LINUX Unplugged - 638: The Distro Everyone Should Copy

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Fedora 43 arrives with polish, new spins, and a smarter installer; and one decision the rest of the Linux world should pay attention to.Sponsored By:Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Ne...tworking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love. 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. CrowdHealth: This open enrollment, take your power back. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using code UNPLUGGED.Unraid: A powerful, easy operating system for servers and storage. Maximize your hardware with unmatched flexibility. Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FMnebula-lighthouse-servicenebula-lighthouse-service: init at 2.0.0 by bloominstrong · Pull Request #454855 · NixOS/nixpkgs — nebula-lighthouse-service is aimed to be run a a public nebula lighthouse for those who cannot host their own, or who want extra lighthouses without the burden of maintaining another lighthouse.Fedora Linux 43 Cleared For Release Next Week — While Fedora 43 wasn't ready for release this week due to outstanding blocker bugs, at today's Go/No-Go meeting it was decided that Fedora 43 is now in a position for shipping next week.Velocity Limitless / Projects / Slitherer · GitLabFedora 43 Wallpaper Wrap-Up – Fedora Community BlogFedora COSMIC SpinPlasma 6.5 - Reaching the Inflection Point[Fedora KDE] Early Plasma 6.5.0 - Fedora Discussion — With Fedora 43 being a go, we will be doing an update on repos towards the middle to end of next week that will bring Qt 6.10 and Plasma 6.5.1 to F43, and Plasma 6.5.1 (Most likely, plans are not 100% final in that regard) to F42. That will bring the update to the usual architectures, such as aarch64.Pick: Millisecond — Optimize your Linux system for low latency audioMillisecond on Flathubnoblepayne/millisecond-flakertcqs — rtcqs is a Python utility to analyze your system and detect possible bottlenecks that could have a negative impact on the performance of your system when working with Linux audioHow do I get an out-of-the-box working Linux audio workstation? - LinuxAudio.orgPick: lemurs 🐒 — A customizable TUI display/login manager written in Rust

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 It's crazy stormy in the Pacific Northwest this weekend. Wes and I have been sharing crazy weather notes back and forth. Yeah, you know, you've got to keep up to date on where the latest power outage is. Did you ever lose power? No, thankfully not. The studio did not lose power either. And I thought I was doing pretty good because I'm out in the woods kind of up against the mountains, the mountains. And the power didn't really seem like it was going to flicker.
Starting point is 00:00:22 The wind didn't really seem like it was blowing too hard. 9.50 p.m. I hear this chichonk. I'm like, uh-oh, that's not good. Like, it sounds like, you know, like a transformer or something like that. Large piece of electrical equipment. And I sit there for a second and I said, okay, I need to pay attention to that. Yes, it's late.
Starting point is 00:00:41 I'm tired. And I had to have a couple of drinks because we went trick-or-treating and they were given out cello shots to the adults. I did not plan on that. So I'm like, okay, thanks. So I'm like, all right, fine. I go to check it. Sure enough, we've lost our power.
Starting point is 00:00:54 I pull it up on the map and, oh, yeah, we're out, we're out. and I announce it to the kids. You know, it's not really easy to tell because all the lights are on because we have a battery bank. The system just works, right. So I announced it to the kids. I'm like, hey, guess what? The power's out. They're like, it is?
Starting point is 00:01:06 And the kids look around. They look out the window and they see the, you know, the campgrounds dark. I go, can we at least turn out the lights? Hello, friends. and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Lance. And my name is Brent.
Starting point is 00:01:32 Hello, gentlemen. Well, coming up on the show this week, we'll tell you what's interesting about the new Fedora 43 release and the thing that they're doing that we think every Linux distribution should copy. Then we'll round it out with some shoutouts, some boosts, some picks, and a lot more.
Starting point is 00:01:47 So before we go any further, before we get into that show, we have to say, time or appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, mumble room. Hello. Hello. Hi there.
Starting point is 00:01:58 Hello. It's quite the group. It's on fire over there. I know. Now there's like some work going on in the background. Maybe I'm riding in the lawn mode? It's unclear. Things are happening and I love it.
Starting point is 00:02:08 Yeah, our virtual lug gets together every Sunday and you're welcome to join us. That's at Jupyterbroadcasting.com slash mumble. And, of course, you need the mumble app, which is like packaged everywhere. So you'll be able to find that. Also, a big good morning to our friends over at Defined Networking. Go check out Nebula. Design.net slash unplugged is where you want to go to support the show and meet Managed Nebula from Define Networking. It's a decentralized VPN built on an open source platform that we love called Nebula.
Starting point is 00:02:37 Top to bottom, you're in complete control. They offer a managed product or something that you can completely self-host. It's optimized for speed, simplicity, and it uses industry-leading security. And Nebula's decentralized design. You know that's something I'm big into. It means your network is resilient. If you've got a home lab or a global enterprise, it will work for you. developed it for Slack originally. Now, of course, it runs many networks. I can't tell you all of
Starting point is 00:03:01 them, but it still manages all of the Slack infrastructure. They run all of their interconnectivity over that. Also, every Rivian vehicle going down the road is using Nebula to protect the data and the metrics there. And, you know, one of the things that can be tricky if you want to self-host would be setting up the lighthouse. That's kind of where you start. That's where managed Nebula is really nice. But there are easier ways to get going with a lighthouse these days. And that's the thing that you host that's responsible for keeping track of all your nebula hosts and helping them find each other when they come online and they don't actually transfer data themselves it's more like node discovery and west one of the things that you and i have been watching is there's more public
Starting point is 00:03:39 nodes coming online you can use and there's now a way to make it even easier to get set up uh yeah right so there's this um public nebula lighthouse service one of the thing that's neat is nebula is so flexible that you could actually, you can do this. So you can have someone run the lighthouse, and with a little automation, there's like a Python service that runs here around it, you can make it so you can submit your Nebula info to it so it can work as a lighthouse for you. There are a couple steps you want to take just for security so that you can do this safely, but they have good docs for that that will have linked.
Starting point is 00:04:12 And listener Blumenstrung has taken it upon themselves to start a Nix package for that as Well, so it's even easier. Ha ha. How cool is that? Is that something I should be looking at? Well, maybe we should run one. I don't know. Oh, a J.B. Lighthouse.
Starting point is 00:04:28 Right? I'd be down for that. I'd be down for that. Well, thanks, Blumen Strong. Nice work on that. So go check out, Nebula. It's awesome if you want to self-host of yourself, or really, why not start with the managed product?
Starting point is 00:04:39 Also could be a great option for friends, family, or your enterprise. It's a great way to support the show. Defined.combed. Redefined your VPN experience with something you can actually control. to find.net slash unplugged. Well, Fedora Linux 43 has been officially cleared for release, probably just about the time you're listening to this, October 28th, that's a Tuesday, 2025,
Starting point is 00:05:03 and there's a lot to like in here. We weren't sure exactly what would land. You know, they kind of have these windows of time, and then the team gets together. They have a go, no-go meeting, and then they decide if it's ready or not. Yeah, it kind of keeps things interesting this time, anytime there's a release in progress.
Starting point is 00:05:17 And one of the things they do is they have a blocker bug tracker where you can specifically see what's holding up the release. So if you're trying to kind of plan when Fedora might land, most of you probably aren't, but we do, it's really nice that they just publish a blocker tracker. And you can say, okay, oh, this doesn't really apply to me. Well, then I'm going to go ahead and install it. And true open source, transparent. Yeah, just great. Yeah. And that's exactly what we did, because the blockers that were there were no big deal for us at all.
