LINUX Unplugged - Episode 178: Big Sister is Watching | LUP 178

Episode Date: January 4, 2017

Robots take over the show while we go around the table & get our 2017 predictions in for Linux.Plus updates from projects we love & the great Mac migration continues!

Alexa, spell Linux. Linux is spelled L-I-N-U-X. That's not bad. I'm not sure I could do that. Ha ha ha! This is Linux Amplug episode 178 for January 3rd, 2017. Welcome to It's Unplugged. That's pretty close.

Your weekly Linux talk show that's celebrating the New Year's with robots. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. I think I could do a better job than the Echo there. What do you think? You have had more practice than she has, so in fairness. Hello everybody and welcome back and happy 2017. This is really Linux Unplugged. Now I'm not even sure what she said. I don't even know if she could know. No idea. But if you haven't guessed, later on in the show we'll be talking about securing the internet of things and how open source might be able to solve this particular problem

and take something that's typically cloud-based and make it all local. What? Yeah. That's later on in the show. Plus, later on in the show, we'll be getting our 2017 predictions from our virtual lug. Yeah. Getting it all prepped and ready for this Sunday's Linux Action Show, the official predictions episode.

Like, it's a big moment, Wes. That's a huge moment. This last week, we put it off to review source. I saw that. And it was just like we had to go that way. But I got a couple emails, and I think I got – I can't remember if it was a tweet or a telegram. Somebody said, I really missed the predictions episode. See, now the anticipation is building.

And then the other guys, the guy in the email said, I had a bet going on your predictions. And then you didn't do it. So we're going to get a little bit of that taken care of today. Not all of them. What's your appetite? Yeah, we've got to make room for some great open source project updates. I don't know. Maybe some of these open source developers got a little time off for the holidays and

they banged out some code. Come back fresh at it. I know that's how I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So check it out, guys, because in a little bit we're going to have some great stories. And, and what I think could be a great trend for 2017. But first, let's bring in our virtual lug for the first time this year. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room.

Time-appropriate greetings. Happy New Year. Hello, everybody. Hello. It is good to see you. And I want to start out. Start out? I want to start.

Jeez, there's no way half this beer that you brought us could be hitting me that fast. But I guess. By the way, Mr. West over there really, really outdid himself this week. He brought an Odin's Gift. It's a gift for you? Come on. How can you? I can't ask for a better gift than Odin's Gift.

And it's an amber ale brewed with juniper berries, which sounds a lot like Jupiter berries. It sure does, yeah. So you're really just pushing all the buttons. Is it local too, Wes? Is it a local brew? Tequila, Washington. Well done, sir. Well done.

It is my pleasure. Well done. So I've been talking about this since the beginning of last year. It feels a little weird to say. And I think, gosh, I don't mean to say I told you so. But I think maybe I told you so. I think you did. There are more and more people these days that are looking for an alternative to macOS, a special group of people.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend like it's millions of users. I'm not going to pretend like Apple is going to fall apart because of how many people are switching to Linux. It's not your average designer or art person or whatever. But there are those. Like the fellow over at BitCanon, BitCanon.net, wrote up an awesome post. And here's why I say it's awesome because it feels like it's from the perspective of an analytical engineer or somebody who's laying it all out there. And it really breaks down the process from the perspective of not the Apple user that we Linux users like to portray, the hipster with the tight jeans. Is it concerned about the image and the – yeah.

This is someone who is smart and rational like yourself that chose a different path and is now using that same intellect that chose that path to evaluate other paths. And so he writes, I've used macOS since the public beta. I use it both at home and work. I've also run various Linux distributions and BSD since around 2000. So he's got some familiarity working with here, mostly using Ruby and has had some experience with a PC that he built on the side.

It's got an Intel like i7 running at 4 gigahertz with lots of RAM and SSD. And he put Arch on that. But he mostly just SSHs into that from the Mac box to do Ruby development. And it's way faster than the Mac box. But recently, he said there's been more and more appeal to switching from – switching away from the Mac. He says, I spent a fair bit of time pondering the appeal of the Switch. These are some of the benefits as I see them.

Access to regularly updated Pro hardware. I'll give that a ding. Not restricted to Apple hardware that makes choices that I don't value, such as removing the escape key, removing all legacy ports, necessitating, jeez, the use of dongles for everything. Although that may be our future regardless. I wonder.

And prioritizing thinness and weight over everything else. Also, access to hardware that Apple doesn't make, such as 2-in-1 laptops, getting comfortable with alternatives before I'm forced to, the ability to inspect and contribute to the OS I use. Oh! And using an OS where developers are first class citizens. Oh. Also, see stagnation of the Mac App Store.

Drawbacks of switching. Time required to find replacements of the software I use, like Alfred OnePass and Sketch. The lack of access to the iOS SDK because he does maintain an app in the iOS store. Yeah, that's rough. Yeah. He evaluated a bunch of different alternatives from Anagross and Arch and Budai and Elementary. It's really quite a good list. Yeah.

Even Solus is on there, I see. Honorary mentions give Deepin and Haiku and Redox. Here's kind of what he was looking for. Integrated, consistent experience, good design, and simple, easy to use, high DPI support, which is underscored, and timely updates. Top pick is Fedora. Actually, really, top pick, fedora actually really top pick he says all three top picks were gnome based fedora arch straight and elementary which is not actually

gnome 3 um which is his favorite right now this is elementary is what he's going with human interface guidelines which are a plus in his opinion native programming language or at least a primary focus valaala, not Python. And that's what he says. A model for fun and ongoing development, bug bounties, Patreon, asking for payment with downloading. That's an interesting thing. I could see why that would absolutely be. Especially from the professional developer angle, someone who's used to, you know,

maybe he had paid for OSX updates back when that was the thing. Could be a, and, you know, and there are a lot of like, if you have an app, especially in that OSX ecosystem, a lot of the really good apps there are a lot of, if you have an app, especially in that OSX ecosystem, a lot of the really good apps you pay for, but you value them. Yeah, just thinking about it, it really does matter to me that the distro I'm using maybe has a full-time developer too on it.

If I'm using a full-on curated distro, let's get IK funded so he can do this full-time. I don't think he does it full-time, right? That's a really good question. Also, designers as well as developers are on the team. He likes that they have a design angle. And then he just sort of wraps it up. My ideal would be elementary on top of free BSD.

Only your ideal, man. He says, next I plan to resize the arch partition on my work PC and install elementary alongside. I'll aim to do all of my work duties on that machine and post how it goes. So I have a link in the show notes if duties on that machine and post how it goes. So I have a link in the show notes if you want to follow the blog as he goes along. Now, the reason I want to talk about this is because we could sit here and we could talk about Michael Dominick from Coder Radio or Leo Laporte or Bick Cannon. I mean there's so many – those are so many examples. Those are three examples of so many – what I believe represent so many other people that are doing the same evaluation. And I'm not doing this to harp on the MacBook.

I don't really give a crap about that anymore. It just – I think it's – I think this – I think there is a new reality. And that new reality is there is an area of the market that Apple has decided is no longer worth their investment to Target based on the overall importance of the Mac to the Apple overall profit. Their whole ecosystem. And those people that are realizing that are looking for something else and they don't want to go to Windows. They really don't. Windows 10, the thing is, is this is hitting – I believe this is hitting when the Windows 10 hype train has stopped. Right. People at this point feel like it's a fine version of Windows.

Maybe it's one of the better ones. But there are probably still a lot of Mac users, especially who aren't ready to go back. You know, they probably left or they've been using it a long enough time. Well, here's the thing about Windows 10. All the things that drove you crazy about Windows still exist.

Yes. The crazy nightmare of downloading setup.exe to install your drivers, the crazy high DPI support that is totally nonexistent, the mishmash of interfaces, the 10 different ways to set your power management settings, all of these, the integration of market trend of the year when they released the OS, that is so obnoxious. Like the Cortana features, give me a break. Well, and I think there's a difference. Like Windows can produce these sorts of Windows power users that I think we've talked a lot about switching to Linux in the past. And they're the kind of people that know that, right? Like they understand that there's going to be three different menus to configure things. They know how to go deep. They know how to do the reg edit.

That doesn't really exist in OSX to the same degree, whereas these people are looking at OSX as like a – this was their functional computer. I think it's interesting because I think a class of these people are probably on MacBooks and using macOS because their taste, which they would probably classify as discerning, would sort of compel them to go that direction. There's not a lot except for some of the more popular newer distributions that I think that meet the level of quote-unquote discerning tastes of a Mac user. And I'm not trying to be combative, but I think it conveys the image. There is a certain standard they're going for in terms of quality and consistency. And elementary OS is sort of unique. Solus is

also pretty great in that way. And GNOME 3 desktop in general is the best generally available desktop that I think, I honestly believe out of the box, is the most consistent. And there's something about that like, I mean, obviously we've talked a lot about Plasma 5 and how great it is, but there's something about the simplicity of GNOME that matches more with the Mac. Also bear in mind, too, that he's specifically

requiring high DPI, which sort of focuses, Plasma's good, Plasma's great, is great actually plasma is still slightly inconsistent on high dpi compared to gnome 3 and it's really gnome 3's ballpark right now yeah gtk3 gtk3 yeah uh so i i think it's sort of a fascinating trend that is going to increase in 2017 and so i just wanted to cover it at the top here because this is sort of what this episode is about is these types of things mr Mr. Jude, you have a point. Yeah, a lot of the people that I know that use MacBooks,

it was not so much about the window manager and stuff, but the apps. The apps and the fact that it has a shell, right? I need my email that's going to be reliable, and I want my browser that's always going to work. Yeah, yeah. You know, both Chromium and Firefox under open-source operating systems are sometimes a bit not perfect.

Whereas in previous versions of macOS, you could rely on the OS not to crash and your apps to work. That's actually not as true anymore. It's not just the hardware that Apple has fallen down on, but the fact that NFS and the latest version of OS X will crash if you try to connect to things. Right, right. And, you know, to that point— And also just people having troubles with even just the web browser and email not working properly. To that point, there was a release of macOS where—I can't remember what the reason was. I think it was a licensing issue.

They just ripped out Samba and implemented their own— Oh, right. That was pretty recently. Yeah, their own SMB client. And it just is absolute shit. It's shit. It's bad, bad, right. That was pretty recently. Yeah, their own SMB client. And it just is absolute shit. It's shit. It's bad, bad, bad. And it's gotten better now in previous – in successive releases.

