LINUX Unplugged - Episode 10: The Ubuntu Hangover | LINUX Unplugged 10

Episode Date: October 15, 2013

What does a post Ubuntu world look like, which distro would rise to the top? Our specially crafted team of armed and dangerous Linux users weigh in.PLUS: Rise up against your bearded distro gatekeepers! If you’re an experienced Linux user, it might be time to break out of your distro box and help push upstream forward.

This is Linux Unplugged, the weekly Linux podcast observing the Linux landscape from its unplugged observatory high above it all. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. I don't know about all that high above it stuff. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. I don't know about all that high above it stuff, but I thought it sounded good. Sounds good to me. Sometimes we kind of get down into it, actually. This is true. You know, this week, one of the things I want to talk to you about, Matt, is how to shake off this Ubuntu hangover that I have right now. Oh, my goodness. So to really fully appreciate this week's episode of Linux Unplugged, there is a little homework involved. You don't have to.

I think it'll stand on its own. But if you have the time, you should go back. On Sunday, we did Linux Action Show's Ubuntu 13.10 review. And that's sort of the jumping off point for some of the stuff we're going to cover in this episode. Then on Monday, we did an episode of Coder Radio called Betting on Linux,

which I managed to turn into a therapy session. And really, really dug into sort of the issues I have around the Ubuntu Dash and why it sort of viscerally bothers me and some of the issues I think it might cast about the Ubuntu project in whole. But again, not critical that you listen to that, but I think it might give you some context because this week we're going to follow up on some comments

that you guys have made on our review, some comments on learning Linux. And then we're going to kind of roll that into the big picture of Linux, like maybe a world where Ubuntu isn't king and a world where maybe not all distros live forever and they change. And sometimes people have to go somewhere else and how Linux users, especially the savvy ones, can kind of control that and sort of instead of be victim to it, sort of control what their destiny is. I like that idea. I definitely think it's important to remember that, you know, different strokes, different folks, right? Yeah.

And what goes up must come down, Matt. That's right. Perhaps, perhaps. But why don't we start with a little follow-up for this here show? An ongoing topic. We've gotten a lot of emails about it, and I've kind of had to be a little picky on what we put in here just because we've gotten so many, which is awesome. But we talked a lot about recently with kids and learning Linux and learning computers in general.

And we got a lot of emails from teenagers, young teens, and even younger than teenage years saying, hey, don't think it's all of us. That's awesome. And good for you guys, definitely. Mike wrote in, and he says says learning the nuts and bolts matt and chris not everybody either wants or can understand how things work to some their computer is an appliance and nothing else so here's his background he says i happen to be a one of the weird guys who does need to know as a kid in the late 50s i build my i built my own radios learned how to read schematics and solder i was an i was also the bicycle repair guy for the neighborhood.

At 16, my first paid job was an electric golf cart repair guy. After two years in the Army as a draftee from 66 to 68, I got a job as a programmer trainee in spite of not having a degree. I just scored very high in the IBM aptitude test. First language I learned was the IBM 360 assembler. He's also picked up five distinct assembly languages. Today at 66, I still program and do web stuff and administer systems including OpenSUSE,

Debian, and Ubuntu, and I'm still being paid to play with the toys. I also have an advanced class in ham radio license as well as a commercial pilot license with instruments. I can teach almost anybody to program, but if it's not fun and enjoyable, they'll suck at it. Mike. So this is a great point that Mike makes

here. And you know what else I loved about mike's emails uh so we have we've gotten emails from uh 10 year olds 13 year olds 16 year olds saying hey don't don't count us out and now you got mike here at the other end of the spectrum saying uh you know at 66 we still like to do this stuff too you know my grandpa who's um quite a few years beyond mike uh also you know he loves playing with linux he loves playing with netbooks. And now he's getting into the open tablets. I gave him. That's cool.

I guess I had a tablet that was going to be the Spark tablet for a while. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I gave it to my grandpa so that way he could load whatever he wants on it because he's just he loves doing that kind of stuff. And I think he's just hit 80, actually. That's awesome. But, you know, it keeps you it keeps you feeling young. It keeps you involved and active and doing cool stuff, you stuff. Yeah, totally. It is good to see that.

And so while maybe the general populace and a decreasing number of people will be specialists, there's still some out there. Now, Brian wrote in with a response to last week's Linux Unplugged, where we titled it the Ubuntu situation. He says, I think everyone is overreacting. I've been running Ubuntu 13.10 for a few weeks now, and it keeps on getting better and better. Other than the

smart scopes, which I just choose not to use for the online results. This is one of the best releases so far. Ubuntu needs to be stable and boring for a release, maybe even for a few cycles. Unity changed everything, and they're now getting to the point of polish, and they shouldn't screw that up.

Everyone outside the hardcore Linux community wants a stable OS. We are geeks. We like the bleeding edge. Do we complain when OS X doesn't ship the latest X? No, we do not. We don't even know about it. That is the mindset that we need to keep in mind. They want this to go big time. The focus on mobile is important. I can live with a stale OS for a few cycles.

And that's a good perspective to get on the show. I think it's a neck, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then Zach wrote in with another follow-up to the Ubuntu situation. Zach wrote, hey, Chris and Matt, I have a few comments regarding the most recent Linux unplugged. Great show, by the way.

