LINUX Unplugged - Episode 196: Orange is the new Red (Hat) | LUP 196

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

Canonical is going for the IPO & that means some big changes. In a recent interview Mark Shuttleworth gives us a hint at the new purpose of the Ubuntu desktop.Plus Thunderbird’s future is uncertain, we get our hands on System76’s Galago Pro & more!

Very excited about today's show. We have something very cool in studio today. And you can tell I'm excited about it because I'm flashing a USB drive right now. And I only do it when it's for something really important. And it is important. It is very important. Yeah. You know what?

I just like it. You know what? The only thing I appreciate about Etcher is you can plug in a thumb drive after you've launched it and it still detects it. Yeah. Because I sometimes, oh, stupid me. Did you get a chance to talk to the resin guys at the fest? No, I don't think so.

Because they're the ones who make Catcher. Oh, well, I would have loved to. I did not. That would have been great. But somebody from the fest did drop something off

on their way out of town. Oh? Oh? Yeah. Yeah. In studio today for the show, I'm doing a first hands-on with the new

System76 Galago Pro. Look at that. Yeah, so we'll be talking a little bit, and we're going to be using that flash drive to put a proper arch install on this. I'll be testing under Ubuntu, too. I mean, because you have to. Yeah, well, I mean, you've got to check it out as shipped. You've got to check it out as shipped.

So we'll be talking about the System76 here in a little bit, into the show, but first you've got to get that flash drive. You know, first we've got to get that flash drive taken care of. Then we can move on. Then we can move on. Then we can move on. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 196 for May 9th, 2017.

Welcome to Linux Unplugged, Jupiter Broadcasting's longest-running Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. Welcome to the flagship Linux program on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network. That's right. Mwah! Mwah! Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get it away there. With the power, you see. Well, welcome to the show.

I even managed to override the mic a little bit. I got so excited. We have a great show on the program despite this clipping. Coming up, Wes, I'm thrilled to say in studio we have the System76 Galago Pro. Whoa. Which we will be giving our first hands-on impressions on in just a moment. We have some awesome news from the community. We have big news for the show itself.

Which? Next level stuff. You know, I don't know if you noticed. Level. I don't know if you noticed. We're getting close to episode 200. Yes, we are. I know.

Isn't that shocking? That's wild. It's shocking, Wes. And so we have a little celebration coming up, and we'll tell you about our first bits of those plans. Our friends over at Mozilla have some big news. Ubuntu is safe on the desktop. Kinda. Kinda.

Kinda. Sorta. It's really confusing. I'll play Mark Shuttleworth's words directly, and then we'll discuss what it means. Server and IoT, though, totally safe. Totally. You're locked in. Good to go.

So we'll discuss that a little bit coming up in the show, as well as some news, some open source projects, and new things that we want to talk about, including the first one, a tool to dump your login password for the current Linux users. We'll talk about all that stuff. But first, you know what we got to do. You know what the appropriate thing is. You know what happens next. We bring in that virtual log. Time appropriate. Greetings, Mumble Room.

Hello. Hey. Give me a hug. Whoa. Dang. You know, that moved me a little bit. I'm going to be honest. You moved me to belching.

I really appreciate it. Hello, guys. It's good to see you. I've missed you. I feel like it's been three weeks, even though I realize we haven't missed a beat. I wanted to prepare you though because we all are now at risk. A great threat has fallen upon the – what? What?

Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was on cable news. No, we have a cool new plugin to talk about or application. It's called Mini Penguin. Mini Penguin. Not mini, Mimi. And it's a tool to dump the login password from the current Linux desktop user.

It's adapted from the idea behind a popular Windows tool called Mimi Cats. And it's just what you think it is. You run it and it takes advantage of the clear text credentials that are in memory by dumping the process and extracting lines that have the highly probable area that's containing the clear text passwords. Yeah. the process and extracting lines that have the highly probable area that's containing the clear text passwords. Yeah. And so in this example, you can see he's able to pull down the Apache user and password. He's able to pull down the one that the user that's running the GNOME process and the user

that's running the VSFTPD process. So it's not necessarily limited to just the current user. Yeah, that's wild. Now he's doing this with root credentials on this particular machine. So you have to have root credentials. But I think it's worth mentioning just this is possible because when you think about someone getting remote access to your machine, this helps kind of frame what they are capable of doing once they have access.

And this is a good way to also audit and test too. So it's also worth mentioning for legitimate uses. So you can go find it we'll have it linked in the show notes mimi program mimi mimi i don't know i don't know so there you have it we have uh c sharp you had a question uh on the top here go ahead yeah essentially is this uh is this something that would be closed by gr sec or pax which have recently you know as pointed out on the latest Linus Action News, they've kind of removed themselves from the process, the development process for the – or at least the patching process for the kernel. You mean is it sort of like the isolating processes from each other and not letting them snoop into areas of memory they're not supposed to?

Yeah, I think that is – Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think you're right. That's a great – that's probably a great example of why things like that are pretty important. And it's also a great example that, to remind us that this stuff sometimes is just running in memory somewhere.

Like, you can have, like, the best encryption on your file system, and you can make sure that you keep all your applications up to date, but if someone's locally on your box and the stuff's in memory, well, not much you're going to be able to do about it. Unless you do something. It's a lost cause. Yeah, unless you do something like C Sharp's saying there.

C's harp? No, it's C Sharp. Like C Sharp. I get it. You got it. You're a clever one, Chris. Are you a C Sharp developer? It's more of a music pun.

Oh, really? But also a DSP pun because I'm into DSP as well. Oh, nice. I actually went musical first and then I thought, no, no, this is a geek crowd. It's probably he. I can tell. You guys have the best compression of pretty much every Linux podcast. Well, thank you.

Well, that is just the nicest thing anybody has said to me all week. Dang it. Those are the things no one else will notice. Yeah. We also have the best. Oh, man. It's so appreciated. Anyways.

We also have the best mic clipping. Nobody has our mic clipping. That's right. 20 dB over, baby. Guaranteed. All right. Well, we've been following the saga of Thunderbird and we have finally some resolution. Nothing's going to change.

Pretty much the weird, awkward relationship continues. But you know what? That's my interpretation. I won't put words in Mozilla's mouth. On the Mozilla.org blog, it says the investigations on Thunderbird's future have concluded. The Mozilla Foundation has agreed to serve as the legal and fiscal home for the Thunderbird project. But Thunderbird will migrate off Mozilla Corporation's infrastructure, separating the operational aspects of the project.

So this means just sort of like even less of what we had before? Yeah, I guess so. Not a strong change here. They write, legally, our existence is still under the Mozilla Foundation through their ownership of the trademark and their control of the update path and websites that we use. This arrangement has been working well from the Thunderbird point of view, but there are still pain points and build release localization and divergent plans with respect to add-ons, to name a few. These are pain points for both Thunderbird and Firefox, and we want them resolved. However, the council feels these pain points would not be addressed

by moving somewhere else. Thus, not much is really changing. What's next is Thunderbird Council and the Mozilla Foundation executive team will maintain a good working relationship and talk and make decisions in a timely manner, they say. The Thunderbird Council and team will make meaningful progress, they say. And they're going to give either side six months' notice if things get shitty and they want to separate. So this is what we get. This is what we get. Now, not addressed in here is the very fact that Thunderbird is really sort of up a creek

because Firefox is moving away from Zool. Yeah, right. And they're implementing new process technologies that essentially break all the add-ons and hacks that Thunderbird uses to exist. And none of that really seems to be addressed in this post. Nothing really seems to be changing other than now that these guys are going to be responsible for running their own infrastructure. So the section at the end titled A Bright Future, that didn't sell to you? You're not optimistic?

No, it just didn't grab me. It didn't really sell it to me. I think the real reason why is it feels like exactly what happened to Firefox, only way more dramatically worse because solutions like Nalaeus are really starting to gain traction. I talked to a dozen people at LinuxFest that are using Nalaeus. Noah is using Nalaeus now. You use N Nelaus. Noah is using Nelaus now. You use Nelaus. I mean it's just – I know that there are several people in companies that we're familiar with now that are switching over to Linux on the desktop and Nelaus for their mail client. And there's plenty of other really good ones too.