But it just was awful back then. And it was just an example of something they just didn't really care for pro users. They wouldn't – And it's another where maybe you have these skills. You've used CIFs on other servers and now maybe the Mac implementation is different for perhaps no good reason. I think, too, and Alan, I wonder if you agree, do you think that some of it has to do with just more people shifting workload into the web browser? Or do you think it's still more about the native apps? I think it's a little bit less about native apps now.

now uh but i think what we need to look at from this is actually getting back the idea of the reason any development happens in open source is developers scratching their own itch so this might be the golden opportunity to get more developers back to using linux or bsd and refining that desktop experience to make it good enough for them uh whereas before it was not quite good enough to drive them to go with the Mac instead. Yeah, sort of critical mass thing. Before I go any further, I should mention Alan reminded me, I should plug it right

now, that you can join Alan and I for our last TechSnap episode 300 this Thursday at 1 o'clock JV time, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. And then the show goes on with Mr. Wes and Dan. So, yeah. I should mention that since Alan's here. If you're listening,

you can join us for that. And thanks for joining us. Yeah, Alan, it's good to hear from you. I just got back from the dentist and had nothing better to do. So hang out with those Linux guys. That's alright. God, Alan. I love it. I love it. Well, you just also happen to be talking about a topic that's been of interest to me lately

because I've seen a bunch of people I've known as hardcore Mac users for five or ten years more being like, well, they took away my escape key, so I bought a Lenovo. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. We just had somebody in the chat room that just said that basically. In fact, he said – who was it?

I just – yeah, DeBille. Are you in the mumb room, DeBille? No, I don't see him in the chat room that just said that basically. In fact, he said, who was it? I just, yeah, DeBille. Are you in the mumble room, DeBille? No, I don't see him in the mumble room. DeBille said that he replaced his MacBook at work for a three-year-old Lenovo with Linux because he got tired of crashing and all those kind of things. And I think that's the main reason so many Linux and BSD developers went with a Mac is because they were having these consistency and polish problems on the open source OS. And a lot of that has gotten better, although a lot of it is not. The thing that we haven't really caught up on is the lightness of the hardware, although like the X1 Carbon from Lenovo is nice and light and is getting there. But you know, reliable

suspend resume and battery life the mac has always been way ahead there but maybe this will be the push to actually make people spend time on making that happen exactly yeah and i've i noticed i think specifically solace and maybe elementary os2 have done something to make standby really fast and reliable on those distros because like it's with those distros my benchmark, my benchmark is the password prompt on my screen by the time I've finished lifting the lid. There you go. Yeah.

And those meet that benchmark. And that's as fast as I could possibly ask for. But then there's other desktops where it does – so what – okay. So Wes just closed his laptop. What login manager are you using on that? Do you know? GDM. Okay.

All right. Because that seems to make a difference. All right. Fired up. All right. Not quite. About a half second after. After, fire it up. All right, not quite. About a half second after. After the screen was up, which is usable.

It was usable. But it's not as fast as a MacBook, which is cool. Yeah. Yeah, but see, the Mac is cheating by not doing things like erasing the full disk encryption password for RAM. Yes, there you go. We covered that in last week's TechSnap. It turns out that it's just sitting there in plain text in the RAM, just hanging out, just chilling. It's a password.

And if you plug into the Thunderbolt, you can DMA and extract it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just wait. So plug into the Thunderbolt port, lift the Mac lid, grab the RAM contents. There's the password. You don't have to crack nothing. And there's little devices, you know. Just the Thunderbolt stuff is going to be – and USB-C is – that's what's going to be crazy about them. We should move on. But with the MacBook specifically, with those USB-C ports being Thunderbolt in reality, I mean that's right there on the bus.

I wonder if that's going to become a security issue. It's going to have to be a – Solus is using LightDM. Well, damn, I don't know what to tell you. Although I don't know if LightDM is specifically fast or slower. I just have a lot of experience with GDM, well, damn, I don't know what to tell you. Although I don't know if LightDM is specifically fast or slower. I just have a lot of experience with GDM. Speaking of Solus, just really quick, since we just put out our review, they have an update. We reviewed them on Sunday, and that afternoon they put out an update. I just thought I'd mention it really quick because it's sort of the distribution that I'm all excited about at the moment

because that's what I just installed on my machine. I still have it sitting right here, and I just checked, and I got all excited about at the moment because that's what I just installed on my machine. I still have it sitting right here. And I just checked and I got all the updates installed. Nice. Yeah. So there's just a few general improvements including a bump to the NVIDIA driver. The new version of Software Center version 15 has gone out which includes updates and new apps

that I probably would have mentioned in our review if they were in there at the time. And I guess they now are, this is like the last version of the Budgie desktop that's going out before they focus on Budgie 11, which is what a lot of the users are excited about. Also, I should mention, the Mate edition has been updated and it's got the new Brisk menu in it,

which we covered two weeks ago, I think it was. That's going to be exciting to watch. It shipped. The first version of the Brisk menu is already, gosh, that was fast. That was really fast. That's right. Just looking at that little snapshot overview, like you said, they do snapshots pretty regularly. But there is a lot of stuff in there. It's so clear how much is going on in this project. I know. I know. I don't – I feel conflicted because I feel like I could take up a half hour covering it actually to be honest with you. But I don't feel like that probably would be the best use of all of the audience's time.

If you're interested, go check it out. Go try it. But there is a lot. There is a lot in there for just a quick update. Yeah. So the momentum is high with this one. Keep it up, guys. Also, it looks like kernel 4.8.15 as well as 1302 OpenGL. I don't even – wow.

I don't follow OpenGL at all anymore. What I honestly was more curious and watch closer is the NVIDIA driver versions because I do like to have the later versions of that. So good job to the Solus project. So, Wes, you and I were chatting about this before the show today. This is kind of a nice thing for Nexus 5 phone owners. Now that Google has stopped updating it, right? Didn't they stop updating it? Yes, they did.

No 7 for us. And then I think this year the 6P and the 5X lose support. They will. They still get security updates, though. Oh, okay. They just don't get the new hotness. Okay. Boy, that's pretty.

I mean, they almost feel still new. Yeah, I guess security updates is not the end of the world. No. How long do they get the security updates for? Do you know? I want to say like a full year. Okay. So you get like two years probably from now if you have a 5X or a 6P.

That's reasonable. Exactly. I feel like the 6p should get another year it does feel like it was you know that was an expensive phone the last phone yeah nexus 6 yeah it's yeah it's one of your nexus 6 is getting 7 and so on no it's it shouldn't be i have the 7 update pending i just have to press the button do you not press the button. Do you not get 7.1? You might not get 7.1. That would be some real shit.

Put you on the point. But you don't get the thing where we ironed out the process. That's the worst. I just don't know about that. And, of course, this is a real thing. This is a real thing. This is a real problem, and this is where I think things like Lineage or Ubuntu Touch have some real promise. The Nexus 5 is now fully working with Ubuntu Phone. Wow.

So if you've got a Nexus 5, you can go all in. We've talked about Maurice's cool software that he created in the past that allows you to flash these devices super easy. So this is, he's been working on it. He's also got an unofficial port for the Fairphone 2, which is becoming fully working, which is awesome. Hey, cool. Yeah, I guess GPS still is not working, but otherwise it's fully working.

Wow. Nexus 5, though. All in. It looks like it's working also on the OnePlus 1, Ubuntu touch port. Still some stabilization improvements that need to happen there, though. But wow.

In fact, the developer, Maurice, is using a Nexus 5 running Ubuntu Touch as his daily driver. He even connects it to HDMI and gets the Convergence stuff. So it's full-on Nexus 5 with Convergence while Google's not even updating it anymore. Nope.

I mean, that kind of makes me curious. I have one kicking around still, so I'll definitely try it on there. But my mom's using a Nexus 5 still, and it makes me like, maybe I'm better off just flashing it with Ubuntu. She doesn't need a whole bunch of Android apps, so would that be a more secure, maintainable thing?

I think it would. And it would be really interesting to see that type of user's perspective. Also, so if you check the show notes, you can get the link to the article, but you can also just go to ubports.com, ubports.com, and learn more, which, interestingly enough, is powered by DigitalOcean. Oh, DigitalOcean.com is our first sponsor this week.

You know DigitalOcean's awesome like that. They're not just, it's not just that open source project they're hooking up. UBports is one of them. I think they also do support for elementary OS's back end. I'm watching elementary OS's back end. Yeah, you bet. Oh, yeah, you bet it. You bet it.

You better believe it. They know the movers and shakers. There's a few different distributions out there they're supplying infrastructure for. And remember that time Wimpy was on the show working on his releasing a version of Ubuntu Mate? He was running on DigitalOcean. That's right. There's a reason why everybody's picking this as their infrastructure. It is so, so easy to get started, so quick to get started, and it's damn reliable.

And it's super fast. DigitalOcean.com. Use our promo code D-O-N-Plugged. One word. You apply it to your account. You get a $10 credit. Now, what's great about DigitalOcean is this super simple interface. What's great about DigitalOcean is this super simple interface.

It is like if you were going to ask for the best interface to manage virtual machines and data centers all over the world that use KVM for the virtualizer, Linux for the backend, and SSD for storage, and then you want to do like templates and snapshots and have an API and multiple distributions including free BSD to choose from, you honestly would not come up with a better idea. In fact, it's the gold standard. And you've probably used some of those other cloud providers' interfaces where you have to configure like five or six things before you've even spun up a VM. That is not how it works at Dio. Those are like designed in the 90s. I swear to – Or they just scream enterprise throughout that whole thing. I swear to Linus.

Those were created in the 90s. This is modern stuff. But what I think is truly awesome about DigitalOcean is I've been sitting here raving about that UI. I think that whole UI runs on their API. That's why the API is so good. It's super good. And it also explains why it's simple and straightforward because they've got to work with it themselves. I don't want to pay any attention.

No. It's awesome. They've got 40 gigabit e-connections into the hypervisors. They got data centers all over the world. They have team accounts. They have hourly pricing. You can run fantastic rigs with two gigs of RAM, two core processor, 40 gigabyte SSD, three terabytes of transfer for three cents an hour.

What? What? Yeah, three cents an hour. I know. Develop locally and then deploy globally. This is a really, really slick system because you could spin up a rig when you need it. So you could be working in a Docker container. You could be working in a VM.

