LINUX Unplugged - Episode 18: Hugs for LUGs | LUP 18

Episode Date: December 11, 2013

Have IRC chat rooms, forums, reddit, and Google Hangouts killed the local Linux Users Group? We’ll share our ideas to reboot the LUG and make them relevant for the modern Linux user.PLUS: Your follow up thoughts on the perfect swap setup, feedback, and much more!

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode weekly Linux doc show that currently has more raw computing power than the NSA. My name is Chris. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey Matt, I'm surrounded right now by, let me count them down, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven screens. Wow, that's a lot of screens. Yeah, it's a lot of computers right now. So we're in the middle of this big hardware roundup where we're reviewing different gadgets from System76, different machines. And I just hooked up today the Leopard Extreme. I actually hooked it up late last night.

And so they sent it to me with 64 gigabytes of RAM. Oh. You got to love that, you know? And I'm just going to tell you, too, I decided to go for it. I installed Arch on the Ultra Pro. Nice. Good choice. So I got KDE 4 with Arch.

And I actually went a different direction this time. I had problems with Integros. I don't know if it was the repos or Nice. Good choice. So I got KDE 4 with Arch, and I actually went a different direction this time. I had problems with Integros. Like, I don't know if it was the repos or what was going on. The install wasn't working. I love Integros, but it just wasn't working out.

What exactly were you experiencing? Was it just not installing, like, crashing? It would get like, no, no, it was fine. It was fine. It would get through, like, 70, 80% of the installation process,

and then it would just seem to start timing out and pulling down a package. I don't know if it was the Arch repo issue at the time or what it was. So I jumped over and tried out Bridge Linux, which is sort of along the same vein as Integros in the sense that they use straight Arch repos, and they let you pick your different desktop and they let you choose KDE right out of the box, which is what I wanted.

And it's definitely not quite as smooth as Integros. Like, it's a straight-up command line installer, but it has, like, an N-curses interface. Not bad. It's a little more... It's definitely more power users. It's not quite as user-friendly as Integros is, but it got it installed,

and now I have a completely current Arch installation, and it took about, you know, 25 minutes. So it was an interesting experiment, because I'd never tried it. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going to have to check that out myself, I think. One of the other things I thought was kind of interesting, to overuse the word already, is I also

tried Manjaro. But Manjaro suffered from the same exact problem Integros did. And they didn't really. So that's why I was thinking it might have been a repo issue. It must be, yeah. I mean, it's really hard to say exactly what was going on. The only thing I've ever experienced as far as a Manjaro versus Integros situation was that one Ethernet, that one Broadcom Ethernet driver issue to where Integros was not having it. And it couldn't install because, get this, it couldn't get to the internet.

And of course there was no detection on the wireless front, and of course you're not getting any love on the Ethernet front. It kind of means you can either go the long way through Kansas. Personally, it would just be easier to install Arch at that point. But I just went with Manjaro on it, and it worked out okay. Well, so I want to apologize up front. I'm not really so sick anymore. Like I feel fine, but I still have some junk in my throat. And it's fine unless I talk, which is not really –

That could be a problem. Actually, now that I think about it, it's kind of a problem. So you might hear... I'll try to mute my mic from time to time, but I do have a little junk in there. That could be an opportunity to yammer on. Yeah, that's true. And you know, I have... It's not the best solution. People... But it's all I have to work with is a little 100-proof peppermint schnapps. You can see it's already working. It's got the tongue feeling good. So I'll be sipping on that as the cough comes up. But I wanted to touch on something before we go on, Matt, because I have a little more things to say on the System76 stuff.

But of course, as is to be expected on the internet, there was a critique. And of course, Stoalf2 in our subreddit, who saw it fit to post the same thing twice in the thread, said that the whole show was more or less a big commercial this time. This is, he's talking about our system 76 laptop special from season 29, episode 10 of last that came out on Sunday. I really hope it won't take that long before they're finished this because I have no interest whatsoever in this kind of thing.

And I really hope they got paid quite a bit. I'm willing to go through a couple of them if it means shows will continue, but I cringe myself the whole time wanking off a sponsor the whole episode this week. So I think there's a bit of an assumption here that this was a paid – Yeah, and that's – well, first of all, there was no wanking. That was happening to my knowledge. At least I didn't get anything there. But no, I would definitely say that this is based on the fact that we're celebrating and reviewing uh hardware that is

built to run linux yes they are a sponsor yes i've also been using myself as of you been using these guys long before the linux eyes ever on the linux action show right so i'm speaking and i've been promoting them way before i had anything to do with them right so you know these are products and these are products we're actually excited about. So, you know, at least from my perspective and that's what we're doing. So, uh, that's exactly it. Yeah.

We didn't, there was a, there was no exchange of money. Um, Matt and I asked to be sent these computers. We didn't, uh, tell them how to spec them or anything like that.

We don't get to keep them. I mean, God, that'd be awesome. I also would argue, I don't think we got necessarily preferential treatment either. I think we, you know, there's just, as they became available, they were sent to us.

Right. Yeah, and there was a waiting list. And it really – and you'll notice – so the way the System76 sponsorship works is System76 sponsors a particular segment, not the entire show. And we move that segment sponsorship out of the System76 – the review. Like we'll do next week when we're talking about the Leopard Extreme. Absolutely. And another thing that happened on Google+, and I'm finally glad it's taking place, is the old, well, they're rebranded such and such and whatnot.

And I'm really excited to see that Carl came out of the woodwork and actually addressed this. And I'll actually provide it maybe in the show notes as to what he responded to. But he was actually talking about what makes them different, what system 76 does to actually ensure that they're compatible the custom bios hand-to-hand right the hardware keys for the function keys right and in case of my bonobo the modification so that the gpu would work properly under linux and not just under ubuntu but all linux right which is which was later on i mean at the time i bought it to run ubuntu but then later on i decided to run arch So there's all this stuff that they don't spend – because this is of no value to you guys to sit there and for them to ramble on about all this stuff. But this is all the stuff that's actually happening behind the scenes that make these guys unique.

Right. And I think it's pretty – I think it's pretty exciting. So are they Clevo-based? Yes. That's the base, right. They're based. But there's a lot of extra stuff there you're not seeing. But unfortunately, it's easier a lot of times to – from an armchair, from an easy chair to point, let's just rebrand it.

So there's changes at the hardware level, but then there's also the support angle of it, which for some folks matters a lot more than other folks. What I come back to at the end of the day is the strongest statement we can make as Linux users, and this is one of the reasons why even though I don't play all of them, I often pick up a Steam game, is there is nothing more powerful than Linux users voting with their wallet. And in the Linux ecosystem, especially in the free software world, there's not always a lot of opportunities to clearly make your voice be heard. And the thing is one of the reasons why I've been buying

and they don't sponsor this show, right? They don't sponsor Unplugged. I can say whatever I want, but the truth is, the reason why I've been buying them for seven, eight years is because that money goes into a company that then continues to push the desktop Linux agenda forward. Right. And so the thing is, is I know, for example, a lot of people love Lenovo ThinkPads, and they probably are. I don't actually. I haven't had one for a while, but they often are very good hardware.

