LINUX Unplugged - Episode 129: Shaky Linux Foundations | LUP 129
Episode Date: January 27, 2016Has the Linux Foundation made moves to cut out the individual from having their voice heard? We discuss the latest controversy brewing this week and the foundations response. Plus why if you're still ...waiting for Wayland to ship, your doing it wrong, AMD’s plans for the open future, some updates from some of our favorite projects, stories from SCALE14x & more!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
We made it from California.
We left California at 1 a.m. and made it.
I mean, we made incredible time.
We made it through California, Oregon, and most of Washington in one day.
Wow.
Do you guys trade off?
Yeah.
You're totally smashing this, like, internal opinion I have of you of a very sweet-smelling man now.
Well, you know, all things said, all things said, I actually think I came out smelling like roses, really.
No real smell.
The hair got a little out of control.
Whoa. Yeah. So that's why we didn't
see much of you. If I do manage
to get all these out in rover logs, as the rover
log goes, my hair goes from
combed to progressively just a disaster
because literally at one point, I'm not
joking you, on our way home we got stuck in a tornado
in an RV and it was one of
the scariest things that's ever happened to me
and so it just goes off the rails.
It goes off the rails.
It's ridiculous.
It was a hell of a drive home.
Where on the West Coast did you encounter a tornado?
Yeah, yeah.
Do tell more.
Northern California.
Northern California.
And it was no freaking joke.
I literally thought I was going to destroy my brand new home.
Oh, man.
Hail the size of marbles at unbelievable speeds.
How did Rover 2 make it out?
Well, pretty good, I think.
Looking good?
I documented all of it, so I'll put it all out in the Rover log.
Oh, perfect.
But it's funny because we're driving down the road and we're listening to a podcast.
And the stereo system switches over and there's this piercing emergency sound that comes from the stereo.
It resets the volume.
It resets it to the FM radio.
And they override your stereo system and you start getting the, if you are on the road, take cover immediately.
This is an emergency.
I'm like, holy crap.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Oh, and Hadiyah's sitting there driving.
She was driving at that point because we were trading off.
She's like, should I keep going? I kind of
want to see it. I'm like, at first I'm like, yeah,
let's keep going. Let's see it.
Think of the network, Chris. And then as we
start to see the big semi-trucks
bailing off the road and taking
refuge under overpasses
I start to realize this and then I
start to look ahead and I'm like
I can't see beyond a certain distance
that's all just gray and
then I'm like pull over pull over
we gotta get off the road
it was something
I did not expect to run into a tornado
and they're like if you are in a
high profile vehicle or a motorhome, you may want to consider
abandoning the vehicle.
Like, this is what they tell you on the radio broadcast.
Wow.
Because you're extra susceptible to the wind.
Right.
But the problem is the hail was so powerful and so fast and so strong that you would have
been seriously injured if you actually tried to evacuate the vehicle.
So we couldn't evacuate the vehicle.
You had no choice.
We had to stay in this huge wind catcher.
This long, tall wall couldn't evacuate. You had no choice. We had to stay in this huge wind catcher, this long, tall wall that catches wind.
That's what we had to stay in during the tornado because we would have been seriously injured.
It was really something.
Can I give you some advice if you ever encounter a tornado again?
Yeah.
If you're watching it and it doesn't appear moving, get out of the way.
It's coming towards you.
Yeah.
It was moving five miles per hour across I-5.
And one of the things we thought about, because where we had to park the whole vehicle was
unlevel, right?
And so you're going through, you're trying to just do everything you can, but the vehicle
is really, really off kilter because we're half off the road.
And that makes us even more susceptible to wind getting knocked over, right, because we're sitting there leaning.
And so we're trying to decide, should we put the jacks down?
But, of course, the jacks are metal, and there's tons of lightning because it's a tornado.
And so I was like, we can't put the jacks down because then that would ground us because right now we're sitting on rubber.
But the vehicle's at a slant.
So if we put the jacks down, it would correct the slant of the vehicle and make us more stable.
But then we were grounding the vehicle, and if we got struck by lightning, we'd be really screwed.
So we stayed on the rubber.
It was really something.
It was intense.
That sounds like quite the moment.
Yeah.
I'm glad.
I'm very thankful that we have you back here.
And I got a lot of it on camera.
Not all of it, but a lot.
So I was talking about the tornado just a second ago.
But the other thing that worked out really, really well is I pulled off at this place called Battle Rock Beach.
And it was in the middle of the night.
So I had no idea what it was like.
I kind of – I could tell because I couldn't see off into the distance.
I thought this might be a great view.
So I parked the rig down – this is in Oregon on our way down to scale.
I parked it, woke up in the morning to this un... That's beautiful.
Look at this. I went up. I had to go up and crawl up.
Look at that. That's from the roof of the
rover there. Wow. You just parked
right there. Yeah.
And I went out and
I got some footage with the GoPro. I got
some super awesome...
I'm holding the GoPro there.
I have it on a stabilizer.
Look at how happy you are.
I took it up to the water.
Hadid, I got this shot from far away.
I'm sitting there trying to get a shot of the ocean.
There it goes.
I got my boots a little wet for good footage.
Well, it's worth it.
That's all in the line of duty.
But that turned out to be a great spot on the way down.
I mean, you know, I don't even know if you can get a hotel that nice.
Yeah, right?
That was waterfront.
Pretty, pretty great.
You just wandered right down to the water.
Made up for the tornado on the way back from scale.
Oh, so this is on the way down.
Yeah, this is on the way down.
And really, the whole payoff was getting to see Popey, who turns out to be a well-smelling gentleman.
I can confirm he does smell well in real life.
He caught me on a good day.
Well, no. I mean, no. No. A conference when you're traveling, not your typical good day.
Because I'll tell you what happened to me. Total devastating disaster. We were moving
from the old rover to the new rover, Lady Jupiter, as we call her. And we moved everything except for the absolutely most important things for a trip like this.
My mixer, my microphone.
Oh, Chris.
And all of the toil trees.
All of it.
Toothbrushes, combs, hair anything, soap, anything.
Left it all.
So we got down on the road
and realized we didn't have any of our stuff.
It was awful. So, Popey,
I congratulate you
for making it over to the west
coast of the U.S. of A. and smelling
like a gentleman. With your basic hygiene
intact. While at a conference.
That is a true feat. I'll tell you what,
the hotel we stayed in was okay.
And as with many canonical events, when there's more than a certain number of people, we share rooms.
So I shared a room with one of the other community guys, Michael Hall.
And, you know, we didn't – the shower wasn't huge.
So squeezing us both in there together was a little bit of a squash.
But, you know, we managed.
That sounds fun.
He's asking for fan art.
This is Linux Unplugged, episode 129 for January 26, 2016.
Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's recovered from the scale hangover by drinking beer.
My name is Chris.
My name is Wes.
Hey there, Wes, and a good beer it is this week. It sure is.
It's a sour one.
Now, coming up on this week's episode of the Unplugged show, we don't have a sour show.
No, no.
Never. We have a
great show. We're going to have some updates from our friends on
some of the projects they've been working on in the Linux
community. Then did you hear the big drama
around the Linux Foundation kicking out the
individual contributor?
It's a big hoopla. We'll tell you what's
going on, who's spreading rumors,
and what the reality likely is with the
Linux Foundation. Then, later on,
have you wondered, where the hell is Wayland?
Wait, what?
It's almost become a joke.
Wayland hasn't shipped yet.
I actually went back in the Linux Action Show archives.
I went back as far as 2011.
We were still making jokes that Wayland wouldn't ship this year.
That means we probably predicted in 2009 it would ship.
I mean, it's a mess.
I'll explain why Wayland hasn't shipped, and it's not the reason you're thinking.
In fact, if you're asking that question, you're asking the wrong question.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
And then, towards the end of the show this week, Wes's best friends over at AMD.
Good buds at AMD.
I love those guys.
They have launched today GPU Open.
GPU Open.
Actually, I don't know if it was launched today.
But they have launched recently GPU Open.
And we will talk about that.
As well as catch up on shenanigans.
Maybe chat a little about scale.
And all of those goodies right here on the Unplugged show.
You know, before we get rolling, let's bring in that Mumble Room, our virtual lug.
Time appropriate greetings, Mumble Room.
Hey.
Time appropriate greetings. Hello, Mumble Room. Time-appropriate greetings.
Hello, guys. Hello. So I don't know if anybody out there
in the Mumble Land is drinking along
with the show today, but
Wes brought in a real sour
beer. This is a sour beer.
It's called Wild Sour,
and it's the Flanders Red.
Product of the USA. It's got a BA
score of 82. Has an
APV, an ABV of 6%.
This is a really, like, it almost tastes like the sour stuff that's in some sour foods.
It's so sour.
But it's also got a really nice, clean finish.
I like it a lot.
So that's what we're drinking this week on the Unplugged.
We've been doing the beer thing to sort of encourage the community hangout aspect.
It's been fun.
So, Wes, we have a big story to talk about
that I meant to cover in Linux Action
Show last week, but the
scale shenanigans totally got away with
things and didn't
get a chance to cover this. And so I
wanted to give a mention out to Jonathan
Thomas who shipped OpenShot 2.0
beta. This has been
the Kickstarter project we've all been waiting
for. OpenShot 2.0 is a This has been the Kickstarter project we've all been waiting for. OpenShot
2.0 is a whole bunch of new stuff.
It's the new
UI look. It's a whole bunch
of fixes he's been working on, and Kickstarter backers are
getting the update first.
It's pretty exciting because you guys know I follow
Linux editing pretty
closely, and I still think it's a pretty bad
state of affairs.
He put together a little video. Let's check it out.
It's pretty cool. Look at that.
That's him
putting that out.
Now, I'll jump ahead a little bit
here. So you can get a basic
idea of what the UI looks like here. It's nice
and it's available. It works on Windows.
It's going to work on the Mac and Linux, of course. He's showing
it here under Ubuntu.
I It's going to work on the Mac and Linux, of course. He's showing it here under Ubuntu. I am hopeful.
I am hopeful.
I am not exactly sure what to expect yet still.
There's no binaries that I have found.
Even though I'm a Kickstarter backer, maybe I missed an email.
That's very possible because I've been traveling.