You could be working in a jail for all I care. I don't care what you're doing. Maybe you're just running a directory in your opt folder. I'm not going to judge because when you're ready, you publish it up to DigitalOcean. You start testing on it. You get a bunch of users banging on it. It's so easy to manage the DNS. Set up your SSH keys. You're going to be publish it up to DigitalOcean, you start testing on it, you get a bunch of users banging on it. It's so easy to manage the DNS, set up your SSH keys.

You're going to be doing it at a boss level. DigitalOcean.com. Be like UbiPorts.com and become a DigitalOcean customer. Just use our promo code DEOUNPLUGGED and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program and happy 2017 to DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean.com.

Use our promo code D-O, unplugged. So, Wes, do you have any interest in the Firefox inaugural consensus results? Oh, yeah. That sounds interesting, actually. I'm kind of curious who finds themselves a Firefox user these days. And I didn't even know they did this. I didn't know that either. But it makes sense when you – I mean you probably need that to help grow in the right direction.

So from the – here we go. This is making me concerned. From the Firefox Department of Whimsy, we get this report. This could be a bad, you know, I'm going to save it. You know what? I'll save judgment. Maybe I'm- Let's see what's happening. Because I was about to talk about having too much money and people sitting around with time on their hands. But no, I'm not going to get in there. So let's keep going.

I mean you need at least two people making up department names, Chris. That's just – that's how any organization works. That's true. All right. You're right. All right. So let's talk about it. So 78 percent of their survey takers were between 18 and 34 years old or 55 plus.

80 percent use a PC. 12 percent use a Mac. And 6.8% use GNU slash Linux. Okay. GNU slash Linux. However, a bunch of the Linux users bitched that I actually also run Windows a lot, so I sort of voted Windows, but I still have a Linux machine I run. So you should have had multi-OS. Don't peg me. That was in there.

I don't know what that means, but that was in there. Next time, just pick Linux, guys. Just pick – yeah. No one cares that you also run Windows. I know. That's what I was thinking when I read that. That's not that hard of a joke. They even – by the way, anyway, I won't get into it.

They talk about it a lot. Speaking of our Linux folk, we found they tend to speak more languages than other OS users. 58% of Linux users speak more than one language compared to 38 percent for Mac and Windows users. So more – that makes sense. Linux is – it feels like macOS and Windows develop for English first and then – right. But there's other places in the world where the people are developing their own native language for open source. And they can just run it on their desktop.

A couple of other things I thought were interesting. Likes for Firefox users. Cooking. At least 66% are good cooks, even if they don't like doing it. Fall is the favorite season by 32%. 16% for winter. And Star Wars beat Star Trek. It was a close call.

Star Wars got 54.6%. We're in on this article. Yeah, 45.4%. I know. Triforce. Dislikes. Most actors who have played Spider-Man. 56% chose no over Tobey Maguire.

Bungie jumping. 67% haven't been bungee jumping. 26% say they never would. Online dating they don't like. 79% have never tried it. 9% said yes, they've tried tried it but it's a horror show firefox sends their condolences um the world oh here's another thing firefox users dislike the word jowls 51 said this their least favorite word over synergy fluid and

moist that's a common one. Moist. Fluid, though. Come on. Fluid's a fun word and concept. I don't – if I could – if people didn't mind me swearing on this show, I would be swearing about this. This is what they spend their time and money on? I mean they probably didn't spend a lot of time and money on it.

But still, I was hoping for like 56 percent of Firefox users want multi-processing. 10 percent of Firefox users know what sandbox tabs are. That's what I was hoping for. The things that people are excited about. I mean, like, I've been using Firefox at work, and I'm always pleasantly surprised that when I have a tab open and I try to open a new tab to go to that same URL, it just pops me back to my current tab.

These are things that I like about Firefox, but the survey does not tell me about that. Oh, man. Oh, too bad Alan had to go, because this next one would be such a good update for him. I should pick up the pace. I feel like we're dragging. Should I pick up the pace?

Let's do it. All right. So we'll just go through this really quick. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge story, everybody. Linux.com, how Facebook uses Linux and ButterFS. Oh, man. Whoa. This is going to be great.

Finally. Finally. We've been waiting for this. Finally, that pro argument that all ButterFS users always throw in my face when I say ButterFS is garbage and we should abandon it. But Chris. But Chris. Chris. Facebook uses it on their servers, Chris.

Chris. Are you better than Facebook, Chris? Actually, Chris. Actually. Well, actually. Well, actually, Chris. Facebook uses ButterFS. That's what I get.

Every time I get that. You've seen it. Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So we have an interview.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have an interview with not just somebody who works at Facebook in the server department. Turns out to also be a lead developer of ButterFS. So this guy, pretty familiar with the product.

So let's go with what he says. So we're going to get – now, this whole article is framed around how Facebook uses ButterFS. But in reality, I love you, Swampy, but it's only two questions in an entire article. It's not about this at all. But so Swampy asks, ButterFS has been in development for a long time. Is it ready for prime time? I know some distributions are using it as a default file system while others don't. So the question is, is ButterFS ready for prime time?

It's right there. Is it ready? The direct quote is, is it ready for prime time? Chris Mason's answer, it's certainly the default in SUSE. Pretty strong answer there. And then he goes on talking about Seuss and how Seuss uses it. And then he says, Red Hat hasn't picked it up in the same way. Okay.

Yep. Okay, next question. What are the areas where ButterFS makes more sense? If I'm not wrong, Facebook also uses ButterFS. Here's all of the millions of deployments that Facebook has. It just has a couple of qualifiers. Inside of Facebook, again, we pick targeted places where we think the features of ButterFS are really beneficial to the workloads at hand. The big areas we're trying to focus on are system management tasks, the snapshotting type of things.

In other words, they run it on a tiny fraction of their systems where that specific workload The big areas we're trying to focus on are system management tasks, the snapshotting type of things. In other words, they run it on a tiny fraction of their systems where that specific workload makes sense for ButterFS. So when you hear Facebook runs ButterFS, they run it on some of their servers. And then it's for things like, OK, well, you have snapshots for your root file system. You can do rollbacks, that kind of thing. But it's not their giant storage cluster, right? He also goes on to say that they use Gluster and XFS and that they're all pretty much Linux and that they don't really use ButterFS outside of management tasks

around distributing around operating systems and updates by snapshotting features. And they like checksumming features, so they think ButterFS, and I agree, has some snapshots, checksums, copy on write, all things I would love, subvolumes, all things I would love to see. Those are legitimate uses. It's not that I don't like ButterFS. Actually, that's not true. I don't like ButterFS. It's a bad product.

It's got a bad brand. Nobody's deploying it seriously. And unfortunately, it's a jalopy. Everybody knows it, unfortunately. I wish it wasn't because the world needs ButterFS because ZFS

isn't GPL and I really think that's why XFS has been getting a ton of development in the last year and a half like the

the development pace on XFS is skyrocketing and I think it really is like they're talking about adding copy on write support to ZFS or I'm sorry XFS and XFS I really think XFS is skyrocketing. And I think it really is, like they're talking about adding copy on write support to XFS. And XFS.

I really think XFS is trying to now fill that hole a little bit. And I think it kind of illustrates as well, like I know some of the things people in the ZFS camp have talked about, you know, is Butterfest really wasn't designed in the way where, you know, stability, production runnableness came first, where it wasn't going to lose your data. But I think it kind of highlights the siloed nature sometimes of kernel development, where we do have this thriving XFS community where it's very much trusted in production, and they're going to add some features, but they're going to do it in a way where they ensure they don't break compatibility. They're not going to break your file system. Go ahead. So it looks like in here, from what he said, pretty much all Linux, the places we're targeting is ButterFS and really management around tasks and distributing the operating system.

This pretty much means if we have a server, the operating system is going to be installed on ButterFS. I didn't read it that way. I do get that. I see what you're saying. But see what he says when he says here where they have targeted specific work environments. That to me means that's not all of their systems. You will want the operating system to be using ButterFS and have snapshotting and all that kind of stuff. But you don't need all of the application that they have on top, which is Facebook or whatever the database is or whatever.

It's the program needs to be on the same file system because that will actually make sense. It's not needed for that. It's targeted of environment doesn't mean that the whole environment doesn't actually compensate or encompasses that part. Alright, okay, fine. So, William, when usually we're talking about file systems, this is usually what I like to

check in with you because you always tantalize me with I can't remember the name of it right now but it's... It's BcashFS, I think. Yes, thank you. Yes, it is. It is. Can we get a little BcashFS update? How's it going?

So development's still progressing at a pretty smooth pace. Encryption still hasn't landed, but there's a branch for it. A lot of work has been focusing on performance and stability recently in just the feature set that is there so far. Those are good things. Unfortunately, we don't have snapshotting yet, but checksumming works. And he's also working on multi-tiering and replication and those sorts of like multi-device type features. Now, is there no work being done right now on Extender 5?

Is that a thing? I guess that's... I think that's a pipe dream. Yeah. I guess that's... I think that's a pipe dream. Yeah. Also, I don't really see why you would want to port the X4 code base forward to add those type of features because it's a mess. Right.

It's probably better to do the kind of clean room implementation. Super quick mention because I said I wanted to pick up the base. Cody. Love it. Hey, one of our favorites. 17 is just around the corner. RC2 is out as we record this. Not much of a difference between RC2 and RC1.

So if you're on RC1, don't worry. But I just wanted to give it a quick mention because it is coming down the pipe soon. And if you have a Kodi box you can test on, they could probably use the help because this is a huge release. The new theme is really what the headline feature is. The new default theme, which does look super good. It does look really nice. That looks really slick. But tons of new backend stuff.

Everything from the PVR stuff to the video decoding stuff, add-on manager changes, all of that is worth talking about. Is Mr. Tennell still on there? Mr. Tennell. Rodden. Michael, do you have any Cody thoughts? You're usually following Cody pretty closely. Do you have any Cody 17? You're usually following Cody pretty closely.

Do you have any Cody 17 thoughts? Or as somebody who has a few add-ons on 16, are there things maybe I'll have to worry about for 17? Do you know any of the – are you hip to any of that? Yeah, there's a lot of differences in 16 and 17. They're mostly like appearance things. Like the Krypton changes a lot of stuff for the way the, the, the theme is going to change. So it's actually changing a lot of the way the interfaces for all the different applications add-ons work.

