LINUX Unplugged - Episode 151: Universal Divide | LUP 151

Episode Date: June 29, 2016

We go hands on with Linux Mint 18, then discuss the latest batch of desktop killers & Wimpy’s new rig. Plus what makes Mattermost really great, a new new universal package format, the confusing things Red Hat says & we get to know WireGuard!

Oh, my gosh. You guys – you know, I'll tell you, Noah. I had to have a talk with myself after your ThinkPad review and last. That was a legitimately tempting review. The things – the main things that really sold me was the problem-free built-in LTE modem and the temporary battery. So you could swap batteries. I'm big on that. I'm big on battery swap, and I was king of battery.

One of my favorite laptops of all time was the Apple Pismo, and it was like when Steve Jobs was gone, and every bay was modular and compatible with each other, so DVD bays could also be battery bays, so you could have two batteries or two DVDs or a hard drive and a battery. And I love that, man, because I get eight, nine hours of battery life out of that thing. You know, I don't want to make you too jealous,

but Chris, do you know what my latest thing is on the ThinkPad? What? Have you heard of the battery slice? The what? The battery slice is a battery, literally the footprint of the laptop itself. Oh, and it goes underneath it kind of, right? It goes underneath.

That's not even new. That's been around for a little bit, actually, because I used to have one. I've not had one before. And I had a 10-hour flight to Tokyo. I had a five-hour flight to Seattle. I had a one-hour flight to Minneapolis. I had two hours in the airport there. I had two hours in the airport in Tokyo.

And I had my laptop powered on pretty much the whole time. It went almost 24 hours. So this actually goes like in the dock in Tokyo. And I had my laptop powered on pretty much the whole time. It went almost 24 hours straight. So this actually goes like in the docking port, right? Yes. The battery slice attaches to the docking port. So you have your extended battery plus you now have this battery, which goes in your docking port. Right.

That's crazy. Yeah. They've had that for a while. That's super cool. I used to have one with that for a little bit. I can switch between all the batteries because of that power dock. What do they call it? The power center at the front.

Too bad I really, really, really don't like Lenovo as a company. This is Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's ready to go on vacation and is trusting the post-production process. My name is Chris. My name is Noah. Hello there, Noah. Thank you for joining me this week. You're actually back. You made it back from Tokyo. It wasn't without a vent. Well, I'm glad you could make it because we have a great show today. Coming up, Linux Mint 18 is just hitting the interwebs. I'll give you my quick take on that. I've got

it installed on a machine and I kick the tires. And then later on, is desktop Linux almost dead? I don't mean actually like Linux on the desktop. I mean desktop computers in general. Now with these massive machines that are desktop replacements, devices like the NUC and, of course, the penetration of mobile, you've got to wonder, is there really a role for the truck anymore? At least let's zoom out like 10 years and talk about the future of Linux on the desktop, especially in light of some recent new hardware releases.

Plus, we've got great updates from the Red Hat Summit, from the Docker group. There could be a new Ubuntu phone and development. What? And much, much more. So Noah, I am super looking forward to Linux Unplugged 151 because 152 will not contain any Chris. So this is my last episode before I go on vacation. You'll sit down in the center seat at the helm and command the ship.

And I can't even believe you're here. I can't even believe you're here because I figured you're coming back from Tokyo. You're a busy guy. You got a lot of stuff to cover. A lot of things to catch up on. 11.59 at night when there's no flights to Grand Forks. So you ended up spending a good amount of time in Seattle, it sounds like. I ended up spending from 8 in the morning until like 6.50 in the Seattle airport.

And I was to the point where I thought I was going to inadvertently be doing Linux Unplugged in Studio. And then I made a last-ditch effort flight and got back to Minneapolis at midnight and then rented a car and drove for four and a half hours back. I had a client that I had to take care of this morning. And so I was, I really, I was expecting to be back on Saturday and that didn't work out. And then I was hoping to get back on Sunday and that didn't work out. And so ended up being Monday. Very, very, very late. Man, it's always down to the wire, isn't it? Isn't it funny how that happens? I work much better that way. That's true. That's true. I have this, you know, my road trip. I'm coming. I'm going to Montana. I'm going to do some soaking. I'm bringing Dylan with me. It's

his first road trip. He's seven years old. You know, it's summer break between first grade and second grade for him. So this is like a big deal trip. This is like the stakes are high. This is his first impression to road trips. So we're really trying to make sure we just stock it full of fun stuff for him to do so we're going to stop along the way we're gonna do like the lewis and clark caverns we're gonna go to water parks and we basically have activities planned every single day but i as of right now i still don't even have lady jupes back in my possession jeez man i know i have it is down to the wire noah you are you're cutting it down to the wire, Noah. You are. You're cutting it down to the wire. I'm really glad that you've given yourself, well, that the circumstances have

turned out so that you have so much leeway when something goes wrong. So here's what I've learned. It's like owning a boat, I think. Owning an RV is like owning a boat where every time you kind of take it out on a major voyage, stuff breaks. And that's why you own RVs that have warranties that cover everything. And to their credit, everything has been covered totally, absolutely for free. The only problem is the delay as you authorize parts and you wait for that and that kind of thing. So I don't even think this road trip is going to be possible except for we've gotten great customer service by one individual. I'm going to give him a shout-out right here to Jeff. He's down at Sunset RV.

Now, they have a main Fife location where we bought our rig, but at Abakli is where their maintenance divisions run. And Jeff, he's been calling up Thor and verifying, are you authorizing this? Where is this at? Can you put rush shipping on these parts? And then he's going to drive it up to our campsite as soon as it's ready to go. So that way we can start loading it up and pack it up so we don't have to do that whole drive my truck down there, jump in the rig and hit the road thing.

We can actually pack it up at our regular site. So he's going to drive it up there. As soon as they get done working on it, even if that's Thursday night, Friday night, something like that. And I told him if he can bring it up there, I'll take him out for a beer. Because I leave Saturday morning. I leave Saturday morning. So, something like that. And I told him if he can bring it up there, I'll take him out for a beer. Because I leave Saturday morning. I leave Saturday morning. So it's like tight. And then at some point, you'll be hearing a lot more from Noah because he'll be sitting

in the seat right here. So let's jump into some of the stories we have to get into this week. We got a lot of project updates, a lot. And so without going too far, without getting to them, I think we should probably bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hey, Pip. Time-appropriate greetings. Hello.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Well, hello. Hi there. You know, I wanted to talk about something right at the top of the show because Mr. Drum, Edrum, or perhaps you might know him as Sean, in the Mumble Room has worked on something. Or sometimes Edrum. Well, I'm Nome. He worked on something special for me as a gift for Lass's 10th birthday. And it was a nice, totally set up.

We'll talk more about why it's super, super cool. Set up installation of Mattermost for the Jupyter Broadcasting community. Now, we've talked about Mattermost in the past. That's that open source alternative to Slack. So is Rocket Chat. setup installation of Mattermost for the Jupyter Broadcasting community. Now, we've talked about Mattermost in the past. That's that open source alternative to Slack. So is Rocket Chat. That's another one. And this week, I wanted to highlight an article over at opensource.com because I really ragged on them last week.

So I thought it'd only be fair to highlight when they do something pretty cool, just actually give them some credit. So I don't know if you had a chance to listen to last week's episode, but I kind of called him out for a few things. And this week, though, I thought they had a great post up here by Adam Hyde on open source software needing to sell the user experience. And I think a lot of us that listen to the show or participate in our virtual lug agree that user experience is a super important part of the end result. And he talks about how Mattermost is doing open source the right way, about how they're creating a compelling project, something that definitely competes with Slack, takes advantage of its open source heritage, uses that to build into features,

have things like code highlighting and snippets that are way better than anything Slack can do, while also providing a great interface. And so it was sort of, I thought, a great opportunity with this article just posted, full link in the show notes if you guys want to read it. Maybe we'd talk to Sean and get his sort of back-end take on Mattermost, what it was like to set it up for something that could potentially be used at large scale, and just sort of his overall thoughts on it. So, Sean, first of all, thanks for the 10th anniversary gift of Signup Mattermost. We had a cool opportunity to use it during our

Fedora review. We had a back channel thread going during last. It worked out super well. I kind of just want to hear your thoughts on Signup Mattermost for a production deployment and what you think of it as a software technology. Yeah, it's really I think it really runs

really well during the Fedora review.'s really runs really well um during the fedora review everyone was drawn there the load on the server cpu load was like 0.05 yeah it was like 200 megabytes and it just just purrs like a kitten um setup wise back when you did the matter most and rocket chat review is when I started working on this. And I actually created a script for DigitalOcean to put in the user data field. And so you just paste that in there, set the variables for your configuration, and let it rip. Nice. And it goes through and it takes care of setting up the firewall, setting up your admin user.

And it goes through and it takes care of setting up the firewall, setting up your admin user. It generates all new salts, all passwords, sets up the whole stack. And it also sets up Let's Encrypt. So if you already have your A record, you can just set that up right during the install. If not, there are two admin scripts in the admin user's home directory. And at that point, you can just run – one will install a self-signed cert,

and the other one will set up Let's Encrypt. And it will also create a cron job, so auto-renew. So what would you say once all this is set up – sorry, then you can go. I just want to know, for people that are listening right now that maybe have an open source project they're involved in, total commit time to getting Mattermost at a decent Mattermost installation at that setup, total commit time, what would you say it is? If you use my script, three to five minutes. Can you link that to me in the IRC so I can put in the show notes and then go ahead, Noah? Yeah, and to be clear, when he says script, he doesn't mean like you have to set DigitalOcean up and then log into the droplet and then run a script.

That's not what he's talking about. He actually custom designed the script so that it can be dropped in the DigitalOcean control panel and then spun up. That is awesome. Yeah, and I wasn't even aware of that feature, DigitalOcean, and during LinuxFest Northwest, like two months ago, we were in the hotel lobby at like 3.

Why is it that the meeting time in the hotel lobby is like three in the morning well it's either you're there to pick up hookers or you're talking about linux that's yeah that's that's true that's well there were no hookers and blow that night so we were working on uh we were working on our laptops and he was showing me how he could literally drop this script in you change like what sean seven variables? And then you click on the button. There's three that you need to change. But there's like 30 other variables you can change if you want to really set it up

and not have to do any configuration. Or if you want to keep the configuration that you already have and set it up on a second droplet as like a failover. Or if you want to test something, you could use the same configuration for both. You know, here's here's why sean i think this is kind of an important thing and i i actually wouldn't mind just sort of double downing on the double downing that sounds like a sandwich on this because uh one of the things that one of the reasons why jupiter broadcasting

accidentally started using slack was because it took me 35 seconds to try it. And then I was like, oh, well, we could actually use this. And so this is basically the way the decision tree works for me is, is this going to be a critical piece of technology to the successful operation of my business? If it is, I would like to own it, control it, deploy it. However, if owning, controlling, and deploy it takes way more time than I have to dedicate to it, then I will never do it. I will never get it done. So then I might as well just go use the hosted solution

that seems to be from a reputable company that's going to be around for a while, because at least then I'm using something versus not using anything at all. So by creating a script that makes it super fast and easy to deploy Mattermost, you're making it much more competitive, I think, with Slack. Sean, what was the first thing I told you when you first telegrammed me and said, why aren't you guys using Mattermost?

