LINUX Unplugged - Episode 135: Microsoft's SeQueL to Linux | LUP 135

Episode Date: March 9, 2016

Our world has forever changed with Microsoft’s announcement of SQL server for Linux. We get a little nostalgic. Plus a look at the new OwnCloud release & updates on some of our favorite projects.Then we take a look at Shashlik which promises to transparently run Android apps on your Linux desktop & more!

Actually, no, I do remember. Chris, are you wearing your usual Lumberjack shirt? No. Since I've now watched two live episodes of the Linux Action Show. I thought about you when I wore that. I thought about you. Because, you know, I can't wear it. I got some great swag, but I can't wear it because it's green. And I left the new jacket, which I got to say, so Wimpy sent me a Abundumate zip-up jacket. Whoa. Fancy. With his own custom design.

And the shirts are green. Like, I would just be invisible in the studio, which is kind of cool. But the jacket's black with a green logo, like, you know, where the Star Trek comm badge would be, obviously. Right. And so it kind of looks like I have a Star Trek comm badge, actually, because it's kind of like the shape of it. Why are you wearing it right now? Well, I left it at home because the girlfriend loves the new jacket. She wanted me to personally thank Wimpy because she thinks it's very...

I can't remember the word she used, but she likes it. That's great. Yeah. Likes it on you or likes it for herself? Well, no, likes it on me. She thought it was a good fit. Oh, well, you're welcome, Chris. Yeah, thank you.

That's what I'm saying. Now, of course, I do have one of the shirts upstairs here. But otherwise, it's all at home. It took a little while because it came from, where did it come from? Oh, this is a good question. A part of Europe that I can't even remember the name of. Yeah, I remember looking at it and going, what did I get from? Oh, this must be.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the guy that runs this place, Gabor, his name is. It's brilliant. So it's Halotux, and they do official Linux merchandise for a number of projects. And they originally started up as like a part-time endeavor and it was uh they've got um a computer system that you can feed you know make designs effectively using inkscape feed that into this stitching machine and then it embroiders you know these designs and originally that was all running on windows and he reverse engineered the whole thing to get it all to run under linux that is great yeah and

i think just recently like within the last nine months or so he he is actually doing hello tux and these things as a full-time occupation now but he gives back a rather hefty slice to each of the projects so you know debbie and are on there and open suzer and you know countless others and every time somebody buys one of the items from there, those projects get a kickback from the items he sells. So I like his business model. And did you get a memory stick in amongst all those? That was the slickest thing. That is one of the smallest, tiny, neatest looking branded. I mean, it's like pinky size.

It's upstairs. I should grab it. I will. I'll grab it before we start the show. I really like those. Yeah. That is slick. Like I would buy that.

Like if you were – if this was back in the day where we had software on shelves in stores and I would go down to the computer store and I would buy it. Ooh, some new software. This would be like that – like minimum price for that, $40. It looks like a $40 like – Wow. It's a high class. I don't know why you're buying that much, paying that much for these kind of things.

No, I know, I know. That's crazy, but I take your meaning. Yeah. I look at it and I go, I almost wish I had to reload. I just would love to see this in the side of the Apollo. It's because it's a metal nice looking thumb stick. Yeah, yeah. And those you get free. If you order like two of his things, you get the USB

stick for free or you can order it independently as well. So, yeah, he's a good guy. He's amazing. What's the site for people to check out? Hallowtux.com. Let me just – I'll go there right now. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 135 for March 8th, 2016.

Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's hunkered down in its secure enclave and celebrating International Women's Day. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Well, hello there, Wes. Good to have you here, sir. Oh, yes. It's aure Enclave and celebrating International Women's Day. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Well, hello there, Wes. Good to have you here, sir. Oh, yes. It's a beautiful bunker. Thank you.

It's a nice enclave, right? It sure is. Yeah. Well, broadcasting from today's enclave is a great show. Coming up in today's episode, a brand new version of OwnCloud, and it may address some serious concerns I've had and also open up the door for those of us on a VPS that maybe doesn't have enough storage at the moment. Super excited about some of the improvements in ownCloud 9, including their code signing. We're going to be talking about that.

Then later on in the show, it's a big topic. It's a huge topic. You've probably heard me talk about it already if you've caught some of our recent shows. We've got to get the virtual lugs take on Microsoft announcing SQL Server for Linux. That's melting my whole head. What? My whole head is melted by this. As somebody who used to,

I used to have to deploy SQL Servers, and the whole lock-in that SQL Server used to bring to an organization was unprecedented. So to have that ship for Linux melts my head. We're going to talk about it. I'm curious to get your take on it, too. And then, later on in the show, towards the end of the show,

there is an application for the Linux desktop, later on in the show, towards the end of the show, there is an application for the Linux desktop, focused on the Linux desktop, that promises to seamlessly and transparently deliver Android applications today on your Linux desktop experience. And I'm talking like, you go to your launcher, you type in the name of the application, hit enter,

boom, that Android app is up and running on your Linux desktop. Wes and I have it loaded here in studio. We've thrown a few apps at it. We're going to get your take. And before we do all that, we have like a whole bunch of project updates to get into. Whoa. I know.

It's so much show. I talked through the whole opening music. That's how much show it is. Holy smoke. So why don't we start by just talking about this beer super quick. Wes, you brought us something special today. You brought us a lady for International Women's Day from Nansky Brewing Company. Nankasi. Nansky Brewing Company.

Nankasi? Nankasi. Nankasi Brewing Company. Yeah? I got that part right. There you go. You got that part. Hey-o.

That's two-thirds, Chris. Dawn of the Red IPA. It is over on the Beer Advocate getting an 87 score, which is pretty darn good. It's pretty darn good. It says very good there? Yeah, pretty darn good. Rocking in at a 7.00% ABV. It's got a whole lot going on with this beer.

It really does. It's complex. Yeah. When you drink this thing, there is a freshness that is happening in your mouth. I feel like when I drink this thing— Would you say it's bursting with tropical notes, Chris? Is that actually on the bottle? That is exactly what I would say. I would say it burst the last

year of layers of skin and sediment on my tongue, right off my tongue when I put this in my mouth. Perfect kind of thing for doing a podcast. Exactly. Clears up the mouth. Alright, before we get into our project updates, let's bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumbleroom! Hey, Pat.

Hello. Hi there. our project updates, let's bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hey, Pebble. Hello. Hi there. Hi-yo. Om nom nom. Yes, of course. So I got a secret. I'm very excited.

I'm planning to pick myself up something in the near term. New toy? Yeah. I hate using the term toy. I hate calling it a toy. New business item? Well, because in my estimation, it is legitimately I'm comparing these different solutions. I mean, I legitimately am curious.

I've been hankering for a really good Kodi box and a really good Plex box. Yeah. And a really good Netflix box. I wanted to do all of these things. And then if you can throw in some YouTube and maybe a Hulu app, now you're really getting my attention. But, you know, I don't really want a lot of the different options that are out there. And I don't want to build a box, really. I don't really want to use Raspberry Pi 3 or 2 because I want Netflix and whatnot.

So I've been thinking about Kodi. I've been thinking about Kodi. I'm going to tell you what my solution is. Well, I'm very curious. First, I'm going to talk a little bit about the new Kodi release that I'm getting pretty excited about. So version 17 or some crap like that. I'll give you the exact number here in a second. Coming out real soon. And they got a brand

new look, you guys. A brand new look. Today is a new milestone. They say a sanctuary, I think is how you say this one, Wes. What do you think? Estuary? Estuary. I like incendiary. Estuary. And it's a brand new look. It's pretty cool.

You'll see it's got the main new eye catcher. There's a whole new home screen, which will guide you through all of the main sections that are available. They've added some useful widgets for movies and TV shows, like random and recently added in progress. Actually sounds a lot like it's been inspired from Plex. Unplayed, most played are also available. Look at this UI. It's looking pretty good. They're calling this their...