Oh wow. So like it's mostly, you know, transparent. You don't have to do that much, but there are some add-ons that require rewrites. Uh, but overall it's not,

it's not a bad thing. It's more like they got a lot of extra features they can utilize. Right. Oh, uh, what I think it's great is the, uh, the Libre office,

uh, not Libre office not libre office why i say that libre elect oh okay that that the fork of libre elect is really fast paced development with cody so like krypton's not even out and libre elect already has builds for the krypton version so like the alpha builds and the beta builds are already there whereas open like is um doesn't even have one yet so it's really something i would suggest people look at if they're looking at using Kodi. So I'm going to put a link to this in the show notes if you guys want it. It's LibreELEC.tv, and their tagline is Just Enough OS for Kodi. So this is something you install.

It gets you a base Kodi box, like an appliance fairly close, that tracks the Kodi development fairly closely. So that's pretty cool. LibreElect over OpenElect. I might check that out. Thank you, sir. That's cool. I'm dropping that in the show notes right now. 17 is, I can't wait till it gets out.

Oh, I know. I've been just continuously impressed with Kodi. I'm using it on the Android TV. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm using it on the- I have not tried it on Android yet. Super good. It's super, super, I can't, it's like – it's got to be one of the best Android applications ever.

It's just so – it's like everything you want from Kodi in an app. It's so – I mean like I'm sitting there browsing Zombashares on an Android app. It's just totally mind-blowing. Without having to go tab out to some other app or any of that. Yeah, it's so great. Wow. And it can browse my local file system too, which is good because I've got a hard drive in that thing. I tell you what, I really love it on there.

And it's such a true appliance at that level. Like we just unplug it from the wall sometimes, and it's just no big deal. It's so awesome. That's amazing. I did an episode on it of Linux Action Show for you guys. Here. Thunderbird development. So this is a question that came in from Kapi in the subreddit.

And he asked, has anyone tried out Zimber Desktop as a replacement for Thunderbird? Because he's worried about it dropping off. And Zimber Desktop, well, if you like Outlook, you'll like Zimber Desktop. That's kind of being harsh. It's better than Outlook, I guess. What does that even say i want to check in with you are you still using lasn1 as your email client i've kind of fallen off with them yeah i i was using it for a while and i was enjoying it and i liked it

um but i didn't find myself using any of the pro features. I don't really – I mean I send emails, right? I receive emails mostly. But I don't need enough. At work we have 365. So I end up using the web interface for that anyway. So it was enough to kind of keep things in the web interface. That said, I still think it's a good project. I'm excited for what they've done. I like the way they develop things. I just don't know if I have enough of a use case.

If anybody in the mobile room has thoughts on their favorite awesome mail client, tag me in the chat room. But I'll tell you, I'm still using N1. What are your thoughts? It's become invaluable. Not like I'd have to have it, but I definitely

like when I installed Solus, I was like, oh my god, can I get N1? Oh, I can. What I really like about it is two things. I super like the fact that I can snooze emails and I can say, alert me about this email tomorrow at 6 p.m. That is such a nice feature because it helps me get away from leaving like the marked as unread. That gets messy so fast. Oh, my God, dude. I've got like – I wonder if it says on my phone if i if i if i pull up the mail icon does it say how much how much freaking mail i have i

mean it's just it is an unbelievable amount of unread mail i have at this very moment and so using using the using what what used to be a great horrible system i suppose of just leaving messages as unread and then if it was unread then then I knew I needed to follow up on it. That doesn't work. You can't do that. Not when you have like a ton of email to get to. So being able to set a reminder like that is super useful because then it goes out of my inbox. It clears out. So it looks like it's been cleared out of my inbox.

Anything that can like reduce the complexity of what you have to do and can make it easy at a glance to just be like, this is what I need to deal with now. Later, I will check again and deal with what needs to be dealt with then. But the other thing I really like about it is this creepy feature that it has. Talking about the red notification? Yeah, which is like read receipts on a whole new level. Do you have any idea how they're doing it? Like I figured – I assume they're shipping like a little pixel or element inside there.

There's something in the email, but it seems to work even with plain text emails. But I don't know if that's true. I guess maybe everybody I email uses HTML mail, but it would have to be damn near everybody I email. So here's what it does. And it even integrates in with Gnome's notifications. So it's so fun. So I send off an email to somebody. Yes, that part is slick.

So I send off an email to somebody. And when they read it, instead of getting like the traditional read receipt email that you get in your email box, I get a push notification to the email client, which shows up as a gnome notification that Wes has read my email. And I get that every time Wes opens up my emails. And it turns out, and this is really valuable for me because I like to dive into email and get out for a while. And so I can tell if I'm having an active conversation with somebody because I can see that they're reading my emails and then I know if I need to stay present. Right. The other thing that's really great is if I leave N1 minimized in the background or running on like my second desktop and I'm on my main desktop, I will often see like Wes has opened up your email, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because what everybody seems to do in the entire world is instead of – they just – when they go to email somebody, they just open up the last email from them, hit reply, clear out the subject line, put a new subject line in,

clear out the body, put a new body in, and send the email. And so everybody opens up my old emails before they send me a new email, at least a lot of people. I'm just not everybody. So I end up getting a notification like five, ten minutes that, hey, you're about to get an email from Wes. So I keep an eye out. And it without fail, it always happens. Actually, that's pretty handy.

It is very handy because otherwise, once I'm out, I'm done. It might be days until I open up my email again. You could have solved that thing or come to a resolution with the question you had right there. That turns out to be a very super creepy great feature. Well, maybe I'll have to give it another try. So that combined with the delay, the way you can snooze emails, and the overall UI is nice.

I mean it's an Electron app, but it's probably one of the best Electron apps I've ever used. I never found it to be slow or anything like that. And I don't mind that it has a pay structure. I'm glad the company is going to be around. And they still allow you to host your own server, which works fine on DigitalOcean. So I'm happy. I mentally disagree with that. I never want that feature ever, ever, ever.

The creepy tracking? Yes, yes. Please, no, please. Make sure you don't email click. It's the worst. Please don't email. If I want, if I want to have that type of knowledge about people being about to text me, I would use an instance measure. There's plenty out there already. Oh,

I should make another one. If you're listening to this, by the way, I should also say it has pretty great, uh, GPG integration too. Like it's, it beats even like,

uh, um, Enigma, Enigma or whatever. What's the Thunderbird extension? Yeah, Enigma. There's also the Enigma. It's good.

It's fine. Yeah, it is. I like Enigma a lot, so I'm not trying to disparage it because I also like that it has good key management. And it came out quickly on the time that FSF was trying to cash on the fears because of the revelations and stuff. Yeah. It kind of does work. But you know what? Yes.

So I just wanted to get it out there for Kipi because N1 might be something, if you're willing to host your own server or willing to let them host it for you, because it does require that server-side component. Right. And that's how, like, the tracking works, but also, like, sending notifications to your desktop. The other thing that's really great about it is that intermediary server seems – it just gets really shitty when you get a lot of email and sometimes like red status doesn't get synced correctly through IMAP and stuff like that. It's just a pain in the butt and the N1 client doesn't seem to have those issues.

So I like that a lot about it too. So there you go. That's my answer to your Thunderbird question. Now, before we go any further in the show, we really got to get to the predictions. We got to get to the predictions. That's the whole point of the show. That's got to be where we're going. So let's talk about Ting.

That's our next sponsor here on the Unplugged program. And Ting is mobile service that's perfect for our audience because it's really quite simple. If you just think about how you use your phone a little bit, you can save a ton of money. Now, honestly, it's not really all that bad. One of the things I've done is I gave – we have a nanny for the kids. And she has an iPhone on Ting. And I don't say – I don't go like, Jenny, don't use data. Don't make phone calls.

She just uses it however she wants. I don't really bother. I am the weirdo that enjoys hacking the system. I like looking at my bill and going, three phones and I've only spent $35. That's crazy. I like that because I know how to use Wi-Fi for phone calls and downloading podcasts. You can get the thrill of optimization there. Yeah.

That's great. I know. It's like, hey, I won a little bit. I cheated the system. That's right. I do deserve this cheeseburger. That's right. That's right. I know. It's like, hey, I won a little bit. I cheated the system. That's right. I do deserve this cheeseburger. That's right. That's right.

That's a good way to think about it. I do deserve a cheeseburger right now. You sure do. Damn it. Free guy. Yeah. He deserves a cheeseburger too. So here's what's great about Ting is your average monthly bill is like $23.

That's your average device cost, like $6 for your line, and then your usage will generally work out to about $23. It's amazing. And if you start with our URL, linux.ting.com, you get $25 in service credit. So it'll pay for more than your first month. Now, if you don't have a device, you can go get one with that $25, and that's also a great way to go. They have fantastic customer service. They have CDMA and GSM networks to choose from.

No contracts. No early termination fee. And they have, guess what? A really great control panel. A legit, a lit, as the YouTubers say. They have a lit control panel. Did you know that? I did not.

Lit. Lit. Which I thought at first was like you're lit up. Yeah, right. Sure. Getting lit. Yeah. Or you're getting wasted, getting lit.

Yeah. I guess that's another term, getting lit, right? This is quite the overloaded operator we've got here. But no. Now it's legit. Too lit to quit. Legit. Shouldn't it be le?

It's le. Ting is le. It really is. I'm like going on almost like, what, three years with Ting? That's le. Let me tell you, that's le. That's longer than a lot of relationships. Look at you guys.

Also, that's love. I know. Me and Ting, you know what? I think it's really Kyra that makes it all work. I think Kyra behind the scenes, she's pushing all the buttons and making it possible. Without Kyra, I don't know what would be going on. Who else would explain to us how Ting works? We can't do it.

We need her. Ting keeps rates simple. We don't make you pick a plan. Instead, you just use your phone as you normally would. How much you use determines how much you pay each month. You can have as many devices as you want on one account. That's good, because when you use more, you pay less per

minute, message, or megabyte of data. Your usage, plus $6 per active device on your account, plus taxes is your monthly bill. Simple. That's what we mean when we say mobile. That makes sense. Yeah, go check out their lit control panel, too.

And I got an app, too, which is really nice. And SIM cards for like nine bucks. Put them in a device, security system, anything like that. I think, you know what? I just got a really interesting idea. I would love to be able to check the battery status of Lady Joops remotely. And I wonder if like there's a little way I could hook up like an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi. Oh, I'm sure you could.

Yep. It wouldn't be great if I could SSH into something and get the battery level. Yes. That would be great. Maybe turn SSH into something and get the battery level? Yes. That would be great. Maybe turn the car on remotely? Yeah. All right. All right.

All right. You know what I can do? Let me try this. I'm not sure if this is the right command. Alexa, ask Automatic how much gas I have. Your Ford Super Duty F53 motorhome is 80% full. Your Ram 1500 is 72% full. Isn't that great?