We're going to talk about System76 in a little bit and they're eyeballing Geary. Is that right? Sure. Future is not bright. Not bright. Mumble Room, any thoughts on Thunderbird before we move on? I hate to be a downer, but I know it's a topic that people actually seem to care about, because we get lots of people submitting links to Thunderbird stories.

I was trying to find this last time when we were talking about it, and I couldn't find anything. So I found this blog now, but I really have no thoughts at this point outside of I'm still going to be using Thunderbird while I read this and then decide what it means to me. I think that's fair because it's not like the world is crumbling around you. You still have Thunderbird if it's working for you, and you're perfectly fine for a while.

Yeah. Okay. I think that's a fair assessment. Anybody else? Okay. I think the harder part fair assessment. Anybody else? Okay. I think the harder part is like what would you recommend to a new user if they were starting today? Probably Nolaeus. Yeah. I wanted to also just mention really quick. This has come in across our radar a few times throughout the week.

There's a – I'm going to say – I'm just going to call it a lap book. There's a 12.3-inch lap book for $329 pre-running Ubuntu. But it has something unique. It has a 2K screen, which I really think is a sweet spot. Interesting. I love a 2K screen. Oh, at $329. That's a pretty nice price.

Yeah, it's going to have an Intel N3450. So that's the Apollo Lake quad core with 2.2 gigahertz burst, and it has an integrated Intel graphics. So not a workhorse, but hey, it'll open your Chrome. Yeah, and you get almost all of the perks of a high-resolution screen without the baggage of high DPI. You can get 6 gigs of RAM in it. It has a storage slot where you can add more storage through M.2.

Not bad. Is that right? Not bad. It has a 36-hour 36-hour watt hour 36-watt hour battery, which is actually the same that the Galago Pro there has. Nice. This seems like it might be a really handy little travel laptop. You know, not your

main thing, but throw it in your bag and go. Yeah, I mean, for $330 US Greenbacks there. That is pretty good. And you can also, I think, get it with some Windows. I'm not familiar with it. Mmm. Now there's a bad taste in my mouth. Yeah, it's got like some sort of digital assistant that will read the weather to you or something.

Wow. Some people like it. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Listen, Wes, I got a secret for you. If you want to dig into the things, all things Linux, you want to get a little bit further. I really do.

If you want to go further, go to Linux Academy. Just go there. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You go there. You can get a seven day free trial to learn i'm not even gonna say try it out to learn to learn passionately about things like linux and things around linux aws for me when i first had to go hands-on for a client was a nightmare there was no resource like linux academy back then i just tried to go in and learn it

myself and it's doable but man could I have gotten so much further and really, really use my time better if I had something like Linux Academy. Also now, same is true for Azure. OpenStack conference is going on right now. A lot of buzz around OpenStack. You've probably seen a lot of news this last week if you follow the news closely about OpenStack. It's because they've got a big conference going on. We're going to be playing quotes from Mark Shuttleworth when he was interviewed there here in just a little bit. And it's a huge topic and it's a huge industry trend, especially for folks that want to build their own local cloud.

They don't necessarily want to be on another provider, but they want to have some of the benefits. OpenStack is essential to, and really Linux is essential to all of this. And so Linux Academy is the perfect blend because it's all things Linux put together by Linux enthusiasts, people that are passionate about this stuff. And then as they have grown, they've met the market demand. And now Linux Academy stands alone in this category. From containers to DevOps, big data, and all things nitty-bitty Linux.

Go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged and sign up for a free seven-day trial at linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. I just had to do a little dance there. Did you see me? That was only for you, too, because it's not like it's a video show. Nobody else got to see my dance, Wes. That was just you.

The Unplugged program. It was lovely. You should all be very jealous. If you're lucky, it'll show up somewhere. Opressity OS. OS, Opressity OS. It comes to an end. Like all goodity OS. It comes to an end. Like all good things, it too comes to an end.

They say it's been their privilege to develop the operating system and to be part of the community. But unfortunately, they no longer have the time required for the upkeep. I think they're shutting it all down too, like updates and all that kind of stuff. Boom. This was an ArchBase distro. I thought these were the big up-and-coming thing. arch base distros were the new hits the new hits yeah is the arch bubble popped wes maybe boy i mean we've got we've got anta gross manjaro is like almost weirdly popular it seems like i will say i did run apricity for like the better part of

six months. You did. It was nice. I mean it was really just Arch. That's why I elected to put it in here because you actually rocked this as your daily driver. Yeah. Good old Upricity. And it was a good out of the box Arch experience right? Yeah. Although. Little did you know they were struggling to keep it afloat. Right.

And that's always the risk with these niche smaller distros. It can be really hard, like, okay, is this something they're dedicated to? How much, you know, I know there's some questions like when Solus first appeared, how you decide, you know, the marketplace of ideas, which things are worthy of support, which things will actually get that support can be really hard to figure out. I don't know if a Presidio was unique enough or had enough of its own thing or, you know, just not enough support. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to piss on its

gravestone. I would say that I think when you were running it, I generally, you know, would have a reaction of, ooh, I gotta try that out. I never really had that draw. I was like, oh, okay, so it looks like I could get that with Anagross and I just changed the theme. And I never really could connect with what it,

and I'm sure it was more than that, but it failed to connect with me to what it actually was. And so in that aspect, I'm more inclined to go with one of the larger Arch variants or Arch itself if I want that experience. I think good on them. If they decided they didn't have the time for it, better to move on. Yeah, there's a lot of trade-offs both ways.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there you have it. Apricity, we barely knew ye. But thank you. It was fun. And it was great for Wes for a little while. I mean, if there's anyone who was using Apricity and hasn't tried Antigros, they certainly should.

Yeah, yeah. Go give it a look. Give it a look. Speaking of Antigros, ours just finished. Oh, did it? Yeah. Oh, very nice. Thanks, Wes.

Thanks for keeping an eye on that. You know who else is bailing out of Linux? Google. What? Yeah, well, very nice. Thanks, Wes. Thanks for keeping an eye on that. You know who else is bailing out of Linux? Google. What? Yeah, well, sort of. So do you have any familiarity with the Fuchsia smartphone OS project they have? A little bit. Yeah, it's like they're –

I hear it mentioned from time to time. Yeah, it's like they're skunk works kind of like in the back room project. Oh, that's what that smell is. Yeah, and unlike Chrome OS or Android, no Linux. It uses a new Google-developed microkernel called Magenta. And Fuchsia is running on top of Magenta. And in this case, Google will not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL. Oh, what's the license here? It's BSD, Clause 3, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Yeah. And dumping the Linux kernel might come as a bit of a shock to maybe some of you listening,

but if you look at Android itself, they really haven't been keeping up with upstream Linux kernel releases for a while. Android is maybe a little better off, but like the Google Pixel, you know, the— I had that thing right in my pocket. Which I think is—I mean, I think they have a current newer build and development that runs off a newer kernel, but the current shipping one, kernel 3.18, I believe. Yeah. That's rough. You should have seen it.

Oh, man. The only reason this should be a video show right now is so people could have seen your face when you. Oh, he says. Oh. That's just no good. That was good, Wes. I mean, I'm a kernel hipster, but still. That was says. Oh. That's just no good. That was good, Wes. I mean, I'm a Colonel Hipster, but still. That was good.

Yeah. Google's documentation describes Magenta as targeting modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processor and non-trivial amounts of RAM with arbitrary peripherals doing open-ended computation. Now, this is also neat because the apps, they're written in another one of Google's background projects called Flutter, a project written in Dart, which is Google's reboot of JavaScript, which on mobile has a focus on high performance, like 120 frames per second type app performance. It's also Vulkan-based, and their renderer is called Escher. And it promises to have volumetric soft shadow capabilities in its UI. Yeah, it's designed to run the design heavy material design from Google.

So their whole thing here is maybe a mobile phone OS that would free them away from the GPO. And if you look at it, the basic design elements just kind of look like Android. Like they are getting this to a point where this is going to be a one-to-one UI swap. If your stuff uses material design like all of Goog's stuff does, it's going to look like – it's just going to look better. You wouldn't even know. Look at these design mockups and these early prototypes. It really does just look – yeah. Looks like Android. It's those shadows to look better. You wouldn't even know. Look at these design mock-ups and these early prototypes. It really does just look, yeah.