But the source code is on GitHub right now.
In fact, I think even 205 beta is up,
or something like that is up on GitHub.
So you could go get it right now.
It just doesn't include a lot of things you need to make it all run.
But there is hope out there.
We have a couple of good video editors that are in the works right now.
So I don't think OpenShot's ready yet,
but hey, you know what? It's great to finally see some
code shipping after quite a while.
I can't even remember, but I think it's
been a few years now.
Yeah, definitely.
So, Poby, welcome back
from the US of A. How was
your visit? Did we treat you okay while you were over here?
Oh, yeah. I had an amazing time.
Loved it. Absolutely loved it. That's great. I asked P asked popey i said so what was one of the first things you did when
you got here and he's like well i got chicken wings of course nice yeah did you did you get
beer with the chicken wings or just the chicken wings of course yeah found a nice little uh place
called barney's and uh had uh some belgian beer and uh chicken. And that sorted me out really good.
Now, this isn't your first visit to California, is it?
No, it's the first one to L.A.
I've been to Palo Alto and Oakland and San Francisco.
So what did you think?
What strikes you when you visit here?
I'm curious, just from somebody who doesn't really have that outsider's perspective.
When you get here, even if you've had the revelation before, what is it that strikes you when you visit?
So customer service is the first thing.
It's night and day compared to the UK.
So over there in the US, it feels like people genuinely want to serve you well and for you to have a good time.
Whereas over here, you'll get a surly person who doesn't give a shit
whether you have a good time or not
and whether you enjoy your food or drink or whatever.
Whereas over there, when we're in the bar,
all the waitresses are very friendly and the waiters as well.
I just had a really, really nice time,
and I feel like the people are nice and genuine.
And Pasadena is a lovely, lovely place.
Yeah, it is.
I was really surprised by how great of a venue that was and how convenient it was to like really great food.
Ubicon had an after party at the Brazilian barbecue, which happened to be where we went for lunch that day.
It's just an incredible venue, really nice, classy, accessible, but big enough to host a large group.
And that was one of many places around the convention center.
Yeah, you could have gone to a different place every night.
And we randomly chose most of them.
We didn't have to go looking for Yelp reviews or anything.
We stumbled on this little Korean place, which was a little bit weird.
It was super cheap.
And the food was part Korean, part Japanese.
So it was like sushi and Korean sake and stuff.
But all the while, there was a TV
which was constantly streaming Korean pop music,
which was really weird.
So it's funny you say that.
There are a lot of Korean channels in Pasadena
because the Lady Jupiter has a HD antenna that goes up.
One of the first things I do now that I got this
is I raise the...
That's awesome.
It's literally called the Batwing antenna.
And you sit there and you crank it up and it goes up.
And it kind of looks like a Batwing.
And I tuned in about 30 non-English channels and about half of them were Korean.
It's a thing.
I just couldn't stop.
I couldn't take my eyes off the TV while I was eating.
Yeah, me too.
It's like every time I went back to the Rover, I'm like, holy crap, look at this.
This is unbelievable.
Yeah, Micah.
We had a great time.
Micah was there.
He helped us out with the reservations at the meetup.
Popey was able to come and say hi to the meetup.
He made an appearance because, you know, he was a working girl while at the convention.
We all were in a sense, but, I mean, he had to go back and do his business.
So how did that all go for you?
Was it a decent success?
Would you do it again?
Yeah, totally.
of that i'll go for you was it a decent success would you do it again yeah totally uh i like the uh so the ubicon was good because there were a few uh talks that i i didn't know about you know
stuff that i was i was interested in in seeing so actually you know as someone who's one of the
well partially one of the organizers and i was giving a talk myself um it was really nice for
me to hear like what other people in the community had to say and see a different perspective than just the one from Canonical.
Tell me a little bit about your talk.
So I talked about a service that I created.
So immediately before my talk, Stuart Language talked about building services on top of Ubuntu phones.
So rather than just nagging us about when the next phone is going to be available when you know moaning that
there's no game center or something like that rather than you moan about it why don't you go
out there and build something right so his talk was all about building something and that kind
of dovetailed nicely with my mine and his joint talk which was we built something so um yeah it
was quite cool it was nice and i did a demo and it worked. That's always nice. Yeah.
I had a webcam pointed at a phone in my house a few thousand miles away just to prove that it was doing what it wanted to do.
So, yeah, that was quite good fun.
Cool.
I've had the foresight to set up a webcam before I left the house flying around the world.
Well, I had like five minutes to talk to Mark Shuttleworth.
And I asked him if this is going to be something that we're probably going to keep doing.
He kind of gave me a can't answer, which I kind of gave him a hard time about.
But essentially he said that the unconference format feels pretty good to him and that this in-person thing and sort of riding along with another conference seems like a no-brainer for them.
So I don't know, Poby, if you guys are going to do something like Ubicon again.
But I thought it was a big draw.
I talked to a lot of people that were there specifically to go to Ubicon.
So I think it's something you guys should keep up with.
Yeah, the next one is going to be in Europe.
I think Germany is the next one towards the end of the year.
I think it might even be booked in for November.
Oh, okay.
We'll probably alternate and have one in Europe, one in the U.S.
But the thing is, it's not us, as in Canonical, that organize them.
It's up to the community.
If you want to have one, you create one in your region, and we'll help you where we can.
How did that work exactly?
So the Ubicon that happened at scale was set up by a virtual – who is that?
Who's talking back to us?
All right.
Wes is watching.
It was the virtual user...
It was the real actual users group,
the physical users group that sort of organized it.
How did that work exactly?
So the Southern California Linux user groups
and the loco teams, the Ubuntu community teams,
are all really active.
And many of them are involved in um scale anyway so it was very easy for them to you know organize
things with scale and get the venue and get the rooms booked and all that kind of stuff so they
did all the logistics and you know we have a stand in the expo area and all that at scale as well and
for the whole of like for ubicon as well so um it was very easy for them to do that organization because they were already linked
to an existing event and i think that's where it probably pays off is if if you're in a local area
and there's already an event nearby you can tack one day or two days off it's like a good
relationship you know yeah and it you know it means you don't you as a as a community person
don't have to fork out for a huge venue that's very expensive.
And that Pasadena Center is massively expensive.
It's really, really expensive.
Yeah, well, it's a nice venue, so I would imagine.
It is, yeah.
We had a chance to chat with one of the organizers about the incredible ham radio setup they have there just so that way the different organizers can communicate.
Oh, really? Wow.
That's how they punch through some of the interferences.
They use ham radio.
And it was so cool to hear them geek out about that.
And then he pointed out where some of the antennas were.
If you looked, you could see, like, they have –
and the Pasadena Convention Center, of course, is pre-wired.
They have antennas installed because this is a common thing, I guess.
Pretty neat.
Pretty cool.
I mean, it's a pretty big event.
I mean, you have to keep this in perspective.
It's being put on by the community, right?
It's not O'Reilly Media
coming in and organizing
all of this. It's not the Linux Foundation
that is organizing all of this.
It's the community. And it's still
a huge event.
I think they said they had something like 3,600
people. That was the number
I heard, too. It was 3,600. That was the number I heard, too, was 3,600.
That's just what I was going to add.
So it was a really cool event.
We're going to go more in detail in Linux Action Show,
but it was really neat to see you there, Popey.
And I would encourage people to check it out.
Yeah, it was good to see you in NOAA, too.
And you know what?
We had a hell of a meetup.
Hell of a meetup.
It was pretty funny because we had 40 people RSVP or 40-plus people RSVP.
And so Micah68 there in the chat room – no, not Micah.
It was Micah.
Not Micah68, different Micah in the chat room realized, well, we should probably give these people a heads up.
Well, at the time he gave them a heads up, it was only 20 on the meetup list or something like that.
And then they lost the reservation altogether.
They lost it altogether.
And so I get there and I'm like, it was a reservation for 20, but it's probably going to be more than that.
And then I'm like, I should, and then like five minutes go by and I'm like, I should probably let her know by more than that.
I mean, double.
So let me clarify.
But they never, they never heard me after the number 20.
They just went with the number
so and like
party of 20
yeah we have 20 people
coming yeah they got 20
we need to set up
a table for 20
like I heard them
talking all the time
about 20 people
I'm like
and I kept like
ma'am it's probably
going to be more
than like 40
eventually
we just completely
overtook their entire
outer seating area
I mean I think it was
like maybe 55-60 people
I don't know how many
people
wow
that's great
it was huge it was huge the class, 60 people. I don't know how many people it was. Wow. That's great. It was huge.
It was huge.
The bus place as well.
We went there a few times and the beer is good in there and the food was good too.
Yeah, the Yard House.
Yeah.
They had a great selection of beer.
Great selection, which was the rarity, including Ian from System 76 had me try this peanut
butter beer that he got.
Peanut butter beer.
Peanut butter beer.
Oh.
And it was smooth. It was real smooth. I got a local- You don't want chunky peanut butter beer that he got. Peanut butter beer? Peanut butter beer. Oh. And it was smooth.
It was real smooth.
I got a local—
You don't want chunky peanut butter beer.
I got some—yeah, you don't.
I got some strong Belgium ale.
I can't remember the name of it was now, but it was really good.
It was excellent.
Hey, you know, something we've been talking about here on this show.
I don't know.
I'm just—I'm fascinated.
Ike or Josh aren't here today to talk about it with us, but a lot going on with Solis. I don't know. I'm fascinated. Ike or Josh aren't here today to talk about it with us, but a lot
going on with Solus. I don't know. Maybe it's the way they
communicate. Maybe it's
the brash
goals that they have. Something about
this project. I'm just fascinated. Very visible.
Right? Yeah. And so
they're going out and making
waves again, and the folks over at
Softpedia have been really
...
I want to couch this conversation just saying they've been really making the folks over at Softpedia have been really... I want to couch this conversation.
They've been really making some changes over at Softpedia,
and I want to talk about that with you guys, too. Wimpy, you're in here,
right? I want to talk to you about this, too.
But Solo S is going to be supported for the next couple
of years, this next version. And so I guess
they say they're going to cry to squash, I quote, all bugs.
And I don't know how the hell
that's possible, but alongside
with their crunch and focus for 1.1, we're also continuing our campaign of bug crushing.
