LINUX Unplugged - Episode 197: That New User Smell | LUP 197

Episode Date: May 17, 2017

We review System76’s Galago Pro, have a crisis of faith about the future of desktop Linux, get completely blown away by our community, help you BASH better & more!

I don't usually go around from the rooftop shouting, have you heard of GIMP? Have you heard of GIMP? But this guy, four days ago, a story goes up about this guy who sucks so bad at Photoshop. He spent 10 years mastering Microsoft Paint to illustrate his book. And, you know, I got to say he did a pretty good job, Wes. It looks like basically the quality of The Simpsons. Yeah. He got a lot out of Microsoft Paint.

I mean, I'll give him that. When was the last time you did something like that in Paint? Shoot, I would tell you it would be never. Yeah. I didn't even know you could do something like this in Paint. I mean, you'd have to use wine, but still. He says, I hone my craft working long overnights at a hospital reception desk. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Then I decided to write and self-publish an e-book about summer camp in the 1980s. So it's pretty cool. It's all illustrated in paint. Oh, look at that. Yeah. But you got to stop and go, in 10 years, you never heard of GIMP? Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's been running the benchmarks all day long. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. We have a great show today.

You're already fired up and ready to go, too. You've been rehearsing. You've been practicing on that TechSnap program, so I know it's going to be good. Oh, yeah. As we go on the air, while I was at lunch, we have some really interesting news out of Canonical about what they might be doing with Ubuntu. We'll see. OMG Ubuntu has two posts.

We'll talk a little bit about the do's and then we'll talk a little bit about the survey, which may give us more hints too. I'm curious already. I do have a little bit of a crisis of faith this week. Been looking at some of the news coming out of Microsoft's build. Yes, I said Microsoft's build conference.

What? And they're bringing Bash to Windows Server. Service set. This is getting serious. I know. We're going to have SSH on Windows Server in legit ways. So we're going to be talking about that, what that could mean for Linux. We're going to help you with your shell stuff.

You got some shell problems? Well, now that it's on Windows, I mean, now it's serious business. That is literally what I was like. Well, now people are going to have a bunch of noobs trying it out. It was literally my thoughts. Some community stuff to get into. And then one of our favorite open source projects on the show. We're just going to give you a little recap on what's been going on.

And speaking of open source projects, our own community has been working on an amazing soundboard project. I can't wait to show you some of the things they've done. They've built something that's truly, truly feature-rich and competitive. And then later on, towards the end of the show, but not quite. You know, it's not really the end. No, of course not. In some sense, it's a whole new beginning.

We're going to talk about the Galago Pro. What? Yeah, we're going to do a little review of System76's brand new Galago Pro, which is in Wes's hot little hands right now. Performing very nicely. That's just a tease. That's me tapping it, too. Yeah, that's real metal.

Have you fingered that logo? Run your hands over that logo right there. You feel how good that is? Yeah, man. It's baked in. It's baked in. It's baked in. So we'll be talking about that

coming up in a little bit today. A bunch of stuff. Bunch of bunch of stuff. It's good to be here. I feel like, Wes, I feel like I've just recently Given delivery to a new baby Right, that's a big moment for you

I've been doing a lot of things What have you been doing? You been up to anything interesting? All kinds of stuff But I don't know if it can compare with what you have just birthed to the world I don't want to take away the spotlight, Wes But pretty excited about Linux Action News Episode 1 Pretty excited.

You should be. LinuxActionNews.com if you want to check it out. Joe, what's the elevator pitch here? Think of it as this. It's Joe and I who've been doing podcasting for a long time. It's our take on the weekly happenings in Linux and open source. And I started this show with Joe because I thought things are really changing in Linux. And there's a new reality that's, like, in some ways extremely great for Linux.

And there's a few other headwinds that are really concerning. And so much stuff is developing. It's really a great time to have a good discussion show. And Joe has not only just a great take on the open source world, and he's been following it for a long time, just a great take on the open source world. And he's been following it for a long time. But from his experience with Linux Luddites and now Late Night Linux, both of which are great shows,

he's really developed like a routine and a system down to collect news and analyze news and really think about it really well. So I knew like just from the podcasters I listened to, he'd be one of the best guys to do the show. I was like, well, maybe Joe would want to do it. And then it turned out, yeah, Joe did want to do it. It was like awesome. That was like my first choice. Totally.

And the thing was is when we announced the end of the Linux Action Show, the biggest feedback we got is people really liked the news. And they tuned in to find out what was going on each week with Linux and open source. You were their like evening news program. And for some people, it's like, well, this is my living. This is kind of how I make my living, and it's helpful to just have another resource to stay up to date

on stuff, to keep current. And so it was kind of with sort of the lessons learned from Linux Action Show and that kind of market in mind that we launched this show. It's still early days. The first few episodes are always kind of early days, kind of like rough. It's not like it's rough because he and I have been doing it for so long.

Yeah, you're not amateurs. But at the same time, it's like not what the final product is going to be. You're still finding the right energy, how you want it to go. And then, of course, there's all the cool stuff that we've been working on, like back-end technology to make it all possible and new hosting and all this kind of stuff. So it was a lot of work to get there and we're super excited because episode one is out. I think it's been received pretty well.

I think so. So I'd love to have you guys at least try it out and maybe consider it. It's a little bit tighter of a show. It's usually going to be about 30 minutes or so. So that means you've really got some time to fit it into maybe an already busy podcast schedule or a commute. It should be never like one of those shows is going to monopolize your entire podcast player for the week. So what's the schedule going to be? Mondays.

Mondays, okay. Yeah, so hopefully it'll be out every Monday. Mondays is going to be a good day for the network. News show, you know, out on Monday for your morning download. You can listen to it whenever you want in the week, but if you want to start your Monday with it or if you – so I figure we'll put it out there and whenever people want to listen to it, they'll listen to it. I think that's great.

Yeah. I'm excited. LinuxActionNews.com. And if you want to just go to episode one, it's LinuxActionNews.com slash one. Pretty simple. Easy peasy. I don't know if the WW is working or not. We'll find out later.

I blame Dan Benjamin. I blame Dan Benjamin. All right. Well, so let's talk about actual news. This was posted over at OMG Ubuntu just one hour ago, literally one hour ago as we're recording right now. The Ubuntu desktop team has discussed some of their plans for GNOME on Ubuntu 17.10. And things have sort of settled since Mark's initial announcement, and people are processing it, going through the stages of grief with some of the Unity users. It seems like they kind of picked up that people needed a little bit more info

to really understand what this might look like. X FCE users started walking around saying, I told you so over and over again. Everybody's got their time. And so we've been all curious to really kind of find out what would Canonical really do. I mean, are they really just going to ship stock Ubuntu? And so Kevin Van Dyne, I think, Van Dyne?

I just Kevin V from Canonical. He's worked there for eight years, so I'm sorry, Kevin. You're never going to learn it at this point. Yeah, because he and I talk so often. He spent the past three years working on various parts of the Unity 8 stack, and he's now part of the Ubuntu desktop team. Now, I think we should just start right there. There was a Unity 8 team.

There's not a Unity 8 team, but if you notice the way Joey wrote this, he's now moved to the Ubuntu desktop team, which tells us there is, in fact, an Ubuntu desktop team. So that's an interesting little bit. And he's tasked with the successful switch over to GNOME, and they kind of, I think we might be seeing a more customized GNOME from Ubuntu than we were originally sort of led to believe. Because we had some worries that it was just going to be like they're just going to ship stock and it's not going to be great.

Mark said something to that effect. It's like they're going to ship GNOME as GNOME intended to be. But nobody's a huge fan of that really. And so Joey over at OMG Ubuntu asked Kevin if they plan to customize Ubuntu GNOME 17.10. And it looks like they're kind of making some considerations, a few tweaks here and there, he says. We want to give our users a good experience. And so they're launching a poll with the help of OMG Ubuntu

to try to figure out what some of those tweaks should be. And so OMG Ubuntu has launched a short survey that Canonical is apparently listening to and they're going to take in some of the feedback too. So it seems like a good opportunity to tell them what you'd like to see in the GNOME desktop. Kind of a unique opportunity. I mean, really, kind of an incredible opportunity

if you think about it. This is one of those ones where later you're going to complain and we're going to be like, well, did you vote? Did you go to that survey? This was posted 40 minutes ago, by the way. So, yeah, so this is all still happening pretty fast right now. So here's just a little idea. Here's some of the extensions that people are being asked to rate uh dash to dock nice impatience no top left hot corner alternate tab applications menu better volume indicator

top icons plus i think i can is that your fan i think so yeah yeah it does that sometimes uh so there you go. That's where they're looking at. I kind of want to take the survey. Yeah, you should. Should I do it? Do it. Dash to Doc, what do you think?

