LINUX Unplugged - 647: Plausibly Postulated Prophecies

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

We make our big Linux predictions for 2026, but first, we score how we did for 2025.Sponsored By:Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. 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: Discover a Better Way to Pay for Healthcare with Crowdfunded Memberships. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using 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.FMLinuxFest Northwest 2026: Call for SpeakersThe Launch 🚀: Nature Chose ViolencePewDiePie - I installed Linux (so should you)James Lee - How I Broke up with AdobeLinux surpasses 5% market share on US desktops for the first timeIt is finally the year of Linux on the Desktop: free OS reaches 5% market shareIntroducing the Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistantADHD is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD: Holderness, Penn, Holderness, Kim, Edward Hallowell: 9781400338610Pick: eilmeldung TUI RSS Reader — A terminal-based RSS reader built on the news-flash backend.Pick: Zbridge — zBridge is an online bridge club where you can learn and play bridge. It is a full bridge platform with multiple features.Zbridge flatpak sourcePick: Cavalier — Visualize audio with CAVA

Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. And my name is Brent. Hello, gentlemen. And joining us as referee this week, it's our friendly editor, Drew. Hello, Drew. Welcome to the Thunderdome.

That's a little indication of how it's going to go today. today we are owning up to our 2025 predictions we'll see how we did and then we're going to make bold and powerful 2026 predictions so don't miss that then we're going to round out the show some really great boosts some picks and a lot more this is where i'd say hello mumbled room but shout out to those of you that are up there in the quiet listening right now look at them listening so quietly so quietly if only my kids could be that i don't hear them i know because they're in their quiet listening hello to all of you that join us in that live mumble room going every single Sunday that we do this here show and a big good morning to our friends at defined networking defined dot net slash

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out Managed Nebula. Now gentlemen, we have a little bit of housekeeping to get into before we start with predictions. It's that time of year again. If you can believe it, the call for papers for Linux Fest Northwest, 2026, ends in just a couple of days. Number 31st, 2025. You're going to get a talk in, Wes? Oh, boy. Well, I better go quick. I swear, like, years are getting shorter or something.

I feel like we just did this. I know, right? I know. It's crazy. Linux Fest Northwest is back in April, the 24th to the 26, 2026 at Ballingham Technical College, and I believe that big area is going to be back available to us again. Oh, nice. Yeah.

It was a great time last year. It was nice. If you can believe it, that's only 100. 17 days away, which means if you include holidays in this, except for U.S. federal holidays, that's 82 business days away, which makes it 16 Linux on plugs away, which means Brent needs to be on the road by episode 660. I really appreciate how you give me the heads up because I need it. So, boost in your bet by which episode he actually hits the route. And which route should I take? You better. Also, if you want to catch up on how the van, or aka the bang bus is doing, rent stopped by the launch.

Episode 46 at Weekly Launch.Rawks. Nature chose violence, and Brent tells quite the tale, which I appreciate it. Also, I talk a little bit about the flooding that hit the Pacific Northwest. You've been a local weatherman. It was quite the thing, Wes. I became an island is what happened. I became an island, for real. So that is Weeklylaunch.orgs in episode 46 for that.

And we'll have a link to the Linux Fest Northwest 2026 call for speakers. if that interests you. All right, gentlemen, it is time for predictions past. Before we get into how 2026 is going to go. You're making us make good on it. We've got to see how we did for 2025. Did anyone else completely forget their predictions from last year? Yes.

I only remembered one of mine and the others. I feel like it wasn't even me who wrote those or committed to those. But there's evidence, right, somewhere? There is evidence. In fact, we have audio. on tape. So let's start with Brent's first prediction for 2025. I believe in 2025 we will see a commercially available machine be released using Risk 5 from major vendors. That's not my best prediction sentence, got to say. Machine is not very good. Yeah, Drew, you should have caught me on that.

I wasn't judging last year. So that's not. on me. Well, we needed you. I'm nervous about this one. For those that are new to the show, Drew is here to play referee to make sure that we have good solid predictions that should be measurable by the next year. And so this is a tricky one, ref. I think we might have to start with right away. I think you could call this technically true in the sense that meta in March of 2025 started deploying their custom AI and training inference chips built around Risk 5 in their data.

Center. And in late 2025, the Coral MPU officially released the Coral MPU from Google that is Risk 5 based. I guess you could kind of consider that. There's a few other, like, large data center implementations of Risk 5 this year that didn't exist in 2024. So I asked the AI bot, and I want to hear what you think about this, true. The AI bot says that the prediction correctly identified an inflection point as of late December 2025, Risk 5 has reached an estimated a 25% market penetration in the semiconductor industry, largely due to major vendors abandoning expensive arm licenses in favor of custom Risk 5 silicon. So, when Brent said a commercially available machine using Risk 5 from a major vendor will be

released, what do you think, ref? Did he get it right? So here's a tricky part. Custom. All right. So these guys are making their own Risk 5 boards. Is that correct? Or are they selling them?

Mm-hmm. I believe you do have them on a technicality there. I think they might be at least having them manufactured on their behalf. Yeah. So for it to be commercially available, it needs to be sold from one company to another. It can't be an in-house product. Mm. I think that's fair.

It's not commercially available. Yeah. It's privately available. So, yeah, if you can. tell me a company that is commercially producing these and selling them. It's a win. If you can't, it's a loss. I think this was a failure in describing my prediction, I will say. So I remember the sort of intention for this prediction was specifically around desktop computers. So when I use the word machine in, you know, saying a commercially available machine, I should have said a commercially

available like desktop or tablet or single, exactly. So I was thinking more available for the consumer market. Okay. So if we take it from that perspective, I do recall that the framework did make available a risk five board, but I think I'm going to fail myself on that from a technicality unless anyone else can help me win this one, because that was announced February 4th and our episode was February 5th so I feel like

it was not fair to make a prediction that happened the day before. Oh, you didn't have to out yourself. I'm the honest one here. So it was announced. Yeah, the day before the episode. He didn't know about it, but it was technically public information at that

the day before the episode. At least from my limited research, which is, yeah, that's not fair. you know i'd say are we doing half points wow i could get behind half points if west doesn't object i could get behind a half point i could do that like a like a point five okay yeah all right we'll be generous this year it is the holiday it is the holidays yeah i mean half a point yeah and there was definitely an uptick in the deployment of risk five mm-hmm so that's good to see okay all right well brantley

you win on a technicality congratulations what do we do it wow all right uh i'm gonna keep this, I'm going to keep track here. I'll keep track. All right. So, Brentley, you had a second prediction for us. You said in 2025, this was definitely going to happen. In 2025, the Ubuntu core desktop will be found as either a download on Ubuntu.com slash download or as an Ubuntu flavor. I, this was like half prediction, half hope. I was really hoping this was going to happen for, you know, Ubuntu's future generally? I don't know if our wishcasting generally works

or does it doesn't seem to work. I know. That's where I trip up on my predictions as I just like put in my own desires in there and sometimes they happen and most of the time they don't. Here's the deal, ref. I looked it up. No, it is not downloadable on Ubuntu.com.

The traditional Ubuntu desktop releases shipped as scheduled, but the Ubuntu desktop that is the Ubuntu core version and immutable snap only version of the OS did not graduate to a standard download option and is still very much under development. So I think that one's kind of a clear loser. Sorry, Brentley. It's fine.

I also have to add that given zero action last year it felt like on this, a micro prediction is that this year doesn't feel so good for this either, does it? Okay, so zero points for that one. But let's see what your next one was, because maybe you had a vision for this next one. I was very impressed. In 2025, we will see a tech YouTuber of over a million subscribers do a I-Switched style video for Linux, using it as their main desktop OS for a period of time. Wow, did you nail that one.

So, yeah, on April 26th, 2025, PewDiePie, I installed Linux, and so should you. PewDiePie has 110 million subscribers. And as of this a.m., the video has seen 7.3 million views. And it's the third most popular Linux video on YouTube. Yeah. It took a couple months, right? That was an early win. Very clear win.

Wow, Brett. I mean, do we know that Brent and PewDiePie aren't friends, or there's some sort of back-channeling? Not only was there that, but then there was a kind of a secondary effect of many other YouTubers making Linux content as well. Lots of reaction videos based on it, right? In a way, you were not bullish enough. You know? Okay. Congratulations, sir.

