LINUX Unplugged - Episode 132: Librem 15 is FAN-tastic! | LUP 132

Episode Date: February 17, 2016

We discuss the official release of Vulkan, look at who has shipping code & why this is much bigger than you might realize. Plus Chris share’s his first hands on impressions of Purism’s Librem 15 laptop, some big Ubuntu Mobile noise, the Linux security bug you need to patch for right away & more!

Talking of a brave new world, Chris, has your Librem laptop arrived? All right. Well, let's go over to the Purism website, P-U-R-I dot S-M, and check out the shipping status for the Librem 15 Rev 1, which is, I believe, the one I ordered, or the Rev 2, which is the one I believe I'm getting. Shipping now, it says. Shipping now. Wow. Wow. Would you look at that?

Did you know that? Actually, guess what? Big news. Big news. I got big news. Oh. That's right. The Librem has actually arrived.

It's here. It is here in my hands right now, the Librem 15. Fantastic. He is holding it up. You can't see, but he is holding it up. The camera feed died from in studio today, but you will hear it soon. You will hear it soon.

We're going to do a little quick hands-on on the show today, I think. Oh, that would be good. You know what's super ironic? It showed up Wednesday. It showed up the day after we recorded on Club. Yeah, well, that's difficult, isn't it? We just had to bust the balls for a while.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they heard that show on Tuesday. Maybe. He keeps talking about us. He's listening live. I'll tell you, the box looked like it was hastily put together. It was like, I got this weird generic box that had lots of previous FedEx stickers on it.

Ooh. Yeah. Because we've been wondering where it's at for about 286 days. So it's here. It's a previous FedEx sticker. So is it a review unit? No, no,

it's mine. It is. I believe it is mine. It matches the specs that I ordered. Minus a few things I was expecting, which I will cover. I have presently ran Purism OS on it and I've ran Ubuntu 16.04 on it, and right now I have Antigros Linux installed on it. So I've tried a few different distros.

Running the gamut here. Yeah. Done a few different things. Got some initial hands-on impressions. Have you tried PCBSD? No. It doesn't boot. It doesn't?

Have you tried it? Yeah, I've been playing with it. I ended up trying to try an 11, a Virgin 11 on it. I got to spend a little time debugging it. So you have a Purism? Yeah, I'm the one who sent you a message on Wednesday when I got mine. Oh, that's great. I'm glad you made it. Thanks for coming. That's cool.

Yeah, you and I got our rigs the same day, which was interesting, I thought. I ordered it literally right after you did. it. Thanks for coming. That's cool. Yeah, you and I got our rigs the same day, which was interesting, I thought. Well, I ordered it literally right after you did. So you've tried what, then? You've obviously already tried PCBSD. What else have you tried? I put the Ubuntu Mate on it as well. I'm

still running pure OS as I need to work on the touchpad issue. Ah, yeah. Yeah, I'll talk about the touchpad issue. Ah, yeah. Yeah, I'll talk about the touchpad a little bit today if I remember. I'm going to do a full review on Sunday where I'm really going to throw some tests at it. But, like, right now I'm still in the process of, like, releasing what the battery life is like at different settings and really seeing what I can get from the performance. So I'm really kind of early days into it.

But my intention is to get a config, lock it down, and figure out exactly how it's set up. Maybe do rolling distro. Maybe just do Ubuntu 16.04, maybe something else. And then for the next set of hardware I get, so like if I get the Oryx Pro in here or the Entroware when it arrives, I want to have very similar testing sets. It's not scientific, but I want to have very similar testing sets so that way when I'm talking about the machines, I can— Some kind of baseline. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to be able to test the Oryx Pro, but I want a very similar testing set, so that way when I'm talking about the machines, I can...

Yeah, some kind of baseline. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to be able to test the Oryx Pro, but I hope so. And I'm very excited to see how the Entroware stacks. We'll talk more about that, too, because... So I heard from Entroware about an hour ago, and your Apollo has been shipped. Ooh! This showdown is arriving soon.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 132 for February 16th, 2016. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that has a brand new Linux laptop. And I'm all ready and fired up to talk about it. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello there, Wes. So we have a great show today. Yes, we do. Sometimes the internet just delivers, and all we have to do is just sit back and receive the benefits.

We just receive them. This week on the Unplugged show, we're going to talk about the Vulkan API. It's here. And as far as launches go, this is tops. I mean, in all of the years we've been covering stuff like this, I've never seen a launch like this. And I'm very excited about that because I think this type of execution is actually going to lead to industry adoption. We're going to talk about why that's a big deal for Linux, for alternative CPU architectures, and you. Yeah, coming up in this week's episode plus, we've got updates on Ubuntu Touch integrating biometrics. We've got info for

all of you out there wondering about the new Purism laptop. I've got it. I'm going to give you my first impressions of the Librem 15. It's right here in my hot hands. You hear that? That's its metal-like case. It's the sound of it being real, folks. Yeah, it's actually here, Wes. And we're going to cover it in today's episode.

I'll give you my first impressions. A couple of things that surprised me. Not necessarily for the good. No. Yeah, not necessarily. So we got that coming up. Yeah, not necessarily. So we got that coming up. Also, a brand new version of FFmpeg.

Google finds a major security that affects, well, basically all Linux distributions. We'll give you a roundup on the Vulkan stuff. It's going to be huge. So we got a lot to cover today in the show, Wes. So before we get started, I realized we made a fatal flaw last week. Oh, no. Do you know what that was? I don't.

No beer. No beer. No beer. And what happened? What happened? We ended up having a fedora rant. Yep. Right?

Got yourself in trouble again. So this week, Wes, being the good co-host that he is, showed up with some beers. So we're going to be drinking something called, you ready for this? Big Guns. Big Guns from Fort George Brewery. And it's got an ABV of 4.2. So it's not on the high end here. No, no.

It's an American IPA with no real score from Beer Advocate. But the folks there seem to like it. Have you been sipping on it, Wes? What do you think? Yeah, it's not too bad. Pretty easy going. Not as big gun as I was hoping for, honestly. Hmm. Wow.

A lot of hops in this beer. A lot of hops, though. Wow. Maybe it's a hop gun. This is a bouquet of hops. But it's not too bitter. I mean, it's pretty clean. Yeah, it's not so bad.

FortGeorgeBrewery.com slash big guns if you want to check out the beer we're drinking. Unfiltered. Expect sediment at the bottom of a can. See this cool green monster they've got, though? That's a huge hot monster is what that is. He's got tats, too. He's got awesome tats. And he's shooting a tank.

That's great. That's what's on the can. Well, good call, Wes. Thanks for bringing that in. My pleasure. All right. So we've got some stories to follow up on I'm pretty excited about. And the first one is an Ubuntu phone rumor.

Let's bring in the Mumbaroo to talk about this. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumbaroo. Hello. Hello. So one thing that I'm very excited about in Android Marshmallow is legitimate fingerprint API support. That's a good thing. is legitimate fingerprint API support. That's a good thing.

And I'm having some experience, not a lot, but some experience with Touch ID and pretty impressed with the implementation. And my Galaxy S6 also had early fingerprint support, even though it was sort of hacked in by Samsung. That's right. So when I saw this story by Joey over at OMG Ubuntu that Ubuntu Phone was going to gain biometric security features, kind of got my attention. Ubuntu Phone's running secure biometric identity tools will be demoed at next week's Mobile World Congress.

Canonical has partnered with ConsenSys and BlockApps, and BlockApps is going to be important here, I want you to pay attention, A web wallet and biometric identity tools on Ubuntu devices using Ethereum. A decentralized public blockchain protocol. As part of the collaboration, BlockApp's Nimbus Uport biometric digital identity tool has been ported to run on Ubuntu phones and tablets. Uport is described as the next generation of identity management systems and is pitched as a self-sovereign identity. I want that. Me too. I'm self-sovereign. Yeah, and I like blockchains.

Those are great. U-Port permits secure interaction with the Ethereum blockchain using biometric and encryption features. This is unbelievable. If a person is verified through the Ethereum blockchain but the ownership of the identity is determined locally using public and private key pairs, this is going to be integrated in with Ubuntu touch devices, or at least some of them it sounds like. I don't really know what the end distribution is going to be like, but I guess Canonical is being very cheeky, at least some folks there, and they're calling it the Internet of People. And it's just beginning. The Internet of People. And it's just beginning. The Internet of People. Now, of course, I got to pick on Popey just for a moment.

But, Popey, do you know anything about this at all that you can make a little more understandable? Because to me, this sounds like fancy future technology using blockchains on phones that are going to be out in the future. I mean, it just all sounds super pie in the sky. But there must be some real code here. There must be some actual relationships and agreements in place. I have no idea. So, by the way, so, Poppy, let me tell you more about this then. Please do.

We've got the inside scoop. It's called Uport, and it uses a blockchain. It's going to kickstart the internet of people. Actually, you did me too. What did you find there, Wes? Well, this is the Ethereum website. Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts, applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference. Well, here's what the head of devices marketing at Canonical says.

