LINUX Unplugged - Episode 1: Too Much Choice | LU1

Episode Date: August 13, 2013

Does the Linux community lean on the age old excuse of choice, to brush of the real limitations of desktop Linux environments? We debate that, and then discuss the growing reasons to roll your own email server.Plus we read a ton of feedback, chat with our live hangout, some tablet troubleshooting, and more!

This is the Linux Action Show Unplugged. It's our first episode and that's exciting. We're doing it on a Monday afternoon. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey Matt. Hey there. Sorry, I didn't mean to step on you. That's okay. We're doing it on a Monday afternoon. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey, Matt. Hey there. Sorry, I didn't mean to step on you. That's okay. Sorry about that.

One thing that I'm kind of looking forward to, because we never really get a chance to do it in the big show, is bring on some folks and chat with them live during the show. And we have a hangout set up. And we'll see how it works out. I'm a little concerned. We've got audio troubles. But I think it's going to be good. Getting a little funky. It's learning, you know, getting used to the new timing, getting used to the whole thing.

It's, you know, definitely Google Plus is being a little janky. I think what we've discovered is that the future does not lie in Hangouts for this show. But already at launch, we know it's probably we need to set up a Mumble server or something. And then we'll get, like, people hanging out in there. And we can bring them into, like, rooms that are designed just for the show. And then we can kick people out when they there, and we can bring them into rooms that are designed just for the show. And then we can kick people out when they're jerks. I like that idea. We already had like a...

In just the short time we've been on Hangouts, we've had Windows 8 users stop by. That was almost offensive. But I mean, we were accepting of their choices. And we have people that didn't speak English stop by. Didn't use Linux stop by. So Hangouts so far, we're a little hit and miss. But we'll bring in the panel that we have assembled later in the show as we get going. But first, I want to just take a minute and talk about the new show.

We don't plan to do this too often, but it's kind of an opportunity to talk about ourselves a little bit. Matt and I were kind of brainstorming on a couple of problems that the Linux Action Show has faced. And one has been that we just have this torrential amount of feedback that we generate every single week from every single show. And ideas sometimes on how to do something differently than how we talked about it in the show. Sometimes it's, hey, did you actually know that maybe that's not the best way to do it?

Or anything like that, right? Exactly. And trying to find a way to present that in a way that wasn't going to just absolutely become a time suck. Right. Yeah, because it would drag down the whole show. Exactly. And I had threatened for a long time. I was like, one of these days, Matt, I'm going to make absolutely become a time suck. Right. Yeah, because it would drag down the whole show. Exactly. And I had threatened for like a long time.

I was like, one of these days, Matt, I'm going to make a feedback show and Walser's going to talk about his feedback. Well, that's kind of what we're doing, although that's not the show in its entirety. That's only going to be a component of this show. You know, I mean, the feedback, I think, is going to generate a lot of good discussion and a lot of ideas. But I'm hoping that this show is even more of an opportunity to kind of get down into some episodes.

I want to just like totally just dig into a topic and we're just going to only talk about really just that. And, you know, maybe we'll just spend an hour discussing something, just really go deep. Sometimes I want to, I want to just be all over the board and just talk about topics that have

come up throughout the week. Things that people want to bring up, you know, do panel discussions, kind of like we're going to try in this episode, and see what works. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of it. I think it's going to be interesting to see how this comes to fruition, which direction we end up taking it, and really where the chatroom guides us to.

Yeah, and what from this will kind of surface up into the big show and make that an even better show. And I'm looking forward to it. But I wanted to start i thought with uh the most classiest way um and that would be me complaining what do you think matt always always a classy a classy approach right like whenever you want to impress people the new show the first thing you want to do is try to offend a good subset of your potential listeners that's podcaster 101 everybody knows that i don't know why more shows don't do this. It was actually, and I can't bear all the blame. I have to put some of the blame on James0610 in our subreddit.

He wrote, and he got me thinking. He said, forget the Arch Challenge. I'm doing the KDE Challenge. And he says, why am I doing this? Well, back in 2006-ish, I started to debate, or I'm sorry, dabble around with Linux when I was like a kid in a sweatshop. I hit a roadblock when I tried KDE. I hated it back then. It was slow.

It was bad. It was old. I stayed away ever since. Yesterday, he says, I started to get those itchy Linux-y feet where I couldn't stay still on what I was using. I've been there. I've seen that myself. Instead of distro hopping, I thought maybe I would try desktop hopping. I gave KDE another

go to force myself to stay with it for at least a month. Here's what I've found so far. The bad points. Shit default settings. Can be fixed with some tweaks. And I, Matt, you know, after we went off air two weeks ago, I just kind of leaned over at you and I said, I am so

freaking tired of these ass backward settings in KDE. Every single default I have to change. Didn't I said, I am so freaking tired of these ass-backward settings in KDE. Every single default I have to change. Didn't I say that after the show? I almost wonder if the KDE devs are trolling users, right? I mean, who in their right mind would make these settings legit? I know. It doesn't work. But that said, they let you change them, right?

Mm-hmm. And boy, can you change them in any way you want. And they are fairly straightforward to set up. Then he goes on to say, way too many customization options, which kind of seems like the two might be related. If I was jumping into Linux for the first time, this would make me jump straight back to Windows. But here's some good points. KWin is a really good window manager. True.

Yeah, I really agree with him there. He said it can look stunning with a lot of work once you get it set up. He says, am I going to stick with KDE? I don't know. I'll let you know in four weeks well so here's the thing i you know kde when you massage the hell out of it and i'm talking about deep tissue hot rocks you know hell throwing hot rocks at it i mean you basically got to stone the damn thing to make it work right and even when you get it there then the sound server decides you know what oh hey you're using pulse

and you're using that phone on thing so we're going to really mix it up for you. That's where it kills me. Every time. I mean, people who were watching the live stream of Last Unplugged know that we spent about 15 minutes just monkeying around with audio settings, trying to get it to work right. Like what? Yeah.

So here's what I have kind of come to with KDE. So last week, after the Linux Action Show, I got back into my home office where I edit, and once again, my audio didn't work. And I said, screw it. I restarted. I logged into GNOME. And I thought for myself for about three days, man, this is so nice. It's like I'm in the Zen garden.

I wanted to go meditate on a rock, Matt. I tell you, it was beautiful. Like a Cardassian on a hot stone. I'm in the Zen garden. I wanted to go meditate on a rock, Matt. I tell you, it was beautiful. Like a Cardassian on a hot stone. I'm telling you, man. Yeah, man, those Cardassians give some damn good hot stone massages. That's right. Especially when, never mind. Anyway, so I loved it.

And then I quickly realized that KDE, while it has its lumps, is, in my opinion, when you look back over the last five years of Linux desktops, is the one that's going in the right direction by the longest shot. And from a technology standpoint, like Qt, but also from an integration standpoint between all the applications. I just learned the other day I can right-click on the volume control and switch which device a program goes to right within the mixer. You can middle-click on the maximize button, and it horizontally maximizes, or vertically. You know, there's a lot of little things in here that, as a power user, they release dopamine in the back of my monkey brain when I'm like, oh, someone thought of me, someone thought of me,

oh, man, that has bugged me for so long. I constantly get that sensation when I'm using KDE. I found it to be a mixed bag. I wouldn't go quite that far, but I would say that I find it aesthetically pleasing. I love that under Arch and or Majero, when you run it, you don't have that weird overheating problem with the notebooks. That's one thing, at least with my netbook specifically. I found the desktop environments apparently matter. It's the weirdest thing. I don't know why. KDE runs cool as ice. XFCE runs like crap. How can that be, though? Because KWin has

compositing, so it's using... But it's the only differential. And then I said, okay, on just a total crack pipe thing, I went and searched it just to see if I'm nuts. No. Other people have experienced this. Maybe XFCE is using the CPU more for rendering, whereas KWin is using the GPU. see if I'm nuts. No. Other people have experienced this. Maybe XFCE is using the CPU more for rendering,

whereas KWin is using the GPU. But then when I look at my, you know, I run a top or anything else, and it's like, there's nothing weird going on. It just runs hot. It just runs hot. It's like, there's nothing I can really identify. I've looked at their logs. I can't figure it out. So it's the craziest thing. And you've noticed a big enough difference on

KDE. Oh, I'm running KDE right now. And besides the fact that the sound server decided to play a musical to make things disappear, other than that, it runs really ice cold. I could literally cool off my soda right now by putting it on top of a computer. Huh. I actually have had the opposite experience to some degree. Really? I think it's because my GPU is getting hit a little more with KWin, and I don't know.