What's cool about this is this is also going to be something they'll make available for touch interfaces with a slight retouch of the UI. Entering the library, you're going to notice new views have received some facelifts. Developers tried to keep functionality information in balance. I think it does look pretty nice. It does look pretty nice.

And then one thing they also say, they've enabled themes in the default, or colors in the default theme, so you can have a whole bunch of different colors now in the default theme, which is new. Here's where I'm going with this, Wes. Starting in version 17, in Krypton, you're going to be able to use this. This nice-looking, I think it looks better than Plex. It's got all the plugins and features of Kodi. Plus, if you don't like this look, there's a bunch of other themes you can apply.

Yes, yes, yes. So I've been thinking, what would be the ultimate box? And I have a special requirement. I want it to be able to run Kodi. I want it to be able to run Plex. And I want it to be able to do it. I want it to be able to run Plex offline if possible. Because when I'm going down the road and I've got three monsters strapped to seatbelts behind me,

the road and I got three monsters strapped to seatbelts behind me. It is a road safety imperative that I can have inside out or frozen playing on the television. I mean, it saves lives, literally. Because otherwise, it's dad, can I have this? Dad, he did this. Dad, I want this. The whole drive, Wes. Okay.

Do you understand what I'm saying, Wes? I understand. So I think I'm looking at the Nvidia Shield TV. Whoa. Yeah. I did not expect that. Yeah, I didn't think you would. Yeah the NVIDIA Shield TV. Whoa. Yeah. I did not expect that. Yeah, I didn't think you would. Tell me more about it. Well, the NVIDIA Shield TV, you know, it's got good performance.

You can run all of these applications. It's actually got the newer version of Google's television OS on there that's not their first attempt at it. And all of the apps we love available for it, crazy great performance. Thing can do 4K video. Nice. Yeah. So I'm wondering. Right on the website, it says Kodi.

Yeah, I'm waiting. Netflix? Netflix? Yeah, they've touted all the different apps it runs. You pair that with something with Kodi. So my thinking is, wait until that thing drops in price a little bit, and I'm going to jump on that thing. And that's going to be my home entertainment setup.

What's it cost now? Well, it depends on which one you want. See, I need offline storage. And I don't know what the – you can get one with up to a 300 gigabyte hard drive. But the price starts to get to $300. So that's a little expensive. But I need the – so I'm going to wait. Or maybe I can see if I can add my own storage.

But I'm just thinking NVIDIA Shield TV with Kodi is a super sweet, low-power, quiet combo. Yep. Could be a good way to go. I bet there's probably a lot of other boxes. Anybody the mumble room just shout out waiting to shout out like chris there's this cody box it's so great you can just get it right now if you know of one i've heard a few there's a there's some like some uh some uh android sticks that are on amazon they could get for pretty cheap that accomplish the same fundamental thing so you can still use Kodi and Plex and Android apps. So you can get the same experience but it's not going to be like 4K.

I don't know if I want to stick. I don't know if I want to stick because the thing is, I want this thing. Chris is over sticks. I am over sticks because I just – I want this thing to be as fast as possible. I do not ever want it – You don't have time. I just – I want it to feel like it's right on the metal. And for me, it's worth it.

Like big-ass MKV files and HD streams and video games. Like it's all worth it for me to have. The sticks, they're just as low-end as possible. I know, I know, I know. Speaking of sticks, though, you know who is into the sticks? Mozilla. On March 1st, Mozilla's Senior Vice President for Connected Devices announced that the open-source organization

seeks to develop, test, and evaluate four Internet of Things software projects. This is coming from Mozilla. Project Link, Project Sensor Web, Project Smart Home, and Project, what do you think, Wes? Vanny? V-A-A-N-I. Vanini?

Mumble, anybody? V-A-A-N-I. Anyways. I think it was Vanee. Vanee. Yeah, there you go. I like that. The announcement didn't really mention anything about Firefox OS at all, but it's probably a safe bet that these things –

I mean, they have it there. It's probably a safe bet it would use these things. Wes, my reaction – and then this is just me being an out-of-touch Chrome user. My reaction when I hear this is, what? What? Mozilla is doing what? Why? What? I mean, what? I don't understand. How does this make Firefox a better web browser? Is this a super old way, a limited way of thinking?

quite some time, but there hasn't been a lot delivered. So I don't know. I'm curious to see what it would look like. I believe that Mozilla has the best intentions, or at least very good intentions, but I don't know what this will really look like. It does seem separate, though, from them also having a pretty good browser. It goes along with their announcement

about the Firefox OS not doing phones anymore. They did say they're going to do Internet of Things stuff. They're going to do tablets and stuff like that. So it kind of goes in with that. But as a Firefox fanboy, I also don't care. If they can make pretty good standard supporting web-focused Internet of Things, maybe even secure devices, then I would support that. But I guess it really remains to be seen if that's what they do. devices, then I would support that.

But I guess it really remains to be seen if that's what they do. If they bring in the new engine, the runtime engine. Oh, come on, dude. Yeah. No, you're just trying to get me upset. You're just trying to upset me right now. Stop it. Rodden, you are trolling me.

That's a good move, but I'm not falling for it. It's just around the corner, right? It's just going to be in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could it be the next one? Of course.

So let's start. Pupi, I think you and I have talked about maybe it was on Tech Talk today before. Maybe it was a Kickstarter of the week. Hadn't we talked about how we thought if there was going to be an IoT-type device, a Chromecast-type competitor or something like that? What do you think of that idea? Well, they tried. Well, someone tried before doing their matchstick for their matchstick yeah i think that was when we talked about it horribly yeah yeah i i i'm i'm taking with a pinch of salt everything mozilla are doing at the moment

having seen recently one of their uh employees post a whole load of uh internal information about how uh how the company works. I'm kind of just waiting to see what they come up with. Kits and Kitty, I wanted to hear your thoughts on this. I just think it's more in line with all the news that has been coming out with Mozilla, both good and bad, the bad being GTK3 getting snubbed again in 45. But they do have all this really cool stuff working behind the scenes. Mozilla Servo, which is breaking records right now in terms of JS performance. But the other interesting thing that I thought was rather interesting coming out of Mozilla

was they're wanting to push Gecko again. Did you hear about this? In what context? You mean the web browser's context? Or what do you mean when Gecko is the rendering engine of Firefox, right? As a framework to build other applications, it looks like. Oh, hmm. Well, that seems like it almost makes more sense,

even though I don't know why that is. Boy, that's like it almost makes more sense, even though I don't know why. That is, boy, that's an uphill fight. It is. And I just, like, whenever I see this story, it just makes me think back to the icky situation around the early 2000s where they tried to do the same thing. And they came out with, like, Nightingale music player, et cetera. Oh, great. I forgot about that. Yeah. And it was just a bunch of disappointment, really.

One Thunderbird. Quiet, Chris. That's interesting. He was a good player, though. Yeah, actually. I would love to see where they go with this. Internet of Things, I don't even know what the hell that means, and it gives me

a little bit of a sick in my stomach every time I think of it. I know it's something that it's the only thing they talk about at trade shows right now, and I know it's a huge industry. I just – it feels like 3D to me a little bit. bit you know it feels like uh it's something we all talk about and it's something we all procrastinate about or you know procrastinate or whatever you want to say about what's going to could or couldn't could go wrong but who's actually buying these things outside of geeks that are just dorking around with them like you i'm not i'm not even buying things is is marketing to not geeks it's like all kind like the Amazon Echo and stuff like that. I think the Echo is the biggest example of a successful Internet of Things product.

And I think what we do is we just arbitrarily go around and say, well, this is now an Internet of Things product. What makes it an Internet of Things product? It has an IP address. Is that where we're drawing the line? It can query APIs. Is that what makes it an Internet of Things? I think it's a device that what makes it an Internet of Things?