Starting point is 00:05:43 And the rest of the bits looked good. and this is the release where we finally get the new web UI installer and Wes you've kind of been the biggest Anaconda hater on the show Ouch, you just had to say that I just put it out there I mean I know you warmed up to it a little bit as time went on Yeah, it hates a strong word but it's never been my favorite of the common installers That's true yep so it's now the default installer It had been in use for Workstation workstation
Starting point is 00:06:08 It hadn't really rolled out wider so now this time it is Yeah Let's start there Wes Did you like it? Oh, yeah. Actually, I am definitely a fan of the new web installer approach. I'm still kind of getting used to the flavor and the limitations and, you know, I'm given it early days and all that. I did notice as part of that just kind of poking around while I was getting things installed. I wonder if our friend Neil could comment on this, something called Slitherer. Yeah. What is Slytherer? What is that? So Slytherer is a alternative, purposeful web engine runner built on cute web engine to run the Anaconda WebUI. And the reason it exists is because the quote-unquote default is to use Firefox, and that's what's used on Wordstation. Almost every other spin, experience, whatever, using Firefox causes problems.
Starting point is 00:07:08 because then it confuses the window manager. And if you, for example, preload window rules for like how Anaconda is supposed to show up like on a tiling window manager, it will screw up because it will also affect Firefox, the web browser, and all these other things. So by having a dedicated web runner that has its own name that identifies as Anaconda,
Starting point is 00:07:30 things like window management rules or you want to deconfuse the desktop shell or whatever these things, Like, they, if you have things that apply to Firefox, they won't apply to Anaconda. If you have things that only apply to Anaconda, they won't apply to Firefox. Like, it's basically avoiding the, and also, like, it won't cause things like, oh, hey, you have mixed up profiles. You have settings coming and garing over for one or the other. Like, weird stuff like that doesn't happen either.
Starting point is 00:07:55 And so Slytherer is basically a very, very simple wrapper that runs the Anaconda WebUI through Q2EW Engine. And that's used just to make it so that we don't have these weird, complicated problems that result in things like, oh, hey, I can't launch Firefox randomly because Firefox gets confused that Anaconda is also running, and Anaconda is also Firefox. Yeah, well, nicely done, because I mean, I think it's kind of the one of the things, the flexibility you get and maybe a problem you have to solve when you make a big switch like this. So it's cool to see, you know, how do you actually make this possible to roll that wider? And I do think, you know, it's a more direct, it's a simpler experience.
Starting point is 00:08:37 It felt a little faster to me just going through the full install to get my system down, and I was trying the KDE spin this time around. Excellent. I also notice this time when you boot into it, it even has a nice little thing that reminds you how much Fedora loves KDE and KDE loves Fedora. That's great. Yeah, also under the hood, the installer switches from DNF4 to DNF5 for package management. Finally.
Starting point is 00:08:59 That's pretty fun. Not that you'll experience any of that. No, you shouldn't. Because the only thing that actually uses that back end is the DORS server install DVD and the net install isos. Everything else is just, you know, it's an image-based install. Yeah. Also, I don't know what the impact of this is, but I read- Hey, some of us love a good net install.
Starting point is 00:09:21 I read in the notes, too, that the RPM package format is actually still version 4, which is going to be upgraded in the future. Yeah, so we have RPM 6, but it's set to the V4 format for backwards compatibility, because like the build system infrastructure is still running older fedora, you know, there's things that are still unrel in the infrastructure. Like moving to the V6 format would just break everything right now. That makes sense. Bide it off as its own
Starting point is 00:09:45 thing. Yeah, so that's going to happen separately later. So let's talk a few details here. We got in Workstation, we have a version of Nome now that is deprecating X11 support. So of course, you'll still have X Wayland. But that's the only way
Starting point is 00:10:01 you're going to be able to run Legacy X applications. other spins in desktop environments still support X-11. This is an upstream Gnome change that lands. And the future is here. The future, I guess so. The Wayland future, I guess, is here, right? I suppose so. I don't have a lot of thoughts on that other than we knew this was coming.
Starting point is 00:10:19 It was signaled for a while. And I think all of my systems have been whalen for years. Yeah, I have, I mean, you know, there are other options, so I still have some remaining sympathy for folks where it doesn't work. But it really has progressed to the point of, regular usability, which is great. I don't often comment on this, but what is striking is the new wallpaper.
Starting point is 00:10:41 I love it. I really think it's great. Yeah, it's one of my favorites in the last stuff you releases, I think. I think it's my favorite since the DNA wallpaper. Oh, wow. I feel like you're a little biased, Chris. Oh, yeah, why is that?
Starting point is 00:10:53 Because it's a rocket? Yeah, because it's a giant, like, J.B. Rocket pretty much. I think it's fantastic. I love it. It is really nice. The backstory is really nice, too. Do you have a TLDR version, an elevator version of the backstory? That's basically inspired by Sally Ride.
Starting point is 00:11:09 And Sally Ride's legacy, she was the first American woman to go to space. I guess that was June 18th, 1983. So just a nice little chunk of history there. And I like that idea of doing wallpapers based on a little slice of history. Let's talk about some nitty, gritty stuff, because I always love these kinds of under the hood things. And I bet you were really excited to see this, and I'm not joking. slash boot on a new install is going from one gigabyte to two gigabytes. Yeah, it's probably about time.
Starting point is 00:11:36 If you're just upgrading, of course, that's not going to be the case. But yes, how big do you make your slash boot? Yep, I mean, at least a gig, probably two. I've gone up to five before. Yeah, five is my max. Two is my minimum. Two is my minimum. I like having some excess space.
Starting point is 00:11:55 Maybe you store like an emergency ISO on there or backups and stuff. Brent, do you have a minimum? size for your slash boot. Yeah, I go at least two. I've certainly run into issues on encrypted systems where kind of everything gets stored there. And definitely Ubuntu is when my parents are using it, let's say. It's not great at expunging things in there. So they have way too many kernels and stuff.
Starting point is 00:12:17 And that has brought down my mother's computer more times than I care to admit. So I now have like a task every six-ish months I had to go through and clear that because it's a tiny little boot. So I say, you know, disc is cheap, make it as large as, I don't know, just go crazy. Five? Yeah, I'd be curious. I'd be curious. I say boost in and tell us how big your slash boot is. Why not just run the whole system off your boot, you know?
Starting point is 00:12:41 Well, and I wondered. That 32 is fine. This is just crazy. My system was running 6171. I believe 6175 is the latest. It came out on October 23rd, so pretty fresh kernel in there. You get some new hardware feedback interfaces, which I think mostly is going to, impact, Risen processors. There's also some improvements for Intel multi-course scheduling
Starting point is 00:13:03 in there, which could mean smoother multitasking. And then I think the one, for those of you that are trying to get higher-res webcams these days, there's been an update to the IPU 7 driver in Linux 617. But speaking of the immutable distributions, Fedora Kino-Nite decided to enable auto updates by default. And this is done via Discover, which supports automatically updating the system in a rather safe, you know, RPMOS tree staged updates, so it applies at the next boot. And, of course, you can roll back if you don't like it, or if something breaks, or you can disable it all together. But kind of an aggressive step.
