LINUX Unplugged - Episode 134: Pi 3: The Next Generation | LUP 134

Episode Date: March 2, 2016

After some updates about some of your favorite distros, we go hands on with the Raspberry Pi 3. Then we look at the AppImage project and their delivery on the download and run promise.Plus a make good on a recent mistake, looking at a new kind of distro funding model & much more!

I went on a distro desktop excursion that landed me on an open source over the last week. Really? Tell me about this. Okay, so sort of like a bender, if you will, like you binged. You went on a rampage. Distro bender. Oh, yeah. It was a heck of a bender, that's for sure. I like the rampage.

I think that's also a good one. Okay, so tell me about it. Tell me about it tell me about this journey and uh sir what were you striving for and did you find it well i thought i was going to try out kde so i decided okay okay kde kubuntu makes sense sure now let's do it kids in way have you heard of the neon have you heard of their neon the neon project stuff have you i didn't want to do that because of it pulling into JIT repos and everything. It's just a little bit too fresh for my taste.

Too hardcore. Sure, sure. Yeah. So I installed it. I had some problems. And I thought, okay, well, I'll install the backports. Maybe I'll fix it. Well, I fixed about half of the problems.

It gave me more problems. So that was not a solution for me. So then I was like, well, I'm already on Ubuntu. Let's remove everything but the base, strip it down, and let's try Ubuntu Mate. Okay. So you're like, I'm not even going to go, KD. I'm going to go a totally different route. Yeah, we're just like, yeah, let's go a different route here.

Okay. All right. So tried that out. Just wasn't for me. Now, that being said, a lot of what was on there really did impress me. But there were just some things that were breaking, like the sound card settings and whatnot. Suddenly I'd find my sound cards were disabled if I swapped between settings too many times, stuff like that. So it was a no-go, and I decided to go open

SUSE and try KDE again, because why not? Because the issue I was having was with KML and the PIM system. Kubuntu has a bad SQL backend package. Well, I still couldn't get the PIM to work, which sucks because email is important to me. And I wanted to use KML because I like that particular client. And if I'm on KDE, why not? So that wasn't a solution for me. So I'm back on GNOME and OpenSUSE.

All right. So I think the elephant in the room OpenSUSE. Alright, so I think the elephant in the room, I mean, just everybody's got to know. Why not Antigros and KDE? Because then you would get a rolling version of KDE. It never really crossed my mind. Have you used SUSE in the past?

SUSE, yes. Yeah, there you go. I mean, if it's in your real house already. That seems like a good reason right there. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 134 for March 1st, 2016. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's been getting its nostalgia on this afternoon. My name is Chris. My name is Wes.

Hey there, Wes. Yeah, I can't help it. We started talking about Mario. It's just too much fun. Yeah, and then I have to admit, I got a little distracted with the soundboard. Sometimes it's just too... There's no judgment here, but I will give you $10 if you can sneak one of those in on the next text message. Okay, good, good. Very nice. I'll try. Well, here's what I'm going to do to make it up for you. Great show today. Coming up on this week's episode of Linux Unplugged,

we got some updates from some of our favorite distros out there. Wimpy's here to give us an update specifically about Mate. We're going to talk a little bit about Raspberry Pi 3Zs. Yeah, yeah. Later on in the show, too, I did a pretty good job of putting my foot in my mouth. Well, I accidentally left out an important piece of information on Sunday's show. The audience noticed. A little errata, Wes.

A little errata in today's episode of the Unplugged program. And actually, I'm hoping we get to a wider discussion about what the core issue is. And if maybe it's time we just get off our porches and let the kids play on our lawn. I won't spoil it for you. Oh, also, Intel. The Intel Atom X3. They got this great new idea. Let me tell you how it works, Wes.

It's radical. You hook it up. You hook up your Android phone. You hook it up, Wes. Desktop environment. Whoa. From the Android phone. That's new.

Convergence. It's a new word. They're using it. They're throwing it around. You got From the Android phone. That's new. Convergence is what they, I, it's a new word. They're using it. You got to check it out. Something from Intel running Debian. We'll be talking about that on today's episode of the Unplugged program. We've also got a bunch of other goodies in there, including some interesting follow-up from the Mint team, which is actually going to be the first thing we cover. Before we get there, though, Wes brought us a new beer. Something that has been hitting me in the face.

So I'll bring in the mumble room, too, so we can chat about this with them and see what they think about it. Time-appropriate greetings there, Virtual Lug. Hello. Hello. Greetings. Hi there. So I've had the privilege

of Wes stopping by and bringing beers with him. Stopping by. It just happens. I'm like, hey, Wes, if you've got this beer, you might as well sit in and do a show. Then one thing leads to another. These are my secrets. Every week we've been trying different stuff.

Now, this one's a local from just south of us down in Oregon. It's called the Wanderlust Indian Pale Ale. Fresh hops, bold flavor from America's Northwest. 6.2% alcohol by volume. And I'm like, geez, this thing's really kicking me in the face, Wes. I'm like, I'm not sure. I was like, this thing's really strong. This is where the Mario came from, I think.

Yeah, it was. A lot of taste. It has a 89 score on Beer Advocate. But here's what's going on with this thing. They've put grapefruit in here. They got grapefruit. So we're drinking a beer that's got grapefruit in it. here's what's going on with this thing.

They've put grapefruit in here. They got grapefruit. So we're drinking a beer that's got grapefruit in it. So if you're sitting around having yourself a virtual log meeting, drink yourself a citrusy beer, and you'll be right in step with us. Anyways, moving on from the beer of the day today, big story from last week was Linux Mint and the hack to the Linux Mint website via WordPress, which led to compromising ISO images.

Yeah, no good. compromising ISO images. Yeah. No good. Big discussion around that. And since then, we have an update from the Mint project. Clam has gone to the Linux Mint blog, and he's posted part of the monthly news update that he does. And in here, he addresses the recent attacks. So I just thought maybe we'd go through some of this and just get an update directly from him. Yeah, it's a pretty big post.

Yeah, and I've pulled out a few sections here. He says, I'd like to thank the PHBB team and Automatic, the company behind WordPress.com, for reaching out to see if they could help us in any way. I'd also like to thank Avast for working with us on this. They contacted us and offered to help analyze the fake ISO. We gave them a copy of it and all the info we already had. A day later, they came back with a full malware analysis. And they were able to issue an update to warn people who might still be affected by it. Avast also pushed

updates toward their own users who run Avast to block the servers. Finally, the addresses of the malware connecting to the server were shut down or blacklisted by Kaspersky's DNS sinkholes. I've been really impressed by Avast and the awesome work they did. It helped us react a lot quicker.

I also thank a few other people. They also talk about a new partnership they have for security auditing, but I want to jump ahead a little bit in the article. Aspects which could be used in future attacks. This was like, what did you learn, is what I'm thinking, right? So here's what he says. To protect you and reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, almost all of our websites will be moved to HTTPS.

So you are guaranteed you are looking at the real Linux Mint server, and the communication between you and us is encrypted. So HTTPS, going on the Mint sites. To make ISO verification more accurate, we will communicate SHA-256 sums and GPG

information more prominently going forward. MD5 was displayed as a primary means of verification with SHA-256 and GPG being available for people who really wanted them. We will review the way this information is shown and try to make more people use SHA-256 and hopefully also GPG by default.

Now, this seems like a direct response to – Yes, it does. You impressed by that? Those are good things. I do note that I'm looking at the blog right now, not using HTTPS. I didn't type that, but they don't redirect it. Yeah, I noticed that too. I mean, it says it's coming.

Yeah, you're right though. Something else. that too. I mean, he says it's coming. Yeah, you're right though. Something else. Aspects which relate to the operating system. We'll be considering re-adding GFU FW, GUFW, which is the firewall config tool

to the default software selection. What happened was a very uncommon, but as our project and Linux in general are getting more popular, our operating system is becoming more and more of a target. We cannot ignore the threat of malware and think that it only affects Windows, so maybe a firewall by default.

And he says, thanks to all the people who donated to us and to all of our sponsors, we feel a bit guilty this month because the attacks took all of our focus. We didn't work on Mint as much as we wanted. There are some really cool things going on in development, like there's now four X apps projects, XED, XReader, XPlayer, and XViewer.

Most of the Mint tools were migrated to Python 3, GTK 3, and G Settings and given better HDPI support. And we're looking at improved out-of-the-box touchpad support. But he actually mentions a couple of times in this post here how it really sucks that this thing robbed development time away from the project. And he really seems to be kind of sore. So overall, Mumbleroom, what are your thoughts on sort of Mint's answers and improvements here? Good enough?

A good start? Anybody have a take? Yeah. Why has it taken this to GPG sign his ISO sums? I've looked back over the ISOs and other distros were doing this more than 10 years ago. Why is he only doing it now? Weren't they available before? Just not?