Could be. So, you know, I ended up logging out of GNOME about three days after the experiment started, went back onto KDE, dropped the whole Unity setup, said, nah, you know what, I'm just going to go taskbar on the bottom, standard setup with Konky, you know, I've got that going now. And I'm just trying to, I figure if I just stick with the audio problems long enough, I'll either wait out the problems with KDE and they'll just get it fixed or I'll become so adept at the juggle, which I am starting to do now. Like I'm starting to be able to juggle like while I'm on air, like I want to change this audio interface. Oh, unplug this USB interface, plug it in.

You know, I'm starting to get the juggle down. And so maybe I'll just cope with it that way. But I do, i think there's also this concept um that um james was touching on and maybe it's more more possible with arch but i am now kind of like maybe i'm just gonna hang out on arch for a really long time and whenever i feel like i'm getting that itch i'll just install another desktop that's the nice thing right because it's so easy to do. Just boom, done. Yeah.

I wonder if that... The only thing is, we're going to see. I've got elementary OS. I loaded it up this morning on an external USB hard drive, a little USB drive that I'll be running. 10,000 RPM USB 3 hard drive that I'll be running it on for the week so we can talk about it on Sunday on Linux Action Show.

And I'll tell you, I'm going to save it for the review, but there's a couple aspects of a simple UI that I feel like make me a more productive user. True. And I know we've differed greatly on XFCE to where I'm a fan of it, to where basically you're saying,

if I can't run a modern desktop, I'm not going to run that hardware. I'm just not going to do it. And I've always taken the prospect of, I'll run that lower-end desktop and stuff like that. So when I look at things like KDE, I look at elementary, I look at all these things and they're pretty and all that. But for me, it just really depends on the hardware I'm going to run it on. So I don't know.

Yeah, I hear you. So it's something I've kind of continued to evolve my stance on because I've flip-flopped around a lot. But I think it all really kind of kicked off and started for me when Unity kind of started to jump the shark. I actually think potentially my perfect desktop maybe was Ubuntu 13.04.

Right. Maybe or maybe, but the problem there is Unity, I wish I could take that whole desktop experience and move it to Arch. I know you can install Unity on Arch, but I just wish I could just lift all that top layer off and lay it down on top of the Arch underlayer. That would be nice. Yeah, that UI to me was very efficient. It was very fast. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, honestly, I just don't have a lot of love or hate for Unity because I'm actually running Skype right now on a Unity desktop on a Ubuntu box.

And honestly, it's come to a point where 1304, I don't care. If it slows down worse, I probably will stick to this for quite a while. I mean, you'll see. If you upgrade to 1310, you'll see what I'm talking about. Oh, that's so unfortunate. What a dumb thing to do. You know, the other thing, too, is like with Arch and with all the other distributions, too, they're kind of – now that Canonical is going off on their own path, I don't feel like I'm as connected to what the community is working on on that desktop. So it's got a lot going for it there. Exactly. And there's a lot of drama there. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of drama. Exactly. And I just don't care for the drama. Yeah. So there you go. I switched back. I'm back. I'm living on KD.

And Matt, you are, too. It's interesting. You're kind of flipping a little bit too. on a desktop. In front of me now because I've turned to my other desks, I basically have the Ubuntu setup where I've got the Skype thing going on right now. And then on a netbook, I actually have I believe it's actually Arch with KDE. So I think we are in a position right now where what we're not talking about, I don't know, maybe this is my impression, but the elephant to me in the room seems like nobody's 100% happy with

any Linux desktop anymore. And we're all trying different things out and nothing's really quite sticking. And I feel like the one KDE that has the most potential, even still, there's some distros out there that are giving a great shot and really make a great looking KDE desktop. But still, nothing is just out. Like, why isn't somebody going at all elementary OS with Qt and KDE? Like, why isn't somebody going at all elementary OS with Qt and KDE? Why isn't that happening? Why aren't we getting the most refined, artisanal KDE desktop that could sort of shake this whole situation up a little bit and slap people in the face and look what you can do with KDE?

Why aren't we seeing this? Why are we only seeing Cinnamon and Mate and the elementary OS desktop environment? Why are we seeing all of this stuff and we're not seeing anybody go after Qt, KDE, and let's just make it great. Let's bring it down. Let's whittle it down to the finest elements.

And so what we see, what you and I see, we see all of our audience members out there that are constantly saying, well, I'm trying this. Oh, I don't like this. Oh, I moved to this. We're always constantly moving around. Some of that's because we're geeks, but I think a lot of it is because most of the time it's not good enough. Like I'll give you an example.

Dolphin, amazing file manager, super fast, flies through my directories, can't play video files off of ZombiShare. Right. So frustrating. I don't like file handling in Kde at all it's just obnoxious even right clicking makes me cringe uh it's just i don't know what it is but the way they do things is so ass backwards um yeah and and then of course inside of dolphins another great example of it my biggest gripe i can make kde work fine if even if i could i can handle all the other crap if they just did one thing and just dealt with allowing pulse audio.

And if they could make that work properly, I would be fine with it. And I probably am going to make this a project now because I want to make this work because I can't really – Gnome just makes me want to throw up. I just can't. I can't do it. I tried. It just doesn't really for me. We get notes from people that say that GNOME works great for them, and it was working really good for me for a long time,

but I just get really twitchy about that much functionality being driven by plugins. And I'll tell you, I think it was right before a show started or during a show. I can't remember how it actually happened during a show. I went to click on my – this is actually why I stopped. One of the reasons I stopped using GNOME again. I went to click on my volume applet in my menu bar and i accidentally clicked on the imager um extension which had been up until that point a great extension where i click on imager then i draw a box on my screen whatever i draw it takes a snapshot of and immediately uploads it to imager and then puts the uh url on my clipboard right super handy like

hey like when i'm chatting in the iris i I'm like, hey, check out this screenshot. And I just, you know, click, drag, boom, done. Accidentally clicked the Imgur extension in my menu bar. Whole GNOME session, totally freaks the F out. Not just like the normal GNOME where like things close and then like zooms back in, but like freaking like epileptic shock flashing on my screen, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash,

like just nonstop, couldn't go to the text terminal. Everything was all screwed up. I had to hard reboot the machine because I clicked the Imgur extension. Oh, my God. See, that's what I'm talking about. That's why I can't deal with GNOME. Even with all Unity's flaws, although the audio is a big one, but the rest of them, for me, they're paper cuts.

They're minor. They're just not a big deal. See, Skyshaper thinks I'm bashing that GNOME through because of a plug-in, but Matt, but I... Matt, am I wrong, or don't you think the desktop environment should be designed to protect you from a plugin crash like that? Well, here's the problem with GNOME, in my experience anyway,

is that, as you pointed out, everything's based around extensions and all these plugins and stuff. So it's a little bit like saying, okay, I'm going to take a green Pinto and I'm going to drop a brand new engine in it, then I'm going to put some electric windows, I'm going to get a new sound system, I'm going to do all this other stuff, it. Then I'm going to put some electric windows. I'm going to get a new sound system. I'm going to do all this other stuff, and it's all going to coordinate through one flux capacitor. Oh, okay.

Wait a minute now. That sounds kind of cool to be honest with you. But it's like – and then let's say your sound system goes kapooey on you, and because it's all wired through the same doohickey, everything in the car goes to crap. Well, that's essentially what's happening in GNOME because of one stupid plug-in, something can create that kind of headache. That's a real problem. Now, with

KDE, on the other hand, it's different because of the fact that you are looking at, in my opinion anyway, you know, these are minor issues. Again, excluding audio, because that's not minor, but as far as, like, the way it behaves and stuff like that, it's annoying, but it's not taking a crap out on me every time I click something.

