LINUX Unplugged - 593: Zen and the Art of Kernel Preempting

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

A special guest joins us for the news, then we dive headfirst into our RT Linux kernel adventures—where speed seduced, but stability ghosted us.Sponsored By: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.FMXfce 4.20 Desktop Released With Wayland Improvements & New FeaturesXfce 4.20 Release NotesThe Last TuxiesPlan your meetup: Colony EventsLUP 600 Pacific Northwest Party · Colony EventsIntroducing CentOS Stream 10 — CentOS Stream serves as a development branch for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), providing a continuous preview of features before they are incorporated into RHEL.EPEL 10 is now available — The Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) 10 has been officially released, offering users access to over 10,000 packages built from 3,600 source packages, thanks to the efforts of over 150 Fedora package maintainers.Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller: A change of hats! — Matthew Miller, the Fedora Project Leader for over a decade, has announced his decision to step down from the role. Initially aiming for a five-year term, he extended his tenure after feeling there was more to accomplish. Now, after ten years, Miller believes it is the right time for a leadership change to bring fresh energy and ideas to Fedora.Fedora COSMIC Desktop Spin Proposed For Fedora 42 — The Fedora Project is considering a new "Fedora COSMIC" spin for Fedora 42, featuring the Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment developed by System76.Changes/FedoraCOSMIC - Fedora Project WikiPtyxis Becomes Ubuntu's Recommended Replacement To GNOME Terminal — Ptyxis was introduced as an option in Ubuntu 24.10, though it was not the default terminal. While GNOME Console remains the default in Ubuntu 25.04 daily builds, there is growing support for Ptyxis within the Ubuntu community. Canonical Desktop Software Engineer Jeremy Bicha confirmed this shift, stating that Ptyxis is now the "recommended replacement for GNOME Terminal."Zen Kernel FAQ — Result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systemsThe MuQSS CPU schedulerLinux Audio System Configuration GuideI've turned preempt=full on and it solved most of my problems : r/FedoraHow to 'test' if kernel is truly PREEMPT=FULL and threadirqs? - Fedora DiscussionRevisiting the kernel's preemption models (part 1) [LWN.net]config_preempt_dynamic - kernelconfig.ioKernel preemption - WikipediaDynamic Preemption Support Sent In For The Linux 5.12 Kernel - PhoronixAnnual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!kb6nu study guideARISS SSTV GalleryLibro.fm, Your Independent Bookstore for Digital AudiobooksFountain 1.1.10 - Payment UX Improvements and Faster BoostsPorts-info — Simple utility to show open ports on linux systems

Well, boys, I think I know what all the kids going home for the holidays will be getting up to. After nearly two years of development, just in time for everybody to go home and play around, XFCE 4.20 has been released. Can you believe it? Wow. Okay, maybe the kids won't be playing around with it, but, I mean, how often can we say we're going on the air with breaking XFCE news? This came out this morning. It's pretty great to see.

It's been a long time. Two years is no joke. And it's been really a lot of getting ready for Wayland. So this release has what they're calling experimental for advanced users only Wayland compatibility. Hey, that means we should try it. I'm actually kind of excited about this. So you got Wayland. Now, you do need a compositor still because they don actually kind of excited about this. So you got Wayland. Now you do need a compositor still because they don't have

a built-in yet, so you need something like Wayfire. There are plans for XFWM4 to have Wayland support, but it's not there yet. Oh, cool. So Wayfire could be fun. And they're also working on a new library that provides abstraction for different windowing concepts across different systems and for different scaling.

And Sunar, the file manager, has seen a ton of improvements. Really still one of my favorite file managers on the desktop. I actually think now with this release, this is a serious contender for any GTK-based desktop. It looks so good. We'll have a link to the blog with all the release notes, and you can just look at the screenshots. There's tons of improvements. I think we really should try this pretty soon. 4.20 is looking like a really great

release and I just wasn't sure a couple of years ago where XFCE was going to be in the whole Wayland transition. But Christmas came early. Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes.

And my name is Brent. Well, hey, gentlemen. You know, it's almost our last show of the year, so we've got lots of updates and stories that you'll want to hear. Then we'll dive headfirst into our arty Linux kernel adventures, where the speed seduced us, but stability ghosted us. And then you know we're wrapping up the flow with some fresh boosts, some picks, and more to the show.

So before we go any further, let's say time-appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room! Hey, guys. Mumble Room not messing around today. at that look at that beefy and a bunch up there in the quiet listening to hello everybody thank you for joining us in the live mumble room which we always have going during our live streams and a big good morning to our friends over at tailscale tailscale.com slash unplugged you know tailscale is the easiest way to connect devices and services directly to

each other, wherever they are. It's a modern networking solution for connecting your devices securely. It's great for companies, and it's great for self-hosters as well. We use it in both capacities. It's secure, like really secure. It's protected by... Oh, I got all of it.

That's right, and it's fast, really, really fast. It'll build out a mesh network and get it going in just minutes. And if you go to tailscale.com slash unplugged, you can get it free for up to 100 devices and three users, no credit card required. That's the plan. It's not a limited-time deal. It's the one I'm on.

And it's also a great way to try it as a company, too, because thousands of companies like Instacart, Hugging Face, Duolingo, and more are using Tailscale. So try it out and support the show for 100 devices for free at Tailscale dot com slash unplugged. Like I said, it's almost our last episode of the year. So I invite you to join us next Sunday, December 22nd, 2024. We're recording the last two episodes. And in between, we'll be blasting some sats to those of you who have new podcasting 2.0 wallets,

like Fountain or Albie Hub. And we'll be answering some of your questions around that. And we'll also be doing perhaps the very last Tuxies ever. Say it ain't so. We're looking at the numbers, and they're pretty low. We think maybe the Tuxies is done. it ain't so. We're looking at the numbers and they're pretty low. We think maybe the Tuxies is done. It's probably mostly our fault just because we're busy these days. But right now we're sitting around 900 votes. And if we don't have over 2,000 votes by the time we do the Tuxies, I think that officially makes it the final Tuxies.

So probably when you're hearing this, you've got less than a week to get your vote in. If you haven't already. Tuxes.party. If you would like to vote and then join us the 22nd for the final Tuxes. And we'd love to have your help party for episode 600, which is coming up on February 2nd of 2025. We have the colony event site that is working, colonyevents.com. It wasn't working the best after we launched it. No, it did manage

to delete several of the first events, but that's been rectified. I don't believe it was our fault. I mean, it kind of was our fault, actually. It kind of was our fault. It was very funny. Very funny prank. Very funny. Also, you're lame because whoever did it has a Linux 5.4 kernel. I'm just saying that's very lame. So it's probably some enterprise Linux user. But our bad for not turning the firewall on and things like that. So anyways, that aside, colonyevents.com is up and running.

And it's actually saving your events now. There's six of them on there. Wow, look at that. I know. I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at Central MA. I'm looking at Berkeley CA. I'm looking at Central Florida.

Listening Party in United Kingdom, London. And one in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Plus ours in the Pacific Northwest. People are starting to set them up. It's great to see you guys. I mean, you're absolutely welcome to do them beforehand if for some reason doing it on the show day

doesn't work in your area and just, you know, pass around a phone and make a nice tight recording for us to say hi. We'd love to play it on air. But if you do make it to one of these meetups

on Sunday, February 2nd during LEP 600, we'd love to have you join us with at least one machine there with a microphone. Get in the mobile room and come say hi. ColonyEvents.com

if you want to check for a meetup in your area or if you want to set one up. It is our self-hosted Gavio instance. No account required, but you do probably want to save your edit key. Should be a fun party, right? We'll have one around our area. I don't think we're going to do it at the studio, but maybe near the studio. I'm not sure.

TBD. Maybe we'll have it like an after party at like a place near the studio that we go to afterwards. That's a good idea. That could be a lot of fun. That's something we've never done before. It could be a new thing. It might be a little more practical too because we will be distracted. Yeah, it is.

You know, there's like a show to do and show stuff to do. So there's all that. Links in the show notes for all the stuff I just mentioned. If it went past you at all, just go to linuxunplugged.com slash 593. Before we wrap up for the year, we are trying to get some news stories in, and we have a fresh one here. CentOS Stream 10 is out. And our buddy Carl not only wrote the blog post to tell us all about it, but he is here in the Mumble Room to give us the inside scoop. Carl, good to hear from you.

Welcome back. Hey, hey, hey. What's up? I didn't actually write that blog post, although I helped draft it. Oh, I see. I see. So I won't give you full credit then. I won't give you full credit.

