LINUX Unplugged - Episode 104: Miles of WiFi | LUP 104

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Ubuntu publishes their roadmap for the next few releases & we discuss what the future might hold for “Ubuntu Personal”. Plus the major challenges Linux gaming is facing.Then we’ve got insights f...rom the experts on building robust wifi for your home, enterprise or even large events… Powered by Linux!

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I just got done trying out Windows 10 for a few days, and I honestly wasn't that impressed over, say, Windows 7. So, Popey, you think it's the best, but what would you say draws you to it over, say, if you just needed a simple Windows install to do something, to get something done, why not just use Windows 7? Well, you could. And there was nothing technically wrong with my Windows 7 install. I mean, it was basically my Steam machine
Starting point is 00:00:23 and anything else that was Windows only that I don't you know that i have that i want to try out or i want to play with um but i quite like the cleanness of windows 10 it just feels more polished it just feels like you know how windows 7 was windows vista done right windows 10 feels like windows 7 with just a little bit of extra polish. I mean, Windows 7 was fine on its own. Yeah, I don't know if I... 10 just feels a little bit nicer. Yeah, I guess I just disagree with you.
Starting point is 00:00:52 Because I don't... I mean, it does at the very high level. The way the start menu slides up, the way the desktop, virtual desktop slide, the way the windows pop open, you know, kind of feels like the best of comp is. A little bit just sort of turned down a slight touch. And I like those things about it. But I find to be, what I find to be just sort of disappointing is sort of the settings within settings and just settings and settings, different kinds of UIs for your settings. There's a really good blog post, actually, that really summed it up very well.
Starting point is 00:01:22 And so I bookmarked it because the guy went through and he essentially book, he screenshotted basically every spot where Windows 10, he says, is unfinished. And I think it's a pretty compelling argument. Like he goes through here and documents like, here's two sections that are identical in the UI that accomplish the same task. Here's like two display settings. They look completely different in how they function, but they do the same task. And he points this out over and over again. Here's where a right-click
Starting point is 00:01:46 menu is weird and dark and gray, and here's where a right-click menu looks like a traditional Windows menu. And all these different inconsistencies in the icons, even in the toolbars where they use different languages in the icons to mean different things throughout the entire UI, it's not consistent at all. I think it's
Starting point is 00:02:01 much less consistent than Windows 7 because it's mixed with this modern UI now. Exactly. And I've heard Microsoft in their official things, Microsoft has said that Windows 10 will never be done. I could have told you that months ago when I tried the 9900 series technical preview. I saw that right away. I'm like, wow. And it's still not fixed.
Starting point is 00:02:28 To me, Windows 10 is a beta. And I believe it always will be. We have gotten feedback about that. No, it's not. Have we all, really? We've all bought into this? We've all bought into this? Most of the chat, am I really at JV on IRC?
Starting point is 00:02:44 Because people talk about Windows 10 like it's the best thing ever. What the frick? I think what you guys are saying is they rushed it to market and they're using vernacular that's hip to justify why it's an incomplete product. I think that would be accurate. And also, I think the whole free upgrade thing is like really like cook, line, and sink people into their market. I mean, I paid $299, okay, so I could unlock the features. Oh, my God. Well, I mean, JB did.
Starting point is 00:03:16 I didn't personally pay for it. I know, but even so, that's a lot of money. Exactly. And I feel like I bought an unfinished product. But to be honest with you, to do a fully, genuine, honest review of the product, I bought it. Because I don't have, like, I have OEM licenses from the past that I don't have that hardware anymore. And those machines run Linux anyways. So, like, my best option was to install it from the ISO.
Starting point is 00:03:44 I downloaded it from Microsoft's website. And then I had to activate it to get all the features. That cost $299, and I figured, well, at least now I'll own one copy of Windows 10 for testing. But in my opinion, this line that I've been getting from the community after our episode, that Microsoft's going to roll out new features in October, and this is a rolling release, and Windows 10 is the final version. It's never done. Sorry, did you say community? Really?
Starting point is 00:04:09 Yeah. The Microsoft community. No, no, no. In the last community. In the last community after we reviewed Windows 10 on Sunday, and people said, well, it's not fair. It's not done until October. And I can't believe we bought this line because this is – see, you guys maybe maybe i have a different perspective because i've literally had microsoft family members and friends that i've been been close to my entire
Starting point is 00:04:29 life i've watched this company i mean i live next to microsoft i've watched this company forever this is what they do every single time it's the same kind of basic message just different language every single time and this time we're buying it. We didn't buy it last time because they didn't use the right words. This time we're buying it. And that's all. If you just change what they're saying and look at the ship product that costs $299, I think it doesn't hold up.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Exactly. I think you're right about it's the same stuff again because the article that points out the consistencies in the Windows 10 ui that's nothing new ibm were pointing out inconsistencies in the windows user interface when they were marketing os2 against windows and pointing out that you know os2 was a consistent object-based desktop environment and everything behaved the same way in every spot
Starting point is 00:05:26 and Windows didn't do that. Still doesn't. And was it Windows NT? Windows NT and the service packs, you know, that was the original Windows rolling release, wasn't it? Every service pack delivered new features and it took an awful long time for us to get off Service Pack 3 to Service Pack 4A,
Starting point is 00:05:49 when just a whole ton of stuff arrived, including new browsers and things. Right. So this is nothing new. It's shinier, but it's new, and it came out yesterday or whenever it was, but it's the same tactics, but I should say it's new language. I think in a lot of ways Windows 7 is still a better product.
Starting point is 00:06:09 I just think that Windows 10 is probably the best you're going to get with modern support, and really at the end of the day, because we're talking Windows, for Linux users, one of the things that matters with Windows 10 is it's going to support the latest version of DirectX, and that's one of the most likely reasons a Linux user would be running Windows. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 104, for August 4th, 2015.
Starting point is 00:06:53 Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that ponders if a Linux-powered tent is a good idea or a great idea. My name is Chris, and yeah, I've got Campion on the brain. We've got a great episode 104. I can't even believe that we crossed over the 100 mark and just kept on chugging because we have so much to cover. A little Ubuntu heavy at the top of the show, but it's going to be worth it. There's some really interesting things being clarified by Ubuntu, some big changes that I'm looking forward to, and maybe some speculation on my part,
Starting point is 00:07:15 and hopefully we'll set the record straight on a few things. There's a new roadmap for the Ubuntu projects. Well, going over the next few years, it gives us a lot of insights. They're sharing a lot of good information. And then there's also been some discussion on the development list if maybe it's time for Ubuntu to drop the software center in favor of GNOME software. And actually, the reaction to that's been kind of
Starting point is 00:07:33 negative. We'll talk about that. And then, later on in the show, the numbers are in, and it looks bad for Linux gaming. Let's just hypothesize. Is the dream failed? Is Linux gaming just not materializing? And then also some of the latest games, some really great games just came out and the benchmarks are in and the performance is devastating under Linux compared to Windows, like 60 to 70% worse under Linux. Why is that?
Starting point is 00:08:00 We'll talk about that and what that means and if it's bad news for SteamOS. But we also have some good news. I found in the archive a lost interview from Self2015 with the guys who made the internet possible itself. And it is so information-packed about deploying good Wi-Fi, troubleshooting Wi-Fi, and what it takes to make wireless work. You could apply it to your house or to a major event. It is a segment in this show that I think people refer back to over and over again when they are visiting or troubleshooting a Wi-Fi network. I can't wait to play that for you. That's coming up later on in the show as well. So talk about that. And then if there's time, we're going to make a major, major experiment run this Friday on the
Starting point is 00:08:41 Linux Action Show. We're going to make a huge change to the show, hopefully in an attempt to be more genuine and honor the show and the fact that it covers Linux and open source, but also to raise the quality and make it even better. And we're going to try something extremely new, and we're going to be doing it live on Friday instead of Sunday. And I want to brace you for it. Maybe just try to fend off some of the immediate reaction that might happen
Starting point is 00:09:07 because it's going to be a big change. And I don't often talk about the show in the show, but I'm going to do that at the end of today's episode of Linux Unplugged if we have time. And I don't know exactly how much I'm going to share yet because I'm a little nervous. But
Starting point is 00:09:23 you know what? I have a beer here. I'll just I'll just keep drinking. I'm about I'm about halfway through. We'll see if by the end of that bottle, if I feel like sharing anymore. But first, I want to bring in Mr. Popey, who can help me dig through some of these. Well, basically, clarification that have been posted on all these blog. He calls it is all these random thoughts and impressions. And can you tell me that way? I don't get it wrong. Who is Ollie and what does he do at Canonical? He's VP of Engineering, so he runs basically the whole show for everything that's user-visible at the moment for the most part. Okay.
Starting point is 00:09:56 And he points out, he made this post on August 3rd, that there's only 242 days left until the next long-term release of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 16.04. And so it's probably time to clarify a few things. So remember, we've talked about Snappy on the show. Snappy is an adjective describing a collection of technologies that allows for transactional atomic updates, rollback, and better security guarantees for apps and users. So remember, it is a transactional updated system, so the applications and the OS can be updated separately,
Starting point is 00:10:28 and you can roll back. And you're going to have Snappy Core, which things can be built around. But there's a new term being kicked around that I wanted to make sure we all understand here on this show, because I think it's going to have the largest impact for our audience. It's Ubuntu Personal. Snappy plus Ubuntu. Ubuntu Personal. Snappy Ubuntu is the logical consequence
Starting point is 00:10:47 of all the things said so far, except that it has the most beautiful user interface sitting on top of it. However, Ubuntu Personal will be Snap-based from the start, and hence the distinction. Snappy Ubuntu Personal is redundant, and we're simply calling it Ubuntu Personal. Ubuntu Personal will provide all the benefits of Snappy apps to users of devices with built-in and attached displays considering that snappy systems were born out of our experience with mobile devices ubuntu personal is the next evolution of phone code based on our path to reach code convergence now i don't know exactly how to interpret that poppy but it almost sounds like ubuntu personal could be something that somebody who wanted to follow like unity 8 and mirror and maybe even try it on a laptop would maybe be interested in a boot to personal like is that or is it just something
Starting point is 00:11:28 for mobile devices what exactly is it yeah so like longer term you could think of buying a device that has snappy on it and that could be a router or a um uh an autonomous device like a flying thing or you know it could be a fridge or anything but snappy ubuntu personal is more about the desktop user experience so that's like laptops desktops like chromecast style devices things that have a graphical user interface are more likely to be Ubuntu personal. So they're machines that a normal user would interact with directly. Does that include a laptop? Yeah, yeah, totally. So it's everything from a tiny device
Starting point is 00:12:19 that might have a UI on it up to a fairly powerful personal computer. So envisage distantly in the future everything running Snappy, but the ones that you sit at and type at and touch and swipe and use a mouse with, those might be running Ubuntu personal, but the ones which don't have a display, which are embedded IoT things, routers, flying things, would just be snappy Ubuntu Core. And you interact with those differently. That's the kind of distinction between the two. So also Ubuntu Personal kind of replaces Desktop Next,
Starting point is 00:12:56 which was sort of the way to currently try out Mir and Unity, right? Yeah. Desktop Next was a kind of image that you could play with that was never really designed to be a production desktop. And the goal with Ubuntu Personal is that that will be the production desktop. It's the next evolution of Desktop Next. Yeah. And now, keeping in mind that the actual Debian-based Ubuntu distribution
Starting point is 00:13:17 isn't going away, this still seems like a ginormous, mind-bending, completely game-changing evolution for the project. Basically, your star products are going to be Snap-based. They're not going to be Deb-based. It is an entirely new creation that you guys are making. It depends on your perspective, really. When you think of star product, some people will think,
Starting point is 00:13:44 well, from my perspective, a star product is something I can install devs on and I can go and randomly build code on. Today, yeah, for the next few years. And still in the future. It could well be the case in the future. You know, you still want to be able to go and get a random dev off the internet of, you know, your favorite app, whatever it might be, and install it, and away you go. Whereas other people will say, my star machine is the thing where I open it, and it works every time when I open the lid, and it updates itself in the background, and I don't have to worry about PPAs or DEBs or sudo or all that kind of stuff. It just works, right?