He says he likes the format. Good compliment to the big show. First, regarding Noah's email about young Padawan learning about Linux. I would recommend, probably not right now, but sometime in the future when he gets a little more Linux under his belt, taking a look at Linux from scratch. Yes, it's hardcore and pretty damn hard, especially for a newbie. But between Linux from scratch and Gentoo, I learned so go-ram much about Linux and how it works when I first started out. See, now he's mixing Star Wars and Firefly references. I was going to say, there's some Firefly up there.

Yeah. I obviously wouldn't use it as a daily driver, but for learning an experiment, it's a great tool. If you could pass that along and suggest to him or mention the show, that would be awesome. Second, Christopher, regarding your recent cock-up with your KDE configs, why aren't you using Git to keep revisions of your.files? It's such a great tool and it's a great way to keep track of any text-based configs, which they all should be.

Make a Git folder at the base of home and then make a git.ignore that filters out everything that you don't explicitly allow. That's a good tip. That's an excellent idea, actually. Yeah, then take a look at git.ignore as an example, and he includes it. And he says you can also use a syncing tool to keep the same config files between your machines.

Just some thoughts. Thanks for making the awesome shows and keep up the good work. May the force be with you. You know, I did kind of admit that I probably should have been doing a better job of backing up my KDE config. I admit to that. But, you know, I'm happy with my GNOME now. Exactly. And it's almost a mood issue. And I would also go so far as to say it's not a matter of not – I mean obviously you know how, but it's also a matter of you have X number of hours in the day.

You have X number of tasks to be done in that day. And where are you spending that time? And honestly, I don't know if setting that up really would have crossed your mind with as much as you've got going on. Yeah, I suppose it didn't because I did know it was technically possible. Sure. on yeah i suppose it didn't because i did know it's technically possible um sure it's also seems like one of those things that you could probably if you just had like some time on a weekend to set it up once you'd probably be good for a while but it's a cool tip though i mean i got to get props for it's like it's really really a creative idea yeah like yeah it's an interesting use of

git too we've heard a few creative uses of git uh and that's just another one uh okay so now we're going to kind of shift gears and get into uh some the stuff that I think is probably our jumping off point for our talk about the big picture around Linux this week. Danny wrote in. And Danny said, please continue to beat the canonical drumbeat. You in this case are not wrong. The issue here is greater than a simple feature that can be easily turned off. The issue is a canonical trend. I think Shuttleworth's vision is extraordinary.

I think he's right on with convergence, but canonical at present is incapable of delivering on its promise. Hubris then showed itself when instead of going and selling his vision to a hardware partner capable of fulfilling it, instead he goes to the carriers and to interweb financing to complete his vision. This is when we meet the underwhelming and self-congratulatory execution. The sad ballad has played itself out over and over again. The Dash, Ubuntu TV, Unity Desktop, Upstart, and Mirror. The same sad song. I ask you, where is the shame in perfecting the desktop experience? Where is the

pride in being the creator of the most popular Linux base? Where is the love in perfecting the desktop experience? Where is the pride in being the creator of the most popular Linux base? Where is the love for the open source community which Ubuntu is built on top of and made it what it is today? So, Chris, as long as the sad song plays, please continue to beat the drum. Get it out of here. What do you think, Matt? Are we now seeing a history of sort of over-promise, under-delivering? I think it's important to report on it. I think it's important to maintain the discussion about it. Where I draw the line though because I think this needs to be talked about and shared and whatnot, but I think where people need to draw the line is that if it's affecting you on your personal desktop to the point where you draw the line in the sand and say no more, move on to something that's not creating problems for you.

no more. Move on to something that's not creating problems for you, and then continue the discussion in a rational, adult way, like what we're doing on the show. I think that's an important way to handle it. I think it's a healthy way to handle it. I think that we should all make those businesses fail. That's basically the summary of it, yeah. Yeah, I completely agree with you. Now, I think Danny could have a point here. We are starting to see a bit of a trend uh you know unity was sold to us as the ultimate touch interface for all and then we realized okay we got to rewrite it a whole bunch of time ubuntu tv was sold to us like three ces ago and here we are it's still not there i don't know if i necessarily agree with upstart and mirror i think uh i think the jury is still out on upstart it it was out before system d it solved a problem and a need and it's continued to function well and you know some people would say swapping out something like

that's a big change mirror obviously not looking great at the moment but it's already playing out okay on mobile and i think it makes some sense there so we'll see on the desktop i'm not convinced but i'm willing to give it a little more time a little more time on mirror i see for me i think that i would need to see it accomplish a specific task or some sort of a purpose uh perhaps it's providing uh an experience with steam that maybe i'm not getting with another distro which at this time it's not let's say that does in fact happen over time it solves a problem yeah solve some sort of problem that i could identify then okay fine i might stick with ubuntu right now i'm using it on this other desktop simply because it's installed

it works it's fine it's doing what it needs to. It's okay. I don't care. I just don't get too excited about that because the fact Linux has so many choices, I choose not to get all excited and butthurt over Ubuntu's decisions and the team that develops that. If they want to do something stupid, hey, more power to you. Go ahead. Yeah, and I actually think what we are witnessing is not necessarily an Ubuntu problem. I think this is going to happen over and over again.

And I think if you look back at the history of Linux, this already has happened just in different iterations. And this is where we get into the big picture aspect of Linux and why Linux is stronger than any one distribution and why that actually really matters and why I actually think that Linux users today are not taking advantage of that fact. matters and why I actually think that Linux users today are not taking advantage of that fact. But before we get to that, before we kind of shift gears into our main topic today, I want to thank our sponsor, Ting.com. Ting is mobile that makes sense, my friends, and my mobile service provider and Matt's mobile service provider. That's right. They got the new Note 3 out now, Matt. I'm just putting that out there, just letting you know. Oh, yeah. Now, one of the things that I think is absolutely fantastic about Ting is how they do their rates.