We have crushed 22 bugs over the last week, ranging from long string bugs that have been resolved since Budgie rewrite to recent ones that related to inclusions of Git-based patches for new software in the repo.
So they're going through making supposedly this next release super, super solid, Wes.
What would it take?
This is my question to you.
What would it take for you to honestly and legitimately install Solus
and run it on like this laptop or a work machine
that you are going to use every single day?
What would it take?
I think it really probably comes down to package availability.
I'm willing to do a little bit of work to get the packages if I need to.
Nothing crazy.
But if I can use the tools I expect
day to day, you know,
even if it's like a compiling or something
akin to... So it sounds like the barrier's
not high. Yeah, no. I mean,
everything looks nice. I'd have to play around with Budgie a little
more to see if it met
my workflow, but I assume I could change that.
Is anybody in the Mumble room using this as their daily driver
right now? Yeah, that's a good question.
It doesn't sound like it.
I don't think it's reached that level yet.
Maybe when this 1.1 comes out, I'll step up and put it on this laptop.
I don't want to – I don't really know – I don't know how to – I don't want to do this without – there's a lot of Softpedia shame online.
A lot of people don't like Softpedia.
Yeah.
And as somebody who just takes on a lot of news sources, I just sort of weigh each article on its own merits and I sort of build sort of a following with an author, those kinds of things. And so for me, it's not so much about where you publish.
It's more about what you publish.
But regardless, SoftBeauty has a hell of a name and not necessarily a good one at that.
And I don't actually know of another outlet out there, say maybe Pharonix, that is actually as closely following less headline-grabbing projects that do deserve attention.
And they also are following projects that do deserve attention.
But I find that they're actually in some cases contacting the distro makers and getting quotes and actually verifying things, which— That sounds like real reporting.
Yeah, and I'm wondering, Wimpy, I know I've seen a lot of articles from them about Matei Edition.
I'm wondering what your experience has been on the end of the person getting reported on
and what your experience, because that's a pretty valuable perspective.
Yes, Sophopedia certainly strike me as an outlet that are far more grassroots community focused.
So they are paying attention to a broader range of Linux news that appeals to probably more the enthusiast.
You don't see so much of sort of the enterprise stuff.
It's sort of, you know, more desktop and mobile.
enterprise stuff it's sort of you know more that's a good way to put it mobile um and yes in the past they have um contacted me directly to clarify things prior to putting stuff out um but in the
main they like to be first to report on things so um you know there is it depends it depends
whether it's a big story and they want
to be first or if it's something new
and they want to be
accurate, it varies
but also I forget his surname
Swapnil from
used to be
Muckedware and Linux Fader
he writes for
various places, he's very good as well
if he wants to cover a story he's very thorough, he writes for various places. He's very good as well.
If he wants to cover a story, he's very thorough. He sets up a Google Doc and gets all of the involved parties together and has a whole question and answer and has various people come in and actually sort of write their responses.
And then he brings that all together so he's the most journalistic of the people that
i've encountered that really goes to people and gets gets not just copy off the website but actually
wow you know what was his name again maybe what was his name uh oh yeah oh sorry i missed it yeah
yeah of course i know he was at uh scale actually oh yeah yeah a whole bunch of us from ubuntu there
was like eight of us sat around the table
I love the picture he got of you guys crossing the street
he posted that to Google Plus
I hate that photo
you look great in that photo
you look like you're contemplating and looking ahead
to the future thinking about converged devices
it's a great shot of you
I think I was just trying not to get run over
yeah
I told him the problem with Swapney is,
and I'm already doing it right now,
is I want to say Swap when I say his name.
So that's really the big problem is I just want to call him Swap.
But, yeah.
You know, you don't need Swapnell if you have two gigs of RAM.
She's rotten.
Oh, but I'm bump.
Anyway, so, yeah, I agree.
That is, to see Softpedia take a step up is nice.
Hopefully, here's the photo I was talking about.
Hopefully, look at it.
That's Popey there in the jacket with the third over from the left.
Beautiful.
That's a great shot.
It really is.
Look at that.
That's Wapney's Ubuntu crew crossing the street sort of in echo of the famous Beatles shot, I think.
It was pretty good.
It was a pretty good shot.
There's only one thing I would say about Swapnil is that when he made that Mugtware version of the onion, it was really annoying.
Because Mugtware was both news and fake news.
Oh.
It was kind of like,
It's difficult.
It's difficult.
It's like,
why are you purposefully
creating noise?
There is
much discussion
to be had there.
But,
that said,
I would,
I would encourage people,
you know,
to just sort of
reconsider from time to time
and take each article
in its own perspective.
And of course, LinuxActions.reddit.com is a great place
to discuss the merits of an article
because I do read those comments
and weigh them when I'm thinking about covering a story.
So, yeah, I have found their coverage to be interesting.
It's been something I've been starting to visit
on a reoccurring basis.
Always good to see better, you know,
more and better Linux news coverage.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Very much so.
You know what else is new, better, and always getting better?
That's our friends over at DigitalOcean.
Man, they've been making UI improvements that I love.
It's some really nice stuff to make it possible to do things at scale.
Yeah, speaking of scale.
Oh, look at that.
Use our promo code right now.
Won't you D1 plug to support this show and get a $10 credit over at DigitalOcean,
which is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way for you
to get a Linux rig super fast in the cloud
that you control. Root access, HTML5
console when you need to really screw around with that thing,
and you can get started in less than 55 seconds.
55 seconds! Whoa! Man,
that is really something. That is...
Woo! 512 megabytes of RAM. Boom!
20 gigabyte SSD. Boom! One CPU and a
terabyte. A terabyte of
absolute domination transfer
for $5 a month.
Use that promo code, deal unplugged, one word lowercase.
You get $10 credit.
And the really nice thing about DigitalOcean is they've got data centers out the wazoo.
Yep.
They've got them all over the place.
Wherever you want to look like a boss, you can have a data center.
If it's in New York, yeah, you've got a data center in New York.
If it's in San Fran, yeah, now you've got one in San Fran.
Oh, Singapore?
Sure.
Amsterdam?
You know how they were there.
Yeah.
But let me tell you about Toronto.
That's where you go to be in the north, right?
Right there on the Americas.
But guess what's not in Toronto?
The NSA.
Oh, also, by the way, Germany.
This is a sweet spot for all of Germany's neighbors.
Or if you want to stream something to Merkel herself, you've got to have a droplet in Germany.
In country.
It's the only way she's going to watch it.
But really, what's great about DigitalOcean is their awesome support of Linux,
working upstream, all SSD drives, and this incredible interface.
I love this interface.
The only thing better about this interface, the only thing better, is the API.
Oh, man, that API.
Holy cow, the API is straightforward.
But the nice thing about it, and I'm going to tell you, Wes,
sometimes I hit the lazy button.
See what I do here is I go over to this community page, and you just go to it, and I'm going to tell you, Wes, sometimes I hit the lazy button. See what I do here is I go over to this community
page, and you just go to community,
and then you go to projects, and you're like,
I want to have a project, right? No,
this is where you go to find a whole bunch of really
good open source code that's already written
around that DigitalOcean API, and there is
tons of stuff you can take advantage of right now.
I'd be scrolling if you're watching the video version. Oh, did you see that?
I was just using the Vagrant integration
the other day. Really? Yeah. How so, Wes? Why spend up a VM on my local machine when I can get one in the video version. Oh, did you see that? I was just using the Vagrant integration the other day. Really?
Yeah.
How so, Wes?
Why spend up a VM on my local machine when I can get one in the cloud for so cheap, right?
Totally.
Totally.
In fact, they even have hourly pricing.
And on top of all of that, with one-click applications, deployments that are super easy,
they also have great guides.
Like here's one they just posted on how to set up Let's Encrypt certificates.
Nice.
For multiple Apache virtual hosts on Ubuntu 14.04.
That's seriously helpful.
DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code DLUnplugged.
Go get your own super fast rig up in the cloud that you have root access to.
You can do whatever you want.
Either deploy applications with a single click or set up the entire infrastructure yourself.
Be a boost at DigitalOcean.com.
Use the promo code DLUnplugged.
And a big thank you to DigitalOcean, not only for rocking so hard and making Linux super cool and a first-class citizen on your service and using Linux to power the entire infrastructure.
KVM.
Yep.
But also for supporting the show with DL Unplugged.
DigitalOcean.com.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
It is almost a joke now.
Where in the world is Wayland?
And it's always like, is it ever going to ship? And I will admit of having fully participated in the world is Wayland? And it's always like, is it ever going to ship?
And I will admit, having fully participated in the joke,
I was going to play a clip for you guys where we predicted Wayland would ship
to show you, just as a bit of context,
how long we have been expecting Wayland to be the default display server.
And this is sort of where you go off the rails, but bear with me for a second.
server. And this is sort of where you go off the rails, but bear with me for a second.
Best I could estimate, I think in 2009
or 2010 actually,
I think it was 2010.
2010, I said it would be default.
In 2011, 2012, and
2013, I made a joke
prediction, as well as did Brian and Matt at those times,
that Wayland would still not be
shipping and no one would care. And it has sort of been the
joke prediction in our show for so many years that we've stopped making the joke.
It's still a joke.
I heard the joke at scale.
And the problem is it's actually completely and totally the wrong question.
The question really isn't, is Weyland ready yet?
That's not really what you should be asking.
The better question is, is Gnome ready yet or is Kaewyn ready yet?
Because, I mean, yes, there has been work that needs to happen on Wayland.
But Wayland itself is a protocol.
I'm going to get more into that in a second.
But blog post here from the Gnome blog – and I'm forgetting the person's name right now because, you know, I'm going to blame it on the beer.
He says, it's been our goal now for a while to get to a point where whaling could be declared complete and ready to be enabled by default.
We've come a long way since starting the porting effort in 2013.
In fact, we feel we're close enough that we can aim for whaling by default in Fedora 24.
So this is, you know, something that's been – everybody's been talking about for quite a while now, you know, getting whaling by default.
There's been a lot of work fixing things like dialog boxes and pop-ups and applications.
GTK Plus has had a lot of work that's gone into it.
Kinetic scrolling now works better under Wayland.