Looks like Android. It's those shadows, man. Whew. So even before we ever really get to good Android apps on the Linux desktop, that whole hope is just going to go right away? Well, the problem is I have is I love that everybody here has got a Linux in their pocket line. You know, they've got the Linux in the pocket. That is a good one, isn't it?

We're all walking around running the Linux. You know, I love that go-to because it's like so poignant, like how Android is Linux powered and ergo Linux is everywhere. And then you get into the cloud and you get into networking and all. And then, of course, huge. But just that whole line of, it's in our pocket. If they do this, they're going to exclude that. And that, Google would wrong me.

Yeah. That's all I care about. I actually, in some regards, hope that they do drop Linux. I wonder if this will be worse for small players, with less hope of... If there's less upstream development, they don't have the crazy momentum that the Linux project has, what's the hardware enablement story going to be like, right?

Like, sure, it's no problem for Samsung to make sure their latest system on a chip works with it because they want to use this platform. But what about third-party retailers who are trying to use more generally sourced components? I wonder if this will be worse. C Sharp, you feel like it would be a bad development. See, I actually kind of feel like it could be a good development

if they moved away from Linux. I don't know. I feel like if the NSA, which is so at odds with the citizenry, especially of the US, I mean, I'm in Canada, but is he constantly in contention with a government body, then I don't see how Google is really going to steamroll anything more than the NSA could. Okay, fair point. Well, Minimek, you actually make a strong point. One of the best things that's happened to Linux is manufacturers have to support Android. Huh. Well, the problem is, you see,

that if manufacturers start to develop drivers only for that structure system, Linux is out of the... Yeah, you can't use it anymore. So these devices will become some kind of wallet garden controlled by Google. I've always felt like Linux is a bit like time travel and that you can use it for powers of absolute good like Captain Kirk does to save the world from aliens that want to communicate with whales. Or you can use it to go back and save Hitler. And I feel like what Google does is they use Linux to surveil and monitor the people on a mass scale and then privatize that and sell it back to carriers. They use it for advertising.

The government gets access to it through information requests. And they do all of it with the assistance of Linux. And it's like using the ultimate tool for good for the ultimate suppression of the people. Privatized domestic spying is a huge problem. And they use Android to do it. And to me to me i just i can't get over it i can't it's like they took something great and they used it for evil it feels like and i in part of me hates the fact that linux is is is complicit in this and so if they stopped using linux on android this mass surveillance operating system that we all happily buy and then pay

carriers to track us even further and sell that information, at least they won't be using Linux to pull it all off, at least in the devices themselves. So that's worth it in your eyes? I don't know. Like relevance drop that Linux may have? I don't know. I mean, I feel like, I mean, I guess if this thing is awesome and gets a really good upstream community, but what will the governance look like, right? And will this ever be targeted for other devices? Will there be third-party ROMs? If they could do something

that would make operating system updates more deliverable to more devices and get more security patches out to consumers, this could be a net benefit for consumers too. That's true. I doubt that it's Linux that's preventing them from doing that. In fact, all of the issues I think that I have with Android, it's none of it's Linux. It's all performance stuff, which is on the Android layer. It's all the other things around Android, and none of it's because of Linux. It's not the kernel

that's stopping you. Yeah, it feels like if they wanted to solve some of their problems, dropping Linux isn't what they need to do, but at the same time, maybe it's, I don't know, maybe there could be some good for it. Although, Minimac makes a really great point. I really think that Linux has benefited greatly from device manufacturers

having to work with Android, especially at the embedded level. I think it's been huge. So that would be definitely a step back. We'll see. We'll see. I just, we'll see what happens. Project Fuchsia looks like it's going to be interesting and we're seeing more screenshots. We're seeing more stuff about it. Yeah, becoming real.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I have something really, really cool to talk about. So last week we mentioned the caster soundboard and this week, holy crap, Wes, I can say it has really gotten a life of its own. So thank you to everybody who's been taking a look at trying to make this thing better. We've been getting a lot of submissions and our poll requests. Oh, that's awesome. It's been added to the AUR too.

So now you can rebuild it from the AUR if you want to install it really easily. We have eight contributors, 31 commits, two branches already. And if you don't remember from last week, this is a soundboard for Hot Keen and Playing Back, all the little sound bites and music intros and stuff like that we have on our shows. And look at this, Wes. Here's how to build it from source. Here's how to install all the requirements on Fedora, Debian, even some Mac OS X thing. Oh, it's in Brew.

Look at that. Yeah, it's in Brew. Yeah. Well, you have to know it's not. Yeah, you get cute, and then you can pull it down. The whole thing is in the AUR, though. Gosh, that's not. Yeah, you get cute and then you can pull it down. The whole thing is in the AUR though. Gosh, that's cool. It's really neat to see the community come together like this because people are now pulling it down and playing with it.

And like producer Michael before the show was saying, you know, I just have it down on my machine. I've been playing around with it. That's awesome. It's starting to look really cool. It's starting to, you know, really come together. Yeah. So if you want to check out, it's an open source soundboard that we're working on right now with the community. And we're adding in features that there really hasn't been something like this on Linux.

There's a few on the Mac that are pretty good, but we're trying to do this on Linux. And Castor Soundboard is pretty much there. It's so awesome. And it's not even an Electron app. No, it's a C++ in the Qt 5 app, as they say. Castor Soundboard, an awesome community effort. Originally created a couple of years by a community member. He's back, too. He's in there working.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, it's... That is so cool. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Yeah, Covariant Sensor, or Covariant Tensor, I can't remember. It's something like that. Yeah, that second one. Producer Michael's in there. Maelstrom's in there, chasing logic. Of course, the Beard's in there. ASC is in

there. G-Dog is in there, Freak Labs is in there, Freck Labs, whatever he goes by. So thank you guys for working on it. You can see the little spike right there in the activity. It's really cool. So it's Caster Soundboard, and we'll have a link in the show notes if you want to play around with our free open source soundboard that we're developing for production

purposes here at Jupyter Broadcasting, but really creating it so the entire community has something they can mess around with. And it's like Caster Soundboard-Git if you but really creating it so the entire community has something they can mess around with. And it's like caster soundboard dash git if you want to install it from the AUR. Now, oh, I wish I, speaking of the soundboard, I wish I had my soundboard set up right now because I would totally do a breaking news clip because this is breaking news right here on the Unplugged show. That's right, it is. So Linux Unplugged is at an interesting point.

It is, it's the last big Linux show that we have right now. User Air is about to start back up. Linux Action News is about to start. Ask Noah is brand new. Growing. Growing. The brand new. And so really, the now Linux powerhouse in the Jupyter Broadcasting lineup is Linux Unplugged.

So let's take a moment and talk about something we're doing as Episode 200 closely approaches us. This is between you and me and the audience of the community listening. So nobody tell anyone, we're going to go into the cone of silence. I am deeply concerned. All right. So the cone of silence here, I just love that clip. I had to have a reason to use it because I actually want you to tell everybody. We are launching a Linux Unplugged subreddit to replace the Linux Action Show subreddit. It always felt like Linux Unplugged was kind of like the younger sibling that was tagging along Linux Action Show and being like, I want to have fun too. I want to have a subreddit.

We like Linux. Yeah. And so now, no, no. We're grown up. We graduated. And so now, no, no, we're grown up. We graduated. And our Linux Unplugged is officially a thing, and we're hoping it can be used to input content, give us feedback for the show. Really kind of, you know, let's take another shot at this and make something that could be possibly known as one of the cool places to get really good conversation and discussion around a story and links around Linux.

One of the things that I am really thankful for for the community of our Linux Action Show is what an awesome collection of just good Linux news resources it is. Yeah, absolutely. There's other Linux subreddits, but we always had the best stuff and sometimes first. And I love that about our Linux Action Show. I'd love to see that continued at Linux. And it was like an organic like this is exciting to me. I want people to you know talk about this. Yeah and I would love

to also speaking of things I would just really love to see for like our goals and our intentions for this like this is like my high point items is the conversation around these stories insights people's opinions but like a good level discussion that is really kind of valuable and helps give people a better idea or thought or see a different perspective on a story.