So I'll let you know. Canonical is keen to support the development of blockchain applications and their expansion from business cloud solutions to mobile consumer applications. Working with ConsenSys and BlockApps on building a platform for consumption and creation of blockchain-based mobile apps is a realization of a promise of Ubuntu as the reinvention of personal mobile computing. That's a mouthful. Yeah. So identity management based on a decentralized blockchain and the key exchange and comparing is done locally on the device.

Integrated with a fingerprint sensor on the phone. Poby, is there any Ubuntu Touch device shipping today that has a fingerprint sensor that's just not turned on? Nope. Okay. None of the devices that we ship or that our partners ship with Ubuntu out of the box and none of the community supported ports do either. So there's a bit of work to do there. This to me, I mean, Joey's got quotes from canonical staff. He's got links to projects. I mean, there's some smoke here.

And so there's probably some fire, but we probably just won't know all the details or some more details until next week yeah all the details we've got are kind of pie in the sky right yeah i think it's kind of one of those pre-mwc announcements that happens every year where it's kind of we're going to show this off at mwc come and talk to us kind of thing and then there'll be backroom conversations with device manufacturers and carriers and so on. Not necessarily public. And also, and now if nothing else, there is down the road, if Canonical is talking to a hardware provider and they're like, so the device hardware we're thinking about using

with our Ubuntu touch images has a built-in fingerprint reader. Can you utilize that? And now the answer to that is yes, and here's our solution. Yep, exactly. So even if there's nothing shipping now, in the future, it might help conversations.

Speaking of things that might happen in the future but aren't actually shipping yet, Maroo. Maroo. Our old friend. Yeah, we talked about it last week, and we're like, where the hell is this coming from? It was sort of like out of nowhere. And it was a project to run Debian on top of Android so you could hook up your Android phone, a Nexus 5, to a monitor and get a type of convergence, an Android XFCE-based, well, I guess it's maybe a virtual machine.

I'm not quite sure how it works. But a XFCE-based desktop that runs on top of Android so you still get Android and you get an external desktop. At the same time. We talked about how is this possible. Well, so last Thursday, Maru has announced the software that turns your smartphone into a PC. And the developer said he was expecting some attention, but he thought maybe he'd get a few early enthusiasts willing to give it a shot. Instead, he got a couple of thousand.

In a few hours, someone picked it up on Hacker News where it hit number five. Within the next 48 hours, dozens of text sites, blogs, et cetera, this show, people from all over the world were asking when Maru would be supported on their devices. The press began speculating about a group of unknown developers challenging the likes of Microsoft and Ubuntu. I freaked out. I was the only one that knew Maru was just me. How the heck was I going to handle thousands of people that signed up for the beta? Then different emails started showing up. Emails from people who said they were ready to offer support in any way and would absolutely love to help and so on.

The support just kept pouring in. I've got to say, the open source community never ceases to amaze me. I've had emails from people asking if they can help test brew on other devices on a Sunday. How many people, how many normal people do you know that willingly want to give up their Sundays to help test software? Probably too many. Our audience, yeah. Us. Yeah. With that spirit

in mind, I'm open sourcing Maroo. Oh! Heck yes. Setting up a largest open source project is new to me, so please be patient. There's a decent amount of work that needs to be done to document and automate things so people can easily get started with the code. So, a pretty good conclusion to

the Maru story that we covered last week. We'll see. Rodden, I think maybe you seem the most skeptical of the group. Did he go? He's done here. Well, I think, we'll see. Rodden essentially put it down to, you know, this at least puts it on the may try some days track. So I think what we should actually do is get Rodden to try it.

I think a lot depends on how quickly it moves, right? Like if they can get something that works really well on more than just one phone quickly, then maybe people use it. I don't know, man. I actually think sticking to the Nexus 5 is a pretty good strategy. Nexus 5, Nexus 5X, expand to the 6P if you got stuff. But stick to the hardcore enthusi if you got stuff, but stick to the hardcore enthusiast devices just for a little while to get that working.

Yeah, definitely, and you want to have a really good experience. But like Popey pointed out last week, those are also people that are most expecting to be able to update their devices. Would you give it a shot? You got a Nexus 5. I do, yeah. I'd give it a shot. I signed up for the beta. So, when I get something.

What if, like Popey was worried, you can't install, say, the next Android update? Is that all it takes and you're done? It depends. If I couldn't install updates at all, if it was a little delayed or they were still working out the update pipeline, we'll see. I would like to remain relatively current. I mean, I do run. Yeah, that's a good point. So I think the interesting story here, and it's one that happens all the time.

And he even says in his blog post, like, how did the media not know it's just one guy? Why did they all assume it's a group of people? It's just one guy. Well, it probably means your presentation was pretty slick. So it looks like it's more than one person. But this kind of thing happens all the time in open source. We start talking about something like it has a whole's more than one person. But this kind of thing happens all the time in open source. We start talking about something like it has a whole team of people behind it or it has a big bunch of funding. And it turns out to be one guy, one gal, maybe a couple of people at best who are slaving away at something for years with no thanks.

And then all of a sudden one day something happens and it gets a ton of exposure. Maybe it's a bug. Maybe it's something. and one day something happens and it gets a ton of exposure. Maybe it's a bug. Maybe it's something. And we just kind of run off and we don't stop and go, this could be just a person. Like this can be just somebody's pet project they're working on. In open source, I think we look at it and we automatically attribute attributes to an open source project that we also attribute to a company.

And so – And we are familiar with some of the bigger open source projects, you know? Yeah, true. That do have a lot of that kind of infrastructure. Yeah, yeah. Doesn't mean everyone does. Kitson, Kitty, you had some comments on the Android update issue. Go ahead.

Yeah, I actually think that the Android update issue is a real bummer, and it's always tempting to me to move away. But it's really the only reason I want to see Ubuntu phones succeed. So I think Android gets too much exposure. But really, on the flip side is I don't want to use Apple. Yeah. That's been my internal battle back and forth for a while now. I want a modern, updated smartphone with good apps that actually make me more productive,

things like Uber and whatnot because I just needed to call Uber recently. I want all that stuff and I want it – if I'm going to pay for it, like I want it to be decent. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I want it to be decent. And yeah. Speaking of decent, Recon are talking about this today. You know, there are carriers out there that kind of help give you a leg up.

If you want a device that gets updates frequently, say you have an S6. You know Samsung's shipping out Marshmallow for the S6? Are they now? Depends, if your carrier lets you. Of course. Some international carriers. I just...

That process right there, that drives me so crazy. That's broken. That drives me so crazy. You know who's got it better? Our buddies over at Ting. They don't get in the way. No, they don't get in the way. They're honey badger about that stuff. Ting is on a mission to make mobile make sense.

They're on a mobile mission to make it make sense. Does that make sense? Mobile sense making by Ting. Exactly. Go over to linux.ting.com to get our discount and support the show. No contracts, no early termination fees, and you only pay for what you use. It's some sort of wizardry, you guys. Actually, it makes a lot of sense.

They're an MVNO, and they have the CDMA and GSM network, which means there's a lot of devices they're compatible with. And it also means they didn't spend the last 20 years digging holes in the ground and putting towers down. They're able to come in and license the towers from carriers that did that investment, and they're able to take that savings and turn it around into great service. So they can do things like invest in really good customer service or invest in the best online management dashboard for your cellular network. They're able to pay unbelievable rates out. So, for example, three devices, right?

Three devices. Three smartphone devices. iPhone 5, Samsung S6, Nexus 5, and there's an iPhone 6. Actually, it's four devices. I've been saying three devices. Three smartphone devices. iPhone 5, Samsung S6, Nexus 5, and there's an iPhone 6. Actually, it's four devices. I've been saying three devices. It's four devices. We have a 6S on there, too. And all of it together, $30, $35.

And part of that reason is because not all the devices are being used at the same time. You can turn devices on and off depending on what testing we're doing. We can be extremely Wi-Fi savvy, so we can do like Telegram and Hangouts and things like that. But on top of it, it's just because it's a flat $6 for the line and it's just your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes.

You add that up, that's all you got to pay. You go to linux.ting.com, you get a discount. You get $25 off a device. You get $25 in service credit. And that is really nice because the average Ting line is $23 a line after minutes and messages and It's 23 bucks. So you get a $25 credit.

You're not even going to pay for your first month. And the best part is then you can just try it. I mean there's no risk. You can probably bring your phone you already have. You know what I love? Shoot. I love the fact that they got $9 SIMs. You want to try out Ting?

You're talking about trying out Ting. Get a $9 SIM, pop in a device, port it over to Ting if it's compatible, and you're good to go. You're good to go and you're just paying for what you use. They have every device from good, solid feature phones that are like $60, $70 for a really good phone with no contract, no early termination fee, and only pay for what you use. Can you imagine on a feature phone? And then they go all the way up to the Cadillacs. They got the Caddys, the S6s, they got the iPhone 6S's, they got the Nexus size, they got the Moto X's. All of it. Because, you know,

that's what consumers want. They have a powerful control panel. No BS when you call them. They're going to help you out. They'll stick with you. They got the tools to manage all of it. If you're doing one account, go to linux.ting.com, support the show, linux.ting.com, check them out.