Drag and drop now works under Wayland.
Copy and paste is getting close in a lot of cases.
But this isn't the problem.
See, this is what you have to understand.
The question isn't really, is Wayland ready yet?
That doesn't make a lot of sense Wayland
is a communication protocol and says very little about the implementation of the two sides you want
to communicate say your web browser a compositor the protocol is stable and has been for a while
but not every compositor and or toolkit or application speak Wayland yet so it may not
be sufficient for your use case so rather than asking is Wayland ready yet, you should be asking can I run GNOME or KDE or Enlightenment under Wayland?
Are they talking Wayland yet?
Because they have to be their own compositor now.
They have to do that own work.
They have to be their own server talking Wayland to the client application.
All this stuff now has to be implemented.
The burden is on them.
It's just not done yet.
It's not ready yet.
But we still
talk about it like if Wayland isn't shipping.
Wayland shipped, everybody. News
alert right here. You can use it today.
Breaking news on the Unplugged
program. This is CNN
Breaking News.
Wayland shipped. It shipped a while ago.
One, it's done. The problem is
graphics drivers aren't ready.
The desktop environments aren't ready.
All of our little esoteric applications aren't ready yet.
We're not ready.
Wayland is here. It's good.
Yeah, I mean, so I wanted to just sort of talk about this for a second because it's sort of, I heard it come up at scale.
I've seen it online a million times.
There's a blog post about it right now.
Why aren't we shipping Wayland yet?
I've even participated
in it. And in reality, it's
just that it showed up and we weren't
ready for it. It's kind of what
it feels like.
I don't know. I think what the author says here at the bottom
that there are exceptions. You know, that
the protocol does still need a
few things to be worked out in a way that's
not implementation
defined, you know. So we want to make sure that KDE
and GNOME don't do disparate things
where the protocol is maybe lacking clarification
or lacking definition.
And I wonder, too, in a
world where the Linux desktop is already not
a primary citizen,
how much
capability we can sacrifice to transition and
still make it work in a reasonable way.
You mean like if we don't get it right, the cost can be too high?
Right.
Like if copy and paste almost works, well, how many people who use Mac or Windows can
deal with not having copy and paste, right?
So I don't know.
I think we're getting really close.
I think that this is a very good point and that we are already seeing like Gnome.
I love when we see the updates from the Gnome team and the KDE team about how far they're compositing their window managers are coming especially the kde updates but
yeah kitson you think that's indicative of maybe a systemic problem in the desktop projects
themselves or the communities what do you mean uh possibly it just seems like at least one of
the desktops would have it fully working by now since it's already shipped. It's been shipping for, what, six months,
about a year now.
I'm just kind of surprised that the X standards
where they got together and all agreed on certain standards
or for the icons, et cetera, drag and drop,
copy paste, all that stuff,
there was actually a huge foundation
that was created just for that.
Why don't they do the same thing for Wayland?
I thought it was kind of being put on by the same people.
That was my understanding.
Heavens, I want to give you a chance to jump in just before we go too much further.
Go ahead.
Well, there's a really easy or simple reason why people seem to think of Wayland as a thing.
Because our old X server was a server and
a thing which had to run, which Wayland doesn't need to run. It's just a protocol for the window
manager to actually manage and use its compositor through. So based on the X386 migrating to the
XOR server, people just confuse it that way.
Also, Wayland is secure by default, which is why something as weird as copy and paste
or moving things between one composited window to another secure, like, composited window
is a little bit tricky, while the X server is insecure and root horror.
Right.
That's actually, so we're talking about the copy-pasting.
The problem is these are all isolated, protected applications now.
We've grown used to not having the security.
Yeah, so sharing data between them is tricky.
William, go ahead. I want you to get a chance to jump in.
Yeah, so I don't think it's so much the desktops holding it back
because Noma actually has pretty decent Wayland support
if you use, say, the latest Fedora image.
It's mostly graphics
drivers at this point, right?
Because it works fine on Intel for the most part, but if you go to
NVIDIA or AMD, you're still missing
complete OpenGL ES support, which you need
for Wayland to run.
That's a total kneeback anyway.
Nobody's buying a $1,000 plus
computer and saying, I don't need my GPU.
Maybe some of the most hardcore
open source advocates are, but the majority of
consumers are not going to buy a computer with a $300 part in it and be like, I don't
need that.
You could get Iris Pro graphics that work, though.
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
Some people are totally happy with the Intel graphics.
My issue with Intel graphics remains, once you put them in a high DPI environment, you
again feel the immediate crippling of integrated graphics.
If you use it in a 1080p environment or even a 2K environment, Iris would probably work for people who don't play games a lot.
But, yeah, in high DPI, it's just awful.
This is really something that I find to be fascinating.
Now, Wimpy, what is the Maui project?
I know I've heard the name before.
Is that like Rebecca Black Linux?
What is this?
No.
Maui is the operating system, and I think it's the Hawaii desktop or something.
Yes, I believe so.
Hawaii.
Yeah.
But they took the Western reference compositor and then built up a lightweight desktop environment around it.
And it's the only, aside from
GNOME 3,
which is sort of adapted from
X to Wayland,
this is the only desktop environment
that was focused on Wayland from the outset.
Now, I don't know
if we've actually had a chance to install it,
but I think we actually talked about this about a year ago. So has this been around for a while? Yeah, I don't know if we've actually had a chance to install it, but I think we actually talked about this about a year ago.
So has this been around for a while?
Because I think we –
Yeah.
I've been aware of it for a few years because – I don't know if it still is, but it was –
It was 2014.
Okay.
Now, I think you brought up an important point when describing it.
So you guys out there have heard of Wayland, obviously.
The other thing you'll often hear about is Weston.
Weston is a reference
compositor. Weston is not really
something, it's not like, it's not
something that KWin developers are going to use.
It's not something that GNOME people are going to use. It was a
reference point. That's what Weston is. And that's
been done for a while, too. Right. Now, what were you
going to mention? Well, I was going to say, here's another
Wayland-focused environment that
is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager.
What is this called here?
Sway window manager.
SwayWM.org.
Boy, look at this.
So, I mean, I think as these things come along, power users may be, you know, if there's a nice timeline window manager, maybe I can make do with Wayland right now.
Yeah, and we're watching a little demo.
They have a little demo video up under our website there.
That does look pretty good. I can do this
and then maybe MPV plays with
zero. Look at that. It's kind of smooth, too.
It actually has some...
This is kind of nice. Yeah, right?
I might give this a try. This could be a
legitimate way to get into Wayland a little sooner
and not expect all of the features
of such a rich desktop environment like GNOME
or KDE. And you could probably have this as one of your logins,
right? You know, from your
display manager and then go back to X if you needed to.
You know, he's playing video there in that one window,
and there's no tearing there.
No, it looks beautiful.
Yeah.
The dream.
Let's put a link to this in the doc.
I'll put it in so we can have that in the show notes.
That's pretty cool if you guys want to check that out.
So it's a tiling window.
Do you call it a window manager now?
Well, that's what it says.
Yeah, that makes it a window manager.
Okay.
It's actually a successor to i3 because the i3 team said they weren't going to make a SoFi Wayland version, so that's why they made it.
And it says that they bring in your i3 configuration file, so it has i3 configuration compatibility.
Oh, oh, oh.
And i3 IPC compatibility, which would probably mean like some of those plugins and stuff, which is super cool.
And also multi-head support.
Oh, and GAP support, which I know you had to compile in separately.
What's gap support?
Is that for like in the monitor?
No, like between your tiles.
If you don't want them right next to each other, you can have a little window gap between
them.
Oh, that's cool.
Which can look pretty if you want to see a little bit of your background.
You guys have wanted me to take a tiled window manager challenge for a while.
This is the way for it to get me in now.
Now I'm like, this is awesome.
This is really cool. So yeah, drop-in replacement for i3 window manager, but a while. This is the way for it to get me in now. Now I'm like, this is awesome. This is really cool.
So yeah, drop-in replacement for i3 window manager,
but for Wayland instead.
It will work with your existing i3 configuration files
and adds a few extra features on top of that.
And the other thing,
I don't know what the state of multi-monitor support is
for like KWin and GNOME.
That's a good question.
Probably depends on the driver.
North Ranger, yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I think we're finally getting to a point of critical mass with Wayland where the whole ecosystem around it,
and that's really what we've been waiting for for a long time, as everybody's alluded to.
It's drivers, it's desktop environments, it's the apps.
And we've been through this kind of thing before.
I mean, there was a long time ago when Linux kernel was at 2.2, and people didn't trust kernel 2.4 for a long time.
So early adopters were hitting it first, things like that.
Same thing with file systems.
So I think there's a lot of similarities there, and overall I'm hopeful.
And I think we are reaching that tipping point where people want the security that comes with Wayland.
The performance is pretty much a wash,
and we're finally getting that decent support from the drivers and the ecosystem side.
Yeah, I really hope that does pan out.
I'm still waiting for mine.
But yeah, I definitely am ready to not see when I full screen video to see tearing.
Right.
So I was done with that.
Have video first class under Linux.
Yeah, I would love that.
And just the sense of
knowing that I'm using something that's not
so archaic, like
there's no material impact other than I guess
my security is probably not as
good as it should be. Right. But I'm
ready to move on.
Anybody else in the Mumper room have any closing
thoughts on the Wayland stuff before we
move on? Do you really think
Wayland's about to
be heralded in i still feel like it's a long way away i mean for example in the last few years
whilst wayland's been brewing we've all been spoiled with steam yeah and while we don't have proprietary driver support for Wayland, I can't see people who have embraced Steam on their Linux workstations wanting to switch anytime soon.
No, I, you know.
Isn't that what the ex-shim, the ex-Wayland thing, isn't that what that's for anyway?
But see, this is the thing, though.
Games, you're going to want the best performance possible.
But see, this is the thing, though.
Games, you're going to want the best performance possible.
I know that the next series... That brings up that whole debate about, you know,
how should Linux do games?
Should we have a way in the protocol to give games full video games?
Well, when it comes to Wayland and KDE and GNOME,
it's up to KDE and GNOME to actually get this implemented and deployed.
It's not Wayland themselves which can actually deploy something and get everyone
on it. It's built in to the desktop
environment. I guess the question there would be, is there
protocol implementations they can make to make gaming
better? Right.