Nothing that gets like all flame-wary, but just good discussion and context around stories can be so valuable and also help weigh how the community is interpreting the story. So I know if I – it doesn't always necessarily decide if you should go on a show, but man, it helps our discussion in the show a whole bunch. So if you want to participate, reddit.com slash r slash Linux Unplugged. We also don't forget we have the other subreddits. We have rJupiter Broadcasting, rAskNoah, Coda Radio, TechSnap on Filter. They're all rocking and rolling too. Yeah.

I'm really thinking it could be neat. And maybe like in the next 200 episodes, this place will blow up too. Yeah. What do you think, Wes? Do you think it's crazy to launch a subreddit in 2017? Are we nuts? No, no. I think it makes sense. Does it? I'm a, Wes? Do you think it's crazy to launch a subreddit in 2017? Are we nuts? No, no, I think it makes sense.

Does it? I'm a little worried we might have lost it. Maybe we've gone crazy. Maybe. I mean, we'll see, right? We're taking a risk. We're going to try it again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose so. I suppose so. I mean, the Mumble Room is always a good place to go to. The Mumble Room is wonderful, yeah. It's like a direct place to talk to us.

In fact, if you want to join us live, go to jblive.tv on Tuesdays. We're almost always live at 2pm Pacific and we just kind of lock it there so that way you know when to join the mumble room. You can get it converted to your local time at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. You can get in our chat room and if you do

bang mumble, you'll get the server information. And then you connect. We do mic checks and we ask that you have headphones on, you have a headset or a good microphone of some kind that we can at least hear you clearly. And then you get in, and you can chat with us one-on-one. Yeah, all right. So anyways, I made a post up on the – I don't really have much more to add.

I guess that's kind of it. I made a post up on the Linux Action Show subreddit. If you guys want to read more, and I have the details in there. That is linked in the show notes. Yeah, so thank you, everyone, to our Linux Action Show. That has been such an awesome resource for not just Linux Action Show, but also the Unplugged program. The discussions there have been helpful.

The stories have been helpful. And I ask that we take the best of all of it and we move to Linux Unplugged. Yeah, exactly. We take the best and we do it all over again. I'm not afraid to start to build all over. Just bring it up from the beginning again, exactly. We take the best and we do it all over again. I'm not afraid to start to build all over. Just bring it up from the beginning again, Wes. Also, be sure to check out LinuxActionNews.com. Yeah.

No www right now. Just LinuxActionNews.com. Subscribe to the RSS feed there because episode one will be landing very soon. There is a prototype beta episode over there. Skip it. It's fine. It's fine. But, you know, it's Joe and I sitting down for the first time trying out a show and it went good. And we're like, all right, we'll publish it. We have something to create the RSS feed around and we can start working with us. But it's not intended as the first episode.

It's more like a concept pilot episode. Practice. It's over there. But the RSS feeds are live now. The episode page is up at LinuxActionNews.com. So check that out. Also, Wimpy, who couldn't join us today, he's traveling, but did get a chance to stop by Ask Noah live at LinuxFest Northwest. Shit, did they have a good conversation. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So that's in the latest episode of Ask Noah. I would also suggest you check that out if you haven't listened to Ask Noah yet because a really thought-provoking conversation. And if you are an Electron lover or hater, I would really encourage you to listen to Ask Noah. Here's another thing that's really nice about Ask Noah. You always know exactly how long it is because he's also broadcasting on the radio. So it's always exactly the same length. So it's easy to fit into your schedule. Ask Noah 6 live from LinuxFest Northwest.

If you miss Wimpy on the Unplugged program, check that out. They had a great conversation, and of course you can find him on the Ubuntu podcast, too. It was so great to get to meet Wimpy in person. Yeah, that was one of my highlights of the fest this year. Yeah, and he really made the best out of the fest. Turns out he's even

more fun in person. Yeah, you know what's great about Wimpy is, this is what I really appreciated about him. If you got an inclination that he's a pretty cool guy online, it's like that, but way more in person. And that's what's so great. It's like when

you meet somebody in person and they're, they're not even, they're even cooler than they seem online. Like, just a genuinely really great guy and a gentleman. So it was great to get to meet Wimpy in person and hang out with him for the weekend. Odyssey, you made it back too, huh? So you survived the long drive? Good job, man. That's great.

You made it back just in time for the Hanford site to start to have an emergency. So that's got to feel good. Yeah. Yeah. Albert made it out here too as well as a whole bunch of other people. But we had a good time and it was a pretty cool fest. We had a little bit of coverage of it in the Linux Action Show on last Sunday, if you want to check that out.

All right, so I want to cover what's going on at Canonical, and I want to talk about what Mark Schellewer said today, and then I want to do our first hands-on with the Galago Pro. So we have much more to come. So I want to thank Ting for setting us up for the next bit of the show. And you can go to linux.ting.com to sign up and get $25 off your Ting plan in credit. Or if you bring a device or if you need a device, you can get $25 off a device. Now, consider, consider my friends this could

also be an opportunity to get a very reasonable usable smartphone that maybe gets updates for a little bit things like that because one of the great things about ting is they don't stand in the way of security updates they don't have any games to play they don't have some image they have to lay on there or some sort of weird ass services that the OS has to support. They don't care how you use Ting. It's just use what you want and then you pay for it. Your minutes, your messages and your megabytes, whatever you use, that's what you pay. It's $6 for the line. And that includes their awesome, great customer service, their fantastic dashboard to manage it all. That includes all of the great perks of Ting, like anything you would expect from a standard phone line, because it is, like your voicemail, your text messaging, picture messaging, hotspot, tethering. It's all in there for $6 a month plus your usage.

It's so fantastic. The average monthly bill per device for Ting customers is $23. I've been a Ting customer for over two years. Linux.ting.comcom You go there, you sign up, you try them out and you see what I've been talking about Oh, also really great they have CDMA and GSM networks so whatever works better in your neck of the woods you can use on Ting and if you go to another neck you can use a different network if you need to

It's, for somebody like myself who likes to go on road trips killer frickin' feature Linux.ting.com. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring this here unplugged program. Linux.ting.com. So Canonical is on the path to IPO, which is the initial public offering for those of you who might not be familiar with the term. And that means they become a public company with all of the responsibilities and duties therein i.e. obligations to make profits and things like that this is confirmed

by mark shuttleworth at the open stack summit he said that they are uh well they're pushing on so this is in the shadow of course of the recent announcement that they're dropping investments in unity 8 the phone and convergence and that mark and that Mark would be regaining the CEO title, stepping in for Jane. This is big. This is going to be a fundamental shift in the gearing of Canonical. Do not misunderstand. This is a huge development.

It's going to mean a realigning of the company's priorities, refocusing. And Mark seems pretty fired up about this. Putting the company on the path to IPO, he says, we must figure out what steps we need to take moving forward. Focusing Canonical on its most profitable business lines. Ubuntu is not going to die. Ubuntu is the default platform on cloud computing and Juju and storage and OpenStack and on

the edge. He says it's nearly unstoppable. We need to work out our IoT path. And at the same time, we had to cut out those parts that couldn't meet investors' needs. The immediate work is to get all of the parts of the company profitable. I mean, that sounds like what they'll need to do in the future. So, yeah. And so it's within that context that Mark was at OpenStack and The Cube, welcome to

The Cube live from the OpenStack Summit conference, asked him this question here. Sure. So the three legs of computing, personal computing, data center computing or cloud computing, and the edge, the IoT world, which is neither data center nor personal. Of those, I had dreamed of Ubuntu as sort of going mainstream in all three. Clearly, Ubuntu is the de facto standard now for cloud computing and the data center, and also, I think, arguably for the edge. Where we failed, and I feel responsible for miscalculating effectively, is our push into personal computing, phones, tablets, PCs.

is our push into personal computing, phones, tablets, PCs. Where we failed was our push into personal computing, phones, tablets, and PCs. And PCs. And PCs. Where we failed, past tense, which I think is also pretty important there. And yikes. You know, that to me sounds like a man who had a bit of a dream and that dream got crushed and now he's dealing with a new reality and he's just done with it uh that and you know he's like really he says he calls it

my miscalculation i think is what he said to sort of going mainstream in all three clearly ubuntu is the de facto standard now for cloud computing and the data center and also, I think, arguably for the edge. Where we failed, and I feel responsible for miscalculating effectively, is our push into personal computing, phones, tablets, PCs. Wow. That's a strong statement, and I think that is a statement that if you take it into its full entirety, it obviously represents a lot of reflecting on Mark on this particular issue. And so the question is, in this context in which he now views the landscape, where does desktop Linux fit in? Where does Ubuntu on desktop fit in? And so I think the desktop remains really important to us in support of developers who are really the lifeblood of free software and open source and IT innovation. But as a business, we chose to focus on these two, the cloud, where we are very strong, and IoT, where I think the story is only just beginning.