Because Chris would have to set it up. And what did I say? Chris's decision is based off of? Path of least resistance. Damn it, you make me sound like a bastard, Noah. No, I just make you sound like a person who has a lot of really important things to do. And so delving into the specifics of setting up a server on a relatively new software platform is not really something you have the time or energy to tackle. But if somebody else did it, you'd be willing to use it.

Especially when you're not sure how much value it's actually going to return to you. So you're not really willing to commit half a day to something if it's maybe something nobody uses. Right. Because who would think that setting up something that's basically IRC would actually be useful? Why not just use IRC? I mean that was my default thinking about it. would actually be useful. Why not just use IRC?

I mean, that was my default thinking about it. And that was my essential bias that I had, my old man bias coming in until I actually tried it. So I don't know, Mr. Drum, anything else you want to touch on on Mattermost before we move on? I don't think so then. They're working on a federated system so you can have multiple Mattermost connect to each other.

That's cool. That will be very nice. That will be very, very nice. That's always something I'm a big fan of. Speaking of fans, there is something going on over at System76. It's only going on for a little bit too, but they're lowering prices with retweets or tweets of the hashtag Ubuntu 76 for two days up to $350 off. And I'm not

saying I have inside knowledge. I'm just saying I have inside knowledge. That's all I'm saying. And you have a little inside knowledge too, Noah. There is someone in the works here. I'm just saying it's in your benefit to get in on this. Just put that out there. So if you check them out, twitter.com slash system 76. They're tweeting about it right now.

The key is to tweet with hashtag Ubuntu 76. And there's something they've been working for quite a while on really hard and they're super, super excited about it. I've been getting telegrams. I mean I shouldn't say this. Unidentified sources have been informing me about what could be in the works. And I'm just saying I'm pretty excited about it. So I've been retweeting and you guys should too because it'll be worth it. All right.

Speaking of what might be worth it, this might be worth buying. This could be my next and finally, I might add, the first Ubuntu phone I buy. It's called Midori. And no, it's not a GTK web browser based on WebKit that you wish you could use but just doesn't have enough features. It could be the next Ubuntu phone. That's at least according from reader Richard S. over at OMG Ubuntu who pointed OMG Ubuntu to bug 1551811. Obviously, I know what you're all thinking. It's right there in the name.

This obviously points to a new Ubuntu phone. Actually, the bug mentions a device code named Midori with regards to a trust prompt issue that causes a reboot on the MX4 and a mystery new handset. Later on in the bug report, director of engineering over at Canonical says this will block Midori RC. Of course, RC being a release candidate channel for Ubuntu touch images. A quick googling around shows that Midori would be in keeping with the code names for previous Ubuntu devices because they're based for some reason on Dragon Ball franchise references. So you have a couple other bits of evidence too. There's some discussion in IRC channel about working on a fairly large change. Interesting.

Poppy, could you define the term OFONO for me? What is that? What is OFONO? OFONO. It's the radio stack that we use for doing like – well, it's part of the radio stack. Think of it like network manager and all that kind of stuff. So they're working on a fairly large Afono change

at the moment for a new handset, says an IRC. And we're expecting to land a new version of Afono soon. Ooh, what could it be? A new device is expected all of a sudden. Codename Midori. Hmm. Noah. Noah. I think where there is fire and there is smoke there is an ubuntu phone what do you think i think you might be onto something the uh

every time i see the ubuntu phone in person i am i i tell myself i'm like this is perfect i want this did you get a little action itself did you get a little action itself? Did you get a little – Yeah. Well, so Michael Hall, that's his exclusive phone, right? Yeah. And we took him – so Canonical shipped them a computer for their demo, but they may or may not have forgotten the Eurochord that goes in the back of it. Eurochord, dude, really? Sorry, Powerchord. So we had to go to a store to go get a Powerchord.

And so I was in the car and i was i was talking with him and i was like man you really use that all the time and he's like yeah it's you know it's a great experience hold on let's be clear you're like no you're in the car with michael hall driving to a electronic store and you're like holy crap you're no you're not shitting me you actually use ubuntu touch that's your reaction you actually are using that thing you didn't pull out an android device when we go to find electronic store that was your reaction. You actually are using that thing. You didn't pull out an Android device when we go to find electronic store. That was your reaction. So I just – to me, I just have a problem and I think you're in the same boat of like using the same – using a phone that doesn't have the available apps that every other platform does.

But they have the necessary ones, right? They have like a terminal and an email client and Telegram and stuff like Telegram and Telegram. But there's a couple of things that are missing. And so I guess I was a little surprised that that was his exclusive phone. But it seems with a couple of exceptions seems to work very, very well. Wait, are you saying that there wasn't a maps program on the phone? Yeah, so he doesn't have GPS. So I was doing the navigation.

Oh, the phone doesn't have GPS. Well, I think the phone does. It does. He happened to have a broken one. Oh, that's a bit of a bummer. So in any case, there's like little pitfalls. The thing, though, when I get back, though, is I just have such a hard time to actually make the leap. Like when I'm sitting here and I'm using my S6, and I'm not a huge Android fan.

I don't particularly like Android. Like when I'm sitting here and I'm using my S6 and I'm not a huge Android fan. I don't particularly like Android. I just don't know that I dislike it enough to go to a completely different system. I was looking through even small things like we switched over to OS Ticket for AltaSpeed now. I'm not going to have an app for that and I use that daily to update work orders and get push notifications when new ones come in and all that. Derek Devlin, where do you fall down on this particular issue? For me, I think it will happen, the transition, the same way transition happened for me in Windows. From Windows?

Yeah. When I transitioned from Windows to full-time Linux, I was like this decision of like, I'm not going to care, just going to deal with all the circumstances that show up as they show up, because I believe in it. So I want to see where it goes and be supportive of that. Well, that's usually Noah's line. I did that and I don't regret it. And in the phone, I think it will happen that I've been saying that I'd like a convergence thing. But, you know, I think when I do the jumping,

it will be like that. I'll just drop my phone and say, whatever. If it's not there, I'll work on getting it there. You know what I think I need? I guess what I need is I need a me in the mobile space. I need somebody to come along, walk alongside me and solve my problems so that I'm not – and hold my hand so I'm not scared. That's what I need. Popey, how realistic would it be for someone like me to assume that this might be an image for a device that already exists versus a brand new device? So this was reported on OMG Ubuntu.

I think there was a photo of the device as well. There's been a couple of photos leaked. I've seen a couple myself, yeah. Yeah, one of them was a bit pixelated and the other one I think is a bit clearer. But they show convergence in full effect and they show it docked to like in one case it shows it docked in there and you see that you see the unity 8 session up on the screen but when you mention the image it's pretty much the same image on every device so when you know some new feature is enabled it's enabled for everyone

unless it's like hardware specific like like a fingerprint reader or something. Then, you know, everyone gets it. So if there's new software which fixes bugs in Network Manager or something that fixes bugs in the radio or GPS, then everyone gets the fixes on all the devices. Do you own a PlayStation 4, Popey? No, I'm a PC gamer, PC master race. I just wonder because I just saw this leaked photo with the PS4 and I just wonder where it came from. Because, you know. Yeah, I think that's, you know, when you're compiling stuff, you like turn to the screen next to you.

Yeah, that's not a bad way to go. Hmm. I really, I find it to be exciting that there's a possibility that there's such a new, there's a new device already because I feel like we just got the Pro, Muez or however you say it Pro which was a brand new, which seemed like a really nice high end phone. Meizu, thank you. And so here we are just it feels like Mobile World Congress was just a couple of weeks ago and we're already hearing possibly rumors about

a new phone. Plus last week we talked about the OnePlus 3 getting a community around it to get a bunch of touch running on that which is an extremely well-reviewed phone. So perhaps it is finally happening, as the Ron Paul meme says. Speaking of mobile, let's talk about Ting. That's right. That's right.

Go to linux.ting.com and learn more about Ting. Ting is a mobile service provider. My mobile service provider, Noah's mobile service provider. It's just mobile that makes sense. It's only pay for what you use mobile with no contract. $6 for the phone line, and then just your usage on top of that. It's super straightforward, super, super crazy simple. No gimmicks, no like on Tuesdays, you're going to get this. And over the weekends, you can do this. And if you don't use this, we'll roll into this, but only for this amount of time. Like,

it's ridiculous. Or you want to do hotspot or tethering, you have to call in and enable that. Like that kind of stuff is the 90s. It's done. It's over with. And what's nice about Ting is they have two networks to pick from, CDMA and GSM. And all the devices are unlocked. So if you're like crazy Noah and you're traveling to Tokyo, you can take your everyday driver phone and just pop a new SIM in there.

It's no big deal. Or like sometimes, you know, like needles, Noah and I will swap phones because we're not hardcore junkies. We're hardcore phone nerds and we swap phones and it's just pop the SIM in, pop the SIM out. It's true. And legitimately, when Noah travels to the JB1 studios, he usually brings a Ting SIM with him. True or not, Noah? Yeah, I travel. I travel everywhere with one. And I actually, I made this guide, actually. I'll have to, I'll have to get it to you. I stole it from, from the, the, the Ting website, but I went through and I started identifying different, like ideal phone specifications

and which models. Oh, nice. Yeah. Specific, which models you can buy so that when people ask, they say, I want the XYZ. I can say, well, this is the specific model for that phone that you want that would work with Ting or whatever. That's been really neat because if you buy one that has all of the I think there are five bands that you're looking for for LTE.

If you buy one of those phones with all five bands, it will work not only on Ting but again, if you're roaming abroad into Europe or in Japan. So I just, you know, and you can buy a prepaid SIM in almost any country, stick it in, and then you have a local number. You act like a local. Yeah, and you know, it's getting way more common to have all of the bands just built into the phones, especially the most recent phones. That's just sort of what the chipset brings now. So that's making it easier.

But so Ting has a CDMA and GSM network. And so like with the Nexus devices, you could have either or. It depends on your phone and what its capabilities are. But if you understand that there's a thing called GSM and there's a thing called CDMA, you're pretty much good to go. Ting is going to really help you out. They have great customer service where you get to speak to a human being. They have a dashboard that makes managing all of this crazy easy. They have a store online where you can get things from feature phones that start at like $60, $50.

Just imagine that. You need a backup line where you can just make phone calls and you only pay for when you use it. Get a $50 feature phone and just put it on Ting. Or go all the way up and get yourself a full-fledged computing device that's unlocked and you own it outright. I personally, as much as I can, I am advocating for the Nexus-Ting combo or iPhone-Ting combo. I think having been back on Android for a few weeks now since LinuxFest and sort of now getting appreciation for those monthly updates from Google, it makes Android to me much more palatable, much more secure, much more like feels much more in line with my priorities from a really important computing device, something that's getting security updates directly from the vendor.