And if you're considering cutting the cord, they have some tips for you. This is a thread they've been following for a while, and they're monitoring the cable TV bills. In some areas, they're doing like fiber in it and stuff like that, so they're watching this scene, and they're really breaking it down. The cable TV companies, what they're charging, what you're paying for, they've done some good research here, and different alternatives you can do if you want to cut the cord all up on the Ting blog.

Go to linux.ting.com and then go check that out. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Thanks, Ting. Thank you, Ting. Thank you, Ting. Thank you, Ting.

Real quick, I want to talk about something that you all need to know about before we go too much further. You need to update your boxes. So I'm sure you all are using rigs that are still getting updates. You're not using some distro that's not getting updates anymore.

You're not crazy like that. Google and the folks over at Red Hat were both eating from the same end of a spaghetti noodle and ended up kissing in the middle and discovered a flaw in glibc that could lead to a buffer overflow. The Google blog starts, Have you ever been deep in the minds of debugging and suddenly realized you were staring at something far more interesting than you were expecting? Well, you're not alone. Recently, a Google engineer noticed that their SSH client segfaulted

every time they tried to connect to a specific host. That engineer filed a ticket to investigate the behavior, and then, after an intense investigation, we discovered the issue lay in GLIB-C and not in SSH, as we were expecting. Thanks to this engineer's keen observation, we were able to determine that the issue could result in remote code execution.

We immediately began an in-depth analysis of the issue and determined whether it could be exploited and possible fixes. We saw this as a challenge, and after some intense hacking sessions, we were able to craft a fully working exploit. This is from the Google blog here. I love it. In the course of our investigation, and to our surprise, we learned that GLibc maintainers had previously been alerted to the issue via their bug tracker in July 2015.

issue via their bug tracker in July 2015. And to our delight, Florian and Carlos of Red Hat had also been studying the bug's impact, albeit completely independently. Due to the sense of nature of the issue, the investigation, patch creation, and regression tests performed primarily by Florian and Carlos had continued, quote unquote, off bug. This was an amazing coincidence. And thanks to their hard work and cooperation, we were able to translate both teams' knowledge into a comprehensive patch and regression test to protect GLibc users. And the patch is available here. Isn't that a beautiful story?

That is a beautiful story. Red Hat and Google, kumbaya, coming together. Now, of course, my friends over at ThreatPost, who I generally think do a great job. ThreatPost. Their headline, it's one of the best. There's a few different ways you could take this. I like theirs a lot. A critical bug in GLEBC vulnerability puts all Linux machines at risk.

Dun, dun, dun. So depending on where you go, there's a different take on the severity. All Linux users must patch. All things are bad. The FlawCV20157547 is a stack-based buffer overflow in the GLibc DNS client resolver that puts Linux machines

at risk for remote code execution. I don't really have much more to say other than that, but I just wanted to get the word out there. This came out since last. It's probably going to be a patch for your local distro soon. You know, I mean, these things come up, right? Do we really need to make a big deal about it? I mean, we can make scary headlines, but yeah.

It's like all software. There are problems. Stay up to date. And some of us have larger problems. Like some of us, there's a lot of machines that have to be updated. Wimpy, you probably had a few rigs you had to update after this announcement. A few, yeah. That was an afternoon's work.

Surprise! Yeah. So, yeah, Debian have pushed the patches out. And what we noticed is their security announcement says the patch is available for Jesse and Unstable. But actually they've also provided patches for wheezy as well so if you're running wheezy you need to go back and patch wheezy but it's not in the security announcement so if you're running wheezy servers go and deal with that but what what i think's more interesting about this is is this the tipping point are we at the point now where we don't have to have a catchy name and a sick logo to go alongside these landmark vulnerabilities?

Is that a good thing? Is that a good thing? That's why I'm not taking this seriously. Oh, really, Popey? You think without the branding, it's not really a big deal? Yeah, totally. There's no big logo. It's not on the BBC News.

I don't care. I'm just updating my machine like I would if there was an updated G BBC News. I don't care. I'm just updating my machine like I would if there was an update to GIMP. I don't care. I'm almost with you, but I'm also with Wimpy at the same time. This is a phenomenon that Alan and I have talked about on TechSnap a lot, is we've watched this branding that's now happening with vulnerabilities. We can think of things like Shellshock and Heartbleed. These immediately come to mind, right?

And there's others, Ghost and all of these that, you know, and what's weird now, yeah, what's weird is we have like this common language, like Ghost was that one that affected Bash, right? And Heartbleed was that one that affected OpenSSL. Like now we can just refer to these names and we all know what we're talking about. In a way, though. It's a Darmok and Jalad moment here. Yes.

But in a way, it's actually I feel like it begins this sounds super d-baggy, but I feel like it begins the conversation when you're in an employment situation where you've got to go to your boss and say, hey, we've got to update. And it begins that conversation because they've heard the name. It's on the news. It's

obviously a big deal. Right. When Heartbleed came out, I think I even played a clip of CBS Morning News covering it. It was everywhere.bleed came out, I think I even played a clip of CBS Morning News covering it. Like it was everywhere. So in some ways, I feel like the branding has been good. But the other time, the thing that's implied there, and I'm curious to know your thoughts on this, is doesn't it also sort of drag Linux credibility through the dirt when it's – Exactly my point. Yeah. All of the big outlets get hold of it because there

is a catchy name and a sexy logo and it drags linux reputation through the mud whereas when it's announced like this and probably the reason there's no sexy logo and branding this time is because it's red hat and google they've got They're not security researchers trying to promote themselves. Exactly, trying to promote their company. Yeah, exactly. And when there is the branding, I just feel that it scares people unnecessarily because the people in the industry know what the issue is and know how to deal with it.

And today's announcement, through the various distros and security announcements, has just been responded to in the same way we respond to any, you know, vulnerability that affects components that you're running in your infrastructure and you just go out and patch and, you know, move merrily along. You don't then have two weeks of media fallout. Yeah, that's true.

All the security officers are still paying attention to it. That's true. Kitson, though, points out, Kitson, you think it was inevitable. This was going to happen. I mean, we give everything names. Yeah, we do. If you really think about it, everybody knows what you're talking about whenever you say like Hurricane Sandy or Wilma or whatever, or Katrina.

Those things come up. And even like with non-hurricanes, for instance uh you have the may blizzard every good portion of the people that live through that know what that is people name houses and their cars yeah that's true yeah the lady jupiter there right yeah um all right i did notice that one of their suggested mitigations is having a local resolver like dns mask or something that will reject non-non-compliant responses so that's another reason if you are doing that you can have something like that on your land i i mean some of those resolvers have been updated as well for the same reason though right so uh ncsd got patched today as well i i also though had the same thought wimpy did it's

like i'm just glad this isn't getting a name for some reason that was also my first reaction i'm just glad it's not getting overhyped. But we still need to update. But let's overhype this. I can't give enough hype to FFmpeg. Oh, I'm so excited. FFmpeg 3.0 release supports VP9 acceleration, which is going to be good for some folks. New decoding standards, new AAC encoding improvements, which is nice.

Meaning you won't have to pull in that special library just to encode. Well, if it's good enough, we'll see. Yes. Well, I trust them. I mean, I'd be willing to give it a shot. But, yeah, you is nice. Meaning you won't have to pull in that special library just to encode. Well, if it's good enough, we'll see. Yes. Well, I trust them. I mean, I'd be willing to give it a shot. But yeah, you're right. That's the whole idea. New filters across the board, which look really good.

What else? Anything else about FFmpeg 3.0 that jumped out at you? Intel Quick Sync. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, there's been a lot of talk of this on the Windows side in the MB community to get the GPU to do your transcoding. So it sounds like FFmpeg supports this now.

That's not just good for MB. No, it's good for a lot of people. That's going to be so good for server-side streaming and encoding. I know Alan was looking at using it. Yes. In fact, Alan just recently specced systems with support for that out of the box because he wants to use

that to do server-side encoding. That's a huge deal. I'm excited. I mean, I love freaking FFmpeg, and I feel like the thing about FFmpeg is if there was one piece of software that people don't realize contributes so much to their desktop in the background for media playback,

and for a lot of podcasters, it's FFmpeg. Wimpy, you had a comment about the AAC encoding. Go ahead. Yeah, only that to get a decent AAC encoder on FFmpeg often means you have to compile it from source and link in third-party libraries that might not be open source. So I'm pleased to see a native AAC encoder, and I shall be interested to try it out

and see how it compares with the FAC FAD components. We've done in-house testing of AAC versus MP3 versus Vorbis. There's a definite you can do like for example this is like

two three years ago that I did this testing but a 96 kilobit AAC to my ears sounded better than a 128-kilobit Ogvorbis or MP3. I believe that. So you get, you know, you get in mobile. That makes a difference. Yeah, congratulations.

FFmpeg version 3.0 is out. The other big feature that they introduced a couple years ago was ProRes support. I couldn't believe it when they have that. And now that they've got AAC encoder support. I know they also added support for the GoPro Cineform HD. So if you have a GoPro, that might help. And then in the previous release, they got the HEVC hardware support.