So that's 1.5 points for Mr. Brent. I believe so not bad Brent not bad of a possible three points is that it so 50% yep yeah I'll take it yeah I mean better than zero as has been some of my years in the past and that YouTuber one was great all right gentlemen so it's my time to see how I did here mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm all right so I said in 2025 this was my first prediction and this was definitely going to happen in 2025 inspired by NixOS but based on NixOS, a major distribution-based flavor spin or remix will ship a declarative configuration system for a reproducible system state. Now, there have been forks of NixOS, but I don't think that was my intention here. BlendOS is a thing, but I don't think that's probably

mainstream major distro. But I'm wondering what you guys think about OpenSuse, because you have OpenSus Aon and Calpa. In 2025, they announced these two different variants. and they have doubled down on the zero-config declarative philosophy, they say. It's based on micro-OS. It uses two specific tools to have declarative setups. You typically place these configuration files on a USB drive labeled ignition or combustion, and it does dis-partitioning rate arrays, creating users, writing files, system-by units, and software install.

You do it with a human-readable butane YAML file, which is then compiled into a machine-readable ignition JSON file, and it can run any bash command, install any RPM package, via whatever transactional update, set up your networking, et cetera. So I think maybe you could argue that OpenSuse is dabbling

with this declarative setup? I have three questions. Okay. Fair? Well, I guess one of them is combined. So you made some notes here. The length of the notes combined with the fact

that it's you talking about OpenSuce makes it seem like a stretch automatically. My other question is like I don't think the ignition stuff is new. I don't know about the butane side. So how much of this is a thing that

was net new to 2025? Well, the announcement of Aon and Kelpa was 2025. But is the declarative tech they're using? Well, no, I don't think so. But the distribution

that uses the declarative tech was. Yeah, the wording is a major distribution-based flavor or spin or remix will ship a declarative configuration system. So it only had to ship in this year. Okay. Questions.

Can I download this today? Yes, you can. Okay. Yeah. So ignition files are not a new thing at all. No, no. I mean, cloud in it and the like are very old. But this also gives you desktop, zero config declarative desktop open su set up.

Yeah. It's like there's silver blue. you could maybe kind of well that's okay see that seems yeah i do think maybe you might have to install this on airmaster if you get oh my gosh all right so calpa and aon are brand new for 2025 using these ignition setups and butane yeah yeah yeah yeah butane and ignition yeah sure well you can have ignition without the fuel source right see you get it yeah see they're good at naming I'm fine with it Oh

yes Yeah One point All right one point for me That was a hard point I had to earn But I'm going to take it I had to work for that one

Yeah Yeah do you feel good about what you've done I mean I was hoping to see more I really was I was hoping to see more And when cache EOS server edition came out I was hoping that would be something like I don't know

And this one was a hard one For me to say yes too Because an admission file Is not really the same thing As a Nix config It's just not But it's arguably declarative, right? Technically, it is a declarative config.

It is, right? Yeah. You can install your software, your networking, get it all set up. Begrudgingly, you get the point. I think this next one's not going to be super easy either. Here is my second prediction for 2025. In 2025, Debbie and 13 Trixie will ship, and every desktop that is capable of supporting Wayland

will have Wayland support turned on. By default. See, this is going to be a nuance thing because there are desktops that are technically... How many desktops does that be an even shift? Well, I pulled the top four. Okay. I pulled the top four, and when you know it, it's right down the middle. So Gnome 48 is shipping with Wayland by default in Trixie.

So is Plasma 6.3. Those are both shipping with Whalen by default. However, LXQ2.1 is using X11 by default and does technically support Waylon via lab W or lib A, WB, WC something, but it is experimental. And XFCE4.2O also ships with X11 by default, but the team considers it experimental and should not be used for regular users and should only be used for testing only. So it's literally split down the middle where the two that are on X11 could technically support it but are not yet recommended by the projects to run it.

What does capable mean? Yeah. Hard fail. I really, if I just would have left, if I could have just kept it a little more vague, you know? There is an art to that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a hard fail.

Sorry. All right. Okay. Guys, I was hoping. I blame, I blame XFCE and LXQT. Experimental means technically capable. Okay. Turned off by default.

You're right. You're right. It is technically, if I hadn't said technically, I think that would have been a winner. Okay, well, I feel a little better about this next one, although at the time I was like, hmm, this is going to be a winner, a slam dunk. It actually was a nail biter almost up until the end. In 2025, Valve will release Proton10.0. They will tout brand new types of compatibility with Windows games, and it will be released before the end of 2025.

I expected to actually come much earlier in the year, but proton 10.0 beta was released in April, but stable did not actually ship until November 13th of 2025, and a major update just went out to 10.0, version 10.0-4 in late December. So this one I actually just got in under the line when I thought I was getting a slam dunk. But, I mean, that one's clet and dry, easily measurable. the stable version of Proton 10 shipped on November 13th. What do you think, Raff? It's a winner, right? What types of new compatibility are there?

Ah, so many games that previously required Proton Experimental were now moved to the stable branch, and they addressed issues with certain games like Assassin's Creed Shadows that had video playback issues, and like another game that had issues that didn't work before was Resident Evil Village, which began working with Proton 10. There's other games, obviously, but those are the ones that stuck out. Okay. Yeah, good. Good to go. Yeah. You've taken the lead. That brings you up to a two.

I have two points, Wes Payne. Let's see if you can beat a 2.0. I certainly can't. I love, well, what I love about, Wes's predictions, he often shoots for the stars and makes it fun. So let's see what Wes said would happen in 2025, his first prediction. I predict that in 2025, Chris Fisher purchases a risk five device that is, a risk five device that has a risk five processor as its primary cb u oh yeah you really failed me on this one there's still time there's still time that is true but uh nothing's in my shopping cart west well why not what's what are you waiting for what do you think rob i think that's a

i'd like to ask here uh what was your motivation west what was your thinking on this one uh he buys a lot of gadgets for himself and there's just been a lot of chat about risk five ah you see i didn't buy many gadgets this year. Yeah. I blame inflation. Yeah. I was hoping you were right. I think we were feeling like it was going to be a big year, and it was just not in a way

that impacted that. And like I could have seen, like, you know, was there like some kind of little tiny, like old school phony size gadget or terminal or a little development board that could, I don't know. Or like a little laptopy thingy sort of thing. But I think that's a fail, ref. The little emulation thing that you bought from like Alibaba or whatever, that does. that doesn't run risk five.

It does not. Then, no. Sorry. All right, zero points. Risky prediction. Fun prediction. I wish, that's one I wish would have happened. Maybe you'll get it in this year.

You never know. Could be the year of risk five. You never know. All right, Wes' next prediction for 2025. I predict that in 2025, a distribution or spin or addition will feature B-Cash-FS as default file system. By which I mean, you can go to the website. Download an ISO, click through the defaults of the installer without having to change anything,

and you will get V-CashFS as your main file system. What do you think, last? You know. Sadly, this is one I was hoping for, too. Yeah. In a way, I think that's gone the opposite direction. I think it's a good setup for 2026. True, yeah.

We're getting to a point of, I mean, the experimental label might actually be off here real soon, too. So that's probably a reasonable precursor before it's likely, at least. But I was being hopeful. What do you think, Ravins? It was hopeful, but seemingly misses the mark? It missed the mark, yeah. Sorry. That's a no-go.

All right. Well, let's see. He may have made up for it with his last prediction for 2025. Wes Payne said this was absolutely going to happen in 2025. I predict that at the end of 2025, all three of us, Chris, Wes, and Brent are using NixOS, stock, you know, regular Nix OS, not a derivative, as our primary workstation desktop operating system. All right, we got a little nuance here.

Because this is technically true, but technically not, because I'm running HyperVyb on my systems. I think Hypervib counts. I think so. It's because you're just using Nix packages. Right, right. When you install Hypervive,

do you install NICS and then switch it into Hypervive? Yes, technically I do right now. So is that the moment it switches? I like this line. So, yes, I am installing mainline Nix, and then I destroy it. And there's nothing that you couldn't get with what you have from just a Nix file. Like, as long as you could just do that and get what you have. Yep.

Yep. What about you, Brannley? NixOS is your main daily driver? Well, I kind of feel like it was my daily driver before the predictions episode from last year. So I haven't changed it, I don't think, at all this year. So I'm Nix OS all the way. It is a possibility. It could happen, so...

Yeah, we try a lot of distros over the year, so you never know. Oh, there's a lot of trying, but I always seem to come back, you know. Okay, so what do you think, ref? Can we excuse the hyper-vibed technicality and consider this one a winner? It's not even a technicality. He just gets it. Oh, hey! No shot out. That does put him in the last place, but I mean...