It's not about making gaming better,
and I don't think that GNOME
and KDE can be faulted, because
they've both been working very hard
on bringing Wayland support to their
desktop environments. They've been too working very hard on bringing Wayland support to their desktop environments.
They've been too busy making their desktops actually usable
and ironing all the bugs out from their new 3.10 releases, KDE 5.0 releases.
Once they get all these bugs and things, wrinkles, smoothed out from their new desktop environment implementations,
they can finally focus on something that is on the back burner, which is Wayland support.
I would say...
No, I disagree.
I disagree, because what's actually been happening is that the toolkits have been evolving,
and therefore the desktop environments that are built on top of those toolkits
have been evolving alongside those.
And that work has been moving on at quite a
pace if you if you actually look at the amount of effort that's gone into supporting wayland on kde
and gnome 3 there's been a lot of effort and they're both very close and they've both got
implementations where you can run uh both their desktops on top of wayland but that's not the
issue and the issue is also not whether games will run
better on Wayland or if there's protocol support for in optimizing uh Wayland support for running
games it's the drivers we've got Intel support which is fairly decent but without the proprietary
driver support to give that performance that's required for gaming and 3D and what have you, people won't make the switch.
Well, here I see two things that sort of are hedges in our favor.
The first being obviously SteamOS.
I mean Valve has the final say on what ships on SteamOS and they can continue to use X11 for as long as they want or they can build some sort of
shim, something like that. But
I am encouraged
by the news I saw today
that the next Serious Sam game is
going to ship supporting
Vulkan out of the box.
And really what the question is
is the way we need things to line
up is we need game developers to
support Vulkan and then we just need the Linux drivers to have good Vulkan support and Wayland support.
And if everybody's interest and priorities can align this way, we're in pretty good shape.
And the thing is, a lot of priorities and interests are beginning to align this way already.
The slow pivot.
Yeah.
Interests are beginning to align this way already.
The slow pivot.
Yeah.
So Vulcan could be an answer to that.
And I think SteamOS is our short-term hedge while this stuff is sort of sorted out because Valve is not going to ship what Valve doesn't want to ship.
Yeah.
But the thing is, is that Vulcan has come along while Wayland has been brewing. And I'm not sure there's any provision in wayland for vulcan
at the moment i could be wrong about that because i haven't looked into it too carefully and i'm not
entirely sure if it matters it doesn't matter there's no reason why you would want at a display
server level to be concerned with something that would be interpreted by the driver and then rendered out that way boy but you know what surely surely you need for example for for wayland to let's just go back to
gl open gl surely you need wayland to understand the open gl extensions for it to be able to render
those things and in the same way surely it needs to be able to do that for for vulcan as well
that that would be done by the drivers for for vulcan as well that that
would be done by the drivers and stacks on top of them that's usually done by messa uh now as to
what protocol it uses to go into to use this with that's that's separate i'm not so sure i think
wayland needs to be able to interpret some of those extensions no it really it really doesn't, because all it's going to do,
the client of Wayland, is it's going to ask for an OpenGL buffer,
and I think you can still speak Vulkan over that.
I think you can still upgrade that to be Vulkan compatible,
and it will just render it within that frame
that it was dictated by the West End compositor.
Well, one of us is wrong.
I would actually bet that the answer lies somewhere in the middle because it seems too clean one way and it seems too ambiguous the other.
Oh, the Talos principles included there.
I like that game.
I will link to the thread that you just put in the chat room, Wes.
There is a Linux gaming thread about how Vulkan will impact open source drivers, and I think they get into Wayland in here.
We are about to go through a massive transition,
and the closer we get to this, the more and more obvious it is
why Valve was very, very smart and thinking ahead
when they decided to release SteamOS.
Because they're like, this is a great platform for us to target,
but you know they had to know about this stuff coming up.
I mean, you don't choose Linux as a platform without following what's happening.
And maybe that because they now have so much skin in this game,
maybe they will be incentivized to work with whoever they need to work with to make this an easier transition for us.
Put pressure on game developers to support these newer.
We could be so lucky, right?
Isn't that the positive side of commercial interest, using Linux?
We could be so lucky. Yeah, Isn't that the positive side of commercial interest using Linux? We could be so lucky.
Yeah, I wonder.
We'll find out.
I wish we had a crystal ball right now, but people in the chat room are saying that Fedora 24 with Wayland is real and is possible right now.
Kitson, I'll give you the last word on performance and reliability, then we'll wrap it up.
Go ahead. Yeah, I've actually been using Wayland quite a lot
as my daily driver on the most recent Fedora release.
Really, I think Fedora should have just jumped in,
released their current release with Wayland,
and said, hey, we're all about promoting future technologies.
This is what we do.
This is what this distro is about.
And I think.
Did you go away, Kitson?
Oh, he went away.
Come back.
I thought he was making a good point.
Essentially, I think what his point is, is that because Fedora is a cutting edge distro.
It's the place to try it.
Well, that's probably where we are going to see it first.
The outlook is good for the 8-ball.
This is the JBot 8-ball in the chat room. There you go. There you go. The outlook is good. That is the decider. That's the final word on the. But that's probably what we are going to see at first. The outlook is good for the 8-ball. This is the JBot 8-ball in the chat room.
There you go.
There you go.
The outlook is good.
That is the decider.
That's the final word on the – but that's it.
Kit's got a good point, and I think when it comes time to do our Fedora review,
I'm going to have to try it on some Intel hardware and my XPS house and Intel Iris Grounds card.
It was.
Mm-hmm.
Chris's new Wayland machine.
Hey-o.
Tell you what else is new.
My friends over at Ting got some new sales I'll tell you about here in just a second.
But first, why you should switch to Ting.
I love it.
I use Ting all the way down to scale and back.
And let me tell you, it is nice to know that Ting is mobile that is finely different.
No contract, no determination fee, and you only pay for what you use.
$6 for your line.
Pay for what you use.
So you go down to a trip to California.
Maybe use a little more data on your
way down, on your way up. No bigs,
because you know what? Now I'm back here at the JB1 headquarters.
I'm on the Wi-Fi.
Wes, I'm on the Wi-Fi. So it all is no
bigs. So my bill is cray-cray. With three
smartphones, it's cray-cray. Cray-cray low.
Low. Hey-o!
Yeah, like December
was like $27 or something. I couldn't believe it.
That's like one meal out. Yeah, the average ting bill, I guess, per line is like $27 or something. I couldn't believe it. That's like one meal out.
Yeah, the average Ting bill, I guess, per line is like $23.
So think about a way now.
You can go get a smartphone that's completely under your control.
You can get the quote-unquote Google experience, if you like.
Get that real pure experience.
Get something that's unlocked, something you own outright, and you're paying like $23 a month.
Whoa.
Man, that's great.
So Ting also has an ETF relief program. If you're
stuck in a duopoly contract, they have super great customer service, a fantastic dashboard to manage
your Ting account. I mean, it is really the best in the industry. And like I mentioned, they got
great sales going right now. So go to linux.ting.com to support the show and get $25 in credit or $25 off a device.
If you want an internet phone, they got the iPhone 5S unlocked.
You own it outright, $338 right now.
Nice.
Really nice deal.
The S5, refurbed edition, $298.
That's a great Android phone for $298.
Unlocked yours.
You own that S.
With all the money you're going to save on Ting,
I mean, you could just buy one of these phones
and not worry about it.
The Galaxy Galaxy Galaxy S6.
This is a really nice phone with the octa-core processor,
few gigs of RAM, the PCIe storage,
the fantastic camera.
You can own it outright.
Completely unlocked.
No contract.
$597. Boom. That's a really good deal. I think when I got unlocked, no contract, $597.
Boom.
That's a really good deal.
I think when I got mine, it was like $700.
Don't tell people.
That's embarrassing.
It sucks, dude.
But now Rika's got a great phone.
Oh, yeah, right.
There you go.
That's true.
That's a true story.
That's another Ting success story right there.
There you go.
Yeah, it pays to be the editor, doesn't it?
So go to Ting.
Go get yourself a great phone.
Go get yourself a plan.
Because really, they've got stuff as low.
You can get a decent phone for as low as $100.
Or actually, if you want to get a feature phone, much lower than that.
And if you've got a phone, and you probably do because they've got GSM and CDMA networks.
So if you've got a phone, I encourage you to just go get a SIM card.
Because the SIM cards are really cheap, $9.
You pop a SIM card in.
This one SIM card here fits all your different devices.
It's really cool the way they do it.
And you just pop it out to the size you need.
They really were pretty clever when they designed this thing.
I'm thinking about having Ting be my backup network, you know,
when certain other large networks aren't working so well.
This is a great way to go.
$6 a month.
We kind of unofficially do it here at the studio already.
So, of course, we don't use it as our primary internet here at the studio, but when the studio goes out,
the first thing we do is we start tethering from our Ting devices
because it's just data. It doesn't affect
the contract. I don't have to call up and get a shared
program. No, I just turn it on.
And I just bill it for what you use.
It is really, really nice. Check it out.
Linux.ting.com. And a big thank you
to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged
program. Linux.ting.com is where you go to support
this show.
Okay, let's talk about the
Linux Foundation.
This happened while I was on the road. I didn't even
know this was going down. But apparently
this is
another disgusting example of what happens in the Linux community.
I'll start you off at the top.
So there's been a controversy that's erupted around the Linux Foundation.
It's whether the Linux Foundation essentially is serving open source community or corporate sponsors.
That's essentially the takeaway headline.
or corporate sponsors.
That's essentially the takeaway headline.
But the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization that supports Linux and increasingly other open source projects,
like I'm a big fan of the fact that they have the Core Infrastructure Initiative,
which funds a lot of really important open source.
They tend to not really have any controversies, but I really hate this.
Michael Garrett, a security developer at CoreOS,
a former Red Hat employee, et cetera, et cetera.
You've probably heard the name before.
Recently spotted that the Linux Foundation has changed its bylaws
to no longer permit individual foundation members
to elect members of the group's board of directors.
Garrett wrote,
The majority of its board is chosen by member companies.
Ten by Plat platinum members.
Platinum membership costs $500,000 a year.