Starting point is 00:14:20 So for some people, that is their star platform. To me, what it sounds like is it sounds like Ubuntu Debian base is a transition platform for those people who have base products around it or have environments around it. And so because of that, it'll be around for many years. take off, which I can't imagine they wouldn't on the server, especially with people trying to deploy applications who are not necessarily the best at understanding how systems work. I got to imagine that a transactionally based, container based system is going to really go big and a lot of people will switch. And it also makes a ton of sense on the desktop. It makes delivering desktop applications so much simpler on desktop Linux. I mean, I see here, so I'm looking at this timeline you guys have posted, and you can see where desktop next comes to an end
Starting point is 00:15:10 and where Ubuntu personal kind of becomes a thing, especially around 16.10 where maybe, like, there's actually something people could try. And really, I mean, the distro that everyone's going to want to use, even next year, you run 16.10 time and so forth, is going to be the dev-based version. But you go out a few more years if if people are really starting to contribute to the snap store and a lot of people are building up and delivering applications in snaps or whatever the hell they called you know digital ocean has a has a droplet you can fire up based on ubuntu snappy core i'm
Starting point is 00:15:39 sure they'll do that um it's going to go big i would think well yeah and there'll be a certainly a period of time where both things are running in parallel and one ubuntu personal may take off and become like the you know the chromebook style os that that just works and you you don't have to worry about deb's and ppas and all that kind of stuff i just love it like in a production environment poppy like in a studio i love the idea of a transactionally based system. Because if I go to do a show and it's not working, I can roll back. That's a lifesaver. It certainly has like use cases that people outside your listenership
Starting point is 00:16:16 might be interested in. Like, you know, my mom would not really care about PPAs and DEBs and release upgrades every six months and that kind of stuff. She just wants to work and carry on working every day. But there are people out there who are engineers or developers who want the flexibility to be able to get under the hood and tweak around with it. And while you can do that with Ubuntu Personal, obviously, then if your level of tweaking means building devs and delivering software as devs and hacking in a way that personal maybe isn't appropriate for, then the Debian-based distro is still there
Starting point is 00:16:54 and will continue to be there. And that's one of the key things to take away, actually, is we keep getting... This blog post was partly to clear up a lot of misconception in the community. People keep saying, oh, well, they're going to switch to know, they're going to switch to clicks, they're going to switch to snaps, and the Debian desktop will disappear. Well, no, it's not.
Starting point is 00:17:09 The whole point of this is the archive is what everything is built from. So we can't take away that archive because it's all built from that. And that is our special source, is the archive. The way Ali put it, he says, the underlying center of gravity for everything I've described so far, however, is Ubuntu, which is bigger than any single technology or product or code base. Ubuntu, the Linux distribution, as we all know and love it,
Starting point is 00:17:32 will continue to be there on the internet, freely available to anyone and everyone. Exactly. So yeah, because Snappy and all that is based on that. And it's just, it's interesting, and I'm looking forward to maybe one day sitting here and having my machine that's displaying visuals on the stream be powered by a winter snappy i think it's going to be from from a show content and review and like uh you
Starting point is 00:17:55 know just digging into stuff and talking about it standpoint super interesting and fascinating can't wait cannot wait it's going to be a lot of fun. It's at least, if nothing else, fascinating to watch it. Who knows where it goes? Who knows? My bet's all on Plasma Mobile. All right. So before we get into our last Ubuntu thing, just to kind of wrap up our conversation, and actually it's great also because it just kind of fits in nicely with our conversation we had with Wimpy last week.
Starting point is 00:18:24 So I want to talk about that in just a moment. But first, I want to tell you about DigitalOcean, the first sponsor of Linux Unplugged. And if you actually want to support the Linux Unplugged program, I got a secret. Well, it's a secret. It's the kind of secret I'd like you to tell every single person you know. You have secrets like that? Yeah, well, I'm not going to go there. We can get dirty quick.
Starting point is 00:18:44 But use the promo code D01plugged and you get a $10 credit over at DigitalOcean and spread it around like HSV1. Just spread it around and let everybody have some of it. D01plugged over at DigitalOcean.com. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't know?
Starting point is 00:18:57 You don't know what DigitalOcean is? Oh, let me tell you about DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way for you to get your own rig up in the cloud. Now, they got free BSD machines. Well, I mean, you know,
Starting point is 00:19:12 maybe you want to use free BSD. It's pretty cool, but they have like CoreOS. You want to talk about, boy, talk about something, talk about, talk about something snappy trying to rip off. Oh, I'm just kidding. No, it's cool. CoreOS, you know, you have the rolling base OS and DigitalOcean because they're bosses.
Starting point is 00:19:27 They work directly upstream with the Core OS team. So you get great core-based OSs and then the applications are containerized, which is slick. Of course, they've also got Ubuntu LTS and they got several versions of Ubuntu up there. They got Fedora. They got Debian.
Starting point is 00:19:40 They even now have Fedora 22. How about that? Not bad. Now, this is the best part you can get started in less than 55 seconds and you got that promo code do unplugged you know you like you don't even have to worry about the cost so just go over there and get started because now your time what you don't got 55 seconds give me a break and check this out five dollars a month well do unplugged is going to give you a ten dollar credit for ten dollars you're going to be able to run a rig for
Starting point is 00:20:02 two months now check out this five dollar rig you get 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSDs, they're all SSDs, one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer. And DigitalOcean's data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, and a big old bad boy in Germany. But their interface is what I love about them. I've been in IT for years. Well, I had been until I got into podcasting because, man, I had to get out of IT. And you know because, man, I had to get out of IT. You know one of the reasons I had to get out of IT? I'm looking at you, VMware ESX, running your whole entire infrastructure on Linux
Starting point is 00:20:32 and forcing me to use a Windows client. I will never get over that. I will never forgive you. And how complicated it is in all of these different... Even you, Proxmox, I'm looking at you. Even you, Proxmox, you're way too complicated. All you guys with virtualizations, you're making it way too complicated. You need to go over to DigitalOcean.com.
Starting point is 00:20:49 I'm talking to you, Proxmox. Guys, I love you. I love you, but you're WebUI. You need to go over to DigitalOcean, okay? VMware, you need to go over to DigitalOcean, all right? Okay? Everybody, go over to DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D1plugged and learn how to really build an interface.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Man, you can spin up these droplets like a boss. You can deploy applications with one click. It's really nice. Full DNS management snapshots, templates, transfer them to somebody else once you're done with the project. I love it. Remember, D1 Plugged. You can try it out. Two months for free. They have great tutorials and
Starting point is 00:21:20 also, they're often hiring. Linux positions and content editors. Check out their We're Hiring page, too. And I bet you if you told them you heard about them from us, you might get moved to the head of the line. I'm just saying it might work. DigitalOcean.com, use the promo code DLUnplugged. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged program.
Starting point is 00:21:40 So, you know what I love is when mailing lists, when developer mailing lists turn into news. Oh, man, only in the open source community. and it creates so much drama, and then we start to question ourselves, and like, oh, we shouldn't behave like this. Commercial companies behave like this too, it's just they don't have a public mailing list. So what the hell's going on? In the mailing
Starting point is 00:21:58 list on the, over on the Ubuntu developers mailing list, there was a post that suggested dropping the Ubuntu software center, and adopting GN a post that suggested dropping the Ubuntu Software Center and adopting GNOME software. Now, GNOME software is not bad. I actually kind of do like it in some regards, but it got me thinking.
Starting point is 00:22:15 Yes, or yesterday, yesterday's show, last week's show, episode 103, we talked to Wimpy about a lot of feedback he got around the Software Center, and Wimpy, just as a little follow-up to that, did you make a final decision or was your decision final at the time of the recording? I can't recall. Yeah, it was final then and it's done. So I'm going to provide the Ubuntu software center and app grid as options in Ubuntu Mate Welcome.
Starting point is 00:22:42 So what do you think about this idea of maybe like in the... Let's just for fun just say Ubuntu shipped instead of the Ubuntu Software Center. For giggles, let's say it shipped with GNOME Software Center and maybe a few canonical fixes have been applied. Wimpy, would that be something you'd be willing to look at and maybe consider including
Starting point is 00:22:59 in Ubuntu Mate? I'm prepared to consider all viable options. Do you think it's a good idea? I think it's a lot of work adapting GNOME software to replace Ubuntu Software Center because there's a superset of functionality in Ubuntu Software Center.
Starting point is 00:23:19 So given the time required, I think that's a big ask. And fundamentally, the way gnome software works is is different to the ubuntu software center so with gnome software each application has to ship its own app data xml file yeah which is the information that gets presented in gnome software whereas ubuntu software center and app grid use confusingly something else that's called app data, but they're packages that you install and they're effectively databases of metadata for the packages that are in the official archive and the partner repository. And that's where all of the descriptions and artwork and stuff comes from. And that's where all of the descriptions and artwork and stuff comes from. So they're fundamentally different.
