LINUX Unplugged - Episode 188: Celebrating Linux on Pi Day | LUP 188

Episode Date: March 15, 2017

We celebrate Pi Day by loading Mycroft & Alexa onto a Raspberry Pi 3, look at the actual use cases for VR & AR under Linux today, flash back to Linux in the 90s & update on our favorite projects.

Check this out. Wes found it. Wikihouse. It's an open source project to reinvent the way we make homes. It's being developed by architects, designers, engineers, inventors, manufacturers, builders, collaborating to develop the best, simplest, most sustainable, high-performance building technologies that anyone can use. This is kind of an awesome project. They're like on their fourth and a half iteration right now of it. This video gives you a little bit of details about it here. This is the team. We're at the beginning of an industrial revolution,

which is allowing us to use the web and digital tools to make it much, much simpler to design homes that are customized to each of us. So they're showing a website where you go in and kind of customize the home, and it creates the printing spec. That can even be locally printed using digital manufacturing tools,

and then simply assembled even by small businesses and homeowners themselves really robust sustainable beautiful homes that has the potential to fundamentally change the rules of how we make houses in britain instead of selling the land to just one developer we divide sites up into plots to be bought or rented directly by local families at a price that they can afford. Together with the local planners, the community would develop an outline neighborhood plan and a basic set of design rules. As long as you stay within the rules, you can build, modify, or extend without having to get any further planning permission from the

council. Residents are then free to create their own homes using any building method, supported by not just one or even 10 companies, but hundreds of companies. So I watched a couple of videos they have on YouTube from a couple. One of the ones I watched was a couple that made a house. And they said that it was the first time they've ever done anything like this. But the thing that was really awesome for them was that there were so many other community members that built a house before them where they had found something that didn't work quite right or made little changes. And so by the time they were on version 4, now they're beyond the version they were even using, there were so many little things as they were assembling like, oh, I'm so glad somebody thought of that. I'm so glad somebody thought of that.

It's awesome. And it's kind of like how you would share a 3D printing spec. Totally. Really neat. So it's wikihouse.cc. So it's wikihouse.cc. I don't know. Part of me loves the whole tiny house thing because I think sometimes people just by default think they need some huge palace to live in when you could probably get by with a lot less and have a lot less to have to manage and keep up, you know, keep clean and keep on top of repairs.

I think a small house could work for a lot of people. But if you're somebody like me, I'd have no idea where to start. wikihouse.cc An open source house. I'd like to see what some of these finished houses look like. Somebody build one and let us know. Yeah, there we go. Come on, audience. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 188

for March 14th, 2017. Oh, welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's so excited about Pi Day, it's borderline obnoxious. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. It is a big day today, not just Pi Day. It's a major birthday of 23 years today, and nobody's talking about it. Do you agree? Yeah.

No. We literally had to fact check it three different places because nobody's talking about it. Well, we're going to talk about it today on the show. It's a big deal. We're going to get into that. Plus, are you ready for the challenge? I have no idea. I like that honest answer, Wes. the challenge? I have no idea.

I like that honest answer. That's honesty. On Pi Day, we thought, what would be better than Mycroft on a Raspberry Pi? How about Mycroft and Alexa on a Cancel on a Raspberry Pi. Cancel! We're going to try to load

them both. Mycroft and the Echo software platform on a Raspberry Pi live on the show and see if we can create the ultimate personal assistant powered by a Raspberry Pi on Pi Day. Plus, we're going to give you an update on some of our favorite open source projects that we follow every single week. And then, despite Wimpy's denial, VR on Linux had a big boost this week. It actually, ladies and gentlemen,

may be crossing into the legitimate territory. What? What? I know. I did not actually think I'd be saying that on this show anytime soon, but we got everything from gaming to creating a VR Linux desktop.

Whoa. Yeah, and also, those people who say AR is the future, we're going to talk about that too, Wimpy. I mean, we'll be talking about that later on in the show.

And we're going to wrap it all up with a celebration of 23 years of the official release of the Linux kernel, and only in the only way your Linux Unplugged

show could. The only way. So we've got a really big show. So big. So let's, real big. Great show ever. Greatest, best show ever.

So let's bring in our mumble room to make it all happen. Time-appropriate greetings, Virtual Lug. Hello. Hello. How? Hello, everybody. It is good. Alexa, stop.

I'm not talking to her. Did you? She's very eager to do it. Gosh. I feel like she's getting triggered more today than she ever has before. I think she wants to be in the show. She should dial into the mumble room. Well, guys, I want to start with, we always like to open the show with some of our favorite open source projects.

And there's nothing too much higher on that list, except for maybe comp is in barrel. It's the Mate desktop, and we have a big release, version 1.18, released just yesterday. Martin Wimpress. I'm not familiar with who Martin is, but maybe Wimpy could help us understand what's new in Mate 1.18. Hello, Wimpy. Hello there.

How are you doing? Good, good, uh very excited about the new release it seems like the uh march towards gtk3 continues right well the march towards gtk3 or completing it i should say yeah yeah yeah so we're we're finally there as in everything is now only buildable with um gtk3 and any of the remaining GTK2 support code that we had kicking around has been ejected. And the 1.18 release has really been focused around cleaning up that GTK3 implementation.

There's still a bit of work to do, but this is a huge step forwards on a number of fronts, bringing the whole underpinnings up to date. And it looks like, oh, hi there. It looks like it's based on 3.14. Is that right? It supports GTK 3.14 and up. Oh, I see.

That's the lowest, I see. That's the lowest it will support, yeah, but it supports all the way up to 3.2.2. Notifications now implemented awesome lock screen will load the user selected background very nice new features yeah that one i think is probably going to be about the most popular which one's that the uh setting the lock screen to whatever the selected backdrop is rather than the system really really we've had people asking wow it's the things everyone notices i suppose it's it's a curious one because um where that where that image is set it runs in a

um in a process with elevated permissions so the reason that we hadn't done it for such a long time is um there were security considerations so had to be done properly, which it has been done. So now when you change your backdrop and you lock the screen, that is the backdrop you'll see on the lock screen, which is a small thing, but lots of people have been asking for that for ages. So this, I believe, also is landing in 17.04. So anyone that will have Ubuntu 17.04 will have Ubuntu 1.18.