Starting point is 00:13:41 Do you have any thoughts on this one, Neil, about automatic, automatic updates on the Kino Night? Well, it's been a long-term goal of Timothy Ravier, who works on Kenoite specifically. and I think in general for these systems I personally am not a fan of automatic updates I don't I don't like him because like I have been burned by them but with these systems the risk is relatively low that you get screwed over by an automatic update it really the main problems come in when you have bootloader and kernel updates that come in as part of it that things get a little dicey You know, I'll say I've been using automatic updates on Aurora since Summit. Yeah, and it should be fine, right? Like, it's in general, ideally, if you are making releases of OST, commits or OCI archives, the new update bundles, you have made sure that they work. You have some way of making sure that they work before they go out to people.
Starting point is 00:14:44 And if you don't, then you really, really need to rethink how you're doing your atomic or immutable or whatever. whatever you want to call it, distribution, because if you're not doing that, then you're putting everyone at risk because everything is your fault. That's how that works, right? Yeah. I have some thoughts. I tried a quote-unquote atomic spin for what we're going to get into some of our experiences with 43 directly. And so far, the updates have gone smooth, but it's like, you know, I'm a weekend. But I just love seeing them kind of push the envelope a little bit there. and then it's a pretty accessible thing for users to disable. It's in Discover.
Starting point is 00:15:20 It's not like they have to go digging through a config or even the command line. And I think that's a nice balance there, too. Wes, is there anything else? Like, I know there's a new compression for init. I mean, there's a few other things in here. Anything else jump out at you? Yeah, I mean, lots. You just get like a nice modern OS, right?
Starting point is 00:15:35 So you get Python 314, which is an excellent Python release. Definitely worth upgrading. Also, Postgres 18, which just came out as some fancy new IOU ring support. I mean, yeah, there's a lot. there's a lot to like. I do think better compression of the NNRD that goes along with your improved slash boot support for just, you know, more robust.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Yeah, just get a little more out of that. Yeah. Just get a little bit more. Just get a little bit more out of that. I did see downstream. There's kind of some interesting things. Build Fedora Core OS using container files. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:06 Podman now. That's a big change. So look at that marching on. It is nice to see. Okay, so that's sort of some of the technical stuff about 43 that we thought was interesting. Now I think it's time to talk about our experiences with it hands-on and the bit that all the other distributions out there should be ripping off. OnePassword.com slash unplugged.
Starting point is 00:16:28 That's the number one password, and then it's unplugged. It's all lowercase. Go there to take the first steps for better security for your team, for your company, by securing credentials and protecting every application. Even the unmanaged stuff you didn't know about. Learn more at OnePassword.com slash unplugged. If your employees are bypassing security to use unapproved apps, they might not even realize they're doing it. They probably feel they have to do it to just get their job done. And you can kind of connect with that viewpoint, but it's a very challenging position for IT.
Starting point is 00:16:59 And if you're experiencing this, you're not alone. Fortunately, one password extended access management will help you get your hands around this. You can be careful about security, but you can't help it if users are going up and signing up for things and signing up for applications, perhaps you're even already paying for, but they're doing it under their own credentials. This is where Trellica by one password really comes in. It inventories every app and use at your company. They have pre-populated app profiles that can assess the different risks, and they let you manage access, optimize your spend, and enforce best security practices across all the apps your employees are actually using. That's right. And for me, the thing that
Starting point is 00:17:39 I was always struggling with and every client I always went to seem to struggle with, they needed a process to securely on board and offboard staff. Sometimes you'd have one that would last for a little while, but you really want something these days that'll also help you meet compliance goals. Well, Trellica by OnePassword provides a complete solution for that. Access governance is solved, and it's just one of the ways extended access management helps the team and you strengthen compliance and security. You know about OnePassword and their award-winning password manager, of course, is trusted by millions of users. Take a second and ask yourself, how many SaaS applications are being used at your company right now.
Starting point is 00:18:15 If you can't keep count, you're not alone. So go to OnePassword.com slash unplug. Take the first steps to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, even the unmanaged stuff. It's really powerful. It's a great way to support the show, and you can learn more by going to OnePassword.com slash unplugged.
Starting point is 00:18:32 That's all lowercase. It's the number one password.com slash unplugged. Check compliance off your list with a system of record for your app inventory and employee lifecycle work. flows. OnePassword.com slash unplugged. Well, while I was on the road this week, getting back home, you boys really did a deep diving. Chris, I feel like some of what we learned on the trip might have spilled into this
Starting point is 00:18:59 review. Indeed. I thought this would be a quick visit, and I ended up moving in. I really like the idea of pairing cosmic desktop with a ton of a ton of. Linux base. There's something to me that seems like it's a really nice match because the way they do, you get all the updates
Starting point is 00:19:20 in one, and that desktop is fairly frequently updated. So it all comes down as an image update. If something doesn't work right, you just roll back, but obviously it hasn't been a problem. And Cosmic has that kind of nice, it's already pretty simple, but it's also kind of got that clean separation, right? It does. It does.
Starting point is 00:19:36 It does. Have all your data and your user location. Yeah, and the config and the application state, are separated in a way where, like, I could be backing that up to separately or taking snapshots. So there's a lot of, like, safety mechanisms I could put in here. And you get, so you get a modern desktop that's frequently updated with sort of an insurance policy that if something breaks, you can roll back in a pretty stable base. So I find that to be true with Hyperland, by the way, as well. You know, I pull from the main branch on my system at home.
Starting point is 00:20:05 And some days when I'm working on something, I'll update Hyperland to, maybe the most has even been three times. And one day, I don't know, man, that guy's cranking it and out like crazy. And it just works because, you know, I'm crazy, I guess. But it's just worked. And I'm months into the setup and it's been working great. So I really like it. And so I thought, well, let's take a look at all the different atomic spins. And I saw the cosmic atomic spin.
Starting point is 00:20:30 And boy was I surprised. Boy was I surprised. I'm trying this on the Dell Knicks book that Olympia Mike gave us, which is a low end. It's a bit of a dog. it's it's a little tired it's a little tired the battery is dead for the most part and running
Starting point is 00:20:48 Fodora Cosmic I could not believe how instant I meant to bring the laptop into the room for you Wes like you click the file manager icon and it's immediately on the screen you click the terminal icon and by the time your finger is coming off the mouse terminal is up on the screen
Starting point is 00:21:04 the text editor everything is launches so fast I it's like I mean, how long have we been using this laptop? When did Olympia might give this to us? I think LinuxFest Northwest. Linux Fest, so since April. And I've been...
Starting point is 00:21:19 You've tried a lot of different things on there. I've had bluefin on there. I've had Nix on there. I've had hyper vibe on there. I've never experienced the performance like this. I just was absolutely blown away. And, you know, if I've used a really minimal desktop, that's not too surprising,
Starting point is 00:21:36 but this is a full-featured desktop. What I've customized a look on and everything like that. And to experience it, on what was, it's, it's essentially, it was a thrown away laptop. It was a thrown away laptop. Okay. I mean, like, it's blowing my mind. So I just had to stick around and keep using it.
Starting point is 00:21:53 I was sold. How much have you customized it? Have you, like, made yourself a custom workflow? Have you kind of just taken the defaults? So the things, I mean, I'm mostly doing is playing around the theming. I have the second desktop set to tiling, the first desktop set to floating, loving that. For me, like, Firefox is still not great. But, like, the main desktop is so responsive.
