they're buying their own devices and they're often nicer than the company issued ones or updated more frequently. I mean, I've even seen, you know, calendars that are like the company exchange calendar that's been subscribed to somebody's Samsung smart fridge through their cloud intermediary service. So how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all these unmanaged apps and cloud services and devices? Well, 1Password has the answer to this question. It's extended access management. 1Password's extended access management helps you secure every device, every single sign-in, every single

application. It solves the problems the traditional IAMs and MDMs can't touch, solves it before they even get connected to the network or the application. It's really security for the way people work today. It reduces the friction between IT and the end user, gives you tools to manage all of it and generate reports, and it's now generally available for companies with octa microsoft entra and it's in beta for google workspace customers so go check it out they go into more detail and you can support the show by going to onepassword.com slash unplugged that is the number one

password.com slash unplugged Unplugged. Now, a couple of weeks ago, I shared sort of a little clip of my experiences with my framework laptop. And Wes, you teased that you were getting one for your mom. And this week, you pulled the trigger. You went down to see her. Well, I guess you saw both your parents, I hope. And do a little bit of sort of family tech support.

So tell us, how did that go? Yeah, we kind of had a tag team family install fest. It worked out great. But let's start with a little background here. I got to confess, I think I've been a bit neglectful in terms of my mom's setup. Now, she doesn't need a ton and she's not one to complain. And then she's also, you know, she's worked for a long time in various industries related to sustainability. And so it's something that's pretty important to her. And, you know, e-waste and sort of churning through devices is not her style. So, yeah, we're just, we're being sustainable. We're just making this laptop

last as long as possible. So I got a Dell laptop for a hundred bucks as surplus from a past employer, you know, it was out of warranty and they'd written it off. That ended up turning So I got a Dell laptop for $100 as surplus from a past employer. You know, it was out of warranty and they'd written it off. That ended up turning into my mom's machine. And it was a Dell Latitude E6430 with Intel Core i7-3540 processor. Whoa. Whoa. Okay.

So I looked it up and it looks like that model was released in 2012 and the processor was in 2013. So I probably got it in like 2015 or 2016 or something like that. So she's had it for a long time. Sustainability achieved. Yeah, I think so. So we're upgrading her to AMD Framework 13. Nice. Okay.

That's a pretty big jump. Yeah, it is. And because of that, it seemed like the base model was probably going to be just fine. So it's an AMD Ryzen 5 7640U with 32 gigs of RAM and a terabyte SSD.

So yeah, it's a pretty nice upgrade. Boy, it's rare that you have that kind of a generational upgrade. I mean, so not only is it a totally different CPU platform, you know, you're going from Intel to AMD, but it's got to be thinner, it's leaner, it looks nicer. I mean, it's a totally different product. Yeah, right. I mean, better port selection by far.

And then I think the biggest difference that you've just got to notice, and when we put them up kind of next to each other, you did, the display. Not even that the Framework laptop has the best display or anything, but compared to several generations ago, it is astounding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you were going to say battery performance because that old laptop must have just nothing left in the tank. Yeah, it's got like a little bit, but she mostly uses it around the house, so that hasn't come up yet. But I think she's looking to retire soon and do some more traveling. So I think that will be a factor that having a new laptop is going to be great.

Oh, that will be much nicer. Yeah. Yeah, I imagine she probably had enough battery to get from the plug to another plug or something like that. Yeah, right. So just so we know, before we go any further, did you get the DIY edition? Yep. So did you, like, pre-assemble at home? I did not.

No, it was shipped right to her. Oh, cool. So we did the whole unboxing together. Look at this. That's your new computer, Mama. It's so clean. It'll never be that clean again. I know.

It's the nicest part. All right. So we got to unboxing before dinner. And, you know, this really works out well for me because my mom made a delicious linguine with clam sauce. Oh, yeah, all right. Right? So, okay. Totally fair trade for any labor I might be doing.

But that kind of built the suspense. You know, we got stuff out of the box. She got to see how shiny and nice it was. And that motivated us after dinner, even if we were rather full, to actually get to work and start assembling things. And kind of right away as we were unpacking and reading the instructions, and I will say, I think like they really have quite the kit down. I mean, just in terms of how far they have gone to try to make sure everything is recyclable and, you know, but just the color, the sort of premium feel to it.

The presentation of it. Yeah, it just it feels thoughtful and well done. So I think overall she had that same impression. But, you know, she has a long history of working in recycling and sustainability and kind of knows the ins and outs of that industry. And so I caught a fun little moment of her getting into some details. They are lying a little bit here. Well, they say it's made of post-consumer recycled PET and it's highly recyclable, but it's not a bottle.

