LINUX Unplugged - Episode 147: The Talking Gnome | LUP 147

Episode Date: June 1, 2016

Open Source artificial intelligence in all the things? Ryan from Mycroft joins us to update us on their recent hard work.Is YubiKey going to hell in a handbasket? The latest from openSUSE, our first impressions of Remix OS & more!

Headline, The Anatomy of a Linux User by Ken Stark. And I'm just going through here. Her computer was a decent machine, a mid-2005 Asus desktop with a Dell 19-inch monitor. Unfortunately, it had all the toolbars and pop-ups that a Windows user can collect when not properly tendered. After getting all the files off the computer, we began the process of installing Linux. We sat together through the installation process, and I made sure she understood partitioning process. Inside of an hour, she had a bright and new shiny PC Linux OS desktop. And I think that right there pretty much exemplifies most of the people that I end up switching to Linux, right?

It's that easy. It is. It's that easy. And you take hardware that already existed and is no longer useful, and we make it useful again. There's a lot of power to that. That is. So happy hacking. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 147, for May 31st, 2016. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show where we've kicked your host out of his seat and made him the soundboard operator where he let the batteries die in the mouse.

My name is Noah. My name is Wes. Welcome, Wes. Pleasure to have you here, Noah. All right, so this week we have a ton of stuff coming up in Linux Unplugged. We're going to be talking to Ryan from Mycroft. We're going to be talking about OpenSUSE.

I know that you've installed Remix OS, which is you've somehow decided to take your useful laptop and relegate it to an Android device. And we're going to talk

about YubiKeys, which I have gone on the record numerous times extolling their virtues. And as it turns out, they have turned from an open source company into a closed source company.

And I just bought some. But does that really matter? I don't know. We'll find out. We'll talk about it. And of course, every week, we have to welcome the mumble room, which sometimes I forget about. So hello, mumble room.

Oh my gosh. We have a full mumble room and we have beer. Those are my two favorite things in the whole world. Beer this week is Alameda Brewing Company. Alameda. Alameda. All right. So gentlemen with the beer, tell me how the beer is.

Hmm. Well, so hold on. I'm still here. I got a beer and Wes got a different beer. I got the Pale Ale from Alameda. I have their IPA. The Click-A-Cat, or Click-E-Tat, I think. Yellow Wolf.

It's pretty good. It's actually pretty good. It's from Portland, Oregon. So I'll just be standing by in the background drinking while Brown Bear Hair dries. That's Chris's job today. Yeah. I had to have a Desi. There you go, Noah.

Back to you. All right. Polar Bear is on it. Just make sure to charge a Desi. There you go, Noah. Back to you. All right. Polar Bear is on it. Just make sure to charge those mouse batteries. So we have beer, and so that makes for a good show. I don't know how many of you remember Arch Assault. Arch Assault, for those of you who are not familiar, is basically a distro kind of like Cali, except based on Arch.

It's a distro specifically designed for penetration testing and network security testing, right? Obviously, when you're doing network security testing and penetration testing, one of the really important things is to stay up-to-date and to have up-to-date software. And, of course, you want to be aware of up-to-date exploits. Right, you want to be able to pull down the latest packages. And so there's a fundamental

disconnect, you know, to some degree anyway, when we are trying to do that on a distro that is not rolling, that is stuck in time, right? And so that's kind of where ArchAssault originally kind of took off. And I had the pleasure of talking

with these guys back at Southeast Linux Fest 2014, I believe. Yeah, and we had a really good discussion and they were showing the gentleman that I talked to, he really took the project to heart and he really spent a lot of time and effort and passion. They had shirts, they had

little banners made up, and this is when the project is at its infancy, right? And so him and his wife were sitting... I didn't see people that excited about it already. Yeah, yeah, you could feel the passion so him and his wife are sitting. See people that excited about it already. Yeah, yeah. You can you could feel the passion. And him and his wife actually took the time to settle this stuff. It was a very well branded project. And I understand that they have gone through some changes. Well, it turns out this week we learned that they have announced a new name.

So headline. This is from softpedia.com. The team over at Arch Assault, a GNU slash Linux operating system based on the famous Arch Linux distro designed for ethical hackers, announced a few minutes ago on their Twitter account that they were changing the name to ArchStrike. Designed from the ground up as a security layer to Arch Linux, the ArchAssault project provides security researchers and hackers with one of the most powerful open source and totally free Linux kernel based operating systems for penetration testing and security auditing operations. Under the new umbrella band called ArchStrike, the project promises a bleeding edge pen test distro to anyone who wants to join the fight for freedom of expression privacy on the internet, and it can be considered a direct competitor to Kali Linux, previously known as Backtrack. Has anyone in the Mumble room, let's start with this, has anyone in the Mumble room participated in penetration testing, or have you have experience with Kali Linux?

I have personally used Kali Linux for certain purposes. I can't legally say what. Okay. But I've had limited experience with it. It worked fairly smooth when I tried it a few years ago. So I haven't had experience since then.

Okay. So have you had a chance to try Have you heard of Arches Hulk or is this the first you're hearing about it? No, have you heard of Arches Hulk, or is this the first you're hearing about it? No, I've heard of Arches Hulk. I'm sure other people have in the chat room. Yeah. Have you played with it at all? No, I haven't gone back to Arch yet.

So I'm debating going to Arch, but I'm not sure if I would have use for a pen testing distro outside of a work environment. Well, I don't think this is geared outside of that spectrum, right? So nobody installs a penetration. I mean, well, most people, most practical people that are not the star of a reality show don't install a penetration testing distro as their daily driver. It's not a terribly practical thing, not to mention you have a bunch of software in there that you don't really need. So my thought on it is that I think that Arch Assault is basically designed to do what Kali is doing, except do it based on Arch, no? Yeah, that would be a fair assessment.

It's really weird because I have seen reader posts on Reddit or other forum websites where people are all, I'm going to install Arch Assault or Kali Linux. And I'm like, why? You don't need to unless you're doing this work. You don't need to use this operating system for that. It doesn't make sense. I think Warhead had something to say as well.

Yeah, go ahead, Warhead. Yeah, I'm familiar with the guys from the ArchAssault and the ArchStrike team, and I just wanted to point out that it's not actually a distro in itself. It's more of a layer or a package set that goes on top of Arch. So you have your normal working Arch installation or Androgros or whichever variation you choose to use. And then you can pull these packages in to give you all of that functionality. And then if you want to later in a run, you just pull them all out and it goes away. Oh, nice. That's way more useful to me.

So you're telling me that they do intend you to run this as a daily driver and then just pull down a set of packages that you need to do your work. Exactly. So it's actually in addition to whatever your daily driver is. I'm going to make this OS version that's just for penetration testing and security tools. It's, I'm going to give you all the packages you want that Arch itself doesn't have, and we're going to keep them up to date and rolling as best we can. To my mind, that works very well.

I personally, at least, have a lot of Arch-based workflows as it's the main distro I use, so this would fit very well in that. You have a repo, your packages are there, and now you've built yourself a new pen testing laptop from your same install script. So you touch on something that I think is really pertinent. So Chris, for example, does not – he lives inside of Arch, right?

And so taking him outside of that takes him not only outside his comfort zone, but it also decreases his efficiency, right? Because he has the ability to find the tools and make them work in a given distro. And so if you take somebody that lives on Arch all day and all night, and now you put them into a work environment, and they can bring in that tool set that they need to do their job, do their job, and then relinquish it and go back to whatever, I think that, as a global idea, opens up a lot of real possibilities for Linux. Anyone else in the mobile room have any thoughts or experience with Archassault? Or, Warhead, if you have more to add,

I know that you're pretty well, heavily in communication with the guys that do this. Anyone? Yeah, I can't really add too much to it. The change actually happened quite a while ago. It's just that somehow we realized that people had missed it, so we added it to the recent Twitters, and now Softpedia has it, and it's been resubmitted across blogs across

the net for like two days straight. Yeah, that's about how it goes, right? All right. Well, moving on. Headline from Seuss.com, Seuss Linux Enterprise 12, Service Pack 2 beta, and OpenQA Status of QA Automation. And the article goes on here to say, in mid-May, we have reached the beta phase of SLESS 12 SP2. So I would like to look back a little bit and see what we've achieved. And it's also it's not just SLESS. In fact, there's some really cool stuff. we've achieved. And it's not, it's also, it's not just Sless. In fact, there's some really cool stuff. This, one of the reasons I think we should talk about this is Sless and the other projects

are now sort of interweaved. And Richard could tell you about that. It's, it's sort of fascinating because when you see a new beta of Sless coming, that also means there's a new version of something for us average users coming too. I think, is that right, Richard? Yeah. I mean, this is actually like the first time we've, we've been doing this full hog this this interweaved it's a bit of an experiment still so the yeah the slice 12 sp2 beta um yeah the beta phases started beta ones just come out which uh that's basically like the the real go point for open suzer to now start working on Leap because that's the point where SLE beta customers now have their hands on the SLE code. Well, if they have their hands on it,

OpenSUSE has their hands on it too. So we've got that now in OBS and we've started building Leap. So within like a day, well, actually a day before that announcement, we've already got Leap 42.2 Alpha 1. So SLE's in beta beta we're in alpha and and we're basically kind of following that that mirrored route all the way up to november so every time we have alpha 2 coming out any day now because sleaze doing beta 2 any day now um and you know following following this all the way along and um yeah it's it's really it's really interesting seeing this whole thing working because we're doing really exciting things

on both sides like on the enterprise side this service pack is definitely going to be something special you don't normally see a an enterprise service that goes, yeah, okay, we'll have a new GNOME and a new kernel and a new systemd, and I've probably missed something big in there. I do have a question about Leap. Does it have support for... Does it have support for... That's a bit... No, not ZFS. It's a...