That does. One point for West Payne. All right, so as far as last year's predictions go, Brentley comes in at a 1.5. Well done, Brantley. Very nice. That's a half point. I didn't even fight for it. I come in at a victorious two points. And West Payne ranked in at one solid point.

Which honestly... Big beefy point, that's what I say. Hey, that one point's doing a heavy lift. That means none of us got a zero. That's not too bad for forecasting the future. Really, if you think about it, those are pretty good odds. I bet you most weathermen aren't that accurate, so we have that going for us. OnePassword.com slash unplug.

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Go learn at OnePassword.com slash unplugged. That's OnePassword.com slash unplugged, all lowercase. All right, gentlemen. It is the time that we've all been with. waiting for. It's our 2026 predictions. Now, you guys are really going to have to impress me on this. I am not going to take any slack on this. Your predictions need to be concise. They need to be accurate. And what you say and how you say it matters. So let's go. Brent, you're up first. What is your first prediction? Well, after that, I'm feeling pretty nervous.

nervous because I didn't workshop any of my predictions. So I might need a little help. So I'll give you the premise here. So this is my first shot at it. I believe in 2026 we will see AI, local AI assistance like Lightspeed, Red Hat's Lightspeed, be available in two other major distros. So two other major distros will ship something akin to light speed. Okay, so not Lightspeed specifically, but something akin to it.

Yeah, something like their own version of it or their own flavor or their own take on it, something like that. I'm not saying exactly how it'll be architected, just that someone will implement this sort of AI in your pocket. What do we mean by Lightspeed? Yeah, what I mean is like having an AI companion be available in the distro, like a distro native available feature. The word you're looking for is agentic gross. I know. Can we get that as a good? Yeah, so maybe I need a little help wording all that because there's a lot of buzzwords and stuff.

But really, it's just like in 26, two other major distributions will make available a native agentic AI. I would go with in-house. Okay. All right. I think that's getting at what you're what you're trying to describe here. So when we say in house, does that mean say it has to be like a canonical developed LLM? Is that what when we say in house means? I don't think so because that's a much bigger lift than just having some blessed interface.

Is the definition then that it's a local thing? It's not running on a cloud provider like OpenAI or something like that, but it's something that runs on premise. That's also quite restrictive. I don't know if I want to commit to that. Okay. Okay. But I do think the interface itself has to be created by the distro. So that like the distro, it's part of their like path, their feature set to offer this as a, I don't know, service.

So a minor technicality here, but that's not quite what. Those are a lot of them. That's okay. Yeah. That's not quite what light speed is. Lightspeed is like a helper for specifically Ansible, right? Oh, yeah, but that's kind of the ish. Yeah, Red Hat does have its own in-house agentic AI for REL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux,

and I think that's really more what you're getting at. Okay, sure. I couldn't remember what it was called. Well, and it's, that's fine. And it's worth pointing out that that particular agent can be configured to talk to multiple different LLMs. Yeah. So my real aim here is that it will be specifically aimed at helping you manage the distribution. Okay. So I think what you're looking for is an in-house interface to talk with LLMs to answer questions about your operating system. Is that?

Yeah, I guess that's close.ish. Yeah, like in-house, by in-house, we mean distro-developed, right? So a distro-developed interface to communicate with an L-LM to help manage your system. I like it. How's that, Brent? I'm noting it down because I, to communicate. A distro-developed interface to communicate with an LM to help manage your system. And that doesn't necessarily specify local, right?

It could be, you know. I mean, local would be nice, but I'm not going to restrict myself to that. I mean, if I'm sure. Settleworth, and I'm looking for some AI money, I'm probably thinking, how do I, how do I add a little AI magic to the canonical cloud and really get everybody worked up? That's where I'm going. Yep. All right. I think I can try a first go at a lock here.

You ready? Yeah, give us a first pass. In 26, I believe two other major distributions will make available an in-house distro-developed interface to communicate with an LLM to help manage your system. What if you just changed other to non-red Hat? I don't know, because you're not other. We might not know who you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair. Other than that, what do you think?

I think it's pretty good. Yeah, that seems workable. Yeah, real close. Okay, Brantley. Lockerick. Third time's charm. Mm-hmm. I believe in 2026, we will see two major non-redhat distributions make available an in-house

distro-developed interface to communicate with LLMs to help manage your system. All right. It's officially locked. Number one is down, Brent. It's anxiety-inducing. It is, isn't it? What did I just commit to? What is your second prediction for 2026? This is going to ride a little on the success of my YouTube prediction from last year.

So my prediction will be that a YouTube personality will start an opinionated distribution, a la Omacube or Omarchi and it will be reported by its Foss and the news stack to make it measurable. Why are you specifying particular news outlets though? Because like any old YouTuber

and I didn't want to say like someone over a million subscribers or something but I'm open to like suggestions for better measurability. I don't think I would limit it to any because any like so you make it measurable then. Well just any of the Linux news outlets that we follow.

I think, you know, like, what Feronix wrote about it, and then you didn't. Well, that was my exact first thought, but Feronix did not write about Omarchi Oromacube. So I was like, oh. That's true. Yeah, they probably wouldn't. You're probably right. But so you're saying essentially, the core of what you're saying is that we're going to see a YouTuber distro. Yes. Yes.

That's really the core of it. Interesting. And so. What do you think of that? Like a Prime OS. Oh, yeah. For Prime Engine, I can see a Prime OS. Or you can see a PewDie Pistro.

Mm-hmm. So it just needs to make that prediction measurable Because I think it's I think it's gold Well I think we'd find out about it I mean We could see Linus Linux To right

Sure Right Well ref what is a good measure for you At the end of the year Major YouTuber With X number of followers minimum creates a YouTube

Or it creates a Linux distribution would be the way I would do it and not mention where it's reported at all. All right. All right. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if I want to say a million. That's a lot.

Yeah. I'll say 500K. Okay. That seems fair. Yeah. I mean, you know, 100K is like the base of like you've kind of made it, right? So 500K is, yeah, you're. It's like someone with some recognition.

You're not like the biggest of big. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I believe in 2026 we will see released a YouTube. personality that starts an opinionated distribution similar to Omicube

and this YouTuber will have more than 500,000 followers. Okay. A YouTuber distro. I can only imagine a great that thing. You're going to imagine reviewing that?

Well, Brent's going to happen. Oh, God, it better be called influencer OS. Oh. Oh, man, that would be good. Yeah. That would be good.

Okay, Brent, why don't you dazzle us with your third prediction for 2026? Okay. This one was hard, but you'll help me. In 2026, I believe the Linux Foundation will start a new foundation. Are you serious? Are you serious? No, I'm not serious. The question is, how many tens of foundations will they start?

would be a fun one to guess. Or could you do a range, like, more than three? Yeah, within a bandit. 10 to 13 or is it more like 13.50? All right, I have a real one if you need one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. In 2026, I believe there would be an XZ-style breach

in another widely used open source project, specifically an inside man style compromise. Ooh. So an XZ style breach. And then you say specifically an inside man, so somebody that already has like commit access to the project is kind of what you're saying. Someone who's infiltrated a project and gained some trust. And then, you know, we discover that, oh, wait,

they're not the person we thought they were. And they're trying to do some maliciousness. So you could say something like a vulnerability via trusted commit access. Yeah. Or something. right? Is that seeming? And I'm, you know, it would depend on that actually getting coverage, but first

to find it probably, but assuming it's even if it's close to XZ style. Yeah, right. If it's, if it has an impact, then there'll be some kind of security coverage, you'd think. Yeah. It seems reasonable. What do you think, refs? That seems. Yeah. Yeah. No notes. I missed the verbiage you used there.

You said vulnerability via trust base. I think it was something like a vulnerability will be discovered in a open source project that what did I say after that? Yeah, right, because it's not that it's not just that there's a vulnerability in the code. It's that this was put there by a trusted, somebody has, yeah, via trusted commit access. Because that is a stinker. That is a real stinker. And, you know, it seems plausible because a revenue source really could become, this is horrible

to say, and awful when you consider open source projects need more funding. But a twisted development of this could be a revenue source. It's becoming this already where you sell a well, well-respected, well-established, trusted account, and you can make more money than the free software project makes in an entire year just to sell that account to get, you know, it's just awful. And I feel really bummed about my prediction. Don't put those ideas on there. Nobody listens to this show, though, right? All right, Brayle, I think you got something.

I think you'll lock it in. All right. I believe in 2026, we will see a vulnerability in an open source project via trust, commit, access, similar to the XZ, style breach. Okay, that's three pretty solid predictions there. What do you think? Raph, this is your chance to get a few in. Enjoying the fun.

