LINUX Unplugged - Episode 179: Project Sputnik Interview | LUP 179

Episode Date: January 11, 2017

Project Sputnik’s Barton George joins us to discuss the new Dell hardware running Linux & the history of the Sputnik project.Plus the KillDisk hype is high, The Pi’s PIXEL is taking on MATE, another Mac dev switches to Linux & more!

Oh, I'm glad you're comfortable, Popey. I'm glad you're comfortable. Shall we relay his best wishes? So Barton Popey says hello. Hello, Popey. A fan from the very beginning, an ardent, true supporter, and I appreciate that. Just not enough to get off his butt and join us.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 179 for January 10th, 2017. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's looking at some new rigs and thinking, I could spend some Bitcoin on that. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. Are you all warmed up for today's episode? Oh, I think so. It's just a wonderful day filled with podcasting. It's very unusual that I'm sitting at the mic with a co-host who's already recorded one more show than I have for the day.

So you're ahead of me right now. You're going to beat me today. You're going to lap me even. Oh, that's right. Yeah, because you're doing a double. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Coming up on this week's episode of the Unplugged program, you may be familiar with a name out there. Barton George, perhaps that rings a bell. He comes from Dell, and he's specifically in the Sputnik project.

And they have some new hardware. We'll be chatting with him very soon about some of the new things coming up. And, yeah, we're going to get our drool on. And then later on in the show, Raspberry Pi wants to be your new Linux distro. Yeah, I mean the Raspberry Pi folks. They have a distro they want you to run on your PC.

Not your Pi, your desktop. Well, we'll tell you about that. Plus the new Linux ransomware that not only is insanely expensive, but then apparently is just deleting your data anyways. Everybody's freaking out about Kill Disk. So we'll see if Kill Disk is a big issue. And then, because the universe likes to reward me,

not one, but two predictions of 2017 are already going to get checked off that I made on Sunday's Linux Action Show. Later on in the show, we're going to talk more about Mac Exodus. Yes, I know that term's obnoxious. And some market details that bode very, very, very well for Linux. Before we go any further, though, we can't really start the show without bringing in our Mumble Room. Time to appropriate greetings, Mumble Room.

Greetings. Hey, hello. Good evening. And welcome. What's up, what's up, what's up? Doesn't that just fill your heart? Yeah, Mumble Room. Greetings. Hey, hello. Hey. What's up? What's up? What's up? Doesn't that just fill your heart? Yeah, it does.

It does. I feel like we can still officially say Happy New Year to the Mumble Room, too. Happy New Year, Mumble Room. Yeah, Happy New Year again. Well, let's start off right – Happy New Year. Thank you. Let's start right off the top by welcoming Barton to the show.

Barton, welcome to Linux Unplugged. Thanks so much for having me. Now, Barton, you work down there at thisged. Thanks so much for having me. Now, Barton, you work down there at this company that some folks may have heard of before called Dell, and there's the Skunkworks operation down there where these crazy kids are doing Linux machines. And it's really developed into quite a, well, what now appears to be an ecosystem of hardware. So, Barton, I am really, really excited because this is the big story of the week in my estimation. Today, Dell is announcing some machines that are coming soon or recently has announced machines that are coming soon

and a new workstation, I think. It's like a mobile workstation, like a big old laptop or something. Tell me all about the new hardware and what you're excited about, Barton. Well, thank you very much. So, anyway, this is Barton George from Dell, as you said. It's really great to be here. I know back on episode 136, you talked about some of the previous generations. So it's great to actually be here to talk about them myself. And so the news you're talking about now is the announcement of the Precision lineup. And those are our mobile workstations.

And it's actually the second generation of those that have been enabled with Ubuntu. And the other, the thing that we're adding to the pie this time is the all-in-one. So that's something that we had not had before, the 5720, for those of you who are keeping count. And so that will be, that's new. And then just to, if I just take a trip down memory lane to begin with, as you alluded to, this is a Skunk Works project that started about four and a half years ago. And what this was, there was an incubation fund in the company trying to get wacky ideas out of people's heads. So what I did was I said, hey, someone had this idea of let's do a Linux laptop. I thought originally, great idea. It'll never fly in Dell given the low volumes relatively speaking.

Is there Linux users within Dell that just was sort of sideloading Linux onto Dell hardware and thought, boy, we could make this great? So there was some enthusiasm in the company. What kicked that off? No, it was really – if any of you know Stephen O'Grady from RedMonk, he was the one. We were chatting with him about, hey, how can Dell do a better job of reaching out to the developer audience. Because that's one of the, we had done well in, from a server point of view, outfitting all the big companies that you're familiar with with servers. But as servers become commoditized, how else might we look to add value?

And the idea there was, let's appeal to developers. And so that's where the idea came about, well, why don't we try and do a Linux-based laptop? And so when Stephen mentioned it, I thought, you know, great idea. It'll never happen twofold. One is because the volume they're going to ask for is going to say, hey, that's what we do in Belgium on Tuesday between 3 and 4 in the afternoon. Right. And that's not really how we're geared as a company to do.

The other thing is we didn't have very good-looking hardware at that point, so I didn't know if that would be something that developers would cotton to. So as I've mentioned, there was this incubation program. As I mentioned, there was this incubation program. I came and presented to them, said, here's this idea of let's do a Linux laptop. And in the meantime, also we started with the new real good-looking XPS 13s. So the two of them together, I got the green light and was given a tiny pot of money and six months to see would this thing fly? Would anyone be interested in getting one of these? So the idea from the beginning too was let's do this all out in the open. And so made the initial announcement of our plan on my blog saying, hey, you know what? We don't even know if this will ever become a real product. But if you tell us what you want, and maybe if we get enough positive feedback, it really

will become a real boy. And that's how we went about it. And then we got so much positive feedback, we ended up turning this into a real product. And we launched first with the XPS 13 Developer Edition. It was now four years ago back in November. So the timing on that seems to be extremely fortuitous because it's positioned, Del, in a way where you've been able to iterate on this thing for four years, expand out the range of hardware, and it's sort of all coming – at least to me, it feels like it's all kind of coming together

when there are certain other market condition factors that are making people look for this type of hardware more than ever. And if Dell was starting this endeavor today, you would be too far behind the ball to be ready for the customers that are looking for a replacement. And this wasn't necessarily going to – there was no real clear indicators of these market conditions, i.e. the total lackluster updates to MacBooks. There was no real clear indication that this was going to happen. Like these seemed like they were really nailing what developers wanted for a long time.

