LINUX Unplugged - Episode 123: Mycroft and Chilli | LUP 123

Episode Date: December 16, 2015

UbuCon is just around the corner, we’re joined by Ubuntu’s community manager & the team on the ground to share the inside scoop on how this Ubuntu conference came to be & how you can get in free.Ryan from Mycroft stops by to give us an update on their open source artificial intelligence project, their new official partnership with Ubuntu & more.Then we discuss the major partnership between LibreOffice & OwnCloud, the cool OwnCloud hardware that could develop into a consumer device. Plus some major project updates, community feedback & more!

Before we start the show, we have been following this World Without Linux series that the Linux Foundation has been putting out. We skipped a couple of episodes, but the last one that came through, Wes, this one I think is a big deal. I think this is the one, right? So let's play a little bit of this. This is the World Without Linux Episode 5 by the Linux Foundation. Hello, world! This is Annie coming to you from the International Space Station. Follow me and I'll take you on a little tour. Oh, boy. Here we go again.

As you can see, we are having a few computer glitches. They're probably running windows. Running windows. Uh, through this door, you'll see that... Houston, we have a problem. Our pod bay doors won't open. Copy, this is Houston. Try asking Super Nice, maybe.

Wow. This is embarrassing. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. Please? I'm sorry, Annie. I'm afraid I'm sorry, Annie. I'm afraid I can't do that. A world without Linux would mean a world

without exploration. Listen, I'll upgrade your RAM and give you three bitcoins. Come on. Ooh, wow. I like that. A world without Linux is hard to imagine.

Thanks to hundreds of thousands of individuals and companies who support Linux, we don't have to. Learn more and help support Linux today. One small step for mankind.

The number you have dialed has been changed. Hashtag world without Linux. All right, I think that's by far the best one yet. That was good. That was good. I enjoyed that one a lot. And you know what else I like? Linux in space.

Yeah. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 123 for December 15th, 2015. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that already has your gift picked out. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hey there, Wes. Guess what? Big show. Oh, big show today. My favorite. 123, it worked out great. We have some great friends of the show.

They're coming on to talk about their projects and what they have going on. Coming up towards the first half of the show, we're going to go through some major updates. AMD, huge new initiative. Huge. Huge. And we're going to break it down for you right half of the show, we're going to go through some major updates. AMD, huge new initiative. Huge. Huge. And we're going to break it down for you right here on the show. I'm going to do a little bit of follow-up on my KDE review. Then we're going to get in and talk about Ubicon.

What is that? What is it? Why is it exciting? And why can you actually possibly attend? We'll discuss that. And then later on in the show, the Minecraft Project has some big updates, some official partnerships, some nice hardware tweaks. So we'll talk to Ryan from the MyCraft Project to get it right from the horse's mouth about what's new. And then towards the end of the show, ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to announce the eventual death of Google Docs.

LibreOffice and OwnCloud have teamed up to bring us something we have all wanted for so long. We're going to talk about that. Plus, OwnCloud has a new hardware partnership coming up that may put OwnCloud in the homes of the average consumer, a Western digital OwnCloud combo unit. That's not the interesting part, though. The interesting part is you can get the prototype in your home built around a Raspberry Pi running Linux in the next couple of weeks.

We'll tell you the information coming up in the show. Big show today, Wes. Huge show. Yeah. That's very exciting. So let's kick it off. Let's bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumbleroom.

Hey there. Hello. Listen to that. Oh, boy. That is a showing right there. Hello, everybody. Hello. Hey, a couple of interesting things to get into real quick before we get into all the main content.

There's a couple of threads we've been following over the year here in Linux Unplugged. And one of them is my continued quest to get my freaking Librem 15 Purism laptop. Where the F is it? I don't know. But they do have a news update. Cubes OS will be shipping pre-installed on Purism's security-focused Librem 13 laptop. Which you won't get, but if you did, it'll be very secure. Oh boy, I don't know what to say. So let's start with Cubes OS. That's the security-focused

operating system that Snowden said back in November was his favorite distro of choice. He's really excited about it. And this week, the laptop maker Purism says they'll ship their privacy-focused Librem 13 notebook with cubes pre-installed. Now, this is a distro that uses Zen to basically isolate each application into its own virtual machine. And it supports Fedora,

Debian, and Windows 7 VMs and probably Ubuntu, because they'd be crazy not to. I mean, how can you not, right? Yeah, so here's an interesting idea, Wes. You got this super security-focused laptop. They got a little video here I can play just a little bit of to kind of give you an idea. A 13.3-inch laptop computer built chip by chip to respect and protect your privacy, security, and freedom. Right now, you are vulnerable to adversaries stealing your personal data.

I do not want that. I'm scared. The Librem laptop's goal is to keep you safe. I do not want that. I'm scared. All right, so let's break it down. Here's the thing that I don't like about this. Two things right off the top of my head. Who's your target audience? Is your target audience the technical Linux user who knows what the hell BIOS is and knows why a computer built around Linux is a good thing? Or is your audience the person going into Best Buy that's heard about cyber hacking from CNN? And

I honestly don't believe the second is their audience at all, because the second is going to be buying from name brands they've actually heard of before, just the way the markets work for the last 30 years. No change there there because that's no change in consumer behavior. So this is obviously a product directed at Linux users, and that's why they're seeking the Free Software Foundation certification. That's why they're working on really targeting Linux users. That's why they did a crowdfunding campaign, because they know their audience is a technical audience.

And yet, they peddle this stupid shit like Cubes OS. Not that Cubes isn't a bad OS, but let's be honest. If I'm your typical Linux user, I've been using Linux for a couple of years, and now I recognize the value of having a Linux-focused laptop that's designed well, I'm probably going to want to run standard Linux distributions with standard Linux desktops so I can do my everyday job. So first of all, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to be investing in an operating system, and they had Purism OS before, now they're doing Cubes OS. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me to begin with. This sales pitch they're doing where you are

constantly under attack. Now you are vulnerable to adversaries stealing your personal data for their gain. That's scare tactic to sell your product, which isn't going to work to Linux users because Linux users already know they're not vulnerable to that kind of stuff in nearly the same scale that a Windows user. But if you researched all of this, I mean, you could, their target audience.

So I continue to not quite get who Purism is targeting. And I continue after over a year and change. And I honestly haven't looked because I will become enraged if I look. But I paid the money and I still, in December of 2015, do not have my laptop. So what the hell? Do not have my laptop. So what the hell? How about you focus on shipping to the people that backed your project and you stop worrying about creating some custom, super, ultra secure environment? Because newsflash, you know what 90% of people are going to do when they buy that laptop?

They're going to format it and install Ubuntu or some other distro. That's what's going to happen. So I don't know. Wimpy, I want to hand it over to you to hear your thoughts. And I am now at a point now where I think maybe I've been scammed, maybe I'm never going to get my laptop, and I don't understand why the project is focusing on these things, and the way they talk makes it sound more official than it really is,

and that makes me uncomfortable. I'm curious what you think, if maybe I'm overreacting. No. So I'm going to try and underreact because I've been very skeptical about purism for a very long time. And I don't want to sort of torpedo what they're trying to do because on the face of it, it's a good thing to do. That's why I backed it. Sell free and open source software in order to better protect computer and and also to design really really nice custom built hardware for linux yeah but that's the first thing so the custom built hardware that's simply not true

there's nothing custom about the uh libram computers there are other oems that have been selling that hardware platform to customers that have got them OEMs that have been selling that hardware platform to customers that have got them in their hands that have been using them for nearly a year so that that whole chip chip to chip design thing I don't buy it and the other thing is is that if it was chip to chip why would you choose chips that don't work with Linux like for example the Bluetooth adapter so if you're getting a Librem don't work with linux like for example the bluetooth adapter so if you're getting a libram don't expect bluetooth to work because there's no kernel driver for the bluetooth chipset that they've chosen oh that's little things like that oh don't expect the trackpad

to work or maybe expect the trackpad to work because i was good enough to point them at some source code for linux kernel drivers which by the the way, they didn't contribute back to the originating sources. So there are things about Purism that I'm not super enthusiastic about. And I've been testing PureOS over the last couple of days and maybe anyone out there

who has purchased and purchased-backed, I'm not quite sure what the correct term is, you know, a Purism needs to go and try PureOS out and decide whether that's the operating system that you're going to go with when your laptop hopefully turns up. Because I wouldn't choose to run it as my day-to-day operating system. Well, I guess, you know, on the surface, you're right, Wimpy, though. Your point is valid. I really love the idea of something that is a genuine solution to some of the security problems we have.

And application isolation essentially protects you from application vulnerability. Assuming the Xen hypervisor and the kernel that it's all running under are secure. It's at least more isolation. But this wasn't something that was planned because there was no talk of using cubes a year ago. Suddenly there's a big interview with Edward Snowden about four weeks ago. And then a few weeks later, Purism are now working with cubes. And I'm not saying that technically that is not a bad idea. I want to actually expand on your point there.

Try and introduce that into your first generation project that you've been planning and working on for the last 12 months. It's disingenuous. Go with what you've got now and work with cubes in your next iteration. Here's what it says in the Ars Technica article, which actually feels like rewriting history to me. Purism has worked closely with cubes developers since before the laptop manufacturer's successful crowdfunding campaign.

Really? Which raised a combined, it goes into $800,000 that they raised. Purism manufacturers own their motherboard and all of the chips are designed to run free software. The Librem also ships with hardware kill switches for camera microphones. Todd Weaver, Purism's founder, who I've talked to many times personally, says he has an uncompromised vision to offer free as in freedom laptops. Now, they – but see, the way they talk about this is they – and I'm sure it's great for cubes too.

And I have massive respect for Joanna and everybody who works with cubes. I mean I deeply have – like some of the people I respect the most in the industry, right? But I – and I'm not deterring – I'm not taking away from cubes at all because I think it is really cool. But what I don't buy into and what I am taking issue with is this sort of sales pitch in this Ars Technica article. I'm not blaming Ars either because Todd is – Todd is great to talk to. It basically says that they've been working with cubes since before the crowdfunding campaign was even successful. Well, if that's the case, then why was there ever purism os why was that ever you haven't heard about this before yeah it just doesn't it just doesn't add up i'd love you know and todd has a has an open

invitation by the way to come on the show he's been on the show before linux unplugged so uh todd if you'd like to come on explain explain it to me, especially as somebody – here's my understanding. When I talked to Todd at OSCON a year ago, he told me that he personally knew where my laptop was, and he personally knew I'd be getting it in November. That was in person at OSCON is what he told me, face-to-face. So it's December. Sounds like you need an update. And I could really, really use that laptop, and I don't have the money to buy a new one. And, yeah. Marks, you've been't have the money to buy a new one. And yeah. Marks, you've been wanting to jump in on this.

Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I've been kind of watching this in the background for a while, and the feeling that I've always got from Librem is that they basically, when they launched the crowdfunding campaign, they thought the problem is that no one is investing money in getting the uh the firmware support that

that you need for these chips in in an open source way and all they needed was to raise the money and then they could get it all sorted and they'd have all of the the code you needed written or convince the manufacturers to write it for them um but basically it's turned out that it's harder than that and now they're kind of floundering a bit and trying to save face them um but basically it's turned out that it's harder than that and now they're kind of floundering a bit and trying to save face and not say no it's impossible they're still putting out these videos and saying oh now you need to look out for your privacy and we're the only ones who can protect your privacy and you know the reason that you're now you're feeling like you're being scammed because you've not got what you've paid for but they they i i suspect

they probably thought that they would genuinely be able to give what you paid for. But they they I suspect they probably thought that they would genuinely be able to give what you were paying for. And now they found it's harder than they expected. So not to put you on the spot, Ryan, but as somebody who's just recently gone through the crowdfunding thing, do you feel an intense pressure to deliver on exactly what you committed to? Or do you feel like there's room to communicate with your backers who are passionate about your project that things are harder than you expected? Okay, so the deal from the beginning was we said that we were going to instead of opt for putting things too far forward, so that we had to keep pushing it back, we were going to put it at a date that we were pretty comfortable with hitting, even if we had delays.