Not useful or very useful? Mumble Room. Oh, wait, let's bring the Mumble Room in. Yeah, what are we doing? Let's make it official. They can help us take it, too. We'll bring them in right now. Time appropriate greetings there, Mumble Room.

Hello, everybody. So'll bring him in right now. Time appropriate greetings there, Mumble Room. And yours. Appropriate greetings. Hello, everybody. So what do you say? Should we take the survey together? Sure. Absolutely. Ready for it?

Okay, dash to doc. Useful or not useful? What say you, Mumble Room? Useful or not useful? Five. Useful. Yeah. Very useful. Very useful.

Definitely useful. I could probably figure out the number rating based on how many people say useful or not useful. Like if a lot of people say useful, then it's more of a five. And if less people say, then I'll say it's... Okay. So Impatience. Impatience speeds up the GNOME desktop animations for minimizing and maximizing windows and triggering overlays and things like that. Would you say this is a useful extension or not useful extension?

Never useful. Useful. Yeah, okay. All right. I'm going to give that one more of a three. Yeah, middle of the road there. Yeah. No top left hot corner.

This disables the top left hot corner in GNOME, which triggers your desktop and makes everything move around like I just did on my video screen here. What do you say? No top left hot corner. Is that a very useful thing or not useful? I don't care. Useful. I think it's pretty useful.

Sounds like it. I'm going to influence it. I'm going to give it a four. See, I've never thought about it before, but just during this last TechSnap program, I was like, boy, it'd be nice if this didn't happen all the time. Yeah, it does get you when you're broadcasting. Yeah. Alternate tab, I'm just going to give that a middle of the road because I want to move on. I don't want to take all day on the survey.

Turns out there's like Linux news or something. Okay, here's the thing, though. This is the one that I am very torn up about, and this is the one I've actually wanted to get everybody's opinion on the strongest. The applications menu, which introduces a category-based app menu for searching and opening applications, which replaces the full screen applications menu in default mode. Useful or not useful?

Useful for new users. Fair. Okay. I feel like it's also a bit of an atrocity, though. I mean, it's a huge diversion from the way the default environment... I've actually never tried it. I have. It's okay.

It's okay. It's no br have. It's okay. It's, it's okay. It's, it's no brisk. It's fine. It's, it's fine. Uh,

I guess the, I guess I hadn't really thought about the new user angle. I could see, you know, it can be nice to have sorted categories to find things. Yep. Yep. Yep.

That's one of the reasons I go with mate. Do you think we should be catering to new users? Oh, that's a very legitimate question. Oh, boy. See, here's the thing is I was going to make that an entire discussion in today's show because I think that is the question of Linux going forward is I think we should really refrain from even considering the new user

because we are fooling ourselves at this point. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer about this. I wasn't necessarily going to get into this because I'm still trying to put my thoughts together on this. But you look at this news from Canonical. Okay. So here's the thing, Wes. If Canonical couldn't do it.

I mean, there's been no greater success in desktop Linux history than the Ubuntu desktop. There has been no desktop that has been prepackaged, no Linux desktop that has been prepackaged with hardware manufacturers more than the Ubuntu desktop. There has never been a greater success story in desktop Linux than Ubuntu, Unity 7 even. They can't pull it off. I would argue that it's not a measurement of the technological prowess of the mere display server. I would argue that it is not the buttons on the left-hand West that is driving consumers to seek out a solution that is not Windows, Mac, or Chrome OS or tablets. In countries like China

and India and other places, of course, there are different market factors at play. And those consumers have been driven to seek out different solutions. And so there it is successful. But in order to be successful in the West, it just seems it's an impossibility. It is amongst the average consumer. Now, certain niches like engineering, software development, certain levels of high-end media production, it seems likely that Linux will continue to just win there amongst people who are seeking out a market alternative. For whatever reason, the one they're using isn't fulfilling their need.

But that is just simply, simply, simply not the case for your most average consumer, the quote-unquote new user coming to linux i don't believe they exist so maybe are there multiple tiers here of new user and like what we should give up on or not focus on anyway is this like very casual user we have to cater to because we maybe we do still want it to be easy for the engineer coming from windows to get here who's willing to learn a little you still want to be able to, like, as a Linux enthusiast and geek, you still want to be able to solve somebody's problem by taking, you know, some crappy Windows install off their laptop and putting Linux on there for them.

And you want them to be able to use it. I mean, so there's obviously, but this quote-unquote new user that we're always sort of theoretically trying to make sure that software is easy to install so that they're happy and that themes look right so that it's pleasant to them and that we have things like application menus that completely overwrite the way that the desktop environment has been designed to work. I mean, it's not like GNOME accidentally doesn't have an applications menu. That's some serious intentional design.

Well, and for me, it's like also I don't want us to think about this new user, super new user, whatever, at the expense of powered users. Because for me, like, one thing I love about GNOME is I hit that key and I type the thing that I want that I know that I want and I get it immediately. And there are some systems where that's not the case. And especially if I have to go browse through this menu to this thing that I already want, like, that's just, it's not a workflow that I'm going to use and it drives me away from

it. Yeah. Wimpy, what are your thoughts? You raise a lot of good points there um the first so going all the way back to the applications menu in gnome i don't think that that should be included because it's a real departure from how gnome is designed to work totally And to follow on from that, you're kind of do you think that is it unique because abuntumate is super appealing to raspberry pies and reclaiming old hardware or do you think maybe maybe i just am missing the boat on that particular point okay so i'm excluding raspberry

pies from that these are people that have had windows on a computer and are now running abuntumate on a computer and i don't know what that what numbers are like. I'm not saying it's millions or anything, but certainly they're out there. They're out there enough that I've seen enough posts in the forums to register that there are this group of people that are new to Linux. And if you speak to the elementary guys, I think they would tell you the same as well.

So they are out there. But what I would also say is that I think you're right that ubuntu's had good success in appealing to a professional market and i think the default ubuntu desktop should be geared towards professionals and specifically developers and the flavors, I think, can attract the consumer market. Wow, that's a powerful statement. So I suppose I have some personal experience recently, if we're going with anecdotal experience, over Mother's Day, a family member that I didn't even know was using Ubuntu

turned out to be using Ubuntu, because some computer guy that helped her fix her computer told her to install it. Really? And she didn't even know it was Ubuntu. If I didn't see that Unity sidebar in that classic background, you should have seen the double tag. What, what, what, what?

It's that Unity. Wow. Explain, explain, I say. I can't even get the word. Explain, explain this. Is that Ubuntu 10.04? And so, of course, she's got no agenda. She doesn't really care.

She just wants to be able to use the internet. Right. So, Wimpy, you could be right. To a certain degree, maybe I'm being a little more extra pessimistic. I think it's probably what you're saying is I'm being a little pessimistic. But I definitely feel like we're spinning our wheels and wasting our time constantly theorizing about a theoretical user when it's not really an applicable okay so i guess i want to shift gears because there is a new user that is out there that it seems to be a real number and that would be say in india and

china where people are walking into stores and buying ubuntu machines and there's totally different market dynamics there what about them don't they deserve a custom built desktop like what or are they shipping something like ubuntu chilling and maybe it's just a totally different experience right well in china that exactly what they're getting but in general i mean is is ubuntu currently geared towards one audience or the other is it particularly new user friendly or is it developer friendly or is it pro user friendly or is it just um general or is it pro user friendly, or is it just general purpose? And I don't think that's going to change in Ubuntu, right? I think that, you know, whichever way these desktop extensions go and the way GNOME is implemented, it's going

to be just as applicable to new users and pro users. I think what's important is that these extensions just make things intuitive. Yeah. So here's how I kind of fell down on it. I said applications menu, I'm going to say not useful much. I'm not going to say one, but hear me out. You're so generous. Hear me out. Because I also rated better volume indicator as not very useful. And then I put top icons as four, which is pretty useful, and window controls on the right. Now, hear me out.

Here's why I started bailing a little bit on some of these extensions. I get nervous about the idea of stock Ubuntu shipping all hacked up with extensions. There's like a hard limit on the number that we should really be uncomfortable with, is what you're saying here. And then so I'm starting to look at these

and I'm starting to go, not totally necessary to make GNOME usable. Especially if Ubuntu's not doing anything anymore, right? Like they're not guaranteeing the stability of these things or that they'll always be consistent necessarily. Right. So that depends too, right? Especially if we are still concerned about new users, if we do have these extensions

breaking your whole experience, that's not great. Yeah. Well, these extensions are going to have to be packaged in order to be part of the image so that means that they're going to be maintained and therefore they will work release to release right it's not like i suppose if you're on lts it's not like you're going to go from a major version of no right during yeah yeah so but i still i still think probably some discretion would be would be advised on how many extensions so anyways if you want to go vote yourself,

you can go to OMG Ubuntu. Joey just put those up. And it sounds like this is an interesting conversation that I would bet is probably likely happening at all different levels at Canonical too. So we still haven't gotten a lot of details on Fedora or SUSE on the Windows Linux subsystem thing, which is kind of strange or whatever the hell it's called. That's because everyone's already running Arch on that thing anyway.