Starting point is 00:24:11 And you don't have reviews in GNOME software, for example. So I'm prepared to keep an open mind on this. And I will happily move to other solutions that present themselves that are a viable alternative. solutions that present themselves that are a viable alternative. And I've even said to Popey, I'm prepared to help with the development effort on whatever the viable alternative might be. I don't know how much time I'm going to have to devote to that, but I'm prepared to pitch in and help with that. Yeah. So I liked, so SB5637 in our last subreddit had a pretty, pretty well votedup response to this. He says, I personally think it's a bad idea.
Starting point is 00:24:48 I've extensively tested and tried the like-nome software on Fedora and OpenSUSE, but it was pitifully awful in my opinion. You can't browse apps while another app is installing, and some apps just simply don't appear in search results, even if they're available in category listings. Search results in general are pretty bad, and I don't like how it refuses to show apps that don't have AppStream data. At the very least, it could fall back to package name, and a short description like Synaptic shows if AppStream data isn't available. Instead, they're just ignoring the software altogether.
Starting point is 00:25:16 And the other thing I've noticed is sometimes it fails to load certain screens. For me, there are oddities to it. The other thing, too, is it seems like it would be a little bit waste of time. I don't know. Popey, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like energies and times would be focused on building QT and QML apps, not adding code to GTK apps that are contributed by other projects. Popey, is that? I think one of the problems is that none of the App Store apps are perfect.
Starting point is 00:25:47 Software Center's got its issues. There's lacking functionality in, if we're just talking about App Stores on Ubuntu, App Grid has issues in that it's proprietary and there are missing features. GNOME software obviously is very tailored for gnome and might not fit unity quite so well so i mean they all have issues but they're all solvable it's simply a matter of programming and it's where you want to devote your attention and i my personal feeling is if we rallied a bunch of people around ubuntu software center we could probably fix up some of the issues remove some of the the things that are maybe less desirable or
Starting point is 00:26:26 less applicable these days, or convince the AppGrid guy to add features and freely license his code. I don't know. But I'm not entirely convinced that adopting GNOME software when we're like 80% of the way there with the other tools is the right way to do it. Yeah, I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a community rallying around just couldn't there be community patches applied to ubuntu software center and just yeah of course it's free software it's free software like anything else so yeah it's just that you know part of the problem is that it's a it's a canonical project
Starting point is 00:26:58 and we haven't devoted enough attention to it over the last few years. And so people think it's dead and nobody's maintaining it. And that's a perfectly reasonable perception to make when you look at the code, that there haven't been any releases for ages and nobody's done any features, and it's idle for a long time. So that doesn't motivate community people to actively work on something when the maintainer and owner of that project isn't maintaining it themselves, right? And that's the same for any open source software project.
Starting point is 00:27:30 So I think if there was a reboot of the Ubuntu Software Center, not a rewrite, but find out what the features are that shouldn't be there and the features that are missing and the performance issues. And it would need, really,
Starting point is 00:27:44 it would need to be updating for Python 3 because we're looking to remove Python 2 and it's a Python 2 app. So it would need to be updated to Python 3. So there's a bunch of things that need to happen to it, but it's where the people are willing to contribute those things. And I'm sure we could find someone in Canonical to help and mentor those people and people in the community, like Martin was suggesting, to help and mentor those people and people in the community like Martin was suggesting
Starting point is 00:28:05 to help update it. But we need people to help out. It's all very well throwing broken bottles at us and telling us it's crap, but someone's got to throw patches attached to those broken bottles. I'm just kidding. It's okay. Thanks, Chris. Just kidding. All right. Well,
Starting point is 00:28:22 good. And the thread is linked in the show notes if you guys want to read it. It's fascinating. I'm glad there's discussion around it. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm glad it is happening. So I want to play a clip that I literally found in the archive. Noah was like, hey, I think you might need to check over here, and I dug through it. And it is a fascinating clip by a couple of guys who work at an ISP called Global Vision.
Starting point is 00:28:47 Linux-powered ISP, Linux on the infrastructure, Linux on the back end. And they claim they're able to deliver wireless internet more reliable in some cases even than fiber. That's what they say. They describe it in the interview. And one of the other things they do is they rock the wireless at trade shows. So much so that we were able to get live Wi-Fi coverage using streaming video over Wi-Fi walking around the floor itself. And they do all of this using Linux laptops and Linux tools. And it's not so much about that angle in this clip that I'm about to play,
Starting point is 00:29:17 but this is an incredibly fascinating insight into how to manage a good wireless network. And these two gentlemen break it down in such an easy-to-understand way that I walked away from this interview feeling like I have an entirely new understanding of Wi-Fi, and I think so often on our Linux laptops, we blame drivers or the Wi-Fi chipset, which it often is the problem, but sometimes, honestly, it's the fact that we have messed up Wi-Fi networks, which are extremely tricky. So this clip is very valuable, even if you have a small Wi-Fi network or a huge enterprise Wi-Fi network. And I wanted to play it. It was from the archive of Self 2015. Welcome. Southeast Linux Facts 2015, walking around, came across one of the booths we were at last year. And now if you're watching the live stream or had been watching the
Starting point is 00:30:04 live stream, you've probably heard us talk about Global Vision. These are the guys that brought the Internet to self and did an amazing job. I'm here with Zach, and I actually didn't catch your name. Ethan. Ethan. Good to meet you, Ethan. You too. Thanks for taking the time to be here with us.
Starting point is 00:30:15 So I wanted to talk, first of all, if you could tell me a little bit about Global Vision itself and what it is you guys do. So Global Vision is a, particularly it's a wireless ISP based out of Greenville, South Carolina. We have wireless networks in both Pickens County and Greenville County and Spartanburg County. And we provide both residential and business internet along with phone service. And we do it over VOIP, voice over IP. And we also manage the public wireless network for the city of Pickens. All right. Now, when you say wireless ISP, if somebody's not familiar with that,
Starting point is 00:30:52 most people have a cable modem in their house and then they plug it into the router and that's how they're getting their internet. Now, you were telling me last year that there's actually, there are some places in your neck of the woods where getting a cable modem, that's just not going to happen. So you're actually giving Internet or providing Internet to people that ordinarily may not be able to get Internet. Yeah, that is correct. Our product specializes in the rural areas or in new neighborhoods. When they build new neighborhoods, Charter could take two years to come into the neighborhood where we can roll in there from day one. Even when there's just one house, it's still profitable for us to roll in.
Starting point is 00:31:26 And essentially what we do is we put an antenna about this big on the outside of your house, pointed up at our tower, which is on Paris Mountain, and then we just run an Ethernet cable into your house and power the radio via PoE, power of Ethernet, and that will provide Internet to the house. When you talk about these radios, what frequency are they running at? We run exclusively at 5 gigahertz for the residential stuff. Now, on the business side, we also get into some different ones like 24 gigahertz, and we also use 11 gigahertz licensed links.
Starting point is 00:32:00 Now, at that frequency, how picky are the radios about being exactly, the antennas are about being line of sight to each other? So the 5 gigahertz, it is a requirement that they have clear line of sight to get the range that we're talking. Our nearest client to the towers is just over a mile. So when we talk wireless links, we laugh at people that say, oh, I can do so many feet. I can do so many miles. And so in five gigahertz, it needs clear line of sight. So a tree doesn't count as clear line of sight. Wow. So there's obviously some challenges then if you work in a place that's densely populated with trees or has fences. How is it that you're going to get around if somebody has property that there is no part of their house that has a clear line of sight to your tower?
Starting point is 00:32:54 So what we've done with some customers is we'll get up on the roof and we can barely see the mountain through some trees. And we'll tell the customer, all right, that tree, that tree, that tree, and that tree's in the way. And we actually had one client, while we're still standing on the roof, went to his shed, pulled out a chainsaw, and cut down five trees before we left so that we could install his antenna and he'd have internet for his kids. Welcome to South Carolina. Tell me a little bit about what it's like to be providing Wi-Fi for self. Typically, conference Wi-Fi is horrendous. Most attendees kind of have come to expect that,
Starting point is 00:33:30 and you guys have done a phenomenal job. My Wi-Fi has dropped out maybe twice the entire time I've been here, and other than that, it's been so reliable. I actually have our production laptop running on Wi-Fi, even though you've given us a hard drop. It is that good. So tell me how it is you've been able to achieve that. So part of it is we use dual frequency. There's 2.4 and 5 gigahertz we're broadcasting over the entire conference area. And the problem with 2.4 is all these dang hotspots. So people will fire up these hotspots. It will create 2.4 gigahertz interference.
Starting point is 00:34:02 And the signal strength and the ping times and latency will go down the toilet. So with a 5 gigahertz network is really reliable and there's a lot more channels so we can do a better channel payment with the 5 gigahertz. So to get to help encourage people to use 5 gigahertz we renamed the 2.4 network to dash slow to encourage people to connect to the 5 gigahertz because at this day and age the vast majority of devices are 5 gigahertz capable we match that with uh with uh decent channel planning um we mapped out all the aps on one of the maps that the uh event provided us and we did some good channel planning. We also had to turn on the minimum RSSI setting, which allows you to roam a little better. Before we had turned that on, I was all the way in the other ballroom,
Starting point is 00:34:53 and I was still connected to this AP with one bar. It wouldn't jump onto the next one. So once we turn that on, you move more easily from one access point to the next, and you just get a better signal overall. Now, is the minimum RSSI, is that something that everyone should be looking at doing if they're planning to put access points into an infrastructure across the building? So minimum RSSI is necessary in a multi-AP environment because without it, you cannot roam effectively.
Starting point is 00:35:28 Essentially what it does is the AP itself looks at the difference between the signal and the noise and basically the quality of the link. And if it drops below, in our case, 20 dB separation, the AP will simply kick the client off and in an attempt to force the client to reconnect to another access point. And in most environments, you will only see about a one to two ping packet drop during that kick process. Now, tell me this. If that happens, if there isn't a stronger access
Starting point is 00:36:03 point available, like let's say I'm at the fringe of the network, am I just going to continually get dropped? Yes. Okay. And for the benefit of the entire network, that is the best thing to happen because the signal can, the system can be only as good as its weakest link. Okay. All right. When you guys go to, when you guys go to set these access points up, how important is placement inside of the rooms? Extremely important. You want to try to stay away from RF bad materials, such as brick. You don't want to put one of these access points right up against a brick wall, because all of the access points that we use now are omnidirectional. So the radio is not compensating the fact that it's up against a brick wall.