Cineform is really nice. That is, boy, I wish there, I guess, you know, an equivalent piece of software from Adobe or something would be $1,000. Yeah, it's easy. Really, the fact that you can use it on the command line too is a huge, huge deal. Build up all kind of pipelines that you want. Yes. So many server-side jobs and scripts and even like the encoding for all of our networks, all the shows here on the network, done with FFmpeg on a bash script on the command line. It's a huge, huge software project.

And when, one of these days, when I get the Patreon funding to the level I want, where I can start, I want, that's one of the first projects on my list. I really, I really can't, it's like, they're like the central plumbing for so many multimedia productions. It's really valuable. I want to take a moment to tell you about something else that's been extremely valuable for my backend infrastructure. That's DigitalOcean.

Go over to DigitalOcean right now and check them out and use our promo code of absolute power, knowledge, and authority. That's D-O-N-Plugged. I mean, if you don't like knowledge, power, and authority and have, well, maybe save $10 too, that's also something else you can do. When you use the promo code D-O-N-Plugged, then don't use it. But I like saving $10. I like knowledge, power, and authority. Power and authority by DigitalOcean with your own Linux rig. It's not like other solutions where you

go deploy a machine and there's some sort of cPanel type interface where you manage it, or you have to go use some sort of archaic web interface to go deploy a VPS. It is a totally different experience. Really great UI, Linux infrastructure throughout using KVM for the

virtualizer, SSDs for the drives, 40 gigabit eConnections to the internets. It is a great solution. Linux infrastructure throughout using KVM for the virtualizer, SSDs for the drives, 40 gigabit e-connections to the internets. It is a great solution. DigitalOcean is very simple to get started to. In less than 55 seconds, you're going to have your rig running. It is going to, I mean, when you, like, for example, this weekend, when I was setting up a discourse server, I did it during the segment break. I went over to DigitalOcean.

I spun up an Ubuntu 14.04 droplet, and I got the root password changed. I got some DNS set up in minutes, in minutes while I'm live on the air. It's a really great system. And they have data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, Toronto, and Germany.

That interface is so good, but you know what? You're beyond interfaces. You're bigger than interfaces. That's right. They got an API. They got a straightforward API you can use to just build off of. I mean, just go build off of like a boss.

I mean, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but here's what I'm going to tell you what to do. Go use that API to create something. Go contribute to the tons of great open source code that's out there. Oh, you need to get started quick? Well, guess what? DigitalOcean's got you covered. One-click application deployments. So this weekend we covered Discourse.

I don't know why we even bothered installing it. They have one-click deployment of Discourse on DigitalOcean. You don't even need to spend that time. GitLab. Go check out GitLab. Just go play with it for a little bit. Use our promo code DL1PLUG to get a $10 credit. Or if you want to try something like, I don't know, Rocket Chat or anything Docker container-based, one-click

deployment, you get a 14.04 base machine, you get Docker, you get the whole stack ready to go on cloud. It's ridiculous how easy it is to get started on cloud. Our Mumble Room? Our Mumble Room, powered by DigitalOcean Droplet. My own cloud installation. My sync thing installation. My BitTorrent.

Yes, I also use BitTorrent sync still. Also powered by DigitalOcean. My Quasicore installation. Oh, my goodness, Wes. There's so many. When we take calls, guess what? Powered by a DigitalOcean droplet. It's fantastic.

It's my go-to proxy as well. Their connections are so good. I was trying to download Xcode for a family member the other day. Don't ask me why. I know it's terrible. But my Comcast connection, you know, way too slow. Yeah. Copied those cookies over to DigitalOcean Droplet.

Boom. One command line later, and there it was, full speed. Nice. Yeah. Good move. Yeah. For $5 a month. When I'm up at the Rover, and I'm all like, or now Lady Jupiter, hello, and I'm all like,

this is a huge file, and I'm on a mobile connection. You know what I'm going to do? I SSH into my Droplet, I download it there, and then when I get here at the studio and I pull it down, the DigitalOcean connection is so fast. Just fast. I have a 100 megabit connection here at the studio. It saturates that entire connection when I pull files down from DigitalOcean. So it's exactly the same way I do it too. And with the pricing the way it is, and you use our promo code DLNPLUG, you get the $10 credit. I don't even bother splitting up virtual machines on my desktop anymore. You can run a really, really, really, really nice rig for $0.03 an hour.

And when you use the promo code DEOUNPLUGGED, you get the $10 credit. You can do that for a while. It's crazy. Those are in American, U.S., Greenback dollars. So you've got to convert. But you use the promo code DEOUNPLUGGED anywhere in the world. I hear there's things that will do that for you. Probably.

Figure that out. Probably. I'm not here to help you. No, no, no. We're just here to tell you to go to DigitalOcean. Yeah. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged and a huge thank you to DigitalOcean for not only rocking

the entire tire back in infrastructure now, but also for having such a freaking great service and a great UI that really make it actually approachable either for beginners or experts. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged and a big thank you to DigitalOcean. All right. Let's spend a moment, before we get to the purism, let's spend a moment talking about the really big long-term thing that happened this week.

I'm extremely, extremely, extremely excited to talk about Vulcan for a few moments. No, no, I don't mean of the Mr. Spock variety, although I do like that type of Vulcan. I am talking specifically about the API. His brain is gone. So one group that we're going to talk about today doesn't actually have code to show you, but they do have a great video with a guy who does a hell of a VO, Wes. I mean, you know, I thought maybe one day if this podcasting thing didn't work out, I could do the In The World, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Backup career. Yeah, backup. Exactly. This guy, though, this guy is really, this guy is going to take the market from right out from underneath me, and he's going to tell us about Vulcan. Vulcan is the only open standard and cross-platform API for high efficiency access to graphics and

compute on modern GPUs. Drived from AMD's revolutionary Mantle API, the Vulkan API provides applications with direct control over GPU acceleration for optimized efficiency and performance. Vulkan exposes features that were not accessible through OpenGL, delivering benefits that include close-to-metal control of the GPU, demanded by sophisticated game engines and interactive media, reduced driver overhead and CPU usage, enabling faster performance and better image quality, superior utilization of multi-core processors. of multi-core processors. Vulkan is the only high-performance graphics API that works across multiple operating systems, including Windows and Linux systems. An industry leader in open standards technologies, AMD donated the Mantle API code to Kronos

to jumpstart Vulkan development with a solid and proven technology foundation. AMD's co-development of the Vulkan API paves the way for PC games to run on both Windows and Linux with the same features and performance. Vulkan makes this possible for the first time, enabling a big step forward for PC gamers seeking an exceptional gaming experience on AMD Radeon GPUs and APUs. For more information, visit www.gpuopen.com

www.gpuopen.com Alright. I like how they have an echo in there. That's nice..com..com. So you know it's serious. That's AMD's little video on what Vulkan is so that way I don't have to explain it and that guy has the VO. He's got a nice voice, but I think your microphone's nicer. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah.

So Vulkan, industry forged and there's a lot to talk about here today. Before we go too far, if anybody in the mumumble room has anything to add, just tag me in the chat room. Who is this? Is that W.W.? Who's got the – is it William? William, you might have a hotkey active because I hear you from time to time. So Vulkan, it's a really big deal for a couple of reasons. First of all, today is the big launch day. 1.0 is out. And I got to say, I'm pretty damn impressed.

Intel, out of the gate, announces an open source driver ready to go. NVIDIA, out of the gate, today, has a Linux driver ready for you to go. AMD. Not quite. They're working on it, though. They totally have a great video for you to watch, so that's cool. So we have a lot of support launching today. Wes, how do you feel about Vulkan?

Do you feel like this is actually going to move the needle? Do you think the industry is going to get behind Vulkan? They're going to start writing games for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, maybe not iOS, Linux using the Vulkan API. Do you think it's actually going to happen, Wes? I think the driver support is a very good first step. You know, if we saw the spec released and it was a lot of staggered releases for drivers, you know, I mean, maybe it's not perfect, but it's a long way. I think Vulkan fits in in kind of a complicated way into the ecosystem. You know, you have OpenGL and then you have Vulkan, which has some underlying stuff, but not everyone is going to need or want to just use Vulkan.

And then you already have DirectX 12, which is kind of a whole own ecosystem. So I think it's going to be a long game, but it's a strong first step. Let's go to the mumble room. So, Gab, I see in there you say that your friend works with DirectX, and he's thinking about switching to Vulkan. Share that story with me. Yeah, I have this friend of mine which is studying um um making game engines and he's been using directx and windows for a lot of time basically because he says that opengl is not on pair with

directx right and he says this uh like with pain because uh he likes and loves open source technologies but he's kind of forced to use DirectX because it doesn't really want to bother with OpenGL. And when Vulkan was announced, he was like, me and him were going crazy about it because it opens literally a great new frontier because it works on every platform. the new Frontier because it works on every platform. So the video you've shown shows Linux and Windows mainly. It's bigger than that, though. Yeah, of course. That's the point. You can run Vulkan game engines on Android, iOS, macOS consoles.

Save that thought because we're going to get to that aspect of here in a second. But I want to stay with the Linux aspect for a second. Wimby, you predicted something regarding Vulkan. Remind me of that. Yeah, so on the Ubuntu podcast, we did our end-of-year predictions. And my first one that Vulkan would be finalized and released in 2016, I actually said that the measures would be that Linux drivers will be released for Intel IGPs as open source, NVIDIA via proprietary drivers, and AMD via proprietary drivers.

