LINUX Unplugged - Episode 163: Games of Linux Future | LUP 163

Episode Date: September 21, 2016

In a special edition of Unplugged that looks towards the future of Gnome & KDE, The Linux Gamer joins us to discuss creating his content on Linux, game releases he’s looking forward to & answer questions from our virtual LUG.Plus we gush about Canonical hiring Wimpy, if your SSH password revealed when you attempt to connect to the wrong server, gander at the Nextcloud box & much more!

There was something else I wanted to share with the class before we started, before we go here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this might be kind of fun. This was submitted to the Linux Action Show subreddit. It is, you know, here at JB we fantasize about 4K video, 60 frames per second, and we kind of joke about how long it's going to take us to be able to get there. Meanwhile, these guys in the pro field are doing 8K video under Linux. So, I mean, we're seeing footage that's 4K, 6K, even 8K footage now

with the red coming in with the weapon and all that stuff. So, you know, we have to be able to run this back in a time when I have clients paying to work with me, paying to sit with me, where things run real time, nice and smooth, there's no hiccups. I mean, I have Resolve on my laptop, and if I tried to put an 8K shot in my laptop, it might explode. We're running on a Linux system. I'll show you what we've got in here. So here she is. This is where all the magic happens.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 163 for September 20th, 2016. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's always looking for an excuse to talk about video games. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. 163 is going to be a big show today, sir. We have really big updates to get into. Big Plasma desktop updates, GNOME updates coming down. The hype is real.

We'll tell you why. It looks like Slack may have a legitimate open source competitor. And before you go to sleep, I'll tell you why you should care. And then we'll answer the question, is your SSH password accidentally revealed if you connect to the wrong server? The answer may surprise you. Stay tuned for more, as they say on your local media. And then later on in the show, we're going to get our gaming on. The Linux Gamer on YouTube is joining us.

At The Linux Gamer on Twitter is here. We're going to dig into a little bit of what he's doing, what he's up to. And then I want to talk about some new games that are coming out for Linux. That look killer. One specifically that if they had a line where you could stand outside a store and camp overnight to get it, I would be in that line. I'll tell you about that game

towards the end of the show. So that's all coming up today. But, before all of that, we've got to get into some project updates. Some of the favorites out there have got big news, big changes coming down the pipe. So Wes, what do you say we bring in our virtual love? Let's do it. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumbaroom.

Hey. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, guys. Hello, guys. Hello, guys. So I'm excited everybody's here because we have much to catch up on because

I pre-recorded last Sunday's Linux Action Show. So I feel like I've been off the air for Linux topics for a while now. You're fresh. You're ready. You hear that? Airplane's flying overhead to welcome us. He wants to hear some Linux news too. I bet he's transporting lawnmowers to another part of the country that still has lawns to mow. Yep. Why don't we start off with some interesting news?

This one's coming in from Microsoft, and I suspect, I have a prediction that I suspect it's going to go kind of good for Linux users. It starts with some bad news. They're shutting down their London office as they're going to develop yet another Skype client. Did you hear about the shenanigans? It's crazy. Microsoft, like – here's what they got right now on the market. They set it up very well here. Currently, the company has the traditional Windows desktop app, the new universal Windows platform app for Windows 10, Windows 10 mobile, Xbox apps, the Skype web client, a web-based or electron-based standalone app for Linux, which reportedly has internal builds for Windows too.

And of course then Skype has an iOS app, an Android app, and a Mac OS client. So it's an excessive number of clients. It's ridiculous. And so what Ars Technica is reporting is that Microsoft's solution has developed yet another client. That'll solve it. This one called Skype for Life. I think that means it's for everything. Skype for Life.

I feel like that could be in a tattoo. The one client to rule them all, as you could say, will be cross-platform covering not just Windows, but Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. And you know how I read into that? This is my prediction. That sounds like the Electron app they started working on for Linux. They're like, oh, this is a good idea. Turns out everyone's making everything an

Electron app. I guess we'll jump on board. Let's do it! The new client, along with Skype for Business, and the new Slack-like Skype team features are being developed back in Redmond. So the development is going to be happening here in Washington in our neck of the woods. This is, I think, going to be one of the first huge apps, really one of the biggest apps using Electron everywhere eventually. I would think they could be one of the first.

I know they're like, you and I, are you still using N1? Yes, a little bit. Probably one of the other most advanced Electron apps I've ever used. It's very sophisticated, lots of features. And then my list begins to trail off on the level of sophistication of Electron apps, and I usually think of them as bloated and slow. Right. Then it's just kind of a wrapper around a web page.

Yeah. This is kind of interesting, maybe. I don't want to call it focus yet, but it's maybe focus of a wrapper around a web page. Yeah, yeah. This is kind of interesting, maybe. I don't want to call it focus yet, but it's maybe focus coming onto the Skype platform, which I don't know. I know some Linux users who feel kind of trapped because they have a lot of friends on Skype still. They have a Windows VM for it or whatever. And if we can get somewhere where we don't need that. Jitsi meet everybody. Yeah, Jitsi meet's a better way to go, too.

Okay, so anyone in the Mumba room, if you have any thoughts on Skype, you are welcome to chime in. But I assume we'd probably just move on. I think we all kind of agree Skype is, it feels like it's yesterday's thing. A lot of us still have to use it. I'm one of them. So I can't say nobody uses Skype. But it feels like, oh, that's next on my list to stop using. We need like a plug-in that just sends people Jitsi Meat rooms.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not available on this proprietary platform. Okay, so let's talk about the next big releases from both GNOME and Plasma, or KDE, I suppose. These are going to be huge. And there's been some hype already started for GNOME 3.22. I thought I'd cover a couple of the nice items that are going to be— this is supposed to release tomorrow as we record this. So that's why we're going to talk about this. I think

the one that most of us will probably appreciate the most are the changes to Nautilus. Nautilus' code base has been unified and Yeah, they're hyping this up a lot. Yeah, they're saying newcomers can be able to dig in a little easier, which kind of makes sense. Yeah, that's a good, that's an impressive feature, especially if you're cleaning up a lot of cruft, that takes a lot of work.

They say the internals are in a lot better shape. There's a new batch rename tool they've integrated file compression which also integrates with the new gnome or a nautilus progress popover so that's you know to build that in they've been using file roller for years now and also it makes me feel like i don't i know the people are so upset about you know when they change things they kind of dropped a lot of features it feels like maybe now they're kind of adding some things but they're doing it or at least trying to do it in a cohesive, thought out, holistic approach where it's like it fits when they do have it. You have less trouble, but.

Yeah. And, you know, as an example, so the detail, so it sounds like, oh, yeah, they've integrated compression into the file manager. Whoop-dee-doo. But actually when they do this, they do it in a real unique kind of way. They really pay attention to details. And it's not just that they've integrated with the popover. It also supports all of the standard key commands and functionalities that users just expect from Nautilus. So undo capability and things like that that traditionally you don't have, you now have

because, well, as an end user, that's what you expect with Nautilus, so they deliver that functionality in the compression. I think there actually is some nice work that went into it. GNOME Calendar is actually usable now with support for alarms. Hey, nice. There's a good idea. And the ability to drag and drop events and move them around on the calendar. Again, kind of –

Also, yeah. GNOME Music got a big, big rework. It's fast as hell now, they say. And GNOME Games is kind of neat. I haven't played with it myself. I'm going to reserve judgment to comment on it. I'm a little skeptical at this point, but supposedly it automatically discovers ROMs on your box,

automatically downloads the cover art for it. Then you double-click and it launches the appropriate emulator, assuming you have it installed. Again, I'm a little skeptical of that particular feature. It seems like an interesting feature for a free software type platform, but if it makes it pretty, I'm not opposed to it.

Now, there's also been some nice improvements to this version of GTK, which I don't know if I'm fully up to date to speak on. I don't know if anybody in the Mumber room has a better grasp of some of the big changes that are coming in GTK 3.22. I know Wimpy does. So if he stops by later, we might ask him. He's the front and center of it. I know Wimpy does. So if he stops by later, we might ask him. He's the front and center of it.

