LINUX Unplugged - Episode 177: The Many Faces of Linux | LUP 177

Episode Date: December 27, 2016

While the guys are hibernating over this holiday week, We look back on some of the most interesting topics the virtual LUG covered this year.Everything from snap packages & ubuntu reviews to LXD & Arch MacBook installs, plus a whole lot more.So kick back, settle in & enjoy the show!

This is Linux Unplugged, a very special holiday edition of the show for 2016. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, the show that promises to be the best of, but how could it actually deliver? My name is Chris on a very special edition of the show, we decided to give people the week off. And by people, I mean everybody but the beard and I. Because this is our collection, our look back at 2016 for the Linux Unplugged program. And how could you encapsulate this show in one single best of? It can't be done. And let's be honest.

I'm too busy thinking about the presents for my kids to think about this, so we pawned it off onto a bunch of bots. They were powered by the Google Compute Cloud. They just had to analyze our inboxes for like a year, and then they came up with the best of topics for us into a spreadsheet, which I have right here. And now we're going to formulate that into a show for you. What could go wrong? Some of that is actually true.

Some of that is actually true. Now, coming up on this week's episode, we'll go back over the year for Linux Unplugged, pick out a few of the gems and see if we can spot a few of the trends too. You know, that virtual lug never know, you never know what you're going to get. It's a random mix. The show really is fairly unstructured. When we launch into a Linux Unplugged episode, we have a brief outline of what we want to cover. But the good stuff is always kind of spontaneous. It's the juicy stuff. So let's look at this list, see what the Google bots have come up with,

and see what might be a little interesting. Now I'm looking through, I see a couple of things. a little interesting. Now I'm looking through, I see a couple of things. Let's start out here with a server in your pocket. We can start talking about Matei and then the classic debates of the traditional desktop versus Unity versus GNOME begin marking the first of many debates for 2016. So Wimpy, I'm interested to some degree to get your perception because Ubuntu Mate is, is one of those, uh, is one of those distros where I, I have not, to the best of my knowledge, found a single thing that when, as when using Ubuntu Mate where it makes me feel like I'm on a, on, on an alternative desktop from, uh, from standard Ubuntu everything just works I mean literally everything just works in fact so much so that I actually all of the production machines that I have here in Grand Forks with the exception of the one I'm on now but all the rest of them are actually running Ubuntu Mate because it runs lighter than it does with Unity and I'm wondering you know what kind of considerations went into that and and and how you guys feel about that and how that plays out?

Well, Ubuntu Mate is just Ubuntu. In fact, it is Ubuntu. When you boil it down, you simply – I say simply. It's taken a year and a half to do. You remove Unity and you put the Mate desktop on top, but then you keep all of the Ubuntu tools and integrations that already exist underneath the hood, which is what gives you all of that stability and just works goodness of Ubuntu on a traditional desktop environment. So one of the reasons why Marte is lighter than Unity is that it's based on GNOME 2

with all of the old compatibility stuff from GNOME 1 removed and all of the underpinnings upgraded to the latest versions of all the recent technologies and it's all written in C so it's a very lightweight implementation by you know by comparison to what it was when it was GNOME 2 in its sort of last versions so it's kind of happenstance in some respect that respects that Marte has now come out as a lightweight desktop alternative. Outstanding. Anyone else have thoughts or opinions on desktop environments?

Go ahead. Sorry if my audio is terrible. I'm in America for scale. So there's a few things. One, whenever anyone says I'm one of the few people who like Unity, I want to slap them because there are millions of people who use Unity. Watch out at scale. Watch out at scale, Noah.

And, you know, saying I'm one of the few people. What actually is the case is there are a few really negative people who don't like it and who are very vocal. And there's a vast number of people who use it and aren't vocal. So saying you're one of the few people, you should actually say, I'm one of the majority who like Unity, to be fair. So the original question from the guy posted on Reddit was about, why don't we just use

GNOME? You could use that same argument about every single desktop. Why don't you all just all pack up and go home and use something else is effectively what you're saying. And every single desktop has their own niche that they want to fulfill or use cases that they address that others don't. For example, elementary have their niche. It's not so much a niche. I would like to have a well-designed, pretty, robust, functional desktop.

That sounds like a reasonable thing. And so I think it's unreasonable to suggest that people who are working on those things should throw that away and use something else instead. You might just as well say, why don't KDE give up and switch to Node? It's a nonsensical argument from my point of view. That's fair. So basically, and I admit that this is a horrible, horrible thing to base a generalization on, but I'm admitting that up front, but it was a couple months ago, maybe even a year ago, that we did a poll, a straw poll, to find out what desktop environment people were using. many people didn't vote for unity and and and gnome shot way to the top and and unity was down there and i guess i've had that correct or incorrect or correct um perception that uh that unity just wasn't preferred by a lot of the people that the you know that that are aware of other desktop environments that are out there and i fully admit that you that you know we're you know

working in the space that you work in you're going to have a much much much more realistic perception you know what actually biased and you should throw away my opinion completely and you should only listen to people who are outside of this bubble um because they weren't their opinion won't be tarnished you know potentially is one side of it but the flip side is any of these um polls are deeply flawed the same way that bearing uh using distro watch as your measure exactly the same history is it's ridiculous and people who who place any importance on something which is basically um a poll which can be shared amongst a subreddit which massively skews the numbers for any one distro plus or minus when in fact the actual people who use and like a particular desktop

or user interface or application or whatever are ultimately never going to see that poll my mum uses ubuntu and has used ubuntu for, she will never see that poll and never click on anything in that poll. That's exactly the point I was thinking. However many millions of people in China use the Ubuntu desktop, they're never going to see this because of things written in English, for one. So it's just ludicrous.

We in particular also are a community of Linux enthusiasts and people who like customization. I think some of Unity's strengths is that it can be widely deployed, and it's pretty easy for people to just get it. The icons are right there on the left. You hit the super key, things just work. So it has a lot going for it. Like you said, your mom can use it.

My mom uses it. It's great. Well, and we also have Unity as actually the default desktop. Well, not the default desktop. It's the only the on all of our kiosk machines that we deploy and so basically if you think about the target audience there it's we're taking people from all walks of tech of the technical spectrum and saying that no matter who walks in if they sit down and they want to check their email print a boarding pass or check the weather they're going to be able to accomplish those things quickly easily and without complaining to check their email, print a boarding pass, or check the weather, they're going to be able to accomplish those things quickly, easily, and without complaining to

the front desk. Because of course, if they complain, then we lose the contract. And what we found is that little bar on the side of Unity, which by the way, requires no tweaking and requires no extensions, which means we don't have to update anything, is incredibly useful in a situation like that. And so I agree that the average person walking around the street is going to sit down and have no trouble using Unity. And I think I even started out by saying, I phrased it, you know, poorly, but the gist of the message was, it's my personal belief that Unity is a more polished desktop than GNOME is um but uh but for whatever reason and maybe it is just that people are are

terribly vocal i guess there is a there is there is a perception from from some people that uh there's a perception from some people that that the that the unity of desktop is inferior correct or incorrect well that's different it's like any any individual like any reddit consumer is entitled to have their opinion and it's perfectly fine for someone to say unity is inferior because of these xyz reasons in the same way that someone might not like enlightenment or someone might not like kde because it doesn't work their workflow or the apps don't look right or you know for whatever reason it's perfectly fine for people to have their opinions you know and like buttholes everyone's got the problem is when you try and extrapolate from a poll on a random website somewhere and

make bold assertive statements about whether something is right or wrong or whether something is good or bad based on a button clicked by a bunch of random people on the internet. It makes no sense whatsoever to me, but that's just me. No, I think that's completely fair. Let's talk about my Librem impressions. What's the point of a perfect desktop if you don't have great hardware? Okay, Wes,

you had some time to, you know... Yes, I did. You know, it's a nice looking laptop. It is. It feels good. Yeah, it's not too heavy. It, you know. Yes, I did. You know, it's a nice looking laptop. It is. It feels good. Yeah, it's not too heavy. It's reasonably well balanced. It's metal.

So that's kind of cool. You don't see that every day in the Linux laptop. So what is missing, as far as I'm concerned, on the Librem 15? I will say there are some sharp edges on this thing. That's true. That's true. That is true. There's something missing, though, that's a pretty big deal to me.

Can you guess what it is? You're looking in the right area right now. You're warm. You're real warm, Wes. You're real warm. Well, there's no CD drive, but I don't think that's what you want. You're right. That's not it. It's got SD card. It's got USB. It's got a TCN. That's important. That is important. It's got some seemingly mysteriously unlabeled switches. Yes, it does. Unlabeled switches, hardware switches. It's got USB. It's got a DC in. That's important. That is important. It's got some seemingly mysteriously unlabeled switches.

Yes, it does. Unlabeled switches, hardware switches. It's got HDMI. Yeah. Hmm. I don't know. There's one port that's not there that's pretty important to me. Ethernet.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. There's no Ethernet. And the one I backed specifically did list Ethernet. That's a bummer. It was one of those little RJ45 drop-down ports that like is like a half port. Oh, yes, right.

Yeah, that you have to like pry open. Pry open before you can actually use it. But in the crowdfunding version, it did list Ethernet. I don't like being live on the air and relying on Wi-Fi. Relying on Wi-Fi. So that was a bit of a bummer. It was the version I got, the edition I got, no Ethernet. And I've tried to track down when the Ethernet kind of disappeared,

if it was a switch to Rev2 or not. But the initial report of Rev2, it would have Ethernet. And then there was another post where it doesn't. I have a few links in the show notes. So I was a little, you know, I... You'd probably use like a USB 3 adapter or something. Yeah, and it's one of those things where I... The only reason why I kind of mentioned it is because I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't have Ethernet because Ethernet is actually a pretty big deal to me.

I actually like gigabit speeds, not 802.11. And you want load latency for studio stuff anyway. Yeah, exactly. So that was sort of my first impression. But outside of that, the metal coloring, like this is not a small thing. Like they nailed this. Mine is not the dark metal. Mine is an exact, looks like a MacBook.

It really does. Yeah, metal. Which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's not a bad looking machine at all. A couple other things, just first impressions that jumped out at me is the version I looked at online, they had, let's see if I can pull it up here for you.

Scrolling, scrolling. They, scrolling, scrolling, they show, there it is, there it is. They show what they call the Purism Key, which is the super key, which is where the Windows key is.

That makes sure everything's pure. I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and open the laptop up, which will wake it up, so you may start hearing it. Wes, if you could just

take a look at the keyboard, what does that look like? What key? Does that super key to you look like a at the keyboard what what does that look like what key does that super key to you look like a square to you or does that look like a windows key now that looks like the windows logo chris yes i was so i was a little surprised that are you running windows on there did it come with windows no no i was a little surprised that the keyboard had a windows key not a big deal but i was expecting a hardware that's another you're gonna have to get one of those little penguins tinkers yeah yeah um the other thing that's challenging about this is the specs that they list online do not match the specs that i was shipped because i got a i got an older model

uh and and the main thing that's really jumping out at me about this one i don't know if you can hear it what's that are you is it windy in the studio chris no s uh i've woken the laptop up and so it is that's the sound it makes and it's it's loud enough west that uh like you walk into that that's that's the fan that's the laptop and i don't i i i gotta tell you you walk into a room and you can hear this thing yeah definitely i heard it when i walked in i'm gonna put it to sleep again so the sound goes down but it's very loud are you holding it up to the microphone close to it no no i'm i it put it to sleep again so the sound goes down. But it's very loud. Are you holding it up to the microphone and shaking it around? Close to it. No, no.

My mouth is much closer than the fan. I now have it off. It's very quiet when it's off. It sounds like weird noise. It sounds like what other laptops make when they're totally maxed out. Well, it might be a little weird because the gate is trying to specifically filter it out. Yeah. It sounds like you're rendering a video or something.

So that sort of almost immediately illuminates it for production use. Wes, however, brought over a mini screwdriver kit, and I'm considering opening the bottom of it and seeing if I can replace the fan. It's not driver control. At least take a look, you know. So here's what I tried to do. It ships with Pure ISM OS, and I thought,

and which is using Cinnamon for the desktop. The nice thing about that is you can actually manage the trackpad. I reloaded with Ubuntu 16.04 and did all the installations and set everything up. The only proprietary driver in use is the Intel microcode stuff. It's got

Broadwell Iris 6100 graphics. It's a 3GHz processor. There is nothing you can do thermal management wise about that fan so i i i could not there was no driver to load there was no lm sensors command there's nothing you can do it is just hard set to full blast it's wired just on maximum you probably won't have any overheating problems yeah so my hope is i'm going to pull off the bottom and see if I can replace that fan or whatever. With integrated graphics and whatnot,

I just can't imagine it needs to be running like that. Especially when you're not actively really doing it. So FreeBSDSA says the email from 4.27.15 states that the RJ45 was removed from Rev2. Yeah. Is there a UFI settings for it? Perhaps.

Go ahead, Wimpy. You had a question regarding the fan noise. No, I've got a potential solution for the fan noise. Though, Entroware ran into this fan noise problem when they were working on the same line of machines, and it's

a bug in the firmware from the ODM, and you may be able to work around this by holding the power down for like 10 seconds and hard powering off the machine and that may reset the system and the fans may correct themselves okay so i'm holding down right now chris just went to sleep when I did that, but it actually just turned off instantly. Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, that I'm willing to play around with. Yeah, that'd be great. I did go through the BIOS and look for thermal management settings and stuff like that. I found nothing there. The trackpad. Let's talk about the trackpad.

I've heard some interesting things about the trackpad online. It looks pretty big. All right alright so I'm holding it down for 10 seconds the problem is it instantly turns off and then nothing happens the trackpad's big

it works well the problem is both GNOME and Ubuntu by default they just only allow you to scroll on the very small side here

if you use Pure's MOS it comes with Cinnamon and Cinnamon's mouse control panel settings allow you to actually change it to two finger scrollinginger scrolling, which works better. Keyboard's pretty good.

The escape key on mine is a little mushy. It doesn't always register. Mushy. Yeah, my escape key doesn't always register, so I sometimes have to hit escape twice, which means sometimes I have to hit it four times. Yeah. So it's not awesome that way. But I'm holding it down for 10 seconds. Let's see what happens. Maybe grub. I'll keep it at for 10 seconds. We'll see what happens.