Is that right, or am I getting that wrong? Yeah, it has landed in fact. Oh, it has already. Yeah, it's landed at some point today. But yeah, it's all in there now. So if you're running the Ubuntu Mate 17.04 alpha and you apt update and apt upgrade'll you'll get all of this stuff now now was there a debate to go directly to two well yeah so yeah um i i was myself and the fedora maintainer were keen that we call this 2.0 yeah okay that's what i thought uh you know democracy

is king and uh there was a 50 50 split on uh on the vote as to whether we were going to go 2.0. And I decided that it wasn't worth fighting over. So step down. So this is 1.18. But this has got all of the features in it that we discussed when I was trying to push the agenda and say that this should be a 2.0 release. Well, I suppose it makes it seem less of a big change, which is probably comfortable to Mate users to some degree. Yeah, some of the other developers feel that it needs a bigger,

significant step forward in terms of technology support for it to be a 2.0. So they're suggesting that the 2.0 will only come when um when wayland is supported so that could be sometime interesting idea though we get there interesting i that's the same thing as like that you know linux 2.750 yeah it's gonna result in the same kind of ridiculous thing joe you had a point about the shifting sands of GTK. I want to hear that. Yeah, so, Martin, good to speak to you on this show, one of the many we've spoken to each other on.

But GTK, it seems to me, is just a constantly shifting sand, isn't it? Where you seem to not be able to be sure exactly which one's going to be the stable version and stuff. So that must factor into your decisions in terms of porting it to GTK3 and finalizing things and making things stable as Marte is famously known for. Yeah, so we've been struggling with keeping pace at the rate of change change in the gtk3 toolkit for a number of years but with gtk322 that is now behind us so gtk322 is going to remain the same there's not going to be a 324 322 is just going to get point releases that fix stuff but no api or abi changes as far as

as far as i'm aware so the mate desktop is going to or at least what we've discussed is stick to gtk 322 now because um we can stabilize and coalesce around that and refine what we've been working towards and there's a lot of good stuff that we can still enable um on top of gtk 322 and gtk 4 is just around the corner but the gtk developers have made it clear that gtk 4 is going to be very much iterative development with lots of API and ABI changes in the early versions, and that they will make it clear when a GTK4 release gets to an API-stable version. So it's not how things have been in the past,

where they've attempted to maintain, or with GTK3, this is part of the problem, why're why they're changing this in gtk4 but they're not going to try and maintain stability in gtk4 it is going to be very much rapid and right all things are going to change for quite some time so not a platform we're going to target because we've been living with that for a number of years and we now just want a quiet life and just want to just clean things up and maybe add a few features rather than keep on fighting you know the constant change in the api so i also had a little inclination that perhaps we should oh is it chilling it's chilling right ubuntu chilling we should follow up on that because i was it was it two three weeks ago you and I were talking about it?

And I think what sort of piqued your interest, do you have any updates on that particular project for us? Yeah. So I've spoken to a couple of guys from the Chilling team. So when we last spoke, whenever it was a few weeks back, they'd obviously announced that they had forked some big chunk of Mate and called it UKUI. And that they'd given it very much a Windows-esque look and feel. And this was going to be the new default in Ubuntu Chilling, which is the distro that's specifically made for the Chinese market. And working with them, what we've been able to do is instead of forking like all the things we've now got that down to just seven packages so they're forking

seven packages and i think two of them are actually um not so much forks but derivative works um in their own right so that they don't really count so there's five packages that are forks of mate so what that means is that they're going to be sitting on top of most of the mate stack with just a few packages that they need so obviously they need their own session manager because they need to identify as their own desktop session and most of the other packages that they've forked, things like, I'm not quite sure how it's pronounced, but Peony or something like that, which is their file manager,

which is forked from Kaja. And that we're simply not going to accept the changes that they've made upstream because they've basically made it look exactly like Windows Explorer, which just doesn't fit with what Marte is setting out to do. So there are some things that they're just going to fork. They're going to maintain that themselves, and it's fair enough. But then most of the other stuff, they're going to sit on all of the same underpinnings,

so they will get to benefit from this new Mate release in 17.04 because that's going to be the first release of Ubuntu Chilling that features the new UK UI desktop. So they get a new set of packages as well. So they've modified it to look more like Explorer. That's interesting. I wonder if they'll also update it to include the new ads that Windows 10 is exploring. Oh, I'm kidding.

So, Wimpy, how has it gone just communicating with them? Has it been fairly effective and efficient? And have they seemed to be receptive to talking to you? Yeah. Yeah, it's been great. So they filed a bug in Launchpad that outlined everything that they wanted to fork. that they wanted to fork um and there's another guy who works on uh ubuntu gnome and he's also one of the um uh the community developers for on the on the desktop side of things as well so jeremy beecher and he's he's been helping them as well so we responded on the um on their bug

and basically said do you need to fork all of this stuff? And here's some ideas about how you can save yourself some effort and just use some of the facilities that exist in Marte so that you don't have to fork everything. So we talked through there and I said, you know, come and join us in IRC. This is our channel. These are the people you want to talk to, which they did. So we've had a good discussion with them. And yeah, I don't know that we'll be closely collaborating.

I think they've got a lot on at the moment to try and get this first release out. And then after the first release is out for them, I'm going to go back to them and see if I can get them more involved with Marte as a whole, because obviously they're going to be using great chunks of it. Sure. And if they get a lot of users on it. And it would be nice to see.

If they get a lot of users on it, too, it would be good to get some of their observations and bug fixes or at least bugs they find. Yeah, last I heard, there's quite a lot of people in China. Yeah. And there's quite a lot of people in Singapore and China. Yeah, definitely. Seems like you could get some good feedback and input at least if nothing else. Yes, indeed.

Indeed. That's fascinating. I wanted to shift gears and talk about Ryzen just for a second, but it was actually following up to something that Popey and Wimpy were discussing on the latest episode – so Ubuntu podcast covered it and I think we discussed it on – it was either this last Linux action show or the one before. I can't remember exactly because we prerecorded a couple of them. And I noticed that – Popey, you seem to sort of shrug it off. But the more I've thought about this, I really think that perhaps AMD might be willing to make a big product differentiating change here. And so what do you think, Bobby? Do you think we could be looking at the possibility of AMD stepping up and saying, we're going to take the AMD control processor, we're going to

take some of our binary blobs, and we're going to open source them, and not just for the desktop, but maybe also for server and other uses do you think it could happen i'd love to see it and i feel a bit jaded because i've heard numerous times that amd are going to do the next big thing and you know this next product that they're going to come out with it's going to be open source it's all going to be clean and it's going to be the thing that's going to kill nvidia or or it's the thing you want to put in your computer. And I just don't. I just don't because I don't trust them. I don't trust them to deliver on what they keep saying they're going to deliver.