Actually, I haven't had one for a while, but they often are very good hardware. But the problem at the end of the day is that purchase is actually voting for the Windows desktop because they're not counting it as like an Ubuntu desktop machine. They're not counting it like that. Plus, on top of that, there's the aspect of the interaction with the community, the drivers, the Ubuntu forms, and all of that that I really respect. I respect a company that actually follows the community and doesn't just get Linux, but actually actively participates in it. And it's not that I, I, I, I don't, no disparity for anybody that wants to buy a Lenovo. You buy whatever hardware works best for you. Everybody, there's, I mean, I've got Macs in the studio.

Okay. So I understand there's hardware out there that does what you need to do and you need to buy it. My point is, is that is a vote. And that's like when I do decide to buy a Mac, that internally for me is a very long process of reflection that I go through and I spend way more time than I should, like specking out a Hackintosh, trying to figure out how to not vote with my wallet, because that is the most powerful vote. And that's another reason why I like System76 quite a bit.

And all of that plays a factor into when I look at a System76 unit and I think, you know, this is something for Linux. And how good is it in that context? And that's why, for me, you know, Ultra Pro is – not only did it change my perspective on Ultrabooks, because obviously somebody has the Bonobo. I'm kind of, you know, as much power as I can cram in there. because obviously, as somebody who has the Bonobo, I'm kind of, you know, as much power as I can cram in there. But it also changed my perspective

on Intel graphics, which I think in the long run is going to be the biggest thing I carry forward from this review is just how far the Iris graphics have come. And again, you know, the Linux games aren't

the most demanding games on the market. I really haven't seen anything that the 680 and my Bonobo can't just chew through without ultimate settings. So it's not, it's maybe not a fair test. Maybe it wouldn't perform as well under Windows.

I don't know. I didn't try. But I loaded Half-Life 2 on this Ultra Pro under Arch using Steam, and it was butter smooth. I didn't even adjust any of the video settings. I just wanted to get in game and see, like, could I get enough frame rates to actually expect to be able to shoot somebody. And it was like, it was as if I was playing on an embedded video and I understand that Half-Life 2 is not you know it didn't just come out it's not the most current game but at the same time I it's

the way I look at is if you're looking at getting an ultra book gaming for you is probably not the first priority it's probably more like something you do on a social occasion and I think it's secondary yeah right it's something you might like to be able to do, but it's not going to decide the purchase. And I feel like the embedded graphics are now at that level. And that's extremely exciting for me because Intel graphics are, A, cheap. They're low power, if you consider the Intel chip too.

And also open source, the drivers, right? So you have open source drivers, which is great. And not only do we have open source drivers, but Intel has shown us that they will work with the Linux kernel team one generation out. So while one generation is on the market, before Haswell even hit the stores, they already had drivers into the Linux kernel. And to me, that's huge. So I'm really excited to see where that goes. And so they haven't paid for any special treatment. We asked to be sent the hardware. We wanted to check it out because in both Matt and I's opinion, this is the premier Linux hardware vendor.

2008. It's a system 76. It still works. I've got a pile of laptops in front of me from other companies that don't work any longer. So, you know, I think the quality is certainly reasonable in that regard. And I've had good experiences with them, um, coming from an old PC repair background and watching people buy crap and then get all buttered over it when their stuff doesn't work anymore. I really value, uh, quality. I don't want to, you know, and that's not just the product, but also the service and the way I'm treated. Um, and that's not just the product, but also the service and the way I'm treated. And that's a big part of it for me as well. Yeah. So I, on my Google Plus page, I posted some hardware porn of the internal Leopard X3. And this is a really well-built computer. And I'm looking at it as a Mac Pro competitor. So the unit they sent me, 64 gigs of RAM

and a six-core Intel i7 processor. And so what I want to try to figure out is a lot of, once I'm done editing a show, I hand it off to FFmpeg on different computers throughout my house. And through benchmarks, I've determined which computers are best at encoding which versions.

Some are better at shrinking video down and then putting out an iPod-friendly format. And some are better at doing just straight encoding to 720p with no scaling. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So you're saying that different machines actually specialize more so in different encoding techniques

than other machines. Right. Yeah. And so I'm wondering where this thing falls down. So, I mean, what would be incredible, and I don't actually know if it can be accomplished, is if this machine could make web and video encoding economical. Because right now, what happens on the Jupyter Broadcasting website is I post a show, and I usually use the YouTube embed for sometimes a couple of days because the WebM video

takes so long to encode that I often just don't get back to it till a couple of days down the road. So I can't use HTML5 video. And so I'm hoping that this might be the machine that makes WebM doable. We'll see. I don't know yet. I got a lot of things I'm going to be throwing at it, but it's pretty cool. I got it under my desk right now, sitting right next to me. And I got a nice Logitech G19 keyboard hooked up to it, so I'm like, I'm full in. Yeah, I'm enjoying it. All right, Matt. Well, we got a couple of emails we should get into. The first one is getting girls on Linux. This was a response to some comments we made on a recent show. Did you want to read this one?

Yeah, let's get over to that. Girls on Linux. Getting girls on Linux. Yeah, getting girls, which I think was a pickup from a topic we touched on last week. Yeah, okay. So I'm going to try not to butcher this here as we go. As a female who discovered Linux in college, I wanted to add my own response to the questions on how to get girls to use Linux. Okay, interesting

enough. The most important reason for someone to switch... I'm reading word for word, so it's going to be a little butchered. The most important reason for someone to switch OS is not who will be doing their tech support. So, okay, I think basically what they're saying with that was regarding the tech support. Okay, moving on to the next piece. It is how – let me make that bigger so I can see it. Hang on just a minute.

I'll probably reread that. All right, let's try it again. Let's see. It is how they switch that will make their life easier. Any female studying STEM in college I studied physics and used tons of open source software in my research.

Using Linux is a great way to separate yourself when applying for research positions. That's actually a really good point. Okay. It also offers some awesome creative outlets for other majors as well. Liberal art students should love the freedom and ideals that Linux offers to the user. Most importantly, it can save them a ton of money, which is also true.

Great point. Yeah, excellent point. Okay, I know it wasn't your intention to demean women. However, let's stop focusing on women as outliers who need a different type of convincing than men and why to use Linux. The benefits of Linux apply to all genders equally. I think that really summarizes in that last sentence. Yeah, I think this is something, too, that really resonated with me. I kind of feel like it's insincere when a bunch of guys talk about how to get women into technology.

That kind of seems like – At one end, like what's going to draw women to technology? It's going to be the same thing that draws men to technology. But when you look at the actual end use cases like in the home, my wife and I use technology very differently. I would even say my wife is more effective with technology than I am in a lot of ways. I mean because she does tend to work smarter. I'm the guy that does multiple trips to bring groceries into the house when she will find a way to do it in one or two trips. So I mean there's definitely an effectiveness there. But I think at the end of the day, I see what they're saying, but I definitely think that there are differences and that, and they can be embraced in a healthy, you know, non-negative way.

One thing I wanted to clear up is I think there was a misunderstanding. She said, you know, one of the things, what's going to make women switch is who's going to be their tech support. I didn't mean it as in like women will switch to whatever the men will help them with. What I mean is usually when you're switching to something new, you're going to have the most success when other people in your, in your immediate social group also use that same technology. So that way they can share experiences or provide insights when you get stuck somewhere.