Good one, Wes. And maybe it doesn't matter, because pretty soon you're going to be running Bash on your Windows servers. Windows servers running Bash. See, there was a time, Wes, when I would have... I actually did climb very tall mountains to get SSH working on Windows

boxes. Right. Well, how else were you going to administer them back in the day? I now there's like win rm and yeah more options yeah yeah and and i also had to bend over backwards to get um event logs into sys into syslog oh yeah and all of these tools uh were either made possible by sigwin or something that like bundled up sigwin on its own in its own little sigIGWIN environment. It was always, though – Hacky at best. Yeah, and just felt so ancient. So now I can only imagine if I was stuck administering Windows servers

and if I could get a legitimate Ubuntu LTS bash shell or Fedora shell or Asusa, that would be a game changer for me because my bash scripts now. I could take so many of my – I mean, in theory, I would have access to cron, which is way better than the Windows scheduler. Like all of these things would shift for me. I would have access to so many tools. I could have I could have good old traditional and map right there on a Windows server, which would be very useful for me. I wonder how much I wonder how well like what's the interaction like between those two? For me, I wonder how well, like, what's the interaction like between those two?

Because if I can start using, like, the Linux or the new tools that I know and love to start maybe applying some automation to the Windows side, not that I want to do that, but I could certainly see people wanting to do that. There's also the scary thought of, like, well, now people can start doing, like, Windows Server. You know, you have, like, Docker containers for Windows that spin up different, like like more little windows server containers that each have different bash linux distributions inside so your next vps might be running on windows server chris geez wow yeah docker is also by the way so i i have linked in the show notes the uh the microsoft server for developers blog also windows server is joining the windows insider program so if you want to run beta versions of stuff on your Windows Server. That's kind of cool, actually. I guess.

But back to the containerization thing. They said the nano server that they came up with is picking up in popularity. And they're going to focus on providing the very best container foundation for developers with a nano server. Okay. It's so small. Yeah. And they're also expanding their Docker support, which will use Hyper-V isolation technology,

and you can use your choice of Linux kernel to host the workload while the management scripts and tool could use the Windows subsystem for Linux. Oh, wow. So you can run – you can pick and match your container. It is isolated using Hyper-V. And you can pick and match the Linux kernel that that container runs on top of. And then you can manage it all with Bash on a Windows server. Wow.

What kind of world do we live in now? I don even know i don't know how to feel about i think we live in one where microsoft figured out how to seriously successfully compete with linux yeah in a way that is going to fundamentally potentially shift the market maybe i mean it's not like you haven't been able to run vm linux vms on windows boxes for years. Yeah, right. So I don't know. It does seem, in some ways, I don't know what the server side is going to do. I don't know how that will change things. That, I'm not, I haven't really thought about that enough. That seems more, to me,

for some reason, it seems like a bigger deal than the desktop. That's what I was going to say. For the desktop side, it feels like, well, like, half of everyone's already stuck on Windows at work anyway. It seems like, to me, this is more of a threat to Mac OS desktops than it is to who's running the Linux desktop there anyway. Either you are and you're not going to change to Windows just because of this

or you're already stuck on Windows. But if you have a Mac, suddenly Windows looks kind of better than a Mac in some ways for running closer to a real Linux. Especially if you want a variety of hardware choices or you need to work with a vendor that your company already orders from. MonkeyGum, do you want to walk me off the ledge a bit yeah the nano thing isn't all that's replacing is everyone that's running vm workstation with a linux image running inside of it that's all it's doing because it's a piece of hardware and yeah it's just replacing the vm

workstation that's all it's doing no that's not a bad market for them to get into. Yeah. I don't really follow it very closely. I don't really have much interest in... You're not in the Insiders program? No, and I don't have any interest in Windows Nano server. But I do... They really are doing a lot of work to try to be competitive.

This is making me have a serious crisis of faith right now. Excuse me. Today there was a rumor that got posted that there's going to be refreshed macbooks at wwdc and even if they're not at wwdc you know they're going to be out in the fall there's also going to be a new imac workstation i would i would expect it probably to be xeon with ecc memory yeah right there's been talk of the new pro at some point yep yep so uh it's not like the mac os platform is going to sit still forever within six months they're pretty much going to have their shit together now on

windows you've got bash on you've got susa fedora and ubuntu on windows 10 in the store so you can you can basically have your dev environment match production on your windows 10 machine that also lets you play your steam games and has all the other crap that i guess windows users like um and then and then we get left with on on in linux we have really i mean gnome is it's not like it's some huge project like there's a lot writing on something that is not like it's that huge And it was just a couple of years ago teetering on bankruptcy. Is this a good time to bring up Plasma? Yes. I mean, yeah, I know.

I'm just saying like more than ever, our independent desktop projects are going to be more important than ever. And it does feel like I wouldn't have attributed all of this momentum or whatever the feeling was. Before this, I wouldn't have attributed it to Ubuntu necessarily, maybe unfairly. But now it does kind of feel like the wind has been sucked from the room or the air.

You know what I mean? There's like a pause here. It's like our big competitive advantage is starting to be taken away. Now, it doesn't. And the thing is, is it doesn't erode our competitive advantage in hardware, or it doesn't erode the advantages that the GPL brings,

but it does erode the one thing that personally I've been invested in a long time, which is the desktop. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of what we talk about here on this program, even. You know, it's... And it's just,

with Canonical making these changes, it just puts this huge elephant in the room about here on this program even you know it's and i i mean i and it's just with canonical making these changes it just puts this huge elephant in the room that i feel like i'm ignoring if i don't talk about something you said on a research maybe it was the one of the last i'm not sure but you talked about how you were like wouldn't really call yourself an evangelist anymore and that's kind of what strikes me too is it's like no one's saying that linux isn't a useful tool and it's obviously still very useful people still want to deploy it on servers. Look at Azure. But, yeah, there's less of this, like, gung-ho, we can replace things on the desktop.

This is the whole stack you can use. Now it feels a little bit more like, well, yeah, I mean, use it if you want to. We'll help, maybe. Call Noah's show. Basically, I can... What my take was is I don't consider my... I'm not an evangelist anymore.

I don't go out and actively evangelize the platform. I do want to see it continue. I do – like so I am – in some sense, I'm an advocate because I try to promote projects like on these shows and stuff like that to help them. And I contribute financially to projects and I try to be an advocate. But I don't really evangelize as much anymore because it's really getting to the point for me. It's like I don't have a super solid argument. I can tell you that it's my preferred working environment. I can tell you that I work the best under it and I was reloading my machines at least once a year, every six months, whatever.

And since I switched to Arch on some of my work machines, the installation just lives as long as that hardware lives. Yeah. And that's really nice because it just means that everything's set up. My SSH keys, my GPG stuff,sh keys my gpg stuff you don't have to change it you don't have to worry about it i just sit down and i can work and and and that's nice because it's been like that now for like three years and it's like wow this is really valuable and i can't really explain to a windows user because you're always going to get the windows user says well i haven't had any problems on my install for four years great good for you

congratulations didn't work like that for me. And it's about me. And so for me, these systems, I find them, the performance stays consistent. They generally get just better. The desktop environments are just getting better with updates. My applications are just getting better and more competitive, especially with a lot of the latest stuff's all just on Electron anyways.

I guess what it makes me think is, like, we're back to philosophy instead of, like, before there was some can'ts, right? Like, you can't reproduce production on your desktop if you don't run a Linux system. And there's, like, various ones of those where, like, you just need a Linux if you want to do this. It seems like less and less of that. It's like you can still use Linux for that. If you want to use Linux, it'll work great.

We encourage you to do so. But it's now more of, like should, or you'll feel better doing it, or here's some like philosophical open source type reasons why you might want to. And for some people, those just aren't as compelling. Monkey, you think the tools matter? Yeah, I mean, over the last five years, the tools available to Linux users have just quadrupled. I mean, we're running JetBrains with RubyMind and just the MySQL tools that are just, they run and they work better and faster and more stable in Linux than Windows. And I have developers that run JetBrains and MySQL tools in Windows, and I have developers that run in Linux and the Linux guys are converting the Windows

users to Linux and none of them run Unity. They all run either GNOME, Mete, or KDE. Yeah, and I think Canonical sees it too. I mean, I think they understand that that is exactly the type of user that is actively looking to switch to Linux. I'm not saying people aren't switching to Linux. I'm trying to build it. Essentially, what I'm building a case for here is we really just need to forget about the general market and just really kind of realize who's switching.