They were hard to find? That was my take from it, but I'm not sure. But it's a good point. I mean, it should be. It feels to me that, like they said, he's focused on development and continuing the operating system, and I think the popularity of Linux Mint shows that he's doing a good job, or at least there's people that really appreciate what they're doing,

but they really need someone in the community to step up and make it their first priority to do these kind of admin jobs that you can't half-ass when you're a big community. Right, you become a massive attack service when you're that popular. And there's no doubting that Linux Mint is very popular. And so you've got to take care of those things because if you don't, stuff like this happens.

It's, you know, 101. Here's what actually grabbed my attention in the blog post. Because I think when we talk about Mint, everybody who's not like a big Mint fan 101. Well, here's what actually grabbed my attention in the blog post. Because I think when we talk about Mint, everybody who's not a big Mint fan has a list of Mint issues. Like, oh, I don't like that they do X, or I don't like that they don't do kernel updates, or whatever, right? I don't like that they don't do kernel updates. It's a pretty common one. And, Clem, address that in this blog post. One of the key advantages of Linux Mint is its stability versus security policy.

The level of information shown at the update management is configurable. It puts the power in the hands of the user, which is something that is lacking in many other operating systems. For all that power to be an asset, though, users need to understand what is at play. So he's kind of admitting that maybe they could do a better job of informing users about the decisions, but essentially saying, we're keeping this. We're going to prove it. We're going to continue to improve it, but we're keeping this policy of not necessarily doing kernel updates by default because it's stability versus security.

Now, why do I bring that up? I bring that up because I think stability versus security, stability versus security. I think you can use that rationale in millions of ways when you're managing a project. And I think what it was, and to answer your question directly, Popey, is steps were taken that seemed sufficient for the job at hand. And looking at it practically, this extra work just didn't need to be done. It wasn't important. And I think that's been readdressed and re-evaluated now. That's my take.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this, you know, if there's any more incidents, if things kind of just pick up, if they take these things more seriously. Yeah, it seems like, and they've got, like I said here, they've got a deal with a group that's going to continue to audit and check in on their security.

So that seems like a good thing. And it's nice to have a good update. Yeah, transparency is key in these kinds of things. I guess in the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse. Right? And so this is a good way to sort of— Relatively short. Yeah.

Didn't last very long. Been pretty clear on communication. All right. Cool. Interesting just to get an update from the Mint team, and so I wanted to follow up on that. I also figure why don't we shine a little light on the Fedora project. You know, them Fedora guys are working on a new release. Fedora guys and gals, of course.

And so Matthew Miller sat down with PC World and did a little interview, I believe with Chris Hoffman, talking about Fedora and its growth and some of the directions Fedora is going in. And Wes, this doesn't sound like your father's Fedora. No, it does not. Fedora wants to start converting people who aren't already Linux users over to the platform, but they don't mean targeting the average desktop user. Fedora Workstation is still focused on being developer-targeted environment, but as Miller says, developers are people too. Here's the part, though, that I thought was interesting. Ready for this? Fedora has never officially supported drivers and codecs

because it has a focus on free software, and it has no plans to do so. However, now these aren't really plans, but Fedora Project would like to make the process of installing them less painful. And there will be a big conversation about that in the next year. Direct quote from Miller. If you need to have those graphics drivers and you're a grown-up, you can make that decision yourself. Hey.

Now, this is the Fedora that really sparked the whole debate on Mono not being included by default in Linux. This is the Fedora that has made it such that there are spinoffs like Corora that make actually just using some of this stuff reasonable. And there's a group, RPM Fusion, that's been around forever to try to fill in some of the rough spots. So this is a Fedora that once was, that's not free software. We won't accommodate that. Well, you know, if you want to be a grown-up and install your own graphics driver, that's fine.

You have that choice. If you want to be a grown-up. I thought that was pretty interesting wording. Mumbaroom, am I reading too much into this? Anybody want to be a grown-up? So it's kind of interesting uh it's it's kind of a different step from where they have been and more towards uh kind of where a lot of other people have been for a while uh i think it's i think it's acknowledging that you know maybe we can continue to be a free software distro and then also give a better option.

Kind of like the Debian route. I like producer Q5 says, this is the Fedora we need, not the Fedora we deserve. It might be reverse of that. But Fedora 24 will also feature a layered image build service, which will be designed to make creating and providing containers as easy as creating a standard RPM package. Fedora also includes a preview of XTG apps, which enables sandbox desktop apps.

And Wayland will make sandboxing possible as well. Wayland's going to be in there. They said we wanted to have something that kind of brings Fedora activities visible to the web. So Fedora Hubs is going to be a new web-based social media portal where information about Fedora is going to be available. And it should also foster interactions, for example. They say this is a new project they'll be working on. People on the Fedora design team could collaborate and share designs in that hub.

It's designed to make it easier to jump in so you don't have to learn mailing list cultures or IRC etiquette to get involved. They're going to have a new way to share with people online. I see here they've also got notifications when long-running terminal jobs end. That is sweet. That's nice. I think it's been there for a little bit. But that is nice. I do like that.

I like this layered imaging approach for making containers, but I tell you what, this new tone, which I'm not necessarily disagreeing with, but I think it's going to upset some long-time hardcore Fedora fans. I'm curious what that means. Make it less painful. See how far they go.

And the positioning is a strong one. Well, if you want to be an adult. That's a loaded sentence. Yeah, that is a loaded sentence. Mr. Wimpy, are you present, sir? Present. Alright, present and accounted for. So Wimpy, after the break here, I want to chat with you

about the Ubuntu Mate update that you just posted. We'll save the Raspberry Pi 3 stuff for a little bit if we can, but since we just did a Fedora update and we just did a Mint update, we should do an Ubuntu Mate update. It's only fair. Yeah, it's only fair. Well, that's very kind. Right, right, and you had a good post.

It was very nice, so I want to talk about that. So first, I'll mention our friends at DigitalOcean. Head over to DigitalOcean.com and support this show and get yourself an awesome Linux rig for like totes free for two months. When you use our special promo code DEOUNPLUGGED, one word, lowercase. Give you a $10 credit. Boom, you go over there, spin up a $5 rig in less than 55 seconds. For $5, you're going to get 500 megabytes of RAM. Yeah, yeah.

A 20 gigabyte SSDs, because they're all SSDs, Wes. No way. They is. One CPU that's blazing fast and a terabyte of transfer. They got Ubuntu's up in there. They got the Debian's. They got the Fedora's, the CentOS's. They got the CoreOS.

Did I mention they even have free BSD? No. I have to admit it, Wes. It is true. The rumors are true. And it runs like a boss. That is also true. They have a HTML5 console

so you can log into the website and get access right there. From post all the way up to the login, which I just can't do without that sometimes. You don't need it that much, but when you really need it, you're just like yes. It's so easy. That is totally the thing. Their interface is super intuitive, very straightforward. If you're managing one droplet,

many droplets, you want to deploy an entire application stack or a base Linux rig it's nice and easy they got data centers in New York San Francisco Singapore Antenna

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rumors about a new data center very soon so go check them out they have a straightforward API which means in all practical terms, there's just a ton of really great open source code already written you can take advantage of, including libraries.

If you do that Python thing. You heard of that? Oh, I love that. You heard of the Python? Yes. Yeah. Have you heard of the Perl? Yes, I have. Yeah, the Perl. I am familiar. They got libraries for those things. And others, Wes. It's all new to me, something to do with computers, but you should check it out.

Don't listen to Chris. He doesn't know anything. Nope. Never heard of these things before, but I do know you can use the promo code D1plugged over at DiddyLotion.com and get yourself a $10 credit and support this show. And by the way, check this out. How to use Ansible and Tink VPN to secure your server infrastructure. Now, you've talked about this stuff before.

That's exactly what I do. I will check that out. We'll have a report back on it next week. This is a heck of a how-to. Look at that graph. Oh, man. Look at these graphics. Look at the way they do all the commands there. The config file's nice and easy.

DigitalOcean has great tutorials. That's beautiful. Oh, man, that's just a great service. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code DEOMPLUGGED and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. All right, Mr. Wimpy.

So, I noticed over on the ubuntu-Mete.org slash blog blog that there is a February 2016 supporters update. And I don't know, Wes. I don't know if you saw this number here. And maybe I'm reading something wrong here. Am I correct in looking at there has been $1,500 sent upstream now? Is this right? Am I misreading something? This is astounding. Yeah. I don't quite know what the currency conversion is. So it's a touch over 1,500 euros. And I think that's around $1,500 to $1,600, something like that. $1,668. Yeah.

That's great. So, Wimpy, just for those who maybe are not familiar, there's various methods that your project is collecting funds. I know one of them is Patreon. That's how I do it. But there's other methods, right? Yep. There's Patreon. And then people who choose to – so on the download page, we put a thing out saying, you know, if everyone tipped us $2.50 for a download, there'd be enough to pay for the full-time development of Ubuntu Mate and the Mate desktop. And a good number of people actually take us up on that invitation and pay some money when they download.