I don't think it necessarily depends on, although in a sense, I guess that does mean who's going to be the tech support. But at the end of the day, honestly, if we want to really quit trying to be politically correct and be honest with ourselves, there are some things like I'm very good at certain things that my wife's not good at. My wife's very good at things that I'm not good at. And they're not

necessarily gender specific, but some of them are. And, you know, some of those things, like, for instance, when it comes to actually planning out the layout of our home, that was my wife. Oh, you guys are like peanut butter and jelly. I know, right? So it's, but I mean, at the end of the day, that was my wife. You guys are like peanut butter and jelly. I know, right? But I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, you know, I don't want to be too sensitive about this because I, you know, I don't, it just doesn't really add any value to it. Yeah, I don't know. It's a tough call.

I definitely hear what she's saying and she's got some great points. I definitely like the benefits of all genders equally, but I think there are inherent differences that we can embrace and do so in a positive way. So, moving on to the as a follow-up thread to the topic of swap partitions, you know, we had a lot of interesting facts. I got a couple I'll get to here. PandaBrain wrote and he

said in the debate last week, no one mentioned swap files. Those are files that can be used for the same things as a swap partition is used for, i.e. offloading content from memory and hibernation. Unlike swap partitions, they can be created, removed, or resized on the fly. There is no real disadvantage unless you use ButterFS, which just simply doesn't support them. You'll find more information about swap files in the always excellent Arch Wiki.

And he has a link to that. So the swap partition thing, it's so funny. Gosh. Yeah, you really opened up a can of worms with that one. If this was a Windows podcast, it would be our, should I defragment my drive topic? Like, this is something Linux users pine over all the time. And you know what? I think SSDs have made it, like, even more...

Like, now everybody's like, well, now I don't have very much space. I've only got 128 gigabytes of space. Should I really give several gigabytes to my swap file? What am I even using that for? I've got 8 gigabytes of space. Should I really give several gigabytes to my swap file? What am I even using that for? I've got 8 gigs of RAM, right? That's what everybody's thinking. And there are ways to take advantage of hibernation without the swap file.

But it probably requires a little bit of research. You've actually got to kind of plan out what your goals are and decide which approach is best for you. And so, yeah, there's a little bit of homework involved. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to get to the topic of the swap file again, but I wanted to read some feedback we got from Ray, which I actually have been meaning to E to personally write Ray back, but I just haven't done it yet. So this will be the first time I've addressed him. Ray wrote into the show and he said, Hey, Chris, I'm one of the golden ticket winners from Ting.

I just want to say how happy I am I have switched to their service. So I wanted to say, you know, thank you, Ray, for doing this. This is an excellent point. So Ting is sponsoring this episode of Linux Unplugged. And I have to tell you, I am a big fan of Ting. I've been telling you about Ting for a while now, and I think they're a great company. It's not just that I like their service, and it's not just that I like their pricing model, and it's not just that they have no contracts and no early termination fees, and that I own the phone

and that Hotspot and Tethering are included. And honestly, all of those things are what got me to switch to Ting, but they're not what keeps me at Ting. What keeps me at Ting is the fact that I'm, again, voting with my wallet, and I'm giving my money to a company that I'm really passionate about. So Ray Roni says, I signed up through the last URL, and I purchased a Nexus S with a $25 discount. Nice. Yeah, you can get that same discount by going to

linux.ting.com. He says, the phone arrived sooner than I expected, and I couldn't be happier after working out a few bugs with tech support, and later a new battery that cleared up some problems. It's been a little tight on cash flow for a long time and i'm getting and i have and getting and i have an 85 phone that has 4g and it's near showroom like condition plus a 400 credit that i will cover my cost for my ting plan for the next year uh he was on an android 2.2.2 device before that his dog had slobbered up a little

bit. He said, I'd have been, by the way, he got to use Nexus S, which is a really great way to save money when you're switching to Ting. He said, I would have been without a personal phone by the end of October if not taking advantage of the deal that was, and the affordable service. I'm blessed with grateful and willing budgeting for my next device on Ting sometime next year, maybe the Nexus 5. So get started by going over to linux.ting.com. Ting is mobile that makes sense. They're my mobile service provider and Matt's mobile service provider. Currently, I've got the HTC One and the Nexus 5 on Ting service, and it's awesome because

they have a great dashboard that lets me see exactly where each phone is at. I can put one phone on suspend if I'm not going to use it for a little while. There's tons of really nice things in the Ting dashboard, but really the great thing about Ting is you only pay for what you use. They take your messages, your minutes, and your megabytes, and they add them all up at the end of the month. Whatever bucket you fall into, that's just what they charge you for. You want to turn on tethering for a little while? Do it! Because son, it's only $6 a month flat, and then you only pay for what you use on top of that. Average Ting bill is between $21 and $33 a month. Think about that.

What are you paying right now on your smartphone? Go over to linux.ting.com and click that how much would you save button right in the middle of the page. Put your current stuff in there. Just put your bill in there. I'm not judgy. Just put your bill in there and see how much you're paying right now and compare that to Ting. Because I've got Hotspot and Tether. I've got an up-to-date Android phone that is awesome, that I own, that I only pay for

what I use, and I have no contract, and there's no early termination fee. I'm truly in control. And as these mobile devices become more popular, as this computing platform becomes the norm, these are the little details that will matter the most. And you can get started by going to linux.ting.com. And don't worry, if you're in a contract right now, Ting has an early termination relief program, and they'll take up to $75 per line that you have to cancel. It's super easy. All you have to do is go over to Ting, get your phone,

port your number, and then submit your ETF claim. That's early termination fee. Submit your ETF claim to Ting, and they'll take care of you. So go get started by going to linux.ting.com. And a huge thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. And congratulations to Ray for becoming a golden ticket winner. Yeah, isn't that awesome? You know, it's so cool. It is so cool. And also, I don't want to steal thunder, but we have a little announcement to make on the faux show.

Somebody just got a whole bunch of service, too. All right, so let's get back on this topic. I got a big one. I got a big one on swap files, Matt. Are you ready for a little more? I think I'm ready. I can only imagine. So there's only one way to take a swap conversation and make it better, and that's to bring in ZRAM

and Hibernate, right? I mean, that's really going to take it. Oh, no. That's really overcomplicating. Oh, my goodness. All right. So Kevin writes in. Hey, Kevin. He says, Hi, Chris and Matt. I'm glad you brought up the topic of swap. Despite the beardiness of the topic, it's something I've been following since SSD price drops and two gigabytes of RAM have made a swappable system not just possible, but perhaps desirable. With the community having a greater experience about it, I wanted to toss around a few ideas to the Jupyter Broadcasting audience. All right, Matt. So I'm going to activate our mumble room for this one, too, so that way I can answer. All right. So question number one, and I pose this to the mumble room.

I've heard good things about ZRAM, but I don't want to spare a machine to test on it yet. Has anyone replaced your swap file with ZRAM? Will it work with hibernation? Is performance under heavy load better than disk-based swap? Anyone in the mumble room tried ZRAM yet? If only Ant was here. I tried it on, I have an

AC100, which is a Toshiba ARM based laptop. It shipped with Android and we replaced Android with Ubuntu. And memory was a bit tight, so we used ZRAM, or

ZedRAM as we we call it over here. Right. And really didn't notice any difference at all. It was fine. And how much RAM do you think the system – do you remember how much it had in it, physical RAM? A gig? Oh, gosh, I have no idea. Okay.