Bottle PET is what is recyclable, not so much flat or clamshells. Good to know. But good effort on that part. She is a recycling nerd. Yeah, definitely. That's great. Okay. So, you know, there were some caveats, but it was fun to see her take on, you know, how far they were going.

I do think she really did appreciate it, though. And honestly, as part of this, you know, getting the DIY, like, I just didn't want to buy a Windows version of the laptop just to have to put Linux on it anyway. Yeah. And, you know, part of me is like, I don't want them to put that in the sales column for Windows. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

And there's something really exciting and fun about getting a laptop and a new hard drive and there's just nothing on it, you know? True. It's just like a pure blank slate. Nothing cleaner than just like totally a fresh install with a blank disk. Yeah. It's like going to a super fancy restaurant. You get a deconstructed laptop and ship to you.

Assemble it yourself with whatever sauce you like. It's fancy. But, you know, the actual assembly part was not necessarily why I was getting that edition and not meant for my mom to have to like interface with necessarily. I was totally willing to just put it all together and present her with the finished ready to go laptop. willing to just put it all together and present her with the finished ready to go laptop but it worked out that we kind of got to like um sit around hang out around the table and she did most of the work step one remove the framework from the box well you did that get your framework screwdriver ready for use i do like assembling things oh that's the wrong thing. When you were a child... I see it.

I got a rocking horse. Mom and Richard were here, and you guys were sleeping, and I assembled that rocking horse, and Mom was stoned. Oh, I didn't know you could do that. You're like, why not, Mom? So, I'll bet I could assemble a laptop.

And you know what? She was right. Oh, with that attitude, I bet she can. I helped with a few things like kind of getting the RAM and the SSD seated, because it was a really nice system. You kind of slot it in there at a 20 degree angle and then gently push it down. Easy to

do, but you know, she was a little first time working on a computer like this but you know handling the screws setting up the bezel really everything else she did oh even the bezel huh uh-huh but the bezel is magnetic and it just kind of snaps in place it's it's easy but that is that's a pretty cool first impression yeah uh we did get into you know one thing i I'd read about and was not really a factor, but we'll get into, but is with the AMD version, you know, it's the first AMD stuff that they're shipping. There are some caveats with the ports. Obviously, the framework has really neat ports, right? You've got these sort of adapters that you can swap in. You want USB-C or USB-A or HDMI or whatever.

With the AMD, there's some limitations. So only two of them can be used for display output or at least display port at USB 4. And then there's another limitation around if you use the USB-A in a particular port, then it might draw more power. But they had a really handy little chart of which ports had which capability clearly labeled. And in practice, it wasn't actually an issue. It's good to know, though. I had no idea. Yeah. It kind of meant you'd want to do your USB-A kind of towards you

and the power towards the display towards the back, but you kind of want that anyway, depending on your setup. Right. It felt flexible enough, and in particular, she's not operating in any environments necessarily, at least often that aren't under her control so we can craft her desk setup or whatever else might need to accommodate the ports if there if there is any accommodation for the ports needed that can be done yeah okay

but if you do have one of these or get one of these it's something to know yeah something to be aware of with the amd edition yeah it did make me curious you know she had an old dock that but it was like the business dell dock with the custom adapter at the underside. So I want to get her a new, you know, Thunderbolt or maybe even just USB-C, but, you know, some kind of adapter. So I'm curious if the audience has any favorite docks, things they like for connecting USB-C. I'd love to know that too. USB-C dock or a Thunderbolt dock. What are people using these days?

Yeah. That'd be a nice Christmas gift for mom. Here you go, mom. Yes, that and a new monitor. That's awesome. Okay, so we got things assembled. That went pretty quick. I think in their booklet they say 20 to 30 minutes, and yeah, that was probably it.

There was some chatting and laughing and stuff, so maybe it was 40 minutes, but with the laptop assembled, it was time to install some software. And of course, you kind of got to start with the OS. I did have to go in and disable secure boot because I wasn't going to fuss with that just for the start of the setup here. But, you know, that was easy to do. And the BIOS was quite nice and easy to operate on there.

No complaints there. And after that, I got things booted up and I offered my mom a choice. Ventoy, whatever that is. Is that you here? Yeah. Okay, what do we do? Well, you have a choice before you. Ubuntu, which is what I'm used to, or Windows 11.

