LINUX Unplugged - Episode 199: No Samba No Cry | LUP 199

Episode Date: May 31, 2017

Why the big Samba vulnerability is no WannaCry, Wimpy gives us his take on e-gpus under Linux, our first take on Plasma 5.10 & a tool that will finally get you to use Docker!

Oh my god, Wes. You're waiting for WWDC. You know it. You're waiting for WWDC to see what the new MacBook Pros are going to look like, aren't you? I'm hoping it's just all touch bar. It's just one giant touch bar, Chris. And then that's it. No more keyboard, no more trackpad.

Yep. It's the touchpad. Wow. I mean, because I'm really done with this whole Linux thing anyway. You know, I want that, I want something stable. And it makes sense, you know, Dan's on the Mac, so that way when you guys are doing text and app, you're on a common platform. Yep.

That makes a lot of sense. And you know that OSX is like the homeboy for Skype. That's just where it shines. That's his predominantly used platform. And then, of course, the studio here is switching all to Macs. Yes. So we just recently made a transition to Linux. Now that we've made that transition, obviously we'll be making a transition to macOS.

When that new Mac Pro comes out. Right. So when you consider the fact that the studio is going to be on the Macs, Dan's on a Mac, you should probably get a Mac. And I plan to release a Jupyter Broadcasting Touch Bar app. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Touch Bar app. So it's got the right on there, right on the touch bar. Yeah, that's one of the buttons.

Yep. Just three things actually. Stallman, the ding, obviously. Obviously. Of course. And then just a button that loads our webpage. You just push that button and it just loads our webpage. Oh, yeah. jayzalive.tv, right there. Yeah, because, you know, nobody's buying keyboards with the custom buttons anymore, but Touch Bar apps, people would be desperate for those. And with all the switching over to Macs, it just seems to make a lot of sense.

And you can monetize. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 199 for May 30th, 2017. Oh, welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's been trying out so many different projects this week. It might be time for a nuke and pave. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. I hope this is one of those episodes where people walk away and they're going to want to try at least something that we talked about today because goodness knows I have. I have been trying out some really great projects this week, and I got just a couple of them that we're going to share.

I've also got like a whole list of things I could talk about for future episodes, but we'll get into all of that because before we can get there, there are some big updates in the open source community and in Linux that we want to talk about. I've been going through the list today, Wes, and I was like, geez, how do we even sort through these things? So what I've tried to do this week is we're going to start with some of the official newsy stuff, and then I'm going to gush about our community for a little

bit. Then we're going to replace Evernote once and for all. Yes! And all your other apps. Those of you who need to improve your focus, well, there's a GNOME extension for you. And finally, we'll solve the problem of old smartphones not getting an update. Then we'll talk a little bit about ChaosBot. The huge improvements coming to the Plasma desktop. And then finally, finally, my friends,

you can stop hating Docker now and we can all have a little fun with KiteMatic. I'll drink to that. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy. Speaking of which, Wes brought us in some IPAs this week and these are some serious ones,

some local brews from Seattle because beer matters in Seattle, it says. That's right, it does. I like that. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. When it rains as much as it does here, you got. That's right, it does. I like that. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. When it rains as much as it does here, you got to have something to lift your spirits. Wes, you don't really, though, you're a gentleman because you've had a heck of a weekend.

It's true. You did the thing this weekend that I hope I never, ever have to do, and that's move. I hate moving. It's really the worst. I mean, there's so much excitement and other things, but you can't get there because of all the other bullshit right in the way. Yeah, not only is it just tons of physical work and disruption to your life, it is so much coordinating of little details that are extremely obnoxious. And then it is so many things not coming through that you then just have to like, well, we're rolling with that bunch. Exactly, yes.

We're going to roll with that bunch. So it's really cool. Not only am I glad you can make it, but it's really cool that you're able to bring us in a couple of local brews. The worst part is I don't even have internet yet at the new place. So it's like the backwoods. So are you like tethering or what are you doing? Yes, I did buy myself a new UniFi access point. Oh, cool.

So that setup, I got it like piggybacking on one of those Xfinity Wi-Fis, but it's so slow. So yeah, I've just been tethering, which is... Yeah, I know what that is because it's one of those things you have to schedule and then they're going to be there, of course, between 8 a.m. and noon or something like that. So good luck.

I'm like, well, how are you going to work from home if you don't yet have internet to wait for the guy to show up to install the internet? Yes. So go ahead and take advantage of the JB1 connection while you're here, Wes. It's so sweet. Yes. Yes.

Well, we do have some news, quote unquote, to get into this week. But before we do, we've got to bring in our lug. Time appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Greetings. Mumble Room. Hello. Woo. But now, you know what? I swear, if we did a little pre-planning, our virtual lug there could do like a little harmonious,

hello, hello, hello, hello. We just got to tune it. Yeah. Hello. Hello, some lads. And then we'll put like an auto-tune filter on there. Yes. That would be amazing.

If anybody knows that's possible at the X32, at Chris Elias, let me know. All right. So let's start with a semi-serious story that's's not really getting a lot of discussion in any of the Jupyter broadcasting shows or any of our friends really because it's not really huge to those of us that are just daily desktop Linux users. But it's something I think is worth making people aware of. And it's a seven-year-old Samba flaw that allows attackers to access thousands of Samba systems remotely. It's a CVE-2017-74-94, and it affects all versions of Samba that are newer than Samba 3.50,

which was released in 2010. Ouch. Yeah, all versions onward are vulnerable to remote code execution vulnerability, allowing a malicious client to upload a shared library to a writable share, and then cause the server to load and execute it. Yep.

Pretty much exactly what you don't want to happen. Now, this story didn't get a ton of attention until WannaCry came along. Yes. And then everybody was like, well, if this could happen with WannaCry, maybe it could happen with SambaCry. It didn't take off, but maybe it could happen with SambaCry. It didn't take off, but they tried to make it SambaCry. They tried to. And, you know, the thing is, is by the time we're hearing about this, the reality is that your distro has already sent out patches. So I was talking with some people who are, like, people I know who are casual Linux users, and they'd had some problems with their work computers, and they'd been, like, told that, oh, yeah, no, Linux is usually more secure.