Starting point is 00:36:49 So it can actually damage the AP if it's running too high because too much of the RF interference will come back into the AP bouncing off the wall. That's incredible. Anything you guys want to add about what Global Vision is doing or what it is that you guys have done to make self-possible or future endeavors that you guys might get into? So one of the things that we're starting to get into is more high-end, dedicated links. We have the capability now of delivering gigabit Internet to our business over wireless,
Starting point is 00:37:28 delivering gigabit internet to our business over wireless, where you could spend $20,000 in build-up costs for AT&T fiber or another fiber provider, and then on top of that pay $2,000 or $3,000 a month for that gig service. We can go in at a much cheaper price point and deliver it wirelessly. And we don't have backhoe fade. Backhoe fade in the fiber industry is when a backhoe cuts the fiber, and your fiber circuit, woo, it's super reliable until the backhoe gets it, and then you could be two or three days without service, where because our product is wireless, we don't have that problem.
Starting point is 00:37:58 One of the things we've been focusing on lately, Zach came up with a solution a couple months ago for our VoIP service, and we were constantly answering phone calls about complaints about the hosted service that we were using before. But what it seems like we've been doing a lot of is coming in and just doing an end-to-end install from phone to radio, including the cabling, the switches, the routes, everything, all the way back to us that we can then manage from our own desks without even having to go to anyone's actual office building. And that's really caused us to, some of the stress is gone, as well as some of the things are just way, way easier to manage. We get a lot less complaints. We've had a company recently where we did inside and out,
Starting point is 00:38:42 everything was Global Vision, and I have not heard a call of complaint yet from them. Completely different from coming in with VoIP phones and plugging into their $19 Netgear router and having SIP ALG issues and things like that. And then they just blame Global Vision because they were able to check their emails on it before, and how come they can't get VoIP service now? When we come in and say, okay, let's put this router in here, and if it works, you can buy it from us. They always buy it from us.
Starting point is 00:39:09 I've actually done the same thing. I've got into a place and I say, listen, I'm so confident in the equipment I sell that I'll put it in first. If you don't like it, call me in a week and I'll come pick it back up and no questions asked. But if you do like it, we'll send you an invoice. And the reality is once once they get it, and once they use it, and they see that it... Yeah, that's right. Once they get accustomed to it, and it works. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you so much for your commitment to
Starting point is 00:39:34 the Linux community to bring all of this stuff here so we all have good Wi-Fi. And if I see you walking around with your Yagi sweeping, hunting for people, I might have to come follow you around. Absolutely. Thanks, guys.
Starting point is 00:39:48 Those guys are great. So now one of the things that Wimpy reminded me about in the chat room is that he's actually talking to us over a four-mile wireless link right now. So you have some insights in this particular topic, don't you, Wimpy? Yeah, I've been using wireless broadband for six years, something like that. So for a few years, I used 3G as a means to get internet access. And now I use a local ISP who is an ex-Motorola radio engineer, and he specializes in wireless broadband services in rural areas in the UK. Well, your sound is pretty good. How has it been as a service?
Starting point is 00:40:34 It's been 100% reliable since it was installed about three years ago. So the service is 12 meg download, 4 meg upload. And when I do the podcast with Popey and the others and we've been checking network response times, mine are in the same ballpark as everyone else's who's using. Yeah, you're looking pretty good here. I'm looking at your mumble stats right now. Less than a 1%.
Starting point is 00:41:04 I mean, it's really looking good. Like, not bad at all. We've had 10 late packets out of like 198,000. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I've got no complaints. It's certainly far better than the 512K ADSL service that I can get from the major BT provider in this country. Well, now, Global Vision is just a local ISPI, as far as I know, in the Charlotte area. But I got to say, you know, we go to a lot of these events and we go to pro events and
Starting point is 00:41:36 we go to community events and Self is a community event and it has some of the best Wi-Fi out of all of them. Now, they're very judicious. They go around with sensors like Noah was giving a hard time at the end there, and they kick rogue APs off and things like that. But, you know, I got to give it to them. Like, it's really nice to be able to go there and have good Wi-Fi. When you go to a technical event and the Wi-Fi sucks, it's like, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:41:58 it's like a real weird disconnect between, like, the interest of the community and all of a sudden they're in, like, offline mode. It's almost like camping but really hot and sweaty. So I thought some of those tips would be really good. And maybe if you've had some wireless issues, maybe it's not Linux's fault. Maybe it's the wireless in your house. And I think what is in common there is
Starting point is 00:42:17 I'm with an independent ISP. You've just interviewed an independent ISP. I think there's a lot of value in having a small local company who know what they're doing over being, you know, one of millions of customers with a national provider and you really don't, you know, matter to them. And that is kind of a nice thing about wireless, right, is they can actually give somebody, like an independent market,
Starting point is 00:42:43 a place to move into. Like it's, you know, the wired infrastructure is owned, right? You can't really be an independent ISP on the wired infrastructure. But in the wireless spectrum, there's still space for the third party, small independent person or company. Yeah. And the organization I'm with, they even do mesh networks in the community as well. So each of the houses mesh together, and you can have community mesh networks with them as well,
Starting point is 00:43:09 which is kind of neat. Well, the other thing that was nice about these guys as being a local ISP is they're Linux enthusiasts. So they go to events like this and bring in the internet for the event, and they run Linux back at the office, and it's just really neat. It's a pretty cool thing to still see it out there. When I was back when I was in high school, the dial-up ISPs were local.
Starting point is 00:43:30 They ran Quake servers back at their office and stuff like that. It was a community. So it's neat to still see that out there a little bit. It makes me a little nostalgic. All right. Well, I want to talk about the gaming stats that have come out recently. And maybe part of me, like I like to, I don't like to pretend like the sky is falling, but sometimes I think we just maybe need to have a dose of reality.
Starting point is 00:43:53 So we're going to talk about some of the things I've been reading and maybe what it means. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe we'll get through it all and I'll be okay. But first, I want to tell you about something that makes me feel great, something that makes me feel like I'm moving forward, striving. That's Linux Academy. You can get a great discount if you go to linuxacademy.com slash unplug, get our 33% discount. Now Linux Academy is a, it's an institution. It is a learning institution created by Linux and open source enthusiasts, people who are really passionate about this stuff, which also has the great benefit. It means they really follow the
Starting point is 00:44:22 good stuff closely. Linux Academy has step-by-step video courses for you to go and learn about all kinds of topics. More than 1,600 videos, almost 1,700 videos. You get different experience levels on all kinds of topics around Linux and open source. Seven plus Linux distributions that you get to choose from. You always get to keep track of your progress. They have all of the great technology stacks like Vagra and OpenStack and Docker and Nginx and Apache and PHP and Perl and Mice. All of it. Well, really all of it.
Starting point is 00:44:49 It's kind of awe-inspiring when you go there. And it's not – I will not say, though, it's not overwhelming because there's a few things that help you understand it. First of all, it's all broken down in how long each section is going to take. And there's guides you can download and read offline or listen to while you take a shower. to take and there's guides you can download and read offline or listen to while you take a shower the only thing that's really cool is the scenario based labs help me actually apply what i'm learning to a real scenario as the name would suggest and these labs spin up virtual servers for you so you get to actually work with the technology and those virtual servers match the courseware there's seven plus linux distributions that you get to choose from and then the courseware
Starting point is 00:45:22 is set by the distribution and the virtual servers are set by that. Of course, if you get stuck, there's instructor help. That's no bigs. Now, if you're looking at getting some of the Red Hat certified courses, which I have done many of interviews when I was a contractor for my clients and also for hiring for the company that did the contracting, and I'm a bit of a diva when it comes to a lot of certifications. I think a lot of a diva when it comes to a lot of certifications.
Starting point is 00:45:46 I think a lot of them are hot air. I actually have mad respect, though, for some of these Red Hat certifications. I mean, there's a lot of other ones I have respect for, too. But the Red Hat ones, really, I mean, I know. You know, the thing is, is like you have to go actually do that work in the Red Hat course. Like you have to go actually apply what you've learned and try it. Like it's not just answering the questions. You've got to go do it.
Starting point is 00:46:05 And there's no Googling. They don't give you an internet connection. You have to do it all offline. I mean, that's tough. I have mad respect for that. And they have the best courseware on the Red Hat stuff. And they update it all the time. They really pay attention to that.
Starting point is 00:46:18 Also, if you just have a little bit of time, you can set your availability, and they'll generate courseware around that. Or you can go check out some of their nuggets. These are just, like, deep dives into one topic, six to 10 to 20 to 60 minutes long. Like this one's manipulating logs with said, that's a new one. I like that a lot.
Starting point is 00:46:32 I, you know, I like getting your announcements too. If you have a great new, a success from Linux Academy, like you got a dessert, you got a new cert or you passed a course or you got a great mark on your review.
Starting point is 00:46:40 Let me know, tweet me at Chris LAS. I like to cover those too. Those are really cool. Go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged and see what I've been talking about. 33% discounts. Tweet me, at ChrisLAS. I like to cover those too. Those are really cool. Go over to LinuxAcademy.com slash Unplugged and see what I've been talking about. 33% discount's great, and you can try it out. It includes the cost of a virtual machine when you
Starting point is 00:46:51 spin that up with the courseware. It's really cool. LinuxAcademy.com slash Unplugged. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Now, I'm not trying to be Chicken Little. I'm not trying to run around with my head cut off. But these latest numbers are no good.
Starting point is 00:47:07 We've got to talk about gaming on Linux just really quick. A couple of different places. Pharonix has their post up. I have that linked in the show notes. Boilingsteam.com has their post up. Shadow of Mordor, the latest big, big game to come to Linux. We covered it in the news segment on the Linux Action Show. It's such a big game.
Starting point is 00:47:23 I don't normally do that anymore. We covered it in the news segment on the Linux Action Show. It's such a big game. I don't normally do that anymore. And so Boiling Point Steam had an i7 rig with an Intel GTX 680, 8 gigabytes of RAM on Ubuntu 15.04 and Windows 10 Pro, both 64-bit. And the results are in, and they're real bad, you guys. So on Windows, he was able to get 81 frames per second on Macs.
Starting point is 00:47:47 On Ubuntu, 50 frames per second. Average frames was 55 frames per second on Windows. 30 frames per second on Ubuntu. They tried it on another rig, one with the GTX 980 and the i7, 4 gigahertz. Again, Ubuntu, 1504, 64-bit this time, and Windows 8. Windows 8.1, actually. Oh, no. Max frames per second, 152 frames per second on Windows,
Starting point is 00:48:15 114 on Ubuntu. 107 was the average on Windows. It was really 108. And on Ubuntu, it was 73. Man, that's pretty bad. Now, here's the other thing that sucks. This is just like, boy, that hurts when a brand new game comes out
Starting point is 00:48:33 and it just plays horrible on Linux. You just, you know, you hate to see that. Something else that really kind of you hate to see, and I guess it's just unavoidable, it's the nature of the beast. It's a game, it's the number one gaming platform. It's not too surprising. There's already more Windows 10 Steam gamers
Starting point is 00:48:48 than all Linux distros combined on Steam. Kind of depends on how you break it down, but 44% of Steam users are running Windows 7 64-bit. 31% are using Windows 8.1 64-bit. Windows 10 64-bit now clocks in at 2.21%, and the 32-bit variant is 0.09%. Yosemite, if you take all the different versions of Yosemite and put them together, Mac OS Yosemite is 1.10%,
Starting point is 00:49:18 but if you combine them all together, it gets up to 2.4% for the Mac. All Linux OSs combined that Steam actually tracks, 0.55%. So Windows 10 technically was released on Wednesday, but people had it for a little while, and it's already surpassed by a pretty fair margin the Linux number of Steam users. Which doesn't matter at all.