Maybe I'll be a little expensive. So Dell really got – I mean in some ways it seems very lucky that they – Right place, right time. Yeah, and now I wonder, Barton, are you experiencing a different set of customers than you originally anticipated? Is it pretty much exactly what you guys thought and it's sustainable? Can you give me a sense of what that looks like? Well, I think the main thing here is that we're pretty much a grassroots organization. So we don't have a huge marketing budget. Basically,

it's my blog and then doing things like this, which is one of the reasons why I'm so excited to be doing this. But lots of folks learn about this after we've been around for a few years. learn about this after we've been around for a few years. And so it's, I would just say it's more of the types of customers that we've been seeing from the beginning. And I think one of the neat things here is we've actually built up some credibility. In the beginning, of course, you can imagine people thinking, yeah, you guys are just dilettantes, you're going to dabble in this, and then you're going to kill it after a generation or two um and then we've stuck with it and you know they told two friends and they told two friends and so now we've we've got a much bigger group that we're that we're uh targeting um or who are aware of it i should say yeah i would say too that the hardware has uh has has proven itself

how old is your sputnik right there that you have? Oh, this has got to be one of the first or second? Yeah, and I have the first XPS 13 that had the touchscreen 4K display. It came with Windows 7. So these, I mean, the hardware itself has proven to be very sturdy and reliable. So it's had a time-developed track record. I guess one of the things I kind of am curious, I always like to try to ask the OEMs these kinds of questions because I feel like a lot of our audience, the first thing they want to do when they buy a machine is they want to format it, install whatever. And so I'm sure you must get constant requests for XYZ distro from everything from things we've heard of to ones we've never heard of.

How important is it when developing a product like this to focus on a single distro? Or could Dell foresee multiple distros, or maybe you personally, foresee testing multiple distros? Because to me, my sense is the scope of work is much smaller if you just choose to optimize for Ubuntu. But could you kind of give us a better understanding from somebody who's actually working in this field field how critical that is or isn't? Sure, and I think that's the beauty of open source in the community. Because as you're saying, given our resources, we're going to focus on Ubuntu and qualify on that. But there was an article that just came out about a review of the XPS 13 and Ars Technica, and he ran also Fedora on it, and he also ran Arch on it. So while we ourselves are only installing Ubuntu, as you say, lots of folks,

first thing they're going to do is wipe it and put their distro of choice. So when we try and we work with, we write drivers, the whole idea is then to push these upstream into the kernel so that people who are not working with Ubuntu or that's not what their first choice is, that they can benefit from that as well. So you've got this new Dell Precision 5720 all-in-one. And one of the things I noticed about it is it's going to come with a 4K optional display. And my XPS 13 has a 4K display. It also has things like Thunderbolt 3. Are you guys running up against any rough edges? Could you kind of tell me a little bit the process of going from developing for focusing on laptops,

or I guess I shouldn't say developing, but really getting the whole product going from developing for focusing on laptops, or I guess I shouldn't say developing, but really getting the whole product ready with laptops as the main focus and then transitioning over to desktop. Were there new challenges or is it pretty much business as usual? And can you give us a little bit of like what it is like to work with maybe Canonical if there are challenges you run into? Sure. So a bunch of questions there. I'll try and tackle them. I think in reality, the desktop one really isn't that much different than what we've been working on with the mobile workstations, right? So the precision line is the mobile workstation, and then the all-in-one is the desktop version of it, obviously. But it really isn't that much different. And then when you start talking about working with Canonical, the other leg of the stool, it's Dell, Canonical, and then it's whatever third-party device driver – sorry – who's making things like touchpads, et cetera.

And so the three have to work together then to actually get these things written. to work together than to actually get these things written. So rather than a, what should I say, a duo, it's a trio in trying to get this stuff done. And that's where it really separates the Ubuntu versions from the other ones, obviously, is you've got to write the device drivers and actually make sure it works. So that feels like that's always been sort of the challenge to developing a Linux-based product that – for the desktop or for the laptop is you're constantly – you want to push the edge to meet market demands and't have to have a distro with this specific driver or this proprietary blob to work. It feels like we're always just outside of that because the market itself is always pushing so far forward. How much of a priority is it to build a system one day where it doesn't matter if – which distro I load or which – or I never will need to load a proprietary driver or a proprietary blob? How close do you think Dell could get a system to that ideal state that a lot of Linux users fantasize about?

And I think that's something we would push for. But we don't have – I would love to say we've got an army of folks working on that. And we do have a fair amount of people working on Linux distros. So we will keep trying to get closer and closer to that, but it still would be a while. Do you feel, Barton, though, like the customers you're targeting right now, is that a high concern for them? Or is – what is your sense of that with the current customer base? Yeah, I think is that there was, and this is, if I take a step back to my initial blog that launched, that announced this, there was such a pent-up desire for anything like this that there was, people were just, doing what we're doing now has got people sort of over the moon not that

it can't be done a lot better but i think the existing uh what was out there at that point was was lacking and i think that's where um people have just been so excited with having something that that just works and i think that was if you you look at Mac, they didn't set out to target developers. The reason why the developers picked it up is because, A, it just worked, and B, you had a Unix slash Linux underpinning. So those two together, that's a, for a lot of people, even the free software crowd were willing to put aside their – what shall I say? Some of their values and go for it. I would say traditionally Apple too has been sort of developer hostile with the exception of –

unless you're developing for iOS or the Mac and you need access to Xcode. Whereas Dell is positioning these as tools for developers. And to kind of play off what you just said, Barton, I'm wondering, and I know Wimpy is wondering, Wimpy, do you want to ask the question? Because it really plays off what Barton was just saying. So my question is, is if the poor reception of the recent MacBooks was considered when adding the high-end configuration options to the new lineup of laptops? Right. I mean, I'm seeing 32 gigs of ram here i'm seeing even xeon processors available as an option i mean that seems like a beast i think in general when we

talk about our client group is they're basically looking at what is what are the customers going to want and what are they going to want next um and i've been at dell for seven years now and it's just amazing how much better looking and all the awards we're winning for our systems now. When we first started out, when I looked at, as I said, had the original idea put to me, we had a very utilitarian laptop that did the job at a decent price, but it wasn't going to win any beauty contests. job at a decent price, but it wasn't going to win any beauty contests. And so now you've got things that we ourselves, we're not looking to follow what Apple's doing, but we're trying to figure out how might we get ahead and read what is going to be next and needed in the market. I think definitely for developers that are looking for a platform that matches what they run in production or doesn't necessarily get drug around by market strategy and things like that, I think it's a very compelling option. I guess I would sort of – I have just one last question and then I will open up the Mumba Room if they have questions for you, Barton.

