LINUX Unplugged - Episode 13: Dark Mail: A New Hope | LINUX Unplugged 13
Episode Date: November 6, 2013What is the Dark Mail Alliance? We’ll dig into how it’s more of a protocol, and a hope than an actual product. Now the time to replace email we’ll explain how you can help get the concept kickst...arted.Plus your follow up on upstart vs systemd, a brief SteamOS chat, and more!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is Linux Unplugged, the Linux talk show that just can't wait to build email 3.0 on top of an open source system.
My name is Chris.
My name is Matt. Hey there, Matt.
Hey, man. 13 weeks, buddy. 13 weeks in a row. And you know, this week I feel like we're going to talk about one of my all-time
soapboxes that I always get on. We need to replace email. We need to get rid of it
and there's been a lot of alternatives. BitMessage is
one that I've talked a lot about, but it just hasn't really gotten traction. It's got a lot of alternatives. BitMessage is one that I've talked a lot about,
but it just hasn't really gotten traction.
It's got a lot of issues around it.
But the Dark Mail Alliance,
the Kickstarter has officially kicked off.
I want to explain what it is,
what they're trying to accomplish,
talk about it technically,
how they're going to pull it off,
and then hopefully at the end of it,
some people will go over and contribute
to the Kickstarter project if they think it's worth it,
and we'll see a new open open source email alternative emerge in 2014.
Good stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you know, it's funny because I'll tell you what I really wanted to talk about this week.
I don't know if you saw this, but Verge and others got their hands on Steam Box, Steam Machine prototypes.
I saw that.
Oh, my God.
I know, and I thought, you know, I can make a whole episode about this.
But we'll do a roundup in the Linux Action Show on Sunday.
But I'm so excited.
And you know what?
You know what?
I'm a little jealous.
They went down to Bellevue, right?
That's like 40 minutes from my house.
Oh, my God.
Val's office is like 40 minutes from my house.
We got to get in there, Matt.
We got to get in there, get our hands on some of this stuff.
I'm marching through the door with cameras in hand. Excuse me,
Gabian. Excuse me. The Linux
Action Show and Linux Unplugged, and we
need to see this device right now.
But we'll have a whole roundup in
this week's episode of the Linux Action Show.
However, I'll tell you
I was like, oh, we've got to talk about this today.
We've got to talk about this today. But then
something of serious consequence happened.
We thought it might happen. I mentioned it in the Linux Action about this today. But then something of serious consequence happened. We thought it might happen.
Mentioned it in the Linux Action Show this Sunday.
Ladar Levinson announced his Dark Mail Alliance Kickstarter.
So we're going to dig into the nitty gritty of that.
And I pulled a few clips.
They kind of had the most unique Kickstarter video I've ever seen, where they took essentially what it was a talk at a, I guess, a meeting of people who run mail servers.
I'm not even sure what it was.
It was definitely the most unconventional Kickstarter video I've ever seen.
And it maybe wasn't the greatest.
However, since I recorded a few clips from this video, they've raised $7,000 in like two hours.
Whoa.
So they're definitely on the right track.
So the video didn't really matter.
But so instead of making you watch the whole 23 minute video, I pulled out a couple of
quick clips about what they're trying to do.
And I think what's even more interesting is the technology behind it.
It's definitely an SMTP replacement.
It's not fully compatible with SMTP.
But I think maybe in light of what's happened recently, people
might be ready for it.
Interesting.
I want to give a shout out, not to the man
on the line here, but to a listener,
Matt, who is in Seattle right now.
And he has been a listener of
the Linux Action Show since episode
one. And he
emailed us and said, hey, Chris,
I'd like to take you out and buy you a
beer. And wine and dime, he probably wanted to sleep with me, to be honest with you, man.
It's the hair. It's the hair, Matt.
It's clearly the hair. It's always the hair. We're all drawn to you.
I can't help it. It's like a big magnet. I don't know what to tell you, Matt.
Anyways, he emailed me and he said, hey, I'd like to take you out. And I said, you know what? Can't.
Sorry, because we're doing Linux Unplugged.
Right.
We're doing Linux Unplugged.
I can't do it.
So I want you to know I just passed up free beer and food for this show.
So there you go.
That's a big thing.
Well, so last week we talked about SystemD.
We talked about SystemD and we talked about Upstart and we talked about Debian's upcoming
choice and the ramifications it might have in the broader Linux ecosystem.
A lot of good responses to that episode. So we're going to do more like that
in the future. As these big topics come up that there's a lot of ambiguity around,
I think the show can kind of stand out by helping cut through some of that
and discuss the real issues without all of the drama around it and things like that.
So the bulk of our email this week, our follow-up.
So at the beginning of the Unplugged show, we like to do a lot of FU.
That's our follow-up.
And sometimes it meets its name and sometimes it doesn't.
So we're going to cover some of that.
But we have two sponsors in this week's episode of Linux Unplugged, both Ting and Digital
Ocean.
So I thought I'd tell you about one of our sponsors up front before we get into it.
And that first sponsor, of course, is my mobile service provider and Matt's Ting.com.
Now Ting is mobile that makes sense. And you can go to linux.ting.com to get started. And one of
the great things about Ting is there's no contracts, no early termination fees. That's huge.
That's huge on its own. That tells you a little bit about Ting right there. Also,
you only pay for what you use. If you only use 30 minutes of talk time, then that's what you pay
for. If you only use 200 megabytes, then that's what you pay for. If you need a gigabyte, you get
that included in your plan as hotspot and tethering. Ting often sees themselves as an ISP,
not so much as a phone company, but as just mobile data. And that's brilliant. That's exactly what I
need because I'm one of the people who likes to buck the system.
I want to try to get the most out of my cell phone bill by using VoIP services and things
like that.
And Ting is a company built from enthusiasts by enthusiasts.
And you can see it through and throughout their culture.
In fact, if you go over to the Ting Help Center, I got an email from a listener today who said, hey, Chris, I switched my family over to Ting and we're loving it.
It's been great.
And I noticed in some of your ads you've mentioned that you have a couple of tricks to skirt around using your cellular data.
Now, in the holidays, this is hard for me to avoid because family members just call my traditional phone.
But I'll tell you.
We totally deal with it. to avoid because family members just call my traditional phone. But I'll tell you, yeah. And
that's what, honestly, Matt, like, you know what, that's what's great about paying for what I need,
because in November and December and in January too, when my phone minutes go way up, I just pay
for what I needed that month. It's not a huge deal, right? But here's a little glimpse into
the Ting corporate culture. On the community forums, they have a post that I've referenced
several times when just setting up a new Android device called Reducing My Bill Via Free Texting and Calls Over
Wi-Fi, where they have outlined how you can use different apps in the Android Play Store
to use Wi-Fi whenever possible to make a phone call. Now, think about that. This is a phone
company that has in their community forums a document that is instructing you on how to avoid using minutes.
That's crazy.
I mean, you'll never see that with any other carrier.
Never see that with any other carrier.
No, and when you combine that with Tings, pay for what you use, no contract, and they have excellent devices.
And they're always adding new devices.