Starting point is 00:49:46 Well, I think it's kind of depressing. No, it's not, because those numbers are skewed immediately. Yeah. Like, for example, the Mordor, oh, the one game performs better. Okay. It's not just one game, though. In fact, the really depressing thing is, and I have this phronix article
Starting point is 00:50:06 linked in the show notes in a lot of cases native native linux games are only performing slightly better than games that are wrapped in the eon wrapper they're only slightly outperforming wine games on average most linux games with with a few exceptions are performing worse than the linux counterparts across the board what about the Valve statistics that show that... Yeah, that is the Valve, that is the outlier, actually. Right, but Counter-Strike Global Offensive was like 30% better on Linux. I think it's probably not a matter of... I mean, maybe there is some issue with Linux,
Starting point is 00:50:38 but I think it's also just a matter of how hard they're working on it. And I don't see... I think the main line that we always get is, well, wait till SteamOS comes along, and then SteamOS will solve this. But all these games are not console games, and they're not going to be great console experiences, and SteamOS isn't going to fix this particular problem. I mean, maybe Linux just isn't a good gaming platform. Is that impossible to admit?
Starting point is 00:51:02 Yes, because it hasn't got to the point where it's even been tested yet there's only been what three or four triple a games and a few and like one of them was uh uh the batman arkham game that came out that was atrocious in every platform so they screwed up massively and on every platform so that's not a that's not a metric. Shadow of Mordor, do we know if it was native or if it's wrapped? Do we even know? No, it's native. Okay, well, that's good, but that's one game that messed up.
Starting point is 00:51:35 So there's other games that were wrapped that perform really good, like The Witcher 3. So does it really matter? Like, we can't use any of these metrics yet because it's it's making a decision to say that this is not good enough and we're not we're not there yet when we're barely even on the starting line north ranger you think it really does come down to gaming profiles that make drivers optimized for certain games yeah definitely we have the news what was the last couple of weeks that changing the name of the binary
Starting point is 00:52:08 to fake out the driver thinking your Half-Life 2 automatically gives you an extra 30% frame rate. Yeah, I do recall that too. That's a good point. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle here because I just wanted to open this up for discussion. WW, you have a clarification on
Starting point is 00:52:24 Arkham Knight. Go ahead. Yeah, Arkham Knight is because of the PC release, which was Windows only, and they're literally fixing it. So by maybe the end of this month, maybe the start of September, we might get an update to that. There's still that, just because of that alone,
Starting point is 00:52:43 that's delayed the Linuxux port until next year so you can't even count that among the games that are on linux yet so i mean it's not even worth to mention it just because we can't even test it yet i guess i i wonder if if i just feel like perhaps the issue is that an operating system like Linux just doesn't necessarily make itself a very good platform for games because games kind of require the opposite of what an always ever evolving operating system fundamentally provide. And that's why Valve is creating SteamOS. I don't, but, and I think Valve recognizes this issue and that's why they want to create SteamOS, which is a safe landing place where game developers can have certain expectations that will always be met. That's because marketing for Linux is terrible. But is it that?
Starting point is 00:53:33 Yeah, all these factors combined are issues, yes. I'm not saying that one is better than the other as far as the sense of why they're doing it. I'm just saying that there's multiple factors that they're making these decisions on, and that there's more likely that the reason why we don't have a good gaming infrastructure right now is because it's only been a few years. It's been, what, two years at the most that it's been even reasonable, whereas for a while, Steam was ignored on Windows, too. And it took them, like, they've been around for 10 years and it took them well no they're spent out 12 years it took them like six or seven years to
Starting point is 00:54:11 get any relevancy on windows yeah yeah i i actually you know when i the practical so here's the here's the practical side of this and uh uh reekai by the way agrees the game profiles make a huge difference um but here's here's here's what i see the games i play and i don't really give a big crap the games i play play oh fine enough for me like the frame rate is good enough like i don't notice the frame rate being slow and i got so many games in Steam now that I can't play 70% of them. And I recently, like last weekend, there was like a super badass sale for Linux, a SteamOS sale. I hope some of you guys got in on that stuff because it was sweet. And I picked up like this new Mordor game, the Shadow of Mordor.
Starting point is 00:54:58 It runs fine for me. I just picked up. I got like three new games that were like crazy cheap. And I'm set now. And like, we are now at the point with Linux gaming that if you are just not super picky, there is a ton of selection. And I don't think it's, I don't really think it's a huge gap to go from where we're at now to really being a competitive system, but I don't, I am skeptical that desktop Linux
Starting point is 00:55:24 will ever be the right candidate I think people might maybe one day go from dual booting desktop Linux and maybe even SteamOS or something I mean I don't know exactly because it just seems like all these games keep coming out and developers are just unwilling
Starting point is 00:55:39 it's not even like Linux is incapable of it it's that these developers are unwilling to put the effort into it because of preconceptions or because of technical limitations that they don't know a workaround to or whatever. I mean, they could have a legitimate reason for all I know, but they don't seem to be willing to put the effort into it. And if SteamOS promises to solve some of these problems,
Starting point is 00:56:02 even if it's just through marketing and branding and Valve brand loyalty. Maybe we'll start to see the performance on SteamOS inch up and inch up and inch up. And, you know, I'm sure that'll trickle down to other Linux distributions. I'm sure there'll be wikis updated on how to take advantage of those things. Couldn't you argue that that was true
Starting point is 00:56:21 even years ago before SteamOS existed and that developers never cared in the first place? And now that SteamOS exists, they are starting to care, and it's been proven by all these games actually coming to Steam, Linux, and SteamOS. Yeah, okay, yeah. Yes, the existence of the games, it proves they care to some degree. I'm just – I'm major disappointed that the games consistently are not performing as good as they could and i don't right i'm just saying that they're they're the changing of the developer's opinion is is actually happening that's my point i mean regardless of whether it's working or not as far as like how good the performance is and stuff i don't know because i don't game that much but
Starting point is 00:57:00 don't you think that's the problem don't you think that's the problem is like they are like testing it out like they're putting their toe in the water. Yay! At the same time, they're doing such a crappy job that the Linux market share is really just not responding. It's not increasing. They're just not doing a good enough job to really move the needle, and that could send the wrong signal. They're not doing a good enough job, but that's only because they're not doing a good enough job but that's only because they're not doing enough they're not doing as many games there's like i mean as far as like triple a games how many are there on linux five maybe yeah i mean there's like three that i think are really great yeah but yeah
Starting point is 00:57:36 yeah yeah and there's recently a new steam os exclusive which is quite adorable yeah i'm just talking about triple a and the triple a on, not whether they're good or not, just the fact that they have marketing behind EA or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and they were available on other platforms first in those cases as well. Yeah, and Borderlands is awesome. And it's one of the AAAs that's available on Linux,
Starting point is 00:57:59 and it runs great. I do enjoy Borderlands a lot. Yeah, there are some examples where it is working and it's fantastic because I never even heard of that I mean I've heard of the game I
Starting point is 00:58:09 never bothered playing it when it came on Linux like awesome I'm playing it well actually all it all most my experiences like I say like I I say this with sort
Starting point is 00:58:17 of a disclaimer that for me the problem is really not that bad like I don't actually I consider myself to be kind of picky and I don't normally nor I don't really nor notice any problems until I go read these blogs or these
Starting point is 00:58:28 reviews. And I'm like, Oh, well, I guess that's an issue. I don't, I don't, I don't particularly have that issue. I guess. I mean, I suppose, you know? And so then I'm like, well, I guess, I guess it could be a little bit better, but for me, I'm not too picky. Usually I just kind of, I'm, I'm, I'm more casual these days days so it's not as big of a deal for me i think it's the issue of these blogs are taking the um the example of happy days and jumping the shark oh wow dude all right okay very good all right well i want to speak about jumping the shark linux action show is about to jump the shark in a really big way oh my god i hope you guys don't freak out i'm going to tell you about what we have coming up. But first, I want to tell you about our friends at Ting.
Starting point is 00:59:07 Go to linux.ting.com. linux.ting.com. Ting is on a mission to make mobile make sense. Why? Well, actually, because you're going to love the way Ting rates work. Ting makes it simple. Ting keeps rates simple. We don't make you pick a plan.
Starting point is 00:59:21 Instead, you just use your phone as you normally would. How much you use determines how much you pay each month. You can have as many devices as you want on one account. That's good, because when you use more, you pay less per minute, message, or megabyte of data. Your usage, plus $6 per active device on your account, plus taxes, is your monthly bill. Simple. That's what we mean when we say... mobile. That's what we mean when we say mobile. That makes sense.
Starting point is 00:59:46 Now, if you go to linux.ting.com, you get a $25 discount off your first Ting device or $25 off your service if you have a Ting compatible device. They have GSM and CDMA too. So you probably have a compatible device, and this is a great way to try out Ting. They also have SIM cards available for just $9. So if you want GSM or cdma and like a device like a security device like my buddy chase does that's a great way to go if you want like a like noah's got a bat phone he picked up by like a super tiny bat phone off of ebay that he gives
Starting point is 01:00:15 the number to me hello isn't that neat i got it and his wife isn't that adorable i think he probably gives it to a couple other people too but i know i'm on that list and i don't even know the number anymore i just have it written down somewhere and it And it's great because he just pays for what he uses. We have all kinds of devices. A couple, if you want some great budget devices, because Ting has also an early termination relief program. So you can really start stacking up the savings when you go to linux.ting.com,
Starting point is 01:00:37 and you take advantage of their ETF if you're in a duopoly contract. And then you can go grab something like the Motorola eSec and Genesis. Just a real nice baseline Android phone. No contract, no early termination fee, and it's unlocked. And you can go get an unlocked GSM phone from Ting right now. They have the Blue Studio, which is a nice phone for $209.
Starting point is 01:00:58 The OnePlus, you know about that. They got the iPhones. They got all the Galaxy devices. They have some really good MiFi devices as well. I really like that one with the OLED screen. Motorola G, though. And the Motorola G is really nice, and so is the Moto X2. All of those are over on Ting.