And, yeah, we've been able to plow a good deal of that money back into the upstream developers that have been helping with either Ubuntu Mate or the Mate desktop. I really like that. Wow. I think that's such a cool model. And so in February now, not only has there been a pretty good amount of fundraising, but is this your highest fundraising? How is this going for

you exactly? Is it continuing to trend upwards? Is it leveled off? What's that like? This is the most we've done in a month. I think up to this point, we've done about $3,000. So with this on top, it's about $4,500, something like that we've done about three thousand dollars so with this on top it's about four and a half thousand dollars something like that we've done uh over the course of the project but the last few months uh we're having some server restructuring and the bandwidth bills uh for the raspberry pi stuff were just massive oh man so that was that was lot of the money. I was wondering, like, what is one of the most expensive aspects of running a distro, if it's bandwidth, if it's what?

Yeah, yeah. The Raspberry Pi 2 downloads are almost equivalent to that donation figure that you're seeing there every month. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, and you'd hope people would use torrents, but I suppose it's just not feasible for everybody. A lot of people do use the torrents, but we maintain a couple of web seeds to keep same with us ticking over yeah same

with jb that's that's where it goes yeah same thing because you want them to have a fast download so if the download is not going fast the web seed is it's it's all part of the experience you know a lot of people they click download and they expect it to come down as fast as their broadband will allow them and if your project is not doing that that's immediately a black mark so we try to keep the the torrents well the well seeded um but yeah so uh we've the the real the real thing for this here is that um we had a lot of work that needed to be done in February because I've started a new job not so long ago. I haven't had as much time to dedicate to the project. But with the money coming in and some restructuring on the server side, we've been able to reuse the money that we've had coming in on the development side. So this month we've been able to approach eight developers

and ask them to do bodies of work for either Ubuntu, Mate, or the Mate desktop. And they've all come through. They've all delivered. We're not paying them anywhere near, you know, what they're actually doing. In some cases they're getting close to market rate in a few cases they've they've put in weeks worth of effort you know for not much money at all so it seems at least with it seems to me though you're getting so you're hiring these developers to to essentially massage things the way you want to deliver the desktop the way you want right not higher so much as sort of incentivize yeah not not even that

i mean in most cases when i approach these guys and say look i'd really like this doing would you be prepared to do it we can offer you this by and large the first response is um i don't want any money i will just do it but uh and there are there there are people that are not on this list because we've approached them and they've simply said, I don't want any money, I'm just going to do it. And all of these people were saying, that's not necessary, but I want, so for example, some of the guys on this list,

they've used the money to buy equipment to help them develop for Marte desktop or Ubuntu Marte. Oh, that's great. So that's where it sort of comes full circle, giving them something that they can use that they can then plow back in. And one of the guys, one of the, one of the guys just said, um, I'm going to use the money to buy a comfortable chair. You know, it's a very simple thing, but he had an uncomfortable chair he was never comfortable

sat at his computer he's a student uh i believe and he he just said i'm gonna go out and buy a new chair tomorrow and i thought that was lovely it looks like a couple of folks were involved in porting the mate desktop over to gtk3 yeah so wolfgang and vlad they're both core mate uh desktop developers and they're primarily working on that porting effort and they have been for months um and i it's it's essential work it's a thankless task because there are all sorts of edge cases and weird bugs that um that come up and that hundred dollars that they each got is like nothing because for weeks and months of effort. But it's a thank you very much.

You know, your efforts are well recognized. Appreciate what you're doing. This is the future direction. Tell me about Mate integration into Synapse. What's this about? Right. So the back end of last year, I worked with Rico, the maintainer for Synapse, and we added some of the Marte integration to Synapse.

And I was supposed to come back and do that work, finish it off, but I ran out of time. So I went back to him and I basically said, look, this is the bits that we need adding. Can you do it? Can you get the packages into Debian? Can you get them into ubuntu and can you do it all before 1604 goes final oh that's great and and if you do it you know if you're able to do it i've got i forget how much it was but i an amount of money that i will

give you to say thank you for your efforts and recognize your contribution to the project. And I think I asked that question on Friday, and it was all done yesterday. Nice. No way. Wow. Wow. And, you know, I really have been using this Apollo as my main driver. And the one thing I would like is a little bit snappier launcher. I want to fire it off.

So snaps, it cross my mind. So, Wimpy, what strikes me about all of this is, well, all of this will make Ubuntu Mate a better project. But none of it is specific. None of it's specific to Ubuntu Mate. It all goes upstream. You're actually improving. In most cases, you're just helping continue improvement of the Mate desktop in general or something like that. I guess maybe the welcome screen might be sort of specific to the distro.

That is absolutely our sort of USP. So, yes, the Ubuntu Mate welcome and Mate tweak, those are the things that are absolutely Ubuntu Mate. They're absolutely specific to us. And the two guys that I've donated some money to for working on Ubuntu Mate Welcome are Ubuntu Mate developers. But people are donating to Ubuntu Mate. So I think it's fair to distribute that across multiple projects. And when you look at some of the other stuff we've donated towards, if you look at Top Menu GTK, for example, which is now being maintained by the Marte team in Debian.

And those packages have been introduced to Debian and Ubuntu. But more importantly, Top Menu GTK also includes plugins for LXDE and XFCE. for LXDE and XFCE, and we package and maintain those plugins as well, which are also now available in Debian and Ubuntu 16.04 for those desktops to take advantage of. So we've not just said, oh, well, we'll just do the bit that's for Mate. We've done the whole thing.

It's interesting because this work overall sort of helps improve the whole ecosystem. Yeah, it really does. I like that. And it's a great model of how to support the people that support you. You know, I want to give Kitson a second to ask his question. But then, Wes, help me remember to come back to the model point because I look at Elementary OS and I look at other projects and I go, OK, this seems really like there's a model here that Wimpy is working with. They're going to be applied to a lot of distros that would, I think, help a lot of people out.

But let's hold that question, and Kitson, I want to give you a chance to jump in before we go too far. So go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to ask Wimpy two questions. The first one being, where does he see Mint Xapps becoming relevant with Mate? Because it seems like they have a lot of same goals. And what's the status on getting a GUI package management system in? Right. The first one about X apps, I don't know much about

because I'm not really all that observant of what's going on with Mint. But my understanding is that some of those X apps are actually forks of Mate applications. So I don't know. I guess Mint are changing the dependency so they can stand alone more, not have to pull in session managers and things like that that are part of the desktop they're bundled with. I don't see X apps featuring in mate or ubuntu mate what if they

wouldn't be though what if they ended up with you know just universally considered one of the better file managers if they did that or one of the better text editors there wouldn't be like a policy against this just they'd have to be a compelling reason right yeah yeah and at the moment we have a file manager and we have a text editor, for example, and that integrates very tightly with the rest of the desktop environment. So when you drag something from the file manager into the text editor, the file just opens in the text in Marte, because of its heritage from GNOME 2, is about the best out there. You know, you can drag-and-drop anything from anywhere. I'll play with that more. Yeah, you really should. It understands the context of everything.

It's a powerful interaction, too, for a lot of users. Yeah, it's nice and quick. So, Xapps, I don't know. We shall see. Certainly for 16.04, we're now in feature freeze. So really it's bug fixing and refinement at this point. So don't expect there to be any big changes in 16.04. 16.10 is going to be the playground for the future.

That's when we can start to mix it up again. Okay. Now, your next question was about package managers. Do you mean package managers or software centers? Software centers, package managers, et cetera. Okay. So in Ubuntu Mate 16.04, we've talked about Ubuntu Mate Welcome. A spinoff in Ubuntu Mate Welcome in 15.10,

there is a section where you can install software. That's still there. It's been expanded somewhat and also can be launched separately. And you'll find that now in the menus, and it's labeled as the software boutique. So that is our place where you install software. We have about 120 applications listed in there, which is the best in class application that integrates well with the Mastery desktop

to get a particular task done. Yeah, this is really something, Wimpy. And I really like that there's just a one-click high proprietary software if you want. Nice. It's like the best bridging of my mom could figure it out and people who want free and open source software. It works for them too. And Wimpy gave me a PPA so I could try to play with some of this. And, you know, for setting up the new Apollo, it was just –

That's awesome. It's super slick. It really is. So, yeah, I like this approach, actually, Wimpy. I like this a lot better than, say, the Ubuntu Software Center because, you know, for a lot of users, they get kind of a static config once they have it up and going. And this really spotlights the best stuff here. I mean, this is a better up front and center than any App Store attempt I've seen on Linux

yet. Definitely. Yeah. center than any app store attempt i've seen on linux yet definitely yeah so you know usually app stores have a like uh featured apps in different sections the whole software boutique is the featured apps that's that's just what it is it's not everything it's just the best stuff there's mb look at that look at that nice minecraft. Minecraft server. Open SSH, yeah. X to go. Yeah, it's not a huge list, right?

But it's a great list. A Samba server right here. I mean, this is really cool. This is really, I guess, causes her. They also do some extra stuff. So, for example, if you're in the server section at the moment by the sound of it, if you click the button to install SSH, it also, behind the scenes, sets up SSH guard for you. Really?