Oh, I can't believe it just slipped my mind. I thought about it, and then boom, lost it. When it comes back, it's fine. Yeah. So, you know, Richard, I guess, can you give me some examples of some of the common things that you've seen, some of the big things that you've seen SLEZ being used for lately? Oh, SLEZ is doing really well, as usual, in all of those kind of big, heavy, mission-critical enterprise environments.

I mean, SUSE is doing very well with that at the moment. I'm not allowed to speak too much about it because we're a public company, but, you know, figures are coming out soon, and it'll be fun to talk about. Because it's being used really heavily in those sort of big, hefty mission-critical environments. SLS-12 has really kind of boosted SUSE in that place. So I joke with you guys from time to time, but the reality is I do encounter a Seuss, you know, in the wild. And I actually, I was working for a client just a couple of weeks ago that was using, uh, that was using Seuss enterprise and they were using it, uh, actually in a Lotus Notes Domino hosted environment. Are you familiar with that? Whoa. Yeah. There's a blast. It's actually, it 11? It's actually, the Domino version was version 8.5.3, and the Lotus Notes version was 9, what they call social edition.

But the cool thing was is that they came to me, and they had a whole host of infrastructure that was hosted in this, and they said, our server died, and we don't know what we're going to do. And they were hosting this on SUSE, and so I was kind of learning the ins and outs. And while I'm doing this, I actually made a recommendation. I'm like, well, you know, it would take a couple days for us to get a server here for you, but... We could take a couple days to get a server here for you, but what we could do for the time being,

or for a permanent thing, is we can rent you a server over at DigitalOcean.com, and they were actually able to use the code D-O-Unplugged to get a $10 credit off their... Rika is cooking chicken. Yeah. They were able to get $10 off, which got them the first two months, because they were actually able to run that on a $5 rig.

And actually, sometimes I think that people don't understand all the things you can do on just the $5 rig. The thing that they fall down on in that $5 rig is of course storage. But guess what? DigitalOcean is working on that. I am so excited. Are you signed up for the beta? Yes, I am. I'm signed up for the beta. That is neat. Yes. We'll have some fun projects later. Basically,

the one thing that I have desired, well, there's actually two things I've desired from DigitalOcean. One is I want to be able to custom upload my ISOs, but because they have basically every distro I'd use anyway, not such a big deal. The second thing I want is more storage. So this block storage thing, I'm in the beta program, and I think we're getting closer to actually getting it, because I got an email from them three days ago or four days ago,

and they wanted a survey about all the things I was going to do. Oh, yeah. Did you get that? I did. Yeah. So I answered that. And hopefully that means that we are getting, hopefully that means that we're getting much closer to the, to actually having block storage is something I'm super looking forward to.

Now I want to talk about, so I have numerous times gone on record and talked about how much I like the Yubikeys, right? They have fundamentally changed the way that I do my job. And at this point, I don't know that I'd say I can't live without a Yubikey, but I certainly can't live without the functionality and convenience that the Yubikey gives me. I mean, they're like at some level, they're like a root of trust in the way you operate. Right. me. I mean, they're like, at some level, they're like a root of trust in the way you operate. Right. So, quick recap.

YubiKey, what it's allowing me to do is, without giving up the private key, store my SSH certificates on a hardware-based token that literally never leaves my side, and I say that as I'm looking around for it. I have two. I have one that I wear around my neck that I've taken off because it jingles when I'm in the studio,

and the second one is actually you can't see it, but it's, it's just, trust me, it's in there. Um, they have recently come out with the four and said that it is no longer going to be an open source device that they're going to close source it. Now the critical question is it doesn't change anything because you couldn't really do anything with the source code anyway, right? It's a hardware-based device, and you still have to trust – And you couldn't change the firmware on the device.

Right, and you still – essentially, you still have to trust the manufacturer. Needless to say, I am a little concerned. How many people in the Mumble room are using YubiKey? Lots, I see. I did just buy a YubiKey 4 before this news came out, like two weeks before. Okay, well, I'm not ready to hand up my YubiKey. There is a competitor up that I am seriously considering, and it is called the NitroKey.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what it is. And what the NitroK key is is it's kind of the same thing where you have a hardware-based device that allows you to store a certificate now a couple things jump out at me the first is that it is an open source device so that i'm happy with it has an open source public published by hardware public software the thing that i'm not so big on is look at the thing right if I go up here and look this is a very large

device also it's a very plastic looking device the YubiKey is sleek the YubiKey is sleek and the YubiKey is I gotta tell you I have had one on my lanyard when I first bought it I actually bought two actually I bought a lot more than two I bought them for everyone in the company. Everyone in my company gets issued a YubiKey. Yeah, we issued them out. Because if I fire somebody, I ask them for

the YubiKey back. They give it back to me. I know that those servers are still secure because that YubiKey has never given up that private key. They can't duplicate. But I bought two for myself originally, and the idea was I was going to have one around my neck, and I was going to leave one at home in my fireproof safe as kind of like a backup, because I have contracts with certain places that, you know, I don't know really what I want to share on the air, but I have contracts with certain places that have very, very high security protocols, and so I am not allowed to access the SSH files. If I want to add a key, I have to write out a justification form,

and I have to explain everything, and then I have to get the key, and then I have to send it in, and then they have to make a change. It takes like three weeks, and it's a real pain. Absolutely. So to avoid all that, this has really changed everything, but I wanted to have two of them, one I kept with me and then one I kept secure. And what I noticed was that it was originally I was concerned that it was going to get broken

or damaged and that's why I needed a backup. Turns out like those things are indestructible. I put mine through my washing machine. It has fallen out of my Jeep while I'm driving down the interstate. And you got it back? Yeah. Wow. My laptop has fallen over on top of it. Like they are practically indestructible.

I can't say the same about this thing. It does not look like it has the same build quality as the YubiKey, and that's a little concerning to me. Mumbaroom, even if you guys don't have experience with the YubiKey, do you guys have any opinions or thoughts? Yeah, I do. The NitroKey, I looked at their website, and they're really lacking in detail. Like, does it even retract? Does it have two slots like the YubiKey does with the long press and the short press?

It just seemed like there was no real comparison between the different models. It's quite early, I think, for the company, so I'll just have to wait and see. I think if I'm not mistaken, it's based on the FST0 token that's already working with GNU and so yeah it does have a couple key slots and everything it's similar to the way the YubiKey works okay now in terms of the open PGP stuff now what is your thought William about what about the about the lack of of YubiKey being open

source does that matter it doesn't really matter to me because I still had to trust them as a manufacturing partner right like they are ultimately manufacturing it. They are, you know, planting the firmware on it at build time. You can't change it. It's impossible. The thing I don't necessarily like about the NitroKey is that you can change the firmware. And typically with GNUK, since they are using GNUK, it will wipe all the keys on there. But I feel like you could probably flash it in such a way that it won't necessarily wipe the keys. And so the security of that whole environment is kind of questionable, especially with that cheap plastic case that's easy to take off.

Right. See, and you're hitting on kind of where I come at it, too, is it feels like the YubiKey was built for commercial enterprise-grade use, and it feels like the NitroKey is like somebody's really great garage idea. Basically. ProKey is like somebody's really great garage idea. I would like to weigh in that, you know, we used YubiKeys here for quite a lot of stuff, especially for folks who are jumping into servers all the time. But Red Hat released an open source app on, at least it's on Android, I don't know if

it's on iOS, called FreeOTP. It's essentially a one-time password generator, but software, you know, so you can load that up on your phone and use it to generate your one-time pass. And it works with everything that we've got deployed. You can also use it in place of the G Authenticator or Google Authenticator app. It's quite wonderful. That's awesome. I will have to check that out.

Yeah. You know, the thing is, there's something about me, and I'm sure I'm going to catch flack for saying this, especially after Sunday's episode, but I have a problem with the idea of Google two-factor authentication when I'm logging into my Google account on a Google server with a Google password

and then the two-factor authentication I have is a software app written by Google, put on a Google device. I mean, that's a lot of Google. Put it on an iPhone, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the software is still written by Google, right?