They're adding new deals.
In fact, the phone that Matt has, the Note 2, is on sale currently.
You can save $31.
The phone that Matt has, the Note 2, is on sale currently.
You can save $31.
On top of what you're going to save, if you go over to linux.ting.com, you can take $25 off your first device. Or if you've got your own device you're going to bring, you can take $25 off your first month of service.
You end up paying for what you use.
You're not locked into a contract.
It's on your terms.
And then you combine that with their amazing dashboard.
Man, you're really cooking with gas.
It's really awesome.
Not only that, but Ting's going to help you get rid of a used device.
They've partnered with Glide,
so if you're going to switch to Ting and get a new device,
they'll help you sell your old device.
They'll help you buy a used device if you want to save some cash.
Like I started, they got right now, for example,
the Evo 4G with WiMAX, 123 bones, off-contract, all yours.
You can pick up the Nexus S, 245 bones, off-contract, all yours. Oh, nice.
You can pick up the Nexus S, 245 bones, off-contract, all yours.
They've even got feature phones.
I mean, there's all kinds of options from Ting.
And now is really time to get started because the sooner you switch,
the sooner you'll start savings.
And speaking of savings, they have a savings calculator.
They've got it linked over at linux.ting.com.
You click that, you put in your bill information, your minutes, your text message, your megabytes, and then you can really see what Ting offers.
Combine that with the early termination relief program, and they'll give you up to $75 per device you have to get canceled from your current contract, and now you're really cooking with gas.
So go over to linux.ting.com, and thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.
Thank you.
I love my Ting phones.
I've got a couple of them.
unplugged. Thank you. I love my Ting phones. I've got a couple of them. Oh, and I'm just in love with the fact that I'm not married to any one particular plan, depending on how I'm using it.
That's really awesome. I totally agree. Our first email this week comes in from Jim, and he says,
Hi, Chris and Matt. Thanks for the great show on SystemD versus Upstart adoption and Debian.
I wanted to weigh in regarding Matt's comment that Upstart was the obvious choice for Debian.
I agree with his logic that it seems
the most conservative way to go in the near term,
but I think he missed the importance of canonical CLA.
I never used Debian myself,
except for as a foundation for other distros, of course.
I've considered it and even burned to a CD with ISO
about a year ago, but never installed it.
When I read that time was part of Debian's mission statement
was that it would be free forever,
I'm paraphrasing here, of course.
Consequently, I think Matt's otherwise logical assumption that Debian would go with a tired and true upstart over perhaps less and will test the system D in the short term may not happen.
So he's saying the CLA might be a bigger blocker.
Now, you were pretty confident.
I am, and I think that's a big consideration, and it's one they're going to have to wrestle with i mean keeping in mind these are folks that actually had a fit about the whole
firefox trademark stuff and actually adopted you know and and went to easel because of it you know
and i'm not saying it's bad or good it's just their opinion so i mean it's a factor but i'm
still not convinced yeah what would happen if they forked it and like and like then they may
be like that's kind of like a compatibility pact like That's kind of what I'm thinking, yeah.
I think that's what's going to happen.
I think Upstart at some point, at some level, is going to either – they're going to use it as it is or they're going to find a way around any issues as far as licensing and whatnot.
I don't know if you saw the headline, and I'm trying not to read too much into it.
I wasn't even going to mention it, but this just fits right in.
mention it, but this just fits right in.
Today we saw that Debian is considering switching to X, or I think they have
decided to switch to XFCE
for their default desktop.
Now one of the reasons I would imagine
doing that is because GNOME 3 has a
dependency on SystemD.
And by switching to XFCE, they remove
that dependency. And I can't remember what episode
it was, but I actually mentioned that at one point.
I bet that they would. And it makes sense
for Debian too, I think.
That's their whole approach, is to not
get in the middle of these Linux wars.
Basically, just to step back and say,
what's the most neutral, logical place
for us to be? And I think that's kind of what they're doing.
I agree.
I agree.
And, I mean,
if anything prevents them,
I mean, I'd love to see them
choose systemd on D from a technical standpoint
but I really think
gosh, I mean, after I saw this move to XFC
I thought, oh, I think Matt might be right.
I think Matt might be right. Now that's not to say they're going to
outwardly, directly, just
automatically adopt it without any hassle
or drama or whatever. I think that they're going to find
a way to maneuver around
it, through it, over it. It won't be a
direct thing, but it will be through Upstart at some level.
Interesting.
All right.
So, you know, now the big question is, is when we find out what they're going to do?
MT wrote in, and he said that in the subject line, the future of Linux should be independent.
Hello, Chris and Matt.
Love the show.
But I wanted to go out on a little rant here because I hate how we, the Linux community,
are always supposed to be held back because
of the BSDs. One major
point in your SystemD versus Upstart discussion
was that SystemD doesn't support the BSDs.
However, I disagree.
This is a problem. We, as the Linux community,
should strive to push Linux forward
to make it the best contender for our needs.
The BSDs do not like us. They do not
need our help with any project like KDE, GNOME, etc.,
but then demand that we consider them.
They bash us.
They hate us on their mailing list.
But then they want their Linux programs to run on BSD.
They rely for years on GCC,
but as soon as they switch to something else, they bash GCC,
as if it was not providing them with a faithful service for years.
I just think that we are so worried about the BSDs while they're clearly not giving a crap about us. So why should we cripple the progress
of Linux platforms because of the BSD? I'd love to hear your opinion on this, MT.
Boy, you know, I think first and foremost, we're talking about a vocal minority,
much as we see in the Linux community where there's a vocal minority that tend to be the
loudest and proudest and most vocal. I think it's the same thing in the BSD community. I think most BSD people honestly don't care. I think the vocal people, probably
the ones that are being affected by the various things, certainly I can see where it's point,
but I wouldn't go say the entire community as a whole. I would say that's basically affecting
the vocal group. And as far as what we should be doing with Linux and whether we should be
ignoring them or not, honestly, I agree with the Linux going forward stuff.
I agree with that. I say, look at it like this.
BSD isn't asking how they can make Beehive, their new
virtualization layer, run on top of Linux. They're just going ahead and making the best virtualizer
possible for BSD. And I actually want to take what MT is saying
and maybe flip it a bit and say,
I think sometimes it's justified to say what kind of decision the GNOME project or KDE project are
doing is going to impact KDE because it is the goal of those projects to be available for those
distros. And so as Debian is a platform, they want to help support the goals of the software that
sits on top of their platform. So I wouldn't discount Debian's concern and consideration for the BSDs, but I would
zoom out and say, we shouldn't discount our BSD cousins.
It's almost kind of like insulting in the sense to say, well, if we don't provide them
with this, they'll have nothing because they can't do it on their own.
Right?
And I think sometimes developers fall into that trap a little bit.
The BSD community is fully capable of creating their own awesomeness
that they need to suit their own needs just fine.
And that's why the Linux community
should feel free to go off on their own direction
and create their awesomeness.
Because the BSD community is going to do it too.
And I think it's kind of a little demeaning
to sit here and go,
well, if we don't provide GNOME just right,
then the BSDs will be left out.