And they were kind of, like, asking me about this and this, and they'd heard about WannaCry. And so I was having to try to explain this. Oh, yeah. And it really struck me that, yeah, you're right. If you just like the update thing, Ubuntu update comes up, you hit update, you're probably going to be fine. But really, it seems like where this is going to bite us is, like everything in the Linux ecosystem, is all of those embedded devices that will never, ever get patched. Or if they do, how many people are ever going to actually update that firmware? Yep.

And that's why I wanted to include it as a discussion piece because I think that is the part that matters is the reality is many of us probably have routers that have Samba built in because we've got a USB port so you can hook a USB. Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of those. Yeah. There's so much Samba out there in the wild. In fact, it's one of the little statistics that the Samba – I always shouldn't say little. I don't mean to demean it. It's one of the statistics that the Samba project is very proud of is that Samba is one of the most widely deployed open source projects.

DVRs use it and some applications have Samba baked in. So the issue – the flaw, I guess, is really in the way Samba handled shared libraries. So the remote attacker could use the Samba arbitrary module loading vulnerability to upload a shared library to a writable share and then cause the server to

load the malicious code and run it. Just one line of code is required to execute malicious code on the affected system. And then, of course, when it's an open source thing, I mean, this happens with Windows, but it happens at a really kind of amazing rate with open source stuff. Metasploit and others already have created penetration testing frameworks

to take advantage of this of this of course just like within days like that just within days i will say that is kind of handy though i'm always um yeah yeah you know whenever these comes out sometimes it's not easy to be able to repro on your side and i'm always kind of curious you know like hey is this like am i vulnerable how do i test yeah so it's nice if you can get an easy to use framework and you're like yep i just hacked myself all right great. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Samba's already issued patches. So that's sort of how this is.

The information doesn't get really released until the upstream projects have had a chance to look at the vulnerability and potentially come up with a fix. And they usually have a timeline. So you're saying we live in the age of responsible disclosure? I believe this is generally how it goes these days. Yeah. Not always. And sometimes projects don't meet the timeline that they're given and

it gets disclosed. That generally happens, though, more with Microsoft than it does with open source projects tend to get it done in remarkable time, actually. But anyways, the issue isn't so much how fast the upstream project gets it done, it's actually the issue is how fast the

distributions get it out the door. Or if you're using a distribution that's still maintained. So Samba has patched versions 4.64, 4.5.10, and 4.4.14. Now, you might notice that three dots are missing in that list. And so after a couple of days of discussion, Good Guy Samba decided to actually also... I kind of love those bobbies. the days of discussion, Good Guy Samba decided to actually also, I kind of love those bobbins.

Good Guy Samba also decided to release patches for Samba 3037, 3.215, and 3.3.14. So even though they're no longer officially supported by the Samba team, they decided to release patches. That's really nice. They're clearly very busy. So if you appreciate the work they're doing here, maybe go help them redesign their website. Oh, man. Yeah. You know, somebody who used to go to that Samba project, it's so funny. When you first get into this stuff, at least for me, when I didn't have any idea, like I got one of the ways I got into Linux was through the Samba project.

Yeah. You're like, oh, suddenly I don't have to have this like horrible Windows file server. Yeah. We were, that's funny. You and I were just, suddenly I don't have to have this horrible Windows file server? Yeah. We were... That's funny. You and I were just talking about remote profiles in the pre-show. We were hosting a bunch of terminal servers users' remote

roaming profiles, which caused a ton of open connections to the NT4 server when users would log in. Right. Anytime anyone logs in. Yeah. And so when you have 700 users logging in at once across 120 terminal servers, it causes a massive, massive issue. And Samba was capable of handling that load. NT4 and even Windows 2000 were not.

And so I got in as a way to solve problems we were having, limits we were having with our Windows servers in many areas, in network proxying, but in storage, and Samba was part of that storage solution. So for me, obviously, the place to get the best documentation was going to be Samba.org. Obviously, you go to Samba. Right from the source. And they did have great documentation for a long time, but it's so funny now, a decade later, no way in hell would I do that. I would go look up the documentation that was the most current, that was the most applicable. If it was Arch, I would go to the

Arch wiki. If it's Ubuntu, I would go whatever resources, Ubuntu specific or Fedora. Like, I would go to a distro specific outlet and I would make sure that the date was relevant and all of this stuff. Like, it's a totally different approach now understanding the complexities of the ecosystem that I would take. And so the Samba website, even back then, it really hasn't changed much. It was horrible back then, and it's still pretty awful. It's got a little better, but it's still pretty bad. Anyways, so go patch your Samba, guys. Don't be like a bunch of Windows XP users sitting around.

Yeah, it does affect Samba 4.3.11 XMM. Now, let's talk a little bit about the community for a second here. A few weeks ago, we talked about Caster Soundboard. I've been giving you updates on it. Caster Soundboard has been driving all of the sound effects in this week's show and last week's as well and all of the shows. And holy crap, is it great. It is really something that if you ever needed a soundboard for anything, for a presentation you're giving or for a podcast you're recording,

holy shit, is it great. And one of the things they've done is they've implemented remote control support, the open sound control protocol into Castor Soundport. implemented remote control support, the open sound control protocol into caster soundboard. And so Oscar wrote this amazing how-to on how to remotely control the caster soundboard using an Android, or I think iOS, but using an Android device. Yeah, iOS too, yep. And really look at this thing. Like, first of all, it's amazing you can do this. But second of all, the amount of work and passion that is going into this caster soundboard is... This is some documentation, too. Like, not only just making the features, but then...