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It's very cool. So go over to linux.ting.com. Tell Ting, thanks for supporting Linux Unplugged. And then go get yourself some great service and a fantastic phone. Go to linux.ting.com. And thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. They get a winner bell for being awesome supporters. All right, Matt.

So I wanted to continue in the vein of digging through some follow-up, which will bring us to our main topic this week. We had a really good post in the subreddit LinuxActionShow.reddit.com this week from Raccoon1215. And the post was titled, I use old crusty Debian stable. And I love it. This is such a great post. I want to just read a couple of highlights to kind of kick us off here. He said,

I was inspired by the recent discussion on Linux Unplugged, and I thought I would talk about my desktop and server distro of choice, Debian stable, technically CrunchBang, and why I prefer it to, say, the way of Arch doing things,

i.e. bleeding edge. You kids and your fancy new shiny GUIs and your Unity and your Cinnamon with your GNOME and your KDE. My desktop was bland, gray, and that's the way I like it. And for reference, here's my default settings of my desktop.

It's a very nice looking, very clean looking desktop. Minimal, for sure. He says it is bland, it is gray. And here's another example of it with like Konky and doing some awesome stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, it looks really nice.

It is definitely a very good looking desktop. He goes on to say on a separate point, I don't want my desktop and window manager to change on me. Chris brought up the example of running a system update and having GNOME update from 3.8 to 3.10. If such a drastic change happened to me, I would panic. I don't want that to happen. To quote RMS, get it out of here, which is right there. He goes on to say, yes, packages are old and they don't and won't ever get updated until the next version of Debian, but that's a good

thing. I don't want some program I use every day to suddenly change its behavior. It should be predictable. I don't want the init system to suddenly change to systemd, even if it does look awesome, until the next release cycle. In addition to that, sometimes old packages are just better than newer ones. Sometimes newer versions of things lose functionality.

In conclusion, if I had to sum it all up, it would be this. Unplanned change is bad, and Debian understands this. Well, I think it's, you know, he's finding something that works well for him, and he's someone that probably likes,

well, not probably he definitely likes his experience oh you know predictable he wants to wake up and know that his even after an update and everything that's going on everything's going to look and feel as it did everything's going to operate the way he expects it to and i think that's awesome i guess so i mean i totally see that i i'm not quite to his degree it smacks a little bit of of being afraid of upstream like um it just if people i think i don't know i'm like him to a lesser degree yeah and i can see that i can see that i'm not near as extreme there are some things i just really want a hell of a lot i want to get the i want to get the arch into the

arch repos and see if some of the latest greatest stuff i do so like i think i called it you know there's an old school way uh this was uh earthy uh i just, I just read the nick, Earthy Pornstar. Earthy Pornstar commented that I called it the old school way or people who haven't gone rolling haven't tried it in years, I believe were comments I recently made. And he says it's not just about updates breaking stuff, it's about general stability, compatibility and functionality. He goes on, and I thought this was an interesting comment. I, like all Linux desktop users, am clearly downright insane for not using OS X as a daily driver desktop. Yeah, Apple Inc. is evil and all of that, but if we look at this from a factual, architectural, and even practical viewpoint, there is no comparison. All the best parts of

Macintosh plus BSD Unix, all highly polished, highly stable workstation quality, because obviously OS X only runs on max therefore apple can write close to 100 of the drivers um he goes on to say the linux um he says oh actually i want to point this out he says a resulting in old school workstation stability that is downright perfection to be honest i don't know if i agree with that i wouldn't say perfection i would say an expected experience would probably be the kind of okay good way to put it right yeah that's a good way to put it um and and uh he you know his point here is that I wouldn't say perfection. I would say an expected experience would probably be the kind of stuff I'd say. that there is a really good compelling solution on the Mac side, right? But it comes at not only a premium price that not everyone's willing to pay, but it also comes at a limited set of options.

Basically, on the Mac side, you can either do it or you can't do it. True. You can't make it. I'd say that's true because, I mean, in the past on my wife's Mac, for example, just the adventures of trying to get HP printers to work or not work or will this update break it, it is not perfection. I quite honestly get greater stability out of any one of my Linux computers than we see on OS X, quite honestly. That being said, that's with drivers.

I would also say it's very boring. It's extraordinarily boring. You really can't do a whole ton of tweaking with it. The only reason I ever find myself in front of one is if I need something software specific that I'm not getting on Linux. I'll always use that over using Windows. Here's the point, and this is funny because it shows you there's several different ways to think about this. I take his last point here, and I see it a completely different way. He says, the Linux desktop is easily still a good five years behind Windows and OS X.

Without LTS, Linux wouldn't even be in the ballpark. So let's take the five-year thing and really look at this logically. Factually speaking, when Windows 7 first came out and I had my mom's ton of peripherals that I wanted to see what would work, 80 to 85% of them would not work because they were not compatible drivers. Fact, okay? Linux, all of them worked. No, I never – I wasn't running Linux on our computer. Another thing, we look at wireless drivers. Drivers specifically would be a big thing there.

