LINUX Unplugged - Episode 190: Boot Free or Die Tryin’ | LUP 190

Episode Date: March 29, 2017

We dig deep into the LibreBoot project, how the Intel ME problem impacts open source & limits badass free laptops. Then we spend Wes’ money and shop for his next perfect Linux rig.Plus we discuss the big changeup at FreeNAS & more!

Wes's adventures with IP tables? What happened? Ooh. No, I just had a machine running some old monitoring software. I need to just... It's just terrible. I'd love to kill it, but it's the thing receiving SNMP traps right now.

But it doesn't use... I mean, it, like, wraps net SNMP, but it doesn't use SNMP trapd, so it wasn't that... I couldn't just have it stop listening, or I couldn't set up my own proxy without having to take it down for some times. But I was able to use IP tables with the dash dash T, which I'd never used before.

And then that sends it sends it over to a secondary host, which then does a pre routing rule on it to change the where it's addressed to, which then sends it off to my actual host where I'm going to capture all of these so I know, hey, what's actually hitting this machine. But it was like two commands. It was really easy. I didn't have to... Oh, I know it. No downtime. Wes, you had me at IP tables.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 190 for March 28th, 2017. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's converting file systems in real time. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. Keep your hands off my file system. I know, I don't jest.

There's actually a few file system things coming up today. But first, we're going to get through some updates. There's a project that's been on the back of my mind for months that we haven't talked about. Plus, a big, huge change up with FreeNAS this week. We're going to talk about that. Kind of fit in with some other topics that we have coming up down the road. Just some overall stuff. Really kind of like major changes for a few projects we talked about.

Then, I'm really looking forward to this. I'm very excited about this. Towards the end of the show, we're going to spend a little bit of Wes's money. Whoa. Yeah, Wes has entered that phase. I should have left my wallet at home. You know, we've all been there. Like, uh-oh, I think it's time for a new laptop.

I got to get a new computer. And this can be like a multi-month search. Sometimes it can be a couple of day search, depending on your situation. And so this week, Wes is on the search for the ultimate Linux machine. We're going to find out what his requirements are. And then our panel of Linux experts, the Virtual Lug, will chime in with their ideas on what might be a fitting machine. And there happens to be some new Linux hardware releases coming

very soon that may fit. We'll talk about those, we have all of that to go through, plus kind of an out there futurist kind of idea about how maybe we could take Linux and mobile Linux to the next level. Really taking some low-end machines and

giving them huge upgrades. So we'll talk about that in a little while, too. So we've got some good hardware stuff, got some good file server stuff coming up, got some huge project changes that people need to know about, like, stuff that's, like, relevant to all of our interests. So I think it's going to be a great show, Wes. So let's get started by bringing in that virtual log.

Hello! Time-appropriate greetings, virtual log. Hello, guys! Hi! Whoa! Hello! Holy, that was... Hello, time-appropriate greetings, Virtual Log. Hello, guys. Greetings. Time-appropriate greetings. Hi. Whoa. Hello. Holy, that was a moment. That wakes you up.

That was a moment right there. So, Wes, if we're going to talk about hardware that might work for you this week, we've got to start with the Zero Terminal, a tiny Linux PC that you can build using a Raspberry Pi and a smartphone keyboard. Look at how cute that is. It is super cute. Called the Zero Terminal, it's an all-in-one handheld computer that features a 3.5-inch screen,

and it gives you remarkable portability with a Raspberry Pi. Yeah? You got HDMI out. You can put a big old battery in there to run this thing. I'm telling you. Does it have a tab key? That's what I want to do. Does it have an escape key?

That's what you really want. Yeah. And it's got a video. That's always a win. Yeah. You see that? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ear massage. Yeah. This is the third iteration of the handheld Linux terminal project I've been working on for a while now. Like the others, the aim is to create a small all-in-one computer that is both portable and usable. One of the main problems with the last version was that it took way too long to make and some of the finishing wasn't as good as it could

have been. I like this idea, actually. Node plans to release the files for the 3D printed parts soon, so that's kind of neat. But maybe that's not really your style, Wes. Maybe you want something more laptop style? So keep this in mind. I also saw this week there is

a laptop concept where you could snap something like that in. So you take like a standard laptop, maybe in this case the Acer Travelmate. Yeah, sure. And you cut it open. So you get it off eBay and you install a Raspberry Pi into this thing and take advantage of its keyboard, its screen. You can use HDMI to drive the display. You can hook up keyboards and stuff like that, and you put a Raspberry Pi inside a laptop.

I'm just putting these out here as options. I know you're in the market. That first one, that might be... That actually could be kind of cool, couldn't it? I wonder what the price point would be. You like that because you can put it in the pocket? Yeah, you could put it in the pocket. I do like that idea too.

There's a few of these out there right now. There's one we covered on last recently too that's trying to build that in-your-pocket computer. That one was more straight up, like, we were going to run Ubuntu and I don't, I can't remember if it was ARM or not. Yeah. A GPD pocket's pretty cool. Yeah, that's what it

was. Do you remember, William, is that ARM? It's just an Atom. No, it's just like one of those cheap, low-end Atoms. It's like 5 watts or something. It's meant for, like, tablets and phones. So the GPD is Atom and the Gemini is ARM. and these are all kicking around right now they're both being crowdfunded at the moment yeah yeah isn't that funny yeah the gpd is like really funded like 2.5 million raised yeah yeah yeah 1200 percent

over their goal yeah yeah and what was the other one you have have with you. All right. So, wait, okay. It's been so funded, man, because at what point does it become a liability? You know, like how can they fulfill all those orders? You know, they were expecting to fulfill a few thousand. Now they've got to fill a few tens of thousand. That's just a logistical nightmare. So that's what's kind of put me off the GPD. So that's a great point, Joe. And so here's what I want to do

because we have a unique opportunity. Todd from Purism is joining us right now. So I want to get to him because I think you could be our resident expert on crowdfunding. But at first, before we go to Todd, I want to ask Wimpy, are you hedging your bets?

You're backing two different portable hardware devices? Like you, sir, are crazy. You must really want this form factor. I do really want this form factor i do really want this form factor and also as i've said before just recently um bitcoin is um trending really nicely at the moment so i've been making a few luxurious purchases investments backing investments yeah i've also bought something old and crusty as well which i can talk about later if you're really yeah i am

good for you but um so i saw the gpd and i thought that looks very interesting and i'm sort of 50 50 as to whether or not we'll ever see it because there's a lot of renders and maybe they've now they've got you know loads of backers then maybe it'll happen we'll we'll we'll see what happens but i'm not sure it's a little bit almost shady some of it yeah well it doesn't really talk about the actual prototypes now. Yeah. I do agree, though. They have shipped a product in the past that's very similar,

and it was on Indiegogo, and it did ship to many backers. So they do at least have successful products in the past that were crowdfunded. When it was first announced, there was lots of renders and not much substance, and it was just a little bit. I think that's still the case a little case on their indiegogo yeah anyway so that's that one so that looks interesting but then the gemini again so this is an organization that really has sort of previous in in this area um they've worked in this space a lot before um and I bumped into them at MWC as well. So I had the opportunity to press the flesh. So yeah, I back that because I think that will probably arrive later

than they're hoping because they don't have all of the manufacturing pipeline arranged yet unless they get really good at that and that all comes together quickly. But I think when that one ships, it will be the better device in terms of the way it's designed and the ergonomics and things. It's interesting to hear how everybody

now, I think we've all sort of we've shifted our expectations in what we get from crowdfunding. Everybody's like, well, let's kind of roll the dice here. But Todd, I wanted to toss to you first of all, welcome to Linux Unplugged. And to Joe's point, when you have phenomenal success, you've almost gone too far. You can't, as a small company, is it difficult to sort of now meet that demand,

which could possibly start a whole snowball effect of bad PR, struggling for a new company. What are your reflections on this story, Todd? Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. So it obviously can be a challenge. Crowdfunding is, you know, still really relatively new as a way to start a business. And a lot of times, what will end up happening is, you know, especially if they're just, you know, if we're talking about like a developer who says, hey, I always want to do this, they get together with their buddies and they're like, yeah, we think our cost is probably around, you know, X dollars. And what ends up happening is to operate a business, of course, it's, you know, it's X times four usually. That's for sure, yeah.