Pharonix covers a couple other features that I think we could grok a little easily. You know, I think probably one of the first places are, well, maybe not. It depends on the release. But everybody takes a little while to ship Gnome. So Fedora 25 will likely be one of the first places you can get Gnome 3.22. So far, one of the hopeful features of Fedora 25 is wayland out of the box by default now oh boy and in conjunction again gnome 3.22 has seen a ton of work for wayland support big improvements here uh in in this so that's one of the major features in gnome 3.22 that has also gotten some improvement and gnome software now supports flat packs i wonder

if there's anything should be something for like gnome? You know how good kernels, aren't they weasels? I wonder if there should be GNOME, you know, because sometimes, at least in the three branches, there's been a lot of, you know, you're like, well, that's kind of the turning point, when everyone started using it, and maybe we're coming to another good, stable point. Yeah, maybe we can pick up on this next week, when I know more, but I seem to recall there's something important about GNOME

3.2.2 being a longer-term, like, stable, predictable GTK. And I don't remember why that is, but I do remember there being some details about that. So maybe we'll pick it up next week if we can dig up the details. So there's your GNOME update. Now here's your Plasma update. Plasma 5.8 is also going to be released soon, and this is going to be a long-term support addition.

And there's a bunch of new updates and improvements to it, like improved desktop widgets, the ability to sort of refresh the back end on things like the KDE App Store. They've improved the Breeze theme, so it has a unified look across basically all toolkits, Qt 4, 5, GTK 2, 3. So even LibreOffice kind of looks like it belongs on a Breeze desktop now. Wow. Yeah, pretty nice. And KDE Connect, the super cool app that connects your Android device and lets you text from your desktop and transfer files and copy files and clipboard stuff. That's going to be front and center in this

release. And they also have unified boot up to shut down artwork, all kinds of things. And I will say when the release comes out, keep an eye out for their video because last release, I don't know if you remember this, Wes, because I can't remember if it was last or if it was this show, but I teased them for not having a very good release. That was our show.

Was it? Yeah. So I teased them. I said, come on, guys. When you have a big release like this, you've got to up the production a little bit. You've got to have a better release video. And I said, look, I'll do it for free. Just ask if you want somebody to do it for you, I'll do it for free. So they actually took me up on it. No way.

Yeah. So I won't play it, but here's a little. After a few hard months of work, the KDE community is pleased to announce Plasma 5.8 Long-Term Support Edition. So you'll have to watch the video to hear the whole thing. Oh, that's great. So they did take me up on it, and I thought, all right, fine,Term Support Edition. So you'll have to watch the video to hear the whole thing. Oh, that's great. So they did take me up on it, and I thought, all right, fine, I'll record it. So I think when they ship it, that'll be in there. So go there and watch it and see how it turned out for yourself.

But I thought, good for them. I gave them a razzing, and they held me accountable. Well, it goes to show that they, one, appreciate the input, and two, see the importance. Like, you know, just that little bit of extra work can go a long way in making people excited about your release. Yeah. So that's nice to see. Yeah, yeah.

That's true, and it helps communicate what you've been working so damn hard on. Exactly. Now, speaking of working hard, people are working hard to replace Slack. Now, don't skip ahead. This is actually kind of important if you care about open source software development. See, Slack has taken a critical role at many prominent open source projects to communicate the team. Now, I know you might be skeptical.

You might go, well, I got IRC. I got the Telegram. Why the hell do I need Slack? I don't want to debate that. People have decided for whatever reasons they need it. And if you work in a professional space, you likely run into Slack. Are you in a few Slack groups? I'm three at least.

Three? Yeah, I'm in a few Slack groups? I'm three at least. Three? Yeah. Not four. Yeah. I'm in three myself as well. And so this is why I'm always kind of keeping an eye out for something that is open, something that you can self-host because I would really love to see open source development move over that. Some projects, you know, they do, they just mailing lists are good enough for us or we're going to do, we're going to run rocket chat.

But a lot of projects, they just don't have the time or the people to run the back end infrastructure. They need something that works that they can just use that's free that they don't have to maintain. So that's why Riot's kind of interesting. And it's caught TechCrunch's Mike Butcher's attention. And he writes that Riot wants to be like Slack but with the flexibility of an underlying open source platform.

We've talked about Matrix before on the show. In fact, we've interviewed the guys behind it on the show before. And Riot, which we've talked about in the past as Vector, we've covered Vector in the past. Vector.im was their old site. Has been renamed to Riot, and they are launching a Slack-like service that is powered by Matrix on the back end that you can either run on their servers or self-host.

And it's not bad. It supports Matrix's encryption, so that's kind of nice. It has end-to-end encryption, as they put it, using Matrix's Malcom? M-G Malcom? Their type of encryption, I guess.

And teams can have the flexibility of self-hosting, which is also very nice. So this could be big. You and I were just quickly experimenting with it this morning. Yeah, I just got it down on my phone, too. Oh, how's the app? I didn't get a chance to play with the mobile app.

It looks pretty nice. Yeah, I suspect the mobile app might be nicer than the web app. Yeah, it definitely looks like it, but it synced up here nicely. It's showing all this. Now, the big question is, is the GIF animated on the mobile app? Oh, let's see.

That is because it is not animated in the web version, and I got to have animated GIFs. Oh, no. It doesn't look like it. You know, mine was animated in the web version, but it was very – oh, you know, it's downloading the phone. It might have just been a preview here trying to save my bandwidth. That's good. Consider yourself either – that could be a feature or a downside. But I kid.

That's super cool to see a real Slack competitor coming. Yep. And one thing that interests me is I've been looking at Mattermost, looking at Rocketcat again. Sorry, Popey, GIFs. Sorry. Yeah, Mattermost is nice too. And I like those things, but it's interesting, the Matrix backend, just because

if Matrix takes off, then this benefits a lot just by that and the bigger ecosystem. Matrix already has all kinds of different bridges, Slack bridges, that kind of stuff. So if we can see development there, it might benefit all kinds of different clients. There's command line clients. There's web clients. There's this client.

I still – I think I'd have to really speak intelligently about Riot. It was just announced today on – I saw it on TechCrunch or yesterday. I would have to try setting it up because that's one of the things about – like Popey is joking in the chat room, but there legitimately is a snap to set up RocketChat. In fact, I think you can even – I think on RocketChat's website, I think they even have like a spin-up on DigitalOcean button. Yeah, I believe both Docker – I mean both Mattermost and RocketChat have Docker images as well. It's got to be really easy. That's the thing because Slack is you click one button. In fact, you can do it from your phone even, I think.

Slack even goes as far as having that beta Linux Electron app, so yeah. The competition's pretty high. That's nice, too. And then, of course, you have that massive entrenched traction, which is why we're still talking about Skype to this day. It's the same problem. And I don't know how you overcome that. So it has to be people that know

what they want, and they have to elect to use it. But maybe they'll have a chance. I'll have to check it out too because one big thing for us is like at work, for instance, like the Slack chargers is a pretty big thing if you want like single sign-on type integration. Mattermost, you have to pay for it as well. RacketChat has a plug-in for free. I'm wondering where they're going to fall on that because a lot of times it seems like places end up migrating because they need that extra accountability or separation control that could get expensive fast yeah for sure what are you going to say william go ahead oh i was going to say they already have the ldap integration so single sign-on should work if you're doing it

through ldap okay that's great on the matrix side and i think what's also great about this over matter most a rocket chat or slack is that everyone can host their own and it's federated so you can talk to other people's home servers i do like the the federation. Brisk could host one, Wes could host one, I could host one. Yeah, we could all be in the same chat. And all the messages would get distributed to all the home servers every time. Sounds kind of fun to try. Just like it should be super cool, because it means you can control all your own data, but be a part of someone else's chat without having to go through their server. Yeah. So William, how much have you played with this? I've been playing with this since May

because I wanted to use it as a way to replace Quassel as an IRC client. So you were playing with it as Vector? Yeah, well, I was playing, yeah, as Vector. I mean, it's basically still Vector, right? Like, they announced the name change, but they're still doing all the code through the Vector IM web client and through the iOS and Android clients. They're all the same code base still.

Yeah, that makes sense. Just a rename. So a sound endorsement though, huh? It's been really, really nice. Yeah, yeah. I've been using the IRC bridge to connect to IRC and it's been super handy in that way

because I like the app much more than I liked Quassel on, say, iOS. Oh, sure. Yeah, I can see that. So how difficult is it to set up the vector or now the Riot server?

It was kind of painful for me, but I mean, I'm already kind of trudging my own way, building my own packages and creating my own stuff anyway. So everything is kind of painful in that sense. It doesn't bother me too much. There wasn't like a just deploy on DigitalOcean button or something, huh? That doesn't really interest me. So, I mean, yeah, I don't have a good opinion on like easy install. something huh that doesn't really interest me so i mean yeah i have to look maybe they do yeah i don't have a good opinion on like easy install i feel like uh i if i i feel like if i was going to use it in production like you would be i would want to build it myself too but if i want to uh

just try it for a weekend to see if maybe there's a use for it then i'm more inclined to just do an easy setup i mean it's a couple of components right so you have like this node.js thing that is the irc bridge connecting to the home server, which you also set up, and then there's an identity server for handling all the logins that you also have to run. Microservices. Yeah, you've got all these microservices. And so it is a little weird to get set up the first time.