You know what?
The BSDs can solve it themselves.
And they will. This is true.
This is true. I agree.
I think MT raises an interesting point,
but he does seem a little upset about it.
Yeah, I mean, obviously this is something
he's probably read about or he may have even
come into direct contact with, but at the
same time, you know, you're dealing with a
vocal minority of people that feel that way, and that's
their opinion. You know, no need to with a vocal minority of people that feel that way. And that's their opinion.
You know, no need to get sucked into it.
Yeah, yeah.
So James writes in.
James writes in.
He says, I've listened to the last Linux Unplugged show a couple of times over now.
It was a very good show, in my opinion.
I do have a minor complaint, though. Once again, the size of Ubuntu's user base was brought up in an attempt to give their side more legitimacy.
Namely, as a reaction to the charge that Ubuntu is the only distro using Upstart.
Sadly, everyone bought right into it, as usual,
and didn't even bring up some very major caveats
that go with that.
Number one, Ubuntu does not have a huge user base,
or I'm sorry, Ubuntu does have a huge user base.
That's absolutely true.
However, they have a huge user base
of highly non-technical desktop users
with little to no actual Linux experience.
They don't know their desktop gets from – they don't know how it gets from Grub to LightDM, nor do they care.
You know, that's kind of true, but it's like – yeah, that's stereotyping because I think there's lots of technical users that use Ubuntu.
I would agree in that a growing – the growth is coming from newbies.
No question. The growth of growth is coming from newbies. No question.
The growth of numbers is coming from newbies.
However, actual numbers, I would say that it's pretty well balanced.
That's not to say that people aren't migrating to other distros,
but I would say that the growth is coming from the newbies,
but the sustained base is coming from a mix.
He says, on the other hand, you got Fedora, Red Hat, Enterprise Linux,
OpenSUSE, Sless Enterprise, and of course,
you got Arch all currently using or going to SystemD.
That's a seriously massive user base of a bunch more technical users in every area.
Desktop, workstation, service clusters, cloud deployments, etc.
I'm not really sure where or when the current trend of dismissing
the actual Linux power users or professionals began,
but I think it's past time it stopped.
Unfortunately, I'm almost positive Debian will end up going with Upstart.
Canonical seems to have their claws sunk in pretty deep with that community. If they do,
it's going to be a very detrimental to the future of their project, in my opinion.
And I kind of grow tired of saying this over and over, but honestly,
these things take care of themselves. The market will, in fact, in this particular case,
the community as a whole, will decide which option is best for them, and it very well may be a mixture.
So do you think, though – I get tired of the victim crap.
So with the market approach, what we sometimes end up with is like a half-implemented solution, right?
We get – I mean, so if Debian bought in with SystemD, essentially there would be one standard to rule them all, right?
There would be one interface to see groups.
There would be all this kind of APIs that system D would provide.
If Debian doesn't buy into system D because the market decides they should go with upstart,
then there will be a more pronounced division in the underlying internals of Linux.
Right.
And that's true.
That's true.
I guess my big gripe, the big underlying gripe I have is that rather than concentrating on promoting, talking up, sharing the things that you're into, the distros don't. So we have to decide how do we take the stance.
I agree that we need to be mindful of what we use on our individual systems.
But you've got to be careful not to fall into the victim trap.
And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense.
I mean that factually.
You come out on the losing end of it, really.
Yeah, the victim camp.
Yeah, you've got to avoid that.
You've got to avoid that.
It just doesn't work.
Yeah, and it's hard when you get really, you get wrapped up into it, you know, and you see,
you know, anytime, anytime an issue becomes clear from beginning to end to you and you
can see an injustice or you can see a logical, it's very hard not to get upset by it.
And the only reason why other stuff doesn't upset people is because they just don't get
as invested in it.
But if you get invested in politics or sports, you get just as upset, right?
This is true.
I mean, good example.
Earlier, we had a big Skype crash.
I mean, it was a pain in the butt.
And boy, how do you know I could sit there and shake my fist.
Oh, Microsoft, you how dare you crash that application that I chose to install and use.
And we could have a debate.
Should we drop Skype, switch to Mumble?
Yeah, like all these technical discussions.
Or do I suck it up and either continue to use it or use something else?
I mean, really, it's really what it comes down to.
So anyway, that's my take on it.
I wanted to say I'm sorry.
I made a little boo-boo last week.
Get it out of here.
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
So, oh my God, Matt.
So after last week's Linux Unplugged,
I lost all access to my Google account.
Oh, no.
Full on, couldn't get to Docs,
couldn't get to YouTube,
couldn't get to my email.
And of course, I couldn't get to
the Jupyter Broadcasting YouTube account. Well, this happened while I was posting Linux
Unplugged. So normally if you notice what happens on the Jupiter Broadcasting website is right when
a show comes out, I post on the website and I use the YouTube embed. And that's because WebM
is horrible technology and takes way too long to encode. Literally, like if the HD version of Linux
Unplugged, it might take 25 minutes to encode and the WebM version, not exaggerating at all,
will probably take two and a half hours to encode. It is that kind of half hour, two and a half
hours. So YouTube's down because I can't get to my Google account. So I say, screw it. I'll just
go straight to the HTML5 version. And I posted it on our website, Linux Unplugged, HTML5 version.
And because the WebM wasn't ready yet, I just didn't link it. Well, on a website, Linux Unplugged HTML5 version. And because the WebM
wasn't ready yet, I just didn't link it. Well, on a ton of Linux desktops, if you don't have the
WebM, well, anyone using Chromium or Chrome on the Linux desktop, if you don't have WebM embedded,
it won't play. It just sits there and spins for a while. So a bunch of people couldn't play
last week's episode on the HTML5 player. I apologize. I did get the WebM version up later,
on the HTML5 player.
I apologize.
I did get the WebM version up later,
but because it took so long to encode,
it was like a couple of days later.
So my apologies to those of you who had problems.
We got a lot of people emailed and said,
I couldn't play the episode.
The direct download links, by the way, folks.
So you have the video in bed,
then where the show description is,
you scroll down a little bit, direct download links.
You just download them right there.
We got torrent feeds and everything.
But that was my bad.
That was my bad.
Well, I think that's an important piece to really realize is that sometimes those things happen, and that is so frustrating for the end user.
I totally get that. But the cool thing is that we do have that alternative option.
So if you run into a problem, just remember, we probably got you covered.
No worries.
And also I try to link the YouTube version, which you can go watch and all of that.
So this week I I wanted to...
Oh, God, did I get...
Yeah, here we go.
This is our Speculatortron.
You like that?
The Speculatortron.
Oh, that's great.
And we're going to look into the future,
the distant year 2000 future,
and we're going to talk about replacing email.
A lot of the bits, Dark Mail Initiative
launched on Kickstarter this week,
and our community's
been talking about it in our subreddit. I actually already became a backer,
35 bucks worth, nothing outrageous, but I became a backer. And I want to talk about this today
because this is, as a former sysadmin, but also now as a business owner, these are,
placing email is kind of a big topic for me because I got to replace it with something
that solves the needs of a small business.