I don't like the usability point of it so much. Eh, but, you know, I can make it work. KDE seems to me no more esoteric than learning the ins and outs of Windows or, you know, another complex operating system. It's Windows 7 to me, really. I mean, it's about, it's kind of a meh kind of experience. It's not bad. It's just not great. Well, why don't we, before we move off this topic, try bringing in the Hangout. See, Hangout guy, somebody there say something.

Mr. Bacon there, you got a shirt on. It says Bacon, and you were drinking a beer. I did. Yeah, I like that. That's a nice shirt, dude. That's a nice-looking beer, too. Now, is your mic on? Oh, hold on.

He's going to unmute. Hi there. All right, no, I still don't hear you. I still don't hear you. But I like your shirt still. And he's got a whiteboard behind him, too, Matt. That's cool. Yeah, he's set up. He's. And he's got a whiteboard behind him too, Matt. That's cool. Yeah, he's set up.

He's prepared. He's got a pretty swank lamp too. And I don't even know why I haven't mentioned this. Dude has a huge-ass beard. That's a great-looking beard, man. I love that beard. There you go. Welcome to the show.

Uh-oh. I had you for a second. Well, I'll open this up to the general panel. So anybody on the Hangout who has a working mic, what are your thoughts on is the Linux desktop just not yet there or Matt and I just spinning our wheels and we just need to settle down and learn to love what we got? Anybody on there?

I think the point of... Sorry to interrupt. Oh, go ahead. Just say your name. I think the point of Josh Strobel from IRC. I think the point of the Linux desktop is you don't have to settle on just one thing. You can jump around. That's the beauty of it. You're not stuck with one

interface. So I don't really have an issue with people jumping from KDE to GNOME to Unity to LXD to Clive to Enlightenment and so on and so forth. Because it's about having that freedom, having that choice.

That's the beauty of Linux. You can always move around. Anybody else want to chime in? Well, I can say that I'm one of the few Unity lovers. I've tried a number of different desktops, but this Unity satisfies me, does exactly what I want to do, so I'm happy with Unity.

Now, which version of Ubuntu are you on? 1204 LTS. And you just kind of plan to hang out there for a while? Absolutely. I like to get one set up that will do what I want to do and leave it there because I use it. Do you have any concerns about some of the desktop software you use kind of falling behind in versions? Or has that not been a problem in your experience? No, it's not been a problem for me. I think that if I

wonder too, if I was kind of more in a traditional sort of work environment or office environment, I think I would probably just run an LTS or something like that. But because I'm kind of in the position where I always kind of want fresh, hot-off-the-presses code, it kind of pushes me in a different direction myself. Well, and I can understand his perspective on that because if you think about it, he has something that works well. He has the applications he enjoys using.

It's no must, no fuss. He knows he boots it up. It's going to start. It's going to run. His apps are going to work as he expects. I can definitely see the benefit of that. Yeah. Now, Dan. It's going to run. His apps are going to work as he expects. I can definitely see the benefit of that. Now, Dan, were you going to say something? Yeah, I'm sorry. I just wanted

to put a little aspect on this. I mean, what was the question? Is it ready for full-on mainstream? Well, no, not even that. Because I think what we're running into is even as non-mainstream users, it still seems to fall short as a complete inclusive solution.

I constantly am seeing threads from people trying GNOME for a few weeks, trying KDE, then going to XFCE, then going to a tiling window manager. And I think, to me, that seems to suggest that none of these desktops are fully baked, that they're not solving 100% of the problems for everybody, maybe not even 70% of the problems. And I think instead of just admitting that as Linux users, we kind of gloss over it and say, well, we have choice. Yeah, we do, but the downside to that is, you're right, we don't have a one-world solution.

Unity is probably one of the closer ones to that, but everybody, let's say some people like to look down on the Ubuntu users. But if it works for you, like, I forgot his name, but the old gentleman there, if it works for you, there's no reason you shouldn't use it. If it makes you happy and it works. Yeah, absolutely. But we do need a slim, fast desktop environment

that does have everything without having to make compromises. And I think that's what we are lacking. And so in your opinion, KDE or GNOME or any of those haven't solved that for you? Well, I felt it with GNOME 2 a long time ago. I thought I had everything, but I was really, really new to that. But I wasn't missing anything. But with KDE, I kept having to think,

wow, crap, I'm missing out. So I went back over and over again. Yeah. Interesting. Anybody else want to hang out? Yeah, go ahead. Hey, Michael. Oh, you're kind of cutting out, Michael.

Can you hear me? Yeah, a little bit. Go ahead and try. Can you hear me? Yeah. I've been using Mate and Sim cinnamon a lot the last year. I've been both of them. I'm very active with both of them. I've been using it on mint and on arch.

Mate, huh? Mate, I've had issues. All right, you're breaking up. I'm going to cut you off there, but mate, that's interesting. That's all right. I didn't expect that. I didn't's all right. I didn't expect that. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see mate coming, but I'll be honest.

I don't judge. Well, and I understand that, you know, I actually was a big GNOME 2 fan, so I understand the desire to use mate from the standpoint of, you know what you're getting. You know where everything's at. You've got your little applets. I mean, everything's kind of predictable. You know exactly what you're going to get,

and it's a pleasant enough interface for someone that just wants functionality. They're not looking for a lot of eye candy. And I think that certainly presents an interesting point. One thing that struck me, though, as everyone was talking, that I realized that Windows users and OS X

users, they may have an all-in-one solution. But what's interesting, if they hate something about their desktop environment, that's too bad with us. They become Linux users. Yeah, exactly. Totally, right? That's exactly it. And so for us, we are spoiled in that we have something to complain about because we have that option. I guess so. And I do agree with you. And I have made that argument myself. But like I said, I just don't want that to be sort of an excuse to cover up the fact that nothing's all that great well i mean yeah i mean kd might have sound issues and gnome has extension crashing problems and xfce might feel like it's from the

90s and unity is controlled by an egomaniac but at least you have choice but here's but here's the here's the point that you may have over skipped on a little bit all right think of it this way think of it this way so we know that gnome and KDE and even some of the lighter-weight desktops, they're not going to change unless they want to. That's just reality. Unity, same thing. They're going to do whatever the hell they please. But some of these other guys, Cinnamon, I think it was Elementary OS and all this kind of doing their own thing with desktop stuff. I think that's where we're going to begin seeing more stuff develop out of projects like that.

Right. And that's probably where the solution is going to come from. Isn't it funny, though, because those guys get some of the biggest pushback because elementary gets, oh, it's a Mac clone, and cinnamon gets, oh, what's the point? You're just wasting effort and resources. But in reality, maybe they're going to shake things up the most. They're doing some of the most interesting differentiation out of all of them.

IBM once said there was absolutely no money in software. They were wrong. I think the people that are saying that all this, oh, you don't need to make it look like this or make it look like that are also wrong. I think that history will show us that. I think over time we will actually see that happen. And they can complain all they want.

It is a long game, right? And of course, we are the sports commentators that are here watching the game as it unfolds. But it is a long game, right? And of course, we are the sports commentators that are here watching the game as it unfolds. But it is a long game. All right. So it says, sounds like you're trying to type, so we've muted your mic. Gosh, Google Plus is really something. How about our Google?

Look at that. Look at Google. Hey, hey, hey, jackass, quit typing, it says. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm kidding. All right. Well, before we move to the next kind of quasi-topic, it says. I'm sorry. I'm kidding. All right. Well, before we move to the next kind of quasi-topic, we don't have real topics.