So you may know a bit about it. Tell us about Stream 10. So it's looking really good. So every three years, CentOS will branch off from Fedora, and that will serve as the base for the next major version of RHEL. That happens in the CentOS project by RHEL engineers, but it's all happening in the open, so people can actually contribute to it, unlike the old CentOS model.

So that's the big difference of, like, if you've been tuned out of it for a little while and you don't know what's going on, that's, what's really different now is it's real getting built in the open. It's the major version of rel and then the minor versions of rel branch off. And that becomes the actual product that's sold and certified and all that fun stuff. But you can just use the major version, no restrictions and hop in right now. And relative is not even out. That doesn't come out till probably Q2 of next year. Uh, and that's, uh, that's when a lot of the companies are going to be getting on it.

But if you just want to start using it now, CentOS 10 is what we feel is pretty ready. It already has RHEL 10.0 features in it. Some people were confused because the RHEL 10 beta came out last month, and they're saying, well, what's the difference between this and the beta? Well, the beta is like a minor version before Xero, and that branched off a few months ago. So CentOS Stream 10 is ahead of the beta and basically is the GA early, if that makes sense. I like this, you know, the new stream model.

It just makes – when we hear it now, right, instead of us having to get a CentOS off the product release, like we're seeing what the product is going to be out here in the open. It's just neat. Especially if you're building for that in the future. You know, you can start working on today. I mean, it's no slouch either. I thought this was supposed to be like a really slouchy kind of conservative release, but you got Linux 6.12 and GNOME 47 in there.

Well, you got to start on the fresh stuff, so that way whenever it's still the same, you know, five years later, it's not too bad. But I'm just looking at that right now. I'm like, that's not a bad desktop. Python 3.12, that's going to be a nice one to have around for a while, I think. Are you using it as a desktop, Carl? I have it on one machine on my, I made one of those new framework external cool master things.

Like I refreshed the motherboard in my framework and then took the old one and put it in that case. I put it on there and it works great, but I'm not using it as my daily driver. My daily driver is still Fedora on a ThinkPad. But no, it works pretty good. A lot of the apps that people would want to install, they're getting from Apple, which is the, I know you know, Chris, but what I mainly work on. I hope it's sent to us also. But Apple is sort of like the Ubuntu universe.

It's community-maintained packages for that. We actually started that earlier than we ever had. We started that at Fedora's flock conference this year, kind of as a soft launch before we announced it. Uh, and it's already up over 10,000 packages. And it has things that you would be looking for, like, uh, like Katie plasma or chromium, a lot of things like that. That'd be really useful. So if you would want to use it for a desktop for, I don't wouldn't necessarily say it's designed to be used as a desktop. It's just a general purpose OS, but you can certainly do so if you want to. I was blown away when I saw some of the numbers, 10,000 packages, 150 different Fedora package maintainers contributing to Apple. So as an end user, say I'm on stream 10 and I want to

consume Apple, is that like a DNF repository that I'm bringing into my box? Right. Yeah, you can just do dnfinstall apple-release, and we've got those instructions on the website. I've got another blog post I'll copy and paste in a minute when I'm not holding down the push to talk button. Sure. This is really sweet. I mean, there's so much stuff in here. It really feels like a lot of what, I mean, there used to be such, it felt like such a separation between Fedora and CentOS in this regard. Yeah, and that's something that's interesting that happened a few years back that didn't make a lot of news. A lot of people didn't really notice it.

When I first started working at Red Hat in 2019, I was working on CentOS directly. And after a few years of doing that, my VP came to me and asked me if I wanted to start a team to focus on Apple, which is actually what I told the guy that hired me I wanted to do in the first place. I didn't actually ask to work on CentOS. It was just the best thing to work on at the time. It made sense. So I started that team working on Apple. The reason that was justified, it doesn't make any money. We don't sell it, but it's because it's just a community repo, extra packages for RHEL and CentOS. But the reason it made a lot of sense was that we had customers telling us regularly,

the reason I'm not upgrading from, say, RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 is because the community packages I need aren't available yet in EPEL 8, but they're there in EPEL 7. I know they're not supported, but I still need them to be present. So that was when the business decided, yeah, we probably should have at least one or two people focused on making sure this is in a healthy state. EPEL 8 was really far behind at that point. Definitely didn't have 10,000 packages. In fact, EPEL 8 launched late after RHEL 8, and that was a real pain point. It was taking a long time to get packages built out. We started Apple 9 early also.

We started Apple 9 with basically zero packages at the same time as CentOS Stream 9, but that was still like six months before RHEL 9, so it was still a big celebration. Hey, we started it way before RHEL. This is awesome. Now we actually started it even earlier and then gave maintainers time to build out a few packages before we announced it. So instead of announcing with zero packages and getting flack about that,

we waited a little while, built it up, and then announced it with 10,000 packages. I was going to ask if you could maybe talk about what does it take to get 10,000 packages prepared and built and ready to be served to users who are going to be pulling them down now? A lot of volunteers. A lot of those actually are Rust libraries. I noticed that. I started looking at some of what it was made up. It's not that it's all just a bunch of Rust libraries that

you wouldn't care about yourself, but there's a lot of applications that the way they're built out in Fedora's packages will be there's a library and a binary, binary command. Uh, think like, uh, like the FD fine replacement thing. Uh, that'll, there'll be a library and the binary for that. Then it'll also have, you know, whatever one, two dozen libraries that it depends on. Uh, we have the Fedora Rust SIG is super active, especially one guy I'll give a special shout out to, uh, Fabio. He's built the most of those packages. Uh, and a lot of those are Rust application, Rust based applications in the libraries that they need to build, but it's not just Rust. Uh, KDE itself has a lot of those are Rust-based applications in the libraries that they need to build. But it's not just Rust.

KDE itself has a ton of dependencies and a ton of applications. That's a co-worker of mine. I don't know Fabio's last name offhand. I know his Fedora username. The other guy, the KDE guy, Troy Dawson, he's a co-worker of mine, a great guy. He's actually the Apple Steering Committee chair, and he works on the CentOS Stream Release Engineering Team. And he works on KDE just as a volunteer thing on the side. It's not even what he's paid to work on at all. He just does that because he loves KDE. And that's a whole lot of packages that have got to get built and shipped out there. Boy, we appreciate that.

It's really, I mean, the short answer is it's a lot of dedicated volunteers that really want to see this happen, see it be successful. They have packages they care about that they maintain in Fedora, and then they want to use them either on CentOS now or later or RHEL later or even some of the RHEL clones and alternatives later on. They want to use them there. Man, I am really just grateful when I think about it. And I'm really – I'm impressed that this is still a priority for Red Hat and for the Fedora community. I mean clearly it's been a priority for some people. It kind of makes me rethink how I frame some of these distributions. Stream 10, available now.

Go get it with Linux 6.12, Python 3.12, Rust 1.82, and GNOME 47. Any other thoughts, Carl, before we move on? No, that was the main thing. I just wanted to let people know it was happening and we were happy about it. Yeah, it's really great to see and we'll have links in the show notes, of course. Thanks for joining us, Carl, even though you're on the road. Appreciate getting it straight from one of the co-authors and the author. Yeah, of course. No, I was definitely involved. I was proofreading and tweaking and helping change things. I did write the CentOS Stream 10 release notes for the most part. Well, it wasn't just me, but I put the final thing together and said, no, this, we don't need

this. We do need this. We're missing this. And yeah, got a lot of feedback from people. I appreciate everyone that helped me get those. The few people that know who they are, I reached out to, I was like, Hey, can you proofread this and tell me like, what am I missing here? What are people going to say? How did you not mention this? Yeah. Oh, it's a lot. It's like a new baby's born, right? And you're're gonna watch it grow up and become a a rel adult one day one day very soon it's not that far off yeah it moves fast all right very good carl enjoy uh enjoy the fam and the trip thanks yeah i'm gonna duck on out of here but it was great talking y'all

thanks for the opportunity thanks sir while we're talking about Fedora, the project leader, Matthew Miller, made some news this week. He announced that after a decade, he is going to step down from the leadership role. Big news. Yeah. He says in the post that he was initially aiming for a five-year term, but then he extended his tenure because it felt like there was still more to do. And after 10 years, he thinks it's probably time for a new leadership at the top. Some new ideas, he says. The search for a new leader, this is from the post, will begin in a job posting from Red Hat.