Well, that's about it. Steam would include support, yeah. But this is the kicker, that on equivalent hardware, Vulkan on Linux will outperform Windows 10. Now, in that, do you mean immediately, or do you think there's going to be a period of time where Vulkan's going to have to sort of be optimized and they're going to have to suss out how to write for it?

In 2016. Okay, in 2016. A game that is written for Vulkan that is available on Linux and Windows on equivalent hardware will run faster and more efficiently. The reason I ask you that is the folks that are making, what is it,

Tremulous? I can't remember. I have it linked in the show notes. There is a game developer already about to ship Vulkan support for their game. Yeah, Talos. That's what it is. I love that game. Yeah, Talos. Thank you. They say, yep, they say our GPU-bound scenarios, ultra settings, resolution higher than full HD,

you're going to see lower performance with Vulkan, 20% to 30% lower. This is a work in progress, and we are analyzing and optimizing performance to get to the bottom of this, as well as the rest of the people in the group. That's not too bad, though. 20% is not a ton. Right, but that does mean some interesting headlines out of the gate for Vulcan, right? Yeah. The most interesting thing is that this

was sort of kick-started from AMD's mantle. Yes, I agree. That is interesting. And AMD don't have a driver on list on the day of launch. It's hilarious, actually. Yeah, AMD's so open, guys. Pioneer of the time.

Guys, they're so open. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You feel bad for them because it must just be an engineering resource contention issue, but... I mean, they had to spend all that time making that sweet video. It's the same team. But it's like a bad joke just getting

worse. AMD's drivers are always behind and they can't even keep up with their own technology. It's just like, God. So, Northranger, I'm curious about your assertion here. You think that this might catch Microsoft overreaching. Go in detail there. Yeah, I think Vulkan is in an interesting position in that it can be promoted as the cross-platform solution, whereas Microsoft is going out on a limb and saying, if you want DirectX 12, if you want that same level of access to your GPU hardware, you're going to have to go to Windows 10. Even if we are offering upgrades for free, they're still going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.

And that may be a little overextension on their part. Here's why I think it can't really long-term work that well for Redmond is it's bigger than x86. It's way bigger than x86, right? This video I'm playing right here is a Vulkan demo running on a Mali GPU,

which is an ARM-based GPU. Now, Vulkan isn't necessarily about improved graphics. It's a graphicsali GPU, which is an ARM-based GPU. Now, Vulkan isn't necessarily about improved graphics. It's a graphics API. But it is about having a uniform cross-platform graphics API. And the fact that we already have working code on Mali CPUs, or Intel's GPUs, I guess I should say GPUs, and also on NVIDIA, that's a big deal. But from what I've been reading is it's actually even a bigger deal on ARM GPUs because Vulkan has some specific stuff in it for memory management that didn't exist before in OpenGL that makes gaming performance on ARM CPUs much faster.

Essentially, there's a lot less back and forth between the CPU and the memory bus and the assets. And instead, the stuff goes into the GPU, it knows what memory buffers it needs to access in the GPU, and it doesn't have to keep referring back to the source material. And on traditional GPUs, that's not as big of a performance hit. But on ARM GPUs, because they don't have as much overhead, it is noticeably a big difference. And so Vulkan might actually improve performance on ARM GPUs. And if that's the case, you're going to have Android, which is huge, huge, right? I could go from zero to a huge deployment. Then you've got the fact that you can deploy it on Windows machines and on SteamOS, a.k.a. Linux.

That might just be what tips it right there. So the ARM stuff is you can't underestimate how big of a deal it is if this is not a Linux-specific technology. And that's where our strength lies, even if not all the code out there is for Linux first. And then, if that wasn't enough, the sprinkles on top, Qt is working on Vulkan support directly in the Qt framework. Yeah, they've announced that today. The Qt company has joined the Kronos group to be alongside many other companies supporting cross-platform industry-backed APIs. Huge deal.

Huge deal. That's just more support right in that corner. Man. Here we are. You got Qt announcing support, NVIDIA shipping a driver, Intel, by the way, announces their support on the Mesa mailing list.

Yep. Just straight up. As part of the open source community, Intel announces their support. Here's the source code. AMD's like, yeah, we're going to get there, bro. But a lot of companies are totally behind it. This is a class A, well done, non-botched launch, everybody. Congratulations.

You are witnessing what it looks like when an industry-backed standard is launched and they actually do it successfully in a way that's going to build positive momentum. We don't get to witness this very often, so you might not be recognizing it first. I understand. And it's still going to take a while. It's rare. Yes, exactly. It's a ways off. It's a slow-moving thing, but this is a really good start. But these SOBs over at the Kronos Group managed to launch 1.0, and they got all of these laxadoodle companies to somehow work together with them.

All with various different interests. Yes. And actually, I'll make their announcements on day one. I mean, if you were watching Reddit or Hacker News today, it was awash in Vulcan news. Their hashtag Vulcan API or something like that on Twitter was actually trending for a short bit. My point is they managed not to screw it up, everybody. They actually managed not to screw it up.

And it actually looks like it could have some momentum. And the beauty is Linux just is along for the ride. First class. Just bam. Pretty stoked about that. Yeah, it is huge. I think it's one of the biggest things to happen to Linux this year, but we just won't see the results for a year or two.

In two years, we'll be really pleased with all this. Now we just get to sit back and watch all these green-blooded graphics. Someday we'll be running Sweet Wayland on Vulkan hardware. It's going to be great. With my Vulkan GPU accelerated Mate desktop on Ubuntu 16.10. Or maybe it's going to be 17.04. I'm not so sure.

But, you know, the great thing is, too, is our friends over at Valve have a particular interest in this. So they're watching this as well and moving it forward for the Linux side. They're working with Steam developers. I've got links about that in the show notes. So there's a lot going on here. Yeah, there is. This is a

big day. Mark it on your calendars everybody, the day Vulkan was born. And it's not the Mr. Spock variety. So we've got lots of links for you guys to go check out in the show notes if you're curious, including the Vulkan decision tree. Did you see that? Yeah, I sure did. This is a fun graph. That's good, right?

It will answer all your Vulcan-related deployment questions. Oh, also, because we could literally spend multiple episodes on this, and that would bore everyone to death. I'm just going to link you to a webinar the Kronos Group is doing on February 18th, a couple of days from now, 9 a.m. Pacific time. It's a webinar that's free. The link is just in the show notes. You can sign up.

What's Vulcan about? Learn about it. Learn about the API, the people who have been creating it. It's a one-hour session. They're going to talk about the API. They're going to go in details about the SDK and have a Q&A session. So if you want to, you can attend that and ask questions. If you don't want to, save that link, and after their webinar is done, they're going to post the video at the same URL.

Yeah. So depending on when you're listening to this, you can either attend the webinar or you can watch the webinar, a one-hour webinar, more details about Vulcan. The Kronos Vulcan working group chair is going to be there. The spec editor is going to be there. And also two of the SDK technical leads will be in the webinar. So they're obviously going to be way better positioned to talk about it. Don't ask us. Yeah, exactly.

So we've got that linked up there. I might try to attend that one or at least watch the results. But I feel like this is, even if you're not a gamer, this is a big deal. I feel like because with QT integrating it and all of that, this is the kind of thing that I've been wanting to see for a long, long time. I don't know. Does anybody in the member room want to cast a doubt? Anybody want to play Devil's Advocate? Because I'm riding the hype train right now.

I'm very excited about Vulcans. This is the happiest I've seen Chris in a long time. Well, yeah. That's true. I do like me the Vulcans. I can't help it. Yeah, so in the show notes, we have links to Well, yeah, that's true. I do like me the Vulcans. I can't help it. Yeah, so in the show notes, we have links to basically all the software downloads that are available for Linux right now if you want to check it out. Pretty excited.

All right. We got to talk about the Purism. We got the Librem 15. The one and only. Here, Wes. You know what I'm going to Wes. You know what I'm going to do? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to talk about Linux Academy for a moment. And while I talk about Linux Academy, I got a job for you.

I want you to hold this Librem in your hands, and I want you to identify the number one thing that's wrong with me, that I have wrong with it, just by the external appearance. You don't have to crack it open. You just have to observe the external appearance of the machine and identify. Now, don't say until after the Linux Academy read. But identify what it is, the number one thing that upsets me.

All right. So now I'll tell you about Linux Academy. Go to linuxacademy.com slash unplug. You go there, you visit. It supports the show. It lets them know you heard about it here. It's basic. It's obvious.

But here it gets even better. You also get a great discount if you want to sign up for Linux Academy. And man, is this a great service. Linux Academy is a platform built for Linux users and enthusiasts by Linux users and enthusiasts about all of the technologies around Linux. Unlike those BS other online services that say, oh, we'll teach you how to use Apache.

And then it's like one of many courses including how to fix the sync when it leaks, how to use Adobe After Effects, like all these other things that are totally unrelated because they just want to have as many courses as possible. That's not Linux Academy's approach at all. Linux Academy has step-by-step video courses, downloadable comprehensive study guides, instructor help is available on demand. You can choose from seven plus distributions. It'll automatically adjust the courseware. There's over 2,300 video courses. You can keep track of your progress as it goes along.

