LINUX Unplugged - Episode 176: Shell-Shocked 2016 | LUP 176

Episode Date: December 21, 2016

We review the very worst moments in Linux during 2016, look ahead to what might be big in 2017 and toss out the rules for our last live episode of the year!

Did you share those notes today there, Mr. Chris? Now, okay. There are no notes? Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. That's a good part to start the show right there then. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 176 for December 20th, 2016. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's currently celebrating its last live production of the year. My name is Chris. My name is Wes.

Hello, Wes. There is a tradition on the Jupyter Broadcasting Network that we don't always choose to take advantage of, but from time to time, and I feel like this is the year we're going to do it. Oh, yeah. No rules shows, the last live show. Anything this is the year we're going to do it. Oh, yeah. No rules shows, the last live show. Anything could happen. These are probably going to be awful, and so it's why we never do it like this. We never do it like this, but if there was any show to go no rules, no prep, it's this show. And it kind of

worked out, because I have like this debilitating carpal tunnel in both my hands right now. Oh, no. I don't mean to be laughing. It's the worst thing ever. It's the only way to deal. It is. I can't even lift up the bowl of cereal or put my seatbelt on.

So I thought, well, what a great day not to have to put a dock together. Yeah, right? No typing. What a great excuse to just not worry about it. So coming up on this week's episode, we're going to throw out the playbook. We're going to look at the worst of 2016. What was the worst in Linux in 2016? We're going to talk about some of that. Then we're going to look forward to 2017. Jack Wallen's got an article that actually got me thinking about what might be coming down the pipe. Not a full-fledged predictions episode, but I want to give the

virtual lug a chance to chime in before we sail into 2017. And then, at the end of the show, like a maniac, I'm going to hand the reins over to Noah. What? And he's going to answer some calls and chat small business and GNU slash Linux. I've heard of that. Yeah, it's new. And they're going to talk about it on the phone.

Just get in there and take calls. So why don't we get started by bringing in that virtual lug? Hello, Mumble Room. Hello, Mumble Room. Hello. Pit, pit. Hello. Hello. Hello.

And hey, guys, thanks for being here on our last episode of the year. It's not really the last one because tomorrow to next Tuesday we'll have a clip show of all the different stuff throughout the year, which is a great one, by the way. If you want to spread Linux Unplugged for the holidays, toss them a clip show. You know it's going to be good. It's all your favorite moments. It's going to be passable. Yeah.

I'm kidding. It's going to be good. You won't hate yourself after. The beard's been sprinkling his beard magic all over it. Yeah. So I didn't want to have any rules. I wanted to let the mumble room and the conversation go any direction it goes

so I thought I'd kind of cue us up with a couple of things and then we're just gonna I'm gonna do the reads for all the sponsors here in a minute just do them all right here at the top of the show and we're just gonna do them and then however long the show goes it goes and we're gonna call it good we're gonna call it good hey check in with Grand Forks North Dakota

Noah are you on the line are you there are you live sir over it goes, and we're going to call it good. We're going to call it good. Hey, check in with Grand Forks, North Dakota. Noah, are you on the line? Are you there? Are you live, sir? Over. Over. Mr. Chris, that might be a bit excessive. I may be on my phone, but I don't think we have to have like a transition of speaking and thinking.

I think we can handle that. Over. 10-4, good buddy. Yeah, 10-4, Noah. Get out the telegraph. Get out the telegraph. Yeah, well, come on, Noah. So what's going on over there? Are you getting

set up to take calls here in a little bit on the show? Well, I spent a little bit of time getting some levels tweaked and getting some equipment set up. I'm actually on my phone because I used up all of my audio interfaces in the studio and I don't want to monkey with any of the levels. Okay. All right. Good. Well, it's setting the bar high. So what we're going to do is we're going to shut down production at some point and then do a quick little swap-a-roo and bring up Grand Forks. Hold on a second. Where's mine? Here. This is just something that I – just so we have the context in which NOAA is working right now, I feel like it would be useful for us to know what's the temperature in Grand Forks, North Dakota right now.

It's 29 degrees in Grand Forks right now. Not bad. No, a lot. Geez. Congratulations, Noah. I'm really happy for you, man. That's some good news. So, yeah.

Okay, good. I feel like we got a good show. We got a good show on our hands here today. I'm ready to dive into the worst of 2016. I'm ready to dive into the worst of 2016 and I thought I had like I think what I want to do is I want to set the bar as to what I think

was the worst thing that could have happened to a tech company in 2016 and then we want to talk within the context of Linux about that so I've got a couple of ideas but I feel like once we really get the ball rolling that's when we're going to get some stuff so that'll probably be thanks to the mumble room they'll probably be doing some of the heavy lifting there.

But why don't we – so let's do this. Are you ready, Wes? Oh, I'm ready. Do you feel like you've prepared your body for this? Well, we'll see. There's only one way to find out, and that's by doing. So let's thank the folks that sponsored this show all year long. And I really appreciate Linux Academy, and I appreciate those of you visited linuxacademy.com slash unplugged this year

or those of you who plan to soon. linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. That's where you go to sign up for a platform to train you all about Linux. And when you go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, you can get a seven-day free trial. Courseware is

great. It's constantly being improved. The virtualization system is slick. It's constantly being improved. The virtualization system is slick. They spin up these systems on demand when you need them. The servers match the distributions you've chosen for the courseware automatically. They have content availability planning. They have instructors you can speak to when you need actual human health. But hot off the presses right here, Wes.

This week, got an email. I mean, I got a press announcement. No, it's just an email I got here from Anthony. And he says, here's a couple of new courses we've got working on over at Linux Academy, machine learning with Azure, PowerShell Essentials. Now, these two first ones right here are fascinating to me because they are on Linux Academy's Linux platform. It's using these tools in combination with Linux, which that really, if that doesn't tell you 2016, right? It doesn't, the fact that Linux Academy... PowerShell on Linux, on Linux Academy.

When I saw this, I thought, wow. It also tells you how they stay up to date with what stuff people are actually looking for to learn. They also have launched their iOS and Android apps this year, which is a great way to train when you're on the go. And they're launching serverless concepts, which was cool because they started with a live stream where you can join the instructors from Linux Academy, a couple different ones, as they discuss serverless concepts and get you started with that.

They have new live labs that get you started with AWS. This is one of the things I think is really great because it's not just the essentials. It's like the stuff that is really big high-level services stuff like AWS and Azure and OpenStack and Docker and the things that, you know, look really great on a resume too. And they help you get those certifications you might need as well. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Also, thank you to Ting for sponsoring the show this year. Wow. Linux.ting.com. I love being able to say that. Go there and save. You know, the reason why Ting has been a sponsor for so long on this show now is really simple economics.

This kind of mobile model makes a lot of sense and our audience gets it. And so they keep going to Ting because it saves them money. And so because Ting keeps getting customers, they keep sponsoring us. Linux.ting.com. It's a great relationship because what we're trying to tell you about here isn't something that's some big scam. It's not some big complicated system or it's not some sort of incentive program where I undermine net neutrality, but I do it with a leather jacket, so I tell you it's cool.

It is a really good mobile carrier that has CDMA and GSM networks. You pick which one works better for you, and you pay for what you use. Minutes, messages, megabytes. Whatever you use, that's all you owe, and $6 for the line plus Uncle Sam's take. Uncle Sam's got to have a little percentage. It varies in your area. He's got his hands in your pockets. But for me, it's usually almost always under $40.

Almost always. Every now and then, like when I'm on the road or something like that, it might go up to $55, $60 for three phones. For three phones with no contract. I love it. You can bring a device or you can go grab one. Go to Linux.Ting.com. And a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring. You see, when I say it like that, it changes it up.

It's like a fresh new code. And if you weren't a long-time listener, you might not have any idea what I'm saying. So it's only for the people in the know. All right, and then our last sponsor and one that's also been with us all year, and I'm super, super thankful to DigitalOcean. Now, DigitalOcean, the one thing that you can really tell about DigitalOcean is it's just about everybody in our audience has a reason to use DigitalOcean. Charm's always talking about it. People write in the emails. We're not only reading the emails that talk about DigitalOcean is it's just about everybody in our audience has a reason to use DigitalOcean. Chatham's always talking about it. People write in the emails. We're not only reading the emails that talk about DigitalOcean or something like that.

It's just what people are using because it's such a simple and fast and easy way to spin up a Linux system on their great infrastructure in less than 55 seconds. All SSDs for the storage, 40 gigabit e-connections to the hypervisors. They run Linux, of course. It's KVM for the virtualizer.

I love that. And if you've ever wanted to see what a real nice web application can be to manage actual really high-end server-type things, DigitalOcean's got the Proto example. You go there, it's like, oh, oh, they managed to put Johnny Ive in a box. They put Johnny Ive in a box, and he spit out this interface, and that's why Apple hasn't gotten anything for years now out of him because he's too busy working for DigitalOcean. It's the only thing that makes sense. Plus, their API is built for humans.

They really did something good here, and there's so much crazy great open source built around that. Go check them out. DigitalOcean.com. Just use a promo code from us for you. D-O-1 plugged. One word, lowercase. Just use a promo code from us for you. DOUnplugged. One word, lowercase. Apply to your account after you get started or even if you had an account for a while.

Get $10 credit. DigitalOcean.com. Thanks for using the promo code DOUnplugged. Okay. Now the rest of the show is open for however the conversation goes. So let's start talking about the worst of 2016. Now this next example is not Linux specific, but I thought it set such a good benchmark. Like it can't get worse than this.