It's going to be people we switch ourselves to Linux or people like MonkeyCon that they just outlined or look at Canonical. Right before Canonical made this huge shift, what did they do? They went on Hacker News, started the thread. Hey, guys, what do you want to see? What's Hacker News telling? We want to see GNOME. We want to see Wayland. We just want to see basically printing a little better.

We want to see this a little better and just ship it all stock. So that way – think about this and then we'll move on. If I was switching from macOS or Windows, one of the things I would be exhausted by at this point is all of the little whims that these companies have had over the years to sell their operating systems you know apple's experiment experimented with like launch center and they have handoff stuff where things popping up on your dock all the time when you walk into the room and microsoft has had just this last few years with the windows 8 and the transition to touch and all of this stuff or ton of everywhere. Now the integration of ads and Cortana into Windows. And even just like to some of us, it's just exhausting these stupid bullshit names like the fall creators update and all of these corporate jerky little names that we all just

get sick. And all of that grades on your nerves after a while. Or like today in the Telegram group, people were talking, somebody was in there saying, I just installed Windows 10 and now I'm spending two hours installing updates. And the way it just trickle feeds you the updates instead of just blasting them on there like your package manager can.

These things drive you nuts after a while and you're going to want to move to something that doesn't have this strategy tax. And a pretty stock GNOME setup riding on top of a Debian or Ubuntu or an Arch or a Fedora is exactly that. It's not somebody's grand vision of the desktop. It's not somebody trying to usher in a new era of computing. It's just here's a workstation OS.

If you don't like this one, you can switch to another one and you can still get your work done. And that's what people that are in the know want that's who our target audience is i think that goes right back to what you were saying before you know just especially like even talking about in india and china like we still need the desktop those things are still important but like clearly ubuntu has started you know decided that they want to focus as an organization on these on these power users developers creators people who are using this you know in these worlds, and maybe there just isn't that kind of profit and momentum left in the desktop,

even if it is still an important part of our mindshare. Hmm. All right. Anybody else in the mom room want to chime in before we move on? I just thought we'd mention that. Totally wasn't going to talk about it today because I didn't want to seem like a downer, but I think it's...

I feel like it is the elephant in the room right now. It just feels like we've got to consider all of this if you're gonna be trying out bash by any chance or i would love to hear more about people using that if you're new to that kind of stuff yeah really since i'm not trying it maybe i should try it if you want a positive spin on the whole bash on windows thing i do always always look at it from the point of view that now people who are stuck with windows can run all of the um fedora ubuntu and open suza user space tools that they want and they could just be using windows as a shell to get at that stuff yeah to make them productive well there i'd say the other positive thing is it does mean more open source

in the hands of more users, which is always good too. It makes it really, the barrier to entry is low. And when they start using that stuff through WSL, eventually it will get to the point that it isn't quite as seamlessly integrated. And maybe they'll start moving over to a proper operating system as a result c sharp you wanted to chime in actually wimpy just touched exactly on on what i was going to say and just to elaborate more on it i think um it's basically just windows compromising because it's not linux and we're seeing stage two we'll see a stage five and a stage six and then you know we'll have a

bunch of linux users i could also make the argument I suppose, that it's sort of like the same argument why it's great that we have LibreOffice and Firefox and tools like that on Windows and GIMP and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because then when you switch over to Linux, your same exact application sets available. So maybe that could be even more true. I think it's just one of these things where I'll have to just watch and see where it goes. While people are trying it out, I just want to mention explain shell.com. A few people shared that with me this week, and it looks pretty cool. You can write down a command line to see how it breaks out. So, for example, say you're maybe trying out the tar command for the first time.

Well, you can put the command syntax in the explain shell.com box and it breaks down the entire command into really easy Look at that. Isn't that nice and easy to understand so you can see what each flag does what the command itself does and it really helps you understand. So that is explain shell.com and then if you're having some trouble with some shell that you've recently written

how about shell check at shellcheck.net which finds bugs in your shell scripts. And you can also install it on the command line if you just want to install it locally. Yeah, it's like a handy dandy little linter for your bash scripts. Which I find handy, especially if you only write bash scripts occasionally and you come back

and you're like, did I use the right number of brackets? What's happening? Or, you know, you just want to maybe sanity check one that gets dropped in a stack exchange thread or something like that. I don't know. Before you run it on your systems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there you go.

There was therapy with Chris. Yeah, wow. I think you guys are probably right. And here's the other thing. Even if we just say, okay, maybe these average consumers that we're always talking about don't really exist for Linux, the markets that do seem to be materializing, like the very kind of people that will be buying this Galago Pro, that is not only a growing market, but that's a good market to go after. There is nothing wrong with that segment. That's a good segment of the market. And there are also people that are more able to tolerate slightly rough edges or understand what an extension is to a GNOME desktop environment. And those might be some of the best users to

have in our fold because they might be able to help fix some of those rough edges too. Oh, man, Wes, that's a very good point. So there you go. That's the positive take on the whole thing. So go ahead, Microsoft. Keep at it. Keep at it. And while I keep keeping at it, this is what I would do.

If you're having problems with your bash scripts, you've got problems with your shell script, you don't know how to do something, Linux Academy is where you go. Linuxacademy.com slash unplug. Sponsor right here of the Unplugged program, and they've been here for a while, and I think it's a great service, and more and more of you are trying it out all the time. You get started by going to linuxacademy.com slash

unplugged, then you sign up for a free seven-day trial. Try something out. Now, the thing that's great about Linux Academy is they have courseware for every type of user. If you're an experienced Linux user and you're ready to kind of step it up to the next level on stuff, they got courseware for you. If you're brand new getting started with something, and maybe it's something that's not even specific to Linux, maybe you want to get your Linux basics, or maybe you want to learn how

to program in Ruby, or a little Python, maybe you could become the next Google. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Seven-day free trial trial here's something else that sets linux academy apart they have real instructors real people can actually help you that's nice because it's not like this is your average online courseware there's so many online training places where they'll have like a linux course so i'll have the linux plus certification or we'll teach you an aws course nobody can match Linux Academy. They've got great courseware on AWS, too, and that is its own beast, isn't it? Isn't that thing a beast?

And it's so nice to have an authority to go to. Same with OpenStack, especially with OpenStack's modular nature. It's really nice to have a place you can go where you can wrap your head around complicated topics in just, like, an amount of time. Oh, okay. Six hours? Six hours, and I know Ruby. I can do that math. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged.

Comprehensive downloadable study guides, servers that spin up on demand when you need them, and courseware that matches the distribution you have chosen. Just try it all for seven days for free at LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. If they can teach Chris Ruby, then, I mean, anything's possible. That's very true. Hey, how about a little admin and public service stuff for the community? Southeast Linux Fest is T-minus one month away,

and they're announcing that the registration is up, the schedule's released, and more. So this I wanted to give a little attention to. Now, it's down in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they have it there at the hotel. It's always actually been a pretty beloved one here by the crew. I don't think I've ever gone. It's going to be June 9th through the 11th this year, 9th through the 11th of June. So it's coming up pretty darn soon, like a month. At the Charlotte Sheraton. Charlotte Sheraton.

Say that three times. Yeah. The Sheraton Charlotte Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. There you go. That's the whole thing. I will say it does seem like it's one of those things like they have a – it feels like they have a similar energy to our dear LinuxFest Northwest, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, like they're cousins. Yeah, very much so. Sister conferences. Northwest, you know? Yeah. Yeah. There's like, they're cousins. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very much so. Sister conferences. Yeah. So check it out. And they also are on the tweeters, if you like to tweet, at SELinuxFest, at SELinuxFest,

if you want to follow them. If you're going to be in the area, let me know. It'd be kind of cool to, we want to, I was thinking- Field report. Noah will probably go. I should ask him. But I thought it'd be cool if people go to events like this and they're in our JB Telegram group. That'd be a great way to meet up with fellow JB people.

Be a great way to... Hear about it live. People could post pictures of the fest while we're there. Pictures of their beer and make us all jealous. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Another piece of admin to cover here on the show. The new Linux Unplugged subreddit is officially launched. Look at that handsome devil. We were talking about it last week, and it's happened. We've already got people starting to go there and submit stories. Thank you to everybody over there. So it's reddit.com slash r slash Linux Unplugged. And look at that good stuff in there. Look at that right there about Palasso put about the Plasma 510 beta.

That survey we covered is already there. Wow, dude. That is nice. Look at that story about Edward Snowden talking at the OpenStack summits in there as well. So all kinds of good stuff. And the question about the studio. I like it. I like it.