Super good documentation. Yes, I know. With really good layout and screenshots and structure and easy to follow and understand and JB references throughout. I just, I can't believe what I'm seeing here. And also the Python visualizer that we use for user error and Linux action news. Yeah. Also been getting some love from the community. Huge improvements coming. I've already heard from other podcasts that are thinking about trying it. It seems like a great tool for audio podcasts. It really does. I'm so, it's so awesome that, you know, anything we can do, working with the OBS project or doing projects like this to make media production under Linux better just really excites me. And so to see the community just like this, where we're at with Caster

Soundboard would never have happened without the community. And now I really think that Linux podcasters and other platforms, you can use it on other OSs too, are really going to have an amazing tool going forward. And then to combine it with documentation like this. And the thing is, is like being able to control the soundboard from your remote system. Here he has an example of on a Galaxy Tab 4, like imagine you have like an old tablet sitting around. Wes could have a tablet there. We've talked about this before, but Wes could have a tablet there on the table and say he went to a conference. He could come back with a few sound clips loaded up, and you could kick him off

as we're talking about it. We wouldn't have to do any post-editing or anything. Just have it right queued up. That would be amazing. If we were doing more of like a morning zoo show where we had a lot of sound effects, you could have access to the board. I could have access to the board. It would really be cool. Whoa, whoa.

Anyways, thank you to Oscar for making that awesome write-up, and thank you to the whole community for working on the caster soundboard. You can get it at github.com slash jupiterbroadcasting. Also, it's just great to see that repo grow, you know, the organization. Yeah. Let's go look at some of the...

Because we talk a lot about open source on the network, so it's cool to see some open source stuff in the network. 101 commits. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, 13 contributors. That's actually awesome.

Okay, insights. Here we go. So let's get some graphs on it. What does that tell us? What does that tell us? Because, you know, it's all been relatively recent, right? So let's take a look at some of these stats, looking just like at the last month from April 30th to May 30th, we've closed 20 issues, 13 new issues, merged 25 poll requests.

Gosh, look at these guys involved with this. This is so awesome. 13 authors, 71 commits, 156 files, 12,980 additions, and 1,642 deletions. Thank you, everybody who's been involved with Caster Soundboard. It is such a cool project. Thank you to Oscar for doing that right up. That looks kind of amazing. It really does.

It's pretty cool to see that, Wes. It's pretty cool. Also, I want to mention, speaking of community involvement, Linux Unplugged has a Reddit now. You can go to reddit.com slash r slash Linux Unplugged to submit stuff in here. I want to say thank you to Reg Gaster. I'll be talking about one of the things you submitted here in a little bit this week. Also, this is a cool one. I didn't really think it was worth putting in the show,

but Chaotic Kernel submitted this GPS share utility, which is a utility that lets you share your GPS device location information over the local network, and it's written in Rust. So it replaces some cloud provider stuff if you just want to do like a small little GPS sharing thing. That's pretty neat. And you know we have a soft spot for Rust. That's right.

Also, if you didn't know, like say you're Popey and you haven't been here for a while, welcome back, Popey. It's good to see you. Welcome. Hello, sir. Hello, hello, hello. Hello.

Hey, you smell great. Yeah. Thank you. I do, actually. I, you smell great. Thank you. I do, actually. I do. I'll confirm. It's mostly IPA I smell like, but anyways, it does smell delicious. Bopey, I know it's been a little while, so I don't know if you're aware, but we're almost

episode 200. Good Lord. I know. I don't. It's shocking. Is that metric or imperial? No, no. I measured it with both systems, and it checks out.

It actually checks. It's the one number where the two systems converge. It's beautiful. I've actually constructed a lab where I'm watching the decay of an atom just to confirm because I can't believe it. But so far, it seems to check out. And as is proper style, I don't really have anything prepared for 200 itself, which is next week. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

So we don't really have anything planned. Except a great show as usual yeah of course duh come on Chris but what is coming up here soon

is America's birthday the greatest day which we will be taking over and renaming to Link's Unplugged birthday so for the fourth

how old is America now um hey Wes google that real quick hey let's see Alexa how old is America let? Hey, Wes, Google that real quick. Hey, let's see. Alexa, how old is America? Let's see what she says.

What did she say? 240 years old. Oh, she knows. And don't we look just fine for that? Okay, let's see if Siri knows. How old is America? Okay, I found this on the web for how old is America. Totally worthless. Oh, my God.

Way to go, Siri. I love how it starts being like, listen, I don't really know. So here's where I got it. You shouldn't trust me, but this is the thing. It's so couchy. It's so couchy. Yeah, I can't wait to put that in a tube. That's going to be a real successful product, Apple.

Go ahead. Put that in a tube. All right, so let's ask the Google Assistant just really quickly. Okay, Google, how old is America? United States of America was founded in 1776. Well, so she didn't really answer the – You're making me do the math here? Yeah.

Come on, Google. So the Echo is the only one that successfully really answered the question. And also, did you notice, though, that they all allowed me to say America? They never – like none of them got confused. Well, actually, hold, though, that they all allowed me to say America? They never, like, none of them got confused. Well, actually, hold on. Maybe that was. How old is the United States of America? Okay.

I found this on the web. Nope. Siri's dumb either way. It doesn't matter. It doesn't. Nope. Siri's just stupid. So anyways, for America's birthday and for America's birthday and for Linux Unplugs 200 episode, which will be 200-ish, we're going to have a barbecue here in the studio.

I've only heard from like three people that are going to make it. So right now it's you, me, the beard, and three other people that are getting burgers and dogs. And maybe we should do like a chicken. Oh, Wes, you were going to do ribs. Yeah. Gosh, guys, if you want the Wes Payne ribs, you should probably come to the studio. That's true. I mean, we can do other things too.

I'm open to ideas. I just wanted – I thought we needed like some sort of non-standard grill item yeah special yeah yeah uh so you could if you're gonna make it let me know at chris las or or or this is where i was building join our new official jupiter broadcasting telegram group it's official now it is are you in there you're in there aren't you yeah it's pretty crazy these days it is pretty but it's crazy like in a good way it's like when twitter was good i'm still It's official now. It is. Are you in there? You're in there, aren't you? Yeah. It's pretty crazy these days. It is pretty crazy. But it's crazy like in a good way. It is.