That's funny. Back in my day, we called those dependencies. Yep. That was before JSON was invented, Chris. You're so old. Now, yeah, I know. It looks like the chat's trying to tell you there is a Slack bridge, too. You're so old. Now I know. It looks like the chat's trying to tell you there is a Slack bridge, too. So if you wanted to have Slack conversations in Matrix, you could import them in real time. Yeah.

See, that's the thing that I think right there really appeals to me about Riot is on the back end, you have all of the capabilities of Matrix. Like it's inherent WebRTC. You can use the client you want. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's another good point. You wouldn't have to use the riot client either yep i do like the way that sounds without having to wait simultaneously you could have right on your phone and you could use whatever

command line client you have on the desktop and if you want to develop your own client which is super yeah exactly super flexible all right this is the most exciting messaging text i am i'm officially hyped i am officially hyped and you managed to get me hyped over something that I think some of the audience probably just snoozes out over. Like they couldn't care less about this kind of stuff. Well, maybe I'll play and try to get my own server set up and something we can check back in in a couple of shows. Yeah. I think it's mixed. I think some people care a lot.

So, yeah, I would be curious to keep following up on it. Thanks, William. That's good hands-on information to have. So why don't we take a moment before we stray too far from the self-hosting topic and let's talk about DigitalOcean, our first sponsor this week. If you'd like to go spin up a droplet and try out anything that we've been talking about on the show that you can host yourself, use our promo code D-O-Unplugged. It's one word.

You smush it all together and you can just apply it to your DigitalOcean balance. You get a $10 credit and you can try out their $5 rig two months for free or take advantage of their hourly pricing. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider that has a freaking great infrastructure all running on top of Linux rigs with SSDs. They use KVM for the virtualizer, and then they wrap it in this UI that's so freaking great. If they shipped this as a standalone desktop application, you'd be like, damn, well, that's just a great UI.

But the fact that it's a freaking web page, it works on all my different browsers. Even like on Linux, I can get HTML5 style right in all good console-ness access. Console goodness in my browser. I love it. And that's really where the secret sauce lies for some things. Digitalocean.com. Use our promo code D-O-1-plug. They got data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Germany, India.

You know, I just like that Toronto one because I like to think that my data is close to Alan Jude. Right. Just close. He's just there watching over it. Even if he's not personally there, I feel like perhaps his aura extends around data and it will protect my droplets. That's the only reason. Otherwise, Toronto. It's Canada.

Come on, right? Who knows what happens up there? Use our promo code DOUnplugged and check out that great interface. They're straightforward API where there's tons of good open source code already written. And they now have high memory droplets where you can get over 200 gigs of RAM on your droplet

and like a nuts amount of just SSD storage for days. And plus they have high availability block storage. You can just attach it to your droplet as you need it, up to 16 terabytes, all backed by SSDs. It's super nice. They're really hitting that perfect mix where you're like, well, if I want to just try it in development, maybe I have an idea for a thing. And then you get real users, and they make it so easy to just take that and instantly scale up. And now you've got like a real production-grade server running, or five of them.

And I think this is – I want to stress this point for people that are collaborating over the internet, working with either, it's like an open source project or in our case, it's podcast production. Having a few tools like a Slack or a Mattermost

or Telegram and having something like DigitalOcean where you can work as a team and you can try things out and people can be spinning up droplets. And because the interface

is so straightforward, we all know how the interface works. And there's been times where I'll log my account in right here on a machine and I'll be upstairs testing something. And Rikai can come down here and do the things he needs to do right there in the DigitalOcean interface because it's the same interface he uses upstairs. It's super easy for the whole team to speak the same language about this stuff. It's like the opposite of AWS.

You do not need to take two courses just to understand it. Really, legitimately. It just helps us get going AWS. You do not need to take two courses just to understand it. Really, legitimately. It just helps us get going and just figure stuff out as fast as possible. So digitalocean.com. Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged. And a big thank you

to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Over 200 gigs of RAM in a droplet. That's nuts. That is full on nuts. So let's get through these updates

because we got things to talk about. But I did mention there is that question. If you attempt to log into an incorrect SSH server, does your SSH password get revealed? Now, before I reveal the answer, before I tell you what it is, somebody in the moment would want to take a guess. If you put the wrong IP address into your SSH client and you try to type in your username and password, could that password be revealed to the SSH server you're connecting to? What do you think? No.

I mean. I don't think so. All right. Okay. Yes, it could. Oh, hello. I mean. I don't think so. All right. Okay. Yes, it could. Oh, hello. All right. Let's call it.

Can we go to the scene? We still have to accept the yes or no, right? So here's basically the answer is yes. And here's why. And this is over at Stack Exchange. If you connect to a machine, when you connect to it, the session is encrypted. But what gets essentially sent inside that encrypted session is basically clear text. The password that hits the system is inside an encrypted SSH session.

So it's not going over the web or the internet as clear text. But inside that connection, it is clear text. And you could configure PAM if you were evil enough to dump that password to a text file when somebody attempts to log in. You'd have to mess Or just a fake little service running on port 22 Oh that would do it too, yeah. But this enables all that like PAM magic or LDAP integration or the YubiKey one time password

so they need it in clear text that you can send it to a third party service to actually verify that word. Right. But if you had, and I actually had a listener contact me about this. He's like I meant to log into one of my local IP addresses but I fudged a couple of the numbers or so I can't remember had – and I actually had a listener contact me about this. He's like, I meant to log into one of my local IP addresses, but I fudged a couple of the numbers or so. I can't remember the details. And I connected to a public SSH server that had something listed on 22, and I attempted to log in a few times. And he asked me, do they have my username and password now?

And after looking into it, I had to tell him, you need to change your password because that is a super common IP address that you just accidentally connected to and he totally agreed. He's like, yeah, I mean, it's possible they just set it up there. And legitimately, if you just configured PAM correctly to spit all this stuff out, it'd just be a real easy poor man's password dump. Log the IP it's from, take that, log back into it. This

is why you should use a key. Yes, at least, yes. Yeah, at least a key. Yeah, go ahead. Or take host key. Yes, at least, yes. Yeah, at least a key. Yeah, go ahead. Or take host key verification seriously, at least. Yeah, yeah. Yes, that is not one of those options. The key doesn't match.

Like, you've never connected to the server before. Right, good point, good point. You should notice that. I think now, in this particular listener's case, he was on a brand new machine. And that could totally happen to me, too, where I don't move my known host file around. Keep checking.

Yeah, I am horrible with this kind of stuff. I really just, because I reload machines so often for reviews that it's really hard to actually stay on top of it. And especially then maybe you're spinning up and down a lot of hosts and you're changing DSS names a lot. Yeah, I can get confusing really quick. Oh yeah. So while we're talking about SSH, Wes has found

some magic that claims to be modern SSH for clusters and teams. And it's thrown a lot of features in our face. It says that it has no need for distributed keys. It can enforce two-factor authentication, including things like Google Authenticator, I believe. You have collaboration, so you can actually have shared sessions.

It supports session sharing. It can record and replay SSA sessions. And it has cluster introspection. Now this is where it loses me, Wes. I don't know what cluster introspection it says. It says every teleport node becomes a part of a cluster and is visible on a web UI. So this

is for people that have a lot of systems. Yes. And so there's a couple other systems that are comparable to this. Like Netflix has one called Bless that they use. It's pretty neat. They run it in an Amazon Lambda function that basically they use their own certificate authority for SSH.

Also open source. Also open source, which is great and how you can use like AWS primitives to kind of build this neat authentication layer. And the Teleport guys, they run like their own private SaaS company offering type thing. They're basically trying to set this up

for like a lot of big companies. Like there's another one from Facebook that they actually have a really great tutorial in the show notes kind of talking about how to set up your own SSH infrastructure with certificates, how you can use that. That is a great article. It really is a great article. We have all that linked in the show notes. And so when you're Facebook, you have security people.

You have multitudes of engineers with time on their hands to build you this kind of system. And the Facebook article, it tells you enough to do it yourself, but it's not all the pieces. They have some of their own pieces, how they handle the like, hey, I have my, here's my thing, sign up with your certificate, that part kind of you need your own. So Teleport has a solution for you. You do have to kind of replace some of your SSH daemons and that sort of stuff. So why would I want a certificate for my SSH login? Why would I want certificate based SSH logins? So we've just kind of talked about how passwords are bad. A lot of people then go to keys. But when you're like an enterprise-style organization, keys can be unwieldy. You either are rolling your own system to manage the keys and make sure that they're getting distributed to the right host.