Starting point is 00:22:14 Like, I'm showing my wife. She's like, okay. I'm like, she's like, that's probably how it should be. I'm like, yeah, well, I know that's how it should be, but it hasn't been like that. She didn't care. She didn't care at all. I got to load windows on there to make a really good comparison. I got the feeling you didn't choose Cosmic specifically for its speed improvements.
Starting point is 00:22:33 No. Was that a surprise? Yeah. I just thought, well, I wanted to try one of the more recent builds of Cosmic. and, you know, after we had gone down there. And the one I had tried, I rebased my Aurora to Cosmic, but it's an older build. And because I think it's based on what's ever packaged for 42. So I wanted to try it since this is, you know, the current hottest stuff.
Starting point is 00:22:55 And, wow, really impressed. So that was my review rig. I think I might have hit a bug in the Cosmic Software Center because I had network connectivity issues when I was trying to add the flatpack repo. and had to reboot the machine. And when I came back, I didn't have any options to add either the Flat Hub repo or the Cosmic repo. I was able to add them at the command line just fine. And so I haven't had a chance to reproduce that. But I'm not sure what happened there.
Starting point is 00:23:24 But it was otherwise so great. I mean, really, other than I can't just drop to the terminal and DNF install whatever I want, I wouldn't even be. Actually, for the first five minutes, I forgot I was on an atomic system. Because I was just, you know, I'm just using flat packs installing it. And it just completely felt like a regular Linux box that was just super fast. And I want to speak more to that when we get to what other distro should rip off. But I think that's enough for me.
Starting point is 00:23:50 What did you think, Wes? I think you tried the plasma edition, you said? Yes, I did. All right. So I finally got the installer over there, which was great. And as I was mentioning, right, when you kind of first come in, you get this, Fedora loves K. Katie loves Fedora.
Starting point is 00:24:04 Yeah. And it really shows because it's like within living memory, right, that the, Katie, spin was a little bit second class, and these days it is nothing but first class. And it's totally usable outside of the box. And, you know, I'm running plasma all the time. And it's just, it's so really nice. I don't find I need to do much to be able to just use it as a very productive computer. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:24 Which I like. Except this time around, well, it turned out that just the way things aligned, Plasma 6.5 had just come out, but it hadn't really made it into Fedora yet. But a SIG member, Steve Cassette, went ahead and made a copper. that you could enable and easily get that, so, you know, I had to. That is awesome. Oh, great. So you get absolute fresh plasma.
Starting point is 00:24:48 Yeah, fresh kernel, fresh Fedora, fresh plasma. I do know, he says, Steve says, every so often, KDE releases a new plasma version smack at the start of Fedora's freeze period for a new release, forcing us to wait to create a new release in Fedora. This is fine for most users, but for some of us with the shiny syndrome, I have to admit that hit a little bit. Who us? No.
Starting point is 00:25:09 They want to see what those of us that want to see what's new in KD Plasma 6-5, and we want to be able to update as soon as possible. My name is Steve, and I'm one of the KD. Sig Packagers, and I got a bit annoyed about the state of affairs, so I decided to do something about it. And we sure appreciate it. That's so great. So how did the installation go?
Starting point is 00:25:27 Easy. I mean, I pretty much, there's like a one-liner to add the copper, and then update your system, and I rebooted just, you know, for a good measure, and I had it. And then after that, it's just been great because I've been playing with Plasma 6-5, which is excellent. Are you enjoying your rounded corners? I am, yes. You get rounded corners.
Starting point is 00:25:43 You also get automatic light-to-dark theme switching based on time of day, which, I don't know, just feels like it must appeal to you, right? I do like that. Based on your love of home assistant automations. Uh-huh. I like seeing because I'm a huge clipboard manager plasma addict, and so they've added pinned clipboard items with 6-5. Oh, brilliant. Yeah. So if you have stuff, you kind of just want to leave around.
Starting point is 00:26:06 you know, while you're working or forever. Your password, you can do that. Yeah, you can do that. Yeah. There's some drawing tablet improvements, which is kind of nice to see. They've also transformed what was the Flatpack permissions page into a general application permissions page where you can configure apps ability to do things like take screenshots except remote control requests. Speaking of big improvements for the built-in RDP server, you can share the clipboard for one, which is pretty convenient when you're remote.
Starting point is 00:26:34 You're also no longer required to manually create. separate RDP accounts. You can just use the regular accounts as you expect using their regular credentials in the RDP client amp. You know, so be careful with that. Don't go exposing that everywhere, but it's nice because it's been a long time to have like robust remote desktop, Wayland era, Linux world.
Starting point is 00:26:55 And it feels like both on Ganoa and on plasma. It's like you really got options. Yeah, yeah. It's just pretty much like check a box on most distros. We tried this on our recent trip, and there's really mixed support in general on platforms, but on plasma, the QR code sort of sharing of Wi-Fi networks, that's getting better.
Starting point is 00:27:13 And they just actually show you the password, too. So if the QR code doesn't work like we were experiencing, you have the password right there to share as well. There's been some audio improvements, which is nice just because there's a lot you can do with pipewire these days, and some accessibility improvements, including the Zoom effect can now be configured to jump to the position of your text insertion point,
Starting point is 00:27:34 not just like to the mouse which is kind of cool yeah I do like to see that there's also some new stuff like playing a sound when you plug in a device just kind of make it super clear you also get a notification as well but you can turn all of that off if you don't like it
Starting point is 00:27:46 you know I'm like back in the XP days oh yeah I wonder I can get that file if anybody has a link K Runner the wonderful launcher on plasma that's getting some improvements too it now uses fuzzy matching to look up applications in a more robust way so even if you misspell an
Starting point is 00:28:04 name, it'll probably still find it for you. Boy, are that useful for me. Yes. Also, the way that the search results are ordered has been improved and it's faster. It now provides these results after the very first character is typed. So all things that you want in a launcher.
Starting point is 00:28:21 Discover's getting nicer too, right? You talked about Kenoite getting updates this time around. So Discover will be improving to help with that. It's also got support now for Flatpack plus HDPS URLs, which means the install buttons on Flat Hub actually worked.
Starting point is 00:28:35 Yes. Which is great. A long awaited feature. There's also some improvements to the emoji picker, which is just nice because that's turned out to be a pretty handy. People use that. They really do. Not us, of course.
Starting point is 00:28:48 No, never. There's also some nice K-Win improvements, including the much talked about overlay panes, which sort of reduce compositing when you have like a full screen or a game going on. They've also optimized various stuff like the splash screen code, rearranging some of the startup steps, reducing the duration of the login animation, a lot of things to make not only long-time applications and windowing faster, but also just getting to your desktop. I'll mention, because that's all great, I will mention that Gnome 49 ships in the workstation spin, and we have talked about this before a bit, so I'll just mention a couple of quick highlights.
Starting point is 00:29:25 There's a new document viewer papers in here, new calendar updates as well. But I wanted to actually touch on the similar thing here. They've increased or improved. Enhanced is the word they used. The remote desktop capabilities. And they provide more capabilities for those that want to connect to Ghanome desktops from otherware. Otherware like multi-touch. So I guess probably if you're coming in from a tablet.
Starting point is 00:29:49 Oh. That could be really nice. Relative mouse input. It's required by some apps. And it's particularly relative to those playing games over a remote connection. Okay. What? I want to see that bug report.