I think it's just a device that has access to the Internet by itself without having to connect to any other devices. But it doesn't have access to the Internet by itself. It requires an infrastructure in place, a Wi-Fi LAN and a router. Yeah, but I meant it doesn't have to connect to another. For example, the freaking Android watches. They require another device to even work. That's what I meant. Okay.

Okay. Boy, that's a pretty broad definition. Yeah. But also, it goes to the same thing about the cloud being incredibly broad. But doesn't that technically make the Xbox and the PlayStation an Internet of Things device? Or smart TVs were kind of an early front of that. So I think it depends on how much they're made the default. You see how this is feeling kind of like...

I think the term is starting to be broad. Yeah, it's starting to feel like a lot of marketing BS. It's starting to feel like you can call it a successful category because you can call anything an Internet of Things device, and therefore if anything sells that you put that label on, you can say Internet of Things is successful. But in the broad context, nobody's actually buying the shit or putting it in their homes

except for us geeks. And even then, I think it's a subset of the geeks. Like I don't have a Nest or the only Internet of Things like I have Hughes lights because I'm in a studio and I want to match color to my green screen. That's a pretty niche reason to buy Hughes lights. Otherwise, I don't know if I would buy them. They're not in your kitchen. I bought them and gave them to my dad as a gift, and

he's colorblind, so that's not even a great gift. He uses them, but... You're a terrible son. It feels like it is a gimmick, and I don't know. So I wish Mozilla all the luck as they cast off into a completely nebulous category that

seems to have no meaning to me. I mean, anybody can feel free to disagree with me in the mumble room. But to me, it feels like anything we want is the internet of things. When they say this is what they're doing, it sounds like a company that doesn't have really great focus is moving into a category that doesn't have any focus. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. But, you know, they do have that super fast JavaScript thing down. That's true.

Soon as they ship that. Yeah. Soon as they ship that. Yeah. Soon as they ship that. All right. So we have a few more updates to go through before we get into some meat of the show. But I thought this one was interesting. I was getting tweeted this one a lot this week. The Failoverflow folks have released their PS4 K exec style code to load the current Linux kernel from the free B,

free BSD based OS. So that is really something. They're not, they're not breaking the PlayStation. It's a kernel module. Wes, they must've had to break the kernel module. It must be signed.

I mean, they must have to have a sign. So like what they say with this is that you need a way to execute this. Ah, so if you get yourself an exploit, like theirs was in WebKit, for example, then you just take this, you can compile it up, run it, and boom, there you go.

Now you run it. Codes up on GitHub. Yeah, I think that's pretty neat. That's pretty cool. You know what that means? Beowulf cluster. Yep. Yeah, it does mean a cluster, though.

That is... And they were talking about how they, like, extract the Radeon driver and make it, like, work with Linux? This, to me, actually, if I was going to buy a console, would push it. I mean, I was already learning PS4. But this would push it, right? For a Linux geek like me? Oh, man, yeah.

Probably. It pushes it. It's just fun to make it, right? I don't know. Yeah, man. I had Gentoo on a Wii at one point. Maybe one day they could really get some performance out of it and use it to encode video. Oh. I see your angle. All right.

So I've got to give a little shout-out to the Elementary OS folks. We talked last week with Wimpy about funding of Ubuntu Mate. And Daniel from Elementary OS has posted an update about some of their funding initiatives. He said, I want to put a quick update about our bounties. As you might know, Elementary has a bug bounty program where we pay out people to fix certain issues. Anyone can create a bounty on any issue or contribute to an existing bounty. It's pretty great. So far, Elementary has paid out over $14,000 to developers fixing bugs.

Here's some of the big ticket ones that are still open. And you know what? I was looking through this, Wes, and something sort of really jumped out at me as I was browsing through Elementary OS's bounty source. Yeah. And I had an off-air conversation with Daniel in the subreddit a little bit about this too. Because I asked, you know, does it slow things down because you can't just go contact the developers directly? Right. And Daniel said, well, no, we think it doesn't.

And he said, I like the kind of transparency that it provides. Of course, bounty source isn't loading right now. That's the Bounty Source website. That's a whole lot of white in your face. But what you get by looking at Elementary OS's Bounty Source page is you get an idea of where the project is going. Like, I'm pretty clear. Like, you can see there's $300 worth of money to work on the file manager right now. And what those top—

You can really see where they're putting their money. Yeah, where's the top concerns in the file manager right now. And what those top... You can really see where they're putting their money. Yeah, where's the top concerns in the file manager? They link all the bugs in the Bounty Source to Launchpad bugs too, which is kind of a nice way to do it for a Ubuntu-based distro. So it seems like a pretty good system. Wimpy, I wanted to just sort of

get your sort of off-the-cuff take on a system like Bounty Source versus sort of the funding that you've sort of come up with where you're working with developers directly. And did you look at Bounty Source and decide it wasn't for you? Or do you just think it's a different strokes for different folks what's your impressions on that yeah i mean bounty source is um it's definitely a tool uh platform

that you can take advantage of i did look at it and i decided uh it's a small project. Ubuntu Martha is a small project with a small group of people. And I wanted to focus on building relationships with people rather than. So with Bounty Source, you can have a drive-by committer who can choose to work on a thing for $50 or whatever it might be. And work on that one thing and then never be engaged with the project again. And I wasn't so keen on that approach. I wanted to approach and reward people that had demonstrated a commitment to the project. So that's sort of the route that I've taken.

I think that – and I could also see, depending on the scale of the project, how a different approach makes sense too. I like browsing through there and seeing what they want fixed, and I like the idea that as sort of somebody who doesn't have any capacity to contribute code, I could contribute money to their bounty source. But then also I found myself kind of confused, like should I be contributing to the Patreon or should I be contributing to the bounty source. But then also I found myself kind of confused. Like, should I be contributing to the Patreon or should I be contributing to the bounty source?

Seems like it would be better just to sort of focus everyone's efforts in one spot. Let them decide where it should go. Yeah. Well, the Patreon is, like, what they do at the bounty source is what they decide needs to get attention. So if you go to the Patreon, you're giving money to the project so then they get dispersed at the bounty source

wherever they deem worthy. That makes sense. OK. Yeah, and that's – and of course you could subscribe to Bounty Source directly too. Yeah. Yeah. But there's also – like just to point out, the 14,000 number is not true. They've already posted this before.

Not this particular example, but about two months ago they posted like we got 9 000 out for bounties and it's like well no that's the total number that is potential to be given well he's saying number given but he's saying here in this post he's saying paid out he's saying that we have paid out not what's event what's out there hanging yeah but if you look at the claimed bounties um the math is not accurate. There's like $4,000 missing from their claim. Which I'm not saying that they aren't doing what they're – they're not doing a good thing and getting developers money and stuff like that. I'm just saying that they kind of inflate it a little bit. So I would prefer them not to do that. Bounty source page is not loading properly for me right now.

But it is worth, there's a link in the show notes. It's actually, I think elementary OS, when you follow them from the outside, it seems a little opaque. It's kind of hard to see what they're doing, where they're going. You know, they're probably working on stuff. But when you go to this, it's sort of, it's like pulling back the

curtain. Insider's view. Yeah, you can get a pretty quick, yeah, this page just loaded for me. So you can see there's $625 worth of bounties available for their new mail program. Elementary OS, 565 bounties. For GTK+, 520. For the Shell, 365.