We do have a couple of real sponsors that I wanted to thank. The first one, this one, I am so thrilled because I know someone out in our audience is going to have a much better day after they hear about Unity Sync from Directory Wizards. And Unity Sync, its version 2.0 came out towards the end of August, runs on Linux, and it will allow you to move information between multiple types of directories. So you think of like maybe with UnitySync, you could synchronize account information between different LDAP directories you might have in your network. Oh, there goes my bottle cap. Or maybe you might have something like an HR application that stores something

in some crappy Microsoft SQL database, and you want to sync that out to MySQL or to an LDAP directory, so that way when HR updates a phone number, that S moves over to that directory you have for IT, so that way everybody's phone numbers on the company intranet automatically get updated. All these kinds of little things where you have data that exists in all these different directories, but nothing's been intelligent enough to move them all together. Well, on top of that, not only is UnitySync built to do that, but it also can do things

like templates. You can say, when data gets entered into a field, it doesn't match this, don't sync that. Or only sync these attributes of the directory. Don't sync the entire directory, don't sync the entire tree, just go down the tree into this particular area and grab just those attributes. This is solving that age-old IT problem. And man, oh man, did I run into this stuff, especially when I had clients who merged companies. So they'd have separate active directories or separate LDAP directories, and they wanted to keep them separate for a while, but then they wanted to have some accounts,

like the admin account and the CEO account. They want to sync those between the direct. Can you just sync those for me real quick? Thanks. Yeah, UnitySync takes care of that. Listen, if you go over to derwiz.com, click on the download link, put in the code Linux, you'll get an extended 30-day trial

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information systems of canada wow yeah yeah big names oh uh it goes the list goes on on fiserv is in here um the uh the doa the dia the dc court the d Council, the Pentagon Telecommunications Center is in here. Omnicom is in here. The US Army Force Com is in here. US Marine Corps is in here. US Special Operations Command is in here. We're talking enterprise grade. And it's under five megabytes.

You can get it downloaded and loaded on your Linux box in no time. And then manage it with a super easy-to-use web front end. Got to love that. Go to derwiz.com, click on Unity Sync, and put in the code Linux to grab the demo and enjoy the magic. Thanks to Unity Sync for sponsoring Last Unplugged. That's awesome. Thanks, guys. Yeah, they heard about that.

Like, dude, we want to be on that. We want to be on that. That's cool. I got one little tip that I mentioned just briefly today on coda radio uh before we move on and that is uh i didn't talk about it on last but i had an i had a nexus 7 i think i've mentioned that on the show in fact i loaded a boon to a touch on there one time well so the the nexus 7 is plagued by a little bug that nobody no google advocate ever talks about and if this happened to the iPad, people would be up in arms about it. And it's an interesting, it is an interesting example of how the tech press

doesn't ride Google the way they should for some of this stuff. So, turns out, Nexus 7, you let it die all the way, can't charge it. You drain the battery all the way, not going to charge. That's a problem. Yeah. That's not even cool. Yeah, people drain their tablets, Matt. That happens.

Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, who doesn't? I mean, that's the whole point. And you can tablets matt that happens oh man yeah i mean who doesn't i mean that's the whole point and you can't recover from that especially when you have two kids right so the charger is initiated by software so the charging process doesn't start until you boot into android and android says yeah start charging that battery for me well if the battery doesn't if the battery doesn't have enough charge what happens is you boot in even if it's plugged in you boot into android immediately android says oh dude oh dude you got zero percent battery better reboot so it goes into a shutdown process that shutdown process has some sort of video card driver crash and then you get static

snow on the screen like you got on your old tv and then it shuts off and then it boots again and it does it all over again and it just loops and loops until the battery is so dead you can't even get to power on so i let my i was kind of mad at it so i let it sit for a little while i found out if it's really really really dead what you have to do is grab the original asus power brick and the original asus usb power cord plug those in let it sit for like an hour it won't turn on it won't respond to your power button so don't even press it just let it sit for like an hour okay then you know this is really even press it. Just let it sit for like an hour, okay? Then, now this is really funny. After you let it sit for an hour, you pull the power cord,

count for 10 seconds, then plug the power cord back in, okay? After you've plugged the power cord back in, hold down the power button and the, let's see, I think it's the down arrow, the down volume area, and press, yeah. Hold that until you start to see the bootloader come up. Then when the bootloader comes up, choose power off. And then it will charge while powered off.

That is the stupidest design I've ever heard. It's ridiculous. I mean, that is just crazy stupid. But I was able to rescue my Nexus 7 and get 4.3. Well, that's good. Yeah. I mean, you know, after an encyclopedia of reading, you were able to recover something that should have been.

I mean, oh my God. I will link to the Google article in the show notes if you guys run it. I got to imagine, I mean, tablets die and kids leave them playing video games. I mean, I'm sure some Angry Birds were just chewing through the battery for a while. So I fixed that up and then I wiped it with four and, you know, four, three stock. And then I gave that to my grandpa for his 80th birthday. So now I am Nexus free. Honestly, I think part of the reason was because this happened to me twice.

The first time I was able to get into the bootloader myself, but the second time, just letting it charge for an hour and then unplugging it for 10 seconds and then plugging it back in, that was the secret magic to actually get it to work this last time. And I was just so frustrated with it. And my, you know, I figured my grandpa,

he's been wanting to play with Android. He's 80 years old. You got an 80 year old man saying, I'd like to play with Android four, three. How do you say no to that? Oh, totally.

And what a great opportunity to kind of be introduced to the whole experience. But, but yeah, that whole battery drain thing, just, it escapes me how things like that, you know,

leave quality assurance. And that's a thumbs up. How does that even process? I know. Do people not use their own products? I don't understand. It is weird. I've had issues on a couple.

I haven't really had any weird issues on my Note 2 or my HTC One. But all of my previous Android devices, and I've had a few, have all had weird bugs that nobody really talks about. And then when you dig around the XDA forums, you can see people in the know are talking about it. But nobody else is talking about it. I was like, come on, isn't this kind of something that people should be pissed off about? I would hope so.

I mean, good grief. Yeah, I think you're right. I think the press is giving them a huge pass. I think that the end users are saying, well, you know, it's okay because Google is awesome. They're becoming like Apple users. Yes, yes, exactly. And maybe it's a little – I don't know if it's more deserved in this case, maybe. But I mean we're sitting here with a Google Hangout going right now. right yeah holy god yeah that that kind of doesn't mix well you know where it's like yeah i i get i get that but at the same time i have a high enough expectation for usability i mean didn't they go out and like hire kevin rose to do this stuff or something right i mean wasn't he's doing vc crap

he's doing oh he's doing vc crap i thought he was i thought he's working for google doing something no he is yeah he's doing vc like google has an arms – a Google Ventures arm. Okay. Where they just go around giving money to people, I suppose. Well, he used to troll stuff for usability. I'm just saying they need to cue him in and get something going because whatever is going on isn't working. Whoever is in charge of Q&A needs to be slapped. I'm just going to put that out there. I kind of want a Moto X though. I'm a con in chat rooms.

I kind of want one. All right. Well, we got an email in the show from Mike. He said, first of all, congrats to you and Angela, the new member of the family. Thanks, Mike. I wanted to complain a little bit about what you're saying about Ubuntu since you started using Arch. I'm a software developer and an Ubuntu user, and I use Ubuntu on my desktop without being a Linux expert. For example, during the last episode of Lass, and this came in on July 30th, so it's a little behind.

Okay. For example, in the last episode of Vlass, you specified Arch use SysMD. I did not know what that was before I had, before you mentioned it, and I had to Google it. I know you prefer Arch, but what are your, I know you prefer Arch, but you are an experienced Linux system admin and a Linux guy.

For normal users, Ubuntu is a lot easier. It was a Windows user who occasionally dual booted with Windows and Fedora, OpenSUSE, PC Linux, OS, Ubuntu, Mint, SUSE, and Ubuntu 12.04 and I'm not dual booting anymore. This is the OS I feel like can replace Windows for me and I think it's smooth, user friendly.