I just, the thing that I like about my YubiKey when it comes to two-factor authentication is like, I feel like the parties involved like LastPass and YubiKey, totally separate entities and really have nothing to gain from working with each other. Yes, but does Google have anything to gain from sidestepping their authentication parameters? They can already do that internally anyway, I would imagine, right? Well, that's kind of my point. What do they really have to gain from somehow subverting what they're trying to do with these different applications? But that's exactly my point.

applications. But that's exactly my point. When it comes to LastPass, my LastPass vault is encrypted client-side with the key, you know, the two-factor authentication that is totally separate from LastPass, whereas Google, you know, you're making my point, is they, you're essentially saying, like, it's basically to keep the honest people honest outside

of Google, because if Google really wanted to get to your stuff, you're hosed anyway. If I'm not misunderstanding you. Yes, but you're still using that two-factor for your Google services. Yeah. Well, anyway, there's something about me that likes having those two separate. I admit, maybe that's just, maybe that's fun. Maybe I'm just, maybe I'm an old fuddy-duddy, I don't know.

But I haven't quite decided if I'm ready to jump ship on YubiKey or not. I feel like it could go both ways. Anyone else in the Mumba Room have thoughts or opinion on the whole YubiKey situation? Even if you haven't used it, I'm interested in what you think.

I think they should have kept it open source, keep it free software. Okay, and why do you say that? Why do you think it matters? Because, Williams, right, at the end of the day, you're trusting. Rather the manufacturer publishes the spec or not, you're essentially, you're trusting. I mean, unless you have an electrical engineering degree and can go verify these things, you're trusting the manufacturer anyway, right? The hardware, if it's got the code in the hardware and you can't change it, that's fine.

But if you have access to it and you can change the software on the hardware, you should have access to the source code. GPU, GNA, the GPL. Free Software Foundation. I remember here. I'll throw it back to you, William. What was your response to that? My response was the YubiKey does not allow you to change the software. It's physically fused onto the board.

Like, you can't change it once it's printed. From where is there? And correct me if I'm wrong. And correct me if I'm wrong. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Doesn't Richard Stallman himself advocate as it being okay to have binary blobs as long as they can't be changed? Yes, he does. He used the microwave example, I think, for this, where if your microwave has software running on it that you can't change, that's fine.

And the YubiKey is kind of the same thing. It's a black box. So if you can validate that it works correctly and the software can't be changed, it's fine. Ryan, you're thinking there's a security implication here? Well, it's just the ability to audit. You know, that's what, for me, makes open source more secure. And so I can't say that I really understand the reasoning here. I understand that it's a simple tool that generates, you know, based on a counter, you know, the one-time

password, but I still like the ability to audit. I mean, that's actually, hold on a second, hold on a second, hold on a second. So let's back up for a second. First of all, that is one very, that is one component of the YubiKey, right? There are three components to the YubiKey. There is the smart card identification, which I'm using for SSH authentication. There's the one-time password authentication. Then there's the U2F standard. So it is a little bit more complex than just

it is spitting out a random number generator coupled with an algorithm to spit out a one-time password. So there is something to be said about, like, I eventually am entrusting that the SSH certificate that I wrote onto this device is secure. So there's some argument to be made there. I question how valid it is in the world. And I think, was it WizardJed you were going to say something? Yeah, I was going to say you can test every single one of these things in a really basic scenario. And the only thing you can't do, and I believe it's for the YubiKey Neo, it has an NFC, that would be more difficult to test, but it should also be just as easily tested.

It shouldn't be that hard to test. All right. Anyone else have closing thoughts on YubiKey? Yeah, I think with the trust issue, I personally trust an open source company more than a closed source one. But I mean, if all you're doing is using it as a two-factor authenticated to get into your Google account, I don't think it really matters. If you're using it for sort of encrypting your email that is super sensitive,

I'd be a bit more wary. Well, I mean, so to some degree, I am trusting that every server that I own or run has my YubiKey SSH certificate in it. So I mean, there is a certain level of trust there, but... I'm trusting that every server that I own or run has my YubiKey SSH certificate in it. So, I mean, there is a certain level of trust there. I'm hoping that by them doing this, that they're not doing this to their older products.

So, do you still have those available that are open source that you can use? Nothing I've read suggests that they are doing this with any of their older stuff. It seems like all of this is their new production. Right. I don't think they're changing any of the old stuff. I want to talk about Krita 3.0. Krita 3.0 was released. Today, the team at Krita releases 3.0, the animation release.

Wrapping up a year of work, this is a really big release. Animation support integrated into Krita's core. Instant preview for better performance painting and drawing with brushes on big canvases ported to the latest version of qt platform and many bigger and smaller new features and improvements to mention now i know we have a number of different graphic artists in the community i know mr rotten corpses i know odyssey westra is has anyone had experience using creta no one huh well not in any professional sense how about in an unprofessional sense and i guess like you know you're using this in place of gimp or something like that here's why i ask wizard is because there is a lot to be said for an application that is easy and approachable.

And Wes, I know that you and I kind of fall into this at the same time. You and I have very busy professional lives. And so when it comes to enjoy software, we have to find software that's easily approachable and we can just sit down and do something, right? I mean if it's going to take more than a half hour to really get going or have some sort of progress. There's not – I can't do that every day, right? Like maybe a weekend if it's important software. But if it's really going to be useful to me, I need to be able to figure it out pretty quick. Yeah, and I feel the same way. Like I want to sit down and bang something out.

And one of the things I have used – I found the GIMP to be totally unintuitive. I can crop pictures in the GIMP and I can make some minor changes, but really the way I see it is like I can do all the things I've always been able to do in GIMP but I haven't really learned how to do anything new and different quite some time, whereas it feels like other software it's a lot more easy to explore, or I'm actually excited about the new features

and Krita is always talking about stuff. So, Wizard, I want to go back and ask, how is it from somebody who who is not an artist because i'm certainly not geez man stick figures yeah so i mean i'm i struggle with stick figures sometimes how is credo when i sit down and you know i'm looking at the i'm looking at the user interface it actually looks you know i guess fairly approachable i mean there's an awful lot of tools and buttons it is it's uh. For people that might have used proprietary software in the past,

it's kind of a nice mix of the CorelDRAW of the past and Photoshop of today. And it's a good mix. It's not like, oh, Lord, why is this all messed up? Why is everything everywhere else? You kind of get with GIMP. And I don't mean that in a bad way, it's a very different from what you would expect it tends to take a little while to figure out but it's it's kind of what you expect where you expect things to be it's like oh okay everything's right here along the left side oh okay oh there's the

layering tool there's this tool everything's where you would expect it to be and it doesn't it doesn't take that learning curve like you need with GIMP, where it's like, oh, okay, I see layers here, but where is the patterns menu? Oh, the patterns is behind it. It's a weird tab. You know, and I can speak, you know, apparently they're not here to talk for themselves, but I can tell you, having talked to people like Rotten Gorbs and people like Odyssey Westred, that, you know, Odyssey Westred has told me on numerous occasions, if it wasn't for projects like Krita and MyPaint, he as a graphic designer would be on Windows or Mac. And so the important thing is, even if you don't use tools like Krita, and I certainly don't.

I mean, you guys probably have more art in your pinky finger than I have in my whole body. I'm just not an artsy guy. your pinky finger than I have my whole body. I'm just not an artsy guy. But it's important to remember that these projects are fundamentally – are fundamental cornerstones to the people that are in that field. And so … And I think as a society, like we – if someone wants to just get started, maybe they're like in high school and they don't have money for professional software or they're

just starting out in whatever age. It's important for – we have free tools that are free tools that can actually do what you want to do and let people be creative. Exactly. Exactly. You lower that barrier to entry and you take somebody that has a creative spirit and you give them professional-grade tools and say, here you go, kid, have some fun.

That can be a really empowering thing. Gentoo. How many people use Gentoo? This, again, comes from Softpedia. Headline, the Gentoo Linux operating system has received an updated live DVD ISO image dubbed Choice Edition,

which brings the latest GNU Linux technologies. According to the announcement, Gentoo Linux Choice Edition live DVD has been released in celebration of the continued collaboration between Gentoo developers and the community. It looks like it brings some of the latest software releases, such as the KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop environment.

What? There's some sort of troll in the background, folks. So, but how many people are using, yeah, and ZFS, right? I was getting there. UEFI support and ZFS on Linux. How many people are using Gentoo? Is anyone using Gentoo in the mobile room? Have you used Gentoo?

I know a lot of ex-Gentoo guys. Yeah? What are they on now? Tumbleweed. I've used it in the past. I don't have anything current. I've run it on a Wii back in the day. That was a lot of fun.