The goal of appointing a successor by early 2025, that's the goal, to coincide with the release of Fedora 42. He also plans to then mentor the next Fedora project leader to just help with the smooth transition. He says, quote, I'm stepping into a full-time role in the community Linux engineering organization. So Fedora will be part of my day job, just in a different way. You know, I think you've got to respect a lot about this. Not only are you, you know, Matthew's going to stick around, be available, clearly cares about the transition and how that's going to go, but you're also kind of like recognizing that, you know, maybe not even close to burned out or anything, but just that there are opportunities here for other people who have ideas and they

should have a chance to try it and maybe they have more energy to make the next version of Fedora great. And Brent, it does sort of feel like we've been talking about this kind of newish era of Linux desktop that maybe is a little more like silver blue. And perhaps if we are transitioning into this, maybe it's it is time for fresh ideas. Well, I sure hope so. I mean, we have so many people in the Linux community who've been working on projects for a long time, but there needs to be a room for new people as well. Right. And, uh, I'm excited to see what's going to come down the pipe in terms of some of these changes and like bring on the new ideas. Although I will say it's still great to see that, you know, Matthew still wants to be involved. So looking forward to what's going to come down the pipe.

It's also just a nice time to reflect on all that he's done. I mean, he's come on this show numerous times, super active in the community and all these events just, it's also just a nice time to reflect on all that he's done i mean he's come on this show numerous times super active in the community at all these events just it's really been a wonderful face for fedora and sort of the 42 releases kind of a nice transitionary moment you know this is a nice solid round number but to your point about him coming on the show you know i that's our primary experience interfacing with matthew uh is through the show and at events. We almost always run into him at events, every event that we go to, really. And I think Matthew really brought a new, fresh and smart take on Fedora's approach to online media. Not to really disparage the folks

before Matthew, but Matthew really understood that YouTube and podcasts and a lot of that kind of coverage was sort of the new media of Linux. And, you know, your Linux magazines were kind of fading. And the old way of like giving somebody an interview a month before the way they write an article a month after that. And then maybe it kind of lands around the time the distribution lands. That was kind of an old strategy. Matthew figured out that, hey, I could come on the show the day we have a new Fedora release and I could pop in the mumble room and I could just tell the guys about it and we could answer questions and just talk about it. And that was a really, a real fresh take on how to communicate directly with the community and the people that are actually using Fedora. And so I hope, you know, future leadership also has that same perspective, and I bet they will.

I think Matthew's kind of instilled that as sort of one of the project's values. So he's done a great job. We've all had personal experiences with him. I remember when we went out to Indian food and he got something just crazy spicy. That was a lot of fun. You remember that? That was a good time.

A lot of great times off air we had great times on air and uh off air so we have a lot of gratitude uh towards his work and uh that's something with something to celebrate when fedora 42 drops oh there's more to look forward to from fedora 42 though um because there's maybe going to be a Fedora Cosmic Desktop spin. I would love to see this. I think Fedora could be a premier Cosmic desktop, you know, the premier Ubuntu alternative, if you will. And they wrote the benefit of Fedora in this proposal would be, well, Fedora is already one of the most popular choices for Cosmic out there,

next to Pop! OS, obviously. And having an official spin for Cosmic is a logical next step to bring these users to a more streamlined Fedora experience. For example, making use of the ISO generation for spins. Cosmic is also shaping up to be a great desktop with a great experience. Just to remind ourselves, what, Alpha 4 is where we're at with Cosmic? It's cool to see this effort moving ahead before we even got like a

1.0. Yeah. It does seem like that would be the time to get in. Yeah, I mean, we're ironing all these things out so you can have a really nice 1.0 shift, I expect, in the future. As a former lizard, Brent, I'm curious if you were going to give Cosmic a spin, say, to review on the show, and there was a Fedora spin that was top-notch, and then you got Pop! OS, which is obviously going to be a top-notch, which would you be more likely to try?

Ooh. I mean, it seems like you should probably try the Pop! OS one, but really the real answer is we should try both, see how they compare see uh how they take the different directions uh but i have to say fedora i'm gonna give a huge round of applause because they've been embracing newer promising projects for the last year and doing some cool work there just saying hey if you want to try something new and different you think it's going to go places uh come to fedora and we'll make it happen and And I think huge, huge applause there. My hot take is, you know, once you got the spin, then you don't have to use apps.

You got DNF plus Cosmic. That's attractive. Tiny in our live Matrix chat says, I'm using Cosmic on Fedora on my laptop right now. It's pretty all right. It works with my passkey. The only problem I have is the shortcuts are more Mac-like and less like Plasma or Windows. Ah, yeah, okay.

I can see that. I think System76 is rightfully targeting folks that might be a little more power user, maybe more developer-focused users that don't really want the Mac platform but maybe are coming from an old MacBook. Imagine how many developers out there, like just web devs writing JavaScript, are probably just like on Intel MacBooks. Oh, yeah. That's got to be a huge market you could soak up with a good cosmic desktop on a nice

Intel-based Linux laptop, I would think. So I hope Fedora does it. It is a proposal, and you'll never guess that, you'll just be shocked, I would say, to hear that Neil's name is on the proposal. Who would have thought? Who would have guessed, right? Now, if we say his name three times, I think he shows up in the mobile. And also Ryan Brew is on there as well. So there's two names on the proposal. I'll kind of keep an eye on it and see where it goes.

And then kind of like not in the proposal stage, but taking a look over at Ubuntu 24.10, there's like low-key conversation about replacing GNOME Terminal with, how do we say it, Wes? Good question. Tixis? Yeah, it's something like that, I think. P-T-Y-X-I-S. And this is that terminal that's kind of supercharged and container ready. And it was introduced as an optional terminal in Ubuntu 24.10. It's not the default.

GNOME Console, the newer one, remains the default in 2504 daily builds as of right now for the next release. However, looking through the communication around desktop team, However, looking through the communication around desktop team, canonical software engineer Jeremy Baca said that maybe we should, quote, recommend replacing GNOME Terminal with PyTesser, however you say it. And I would love to see this because I'm not really sure what GNOME folks are doing. God bless. I recently switched over to GNOME 47 on my home workstation. I've really been enjoying it. But almost immediately, it becomes obvious that GNOME Console is a real weak spot of the desktop.

Very watered down, very basic, feels like an app that's been rebooted three times. And I find that kind of ironic because the terminal is sort of inherently a power user tool, and so I don't quite understand making it crappy. I understand making it clean. I understand making the interface simple, but I don't understand making it crappy and basic and bad and then doing it a second time for something that is inherently, by its very nature, a power user tool, right? Where console is like one of the best terminal applications, period. Not for Linux desktop, but just period, right? That's what Plasma plasma ships one of the best terminals period

right that's what plasma ships gnome keeps doing this weird thing with their terminal I don't know if it's like maybe it's like technical they had to get rid of I don't know what it is but I completely support this idea to switch it just kind of

feels like uh all right we're gonna change it which which, okay. But then it's never quite done. No, it didn't finish. Yeah, right. It just gets set down on the shelf again and kind of never touched again. And then we start with a new one. Yeah.

And that's, so I have been, and I would love some input from the audience because I have been really enjoying GNOME 47 except the terminal. And I don't want to replace it with something electron-based. I don't really need it to be super fancy, but I would like it to have some features where maybe I could set the width and stuff like that reliably, things like that. Have you thought about an old virtual terminal, or like a physical console setup?

Cool. To like a serial port or something? That's a great idea, Wes. I don't really have room in the RV for that, but I really like where your head's at. Maybe I could get like a Visa mount, you know, and I could just mount like an old terminal above my

widescreen. Yeah. There's got to be something. Maybe it's PyTix or however you say it. Tixis? Tixis. Not sure. I'm not really sure. But otherwise, I think Gnome 47's been pretty nice. It feels like they really got in a good spot. Feels really tight. Other than, now I'm not sure. I'm not really sure. But otherwise, I think GNOME 47 has been pretty nice. It feels like they really got in a good spot. It feels really tight. Other than now I'm kind of over there looking at Thunder thinking.

I do think this, you know, terminal app, it's kind of quite the little rice from kind of, you know. Yeah. Bopping into smaller distros, things like uBlue. And now we've got it up being a recommended replacement. 1password.com slash unplugged. That's the number one, password.com slash unplugged. If you're in IT or if you're in a company that could use something like this, I want you to pay close attention.