It's like when Twitter was good. I'm still kind of trying to figure out exactly how to use a Telegram group. Oh, I use it like I use Twitter. I really do. You should ask. It's like somewhere between Twitter and IRC and- Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Bit.ly slash jbtelegram. Bit.ly slash jbtelegram. Wimpy, telegram wimpy you're in a few groups how do you manage all of that uh well the first thing you do is every time you join a group you mute notifications yes absolutely yes and uh yeah i don't know how to use twitter but i think what you're driving at is how i should use twitter which is you don't read everything obviously you read everything in the ubuntu podcast telegram because it's all excellent content uh but the other groups you uh read what you can see whilst you're in there and then when you wake up in the morning

you just fly by the 500 notifications that you've missed yeah yeah and that's sort of i dip in i like it's like a river and i dip in for a for a swim and then I dip out. And pinned messages can be nice. Yes, that's true. So, Popey, what happened when you asked Mycroft how old America is? Should we find out? Oh, yes, yes. Mycroft, how old is America? Not as old as England, so it doesn't matter that is pretty much on point all right

good very good thank you yeah it makes me feel young it's a good point this this weekend the village i lived in celebrated our 900th uh now listen wow birthday now listen oh and you don't look at J over 799. We've got some old trees in my neck of the woods. Does that count? Can I – no? No. No.

It doesn't, does it? Well, very good. Bit.ly slash JB Telegram. Oh, my gosh. Guys, there's so many things I want to talk about today. Let's mention real quickly before we go crazy. Wimpy, how do you feel about teasing a little bit about your recent shenanigans with

eGPU testing? Are you ready or do you want to save it for a little longer? I can tease some stuff. Yeah, do. Hold on a second. Let me do a little teasing here. Let me tease DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean.com. Go over there, create your

account, and use our promo code D01plugged. It's one word. It's lowercase. It's easy. You put it together. You smush it together. You create the account, and you get a $10 credit when you apply D01plugged. Now, once you've got the account set up, I'm not going to tell you how to do your business. But if I were you, if I were you, take a couple of things we've talked about in just, say, the last two weeks on this show. Just take what your favorite one and try it out on a DigitalOcean

Droplet. It's so fast. It's so easy to use. The interface is super simple. The SSD storage is lightning fast. Faster than lightning. I don't even know how fast it is. It's too fast. Faster than lightning. I don't even know how fast it is. It's too fast.

I'm making pew-pew, right? I'm making pew-pew. It's like pew-pew fast. That's how fast. Presidentially fast. I don't really know what that means. I don't know what that means either. That's how fast it is.

DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D1Plugged. They have an API that's really easy to integrate with desktop applets for your Linux desktop or for Android applications or your own code. I really like it for that. DigitalOcean.com, use the promo code D-O-M-Plugged. Earlier, you were talking about how you wouldn't really go to the Samba website. And you were like, I'd go to some distro, I'd go to the ArchWiki. I think you were just trying to be polite, though,

because in reality, you would go check out the DigitalOcean documentation. I sure would. In fact, check out this post from May 26th how to use gpg encryption and sign messages this is an example of a digital ocean how to that crushes it because it's not necessarily specific to digital ocean i don't mean to tell them like something that maybe they're not aware of but guys i could read this and use this anywhere but But go over there, check it out. It's a great guide on how to use GPG on Linux. It's not even, look at this. Look at this.

It's not even distro specific. This guide works for Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and Fedora. Fedora. Fedora. Fedora? Fedora? Is that how you say it? I'm not sure.

You know, if Matthew ever stopped by the show, he might remember. Oh, yeah. He could tell us. Anyways, go over to DigitalOcean.com. They got great tutorials. They have a really great dashboard. They have a service that's super, super nice. Not only do you get up and going in no time, which is what they like to emphasize, but

the pricing is amazing because they have $5 rigs a month. They have hourly pricing. They have a bunch of different distros you can choose from. And one of my favorite features is they have an HTML5 console that works on everything from your tablet to your Linux desktop. And there's a lot of stuff you can do when you get access to that console. A lot of stuff you can do. DigitalOcean.com, you go over there, take advantage of all of that stuff.

Plus, if you're in a team, they support that. 40 gigabit connections to the hypervisors. Highly available block storage when you need to grow your rig, monitoring, alerting when you want to look like a boss and know about things before your clients even do. DigitalOcean.com. Playing around or putting it in production. Try it out and just use our promo code D-O-Unplugged. And thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program.

So, Wes, one of the things that I'm thinking more and more about these days is a future where I buy a really light and thin laptop that is using an embedded Intel GPU that is supported under Wayland really well. And mind you, I'm thinking about this too. Because you want to run Triscoll, right? That's the motivation here. I want to run Wayland is what I want to run.

And I want it to run smoothly. And I'm really trying to think about how to do this in the future where maybe I'm taking a rig between the studio and the RV a lot. And one of the things that's jumped out at me is if we could really nail external GPUs right, so I could have a laptop that is thin, light, and portable, but when I need to edit or I want to play video games from time to time, I can buy a box that's a PCI 3, like Thunderbolt, or whatever, Thunderbolt 3, that's what it is, Thunderbolt 3 connected device. You put a

GPU in there. Then I can hook it up to a laptop. I can have a lot more horsepower. But beyond that, I can take this one video card that I spent all my monies on, this one video card, and I can move it between my laptop, or a desktop that has Thunderbolt 3 or another laptop or your laptop.

And it's like you invest once in a great graphics card and then the three or four times a month that I need it, I've got a plug-in go-to graphics card. And all the other time, I've got a super portable, lightweight, great battery life laptop. So Wimpy stopped by that official bit.ly slash jbtelegram group the other day and was teasing me with a little information that he's gleaned. So you've been doing some testing, Wimpy, on eGPUs, external GPUs over what, like Thunderbolt 3 USB-C style connections? That's right.