So Chris and I were talking about doing a Gentoo review have you heard about this? I think you should I would also run it if you guys are installing it on things I would do it too sounds like a blast so the fact that ZFS on Linux is becoming such a big thing and you can tell these early adopters things like Arch Linux and things like Gentoo

that tells you where the drive is for a given file system ZFS is a big deal and what's funny is I still can't get it to work on Ubuntu Now, that tells you where the drive is for a given file system, right? ZFS is a big deal. And what's funny is I still can't get it to work on Ubuntu. Yeah, I know. That's funny. You know, and I can kind of see Gentoo as an interesting thing for our container world. Maybe you want to make yourself a really tiny, minimal Gentoo user land.

And since everything runs on x64 virtualized things anyway, the architecture doesn't matter as much. And just run it like that. You know, Gentoo folks, they're much like Chris and his Arch love, right? They use it, once they get hooked on that train, they use it for everything. And so I've got a really close friend of mine, he has it in his living room. It runs his projector, his TV projector thing. It runs his media center. And then for a living, he actually hosts a website, and he runs all of his servers on

Gentoo as well, because he becomes so familiar with it. Yeah, and the thing that he always says that he likes about it is that he can build that installation to serve that given purpose. In the living room, it's a media center. In his server, it becomes his web server. And so I think that it's important to get these features, things like ZFS. That is going to fundamentally change how he can run it in on his server. Anyone in the mumble room have thoughts about ZFS on Gentoo?

And if not ZFS on Gentoo, how about ZFS on Linux in general or anything related to the current topic? Does anybody know if they've actually got the ZFS module compiled on that live CD or are they compiling it on the user's workstation? You know, I don't know. Maybe if we do a Gentoo review, I'll be able to answer that for you. Yeah, because that would actually be my question because, you know,

Ubuntu's going the way of having it pre-compiled and you're pulling it down and, well, other distros, Debian, and I believe there's a couple others that are coming out and trying to do this DKMS module, which is built on the system. That'd be an interesting way to see it. Like, how are we doing this? Are we doing it the NVIDIA way of which is built on the system. That'd be an interesting way to see it. How are we doing this? Are we doing it the NVIDIA way of compiling

on the system that you're on, or are we pulling it down as a binary? For those of us like myself who are ignorant, explain to me why that's important. Why does it matter? I understand that the perception is that a DKS

AMS module is not going to be as stable, reliable. To start with the simple, like, I am not a lawyer thing, but based on the free software, the SFF and Software Freedom Conservancy, the simple part is basically with all this open source stuff, you as an individual user can do whatever the heck you want but the GPL brings with it certain responsibilities for distributions and so if a distribution is breaching the GPL

the conditions of the GPL are very clear in this they can lose their right to distribute GPL licensed software so you know if you want to you know from a very narrow reading but you know obviously ubuntu think otherwise but you know ubuntu effectively are currently risking their right to ship gpl software so the the you know if you're just if you're doing like a debian or or you know others are the source, users compile whatever the heck you want,

that's generally seen as a loophole around all of that. Hmm. But, of course, yeah, if, you know, how do you know it's going to compile properly? How do you know it's going to work properly? There's more things to go wrong there because, like, your kernel's going to move, then you need to make sure that's going to recompile properly,

blah, blah, blah. There are definitely more moving parts, that's for sure. Well, there are more moving parts. You know what I like? I like operating systems like CentOS and Red Hat that are predictable, and they just have a nice, even flow. You know what else I like? I like when I can learn about those things in a structured

manner without having to guess and stab and search around the internet at places like Linux Academy, where I just got done doing my Red Hat 7 training, and now I realize that they are still releasing different versions of Red Hat 6. I'm thinking, now I should go back, because I've still got a couple of clients on 6. Maybe I need to go back and brush up on 6 skills. They still have the ability to, I can still go take a course and brush up on that,

because now everything's changed. And I don't know about you, Wes, but I have fundamentally changed my behavior to everything is system D now, right? I go to stop a service, it's system D. I go to start a service, system D. I go and enable, like the whole check config to enable something and service to start something, my brain no longer works that way. It's great. Honestly, it's awesome. It is until you go back to a six box. Ooh, ooh, then you're a little lost. But's great. Honestly, it's awesome. It is until you go back to a six box. Ooh, ooh.

Then you're a little lost. Then it's not so great. But you have Linux Academy to fall back on. So Linux Academy is a great place to go and learn about Linux. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And if you go to Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, you can get a great deal on signing up for Linux. And here, Carissa has so kindly pulled up the Red Hat Certified Engineer exam. Now, if you're not familiar with the structure of certification in Red Hat,

the entry level is the CSA, the Certified System Administrator. And then from there is the CE, which is the Certified Engineer. And then after that is the CA, which is the Certified Architect. And I don't remember exactly what the numbers are off the top of my head, but the last time I was talking with a Red Hat employee, they're so shockingly low. The amount of certified architects in the world, there's a handful of them. I've got to tell you guys, if you have one of these certifications, maybe not so much the CSA because that's kind of the entry-level one, but definitely when you start approaching the CE and definitely if you get the CA, man, you write your own ticket. That is a marketable

skill to have because there are so few people. It's a lot of trust you can get from people. It's going to come with a decent salary too. And you can learn all of this stuff on Linux Academy. The site is structured for people that are busy professionals that don't have a lot of time. And that has fundamentally enabled me to learn the things I need to learn.

And again, I'm comparing this from going to a week-long class and now taking this class online at night. Yeah, for sure. I think, too, for me, it's not even just about how busy I am. It's about how they break down the individual courseware. Yes. And so I just look at that and I go, okay, that's something I can accomplish. That's something I can do. And I no longer have this big nebulous question of this task I want to complete.

I have a very specific range of time I need to commit and instructions and comprehensive study guides I can use. And it's like, okay, I'm ready to tackle this problem. Or you just pick that nugget and say, I'm going to tackle that nugget. I love that too. The nugget system is really cool. Like you just want to do a deep dive. They got availability planners too. Just go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged to support the show.

So while I'm on the mic, why don't I take over and start talking about something I've wanted to chat about for a little bit. It's the Mycroft project. Now, Mr. Ryan was going to join us last week, but we got our wires crossed on timing. And that actually sort of works out because there's something now I want to talk about. It's not directly related to the Mycroft project, but it's sort of the power of open source. So let's get started by saying, hey, Ryan, welcome to Linux Unplugged. Hey, I'm glad to be back, as always. Welcome to Linux Unplugged.

Hey, I'm glad to be back, as always. Now, I assume you saw this morning, this super, super cool GNOME extension that brings Mycroft for the desktop right into the GNOME shell. Look at that. It looks like it's professionally done. I mean, it's really, really slick. And this is just a great example of what's one of the great benefits of having something like this be open source. So Ryan, what the heck, what's new with the Mycroft project? There's a lot new. So last week we released the code Mycroft core, which is kind of the piece that ties it all together out to the open source community. We know that it's an alpha, it's got a lot of bugs we're going through and fixing them and

honestly you know once we put it out there immediately you know we got so much great feedback but we also got like so many people trying it and so many new environments that now we're kind of just in crazy patching mode so we'll be probably doing that for another week or two you know just trying to fix it all the bugs people found. But so be ready for an alpha experience. But I encourage everybody to come play with it and even install this extension and provide feedback. It's so ironic because I was actually talking to a group and we have a Slack channel that anybody can join. The documentation tells you how to do that. the numery can join you uh it the documentation tells you how to do that um but we were talking about start starting to make a gnome extension and then somebody linked me to this gnome extension oh okay and it was right before you pinged me on twitter and so i learned about it just as we

started talking about possibly talking about today but it's awesome it's freaking awesome and i'm so happy to see it so uh you seem like you've been pretty busy these days how are how are things now in an open source project that's getting some attention some interest from other parties i have things do they feel like they've leveled up in difficulty for you absolutely absolutely leveled up in difficulty but you know the thing is we're making jarvis an open source Jarvis. So we knew from the beginning it wasn't going to be easy. And so as the project has grown,

we've hired four interns to help just manage all the little tasks. Good, nice. And so we're also leveling up our capability to try and keep up with the difficulty as things increase. But the cool thing is we're in the right space. Well, I would say it seems like there's a lot of attention here. I mean, everyone's aware of Google Home just was announced. Of course, we don't know when it's going to ship yet. Everybody's familiar now with the Amazon Echo.

And the big rumor coming ahead of WWDC is third-party API integration with Siri, which Apple seems to have directly linked to the information to put the word out there that third-party integration is coming to Siri. So it would seem every major player. And then, of course, let's not forget Microsoft has that adorable Cortana as well. You ever wonder if they see this type of movement in the open source community and adjust accordingly? You see Parsey McParser, you know, get released. And you ever wonder if they, they see like, uh, uh,

a project like adapt our intent partial get dropped out there and they're like, Oh, well we don't want a whole bunch of people adopting that, you know? So let's, let's put something else out there that ties kind of people into, to our, you know, ecosystem. But I mean, it's all great. We're making use of everything that these guys drop, you know, and evaluating them and seeing how they can improve my crop. But it's just, and it's great. It's great.