That's right. So I'd just like for you to be the one to hit enter on Ubuntu here. So on my current laptop, I do have both, but I never go to Windows anymore. That's perfect. But it's there. We can put Windows on here if you should ever want it. Boot in normal mode? Yeah, that should work. Ah, she chose Ubuntu. She chose Ubuntu. Now, did you go

Ubuntu 24-10, Wes? We sure did. Oh my goodness, you gave her the nine-month time bomb. Well, so I gave her 24-10, mostly because she'd been on ubuntu mate with the their unity style interface oh yeah but i wasn't gonna go mate again right um and so i want i thought it might be a good time with a new setup to do a little sort of you know environment shopping uh if you will so i went with 24 10 because i knew it had a nice shiny gnome 47 and i wanted to see

yeah and so what she thought of that interface. And somewhat familiar to Unity. Yeah, right. Yeah, and the Ubuntu style of GNOME 47. So I thought that would be nice. It did work out great in practice. She liked the startup sound. I got to share with my family, like, the history,

that it's the anniversary stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they appreciated that. So that was nice. Did you tell her, I'm going to be back out here in nine months reloading your machine? Oh, it's going to happen sooner.

Okay. I was forthright about it. I was kind of tell her, I'm going to be back out here in nine months reloading your machine? Oh, it's going to happen sooner. Okay. I was forthright about it. I was kind of telling her, well, I'm going to give you some stuff to try out, and we're going to get you towards your final install. And her current machine isn't broken or anything, so it's not going to interrupt. We can kind of swap in. That's nice. Time allows. But long term, I think we're going NixOS.

Oh, of course. There we go. Yeah. I'm also going to have her try Plasma as part of this to see what she thinks of Plasma. And I don't know if there's other ones people recommend. We could add those to the mix. I'm not going to do like 10 of them, but, you know, three or four maybe. Sure.

I was thinking about it. And I mean, there's a lot of factors. But first off, like my mom doesn't expect to manage the box in like a traditional Linux way. She doesn't use the command line. You know, she can use the settings app, but she doesn't have a lot of expectations. So there's not stuff to unlearn and totally comfortable with her. And she seems fine to be using like an app store style thing, whether that's the Ubuntu one that installs snaps or just something that, you know, interface to flat hub where she can get stuff for on demand things. But I'm also going to set it up

so it's, you know's connected to a mesh network and it's easy for me to go hop on there and do support if necessary. So if I go NixOS, it'll also be really easy for the stuff that's packaged. Like if she needs something new, as part of this, I did chat with her about like what apps do you need,

what expectations you have from your computer that I can help make sure it's there from the start. It's probably a good time. I mean, it's probably been a bit since you've had that conversation. Yeah, totally. But, you know, I could just, as a sanction, add something to the box or repull from the next flake, however I set it up, and add an app that way. So that seems nice.

And then part of it is just since I'm using it day to day, I'm kind of most familiar with it. So if I'm going to be supporting it, that has a nice part. Especially, you know, there'll be moments to be supporting it, that has a nice part. Yeah. Especially, you know, there'll be moments, not all of them, but there'll be times where you solve something for yourself because this has been true for my kids' computers. And I'm like, oh, well, I'm going to SSH in and apply this to the kids' computers. Yeah.

Right. And also like test out config changes or if she has an issue, I can maybe try to replicate it on my machine easier. There's also then rollbacks, of course. Like, I hope not to need it, but having rollbacks there is an easy option. Especially if mom's right in the middle of something. Yeah, but I think that's something I could say. Like, if you have issues when you're rebooting, here's how you fix it.

I would think that sells it for most end users. They just want to use their computer as a tool. Right. And then the other part is sort of ease of automation. She asked me at one point, can't you do this stuff with Ubuntu? I'm like, yeah, I absolutely could do this with Ubuntu or any Linux really.

Mom, can't you get to the grocery store with a horse and buggy? You can still get to the grocery store, Mom. It's a matter of efficiency. That's right. It's really flexible and easy to sort of automate things without a lot of additional steps. And this also came up recently. I was chatting with our pal Olympia Mike, who also kind of has a NixOS set up for friends and family kind of thing going on.

Yeah, he's been working on like a really bulletproof Chrome OS style Nix deployment that he can do on like rescued hardware and turn around and give it to folks who are in need and have just like a super reliable desktop. And I thought, that's pretty analogous to what Wes is trying to do with mom. Yeah, we were chatting specifically about how you might do auto updates, which is easy to do already with NixOS, but how you might do that in a way that notifies the user so that they're kind of like clued into the process. And it was just, you know, having that conversation, you know, there's lots of ways to do that,

but just it was easy to do. And then I could try out something I thought would work on my machine and then share that little snippet with Mike. And that's just one of the things that would be nice if I'm trying to do a quick sort of patch to fix something for mom. Yeah, one day you could just be pushing that to mom's computer. So we'll see. She's still trying out a bunch of right now

and I'm crafting a sort of Nix config um so if anyone has any recommendations they are either but uh she's happy with the computer yeah very happy you think uh she was uh she she likes doing um various sort of uh puzzly word game type activities sometimes it's like a you know evening wind down so she's able to move her laptop around, do that. I think it was working nicely. Now that she's got a battery too, she may find that she ends up using it. There's more places to go.