Stretch your wings. Yeah. You got a prediction for 2026? I do. I've got a few. So first one is maybe the spiciest. I think that NVIDIA is going to potentially exit the consumer sector. I like that.

The way that I would state this is. is that NVIDIA releases no consumer hardware cards in 2026. Oh, man. So, like, similar to what Micron is done, they just kind of pivoted to non-consum, wow. Yeah, that would really hurt. But, again, like, I guess it wouldn't really impact me because I haven't been able to buy an NVIDA card for that six years.

Yeah, yeah. I keep waiting for the prices to come down. They just keep going up. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is dark. Boy, this would really be a, this would be a sideways tilt to the PC manufacturing,

business. So that's pretty solid. I mean, NVIDIA exits the consumer business is a pretty solid, succinct prediction. I don't really have any notes there.

Yeah, I think you could, I think you can lock that in. All right. In 2026, NVIDIA will release zero consumer graphics cards.

I hope you're wrong. I hope you're wrong. Me too, but, you know, I mean. Because like, where else am I going

to get a used card in five or six years, right? That's what I'm like, so. Well, and AMD and Intel are both working it. And there's that Chinese company that's trying to start making cards. I don't remember their name, but, you know, maybe it gives some breathing room to the market. We'll see. Come on, Arc. Come on, Arc.

This is your moment. Okay. Mr. Drew, do you have a second prediction? Sure. So my second prediction is security-based. I believe that a major vulnerability of CVASS 9.0 or greater will be found somewhere in the base Kubernetes components. Ooh, 9.0 is putting a real number on it. Not an 8.

You're going for a 9. Major. Wait, is this like inside baseball? You got some kind of? It's just a very complicated stack. There's a lot that can. Yeah. Have we seen any of these previously?

Like, is this a trend? I mean, I almost feel like it averages out to one a year, but I'm not sure. The only possible issue I can see is in the base Kubernetes component. Oh, what is that? Yeah, could you argue for some optional networking component that you were labeling in space? No, no, I'm not talking, like, no CSI drivers that are outside of base Kubernetes, that sort of thing. We're talking, like, in Kubernetes, not add-ons, right?

okay so base but how do you define what you would define as what you would define as like the base thing to just have Kubernetes operational yeah that is a good question of how to how to state that effectively

well and it it is also worth stating that some CSI drivers are in base Kubernetes right right there's nuance here and a lot of yell what about something like

what about like using sort of cheat language in a way, like a vendor-shipped version of Kubernetes. I'm thinking more that it's a component that exists within the Kubernetes GitHub. Okay. That's concrete. Yeah, GitHub, okay. Yeah. That could be lock-inable right there, I think, then.

All right. So let's go with, in 26, a major vulnerability of CVS-9.0 or greater will be found in a component of Kubernetes that exists in the Kubernetes official GitHub. True bringing the spice. Dave, sizzled to those. Yeah. Okay, all right. So do you have a third prediction for 2026?

Yeah, yeah, this last one's cheap. I think global use of Linux will breach 10% in the Steam hardware survey. Let's hope so. So you think it's going to, I mean, that would technically be a double. that would be a double this thing. It's trending up, yeah. Yeah. And a Windows 11 has been really biffing it.

So, no, I don't know. Maybe and steam machines are coming back. You know, I heard somebody say this weekend that's been using Linux for a few months, and they said, you know, I feel really great because I'm early to Linux. And I thought, you know, wow. Well, it depends where you're comparing yourself to, I guess. guess. And which adoption wave you're thinking of. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you may be right. There may be a whole way of a coming and 10% maybe. I think it's the pootie pie effect. Yeah. I would love to see it.

I would love to see it. All right. Well, let's log it in. All right. In 2026, global use of Linux will crest over 10% in the Steam Hardware Survey. Woo-hoo-hoo. Wow. Let's go Linux. I like it's a couple of hard hitters and a really positive one there, like a moonshot. That's great. That's a nice mix. That's a nice mix. All right, Wes Payne, are you going for a W this year?

What do you think? How are your 2026 predictions looking? We're about to find out. I wonder if Wes's theme will be the dark one this year or just the very, like, kind of spot-on, well-calculated one. You always flips. Well, I'm going to hopeful for my first one. Okay. A consumer-oriented NAS is announced that uses B-CacheFS under the hood.

Oh. And now, could that be an existing vendor that just updates their OS? That would be my intention, whether or not I've conveyed that or not. We should decide. And it doesn't necessarily mean that when you install it, it uses B-Cash by default, but it just has support for B-Cash? I think that it means it's using it. Okay.

Okay, that's a big difference. I have a question. Is this? When you say consumer-oriented NASS, do you mean hardware or do you mean software? Either. So it could be an ISO, could be a product pre-built. Yeah. Okay.

I'd love to see it. It does feel a little long-shoddy. It does feel a little long-shoddy. So you're basically, you would lock in a vendor, a NAS vendor, will announce. Doesn't mean they shipped it. Right. Just an end. Announce.

B-Cash, FS being used under the head. Oh, that's a good. good trick. They don't have to actually make anything. That is. It might not ship till 2027, but it's a cheater. What do you think, Ref?

I think that's actually, I think that's, I don't know. Yeah, I think we're close. It's a little weasily, but it's clever. It's reasonable. Maybe offers Bcash FS as a default option because a lot of these NAS vendors, you will have an option of what underlying file system to use, right? Yeah, okay, sure.

Okay, so what do we think here? What was the phrasing you liked for the N? Like, it's in the drop-down? I don't know. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It's not necessarily the default, but an available... But it is available by default during installation? Oh, during installation.

Okay, during installation, I guess. Well, because here's what... This is going to, so say Unraid, for example, they support NTFS and extended to, but during installation. It's not going to deploy those on the disk, but if you put a disk in with NTFS, it would support it and you could use it. So maybe not during installation,

but during setup. So then for this to, right, because by that definition, for this to win, Unraid would just need to ship an update that includes B-Cash-FS support. Yes, true. A NASF vendor announces B-Cash-FS support.

I think that would be the way I go, because it's still kind of a long shot. Yeah. I think, I'm down. This is my wild card. I love it. I love it. I love it.

I hope you're right. Supported B-Cash-FS support? Okay. Does that make sense? Like, it's an official part of the... It's not like an extension. It's not a... It's an officially supported B-Cash-F-S option.

Right. It's not like some vendor... Or it's not like some community mod or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, West Payne, lock it in. I predict that in 26, a NASF vendor announces official B-Cash-FS support. I hope you are right about that one. Wow.

I really do. I really do. I like that a lot, Wes. That's a good, solid first one. It's a risky one. And if it wins, it's going to be such a payoff. All right. Do you have a second prediction?

Yeah, all right. Here's a safe option. I predict that in, I predict that in 2020, sorry. I predict that in 2026, we will see Kernel, version 7. Whoa. I didn't even think of that. I like that a lot. Wow.

Wow, that's so nice and simple. Very easy to measure. Yeah. Can I ask you a couple of qualifying questions? Of course. Does a RC count? That was my question, too. Does a beta count?

Yeah. Okay. What do you think? So, because how are you defining 7.0 release? Is it stable or is the code out there and we could run it? Like, where's the line? Is this like announced versus shipped? Is it you did pull in one of those again?

We will see that the next version will be 7. So we'll have an announcement that it's seven. is the next. Okay. That's sneaky. That buys you like a couple weeks. That seems probable, actually. That actually seems probable.

I can't believe I didn't think of that. Damn it. I wish I would have thought of that one. All right, Linux 7 announced. Is essentially what you're saying? Well, I said next version, so it needs to be like... Well, a version. We will see...

Right, because 8 is going to be the actual next stable version, right? And 7 would be a development series. Is that how they still do it? Well, because we're in 6.19... Yeah, so I'm saying that in 2026, we will go into the seven series. Uh-huh. We'll get out of the six series into the seven series. However, we will think that's best said.

How about, what about something like, what do you think of this, ref? It's something like in 2026, the next series of the kernel, the next major series of the kernel will be announced. Something like that? Well, no, it's got to include the seven. That's a pretty crucial part of the prediction. And do they start on that development branch? Is that one way to measure? Just announced.

I think announced. Yeah. Yeah. I think announced is... They announced they're bumping the major kernel version to seven. Okay. Either that or they're taking this thing to like 30 something. You know, I don't know.

Okay. How about... I predict that in 2026, Linux kernel, community will announce they are bumping the major version to 7. I think that works. Yeah, I'm cool with it. All right, West Payne. Lock it in. I predict that it.