Three by gold members.
Gold membership costs $100,000 a year.
And by one silver member.
A silver membership is $5,000 and a $20,000 a year, depending on your company size.
Up until recently, individual members, which I am a loved one,
for $99 a year could also elect two board members,
allowing a community perspective to be represented at the board level,
which is one of the reasons I became a Linux Foundation member.
Get your voice heard.
So this is an article at ZDNet written up by Stephen,
and he says, why would the Linux Foundation do this?
Garrett speculates
it's because of Karen Sandler,
the executive director
of the Software Freedom Conservancy,
a woman who we have
interviewed many times on our shows.
An organization that does vitally important
work of the enforcement of the GPL. I recently
shared with you the story about their fight
to enforce GPL violations of
VMware.
VMware, who is a Linux Foundation member.
So Garrett speculates that the individual membership program was quietly renamed to
the individual supporter program, and the promised benefit of being allowed to stand
for and participate in board elections was dropped.
He compares the old page and gives you a link to the new page.
He asked why would the Linux Foundation do this?
Well, he states that historically it's been less than enthusiastic about GPL enforcement.
And the Software Freedom Conservancy is funding a lawsuit against one of the foundation's members for violating terms of the GPL.
He speculates they have made this move to prevent Karen Sandler from joining the board.
He speculates they have made this move to prevent Karen Sandler from joining the board.
Then because of this speculation, Karen Sandler has found herself under attack by people who have assumed that her mission is to bring some sort of agenda to the Linux Foundation,
one that they would define as a social justice warrior's agenda.
And so she has now come under attack because of Garrett's speculation here.
The Linux Foundation didn't help the situation.
It's not really their fault.
But Jim Zimmerman – or but Jim Zimmerman Zemlin
who I've met and talked to before
he's a nice guy
was apparently busy
while all this shit was happening
and everybody was declaring
that the Linux Foundation
had betrayed the community
and that this was an effort
to switch to corporate backing
and that this was also an effort
to block Karen
Sandler.
Some even speculated a move by Linus Torvalds himself, orchestrated by Linus himself.
Some of the crap that's out there is unbelievable.
And it turns out, of course, that the guy that runs Linux Foundation was busy.
In China.
They couldn't get out because they were in China with limited access to email.
As a result, they only became aware of the problem 48 hours after it blew up on social media.
And then they tried to make an immediate response on their blog, which completely sucked and was insufficient.
Sorry, Jim, but it's true.
The conversations relating to the Linux Foundation governance changes had developed into personal, inappropriate, and offensive remarks, he writes, directed at some members of the community, in particular against Karen Sandler, the executive director of the software freedom conservancy.
But if you extract yourself from all of that crap,
I think the real question behind the debate
is who actually is controlling the Linux Foundation.
Is it the users or is it the companies?
Now, the current developers themselves
are able to elect some members of the board, like the technical steering committee.
But Michael Garrett, or Matthew Garrett, sorry, sees it as a move as the Linux Foundation is taking one more step away from the community and towards the corporate world.
It's not exactly addressed either.
That point is not addressed in the Linux Foundation's post.
That's why I say it's insufficient.
I say it's insufficient.
But he does tellingly say that the process for recruiting community directors should be changed to be in line with other leading organizations in our community and our industry.
In other words, nobody else does it this way.
So in addition, Garrett pointed out individuals no longer have the ability to run for and vote for the Linux Foundation board seat and influence the direction of the foundation, which I think is a bit of a loss.
That said, a lot of times what happens is these board positions are clown shows.
They're people who are sort of positioned there by a corporate interest.
They're people who want to be positioned there because it's better for their career to have it on their resume.
They are not always, always fully representative of who you actually want. And a lot of times it's really the companies that have different people in those positions,
line them up so that way they can influence things.
And even when that's not the case, like in the case of HP, it's often accused to be the case.
It's claimed to be the case.
So it often looks bad anyways.
It is, to me, coming back from my trip, I look at this and I go, this looks like a hot mess.
And I find myself to be sort of like taken aback by all of it.
Wimpy, I'm curious what your reaction is.
I see you had some thoughts.
Come on, Wimpy.
What?
Are we in the wrong?
Oh, sorry, Wimpy.
Go ahead.
Sorry, we're in the wrong room.
Wimpy, are you there?
Did we lose you?
I think he's so upset he left wes
well we should take a moment and have a beer we should take a moment and have i do think he makes
a good point though that uh you know we have to consider the nature of linux you know it's an
open source thing it exists on its own the linux foundation has always been you know like he's as
a trade association it's kind of a a nice mechanism to extract money from people who use linux for
their profits and then gear that you know use it for open – the infrastructure.
But it has not – it is not.
And as Greg KH talks in our Linux link, the community members haven't necessarily besides B. Dale been good representations of the community.
They haven't really functioned this way.
So maybe a name only.
I really like – so Greg KH took to
Linux subreddit and responded
to some comments, and I really, we're going to link to that
in the show notes, because I really liked his take on it.
I don't know, can we not hear anybody in the
room? Somebody say, North Ranger, say something for me.
Can you? Do you see? Yeah, do you see him
lighting up? Yep. Well, I don't know what's
going on. Computers are hard, Wes. I don't know what's
going on. We're not experts here. No, no.
I don't understand how computers work, And as far as I'm concerned,
we should all go back to calculators. I don't know, maybe close that thing and reopen it for me,
Wes. I have no idea. I have no idea. I look at this and I'm trying to suss out if there is bad
blood between the Linux Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy. That's really my question.
Right.
Is there something going on there?
Is the Linux Foundation affected by its members?
I would tell you – I would like to sit here and tell you because I have a lot of respect for the Linux Foundation.
I've worked with them on some projects in the past, several projects in the past.
They do a lot of good things for the ecosystem.
Yeah.
Yeah. Like they pay Greg and Linus. They do a lot of good things for the ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah.
Like they pay Greg and Linus.
That's a great – and the core infrastructure, all kinds of stuff.
They – I also have seen sort of a side of the Linux Foundation that gives me pause because
it doesn't seem genuine.
It doesn't seem honest.
And that is there are news outlets online that purport to be just straight news outlets that are actually PR fronts for the members of the Linux Foundation, primarily SUSE and Red Hat, but others as well, that hire people that are their PR people, to write articles for them, and then they publish them on these quote-unquote news sites
as an article that essentially implies this is why you should use distro,
you know, insert Red Hat or Seuss or whatever, instead of something else.
And they are essentially native advertising pieces
that the Linux Foundation is allowing their members,
their contributing members, to publish through their publishing platforms.
And I find that to be disingenuous,
and I also over the years have found it to actually be shaping the tone
of the conversation in the community,
and I find that to also be disgusting and disingenuous.
So I would like to say that I have absolute respect for the Linux Foundation,
but if I'm being completely honest with you,
I have seen some practices that seem disingenuous to me.
Basically, it seems that if you write a big enough check to Linux Foundation, you get access to their publishing platform.
Got to do what they want.
You want.
And that bothers me because as somebody who publishes, like that really bothers me.
Now, maybe I have it wrong.
Maybe I don't.
But I do wonder if this is a shift more towards corporate funding, corporate sponsoring,
corporate interest, which is honestly where Linux makes its bones right now.
And maybe this is a moment for us as community members to consider, you know, just how we think of the Linux Foundation in terms of the larger ecosystem and other organizations
that maybe can do similar roles.
The other thing I question, and I wish I knew more about it, and I absolutely welcome Matthew
Garrett to come on the show if he wants to tell us about it himself.
The mumble room is open when it's working.
What I don't understand exactly
is why Matthew made these speculations
about the Linux
Foundation making these changes
specifically to
try
to screw Karen.
I know that there was some timing of some talks
canceled and all that kind of stuff,
but when you talk to Karen,
there doesn't seem to be any malice on her part.
And I'm just wondering where that speculation came from
because it led to some weird stuff that happened.
And I'm kind of curious why he did that
and maybe if he knows something that we don't know.
But it seems like he went to his blog
and made some speculations
that ended up causing a shit ton of issues
for the Linux Foundation
who are honestly doing something that any foundation would normally do.
I don't necessarily agree with it.
And there is merit to him bringing up that they did away with the seeds.
It's just kind of the other stuff that got glommed on there that maybe took away from that.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Like I think it's a good thing to mention as a contributing member.
You wouldn't have known this otherwise probably.
That part, totally valid.
We should have a conversation about that.
The speculation why they did it, it feels off base because it's nothing unusual for a foundation to do like this.
By their own bylaws, they're allowed to make these changes like this.
It's all internal.
Yeah.
I don't know exactly.
It leaves me taking a bit of a pause.
But the full write-up, Stephen Jay, Von Hoff Nicholas, did a great – I just added the Hoff.
He wasn't at scale.
Oh, that's too bad.
Yeah.
He's like pretty much one of the only Linux quote-unquote celebrities that wasn't at scale.
I don't know.
I mean, that's all right.
Noah was there showing him up, so it doesn't matter.
JB's own.
He would have had to compete with Noah.
I can understand why he wouldn't.
How many people can do that? How can you? Right. He doesn't bring the Google Glass, though. Really? You know why. JB's own. He would have had to compete with Noah. I can understand why he won. How many people can do that?
How can you?
Right.
He doesn't bring the Google Glass, though.
Really?
You know why?
That's disappointing.
You know why?
No.
Here's something you'd never know unless you're a glasshole.
If you change radical climates, Google Glass gets destroyed.
Only because, so the way that it works is the projector that projects the thing in your eyeball,
it projects against a foil reflective material that's on the end of the prism that then bounces
it back into your eyeball.
When you travel, and see where Noah's at, it's like below, it's like negative 16 Fahrenheit
right now.
So it's like crazy cold.
It's inhuman cold.
It literally is not survival.
No one should live there.
No.
He should move and he should come to Seattle.
Come join us and pient up.
But he's, you know, like the boiling frog, he doesn't know life any other way.
But what he has learned is when he travels to places that have human climates, like the West Coast, I'm not, boy, people are snowed in right now.
We don't get any snow.
So I don't mean to make fun of you. travels, if he makes large climate changes, the foil that the prism uses for projection reflection
bubbles up.