Also, just overall stability. Even in Windows 8, it's more stable than it is in the past, but it's not that awesome. I think you're right. I mean I think you're right in terms of drivers and kernel stability. I think what he's talking about is because I think in this context he's talking about certain applications perhaps like Final Cut and Photoshop and things like that that are just way ahead that but that should be stated as such. Not that the platform is five years behind, but the fact that the companies that produce SUSE Enterprise, all of these enterprise-grade distros, they are a picture of time. They're like, you know, when we look out into space and we see planets come back into us, the reflection of light from millions of years ago. And so it does not represent the true state of the Linux desktop. So in a sense, in a way, you could argue that LTS also holds Linux back because

as we are rapidly evolving at a pace that is way beyond what commercial software evolves at, as we are rapidly evolving, that is lost by these LTS snapshots. Now, that is a benefit in the enterprise. And that is a benefit for folks that want Debian stable, right? That is a good thing. Right. But in terms of actually pushing the envelope forward, seeing where the innovation is in the Linux desktop, you lose it a little bit. You lose it in the forest because you can't see it. And I think, in a sense, LTS is actually doing the opposite of what his argument is.

Now, it has a role. It obviously has a role, right? But I actually think for desktop users that are savvy enough, people who are comfortable with Linux, I think using an LTS is sort of shortchanging yourself. I don't agree with that. I think that it basically comes down to two happy mediums. I would not want to be in a world where we only had an LTS because I think that would be incredibly limiting. Nor would I want to be in a world where we only have rolling releases and bleeding edge stuff either. I think you need both because honestly, if I'm going to put one of my family members on a Linux distro, it's going to be something long-term and something I don't have to screw with, quite frankly.

I don't want to roll updates for them. I don't want them doing anything to it other than letting me manage it when I have time, and that's a long-term release. For myself, I'll probably take a bleeding edge option. letting me manage it when I have time, and that's a long-term release. For myself, I'll probably take a bleeding-edge option. Well, okay. So let me jump from there, and then we'll roll into Mumble folks here in a sec too.

So for you and I, who are hardy enough, and of course millions of other people, who are hardy enough to sort of tuck and roll when something happens in our rolling distribution, I think we are benefiting Linux more so in the long run. So I think if we zoom out and we look at what's happening to Ubuntu, there could be an argument, at least on the desktop side. Now, maybe they're about to be a shooting star on mobile or whatever the future of these converged devices, maybe they'll come out on top as like a shooting star of that category. That maybe is yet to be be seen but if we accept that a lot more people these days are less satisfied with the ubuntu desktop and that in in some regards is in a decline watching the events around ubuntu unfold i believe once again is teaching us that

something who anyone who has watched linux for a long time has probably noticed and like myself refuses to probably fully accept that maybe all of them, at least not most of them in the grand scheme of things, most distros die or change for the worse. And yet many Linux users are still, they remain afraid of the raw Linux experience without the protection of their distro masters. They fear total system havoc without some bearded gatekeeper at the repo preventing mass chaos from entering their system via a system update. And they believe that only the distros can protect them from this.

The great distro masters. You know, and the thing is, Matt, is four months now into the Arch experiment. Yeah. Using Arch as my daily driver in production and play. And yeah, we just had Skype crash on us on an Arch rig. Is that because of Arch? I don't think so.

I think it's because Skype is crap. Skype hasn't updated in months. But using it as my daily driver, it's taught me a really big lesson. And it's not about how elite Arch is. And it's not about how wikis can actually not suck. Those are lessons I did learn, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I did learn is that upstream is amazing. The near real-time work that is being done is inspiring and encouraging me as the host of the Linux Action Show to push on. It is fun to watch and a joy to use. And all of that is lost when you live inside this distro box. And I think there could be a case to be made that if you, like me, enjoy toying with your computer more than actually playing video games,

then perhaps using a rolling Linux distro, it's better for Linux and it's better for all that upstream code. It's in everyone's best interest if we all live outside the box and we live a little closer to upstream. If we can bear it, if we can be exposed to the bumps that come along with that. I would agree with that. Yeah, I think the more people that are living on the bleeding edge, the better because that just, of course, as bug reports come out and things like that, it's making a better experience so that when the next long-term release comes along on another distro or whatever that is, it's better for everybody. It's a great ecosystem to live in. I think that's awesome. And it's something that we miss in a Windows or OS X world.

You're talking about very limited testers and whatnot. I think you lose it just kind of even just living in the distro box. I'll give you two examples that applied to me this week. Okay. Two new apps that have rolled out, both covered by OMG Ubuntu, which is ironic because you can't really use either one of them in Ubuntu. First is CoreBird. It is a really, really, really nice Twitter client that is completely designed for GNOME 3. Minimal, does exactly what you need, has great features, has notification support.

But if you want to install it on Ubuntu, you're kind of out of luck if you're on 1304 because it requires GNOME 3.10. And if you want to install it on Ubuntu 13.10, then you've got to go get the GNOME 3.10 PPAs, install those first, and then break your Unity installation and then install Corebird, right? Right. That's one app. That's one new app that's coming out that is really interesting to follow. Second new app that's coming out, Polari, an awesome new IRC app for GNOME, which again is like IRC, totally follows the GNOME design, looks absolutely incredibly amazing. I have it installed right now on my Archbox, can't get it on Ubuntu. Right, exactly.

And this is what I'm talking about, where I enjoy watching these new stars be born. And as soon as I see a news article on it on my rolling distro, I go get it. And I have it installed. And now I get to play with it. And I think that, and see, you're the type of person that really values that experience.