Maybe grub. I'll keep it at grub so it doesn't boot. Alright, so I should be about 5 seconds in. This thing's really loud. Yeah, it is. Okay. This might be like a workplace hazard. Still running. It hasn't turned off yet.

I don't know if it's going to turn off. I feel like I've been holding it for like 20 seconds. Feels like it's been like 10 minutes. Yeah, it's still going. I know Mike's listening. Mike, telegram me. There's something else we should be doing. Did it get quieter?

Is it quieter now? I don't think so. No, what I was expecting is the machine should go off, and once it's off, you can then power it on again, and it may. It's not guaranteed it may. All right, so I just let off and turn it on. Let the fans on.

No. Huh. Yeah, yeah, your GQ is loose. So FreeBSD, you have yours. What have been your initial impressions? It's not a bad piece of hardware. If I'd have seen it in the store before backing it, I probably wouldn't have bought it. All in all, it is nice, except for, like I said, the loose G key.

And, of course, when I'm running something other than PureOS, I have trackpad problems that I'm going to work on. Yeah, that's been my experience, too. Performance, pretty darn good. You thought it's been pretty performant on yours? Yeah, it performs really well. I've done some full-screen Flash movies on it with no problem. Now, Wimpy, I guess sort of the trackpad has a bit of a rep.

You know a little bit about some of its tricks already. Yeah, there's no mainline Linux kernel support for the trackpad that's in the Librems. So there's been a few of us working on a driver for the BYD trackpad, and that's currently an out-of-tree patch. And what Purism are doing is shipping a bespoke kernel with PureOS.

It has the full touch gesture support in PureOS, but if you install any other version of Linux, then it will revert to a PS2 mouse. Hence the weird scroll and stuff like that. So I have a kernel patch I can send you. Wow. Take it back like 10 years here. This is not why you buy a laptop dedicated for Linux, though.

No, this is the point. And the other thing is, you know when in the past you've you've talked about system 76 don't just take the odm equipment and stick their badge on it and ship it out the door they actually work on you know firmware and bios enhancements and all the rest of it and get bespoke changes. Right. Yeah. This is the same sort of thing that Entroware have done, and they've overcome some of these issues

that you're discussing now, like the fan, for example. And that doesn't seem to have happened here. So here's the rig I got. 8 gigabytes of RAM, 500 gigabyte SSD, which I paid a little extra for. It's supposed to have a CD-ROM and DVD.

It does not, which I don't care about. No big deal. But I'm looking at the specs I bought on Indiegogo. It is listed as having a CD and DVD-ROM. It also ships with like a 65-watt adapter, which I'm not sure is actually enough. It takes a while to charge. The nice thing is it's kind of small. I paid for a core – this is a 3 gigahertz Broadwell CPU.

Iris 6100 graphics. Eight gigabytes of RAM. I would have preferred 16. Eight gigabytes of RAM. 1920 by 1080 display. I paid $1,824 for this machine. If I was going to spend $1,800 on a machine today, you could guarantee it's going to come with Skylake.

You could guarantee... Probably at least $16 for RAM. Mm-hmm. Maybe dedicated graphics at $1,800. You might get that, too. Now, is it going to be something that has hardware switches for a webcam? Is it going to have something that has hardware switches for the mic and stuff like that? I actually do really like that.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. And I also like the idea of supporting a company who is pushing the conversation about privacy and security forward, and it's their primary leading cause. So those are things that my money went towards that I still like. Basically where I'm at right now with this thing is it has a strange USB-C port that I wasn't expecting. Yes, I saw that. That's interesting. I don't know.

You see, it didn't come with any documentation. So there's no manual. There's no – Naked in the box, and it's a very generic box. In fact, when I got the box, I immediately started to feel like, oh, no. Like I immediately started like this. It was starting to set my expectations low because the box was used. The sit and finish kind of thing.

It had like five or ten other FedEx stickers on it. And there was not even like a brochure in the box, right? It was no documentation, nothing. No thank you for backing our project. Sorry it took so long, nothing. And so that sort of was like, eh, I'm a little worried about that. That all aside though,

like one of the things I would have liked to have in the box is what is this USB-C port? Because the one I backed doesn't have this port. The one I backed, where this port's at, was an Ethernet port. So, and is this USB, can I charge the device with this? Is it real USB-C? It's USB-C port. And is this USB? Can I charge the device with this? Is it real USB? It's USB-C with an electricity bolt.

Does that mean I can actually draw power from that port? Like what does that do? And I got nothing. I got no – there's also – there's questions if this is actually HDMI 2.0 or not. I'm not sure about that. Those are issues. Have you tried the SD card slot? No.

But I think the other thing I like is it looks like perhaps that's a physical switch for the SD card slot? no if I can but I think the other thing I like is it looks like perhaps that's a physical switch for the SD card slot oh wow perhaps physically turn it off I'm not sure

if I could get the fan replaced this is a pretty the thing I do like about this is it is a it is a damn unique one off laptop yes it is and it is

it looks pretty special wherever you are with it it's a great showcase for a lot of really good stickers because it's completely unbranded all over. It really draws your eye. There's no, like, big Mac logo or Dell logo. No Intel sticker, no nothing.

In fact, the only sticker on the bottom is a UPC barcode, a small one. And other than that, it is untouched. It is a metal housing that is untouched. It feels good in the hand. It has that MacBook Angular slope to it. Yes, it does. It's got one, two, three, four USB 3.0 ports. That's pretty good.

Plus the USB-C port. It's like four times as many on that MacBook. HDMI out, and it has headphones out, and it has an SD card slot reader. I like that. This could, you know, my XPS 13 doesn't have an Ether port, or I'm sorry, doesn't have an Ethernet port either. Right. If I can get this fan fixed, this could replace the XPS for me. But it can't, I don't know if it can be a production machine without.

The lightning bolt by the Type-C port means it may support Thunderbolts, says North Ranger. Is that true, North? Is that really? Yeah, a lot of vendors, especially if you have a Broadwell system, are using an Intel add-on chip in the chipset that provides not only Type-C port, Type-C USB support, but also 40-gig Thunderbolt, things like external graphics cards. That would be – I was about to say that. If I could hook up – see, that would make me feel a lot better if I could hook up like a high-end Ethernet adapter to that USB-C port. Here's FreeBSD. He sent this to me when he got his.

There he was listening to episode 131 of Unplugged where we're like, where the hell is my laptop? And there's his purism right there. What was your out-of-the-box experience like, FreeBSD? Was it the same kind of like rattle experience or did you get some documentation? Did you get a nice, what was your initial experience like? Yeah, documentation non-existent. I haven't played with the hardware switches yet to figure out what they turn off, but it would be nice if there was some information. I even looked on the hard drive to see if there was documentation in the form of a PDF and I don't see anything on there.

All right, so I'm turning it back on. I'm going to check. There's proof. Yeah. Wimpy wanted to know if the BIOS, I want to give peers some credit here. The BIOS is like every setting you could ever want to tweak is available. That's cool. Some OEMs, you know, when they, like, basically all of them,

they really kind of limit down the BIOS. And this one, you know, you can tweak everything from overclocking to everything. So, that being said,

there's so much in here it actually takes a little while to find stuff. I'm looking through here right now, and I don't know if I see Bluetooth, chipset,

security. Look at all this stuff, Wes. I mean, look at all, and all of these have submen menus to them too like there's just a ton of stuff in here yeah what specifically are you looking for wimpy

um does it have a bluetooth device in it and the reason i'm asking you to look in the BIOS. Well, I believe it's a BIOS, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it has a BIOS. Is because I'm not sure if the Bluetooth device that's in the machine is supported by Linux,

so it may not show up. Oh, I could... I don't see anything in the BIOS, but you know what I'll do is I'll boot into Antigros Arch, which boots... I mean, one thing, by the way, but you know what I'll do is I'll boot into Antigros Arch, which boots... I mean, one thing, by the way, is once Linux is installed, this thing freaking flies. It is nice to have a nice modern computer again.

I tell you, it's been a little while since I've had it. It looks like you've got that Samsung SSD in there. And that thing is fast. So I'll see. I can log in right now, Wimpy. It just boots that fast. I'm already booted, and I'm already in GNOME system settings. So I will take a...

It does look like it supports UEFI right it must, yeah it does actually look at that, it's discovering the bluetooth devices it is discovering the bluetooth devices around me right now, so it must have bluetooth in it alright, okay, cool, that works then, that's great yeah, cool that was something that they'd mentioned

may not work at some point in the past so they must have changed their you know, I haven't tried the webcam either. Let me try the webcam real quick. Yeah, webcam works. Hey, look, that's me. Hey, look, Wes, there's you. See?

Well, it's me. Yeah, webcam. So the webcam works. That's good. Frame rate's a little low, but I'm going to keep playing with it. I think my next big task is see if I can alter that fan. And then on top of that, I'm going to just benchmark the shit out of this thing.

I mean, it's already going to sound super loud, so you might as well make it do some work. Yeah. Well, it's funny how mentally, in the back of my mind, I associate loud laptop with high CPU usage. So after I'd been working on this thing for about 20 minutes, I was sort of just getting in the flow of things. And I remember thinking, I stopped my work phone and go, why is my computer working so hard? Oh, wait, no, no. No, no, it's fine.

It's fine. Yeah. So if anybody knows anything about the fan noise, I would love to hear your- If we could get that solved, I mean. Yeah, yeah. But that side, I'm going to put that aside. I'm going to keep working with it

and see what kind of things I can get done with it. So just to recap, I paid $1,800 for this thing. It did ship 286 days late. It was originally expected to ship on April 2015. I backed it in November of 2015, I believe. November 22nd, 2015, I believe, is when I backed it. I'm sorry, 2014. 2014, right.

Sorry. I wouldn't necessarily buy it today. But that said, I think it would be interesting. Like, I'm picturing bringing it to conferences and whatnot. You would, you know, it might be a pretty good machine, especially if you can just a little quieter. And the feel in the hand is good. The hinge is good on the laptop screen.

And it's nice to have something that feels like that. Yes. And it's not, oh, I bought a MacBook and I put Linux on it. It's like, this is something totally different. Yes, exactly. So that's exactly how I'm feeling right now about it. So this is the Rev2. Oh, one more thing I wanted to show you, which I'm not super happy with. I'm going to talk more about this on last, and I'll have visuals to show you guys.

It does have a backlit keyboard, and all of the Fn keys work, but I want to show you what the backlit keyboard looks like, Wes. Hold on a second. It's not working. Oh, there you go. So the keys are backlit, but the actual letters themselves are not translucent. So there's light around the keys, but you can't actually... It doesn't seem like that would be that bright at night. It doesn't work, because the keys themselves are black objects in the night,

and there's just light around them. There's basically an LED light behind the keyboard, but the keys themselves are black objects in the night and there's just light around them the keys have there's basically an led light behind the keyboard but the keys themselves so if you were concerned about where the keyboard was it would help you find that but not the individual keys exactly just you know yeah they were confused about that exactly so if you ever need to find your keyboard it can it can do that pretty well but you can't find individual keys so uh i guess the at the end of the day i would say if i was betting the farm on a laptop right now and that was my machine i could make it work but i would be very disappointed how about a little follow-up on the libram i still have the libram. I have a lot of thoughts on it, so let's talk about the Librem and the Apollo. So, as you may have been aware, Wes, last week, after 445 days of waiting, I had a chance

to try out the Purism Librem 15. Ultimate Linux laptop. And I don't know if, you know what, to get the timing right on this, we're going to go to the horse's mouth directly here just for a moment. But my recollection goes down like this. In the time since I backed the Purism, a company I'd never heard of called Entroware has come around and has started shipping laptops, preloaded, by the way, with Ubuntu Mate.

And they have a couple of different products out there. We'll talk more about that in a sec. But the one that I want to talk about today is Intrawear's Apollo laptop. I think it starts at base price around 700 US greenbacks, somewhere around there, depending on the conversion rate. It is a 13-inch laptop. And I have it here in my hands. And they sent me a version of the Apollo, pretty well specced, to see how it stacks up to the Librem 15 and others in terms of build quality, performance, and all of that.

So I have it here. I have had it for about 24 hours. And before we go any further, I want to introduce Mike from Entroware. Mike, welcome to Linux Unplugged, and tell the folks listening what you do over there at Entroware. What is that title of yours? Hi, I'm the co-founder of Entroware, and we build Linux computers for the UK at the moment and soon Europe. And the Apollo arrived on my doorstep yesterday, and it is a 13 inch laptop very similar in in sort of a look to say a macbook air or um or really the apollo 15 only or i'm sorry the libra 15 only um 13 inches very very

very good build quality and so uh mike i'm just curious i i don't actually think are you selling these in the u.s at the moment uh no we're not selling them in the U.S. at the moment? No, we're not selling them in the U.S. for a while. The reason why yours has got a U.S. keyboard layout is because we're going to be shipping them to some EU countries because they also use that layout. Oh, I see. I got you. So a little bit about the Apollo, if you would. Can you give me some background on how this computer came to be and any kind of interesting details about the Apollo? Yeah, we started selling Linux computers about a year and a half ago, maybe two.

We got a lot of requests for an Ultrabook. We just found an ODM in China where we could have them built and shipped over. an ODM in China where we could have them built and shipped over. It is... You make it sound so simple, but what I find to be remarkable about it, and this is something that every single person that I have put this in their hands has said,

is it feels really, really sturdy, really well built. And they also, people often tell me it feels a little heavy, which I think adds to that it feels well built. And they also, people often tell me it feels a little heavy, which I think adds to that it feels well built. Right. And so I'm curious how, was it a matter of finding the right builder?

What is it that Entraware has been able to accomplish here when it comes to build quality that other vendors sort of in the space maybe haven't gotten to? Um... Does it just happen to be the partner builds a good machine? Because, I mean, it seems, feel-wise, it's pretty significantly well-built. Yeah, so we approached a few people, and these were one of the few that did solid aluminium chassis.

