LINUX Unplugged - Episode 17: Swap It Outta Here | LUP 17
Episode Date: December 4, 2013Do you run without swap? This week we reach into the topic grab bag and debate to swap or not to swap, the reasons long timer Linux users are switching to BSD, and what’s wrong with our Sailfish OS ...coverage.Plus we’ll some perspective from a new Linux user on what she ran into, your emails, and more!
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This is Linux Unplugged, Episode 17 for December 3rd, 2013. Hi everyone, and hello planet Earth!
Your weekly Linux talk show welcomes you to the closing act of 2013.
Pour yourself a cold one!
And join us around the penguin-shaped table.
My name is Chris.
My name is Matt.
Hey Matt, here we are, episode 17. It's the final hours of 2013.
And it's been a big year, Matt.
Oh, it's been huge.
I guess this was supposed to be the year of Steam.
But now that we're coming to an end, the only thing I can think about is Bitcoin.
Oddly enough, yeah, I can understand.
Yeah, well, yeah, recently Bitcoin has been sitting above $1,000 right now on Bitstamp,
which is where you could actually cash out today if you wanted to.
The price is $10.45.
Other exchanges have it higher.
Those exchanges are full of crap.
And I think it's interesting because I have to hold myself back.
I don't want to talk about it in the Linux Unplugged show, Matt, but it's all I'm thinking about.
Oh, yeah?
All right.
So, you know, this week, Matt, I had a grab bag.
Called it Dev Random because I'm funny like that.
And I had several topics I wanted to dig into, sort of suss out, and I wanted to start with
some of our follow-up this week.
But before we get into that follow-up, I wanted to ask you, have you opened the boxes yet,
Matt?
I have.
I have.
I did my...
Usually when I get a review item, and this is something I've done
for probably over 10 years, is I get a review item,
I pop it out of the box, I plug it in, make sure everything's
working, looks good, drool for a while,
cry myself, then I cry myself to sleep when I put it back
in the box. Yesterday, Matt got
three boxes from
System76 on his doorstep.
You got the Leopard Extreme in there, and you got
two laptops. You got the new
Kudu laptop and their Ultra Pro laptop.
Can't wait to try those things out.
They're just gorgeous, gorgeous machines.
Is the Leopard Extreme heavy?
What's it look like, Matt?
Is it nice?
I remember carrying it in the last time, and yeah, it has some weight to it.
That is solid hardware.
You're going to be showing up on Sunday with a car full of gear.
That's going to be awesome.
Can't wait to try that out.
And we even got a little bit of extra time
to try these things out. I'm going to be banging on
Elevator Extreme for like a week solid, so we'll have
an extended report on how that thing performs
on the big show.
Well, speaking of the big show,
so this week, I want to talk about
Sailfish OS and
the Yalophone as sort of a follow-up.
I don't know how many of you
out there, if any of you out there listen to Unplugged
and don't listen to the Linux Action Show.
You're a crazy son of a bitch if you do that.
What's the matter with you?
But one of the things that happened,
the biggest thing that happened,
we talked about Mint 16, Mate and Cinnamon Edition,
of the latest release from the Linux Mint project.
You would think that would be the thing
that dominates the dialogue from the Linux Action Show audience.
No.
No, pretty much everybody
was talking about our coverage of
Yala OS, or the
Yala Phone and Sailfish OS. And so Kyle
wrote in to the Linux Action
Show, and I
broke in to the Linux Action Show's house.
I ripped open their
little sack they have hanging on their refrigerator that holds the Linux Action Show's house. I ripped open their little sack they have hanging on their
refrigerator that holds the Linux Action Show feedback, and I stole it for this show. And so
we're going to read Kyle's email, even though it was directed to the Linux Action Show. We're going
to break all the rules and tie the knots together and cover it here. He writes, Hi, Chris. I'm sure
you got more than a few of these emails this week, but hear me out. I was interested to hear what you
and Matt might have had to say about Yala's launch of their new phone and OS on this week's
show, and I was disappointed to see you dismiss it out of hand. You spend numerous segments and
even a whole Linux Unplugged and Coder Radio talking about Canonical's dismal mobile efforts,
and when similar small groups of devs not only creates a 1.0 version of their Linux-based OS,
small groups of devs not only creates a 1.0 version of their Linux-based OS,
but actually ships it on non-Vaporware phone,
you blow it off like it's no big deal,
and don't even bother to research some basic facts about it.
Sailfish OS does run Android apps.
In fact, he linked us to some demos online that show that.
And it will run on Android hardware in the future. This is actually one of their main strategies for expansion into China.
The device has only been out for a few days,
and already community members have got Google Play Store support up and running on it.
This is exciting and just the sort of thing to expect from an enthusiastic Linux community.
In fact, smack the table,
JAL's efforts to provide open source compatibility for Android hardware
helped out Ubuntu Mobile's efforts
and represent a real contribution to the open source community.
Furthermore, the MakePlay Live project you got so excited about is using Mer, which Sailfish OS is also based on, and which Jala is dedicated to supporting in a similar way to how the Linux kernel gets contributions. There was a developer-oriented talk by one of the Yala devs
on a subreddit a while back that outlined how
Sailfish OS is just one aspect of their broader
plans for MER, which sounds very exciting
in terms of spreading Linux adoption
through devices like the Improv.
Sorry if I came across as a bit of a fanboy
that Matt's always telling to settle down.
I know I've probably been in damage control mode
since Amazon... I know you've probably been in damage
control since Amazon dropped their bomb on you and
you haven't had much time to research the topic, but I think you might want to give
y'all a second look.
At the very least, I hope you review Sailfish OS once it hits the Nexus 5.
On another note, I can't afford to buy a new t-shirt with the cost of the international
shipping, but I will start a subscription on filter next week.
I hope you get over the financial problems on Amazon that they've dumped on you.
Continue making great content for the community. Thanks. Best, Kyle.
So, interesting points, Matt. What are your thoughts? Well, so here's the deal.
We never said, and it's interesting how if you're not really enthusiastic in a positive
way, you're automatically negative. There can never be a gray area. And I noticed that because that's not
what happened. What actually did happen is that, as he pointed out, it's very
early on. So at this moment in time, until I have something in front of me that I can really hold on to, like say,
oh, I don't know, Firefox OS, you know, that I can actually have an opinion on, we're at a meh
moment right now because there's nothing to really, to judge. It sounds cool, but Firefox OS
actually addresses a specific need. It brings low-end smartphones, you know, accessible smartphones
to people that might not otherwise
be in the Android market.
If I understand the other side of this argument,
what their point is,
here's what they would say to that. They would say,
hey, dude, look,
Sailfish OS is coming from the folks that made
me go, Nokia, we've got industry
ties, we've got a proven track record,
we've got a community that's already built,
we are here, we are the proven recipe, and we've just shipped. And meanwhile,
you're talking about Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch. I'm talking about something I can install on a
phone and see right now. Now, again, I've not researched this heavily. So if I can do that
today, I'm excited. If I can't, I will be excited tomorrow. When Kyle says, yo, dog, you're going to be able to install it on Nexus 5, I think to myself, actually, that's when it crosses the line from interesting concept to practical product.