That's what this whole point of this project was, was to introduce an open source alternative, you know, into the environment and to give people like us a chance to integrate this stuff into you know for instance gnome yeah we're we're not going to be able to necessarily grab you know cortana or would we really even want to like and integrate that into our linux desktops and into you know these various random devices around our home and so that's the whole point since the beginning was to provide a platform to enable people to do that and uh you know just last week we uh we finished tech stars which is an accelerator it's like y combinator it's one of the big accelerators in the nation and that was powered by tech stars and sprint and uh we got a lot of

value out of that but uh you were asking about a video and I totally forgot that Josh's keynote was recorded there. And he talks about how open source has, you know, rose to the occasion to rule like mobile and the desktop and how, you know, this is just another space where it makes sense when you have this ubiquitous technology that's going to be everywhere to have it be open. So, okay, I follow you there, Ryan, and I agree. This is fundamentally an area that we have to have a great, solid open source solution to.

What about that ecosystem, though? What makes Google Home attractive is that it ties in with the entire Google ecosystem and all of the third parties that will integrate with it simply because Google is a name that gets their respect. And so they'll work with Google. How do you compete when it seems like that is going to be one of the larger feature sets of these devices? Good question. So the answer is that we don't. The answer is that, sure, you can have a Google Home device that's this black box, you know, that you talk to.

But what about voice enabling, you know, your oven? What about voice enabling, you know, the random Internet of Things that are around your house? Or the new device that you create. Yeah. We're looking at this all wrong. What Mycroft gives us an opportunity to do is to make voice command ubiquitous throughout the house. We keep pushing down what this stack can run on. And the idea is to get it on the smallest microprocessor possible so that your garage door opener can be voice enabled. That's the goal. And to make voice be everywhere, you know, and, and, uh,

do you need to talk to your microwave? Not necessarily, but it'd be fricking awesome if you could, you know, uh, same with the oven preheat to 375 degrees and set a timer for 10 minutes. You know, this is something that I don't necessarily see people, I don't see people adopting Google and Echo and Amazon solution, simply because if I'm GE, and I'm installing, you know, one of those stacks, if they come available to where you can do this, if I'm installing it on an oven, I now my relationship with my customer is shared with Amazon, you know, and everything they say is going to be hoovered up by Amazon. And it's the same with like a Sonos speaker or a Bose speaker.

If you were to put Amazon's, you know, technology on that speaker, if you ask the speaker, what's the best speaker in the world, what is it going to say, Chris? It's going to say the Amazon Echo. That's right. Chris. It's going to say the Amazon Echo. That's right. And so Amazon, like, you know, I know that that you can load Amazon, the Echo software onto Raspberry Pi. But the question is, do you want that relationship with Amazon to permeate everywhere? It's like when you ask Siri, what's the best smartphone? Siri says the iPhone, of course. You know, boy, so it's bigger than any one device, that's for sure. And it's almost the Raspberry Pi of AI and voice, where you can build it into anything and then give that. All of a sudden, there's lots of devices out there, but the Raspberry Pi is what everybody knows.

You take a device like this, and all of a sudden, you can put a computer in something that was never possible to have a computer at a price point, never possible before. Yeah, and the thing is, this is the big thing. For years and years and years, we thought the most innovative way to talk to your computer was to point and grunt. And now we're at a point where computers can understand what you're saying, and they can understand natural language and respond to that. And that's powerful you know that's going to change what we perceive to be computers and what can be a computer because we they you need a speaker and a microphone in this case and then you can have a conversation with this device and make it do what you want it to do wizard jet actually has a good use case for

talking to your oven go Go ahead, Wizard. Yeah. You know, when everyone goes out and they realize, oh, I left my oven on, you can actually go down and ask your phone, oh, did I leave the oven on? Hey, Mike. Hey, Mike. Yeah, I try it. tell your audience you know is is uh we would we we've seen a successful funding round so we'll have more details on that soon which means that we're we're in this for the long haul and uh and we're going to be working with every community that will work with us to try to get the mycroft core to permeate you know throughout open source projects that,

you know, be it applications or desktops or anything. You know, I used Home Assistant the other day, homeassistant.io, which is a really cool project. And I noticed that they used, you know, some really simple Google speech to text to do pretty simple commands. And this is another place where, you know, Mycroft might be able to help extend that capability. And so if you're, if you're involved in a project that you think could benefit from voice, you know, enablement, um, please come over and hang out with us and talk with us because this is, this is something that where we don't have to be behind this time. I mean, we're where we might be a little behind as far as like,

if we're talking about the desktop, because windows 10 has had Cortana for a little while, but, but there's now an option. And the only thing holding it back is getting, you know, people contributing and porting it over to the different desktops and, and making sure that it's easy to use and enable.

And we saw that with the GNOME extension. But unfortunately, there's just not enough people on the team to be an expert in how to integrate into each of the desktop environments. So I'd love to see, you know, this permeate as an option for people who want to voice enable their desktop and maybe even their Linux-powered phone. And I'm looking at Popey, even though I'm sure he's not listening right now, but I'm looking at him.

So, Stereoblow, you made a comment in the chat room about the importance of some sort of open dictation system, something like that. Could you expand on that a little bit? Yeah, I'm not sure if people have tried to use dictation on Linux, but it's not that easy to get a working dictation going. I mean, you have the option of using something like Dragon NaturallySpeaking or something, but having open dictation technology would be just great on Linux. I like the idea, too, of all of these really interesting chat applications that are coming

out now, like you have Silent Circle and, of course, Telegram and all these could use. They're working on early versions of bots, but wouldn't it be interesting to see them integrate some sort of micro functionality? Yes, it would. Yes, that would be very cool. So it's kind of like the perfect time to be the plumbing of this kind of stuff because there's a lot of stuff in development. And if we have a really good, friendly, open source upstream, that's awesome. And it sounds like you guys will be a good horse to bet on with the funding going successfully.

It'll be around for a while. So that's good news, too. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, one thing that holds us back and that the Jupiter Broadcasting community can help with is we just need people to test on all different mics. You know, unfortunately, we found some people whose laptop mics give them a really, really difficult time. But that's great information to have. And that's great information to take and, and try to adjust the experience work everywhere,

you know, and we can only get that. Like we're not an enormous company. We don't have, uh, you know, $20 million and a hundred engineers to throw at, throw out a problem. So the best thing that people can do for us is to come over and provide us with feedback and we're not perfect and we're not going to be perfect. a problem. So the best thing that people can do for us is to come over and provide us with feedback. And we're not perfect and we're not going to be perfect. It's rough to do what we're doing, but the best way to accelerate that process is to get feedback and contributions. And so I'd probably say the same thing every time, but we could really use the help of the open source community to help

us kind of drive development and drive testing. So if people have time and they want to contribute to a project, we could really use the eyeballs in the hands. Yeah, excellent. Thanks, Ryan. I think that would be really – that's probably – helping out with the mics, that's something anybody can do without any development skills. Swift, you had something you wanted to mention regarding Simon real quick as we wrap up? Yeah, I was going to talk about that. You can use that as dictation software.

It's not the prettiest in the world, but it is nice. Yeah, something for people to look into. So, Ryan, well, thank you for stopping by and giving us an update. It's a project we've been following for a while here on the show, and I continue to find it every single time we talk fascinating. Yeah, I still hope to head over your way and hook up Lady Jupiter. That would be amazing. We'll make it worth your time.

Okay. Alright. I'll help you do that. Lady Jupiter knows how to party. That is a great, as LinuxFest can attest. So before we go any further, speaking of party, you know it's a party for your pocketbook? Ting. Go right there. Get yourself just a great cellular plan. Go to linux.ting.com to get our discount and support the show.

It's your own terms wireless. So they've got CDMA and GSM you get to pick from, which is dead simple, which means if you have a better GSM signal in your area, switch over to that. If you have a better CDMA signal, you can switch over to that. Where else are you going to get that? I love that flexibility. I love also – well, I suppose what I really love about it is it's $6 for the line. And then it's just your usage on top of that.

That's the brilliance. That's where it's just simple and straightforward. It's how wireless should have been from the beginning. No contract. No other termination fee. No, you go to linux.ting.com. You get $25 off your first device. If you've got a compatible device, and you might, you get $25 in service credit.

Now, the average Ting bill per line is like $23. They're doing a giveaway of the Ancetel OneTouch Idle 3, which is a pretty decent freaking GSM 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch Android phone. I know. So we got details on their blog right now.

How do you beat free? You can't beat free, Wes. You can't beat free. Free phone and then that Ting service. You're paying nothing. $9 for a SIM if you just need a SIM card. Then they have great devices, including the Volt 2 for $66. If you're just looking for a nice Android phone to just make calls and stuff, or do like Telegram. Right. Perfect.