Right. So that's one of the things that tends to underfund, meaning on a per quantity basis. So they might, you know, a lot of projects that get overfunded and oversubscribed, which, of course, is a great problem initially when you think, hey, this is awesome. People are really excited what we're doing. doing. But then I think to Wimpy's point was that when you're actually looking at a per cost per item that you need to start scaling your operations, right? You have to start dealing with, are you managing inventory, right? And the entire operational side of things, which a lot of those types of campaigns don't end up having. So it, you know, the a crowdfunding track record is not as good as we'd all like it to be because obviously it's such a great way to, you know, to get these things off the ground

and, you know, see projects and it's sort of a new way to start businesses. Really what they tend to do is kind of stay in the hobby area or obviously, you know, kind of stay in the hobby area or obviously, you know, delivery is, I think, I could safely say that 99% of the projects are delivered late because that's just, you know, the nature of the beast, especially when you're dealing with hardware. Yeah. Yeah. Especially it seems too, when it's something that's pushing the edge a little bit, where you might have to get manufacturers on board with a new idea or a new way of doing something or shipping in a way they've never shipped before, it seems like the difficulty gets exponentially tougher. Do you agree with that assessment, Todd?

Yes, I think you're exactly right. And so like in our case, we actually, I've had a previous company use the same exact supply chain. And but that, you know, just made it where I had the contacts to be able to do things that we were trying to do. But we obviously had a lot of learning curves along the way. Mostly it was around delivery times or what products were actually available.

And obviously even one of the things, Chris, that you might remember is that we were originally slated to get 4K screens. So we said, yeah, we can do 4K screens because we heard from the supply chain we can do 4K screens. And then that ended up turning into constant delays because the actual source manufacturer, Samsung, was getting bought up by much larger suppliers or much larger buyers.

And so we kept kind of falling to the back burner. And then at some point, we just had to cut our losses and say, we're going to have to ship what we can right now and then basically place another order with a more reliable supply chain. So really that supply chain management is an area that is really difficult to manage through. And now we ended up after we've just, because we've grown to the point where we can have a really solid supply chain and through negotiation really to some degrees trial and error. But a lot of the new crowdfunded campaigns that that is, I think Wimpy's point is exactly right.

When you start to get oversubscribed, then they introduce all sorts of new problems, right? It's not just like a hobby putting this together. They're trying to actually now start to form a business. And if they didn't get their pricing right, it could end up being that they won't be able to actually fund the entire process. that they won't be able to actually fund the entire process. Right. If they don't have experience working with manufacturers and, like to your point, which I don't really think a lot of us think about, if they get to a certain size, now all of a sudden they have to also have experience with managing inventory and tracking support issues and support staff that if you don't have the past experience standing those groups up

and integrating those employees into your business, it's going to be a huge learning curve while you're also trying to ship the product that you just promised everybody. It's like zero to medium-sized business at a date. So I'm glad Wimpy is risking the Bitcoin on it because I really want to see both of these be successful because I love the form factor idea. Totally. So thanks, Wimpy. Yeah. And if I end up with two of these, then one will be for my daughter. So that will be fun.

That's nice. Yeah. That's brilliant. Well, that's brilliant. Well, Todd, thanks for being here. And I hope you stick with us. We've got a whole bunch of stuff coming up. I just want to give a quick heads up to folks that may be using LastPass. I've been looking at different password managers recently, if that wasn't obvious. It's that time again.

And I keep coming back when it comes to mobile integration and stuff like that. I keep preferring LastPass. So this applies to me. I don't know if some of you are out there, but over the weekend, a Google security researcher reported a new client-side vulnerability. So this is in the browser side, which could be potentially dangerous. There is an update. Now, LastPass is not giving us the details. Maybe those TechSnap guys will keep an eye out for the details on what the actual vulnerability was.

not giving us the details. Maybe those TechSnap guys will keep an eye out for the details on what the actual vulnerability was. But right now, as of yesterday, the word from last pass is just update and we'll tell you all the details soon. Or maybe Google actually will because a lot of times the Google Project Zero blog has that stuff. Speaking of TechSnap, we should mention more often that you can find more of Mr. Wes on the TechSnap program.

Was it last week you guys did a deep dive? Or was it the week before? Yep, last week. Broke from the traditional format and did a deep dive into Bacula, which is such a badass backup system. Dan knows very well. Yes, he does. Yeah, he's a Bacula guy. And I tell you what, if you've ever been curious

about a really rock-solid backup system, it can do bare metal restores, it can do individual file restores. It can really manage a lot of sets of data. Bacula. And check out last week's episode on TechSnap about it, which is an open source. I used to use Bacula.

Oh, really? Yeah, I used to use it to back up a company that sold antivirus software. Oh, nice. Yeah, that makes sense. But it works great for something like that. Yeah, and it was perfect. It really was.

So that's a different time. You don't know. Now I might use it with DigitalOcean. I could picture it. DigitalOcean.com, go over there. In fact, do me a favor. After you sign up, you can get a $10 credit and support the show by applying the promo code

D-O-U-N-P-L-U-G-D to your account. I like the way that this works, too, because you fund the account. So this is just one of the funding methods. You could fund it with PayPal or a credit card or probably pixie dust, but use the promo code. I'm not sure about that last one. D-O-unplugged. One word, you get a $10 credit.

You can spin up a Linux rig up on their infrastructure. All SSDs for the storage. Woo-hoo! Wes, it makes a difference. It sure does. You know what also would help with that Bacula thing? Their private networking. Dude! You mean for backing up your own droplets and stuff? Yes, because also that's brilliant, A, because then your backup server isn't on the public net.

But, B, the transfer over the private networking doesn't count towards your total data transfer. Boom. That's money right there. That's a good idea. Yeah, check that out. That's one of the many great features of DigitalOcean. Go over there. Use our promo code DLUnplugged and spin up a rig.

You can try out Bacula for just a few pennies on the dollar if you want to run it for a few hours. Try out the $5 rig, two months for free. It's going to be all SSD, so it's nice and fast. And if you want to back up to DigitalOcean, they have block storage, which you can add up and add up and add up and just keep growing as you need or even reduce. Or, this is brilliant, didn't realize this until recently, move it to another droplet. Frickin' mind blown in the context of backups. Frickin' mind blown. And that's just the beginning of backups. Freaking mind-blown. And that's just the beginning, too. If you're into this kind of stuff, you might also favor their new monitoring system coming soon.

It's going to be coming. Little Birdie tells me very soon, and you can sign up for early access when you go to DigitalOcean.com. Go there, create an account. Big thank you, DigitalOcean. They have a great interface for managing all this, an API that really works. Hell of a good service. DigitalOcean.com. Use our promo code D-O-Unplugged.

And thanks to them for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Okay. So I want to talk just briefly about file servers. I know. I know. Some people's eyes are going to glaze over. But there's one that we don't talk about very much, and I want to give it a little love right now. And that's Rockstar.

I've mentioned it once before, but a couple of days ago, I missed it at first. They had a new release, and I think to give it a little love right now. And that's Rockstore. I've mentioned it once before, but a couple of days ago I missed it at first. They had a new release, and I think it's worth mentioning, because they've put a ton of effort into this. They have now six contributors coming together to work on bug fixes and performance improvements. The code quality, from what people tell me,

has had a big jump in this one. They've had a lot of improvements to their Python backend stack. They are still, and this could be actually, I think, a feature to some of you, all in on ButterFS for the NAS file server file system. So if you're a big fan of ButterFS, which people remain fans, this is a great file server for you potentially. They also seem to offer some commercial products or offerings. I'm not totally familiar with it.

There's support available as well. Yeah. Maybe it will make you feel a little more secure with that ButterFS file system underneath. So Rockstore just had a new release, which sounds like a lot of nice refinements and improvements, which is pretty much exactly what you want from your NAS. Now, on the other end, there is FreeNAS Coral, which is also known as FreeNAS 10. This is a massive release, in my opinion, for FreeNAS. It's big. It's sort of, in some ways, a total revisioning of the way the UI works.

It's got a brand new slick UI. It's got a rewritten middleware architecture. And the big and probably one that has gotten the most discussion, changes. They're transitioning from using jails for plugins to using Docker containers. Say what? Docker containers. Isn't that a Linux thing? Docker containers with full ZFS integration and a new command line.

And there is some caveats. If you're migrating from FreeNAS 9, your plugins that you have installed via JAILS, they don't get deleted. They just get deactivated. And you'll have to kind of come up with your own solution to maybe converting those into Docker containers.

Now this is interesting because I think this is probably one of the biggest competitors in this sort of rock store sort of Linux. It's the household, Dave. Yeah. And FreeNAS is making huge changes. And along those are also some of the changes on the back-end team. Jordan Hubbard, who I've had the pleasure of meeting and watching a presentation on FreeNAS 10 at MeetBSD, who seemed to me a big part of the project.