There you go.
And it might be a limitation in just the fact that there's a lot of things to focus on these days.
Sure.
And so unless you can actually play with it, it just maybe doesn't spark that interest internally.
But I go back to that I think my senses from the Linux Action Show audience and the Linux Unplugged audience is there's just straight up mobile exhaustion.
Like Android didn't just kind of pull ahead.
Android dominated everybody like in a major way.
And not necessarily in a positive way it just it just kind of happened it's kind of like when you spill something all over your keyboard it's
there it you know what i mean it makes the deployment and the adoption rate of windows
look quaint oh yeah and so i think in in in that shadow it's hard to conjure up any genuine
excitement because it just seems like it honestly seems like cavemen going up against the United States government.
Oh, I wouldn't go that far.
I think that once we – again, going back to – as you pointed out, once we have something tangible in our hands, I can experience the performance of those Android apps running on this.
I can experience the flow of the phone.
Then I can make an educated judgment based on that experience. But we're not there yet. He's asking me to be excited about nothing.
But okay, let's say six months down the road, I can buy a Nexus 5 and guaranteed I hook it up to
the USB port of my computer. I flip a few buttons and I can install Sailfish OS on it.
Sure.
I'm still probably not going to do it. I mean, I might do it in the sense of try it out, give it a go, try it for a couple of weeks.
But the reality is I want applications that are on Android.
I want –
We do.
If I'm going to have a mobile device, I want badass mapping.
I want Waze, right?
I want to have all of these things that are just now come to be expected on a mobile device.
I want Netflix on all of these things that are just now come to be expected on a mobile device. I want Netflix on a mobile device for that 15 minutes where we have to wait for something.
And oh my god, I got to do something to inoccupy my two kids who are running around like crazy.
Let's put SpongeBob on the phone for 15 minutes.
And it gives me a better peace of mind.
I want that on my mobile device.
Can they offer that?
I don't think so.
And if they can, how long do they care? But do we know? But do we know yet? I mean, that's just it is, I mean, and I'm not
defending the email, but I'm just saying, I honestly don't know. I mean, perhaps possibly,
maybe it addresses something in a fashion we haven't experienced yet. If it does, that's cool.
But yeah, I mean, for myself, I just, I, because I think those are valid points, but I think at the
end of the day, until it's in my hands for in my universe, in my world, it's theory.
That doesn't mean it's theory for the developer.
It just means for the end user it is. Here's what they have to do. They have to make it good enough
and I think they're actually, I think this is why people are really
excited about Yala and Sailfish OS is I think
they are on the verge, like
out of the gate. Out of all the projects, out of the gate.
Because Ubuntu Touch has
a bunch of phony icons that don't do
anything and they're relying on their community
who doesn't really care. has a bunch of phony icons that don't do anything, and they're relying on their community who...
Doesn't really care.
Right, to make core functions of their operating system.
So Yala comes along, and they have Sailfish OS,
and it's a 1.0.
It's a straight-up respectable 1.0.
And I think these people are like,
hey, you assholes, this is almost getting good enough.
And I'm not saying you have to replace Android one-to-one for somebody like me to switch because I will jump when it's – all I got to do is I just got to change a few habits.
I got to twist my arm a little bit, but, man, I'll switch to get off of Android.
Android's doable, but you guys – I've documented the copious amount of problems I had with Android.
Well, and see, that's just it.
And I'm holding out hope, and I would love to see this.
I would love to see it to where it provides me the same seamless experience, potentially even a better experience than what Android does.
And that includes not only it runs Android apps, but if it runs them at native speeds, performance, feel.
I don't want to feel like I'm running wine or something.
I want it to feel good. If it does that, it very well may. I don't know. If it does, performance, feel. I don't want to feel like I'm running wine or something. I want it to feel good.
If it does that, it very well may.
I don't know.
If it does, that's awesome.
But until I see it, I have no opinion because I can't judge it.
So I want to make sure I stress that I do believe we need something like this.
So I got the Nexus 5.
Sure.
It's an amazing piece of hardware.
It really is great.
But there's a creepy factor to every time I get a new Android device, more and more is proprietary.
It's closed up.
Like now the photo management application that shipped with the Nexus 5 is Google Plus photos.
Your photo gallery is now integrated in with Google Plus, and they've deprecated the original gallery app.
And it's just abandonware. It's just totally abandoned. It totally sucks. is now integrated in with Google+, and they've deprecated the original gallery app, right?
And it's just abandonware.
It's just totally abandoned.
It totally sucks.
And so as somebody who is cognizant of these types of deficiencies, this bothers me, and it makes me want to switch.
I don't think it'd ever make Joe User want to switch.
And this is where the fundamental lack of enthusiasm comes from for me,
is how can I get excited about something
that 70 of our audience will likely never use uh the same could be said for desktop linux five
years ago though and so i would say that you know that that was the argument of well it's just a
hobby operating system when obviously it's not it's it's a very core experience for a number of
people myself included yourself included so i i'm gonna be i'm gonna go out on the optimistic
level of,
if it can in fact provide me with what I'm looking for, I will be its biggest advocate.
If it doesn't, I won't care. So you're in a wait-and-see approach.
I'm a wait-and-see guy. And I don't get too bent into licensing. I prefer open source licensing,
but it's not a lifestyle for me. I'm not a developer. I have a preference,
but I'm not married to it. You have more security in products that use an open source license.
Right. Absolutely. I would prefer that. Absolutely. Hands down. We'll even take a hit on,
you know, uh, user experience to a degree within reason. Yeah, certainly.
Or the amount of hoops you might have to jump. Oh yeah. Yeah. I, that's where I fall down too. And
yeah, we'll see. We'll see. You know, all companies go through their rockstar moment
and then they fade and, and, and maybe as that happens to Google, Android, more and more people look for alternatives. And by that point, these operating systems and these devices will be at a stage where they've had enough R&D and development and progress for that they're ready to pick up that slack. And that would be amazing.
and that would be amazing. So, you know, as, as Sailfish OS comes out for other,
for other devices that I can get my hands on, I'm totally going to check it out. I'm keeping my mind open, but I'll be honest. Um, I couldn't, I couldn't push myself to research the Yala
announcement enough to like know it in and out. Like I researched it enough to know what the
important moments were and, and, and highlight some of those important stories in the show notes.
So folks wanted to go look in the show notes of last week's Lass.
They could go get that info.
However, myself, I was like – I more wanted to cover it in the show just to document the important moment for the project itself and not much more than that.
And that really seemed to bother people.
Not much more than that.
And that really seemed to bother people.
Well, and it's comical because, again, we're victims of a – we as the Linux community tend to – we're almost religious about things.
And sometimes that's not –
I'm going to be brutally honest.
It's stupid.
It's really annoying.
And quite frankly, it's a real turnoff to people that aren't Linux people. Yeah, we got an email about that this week.