But do you think it also betrays the fact that perhaps there has been some internal discussions and debating and they feel like it's something they should do but they can't quite figure out how to pull the trigger? And that was exciting to be able to see a conversation on Reddit turn into a CEO-level conversation. Yeah. That's great. And I hope it follows through. I hope it doesn't just die as yet another project internal to the company that doesn't actually materialize or they realize, well, actually, there aren't that many desktop Linux users, so we don't really care. It just seems like even if they didn't care about the desktop, if they just totally ignored the desktop,

the benefits of doing the server side for GPU-based tasks and entire server systems built using AMD's whole platform, it feels like they would almost become the default for really reliable, completely open. And by the way, by completely open also means auditable Linux servers. I would love that to happen. I'm just not holding my breath. Yeah. Okay.

All right. It feels like to me, and I hate to use this term because it kind of feels like a DBAG term, but in the post-Snowden, quote-unquote, or the post-Vault 7 reality, if I want a highly confidential, highly secure cloud server, I would like to have something that is from the blobs that run the hardware all the way up to the code that runs my web server and the web apps that run on top of it. I would like to be able to audit that, especially if I'm a government institution or a nonprofit of some type that might be in the political light. I feel like this is – the market pressure would almost just handsomely reward AMD enough to make it worth it just in the server area alone.

I could be wrong. Does anybody else in the moment have a sense of that before we move on? I'm pretty excited about Ryzen even though I don't have any intentions of buying. In fact, I may be buying a 1080 graphics card from NVIDIA pretty soon, actually, for just VR. But I'll save that for later. All right. So what happened? I share Popey's skepticism because they said the same thing in 2009.

And I think I kept believing that right up until Vulkan came out for every other platform but AMD. Yeah, I agree. Joe, you were going to say something too yeah i was going to say what happens when they do their next deal with microsoft or sony for playstation or xbox and have to put a processor in one of those you can be sure right they are not going to want that stuff to be open source right right i just really would love to see some solid competition to intel because it's not just the graphics, right? It could be the whole platform. I agree.

I'm trying not to get too excited about it, but just the idea. Who knows how accurate it is? And perhaps – Sorry, Chris. In a dream world, yes, I agree. I would love this. I would love for it to be the compute platform of choice. be yes the compute platform of choice right like whether it's you know you could throw out your intel cpu you throw out your proprietary nvidia drivers and you could go all in amd and have your

racks full of cuda cores doing all your compute and you could be super happy with everything being open source and auditable i'm yeah imagine really 4k gaming and vr with open source amd drivers right that is surely the dream yes joe joe you mispronounced ar there there it is hold on we're getting there we're getting there yeah okay um so ryzen's an interesting development from amd but i think it's most interesting um in for server use because what you're getting is something that's a little bit cheaper um almost equivalent um in terms of compute power not quite intel can best it in in in most areas by just a smidge but the big thing the big thing at the data center is is power and this these new Ryzen chips are significantly lower power

than the equivalent Intel. That's a great point, Winfield. So I think that's where it matters. And likewise, if AMD have any aspirations to make their CPUs available through LibreBoot or CoreBoot or whatever, then it makes most sense in the server market because the Linux desktop market share just isn't big enough to warrant them putting that time and effort in.

But they could be persuaded that on servers, there's some benefit to that. Imagine a world just because often you'll see, well, why do we want commercial software on the Linux desktop? Why do we care if we have more users for Linux desktop? Maybe it should just be for us. Technical people will have a haven of an OS built for us. Oh, that sounds nice. Yeah, it does. But imagine for a moment, if you will,

ladies and gentlemen, let's imagine here that Adobe has released Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects on Linux. If those applications existed on the Linux desktop, AMD would probably be all in on doing this. This would be an obvious decision for them because they would want to dominate that workstation market.

So that's why I say, like, at the end of the day, I don't necessarily want a desktop full of closed source applications on my Linux desktop. But if we got a couple of market-dominating applications for a couple of segments, then all of a sudden there is a lot more reason to invest in the desktop platform. And right now our best in is the server or mobile market, and we hope to God that there's a trickle-down effect that applies to us desktop users. That's what we have right now. couple of just totally category-owning applications that demanded great hardware. You would see companies like AMD tripping over themselves to deliver this. And we're just – we're not there yet. What were we talking about? Dream Worlds a little bit?

Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, it seems like it should be in Adobe's best interest unless they feel like distributing Photoshop via the Microsoft App Store one day. It seems like it should be obvious. They should be seeing the same lights that Valve is seeing, the same warnings. But we're going to get there actually in just a moment. But, yeah,

maybe my Linux goggles are just too rose-colored for me to understand why they don't do it. But I tell you what, there is like a... What is it? Package distribution is a massive pain. We can fix that. That is actually sol Package distribution is a massive pain. Yeah, I know.

We can fix that. That is actually solvable. It is. It really is. It's not perfect, but not only is there things like snaps, but there's also just target and LTS Ubuntu. I was going to say that does seem to be like it's not ideal, but it does mostly just work.

Every other distro will figure it out. They would have to be like dealing with a bunch of hate from so many people. I disagree. No, they wouldn't. I agree. They would deal with hate from a very small minority of people who would never run their software. And the professional market would not care. Yeah, plus stick it on Ubuntu and what's going to happen?

People are going to port it to Arch and whatever. Yeah. There will be an AUR in 15 minutes that pulls down the dev and installs it on my Arch box. That's why – also if you look at what Valve did where they just created an Ubuntu runtime inside their directory structure. And now they just – they have all of their folks target to that. And that works fine. Adobe could do that. Adobe could create a horribly out-of-date runtime environment full of libraries that do not take

advantage of the latest features of my system, and they could target that and make applications for all the Linux desktops that would still be 20 times better in performance than they are on Windows. Snaps is the new LSB. I would also take a snap. I would even take an app image. I tell you

there is hardware out there now, like the Oryx Pro and the XPS 15 that if I had a competent video editing software and compositing software besides Blender, I would pull the trigger. I would pull the trigger. I would not be doing the show right now.

I'd be buying that hardware. I would pull the trigger so hard. I just would love to see it. And then maybe that we'd have a viable platform, you know, for real creative professionals. You could put some elementary on there if you had that LTS support. I love that. I love it. And then maybe we'd have a viable platform for real creative professionals. You could put some elementary on there if you had that LTS support. Boom. I love that. I love it. So we're going to get into Valve here in a moment and also our old friend, Sync Thing.

Some interesting numbers from Sync Thing. It's been a while since he's come around, but it's back. Yeah. It's back in town. Yes. Visiting the Pacific Northwest. All synced up. We're going to sync up. Yeah, that's right. I see what you did there, Wes. That's back in town. Yes. Visiting the Pacific Northwest. All synced up. We're going to sync up.