But I like to do this. It's the beginning of the new year. I like to do this. It's the beginning of the new year. And I would be really curious to know if Barton could write one blog post and all of a sudden everything would change in open source that he was concerned about. If you could change one thing to improve maybe Linux on the type of hardware that Dell ships or something in the open source community that you think that would help make it this more approachable, I would love to know your thoughts on if by the end of 2017, something could change that would make Barton's life better, what would it be? What would that wave of the wand be? I think what it would be, and this is, I started mentioning it before, but it's, it's the people beyond ourselves and the canonical who are working to, to support,

Canonical who are working to support things like the touchpad drivers, people who do that, different places that need to have drivers written. If we can get more people to more seriously consider Linux as one of their top targets, obviously with the volumes that Windows delivers, it's not going to be something that they're going to put on exactly equal footing. But the more that we can get people to prioritize that and make it, make a good show out of it, the easier it is for all of us. Martin, what is your sense of how long this effort may continue? Do you have a sense that this has got good momentum? You're talking about the Sputnik?

Yes, sir. I think what I'm trying to do is keep expanding it and not just on the client side, as we call the laptops and the desktops, but tying it to other things that Dell provides. And when I say Dell now, I should switch. Dell is what we call the client side of the business. Dell EMC is the broader company. And so that, the more that we can tie it to things like Cloud Foundry, if you're aware. So one of the things I'm getting a system out tomorrow, if I can do it, to someone who's going to see if they can get PCF dev, which is the Pivotal Cloud Foundry, working natively on a Sputnik. So the more that we can get things tied to it, then the more that this program continues to go on. Integrates with the rest of the strategy. Exactly. on. Integrates with the rest of the strategy. Exactly. And so, and I think in general, I've just been extremely excited how we started with one config and now we've got one config,

one system. We've now got multiple configs of the XPS 13. We've now got five systems in the precision side. And because precision is configured to order unlimited permutations of what's offered there. Oh, that's great. So I'm very excited. And I think the other thing, too, is we keep getting more visibility within the company. The fact that Linus Torvalds picked the XPS 13 as his laptop was actually something that went over pretty big within Dell. Oh, wow. Oh, cool.

A lot of people were excited about that. Even though we do a ton of stuff on Windows, people understand the value of somebody like Linus. And so we're getting more, as I said, within the company, we're getting more visibility as well. And that helps quite a bit. That's great. And I think if the Sputnik project can stick around, you really are positioned to take advantage of some really great market conditions that are not only just what was going on with Apple but also just as computing in general moves more towards cloud and the web, blah, blah, blah. And the general computing device you're using to access it doesn't need to run a specific operating system. Companies that sell specific expensive

operating systems are going to be doing less less business and a company like dell that could be positioned to already know how to interact with the upstream community the individual vendors that's a that's a huge advantage potentially wimpy is reading my mind though and i wanted to give him a chance to jump in about the xps. Go ahead, Mippy. So Barton, do you know if there are any plans to introduce an XPS 15 developer edition at some point? Ah, yes. I just got that on Twitter before I got on the call. We get that every so often. So Mr. Shuttleworth himself uses the XPS 15. That being said, at this point, we don't have any plans. But if you get enough positive customer input, we do. So for example, the whole way we got into the Precision line was because customers were saying we need a bigger, beefier system. We launched on the XPS 13. And we just

all of a sudden, people kept saying, hey, we need something bigger. We need something more powerful. And then just a quick trip through memory lane, that's where Jared Dominguez, who's on the call and part of the Sputnik team, went and just got it running, Ubuntu running on the M3800, which was the precision system at the time. And he put that information out for folks. And then that got so much positive feedback that the year after that, we made it a real boy. And that was, once again, started with the M3800 that year. Then we went to the 4, and nowPS 15 is very similar to the 5520.

So for the right now, that's where we would steer people. But as I say, just like many times, we get enough positive customer feedback, and we actually – just like the program itself, it becomes a, we can productize it. It's heartening to hear that there's that kind of internal flexibility in the, you know, there's, you've built the trust up over the years to do that. So we will have a link to Barton's blog if you're curious. BartonGeorge.io is where you go if you want to visit directly. And we have the post linked where he talks about all the new hardware.

Because for me, I just got really excited about the new all-in-one and the new laptops, but the names matter. So if you want to make sure you get the names right, like precision versus things that are not laptops, check all of that out in Barton's blog where he's outlined it. Barton, is there anything else you want to add before we let you run? We're going to update it soon, but dell.com slash Sputnik or dell.com slash developers will have the list of all the systems. That's work in progress. So if you go

today, you'll see the new 3520, which is available now. But that'll have more information. We'll have links as we go forward. But other than that, I'd just like to say thank you so much. And the great thing about this, and it could only happen with something like this, is that the whole fact is that this is open source and this is community driven. And that's been since day one what has made this, which a lot of people at Dell looked at skeptically, viable. A lot of people at Dell looked at skeptically viable, that people actually said, no, we really do want this, and we want to pay for a nice system as opposed to what Dell had before, which is let's put a free operating system like Canonical on a low-end system, and we get a low-end price point. The idea here was let's put it on a really good system so people have a quality system. So anyway. I love that.

Once again, thanks so much. Thank you, Barton. Thank you for making it work. We appreciate it. Keep up the great work. Please do. Keep advocating Linux there at Dell and feel free to drop us a line whenever something interesting is going on because 2017 – it's funny, Barton. Yesterday on the Linux Action Show, this is crazy day.

I had no idea you and I would be having this conversation today. Or I guess it was two days ago on the Linux Action Show. I predicted that 2017 would be the year that Dell really steps up with Linux and I start taking them seriously. And I think two days into 2017's prediction, it's coming true already. I'm going to be watching this closely for the rest of the year. So thanks for once again proving me right, Barton. That's what I'm here for, man.

And come back sometime soon. Yeah. And thanks for all the great hard work. And we will definitely be following with interest. And like I said, chat room, if you guys want to see that post, you can find the link in the show notes to Barton's blog. Now, before we go any further and get into the rest of the updates of the week, I want to thank Ting for sponsoring this episode of the Unplugged program. Best URL in the business, linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com is where you go to save $25 off your first Ting device. Or if you bring a device, and you just might be able to do that because they got CDMA and

the GSMs. What does the GSM stand for? Global. Come on, Jerem. Global systems muckery. Yeah, muckery. That's a technical term. Yeah, don't even get me started on CDMA.