Netgear Zing's back in stock. That's great. That's great. They also have the old Nexus 5. If you want something for under $200 that is a Google Experience phone. And of course you've got the 5X and the 6P and the internet phones and the Samsung phones and all of them. Yeah, they've got them all. You go to linux.ting.com

go there, try them out. Like I said, there's no contract. There's no early termination fee. There's really no risk. They have a savings calculator right here. You go there. You plug it in. You see how much you would save. And you know what, Wes? Girl, you're going to save so much. Wes, I can't. Okay, Wes? Girl, you're going to save. So much. Wes, I can't.

Okay? I can't, Wes. I can't. You just have to go there. Just for me? Wes, I can't. Linux.ting.com. You've got to go there and try it out.

See what I've been talking about? That supports the show, looking at what they got, reading their blog, learning more about the company, maybe doing their savings calculator. All of that's a way to support the show and maybe save yourself some money. It's a great service. I've been, I mean, I'm like two and a half years now or something. Because it's almost freaking June, which is crazy.

Linux.ting.com So, Wes, I don't know if the, does the Mumble Room know that we asked you to sacrifice your laptop once again? I'm not sure. We did talk about it pre-show. Yeah. So, I'll bring the brown bear back in for this segment because I know he might have more interest in this than I do.

But I will confess I was the one that asked you to do this. That's true. And you've actually gotten – A sacrifice. You've gotten remarkably further than I expected. I am damn impressed when I looked over at your machine and saw what you've been up to. So, ladies and gentlemen, we asked Wes, for the good of the virtual lug and our audience, take a look at what might be a desktop Linux competitor someday.

Remix OS for the PC. What is it, Wes? Well, it's a combination of Remix OS and Android x86. And it's Android on your laptop. That's what I'm running it on here anyway. And it's kind of like a regular desktop experience. Maybe like a little Windows 10-ish, but they've got like a pseudo desktop

with like your Android icons. It doesn't, it comes with like a guest mode. So you can start out and you can just run it like a, you can burn it to a CD or a USB and then run it in guest mode and it'll just be like a regular live CD without persistence. Or they have a resident mode, they call it, where it will make itself like a little

loopback image file and write on there. So that's what I've been doing. I put it on a USB drive. And edited grub. Had to do a little futz with grub that maybe that's my fault, maybe that's their fault, you know, it's hard to say. But I've got it running and it doesn't come with Play Services, but Play Services, they have like

an easy install for Play Services that took, I don't know, a minute. You just reboot, and then the Play Store was there. So I've been able to install Telegram. I've got Slack. I've got Google Drive. You did. You got all those up.

There have been a couple caveats, like Google Drive. I can download the show notes as a PDF, but I have not been able to get it to actually show me the show notes and be able to edit them. But Telegram works. Slack's working great. Do this for me, if you don't mind. Can you look and see if GoPay is on there?

And here's why I say that. We have a payment solution for the, you know, so we offer services in some weird places, and I'm an entrepreneur, right? So I never tell somebody no. So somebody calls me and says, yeah, see if that installs and runs. Somebody calls me and says, yeah, see if that installs and runs. Somebody calls me and says, will you come service me at my RV or in the middle of a parking lot?

Or where are some other weird places we've done? You want someone to know that you'll be able to get this. Right, yeah. I have no problem going out there and doing service. The problem is billing somebody that I met in a parking lot or billing somebody at their RV, that poses a challenge. I'll send you an invoice? Yeah, right. And so, you know, my front desk staff, they get all hot and bothered anytime something

isn't laid out for them. Is it normally in a foreign language? No. No, no. It's normally in English. Yikes. Okay. All right.

Well. But it might work. Maybe we have to change a user agent. Is that a thing? The thing is, though, I hate using tablets for that kind of stuff. It would be much more convenient if they could just boot into a VM, type in the credit card number, run it that way. And so this kind of thing is really not my wheelhouse, right? So for one, I have a hard time really getting behind wanting to run Android on a – taking a perfectly good usable laptop and then running Android on it. No, I feel you.

I mean I don't think I'll keep it and it is like Android is – it's OK on my phone. It works on the phone but it's not perfect. Well, where I do see a lot of value coming in is there is – Inuit GoPay as one example, but I think there are others. There are a lot of applications that are not written for Linux, but they are available on the Play Store, right? Absolutely. And so the ability to have to be able to run those applications, especially if I can virtualize it, if I can get it to run in a virtual box, man, now we're cooking with gas in the front right burner. You know what?

GoPay isn't even available. It's not a Windows app. It's not available on Mac OS. It is only available in iOS or Android. And you're seeing that more and more. There's a lot of applications that are only available inside of a mobile atmosphere. And so, as a person who wants to use a desktop for everything, I think that there is a lot of value to be had in being able to virtualize that stuff and being able to run that on my laptop. Totally. Now, have you run any intensive applications, something like Plex or any sort of game?

I do have Plex installed. I have not tried actually watching it yet. Maybe I can get YouTube going though. I will say it has been nicely integrated. Like my function keys for brightness and sound, those are working right out of the box. No kidding. I mean, it hasn't been slow. It seems to be compositing and accelerated.

Wi-Fi seems to work okay. Wi-Fi was there in the installer process. No kidding. And since then, it's been just perfect. You know, a lot of this leads me to wonder the direction that Google is traveling. I would not be at all surprised if in 10 years, when you buy a MacBook Pro, it's running iOS, and when you buy a Chromebook, it's running Android. I think that as these companies continue to invest more and more money and time and effort

into their mobile operating system, and as companies start to develop apps and put their infrastructure in a mobile atmosphere. In fact, I was doing contracting for a company just last week, and they had an app that I had to send all of the information into them. It was not available from a web browser. Could not do it from a desktop. Had to be done on a smartphone. In fact, they actually told me when we were negotiating the contract out, they said, you know, we want to subcontract you. We want you to do X, Y, Z. And we need you to use our app because that's how we – it's actually – honestly, it was kind of creepy because they actually could take control of the webcam. Oh, boy. And the microphone so that they could see what was going on.

And, again, this brings me back to I think it would be really useful to be able to virtualize something like that and have something like that available to me so that I can complete the assignment. But at the end of the day, then I can shut it down. No way in heck I'm installing that on my phone, right? It just so happens that I happen to have an Android tablet that I don't really like and didn't really want. And they're cheap enough these days, right? Right. And so I just load it on there.

In fact, I have a Google account specifically for things I don't want to use. Well, YouTube, here's on filter on YouTube. No problem. Wow. And that's a great playbook. I don't know if you can hold that up to the camera and they can see. The playback is remarkably smooth if you can't see that. I'd have to hear it with sound to know if it's syncing up and stuff like that.

So we'd have to maybe look at that a little bit closer. But based on what I'm seeing here, I think that's great performance. And, you know, the thing is, really, what is that, a Core i5? Yeah. So, I mean, it's got, like, way more hardware than it really needs. And it has a little less RAM than I should be proud of. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of use cases. MumbleRoom, do you guys, what do you guys think about running Android on a laptop?

I would run it in a vm okay depressing why is it depressing i'll do it in a vm as well so now i'm gonna run you know all of these other os's in my laptop or in my computer it's like well i'm gonna have all these off-base experiences because nobody actually targets the thing that I'm using. Right? I'll just keep adding layers so that I have crappy experience on my laptop supporting these half-baked infrastructures. No, thank you. Now, do you say that as a developer or as an end user? Both.

Okay. Right? As a developer, I don't want to target a thousand platforms. an end user? Both. Okay. Right? As a developer, I don't want to target a thousand platforms. I want people to adopt one thing. But at the same time, as a user, I look at it, it's like, if I support this type of thing, this will become of incentive for developers, right? Gotcha. Okay.

You know, how about outside of just development or sandboxing security concerns, does anyone see this as being like, man, you know I would use Linux more if there were just more apps available, so now this really enables me to do that and I'm going to blow away my Linux install Is anyone thinking that route?

I'm not, but I'm thinking the users might be like that I'm actually thinking I'm thinking the users might be like that I'm actually thinking I already explained to my I don't know, grandmother my father how to use Android phone, now I don't have to explain the same thing

to them again how to you know, use Google Docs on their computer because the experience is the same if I use Remix OS or a similar Android PC thing, right? So they have one sort of device in their pocket and the same experience on their desktop. It could be used for users like that who are not power users.