So we chose them, obviously, because they had bad build quality. And then the keyboard also. I don't know what the processors have selected in the keyboard, but versus some of the others, the keyboard is pretty nice too. And it feels good in the hand. The keys are actually translucent, so the backlighting shines through, which is nice. And the fan isn't running crazy loud. The fan actually seems to properly cool the machine,

which was a nice surprise when I took it out of the box. Was there any particular tricks you guys had to pull to make this thing work properly with Linux, or was it all pretty easy? Well, at first, the first revision we had, there was a few problems with the fan. But we had the mind out in the firmware, so that's now gone. Yeah,

I would agree. So if there was definitely some problems with the fan, if you ran into the same problems I did, so if I wipe the OS that this came loaded with, will the fan still work fine, or will it stop working normally? No, it works exactly the same as what it's doing now. So it's firmware level then. It's totally hardware level.

Well, that's awesome. That's great. I got it. So my first impressions of this are this is one of the most well-built laptops I've ever held. Would you agree with me? Oh, yeah. I really want one now. Yeah. So it's got one, two USB 3 ports plus USB-C. It's got an SD card slot reader, full-size HDMI out, and a headphone jack.

Enterware was kind enough to include a USB Ethernet adapter in the box, too, because there's no USB Ethernet on this. It's got a 13-inch screen, 1080p resolution on it, two hard drives, a 500-gigabyte spinning for the home and a 120-gigabyte SSD for the root. Yeah, two hard drives in a 13-inch laptop, too. Mike, that's a pretty impressive spec, a Skylake Intel processor, and it's silent. I haven't heard it sound since I've been here. Yeah, that's a pretty impressive piece of hardware. Are the Apollo cells meeting your expectations? Yeah, they keep growing as we get more publicity on them, because they are really good for the

price. Yeah, a base $700. Now, the base $700, I think has like an i3 and 4 gigs of RAM, but you just bring it up from there. Yeah, that's right. And then Mike, could you talk a little bit about the choice to work with Ubuntu Mate? What drove that, and how's that going?

Well, it was approached by Martin about a year ago, and we just added back in that, and how's that going? Well, it was approached by Martin about a year ago, and we just had a back-and-to, and I was a big fan of the project, so it was obviously a good move to start shipping the Marm machines. Yeah, it feels fast. It's my first experience with it. When you get a machine with a nice, fast Skylake processor and plenty of RAM, and then you throw the Mate desktop on there

with the Ubuntu base, it feels really snappy. Just ready to go. Yeah, and the battery life, I don't have numbers yet, but the battery life has been pretty good, and I think part of that is because the desktop environment

just isn't really very demanding. So you feel like you get a nice performing computer with a very reasonable modern desktop. Plus, you get someone like Entroware here, where they're a company, right? So if you have problems longer term, you know they're going to be around to support them and to fix them. So the number one question, Mike, that everybody in the chat room has is,

how likely and possible is it for Intraware to eventually start selling in the US? Is that a possibility for you guys, or is that just a lot of trouble? It is a possibility, but we're going to wait for a few more, a larger amount of orders before we start shipping over there. We're going to make sure all of the use started first. Yeah, you get it nailed there,

that makes a lot of sense. We'll have to work on a JB group order. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, a group order. This thing is, boy, I can't wait to just keep trying it over the week. This is going to just keep trying it over the week. This is going to be my main machine for the week. It seems like a great little just getting stuff done laptop. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to putting it through its paces.

So far, it sounds like it's silent. And silent is a big deal for me. So I'm really happy about that. And one thing I may be continuing to troubleshoot, and I don't know if it's just the Wi-Fi here or what, but I've had a couple of Wi-Fi issues where either the transfer rate has been real bad, like I'm talking like I'm getting 2,000 millisecond pings, or it just won't find the network. But in both cases, it actually could be interference. So I'm going to take it out to a known good location where I only have one Wi-Fi access point.

There's no other Wi-Fi access points around or access eyes and see if I have any issues. But so far, other than that. And then with the Ethernet adapter, of course, I've had zero problems. And Ubuntu Mate has been pretty great too. I really like the design. Because it's a little bit smaller than the Librem, it feels a little tighter. There's a notch where you put your finger that kind of is reminiscent of the way the MacBooks do it.

Which looks nice. It really all comes together. It's got a bottom plate that could be removed with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 screws. So you remove 12 little Phillips screws and it looks like the bottom plate would come off. It seems like such a good laptop.

Like, you show up at a conference, and it's just a little different, and you've got it running Linux, and it works well. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I really like it. And I'm really, really happy that the keys are actually,

the letters are translucent, so the backlit key light actually shines through the keys, which is nice. Because otherwise, it's kind of pointless to have the backlighting. Mike, is there anything else you want to add about the Apollo before we move on? No, that's it. Very good, sir. And Wimpy, was there anything you wanted to add?

Any thoughts? I'd like to add. Yeah. Yeah. Mike's being far too modest. Mike has a partnership with a company that you'd be very interested in hearing about, I think. Tell me more.

They're Valve Partners. Valve? Okay, Mike. Are you burying the lead here? Hold on, we have ourselves a little Valve story. I've got to hear it. Tell me about it. Yeah, so we're official Valve Partners, so we're going to be building a steam machine shipping them out in a few months ah very cool uh have you have you already begun testing

come on now are you a gamer mike yeah we had one uh prototype uh i'll count this year for people to use and i got a good reaction. So, Mike, I've got to say, I don't know a lot about Entraware. My initial impressions are you guys are very clever. So it struck me just in the name of this device. It's a pretty great device, and you went with the name Apollo, which, when I say Apollo, Wes, what's the next thing you think of? Fast.

Oh, you do? Well, I don't know. I think 13. I think Apollo 13. Oh, 13. Right. And what is this? A 13-inch Mac. Yeah. It's a 13-inch laptop. It's brilliant. I mean, it shows you a little bit of the... To me, I think it just sort of demonstrates a little bit of the thought that goes into it is it's an Apollo 13.

But, of course, the product name is just Apollo because the 13 just sort of comes naturally. It's part of it. And it makes you think, what laptop did Chris get? He got that Apollo. And how big was it? Oh, yeah, it was 13 inches, Apollo 13. That's clever. Yeah, and the 15 should be called Creed.

No. No, nothing ever gets called Creed. That's clever. Yeah, and the 15 should be called Creed. No, nothing ever gets called Creed. That has been banned. But yeah, so I think it's pretty good. Kitson, you had something you wanted to add to go ahead, sir. When you said Apollo, I actually

thought art and illumination like the Roman slash Greek god. Yeah, okay, alright, okay, all right, okay, fine. Not everybody thinks Apollo 13. But it does have proper backlit keys, so Illumination is accurate. All right, okay, fine, fine. All those are good.

See, it's a clever name. Nonetheless, it is a clever name. So I have a – if you're listening to the audio version and you're curious, what the hell does this thing look like? And probably a lot of you are listening to the audio version. In the show notes, I have a link to an album I took up at my campsite. If you're listening to the audio version and you're curious, what the hell does this thing look like? And probably a lot of you are listening to the audio version. In the show notes, I have a link to an album I took up at my campsite. And I posted pictures of it because I was like, hey, you know what?

You know what makes a good background for photos? The frickin' Pacific Northwest. Yes, it does. It's a pretty good-looking state. So Washington is. So I put that up there. And, yes, it does have an Ubuntu button. Actually, it's a Mate button.

So that's pretty cool. Yeah, I like seeing you can customize that right on the website. That's great. Yeah, yeah. And it's a sticker, but it's a translucent sticker. So it doesn't block the light, which makes it pretty. Get that attention to detail. Yeah, it is. It's very well done.

So right now I'm running Ubuntu Mate 15.10 or Mate or whatever edition on there. I may stick with that. I don't know what exactly it is, but this particular hardware has made me also want to just see what it would be like to have elementary OS on it, just to kind of go all the way. I don't know, though, because the thing is right now for testing, Ubuntu makes such a great

low-key desktop environment that it's like you just get all of the machine's performance out of it. So I just don't know about it. Wimpy, you had one more comment. Go ahead. Yeah, the version of Ubuntu Mate that you're running there is actually sort of Ubuntu Mate 15.12. Really?

So, yeah, yeah. So what you've got there is Ubuntu mate 1510 and then i worked with mike to get the mate 1.12 desktop on there rather than mate 1.10 and the reason i did that is because in mate 1.12 we introduced um in the control panels two finger, three finger touch configuration options. Yes, and I do really appreciate that. Yeah, so that's why we've just given you a slightly custom

version. So if I reloaded the OS, I might not get the trackpad configuration stuff? No, the trackpad works on all OSes, but Barte didn't have two and three finger touch options until just recently. That is actually exceptionally nice

because it's a good-sized trackpad, and when you go into the mouse settings in Mate, you can say two fingers down is a right click or in the corner is a right click. I want to scroll by touching the right side of the trackpad i want to scroll by using two fingers like all of that is available for you wow yeah really nice so that's good to know yeah i think i might stick with it i i just i really have very little reason to replace it once i have it all set up it really works super good the only thing i might want to replace it with yeah sorry i was going to say you'll be fine

when you go with antergos as well, because I know Mike runs Arch. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Cool. And, you know, I was also thinking, all the other things I might do is I might do the 16.04 version of Ubuntu Mate. Yeah. Yeah, and just do that.

And that would likely still have the configuration options, right, for my trackpad? Yeah, that's all built into 16.04. Boom. Boom. I loves it. I have not done the distro balance the chat room was asking. So, yeah, there they go.

But I might by the time LAS comes around. I think if all goes as planned, this will be my review for LAS and we'll compare it to the two. I might try to do some performance stuff. Yeah, you should. questions or even better yet suggestions of ways to benchmark a system like this that actually produce information that we care about and that is relevant I would love to know that. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. You can link

the benchmarks there or something like that. Oh, okay. So Wimpy, I will absolutely have to have Loki if I want to try it on this machine. Why is that? Yeah, because elementary is based on 1404 right which doesn't have sky lake support right right and loki's based on 1604 yeah okay all right well 15 10 or better see somebody's got to make me a loki i so

just because it looks like it looks like if you uh here's my thinking right you put that on here and then you go to like a mall or somewhere and you say, look at the new MacBook. What do you think? See what they say. It's your inner prankster. And, you know, before we walk away and say, oh, it's a big MacBook ripoff, I want to actually make sure I'm clear. When I look at it, I actually don't get the impression that it's trying to rip off from the MacBook. What I get the impression of is aluminum makes pretty good material for this. Exactly.

And when you make a 13-inch machine, there's only so much room. I actually, in some ways, I would say there's potential the keyboard may be better than the MacBook keyboard. I'm going to type some more and tell you the truth if that's – I don't know about the trackpad, but the keyboard I think might be better. And this thing with one, two, three USB ports, I think outclasses the MacBook in terms of connectivity, plus a dedicated HDMI out port and an SD card slot reader. This thing might outclass the MacBook in connectivity, but I'm not sure about that. And so I don't actually – I think it's selling it short to say, oh, it's copying the MacBook. I think what it is, it's taking design cues from a good design. But it also, I think, is its own product, very much its own product.

And I like it a lot. That is my – that's my first impression. If you want to check out some pictures, go to the show notes. And if you've got ideas on things you want me to do to test it, let me know. So Skylake has got Intel graphics. So we'll see what happens. We've got two drives in there. Those are some significant pieces of hardware for this

year, and it's interesting to look back at those reviews now. Next, we're going to talk about another piece of hardware that was way more important for everyone else out there. I actually got one myself, but first I want to thank DigitalOcean for sponsoring this episode of the Unplugged program. Use our promo code D-O-Unplugged.

After you create an account, you just apply it, and you get a $10 credit. Now, that's awesome because you can run serious workhorses for like $0.03 an hour or just run a machine for $5 a month. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way for you to spin up an awesome Linux rig when you want it on their infrastructure, which is all backed by SSDs, KVM for the virtualizer, Linux for the host system, 40 gigabit e-connections into the hypervisor. I'm talking this is a serious infrastructure wrapped up with the industry's best interface and most straightforward API. It's unbelievable the pricing.

They have data centers all over the world, entire Linux systems or just the base system. And with Fedora 25, too, DigitalOcean.com. Just add our promo code DLUnplugged to your account and get a $10 credit and support our show. DigitalOcean.com, DLUnplugged. And thanks to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program for all of 2016. DLUnplugged, one word. The Raspberry Pi

3. Wow. What an interesting device. And I ended up getting one pretty quickly to try out a few different projects on it. Okay. So, the Raspberry Pi 3 has landed. Wait, what?

Oops. Sorry. I think I just dropped it down the toilet. Hold on. It's so small. It is going to be 35 US bones. Has a 64-bit CPU, is my understanding, but it ships with a 32-bit version of the OS. Two USB ports on that thing.

What's that right there? Go ahead, go ahead. Jump in any time. Bluetooth, by the way, Wi-Fi like we've had before, and four USB ports, if I'm correct. Yeah. So, Whippy, can you say how long have you had this? A little bit, right?

Since Friday last week. Oh, oh, oh, oh. So you've obviously been working on this thing, trying to get Ubuntu Mate desktop, working on it. What were your initial impressions of the hardware when you sat down to work with it? It looks, well, it is the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi 2 and the Raspberry Pi B+. So, you know, the number of ports and its size and its arrangement is almost identical. There's one minor change, and that's the location of the led lights but other than that it looks it looks like a raspberry pi um i hooked it up uh tried to boot my existing image for ubuntu mate and got a very colorful rainbow screen which basically meant uh

do not pass go um so yeah then started work on making it work once i got it working uh that it's obvious where uh the before the performance improvements come really with this device yeah yeah across across the board and in some unexpected places as well um so uh it's uh got a new uh sock so it's a broadcom 2837 it called 1.2 gigahertz it's an arm v8 uh cortex a53 it's clocked at 1.2 gigahertz which is up from 900 megahertz as the stock clock on the pi 2 um and by and large more or less just about everything is about 50 quicker on the pi 3 compared to the pi 2 um so you see that in everything in terms of the responsiveness of the applications but where you really notice it is it really starts to close the gap in terms of things like if you've got a web browser open and you're scrolling um you know the web pages that's much more fluid now much more fluid um and uh so you've you've mentioned that there's

there's bluetooth and there's wi-fi now so they're integrated uh on the sock um they're using a broadcom uh four three four three something chip um and the interesting thing here is that in the past one of the criticisms of the raspberry pi was that the uh the sd host controller and the ethernet was that the SD host controller and the Ethernet were on the same USB bus. Right. So if you were doing a file copy over Ethernet, the performance could really take a dive. The Wi-Fi is implemented on the SOC

and on its own MMC controller and not on the USB bus. Now, I haven't tested this yet. This is what I want to test. But my working hypothesis is it should move data around quicker over Wi-Fi than it can over Ethernet. Hmm. It's a good excuse not to bother trying to find an Ethernet

plug for it. That would be pretty cool. That would be pretty damn impressive. Okay, so the hardware impressions. I mean, a 50% improvement across the board. That is damn impressive. I like that a lot. I'm kind of curious to see how that might actually play out with multitasking and things like that.