But they got both of them because Ting be crazy like that. And here's what I love. There's no contract, no determination fee, and you only pay for what you use. You only pay for what you use. You only pay for what you use. How brilliant is that? That's impossible. It's how it works. It's $6 for the line and then you pay for what you use. Crazy Ting is crazy. I know and I love it because

I get to choose whichever network works better. I only pay for what I use. I use Wi-Fi like a booze. And then to top it all off, you get to speak to a real human when you need customer service. And they have a fantastic dashboard to choose from. You can bring your own cheapo phone or they'll sell you one with no contract, no get in the way of updates, no termination fees. Man, everybody ought to do it like this. And they just might one day if you vote with your wallet at linux.ting.com.

And I want to make thank you to Ting for sponsoring the unplugged program, linux.ting.com. Also, hey, the rest of the industry, go learn how to do a dashboard. It's only going to cost you $6 a month. Go create a Ting account and just learn how to make a good dashboard. It's 2017 already. linux.ting.com. Big thanks to Ting for sponsoring the unplugged shenanigans. All right, Wes.

So I don't know what to make of this. So I don't know what to make of this. I really don't know what to make of this. I feel like the Raspberry Pi folks, some of them, want us to run Pixel on all of the things. Oh, yeah. And this is a step too far. I can't take it. I can't take it at all. But they have made the Pixel Linux desktop environment available for x86 PCs.

You can download an ISO with it all ready to go. That's a, by the way, Pixel is their acronym for Pi Improved X Windows Environment Lightweight. I'm just kind of shaking. I'm just confused. It's a jacked-up version of LXDE. I mean a modified version of LXDE for the X11 desktop environment. That's the new cool desktop environment. X11 desktop environment.

That's that. It says it right there. It's the new cool desktop environment. X11 desktop environment. That's that. It says it right there. It's the new hotness. It says it right there, the X11 desktop environment, and you know that's the good hotness because it's... Network transparency, Chris. Because they're not talking

about a display server. No, no. They're talking about an X11. Anyways, moving on. It was originally released in September for the Raspberry Pi. We covered it back then, but now it's been packaged up

for your x86 PC. They say Pixel, this is Eben, says Pixel is our best guess, our best guess as to what the majority of Linux users are looking for in a desktop environment. Put simply, it's the GNU slash Linux we would want to use. They say it's clean, has a modern user interface, curated suite of productivity software and programming tools. And by curated, they mean 1.3 gigabytes of ISO. Carefully selected from the Debian repository. I wonder what their definition of curated mean. Yeah, so it's Debian Jessie with a pixel on top.

And you can burn it to a DVD, they say, if you like, or write it to a thumb drive. Optional persistence? Wes, is this a shot at the standard Linux distribution desktop environments? Like I feel like this – I feel like I would say this if Wimpy wasn't here. So I'm just going to say it anyways. I feel like this is a shot at Ubuntu Mate because Ubuntu Mate is kicking a ton of ass on Raspberry Pis. It makes the Raspberry Pi a completely usable real computer with a no compromises traditional desktop environment.

And I think the Raspberry Pi folks are seeing that and going, oh, crap. There's this other distribution that's getting more dominance on our own platform than our own software. Why are they successful? Oh, well, it must be because you can run it on x86 PCs. Ergo, we will make – we'll reverse it. We'll flip the script and we'll release our desktop environment in distro for x86 and that will stop the problem. It will stop the bleeding.

What do you think? You know, I was really confused when we saw this. We put it in the show notes. You know, I was really confused when we saw this. We put it in the show notes. I guess to me it feels like they're going there. It's like an attempted dominance play where, I don't know, because it feels weird from our perspective.

Like I'm not interested in this. You know, we have a wonderful community here of like long-time Linux users, some new people. But anyway, people who have experience, you can shop around. I can't imagine installing this. But I wonder if it's something with the fact that it comes with a Pi Store icon on the desktop. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. It might. But I could see it's something with the fact that it comes with a Pi Store icon on the desktop. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. It might.

But I could see that, like, you know, you're new to the Pi. Maybe you get into Linux using Pi software. If this is the default, if this is what you're comfortable with, it could be, you know, an easy way to extend it. Like, okay, now I can run it on my desktop, too. I guess. I mean, at least it's Debian. Wimpy, I have to ask you what you think of this. Well, I tell you what.

I've got two things to say about this the first is uh you know my thoughts about this pixel initiative and if you want them reinforcing then uh listen to episode one of late night linux where aikidoity is now a presenter on a podcast you just see now you're totally spoiling my end of show plug. Oh, I'm sorry. It's all right. Let's go.

Let's do it now. Now I don't know what I'm going to do at the end of the show, but it's fine. I launched a new show. I think it's brilliant called late night. Linux is episode one. We'll have it linked in the show notes. You guys got to go check it out.

And it sounds like something relevant or interest is on there. Continue. Okay. So you want to listen to Ikey's little spiel about um the raspberry pi pixel uh desktop environment his thoughts and my thoughts are completely aligned now to your point about did the raspberry pi foundation respond to ubuntu Mate on the Raspberry Pi? I believe it's the insurgency of Ubuntu. Whatever you want to call it. If the only thing Ubuntu Mate achieved is to make a better default operating system for the Raspberry Pi, then that's a fine legacy as far as I'm concerned.

Wow. I couldn't have written a better response if I had an hour to come up with it. That is some smooth as butter response right there. I love it. Well, I suppose that's one brilliant and wonderful way that leaves my heart feeling warm to look at it. So I choose to move on and not ask further questions. Do you have a thought? No, I think that's perfect.

Okay. So let's go from that heartwarming story to Kill Disk, ransomware that's targeting Linux machines, demands 250,000 US greenbacks once converted from Bitcoin depending on the rate, and then doesn't decrypt your files after you give it the $250,000 greenbacks. That is the lowest of the low. That's crazy. You're undermining the whole ransomware industry when you do this because people are going to stop paying if this becomes a trend. We've got a whole trust thing here. I mean no one liked it but at least you could get your phone back. You're really going to – you're going to undermine the industry when you do this, ransomware authors.

I'm telling you. I don't really know how big of a deal it is. I'm having this really weird – I mean it's not unusual but it's extremely strong with this one. A lot of hype blogs. A lot of like end of the world, the sky is falling. All your files will be destroyed. And no good really technical analysis of what this thing is. But I don't really – because you mean like I would love to know a great example of how it's getting on people's machines, how they're executing it.

Has anybody in the mumumble room come across the story that covers it on that sense? Yeah, I'm taking that science to mean no. I haven't seen it either. I've been looking. People are too scared. Killed us. Who's going to pay the fee, though?

222 bitcoins, really? I know. That's pretty serious. But it does sound like, yeah, that is a lot. But it does sound like some businesses have been paying them. Yeah, that's how we found out it does sound like some businesses have been paying them. I mean – Yeah. Yeah, that's how we found out.