And Ting never gets in the way of that process. They don't have an agenda. They don't have to brand the update before it gets out there. So when you get a Nexus device from the Play Store and you bring it over to Ting, a couple of really amazing things happen. First of all, when you go to linux.ting.com, your first month is going to probably be paid for because average Ting bill is like 23, 24 bucks for a line. So you go to linux.ting.com, you get your first month paid for. You bring the device on there. You pick GSM or CDMA, whatever's stronger in your area because the Nexus devices are doing all of

it. Once you get it online, put it on Wi-Fi, get all your updates, get all your applications installed, and then just sit back and enjoy the savings. It's such a great combination. Even if you're from outside the U.S. and you're just visiting the states for a little while, go on eBay. Get a cheap GSM phone. Put it on the Ting network, and that can be your travel account. They're traveling from outside the U.S. A lot of phones abroad have two SIM slots.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, just bring a phone. And it's so simple because at the end of the day, you have the safety net of the Ting support where there are actual geeks that love this stuff and they're willing to engage with you. So you actually have really great support to go to. Check them out at linux.ting.com. Also, if you want to just support the show by visiting that page, go read their blog. They got a new post on 130 over-the-air TV stations coming to us cord cutters. I have not had a chance yet to read this, but man, does that sound like music to my ears.

As someone who's probably not going to be getting cable, it may be satellite during the election if things get crazy. But I just – for right now, I'm trying to do everything over the air in Lady Jupes, and that's a blog post I'm going to read. So go to linux.ting.com. Hey, Noah, how about we get super geeky for a second on the show? You ready for this? That's great. I love getting super geeky in the air. I know you like yourself a VPN and that secure networking, so this is what I am looking forward to.

It hasn't hit mainline kernel yet, but say goodbye soon to OpenVPN. Say goodbye to IPsec and say hello to the next generation secure network tunnel announced for Linux. Jason Donfield is the developer and it's called WireGuard. It's described as a next generation secure network tunnel for the Linux kernel. It's built into kernel space, unlike OpenVPN, which runs in user space. It's built into kernel space, unlike OpenVPN, which runs in user space. And inherently, when you're dealing with all this crypto stuff and networking stuff, we're running in user space and then communicating with the kernel. There's just an inherent disadvantage there. So Dunfield explained to a briefing to Foronix last week about WireGuard. He says IPsec is overly complex and impossible to actually use in a secure manner, but it's the fastest thing out there for VPN and secure tunneling. OpenVPN, very popular, but it's super slow.

And by virtue of being in user space, it contains a whole buggy SSL X509 stack. He says, I've started from scratch and written an extremely simple yet powerful cryptographically secure replacement in around 4,000 lines of code called WireGuard. It's much simpler than anything before it, with peers exchanging short-curve 25519 public keys, just like in SSH. Secure network interfaces can be added and removed using the usual IP link and IP address tools. And from there, everything is easily taken care of by the kernel,

and secure tunnels are made quite simple. Not only that, but the performance is in fact better than IPsec, which is basically a huge accomplishment. Now, this isn't brand new. He's been working on this for a while. It's been detailed at some kernel conferences. So it's not like it just showed up out of nowhere. It's using industry standard cryptographic standards. And they have a brand new website at wireguard.io, which they say there it aims to be an easy-to-configure-and-deploy as SSH is, but gives you a VPN connection made simply by exchanging very simple public keys, just like exchanging SSH keys, and all of it's transparently handled by WireGuard.

Roaming between IP addresses, just like MOSH, is also supported. There's no need to manage connections, be concerned about state, manage daemons, or worry about what's under the hood. Very basic but powerful interface. This is a whole new way for doing secure networking under Linux. It's not in Mainline Kernel yet, but man, does this look super promising. Noah, I'll start with you. But man, does this look super promising. Noah, I'll start with you.

What are your thoughts about kind of just sort of wiping the slate clean and starting over with VPN technologies under Linux? So anyone who has worked especially in the commercial side of VPN knows what a pain it is to get some stuff set up correctly. But part of me says that like the last one I did, which is just a couple of months ago, it was literally as simple as I logged into the router. I checked a box. I specified the DHCP lease space that I wanted the VPN clients to log in with. I created credentials and I was done. And that is thanks to the fact that OpenVPN is just like natively supported on like every major, you know, device now. So on some level, I feel like we have already gotten, you know, a long ways and we've made a lot of headway and things are actually pretty good now, though I do respect and understand the concept of, you know,

it may not be as secure as it could be. And I got to tell you, Chris, having fought with VPN for almost 10 years in various different forms, if we could get to a point where it was as secure as it could be. And I got to tell you, Chris, having fought with VPN for almost 10 years in various different forms, if we could get to a point where it was as simple as SSH, where I could install one package on the destination server side and one package on the client side,

man, that's appealing. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, I started picturing like just essentially using these types of links and connections as standard by default. Here's the – there is one major issue the internet is taking with this new technology. And I wonder if anyone in the mumble room feels this way.

One of the big pushbacks coming in right now – well, there's two. But the big first one I want to talk about is what about putting something that is network accessible, that is essentially a core networking technology like this in kernel space? Because if there is an exploit against this thing, you've just owned the entire kernel. Your exploit now runs with kernel-level privileges. You're in. Doesn't anybody in the mum room have any concerns about this? I thought for sure somebody would. i thought for sure somebody would i thought for sure somebody would because that is genuinely i think a legitimate concern the other i think number two issue and the open vpn developers have already raised this one is why not just spend this time making open vpn faster why can't we why can't we just take all this energy you guys have

and put it in open VPN? What do you think about that, Noah? Yeah, I think that open, so the thing about starting over, right, is I think to some degree it suffers from the not invented here syndrome. I think it's, you know, you get these people that say, well, I could do this better.

I could restart from scratch. And I think that then you essentially, we were reinventing the wheel on some level. On the other hand, though, every time I've seen this happen in the past where you take a technology, like look at SystemD, for example. And I know there's probably a sore subject to bring up. But you look at SystemD and look at what has happened. And we have taken something and completely redone it from scratch. And everyone kind of said the same thing is, Oh, you're reinventing the wheel. There's no reason to do this.

And I got to tell you, we have gone from, you know, minutes, minutes of boot time to seconds. And if you, and if you don't, if you're not working in a field where you see that, then maybe it's not as clear to you. But to me, it's there, there's, there is, there should be no discussion about this. It was a, it was a, it's a clear win. Might have been a little quick on the draw, but it is definitely the direction we should be moving. And so if a new VPN protocol system integrated at the kernel level, if we have that same kind of success and that same kind of cleanliness and that same kind of increase in performance and security, I'm all for it.

Okay. Well, here's his argument. He says you just can't get performance in user land applications. It's not that we don't want to support open VPN. It's that open VPN from a performance standpoint is just sort of doomed. And he said, the developer, the other thing about WireGuard is this is why it's 4,000 lines of code. It's insanely simple.

It's meant to be the smallest attack surface as possible. I was on the fence about this until I read Greg KH's post on Google+. Now, he's not a networking developer. He focuses on the Linux kernel. He focuses on the LTS branch and on the USB stack and lots of important subsystems. The networking subsystem, not one of them. But he writes a new VPN protocol and implementation for Linux. It was announced last year at the Kernel Recipes in Paris.

It's great to see a releasable state at this point. I recommend taking a look at it if you're into this type of stuff. Disclosure, I have reviewed various versions of the kernel code over the past few months, and it seems sane. But he says, no, I'm not a kernel networking developer. So Greg says, you know what? It looks like good, sane kernel code to me, which is pretty encouraging. I mean, I definitely can't disagree with his opinion on the topic. Greg says, you know what, it looks like good, sane kernel code to me, which is pretty encouraging. I mean, I definitely can't disagree with his opinion on the topic.

I just have one thing. It's a network thing. It's about doing these type of – it's in the kernel level when we have to understand what it actually means. Being in the kernel level also means that a potential flaw on it is ten times higher to danger. It's an immediate serious issue, especially if it's remotely exploitable. Exactly. Exactly. And not only that, it's also something that if it's buggy for some reason, crashes your entire system too because it's in the kernel. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. So those things should be in mind. Yes, you're not going to get the performance in the user space, but I think it's a good tradeoff. Maybe the performance for the security layer. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah.

I think I pretty much agree with your assessment. Okay. All right. Well, this is CNN Breaking News. We have great news today on the Unplugged program. Finally, after years of waiting Linux users, our prayers have been answered. Universal application installation is now available

thanks to a brand new standard called Subuser. That's right, offering portability, security, and maintainability for user application installations on Linux. We have ourselves a brand new standard called Subuser. You got your flat packs? Go screw yourself. You got app images?

Good for you. You got snaps? I don't care because now we got Subusers. Are you excited, Noah? Come on, Subuser buddy. Yeah. You know that XKCD comic problem? We have 13 computers standing?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Comes to mind. Special news correspondent Wes is joining us in the field right now for reporting on this. Wes, you are at the launch event for SubUser, correct? Yes, I am. And this is truly the one universal installations solution for all Linux users. Correct, Wes? Is that what you're learning on the scene? Well, I think Docker was there already, and this just makes Docker every place else. That's right. That's because this is application

installation with Docker. So you take your Docker containers and now you use them to distribute all your applications with sub-user. That is, oh, you like your, you know what? And here's the crazy thing. This almost could work because there is just a lot of stink behind Docker containers. There's a Docker container for everything. It's unbelievable. So if you take that and you whittle it down a little bit and you make it as an application delivery platform, you are utilizing the built-in knowledge set of all of these people that have already composed Docker containers, which

is a lot. And it could almost by default just be a way people end up distributing applications. At what point though, at what point do we just stop? I don't know. I just don't know what to do with this anymore. It's too much. It's too much. My head kind of explodes.

But there you go. It's sub-user and you can read more about it. It's Docker and Python and a little bit of Git combined with a little bit of Docker. I think to complement this, we need to have some universal window managers. Yes, right. Yeah, yeah. Got to make sure that you got to make sure we get a couple of those, though. Can't just have one. You know, it's amazing how on one side of this argument I started out like two years ago.

If you'd asked me two years ago what I thought about universal installers, I would have told you that it was the number one problem on Linux. And I don't care what anyone said. The number one resistance I think that happens to Linux, the reason that people don't port software to Linux, the number one reason is there is no universal app installer. You've got to figure out which distro to navigate that whole mess. And now I've almost gone to the complete other side of it because I guess I'm not as convinced today that a universal installer could ever work in the Linux ecosystem. I don't know if I believe anymore that it's a viable

solution for the very nature of Linux. Oh, girl, you crazy. I almost don't know how, and I know I get so much crap for this, but I almost don't know how you can't see it. It's such, like, out of all of, I'd say it's the number one problem with Linux desktop.

I agree. I agree. But I don't think it's a solvable problem unless we all agree on one distro to use. I disagree. Well, the whole point of snaps, for example, is to be on multiple distros. It doesn't matter what distro you use as long as the top-level application layer is not directly intertwined into the distro. But then don't you have a handicapped version of the application, potentially? No. What do you mean?

Well, so for example, if you have – if the Arch system, for example, works – is not capable or works differently than Ubuntu, then isn't the snap package packaged for the lowest common denominator? No, it would all work the same. It's just that the current reason the Arch thing doesn't work as well as the Ubuntu one is because the Ubuntu one has been out for two months and has been developed for four months and the Arch one has been out for about four days. So I'll tell you what, I think here's what Colonel Linux is talking about, Rotten, is he's saying the

application itself sort of has to assume the lowest common denominator when it comes in the library. So for example, when I installed the VLC snap on Fedora 24, I got a version of VLC that had really, really crappy fonts compared to the rest of the Fedora 24 desktop, which this is one of the areas they specifically worked on for this release. And so it seemed like that's probably an early problem that's going to get worked out. But right now, that VLC snap doesn't take advantage of the better fonts and better font rendering on my host system.