And when a user separates, you have to remove them. And how secure is that? Yeah. And how much are you staying on top of that? And so certificates, you can set it up so that each of your hosts trusts a certificate. And then they're looking for something to be signed with that certificate. But you can also have, they use what's called principles. And so you can basically, you have your own, your public part of the key, right?

And you give it to them and you can then like maybe do an LDAP check. I don't know. It depends on how you do it for the background. And so then the advantage here is if it's certificate based, then it checks to see if the cert's valid when I connect. And so that means as an IT department, I could revoke somebody's access to all my servers simply by revoking their certificate.

Exactly. You can also have it be time-bound, right? So, all right, you have root on this box, but you have it for the two hours of your change window and then otherwise no. And then it can also, when you get that cert signed stuff, you can have it list the principles. So you can be like, okay, you're allowed to do root on these hosts

and you're allowed to do this person to those. And as long as that's set up, that's what they get. So Teleport provides this as like if you're not a company that's big enough to make that infrastructure yourself, but you want auditability, you want to be able to have logs, you want to have maybe a nice web UI to configure who has access and who doesn't, Teleport gets that all for you ready to go.

Wow, and it's all open source? Yeah, and so this is maybe like a software option. I know Alan has mentioned a couple like hardware boxes. This, though, for somebody who even just has like a handful of droplets might actually be kind of useful. Yes, right? I mean, especially just, you know, it's all centralized. I think what they're talking about with like the introspection is you,

you know, rather than just hoping that you have it, you can see, you can make sure all your nodes are online. It's a little bit kind of like a chef or a configuration management where you have a little bit of metadata associated with your whole cluster. Yeah, I follow that. That's kind of nice. A web UI for my SSH connections. I don't know.

I thought MOSH was pretty hip. I thought I was hip with MOSH. Yeah, so if you're willing to do a little bit of a stack change, this might be something to try out, especially if you're kind of building your own little cloud and you want some better security. Speaking of building your own little cloud, and I'm busting through these updates because I want to get to the gaming stuff. I'm chewing at the bit. And plus, I just haven't had a chance to talk with Gardner since we were at System 76, so I'm looking forward to that. But I hinted, oh, man, oh, oh, man, oh, man, last week's show, two hint bombs, and I don't

know how many of you caught the first one. There was two massive hint bombs in last week's Linux Unplugged. The first one was about a surprise from the NextCloud project that would be announced in the coming days. I'm about to reveal what that was right now. And the second one and he's not here probably on purpose is Wimpy got a new job.

Did you hear about this? Yes I did. And Ryan totally called it in last week's episode. Yes he did. Oh man he was spot on. And I felt and I was like I downplayed it because like it felt super awkward to be saying. And I was like, I downplayed it because it felt super awkward to be saying that. I was like, oh, come on. And I tried to get Wimpy out of it for him because it felt awkward, but he was totally right. Wimpy is now

working at Canonical, so congratulations to him. Congrats, that's great. He's going to do a lot of good work there. Congrats, that's awesome. It is, and since he's not here and I'm going to make him pay for it, I'm going to embarrass him. You always watch these companies that are super important to our Linux experience to see if they're making good decisions, to see when they fumble, and everybody loves to point to things like Ubuntu TV.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Look what they did there. They never shipped it. But rarely do you get to see a company show its cards at how insightful it actually is into people that have really contributed something solid to open source. They showed their nimbleness recently when they organized around getting the Snapcraft sprint and all that stuff. And they brought people in. They showed their nimbleness, which seemed clever, but it didn't necessarily show a ton of insight i i genuinely believe that by hiring wimpy it shows insight the canonical has into the people that are contributing in their community and really it's many of the steps they've been taking with their with their quick adoption of

ubuntu mate as a flavor, with making Wimpy an official Ubuntu contributor and member, and now with hiring him at Canonical. And I have a sense, I've spoken with Wimpy and I have a sense of what his contribution will be. And it's brilliant. It's just absolutely brilliant. And it shows that Canonical isn't so far up there. They're up in their cloud strategy like heads.

They're not so far up there that they can't in their cloud strategy heads. They're not so far up there that they can't come down to the ground level and say, these people are making a difference. We should bring them in, give them a paycheck, and utilize their great skills. And that move that they just made shows that cleverness in a way that I don't think we've seen out of the company in a while.

I think it also shows a good commitment to, just as much as we've seen Unity 7 stagnate, or we haven't been necessarily happy with it, and it seems like they've focused a lot on mobile, and there's obviously a big cloud focus. And so I think it shows that their official support here, them supporting the community and the clear momentum that Mate has around it and Wimpy,

it kind of seems like, yes, this traditional desktop paradigm, yes, these values, yes, the community who supports those is still an important aspect to Canonical. And just like when ByteMark became an infrastructure sponsor for the project and they said these are one of these – these are one of the things that happen that make a distribution in it for the long haul that you can count on maybe another decade or generations of releases. This too. This is a move because it's not like Wimpy hasn't had a day job already. He's had a day job. He's been maintaining Ubuntu Mate while he has a day job.

Now his day job is going to be more directly aligned with supporting that project. Not directly, but obviously if you're sitting there speaking with canonical staff every single day and you're working on canonical projects and you have direct insight on the direction of where it's going, you are in a much better position to maintain a flavor of Ubuntu. It's obvious. So it's a huge win for Ubuntu Mate users too, which are growing rapidly. So there you go. And I think it's Popey Jumpy.

Yeah, Popey mentions that they do have openings at Canonical. Yeah, there's quite a few here. Oh, maybe they were just desperate then. I don't know. All right. So this was what I – that was hinted later in the show last week. Earlier in the show, I hinted that NextCloud had a surprise for us, and here it is. It's the NextCloud Box.

And I think this is kind of clever because it is inside a box. In the box for the NextCloud Box, you get a 1-terabyte USB 3 hard drive from Western Digital. You get the NextCloud case with room for a drive and a board. You get a micro USB charger, cable and adapters, and a screwdriver and screws. You get a micro SD card loaded with snappy Ubuntu core. Hey. And you get NextCloud 10 pre-installed with Apache and MySQL configured. But what you don't get is the compute board.

You supply that yourself. The box is compatible with the Raspberry Pi 2, which you need to supply. The box can also fit the Raspberry Pi 3 and the Odroid C2. Just go with the 3. Why would you use that? I know. I know, right? And I kind of – I don't know how much it is because I have been traveling, so I didn't

get a chance to look after they announced it. Let's just see right here. I want either. I either want to pick one up or I'm going to ask Joss if he'll send me a review. It looks like it's like 80 bucks, US. I think I might just buy one then. Yeah, that seems actually pretty neat. Yeah, I would like to try it out. I would like to really try that out.

I would like more storage, but it's a good starting place and it's a good way to introduce people to NextCloud. And NextCloud supports online storage options too. So if you've got to grow, that's a pretty solid option. And this seems like a nice little place for hobbyists to kind of get it. Maybe you're not that interested in having it run on a cloud droplet or whatever and you just kind of want something to sit by your TV or sit in the basement somewhere. Yeah. And I think too, you know, $80 isn't going to break the bank for some.

And if you have some investment in NextCloud as an ongoing open source project, probably not a bad way to not just throw a little money towards NextCloud, but also to validate to hardware partners that NextCloud was worth their time. And that might be the bigger long-term benefit that we as a community could do here is if we pick this thing up, it shows Western Digital and it shows everybody that's involved with this, all the hardware partners, that, hey, this company actually shipped some orders. We should pay attention to them. Wouldn't that be great if we could kind of set those up to facilitate those kind of partnerships? Right, because what happens next? What happens next? And the conversation is, well, what is it about this people like?

Well, it's got this NextCloud thing on it. Well, what's so great about NextCloud? Well, then the answer to that is, well, you get to control of your own data, and it's not on a hosted service. And wouldn't that be a great conversation for all these companies to start having? Yes. Like I'm fine with embracing a hardware provider with their – maybe they have great hardware. But I don't want to use their weird half-supported proprietary platform.