It breaks down hard, unbelievable concepts into hours that you can grok and you can actually execute on. They have courseware available that automatically adjusts to your availability. They're always doing updates. That's why you have a subscription, and it is worth it. They have live streams they're making available offline, even if you can't attend live. And they constantly have new scenarios they're putting out there. They give you hands-on experience. They have graded server exercises. They get you ready

to go out and actually test, to actually do the work. And if nothing else, they give you the ability to actually work with different types of technologies and maybe see what you find interesting. See what challenges you. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.

If you've ever had to get an AWS, I would invite you to go try out their courseware on it. Instructor mentoring. A great community stacked full of Jupyter Broadcasting members and updates all the time. They have really put a lot of effort into revitalizing older content so it stays current. They watch the trends in Linux to see what they should do courses on. It's a great system. Go check them out at

linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thanks to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Okay, Wes, you had some time to, you know... Yes, I did. You know, it's a nice looking laptop. It is. It feels good. Yes, I did. You know, it's a nice looking laptop.

It is. It feels good. Yeah, it's not too heavy. It's reasonably well balanced. It's metal. So that's kind of cool. You don't see that every day in a Linux laptop. So what is missing, as far as I'm concerned, on the Librem 15?

I will say there are some sharp edges on this thing. That's true. That's true. That is true. There's something missing, though, that's a pretty big deal to me. Can you guess what it is? You're looking in the right area right now. You're warm.

You're real warm, Wes. You're real warm. Well, there's no CD drive, but I don't think that's what you want. You're right. That's not it. It's got SD card. It's got USB.

It's got a DC in. That's important. That is important. It's got some seemingly mysteriously unlabeled switches. Yes, it does. Unlabeled switches. Hardware switches. It's got USB. It's got a DC in. That's important. That is important. It's got some seemingly mysteriously unlabeled switches. Yes, it does. Unlabeled switches, hardware switches. It's got HDMI. Yeah. I don't know. There's one port that's not there that's

pretty important to me. Ethernet. Oh! Yeah. Yeah, there's no Ethernet. And the one I backed specifically did list Ethernet. It was one of those little RJ45 drop-down ports that is like a half port that you have to pry open. Pry open before you can actually use it. But in the crowdfunding version, it did list Ethernet.

I don't like being live on the air and relying on Wi-Fi. So that was a bit of a bummer. It was the version I got, the edition I got, no Ethernet. And I've tried to track down when the Ethernet kind of disappeared, if it was a switch to Rev2 or not. But the initial report of Rev2, it would have Ethernet. And then there was another post where it doesn't. I have a few links in the show notes. So I was a little – I – you know, I –

You have to probably use like a USB 3 adapter or something. Yeah, and it's one of those things where I – the only reason why I kind of mentioned it is because I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't have Ethernet because Ethernet is actually a pretty big deal to me. I actually like gigabit speeds, not 802.11. And you want load latency for studio stuff anyway. Yeah, exactly. So that was sort of my first impression. But outside of that, the metal coloring, this is not a small thing. They nailed this.

Mine is not the dark metal. Mine is like an exact – looks like a MacBook. It really does. Yeah, metal, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's not a bad-looking machine at all. A couple other things, just first impressions that jumped out at me is the version I looked at online. They had – let me see if I can pull it up here for you. Scrolling, scrolling.

They show, there it is, there it is. They show what they call the Purism Key, which is the super key, which is where the Windows key is. That makes sure everything's pure. I'm going to go ahead and open the laptop up, which will wake it up, so you may start hearing it. Wes, if you could just take a look at the keyboard what what does that look like what key does that super key to you look like a square to you or does that look like a windows key now that looks like the windows logo chris yes i was so i was a little surprised that are you running windows on there did it come with windows no no i was a little surprised that the

keyboard had a windows key not a big deal but i was expecting the hardware that's another you're gonna have to get one of those little penguin stickers. Yeah, yeah. The other thing that's challenging about this is the specs that they list online do not match the specs that I was shipped because I got an older model. And the main thing that's really jumping out at me about this one, I don't know if you can hear it, Wes. Is it windy in the studio, Chris? No, Wes. I've woken the laptop up, and so that's the sound it makes. And it's loud enough, Wes, that you walk into a room.

What the hell is that? That's the laptop. That's the laptop. And I got to tell you, you walk into a room and you can hear this thing. Yeah, definitely. I heard it when I walked into the studio this morning. In fact, I'm going to put it to sleep again so the sound goes down. But it's very loud.

Are you holding it up to the microphone and shaking it around? Close to it. No, no. My mouth is much closer than the fan. I now have it off. It's very quiet when it's off, so that's a big selling point.

It sounds like weird noise. It sounds like what other laptops make when they're totally maxed out. Well, it might be a little weird because the gate is trying to specifically filter it out. Right. Yeah. It sounds like you're rendering a video or something.

So that sort of almost immediately eliminates it for production use. Wes, however, brought over a mini screwdriver kit, and I'm considering opening the bottom of it and seeing if I can replace the fan. It's not driver control. At least take a look, you know. So here's what I tried to do. It ships with Purism OS, and I thought, which is using Cinnamon for the desktop.

And the nice thing about that is you can actually manage the trackpad. So I reloaded it with Ubuntu 16.04 and did all the installations, set everything up. The only proprietary driver in use is the Intel microcode stuff. It's got Broadwell Iris 6100 graphics. That sounds nice. Yeah, it's a 3 gigahertz processor. There is nothing you can do thermal management-wise about that fan. So I could not.

There was no driver to load. There was no LM sensors command. There's nothing you can do. It is just hard set to full blast. It's wired just on maximum. You probably won't have any overheating problems. Yeah. So my hope is I'm going to pull off the bottom and see if I can replace that fan or

whatever. I mean, with integrated graphics and whatnot, I just can't imagine it needs to be running like that. Especially when you're not actively really doing it. Thank you. So FreeBSDSA says the email from 42715 states that the RJ45 was removed from Rev2.

Yeah. Is there a UFI settings for it? Perhaps. Go ahead, Wimpy. You had a question regarding the fan noise. No, I've got a potential solution for the fan noise. Though, Entroware ran into this fan noise problem when they were working on the same line of machines,

and it's a bug in the firmware from the odm and you may be able to work around this by holding the power down for like 10 seconds and hard powering off the machine and that may reset the system and the fans may correct themselves okay so i'm holding it down right now of course i just went to sleep when I did that, but it actually just turned off instantly. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that I'm willing to play around with. Yeah, that'd be great.

I did go through the BIOS and look for thermal management settings and stuff like that. I found nothing there. The trackpad. Let's talk about the trackpad. I've heard some interesting things about the trackpad online it looks pretty big alright so I'm holding it down for 10 seconds

the problem is it instantly turns off and then nothing happens the trackpad's big it works well the problem is both GNOME and Ubuntu by default

they just only allow you to scroll on the very small side here yes right if you use Pure as an OS it comes with Cinnamon and Cinnamon's mouse control panel settings

allow you to actually change it to two-finger scrolling, which works better. Keyboard's pretty good. The escape key on mine is a little mushy. It doesn't always register. Mushy. Yeah, my escape key doesn't always register, so I sometimes have to hit escape twice, which means sometimes I have to hit it four times. Yeah. So it's not awesome that way, but I'm holding it down for 10 seconds.

Let's see what happens maybe grub i'll hold it i'll keep it a grub so it doesn't boot all right so i should be about five seconds in this thing's really loud yeah it is okay this might be like a workplace hazard still running it hasn't turned off yet i don't know if it's going to turn off. I feel like I've been holding it for like 20 seconds. Feels like it's been like 10 minutes. Yeah, it's still gone. I know Mike's listening. Mike, telegram me.

There's something else we should be doing. Did it get quieter? Is it quieter now? I don't think so no what I was expecting is the machine should go off and once it's off you can then power it on again and it may

it's not guaranteed it may alright so I just let off and turn it no huh yeah yeah

your GQ is loose so FreeBSD you have yours what have been your initial impressions? It's not a bad piece of hardware. If I'd have seen it in the store before backing it, I probably wouldn't have bought it. All in all, it is nice, except for, like I said, the loose G key. And of course, when I'm running something other than PureOS, I have trackpad problems that I'm going to work on.

Yeah, that's been my experience too. Performance, pretty darn good. You thought it's been pretty performant on yours? Yeah, it performs really well. I've done some full screen flash movies on it with no problem. Now, Wimpy, I guess sort guess the trackpad has a bit of a rep. You know a little bit about some of its tricks already.