That seems like a bit of a downside, don't you think? on my host system. That seems like a bit of a downside, don't you think? Well, yeah, it'd be kind of annoying, but if there was no one at all putting effort into a shared library system for snaps, that would suck. But they're doing that, so I'm okay with it. I think it's definitely less annoying than not having the application at all.

Yeah, that's true. That's true, and the other thing... They could just include the font they want. Yeah, that's true. I wonder about user experience. Where AppImage to me feels like it's kind of the easiest from the Windows user download and run it, I wonder how much we'll see that pushed.

I think Canonical could do it, but it doesn't seem like it's at quite the same level yet, and that will probably determine a lot for the desktop user. AppImage is not even that simple for the users. It's more simple than an EXE or a DMG in general because you have to be able to do permissions. But as a user

of app image, you have to know that you have to do that. You have to give them information about that you have to set the permissions so that it can execute. You also have to know how to do that in the first place. There is still a stepping stone that you have to go through for app images that doesn't make it can execute. You also have to know how to do that in the first place. So there is still a stepping stone that you have to go through for app images

that doesn't make it the best. Whereas in certain cases, the goal for snaps is to have just an installer that you would go to the Ubuntu software app or whatever they're calling it now, and then you just install it and there you have it and it's a snap and you're done. But you have to train people to go to that app.

That's the thing. That is actually – You could go to the website and download the Snap, and it would work the same way. Or if the website could somehow initiate the software center's page, that would be nice too. Like an app colon thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wimby, I think you were about to try to jump in there during the crosstalk, so go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say on the point of that vlc application or rather snap um with because i've not seen it but i understand what you're describing the first gui application that i tried to make with the snap had no fonts whatsoever the menus didn't render correctly and pngs didn't render correctly and i PNGs didn't render correctly. And I fixed all of those problems, and it now looks like a themed Ubuntu Mate application again.

And that took some changes in Snapcraft to support that, or rather Snapd to support that, and learning how to do this stuff and then that got abstracted away into the way you build snaps so don't assume that all applications are going to look like that by default just take it that somebody has made a vlc snap of a pre-release version of vlc and they may well still be finding their way with how to actually... That was sort of my impression when I used it. And I think that, you know,

and when you see that represent itself in a couple of different ways that's funny, people will jump on it. Remember when LibreOffice shipped their first Snap, and it was way bigger than it needed to be. People jumped all over that. Yeah, and that's another thing. You have all the debug symbols in there by default at the moment, for example.

And there are mechanisms to say, these are the only bits that I want in the squashfs file system. This is the stuff that is the runtime and the executables, for example. And you can ignore all of these things. And the first few times you make a snap, you just include everything because you just want to get the thing to work. And then once you've got something that works and looks right, then you can start refining it and actually trimming it down.

You know, and just as an indication of how early days all this stuff is, I ran into an issue during my Fedora 24 review where I was trying to install GIMP, and it just downloaded an empty repo folder into my home directory. It turns out that was a bug in Flatpak. I was hitting a bug, and I didn't realize that. I thought I was just doing the commands wrong. And I got a note back from my review as a bit of feedback saying, yeah, turns out bug. We fixed it now. So it is super early days for all this stuff. I guess what I'm trying to convey is not only is it early days for the back-end implementation, like

the store, what its source code is, how the packages are delivered, but it's also early days for all the people that are packaging the software. And I feel like right now in terms of snaps, I feel like we're up against a wall that's about to break and then a whole bunch of snaps are going to come out, but there's not a whole, a whole bunch at the moment

that you could just jump on. You know, for, for, from a dumb user perspective, because that's, you know, it was, it was kind of a, it was kind of an eyeopening experience. I hadn't followed, you know, the snap packages in the flat pack and the app image a whole lot prior to obviously until we covered it on the show. But prior to that, I knew that it existed, but I hadn't really played with it. And so my first foray into it was I went to download our app pick, which was that image burner that Rekha had suggested,

and it was an app image, and I had no idea how to use it. I just downloaded it on the site and double-clicked on it, and it installed. I was like, well, that's cool. Then I did it on like three other distros, and then that really started to click with me and when i went to install my first snap package i had no idea how to do that and so i was googling for snap packages found one online downloaded it from the website tried to double click on it like i did with app image

and that didn't work and then i googled around a little bit and found that you could do it from the command line were you on ubuntu or what were you on? Fedora? That was, yeah, that was Ubuntu. Okay. Yeah, and so basically, I guess, all that to say that if you are a person coming over from macOS or Windows, the software installation of AppImage functions exactly how you would expect it to, and you acquire software exactly how you would expect it to. And because it's cross-distro, I know you no longer have to worry about training users to search for XYZ on a button rather than XYZ on Linux. You know, look, look, Noah, look. I have no updates.

I feel like your criticism right there is temporary. I feel like the next Ubuntu, say the next release even, they just have to associate the Snap Files Association with an application that can install it. Okay, but every distro has to do that for that to work. No. Hang on a minute. Noah, you say that you downloaded an app image and you double clicked on it and it just did stuff. It did not.

Yes, that is right. Yep. You didn't have to make it executable. Oh, did I? Maybe I did. Maybe I did. maybe i did maybe i did yeah because i've tried executable and that didn't that didn't double click though no you're right it's not associated with anything i had to download it i had to make it executable and then i could execute it and yeah you're probably right see that's that's the problem. And I felt that it wasn't. So we looked at Etcher because Etcher is that disk creation utility that runs on Windows Mac and Linux.

Yep, that's what I'm talking about, actually. We were rewriting all of our how-to-make-a-USB drive using Etcher so that every platform could use one tool. so that every platform could use one tool. But the process of actually installing Etcher on Linux is so alien to how people would install things on Linux. What we're actually going to do is write the instructions for Windows and Mac to use Etcher and then use GNOME disks for Linux because... Isn't that...

Now, can we just talk about that for a second? Wow. You know, a distribution is in the position where it is easier to write how to get it set up under Mac and Windows than it is under Linux. That right there perfectly defines the problem we are trying to solve. I'm not arguing for the replacement of repositories. I'm not calling for the end of DEBs and RPMs. But that right there is such a wonderful illustration of the problem. That's amazing.

Well, but so I guess – so what would be the alternative that we allow by default for applications to – when you download off the app? Well, no. Fast forward five years from now and let's just say Flatpak snaps or app images have taken off. One of them is so predominant that you can pretty confidently write a how-to and say download this app image, and you can almost know with absolute certainty that they've downloaded an app image before and they know how to install it. Or if it's a snap, they know what that's about. And so now imagine what Wimpy's process would be. He'd have the same download page.

He'd say, here's the instructions for Windows. Here's the instructions for Mac. And if you want to do it under Linux, download the Snap, and he could link to the most recent Snap, or he could link to the uBrowse page or whatever it is, uApps page. And then it would just be double-click the Snap and follow the instructions when it launches. It would literally be a less instruction set than it is for Windows. I mean, it's a fundamental shift in the friction and it's a fundamental reduction in that friction for users to start with mate i mean do you think

i'm wrong wimpy or do you think i'm right no you are right we're constantly trying to find ways to make um to lower the barriers to entry and um for many reasons snaps and universal package installers solve a number of problems. And the thing is that you've talked about putting snaps on the vendor or author's website so people can download a snap and install it the same way that Windows users do. I feel that's a bit of a retrograde step

because I think the central repository where you can search for find and install applications from one place is the superior mechanism but snaps support both paradigms you can have a snap store or many snap stores depending on you know if you've got an IOT device that, or a NAS, you know, and the NAS vendor wants their own snap store, but, uh, companies like Viber, for example, could make snaps and have them download off their website. So both paradigms are supported with snaps. And I think that's, um, that's a, a, a particularly useful use case.

Do you think it's going to be problematic, though, for users if sometimes you obtain it from a central software center and we keep what we're used to and what mobile phone users and tablet users are used to, which is all of your applications are in a central repository. And frankly, what macOS and Windows are going to, right? Both have an application store. Yeah, and iOS and Android. Yeah, yeah. So how about this?

Would there be a way for somebody to add, if the Snap is on a website, would there be a way for somebody else to take it off their website and add it to the store? And then would the reverse be true? Would it be possible for somebody like me who really likes to have local copies of things to be able to download those Snap packages

and store them on my device? Yeah, so build a snap package for example i build it locally on my computer and i end up with an architecture specific snap so a an amd 64 snap and the snap is a squash fs file system that encompasses the application and all of the shared libraries and assets that that application needs to run. That Snap file you can install by typing snap install path to snap.snap file. So you can download a Snap and install it. If you wanted to download all of the Snaps in the world and stick them on a USB hard drive and carry it around with you and install from those, you could do that.

And if you have the Snap, the YAML file, the Snapcraft YAML file, you can build your own. Yeah, if you've got the YAML file, you can build it yourself. So Daredevil, what do you think about it being a centralized repository and that being with Canonical? Because don't you think then that means every single aspect of getting these snaps into the central repository has to be as easy and simple as possible. And I don't think we're there yet. What do you think? What I think is, essentially, I agree with Wimpy, and that I prefer the model to have a repository.

And if we want to see the repository still to prevail as the way to install packages, what we have essentially to do is just make the process easier for third parties to come and put their package in and once we do that there's no excuse to why they're not deploying through that mechanism and why they are distributing you know through their website instead and perhaps make it easy uh to make their website put something that you know like you do in Android. You run a website. It detects that it's an application from the Play Store and opens the Play Store.

You might want something that is similar to that that goes and opens your software center and installs the app. So the website will not actually have a download but actually something that opens the store and makes you install through it. something that opens the store and makes you install through it. Rodden, I wanted to give you a chance to jump in and just I was curious your thoughts about the process right now of getting into that central store. Yeah, it's actually very easy. Like when people

was talking about how he builds the snaps locally you don't have to do that. You can actually just make the YAML file and then send it to the launchpad will build it for you through the Snapcraft tool and create all the architectures snaps that you want and you just push it to the launchpad. We'll build it for you through the Snapcraft tool and create all the architectures snaps that you want. And you just push it to the store. And if you,

and if you get you on, if you have a, if you are a part of a project and you were like the official person, you get the namespace of the official project. If you're not, you get, for example, telegram,

it's telegram dash the name of the guy who did it. Then so that way you can, there's, there's no one fighting over namespace. So then to get into the store is very simple, and as long as your stuff runs and doesn't break anything, it's all good, and you get

it in there. And then if you have, let's say you see a bug and you want to fix it, you just do it again through Launchpad, push it to the store, and then the user gets the access to it and gets the update. It actually is a lot easier. So it sounds like the biggest inconvenience is you have to have a Launchpad account.