In 2026, the Linux kernel community will announce they are bumping the major version to seven. All right. There it is. I like that. I wish I would have stolen that one. I wish I would have thought of that one. You got a third one for us? I have some backups in the dock if you want to steal any of those.

Thank you. I do have a third one here. By the end of 2026, when we review predictions next year, it will have been at least a month since you, Christopher, hand-edited, without LLM assistance, your main NixOS config. Whoa. I mean, that might be true for this year's. How do we define main? Yeah, we could.

Because I have, you know, my server config that I use pretty. Yeah, we could probably switch that out. But the nut of what you're trying to get out here is that I'll have gone a month without having to have touched a config file because I'm telling the machine. Yeah, there we go. Maybe that's it. Okay. Yeah. That's probable. How much are you paying him for this one?

I mean, it's possible. It is surprisingly possible, actually, because I've been trying to push it as far as I can. I mean, okay. I have a question. This assumes he's still using NixOS at that point, right? Yeah. If he's not used NixOS, then obviously he wouldn't have edited it, right?

I would say, yeah, I have used it to edit an Ubuntu config file. So if you just made it config file. Yeah, it'll have been. at least a month since you've hand edited without LLM assistance a Linux config config file. That seems pretty good, ref, right? Yeah, so anything in dot config, Etsy. Yeah. Okay.

Docker files. Yeah, Docker files. Nix config. A lot of things, West, just need a quick edit. That is spicy. All right. All right, lock it in. I'll be honest.

I predicted that. And by the end of 2026, when we're reviewing these very predictions, it will have been at least a month since Chris hand-edited, by which I mean without LLM assistance, a configuration file like a Linux config, a Docker config, and open-source app config. We shall see. All right, so I have too many predictions.

I have to whittle this down a little bit, and I have to go with my winners and losers here. And I'm going to start with kind of, I think, maybe aspirational prediction. And I think that in 2026, Fodora Atomic replaces Workstation as the recommended download. When you go to the Fodora as a download page. Wow. Yeah. What's this based on?

Like, what's the hunch here? Well, over 2025, the Fadora Engineering Steering Committee has been kind of more. moving towards making the image-based system the main stable Fedora. So it's not based on the Aurora install you're talking about wiping? No, no, nope, nope, no. It's based on the three years of the steering committee slowly working towards this. And I have to imagine this could be the year we actually see their efforts come to fruition. So I think the way to verify this would be you'd see changes at Fedora or getFadora.org

where essentially a silver-blue-based download would be the default, silver-blue workstation, perhaps. So year of the Fedora Atomic Desktop is... Okay, so when I go there now, I get Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma desktop, and Fedora Server. Yeah. Well, then there's also three more under that. So there's like a row of... Is it just offered there? The top ones.

The premiered featured workstation gets replaced with the Silverlee workstation. Okay. Yeah, another... So there's also FedoroproProject.org slash spins is currently all standard spins. and then Atomic dash desktops is a list of all their atomic stuff. So you could also say that those would swap where atomic desktops become spins and spins becomes legacy or something along those lines. The shorthand I was thinking of using for that is just it becomes the recommended download.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so my lock-in would be Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation as the recommended download. just sort of, you think that works? Does that work? As long as it's measurable, right? As long as we feel like there's a way that we can see that a switch has happened. Well, if they did make that switch, it would be huge news. It would. Okay. All right.

It's kind of a long show. I think we do need to be a little bit more specific about what recommended means, recommended as the default download. On the primary download page. Yeah. Something along those lines would make me happy. So Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation. as the recommended download on the primary project download page.

Works for me. And if it doesn't change there, then the prediction... Yeah. Okay. All right, I'll give that a shot. In 2026, Fodora Atomic will replace Workstation as the recommended download on the project's primary download page. We shall see. So that's one.

Now, now I got to pick one that I think is a real curveball here. And I don't think this one's going to be a winner. but if it is, I'm going to feel like Nostradamus over here. Not Nospherati. Here's what I'm thinking about going with. I think Framework might launch their own distro in 2026. Whoa.

I want to know more about what you think it'll look like. So I think in part we have seen them finance multiple projects this year, and that could be a great way to lay a bit of goodwill before you announce your own thing. And what made me think about this is they kind of need a framework addition OS just so that way when they do new edge products like their Snapdragon X Elite laptop that we talked about in LEP 641. In LEP 641, we talked about how the generic kernels weren't enough for this new hardware and that's been a pain point for framework. If they have like a framework light edition ISO, it might not be like a full-blown distro, but it's like slightly, you know, amended distro. that you would you could just download from them and you could say install on a risk five development system or on an arm not saying for for points or anything but just i'm curious do you have any ideas what they in this hypothetical world of yours how are they building this district well they would make an arch base like everybody else is i think so yeah i mean if if i were i'm not going to put this in the prediction but i would think maybe they they do a little contract with d h h's company wow a little business contract something that has some terms No, that's a prediction.

Yeah, I know. I don't want to be that. No, yeah. There could just be a fedora spin at the end of the day, and that would still count. Sure. I mean, this is kind of what we saw, so 776 do, right? Is they saw that having an officially supported OS was easier for their hardware support and all that stuff. Fascinating.

So you're thinking like an OMA Framey? Yeah, basically. A framework distro light. Why light? Sorry, why are you? Well, because I don't think it's going to be a massive departure, right? I don't think they're going to have a customly, you know, in-house built desktop environment. I wouldn't expect it to be, I mean, it could be, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be, say, like, Steam OS where it's image-based and things like that.

But it's more than them installing Ubuntu and putting a wallpaper on it. It could be as little as that, or it could be more than that. It's basically the key is it enables their hardware to run out of the box. So you ship with a kernel that has. has the right drivers that are signed and so forth for that particular hardware. That's the net of what they're trying to accomplish. You can put any distro you want on there that's supported if it has the upstream drivers. But the idea is you can buy it with something that works out of the box.

It doesn't run Windows. Framework branded distribution. Yeah. Yeah, framework branded distribution. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So how about in 2026, framework will announce a framework branded distribution.

Yeah. Does that work? Works right to me. Here I go, gentlemen. Okay. In 2026, Framework will announce a Framework-branded Linux distribution. Watch them do it with FreeBSD. I noticed you said announce there, not ship.

Yeah, well, I'm seeing a trend here. Things are hard. This is where, okay, I could use your guys as input. I have a couple of extras to go with, and I don't know what direction to go with. One prediction is that a distribution, a rolling distribution, will replace pseudo, with Run Zero from System D. Okay. And then my other prediction, and this is a little spicy,

KDE Linux misses a 1.0 in 2026 and maintains in the, you know, beta and RC State. Building a distro is hard, and the last 10, 15% is the hardest. And then, and this is the one I think is my weakest prediction, but I feel the most conviction about it. So I don't know how to square that. And you should go with that one, clearly.

Yeah, I second, Brent. Okay, here's the prediction. In 2026, refurb used and upgrade not replace becomes the top homelab narrative showing up as a dominant theme across Linux and HomeLab channels on Reddit and other communities. Oh, yeah, I think that's a good one. That's a good one, but that's real hard to prove. That's going to be true, but impossible to measure. Well, so I figured the way you'd measure it is there would be a couple of scoreable success criteria. You'd have to look at our Home Lab and our self-hosted and our Linux and see.

how often keywords like refurb used, e-waste, old hardware, upgrade, DDR4, DDR5, SaaS, enterprise surplus were used. Maybe two major outlets like serve the home, level one text, phoronics, LWN. They have articles or videos explaining

centered around surplus, refurbed hardware. And this probably doesn't count. But I would also imagine it becomes a topic on this show too. It'll become a topic throughout this show. Isn't it already? Because, well, I mean, it's already. so bad. And with the RAM and the disk prices and GPU prices already crazy, I really think it's

going to be a year about getting every inch out of the hardware you already have. And honestly, there is room. Stock distributions have room for improvements. We've played with this. And you can get better performance if you are willing to dig into it. So I think that type of system optimization and reusing hardware is going to be a major trend for 2026. Okay. So here's the way I see it. You like that one more than the KDE Linux one? Yeah, I do.

I think it's a more interesting prediction. Okay. I also think it's the one that's going to piss you off the most when you actually have to go and collect the statistics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's your funeral. Yeah, if I could think of a really good way to measure it, I would feel better about it. But also, who's going to verify?

your measurements. Yeah. Well, no, I think, no, it'd have to be, like, it would have to be, submit the code for review. Yeah. Ideally, should we build stats, start building stats now to see what the baseline? Right. Yeah, you'd have to be based on, like, coverage, community discussions.