I'm calloused enough to where I – it's fine, whatever.
But regular people are looking at this thinking, wow, you people are nuts.
So, I mean, for me, I need something tangible.
I'm about user experiences, and that includes the benefits of the open source licensing
because there are tangible benefits to that.
So, I mean, I put that in the same bucket.
But a great analogy is looking at the difference between the Steam box.
We're all really excited about that.
You ask my 17-year-old nephew what he's excited about,
who was really excited about Steam Box last week
until he saw a trailer for Killzone for the PlayStation 4.
He couldn't give a rat's butt about Steam Box anymore
because something visually tangible is in front of him
that he'd be like, ooh, drool.
And that's what Android's got over these other operating systems.
I think we're going to have to overcome that.
Good point.
All right, well, so Kyle, when he wrote in,
mentioned the shirt drive
and the problems we've been having with Amazon.
So I got a little update.
We had a lot of people say,
hey guys, love the shirt,
don't want a long sleeve t-shirt,
I want a hoodie.
So we added a hoodie.
So if you go to teespring.com slash Jupiter 2014,
you can grab a hoodie.
This is helping us get to our 2014 goal
or at least helping us get through 2013.
This is a logo we'll be rolling out in 2014.
So now we've got a hoodie available.
We've got a woman's tee also
if you want to get one for your lady.
So that's all in the same addresses before
just in the pull-down?
Yep, just in the pull-down.
And now it all goes towards the goal.
319 out of 499.
That's a great...
Oh, it just went up to 319.
Did you see a change?
You know what?
You know what?
I'll tell you something, Matt.
I'll tell you something.
The bulk of that is the Linux Action Show audience.
Now, there's a good mix of Coder Radio in there too.
Sure, sure.
The bulk of it is the Linux Unplugged and Linux Action Show audience that have, right
here alone, have almost got us to 320 shirts.
I'd love to see that flip over to 320, 325 during the show.
The goal here is we have commissioned a new logo
for the Jupiter Broadcasting Network.
We were planning to roll this out in about March of 2014.
Yeah, you know, it was one of those things,
like we were really proud of ourselves
because we were working way ahead of the game.
We had secrets we were going to roll out in months.
And I was like, yeah, this is awesome.
We're ruling.
And then we had a falling out with Amazon.
And the way that a lot of people contribute and support our network was removed.
Now, what we're trying to do is close that financial gap.
I sold some Bitcoin so that way we can keep the lights on.
But we are definitely still hurting.
And this shirt we've launched over at teespring.com slash jupiter14.
This is an effort for us to continue to fund the network through the remainder of 2013
and also to get you guys a little bit of swag so that way you got yourself something.
Maybe you want to give it up for the holidays or something like that.
And that new logo is so gorgeous.
Display it, right?
Just display it.
So based on your popular demand, we now have a hoodie.
How awesome is that?
That is fantastic.
No, it's definitely been very popular, and I think it makes sense.
I think people see the value in not only participating in the program itself by helping to support it through buying this,
but I think they also value the fact that, hey, I get to represent.
Yeah, dude.
People really get that.
You know what? That new logo looks good on black like that, hey, I get to represent. Yeah, dude.
You know what? That new logo looks good on black like that. It looks excellent. It pops like crazy. It's awesome.
Yeah.
So thank you, everybody who
has already picked up a shirt.
And if you haven't gotten one yet, go to
teespring.com slash jupiter2014.
We're trying to get to 500 shirts.
We're not there yet.
And if we don't get to 500 shirts, we won't – none of them will ship.
You won't get charged.
Don't worry.
You won't get billed.
But none of them will ship.
So hopefully we can, and that will help us fund the remainder of the year.
And thank you, everybody.
All right.
Yeah, I think it's also worth mentioning too.
A lot of people have the mindset of, well, I might do it later, but someone undoubtedly will buy it.
Every single purchase helps make this happen, so definitely jump on.
We have an email.
So there's a few recurring topics that we've talked about.
Like on TechSnap, one of them is drive fragmentation.
On this show, it's the whole philosophy of to swap or not to swap.
I've got an email about that that I want to touch on here in just a second.
But first, we should probably thank our first sponsor of the Unplugged show,
and that, my friends, is Ting ting ting is mobile that makes sense my mobile service provider
and matt's mobile service provider and they freaking rock so ting what's great about them
no contracts no early termination fees and pay for what you use pay for what you use messages
megabytes minutes all that they all get added up at the end of the month.
Whatever you just use, that's what you pay for.
Flat dollars, six months per line, and just whatever you need on top of that.
That's great if you sometimes use the phone, sometimes you don't use the phone.
And every Ting service includes hotspot and tethering, caller ID, voicemail, and their
amazing Ting dashboard.
But something that was pointed out to me in the Linux Action Show subreddit this week
that we don't mention is Ting also doesn't have roaming charges. There's no additional charges
for voice roaming within the US. As long as you have a CDMA signal, you should be fine. The Ting
network has agreements in place with Verizon that allows you to roam over the Verizon network and
use that service and you don't get dinged for it. It's one of the really nice little perks
among the many other things with Ting. Now, of course, the average Ting bill is around $33 per month.
Think about that. $33 per month is the average Ting bill. And that's your smartphone with data,
text messaging, all of that contract free with no early termination fees. Now, I just got my Nexus
5 on the Ting network. Ting has a bunch of really great devices at all ranges of prices. Right now, if you go to linux.ting.com, that's
right, linux.ting.com, that'll take $25 off your first month of service if you already have a
Sprint-compatible device. If you don't have a Sprint-compatible device, they'll give you $25
off your first device. When you buy this device, you own this device. They're not leasing it to you
on like a house on a mortgage where you pay into it every single month. And after two years,
you now own a completely out of date smartphone. No, no. Like a computer, when you buy it,
you own it. And this is as an active consumer, as people out there who are aware of the differences
in that kind of setup, this is something I think we can all elect to be involved in,
is let's change the dynamic of the mobile market
because it's obvious the mobile devices,
even if you don't think they're that hot,
are going to play a huge role in the computing platform going forward.
And the problem is the cards are stacked against us right now.
Ting is changing all of that,
and they're doing it in a very dynamic way.
It's starting with no contracts,
starting with no early termination fees, and starting with the fact that you own your phone
and then they price it at a rate that is absolutely reasonable and not only that but if you're in a
contract right now and you want to get out of that contract ting has an early termination relief
program where they will pay up to 75 per line that you need to cancel that's huge people because you
can start saving right now if you switch to ting and you can get started by going to linux.ting.com. Man, I love Ting. I've been using them for a
while. And as a longtime customer now, I got to tell you, that dashboard, that dashboard, Matt,
it's like nothing anybody else has. And I know that as a Ting customer, when you signed up,
when I handed that note to you and said, Matt, have at it, tell me what you think,
that dashboard was it, wasn't it?
That was awesome.
It was really this big point for me.
And I still use it frequently because there are times to where like if I'm not going to be using the phone for a while or maybe I just don't need any – I know I'm not going to be getting any important calls.