Wow. Yeah. We're going to get into that more later. But let's start with our 2017 predictions. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Now, I don't know what it is this year. This year, I feel like it's going to be the year of more of the same. Yeah. And what do I feel like it's going to be the year of more of the same. You know, like,

and what do I get excited about? It's more momentum in the right direction. Like, we're going to have some fights. We're going to have some missteps. But overall, we're going to do pretty good. So maybe that means 2016, for all the negative 2016 comments, maybe it really wasn't a bad year for Linux at all.

Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. No, Freclabs is not saying it's 1500% full. There's two different motorhomes, or two different vehicles listed there. One motorhome, one truck. So, I want to defer to the virtual lug. Maybe they can get us going. Maybe they can get us

going. Do you have a quick one off the tip of your tongue? Well, we kind of already talked about it. I was just thinking at the end, we'll say BcashFS. I think by the end of 2017, that's going to be something we will be talking about more. Interesting. I wonder if he just stole Williams. All right. Sweet Lou, what is your – go ahead.

You'll get first. Go. Well, I still hold on to my prediction about Ubuntu and Microsoft merging when Ubuntu reaches the end of the alphabet this coming April. I'm going to keep track of this. So Sweet Lou's prediction is really what you're...

Are you really saying that Microsoft buys Canonical? Yeah, either that or merges with them. Yeah, it's going to be an acquisition, right? It's not happening. Alright, hold on. I got to write these down. So, that's not...

Okay, go ahead. May make a deal with Canonical, or actually more likely with Suze, to be honest, though, because of the previous deal. To have them help them support a Linux kernel, I don't believe they will acquire.

So is it like an Ubuntu? It's like an Ubuntu blast kernel running on Azure? Not just that, but also because remember my prediction, we're ever closer to the year of my prediction of Microsoft running with a Linux kernel and a Windows desktop environment on top that is proprietary. God, I would love that. But I just think they're so allergic to the GPL.

I think they're not, though. They're not. This is the thing that they've been realizing. It's that it's actually useful to have other people maintain your stuff and you will not ever have the issue of not having people to hire to fix your stuff. I mean, that's logical. Everybody knows it. That's logical and very cognizant.

But do you think they've actually made that big of a change? Yeah. Yes. And I believe that because look at the companies. I just can't not look at the fact that they've been acquiring talent more with the acquisitions of the apps companies and so on. They're not acquiring just the companies. They're acquiring talent that knows how to work in this platform without telling the world that they're doing so. Right now, if you want to look at the prospects of any business in IT and you want to know what

they're up to, there's two ways. You can ask them and they might say about it or you can look at what they're hiring because they can't lie about the hiring because otherwise they'll not get the right people. So do you want to go on record and say that you're going to see Microsoft products running on an Ubuntu kernel because I or do you want to actually say Windows? Because I could actually get behind the first one. I don't know if I could get behind

Windows in 2017. I'm not sure if it will be in 2017, but until 2018, I'm pretty sure there will be a Linux kernel with a Windows desktop environment. I think... That was my prediction.

It was a five-year span. Three years in, they already have a Linux distribution on the server and Azure and all the stuff. They love Linux now. Here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to hijack your prediction a bit, and I'm going to say in 2017 Microsoft makes a deal with Canonical to run a product on an Ubuntu blessed kernel. And it might be like the more like the slimmed down Ubuntu stuff, like Ubuntu Core.

Right. I could totally see that. I could see that too. I could actually – like I could see them doing that on the cloud. I could even see them doing that in like a product. I mean I really could see that. I could see that too. I could actually – like I could see them doing that on the cloud. I could even see them doing that in like a product. I mean I really could see that happening. But running their core Windows desktop, I've always thought eventually to go in a VM. But I figured it would be because it would be replaced with another Microsoft product.

Right. And it seems like – I do see – like I could see them doing that on like a BSD or something. But I feel like they will – they're always going to want to withhold that, you know, to be able to have their new proprietary drivers, their new custom kernel integration that lets them have the one new feature or the HoloLens support or something where they have a competitive edge in the business.

And I don't think, I think there are still enough things at the OS level for the desktop world that they wouldn't be willing to share that. On the cloud server angle, yes. I think that's a different ballgame for them. Mm-hmm. I think you're on a certain page.

To be honest, it won't matter that much, the feature of Microsoft, like in general, what OS you're running, because they're really moving to the assistant world. They want to give you Windows 10 for free. Why? Because it doesn't matter. They're going to profit on

having you talk with Cortana. This is the thing that actually is dragging people still to Windows 10 and try. And people are excited about the experimentation. You can run Cortana everywhere, even in your Android phone. Alexa, what do you think of Cortana? I like all AIs. Yeah, she's pretty nice. Bias.

Yeah. So, producer Michael, I would love to hear your predictions. You wanted to jump in. Go ahead. Yeah, I was saying, one of my predictions is I think Snaps will make a big leap forward ahead of everything else. Oh, yeah. So it's the year of Snaps, huh?

Yeah. I think that Snaps are already on the track record of becoming the more standardized way of deployment. But I think this year they're going to set themselves apart way farther than Flypacks or AppEminis could be close to catching up. I think that won't happen until the end of the year, but I think it'll happen. And I think 1710 will probably offer a Unity 8 by default.

Okay, all right. So that's two right there. I'm going to mark you down for it. So 17 a Unity 8 by default. Oh. Okay. All right. So that's two right there. I'm going to mark you down for it. So 17.10, Unity by default. Unity, you mean Unity 8 by default. Unity 8. Yeah, I meant Unity 8. Okay.

QT, Switch, and stuff. Ooh. Ooh. Oh. All right. All right. All right, Double. You got two predictions for us?

Go. I do. All right. First one, Double, you got two predictions for us? Go. I do. All right, first one, NVIDIA finally getting proper KMS support as well as the right Wayland support. Okay, I'm down with that. The second is Solus is going to become more popular and will eventually come out with a AUR-type solution similar to Arch where the community

can maintain build scripts for separate packages. I could see that. So it's like a Solus AUR equivalent. I'm going to vote for, I'm going to, my prediction is that doesn't happen. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Here's the thing.

Because Solus is anti-AUR, anti-other people's packages. Yeah. I've already tried to make packages with them and they've already told me yeah yeah yeah yeah so i've done this too with solace and the thing is if you go to install an application that doesn't support solace like you don't have the advantage of a dev or an rpm install so you go into eo package and you copy a couple make files you create a script it starts downloading the source and you go into EO package and you copy a couple make files, you create a script, it starts downloading the source, and you go through this rigmarole to get one thing installed. What people are doing is posting those to the wiki.

So the wiki is starting to contain more and more of this third party. And I think as they gain popularity, they're not going to be able to keep up. And so they're going to have the ability for you to actually compile them, but it's not going to be part of the main repo. I think that this is the possibility of happening, but I don't think it'll be solace back no solace will not will not like endorse it or anything there won't be an sur and my main reason is because i'm an official maintainer of a package for like the official upstream and they still wouldn't let me control yeah but yeah but you just named it dude the sur is good i good. I like that. That's good. You're welcome, sir.

Yeah, I think they should run with that. I don't know so much about NVIDIA getting Wayland support this year. I would say maybe beta support. I don't know about it. I don't know. Sorry, Wes. I was stepping on your pedal, Wes. At the end of the year, maybe, you know, you start seeing the, yeah, some of the, like, if you install some of the beta drivers or something.

Yes, exactly. But it's not like the default, it's not shipped in the. Yeah, and it won't be like the unbelievably great performance that we want or something yet. But I don't know, but maybe you're right, Double. Maybe they'll, they should, right? It's not, here's the thing. It's not like they haven't seen it

coming. We've been, Wayland has got to be the slowest moving train coming at you. It's like it's, there's, if you don't see the Wayland train coming, then you're not looking. You are not looking. You've had like, what, like four years now of gradual buildup? Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Alright, anybody else in there want to toss into the mix a prediction for Linux in 2017? Hmm. Really? Nobody else has anything else? No? Nobody else? It's not going to be the year of the desktop. Really? Nobody else has anything else? No? Nobody else? It's not going to be the year of the desktop. No? The next desktop.

Is there ever going to be a year? I'm not surprised at that at all. Will there ever be? I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so. If you talk about Linux in general, Chrome OS already kind of did that. A little birdie tells me from the Solus project that there's no way in hell the AUR is happening.

I'm not going to. No. No, they say. No. No AUR. No SUR, which is too bad. Can we make wishes too? I do agree that Solus will become even more popular than it has been before.

Yeah. I think so too. So the predictions, can we make wishes? Oh, I'd love to hear it. Yeah. Yeah. make wishes oh i'd love to hear it yeah yeah i just i just wish that we have one either either google play store like it something that is just across all os's actually is able to if the app has compatibility with your multiple os's install it please yeah yeah uh it's a big wish i know

rika says if you're looking for crazy predictions maybe 2017 will finally be the year KDE cleans up its mess of settings. Ouch. Wow. Wow. I don't know. How dare you, sir? But then what will we have that the Windows users will be comfortable with? Where's the refuge?

Yeah. I still feel like I don't have my succinct prediction. I feel like I have good commentary on other people's predictions. Go ahead, Double. You can jump in again. So I wonder if at the end of 2017, we'll look back at the 2016 MacBook Pro release and basically realize that a lot of developers have switched over to Linux and the wish and the wonder is going to be what gains we see on the Linux desktop from that.

Do you think it's possible Apple could hustle and crap out another MacBook in June that is 32 gigs of RAM? Do you think that could happen? Or do you think they're up there in their Johnny-Ive White Towers going, I don't know what the problem is. This is a really powerful machine. It's great. They just need to figure it out.

I don't think that's going to happen now that they rely on common people to just get their stuff. I don't think they care anymore to make it really high tech. Because they're going mass consumer. Yeah. Yeah. I was about to say, I don't think they're worried about, like, what's the problem. I think they're like, there's no problem. Yeah.

I wonder how that ties into their IBM partnership and stuff. Because it seems like some enterprises make MacWorks, but it also is particularly a pain point. So maybe this is a sphere they exit. And why are they going to go? You know, you think that they think it's a problem or whatever. A lot of people think it's a problem. But remember, they think different. Oh, boy.