Two, five, six, maybe. It's either 512 or a gig, because I remember looking at it, it's a Tegra 2-based system. Yeah, it's pretty lame. Yeah. The other thing to note is that ZRAM does not fix the hibernation problem. Oh, okay. Okay. This period does not fix it.

Okay. There is no way to currently hibernate, which does not require you to write to disk at some point your contents of RAM. Right, because you're powering down the RAM. Exactly. Yeah. of RAM. Right, because you're powering down the RAM. Exactly. I don't get why there isn't some solution

that on Windows creates a hibernation file separate from swap if you don't wish to have a large swap file that matches the amount of RAM you have. Another thing I've been noticing just on my main machine is that ever since

kernel 3.8 for some reason, ZRAM causes a kernel panic when enabled. What? After some amount of time, just randomly, it'll kernel panic, and I don't even know why. What distro is this? Any distro. With anything after 3.8?

Anything after 3.8. Wow, that is weird. Linus, damn it. So, okay, now here's, let's talk about swap files specifically. So Kevin wants to know, Wow, that is weird. with much less hassle than a swap partition. Now, I have a theory, but has anybody actually tried swap files? No. All right, so here's my theory on the swap partition. This is just a raw space that the kernel can write to. And I got to believe that is faster than going through the file system driver

and whatever it is, butterfs, extended for. I have to believe it is a much more direct connection when you have a raw partition space that is just only for swap. That would be, you would think so. Yeah. I mean, you would think it would,

it would be a straighter shot anyhow. Yeah. All right. So he goes on to ask about USB 3.0 flash drives being cheap enough and maybe storing swap on there. No. See the one problem with the USB is that it uses the CPU for the controller logic, so you're going to have CPU load for doing that.

I just don't think that's a good idea in general. He said, it sounds like some of the Mumble members would go swappless if not for Hibernate, and he includes a link where we can find out more information from the Debian wiki. How about that? A plug for the Debian wiki on at least running Debian Hibernate without an official swap file. So there you go.

All right. So he says, thanks for relieving my ramblings. Well, Kevin, thank you for emailing in. That was a good one. Yeah, very good. I thought that was a good little topic. All right. Really well thought out, too, I think.

Yeah, it's funny how there's just the semantics, you know, where you think about these kind of things. Like, honestly, when I was resetting up this ultra pro, I was like, should I make a swap partition? Right. Yeah, exactly. Cause yeah.

Yeah. I mean, unless you're running like open system, you just import what you, what you're working. Yeah. I mean, I decided to go for it,

but yeah. Okay. All right. Well, I wanted to remind everyone that we'll be doing a double recording on Tuesday, the 17th, starting at 12 PM.

So we're going to start early. Oh boy. Don't forget, Matt. I actually forgot until I read that. I got multiple entries in my phone as well as other, actually both of my smartphones. And they beep and squeal all day long, so I don't forget. Yeah, you know, so, okay, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to start at 12 p.m. Pacific over at jblive.tv on next week, on Tuesday the 17th. We won't be live on the 24th, which is Christmas Eve. So we're pre-recording. And I'll tell you, this show, having no topics and just going off the cuff is fine for one episode. I don't know about two episodes.

It might devolve into another Star Trek review. No, I'm kidding. But show up and hang out in our mumble room. You'll have more opportunities to do so. So we'll go to that. Matt, speaking of opportunity and things that you've been dealing with, I know – were you dealing with car troubles earlier today? Okay, yeah. I mean just keeping it real loose here.

Basically, I had – I'd known for some time, and I'm sure Ange and Chris have certainly heard it as I'm pulling in or pulling out. My car likes to squeal like it's dying a horrible, painful death. And so I have a trusted mechanic, a very good guy here locally that I take it to, top-of-the-line fella. Well, anyway, shaving a few things off, even relying on a battery warranty, I'm looking at just under $1,000. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, and it's like I'm literally going to be delivering phone books to pay for it right now. So you've got to do it. For the belt?

For the belt? No, no, no, no, no, no. I need a new axle. What? I've got all kinds of stuff. I actually went to – I had a second mechanic look at it to make sure. Yeah, it's the real deal. There's a number of things that are going to be – I'm going to see what the timing belt.

I think it's the other one. Yeah, the timing belt was the other one. There's a number of things I'm looking at. So yeah. So definitely been, you know, just one of those tough life lessons, but the good news is, is it's going to be possible. So that's, what's awesome, man. I'll tell you what, so car problems and they have a great way of coming like at the worst time ever. Well, it's December, right? I mean, clearly this is when you do it. Now, do you have like a business that you can like say that the vehicles

for the business travel? Do you have some? No, at one time, yes, but not anymore because I don't work outside of the house really. I mean, I do kind of, but not really as much as I used to. I don't, just mathematically, the accountant actually said

it's easier to go this other way. We're rethinking that now, but no, I really can't. So, you know, it's just, it's just one of those things to where you just gotta, you know, stomach it and move on. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, for us, the biggest upset has been this whole Amazon affiliate. And it's, it's been interesting because when I set up the, the Amazon affiliates program, I set up like four or five of them. I can't remember. I set up, I think it was four because

I was going to do an affiliate ID for each show. And then I realized the way the Amazon system works is by traffic base. So if you have everybody use one affiliate ID, you get better results, which is totally legit. So I had all these other accounts available. So when they shut down our account, I still had these other ones. So I thought, okay, let's see how these go. Of course, they were all systematically shut down within a period of time including my wife's account which is on her her mom vault.com blog completely unrelated to jupiter broadcasting it's just her own personal blog where she sells if she talks about a mom product a mommy product that she bought from amazon she'll put a link to it with the affiliate id but it's like straight up like that's all she uses it for yeah it's not

involved with our company at all and they still shut even that account down. Really? Is it based on what if they're like looking at address or what the hell? I mean, or last name or I don't understand. It's got to be address, right? Yeah, it's got to be, right? I mean, because you get 10 versus SSN and all that. I don't know.

I'll tell you, it comes kind of at a sucky time because so the early early 2014 window was we were we were going to start up i have a townhouse that i own that is currently rented out and my my idea was is i will take that townhouse and i will convert it into i will ask the renters to vacate and then i will convert it into a studio and part of that would also be hiring a full-time person to operate the studio. And then what I would do, and this is the part that I really want to do, and even if we can't do the new studio, I still want to figure out a way to do this. So I'm putting the call out to the Linux Unplugged audience, is I want to take Tuesdays and I want to go on location to a company in the greater Seattle area that is using Linux.

Ah, yeah. I mean, Valve would be the dream, right? Oh, yeah, right. Any company. Any company. And I mean, I'm asking for a lot. I mean, I realize it's up front. But what I want to do is I want to go there.

And here's my thought, man. It's totally economical in terms of production senses. I want to go down there on a Tuesday. I want to spend the morning shooting a segment for the Linux Action Show. And then I want to spend the afternoon doing a podcast from their office and maybe bring in like their sysadmin, right?