So this is the worst. This is the very worst of 2016. Now the what? Go. I said go. Frightening headline about your smartphone. Now to a... Now to what? Go.

I said go. Frightening headline about your smartphone. Samsung delaying shipments of its Galaxy Note 7 amid reports of exploding batteries. And that announcement sending their stock plummeting. ABC's Rebecca Jarvis is here with the latest. Good morning, Rebecca. Good morning, Amy. Multiple consumers have now complained of explosions of their Galaxy Note 7 devices.

Take a look at this. Some are sharing these pictures of their burnt out phones online. Samsung says that shipments are being delayed due to additional tests being conducted for product quality. And there's no word on exactly what caused the problems. When you go to the airport today still, you hear warnings about how you can't bring a Note 7, a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on the plane. And it's played over the loudspeaker at the entire airport. That is embarrassing.

There's no, I mean, Apple had a bad MacBook. There's a lot of stuff that hasn't come out of Google that we were hoping for. But nobody really had products that were blown up in your pockets like Samsung did. And what's interesting now is we do have kind of a picture of what happened. Did you hear about this? No. I'm behind the times. A third-party contractor was brought in by Samsung to investigate what was causing the explosions.

And their analysis was is that Samsung left insufficient room for battery growth. When the battery heats up, it expands. And when the battery cools, it contracts. But when it's doing that super fast charging, it expands because it gets hot. And when it – I guess part of what caused the problem is it would expand, breach, some sort of rupture happened, and then I don't know. Maybe – I don't know what happens from there to cause this to explode, but that was the core issue.

Undefined behavior. Woo. Woo. And Samsung, they just really didn't have a response out of the gate. No. No. No. They really did not feel like they were – they didn't embrace it.

They weren't out there already with the report. It took a long time to feel like they were really responding or trying to respond. Yeah. I tell you, that is a – that is the worst case for a company like Samsung. And it allowed for like the Apple iPhone to essentially be totally lackluster without a headphone jack and still do very well because people are like, well, I'm done. I'm done with this. I'm sure Google was happy about that.

Yeah. Their Pixel release. William just randomly wanted to jump in there and say hi, I think. So are you there, William? Are you good? Are you okay? Are you all right? I think something happened.

We need you in 2017. Don't hurt yourself. I think something happened. I think somebody just busted into William's house. Are you okay? Are you all right? It was a Samsung Galaxy Note. I think so.

Just exploded right there. I want to transition from general technology and I want to... I'm not here to talk about Samsung. You killed that show this year, remember? That's right. Hey, where's the bell? Come on, Wes. You're right, bell-worthy.

That was bell-worthy. I thought maybe we'd stop right there and just talk Linux and talk worst of 2016. And I don't want this to be a bitch fest. This is just like, you know, this is kind of in good fun, really. It's in good fun. And there are a few that we could start with. And I thought maybe to do that, we'd look at the 2017 list that Jack Wallen put together. Because this one jumped out at me right at the top.

Canonical finally exits the phone market. He just went right for it. He says, I give Canonical credit. They tried hard. Unfortunately, Ubuntu phone missed the mark on nearly every possible level. The idea for the interface was doomed from the beginning, speaking in past tense. Wow, yeah. In past tense here.

And it couldn't gain any traction in the already saturated market. However, I do believe their dream of convergence can be fixed, and it begins with Android. Instead of focusing so much effort on getting Ubuntu phone in a position where it can make the convergence between desktop and mobile, Kodamico might well sell their sites, or I'm sorry, set their sites on integrating this functionality into Android. Regardless of what happens with Convergence in 2017, we will see Canonical return their focus to what they do best, the desktop and server market.

What do you think of that? Is that too strong, or do you... Boy, I don't know. It's not original, is is it this is not the first journalist in the linux and open so i think i saw these written in 2015 about 2016 too though definitely yeah and i've seen other journalists say it for next year as well and to some extent it's true because it's been announced that you know canonical are stepping back from working on mobile devices to consolidate all of the work that's been done on unity 8 around the desktop so that will take

some time whether or not there's another device this year i don't know for mobile but it's now bringing all of that work that happened in unity 8 to the, and everyone's working on that right now. Yeah, so to me, it feels a bit hollow. It feels too... Actually, here's a better way to put it. But to me, it feels a bit cookie-cutter. Like, it's a cookie-cutter argument that somebody else has already made a stencil for, and you can stamp it out,

and you can mold it into your project or your article pretty easily. Like, what I'm trying to get at here is it feels like it sort of misses the mark on a couple of things in its analysis. First of all, it sort of seems to not acknowledge the work that mobile forced Canonical to think about, like transactional updates and snap packages. I mean a lot of the reason for Mirror, right, was involved with their mobile stuff. And also, I think the other thing that if Canonical...

Oh, hold on, I'll come back to that because that Mirror thing is a great point, but I want to... The other thing that I think that sort of it underplays is their total refocusing and retooling around Qt, which is going to long-term make a huge, huge differentiator for the Unity desktop. Like it's going to be its own thing that developers will go after. It's going to be the Unity desktop is going to stand out from GNOME and Plasma, not because

of the toolkit that it's using, but because it will not be like any other desktop. Unity 7 already stands out as its own unique thing, but in most cases, it feels like a GNOME desktop. It feels like a GTK environment. I believe once Unity 8 is in a good usable spot on the desktop, and I don't know when that will be, but when it arrives, I believe it will stand out as a completely, totally differentiating product. Canonical going their own way. Yeah, and not in a bad way Yeah. And not in a bad way. No, not in a bad way. And so I think it totally undersells the massive tide change that is happening, that it's only

happening because of the work and investment in mobile. And I don't even think you necessarily kill off mobile. You just make it as part of a wider strategy. So you take the crap you've built to support that and you integrate it with the wider product strategy. So that rather than pushing mobile first, it's, hey, also mobile.

It's this tool set, this platform will work across this device range. Don't even think of it in hardware terms. Think of it more in terms of screen size. What do you think of that, Wimimpy is that way off the mark no no it's not way off the mark at all yeah okay so that's so that's the i think it's possible we could say they're exiting the phone market in terms of additional partnerships with your aggress making continuing aggressive partnerships with hardware what to expect in the next I don't know if you can even say that.

All I know is that engineering is focused around pulling everything that's happened in Unity 8 to the desktop right now. And as far as I know, the work on mobile has just been paused to allow that to happen, as in mobile software development has been paused. But that doesn't mean that another device manufacturer couldn't come along, want to do a device, and the platform's there and ready to use. There's been an interesting shift happening, and I wonder where the market's going to be

once Unity 8 arrives for end users. Because in the background, there's a big shift happening with the popularity of Ubuntu Mate. There is a lot shift happening with the popularity of Ubuntu Mate. There is a lot of energy around projects like Solus right now and Elementary OS. There is a lot of energy and discussion there where there is some – especially in the case of Elementary OS and in the case of Mate, there is some – there is definitely some direct connections to Ubuntu. And in the case of Mate, there is definitely some direct connections to Ubuntu. So they're not totally their own things, but they're kind of gaining speed and popularity and size as the more and more the desktops people are interested in.

The things people are talking about, things with high momentum. So where is that going to be once Unity 8 actually arrives? Is it going to be too late? Are people going to have moved on or will we all be ready for something fresh again? I don't know. I think it's interesting too because last year we were talking about this. Sorry, go on. I think the community talks about not liking Unity,

but I think a lot more people actually use Unity than don't. Overall, in the grand scheme of how many people use Ubuntu and don't care enough to change their DE, or even know if they could. I think I would argue that I would I would argue that Unity has the best multi monitor support of any desktop operating system out there. And this is coming from somebody who just dumped Unity for GNOME. Yeah, there's that. I would say the only people who don't like Unity are fussy Linux users because every regular person I've ever given it to, they have

two impressions. Yeah, this is great. It works fine. Why are you asking? It's fine. Right. They don't have the concept of that they really have a choice, right? I've had that exact same experience. Noah and I just put a Linux box in for Hadiyah at her clinic and she has an employee that sits down there. She sits down there

and uses it. Literally did not even say anything to her. She just sits down and uses it. She sees the icons on the side. That's great. She can do the printing. She can do the scanning. She does it.

It's fine. All the buttons are in the right place. We've literally never had a conversation. And then when I finally asked her, how's the computer working, she looks at me like I'm crazy. It's fine. Is something wrong with it? Why are you asking? Yeah.

You know what did not come out of her mouth? Well, I really can't stand Unity. I really – I wish it was GNOME 3. Did you put K something wrong with it? Why are you asking? You know what did not come out of her mouth? Well, I really can't stand Unity. I wish it was GNOME 3. That was not what came out of her mouth. We definitely live in a bubble when it comes to these things. Just a little bit. The original argument about the guy saying that it's an exit from it,

you could just say that they're developing a convergence concept because they already had a desktop environment built and they already had the server infrastructure built. So in order to do the convergence, they needed to work on the mobile. So now that they're getting closer and closer to the convergence, they can work less on mobile and more on the other stuff. So just changing slight direction doesn't mean that they're going to completely abandon it. Yeah, I think so. Interesting.