Yeah, there's no mainline Linux kernel support for the trackpad that's in the Librems. So there's been a few of us working on a driver for the BYD trackpad. And that's currently an out of tree patch and what um purism are doing is shipping a bespoke kernel with pure os has the full

touch gesture support in pure os but if you install any other version of Linux, then it will revert to a PS2 mouse. Hmm. Hence the weird scroll and stuff like that. So I have a kernel patch I can send you. Wow. Take it back like 10 years here. This is not why you buy a laptop dedicated for Linux,

though, you know? No, this is the point. And the other thing is, you know when in the past you've talked about system 76 don't just take the odm equipment and stick their badge on it and ship it out the door they actually work on you know firmware and bios enhancements and all the rest of it and get bespoke changes right yeah this is the same sort of thing that entroware have done and they've overcome some of these issues that you're discussing now like the fan for example and that doesn't seem to have happened here so here's the rig i got eight gigabytes of

ram 500 gigabyte ssd which I paid a little extra for. It's supposed to have a CD-ROM and DVD. It does not, which I don't care about. No big deal. But I'm looking at the specs I bought on Indiegogo. It is listed as having a CD and DVD ROM. It also ships with like a 65-watt adapter, which I'm not sure is actually enough. It takes a while to charge.

The nice thing is it's kind of small. I paid for a core – this is a 3 gigahertz Broadwell CPU. Iris 6100 graphics. Eight gigabytes of RAM. I would have preferred 16. Eight gigabytes of RAM. 1920 by 1080 display. I paid $1,824 for this machine.

If I was going to spend $1,800 on a machine today, you could guarantee it's going to come with Skylake. You could guarantee... Probably at least $1,600. Maybe dedicated graphics at $1,800. You might get that, too. Now, is it going to be something that has hardware switches for a webcam? Is it going to have something that has hardware switches for the mic and stuff like that?

I actually do really like that. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And I also like the idea of supporting a company who is pushing the conversation about privacy and security forward, and it's their primary leading cause. So those are things that my money went towards that I still like. Basically where I'm at right now with this thing is it has a strange USB-C port that I wasn't expecting. Yes, I saw that. That's interesting. I don't know.

You see, it didn't come with any documentation. It just came naked in the box. And it's a very generic box. In fact, when I got the box, I immediately started to feel like, oh, no. Like I immediately started like this. It was starting to set my expectations low because the box was used. The sit and finish kind of thing.

It had like five or ten other FedEx stickers on it. And there was not even like a brochure in the box, right? It was no documentation, nothing. No thank you for backing our project. Sorry it took so long, nothing. And so that sort of was like, eh, I'm a little worried about that. That all aside though,

like one of the things I would have liked to have in the box is what is this USB-C port? Because the one I backed doesn't have this port. The one I backed, where this port's at, was an Ethernet port. So, and is this USB, can I charge the device with this? Because it has- Is it real USB-C?

It's USB-C with an electricity bolt. Does that mean I can actually draw power from that port? Like what does that do? And I got nothing. I got no – there's also – there's questions if this is actually HDMI 2.0 or not. I'm not sure about that. Those are issues. Have you tried the SD card slot?

No. But I think the other thing I like is it looks like perhaps that's a physical switch for the SD card slot? no but I think the other thing I like is it looks like perhaps that's a physical switch for the SD card slot perhaps physically turn it off I'm not sure if I could get the fan replaced

this is a pretty the thing I do like about this is it is a damn unique one-off laptop yes it is it looks pretty special wherever you are with it it's a great showcase

for a lot of really good stickers because it's completely unbranded all over. It really draws your eye. There's no like big Mac logo or Dell logo. No Intel sticker, no nothing. In fact, the only sticker on it on the bottom is a UPC barcode, a small one. And other than that, it is untouched. It is a metal housing that is

untouched. It feels good in the hand. It has that MacBook angular slope to it. Yes, it does. It's got one, two, three, four USB 3.0 ports. That's pretty good. Plus the USB-C port. It's like four times as many on that MacBook. HDMI out, and it has headphones out,

and it has an SD card slot reader. I like that. This could, you know, my XPS 13 doesn't have an HDMI port, or I'm sorry, it doesn't have an Ethernet port either. If I can get this fan fixed, this could replace my XPS 13 doesn't have an HDMI port. I'm sorry, it doesn't have an Ethernet port either. Right. If I can get this fan fixed, this could replace the XPS for me. But it can't, I don't know if it can be a production machine without.

The lightning bolt by the Type-C port means it may support Thunderbolts as North Ranger. Is that true, North? Is that really a thing? Yeah, a lot of vendors, especially if you have a Broadwell system, north is that is that really yeah a lot of vendors especially if you have a broadwell system um are using an intel add-on chip in the chipset uh that provides not only type c port not type c usb support but also uh 40 gig thunderbolt things like external graphics cards that would be if i could hook up see that would make me feel a lot better if i could hook up a high-end Ethernet adapter to that USB-C port. Here's FreeBSD.

He sent this to me when he got his. There he was listening to episode 131 of Home Plus where we're like, where the hell is my laptop? And there's his purism right there. What was your out-of-the-box experience like, FreeBSD? Was it the same kind of like rattle experience or did you get some documentation? Did you get a nice – what was your initial experience like FreeBSD? Was it the same kind of like rattle experience or did you get some documentation? Did you get a nice, what was your initial experience like? Yeah, documentation, non-existent. I haven't played with the hardware switches yet to figure out what they turn off, but it would be nice if there was some information. I even looked on the hard drive to see if there

was documentation in the form of a PDF, and I don't see anything on there. All right, so I'm turning it back on. I'm going to check. There's proof. Yeah. Wimpy wanted to know if the BIOS, I want to give Purism credit here. The BIOS is like every setting you could ever want to tweak is available.

That's cool. Some OEMs, basically all of them, they really kind of limit down the BIOS. And this one, you know, you can tweak everything from overclocking to everything. So that being said, there's so much in here, it actually takes a little while to find stuff. I'm looking through here right now, and I don't know if I see Bluetooth, chipset, security. Look at all this stuff, Wes. I mean, look at all, and all of these have sub menus to them too

like there's just a ton of stuff in here yeah what specifically are you looking for wimpy um does it have a bluetooth device in it and the reason i'm asking you to look in the bios well. Well, I believe it's a BIOS, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it has a BIOS. Yeah. Is because I'm not sure if the Bluetooth device that's in the machine is supported by Linux,

so it may not go up. Oh, I could... I don't see anything in the BIOS, but you know what I'll do is I'll boot into Antigros Arch, which boots... I mean, one thing, by the way, is once Linux is installed, this thing freaking flies. It is nice to have a nice modern computer again. I tell you, it's been a little while. It looks like you've got that Samsung SSD in there.

And that thing is fast. So I'll see. I can log in right now, Wimpy. It just boots that fast. I'm already booting. I'm already in GNOME system settings. So I will take a look. It does look like it supports

UEFI, right? Yeah, it does. Actually, look at that. It's discovering the Bluetooth devices. It is discovering the Bluetooth devices around me right now, so it must have Bluetooth in it. All right, okay, cool. That works then. That's great. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah. That was something that they'd mentioned may not work at some point in the past, so they must have changed their... You know, I haven't tried the webcam either. Let me try the webcam real quick. Yeah, webcam works. Hey, look, that's me. Hey, look, Wes, there's you.

See? Well, it's me. Yeah, webcam. So the webcam works. That's good. Frame rate's a little low, but I'm going to keep playing with it. I think my next big task is see if I can alter that fan. And then on top of that, I'm going to just benchmark the shit out of this thing.

I mean, it's already going to sound super loud, so you might as well make it do some work. Yeah. Well, it's funny how mentally, in the back of my mind, I associate loud laptop with high CPU usage. So after I've been working on this thing for about 20 minutes, I was sort of just getting in the flow of things. And I remember thinking, I stopped my work phone and I go, why is my computer working so hard? Oh, wait. No, no. No, no.

It's just – No, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. So if anybody knows anything about the fan noise, I would love to hear your – If you could get that solved, I mean – Yeah. Yeah.

But that side, I'm going to put that aside. I'm going to keep working with it and see what kind of things I can get done with it. So I – just to recap, I paid $1,800 for this thing. It did ship 286 days late. It was originally expected to ship on April 2015. I backed it in November of 2015, I believe. November 22nd, 2015, I believe, is when I backed it. I'm sorry, 2014.

2014, right. Sorry. I wouldn't necessarily buy it today. But that said, I think it would be interesting. Like I'm picturing bringing it to conferences and whatnot. Yeah. You would, you know, it might be a pretty good machine, especially if you can just a little quieter. And the feel in the hand is good.

The hinge is good on the laptop screen. And it's nice to have something that feels like that. And it's not, oh, I bought a MacBook and I put Linux on it. It's like, this is something totally different. Yes, exactly. So that's exactly how I'm feeling right now about it. So this is the Rev2. Oh, one more thing I wanted to show you, which I'm not super happy with. I'm going to talk more about this

on last, and I'll have visuals to show you guys. It does have a backlit keyboard, and all of the Fn keys work, but I want to show you what the backlit keyboard looks like, Wes. Hold on a second. It's not working. Oh, there you go. So the keys are backlit, but the actual letters themselves are not translucent.

So just there's light around the keys, but you can't actually. It doesn't seem like that would be that bright at night. It doesn't work because the keys themselves are black objects in the night, and there's just light around them. There's basically an LED light behind the keyboard, but the keys themselves are black objects in the night and there's just light around them. The keys have, there's basically an LED light behind the keyboard, but the keys themselves. So if you were concerned about where the keyboard was, it would help you find that, but not the individual keys. Exactly.