I want something secure and safe because I get hundreds of emails from people outside the country in a week.
And, you know, so I never know who I'm getting emails from.
And I also want something that's easy enough that is just sort of doesn't have a cognitive burden, as they put it.
And so I want to talk about the Dark Mail initiative. I want
to break it down. And the fact that it's open sourced, it's going to run on Linux, all of that
is going to be a point of our conversation today. But before we get into that, I want to thank a
new sponsor on Linux Unplugged, and that is DigitalOcean. Now, if you're not familiar with
DigitalOcean, they've cracked it. They've solved it. DigitalOcean is simple cloud hosting dedicated
to offering the most intuitive and easy to spin up cloud servers. And this is, I'll tell you a little bit about the DigitalOcean cloud server I spun up last night. By the way, check this out, Matt. Users can create a cloud server in less than 55 seconds. Pricing plans start at only $5 per month, which gets you 512 megs of RAM, 20 gigabytes of SSD storage, a CPU, and a
terabyte of transfer.
A terabyte of transfer for $5 a month.
The interface is so simple.
So if you're watching our video version here, I've got my personal digital Ocean control
panel up.
And so you go to create, and then you select your size.
So here I have a 512 megabyte cloud server, one CPU, 20 gigs of SSD, and a terabyte of transfer, five bucks a month.
That's crazy.
That's a great deal.
That's a great deal.
If you use the code Linux13, this is episode 13, Linux13, they'll give you a $10 credit.
That's basically two months.
You can get a DigitalOcean server for free for two months.
So what I did is I went in here and I said I want the 512 box.
And then you select your region. They got
New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco
and another New York location. So I
decided to go East Coast. I'll tell you why
here in a second. Then you go down
and select your image. Now they've got
everything from Ubuntu 13.10
through Ubuntu 10.04. They've
got CentOS from version
6.4 to 5.8. They've got Debian
from version 7.0 to 6.0, but Matt,
and they've got Fedora too, but Matt,
they have the Arch.
I couldn't believe that. It's like, oh my god.
It's like all those times you're wondering, I wonder how Arch would
handle this. Well, there you go, right?
So that's what I did. I spun up
an Arch server.
They've got the
May snapshot.
So you click that image, you get the minimal arch system,
just image to your box. So it's totally set up. You generate the root password, you log in,
you've got root access at this point. You can set up any encryption you want, anything like that.
You know what I decided to do? What did you do? One of the things I've been trying to figure out
a way to utilize, but also make a good experience is BitTorrent Sync. BitTorrent Sync offers just incredible possibilities for content distribution.
And I've been experimenting with distributing the Unfilter Supporters Show and Clips catalog
using BitTorrent Sync. So I spun up an Arch Linux box on the East Coast running BitTorrent Sync.
This got a copy of all of the Unfilter Supporters stuff on there. So when new members join the
Unfilter Supporters Club, they get seeded a new york server and from my server here on the
west coast so i've got now i've got servers on both coasts of the united states seeding
the unfilter supporters club so it just makes it super crazy fast and matt i brought my arch box
up to total current first thing i did matt when i when i logged in right as i just brought that
sucker up today i was pulling down packages from the Arch repo at 9, 10 megabytes a second.
Whoa!
Yeah.
Seriously.
And that all goes on those SSD hard drives. So when you combine that crazy speed with those
SSD hard drives, it is absolutely mind-blowing. DigitalOcean also offers a vast collection of
tutorials in their community section. This is awesome, Matt.
Users can submit articles to the community and get paid $50 per published piece.
So if you feel like you have an article you could write that would help the DigitalOcean community, if DigitalOcean selects it, they'll give you 50 bones.
I know.
So I'll put a link to that in the show notes if you guys want to check that out.
And if you want to go check out DigitalOcean, use the code Linux13 when you check out. That'll get you $10 credit. So if you get the $5 box,
that's going to get you two months of DigitalOcean for free. Not only can you select base images,
but under the Applications tab, you can just say, well, I just want a LAMP stack on Ubuntu 12.04.
Just spin that up. Or I want Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 12.04. Or I want Ghost on Ubuntu 12.04. Just spin that up. Or I want Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 12.04. Or I want
Ghost on Ubuntu 12.04. You can just push those out right then and there. You can have stored
images. So once you have something, you can snapshot it and then redeploy that later on.
You can back things up. You can destroy images if you don't like them. They support Docker
containers so you can create something locally and ship it up to them using Docker. And then
on the back end, they're using Linux and KVM to make it all possible.
And I love the interface.
I love as you're bouncing from tab to tab.
It's physically impossible to get lost and confused as to what you're doing.
You don't even have to know what any of this means.
It's so awesome.
It's so awesome.
It's like awesome.
And we were just talking on the pre-show with some of our Mumble folks, and they were mentioning
it was a JBViewer66. He was mentioning
that he's been a DigitalOcean customer for a long time, and support questions get answered
super quick, super fast. I couldn't believe it. Their claim, you spin up a server in 55 seconds,
is totally legit. I spun up an Archbox in 55 seconds, and I owned it. And then I got geeky,
Matt. I got super geeky. I SSH'd into it with X11 forwarding.
And then I installed Firefox and only the X11 dependencies I had to have. And then I'm forwarding
my Firefox session and configuring my BitTorrent sync through localhost. That way I don't have to
open up a remote listening port. It was awesome. So cool. Good deal.
You feel that SSD speed too. So go over to digitalocean.com and use the promo code Linux13 to get a $10 Digital Ocean
credit. And thanks very much
to Digital Ocean for sponsoring this episode
of Linux Unplugged.
We'll have a link in our show notes as well. I'm going to be checking that
out after the show. That is fantastic. Oh yeah, buddy.
I was like,
I walked over to my wife and I'm like,
okay, I got to apologize. I'm really geeking out tonight.
I just did the coolest thing.
Did you get the geek twitch? I did, apologize. I'm really geeking out tonight. I just did the coolest thing. Did you get the geek twitch?
I did, totally.
When you're about to do something really geeky.
I absolutely did. So switching gears to the LavaBit Dark Mail initiative, I thought let's back up a little bit, and then we'll open up to the Mumble Room too.
But let's start with Ladar's introduction of the goals around Dark Mail and what it is.
I've been working with Mike Jenke and his team at Silent Circle,
Phil Zimmerman and John Callis,
and we've been working on a little project we're calling Dark Mail.
We thought blackmail kind of gave the wrong connotation.
And what we're doing is we're setting up a little nonprofit called the Dark Mail Alliance.
That would be the group that we're using to maintain and control the intellectual property related to this new protocol.
I think if I had come to you guys two, three years ago and said, hey, it's time to toss out all the mail protocols and replace them with ones that integrate security,
all of you would have laughed at me.
You would have said, you want to throw out how many man hours of work
all for this hypothetical threat that we don't know exists?
Well, I think after the summer of Snowden,
hopefully you guys have a slightly different attitude
about how important security is
and how insecure many of the protocols that we use every day.