Yeah, that's right. I see what you did there, Wes. That's pretty good. First, we're going to talk about Linux Academy at linuxacademy.com slash unplug. Go there to support the show and sign up for a free seven-day trial. A free seven-day trial of a platform to help expand your mind about Linux. Linux, the nitty-bitty details, and also the really big, heady stuff built around Linux, like that OpenStack, Azure containers, infrastructure management, they make it all

really accessible. Whatever it is, if you're just learning how to manage a firewall on a Linux box, or browse the directory, or if you want to go all in on the really huge topics, they've got self-paced, in-depth video courses. They have labs to give you hands-on experience, instructor mentoring when you need it. I don't know what to call it because a platform feels like something that is – like a platform is not like something you do to connect a whole bunch of stuff and sell stuff. It is a learning – well, you know what? It's an online academy. That's what it is.

You know what? It's an online academy. That's what it is. Whether you're an experienced sysadmin or new to the world of Linux, Azure, and AWS, OpenStack, and DevOps, a sharp skill set is an absolute necessity to succeed. Meet Linux Academy, an online Linux and cloud training platform that uses self-paced video courses and hands-on labs to give you real-world experience for a wide range of skills. Train for your certification, learn the latest DevOps tools, and grow your skill set to do better work. Linux Academy is not just a video library. Our scenario-based server labs and quiz system allow you to learn hands-on.

We also have full-time human instructors who answer questions and help you earn that certification or promotion at work. We add new training every week, so you'll always be up to date on the latest tech. Sysadmins of every experience level use Linux Academy to stay on the bleeding edge of the Linux ecosystem. You should too. I've never installed GNU slash Linux.

Linuxacademy.com slash plugs where you go to support the show, sign up for a free seven-day trial, check out some of their downloadable comprehensive study guides, the vibrant community packed full of Jupyter Broadcasting members, the course scheduler that works with your busy schedule, the note cards that get forked and improved by those very community members, and of course the instructor mentoring, the real humans that help you when you need it at linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Okay, before we get into the sync thing, hey, Wes, how's it going out there?

Playing with it. Yeah? Yeah. You're doing it? I don't know. He's got a Raspberry Pi. Why are you doing it in the other room, Wes? Well, I needed the screen to get the code.

Are you using the TV out there for your screen? Hilarious. That's awesome. I feel like I should take a picture of that. So what do you have right now on the Raspberry Pi? Right now we've got a Minecraft. It should maybe be working. I might need to restart it.

I just plugged in the microphone I brought for it. Oh, good thinking. But it's all paired up with their online service now. Good. Next step is Alexa, if that's working. So the Minecraft portions might be working, right? That's awesome. Alright, well, we'll check back in. Good work! I mean, that's a nice, that's a nice, that's a pretty

good accomplishment right there, Wes. I'm impressed already. So SyncThing has published some, I don't, I think this is new, data.syncthing.net. It's new to me, at least, and they're showing the total number of unique users that have reporting turned on, which, by the way, not on my default, and it's fascinating because what it basically shows is a consistent, with the exception

of the release from.9 to.10, a consistent trend line of growth. New users joining every single day, growing. Each version getting more downloads than the last version. Files managed per device, growing. Memory usage, growing. I get it. So I thought actually in the age of constantly talking about how Dropbox is this or Dropbox is that

or LibreVault's going to be or LibreVault can't be, I thought it was interesting to go back and revisit our old friend SyncThing and see how active it actually appears to be with nearly now 30,000 unique users that have data reporting on per day. Active. Not bad. Yeah. Yeah, I saw some discussion about this too.

Like some folks are saying there's not very many relay servers still. So one guy's got one going on DigitalOcean and it's like in the San Francisco data center. It's like one of the most popular on the West Coast. Oh, wow. Not that many running. So people are working on setting up containers with the relays in there to help make it easier for people to throw those up. Have you messed with it at all, SyncThing?

Have you been... I still have a couple Syncs going. They've just been running. Oh, you do? You use SyncThing? Yes. Very much in the background. So this is actually a good motivator for me to kind of check back in with that. I mean, it's all been working because I use it, but really it's just a way to easily shuffle files around right now.

Wimpy, you know I've got to ask. Oh, go ahead. I use it every day. You are. Producer Michael, ladies and gentlemen, using syncing every day. Tell me about it. I use it to sync some config files for multiple computers and also for a custom to-do system that I built.

And it syncs through my phone through multiple computers and a Pi. And a Pi. Now, is there ever any issue of like you have the same program running on two computers at once and the config files are getting written to by both programs? No, because you can set it to be one as a master, so if there's a conflict, it always pulls from the main one. That's exactly what I've thought about using SyncThing, because the nice thing about SyncThing, as opposed to something like Dropbox,

is you can have SyncThing look at any folder on your file system. Multiple Sync folders. The best part is that you don't have to have a specific folder for this. You can just pick one random. I don't have to have like a specific folder for this you can just pick one random so I don't I don't have a sync thing

infrastructure in this like you just go in and say you can actually create like IDs for each folder so you can have a different name for the different folder on the thing as long as the sync ID is the same that's a good tip. Wimby do you have anything to contribute to the sync conversation before we move on because I always go to you but I don't know if there's much you have to share.

I haven't used SyncThing in ages because I switched to a different solution for what I was using it for. Yeah, yeah. Any updates or anything you want to share with the class or nothing in particular? No, not about SyncThing. I can't add anything. No, about syncing in general. I can't remember what you switched to. Well, my use case for SyncThing and BitTorrent Syn sync before it was to sync dot files and stuff like that.

And I'm now using Yadim, which is yet another dot manager. And that's Git-based. That's right. And it's brilliant. That's what I've been thinking about using, too, is something Git-based. I hadn't had a particular – oh, look into that. Thank you. Yadim's great.

All right. So let's talk about your favorite subject. I feel like we – well, you know, I feel like we can talk about it now. I'll give you a little more time. I'm going to give you a little more time. Let's talk about VR on Linux. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

Let's do it. I got an HTC Vive sitting in the other room right now, so I feel like I just got to bring it all out. So Valve, starting with this particular story, not necessarily directly VR, but probably going to play in a little bit. Valve has hired another developer, a well-known one too, Keith Packard. He's worked on the X-Window system in the past. He's worked for Intel.

Then he moved to HP. And now he's at Valve to continue development on the Linux driver stack for graphics. So that's a bit of news. Yeah, it is. That's a bit of news right there. So that's something that I thought was worth mentioning. Also, SteamVR has gotten some update builds for SteamVR Beta now with Linux support, ladies and gentlemen. Whoa.