Starting point is 00:30:00 See, this is, this is, okay, this is impressive. Extended virtual monitors. It is now possible to have additional virtual monitors when using Ghanome as a remote desktop. Additional displays can be added to the remote desktop session from the remote desktop client, even when there aren't additional displays physically present. Brent's going to make so many of these. Oh, I want to do this. That sounds like I want that.
Starting point is 00:30:22 I think we might need to have some sort of remote desktop competition. Oh, that's a good idea. You should write that down. we've mentioned this before but just really quickly the lock screen has had some security improvements specifically around media controls and the way it runs the do not disturb toggle has been moved from the notifications list to the quick settings for more consistent experience
Starting point is 00:30:44 power connected status with the battery icon and the top bar now indicates when the computer is connected to power and or if it's charging or not like you know the preserved battery health setting and you now have better HDR brightness controls and you can also reboot and shut down from the lock screen in a way that is implemented in the I guess you could say secure and improved way.
Starting point is 00:31:04 And there's also image loading that's been sandboxed. We mentioned this too before but GTKFs now have sandboxed image load. That is a big thing. Yeah. So a really nice Ghanome 49 and you can get, if you like, if you're crazy you can even get the absolute latest plasma in 43.
Starting point is 00:31:20 So it's, there's a lot to like between the spins and just the flexibility of both workstation and the KDE spin. There's a lot to like. But I think there's something in here, and you touched on earlier that just about every other distro could focus on a bit more. And Fedora's not perfect. So I'm not trying to, as the kids would say, glaze them here. And the more familiar you are with anything, the more flaws you see. But one of the things that we notice by going through the release notes of the different distributions
Starting point is 00:31:50 is Fedora is constantly tidying things up. And moving forward in technical areas and in little areas that I think other distributions maybe ignore for a few years longer than they should sometimes. Yeah, not only is there like a sort of modern aspect to it, but you're right. They're sort of like an attention to detail, dotting the eyes, crossing the T's, making sure as upstream changes, you are still doing like the integration and configuration of those components the best way that you can. And sometimes, you know, people don't like some of the changes.
Starting point is 00:32:22 Like an example this time might be they're rolling with Gnome moving, removing X-11 support. But there's other things in here. In fact, I did some recent examples of just this sort of thing. In Fedora 33, SystemD Resolved D, and it was enabled by default. ButterFS was also in Fedora 33.
Starting point is 00:32:42 Pipe wire landed in 34, wire plumber in 35. They were really early on that. They were also aggressively early on smarter out-of-memory handling. They rolled out of first version in 32 and improved it in 34, switch to NTFS tables in the 32 to 41 releases,
Starting point is 00:33:01 unified user bin and slash user S bin with a sim link in Fedora 42, and so on and et cetera. Like there's to small things, to large things like audio subsystems where they're constantly pushing this stuff forward in a way that has been a very consistent user experience. The end result that I get is something that feels clean and modern. It's a weird thing to say because all Linux, especially compared to its commercial counterparts, all Linux is very modern. But Fedora feels especially leading edge and modern, even compared to Arch and rolling NixOS.
Starting point is 00:33:39 It's just because it's not just about the packages. Right. Yeah, there's something you get extra. It's not just straight upstream. Yeah. In a good way. Yeah. And I think this sort of attention to modernization in detail and trying to.
Starting point is 00:33:54 to track upstream is something that other distributions could ape from a little bit. Some of our other, you know, large distribution friends out there kind of build up some technical debt. And then they come along and they make big dramatic changes, big sweeping changes. And that's very exciting. Right. But Fedora is very iterative. It's always like, and it's, it's only when you look back at three or four releases and you go, whoa. Which is also meant, I think, is that you've experienced yourself, right? Like, it's also something where you get a lot of updates, but you're happy to do the updates, especially with, you know, DNF under the hood, which is every time I use Hodorah, it's just, it's a great package.
Starting point is 00:34:30 Oh, I'm using RPMOS tree now, West, so I don't, I don't use DNF, but that's real nice. Join crowdhealth.com slash unplugged. If you followed me for a while, you know I have really struggled with trying to figure out health care. A small business that's a really small team, there's really no great options. My wife also is a type 1 diabetic, and so that makes things extra expensive for her, and she also runs her own small business. This has been something that has just really been a big stressor for us. But if you've noticed, I haven't really complained about it much recently. That's because just over three years ago, I joined Crowd Health.
Starting point is 00:35:11 And right now it's open enrollment, the season where the health insurance companies are going to hope you sign up. Even though things are getting overpriced, they're becoming a political football, and there's lots of confusing fine print. but don't take my word for it. Go over there, check it out, just see if it might make sense for you and your family, drawing crowdhealth.com slash unplugged. I wouldn't be talking about it if I hadn't tried this for myself and my wife for a long time.
Starting point is 00:35:36 And it's something I'm very comfortable with. In fact, it's something that gives me peace of mind. I found the entire game of trying to pick insurance, pay the different prices all the time, and then, of course, you know on the back end they generally try to weasel out of actually helping you. crowd health is different it's a community of people funding each other's medical bills directly no middleman no networks no nonsense now for me when i signed up i didn't really know what i'd be getting into because it's a new idea but crowd
Starting point is 00:36:03 health is actually something that's been around for a while the idea is just modernized with the ability to have apps and the internet and now three years into it i'm really glad we went this route and we have saved a ton of money you've got to check out crowd health the health insurance alternative health care for under $100. You get access to a team of health bill negotiators, low-cost prescription and lab testing tools, as well as a database of low-cost, high-quality doctors that are vetted by crowd health. They also have a fantastic app that they have improved on over the three years that I have been a member, and it just makes it so easy to get started with the process. From, oh, I think something's wrong to, hey, I have a bill. It really is pretty powerful. And if something major
Starting point is 00:36:45 happens, you pay the first $500, and then crowd health steps in with the crowd. to fund the rest. It feels like the options we used to have before Obamacare, in my opinion, messed everything up. As a small business owner, it has been disastrous since then, especially if you have two of us in the family. And, of course, you'll join the crowd, a group of members just like you that want to help pay for each other's unexpected medical events. The system is betting that you'll stay stuck.