I think we would have talked last year about, you know, how we saw them focusing on mobile and how we liked what they were doing on the desktop, but we wanted to see more focus in that area. So it's almost kind of like an old Intel TikTok kind of thing where, hey, now we're back on the desktop. Maybe that means, you know, if it's a bad thing for 2016, maybe it means there'll be some good things in 2017 to be excited about. And also we've just watched so many different vendors or hardware makers or whoever just lose their ass in mobile. So it just doesn't look as awesome of a market as it used to.

So as a company, they're probably going, well, maybe we'll just let them eat each other. We've got this cloud thing, desktop thing, enterprise thing. So what do you think of Jack's next point then? You ready for this one? Let's hear it. Yeah. So I think he, because, you know, we kind of were hard on that one. So this one might be a little different.

Elementary OS will gain significant ground. He says, I'm not trying to be partial here, but I believe partially due to Canonical's failed foray into the phone space, Elementary OS will become a much bigger player by the end of 2017. There's a good reason for that. Elementary OS is an amazing flavor of Linux. It's very user-friendly, it's beautifully designed, and it makes working with Linux very easy.

He goes on also to say that elementary OS currently stands at number five on DistroWatch with the ranking, and he says by the end of the year, he believes it will just be a bit number – a bit number two under Mint. I just – it's interesting. I just read another article today too that thinks that part of the reason – people were speculating about – where did I see this? People were speculating about what will take Linux to get to 5% desktop market share. And one of the things in that speculation was – yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It was one of the – one of the things in there was that elementary OS would play a significant part in growth. This is two people now saying elementary OS is going to play a significant role in 2017 for growth. I don't think just elementary OS either. I think elementary OS are doing great things, and they are very squarely focused on the Windows and Mac users who are looking to switch to linux but i think the other two distributions that will also grow in popularity are going to be solus and kde neon but specifically it's lts version that they've just announced really you think that you think you think so tell me more why well you those three projects all have something in common

they've all well elementary's been around for a long time but it's really sort of come of age in sort of the this last release that they've put put out it really sort of really felt like it was the whole thing but um there's a lot of buzz around solus and kde. And I think that people are tempted to those to try them. And I think what I've seen is a lot of Arch Linux users who are tired of curating their own system moving to more cutting edge curated desktop operating systems. So I think elementary for those people that just want something that works and is stylish

and has got familiar workflows, and Solus and KDE Neon for the enthusiasts, probably most of our audience, who are looking for something new and shiny that's got all the bells and whistles. You know, that's interesting because Neon's been tugging at my distro hopping gene. Whatever it is in me that makes me want to constantly move around, it's tugging on that note again saying, hey, come over here to KD Neon Land. Come over here to KD Neon Land.

X Metal in the chat room says, well, what's the difference between Neon LTS and Kubuntu? Where's the line there? What do you think, Ron? Where's the line there? What do you think, Ron? Well, the biggest thing about the difference between Ubuntu and Neon is Ubuntu does the six-month thing with Ubuntu. Neon is based only on the LTS 16.04. So that's the biggest difference.

But also the Plasma desktop updates in Neon the day it releases. Ubuntu is months behind usually so they're like there was a post recently about how you can get the latest plasma 5.8 in ubuntu with the kubuntu backports well if you had neon you'd already have it months ago yeah so like the the difference between the lts of neon and like it's kind of weird that they use that term because Neon LTS they're both using Ubuntu LTS it's just that the Neon version is like Plasma 5.8 is the LTS of Plasma so Neon LTS is 5.8 Plasma on top of LTS Ubuntu so if you use the regular Neon and not the LTS Neon you're going to continue to get updates to Plasma so like 5.9 and right right right but in theory if you not the LTS Neon, you're going to continue to get updates to Plasma. So like 5.9 and et cetera.

Right, right, right. But in theory, if you have an LTS desktop environment, an LTS-based distro, that could be a pretty sweet setup for those that are looking for a powerful workstation that lasts a long time. Monkeycom, you wanted to add something to that discussion. Go ahead. I've heard that kicked around of which one – what's the difference between Kubuntu and Neon?

around of which one what's the difference between kabuntu and neon well kabuntu is kabuntu's way of doing kde and neon is kde's way of doing abuntu and it's much better no because they're both separate they're both different community projects like abuntu canonical and abuntu does not work on kabuntu so that's i mean that's like kabuntu is more of a a full a full service distro it's got all the applications like ocular pdf viewers and things like that and it's all built in for you and it's got a like a email client and all this other stuff kde neon is just the fundamentals of what makes the distro work and that's it you you add everything else yourself. So it's more of a minimalistic with a rolling on top. But the one thing I would say is that if you want a KDE Ubuntu base

and you don't want to do all the effort of having to set up things up, Kubuntu is going to do it more for you. Okay. So it depends on your preference. I think what Wimpy said about the enthusiast, Neon is definitely more for the enthusiast rather than just give it to me and let it go. Wimpy,

you say you notice a lot of buzz. I have too. About Neon, about Solus, but of course you're being humble and not mentioning Mate, but I see a lot of buzz around that too. That's interesting. So elementary OS, in my estimation, is probably going to be an important distribution.

Is it going to be a game-changer distribution though? And something like what Wimpy said, they have been around a while, and I feel like it's not that they're not moving. They're doing a lot of cool stuff. It just feels like it's a slower wave, a longer period. It feels like it was a long time since I was excited about their last release and now there's the newest release and i think there's a lot of good things but at least in our circles maybe there's less because it changes slower there's less that we have to yeah yeah yeah i think i think i think it's because it's

they're playing they feel like they're it feels like they're playing catch up when other des already have like everything you expect to have like pantheon for a for a long time maybe even still they had no ability to always on top for a window which seems like a fundamental in every other d so like but when you when the reason why it's going to be very popular is because it's kind of like a full cohesive unit of a system right right so i guess i wanted to double down on something that Wimpy said that Rotten seemed to jump in on. And it kind of made my head nod too, was that Wimpy said, I think one of the targets for

Neon will be Arch users who are sick of curating their own desktop. And that hit me because I see that sometimes. And Anna Gross definitely tries to serve that niche. But I wonder if that might be a thing over 2017. Will there be a – as these other distributions stand up and get more popular and get more software available to them and get more momentum, will there be a bit of a migration do you think, Wes? And like as rolling becomes more than just the Arch Gen 2 crowd, right? So it's like suddenly you have options. If you – before it felt like it was more like yes, you rolled and you put everything together yourself and you got this great system.

But it could be there's an audience there that they want the new packages, they want the fresh stuff, but they don't necessarily need to put it all together if someone else has glued it in a good way. You know, so let's talk about that for a second. So rolling has changed – not changed, but has seen – it's sort of become like the buzzword in some cases for distributions. Like, yeah, we're going to go rolling. We're going to go rolling. And you've seen some major refactorings like on the case of OpenSUSE, you know, not this year, but just recently.

And Fedora is now talking about that. It definitely seems to have done something really good for SUSE because it feels like in our audience there's more people using it now than there used to be. It still doesn't feel like one of the major big players that has a lot of the community excited about it. And it hasn't taken over the enterprise.

But it feels like it's carving out this group of users that use it that really like it. And that's a good sign that they're doing something right there and that they could be on the precipice of tipping that over. So that's been interesting to watch, Sousa. Very much so. I wonder if as we go through 2017 if we'll see them cross that tipping point. There's been Fedora rumors.

And then my friends, we have Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft. You just, you never know what they're going to do anymore. And Jack thinks they're going to open up Windows. I wonder if he's bold

enough to predict. Oh, man. I know. I wonder if he's bold enough to predict the license. This might sound crazy, he says, but this, Jack, man, I like you, but this is almost making me want to throw out this whole list. He says, this might sound crazy, but I think it makes sense. Microsoft stands to gain far more leverage by opening up the source

for their Windows platform. Not only would this be a boon for the enterprise, it would also enable a lot of enterprise-level systems and services to better integrate with Windows. Yeah, because that's, well. He says, I don't suspect we'll actually see an open-source version of Windows release. What I do believe is that Microsoft will finally become open to this idea and begin to see a certain validity to handling over source

to their platform-specific entities. I don't follow that at all. I don't even think they could because of IP reasons. Exactly. This just doesn't seem possible. If you remember the whole OpenSolaris project and how long it took them to rewrite the parts they needed to that were written by some contractor that they couldn't give out because they didn't have permission. I can't imagine Microsoft is any different with Windows. I'm sure there's tons of the Windows core

that they just didn't even write permission to use. I think that the recent Microsoft partnership with Qualcomm will have more to do with Microsoft's resurgence than opening up Windows. So you familiar with this new arrangement? No, tell me about this. So, Microsoft and Qualcomm are partnering

so that Qualcomm are going to provide chips for Windows to run on ARM, but it's full-blooded Windows desktop on ARM. And also, the ability to run Windows 32-bit Intel binaries on this ARM platform. So they're going to do x86 32-bit Intel binaries on this ARM platform.

So they're going to do x86 32-bit binary emulation on ARM chips. Yeah, so that opens up the entire back catalogue of Windows software on this platform on mobile, which could or could not be either phones, but more likely probably Surface-type devices. There's no reason they're going to open up Windows to do that. No, I can see them doing more open things in their cloud environments, in that focus,

you know, new products being open. But yeah, there's just no reason to go back and do that. Yeah, historically, we can now look back over sort of, you know, 18 months, two years of Microsoft's behavior. And it's about server and enabling technologies that they've open sourced. It hasn't been core products and it certainly hasn't been Windows. Right. So this has been my thought is if we watch Microsoft specifically now in 2017, I think them doing much more with Windows, they're just going to, I think, do business

as usual with Windows as businesses need Windows going to, I think, do business as usual with Windows as businesses need Windows and people that are doing business want Windows. It's just going to be what they've always done. I think what we need to watch for is the new Microsoft hardware that comes out in 2017, their Surface Books, their home devices, the stuff that they're really kind of putting a lot of their intention and energy behind. How does that interact with Linux? How locked down is that? What is this built out of? What can I do with this if I don't want to run Windows? Like, what are the answers to those questions?