I'll literally just go ahead and toggle it off.
I can keep the phone calls from coming in completely by using the dashboard.
So cool.
This is a great point.
So as – back when I was in IT, I would have
a several different
Blackberry,
this was back before
Android and iOS
had really taken off.
I would have several
different Blackberry devices
and one Windows mobile device.
And I never
used the Windows mobile device.
I was down with Blackberry, man.
I was a Blackberry guy.
But I only needed one, right?
But the company I worked for,
they had to pay for
all three lines all the time every single month.
And then when another tech needed to try something out for their client, there's no transferring.
Unless you want to call the Verizon rep and ask them after you explain to them what it is you're even trying to do.
Ting does it all through their dashboard within a couple of clicks unless you get right back to work.
It's so awesome.
So go get started by linux.ting.com. And by the way,
you need to order your device by December 13th
if you just want to get FedEx Ground
or December 19th for FedEx Express
in order to guarantee delivery by December 23rd.
So if you're giving somebody the gift of Ting for the holidays,
get your order in before December 13th
for the cheap shipping
or December 19th for the express shipping
to get that guaranteed by December 23rd.
So a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Love those guys. for the express shipping to get that guaranteed by December 23rd.
So a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.
Love those guys.
Okay, Matt.
So I want to cover this email that came in from Bab because it's a topic that we talk about a lot.
No, it's all good.
Oh, it's good.
No, it's good.
I felt like this was going on.
I'm about to get three protocols.
Actually, I think we do have one of those at the end of the show.
Oh, you got to have one.
I haven't had one because otherwise, what's the point?
I tell you what, we got one that's going to get people really fired up next.
Yeah.
OK, but this one comes in from Bob.
It's safe territory.
We're not going to get anybody too upset.
He says, hi, guys.
Just a quick note.
Chris Muse that maybe the day is near that you could run with a machine without a swap partition.
Well, this intrigued me, and for the last year, I've been running my 8GB laptop with no swap partition and have not noticed
any issues even when giving it a pretty thorough workout. In fact, it worked so well that I
honestly forgot about it. One thing that had bugged me, though, was that the Hibernate hasn't
been an option on Ubuntu for me. I just assumed it was a config issue or the hardware not being
supported. I found out I could run pm-hibernate command, but it would just simply not hibernate hasn't been an option on Ubuntu for me. I just assumed it was a config issue or the hardware not being supported.
I found out I could run pm-hibernate command, but it would just simply not hibernate.
My frustration boiled over today, and I went digging for clues.
It looks like it may just simply be a case that a swap partition is required for hibernate
to work as where the memory image is written out before the machine shuts down.
I G-O-L'd, that's groaned out loud, when I found this out.
I'm not yet, I cannot yet confirm this is my issue, but I thought I'd share experiences for the benefit of all.
Bab.
Yeah, that is true.
That is true.
Interesting.
That is the downside to running without swap.
And, you know, I have a swap.
All my machines have swap right now.
Do you do swap partitions still?
I do.
I mean, and honestly, it's just a legacy habit.
I mean, it's almost like building machines and putting a floppy drive in it.
You do something like out of habit, thinking, why the hell am I putting this thing in here?
Actually, Matt, I don't mean to age you, but it's now CD-ROMs, Matt.
It's not floppy drives anymore.
What?
It's CD-ROMs now, yeah.
Well, I've got my cassette tape drive sitting right here.
It works.
It's magnetic media. media is the future.
God.
Why hibernate when you can just either suspend or
boot? I mean, what kind of system
takes that long to boot anymore?
I don't know. I put it out to the mumble room if anybody
in here has a strong feeling on swap
partitions. Anybody in the
mumble room running swap free these days?
Yes, kind of. I use
swap files instead.
Can I jump in quickly?
You only need swap
if you're using a laptop and you want to
put it into Hibernate. If you've got more than
two gigs of RAM, you do not need swap.
Swap is only used for
hibernation. Well, what about crashing?
That's not true.
That's completely incorrect.
Here we go!
And it's on!
I actually need a swap partition.
Let's say you've got three gigs of RAM.
What swap use for?
I use a swap partition in order to compile my kernel.
Usually I don't have five or six gigs partitioned
or put on my rig, so I use a swap file.
I knew this would be a hot topic.
I have 12 gigs of swap
even on machines that have
144 gigs of RAM.
Yeah, I do too.
You have no swap at all. The only negative
thing I add is you can't hibernate. That's it.
No, there's no negative things.
First of all, if you don't have any swap
space, as soon as you're out of memory,
the kernel either has to start killing random processes
or panic.
There's no other option.
If you have even a little bit of swap...
It's not an issue anymore.
500 gigs of RAM
for a 500 gig swap I think should be
enough. Just as a safety. I mean
it's 500 gigs.
You only have a boot partition or a swap file.
Yeah, exactly.
Oftentimes you'll make the swap only 512 megabytes
or something,
which is just enough so that really inactive stuff can get out of your way
because free RAM is wasted RAM.
So you use as much of your RAM as you can for your file system cache and things like that.
So if a program is completely idle, why have it wasting memory
that could be being used for cache if you could swap it out?
This is my philosophy too.
I guess having
even just that little bit means that
a program can be swapped out.
Right, but if the program
is always idle and its memory is not in use
then it's even worse than just wasting it.
So you may as well just write it to the disk
even if it's slow. It's not being used. Who cares if it's
slow?
The important thing is that a lot of applications
will adjust their behavior based on memory pressure.
For example, the ZFS file system will free up some RAM
when there's memory pressure.
But for those couple of seconds while that's happening,
there's nowhere for the program to go.
Whereas if you have even just a little bit of swap,
most of the time,
you'll know that you'll need a swap partition.
Otherwise, you'll never know.
Your Firefox profile's being used.
So it's good that you're storing it in RAM, right?
Right, but that's good because it's actually
fast then.
But that doesn't change the argument
about using swap.
Why do we need a swap if you've got more than 4 gigs
of RAM? Because it's using more than 4 gigs of RAM.
I regularly use more than 4 gigs of RAM just browsing.
You may not use more than 4 gigs of RAM, but there do exist people who use more than 4 gigs of RAM.
All right, there you go.
So you can see, I did that as a pure demonstration that this is not a cut and dry topic, right?
That was Chris making a point right there.
I think there's no total right answer other than you should use some swap unless you're somebody who thinks you shouldn't.
And that's really the way to leave it.
And it's so funny because you can see how fired up people are, which moves us perfectly to our next email from Michael who says,
It's time to move on.
Get ready for this.
This is going to play right into Alan's cards, Matt.
So if any of those BSD guys are listening,
maybe they could just skip ahead a couple of minutes.
He says, hi, Chris and Matt.
Longtime viewer of Linux Action Show
and a short time viewer of Linux Unplugged
since it's, well, new.
Put both your flame suits on, boys,
because I'm about to get some backlash
from the listeners about this.
I'm done with Linux. I'm done with Linux.
I'm done with the Linux community especially.
I found Slackware in 2002 and I immediately fell in love.