Bring in somebody who works with Linux on site, have them sit down on microphone with us. And you could be there in person sometimes and sometimes you'd be on Skype, whatever works for you that week. We bring it all in and we'd have somebody back at the studio who could switch it. So I'd Skype in.

Maybe I'd buy myself a Galago Ultra Pro and utilize this nice webcam. I like that. And that's my 2014 dream. So I don't know how we're going to pull that off. But if you are in the Seattle area and you would like to have us come and burden your office with our presence and abuse your bandwidth and ask you all kinds of personal probing questions about your Linux infrastructure, email me, chris at jupiterbroadcasting.com, because I want to start setting this stuff up. I want to start doing Linux Unplugged on location and then come back with something for LAS on Sunday.

I think the opportunities here are great. You'll get the behind-the-scenes story here on Unplugged. Youged you'll get all like the nitty gritties the stuff that we don't tell you about on last just because we'll cut on last we'll cut down and give you like here it is boom boom boom here's the information here's the interview here's what they're doing but on unplugged we're gonna do it right there on location we're gonna bring their guys on they're gonna chat with us and i think this could be a great opportunity so if you are in the greater seattle area chris at jupiterbroadcasting.com, let me know, and maybe we'll do an episode on site in early 2014. I don't know how. I don't know how we're going to pull that off. Oh, yeah, no kidding. One way we're going to pull it off is we are

rocking our teespring. We've exceeded my greatest expectations. We're now at 722 of 499 that we needed to unlock it. So I'm just mentioning it real quick. You have five days and two hours left as of this recording to grab yourself a Jupiter Broadcasting limited 2014 shirt or hoodie or ladies tee. Hello. Oh, it says women's tee.

I think they should put ladies tee in there. And I think they should say it that way with a little Barry White in the background. Ladies tee. Also, I've heard from our Aussie viewers and folks in Florida, I'm not kidding, they're happy that we have a short sleeve option as well, just a straight up tea. So if you want to get those, teespring.com slash Jupiter 2014. And if you're listening to this six days from when it was posted, it's too late. We won't have them anymore. Before we get in, we got our Mumble Room back, and I'm going to ask the Mumble Room if Linux user groups are dead. And Matt and I are going to share experiences with some local Linux user

groups who we both love, but we're going to talk about it. First, I want to thank our second sponsor this week, and that is DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is cloud hosting made simple. They offer the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server users can create. A cloud server in 55 seconds and pricing plans start at only $5 per month. Which gets you 512 megabytes of RAM, 20 gigs of SSD storage, one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer. DigitalOcean has data centers in New York, San Francisco, and Amsterdam. Hey-o! The interface is simple, intuitive.

The control panel lets you deploy a droplet super easy. I have right now an Arch server up. Yes, I said Arch. It's kind of my personal experimentation. And I'm going to keep pushing it, see how far I can take it. But one of the really cool things is if you want to try something out for a little bit, DigitalOcean also offers hourly pricing. Yes, hourly pricing if you want to split up a cloud server. I know. And what's so awesome is you could create, so like take my Arch machine that I have right now that has BitTorrent Sync and other goodies on there. I have a backup snapshot of that. I can redeploy that dozens of times if I want and only pay

hourly. And there's something even better. Listeners of Linux Unplugged can take advantage of a special offer, Linux Unplugged December. Linux Unplugged December will get you a $10 credit when you check out. Use that promo code, a $10 credit. So if you're using the $5 machine like I am, well, that'll get you two months of that $5 machine. That's a pretty good deal. And I invite you to take advantage of it because I didn't actually fully appreciate how awesome DigitalOcean was until I spun up a server

and I've really been enjoying it. DigitalOcean also has a really good community. And they, in fact, are trying to encourage that sort of grow it a little bit. And so right now they're offering those of you who want to create articles or tutorials for their community. If DigitalOcean selects the piece that you wrote,

they'll give you a $50 credit. You can follow the link in our show notes to find out more about that. But if you think about the baseline server is $5 a month. Well, if they give you a $50 credit, that's going to get you going for quite a while. And at $5 a month, I'm thinking about taking... So right now I have an Arch server. And one of the criticisms of Arch is that, oh, it moves too much and that's scary because apparently we're all scared of our computers. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to also take advantage of Docker, something we talk about a lot. And my thought is, is why not take Docker and spin it up on Arch and

create an Ubuntu LTS or a CentOS environment in that Docker instance, install things like Zimbra or whatever sort of productivity suite i want it lives in this cocoon of protection this this cocoon of long-term support while it rides on top of that wily and crazy arch os and of course digital ocean will let you spin up instances with docker ready to go also the lamp stock totally configured sent to us a bunch of they got a whole bunch on there you go check it out. Go over to digitalocean.com. Linux Unplugged December is your promo code to get that $10 credit. That way you can check it out for a couple of months.

And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Huge thank you. I love those guys. I love the fact that you have all that freedom and availability to actually really pick and choose the kind of lifestyle you want to lead in the cloud. And it's so nice for software development and testing for the hourly pay-as-you-go. That's super easy. All right, Mumble Room, are you back? Are you here? Yes, we are.

All right, so let's put your flame-retardant pants on and let's have a frank conversation about the state of lugs. Popey very poignantly asked the question on the pre-show, are lugs dying? And I think Matt and I both chimed up and said, with much respect and appreciation for both our local Everett and Bellingham lug, which by the way, our Bellingham lug

puts on Linux Fest Northwest every year. So much respect, but sometimes it kind of feels like it's last generation that's left at these lugs. Like for example, in the Everett lug, they're kind of famous for, these are the guys you go to when you want to put Linux on a 486, right? It's not the kind of stuff I'm interested in anymore. I mean, I have a lot of respect for what they're trying to do, and I think it's really

cool. And I kind of want a 486 running Linux in my house, but at the end of the day, to get my work done, I'm looking at six core i7s, right? Exactly. Yep. So I wonder to you guys, I wanted to start, maybe, Popey, are you still here? Do you want to share your thoughts on the state of LUGS? Because you were really the one that kicked this conversation off. Yeah, so this came from I've been involved in the UK

Linux user group scene for a few years, and I've been to my local Linux user groups. There's three in a fairly small catchment area. And when I first started going to them, it was, there were lots of talks being given. We would video the talks and we'd put them online.

And we'd get like 40 or 50 people in one county lug coming every month, once a month. And we'd debug people's issues. We'd chat about various salient, newsworthy things that were going on. When was this? What year? This would be probably about 10 or 8 years ago. Right. Somewhere around about there. Right.

And then over the years, I've kind of noticed it drop off a bit. The amount of traffic in the various mailing lists on all the lugs in the UK has tailed off quite a lot. I mean, Poby, don't you think maybe the internet is killing the lug a little bit because we're more connected now? We go off into our community silos and we just hyper interact there? Sure. And I know when the Linux user group nearest me first started, it was one of these ones that was a mailing list on the end of a dial-up line. So, you know, you might get a batch of mail, you know, every couple of days or something when the guy dialed in and processed all the requests. And now you can probably get an answer to your question before the modem has finished negotiating the call. So here's what I worry, though, is there really truly is something to that meatspace connection.