So that's Ladar, the owner, I guess, of LavaBet, which was shut down as it became public that Edward Snowden had used LavaBet as his mail server and then they wanted carb launch access to all of the mail records there.
server and then they wanted right carb launch access to all of the mail records there and he makes a very good point is in the past and i think this is a very legitimate to the conversation in
the past if if somebody come along and said we want to replace email but we don't want to use
smtp people would have laughed them right out of the room oh they really would have too yeah and
and it's it's now to the point where it's like, okay, well, I'm willing to seriously consider this. In fact, I was reading some of the comments in our subreddit.
And Josh Strobel wrote, I personally threw in $35.
I look forward to LavaBit code being open source, the Dark Mail Alliance making the protocol open,
and the fact that they are tailoring this to everyone ranging from service providers to your grandmother.
End encryption is absolutely needed.
other. And encryption is absolutely needed. Somebody else wrote that he says, this was BuffusBree66. He says, I'm going to throw in 100 when I get paid. This is the first SMTP killer I
really believe in. And SMTP really needs to die a painful death. I think this will also be a great
time for companies like Google and Yahoo have been leaking bits and pieces of conversation starting how they hate the NSA and GCHQ.
So I thought, you know, these are – I'm two.
Like these guys are ready.
I'm ready.
But it's – not only have we needed the right time, but we've needed the right team.
And I think that's the other thing that the Dark Mail Alliance has is the right team.
Basically what you've got is you've got a real interesting mix going on here. You've got the Phil Zerman, who John and I is the co-founder
of Silent Circle, along with John and I, creator of PGP. You've got John Callis, who's the creator
of PGP Universal Server and Apple's whole disk encryption. And you've got Ladar, who, if you
haven't figured it out, is one hell of an engineer.
I mean, it's kind of the dream team.
It really is.
And I think that was the missing piece.
As you pointed out, these are the people who needed to come together to actually make this
come to fruition and come to reality.
And one of the things that's, I think, probably important to understand is, so this is what
the Kickstarter is funding is developers.
It is not necessarily funding the product directly itself, but funding, hiring the developers to work on cleaning up lava bit source code and open sourcing it and at the end the end
product will be was essentially a series of protocols this is really a set of protocols
and it's a set of protocols that has as the goal you start out with security and for those who need
dial the security down you can dial the security down.
The problem right now is that email has no security, and you're forced to dial it up, and you can only dial it up to a certain point.
There's lots of metadata in every email that absolutely cannot be protected at all.
Such a great point, right?
Email starts insecure by default, and then you can try to force all of these security layers on top of it. But at the end of the day, the metadata
is still exposed, right? Well, it's just a bandaid solution. I mean, that's the bigger picture is that
no matter how much wrapping you put around it, that metadata being exposed is going to be the
downfall of anything you're trying to protect. I mean, it really doesn't work. There's so much you
can draw from the metadata. I talked to this person at this time over this time period, right
after I dropped off the backpack in front of the trash can, right? Exactly. And that's really
all they need. They don't even need the contents of it. But what also inspires me about this dark
mail initiative isn't so much what they're saying now, and the fact that it's going to be open
source, but the fact that it's probably going to be based on a technology that they've already got
working. What we're thinking about doing is basically building a new messaging protocol based around
JSON that, like he said, includes security by default.
I would say we already have it.
We already have a working prototype of it.
That our texting system, silent text, basically works this way.
That if I send you the equivalent of an MMS, you know, I text you a picture,
what happens is that you get an encrypted XMPP message that tells you where to go get the
picture. And the picture is end-to-end encrypted between me and you, and nobody else can decrypt it
at all. So what they're going to do is the system will use XMPP for the communications
between clients. It will go to a client and say, hey, so when I send Matt an email, it'll say,
or I guess a dark mail, it'll say, you'll get essentially a notification that, hey, Matt,
there is a goodies waiting for you on this server. Now that could be Chris's server. That could be
some, that could be Gmail that's implemented this protocol. That could be anything that kind of cloud storage. And then your client
will go out and get this encrypted bundle and pull it down. That'll be the actual message contents.
Now, that gets encrypted on my end using a key that gets generated on the client,
not from the cloud. And then you can only decrypt it using the key generated on your client.
And then you pull that package down and you can decrypt it and you get the contents.
And it's sort of kind of more like how a lot of messaging systems
are going on mobile where you have a message
and then the asset gets stored on the cloud.
And in this case, the cloud is whatever you want it to be.
And I think when you've already got, okay,
so you got people who spent 10 years in the industry,
LADAR, creating what was the most secure email option of our time.
Then he gets shut down by fighting back against the National Security State, I guess.
Then you've got Silent Circle, who also shut down in spite of the National Security state who already have a working messaging protocol, right?
They've already got it working and they've teamed up and they're saying, hey, we want
to do this and we want to open source it.
And we want it.
The way we want to make this happen is by giving money, money to developers.
And then, you know, I think this is really chocolate and peanut butter coming together.
I really feel like it is, you know, I feel like we're sitting here on the edge of like
the first honest to goodness, serious email replacement. Like we we've got the motivations we've got the technology and we've
got the people right and it's all but it's all going to be open source and it's all going to
run on linux i'm excited to see it come to fruition i really am so uh i so i was curious i thought i'd
i'd toss it here to the mumble room and ask you guys, is anybody not on board with the dark mail?
Does anybody have any issues, concerns, or doubts in this room?
I'd just say it's about time.
Yeah, yeah.
Why do you think?
We needed this years ago.
I agree.
Actually, that was going to be my question to you guys.
So their best effort here is they hire up a developer.
I mean, best case scenario, you're going to see something mid-2014,
probably beta status, right?
I mean, is that too long, you guys?
Is that too far away?
Because I feel like I need something right now.
I wanted to deploy Zimbra and move everything this year,
and now I'm sitting here and I'm seeing this,
and I'm like, ah, maybe I should wait for LavaBit 2.0 Darkmail 1.0.
What do you guys think, MumbleRoom?
Is it too far out?
I think it's too late.
Because, I mean, if you think about it,
this Snowden thing that happened,
I mean, if we had something like this
before the summer of Snowden, as he put it,
then we wouldn't have as much issue with,
oh, well, let's just switch everything over to this.
Now we've got to wait too long to have that happen.
And quite frankly, everybody knows that email is already completely insecure.
So get the dark mail going.
It needs to happen quickly.
We got a bit message.
Yeah, I mean, bit message is here today.
But see, here's where the dark mail system is superior.
Dark mail is mail, and then if you want, you can dial it down theoretically,
and it can also do SMTP and communicate with older mail systems.
So it gives you that transition, whereas where bit message is off on an island of its own.
You've got to use bit message to take advantage of bit message.
The sender has to be on bit message.
They've got to use BitMessage to take advantage of BitMessage. The sender has to be on BitMessage. They've got to find you.
Whereas this, in theory,
could be integrated to existing mail
products today, and it could even downgrade.
So it starts at the highest level. Everything is
encrypted from the email to the metadata.
From top to bottom, everything's encrypted.
And it's encrypted on the net.
BitMessage is its own
island.