I watched Last Encoder Radio for some time now and when you took the Arch Challenge, I decided to try Arch 2. First in a VM, then dual booting alongside Ubuntu. I also tried Interagross and Manjaro and they all bombed on him. So he's back alongside Ubuntu. It also tried Interagos and Manjaro, and they all bombed on him. So he's back on Ubuntu. Yeah, so a couple

thoughts, and I'll try and run through these quickly. Ubuntu's awesome for those, you know, if it's working for you, just like with any Linux distro, if it's working for you, then that is the distro for you. That's a great choice, and I certainly run it for certain purposes and not for others. Going back to the whole Arch and Manjaro and some of these other things, Arch is an advanced distribution for people that are power users in Linux. I mean that really want to control every single aspect of their experience.

It's a Tinkers distro, right? It's a Tinkers distro. It's like you're a car guy and you like to work on your car. And then Manjaro, of course, is – and they don't talk about this enough, but it is very much still in beta. So it's got some issues, and it's a rolling release. So a lot of times the headaches you're dealing with are fixed in an update. So that's something to put out there as well. That's one reason why I like Arch or Bungero over Ubuntu is that I don't have to cross my fingers every time I run the updater and hope it doesn't crap out on me because it does, and it has happened. I haven't been big yet, although VirtualBox has died on me twice now after an update.

But other than that, and I was able to recover both times after slight consternation. Absolutely right. And so there's nothing wrong with running Ubuntu at all. I'm actually Skyping in on Ubuntu right now. That doesn't mean it's my primary desktop. I use different things for everything. So we're not ripping on it in completion. We're simply saying its current direction scares the hell out of us.

It scares the hell out of me anyway. He also mentions, though, by the way, that he's landed on Unity. I'm sorry, XFCE. Oh, XFCE. That's good. Okay, that's cool. Yeah, that's interesting. An email came in from Tom. He said, Hi, Chris and Matt. It's good that you cover Linux

features like Mint and Zorin OS that can help ease the transition of Windows users to Linux. However, I feel something is still missing with these reviews of Linux that the majority of Windows users are scared of not having. Windows-like active security and visible security. The problem is that most Windows users are used

to software firewalls that prompt them to allow or deny permanent rules or every time they connect to the internet. On a standard Linux install, the firewall is off by default. Perhaps even not seeing an animated network firewall icon on the taskbar could put some off. Having antivirus software block a web page, for example, that has malicious code injected into it not only protects the Windows user,

but alerts them that the site is hijacked and could siphon their credentials. This is where I think Linux needs an antivirus, and the fact that Linux doesn't need an antivirus argument fails. Can you, Chris, Matt, and the chatroom suggest how to overcome the issues I suspect others are in a similar situation. Sorry for that long email. Great show. And thanks for reading all of that. Two things. One, no argument from me. I think that Linux users are living in la-la land when it comes to the belief that they're somehow protected from malware. That's absolute crap. Second thing though, yes, there are absolutely antiviruses that exist currently that do a fantastic job at dealing with Windows viruses on your Linux box. And for those new things that crop up occasionally

in the Linux space as far as viruses, it'll take care of that as well. As far as having the alerts and stuff, I think that would be a great idea, but that would require either a corporation getting involved or a nonprofit or maybe some sort of crowdfunding environment to create something like that to happen. We just haven't come to critical mass yet

to where that's going to take place um the apps already like at the under underlying level exist but it's the it's the bubbling the little bubbles and the alerts and the the okay let me ask you this though man don't you feel like this is maybe our opportunity to break clean of this environment of fear that companies like norton and McAfee have sustained for years on the Windows platform to essentially manipulate Windows users into being scared to buy their insurance policies? Yes and no. Well, no, not really. And here's why. Okay, so the problem is that unless you're running something like Chrome or something that basically has – I mean, you're really sure you're not going to get infected with something. Even in Linux, if it executes code, there's that potential.

Most people using a computer, especially coming from the Windows space, don't have any idea what they're doing. And so, you know, as far as having the alerts and stuff is concerned, a lot of people find that comforting, even if it is a little delusional, much like UAC. You know, it's like, oh, that makes me feel more comfortable. Even though it's completely pointless, it does offer some comfort. Sadly, yes, some companies do take advantage of that. But I do think that security in Linux for casual users, non-IT people, is terrible. And I'm going to say that again. I think if you're a non-IT person that literally just jumped over from Windows, you are going to execute everything you can get your hands on because you don't know any differently. You don't know about where the

packages are coming from, and you really do need something to basically babysit you because people aren't wired for that. They're just not. IT people are. Absolutely. IT people roll their eyes and think, god, you people are idiots. But the fact of the matter is I used to deal with people like this on a daily basis. Folks aren't wired for that. So they do need the option of a babysitter, but I don't think it should necessarily be enabled by default. I think when you

install a distro, that it should prompt you, are you a newbie or are you advanced? And then your experience is then catered accordingly. That's all I would say. Alright, let's take it to the hangout. Let's give Chris there with the epic beard a chance to because he didn't have his mic working last time I went to him.

Chris, is your mic working now? Oh, no, hold on. Still not. Man, two in a row. That's going to be your last chance, man. Yeah, you got to check that stuff with Pulse Audio somehow. It's all right. It's all right.

Anybody else on the Hangout panel want to chime in? Do you think Linux needs antivirus and visible security, more visible security alerts to the user? Anybody want to? And it's a placebo. Take it, Josh. Yeah, take it. I think it, Josh. Yeah, take it. I think Clam AV has its use, not for viruses on Linux, though,

but for scanning files that potentially have viruses that could be harmful to Windows because that still could island hop over to your Windows machines, say, if you're a novice. Well, I remember we just talked about it yesterday on LAS. You have that malware that is not really interested in much on your Linux box other than what your web browser is doing. It cares more about what Chrome and Firefox are up to. Exactly.

Can you hear me? Yeah, we hear you, Chris. Awesome. So what do you think? Well, I think that if you want to have something visual to give to a new user, you can have plenty of web browser plug-ins, whether for Chrome or Firefox, that you can throw in there. Things like NoScript or AdBlock Plus that can give you a visual that can keep bad things from executing within the browser. But I think that as far as a firewall or antivirus goes,

I mean, you have your Clam AV and you have a couple of other options. But when it comes to the firewall, I think that's an opportunity to teach. It's an opportunity to introduce people that aren't familiar to teach them how it works and how to maintain it. Because, I mean, as much as you would like to, you can't sit grandma down with any version of Linux and expect her to know how everything works and expect it to be safe. I mean, you have to carry on from there and give them the full experience and teach them. Yeah, very good points.

All right. So I tend to agree, and more so from the fact that I think I'm on board with you guys in regards to what users need to be comfortable and to kind of act as an educational experience. In fact, we aren't the first people to touch on this. Matt, you remember Xandros. Oh, yeah. Actually, I did a presentation, LinuxF on this. Matt, you remember Xandros. Oh, yeah. Actually, I did a presentation, LinuxFest03, I believe, on Xandros talking about the fact that – and one of the analogies I used is the screenshot you have up here giving an example is that they understand that just because you like to eat does not mean that you like to cook. They understand that just because you like to have your oil changed does not mean that you want to sit there in the driveway with your monkey suit on and get under the car.

I'm one of those guys. I'm like six flavors of lazy. There's no way I have any interest in doing any of that, and I would pose the same thing to a computer. So a lot of IT people have this belief that, well, they just need to learn. Really? What are the things that you have – that you pay to have someone do for you that you're not interested in learning? Translate that.