So we built in a delay into our schedule for when we'd get Mycroft out to people. We have a saying of under-promise, over-deliver. What are your thoughts on like, oh, man, something comes up, and now we've got to kind of just roll with it and now we have to communicate this. What are your thoughts on managing that? Immediately be upfront about it. Yeah, no pressure says Michael. every avenue that we had to communicate because we have to, as a new company and we already took people's money, we have to be as upfront as possible or else that would be the end of us,

I think. Here's the disconnect for me and the Purism Project and other projects I've backed in the past. If you're going to a certain technically affluent audience, then that audience also generally is able to recognize the scope of task you are trying to take on. And that is at the core of the very reason they are giving you money because they recognize, holy shit, you are trying to do something that is incredible. Let me give you money, right? That's a big thing. And so those are people who are deeply invested in the future of that project. And it seems likely to me that those would also be the people most likely to best receive, hey, this is way harder than we thought, but we're still totally working on it.

We apologize we can't meet the expectations. Let us reset those for you, and we will continue to clearly communicate those expectations. That is really what it seems like it takes to successfully manage a project that has been crowdfunded that is slipping a little bit, because the very people that are backing you acknowledge the fact that it's a difficult task. I think that's the core of it right there is that there's been this disconnect between, and they promise so much freedom, right? And the PR, it sounds really good. That's what the casual Linux user wants. Oh, free BIOS. But you're marketing to an audience of people who like researches this stuff, right? And we can see, well, that's really the same firmware.

It's still closed. And that's fine. If you can make a more free laptop, if you can progress towards that goal, that's great. But it's the same kind of like you need to understand your audience and you need to be clear with them at all steps. Can I give you a little bit of a shout out to the Purism crew? I would recommend that it's probably exactly what you described, Chris, and they've come across some technical challenges that are much harder than they anticipated. What I would tell them to do is take your advice, explain that to the community that's following them, and then they might be surprised to find that somebody within the community has a wealth of knowledge in that area in which they're hung up on, if that is the case. Yeah, I think we all want to see more well-designed Linux laptops. Definitely.

That's why I backed it. We all want to see that. And so if the answer is, turns out it's a harder job than we thought, that's a great answer because that means you're really working super hard on it and you're not cutting corners. So I'd love to hear that answer. Okay, so Wimpy, I know you want to jump in here as we wrap up. Go ahead. Yeah, I agree. You know, I'm conflicted about purism. I identify with their goals and objectives. I've not seen anything to convince me that something's not quite right with the way they've gone about this

there's a number of issues that they've not been up front about but i've been testing out pure os and the one thing that does stand out is the pure browser oh which um i think is really uh quite good so it's um a rebranded firefox that comes uh pre-configured with a number of privacy enhancing plugins and extensions so it is something you could you know create for yourself but as an out-of-the-box experience it's quite nice well and let's be honest that's a huge that is a huge thing because a lot of us would love to be able to say, buy this, and it's going to be a great desktop for you. I didn't say that. I said the pure browser is very good.

Well, okay. That's the goal, though, right, is we would love to be able to recommend a hardware desktop combo. And it's not that this isn't being accomplished today. System76 does it, and you work with – they start with an E. I'm blanking. Entroware. Entroware they also create really great out of the box Linux desktop machines. This is Dell is working on it now. I mean this is already beginning

to happen in a big way. And I think that that's the distinction between simply providing Linux compatible hardware versus a privacy and security focused complete package. There are people out there that are making linux compatible hardware and selling various flavors of ubuntu and other distributions

on it so you don't have to you know mess about you just get the full package delivered purism are trying to go a step further with having the whole operating system augmented in such a way that it is it is geared towards protecting your privacy which is great yeah and i think that maybe they should have focused on that part of it more than the whole operating system from the outset just get the privacy components you know buttoned down because pure browser is a good example of of where they've done it right. Yeah, and I would love to talk to somebody at Cubes because I wonder too if for desktop implementation,

if containers might make more sense than entire VMs for applications. We've reviewed Cubes before on the show, and the performance is pretty incredible if you have the right hardware. You've got all the hardware acceleration. The i7 or i5 stuff with the VMX and whatever. Whatever that stuff is, I forget now, the VTD and VTD and VTX, so you can actually get direct access to hardware. And you can really have some serious performance. But it's not the same as containerization and sandboxing, which the other thing about that, last thought, and then I do want to move on.

Well, all right. Is that unidentified? Is that Alex? Who keeps coming up as identified and wants to talk about cubes? Because we should probably give cubes a mention because it is so badass. Go ahead. Go ahead. Alex, that's you.

No? All right. Maybe we just do a whole segment on cubes. That's fine, too. That might be interesting. Because I do want to move on because I want to get to both Ubicon and the Mycroft update. So we will – you know what? Let's do this.

Let's continue this conversation in the post show. If you remind me. Will you help me remember that? I sure will. Yeah. All right. So I want to talk about something really huge that AMD has announced this week that is going to make it possible for developers that are currently creating application – I'm sorry, games. I'm in my head.

Creating games for things like consoles like the PS4 that runs an AMD GPU and others. They are creating an open source technology that should theoretically make it possible for them to essentially have that type of experience across the PC with access to the code, projects up on GitHub. So I am not, because I don't follow this stuff very closely, I am not familiar with what the hell they're doing and why it's a big deal. So what I'm going to do, and please apologize for a bit of the side diversion, is I'm going to play a little bit about NVIDIA GameWorks because NVIDIA GameWorks is essentially a set of technology that developers can write to that works across the NVIDIA GameWorks is essentially a set of technology that developers can write to that works across the NVIDIA cards, things like PhysX and being able to make certain

particle effects that you can know you write to this and it's going to work on all these NVIDIA cards. It gives them essentially like an API to have effects across all this range of machines. AMD is working on an open source version of GameWorks, essentially. We're going to tell you more about that, but just so you kind of understand why it's a big deal, I do want to play a little bit of NVIDIA's video because it explains why this technology is awesome. NVIDIA GameWorks pushes the limits of gaming, providing a more interactive and cinematic game

experience, enabling next-gen gaming for current games. We provide technologies like PhysX, visual effects, optics, and a core SDK, as well as game and graphic sample code. We also provide tools to debug, profile, and optimize your game and graphics code. Here are some of our latest technologies. NVIDIA Flameworks enables cinematic smoke, fire, and explosions. It combines a state-of-the-art grid-based fluid simulator with an efficient volume rendering engine. The system is highly customizable and supports user-defined emitters, force fields, and collision objects. NVIDIA FaceWorks provides shaders for realistic skin rendering, enabling skin subsurface scattering, which means that light not only reflects off the skin, but it also transmits through the layers of skin below the surface.

Wow. to a heavy storm-tossed ocean based on the Buford scale. The energy-based surface foam simulation is locked to and driven by the underlying spectral simulation. PhysX Flex is a particle-based simulation technique for real-time visual effects. It'll be introduced as a new feature in the upcoming PhysX SDK version 3.4. All right, so you get it, right? It's a series of stuff that developers can expect to just work for them. And I thought, who said it in the chat room? Somebody had just nailed it. I think it was like TechnoDragon says, NVIDIA deliberately cripples their drivers.

He says he hates NVIDIA and GameWorks. It's a stranglehold on the game development community, and it's disgusting. Well, his passion is exactly what I've been feeling as I've been doing some research into this. So today, AMD announced GPU Open, and it's their open-sourced gaming development. Now, this is actually pretty nice. As part of AMD's recent summit, the company released information about a new initiative to help drive development and evolution in the world of gaming called GPU Open.

As the name implies, the idea is to use open source mentality for drivers, libraries, SDKs, and more. Now the idea here is that developers will get direct access to code, and the promise is to solve the problem of developers wanting to write their games for multiple platforms, multiple systems.

AMD believes that many developers are sick of black box development environments. They're having a negative effect on the PC gaming environment. The black box mentality means that developers don't have access to the source code of some of the packages and thus cannot tweak performance and features to their liking. GPU Open is going to be direct access, open software, using industry standards. AMD's GPU Open is the solution to the problem offering

unprecedented access to the gpu through apis and sdks starting and cultivating open source software suite that includes effects tools libraries and sdks and inviting participation from other hardware and software vendors to add and modify all parts they're going to have code up on github in january which is very awesome They're going to include a bunch of different things like NVIDIA has in GameWorks, like Liquid VR and TressVX, Firebase SDKs for impressive fire demonstrations.

They are specifically calling out that these are open source initiatives, including a headless 64-bit Linux driver, a driver that is particularly advantageous to SteamOS machines. They have a great graphic of the new AMD Linux driver, a driver that is particularly advantageous to SteamOS machines. They have a great graphic of the new AMD Linux driver stack. I love this chart.

They specifically spent time in the presentation talking about their Linux driver stack. Their plans are basically this. They have a revitalized take on Linux software. They say they're going to have broader out-of-the-distro-box support, whatever the hell that is, but that's actually what they call it, out-of-the-distro-box support, accelerated implementation of new products and features, and will include community-built innovations and improvements. The AMD GPU package will be unified in both the closed and open-source mode drivers, keeping support and feature sets for all Linux users. Seems like pretty big stuff. Now, Wes, I'm curious because I am not a big AMD GPU user

today. This kind of S, though, makes me think, well, maybe down the road I will be. And when you look at this, what stands out to you? What jumps out at you? Well, first, it's a lot of promises, right? It's a lot of stuff will be delivered. We'll see the code in January. But, you know, they already have done a lot of stuff. A lot of AMD GPU

support has been merged into kernels. You know, that stuff is coming along, and I think that graphic is great, just kind of showing you that at least they're moving to a model where the core part in the kernel, that part's open source, and they are working with the open source community on the open source OpenGL

implementation. Yeah. And the open is the open source AMD GPU base graphics, the open source UMDs for OpenGL, Multimedia, and OpenCL, and all of the kernel and runtime stuff is going to be all open. Then they're going to have a professional gamer driver, which you know what? I think that's an interesting way to

call it, right? And they're going to, I think that's it. So essentially, if I'm understanding what their effort here is, you could have a really great AMD GPU experience out of the box a year or so from now and maybe not even need to load the proprietary stuff. Right. Unless you have a specialized workflow, you know, you're doing lots of scientific computations. You're a high end gamer who wants,

you know, 4K resolution. Right now, I think that the 2D graphics on AMD, in my experience, they support multi monitors very well. Video acceleration works great. You know, you can get it installed X11 support out of the box. And now to see them working towards the future the OpenCL and Vulkan driver is going to start closed source but they say that they're going to work to open source that. So hopefully

for the future with Wayland and Vulkan we'll have them all open source. But at least referring to this GameWorks stuff, I think it's huge for the NVIDIA it really feels kind of like an old style Microsoft Microsoft move, right? Yeah. Well, the graphics hardware, you can play the game on both. But, oh, you use our nice, shiny libraries, and you'll get all these nice effects for free.

But only works on NVIDIA, or at least only performs well. This is something that isn't necessarily limited to AMD GPUs. Exactly. Let's go to the birthday boy. Mr. Westra, you're sticking to Intel for best out-of-the-box support. Mr. Westra, I don't hear you. All right. Well, he's probably too busy eating birthday cake.

Wimpy, as somebody who's packaging a distribution, this has to be appealing to you long term, right? Yes. Yes, I wish I was more conversant in the linguistics of Linux video card drivers, but I'm not. I just hope it all works and works well. Yeah, and that's what's important. Yeah, I agree. That is exactly what my thinking is. WW, take it away. I'm curious about your thoughts on the long term.

You know, looking back at somebody who's been messing with AMD drivers on Linux for a while and ATI drivers, does this got to feel kind of appealing to you? I think it is because as TechDragon said earlier, NVIDIA has a stranglehold on game works and on developers because their drivers have always been on point for game releases and supporting those games and optimizing them. That's why NVIDIA has such a stranglehold. But AMD issues have stemmed back to even before they bought ATI. Oh, yeah. And so even drivers back in the 90s were horrendous and didn't work right all the time.

So I'm hoping with what I saw about their Crimson drivers for Windows, and hopefully this will get AMD back on the right track with their video cards, and maybe they'll be a lot more competitive than they are now. It's never been their hardware. It's been their software that's been holding them back. Yeah. And you know, some people think that this is the prelude to AMD rolling out a totally new GPU architecture and these drivers are sort of the building blocks you need and it could be super, super cool. Marks, I want to give you the last word as somebody who also

sounds like they've struggled with some package updates in the past. What do you think? Yeah, I just hope that some of the not the newest like the ones they're just releasing when all this code is released. Hardware is supported in some of the new open source goodness.

And I really, really hope that having this more stuff open source allows them to sort out their driver and so on up their process. Because at the moment, it is just so painful. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. And honestly, if that is the best case scenario, then maybe I will start reconsidering AMD video cards again. Right, I mean, if you can get great out-of-the-box open source support that'll work for 80% coverage at least. Right now, I'm like Odyssey, man.