He is moving on. Now, he was the main dev. So he's also the CTO of iX Systems. So that's a big change. He sounds like he's moving into something that he's going to be super passionate about. So he's going into, I think, like the – yeah, he says the nanotech biomedical field. It's a complete career change for him. Wow, yeah.

Yeah, which that's got to be nice from time to time. Totally. Reinvigorate. Yeah. Good for him, but it's got to be a huge change. Also, back in December, they had another longtime FreeNAS developer who was with FreeNAS since version 8, seven years. He's also moving on from FreeNAS. So some big changes.

Jonathan says that he will not be, or Jordan, not Jonathan, sorry, Jordan Hubbard. Jordan says that, I don't know, Jonathan. Jordan Hubbard says that he won't be a developer anymore, but he'll still be part of the community. So Jordan's still going to be in the, you know, as a user. He'll be filing bugs and yelling at those devs.

And some people have speculated, well, is this because of all of the breakage from upgrading from FreeNAS 9 to 10? But I don't buy it. I don't buy it because FreeNAS 9.10 is still available for download, still supported. Like you don't have to upgrade. And you can roll back your upgrade if it goes wrong. So I don't really buy that like Jordan was pushed out, which is what Reddit – the Reddit conspiracy theory is right now that FreeNAS 10 was such a failure that it pushed Jordan out, which seems a little over the top.

But if he was just pushed out, he'd probably go to a company with similar interests or do something in a similar vein, not change careers completely. Yeah, I agree. I just, I don't know. I think what it was is he worked on this until it was done and he got sort of got some stuff wrapped up, and now he's... It's a natural time to change. It's like a nice, smooth transition. Yeah. And all that is my way of saying

there is some pushback on this new release, this Freenaz Coral. I'm sure there is, yeah. And I wonder if things like Unraid or another Linux out-of-the-box file server could step up to fill the gap. I don't know. Afrinas has got a pretty big lead at this point. And like I said, version 9, still perfectly good, still perfectly usable, still perfectly downloadable.

But you do have to wonder. I mean, there was even a question to the TechSoup program about what's that support cycle going to be, which knowing IX, I'm sure it's going to be very reasonable, especially since there's a community around it. That's what it seems like. I'm not that worried. But you do have to think, like you've been talking about, if you're planning the next five years, I mean, it would probably still work for that time frame. But 10 years?

What do you think about Docker? I mean, that's an interesting choice. Did Docker just win right there? Did Docker just win? I mean, I can't see it from their perspective of, is that much easier? Like if it's packaged at Docker, is it now pretty easy for them to make sure it works in their environment versus having to put together plugins with their own custom jail format, that kind of

thing? To me, it seems to represent like sort of the industry, even the people on the BSD side of the fence coming to a recognition that, well, if you want to be able to distribute software that runs across multiple platforms, Docker's just the container technology we're going to use. And it's not so much that they're like betting on Docker so much as they want to make all of the stuff that's already in a container available to FreeNAS. So they, instead of having- That's where the reach is. Yeah.

Instead of having to have a plug-in author who creates something specifically for a free nas now just exactly joe free nas user can pull down a docker container do we know yet how they're doing it is it using it's probably still using jail that's what i would covers it's just that the docker format gives you this like universal format to package the thing up with and then you know i wonder universal controls that just work i wonder uh because the way they say, listen to the way they put this. Support for Docker containers,

its own built-in hypervisor that supports virtualization with full ZFS integration. So to me, it sounds like they're using a hypervisor to run the containers. Are they running, like, a Linux kernel at Beehive? You think they're able to run Linux Docker images is where they're going with this? They are Linux Docker.

No, they are Linux Docker, because they're making it available for you to pull down pre-created Docker containers. Then it's probably, yeah, Beehive with Linux running on top of it. Okay, interesting. That, to me, is a huge statement.

Yeah. Don't you think? That's pretty cool. That's sort of like when Microsoft started shipping Docker support and Bash on Windows. It's just sort of like this Linux is the runtime.

Linux is the runtime. And however you get that runtime on your machine. For sure, yeah. And the container technology is how you get the runtime right now. But it's really – but those – half of those containers are running Ubuntu, right? So it's really Linux is the platform. Yeah. And in a lot of those cases, it's Ubuntu.

70%. There you go. There you go. In a lot of those cases, it's Ubuntu. 70%. There you go. There you go. So that, I think, they came up with a way to run Ubuntu on FreeNAS. I want to look more into this.

I'm very curious about it because I wonder if it will create any pressure for their compat layer to implement those primitives, you know, emulate those. Because they're just using Beehive with a Linux kernel, right? It would be better, though, if they didn't have to run a whole hypervisor. right? It would be better though if they didn't have to run a whole hypervisor. If you could support like OCI or other types of things then suddenly you could have like hey I want to run Furby SD as my base platform for Kubernetes

or whatever. Working most reliably using the hypervisor route is probably the best way to go. At least to start and maybe down the road they allow you to pick whether it's using the ABI or using a hypervisor. And I think that's what Microsoft is doing. Oh and at 2.30 the file system upgrade just finished on the phone. Ooh.

So in from 2. New hotness. Yeah, so there you go. The file system in real time is completed. Oh, jeez, now I've got to sign in? What is this crap? Just for one point release? Does this mean if Ubuntu is running on FreeDOS,

does that mean we can get apps running as well? Well, if you could run Docker containers on there, couldn't you just run essentially like a small Ubuntu system? An SSH anyway? You could. Yeah, you could, and you could make snaps on it as well if you wanted to. Fascinating. That is interesting. I really want to see what the

web UI... I've looked at the early betas. I don't know if there's limitations. Well, they have like a VHive support in this new UI, right? So it would make sense that they might use this it's just another built in VM they have a section called VMs right exactly that's what I would think it's just another built in VM so it's something I think I'm going to play around with

now that I can get Linux on my FreeNAS this is a game changer for me but it's a big controversial feature in the FreeNAS community right now oh I'm sure alright well there you go I thought that was oh and by the way if you are going to upgrade, let me see. I have somewhere in this mess of show notes – here we go. I have a migrating from FreeNAS 9 to FreeNAS Coral entry on the FreeNAS wiki.

That covers all of it and like issues you have, especially if you're using encryption, maybe just give this a read. It doesn't sound like it's going to be too complicated, but probably stuff you should be aware of. So check that out. Go try the new version. I'd love to hear what people think about it. Do you have a file server at home? Not anything pre-built like this. Hmm.

I have a box that has a container that runs my, and then it has a container that serves my files. If you just built a big desktop PC, you could put a bunch of disks in it. I sure could. I sure could. You could just use that. It's like a double duty. All right. We're going to talk about your new machine.

We're going to go spend your money here. We're going to go spend your money here just about now, actually. So I think it's just about time. So let's do that. Let's mention Linux Academy. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Then we're going to go. Oh, man, actually. So I think it's just about time. So let's do that. Let's actually, let's mention Linux Academy, linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Then we're going to go, oh man, Wes. See, my favorite thing to do

is to spend other people's money. And we're going to get you set up. It's much more fun. We're going to get you hooked up. We're going to get you hooked up with a good machine. And then when you're ready to put that machine to use and you want to do more, I want you to go to Linux Academy and learn more.

linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You land there to support the show and sign up for a free seven-day trial. It's a platform to learn more about Linux with self-paced in-depth video courses, hands-on real-world scenarios that help shake off that test anxiety because you've got actual expertise. I love it. They spin up the lab server when you need it. You SSH into that shenanigans.

You get a real environment, 7-plus Linux distros you choose from, the servers, and the courseware all snap. See what I did there? To that distro. All snap to that distro. You can also take practice exams to, like, prepare for a cert test. You can get note cards that have been forked by the community and improved. You get nuggets, which are just tiny bits of wisdom. You just do a little deep dive into a singular topic for five minutes or an hour, depending the subject which is great when you've got a busy week speaking of busy weeks they have course schedulers to work with

you to help match content to your busy schedule a community stacked full of jupiter broadcasting members downloadable tools like guides and lesson audio that you can take with you ios and android apps to study on the go damn damn the list just keeps getting longer and longer and they're always adding more courseware you can just look at their Twitter feed to see that. It's just, it's so awesome that something like this where you sign up once and then they just keep working their butts off to get you more and more stuff. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thanks to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged.