Thank you, everybody, for helping us get the new subreddit set up for this show. You can participate at reddit.com slash r slash Linux Unplugged, which, you know, think about it. For this show, you can participate at reddit.com slash r slash linuxunplugged, which, you know, think about it. If you can't join us live for the live virtual lug, you could totally hang out with us on the subreddit. Yeah, that's like 24-7. You don't have to be here at any specific time for that.

So r slash linuxunplugged. It's kind of long. That's what she said. But hopefully it will become a pretty good community. Speaking of community, holy cow. The soundboard I was talking about recently, Caster Soundboard, this thing is full on nuts now. This thing is – I'll show it to you here in a second. Just a reminder, it's a soundboard for podcasters written in C++ and Qt 5. And Cube 5.

And since last week, I think, or since the last time we've talked about it, they've added the ability to remotely control this thing over the network. Whoa! Yeah, they've closed 16 features. It's now feature complete and in beta. That's awesome. It supports the open sound control protocol, which I think I'm getting that right. I don't even know what that is, but I'm excited. There's a bunch of great open source and third-party apps available for your phone that you can install and control the soundboard from your phone.

Right? Isn't this wonderful? Wow. They added the ability to duck all of the clips at once. They have app-wide ducking. You can save and unsave setups, which is one of our original big requests. You can have hotkeys to fire off different things. And it's been added to the AUR, which is one of our original big requests. You can have hotkeys to fire off different things, and it's been added to the AUR, which is

totally, totally awesome. I think they've also added a Jar Jar submenu. I don't know why we have a Jar Jar Binks submenu, but I think they're adding that. So I wanted to show it to you. So I have it installed. If you guys are watching the video version of the Unplugged show, I have it installed here. If you're not listening, or if you're listening and not watching,

what's up here is a tabbed interface. I can have multiple soundboard tabs. And right now I have the Linux unplugged soundboard up. And there's a couple of sliders. One is volume and one is position. I can set different colors. They're all large touch objects, so I don't have it fully maximized. So a picture that's even larger than what would be on my screen.

The idea being that it's going to be on a Dell 21-inch touchscreen, so I can fire off all of these either with a keyboard or with touchscreen, because keyboard's when I'm sitting, touchscreen's when I'm standing. You have, of course, names. You can load files in here. It uses the local GTK open file, even though

it's a cute app. Look at that. That's super nice. Wow. Like I was talking about just a moment ago, it has the remote control feature feature so with an open sound control server running on this you can do one-way or two-way communication with this soundboard wow yeah which is great because you can have somebody like yourself you could you know nothing we do in there but imagine like say you went off to like uh to like some, some conference in Seattle and you came back with some audio. You could be sitting there on your laptop and you could be firing off the clips of the audio when you were ready for the – it doesn't have to rely on me. So in the past –

That's awesome. You would have had to give me all the audio before the show. I would have had to listen through it all to know when to cue it up. And then I would have fired off. But now you could bring the audio in and you could fire it off. That's amazing. Yeah. So that's something we could play with in the future.

They have also added the ability where I can grab the in and out part hi there you knew that was gonna happen and out all the same time i can grab the in and out parts of a clip i should do it i should so i can pull down the volume right here so i do it again see that's quieter now and then there is uh isn't that great we also have app wide ducking like i was talking about. So it brings everything down by 33%, which is really cool. I can drag it up a little bit there. And then, of course, there is a global stop all clips button, which is pretty cool. A.K.A. the shut up button.

Yep. And then I could just create more sound boards. So I could call this one, you know, something that would be relevant to the show. And I can tab through the different interfaces and have different boards loaded here, save them out, import them out. Isn't this neat? That is so awesome. It's all created by members of...

It's like a very productive tool. Yeah, it really is. It is now... It is beyond what the proprietary applications on macOS could offer. In a few short weeks. All created by our community members for the podcasting community.

So we have that linked up in the show notes. It's sort it's it's a yeah sorry about that loud noise the chat room's giving me a hard time uh but it's sort of the um it's sort of the coolest like little community project i've seen us work on in a while so big thank you to everybody on the github that is working you guys are awesome and we should like uh i don't know we should like come up with a way to get you guys like beers or something. Something. Yeah. If I had all of the monies in the world, if I had all the Bitcoin in the world, I'd just fly people out and take them out for beer for that. You know, if I could throw one more out there, I would love to see if anybody has any interest in working on another open source project.

It's an audio visualizer written in Python. It's a little GUI tool that renders visualizations on audio files. Now, if you've ever watched a video version of User Air, you've seen this sucker in action. If you're watching the video version, too, I have an example up. And essentially, it takes an audio input file, and it takes a background image in, and then it uses FFmpeg to render out a video that matches the length of the audio file that has waveforms that match the audio so that way you can put this up on you could put an audio show up on youtube or put it in an mp4 video feed or something like that and there's actually

something there's a visualizer there to look at that matches the vocals now the only problem with this is is it only does this there's no variation we can do with it we can't put animation like we can't put a movie file in the background. Even though FFmpeg, of course, supports all of this. It's just the wrapper does not. Right. And what we'd like to do is be able to have more variety so we could use it for Linux Action News.

We could use it for User Air. And then other podcasters could use it for their podcast and we could all look a little different. We could all have our own unique look to it. So that's also going to be in the GitHub. That might be asking for a lot. Really, it's Python and FFmpeg. So it's pretty straightforward.

It's pretty awesome. And it's already up on GitHub. Just go pull it down right now. And so we're working on this. And one of the pushes for us to do this is we're trying to decide as a network if we want to be the podcasting network that delivers. You get a show and you get it in any file format, any way you want it. So if you want to get Linux Action Do's in a video file and watch it on your Kodi box, you can do it. If you want to download an MP3 of Linux Action Show or TechSnap, you can do it.

If you want an HD video version of TechSnap, you can get it. I want an Opus file, Chris. Well, that's something we are actually working on too. And so it's going into this thing like what do we want to be as a podcast network? Because it's much more feasible for us to say, well, this is an audio show, so we're just going to officially release an MP3. Because then we can get actual tracking numbers on it. We can manage the feed simpler. We know where to focus all of the ratings and the reviews and the different podcast networks, which makes a huge difference for discoverability.

And it's less hosting for us. And it's less time for encoding. We're more in line with what a lot of other more mainstream podcasts do. Right. And a lot of, quote, unquote, platforms that are built to host podcasts are dropping support for Ogg and WebM. And so they're just essentially supporting mp3 maybe m4a and so we've been trying to decide well what do we want to do is do we want to just continue to like rebuild replacement platforms to host these files when these things shut down and pay for the storage

and pay for the time to upload it and encode it for our for the editor and like what or do we just want to focus we and we're trying to decide like we're trying to find a really good balance here and this this this this open source project is actually the linchpin to this entire thing because this audio visualizer allows us to put in an audio file, put in a good background, which we would like to have more flexibility with, and have a little more flexibility with the visualizer. And then we can put out a file that we're actually, like, I tried it with Linux Action News and nobody liked the video file. Like, I thought it looked okay, but everybody's complaining on YouTube that it's giving them seizures. So, okay, all right, we've got to come up with something better. But you'd like to have like a first-class audio-only supported pipeline. It makes it – when you produce a show for audio, it makes it so much better.

I don't need to go into it. And if you make a show for video and you produce it for video, it makes the video show that much better. And that's how we're going to do it. But I still think we should probably try to make everything available in whatever way people want it. And this tool is sort of the tool that I think is going to allow us to build a production pipeline around that. So we would love the help if you have the interest on the audio visual Python thing. Yeah. So there you go.

Yeah, that's true. Thank you, WW. Thank you. That does make me feel better a little bit but i love them you know what i love them i just i just love them uh one other thing i want to talk about because i think it could be interesting maybe down the road and how things like this affect linux users too it's only affecting android users right now but netflix is confirming that it's blocking rooted and unlocked devices, which could be pretty significant

down the road for potentially other types of... And I feel like especially for some of our audience, you know, we more than a lot of other people perhaps are interested in having rooted devices or other modifications. Yeah. So I thought that was... And Netflix is kind of something that I've taken for granted that it'll just work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They're using the Wildvine or Wildvine. Widevine. Widevine. Is that what it is? Google's. They bought that company, right? Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. And it's a DRM technology that basically has like you can pick your layer of security, how trusted you want a device to be and Netflix has chosen the trusted level that disqualifies rooted devices. Which may be more accurate to say that the content partners Netflix works with has forced them to choose. But we don't know. Probably. So it's an interesting thing with Android.