But again, we're at the center of everything. So they're going to focus on the desktop for developers, essentially, which means it sounds like a narrow focus. This is going to be our market. You know what's interesting about that statement? Sounds like Fedora Workstation. No, you meant something else.

You made me clip again, Wes. You made me clip again. You are getting me this week. You are getting me. I apologize, guys. It's all Wes's fault. It's my fault. It's all Wes's fault. It's my fault. It's all Wes's fault. It was good, Wes. No, now you made me forget because I was so good.

Whoopsie. No, it reflects exactly what Del told us. When we were down there, Del said, you know, we kept trying Linux and we thought it was going to be like this low-cost desktop. We thought it was going to be the cheap way to maybe take $100 off of a PC. So that's how we initially positioned it. And it wasn't selling. We didn't understand. People didn't want these Celeron machines and these Atom machines.

What they wanted was they wanted to develop on Linux. And so once we started creating the Project Sputnik and we focused on developers specifically with Project Sputnik, we started selling like crazy. Now we have 100 percent year-over-year growth. They're selling numbers that are just intense, right? Now, the reason why that – I think it's interesting that Mark's sentiment and Dell's sentiment lines up is because it must be reflected in sales numbers. The part that's disconnected from all of this for me is the thing that we hear over and over again is that Ubuntu is selling like crazy in India and China and that it's almost half of the PC sales over there or that you go into the stores and half of the store are Ubuntu machines and half the store are Windows machines and that Ubuntu is extremely successful in India and in China. And are all of those developers?

No, because then you're told that the story is, well, these are people that don't have a market bias, so they're able to go in and assess a computer not based on Windows or Mac or Linux, but just is it a computer and they're buying these Ubuntu machines and it's successful there. So it would seem like they also are getting quite a bit of successful in the totally new user market, but – and I hear that a lot. But then when we talk about it now, we're just going to focus on developers. Hang on, Chris.

Aren't a lot of those installations just getting wiped for a pirate version of Windows straight away? Perhaps. That is a possibility, yeah. Dell would say no, but I don't know. I don't know. Of course they would. Maybe.

And so you think that's why they're so easily ready to just jettison that type of user? They're not real Ubuntu users? Well, yeah. And as for the developers, well, what's the whole subsystem for Linux on Windows all about? Isn't that about developers? Yeah, seemingly so. Yeah, that or yeah, let's not go down

that path because that leads to a dark path because there's so many other solutions for that. I'm getting a mixed message. I'll tell you what, I'm getting a mixed message because while it's consistent from what Dell would tell you, Project Sputnik is only representative of their success in the

US market. Outside of the U.S., they're just selling to average users. And I think Canonical is saying we're not going to be targeting those users anymore. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of glamour there. I don't know about the profitability or the business incentives, but does it...

Seemingly, they're placing the bet that it matters more to become completely adopted and ingrained in these IoT and cloud markets than it does to be the low-end desktop for a lot of the world or just that like is the return not that great like they already have you know they'll continue making an open source desktop that you can install if people want to use it if hardware retailers they are already using it you know what does it get them to continue to invest in it and i think the the thing that we will just have to wait and see in this whole story is – and it's almost – it's getting to the point now where it's starting to, I think, pass its prime and we can move on until things develop. But how much of a desktop experience do they end up creating?

Like we will – the priority that the desktop has inside Canonical will be represented in what we get as a product in 1710 and 1804. or changes to make it more palatable in some way out of the box, that would seem to imply resources, testing, personnel, i.e. effort. If it is stock Ubuntu GNOME with no changes really, just hardly any, you know, we've just repackaged things up, we put it in our repo, and now we're going to give you security fixes, that to me would suggest a low amount of effort and energy and personnel, et cetera, put into the desktop. And that's just, the proof will just be, as your buddy Bill says, in the puddin'. It'll just be in the puddin' when it gets here.

Right there in that puddin'. Yeah. Under the skin. Yeah. Just right there, skin deep. Minimac, I will give you one more chance to chime in. Go ahead. Yeah, thanks.

So I guess Ubuntu will stay the base for a lot of distributions, and they will continue to publish a somehow default configuration for that system, but it's not their primary goal. Remember, China has its own Ubuntu distribution called Kalin. Right. I don't know if I spelled it right, but it will stay the base for a lot of distributions we all love. That is a great point, and I'm surprised I forgot about that, because that exactly solves that problem, doesn't it? Oh, of course. It makes much, that actually fills in the gap. Kylan or Kaylin, Kylan.

Of course that's why that's okay. Chillin'. What is it? Chillin'. Yeah, chillin'. Like chillin' with my arm. Chillin', right. Thanks, Joe.

It's chillin'. That is, of course, that fills in that gap, so that's why there's something stepping up Chilling. Yeah, chilling. Like chilling with my arm. Chilling, right. Thanks, Joe. It's chilling. That is, of course, that fills in that gap. So that's why there's something stepping up to fill that need. Oh, that makes sense. So that really, you know what? Jeez, the more I think about this, the more sense this makes. I think Canonical is going to knock it out of the park.

I think I've never been tempted to invest in a company. I don't know if I should or not. But, man, I would be tempted to buy a few shares in Canonical because what has been the criticism of Canonical all along? Why can't they just focus? Like they have these things that make money but they just keep going off and doing this stuff. And now that's exactly what Mark is doing. He's narrowing things down. He's going to go with what works.

And these are profitable aspects of the business. It's not like they have to figure out a way to make, they're not Twitter. They already make money. They just were spending it on stuff that wasn't making money. They're already going to make money. If you were an investor that wanted to get in on this market, how could you not be interested in investing in the company behind the thing that runs the most on AWS and Azure and Rackspace and on private clouds. How could you not want to invest in that company that has a very solid IoT offering that's pretty much ready to go and already being used by companies like Dell? I would be pretty much in on that.

So it seems like a slam dunk. And if they're going to let some of their other projects like Chilin or Ubuntu Mate or the Plasma, you know, Kubuntu slash Neon groups, they can continue to serve those markets. They can then now focus on the very thing that seems to be selling XPSs and HPs and System76 machines and make a great desktop there if they put energy into it. So they could be lined up for like a super home run. Like if they do this right, this could be – they could be lined up for like a super home run. Like if they do this right, this could be, they could be the next red hat. Don't you think?

And only, I think in some ways they're better positioned. I don't know about revenue wise, but they're better positioned in terms of a deployment in all of these markets that are making all of the money right now. Seems like investors are going to go nuts. Go ahead. But is it not the case they've invested all this money into the community stuff and the flavors of the money right now. Seems like investors are going to go nuts.