Starting point is 00:37:12 You'll just use the same overpriced, overcomplicated mess. And this year, it's even more complicated because most of the ACA subsidies are set to expire, which means your prices could go sky high. So far, crowd health members have saved over $40 million in health care expenses because they refuse to overpay for health care. This is open enrollment. Take your power back. Join crowd health to get started. Join the crowd with me for $99 for your first three months. $99. Just use the promo code unplugged at join crowdhealth.com. Join crowdhealth.com promo code unplugged. Crowdhealth is not insurance. opt out take your power back this is how we win join me over at join crowdhealth dot com promo code
Starting point is 00:37:57 unplugged unraid dot net slash unplugged unleash your hardware with unraid a powerful easy to use nas operating system for those of you that want control flexibility efficiency and you want to just take advantage of some of the apps we talk about with what you have in the closet right now build your ultimate rig or take advantage of that laptop sitting in the corner you can really unleash the hardware that you have right now and unraid is cooking my friends the new rc is out for version seven dot two oh five thousand different unraid members help test the rc that's awesome they have lots of nice fixes polish across storage vms the web gooey and the stable is just around the corner unraid goes from win to win and recently they have been
Starting point is 00:38:45 laser focused on making that web UI even better. Their community app store is bonkers. You get access to support, to the community, to all of those apps, and the continuous improvements of Unraid built on top of a modern Linux kernel, which means you get the best in virtualization, the best in containers, and the best in file systems. So check out UnRade and support the show. You get a 30-day free trial, which lets you test out UnRade, no credit card required,
Starting point is 00:39:11 when you go to UnRade.net slash unplugged. It's pretty powerful, and it just keeps keeping. getting better. And they just recently crossed the 20-year mark. And it feels like they've got all the steam and energy from like a startup. It's really pretty impressive. Check it out, support the show. Unraid.net slash unplugged. Well, this week we want to do a nice shout out to Vatim, who's a new jubiter. Party member. Thank you for joining the club. Woo! Thank you. Thank you, Vadam. Appreciate that. Boys, we've got a bunch of e-m on recommendations for a low power but semi-powerful home lab,
Starting point is 00:39:50 sent in via the contact page in the boost. Thank you, everybody who did that. I'm processing all of them. And, yeah, a couple of themes came through. Some Lenova hardware and some Beeline hardware. A couple of themes, definitely. And they're really good options. So, yeah, I'll have more on that in the future.
Starting point is 00:40:08 Tell you more about that. We got an email from LEP listener, and I feel like maybe we've had a blind spot here, and he kind of brings it to our attention. He says, I'm moving off of Windows 10 now, and I'll be trying out Zorin OS or Winnex for moving from my SDR and Ham software and hardware. At first, Winx seems better, but time will tell. That's a Linux, but with a W. Maybe this could be a topic and could get some new listeners.
Starting point is 00:40:36 And, you know, I don't think we've given much attention to this end of Windows 10, but this is a big moment for a lot of Windows users. Lepfan brings up a good point. This is true. So I'm not a big fan of Winux. This is my opinion, and it's not a particularly well-researched one, but what it is, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, and this is, I'm just, it's a paid distribution,
Starting point is 00:41:00 and what they've done is they have packaged Ubuntu, and they put a Windows theme on top of it, and then they sell that to you, and you buy a Prokey. So Winux 64-bit is based on Ubuntu 24-03-LTS. And you could just get this theme for free on Ubuntu 24-04-3 LTS. And the Pro-Kee, let's see, does it tell us? They called it a donation, isn't that interesting? So the Pro-key is $35.
Starting point is 00:41:36 You get the appearance and the control of Windows-inspired themes. You get a Windows-style control panel, improve support for .exe and MSI applications. So they're basically making wine integrated. Yeah, I think they say they have windboat. Oh, okay, okay. Active Directory support, native graphics, support for OneDrive, native OneDrive File Explorer, Android subsystem, power tools,
Starting point is 00:41:57 improvements to the co-pilot in-chat GPT subsystem. Lifetime key is $35. Yeah, that's, I think. think it's your decision if that's of a personal value to you. I think you would probably be better served by just using Ubuntu LTS. There's kind of an idiom in Linux that goes the further out from the most commonly used system, the harder that is. And so you're picking something that's a derivative of Ubuntu.
Starting point is 00:42:29 And so if it ever breaks, you're only going to get support from them and they're very small user base. Or if the thing that supports Ubuntu that you try to run on it, that that breaks, probably on you to figure out the Delta. Yeah. Yeah, there's that. Where there's millions of users that use Ubuntu and there's a giant support community out there and there's also people you could contact.
Starting point is 00:42:52 That's just something to consider, Lep listener. Zoran may be worth trying. I haven't spent a lot of time with Zorin. Maybe we should. Maybe we should. I'd be curious to know if people would like to know our opinion on Zorn. I'd kick the tires. People'd like to do.
Starting point is 00:43:05 Well, we should probably do. It would run some windows again for a bit and then switch to Zorin. I would be concerned about the people who rely on these pseudo-Windows experiences to adopt Linux because you're going to get burned eventually. Yeah. I know people often say, oh, you know, KD Plasma is the Windows-like experience and Konoma's the Mac-like experience, which is completely and utterly wrong for a lot of reasons. neither KD nor Gnome are actively trying to aim towards that direction but there are people who like want to see patterns that aren't there for example and the problem is that if you start reinforcing it with other things
Starting point is 00:43:46 then what you wind up having is you're subtly tricking the users into thinking this is the same system that they had before and as soon as that superficial skin breaks like the users will be more upset than they were before. Yeah. In fact, I'm glad you're touching on this. I think another way to put this, because I thought about this when it came in, and I forgot to mention it, Neil, but you reminded me is it creates a misalignment of expectations. Exactly. And I think that's the core problem, is people expect it to behave and function and do the things Windows does, and it's not Windows.
Starting point is 00:44:18 Well, we got another email here from Adam, who's also a member. Thanks for reviewing my Nix Config. It was really fun hearing what others thought of it. it. So another plus one for Nick's config reviews. Oh, all right. Chris, you were right. My machine Boomer. Oh, I remember this one, of course. Yeah, yeah. Isn't my only host. It's named after the
Starting point is 00:44:38 Battlestar Galactica character. And because it's my desktop with the most horsepower, it booms. I like it. I do prefer our theory that it was this config for your parents. But that makes sense, too. It does send you a little shade here, though. Chris, not sure how you missed my prowler.nix file sitting right next to sonar.netx and radar.
Starting point is 00:45:01 That's my bad. I will count those points towards you again. Sorry I docked you for that. That's good. I'm glad to hear. By the way, things people should look into if they haven't. That's all I'll say about that. He does call you out a bit, but not in a bad way. Yeah, I mentioned that Adam has a nice structure with explicit modules in his Knicks setup. He credits his old puppet experience showing because in Puppet, you write generic modules that you can reuse across machines, and Adam's trying to do the same thing with Nix, and it definitely shows. Portable configs, makes a match anywhere. As an example, Adam mentions
Starting point is 00:45:38 his telegraph module, which runs on every host. Also using my flake for ERSA, which I need to update. I started doing that and got distracted with other things. Sounds like maybe here, though, reports on getting hardware acceleration. When I play stream, NVTOB shows GPU activity. or sets reports hardware acceleration as enabled, but the logs always complain, unable to determine VAPE compatibility. Please install VA info. But you're seeing activity in...
Starting point is 00:46:05 Oh, so we commented, yeah. So that last commit was my vain attempt to fix that. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. Oh, the newer QSV method he notes has a bug where the audio lags about two seconds behind the video. Oh! Yeah, so I had to set the FFMPEG profiles.