Like when I go to LinuxFest Northwest or I go to PAX and I shake the hand of a Linux Action Show listener or, I don't know, does Brian2040 leave? Like Brian2040, he was a name in the chat room until one day he's driving my truck home when I'm too sick to drive it, right? And they become real people. And that meatspace connection, I think, is easy to sort of undervalue on the internet. And I worry that Luggs brought, like now with laptops and all this, Luggs seem like they could do more good than ever. But I agree with Popey. It seems like they've faded big time yeah and i agree with you there is there is that element of

personal interaction you know there's the and i agree with you that there are some people of an older generation in our local lug but that works in both ways there's a guy who's recently had to go to hospital and spent time in hospital with a netbook and found that he it was difficult for him to type so you know we rallied the troops and sent a mail to the lug and has anyone got a keyboard they can send him you know that kind of stuff i feel like the reason why the lugs in my area are populated by the gray beards the older guys is because they're more socially adjusted and they're more socially balanced because they haven't been perverted by the easiness of the internet that allows them to create these fake social connections that don't

truly connect them at a human level to another person what the actual lugs do and i feel like we're losing something there if i if i may interject because um linus price northwest was like my first really big uh festival went to at least in my experience. And from what I've heard, it's just in that sort of environment where it's more of a development festival almost, it feels like Lugs are growing at the same

time. Go back to what I said a second ago. You were saying that Lugs also were a place where you could actually get help. And when it got to the point, honestly, it's so easy

to just help yourself now. How easy it is to take a USB stick and install Ubuntu on it. You've got to get it done in 20 minutes by yourself. Whereas before, you go to a lug to have somebody walk you through the Slackware installation. Yeah, exactly.

So I don't really agree with you guys because I'm one of the officers of the lug at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles. And at least in my experience, we hold install fests every quarter. We give talks and stuff. And at least in our academic, like the realm of students and stuff,

a lot of people just are never introduced into Linux, and then by the time they do in classes or whatever, they are introduced at such a cursory level that they need an extra place to go to to get the kind of help they need. So is the majority of your users group fellow college students? Yeah, and then we also have some professors and people from around the area. kind of help they need. So do you, is the majority of your users group, uh, fellow college students? Yeah. And then we also have some professors and people from around the area. Okay. Um, I think a lot of Los Angeles has scale,

obviously, um, which I've been doing a couple of times. It's just an awesome conference. Um, but it does happen to happen to be, I mean, we have media temple and a lot of other big companies that are very focused

open source software. but it does seem that a lot of the focus is in the industry and is in big companies. As far as the community scale, and there's a couple other lugs around LA, but we're definitely one of the biggest on the west side. And we're still not very big, but I think it helps that we're part of a university also. Do you guys meet on a regular basis? Yeah, so we have meetings every week okay and how was the attendance like on those so we probably have seven or eight extremely active people who come to every meeting um we have a lot of legacy users and one of the a lot of legacy members and we have and a lot of

people hang out in rsc or or come to install fest and stuff. But in terms of active, it's maybe 10 people, so it's still not very many that come to every single meeting or whatever. Go ahead. I was going to say, for the longest time, I actually hung out in the IRC of a Linux user group that started out actually as an Ubuntu loco. They were Ubuntu loco Kentucky, and then they went to Bluegrass Linux user group that started out actually as an Ubuntu loco. They were Ubuntu loco Kentucky,

and then they went to Bluegrass Linux user group. It was active for a while. I went to a few meetings in 2011, but it's really tapered off. A lot of the major members moved down to Texas, I think, and then I myself ended up moving out to Kansas. Yeah. See, I found it moved the other way. Where I am, there was a distinct move from geographically-centered Linux user groups.

Like in the UK, you have one per county, and I'm sure you have one per state or one per city in the US. It moved to a UK-wide Ubuntu loco. Like I moved that way, and a lot of people moved that way too and then there were various other distro specific groups as well which kind of made the locos at the the lugs somewhat less populated and less um less utilized geographically i have to say that's probably a lot easier to do in the UK

than it would be in the United States. Yeah, sure. In my area, it went from a – the user group in my area is very scarce. So there was one lug that was here for a couple years, and it's been disbanded. But it's been replaced by a meetup group for just Linux users. Yeah, that's the thing that hindered me from going to a lot of meetings is I was in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was younger at the time.

And most of the meetings were over in Lexington, Kentucky, so the majority of the time I couldn't make it. Yeah, see, I'm in North Georgia, and the closest person that uses Linux that I know personally, I mean, I don't know him, but it's Brian. He was probably like an hour from me. Just kind of give you an example. It's just spread out all over the place. I mean, is there some value in a Linux users group that exists virtually? Like this mumble room right now is as big as some Lug attendees are, right? And the IRC is many times larger right now. 367 people

in the IRC right now are chatting about Linux related topics, way bigger than a local lug. So is the amount of connectivity and the frequency of connectivity and the availability of information and help, does that in some ways, I guess if the end goal is Linux adoption, if the end goal is getting people using Linux, doesn't this new model where the Lug plays less of a role still promote Linux on the desktop more? I completely agree. And the reason being is that in my area,

there aren't very many even computer user groups, let alone Linux user groups, or even, you know, I was looking for an Ubuntu loco for some time ago. The closest one is over the Seattle area, and then there's another one that's in Boise, Idaho. That's the next closest. That's just how it is here, too. There's nothing computer-related groups like that. Yeah, that's a big factor, especially in the U.S., is there's massive groups of areas that don't have other technology enthusiast groups.

But at the same time, going back to the IRC thing, IRC has been around since like the dawn of time. Here in Kansas, the closest Linux user group to me is the Kansas City Missouri one, although that doesn't seem all that active. It's more than that, I see. It's, like, for me,

I live in a huge city center. I live in Toronto. And I can't get to their local user group because it's so packed and I'm on such a small time strength. Interesting. I also think that the idea that an online friendship, an online relationship is considered a lot more legitimate these days than it was 10 years ago. True. Well, I remember some five, six years ago when Lug Radio,

John O'Bacon and Stuart Langridge podcast was going. Right. There's a guy in France. There's an IRC channel, and it's still going now, hash Lug Radio on Freenode, long after the podcast finished. The podcast finished six years ago, and the IRC channel is still there, and people still come in there and say good morning morning everyone there's still a community around it and i remember bruno um

a guy from france who was who was um uh listened to the the podcast and was you know uh always in the irc channel said lug radio is my lug and and these and this was five, six years ago. He saw this online virtual community as his Linux user group, as the people he was empathic with that he could relate to. This could be the Irish schnapps talking, but you guys literally are my lug. Really? I love you too. Well, same here.

You know, Chris, when you mentioned something earlier about, you know, when you met Brian at the Linux Fest Northwest, you know, that kind of reminded me how earlier this year I also helped Brian pack his stuff when he was moving from southern Indiana down to Georgia. Right. Well, that is really the interesting thing is there are members in like our IRC chat room that have then met up in real life. Like, Brian, didn't you meet up with Mail Hauler? Twice, actually. Met up with Tyler, Mail Holler, and his entire family, and you, Angela, and Ty the Geek over at LinuxFest.