I don't know. Yeah, that's about the size of it. For some, that's a deal breaker. Good thing it's free and open source, Launchpad is. Yeah. And the Ubuntu Snap Store implementation is just a Snap Store implementation. I think others will sprout up. Yeah. I want there only to be one,

because then if there is more than one, there creates more availability issues. But if there was a structure, for example, like Ubuntu's store was like the core base that you could build on top of and have your own snaps. But if you don't have a snap for a particular application, you kind of have like a fallback, that would be fantastic. Or it could end up like repos, where you could have multiple,

you could have your local installation of snap pointed at multiple repos, just like you can with Flatpak today. It could be like that too. It might not be hard-coded to a single store. Maybe you could have – let's say I'm Ubuntu Mate. I could have – when my users launch their version of the software center, it could be looking at all of Canonical's Snap Store and a Ubuntu Mate Snap Store that maybe has the welcome screen in it and maybe a menu launcher and a few other things that they've created to ease the process.

And maybe it's only four or five things. Just like today, Antegros does repo priority and you have Antegros' repo at the top and then they have the regular main repos, and they can pull from all the different sources. Like we see today with a lot of derivatives, only this would be a Snap version. It might not have support for it today, Snap and local Snapd and all that. It might not have support for multiple stores today, but this is an

open source project. I mean, in a year, it could do ten times what it does today. Right. It has support for a store, like having your own custom store now. And it's only been like two weeks since that was even announced. They were doing the different distro stuff. So that's already been proving that they're going to do other things. But there's actually something that a lot of people aren't aware of is that when you have a snap in the store, you actually don't just have that snap and that branch.

You have multiple branches. You have the stable branch, the unstable branch, the constant testing branch. You can actually have betas and all this, and it's all still one snap that you control. The user can select which branch they want to use. So if they want the absolute latest, they can get it. they want to use. So if they want the absolute latest, they can get it. What about licensing issues? Like for, you know, Adobe Reader or, you know, Adobe Flash or something like that? I guess more specifically, I guess here's my question. The concern I

have about the whole repo idea is you're going to wind up with, I'm afraid that anyway, that you're going to wind up with some distros having certain repos and those repos not being added by default in other distros. And so what you wind up with is, again, certain packages available in one distro and not in another. Well, but they're all snaps. They're all snaps. You can always just grab the snap. Right. If you know where to. But yeah, you're right. Yeah. Here's what I think, though, about that. When it comes to licensing and stuff like that, I don't know if there's a direct answer because for all we know, in six months, Snap or Flatpak could have an option at install where it enables user prompting to accept EULAs.

And so that I'm not so worried about. But the point I think you're touching on is if something were to happen where you had multiple stores and you had – like the chairman was talking about, multiple people submit Telegram. How would you know which Telegram is the one that's the most secure, most updated, most reliable? I think what you would see if that truly existed, and I think you're going to like this answer, is the market would respond by creating a directory like GNOME files and like the UAP browser that's already created. The open source community will step up and create a platform where you'll have everything

indexed. You'll have comments. You'll have votes. You'll have votes. You'll have just like the AUR or just like GNOME files, right? It'll be that. So I don't use the AUR as much as you do. But I go back to the most effective way for me to research products nowadays is I go to Amazon and sort by number of reviews. And if 10,000 people bought something and really liked it, I know that I can trust and buy that same product and probably have a good experience.

If we could bring that to software, geez, man. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think the market, that's just what happened. So, Wimpy, is there something you want to jump in before we wrap up? Because I didn't plan to talk about this for that long, but I wanted to give you the last shout. I can't remember. No problem. No problem.

You know what? I'll just say this. We should probably move on because right now as we record this, there is actually a news event happening. And we're like, I don't even know how long into the show and we haven't even mentioned it. If you get to the point where you want to host your own flat packs, your app images, or your own Snap Store, DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged. Support this show and get a $10 credit. Man, DigitalOcean is great because it's all KVM. So the virtualizer, I think, I mean, just my opinion, the best virtualizing platform I have ever used.

KVM is the bee's knees. They've stacked that on top of SSDs. Of course, it's all running on top of Linux. 40 gigabit e-connections into the hypervisors. Data centers all over the world. And literally the best interface they could have possibly built sitting on top of the shenanigans. I don't know how they do it. And the nice thing is it's all HTML.

And even if it was, like, if they had a native app that worked this good, I'd be like, man, they got a great desktop app, and then they have a functional website. No, it's, like, better than I would have ever expected even from a native app. It is extremely functional. You get HTML5 console access to your rigs. You can deploy SSH keys to multiple machines at a time. You can submit up applications like the entire freaking stack from everything from the kernel of whatever distro you chose all the way up to the final crazy Ruby on Rails application you want to run or just the base system. They've got data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Germany, India.

They're growing like crazy. And they've matched this great interface that I just freaking love with a super cool API, an API that's so straightforward and simple and something they take seriously that a really great community has cropped up and built a ton of open source code around that. Speaking of community, they have some of the best documentation out there. Literally, even if you're not a DigitalOcean customer, it's still one of the best resources out there. Check it out because they take that very seriously, which means between the application stacks they have available, the base distros they have to choose from, and their documentation, experts and beginners can make super, super good use out of a DigitalOcean droplet. They also have hourly pricing available. And because you can spin up and destroy a rig in a matter of seconds with snapshots, you can restore and get right back

to where you're at. It's really nice to take advantage of their hourly pricing. And when you use our promo code DOUnplugged, one word, lowercase, you get the $10 credit. That hourly pricing is going to last you forever. So if you want to experiment with something on a machine that has a crazy great internet connection, tons of CPU, you want to have multiple people bang on it, you want to put it in production for yourself. If you want something you can access between your work and your home and also on your mobile device and not have to mess around and fuss with your crappy router, DigitalOcean. Just use the promo code DEOUNPLUGGED.

And if you ever get to a point where you're ready to put this thing in production, it'll work. It'll do it. And they make it easy to expand the machines too, especially now with the new block storage beta program. You know, right now, Jupyter Broadcasting is taking advantage of DigitalOcean's infrastructure like never before. It's so nice to know that when we just want to try a concept, we can mess around on DigitalOcean. We don't have to worry about the costs. We know we get great performance and we're ready to go into production. We have enterprise grade features like their API, like the snapshot capability, like the application stack deployments.

And now – go ahead. I was just going to say you're slowly moving your studio up to the quote-unquote cloud. It's just a cloud that you can control so that you can get to it from anywhere in your RV. I was just going to say, and now with the new team features, I'll just never have to worry about it and let Noah do everything. Oh! DigitalOcean.com. Yeah, well, that's – Rekai's got the post-production work. Noah's got the server-side work.

And, you know, also they make it nice. They're like if you want to set something up for a client and transfer it to them, you can transfer droplets. It's a pretty great service. DigitalOcean.com. Just use the promo code Dio and plug it up. Big thanks to DigitalOcean. So I was saying there's a news event going on right now. I got a little audio to get you

in the mood. For those of you that didn't know, I almost considered making it, but I would have had to mess with the whole road trip plans that I have right now, so I couldn't do it. But going on right now is Red Hat Summit, or as the Red Hat folks that I've been talking to call it, Summit.

Summit is going on right now. And I got a little audio to put you in the mood. Ooh. Now, no, you might. I always heard about it. You might be a little jealous. I'm kind of new to Red Hat. I've only been doing it for over a year now.

My job, thought it would be a great idea and a great experience for me to come to Red Hat Summit. My job, I thought it would be a great idea and a great experience for me to come to Red Hat Summit. My excitement here is to learn about a lot of things that I heard this morning, 12 plus new release announcements. I'm like, yes, and I'm just looking forward to the next four days. I mean, there's so much going on around application development, containers, which is part of my world. I think there's an opportunity to figure out what's going on all in one place. You have a lot of vendors at Summit who are starting to embrace open source in new ways. One of the things that we're really trying to talk about with customers is the fact that we have this cross-portfolio experience, including services, and it's not just product

by product. And these solutions can really help them solve specific problems. All right. I was excited. I was stoked until that last executive spoke there. And then the entire thing kind of lost me. I don't know. You didn't hear it? Did you? Customers is the fact that we have this cross-portfolio experience.

Okay. So one of the things we're trying to communicate to customers is that we have this cross-portfolio experience. Okay. Yeah. Including services, and it's not just product by product. Including services, and it's not just product by product. And these solutions can really help them solve specific problems. But these solutions can really help them solve specific problems.

I'm going to play it once in its entirety, Noah, and then once it's done, I want you to tell me what she just said, okay? Trying to talk about with customers is the fact that we have this cross-portfolio experience, including services, and it's not just product by product, and these solutions can really help them solve specific problems. I think she's just saying that Red Hat Solutions, stretch across, so they partnered with, or they're working with Microsoft, and they're working very hard with all of the different problems that exist in the IT sphere, and they have hired industry experts and have them available

to solve those problems. All right. But do they have DIRP learning? Soon. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So that's what you think. All right, no, that was a good try. That was a good, solid effort. We got nice music. Soon. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So that's what you think. All right, no, that was a good try. That was a good, solid effort.

We have good, we got nice music. Ooh. Yeah, okay. So, I mean, I'm digging this piece overall. Wimpy, could you explain to me what she said? Yeah, they've got, I'm Dupwoods. You know, that wasn't helpful, actually. That didn't help.

Chris, you of all people should understand this. That poor woman, that poor woman is standing there. She's standing there with her computer, and she's working on a couple of things, and everyone is tapping her on the shoulder. And finally this guy turns around. He's like, hey, I'm John from the media marketing department, and we're going to shoot this thing. We're interviewing people, so tell us about Red Hat. And she told him. She's like, I'm not really good on camera.

You'll be fine. You'll be fine. I don't even really know what to you you'll be fine here we're gonna start rolling okay uh go and then that's what came out that's definitely a possibility that's totally what happened i i think i think what it was now here's what i think it was noah and picture it okay it's it's two days before the floor opens you finally just got all the banners up the The executives are arriving for their pictures. Whoa, who's getting aggressive in the mumble room? Daredevil, you were getting aggressive there in the mumble room. Everybody's arrived for their pictures. You haven't actually opened the doors yet, but from a corporate standpoint, you have decided what your core

message about this entire event is. So you get your marketing team there with their DSLR camera and you say. At Summit, who are starting to embrace open source in new ways. One of the things that we're really trying to talk about with customers is the fact that we have this cross-portfolio experience, including services, and it's not just product by product. And these solutions can really help them solve specific problems. What I love about it is she ends with, these solutions can help them solve specific problems. What I love about it is she ends with these solutions can help them solve specific problems. What's so corporately wonderful about it

is we can help you solve your specific problem after making the most vague possible generalized statement we could ever come up with. That's what's so amazing about it. And I really respect Red Hat as a company, but when they actually outwardly communicate, so they don't actually allow all the cool people in the company to brag and talk about all the neat stuff they're doing.

And so when they communicate with their Red Hat voice, even their CEO, who seems like a pretty great guy, communicates in this style that feels like Microsoft at its clumsiest. I guess I don't know. I guess the problem is you're dealing with a couple of things, right? You're dealing with a, you're dealing with the most litigious country in the entire world. You know, that's such a, that's such a tired red hat excuse. It's so true. When you have a company that big, that's worth that much money, they're walking around with a constant target on their butt.

Meanwhile, companies that are jillions of times larger have their top CEO, a top, top people sitting down and talking to podcasters by anything the podcaster asked them. That's such a tired, tried excuse for all of the things that are wrong with Red Hat and Fedora. I'm just sick of it. I just, I guess, I guess I would agree with you and you, I know for a fact you've been there with me. I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that we've talked to those people and what they say on camera and what they're able to say on camera. I don't think – I think there is a culture problem at Red Hat and I think the employees absolutely fear all these legal things. I don't think – I think they all are the biggest bunch of paranoid people out there. I mean it is ridiculous.