I've been betting on Intel to just get better and better and better and better. Get those Iris Pro and hope for the best. The long-term computer user in me who's been building PCs since forever now, since you could build PCs really, which is kind of weird, I know that the dedicated GPU in that entire history has always been more powerful. And that is always, always going to be the case because that is a dedicated space for research, development, implementation. And you can modify, you can replace without having to change your main CPU,

which just means over a period of years, you can interchange that part. And so if that becomes the part that I can interchange is an AMD GPU, that means it's easy for me to reload a machine. I get up and running very fast. I get my desktop effects. I can play games. That's all it really takes for me to start buying AMD GPUs from here on out so the hardware is perfectly capable it's just whenever I see an update is needed my heart sinks and I know

I'm going to spend a couple of hours just messing around that has to change only what 1% of users are willing to even consider doing that? Apparently alright so we can spend all day on this but I do want to move really quickly so that way we can start talking Ubicon. I want to talk about KDE 5.1, or sorry, 5.5.1, which came out today.

And this is an amazing turnaround. So KDE Plasma Desktop 5.5.0 shipped like on Thursday last week and 5.5.1 shipped on Tuesday. So some seriously fast updates. Still running Plasma 5 desktop as my main desktop. We reviewed it in the Linux Action Show this past week. Lots of updates, lots of fixes. And yeah, I'll keep running it for a bit and give you my take on it. But yeah, I can't really think of another time

where a desktop has been updated that quickly. So there you go. And interesting, a bit of a dichotomy here, which I find to be perfectly exemplifies the Linux desktop experience. Without question, if you want to be right up there with the latest stable Plasma 5 desktop updates, Arch is a great distro to go with.

Because honestly, 20 minutes after the Anusa release that there's an update, the packages are in Arch. I mean, it is really something. And honestly, it's because, I mean, everybody who's followed this for a while actually knows this. A lot of core devs for the Plasma desktop are Arch users, so they are also the maintainers

for the Plasma 5 desktop packages. So that's why it happens so fast. Arch has got its fingers kind of everywhere. Yeah, but it's funny because after I reviewed Plasma 5.5.0 on an Arch desktop, core devs came out and said, oh, well, yeah, you're doing it on Arch, so you're going to have this problem and that problem. Like, really?

So the distro where you can get packages 20 minutes after the release announcement is the distro where you get all of the weird oddities? Really? So the distro where you can get packages 20 minutes after the release announcement is the distro where you get all of the weird oddities? Really? I mean, there's the great wiki. I mean, if the oddities are documented, that's fine, right? Yeah, that is true. I mean, then you know. The one that really burns me that I have gotten the most feedback on is under the Plasma 5 desktop.

Okay, just for those of you who don't like rants, this will be over in about one minute. I just gotta really, this really upsets me and so I might get a little upset, but I'm gonna try to keep it calm. Okay, so the thing that really bothers me because it actually makes me want to crap my pants is on the Plasma 5 desktop, applications keep

changing my default system volume to 100%. And I have seriously the world's loudest speakers. Like, they shake the house when they go off. And so I'm death now. Because every now and then I launch an application and then I go to close Kate or K-Write and I get a would you like to save prompt.

And it is the loudest thing I've ever experienced in my life. Your brain explodes. Yeah, it literally breaks glass. It boom, right? And everybody tells me, hey, Chris, no bigs. You just have to turn off auto leveling or whatever it's called in pulse audio. It's a bug in pulse audio and the way the package maintainers installed it or the way they packaged it up is not actually a Plasma 5 desktop issue. Okay. Completely accept that. I do not argue

that fundamental fact at all. Here's the thing. And this is what I cannot wrap my head around. And I get really upset. Because like, there's not a lot of things in my life I can brag about. Like, I don't have a lot of things that like, I can walk around and be like, yeah, I can, I can, I can say this. But here's one thing I can say. It's a heron. That's it, right? Well, that and the fact that I've literally used Linux on the desktop since the 90s. And not on one computer, but like on 12 computers, and in certain periods of times, hundreds of servers at a time, right? Across multiple different types of hardware architectures, multiple different desktop environments,

multiple different Linux distributions since the 90s. And then on top of that, I have done two podcasts that closely follow the development of Linux software. And one of them has been going on for 10 years. Like, I'm not trying to brag, but literally I am, like, super informed and super familiar with the subject matter, right? Like, hyper aware of the subject matter. I certify Chris Last as a Linux desktop expert. Just for a second, like, I really don't know. Like, there's probably only, like, I mean, how many people literally have years of experience like this

where for 10 years you are on almost a weekly basis reviewing different desktop environments, different Linux distributions, nonstop, right? And in all of these different configurations across multiple different hardware configurations and architectures across multiple different distributions, multiple different desktop environments for 11, 12 years. I don't know. How long has it been since it's been 96? How many years has that been?

You do the math. Since Pulse Audio was ever shipped ever in a distribution ever, I have used Pulse Audio. Since it literally ever shipped, I have used it. And I have never, ever, ever had this problem where my applications automatically jack up the audio to 100% while the application I'm presently using is using the volume I expected at. So IE, I'm sorry, I'm getting upset, but it actually really does bother me. I'm using Chrome and I'm watching a YouTube video and it's at 20% system volume, which is about what I like to listen to because these speakers are very loud. And then, randomly, it feels like I go to close KWrite, and it prompts me to close or

save the document, and the volume is at 100%, and it devastates me. And I do not understand why. And I have never, ever, ever had this problem under any other desktop environment ever, except for the Plasma desktop. I acknowledge there is a setting I can change in Pulse Config to turn this leveling off. I have never, ever had to do that.

So what I do not understand is the disconnect between why I only experience it in the Plasma desktop, and then when I go to talk about it in a review, everybody's like, I've never had that problem, or I have it under every desktop. Like, if that is true, this is fundamentally a problem with Linux. I cannot look at it any other way.

This is fundamentally an issue with developing desktop software for the Linux platform. And if this is truly how end users randomly experience different things that are completely unlike any other user experiencing the desktop has ever seen, then how the hell could you ever write an application for that? I can't accept that. I have to accept there is something all of the other desktop environments are doing that Plasma Desktop isn't doing. And because Plasma Desktop isn't doing it, I experienced the issue under the Plasma Desktop.

End of rant. I don't want to go on any further. I don't want to talk about it. It's just... Okay, I'm sorry. Big sigh, Chris. Just get it all out. Thank you.

Thank you. It's just I have gotten like 130 emails about it. There's like a huge thread in the Linux Action Show, so I read about it. I've gotten tweets about it. I've gotten G Plus messages about it. I understand, but what I'm telling you is I am coming from an unfathomable amount of real-world experience that literally most of you out there that are telling me you don't have this problem can't likely have unless you've been hosting the Linux Action Show for 10 years and reviewing distributions of desktop environments on a weekly basis. And I doubt, I doubt that is you.

And I'm just saying, I have some standing in this, and I am telling you, it only happens under the Plasma desktop. And I acknowledge that it is a core issue with the way the Pulse software was packaged for wherever I installed it under any distribution I installed it under. I acknowledge that. But somehow those clever sons of bitches over at GNOME and XFCE and Openbox and all of the other desktops are somehow solving this problem. Okay. Okay.

I'm sorry. That's – that was rough. I'll just take those speakers off your hand if that might be the easiest solution here. Here's the thing though is the reason why I got so upset is I thought I don't think I can ever review the Plasma desktop again because I just – there is such a disconnect from my experience and the rest of the audience's experience that I feel like a D-bag at the end of it because like I apparently experience stuff that nobody else really runs into. And then like there's like two people in the thread like, oh, yeah, I have that same problem. But everybody else, including core developers of KDE and everything or Plasma, stop by and tell me I'm wrong. And I don't know how to match those two things up because I just am apparently unqualified to review the Plasma desktop. You shouldn't even be allowed to run the Plasma desktop.

Apparently. That's what it sounds like. So I remove – so here's what I'm going unqualified to review the Plasma desktop. You shouldn't even be allowed to run the Plasma desktop. Apparently. That's what it sounds like. So here's what I'm going to do. If I ever review the Plasma desktop again, please disregard all my thoughts on it and don't listen to that episode, okay? Because that's just the only way to solve that problem, apparently. And that's all I have to say on that.

All right. Now, let's change gears. Let's move on to something more positive. I'm not going to continue that thread in the Linux Action Show, so I had to get it out here. And I didn't want to rip anybody on the internet where people could quote my words. I'll do it right here in the show where people can take my actual audio. I mean, no one listens to this anyway. No, no one will ever hear this.

So I'm safe to do it here. This is a safe space. You know what else is a safe space? DigitalOcean. That's where I want you to go to create your own droplet. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up your own Linux rig

in the cloud. But use our promo code LAS. No, not LAS. Wes? Not LAS. Not LAS. I mean, you could. LAS Digital, you could. That's fine. But then NOAA gets so much credit. Yeah. I can't have that. That guy lives in Grand Forks. What's wrong with him? You gotta use the promo code DEOUNPLUG. That'll give you a $10 credit. Yeah. I can't have that. That guy lives in Grand Forks. What's wrong with him? You got to use the promo code DEOUNPLUG.

That'll give you a $10 credit. You can try out their $5 rig, two months for free. Yeah, $5 rig. And you can start in less than 55 seconds. You get 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, one CPU, and a terabyte. Did you say a terabyte? A terabyte. Here's what I'm thinking, Wes.

Oh, I don't know. I use 300 gigs maybe. And you know what I do with the rest of that? I torrent the latest Ubuntu Mate release. Ooh. Yeah. I give them a little extra help. I help them out. You know, for $5, you can get more than the Comcast caps that they're starting to roll out around the country. $5 a terabyte.

Don't even get me started on Comcast. And talk about a great way to work around things like caps, right? You know, I was following Cassidy, the guy who works on the Elementary OS project, works at System76, and he had a post on G+, about a new UI that DigitalOcean is rolling out to create multiple droplets at once.

Ooh. It is so, so cool. It is so, so cool. It is so nice. You know, the Elementary OS project is backed by DigitalOcean. I did not know that. So that's probably why he was following what they're doing. They're working on some really cool stuff. They have a very nice interface that allows you to manage your different Linux boxes and

set them up and move them around the world and back them up and deploy applications, take advantage of Docker containers. They got the latest versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, the Debian Core OS, and FreeBSD. Don't tell Alan. I don't think he knows. I don't think he knows that. Man, I love that interface. But what's really cool about the interface is the API.

Here's what I put it. I ask. Here's the thing I need. Go make a DigitalOcean manager applet thingy for the GNOME desktop. Use a DigitalOcean API. Once you make that, I'm going to switch back to GNOME.

Yeah, because their API is super straightforward, it's well documented. There is a thread in the Linux Action Show subreddit saying, hey, is there a thing? Because like for the Unity desktop and for Windows and for Mac, there are little indicators. Little status bar icon. Yeah. You can get those for

Ubuntu and you can snapshot and stop and restart and all that kind of stuff for your DigitalOcean droplets because they're just using that API. The GNOME desktop doesn't have that. I got extensions that do all kinds of zany things, but if they don't do, they don't manage my droplets. I ask the audience, somebody go make that and then I'll switch back to GNOME. We're starting the countdown now.

Let's see how long it takes the community. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged. Go check them out. Go create a Linux machine up in the cloud. It's super fast. And they got data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London and Germany. And a brand new kick, the NSA and the Balls data center right up there in

Toronto. Which, that's not DigitalOcean saying that. in Germany and a brand new kick the NSA and the Balls data center right up there in Toronto, which that's not DigitalOcean saying that. I'm just kind of surmising that based on the fact that it's geographically, it's in the north, and it's on the same continent, but yet it's outside the legal walls of the United States of America. And it's brand new, so it's got sweet pipes. 40 gigabit E connections to each hypervisor. They're fastest SSDs yet because they're all SSDs. DigitalOcean.com.

Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Man, those guys. Woo! All right, so now let's talk to Mr. Michael Hall, community manager over there at Canonical, to tell us about Ubuntu's event of the year. And he brought along a whole cohort of compadres.

Mr. Hall, welcome to Linux Unplugged. And if you would, introduce who you brought with you. Well, thank you for having us on. With me, I've got Nathan Haynes and Richard Gaskin, who are from the California local community. And they've actually been the ones who have been running the Ubicon in California for several years now. So I'm actually going to talk a little bit about Ubicons in general, and then I'm going to hand it over to them to talk specifically about the big event that we've got coming up. I've been to the Ubuntu One Summit way back in the day where it was paired next to OSCON.