I was an everyday Windows user and thought of a virus-free system
and that seemed amazing to me.
I learned that right away more learning was required.
No problem.
I'm a math geek so I should be able to figure out all of this Linux stuff with no problem,
right?
Well, long story short, I've been on Linux for about 10 years.
I loved it at first, but there were always little things that bothered me.
I didn't think that there was anywhere else to go, though.
I didn't want to get a Mac, and I certainly didn't want to go to Windows again.
The community of Linux users was driving me crazy.
With their irrational views and immature ways of expressing those views.
I have yet to meet a chill Linux guy.
Now, hold on.
I think you and I are pretty chill Linux guys.
I was going to say, I'm literally the most, oh, man.
I mean, yeah.
Because, I mean, it's like not only do I run like every operating system there is in my office, but, yeah, go ahead.
Keep going.
No, okay.
All right.
So he says, funny enough, I found out about an alternative through Jupyter Broadcasting.
Hearing Alan talk about BSD on TechSnap made me very curious, as I'm sure it has a lot
of other Linux guys.
I tried it out and everything seemed basically the same.
I didn't even have to learn much of anything except a different device name or something.
He says, I used the system to build and install ports.
I explored and getting actively involved in the mailing list and forms.
Studying and passing on my own limited knowledge to those who could benefit from it.
I pursued my new journey in other open source software world,
learned the differences in BSD and GNU licensing,
and the fragmented nature of Linux distributions,
realizing the FreeBSD community was more mature and well distributed
about industry, education, and research. distributions, realizing the FreeBSD community was more mature and well distributed about
industry, education, and research.
Everything steered me towards working with and on BSD, even though I expect some of the
listeners to get upset about this email in typical Linux fashion.
Well, so here's the thing.
I've actually had fair dealings with both communities, mostly with Linux community,
but with the BSD community as well.
And I'm going to go out on a limb and actually
agree with him that, truth
be told, at the end of the day, when you look
at hard numbers of my own personal experiences,
I can't speak for other people out there,
there's a vast maturity difference.
It's pretty
significant. Let me ask you that, though.
I don't get as much monkey
poop slinging with the BSD guys.
Is it that? Oh, yeah. BSD guys. Is it that?
Oh, yeah.
It's ridiculous.
Is it that it's a more narrow spectrum on the conversation?
The BSD guys, the ones I dealt with, they don't give a flying crap if I'm on board or not.
They're just there to answer questions to be polite about it.
They're not fanboys. You don't think it's a factor of a smaller community that's more focused?
Do you think it's the fact that the people there are there to get some work done?
Yeah.
I mean, that was, again, everybody's experience is going to vary.
I'm going to get flamed no matter how I put this,
but my,
my personal experience is just that when I asked stupid BSD questions as a
newbie,
I didn't feel like I was going to be punished like you do with the arch
forums.
Okay.
That is interesting.
Yeah.
Sometimes like,
or even the Ubuntu forum,
when you mentioned I'm using your to install a VLC and then like 10 people
pound on you.
Oh,
you should be using the BSD.
You guys didn't drop links in a
post. That's my number one pet peeve. It's like,
look, they're asking a dumb question that's fair.
Answer the question, then mention, hey,
by the way, use the search feature. Don't be a
douchebag and put a link in there.
That's like all aspects.
All right, Mumble Room.
I'm going to give points to BSD guys.
What do you think, Mumble Room? Why is the BSD community
generally considered more civil and calm
than the Linux community?
Anybody have any?
Because less fragmentation.
The average age is 10 years older.
Less fragmentation.
The average age of a FreeBSD developer is 10 years older than a Linux developer.
Yeah, that's there too.
I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing or whatever, but that shows that BSD, yeah, it does help.
good thing or a bad thing or whatever, but that shows that BSD, yeah, it does
help. I think that shows that
FreeBSD has a more
technically oriented,
more server-oriented
user base than Linux, which
obviously is on the desktop.
I don't know. It might be
a wash there, but I definitely think the age thing
probably plays a component. I'm 40 years old.
The guys I'm dealing with are probably 40 and up.
Poby, what do you think? So you're sitting from the perspective of Canonical, who's probably plays a component. I'm 40 years old. The guys I'm dealing with are probably 40 and up. You know.
Popey, what do you think? So you're sitting from the
perspective of Canonical, who's, you know,
sees a huge Linux user
base. What do you think?
Right. I don't speak for
all of Canonical.
I know, but I'm curious because you have a unique perspective on this
as somebody who's involved in a very large Linux
project. Personal experience.
So yeah, we have, like, you we have a fairly significant community, and like any
community, we have people who are
objectionable and
say things that are unsavory
and are unpleasant to people.
Same as any other community. Same as
Windows and OS X
fans and iPad fans
and whoever. I don't think it's necessarily
unique to the Linux community that you get
doofuses that make other people feel
uncomfortable. I think that's just people being dicks
and they're dicks wherever they are.
See, that's the thing.
Hold on here. I'd like to point out
two dicks. He felt the need
to write a letter saying that, well,
a bunch of dicks went because
he's switching to previous dicks.
It's exactly the same thing.
Okay. Seriously, it's the sameucky. It's a ducky. Okay.
Seriously,
it's the same thing.
He's doing it too.
Again,
there you go.
It's all anecdotal
at this point anyway
that this is true.
The claim is all anecdotal.
It's not like
we actually have data
for this.
then you look
at the fragmentation.
The Arch forums,
sorry,
just one thing.
The Arch forums
are not representative
of the entire Linux community.
Neither are the Ubuntu forums.
I was using polar opposite ends
of the spectrum. I was comparing Ubuntu community to
the Arch forum community. And they're definitely,
it runs hot and cold. Depends on the time of
day, the time, you know,
what it looks like outside, what the weather is,
whether someone's pissed off, whatever.
Yeah, so I've always assumed
it's been a volume, just because there's
more people in a community, there's more chances for jackasses.
But I was looking at, like, if I was
literally take a checkbox and go yes and
no for everyone it was awesome and everyone it was no,
I was running averages. And so for my averages,
that was my experience.
I think the
problem is you get people
who leave a community feel
so angry that they have to in the same way that when someone unfollows a celebrity on Twitter, they'll announce to the world, that's it, I'm unfollowing you.
Or they'll leave a post on a blog saying, that's it, I'm switching to Arch.
People feel the need to have their voice heard even if it's a negative one and and yeah and declare when they're
leaving and they're going away and throwing their toes at the path that's a good point in a way i
think it's a way of natural progression all of us usually start upon linux because it's the largest
and most common to start on most of the time it's usually a choice to change to a bsd base based on
what we know and what we consider to be what rubs us right and what floats our boat yeah it might be why the way of uniting together under the bsd umbrella will be a little bit more civil
versus the linux yeah there's just as much fanboys them over there because they always
because i mean they just like pretty bsd right or pc bsd but then at the same time they talk a
bunch of crap and whatever about people who use Linux,
or whatever, anything.
It's the same exact thing.