Midori, 315. Pantheon Files. And they have different stuff in here. You can see for their App Center, one of the things they worked on is to show the most popular apps feature, and they're willing to pay money for that. Nice. This is making me excited for when their next version comes out. It's been so long, and I haven't

wanted to... the current one's so old. It is kind of fascinating to watch it from that perspective. So I decided I'd toss them a few bucks to the Bounty Source, just because I think it's an interesting idea. The reason why I'm... for those of you that are wondering why I'm looking at this stuff so much, is I eventually want to come up with a model like this for JB when

we can afford to do so through our Patreon. But I don't know... Support the community that keeps you here. And so I was kind of looking at Wimpy's model. I like that a lot, because I like establishing those relationships with people. Right. But then this is another way to go. But this seems like, for something that's not a...

If you're not a software project, this model doesn't really work very well. But it's interesting to kind of check in and see what different people are doing. And I find both approaches to be very valid. So it's good to watch, I think. All right, Wes. is that if you are using open source software in the production of your podcasts and videocasts, you could post bounties to add features or fix issues in the tools that you're using. Sure.

Because that way then, let's pick FFmpeg because I know you use it a lot. Let's suppose you need it to tell you the price of tea in China. You put a bounty up for that to happen in ffmpeg because i know you use it a lot let's suppose you need it to turn the price of tea in china you put a bounty up for that to happen in ffmpeg and ffmpeg benefit and you've clearly funded that body of work so you could make it work for you know what you're doing and it might be a little easier to navigate because obviously elementaries are a rather large project and there's lots and lots of bounties there. And I imagine the scope of your bounties would be a lot smaller.

Yeah, I know. There's a big problem with Bounty Source, though, in the sense that if you put money out for a particular thing and then no one does it, that money is still out. Like there's a difference between pay. This is actually one of the things that I mentioned about them paying money to developers. This is not true because of the way Bounty Source is structured.

You're paying money to Bounty Source because as soon as it's put into that particular project or that task, Bounty Source takes that money. So maybe Elementary has paid out that amount of money in general to Bounty Source, but no one's actually claimed it. So if you scroll down their list, it says this is how much has been claimed by developers. And it's a lot different than what has actually been put into the Bounty Source itself. So if you're going to donate to a particular project, it's better to just give them the money to the project and say maybe ask the ear market for this purpose or something. That sucks for elementary.

So you're saying that elementary have put money into Bounty Source to say we want these things implemented or fixed or whatever they want, and they've paid some $14,000 into a thing, and that money has been invested by them, but the work hasn't been done, and the money is effectively sitting in escrow waiting for somebody to do the work. Yes. There's about 4,000 waiting for someone to do it.

I guess they figure that it's in the wash that eventually somebody will come along and claim that work. I hope so. Yeah, what happens if that doesn't? Well, maybe the people don't even – maybe there are people in those projects that aren't even aware that those are a thing that they're willing to pay for. And what if you cancel? Oh, that's a good point. Like if it's GTK work, for example, a GTK maintainer might not even know there's an elementary bounty for it. Yeah, he might even do the work and then that money is just already put into Bounty Source but no one claims it because they didn't know to claim it and it's just there forever.

I guess until they cancel the project, right they canceled that line item i guess it would probably return the money i'm not sure about that i i didn't know that's how bounty source worked i'd certainly be really interested in hearing more about particularly from elementary um i've just listened to a fascinating podcast today with Stuart language on the, uh, simply elementary podcast. It was a really insightful talk about his experiences with elementary and some of his thoughts on, on their project and their direction. It's a great listen.

If you, if you've not heard that, it's definitely one to go and listen to. But I, I feel bad for elementary that they may have invested money that they're not getting full value out of i would i would estimate it's a matter of counseling the bounty and then the money probably returns so if so but then it's but then of course it's just the process of administratively following

up on those things right yeah there's a few of those gdk things those line items for gdk they've been in for a while i i know for at least at least two of those i've seen for a long time because i used i was when they first the reason i know about this thing about any source of stuff is because when they announced this like uh a couple months ago they said like 9 000 was paid out and i had a conversation with daniel and one of the developers that essentially i was i realized that it's not it's not exactly paid out to a developer. It's just paid out to Bounty Source. So I didn't ask them about what happens if you cancel it,

but hopefully if they cancel it, they get the money back. But at the moment, it's just in limbo. Yeah, Bounty Source seems to have continued to grow, but it hasn't grown at the rate I've expected either. So they have continued to expand. It's worth... They've also kind of created a code-based Patreon-type thing, too.

Hmm. I think that's interesting. I think for us, I'm going to look at it. I don't know if it works directly well for us or not, but I like it. So I'm going to play around more and keep looking into it. I'd love to hear from the Elementary OS Project. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I want to shift gears and start talking about this new own cloud release.

This looks like version 9 is a pretty big deal. And, you know, you could probably deploy own cloud on a DigitalOcean droplet. I would be good. We'll probably have a really easy deployment here in a few days for version 9. So use our promo code, if you would, DOUNPLUGGED, and get a $10 credit over at DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud housing provider, dedicated offering, most intuitive and easy way for you to split up your own server up in the cloud. They have mostly Linux. I mean, let's be honest, Wes.

It's the superior OS. But they do have a little free BSD, too. You can get – That's your fancy. Yeah. You can get started in less than 55 seconds. Some pricing plans start only $5 per month for 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSDs, because they all SSDs, a blazing fast CPU, and a terabyte of transfer.

Their pricing plan is crazy straightforward. In fact, you can go to their pricing page and do yourself a favor. Tab it over to hourly. Look at that, Wes. Three cents an hour, two gigabytes of RAM, two core processor, 40 gigabyte SSD, and three terabytes of transfer.

You know, it's becoming just something you want to do. Oh, you're compiling the kernel. Spin it up. Yeah, just do it over there. Just do it on DigitalOcean Droplet. You know, if you're using things like Docker, too, it's really ridiculously fast. It can get deployed on a droplet in no time. And they have data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Germany.

They've got a new one opened up in India, too. That stuff's crazy, I tell you what. But you know what's cray-cray? Super cray-cray? Intense cray-cray? That interface. Yeah. Oh my goodness, Wes! That interface is so good. They have a straightforward interface that's very easy to use

but yet extremely powerful. I'm saying you can set multiple machines, DNS host names at the same time, set up SSH private keys, backups, you can transfer between data centers, you can do private networking, you can You can transfer between data centers. You can do private networking. You can destroy the machine. HTML5 console, all of that.

One-click application deployment, but it's still cray-cray simple. I'm saying cray-cray simple. And they have a straightforward API to make it even better, to just step it up a notch. They have a really great API, and there's a lot of great open-source code written around it.

And go check out some of those great community tutorials written, too, in their community section. Super good stuff. Super. Really well written. Well documented. DigitalOcean.com. Just use the promo code DOUNPLUGGED.

And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Linux Unplugged. Okay. So I don't know if you guys in the mumble room are own cloud users. Wes, are you an own cloud user? Come on, Wes. On and off again. But I've been thinking about using it again.

I got an own cloud instance. I've been running it out for about a year. And I got real heavy into it for a bit. And then I backed off for file syncing. I've been using it for CardDAV and CalDAV. See, that's what I was thinking about, too. Are you liking it? I do.

And I use SyncThing for the file syncing. And I'm using Dropbox still as well. Can't help it. So own cloud 9 is shipping. And this is kind of a major release. The OwnCloud version 9 shipped with code signing, they say, which promises to offer users with safer code. I don't know exactly how,

but by verifying the integrity of their OwnCloud installations during upgrades or installing apps. Well, that's good to hear. Code signing. Yeah. They say with 8 million users, OwnCloud is the world's leading file sync and share solution providing users with a safe home for all of their data.

Founded six years ago as a project with the goal of bringing privacy and control back to users, OwnCloud is where it is today, thanks to contributions from well over 1,000 open source programmers, designers, translators, and others. The big hot features. You ready for this one? Oh, translators, and others. The big hot features. You ready for this one? Oh, I want to hear. Administrators will happily, happily learn that it is now possible to add as many own cloud servers as they want or need as trusted servers to their infrastructures.