Valve has pushed out Linux support for their SteamVR. And they've set up a couple of different resources that I want to point you to if you're trying to make this work. Number one is they have a GitHub issues tracker for the Valve software account, which I have linked in the show notes. And there are some community threads in the SteamVR group specific to Linux. I have those linked as well. If you're on Arch, I also have a warning for you. It looks like there is currently an issue with the NVIDIA beta driver, which is required to use SteamVR, and the module failing to build for the Arch kernel 4.10. So if you're on Arch and you want to play with SteamVR,

it looks like you need to use the LTS kernel on Arch for now because that module will build. That seems to be one issue right now because you have to be on a fairly recent kernel and you have to be on the beta version of the NVIDIA driver and you have to have something that supports Vulkan. Vulkan. So that is sort of the state of Steam VR right now. And it looks like also there is sort of at the same time a really interesting write-up about somebody who decided to modify a few programs, chain a few things together, and create a VR workspace

for Linux. And it's kind of fascinating how he did it. He said, first I needed to figure out a way to capture the images running on my desktop. There's a lot of ways to do that. So I ran the Zypher display server. Then I had this thing set up to take screenshots, which used some Python scripts. The screenshots are handled

and are Base64 encoded. He made those images available for his smartphone through a data distribution service. He chose Crossbar. The Crossbar system is a networking platform for real-time applications. It has a static web server built in, which can be used to distribute JavaScript to a smartphone.

So then his smartphone client then connects to Crossbar or whatever the in-between thing is. It could be the Linux client. It could be anything. then connects to Crossbar or whatever the in-between thing is. It could be the Linux client. It could be anything. Connects to Crossbar. It feeds the images from the system, and it titles them as topics. So then Crossbar is configured around the web server, and it runs on port 8080. Then you point your machine at that on the same network.

You open IP address, port 8080, and it's set up to run Linux desktop applications in VR. Now, I just blew through all that because there's no way I'm going to walk you through all of the Python code that he set up and stuff like that, but we do have it linked in the show notes. A way to take individual apps and project them into VR using anything from the Vive to Google Cardboard. And so he looks at things like Stellaris

and apps like that as a way to take advantage of this. Now, having listened to episode one of season 10 of the Ubuntu podcast, I heard Wimpy talk about his experience with augmented reality. And I heard Wimpy proclaim that augmented reality was the future

and that VR was not going to be the future. And I have to strongly disagree that augmented reality was the future and that VR was not going to be the future. And I have to strongly disagree because, A, I will present that I believe what Wimpy was experiencing was in fact virtual reality and not augmented reality because there was no jet engine in the room. It created the entire jet engine from a virtual reality. So, A, I would argue Wimpy did not, in fact, experience augmented reality. And B, or two, which I forget which mechanism I'm using, I would argue that AR and VR are not mutually exclusive and that they may be more closer to the same thing. That's not a Coke and Pepsi competition is what I'm trying to say. Now, I look at this.

I look at SteamVR, I look at the fact that you have even just these easily put together methods to put some sort of rudimentary VR experience together, and I say to you, with HTC Vive shipping, with SteamVR shipping, and with systems like this that even work with simple applications like VR Cardboard, simple,

VR has arrived for Linux. With all due respect, Chris, you're wrong. Okay, tell me. That's why we like you. It totally is an AR system because while the jet engine isn't in the room, you can see through the glasses and the user interface is on the wall. So you can glance up at the wall and navigate through the menus. They're over on the wall over there. So you can leave them on the wall and navigate through the menus they're over on the

wall over there so you can leave them on the wall oh i like that but couldn't they do that in a virtual room just as well you could but you can't see what's what's around you because with vr but the jet engine isn't there no but with vr nothing is there with some of it okay there. The wall is there. The table and everything around you is there. What you may not have gleaned from the demo that I got to do was the use case is I'm a jet engine repairman. There is a jet engine in the room, and I want to bring up this VR overlay and the service manuals in front of me as part of the additional context to what i'm doing and the idea here is that as a maintenance engineer you have access to stuff in front of you immediately and you can reference that and the hope is that there will be fewer human errors when you're doing these sort of maintenance operations because all of the information you need is available to you and you can check out where the parts are on the virtual model before you actually go and start you know

spannering the real engine i like that i would i would say two things number one i would say uh i feel like you could still do all of that in VR. You would have a headset on. You wouldn't see through it, but there would be sensors that would be aware of the physical shape of the object, and that physical shape would be represented in the virtual reality that would be proportional to the actual object. But that said, I'm really just playing devil's advocate because to me AR does seem to make way more sense, especially in the industrial applications where you have a known setup. It's maybe a factory or it's a jet engine or whatever. It's a reactor even. But it is always in this spot in the room.

It is always this dimension. It always has these components. It always has these attributes. attributes and and that to me seems like a much more achievable practical a practical application of this technology simply because those variables are locked down and they're known quantities when you have people's homes where you'll never know the layout and the lighting is always going to be different and the colors are always going to be different in the end the and all of these all of these random variables, I think that's where AR begins to break down

and VR will be stronger. Can I just find an analogy that I often like to go to, right? And that is with networking, okay? It took quite a few years for us to get wired networking perfect with the TCP IP stack and all that kind of stuff and we got to gigabit and all that kind of stuff. And we got to gigabit and, and all that kind of stuff. And now that's working perfectly and beyond. And then in parallel, we were also working on wireless and we got to, you know, G and N and then AC and beyond. And it feels like AR is wireless, Wi-Fi and VR is wired. And they're kind of two ways to look at the same thing.

That's how I see it. That's a great analogy. I really do see it as two almost complementary technologies in some sense. They are complementary, but they're not the same. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but wireless isn't the same as wired, but they're still complementary.

And you kind of need to build that base of virtual reality first, I feel, and perfect that. And need to to build that base of virtual reality first i feel and perfect that and then once you have that then you introduce cameras and blending of that into the rest of reality and and that's when it's going to be truly useful also don't you think virtual reality seems more applicable to entertainment uh games movies porn perhaps whereas augmented reality seems more applicable to industrial applications or getting getting work done or even here in the studio west wouldn't it be nice to have ar overlaid on the equipment when you're setting up for tech snap absolutely i want to

jump in here because there's there's a key point that you're missing and and you're right you're talking about using it in the home right so at the moment if you've got a vive you've got to blindfold yourself and tether yourself to a computer yep and then stand in a room big enough that can accommodate all of the other poles and things my tiny house yeah yeah so you need a very much actually that's that is legitimately a problem yeah so you talk about entertainment i don't think any of that is particularly entertaining and also it's kind of solitary because doing that with two people, basically you're just going to chin each other, aren't you? I mean, you're going to be walking around blind.