Yeah, they do that.
I look at it every day on TechSense, or every week.
Well, I look at it like this.
I think guys like Alan, who have a very set of practical expectations
from the software they use...
Okay, here's my background.
Before I was even doing the Linux Action Show,
I was using
Linux, of course, but I definitely experimented with some FreeBSD file servers because at the
time, there was a bug that dramatically affected Linux's performance with Adaptec SCSI cards,
and FreeBSD did not suffer from this same bug. And I got massive better multi-user performance
from a FreeBSD server than I did a Linux server. So I started deploying FreeBSD in quite a bit, actually the job done. But where, for me, I started to
have some problems, it started to fall down, was this was really early on in the Sombud project
developing their WinBind technology, where you could actually bind to an Active Directory,
import the Active Directory NTIDs as UIDs, and actually set file permissions based on entries
in the Active Directory.
And this became an absolutely mission-critical function of our file servers because this
was during the transition from NT4 to Active Directory.
And the only place I could get that initially was on SUSE Enterprise Linux.
And so we ended up going that route.
And I found it interesting, though, that I was very happy with FreeBSD, but then as I
needed something that was really kind of emerging, I ended up having to go back to linux and that's always kind of kept me
there well that's weird because sam would be in the port street so it'd be just as updated on
freebsd as it would anywhere else unless you're talking about development that is only happening
on i don't remember what the details were actually to be honest with you because it was so early on
that there were so many bugs but i I find it to be more like...
Because Samba's actually developed on FreeBSD.
Here's what I find it to be like.
It's like there is
a definite range
of crossover where both operating
systems can do the same tasks, serve a
web page, handle a
print job, whatever it is.
I can't think of anything that either of them can't do.
Right. Well, there's other ranges. Come on, let's be fair. There's other ranges where
you start to get more into the desktop spectrum where there is
some rationale behind using Linux. And there's other areas where there's some rationale
behind using BSD. And I think what happens is, as people make the transition
and whatever kind of requirements they have, when BSD
fills those, they're kind of surprised all of a sudden.
They're like, wait a minute, this whole thing's been out there this whole time?
And it's this one cohesive system that's done by this group and it all makes sense and it's well documented?
It's rational? This is so awesome.
And people are like, holy shit, this has been here the whole time?
And there's this massive realization about it.
And I think as a lot of people out there, they come to this realization,
they're like, holy crap, and they make this move just like our writer here has done, Michael.
But at the same time, I've been that person who's made that switch on my router and on my file
server, and I've been like, it's awesome. But I haven't been able to make that switch in other
areas that I use. So at the end of the day, I think Linux is a little more
diverse in the sense that you have a larger range of users from like, you know, people who just want
to play Minecraft to people like Alan who are building like these crazy, amazing infrastructures
on Scale Engine. And there's just this, there's this like, this is crazy range of users. And
that's, I sometimes leads to all this public drama.
And there's all of this – I think the GPL also adds to a little bit more of this advocate mindset.
I think the BSD license is a little more practical in some senses, and the GPL is a little more advocate-based.
And I think that also is a base of some of the attitude maybe.
Well, I think – no, GPL is great.
I think it's awesome.
But there are headaches with it at times as well.
It really just depends on what your goals are.
From an idealistic point of view, it's wonderful.
It's great.
But it's not always the most practical thing in the world.
And I guess best examples of that is you don't really ever see a whole ton of monetized,
open source desktop applications for home users.
I know it's like a niche within a niche within a niche,
but I'm kind of putting that out there
as to where with a closed source license,
that's readily possible because no one's going to take your code
and run with it unless they've hired it.
So I think there's facets like that,
but where it's like you have maybe the BSDs
to where maybe people would see that as more of a,
it's just less, well, quite frankly,
it's less verbiage in the license itself really.
It's just – it's almost – I hate to say it, but it's almost easier to understand.
You pretty much know where you stand.
So there's advantages there.
I'm not saying one is better than another.
I'm just saying I think they serve different purposes, and so they probably appeal to different people.
As far as BSD itself, I don't have a ton of experience using it.
I just had good experiences with the community.
Have you ever tried out PC BSD?
I have.
I was actually an early tester way back in the day.
I love the PBIs.
I still do.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We've talked about that.
Yeah, I really, really do.
I still think they nailed it.
Port system is awesome on its own anyway.
But that's just a no-brainer.
But no, I mean it has its advantages.
It definitely interacts
with your hardware differently as far as
detection. It's less about bleeding edge, more about
stability. Yeah, it definitely
kind of feels like an old, comfy chair that you
know how it's going to work. You don't have to cross your
fingers. It has some certain advantages,
but it doesn't mean that PCBSD was
perfect. It definitely had some
challenges along the way, but I think it's interesting
to watch, and it's a hell of a great alternative.
If Linux isn't your bag and you want to try something else, I really recommend checking it out, certainly.
You know, we're just scratching the surface.
We're all over the place.
If you want to get in deep on BSD, go listen to BSD Now.
It comes out every Friday on the Jupyter Broadcasting Network.
You heard from Alan.
He's my co-host on TechSnap.
He's the host of TechSnap.
And also Chris Moore, the creator of PCBSD.
He co-hosts that with Alan, and they do it every week live on Wednesdays.
It comes out for download on Fridays over at jupiterbroadcasting.com.
BSD Now just had an interview with this guy.
He's not only one of the founders of the FreeBSD project.
I believe he also was one of the co-creators of SysInstall, but also the inventor of Ports, which is amazing.
Yeah, his name is Jordan Hubbard, and they did an interview with him on last week's BSD.
Now, if you guys want to go check that out.
All right, Alan.
Boy, see, now I'm in tech snap mode.
Do what happens.
And I've been upgraded.
I see.
Now I'm in tech snap mode. Do what happens.
And I've been upgraded.
So look, I thought we'd, last week when we were gearing up for our Linux Mint review,
one of the things, because people always kick around, like Linux Mint is the perfect distro
for new users, right?
So I brought the wife in and I said, okay, honey, here's Linux Mint, have at it.
So I'm going to bring her in in just a second to get her opinion on Linux Mint and kind
of share some of her thoughts on some of the things she ran into. But before we get to that,
I want to say thank our second sponsor this week. And that is DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean
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And I'm looking at this Archbox.
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this Archbox, I'm like, damn, son, I got more resources available to me. And I'll tell you,
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so you can have hundreds of people bang on it to actually get real world testing and only pay
what you use for like, you know, what, a half hour? That's nothing. In fact, I was just talking
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He ended up spending like 17 cents.
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Their web administration panel is awesome.
But DigitalOcean also offers a vast collection of tutorials in their community section on their website.
Users can submit articles to that section.
And if DigitalOcean publishes it, you'll get paid $50 per published piece.
So we'll have a link for that in the show notes. Go check out DigitalOcean. We have a brand new
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Did I say Digital Ocean Unplugged?
It kind of fits.
Hey, that works for me.
These guys are awesome.
So, Matt, let's bring the wife in here.
Andrew, are you with us?