They just want the streamlined experience everywhere, right? You know what? Non-power users should just relegate themselves to Alexa, Google Now, and things like that, not actually touch the machine. And one thing or not, these will actually save us. And then we can actually focus on getting Linux as a platform, which if you think about it, works on Windows, on Linux, in Solaris, in BSD, and

Android is based on it. So why don't we just rip Android and keep the Linux layer, which actually is what we need so that binaries work. Target that platform instead. It runs everywhere already. I find this, okay, a couple of things about this that strike me as kind of nice. First of all, nice or not, it

definitely looks a lot like Windows 10. But what I really think they've done right is the window controls, the window borders, so you can use the Android apps in a windowed environment, the window borders match the header color of the application. It really looks nice. Yeah, it looks like those applications are meant to be borderless windows. And now that even desktop environments are dropping scroll bars, it doesn't look that weird to have an application with no scroll bars. It just looks like a desktop app. I mean, when you look at that, I wouldn't even know those

are necessarily Android apps, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. And I think as that line gets blurred, I see that as kind of a problem, to be honest with you. I mean, it's great from the familiarity standpoint that Fresnel was saying, you know, you can show your parents to use this and the other. But the thing I do get a little bit concerned about is I like my desktop. I like my desktop operating system. And it seems like every day we take steps to make the desktop a little bit less relevant and mobile a little bit more relevant. And it seems like this is one more step in that direction. No? No? little bit less relevant and mobile a little bit more relevant. And it seems like this is one more step in that direction. No, no, no.

In that case, would you be more comfortable with running something like Chrome OS where you can run Android apps, but you're keeping a more stock Linux experience under the hood? You know, I feel like Chrome OS is the closest I have gotten to mainstream Linux that I could live with, but it misses the beat. I mean, we discussed this on Linux Action Show a couple weeks ago. It misses the beat because, one, is we start to fall into this fallacy of our team's winning rather than we actually have a good solution. Chrome OS, let's face it, is really not a whole lot better than macOS or Windows.

It technically has a Linux kernel, and it technically has a Linux shell, and that's pretty much where it ends. And then we're stuck. I mean, I can't install GIMP. I can't install Inkscape. I can't install LibreOffice. I can't install, I mean, all of the things that I want to do

with a Linux installation. It makes it feel like a traditional Linux desktop. Right, and all the freedoms that come with a Linux desktop. And all the, you know, and the other thing is too, and I've said this before on the air, and all the freedoms that come with a Linux desktop. And the other thing is, too, and I've said this before on the air, and it's worth repeating, because it applies to both Chrome OS

and it applies to Android on a laptop. I don't fundamentally trust those operating systems, and so I will not put highly sensitive information, pictures, videos, documents, whatever, on a Chrome OS laptop or on an Android laptop. And, you know, actually, to second that, all of those important files are encrypted with Lux. And I don't know about you, but I haven't really found a way to get Lux to work on Chrome OS or on Android. I have not tried, but you're right.

Well, as far as the thing you mentioned earlier, that you still want your classic desktop experience and you don't want that mobile thing to take over, that battle is already lost. I think two or three years ago, I talked to, I think he was a backend developer at Tumblr. And he said their user base is growing, and it's growing steadily, but the desktop user

base is stagnant. All the new users that come in are phone and tablet users. Hmm. That doesn't surprise me. Well, it's a trend that just continues in that direction, right? So the next generation of consumers are all people who want that mobile experience.

Well, I have to be honest with you. I'm really hoping what that means is that it opens up a void in the desktop space and allows Linux to take more of a foothold. Because I think that Windows has been dying a slow death for a long time, hope because I think that Windows has been dying a slow death for a long time and I continue to hold out hope that macOS really isn't

making any serious headway into the desktop space. And so, you know, really, their eggs are a lot in mobile as well. So hopefully it kind of leaves that void. You know, a lot of people do that. A lot of people see laptop and desktops as the old generation, the old way of doing things.

And if that's the case, great. Leave that kind of stuff to me. And that's what my generation is. Maybe there are different types of people where, like, you just don't need it. And, OK, that's fine. And you consume and create to the level that you can on those devices. Well, Chris said it best when we were at System76. He goes, yeah, tablet living works great and mobile living works great until you need to get real work done.

Then you need a laptop. So it is what it is. Hey, guys. Then you buy an iPad Pro. Yeah, which doesn't have a keyboard and is really more of a tablet and runs iOS. And so that's, you know, useless.

You have these new Microsoft tablets, the Surface Book, you know. Yeah, I've tried getting Linux to run on those. I haven't, you know, had much of a chance to get that to work well either. Hey, guys, you know, one of the things that I come here, every time I come here, I'm excited to work with Chris, and I'm excited to meet up with Rekhi and have a chance to chat with Wes and whatnot. But the other thing I always try to look at is what is the network doing? What changes is the network making?

What direction is the network doing? What changes is the network making? What direction is the network growing? And as a person on the outside, I always thought I kind of had a decent idea because I think Chris does a really good job of keeping people up to date. But he has been working night and day for months to make some of these fundamental changes possible, like the streaming services. There are streaming servers that are going out to the different services and providing you guys with an uncut feed of all of the shows here.

That's huge. Yeah, it's huge. But the thing that I think often gets overlooked is a lot of people are great at doing addition on the internet and not so great at doing subtraction. And the reality is that there is a cost associated with that, right? so great at doing subtraction. And the reality is that there's a cost associated with that, right? When he is paying Rakai to work on all of this stuff, or when he's having me do all this stuff, when he's having other people come in and try to get all this infrastructure, not to mention actually pay for the physical infrastructure itself. And let me tell you, I mean, I was here, I watched firsthand how carefully he was counting costs, trying to make every single penny count because we had to stretch it as far as humanly possible to make this possible.

And then you get to the end of it and it's like, well, we still aren't going to be able to make this work quite the way we really wanted to. Well, we'll find a way. We're going to we're going to shoehorn this. We're going to shoehorn that. And we're going to we'll outsource this. And thank God we have resources like DigitalOcean that allow us to expand that. But I see so many people that they will pay for a $10 Netflix subscription. My in-laws, and I was showing Chris the text of this earlier, my in-laws have a Netflix subscription that they don't use. They pay every month for a Netflix subscription. But because they bought one of these smart TVs that turned out to be outdated like in six months. By the way, I think I did mention this to them like six months ago when they bought

it. I imagine you did. I was like, you know, smart TV, not a great choice. And so the smart TV goes out of date. And so this Netflix app isn't working. And I find out about this and I'm like, well, you know, you could buy, you know, one of the little streaming sticks or whatever and stick in there. And I'm explaining this to my in-laws and then it dawns on me, they're paying $10 a

month for content that they don't even watch right they don't touch and the reason for that is well I think it's a couple fold one is I think they they buy into the Netflix experience they buy into the Netflix desire that they have access to this on-demand content in the back of your mind you know you can watch it whenever you want exactly never do exactly and and then second of all it's they put it on you know you put it on automatic, you know, draft or whatever, and you just forget about it. It's not that much. It's one meal or whatever. So I guess what I'm asking you guys to do is why not do that for JB?

The people here, I promise you the people in this building are working twice as hard than most of the people at Netflix to bring you content. And the thing is we don't restrict the content. We give it to you in Libra-respecting formats. We give it to you in the most common formats. You download it, and we don't even charge you for it. I mean, you go to the website, you just download it. And all we're asking in return is that if you appreciate the content, if you like what we do here. You know, I used to have a friend who used to say, it was Rabbi Lappin. He used to say, gratuity is what you give people with presidents' faces on them and their tokens of appreciation. And there are so many different levels that you can contribute.

I'm looking here. You can get started at three bucks, three bucks a month. And that's a great way to say thank you. And the thing is, I think a lot of people fall into this. They say, well, I don't know if that really does anything. The reality is, if everyone that said that just signed up for $3 a month, which, by the way, is a third of the cost of Netflix. So if you think about it, you're getting it at like 66% discount. Nothing.

Yeah, exactly. And it does a lot. And of course, if you can afford to help more, then people do. We get emails in all the time. And we don't always read them because quite frankly, there's no good content way

to read flattering emails sometimes. But there's a lot of people that have said the network has helped them get a new Linux job. The network has helped them double their income because they're now working in a different field. So I would just encourage you guys, if you like the content we're producing here, go over to patreon.com slash today and sign up

to be a patron. If this became a wider spread thing, if more people were involved in the Patreon and voting with their money, Chris and the entire network becomes beholden to them and them alone.

And so really, you're not only saying thank you, you're not only saying we see the content that you're doing, we appreciate the content that you're doing, and we thank you, but you're also buying a piece of power, right? You're also buying that little bit of this is what I want to see done. And we try and listen to that. So we're at 3,981. Now, every time that I've been here, I'm starting to get a record.

If I come here and I make some ridiculous promise, then something ridiculous happens, right? I don't know what... I mean, I wore a window shirt. I mean, what else do you want from me? But I think it would be super cool if we could get to 4,000

patrons. Now that is 19 patrons? It's just 19 people. If 19 people sign up, we'd have like four. That's a really nice... Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? It really does. I think it has a nice ring to it. I think that that would go over... I think then Chris would be like,

Noah and Wes do not totally screw up the show when we let them do it. And then and then our beings are way less severe. They are. They are. He doesn't get nearly as he doesn't get nearly as as as upset with us. And we might even get to eat tonight. Yeah. If only we could get 19 patrons.