Hang on, Wimpy, hang on. You're trying to tell me that people don't want to play games on their own connected to a billion other people in the world. No, some people like to play with the other person in the room. Well, I mean, let's not let's not forget i two really apparently smart individuals would seem to think people are very interested in this and that would be mark zuckerberg and gabian they both seem to agree that people are going to want to put these full visors on and be completely lost in this virtual

holodeck so yeah it's like sitting in front of your workstation your battle station it's it's very similar there are a few people there is there's a niche of people who are going to want to do that but probably more mainstream is more like the wii where it's kind of more cartooning you've got these motion controllers and and now with the switch and stuff like that so it feels like there are two markets there but the the ar headset i had on a couple of weeks ago was was a helmet it you you wore it like um a hard hat okay um there were no cables there were no wires the whole thing was self-powered running a button and and i wasn't blindfolded i could see everyone and everything around me and i was also able to see the 3D images that this thing was projecting

into a space that I could move around it and interact with it. That to me is light years more compelling than being tethered and blindfolded and not being able to see what's going on. And whilst I agree there's an application for vr for gaming i i can totally see that at the moment i haven't actually seen any compelling i'm not a big game but i haven't seen any compelling games that utilize vr at the moment we just have a shit load of tech demos i racing is amazing i but i think wimby there is one compelling yeah i kind of take your point there i take your point there overall to be – that is true. Like I can't articulate the absolutely killer app for VR. I am interested in this.

Why I just really quickly blasted through it a few minutes ago. I am kind of interested in what I could do with VR and my desktop just from like maybe a content creation standpoint, but that's so far down the road. It doesn't really seem – and AR may be even better for that. I don't – I grant you I can conceptualize the real good use cases for AR much easier. And that's why I've been more of a – kind of more on that side of the fence. But I've come to see it more like Joe's analogy is wireless and Ethernet. I think VR, the time I was really blown away by VR, it was sort of a hippie good feeling

experience where I got the Oculus DK2, I put it on my head, I put on headphones, and there's like tech demos, same stuff, tech demos. And so what tech demo did I try? Well, I tried the go float on a raft in the middle of the ocean tech demo. And I think it was in part because I had headphones on, so it was a more immersive experience. But I took that off after five minutes, and I felt like I just meditated for 30 minutes. It was a really powerful sort of like, holy shit, I really kind of – not all of me, but 50 percent of me, maybe even 40 percent of me felt like I was actually on a raft in the middle of the ocean. And that was that was a pretty intense experience. Took you out of where you were.

Yeah, because I was actually in this room. Yeah, but that was a pretty. And then and then I then because I was so impacted by it, I then wanted everybody around me to try it. So then I put the helmet on. I try this crazy. Wow. And people were generally pretty impressed uh i so intense experiences a second um what was it that made vhs successful over beta max

and what was it that made uh blu-ray successful over hdvd speaking of intense experiences that you touched on earlier chris it it you know it's it's not a comfortable topic for most people to talk about but it's very possible that porn is going to drive what becomes the next uh yeah in the case of hdvd and blu-ray that was sony spending billions of dollars and getting uh exclusivity deals with movie companies that's true true, too. That is, you know, we will all just look back at this in five years and laugh at all of our floundering to figure it all out. But, yeah. Okay.

So we just got a note from Dan for TechSnap. There's a blizzard, Wes. There's a blizzard over there. So we're going to pick the pace up. But I do want to celebrate the 23rd year anniversary. It's important. Or the birthday, if you will, of Linux 1.0. And then we'll follow up on Wes's challenge over there.

So before we jump into the rest of the show, let me thank Ting. Thank you, Ting. There you go. Thanks. They're the best. All right. Linux.ting.com. Well, we're basically done.

What? You didn't know that Ting is a mobile service provider that's super simple? Where have you been? $6 a month for the line guys, and you just pay for what you use. It's amazing. Go to linux.ting.com and check them out. They have such a simple – I really feel like it's almost too good to be true. You're like, this can't be possible.

If I hadn't been a customer for like two and a half years now, I'd tell you, ah, this can't be true. I didn't believe it. This can't be true. But it's true. It's actually how they're structured. So first of all, they're owned by 2Cow. So it's like they've been around for a while. They know how to do this kind of stuff.

And they've set up an MVNO network where they have CDMA and GSM. You get to pick from it. Whichever one works better for you. You pay $6 a month plus your usage, whatever Uncle Sam takes. That's it for Align. That's it. It's really nice. They've got great customer service.

Go check them out. They also have a blog right now on the most, well, capable is probably a generous thing. I was going to say the best smartphones for under $100. I'm going to say the best smartphones for under $100. I'm going to say the best capable smartphones under $100. Thank you. Your buck. Yeah, check it out. They have it at their blog. Just do us a favor and start by going to linux.ting.com.

And a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged show. So these are the final moments of the show, Wes. I know you're doing great. You've got a lot going on. So what I want to do is I'm going to give you a little time by celebrating the 23rd birthday of Linux 1.0. Yeah, 1.0 came out on March 14th, 1994. And what I decided to do to sort of celebrate this moment, I was trying to think what could we really do. I wanted to do a little time machine.

I wanted to do a little time machine i wanted to do a little time machine and i'm going to play i'm going to play an interview on this show i would be willing to bet i i gotta guess nobody i'd be willing to bet nobody has seen this before it's possible but i'd be willing to bet you haven't because this was taken from a live recording of CNN recorded to VHS and uploaded by a dude to YouTube recently. I've never seen it before. And it's great because it's Linus around 1997, 98, from what I can kind of grok. And it's so awesome because the clip starts out in the typical, do you worry about Bill Gates? Does Bill Gates worry about you?

You know, this whole threat model. And you could tell him the answer. Bill Gates might be worried about Linux, but Linus ain't worried about Microsoft. Do you think that Bill Gates worries about you? No. I think he thinks about Linux a lot because I just think that he's a person who likes to be in control. I mean, Microsoft is his baby, and he worries about anything that keeps his baby

from being number one, and Linux is one of those things. I don't think he really, really worries deep down because he can always look at his pile of cash and then say, okay, I'm okay, right? So. Do you see that somewhere down the line that Linux is going to be bigger than Microsoft I think this Microsoft is going to be smaller than Microsoft oh that Microsoft is obviously in an enviable position from a market sense right now but at the same time this is

what what's called despotism to control a resource and that's what happened in the west when when people control the resource of water and became very rich in the process it's a powerful tool for for making money but it does have one downside and the one downside is that it never lasts forever and when when it breaks as a tool, you've lost everything. That was pretty good. That was late 90s. That was late 90s. Linux was just a baby back then, but starting to get some server traction.

So now let's fast forward to 2001, about four, five, six years out from the mobile revolution, before Android, before iOS. And Linus sits down with Charlie Rose. A stupid question to ask, will Linux supplant Windows? It's a hard question to answer. I don't know if it's a smart question to ask. Why is it hard to answer? I mean, either. Well, it's. Would this just be a

niche operating system that... I think Linux has a very strong future on the desktop, actually. On the desktop? Including the desktop. I mean, Linux already has like a quarter of the web server market or more. So in certain markets

Linux is very strong today. The desktop is obviously, for a lot of reasons, it's a very interesting market. And it's also very obviously a market that Microsoft completely dominates today and makes a lot of money dominating.