So, yeah, lots of people. I mean, it is sort of a long haul for Brian, too. And I actually plan on starting early this year, saving up to get a plane ticket to head out towards LinuxFest Northwest in April. Oh, man. See, this makes me want to get the studio started up, because then we could have a spot for everybody to come hang out after LinuxFest Northwest. Yeah, I would love to go up there, too. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun.

What's happened to Lugs is that all the simple support stuff has gone online, and now it's just the dedicated users that go to these hyper-focused events like hackerspaces in their towns or these conventions. The hackerspaces are different, though, because hackers are more computer-centric focused. It's not 100% when it's just hacking on an item thing. There's a big overlap there, though. If I go to any of my hack spaces nearby, they're the same kind of people,

like people who want to take things apart and make them work the way they want to, don't necessarily want to use devices the way that the manufacturer intended. They're the same kind of ethic that we have. Yeah, it is. So I totally agree with Popey because at least in LA we have DevOps LA meetups and different infrastructure

industry type user groups and in many ways I think those have replaced the lug movement because as more and more people want Linux professionals they kind of congregate within their own professional groups rather than these informal log type situations. Well, and it's interesting, too, as new Linux-based technologies take off, like Android, online, the communities solely seem to be forming online, right?

And very large ones, like the XDA form. Oh, Blue Phoenix actually just had an awesome idea. What if you got your new studio and turned it into a Jupiter Broadcasting hacker space? Oh, that would be cool. You know what we do? We would have a garage, so there is possibilities. And, you know, if you made that new

studio, you could have a couple interns, too. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Mwahaha! Alright, well, interesting thoughts. You know, I'd love to hear also if anyone out in the download audience has experience with a

local Linux users group or runs one or is involved with one, we'd love to hear what you think. Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com and pop that contact link at the top of the site. There is actually a Linux Unplugged drop-down there. Any other closing thoughts you guys, on the lug topic? All I've got to say is, coming April, party at the JB Studio.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. All right, Matt. When it comes to things, well, I've gone through most of this topic. Well, for me well all those groups they're more of the fallout from the old school computer clubs that used to do the right old hardware i agree old oi stuff but i don't think i wouldn't discount them because of that though well they never had the internet back at that time no i agree like invented but there is something

about seeing somebody else do something in Linux that makes you go, I could do that. When you see it happen, I'll tell you this, the only reason I say this is because for years I went to clients and a few of these clients I would have the tech savvy guy or gal that worked there who was the tech

person for the company. And when she would see Compiz on my Linux machine, that was the coolest thing ever. And that made her him want to run Linux. If I can say something, honestly, that kind of concept is what actually, because I say my first experience with that was actually watching Linux Action Show, and that's kind of how I got into it in the first place. And now you're spinning out your own distro.

Yes. Yeah, that's interesting. So I think for myself, what really killed the whole lug situation really comes down to the following. I poked in and out of the Bellingham lug for a few years, just real occasional. And I found it remarkable how it felt like Groundhog

Day. Nothing really, no new faces, always the same folks, great folks, awesome people. But it was just the same thing over and over. And honestly, it's like even online, it's hard to get that stale. So for me, it was, I stopped attending just because I was really not getting anything new from it.

Everybody used OpenSUSE. And if you didn't, you weren't, you know, or not OpenSUSE, but ASUS at the time. You know, it's just, it was very much, it was very much an echo changer so yeah i could see the echo chamber and like the same old stories over and over again so that sounds like a lug that's kind of given up on recruiting and they're kind of in a rut because we've had an experience where this year we did a pretty heavy recruiting uh drive with all the tech the club fairs and stuff at our school. Yeah. It's basically just about you need to because we're in a room in the

bottom of the engineering building and unless you know about us, unless you have discovery, no one's going to know we're here. I would say from what you're saying is that the lug is most likely to live on the best in a college campus. Yeah, I would agree with that.

And the thing is, is the college campus doesn't really, as much as, I mean, I totally, I dig that Cognosu is talking about a lug and that's awesome. But to me, it seems like it's only successful because you kind of have a captive audience. It's easy to message to them because they're all in one location and they're sort of already there. And you've got people churned. You've got new faces at least. Right.

Oh, great point. Isn't that what a business would want if they want to hire people who know Linux? Wouldn't they want to team up with somebody who's attracting other young, fresh blood who are coming through the colleges? Well, so it's funny you mention that. It's funny you mention that, because that's one of the primary reasons we exist. Our school is a typical high-level CS department where they really don't teach a lot of practical skills because CS in academic level is almost like math. It's like math for computer programs. And to teach – like for example, I've been doing a lot of work professionally with

Puppet and very different DevOps, vagrant stuff type, stage integration stuff. And those are skills that I basically taught myself. And I've gotten jobs because I've known these skills from teaching myself. And when there's an interest group where we give talks about these things and we have other people who are interested in them. I'm not going to name names. I think it's probably not the best thing, but we've had very massive companies come and trying to partner directly with us and give sponsored talks and things

to try and attract our members. So they're looking for talent. They're looking for hires? Yeah, so I've gotten three jobs from, I don't know if it's directly from the lug, but it's from just knowing these things and having that kind of interest. I mean, that actually makes a lot of sense, right? Because these companies don't know quite how to find these people.

And a lug is something they can see, something they understand, something they can approach. And they can come to the lug and say, we're looking for somebody who is talented in NGINX, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So this is something that – I was talking to the Facebook recruiter, and she was telling me, okay, so Facebook has this position called production engineer. And the reason this position exists is because the software engineers they hire don't know enough about the infrastructure backbone to make the kind of decisions they have to make about how will this application run in production. And so a lot of what happens is a software engineer will end up learning a lot of these skills after they've been on the job for a while and then transition to this role. Well, another thing is if you remember at Linux Fest Northwest, Chris, that lots of job recruiting people are also there, like Dice.com was there. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. You know, that's a great point. And I think part

of that is because some of these companies have their foot in the old world, and they really haven't figured out how to approach a community. Like, if you think about it, like, if you were trying to hire a sysadmin, or you're trying to hire somebody to take care of your backend infrastructure, dude, I would totally troll the Linux Action Show subreddit. But these companies haven't figured it out, right? They haven't figured it out. But what they have figured out is lugs and user conferences. That's a great point I didn't even think about. And now that I think about it, if I was going to hire somebody to handle the Jupyter Broadcasting backend, that's probably where i would look too actually yeah it makes a lot of sense yeah it does make

a lot of sense i never even thought about the employment aspect and so i mean that's probably another argument for like how do we figure out how to rejuvenate the lug and does it need to be rebooted doesn't okay let me ask okay mumble room let me ask you this and poppy i want to start with you because you're the one that brought up the topic, so I think you should get first shot at this. Could a Google Hangout replace a lug? No, because the people that you want to get involved are highly opinionated and the kind of people who wouldn't touch Google Hangouts with a barge pole. Well, okay. I'll give you that on the last part.

But let's look at the Ubuntu developer summits. You guys have moved to these virtual summits, and you're still getting a lot of stuff done. There's a lot of discussions that are happening. People are able to attend because they're able to just connect in. You're seeing each other face-to-face. I mean, there's productivity happening there. Isn't it better than nothing?