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Employees are going to have their own phones, their own tablets, their own laptops, their own smart TV. I just read through the EULA on my smart TV. By the way, you can plug your calendar into it. Yikes. So the obvious next question is, is how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all these unmanaged apps and devices and don't make users and life miserable? Well, 1Password has the answer to this. It's Extended Access Management. 1Password Extended Access Management helps you secure every sign-in for every app on every device because it's solving problems that your traditional IAMs and MDMs just can't touch. It's security for the way we actually work today, and it makes end users' lives actually much easier.

It reduces friction between IT and the end users. It's generally available for companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra. It's also in beta for Google Workspace customers. It's really easy to get started, and they have more information at 1password.com slash unplug. This could be the thing that just unlocks this for your company. Check it out and support the show. 1password.com slash unplugged. This could be the thing that just unlocks this for your company. Check it out and support the show. 1password.com slash unplugged. Well, it's been a couple of weeks since we talked about Linux 6.12. I think episode 589 is the last time we talked about it. And you both have been brave enough to be

running that kernel with a special function ever since you want to give us an update yeah okay so 612 came out and we were excited because the um long out of tree preempt rt patch set had been finally merged with 612 and so i built a custom patched kernel to enable that and then built it and both Chris and I started running it on one of our workstations. As one does. As one does. Because, you know, at first we wanted to just try it for audio testing.

Which it did great at. And then I was like, wait a minute, the actual whole computer feels faster. And you noticed that too. I did. And then I'm like, well now I can't not have this because the entire desktop interface feels a little snappier. Even, it's strange to say, but even Firefox tabs open a little bit quicker.

Yeah. Terminal to console to everything. Yeah. Everything is just a little tiny bit faster. And once you've turned everything up a little bit, you really want it. You want it real bad. So, yeah, went ahead and threw Wess's custom-built kernel on my machine, which was quite the adventure.

Yeah, rootkit and everything. I mean, what? Oh, is that what all that network activity was? And I definitely hit a few snakes, but you didn't. So I want to hear your overall impressions first before I say the negative stuff. Yeah, okay.

Well, I would say one snake, but it took me a while to realize that maybe it was going on. I think, by. Well, I would say one's negative, but it took me a while to realize that maybe it was going on. I think, by and large, had a great time, been very snappy, and you know, with Preempt, you're kind of trading

having lower latency for reduced throughput, but, you know, doing stuff like rendering audio or other things where throughput's more of my concern, and you and Plasma here putting it in, know performance oriented mode and everything like it still seemed totally fine so i was overall i was quite happy except i noticed that my machine just seemed to be running hotter oh really yeah your fans are going more yeah even in like not okay in performance mode sure but just in like the normal hybrid sort of balance between energy saving and performance.

Oh, you know, I was just commenting to Brent that my fan is running more, and I thought maybe it was because I switched to Gnome. But maybe it's the RT kernel. And, you know, in a desktop rig, or like if you weren't doing stuff where the fans were, there's plenty of cases where maybe I wouldn't care if the machine was still safe operating temperatures

and adequately cool and all that. Right. But this is audio we're doing right here. And you don't want your fan going. I was also using this just in the off time sitting on my lap, you know, on the couch while I'm watching TV. It's so annoying. The fans are going and it's getting like noticeably hot, which if I'm not just browsing the web, it should not normally do. And you know this machine, you know, it doesn't do that.

Weird. Okay. See, mine's on my B-Link, so I'm not going on battery or moving it around. And it has a pretty crappy fan in there already, so I just sort of assumed it was an inadequate fan combined with extra storage and stuff. But yeah, my fan is going more often as well. Is it not that I started turning it down just to like hey chill out machine so you you're using like are you using like the performance uh profiles in plasma yep yeah i should try that and you notice a difference when you change oh very much immediately okay

i'll try that oh wait i'm in i think you know you can still the problem is at least for me like in the the uh let's see this so there's right now i'm in the balanced one and then there's power save and performance. It is fun toggling while you're rendering audio because it just the speed immediately changes. Yeah. The power save, which does a great job of not running the fans, is just it's the opposite. Right. Everything's a little slower. Yeah. New tabs. Yeah. Changing windows. So I prefer really not to have to run it. Right. Except if I'm on a plane trying to save battery or something. It makes me think like if I was on a desktop that was well-cooled, you know, this would be a no-problem kind of thing.

But when you're on a little tiny computer or a laptop, you kind of notice it. But you didn't have... I didn't have your problem. And I thought that I might have further problems because in my patching, I actually had to patch the Intel i915 driver, which is, at least at the time of the 612 kernel my patching, I actually had to patch the Intel i915 driver, which is, at least at the time of the 612 kernel we were building, disabled because it isn't fully,

there's some, you can get into problems where something could get preempted at a time that wasn't safe to do so, which has not seemingly been a problem for me. I love that you're just YOLOed into that. You're like, well, we'll see. It's probably fine. Yeah, no, for me, so my system's AMD graphics, so I don't really have to worry about the Intel driver. But I had, I had this really kind of persistent system lockup that would happen. And, you know, I'm probably running three electron apps, a telegram, Firefox, maybe, you know, seven tabs of Firefox plus another Firefox window with maybe a video or media playing. And I probably have a console open. I may or may not have Steam in the background, but it's not like anything's maxed. Systems usually sit in with plenty of free

RAM. You know, I'm like literally like probably 30 gigs free. And, you know, maybe, maybe I'm at 0.5 system load. So we're, we're, we're totally fine on resources. And it doesn't matter if I'm actively using the machine or just letting it sit there about four or five times a day, it just hard locks, just hard locks. And it's an interesting thing because if say I'm watching video, the first thing I'd notice, and it all happens within a few seconds, but the first thing I would notice is the video pauses. My mouse works, and like if I'm in a text editor, for a second or so, the text editor is still working because I've always noticed, like, hey, why is my video paused? What's going on? And I'll stop typing, and then all of a sudden everything's locked, and my mouse is locked locked and the only thing I can do is hard power it off

and then boot back up. And I mean, how long? I mean, it's been what, three weeks? I lived with that for two or three weeks because I loved the speed. You were tolerating multiple hard locks a day. Yeah, yeah. I just didn't want to switch back.

I didn't want to switch back. But it was bad. I know I'm crazy. switch back. I didn't want to switch back. But it was bad. I know I'm crazy. I know. I know it's ridiculous. But I really like it. It's kind of a nice stress test, right? Like your ButterFS file system didn't get corrupted.

That's for sure. I was surprised. I lost very little work. I lost more work here at home, or I mean here at the studio, than I did at home with my machine lock, you know. I've lost more work just with random internet connectivity issues. We lost power this weekend at the studio and I lost like half the dock I'd worked on. Um, so that was, that was thankfully not as bad of an experience as it could be. Cause you could see like, there could be something where you're in the middle of something that's quite important. Maybe you're in the middle of installing updates or, you know,

firmware flashing or something. And it does a hard log. Obviously it's a bad thing. I didn't want to keep it that way, but I still wanted to have that real-time performance or as close to it as possible. So we started looking into our options. I think we considered maybe just a new kernel that we custom patched again. Yeah.

And that might actually be something we go back to for like BcacheFS and other things in the future. So we may actually end up back there again. It is nice to have the stuff set up at least a little bit to be able to do that. 2 for like BcacheFS and other things in the future. So we may actually end up back there again. It is nice to have the stuff set up at least a little bit to be able to do that. But you did a little look skis at some of our packaged up options and several distros like Arch and others have these packaged up as well, like they are in Nix. And of course, you have your stock upstream kernel, the latest, and you have the LTS options, but then there's some more fun options too.

Yeah, like Licorix. I don't know if that's how you say it. I think it is. Yeah, an enthusiast Linux kernel designed for uncompromised responsiveness and interactive systems, enabling low latency compute and AV production, reduced frame time, deviation in games.

I think it might be sort of built on further on top of the Zen kernel as well, which is a result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systems. Yeah, so that's an important distinction, though. It's built on top of Zen, so it follows Zen. It's a little bit behind.