You've got to bring your homework. It's the thing when you go to prove this out. You could do it another way. You could say, like, the trend becomes so powerful that, like, There's a new pod, three new podcasts that start specifically angling that. Or like, you know, 10 new YouTube channels that are specifically about refurbing or something like that. My old homelab. This old home lab.

That's, Wes, you should have said that out. That's good. MicroCenter has a used home lab section. There you go. There you go. Honestly, I want to do this old homelab segment where we go out and we refer on listeners' home labs. So want to do that.

I mean, this is, to me, seems like it's at least going to be a strong narrative for most of the year. If it dominates 2026 is yet to be seen. But, like, Drew, if your prediction plays out where Nvidia pulls out of the consumer market. And if the, who was it also was just announced that they might be leaving the consumer market just yesterday or the day before on Friday. Another company announced that they're probably pulling out of the consumer market. It's getting rough out there. So, yeah, the measuring it, the proof is going to be to measuring it at the time. And I guess if we said two major outlets, so if I said something like two major outlets on YouTube and in writing and dominant themes on our home lab self-hosted in our Linux, is that?

The dominant themes is hard to measure, right? Yeah, it is. Mm-hmm. but probably achievable. Well, you could like sort the posts for the year and if the top five, you know, I don't know, 50% of the top 10 posts are about it. I don't know if it'll materialize like that

or if it would just be a lot of chatter. Well, you got to measure this thing. Yeah. It's a good prediction, but it's nebulous. Primary verification signal to me seems like news coverage and just frequency of YouTube videos, subreddit posts, podcasts. Like if at the end of the year,

if we can measure that somehow. All right. Look, if I'm judging again, when you go to prove this out, there had better be a Pepe Sylvia-style board behind you. Yeah, there we go. Build a board, prove it out.

Yeah. And I recommend working on this thing through the year. I mean, maybe I shouldn't go with this one Because like the KD Linux doesn't hit 1.0 would be easy to measure or say tumbleweeter art switching to run zero. But it's quite plain as a prediction. I'll give it a go. And if I can't, if I can't argue my case, I'll have to take the L next year. Probably going to hate that I did this, but I could do it.

What about like a well-established podcast takes it up as a topic that they would have never done in the past? Because it's like. I just don't know if I'd notice that. Well, that's up to you, man. Can you imagine me spending my entire year scouring. the web. Isn't that what you do anyway?

I must be right. If you can measure it, I think it's a good one. Yeah, it's a really good one. I like it, but yeah, it's you've got to put it in the legwork. Okay, how about reused, refurb, upgrade, not replaced becomes a top home lab narrative

showing up as a dominant theme across YouTube, Reddit, and news outlets. Not a dominant theme across news outlets, but showing, How about it is a reoccurring theme? I don't know if that's also very... See, this sucks, you guys.

This one sucks. How bad do you want it? Recurring theme isn't terrible. It could probably be improved. Come on, chat room. How do you yes or no the prediction? That's the real question. Like, what's the tip-over point?

What about Google Trend words? Oh. Ah, yeah, okay. So as measured by Google Trends? Yeah, but would you define a set of... You have to take a baseline? I have them here in the dock

refurb used e-waste old hardware upgrade DDR4 DDR5 SaaS enterprise surplus those types of those types of things if they trend

strongly upwards yeah okay in 2026 refurb used upgrade not replace terms that get the most out of old hardware we'll see an uptick

on Google trends that's pretty stuff we gotta move on So I'm going to lock it in, even though it's crap. No, I think that's okay. It is okay? We'll argue it next year.

See the terms. Say see the terms in the duck. Yeah. Terms available in show doc. There you go. I love that. All right. Okay.

Okay. I'm going to try this. In 2026, refurb used, upgrade, not replace. These types of topics become a top narrative on HomeLab, subreddits, YouTube, and news outlets. And I will have terms in the doc that can be used for Google Trends searches and others. Good enough. Good enough. Not great, but I like the sentiment because it just feels like,

and I think it's an area where Linux is kind of superpositioned to do really well. It's a sucky position for us all to be in, but this is like our moment to shine, too. So the Linux Wave continues. That's strange. Our show doc just changed with new tags in it. Yeah, it seems to be dynamically updated throughout the year. Join crowdhealth.com and use the promo code unplug. The clock is ticking, and these are hard decisions that need to be made.

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Join crowdhealth.com. promo code unplugged. Join crowdhealth.com, promo code unplugged. Unraid.net slash unplugged. Unleash your hardware and software and software. start 2026 off right by reducing your dependency on the cloud. Go build the system you have right now or your dream server. Unraid will grow with you.

Unraid.net slash unplug to get you started, 30-day free trial. It's really something. And recently 7.2 came out. There has been some incredible improvements in there. Really nice improvements to the web UI to make it responsive. So you can work on your couch on your mobile device, which, come on. That's actually really great. You're sitting there watching kind of a low-key show.

You can sit there and poke on your home NAS, right? all a new application. And with the UnRade API available now, there's some really cool, powerful applications and dashboards being built. And they've expanded their ZFS support. They have NTFS support now for Grampus Photos. And the really great thing is the growing community app repository. I don't think there's been an application we've talked about on the show yet that isn't just essentially a click away on an Unraid system. And they have different versions depending on your hardware. So if you have an all intel system, well, they'll have builds optimized for that. or if you have an invidia or AMD, et cetera, et cetera,

you'll find community versions of some of these apps where it really matters. They'll special optimize them for your different GPUs, meaning it's a one-click install to get something that's optimized for your particular hardware, be it with GPU or without. And that's just kind of a taste. It's really, it's such a powerful aspect to Unraid is those community applications. And now, really, that new responsive web and that API. You bring it all together, Unraids built on top of a modern Linux system

that they've been maintaining now for over 20 years, and they're going strong from strength to strength. It's so great, and I think you're going to love it, especially for those of you that have a weekend, you've got some hardware in your closet right now, you want to try a project, unrayed.net slash unplugged. You get started right away, and you get going.

Check it out, support the show. Unraid.net slash unplugged. Well, happy holidays, everybody. As we're nearing the end of the year, we have some baller booster. this week. A baller booster of baller boosters. Chris, you want to take this one?

You saw it come in and you kind of like, lost your cool. Well, Optic Gray is our baller booster. Hey, Rich Lobster! And get ready for this gentleman. Brace yourselves, 1.5 million Satoshis. You're the best around.

Nothing's going to ever keep you down. You're the best. It's absolutely ever keep you down. You're the best of loud. Nothing's going to ever keep you down. It's absolutely amazing. I don't think ballers the right word anymore. No, no.

Hello, Chris, Brenton, West. Happy holidays. I don't know if you remember, but I wanted to reminisce about a trip I made back in 2019 to the Texas cyber cell. Oh. The conference itself was meh. Yep.

But it was completely overshadowed by the evening I got to spend with you two. Carl, special thanks for paying chauffeur and cheese and a bunch of other J.B. fans while gallivanting around San Antonio. The night remains one of my most cherished memories. And I'm still incredibly thankful to all of you for being so gracious. Wow. Well, thank you, Optic. That's amazing. And he said that in where he had some trouble with Fountain. He was persistent and kept it going anyways.

We really appreciate that. And I would say it was that evening that was the. singular highlight of our trip. Yes, definitely. Yeah. We'll have to run into you at another, some kind of event, hopefully a better event, but some kind of event. Yeah. Hopefully we'll be down in Texas next year. That's my prediction. We go to Texas in 26. It's a good one. Hopefully we'll see you there. Thank you for that baller boost. We tremendously appreciate it. Fantastic way to wrap up the year and kick off the new year. The dude abides comes in with 247,000 Satoshi's.

247 sounds great number the dude abides writes hey a last boost of the year i finally caught up i always liked to listen to the full members episode so it takes some time i enjoyed the last episode with kent and carl keep him coming also thanks for the ipTV suggestions i almost had no idea this existed i managed to submit my homelab in time so i'm excited to listen to this episode although not sure if i'll catch it live but it would be fun to have alex on the show to our setups. Oh, that would be a great addition. That would be a great addition to next year, wouldn't it? We should consider that. Thanks for the holidays, gents, and the company. Well, thank you, the dude abides. Keep abiding. We really appreciate that.