Yes. Well, that's really cool. I'm really glad to hear that, well, A, that she got to be part of the process and B, that she's happy with the machine. And then C, I'm going to want to hear about it when you move her to Nix. Yes, definitely.

I want to do an update sometime down in the future, see what she thinks of it longer term, and then also, yeah, how the support model is working out. This spot could be yours. We're getting ready to set up ads for next year, and you know we're kind of picky. We say no more than we say yes, and I have a feeling that if I reach out

and we get somebody who's a sponsor from the community, they're going to get us. They're going to get the show. They're going to get what we're about. It's going to be a great fit. So if you've got a company, a product, a service that you'd like to reach the world's largest Linux audience, email me directly. Chris at Jupiter Broadcasting dot com. We have a great audience. And if you're listening, you already know that. And I think there's just so many opportunities for someone from our community to reach others in our community. It's like a peanut butter and jelly thing. Like you bring the jelly, we'll bring the peanut butter. I don't know. It could be a thing. It's a great audience. It's a great opportunity, and we're setting up for next year, and we'd really love to work with some solid sponsors. So shoot me an email.

Let's talk. Chris at jupiterbroadcasting.com. This spot right here could be yours. Well, I'd like to thank everybody who boosted in this week. Wes, I didn't quite see your mom send a boost in, but maybe that's coming as a thanks for your efforts there. Oh, definitely. We did get some great boosts,

and our baller boost this week, maybe this is Wes's mom. We don't know. It's from and our baller boost this week, maybe this is Wes's mom, we don't know. It's from Tokionet, something like that, but it's a fantastic 250,600 sats, boys. Hey, rich lobster! Bum, bum, bum, bum, sats for Jeff. Yeah, okay, so full disclosure on this one. Tokionet had been trying but struggling a bit to get the SATs through.

And so reached out on Matrix. And we worked together. They sent the SATs to me. So this is a proxy boost that I set for them to relay the SATs. But they really wanted to get the SATs to help out Jeff. So I really appreciate that. All right. That's awesome.

I appreciate that sentiment. All right. We'll accept the complexity. That's pretty great. Yeah, I'm not available for ad hoc proxy. Sometimes I'm available to help out. I was going to say, maybe you don't want to say that. Yeah, that's fantastic. And thank you for being our baller. We really appreciate it.

Adversary 17, Boosin, with 65,536 cents. I hoard that which your kind covet. Nice. You know, I'm really which your kind covets. Nice. You know, I'm really thinking about setting up Meshtastic now. Ooh. I wonder how many people have it running near me. Yeah, that's the question, right? You'll find out.

There's only one way to find out. Yeah, exactly. Being in the Midwest, there shouldn't be too many issues with mountains getting in the way, lol. Yeah, you might have good luck. Sometimes mountains can be your friend if there's a transmitter on that mountain. Then that can be the best thing around. But since we've done that episode, more nodes around the studio have popped online and I've been able to have a few successful public chats now. the network has grown just a little bit enough that i can actually communicate now so something to remember adversaries is that uh even if there's nobody around today you could have the node running and check on it like a you know like a tamagotchi pet you could check on it every couple of days and see if anybody has popped online you will find over time the network grows and get in

early yeah yeah you'll be a long timer by the time this explodes. You're the OG. Yeah. I mean, someone has to be first, right? Yeah. Awesome Matt boosted in 50,000 sats from found. Coming in hot with the boost. Matt is quite awesome and says, hey, it's been a while. I've been bouncing around with my housing situation for a bit and haven't gotten to listen to the show, but I just got my PC set up, and I'm kind of itching to try Hyperland set up,

so I'm also back on my Linux podcasts. Pew, pew! Nice to have you back, AWS Matt, as I believe I've called him before. Awesome, Matt, it's nice to hear from you again. Have fun with the new setup. Welcome aboard. Frigolet comes in with 25,000

sats. That's a great name. Yeah, that is. First time booster. It is a journey. You are right, and we really appreciate everybody who takes the time. Some routes are more treacherous than others. Thank you for being a brave traveler.

Plus one for Jeff Tastic there, right? I don't know if he's really a producer. Jeff Tastic sounds pretty cool. I don't plan to mess with Mesh Tastic anytime soon, but I did enjoy listening about it here and when you talked about it on Self Hosted. Yeah, Mesh Tastic is one of those topics that's coming

across, even this week in Bitcoin, it's come across multiple shows. I think next time I go visit my folks, I'm going to bring my note down just to go poke my head around, see if there's anything nearby. I do find myself driving around with my Note just for that reason. Awesome. Yeah. Also, we got a plus one here for KDE Connect.