And it destroys the ability to project
anything in Google Glass. Permanently? Yeah.
Wow. And so he has to get it
replaced every time he does this. And Google's been
pretty good about it, but now they don't make glass anymore.
He feels like this might be his last glass.
So now he's afraid to travel with it in the
winter. So it's a home glass. It's home glass
because it's too cold where he lives.
Yeah.
He needs like a humidor for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
Now, hold on.
Now, see, A. Gates, earthquakes ain't got nothing to do with climate.
That's two separate issues.
Yeah, we're going to have an earthquake.
That's why I drove Highway 101 so I could see the coast before it falls off into the ocean.
I thought it would be beautiful.
I don't know what to do about a mumble room.
Yeah.
I don't know what to do about that. Freak. Yeah. I don't know what to do about that.
Freak high.
What's going on?
I'm not sure.
What's going on with that?
You closed and opened it, right?
I sure did.
Yeah, I don't know.
We're in the on-air channel.
Yeah, we are.
We are.
You know what I'm going to do?
I'll reset the channel over on the mixer.
Here we go.
You ready for that?
Let's see here.
I think that we should all make those businesses fail.
Now I just got to purge this buffer over here.
Get it out of here.
Okay.
Here we go.
Okay.
Wimpy, can you say something now?
Are you there?
Hello.
Yeah.
Yay.
Welcome back.
Hey, it worked.
Look at that.
Our dearest friends, the mumble room.
That's all you got to do.
You just got to reset the channel and flash a little bit.
So if there's anything you want to mention on the foundation thing, go ahead.
No, I think Wes covered it.
My point was very brief, and that's that the Linux Foundation is a trade association.
You pay to be a member of that trade association,
and the Linux Foundation represent the interests of its members.
interests of its members and for the most part the interests of its members are going to be conflicted with grassroots community stuff there's going to be some overlap you know you've mentioned
core infrastructure projects and all the rest of it that's terrific but being no doubt that
we're a we benefit as a byproduct of them serving look members. Look, we made you a nice platform that works. Oh, you guys
can have it for free. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know,
but, you know,
that's it. It's a trade association.
There are lots of them in different industries
and that's how they work.
I would understand that they wanted to remove,
you know, instead of having two seats,
they wanted to limit it so they could
open another seat to another corporate interest or something like that.
That makes sense.
But to completely remove the community from the situation is just really weird.
It feels like it made them special to me.
It feels like what made them special is gone.
Right.
I don't think we'd question it if they'd never had one, if that had grown up.
But the fact that they have had it and then just remove it even if it wasn't necessarily doing its job, yeah, it's hard to ignore.
To see the internet go batshit crazy though and say that Linus is orchestrating some sort of campaign against social justice warriors is sort of like –
I can't imagine he would care for more than his colonel to even worry about that.
Yeah, it's a total misread of what Linus' priorities are.
It shows what total lack of understanding people have of how the community actually works.
It's sort of ridiculous.
We've got a community calling for our destruction here, Chris.
Why is that?
No, what happened?
In this earthquake.
Oh, I know.
Dude, they're going to totally cause it to happen.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks, guys.
That's all right.
Then I'll just have to move over to – You've got a mobile home now. Thanks, guys. That's all right. Then I'll just have to move over to...
You've got a mobile home now.
Yeah, man.
I live on springs and shocks.
I won't even notice.
No, actually, that's not true.
You know what I do notice?
Linux Academy,
because I notice that they have made
some major improvements over at Linux Academy.
I'd like you to go there.
It's a learning platform for Linux
and all the technologies around it.
Everything that really kicks ass in the Linux ecosystem,
they've got stuff to help you learn
and manage it, including
AWS platforms, of course
the Red Hat certified courses, step-by-step
video courses, so many of them,
downloadable comprehensive study guides, instructor
help is available, 7 plus distros for you to
choose from. That's the highlights.
Linux Academy has really
been rocking. They just had a big announcement recently.
They've rolled out a ton of new features, but one I want to talk about today,
which I think is super cool, is the new Linux Academy mobile app for iOS and Android.
This is a really, really great idea.
If you get a couple of minutes on your device, I think this is going to be the way to go.
You're going to see the Android version coming at the end of Q1 2016.
It's going to be free for all the users.
Of course, you're going to need to be a member to take advantage of it. But look at that.
Right there. It gives you an idea
of what it's like to become a Linux Academy member.
You can choose a topic.
You can go into Linux certification training.
You can go into OpenStack, AWS, DevOps.
Once you go into those realms, there is
so much content to learn.
There is scenario-based labs.
There are great,
great exercises for you to take.
There are nuggets to go deep dive into a single topic when you're ready.
In-depth resources, virtual machines that spin up with the courseware on demand that you can SSH into.
Brand new CDN to distribute all of that content.
And live streams of a bunch of really, really great sessions where you can ask the educators questions directly.
It's amazing how helpful this is, just if you want to be a
Linux professional in any way, right?
Maybe you've been doing it forever and you want to catch up
with what's this DevOps jazz you
keep hearing about. One of the things, there's two things in Linux
Academy were really kind of like game
changers for me personally. The first one
was taking courseware and breaking it
down into hours. You know, learn Python
in six hours. No longer this nebulous thing, oh
I need to spend six hours that I can actually understand
Python.
But the other thing is, is I suck at taking tests.
Like, not my thing.
I hate it.
Like, because I always feel like tests are like of these scenarios that never actually
happen in the real world.
And so then I do.
In the real world, you just Google for the answer.
Right.
So now, one of the things they have to help with test anxiety that I have is practice
exams.
Nice. Yeah. You can use Linux Academy practice exams to help with test anxiety that I have is practice exams. Nice.
Yeah, you can use Linux Academy practice exams to help prepare your way through the, like maybe AWS or one of the Red Hat courses or anything like that.
You can also take Linux Academy quizzes to help ensure you're learning the core concepts required to be successful.
So not just passing the test.
Not just passing the test.
Really understanding it.
Yeah, that's really nice.
You don't use it, you know.
You've already deployed it once you've finished
with Linux Academy. And as a listener of our program,
you go to Linux Academy,
linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You get
a great discount. That's cool thing number one.
linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.
But, because we've been
talking about Linux Academy for a while now,
lots of JB members in their community,
lots of Jupyter Colony members up
in that community, So you're hanging out
with a great group of friends
that help give you
that sort of confidence boost
when you need it
or celebrate
when you've got some breakthrough.
It's really cool.
Linuxacademy.com
slash unplugged
and a big thank you
to Linux Academy
for sponsoring the Unplugged program
and congrats on the new app
and all of the new updates.
You guys are kicking it.
And Anthony was down at scale.
I didn't get a chance
to say hi to him,
but he was down at scale, so he might have got a chance to say hi.
They really are community members.
I loves it.
Yeah, they're huge enthusiasts.
It's really cool.
So AMD has got something hot for us.
GPU Open.
GPU Open is composed of two areas, games and CGI for games, graphics, and content creation.
Holy moly, you guys.
Yeah, they're the first to provide code, they say,
and documentation, allowing PC developers
to exert more control over the
GPU. But that's the first part of it.
The second part of it is a commitment to open source
software. The game and graphics
development community is an active hub of
enthusiastic individuals who believe in the value of
sharing knowledge. Full and flexible access
to the source of tools, libraries,
and effects is a key pillar of the GPU open philosophy.
So it's not just talking to the driver.
It's art assets.
It's all kinds of stuff.
Documentation.
The fancy libraries you need to take advantage of their sweet, sweet hardware.
So this is being put on by AMD, I understand.
Is that your understanding as well?
Every single year.
Here's where I'm at with this.
I'm getting real sick and tired of this crap.
I'm getting real bitter, and I'm becoming a little skeptical.
Every year I sit here and I'm reading you stories
about how AMD is going to revolutionize their open source graphics driver,
how they're going to decouple this,
how they're going to have user space that, kernel space that,
how they're going to have user space that, kernel space that, how they're going to have initiative this, protocol that.
And every single year, I feel like I'm just reading a different version of this story.
And this is the coolest version yet that gets me just as excited as ever.
And by the end of the day, what the hell is actually going on, Wes?
What's going on here?
Unfortunately, I think we're still in the wait and see.
I'm glad they've launched this website.
They've had code up on GitHub for a little while.
But until...
We're still waiting for Vulkan.
We're still waiting for all the AMD GPU stuff to land in the kernel
and be deployed by distributions.
I know I piss off all of the AMD fans when I say this,
but I'm just not impressed.
I love all of the things they're saying, and every time they say them, I love them every single time.
And then I just – I don't – I guess what it feels like to me right now is before the last idea ever even sees code, they got a whole new idea that's even better than the last idea.
Right.
We had Mantle, and now, well, now they're supporting Vulkan, which is good, but it's still like... And I feel like
for three years I've been hearing about how they're going to split the graphics
drivers up, and it's going to be super awesome,
and you can just use the open source driver, and if you want a few
more features, you go get this binary blob
in user space, and you're good to go.
To be fair, they never actually claimed that Mantle
was coming to Linux. They even were asked
specifically, and they just basically
dismissed it, saying that if people wanted it,
then maybe they'd consider it. But now they're actually saying that since they're doing open source,
it's actually going to be coming. And I think it's great. You know, like what they're saying
is great. And I'm optimistic. But you know, it's been 10 years since they were reasonably usable
in Linux. So at this point, I'm still not going to buy their stuff. Yeah, it's hard to come back
from underperforming to such a level.
Here's why it's a double burn for me, and this really upsets me.
So not only are they saying crap that I like and want,
and they're not delivering as far as I can estimate,
at least in any material way that actually matters at all.
But at the same time, it's like, hey, everybody,
and this is something the Windows users, like the savvy ones,
are starting to give Linux users a hard time about.
Hey, come to the Linux desktop, the land of free and open source choice where you have all the great choices in the world.
Oh, except for your graphics card if you want any performance at all, use NVIDIA.
Replace most of your weird X stack with this.
So like we have one video card manufacturer that makes – I mean like really, where is the choice?
You can use Intel and have a subpar experience.
You can use NVIDIA or you can use AMD.
And in my testing, the NVIDIA is by far and really the only easy one-click solution by most distros for end users to implement and get great graphics performance.