I think, you know what's weird is my thoughts around Linux in 2017, oddly, Microsoft – the name Microsoft keeps popping up. I keep – it just feels strange. It's weird. And it's – I wonder if it's – I mean if they continue that trend, that will be noteworthy for sure. And it's – I think it's going to be – I think I'm going to – I guess I'll wait for the last. But I think we're going to be – I think I'm going to – I guess I'll wait for the last. But I think we're going to be surprised by Microsoft in 2017. And I think we probably all sort of settled on the fact that distributions like Solace and those others are getting more important than ever. But there's other distributions over 2016 that I think turned it around.

And I don't know if that gets enough attention either. And I think OpenSUSE is one of them to a degree. I think it turned it around from a distribution. I don't know if it's still – it's not quite – I don't know if it's gotten there yet but I guess it feels like it's not quite yet a distribution that's changing the conversation, that's influencing the conversation, quote-unquote, but it's one that's getting a whole new tidal wave of excited users. Like so they're doing things right as a project that's appealing to a lot more people than

they were, say, at the beginning of 2016. And they're kind of on that starting point of the curve where it's like they're doing a lot of cool things. They have some good, interesting ideas. And so, yeah, maybe 2017 will be the year where we see, like, do people flock there? No, we don't know. It could be a great year. 2017 might end up being a great year for OpenSUSE.

Yeah. 2015 was when they first announced. It was like November 2015 when they started doing this whole new thing. So there's only been a year of this massive change. So I think there hasn't been enough time for them to actually kind of develop the curve completely yet.

But now I think you're right. 2017 will be a much more OpenSUSE friendly. Unless they screw it up. I think they're pretty positionable to do well. MonkeyCom, you want to jump in with a.NET one. All right, go for it. I could see.NET becoming native.NET support

for the desktop for Linux. Why do you say that? I think Microsoft has enough third-party applications that if programmers could use their.NET languages and just port them to Linux, you would see a lot more... People wouldn't be threatening to move to different applications or different programming languages, which is a big problem for them. So if they could install a.NET application on a Linux desktop, it solves the migration of.NET programmers away from

Visual Studio. You mean it helps Windows desktop become a reality on Linux. I get it. I don't know if it helps Windows desktop, but I think what it helps is Windows applications, Outlook, per se, or business applications where people want to run them natively. Yeah, I can see that. Or third-party developers.

People that write in.NET, they can now run it in Linux. Yeah, they could release the.NET, they can now run it in Linux. Yeah, Daredevil, they could use that for the – they could release the.NET VM bridge from your Linux desktop to the Windows VM. That's good ones, guys. So here's what I got. So Sweetloose says that Microsoft will make a deal or buy Canonical. Daredevil says that Microsoft makes a deal to run a product on Ubuntu Blessed Kernel or maybe even Windows in 2018, which we probably would start hearing about in 2017. I'm going to actually – mine is – I have a similar prediction along the same lines,

just a little more less ambitious. Rotten says it's going to be the year of snaps. They're just basically going to pull ahead by a pretty good margin. And at 17.10 Unity by default, Mr. Double says that NVIDIA gets Wayland support and Solus will have an SUR equivalent. And MonkeyCom says.NET becomes a mainstream Linux language. I got one last thing to throw in there. Throw it in there, Mr. West.

Doesn't make me happy to say, but I feel like at least, I think we're going to be talking about Linux Mint in a less than positive way at least one time this year. You know, interesting. I don't know if that'll be another security breach or just relevance issues. It's not that I don't like the project. I just think that seems like something on the horizon. It feels like there is some direction and momentum that way.

And over the holiday break, I was seeing a lot of threads. And I don't know if anybody in the Mumble room saw this. I was seeing a lot of threads about potentially Linux Mint was compromised again. Did you see that? There was someone asking the question about it. In a few Reddits, yeah. What happened was somebody posted in SlashPwned, hey, I just owned Linux Mint again.

And then in all the other subreddits, people were asking if it was true or not. Trying to validate me. No word there, though. Second time I have seen something like that since the initial break-in though and i hope that prediction is wrong honestly i really do but we'll see yeah hmm i feel i mean as soon as i just want mint to stop doing the terrible decisions they do oh damn i can give you one example that they should stop right now late on the incredibly

stupid brah late on the priority structure that they they make their repo higher priority than ppas yeah they need to stop that if it's fud if it's fud why is this happening what kind of fud is this and who's behind it you're telling me that just somebody that not nicole might be behind come on come on i got do i have to get my conspiracy bacon pretty fast on red Reddit. So maybe that's the part because I think the reason that particular thing. Although the problem that they had was so easily avoidable that they should have never had the problem in the first place.

True. And it meant that anything can happen at this point. Like who's to say that they realized their problem the first time because they should have never had that problem

because what they claimed was the hole meant that they didn't update their WordPress for three years. That's just stupid. That's literally painting a target on your back. Exactly. And it's also an easy target because there's a plethora of holes for it. But that has got to be the – that is – yeah, it is Reddit.

Who knows? Yeah, okay. Well, that part, yeah. I mean it is reddit's who knows yeah okay well that part yeah i mean it's this this is the current one is totally probably i mean i i don't know could be could be not it seems to be garbage like it's not true at all i don't like it it just makes me the whole so that's a that's a that's that is a thought-provoking prediction to end on there i like that one you know what else is thought-provoking getting an education linux academy.com slash unplugged go there sign up for a seven-day free trial, and try out Linux Academy, a platform built by Linux enthusiasts and educators and developers that came together to create the Linux Academy. They wanted to create content that Linux users could consume to learn more, to spread Linux, and to help you get a job, get a raise.

In fact, a lot of new features they've launched to the platform really enable these goals, like public profiles to show your accomplishments, course schedulers to match a busy workday, mobile apps for iOS and Android so that way you can practice on the go, which would be so awesome like on the bus or on the train or sitting on the toilet. Up your skill game while you're just wasting time otherwise. I had an uncle that would seriously take a two-hour crap, really. And I tell you what, if I had a Linux Academy on my tablet … You would too. That would be a very productive two hours. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. One of the things I think is really great about Linux Academy, it sets them apart from everybody else is instructor mentoring. Because these topics, they're not fixing the sync. They're not something where they could have somebody with a cell phone on call when you have a question like

that. These are dedicated staff members that have to really understand this stuff. It's a business. They know what they're doing. You know, they've been really good at adding new content and updating old content too. And that is also something else that sets them apart. Plus they have these labs, these hands-on scenarios where you get real world experience. If you just need to get some certs, they've got great courseware

for that. They have study tools that you can download comprehensive guides that you can look and print out and listen to for audio. Seriously, people listen in the shower. I can't even believe it. Actually, actually, actually, shower thoughts are real, man. That's a real thing. So why not – if I can be that – if I can have brilliant shower thoughts, maybe it is the perfect time to learn actually.

I think about it. It's shower thought time. You can check it out. Also, just a real quick thing. If you've already subscribed to Linux Academy, you've got just a couple of days left. We were on break, so I couldn't mention this sooner. But if you're listening live or you're downloading day after the next day, they're giving away a pixel. What?

Yeah. Yeah. It ends on January 5th. They'll do this from time to time. So it's just good for you to watch. They have a blog where you can watch these things. You just got to log into your account and help spread the word. Well, they got it all on their blog.

Just go to their Linux Academy blog and learn. But you got a couple days left to get a pixel. And Wes, would you recommend it now? How many? What are you like? What? One month? Two months into it?

What do you want? Yeah, probably like two, almost three months probably. Are you loving it? Hating it? Caveat. I'm not a person who – my whole life is not on my phone i mean i do a lot with my phone obviously i need it uh it's a great it's a great phone if you just need like a consistent phone latest android that sounds perfect yeah exactly i it's perfect for that sounds like an iphone yeah it's exactly the kind of like i'm not i don't have a lot of complaints i don't have a lot of like i I don't need to do anything with it.

It just works. How's the camera? Lovely. Really? Oh, yeah. I'm loving it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I could, maybe one day. Maybe one day. And you know what? If I could get it for free. If you can get in the ravel. Yeah, man. Totally.

Linuxacademy.com slash unplug. Go there. Get a seven-day free trial. Learn more about the platform. And while you're there, I mean, you'd probably be eligible to get a seven-day free trial. I'm just saying. Go to LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged, sign up, try to get a Google Pixel, and you're off. Boy, if you get it, tweet me, at ChrisLAS.

I seriously want to know about that. That would be— Oh, man. If a JB member can get— Yeah, yeah. All right. So are you ready to talk about securing the Internet of Things and smart devices?

I mean, I'm quaking in my boots over here because you said IOT and smart devices in the same sentence. But. Can I put it on? But. Yes. Let's talk about it. Cyber.

Ah. Are you? Well, OK. How about this for a sentence? You ready for this? Wes, are you concerned about cyber threats against your smart devices, Internet of Things? Huh? See, I got cyber threats in there, Wes.

Isn't that good? Is there like a thing I can do with my body that just I'm like 100%, 1,000% yes? You know, so I got to just make a huge disclaimer before we go any further because I got to imagine I probably should have said this way earlier in the show now, now that I think about it. Yeah, that's true. A lot of you are listening going, Chris, what the AF are you doing? Why do you have a privatized spying device in your studio right now? Literally listening to every word you say. Spied on the whole show.

Yeah. Are you crazy? Are you ridiculous? Are you nuts? Have you lost it? Don't you care about open source and Linux? My God, Chris, what about Mycroft? Before you go down that route, I encourage you to go check out how I use the Amazon Echo Dot to automate my studio. It's a vlog I posted this morning, just posted a couple of hours ago, and it goes over how we use

the Echo Dot in the the studio why we got them how i've isolated them off on a separate network and uh what our intention is behind all of that so just so you know that's if you're concerned about that go watch that episode it's all covered in there how we're using it, all of that stuff. It would be a whole episode to talk about that. So that video is, it's in the show notes. Now, I want to talk about the big concern. The big concern everybody listening has is cloud services, cloud monitoring, things like that. Well, it turns out I've done a little digging and there's some interesting things that those

of you who are considering getting a device like this might want to look at. Now, I'm not like Mr. Expert on any of these devices yet. I've got three of them at this point for the studio because, you know, the Echo Dot was 40 bucks. And what I decided to do was, well, I should get one for myself to learn with it. So that's upstairs in my office. And then I wanted one in the studio because I check this out. Now, actually, we have video. So if you're watching the video feed alexa turn on jb1

okay so everything that's so cool yeah yeah look at that yeah alexa turn off jb1 okay and we're back so everything was kind of in the studio was sort of in place And we're back. So everything was kind of in the studio was sort of in place. And then I can do things like Alexa. Turn on studio ambient lights. I didn't say it fast enough. Sorry for those of you at home, by the way.