I forgot all about it until Jeff Tastic had mentioned it. I use it to copy my JB member leaks from my Neon laptop to my iPhone. Oh, yeah. You know, I never think about using it with the iPhone, but I guess that is a thing. Yeah, brilliant. I love it because it just low key works most of the time. And sometimes I'll have like my screen on and I'm watching a video on my phone while I'm working on my computer and I'll copy something on my computer and then I'll see the Android

page. Yes. Oh, yeah. Right. Sweet. Well, that's handy. I don't use it too often, but I do love it when I see it. Thank you, Frigolet.

Appreciate that. And congratulations on being a first-time booster. Speaking of the framework this episode, hybrid sarcasm comes in with 23,456 sats. Now, do you suppose that's an, I feel like, two, three, four, five, six. Oh, yeah. What is it, though? Is it a, it's not like a combo, right? Mirror Universe Spaceballs?

I don't know. The fun will now commence. Sounds fun whenever it is. It's like a Spaceballs sequel, I think. Yeah, okay. Framework 13 follow-up. Brent's got me beat on number of tabs. Oh, easily.

Brent's got everyone beat. It's pathologically a problem. Hybrid's reporting in with 38 open tabs. All right. That's better than me for sure. Okay, wait though. Some of which are five plus years old. Okay, you got me beat on age.

That takes like really special care and tending to. You also have to not wipe your OS every couple months, I guess. No, no. You can drag your profile over. I say that because I know. See, no. You can drag your profile over. I say that because I know. See, that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that's what he does. He's moving his folder.

Though I also have plenty of Electron apps running like Element and VS Codium. Perhaps frequent restarts help. I am addicted to those Fedora updates. Yeah, buddy. You know what? He's probably, that's what he's doing. He's just rolling Fedoras. You know, quote unquote. He's just moving from release to release that's a nice setup you know i think like uh maybe a year ago i decided because chris you're razzing me so much about my tabs

uh that i should do something about it and so i installed like a tab uh what would you call it i'm tab manager or something that'll just hide them for you so they're not cluttering up your display manager. And it occasionally will tell you how many tabs you have stored in that manager. And so I discovered this week that I have 1,383 tabs that aren't open, but they are in that manager. three tabs that aren't open, but they are in that manager. That's like, you're like a hoarder that has rented out multiple sheds and storage locations, and you're just like stuffing stuff in there in case you need it one day. You know? I mean, I've been there, but I've learned.

There are worse things to hoard, right? What extension are you using, just out of curiosity? This one's called OneTab. I did explore a couple. Some people like a few others that I'm blanking on the names currently. But there are a couple out there, at least on Firefox, that are pretty well regarded. And I guess one tab worked for me because it has a giant button. You hit it and it just hoovers up all your tabs in that window, which works pretty good for me.

Magnoli Mayhem in our live chat points out that his tabs are old enough. Hybrid Sarcasm's tabs are old enough to start kindergarten. That's crazy. Well, Geo Bright came in with a row of, what are those, McDucks? Things that are looking up for old McDuck. Geo, be right. Maybe you should consider two GPUs in that new system, one for Linux desktop and one for machine learning.

You could consider the machine learning GPU in an external enclosure for max flexibility. Not the low cost option, but, you know, buy once, cry once. I love the ballerness of this one. It's the kind of solution I would prefer to go with. Yeah. You know, all things being equal and affordable, yeah, why not have a cool desktop CPU and then a dedicated AI CPU? GPU, I mean. It's also a nice sort of summary statement for our current era.

Have you tried more GPU? Yeah. You know what you need? $800 worth of GPUs. I already have an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. And so I was wondering if I got a motherboard that has, quote unquote, USB 4, could I plug a Thunderbolt 3, which is a USB-C style connector, into USB 4 and have that work? And then could I use the external eGPU enclosure for the AI GPU? Are you asking if Wes's mom can get an upgrade?

Yeah, you go. Yeah. Plug in there. That's a great idea, Gio. I love the way you're thinking. Thank you very much for boosting it. It's going to give me something to think about now. New goals.

Life goals. Hashtag. Lemons comes in with 2,000 sats. Why is lemons so funny? Very interesting to learn about Meshtastic. Well, thank you. You know what? I love it.