Do we have to redo the boosties because of these two boosts? I know, right? Also, we should mention, these are not even all of the boosts, because we're a little out of time. We're going to do another batch in the next episode. So if you do not hear your boost read this episode, We do have it. We have it banked, and it'll be in next episode. Thank you very, very much for sending it in just for time. We're kind of, we're doubling them up and also because of the recording schedule.

Nostromo, moussin, with 37,879 cents. Hey, I like that. I like you. You're a hot ticket. Thank you for another year of great entertainment and happy new year to all of you. Happy new year to you. Thank you very much, Nostro. Appreciate that. Appreciate that value, too. It's good to hear from you. I'll take Amunday here, too. Amunday boosin with 24,44 sets. Coming in hot with the booth. Too bad. I'm answering a question.

Yes, Signal is still absolutely the best secure messenger. Or maybe Molly, which is just an alternate but compatible version of the Signal client with a handful of security improvements and optional settings made mandatory. There's periodically fun of varying ridiculousness around Signal, but it carries on through the noise. I'm continually impressed by how everything Signal does is from an... an explicitly security first position. The one may be legitimate criticism of it was that it used to require a...

Oh, that got got off. Oh. I believe it was trying to say. Yeah, exactly. But that was recently addressed. Yeah, yeah. Also, Emindea here notes wanted to say that they really enjoyed

the conversation with Kent. So we've seen more continued support there. We really do appreciate that signal. You don't have to send us a huge boost, but that But that is a big signal for us to continue that kind of stuff. That's a great boost. Really nice. Thank you, Amadei.

Appreciate that. Well, Johnny Castaway sends in 19,045 sats under two boosts, and one of those boosts is a one, two, three, four, five, Satoshi boost. Oh, sneak in and in there. Well, let's give them a little, let's give them some fruit loops. Oh, my God, this drawer is filled with fruit loops. Which everybody loves. Thank you very much.

And, of course, a little space balls. So the combination is one, two, three, three. Three, four, five. Nicely done. Johnny here's a long-time listener and Jupiter Signal member. Just saying hello. From the south coast of England. That's in Devon, UK.

Oh, hello. Thanks for sending the letter all this way. I've just up my next game and now running Nick's Flakes with B-Cash-F-S, Z-Swhip, F-E, Plymouth, Ganyome, and Neri desktops. Oh, by the way, some a little tail-scale with a work. in progress to give Nebula a try. I'm off to Fosdom early next year, my first Linux Expo and very excited,

and have some mince pies on me with some Santa Sats. Thank you very much. You ever had minced pie with? No, but I think we've got to go get some. I think so. Also, if you are interested, and this goes out to everyone too, but especially to you, Johnny,

if you would like to send us a Fosdom report, especially from a perspective of a new person, we would very much love to read those on the show. So that would be a good signal. If you're interested. Good idea. Johnny continues here with the second boost. Just wanted to say I enjoyed the show on B-Cash-F-S, amazing work by Kent and the J-B-B-Crew for the great content, as always.

This gave me the extra motivation I needed to switch up my daily driver, a NixOS T-460P thinkpad with B-Cash-FS, cache E-EOS kernel, using my favorite terminal emulator, Ghost T-T-Y, and Neri desktop. It's been rock solid, and by the way, the boost amount is cryptic but related to B-Cash-F-S. Oh, interesting. 6-7-00. Maybe a commit number? I think my prediction should have been something about how much of the audience is running B-Cash-F-S. I love to hear how it goes.

Keep us posted on that, too. And Cashie OS kernel, I agree, is pretty great even on NixOS. So good to hear. Thank you for that. That's coming in with a row of ducks. That's 2,22s. And he says he loved the People's File System episode. Now I really need to try out BcashFS.

I have an upcoming reinstall for sure. Yeah. I do that thing too. Like I'm thinking about my next install. And I'm like, okay, this time around, I'm going to do Bcash FS. I'm going to do a two gigabyte boot. New install dreams. Yes, yes.

Even when the system's totally fine, I already start planning the next system. You got to think about Subway, honestly. That's true. Thank you, Thor. Appreciate that. Boast. A Daja boost in with a 6,9609 cents. Put some macaroni and cheese on there, too.

Love the chat with Kent, as well as the one with Carl today. Oh, great. Our pal, Carl, from System 76, of course. Yeah, and the new cosmic release. The technical episodes are some of my favorite. But then I often find myself not knowing what to say, kind of addressing boosting or not. I also need to remind myself that when small boosts still give you signal,

even though I can't afford much beyond the party membership. And we really appreciate it. The boost amount, I mean, a huge amount of the value is just the message. Yeah, and thank you for being a party member. Also, Brent's comment reminded me, have you guys read ADHD is awesome? Would 110% recommend. Wow. I've got it on, yeah, and then there's some links, and we can find some links maybe to it to add to the show notes.

Thank you for the recommendation. ADHD is awesome. No. This is a great recommendation. I have not heard of that. Thank you. Yes, I will look into that. Sounds like there should be an audio book available as well.

Oh, that's probably the route. I'm going to go, you know, with the ADD and all. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Thank you, Dajah. Thank you very much. Well, the Sithy Penguin boosted in. This is two boosts with Rosa Ducks. Give me a holler when this goes south.

Hello there, J.B. Crew. I'm a medium-term listener question. What is the minimum time required for? a long-time listener anyway. Either way, I've been listening for a few years now, and it's my first boost to any of the shows, but I did leave a voicemail on launch earlier this year. Nice.

Well done. Thank you. A vocal boost. I am dropping my Nix config for the next config confessions. It's about 95% vibe-coded with flakes and Hyperland, which I have yet to fully grasp, but the Nix Nerds Room has been great. Oh, good.

I'm glad to hear that. very helpful room. We didn't even open the next config confessions and we're already getting submissions. This is great. Second boost here says, hey, question for the crew. Do you ever collaborate with any of the other podcasters out there? Aside from all the stuff you guys have done since I tuned in, we'd love to see more collaborations with other Linux podcasts.

That's a great. And in fact, I meant to mention at the top of the show, Michael Tennell from Tux Digital and Destination Linux, was going to join us today for this episode but ended up with a sore throat and was traveling so the two combined just couldn't make it work because we do want to do more of that but the reality is all of us are super busy making the shows that we make and then yeah the double calendar systems yeah and i mean just trying to schedule this week's episode is was a little tricky right and then also additionally there's time zones so some people are on like opposite times and stuff like that so So that is a compounding issue, so you'll often find a lot of us are just very heads down. But around the holidays, we do, we try to reach out a little bit. Hopefully we can do some more co-lams in 2026? Yeah, absolutely. And as far as what makes a medium-term listener?

Well, so it's tough to say because the show's been going for a while. So maybe a year? Or maybe we need like, you know, like there's sort of like geologic eras. Maybe we need that for the show. Like E-Ponts. You kind of did. That is often a thing, right? That is often the way people...

As a reference point, I kind of joined in this, yeah. Were you here for LUP 600 or not, you know, the pre-600 or post-600? If you're here before 600, you're probably no longer medium term. And if you're here before 300, you're probably a long time. I don't know. You could cut that up below. Going forward, pre-van and post-van. Yeah, yeah, the van era.

Sure, sure, sure. That's great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for setting up the booze stuff, too, and setting that in. Really appreciate it. that takes a bit of work, and the beginning of the journey is the hardest guy. Thank you, Penguin Guy.

Appreciate you. Hybrid sarcasm, there he is, comes in with 10,000 sats. It's over 9,000! And he just says, Merry Christmas, boys. Oh, Merry Christmas to you, too, hybrid. Thank you, hybrid. Merry Christmas. Pod bun comes in with a row of dogs.

It'd be interesting if we could somehow get a count of how many times you guys have said Grafino, OS, or Rust. Oh. I'm sure people would have other ideas. Yeah, that could be That could be something that's done I would love if anybody ever wanted to cut together Like a cut of our rust coverage or some

Our Graphene OS coverage and we could do a highlight thing And then one day we just here you go We're off for this week Drew here's somebody made this for us The supercut themed supercuts I like that Yeah I think you could write a Python script pretty easily That would go and search all the transcripts that we have available And give you a count

Drew, I'm going to say Every time Pod Bunn boosts in, I think of your buns. Not your buns, but your bunnies. Well, Odyssey Westra boosted in here, 20,000, oh sorry, 20,000 and 552 Satoshi's. Make it so. Sigh, it's just wet, cold, and windy on the east side of the state. That's Washington's state.

Winds didn't cause too much damage, though, on this side. Definitely not what you are, all experience over there on the other side. Stay safe. Also, a little birthday boost since you released the episode on that same day. Oh. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Yeah, the studio with the winds lost power twice, which really stinks.