Multiple own cloud servers, y'all. Sharing and exchanging of usernames along with automatic name completion. Oh. Yeah. From all the shared servers is a breeze. Trusted own cloud servers can be manually added by admins who have control over the automatic addition of servers. And starting in version

9.0, organizations and institutions like CERN Yeah, that's right. Whoa. Will be able to integrate deeply with their massive own cloud installations with their various storage solutions in their infrastructure. Thanks to the addition of a new storage API that allows for unimaginable scaling levels. Don't even try to imagine it, folks.

Built into own cloud. Enterprise edition is also coming next month. We got some nice UI improvements that look great. Hello, Slack. Nice calendar. Hello. It's looking really good. I want to talk a little bit more about this,

but I thought instead of me talking about it, Wes, I'd play a little bit from the own cloud site. Are you ready for this? Let's hear it. This is direct from the own cloud site. I thought we'd hear it from the horse's mouth. As always, we are working hard to give you tools to manage your files. Wait, wait, that's no good. That was no good. We got to, we got to, we got to, we got to give them a little tip. Let's fix that up. Hold on. Stop the show. Stop the show. We've got to give them a little tip.

This is us contributing back to the open source community. Wes, this is how we would do it. First, you've got to get yourself some hipster Kickstarter music for the background. That is essential. Right? So you get that going. That makes everything sound better. You wait for that to play a little bit.

Then you start your video. Everything sound better. You wait for that to play a little bit. Then you start your video. Hello, ownClouders, and welcome to your personal guided tour of ownCloud 9. The newest ownCloud release is full of improvements and new features. See, this is better, right? Much better.

Let's start on the main files page. This is the default landing for the web interface. In fact, we should just have that for the whole show. That's not bad. I'm down to keep listening. So that's our advice to the OwnCloud project. Good release. Solid release.

But, you know, maybe put some hipster music in that video. Come on now. It makes everything better. Look at that, though. It's looking really great. So OwnCloud 9, Wes, what's been holding you back? What's been holding you back? Be honest with me. Take the gloves9, Wes, what's been holding you back? Federated sharing sounds neat. What's been holding you back? Be honest with me. Take the gloves off, Wes.

I think mostly just that there had been concerns about large file syncing, and I've been using SyncThing for a long time, so I've had that problem solved. So it's more been like, am I ready? Do I want to set up the CardDAV, CalDAV server? But with the Documents app and kind of the more features they're getting, it's making it more like, well, I already have more than enough servers laying around or I

could spin up in an instant. So, why not? Man, this UI is looking good too. Anybody in the Mumbler room currently using own cloud and willing to maybe try upgrading to version 9 and reporting back in the near future? I might do it. Oh,

look at that. Hold on, sorry. Let me see. That would be completely a no. Nobody wants to do it. Oh, look at that. No, hold on. Sorry. Let me see. That would be completely a no. Nobody wants to do it. All right. Fine. I've never installed GNU slash Linux.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. You can take the fall. I don't want to have to do it. I'm not using it at the moment i've tried uh i think five six seven and eight and yeah the file syncing uh was a thing that i wanted to work and it didn't work for me but i'm going to try nine again and i really want own cloud to work and and there are features of own cloud that i

i should be using because I do have sort of notes that I sync around between all of my machines and it would make much more sense to actually use something like own cloud to synchronize that stuff. Yeah, I think about that. But I really want the file syncing to work and that just hasn't quite cut it in the past. So with that article about CERN and all of their petabytes of data that they're

shunting around the place every day, I'm hoping that that's just not marketing spiel and that's really being... See, I'm worried that until they replace CSync of the underlying sync library, I worry that the actual client sync is never going to be enough.

I just want it to be good enough so my wife or I could have an own cloud server with my friends. You know what you could do, too, is you could always point own cloud at a sync thing directory. See, that seems like the way to go. So I want to get a couple other people to jump in here. So, Rarian, you're a heavy own cloud user. Could you tell us, are you looking forward to version 9? What are your thoughts?

I don't know. We'll see. Are you too worried? Are you too worried to use it? You're too dependent on it to upgrade? I'm too dependent on it to upgrade. I haven't had a problem with any syncing issues like you guys described, but I don't sync huge files like ISOs. Okay. I'd be curious to see what Muhahaha has to say in the mumble room.

Because it sounds like you might be planning to upgrade to version 9. Yes, I just started to use it. So I don't think it will be that big of a problem. You're already using version 9? Oh, 8.1. Oh, oh, oh. I see. You mean it's sort of a fresh install of 8.1, so it's probably going to be an easy.

Yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. Yeah, jump on that S while you can. All right. Maybe I should do it. It seems like, yeah, maybe it'll be fun to just get it going. I could do a review of it, too, if I don't know. And would people be... Chatroom, would you be interested in reading it?

We can federate and share files with each other, Chris. Do people care anymore? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. So, I know you're a heavy GNOME user chris and uh so am i and it integrates very well with a gnome desktop it integrates with the built-in notes app in gnome uh so it's easy to sync notes across it's really great in that regard hmm so i've been i've actually been really enjoying Mate. So I was actually considering switching. But, yeah, that is nice.

That is nice. You just dropping the bomb like that on this, Chris? Well, I don't know. It's just I've been using the Apollo a lot. And then when I sat down at the GNOME 3 desktop, it was the file manager. The file manager. I prefer the way Kaja works. To me, it just works better.

But yeah, points well taken. I do like the integration with GNOME 3. I'll consider it. If people are interested, let me know about a review of it on cloud. I'll take a look at it. Even if it blows up in your face, that's still another episode.

Jeez, thanks. Thanks, yeah. Well, hey, no, it can't blow up in my face because code signing. You're secure. Code signing. Good to go. Don't blow up my face because code signing. You're secure. Code signing. Good to go. Don't have to worry about it.

Hmm. I guess I do like the idea of updates, but, you know, this all goes back to own clouds when one of the big advocates that don't get updates from their repo get them from us directly. All right. I'll dig around. I'll see where – I'll give it a consideration. You know, I've been recently thinking, too, about using OwnCloud to store, like, a digital filing cabinet because I just got so much paperwork. Like, you know, like, when you buy something or you get a divorce or you get a loan or whatever, like, there's just moments in your life where all of a sudden you have all this paperwork just dropped in your lap. life where all of a sudden you have all this paperwork just dropped in your lap. And I feel like if at that point in time, if I scanned it and saved it to a system that I used for years, I could actually manage this.

But the problem is I set all the paperwork down aside and then it just goes a scatter. It goes all over the place and it never makes it into a filing cabinet. So I was thinking, geez, if I could get some scans of these things, put them in an own cloud server that's protected. But then I would be, every time it came time to do an upgrade, I'd be like, oh, my stuff. You'd need backups. Yeah, that's true.

You need backups. That's a good point. So I might give it a go, because I have been needing, like, a digital vault for some things like that. And so you never know. You never know. Kaja is pronounced Kaha, not like Cougar or Cougar. Yeah, Kaja, the file manager. Kaha, K like Cougar or Cougar. Yeah, Kaja, the file manager.

Kaha, Kaha. It's a good file manager. Yeah, it is a good file manager. Reminds me of the good old days. All right, you know what else reminds me of the good old days? Ting, because they're keeping mobile simple. Man, they're keeping mobile simple, and I love that. They're just out to make mobile make sense.

It's your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes, and that's what you pay. It's a flat $6 for the line, and it's your usage on top of that. Very straightforward. No contracts, no early termination fees. Really good customer support. It's kind of obvious. Average annual savings per device for a business with 11 to 20 employees per device, $440.

Linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com. Go there to support the show and get yourself a discount. They have really great customer service if you want to call them. 1-855-TING-FTWs. They got great supports. All the nice devices from just the GSM or CDMA SIM card, feature phone, all the way up to the Cadillac smartphones.