Yeah. usbc style connection connections that's right yeah so um i've got a razor core which is the box of tricks that is the external enclosure and i've got a an nvidia card in that and i've been putting it through its paces on a number of computers i have that are thunderbolt 3 enabled to see uh a does it work and how well it works and and this is on uh modern linux like version what uh well i've tested ubuntu 1604 and upwards okay so uh stuff that's easily available so So I don't have to be running some crazy development version of Linux to get support for this. No, you can. So in the Ubuntu world, you will need Ubuntu 16.04.2, which comes pre-shipped with the hardware enablement stack. Okay, okay.

Okay, okay. And if you don't have, if you've just upgraded from.0 or.1 of 16.04, then you have to enable the hardware enablement stack, and that will do the good stuff that you need. So there must be a downside, right? I mean, there must be a downside to having an external GPU. There must be something that is inconvenient about it other than, I mean, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to fathom like what would be, I imagine you can't hot swap it, right? So you can't just be running an accession and going about your business and

just connect this thing to your computer and all of a sudden be connected to your eGPU, right? Yeah, you can do that. You can hot plug the GPU. No, see the folks at Dell told me that wasn't a possibility.

Well, you can do it under windows. It's built into it. Well, in, in windows with additional drivers on do it under windows it's built into it well it's in in windows with additional drivers on the razor laptops it's doable you can hot plug the gpu and if you know the right incantations you can then bring that gpu up without having to do anything the the the best route that i've got is you can hot plug it then use nvidia settings to switch to that gpu and then

you have to log out and log back in and that's like the safest way to to handle it that's that's that's not so bad so you don't need to do a full reboot you can you know log out log in so that works now bash you had a question in the mobile go ahead i think it was about cost mostly just bringing out you were talking about um some of the downsides i was mostly just talking about cost of them yeah because it's like a 500 box uh us greenbacks right wimpy yeah yeah the the razor core itself was uh 499 pounds and then you've obviously got to put the gpu in that as well yeah um so yes expensive or you know the way that i did this was with bitcoin so the combined cost of the core and the card was uh half a bitcoin yeah yeah and how's the crazy to think that you can get something as expensive of that for a fraction of a Bitcoin now. It's just mental.

Yeah. I mean, it looks like it's well built. I mean, it looks like it's a good metal body. It looks like it's like it's like a solid piece of equipment. Does it does it feel good? The Razor core is extremely well constructed. Integrated power supply. Yeah.

It's a 500 watt integrated power supply. It's it's got fancy glowy, glowy lights and all of that carry on i'm not into all of that but if you like your things flashing and blinking at you you can do all of that um is it loud uh no not really um when it's in just in general use it's barely audible if you're playing a game then yes uh the fans kick. I think you can negate that to some extent by buying graphics cards with different cooling strategies and what have you on them. But maybe that's a downside for some. My experience is that any gaming PC that's competent makes some degree of fan noise. PC that's competent makes some degree of fan noise. So have you been able to accomplish my dream world of having several machines that have this Thunderbolt 3 connection

and essentially have one great GPU that you can move between them? That's exactly what I've got. So I've now got a hot stinking GPU that I can move between four devices at will. Wow. And it just works under Linux fairly well. Like it's... Yeah, there's one caveat, which is right now in the Linux kernel, it doesn't support the Thunderbolt security profiles. So consequently, it will only work on a computer where you can disable the thunderbolt security model or enable what's known as legacy mode once you've done that it works but uh as i um i was doing some research and i there's fixes coming for that fairly soon in the next so you can actually keep that enabled in something that you want enabled right because this is a device you're plugging into the bus of your computer and that's a bio you have to have a

bio it's a bio setting at the moment so I've got three laptops that supported that in the bios and one that doesn't so I've got one laptop that's got thunderbolt port where you've seen it it's that hp specter it's got thunderbolt ports coming out the wazoo um but i can't use this device on it because linux just doesn't see it well it sees it but it doesn't know how to um manage it so when those new kernel patches drop i shall be testing that with interest but the performance games are considerable um you know you're you're you don't like significance so i'd imagine i've got an intro where athena which has got a gtx 980m in it oh and um if you're familiar there's a unigine i've got a new benchmark uh tool called superposition yeah and this was recommended to me by um pedro matos from linux gamecast because by and large

this tests the gpu performance rather than taxing the cpu overly so you get a fairly fair comparison of the the gpu performance i know there are other factors but as best as you can manage this is a good reflection of gpu performance so that 980m can run the superposition benchmark which uh the default settings are medium 1080p and it can conk out a consistent 45 frames per second and then when I stick my um Razer Core into the various laptops, that goes up to, well, on the least performing device at 80 frames per second and the highest performing at 107 frames per second. And this is a really graphical intensive benchmark.

And the gaming for Linux community, gaming on Linux, they have a benchmark forum, and in there they're currently running a run the ultra test using Unigine superposition and post your benchmarks. And one of my systems with the Razer Core attached is the number two placed box in that list and what's the host placed what was the host system uh it was the is it was the intro host system no my one was a skull canyon nook yeah i do want one of those those look sweet so you hooked it up you hooked the cgpu up to a nook

and you you ranked number two in the benchmarking positions on Linux gaming. And comfortably number two. So this has got a 1080 Ti at this Razer Core. And the number one position that it's behind is a Ryzen 1700 with an 80 Ti on a 16x bus. And I'm only just slightly behind. Wow it it shifts some data yeah so we've defined good enough well to me it suggests that perhaps hmm so you're telling me that these yeah because you're comparing this to machines that have you are comparing this to to to other systems that have these video cards snapped into like a 16x PCI slot.

Yeah, yeah. And my Skull Canyon is four PCI lanes are exposed over the Thunderbolt port, but they're shared with the NVMe drive and several other components on the board. So it's not dedicated four lanes by any means. But it's still right up there. Wow. Well, will we hear more on the ubuntu podcast yes on thursday this week ubuntu podcast is out and we discuss this at the top of the show ah attaboy i'm looking forward to it me too i'm looking forward to it i uh i will uh follow this topic with much interest because it seems like it could unlock both portability and a lot of power.