That's just, you know. Yeah. They were confused about that. Exactly. So if you ever need to find your keyboard, it can, it can do that pretty well, but you can't find individual keys. If you ever need to find your keyboard, it can do that pretty well, but you can't find individual keys. So I guess at the end of the day, I would say if I was betting the farm on a laptop right now and that was my machine, I could make it work, but I would be very disappointed.

Chris? Windows key, I mean, all of that. Yeah, yeah yeah go ahead um i i don't know if this is because you're you know recording this and this is going out live and you know uh this will live forever on the internet or what but if i was in your position personally speaking i would be somewhere on the barometer between mildly pissed off and incandescent with Reg about this because you didn't get what you paid for. You paid a lot for it.

It came in a shitty box with no documentation, and it's not up to par. I would be sending it back. I would be getting pretty pissed off and want to talk to someone about it. I don't know. You're more chilled out than me, clearly. Well, because when I backed it, I knew it was a long shot. And I backed it for content because I wanted – I mean, I really like the idea of the ultimate Linux laptop.

We always have. You're right. Linux suckers. You're right. Because that's somewhat of a unicorn. And some companies, some very large companies still don't get it 100% right. And some companies, some very large companies still don't get it 100% right. So, yes, okay, it is somewhat surprising that a one-man band can churn out something better than Adele, you know, Sputnik or System76 or Entryway or whoever.

That would be surprising, yeah? But I still think they could have tried a bit harder. Yeah. I mean, I really want to be positive about this, but the honest truth is, I guess the reason where it's... I'm going to close the lid again because I just can't stand the fan noise. Where it falls down for me

is it begins with Purism OS. I bought this laptop to run Linux, not to run a specific distribution of Linux, and that's a bit of a letdown. And so that's where my letdown begins. The fact that I also bought a rig with an RJ45 port and it doesn't have one is a bit of a letdown. There's that. The issues around the fan, I mean, here I have an $1,800 laptop,

and my first order of business is break open the case and literally replace the fan with something I buy off Newegg, that's also not a great position to be in. I look at it as like a model kit car, like a spec car or something like that, only it's a laptop. It's a spec computer and that's how I'm looking at it. And now my best hope is to make it usable. at it. And now my best hope is to make it usable. I think if there weren't other solutions out there, I'd be feeling pretty desperate. I'd be feeling pretty bad right now. But the fact that

Entraware and System76 have solutions out there, and Dell, I'm feeling better about. Plus, this isn't your only computer. I mean, I realize you may have a bunch of old computers, and some of them are dedicated to other tasks, but this isn't your only computing device. I would imagine if you'd saved up your pennies and you were a student and this was your one computing device, you might be a little bit more pissed off. Oh, man. I would be really – I would be up a creek right now. Creek.

Now, FreeBSDSA. Okay. I thought it had NVIDIA graphics. So you remember that, too, that it included NVIDIA graphics? Oh, yeah. It was, remember, it was supposed to be for 2D. It was going to be the onboard Intel chipset. But for 3D, it was going to be discrete graphics from NVIDIA.

I didn't think I'd buy a 15-inch laptop with integrated graphics. Like, if I go integrated graphics, that's for my smaller form factor laptops. When I go 15-inch and above, I'm expecting. That's a working machine. That's a dedicated graphics. Yeah. I thought so. I thought so.

Oh. Do you remember the NVIDIA graphics issue? Yeah, I remember that that was the original, you know, launch spec. But I think they got a lot of negative feedback about how can this be a open-source friendly laptop with NVIDIA chips, and they went back on that and went with the Intel integrated instead. So if this Thunderbolt works, we can build you external housing

that has a nice external GPU and your Ethernet port. Right, I'm good. I'm good then. I wonder if that really is Thunderbolt. My other question is, if you do LSPCI, can you just tell us what the Wi-Fi card is and what the Bluetooth card is? I have that up on the screen right now. Let's see. I will wake it back up here. Okay. And Chris, while you're at it, I also mentioned the LSPCI output for that Thunderbolt controller.

Oh, clever boy. Clever boy. All right. So we have a Broad for that Thunderbolt controller. Oh, clever boy, clever boy. All right, so we have a Broadwell U-host controller. Let's see, audio device is Intel Broadwell U audio controller. USB is the Wildcat XHCI controller, communication controller for Wildcat Point. Let's see, what are we looking for specifically? Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Hmm. Bluetooth might be on the USB bus of course

Yeah I think it is because looking at LSPCI I see an Atherios AR9462 Wireless network adapter Okay So there's our Atherios wireless adapter That's the ATH9K But I do not see the Bluetooth controller Do you see that listed here Wes?

No Let's take a look But I do not see the Bluetooth controller. Do you see that listed here, Wes? No. Yeah, I don't either. So, yeah. Let's take a look. See if we can. Maybe LSUSB? Yeah. On the USB bus, I see a LightOn Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth controller.

So AR3012 Bluetooth. And a Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub. Hey, how about that? Everyone's favorite root hub. Yeah, exactly. And the CPU, just so that we have it all, I'll cap ProcCPUInfo real quick and then I'll shut it down again.

CPUInfo. It is the Intel Core i7 557U running at 3.1 gigahertz. And I'm closing the lid again because it's too loud. Is it only dual core? It is. Well, I think maybe the mobile is, but it says, I think it actually lists. I know, I just turned it off.

It does list three CPUs, which if you count zero, it means four cores. So, right? Right, right, right? If you count CPU, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. So let me bring it back right, right? If you count CPU, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. So let me bring it back up. I think it said three CPUs.

Yes. So it has four cores. Okay. Good. Yeah. I tell you what. I tell you what. The fan noise is really a killer for me.

It really is too bad. All right. Any other thoughts on your Librem before we wrap up the session? No, not really. I'll have more as I really dig into it and play with it. Okay. So it is two cores, and it's just because it has hyper-threatened the other logical cores. Yeah.

I'll give you guys more on it, too. I'm hoping to have more good things to report. So I've been primarily doing Ubuntu-based OSs, and now I've got Arch on there, do that for a couple of days. You can try Corora. Yeah, try install some Steam games, see how those play. See how it works from that perspective, actually getting work done. You know, one thing I have to admit, feels really good holding it.

Yeah. I'm holding it right now. It just feels good in my hand. It's really a pretty good weight distribution. Yeah, they really nailed that. The battery life, real early. I'm getting so far, and I've only done one full test, about four and a half hours. But I don't have any optimization stuff.

I was going to say, have you got power top or anything? Nope. But I did turn the screen down to like 80% from 100. But other than that, no other tweaks. Four and a half hours. I'm going to run it through a few more cycles. It's interesting. The different desktop distros

all are reading the battery differently for me. Of course. Yeah. Purism reads it one way. It says seven hours. Ubuntu 16.04 gave me four hours. And Arch said it's going to give me an hour and a half even though it was way wrong. Oh, man. It was way wrong. But yeah. So each desktop

I've installed has given me completely different reads on how long the battery's going to last. The only way to really find out is you've got to run it for a while. So I have that in testing. So if you have any questions, you can on linuxactionshow.reddit.com find episode 132. Ask your questions about the purism there, and I'll try to incorporate them into my review on

Sunday's episode of Linux Action. Hey, hey. Once you've really lived with it. Yeah. Once I get used to the trackpad a little more and see if I can maybe install you know maybe if you won't have an editor this is going to be an interesting Linux action show maybe you should just use it as your show machine

maybe it'll be a loud show we won't be able to hear you but the audience won't be able to listen to the whole show but I'll do it on a Purism yeah test that HDMI out I like the way the timing worked out I'll dump it on a Purism. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm – Test that HDMI out. I like the way the timing worked out because we got it right after we covered it last week.

And then I'm going to have a chance to actually really be fully like dedicated to this. And then the entryware will show up and I'll try that for a while. So I think the timing is actually – is pretty good. And I'll give you guys an update. I don't know. I'm in process of deciding where I'm at. I'm very happy to have it. Yeah, definitely.

And if you've gotten yours out there, let me know how it's going. Send us an email. Go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact. You can send us in your feedback or linuxactionshow.reddit.com. Or you can always join us live. Did you know the Unplugged show is live, Wes?

Oh, yeah. It's a blast. It's a big show. We've been having some big shows, and the live contribution from our member room makes all the difference. Go to jblive.tv. We do this show 2 p.m. Pacific on a Tuesday. Go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that converted to your local time zone. What?

What are you laughing at? What? What is it? Specs on the what? Thermal design at low noise. They say that on the site? Low noise? Low fan noise? It must be a firmware bug.

It must be. We'll find out. I don't know. I'll keep you guys updated. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you. Aw, crap, Wes. What if I try out Windows and the fan noise stops? Oh, you have to.

Now you have to. No, I don't want to. I'll install it for you. Since Rikai will be gone, I know he normally does that. The dirty deed for you. The dirty deed, yeah. I'll put Windows 10 on there. It'll be better than ever. You could probably waste

a whole weekend on this troubleshooting. I know. I know. That's why it's a Linux laptop. It gives you these little opportunities.