So if we're not going to do the Raspberry Pi with a keyboard for you, Wes, it sounds like you are – well, can you tell people what you got right now? Give people a base so they know what you're coming from. Right now I've got a Core i5. What is it? Second generation? What generation is this one? I think that might be first. It might be first, yeah.

First gen XPS. Yeah. I think that was the first gen i5. Yeah. 13-inch screen. 13-inch screen. And what's the resolution of the screen? 13 whatever. No. Yeah. I think that was the first Gen I5. Yeah. 13-inch screen. 13-inch screen. And what's the resolution of the screen? 13-whatever.

No! Yep, yep. So that's the icing on this horrible cake. Oh my goodness. Which, at home, I have external monitors, so it's not that big of a deal. But... And how does the monitor hook up? Display port?

Yeah, display port. All right, so that'd probably still be the same. Yeah, so that's fine. SSD. SSD, yeah. And 4 gigs, 8 gigs? 4 gigs of RAM. Oh my god.

Oh my god. Okay. Wow okay wow yeah we really gotta talk so 13 inch now what do you like most about that form factor i mean it is very convenient it's not a heavy machine it's easy to throw in a bag i think i could do up to a 15 inch as long as it wasn't you know crazy i would like to like you know be able to easily take it to a coffee shop or a bar to do some work okay okay all right well see i was i was going to recommend i was going to recommend something a little bigger i was going to recommend uh you have you seen this uh acer here with the with the 20 inch curve screen wow yeah it's got a fan 18 pounds yeah that's weighs 18 pounds. Yeah. That's crazy. Okay, maybe not.

Maybe not. Maybe not. It looks like it has a nice keyboard, though. Is that like a real keyboard? Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah, that's legit right there. Not the numpad.

Not the numpad. No, it's like a mechanical keyboard. That's awesome. Yeah, the numpad actually comes out and can be a trackpad. Oh, wow. Yeah, it flips over. Yeah, there you go. That's nuts. Yeah, isn't that sweet?

So, not that. That's too that's too big yeah so what do you like least about the form factor did you feel constrained on the screen you must yes oh yes so it's not it's not that bad like i honestly spent a lot of the time i have like you know a chat program or two but once at a time a terminal and a web browser so it's not that bad but when i'm away from home and i'm trying to do some development, which I need, you know, like a couple terminals and a web browser, then suddenly I'm all tabbing all over the place. It gets dicey. Okay. So not just because they're friends of the show, but it seems like something like the Galago Pro would be a pretty strong contender for you.

What you have to decide here is do you want to go bigger than 13-inch screen or not? Because I think that's the classifier. It sounds like you're leaning 15 inch i mean the 13 inch i i like 13 14 even i think i think i would be okay with a 15 inch that's where it kind of forks the discussion maybe a little bit as well do i also want to consider building a new desktop rig right okay i haven I haven't built a desktop rig. New laptop and a desktop or in place of the laptop? I guess

there's both options. I would still like a new laptop, but if I have a nice desktop at home that means I could have a different... I would probably want a 13-inch. Or, you know, one of these options with Thunderbolt's eGPUs, then I might want a beefier laptop. So here's what I think. I think we should do this.

I think we should do this since people at home are probably thinking some of the same stuff. I think we should break that particular, the desktop, into a separate conversation because I think we can quickly get there. Because I think that might be the way to go. Although, although, there are some super nice laptops. Like, is it called Kratos? Is that how you pronounce it, Wimpy? The Kratos? Kratos?

Yes, it's the Entroware Kratos. That looks like a nice rig. Yeah, if you're on this side of the Atlantic, so in Europe, they've just released their new updated version of that, which is an i7, and it goes up to 32 gigs of RAM, and it's got an NVIDIA 1050 in it, GTX 1050. Nice. A 15-inch display. That matters, I think. Yeah, 15 inches. gigs of ram and it's got an nvidia 1050 in it gtx 1050 there is a 15 inch display that matters yeah 15 inches kind of tasty i think i think wes you really deserve dedicated graphics

if you can there's something there's another route you could consider this is something i know you've been looking at that's why i bring this up so audience behind the scenes wes has been reading up a little bit about using, say, like a Thunderbolt cable to hook up an external GPU. You could also go this route. So if we keep this in mind, this also opens up your possibilities. I just don't know how well

this kind of thing works with Linux. I'd love to know if anybody in the audience or in the Mumba room has any information about external Thunderbolt GPUs with Linux. It looks like WW has got something. You do, WW? I got something on the Windows side. Okay, so I've only seen one person on YouTube

actually test what Thunderbolting, an external video card, what the performance is actually like. And from that one series of like two videos, it's a 30% to 40 percent decrease from desktop performance for a 4 to 12 percent gain and that is if you're using the monitor hooked up to the external right gpu unit so i mean that's all windows your performance could vary wildly very do you

happen to know what what connection interface they're using if it was thunderbolt 2 or 3 because that makes i think it was thunderbolt 3 wow yeah i think most of the gear is thunderbolt 3 driven thunderbolt 3 that was 40 gigabits it is what's cool is if you get a laptop that has the thunderbolt 3 but it also has the reverse feed display port, so the graphics card can feed a display port back in and power the screen on the laptop. Oh, yeah. Because the Apple, I want to say just the MacBook or the MacBook Pro can do that. And I know there are other laptops. I think the Razer Blade and stuff can do that, where you can plug in the external GPU

and still use the laptop monitor with the external GPU feeding it instead. A lot of people in the chat room have been suggesting Razer Blade. Have you looked at Razer? I have not. I mean, I'm vaguely aware. The Razer Blade is pretty cool for the price. Aren't they horrible with Linux, though? I think so.

Yeah, see, this is the thing, Wes, is I would encourage you to really get your head around what screen size you want and really draw the line somewhere. For me personally, over the years, having right next to me, I have my Librem right now, and I have the Apollo, and one is a 13-inch and one is a 15-inch. And if I want something that I take on the couch, I like the 13-inch. If I want something that I'm going to work from,

I like the 15-inch. It's just so it's really what you're going to use it for. What are you going to... Is it more of a work machine or is it more of a browse the web, have fun machine? Honestly, probably more of a work machine or is it more of a browse the web, have fun machine? Honestly, probably more of a work machine. I mean, I will use it in a casual capacity. But portability, do you take it with you to work?

Not to work, but I like to work out of the house a lot of my own personal projects, show work, that kind of thing. Yeah. And that's where this really fails. How much time do you spend looking at the screen when you're doing that sort of stuff? What do you spend looking at the screen when you're doing that sort of stuff what do you mean uh when you're working on your own stuff and you want to use it you know for working on your own projects how much time might you be spending at the computer than those those moments uh i would say anywhere from two to six hours whoa depending okay jeez i can't believe you've put up with that resolution for this long. I would not. I would not, man. That's got to be rough.

Well, that's how I find myself here today. Good for you. I'm really proud of you for taking this one. So I've essentially got the same machine. I've got a 13-inch and a 15-inch variant. So it's the 13-inch XPS and the 15-inch XPS. And the 13-inch XPS is what I take out when i'm going traveling that's the device i take because it's small it's powerful it's no compromise um but for extended periods working

on that machine it's not so great because 13 inch screen um you do find yourself you know you can't quite get close enough to it now that's probably compounded by the fact that that's a high DPI screen. So I've actually been thinking about potentially selling that XPS 13 and getting the version with the 1080p screen because I think that would be better to work on for longer periods. Oh, yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah. And I don't need a touchscreen.

I mean, they're nice. I would maybe occasionally use it, but not a deal-breaker at all. Regeister, it looks like Razer is working the Razer Core, which is their external eGPU with a 970 in it, hooked up to an XPS 13 running on Arch. It looks like it's working to power an external monitor. Ooh.

That's interesting. Can you post links for that somewhere, please? You can put it in the chat room. Arch looks like it's working to power an external monitor. That's interesting. I really like it. Can you post links for that somewhere, please? You put it in the chat room. I really like the XPS 13, but if it was my only computer, I would probably opt for the 15. Yeah. And Wimpy, what was the battle like to put, because this thing only ships with Windows, so what was the process like to put Linux on?

Is it just a format, nuke, pave, install Linux? Or did you replace Wi-Fi and whatnot? So I got my machines both from a Dell reseller. And they were able to sell the XPS 15 with a configuration that had the same Wi-Fi chip in it as the xps 13 developer edition so i didn't have to do any monkeying around it obviously arrived with windows 10 on it which was actually quite helpful because around the time i got mine sort of september last year they were just working out the last of the firmware bugs in the biosOS. So you needed to flash anyway. So, yeah, I needed to do the updates anyway.