Go ahead. But is it not the case they've invested all this money into the community stuff and the flavors and now it's kind of like they can just almost abandon the desktop to them and they've put enough investment in and they'll keep helping them, but they don't need to pay developers so much anymore because they've got Ubuntu GNOME, which is fine

and they're basically saying we're just going to ship stock that as far as I understand it. Yeah, I think that is smart. It's focusing on what they can make a difference on, what they make money. Yeah, exactly. And they probably only need to support the desktop as much as it helps their own dogfooding and internal uses, right? It's going to be

great. I've been... Everybody coming up at Linux Fest, we've been talking about this stuff, talking about it. It's been a really big... I don't think anybody's ever talked about Ubuntu as much as they did this year. In fact, in years past, I've actually been like, where's Ubuntu? This year, there was a booth. This year, people were talking about it. It was a big topic of conversation. And what I realized was, is damn, did Joe and I pick a good time to launch Linux Action News? No kidding. It's like, nailed that and user error where we're gonna have a bunch of discussions and this show where the

mumble room and you and I can chew on this stuff like we've, it's never been better time to have shows, to be launching shows right now around Linux to where we can actually talk about this stuff in a way that's really appropriate for the size of the topic and all that. I think it's going to be an ongoing interesting point and we're going to be

watching a massive transition by a big player and I don't think I've ever felt better about their potential i think if you step back and look what they're doing here it's going to be the most sustainable long term for that company we all were sitting here waiting for them to pull the plug on the is and it really is sad that it means it's a lot of people are losing their jobs and i think we'll be hearing more about that pretty soon. And it's, you know, it is a very unfortunate aspect of this story, and I don't want to underplay it because some of those folks, some of us probably know, and, you know,

there really are some ambitious things that they were trying to do that would have been awesome if they could have super, like I was just talking about how awful Android is. Imagine if Ubuntu Touch had come along and saved us from that. Like there was high hopes. Too soon. It's still summer. I know. I know. So I don't mean to underplay that aspect of it. But at the same time, we were all holding our breath,

hoping that this thing didn't run the company into the ground because it seemed to us on the outside like it was an intractable force to defeat. Right. So while we can be sad or miss some of these elements, it's certainly better than a world that didn't have Ubuntu at all. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go't have Ubuntu at all. Yeah, yeah. So there you go. The Ubuntu desktop will remain important, but it sounds like it's going to be

more developer focused if I follow what Mark had to say. OMG Ubuntu also had a write-up on that particular aspect of the interview. And I have the entire interview where Mark also talks about taking over CEO roles again and some of the products

they're doing specifically for OpenStack. That is also available in the show notes, and you can read Joey's write-up at OMG. Ubuntu. Hey, Wes, you know what I do from time to time? In fact, I was just doing it this morning. Creating droplets. What? Creating droplets.

Wes, I'd be creating droplets like other people be creating problems. You're not using that API. Wes, I'm all about that API. I'll tell you API. Wes, I'm all about that API. I'll tell you what, too. I'm all about that dashboard. Yeah, I like that dashboard. What I love about DigitalOcean is somebody came to me today and they're like, I need to do something. I'm like, you know what?

We can spin that up on a droplet in no time. It's so nice to know that you can get started within seconds. You can do a full support, totally like installed stack with Ubuntu LTS, Docker and an application ready to go, or you can deploy a base system and set it up yourself. Beginner, expert, you're going to have no problems.

If you're messing around in the container space and you know, quote unquote, messing as in probably running your entire infrastructure on it now at this point. Hey, oh, you got it. You got it.

You got, guys, it's no problemo at DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean, honey badger about containers in a way that's epic. You ever done anything like that? Anything. Anything like that craziness? Like, oh, I don't know, Wes. Docker or LXD containers on that.

Their DigitalOcean infrastructure with the SSDs and the bandwidths and the CPUs. Yeah, it's amazing. I know it. It's amazing. Yeah, I got NextCloud going. I've even got, I'll tell you what, new Fed the CPUs. Yeah, it's amazing. I know it! It's amazing! Yeah, I got NextCloud going. I've even got, I'll tell you what, new Fedora installs. Oh! Go check out DigitalOcean's new

Fedora update. Little pro tip for you. If you want to mess around with Fedora on the server, specifically maybe Fedora Atomic, go check out DigitalOcean. You want to mess around with CoreOS? DigitalOcean. You want to go put an Ubuntu or Debian box into production? DigitalOcean. Oh yeah. Just go over to DigitalOcean. You want to mess around with CoreOS? DigitalOcean. You want to go put an Ubuntu or Debian box into production? DigitalOcean.

Oh, yeah. Just go over to DigitalOcean.com and sign up. And when you're there, use our promo code D01PLUG. You'll get a $10 credit. You can try out the $5 rigs two months for free. You can try out one of their high-memory systems or request early access to the high CPU. You'll be able to deploy in seconds SSDs for all of the drives, lightning-fast networking, highly available block storage, which you can attach up to 16 terabytes as a block device

to your Linux box. Tons of amazing open-source applications you can use out of the box. Community documentation that is the best. Load balancing as a service. Monitoring and alerting. And that is just on top of the simple straightforward pricing did you mention that block storage that block storage one block at a time up to 16 terabytes show up as a block device play with setup best why not why not and look at this west for three cents an hour you

can get a crazy great rig if you use our promo code do unplugged you apply that to your account and you get a ten dollar credit i know i know Yeah. I know. DigitalOcean.com. Go over there, sign up, use our promo code DLUnplugged, and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this here unplugged program. Program, program, program, program, program. DigitalOcean.com. Use our promo code DLUnplugged. I did a little dramatic there at the end.

Yeah, you did. Just for you. Speaking of things that are dramatic, holy smokes, am I excited about this Galago Pro. This thing is dramatic. A dramatic design. A dramatic flair. Look at where the power button's at. Isn't that cool?

Oh, right on the side. Interesting. Yeah, I like it a lot. So, yeah, I've had the opportunity here at LinuxFest Northwest to steal a Galago Pro and get my hot, grubby little hands on it. So I've been trying it out for about 24 hours at this point. So I'm not doing a review. I'm just giving you a first impression hands on. It'd be an unboxing, but

it's already out of the box. It never was in a box. Never was. It's true. It's true. It does have quite a bit of ports, which is really a crazy number of ports. And I've been reliably informed that the USB-C port on this is a 4 PCI lane Thunderbolt USB-C port, which is what you would need for a full external

GPU. That would be slick. Yeah, wouldn't that be interesting if that developed later on? So this Galago Pro here is, I think, a pre-production. So I'm sort of doing like an early review kind of look at it. And right now, I've just kind of got the in-bag, in-hand experience, carrying it around for about 24 hours. It's really nice because it goes right in the bag, a little bit of extra room because it's, you know, it's like 13 inches. It's not huge, yeah.

Screen's really nice and vibrant. I like the availability of the ports. I'm still trying to work out what the battery life is like because, like I said, I've just been messing around with it a little bit and I get different readings at different times. So there's all of that. We just tried putting an arch on this thing. That's right. It looks like it woke up from suspension. Yeah, and we're going to be, of course, putting Ubuntu back on this thing and putting the System76 PPA on there and all that. It's got an NVMe hard drive in there. Yeah. Super slick.

In fact, I think it actually has capacity for a 2.5-inch as well. Oh. That's awesome. You can have two hard drives on this little thing, which I think is really neat. Especially if you've got a bunch of clips you're editing or whatever. Hard drives on this little thing, which I think is really neat. Especially if you've got a bunch of clips you're editing or whatever. HDMI, DisplayPort, USB 3.0a, and of course... Is that Ethernet?

Uh-huh. That's Ethernet right there. It's got a little door. They say it's their best latch yet on those Ethernet ports that have the little latch on them. They say it's their best latch. You know, that's not one of those features that's big for me, but you know having heard noah talk about it i understand you know i understand that for some people that really is important oh my gosh i mean for me it's it's like fundamentals here because uh uh every day i'm copying gigabytes and gigabytes of footage around i think just for me like i'm

okay with the like usbc or usb dock just because if i need to use it then I'm going to set it down. I'm not going to a data center where I have to go plug in some Ethernet thing, but I get that people do. That makes sense. If your workflow was like, I'll just sit down at the dock. But it does say a lot about System76 that they've thought and put in the care

to put that there because they understand their user base and that people really do want it. This is essentially what I like about it is you get the advantages of a thin and light machine, but no dongles required. Right. W.W., you had a question. Is this part of the new System76? They're going to design it and make it themselves or not yet?

No, not yet. So they're going to do desktops first, and I would bet we would see that around the beginning of 2018. And then we will see laptops shortly or maybe depending on how it goes a little bit after that. Because you think about it, it's two problems you have to solve, right? First, you have to get the manufacturing plant up and going and get all the robotics and any personnel staffing that's needed, things like that. Then you've got to get – once you get the supply pipeline, you kind of have to work out some of the kinks. And to do your own custom laptop, you then are also custom designing the motherboard and things like that. And so I think they've got to work through all of those stages.

So this is from an upstream provider that they've heavily customized. In fact, they are the only OEM offering it in this specific configuration too. In fact, they are the only OEM offering it in this specific configuration too. So they do have an exclusive on their hands, but they didn't design all of the internal motherboard components and stuff like that yet. But they do work with them. Like right now they're working on refining some of the firmware cooling functionality and stuff like that. You've got to keep it cool.