Are you here there,
Andrews? All right. So over the last week, I had you try out Mint here and there, Spotty,
and I wanted to bring you into the show. Did you get a completely new Linux user's perspective on Mint? Did you think, was Linux Mint the distro, like if you were going to switch, could I put a Linux Mint computer in front of you and have you actually be successful? Well, only if you actually like set it up for everything that I would use it
for first. Yeah. Because I tried their app store and it just really didn't do it for me. Yeah. So
what was the problem there? Because I mentioned a little bit on last, but I don't know if I gave
it its due. Well, basically, I mean, it's great that it's broken down into like five or six main categories,
I think, or maybe there were like 10. Anyway, it was good the way they had internet, photo,
whatever. But after looking at like the photo things, that's where I went first,
since I'm so photo centered. I was really discouraged. It looked like I would need to
have like minimum five programs just to import
a picture or try out a lot of different programs just to see, you know, what would be the best to
import pictures. Yeah, that was you kind of felt like there was like, you could string several
programs together to get what you wanted. But you wanted you wanted to like plug the camera in one
program comes up and takes care of all of the things you needed.
Yeah.
And it's not that that wasn't there, but you just didn't find it in the App Store.
Well, I definitely didn't.
The descriptions are very technical.
And I think I'm a little better than the average user, but I'm still an average user.
So having that it says, I know what a GUI is, that's great.
That's kind of what I would expect as a typical user.
Yeah, they all kind of advertise the GUI aspect.
Now, there was a little bit of a bumpy road.
So what I have, when I'm testing out a distro and I want to try it on full hardware acceleration,
I don't want to use virtualization, I have this external USB 3 hybrid drive.
It's like SSD.
It's like a 32 gigabyte SSD and a one terabyte
hard drive spinning drive. And that's what I load the distros on. And then the Bonobo lets you
choose what device you want to boot from. So I just choose the external USB device and I boot
from that. And so here I am. I'm like, here you go, wife. I'm going to give you this Bonobo. And
you just sit down here and you use Linux Mint. And Ange is like, oh, cool. I'm going to get to use your System76. And then what happened, Ange?
Okay. So this is great. So he's like, all right, here you go. And he turns it around. And I'm
sitting pretty much where Chase does when they do unfilter. So they face each other. And yeah.
And I go to click on something and nothing happens. So I try the corners.
And I'm not watching because the screen isn't facing me at this point. So I'm just like,
I'm figuring like she's making mistakes.
Yeah. And I double click the computer icon and the whole screen freaks out.
And I don't know what's going on. And I was asking him like, how do I do anything? Because
I didn't have a... Oh gosh, all I can think of is calling it a start bar.
What is it called when it's on Linux?
You can call it the start menu.
Everybody knows what you're talking about.
Okay.
Well, that menu wasn't even there.
And so when I asked, what do I do and what do I even do, he scoffed.
I was like, well, okay.
So then I turned it towards him and he was like, what did you do?
And he's like, oh, he had unplugged the hard drive before he turned around the laptop.
So her first experience with Linux Mint 16
was total crash fest because me being the dumbass,
I'm turning around the laptop.
I'm like, well, we don't need to have all these things connected
as I'm moving the machine.
So I unplugged the USB devices.
And then, of course, the USB device
was the actual operating system's hard drive.
Right, Ro.
Yeah, so then he got it up and running. And I like oh good as a start bar that's good that's a good
start and um and he said well you know do something so i went to digitalblasphemy.com
from the suggestions and um on twitter i got a new background which surprisingly felt just normal
like i did that without any problems.
Just right-clicked the right resolution, set as background,
just like Windows, just like Mac.
Super easy.
And then let's see, what was the other thing I tried?
Oh, I did the sticky note.
That was good.
Oh, yeah, you liked that.
In fact, you wanted me to add that to your Mac.
I remember that.
Yeah, because I never like, okay, well, I, on my Mac,
I have a really old version of Office for Mac. And it's slower than molasses. And I don't like text edit because of the lack of formatting. So I need something where I can just throw stuff temporarily so that I can keep it there and then get it later. well so uh so your your overall i guess your encapsulated it was yeah i could use it but
you didn't feel like now did you feel like do you feel like that would be the case if i gave
you windows today i'd have to completely set it up for you is that any different than if you were
switching to windows no no or i mean uh the answer is i think i could be just fine on windows
surprisingly do you think you could be just fine on mint, surprisingly. Do you think you could be just fine on Mint?
No, because I don't know if you recall, but you're like, go find a program.
So I went to Firefox and I typed photo programs for Mint.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Windows 7 versus Windows 8.
Which one would you feel more comfortable with?
Oh, I don't even want to look at Windows 8.
Good answer. Good answer.
Good answer.
I was a big fan of Windows 2000.
I didn't even like XP.
So, no, I don't even want to try 8.
No.
It's pretty bad.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for trying that.
You were a good guinea pig.
And I think in the future I might have you try Elementary OS and see what you think about it.
And maybe we'll have you come back on Linux Unplugged
and share your thoughts.
That would make Ryan516 happy.
Yeah, well, you're a Mac user,
and Elementary OS is the closest sort of Mac OS experience,
I think, on Linux right now,
without being just a rip-off theme.
They really try.
I think Pair OS might be fun,
just to see how different it is
os yeah yeah yeah that'd be my choice okay all right well thanks ang yep no problem all righty
thank you so uh matt we got one more little bit of uh email i wanted to get to uh before we go
actually wasn't even an email i keep calling that because we've gotten so much email recently but
this was actually a subreddit post and i'll read, and then we'll jump into the Mumble group and see what the guys think.
But he says, hello, I got a show idea for you.
Tiling window manager roundup.
I feel the Linux Action Show has not showcased many tiling window managers.
They can be really customizable and, in turn, boost your productivity when it comes to certain tasks. I personally run an i3WM setup,
and although I sometimes use KDE No Man's Cinnamon,
I always keep coming back to good old i3. My main suggestion is go over to reddit.com
slash r slash unixporn.
They regularly will show off how beautiful
a Tiling Window Manager can be, both new and old.
So he wanted us to take the Tiling Window Manager challenge.
And I got to say, man, I just... Are you as excited as I am? So he wanted us to take the Tiling Window Manager Challenge.
And I got to say, man, I just – Are you as excited as I am?
Yeah, I think so.
For me, I think it's worth doing.
I think in fairness, despite what we might feel.
We need – because remember the Arch thing?
Oh, that stupid Arch crap.
That was me.
I was Mr. Oh, Arch is stupid.
I will never use Arch.
And now I'm basically using arch yeah so based on that even though even though i've tried it and i was never
impressed with it i have to eat my own dog food and actually at least try it then i can dog on it
but matt katie is so nice i'm liking katie these days all right so i gotta let's let's jump in the
mumble room is uh let's ask theble room. Guys, what do you think?
Do Matt and Chris have to take the Tiling Window Manager Challenge?
It would definitely be interesting.
If you do it, you've got to do all of them, and there's about 11.
I don't want to do all of them.