I don't think it was quite up to date when we tried it. Yeah, and didn't seem to maybe be in the Nix cache when I was trying to switch to it. So we were looking at Ligarex. It might be something we would use in the studio because it is kind of a little more focused. I mean, like, yes, everyday response, but then a little bit more on, like, AV production as they talk about. So maybe a little closer to what we were aiming for with the full RT kernel. But for desktops and, you know, maybe something you're gaming on,

maybe you're doing some light production and maybe you just want performance, it seems like the Zen kernel, which is where we ended up, Z-E-N, could be something to consider. It is current, I think, right? Yeah, we're on like 6.12 something, so it's current. Yep, 6.12. In fact, what version am I on? I wrote mine down. Right now I'm on the 6.12.2 Zen 1 release with preempt dynamic. So let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so there was other – so without going full preempt dynamic. So let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so there was other,

so without going full preempt RT, we still had some other options for the kernel we were running to try to get it to be more preemptive. And a lot of kernels these days come in what's called preempt equals dynamic mode. And that lets you set it at boot time. So you can change the parameter

on the kernel command line to tell it how much preemption you want to enable. And basically it's sort of a toggle with different levels. And as you go closer to full RT or full preempt, more and more kernel preemption spots, the little spots where the kernel goes, oh, I'm going to check here. Is there other stuff that wants to run? Let's switch and chances for things to be more interactive. So you kind of negotiate that trade-off

between interactivity and throughput. There's a really nice guide over at the Linux Audio System Configuration Guide, which we were reading anyway for audio stuff, and they kind of talk about two kernel command line options. So one is you set preempt equals full if you want to have more preemption, right? So it's preempt dynamic, which enables this,

and then preempt equals full is basically all the stuff, the maximum preempt that's not gated behind the preempt RT config option itself. So it's not full RT, but it's all the stuff that like isn't hard real time. So it's pretty close.

Yeah, it's the most, as far as like we're going to experience, it's probably as close as we need to get. Yeah. And then the other one is you can turn on thread IRQs, which I think makes interrupt handling happen on kernel threads and just seems to be, it's one of the options that gets force turned on

when you turn on RT, so it's just another effort to sort of like turn your... Getting you a little bit closer. Yeah, turn your dynamic kernel as close to the RT kernel as you can. So we did this dynamic preempt RT and we did the IRQ kernel mode stuff. Yeah. And then worth noting too with Zen, so not only do you get like, you know, stuff like this, like making it more preemptive, but that also uses, which I don't know if you need these command line options, but sincerely with Zen or like they might apply them in

the kernel config anyway, but they also use a custom scheduler MUQSS, which is kind of like the BFS scheduler, but with changes. But this scheduler is also designed further for interactivity. I guess my question is, and I'm going to ask Brent this in a moment, but my question I'll put to the audience, too, is do you have any interest in swapping out your kernels and trying to see if there's benefits here? Brent, I have a sense, and I don't have any judgment with this statement, but I have a sense that this probably doesn't appeal to you. It doesn't only because it introduces possible, well, in your case, lockups,

but possible like other things to manage. And I don't have the confidence to feel like I can turn this on and off easily or, you know, have enough knowledge to make this work well in my particular configuration. But tell me if I'm wrong. Like, maybe this is pretty easy to slide in. Yeah, I mean, if it's packaged in your distro, then it's basically, you know, with Nix, it's especially easy. But in whatever distro, just install that kernel and it'll swap it out for the one that you have.

Yeah, you could think of like the Zen kernel, Z-E-N. You could think of that as like a remix of upstream that is optimized for a desktop use. So maybe the main Linux kernel is sort of generally optimized for general work use cases. The Zen one, somebody who has, you know, gone through and curated certain settings and patches and has put that into Zen. So you could kind of think of it as you don't really have to know what it does because the person that put it together does the packager, sort of the same thing with, you know, all your Linux packages. Right. Like the distros do this anyway, right? But they're taking the general Linux kernel and then kind of adding their own stuff on top and then

trying to make it fit the use cases they perceive for the people they're distributing it to. So this is kind of swapping out that tuning for a more specific tuning. But like some of the folks working on Xen are also, you know, kernel contributors who, you know, it's not just like a totally third party thing that has no overlap. This is my thing is I a lot of linux users have written this off as too dangerous to tinker or not worth the hassle or not worth the time and i i will i would flip that around and say you're wrong i think it is worth the time and the hassle because this is a unique thing that we can do in linux and it's not necessarily been optimally tuned for your particular work case.

And we see in so many other areas, we tweak so many other things about our desktop to make it optimized for our workflow and our area. And this is just another one of those. And I would challenge somebody out there to try it and see how it works. Because yes, you could go too far and really live on the very bleeding edge

and have lockups like I had. But I always had the ability in my bootloader to just select a different version of the kernel if i had something really important to do and boot the kernel that didn't have real-time linux now boost in with how many hard locks you'd be willing to tolerate per day yeah i just i really would challenge people to look at this with more of an open mind i think we made our you know back in the day when you you know you had to go in the menu and choose all your options and then build your config and manually update your bootloader.

Yeah, it really was quite the journey and definitely not worth all that effort. It just was awful. Just use the packaged kernel. That just made the most sense. But today and this day and age, so many different ways to get this stuff. And also, I mean, I don't know about you, but using Zen, I don't know, maybe there's like a slight difference, but it still feels way more snappy than

stock. Yeah, I guess we should have said that. But yeah, I'm still quite happy. I feel like it's a really good compromise. It felt, I mean, it feels about the same as the RT version, the full RT version did. Yeah, very close and at least for me, the temp stuff is all fixed. It's did. Yeah, very close. And at least for me, the temp stuff is all fixed. It's all back to running very nicely. There's a whole world out there, I bet, of

listeners that are tweaking their kernels for their particular work cases. And I feel like what you and I are doing on our custom machines right now are going to be tweaks that we apply, like the most stable, practical, actually make a difference tweaks. We're going to end up applying to the studio systems when we maybe next year when we yeah i think you're right about that we're getting close i feel like we're really we're cooking with a lot of components now there's a lot to this recipe but i'm going to stick with the zen kernel so i'm on 612 2 right now and i'm going to stick with it for a bit and if i have any weirdness or anything like that i'll report back like we did for this here but But I'm hoping to stick with it. We'll see.

I could see something breaking at some point. I am now sort of on more of an edge case. But I challenge somebody out there. I challenge all of you out there. If your distro makes this possible, give it a shot. It's something that Linux actually makes possible for us to do. And I think it's gotten a bad rep. This was a pretty painless process even

though i had a few crashes and i knew i always had an escape hatch and most distros offer those now and now it is time for the boost we had a great boost week and i gotta say there's a baller here who touches close to home we got our very first baller a A.A. Ron, which is dear to my heart. A.A. Ron came in with 100,000 sets. Hey, Rich Lobster! A.A. Ron writes, Merry Xmas, you all. If you could ask Santa for one thing, no matter the price, what would it be? Wow. I think it would be a year of funding for JB.

Oh, that's a nice one. Just right off, you know, we start 2025. We know we have a year runway. But that leads to the next question. What would you do with that runway? Well, one thing is I would work a lot less. way uh well one thing is i would work a lot less i would immediately you know like and i think we'd take the last three weeks of the year off you know to really recharge and come back fresh i think i'd try to do less that's what i would try to do what about you brent what would if you could ask santa

for one thing would it be like a uh pumatic tube to get you to the studio um well i i gotta think big with this question if i can ask santa for one thing no matter the price see that's the part that gets me no matter the price so i'm gonna say well i'm gonna say that linux has the same funding as the two other massive corporations pushing distributions out there. Yeah, okay. All right. Not a bang bus, not a helicopter, but he's going to give it to others. I'm going to make the world a better place instead of – yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I just feel like you could have worked the bang bus in there. You get your bus and then you drive around and you spread goodwill to open source. Everybody wins. I was hoping that that fit into your having the funding for JB. Oh yeah, right. That includes funding for the bus.

Okay, well I'll turn it selfish here then and say that I would like a GPU printer for Christmas. Oh my god, that's brilliant. Yeah. Why aren't we working on that? Which I guess means a fab. Why aren't we working on that?

You'd like a fab. I'd like to own NVIDIA for Christmas. The biggie, right? Now that's thinking big, Wes. Good thinking. Calm Brewer boosts in with 84,100 saps. Hey, not bad. Oh boy, day Hey, not bad.

Oh boy, day one to massage guarantee. If anyone is in the U.S. and looking to get an FCC certification, KB6NU gives away his No Nonsense Technician Class License Study Guide for free on his site. He also sells paper, digital, and audio versions for all the classes. I use that audiobook for my general, and I'll probably use the extra version if I ever find some free compute time to learn it. Sorry, no Linux tie-in here, but keep an eye to this guy. The next ISS SSTV event. Hey, that's great. So the website is kb6nu.com slash study dash guides. And we'll have that linked in the show notes. Also, sorry, Calm Brewer,

you generously tried to send a double boost here because I guess my node wasn't working. I did just switch to a new node. So do let me know if it's not working for you. It should be all up and operational now, and the rest of the boosts seem to have gotten no problem. Got that new node back on. You know, it takes a while.