You do, yeah. What did you think of the keyboard when you were messing around with it so far? It was pretty good. It felt comfortable. Nice to type on. Yeah, I really didn't mind it. Key travel's not terrible at all. I'd say the key travel's actually pretty decent really, especially for a laptop this thin. It's got a Core i7 in the

thing too, which is nice for a laptop of this size. Yeah, I'm looking forward to trying this thing out and coming back with a full review. Yeah, I think I'll really be curious to see, especially you've spent so much time with with various xps models and yeah dell offerings and previous system 76 right yeah yeah i had a chance to play with it some too at linux fast where they had their new theme and stuff on there yeah and so they had gnome 3 installed with their system 76 pop theme and whatnot i don't know if this is a consequence

of the high dpi and the beautiful screen, but the one they had at their booth, at least for a little while, the trackpad, it was just not, I think the acceleration wasn't turned up or hadn't been tuned at all, so that was a little bit like, that was not the best experience that I had there, so I'll be really curious what you think of it after some time. Yeah, I wonder if they had it with

a, I wonder if their system there had lib input or not. That's, yeah, I'm not sure. That can make a big difference. So, speaking of System76 and their GNOME intentions, Carl, the man behind System76, has posted essentially like a GNOME manifesto, if you will, over on the System76 blog. And he writes, Home sweet GNOME.

It's been a while, but we're excited to be back. And we've been playing with our new toy for the last few weeks. And he says they're going to make a consistent theme that was born in the desire to provide customers with a consistent experience all the way through the OS. Pop is bright and beautiful and very System76. And they're going to have Pop ship on their computers with Ubuntu in 17.10 this October. And they're already testing it, obviously.

Here's the different things in here. They talk a little bit maybe about working with KDE Connect, integrating KDE Connect with GNOME. And potentially, it sounds like he implies maybe some iOS support, because he says in this post, KDE Connect only works with Android phones, so I have to buy a new phone. Maybe we can do something about that. Hey, that'd be awesome.

Yeah. This, though, this one, we've got to talk about this one. We got to talk about this one. I'm really, you know, I'm not so sure about PPAs anymore. I feel like the world is moving on. But he writes in here specifically a portion about PPAs. He says System76 delivers fixes, themes, and drivers via the System76 PPA, which is Ubuntu's personal package archive. System76 PPA, which is Ubuntu's personal package archive. When Ubuntu upgrades from one distribution version to the next,

it disables PPAs, thus stopping customers from receiving updates to their products. Disabling makes sense for unmaintained PPAs. But for maintained PPAs, there should be a mechanism to keep them active. We will submit patches for update manager that adds a config file to allow listed PPAs to remain active during a release upgrade. He says that we think other OEMs, partners, and projects will appreciate this functionality as well. The only thing is that I'm reading there, which kind of sets off like a worry for me here is it sounds like they're going to fork update manager. And even if it's a small fork, like, but they're going to, they're going to have their own version of update manager that checks a config file. And then they will submit that upstream. And if OEMs or Ubuntu want to take that on, they can.

The issue I would have with that is at what point does it stop becoming Ubuntu? So if you have a PPA, a persistent PPA that persists through upgrades and you're applying fixes and patches to it between upgrades, is that still Ubuntu then? Or is that more like System76 too, which might be a good idea as well? Maybe that's a good idea, System76 too. Because I have found that in total, the disabling of PPAs is a better practice than keeping them enabled between upgrades in whole. Now, the idea here, of course, is System76 could test and fix things before they ever ship it. But it seems like you could still end up with a window where customers are jumping on board, they're upgrading before the PPA is ready, and it doesn't get properly disabled and things get broken.

I mean, it seems like this. So this is the one part of all of the strategy. I'm like, this seems like there could be a little derivative of Ubuntu happening here. There could be some upgrade shenanigans. But if they manage it correctly and they test it, which they do a lot of testing, they should be able to hammer out,

I'd say, 90% of the issues. So it should be doable. But it does sort of raise a little bit of a red flag for me. And I do understand why they would want that, right? Especially if a user's like, yeah, I'm going to update,

but don't know enough to go check out their PPA list or their sources list or anything like that to be like, oh, well, why don't I get the new themes or the – whatever. Yeah. I would wonder too if it would become less of a problem. So it sounds like they're going to upstream a lot of stuff.

And so if folks upstream just accepted some of these patches in, then they could reduce the amount of stuff they have to shove in the PPA over time too, sort of negating the issue over time. Maybe. But that would depend on upstream picking them up. But anyways, if you're curious about what they're going with GNOME, this is really interesting. And they toss in some details about the pop theme, which I think this is going to be really cool to see System76 get behind their own theme here and really do something different because it obviously could be used by other folks that aren't using System76 machines. So you could just end up having a well-known hardware OEM that's keeping a theme alive that just ends up being

a really well-liked theme on the GNOME desktop, which could be pretty cool too. We'll see because people are liking it. The pop theme is pretty good. It's forked from a couple of other themes, from I think both a main GNOME theme and also an ICON theme, and all that stuff. I think we had details about that in a previous show. But we say goodbye to Unity 8

and the dreams of what that had, and we say hello to different folks' take now on the Ubuntu GNOME desktop. System76 is definitely taking a leap here, because we don't really even know what Canonical is going to do with their GNOME yet. We've heard more from System76 than just about anyone else. Yeah, they're really going at it full speed.

It's more than just words because they had a Galago Pro, like I said, at LinuxFest running the stuff they're talking about right here. So they're testing and dogfooding it at System76 right now. And I was asking folks at the booth at System76 as they walked up, like, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? And, you know, different people had different takes on it, obviously, because it's always a taste thing. It's always, you know, people have different opinions on that. But it's definitely a very eye-catching theme.

And on high DPI, it really looks sharp. You get a good monitor. So what do you think, WW? Interesting times ahead? Oh, yeah. I mean, like, like, canonicals doing their move. System 76 is kind of like going, hey, we're going to up our game and be, you know, see how these two different companies have worked so close together, either go separately or they still work or, you know, things like that. It'll be interesting to see. Sure. Yeah, because what happens, say, if in 1804 it comes out that, well, we have this new Ubuntu human theme for GNOME and we're really happy with it and it's got all of our energy and effort into this. And this is what we think the Ubuntu desktop should look like.

Then what's System76 going to do do i would imagine they'll probably stick with their look because now this is going to be part of their branding switch to kde yeah actually i i think this is this is clever on their part is i think what their plan is if i remember right now i suppose all this is subject to change but i think they're going to have like a login menu entry item on like light dM or GDM that says System76 GNOME session or Stock GNOME session. So if you don't want any of this stuff, yeah,

you just choose that and then you just get the, whatever the Stock Ubuntu GNOME session is. Which is kind of like a best of both worlds. Yeah. That's a good way to go. Yeah, as long as it's not confusing for people, that sounds pretty nice. Yeah, so if you have questions about the Galago Pro, tweet me at ChrisLAS and let me know what they are, and I'll try to work them into a—

See if you can get them to run a fork bomb. Yeah, maybe. That's probably not what I'm going to do, but yeah. I think probably I'll have my review ready by the next Linux Unplugged. Oh, cool. Awesome. So yeah, I'm only going to run Arch on it for a couple of days, and then I'm going to load Ubuntu with the System76 PPA on there, and that'll really what the majority of the review is. And I would imagine by that, I'll have a better idea of laptop battery life.

And the other thing I want to test is what's laptop battery life before I put things like TLP on there and what's laptop battery life. What kind of improvement are you able to get here? And I'm not going to – I probably won't come back with like exact numbers because it's numbers because it's so varied based on workload. And it's not like I have some sort of stringent regime for battery testing. So I'll just give you my impressions on it. But I'll try to do my best job. So we'll probably have that. Chris, I've got a question for you.