And one of the things that we're going to be talking about probably more next week is Magic Device Tool, which kind of goes in with all of this. So Magic Device Tool, we've talked about it before. It's pretty straightforward, and it's pretty easy to get set up on your machine. And it is amazingly powerful. It allows you to load Ubuntu Touch and Ubuntu Phone, you know,

on like a Nexus 5, I think. I might be wrong on that. So if anybody like Wimpy or somebody in the Mumble Room knows, correct me. But I think on like the Nexus 5, you can load Ubuntu Touch, Android, Lineage OS, Maru OS, Sailfish OS, and Phoenix OS with this one tool. With this one tool. So I downloaded it and I have it on my machine upstairs and I have my Nexus 5 charging up. And I think I'm going to try Lineage first. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Isn't that what Mr. Joe does? I think so. I think so. And it's the one I hear the most in our community too in terms of a module. So you weren't going to go for the Ubuntu Touch? Well, it just might make me sad. Yeah.

I also have been very much considering MaruOS. Yeah, right. Which is, it's like Android, but also Debian XFCE. I have. I don't know if it would be helpful, but I have that adapter. Oh, yeah. So we can get HDMI out. I will try it then.

Yeah, if you remember to bring that. Yeah, I'll go find it. So anyways, get HDMI out. I will try it then. Yeah, if you remember to bring that. Yeah, I'll go find it. So anyways, I'm going to be playing around with this and if things work out, we may get a chance to

chat with the developer of the tool next week if all things line up. Marius, who works on this, says he might be able to make it next week

and I would be great timing to pick his brain while he's playing with it. If you guys want to try it out too and join us next week in the mumble room, I

have a link to the magic device tool, which is also, there's a Snap for that. Although I tried to install it. I had some problems on Arch. But if you're using Snap on Ubuntu, you're probably fine. That's awesome. That makes it so easy. Yeah.

And you know what I'm going to do once I rock that Nexus 5? Once I rock that Nexus 5 with Lineage? I'm going to put it on Ting. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put it on Ting. You go to Linux.Ting.com to save $25 off a Ting device. Or if you bring one, you just bring a Ting device, check their BYOD page because they support CDMA and GSM.

If you just bring it over and you'll get a $25 service credit from Ting. Now here's the killer thing. And I was surprised I did not realize this when I switched to Ting. Average Ting bill, $23. So they're going to give you a $25 service credit. It's mobile the way it should be. You just pay for what you use, and that's it. $6 for the line, and it's your usage on top of that. No contracts, nationwide coverage, pay for what you use with a really great dashboard. Check it out. Just go to linux.ting.com, and they've got great devices too.

So if you just want to grab one there you can do that and if you uh get a like a play store device bring that over there if you get like one of the nexus devices or pixel you might take a look at what coverage is better in your area because you could choose cdma or ting i mean cdma or gsm on ting they offer both so many options you can just pick up a sim card and then just put it in a device that you picked up from the Play Store. Also, you can buy iPhones and Motorola's and all the really nice devices, like the high-end stuff. And, you know, like the stuff that's still a pretty good phone, but it's in the budget price range. And then down to like the flip phones.

Holy crap. Holy crap. Look at this. The Ancetel OneTouch Fling, which is a flip phone, but that could be kind of nice twenty dollars see that's the thing like twenty dollars six dollars a month for the line yeah even if you break it or you just throw it on the ground in spite like it doesn't matter wow it's so cheap it's amazing that is really it's a game changer so go over to linux.ting.com and a big thank you to ting for sponsoring the program. That is, wow, wow, wow. How do they even do that?

How do they? That's their secret. How do they even do it? How do they even do it? I don't even understand. So, Mr. Wes, right here in our hot little hands is System76's Galago Pro. And this is a pretty, pretty exciting rig. A lot of people were drooling all over this thing at LinuxFest Northwest.

People were constantly stopping by. I think that was the highlight of the System76 booth. Yeah, people were stopping by there constantly to look at this thing, and I'm playing with this Ethernet port right now. Yeah, he likes that. So I've been messing around with it and getting a sense for what kind of machine it is and who I think might be really into it

and where I think it would fit in with my workflow. I still have thoughts. In fact, I'm probably going to still kick it around for a couple of more days. I'm going to send it back pretty soon because these are in-demand product. So I'll just give you the basics if you're not familiar. The Galago Pro is a 13.3-inch machine that weighs around like 2.8, 2.9 pounds. Port-wise, it has them. It's really nice in 2017 to get a machine with these ports.

It's got one USB-C with Thunderbolt, and I've been told it has four PCI lanes in that USB-C port. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which means as eGPU support gets better on Linux, you're going to get full, you would get full eGPU support with four PCI lanes, which is really nice. Like I said, it has Ethernet, it has HDMI out, it has an SD card slot, and display port. Now, one thing that might throw you off, and this is just my understanding at this time, there is also a here it is, there's like a little

GSM SIM card slot, but I don't think the corresponding hardware is on the motherboard. That's too bad. Jeez, excuse me, I'm getting over a cold from Linux Fest. Yeah, so I might be wrong you might also be able to pop the bottom off and put something in there so it might not be a huge issue but i think right now it's just a dead slot it really is a ton of ports though and it's like i'm just not used to seeing that number on a laptop it's not three

it's not four especially especially one that weighs under three pounds. Yes. So it's this one, the one I'm using, has a Core i5, or I'm sorry, Core i7 7500, running at about 2.7-ish. They change depending on what you're doing. Two physical cores, four logical cores, Intel HD graphics 620, 8 gigabytes of RAM, 256 gigabyte MV, ME drive, and a 36.2 watt hour battery. So that is my test config of the System76 Galago Pro. I'll tell you too, one of the things besides the really enjoying the ports and the availability of a display port in HDMI is particularly nice. And the USB-C port is nice. It does also have a barrel charger.

It does not charge over USB-C. And I asked System76 if they think that might be something future models might offer, and they're looking at that. So that may be something. That would be nice. The barrel connector is pretty straightforward, and the power brick is pretty small. It's like one of the smallest I've ever seen from System76.

Ooh, that's dainty, yeah. Power button here on the side, too, which I kind of like. It's just an odd spot, but it's got a... It's disc got a one of the things they discreet one of the things they've done is they built a delay into it so that way if you like bumped it with your mouse or something it doesn't trigger it you have to hold it for a few seconds which i actually think is a pretty good idea uh the case is is pretty nice it's it's particularly nice from system 76 too and one of the things that i think they've done above and beyond with the

galago pro is the way they've done the logoing. And I believe this is probably how they're going to do it on future products as well. It's an aluminum or metal type casing, and the System76 logo is like baked into the housing. Yeah, you don't feel it at all. It's just – It looks really good. I'd say it's pretty close to the XPS line in build quality. I'd say it's on par with most Lenovo's for sure. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean it feels sturdy. There's no bend in it. The hinges with the screen, which is always something I'm worried about. That's rock solid. In my opinion, the screen really pops too. Do you feel like that? Yeah. It's got... It's not touch though, right? Correct. Which I think actually a lot of people might...

They're not interested in that. A lot of times it takes away from battery life and other things. But it is beautiful and it's high DPI. It is. It's like – it's 3200 by 1800. I think is that right? Is that – Yeah, I think so.

So yeah, that's the – so the screen, I've been pretty impressed with it. There's a bezel around it. So when compared to the XPS 13, it jumps out at you you but it's not as bad as most of the other systems like i'd say it's a smaller bezel than you'd have like on the apollo um and it it all is the housing itself is pretty nice it's well balanced too like you can have a nice laptop that's weighted really weird and hard to hold and carry around but this is like it's portable yeah yeah i've had a couple of uh i've had a couple of complaints with the fan noise and i think I kind of got from a conversation I had with System76 that they're still tweaking the firmware a bit on the cooling. Like maybe the fans kick in a little sooner than they need to.