How did that translate, Wimpy, for you when getting whatever you needed to do to make Ubuntu Mate work on the Raspberry Pi 3? Because two things jump out at me. Number one is you kind of had to go back and retrofit the released version of Ubuntu Mate to make it work, right? Because you couldn't just say, well, go, if you want to make it work, go use 16.04.

Or did you? No, because there wasn't much time to do this i went with the build system i had for 1510 okay because aside from the new you know feature enablement i knew the rest of the thing worked so you know minimize things that said i still only got about six hours sleep between friday and and sunday working on this last down to the wire yeah yeah yeah but to your credit you got it right out on release day so that looked pretty good and that's impressive yeah yeah it needs some work so um despite the um assistance i got from the raspberry pi foundation over the weekend so they they had some engineering assistance mostly from phil elwell who who's just

been brilliant um i haven't got the bluetooth working in uh on the raspberry pi 3 for ubuntu mate yet um but i'm yet to hear and maybe over the next couple of days we'll start to hear i haven't heard if anyone's got bluetooth working at all yet that it's a bit it's a bit complicated to get going and i was sort of groping around in the dark a little bit because i was sort of being drip fed oh you need this binary blob and uh and i'm nice this still doesn't go and then oh no you need this this blob as well which patches that other and now you need these patches for this so it was all good because i got all the information but i just couldn't quite get the thing to enable the bluetooth so i've decided just to sit back for a few days and see if nobody else

with the official with the official images yeah so i'm going to start taking a look at the new images so today um this evening i downloaded all of the new packages that have gone into the raspberry and archive to do with bluetooth and firmware and i'm sort of picking through those to see if there's anything different uh that i may have missed or overlooked so bluetooth will come in in due course and it will be delivered via an update i should think very good okay now there is another thing about the uh the raspberry pi all right do share that the raspberry pi 3 that I think is probably more important. I think the Raspberry Pi 3 itself is the hors d'oeuvre.

This is not the main event. So in the Pi 3 the video core, the graphics processor has been upclocked. So the video core was running at 250 MHz. It now runs at 400. And the So the video core was running at 250 megahertz.

It now runs at 400. And the 3D graphics processor was running at 250 and now runs at 300. Okay. One of the benefits of that is that you can now run 1080p video at 60 frames per second. Nice. Which is good. And the other thing is that there's been an awful lot of work going on behind the scenes at the Raspberry Pi Foundation to do all of the uh graphics enablement in kernel mode setting

and direct rendering manager and Mesa and Gallium and that's sort of experimental at the moment but i have had it working for brief periods of time and when that works it's a game changer because you can turn on the open gl renderer in vlc and get smooth video playback in vlc nice not the rather clunky can't quite keep up software version and you can also you can also uh run open gl accelerated software providing open gl versions match up so if you've ever played never ball or never putt i've had that running full screen 60 frames per second, no problem. And there are other examples of where that... On the Pi 3? On the Pi 3, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. That is a big deal. So when that lands properly, it's GLES, Warheads. GLES is the implementation for the Pi 3. warheads dles is the implementation for the pi3 but when that lands later in the year as a fully finished thing that takes an awful lot of burden off the cpu and i think that is where this sort of pseudo desktop use case really comes into its own and will start to grow because using things like composited desktops becomes a reality and alleviates burden from the CPU.

This is good. Yeah, but as it is, it makes a very usable desktop experience. I mean, imagine if for $35 you could buy a computer and plug in a USB microphone and join a mumble room and have a podcast just like we are now. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is all plugged into a Raspberry Pi 3. That is great.

Oh, Libby. Drop the bomb. Well played, sir. Well played. You know, I was going to ask you if you think this is – I mean, wow. I mean, there you go. Podcasting is – that's probably something you can barely even do from a tablet. I mean, you can, but it's – I just – when I see this, $35 Wimpy, isn't that a big part of the Raspberry Pi 3 is the performance for the price?

It's not $50. It's not even $45. It's 35 US greenbacks. And that seems like that sort of is a game changer. And your downloads must be bearing that out. Yeah, yeah. I haven't looked since the new images have gone up. I'll check in a week or so to see how things are going.

But, yeah, so the Raspberry Pi is known to be something that, you know, retails for $35. Well, or at least the traditional ones is obviously the zero now for $5. And as I understand it, they're trying to keep that $35 price point. So they will introduce features to that price rather than just introduce features because they can, which I think is kind of neat because, you know, it's always going to be $35. Yeah, it keeps the expectation. Yeah. Yeah, it's a step change in performance, definitely.

And I think that it's very early now. You know, we're in day two. Right. I think, you know, a few months from now, we'll be able to see the full, hopefully the full potential. A smart move, though, on their part, to keep the form factor, right? By keeping the form factor the same,

like, groups like Mycroft, though, like Mycroft saying, hey, we're now doing the testing, and if everything works out, we're just going to include the Raspberry Pi 3 in with the Mycroft units because it just snaps right in. Bam! Upgrade. Don't you think that's a big deal? It's the same price. Yes.

I think that's a huge deal. I think that means that people that are building things, I mean, for predictability like that, when you're building something, right, to have that kind of predictability, that's important. Now, for others, there might be other boards out there, but for some of us, that is a huge component just right there. $35, about the same form factor.

I can snap it in. When you buy it, probably the same software you used before will just install to it. I think it's pretty neat. Any other thoughts, Wimpy? Well, the only other major change that sort of just juxtaposes what you've said is that it does require slightly more power now. So in the past, 1.8 amp or 2 amp power was recommended.

So that's a bit of a twist, yeah. Now it's 2.4 amp. So if you've got existing power supplies that were kind of on the edge of being acceptable, chances are you're going to need a new power supply. I use an Atrix lap dock to connect Pi 2 to work on them, and I'm pleased to say that that still powers the Pi 3. Yeah, I mean, 2.4 amps is not too uncommon.

So, yeah. Also, if a Mate or Raspbian isn't your flavor, Windows 10, look at this, Wes, Windows 10 Internet of Things Core for Raspberry Pi 3 is out. There's even a video. Look at this, Wes. Windows 10 Internet of Things Core for Raspberry Pi 3 is out. There's even a video. Look at this right here. It's Windows

powering a wheel. Like a hamster. Go, Windows, go. Just like the hamster. It's learning, Chris. You gotta be nice. So Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi 3 controlling a closed loop wheel. You ready for this, Wes? Raspberry Pi 3 running Windows 10 IoT Core. The wheel represents a common situation

in robotics when you need to know exactly how fast a robot's going or how far it's traveling. Here I have a display connected to the Raspberry Pi 3. You can see the speed of the wheel, the speed I've chosen, and the power output to the motor. I just can't ever imagine why you would want the overhead of Windows for such a simple task.

It's just, that's never gonna, that's never a value argument you're going to win. It's crazy. Absolutely. But, you know what? Go to Microsoft for trying. It's going to be the people who already have all that chain there. What do you think, Wimpy? What do you think?

Oh, that's cute and everything, but let's see them come on a podcast. We're using a Raspberry Pi 3. That's right. Raspberry Pi 3 is a nice piece of kit, but what about getting software installed on your distro of choice? Let's take a moment. Let's talk about 16.04 and Snap packages. Now, there are many things to discuss in regards to this review, and I want to cover all of them as much as we can.

If you have not had a chance, it's not a prerequisite, but I would invite you to listen to Episode 413 or watch Episode 413 of the Linux Action action show where we did our review and uh just as a background because i don't know if i really went into this in the show or not but uh basically every machine in my life except for that one right there that bonobo got reloaded to ubuntu 1604 wow kubuntu edition was the one i ran with the longest and then i put the neon packages on there because I loves me the fresh neon. And I guess actually going back further, it really started the day I got the Apollo.

Yep. I got really excited by what a good implementation Ubuntu Mate 15.10 on the Apollo was. And then as soon as it felt reasonable, I brought that up to 16.04. And then I started bringing all my other machines to 16.04. One by one. Yeah. And so I spent a real solid month in Ubuntu, which for me was a big transition again going back. Yeah, I hear you there.

But part of the reason I wanted to do it is because I really wanted to spend – when you just do it for a couple of days, you get totally overwhelmed by all the little rough edges that are just different. You know, just because it's not comfortable and familiar, it just, it feels abrasive. But if you actually spent time with it, you learn, oh yeah, I do it this way, this now. Learn the true character of what it's like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I really wanted to give it its due. And so when we walked away, I walked away with some impressions that I had reflected on for that whole month.

And those definitely took the stage of the review. do. And so when we walked away, I walked away with some impressions that I had reflected on for that whole month. And those definitely took the stage of the review, I think, the bulk of the stage. But there's a lot of things covered in the 1604 review. And I was curious, Wes, why don't we do this? If you'd be up for this. Let's get your impressions

sort of at the top. Then let's go to the Mumble Room, get some of their updates and follow-up and their impressions. And then towards the end of this shenanigans, let's talk about some of the things that have changed already or fixed already since Sunday's episode of the show. So like a full spectrum coverage. So as follow-up to our 16.04 review,

Wes, what are your sort of out-of-the-first-gate impressions of this brand-new LTS release? Okay, so for context, both in work and kind of at home, I both skipped at work the 14.04 release, and then I used that at home, but I didn't use too much of 15. I guess this is kind of like, for you, a huge upgrade. Yeah, it really is a huge upgrade that's an interesting perspective so you've been stuck at 1204 for years and a majority you know i use some 1404 i do have like one system at 1510 but but yes there's a lot of 1204 and so there there's so much new and so much i'm excited about i mean i've used ubuntu on systemd before but i just i love doing you know system control status and just seeing that breakdown it I'm really excited to see it at servers

on work. Now, did you play with the in-between ones? Yeah, I played with them a little bit. You just didn't use them widespread. Yeah, I didn't really deploy them anywhere. And I'm kind of in the same boat. I traditionally just stick to the LTSs. Right.

It seems like a good point right now where once it's out, it'll have fresh packages for quite some time, and then you have the snap packages, and you have ZFS right there. Have you played with ZFS on 16.04? I haven't on 16.04, but I've used it, you know, building it myself or loading

it myself, installing it third-party on earlier versions. I'm really excited also about LXD 2.0, which just came out. I like LXD, I0, which just came out. I like LXD. I like that model, and Ubuntu supports it very well. So do you use a lot of other desktop environments other than just Unity? Yeah, I almost never use Unity, really.

So I'm trying it out right now. It's not bad. The animations are pretty slick, and I've seen the touch-ups from what I'm used to, especially seeing it work a lot of the deployments I've done before. Unity's nice, but normally I use Cinnamon a lot for Linux Mint, or I use a Tiling window manager. But I'm really excited for just having, I feel like 16.04 will be a release I can deploy in

almost every part of my life. The places where I don't need first-hand management or where Arch doesn't make the most sense, maybe for less minimal stuff, but anywhere where I just need a general Linux where I know that the packages will be what I need, especially with Snap packages, there'll be a way to get the software that I want and I can figure out the way I need.

I'm really excited. Yeah, that's sort of my takeaway too. And I kind of wanted to... I joked a lot during the live stream, but I actually am kind of curious on Popey's take for it because – not just because he works with Ubuntu and works at Canonical but honestly because he's obviously been following this for a long time and has good insight on this. And I wonder too if maybe these are some of the elements that he's excited about. And I know I've kind of asked him to dance it like a monkey before on this topic. But I know that the Snap packages are sort of the weakest area of coverage in our review,

and it's sort of, I feel like, the biggest long-term ramifications of 16.04. And so, I don't know, Poppy, do you have any sort of take on our review and thoughts on it and maybe thoughts on Snap packages specifically? Can't talk, Chris. I'm busy playing games on 16.04. Nice. Yeah, okay. You know what uh that's another thing is it is a great platform for steam games yeah i kid i'm joking um i was actually playing yeah i believe you um but uh yeah the snap stuff you know when i first heard about this a couple years ago

um i was kind of skeptical because the guy who was telling me about this was outside a hotel. You know, we'd all had an intro to what Snappy was, and only a few people had been involved in what it was going to be. And I didn't quite get it. And it's only now that I realize how many people depend on things like AUR in Arch or self-updating applications like Chrome and other things that just sort themselves out and nobody has to worry about it, right? And we used to think that PPAs were a marvelous way to get stuff to users,

but actually it's quite abrasive to get from, you know, I want to have the latest version of whatever Atom or, you know, Sublime or whatever, whether it's free software or proprietary. It's quite abrasive to get from I want that thing to getting that thing. And I think Snap can make that a whole lot easier and also make it so that you can have the latest version of stuff up to date all the time on your system. And that is compelling for a lot of people. Yeah, extremely. And I know every year I talk to Frank about this problem from own cloud. And I'm really curious this year to say, what do you think about this?

What are your thoughts on this? I know they're relying right now on the OpenSUSE build service. And so one of the things that we kept going around and around about is this seems maybe like a little bit too late, Pobi. It seems like maybe this should have come about. But if you look at the origins of where Snap packages were originally created for, there was almost no route to here without having gone through the Ubuntu phone process, right? Yeah, we learned a lot from click packages on the phone. Click packages, thank you, yeah.