And depending on how close it is to, well, pretty much whatever you want or anything that can use the API or, well, if you just grab this, if the answer is getting closer to that, then that shows you what Microsoft's real intent. And if the answer is, well, you need Windows 10 and it has to be activated, then that shows you where their intention is at. I would predict it's going to be the more open Microsoft. It's going to be the more, oh, they don't really care what the OS is, Microsoft. And I feel like that's the direction they're going in. And I would just expect more of that.

To go as far as open sourcing windows right i think they're playing they're playing making a strong play towards developers trying to be friendly towards developers and not put up roadblocks and i don't think the windows angle helps them with that in the same way as the open cloud api stuff does yeah so we've we've just finished recording the last two episodes of Ubuntu podcast for the year. And also for season nine. So we now take a break. So if you're an Ubuntu podcast listener, we're off air for two or three months. That sounds so nice.

And you want to have a listen to what will be episode 44, which is our predictions episode. And what Popey has to say about Microsoft in 2017. So there's a tease for you. I will definitely check that out. I wonder if you have any thoughts on Chrome OS and Android merging in 2017, and if this is going to be a problem for Linux desktop. I hate to be like Chicken Little, but when I think about actual competition to Linux, I don't think about macOS or Windows.

Not long, long term. Not really long term. When I think of general desktop computing, business computing, people that are task-oriented that need this type of interface for the type of work they do, software development, production, there's so many categories of work that will never really work on touch. And maybe a lot of them always require local applications. And I just really believe that one day these types of computers, these roles, will go towards a more general computing platform, like Linux is always what I've hoped. But I feel like it's very probably going to be Android, very likely, because the industry is capable of wrapping its head around Android as a thing that it can build towards. They understand how to do product testing against it.

They understand how to image and flash. It gets put in every little place you can imagine. And if they play ball, they get to take advantage of Google's APIs and services. And that makes it nice for end users because they don't have to worry about shipping software that actually is any good because they can just include Google stuff. And it can integrate with their Android of things. Right, of course. I really kind of wonder if they're targeting – are they really targeting the same audience though? I mean Android is targeting your everyday person.

I don't see many guys that are – they're developers, they're web designers, whatever. I don't see those guys going over to Android. And I think that's a large target audience that Linux could hit pretty heavily. If you can get the dev community, you can get the... Those guys aren't using Chrome OS either. Yeah. For the most part. I know, that's what I'm saying.

No, I agree. To be fair, I actually do it work. And I use Chrome OS pretty regularly. But I'm mostly just SSHing into a real machine. So... I was just going to say, and you also have – your company has built you tools that specifically allow you to use Chrome OS as a method of production. Most people would not have those resources available. That's correct.

That could just become a thing though. But that could absolutely become a thing. Yeah, right. Like Chrome OS is actually really usable because I'm mostly SSHing through it and I have a couple web portals I use in a mail client in the browser and all that stuff. Yeah, I can see that. And it's not that unreasonable for a modern company, especially if you use Exchange, you get Office 365 potentially and that satisfies all your browser needs. Or you use the Google Apps for business.

Or you use Google Apps for business. Those two things are so popular now. Yeah. It seems fairly possible. And then if your other work can be ported somehow, whatever it is, you're good to go. You basically just described the entire computing setup for my kid's school. That's how they do it. No, that's not surprising at all.

That would actually be the most poignant case to make is for school, it's really easy to go with a Chromebook these days. And that's what schools are going for because they're cheap. That's what they have done. Every kid in Dylan's second grade class gets a Chromebook. Oh, hey. The teachers are on Chromebooks. They're on Google Apps for Business. It's the whole shebang. And it's not just his class. That's how Chromebook. Oh, hey. The teachers are on Chromebooks. They're on Google Apps for Business. It's the whole shebang.

And it's not just his class. That's how it is for the students there. And I don't know who's getting that big fat check. Somebody got a big fat check. Yeah, definitely. Wow. So I could just – to me this seems like this is going to spread. Actually, I can jump in real quick.

It's free. I was actually just working with a client, and Google actually – you can work out a deal with Google. They will give you access to the admin console and Google Apps for G Suite. G Suite is what they're calling it, but they give it to you for free if you're a school or education institute. Yeah. You need to be very careful about your definition of free here because free is basically hooking a generation of children into the Google ecosystem. Because that becomes the new normal. That becomes what you expect to do. You thought it was bad when they were giving them Macs.

Or Windows computers and you're bringing them up on a closed source operating system. Now you're bringing them up on a closed source operating system. Now you're bringing them up into, you know, a whole online life. A privatized spine apparatus. Yeah, it's just worrying. But that aside, you know, Chrome, Android blended together for, you know, casual desktop use, or maybe most, you know, office-based jobs is very compelling. But like you say, for developer stuff, maybe not so much. And also Android have just announced their IoT thing,

which is kind of just Android at the moment. They haven't seemed to announce anything specifically to target it at IoT. But because of the juggernaut of Android, you can see that that's going to sort of probably pick up some traction over the coming year. And it'll be interesting to see how people decide to build their IOT devices and platforms in the backdrop of 2016, which frankly has been a miserable year for IOT in terms of appalling security

and carefree attitude by device manufacturers. I think Andrew just wanted to, I want to quickly address, I just want to quickly address kind of what, you know, the, I agree that there is definitely some concern and I definitely, I think Andrew – they were going to do for this infrastructure problem because they didn't have the budget. They didn't have the resources. They didn't have the money. And so when we got a hold of Google and they said, hey, we'll just give you everything for free. We'll give you the way to manage the devices and we'll give you email and we'll give you the software. Everything is free. When you get all of that and then on top of that, on top of that, you have to understand when these kids leave the Education Institute, they are not tied to a – it's not like all of a sudden like what Microsoft is doing with their Office Suite.

After you left the student and teacher version for $140, you wanted to write a resume. Then they ding those students because they didn't have the professional version for $500. It's not like that. I mean those students can go create a regular Google account and have access to all of those same tools. So is it in Google's best interest? Of course. Is Google taking that information and making money off of it? Well, they say they're not, but they probably are.

And so there is a cost there that's being paid. But I think that we have to acknowledge that there's a huge benefit. I agree. There's a huge benefit to put computing in the hands of young children and to enable students to have access to technology that didn't have it before. And I don't think that it is too expensive of a cost. I think that is probably the better good overall, especially if a certain percentage of them become intellectually curious about how it works.

But the thing that does make me concerned is it's essentially the death of desktop software. What student is going to come up on Google Docs and ever, ever, once they go start a business or they go into school, install LibreOffice and use that? That is never going to happen. It is guaranteed lock-in to the Google ecosystem because it will simply be how they expect things to work, how they share information using their social network attached to Google. The way Google Docs works with links and all that, you will become to depend on that infrastructure and those expectations and LibreOffice will never have a shot. In much the same way that Microsoft encouraged students to use Windows products from an early age throughout their education all around the world and people consequently know that as the de facto

standard and if you're not studying computer science or software engineering it's unlikely that you will ever consider that there is anything else out there available although most mostly because of iphone and ipod they are aware that mac exists So what do you think? Careful what you wish for. Two lines from a popular children's novel. Eat me, drink me. I still think that Windows is so ingrained in the business world before kids get out of school using it. Maybe. And there may be more similar cycle.

It was only what, like 15, 20 years of a life cycle of that stuff. I don't know. Microsoft, I don't know, you know, because it's getting chewed away at both ends because Microsoft themselves isn't exactly pushing Windows platforms too hard. They're moving people over to Azure and Office 365 on their end. So it's kind of getting chewed out from both ends. Yeah. I just don't think any of these things last long enough that it's really ever a lock-in because they end up kind of fading and dying and things change. And that is good for us running Linux, right?

Yeah. I mean, on the flip side. Not the native apps, but at least the base of apps. The platform agnostic aspect that comes as a result of it is good for Linux. But it might not make Stolman very happy. Not much does. And the value of this is negative. There we go.

So we're going to switch over to Ask Noah in a bit. So I probably, before we wrap up, should give you guys a heads up. I'll plug the phone number right now if you want to call in. And if you want to talk business, you want to talk Linux with Mr. Noah. 1-88-347-0011. 1-88-347-0011 if you're watching live right now. The last unplugged of the year, at least the last live one. Then next Tuesday is the Beard Spectacular Clip Show.

But if you want to call in right now if you're watching live, if you've got a question for Mr. Noah, do it. You should. 1-888-347-0011. Okay, so there's one more thing. This was sort of the worst of 2016. So I'm going to get to what I think was the worst thing in Linux for 2016. And it was the vulnerabilities because we were – sorry.

Not only were we not hit with – I'm sorry. How should I say this? Not only did we have a fair amount of vulnerabilities, right? Fair statement. But they were like super embarrassing, had been around a really long time, and really hollowed out the argument that thousands of eyes make all bugs shallow. It really – like we took a blow to one of our biggest mantras this year. I mean we had dirty cow. We had shell shock and we had just –

And all the botnets, right? They're all made of Linux machines. I was going to say I think we also had – what was the – was that LibreVault? No, not LibreVault. The SSL. was that this year? I can't remember if the Heartbleed, was Heartbleed this year? Yeah. I can't call.