The nice ones. And they give you great control with their fantastic dashboard. But, Wes, let's not mince words. What's really important right now? Freaking sales. Ooh, sales. Moto E, second gen, $74. Unlocked, off contract.

Nobody standing in the way of you and your updates. LG Volt 2. Yeah. $66. $66. Samsung S6, $549. Unlocked. Off contract.

You own that. You're going to get the updates right when Samsung finally gets around to releasing them. That's the way to go. It really is. Also, they've got the Nexus devices. They've got a refurbished Nexus 5 on sale right now. They've got the internet phones. They've got them all.

Linux.ting.com. Go check them out. Linux.ting.com. Support the show by visiting them. Try out the savings calculator. You'll be very happy you did. Linux.ting.com. Go check them out. Linux.ting.com. Support the show by visiting them. Try out the savings calculator. You'll be very happy you did. I think so. Linux.ting.com. And a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.

Okay, we've got to talk about this a little bit with the virtual lug because I just don't know what to make of it. Microsoft's gone totally cray-cray and they've announced SQL Server on Linux. On Linux. Poppy and I had a chance to talk about this a little bit today on Tech Talk today, and Popey said he actually fell out of his chair.

So I think he was pretty surprised. Wes, what was your reaction when Microsoft made this announcement? I was pretty surprised, too. I'm curious to see it running. Yeah, so Mumble Room, let me know in the chat room if you have – I'd love to know your initial reactions. But, Popey, for those who didn't get a chance to listen to Tech Talk, recap here your thoughts when you heard that SQL Server coming out for Linux

and what do you think it means? Popey, that's your – I was talking to you, Popey. Anyway, all right. ND Carces, your takes. Do you think this is a go up against Oracle? You go. Yeah, I mean, they've been losing so much ground to the Linux Oracle Constellation hardware server. So you really think it's more of a straight Oracle competition play and less of trying to stay relevant by going to Linux play?

Well, I mean, they also want to sell their stuff. play well i mean they also want to sell their stuff like with virtualization being the primary platform being you know cloud first then you know the primary apparatus they need to get as much value add as they can so they need to like sell sql server licenses and if you're not going to put linux on your machine then at least you know be using Visual Studio 4 or something like that. Yeah. I think it's a pretty good move. I wouldn't deploy it personally, but I could see it, at least from my perspective, if there's DBAs that manage the databases,

if that's what they want to do to provide a redundant SQL interface that I connect to, then if it works, that's great. I wonder if any of you recall a time and place where I was in a spot, and I wonder if any of you found yourselves there. You're sitting down, you're trying to come up with the pros and cons of deploying different systems, and when you look at an application that required Microsoft SQL, from a Linux administrator standpoint,

I knew that meant a Windows IIS server most likely, a Windows Server server, Windows SQL server, so maybe two, three Windows servers locked into a SQL box. It meant that this was going to be yet another deployment of freaking Microsoft Windows and SQL. SQL was the way – was such a conversation stopper for me. When I would go into – oftentimes for clients, one of the things I could do is we could move these things over to Linux. You won't have to upgrade to Windows 2003, whatever, et cetera, et cetera. You won't have to go to 2008. We'll go to this. But when SQL came up, that totally stopped the conversation.

And that and Exchange. Right. There's other things. It's a sore spot. Yeah. I wonder if for people like me now who are coming into shops and trying to get people to move over or maybe move off of Windows and move on to a different system, like you could now spin up a freaking droplet running SQL Server. Yeah, right? Right? Use that as your SQL Server, your off-site premise of SQL Server.

I mean you can't right now. It's not shipping at the moment, but it will be mid-2017. Yeah, they say. I just find that to be a game changer. It's like, that combined with their announcement today as well, that

they are joining the Eclipse Foundation. They say, today I'm happy to share that Microsoft is taking its relationship with the Eclipse community to the next level by joining the Eclipse Foundation. As a Solutions member, joining the Eclipse Foundation enables us to collaborate more closely with the Eclipse community to deliver a great set of tools and services for all development teams and continuously improve our cloud services, SDKs, and tools. What? What? What? Did you know that at Microsoft, their developer mission is to deliver experiences

that empower any developer building any application on any OS? Get it out of here. I like that tone. I don't even... I'm confused, though. It's pretty... It's great, except for the contradiction of the universal Windows platform.

Yeah, that is interesting in that light. You're right. You're right. I actually wonder Except for the contradiction of the universal Windows platform. Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting in that light. You're right. You're right. I actually wonder if this isn't really just about getting people to develop more services that use Azure in the long, long run. I don't know, though. I could be wrong on that. Hey, Java developers, don't you want to use Azure?

Wimpy, you look at this and you say, okay, we've got Visual Studio Code. We've got Microsoft SQL. We've got.NET going open source, joining the Eclipse Foundation. But, Wimpy, where the hell is Skype? Where is Skype? Well, and this is the important distinction. The previous four things you mentioned are all squarely developer and enterprise focused. And Skype is desktop focused for Linux. And Microsoft don't love Linux.

Microsoft love enterprise Linux. And my only concern is if you adopt Microsoft SQL Server on Linux, what happens if it falls out of favor at some point in the future and you've got everything invested in it? Then where do you go? And this is why open source is the safe bet, because you can't have the rug pulled from beneath you. You know, as best as people have tried,

when Oracle acquired OpenOffice and MySQL and other projects and other organizations have, they have always come out better and stronger because of open source. I agree. What does Microsoft SQL have that Maria, Mongo, Couch, Postgres, and the others don't? Maria, Mongo, Couch, Postgres, and the others don't. Well, now we're asking a question above my pay grade, but I do know that it's a well-respected SQL database server that has some nice features. That I do know. Microsoft SQL Server.

Yeah. It has the word Microsoft on it. Well, I know the origins of the Microsoft SQL Server because I worked for the company that Microsoft bought their SQL Server from in order to create Microsoft SQL Server because I worked for the company that Microsoft bought their SQL Server from in order to create Microsoft SQL Server. This story is coming full circle all of a sudden. Way, way, way, way, way back. So Microsoft SQL Server was actually Sybase SQL Server 4.something. Oh, I remember that. And they bought the rights to the old code.

So I think when Sybase released Sybase SQL 10 or 11, they sold the source code to 4.9 or something like that to Microsoft. And then Microsoft reinvented it into Microsoft SQL Server. Yeah, wow. Good callback. That does ring a bell. So what do you think, Wimpy? What were your impressions when you heard this story? You've got some history with this.

Well, I was never involved in that side of the business at Sybase, but it doesn't surprise me. I mean, yeah, Microsoft's loving of Linux is clearly enterprise-focused, and it makes sense for them to have their database product in that lineup alongside, you know, with the Xamarin acquisition and developer story, which I think is going to continue to grow. And we will probably see other Microsoft technologies. I think we'll know when they're really serious, when Exchange can run on Linux.

Yeah. You know, I just look at this now, though really serious when Exchange can run on Linux. Yeah. You know, I just look at this now, though, and two things strike me about this. Number one, when it comes to Microsoft, you now live in a world where you can use Visual Studio Code to write open source.NET software to use Microsoft SQL services or Linux servers running on Azure. That's pretty weird. Wow. Azure. That's pretty weird. And then the other thing that I find to be really interesting about this is at the other end of the spectrum is Apple open sourcing Swift, making Linux general libraries and the runtime available. I like all of

the compiler. This is a really crazy time for Linux on the server. It is so far and above the accepted platform now on the server side. It's really remarkable. So eat that free BSD. I'm sorry, what? What did you say, Wes?