When they asked for 10. No, we found out because someone reversed that. Well, ESET did the research on this thing. So ESET went in and did the research on it on December 6th. And they say there's even variants out in the wild too. They say things like, we are so sorry, but the encryption of your data has been successfully completed. So you could lose your data or pay 222 BTC. Like people even know what BTC is. Like imagine if you got that and you don't have any, you don't, you're just starting

from like, wow, that's rough. Then they put the address on there. You know what we could do? If anybody in the chat room wants to screenshot this, screenshot that and then go look up and see if any Bitcoins were sent to that address. That's publicly available. So that's how, William, that's how we could find out if anybody paid it.

Is that true? So I'll leave that up there on the screen for a moment while we do this. So I guess there's- I'm assuming there's only one address. Oh, right, because there's variants too. Yeah. There's a screenshot. You don't know necessarily that's the only address.

But you could at least look at that one and see if anyone paid to that one. I don't know if it changes. Not getting as much attention, but there's also a version for Windows called Win32 Kill Disk. So it's not just a – Cross-platform, everyone. All your favorite software. On the bright side, at least they're sorry about it. They're so sorry, actually.

We are so sorry. But the encryption – I like the cadence of it too. We are so sorry, comma, but the encryption of your data has been successfully completed, comma. So you can lose your data or pay and there's no commas or periods right there. It's all just – And they're like mixed messaging of sorry but successful. It's delightful. It's also nice that they have a contact email on there.

Maybe if we email them, we can ask if anyone has paid them. Invite them on the show. Talk about their system. It's delightful. It's also nice that they have a contact email on there. Maybe if we email them, we can ask if anyone's paid them. Invite them on the show. Talk about their system. It's interesting. Look at this. And then in Grub on Linux, they rewrite Grub so that the menu entries in Grub are the error message. That would be so frustrating. Look at that.

That's it. So right there, it's in Grub. We are so sorry, but the encryption of your data has been successfully completed, so you can lose your data or pay. And then it goes on. And each line of the sentence is a Grub menu entry for boot. That is – that's a whole kind of awful. They do have a technical analysis on the ESET blog. And it doesn't really go into, though, how they launch it, though.

What's kind of hilarious is that the one they reference, the Telebot infection that they reference in the description of this one, there's an infection vector listed there. But the one that they're now talking about getting a lot of press for, no vector. Yeah. I mean, I would assume under linux you are somehow getting this on the machine now maybe it's getting put on there remotely through another vulnerability but it would seem like more like a phishing attempt or something like downloading it and then getting the user to execute it which for better or for worse is not as easy it is on windows right no it's not i mean where are you because you would also likely

have to mark it as executable. Because what are you downloading from your browser doesn't automatically mark things as executable. So are you getting people to plus X these things as well? How is this working exactly? I like that idea, yeah. What is the main distribution factor? What I find interesting is they're seeding the key based on the time of the system, and that's it. And so I wonder if based on the modification time of the file, you couldn't

guess what the key might be. So Rikai looked it up on blockchain. They've received one transaction and it looks like a test transaction because it's just 0.0001 BTC. Well, let's hope that they don't get any money.

Either they haven't gotten any money that or they have lots of addresses or something. So no one's paid that one at least, which is the one that's all over news articles. They don't get any money. Either they haven't gotten any money that or they have lots of addresses or something. But yeah. So no one's paid that one at least, which is the one that's all over news articles. So don't get tricked, audience. Do not send your BTC to that address. Somebody sent it on December 30th. I might just be – I wonder if you could trace this back.

It would be funny if it was someone trolling them. What would be really funny is if you could trace that transaction back and then figure out who it is based on blockchain. So I don't really think anybody actually has to worry about this. But what really struck me was the amount of panic is at a whole new level. All kinds of blogs about it. Like there was, I don't know, three or four different articles by this weekend. And now there's like a dozen articles written by today and none of them have any real substance. And I don't know of anyone that's actually been infected in the wild.

I mean, it sounds the article implies like somebody was infected in the wild and there are screenshots of it. So it's likely been run in testing. But I don't know. I don't know. Right. It's like there's no qualifications or evidence as to like, is this any dramatically more popular than any of the other?

I wonder if they found the Linux variant by first getting the Windows variant. Like, I wonder if there's some connection that makes it easy to find the Linux one after having the Windows one as a sample. Do you guys know I used to work in an antivirus company, and they had a— Really? Yeah, they had a whole isolated research division where they were trying to get infections and stuff all the time. Yeah, it was pretty cool. I mean, it was a real scam of an antivirus company, but it was a bad one. And I didn't really know at the time because, like,

what did I know about Windows antivirus back then? But I was in the IT department. They ran all Linux and they ran Asterix for their phone. That's where I learned to use Bacula. Oh, that's awesome. And this is where I also learned a very – I had a very quick crash course in network segmentation because they had like this – they had this cool setup. Like they were off in this second half of the building where they didn't have their overhead lights on and they had lamps at their desks.

And they had their own network with its own internet connection. It was like this truly cool elite. Red squadron. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. So that was my first experience with that kind of thing. And that's. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. So that was my first experience with that kind of thing. And that's how they do it, right?

They get systems. They have lots of VMs and they would get infections and then they would go track that back. They would reverse the path. And like William says, a lot of times they'd start with a Windows one and they'd find that there's a Linux variant just by beginning the research of it. Not because it's necessarily getting actively exploited. It's very, it feels like a million years ago. And I would have killed for a resource like Linux Academy back then.

Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Go there to support the show and sign up for a seven-day free trial. That's madness. You could really just dive in and really get a sense of it, engage with some of the live instructors, enjoy the community stacked full of Jupyter Broadcasting members,

have yourselves a little hands-on scenario-based lab or an in-depth video, or maybe use the course scheduler to match your busy schedule. We get lots of emails about certs, lots of emails. And they have courses created specifically to prepare you for exams. And they have this public profile section that I think is ideal for those of us that need to either prove to an employer that you're using your education time. Like I, for a long time, worked at companies that gave me a budget every year for education. And this, boom, again, perfect for that. And you can use the public profiles to demonstrate the work you've done.

Also great to help clients understand what you're capable of or just to prove to yourself. I also appreciate the fact that they understand you don't always have hours and hours and hours to commit to this stuff. They give you the study tools you can download and take with you. That's awesome. They have mobile apps that you can take advantage of when you're on the go. They have nuggets with little tiny bits of sparkly wisdom just to deep dive into a single topic. They have the learning paths and course schedulers to help work around your busy schedule. Note cards to help you study up really quick.