It was 2014, man. Okay, all right. It's almost been three years. It feels like we had, that's the reason why, okay, this is why, because it feels like we had three or four Heartbleeds this year. Like one year we had Heartbleed and that was like, God, that was a bad one. And we all remember it. But it feels like this year we had like three of them.

And it feels like we're on that – we're that bad part of the slope where like we're finding a lot of these things. But we're getting them fixed and it's just – we're so big now that – I'll tell you what the worst thing is. I mean it's good and I'm very thankful for it. But the worst thing is, you know, why all of these vulnerabilities are being found because either somebody is exploiting them or because a huge company that makes a ton of money off commercial software or stealing people's information and making ad money is doing projects because they have so much extra cash sitting around. They have a project to better their own interest in this field and are researching these.

Look at like Google's Project Zero, Cisco's, others have things just like this that only they could sustain because they make so much money that they can fund these things. It's not the millions of free software developers all around the world. Now, hopefully some of these companies have snatched up some of the best software developers and they just happen to be there. But that's the other thing I don't really – I really kind of wish we hadn't hit that so hard this year and I really kind of wish that we – that it would have been more from the community. I would have loved to have been like independent hacker groups on the internet that have self-organized as a community and are doing this and solving these problems and have a name for themselves and are not Project Zero from Google.

It's like just a group of real people that are just out there. I don't know. The community making itself better rather than something that feels kind of like outsiders, even if those people do heavily use open source themselves. And I'm always very thankful that these companies have these projects. It's like, okay, great. We found another one. At the same time, I'm like, I wish we could have caught it ourselves.

Boy, it sure is stressing the no press is bad press, right yeah it's just kind of not what the open source developers necessarily want to do right like these people who exist to find these vulnerabilities who love doing this are going to try to get paid to do it and so they're going to join you know project zero and whatnot so uh if you try if you're going to try to call talos or whoever yeah they call it if you're going to try to call no, it's 1-877- not 8-8. I don't know why he said 8-8. Noah, what the hell, man?

What the hell? Are you in there? Are you still in there, Noah? I was about to ask about that. Look at this. What does it say? Can you read that on my screen? What's that first telegram say?

What's that first- It says 877. Uh-huh. Well, okay. Now, are you going to make me take a screenshot? Are they really? See, look. What does that first number say, Wes? What does it say? That's all eights. That-huh. Well, okay. Now, are you going to make me take a screenshot of this? Are you really? See, look. What does that first number say, Wes?

What does it say? That's all eights. That's all eights, baby. That's all eights. He tells me it's all eights, and then he sends me a correction. Hey, jerk. Hey, jerk. It's 877-347-0011.

877. We need an API call to return this. 347-0011. That, and I just can't even with this guy. I can't even with this guy right now. We need an API call to return this. 347-0011. I just can't even with this guy. I can't even with this guy right now. We don't know. But we're going to find out today. I want to ask Noah.

I said just take Skype calls. That's what I say. Just take Skype calls. That's all. The other thing that I think did kind of start to develop this year is Apple did kind of have a rough year for the desktops and laptops and enthusiasts. Apple did kind of have a rough year for the desktops and laptops and enthusiasts, the same people we're just kind of talking about. To some regard, there is an uptick. I think the Switch is real. Based on the feedback we've been getting on Coder Radio from Mike Switch, I feel like people have been following along with him because they're doing it too and they're coming from Mac.

And I think that's been a bigger trend this year than we expected. Oh, definitely. I mean, I don't think we expected Apple, the alienation to be that real, right? Like there's always like going to be some people switching. There's like that small little flow of people. But there were a lot of people who just, there was not the computer that they wanted.

They were really, you know, obviously they'd been waiting a long time to buy a new Apple computer. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It was an event that that I guess what I expected was I expected a slow burn of boredom and dissatisfaction with a platform that wasn't really serving their needs anymore. Or being innovative. But what Apple did was they dropped this huge doubt bomb, this massive doubt bomb that said to the hardcore enthusiasts, I'm not sure there's actually going to be any better Macs. In fact, this is Mark Gurman.

For those of you that don't follow Apple News, Mark Gurman is probably the guy that has the best Apple sources in the tech press. Mark Gurman is – he helped start a 9 to 5 Mac. And then because his sourcing became so good, he was able to build a name for himself. He's been hired by Bloomberg and now he writes for Bloomberg who is trying to focus even more on technology because it's a huge part of the stock market and that's why Bloomberg cares. So now Mark Gurman writes for Bloomberg and today he wrote, to diehard fans, Apple's Macintosh sometimes seems like an afterthought these days. Mac upgrades, once a frequent ritual, are few and far between. The Mac Pro, the Apple's marquee computer, hasn't been refreshed since 2013.

That's embarrassing. Yeah, it is embarrassing. The affordable and flexible Mac Mini was last upgraded in 2014. And when a new machine does roll out, the results are sometimes underwhelming, if not infuriating, to the devotees. So he says that he's been interviewing people familiar with Apple's inner workings, and it reveals that the Mac is getting far and far less attention than it once did. Confirming all these diapers, a German it seems like what we see on the outside. A German source says that the Mac team has lost clout within the famed industrial design group led by Johnny Ive and the company's software team.

They also describe a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware, and technical challenges that have delayed the rollout of new computers. So there is a real actual lack of focus on the Mac in Apple. It's true. The Mac is actually dying in Apple. Now, Tim Cook, they leaked an internal forum posting saying they have some great desktops in the line. But who knows? To them, the new MacBook Pro is a great machine. They say it all the time. It's a great new machine. They're proud of it. So their definition is great. It varies.

And the Mac generates about 10% of Apple sales, which is legitimately big. That's billions. So it's bigger than some companies make. But yeah, that is not good. That is not good for those that are out there hoping to make their living on a Mac. I wonder how much this Bash on Windows 10 will play into that. The divergence that we see coming to Linux users versus how many developers will be more happy to stick with Windows if they can get a real Unix shell going. Yeah.

This could be good for Linux, too. Go ahead. It could be. This could be good for Linux too. Go ahead. It could be. I was saying that I think the Windows people – the people who would stay on Windows because of the access to Linux are the people who are already OK with Windows in the first place. I don't think there's any – If they want to leave to go to Mac, then instead of going to Mac because of the new releases of the out-of-touch bar, they could go to Linux instead.

Here's actually what I'm thinking. Here's actually what I'm thinking. I think a lot of high-end technical users that switched to Mac did it as a refuge from Windows. I think a lot of them were pissed off at Windows at the time and they wanted something else. And the thing is, is Windows 10 is not good enough. If you want to have high DPI, if you want to have consistent interface, if you want normal power management settings, if you have any sort of particular esoteric hipster standards that a lot of people like to make fun of as quaint and not necessary but things that people who pay attention to detail, Windows 10 is infuriating to use. I mean it's just – it is just an absolute train wreck of a mismatch of UI and a lack of high DPI support and old routing and typical Windows. It is everything Windows always has been with some nice stuff on top. So it's not going to attract Mac users. They're going to look at Linux.

It's just – I just – I think maybe the reason I feel the most fired up about this because I've gotten the most emails about this. We've had people following this. There's podcasters I listen to that are making a transition right now because it was recommended to me by audience members. Like, hey, listen to this guy. He's doing the same thing. And it's – this person has never heard of the Linux Action Show. He doesn't know who I am and he is going through a process of switching from a Mac to Linux because he didn't want to go back to Windows. And it's – I get enough input now that I feel like this is a thing that has happened. I'm not saying it's billions of people, but I'm saying it's a category of users now.

And I love it. I love it. It's funny too. You kind of see this like – it's like they knew – they could do Linux, you know, but they just didn't. They knew it didn't have the polish they wanted or they didn't think it had the polish they wanted. And so now there's this like, well, now I'm forced to look. And, oh, hey, it's really not as bad or it's better than I thought it might be. You know, you're starting to watch some of the cracks in macOS.

You know, the new battery life on the MacBook Pro sucks. And, of course, one of the ways Apple fixes it is they just remove the time estimate from the battery menu on macOS now. That was glossy. Yeah, you're starting to see the cracks. And so it's like, well, yeah, okay, Linux has some problems, but so does Windows and so does macOS. So which ones do I want to work with this time? And then, you know, the grass is always greener. Oh, yeah, naturally.

So, W.W., you were just saying that you knew somebody who made the switch because of windows 10 to a mac what happened well it's actually a family member of mine because um all all pcs come with a 5400 rpm drive and that's what's causing part of it because windows 10 is so heavy that you're sending people laptops with a 5400 RPM drive in like 2016 when you should be sending them out with SSDs and people are having such a poor experience, or at least the people I know, that they'd rather go to a Mac, pay the extra money, not have the hassle of the average user and having to put up with Windows stuff and just have a smooth experience. They're willing to pay for that smooth experience that they get with Mac.