Starting point is 01:01:14 If you go to linux.ting.com, they'll take $25 off. You can get an ETF. They'll help you get out of that contract if you're in one, and then you're all done. You got an unlocked phone. You have no more contracts. Ting is really nice. And if you got a few devices, you should really check out the Ting Savings Calculator. It's kind of nuts. You've got an unlocked phone. You have no more contracts. Ting is really nice. And if you've got a few devices,
Starting point is 01:01:25 you should really check out the Ting Savings Calculator. It's kind of nuts. You put your current usage in there, and you'll be pretty surprised. Also, nice thing about Ting, no hold customer service. You can call them at 1-855-TING-FTW, and a real human being answers the phone.
Starting point is 01:01:37 Go to linux.ting.com. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring. The Linux Unplugged L program. Yeah, you see that? I'm multilingual now. Not offensive at all. Speaking of offensive, man, am I fired up. I am so effing angry right now.
Starting point is 01:01:56 It really burns me more than you might actually think, and I'll tell you why. So you might have noticed this week that the Linux Action Show was pulled down from YouTube. Episode 306, Windows 10 versus Linux. Boy, what a great title for YouTube, too. And not many people had had it by the time we'd posted it. I did a little search before the show went out. So boy, that was going to be a good episode for YouTube. Windows 10 versus Linux.
Starting point is 01:02:21 And it got pulled down by Conde Nast because we played a video from Wired in the news segment of the show. Now, the Linux Action Show is going in on its 10th year now. It has done news every single week, well, that we've been on the air, for 10 years. And in this particular episode, we were covering a Linux-powered rifle, and we were covering the fact that a wired was covering it. B, the fact that wired was doing video and see the production of that video. So not only were
Starting point is 01:02:50 we covering the news item itself, but we were actually also covering the video as part of our coverage that my friends, I consider to be fair use under the U S copyright law, but the way YouTube systems work, even though it's content creators that make YouTube possible, that allow them to sell ads, that made YouTube actually exist, even though it was stupid cats playing keyboards and people getting kicked in crotches, it was the content creators that made YouTube possible.
Starting point is 01:03:17 And now it's the content creators that are guilty first. And then we get to try to plead for innocence. I filed dispute Sunday evening. It is now Tuesday at 3 o'clock in the afternoon as I record this. We have lost all potential to gain any revenue off this show. Of course, YouTube revenue sucks anyway, so it would have been $10 at best. But now, if we're three days into it after release,
Starting point is 01:03:39 we won't make any revenue. Even though, in my opinion, it was absolutely legal for us to play that video. And the really burning thing about this is, and this is the thing you don't even know, is for this particular episode of the Linux Action Show, a real shit ton of effort went into making the video presentation possible. In fact, I had to mow down three of my Linux laptops that ran Linux and had to install Windows 10 on those things, trying to get them to hook up to our video presentation system so I could actually demonstrate visually the things I was talking about in the
Starting point is 01:04:14 video version of the Linux Action Show. I destroyed three of my Linux laptops to get them hooked up between Windows 10, the drivers, and our capture rig, so I could display Windows 10 in the video. And then a couple of hours after that video goes up on YouTube, Google has it pulled down because, well, Condé Nast thinks they should. Even though the show's been around for almost 10 years, we've been publishing on YouTube for a very long time, we have thousands of videos up there, they don't care. They pull us down.
Starting point is 01:04:43 After all that work, I spent two days just to get the video setup working. I spent more time just to do the visual presentation than I actually had to spend on the content of the show itself. Thankfully, Windows 10 kind of writes its own review. But still, the point remains, I spent more time to get the visual aspect working than I did on the actual content and just to get my video pulled down. Now, thankfully, I don't rely on YouTube as a primary distribution platform, and I never will because of crap like this. But man, is it a kick in the nuts when we're already dealing with some other problems. One you may have noticed, if you were somehow able to say,
Starting point is 01:05:17 oh, I don't know, download the video from our website or watch it in HTML5 from our website, but you might have noticed how crappy Noah's video looks. In fact, it seems like Okiewan Linux fan did. He says, I love the show, but Noah's camera is really distracting. I know it's a Linux solution, but the quality of the show, which used to look so good, now looks unprofessional. Sorry, I have to say it, but it's a fact. I tried to get a friend who was new to Linux to watch the show,
Starting point is 01:05:41 and that was his first comment. When I see videos like this on YouTube, I immediately switch to another video. The Linux Action Show is well produced. Why drag the production quality back 10 years? I think the free software crusade has drifted a little too far into the Stallman dimension. And I'd like to hear what other viewers have to think. One last thing.
Starting point is 01:05:58 Why does Crystal look good? It looks so good. If you're not going full Linux solution and production, why go halfway at the expense of the show? Just bring it up because I care. Well, obviously I have to look good so that way my hair looks good. I mean, hello. That's obvious. And so, you know, this is something that Noah and I have struggled with a lot.
Starting point is 01:06:15 We want the Linux Action Show to be produced and edited and created and all that stuff as much as possible under Linux as we can. much as possible under Linux as we can. But to do high resolution video production sometimes requires sort of using proprietary solutions, which we have been fighting with since Noah became a co-host. And so you see the different versions of that in the video. Like sometimes his video looks a little weird. Sometimes it looks like he's from 1980 and it needs anti-aliasing applied. And sometimes it's fine. It's been all over the board and sometimes he's in studio.
Starting point is 01:06:42 Yeah, aliasing applied, and sometimes it's fine. It's been all over the board, and sometimes he's in studio. But as Obi-Wan Linux fan here, or Oki-Wan, Oki and whatever, Oki and Wan, whatever. Let's just call him Obi-Wan Linux fan. That's nice. As he points out, it does look unprofessional, and that really does burn me. That really gets me upset because we work really hard on the show and that's got us thinking. You know, the show is actually coming up on its 10th year in June, in next June, June 10th. So we're coming up on it. And 10 years is a long time for any person to do any one thing. And I don't really tend to stick with anything, actually. It's kind
Starting point is 01:07:24 of funny. Somehow I've managed to stick with anything, actually. It's kind of funny. Somehow I've managed to stick with these shows, but for the most part, I've got to be honest, I can't even stand to drive the same route to work every day. I sometimes stay at the studio to avoid it. Sometimes I drive a different route. Monotony drives me insane. So somehow I've managed to do the Linux Action Show
Starting point is 01:07:43 for almost 10 years now. I don't know how that's happened. And all these shows really. And so it's been, recently we've been discussing how to get the show more genuine to the fact that we cover open source and Linux. And every time
Starting point is 01:07:57 we go down this route we always run up against the wall of video production. It's always the main issue is video production. It's always been the problem. It's why we use Wirecast now. It's why we edit under Final Cut. It's just never up to snuff.
Starting point is 01:08:14 So that's really been something we've discussed a lot since before Noah was even a co-host. And so we've decided this Friday to try something a little different. Now, you saw the beginnings of this last week, perhaps. You might have noticed that we did a remastered version of episode 103 of Linux Unplugged. Multi-track recording, each person, each presenter, and the mumble room gets their own track, and then our editor, Ham Radio, goes through and cleans up the individual spots,
Starting point is 01:08:40 then he turns it over and passes it on to our other editor, Rika. It's double the work, really. And it's a process we don't really have worked out yet. But the sound is much better. It's much more presentable. It sounds much more professional. And honestly, it's much more doable under Linux using open source technology. Or hardware, even.
Starting point is 01:09:00 And we have a limited budget as well. And the kind of money, you know, like say you you have six thousand dollars in a year to spend on hardware well the kind of distance you get out of audio hardware is it's just unbelievably more than you get out of video i mean one camera can cost six thousand dollars so we've been we've we've kicked this back and forth a little bit and what we want to what we want to try this friday live is an audio version of the linux action show now that doesn't mean the video is going away it's going to be more like linuxplugged for one episode, maybe two. We're going to try it for a little while and see what we do. And what that means is we're going to build it quality first.
Starting point is 01:09:32 We're going to try to get it to sound as good as possible. We're going to try to focus, when I put together a segment, I'm going to focus on the information not on the visual presentation of it. And we're going to try to put it all together and then release it on the regular Sunday release date with with basically a version of how Linux Unplugged is done now with the screen showing some visuals, but the primary focus will be on the content. Now, we're not going to switch the
Starting point is 01:09:54 whole show to this. We're trying this out as a concept because it's something that excites us. And after you've been doing something for 10 years, it's nice to get pretty excited about it again, to try to have a new idea to make it really, really good. And we even have an idea, and it's something I will be willing to share as we go along, but we even have an idea to make a remote recording, local recording of guests, very straightforward. The idea being, eventually,
Starting point is 01:10:18 and we won't be able to nail it in the first or even second attempt, but the attempt is to really have the best sounding show possible. Really something that sounds unbelievably amazing. Local in studio is possible as much as, as we can. And, and really because we have so much we can apply to that. And it, it is going to only be an experiment, a temporary experiment. We're going to try recording on a Friday to give us extra time for extra editing production. Normally we record on a Sunday, and we have it out a few hours later.
Starting point is 01:10:50 That's an amazing turnaround time. I mean, not to brag, but really, for like an hour and a half HD video podcast, it also releases in several formats, including audio. To get that out in a few hours is a pretty good turnaround. Most podcasts don't even get that with audio only. So what we're going to do is record on a Friday, A, to give us a little time to sort of experiment
Starting point is 01:11:09 with things, and B, to give our editors time to put it all together and still release a video version so those of you who consume last in video will still have something to watch. And hopefully it'll sound better and you'll see why we're here. You'll hear why we are trying this. And we'll take these lessons we learned from this and see how we can incorporate them into the main show or what direction we want to go.
Starting point is 01:11:30 It's a big change, and if it's something we go with permanently, it's something we'll be very upfront about. But it's something we're at least going to experiment with for a little while. And I'm a little unsure of how people react to it because I know for some people the video component is a big aspect of the show.