That's the point of it. A lot of people are willing and happy to pay for software or other tools to do that for them. Stepping outside of that bubble for a minute, I would say this is an opportunity to start promoting boxes that sit outside of the computer attached to your router that then run this stuff for you so that it is you know out of the box easy they don't have to worry about it and it's secure

so that's another option as well but no people don't want to learn this stuff i i can't tell you how many times that i hear that it's just like it's you know it's it's a novelty thought i think even young people um young people know how to run smartphones they know how to run angry birds they know how to play games they don't give a flying crap about a lot of this stuff unless they are in fact geeks or they are in fact interested in this stuff a lot of them aren't though you'd be surprised um good point good sad sad but it's true yeah no it is no actually you know i mean to us it seems foreign and strange but these people have other things in their lives that they're more interested in and i i can't hold i can't hold that against them i deal with them every day and

some of these people are really smart individuals that's what's you know a lot of people that's how a lot of us make money it's by dealing with these people totally yeah and it's and it's and it is wasteful and it is silly but it's true yeah um i just uh i worry about future generations not learning uh but look's something else that I worry about. And our next sponsor is going to help you solve a problem that is becoming more and more of a concern for a lot of us with a lot of the recent NSA revelations going on. ProXPN. Go to ProXPN.com. You know what they are? They are what I think is becoming one of the up-and-coming premier VPN solution providers. They got all types of VPNs, great VPNs, and they also use OpenVPN, which obviously I'm a huge fan of. So if you haven't thought about why you might want a VPN, obviously the first is to kind of

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We've had a lot of people asking us about VPNs, and that's how I would do it. So I thought, hey, this is how I'm going to do it. These guys should be a sponsor. That's right. Andre writes and he says, on OMG Ubuntu there's an article about the Android lock screen getting an official, quote unquote, not official at all, Ubuntu touch lock screen, where you can

replace the lock screen on your Android device with the Ubuntu touch. And of course, this is stirring up some controversy. It was done by a developer on the XDA forums. And I'm looking at a picture of it right now, and it looks like all the promo images you've seen of Ubuntu Touch running on Android. That clock with the dots going around. Right.

Yeah. And so he's asking, you know, what do we think about this kind of thing? Is this hurting Canonical? Is this evil to rip off a Linux company like this? Or is this just part of the way the web works now? I think it remains to be seen. I really do. I'm still kind of on the fence about it. Lately, the company as a whole has me just scratching my head as to what they're thinking. the company as a whole has me just scratching my head as to what they're thinking so no this isn't canonical to the deport that did the port some other guys took it and said i like the look of it i'm gonna make a port of it and kind of ripped off their branding a little bit oh oh that's naughty no that's not good that's not good at all that's not all right you know that's kind of where i fell down too i mean i like it i haven't i'm not gonna lie i did have it on my nexus oh nice hey you know you gotta try it but that's just because i'm just waiting for a boon to touch I did have it on my Nexus 7.

Oh, nice. Hey, you know, you got to try it. But that's just because I'm just waiting for Ubuntu Touch to finish. Deval writes in and says, Hello, Chris and Matt. I've been listening to the show for a while now. I've grown to be quite a fan of it. I would just like to say thank you for providing such a great,

amazing content day after week and week after week. I don't know how you do it, to be honest. Well, thanks, Deval. I do it by not pronouncing names correctly. I don't spend any time. That's right. Yeah. I would like to add that my dad finally runs Linux, thanks to you guys. His ancient one gigabyte, one gigabytes of RAM, 1.6 gigahertz Core 2 Duo finally got messed up enough that he couldn't connect to the internet anymore, so he finally agreed to let me put Linux on it. Now I have an option as the choice of distro, but since this is my dad and it was an old laptop, I decided to give Linux Mint 15 a try, thanks to your review of it on the show. And it looks gorgeous. It looks absolutely spectacular and my father was completely blown

away by it. Now I don't have to worry about him installing some malware toolbar.exe or anything like that on his machine. But wait, there's more. My sister came to me with a strange request the same day wanting to extract a couple of clips from a video at first i didn't think i had any choice and i thought i'd have to use windows movie maker then i remembered you guys talking about open shot i quickly downloaded onto my sister's laptop extracted the clips she needed uh through x11 vnc because she asked me to do it on her computer and i wasn't there can't thank you guys enough for introducing me to open shot and more keep up the great show and congratulations on the baby, Chris. That's awesome.

Yeah, you know, and throw some Splashtop on that, and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Yeah, and now that's, you know, Splashtop might be fast enough you could actually video edit. Oh, you could. I've actually done it. Yeah, you totally can. Yeah, I linked in the show notes there was an article that Pharonix ran that was, like, they did some sort of test,

and they were saying, like, Splashtop in some cases was, I don't know how this is possible. now i think about it but i think it was saying 10 times faster than vnc i based on my experiences i can't assign a numeric value to it but it is it it was painfully faster than vnc i'll i won't assign numbers to it but it was vnc and then going back to vnc or even team viewer or any of the others it was it was there's definitely a difference but vnc just it's horrible to use VNC after using Splash Top. It's just horrible. I don't know. I feel dirty.

I don't know. Hey, Matt, do you have any experience with BT Guard? Isn't that for guard? No. That's not a VPN solution. It is. Isn't that for just making sure you don't VPN from the wrong? It's something that worked really well

for about a year. It's not something that is really considered to be a secure. It's a little bit kind of the... They're dealing with some of the... Yeah, I would avoid it personally. I haven't had good experiences that I've heard about it, but I've not used it personally. So I can't speak. But yeah, I wouldn't. Google around about

BT guard problems, BT guard security and then come to your own conclusion. Hang out. I want to toss to you guys real quick. Anybody in there play with Splashtop or any other remote desktop solutions that you think are worth people checking out? Anybody had any experience with those? No, everybody's shaking their head no. Well, all right.

Let's check that out. Yeah, yeah. I thought Splashtop was pretty great. Oh, yeah. It will change the way you use your computer. You will literally – like all the stuff that you need to have your – you know when you're doing just like mild mouse access for that you have to come upstairs to do or go to another room to do? You'll be doing this from your recliner from now on, I'm telling you. Absolutely. And yes, TeamViewer is also a really good one, but I found that the performance is a wee bit better with Splashtop.

All right. Garrett writes in. He says, hi, Chris and Matt. Long viewer of the show. I try to catch it every episode. Congrats on the new kid. I've heard you say you do all your editing on the Bonobo. I would hope that means under Linux, he says. If it is, what

programs do you use for editing? I've been unable to find many good programs for video editing under Linux. So, Garrett, you have some back episodes to go catch up on, my friend. I do the, I could edit audio on the Bonobo. I can do the soundboard from the bonobo so like if uh if we were sitting around here and all of a sudden um i decided like uh oh crap you know hey i think that's anderson cooper oh my gosh it's anderson cooper everybody

something like that is driven from a linux box uh right now in the studio but the video editing is happening on on the final cut, on the Apple's final cut. I was thinking, though, possibly about this show. Might be our first regular show that I edit fully under the GNU slash Linux. Wow. That'd be kind of cool.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, OpenShot, I guess, would probably be the way to go. Yes, I'd say OpenShot's good, although KDE, well, it depends on what you're really doing as far as transitions and stuff. Yes, I'm going to say OpenShot probably is an option, but you might want to try the KDE Live, go that route, for especially running a KDE desktop. Whoa, Fox News alert.

Matt comes in with KDE Live. That was for the chat room. All right, Chris, this one comes from Cody. Hi there, Chris and Matt. Great show. Been watching since shortly before Brian left, and boy, has it gotten good. Anyway, I was wondering if I could get your input on something. I have a Raspberry Pi set up in my house as a combined NAS and deal in a media server with one terabyte of external hard drive attached via USB.

attached via USB. I'm looking to restrict the NAS port to where only I to, okay, I'm looking to restrict the NAS port only I had to select other few people could access it from Windows and access it at the same time, as I'm the only Linux user in the house, so which is easier to set up? A kind

of Raspbian, ITS, or something? Boy, this is getting clunky. But what I think he's saying is he wants to set up a NAS server and only give certain people access. And he says, congrats on the baby. So C Smith, Cody,

what, here's what I would say. Yeah. So he asked if Samba would be the right way to go. If you've got Raspbian already loaded on your Raspberry Pi, then you can start Samba. And then there is a command called SMB password. And you do SMB password dash E.

And then the Linux user that you want to have access and you do SMB password dash E and then the Linux user that you want to have access and you could just enable just those users. So you could enable your account and your buddy's account, but not the other people's account in your house. Right? Duff. Good stuff. Lazarus asked whatever happened to light works.

It's first of all, I can't get it running on arch. Yeah, it, it's still so long out and I, I, I'm, you know, honestly, I'm holding out for what openot plans on doing over time. I think that's probably in the long stretch is probably where it's going to come out winning. Although Kdenlive's been kind of my go-to thing here lately just because it does have more – it has additional functions that are useful to me.