Nice. So there you go. So that's sort of the answer in the question of the App Store. Yes. It's sort of a new take on it. Yeah. Okay. And also you'll find in there that if you want to explore the full Ubuntu catalog, then the options to install AppGrid, the Ubuntu Software Center,

and Synaptic are there. Yeah, I saw AppGrid is there too, which is pretty good. There's Ubuntu Software Center and Synaptic. And of course, GDEBI is installed by default, which is what I like for installing Debian files that I download, or dev files. All right, so let's talk about the model for a second, because here's what we have. I think if you assume a couple of things. You need to have a distribution that appeals to a wide enough base that there's enough people to draw from to donate. Right. So that's going to – you can't – I mean some of your really small, small distros, they don't qualify.

But I think your distros like Antigros, Elementary OS, obviously Ubuntu Mate, Kubuntu, any of these around this size, they'd all qualify. They'd all fit. The particular model that I'm sussing out, Wimpy, and tell me if you think I've got it wrong, is you're kind of doing a few things. You're very up in front representing what people are getting for the money. Essentially, you're saying this is where the money went. This is what some of the costs were. And you're applying – you're kind of being flexible in how you're bringing in the money. So it can be through a direct funding method or it can be through Patreon and you're

kind of bringing all of the funds in. And so that seems to be – and then what you're doing is you're kind of being specific in targeting where that money goes out when you do spend it, either for infrastructure costs or to incentivize a developer to work on something. And then when you do that, you report on it. Now, is this sort of the rough model that you could say you're applying to fund the Ubuntu Mate project? Not to make you put it all out there, but what I'm asking is, it seems like in some

sense that's kind of obvious, yet nobody's really quite done this. So we originally started by, if you look back through the monthly reports, we picked a particular project that was either integrated into Ubuntu Mate or Ubuntu Mate was using for development or something. And we would sponsor that project. I say sponsor. We would donate some money to that project. Right, I remember. we would donate some money to that project right i remember um and what i found doing that is actually you start a relationship with the developer that you don't know by doing that and then you get this oh well you know if there's anything i can ever do

um you know to help you out just ask you know and it's it's you know you've made a fairly modest contribution to their project in order to sort of get that offer for help and that actually paid off with um calculator which is the calculator utility that's um used by default uh in marty as a whole not just on a bungee marty but marty in general and there was there was a bug in that in the 1510 cycle and i went back to the developer because i'd contributed to that, you know, previously. And he was like, oh, sure, no problem. We'll get that fixed. And I just thought, hmm, this is better going to individuals rather than projects because there are some projects we've donated to.

And I won't name them. And the money just sort of goes into the project and there's no dialogue has been formed as a result right and so you're not establishing a relationship necessarily yeah yeah you've just you've just deposited some money somewhere and that was the end of that right so i've i in recent months i'm starting to use this technique of well i know that there are these people working on these things these are the things that i would like to see implemented for Marte or Ubuntu Marte. I can go to these people and say, will you do this one thing? And if you can do it, there is this amount of money that we can donate to you for doing the work. donate to you for for doing the work and if you expand this out if all of those other projects because i think distributions are able to pull in more donations than say individual applications right so if those if all the distributions were pooling their money like this and were handing

out discrete tasks because some of these tasks actually took far longer my original idea is each task was you know some hours of work not days of work although i've i've not got that right in some cases the other is you give somebody a body of work that should take a few hours and you pay them something close to market rate for doing that work but it's a very carefully defined has a known um scope of work right yeah yeah and and that's the idea and and if other distributions were able to do that then maybe there would be more of these independent software developers working on open source that would be able to do these smaller piecemeal tasks and maybe not make a salary just yet but maybe earn supplement at least yeah supplement their salary yeah because ideally the what the size of the work i'm giving out here

is something you can do in the evening right it is an interesting model. And I look at – so I've been following elementary OS for a while and I find what they do to have a unique – it has a unique appeal, what they've been trying to do for a while. So I've always liked to watch it. And they're really forming a company. They're forming a full-on business. And I guess there's a mix there to be had, right, of it being a company for certain legal reasons. But then also when I think of – so I guess what I'm trying to say is today when I think of the modern elementary OS team, when they introduce a new person coming onto their project, they introduce them as a new person joining their company. It's not a new community member. Right.

And so that doesn't seem to be a line that the Mate project has crossed. And I'm not making a judgment call there, but I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that. And, I mean, Ubuntu Mate, there must be – there is a company involved, right? No, there's no company involved here. So it doesn't necessarily dictate for the model to work that there has to be a business about it, really. No. So Ubuntu Mate is what's called a CIC in the UK. Okay.

It's a – I forget the – corporate – Community interest company? That's the words on the people. Community interest company. And it's basically a way of setting up a charity-like organization without actually having to go through all the red tape of being a charity. Oh, that's nice. Okay. Interesting. And I know it's

apples and oranges, perhaps, but I just thought there's a lot of different takes we're seeing out there right now. And I don't know. It seems to me now that the landscape is actually more fascinating than it's been ever. So, Wimpy, anyways, I'll have a link to the update for February.

But if people wanted to support the project, what's your preferred way? Is it Patreon? Do you have a preferred way? It doesn't make much of a difference at the moment. The thing I'm struggling with is it doesn't matter whether you're contributing via PayPal or Patreon. There is a slice of money being taken out by various organizations there. And I'd like to find a way where that is minimized in the future, but it's going to take time to sort out.

I believe that is called Bitcoin. In time being, yeah, I would prefer Patreon, even if it's small amounts, because that's predictable amounts of money that we can plan on. But that said, the one-off PayPal donations that people generously give to the project are far in excess of what Patreon generates. But Patreon would be preferred because there's some predictability in what was in there. I just want to underscore that welcome screen is super cool for installing Spotify, which is sometimes a bit of a pain in the ass on Ubuntu, to be able to just have a button there.

All right. So before we move on, chat room or mumble room, any last questions for Ubuntu? Oh, Kitson, go ahead. You've got our last question before we move on. Go ahead. Actually, it's more of a statement. I just wish more projects and distros had Patreon-like subscriptions because that would be something I'd totally do when I settle down on a distro

and use it for a long time is I'd like to be able to contribute, and I'm not a coder. Yeah, I would. I could see that too for like maybe you get betas or things before. You get access to behind-the-scenes development if you're a supporter. You know what? If Elementary OS did that, I would see that too for like maybe you get betas or things before you get like access to like behind the scenes development if you're a supporter. You know, if Elementary OS did that, I would do that. And if Anagro did that, I would do that. And I don't want to pay $10 one time for the ISO.

I want to – if I like it, I want to support it. If you do the tiering rates right, I would back – I would keep my backing for all of them. You know, if it's five bucks or whatever. I mean I bounce between all of them enough that – They're all useful. And if you look at, like, one – so my Linux desktop is infinitely more powerful than Windows 10, and Windows 10 costs $400. If you get the Pro or $399 or $299 – whatever, $299 to get Pro. I have no problem kicking in five bucks for ongoing continuing development of a kick-ass desktop. So I think more people should get on there.

So, yeah. Well, cool, Wimpy. Thank you for – stick around because Wimpy has had a little time with the new Raspberry Pi 3. Special access. Yeah. A little early bird preview. So he's going to give us his take on that and also I hope to get a little bit of inside info about getting Ubuntu Mate up for it. Right on the release day, people were impressed.

But first, I wanted to mention a project called AppImage that we've talked about before. But it's got some stink behind it now, Wes. It's got some real stink. Like, you could get up and running right now on your distro. I'm doing it right now. Are you? Yeah. So AppImage allows you to run Linux apps anywhere.

Yeah. It's an application that you just drop it on the file system and you can run it, right? Yeah. You download the file, you chmod plus x and execute that, and it runs. It actually has an ISO file system in it, and it fuse mounts that into slash temp and then runs the app from there. So is it a shell script you're downloading that runs? No, it's an executable.

So this is, like, they have all kinds of stuff available for it already. Like, they have app images you can just download. Here, I'm running Krita right now. Look at you. Or Krita. Krita, yeah, there you go. Look at you doing Linux. You've been drawn over there on Krita during the show.

But it's running great. It was like an 80 meg download. They're bigger sizes, but that's really not a big deal. It downloaded in a few seconds. And what's the update process? Do you just go download a new one? That's a good question. I don't know.

Because all the libraries must be contained in that. They are contained, yeah. So Linus Torvald says he loves it. They also link to his Google Plus post where he talked about getting his subsurface in there a while ago.

And then we also, don't look at that, we also have a link to some of the app image containers where you can go get them right now. So this is something I should try, you think, huh? You think I should actually play with this? You know, I think it could be useful for some people. I think Linus had some good points in that Google Plus thread when he was talking about it that, you know, you wouldn't – it should never – this is not the model to replace core system dependencies or, you know, core utils or anything like that. But for the weird projects that maybe they have very, like, Subsonic apparently needs very recent,

like, lots of things. You need very recent libraries for, that's what they develop against, that's what makes sense, and you can't get them in all your applications. So if this helps you get, like, Spotify or one-off apps that they were probably going to package themselves this way anyway, it's probably not a bad thing.