So if they can partner with someone that has open source support, that would be amazing. And then you could see – I mean it could start Western – this could lead to something like where companies like Western Digital, instead of having their Western Digital MyBook, MyCloud proprietary old version of Linux, it could simply be running a more modern version of SnappyCore with NextCloud running on top of it. And imagine for a moment if multiple vendors started doing this. So then they started competing on hardware and RAID features. Oh, man. And the software to manage it all and the interface and all that stuff was in the next cloud level. And it was just something to do. One upstream.

Yeah. Oh, man. I don't know. That's putting the cart way ahead of the horse. But, yeah, it seems like if this goes well, that's the kind of thing that could follow years down the road. Exactly. Building a platform. That's pretty cool.

Pretty cool. Speaking of building a platform, I'm following Flatpak and Snapcraft and Snappy, Snap Package news all the time, and there's a new version of the Snapcraft GUI, which I don't know how much we've talked about, and it seems like it's a pretty big deal to me. The Snapcraft GUI is just what you would expect. It's a graphical interface to create Snap packages,

which it's not that Snap packages are hard to make in the first place. And there's already been a command line tool to do this, but this is, there's going to be a version 2 of the Snapcraft GUI shipping soon, and it kind of is badass. Also, I don't see a lot of Unity desktops with the launcher at the bottom.

I know, I don't see that either. It's kind of cool. Yeah, it is kind of cool. It is kind of, I should have tried that. It's like a purple Windows 10, but without all the tiles. Now I hate it. Now I hate it, Wes. Sorry, either. It's kind of cool. Yeah, it is kind of cool. It is kind of cool. I should have tried that. It's like a purple Windows 10, but without all the tiles. Now I hate it. Now I hate it, Wes. Sorry, Chris. Jeez. Sorry, everyone.

Gah! Damn it. Damn it. And I was all happy about Snapcraft. But it does seem like a big thing, especially for, like, you know, you make a Windows app. You have Linux users telling you they want it. You're trying to figure it out. And suddenly you're, like, miles deep in make files and in the command line.

So if this can help you package your app in an easy way that lets Linux users consume it, then that's great. Yep. I've heard many, many complaints at CoderRadio, at JupiterBroadcasting.com. At Michael Dominic. Boy. People, they're writing these emails saying, like, I got all excited after hearing the show about starting Linux development. And then I spent three days trying to figure out how to deliver an application on Linux and I gave up and went back to the Mac App Store. Yeah.

We were so close. Don't go. Don't go. Yeah. We'll use it. We just have some weird requirements. Oh, and Popey points out in the chat room that Snapcraft is a community maintained effort, which is really kind of awesome. That is awesome.

Yeah. I hadn't really thought about mentioning that, but that does actually show some serious investment from the community. Yeah, it gives a sense that people are really liking this platform. It's a QT-based application, too. All right, so we've been here for a little bit. We have, let's see, how many more do we have? Oh, yeah, all guests. Oh, good.

Oh, good, good. We finally get to the point of the show that I've been waiting for all episode. Let's take this moment then to thank Ting. Everybody, if you do me a favor and go to linux.ting.com, you can support this show, and you learn more about Ting, and you also get $25 off your device. Or if you bring one, you'll get $25 in service credit. Now, this is why I recommend Ting. So it's first full disclosure, more than two and a half.

I mean, gosh, I guess this year is, wow. I'm like two years, I'm like way over, way over two years now. It's been a while. And every time I think to myself, what is it about Ting now that I like? Because as I started using it, the things that initially blew me away were the price. It's $6 for my line and then I pay for what I use. And if I use Wi-Fi for most of my downloads, my big phone usage, honestly, is if I'm not on Wi-Fi, it's when I'm driving. Driving, yes. And I don't like to really do a lot of text messaging or a lot of stuff when I'm driving

anyway, so I just pre-download my podcast. And my data connection on Ting is really handy. It's a great backup. And where I'm at here at the studio, we get like... Are you on CDMA or GSM on that phone? GSM. Have you ran the speed test here at the studio? No.

You should turn off your Wi-Fi and run it. It's like 22, 23, 24 megabits. Wow. It's really nice. So you can – the nice thing about Ting is they have two cellular networks, CDMA and GSM. And you can pick whichever works better for you in your area. And some places here in Washington, because we have a lot of hills and a lot of trees, CDMA legitimately works better.

Yeah. Might not be super fast, but at least you have service. Right. But here in town, we're at the studio. GSM is rock solid fast. And it's so solid that Alan was in studio for a special TechSnap episode a couple years ago. And like, when does that happen? No, never.

That's rare. Yeah. Three times ever in the history of the show. And of course, our internet was out. And it's not like we that happen? No, never. That's rare. Twice. Yeah. Three times ever in the history of the show. And, of course, our internet was out. And it's not like we could reschedule that episode. I was just like, you know, book your flight again. It's fine. So we set up the Ting hotspot on my phone, which is just, you know, it's just a checkbox in Android.

There's no extra fees. You must authorize with your carrier. None of that bull crap. And it just turns on, and we used it for a couple hours. It saved the day. It was really nice. And the flexibility like that is what's really great about Ting. And I'll also mention that if you're a Nexus phone user, they have some great tips on their blog right now on ways you can save with Wi-Fi assist.

So I'll link you up to that. They've also got articles up there about bringing the iPhone 7 to Ting. So start right now by going to linux.ting.com. Try out their savings calculator. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged program. Linux.ting.com. That's how they say it. That's exactly how they say it.

No, that's how Yahoo says it. I apologize. I apologize. Yahoo's not a thing anymore, Chris. Oh. No, too soon. That's sad. Too soon.

So Gardner is joining us in the mumble room. He is the Linux gamer on YouTube and on the Twitter. Gardner, welcome to Linux Unplugged, sir. Hey, I'm glad to be here. So would it be embarrassing for you or would it be okay if I played your channel trailer to introduce people to you who are not familiar with you? Because I know for me it's hard to watch my own stuff. But I thought actually your trailer would be probably a good way to just kind of introduce people to you.

Are you cool with that? Oh, absolutely. Okay, yeah, it's a good trailer. You wouldn't use a hammer like this. So why would you play PC games like this? Blue screen. Sure, you might accomplish what you're trying to do, but there's a much easier way. The answer

to your PC gaming woes is Linux. Hi, I'm the Linux Gamer, and this is my channel. I produce weekly reviews of Linux and SteamOS games, titles you can buy from the Humble Store, GOG, and Steam. I also make informational videos, do product unboxings, create informative tutorials, produce hilarious Let's Plays, and a whole lot more. Please take a moment and check out some of my stuff, and if you're intrigued by what you see, you can mash that subscribe button. I'm the Linux Gamer, and there's a better way to PC game. I don't know how hilarious my Let's Plays are, but okay.

Well, I did like the goat one. What was that? I forget now the name of that. Goat Simulator. Yeah, that one's pretty good. So, Gardner, why Linux gaming? And are you crazy? I mean, there's no games for Linux. That's impossible.

I hear that all the time in my comments, and I don't listen to them. Yeah, I bet you do. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, why YouTube, too? That is, I mean, so not that, I mean, we published YouTube, too. I have no problem with YouTube, but it's not necessarily known as the most Linux-friendly place. Well, if I'm going to be totally honest, I think of my channel as a gaming channel first,

and I just happen to play games on Linux. I like that. Yeah. That does make sense. And what do you, do you do all of the production on Linux for your setup? Yeah, I do. I use a AverMedia capture card that captures to SD to capture all my video. I edit on a Linux rig.

I use Ubuntu, and I edit with Kdenlive. Okay. Hey, that's awesome. But you also have a day job, too. So you're doing this as like a – it's not even fair to really call it a side project because it's more than that. How is that working out for you? It's a passion project. I really, really enjoy gaming.

And the reason I started my channel was kind of twofold. The first thing was that I didn't think I played enough games. So I wanted an excuse to play more. I understand. And the other reason was I wanted to feel like I was doing something like with my life. So yeah, we've all been there. Yeah, it's a passion project for me. I really enjoy everything that I have gotten to do so far and hope it can expand in the future.

So as we record the episode, he has 11,000 subscribers, which is really a great number on YouTube for Linux-focused content like that. And that takes a long time to build up. I mean, that's a big commitment of a lot of releases. I'm looking at your channel right now, Gardner, and it looks like YouTube doesn't tell me, but I mean, thousands of videos. How many videos? Do you have an idea that you've posted over on YouTube? So I post some for my Patreon subscribers that are private,

but I think I have something like 110 or 140. Jeez. Somewhere in there, yeah. I've been doing it for about, sorry. No, go ahead. I was going to say, so what, that's what, a few years at least you've been doing it? Yeah, I started my channel actually two years ago, almost to the day.