It's its own ecosystem, whereas this integrates with everything.
Yeah, and also because it's worked on XMPP, you could even use it as a dark mail for instant messaging.
Right, yeah.
Okay, so that's a great point is mail is just going to be one aspect of what the system could deliver,
whereas BitMessage is pretty much just for messaging.
You'll be able to see more people willing to adopt something like
dark mail than message.
I think so.
I think so.
I think the fact that it could support pictures and video is kind of a big deal because if
you're going to replace email, don't you want to replace it with something that has more
capabilities?
Exactly.
My two cents is that if you're going to be replacing email, then you're going to need
a bit of time for some of the companies such as Google and Microsoft to work with these guys
to develop a standard in a way that it suits businesses going forward.
I don't see them being on board, though.
Especially Microsoft and Google.
At least right now, the NSA is probably so integrated
within those corporations right now
that it'd be hard to have them even be interested in it.
I think the biggest key is going to be Red Hat.
This is a crazy idea, but I think the way that the first company
who's going to jump on and actually provide a good service using dark mail is Yahoo.
That'd be interesting.
Oh, I see what you're saying because they're kind of the underdog right right they need something to give entice people that would
that would be a pretty nice feature i kind of wonder if we aren't fighting the business model
here uh and it sucks because what all of these cloud providers uh base their business model
around is mining every bit of information about you. Even if it's just their robots doing it to display ads, they have to be able to read the contents of the message.
And it's not even like, oh, well, that kind of suck if we couldn't do it. No, it is like
fundamentally key to their business model. It's how they analyze and sell you things.
And so it is a mass. It is why they did mail. It's literally why they created an email service.
That's why they did it. And so literally why they created an email service. That's why they did it.
And so to take that context away from them essentially makes them run the mail service at a total loss.
And so I don't see the commercial incentive for them to have their customers' contents encrypted on the drive.
I mean, they're happy all day long to let you connect over an SSL connection.
Whoop-de-doo.
What they don't want is that data sitting in REST encrypted because then they can't
mine it. And I think that might be the biggest
thing they have to fight against.
I have a question here now. Is this Darkmail,
is it mostly the protocol that they're
focusing on? Yeah.
So I wonder if it could be
paired up with something like the mail pile
for a good client. Well, LavaBit
is talking, what they're talking about doing
is re-releasing LavaBit
as a software package
that integrates in the Dark Mail initiative.
So you'd have the LavaBit mail server.
I don't know what web front end would sit on.
I don't know if,
I'd never used LavaBit.
Maybe it had its own web front end.
They want to repackage,
okay, they want to repackage that
as an open source project
to be, quote unquote,
a first class Dark Mail initiative citizen.
But they feel like that, those protocols could be used by anyone,
but it's like their Nexus device in a sense.
I think the biggest issue is going to be Red Hat.
If Red Hat can introduce this as their server operating system
and include it in their package,
along with updating GNOME's evolution to include it,
then it's going to be a big step forward.
Here's a thought. The reason I'm saying Yahoo would be an option
for it is because of the fact that they're an underdog right now, but also the
commercialized part of it is they could do
a dark mail service that is kind of like Google Apps for Business
so they could provide a dark mail that's completely secure
so they could immediately be dark mail that's completely secure and so they could
immediately be like HIPAA compliant.
So here's what I like about it.
Yeah, because it does provide a certain like regulation compliance.
And I like that if encryption happens, this is why I like LastPass too, because encryption
happens on my end and on my client device.
And so then there's a little less risk in using a public service because they can't decrypt the data.
But you as a back end service provider, not only do you lose the mining aspects of it, but you also lose like a lot of nice things like reducing multiple copies of files and all of that kind of stuff that you get when you can just look at the data.
So I wonder if we're I mean, I'm not saying that it's not going to be successful, but it seems like it might be a little more indie. Now, they say they've already got like 32 companies that want to launch with LavaBit – or I'm sorry, Darkmail support, right?
Just built in.
Does it have a list of those companies on the page?
No, they don't have anything up on that.
$20 says half of them are VPN providers.
Yeah, maybe.
Because they're already in the privacy business.
Why not, right?
Probably.
Yeah, that is interesting.
You could do that.
Well, I was thinking, you know, to go back to our DigitalOcean sponsor,
I was thinking, like, this would be, there you go.
So you take a $5 a month server, you throw your Dark Mail Initiative project on there,
and you've got a mail server.
No kidding. dark mail initiative project on there and you've got a mail server no kidding and it's just i want
to see this happen but i feel like i i guess like the the primary issue is there's email has been
consolidated down to four or five big companies now to really do it and so it seems like you got
to get one or two of those big companies on board and yeah and i am and really for one of those companies, it has to be a company that isn't wanting to try to get government contracts for their service because otherwise the government could hang that over their heads for them to get the data.
Well, Yahoo's pretty good at fighting requests for the data as well. So that's another reason why I thought they might be.
My thing with it is as long as they keep it
open source, that's the bigger picture here.
That's always been my one issue
with BitMessage is it's
closed source and proprietary. You never know what
they're doing in the back end.
No, I thought BitMessage was open source.
He's thinking BT Sync.
Yeah, BitTorrent Sync.
That one. As long as they keep it open,
I'm fine with it because
you can
see the best encryption
ever as long as it's closed source. I still don't
trust it.
We've seen with TrueCrypt, when the
project is important enough,
certain groups will
sit down and do an official audit of
the code. That's why I think that is key just for a trust standpoint.
Not even from everything else, but just from a trust standpoint,
I think that's pretty key.
All right.
Any other thoughts on the dark mail before we move on, guys?
Was that mail not audited at Fig and Todd at one point?
So, you know, let's talk about that name.
Yeah, because that name does, like, it brings up Darknet, right?
Yeah.
Matt, what do you think?
Do they make a mistake with the name?
I think, as they pointed out, it's probably better than other names they could have gone with.
But I don't think it's going to, it definitely sounds like something that was developed by developers.
It sounds like something that is not really hitting the mark as far as the consumer is concerned.
They said their inspiration was the Dark Empire, right?
But at the same time, I applaud the name simply because it's going to attract the people that need to get a hold of it, the people that are going to roll it out on their own service, that are going to actually work with it, and then provide it in more of a – to start out with probably in a very niche point of view.
They should have called it Ninja Mail.
Well, after the summer of Snowden, maybe we need something that snaps us awake, right?
Snowden Mail, right?
That's why I think Red Hat's a good contender for that, because if they already establish
it and have it in their repositories, then businesses might see it and think, hey, we'll
include this.
And maybe they don't know what it is, but once they start offering that service, then they'll get users to like them.
Well, go ahead.
Also, go back to the open sourcing.
Did he say what he was wanting to license it as yet?
No, I haven't seen any license.
I see it's the MIT.
No, I haven't seen any license.
I hate it when they say open sourcing.
I thought he said GPL.
Oh, did he?
Because I haven't seen that.
Okay.
This would be good for BSD devices
where anybody could just take it and run with it
so there'd be a million different versions of it,
like you said before.
You can't stop them all.
Yeah, yeah.
Sure.