Starting point is 00:46:18 Use VAPE acceleration with the IHD driver for the N-100 Media Server. Also mentions maybe to fix some of those. issues with VAPE. Maybe we need LibVA utilities. Yeah, we could definitely, I can take a look at that when I touch ERSATS next. So thank you for testing that. Because I haven't had as much time to actually get it
Starting point is 00:46:34 really going as I'd like. I had ERSATs going on three screens over the weekend. I was looking that they've done some nice looking updates, like their change log is full of good things. One of the things that I like doing, this is an aside, but I like to set up holiday channels. So I have right now a Halloween channel,
Starting point is 00:46:51 which I'll turn off, and then I'll turn on a Christmas channel. And then I turn them off after the season's over so that way people don't otherwise the kids just watch them and yeah being able to have a go on multiple screens is so great it's so fantastic and i'll just i'll sometimes i'll just uh go on youtube and find some of those long Halloween video loops you know the with the different music and stuff and throw that in there you can throw all kinds of stuff in there it's such a great application and then another fun thing you can do is uh have the kids pick the colors for the different smart lights that can change colors go around and have
Starting point is 00:47:21 them pick they love that well we have another note here from Alan Bacon who says, hey there, long time party member, first time writing in. Hey! I was just listening to the latest unplug episode where you guys were looking for a name for the
Starting point is 00:47:38 audience, and I think I have something not half bad that might just fit the Jupiter broadcasting brand, the colony. It keeps in theme with that space theme, Star Trek, the launch, etc. What do you think? We have in the past. In fact, that's the
Starting point is 00:47:54 domain name for our Matrix server. I think that's the way to lean into then, the colony. So that's when we're talking about the audience. We'll just refer it to it as the colony. It'll be our, you know, our cute love name. Only those of you that listen to this specific episode will know what the hell we're talking about. Subscribe. Grow the colony.
Starting point is 00:48:15 Mr. Bacon also says here, have a good one from up north in French Canada, the real French, not like that wannabe Brent. Oh, Brent. I didn't know that was in there. Well, those Acadians, you know, you got to... Is that a thing? Is there tension between the, you know, the, like, the half French Canadians and the real French Canadians? Hey, what? What does half mean?
Starting point is 00:48:38 I mean, I think what you're hearing of my voice is the answer is yes. You know, after like 5,000 miles in the States, you're really becoming one of us. Louisiana has some French down there. I mean, Chris, it's a problem in all the Francophony-speaking areas. It's like, that's a whole, yeah. I love humans. They're so great. We're just the best.
Starting point is 00:48:59 Love it. Thank you, everybody, for the emails. Appreciate it very much. Linuxunplug.com slash contact. And now it is time for the boost. Of course, you can also send a boost into the show, support us, and get a message. If it's above 2,000 sats, we read it. And our baller booster this week got it on discount.
Starting point is 00:49:18 It's Terd Ferguson with 43,000 sats. Tern Ferguson. 43,000 stats for Fedora 43 of you. Always look forward to hearing your takes and realized it was valuable to me. Ah, this is a live boost. Nice. Thank you, turd. Not to the pending, cool.
Starting point is 00:49:34 I'll appreciate that, turd, yeah. Yeah, we mark, if you have a podcasting 2.0 app, we mark the live stream and schedule it pending at a time. So if you ever wonder, the guy's going to have a live show today or what time is it at or did it get rescheduled. We mark it as pending. I try to do it about 24 hours before the live stream, and it just, it'll show up in your live show up in your live. list of apps or I'm sorry your list of podcasts as a baller here I'd like to mention that about half the fuel that went into the van on the way home was from sats that we received from listeners and I got those just directly into the gas tank so I wanted to say a huge
Starting point is 00:50:08 thank you to everyone who boosted in and also fake boosted in to allow me to get home thank you that made a huge difference and get there and get there right right thank you yeah absolutely fun will now commence yes indeed Tom A. To comes in with 9,001, Situci's. It's over 9,000! Here's a little power at usage data point for you, Chris. Okay. My net BSD desktop, so not a big hog like Linux, but is a think center M710Q, generation older than the 720.
Starting point is 00:50:41 The M710Q, I think, was probably one of the number one recommendation. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, so I'm interested to hear this in the field report. They can both take 32 gigs, mine has 16 and a second disc. measured from mains, it idles at 12 watts and uses around 25 to 30 under load. And for the listeners, how about Jovenauts? Jovenants.
Starting point is 00:51:01 Well, if you want to self-opt into that, we won't complain. 12-wats idle is a bit high, but not unreasonable. 30 watts is dangerous, but if it's only under massive load and I've consolidated, I can see that working. If I could get 32 gigs of RAM in that puppy and a couple of disks. And then, you know, I'd probably have to do a couple external disks. That's the thing I don't like is I don't see a way
Starting point is 00:51:24 where I could have a large internal array and it needs to be solid state so it gets expensive pretty quick externally. But that is nice. Have you considered towing a small fission reactor?
Starting point is 00:51:36 Good idea. That's some good real world. I really appreciate the actual power usage numbers. If anybody else has that for their mini PC home lab machine, please do send it in, especially if you could beat 30 watts
Starting point is 00:51:48 under load. I'd love to see that. We've got Opie 1980. 84 here with 4,000 sats. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too. Well, this was a timely episode, thanks to the AWS outage. My Smart Things Automations all failed. And that was all I needed to stop putting off making the switch.
Starting point is 00:52:06 Bonus, my 70-plus-year-old mother has, after 10 years of resisting, agreed to try Linux. The Linux mint specifically, since her Windows 11 laptop is having tons of issues, and I'm always having to fix the darn thing. a year with Libre Office instead of paying for Microsoft 365 just got her to see FOS as a user-friendly option and not just for the hacker man. Wow, that's wonderful to hear.
Starting point is 00:52:33 Libre Office is coming in as the sale closer there. Well, you can tell, like you're taking a thoughtful, long-term approach to, you know, make this happen, and it's finally really paying off, and that seems great for not only your mom, but also you as the support prison. Yeah, love that. Nice win there. Thanks for sending that our way. Love hearing those.
Starting point is 00:52:52 I always love when some kind of power outage or service outage also most people to bigger and better things. I'm assuming home assistant here, so go call any members? A follow-up, since I did the Yolo delete of the random zombie adapter, Zygby Network has been totally solid. Nice. Totally solid. And that's even after going down and relocating a new, you know, which you never know. It's all been good.
Starting point is 00:53:16 uh thor comes in with a supercharged rooducks 2,444 sats more nix is good and yes to more config confessions please also i can identify with colony it's on the theme of jb well there we go thanks thor appreciate that augustin boost in with 3,714 sats i like you you're a hot ticket just wanted to give a shout out to an email sir called MOX MOX. Oh, yeah. For anyone who feels crazy enough to self-host your own email, it's a modern Go-based email server that I found very easy to set up,
Starting point is 00:53:55 which is saying something because email servers are not always easy to set up. Been running it for the past year on a VPS without issues. There's even a Nix package for it. You know, this had come across in one of my searches, and I had not heard any reports of it, and I'm just looking at it now that you bring it up. This is great. We're getting some super good in the field reports.
Starting point is 00:54:16 Really, really high value there. Appreciate that a lot. All right, so that's MOX.com. That's XMOX.NL if you want to check it out. Thank you for that. Appreciate that one. Distros too comes in with 11,11 cents. I loved the Nix Config Reviews episode,
Starting point is 00:54:42 and there are so many interesting ones in GitHub as well. Every system I have has an alias U that updates everything regardless of package manager. And I did it this way in Nix for quite a long time, but eventually it started causing issues. So now I have it broken out into more granular aliases. And he does link us to those aliases in their NixOS repo. Feel free to roast the configs, of course, while you're there. And P.S., thanks for showcasing my reader app, Saver. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:55:16 Well done. That's great. All right. We'll save that one. I think we're going to have to start building a stash. I think so. Thank you, distro, Stu. Appreciate that.
Starting point is 00:55:24 Kiwi Bitcoin guides here with 3,456 sets. I like that. This is why I have bedtime wine. Thank you, Kiwi. He says, thanks for the explainer on the distros. More questions to follow and plus one for a deep dive on the AlbiHub stuff. Yeah. Indeed.