Well, you know, I was, I don't know if lamenting is what I would call it, but I was discussing with Noah on the last live stream, like I kind of love the idea of just getting like the perfect desktop install, like just doing an LTS desktop and then like

actually writing it for the whole two years. Like, what if I don't think I can do this, but what if when 16.04 comes out I just ran a 16.04-based OS for like two years? I didn't the full experience. Just go for it. Because then I feel like it's like when you have a couch or a chair that's like custom fit to your butt.

I feel like a two-year distro is like custom fit to your butt. And so I want to just experience that, but the problem is, I like to run applications. And you want to install things for reviews, for the show. Yeah, I like to actually exist in the present. And so, if something like this could allow me to run a nice

stable LTS desktop, but yet have brand new absolute versions of my applications, we might have ourselves a winner wes you think you think you could do that like when you look at the application selection could i actually accomplish that not today right now it looks like kind of the one guy is packaging all of these so it would really need a lot of third-party people you know obviously subsurface is doing it but some other big projects we're like yeah here's a here's the way we support all right well in the

meantime i'm just going to use a rolling distro. Yeah, exactly. Me too. But it might work for like, oh, well, I have this 14.04 install in my parents' house, and they've been using it forever. But I really want them to try this new thing. Yeah. And one click, it just runs. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, have you heard about the Intel Atom, the X3? They're bringing something called Convergence to – oh, I'm sorry, Continuum. No, I'm sorry. Handoff between Android and Debian Linux. It looks legit too, Wes. This was going on at Mobile World Congress. It's an Intel x86

chip phone. It runs like Chromium. Here, I'll play a little bit of the video. I think it's probably not in English. It's not in English. Not English. But see, he hooks it up there to the cord there. He starts the mode.

And on the screen there, it begins a desktop environment. And I don't know if you... Maybe I can do a little zoom and enhance here, Wes. Bang. Do you see how that kind of looks a lot? It looks like... Something starts with a U. It looks a lot like Unity there, doesn't it? You see that sidebar there?

But what you might notice is that's actual legitimate Google Chromium. This is an x86 phone. And it's running all off the Android kernel. So the Linux environment is actually also used. So it's a shared kernel. It's a shared file system. You get access to the Android file system from within your Linux applications. You also see it's got VLC playing.

Yeah. And it's being demoed right now. I'd like to toss it to Popey and see, Popey, what do you think, sir, of something like this? With Intel backing something like this, what do you think? I mean, this is like not really what Canonical is going after, but it seems to sort of be in the same vein. Kind of validates the idea a bit doesn't it it looks very similar to Ubuntu for Android

right yeah to MWC three years ago it looks like it's exactly what it is yeah it looks exactly like that's what it is but what's Intel's angle here because I mean are they is this a thing they're actually selling? Well, MWC is showing stuff off to the rest of industry,

and so they will have had lots of meetings with potential hardware partners and ODMs and OEMs who may potentially ship this on a device in the future. Okay. That UI. Look at that UI. Look at that side launcher with the search and the main search thing right up there in the top left-hand corner, your clock and your settings in the right-hand corner. I mean, is that not sort of the Unity interface right there? It kind of looks familiar.

Yeah. It turns out that some people actually quite like having a launcher on the left-hand side. Yeah, I do too. I do too. Most recently accessed applications in it and an indicator panel in the top right with the status and the rest of the screen to do whatever you want. I mean, that seems common. Yeah. Yeah.

It just makes you wonder if they've seen what Canonical has been working on. Yeah. If they're aware of how open – do they understand how open source works? I just have all these questions after I saw this. What do you think, Wes? Is this going to actually make it to something you could – I don't know if we'll see this again. I don't know.

I guess it depends. If they follow up with it, I'll continue to be mildly interested. OK. Here's the takeaway though. $100, x86-based, 2 gigs of RAM. I mean this thing is like – I got the specs in the show notes. It's a respectable piece of hardware. Would you – $100, x86 based, 2 gigs of RAM. I mean, there's things like – I got the specs in the show notes. It's a respectable piece of hardware. Would you – $100, Wes?

$100 is a pretty good price point. Would you try it for $100, Wes? Yeah, I would definitely try it for – I mean, especially – I feel like you'd get that – end up with that as a gift or something. What do you mean $100, Warhead? That's a great deal for an x86. Fits in your pocket. Warhead, that's a great deal for an x86 that has a Debian like Chirrut or whatever it is that it loads, that has Chrome

and all of your x86 apps. If I can put Arch in the Chirrut, carry it in my pocket and then plug it into my monitor wherever I am, that's pretty sweet. I could make do with Debian. I wouldn't have to bring a laptop for the show. We'll just put a monitor here. I'll plug that in.

Isn't that the dream? Yeah. That is the dream. And you know where you'd have that phone? You'd have that phone over on the Ting. That's right. That's also the dream. Ting isn't a dream.

It's actual reality. You can take advantage of it right now. It's mobile that makes sense. No contract, no early termination fee, and you only pay for what you use. Did I mention you only pay for what you use? You know what? I know. It sounds impossible.

If you don't believe me, you can take it from somebody else, maybe Kyra. Ting keeps rates simple. We don't make you pick a plan. Instead, you just use your phone as you normally would. How much you use determines how much you pay each month. You can have as many devices as you want on one account. That's good, because when you use more, you pay less per minute, message, or megabyte of data. Your usage, plus $6 per active device on your account,

plus taxes, is your monthly bill. Simple. That's what we mean when we say... mobile. That makes sense. Ting. So you go to linux.ting.com, you get $25 off your first device,

or if you have a compatible device, either CDMA or GSM, they'll have, like, a little checker, you'll get $25 of service credit. And you can also grab a Ting Sim on Amazon, but then I don't know how you're going to give us credit. So go to linux.ting.com. Yeah, just go there. You know, every time I hear that music, I just feel good.

I don't know if it's Kyra. I don't know if it's the Great Deal. Dude, it is the trifecta of Ting being badass and awesome and Kyra being super cool and that music just getting you down. It feels good. It's trifecta. They got radically awesome customer support. They have an incredibly good dashboard. I mean I really have tried all of them in the – oh, what was the – I as a contractor for my clients in business.

I've had accounts with all of these duopoly. You've been around, Chris. I tell you, I have gotten around with. I have been passed around from carrier to carrier, and none of them even come with a stone's toss of Ting's dashboard. Have you heard that saying before? No, I don't know. Yeah, it comes from Hicktown, actually. They have great phones all the way up from feature phones to the top Cadillac phones.

Linux.ting.com. Go there and check them out. You can call them at 1-855-TING-FTW. No contracts, no early termination fees, and you own your device outright. Yes. What's up? Just like you would your computer. Linux.ting.com.

And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Okay, Wes, moving right along, sir. Oh, and by the way, they're doing a, I should mention really quick, Ting is doing a giveaway of the Galaxy J7. Just give me your plugsies. J. Go get that stuff. Okay. Okay.

So, the Raspberry Pi 3 has landed. Wait, what? Oops. Sorry. I think I just dropped it down the toilet. Hold on. It's so small. It is going to be 35 US bones. Has a 64-bit CPU,

is my understanding, but it ships with a 32-bit version of the OS. Two USB ports on that thing right there. Go ahead. Go ahead. Jump in any time. Bluetooth, by the way, Wi-Fi like we've had before, and four USB ports if I'm correct. Yeah.

So, Whippy, can you say how long have you had this? A little bit, right? Since Friday last week. Since Friday last week. So you've obviously been working on this thing, trying to get Ubuntu Mate desktop, working on it. What were your initial impressions of the hardware when you sat down to work with it? It looks, well, it is the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi 2 and the Raspberry Pi B+. So, you know, the number of ports and its size and its arrangement is almost identical.

There's one minor change, and that's the location of the LED lights. But other than that, it looks like a Raspberry Pi. I hooked it up, tried to boot my existing image for Ubuntu Mate and got a very colorful rainbow screen which basically meant uh do not pass go um so yeah then started work on making it work once i got it working uh that it's obvious where uh the before the performance improvements come from with this device yeah yeah across across the board and in

some unexpected places as well um so uh it's uh got a new uh sock so it's a broadcom 2837 quad core 1.2 gigahertz it's an arm v8 uh cortex a53 it's clocked at 1.2 gigahertz which is up from 900 megahertz as the stock clock on the pi 2 um and by and large more or less just about everything is about 50 quicker on the pi 3 compared to the pi 2 um so you see that in everything in terms of the responsiveness of the applications but where you really notice it is it really starts to close the gap in terms of things like if you've got a web browser open and you're scrolling um you know the web pages that's much more fluid now much more fluid um and uh so you've you've mentioned that there's there's bluetooth and there's wi-fi now so they're integrated uh on the sock um they're using a broadcom uh four three

four three something chip um and the interesting thing here is that in the past one of the criticisms of the raspberry pi was that the uh the sd host controller and the ethernet were on the same usb bus right so if you were doing a file copy over ethernet the performance could really take a dive the wi-fi is implemented on the sock and on its own mmc controller and not on the usb bus now i haven't tested this yet this is this is what i want to test but my but my working hypothesis is it should move data around quicker over Wi-Fi than it can over Ethernet. Hmm. It's a good excuse not to bother trying to find an Ethernet plug for it.