Well, here's what Daniel said.
Daniel wrote into the show and he said,
Why people will not use dark mail,
or at least why many people will be discouraged,
is because of its name. Seriously.
Why can't they just call it SMAIL,
or SecureMail
or Bmail or BetterMail?
This has, of course,
nothing to do with
the technical functionality,
but with the average user's perception.
Dark mail sounds, well, dark.
It sounds dubious, just not right.
Here in Germany,
ISPs' cooperation with the state
try to promote something called Dmail.
He links to the Dmail Wikipedia page.
He says,
for quote-unquote secure communication, the whole concept is not secure, but offering interception possibilities for law enforcement.
But if I would have to explain to some average computer user why to use dark mail from the Dark Mail Alliance instead of the D-mail from German T-com, they'll look at me like I want them to commit a crime.
from German T-Com, they all look at me like I want them to commit a crime. We geeks
are used to funny, ironic names and technical names
like XMPRFC25353,
whatever, but the average
user is not. Maybe we should keep in mind
from time to time. Greetings from Germany,
and great shows, Daniel.
What happened to email 3.0?
Yeah, email 3.0 is almost catchier.
So I think the thing to remember, too, is as this
email pointed out, I agree with this latter part as far as
the naming scheme and stuff in Linux is just atrocious because I can't pronounce half of it.
At least it's not Yemail.
Yeah, that's true.
Like yet another mail client.
Yeah, no kidding, right?
But I think that the intro point of it is that we need to remember that this is not a product that's going to be successful going straight to consumers.
It's going to be targeted at some IT department at various companies.
People that aren't going to read into the name other than, oh, hey, this is doing what
I want it to do, they can then rebrand it into something like grandma's good time cookie
meal or whatever the hell they want to call it.
Good point.
And you know what?
The name SMTP never really seemed to hold SMTP back.
Yeah, exactly.
When was the last time you logged into your – I mean –
Yeah.
Users don't care about that.
Or POP or IMAP.
Yeah. Yeah, right. time you logged into your you know i mean yeah users don't care about that or pop or imap yeah yeah right i i guess where i'm at is i'm left still not knowing what to do like i i feel like
i need to probably get off gmail honestly just because like last week when i lost access for
a little bit that was enough to freak me out and then because i now i'm at a point where i have to
pay for like every mailbox for a year when i want to create a new mailbox that that's annoying because I know,
you know, it's, they're not used that much that I need to do that. And so I would prefer to just
roll my own, have my own system, but at the same time, I don't want to roll something out and then
have this come out six months later and be like, Oh, I really wish I would have switched to, I
really wish I had that and then switch all over again, right? So I'm just kind of in this holding pattern now.
Well, I think the main advantage to rolling your own is that if you control the domain,
whatever's running in the back of your business.
That's true. I could just point at something else, but this is the time of it.
It is the time, yeah.
And going back to our previous Linux Action Show, if we just get one of those robots.
I know. I need it now.
Problem solved.
I need it now.
Take care of it.
You know what would be awesome with this is somebody would make a Studio version on this. at one of those robots. I know. I need it now. Problem solved. I need it now. Take care of it.
You know what would be awesome with this is somebody
would make a Sysus Studio
version of this,
like the own cloud thing.
Right.
Just deploy a Dark Mail
Alliance compatible mail server
in a few minutes.
Yeah, that would be really cool.
I got to say,
as far as branding
Dark Cloud with that,
yeah, that's,
I mean, it sounds like
underground or it sounds like
black market you know you're absolutely right it's not like they call it something i mean
you might as well call it like hacker cloud or ominous cloud or silk mail so are you guys
take a charge with that because they offer cloud solutions and that just seems like the best key
are you guys going to contribute
to their kickstarter which we'll have yes in the show notes absolutely i'll like me through a fiber
yeah i mean there's that i mean i i threw in 35 they kind of have a funky
so they i mean honestly this seems like the loosest kickstarter project i've ever seen
because i thought kickstarters were supposed to have like a seriously hard like complete goal and really
the goal here is like well we'll hire some guys and they're going to work on it so it's kind of
the loosest kickstarter ending i've ever seen but they've got a 25 spot oh i could have sworn
that was a 35 spot when i threw in a 25 spot a hundred dollar spot and then it goes to a thousand
five thousand ten thousand wow yeah i bet they $25,000 just to make it more accessible.
Yeah, and they're now at $27,000 of $196,000.
22 days to go.
They just launched it.
But when I threw in, they were like at $16,000.
So it's going up pretty quick.
It seems loose, but because it gets backed
by Ladar, it makes it
okay for me to do it for the 25 at least.
I agree. I feel like
it's totally fine. I think
just a reflection on how Kickstarter seems to be a little
loose. If it's good PR,
they'll kind of allow a looser
definition. It's fine. It's their prerogative.
At the same time, if you got
loose of an
ending for it, it's not like
that just gives them some
freedom to work on it how they need to.
It's very true.
It's true. I wouldn't want to box
them in too much. I want to cover
a little bit of two things before
we run this week. First of all,
I'd love to hear your thoughts, audience
out there, on the Dark Mail Alliance
and replacing email with email 3.0.
So email us.
You can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com
and click the contact link
and choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown.
We'll cover your thoughts
in our follow-up next week.
Last week,
we asked the audience to vote
on what they thought,
which direction Debian would go.
You remember this?
Oh, yes.
And we didn't get a ton of votes because I screwed up on how I linked and embedded the
poll, but we still got enough votes.
I think it's pretty telling.
Oh, yeah.
We got 208 votes total.
19% of the votes went to Upstart.
81% of the votes went to SystemD.
81% of the people think it's going to go system d that's probably wishful
thinking though i think so right well and what i want to know is because you have half you probably
i'd say you know you have a large group of people that are doing this based on logic you know there's
logical reasons why they're throwing their hat to system d no question that but there's also a fair
handful of people that i firmly believe are throwing it in based on emotion and same thing
with upstart i think people throw into upstart for emotion too i'd be interested in a poll that shows
whether you're basing this on you know your emotional dislike for one of them or the fact
that you really feel one is superior i would love to see that yeah here's the here's the options to
vote and now give it why yeah right exactly yeah i would this i wanted to keep it simple to see
people which way people go people are voting now People are voting right now, and it's still going to System D.
And that's totally expected.
I mean, I already knew it was going to go that direction overall.
It's going to be interesting to see the drama fall out.
And then either way, right?
Either way, you think we're going to get some interesting drama.
So it's kind of crazy.
And the numbers increase.
Yeah, they're going up.
The System D is still going up.
Upstart just got a vote.
Well, there you go. It's fast and crazy. Oh, my gosh. Well, they're going up. The system is still going up. Oh, Upstart just got a vote. Well, there you go.
It's fast and crazy.
Oh, my gosh.
Well, all right.
So maybe we'll do another poll again in the future.
Yeah.
So next week on the Linux Action Show, so on Sunday,
we'll be talking, if everything works out, with Joss from OpenSUSE.
He is the community manager over there,
and he's going to be at the Fedora, at the Florida SeussCon, right?