But there are a lot of people out there that don't. And a lot of people there that do. And so I think there is going to be a balance there. I think that as the people that really want that bleeding edge experience, they'll test these apps and they'll just get better and better and better. And by the time they do roll down to

an Ubuntu type distribution, the people that are wanting to remain in that space will also be able to enjoy it. It's kind of like paying for cable and getting your TV now versus waiting for it to end up on Netflix. It really is. There's no right answer. It's just I think everybody's kind of

got their... Yeah, it's interesting. It's a good analogy. Or it's like, you know, it's funny. There's no right answer. It's just I think everybody's kind of got their – Yeah, it's interesting. It's a good analogy. Or it's like – Yeah. You know, what's funny is like on Usenet, Blu-ray movies of stuff that's like two months not even released yet will show up on Usenet. It's like, wow, really? It's like you could get it – yeah. Handycam. And I don't know.

I mean maybe I'm wrong here. And we can ask. I'm totally up to Mumble Room. Chime in. But I feel like if Polari and Corebird have more users using them, then those apps get better, and then we have a better chance of fighting the proprietary commercial desktops. But when we live inside these cages where our bearded masters make sure everything's perfect for us, we don't really push the envelope forward as fast as we could. Your thoughts, MumbleRoom? Your thoughts, Mumbaroon?

Okay, see, the thing is, since I guess I'm the only one talking here, the thing is, it depends on what your situation is, what context you're using Linux in. If you want to take the risk of only upstream packages or you want a more stable solution for it. So while the upstream philosophy and the arch philosophy applies uh to some people it may not apply to other people so again you have to look at your situation it does not actually matter what um what philosophy you drive your linux box with it matters what that box does for you uh secondly there are still risks to getting upstream.

And so you have to make a choice whether you want the latest and greatest and whether you want just a new IRC client or are you happy with your old one and you can take the safe option of not breaking your desktop. Right, I agree. And so I think what I'm talking about

is the category of people that listen to this show, the people who are a little more savvy, a little more comfortable. And I would say, like, haven't all of us seen the scenario where you have a problem with, like, say, XChat, and you submit a bug, and then it gets marked as,

it's not our problem, it's downstream? Yeah, we've all seen this. I guess if I wanted to pipe in and say something, when I was distro hopping, I was fine with getting the latest and greatest on a distro, but now anymore, I just want to install something and let it sit. If I want a newer

package of a software, I will usually go search for that Debian file or that RPM file and get it myself, rather than relying on the distributions or repositories. That only gets you so far though because pretty soon you run into some sort of GNOME 3.10 dependency or you

eventually require your underlying system to be current to take advantage of new apps. Eventually, but I do upgrade often enough to where that shouldn't be a problem like once every maybe six to eight months. Yeah, okay. Those distro snapshots in a way are a figment of our Slackware past.

Yeah, they are, I think. I think that's exactly what it is. We have security updates and functionality updates, but it's not exactly how today is best utilized. And granted, if I wanted to, I could, on my laptop, switch to the Tumbleweed repository and get the latest packages. Oh yeah, I run Tumbleweed, and I run

Rawhide. It doesn't have to be Arch. It doesn't have to be Arch. It could be Rawhide. Yeah, it could be Tumbleweed, for sure. I do daily Ubuntu, like for the before you guys done your Ubuntu review. I was running daily for a week, just to make sure that I knew review. I was running daily for a week just to make sure that I knew exactly

what I was trying to get to. I guess part of my argument might be, though, is when you look at distros, there's some distros that patch kind of heavily and there's some distros that don't patch very heavily. And that's where you start to get into the blame game is when you have a distribution who patches a lot maybe they change the way their whole notification system works

and so every app that wants to use the notification system has to have some sort of tweak applied, right? That's the only thing where I kind of I guess the point I wanted to get across is I feel like I was a person who I for a long time believed that if we couldn't make Ubuntu a success, it wasn't possible for Linux to be a success. Not because it wasn't good enough, but because you needed to have a corporation behind it with a little bit of money that, you know, a company like Valve could call up.

You needed to have a community organized around it. You needed to have a good established base with a good reputation. And I thought, you know, there's really not another distro while there's other really good distros and even better distros. Like they, none of them have all of that stuff and are also targeted at the desktop and cloud, et cetera, et cetera. And, and what I realized over the last four months is like, Arch isn't really a distro. It is just straight upstream with a bunch of great scripts and some shaffling around it. Yeah, it feels almost like a roll-your-own, for sure. Arch is like a build-your-own distro.

Yeah. Right. But what that has shown me is, like, just what the community itself is producing is pretty great. Well, all of the distros, all the other ones with corporate backing are pretty much server or corporate desktop based

distros like Novell and Red Hat. Ubuntu is the only desktop distro. But the reality is they actually make their money on cloud. You're right. I was thinking back when you said notification,

that's why I stick to the standard desktop environment like KDE or even the GNOME 3. I don't go towards Cinnamon or towards Unity just because they're the biggest ones out there, GNOME and KDE, or even XFCE out there. Then they tend to use the standard components for notifications and such. Right. Lib notify. Yeah.

See, the thing I was saying about Ubuntu is that there are still disadvantages to having a super popular Linux distribution because there was a post in the Linux sublet where a man said Microsoft Word deserves to die because it captured the market.

So what I'm saying is that you need what Ubuntu has established is a monopoly. And so that has its own disadvantages that may not be looked at in several places. Meaning if Ubuntu is, if you have one OS that is the king and it has 80% market share or 70% market share, then everybody, regardless of the OS's flaws and merits, has to develop for that. And so that restricts them. I don't know if they've reached that.