Because, like, the UPS's last 15, 20 minutes, you know, and the power was out for two hours, one time, and it was out for quite a while the second time. And it was one of those things where I, both times I wasn't here, so I showed up. and you start putting it together, like, uh-oh, that's not right. That's not right. Oh, no. There's always a bit of a job there. I'm glad you're okay over there, Odyssey. Mr. Mayhem's here with 2,323 sets.

Well, let's hear it, good, buddy. A new challenge suggestion. Oh, good. I was hoping we'd get one of these. He says, I just found out that damn small Linux has started showing signs of little life after 15 years of a hiatus. at least they were in 2024. A new challenge that I'd like to see is to find out how long the crew could last on damn small Linux while running the kind of hardware that DSL is made for. Is it the same as a third-d-bit challenge?

Kind of, but it goes farther and embraces the ability to use modern software so long as it's small. Well, I'll be dipped. This to me sounds like a vote for, like, co-host suffering. Yeah, I do think 2026 is prime for a new challenge. That's one of the things I enjoyed over 2025. I liked the home labs too. That was a lot of fun. We had some great challenges that really did push us.

So, like, how do you do more than that? I keep thinking, I just don't know how it comes down. I keep thinking we need to go out into the real world and get ourselves in a real situation with real time constraints and fix and solve something. And I think that would be a great challenge. I like this idea. Three days to, like, refurb somebody's home lab or three days to get a business network operational and, you know, that kind of Can we bring epoxy?

Yeah, we're going to need a lot of epoxy, buddy. We're going to eat a lot of epoxy. All right. So, like I said, if you did not hear your boost red, don't worry. We have it. We're saving it for next week's episode just with the recording schedule. We do appreciate you sending that in, and we will read them next week. So here's what we have for this episode so far.

And first, I want to start by thanking those of you who stream sats. As you listened, we had a really. Well, that's pretty good. 27 is pretty good for total streamers because I was looking at the total streams. It was 2,183 total streams. And the SAT stackers streaming it right in here, 92,359 stacked by you streamers. Thank you very much. That's a very nice, healthy number. But get ready for this. When you combine it with our boosters this week, we are around in 2025 out really strong. This episode got tremendous support with a total sats of 1,952,729 Satoshi.

Geez. Unbelievable. Thank you. Thank you, everyone who. Thank you, everyone who supports the show with a membership or with a boost. Fountain FM is making that easier and easier, but there's an entire self-hosted infrastructure with Albi and lots of. great apps. You get not just boosts, but new features, transcripts, pod chapters, all kinds of stuff, like new release announcements, all that, right there in the app, including live streams. Thank you everybody who supports the show. It really means a lot to us, you know, I, at times, right, as a small business owner, the thing that really stresses me out, if you'll allow the cliche, the thing that keeps me up at night, is often, how am I going to fund the next quarter? At the end of the year, with the holidays, all of it, so much is up in the air that if I was prone

to, you know, ulcers, I'd probably have a real zinger right now. Thankfully, I am not. But when we get support like that, you know, I know this sounds trite and cliche, but it is true. I am going to sleep better at night, knowing that we have that now in the bank. And even if I don't get contracts signed,

you know, we're going to survive for a little bit longer. With the members and with the boost, it truly makes a bigger difference than you can appreciate. Thank you everyone for supporting the show. It means a lot. And with that, it's time for a few banger picks. We couldn't help ourselves once again. And the first one is for those of you that are still living the Tui lifestyle after our Tui challenge.

Which I hope is everyone. And it's, I don't know, how would you say this one, Wes? Emel Dung. Actually, that was better than I thought you were going to do. Yeah. I didn't ship it. Emel Dung is a... Ill-Mildung?

Yeah, I'm sure I'm getting that wrong. It's a Tui RSS reader based on the Awesome News Flash Library, mostly written in Rust and... With a flake dot Nixon in its repo. It does indeed. It's also beautiful. It's strange to say about a 2E, again, terminal user interface, RSS reader,

but it is actually very beautiful. And I think nicer design than just about every GUI RSS reader app I've ever used. And it could be just a really great way to bust through some RSS. And also, I'd love to know if there's interest. I have recently set up my own fresh RSS instance with a few integrations, summary tools, and different plugins. If you're out there would like me to do a segment on fresh RSS, let me know. Send us an email at Linuxunplug.com slash contact, or even better, send us a boost because I have, I think, been very surprised with my time with fresh RSS. Now, this next pick I put in here because I really wanted to get your take.

you could educate me on this because there's a few things I don't know about. And the pick is, it's an app, it's called ZBridge. And it's a contract, or I'm sorry, contract bridge game, which I guess is a trick-taking card game for four players. I don't really understand, but it's a game of bridge, contract bridge. Yeah, based on bridge. And ZBridge is an online bridge club where you can play in learning mode, you can play with other people in multiplayer,

you can play against a quote-unquote game AI. to Jethro. Is that what it's called? Play with Jethro. A competitive bridge bot. So Jethro is available. But I know nothing about bridge.

And you, on the other hand, know quite a bit about bridge. So I'm wondering if this passes the West Payne sniff test, the ZBridge app. Yeah, it does look like it is a flat pack of an electron

packaging for the service. Yes, it is. They have a website. But that makes it pretty easy to get going. Yeah. And I like the idea. idea that you are learning bridge.

So I'm going to say a thumbs up. All right. I got the thumbs up. All right. I like that. When I read the title, ZB Bridge, I thought it was like a Zigby Bridge

for Home Assistant or something. And then the description. It threw me right off. Didn't I expect that. Also, no license was found for that one. I've got a, I could not find. I've got a quick pick for you guys if you want a third one.

Yes, we do. All right. Yeah, I always like bringing you guys some audio visualization. fun. Yes. This one's called Cavalier. It is based on the CAVA graphics engine.

Sure. And it's also written in dot net 8. Oh, this looks really nice. And it's MIT licensed. But yeah, it's just a little visualizer. You just connect it and pipe wire does the rest. It will automatically connect to your main out monitors. Or you can manually connect it to something else

through Helvum or QPW Graph, whatever your choice is, and it has a lot of little options that you can make it your own. It's really cool, small, fancy, and fun. Take the best part of Winamp

and make it into this app is what they've done. The visualizer with customization options where you can have in a window. It's really cool looking, too. It's a nice modern Linux desktop app. Rad. Yeah.

All right. That's a good pick. and so it's Cavalier, and we'll put a link to that. MIT license. Yep, available as a flat pack or snap. It looks like to have it in Arch as well. Very nice. Drew, thank you for joining us and playing referee.

It's always good to see you and catch up. You're very welcome. It was my pleasure and my honor. And I think we got some good results. I think you got good results out of us, so that's always appreciated. So we have someone to blame for next year. Yeah, right, yeah. Even when Drew is not here, of course,

the friendly hand of editor Drew touches every episode. So thank you, Drew. Round of applause for all your hard work there. Thank you, thank you. Now, we encourage you to make it a Tuesday on a Sunday and join us live Sunday, 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern over at jb.live. TV. See you next week.

Same bad time. Same bad station. And if they're getting us on the download, depending on their podcast client, Wes, there's some fancy features they can take advantage of. Yeah, how do you feel about magical class? based JSON that comes right to you and tells you where we talk about what. And you know what I like about that? We can update it dynamically when we make a mistake.

Yeah, it's got like you can put in images and all kinds of fancy features, which we don't even fully take advantage of yet, but we will. One day, the more people use it. And you can also just get a whole transcript. Say maybe you want to count words that we say way too often? Maybe you do. Yeah. Well, that could be one way to look at it.

Or if you just want to be able to follow along or double check something we said or it's just nice to be able to read. It's all right there. if you just need to double check something or whatever it is. And also makes it more accessible as well, which is a big thing. And links to what we talked about today, those, my friends, are linked over at Linuxunplugged.com

slash 647. Sometimes these holiday episodes, a little lighter on the links, but we tend to have pretty copious show notes, so it's always worth checking out. There's usually more in there. But links to like the apps we talked about and whatnot, some of the news that I'll be in the show notes

at Linuxunplug.com slash 647. You'll also find our RSS feed, our Mumbleroom info. matrix info, membership info, boost info, all of it. It's a website with links at Linuxunplug.com. And then you can go check out the launch. Recent episode had Brent in it, or this week in Bitcoin, all of that and more over at jupiterbroadcasting.com.

Thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of Your Unplugged Program. And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday. You know, I'm going to do. Thank you.