So it was quite handy to have that do the updates, and then it's just been running Ubuntu ever since. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, I wonder if even now, if the latest model even would have, if you'd have to replace the Wi-Fi. That may not be an issue anymore. And, I mean, I'm comfortable doing that.

It would make me happier if it had a 10-series card. It has a GTX 960. It's not a hard swap. I've done it. You just take the bottom off and it's right there. It's not a hard swap at all. And you can just get a replacement card on Amazon for like $35, $60. But that seems like a decent way to go. All right.

So that is – so if you go in like the 15-inch range, that, you know, there's some nice machines there. But you said something that I think is probably the more exciting thing to consider because it's something I've gone through myself is, what if I do something like an Ultrabook or even, this is crazy, but even like a Chromebook, and then I get myself like a six core or more i7 machine, 32 gigs of RAM, lots of storage, and you just go all out. Plus, it's kind of fun if you haven't done it for a while to build a PC. Like when's the last time you built a PC?

Ages? Yeah, ages. Ages, like seven years or something. So have you been on laptops for years now? Okay, so we've got to talk about this because I did this transition myself. Occasionally there's like a gaming rig kind of thing, but it's not like new. It has a nice graphics card, but older processor.

So it really would be a chance. It's not where you're working. It's not where I'm working, no. Yeah. Okay. All right. So I recently made this transition myself where I was on all laptops for years, even the machines here at the table. Right.

Oh, yeah. Looking back at it, it seems ludicrous. Kind of crazy, yeah. Ludicrous. It seems ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous. And now, because now you just, ah, it blows my mind. Yeah. So let yeah. Ludicrous. It seems ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous. And now, because now you just, ah, it blows my mind.

Yeah, so let's. Ludicrous. That could be your new handle. Chris Ludicrous? Yeah. Something like that. I wonder. That's not bad.

That's not bad. You know what else is ludicrous? Ting. Go to linux.ting.com. You'll save $25 off your first device and support the show. If you already have a GSM or CDMA device that works, check their BYOD page. You get $25 in service credit. That's nice because it's $6 for the line. And then just your usage on top of that

for minutes, messages, megabytes. I was having a Telegram conversation today with, I think it might have been Corey. I can't remember it, on Telegram. He said, Chris, my mom does not want data on her phone. And he says, can I use Ting anyways? I said, actually, Ting would be perfect because you can just go in and completely turn data off. I guess his mom had a bad experience with data.

I don't know how that happens. And not Brent Spiner data. That one time you get that extra bill, you're just like, ooh. That's it. I just want phone calls. And so he goes in there. He can turn it right off. Boom.

That's the thing. Ting makes it so easy. And if you do want it, it's super easy to set like, hey, let me know when I've crossed this boundary. Or if you just want to turn it back on. Yeah, exactly. Just go check a box. They've got apps for the phone to manage all of it. They've also got a great website and customer service that really sets the bar.

You get to talk to real human beings. So all of that combined with the fact that they're a really cool company with geeks that work there, they're really into this stuff, and they follow stuff like on their blog all the time. They've got the Moto G5 Plus available now for pre-order. That could be kind of a cool device. It's got a 2 gigahertz octa-core processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM. It's like around

what? I think it's like, what, 300 bucks for a nice Moto smartphone with damn, 4 gigs of RAM? Damn, I think that's as much as the iPhone's got. That's as much as my laptop. Oh, my God, dude. Oh, it's horrible. Oh, that's so horrible.

Oh, my God. We got to talk, Wes. We got to talk. All right. Thank you to Ting for sponsoring the show. Linux.Ting.com. Oh, Wes. I tell you, when I made that transition from,

and these are nice laptops, right? Yeah. Bonobos, XBSs, Librem. You haven't been working for laptops, no. No, they're good. Yeah. i5, i7 processors, SSDs. This is why I thought – and like the Bonobos, for a while, they were dedicated GTX graphics cards.

What could the – in my mind, I understand that some of these things are clocked slightly slower and they run slightly slower for heat. Right. But not necessarily in the bonobo. I don't – I couldn't really conceptualize that there would be a noticeable difference in my day-to-day usage. I couldn't really – even in my main workstation upstairs, I was using a laptop. And I was just doing – you know, filter editing, show editing, show prep. Regular things, yeah. Trying reviews.

And then when it came time – like I guess it was last year. Was it last year or the year before we built new rigs for Linux Fest? Last year, I think, yeah. And one of the things I can, if it's possible, whenever I can, I'll buy two of everything so that way we have a backup because we're live, right? I want to have a production machine and a backup machine. And so I bought. So I thought, well, you know what? If we're going to build these anyways, I'll buy a third one.

Because, I mean, I'm using Bitcoin, right? It's not like I'm using actual cash here. It's not real money. So it's like, oh, just get a third one. Yeah, looking back on it. Hasn't been money for ages. Anyway, so we build a third one. Slightly nicer configuration because it's my personal workstation.

And put it in. And I sit down and start working on it. And now looking back at it, it's a totally different computing experience. It's something about just the amount of sheer work I can have this one system doing. Because not only am I doing things like video encoding and editing and transferring large files around the network all at once. I've also got YouTube streams, Telegram, all this regular desktop, my email, my web browser, I've got all this regular desktop stuff going too. And then in the back end, I've got Usenet, I've got indexers, I've got downloaders,

extractors, I've got sonar monitoring feeds. I've got all this other server stuff that this thing's doing that in the past would have been on its own dedicated machine. And it's doing all of it while I'm doing all this other stuff stuff that this thing is doing that in the past would have been like on its own dedicated machine. And it's doing that – all of it while I'm doing all this other stuff and it never misses a beat. And it's just the sheer amount of productivity I get out of one machine. For my main computer, I will never, ever – well, I shouldn't say that. I cannot for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I cannot see me going back to a laptop for my main work system.

That's a pretty strong opinion. Plus it takes the pressure off the laptop pick. Right. Which is so hard to get just right. Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect anymore. It just has to fill that niche. So that's, I don't know, anybody in the Mumba room have an opposite or similar experience? Like, you know, you switch over to a desktop and it's just a totally different amount of

work you get done. For me personally, especially working with video and stuff, I love the fact that I can start an encode job. I'm just going to run for 15 minutes. I switch over to another desktop and it's like... You just don't even worry about it. Not at all. Wow.

As someone who's building a lot of software, it's invaluable to have like a Dual E5 machine sitting in a closet somewhere, sort of SSH-ing in for my laptop to be able to build software on 32 threads. Yeah, that makes sense. You can just put it in a laptop. My build machine...

So I just SSH-ing into everything. My build machine is my intro where athena which is an absolute monster so that's a laptop um and it's my gaming laptop but when it's not being used for gaming which is infrequently it sits on the desk behind me during the day and that's the machine that i do all of my builds and what have you on see that would be nice because a big that's a big machine like the all of my builds and what have you on. See, that would be nice because... That's a big machine. It's nice to be able to get a nice Ultrabook with a huge battery, say like an X270 from Lenovo,

and be able to go 13 hours without plugging in. And you're just SSHing into your powerful box. So you can get a lot of work done but still go forever on battery. It would be nice as well to have that kind of home base because I don't find this laptop, especially when I format it for the show or distro reviews or whatever, it's just not that consistent. So it ends up that I have to promote some cloud server or droplet

or other thing to be my kind of like, that's where I do Ansible runs from. That's where my main backups from my sync thing are taken or whatever. That might not be a bad strategy. Yeah, but it would be nice for some things to have like a whole base that I could. That's like me. It's like I just end up, there's some things I just want to run on my local machine. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I think you should give the idea serious consideration because if you've made it this long on this machine, a fairly modest laptop would be a pretty big spec bump. So you could do a modest laptop bump and really invest in the desktop. You know, it's not all fun though. You know, I also, I mean, you know know we got a stack of dead motherboards right there. Yes, that's right. I don't feel like it's quite as good as it used to be.

I feel like I get a lot more dead-on-arrival parts when I custom build now than we used to. But, you know, I guess it doesn't seem like it's as big of an industry. It's fine to me. Yeah. So, Wes, how important is battery life to you? I don't need, how important is battery life to you um i don't need like crazy battery life i would like you know like five plus if more would more would be nice but i am usually in a position where i could find power or know of you know like my favorite establishments to work have pretty readable power outlets that sort of thing right so the reason i asked the question

is when i got my entroware apollo i suddenly walked into a new era of battery endurance that i'd not experienced before and i got used to having like seven hours plus battery life and that was pretty great when i got the xps 13 i was looking for touchscreens and high DPI because I wanted to play with all the new toys. And I'm somewhat jaded because the tradeoff there that you make is battery endurance because those high DPI screens and the touchscreen sip up more power yeah so i i will get comfortably four and a half hours on the xps 13 maybe five a push but nothing more than that and that's another reason why i've been considering for the for the xps 13 perhaps the 1080p model which which doesn't have the touchscreen, has a lower-res screen, and the battery life is almost double.