That would be pretty cool. That would be pretty damn impressive. Okay, so the hardware impressions, I mean, a 50% improvement across the board, that is damn impressive. I like that a lot. And I'm kind of curious to see how that might actually play out with damn impressive. I like that a lot. I'm kind of curious to see how that might actually play out with multitasking and things like that. How did that translate, Wimpy, for you when getting whatever you needed to do to make Ubuntu

Mate work on the Raspberry Pi 3? Because two things jump out at me. Number one is you kind of had to go back and retrofit the released version of Ubuntu Mate to make it work, right? Because you couldn't just say, well, go if you want to make it work, go use 16.04, or did you? No, because there wasn't much time to do this, I went with the build system I had for 15.10. Okay. Because aside from the new feature enablement, I knew the rest of the thing worked. So, you know know minimize things that said i still only got about six hours sleep between friday and sunday working on this last down the wire yeah

but to your credit you got it right out on release day so that looked pretty good and that's impressive yeah yeah it needs some work so um despite the assistance I got from the Raspberry Pi Foundation over the weekend, so they had some engineering assistance, mostly from Phil Elwell, who's just been brilliant. I haven't got the Bluetooth working on the Raspberry Pi 3 for Ubuntu Mate yet. But I'm yet to hear, and maybe over the next couple of days we'll start to hear, I haven't heard if anyone's got Bluetooth working at all yet. It's a bit complicated to get going. And I was sort of groping around in the dark a little bit

because I was sort of being drip-fed, oh, you need this binary blob. And I'm like, no, this still doesn't go. And they're like, oh, no, you need this blob as well, which patches that other blob. And, oh, you need these patches for this so it was all good because i got all the information but i just couldn't quite get the thing to enable the bluetooth so i've decided just to sit back for a few days and see if nobody else cracks with the official with the official images yeah so i'm going to start taking a look at the new images so today um uh this evening i downloaded all of the new packages that have gone into the raspberry and archive to do

with bluetooth and firmware and i'm sort of picking through those to see if there's anything different that i may have missed or overlooked so bluetooth will come in in due course and it will be delivered via an update i should think very good okay now there is another thing about the uh the raspberry pi all right do share that the raspberry pi 3 that i think is probably more important i think the raspberry pi 3 itself is the hors d'oeuvre this is not the main event oh so in in the pi 3 the uh video core uh the graphics processor, has been upclocked. So the video core was running at 250 megahertz. It now runs at 400.

And the 3D graphics processor was running at 250 and now runs at 300. Okay. One of the benefits of that is that you can now run 1080p video at 60 frames per second. Nice. Which is good. And the other thing is that there's been an awful lot of work going on behind the scenes at the Raspberry Pi Foundation to do all of the graphics enablement in kernel mode setting and Direct Rendering Manager and Mesa and Gallium. And that's sort of experimental at the moment,

but I have had it working for brief periods of time. And when that works, it's a game changer because you can turn on the OpenGL renderer in VLC and get smooth video playback in VLC. Nice. Not the rather clunky, can't quite keep up software version. And you can also run OpenGL accelerated software providing OpenGL versions match up up so if you've ever

played never ball or never putt i've had that running full screen 60 frames per second no problem and there are other examples of where that on the pi 3 on the pi 3 yeah wow yeah that Wow. Yeah. That is a big deal. So when that lands properly, it's GLES, Warheads. GLES is the implementation for the Pi 3. But when that lands later in the year as a fully finished thing, that takes an awful lot of burden off the CPU. the cpu and i think that is where this sort of um pseudo desktop use case really comes into its own and will start to grow because you know using things like composited desktops becomes a reality and and alleviates burden from the cpu this is as it is yeah but as it is, it makes a very usable desktop experience. I mean, imagine if for $35

you could buy a computer and plug in a USB microphone and join a mumble room and have a podcast just like we are now. Oh, yeah. This is all plugged into a Raspberry Pi 3. I'm talking about. That is great. Drops the bomb. Well played, sir. Well played. You know, I'm talking. That is great. Oh, Wimpy. Drops the bomb. Well played, sir.

Well played. You know, I was going to ask you if you think this is, I mean, wow. I mean, there you go. Podcasting is, that's probably something you can barely even do from a tablet. I mean, you can, but it's, I just, when I see this, $35 Wimpy, isn't that a big part of the Raspberry Pi 3 is what the performance for the price it's not $50 it's not it's not even $45 it's 35 us greenbacks uh and that seems like that sort of is a game changer and your downloads must be bearing that out uh yeah yeah the i haven't

looked since the the new images have gone up um i'll check in a week or so to see how things are going. But, yeah, so the Raspberry Pi is known to be something that, you know, retails for $35, well, or at least the traditional ones. There's obviously the zero now for $5. And as I understand it, they're trying to keep that $35 price point so they will introduce features to that price rather than just introduce features because they can, which I think is kind of neat because, you know, you know, it's always going to be $35. Yeah. It keeps the expectation. Yeah. Yeah. It's

a, it's a step change in performance definitely. And I think that it's very early now. You know, we're in day two. I think, you know, a few months from now, we'll be able to see the full, hopefully the full potential. A smart move, though, on their part to keep the form factor, right? By keeping the form factor the same. Like groups like Mycroft, though. Like Mycroft saying, hey, we're now doing the testing. And if everything works out, we're just going to include the Raspberry Pi 3 in with the Mycroft units because it just snaps right in. Bam, upgrade. Don't you think that's a big deal?

It's the same price. Yes. I think that's a huge deal. I think that means that people that are building things – I mean, for predictability like that, when you're building something, right, to have that kind of predictability, that's important. Now, for others, there might be other boards out there, but for some of us, that is a huge component just right there. $35, about the same form factor. I can snap it in. When you buy it, probably the same software you used before will just install to it. I think it's pretty neat. Any other thoughts, Wimpy? Well, the only other major change that sort of just juxtaposes what you've said is that it does require slightly more power

now so in the past um uh 1.8 amp uh or 2 amp power was recommended so that's a bit of a twist yeah now it's 2.4 amp so uh if you've got existing power supplies that were kind of on the edge of being acceptable, chances are you're going to need a new power supply. I use an Atrix lap dock to connect Pi 2 to work on them, and I'm pleased to say that that still powers the Pi 3. Yeah, I mean, 2.4 amps is not too uncommon. So, yeah. Also, if the Mate or Raspbian isn't your flavor, Windows 10.

Look at this, Wes. Windows 10 Internet of Things Core for Raspberry Pi 3 is out. There's even a video. Look at this right here. It's Windows powering a wheel like a hamster. Go, Windows, go. Just like the hamster. It's learning, Chris.

You got to be nice. So, Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi 3 controlling a closed-loop wheel. You ready for this, Wes? Raspberry Pi 3 running Windows 10 IoT Core. The wheel represents a common situation in robotics when you need to know exactly how fast a robot's going or how far it's traveling. Here I have a display connected to the Raspberry Pi 3. You can see the speed of the wheel, the speed I've chosen, and the power output to the motor.

I just can't ever imagine why you would want the overhead of Windows for such a simple task. It's just, that's never going to, that's never a value argument you're going to win. It's crazy. Absolutely. But, you know, go to Microsoft for trying. It's going to be the people who already have all that chain there. What do you think, Wimpy? What do you think?

Oh, that's cute and everything, but let's see them come on a podcast that we're using a Raspberry Pi 3. That's right. That's right. You know what? Maybe they'd better switch over to the

old Droid C2, the faster, bigger version of a Raspberry Pi 3. Look at that heat sink on there. $5 more, Wes. Okay, $5 more.

You get 2 gigahertz ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor with Mali-450 graphics, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and a gigabit Ethernet port with 4K HDMI out. Also has a GPIO 40 pin and four USB ports and an IR receiver. That seems like a pretty nice device, too. So I'm just mentioning that because I know everybody's going to give us feedback.

Guys, the Odroid is only $5 more and it does X. Have you played with those at all, Wimpy? I have played with Odroids, yeah. I've got several. But there's a keen difference between, well, in fact, most of the other SBCs and the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is a platform. It's not necessarily about the specifications and the capability of the device itself the fact is is that if you bought a raspberry pi four years ago you can

run the same operating system on all of the iterations of the pi that have come out since and these other manufacturers they're they don't have that longevity in the platform. They make a device, they want people to buy the device, and then they're on working on the next specification and the next iteration and the next new feature and the next new feature. So you sort of get obsoleted quite quickly. I won't say which manufacturers they are, but I've got ones that now are a pain to maintain because they're just not supported by the manufacturer anymore. You know, that's an interesting point. And that's not the case with the Pi. I want to underscore your point about the Pi being a platform because I think this is maybe the one thing I haven't been able to articulate.