I'm very excited. Mr. Popey, it's good to have you back. I noticed recently you've been tweeting away these days, and I followed the story you were – where was it? Where was it? Hold on. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. What to expect and not to expect from Linux Universal Packages, which is the next story in the show.

So I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on the state of Universal Packages and whatnot. What do you think, Popey? This post from The New Stack that I think you tweeted a few days ago, if I remember. I can't. That's how it showed up in my list. Yeah. What was your takeaway? Yeah.

So it's, uh, Bruce Byfield who, um, spoke to a bunch of people who are involved in these new packaging systems. So obviously, you know, Bruce should come on this show too.

Yeah. That would be awesome. That would be really good. Okay. Anyway, sorry. So he spoke to us about, um,

snaps and he spoke to uh people from the flatpak project and app image and also people from traditional distros uh like our good friend richard from open suza to get everyone's hot take on what the new packaging formats mean for linux desktop and um yeah i think I think it's fairly fair and balanced and covers everyone's perspective. I don't think everyone agrees on this, but yeah, I think it's pretty fair. Yeah, and Wes and I were just chatting recently,

just like, you know, recently as in like 45 minutes ago, about Visual Studio Code just recently announced that they have a Snap available. Great. That's pretty cool. And I also saw like a a cute based uh flat pack manager that people are working on it's like a graphical cute based flat pack manager so the universal package march even though we're not talking about as much these days is continuing

it continues on so uh yeah check out the new stack although i i mean people mention it as wars but i i really don't think the people who work on it see it as war a war yeah as such yeah i think we're all working on our own thing like the flatback developers are working on a great way to deliver the gnome experience and no applications to their users and tailoring it specifically for their needs app image developers are working on their system for making sure that it's super easy for people to just download a file and then run it and get the application. And we're working on our unique selling points that make ours slightly different. So I think they've all got their own selling points and they're all slightly different.

I don't think we're all really seeing each other as one. I think you're underselling Snap's competitive advantage in this space. So I would phrase it as this. Flatpaks are a reinvention of PPAs that nobody needs and ain't nobody got time for that. App image is what's already being done on macOS, and then developers have to create things like Sparkle, which are their back-assward workarounds

to get users to update their applications after they've already been dropped onto their file system. And Snap Package brings us sort of the best of both worlds where we can have a centralized store and an index where it's easy for users to search, it's easy to install. And on top of that, it's particularly well suited for not only server side, but graphical applications. So in my opinion, if one of them could win out, I would absolutely want it to be Snaps based on all lessons we've learned from all other operating systems and things we've tried on Linux before. After that, I'd want it to be AppImage because at the end of the day, I just want the damn application.

And then the very number three on my list would be Flatpaks because honestly, I think PPAs suck. Um, besides outside of a limited scope for testing applications for, uh, users to maybe like a beta test applications before they're put in the repo or something like that. PPAs are fine, but as a way to distribute software to everybody in the world and then have a random people who have lives and then maybe have children and a job to then maintain a repo, it's ridiculous. And flat packs don't seem to solve that particular problem at all. And, uh, snaps do. And, uh, also uh also uh app images do

out of any of them though i would if any of them take off i'd be happy i would be i would be satisfied if any of them are successful uh it just seems to me that right now things have slowed to a crawl and i don't know what exactly i was expecting but i was slowed in what way i mean we we spend all our days talking to developers about what they want so like you know we we developed uh snappy and snapcraft and we think we know what developers need but you know because we are essentially a company full of engineers but you know we speak to developers who create things in new and interesting and different ways. And these can be proprietary software vendors who just want to get their code out there to Linux users.

Or they could be open source software developers. Or they could be proprietary companies who are making open source software like Microsoft with Visual Studio Code. And some of those people have very specific requirements. And so what we're doing is spending time listening to them to find out what it is they want. I'll tell you what I was, I'll tell you, the only way I can answer your question is tell, I can tell you what I was hoping for by about now-ish was, so say Visual Studio Code is announced as a snap package. Hooray, that's great.

You go to the, you go to download Visual Studio code for Linux and nowhere on their website does it mention that as a possibility. It's not a download link, it's not like, hey, by the way, if you're a Snap package user, they've obviously, they can't be bothered to update their website. You're talking about the marketing level and the...

Well, I'm sorry, so let's just do a little, so let's just Visual Studio code. So you want to go get Visual Studio code. Let's just say a little – so let's just Visual Studio Code. So like you want to go get Visual Studio Code. Let's just say you want to get Visual Studio Code for Linux. So I'm going to Google search Visual Studio Code for Linux. I would imagine this is how most people would find this. And then I'm going to go – I'm going to – well, boy, that's not the right link.

The first link is no good. The second link is what you want. It's code.visualstudio.com slash download. And then when you go to that – I don't know why it's not loading. But when you go to that, they have DEBs and they have RPMs you can download and things like that. But they don't have a snap package or they don't have a link. I understand. And that was the benchmark I was hoping we would be at by now.

And that really depends on the developer because some developers have embraced it fully. And some, I could point you at a website where you go to download the application. And the first thing it says is go and get the snap rather than his windows his mac and oh by the way there's a snap so okay it really depends on the developer and some of them are at an early stage so visual studio code only recently landed in the store and you know a little and you think about the size of the company behind visual studio code these companies don't move super fast whereas little agile developers who throw their code on github and just want to get it out there they will accept a pull request that says here's how you install a snap and you can just provide a pull request and fix it for them yeah like cast a soundboard for example yeah yeah yeah and that's nice i i guess it it's it's starting to feel like we're not landing on a universal package format. We're landing on a couple of universal package formats, which, you know go read an internet war about which particular one is better. Let me go read a bunch of users' comments about why Flatpak isn't the next PPA, and then I'll go base my decision off of that. I just want it to be so fucking obvious that if you're going to make software, it's like you're stupid if you don't release it this way. That's what I want.