I'll just I'll get over this and I won't do this. Just give him like two months, maybe. No, give me like two more minutes in this episode. Then you just there's a mute button on there. Alexa. Turn on studio ambient lights. OK. Oh, that's studio ambient lights. Okay. Oh, that's lovely. Yeah, isn't that great?

Alexa, turn on studio accent lights. Okay. Alexa, ask for a fart. Just to prove a point. So the studio was kind of out of the box just over the years, ready to be integrated. But you really kind of need something to centralize the control because this product is made by Hughes. This product is made by Belkin. This product over here is made by TP-Link.

They all support some weird subset of the same protocol or maybe not. And I want them all isolated off on their own LAN. So that way they're not talking to any of my other devices. They're not monitoring any of my other traffic because I don't trust these things. I don't trust these things at all. And so I want them off on their own LAN. But in order to actually access them, you'd have to take your device and put it on that LAN to talk to them.

Well, what kind of stupid idea is that? That is not feasible in a lot of cases. Not only is that a pain in the butt and breaks whatever I'm doing on my device, but it also then exposes that device to the very thing I'm trying to avoid. It's like the stupidest workaround ever. And so this device, this Echo, is in that LAN. And so it's my bridge essentially. So I talk to it and it talks to them. So that's kind of interesting. But I talk to it and it talks to them. So that's kind of interesting.

But I wanted to make this even better. So I'm not here yet, but I've begun looking into two different products that look like they could essentially act as the command and control of the cloud for a device like this. The first is Home Assistant at home-assistant.io. It's a Python app, I think. Yeah, Python 3. Home Assistant is an open source home automation platform for running on Python 3. Open source, did you say? Mm-hmm.

See where I'm going with this. You see where I'm going with this. And the other one, and this is maybe the one I'm more likely to look into, OpenHAB, Open H-A-B. It's a vendor and technology agnostic open source automation software for your home. And my understanding is the Echo. I'm trying not to say the hot word. The Echo could actually talk to it over Bluetooth. And OpenHAB could run on something as simple as a Raspberry Pi. So it's like –

Which is even cheaper than the Dot. Yeah, right. Exactly. Fully open source, developed in Geneva. It's got a web UI. It's got Android and iOS apps, and a web, of course, works on the desktop, so that's already built in. It's got notification support, all of these things. And I've seen some indication that there is a way to tie the device into OpenHAB, so that

way, instead of going to the Echo Cloud or the Amazon AWS hosted services, it goes into OpenHAB. So that way, instead of going to the Echo Cloud or the Amazon AWS hosted services, it goes to OpenHAB. Oh, wow, really? I'm not sure yet. Yeah, but that's what I've begun looking into there. So that's kind of a fascinating path I've gotten. And I really kind of think like

one of the reasons I want to wrap my head around it now is they sold a ton of these over the holidays. Oh, yes. And I had so many non-tech people in my life asking about them. I tried them. I was astounded. I thought I understood how this all worked. I thought I kind of had all conceptually

figured out until I actually had to set all of this up and create smart groups and do all these things. I have such a deeper understanding of that. It's like AWS Lite. It is like an entire thing you really have to learn. Like there's a command structure and all of this stuff. So it's been fascinating.

And I do kind of feel like it's an interesting thing to know for the general consumer platform. But man, I can't wait until something like Mycroft comes along. And then that's really going to be work. It's interesting. And that's a space that we need to have open source stuff. What's that? The API of the Echo is pretty good

too. Oh yeah? You can do a lot of integrations for, you can write your own integrations and commands for the Echo to do a lot of things that aren't necessarily intended to do. They have integrations built into

a lot of things, but you can pretty much write your own for whatever you want. It's not really open, but the API itself is very extensive. That's interesting. So I got a dot for the beard to do some experimental development with too. Ooh. Yeah, and specifically I was thinking, hey, maybe we could tie it in with JBot. Wouldn't it be great if I could execute?

So we control different things in the studio now with JBot. Wouldn't it be cool if I could get some of those – if I could bark that at the Echo? Yeah, how many times at the end of the show are you like, oh, I want to stop the YouTube stream? You can just yell at the Echo. It's been pretty – it's been interesting to just see how many little scattered devices I had around the studio that were controlled with it. It's a fun experiment so far. But I think OpenHAB is probably my path. So this is sort of my call out to the audience.

I heard from an individual this morning, which is really awesome, who might be pretty well informed on it. But I've also just put the call out there at Chris Elias on Twitter if you've got something set up and maybe you could give me some advice on how I could compare it with my Echo Dot.

And if it's feasible, I'd love to be able to have one here at the studio an openhab setup and one maybe like running at the rv2 oh yeah and do i even need the dot like all the i have all these questions i don't know you don't need the dot for openhab you can put the software you can put the software on other devices oh and then get and then like so i wouldn't get the voice stuff but i I would have one app that controls all. Yeah. I've actually played with OpenHAB myself, but I haven't spent a ton of time on it.

But I have dug into it a little bit, and it has the ability to use pretty much any device you want. And depending on what hardware you give it, what features it has. Right. You can't really replace the dots or the echoes like software, but if you have something that's similar to it and you put open hab on it, you can use it to facilitate most of it. Wow. But you can also make it where open hab and the echo connect to each other too. That's,

that would be great. That sounds interesting because I think, I mean, here's where, here's where I feel like this is gone. And as people where we talk about specs and often we think about open source and community solutions, we sometimes – I think we fail to see when the market has decided on something. I wonder if this holiday season, if the echo didn't tip over to a mass consumer product and it sort of won. Boy, didn't Google Home try to push hard on the ads though?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know if that actually translated. A lot more expensive too. Can you name a single Google Direct product that's done well in the mass consumer market? Or any reason to think that Google is good at doing that kind of product? Yeah.

product yeah whereas like like amazon at this point has really got like there are uh like there is a there is a lot of there is a lot of different functionality built in the alexa like they have not slowed down from the moment they released it there is almost stuff daily they're doing on this thing like they are very passionate about this thing it's a huge thing for them have you ordered any packages or no things with it no but that I think is the number one reason why Alexa, why the Echo will always, it's hard. Well, I think it is a core business interest of Amazon to have this thing in your home because they don't have physical stores. They need to have this in your home. This is super important to their business. This is their like easy way to interact with you. Right.

For Google, this is another metric. This is another metric collection device. It's important, but it's no more important than your Chromecast or your Android TV or your tablet or your Google Docs account or your YouTube account. Those are actually probably great, especially your Gmail account. It's a much richer, greater source of metrics than a Google Home will ever be. Because there's a certain line they just can't cross. If they could always monitor, if they could listen to every dumb thing you say, and every time you masturbate, and every time you cook dinner, and every time you watch TV, if they

could listen to all of that, that would be extremely useful for them. And that would also destroy their business. It would fundamentally undermine their business. Extremely useful for them. And that would also destroy their business. It would fundamentally undermine their business. So I think – I just don't think it's as critically important to Microsoft, to Apple, or to Google as it is to Amazon. I think it's fundamental to Amazon. Here I will disagree.

I think the reason Google does not need to make such a big effort is because they already have the phone. such a big effort is because they already have the phone actually you can there is a page you can visit in google and listen to all of the recordings of you saying okay google and basically see all of you said all recorded you can have access to it so they already have that and the reason and the fact that but they're not but you know what i'm saying okay google sentence they're not always listening you have to trigger it it. Actually, it does. Actually, it does. It is always listening to the point that if you go to the recordings page, it includes the part that you said, okay, Google. So it meant that it's recording all the time. I can set it up where it's not paying attention to me.

Like right now, you said it a bunch of times where my phone is right next to my speaker and it didn't do anything because it's not listening. Well, in the case of the home, it is – and same with the Echo. It is always listening because there's no other way to hear the command word. Like if I just say the A word in casual conversation, it triggers her immediately. I don't have to like say it like Captain Picard talking to the computer. I just – if I just say, you know, Wes, today I tried the Alexa and it's working pretty great, it'll just pick it up and start running like crazy. And the Google Home is the same way. However, what it does is it just has like a quick buffer. It has like a 10-second buffer.

Listening and discarding. Yeah. Because honestly, if you think about it, it would be like a constant 800 kilobit stream up if it was uploading everything you always said to the cloud. Of course, it doesn't need to always upload. But this is the thing. When people are saying that, you know, we're moving to this assistant-oriented world where your device doesn't need to have massive computational power. You just get all of the data from fast connection and basically have massive computational power. Just get all of the data from Fast Connection and basically have a huge battery and this is just the device. And when you include that alongside having self-driving cars, which Google actually is

working on, I don't feel that that's why they don't need to make a huge effort on it, because they don't care about it. So today at CES, Amazon announced the Alexa Everywhere strategy. So they're building – cancel. They're building it into watches, dish, Whirlpool devices. Lenovo is going to do a series of speakers with it built in. And there's probably other devices. I think that goes right back to what you're talking about where like here are these companies where suddenly the incentive to work with Amazon on this is huge because they want to sell them. They know that you want to get your refills.

You're like, hey, washing machine. Amazon gives preferential placement to devices that work with Echo. You've seen it if you've gone on Amazon ever. You see it. And so imagine now one of the biggest – the Walmart of the internet is now going to feature devices that come with Echo. You've seen it if you've gone on Amazon ever. You see it. And so imagine now that one of the biggest, the Walmart of the internet is now going to feature devices that come with Echo built in. And you've got DISH enabling Alexa

voice control on its Hopper. Cancel. You've got Whirlpool devices. Whirlpool freaking appliances. Imagine that. Cancel. Imagine being able to bark at that thing to start the dishwasher. Or just get an update on how much longer the dishwasher has. I feel like also for these companies, Amazon is less risky.

So not only do they get preferential placement, but when you partner up with Apple or when you partner up with Google, you generally get taken to the washer. They have their own agenda. I mean, not that Amazon doesn't, but Amazon agenda you can understand in a much clearer way. And the Amazon one is going to sell you more devices. So that was sort of – I just sort of in a long-winded way, which was much more eloquently stated in my vlog video, explained part of why I got one. And so I feel like right now I'm in the phase of wrap my head around how this damn thing works with all these devices and figure out like all of the limitations and all of the

little like boxes you got to check. And then it's like, OK, now that I understand how this consumer product works, how it integrates with these other consumer products, what their risks are. Oh, and if you want to know like the monitoring and capturing we're going to do, also check out that vlog because we're going to be packet capturing and all that stuff. Ooh. Once I get my head around that,

then it's time to roll out OpenHAB. Then it's time to really like, now I've walked that walk. Right. What's the state of the art if you don't care about the compromises? If you want to build your own secure land, don't want to go out to the net, don't want to worry about all of that stuff, is it possible at all? Is it ever possible with a device like this?