Because when we talk about the Raspberry Pi, a lot of people will write in and say, why aren't you talking about this? It has a better X. And I have a – it's sort of – this is just to make an equivalency. But in production, we started using the GoPro from time to time. The GoPro is not the best camera in the world. What the GoPro is is it's a camera platform. And there are hundreds of different types of accessories. So if I'm driving down the road, there's a mount to mount the GoPro to the window.

If I want to walk with a selfie stick in a crowd, there's a mount for that. If I want to use a gyroscopic stabilizer, there's an accessory for that. There is all different tripods and different types of head mounts and body mounts and charging accessories and all this weird stuff for this one little teeny tiny camera. The camera isn't the important part. It's this entire platform of all this stuff that the camera can snap into and be used. And then on top of that, it's an entire community around this camera that knows how to do all these different jobs like, hey, I want to mount a camera to a bike as I'm going down

a hill at 40 miles per hour. There's people out there that know how to do that. And so the GoPro isn't necessarily the – maybe it's not the best camera for 4K, 120 frame per second video capture attached to a drone. But it is a very good camera for a lot of reasons. And just like the Raspberry Pi maybe isn't the fastest or whatever. It is a platform where there's a lot of things around it. There's a lot of people that know how to support it.

There's an ecosystem. And it's $35. Right. And it sounds like that the Raspberry Pi is really, and I mean, to Broadcam's credit, they're doing a better job of upstreaming things into the kernel, like Wimpy was talking about. So we'll hopefully see more, better support. And yeah, you won't buy this one-off system on a chip that runs this one distribution with

these binaries that are compiled against that distribution so, you know, modules, it'll just work. Yeah, as producer Q5 says, points out, if you take my argument to the logical extreme, that would be an argument to stay with iOS or Android just because of the apps and the walled garden and the ecosystem. And I think with each thing

there is sort of, it's not black and white. There is a gray area. Like if you want something, for example, that requires gigabit Ethernet, then maybe the Odroid would just be the more obvious choice, right? I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm saying I think one of the reasons why something can be popular like that is because of all of that. And it's – for some people, that's what they need.

Or like the Mycroft folks, for example, they could ship anything in the Mycroft. Yeah, their own hardware, whatever. But the Raspberry Pi is attractive for some of the reasons we outlined in our discussion. I think it's fascinating, and I loves it. And I love that Microsoft's trying, that's super adorable, too. It's all running Linux. Yeah,

you could put Windows 10 Internet of Things Core Edition. That just rolls right off the tongue. Windows 10. How about just – even this, that, even just that just drives me crazy about Microsoft. You know what we need to do? We need to punish Chris. I got some feedback this week from Linux Action Show.

I introduced an app pick that has a pretty big disclaimer and I didn't make that disclaimer. And for some of you who are very privacy-focused, I sort of like committed like total crime here. And I need to – I need to come out. I need to admit my faults. Get to the chest, Chris. I got to admit that I did make a mistake and then I got to tell you what's going on, give you a full disclaimer about it, because otherwise I'm going to get in trouble. And maybe I could blame Noah. I think you already have.

Oh, did I? Yep, just now. Where were you, Chris? Come on. It's Noah's fault. I like the way you think, Wes. You know what else I like? Linux Academy.

Go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged and check them out. This is a great sponsor for our audience because they are a perfect fit. You guys, it's not just a feature. They don't just have, oh, let's make sure we have Linux on our support page and let's make sure we can do Red Hat because that's something people use. They are passionate about Linux. They hire educators and developers and they bring them together and they created the Linux Academy platform. And now they're filling out the back-end staff so that way all of the content stays relevant. They can introduce new features.

And now they're filling out the back-end staff so that way all of the content stays relevant. They can introduce new features. They do have, like, the Red Hat Certified Engineer stuff they're working on right now and those administration courses. A bunch of AWS stuff. Over 2,330 self-paced courses. I know. Scenario-based labs where you work in their advanced lab environment. Complete scenarios from the beginning to the end.

How did you know? I learned that. You learned it at Linux Academy. LinuxAcademy.com. You support the show, take advantage of the great discount we get. They have instructor mentoring, which I think is really great. They have graded server exercises. That's a big one.

Helps you if you've got testophobia like I do. And you know you're not just thinking that you've learned this stuff. You didn't just read the article. It's like you've done it and you've been tested on it. And you know, one of the other things that's been really nice for me is being able to go in there and conceptualize how long

it would actually take to learn something. Like a topic, like, well, say I want to learn how to write some PHP. What would that actually take? Oh, here it all is outlined step by step what I could expect. And Linux Academy works in such a great way

because you can say, I have this much time available, this couple hours on Monday, couple hours on Tuesday. Does it work with zero hours, Chris? Well, in that case, what you do is you want to use the nuggets. Oh, yeah, right. You would. So if you've got zero hours available, what you do is

when you're driving down the road, Wes, and you're not driving, but somebody else is driving, when you're being driven down the road, they have a new iOS app. Now, I know you don't have the Nexus 5 there, but you just bring an internet paddle with you. Bring it up on the internet paddle device. Linux Academy, they are working on an Android device, though, for your Nexus.

They have a really – the Nugget system is actually a really cool idea. So they've been working in some of their live video stream events, so you can just – if you don't have time to do a course, you can just kind of benefit from watching some of their live events where educators speak or they talk about the platform. That's so cool. Yeah. They also have nuggets that are like two minutes long. You got two minutes, right? You got two minutes, Wes? I think so.

Yeah, then you can do it. I'm not doing anything right now. Shoot, you can do it right now while I'm talking about Linux Academy. Every single Tuesday, weslinuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Try out their practice exams. Check out their detailed notes, comprehensive study guides you can download, stuff you can listen to offline in the shower. Seven plus distros to pick from.

Automatically adjust the courseware and the virtual machines, which spin up on demand right when you need them. You get to SSHN because, you know, they know that's what you want to do. I know if you want, you could tell them that, but I'm just saying. You should probably. No, you can't tell them that. No, don't tell them that. Never.

LinuxAcademy.com slash unplug. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Great fit. Go check them out. All right, Wes. So I'm a big idiot, and you know what? I'm not going to blame Noah. But I'm just going to say things were bumpy on Sunday's Linux Action Show behind the scenes.

It was a rough ride, as it were. Don't tell everyone. No, I won't. I'm not just saying it. Zombies don't run Linux. Things were a little rough. And a bit of feedback we got on Sunday's show. I'm going to see if I can zoom in and enhance it.

Watch. It came in from Maruki. Markoli. Markoli. Chris, are you aware that by using the N1 client, all your mail is being routed through their third-party services? By default, N1 uses the analysis API and open source sync engine to handle mail sync operations on their own cloud. Not their own cloud, but their own cloud infrastructure.

In effect, this means the emails you get from the app first pass through and are stored on their server. That's a big no-no in my book. And so my accidental... Omission. Omission. Thank you. Omission of this fact led to a thread on our Linux because why not? That's what we do.

That's what we do. Yeah. Where they say N1 is a very nice open source client with modern workflow, but it requires that all emails are synced on the Nelia servers and run and maintain a sync engine or run the engine locally. Would you trust a third-party service provider with your emails, however secure they claim to be? So, part one, my bad. I'm sorry I didn't mention that. We ran a little short on time, and I neglected to bring that part up.

However, the reason why it didn't stand out to me as a big issue is because they do have a GPL3 server you can run yourself. Yes, they do. And we have a link in the show notes. So it's not like you have to use their server. The one big disappointment if you are going to use ActiveSync, the open source version does not support it. That's not a huge thing

for me, but yeah. But there is like the open source DAV mail client, which will translate ActiveSync to IMAP, etc. So. Well, and here's the other thing why, and this is where I was going with this. Where do you draw the line? Because for me, N1 is connected to a Gmail account.

So do I stop using Gmail? To me, where do we take this? We seem to be now in this position where I was looking at this. There's like three or four email clients now for mobile devices, and they all use server-side mail processing. Sure. It's becoming super common on mobile because you have lots of server-side processing power.

You don't have battery constraints there. You can do all your kind of filtering. Just push what you need. Yeah, you do push notifications, and you open up the app, and the app pulls down the latest stuff. And this is becoming really common on mobile. And now they're starting to do it on desktop. And it's not going to be just email. No.

Where do you draw the line, Wes? Do you draw a hard line and say, I just won't use third-party hosted services. I don't care how trustworthy they are. I don't care how secure they claim to be. It's too risky. Do you walk a line somewhere? Is there a gray area for you? It seems like you have like rings of trust.