Yeah, see, I think I could do that. That's my observation as well. Also, there's more Linux software that works better at regular DPI. You can definitely make it work, especially if you're working with Qt 5 apps or GTK 3 apps. You're going to have a fine experience. But almost all of them will screw it up out of the box.

You're going to have to make some tweaks. I still am making small refinements to my Plasma desktop on the XPS 13. I would also agree. If you don't need it, I personally think I don't know of any laptops that have the screen resolution, but 2K is perfect.

Perfect. I really wish resolution, but 2K is perfect. 2K is the best, yeah. Perfect. No, perfect. It's perfect. I really wish we had more 2K screens on laptops. The other thing to consider is on the high DPI laptops, most of the 13-inch laptops, when you've pixel doubled them, are like the equivalent of 1600 by 900 in terms of usable equivalent resolution. So you actually have more screen space on a 1080p.

I'm just mentioning these things because these are things that I hadn't considered going into my purchasing decision that I'm now aware of having made it. I mean, I wanted to, in fact, I still want a machine I can try out high DPI stuff on for review purposes.

Yeah, that makes sense. But if you're not doing that, I don't know. I don't know. It depends. Most of my time is in the terminal. Maybe some photo editing. But if I had a desktop, I could do that there, too. Yeah, dude. You could also get a 2K screen for a reasonable price on the desktop.

Exactly. The new X1 Carbon is a 2K screen. Is it? In case you're curious. It is. It's an older book form. What? Now I'm going to have to sell some things.

I know. It's like the Infinity display, right right It's got the thin bezels Yeah remember what we were just talking about in the pre-show Pretty cool Type C charging on the new one too Oh I love that That would be awesome That would be a killer feature of the XPS 13 and this

Do they take Bitcoin? Seriously Yeah that I've always liked this this is type c charge do they take bitcoin seriously because yeah that oh that's because he got the x270 i'm curious if that also type c charges off the type c port on it so i'm so done with type c me too i was just having a conversation last night with noah about how i just want everybody to go all in on usbc let's just do it yeah that's why when i saw the galago ultra pro with the new one, they didn't have Type-C.

I was like, you guys, you better fix this before you ship this. I would really love to see them have USB-C on that. Maybe the next Rev can do it. I'm not sure why they can't do it now, but it is time. It's time for cameras. It's time for everything. I want to charge my remotes with USB-C, my phone with USB-C, my camera, my laptop.

The thing that did it for me was I bought one of those battery packs, but it had one that you could use to jump start a car on it and it was chargeable and it used USB-C so I was like so in theory if I had my phone I could charge this battery from my phone and then start my car. Maybe yeah. Wow. Drain your phone

though. Yeah drain my phone but whatever and then I can go drive somewhere. Yeah exactly. Okay. Somebody at Chris Ali asks me a Lenovo reseller that sells the X1 Carbon with the N accepts Bitcoin. Okay. Somebody at Chris Ali asked me, a Lenovo reseller that sells the X1 Carbon and accepts Bitcoin. Okay. All right. So there's that. Now, Wimpy, though, you were teasing earlier that you got new hardware.

You got something, a new device. Yes, I have. I can't tell you much about it other than what it is. But I have bought an old computer. I have bought an ibm x200 but this x200 has libre boot so it's an fsf approved laptop now this is a brand new purchase so you just got you got this old new device this new old it arrived it arrived today and other than getting it out of the box and the bubble wrap and turning it on i haven't

done anything with it well so hasn't that just isn't that just perfect because todd's here and i just recently saw news from from purism about uh work on libreboot todd can you bring us up to speed what's going on over uh with uh with libreboot uh yeah so um well libreboot of course is just the port from corebooot that removes the binary blobs. Right. Right, so... So, which, I guess, can you back up and explain more binary blobs of what? So, anything that's built pre-2008, you can actually have a CoreBoot running without any binary blobs, which are, of course, mystery code that runs at the BIOS level.

And obviously this is getting more and more attention, especially with Vault 7 releases where about 90% of those security-based exploits were EFI or UEFI exploits. And then obviously, so one of the biggest ones and the biggest worry is called the Intel Management Engine. Then there's also something else called Intel AMT that actually allows for remote access of your machine when it's even powered off. So those are a couple of things that are binaries at the lowest level. And the way that I like to describe that is basically from a security standpoint, it's kind of how deep do you go? And so some people, you know, they'll just like

install a, you know, ad blocker and they think that they're, you know, happy as it can be. And then, you know, then you can go deeper down to the operating system where you, you know, do you have binaries that power your wireless card or your graphics, et cetera. And then you can go deeper than that, which of, gets you to the bootloader. And then the lowest level is the firmware on the machine, which, of course, is the BIOS or EFI, or in our case, it's Coreboot. So we actually just ported Coreboot for the Purism Librem laptops. And then we have also what's called neutralized the management engine, which means we've removed the network stack, removed the kernel,

so we have a very small bit of code to reverse engineer or actually just get to the point where we can disable the management engine. And at that point, we'd actually qualify for Respects Your Freedom certification on a brand new i7 6th Gen CPU. Damn. Yeah, that's how I feel i feel about just disable the damn thing just turn it off i don't right yeah that's exactly what's funny about it is that um i mean it's one of those things that initially i don't think it was like really a nefarious reason why the

management engine was initially started it was part of this sort of business push to um to make it where sysadmins can you know remotely control a device at a lower level than the operating system to reinstall or repair, etc. And then it turned into this, wow, this can actually be this black box that does a tremendous amount. So it actually now has its own separate core.

It's an ARC core. But the thing at the end of the day is that it can be completely removed. So we've actually proven it can be completely removed and the machine can operate, but it happens to operate for 30 minutes because there's a little watchdog timer that disables the CPU or actually powers it off. So now we have 93% removed. The last 7% is this watchdog timer.

So you're telling me, just to pause there, in the process of trying to figure out how this damn thing works and how to disable it or just bypass it altogether, you're getting down the path. Oh, my God. I think we got this working. High fives all around everybody. We did it. And then 30 minutes into it, it shuts the system down.

And it's like, then you discover there's a timer in there? Yeah, that's exactly right. So there is a separate watchdog timer that basically, when the machine first powers on, there's a signature check against one of the partitions within the management engines. You can think of it like a zip file of partitions. But the signature check is only on the very first file or partition of the management engine. So the networking stack and the kernel are in other partitions. So we can actually zero out all the partitions except the one that has a signature check.

And then if the signature check fails, then this watchdog timer triggers for 30 minutes. this watchdog timer triggers for 30 minutes. But because we manufacture the motherboard, we actually have fusing capabilities that get us a little bit deeper than what would otherwise be there. So we can actually start to really debug and say we can put the CPU in a debug mode or the management engine in a disable mode.

So we're starting to test those features out. And obviously the end goal for us is we want to have a device that can operate with completely free software throughout the entire stack from the very first firmware loaded all the way through all the operating system and all the applications that run. Capitalist sense would tell me that there would be some other market leader that would seem to want to jump to the call of organizations that want to have more secure laptops, especially in a post-Snowden era. It seems like there could be even entire governments that would want computers that are rid of management engine that's controlled by a U.S. corporation. Why, in your estimation, is this something that's not being – why is Lenovo not leading this charge? Yeah, it's such a great question, and I don't happen to know the answer because, obviously, we're focusing on that. The area that I think – the only way I can really sort of answer that is that, for us, we need to have the entire stack, and it's really a game of depth. So if you're operating system, if you're going to be running Windows 10,

well, then you're exploited at the operating system level. So for us, we look at it as the game of security is a game of depth, and so we want to have all of our applications running free software, the entire operating system itself, the kernel, not running any binaries for wireless or for GPU. And then of course, the bootloader being freed, and then the firmware at the lowest level being freed. So and obviously, the more of these documents get leaked, it just really underscores the reason our, you know, our model. But it seems to me, Todd, like it's such a Herculean effort to actually do this, that by the time you get to completely done, there's the real honest potential that the market could shift out from underneath you.