Thank you for the boost, and thanks for the tip, Calm Brewer. Now, we did get a special boost here from Blackhost. 50,000 Satoshis, and that was, I guess, later yesterday? Oh my god, this drawer is filled with Froot Loops! And what's so special about this boost is, Chris, it boosted the episode we are currently doing, which wasn't even out yet. Now that is generous. Thank you. Thanks, Blackhost. Good to hear from you. Margie's here with 42,000 sats in the guide.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but this turns out to be the answer. The answer to the ultimate question. Thanks, Margie. He says, no way am I going to migrate to Albie Hub self-hosted over the Christmas period. So I'll be using my sats before I lose my sats. Thanks for the PSA. Merry Boosmas. Well, thank you, Marchie.

Although if you do want to, next weekend we're going to help people get going with their Albie Hubs. Also, Fountain FM offers a hosted Lightning Wallet. That could just be an easy way to go, too. It can be a nice place to just send some sats if you're in between other nodes, too. But thank you for thinking to go, too. Can be a nice place to just send some sats if you're in between other nodes, too. But thank you for thinking of us, too. Nostromo boosts in with 26,037 sats. How is that, Wes? How do you say that?

Nostromo. Well, that's Eric good, buddy. Ah, the last four digits of the boost amount are the zip code of a small town in a European country known for its beautiful Alps. Oh. Yes, zip code is a better deal. I grew up nearby, but wouldn't want to live there today because it feels a little too privileged.

You want to try doing that? You want to try doing that? He says, let's boost in other Linux town names from around the world. What? Linux town names? That gives us a hint. That's a great idea.

Look on your map there. See if you can find a Linux town there, Wes. Yeah. We should really start marking these things down. Although with these coffee stains. I don't know. That looks like a cigar hole. I don't even know what happened there.

You burned it. There's a dog paw print, too? Okay, right. So we're working with, what, 6037? That's the last four digits? Entire sections of the map missing, dude. It's going to get there. We're going to get stumped sometimes.

My normal way that I search the map is turning up things. Why am I keep getting to Australia? You know what you ought to do? Bring up old chat jippity and tell it I have a riddle for you. Oh, great idea. I've got a riddle for thee. I'll take the next one while you do that, okay? Kangaroo Paradox comes in with 20,000 sats.

I recently became a Jupiter Party member. All right on. Thank you. I love the raw bootleg and fully intend to binge listen to some earlier shows. Thanks for the tip on Obtanium. It's been a treat as a replacement to F-Droid and Goodbye Aurora Store. I'm a Lineage OS user myself. No G apps,

but micro G as an OSS replacement for the apps that do require the play services. I got the wife of refurbished pixel seven pro. Do you recommend graphene for normies? What do you think Brent? Wow. That's a good question. I am in the,

maybe it's not a good idea, but I'm in the process of throwing my parents onto Graphene with a Pixel 7. Each of them need new phones, and they're pretty privacy conscious, probably thanks to my scaring them. And I think it's ready. I think other than a few banking apps that have some issues with Graphene for a variety of reasons that we've talked about previously. Everything else just seems to kind of work. I know there's a little bit of initial setup. You know, when you install an app, it asks you for certain permissions and things that aren't necessarily normal on vanilla Android

or anywhere else that you're getting your Androids, such as the Samsungs. But really, the tradeoff I don't think is very big. We've been using Graphene for what, two years now? And I think at this point- It's all initial stuff. Yeah, I feel pretty comfortable recommending it. And considering the amount that normal people understand how their phone works and take advantage of various features anyway.

Right. I think if you just launch their core apps, make sure everything works, is signed in, I think it would probably be fine from there forward. That's my bet i guess i would say it's good to have someone who can be there to help you set it up so graphene for someone who's never you know put on their own os on an android phone probably not but if you've got someone there as an ambassador to set it up for you go for it oh you brought a backup map return of the map okay vindication Vindication. We're looking at Route, Switzerland.

Oh, I see the theme now. I see the theme. Very good. Alright. Alright. Thank you both Nostroramo and, of course, MrParadoxKongaroo for those boosts. Appreciate it, and keep on rocking LineageOS. I'm getting rusty with the map, so

thanks for... I need to work on my skills. We need more zip code boosts. Yak chip boosts in with 9,001 sets. It's over 9,000! For the Tuxes 2024 edition category best power CLI tool, although I guess it's more of a two-y, I nominate JLess. For all the people who need to constantly look into JSON files, it's an invaluable helper

tool. Plus, plus, Chris, it's written in Rust. Oh, you said it's written in what? Now, I'm looking at this, Wes, and I'm loving the structured output on the command line, the syntax highlighting. It basically takes a JSON file and just makes it super readable. How would you say it compares to something like JQ? I don't know if I could speak to that, but

it seems maybe a little, I might be wrong, it seems, it's like it's more like just less. It's just less, but it's less that knows JSON. You know what I mean? The less command? Yeah. It's less that knows JSON. You nailed it. JLess at JLess.io I folded the map up so I'm getting there because this is also a zip code boost.

Oh, where is it? Oh, it is not. From the beer-loving part of Europe. If you add 999 to the boosted amount. Oh, boy. Let me. You got the calculator there? I do, yep.

All right. Well, it's an app. I don't know if you need the calculator for this one. Is there a method to the madness with these numbers when we add them? I mean, I'm sure it's also because it's expensive. But, like, is there a hidden number? I think they want to make us work. Well, I know that.

I do love watching you scramble with that huge map. Oh, we got it out again. I love the confidence, though. He's got, like, a technique. A real flick of the wrist. All right, here we go, Wes. You got it? the wrist all right here we go wes you got it i don't know that i do but we are going to guess zagreb croatia oh okay all right i'll go with that hello what'd you say croatia all right we'll go

with croatia that sounds right sounds good thanks for the boost well chakuka boosted in 10,000 Satoshis. Live long and prosper. Hey, that was a pleasant surprise getting my fountain feedback to them. Thank you for the value for value. Thank you for the boost and the suggestions. We're still going through them. In fact, there's a brand new update coming out this week

with a revamped and much improved boost UI with a faster boost and easier UI and easier to understand how much you're spending and all of that. So hopefully you'll enjoy that. Thanks for the boost. Nice to hear from you. Zack Attack comes in with 5,432 sats. This is a tasty burger.

I agree. 2024 has been the year of the immutable desktop Linux. Combine that with beefed up Flathub for all your apps and hardware manufacturers that ship immutable distros by default. And now have something that is familiar to the vast majority of end users who want no fuss operating systems and app ecosystems, kind of like their phone. Valve and Fedora, I think, have the right idea. I'm excited to see what GNOME and KDE come up with. Also, the kernel development coverage was appreciated. Well, thank you. That's good to know.

I am stacking that feedback, as you know. I also, I'm taking a wait-and-see approach with the GNOME OS and the KDE Banana. Plenty of time on that. But excited. You know, there is so much they can build on top of. There's so much, especially with all the lessons they've learned over the years. We'll see. But I do think the trend has been pretty clear. It is very, very strong. Things are leaning in the immutable direction and probably pretty soon will be the default for a lot of end users. Maybe not all Power Linux users,

but a lot of end users. Soham G boosts in with 4,222 sats, which is partially a duck. Yeah, I'm not sure what it exactly is, but it's kind of duck-like. Well, there's one of the, it's two boosts, you see? Yeah, mm-hmm.

Hybrid boost. Well, continuing on immutability, and specifically responding to immutability doesn't let me muck around in my root. I think the idea is that you should be able to muck around in your route, it's just that changes should be logically consistent and rollbackable. Immutability deniers will soon find themselves in the same predicament as systemd deniers. It's the year of immutability, for sure.

Also, transferring SATs bought on Cash App to Fountain was super painless and easy, just a simple invoice copy-paste. That's great to hear. You know, the standard there that I think is really becoming universal on Lightning is LNURL. And it just makes Lightning addresses look like email addresses, and the apps are starting to universally support that. I think you're going to see more and more of the podcast apps go that way as well. Oh yeah, they went on to say, so I buy SADS on Cash App to boost from Frownton when I listen on Podverse. Podverse has that no-nonsense

GPL software charm, which yeah, but it's a bit lacking on the SAT wallet front. Fountain is a little too busy for me personally. I do hope Podverse keeps getting better. React.js creeps me out or I would be in the weeds sending PRs myself. There's a lot of work on Podverse.