Oh, yeah? useful to me oh yeah but uh you know but open shot's really cool if you want the blender functionality things like that but i think long term i think open shot will be the winner as they begin plugging in all the work that he's been putting yeah man that's what i was thinking it's like might as well get on board with that now yeah although i'll be honest the one advantage that light works i don't know if open shot does this it depends on if it just uses ffmpeg but um i record stuff in that crazy ass pro res format and we'll see and that all this stuff is and maybe this too i'm not sure about that specifically but all this stuff as as they he's completely retooling open shot i mean like totally from the ground up

everything yeah everything's different and so as that becomes to come about in fact he's trying to make it more pro level i think i think i'm trying to find his kickstarter page right now but i don't see i think i remember him saying he just did an update on his Facebook page. I don't know if it's... He's sending out all the goodies now. I think I remember they are working on that. So that would be interesting. All right.

So we got... I think this will be our last email. At this point, there's still... Let's see. If I tab over to the Linux box, how do I... How do you... Thunderbird doesn't... Oh, yeah.

Here we go. There's still 189 unread emails. Wow. And that didn't even open up BitMessage. I've been replying to BitMessages this morning. In fact, speaking of that, that fits in well with our next email from Sam. He says, hi, Chris and Matt. In one of your shows, Chris said that he doesn't watch much television anymore.

Instead, he subscribes to podcasts. I like the idea since I don't watch television either. So I started looking for interesting podcasts, not necessarily Linux specific, but I really didn't find anything worth listening to. So, would Chris mind sharing a list of the podcasts with us? That's a great idea. This

floats around a lot for me because I browse around to see what other folks have up their sleeves, but that's where I'll start with one podcast that I listen to every Sunday after Lass. After Lass is done, after it's published, after I've put the family to bed, I break out a beer,

and I listen to a little No Agenda with Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak. And they, Adam Curry, was experimenting with BitMessage this morning, so I've been corresponding with Adam Curry this morning over BitMessage, which was fun. And he's got an interest in it, and so it's cool to work with people

as they try out BitMessage for the first time. So no agenda is on my list of one of my regulars. And another podcast that I listen to every single week, otherwise I just jump around a lot, is Mission Log, a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast, where they're going in chronological air date of the Star Trek shows, where they're going in chronological air date of the Star Trek shows, starting with the original series, working all the way up to the end of Enterprise.

And they just did an episode 53, The Ultimate Computer, where M5... Oh, yes, I remember that. Yeah, M5 comes on board, and they plug in M5, and he takes over the Enterprise, and then chaos ensues. So I really enjoy that podcast that's one i listen to regularly but i really those there's another one i listen to on occasion uh this week in trek um you can tell i'm kind of been in a star trek kick lately i'll also i'll also occasionally listen to this american life uh and radio lab but not too often um and then otherwise i just kind of shop what about you? Do you have any podcasts you listen to on a regular basis? Not really so much

anymore. I used to listen to a lot of some of the Twit Network stuff off and on. Oh yeah, I'll tune into their live stream sometimes. I'm a buddy of Lamar Wilson, so I of course listen to all his stuff, or actually rather view it. So I watch that.

That's really, you know, I don't watch as many podcasts as i used to i'm just you know so caught up in my usual day-to-day stuff so i'm either out doing something or i'm or i'm watching you got caught with the netflix plague i understand you got the netflix plague yeah i got the i got plex what do you want i know right how great has plex been plex has really been awesome yeah yeah yeah yeah so i've been i've been catching some pretty good shows. I think out of all of the sort of stuff we do in these segments are like, Chris is solving a problem in his house

and now he's going to talk about it. Or Chris solved a problem for a client. That's honestly where a lot of the topics come from. Plex was like, oh man. I just want to do a whole Plex show. I love Plex so much these days. I even signed up and bought a lifetime membership of my Plex. And originally when I said it, I was like, I'm not going to buy that. I'm just going to use the freebie.

But then I was out. I had the HTC One. It has fantastic freaking speakers on it. And I was like, gosh, we know, we're going to Costco. We're going to be sitting in the truck while we wait for something to get delivered. I've got 30 minutes to kill with my kids. MyPlex pulled up one of their favorite little shows and, you know, perfectly viewable, perfectly watchable from the HTC One right there while we're sitting in the Costco parking lot. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure I could do that from Netflix, but this is my collection. Exactly. Because, I mean, I'm in the same boat and that's awesome. I was like, okay. Yeah, and I'm sure I could do that from Netflix, but this is my collection. Exactly, because I'm in the same boat, and that's exactly what I do. I mean I have a lot of stuff on Vudu that basically where you buy a DVD or Blu-ray, and it comes with a little slip, and you put it on your Vudu setup. I've got that. I've got the Netflix. I've got the Hulu. But yeah, I find myself using Plex more and more simply because it's DVDs and Blu-rays that I've backed up so this is content that I'm excited about

and not Netflix. Yeah, exactly, and the quality's a little better. Way better. And the other thing that has happened to me I've been bitten by is that age-old problem where A, it doesn't work under Linux natively, and B, they pull content off of there from time to time and then you're kind of

left off. Oh, shoot! Shoot! Crap crap there's one more topic i want to talk about before we go i shouldn't have waited this long matt dang it so you and i asked during the live stream last week let's just ask the hangout panel right now just curious anybody on the hangout just say i if you are considering rolling your own mail server? Oh, yes. All right. You got one. I. Two.

I. All right, there's two. So two out of the group of you. I don't know how many people. Wait, is there eight people on top of five people? So when we asked in the IRC chatroom, look at all these I's in the IRC right now, right? Look at all these I's. Oh, yeah.

Look at all these I's. All right. So when we asked last week, because last week LavaBit shut shut down um tour mail was shut down secure circle shut down okay in like a two-week time span the private email industry all the top dogs have just basically left the market and i got to thinking about the fact that when you're on a Google Mail, a Hotmail, whatever it is, you have no idea who's asking for what, when it happens. Exactly. You don't know if you get swept up in some sort of mass surveillance like what happens with the Verizon and other telco phone metadata monitoring.

And if you host your own email server in your house or on your own private locked up VPS, at least they have to come to you and they have to say, we want access to your email, Mr. Fisher. And they have to serve me a warrant. And it no longer becomes a convenience for them, really. Right. It's not something where eventually the companies are going to build in these automated extraction processes to save them time and money. It's not something where they can just put a tap right in front of my house and monitor. Well, maybe. And it's one of these things where at least I would have some sort of visibility, even if I can't prevent it from happening. Even if there's no legal recourse, I at least am aware of when it happens. And so these things got me thinking. And so I set up a mail server using some open source software from my grandparents recently. It was part of my grandpa's birthday. I got him a.com using our last 249

code. And then I or Linux 249. And then I forwarded that to their own personal mail server that I preset up for them on that Nexus 7. So they just push the little mail button on the Nexus 7 and it launches into their private mail account. And because they were on MSN

for years since MSN was a dial-up service back in the day when it competed with AOL. I said, okay, grab it, grab it. Let's get you off MSN. Let's get you on... We have a good in-family joke URL that we use that everybody thought was really great and had a good laugh at.

I set all this up and I thought, maybe I should do this for myself. I'm getting emails from people outside the United States all the time who knows what the hell they want to talk to me about, who knows what the hell is going to be in that email, who knows what list they might be on when I'm responding back to them. And so I've been thinking about this a little bit. But I don't like the idea of having a mail server in my house. It's a pain in the ass. Oh, yeah. It doesn't

at first pass, it doesn't seem very practical. I mean, when you first think about it. Here's what I think. Here's the here's the sort of like thing that gnaws at me is it's one of those things where it's hard to quantify a reason to do it today fully. Oh, yeah, man. Maybe the NSA is going to monitor my shit, but I don't care. I'm not saying anything. I don't care. It's not like I'm all that important. But the reality to me seems like so there was this now we're getting down to the conspiracy range.

to me seems like, so there was this, now we're getting down to the conspiracy range, but there was this story that ran this week that the NSA plans to reduce their system administration staff by 90% and automate the majority of the task automation. That seems obvious. Of course that's going to happen, right? Sure. Absolutely. And so they do this task automation. They're going to automate all of this data analysis, and pretty soon it's just going

to be computers looking at this stuff, indexing, storing information, and it's going to be every now and then a one's going to go in this database first. So Matt likes cats. Well, let's put a one in that field, all right? Matt likes burgers. Put a one in that field. And over 20 years, they're going to have all of this information about you that you have no say in opting out of that system. And you're going to have all of these weird things that will happen. You'll have profiling that happens. You'll have analysis that happens. You'll have assumptions that are made based on you contributing 20, 30, whatever it's going to be, years, 10 years of information into the system.