Now, mind you, they're not the most technical person, but they just want a good UI, stuff that works, and maybe they'll spend more because of it. I like that theory. I think I'm going to just sort of sit back and just sort of keep watching Mike and watch others. Mike's also considering doing, and now he's been doing it on Linux, he's considering doing a stint on Windows

and seeing if he can get Bash on Windows to work for him and do that just to give it a fair shake too. Yeah, no, that would be actually quite interesting. Because, you know, I'm not going to do it, but it feels like it's worth looking into. I think – I did want to just sort of conjecture about one other category that I'm getting sort of – my opinion is beginning to change from this is a toy to maybe this is something that's worth taking seriously. And it's not Linux-related specifically, though I do hope – I do hope open source and Linux and the entire ecosystem isn't locked out from this next category in 2017. I think it's going to be a tight line.

I really think Amazon has nailed something with the Alexa. I thought – so I do something with the news is I notice when a new product comes out, there's a hype cycle. Oh, yeah. It starts before the product comes out. It starts – then there's the announcement. Then there's hype until the release. Then there's a hype cycle. Oh, yeah. You know, it starts before the product comes out. It starts. Then there's the announcement. Then there's hype till the release. Then there's release. Then there's a selective review hype where certain people release the reviews.

Then there's the limited release to the public where you start to actually get the people that are using it begin to review and comment on it. And then there's folks like me who like to use it for a while and then give you a review. So those start to pop up for a while. And then it just sort of drops down. And there's not a lot of people that usually keep talking about a product after that, if it's not successful. And we don't get exact numbers from Amazon, but we know they just kind of churn them out as they can. Well, one of the things that I find to be really fascinating when

it comes to the Alexa is there's there is still a good flow of posts about people talking about things you can do with it, ways you can integrate it, what an interesting device it is, how reliable it is. Like that, those things are still being written on a daily basis about the Alexa right now. And Google's obviously interested in this area. Microsoft's interested in this area, who knows about Apple, but they got Siri on the devices. I wonder if in 2017, if we will be able to be somewhat of a player in this field. I'm not really even talking Mycroft. I mean, just our stuff isn't off on its own island.

We're not completely left out. We're not completely excluded from playing. Will we? And I wonder where this is going to go. And what do you think, Wes? When I look at things like the Alexa, it seems to be more open. It seems to be the more successful device. So I guess I'd say, what do you you mean by we when you ask that question?

Well, when I'm using things like – well, I like to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp. I like to use this podcast player instead of – what's the one, the streaming one that combines all the shows and makes it sound worse? It's the really popular podcast player that I should know off the top of my head. I should too, but I don't know. It's a – oh, damn it. It's like it basically – anyways, there is software. There are like – there are radio and streaming services that just work with Alexa. Work with Alexa, right.

There are stuff that like when you're in their ecosystems, you work. But I guess what I'm talking about like the things I choose to use. I choose to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp or I choose to use – If you made niche decisions about the products, maybe they're more open source friendly, maybe they're more, you know, whatever, but they're not the, yeah. Or maybe I have my calendar on own cloud instead of Google Calendar or NextCloud. It really does come down to how well do these things play with different APIs. Is there interop? Is that the focus?

Because if it is just like the three big, right? And you see that with a lot of things where it's like, hey, we integrate with your favorite clouds. That means you have Dropbox and iCloud, and that's it. But if it's like, hey, you can add whatever here, add your custom, drop in a URL for your calendar files, and here you go, that's like a whole different story. Have you thought about picking up an Alexa? Or a Google Home?

The Google Home looked a little more interesting. When Alexa first came out, I mean, it was interesting. I'm very interested in like their, it seems like they've done a lot of good work with the microphones with you know actually making it so that it can hear you and process your voice well which is interesting and i did notice slash creepy slash creepy it did also seem that at least with alexa they've they've kind of and maybe because it was from amazon who i mean like i think like on on coder you're talking about you know it's like they're kind of like the big four four. They kind of get grouped in differently now.

So maybe it was a little more friendly. But it seemed a lot of people who do value open source or free software had been playing with the Alexa in a way. So it does seem like it has some developer mindshare in that respect that maybe other devices don't. I think that's what I was trying to say is the developer mindshare aspect of it. That's a good way to put it. I don't suppose. I'm going to roll the dice. I don't know why I'm betting no for some reason.

It's not that I think that you guys are all a bunch of haters, but I just, I'm going to guess. Does anybody in the mumble room have an Alexa or a Google Home? Nope. No. Yeah. Anybody considering getting one? I am. Okay, no.

Oh, okay. So there is a wide range. So Wimpy, did you jump in on the I am? Yeah. Oh, alright. Tell me about this. I'm tempted to get an Amazon Echo. So am I. Why are you? Because

friends of mine that have experimented with it and reading that I've done on the APIi i can see how i can integrate it into projects that i'm working on trivially more trivially than the other systems out there of a similar nature i uh i've been thinking about getting it because there are four – I'm sorry. No, there are one, two, three, four, five, six lights in the studio that are Hughes lights and that are used now in production. And also there are certain timer aspects that could be really handy and certain other functions like JBOT functions that could be really cool with Alexa. So I was thinking about maybe not necessarily for my house or my RV, but for the studios.

Hey, that could be fun. What about now, Rod and I hear you jump in, so you were thinking about it too? Yeah, I'm thinking about it as well, mainly because they have the multi-tier options. So it's not just like one device that you purchase that's $100-something. The default Echo is $150. Oh, so then if you found it useful, you could slip it in other places for cheaper. Yeah, the Echo Dot. They also have the Echo, the Tap, and the Echo Dot.

The Echo is like $150. The Tap is like $90. And the Dot is only like $50 or $40, depending on if it's a discount or not. Like right now, it's only $40. Yeah. You can get most of the benefits of Alexa. What?

What? Oh, no. Oh, you know, Chris hasn't gotten a Christmas present for himself. You deserve it. You've been a good boy. I have. Now, does anybody know will the devices work together? Can I set a reminder, say, at home

and then show up at the office and have the Echo at the office help me? Anybody know? Yeah. See, I think it's time I do need to figure these things out because I hate not knowing. Well, so anyways, I think that's going to be an interesting category. I saw a video explaining that the integration exists, but I don't know in different locations how well it works. Fascinating. This is going to be, I think it's going to be a really interesting category.

And the thing is, I don't think all of the big players that are going to get in have gotten in yet. I think there's still going to be some interesting entries. So check it out. Check it out. We'll have the links to the Echo in the show notes and the Dot if you guys are curious. And if you have one, let me know.

Let me know how that works. There's another thing that you might want. People who are like paranoid about it, always listening, the tap version doesn't listen to you until you hit the button. Right. So the tap version is $90. The Dot is $40. And the big Echo is $140. So the Dot and – I don't think – the Dot is not always listening either, right?

The Dot is – Oh, it is? Yeah. You're telling me the Dot does everything the big Echo does? It's just not a huge speaker? Yeah. It doesn't have as big speaker and it doesn't have as – like the microphone. That seems obvious then.

That seems like – for $40, that's an obvious way to try it out. Just try it out, yeah. I think I'm going to – See, that starts tempting me too. Like I don't need it in my life. I don't feel like I need those things. But for $40, I can... It seems like a lot of fun to do it.

The category's interesting enough. No, and it's better because it has the aux out and everything, so you can hook it up to, like, a decent speaker system. No! That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the draw to the ones that don't have the speakers, is they can be hooked up. That's pretty clever.

That is... Actually, if you go look on Amazon, go look at the advertising material, it shows it hooked up to a receiver. Yeah, I see that. To, like, a Pioneer or something. Also, or something also that's what i've done yeah it will also connect to the speakers using bluetooth so i could just pair it to the bow's bluetooth speaker exactly yeah so at the makerspace we we paired an echo dot to a bluetooth speaker to improve its speakers. Okay. And during Cyber Dark Black Tuesday, Friday, whatever it's called, they were doing three Echo Dots

for a combined discounted price of like $60 or something. Wow. That's a very compelling... They're having that ecosystem. Oh, man. Yeah, and I have them here in the studio. So that just seems like a, I just want this in my room so I can be like, Hey, turn on my lights when I wake up or Hey, turn them off at night without having to go hit the

switch, which is really far away. That's what I'm interested in. Cause I've, I've identified as a lights project is something that is going to have wife acceptance factor and also, um, sort of in-law acceptance factor because they've already got a sort of a lighting system. And I want to experiment with the Dot to do control of lighting. Yes, for sure. And I wonder, you know, if I got just a couple of smart plugs, I could make all of these lights controllable. One thing I noticed in discussion of this is that it seems like busy people or people with children are very interested in these products.

Just in the kind of direct accessibility, the kind of – a lot of times in busy situations, you can use your voice when you can't use your hands or sit down to do something more complicated. I'm coming in the door at home and my hands are full of my bag for the day and my groceries. It would be nice to just – You still need information or you want to turn on the lights. It'd be nice if you still need information or you want to turn on the lights. For those of you that want to do like IoT stuff but without the development, Alexa was recently added to IFTTT. So you can do IFTTT then that rules and hook Alexa up to all the other pipes that IFTTT supports. Hmm. You know, the only thing I wish...

Does anybody know what... Which includes Hue Lights and all the rest of it. So the Echo runs on what? Fire OS? What does it do? Do we know what the underlying operating system is to the Echo? Is it Linux? You would have to think so.

It's probably not BSD. It's probably Linux. So it's... Just based on their other... Who knows? It's safe to put in lady juice. It's probably not BSD. It's probably Linux. Just based on their other things. Who knows? It's safe to put in lady juice. It's safe. Well, it's only Linux and lady juice. Right.