I want to narrow it down to one or two.
I'm sure there's more than 11.
We've talked about Awesome and Window,
and we've done Awesome and Ex-Nomad on the show before.
And both times I felt like I was just doing a fan service.
Because to me, I feel like I'm compromising a modern desktop experience.
I come from the 80s, people, where we didn't have desktops.
And goddammit, we finally have desktops.
And I want the best possible
desktop possible. And why the hell
would I go back to a tiling window manager?
Windows 1.0 was a
tiling window manager. Yeah, exactly.
That puts it in perspective.
3.1 sort of was, too.
See, the thing about tiling window managers,
I think if you're going to do it,
you don't need to do all, like,
25,000 of them.
You only really need to do a dynamic tiling window manager,
which would be I3.
I3, yeah.
And then you need to do, because most of the others are all forks of DWM,
like even Awesome is just a fork of DWM.
So I'd probably do I3, Awesome, and Exmonad,
because those three seem to be
the three main ones.
You have to spend
at least a month or two with each one
to really learn them.
That's not going to happen.
You need
to just use the rat poison.
I use my fling with
Xmonad and i3. And then I'll go surf YouTube with
links.
To me, tiling window monitors are just not...
TTY4, TTY4.
Tiling window monitors are for pretentious idiots
who just want to feel cool about using and can be...
Ouch.
Not at all.
That is exactly what I completely agree.
Okay, all right.
So there we go.
I think the links and YouTube thing may have been a little much.
I think we got to try out I3. I think we got to try out I3.
I think we got to try out I3.
That would be fair because we can settle on one and really put it through its paces.
This is the one that we always – everybody keeps coming back to I3.
This is the one we hear the most about these days.
And we've done Xmonad.
We've done Awesome Window Manager on the last show.
Maybe it's time to try out I3.
Now, I'm not saying immediately because we got a lot of stuff lined up on the big show.
But maybe the end of the year. I'd say that once we get through our big stuff i think you know once we're
looking for topics i think it's a great i think it's a it's a fair thing i mean you know we we
tried arch it worked out who knows maybe we'll have a a passing uh affinity maybe you know what
matt you're right you're right i i said the same thing about arch and now here i am running arch
everywhere it just allows us to at least we can for myself i can speak intelligently and be like Matt, you're right. I said the same thing about Arch, and now here I am running Arch everywhere.
It just allows us to at least – for myself, I can speak intelligently and be like, you know what?
I really love it because of blank or I really hate it because of blank.
I can actually point to something directly versus just – No, no, no.
I don't want to try it.
That kind of thing.
Although I'm going to tell you one of the reasons I like Arch is because I get the most current KDE anywhere.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
And that's a benefit we weren't even aware.
We're really fully rationalizing that we missed. the most current KDE anywhere. Right? Yeah, yeah. And that's a benefit we weren't even aware of.
We're really fully rationalizing that we missed.
We heard it, but we never really materialized in front of us, I guess.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to set up an i3 desktop
that is powered on the back end by KWIM, right?
Oh, there you go.
I see where you're going with this.
I will have wobbly windows, although I will never get wobbly windows.
But I know it's there.
I know it's there.
If I ever needed it, I know it's there.
Um,
look before we run this week,
it is getting close to the holiday season.
And I,
I've gotten a lot of crap from our,
from our very own mumble room about talking about steam and humble too much.
But I don't know if you're like me every now and then around the holiday season,
I get the gaming itch.
Even if I don't have the time,
it's like baked into my brain.
It's time to game.
And there's a new Humble Bundle,
which we will probably talk about on last,
but it'll be several days into it.
Now it's just launched.
There is a new Humble Bundle out
and there's a couple of games on there
that make the entire thing worth it.
Serious Sam 3, BFE, and Natural Selection 2,
which Natural Selection 2 is that game
where you get to play as the human or the alien.
That's the one I like.
13 days left on this humble bundle.
All's I'm saying is I want all of you
to go over there and dominate this thing
for Linux again. Let's just go over there and remind
them why they go through all the
effort on porting some of this S to Linux, because
if you look at this lineup,
one, two, three
of the games are not available for
Linux. This is not a trend we can allow, my friends.
And the trend must be our friend,
so therefore we must go over to Humble Bundle
and use our Linux dollars,
or Linux bitcoins, as it were,
to own this chart
so we can show them that it's still worth their effort
to port to Linux,
and the entire damn thing is worth it
for Natural Selection 2.
Sanctum 2 is also in there.
Magicka, plus all the DLC for
Magicka is in there. Orcs Must Die 2
is a community favorite,
but it is not available to Linux, and
those bastards must fix that. So go over
there and buy that sucker, so that way the next time
a developer gets in there without a Linux version,
Humble Bundle kicks them in the nuts.
So the only way it's going to happen is if we vote with our
wallet. And I don't know.
I get a little fired up.
Let's see.
How are we doing right now?
Let's see.
Okay.
Okay, Matt.
You ready?
Average purchase price, $3.89.
Okay.
Okay.
Average Windows price, $3.92.
Average Mac price, $4.29.
Average Linux price.
You ready for it?
I'm ready.
$4.85.
Hello, everybody.
That's right.
That's right.
I don't know.
I'm just thinking.
Howdy.
Those are some good games.
Too bad I own all of them already.
Right?
It's like, oh, wow.
Yeah, that's the only thing.
It's humble bundles.
It's getting a little harder for them to have the exclusives, but that's understandable.
That's okay.
That's totally cool.
All right, man.
Well, we have a really big Linux action show coming up on Sunday.
Man, I got more stuff we could dig through.
But I wanted to just, before we run, I wanted to give people a little heads up.
The holidays are cometh.
So Matt and I are going to do a little double recording on Tuesday the 17th.
So not next week, but the following week, we're going to do two Linux unplplugs back-to-back, starting at 12 p.m. Pacific.
And that will probably go from about 12 p.m. Pacific to about 3.30 p.m. Pacific.
And that will be our live show for the 24th, too.
So we won't have a live show.
That second episode will be released on the 24th.
That way we can take the holiday week off.
So if you'd like to join us for a special long edition,
we're going to need your help out there, too. We're going to need you in the mumble room.
We're going to need your emails. So if you've been waiting
to email Linux Unplugged, now's the time.
Go over to Jupyter Broadcasting, click that
contact link, and choose Linux
Unplugged from the drop-down, because we
need your emails. We need your feedback. You fuel
the show, and on Tuesday
the 17th,
without you, we will have no show
so we need your feedback and we need you in the mumble room
join us live normally we're live
on a 2pm on Pacific but on that Tuesday
the 17th we'll be starting at 12pm Pacific over at
jblive.tv don't forget
you can always
get a hold of us on the subreddit over at
linuxactionshow.reddit.com
we check that out for stories
we should follow for the show your feedback threads threads, and all that kind of stuff.
Hey, Matt, have a great week.
I'll see you on Sunday for some hardware reviews, all right?
All right. See you then.
All right, everyone.
Well, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged.
We'll see you right back here next week. you