Oh, yeah. So that was a potential issue. You know, looking at this machine, this was probably one of the hardest laptops I've know, I think it was the hardest laptop I've ever reviewed. And I'll tell you, I couldn't really wrap my head around why does this feel like it's so, so hard for me to review this laptop. And I realized that we are in like a three-year transitionary period that's extremely awkward. We are transitioning, well, let's start with the one we've just been talking about. We're transitioning on the Ubuntu side, which is System system 76 ships we're transitioning to gnome and wayland that's a big transition that's going to take a few years to work everything out we're transitioning to high

dpi there's still a lot of little nigglies there that need to be worked out we are transitioning from lots of different types of connectors to USB-C and Thunderbolt 3. Hardcore making that pivot. Right. Like all of these are huge transitions. And that machine is a product of that that is on the outer rim. It's a machine that is, if you're the type of person that likes to buy a computer that is going to where everyone's eventually going to end up, this is that machine. So if you want a two, three, four year work machine, this is going to be that computer where in some sense it would, if you could have

everything in the entire world, you would probably have more like a 70 watt hour battery and you would probably have maybe a slightly larger trackpad and charging over USB-C. Yep. But that's just not where this market is at right now. We are in a transitionary period. And if you need a good workstation that runs Linux right now that is lightweight, that's easy to, say, take on a plane and travel with, that still has some pretty great performance. I knocked on this thing quite a bit specifically today before the show to try to get a sense of like what the battery life is under some significant work so not only did i just do like a lot of my general show prep web browsing writing up notes on the show but i also ran a few pharonix benchmarks

low level stuff that just sort of kept the hard drive busy for a little bit did little things here and there just to keep the machine average busy but not stress it out too much so so i could kind of get an idea of what the performance of the battery would be like if I have Wi-Fi on, if I have the screen about 50% brightness, which is still plenty bright. It's plenty bright at 50% brightness. If I put it down to 50%, I'm on Wi-Fi and I'm just taxing maybe the disk subsystem for a bit and then the cpu for a bit and then just general browsing i got about about three hours i think i could have got three hours and 50 minutes out of it if uh if i wasn't pushing it quite as much if you weren't you but i wanted to simulate more of a real workload for me

now i am the kind of person that is sufficient battery for me yeah me too i think i mean like four hours ish is like a good target. No, he's like one of these guys, he likes a 12-hour battery life, because he doesn't like to charge his battery all day. He likes to pretend like it's a tablet, even though he has docs everywhere. That's true. But I was actually, I was more impressed with

that than I expected. I did have some issues initially when I was first charging this thing up under Stock Ubuntu, reading the full battery life. But then after I installed System76's PPA, that cleared up. That pretty much became a non-issue. The other thing I was considering too is I might be able to push it beyond four hours if I installed TLP and configured that to like some just sane defaults. So I contacted System76 and I said, are you considering shipping this laptop with TLP pre-installed?

It's not on their radar yet. They're considering maybe some tweaks like that, but there's nothing like that yet. They're going to be shipping it with Unity still, by the way. A lot of people have been asking me, is it shipping with GNOME and their new theme? It is shipping with Unity right now. So I have it with the latest Ubuntu stable release with the System76 PPA on there. It is really snappy. I got to say, just playing with it. I played some Race the Sun and other things.

Yeah, and the thing is you're playing, I mean, I know this isn't like the most demanding game, but you're playing Race the Sun at 4K resolution on an Intel embedded graphics card. Yeah, with a nice frame rate. Yeah, so I'm going to do some more gaming on it too, just to get an idea of where its limits are because I'm sure I'll hit them with an Intel graphics. But it's nice to know that the desktop itself performs well and some basic games seem to be performing well even at high resolution um yeah anyways so that's that's that's sort of my initial take on it so far but i wanted to touch on one more sort of concluding kind of thing that i've liked a lot about this laptop

so for myself uh there's one thing that i always undersell myself on, and it bites me every damn time. You need that Windows Pro license. That's what it is, right? That CD key on the bottom. That's what you want. Yeah, man. It solves so many problems. No, it's the keyboard.

So many times I have undersold the value of a good keyboard to myself. And the cost is daily frustration when I use my machine. Like not quite as fast as I could be or my fingers still have never learned the right position. And it's so frustrating. I always feel like I can never quite get that balance right on a laptop. And I think some people think System76 has maybe missed the mark. I think they've been better at it in the last few years. This one, out of all of the machines I have in the studio right now,

I can honestly tell you that this has the most comfortable keyboard. Now, I don't have a mechanical keyboard with brown key switches or whatever. I should. Come on, clear. Clear. Okay, all right. Okay, see? See?

Apparently Wes knows. But I don't. So I'm not comparing it to somebody's ultimate keyboard setup. I'm comparing it to a bunch of Logitech keyboards in the studio, a MacBook Pro keyboard, a Logitech gaming keyboard. That's what I'm comparing this to. And laptop keyboards are a class of their own, right? Like it does have to be portable. Do you – what do you – now, I've had you – that's one of the things I've asked you to specifically sort of play around with since you've been in the studio today.

What are your thoughts on the keyboard? I like it. It's comfortable to type with. You know, it's not like the deepest ever, but the key travel is nice. And so, like, for me, I have, like, a 17-character password for a lot of things, like my main go-to password for things. Of course you do. And on bad keyboards, I can kind of tell, like, when I first got, like, the mechanical keyboard I have at home, one of the first things I noticed was, like, I don't make mistakes typing this keyboard.

Because, you know, I type it like a thousand times every day. Same thing with this one. Like I can type that very reliably. I'm not making mistakes. And that's really what counts. Cause like those backspaces are what really kill you. Yeah. Yeah. That just shaving off those frustrations is really nice. So I was, I'm pretty, I'm pretty impressed with it. I found it to be, um, exactly what you would want if you were somebody that wants to bust out a daily Ubuntu workhorse and get some work done. And gaming is in the back of your mind, but you're willing to sort of consider, if I give it a few more months, I could probably pick up an external GPU. And when I'm at my desk, I could game. I can't tell you that's going to work with this.

I would love to be able to test that. I just don't have an eGPU. But I know that System76 specifically worked to make sure that this was a 4 PCI LAN USB-C port. And that is, to me, that is a very exciting future where you can have an ultra-portable 2.5, almost 3-pound laptop that has Ethernet, by the way, which i think is a real standout feature of this thing when comparing it to the xps one of the things in my notes is like if you if you need an ethernet port and i i consider myself one of those people um this is this is sort of one of your best bets at this size right so like for noah that's a huge deal right so he doesn't want those dongles yeah i i i have settled with the dongles but i don't like it and so this would this would don this would this would be a dongless machine for me, which I think would be pretty great.

But anyways, if you're somebody that needs a machine like this, this is a pretty good match for that. The competition is stiff right now, but I think they have a pretty solid offering with this. I would really like to see System76 stick with this machine over a few releases too. Keep iterating. Yeah, eventually add in things like USB-C charging, maybe actually get that SIM slot. Oh, man. A System76 laptop with an active LTE SIM that I could pop in there.

Oh, that's amazing. See, the other thing too is like, it's a handsome looking machine and I know it sounds silly, but especially living in Seattle like, I'd like to, if I'm going to be repping a Linux laptop I'd like to not feel like I look worse than the MacBooks in the coffee shop. Yeah, you're going to be competitive. And that's why I think that logo on the lid is kind of an important thing to mention.

I would tell you, I would definitely, if you could get your hands on one at a convention, try it out. I'm hoping they work out the firmware on the fan stuff. That would be one thing for me that would be a little bit of an issue. But otherwise, I really liked it. I really liked it. And I was also consistently surprised at how fast it was and today when i was when i was particularly trying to push it to kind of see what i could get out of it um it's still the unity desktop still remained responsive while i was slamming the disc or slamming the cpu like things still felt like

it wasn't like my whole desktop was like you know and i And I think that MV&E is a big part of probably that performance story right there. Low latency. Yeah. So check it out. If you guys are curious, you can find it over at System76. Lots of reviews are coming online right now, too. I think people – I think I saw somebody, too, is receiving theirs or something. Like, it's beginning to happen.

It's happening, Wes. It's happening. Speaking of happening, you can make it happen at DigitalOcean go over to digitalocean.com and sign up just use our promo code

D-O-Unplugged and spin up a rig on their infrastructure in no time and that's my favorite promo code it's just so fun to say D-O-Unplugged

D-O-Unplugged digitalocean.com go there you create your account first and then once you are signed up you can apply our promo code D-O-Unplugged and you get the $10 credit. All SSD infrastructures. That makes everything super fast. You can deploy in seconds. They have highly available block storage, lightning fast networks, team accounts if you want to work with a few people, and pre-built open source applications are ready to go. Go to digitalocean.com and use our promo code D-O-Unplugged.

And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged program. So we have to go kind of soon because the TechNet program is recording another show. But I did want to give

the Mumble Room a chance to ask any questions or give the chat room. If anybody wanted to ask any questions about the Galago while I have it here in my hot little hands, go ahead.

Anybody? Going once or going twice. Are you going to buy it? Go on once. I'll go on twice. Are you a regular user of the touchpad on that thing? Or do you use a mouse that's external? No, I've been using the touchpad the whole time. I have not actually hooked up an external mouse. How do you feel about that compared to, say, the MacBook or the XPS 13?

Well, I think it's comparable to the XPS 13. I feel like the new MacBook, that's a challenging thing to compare it to because it's so huge huge yeah trackpad on the macbook is crazy nice yeah i would like to see the trackpad i tried the gallego ultra pro at scale but it was before they had the final keyboard and it might have been before they had the final trackpad i would say i was so i was not impressed but i don't really have a lot of complaints the buttons aren't like super clicky to me but they're fine it's got dedicated buttons. For me, it was just the touchpad itself, the feel, and the fact that the mouse didn't seem to move smoothly across the screen. It's a little smooth for me, the feel of it.