Given their clientele, do you think it – I mean is the community involvement or a better presence just not in their interest in the long-term fiscal sense? I think given their clientele, it's expected this is how you communicate. So it's part of the reason they communicate this way. Yeah, that might be part of it. I guess just every time that we've had somebody on camera, it seems like they follow this strict rudimentary procedure and then you get them off camera and they're geeks just like you and me. And that just tells me that they have hired legal people that have specifically told them, hey, these are the things that you don't want. These are the approved things that you say because these are the things that we can guarantee. Right, sure.

And I feel like – That does feel like what they say. Why is it that no other company is like that? No other company we talk to, no other company in the Linux ecosystem has these same concerns. Other people are worried about these particular issues, but nobody is literally petrified. The employees from Red Hat are terrified of this particular issue. Nobody else is like that. What's the downside?

None of them is – I'd claim that none of them is as big as Red Hat, and that's one thing. And they have to be risk takers if they want to be in the platform discussing when Red Hat is discussing things. I would also claim that they mentioned solutions, which is a key word to we provide for everything, but without committing to any specifics. So you come with us, you talk with us. into any specifics. So you come with us, you talk with us. Yeah.

What we're really trying to talk about with customers is the fact that we have this cross-portfolio experience including services and it's not just product by product and these solutions

can really help them solve specific problems. You know, I've heard that 30 times and it still just doesn't make any sense. I guess it doesn't matter. It's just a point

of how they communicate. That's my main point. They need some cross-vocabulary solutions. Maybe they have some specifics. Just think which company provides products and always advertises their products and it's their competitor while they're providing

solutions and that will be more pleasant to their customers to hear. Just think about that. Who's that? Usually Canonical, for example. Focus on their products. What's the downside of saying something like that? Usually Canonical, for example, focus on their products. It's their – What's the downside of saying something like that? Like where is that – where is it problematic?

It sounds like disingenuous bullshit by people that don't actually even know the very products they're selling and which makes me have doubt in the people that run the company. Because there's a clear communication style. Isn't that doubt alleviated from the people that do have the expertise? No, because they're not the ones making the decisions. The people making the decisions don't even know the product. Right, and they're not listening to that spiel anyway. They don't care. The deals are made elsewhere, right?

But I feel like the entire culture at Red Hat is the idea that anyone in the company has the ability to offer input and in, there is no top down hierarchy. And that was entire, that was the entire purpose of Jim Whitehurst book was that he thought he was going to go into this company and teach them how to run a company from the top down. And what it taught him was that that's not the way that a company is run. Okay.

Not so much. I mean, I just, that does sound, that's the way pretty much every corporate company ever, you, corporate entity speaks when they do any kind of press. Like, what hurts, what is hurting Red Hat in this case? Maybe it's because no one listens to what they say because they never say anything. That is exactly it.

And I don't really, I guess, I wish we weren't dwelling on this because I'd rather move on. But my point is, is when you don't speak clearly, you don't connect to the Linux audience. If you have an audience in the open source, this is a summit for technical people. Okay, this is not a marketing event. This isn't CES. This isn't something for consumers. This is the Red Hat Summit for people who are sysadmins and people that make their livings on Red Hat systems, right? So I think I want to be clear. This is an introduction to why you as a technical person should come to the summit that was posted on the Red Hat YouTube channel. I guess that wasn't my impression of Red Hat Summit.

I thought it was for more like high-level, you know, like, you know, CTO. There's absolutely – and there's all kinds of – yeah, there's people, VARs there and all kinds of stuff. And another group of people there is Microsoft. And they made some huge announcements at Red Hat Summit, which I think is sort of a big news story kind of in and of itself is that Microsoft is making these announcements at a Red Hat Summit. The company announced the general availability of.NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0. The Microsoft announcement is kind of a big deal at Red Hat Summit. And one of the motivations in open sourcing.NET is they really want to collaborate more with Red Hat.

And Red Hat has a couple of web pages dedicated on their website now to making Red Hat the premier.NET platform. The.NET Foundation will be the steward of overall.NET development, and Red Hat just joined that foundation. So that's kind of a big deal. That's an example of some of the folks that are at the summit. And it's really Microsoft kind of delivering on this promise of opening.NET and getting it running on Linux.

Yeah. Well, they seem to have some serious motivation because they announced that nearly one in three Azure virtual machines are now running Linux. Microsoft is sort of seeing a huge growth because just the same time last year, they said one in four. So now they've gone in a year, at least according to Racinovich, who runs Azure. So Microsoft has gone from one in four of its Azure virtual machines to one in three. And the other two-thirds are just Azure customers running Windows servers and virtual machines.

So they're seeing a big uptick for Linux at Azure. And, you know, it's one of the reasons Linux Academy has launched Azure training is it's just big over there. So yeah. That's a big, I don't know, guys. To me that seems like... The Microsoft stuff changes how I think about it a little bit.

I wouldn't previously, if I was going to make a project I wasn't going to start it on.NET and maybe Java if I want a nice object-oriented, garbage collected, etc. But if they're going to have first-class Linux support and really stand behind like that, then they make some good software. They have a lot of talented engineers there. If they're really down with the openness, then maybe it's something to be worthwhile. So I just looked at the registration. It's $1,600 for the full pass to go there. So to me, this seems like the OSCON and the LinuxCON of conferences, except based more

on Linux. And so in that regard, I don't know that highly technical, down-to-earth, unfiltered technical talk is necessarily the most appropriate in a marketing video. Dude, you are really just all in with Red Hat. Well, I just, I really am, you know, I'm not, I guess I'm just not. You're telling me, you're telling me, I mean, I feel like this is sort of almost like it doesn't even need explaining, but what are, what are the number, who are the number one attendees of OSCON?

You know, we've talked to them. A lot of, a lot of big business people that could care less about the actual- No, those are the VARs. Those are the people at the booths. The attendees are sysadmins and dev guys who are sent there by their company because their company's paying for the ticket. That's the people walking around the floor. Those are the people attending the talks. I mean, come on. Those are the people filling up those rooms, listening to the talks. I guess you're right there. I mean, there to the talks. I, I, I, I guess I, I guess I don't, I guess you're right there. I mean, there, there's definitely a large majority of those,

but there's also a healthy, there's also a healthy majority of people that are, you know, that are, that are just, you know, decision makers, just, you know, executive types that are there to learn about their technology too. They're not actually the ones implementing that stuff, the low level developer kind of people. Uh, but I But you're right. I mean, we walked into that. There's a whole group of people that we talked to. It was at OSCON, I think. And all of them, you know, were all working. I think the funnier thing is that you're bringing it back up after we moved on. I just, I went and looked at their website and I was like, all right, well, let's dig into it a little bit. I'm looking at their keynote speakers and I'm looking,

there's a guy from Target, there's a guy from Intel, there's a guy from Dell. It just, it very much feels like a very corporate-y conference and it seems like corporate-y speak is appropriate there. So what do you think about Red Hat Enterprise being the premier

platform to build.NET on a proven and trusted Enterprise Linux? .NET on Red Hat Enterprise Linux gets started right now if you go to developers.redhat.com. Are you excited, Noah? I am excited that a company like Microsoft is going to have the incredible influence of Red Hat over them to help them push them in the right direction.

Well, that's a very political way to say that. That is very nice, very nice. political way to say that. That is very nice. Very nice. Maybe something to rub off. Are you okay if we move on? Or do we – do we got to hug it out? If we got to hug it out, man, I'm going to hug it out with you. No, we're good.

I mean, because, you know, I know you don't like it when we talk bad about your Red Hat. No, no, it's okay. Just – they – Red Hat is why I'm on Linux is because they made such an amazing product. All right. Well, speaking of running Linux, I have been running Linux Mint 18. And I got to tell you, it's not so bad. By the time you're probably getting this listened, if you're a download audience member, Linux Mint 18, Cinnamon and Mate editions will likely be released. Softpedia noticed it a little earlier thanks to a tipster.

They have links to the ISO downloads which are in our show notes. And this is as of June 28th. Now, this is the new version after a lot of talk about X apps and all of that kind of stuff. It has the new Cinnamon 3.0 goodness in it that probably a lot of you have been anticipating if you're a Cinnamon user. And this release is going to be supported until 2021. So this is something that'll be around for a while. In fact, it'll be the base of future releases until 2018. So like I was mentioning, this has the new X apps in it,

which I had a chance to try out a little bit. It has high DPI support, well, at least much improved high DPI support. It has the brand new info screen when you launch the update manager for the first time that gives you a little bit more clarification about the different upgrade options. What is this? There's somebody like, there is somebody going on with the jack saw in the back. I don't know what's going on out there. And it's got the new theme that is based on

ARC and the Mocha icon theme. The Mint Y theme. Which actually, when you put it in ARC mode, looks pretty nice. It looks pretty nice. So this is the new Mint 18 sort of at a very high level. I've only been using it for like three hours.

So I only have very, very first impressions. I did hit a few bumps so i want to give you guys a few warnings and things like that anybody in the mumble room had a chance to try any of the betas of mint 18 or been looking at it as the release has been getting closer i've been doing competitive research yes oh really and what is your reconnaissance uh showing you it's Linux Mint. Same stuff, but newer. So that was sort of my impression too, and I was actually kind of hoping you would have more because I didn't have much.

That's kind of all I got. Sorry for stealing your wind. Yeah, you did, and my wind was not much. I had very little wind, which is not normal for me. I think right now, like what we were talking about, at least what we were talking about, like 17, 17.1, et cetera, I think we kind of know what Linux Mint is and where they really shined in the past

was on some of that polish and integration. And it's kind of hard to assess that this close after release, right? So maybe in a week or two, we can see really, are they excelling at what they're trying to do or not? Yeah, I actually think wait a week or two would be good advice because so I decided to put this on the Librem, which is, as you guys are probably well aware, a laptop built to run Linux. No, did you know that?

What are you laughing about? It's a laptop built to run Linux. What's the problem? What's undoubtedly about to leave your mouth? So the Linux Mint first pass on the install wouldn't work. wouldn't work. It warned me about some UEFI issue, basically that I had another OS on there and that some shenanigans were to occur

with biosimulation that I may not be able to boot into other OSs, to which I said the entire reason I'm installing Mint is to not boot into those other OSs, so go ahead and nuke and pave. All right, back to you. It's problem solved. Oh, no.

What? You didn't switch the hard drive, did you? No. Okay, so we just blew away our OBS. Oh, no. What? You didn't switch the hard drive, did you? No. Okay. So we just blew away our OBS. Oh, okay. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, and I realized that, and I realized it doesn't boot. So it doesn't boot at all. So that's good. So that's sweet. And then I did manage to get it to boot, but I don't know why, but my Wi-Fi is not working. And that's kind of – so I just ended up using an Ethernet USB adapter to play around because I didn't have time to troubleshoot the Wi-Fi at the moment.