It is incredible. And to top it all off, they have that instructor mentoring and they're constantly adding new content. I just got an email from Anthony yesterday about a whole new slew of stuff going into Linux Academy. Check it out at linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.

And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring this unplugged program. Talking about hardware. I mean, Barton's really got me thinking about this stuff. I know, right? And I have this sort of

kind of casual eye on where Intel is going with these really small x86 PCs. And they've tried – they keep trying to dip their toe in here. They've totally missed the boat on the mobile stuff. And they keep trying to dip their toe in here, kind of compete with the Raspberry Pi. I think they might have something kind of interesting. Now, this came up at CES and and it's Intel's Compute Card. It's a PC that can fit in your wallet. It's intended to be a more versatile replacement for the Compute Stick that hasn't really gotten a lot of traction.

And I was kind of interested in the Compute Stick, but it really was a bear to put Linux on. In fact, I think we bought one and tried and couldn't even get it. I can't remember. But we don't have the specifics on the specs yet. But Intel reps say that it will have the performance of high-end fanless laptops like some MacBooks. The processors have a TDP of up to 6 watts, which could fit in these things, which is pretty nice. That's like a low-powered Atom or even the M and Y series Core i5 and i7 CPUs. Hey, hey.

So that's actually – I'm taking i5 in my pocket. Yeah. Now this I'm not so sure of. I guess this would have to take off, but because it's Intel, they could probably just rev it into a chipset. Intel says that the card uses a variant of the USB-C port

called USB-C Plus Extension. Oh. It allows you to connect the system right in. So you connect this to, like, say, another PC. It allows you to connect right into the PCIe bus as well as the HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs. So they feel like it could be, like, a way to, like, really juice it up. And they estimate the Compute Stick will drop off their roadmap in 2018, and this will be what replaces it.

It's an x86-based PC. It will be available to run something called Windows. That sounds like something you'd put in your house. And then also Linux. Basically any operating system you kind of put on a low-end PC. In mid-2017, the Intel Compute Stick. It's interesting that they felt limited by the connections available on the Compute Stick. It's interesting that they felt limited by the connections available on the Compute Stick. I think that was one of their

motivations to move to this weird new USB. This new USB-C era. I wonder if that, hopefully it seems like they'll need that USB-C plus extension to be compatible with other things. Because I could see it working if we really do start living in the dongle universe where there's dongles

and docks and USB-C things everywhere, then, yeah, sure, if you've got this thing in your wallet, then you show up and you plug in your one cord. Maybe this is the convergence device. Yeah. Anybody in the Mumbroom have thoughts on this particular type of form factor before we jump from this? It sounds really cool as, like, a smart card type thing.

It could be your smart card. It stores, like, your identity type information and, like, core information you want to carry around. Your smart card could be your entire PC. I can compete on that. Well, not so much. Why not? It's not powerful enough for me.

Yeah. I mean, I think some people could live with this, but I think that's a very small market right now. I think this is enough to get more powerful before most people could live with it. I agree. Yeah. This is still worse performing than even the ARM Chromebooks. Yeah. worse performing than even like the arm chromebooks yeah and i so i i i think i i think i'm like i think i need at least a four core i7 as a minimum like 50 watt tdp processing

and then like a 50 watt tdp gpu yeah do you say i look at those two core ones and i'm like you know you know chris you could probably slam it and get away with an i5. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. So we're back to that precision line then. One of the big trends out of CES this year is these huge laptops. Have you seen some of these?

Yeah. Yeah, they're mental. They're pretty fancy. Crazy. Yeah, with like dual power supplies and 22-inch curved screens in some cases. And they're just – That seems like a lot to lug around. I feel like –

Some of them are almost like 18, 20 pounds, which is ridiculous. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a market for that? It's like a briefcase.

Well, is this a huge – is this a huge response to – is this like a big backlash to the MacBook thing? I like that know that you... No, this was sort of in the making for years. That's what I feel like too. Apple pushed this in any way. But they're not making these things as a folly, right? They must believe that there is a customer base out there for these things.

I'm thinking maybe, you know, on-set editing machines for, you know, big productions and what have you could vr i know wimpy you probably would doubt this but no it's not gonna not gonna be for vr is it i mean blundering around blinkered wearing your nose bag you know possibly running into walls all of that is just not gonna happen but no i'm thinking i'm thinking you know high-end editing machines uh 3d video creation uh tools that sort of stuff i think with gaming gpus being possible to integrate into laptops now it's becoming more prevalent like your 1080s and your 1070s the desktop variants can be directly integrated into laptops and even water cooled and that's all right and all sorts of crazy yeah well the 1080 series i think with the cpu slowing down and being fast enough and the gpu's sort of

catching up in the mobile segment gamers are really interested in these devices and asus makes one where you can dock it and it's water cooled so like the gpus and everything are hooked up to water blocks and there are two outlets on the back that hook up into a dock to give you more cooling when you're docked at your desk yeah that is are you are you saying that there's a potential market there for pro gamers for these absolutely yeah wow well there you go see at least that's emerging as a market it may not be that of course becoming a thing of course you're gonna be taking your rig anyway and you know that that you know and uh i've recently uh i've recently been working with 4k footage that is – it's compressed but it's 100 megabits and it makes my machine chug. Just crying.

And my SSD gets like 800, 900 megabytes a second read and it's still – when I'm skimming in the editor, 100 megs a second, it can't keep up when I'm really jumping around. 100 megs a second, it can't keep up when I'm really jumping around. And then, of course, rendering that and all of that is becoming – I'm pushing the limits of it. And I could – honestly, I don't need portability in my main editing machine other than I need to be able to edit somewhere wherever I'm at. And I can set up and I can plug in and I don't need hours of battery life, but I need unlimited disk and CPU. And it doesn't make sense to have like a big desktop in the rig or anything when you could just have this and then still take it to the studio. The other problem is when you're dealing with files like this is a day's worth of shooting now is 70, 80 gigs. You probably need your fastest and then like a second disk at least with bigger storage. Every night I have to offload to the NAS to make room for the next day's editing.

Chris, admit it. You want one of those laptops with the curved screens. Come on. I think that would be kind of cool. Chris, take a look at the link I sent. Where is it? In the IRC? In the ASUS ROG GX800 or the YouTube video that I and a go-go linked.

Oh, jeez. I know. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. From Linus? Yeah. I think they probably have a content ID. Yeah, they've actually had a similar model out in the past. There was a previous iteration that is veryus. Yeah. I don't, I think they probably have a content ID. So yeah, they've actually had a similar model out in the past.