Wow, congratulations. Happy birthday. Wow. Yeah, that's wonderful. Happy YouTube birthday. So I kind of wanted to get a picture of life for Gardner. Where are you based out of? I live in Maine.

Oh. Hey, opposite ends over here. The beards from Maine. So yeah, that's, that's very interesting. And so you, you have the day job and then you, you do production on the weekends. Do you do it at evening? Are you up late working on this thing? Most of the time I do my editing on the, on a Monday typically. And then I work on the, like recording the video and writing the scripts on weeknights after work. on a Monday typically. And then I work on the, like recording the video and writing the scripts on weeknights after work.

And how much time do you have to spend ever fiddling with things to get the game to work under Linux? Has that been a problem or are you for the most part be able to install these things and they just work

because you've probably tried more games than most people? I think so. Typically, I don't like to review games that require a lot of work because of who i'm kind of targeting on youtube um but like there are some games that have had more headaches than they're worth yeah yeah yeah that makes sense yeah all right well so we got some new games that have come out recently that i want to talk about in a moment but if anybody in the mumble room has

any questions for gardner uh go ahead because i I don't want to dominate, or Wes, if you have any questions. But I think one of the things that we've all kind of discussed recently is the big games that have been announced, some of the big releases. There's, though, some independent games that are coming out soon that I want to talk about. But there is some rumors, too. So why don't we start with the rumors, then we'll get into the confirmed releases. Now, one of the resources that people are are familiar with is there is a subreddit for gaming, Gaming on Linux. Is that what it is? What is the subreddit? Because I just saw, I was just...

Go ahead, Gardner. You probably know what it is. Linux underscore gaming. Is that what it is? Linux underscore gaming? Yeah, it's Linux underscore gaming. Yeah, okay. So this is not a bad resource for Linux gaming news, and Gaming on Linux is another one. Gardner, what are some of your favorite resources for learning news about Linux, besides your Twitter feed? I like GamingOnLinux.com, and I actually go to OMG Ubuntu quite a bit. But the Linux Gaming subreddit is one of my favorite places. All right. So this was in the Linux Gaming subreddit, and it's tagged as speculation. So take it with some grain of salt. But 21 hours ago, they posted that Star Citizen may be confirmed for Linux as the dev was doing a coding streaming session. And in the IDE here, you can see something tagged Linux

launcher. Did you happen to catch this one, Gardner? I actually didn't see this one. Isn't now. Now, I don't think it's like shocking that there's going to be a Star Citizen for Linux. Google even, I just Googled Star Citizen. It says it's an upcoming space sim game for Microsoft Windows and Linux. Yeah, that's not the shocking part. But they've been super dodgy about when we'd see it and how far along it is for a long time now. People have been getting a little concerned. That's sort of been my sense of it.

There's been that history of like, well, okay, you say it's happening. My Windows friends aren't going to be playing it. I want to play it. But that could be. So that's in the rumor category. But there is some big games that people are looking forward to that we're going to mention. We're going to talk about. So quickly, let's mention Linux Academy at linuxacademy.com

slash unplugged. Go there to learn more about the Linux Academy platform. This is where they teach you everything you need to know about the basics of Linux, the advanced topics, and all the stuff that runs on top of it. Which is everything. Yeah, really. And they have instructor mentoring available, downloadable comprehensive study guides. They have a great community.

They have people working around the clock to make Linux Academy better all the time, so that way your subscription constantly gets value. I'll also mentioned, I will just briefly say that they have some great news. Linux Academy students can now make their profile public and share their credentials and their professional certs. So when you're getting a gig, you can link that in your resume. I know there's a lot of organizations that will let you use their company account for this. So if you can come in as an applicant and just be like, well, look, you were going to have me do this if I'm hired.

I've already done these three things. You should probably hire me. And one of the great things is Linux Academy has just been growing more and more and more in notoriety. So Linux Academy is being established. They've worked a lot with the Linux Foundation. So in a professional space, they're becoming a well-known name. And so that's a great feature just at the right time.

So my hat's off to them, and I wanted to give them a shout-out. I'd like you to learn more. If you go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, you support the show. You can check out their features page and I'll have a video for you there. If there's topics we've talked about that have been over your head at all, this might be a great resource to learn more. linuxacademy.com

slash unplugged. Thanks to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. So this came out just a couple of days ago and I'm going to say it's pronounced Deus Ex. How's that? The Unplugged program. So this came out just a couple of days ago. And I'm going to say it's pronounced Deus Ex. How's that? I think that's beautiful.

Deus Ex. Yeah, I know, Deus Ex. Mankind's Divided is coming to Mac and Linux this year. And that's big news. Everybody's talking about it. I saw you tweeted about it, Gardner. Why is this big news? I'm not familiar with the franchise.

Deus Ex, the franchise actually started in, I think it was like 1989. like 19 forever ago yeah yeah yeah and it was uh what's his name warren uh uh lord specter yeah warren specter that's it and he like he's a big name in in the gaming world and you know i've had i think i played the original deus ex and it was really interesting and it was like a pioneer of storytelling um and the uh the previous game to this incarnation of deus ex was uh was really interesting and it was like a pioneer of storytelling. And the previous game to this incarnation of Deus Ex was really well received. So it's kind of big news that Deus Ex Mankind Divided is coming to Linux. Yeah, and I guess it's already out for Windows and it's kind of got a mixed review, at least according to Steam. It's got a kind of like a, not a fully loved product,

but people still seem to be pretty excited on the Linux side of it. I saw a lot of Linux press for it. The graphics look incredible, but that's all my, that's really the extent of my excitement about it. I assume, though, that you yourself will probably be getting it on release day. Probably, yeah.

I'd like to get a release, an early release. Have people been working with you on that? Some people. Feral is pretty good about it. Ah, it depends on the shop, huh? I see. Yeah, that makes sense.

So just a hint, hint, nudge, nudge. But speaking of OMG Ubuntu, they, well, we were speaking of them. They have the game that I'm really the most excited about. This is the one I've been waiting to talk about all episode. I don't know what it is about me and space shooters, but Everspace is going to hit Linux later this month as early access, I believe. So keep that in mind. I don't think it's a finished product yet. Holy scrumptious space shooter, though.

This looks like I could spend an evening just totally set. Get my food, get my snacks, get myself a beverage. Oh, man. And stare at my screen. Can I come over for this? Yeah, it looks really good. How would you describe these graphics, Wes? Sublime.

Intense. Titillating. Perfect. Yeah, and you're flying around in space like a madman. Space dogfights. I mean, what more could you ask? It's like Star Fox grew up. Yeah, it's starfox and descent

meet uh uh i'm trying to remember what that old game was descent 2 i can't remember what the game was called but this really just looks this really looks like it's pushing my buttons now mr linux gamer have you seen this game have you seen this story yeah i'm pretty hyped about it i really like how it looks i think it's going to be uh pretty interesting not too hyped about the early access though i don't know right yeah yeah it's always a mixed bag what are your thoughts on it on early access in general uh i mean i try and steer clear of giving reviews of early sure yeah um because they're not finished it's kind of like why i haven't done a lot of open source games is because they're not always finished so yeah sure yeah i feel like this

though will fill that star Star Citizen void that I have until Star Citizen does ship for Linux, because I feel like this is the game that I can play for a while. I mean, one of the things I love about No Man's Sky under wine is just going up into space and flying around and blowing up stuff and getting the materials from it. So now I'll have this. So it's Everspace, and it's going to be on Steam and GOG

by Rocketfish Games. And, uh, Something to check out if you've got a few bucks laying around. It uses the Unreal Engine, which, uh, is damn good looking.

It looks like right now it's, you know, it's on those platforms. It's 30 bucks, uh, US Greenbacks. Okay. $29.99

is how much it is. Is there any other games, Gardner, that you're kind of looking forward to? Big releases or ones that you have your eye on

that you can't wait to install when it finally ships? So two games that I've been really interested in lately are What the Box, which is kind of like Gary's Mod Prop Hunt. It's kind of everyone is a prop and you're just a box and you run around.

It's what Middle Gear Solid Online should have been. And then there's also uh let's see what's the other one cluster truck uh that looks like a very interesting game it you're there's it's a procedurally generated game where there's like a a bunch of trucks and you just run on top of them as far as you can it looks really fun it does look fun uh okay the truck yeah yeah that doesn't seem like a super complicated game to port over to Linux. I would think that would be coming. I love it just says, jump on trucks.