You got a little value from that. I appreciate you just sending that and letting us know. E-Rock boosts in with two boosts starting with a row of ducks. Oh, I just didn't see that sneaky row of ducks in there. All right. All right. Here you go. I know you all mainline nicks for server applications like image, but for the primarily Docker focused users like me, Image Genius has a monolithic container for image that helps juggle

the dependencies and breaking changes for those of us that prefer Docker and want a more hands-off approach to keeping image up to date. Have I not heard of ImageGenius before? That does sound like really nice. It's all one word. It's ImageGenius. It's not ImageGenius, right? But it's

ImageGenius? We'll see if we can find that. I'll do a little Googling. And then we got Microduck222 sets. Throw in a little more your way just to say that these boosts, like many others lately, have been powered by my Albie Hub. Hey, nicely done on the self-hosted setup there. Round of applause for that. I see. So Image Genius is the ones creating it, and they have a Docker image particularly.

So Image Genius is like sort of the sub or the organization that creates these, and then they have one for image. That is really neat to know. I really appreciate it. I don't know how image is growing. I'll probably do some follow-up about that in the near-term future, but it's definitely getting a bigger user base, and you're starting to see things built around it. Oppie 1984 boosted in 4 000 sets that's not possible nothing can do that loved the mesh tastic episode hope to hear more about it soon by the way i have one of those seed studio nodes that's s e e d coming as my everyday carry that I will link to my home node to broadcast out to the mesh. That's neat.

Yeah, I love thinking about ways to kind of build out like a car node that connects to my other nodes when I'm parked at home or when I'm out on the road. So Seed Studio, yeah, they're pretty well known. It's the new CB radio. Maybe it is. That's a fun idea. I'd take it, you know, because I prefer text messaging anyways. Bitcryptic comes in with 3,072 sats. This is the way.

Hey, guys, just catching up on shows I've missed for a while. Been busy. Hey, nice to have you back on board. He goes on to say, got me wondering, though, how do you do the accounting with your after-the-event earnings from streaming and boosts? I'm always interested to hear your summaries of how much you've generated as I love the value for value model. Presumably what you mention each show is what you see live, but do you keep track of what comes in later and add that subsequent live total or is it hard to deal with? So we just count everything that comes in towards

the next episode. So after we read your boost on the show, if it comes in after that, we count it towards the next episode. Yeah. One way you could do it is look at the metadata and do like a after the fact total accounting per episode. And with our system, we should be able to do that. But what actually ends up sort of making the most sense day to day in terms of the show flow has been viewing the boosts and the invoices, backing them as like a, you know, a timestamp log. And we are just picking timestamps to sort of segment that log by. Yeah.

And that kind of works for us because people can be boosting from a couple of weeks back, but we can still address it currently because we're not, you know, we're not going to go back and redo that whole episode and include their boost. Thank you for asking, BitCryptic. Freak VH comes in with 10k says. You know, I think that's over 9,000. It's over 9,000! Oh, this is feedback on

that Notebook LM generated podcast that somehow had your voice, and Freak says, holy smokes! At first I didn't understand and just thought you, Chris, read the rest of that Notebook LM's transcript. Bizarre. I know, that's why I didn't understand and just thought you, Chris, read the rest of that notebook LM's transcript. Bizarre. I know.

That's why I didn't just play the clip and then hit the intro music. We had to discuss it because I don't think it would have been obvious it wasn't me. And, Wes, you gave it a go throwing various Linux content at it to try to get it to do it again. I sure did. We never did get it to do it again. No. I've never gotten a third voice. it again.

No. I've never gotten a third voice. It's so creepy to know that I'm like out there just under the surface, like some digital version of me behind the scenes. And I broke out for one moment. I do think it's a testament to your internet legacy. So maybe there's a silver lining. If I live on as an AI voice for the next hundred years. Right.

Yeah, I suppose. I would love also any kind of tooling that people know about to do voice generation that is self-hosted and free software. Send that stuff into the show. Also transcription-based stuff. Behind the scenes, we're looking into that stuff pretty seriously. Martin DeBell came in with 18,003 sats over two boosts. The traders love the vol. First boost here, Chris, is actually over 9,000. It's 9,001 Satoshis. Hey, nice. That's, yep, over 9,000. It's over 9,000!

I used OneDrive for work to move seamlessly between laptops before. You already have NextCloud Hub 9, so this can be used in exactly the same way as my OneDrive setup. With NixOS or Ansible, you can deploy your machines in a standardized way. You can also set up a PixieCore server and a DHCP server to be able to boot into a NixOS Netboot image. Then, with C file, you can keep your configuration files in sync between servers. You then need to separate your work. This is the second boost for 9002, which is also over 9000.

and boost for 9002, which is also over 9000. You then need to separate your work machines from your testing machines because your JB work requires you to experiment and try all kinds of software and OSs. For software experiments, you could use Distrobox or maybe Docker and Podman or Flatpaks or Virtual Machine Manager on your pre-installed work machines. For Linux OS reviews, you need to use real hardware. You can still use Nextcloud, but applications and configurations need to be set up separately. There's a lot in there, but what really stood out to me is a reminder that we've got to get some pixie booting going in the studio already. We're way behind.