Yeah, so I'll give you a good example. There's a developer who created a game for Ubuntu phone called Balls. And it's written in SDL2. It works on the phone. And he cranks out a new version once, maybe twice a day. Wow. And he can just push a new version to the store. day wow he can just push a new version to the store and it's on his customers handsets or his users or whatever you want to call them the people who play his game he can build a new level in 15

minutes that he has to work on his game he can build a new level crank out a click package shove it in the store and thousands of people have it straight away, right? And so that works great on the phone. But, you know, you and I both know. I'll give you a little secret, right? We don't have millions and millions of phone users, right? But we do have millions and millions of Ubuntu desktop users. So take that technology that we used on the phone to deliver applications super fast to the users on the phone and bring that to the desktop.

Then all those millions of users can potentially have super up-to-date packages with all the lessons we've learned from the phone. I do like that. I feel like it's one of those things that we won't see pay off for quite a while, though. Potentially. I mean, we're working on tools to make it easier. So, like, you know, we're all working on snapifying, we call it. Not formally. That's just like a stupid term.

Not snapcrafting or. Yeah, there's not a verb for it, really. Snapping. Snapping, yeah. You don't want to snap. Yeah. So we're all working on yeah snapification sounds good sounds very george w bush um and uh we're all doing a bit of that to to iron out all the

kinks and figure out you know because every application is different and some things need have different requirements right and because of our security model to ensure that one application can't stomp on the files of another or you don't get one file um you know able to access the data from another application and like send your key presses elsewhere there's the security side of things is super critical and we're just discovering the edge cases of you know what each application needs in terms of security with Snappy. And so we're pushing the boundaries of that, trying to make sure that we're getting all that done so that when a Coder Radio and one of the things that Mike has run into is he says, right, okay, I'm going to develop for Ubuntu. I'm going to release an app for the Ubuntu desktop for Ubuntu users. which SDK, which toolkit, which backend language, and I distribute it to my end users with reliable

secure updates. How? Okay, so if I want to distribute for Ubuntu reliably via software update, how do I do that? And if I'm just saying I'm like, say I'm the developer of your favorite application that's available for another platform that just has decided now's the time to target

the Linux desktop. How do they figure this out? They either A, somehow get it submitted to Debian downstream so it gets included in the Ubuntu repos and thus gets updated when there's system updates. They figure out how to create a Launchpad account and create PPAs and publish their own repo. They figure out how to package a Launchpad account and create PPAs and publish their own repo. They figure out how to package a

deb file or pay somebody, which is a common thing that developers do, is just hire some guy or gal to package a deb file for them. And then they post it on their website, which then means you don't get to take advantage of any of the built-in package management.

And so, you know, what Mike and I have kicked around a ton on Coda Radio is this is a shitty story to tell developers. This just doesn't work for them. They can't bank on that. They can't take that to the bank. And so I think that the Snap packages is probably the best answer to this. And I think it answers a bigger question

than we all realize is being asked. Do you agree with my sort of rough assessment, Popey? Right. And, you know, for a slow-moving free software project, there's a good argument for you should put it in Debian or AUR or wherever. Sure, yeah. That hits the most number of free software developers.

But that's not really practical for a lot of people that are maybe bringing something over to the Linux desktop for the first time. Right. And that's just one method. I'm just trying to say that putting it in Debian is not inherently a bad thing. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

If you could do it, it's great. But we've seen, or if you can find a Debian developer to sponsor your upload or whatever the process is. But we've seen recently friction in Debian where an upstream developer wants more recent versions of their application in the distro and the Debian policy doesn't allow that to happen. Right, you're referring to the XSaver thing. to happen right you're referring to the x screensaver thing right and and so with with a system where the developer is put in control of how they distribute their code and with automated reviews and sandboxing these three things put together means that developers are happy because they can distribute the version of their software that they're happy with when they want to users

are happy because they get the latest version of crack that they want. And users are also happy, and sysadmins are happy, because the system is secure, because the apps are siloed from each other. So it seems like a win-win-win all the way around. Art Brown, I wanted to give you a chance to jump in because also, I mean, we've seen this play out in a lot of instances, but own clouds are probably one of the more prominent ones. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah. They're a pretty good example of one of those projects where, yeah, they're really, well, in the case of the Debian one, it wasn't just a case of not able to get the version in there, but also the Debian developer putting in what own cloud considered was an unsafe upgrade path. Right. developer putting in what own cloud considered was an unsafe upgrade path right now uh richard i just want your frank opinion not even as a representation of susa uh just as a representative as a representative of the linux community do you bang your head against your desk do you facepalm a little bit when you go guys guys guys we've got the open bususa build service it's working great projects like own cloud are using the hell out of it. Don't reinvent the wheel of Snap packages. Just put it in OpenBuild service. Is there a facepalm moment for you, or do you see it in a different light?

There is to a large extent. When you mix in the Ubuntu mobile thing, there's maybe a case to be made there, but I'm not sold on it, no. Yeah, this is where our debate was going in the living room and Noah, I don't know when we talked about it my take was

I guess I'm of two opinions because snap packages on their own right are pretty slick technology and a pretty great idea and something that I think pretty much anyone who's new to the scene, you can look at how to build these things, how to write the description file, and you're going to get it. It's going to be easy. I love that a lot. And it might be familiar for how you're doing packaging things for other systems already.

Yeah, yeah. So that, I'm pretty jazzed about it in the big picture. At the same time, I don't want to say this in a flamey way, but if Ubuntu would have just, if it could have gone like this, like what if it could have gone like this? Like Canonical would have been like, all right, we're going to go focus on mobile for a bit. So what we're going to do is if you want to worry about getting desktop software on our desktop,

we're just going to hook in with the OpenSUSE build service. And we're going to hook in with that, and that's going to be sort of our official avenue for getting software on our desktop. And I feel like that would have been a game changer for desktop Linux. would have been a game changer for desktop Linux. Because instead of now getting packages bundled for Debian and Ubuntu out of the goodwill of the developer, it would have been a standardized method to deliver software to the Linux desktop. What guarantee would Canonical have had that the OpenSUSE build service would have kept their values and their priorities in mind? Besides the fact we've been doing it for 10 years now?

Well, so I guess what I'm asking is, you know, Canonical invented the PPA system, and for better or for worse, they have these devs that are available on the download, but that was, at the time that that came out, that was far and away better than anything else we had had on Linux. And so I think it's a little unfair to say that because other competition has rose up around them and they are now taking those steps to advance it.

I think it's a little unfair to say, well, all of a sudden Canonical has just done it all wrong. And I guess – No, I don't want to come across as saying they've done it all wrong because I don't agree. I think that PPAs were a a decent addition and so here's where i'm coming from on this and and just just really quickly is uh seuss martin in the uh linux action show so i read it said sorry chris no offense which is always it's about to say something yeah i just i just pissed in your flower bed no not to upset you. Anyways. That's good. But that was not a review. More like an hour-long monologue about how bad PPAs are.

And I want to stop right there. I actually think as far as PPAs go, they're not an awful system. I don't think it's that bad. I think it was a good addition when PPAs were launched a long time ago. I'm trying to look at Wikipedia to find out the date, but they don't have it. 2009. Thank you.

They certainly filled the need. Right. Yeah, this was solid in 2009. Great idea. 2009 is too long ago now, and it needed to be iterated on continuously since then. And what happened, in my estimation, is it just didn't become a priority. And then the cloud took off, And then rapid software development took off. And people start creating entire

applications that run on the web based on Node.js and plugins that can be completely revoked. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. And in days, they have a new web application. And then in months, they have iterated three times. And all of a sudden, we now find ourselves in a world where, unarguably, OpenSUSE were the leaders, where Fedora has a very competent solution, where Arch has a crushing lead with the user repository. We now find ourselves in a world where Ubuntu is behind in this regard. I'm not saying PPAs are bad. I'm saying that if we could have switched over to another solution by now, I like the build service just as my personal

one. Yeah, works well. We would have fundamentally changed how software is distributed for Linux. The answer for developers that I talked about earlier would have been target the build service with clear documentation, a large community, and it would have made Target the Build Service. With clear documentation, a large community, and it would have made it available to just about every damn distro on the planet. Now, I'm very excited for Snap Packages, but at the same time, I kind of feel like it's too little to, well, not too little, but it's too late. 1604 and Snap Packages, definitely notables from 2016.

One of the next segments that's coming up is one of the first really – well, not really one of the first, but one of the many super solid technical contributions that Wes has brought to the show. It's been great having Wes on the show in 2016. And our next segment is a great example of that. And it's so great because he's not caught up in all the buzz and the hype around some of these things. And he gives you a real practical, straightforward, working with us every day kind of take. First, speaking of working with things every single day, your education's one of them, and that's Linux

Academy. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged is where you go to support the show and get a seven-day free trial. Linux Academy is a platform created by Linux enthusiasts for you to learn more about all things Linux and the great stuff built on top of it. And they're just geniuses about the way they've set this up. They have self-paced, in-depth video courses for every Linux and cloud and DevOps topic.

They have labs that give you hands-on scenario-based training, which helps me with my testing anxiety. Instructor mentoring is available when you need it, actual human beings. And then if you're not quite sure what path to take, well, they have learning paths for you, a series of courses and content planned by those human beings. They have cert training if that's the route you want to go, nuggets for tiny bits of sparkly wisdom, course schedulers to work with your busy schedule, study guides and comprehensive downloads that have audio or PDFs that you can read or listen to offline, and note cards that are forked and worked on by the community, and the community is full of Jupyter Broadcasting

members. I love it. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged is where you go and kind of fun to watch their feed right now on Twitter, twitter.com slash linuxacademy.com. They're at an AWS event that's going on and they have a booth there and there's a lot of shenanigans going on and they're giving away drones too. This is awesome. And they have giant plushies.

What? I want a giant plushie and a drone. This is pretty cool. Their Twitter feed's great. You can learn about new content coming to Linux Academy and see some of the shenanigans they're up to. Again, that's LinuxAcademy.com on Twitter if you want to see that and some of the video from the AWS event they're at. It's cool to see them down there and getting, and getting hands-on with all the big stuff that Amazon is announcing today. So that way they can

integrate it into their courseware pronto. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. Go there, support the show, and sign up for a seven-day free trial. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. And thanks to Linux Academy for sponsoring the show all year. LXD, it's like the non-hyped docker, and Wes has had

some real hands-on experience. I love this contribution to the show. Alright, Mr. Wes, so you said to me, okay, Chris, I know we've talked about Ubuntu 16.04 a lot, but let's be real, we've mostly focused on the desktop, where we've trashed on it a little bit. Plus, I mean, does anyone even

use Linux on the desktop? I don't know. No, I kid, obviously. Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! But, you know, there's a whole other element of the Ubuntu server. The server, where it's actually hugely successful. So have you used it at all? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

Andra, wait, do I have any local 16.04 servers? No. No, I don't. I only have DigitalOcean droplets, But we've got a handful of them now. And I don't really have anything to say. I guess that's a good thing.

They just freaking run. We've set up software on them. We have some 14.04 droplets we want to move to 16.04 because we... I'll tell you one thing that I have noticed. It is a pain in the ass now to like, it is a major pain in the ass to write init scripts for Upstart. And it's like the last thing I want to do.

It's the last thing anybody on the JB crew wants to do is learn Upstart at this point. Oh, my gosh. Who wants to learn Upstart? It's dead. Yeah, exactly. And here's the other thing is that tons of the projects I've been using for a while now have systemd init scripts. Yep, they're right there. Yes, yes, yes.

So that is sort of the nicest thing about 16.04 is now I can use those examples and things. But that's pretty much the entire summary of my review from the servers. It works. I don't really have any complaints. And it does everything I expect, which, by the way, exactly what I want on my server. It's just it. server. It just is. It's consistent. So you, however, you, however, have had a bit of a

bigger route of change. I'm in the weird position of like, I mean, I use Arch for a lot of things. What I'm most familiar these days with, I know how to bend it to my will, get whatever I need to do done with it. I'm in the position where I'm considering switching to Ubuntu for a lot of my larger server uses.

Mostly because of LexD, as they call it, which is LexD 2.0 was just released. And that's their container lighter visor, they jokingly call it. And it's meant to be a new way to interact with the Linux container or Lexi subsystem and the infrastructure they've set up. So if you're not familiar, you can go to linuxcontainers.org, backslash LXD, backslash try. Try-it, which we will have a link in the show notes. And you can give it a try right now. Now, hold on.

When you say give it a try, you mean I can go to a webpage and I can spin up a LXD container in real time? Yeah, let's try it. Let's do it right now. Are you ready? You want to do it? Okay, here we go. So, I am at linuxcontainers.org slash LXDE slash try-it.

Again, link in the show notes. Yeah, where's the IPv6 connectivity, Chris? At the studio. I know, right? So, I'm going to say I've accepted the terms of service because, of course, I do. They're pretty reasonable. Now, they are going to start the container on the fly. Now, because we just gave out the URL, it's going to get slow here, but before it gets slow, you can see right here, Wes,

right here, boom! I got a console. I got an LXDE container. I'm now root inside a container nested inside an LXDE install, which is sort of like LXDE inception. Yes, right. What am I seeing here, Wes? What am I seeing? You're seeing they ran LXDExec container name bash, and it just gets

you executed as root inside the container, a bash shell. This is pretty cool. This is a pretty cool way to do it. Yeah, it's pretty neat. So they, one of the neat things that they've, LXC was pretty complicated to use. It's really neat to use if you've ever tried it, if you need like system level containers. Yeah. But there's a lot of things to learn and a

lot of like configuration things to set up. Sure. LXD, or LexD, it's a lot simpler. And so and a lot of configuration things to set up. LXD it's a lot simpler and so you can kind of just get an image going and they have default profile set up so the default one it runs as an unprivileged container meaning that it actually runs in a user namespace

so that root in the container is no longer root on your host it's actually matched to like UID 1 million or something like that so hopefully that can get you some added security no longer root on your host. It's actually matched to UID 1 million or something like that. Hopefully that gets you some added security. But it also has default profiles. If you want to run Docker in there, you just change your container to be on the Docker profile, and they tweak some of the security

settings and the nesting settings so that you can run Docker inside your container. Huh. You're just starting to play with this, but how's the workflow? Is it pretty easy to use? LXC used a template workflow. you'd use something like packstrap or bootstrap or whatever to like get your container implemented on the machine you're running it on. LexD uses an image based format. So you actually just have like a tar gz of your container root file system. Huh. And it also takes great advantage of CFS. It's awesome. So like, you know, in 16.04, you

just install the Userland tools, the kernel module's built for you, you just load that up, it has a do sudo lxd in it, and it'll walk you through it, it'll even set you up like a loopback mounted ZFS file system if you want, right? So that's what I'm using on the laptop here. Or if you want to have,

you know, you have an actual pool of disk to use, you can use that, or use one that you already have. And so what laptop here. Or if you want to have, you know, you have actual like pool of disk to use, you can use that or use one that you already have. And so what that means is when you want to use like a new, they give you some image servers by default with the, like, you know, Ubuntu 16.04 container image. You can just pull that down. But once you have that image, every new container you start, it's just a, it's just a copy on write copy of that, right? So you, you, it's basically free except for what you change it.