I've heard of virtual Ubuntu online summits. I'm not familiar with Ubicon. So what is Ubicon, and is it only happening in California, or is it something that's bigger than that? So if we go all the way back, the Ubuntu community used to have two events every year called the Ubuntu Developer Summit. These were big in-person events.

They had people from Canonical, people from the community, all gather in one place. We did that for several years. It grew really big, really expensive. Got expensive, yeah. So a few years back, we decided that we were going to take it online. We were going to do it all online over Google Hangouts and IRC and YouTube and whatnot, so that everybody can participate and it doesn't cost us millions of dollars anymore.

That's brilliant. and it doesn't cost us millions of dollars anymore. That's brilliant. It worked really well for development planning, which was on the surface what UDS was all about. But what we lost was that human connection, that social network that you get by being in the same place with people. And Michael, don't you think that was sort of like,

you only really figured that out by trying the virtual conferences because it's so easily – you think today in nearly 2016 with Skype or Hangouts, right, and Google Docs and real-time collaboration with OwnCloud, all of these things make it possible to be really hyper-connected. So we can all meet in virtual space from our bedrooms with our webcams. It's something we've tried here at JB and we discovered, yeah, that's good at a certain level, but there is nothing like the collaborative environment that happens in person. Yeah, it's something we started calling the hallway track because it was, you know, the communications that happen in the hallway between sessions or over lunch or at the bar. And it turns out that there was a lot going on there outside of, you know, the regular

track sessions that we had that we were missing out on when we went online. Sure, sure. Yeah. And so is Ubicons sort of replacing these online dev summits? Is it supplementing? What's going on there? So Ubicons have actually been around before we went online. Ubicons have been something that the community has been doing for a long time.

They're not canonical events. They're all grassroots from our local community. So these popped up, like I said, Nathan and Richard have been working on the one in California for quite a while now. There's been one in Europe and in South America, and we've got some now in the Southeast US. They're usually co-hosted with other conferences, so we get like a room and a day that we can dedicate just to Ubuntu presentations. Right. And you can also take advantage of folks that maybe are already going to be in the area for that other event too, which is kind of brilliant from a budgeting standpoint for attendees. Exactly. So these became kind of regional events. They augmented the local team events, which were per state or city or something like that so they're drawing a little bit bigger of a crowd and when we did take uds online they really started to grow to fill that

void that was left from not having those in-person events sure and so we've watched them grow um in locations and in size also the one in california is getting really really big uh so we were talking with richard and uh nathan after UbuCon from 2015 at scale about doing something much, much bigger, taking it up to a big new level, getting more canonical involvement and more canonical resources to help grow that. So that's what's become what we're now calling

the UbuCon Summit. So it's one big event where we're again pulling in people from all over the world. We're sending a bunch of canonical employees there to talk. Mark Shuttleworth is going to have a keynote there. He's going to be there for a panel also on the second day. So it's going to be a lot of what we had at UDS. It's not going to be the development discussions. We're not going to be planning Ubuntu's development because we still do all of that online much more frequently than we can do in person. But it's going to regain a lot of that human connection that we used to have.

Yeah. So let's talk about the actual event itself. And Michael, I don't know if you can pass this off. But my question is, what was it like getting something scheduled near scale? And what was the basic logic there? And what should people expect? And let's start with why nearair Scale and the logistics in it. And, Michael, maybe you can punt that to somebody from the – Yeah, I'm definitely going to punt this to Nathan and Richard because they know all of those logistics a lot better than I do.

Yeah, great. And Nathan was the starter, so let's start with Nathan. Perfect. Nathan, take it. So I was asked a few years back to sort of start at this. This eWeCon was a new concept, and I was asked to be one of the first people to do it as a sort of started this this e-beacon was a new concept and I was asked to be one of the first people to do it as a sort of a mini convention all day thing

so we approached scale since they're the base they're this little regional conference but they're really the largest sort of first of the year conference and they were really approachable and they said sure sure, no problem. We got some sponsors to pay for the room.

And we got some people in there and a line of speakers. And before I knew it, the room filled up. And then we had the hotel bring – that was sponsoring the conference or hosting the conference. We had the hotel bring in more chairs. And then those filled up and we had more chairs. And then we were standing room only. It's been a hit ever since. And do you think it's – so I noticed the UBICON attendance, 100 percent free.

But you guys are asking for folks to register. We'll have links in the show notes if they want to register. But what I think is really smart here and I kind of want to get you to talk about this a little bit, Nathan, if you would. I mean why is it now? Why write the day before or day or so before scale? Why is it so close to scale and what's the goal there? Well, scale is such a large, wonderful example of the open source community. So basically the logic is it's bringing a lot of people to that area? Well, that's part of it. but the scale atmosphere is really friendly.

I like to say that scale is the best of a fan convention and a trade show all mixed into one. So, I mean, the talks are fantastic. There's beginner-level talks. There's advanced sysadmin talks. talks, there's advanced sysadmin talks, there's a youth track where kids and teens host the talks, and hundreds of exhibitors. There's really something for everyone. And we wanted to do the exact same environment and feel for Ubicon as well, because that really does sort of embody the Ubuntu community, is that everyone's welcome, no matter what

your focus is or what your skill level is and so it was a and because skill had so much um experience running the convention they were able to basically handle all the logistics for us early on so that we didn't have to do anything it was really amazing and wow they continue to amaze even uh even this year coming up for the next next. That's really great. That is really awesome to hear them sort of doing that for you. And I don't know, maybe Nathan or somebody else who might be better to answer this, but as a non-day-to-day Ubuntu user, I mean, I absolutely use Ubuntu on a few droplets. I've got a few Ubuntu machines here.

But as a non-day-to-day Ubuntu user, what would maybe I expect attending the summit? What would be sort of appealing to me? We have two tracks. So depending upon your tastes, we have something for you. This year at Ubicon, we're splitting it into two tracks where we have a track for users and a track for makers, mostly application development and other types of DevOps stuff. That's a great idea. So you can look at the schedule we have, and you can pick the tracks that fit your interests,

and there's probably something for everyone. What a great idea. So it's like, I mean, obviously it's people making things and probably using Ubuntu, but it's like, if you want to accomplish this goal, this task, make this thing, here's how you can do it under Ubuntu. Am I tracking? Exactly, yeah.

We have this maker track for application development for desktop and mobile and Snappy. Now that that's rolling out, that'll be well covered there. But we also have a lot of community support. Ubukan has historically just been a community event of buy-in for the community. And we have a lot of people there who are fairly new to Ubuntu. So we have the user track to help them get started, find help resources, and those sorts of things. So how official of a canonical event is this?

Is this more of a loco kind of official event, or is this a canonical sanction, a.k.a. sponsored or perhaps financed event? Mr. Hall, is that maybe better answered by you? I think we can both answer that. It is a community-led event still. It is still Richard and Nathan who are spearheading this.

We are giving some financial support. We're also looking for some external sponsors to help pay for the rooms that we're taking from scale, the coffee breaks that we're going to have during the day. But we are investing more in it. Internally in Canonical, it's an official event in that engineering managers can send employees to it using their travel budget. So we're going to have, I think, somewhere around 30 Canonical employees that are being sent to this either to speak

or just to be there for the unconference sessions that we're going to have also. Cool. So if I want to attend, I have to show up how many days before scale? You have to – you should show up on the 20th because we're planning on doing a social event the evening of the 20th for people who are there. The actual event starts on the 21st. Okay.

And you guys have like an Ubuntu promo code to get some change off the scale full access pass, right? Yes, if you go to our registration page on ubucon.org, there'll be two buttons. One to register for Ubucon just so we know how many drink tickets and stuff we need to have at the parties. And then another button to register for scale. And if you use the Ubuntu and it's missing a letter because of their promo code system, but it's on the page. You use that promo code, and it's 50% of admission to scale itself. I love it.

We encourage everybody coming to Ubicon to please register for scale. It helps support them. They're doing a lot for us, so we want to support them. Plus, it's really an amazing show. If you go to Ubicon and you don't miss scale, you're really missing out on something. But did I hear there's going to be a party because that might be the censure for me. Chris can never resist. I think

I'm going to have to go. I think I'm going to have to drive from Washington State to California to party. It will be worth your time. If that's what it takes to convince you, you should definitely do that. I've been going to scale for many years and I like to think of it as a vast learning party. All day long, there are intense sessions from some of the finest minds in open source.

And then at night, there's parties. There's game night on Saturday night at scale. And then with UbuCon, we have the reception party Wednesday night, and then another UbuCon party Thursday night. And you'll be meeting a lot of friends. You'll be making your own parties in between. I like it. I like it. It is a good – it sounds like a fun experience.

You know, boy, I would love for some of you guys to also consider coming up to LinuxFest Northwest because that is a – it is a great show. And one of the great things about LinuxFest Northwest, it's getting really big, but it hasn't tipped yet. So it has a genuine one-on-one community. Like, you know, you talk to the guy at Debian who is working on X, or you talk to the person at Facebook who's like the BTRFS developer. Like, it's just, it's such a unique experience. So I want to give a plug for LinuxFast Northwest. But I'm thinking, I'm thinking I should go.

What do you think, Wes? You think I should go to scale? I would like to watch you at scale. I'm thinking I should go. What do you think, Wes? Do you think I should go to scale? Yes. I would like to watch you at scale. I'm just going to sweeten the deal for you a little bit more. Both Ryan Sipes from Mycroft and Alan Pope are going to be there. Hello.

Yeah, you know, actually, being Popey being there alone is almost enough to make me go, actually. Popey, are you planning to go to any other events throughout the year yet in the US? No, that's the only one I'm going to. That's the only opportunity you have to see me, I'm afraid. Oh man, oh man, the pressure is on. Here's what I'm going to do, Wes, because I can't make up my mind.

I am horrible at making up my mind. I can bounce back and forth because part of me feels like I could go to all the other conferences throughout the year and get what I would get at scale. But then other part of me feels like this is actually with Ubicon and the fact that everybody is going to be there, this is actually going to be kind of a special thing. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to let the audience decide. Our most valuable resource, the audience. I just put the link in the IRC, strawpoll.me, 6278477 if you're not in the chat room.

And strawpoll.me, 6278477. You go boat. And let me know what you think. Do you think I should go down to scale and cover Ubicon and also scale itself? So, Chris, this is a promise, right? So if I say yes, that means that LinuxFest Northwest coverage will not be sacrificed. There might be some Patreon goals to make that happen. There's no nuance on this page.

I'm just curious. It doesn't mean there won't necessarily be Patreon milestones that are established. But, yes, you know, actually, before we go any further, this is legitimately a good time to mention that if you had a successful Patreon payment in the month of November. And you should. I'm serious here. Then you should go over to payment in the month of November. And you should. I'm serious here. Then you should go over to the show notes for episode 123. We had a – we'll have a swag link in this episode. So we've been giving away swag for the holidays.

And like we just gave away this awesome – look at that. That is beautiful. You ever listen on Filter? I do. The red book. That's the official red book right there. I'm going to have to ask you about where you got that made because that is a lovely little book. It is super awesome.

We just gave it to our viewer, Lucas, too. We have been working on a whole bunch of swag for the holidays, and we gave away a Coder Radio mug with a beautiful green handle and green rim. And a sweet cube. Yeah, yeah, right there. We gave that to Adrian. He got that. And, of course, also we gave a really nice beer coaster, big thick piece of glass with the Linux Action Show circular logo in there to brand it. You guys go all out.

Yeah. This is beautiful. We have a Linux unplugged specific swag that will be given away from episode 123. There will be a link in the show notes. The only catch is, because we need your help and I really need your your support is you do have to have a successful Patreon payment. Now, a little bird – and I cannot – I can't come on here and I cannot disclaim who that little birdie is. Oh, my gosh. It's Angela Fisher, everybody.