Yeah, but UDS is a very different animal than Luggs. And we all have Google accounts by virtue of the fact that we have a Google setup. Oh, that's a good point. Not everybody has a Google setup. Oh, that's a good point. Not everybody has a Google account. But lugs are the place where you find people who buy Android phones and then immediately flash them so they don't ever have to connect to Google or the kinds of people who refuse to have smartphones. I'm not saying there's anything bad about that,

but it's a different type of person in a lug. All right. Isn't that the problem? Don't we need to reboot the lug and make it more modernized? saying there's anything bad about that but there there's a different type of person in a lug all right isn't that the problem don't we need to reboot the lug and make it more modernized that way guys like me who want as i want a 12 core processor maybe i want two of them in my box i want 64 gigs of ram let's reboot the lug for that guy so you're saying exactly what to turn it into having it turn into a hack fest type thing would be more similar to the old school's lug. At the same time though, that's like, Linux was for those

people who wanted not to use them, like, it's for open and free software and not like, hangouts. Also when you're in person, all the creative juices happen a little bit better and you're more competitive when you're in person versus just over the internet. That's interesting. It makes you think better and you're more competitive when you're in person versus just over the internet

that's interesting it makes you think better and more hard like it makes you think better and harder about what the hell to counteract this guy's idea a few years ago um on omg abuntu which is a popular blog you may have heard of no um never just a guy called benjamin humphrey who No, never. And maybe we should involve younger blood who want faster processors and the JavaScript and that kind of thing of today rather than COBOL and mainframes and 26s. You are blaming me for stereotyping when you are saying that all these people at Luggs are old school mainframe COBOL guys. And I'm saying that's stereotyping a lug. You are really, sir. Really? No, what I'm saying is that he made that,

he made that kind of suggestion and he got a lot of flack for it. And rightly so, because what, what the reaction was actually that, that people, what you're doing now and in the future is built on the shoulders of what the people did before you. If those lugs didn't exist three years ago, ten years ago, then your podcast wouldn't exist. Yeah, isn't that true? Do you see what I mean? Yeah, I do. This podcast is almost like the recording of a huge lug meeting.

I'd say a community, though though has to center itself around far more than just a Google Plus hangout. There needs to be more substance to it. But you've also got to have, you've got to close the loop locally like what's happening at Cogsues College. So you need two separate things. The online

stuff is going to solve itself and happen and is happening right now. But you need to close the loop locally i i think you might be on to something there because uh going back to the linux fest northwest it's like it's it is truly one thing to to know these people and hear their voices but to actually shake their hand see them as a human uh with their with their flaws and with their pluses that you never knew about until you saw them personally. Like, I really, really love my truck. Okay?

I really love my truck. And I gave the keys to my truck to Brian2040. And I think that no other man, maybe with the exception of one or two other men, have ever driven my truck and will never drive my truck. I will make that point right now. We'll never drive my truck. But I gave it to Brian 2040. Part of it was because I knew him in the IRC. But then I met him and there's a connection that is made.

And it's interesting. I think. Get a room. I remember Chris standing up for the boombox. You also had to point out you were violently ill as well. I was quite sick. Options were limited. That is true.

I remember very clearly as Chris looks me dead in the eyes, deadpan serious, and says, dude, I don't feel good. And I was like, oh, okay. And he's like, no, Matt, really, I don't know what's going to happen. And I'm just like, oh, crap. Yeah, we were actually all concerned because Chris went out into his car and then it was just nothing for like two hours yeah well he was funny guy i was like i kept like i kept thinking like i'll get better i'll get better i'll be all right i'll be but i will tell you that it wasn't for angela coming in and like basically looping all of us together because we're a bunch of trained monkeys

going in circles she was the one that set us straight and made sure we got things done so i'm gonna get i gotta get props to her on that one. Big time. I'll be alright. It's just a flesh wound. Yeah, exactly. Oh yeah, no, he was so sad. I totally see the closing the loop argument.

But unfortunately, that's not a practical like, so people listening to us in the UK, like they can't realistically attend LinuxFest Northwest and shake our hand. So I want to offer something to them. I want to say to them that even though you're not visiting the Lug, you're still part of an overall larger community. Yeah. Hugs for Lugs.

Hugs for Lugs, guys. What you need is you need to start a fundraiser so you could take a trip with the family over to the United Kingdom to have a meet up there. Once I get the staying on the air thing figured out and the studio thing figured out and the doing Linux action shows and Linux unplugs on location thing figured out, then it's the travel to the UK thing I got to figure out. So, Chris, let me know when you're coming over to the UK so I can go to another country. Ouch. It hurts. Popey, that hurts on the inside. Deep down.

Popey's got a sore first time. We're Americans. We like our little angry bubble. All right. We love our ignorance. Okay. Now this is the, oh boy. These are the final thoughts.

You know, the only action show went down to the Ubuntu One conference back when they did these things in the meat space, and that was a good time. That was actually a really good time. Meat space, huh? So, all right. Any final thoughts, you guys, on the Lug? I know, Ixl, you were thinking about...

Ixl, what did you think about starting the Lug on your own? I thought about it and kind of played around with the idea. Yeah. But with me moving, there's no real sense in doing it over here so i mean if anybody else on like in the chat room i saw somebody else from the spokane area oh he just found spokanlinux.org how about that that should be pretty cool all right well uh it's an interesting topic and it's one that i'd love to hear the audience sort of at large like i i wonder if if maybe because we're living on the West Coast.

We're right by where I mean, I think I think I could get to Microsoft in 45 minutes if I if if traffic. You could throw rocks at them. Right. So maybe they're interfering with my thought process just because of the proximity. So if you are living out there and you have a rock and lug, we'd love to hear about it. And I know they're out there like our Bellingham lug puts on Linux Fest Northwest every single year. And those guys are awesome. And the Everett lug is nearby and they're working out on some pretty cool stuff. But I'd love to hear what you guys are doing. So go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com and pop

that contact link and let us know what's happening in your neck of the woods. And don't forget, we're doing a double back, backto-back special of linux unplugged next week so uh join us for that we'd love to get you in the mumble room that'll be on the 17th starting at 12 p.m pacific over at jblive.tv don't know what time that is in your local area that's okay it's okay we got it we got a jupiterbroadcasting.com calendar and it uses secret technology that automatically converts it to your local time zone. I don't even know how that's possible. It's some sort of... Munchkins and gremlins.

It's some sort of... Yeah, munch... Yeah, exactly. Right? I think we've had munchkins and gremlins that have been working on our website named Hymer 16, and they are incredible. All right, Matt. Well, coming up on Sunday, we'll have a look at the Leopard Extreme.

I'm punishing it right now as we speak. Punishing. So, and I know we've got more to talk about too, so I want everybody to go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com and go watch our last episode of Linux Action Show if you didn't catch that. And then tune in next week. We've got a big one where I'm taking Leopard Extreme, the real

System76 Mac Pro competitor and we'll see how it holds up to a production workload. That's anyway. Alright man, well I'll see you on Sunday, okay? See you on Sunday. Okay everyone, thank you so much for tuning this week's episode of Linux Unplugged, I'll see you on Sunday, okay? See you on Sunday. Okay, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning this week's episode of Linux

Unplugged. We'll see you on Sunday for the big show and we'll see you right back here on Tuesday for the next episode of Linux Unplugged.

Thanks so much. you