That's slick. And all, again, super easy to set up. And I've already set up like an Arch version. So they have like Alpine, they have Fedora. So you're saying you have, okay, so for example, if I were to do this on a droplet, I could have an Ubuntu 16.04 droplet, but in the container run Arch.

Yep, absolutely. So they don't have one provided on there. They have like an images.linuxcontainers.org where they have like Fedora, Cora, like lots of pre-built stuff for you, but Arch wasn't one of them. But you just take a, you know, you make a reasonable Arch file system,

you package it up in a tar, and it's really easy to get it as your own. And then you can, the other neat thing is it's a network. Like it's all done over a REST API. That's like, that's how the client talks to it. That's how you can talk to it. They have Python bindings. And it also it's a network. It's all done over a REST API. That's how the client talks to it. That's how you can talk to it. They have Python bindings, and it also talks over the network, so I can have a

server here, and then a server on a droplet somewhere, and I can go make myself a new image, have containers here, and if I make a container I really like here, I can just push it over to the server, and it will run there. That is nice. You can even snapshot up here, then push the snapshot up to the server. I'm really excited.

I might have to change a lot of my infrastructure to use this now. That is super, super neat. I like Wes's discussion about LXDE. And while we're talking about things that are very practical, let's talk about the Linux desktop in terms of pragmatic reasons

and philosophical reasons to use Linux. All right, so I don't want to go too far in this without bringing in the mumble room because this is sort of the segment I wanted to give them a chance to shine. However, I got to ask you. I don't think I actually know the answer to this question either. I was just trying to think if I knew what you were going to say.

Do you today use the Linux desktop for idealistic reasons or for purely pragmatic practical reasons today? And is that different than when you first tried Linux? I think I've kind of come full circle. You know, I grew up kind of playing with Windows. I remember trying to change the Windows boot screen and breaking the family computer for a while,

that kind of thing. And you quickly figure out what you can and what you cannot change with Windows. And so Linux started out as this wonderful playground. And I knew what open source was. I thought it was cool because I kind of started trying to program. But it didn't mean a lot. I couldn't really use it to do any, you know what I mean? I could do a lot.

And I loved all this software. But it was like, this is just fun. And it let me really deep dive and i think somewhere in the middle there i really stuck around because i mean at some point i started going to school and like well i mean linux was very important for that you know you can write a paper on just about any operating system so i think it really the the idle ideology it really did it really did sink in you know and it you know And it made me want to try more distributions. It made me want to try to, you can play with FreeBSD or something else, look at a little different ideology.

But I think today, I don't think there's another platform where I could get what I need to get done. There's definitely both parts. Both parts are very important. I think the ideology is, it's important. I think freedom is important. I think open source is important. But it's also just, I need an operating system that is malleable and where I can change things. And the ideology definitely informs that, but someday, be it as long as it is

free, I think I can make it work. Okay. Alright, so let's bounce to the mumble room and then I'll give you my thoughts. So BC, I'll let you go first. Do you use it today for idealistic or practical reasons, and is that how you started using Linux? Yeah, so the first time I installed Linux, it was like 15 years ago. Yes, coming directly from Windows, I just wanted to check out what exactly it is. Right now, as I use Linux full-time,

I'm just much more productive with it. However, it's not just productive because I try to use as little closed software as possible. So, in reality, both. See, it is an interesting thing there, too, because you can kind of reach a

limit where you're like, well, I want to be free, and then sometimes you hit that area where you're like, well, my operating system is free, but this application is proprietary and I need it. Yeah, I use Windows for some things. For example, game development, I use KVM GPU pass-through,

unfortunately. Yeah, okay. All right. Good. And it sounds kind of like sort of a similar situation. UberPanda, I want to hear your thoughts. Yeah, so I started using Linux because of battery life reasons. My laptop on Windows lasted like one hour, and I just started using Arch Linux, and it lasted for two and a half hours.

So I used that. And then I understood what was free software, that kind of thing. So it became an ideology. And now I think free software is good, and Windows is also a terrible operating system. So I use Linux for both reasons. Yeah, interesting. I love it. I think that actually makes a lot of sense.

Now, okay, Mr. Heaven, so it sounds like you've been around the block a couple of times, including over in the FreeBSD camp, and then ended up back on Linux. So is that for idealism, or is that because it just made more sense, practically speaking? or at least, let's say, during my first bit of open source adventures, of course I like the technical things. So I went on to an adventure in benchmarking a whole bunch of file systems. I found XFS while I was on Linux, and I loved it. Thing is, my philosophy is closer to the BSD philosophy versus the Linux one. So I actually went over to DesktopBSD and whatever that other one was, and FreeBSD.

And I went there for a while. The thing is, their XFS port wasn't up to stuff. It wasn't up to date enough. So even though I love FreeSB's philosophy of true freedom, it allows you to keep secrets if you want. Linux pretty much prevents you from keeping secrets if you, you know,

regardless if you want to or not, other than the LGPL. So I went back to Linux because of XFS, because all of my storage was XFS. And it didn't, like, FreeBSD didn't actually, you know, provide what I needed. So it was more stable. That's a practical, that'd be a practical reason there. Yeah, that is actually a practical reason, even though it's slightly philosophical as well. Oh, man, that's so interesting. All right, MiniMC, your practical or idealism for your initial adoption of Linux and where you're at today?

So I wanted to know something new. I started with Linux 6.1. I just wanted to see something new. And all missing stuff was really hard to replace. And then from time to time, it became a feature. So now Linux changed my whole workflow. So it stripped me down to the basics and I'm much faster, much clearer in my workflow

than I was before, I guess. Interesting. Yeah, I know. What's been interesting for me just on the workflow part is I've had the opportunity now of moving a couple of different types of workflows onto Linux. It started as just moving like desktop, Microsoft workflow, like Office and Outlook,

getting that running on Linux and doing interacting with Windows file shares. And that workflow was a major workflow. And it took me a while. I mean it took me a while to make that more efficient under Linux to be able to justify running Microsoft applications under Linux. But I got there. I eventually got there. And then I moved – I went as a consultant.

I had to move that workflow onto Linux when I did IT consulting for a while. And then, you know, just here at Jupyter Broadcasting, there have been so many workflows that are sort of – they start with the Mac. And then I was like, I have to move this to Linux. And definitely one of the biggest ones for me was my unfilter clip editing and workflow. Because that just – it started out as such a Mac-centric couple of tools that I just hated using, and it just was a mess. And moving that over to Linux and finding that to be... And being able to then use all of my traditional Linux skills

on the command line and being able to take advantage of things like Guake and being able to take advantage of things like AvidMux and being able to install Codex by just a command away, it made it very practical in that case to move that workflow over there so that workflow element and be and just because i have a better workflow sometimes is enough of a reason it's and more options and how you make that workflow right

um so rotten i wanted to hear your practical or idealism oh well i started as practicality thing because i was a beta tester for Windows 7 for about a year before it was released. And when it came to the point where they were about to release it, they said all beta testers now had to pay for it. And it wasn't like you had a certain amount of time to pay for it. They stopped your Windows 7 from working. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so it was completely just stripped away from me.

And they gave me, I think, like a week ahead of time. You're going to lose the access to run the system that you've been working for free to fix bugs and find problems that we've obviously have not finished fixing yet. Wow. And then to the point where I was just like, you know what? Out of spite. fixing it. Wow. And then it to the point where I was just like, you know what? Out of spite, screw it. And I was already dual booting at the time, but then I just kind of like just wiped it and went to the Linux way and

been there the whole time. And now it's become both. I didn't really know what the ideology was at the time. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It's hard to pick up on it. Yeah.

Yeah. So now it's more like the ideology made me stay and the practicality made me come over. That's a good way to put it. Landrash, I wanted to hear your ideology versus practicality, where you started and where you ended up. Probably started in school using it when I needed to for courses and stuff. Going over to practicality when I got used to it and basically getting

the only way I could do things was with Linux because I needed the tools. I had the tools I needed there. Going to Windows for like shooting myself in the foot and doing it ten times slower. I think we've all been there. He's finding that school's pretty cool. Okay, Mr. Ranger,

how about yourself? I'm another one that i started out practical because uh you know back in the late 90s early 2000s worked at a computer shop where we needed easy internet sharing and ip chains was where it was at nice um we similar to your banking story we had a point of sale system that was crashy and the networking on it was horrible. And oddly enough, the perfect solution was to run it in DOSBox. Wow. And even to this day, just a few months ago, was an officiant at my sister's wedding

and I needed some random government form. And I was trying to figure out how to modify this the way that I needed. And Scribus know one command line install away so i'd say practically um you know linux is so easy to get software for and so easy to find software that does you know whatever task you need that day so for me way practical cool i think that's an interesting thread like in what what swift 110 here is is commenting like's interesting how, I mean, practical is so different. There's a lot of enterprise cases or if you're a creative type where it's less practical because the tools you need are proprietary and expensive. But there's a lot of other cases where the ideology of freely available makes for these, if you're underprivileged, if you're out of budget for the quarter and you really have a problem that you want to get solved,

free software is there for you. Yeah, it really is. I'm going to touch on that one. I'll share mine here at the end, but I'm glad W.W. wants to share his. So go ahead, W.W., what's yours? So I started back in Red Hat 5.1 in 96, 97. I didn't have LUNX back then I lived in the

desert so I was lucky enough to have friends that were into Linux and into ham radios and you can walk into software etc and buy Mandrake Linux or whatever or if you were lucky enough you can have an independent ISP

and order Linux online and get it. And so I think I should have been on it longer. I should have been on it before, since Windows 3.1, because I always like to dig into the system and figure out how it's running and what it's doing and how to change it or how to move it around. So for me, practically, it's been something that I've been striving to be more on, even though I've been someone that dual boots and still uses Windows for what I really need to do.

It's ultimately where I hope I end up is more on Linux. And I'm not sure about the ideological side. I like to be more pragmatic. So for me, it's more of a practical reason to be on Linux and that makes more sense in the long term than being stuck on a closed system that you will never be able to open and openly use a way you believe it should be used yeah so long term for me i think

it's gonna be practical but uh maybe once i um i get a chance to read more into the ideological stuff and they'll be both but for me right now it's all more of a practical reason you know i think what i'm what i'm really picking up and, and it echoes mine, is sometimes you come at it from what feels like a very practical reason, and then you get there and you discover the philosophy. So I'll tell you, mine really started as a need to solve a limitation of Windows. Windows just simply at the time, Windows NT4, was not good enough for the job I needed it to do. And so I had to find another solution. It started very practical. And I think particularly for me,

if you watch the back catalog of the Linux Action Show with this in mind, you can see where I switch from a pragmatist to more of an idealist. And now I'm on Linux simply because I can't stand to use any other platform. I couldn't imagine having to use Windows as my daily driver. I don't know what I would do.

So you could claim that's practical, but I think really I'm here now for the idealism. And I'll tell you, for me, it took a while for it to sink in, mostly because there were so many problems I needed to solve. And it didn't really hit me until I started thinking about it in the way that affected my own bottom line. And then it clicked. And it was really in the sense of my clients kept getting screwed over by companies like Microsoft and many other proprietary companies that would just extort them for support contracts that were unbelievable and that would change and drop features at a moment's notice and completely leave them off on this old version

that was no longer supported for a decade because the next version up completely uplifted their workflow. And what I discovered over time, both in a sense of software and hardware and in contracts, is that vendor lock-in can be paralyzing for a company sometimes. And so that was in which the lens that I first looked at the advantages

that a core open source infrastructure gives you. The kind of visibility into the long-term viability or even the emergency eject lever of forking and maintaining it by hiring your own developer. It's a really interesting business case. You get a lot of freedom there. It's huge because I can tell you, you can deploy your infrastructure on this. And worst case scenario, if they stop making this thing, you can go hire a developer.

And that developer can continue the thing because all of the code is completely free and open source. And for an enterprise, that's not a crazy proposition. No. They already have developers, or they can hire one. Yes, and if it's a core piece of their business that makes them money, they like having that flexibility. And so it was with that perspective, that looking at open source, the way that it would solve that problem that I realized, oh, shit, this is the killer feature.

It's not the great package management. It's not the stability. It's not the security. It's not the great package management. It's not the stability. It's not the security. It's not the transparency. It's not all of the incredible minds and diverse opinions that are contributing to this. It's this fundamental open license, this GPL, that is the actual killer feature of this platform. And it took me a while to get there. But now it is based upon

that which i look at everything else i i you you can't have a practical linux desktop experience without the idealist without that gpl without that idealism that led to the gpl and the gnu stack you can't have the full practical linux desktop with which is a sensible reason that we're all using it wouldn't exist without that and so it was once so once I sort of made that sort of transition, that revelation, I realized, oh, I'm actually an idealist. And when I make decisions based on that, in the long run, those always tend to be the ones that pay out. And when I make a decision that's not oriented towards that, it tends to screw me eventually.