It says it's available. It's going to be available on September 27th, which is just a few days away too. Mr. Tanel, you had a question for Gardner. Go ahead. Yeah, I was wondering if you do any plans, any reviews for games like emulation. What do you think about games on emulations that are not technically for Linux native? Uh,

because I noticed that you're one of your, one of your recent videos was, uh, Aladdin. So, uh, I was just wondering, would you do a video,

do a review? That's not necessarily native. I've thought about it and I've talked to some of the people who watch my stuff and it's not really something that my viewers are probably interested in although i definitely am going to cover uh gnome games when it finally hits oh that's good yeah what do you think in gnome games i've been kind of hyped about it um i've from what i understand it seems like uh like a med defend front end which is really interesting to me. I don't know if it actually can be used with a controller, which is something I'd be interested in seeing.

But yeah, I really like the idea of... So you're not as skeptical about it as I am? No. I'm a big fan of GNOME anyway. So to have something like that... I mean, I do play big fan of GNOME anyway. Yeah, yeah. To have something like that. I mean, I do play emulators quite a bit. And I'm interested in having like a, you know, a unified front end for it. Yeah, yeah, that is what I do like about it. Go ahead, what?

Have you tried Lutrix? I haven't. I don't even, I've never heard of that. It's basically a front end for games that you can create launchers for any game, and it doesn't necessarily have to be an emulator or anything. It could be any game, and it could be even a Steam game that just has a launcher connected to it, so it's all in one manager. I'm definitely going to check that out.

So, Gardner, you've—oh, go ahead. There was another question in the forum. I can wait. Yeah, LinuxGamer. What's your view on um speed running an app i really enjoy watching speed runners especially like agdq um i follow like you know mainstream gaming quite a bit so when when stuff like that pops up on polygon or wherever else i i definitely check those out i love speed running i don't do it myself i don't think i'm good enough what is speed running it's where you basically um break

a game to beat it as fast as possible oh yeah so exploiting glitches i love it i love watching those i don't know if i'd want to do those but i'd like watching they're fascinating to watch it really takes a lot of skill sometimes it's i saw one guy uh play super mario 64 i think he beat it in about five minutes with one hand like he did one hand to play the game it was awesome so what do you think about oh ww you have a question go ahead uh okay so um a lot of games that i've played on the windows side and that are on linux like let's say payday 2, they have a heavy modding community. And it seems like I would love to play Payday 2 or other games that have a good modding community, but it doesn't seem like that translates over. Do you think that's a hurdle to overcome in the

future for gamers that want to game on Linux and want to be able to mod games and add different features or change the UI how they want? I definitely think that's important. One of the staples of PC gaming is definitely the modding community. I'm very excited to see that Unreal Tournament, the new one that's coming out, is going to support that. And I'm hoping that they create a modding platform that allows someone to just publish to the platform and then it works across Linux, Mac and windows. Um,

but yeah, it's very important and games that don't like that gives us support, uh, workshop, uh, like steam workshop on windows and not on Linux. I dock them points when they do that. Um,

uh, it's, it's very important to me to maintain that kind of compatibility, especially with like, since Linux is such a community based, uh, initiative. Right.

Yeah. So how has, uh, how has your sense, I guess I should put it, how, what is your sense of the take on developers and continuing support of Linux? Do you think it's increasing?

Do you think developers have sort of had a cold reaction to SteamOS and maybe it's tapering off? What's your sense at this point? So it definitely boils down to the actual um the the publisher i think um square enix has been publishing games um like idos and you know they're bringing um uh deus ex to uh to linux and they've done a couple other games before uh life is strange and stuff like that um and uh take two has also kind of um or 2k i guess has been bringing games to Linux. Certain developers need to be pushed a little more, I think. Yeah, it's kind of a mixed bag, honestly.

So it's still kind of early days, then. Definitely. I guess that's where we'd expect it to be. Yeah, I think there's room to grow, for sure. It's also, we're on the precipice of vulcan taking off we're going to be making a big display server transition so it's maybe all this amd work to try to yeah maybe it's okay that it's still not we we have some time we still have some time a long way just in the past you know three or four years that's true it definitely has yeah and you know i i

suspect that valve has something else up their sleeve. They're not dumb and they understand that, you know, Windows is definitely trying to wall off the open garden that PC gaming has been. And they have to have something up their sleeve. I don't think they're going to go quietly into the Windows, the universal Windows platform or whatever, you know, Windows is trying to push on us. Yeah, I think you're probably right. I hope. I hope. I hope. Lyle, you had a question before we wrap up. Go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to ask. Do you think, Garner, do you think that – so I'm hearing echo. Anyways, do you think Steam is kind of a scapegoat for native Linux gaming? Because you're not really, in Steam, you're not really using the Linux desktop per se as a native client. I don't know if that made sense. Because you're using the Steam runtime? Yeah. Yeah. Do you think there's a way that we could convert programmers to make native clients instead of Steam?

So that's an interesting question. I haven't actually heard that before, but I guess you can turn off the Steam runtime, but it sometimes will break compatibilities with games. Yeah. It sometimes will break compatibilities with games. And if you're downloading games from like GOG or the Humble Store, they're going to be using like the native libraries on your system. I don't know if I like the classification native. I know that's the term we've been throwing around. But native makes it sound like it's not Linux-developed code. They're just libraries that shipped with an older version of Ubuntu. That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about things that were created for Linux, that are compiled for Linux.

They're just shipped with a, essentially, it actually, it makes a lot of sense. And I don't know if you'd really want to do it differently. Because it allows developers to target a single target, Linux, Ubuntu, 1204, whatever it is now, I don't know. And that is a real easy, okay, this is something I can wrap my head around. I can ship to that. And then we as end users, if it bothers us, have the means, especially with distributions like Solus,

have the means to switch over to our native distribution. I'm using that term again. To switch over to our distribution bundled libraries if we want. And that's where somewhere it's like, you know, maybe if you see more open source in games where it doesn't matter as much because they can link when they're building all the packages. Maybe we see more static compilation

in games. But when you do have the Steam runtime and you have all the Steam users and you have the library and the support services and the cloud sync and all that, I can see why it's a popular target. A game development shop needs some amount of predictability. You can't really ship a game without some level of predictability of what your target system is going to be. And that's what the Steam runtime gives them.

And it's something that I think Linux was missing. And it's not something that you are dependent on to have gaming on Linux. As Gardner just pointed out, GOG or Humble Bundle Games as another real easy source to get games, don't use those runtimes. And it's very simple on Arch and on Solus and probably other distros to flip a switch and now you're using your built-in bundled runtimes.

It does bring up libraries. It is important then for that runtime to see maintenance, upkeep, updates, that sort of thing, to make sure that it's easy and not a hassle as we move forward on the Linux desktop. So that'll be interesting to see what Steam does. I don't necessarily disagree with you, Chris, at all. I think Steam is a great intermediary

between getting games on Linux and having them outside of Steam native, if you will. I agree with you that Steam is native, okay? I agree with you on that. There's still Linux binaries at the end of the day. Right, right, right. I agree with that. But running a program to run a game is the same in some respects as just using Wine, correct?

Because you're using a program to run the game. Well, no, Steam doesn't run the game. The game runs as native code on the system. Steam might launch the game and authorize the game or something like that. And include additional libraries that it uses. But when the game starts, it starts on its own volition. I mean, Steam might kick it off, but then it runs

as its own process, and it uses its native compiled Linux code in most cases. Okay. And aren't Snap packages going to do something similar to that where the developers are going to be able to publish their own libraries along or package their own libraries along with their app? Snap and Flatpaks are going to reimagine the runtime structure. So Linux will be that for everything native. Runtimes are coming to a lot of things, yeah.

Linux will be that for everything. Runtimes are coming to a lot of things, yeah. That's actually where I was going to go next is if we got a community donating money to advancing flat packs or snap packs or whatever for the development of AAA games like WoW or SWTOR or any other huge MMO out there, then wouldn't that gain more credibility to gaming on Linux?

I don't know. What's the difference though? Because if you're creating a runtime that's making it easier to develop on it with Flatpaks or Snaps, or you're creating a runtime with Steam as your base, what's the difference of it not being native and is native because to me it sounds like you're just kind of picking at straws and it's it's totally native and you're kind of

trying to like imply that it's not i would say i would say the conversation around uh runtimes is actually that is a valid one. Do we, you know, because what is the point of having this always up to date perfectly synced rolling release of a Linux distribution just to rely on runtimes that might be two years old

or something like that. Especially, so Flatpaks today ship with GTK 2.3.2.0 version, right? That's what the base Flatpak runtime GTK setup is. Well, that's great today, but it's already going to be out of date in a couple of days, practically speaking. Right. And then, but really in a year or two, that's going to feel limiting when I might be on GTK 4.0, potentially, at that point. And yet the Flatpak runtime will still support

GTK 3.20 which will probably also get upgraded. But that runtime discussion we should probably have on a future date because I got to run because it is time

for me to start recording a special edition of Unfiltered coming up a little bit. What? Yeah, Mr. Chase is in Shoreline right now as we record.