So let's let's try to make that a goal. Let's see. 19 patrons. We get 19 people to sign up for patron dot com slash today. I'll have to think of something. I don't know what. Again, I just, you know, a Windows shirt. I don't know.

What else am I going to do? Windows tattoo. That ain't going to happen. Down too far. 10,000 patrons. No, it's not going to happen. Even if they were my patrons. No.

Patreon.com slash today. Anyone else in the mumble room have any closing thoughts? Not necessarily about Patreon, but just about Linux in general, you guys. Come on now. We are doing pretty well this week. You what? I'm just saying we're doing pretty well this week. Yeah, I guess so.

I guess everything has... Either we have gone through and said everything humanly possible, or everyone has totally tuned out because we totally screwed it up. But that's alright. Well, thank you very much, Mumble Room. Thank you very much, Mumble Room, for being part of the Linux Unplugged this week.

I really appreciate the opportunity to step in here for Hair Master Chris while he's out getting some much-needed rest, and then he can just kind of pop in here when he has great things to say. The hair doesn't maintain itself, folks. No, it sure doesn't. Thanks a lot, Wes, for being here. I really appreciate it. It's wonderful to see you, Noah.

Great. Well, we'll see you right back here next week. I've never installed GNU slash Linux. Zombies don't run Linux. And the value of this is negative. Get it out of here. you know one thing i uh one thing i'd really like i wish that soundboard thing had like a waveform so i could see when it's about to hit the thingy. Yeah. I have one that does that. Wouldn't you like that? Good show, Noah.

Good show. Thank you. Good show. Boy, did it get warm in here or what? Yeah. I changed. I literally changed mid-show. I changed.

So all that stuff about Patreon, air conditioning would be amazing. Oh, my God. I know, right? Thank you, Mamba Room. You guys are great. Thank you. Think about how much longer they can work. But you can't run it during the show, right?

Because it'd be too loud. JBTitles.com. Well, if we got a unit that's across the yard and then we ducted it over here, what we would do is we would run it into the furnace and then essentially the furnace would be the distributor of the cold air. That's the plan.

Can you tell that Chris thought about this? Yeah, I've been looking into this. It also means our furnace here in the studio is 18 years old now, so we'd have to replace the furnace, too. Let's get the whole job done. JB titles! JB titles!

Now we all got to go boat. Ah, did you have fun, Noah? I did, thank you. Good, good. The Talking Gnome, Noah's Arch, the Gnome Talks Back. This is my first JB titles on Android. Oh, that is a pretty, that's a more solid implementation than I expected. Me too.

That's what. Yeah. If for some reason I was like wanting someone to run Android or I was wanting to run Android, I would use it. Like it's totally usable. If there was an Android app I had to have. Yeah. Or if I had a device like this that I wanted to have a Sling TV on or something like that.

There's a fix your Android problem. You got Anagross on that USB? I like how every time you get on mic these days, you paint me as this unmovable Arch user who is so entrenched into Arch. Alright, Mr. Hotshot. Point to the machine running a distribution

other than Arch. Really? I mean, this is kind of unfortunate, because that's running Mint right there. You see that Mint menu right there? Yeah. Yeah. I just I just, if it's, here's where my Fine, fine, fine. Point to the machine that's

not running Arch that you didn't install for a review. Well, okay, that's true. But also it just comes down to this. If it's a computer I want to install software on, then I don't use Ubuntu. That's the calculus. If it's a computer I'm going to install one piece of software on like Mumble and Skype, so two pieces of software, then it's no big deal to run.

Ubuntu can handle that just fine. You know, it's really easy to install Telegram from the Play Store on Android. Yeah? You know, maybe you should. Oh, whoa. What if Skype was better on that on Remix OS than it is on desktop Linux? Then we could start using that for our calls. Actually, just something quickly on Tele Linux. Then we can start using that for our calls. Actually, just something

quickly on Telegram. I didn't realize this. I just got an Ubuntu phone for the first time ever, and the Telegram client on Ubuntu, like Ubuntu Touch, beats the crap out of the Android version. It doesn't support stickers yet. I have no idea.

It supports everything out there. I'm going to send It supports like every other thing out there. I'm going to send you a message. Let's see. Because last time I checked, it didn't support stickers, which is like I can't use it. You know what? You know what? Oh my god. I'm not normally this guy, but this guy

on Reddit was giving me so much crap for how I covered the own cloud story in the Linux action show this Sunday and then I just realized that both Frank and Joss tweeted out our coverage specifically I was referring people to it which

gives me the sense that we were probably close to the mark yeah I saw that what's that they've got more news today the foundation yeah from own cloud inc today. What's that? They've got more news today. The foundation? Yeah, from OwnCloud Inc. If you have a look at it, if you look at that in the context

of everything that Yoss and Frank and everybody said about why they left, the pieces are starting to come together. It's pretty clear to me, this is why they left. This foundation? Yeah. are starting to come together it's like it's pretty clear to me this is why they left this foundation yeah because like they like think about frank's initial bit of like who owns the community blah blah blah then look at the foundation thing and there's only two community elected seats on

that board there's four corporate seats where any company can effectively buy their eligibility for that board. There's one own cloud appointee. So that's out of a seven person board, the community is only two people. That's the kind of thing that I could see getting. When you put that in the context of Frank's stuff, that's all looking really interesting. Dude, you're totally right. Like I was reading that all backwards i thought the foundation was a reaction to you know some of this bad press that they were getting because of people leaving but i bet you're right i bet it's the opposite i mean the weird the weird thing with me i read that

announcement and i read their their current spec and it's like okay i mean i know i'm biased i'm you know chairman of open sues of f and sake but looked at their rules and foundation charter and it's like they took everything out of the open suzer board spec and like ripped out the community part yeah people say i'm creating fud in this in subreddit i don't i find that i find that subreddit sometimes i just can't i can't track their same thinking i don't think it's spreading FUD. I think it's, like, I guess, what is exactly the FUD of it? What is FUD about, say, these people? And not only did I not cover it when it first started happening because it just seemed like drama, but I waited until, like, multiple people left and another organization reported.

In this case, it was Pharonix. I think even, like, I don't think necessarily you did anything wrong, but even if you covered it in a poor way, I think it was clear that your intentions were there. Like, you've discussed that quite clearly on the show. No, I don't think necessarily you did anything wrong, but even if you covered it in a poor way, I think it was clear that your intentions were there. You discussed that quite clearly on the show. I don't even – yeah. I guess when I look at it, I guess it feels like we're walking the line of if you talk about this stuff, that equates to spreading FUD. And that's the line that makes me uncomfortable. Don't say the bad things.

Just don't ever talk about the bad things. Just don't ever talk about the bad things. I think the bit the subreddit's trying to get onto, and I agree with this part, if this is a subreddit's point, of there's a distinction between OwnCloud Inc. and the OwnCloud community. And I think what Frank is trying to allude to, actually, is part of the problem is people don't see that distinction. So your coverage is kind of evidence of that because you didn't really make a distinction between the two. So, you kind of equated… Well, no, I did specifically say… …unclouding and troubles, therefore uncloud is. Well, no, okay.

So, when we started the coverage, I did specifically say that there are two different entities. But I think it's because I am of the opinion that if Frank and Joss and others leave, it is a bad sign. It's not necessarily they're doomed, but I am honestly of the opinion that it is a bad development for them i don't think that's necessarily bad analysis either i think that is a concerning development i have no idea what they're planning besides i have a pretty good suspicion they're going to announce something tomorrow and obviously frank is a keynote speaker at open susa conference later this month but um the you know this could be like the libra office of the open office for own cloud hmm interesting yeah i don't know if that's true this is purely speculation but you know you know everybody said the same with libra office

what are these crazy guys doing getting all all idealistic and skipping away from that? And it kind of worked out all right for them. Well, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with Frank. And he seems like a pretty intelligent individual. And he seems like he's a pretty... He very much is a big picture kind of person. And I think

for that kind of project, he's a good person to be involved. And so I just think it's a little unfortunate. And hopefully if it does kind of go like the way of LibreOffice OpenOffice, hopefully it'll sort of work out the same way it has long term too. For them. I don't know. This is Linux Unplugged episode 147 for May 31st, 2016. Like, what month is it?

What month is it? This is BSD Unplugged. Okay, here we go. All right, let's try again. This is Linux Unplugged, episode weekly Linux talk show where we have kicked your host out of his seat and made him the soundboard operator. My name is Noah. My name is Wes. Welcome, Wes.

Oh, my mouse died. Oh, my gosh. The mouse died. Oh, I'm sorry. We've got to do it. Oh! Oh! This is what happens when we, this is why we don't have nice things.

This is why we don't have nice things. All right. The one thing this thing's supposed to do, the one thing, the one job this computer literally has. Okay, Noah. If it was micro USB, I probably wouldn't have that problem. There we go. One more time, Noah.