A little birdie told me that we'll probably likely also include successful December patrons. So if you go to Patreon.com slash today or Unfilter and you want to back either the whole network or the unfilter show specifically, you'll be entered. And it's easy. I mean, Patreon makes it so simple. So anyway, audience, go vote away. Let me know, strawpole.me and let me know if I should go to scale. And if you also think I should go to scale, maybe you

should consider going to patreon.com slash today because I still want to do Linux Fast Northwest like a boost. That's the thing. If I go to scale, I don't want to scale back on LinuxFest Northwest. So that's sort of the agreement we're going to reach. Anyways, let me move on. Before we go any further, I got to pay the infrastructure bills, the things that keep the lights on,

the thing that literally keeps the payments on the studios possible. That is Linux Academy. Go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged to support the show, to support the whole damn network, to keep the lights on, and to learn more. Linux Academy is a platform designed by Linux users for Linux users. Full stop. Legitimately, that's all you really need to know, isn't it? It's not a half-assed implementation of some feature set because they have an online learning

platform, and Linux is something that people talk a lot about, so we should probably have some courseware on it. It's not that. It's people who are, like, fanatics about open source and Linux. It's people like your very host here who are dedicated to talking about Linux and open source all of the time. Only instead of doing podcasts, they did a whole training infrastructure. And honestly, one that has a revenue model that is much more obvious and straightforward.

Jealous but. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. I really love them because they have followed the most important open source trends for a long time now and created tutorials, instructions. I mean we're talking stuff, almost 2,000 comprehensive study guides that are just brilliant with instructor help available on demand. Videos you can watch, downloadable comprehensive study guides. help available on demand. Videos you can watch, downloadable comprehensive study guides. And I got to say it, I got to make sure I say it several times, a spot read. Instructor help is available when you need it with these self-paced courses. That is huge because if you're like good at just doing it on your own, then guess what? You almost got 2,000 videos where you can get

going, 2,000 self-paced courses, you're good to go. Blast through that stuff. Go ahead and be Superman. If you get stuck and you need a little help though, that instructor help is a huge deal. And it's very unique because these guys are Linux experts. That's a big deal. Not only that, they have scenario-based labs. You have real world experience with this stuff. You really know what it's like to implement it. They have nuggets. So if you don't have a lot of time because the holidays are coming up, you can still get value out of your Linux Academy subscription with these nuggets. They have self-paced availability planners. You can go, I got, look, you can go at Linux Academy, the holidays are coming up, I got a little bit of time on Monday, what do you got for me? It will automatically generate

courseware that matches your availability. They've got nuggets that are two minutes to an hour long, deep dive into a single topic like backing up your Linux box, syncing your Linux box, managing your firewall, managing SSH keys, bash aliases, all this stuff. And the list is really extensive. Just a couple of minutes long, maybe an hour long, just go there when you just want to do a little bit of learning. It's a really cool resource.

And here's the best part, because Linux Academy has been supporting Jupyter Broadcasting for a while. The community is stacked full of Jupyter Broadcasting members. We're all there. And so it's like your peer group who likes the same things you like, who are trying to accomplish the same things you're accomplishing to help you along the way. This is sort of like anytime I've ever tried to exercise

and stick to it, the only way I can do it is if I can talk either a significant other or a friend into doing it with me. Someone who will guilt you when you're too lazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, it does work. It is motivation well, so and so knows. It is literally motivation and it's a good head game to play with yourself

to keep you working. And on top of all of that, they take the best current technologies that utilize open source or Linux, and they make it quantifiable in an actual time commitment. You go in there and you see this concept, like Ruby or Python, that I've been trying to learn, it's going to take me five hours. So it's not this nebulous idea of, oh, I want to learn how to do Python. It now becomes, I need to dedicate five hours to this and I will know how to write Python. If you haven't done it before, that shift is fundamentally awesome because it allows you to just sit back and learn.

And it gets you off your butt, no more procrastinating because it's such a big nebulous thing. It is six hours. It's five hours. That is so freeing to let you just sit back and learn. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged and a huge thank you to Linux Academy for their support of the Unplugged show and for creating such a kick-ass system. It's awesome. Yeah. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged.

Speaking of kick-ass systems, holy smokes, it is time we talk about a kick-ass system. Ryan joins us from the Mycroft project with a really great update this week. I looked at this and I thought, all right, they are really thinking about the end-user experience. They're really thinking about the details. Ryan, welcome back to Linux Unplugged. How the heck is the Mycroft project doing? We're doing really good. We're coming up against the end of December,

which was when we talked about having our final design done. And so we've really been rapidly developing on the hardware side of things. And then on the software, we're really beginning to know exactly, you know, what components go where and how to utilize those. And I'm kind of crunched on time. So if I can't finish out this conversation, I'm going to turn you over to our sysadmin, Aaron, who happens to have his fingers in all the parts of this project as well. So yeah, I know you do have to go very soon. So Ryan, one of the things I wanted to touch on with you is it looks like you've been taking a lot of input from backers, the HackMe port, the rear mounting plate, even the silicone feet,

anything you can kind of touch on that, like What kind of feedback have you guys been getting and what kind of changes have been made overall to the project? So when we first started, we had a couple of different perks on the Kickstarter. And what we noticed was that like 90% of the people who backed were getting the extended version of Mycroft anyway, with a lot of the ports exposed and a lot of different ways that you can interact with it and hack it. And so when we got that feedback in the way of that stuff, you know, those people making those orders, we decided to pivot and kind of adjust Mycroft's design to accommodate them even more. And so once we started getting pictures of people who wanted to include it as a head for their robot and other things like that, we thought, let's not make it harder for them

to do this. Let's make it easy. And let's really target this at making it the simplest possible to enhance Mycroft and to integrate it into your existing products. Yeah, why not, right? And Ryan, before you run, one last thing maybe you want to touch on before we get into some of the other stuff is any notes you want to touch on with the official Ubuntu partnership? Yeah, well, we actually were talking to Martin, who's kind of a part of their, he's like a

senior vice president of their IoT. He's got a really long, like 16 word title. And so probably the Ubuntu guys can tell you a little bit better. But he was talking about how there's a lot of interest from certain groups about voice enabling their appliances and these embedded devices that they ship out the door. And so he thought Mycroft would be a really neat way to do that. And so after some conversations, they decided to make it official and put a ring on it. And so now we're a canonical partner and we are so very happy to be working with them

because they've just been really awesome to us every step of the way. And I love this idea of open source companies coming together to do something that really I think we can do better than the proprietary products in this area. And so it actually tugs on my heartstrings to have them talk to us and want to work with us on this. And I think that's just awesome. They bring a lot of not official endorsement, but they've existed for a long time. Yeah, they've existed as a successful business for a long time. And that can only be good for us. I agree.

I think the concept is solid. I think the brand support is good. And I think it's smart for Canonical or AKA Ubuntu to want to work with you. So Ryan, thanks a bunch for coming on. And I really like these weekly updates too. Are you going to continue doing these? I noticed there's a video series now too. What's the plan there?

Okay, yeah. So one thing that I was going to talk about this a little bit in regards to Purism, but actually I got a shout out on Google Plus from somebody who was asking if the project was dead because they hadn't received an update in a couple of weeks. And they were talking about how our web server, before we moved it, had a hiccup. And so the website went down for an hour. And so they were like, oh my God, did I just get scammed? Mycroft took my money and now their website's down. And so

we decided to become more frequent about our updates. It's easy to get so down in the trenches with a project and forget to like share out what's happening. And so we've just made that a part of our workflow. So we try to take everything that we're doing, put it in a document, and then I read through that and turn it into human readable format. I think that goes a long way. It does because now you're getting coverage here on the show and hundreds of thousands of people are going to download the show and listen to it. So I mean, it is, I mean, it's hard to quantify the value of it, but here we are, you and I are having this conversation. And I think we all understand, you know, it's like you want it to be polished. You want it to look good. But I think people are very accepting of like, well, you just put this out and

you gave us more information. And even if there are like some typos and there's, you know, whatever mistakes. Yeah. Just the fact that the communication goes along. So, Ryan, before you run, will you introduce me to your coworker there and let me know what we can talk to him about? Well, let me pull him in. Aaron is here and he is a giant fan of the show. Hey-o. He's smacking his head because he doesn't. He's been nervous about talking to you, Chris, but he is a master when it comes to our infrastructure.

And he has set up so many awesome tools. And he could probably spend an entire episode talking about just the tools that we've utilized. And his face is turning really red. And so I'm going to leave him or you in his capable hands. Okay. And he probably will have a lot to contribute in the way of other things you talk about on the show today. Great. So, Aaron, do you want to say hi to the Linux Unplugged crew?

Hi, Chris. How's it going? Hello, Aaron. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Aaron, I want to play a little bit of this video and maybe you can take over the main position on the mic there while I play a little bit of this weekly update. It's called Netflix in Chile.

Text message is asking if you want to get something to do tonight. Netflix in Chile. And here's Ryan. Hi, welcome. Hey! Look at Ryan getting the hugs in the video. Nice, nice. So, what do you want to watch tonight? I think I have some ideas. Mycroft.

Netflix and chill. Oh, Netflix and chill, not chili. Chris has got chili on the brain. Yeah, I guess I do have chili on the brain. Yeah, you see, chili on the brain. Yeah, I guess I do have chili on the brain. Yeah, you see, you get the idea. So the Minecraft device next to the TV starts a laser show with lasered pointers. Dude, holy crap, this is freaking awesome. This is legitimately awesome.

Lasers all over the place. And now they're getting busy. See, I gotta do Theater of the Mind for the audio listeners. Mycroft, the ultimate wingman. Mycroft just sitting there smiling. But it doesn't tell anyone about this, right? It's not Fitbit. You don't get

there's no notifications of what's going on. Here's my love by Ryan, though. Here's the bloopers. Hi. Awkward. Super awkward. Oh, Ryan. It's super awkward.

So maybe don't. I can't do this. Oh, man. I mean, Ryan doesn't. I can't do this. Don't. Oh, man. I mean, Ryan doesn't need game because Mycroft's got game. Right. Oh, no, Ryan, it's so awkward. Oh, no, it's so awful, dude.

Don't get in my camera. Oh, no. No. No. So here's. Are you embarrassed? Weirdo. Here's what I love about this.

It's very legit. It feels very honest and genuine. That's great. That is super, super great. All right. So hopefully we gave you guys enough time to swap around microphones there. Was it Aaron? Was that what it was?

Yes, Aaron. Yeah, go ahead. Aaron, welcome to the show. And were you involved in the shooting of that video there? I wasn't involved in that shooting, but I was in the drone video, I guess, as the sketchy guy. Yes, the first one. Yeah. Oh, very nice.

Very nice. So, Aaron, I'm looking at this update here, and I'm seeing some really impressive stuff. But one thing that's not clear to me is, like, it sounds like there is some sort of official partnership with Ubuntu. Is that Ubuntu Snappy? Is Mycroft officially using Ubuntu Snappy for its base OS? T products. They already have a relationship about the possibility of voice control via Mycroft. But we're talking about the idea of how Mycroft could be loaded onto other appliances and embedded devices.

Yeah. Oh. So I don't want to put words in your mouth, but things like, okay. I don't want to say it because I don't want to activate it. And hey, there is a lot of devices out there. You know what I'm talking about, right? I do. I don't want to say it because I don't want to activate it. And hey, there is a lot of devices out there. You know what I'm talking about, right?

I do. I don't want to activate people's phones. Maybe you do. Maybe you do. Hey, Harry and OK Galagaga are activated. There are smart devices out there or you could say devices that – Pretend to be smart. Or devices that are convergent, that have smart assistants, like Windows 10 has Cortana, iOS has Siri, Google has OK Googs.

And this would be something that maybe would be missing from the Ubuntu Touch platform. Is that kind of the smell you're putting out there, Aaron? Exactly. After meeting one of our stretch goal of having Mycroft work on the desktop as a launcher, I think that it could be portable to many different platforms. Interesting. Wow.

You know, so it's basically, you know what I love about you guys, Aaron, is I have to be honest, is even though you're really starting with the Mycroft hardware unit, you're not limiting the Mycroft AI or functionality to a particular hardware unit, correct? That's correct. Thanks to our backers helping us meet our stretch goals, well, that's now possible. I love it.

That's beautiful. Could you imagine something like that built into the Linux desktop? But something that's not just like a version of Clippy like Cortana is, but something actually useful to interact with. Which we're going to need in five years when people expect that in the desktop. Or not just the... Your desktop is going to be expected... Who is that?

Who's typing? Is that Mr. Hall again? Who's typing like crazy? Yeah, that's me again. Sorry. You're working hard, huh? What do you have? Let me guess. You have your voice activation set to like control or shift or something? Is that what it is? It's shift, yeah. No, I love it. Don't go away. I want you to continue.