Is that what it's called? SeussCon?
SeussCon.
SeussCon, yeah.
And I was just kind of thinking
maybe we'd brainstorm real quick here
with the Mumble Room on what we should ask
the OpenSeuss community manager
when he's on the show.
So, Mumble Room,
is there any burning questions
that you think we should kick
the OpenSeuss community manager's way?
Don't forget 13.1 is coming out soon.
So that's in there.
And of course, I've got a list of questions,
but I wanted to open the floor and also to the audience listening on the download,
just go over to Jupyter Broadcasting, click that contact link.
You have a chance to send in, choose Linux Action Show though,
and send in your questions for the, or start a thread in the subreddit,
linuxactionshow.rad.com, send in your questions for Joss. I have a the subreddit linuxactionshow.red.com send in your questions for Joss
I have a question but it's not very
it's not like a broad it's more
specific but it seems
to be that OpenSUSE is the only
distro that Unetbootin
doesn't work with
that is pretty broad
I don't know if the community
guys can
I thought Manjaro doesn't work with it either,
if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, right.
He doesn't.
I'd be curious about OpenSUSE's plans
for maybe implementing Wayland in the next couple years.
That's interesting, yeah.
Yep, yep.
Okay, that's a good one.
He might have the scuttlebutt on that.
Maybe we could...
Well, he would have to because of KDE, wouldn't he?
Oh, yeah, they're going to have to.
Yeah, they're going to have to.
Right. Keep in mind, also, this is going to be an evergreen release.
Oh, yeah.
True.
Yeah, so maybe they're going to be a little more conservative, but that's usually a good thing.
Yeah, that's a good point.
So probably anything we ask would be then considered or pondering into future releases going down maybe a year or two.
Rotten, did you see that Big C just linked in the chat room a Open susa live usb stick creator that might help you that might help you get going
ben digs in the chat room asked maybe i should ask him about my sound issues in kde
there we go oh wow well they are tied in so tightly with kd it would be interesting and i
did experience those same sound issues with an open SUSE install.
Well, so this is – I was saying on the pre-show, I was going to – it's been so long since I've tried it on another distro.
But just a little background because I know a lot of people don't watch the Linux Action Show live.
Right before last starts, and we're trying to stay on schedule because we had Frank from the own cloud project coming on, and we didn't want to make him wait.
So, right – and the Run's Linux pick was that now robot and had a video so i knew i wanted to i knew the first thing out of
the gate as soon as we got into the show i want to play a video and i want to make sure that works
because i hate you know to have it like right there in the show the beginning have some sort
of problem so uh i just do a little test run i set my sound outputs i get all the sound effects
i even like people i even did like the little bark sound through the sound effects control panel. And the viewers at home were like, Oh, you're making my
dog go crazy. Right? We know it's working. It goes out over the live stream. Everything's solid.
We tested it. We saw it on the VU meter. I, I launch up chromium. I load up the tab. I click
play on the video and the sound comes out my laptop speakers. And where it gets weird is that
everybody's immediately going to go, Oh, well you just run the pulse audio uh volume manager normally that would be true but
in chris's particular case different tabs did different outputs yeah no that's where it got
weird that was so strange yeah that's where it's like okay you lost me it's got to be a flash issue
it's got to be a flash issue but it's like at the same time uh how do you explain that i just don't
i don't know i don't and then what can i fix it because i had to play the video um and then like later on in that episode you know 30 minutes
later we did a skype call with frank and it was just fine there was no sound problems at all right
how about support for kernel 312 with 312 they're going to have full optimus support even switching
graphics cards right yeah that is a big thing for laptop users.
What about the installer?
I wonder if they're ever going to update their installer because that thing is still
pink. Beautiful, you mean?
I've had issues with
the partitioning part.
Really? I haven't. I never have.
I've had issues with
what file systems are you guys using
for when you're having problems?
ZFS.
No, ZFS.
Here's something I'd be interested in asking.
My laptop is currently running OpenSUSE at 12.3.
I wonder how would an in-place upgrade to 13.1 work compared to doing a clean install?
Okay.
Good question.
You could just do Tumbleweed, couldn't you?
So I was wondering
what you guys
thought.
I guess during the
review I'll do the
13.1 and then maybe
after the review,
maybe I can try going
for a week on
Tumbleweed or
something.
That's what I would
do.
My issue with
Tumbleweed is
so many build
service packages
don't work with it.
Yeah, oh, that
could be a pain in
the butt.
That's an excellent
point.
Yeah, good point. Yeah, there's quite a bit in the build service that don't work with it. Yeah, oh, that could be a pain in the butt. That's an excellent point. Yeah, good point.
Yeah, there's quite a bit in the build service
that don't work with Tumbleweed.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
There's an option in the OBS to make it work with Tumbleweed,
but you have to do extra steps for it.
Make it show.
So maybe they should just have a checkbox or, you know, something.
Be nice.
Well, guys, that does bring us to the end of this week's Linux Unplugged.
You know, we have
gotten... I have
stopped reading them on air because we get
so many emails from folks talking
about their switch to Arch, and
I think that's so cool that so many
people are trying it out. And the only reason I haven't covered it is because
I didn't want to make these shows
like some sort of Arch
promotion platform, but at the same time
I think it's so cool that people are trying it
after they saw us try it.
And a lot of people are having really good success.
I think it's just fun to step outside the box
and see what is happening in other distributions as well.
And so one of the things I want to do
in the nearest term,
what I mean before January,
I'd like to talk to Antegros
and Mangero developers as well.
So if we have Mangero developers out there listening,
go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com and click the contact link
and choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown.
I'd love to get you guys on Mumble and chat with you
about what you're working on because I have a feeling
we're sending a lot of people your way.
And I'd like to ask you a few questions about how your system works,
how it differentiates itself from Arch,
and where you're going in the long run.
So that's another invite I want to put out there.
But thanks to the Mumble Room
for hanging out with us this week
and chewing on all of this S.
And you guys will have a link
to the Kickstarter project
for the Dark Mail Initiative
if you want to go in and maybe help them.
Oh, that's the wrong show.
If you want to go in
and maybe help them get to their goal,
well, then we'll have a link
so you can do that.
And we'll keep you posted on their progress. Matt,
I think we're going to have a really good show on Sunday. We'll be talking
to Joss while he's in Florida.
Oh, right on. I know. That'll be fun.
And don't forget, everyone, you can join us live. Go over to
jblive.tv at 2 p.m. Pacific
on a Tuesday. We've also got
jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar where you can
find out what time the show is live
in your neck of the woods. What's great
about joining us live is not only can you participate in the mumble,
but you can participate in our IRC chat.
You can help us name the show,
and we've got a lot of fun in the pre- and post-shows
after we're all done with Linux Unplugged.
Linux Unplugged is out every Tuesday,
and Linux Action Show is live on every Sunday.
All right, everyone.
Thanks so much for hanging out with us on this week's episode of Linux Unplugged.
Matt, I'll see you on Sunday, all right?
I'll see you Sunday.
All right, everyone.
We'll see you right back here next Tuesday.