Starting point is 01:11:47 It's something that, you know, we really want, and it is nice to be able to showcase some of this stuff. You know, when there's a new version of KDE or GNOME or Windows 10, it's nice to be able to actually visually capture it. And I'm not saying that's going to go away completely. I still want to have some elements of that. But what we would probably do instead is what we would try to instead is what we would try
Starting point is 01:12:06 to do is have individual video releases when necessary. So if something is inherently video centric, an interview on location at Red Hat, a demonstration of an open source application or a desktop environment or Windows 10 or something great that happens down at LinuxCon on August 17th, we can still individually publish those as YouTube videos or as download videos. Like, something great that happens down at LinuxCon on August 17th. We can still individually publish those as YouTube videos or as download videos, like we did with OSCON. If you go back and look at our OSCON 2015 coverage, we individually published every single video interview we did. So that way, the audio audience, which is the majority of the last audience, that's somewhere between 60% and 70%. It depends on the episode. My best guess is a lot of you just kind of move around. But the majority are audio. And we realized, well, if the majority
Starting point is 01:12:51 are audio, and we're talking about the Prism laptop, or we're talking about Firefox WebVR, or we're talking about Keyboardio, you guys might want to be able to see that. So for the audio listeners, in the show notes of OSCONcon 2015 we individually uploaded and published the interviews and this is an area i think we want to explore a lot more is if we have an audio version of last we could individually publish the video elements still for viewing and on top of that there's an element of this that i haven't told you about yet and i'm not going to tell you about it a lot yet because it's still in development, but there is a plan somewhere in the September time frame
Starting point is 01:13:29 where I'm going to go on the road and try to do some of these shows while traveling. And I, if we can nail this down during this time period, this will make it much more possible for me to be able to do this from the road. And so there is a bit of an ulterior motive. We're sort of experimenting with some ideas that we might need to apply do this from the road. And so there is a bit of an ulterior motive. We're sort of experimenting with some ideas
Starting point is 01:13:45 that we might need to apply later on down the road. And that's something else that we're going to be experimenting with. So that's why we might do one or two episodes of it, because there could be an element of that that we need to cover. So, yeah. All right, yeah, and like Conseco points out in the chat room, this is a good time to try out a new Art Door release. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 01:14:07 And it's a big change, especially, you know, since we've been doing video, we've been more and more video focused, really, since episode around, what, I don't know, 100, 120-ish, we started transitioning to video. And then, you know, 100 episodes after that, it was pretty serious. And I think a lot of people
Starting point is 01:14:26 I think we have a good balance in our audience of cord cutters and people that watch video primarily and a lot of people who commute I mean the download numbers suggest a lot of more people download over audio on a podcast catcher but the video is still a pretty significant portion and we have Roku apps and TiVo apps
Starting point is 01:14:42 and XBMC apps so we want to still continue to deliver video as well. And I'm just going to try to experiment with striking a balance there and seeing what works. Because I want, if nothing else, I want you to be able to listen to Linux Action Show and go like, damn. You can make a show that sounds that good under Linux? You know, I mean, things like that. Like that's some of the – and I don't want you to watch and go, man, why does that video look like that? I just, it's, it's distracting from the content. And it's not that, uh, I'm, I'm, it's not that I'm against using, uh, proprietary
Starting point is 01:15:14 software and proprietary hardware in the production of a show that talks about open source software. It's just, it chews at me every single week. And so for a little while, I want to try doing it. Um, and we won't make a complete transition because this is going to be a temporary thing. But it's putting a test balloon up and seeing how it goes. And we'll still continue to do video production and continue to test all of that. Now, does anybody have any thoughts or comments before we wrap up today? Because I know I just kind of dropped a big bomb there. But anybody have any immediate reactions?
Starting point is 01:15:43 Go ahead. The room's open. No? No? Are you sure? There's all the software you'd want is free and available on the Linux platform. Oh, go ahead. Well, I'm a commuter, so I've never
Starting point is 01:15:58 watched the video version. You're kidding me. You've never watched the video version? Never. Yeah. I am slightly terrified by the fact that if we make this transition and we discover that it's not a huge deal, that all of these years focused on video have been wasted. I'm a little worried about that. Because there was a time when it was a really big controversy that we launched video.
Starting point is 01:16:22 People have been around for a long time. That really blew up on our face when we said we're switching to video people really were upset and so now i'm kind of saying we're going to refocus on audio i just uh so this week's episode our plan for linux unplugged is to and of course i probably should have said this earlier but our plan is to delay the mp3 and aug versions of the show we'll release the video versions on as fast as we normally can and we're going to release the AUG and MP3 versions as the multi-track remastered sounds
Starting point is 01:16:50 really good because we figure those people are the people in the car, most likely. And those are the people that need the remastered version the most. So if you're subscribed to the Linux Unplugged MP3 feed or AUG feed this week, it might be a little delayed, but the result is you'll get the higher, higher, higherly,
Starting point is 01:17:06 better produced version, I guess is a better way to put it. The better produced version of the Unplugged program, which hopefully is better for headphone users and commuters. And, um, we also have a version, we have a version of it, episode 103, that you can go find in the subreddit, if you didn't get a chance to listen to that.
Starting point is 01:17:22 And I'd like to hear your feedback. We'll always, we have feedback threads over at Linuxuxactionshow.reddit.com i'd like to hear your thoughts on this you kind of now know what's coming up not everybody who watches last and listens to last listens to this show by by a long shot and so those of you who do kind of have a little bit of the inside scoop of what's coming up and i just want you to know i just to recap the core reasons behind it is we really want to make something that is fun for us to make and gets us excited to produce. First of all, I want to be excited to make it, and creating something new honestly gets me excited in a way I haven't been excited in a
Starting point is 01:17:56 long time, and just experimenting like this. And it's a podcast. If you don't get to do this with a podcast, when can you? It's not a radio show show it's not a television show like if you're ever going to do something crazy this is a place to do it so that's you know keep that in mind and second thing is is honestly what we really want to do is create something that's really truly genuine to producing content under linux and we have ideas to make it so if we really did this we could have it would require some internet connection isdn connections or some hardware something over ip but you know, you flip a few hardware buttons and we could really do this entire thing under Linux eventually if we got there. And that really excites me.
Starting point is 01:18:34 And that's something else we're going towards. And then last but not least, I really think we can, we can experiment in a new way with the medium. We can do something we haven't been able to really do is create stories around open source and around projects that are truly fascinating and genuinely interesting to listen to. And that's something else I've wanted to do for a long time. And it's something we might experiment with. I mean, we might not.
Starting point is 01:18:55 The feedback might be so hostile and so negative that we chicken out. But currently, that's where our momentum is at. And I hope you understand it. And I wanted to share it with you guys. I know it's a little cray, but you stick in there. You can join us live on Friday. We'll have it up on the Jupiter Broadcasting calendar, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar,
Starting point is 01:19:11 and see how it goes at jblive.tv. All right. Wow, man, I feel good. I feel like that was a little bit of a counseling session for me. Like I had a big secret that I needed to share with you guys, and now I've gotten it off my chest. That's nice. Thank you for listening. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:19:25 Thank you. Now also, I'd like to get your content, ideas, topics, suggestions, feedback. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com I say this every week. I kind of feel like a jerk, but really, we get no love for Linux Unplugged. Subreddit just gets no love. Go over there and love on this show,
Starting point is 01:19:42 won't you? Jeez. You know Wes? He didn't show up this week because no love. I'm sorry, Wes. If you're listening, I'm sorry, buddy. They love you. They just didn't say anything. It's sad. It's sad.
Starting point is 01:19:51 No, really, it's fine. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Go to JupyterBroadcasting.com slash contact to send us feedback. JBLive.tv to watch us live. We do it live Tuesdays. That's Pacific. You can get it Pacific time. You can go to JupyterBroadcasting.com slash calendar to get it in your time.
Starting point is 01:20:03 All right, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next week. I love it. I don't know, Wimpy, you're like a master podcaster now. You are good at the tease. So as we're signing off, Wimpy says, the next USC mailing list discussion could be show content. Wimpy, what do you know?
Starting point is 01:20:50 What do you know? Ask Popey. Popey laughed a while ago. As he laughed. Come on, come on. Just give me a little tease. Give me a little tease. I don't know anything.
Starting point is 01:21:03 I don't know anything. Just keep an eye on the Ubuntu devil mailing list. Okay, okay, I see. I see how it is. Very good. Or just subscribe to Softpedia because I'm sure they'll pick up on it. Right, no kidding, right? Hey-o.
Starting point is 01:21:14 Hey-o. So, all right, jbtitles.com. Chad, go pick our title now. Now the show's over. Am I crazy, you guys? What do you think of the test we're going to do for last? I don't think we have to see to absorb the content. I mean, if you're going to do something,? I don't think we have to see it to absorb the content. I mean, if you're going to do something like you said with Linux Unplugged where it's video enhanced, I mean, that's perfectly, I mean, it's better than most of the other podcasts I listen to.
Starting point is 01:21:34 Okay. Software Center Woes isn't bad, my creepy uncle. Yeah, I mean, I suppose that's true. Yeah. And, you know, some people think the green screen looks old too and i agree we didn't want to really use the green screen very long in fact when for a little while we thought about just trying to use the studio shot uh but uh yeah i don't know uh software center woes jbtitles.com i think go ahead ww i think it's better that you experiment and find something that works overall well for you, well for the audience, and just doesn't put that stress on you because people can tell, I'm sure.
Starting point is 01:22:13 Yeah, I hate being stressed out. That's the other thing is I hate what happens so often is I have to troubleshoot something video production related for the first 10 or 15 minutes for a show. So 10 or 15 minutes before the show starts, I'm not thinking about the show at all. I'm thinking about this video issue. And it really gets me frustrated. Alex, you wanted to mention something? Yeah. One of the features of video I liked really much is that I got to see the chat logs.
Starting point is 01:22:39 And I would like if they would be saved and published in text form if you are going to give up video. We've thought about it. We'd probably be showing the chatroom more in the video version if we did that. But the only reason I don't do that is because all it really takes is for somebody to just log a chat client into the chatroom and set their buffer. And then you have that. Yes, but if I'm not online at the time yeah that's true yeah there's probably a great system that does this if somebody anybody out there knows or wants to set us up one let me know uh all right so miles of wi-fi is not bad
Starting point is 01:23:18 either i kind of like that ww jbtitles.com jbtitles.com everybody speaking for myself chris like if you're going to get rid of the video feed like as far as being able to see you and noah i think it'd be nice to at least have the video feed of the chat room yeah okay yeah yeah and i mean you know like if we did interviews and stuff in that in that episode some of them would be audio only but if they're on location they might still be video and like an applaud like an unplugged you know i just played that video clip of Noah. The only thing is I don't totally want to commit to that because I've at least just in my real initial sort of last run,
Starting point is 01:23:53 I've noticed I seem to get better, more genuine conversations with people when I do audio interviews because they don't have a camera in their face. And so I don't want to commit to doing a bunch of video interviews because if I can get a better interview when I use a little portable Zoom recorder, that's what I'm going to do. I mean, the interviews I got at OSCON with our audio, the people are much more relaxed and the conversations are more jovial and joking and funner to listen to because they're not all freaked out by a camera. And I just can't ignore that. I just can't ignore that. And that was the other thing that sort of led me down this path was we went to OSCON and the interviews we did on Audio Man, we banged those things out so fast and they went so smooth and so natural. And I had such a good range to pick from and I had so much room to clean up mistakes and cut out things that were just, you know, dumb or superfluous. It was so – and I was able to get through all like four or five or six or seven clips we played in an hour. It was just, for my availability, I was able to do more, and the people sounded better.