And it's a market that a lot of people have tried to enter. I mean, Apple, IBM tried with OS2, a lot of the Unix vendors tried, and the only reason your average person doesn't even know that they tried is that they failed so horribly. And the reason I think Linux actually has a chance

and why I feel in five years the situation will be different, is that Linux kind of works around the market. A lot of people are very interested in the desktop, so a lot of people will be working on all the applications going on the desktop, making it look nice. And you can really see the changes that have been going on in the last few years. Now, he was close. He says, I want Linux to take off on going on in the last few years. Now, he was close. You know, he says, you know, I want Linux to take off on the desktop in the next few years.

But there was something he said in there that was very accurate, and that was Linux works around the market. And so it's, I think that with that sort of mindset that when he talks about this next thing, I thought this was fascinating. Linus says what would be most disappointing for him about Linux in the future would be if it all went exactly how he expected it would go. I don't control the thing. I'm actually the single nicest thing about Linux as far as I'm concerned

has been how it has evolved in ways I hadn't expected it to. People are doing things with Linux that I never envisioned. People are doing things with Linux that I'm frankly not that interested in. That's fine. And it's very interesting to see how people use Linux, even if they use Linux in ways that I would never use it. So I'm hoping that, I mean, in five years, if I were to make a prediction right now, which I'm not going to, if that prediction actually came true, I'd be really disappointed. Part of it.

Because it ought to be unexpected. Yeah. A lot of the fun has been that people have done things I never expected. What's the best? I wonder if Android would fall into that, because that was about five years out from Android being announced. A world before smartphones. Yeah. Isn't that something?

And so I wonder if Android would fall into that category. So here we are, 23 years later, this day in history, March 14th, 1994, Linux 1.0.0 was released. Of course, it was 91, really, when version 0.002, I think, was announced by Linus. Some people celebrate different days, but I think if you go by the 1.0 release, that's today, Pi Day. Some people celebrate different days, but I think if you go by the 1.0 release, that's today, Pi Day. Especially where here, you know, it's starting to become a little more serious and the, you know, like the enterprise server thing, the Linux we know today. Yeah, yeah. I will have some links to some of those videos.

Yeah, because I was doing some trolling to find those. I had not seen those interviews before. No, me either. Linus was on Charlie Rose to promote a book. Yeah. Let me see. You know what? let me see I don't know if I have the original beginning but that is actually kind of a

fascinating aspect of it in fact I think I made I've created like a Linus folder now where I just have interviews with Linus Torvalds and yeah here it is here's part one where I think he's introduced as amongst other things

an author oh we don't need the old charlie rose intro wow although it's so 90s it's almost perfect it's so actually it's kind of what it is now that's horrible charlie rose lanis torvos was just a 21 year old student in 1991 when he created Linux, the groundbreaking operating system for computers. After developing the system, he posted it on the Internet for free, inviting users to download, share, and modify. Its popularity has skyrocketed over the last few years. There are currently more than 12 million users. There are currently more than 12 million.

In addition, tech stalwarts, including Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and IBM, have begun incorporating it into their operations. Today, Turvall's is hailed as a hero by the open source community. His new book is, quote, Just for Fun, the story of an accidental revolutionary. There you go. I have that book. Just for Fun. Yep. 19, was it, or 2001 when that book came out, 2001.

Wow, it's so weird to look back. It's so weird to look back. What a different time. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. How young Linus looked. So how young, so how young. All right, so I thought that was fun, and happy birthday to version 1.0 of the Linux kernel,

and thank you to Linus for continuing to work on it for so long. It's a fascinating interview. I will try to get links to the entire ones in the show notes. Wes, before we check in on the Mycroft Echo Challenge, let's thank DigitalOcean. If you want to run your own infrastructure, maybe you want to run Jarvis, or maybe you just want to run your own webmail client, or heck, just a sync thing instance, DigitalOcean could have you covered. It's a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way

to spin up a super fast Linux rig on their super nice infrastructure. All SSD storage. 40 gigabit e-connections into them hypervisors. Of course, the hypervisors run Linux, run in KVM. They got data centers all over the world, and they have the world's best interface. Other people are like trying to adapt and compete with DigitalOcean, but I think they can't actually compete with DigitalOcean because DigitalOcean's interface was created by an organism from the future

that doesn't actually take our corporeal form. And what they have done is they have interfaced directly with the DigitalOcean computers and they have coded right into their editors this amazing interface. It's the only thing that explains it. And then, thanks to a time flux vortex, they're able to pull in this code for this amazing API that makes it all simple. Now, I like to mention the interface because it's great, but once you actually start working with DigitalOcean,

you're going to be using the API. Even if you don't know what an API is, you're going to end up using it because it's so great, so straightforward, so simple, so boatiful. Check them out at DigitalOcean.com. The pricing is to die for. If you want to go hourly, check this out. Three cents an hour, two gigs of RAM, two core processor, a 40 gigabyte SSD

and three terabytes of transfer for three cents an hour. Three cents. That's crazy. Like they have one-click deployments of like an entire Ubuntu LTS rig with Docker. You could try out SyncThing or set up one of those SyncThing relay nodes, the discovery nodes, in seconds and just try it out at $0.03 an hour. And if you use our promo code DOUNPLUGGED, you get a $10 credit. In the time it takes you to complain there's not enough relay servers, you could have one going on DO.

Use our promo code DOUNPLUGGED to support this show. Get a $10 credit. You just go over to DigitalO D.O. Use our promo code D.O. Unplugged to support the show. Get a $10 credit. You just go over to DigitalOcean.com. You sign up. Once you've created your account, use our promo code D.O. Unplugged to support the show and keep us going. It's very much appreciated.

DigitalOcean.com. And thank you, DigitalOcean, for sponsoring the Unplugged program. And thank you to everybody for using the promo code D.O. Unplugged. All right, Wes. I noticed you're sitting here at the laptop. You're not at the Raspberry Pi anymore. No, I'm not. I assume you have an SSH connection? Oh, yeah.