We have one choice if you're a regular end user in Linux land, and it's NVIDIA.
There's no come to the land of multiple choice except for why here you only have one choice.
And AMD has done nothing
in all this time, nothing to change this
situation. A lot of good talk.
I get all hot and bothered. They kind of just have
followed NVIDIA's track, but not done it
as well. Wimpy,
what do you think? You think the
Iris graphics is finally there?
You think we're finally, finally there with the
6100?
I'm not the biggest gamer,
but I have embraced Steam in the last few months,
and my knuck with Iris 6100 plays all the games I have,
and I've got most of the... I don't know if I have a 5600 machine.
I don't know if I have one.
I haven't tried that one.
And I'm not just
running the games but running the games at um quad hd so just to be clear this is not 4k quad hd is
uh 1440p that's nice that's not william i'm curious to see what you think about this
so i think amd has been in the state where they just have to announce paper launches for things.
And so they're like, we have this great idea.
Here it is.
But they're not going to have that thing materialized for years.
Like, oh, we've made an initial commit and we have a plan.
Here's this thing we're launching.
But it's not going to launch for a couple of years until we get down the road, until we have hardware support, until we have all these things, until we've actually written the software.
So they're like, don't abandon us.
Don't abandon us.
Right.
things until we've actually written the software.
So like, don't abandon us.
Don't abandon us.
Right.
They don't want you to abandon them because they're kind of falling behind and they're trying to show all these paper releases that just aren't there yet.
And I think that's the state we're in.
I hope we get there and I think we will get there eventually.
It's just going to take time.
So do you think the way to look at GPU open is more about, it's a piece to the overall
strategy.
So an open source driver is a piece to that, but also a piece to that is giving developers open resources to take advantage of to make great games.
Like it's part of the overall strategy, but it's just part of it and we're just waiting around.
That's really what's going on here, isn't it?
I mean it's even like the splitting of the GPU driver.
It's part of the strategy.
driver. It's part of the strategy. They're going to try and make all the kernel space stuff open and
integrate it into the mainline kernel and then have a
bunch of user space components that they can change out
depending on whether you want proprietary features or
not. Sounds so nice. And they're just, we're slowly
getting there. Like, they just started committing this, I want
to say, like, five kernel versions back
and we're finally getting to somewhere where it's usable.
Yeah, they have at least dumped some code into the kernel, which is
But they announced it way back when.
Yeah, that's where I'm kind of like,
oh, come on already.
But I like the idea of open source resources, graphic assets, all that kind of stuff for developers.
That's really cool.
We'll see if they can get their foot in the door with, like, scientific stuff.
If OpenCL can really compete with, you know, video stuff there.
And they're also distracted with all their side projects.
Like, they're building the A1100 ARM chips, and they've got to get Xen out the door,
and they've got to get the new GPU architecture done.
Like, they've got all these things that they're kind of...
Even the A1100, that was a huge paper release.
Like, they talked about this three years ago as being ready in a year,
and it still isn't even shipping.
Like, we're just getting there now, hopefully.
So, we'll see.
You know, I've talked about this before,
but you look at the next three years for Linux, we have never had more change coming ever.
So you have, obviously, we've talked about today Wayland coming.
You have Vulkan coming, right?
You have the continuation of evolution of SystemD and Bus1 or KDBus, whatever it's going to be.
That's coming.
systemd and bus1 or kdbus, whatever it's going to be, that's coming.
And all of these transitions are going to be some of the biggest transitions we have ever seen in the desktop, ever.
Like a lot of times we see things that are really huge on the cloud and server,
but this is going to be huge.
And Wimpy, there's another big one I didn't even mention coming, isn't there?
Yeah, with ZFS, I think it's going to really gain traction in the Linux world
over the next 12 months, 18 months.
We'll all be running ZFS on root machines with Wayland for three years on open source AMD graphics.
It'll be a glorious future.
In systemd containers.
Yeah, right, exactly.
And spawn, man.
Oh, whatever you're drinking wears I want a pint.
You know what?
We'll just end it right there.
That's a good way to wrap it up on the Unplugged show.
It is going to be a couple of crazy years, and guess what?
We're going to be talking about it.
Stay tuned.
Every single annoying minutiae along the way.
We'll be discussing right here on your talk show, Linux Unplugged.
We'd love to have you join us.
Don't forget, we do this show on Tuesdays.
Go over to jubilabroadcasting.com slash calendar to get the live time.
JBLive.tv is where you watch it.
LinuxActionShow.reddit.com is where you go to submit content and stories.
And you heard our virtual log.
You can participate in that.
You just need the Mumble software, open source software.
Go to our IRC room.
You can get the info on how to join us.
We'd love to have you here on the Unplugged program.
If you can't make it, the subreddit's just great.
All right, thanks for being here.
See you right back here next Tuesday. so
so I kind of feel like I'm going to get some crap for calling out the Linux Foundation on that news outlet thing.
But that is something that they do that really bothers me. Yeah.
Because it feels really dishonest.
And it's basically, you know, you've got to be of a certain contribution level, it seems.
I can't exactly tell what it is.
And you have to have writing staff.
And if you meet those qualifications, you get to publish through some fairly well-established news outlets.
And then on top of that, because they're established enough, all of the news syndication sites pick up those stories.
And then it just becomes part of the discussion.
And it feels like they get background cred in the community because of the Linux Foundation name on the front, right?
Even if the company at play maybe uses it for their end but isn't a good community player.
It's not something I've brought up before a lot because I feel like there's going to be a certain amount of backlash because I value my relationship with the Linux Foundation.
Because I think, in other words, in other realms, they do a lot of good.
And I've worked with them in several projects before and they've been fruitful.
And I enjoyed that.
And also, you know, I like to be able to speak to the people that they write the paychecks to.
But at the end of the day, like that is a concern of mine that I have.
So it's a real tight line for me to walk there.
But I kind of feel like I have to say it's something that bothers me.
And it doesn't mean that they're bad as a whole.
It just means this is an aspect that happens
that I don't quite understand. Maybe I'm
wrong about, but to me, I would
like to know more information about it. And it doesn't
preclude the fact that they also
contribute to open source projects when
they can, that they contribute to people that are
making incredible changes in the Linux
kernel. It doesn't take away
from any of that.
I hope I don't get too much crap for it, but I'm probably
going to get some crap.
Well, you always get crap.
Have you been to the internet before?
I don't know, but that's all
that's true. I do that. It's a good point.
I keep trying to think of what's the worst
case Slack scenario because I'm starting
to slide, Wes. I'm sliding into Slack.
I love that they have
even if it's just Chromium, they have the Linux dev files. I've enjoyed that. I think it's slide, Wes. I'm sliding into Slack. And it's very, I mean, I've had a great, I love that they have, I mean, even if it's just Chromium, they have the Linux dev files.
I've enjoyed that.
I think it's Sudclutter.
I can't remember what the name of it is that I'm using on the Linux desktop for a dedicated Slack client.
And, you know, their iOS client is great.
Android, no complaints there really either.
But, I mean, even we have a couple channels just for, like, individual projects.
And on some of them, we've gone past 10,000 messages.
Yeah.
And then the archive starts to go away.
And it's like you start depending, especially on things like where you're sharing information.
You're like, oh, well, just pass there.
I know there was some information I wanted, and I put it in this channel for use.
And so we've asked if we're trying to see if – not yet.
So we haven't been paying.
We're seeing about paying.
The cost is serious.
Right.
So I saw there was a recent thread on Reddit about Mattermost.
Yeah, yeah.
I have not actually tried it.
I know I should, huh?
The thing is.
And then Rocket Chat, I guess.
The thing that Mattermost isn't going to deliver for me right now, at least, is it takes 30 seconds almost to set up a new Slack.
Yep, it's super easy.
It's great.
And if I'm hosting it myself, I just, I don't really have time for this right now.
I just need problems solved.
I don't want to create more problems down the road.
But here's what I'm truly, truly worried about.
And I don't know exactly where you go to find it.
I'm trying to figure out.
Yeah, so here's an example.
If I want to upgrade to standard edition, $880 per year is what it would cost.
Jupyter Broadcasting right now.
And that's just because we only have 11 users in our Slack.
I think for us it was somewhere in the couple grand range.
Yeah, or eight per user per month.
That's a little more swallowable.
You'd be sending invoices out to crew members.
So then it goes back to, well, okay, it's kind of worth looking at Mattermost, but it is
it has become a critical tool, and the thing
the other... Slack does it well.
And the other problem is, a lot
of people now have Slack accounts.
So you can... They already have the client on their phone.
Yeah. Yeah. They already know how to use
it too, and some people are already kind of like Slack
clever, and they're like, yeah.
I like that one of them,
I don't remember who was matter most or
rocket chat i think had better markdown support slack has like partial but yeah markdown support
would be killer because then we could actually cut and paste stuff right into show notes yeah
yeah somebody should set up a matter most for us and let us try it out maybe we need like a matter
most slack bridge well i would i would be i would also like to know if people know of a hosted
matter most solution but you can just pay a reasonable amount for.
Yeah, because I just am not in a position to manage more stuff.
If I have free time right now, I want to spend it on other projects right now.
I don't want to spend my time on that.
So I would really like to get a recommendation.
I wonder if there's also, just for me, maybe I can just set up the IRC bridge
and then have an IRC program that saves all my history, archives it that way, keep the free model.
So when I think of hosting Mattermost, my mind immediately goes to, well, I'm going to spin up a DigitalOcean droplet.
And I'm going to register a domain.
And I'm going to create user accounts.
And then I'm going to convince all of the JB people to switch over from Slack to this new system,
and we're going to have to do a clean break of our history.
And then when we fill up space or we want more users or whatever,
it's always going to be on me to do it.
And just I'm not digging that idea.
That's a big workbook.
And you're not going to want to troubleshoot it right before the show.
Then again, I don't feel like spending a grand a year for essentially fancy IRC.
Right.
When you have the technical capability, it's just not maybe the time or will.
It's a real son-of-a-bitch problem.
I almost wish I was ignorant and just had to pay.
Right.
Because then my decision is made.
Fine.
Yeah.
Bottom line.
Too smart for your own good, Chris.
I guess that is kind of a thing.
I don't know.