There was a previous iteration that is very similar. Wow. The full 1080s in SLI. You know, what's funny is

I hope they don't content ID this, but I think he actually says right here has to put it down because it's too heavy to hold. Yeah,

it's super heavy. I mean, it's like that solid copper blocks in there. Yeah. My arm's tired. Yeah, it's,

it has been funny watching that. Too bad they all run Windows. Yeah, it's... It has been funny watching that. Too bad they all run Windows. Yeah, right? Bart needs to go talk to all those people and tell them what's up. Linux users need power, too. I'm on it. Who do I talk to?

You should convince System76 to get one of these and then integrate Linux into it. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I wonder if they would do... I wonder if they'd be up for something like that. Because I think these are from a Clevo line.

Like, I think they could actually take these and fix them up. These feel like this is a pretty – like, this feels like – unless I'm misunderstanding – I understand professional gamers is a huge growing area, which kind of blows my mind in its own right. But could they – it just seems nuts that – OK, I guess here's where I'm trying to go with this. Could there really be enough of a market that this many vendors are building machines this

extreme? I think they're taking a a gamble i really don't think so i think what dale needs to make is really the thing that razor is doing with a three monitor laptop go back to the old thinkpad days where you'd like to slide out monitors yeah that's what i thought of when i saw that yeah yep although i don't think razor has any intention of actually ever shipping that at the moment i think I have to get them back. It's too bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's $9,000 for some of those machines. Uni, you want to jump in? Go ahead.

Uni. Go on once. Are you muted, Uni? Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, there you go. No, you're... It's okay. I got it. Go ahead. Go ahead. All right. So I got Mario Grip over on Telegram here.

He just wanted to let everyone know that no, Ubuntu Touch is not dead. Please stop saying that. The guy that runs UbiPorts. Yeah, we covered that on LAS. I don't know if anybody in here, hint, hint, has any comments on it. But yeah, essentially it sounds like it's hiatus why we transitioned from, or they, transitioned from click packages to snap packages and then integrate it with the rest of the overall strategy. Fair? Fair. I think I've said that before, right?

It just makes sense, too, and it feels like the right time to do it. More consistency. Yes. I almost made a prediction that Canonical will drop Mir in 2017, but then I just decided, no, they're too far in. But wouldn't that

make everybody's mouth drop if they just said, you know what, we think we can contribute what we need to Wayland. Yeah, that would be a great Newsweek for us. That would be a great episode. Yeah, I almost made that prediction. But yeah, I know that a lot of people are reacting about Ubuntu phone. A lot of what

I'm seeing is, oh, saw that coming, you know, real armchair kind of stuff. But I think it's extremely practical at this stage. And it would be awkward to have this division with click packages and snap packages, especially with so much momentum in the company behind snap packages. And if you wanted to make the case for like Linux users to move over, here's the whole little bit different of an ecosystem that you have to learn. Sorry it's not just a bunch on your phone that you're used to. Yeah.

It's too bad that it hasn't gotten more traction. I would have liked to have seen a few solid US options. I really, you know, I've exhausted myself talking about mobile at this point, but I think long term it just seems talking about mobile at this point. But I think long-term, it just seems to make the most sense anyways.

Like if you're not afraid to be a little embarrassed in the short term and you have the fortitude to stick with it over the long term, it seems like the better route to go. Just my estimation. I don't know. All right, Wes. Well, I want to talk about a couple of things. I said I was going to – I said I would confirm two predictions. I've only confirmed one prediction this episode. You got one more to go.

I got one more to – I know. I know. So before we get into that, I want to thank DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Did you know that DigitalOcean is a thing and it's a thing that will change your life? That's true. It's changed my life. D-O-Unplugged. D-O-Unplugged.

Get a $10 credit. Go create the account and you apply it. D-O-Unplugged. D-O-Unplugged at a $10 credit. You go create the account, then you apply it. D-O-Unplugged. It is really something. I guess I probably, if you've heard these spots and you've never gone and actually pulled the trigger, I don't really need to tell you something you haven't heard before. You probably are aware that it's a simple, easy way to get started to create a Linux rig up in the cloud, in their data centers all over the world, all SSD-based, super fast, great UI, super nice API, solid set of documentation,

some of the best on the web, really straightforward pricing, and hourly is available. That's, oh, and basically any distro you'd ever want to choose from. And if they don't have the one you'd want, you know which one I'm talking about. There's a little birdie that tells me with that HTML5 console you can make it happen. I'm not saying that, and I'm definitely not putting that in the spot, so cut all that out. But I'm just saying there's a thing you can do. They have an HTML5 console. It's a powerful thing from post to boot.

Check it out at DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D1PLUG. Now, you know how you can use DigitalOcean? If there is any task you can do that doesn't require a GUI, if there's anything you can do on the command line, you could use a DigitalOcean droplet for it pretty much. You got something you need to download in the background, you want to host some torrents.

I mean, I'm talking simple stuff for average everyday users. DigitalOcean works for you. If you want to build the backend infrastructure for your business, or in our case, for your live streaming infrastructure to send it off to Scale Engine and YouTube

and Ustream and Bibbidi-Bops and Records Here. Maybe a Twitch channel one day. What? You got to use, you know, I could, sure, I guess I could have a big old rack that I'm running hardware out of all the time like an animal. Or I take advantage of their entire Linux infrastructure using KVM for the virtualizer, SSDs for the storage. Oh, and did I mention 40 gigabit E connections right into them hypervisors? They're doing it right. I mean, yeah, I guess I could spend all of my time building that and get like one – not even 1% of what they got.

I mean, it's really – come on. As the Borg would say, it is a futile maneuver. Go over to DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code DOUnplugged. It's one word. It's lowercase. Smack your leg when you're saying it. Apply it to

your account. And thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. I am not proclaiming that the Mac is dead. I am not proclaiming that Linux is going to become the champion of 2017. I am simply saying that a lot of long-time Mac users, developers, technical workers are abandoning the platform. And we have yet another blog this week. And these are one of many examples. We had one last week too. The title is From OS X to Ubuntu. And it's a fascinating read.

It's good if you're looking to switch yourself. I won't go through all of it. But I did highlight a couple of the interesting bits. And then I want to talk a little bit more about some of the data we have. So he says, I was a Linux user 10 years ago but moved to a Mac. One, mainly because I was tired of maintaining an often broken system. I'm looking at Xorg. Oh, man. And Apple had a quite appealing offer at the time, a well-maintained Unix platform with beautiful hardware, good UX, and access to editor apps I like, like Photoshop and Office.