We like you. I love you. You can continue talking. It's just I've done that myself. So I know that one. I know that one. I love the idea, though, of actually creating something that is built into the Ubuntu desktop or the Unity 8 desktop or Unity 9 desktop or whatever, right, that is built into the Ubuntu desktop or the Unity 8 desktop or Unity 9 desktop or whatever, right, that is available on the phone, that is available on the desktop, that is available on the tablet,

that is a Siri or OK, Googs-like experience, but A, a lot of open source tech, and B, maybe actually more focused on integrating with other open protocols and standards on your LAN, right? Not so cloud-focused, but maybe a little more LAN-focused. Maybe I don't care about Hulu. Maybe I never want to watch that, but maybe I want to be able to tie in the services I already have. Right, and there's a lot of protocols like Zigbee and others that work on your local network that don't require you go out to a cloud service and have some sort of NAT set up. But it's just – there's a lot of appeal there. some sort of NAT setup.

And it's just, it is, there's a lot of appeal there. So Aaron, I'm kind of curious, what are your long-term visions for something like this? What is, what do you envision like say 2017, 2018? You're looking at the Ubuntu desktop, you're looking at Ubuntu phone experience. What would be your best case scenario, your dream, your hope with Mycroft technology being integrated with that experience?

Well, I'd have to say that I hope that this project really goes smoothly all the way that far and that people, the community, actually participate and create their own modules and solutions for their own, you know, whatever they like. And since it's based on an open source platform that runs on Linux to begin with, I think that we could really have a vibrant array of applications for people to use. Yeah. And I obviously have been somebody who's – maybe to a fault. I often worry that open source is falling behind in VR. Especially Microsoft just won an image recognition award, right?

Right. Like we see these things and they'll be locked away in their proprietary world. Augmented reality. Yes. Right. And another one that is cropping up around us and really here before all of these other technologies is virtual personal assistants. You know, I have to be honest with you. I actually do find myself using them too.

Like I wish I didn't, but I have a horrible memory. And if I can tell a computer the moment something comes to me over voice command to remember it and remind me about it, that shit is valuable. Like it is the difference between me having a great show idea and me never having a great show idea. Like I was out Christmas shopping this weekend, Sunday. I'm out shopping, buying gifts for my kids, and all of a sudden a great idea hits me. And in 15 minutes, that idea will be gone forever. And if you were ever in the position of writing or creating content, you know how valuable, like once the idea comes to you, you think,

oh, it's so good. It's so good. I'll remember it again. It's like a dream. You don't ever remember, like it fades. You don't remember it again. Then you spend like 15 minutes trying to think about what it was, embarrassing yourself. And like I brought around with me for a long time, I brought little pieces of paper that I could write on, but

I always forget the pen. This is the 17th century? I don't understand, Chris. So being able to hold down a button and say, hey, Shlomo, I want to remember this thing and remind me about it when I get back to work is literally an invaluable tool. And I love it.

So the idea of building that into the Linux desktop would make the Linux desktop even more appealing to me. So I'm pretty much... Especially integrated with people who understand open source, who understand that the Linux desktop users have slightly different needs than Cortana users.

Yeah. So Aaron, speaking of that, like what is the long-term possibilities of other open source projects just kind of hooking in with Mycroft and kind of working with you guys, working with the backend infrastructure, specifically the backend infrastructure and sort of the backend processing.

What are the opportunities there? Is there much? Yeah, there is going to be a lot of opportunity there. We're going to be open sourcing multiple elements, including the Adapt intent parser here pretty soon. So basically, once we get things ironed out to the point where we can release it to the community, you'll have sort of an API to communicate with whatever you'd like. That's nice. Wimpy, I'm curious, and I look at your comment in the chat room. What would it take

for you to make Minecraft integration with the desktop more than just a gimmick, not Clippy 2.0 to the open source ripoff? What would it take for it to actually be a compelling feature for a user like yourself or other users you might have in mind? Well, myself. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead for Wimpy. And then Aaron, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts too. But Wimpy, go ahead. It's something I've been thinking about for a while now that when a technology emerges in the open source world that i can leverage to have that seamless voice uh commands then that is something i will definitely be looking at integrating into ubuntu mate because like you i have grown accustomed to using those convenience functions on mobile devices and And I absolutely know I want

that on my desktop operating system as well. Yeah. And Aaron, I'm curious what were your thoughts on it? I bet as somebody who's very connected to the project, you must have thought about this a lot. Well, to be honest with you, I basically started working on this same concept right before I joined the team. And my idea was initially that there's a lot of DevOps teams that use chat rooms and chat bots to monitor things and give commands, like what is the load on this cluster or whatever. And I think that this is going to enable that sort of thing. Or it could turn on your coffee pot or it could tell you –

So it could be anything from, yo, Mycroft, what's the load on my third web server to, hey, Mycroft, turn on the coffee pot? Yeah, it could literally be anything because you could use regex to create your own voice commands. That is so cool well Aaron I invite you and of course Ryan to join us anytime any week we do the show Tuesday 2pm pacific right oh yeah 2pm pacific

and I'd love for you to join us and share your thoughts on any open source stories that we cover but also just you know ping us with different interesting things you're working on because to be honest with you it's something that I think both Wes and I are really interested in, and Rikai too. I am loving the future where I can be like, hey, Mycroft, play the next TechSnap. And it just

shows up on my TV, right? Yes. That is the future. I mean, this is the near future. I hope so. So you have an open invitation, sir, to join us every single week. And that, of course, extends to everybody out there, but I would love to talk with you more about this but I do want to get into some of the

groundbreaking stuff that OwnCloud and LibreOffice are doing that I think could not only be huge for education, not only be huge for business, not only be huge for individuals but hopefully will be huge for Jupyter Broadcasting specifically and we also have early results from our straw poll if I should go to scale

or not. We're going to talk about all of that. But first, got to talk about Ting. I love talking about Ting. I do too. I tell you what, Wes. There is something pretty neat about Ting. And it's something that you might not consider. Our viewer, Tyler, in the chat room, I feel bad for him.

So this week, Tyler's internet went out. Yeah. How can we listen to Jupiter Broadcasting? Well, this is the thing. I don't understand. This is the thing. So what he's able to do is because Ting is pay for what you use, right? No contract, no determination.

You just pay for what you use. Now, this month, Tyler is going to have a big Ting bill. I mean it might even be like $125. I mean it's going to be a big Ting bill because he's using a lot of data because it's the ISP basically for a family in his house. And I feel like, oh, that sucks, man. And then I think about it and I think, you know what's amazing about that? Two things. You can do that.

You can just use as much data as you need one month. No throttling. No throttling. No overages. Nothing scammy like that. 11 months out of the year, he's going to have a bill around 50, 60 bucks for the entire family. One month out of the year, he's going to have a high bill. Think about how that averages out. Before I switched to Ting, I paid 125 to 140 bucks. I can't even remember anymore. No way. For two phones. Two

phones, like six gigs of data. It was pathetic. I switched to Ting. My bill for three lines, 40 bucks. 45 bucks if it's like a holiday. It is fantastic. And here's how you can get started too. Go to linux.ting.com. It'll take $25 off your first month.

$25 of service credit if you have a Ting compatible device. Which they got CDMA and GSM. You just do. I mean, unless there's a certain carrier that maybe I won't talk about. Newsflash, cell phones aren't new. Right. We've had them 10 years, 15 years. I don't even know how long.

Yeah. And so the pay-for-what-you-use model is really interesting because if you have one heavy month, like say I go down to scale. I don't know. I haven't looked at the results yet. But say I go to the straw poll. I look at the results and they say I should go to scale. You just have to go. Well, the audience has voted. I mean, they decide everything.

Are they? Well, I mean. They're our masters. We acknowledge. Quite literally, that is true. So here is what I figure. If I got to go down to scale, that week, maybe I'll have heavier than average usage. Big freaking deal.

Because the rest of the year, I pay almost freaking nothing. It is ridiculous. This is what I love about Ting is you can just be a little savvy and you really can nail this thing. I'm not trying to say you're gaming the system, but if you're just a little savvy, you can really figure this out. No contract, no early termination fee. It's $6 for the line. You got Wi-Fi? Let me tell you something.

You're not going to be paying much. And they help you out. Kyra's got all of the app picks to help you make your calls over Wi-Fi. All of those. And they got the fanatical customer support. You can call them. You talk to a real human being. They got the unbelievable control panel that works across all of your devices.

No special ActiveX or Flash or Java runtime required. It works on your Linux box, no problem. They also have companion apps for iOS and Android. It really is a great setup. You can't say too much about that. It's one in the morning, and you go buy a burner phone from Walmart, and you need it to work, you go onto

Ting's website. Ten minutes? Five minutes? Three minutes? I don't know, but it works. I believe in January, and I will have to double check on this, but I believe in January I will be breaching, breaching Wes, the three year mark of Ting. No way. Yeah, breaching the three, is that the right word? I think so.

It's a little vulgar, but I like it. Okay, I think I could have been more vulgar, I think actually, because penetrating. That's for the new year. Penetrating. That's for the new year. I'm thrusting into the Oh, okay. Anyways, I believe I'm going into my third year with Ting, and a couple of things that are big with Ting since then. They got these SIM cards you can get now for $9.

They're on Amazon. You just pop them into anything like a Raspberry Pi module to a phone and you got Ting service. So it's like, wow, just data wherever I need it, anytime, GSM or CDMA, that's mind-blowing. You just check that out. But also one of the other things that has really struck me about Ting over the almost three freaking years now that I've been using Ting, they continue to have

a great selection of devices that are unlocked. You just buy them outright. They also have an early termination relief program, great blog post, all of it. Linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com. Go check them out. Support this show. And you know, this might actually be a way to give somebody in your family or your small business connectivity without costing you an arm and a leg. Linux.ting.com.

And a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring. Linux Unplugged. Love you guys. All right, Wes. You ready for the results of this Linux live here on the spot, united um poll. Are you ready? Lay it on me. Alright, here we go. Should Chris go to scale? And I'm going to refresh right now

as we play it. Oh wow. Wow. Yikes. That's unequivocable. 94% say I should go to scale. 6% say no. I'm curious why the people who said no. Yeah, speak up. Yeah, that was me. Sorry, Chris.

He doesn't want to run into you. He doesn't want to have to see you or talk to you. Oh, wow. Your face offends him. I haven't opened two browser sessions to get two votes in. Hold on now. Hold on now. What day is this scale actually happening on?

Is it on a Tuesday? Because if it is, we could do Linux unplugged in person. Oh. Could you imagine how much – It's like a Thursday evening to Sunday. Yeah, OK. And Sunday is kind of quieting down usually. Well, you know what?

Maybe it's Popey's opportunity to come on Linux Action Show because we'll be doing that on Friday. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Maybe I could talk Noah into hosting the whole thing from OBS. I think the second you start with, maybe I can talk Noah. Yes.

He's just, he's going to do it. So, wow. 94% of the votes. I think I have to go. I have to go. I have to go. Here's an idea. Look at what Jumba says in the IRC here.

Chris Lass, I don't want you to go. I want Rikai. You know, I can- An all Rikai special. How about I got this, Rikai and Ange. I'll send them both down there, and I'll stay here, and they can Skype in and tell me how good it is. I think that's – I'm in support of this. There's the thing.

That's not what people voted for. I actually – I should have thought about this ahead of time, but I said should Chris – Should Chris – The results are invalid. Yeah, should Chris go to... You're going. It's tough.

Hmm, hmm, hmm. This is CNN Breaking News. Yeah, I think I'm going to scale. I think I'm going to scale. I think that's the only way around that one. I think I've got to go to scale. Holy crap, let's talk about OwnCloud and LibreOffice working together, everybody. It is like the best of both worlds today. December 15th, OwnCloud Inc. and Collabora

have just announced a partnership to bring new tools for LibreOffice and OwnCloud users. Based on the LibreOffice online project and the robust open-source OwnCloud server, you will have a self-hosted, real-time doc editor based on LibreOffice. You got an ODF? You got a...

What do you got? What do you got, Wes? Here's the big thing, my takeaway. The main difference between LibreOffice Online and other offerings that are available is that LibreOffice Online uses the same rendering engine. Yeah, and that actually is...

You know what you're going to get. It's not different. It's not a different stack. I think that's probably as far as, I'm going to drop this into a corporation or a school district or whatever. I mean that's a huge thing for document users is you want to be able to make something, but you want to be able to send it to people who can use it. Yeah. And I look at this and I – so I think the UI holds up, which is what I was really worried about. Right.