Right on me, brother. Well, where there are like some communications, you know, maybe your various things where there's a lot of mail that I don't really care if it goes through. I mean I do not trust Nihilus, Nihilus, however you say their name. I don't trust Gmail either. So most of the stuff that goes through my Gmail is – If anything, Google has more interest in getting stuff out of my email. Right. If anything, Google has more interest in getting stuff out of my email. But that said, if I was already running my own private mail server, I probably wouldn't want to introduce this third party into the system.

And if it was not super easy to spin up my own sync engine, then I might just keep using what I'm doing now. But I think you have to operate with regions of like, this is my secure mail. This is where I do my most secure stuff. I know who has access and when, and then you can go from there. I'll tell you, I feel, Wes, like the polar bear on a melting ice cap. And I'm sitting here floating in the ocean, and the little piece of ice that I'm on is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

And, like, eventually I'm just going to have to go jump in the ocean. And I'm just going to have to swim. It feels like, in some ways, you either play by what the world is doing, or you're just the weird Linux user who doesn't use any of the services everyone else does. That's no fun either. No, because then you start to get left out of certain things, but also, there is a bit of a stigma there.

Oh yeah, well, the Linux guy, of course, he's not going to use that. You don't want to be that guy either, or gal. So I don't know where to, like, I don't know at what point, like, Twitter, also another example, all the data is, you know, on Twitter servers. So I find this, like, it's fine when it's, well, fine, I say. But, you know, when it's one service, you can kind of compartmentalize that and deal with it. But when it becomes more normalized. When it's everything you use.

Another example of this is IRC Cloud. IRC Cloud is a server-side IRC server that logs in for you, and then you go to the website, and it downloads all of the IRC. It's your little fancy private bouncer. Yeah, exactly. So this is, I think, you know, you could see this more and more with instant messaging. I could see this with all kinds of applications. Imagine like a server-side terminal service where you connect, you

open up your terminal and it connects to some cloud instance of a terminal where you maybe have like, it's like hosted screen, right? It's like some sort of weird, really easy to use hosted screen and there could be all kinds of reasons for that. I'm wondering if, I wonder if there are, you know, since it is GPL, I wonder if there will be

like private servers? Like would you, if you signed an agreement with someone? Over N1? with someone, would you use someone else's hosted sync engine? If they had a firmer agreement about your rights. I would want to just put it on my own drop-off. Well, yeah, that's true. Has anyone done that? I haven't bothered to yet. No.

I think it's too new. Kitson, you had an idea. You want to jump in here. Go ahead. Yeah, there's actually several third-party mail uh hosts and whatnot like xquick slash start page they're the same company uh that you could actually pay them a subscription service and they'll give you access to an email server that they don't scan your email they don't do anything with it's just all yours so the overall theme on on the R Linux thread is a hard no. No way, no hell, no way at all

would I let anybody host my mail for me. And I mostly agree in concept, I guess in theory, but in actual practice, it seems to be less and less of an option. I guess I have a hard time. I get it, but I don't know. Everything goes through Gmail for most people already. Well, that's true. Yeah. And I wonder, but for Linux users, where do we go with something like this? That's where it comes back. Like, if you're already running your own mail server, then it's not really relevant. Like, of course

it's a hard no, but for everyone else, it's just one more. I think the solution, I think there is a solution. I think when projects like N1 come out and they say, yeah, and we also make the server-side open source if you want to run it, run it. Use it. Contribute to that and make it a valuable thing for the project

and make it something that other projects are encouraged to do. I was really surprised to see, like, I couldn't even find a DigitalOcean how-to yet on how to set up a sync engine. So, like, there's a good opportunity for someone in the community as well. Yeah, it's very, very new. And I have a link to that in the show notes. If there's a good opportunity for someone in the community as well. Yeah, it's very, very new. And I have a link to that S in the show notes.

If you guys are curious, you can go check that out. Mobile remaining closing thoughts on the whole having more and more services hosted and how it sort of infringes on privacy. Open that up right there. Yeah, so it's just, I guess, I understand where you're coming from. I guess the only thing I can really say to kind of give reflection on it is I guess the limit for a lot of people is going to be, you know,

they realize that they're using Gmail, they're using some service, and they're sure that maybe Google does go over and just go through all their emails. You know, it's fairly privacy. I don't know. It lacks a lot of privacy uh but i think yeah their their big thing is they don't know at least for me anyway i shouldn't speak for everyone but a lot of people i guess are kind of upset and don't want another person reaching into their data it's like too many hands in the cookie jar right now that's true

uh and that cookie jar is only as strong as the weakest link. Isn't that true, Wimpy? It is. And, you know, a lot of people do use Google. And we can't know for sure how much Google are complying or not with government requests for access to data. But if you've got to proxy all of your mail through a smaller organization like Nylas, they will absolutely roll over if they get pressured by government

organizations. So don't double proxy your email through smaller clients. Do what you suggested, which is if you want to use a platform like that, host it yourself. Yeah, very much. So this has been my general take is have one that is, you know, it is honestly life is easier just to have a Google account. There's just certain things that make it easier. So that's where a lot of stuff will go to that I don't have a super high priority.

And then if I have a private hosted email email account that's like for actual private communications. And that's just been, and it seems like to me that if I really cared, that's where you have to draw the line. And I've always kind of liked the idea of pushing that a little bit and making myself a little uncomfortable

and say, well, I could do a hosted version of this, but let's try building our own. And we go back and forth on that all the time. Different stuff, but it's always sort of the general direction. Right, how do you want to allocate your resources? Yeah, that's sort of the general direction we go in, and I don't know. So anyways, I do apologize though for not mentioning the server side.

That was sort of a crazy moment in the show, and so I just sort of neglected to mention it, and that was my bad. So that's my errata for this week's episode of the Unplugged program. I'd like to say too that a lot of the stuff I've seen, I've never used it really, but just looking through their documentation and looking at the extensibility,

it seems like a cool project and the fact that they're going open source at the start, I hope that a community springs up that does run this stuff on their own. And don't be turned off just because it looks like an OS 10 application. If you download it and you turn on the dark theme, it's not so bad. It is a Chromium application, too.

So I'm not saying it's the perfect thing. It's just with Thunderbird kind of being an unknown and Geary now being Pantheon Mail for elementary OS, Evolution being something that makes me want to commit suicide, and KMail feeling like it's from the 90s, I'm just sort of looking for a nice desktop mail client that can handle a huge inbox. And so here's the thing.

Is there server-side processing? You know what that means? The client doesn't crap itself when I open up an inbox with 50,000 unread messages. There's not a lot of email clients meet that standard. Thunderbird is one of them, although

Thunderbird just chews and chews infinitely. Thunderbird never stops chewing on my inbox, but at least it's still responsive to. Creepy Uncle says I should try Outlook. Are you in the Mamba room, Creepy? Creepy on mobile. Creepy, are you drunk right now? Outlook!

No, I'm in here. Outlook! World-class email, Chris. Get the heck out of here. Come on. No, no, you Chris. Get the heck out of here. Come on. No, no. You know what? No.

Get it out of here. No way. No way. All right. So that'll bring us to the end. Unless anybody else has anything else they want to contribute. Going once. Going twice.

All right. That'll bring us to the end of this week's Linux Unplugged. Did you know, Wes, we do this show live? Every week. Oh my goodness. On a Tuesday over at jblive.tv, go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that converted to your local time zone. We've got a mumble room. J-B-M-P-S-T. That's right. J-B in the P-S-T. We've got the mumble room. We've got the live

chat, so you can hang out in there. LinuxActionshow.reddit.com. You can't make it live. Go there. Contribute. You guys are what make this show possible. Oh, that's deep and so true jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact for the emails thanks for joining us on this week's episode of the unplugged program

and we'll see you right back here next Tuesday Thank you. Holy crap. It cannot be 350. Holy smokes. I have to start unfiltering in like 40 minutes. This is, oh my gosh, jbtitles.com. Let's vote. You know what's weird about the windstorm?

So those people that are listening don't know this, hopefully. But we had to stop recording partway through the show because the lights started flickering here in the studio. And if the machine loses power, Wes, and the file isn't completed, we'd lose everything in the file. It has to be completed, right? The file has to be closed. And so I stopped and started recording so that we wouldn't lose all of the show. But you know what's weird about the wind right now? It's freaking sunny out.

Yeah, now it's like a beautiful day. It's still gust of wind, but it's like, I don't know, it's strange out there. With gray on the horizon. Yeah. Oh, man. I just, oh, don't even make me talk about Panda Express. Don't even. All right, JBTitles.com.

We've got to pick this thing fast because they've got these other jerks that are going to come here in the studio. This guy named Chris, he's got to get here and start another show. Man, I hate that guy. I feel like I'm already losing my voice. I need hours to go. Can you hear that? Yeah, yeah. It's going to be rough.

Anyways, Wimpy, thanks for all the great contributions today. That was excellent, sir. My pleasure. And thank you to everybody in the mobile room. Yeah, really. Thanks for joining us on this Super Tuesday. Every Tuesday is Super with Linux Unplugged. That's good.

Let's go with that. That's our new slogan.