I don't know if they have reached that. And I think the thing that kind of made me think that was, and I could be way off the mark on this, but to me, the thing that kind of made me think that was and i could be i could be way off the mark on this but it to me the thing that kind of brought that home to me was if ubuntu had reached that monopoly point where you must write for ubuntu kind of like the reason i put our videos on youtube is because if you don't put them on youtube then there's thousands of people who won't see them and i hate it but you know that's where i put them and there are a lot of advantages to being on youtube, even if I have to fight them constantly. I think that, you know, when Valve chose to create SteamOS, that was Valve making a vote of no confidence in the long-term viability of Ubuntu on the desktop.

And the reason I say that is because if you're going to hyper-focus on making the best thing possible, you don't really need the baggage of creating your own OS, right? I mean, they never had to have SteamOS when windows was around and the mac was around and then it was like i think maybe gabe was sitting back smoking a cigar and thinking man am i going to bet the whole farm on this uh canonical clown show or am i going to just take some of the great work they've done so far and create my my own you know direction and i i i i believe that they're they're them going with steam os proves that they do not hold that monopoly yeah but certainly i was thinking this whole time it's like okay what if the canonical patches the kernel so much that it eventually ends up like let's say

android um um and i think that's that why did um steamOS just because of the brand, because most people don't even know about Linux. Yeah, you could be right. It's the same about Chromebooks. Chromebooks are because Chrome is so popular and people know about it. I agree. Though I do think, though, if we just had a world where maybe, you know, Ubuntu's market dominance was so clearly established that they might just say, well, they've got that part taken care of.

See, it might be, though. See, the thing is, Steam not putting confidence into Ubuntu might not just indicate that Ubuntu is not as popular. It might just indicate that Canonical is very much a clown show, and they have no idea where they're going. It does not reflect, I think, on their popularity and dominance on the Linux desktop environment.

I disagree with that. I disagree with that a little. Let's let the disagreeer go. I would say that the whole thing of them taking on SteamOS might be because Ubuntu is focusing on mobile.

They're focusing on the tablet. And they're not focusing on the desktop as much. Well, Steam, they want to focus on the desktop because that makes sense. Mobile makes no sense to Valve. Well, that's what I'm saying, actually. I don't know. I believe I heard somewhere

where Valve wants to get into the mobile market. Yeah, I'm still surprised they haven't. Yeah, but see, the thing is, I say you've got the Nvidia Shield and that, so there's definitely a gaming market for mobile devices. And that's Android.

Well, if they wanted to do Linux, choosing Ubuntu is not exactly choosing Linux any longer, because Ubuntu doesn't patch upstream like all the other distributions do. They are Ubuntu and are siloed as themselves. They can't benefit or give back to the other rest of the community. So if they chose Ubuntu, then they would be kind of locked into Ubuntu. But they did choose Ubuntu.

They're just stripping off the top layer. Exactly. See, the thing is that does not mean Ubuntu is not popular. It just says there are other factors. I'm saying unless you're using something like Unity, I don't think you're locked into Ubuntu just yet. But again, like I said, the whole lock into Unity, Ubuntu thing with Unity, that's why I use KDE

because that's pretty universal across whatever distro I use they're even saying screw kubuntu screw zubatu screw they're themselves they don't want to help them are there other derivatives what what ubuntu does quite well is it takes debian testing and freezes it so it gives you a fairly up-to-date platform to work with no stabian is old it's stable it's rock solid that's what i'm going to does it takes um test being testing freezes it for six months and then you can work on it so you get quite an up-to-date platform that's stable debian's testing is also stable too i mean it's not like a bleeding edge distro. That is constantly changing. That is constantly changing.

Okay. So I want to change the conversation for a second. I want to play a mental exercise and I'm going to toss it to Matt first and then I'll toss it to the mumble room. Let's, let's, and I'm not, I'm not saying it's going to happen. I mean,

Ubuntu still could pull it out. You never know, but let's say, well, fast forward three years down the road, SteamOS has been shipped for a year. All the other distros have gotten better at what they do, and Ubuntu has continued to decline. Who is the new dominant distro?

What do you think, Matt? What is the distro that pulls ahead and why? As much as I hate to admit it and as much as I want to say, oh, it's going to be Fedora. Oh, it's going to be OpenSUSE. Oh, I thought you would say Fedora actually. No, I can't. I mean, realistically, if I'm looking at Ubuntu's targeting of new users, I hate to admit it, and yes, I'm not a fan, but I'm going to say Linux Mint,

because they do have their Debian stuff on the back burner for just such an occasion. If Ubuntu does a poo-poo, they're going to go with their Debian release, and that's what they're going to do. And I think that they have enough stuff going on internalized that they could make that switch work. They're not ready yet. Would it be better for everybody

though if it was like Mangero or Antegros? It would be awesome, but I think that we... People have to remember, part of why Linux works is because it is not, the kernel is not, a democracy. What about elementary OS? What about elementary OS?

Elementary OS, again, it's – you got these community-based distributions that that's great, but they're not – they come and go quite honestly. I've seen a lot of community distros come and go, and at least with a corporate-backed distribution, as much as I don't like a lot of them, you have something identifiable. You can spot, okay, it looks like they're going to go downhill or it looks like they're going to pull the plug. Okay, all right, but could the problem with Mint be, as much as I have respect for Clem and all that he's done and all he continues to do, if Clem gets really super burned out, what happens to Mint? I mean you've got one guy, right? Whereas OpenSUSE is an entire company. There's an entire team.

You know, people come and go, right? And Fedora has got the backing of Red Hat. You got these Mint and elementary OS. They all suffer from a very, very short bench. No, that's true. But here's the problem, though, is that you have to look at – Fedora doesn't target new users in any universe. OpenSUSE, again, great distribution for the enterprise, not for the new user. It's just not.