And at that point, when that arrives, you'll look back and go, well, shit, maybe I should have done something about that back early when I found out about this shit was going on. I knew it was a bad idea all along. I knew this was going to happen, but I never did anything. And now it's too late. And to quantify this.

And for people that are thinking, oh my gosh, this sounds like unfiltered stuff. Cause I understand that at first pass, it doesn't let me put this into something we all experience. Junk mail, mailing lists and catalogs for really weird stuff. Okay. This is an example of being thrown into that kind of bucket on a very,

you know, platonic casual scale. Don't try to appease the into that kind of bucket on a very platonic casual scale. Don't try to appease them. People that say this is unfiltered stuff are just morons that aren't appreciating the situation that we're in. I'm not trying to appease them. I'm trying to help people process that information. Open source Linux software is here to help us with all of this.

Let's not hide from it. Let's embrace the fact that this is a new calling for open source software. This is a new need that open source software can solve. And I think we should embrace that fact. I think it's worth celebrating that aspect of it, that thankfully we've all been sitting here championing a platform and a methodology and a theology that in the long run is going to protect us from an oppressive government, at least at the technological level. And I don't think we should shy away from that. protect us from an oppressive government at least at the technological level and i don't think we should shy away from that i don't it's still it it it's it demeans it's it's reductive of the overall issue to say no that's unfiltered related that come on screw those guys well i'm not even

trying to appease them a lot of times when people feel that way it's a defensive mechanism because we're taught to not question things that's true we want to get we want to get more people to to you know actually rationally think about things. It's not about appeasing them. It's helping them to see something in a new way. Maybe it's like someone trying Linux for the first time. Well, I've heard that's stupid because I heard it was this and I heard it was that.

But by getting them to actually quantify something they can relate to, it's like, oh, okay, well, that makes sense to me. So by using that catalog example, that is an example of how that has happened. I see what you're saying. Transferring back over. Factually, it will happen.

You will end up in a list that you don't want to be on. That's reality. When all this server harvesting garbage goes on, it will happen. Next thing you know, you're going to be on a list for – I like to explode cats or something because you looked up – you have explosive diarrhea on one list. And you love cats on the other, and that gets intermixed. Things happen. There was something I was looking for just last week for Unfiltered, and I opened up the tab. And, of course, in Chrome, you just start typing, and it starts Google.

And I started typing, and I said, this is a DuckDuckGo search. And it was like, I don't know. I don't remember what it was, but it was like one of those things where I was like, I don't really want to log of this. You know what's funny? To show you why the system, and there's, so if you remove all conspiracy from it, you're just going to have a system that just doesn't work anyways. I'll give you an example right now. If I pull out my HTC One and I look at my Google Now screen, Google Now is giving me driving directions to the nearest Walmart. Matt, I don't go to Walmart.

But during Coder Radio today, Michael said the phrase Walmartification. And I Google searched Walmartification just to get the spelling of it because I thought it'd be a great title suggestion. Because I Google searched Walmartification, apparently Google Now thinks I'm a Walmart shopper and is presenting me a Google Now card

with driving directions to the nearest Walmarts. And this is just... I don't want to be in the system as a Walmart user. I forget the video. There was a really awesome video that talked about the danger of Google having some of the power that it does, and it was a guy that was calling up

to check on the status of something he'd ordered and it was i think it was like a new pair of pants or something he's like well according to our records you know you've been to the doctor recently because of your blood pressure and oh your weight's kind of going up there we need to look into that oh no he's ordering a pizza that's what it was he was ordering a pizza and it went through his medical history and all this other stuff because it was just readily available you know that kind environment, that kind of world, isn't really that unlikely to be that far off, and it's kind of scary. That's not tinfoil hat stuff.

Stuff we deal with now, 10, 15 years ago, hell, 20 years ago, was totally tinfoil. Here we are. That's kind of how I see it. I would leave you with this final thought, too. If you like the ability of running your own email server, if you like the idea of having your own file server, if you like that, then it is worth being a user of that just to encourage those developers to continue on. It's a cool skill to learn.

It's cool. And it's kind of neat to be able to set it up for people, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, so I think I might I think I might cover how I set up that mail system for them because I used a really cool open source package that I think a lot of people could use to get going. I did it like I did it in an afternoon. Oh, nice. Yeah. So I think it worked out pretty well. So this is a point of, this is maybe a topic

I'd like to get more feedback from you guys out there on, is how you've rolled your own mail servers. So email us, linuxactionshow at jupyterbroadcasting.com. Of course, love to hear all of your feedback out there. You can join us Monday afternoons for Linux Action Show Unplugged. I think, also, this is a long shot.

If anybody out there has a Mumble server and like to help us get that up and running, I don't know anything about Mumble, really. I mean, I know what Mumble is, but I've never set up a Mumble server. I don't really want to. I don't know if I want to use a Mumble host or which one's good.

So if you have an experience out there, if you run a Mumble server and want to help the community out, get in touch with us. Just email me or the show, chris at jupyterbroadcasting.com and the show, chris at jupiterbroadcasting.com and linuxactionshow at jupiterbroadcasting.com. I wanted to give a special plug.

I'll put the link in the chat room right now. Professor Messer? Professor Messer. I think is how you say his last name. It's a YouTube channel. Yeah, I know. And it's one I stumbled across this weekend when prepping for LAS,

and I thought I'd just give people. He just uploaded a couple of CompTIA Linux Plus tutorials, Linux Plus common bootloader commands, Linux device drivers, Linux hardware resources. It's for getting your CompTIA Linux Plus exam, and he's got videos that go through those uh those sections of the lx uh lx 101 and lx 101 l l i lpic1 and 1.1 it's anyways if you if you're looking at the linux plus exams or you're curious about the material they cover uh his youtube channel not only has those but lots of other good stuff in there he's got uh a plus

hardware information in there he's got network Plus video groups in there and study group sessions in there. I think he is a college professor himself or somebody in that degree who covers this stuff. I thought it was just an interesting resource and it's as current as of two days ago with some of this stuff. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Professor Messer

is the... Professor Messer. Professor M-E-S-S-E-R is the channel on YouTube. It might be a little good extra reading if you guys are looking for something afterwards. Hang out, guys. Thanks for joining us. Anybody want anything to touch on before we go? Last chance, hang out.

I'm done. All right, Don. Well, thanks for joining us. It was good to see you. I'll see you again. All right, very good. Chris, wonderful beard, and Josh, thanks for chatting with us, guys. It was good to see from you. And everybody else who didn't speak up, thanks for joining us, you guys. You're a good panel. I'm going to hang up on you guys now and things you want to see from the show, just let us know. It's very early in the massaging process.

Lots of possibilities still, and we'd love to get more of your input, especially as we get to a Mumble server or something like that. You guys can join us regularly and hang out in there and talk with us. I think that'll be a lot of fun. Don't forget, we want your feedback. Linux Action Show at jupyterbroadcasting.com. Or if you use that contact link at the top of our site, just for you guys, just for this show. Well, really, everybody gets it now, but I did it because of the show.

I added the subject line. Huh? Subject line, Matt. How about that? Nice. I like it. I like the format. I think it's going to work out really well.

Absolutely. All right, everyone. Thanks so much. We'll see you on Sunday for the big show. See you back here next Monday. Thank you.