So that's the thing. Well, okay. Maybe you have to take it down and see what you can find out. Well, now that we've all made Chris, boy, I can actually see a pretty cool episode out of this too. Oh, yeah. Specifically talking about how to make it work with Linux. Oh, my gosh. Now I'm going to sell it to myself.

I got to stop. It's happening. It's happening everyone. Well, I hope you enjoyed this half of the show. I don't know how much more show we have,

but I want to now get us ready to transition over to Grand Forks, North Dakota. I want to also let you know that coming up on the Linux Action Show and probably this show too,

we'll be doing our 2017 predictions soon. So I'd love to get the conversation rolling on that. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. If you have thoughts about 2017, you can leave it in the comments here or start a thread. I don't give an S.

Or just tweet them at me, at ChrisLAS. And we'll start talking about that very soon. So what we're going to do now is a little internet magic. We'll hit pause on our end and when it comes back, you'll be hearing from Mr. Colonel Lennox. Something a little different. Live from Grand Forks, North Dakota, the show that puts you, the listener, in the driver's seat because you are the content.

The phone lines are open to be a part of the program. Give us a call. It's toll-free 1-877-347-0011. We'll talk about your tech problems or your business and tech problems. Linux advocate above all else, small business owner and now host of the only show that's centered around you, the audience. Welcome to Ask Noah. And as you might have guessed, I am Noah. Now, this, well this particular episode really was born right at the end of Lass. Basically Chris said, I want to see, can we get a show up and running in 48 hours? And so this is the test of that. The job looks much easier from the outside than it actually is. To actually get

all of the equipment set up, get everything tested, get levels right, the recording set up at the graphics rolling, all of that. It takes time. And so I don't have all of the equipment I want. I don't have things set up the way I want it to, but we're going to try this and see if, if we can take calls, if this works. So you call in 1-877-347-0011, and we'll talk. Ask any question you want. Ask it about Linux. Ask it about technology in general. Or ask it about business.

We're going to start going out to the phones, and let's see here. Who do we have? We're going to start with Justin from Boston, Massachusetts. And so it's it's there's a little bit of a delay right now. The way that our call system is set up. Justin will be here with us in a second and I'll take his questions. And, you know, I made a post on Reddit a while back about business and how we set everything up and how we got things rolling

here at AltaSpeed. And that post got so many likes and so many other follow-up questions. People sent me emails, people went online and sent in contact forms and got a hold of me, all sorts of different ways. So if you have a business question, you can answer that as well. So Justin, you're with us and you're here from Boston, Massachusetts, I believe. Hello. Welcome to Ask Noah. Hey, Noah. How's it going? So it's a bit of a complicated setup, but it comes down to this. I am looking at building a personal infrastructure for a replacement Google Drive. After some price hikes with Google Drive, some file manipulations on Amazon Drive and other cloud services,

I'm really, really tired of trying to put terabytes of data somewhere that is not physically at my home. Gotcha. Okay. So I've got this idea of putting together a few boxes, putting NextCloud on these boxes, and sort of replacing Google Drive with that. Okay. However, I've heard you and Chris, among others, have some issues with large amounts of data with own cloud

and NextCloud being a successor. Right. I have that same worry. But I also wonder about multi-user support and if you guys have had experience with that because this is a solution for tens of people. And the ability to scale this up if need be. Currently, the plan is two or three machines that are going to be targeted from the desktop client. And then these two or three machines would be essentially their own redundancy.

If one goes down, the others pick up the slack and so forth. Gotcha. So I'll tell you what my experience has been. I was one of the early adopters of OwnCloud. Chris was as well. And we used own cloud extensively. And what we found was it worked fine for syncing documents, for syncing pictures. Large amount of files weren't a problem. But when you took a 20 or 30 or 40 gigabyte file and tried to sync that across multiple machines, what we found was you'd get files that were corrupted, and occasionally you'd have some files that were entirely, missed entirely altogether. I have found that most of those problems have been resolved. I'm on the, I was on the last version of own cloud before the split,

and I tried it with some test data and ran that for a while, and that seemed to work pretty well. If you watch the last week's episode of the Linux Action Show, we actually talked to Joss from the NextCloud project, and they have continued to improve upon the technology and feature set that OwnCloud left behind. I have some lingering concerns. First of all, I have some concerns with the database that they're using. It is possible to

swap it out. It's possible to point it to something other than SQLite. The other thing I have a concern with is with the syncing application, it's using CSync on the back end, and you know, the entire workhorse is essentially written in PHP, and I'm

not a coder, and I don't necessarily claim to understand some of the underpinnings of this, but everyone that is in the know tells me that the choices of technology that they have used are not the best. I'm going between two different options right now. My first option is I'm looking at C file for doing file syncing,

but I'm actually also looking at building a file server for our company to sync all of our files, and we're still considering NextCloud. YAS actually talks about how they actually have deployments of large users, universities, so to speak. And if you haven't seen it, I'd suggest you go check out that episode because it does a very good job of explaining how Nextcloud does scale. I would be willing to give it a shot, I think, if I were you. In fact, I'm going to do the same. So with that in mind, with your experience, how reliable is it in its re-scanning, I guess? One of my concerns is, albeit in a virtual machine network, I have set up a few instances on cloud, and it's nice to start out by just throwing data into the data directory itself and letting NextCloud rescan

and everything appears really nicely in the web interface. But that isn't always super viable. And I've noticed that with the desktop client, certain folder names will just be ignored. For example, I have a folder called Archive and I have to explicitly rescan with that folder being an exception list to get that folder to appear in the web archive or pulled down by other users. Yeah.

Are these kind of problems that you've had experience with? Yep. Yep. I've experienced almost all of those. make own cloud the happiest is to install the client point it towards whatever directory you're going to use and then give it a couple minutes to kind of sync itself up and then start adding data to that director the worst possible thing you can do is climb in under the hood and start moving data around on the server i've i have destroyed my entire own cloud instance well my my user account anyway all my data i've erased all of my data by doing stuff like that. So, you know, I would encourage you to be pretty cautious, you know, in that

regard. But I think it's pretty much ready for prime time. I think I would go ahead and give it a shot. And again, I'll be able to tell you more as time goes on because I'm going to be implementing this myself. I'm going to try NextCloud and see if it works. I looked into the commercial alternatives like Dropbox, right? And that's kind of the go-to if you're in the business world is you sign up for Dropbox for business. But, you know, they're charging, I think it's something like $9 a user or something. You know, we have a small team and it's not a, you know, file syncing is not a central part of our business. So the idea that I would be able to afford that kind of capital stream for the return on the investment just isn't there.

We're going to head back over to Washington State, right where Chris came from. Sean's joining us. Hi, Sean. How are you? Hey, Noah. Hey, thanks for joining us. How can we help today? So, I'm meeting a couple of my friends. They're looking at starting a podcast. Just us sitting around, shooting a breeze about technology. And we've got some mics. We've got some computers.

And I'm not really sure where to go there from next. Are you guys doing audio only or are you doing audio and video? Audio only. Awesome. So never do video. If you go talk to anyone that's doing video in the podcast, they'll tell you that they would give, they'd trade their soul to the devil to go back in time and never do video. Audio is actually pretty easy to do.

I have tried, I've used Skype and Mumble side by side. And there's a lot of people that will tell you that Skype is a very high quality piece of software. I think Skype works okay. I found that conference calling and Skype can be difficult at best. And also, the, I believe it's Silk is the codec or a modified version of Silk that is the codec that's being used in Skype. My understanding is that a future version of that or a built-upon version of that is the Opus codec, which is what can be used in Mumble. And also, there is a growing number of people that are using G. I believe, I believe it's 722 or 729, one of the two. I can double check and get back to you. But G.722 is basically what they've done is they have built upon what was a phone standard and built it out.

And so if you look at – I actually had the opportunity to try some enterprise-grade audio connection tools that were basically designed to facilitate remote studio connections, and they were using the G.722 codec. That codec is available in software like Zoiper, and so you can set up a conference call between three or four participants or five participants, and you could actually use the exact same Kodak as the industry professionals were using. If you have mics and you have audio interfaces and you're just looking for the connection piece, that's an option. If you want something simpler, Mumble's a great way to go too. Yeah, because I'll be doing everything on Linux.

The other two guys have one uses Linux and Windows and one uses just Windows. Okay, great. Well well I really appreciate you taking the time to call it again 1-877-347-0011 that's number and we'll take your calls we'll answer your questions it is uh it is really fun to be able to actually uh to actually do this I have you know every day I'm solving problems on Linux. I'm going through and trying this stuff. You know, this Kodak thing was one thing that I was looking at doing because obviously we're looking at implementing something like this

on JB. And so as I have gone through and kind of experimented with this, I can't really make an episode about it. But Sean calls in from Washington and says that he wants to facilitate remote connection between him and his friends to do a podcast. Well, now we're talking, right? Now that's something that we can do. James, North Carolina, you're calling in about SystemD. How can we help? Yes, I was calling about some, I guess, more general recommendations.

some, I guess, more general recommendations. With Ubuntu, and I primarily use Linux myself, switching over to SystemD from Upstart, a lot of programs that I've used for programming things like automatic triggers for, like, green dimming when power disconnects from a laptop or things like that no longer work with SystemD. So I was just curious if you guys have any recommendations of programs that you can

interact with those SystemD triggers to do things essentially. Huh, that's interesting. So I have done a number of different upgrades in the last couple of years, moving from to the latest version of RHEL, which of course uses systemd and

it's interesting i have worked with some pretty esoteric pieces of software um and i've not run into that issue i most of those calls are set up so that um so that it just translates uh you know any of those uh any of those upstart commands you know right to to systemd it seems like it's it's it's pretty smooth or you know redsk systemd ingay system VNIP. But do you have some custom stuff that is written in there, custom stuff that it's calling or custom things that it's doing? No. Oh, I just remembered the name of it. It's called Cuttlefish.