The tools provided are not targeting grandma. Linux Mint is. That does not mean in its current state that they don't still have some of those community issues. But I see enough interest, resources, and I mean financial resources being dumped in their general direction to where I think at some point if Ubuntu did go south, I could see some sort of a structure stepping in or perhaps even being formed around it. I think that could happen. Okay. Mumble Room, let me ask you this question, and whoever wants to chime in, answer it. So I think there's a couple ways we could take this.

I want to ask you guys, is it possible we could have a three or four year – three years down the road, Mangiero continues to evolve, and they've really got something where they've got a good combination of up-to-date packages, but certain snapshotting of key components to make things stable. Could Mangiero pull ahead as a lead distro candidate? I don't think Mangiero has the corporate backing or the

money behind them to make that happen. It's completely community and um granted uh mint is completely community too but i mean their sponsorship is up the wazoo it is yeah um that's almost better isn't it yeah well the thing with ubuntu ubuntu isn't brilliant but what i'm going to is extremely good at is marketing. I don't think there's another distro that is as good at marketing as Ubuntu is. Elementor got close with their countdown, but I agree. When you search for past stuff, Canonical can capture the headlines, especially for the Edge campaign, they captured the headlines. Yeah, I mean, they're a PR machine.

They can do marketing like no one else. They're really good at it. I was thinking Mint, I think, would probably put out front. But I got a funny feeling that Kubuntu might do quite well. Because that's got quite a lot of backing. That I like. Yeah, that I would like. Yeah, I see.

I can see that. What is Kubuntu? Kubuntu has a new backing. Yeah, they have a corporate sponsor now. Yeah, Kubuntu's got blue systems. Yeah, they have a corporate sponsor now. Yeah, because Ubuntu's got blue systems. Yeah, and it's a completely separate operating system now. I mean, I know it's still based on Ubuntu, but the KDE fellas have very little. And they're leveraging the – Kubuntu will continue to leverage the big advances we're going to see in Qt and the big adoption we're going to see in Qt because of mobile.

and the big adoption we're going to see in Qt because of mobile. I mean, that's the other thing about that could play a big part in three years is as mobile continues to influence the direction of Linux, Qt is going to continue to become a more and more dominant framework that people use. I wouldn't be surprised if KDE distros do pull ahead because of that, right? Yeah. Didn't that say that the default is king? Right.

How is Kubuntu default? It may be. Well, they have a huge corporate sponsor in Blue Systems, but for Blue Systems, I think that's a means to an end because their goal is for Netrunner, which is a derivative of Kubuntu. They live and die with Kubuntu. If anything, my choice would be Zeus.

Because it's got a good mix of corporate backing and community. And yes, and they can PR the hell out of themselves. Yeah, you know what? The Seuss camp is really good at PR outreach. They've got support, but they're not up to the snuff yet. Well, I mean, think about it. Matt, before a Seuss is released, you and I usually get an email from somebody at the team who tells us what's new. They usually send us pre-release ISO links for us to download so that way we can get it before the mirrors get smashed and give us a chance for our review. But for their audience, I would say so. But for the people that are going to your targets, not even close.

No, I agree. Yeah. For us, oh yeah. For ge geeks they're awesome yeah they're great they're all over it's about it's it's about um not just a single thing it's going to be a combination of things it's going to be uh you know good pr it's going to be low barrier to entry like do you need to know anything about linux to get into it um you know your your grandma's your your you know lifetime windows users and things like that it's's – if it isn't simple for them to just pop in a disk, install it, and then it's easy for them to understand. I think OpenSUSE – maybe not all of us like it, but OpenSUSE has YAST. And when you're a Windows user, you want the control panel, right?

You want to be able to bring up the control panel and go add, remove software hardware well i mean that's what yes does right and okay yeah and and i'm not saying that that susan couldn't uh pull it off i'm not saying that at all i'm just saying it's it's we're focusing on well it's this we'll know it's this we'll know it's this and it's really just a combination of things and right now buntu just has a stranglehold on that but susan has all the combinations they have the corporate backing. They have the build service, which is bringing in a whole bunch of new software. They have the gallery. And, ladies and gentlemen, probably the number one thing for me right now, they have Tumbleweed.

So you can also be rolling, right? I mean, it seems to me like OpenSUSE has got a pretty good collection of a lot of the things I like. The only problem is, at the end of the day, I can't imagine using Linux now without Pac-Man. Yeah, so that's my thing. But OpenSUSE is definitely my fallback. They have Greg. He's straight

up next in line to Linus. He's a straight up kernel. He's our kernel master. He's at SUSE. Oh yeah, for sure. They can support the hell out of SUSE. I'm going to use the M word here, but one thing SUSE has backing it to is

an agreement with Microsoft. Oh, yeah, they do. In fact, they're open SUSE. They have an open SUSE week, or they have a SUSE week coming up, like a conference, and Microsoft's one of the top sponsors. There's SUSE Linux Enterprise Edition. I completely forgot about their Enterprise desktop. I have to Microsoft's one of the top sponsors. There's a Syslux Enterprise Edition. I completely forgot about their Enterprise desktop.

Right, yeah. I have to say, one of my favorite things about OpenSUSE would be the build service that people could set their software on. Right. I'm going to check something out there. I'm going to check something out. How about an Android Chrome OS hybrid? I mean, if Google actually ends up sort of producing that,

where you can run Android apps. I feel like Google has too much skin in the game to be a trusted platform provider like that. My system controlled by Java. I don't think they're going to do that. It's JavaScript, it's different. No, but Android is Java. It would succeed because of Google, but it wouldn't be good.