Right. From hearing some of your discussions with Michael on Coder, that seems to be like, if it's not that, then you really lose a lot of people who can't put that much time in for a niche platform. Yeah. And for some developers, packaging is like the least interesting. Exactly. That's, I think, what Wes is saying. It's like, I barely even want to waste my time on Linux to begin with. Oh, it's Electron. I'm not even going to bother to make the Linux version.

Like, these people, as they start to like, well, maybe I should target Linux. Maybe I should publish. And then they start to like, well, maybe I should target Linux. Maybe I should publish. And then they start to actually invest time. The last thing we want is, oh, but I can't figure out how to distribute the damn thing. Right, which is exactly why today on if you go to insights.aventure.com, our most recent blog post is about build.snapgraph.io. We want to make it easier so you don't have to learn the intricacies of packaging, DEBs or RPMs or whatever weird esoteric format it is. You just blop a YAML file in the master branch of your project, hook it up to build.snapcraft.io,

and every time you land an update, it goes in the store. So you just don't have to worry about it. It just does it for you. That is nice. So do you think that it's a give the market time kind of thing? Let the universal package – I don't want to call it a war because I – so we go back. So this is why – this, Popey, I think is why it gets described as a war is because to get to the goal that I stated earlier rather passionately, you kind of have to have one thing win out. And that's where the war context comes from. But if you take the more practical approach and say, well, Flatpak is a great way to distribute a lot of software and Snap packages are going to be a great way to distribute a lot of software

and AppImage, well, then shit, that isn't actually what people want. But at the same time, it is the more realistic thing of what's going to happen. But on a daily basis, when I'm talking to a developer, right, a typical developer will be writing something either in Go or Rust or with Node.js. It might be electronic, might not. It might be a command line tool. It might be some amazing utility that gathers system metrics and puts it in a central place and you get a lovely web-based dashboard, right? Is AppImage the right way to distribute that software and deliver updates to their users on a thing that runs on a remote server?

No. Is Flatpak the right thing to do that? No. Is it Snaps? Yes. So there are certain situations where you can just really easily show a developer this is the right tool for the job to distribute your software to as many users as possible and make sure that they're all running the very latest version of the software as possible. And each of the others have their niche as well. So if I was talking to a known application developer, if I could find one, there aren't actually that many. When you look at how many projects there are on GitHub or

Bitbucket or GitLab, there aren't actually that many GNOME native projects. Most of them, I would imagine, are known to the GNOME upstream developers, so they know who their target audience is. We're looking at everyone outside that bubble, right, which is a huge number of people. Which is why I think Snap packages have probably the best long-term chance

because you are solving real problems with distributing server-side software, which is an obvious strength that Linux and particularly Ubuntu have. And so people will get familiar with that package format on the server-side, right? Yep. And then by the time you're looking at distributing software for the desktop, you're like, well, we're already doing snaps for the server side of this. So why not? Like if I'm Nalaeus and I'm making my Nalaeus server and I'm making the Nalaeus for the desktop. and I get really familiar and I have, say, 15,000 users downloading my Snap package, then it seems like it would just be the next obvious choice to then use Snap package format for the desktop client that we start officially supporting.

Yeah. I mean, I think in that case, right, the biggest hurdle is getting the build chains and familiarity with the packaging format and all that. So if you've already done that hurdle and it works on the desktop, then, yeah, why not? Yeah. And I guess I suppose at the end and it works on the desktop, then yeah, why not? Yeah. And I guess, I suppose at the end of the day, if I can install support, if I get support for Flatpaks by installing GNOME, and whatever distro

I'm on, I have a pretty good chance I can install Snap support, and AppImage is sort of the way it works, is you can just get it. So what you're saying is we need Snap to be distributed in an AppImage, and then it'll be fine. No, I'm just saying like the end result is if I only have to install these two things to get this, it's not that bad as an end user experience. It's not so bad.

Yeah, that's true. I want to give a little attention to standard notes. Joey over at OMG Ubuntu wrote about this eight hours ago. And holy crap if it doesn't just look great. So it's a simple note killer, really. I teased it as an Evernote killer, but it's really a simple note killer which is even better in some sense.

And it's totally open source. It does have a server-side component, although you can run the server yourself, but you can get a free sync account. So calm down, calm down. I know. And when you do that, you get end-to-end encryption. And it encrypts on your device before it uploads to their system. So that means you don't have to worry about them sharing it with like a government request or something like that if you're super paranoid. It also means if you lose your password, you're totally screwed.

So make sure you don't lose your key because it's encrypted on your end. It's AES-256 encryption. They have Mac and Windows, iOS and Android apps as well as their Linux app. Automatic sync with no limit on data. It has web access. And if you decide to pay, you get some nice stuff along with like a new like dark theme and fancy stuff like that. You get what's called an extended account. Oh.

Ooh. How extended? Well, it's so extended it unlocks access to additional features, like the ability to go back in time on your notes up to 100 years, which feels pretty optimistic. I'm not sure what that means. Like, I'm never going to test them on that. I'm never going to test them on that.

You know what? You give me a good solid 50 years, and I'm never going to question. See if your kids are still using it. Yeah. Yeah, they're really going to care. And performs real-time backups of your notes to drop Bizzle and Goog drives if you want that. Also, with that extended account, you get access to additional editors like a Markdown editor. So this is where it becomes relevant.

Markdown editor. That's pretty cool. So it's standard note. You could host it all yourself like an animal, or you could pay a slight gentleman's fee and get access to their extended. I will say I like the name. It sounds so antiquated in a way. It's like Standard Oil but Standard Notes. Actually, I particularly like that.

I got a question for you. If you're trying to get in the zone, you may be writing a little code. For me, it's editing or it's writing. You may be writing a little code. For me, it's editing or it's writing. Sometimes in the past, what I used to do is I used to play a podcast, maybe like the Ubuntu podcast. But those guys, they're making such great points. It turns out it's so good now you have to listen even if you're trying to ignore them.