Yeah, yeah, sure. I've got a question for you about the Galago Pro. Could you please do me a favor and try and spin up the latest alpha of Triscoll? I think it's Triscoll 8. And see what works and what doesn't. Because, look, I'm not going to use Triscoll. You're not going to of Trisco. I think it's Trisco 8, and see what works and what doesn't. Because, look, I'm not going to use Trisco. You're not going to use Trisco. But if you spin it up and everything works,

then that's a nice warm feeling, isn't it? That, okay, it's running Libre software. If the graphics doesn't work, if the Wi-Fi doesn't work, then it tells you, okay, it's working in Ubuntu Fedora Arch, but it's using some binaries. And then at least we'll know that. A blob, informal blob count. Yeah, so put the latest Trisco on there and see what happens.

I'll give it a spin. Yeah, that's a good idea. Thanks, Joe. And of course, if you are particularly interested, join us in the mumble room next week and I can try to answer your question directly. Otherwise, tweet me at Chris Elias. I'll try to get some of them in there. And if you want to get the pop theme,

I suspect there's, if you're on Ubuntu on 17.04 or 16.04, you can get the pop theme in Unity or GNOME by adding their PPA. Now, this PPA, I think, this PPA, I think, is just the pop theme, but I'm not sure. So just double check

on all of that. They have all the information in the blog post as well as links to the GitHub repo, which I think so Adapta was the original theme and Paprius and Fira, if I'm getting those names right, were the upstream projects that they've sort of

forked from. And I think they're contributing back up to those projects. Awesome. So check it out. We have the post in the show notes. And congrats to System76 for getting that out there and getting the Galago Pro close to shipping. It seems like there's a lot of excitement around there. There was also a lot of discussions there.

You know, one of the other things, I don't know if I mentioned, it's just one more LinuxFest. This is like littered throughout the show. Right, yeah. One more LinuxFest observation was a lot of new users at LinuxFest this year. Yeah, wasn't that wild? Yeah, folks that didn't yet run Linux. And so as a consequence, the Linux 101 courses were the standout hit. Right as I was going out the door, I talked to the LinuxFest organizers, and I said, so what were the big talks?

What was all the feedback? And he said the 101 courses, those those linux newbie courses were great um and uh in fact while we were at the booth during those courses we had people stopping by the booth going yeah well i went to the 101 class but uh it's standing and people are out the door in a line and there's just uh there's too many people in there it's hot so i had to leave so I think they'll probably expand that next year. So do you have to lay some Linux 101 on some people there? Yeah, we just quizzed them real quick. We said, call it Linux Academy.

I think it's a good sign that people that were just genuinely just interested in technology but weren't yet Linux users were there. There were more of everyone. There was kids there, my kids included, but there were more kids there this year than normal. I think in my impression, of course I don't have hard numbers, but it seems like I've never seen as many women there as I saw, which was a great sign. And like I said, new users, which is a great sign. A really diverse crowd, which was great.

Yeah, diverse crowd, great presenters, good booths, just a great fest overall. And he said I didn't have official numbers by the time I was leaving, but he said it's probably their biggest one. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. And boy, did their biggest one. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And boy, did it show in that expo hall. And oh my gosh, I have to tell this story. Maybe I'll try to get it in my vlog because it was so cool.

And I did have my vlogging camera with me, but they had a gaming den. Yeah. And it was the most badass gaming den I had ever seen. So they were all playing when I went up there, Rocket League. And so all of the machines were running Ubuntu, all had Steam with Rocket League. And then they had on the projector, because it's like a big college classroom, on the projector, they had spectator view where you could see everyone playing. So you could see the entire court. That's awesome. They had an elimination hierarchy scoreboard where you could see who won and who was getting eliminated and who was still the champion. They had prizes. They had great prizes they were giving away. I mean, I couldn't find the gaming den at first. And I started hearing all the hooting and hollering. I just went that direction. And it was high energy, a ton of fun, super well organized. And, you know, you really go in there and you see all these folks that are

new to Linux and they're just sitting down playing video games like it's no big deal. Of course Steam is on here. They just sit down. You didn't see people going like, what do I do? They just click the Steam icon, okay, Rocket League play, and they're on. My son Dylan sat down. He just started playing. He's never used Unity before. He just sits down and starts playing,

launches Steam. This is so cool. That's so cool. That's totally the face we want to put up for New Year's. Just, yeah, and, like, good effort, fun-spirited. They also had a robotics area where school kids have been building robots. And they had this robot that shot balls and ran a Raspberry Pi that was running Linux that did the optical image recognition so it could recognize objects in real time.

And so it was a remote-controlled robot that would go and have some autonomy for a short period of time while it recognized objects and then return control back to the remote user, built by freaking students, and up there owning one of the rooms up at LinuxFest on the second floor. So there was really cool stuff tucked around too. It was neat. And Sunday was way busier than any past Sunday. Yeah, it was like a whole other Saturday.

We had a ton of people watch Linux Action Show live. It was a good experience. You know, I went to one of the last talks in the day, and they were still like, you know, they were starting to take down the booths and stuff, but there were still tons of people around checking the talks. That was great.

Yep, yep, yep. Alan Jude shot the place down. Woo! He sure did. So if you want to see that, go check out the last Linux Action Show, which was just posted yesterday. And then I may have some of it in my vlog soon too. Speaking of the vlog, you can find it linked at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash rover.

The Texas trip to Dell and back, the series from that is now posted, which turned out pretty good, I thought. So if you want to see the trip to Texas, a little more behind the scenes at Dell, and then the crazy long haul back. Oh, I bet. It was nuts, Wes. I'm glad you made it. It was nuts. It was squirrel nuts at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash rover. That's where you go to find all of that.

Sans the squirrel nuts part. Just sans that. Yeah, just sans that. Unfortunately, as much as I regret it. Well, Wes, that brings us to the end of this week's episode of the Unplugged program. You know, it's good to be here on Jupyter Broadcasting's largest Linux podcast. That's right.

Maybe the world's. I don't know. I'm not going to make that. I don't know. I don't really know. If not, we'll work on it. In fact, help us take over the world at reddit.com slash r slash linux unplugged. Email us, jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact. He's at Wes Payne. That's right. I'm at Chris LAS. The network's at Jupiter Signal, and we're live at jblive.tv, where you can join us

in our virtual lug. Thanks for being here. We enjoyed ya. Hope you enjoyed us, and we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Goodbye, everybody! Say goodbye, Wes! Goodbye! everybody say goodbye Wes goodbye So did you hear the big news? The big news? With Amazon Echo and Alexa, you can use your voice to play music, control smart home devices, and get news and information. Yeah!

And now, introducing the newest member of the family, Amazon Echo Show. Hi there. This is Doug, first time dad. Yeah, we'll stop there because it just starts getting patronizing after that. But did you see the news? Yes, I did. Yeah, what do you think of the Echo show, Wes? It looks kind of, I can see why they're doing it.

I don't know that I'm interested in it. Yeah, they really pushed the video calling. Really pushing that. And I'm like, okay. Is there a time where video calling is ever actually going to become like a thing that people do a lot? I don't know. I actually think FaceTime actually is pretty successful. If you're going to go like a thing that people do a lot i don't know i mean ever i actually think i think facetime actually is pretty it's pretty successful you know if you're gonna go for that but yeah i know it's like i can see it for a long you know family people you see infrequently yeah work

meetings yeah sure but like for day-to-day i don't know they also introduced something else kind of new which i actually am excited about because i've got a couple of these devices, and this is supposedly rolling out today. Alexa, call Dad. Again. Calling Dad. Oh boy, what did you do? Alexa, answer. We crushed you! Alexa, hang up. sir we crushed you calling through the echo devices is actually kind of useful because i've got some here in the studio

i've got some uh and they also have a messaging feature so you know it doesn't have to be a call you can leave a message for specific individuals and it'll play that's actually not a bad feature i think so people that are people and the thing is is again amazon builds this lady in a tube once and sells it to you and then they just keep piling these services that is their way isn't it welcome to the future west what actually just two other alexa devices right for the yeah oh yeah yeah of course yeah but they're alexa send message to uh link to map for like what i can't find it. Products for gorilla masks. Yeah. I mean, there's going to be weirdness about it.

But the thing about the whole Echo strategy is the Echo themselves are Amazon's versions of the Alexa-enabled product. But there are many other products. Like, GE just launched a lamp, a really cool looking expensive lamp, but so cool. Like you kind of would want it. That also, oh, by the way, has Alexa built into it, right? Cancel.