Is the UI to me, it is, so it's a little big. You go into your web browser of choice and then you got your own cloud header and then below that you have a LibreOffice header and then below that you have the actual document. But it is, it appears to be pretty much everything you would expect from LibreOffice embedded in the web browser. I don't know if that's really the issue. What I think the issue is going to be is how good is the collaborative editing? How real-time is the collaborative editing?

That's a secondary issue though because the concept here is a small business, an open-source project, an individual with a family, whatever it is, you could just be somebody listening to this show and decide I'm going to set up an own cloud server with this LibreOffice plug-in. And now the family has somewhere for the wife and husband or the husband and husband or the wife and wife to make shopping notes, right? That's exactly what I was thinking. For groceries lists, right?

You have somewhere for the kids to do their homework, centralized spot to do the homework. Like all this stuff that can now be shared in one family. It doesn't have to be a large enterprise. It could be, but it doesn't have to be a large enterprise for this to be relevant. And I find that to be really exciting. It's the technology of LibreOffice and the technology of OwnCloud coming together in something that will essentially boil down to a plug-in. And I feel like it's a big boost, honestly, for OwnCloud.

I think that LibreOffice brings a lot of stability, a lot of – they have delivered a number of times. Right? Yes, exactly. And nothing against OwnCloud, but I feel like we've seen some instability, some growing pains in the past. I trust this a lot more than Own clouds own implementation exactly the fact that libra office is willing to work with them that they're endorsing this plugin that it's kind of you know maybe the future that's a big deal so uh wimpy you say that uh collabora are really bringing it these days with libra office and it seems seems like they truly are responding to user demand. What are your thoughts?

Well, yeah, I mean, Calabra have been a great organization for adoption of open source technologies, but just recently they've been involved in, you might remember earlier in the year, or was it last year, the UK government announcing they were going to support open document formats rather than proprietary formats. Don't rub it in. That was followed up a month or so ago with the fact that the UK government are going to start using GovOffice, which Calabra are working on to actually augment LibreOffice into a rebranded version called GovOffice, which

the UK government are going to be using. Thank you for that clarification. Not only open standards and open document formats, but also the open source version just rebranded to become an easier way to transition people over to it. Not to get lost in the nuance here, but just as somebody who didn't quite follow this, so GovOffice is LibreOffice just focused on the needs of government institutions, but it's essentially the same code base?

Yes. Okay. Oh, there you go, GovOffice. Wes is bringing it up right now. There you go. I see. Very nice. I mean, that tagline right there, if you...

Professional LibreOffice for the public sector. There you go. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Wimpy. So not to interrupt but I just kind of wanted that clarification because I didn't quite follow that before. No, that's all I had to say is that Calabria are LibreOffice contributors. I think they're one of the larger LibreOffice contributors and they're really following up that development angle with the whole advocacy, outreach, and implementation. So, yeah, when you look at GovOffice and what they're doing with OwnCloud,

they're really doing a fine job, I think. So, Jumba, you had the big question on probably the tip of a lot of listeners' minds who have been listening for a while. Go ahead. Jumba? This is like the episode where I throw to the mumble room and like half of them don't answer. Yeah, this is like this.

It's like a great episode except for the fact that half the time I throw to the mumble room, nobody answers. Other than that, it's a solid episode. And so Jumba wanted to know if this makes own cloud sort of more appealing in my view, if it sort of turns my point of view. You have been own cloud critic is too harsh. An own cloud invested person? That is a tough thing for me

because I personally know and talk to people. And you're a huge supporter of, I mean, almost all open source projects. Yeah, and I have absolute respect for Frank. I see Frank all the time. It is a hard thing for me to criticize a project where I literally, the guy who runs the project, I run into all the time. So the thing about OwnCloud is I also have nearly lost entire episodes to OwnCloud where it would have lost an entire week's worth of two people's work. And if you have ever worked in a small business and know the cost of two people's work being

completely lost, it's very- The other part is that you work in a job where if you make a mistake, Alan will tell you that you should have been using ZFS. And how many times can you do that a week? God, thank you, Wes. Thank you for understanding. Yes. Thank you for, you know what?

I really appreciate you taking a moment and actually truly understanding my pain. Welcome to BSD Unplugged, your weekly BSD talk show that's too busy getting actual work done to care about your silly display server. My name is Alan. You know, speaking of Alan, we had a really good episode of TechSnap. Yeah, that was a great episode. So people should check that out. Check it out. Yeah.

Okay. So this is something, obviously, I have struggled with quite a bit. And I think – you know, talking about Allett, it's like how many times can I make that excuse, right? So I am passionately interested in a recognizable, trustable company coming in and working with OwnCloud. coming in and working with own cloud and it it really makes sense with where frank the the the guy behind own cloud the the the main project lead wants to take own cloud is he wants to make it more legitimate so he looks at all of these small businesses out there that are using hosted solutions like google docs and google apps or microsoft's platforms or any of the many platforms like zimbra even are platforms out there that are hosted platforms for businesses.

And he says, you know what, with a Linux box and own cloud, you could do all that stuff and keep it on premises, keep it on your LAN. Man, that is an idea I completely am behind. And so I love, love, love that you can take LibreOffice, you can create a document on your PC, and you can know that when you open it up on the web, it's going to render exactly like it should render on your PC. That is fundamentally a big issue for basic end users. I think that's great. Wimpy, did you want to add anything else to wrap this discussion?

Well, I think that you've cited file sync difficulties with own cloud, and I'd go along with that. That's what I've experienced. But with the rest of own cloud, the fundamental syncing of contacts and calendars and online collaboration, that stuff works very well. So this LibreOffice and Calabra involvement with own cloud is all very great. LibreOffice and Calabra involvement with own cloud is all very great and the other thing we need to look at is that Ubuntu 1 got open sourced and has been forked into a new project and maybe 2016 we'll see that evolve into something that maybe own cloud could work with and integrate in order to replace their file sync backend. Yeah. So, you know, let's just watch this space.

Yeah. I think that is actually a really good comment. So I want to make sure, I just want to make sure people understand what Wimpy is saying, is I've never really had an issue with any of the web-based services that OwnCloud offers. And in fact, I continue to use own cloud for caldav and card sync probably the best open source option for those and i do it i do it by far yeah so i i really think it excels in some areas and like when i want to so uh you know like uh um thanksgiving halloween and like doing christmas shopping with the the kids Angela and I are sharing albums through OwnCloud

it's perfect for that kind of stuff I still today use OwnCloud on a DigitalOcean droplet to do a ton of stuff the one thing I'm no longer using it for and what Wimpy is touching on is my primary file sync large numbers of gigabytes that kind of stuff and I know I think on the back end I use something called like

CSync or something I know it's based on a good solid open source syncing solution but it's just not holding up for me. Wimpy, that's a great point. And that's why I am legitimately able to, A, criticize own cloud for some things and, B, be excited for the integration of some things like LibreOffice in their web experience. And I just cannot wait to the day I can come on the air and say Jupyter Broadcasting no longer uses Google Docs to prepare for these shows. I hope that they also allow external, right? Like, I hope that OwnCloud supports stuff like, well, whatever you use to happen to get these files, if you can stick a bunch of LibreOffice documents, ODTs, right, on your server,

and OwnCloud will just read them, let you edit them, et cetera, that would be perfect. Yeah. Yeah, that really would be. And, you know, it is getting to a point where, and I think this is real, like there's a lot of products out there that are open source projects that get sort of productized. Right.

And they don't feel like they're quite ready for end user adoption. They're just not easy enough. Hobby is fun. If you want to have a few problems, you want to fix them, that's fine. And if you're just, if you're a little educated, you know how to solve problems, you know how to do a good Google search.

You don't mind a hiccup in your workflow. Right. It's good for you. But not everyone is there. Yeah. So this is why I think – but I think own cloud is close to technology that is actually totally ready for the end user experience. It just needs that out-of-box experience, and this is why I'm really excited about something the own cloud project is announcing today. Western Digital and own cloud have teamed up to bring OwnCloud to home users. And I think this is really neat. And what I really like about it is you don't have to be an OwnCloud contributor.

You just have to basically have a little bit of enthusiasm and skill sets, and you can get involved in this right now. Western Digital Labs has teamed up and contacted OwnCloud to work together on an offering as a self-hosted device running OwnCloud pre-installed out of the box. Their end goal is to provide a solution

for non-technical end users. Something that will be very easy to set up doesn't require a lot of skills. So Noah could set it up. So somebody like Noah could set it up.

Why are we being mean to Noah? Well, he just loves Western Digital. Oh, good callback, Wes. Wow. Wow. Right? I mean, if this will support the same sort of stuff that his play now does. I'm just impressed that you had an inner show reference that I didn't even get, and I host all

the shows. That's why you have to keep me around. Yeah, nice, nice. So Western Digital Labs is working with these guys over at OwnCloud, and they say, here is the thing that is applicable to our audience. Western Digital has provided OwnCloud with 10 early prototypes to get started with. They would like to send them out to community members who are serious about helping home users run their own OwnCloud server. That's awesome. If I didn't do these shows, that would – I mean, man. Honestly, I wish sometimes before people ever presented something to consumers,

they would let me look at it because I would just tear it apart. The prototypes contain all the parts to set up a small server, including a Raspberry Pi 2, a one terabyte hard drive, all the cables, as well as a fast SD card, pre-installed with an own cloud image, Barry boot based, and a small manual. And the idea is sort of create something, use it, and let them know. And here is what I find freaking fascinating about this,

is I think what this is betraying, and maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I could be totally wrong. But I think Western Digital is going to ship a product based on a Raspberry Pi. Because why send it out as a prototype if you're not going to use essentially whatever the Pi is as your base of the product? And if you're Western Digital and you want to send out a Linux-based product running own cloud, why not just ship it with a Raspberry Pi? Wouldn't that be interesting if in early January or early April we hear about a a Western Digital powered Raspberry Pi device that has own cloud. And that would be this. So, here is

the cool bits, you guys. You can get in on this S. You, listening to the show, can get in on this S. You've got until December 17th to write a proposal. Earlier is better, so do it fast. I mean, I would really freak out. Just do it today. But if a JB member got in on this, I would, oh, man.

And then they could join us in the mumble room. You would be priority. You don't have to be a well-known own cloud developer or active in the community. It's open to everybody. They're going to pick the best proposals and send out the packages on December 19th. They're hoping to get them out before Jesus' birthday. So hurry up. they're hoping to get them out before Jesus' birthday.

So hurry up. And by the end of January, they'll get in contact with you and work together on getting a blog about covering your results of your project. They want you to try this thing. They want you to build this thing. They want you to use this thing. And they really want you to tell them why it's not going to work for an end user. This is where I think I could come in. Yep.

Are you saying you're good at criticizing things? Yes, I am. And so there you go. Oh, sorry, Kitson. I got the birthday thing wrong. Well, it's on December 25th. They're going to try to get them to you before December 25th. I'm sorry. I don't follow it that closely. So you guys can check it out. We'll have a link

in the show notes. I think this would be great. It's exciting to see something as big as Western Digital. They're pretty big in the storage community. Well, and Chaotic mentions that Western Digital has bought SanDisk. So Western Digital and SanDisk, same. That's a huge conglomerate.

Wow, yeah it is. And wouldn't you love to see them start shipping things and contributing upstream to own cloud? If you buy a couple disks, maybe it's a little RAID thing, who knows? OwnCloud's on it, It manages your home infrastructure. That's great. Man. Wimpy, have you heard little birdies talking about other

interests that Western Digital has had with open source projects? I may have heard that this might be the start of Western Digital courting other open source projects and releasing other devices built around the Raspberry Pi 2. So what? Did they just all of a sudden realize that the Raspberry Pi 2

was like this awesome platform pre-built for them ready to go? What has been all of a sudden the big change here? I don't know what the big change is. I just know they've been reaching out to open source projects and finding out what the capabilities are and pitching ideas about how they could use those projects and the Raspberry Pi 2 combined with their storage to deliver new solutions at a low price point. Yeah, that sounds pretty obvious.

I would invite Julie over at Western Digital to email Chris at jupiterbroadcasting.com. And maybe we could talk more. That's Julie Wyson you want to speak to. Julie. Julie. Well, if anybody knows Julie, let her know. I want to talk to her because I got a few thoughts on this particular thing as a long-term own cloud user now.

I've been using own cloud since like version five, so. I'll hook you up. Thank you, Wimpy. That would be great. That's the best. Yeah. Also, a special shout out to Remy in the chat room. Remy.