And like AMD's PSP system, the system that a lot of people are talking about now that Ryzen is getting more attention, could all of a sudden start showing up in a lot of laptops. And now the market demand might start leaning that direction, right, as we finally get this problem checked off. Do you see what I'm saying? It feels like as long as we're fighting this uphill battle, we might never really be on time with the market demand. Or do you think it's possible? So I absolutely think it's possible.

And, of course, with AMD right now, it's a lot of potential. But we're not at the point where even if they were to say tomorrow yeah let's go ahead and release this you're talking about 2018 by the time they actually have something that's you know into a product yeah um and and i also think feel like right now it's a lot more talk than it is actual product and the reason is because now's the time where they can talk about it and have the you know the theories start you know spewing around and at the end of the day it's going to be a business decision. Where in their triage list is it going to be to release a source code for the Giza binary?

It's going to be way down their triage list. We're pushing for AMD to release it as well as pushing with Intel to say we want an MES design. The cryptographic bond and the goal for a lot of these corporations to really lock up a lot, that you can start to see, especially with the CIA Vault 7 release, that it's clear that at least the CIA, as well as the tools that they were using, that they have the philosophy, right? If you were to ask me, hey, you know, I want to hack all the encrypted communication services on Android phones. How should I do that?

I would say go a level lower than the application. Right. Target the operating system and you own everything above it. Or the baseband in some cases. Yeah. So the same way it goes for management engine or obviously phones, which with the baseband, which we're working on, we actually have all of our hardware specification ready for manufacturing a phone that'll come out in 2018. So these are all things that we're

really concerned about. But to answer your question about, you know, where's the market demand and is it going to shift from underneath us? I think where everything is trending right now is that digital rights for users are getting stripped. Privacy is getting worse. And those who want to have access to your data or your devices is growing in number. Yeah, I think it's a market. I think it's a market that's going to just get more and more leaks are just going to keep coming out. Joe, you had a question about working with Intel.

Go ahead. Yeah, so Todd, when you originally launched your crowdfunding campaign and everything, you were very positive and very optimistic about working with Intel and trying to get the various binaries freed. Presumably, you've come up against quite a lot of walls with Intel. I just wanted to ask, is your optimism still there? I mean, you've talked about what you want to happen, but I mean, what you realistically think can happen?

And that's really what I'm getting at here. Sure. That's a great question. So one of the great things about buying product from Intel is that we're cutting checks to Intel, and so therefore we have account managers, and we have, therefore, dollar leverage. Now, our dollar leverage is obviously a whole lot smaller than Google, but as we grow, then our dollar leverage starts to increase where we can start making demands to Intel, and they'll start to actually listen.

So we have submitted a petition. We've talked with Intel about creating an MUList design. Actually, they came up with the name from us discussing it. There wasn't anybody talking with Intel about having an MUList design. So as an example, Google, once they had Corbett running, then they were perfectly fine with using the MRC bin that they used from Intel's FSP binary. So Google at that point was content with core boot running, even though they're using that binary.

And we're just digging levels deeper. So for us, we're looking at having our solution in parallel. There's actually three parallel paths. The first is communicating to Intel our intent and what we want, and then they in turn actually share documentation, BIOS writing documentation, so that we can start to find, oh, maybe there is something actually within the existing documentation

that nobody's been able to really exploit. Such an example as being able to disable the management engine from NVRAM fuses on the CPU. So those are some things that Intel is helping with. Oh, so the fusing tip came from Intel's documentation? That's correct. Oh, okay. Yes. So that's one where by having an account manager and having access to documentation allows us to have more knowledge than, let's say, just someone else just trying to plunk away and hack a reverse engineer and try to figure things out that way.

And their documentation, Intel's documentation, is immense, right? So we have a lot that we can end up doing that way. That's the first avenue. That's basically working with Intel saying, hey, you know, you're not the enemy, right? We want to continue to use your hardware. We want to purchase from you. But these are the goals that we want. Then the second option is that we, by using the documentation, find our own way to either modify code or disable the ME. One of the nice things here is that it's not actually hostile towards Intel because we're not trying to reverse engineer and release a management engine replacement. What we're trying to do is just not use it, period. So that's not a hostile relationship with Intel to go down that path. And then the third path, of course, is looking at alternatives.

Do we end up wanting to use AMD, or do we want to actually scrap it and go to something that's really low-powered? So with AMD's talk, that ends up helping us with the leverage where we could possibly switch to AMD or continue to talk with Intel about, you know, about switching. So I am very optimistic because, you know, I get to read through the documentation on, you know, the ME Design for BIOS Writing Guide. It's a, you know, 19-page document. So Intel has very deep knowledge and documentation on areas that you'd be really surprised about. So to answer your question, I'm very optimistic because Intel has been helpful

in providing documentation, and the long-term game, it might very well be that they don't put out an MUList design and we end up finding it something ourselves through their documentation or maybe in a much later version that they say that there is a market demand for that and then they offer that up to other manufacturers. So I guess, Todd, here's the pessimist in me because I see it almost feels like two scenarios. pessimist in me because I see it almost feels like two scenarios. Scenario one is a triumphant arrival at some solution that essentially gives people the ability to use LibreBoot to bypass and disable Intel management engine and everybody's happy.

Less blobs, everybody's happy. But all of that work will just quickly be snapped up by vendors like System76 and Intraware. And so there won't be a market advantage that lasts very long. So that's scenario one. Scenario two, though, but scenario two would be that Intel just decides to do this, and then everybody gets it, and market advantage is also lost there. So what's the upside for Purism long-term here? Right. So there's a couple pieces.

So first of all, you have to be running core boot. So if your machine's not ported to core boot, then you have to do that port. So it's not like by us disabling the ME. Okay. That's right. That seems like that would be within the range of other OEMs, especially those that are getting more serious

about their own manufacturing. It seems like that could be within their capability. Oh, yeah, absolutely. They would just need to say, I'm going to invest and actually have that ported. So that's step one. But of course, right now, everybody's using EFI or UFI

except Chromebooks, right? Or, you know, pre-2008 machines, right? Lieberboot-based machines. Yeah. So that is obviously an advantage that we would end up having over others is that we're investing in that space to have a really depth of credibility on the security side of things. That's true. Yeah. So that's point one. But yes, if System76 or even, let's say Dell decided, hey, you know what? We don't like all these threats coming in from

Vault 7 where all of our machines are gutted because it's an EFI threat, that they could end up putting Corbwood on. At that point, then, they would still be using the default installs from Intel. Then they would have to actually go through the fuses that we have, and, of course, we'll publish what fuses we're targeting because it actually helps users. So then they would be playing catch-up. But the question is are they going to want to have the same depth of credibility that we have? If they're installing Windows, the depth of credibility is completely pointless.

Yeah, I mean it seems like you – yeah, I guess your point there is by trudging this journey, you'll establish the Purism brand as sort of being like the – not only one of the first on the scene with it but also having expertise with it, which is obviously going to give it some credibility. So I guess that is a good point. But what about if Intel just decides to play ball? Do you feel like that's still a net win for Purism? I do, and the reason is because then it actually allows the users to control it, which would be that the ME is going to be on by default. That's just how it's going to be.

allows the users to control it, which would be that the ME is going to be on by default. That's just how it's going to be. So a manufacturer or a reseller who has access to being able to fuse a CPU would be able to. So our proposal to Intel is actually to add one of the fuses that we get as a manufacturer, because we get the CPUs in manufacturing mode. So then we have the capabilities to fuse the CPU, and right now we have 14 fuses that we can fuse. And we're saying make a 15th fuse that allows us to actually disable the ME, and you can ship it where it can be fused by default, but it'll have the ME by default, and then we can fuse the CPU during the fabrication process

to disable the ME. And then that's all we need. So in that case, then, you know, it accomplishes a few things. The first is that we would then have a CPU that from Intel, that's Intel supported, that would allow us to be able to disable at the lowest level a core that we don't need. to disable at the lowest level a core that we don't need. The second piece is then it doesn't change that for any of their other buyers. Right. Because they would get what they had to begin with. And they likely would not be all that encouraged or motivated to make a change, like going back to Lenovo or somebody, because they'd already be pushing this if they were.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay. That makes sense. All, that's exactly right. Okay, that makes sense. All right. Wow. Okay, well, I'm glad you guys are working on this, because going back to Wimpy, I imagine, Wimpy, your goal here is to have something that's sort of a unique, fully open-source stacked machine, right?