It was a program that would essentially tie into some of the triggers for things like when you log on, if you, I guess, disconnect from your session, if you put the laptop to sleep, wake it up, that kind of deal. Okay. So you could basically connect that to any type of bash script, and you could have it run as triggered, or you could have it do a few preset actions as well. Gotcha.

Yeah. So, yeah. So I guess I tell you what I'll do. If you can, if you head over to a Jupiter broadcasting.com, click on the contact link, click on ask Noah.

I don't, I don't have any great recommendations for you, but I know a guy that knows everything there is to know about moving older systems to system d and if you send me a contact form i will i'll put you in contact with him and i'll see if you guys can get together and see if you guys can can work something out because i'm sure there's somebody that that has that has has run through this for me it has been a marvelous experience moving to system d has been flawless in fact the only thing that i've really noticed is my boot times have gone from like a minute minute and a half down to mere seconds

that's the big difference for me from moving from the the older init systems to to system d so i have i really don't have any complaints and uh and like i said i worked with some pretty esoteric pieces of software i worked with the with the university on some chemical calculation software that, I mean, it was just a tiny little company. And, you know, it's a very, very limited use case. And all of that stuff worked perfectly, you know, right out of the box. Angela's calling from Washington. I have a feeling I might have talked to you before. Yeah, maybe, possibly.

I don't actually have a question, but I thought it would be cool to let you know that back in 2015 at LinuxFest Northwest, my friend Jenny gave you her Mac laptop and asked you to fix it, which is laughable on its own, and you gave her a Linux laptop. Okay. She has been using that for the last year and a half,

but not like super well. Sure. And she's trying to finish up her AA degree, which she only needs about three or four classes to complete. Sure. And she is choosing to go back to school and taking CIS 105 intro to Linux. Nice.

With that laptop and i thought that uh that you should be able to have that credit and know that she is dabbling now in linux to a deeper level that's all that's outstanding the the um you know what's funny about that is i think i was the only one participating in that conversation i'll leave this out for you guys. So we're at dinner and her friend Jenny is telling me about how her laptop, you know, is having some troubles, not working. Turns out like the motherboard was like totally dead. And so I said, if I send you a Linux computer, would you use it? And she's, you know, she kind of looks at me like I'm crazy, you know, two eyes, one eye. And she's like, yeah, I guess. And so I got back to Grand Forks and I set a computer up and I shipped it off to her and i get a message from uh i think it was i think you angela actually sent me a message and there's a picture of this computer and she's like why did a laptop just arrive at

our house and what is it for i'm like well it's for jenny it's for jenny and so and so yeah so anyway so that's how she wound up with that computer it's not a it's not a it's not a you know any terribly nice computer but it's it's something that if you're just using daily stuff, I think it gets her along just fine, right? Yep, it does. And now she's just going to be more confident in it. And gosh, I feel like she's going to know more about Linux than I will after taking this test. Well, that's awesome.

Well, thank you very much for the update. And please make sure to give Jenny the number 1-877-340011. I have to memorize my own number. That would be good. 1-877-340011. 1-877-340011. Someday I'll have that totally memorized that I won't have that issue. I love giving Linux to people that don't have a predisposition to it. I love giving Linux to people that don't already have it made up in their mind that they're going to like Linux or they're going to hate Linux. Linux is going to work. Linux is not going to work. The people that can just evaluate it from the standpoint of I have a need.

I have a task. I want to get that task done. How do I do that task? That's where Linux is going to succeed. Really, that's where any operating system succeeds. Because if you take me as a Linux user and put me on a Windows environment or a Linux or a Mac environment, I'm going to have a tough time too. But you know, you know, I'll tell you what, the inspiration for the show is pretty simple. My company, AltaSpeed Technologies, we've spent the last couple of years perfecting, providing creative cost saving solutions to our customers without sacrificing quality using open source software. And so we go into a place, to a business that, you know, their budget is they spend $500 per workstation for an office suite. We tell them we're going to provide that to them at nothing.

They're just going to pay us for their time. for an office suite. We tell them we're going to provide that to them at nothing. They're just going to pay us for their time. And they say that they're paying, you know, X amount of thousands of dollars to hire this in-house mail administrator guy that is going to work on this crappy exchange server that works less than 50% of the time, right? And we show them other solutions. And we're going to take that knowledge and we are going to morph that into a show and provide those answers to you, not at our billing rate of $75 an hour, but we're going to give that to you for free just by calling the number. And I think this has the potential to morph into a really successful show. I hope it morphs into a really successful show. And so I

want to thank everyone for taking the time to be here, for being on the phone lines, waiting on holds, particularly those of you that are calling internationally. It is a toll-free call, though. 1-877-347-0011. So I would never be worried about calling. It won't cost you anything. That'll bring us to the end of this week's test episode. Keep that number, guys. 1-877-347-0011. We'll be back with you soon for another couple of test episodes and, of course, finally, the official launch of the Ask Noah program. Now if you want to support this program as well as the rest of the network, head over to patreon.com slash today. You can directly participate

in getting this program off the ground. Special thanks to Sarah, our producer, Ham Radio, our call screener, and of course Rekai, our editor and resident wizard. To keep up to date with what the network's doing, head over to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar and a big thank you to Chris and Wes for giving us this time slot. Make sure to tune in next week for their clip

segment. Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and I'll see all of you guys on Sunday for our predictions episode in the next two weeks. You guys have a great night. um we have who do we have here do do do do ryanard, Washington. Welcome to Ask Noah. Hey, how's it going? Excellent. How can we help today? So

you mentioned on an episode of Last recently that you switched over to Arch on all your boxes because you were thinking of all the you kind of like little things like a functioning network manager and all. Right, yeah, I'm weird like that. I really functioning network manager and all right yeah i'm weird like that i really prefer my wireless to work yeah what are you trying to live in the future or

something come on man i know it's crazy i'm i'm a i'm a i'm a whore for the details so i was i was wondering what made you choose arch specifically over something like ubuntu mate which doesn't seem to have all the same issues as standard Ubuntu. A couple of things. The first and foremost factor that really led me to Arch was these days I move more and I'm spending more and more time doing things for Jupyter Broadcasting. And so it makes a lot of sense to use the same environment stuff that the other people you're interfacing with do, right? And that was one of the reasons that drew me to Fedora early on is because I was dealing with so much Red Hat

that it just made sense to have Fedora on my desktop. And these days, you know, every Sunday, at least I'm doing something. And, you know, if there's an app pick that we're doing that week, it's really nice to be able to have access to the same applications as everyone else. And then the other side of it, too, is that, you know, I have some ground to step up on and say, okay, I tried Arch, I ran it for X amount of months. Here's why it didn't end up working for me. And then I, then I can put that, that, that baby to rest. And I don't have to, I don't have to constantly, because right now, or at least prior to that, it was always, well, I'm using Ubuntu and there's all these people out there telling me that there's this better Linux experience available. Really what I found is I have probably the same amount of problems. I just, they are more solvable, number one. Number

two, I expect to have to solve them. And number three is they're not, well, that's not entirely true. Some of them are kind of show-stopping problems, but they've, so far they've all mostly been solvable or tolerable and not having wireless in Ubuntu was not that way. Now, for why I didn't choose Ubuntu Mate, the Mate desktop does not offer the ability, at least out of the box, I think they're including it, to launch an application by hitting the super key. And it is so ingrained in my mind when I want Firefox, I hit super key, F-I-R-E, enter. And then I expect Firefox to be on my screen or super key, T-H-U-N, enter. And I expect Thunderbird to be on my screen or super key T H U N enter. And I expect Thunderbird to be on my screen without those, you know,

it's a difference in how I use the computer and I'm really not willing to make that change. Other things you can do, you can, you know, use synapses. In fact, I think they're including, you know, a launcher by default, but it's, it's, I see Ubuntu Mate as my utilitarian type distro. So the computer I'm on right now, for example, is running Ubuntu Mate because it's an appliance. It's a computer that needs to sit there

and it doesn't need to be pretty. It doesn't need to switch desktops. I just need to open OBS, for example, and just have it run. That was not the case. That is not the case on my desktop, on my laptop. So that's the short answer

why I wound up on Arch. Mostly happy. The latest thing that really bit me that I was super upset about was I went to open Lightworks to edit a, or not Lightworks, Inkscape to edit a graphic and Inkscape just wouldn't load. Like I would click on the icon, nothing would happen.

So I had to drop to the terminal and then I ran the Inkscape just wouldn't load. Like I would click on the icon, nothing would happen. So I had to drop to the terminal and then I ran the Inkscape command and, you know, and then it gave me some error that I didn't entirely understand. I had to Google the error and then I'm going through and I'm going around and somewhere through there, I was like, you know, I have some tolerance when it's TeamViewer or some other non, you know, proprietary piece of software, but like Inkscape, Inkscape's like a huge vector graphic, open source vector graphic editing suite for Linux. How in the world do you get to a point where you can't, where that doesn't work? How is that a thing? It doesn't even make sense to me. So I was a little upset by that, but got it to work and I guess it's worked now so far.