Well, so I don't think what Martin is aware of is that the production gear is all, and it has been from the very beginning of JB and it will remain this way as long as I can, running on IPX. So the IPX network doesn't route outside the studio, doesn't have any

TCP IP, and then all of the people that visit or any of the test machines, those are on the IP network. Yeah, I also find that StarCraft plays a little smoother over IPX. It has built-in name resolution so I don't have to run DNS, which is really nice. So that I particularly enjoy.

So just keep that in mind. It's a different architecture but I think it's going to come back. I think just like the bell-bottom pants, it'll come back into style to have IPX again. We agree, though, for reviews you generally do want to have on physical hardware. That tends to work the best. And for that, Martin, we thank you for the boost. Appreciate it.

We have a Jar Jar Boost, which is 5,000 sats from VT52. You supposed! Well, it's been a while since I boosted, so I thought I'd drop a couple of self-hosted recommendations. First one is Dumb. Dumb is a self-hosted alternative front-end to Genius, the lyric site. All right. Well, even if you don't have a use for this app, the name alone makes it worth using. So fun.

Is there a Dumber? Yeah. That would be the Rust version, right? That's good, Wes. I don't know what this one's written in. That'll be the Rust version, right? That's good, Wes. I don't know what this one's written in. That's good. Then there's Gluten. Tired of worrying about Linux ISO traffic egress?

Use Docker. Do you use Docker as well? Gluten makes all traffic egress through OpenVN or WireGuard endpoint. It's called Gluten. I like that you're going with Gluten. I was going with Gluton. It is. But Gluten, endpoint, it's called gluten. I like that you're going with gluten. I was going with gluten. It is.

I realized that as I started to pre-read it. And then I was like, well, I'm too. Sadly, it's not available for Brent. It is gluten. Yeah, I think I'm allergic to this one. No, you'll be all right. It's gluten. I just, you know, didn't realize it until I was already halfway through the read.

So there's two good recommendations from VT52. Thank you, sir. We really appreciate it. GreenDog boosts in with 7,350 sats. Analysis mode. Password 80085. Yeah, looks like GreenDog was doing some helpful experimenting. We got 5k

sats, no message. Row of ducks, no message. And then 128 sats to say only 128 characters is available on Breeze for a boost. So now you know. Yeah, Breeze is tight. Breeze is tight with the old boost type space. You know, there's never really been a standard agreement.

But, you know, Breeze is pretty easy to get going with. So still maybe a nice option. But if you get past that and you need to send us longer stuff, then, yeah, maybe look elsewhere. Thank you, Green Dog. Appreciate you. Well, 8,000 sats us longer stuff, then yeah, maybe look elsewhere. Thank you, Green Dog. Appreciate you. Well, 8,000 sats came into the show from Sarcastic Admin. Live long and prosper. Hello from SoCal.

Been a listener since about 2012. Thank you for all the great content since then. Just wanted to let the JB community know that the SoCal Linux Expo 22X CFP, the call for papers, is open now. That deadline is November 1st, which is coming super quickly. We have a link here for you. If you need ideas or help, you can join the scale committees and others October 25th at 6 p.m.

Pacific, that is, for feedback on your call for papers and ideas and help with proposals. Wow, that's a great idea. So that said, scale 22 is March 6th to 9th, Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena. Yes, I have a sense we're going to be there. We haven't made any formal plans yet, but I can feel the way it's moving. There's also going to be a LinuxFest Northwest, not too long, which we'll have more information about. Thank you very much, Sarcastic. Appreciate the heads up on that. We'll start keeping an eye. And the call for papers link,

we'll put a link to that in the show notes in case people want to get out there. It is one of the largest Linux and free software events in the United States that isn't run by a corporation. So it's got a lot of the folks that are in the quote unquote scene make it to that one because it is one of the larger ones. A lot of the vendors make it and it managed somehow not to get co-opted by some sort of company and make it all about enterprise sales and stuff. So scale is a pretty good one. I love LinuxFest Northwest too because it's a notch smaller.

So some people don't like big crowds, but still extremely high signal. So those are both coming up early next year. We'll have more details for you. As well as episode 600, remember, if you would be interested in being a meetup organizer for your area, for no particular reason, let us know. Let's get in touch, boost in contact page, something so we can work on it. All right.