Are you going to put, like, Triscoll on this thing, or what's your plan, Wimpy? It was shipped with Triscoll 7. Oh, really? Yeah. Are you going to keep it, or is this a Mate test machine? Like what's going on here, Wimpy? What's your why? Why this machine?

It's a curiosity. Okay. You know, as we said earlier, you know, there's some Bitcoin value at the moment. There are some unusual items floating around and this was one of them. And I was interested to have one of these and actually have a poke around with it and actually retrofitting you know the the core boot libre boot on these devices is not is non-trivial so i wanted to have a play uh and see what it can do and what it's doing the first thing i've noticed is it boots very fast that that initialization piece is i bet shockingly quick so it makes that old machine seem quite pokey i've heard that comparison yeah i've heard that i've had the same curiosity

as you um and so is this uh is that is the end goal here to uh experiment with uh just the just the process uh yeah it's just it's just another interesting bit of technology i'd like to learn more about uh and i've had a helping hand in that i haven't had to um uh wrestle uh the laptop open and um put it under my rather dodgy soldering skills somebody else has done that for me is it ssd yeah so it's been refurbished so they they've fitted it with a Qualcomm Atheros wireless N card and a Samsung 850 256 gig, and it's got 8 gigs of RAM in it as well. So it's like a full… So not bad.

It's actually sound nice. It's Wes's laptop. Yeah. Actually, I bet it's not. If you want a new laptop, Wes, I could… Yeah. I bet you the performance is not that bad. It's actually very decent.

It's actually very decent, yeah. And I've got an X201, which I've had for a while, so I know how to compare the performance, you know, because the 201's a little bit newer. And, yeah, the thing that surprised me, because it's obviously got the SSD in it, is just how quick the machine comes on and actually starts booting. So it comes up fast, but it's just not having to sit around

and wait around for the BIOS and EFI to happen. It's very quick. But it is still a Core 2 Duo, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've not done much with it. Like I say, I've literally turned it on, been impressed by the boot speed and done the updates on the box. I've not actually tried to it. Like I say, I've literally turned it on, been impressed by the boot speed, and done the updates on the box. I've not actually tried to use it for anything serious yet, but I'll get to that.

Huh. I kind of want to check back in if I remember. I won't be here next week. Oh, I won't be. Yeah, so I'm going to be on the road next week. I think we're going to – I don't know who's going to guest. I haven't – Ooh, we get to find out.

Yeah, so much going on. I haven't – it might just be Wes. So everybody show up in the Mumba Room. We'll have a lot of fun. However, I do have this computer set up. So if we do have a guest, they'll be able to call in and they'll be able to talk to Mumble. They'll be able to hear them. So we'll see.

We'll see what happens. We may have a surprise guest host next week. But maybe in a couple of weeks, I'll check in Wimpy and see what you think. I think that's a good experiment. I think we may talk about it on the Ubuntu podcast. So you can have a listen there. Surprise. Go find Wimpy over there.

Surprise, surprise. And also, Popey's on there. So you can find Popey also, but he's not here today. Yeah, the Ubuntu podcast. One of the podcasts I am subscribed to. You can also, Joe is on Linux, late night Linux. I almost call it Linux after dark again because I keep thinking of the screen saver. Don't do that again.

I know. Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And that's a great show, too. So go subscribe to that as well. It turns out, despite what might be going on with those guys over at Linux Action Show. Can't trust them. Don't trust those guys. The Unplugged show is sticking around.

We're here. So we'll be here. I might not be here, but we'll all be here next week. It's a community. That's what makes us a community. You know, I thought about trying to join in Mumble, but I was looking at the timing for next week. Yeah. And I just—

You'll be driving like a bad man? I think it's going to be like peak driving. I think it's going to be like an 11-hour day for me driving. Well, Dylan's coming along, right? Just pop him up at the wheel. Yeah. Well, Hadiyah offered, like, oh, I could drive for a bit. Yeah, you know, the thing is, it's not just driving.

It's like then you don't know where you're going to be reception-wise either because you're moving so much. So I just feel like I would be, oh, we're at the pass now. If that were to be on a show from a car, man, that would be unbelievable, wouldn't it? Somebody? No, never. That would never happen, Joe. That would never happen. I'm heard of somebody joins from a car.

Never. Crazy. Yeah. Chad was like, hey, by the way, Mumble's on Android. So we'll see what happens. But I think, well, something will happen next week. You just got to tune in and find out.

We'll keep it fresh. There will be show. There will be a show as long as these guys can figure out how to turn on the studio, which I think you've got. I think you got it.

I just stroked the beard, the magic beard, and everything comes up. When I asked the beard about it, he said, yeah, I mean, I think so.

I mean, the show might just be late. Yeah, that's what he said. That sounds, that's, yep, exactly. I'm like, okay, well. He's a he said. That sounds, that's, yep, exactly.

I'm like, okay. He's a realist, that one. That's fine, I suppose. That really is fine. You tune in over at JBLive.tv and you don't have to worry about it. You just get to watch the show go down. And Noah won't be here to bail you guys out either because he's going to be flying to Austin. Right, yeah.

So we're going to be in Tejas meeting up with Del. I wonder if they'll have any XPS 15s in the lab that I can check out. Go find them. I mean, if you see one in the hallway, just snag it. Yeah, man. Totally. All right. Well, that does bring us to the end of this week's episode of the Unplugged program.

Thank you for joining us. You can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get our live time in your local time of neck of the woods thing. Time zone thing. Also, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact for feedback. Linux action show at our reddit.com for potential updates and projects. Join us live in the Mumble Room, too. Get information in our chat room.

See you next week. Well, they will. I'm out of here. See you guys. And good luck. And we teach canonical a lesson. All right. So JBtitles.com, let's go do our title thing. up. All right. So, JBTitles.com,

let's go do our title thing. Now, I know that Nick Lobb, who I almost want to call Nick Bob in the show, had a question regarding the Intel Management Engine, probably for Todd. So, Nick, go ahead. I saw you asking. You get first go. Hello. Todd left, actually,

just a second ago. Oh, he did? Oh, was it for him? Okay. Well, thanks, Todd, for joining us. Goodbye, Todd! We appreciate it. Maybe it was our sick tunes drove him away.

Jail That Whale. What's that a reference to? Oh, the Docker stuff? That's pretty good, too. That is pretty good. Boot Free or Die Tryin'. That was my suggestion. Yeah, I like it.

How rowdy of you. Who should I have guest co-host next week? Who should I ask? Because obviously I can't make them do it. Right. Who should I invite? Here's an idea, Dan Lantell. Hey, all me all.

Sweet Louise. I just called it down. I want to take Sweet Louise. I want to put him in my lap. I want to pet him right now. You could ask Chase just to throw it as a wild card sweet I want to put my lap I want to pet him right now You could ask Chase Just to throw it As a wild card

I feel like I feel like I could ask Joe But I feel like It's a lot of asking That's a lot of Joe I mean that's a lot Asking a lot of Joe But yeah

That would be good That would be good For people to get to meet Joe That's a good Mix it up Have Michael I'd have to Not be in my car

But I could Work something out Yeah we don't want to Impose too much on you So I have Skype set up here and Joe could call it. Alright, I like this, Joe. He's going to throw you under the bus and I'm going to go with it. Joe, if you're down for it,

boy, that sure solves my problem right there. And it actually probably is a good chance for the J.B. Honest to get to meet you more. I can talk about how great DigitalOcean is, honestly, to be honest. There you go. Yeah, that helps. I heard the read in the plug for the affiliate in Late Night Linux.

Yeah, it's legit. Yeah, man, I've been using them for years and I'm happy with them. All right, awesome. Well, that's awesome. Joe, thank you. Boom, problem solved. You can just be able to Skype

to Jupyter Broadcasting and Wes, you'll be able to just, should, I think I'll set it to automatically log in. Yeah, let's do it. Cool. Well, that's awesome. Thank you log in. Yeah, that's it. Cool. Well, that's awesome. Thank you, guys.

Well, that's excellent. And Wimpy, I'm glad you're – Right, I'm officially Joe's agent now. Yeah, right? All financial transactions I'm taking 20%. Representing – whoa, there's Skype. There's Skype. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to log into Skype. I'm going to turn off all of the notifications for you right now, Wes. I appreciate that. I'm going to hook you up with that. A boast. Yeah. I hate those so much. And Wimpy, I owe you a beer or two, that's for sure. Yeah.

Beer's only redeemable at LinuxFest Northwest. I'm going to pull my finger out and sort my travel out this weekend. Atta boy. I'll be in touch. Atta boy. Atta boy.