And that has bared out in my personal life through stuff I just use myself, and it's bared out in my professional life with my clients and whatnot. And you know, I'm very, very, very, very, very proud of the fact that I can go back to almost any of my clients and any of the Linux and open source solutions that I implemented are

still maintainable and supportable today. That is awesome. I cannot do that. It's literally not possible and supportable today. That is awesome. And I cannot – Proprietary solutions don't work that way. Cannot do that. It's literally not possible because aging them out is part of the process and locking you into their support path because that's where they make all of their money in the enterprise is part of the process. And so it took that kind of – that particular doorway in which I saw it, then it really sort of lit up for me. But my – it was very pragmatic these two are you know like i feel like a lot of people it's that that pragmatism especially if you're i feel like

networking is a huge part where like i want my internet gateway and i feel like it actually that's a more solid foundation because if you're just in it for the idealism then that idealism is going to last you as long until you want to watch something on netflix or you're going to watch a tv show i mean where do you draw the line at that point? Do you abandon all proprietary lockdown media altogether? That's kind of the – That's pretty hard. And maybe you do and maybe that works for you. But to me it seems like that eventually after a certain amount of time, unless you're freaking Richard Stallman himself, you're going to give.

That dam eventually is going to break. And then what do you have if all you have is the idealism? If there's not the pragmatic thing you're also grounded with, it feels like it's not quite as strong as a grip. If you can't get anything done, then what's the point? Yeah. It's a fascinating topic. It popped up a couple of times on Reddit

in the last couple of days. We thought we'd ask it here in the show. I'd like to hear your stories too. LinuxActionShow.Reddit.com. Oh, please go. That's a great forum. I always enjoy those Linux desktop discussions. I could probably do it every single week. I know you guys would get sick of it, so I don't, but I freaking love it.

Just something about having that conversation with the virtual lug and Wes is super satisfying for me. You know what else is super satisfying? Seriously, saving a ton of money on my wireless. I can't even believe what people pay. Ting is brilliant. Linux.ting.com is where you go to get $25 in credit or off a device, and then you only pay

for what you use with no contract. No termination fee. They don't block updates. They're just simply on a mission to make mobile make more sense. They're backed by 2Cow, so they've been around forever. And it's so great to just pay for what you use. If you got Wi-Fi at home and work, you're going to be shocked with how much money you can save and for me what i love about it is i have a ting cdma and a ting gsm wi-fi when i travel i use whichever one works better and i just pay a little bit more that month for my data usage it's not a big deal because all the other 10 or 11 months out of the year i I'm not traveling.

And so it totally works out saving me tons of money. And you can find out more by clicking on the Ting Savings Calculator. One of the other things I really love about Ting, and with the holidays coming up, you know, you're gifting cellular service. You get like a $9 Ting GSM SIM and you want to put it in the stocking. I'm serious. Why not? $9 SIM cards? Yeah, it's really, with no contract, no determination fee, just pay for what you use. That's seriously awesome. But you're giving away to friends and family. You don't want to have to play tech support. Well, you don't have to worry about it. Ting

has crazy great customer service. They have real human beings that sit on the phone and work with you. Hello, this is Isabelle speaking. How can I help you? Hello? Thanks for calling Ting. This is Isabelle speaking. How can I... Hey, this is Isabelle at Ting. People never believe it's a real person, but it is. And I think that's really kind of a cool service that Ting offers. They have great prices, unbelievably cheap devices, all the way up to the Cadillacs or just the SIM.

You just get started by going to linux.ting.com. And a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged program now for the whole year. linux.ting.com Now there's a big moment for me personally in Linux Unplugged this year. That's when I gave Wes a challenge to get Arch Linux working on my 2013 MacBook Pro Retina by the end of the show.

I was super skeptical because in the past, MacBooks have been such a headache. Well, Wes was up for that challenge. So the question is going to be coming in pretty soon, because rumors have it that your friends in Cupertino will be releasing a new MacBook soon. Hey, oh, it's been about time. Yeah, geez, it is ridiculous. And you know what's going to happen.

The current models, which are still perfectly usable, will go up on eBay, and people can buy them for a reduced price. Right. And we have a pretty common question that comes into the show. How do you install Linux on the MacBook? Does it work? What should I know about? So this week— Is it worth the amount of effort that might be required?

Have you ever done this before? You know, I have, but it's been, oh boy, probably three years at least. So this week... Actually, I was installing Debian. Really? Yeah. Great. I'm going to see if by the end of the show, Wes can get Arch Linux or maybe Fedora Linux,

we'll see, running on a MacBook. It's like a late 2013 model, I think. And we'll kind of give you a report of what it's like to try it. If he can get the dedicated graphics working, the wireless working, and we'll kind of give you a report of what it's like to try it. If he can get the dedicated graphics working, the wireless working, and we'll give you a review, so that way, some people out there, they just want that hardware. And this is an old production rig that we have that's like, it's good.

I'd like to see if you could leave Mac OS on there, because I think a lot of people are going to want to do that. Based on the emails we've received, people want a dual boot, and I can understand that. Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to do it for more updates... Wes, I officially am handing you this Linux-unplugged branded thumb drive, which contains the latest official released Antigros image from last month. Sure, it's signed with the JB signing.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I checked it for sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Absolutely. So there you go, Wes.

Good luck to you. Thank you, sir. And it is already partitioned into two separate – well, there's the OS X partition, Thank you, sir. I wanted to mention something that I think was well said and started a conversation that I think probably wasn't necessary. But I wanted to give a shout out to Ninja Aaron, who 23 hours ago created a Linux Action Show subreddit post saying a quick comment about the ButterFS coverage on the latest Linux Action Show. And that's where we discussed the fact that the official ButterFS project Twitter account recommended people use ZFS or ZFS. That's pretty wild. That was wild. And our story was really about the reaction to that.

But, you know, he makes a great point. He says that ButterFS is definitely having its issues, but he makes a couple of good use case for ButterFS in this post. But he makes a couple of good use case for ButterFS in this post. And I guess I did want to mention like I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of people that want to use ButterFS on their laptop that has an SSD drive. I don't really think ButterFS is like the devil file system. Yes, totally. Really where I have an issue with the ButterFS advocacy, it really comes down to when people try to advocate that it should be used in a business slash enterprise setting, however you want to describe that. I started in IT in the year 2000, about 99. Well, actually, really, actually actually that's not true 97 was when i actually officially got paid uh in uh in it when i was uh i was at that time desktop tech support but one of the things that

i had two there was interesting i had two challenges over my career that were uh very much about data retention and then i had and i had many challenges beyond that but there were some that were very particular legally mandated, very, very, very carefully audited use cases that I can't even really go into. And in these scenarios, back then we used very, very cutting-edge

file systems that were very risky, mostly because that was all that was available at the time. Yeah. And so it's not that I'm also like some holier thanthan-thou soapboxer who says, oh, you should never use ButterFS because you're a lunatic. I mean, I've been the guy that's been putting in a file system that's a little edgy in production. I have on a lot of my systems.

But there is sort of, I guess, there is sort of this, it feels to me like there is this failure to look within a bit to sort of self-analyze and say, we've made a mistake here. And so I wanted to acknowledge that while I have been sort of anti-Butterfest in the last few weeks, as there's been more flaws, I also think there's many useful use cases for it. And I wanted to give a shout out to Mr. Ninja Aaron for kind of, you know, very well stating that case and making me reflect on it a bit and go, you know, I myself myself if I

actually for this MacBook here I would absolutely consider ButterFS on there you should have said that like two minutes ago you're getting the XT4 just because I figured you wouldn't mind if it was a safe and solid choice. No, so you're actually that far huh? It's installing right now. So then in order for you to be that far that means you got wireless working

oh yeah. Ah, now that wireless fix, this is one of the interesting things, though, is that wireless fix will not persist once you reboot into the main OS after it's been installed. No, but maybe I'll be smart enough to cheroot into and install that preemptively. Thank you for the reminder. Damn it. You know, Wes, I'm actually pretty impressed that you got the Wi-Fi working without any other connectivity. So what did you do? What did you do?

Because this is going to be the number one challenge is these MacBooks, any recent MacBook doesn't have an Ethernet port. And everybody that's going to be doing this is going to run into this problem where they're not going to have Wi-Fi when they get in a live environment. So what did you do to enable networking without having a connection? Well, I had conveniently, we're installing Antigros here, and I had an Arch Linux little laptop right here. So I just ran make package, built the package, copied it on a USB drive, installed it, mod probed the Broadcam drivers, and away we went. Well played, sir.

Which I was very pleased. Everything worked perfectly. Well played. Network manager picked it right up. We were on the network. Damn. And also also I'm impressed that you remembered the wifi password too because I didn't tell you what that

was and you still good job anybody have thoughts on ButterFS in the mumble room before we move on to just a quick

shout out I have I'll just say I'm excited for bcachefs we'll see when that's actually usable but is that a

btree kind of yeah like ram based second that yeah okay all right tease me a little bit let's see there's actually a patreon for it are you serious wimpy why are you looking forward to it throw it right there oh my god okay i'll explain it better than i could probably well b b cash is something that b cash is something that I've used to accelerate spinning drives by putting a Bcache partition on solid state to effectively create sort of a level two cache. This is great. The authors behind Bcache realized that they were very close to actually having a full block file system. So they're going the next step to implement it as a copy-on-write file system.

They only have 38 patrons. I feel like maybe we could bump that up a little bit for them. So it's going to be a copyright-on-write file system like ZFS or Butterfest. They aim for good performance. They say significantly better than existing copy on write file systems. Comparable to the performance of Extended 4 or XFS. We really need this. Oh, wow.

Metadata and data check summing multiple devices including replication and other types of RAID. Caching, compression, encryption, snapshots, and scalable. It's been tested up to 50 terabytes and will eventually scale higher. Already working on stable with a small community of users. This is super exciting. And what I really like about it is, and this is where I was trying to get to in the conversation on Sunday, but I think I went off track, is ButterFS, when you look at the model, almost seems like this funding model makes

a lot of sense. It's just they would need way more support because it really is a full-time job. It is a lot of work to do this properly. And this is great. So Bcash, I'll put a link to the Patreon in the show notes. So that could be really cool. I'll check it out more after the show. Okay, Wes.

I heard you're rebooting during that spot. I heard you. How's it going over there? It's installed. Now we're working on getting it to show up in the bootloader. Do you have a preference? Do you want refined? Do you not?

I don't know. I don't know what's the difference. This is all new to me. I mean, you can get it to work with the native EFI bootloader. That seems good. Okay, but you can also install Refind, which is kind of just a nice, better bootloader. What would make it easier to get the NVIDIA graphics working? Because that's part of this.

That's part of this. That's a good question. Because I think that's like a kernel boot parameter. Because otherwise, I think it uses the Intel graphics by default. I believe so. So I want to talk about why this is happening. Because this is some crazy bull crap. I mean,

actually, I will be, in full disclosure, I will be honest with you, the number one question we have ever gotten into the Linux Action Show and Linux Unplugged, and I am literally talking since episode one, over a decade ago, of Linux Action Show,

the number one question we have gotten is how do I get Linux working on a MacBook? And we answer it from time to time, but we never really fully go into it. And it's one of these things that we're simply sick and tired of getting the question asked. And so we just don't address it a lot and i was i was um i've been using the entryware apollo as my daily driver at home pretty much since my review and absolutely loving it and it is light right the battery lasts for hours it's it's it's small enough that i can carry it and just bring it to work when i need it not have to worry about bringing the power adapter and it's it is a very nice machine and i have all my stickers all over it.

I really enjoy it. But then No Man's Sky came out. And that damn game. I can't help but love it. And it requires OpenGL 4.5 support and SSC 4, I think, and basically dedicated graphics. And that's where the MacBook came in. Yeah, right. And then I connected with, okay.

So I sort of visualized myself as an audience member. I've either bought a used MacBook, I've inherited a MacBook, or I'm sick and tired of macOS, and Apple is not getting around to updating this thing. No. And one of the things that I know from previous testing experience is that Linux runs a hell of a lot faster on the MacBook than OS X does. So the fact that this is a 2013

is going to feel it's going to feel, I estimate under Linux, probably going to feel like a brand new machine. It's probably going to feel very fast. I mean, it's got the PCI SSD in there. It's got dedicated I thought about using F2FS or whatever. Yeah. It's got dedicated NVIDIA graphics.

It's got a wonderful retina screen on it. It's got dedicated NVIDIA graphics. It's got a wonderful retina screen on it. It's a really, it's a pretty nice laptop. Yeah, it is a nice laptop. And people generally accept that the MacBook is built well. So the question has always been

how reasonable would Linux be on the MacBook? Because my intention is, and I know this sounds ridiculous, is to then install Wine and then install No Man's Sky. Eventually, I plan to also put OBS on there and do some broadcasting from it because it does have a four-core processor as well.

Oh, sure. Yeah, that would work well. Yeah. So that was sort of the impetus for myself to want to try Linux on the MacBook. And then that sort of sent us down the path of trying to figure out, well, what do you need to know before you put Linux on a MacBook? And it definitely seems to be one of the things you have to get your head around is, what model of MacBook do you have?

And this is somewhat not obvious since Apple just calls everything MacBook. And if you have macOS on your system, you can actually ascertain this by going into the About Mac system. And I have a screenshot of this in the show notes. You go in there, and it'll tell you, like, it's a late model something something. You Google MacBook Pro late model 2013 and it will tell you the specific like model number. It's like it's 11 comma 2 or something like that, right Wes? Am I? Yes, I believe so. Yeah, and there's like other ones, like older ones are like, you know, different. So it's a major model number comma minor model revision. And you can find like arch wiki entries which for mine i've linked in the show notes that specifically tell you about the little kind of esoteric

tweaks you have to make to make it work on your particular backbook model and i as i look at this i think this could be a this could be a really great linux box if if all of this works out so i'm kind of really interested to see where it goes. I'll try the Thunderbolt out and then I can report back to the audience on some of my adventures with it. I also was kind of wondering, I was kind of wanting to pick Wimpy's brain and ask him if he hears many people in the Ubuntu Mate community that are

running it on the MacBooks. Because that also crossed my mind as a possible distro if we couldn't get Arch working. Yeah, it does crop up from time to time. mostly in uh discussions in the ubuntu mate community and if it's something that you're interested in doing then that is the place to first search because it's a discourse so you can find the right discussions easily and if your model hasn't been discussed,

then start a new thread. And there are a few people in there that, uh, can assist you with that. It doesn't come up a lot. Um, it comes up a bit, but not,

not loads. It's certainly not a major platform. I'm seeing people use Ubuntu Mate on. I, I good. I don't know. I just don't, on. Good. I don't know. I just don't, at this point, I don't know if I feel like recommending it,

although maybe I'll feel differently after we try this. I do see it as like it could, so a couple of things have changed recently. First of all, based on some of my reading, the roadblocks of getting the wireless working, the Broadcom wireless, have been significantly reduced. But the big change, which is in the more recent kernel, it's been around for a little while now, but it depends on your distro. There is built-in kernel-level support with the Synaptics driver for the MacBook touchpad or trackpad or whatever you want to call it.