I didn't hear a word, Chris. This is BSD unplugged. Yeah. Go ahead, Wimpy. Yeah. I think you're right. I think that Microsoft are reinventing themselves as a

well, as two things. It's cloud and mobile. They're a cloud and mobile first organization, which I've never quite understood how you can be first in two things, but hey-ho. Yeah, thank you, thank you. But I think this is a tacit admission that Linux has won the enterprise server space and that Microsoft have to be a provider of software in that enterprise market in order to continue to be relevant. Right.

It really has nothing to do with Microsoft being a good open source citizen. Nope. And keep in mind, SQL is not open source, right? They're just releasing it for Linux. It just runs. It has to do with that Linux is in such a market-dominant position that after years they finally bent to this position. But they seem like they're bending fast now.

Yeah. Now that they've come to this new reality, they seem like they're actually moving in the direction. Yeah, I mean, this SQL server must have been in the works for some time because that's not something you just cook up, you know, in short that must have been going for you know many many months yeah and and even in terms of internal staff knowledge retooling your staff to work on linux or bringing a staff that's a big move yeah like that all of that takes like when you think about behind the scenes a company who makes a competitive product having to retool to ship this on Linux, that's some interesting stuff right there.

And it's Microsoft we're talking about. It's not Adobe, which would be incredible. It's Microsoft. And, man, there's a lot of people that fall into that just want to get things done crowd. It's like that's the tool they know. And so if that means that they can deploy it on Linux and and it just works that's that's that's nice well exactly right you know you've now got a migration strategy that doesn't involve changing your underlying rdbms you can just have a microsoft sql server on linux that scales out horizontally and your application can scale with that and

you're not constrained by the limitations of the underlying operating system. You know, which is, you know, in order to do web scale applications, you need to be able to do that these days. I bet it was ZFS coming to Ubuntu that made them do it. That was it right there. Huh. This is interesting, though. And what's next? Is there something next for Microsoft? Is there another thing coming? I don't think it's Exchange, because I think Exchange is too hooked in with Active Directory.

So I think it's got to be – see, SQL was its own beast on its own anyways. Yeah. So there's something else out there. Something else out there. They're going to put Office on Linux. No, IIS. Oh, I hope not. Oh. Oh, I hope not. Oh, boy, I hope not.

Please do. You know, though, I do have a bit of a recommendation for all the gals and guys over at Microsoft that are having to train up on Linux. That's our friends over at Linux Academy. This is where you go to get brushed up on your skill set, whether it's for your gerb, whether it's maybe because you're a multinational, multibillion-dollar corporation with tens of thousands of employees that has to retool on the new market reality. There's probably a use for Linux Academy.

So go to linuxacademy.com to get the unplugged discount. Over 2,325 video courses. Man, what would be crazy is a mashup of over the last year of that number, because this has been going up and up and up. Self-paced courses are awesome, and I love that for somebody who is self-motivated. But what I think is also really great about that is they have a great community

to kind of help move you along a little bit when you need that, and they have instructor help. They have instructor help. They have instructor help. Did I mention? Instructor mentoring is available. Yeah, that's nice. Scenario-based labs, those are really great. You go into an everyday environment.

You get something done. You work in that advanced lab environment from beginning to end over SSH, so you're not an animal, which is really nice. I tell you what, Wes, when I'm over at linuxacademy.com slash unplug, you know what I'm doing? I'm saving money on my future. Yeah, yo. I'm making an investment in Chris, and that feels good.

The graded server exercises are brilliant. Why sit around and wait all day? We got computers that can compute right now. Graded server exercises give you real-time feedback like a boost, like they should. You got a little exam anxiety? Ooh. Here's my tip. Drink a whole bunch before the test.

If you don't want to do that, though, what you ought to do is go over to Linux Academy because they got stuff over there to help you prep for those exams. They have a fantastic availability planner. You tell it how much time you got available, it automatically creates courseware for you. You guys, seven plus distros to choose from. It adjusts the courseware and the servers that it spins up on demand. Oh, you need to learn AWS? They got courseware on that.

You're getting in the Red Hat stuff? They got courseware on that. You're developing Python, Ruby, getting into Android or PHP. Guess what? Courseware on that, all of it and more. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. Go check them out. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program.

Okay. Go check them out. And a big thank you to Lynx Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Okay, so I'm pretty sure I actually did a little research before the show to make sure I'm getting the pronunciation of this right. It's something we've never talked about before. It's kind of new. I hadn't really heard about it. It's called, I think you say, Shaw Link, and I got a little video to introduce. Ooh, let's see. All right. Hi, guys's see. All right!

Hi, guys. Welcome to my channel. Today I'm making something absolutely amazing. It's called Shashlik. In translation, it's basically big pieces of meat on a skewer which are grilled or barbecued. Oh, wait, that was another video. Sorry, no, it's not barbecue skewers. It is software that allows you to transparently run Android applications on a standard Linux desktop as easily and simply as possible, not large chunks of meat.

Both sound good, though. Both sound good. That's too bad because I thought that was, see, much better than the own cloud video. They got music on this one, and I thought that was pretty good. Music and meat. Yeah, they got music, meat, and you know what? Yeah, yeah. All right.

Okay. Add this to the JB repertoire. Man, I'll tell you what. If you're going to talk about meat on sticks. Hi, guys. Welcome to my channel. That is, well, unfortunately, it's not what we're talking about.

What we're talking about is Shashlink. And Wes and I, you've tried it on a couple of desktops. I tried it on an Arch desktop. I've tried it on a Ubuntu Mate 15.10 desktop. What are you trying it on right now? I'm trying it on Linux Mint right here. Boss. Okay.

So, this is a pretty new project. And I'm excited that they're, like, they're really giving a go at this. And it's a big, ambitious project. I've got to say, Wes, I ran into a few bumps. Yes, it's definitely bumpy. Hmm. Okay, I was hoping maybe we had more success because I've only got one application that worked.

I've got one as well. Really? Yes. But it did work. I mean, it really did work, and that was cool. Okay. Okay. All right.

So when I tried it, I tried Snapchat, OwnCloud. I tried Evernote. I tried Telegram. Oh, I didn't think of that. And here's the first couple of – there's a couple of limitations when you're going to run these Android apps on your Linux desktop. They have to have x86 builds. Not a lot of Google Play apps are doing that at the moment

because, you know, people are downloading on mobile. They want them to be as small as possible, so they're optimizing the builds. So that's one big downside is it does have to have an x86 build in it. Another downside, of course, you're not going to have Play services, and then maybe on the minor category of downsides is it does pull down a bunch of KDE dependencies. See – oh, interesting. So I installed the – they have a dev on their website? And it didn't – there were no dependencies.

Maybe you already have them. I did have to comment out – it did try to use KDialog. Yes. I just commented that out and it's been working. Oh, OK. Because it still prints the message it's trying to make a dialogue for. Okay. Okay.

So I did have a – it looks like some things on F-Droid have the x86. Oh, yeah. Sure. Okay. That's nice that F-Droid even tells you. I was able to download the Jupyter Broadcasting app and open the live stream. On your desktop? On my desktop.

That's cool. Emulated Android. So that was pretty neat. I wanted to try the Audible app because I have an Audible subscription and there's no way to listen to Audible on Linux that I know of. And so I was like, well, that's a perfect opportunity is I will run the Audible app.

It just crashes immediately. I couldn't get Evernote to install because Evernote didn't have an x86 build in their Play Store, so Evernote was a no-go. I will say, it does seem to take quite some time to load. Yeah. That sounds a little weird

because the Atom processors are x86, and there's a ton of phones that have Atoms. I agree. I don't know. I thought there would be more that were x86 as well, because there are x86 Android phones on the market. I was surprised by that. Kodi would be an interesting

one to try, although why would you bother since you could just use the Kodi Linux version? They show a whole bunch of apps, but they don't actually show any of the ones I tried in their main screen. But here's what the experience is like. Once you download the APK, you tell ShoshLink to

install it, and then it actually gets integrated in with your desktop launcher's desktop menu. When you launch the app, it shows up in your taskbar as a running application with the desktop app icon. So when I ran the Audible app, it showed up in my dock on GNOME 3, and it had the Audible icon, which was pretty cool. And I launched it by hitting the super key and typing Audible in GNOME 3 search and hitting enter. And so that part of it is really damn slick. And they're iterating on this thing super, super fast. I wonder if people out in the audience have messed with this.