The trigger was pulled when Apple, though, for him to switch when Apple announced the 2015 MacBook line with strange connectivity decisions like having unique ports for everything and using strange dongles. Even if their top-notch hardware started to turn weird, it was probably time to look elsewhere. And now I've seen their latest MacBook Pro line. The escape key was removed. I'm kind of comforted in my decision. He's also recently joined Mozilla, the storage team, and saw lots of colleagues happily using Linux. They weren't struggling with anything in particular. Oddly enough, it seemed like they were capable, working efficiently both at work and for their personal stuff.

So in this case, our author buys a Lenovo X1 Carbon and started transitioning over to Linux. Chose Ubuntu right away because previously that's what the developer used. And stuck with the Unity desktop. Everything worked right away. Nothing really needed to be messed with, including Bluetooth and external display. Unity is going fine. The last batch of OS X apps that he really liked are not available on Linux. But so far, most equivalents have been found for the most part.

The web is your app store. That was an interesting observation. I mean, I think we've talked about that before, but he's definitely right that 10 years ago today, there's a lot more that you can do online. You just don't have to worry about it on Linux. Yeah. And there's still some web apps that don't live up to the app and up to snuff. And so there's sometimes

specific tasks in native apps that are still more efficient or better integrated than what the web has. Finds the Unity launcher to be sufficient and has looked at Albert and Synapse file managers. Talks about all that. I guess I'll end it with the conclusion because you can

read the rest. Talks in here about using dark table and all of that, gaming, music. It's really fantastic. Video editing, password management. It's a fantastic post. But so is Linux ready for the desktop? For me, the answer is yes. The author concludes and we'll be sticking with Linux. Nicholas, I believe is how you say his first name.

This is like – I guess we could – I won't keep doing this. I won't keep reading all of these blog posts every year – or I mean every week as these come out. But I wanted to read it this week because it goes in combination with another report that's come out. Greg over at Computer World is reporting on this, that according to Net Applications, who constantly reports on this stuff all the time, Apple's macOS is beginning to decline from 7%. Actually, it peaked at 9.6%, but now it's down to 6.1%. Yeah. So I guess it

was down 7% from a year ago. That's actually a decent drop-off. Now you're wondering about Linux. Linux user share is at 2.2%. It peaked at 2.3% in November when those new MacBooks came out. And Linux first cracked the 2% barrier back in June of 2016. Wow, okay. And now we're sitting at 2.2%. So a nice little growth curve for little-laired Linux. So I present you a case, Wes.

Am I looking for evidence of upset in the Mac community and them coming to Linux? Or do you think we are witnessing the slow new trickle of Mac exodus users coming over Linux? Am I right or am I looking for trouble? No, I think you're right. I mean, if anything, I think you've been a little bit cautious in that there are always those people who are doing that switch. There's always, you know, and there's a lot of, for a lot of people who it's kind of easy to be like, well, yeah, it works for me.

I think what's unique now is that we're seeing people who had, a lot of them were previously Linux users. They've dabbled in it. Some of them have tried over the years to switch or, you know, have one Linux system and then have to use their OSX. So I think the difference is we're seeing people who, you know, this is like their main workstation, this is their main work laptop, that kind of thing, and now... The kind of folks Barton is targeting. Exactly, and it does feel like there's like a zeitgeist changed

where now Linux is a real option in their minds again. Yeah, and I think there's also sort of this sort of belay setting in over the situation with some of the previous vendors. I think it's a whole interesting storm. All right, that's it. I'm done. I'm just saying I think this is a good trend for Linux in general. I think maybe I've beaten this horse now.

We'll check back in in some months. Yeah, we'll check. Let it simmer. Exactly, exactly. Because for all I know, in a couple of weeks. They'll all realize they hate Linux. Yeah, they all can start writing posts, Linux is the worst, how I tried to switch to Linux and it blew up in my face, and I came running back to the Mac. Like, that could be the post, and they all end up buying Mac Pro trash cans.

We'll really eat our words. Yeah, that's right. W.W., you want to jump in? Go ahead. jump in go ahead yeah i'm thinking that maybe professionals and the people who really use those big machines that are tired and they're they're moving away from it they're moving away from it because as work um workloads get you know bigger like video professionals and photography professionals are going to be dealing with higher and higher images they need something that's cutting edge that can do the work that they need something that's cutting edge, that can

do the work that they need to do and not work on two year, three year old hardware that's last generation. And that could be pushing them to move to, you know, besides openness of Linux, which is much better. I think, too, when it comes to business, you know, they specifically like predictability to a degree as well. I mean, there's obviously constraints on that. But as a business, you sometimes build a workflow around certain hardware features.

And for a lot of professionals, the loss of the SD card reader, even though it's not required. It's not necessitated by thickness requirements because the reader is tiny and thin. It's as thin as an SD card. It's not necessitated by thickness requirements because the reader is tiny and thin. It's as thin as an SD card. It is – but that one thing is a major blow to the digital video workflow because essentially a lot of like the Canon cameras and even Sony cameras and Nikon cameras have standardized on SD, right? So when you're shooting it with photography or shooting video on these cameras and then you go to sit down and import it, you always have SD cards you need to work with. And you don't want one more dongle that you're dragging around. You already have the giant camera bag and the laptop.

This seems like a small example, but this unknown quantity when it comes to Apple hardware where one line has this feature and then the next iteration on it all of a sudden removes it and now that's in a dongle. It's this unpredictability of when it's going to get updated and how much that's going to cost. And there's also just the fact that businesses are looking at these things and going, well, what am I getting for my purchase here? This is an $8,000 computer when I build it. What am I getting out of this? I think all of those things add up. All right. Anything else from the Mumble Room before we officially consider this closed – unless something interesting develops.

We're going to consider this topic closed for the Unplugged program. Going once, going twice, and Popey. I secretly use Arch Linux. Thank you. On a MacBook, though, so it's fine. He doesn't actually. He secretly uses Ubuntu Mate, but we'll just call it. Secret sound. Yeah, it's'll just call it. Oh. Secret sound.

Yeah, it's not so secret anymore. All right. That'll bring us to the end of this week's Unplugged. We're going to get out of here a little early this week because once this show ends, we redress the set and the next episode of TechSnap is getting recorded. Check out Wes on the new TechSnap. What? Yeah. Also recording on Tuesdays after Unplugged, at least for now. Yeah, at least for now.

So you can show up, listen to the Unplugged program live, hang out, stick around, and catch a live TechSnap. How about that for a double-ender? Thank you for joining us this week. You can find all of our live times at jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar, our subreddit at linuxactionshow.reddit.com, our contact page at jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact, and follow the network on Twitter at JupyterSignal. Thanks for being here.

We'll see you next week. Thank you. you