So you may go just check in because some of it's a new code base. There's tons of innovation happening over there. And the next several releases of Fountain are really polishing up the library UI, the first page UI. I don't know if I can say that, but I just did. The playback stuff and the one that just came out, is the boost stuff. So lots of nice improvements coming throughout the Fountain UI over the next few releases as we round out the year.

Great boost. Thank you so. It's so nice to hear from you, too. And I completely agree with your thoughts on immutability as well. We have a boost here from Fountain, from Mount B-Dude, otherwise I guess known as MTB-Dude. It's a boost! I would definitely like to have transcripts B-Dude, otherwise, I guess known as MTB-Dude, I'd help us. You're supposed! I would definitely like to have transcripts when

I'm looking for something said in a past episode. I normally ask Chat-Gippity when something was said, but it would be easier to just search your transcripts. I would be curious how well Gippity does on that. But yeah, it would be a lot easier if we just had

a tool to let you do that. Okay, yeah. I've wondered. I haven't heard a lot of demand from the audience, I have to be honest with you. It's something that is on our short list. And for the members bootleg feed, we've been experimenting with an automated transcription system over there. So if you are listening to the member bootleg feed, there is a transcription file. However, it hasn't been a perfect implementation, so we haven't rolled it out wider.

But it was an opportunity for us to test. So thank you for the feedback there. That's something I think we'll take very seriously. Brandon L. came in with 2,048 sats. Chris, since you're not using the Audible app anyways, check out Libro.fm. It's got a referral link here. All your audio books are downloadable, DRM free, and you select a local bookstore to support with your purchase. Interesting. Another pro is that you can buy credit bundles at the discount rate without

having an active subscription. That is nice. Availability has been nearly as good as Audible for me, and I'm happy I made the switch back in August. Well, I'm definitely going to try this. Yeah, same. L-I-B-R-O dot F-M. I can see maybe a trick here if you already have a giant Audible back library that you want to be using. Well, you pull them down with Libation or OpenAudible. Well then, no reason for you not to try it either, huh? It may be.

Thank you for that boost. That's a great tip. Appreciate it, Brandon. Lima 3 boosts in with 5,000 sets. Use a boost! Boosting to clear up our confusion around Veeam. Okay. Veeam is a robust backup solution, but the last time I checked, it still required a Windows server to host it. Talking to a rep

at VMware Explorer, they are working on a browser based GUI so they can move to a Linux host. Here's hoping it happens soon. So yeah, sounds like a very enterprise-y backup solution. Also, user 4794 came in with a row of ducks real quick just to say, Boost! Boost! Well, Squared Triangle boosted in 13,337.

I think that's a mega lead, Sats. I've been mostly listening to podcasts while commuting, using wired Android Auto and Fountain.fm. While in the background, it's just working fine. However, as soon as it's displayed full screen or in split screen, its window keeps disappearing and reappearing. The podcasts continue playing without issue, but the only way to continue using Android Auto is to put Fountain.fm in the background. I can capture a video and send it if that would help the team. What would be helpful would be to know what type of Android device.

When I hear this kind of stuff, when I kind of chase it down, what I often discover is that it's memory management. often discover is that it's memory management and maybe for some reason like it's low signal so fountains working extra hard because maybe you're streaming sats or getting sat stream to you and so there's a lot more memory usage or something and so the app closes where if it's foreground uh i i would think i don't know but that's often the so the watch android device and how much memory is on the system. And then any, if you have any tools out there, people recommend to like check your free memory. Because even if you have like an Android device with 128 gigs of RAM, if something's using 128 gigs of RAM, it doesn't really matter. We need to know how much free RAM is on the device as well.

I know it isn't helpful. But as a Pixel 7 user, you user, this is my daily drive. And I just drove for four hours on Friday with this setup and didn't have any issues like that. But I think it's maybe because just maybe I have a newer phone. So it would be really helpful to know squared, but I'll keep an eye on it. Thank you. And if you want to keep us in the loop, I'd really appreciate it. Soul Reapers here with 6,666 sats.

That's not possible. Nothing can do that. I think Soul Reaper can. Watch your souls, boys. First time booster. Hey-o. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to set that up.

I know it can be obnoxious sometimes. I agree with Mike from the last episode about the Iron Maiden boost theme. Okay. All right. Also, I was at the Sacramento meetup back in September. So the first time meeting other Linux users in person, I was the noob who uses Zorin OS. Now I dove in the deep end and I installed CacheOS, which is a lot of fun. All right. I got to go take a look at CacheOS. Take a look at it. Also awesome to hear about the SAC meetup. So CacheOS, C-A-C-H-Y-O-S, a blazing fast and customizable Linux distribution designed to deliver lightning fast speeds and stability, ensuring smooth and enjoyable computing experiences every time you use it. I like that. Do you think they use a custom kernel?

I believe it's based on Arch. Yeah, it looks custom kernel? I believe it's based on Arch. Yeah, it looks like it. Looks like it's based on Arch. Yeah, it's one I think we should maybe try at some point. Oh, look at this, boys. Look, they basically are using the Zen kernel here. They've got RT enabled. I called it.

They've got some scheduling tweaks turned on. Yeah, this is fancy out of the box. It looks nice, too. It looks like it might be plasma-based, too. All right. That could be a fun one to play around with. Thanks, Reaper. Nice to hear from you.

Thanks for setting up the boost, and thanks for mentioning the distro. Odyssey Westra boosts in with 4,491 cents. Incoming transmission. With Flathub, I would love to see some sort of funding tag like you can do with Podcasting 2.0. We don't really need an account, and we could just use something like a transaction ID to keep track of purchases. On my end, with my paint, I'm looking into using Lightning to send split payments to contributors on a release. Ah. Value for value philosophy basically lines up with us in the open source realm, so let's take advantage of that.

Great idea. Heck yeah. That's brilliant, Odyssey. And I completely agree. I really think there is a very nice one-to-one lineup there. And I would be so impressed if Flathub could roll out an app store that we all could use and keep track of our purchases and not require an account i just think it would require them embracing technologies that they're not ready that the whole linux community is not ready to embrace but god wouldn't that be great if these things

could start launching and we didn't have to create accounts or connect one of our many large enterprise tech giant accounts to these things. It would just be so great. You're onto something there. Mr. Westra also snuck in a little birthday boost live today. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. That's great.

Well, Dexbot boosted in what looks like a binary boost here. 1-0-1-0-1, Satoshis. The traders love the Vol. Not sure why, but my boost didn't go through last time. Wes! Sorry. I stack my flax with Bandcamp if I can. For more mainstream flax stacking and streaming,

I use Kobuz Studio Sublime. The discount on high-res album purchases pays for the streaming, so I might as well. That said, Tidal DL has me thinking about a switch. Thanks, Dexbot. I had not even heard of that service. Hmm. Studio Sublime with high-res albums, huh? Okay.

They just have Sublime albums on there and that's it? Is that how it works? Yeah, right. I'm like two weeks into my Tidal subscription. I've been pretty happy with it and I have not yet played around with Tidal DL. But as I enter my last week of like a free month, I think that's when I'm going to experiment with that. Yeah. And I love the idea of having my own player like some of the ones that use Jellyfin because Tidal app is all right, but it'd be nice just to have the songs I love.

Great boost. Thank you, Dex. Fuzzy Mistborn is here with 5,000 stats. That is a Jar Jar boost. You sub boost! So I moved from Albie to Fountain. While I don't plan to use it for my podcast app, it does make for an easy lightning wallet.

I have no interest in dealing with a self-hosted Albie setup. I did try Breeze, but the character limit on the boost was very infuriating. Yeah, it's like 120, 128 characters on Breeze. Should really talk to them about it and see if they could increase it. The problem here, and this is actually being worked on right now. No, Mistborn, that doesn't make you feel better. But they're coming up with a way to separate the message from the payment information. The trick has always been the message kind of got crammed into the payment information, and then that was never a standard.

So different apps implement different character limitations. And there's not just like a universal limitation. When we separate the message metadata from the payment, then there will be a universal standard for the message. And there'll be longer lengths in apps like Breeze, I would imagine. Yeah, right. The whole payment has limitations in the custom TLV record. But then depending on what metadata you stick in the actual boost part, well, then that means there's different restrictions on how much can actually go in the one part of the metadata that is the message. Right.

Yeah, because there's other things in there that you don't add, like the app and the time and the splits information. So there's other things it has to make room for. And different apps put in different things. Yeah. So that is being sorted out right now in the podcasting 2.0 community. And there'll be improvements rolling out probably early 2025.