Oh, he's hot on the way. I can see that. He is and I don't have clips ready yet. Nope. Someone in a seat. It's just a hot mess. So let's pick that conversation up on a future date. But Gardner, thank you for joining us on the Unplugged program. So we've got links to your

Twitter account and your YouTube channel, but also to your Patreon if people want to support the work you're doing on Patreon. And please feel free, if you're ever bored on a Tuesday, come back, hang out, chime in with your awesome Linux opinions. Totally. You're always welcome back, sir. So thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, guys.

Absolutely. I'm glad you were able to make time for it. And Wes's invitation extends out to you at home there, audience, if you'd like to join us on a Tuesday. Next week won't be the week to do it. No, not next week. In fact, big disclaimer to you guys in the mummer room, check the calendar page because Wes and and I, we got a date. We're going down to the—

You better treat me right, Chris. You better treat me right. Just saying it like that. We're going down to the Open Daylight Summit, which is something the Linux Foundation is putting on, and it's all about software-defined networking in Linux, which is a huge area that's growing for Linux like crazy, but it's really happening down at the infrastructure level. It's not really something that we have a lot of eyes on. And users haven't seen too much yet. Yeah, and so Wes and I are going to try to attend that and come back with the bits and pieces that you probably actually would care about

and want to know about and see how well Linux is dominating or not. Right. So those are things we'll be doing next week, but here's the catch. It happens during the unplugged lifetime. So when we would normally – Who schedules things like that? Come on. Linux Foundation.

Don't they watch the Jupyter Broadcasting calendar, Wes? So we right now are tentatively planning to have a later recording. So maybe more like 4 o'clock JV time, something like that, a couple hours later. So we can go down there, get the interviews get everything recorded, hustle back up here, edit it all together and then put together a masterpiece for you take like, you know, take many hours of interviews and

condense it down to a few minutes of actually interesting bits. The hot shit. Yeah, that's very well put and that'll be next week's unplugged so the time's gonna be all jabber wonky. But we'll try to let you know as soon as we have some good times. Yeah, so we very well put. And that will be next week's Unplugged. So the time is going to be all jabberwonky. But we'll try to let you know as soon as we have some good times. So we'll put it up at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar as soon as we know. I apologize for that.

Thank you for sticking with us. But the idea is we'll go down to the event. We'll get it all done, and we'll come back all still fresh from the event with everything on our mind and sit down and have hopefully a good tale to weave, I suppose. And you guys should go check it out too and maybe comment on the subreddit if there's anything you want us to really pay attention to or people we should go try to track down and you're curious about.

Let us know. And if you're going to be in the area Tuesday and you're going to be at the Open Daylight Summit, come find us. We'll be walking around. Come say hi. We'd be happy to shake a hand or two and chat a little bit with you, see what you're doing, see what you're up to. So jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar is where we have our new live time for just next week.

We're just making a change for next week. And you can just check there, and there's an RSS feed if you want to. And you know what? If you're not a live timer, if you don't watch live, you don't go to jblive.tv, you don't have the Roku app, you don't watch it on MPVs using the RTMP stream. I understand. I understand. You're not watching on the YouTube live.

Sure. No, that's cool. Because what you do is you subscribe to the RSS feed. And then you automatically get the unplugged program every freaking time we have a new release. It's this brand new technology. It's just brand spanking new. I think Twitter invented it. I'm not sure.

It's called the Really Simple Syndication. And they just added this new enclosure tag, Wes. What? It's incredible. Yeah, yeah. Updates? Yeah, so now you can get downloaded files via RSS. And then people have created these podcast players. Oh, man, Wes, I can't wait to tell you about it, but we've got to run.

So I'll have to tell you after the show. Be here next week. Yeah, we'll tell you the whole world about podcast apps. It's amazing. We're really on the top of things. If you'd like to join us, though, we will have that Mumble Room live, so you can tune in next week. Join us live, hang out in the Mumble Room, and

chat with us. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com is where you go for feedback. Thanks for being here. And we'll see you next Tuesday! Probably. Assuming we get up here in time from Seattle. I don't really know. Roll the dice. It should all work out.

Oh, God, Wes. Get it out of here. I never installed GNU slash Linux. I secretly use Arch Linux. are truly nuts. Wes has got this Sputnik Dell laptop that he just, it really just gets loaded with stuff all the time, really for purposes of the show. But every now and then, the man has the opportunity to load an OS,

to load a desktop, to load a distribution, just for himself. This is true. And I think the last time you did this, didn't you do Antigros? Well, it was a Pricity for quite a while. Yeah, you actually, you did a Pricity for the show and then like stayed there. Yeah, it really wasn't too bad. But not anymore.

Well, I did try. I did upgrade because they had another release or another beta out or something. So I did try it. I was having a very strange issue where my backlight would just flash. Just like intense flickering. And this is nothing. That's not the Skylake Sputnik, right? It's like a –

Yeah. Everything should be well supported. Yeah. And, you know, normally right now the screen is not flickering. So I don't know if I can blame it on electricity or just like a random, you know – Kernel version. Kernel version, library version. Who knows?

It is like a rolling release. So I didn't investigate it too hard. was playing around with antergross i usually have like five antergross live cds or usbs laying around and it's kind of playing with their bootloader and i was playing with their live cd and i like to do fun things like you know download it and then loop back mount into the iso so you can do it or load that copy the iso into ram so you can do it all easily without needing yeah or it's crazy i know you know those fun little things you can do and it just reminded me like just playing with extracting their the iso and looking at how they do the init ram fs and it's just enough different from arch that it's like kind of outside of my comfort zone and i like all the way it's set up but i kind of i started

getting frustrated too that like sometimes the enter goes mirrors for their like the google true type fonts and their other fonts they're fonts, some of their extra packages are really slow to download, even though they take the time to update all your Arch mirrors and stuff. And I'm like, what am I? It just didn't feel like the fine-grained control that I wanted. So you did. So I just wiped it and installed Arch straight away. Vanilla Arch.

Well, then we might chat more about that. So how's it working so far? Oh, it's beautiful. Got the know-how? You know, there's like that you have to give that like hour, two hours to get stuff going. But after that, I'm really – it's not quite there yet. I need to get a bunch of the like YubiKey GPG stuff set up, which I haven't. I need to re-get like my Tink VPN and sync thing and maybe play with some LibreVault, get that going here too.

Anything been a challenge that you didn't expect or anything odd during setup because you know the only thing i ever find when i'm building my own machine or my own arch install versus like anagross or or manjaro is there's usually one or two defaults that don't really make sense in a desktop config that you end up having to go tweak or change i think there will be i have not heavily just right now i've got a few extensions like a little bit of theming but i haven't i haven't like gone and tweaked a bunch of stuff but also um setting up a bare a bare linux box is so much easier not to downplay what you did but it's so much easier than it was back in the days when you used to have to manually configure x oh man and manually configure all of your init system and manually set up all of the basic stuff.

Now, you know, X auto-configures itself. SystemD takes care of tons of things. It is building a Linux box from scratch is, I mean, depending on how you define scratch, has gotten so much easier than it was a few years ago. And I love how Arch kind of exposes that. So, you know, it's like, okay, well, you format your things. You dump all your packages to the file system, configure a few things, add yourself a user, enable GDM, install GNOME if you want,

and, hey, now you've got a desktop. That is pretty cool. So what happens when you have to try another distro? Well, see, that's one of the things I want to do, too, is before, I think it had all started, I'd, like, wiped the whole hard drive to install some distros, but somehow, I think from one of the things i want to do too is is before i think i'd i think it all started i'd like wipe the whole hard drive to install some distros but somehow i think from one of the installer guis it had set it up gpt on mbr or maybe it was the opposite i don't know it was set up it was configured in a weird way so now it's now it's nice and uefi and it's gpt so

i'm not limited by how many primary partitions i can have like it's the 80s so it should be perfect so i can install like a whole crap ton of OSs for us to review on the show. Nice dig. Yes. Cool. Well, congrats on the new fresh installation. That's always fun. I've been recently reloading a box of my own, and every time I do it, I try things just slightly differently.

Just a little tweak. Right, exactly. It's a little, like, hmm, what's new this time around?