Starting point is 01:24:54 And I was able to put the Zoom recorder in my pocket when I was done. It was really nice. I mean, it was... Yeah, I know, the hair. Right, Wimpy the hair. Yeah, that's true. That is... Well, see, the thing is.
Starting point is 01:25:06 I don't know what they're talking about. The thing is, Wimpy, some people like the hair. You know, they like to check in and check in on the hair. But I can just every now and then I'll just flash the webcam and prove that, yes, the hair is, I'm not going off camera because the hair is looking bad. The hair is actually looking better than ever. Look at that. And it's great looking hair.
Starting point is 01:25:24 I think one day. day kobe should sit down would be in the hat and film uh would be watching an entire episode of last week he's never watched yeah yeah that'd be great i haven't got time for that i have i have about two and a half hours of commuting a day so i've got i'm driving in that time so i've got lots of time for listening to podcasts. You know what? You subscribe to about 18 or 19 Linux and Floss podcasts. I think that's super common. I think that's the majority.
Starting point is 01:25:54 And you know what? Even somebody who makes video content, over time, I was watching four or five video podcasts a week. I've whittled it all down. It's all audio now. Not intentionally. I just reflected on this a couple of days ago and realized that all of the podcasts I listen to now, which... Let's see. How many? Let's see here. Man, there are so many great podcast apps right now. If you guys... Pocket Cast is
Starting point is 01:26:16 really good, by the way. Yeah, I use that. Pocket Cast is awesome. Yeah, yeah. So here's a couple I'm listening to right now. 99% Invisible, Daily Tech News Show, Mission Log, No Agenda, Radio Lab, Surreal, This American Life, This Week in Trek, the Accidental Tech Podcast. Actually, I just actually recently unsubscribed from that. Common Sense with Dan Carlin, Everything Sounds. Oh, that's a good show. The History of Rome. All of these shows, Random Trek, all of these shows now are all audio.
Starting point is 01:26:48 Like, they, I've just accidentally, just over time, because I'm using, these podcasts are like, these are my time. Like, when I'm not hanging out with family or friends, and I'm driving, or I'm working, or I'm laying down, like, podcasts are for me. They're my time. And so, I like them in audio. And our downloads kind of seem to bear that out. It's really tough to tell because what I've basically gathered by looking at the stats over the years is people might find us on YouTube, then they move to the site, and they watch us, and then they decide, well, if there's no reason to watch, I could just listen.
Starting point is 01:27:24 And then every now and then, an interesting comes along or they have the day off or it's something extra in their routine. Or they decide they want to watch on the Roku today instead of listen while they drive. And that time they decide to go video. And so an audio listener maybe once a month goes to video or once every couple of months goes video. And so it's not just a clear break. to video or once every couple of months goes video. And so it's not just a clear break. I can't just say, well, I'll only lose 10 percent of the audience because that's not really true, because the other percent also watches video from time to time. So it's not a clear cut decision to make. And the other thing is, is it's nice to be able to showcase this stuff, because, you know, if I show
Starting point is 01:28:00 you what Gnome looks like today, well, when you watch the show in five years, it's pretty quaint to look at that. If you go back and look at the old shows of LAS and we're showing off the old versions of SUSE's KDE desktop, it's adorable. It's adorable that it looks like that. And because we had video, we are able to document that in a sense and capture it. And it's like a time capsule. So I'm cognizant of the fact that LAS does provide that aspect of Linux coverage, and it's kind of unique in that respect.
Starting point is 01:28:28 There's not pretty much any other Linux podcast that does that. And so if we stop doing it, nobody's doing it. So I don't intend to stop doing that altogether, but I just, you know, to be honest with you, to be completely frank, what happened was we got into video because we could. Because live streaming became possible, webcams and cameras became cheap enough, and it was approachable. And so we did it. And we didn't really ask ourselves, does it make a better show? It just was, well, technology has enabled us to do the next thing. And because we like to follow technology,
Starting point is 01:29:00 we do it. And we went into it and we didn't really think about how it's actually sort of it sticks you right in the middle of you can't really make a fantastic audio show and you can't really make a fantastic video show. Like you go back to Noah demonstrating YubiKey or something like that. And he has to sit there and he has to dictate out the commands to type. And the video audience just has to sit there and watch him while he's waste time because we don't know if you're listening to this tutorial or watching this tutorial. And so when you put a tutorial together and you have to consider the audio audience and the video audience, it's a it's basically it's a wash. It's like trying to write for multi platform. It's like you kind of just get the worst. get the worst. And so it's not, we, I feel like have done a very, not to pat ourselves on the back, but I feel like we've done a very good job of trying to walk the line of making the show
Starting point is 01:29:48 approachable to audio listeners and video listeners. But if I'm being honest with you, I could do a hell of a better job of making an audio show that I'm doing currently. And if I know I'm shooting a video segment that I'm going to release independently and embed in the show notes, I can do a hell of a lot of a better of a, of a job making a video specific thing too. And, and, and that's just the reality is right now we kind of walk the middle line. And because we do a fairly good job of it, I think personally people don't really give us a hard time. But I think if you really know content and you really know how it works, you can see it. What about doing both video and audio but doing less – not on-camera video but doing the just like like the tutorial stuff would
Starting point is 01:30:26 be separated and embedded in the show notes but then it'd be like other stuff where the chat room and then like video websites displaying and playing another person's video or something like that would still be involved in the main thing yeah i think that's probably what we'll kind of get to i don't know yeah i think it's kind of essentially i'm thinking love plus more yeah yeah with more uh and i think well you know the youtube channel will have more individual releases which actually could be very good for people looking for content because you shorter content does better on youtube so you know if we had a 10 minute video explaining how to set up yubikey people are way more likely to watch that. Like I'll give you an example.
Starting point is 01:31:09 We did a digital photo workflow on Linux like a month ago. And a big part of that segment was how to back up your photos on Linux to SpiderOak. And then two weeks later, we got a question in the subreddit, can anybody recommend how I back up my digital photos? Now, the problem is, if you're looking to solve that one particular issue, how do I back up my photos on Linux, you're not very inclined to watch a two-hour video on digital Linux photo workflow. You know, and so that's what we run into is people don't even know that we've answered their question because they're not willing to watch an hour, 32 hour video. So if we could take those individual pieces and still
Starting point is 01:31:49 include them in the show, but also release them as separate videos, we might find that the need for a show like how to Linux pretty much goes away. And that solves that specific need and issue of people trying to solve these problems under Linux. It burns me that even in our own community, people are constantly asking about apps that we have, we have recommended and suggested of people trying to solve these problems under Linux, it burns me that even in our own community, people are constantly asking about apps that we have recommended and suggested, how-tos we have done and solved and shown, and it's just, it's not their fault. It's because discovery in a podcast
Starting point is 01:32:15 is basically non-existent. And you just, if you don't listen to the whole thing every single week, you don't get all the information. And so what my idea is, we really focus in on content. We focus on making a great audio show that sounds amazing, that's great to listen to, that you are proud to have somebody who's checking out Linux listen to.
Starting point is 01:32:33 And when it calls for it, and not every episode, but when it calls for it, there is separate releases of video that either showcase something or walk something through. And then we would also just play those as clips in the show, as a video in the show itself. So you don't have to go out and watch them separately if you don't want to, but they're available if you're just out there searching for them. We are considering transcribing the audio too,
Starting point is 01:32:56 where we've been doing that for Women's Tech Radio, and it's something we're considering doing for Linux Action Show as well. Transcribing is good for SEO too, but the part where it may not have video and it may have video, wouldn't that pretty much guarantee that people are, unless you specifically say in the show that there is a video component in this particular episode,
Starting point is 01:33:19 no one's going to know about it, no one's going to click it. Yeah, and that's no big deal. I don't think it's no big deal. I don't think it's no big deal. I think that's going to pull a lot of people out of it because if there are people who just watch video because they want to see
Starting point is 01:33:34 the demos and stuff like that, but then there may or may not be there, then they might not even care. So it's two different audiences. So here's how that works from a practical standpoint. In the show, we cover it, and we say, if you'd like to see the visual version, it's embedded in the show notes. And that's all you have to say in the show.
Starting point is 01:33:52 That solves that problem. Now, for people that are just watching the video version, they just want the small episodes, the snippets. Now, when we post the video separate, it starts with a splash that says, this is a segment from the Linux Action Show, like a two-second-long splash. Boom. It goes into the segment. This is a segment from the Linux Action Show, like a two-second long splash, boom, goes into the segment. Then it wraps with a wrap screen that says you can listen and find the entire episode over at bit.ly slash last 357 or whatever. And then they have more information if they want to watch the entire episode.
Starting point is 01:34:26 But the reality is somebody who wants to watch a four-minute how-to is not at all the same person who wants to listen to an hour, hour and a half, hour podcast. I actually found last for looking for an how to and it just happened to be in the video the title of the episode. Yeah right now we basically we rely on titling. That's the truth. If it wasn't in the title I probably wouldn't ever sound it.
Starting point is 01:34:42 That's why we go through the trouble of being anal about the titles. You either have to know't in the title, I probably wouldn't have ever sounded. That's why we go through the trouble of being anal about the titles. You either have to know it in the title or know exactly what to search for in the show notes sometimes because I've run into that a few times. Yeah, and so by breaking these things out, we kind of want to try to solve that problem a bit. And then we're hoping that when people see those, they're like, oh, there is a podcast behind this. And then you listen and you're like oh this is like the this is the real show and and the idea is is it you kind of do give away a little bit of the farm but truth is we put the content out we put the content out there for free anyways so it's not really like it's that
Starting point is 01:35:15 big of a deal and people can already time code link on youtube and people do like when we you know whenever we do get posted to reddit which very rarely happens because people don't want to watch a two-hour video on reddit either um when we do people usually link Reddit, which very rarely happens because people don't want to watch a two hour video on Reddit either. When we do, people usually link to the time code, which I'm actually totally fine with. I have no problem with that. I think it's a nice feature. Anyways, so yeah, many people do think the show notes are the video description. That's true.
Starting point is 01:35:39 All right. So there you go. And so tune in Friday. Let us know what you think, you guys. And hopefully all goes well. And it turns out to be, you know, it's not going to be perfect on our first attempt. But hopefully you'll at least get the essence of what we're trying to accomplish.

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