I always get that wrong. I'm sorry. Who emailed both Wimpy and I about Pwiki, was that what it was, Wimpy? Pwik, yeah. Pwik, thank you. About the sort of Google Analytics replacement that is open source in nature. The open source persuasion.

So we may see that coming out to the JB site soon, and you may see Wimpy trying that out soon, which is pretty cool. Very cool. Yeah, it's very nice. So I appreciate that too. And if you have any feedback or comments, linux pretty cool. Very cool. Yeah, it's very nice. So I appreciate that, too. And if you have any feedback or comments, linuxactionshow.reddit.com Yeah, I know. I know it says linuxactionshow.

Whoa! Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. That was... Calm it down, folks. I've never installed GNU slash Linux. Get it out of here. So here's the thing. If you have any feedback for this show, go over to linuxactionshow.reddit.com. Let us know. Yes, it does say linuxactionshow in the thing. If you have any feedback for this show, go over to LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Let us know.

Yes, it does say Linux Action Show in the URL. You can blame Wes for that. That's my bad. I apologize. Wes, years ago, like 100 and— Whoa. I just realized, hold on. This show has never missed a single week.

That's because we're perfect. I haven't been here that long, but I'm just going to say we're perfect. I was going to say 124 weeks ago, you came to me and you said I got an idea for you. And I said who are you? And you said, don't make a separate subreddit. And I said, okay, that seems like a good idea. So LinuxActionShow.reddit.com

I honestly feel like this show has been particularly kick-ass this year and we don't get enough engagement in the subreddit. Like, we don't get the upvotes, and we don't get the comments, and I'm like, have you heard how badass this show is? It is a super badass show. And it's the show where you've got opinions, man. Come on.

You want to hear them. Yeah, and also sometimes we drink beer, and we get into horrible rants that we wouldn't normally get into, that if we were actually sober,, wouldn't have said on air. JB Ruff. Where else are you going to get that? You got the unplugged experience. So go over to LinuxActionShow.reddit.com.

Give us a little bit of love. Check us out. Also, next week, 124. I think it's the best retrospective on the network. We talked about some of the big topics we covered throughout the year for Linux Unplugged and we followed up on them, played some clips. It was good. So 1.24 will be coming out on the holiday week. We won't be live next week, so don't bother going to jblive.tv.

This is the spot where I plug jblive.tv, and I'm like, you should totally go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar and get in your local time zone. I'm not going to say that, though. I'm not going to say that because we're not live next week because it's the holiday week. But what I am going to say is if you subscribe to the RSS feed or you go to the Jupyter Broadcasting website or you're on YouTube. There's a Plex channel. There's an MB channel. But what I am going to say is if you subscribe to the RSS feed or you go to the Jupiter Broadcasting website or you're on YouTube.

There's a Plex channel. There's an MB channel. Yeah. Just anywhere really. You know, you do how you do. You do how you do. You're going to get yourself a really great episode. I know you're busy next week.

Let me tell you something. I think it's one of the best retrospectives JB has ever done. I really do. And it's because the mumble room was there. I mean it's not my doing. It is what this show has represented. And 124 is a perfect example.

We went into 124 knowing these are the things we're going to talk about, and we walked out with one of the best shows of the year. So I invite you to join us for 124. It is a good show. And then we will be back on the final week. So do you remember when you and I did that unboxing in 124?

Yes, I do. Well, it turns out files copying in the chat room is the one who sent me that box. No way. And all of you will understand what I'm talking about when you listen to next week's episode. I have invited him to join us in the following episode to tell us about the project and what's going on. It's going to be great. I am really excited. It's going to be great.

So 124 and 125 are going to be fantastic. Jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar for live events. Linuxactionshow.reddit.com for feedback. And, of course, jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact to send us an email indirectly. Anything else we've got to cover this week, Wes? I think this was too big of a show already. Too big. We'll have links to everything we talked about in the show notes. If you want

to go to Ubicon or you want to find out about the own cloud initiative or you're curious about Mycroft and their updates, all of that stuff in the subreddit. Well, actually, some of it does come from the subreddit, but turns out we still managed to come up with some of the stuff on our own. It's amazing. And you can find links to it

over at jupiterbroadcasting.com. jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. And don't forget, we'll have a swag link in the show notes. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you back here next week. Thank you. Do you remember what it was, Wes? I believe it was a follow-up on something we opened up in the beginning of the show. Yes, it was. Libram. Libram.

Yes. Thank you. Yes. Okay. I know. Thank you. Because I know people listening were like, oh, my God, are you guys really that dumb? But it's been a long time.

We really are the worst. Yeah. So that's accepted and move on. So who did I cut off and who wants to pick up? Because I don't remember. Anybody? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody?

There's all the software you'd want is free and available on Linux. No way. All right. Who is it? On the cube. Yeah. Oh, Cubes OS. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. Go ahead. Well, you suggested that Cubes might be interesting with containers. suggested that cubes might be interesting with containers. At least for the scenario cubes provides, containers wouldn't work because cubes also provides Windows software on top of the cubes. Right.

Then you'd be limited to something that supports the kernel you're running. Yep. Also, I'm not sure if it's implemented in any container solution, but what cubes does is also provide a way to identify which window comes from which environment. Oh, that's handy. So, Alex, how long have you been running cubes? Oh, that's handy.

So, Alex, how long have you been running cubes? Insignificantly. I just researched it, and I'm trying it out right now. Have you tried the Windows support? No. I plan to. Okay. Yeah, see, like if the Windows support works really well,

I could see that being a big plus for the Zen thing. It would be really interesting to see a cubes version with maybe LXC support or you can run a window that's contained in Docker. That said, it might compromise some of the security. Obviously, containers and security are an evolving topic, let's say.

Yeah. What I would like to see in the future would be something like cubes, but based on Gnode. And since Gnode uses the L4 kernel, it could also use the secure L4 kernel, which is probably secure. It was formally tested. And I think that would be kind of the ultimate security OS.

Yeah. I mean, I wonder how that compares to the library operating system trend today, where you see rump kernels and stuff being run in Docker containers, where you have your application and a library and it just runs. All right. So by the way, Douglas says he loves you, Wes, which is great.

Oh, I love you too. And I want to go to Kitson and then Wimpy. So let's – not to cut off, but I don't want to cut this. This is already a really long show. Kitson, you've been trying out the Plasma desktop. What do you think? Yes, I did. I tried out Plasma on Fedora, which isn't 5.5. It's 5.4.

Meanwhile, I'm running 5.51, bro. What? But I did have a few ideas as to what's going on here and everything. I think that KDE's biggest problem is every time they're doing this like rewrite, like with 4 and 5, they basically end up basically creating the same thing, just only shinier. And that's my biggest problem. I noticed – That's a tough criticism, right?

Because you have to acknowledge the fact that they watched the GNOME project sort of hit the reset button and the massive backlash. So in a way, I think – and I don't disagree with you. At the same time, I think you're right. task that they took on by recreating so much of the standard Plasma desktop, KDE desktop paradigm in Plasma 5 that you can actually make that criticism. Now, I'm not minimizing your criticism, but what I'm trying to say is they so amazingly recreated the functionality, productivity, and workspace environment of their previous desktop that you can actually make the criticism that they didn't change enough, unlike GNOME 2 to GNOME 3.

Do you follow my logic there? Oh, yeah. That's actually my biggest complaint there is that not enough has seemed to progress. For instance, why is Phonon, which is actually what's giving you your sound issues, why is that still a thing right now? Why don't they just directly use Pulse Audio

instead? Yeah, I follow you. I do. All right, Wimpy, let's move forward. Wimpy, you want to talk a little about how Rami hooked you up. Tell me about that. Yes. So, he sent an email to both of us and said if we wanted to play with P wiki's running a

free server for open source projects and i said i've got a new project in the offing and uh he sorted me all out so i've been having a play it's really good really like like maybe oh like podcast tracking tastic good yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, this is really terrific. So I've had a little play. I didn't have to set the back end up, so I'm really grateful to Remy van Elst for sorting that out. And I've just been able to tinker with the front end. And the little bit of JavaScript that you embed,

there are some tips and tricks on how you can augment that to suit your particular use case. So you can even create specific URLs to track file extension types that aren't supported by the defaults and all sorts of good stuff. Oh. Yeah. So in other words, you maybe could do potentially some podcast download tracking or ISO download tracking, right?

Things like that, like actual distro stats tracking. Yeah. So I was interested in distro tracking. Yeah, sure. And podcast tracking. Podcast tracking is there by default. Distro tracking is there to some extent, but like torrents, for example,.torrent files. Oh, man.

Almost untrackable, really. But not.isos yeah so by doing a little bit of research i've been able to link uh pwik into a private torrent tracker so that i can do full torrent tracking and get better benchmark so i'm i'm suitably impressed yeah so here's my only consideration oh yes yes oh yes big props to remy thank you remy listened to last episode and he emailed both wimpy and i and he set up a demo for us it was super cool uh here's my here's my only concern and this is something that we are debating internally at jb and i'm curious to hear your thoughts on it

is sometimes we we need to be able to like, sometimes I'll say, you know, 100,000 people are going to listen to this episode, right? But I actually have to prove that to certain people. To prove it, right. Yeah, and so do you feel like people would believe these numbers? Because it's kind of important to me to be able to cite something that people trust. So if you show somebody Google Analytics,

they believe it because it's Google Analytics, but not necessarily because of what you may have done to massage the numbers behind it. These statistics and the project that I'm setting up at the moment isn't live, so it isn't getting a vast amount of traffic through the site. But the information that is being gathered is far richer and far more useful and far oh really actually oh god oh yeah yeah yeah that sort of seals the deal right there as as into like the distribution that you're using on your oh i would love to know that yeah yeah it's really it's really great oh all right that almost seals seals the deal there. So the deepness of the statistics is, you know, the kind of data you can expose is much more interesting. So you are able to get genuinely important information without sort of contributing to a more broader surveillance system. Yes, because although Remy is running this, he's running it for open source and free culture projects.

So I'm very thankful that Remy has set this up. And also, for anyone listening, Remy is a first class sysadmin who deals with reliability engineering and clustering and scalability problems. So he knows what he's doing. Yeah, he's a frequent contributor to our TechSnap subreddit and he's contributed some great content to our TechSnap show. And also to the Ubuntu podcast. And to Last too. To Last too. One of his scripts has been a desktop app pick

or a spotlight in the past too. He's been really great. And he also wrote a utility to track Let's Encrypt certificate expiry recently as well. Oh, nice. Super handy. Yeah. He knows his onions.

Now, whilst I'm relying on what Remy has set up, if I wanted to take that whole package and self-host it so that I wasn't making any data outside and therefore I didn't have to carry those, we're tracking you, you know, cookie messages that you have to do, then you can do that. You can bring the whole thing in into your own infrastructure and do it all yourself. Yeah, and it sounds like it's actually pretty straightforward to do that too, which is – Yeah, and if you need an expert, Remy knows what he's doing. Perfect. Cool. Yeah, I think I'm going to reconsider. Now, it's not like I can't do it right now, but I'm thinking early next year it might be something that we –

Put on the roadmap. But if you've got one of your – because you've got lots of sort of off-spin domains and things like that and subdomains. Like, for example, I'm looking at jbbot.jupitercolony.com. And mumble.jupitercolony.com and things like that. Yeah, if you were just to take a few of those and talk to Remy and just embed tracking references into a few of those subdomains, because you can run it alongside Google Analytics, which is what I've been doing. So I've got both trackers in the code of my new domain at the moment to sort of compare the two and getting much better information out of Pwik. Interesting. That's awesome.

Much more useful to me, at least. I would love to replace it across the board, to be honest with you. Yeah, but you can have a suck it and see trial in a small way. Yeah, that is really good. Thank you for letting me know. That makes me pretty excited to try it. I was a little apprehensive, so I'm kind of glad to get that. Real world youth.

Yes, yes. All right, so there you go. And you know what I think our title should be? Mycroft and Chili. That sounds pretty good. I think that's great. Doesn't it call it the UbiCon? Doesn't cover UbiCon, but it does have 21 boats versus 12 boats. That seems like where we got to go.

I might have gamed that. I'm not even mentioning the third option there, Chris. I see. What is the third? Chris Lass pronounces something correctly. Yeah, I know. That was a landmark event. Let's be honest here. And Chris Lass atces something correctly? Yeah, I know. That was a landmark event. Let's be honest here.

And Chris Lass at scale. Oh, my God. Not bad either. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to tell Ange about that one.