I did notice the settings. Control panel is also a little cleaned up and there's – overall, the new theme and all that and the new version of Cinnamon is really nice. It's a really nice desktop. Can you disable tap to click yet? So I tried to figure that out for you because I thought you might ask me that and they've removed the mouse and trackpad control panel applet from the settings

thing. Some stuff you can still search for. Like so for example if you wanted to search for proprietary drivers you no longer can find like the drivers or software sources entry in the settings but if you search forward in your mint menu it will come up. Ah, that's good.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm glad to hear that. So yeah, it looks like I was going to ask if we can enable touch to click. Yeah, right. I know. I know. No, not Noah. No, not Noah.

I hate app to click. I don't just, I don't want to click during the show, Noah. Quietly click. Here's the thing is I actually, not only, i don't just like kind of dislike it i actively like i can't stand it i can't stand i can't even use a computer if it has to happen he gets super grumpy west and then if it's like one in the morning he gets like all diva about it it's bad it's real bad we don't want that and you could ask reekai my son dylan was over here at the house last night at the studio and uh he was going on a rant about trackpads,

and then him and Rikai started labeling me as a trackpad supporter. Yikes! I know. It started getting heated in my own studio over trackpads. So, you know, I'm just a trackpad indifference. That's all. I don't like them, but I don't dislike them that much. Exactly.

And I started taking a lot of trackpad heat. So, Noah, you are leading a revolution. You know who else is leading a revolution? That would be Red Hat in their communication. One of the things that we're really trying to talk about with customers is the fact that we have this cross-portfolio experience, including services. It's not just product by product. Right. And solutions can really help them solve specific problems.

Chris? Yeah. Chris. Trackpad works under Fedora, them solve specific problems. Chris? Yeah. Chris. Track Bad Works under Fedora, just saying. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. The new lib input, huh? Yeah, that is nice.

I can go ahead and disable Taptic Lake. It's fantastic. You know, the first time we used the new Fedora 24, there was like 20 seconds where the mouse felt really weird. And then... So... Yeah, go ahead. Are you looking for cross cursor solutions?

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Are you looking for cross-cursor solutions? Yeah, could you have any specifics? Because I wonder if you don't have it from any specific division, maybe as a service. All right, so this is, yeah, can you tell this is my last LUP for a week? Yeah, I know, right? Before we get into these desktop killers that Wimpy and I have been drooling over, and I think, Noah, you're perfectly suited as an Oryx Pro owner and as somebody who also has the 13-inch side of this. We're going to talk about is Linux technically dead on the desktop?

Not because of Linux itself, but because just statistically speaking, in 10 years, five years, is the desktop really going to be necessary? We have a couple of new products out in the market that are just unbelievably powerful, and they're portable. As somebody who works in video production, I can't even believe I'm about to ask this question. But realistically, I've got to look at the specs. I've got to look at the sales stats, and I've got to ask the question. So before we go there, let's go somewhere nice. Let's go to this new – oh, there it is.

We're just on time. There's that weed whacker. Good. This is – we've added that weed whacker. Good. This is... We've added that weed whacker in post. We sweetened up the Linux Academy spot. We wanted to make sure... You know what else? And then we add a few other things. We brought in Bill Hammer from... Or Himmer from Fox News.

See? There's Bill. So that's nice. And Megan Kelly's here too to help us. OMG, OMG, OMG. I don't know why. I don't know why. But we also have a little background music for Linux Academy. That's right. Go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplug know why. I don't know why. But we also have a little background music for Linux Academy. That's right. Go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged friends and look at that new site. Oh, look at that site.

Oh, friends. Look at that thing. They, I tell you what, they ain't stopping over at Linux Academy. They're adding new content all the time. They've expanded their staff to make sure the old stuff stays relevant It's Linux enthusiasts Trainers, developers Educators, they've came together

They created the Linux Academy platform And you can get started at linuxacademy.com You get a great discount They have hands-on labs So you get to work with this stuff Instructor mentoring when you need to talk to humans Video courses with self-paced in-depth courses Where you can download download comprehensive study guide, the course where it automatically

adjusts to the distribution you want to use, learning plans, learning paths, availability planners. All of these things help you structure a learning plan when you don't have a lot of time. So if you get busy, going on a road trip, those kinds of things, you're going to Tokyo, Linux Academy's got your back. I like that, too, for the... This is like when you're just... You've only got an hour.

They've got Nuggets, Deep Dives. They have iOS and Android applications. They have note cards that can be forked to help you study. And they have a super active community packed full of Jupyter Broadcaster members. Or if you have 13 hours of free Wi-Fi on an airplane over to Tokyo, then you can continue to learn while lounging about on an airplane. I like that. In business class, too, at that, you swath, son of a gun.

That's right. Getting your knowledge on it. Linuxacademy.com slash unplug. Go check them out. They're growing like crazy. It's a really great platform committed to expanding Linux. All of the technologies, Linux core technologies, and also the technologies built on top of Linux Academy.

Go there now because time, my friends, is running out. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. And thank you to that weed whacker

for adding a little bit of extra context to that spot. A little extra buzz. Yeah, you know, a little bit of layers, a little bit of flavor. So there's this guy

named Martin Wimpress. I don't know who he is, but he's got a lot of nerve teasing me like this. This son of a gun over here posted, Entroware will soon be announcing a new laptop that he had the privilege of naming, the Entroware Athena. Well, Wimpy, that sounds pretty cool. Tell me about the process of naming a computer

and maybe a little bit of backstory here about the Athena and then the big reveal, if you will. Okay. So I obviously have a relationship with Entroware. And I've known that they've been working on this computer for some months now. And as it was getting close, it had like a code name. And we were exchanging details using the code name. And then they sort of said, oh, we're going to call it this. And I was like, oh, okay. I said, oh, we're thinking of calling it this

and i was like oh i i'd like uh coming up with a name so i came up with the the name athena which they liked so it's the entra wear athena that is pretty and athena is there any special relevance or uh connection to the name well um all of their machines are named after greek gods and goddesses uh-huh um and i like the classics and athena i think is the uh the uh most interesting uh of the goddesses so she's the goddess of war and peace and wisdom and craft and all sorts of things. So she's got more attributes than any of the others. So this is a pretty well-specced machine. And depending on your different options, it could be a powerhouse.

Now, I happen to – a little birdie told me that you may have ended up purchasing one of these Athenas. So you must have had it for at least a bit. How is the machine? Why did you decide to purchase it? What are your experiences like? Tell us all about it. So I have sold every computer I own in order to make some money to buy this. So once I knew this was on its way, I've been eBaying my computers.

And I've also, I don't know if you remember, a few weeks ago there was a sharp uptick in the Bitcoin price. It went up about 20%. Oh, yeah, I did notice that as a matter of fact. Yeah, so I cashed out some coins. Between you, Noah, and I, we were playing the Bitcoin market for our hardware. Yeah, to sort of cover the balance.

So I've gone full metal Entroware Athena. So the one I have has got the Skylake i7-6820HK, which is a quad-core, and that can push out a turbo 3.6 gigahertz. 64 gigs of DDR4 RAM. All right. I've only installed three of the hard drives at the moment, so I've got three SSDs in there at the moment, a 256 drive, which is boot, and two uh one terabyte drives no and i'll be i'll be adding another one and the reason for the two one terabyte drives one is for

uh the home partition and then i also create myself a second logon that's just called steam and i mount that second drive on slash home slash steam so that all of the games sit in there and then uh as as i reinstall and what have you i don't have to download all of my stuff oh that's a really smart idea i put mine all on a drive called slash big and that's just like a pool of drives so that's a clever name hey speaking of names uh wimpy i have i have one but one question for you did you consider naming the laptop laptop mclappy face no i didn't i i spoke about this on the ubuntu podcast and they all pointed out i missed the obvious thing is that i should have called it the intro where martin but nobody, I don't think anyone at Entroware would have gone for that.

Yeah. So this has got the, it's got Intel Iris 530 Pro graphics in it, and it's also got an NVIDIA GTX 980M in it as well. So with Optimus switching. Oh, and is that working yeah well um it's you have to log out and log in so i i it doesn't do diane on the fly switching i i imagine if i messed about with bumblebee i could get that to go but i usually i'm using the intel graphics the only time i use the nvidia graphics is if i want to do uh some game playing or uh i've just started recently

experimenting with the nvank stuff but those tend to be specific work cases and i'm quite happy to log out and log back in to handle that but i wrote a utility for mate or rather forked a utility and extended it a little bit that sits sits in the train it shows you which you're using and you can just toggle oh and then log out log in wow that is quite the mission that's a multi-year machine i can tell you somebody who's bought some workstation killers before yeah any chances are going to be sorry any chances are going to be available in the u.s at some point uh there are no immediate plans for intro where to ship in the u.s as far as i'm aware now is this is this yeah go ahead i do know despite despite the uh politics in the uk uh last week

i do know intro where are very close to launching in some european countries this seems this seems very similar to to the orryx Pro from System76. Oh, does it? Yeah. So, Noah, you may already have something very similar to this rig. Yeah, no, I figured the ODM manufacturer is probably the same, but it just— There are small differences, of course, across them because they're both building them, assembling them separately and making them into twigs. and make it right. And the other thing is, and Wimpy and I had talked about this a little bit, is that various little components inside are sometimes different

and that leads to drastically different user experiences. Yeah, it does. Yeah, and this also you can get with Ubuntu Mate from Introware, which is kind of nice. Yes, it arrived pre-installed with Ubuntu Mate 16.04. Have you experimented with battery life much? No, I haven't plugged it into the main since i received it so um i've been playing with it on and off during the day

i've probably well i don't know how long we've been sat here this evening so it's done several hours and yeah it's about half halfway exhausted at the moment well congratulations so you know now kind of so this is where I started thinking about this. On the high end, you have these Athenas, Bonobos, Oryx Pros, these real desktop killers. They're not super portable, but they can get you a few hours. They can move you between your different work spots. And then on the other end, you now have very efficient performance and capabilities from something like the NUC Skull Canyon.

So compare and contrast those two machines for me, Wimpy. Do you think when you look at the two spectrums there, is there less and less of a role for you with a traditional desktop tower that you assemble and you put together or you buy pre-built? Where's the tower fitting in? Well, the tower computer that I bought in 2008 is one of the boxes that I've sold in order to make the funds available to buy this computer. So that computer back in the day in 2008 was a dual quad core Xeon with 32 gigs of RAM. And it had two NVIDIA something or others in it at the time.

So that was a fairly stonking machine when I bought that. And that just about expired. It still worked, but it was breathless doing gaming, for example. So I've sold that. And it was massive, and it had a 750-watt power supply. And by comparison, the Skull Canyon NUC is about three times faster than that quad-core Xeon from 2008 in terms of cpu performance and this this uh box had an nvidia when i sold it had um an nvidia 680 in it and the skull canyon

nuc with its iris pro 540 could outperform it um on 3d as well you know for gaming and what have you you know isn't that something so i'm using knucks so i bought a knuck back in november which i'm very happy with and i've still got and the only reason i got the skull canyon knuck is because i'm about to replace my plex server and i thought i'd buy a knuck to be the plex server and i'd plug external drives into it over usb3 okay because i'm trying to find smaller form factor lower power solutions and then i thought huh well i've got this nuc and it's really beefy and then i saw the skull canyon was coming along so what i've done is i've bought the skull canyon to become my new desktop workstation and my old knuck which is only six months old is going to become the plex server oh nice um but the reason i like the knucks is they're so small um i've now mounted my skull canyon knuck onto the

back of my monitor so everything's now behind the screen and because i i've got hubs and stuff built into the screen you know it it's just tidy you know i had this massive sort of 40 kilo dell precision workstation yeah and it's got bricks in it yeah and and now it's this tiny little device and uh it's it's great uh so i really like the nux they're great workstations and. And the one laptop I've kept is my Apollo. So I still have my Apollo. And that's my lightweight. I'm going out. So those are people that know me, sort of see me in real life.