Anybody in the Mumble room mess with any of these? There's a couple other out there that let you run Android apps on your Linux desktop. Has anybody played with this in the Mumble room? There's some validity to it, I think. I've used, not this one, but I've used the one that Google was talking about. Right, there's one that integrates in with the Chrome browser

that I've used too. And there's also some... I'm actually kind of... I was kind of bothered by, when you said that this uses KDialog, it kind of makes me confused because KDE deprecated that like a couple years ago well there's that you know that was just an install script too good option hmm okay well yeah i guess you were able to disable it that right so i literally just commented that line out yes yeah yeah so it has so as you would as you'd imagine

it's a couple it's a couple of pieces of technology. You have the ShoshLink D, which runs Android space and responsible for a few things, drawing a custom boot splash, drawing the back and menu buttons, and notification receiving and pass them to the host operating system. So that's pretty cool. And then they have the runtime. That's the desktop side of the integration layer. It provides small scripts to install APKs, extracting the icon

and creating the desktop menu icon and copying any relevant files around. It also provides the startup script, which launched the emulator. Oh, the emulator? Yeah, as the name suggests, this is a fork of QMU, of the QMU Android emulator from the SDK. So that's where they're kind of getting the secret bolts.

I see. Yeah. It's modified to show the window icon and the title of the app we're running, not like the emulator. That's kind of an interesting approach, though. Near future plans. Drop the manual APPD parsing. Fix network stuff, which I don't know what that means. Yeah.

You were able to stream video. I was watching the live stream. Yeah. Simple window resizing to be more intuitive. Tidying up packaging. Getting better access to the file system using Fuse. It would be pretty neat if you could get this going and get good pass-through of devices, webcams. Honestly, yeah, because there are applications that come out for Android that I would kill to have on the Linux desktop, and I would use these for a decent Android or the Evernote client from Android that could actually use my microphone.

There's like UPnP control clients on Android. Yes. Different things like that. Yes. Honestly, you know what? The Hughes Lite app would be nice to have on my desktop. A very simple app like that would be great. So I could definitely see this.

There's a few things out there. Even maybe Microsoft Office. Hey. Possibly. Yep. Which is great, great. All right, Mumble, any thoughts on Android apps on the Linux desktop before we close the book on this topic? I haven't tried this, but the idea is awesome.

You guys should try it out and see which ones work. See if we can find something that is useful. Yeah. I give them credit for shipping something right now. Yeah, it's worth checking out and playing around with. It is a little hard to figure out. When I installed the dev, it didn't get added to the path or anything. So I had to go find it in opt.

I installed it from the AUR on my machine. And I did the bin. So I did shoshlink-bin from the AUR. And then so I ran, you do install and then there's run. You don't have to mess with run. But you do install, install the APK. Right. And that was it.

But then, you know, you think about this maybe in context of Ubuntu phone, right? And you think, maybe this would be a decent way to run some APKs on Ubuntu phone. That would be pretty sweet. Be the right size. Except for its arm. Yeah. I've got to work on that. So it's called

shashlik, S-H-A-S-H L-I-K, and we have a link in the show notes. Chatroom says no. They do not want this for Ubuntu Touch. No. Micah is upset about that. Sorry, Micah. Sorry.

Micah, you should join the mumble room and tell me why. Because it might be a way to get some nice... Like, what about Waze, right? What if you want Waze? Or what if you want Google Maps on your Ubuntu Touch device? I don't know if they would work because of Play API and all that. But I think there actually is that, but I think there actually is some serious,

I think there actually is some serious uses for this. Does it mean stop developing Linux desktop applications? No, certainly not. Certainly not. That would be crazy. We would never say that.

You know what else is crazy? Not attending a live Linux unplugged. Oh, just don't make that mistake. Be here. You really sold that one. Don't, don't, don't do that. That would be... Just don't. Don't that one. Don't. Don't. Don't do that.

That would be. Just don't. Don't. Never. Don't. No. Hey, you know, we should give a quick mention. You can come say hi to Wes at LinuxFast Northwest and me and the crew. Yeah.

LinuxFast Northwest is coming up at the end of April. All right. JBLive.tv for live shows. JupyterBroadcasting.com slash calendar. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com to get it converted to your local time zone. We do it every single Tuesday. We'd love to have you in our mumble room. Thanks for being here.

See you next week. Thank you. Wow, we haven't had a short Linux Unplugged for a while. That's kind of refreshing. Wow, yeah. Crazy. Hey, Chris. Yes, sir. I got to go, but I just want to tell you I just signed up for Linux Academy. Hey, very nice.

That's great. I hope you enjoy. Enjoy that, Mr. Radio. All right. Have a great rest of your day. Right on. You too. We'll see you guys later. Right on.

Actually, I think we had two firsts today in terms of JB shows. Oh, lay it on me. We began 10 minutes early and we ended early. No way. We began early? Wow. I began on the nail. I started this show early? No way.

No way. It was 10 minutes early. Yeah, 10 minutes early. Wow, I began on the nail. I started this show early? No way. No way. It was 10 minutes early. Yeah, 10 minutes early. Wow. I never do that. How did we not? Usually we have enough things happening. Yeah. I just, I'd managed to get through all the things.

Wow. There you go. Look at that. Rikai mentions I can use MPV to listen to Audible books. I don't know how to do that, but that sounds good. Rikai, you got to give me details on that. Oh, I just installed Flappy Bird. Really? Using the thing?

I don't know if it'll work. That would be decent. That wouldn't be bad. You know, games? That wouldn't be bad, yeah. That's actually a game that I'm surprised hasn't been ported to Linux is Flappy Bird. Or like a clone of it. It doesn't need to be because Or like a clone of it. It doesn't need to be because there's web versions of it everywhere. And there's like 5,000 different clones of it.

Well, Rodden, I wouldn't mind a K Flappy Bird on my system that runs natively. No, that's Clappy Bird. Clappy Bird. Oh, there we go. That's something else. Come on. Let's not talk about that. Hey, look at Rikai linking me to the Arch wiki here with how to play your freaking Audible books using MPV. How about that?

I've got Icon. Are you playing Flappy Bird? Not yet. It's loading very slowly. It's very slowly loading. Maybe I can very slowly play it later. That's a big game. That's a real big game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a big game. Very complex, too. Yeah. This is not the fastest of computers. No, that's what it is. It's the computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a big game. Very complex, too. Yeah. This is not the fastest of computers. No, that's what it is. It's the computer. Yeah, blame the computer.

Mm-hmm. Linux's fault. Slow as a dog. You know what you ought to do is get yourself that new Sputnik that's got the Thunderbolt on there. I have thought about that. Have you? Have you? Yeah, I have.

Mm. Is it on sale yet? No. No. Although you could probably get the Windows version now, can't you? Mm. For some arbitrary reason. I want one of those new 76 systems that are out yeah which one uh it's the one that's one up from the gazelle i was looking at that one i was like man i i need

to find a need and justification for me oh i know. Yeah. Hey, look at this. Look at this. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Using Pygame, there is a clone of Flappy Bird. Nice. Yeah. Are you – I wonder if this is – I wonder if I search the AUR. If this is in the – oh, I'm not using Arch on this computer.

I was going to say if this is in the AUR, I'm going to get it right now. There's probably a PPA. Yeah, there's probably a PPA.