Starting point is 00:55:41 We're talking more about that. Something we'll do. We don't have anything planned yet. So if you have any specific questions, you can still get them in and we'll help inform the coverage. Anonymous boost in with 2021 sets. Make it so. About to start my home assistant journey. Oh, let's take a moment.
Starting point is 00:55:58 Oh, to be at the beginning. Oh, coming in with Podverse too nice. This is my Bacard moment when he's dying in the cave and Wesley's, you know, leaning over him and Bacard's like, to be young again. You know that moment I'm thinking of? That's how I feel right now. do keep us posted very excited i think you're going to love it start you know start with like a small win don't go crazy don't go crazy but then once you get the small win go crazy obviously well adversaries 17 is here 16384 sets
Starting point is 00:56:35 yeah i got a name for us listeners the jupateers we are pioneers of the false space I can't help but picture the Rocketeer, you know. Remember that movie? Uh-huh. I don't know, adversaries. I don't know. You have to unsee colony, I think. Yeah, I love colony because we already have it in so many places.
Starting point is 00:56:54 The Jupeteers, maybe the Jupeteers are the individual members of the colony? I don't know, you know, because the colony could be the whole. Mm-hmm. We could workshop that. We could workshop that. Hey, look who it is, boys. The Golden Dragon is here with 2,22 sets. The Golden Dragon!
Starting point is 00:57:10 I listened to this week, but I don't remember what I had to say as it was late. Here's some support for the excellent episode, however. Oh, you still boost it? That's so sweet. Oh, God, that's great. I love it. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's pretty good. It's pretty good Golden Dragon. Also, thank you to everybody who stream sets as you listen. We had 24 of you do that, and collectively, you stack 26,238 sets.
Starting point is 00:57:37 When you combine that with our boosters, it's not a super strong. episode. It's not a, but you know what, it's not also a disaster. I'll say that. We stacked a grand total of 120, 123, 691, 123, 691 sats. The easiest way to boost the show is with Fountain.fm. It's also a podcasting 2.0 app, so it means you also get the podcasting 2.0 chapters. You get the transcript. You also get the live stream integration with the pending and a bunch of other special features, including the ability to boost, and they self-host all of that. Or you can go down the adventurous route of AlbiHub, and then you compare that to a number of apps. On iOS, Castamatic is absolutely fantastic. Podverse is a popular one in our community because it's GPL3.
Starting point is 00:58:24 You can also just boost from the podcast index. There's lots of options. And, of course, we want to take a moment and say thank you very much. Just pump the brakes and say thank you to our members who also set it and forget it with either the party membership or their core contribution. We couldn't do it without you either. So thank you, everybody who supports this show. We do it for you. Okay, two picks.
Starting point is 00:58:47 And I put this first one here for you, really. I just felt like this is something you and I could geek out on. But every now and then we get into this stuff, and somebody else in the audience loves it too. And so this week we're highlighting millisecond. It's an app that lets you sort of audit and optimize your Linux system for excellent, low latency, beautiful audio. And that's why it's called millisecond, because it does just that.
Starting point is 00:59:12 Yeah, I like the name, that's clever, and it just does one thing really well. So you get a clean little GTK application with some different groups like user, CPU, kernel, and then some nice little icons and displays where it'll tell you just sort of default, like, how do your real-time priorities look? What about group limits? CPU frequency scaling. It gives you like a warning or this is bad or you're looking good with a green checkmark. And there's a link with explainers over at the Linux Audio.
Starting point is 00:59:39 where a lot of this sort of these tips are accumulated and you can just kind of drop things down to get like more of a in-line help tip as well. This kind of is in the broader context of a collection of tools now that makes audio production on Linux absolutely just top notch. And it's GPL3. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I made a little flake for it too if you want to run it on next.
Starting point is 01:00:01 I saw that. Okay, how about this next one? I never even thought about this. But would you like a lock screen for your just standard old TT. then I would like to introduce you to lemurs. It's a customizable toie, and it's kind of a login manager written in Rust, sent in by Lepfan, who we read his email earlier. It's got both Apache and MIT mixed in there.
Starting point is 01:00:25 It creates a small, robust, yet customizable login manager, which can be served as a front end to your TTI, X11, or Wayland sessions, has also the back-end support for Pam, so it just plugs into your existing authentication infrastructure. And the UI is a very simple, log in password, lock screen, and I've never thought about locking my TTI before until now,
Starting point is 01:00:47 and I can't believe I've never thought about it. Yeah, you're going to keep them all locked now. Yeah, dude, I'm going to log all of them in, and then I'm going to lock them. That's what I'm going to do, because I like it that way. I don't know. I just, or maybe you're SSHed in
Starting point is 01:00:59 and you've got to leave it up on a machine that you can't lock the screen of or something. Like, there's times where you want to lock this stuff. It does have a very classic towey look to it. You know, it kind of looks like an older DOS machine almost vibe. Yeah, and if maybe you were ricin towards that vibe for your Wayland desktop,
Starting point is 01:01:13 you could just use this as your lock manager for Wayland, too. It doesn't have to be for your TTY, but that's what, that's what drew me to it. So what a great idea. And how did I never think of that before? I'm embarrassed. I never even crossed my mind.
Starting point is 01:01:25 I, you know, I just log in this route. Yeah, well, it seems to be a dual license, Apache 2 and MIT. Yeah, I don't really log in this route. Don't do that. I mean, I pseudo, a lot. And maybe I sued it without a password. I might do that.
Starting point is 01:01:39 But I don't run as root all the time. You know what I mean? I don't do that. Yeah, but you're always in the Docker group. Definitely, definitely in the Docker, in the wheel group, in the video group. You know, if I, you know what, sometimes it, I'm in the floppy group. Why not? Why not?
Starting point is 01:01:53 I love the floppy group. All right, so I have a few things to let you know before we get out of here. This show is live. We do it on a Tuesday, which is actually a Sunday. And it starts at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern over at J.B.Live. See you next week. Same bad time, same bad station. West Payne, we have a few pro tips for them as well.
Starting point is 01:02:13 You know, I mentioned it earlier, but I think it's worth iterating because we work hard to make these things nice. Yeah, that's right. If MPEG layer 3 is not enough and you want more metadata, we've got a JSON file in the cloud with chapter information.
Starting point is 01:02:27 Yes, skip right to your favorite stuff, skip the boring parts if you want to. One would think, too, that it would be a pretty easy way to sort of parse through like the topics of the show. You could, there's some data you could work with there.
Starting point is 01:02:39 Yeah, indeed. That's what the major moments. And speaking of data you can work with, that's right. Yeah, if you want way more data,
Starting point is 01:02:45 how about VTT and SRT files for you? Also in the feed for transcripts, more and more of the players out there can use and display and even play and show the transcripts as you move throughout the episode. With speaker names. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:58 And since they're in the feed, you can download them, process them, throw them at an LM, whatever you want. And we go extra far and above. We process each host track individually so that way it has the best chance of recognizing the speech correctly and identifying it. So we really put some effort into those transcripts. Check them out. Links to what
Starting point is 01:03:14 we talked about this week. Those are over at Linuxunplug.com slash 638. Thank you so much for join us on this week's episode of your Unplug program. We'll see you right back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday. You know, You know,

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.