Thank you. Everybody who boosted in, we really appreciate it. It's a great way to keep this show going on your own schedule, on the amount you like at the cadence you like, while also getting your message on the show. We try to read everything above 2000 sats. We cut it off there for time's sake,

but we really appreciate everyone who does boost in. You just need a new podcast app to do it. So we had 54 folks just stream them sats as they listened. So we stacked 108,817 sats thanks to our streamers. And then when you combine it with everybody who also boosted a message in, we stacked a very handsome 605,600 sats. Which is fantastic.

That goes directly to us, also to Editor Drew. And from time to time, we put random special guests and other people in those splits. It's all just in the RSS feed. If you're ever curious, you can just look at how it all works. The entire process is transparent from the message that gets sent to us, the amounts and the totals, and even the way the splits are designed. It's all transparent and open to you. Unlike advertising and other methods that monetize podcasts and make larger sustainable shows possible, easy for me to say, they all are very opaque. You don't really know what the deal

is. You don't know what amounts are being exchanged. You don't know what the terms are. You just kind of have to hope that it's something that you would be comfortable with. With the boosts, it's all right there. It's all transparent. All the accounting is done for you. I think it's pretty cool. It's sort of like an open source approach to funding content about open source. You can get a new podcast app like Fountain FM at podcastapps.com. And also a giant thank you to our members. Those of you who just said it on autopilot, you want to support us, but you don't want to have to worry about it. You don't want to forget. Don't forget you also get those special features. We thank all of you who support the show and we just appreciate everybody who listens as well. Now, this is one that Wes found, and I'm quite pleased about it because I believe it fulfills one of my prophecies in our predictions episode.

Oh, no. Maybe it was from last year, but either way, it's CLIAI, a simple command line AI assistant that translates natural language into shell commands. And I guess it works on Windows too. But essentially, after installation, you can burn up a whole bunch of CPU cycles by never having to learn Linux commands anymore. So say you wanted to do a simple LS. Well, now instead of just typing LS,

you could type out the sentence, list all files in the current directory. When you type that big old sucker out, it will then translate on the back end to ls-la and display your directory. I tease, but you could actually see on a system where maybe somebody's not familiar with the command.

That's actually kind of cool. Okay, maybe you use something like KD Connect, but you sync up with your phone, and then you kind of yell at your phone, and it, you know, speech detects that, and then throws it into the terminal on your machine it you know speech to text that and then throws it into the terminal on your machine like how does it i wonder how it handles like pseudo like i need you to do this as root maybe that's what you would say and then it would it would append pseudo it's

fun to see this happening because i mean let's be real none of us are going to put this on a production system but one day in the future maybe this could be incorporated into training systems. Like there is some potential here. It's a little silly and it's like half a joke today in October of 2024. But in October of 2025, maybe not. Is this like the evolution of man pages? Is that what you're saying? Maybe, yeah.

If we could answer more questions. Right. Yeah, true. I did think it was maybe interesting, I don't know, instead of using OpenAI, this one's using Anthropic as the background provider. Oh. I don't know if it's better or worse or how easy it is to get self-hosted LLMs

that have the same APIs. Anthropic, how compatible it is with the sort of OpenAI pseudo-standard, I'm unsure. Yeah, well... So you do need an API key out of open AI pseudo standard? Yeah. I'm unsure. Yeah, well. So you do need an API key out of the box with this thing. You're going to need, what, system DLM? Like, how are we going to do this in a standardized way on Linux? We'll see.

But right now, I think a lot of it's cloud-based. I did also notice that there is a way you can tell it to not ask you for confirmation if you want to live dangerously. Oh, nice. You know, I'd turn that sucker on. All right. Well, if you'd love to join us live, I don't know why. Maybe you got nothing better to do on a Sunday.

Maybe you do, but you just like to get it fresh. I don't know what your deal is, man. But you can tune in live. We do the show on Sundays at noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. And we have details at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar, as well as a pending item in all of those podcasting 2.0 apps that support the live item. See you next week. Same bad time, same bad station. Thank you, everybody who just listens or shares the show.

If we've got a particular episode you think somebody might enjoy, please consider sending to them. That's a great way to share the show and also send a little value back our way. Thank you for listening. Also, you can find links to what we talked about at linuxunplugged.com slash 585. Congrats, Wes. Mom's got a new laptop. It's a good feeling. And I think she's going to enjoy it.

If we have any follow-ups or something like that, we'll include it in a future episode. Maybe when he converts her to Nix, too. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this week, too. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I appreciate you, and I hope to see you

right back here next Sunday, as in Tuesday, as in Sunday. Thank you.