Hmm. Well, I mean, if we're talking a hybrid that works the same way that Ubuntu's, quote, convergence would, the Android part would still be Java, but the Chrome OS part would not. There has to be no Android Java. Chrome OS is JavaScript, Android is Java. Yeah. Alright, well now we're going down the Android path. I feel like I should pull us out. I should pull us out, but I just leave you with this.

I just, I wanted to make the case that if you have the stomach for it, and there's no judgment if you don't have the stomach for it, but if you have the stomach for it, maybe consider going with one of the rolling releases from whichever distro provides it, just to kind of...

It is really exciting to be on the edge and see things that are coming out, like Core, Birdam, and Polari, that are so cool, and to play with them. You know how great it is to get GNOME 3.10? I mean, the GNOME project, let's be honest, it has been really, really hard to use GNOME for a while. And with GNOME 3.8, it got there. And GNOME 3.10, they made it even better. And GNOME 3.10.1 is really

looking good. I look at this and I go, this is it. We're getting there again. And KDE 4 series, man, they are just, I love their plan to make KDE 4 just rock solid when they work on 5. Both GNOME 3 and KDE 4, I feel like, are once again getting to that point we were before we had the big upset, before we killed GNOME 2 and moved to GNOME 3. I feel like we're getting back to that. We're not there just yet, but we are probably within one or two releases

to being back to that level of awesomeness. And it's got nothing to do withesomeness. And it's got nothing to do with any particular distribution. And that's what's so awesome about it. There you go. Again, I think at the end of the day, it's about what suits you best.

But yes, ours does have a very good advantage on this. But again, what suits you best? Because GNOME and all the other upstream packages are working. They are in beta, they're in alpha, and they're still working. If they break, then that's where the

trouble starts. And they don't, which is a good thing. But if they do, then you have to deal with it. That's the cost you pay. Yeah, yeah. But I feel like it's helping. Because I am fully I fully figure that if that happens, then I'll submit the bug thing. I'll watch the bug report and I'll participate in that part. Because that's what I can do, right?

I can either donate money, but I'm too broke to do that. So I'm going to donate my time to submit bug reports. And then plus for me, it also works out. I can talk about it on the show and stuff like that. But I think it's an interesting position for us to be in to maybe not have a direct influence on the future of our desktop, but at least help push it in the right direction as a user, which is way more, which is just so more empowering than Mac is great for this and that. It's like these number one things, being tuned into the open source community, being able to have an impact on the desktop, being able to choose these things where we can move around, those are indispensable features for me that only Linux provides.

The Mac can, no matter what Apple ships in the next version of Mac OS X, they will never be able to ship that. They can't, right? That's true. Although Apple is a master of copying various Ubuntu features, and I could make a list for the person to send in the email if they'd like that. Yeah, I think the copying goes both ways in some cases, but yeah.

I mean, but it's very visual, upfront, front and center experiences that they copied, not back end. Now they just need to copy the App Store a little more, and they'll really have something. All right, Mumble Room. Well, thanks, guys. You guys were great today.

And I'm going to wrap it up with an email from GH. He wanted to write in in defense of KDE. He says, Chris and Matt, how contradictory is it for people to leave Windows or Apple because they're tired of their intrinsic limitations? Only then to move to Linux and choose the most limiting working environments like GNOME or Unity. Wouldn't it be more logical to move to an environment, say KDE, that gives you the most options to configure in any way you want? Spock would nod in agreement. For me, choosing between GNOME and Unity and say the others versus KDE is like choosing for the same price of $0 between an

F-150 and a sovereign class Enterprise. And guys, you're choosing the truck because you find the spaceship too complicated to use and it has too many options. And the truck can still take you places and has technology I can understand and use without too much effort. I assure you that if an option to choose was real, you'd pick the Enterprise,

even if it took you the rest of your life to figure it out. Your friend, GH. Well, I heard from Mavera, and she was very clear in saying, Captain, the communications are not working because Pulse Audio doesn't play well with the KDE sound system. So once I get my communications up on the Starship, the radio in my truck seems to work pretty well. I also would point out that Gene Roddenberry went to great pains to work with his designers to make sure that the enterprise was clean and streamlined because Gene believed that technology had become so perfected that to truly enhance human life, it would be natural and comfortable to use. I'm just pointing that out. So however that is natural and comfortable for you is how you should use it, right, Matt?

That's right. I mean, who needs to hear anything with headphones? That's so gnome. Yeah, that's for GNOME users. Whatever. I guess if I want to have a modern sound experience, I do need Pulse Audio. I don't want some antiquated hoppy back and forth crap

that every other... Matt, I have in my hot little hand right here my Synology box that arrived. The DiskStation Synology. An ads experience running Linux supports iSCSI file service backup surveillance cams. It's the DS412+.

I think we'll do a review this Sunday on the Linux Action Show. Oh, nice. It has four four terabyte drives in it running Linux. All right, everyone.

Well, thank you for joining us for Linux Unplugged. Don't forget we're live on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. And you can email us by hitting the contact link at the top of our website. We'd love to have you.

Also, check out our subreddit over at linuxactionshow.reddit.com. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Hey, Matt, I'll see you on Sunday. Sounds good. See you then. All right, everyone. Thank you.

And we'll see you right back here on Tuesday.