Is it ever going to be possible? Right. Is that possible? You know what? Just one last thing before we move on. I am shocked at how quickly my son Dylan, who's almost eight years old, picked up the Echo. Like he's up in my office right now as we're recording this. And he's just sitting there playing Minecraft.

And he just casually barks over to the Echo to turn off the fan. Or play a fart sound. Yeah, definitely that one. There is something for – there's sort of like a – there's like a – it lowers the barrier. Like I had all these devices before that I had control from my phone that I would trigger that nobody else had access to. And that's not actually a good thing because now people around me can turn off the lights and stuff like that. That lets you delegate. Well, it just lets them get – like when they're up there too, it lets them get control over their environment a little bit.

Anyways. And a free trolling device. It is also – yeah, because there's a Simon Says feature. And you can just have it – that's where the magic happens. So you can Simon Says to that thing all day long and it will repeat it back to you. Yeah. There's also – you can have it connect to your phone. So that's particularly handy too. It will connect like a Bluetooth – as a Bluetooth speaker, which is kind of cool.

Anyways, playing around with it, and I would love to hear the audience's thoughts on it. So LinuxActionShow.reddit.com or tweet me at ChrisLAS. I personally think this conversation is over. I personally think Echo is running away with it. It's a solid product, and it's one of those products too that people that got it are still excited about it. So I think that's all in all. The barrier to entry is great with a dot. Yeah, right. It was $40. I think it's still $40.

And that's safe experimental levels. Yeah, that's very true. Something you can easily play with. Yeah. Uh-oh. I think Dylan's in here trolling us. This is the problem.

I can't find the answer to the question I heard. Alexa, Simon says, Dylan, don't interrupt the show. Let's see if she says that. Dylan, don't interrupt the show. Dylan, come over here real quick. Come here real quick. Come over here and sit on my lap. You got a couple of seconds to tell people.

Dylan, what's your quick review of the Amazon Echo? Do you like it? Yeah. And what's your favorite thing to ask it? Alexa, ask for farts. That's your favorite thing? Yeah. I'm not sure what you meant by that question.

Jesus, too bad. Alexa, ask for farts. There we go. This is something that Dylan and I were trying earlier. Let me do it. OK. OK, I'm going to show Alexa. What is the largest state in the United States of America? The largest U.S. state in the United States is Alaska. Alexa, how many people live there? The population of Alaska is about 686,000. That contextual awareness is pretty powerful. We've been able to go about three or four deep, I think.

Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. Do you have one more thing you want to add before we go? We're about to wrap up the show. Did you want to say something? All right, get in there. Say it. Bye! All right. It's Dylan's last day of winter break, so he's joining me in the studio. Well, that's great.

Yeah, it is actually really cool. All right, so that brings us to the end of this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. If you've got any advice or thoughts on securing the crazy wild west of Internet of Things, let me know if you've gotten experience with it, too. What are you doing to lock it down? And any open-source projects that are helping you make it more secure?

LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. That's also where you go to submit other project updates you think we should talk about. At least do. And we'd love to have you join us live next week. We'll do episode 179 on Tuesday. Go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that converted to your local time zone. And don't forget jblive.tv is the URL you put in there where our chat room is, where you get information about our

virtual lug and hang out with us. We love having all of that. You can also send us emails at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact. And one last reminder, episode 300 of TechSnap, the last Alan and Chris episode, and then the new, fresh, bigger and better blood comes in.

See you next Tuesday. Thanks for joining us. And have a great week. And Happy New Year! Woo! Woo! What's up, dude? Oh, you know what? We should have mentioned.

The Patch Your Shit shirts have relaunched. Oh, yeah. You know what, Wes? This is what I get. This is what I get for not being a salesman. If I was a good salesman, I would have thought of this. Yeah, you sure would have. Teespring.com slash Patch Your Shit.

Check it out. Spread the word. I guess we should have said something. I can't find the answer to the question I heard. She doesn't ever find anything for me. Alexa, buy me some shirts. No, don't do that, Alexa. All right, JBtitles.com

JBtitles.com. Thank you, Mumble Room. You guys are great. Yeah, great suggestions. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. We didn't actually address one thing that's very important. I can't find the answer to the question I heard. What? What is that? What did we address?

One thing that's very important about the Echo. What? Perverting free software. Sorry. Oh, that's true. I didn't understand the question I heard. She doesn't understand it. She doesn't understand about free software.

No, she doesn't. I kind of felt like the reason why we didn't really address the free software angle of it is because that's kind of a foregone conclusion. Oh, yeah, it's totally not ever going to be. Yeah, no, and I think really we've got to wait for the Mycroft. Yeah, that's probably true. But Mycroft is still using Google on the back end. Well, no, it uses whatever you tell it to use.

You can tell it not to use Google. You can tell it to use Alexa. Oh, I meant for the speech recognition. Remember that time I hooked Alexa up to the Big Sur? Yes, I do. They built their own speech recognition as well. I don't think so. Just because, yes.

I think they're still using the web service through Google. Nope. They built their own. Alexa cancels 2017. That's one title. Dude, this is not duct tape. This is gaffer's tape. This is what we use in the studio.

They're working on their own infrastructure so that you don't have to use Google and you can use whatever you want. And you can actually self-host their own protocol and their structure. Chris goes IoT. Chrysler minivans will run Linux. Alexa predict cancer. Cancel. Farting in 2017 with Alexa. That's good.

That is good. Ooh, Alexa engage 2017. I like the Alexa prediction. Cancel. Are you guys still recording? Yeah, we're still doing our show. Yeah. I know. We do these shows forever, huh?

Oh, yeah. I told you we'd be done at 3.30, didn't I? Yeah. Jeez, well. You know, it's Wes. He just talks so much. You just can't get me to shut up. Oh, actually, Simon says the spiders are coming.

I don't have you hooked up to it. Richard Stalmazon. That's a pretty good pizza, dude. I like it. He hooked up to it. Richard Stalmazon. That's a pretty good pizza, dude. I like it. He won't like it. No. But what does he like? E-Mex, mostly?

Yeah. That's pretty much what I was going to say. Don't say the A word. That's pretty good. I like that, too. Dot the cloud of things. Chris has gone full retard. Fair. Big sister is watching you.

That's pretty good too. Yeah, that is pretty good. Big sister. I like that. Dylan unplugged. Boy, I feel like this is the hardest year to do predictions ever. And it's not because... I know. I know. I'm a horrible person.

Aren't we all? That's what we've learned in 2017. Alexa, cancel 2017. 2016 has proven that anything can happen. So we're just like, okay. Yeah, I suppose so. I don't know. I don't know.

I do like Big Sister is Watching. I mean, it might not be the best title.. I do like Big Sister is Watching. I mean, it might not be the best title. Should it just be Big Sister is Watching? Oh, maybe. Alexa, you're Big Sister is Watching. I can't find that skill. To find skills, go to the skills section of the Alexa app. Oh, they actually got a skill, too.

Interesting. Ask for cards. Sorry, I didn't understand the question I heard. What's great is you can turn that skill off. Oh, that's great. Ask for farts.

Sorry, I didn't understand the question I heard. He is determined to get a fart. Yep. I mean, we've all been

in that position. Ask for farts. I found a few matches. Do you mean for a fart? Fart sound jokes or fart detective? Ooh, what's that last one? Alexa, fart sound jokes. I can't find that skill.

Alexa. To find skill. What is a fart detective? Sorry, I didn't understand the question. Got to control your laughter there. Alexa, ask for farts. Hmm, I'm not sure what you meant by that question. What is a fart detective?

Is that what it is? I like how calm she is, though. I'm going to start, hmm, I don't know what the answer to that is. Not that I should know. There you go. You got it. Yeah, that's the Alexa. Don't you want one now? Yeah.

Give one to Wes. You gave a fart to Wes? Give a dot to Wes? Wes, you should get a dot. I should get a dot. You know, one thing the Google thing has going for it, I will say, is Google Home. If they could connect all of the – if OK Googs and Google Home and Google Assistant were all connected. Yes.

That would be powerful. Yeah. Assistant is. Because then you have it with you. Yep. Because this thing, you know, the Echo is only – If you're with it. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. If I could have my home then do all the assistant stuff, yeah, that would be nice. So Big Sister is watching is now the number one. They just made an Echo Alexa thing for your phone. Well, they do have them for watches. I wonder why they don't make an app. Yeah.

Oh, speaking of which, earlier you asked for what is a product that Google made that isn't a failure. Yeah. Chromecast. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I don't know if it's super mass consumer, but it's definitely the biggest hit they've ever had.

The $35 price point doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. Yeah, that's a good point. What is the home selling for? Like $100 or something? Or $2? $120. $120 or $130.

Oh, wow, yeah. Yeah, it's already back in stock. It was out of stock in our local Best Buy. It's the same price as the regular Echo, except Amazon made three versions of the Echo. So people who don't want to spend the money that would be comparing to the Home can get a cheaper version, which would be so much. And also people who don't want it to constantly listen and get another version, which costs a little more. So I think that's probably a really good strategy on Amazon's part. But you know what?

I'll tell you. I'll tell you. The Google Home did sell out, but the Echo, everywhere. So I had a couple days off before Christmas, and I wanted to get them in the studio. I had a couple of days off before Christmas and I wanted to get them in the studio. And I literally called every store, every store, like everything from Best Buy to Sears to Bed Bath & Beyond to Kmart and Fred Meyer and Home Depot. I called all of them. I wonder when this started. And they're all sold out.

Because I feel like – They sold out everywhere. Five months ago? I mean, yeah. Like we talked about it a little bit. But it didn't feel this hot. Amazon sure pushes it. Like every box comes with like Echo stuff all over it. It's all over the front page. The stickers, yeah, we talked about it a little bit, but it didn't feel this hot. Amazon sure pushes it. Every box comes

with Echo stuff all over it. It's all over the front page. The stickers, the packaging. And so I think people have been really aware of it. So when it dropped from $130 something to $40. That's a gift. That's a casual buy it for yourself with no thinking. Sort of like what they did with the Kindle. Yeah, right. Yeah, if it's like $70, you're like, okay, fine, I want one.