I will also say I do like that it's small. I like that the Mac one's big, but Linux drivers have never been as good when you hit it with your thumb. I have kind of small hands, so a giant touch a giant touchpad. It's hard for me. So I kind of appreciate that this one's not huge. Yeah, yeah. Some people in chat rooms say the battery life isn't for them, and that's just a decision you have to make. For me, two, three hours when I'm working on it pretty hard is decent.

I blame some of that on Linux, too. I mean, if you put Windows 10 on here, maybe you get six hours. I don't know. It's possible. Maybe not, either. You're not going to try that? You're not going to put Windows on the machine born to run Linux? I did run Arch on it for quite a bit. I ran Arch, and I actually am planning to put Elementary on here in a bit too.

Yeah. Elementary and that would be a handsome combination. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Any other questions? Anybody else got any other questions before we move on? I don't know. William, I really like the keyboard on this. Yeah, what's the RAM on that?

How much RAM does it have? You can go up this. Yeah, what's the RAM on that? This one came... How much RAM does it have? You can go up higher. Up to 32, I think, right? Yeah, the review unit that I have has 8 gigs of delicious, tasty, tasty RAM on it. I also was considering, although I don't have a lot of time with this unit, I have to send it back. I was considering popping off the bottom and seeing what the upgrade possibilities are. You should post some of those pics on Twitter or something.

I got a box of that. You could post some of those pics on Twitter or something. I got a box of that. You could actually add the LTE modem yourself. It sounds like it's not in the SKUs they sell, but I wonder if it's still on the board because it is a Clevo unit or something originally. I wonder. I wonder. I don't know. Since it has VMs, since it has 32 gigs, do you see yourself running any VMs on it? So this has a 256-g gig hard drive, but you could obviously put a larger hard drive in it if you wanted to.

Because yeah, you can get up to a 1 terabyte NVMe if you wanted to. Actually, they offer up to 2 terabytes on the System76 website. 2 terabytes of NVMe storage would be... That's another part about this that's nice. It's like a very configurable laptop.

Yeah. You can put an additional disk in this. Compared to like Dell's website where you have to, there's like six different ways you can try to configure an XPS 13 and none of them have the same options. You can put, so you could put a, if you wanted to,

you could put a 250 gig NVMe drive as your OS drive and then you could put a 1 terabyte 2.5 SSD in the second drive bay. Now you're editing video, man. Well, or definitely getting VMs. Definitely. Or that's your Steam partition right there. Yeah, yeah.

I would say for like the – Oh, yeah. It's got two DIMMs. That's nice. You can go full 32. Yeah, you can get full. Yep, yep. I would say for that, so if I was going to build this for myself, if I was going to go nuts, I would go with 1704 Ubuntu.

I would probably leave it at 3.1 gigahertz. I don't need to blow that money. I would probably get 32 gigs of RAM. I would get a 250-gig OS drive. I get a 1-terabyte SSD. I would probably get the nicer Wi-Fi. Just throw that laptop bag in there you need a new bag chris so my total wow this is pretty reasonable my total for a pretty nicely

specced 13 inch laptop with a 4k screen is 1800 that's under 2k that is actually really reasonable 1900 to you know probably if you know after there's some taxes or something i don't know but yeah that's really i mean compared to the like i mean i'm comparing to a macbook there but uh well even on some of the like a higher end xps 15 or something like you're easily in that territory yeah yeah so you really what you have to decide is are you ready to switch to 4k on linux that's one of the things you have to consider when you get the galago pros some of the things you don't think about there's like grub screens other things are kind of a pain sometimes. Yeah, Java apps.

Even Steam on that, like really super small. There is, I've linked to it a few weeks back, there is like a Steam theme that helps with high DPI. Nice. It just makes fonts a little bigger. So you gotta make that call. Are you willing to be on a little bit of a bleeding edge? And then understand too that we're about to go through the Wayland transition as well.

Which probably should be fine for high DPI, but just something to be considerate of. And if you are, well, which probably should be fine for high DPI, but just something to be considerate of. And if you are and you want a workhorse that's high DPI, and a laptop, this could be a great one because it's fast enough to get work done and it's small enough to travel with you and light enough that you'll actually put it in your bag. That's pretty nice.

So they've got a good mix there, and I'd be curious to see if they stick with it where it goes, especially when they start building these. There you go. Oh, W.Ww you had a uh a note go ahead oh um no bashful was asking in chat and i don't think you got it he was uh wondering what was the heat output on it is it running too hot when you're using no you know i wanted to ask that as well yeah it's really not bad although i think part of that is the fan does seem to kick in a little sooner than it should. And it does have good ventilation on the bottom, it looks like, as well. Yeah, it really does.

This whole bottom piece, this whole piece where the motherboard is is vented, and they do have a fan there. So I think, I mean, I would say it probably has room to get warmer before the fan kicks in. I think that's what they're playing with right now. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. If I could keep it for a little bit longer, I would try a few different production things on it. I would try editing, doing some encoding on it just to give you that take, too.

But in the meantime, kind of give you an idea of where it's at. Yeah. Well, hopefully if anyone out there buys one, they'll let us know what they think of it, too. Oh, yeah. I would be. Yeah, I'd be really interested. Because it does seem like there's some pretty good interest here. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we really should. Because it does seem like there's some pretty good interest here. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It looks like Mr. Martin Wimpress had to part, but you can find him and Popey over at the Ubuntu podcast. Do it. So check them out.

They just had Joey on from OMG Ubuntu, which we were just covering a little bit earlier. So check them out. Also, be sure to check me out on Linux Action News. It's my new show. And check Wes out on the TextNet program. That's right. Look at us. Wow.

All our different ventures. Okay, you ready for me to use our new soundboard? Oh, my God, I'm so excited. Okay. There we are. It's doing it, Wes. It's doing it. You're talking over it.

Oh, well, all right. Well, then I'll just say this. He's at Wes Payne. I'm at Chris LAS, the network itself at Jupyter Signal. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Check out Linux Action News, too, for that secret Jupyter Broadcasting Telegram group. LAS, the network itself, at Jupiter Signal. Ha ha ha ha! Check out Linux Action News, too, for that secret Jupiter Broadcasting Telegram group. Get involved with the show when we're not on the air at reddit.com slash r slash linuxunplugged.

Hang out in our virtual lug Tuesdays. We do it at 2 p.m. Pacific. You can get that converted at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. And email us, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for being here. And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Say goodbye, Wes. Goodbye.

Bye, everybody. Thank you. Soundboard's doing so good right now, Wes. It's doing so good. And Soundboard officially played us in and out. Hashtag proud of you. Of our first production show. Good job, community. That's pretty impressive. That is so awesome.

In the background, you might be able to hear our lights screaming right now. All the lights just came on in the studios. We're getting ready for the next tech snap. Let's go pick our title. UABtitles.com. So are you ever going to fix BangSuggest.com? I just have to ask. I don't think so.

Because I miss typing that in. We should register it. I'm sorry I forgot to bring you guys in so soon. We got all excited about that Ubuntu story, and it kind of threw off the thing. I know, right? Yeah. I know. I'm new.

I'll get the hang of this podcasting thing eventually. Yeah, this Chris Kai is new. Yeah, he's also apparently a Linux hater now that he quit the Linux. I didn't want to talk about it, but it just came up. It just happened. So was there any pushback on the name Linux Action News? No. Was Joe like, this is like, where's my part of this?

No, no, I don't think so. That's good. I think we all liked it. No, it's a good name. I like it too. Yeah. I think it went pretty well. Now we just need those Macs on eBay to sell so that way we can fund all the studio stuff that we changed here.

Oh, my gosh, Wes. Oh my gosh. It's a world of changes. I mean, it's all good, right? It's actually really cool and awesome. I'm excited about it. Do you find it easier to work with the new stuff? Yeah, totally. That was part of the goal right there. I don't have to load any kernel

extensions on the Mac OS X anymore. Yeah, you don't have to like us. I keep trying to use the long options on the BSD user lane. I like it because I'm up in my office and I'm listening to you and Dan on the live stream and I launch the editor remote program

and I tweak Dan's EQ a little bit and change this a little bit. I don't have to come in and interrupt you guys. You're none the wiser. I just get it done and don't get in the way. You guys just go about your business. It's a really cool mixer. Yeah, that's a super nice feature of it. Just hope those Macs sell less.

Yeah. So everyone go vote and then go buy some Macs. Yeah, right. Go look for Colonel Linux on eBay. I'm sure he's on there. I'm sure he's on there.