Free KVH boosts in with 10,000 sets. This is the way. Recently, I was eating in a Japanese fusion restaurant, and I found myself thinking, boy, they really are doing a lot with mayo these days. Aren't they, though? Boy, they are doing a lot with mayo these days. Yeah, just ask Brent.

I was referring to this just last night because we were having tacos, and of course, as I do, I put mayonnaise on my taco. And my brother was like, yeah, that clip is pretty accurate for you. Thanks, Free. That's a great post. Well, whomever it is. No, wait. Whomever-whiz.

This is a great name. Sent in a row of ducks. whiz, this is a great name, sent in a row of ducks. I started with the self-hosted in January, but I've been listening to all the JV shows since the summer. Never could make the boosts work, but I finally buckled down and got the Albie Hub up and going. Nicely done. Right to the self-hosted.

And welcome. We're really glad to have you as a listener. Thank you for getting that set up. There are so many things I've wanted to say, but there's something I need to start with. In episode 573, timestamp 1420, that's very specific, of the live feed, you played the going lit music. I absolutely need it in my life. I keep pulling up the episode and skipping ahead to hear it again. Every time I try to use Shazam, it comes up with a different and incorrect track. What is that track you played?

I wonder if it was this song. This is probably, this is possible. So if you search for Star Trek TNG, Airwolf mashup. I guess maybe we'll have to go check this timestamp. If this is the song, there you go. Star Trek TNG, Airwolf mashup. Isn't it already in your search history? We should check it.

We'll check it and see if we can call it out. Brent, it's your job to remind us after the show. Oh, yeah. There you go. I'll get the map. Anonymous comes in with 5,123 sats. Make it so. Big week and a bigger couple of months.

Our first child was born in October. It's a little girl. Well, congratulations. That's so awesome to hear. And then this week, I set up Albie Hub. Also congrats. Well, that kind of pales in comparison there, but nicely done. Very awesome to hear about both.

Congratulations. Also Synapse and Hoarder. Hoarder is an app I talked about recently on Self Hosted. I'm enjoying catching up on all of the JB shows. After a couple of months off, cheers to the team. P.S. Let me know if boosts like this are working. Yes, you got it. You got it.

You got your LB up and going. Well done. And my node received it. The only thing is your name is anonymous. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but if not,

you can set a different name. Yeah, you just go in power version or set that. Congratulations on your firstborn. That is an exciting time and I know how

those first few months are all just a blur. We're just happy to have you back on board and hear from you. Navoglio boosts in with 11,159 sets. I think that's a taco boost. Just boosting in to empty out my Albi wallet, and also just to let Brent know, I maintain a fleet of 37 machines running Gen 2 Linux. Brent.

Brent. Sounds very modern. I've been a handbook contributor, and I am also still waiting on you to install it. There it is. Also, 30 of those machines do, in fact, use Pixie to boot. Wow. Ooh. Brent, that's how you do it, man.

You know, you get Netboot working on your network, And then just some days when you're feeling a little wild, you just boot into a Gentoo environment. Because it takes multiple days to get it going fully. Oh, gosh, come on. I will do this at some point. I just don't know when,

but we'll see. Thanks. Uh, from, uh, thanks for thinking of us, Nev. We love hearing from you.

So, uh, in the future, if you want to boost in and you need help getting set up, just reach out. Cause, uh, you know, you're one of our OG favorites out there. Speaking of OG favorites, True Grits comes in with 17,010 sats. I need a zesty drink. That is a zesty drink.

Thanks, True Grits. All right. I pulled the trigger. I'm sending my first message from Graphene OS. Oh! All right. I pulled the trigger. I'm sending my first message from Graphene OS. Oh. I got the Pixel 9 Pro XL direct from the Google Store because it had a great Black Friday sale. I'm very happy so far. And I've only had problems with one app. I bet Wes can relate.

It's the same app. That old Cash App, I bet. I'm sorry to hear that. That freaks me out so bad because the one thing i got my family to migrate to off of that was apple pay to cash app if i weren't able to get to cash app yep oh my god oh but that's awesome and it's nice to hear a report from the pixel 9 pro xl yeah that could be you know i always think like i always like keeping my eye on it just in case something were to happen yep i mean the thing is the phone's just fine i'd love a little more battery life is the phone's just fine. I'd love a little more battery life, but the phone's just fine.

That's all of our boosts above 2,000 sats. I just want to raise one up real quick. Go ahead. Pull it up, Wes. You know, our pal Hybrid Sarcasm sending in a 50-sat test boost from their new LB Hub wallet. Fun will now commence. That's fun. So just confirm and act. We got it. Well done, Hybrid.

Well done. And if you have any troubles, join us. Well, you always join us and we'll help you with it next weekend. All right. Thank you, everybody who boosted.

We do 2,000 sats and above for our on-airs, just for time. And also, I want to give a special shout-out to all our sats. That's awesome. I want to give a special

shout-out to all of our sat streamers. 35 of you helped support this episode and you stacked 61,956 sats for episode 593. When you combine that, we had a pretty good showing of 60 different individuals participating in supporting episode 593. Together, they collectively stacked 517,855 sats. We really appreciate it. Episode 593 is one of our last live episodes of the year, and this was a great showing to send us off. Of course, our last live show will be next weekend. And we appreciate everybody who supports us, either using the Fountain app or decides to go

the self-hosted route and set up Albie Hub and pair it with the app of their choice. App choices are at podcastapps.com. And of course, thank you to our members out there who support us with autopilot support at linuxunplugged.com slash membership. We got some special thank you features just for you. Really, it's just a nice week of support.

Appreciate everybody very much. The show continues because of you. You know, we're kind of running on one wheel with the sponsors on the network. We're literally like down by 60, 70 percent. But the show continues to go because of that support. So we really, truly do mean it. Thank you, everybody. Wes, you found such a neat little tool.

It's not something you couldn't have done without this, but it just is one of those things that makes life a little easier. Yeah, okay. So just this is a brand new. I saw it over on the R Linux subreddit from the author posting it. It's called ports info. And really, it's just like a single file little Python app. But it surfaces the kind of info you get from netstat

or ss in a really nice little gtk style gooey it's very gtk so you know there is that but very nice gtk app and it just puts stuff that you kind of want to see right so when you first look at it it's a breakdown of all your ports including tcp ipv6 versions of that and udp as well but if i go click in here right so here so here's TCP 22. I've got OpenSSH running, and I can see the exact command that's running. I can see, you know, what's the local address, the foreign address, what the state of the socket is, the user, the CPU usage, the memory usage, when it was started.

Yeah, and its active status if it's listening or just sleeping, if something's actually actively talking to it. And it just makes it really simple to have an understanding of what's publicly listening on your computer. And get right to like what process is actually listening. Like I said, there's ways you can do this already. But ports info is a nice simple utility to make it possible. It's also capable of prompting you for the SSH password, which it needs if it's going to get all of that info, like what processes using the port and stuff. Oh, neat.

So you mean for like remote machines? No, but just like locally. Oh, okay. Well. So you don't have to like run it as root. It can just prompt you for it. Yeah. Okay.

Ports info. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. Those show notes, I mention them often, but they're very useful. Linuxunplugged.com slash 593 for this one. Now, don't forget, we really want to get your votes in the tuxes. This may be the last tuxes ever. So go get your opinion heard so we have the most representative sample possible. It is tuxes.party. And you know, you're doing your Linux civic duty over there. And last but not least, I'm looking for your thoughts around switching out your Linux kernel. Are you too afraid to experiment? Tell me about it. Boost in and'm looking for your thoughts around switching out your Linux kernel. Are you too afraid to experiment?

Tell me about it. Boost in and let us know your thoughts around that. And also, the best terminal for a GTK desktop. Because I'll tell you, man, I could really use that advice. You can do that with Fountain FM or another app. We'll have links in the show notes. Of course, like we do. See you next week.

Same bad time, same bad station. At least for one more time. Check it out. JupiterBroadcasting.com slash calendar to get it in your local time. We'll have it pending in the podcasting 2.0 feeds. The mumble room will be rocking and rolling. Just need to get the mumble app. Probably packaged for your distro already. And it's also available as a flat pack, probably an app image, probably a snap.

It's one of the OGs that's been there forever. I don't think you'll have a hard time finding it. You could probably ask ChatGPT. Right? I guess so. Okay, well, one last time. Thank you so much for listening. Links at linuxunplugged.com slash 593.

I'm not going to mention it again. I promise you that. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll see you right back here next Sunday. Tuxes! Thank you. you