What are we running as our base Linux distro? We are running it looks like a fork of Raspbian. Okay, so something Debian-ish. Debian-ish. And we got Mycro running we got minecraft hold on should I are you ready to what

with poppy's voice no unfortunately right now it's only outputting on the 3.5mm okay so we don't have a way to play it on the air. So we don't have a way, but we could set that up for the future. Yeah, that is... Pretty darn easy. Alright, so... It works for... It's just

plugged in a USB mic. So the process of getting Mycroft set up on the Raspberry Pi. Stupid simple. They even have it so that it'll start up their own little Mycroft AP. At first, you connect your phone to it, then it does like a Chromecast style Hey, what's your LAN's Wi-Fi password? And then from there, it just

popped up. It gives you a little pair which will speak for you, or you can see the speech log. Really? You can pair that on their website. And then it just started working. You can ask it stuff, so like to log in over SSH, I was just like hey, Minecraft, what's your IP address? Really? Yep. I secretly use Arch Linux.

Yep, and then Popey was reading me. 192. Really? Yes. Now, how did it go Popey was reading me 192. Really? Yes. Now, how did it go when you tried to get to the Echo software? So here's the thing. Uh-oh. It's installing, but it is a lot more.

The Minecraft stuff was pretty, there's a lot of it is in Python. It was pretty lightweight to get going. This just downloaded the Oracle 8 JDK, so it's a little bit different. There's also, like, you have to jump through a fair number. I mean, I had to go to the Minecraft website to be fair, right? And I had to put in a code and stuff. And I made an account, but the account was very easy. The Alexa service, you gotta go register as an Amazon developer. You gotta

check a number of boxes, being like, no, I'm not making money. No, this isn't for kids. Et cetera, et cetera. And so I think it's gonna work beautifully whenever... The thing I liked about that is if you are in that camp of this is a CIA surveillance device put into your home, run by a private corporation that has a deal with the CIA to run its infrastructure, you're a maniac for using an Echo. Like if that's the camp you're going to find yourself in, which I can understand.

Sure. I think this shows you what a tech hack this product really is in some sense. Like once you go through this process, you realize the limitations very quickly of the software too. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. So it's a good way, like if you're concerned about the security of the Echo, it is a good way to get intimate with what the actual technology stack is that it's using. And you realize it's just – it's really plain Jane Vanilla stuff running on Linux.

I mean, they tied in with their backend infrastructure. Right. I know. I mean, just to that point, I just sourced their install script and away it goes. And actually, that part was actually pretty nice. Like, it has some good, like, hey, yes, do you agree to this? But then it asks, hey, do you want to output over HDMI or 3.5 million? So that part, I was actually pretty impressed with. Oh, whereas the Mycroft one just went...

Yes. I imagine there's a way to go tweak that, obviously. Do you have a speaker hooked up to it right now? No. I just have headphones. I want to hear Popey speak. I know, right? Yeah, I can never get enough of him. I think it should just work.

We just have to move the stuff. We just have to find a way to plug it in. Yeah. Well, I could just, actually, I would like to get earbuds so that way Popey's in my ears. Oh, yeah. You know? I want to just hook him up. I mean, you can get one of those batteries.

Yeah, just like that you get a battery pack for the pie and then you can tether it to your phone through your ting connection and then you can just be talking with minecraft there you go all the time you can also just wiretap poppy's echo that would work too yeah that might be easier yeah that's probably already done let's be honest uh actually they got a little credit bit of credit recently for uh trying to fight a court case. Did you hear about this? Yes, I did. Yeah, Amazon. And then the defendant decided.

Actually, I think we might talk about that very briefly in today's round. Oh, really? You know what? That's a good tease. That's a good tease right there. I will leave it there. In fact, if you're not watching Wes on the TechSnap program, what's the matter with you? Dan and Wes are really, you know, it's been, what episode number are you on now?

Eight? Three, ten. Ten. Ten. Dan and Wes are really, you know, it's been, what episode number are you on now? Eight? Three, ten. Ten. Ten. Ten weeks. Although some of those were doubles. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

But damn, guys, wow, you guys are cranking those things out. I like it. Well, all right, so we should probably end it there because Dan's in the middle of a blizzard out there and he doesn't know how much longer he's going to have power. So we on the West Coast have it easy. I complain about the rain, but Dan's in the middle of a blizzard out there, and he doesn't know how much longer he's going to have power. So we on the West Coast have it easy. I complain about the rain, but Dan's in the middle of a blizzard. Yes, exactly. Well, are you going to poke at it and see if you can get the Echo on there? We can have some updates next week.

Yeah, maybe we'll do that. We'll follow up on that and see. So happy Pi Day, everybody. So it does seem like what we weren't sure before the show started, and I guess I should make this point clear before we go. What we weren't sure before the show was could you take the same base Linux image that you used to set up Mycroft? Could that also support the Echo software stack? Or is there going to be version conflicts?

And it does appear you – It seems like it's going to work just fine. I don't know. Not quite done setting up, but fingers crossed. There you go. Tune in and find out next week. That's the word on that, I guess. I'm kind of curious because that could be the ultimate personal assistant.

Yeah. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I'm also curious to play with it, but I'm not like, I haven't been at the level even to buy a dot yet, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now if I have one there, wow, what's my excuse? Yeah, yeah. You know, I got the assistant on the phone. Oh.

Yeah. It's really not that different. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of episode 188. We're going to get out here on the account of snow. There's so much more show we could do. There's so much more show.

So check out the show notes. We've got more stuff in there that didn't fit in today's episode. Check out next week's episode of the Linux Action Show. We're going to have a really unique take on our visit to scale. I like it. I also, if I'm somebody who's never been to scale, I would really like it. If I'm somebody who's gone every year, I would like it. I watched the video already.

Noah did a great job. So check out Linux Action Show this Sunday. Thank you for being here on this show. Give us your feedback in your comments at linuxactionshow.reddit.com.

Give us your emails at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact and find out the live times at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact. JBLive.tv is where you watch us. See you right back here

next Tuesday. Thank you. Most of the web runs on servers powered by Linux. It's for people who like to mess with computers. JBtitles.com. That's not us. No, no, certainly not. Get those computers out of here. We tried to hustle, but we're still almost just on our regular time. JBtitles.com.

We've said so much good stuff. JBtitles. Sorry, Dan. We're working quick. Are you really better than VR, a focused mate? That's not bad. Thank you, Mumble Room. You guys are excellent and wonderful and the best as always.

Oh, yeah. Penguins are assholes. That's also true. Hmm. Those stinking penguins. The bite and the betcha. Do you want to start killing people at the end of shows to share the show? Oh, you know, I should do that.

I guess that, yeah. Everybody go share and like. Was that what you say? What do you say? Is that what the kids say? Everybody, please share and like this. Like, you know I should do that? I guess that, yeah. Everybody go share and like. Was that what you say? What do you, is that what the kids say? Everybody please share and like this. Like, comment, and subscribe. Hit that subscribe button.

Yeah. Smash that thumbs up, retweet, and share it with your friends and your family, please. If we could get 100,000 likes. Yeah, yeah.