I have a habit of going to do coding in the pub. It's one of my favorite pastimes um i i i take myself away for sort of a couple of days and i go and camp out in a in a pub and just sort of have a one-man sprint um and that that apollo is the computer that comes with me and it's great for a one day you know know, you can go anywhere, you know the battery's going to last, you can get stuff done, it's lightweight, it's easy to carry. But when I go away for a bit longer, and I'm going to probably work on different things,

I want something a bit more powerful. One of the reasons I've got this machine is because I run lots of virtual machines. So I've got the disk space for that now, and I've got ram and the cpu for it yeah we were talking about snaps earlier when you build snap packages on your own machine you can now do that by um building them inside uh lxd containers so each build is isolated and clean nice but you can also build simultaneous snaps, different snaps simultaneously. So if you're working on several projects, you could actually have three or four snaps building. So another reason for this machine is that I can absorb that workload. Yeah, all the cores.

Cool, Whippy. Well, congratulations. And, you know, as somebody who recently just got a semi-upgraded desktop here in the studio, I feel like desktops aren't going away for me for a long time. I want capture cards. I want multiple drives. I second that. Cooling. But I think – and I would be curious really to get the audience's reaction to this is if we remove ourselves from the equation and we just – like if you're looking at a chart and we just chop off our percentage.

off our percentage. How many people realistically that are buying computers say from Best Buy or going into Costco are really going to want desktop towers for much longer? It seems like that's a dying breed just – and it's – not to be the – not to use the Steve Jobs analogy here but it really does seem like cars versus trucks. There's going to be a lot less people driving trucks. I don't think they're going away but to that end, I think one of the hazards of it becoming a smaller and smaller market is the components are becoming crappier and crappier. And when you're trying to build multiple machines and you're buying all the parts,

most of the parts are bad. It's becoming more and more of a niche market and the parts are becoming more commoditized and the quality is going down for the enthusiast market. And that's sort of the downside of it all. So that's why I think when you have companies like Entreware and companies like System76 and you have Dells out there that are shipping Linux rigs, it's nice to have a good set of answers now for pre-built machines where they're being the front line for that kind of problems. But there are still options for the rest of us. So my question to the audience is, realistically, what's your over-under, what's your long shot on how much we have left

on desktop computing for average people? LinuxActionShow.reddit.com, that's where you go to leave your thoughts. I won't be here next week, but Mr. Noah will, and they have plenty of good things planned for you. So if you'd like to help them put together a great show, you can submit topics to LinuxAactionshow.reddit.com, vote them up and comment on them there. You can leave feedback at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact.

Don't forget to join us live over at jblive.tv. We do the show live. Well, I assume you guys are doing it live at the regular time, Noah, but if you're not, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact. Two in the morning. Two in the morning. Great idea. Great idea. Bestupiterbroadcasting.com. We're doing it at 2 in the morning. 2 in the morning. 2 in the morning. Great idea. Great idea.

Best time. I'm kidding. Yeah. If that was. There's going to be somebody that shows up at 2 in the morning. No. And we apologize already. Check the calendar, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar.

Otherwise, it's out for download later on in the week. And don't forget your stickers at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash stickers. And I'll see you back here in two weeks. Thank you. There we go. There we go. There we go. That was it with no music. That was it. And we're not doing the West City.

You missed, but we're not doing the music live anymore for a little bit. Okay. Which is hard for me. It's hard for me. That's weird. Why? I tried to convince him, Wes. I was telling him, if he just put the theme song

in Telegram, then he could play it to himself in an earphone. Sure, yeah. That makes total sense. Oh, yeah. I would like that, too. JBTitles.com.

I'll show you, Wes. I'll tell you why. JBTitles.com, JBTitles.com, everybody go boat. So here's the thing, Wes, as Noah would say, is, now, Noah,

you won't be able to hear this because I'm playing this on the computer that you're connected to. Okay, thanks. Noah would say. Now, Noah, you won't be able to hear this because I'm playing this on the computer that you're connected to. So prepare yourself for silence, Noah. I apologize about that. But let's see. This is going back to 150.

Right. So here we are, Wes. This is you and me commuting about a Kickstarter. $5,000. So they're scratching some itch. But, yeah, it's essentially a read-only live GNOME desktop with a decent GNOME theme. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look bad. You can hear it? You know what it is? Why is it's essentially a read-only live GNOME desktop with a decent GNOME theme. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look bad.

You can hear it? You know what it is? Why is it a keyboard as well? Well, because then it's the tamper-proof device where it freaks out when it gets broken. You know what, guys? This is what it tells us. It doesn't matter about the technical. All right.

So here we're about to start the intro music. Now, we didn't hear this live, Wes, during the show. But in post, it's obvious. Here it comes. Right. What it does tell you is that we are in the wrong music. Now, we didn't hear this live, Wes, during the show, but in post, it's obvious. Here it comes. What it does tell you is that we are in the wrong business. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 150 for June 21st, 2016. I see what you mean.

Yeah, it sounds horrible. That's rough. Yeah, so we're just going to play it in post, and then there will be no processing of it. So, you know, I think what it is when we try to level out all the different mumble levels, I think it just butchered the mosaic. Right. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, jbtitles.com. Let's go boat. Universal Package Paradigms, not just a packaging solution, snap it, packet, ship it. Can we do three weeks of packaging? I don't know if we can, guys. Universal Divide. That's not bad. People love packaging. Oh, dude, we love it. They just love it.

Noah is number one. Entroware Pub Laptop going full Entroware the Red Hat Summit. Carl's Packaging Solutions. I think I owe Noah an apology because I upset him when I talked bad about his bay. I am sorry, Noah. I didn't mean to make you upset. My apologies.

Here's the thing. You said something incorrect, and I corrected you. It's all right. You have the right to be incorrect. This is America. Okay. All right. Good.

Good. Good. Yeah. All right. So that's it. That's all it was. Fuck the EU. What?

Don't say that. I say balderdash. JBT Don't say that. I say Boulder Dash. JBtitles.com, JBtitles.com. I experienced life in freedom. I don't know about universal package paradigms. I don't know if I want my last show before vacation being titled about packaging. That feels like a failure on my part. Like I didn't show up for duty. Although we did have a good organic discussion about it.

They're fools. JBTales.com. Noah, have you gone? Do you see one you like? What about you, Wes? Did you see one you like? Thanks for making it, Wes. Where are you right now?

Where are you right now? I'm at the beautiful East Hotel in downtown Portland. Downtown Portland. I just, you know, last I heard you were just rubbing elbows with Linus. You know, we're just best buds now. He's a very nice guy face to face. I heard you were making him breakfast.

He loves his eggs, bacon, and toast. He made fun of my suit. Yeah, that is true. That is true. Yeah, that is Noah's experience with Linus. Yes, yeah. I was up in England.

A client had paid for my trip down there and paid for the hotel and everything. And so I was representing them. And I was in a suit. And there was other people there from the company. And I walked up, met him, and shook his hand, got my picture. And he's like, why are you wearing a suit? i was with there's other people there from the company and and i walked up met him and shook his hand got my picture and he's like why are you wearing a suit kind of like that's amazing yeah he's like you shouldn't wear a suit this is this is you're the only person here wearing a suit that's that's very strange i don't know why you'd wear a suit here and i'm like i'm not because

other people think us the company we're wearing suits so he questioned your linux like credentials right basically he's like are you not he's like are you not a geek? Yeah, exactly. That's rough, man. That's rough. I got a chip on my shoulder. You could never make a curl. Yeah. Which, I mean, is true. I couldn't either, but whatever. What do you guys think of Universal Divide? You like that?

I like Universal Divide, yeah. I'm voting for it. I just voted for it. Now it has 11. Okay. No, this is the chatroom shoutout. No, chatroom shout out right here. There you go. That's chat room shout out. Okay. Yeah.

That's way different, Noah. Is chat room shout out in the Dropbox? Well, the soundboard, no. Yes. Well, probably everything's in the Dropbox at some place. Okay. The soundboard's right here on the machine. But yeah, I don't know about...

I'm sure it's in there. Okay. Yeah, you're welcome, X-Metal. You're welcome. That was a literal shout-out, yes. I do it for you guys because you guys are voting over at jbtitles.com. So Universal Divide looks like it's our winner. Yep.

Sounds good. Okay, guys. Well, thank you for being here. I appreciate it very much. Chris, I'm going to miss you. A whole week. Or several without seeing you. Wimpy, wait.

You had Entroware news that I missed? What was that? Well, they were listening live, and they were just saying that the European shipping stuff is about to launch any day now. So if you're from Europe and you can hear this, coming soon, coming soon, including keyboard options. Hey, very nice. All right. I'm really pleased keyboard options. Hey, very nice.

I'm really pleased for them. Everybody treat Noah nice. He may or may not be in the studio next week. I think we should switch the Mumble server two or three times, maybe change the website address. Actually, that's all. I think TeamSpeak is pretty good.

All of that's actually happening between now and the next show. Stop publishing to YouTube. The Mumble server's changed. We've got to shut down the old Mumble server, and the website's moving this weekend. You're welcome, Noah. The site for the Mumble server's done.

The transfer for the old thing's already done. Remember, make JB great again, Noah. Okay? That's your mission. You know, here's my mission. Here, you're going to start a new slogan. I'm going to get you a hat and a flat-brimmed hat and everything. And it's going to say, screw it, we'll fix it in post.

Or no, no, no, no, no, no. Screw it. Somebody else will fix it in post. No, come on. You know me. I do it live. Yeah, the Reek guy will fix it. Out of all the people on the network, I'm the guy that least puts it on Reek guy to fix it.

Because, you know, unless it's Comcast. Yeah, and it's like Reek guy can hurt one of the few. I'm just saying there might be other people on the network that are worse about it. Welcome to BSD Unplugged. I won't call out names, but there may be people on the network. This is BSD Unplugged. They expect a lot done in post, and it's not me. Those BSD guys don't know how to make anything right.

What? How did you know it was them? I didn't say anything. What? What? All right, we got to get out of here. Thanks, you guys. I got to go.

Thank you very much. Chris, have a wonderful vacation. I will. Go enjoy yourself and relax. I will. Thank you. The network will be fine. Yeah.

Wait. Now I thought it was until you said that. Now I'm worried. Get out of here. Get out of here. Okay, bye, guys. Bye. Bye, Noah. Bye, Noah. Thank you. You're a darling. Get out of here. Get out of here. Okay, bye, guys. Bye. Bye, Noah.

Thank you. You're a darling. Bye-bye now. You're the best, sis. Enjoy the rest of your craziness. Thank you for making it, Noah. Hugs and kisses. Hugs and kisses.

Bye-bye. All right, bye.