And that was something that used to be a sticking point on my particular model. Have you had to do anything to get the trackpad working or has it been working uh no it's just been working i mean it's not quite as nice as the default one but i've got scrolling i've been impressed the media keys have working even in live media uh what about the i can see the high dpc i support gnome working nicely really you can see the tiny text on the console boot up and then yeah once you've got to the login screen really did gnome just automatically go high dpi yeah no way really yeah at least in the integrals now uh um um what about the keyboard backlight that's a great question is that working can you turn that on oh yeah and it even has the like scrollable menu

shut up really yeah wow that's actually pretty look at gnome like kicking ass on that thing Oh, yeah, and it even has the scrollable GNOME menu. Shut up. Really? Yeah. Wow. That's actually pretty. Look at GNOME kicking ass on that thing. So are you in the live media right now, or are you in the installed OS? Well, now I'm in the installed OS. Actually, I have to review how it actually got here.

I was just kind of troubleshooting that, but I rebooted it again, and I expected it to go into Mac OS X, but it went right into yours. This is really going to be nice to be able to play No Man's Sky at home if you get this working. I'm pretty excited. All right, so where are you at with that thing? I've got it booting. I'm making sure the bootloader is actually working and getting the Wi-Fi back up.

Nice. All right, let's go. We'll see about that proprietary driver. JB Titles, JB Titles. So this is a MacBook with an NVIDIA chip in it. Yes. Yeah, I think it's a 750, I think, or a 760. And is this a new computer?

No, no, no. It's one that I used back in, like, before, I think even before I hired Rikai for editing. And then once Rikai came on board, he had – 750M. Okay, 750M. He got the dedicated Mac and then this sort of became like every time I wanted to do a comprehensive video editing project, this is my machine I would go to and still do to some degree. But I have been transitioning to KDN Live more and more.

So I've had this sitting around and it's a late 2013 model that i and i actually think with an old macbook you have a better success rate with a slightly older model which is kind of bears out why i think you'll probably see more of these showing up on ebay when the new model comes out because it's literally been too long and so they'll probably people throw their old models on ebay and you might have linux users who want a particular build quality of a machine grabbing these and snapping these up, perhaps. So this is a Pro 15 of some description, is it?

Yes. Yeah, it's a late 2013 MacBook Retina 15-inch with a 750M and the 1-terabyte SSD, PCI SSD, and 16 gigabytes of RAM. And Wes, did you decide on a bootloader? Well, yeah, right now it's just using the built-in EFI. So when you hold down the option key or whatever it is?

That's what I'm working on confirming for you. But we might just install Refind anyway. Yeah, I'll look at you. Because it's awesome. It would be interesting to compare battery life between the systems, you know, TLP installed and all. It would really interest me. Yeah, I absolutely would do that.

Because they say Linux is not well optimized for these kind of computers. To be fair, the cards are definitely stacked against Linux. However, I was reading the Arch Wiki, and it appears that LM Sensors now has some support. reading the Arch Wiki, and it appears that LM Sensors now has some support. But see, honestly, the core issue why I've never really been super compelled to do this is the way Macs are built. They are Intel machines, absolutely, but they use a completely different power management and cooling management architecture than a standard desktop PC. And honestly, if I were Apple, I would too, because ACPI and all of that is just total shit. So what Apple did is they created the SMC controller.

And the SMC controller is both hardware and software. And the software component is only available in Mac OS X. There's no open source equivalent to it because Apple holds all of the information. And the SMC controller is used by Mac OS X to escalate the fans with CPU usage. So the OS is constantly monitoring the demands and predicted demands,

the predicted demands, if you can even believe that, of the OS workload based on your average workload, and it preemptively throttles the thermal management of the Mac based on whatever metrics that Apple has come up with with their black magic. And there's just literally no way to translate that to Linux or Windows. It's the same problem for boot camp users who decide to run Windows 7 to 10 on their Mac hardware. They have the same exact issue.

And in the past, what I had done is I got a program called SMC Control. And SMC Control is a Mac OS program. What you do is you can use SMC Control to hard set your fans to a certain RPM. So that way, at least there's some thermal cooling. Because otherwise, what happens is without the SMC Controller kicking in via software ignition, then the thermal limits of the actual hardware are what dictate the fan usage. Yeah, it's not what you want. No.

So when you actually get to the full thermal limits of the Intel i7 processor, that's when the fan's cool. When you get to the thermal limits of the GPU, that's when the fans kick on. So by using SMC controller in Mac OS X, I could set the fans at a steady 5500 RPM or 4000 RPM, depending on my workload, and then restart into Linux. If you shut down, then the SMC controller reset. And so if I booted from a cold boot right into Linux, I have no fan control. But if I would first boot into Mac OS and then use SMC control, which is a third-party utility that only supports most Macs,

and then use that to set the fan, and then reboot from that into Linux, I could have proper thermal management. So one of the things that appears to have changed since I had to do that rigmarole was LM Sensors appears to have some capacity to control the thermals on the MacBook now. And so that could make a significant difference in battery life, and it's absolutely an area i'm going to test versus mac os whatever the current release is so i was just looking on ebay in the uk at that spec and they still sell used for around 1200 pounds which is about 1500 isn't amazing

see i think apple has always managed to have super good resale because they only, at best, release a model a year, it seems. So it's sort of like by their apparent nonchalant attitude towards their Mac hardware customers, they have created a very robust aftermarket value for the MacBook. But every time a new one comes out, everything shifts down a bracket. So that, I believe, this MacBook will probably shift down to about $800 once the new MacBook comes out in September. And this, a Core i7—

But was that still a current model even though it's been around for a few years? No, no, no, no. But the current model will shift down a price range. And because this is a model or two below the current model, this is going to come down significantly to about $800. That's my estimation. I could be totally wrong, but that seems to be the history. Because this is like two models or three models behind, is going to be the this is going to be the real bottom basement like still get an i7 still get thunderbolt still get retina still get pcie storage but under a thousand dollars easily will be this i believe that'll be the price of this

machine and at that price range it almost becomes reasonable to experiment with linux on it and just see well what the hell because i you know i it's a it's a six to eight hundred dollar macbook depending on spec and well at the end of the day hell? Because it's a $600 to $800 MacBook depending on spec. And well, at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, I could just do Mac OS X with Linux and VMware. And so I think you're going to have a lot of Linux users that will pick this thing up because the cult of hardware worship around the MacBook, they'll pick this thing up, they'll try putting Linux on it. And so I was like, this is probably something that I'm going to get a whole new wave of

emails about. I'm kind of preemptively getting that. I'm still rocking Arch on the MacBook. I'm dual booting Final Cut OS and Arch, and I'm keeping it up to date every single week. I love it. Now, let's stop right here and reflect on the fact that Vim's birthday gave a moment for us nano users to unite. Let's celebrate a very important birthday that almost just passed us right by. I know, right?

But we did manage to catch it, and it's something that we all can relate to. It's at a milestone, the 25th birthday, where Vim's car insurance finally goes down in price. Happy, happy birthday to Vim. This is a rowdy crowd. Come on, guys. You're in my house. That's right. Over 25 years ago, over 25 years ago it started.

You see, the problem was that Bram, he wanted something like Vim for his Amiga. He was a big user of VI. I should say VI. He wanted something like VI. But they didn't have anything like that on the Amiga. of VI. I should say VI. He wanted something like VI, but they didn't have anything like that on the Amiga. So in 1991, on November 2nd, he released the first

version of VI, Imitation Edition. After three years of working on it, the VI Imitation Edition. Two years later, with the version 2.0, so the first version took three years, second version took two years,

two years later, with version 2.0 of Vim, the feature set had exceeded that of the original VI. Or VI. And so they changed the acronym from Vim Imitation to Vim Improved. Isn't that great? That is really cool. That is really cool. That is a big milestone. 25th birthday?

An indispensable tool. I mean, and think about where it's gone and how widely it's deployed today. Thank God we have Nano. I mean, what? No, I... Come on. And they still don't know how semantic versioning works. Hi, hi, hi.

I used Nano once in a video recently, and I've been getting crap about it for two weeks. Chris, you use Nano? You just got to say it's for the new Linux users. You know, you're trying to be friendly. What are you doing? I thought you would use VR or Emacs. Why are you using Nano? I think it's nice.

What are you doing, man? Nano-W. Nano-TAC-W. Forever. Enlighten us. Oh, man. nano-w, nano-tac-w forever. I don't even know what tac-w does. Enlighten us. Oh, man. It just supports wide characters without cutting it off.

So it's like when you've got config files, that's all it does. But, you know, I actually, if I'm editing the file, I don't know what this is. If I'm editing the file, I tend to use vim because vim because I got like my colors and all that kind of stuff but if I'm viewing a file and I don't want to use cat or more or whatever if I don't want to just look at the file

I just want to just like for some reason open it up but not edit it like when I'm going to look at a file and I'm going to dig around but I'm not going to use sudo I use nano for some reason and then when I'm going to dig around, but I'm not going to use pseudo. I use nano for some reason. And then when I'm going to edit the file with root privileges, I pseudo VI, then the file. Okay. Isn't that weird? That is weird. But I mean, I can see, you know, if it's just something you've learned in your fingers now and you just type it, right? So

it's like the one is my viewing editor and one is my editing. Not sure viewing editor is a consistent idea. It's so dumb because I do every now and then when I'm already in there and now I'm like well I'll just change that real quick and then it's like I go to save and it's like you don't have the privilege of using sudo t to get out of it It's so stupid but it's habit

from a decade ago when I was revolting and I wanted to find a new text editor and I had this I had this boss who was the only other Unix slash Linux guy in the office with me, and we would prank each other constantly. And so I remember I had replaced Vim when he would use VI. It would echo Bruce Stinks or something like that. Bruce is a monkey.

And we did things like we'd set up cron jobs to send system-wide messages on the hour so every user logged into the system would see Bruce smells like a monkey and things like that. We'd mess around with each other, and I remember Nano was sort of the prank we would use. We'd set up an alias so things would launch in Nano or whatever.

There was all these... So I think that's where it started, and it just sort of became... Because I got pranked, I think I just stuck with it. I'm not going to let this, screw this. I'm not going to let this defeat me. I will use this editor.

Exactly. And then now here I am years later and I'm getting crap from the internet. It's like, okay, but you guys don't understand. That's how a lot of stories end. So I just pasted you a command you can run which shows the most popular 10 commands in your bash history oh

that's a great one and for me the top five number one is ls by a factor of two above the next thing i've ever run which is cd right so ls and cd and then sudo which is not unreasonable on one two where you don't get root account by default. Yeah. And then the next one is my editor of choice, which I'm not going to name because I'll just get hate. And then there's other stuff after that. But yeah, LS and CD and pseudo, they seem like reasonable things to have at the top of your list. So I think you should say, and we can debunk a myth here.

Well, I'll go first. I should tell you. My favorite editor is Nano. Oh! can debunk a myth here. I'll go first. I should tell you. My favorite editor is Nano. Oh! Were you here earlier in the show where I admitted to getting crap for the last two weeks because I used Nano? I heard you mention it and

I wasn't here to back you up, but I've been using Nano forever. And this is mostly because the first Unix system i used pine was the email yes yes and consequently pico was the editor okay so yes hard code and nano is a pico clone so hard coded into my dna is all the key bindings for nano and i knew that i knew there was a reason i liked you martin and all these people that say that you know vim and vi is so powerful and there's all these key bindings well there's all these key bindings in nano as well um and if you know them it's just as

just as fast and productive i love you that is amazing I forgot about Pico and Pine. Yes. All right. So is it Nano for you too, Popey, that I take it? Yep. All right. Now, JDA, I think I saw that go by. You also use Nano. Yes, I also use Nano. And I'll say as a visually impaired Linux user, yeah, I'm low. So it's a lot more user-friendly when you're zoomed in to a pretty high degree on a monitor than the alternatives out there. And just as someone who's tried all the different ones, in an accessibility standpoint, Nano takes the cake. And I just wanted to throw my two cents in there.

I can't believe we started this show out with me admitting to all the crap I was getting. And Ben, you use Nano as well? Yeah, man. Look at you. Nobody stood up. Nobody said anything. Yes, club Nano. There we go.

A wrong has been righted. Wait a minute. You see, guys, I am visually impaired too. I have to wear glasses because I have astigmatism and light problem. And truthfully, I just got to use Nano because of my sight and because, you know, I also have autism, so it's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around other editors. You don't have to justify it. Just embrace it.

That's right. I love the nano. It's fine. Here's some funny follow-up from that Nano Users Unite episode. Since episode 170 weeks ago, I'm still getting emails and trickle tweets about other nano users who are coming out in their love for nano. We truly have united,

which is, I don't know what that is. It's funny. If nothing else, I guess I, I don't know. I don't, it's like,

I'm not sure we need to, now we need to support some sort. We need to form like some sort of support group, I guess. Right. I, well, that brings us to the end.

I hope this wasn't your first experience for the Unplugged program, because this is not how this show normally goes. I don't normally have a fireplace behind me. If you're listening, I have a fireplace behind me. I don't normally have presence in the studio. We don't normally play clips of our own show. It's not really how this show... Actually, if this is your first time watching, this might have been the perfect episode

because you now kind of get an idea, a feel for what we talk about. You can submit content at linuxactionshow.reddit.com and share it on subreddit with Linux Action Show. You can go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact and find out when we're live at the calendar page. Thanks for being here. See you next week.

And happy holidays. Thank you.