It's distracting. Yeah. So I have to find something else. So I've been trying stupid Spotify playlists. I've been trying all these different things Spotify playlists. I've been trying all these like different things to like, try to like give myself some background noise. Right. So that way my lizard brain can relax and I can focus. What do you do? You know, I'll put, I'll put things like public radio or some podcasts. Some NPR that talks like this all the time.

Yes, exactly. Because it's all the same tone. It doesn't, you know, there's no like dynamic range there. So. Perhaps you should check out Focusil. It improves your focus and increases your productivity. Sounds like a prescription drug. Yeah, I know, right? Focusil. Yeah, I'll take that, sure.

It's a gnome extension. I don't normally share gnome extensions on this show, but this is just too good to pass up. It is a gnome extension that plays different nature sounds. So it's like a white noise or sound machine type? Oh, you could do rain. You can do wind. You can do the vibes of the earth. You can do people chatter.

You can do system hums. It comes with some built-in sounds. Of course, you can add your own by dropping them in there. Just make sure you're ready to edit the JSON file. And it just needs to be MP3. And then you get a slider built into the no menu. In fact, I have the extension right here. Yeah, I can't really see it.

I got a screenshot of it, though. And it provides you with background noise. Do we get a sample of what that noise sounds like? Do you get that set up? I have a, I don't, I couldn't get it. Apparently, I'm missing the dependency. But they do have a sample. Should have been a snap. They do have one here you can listen to. Here, I'll missing the dependency. But they do have a sample. Should have been a snap.

They do have one here you can listen to. Here, I'll turn it up a little bit so you can. Right? Are you feeling focused? Very nice. Yeah, man. Super focused right now. Focused on getting out of here.

Here's the people chatter, which would be the last one I'd ever use. It's like you're working in a coffee shop, but without the coffee. Here's the nature of earth sounds. And this is right there in the film show. I'm sorry, Wes. I don't mean to make fun of it, but out of all of the extensions I've ever seen, that has to be both the most useful and most hilarious extension ever. Can I share?

I want to share something with you real quick before we move on. Just a little secret. I've talked about it before in my vlog. It's mynoise.net. And let me share with you one of my favorite go-to-bed. This is when I park Lady Jupes at a rest stop and the semi-trucks are idling really loud. I put this on my Bluetooth speaker and this is what I listen to. Oh, that's nice.

Isn't that nice? Yeah. What was that, mynoise.net? mynoise.net. I like it so much I'm a patron. Wow. I could listen to that for hours. I know.

It's really great. And they have so much more. Like, here's, you want to check out another one? This is Rain on a Tent. Wow. Isn't that great? Isn't that so great? So what do the sliders do there?

Well, oh, thank you for asking. Thank you for asking. These are, because what you're actually hearing is not a single audio stream. You're actually hearing a seven-channel audio stream being composed in real time in your browser. And so you can, in real time time tweak different elements of the stream now this isn't a particularly good one so let's go back so for example i have of course i have my favorite one i have a bookmarked so that way i can fire it up anytime so you see how i have these different ones tweaked so if i if i were to move some of these dials, I can add more sound effects. So here's more interface sound effects.

Oh, wow. Yeah, and here's another one. And I can pull that away. Let's hear it right in the engine room. And here's like a, this one is kind of interesting. This is like a more like a 60s sci-fi sound. Oh, yeah, look at that. It's like a, this one is kind of interesting. This is more like a 60s sci-fi sound. Oh, yeah, look at that. It's like beats.

Yeah, and then here's another one that I think is... Isn't that interesting? And here's one that I have completely turned off because it distracts my fiancé. And you can mix it all in real time in your browser. And they have also, they have ones that other people have created, and they have all kinds of stuff. They have so many interesting different sound effects you can get.

So that is a real thing, and I do find it helps me focus. Having it as an extension in the GNOME desktop, though? No, I don't think so. I'm going to uninstall that one after the show. PostMarketOS, aiming for a 10-year lifecycle for smartphones. I love this project because why the hell can't we do this? If you go get a PC from 2007 and you put a basic minimal in it, you put that or something classy like Ubuntu Mate on there, you're going to get a real nice system where you can do basic computing tasks. A 2007 PC could surf the web,

it could read emails, it could listen to podcasts, it could do IRC chat. It really would be fine. And it would even be able to get security updates. But even a three or four-year-old Android device, screw you. And part of this is because Android's architecture is in some ways really based on forking the entire code base for each and every single device out there that these OEMs come up with. Yep. is really based on forking the entire code base for each and every single device out there that these OEMs come up with. And there's things like Lineage OS,

which do provide even weekly updates, but they're really based on Android, which means they're always catching up to whatever Google's doing, and it's not really great for the root cause of the problem. So PostMarket OS thinks they have a solution. Now, this is just just early days big dreams here but they're going to bend an existing linux distribution to run on smartphones bend it wes they're going to apply the necessary changes as small patches wes upstream wes where it makes

sense wes it's an alpine linux based distribution called PostMarketOS, which each phone will have only one unique package. All other packages will be shared amongst the devices. Wow. Popey, can I ask you what you think of a project like this? Sounds like a bunch of touch. What do you think? It's Alpine Linux, and they're not even going to try to make it all that fancy with a touch UI, I don't think, right now. I think they're just going to basically try to throw some Linux on there and give you some updates and get some basic use out of the machine.

Do we need another one of these? Part of me says yes. It does feel like we have these— Well, I guess we need one successful one. Well, I do feel like we should be able to get more than three or four years out of these devices. So part of me says yes. Oh, I completely agree. Who else is going to solve this problem if not

the Linux community, though? You know what I mean? So you're saying that Tizen isn't going to do it? Maybe. Maybe. I end our updates on ChaosBot. This is so fun. The Beard found this one. We might talk about this more on User, depending on whereBot. This is so fun. The beard found this one.

We might talk about this more on user, depending on where it goes. It's a social coding experiment, and it's pretty neat. It's ChaosBot. It's an experiment to see what happens when absolute direction of a software project is turned over completely to the open source community. So here's how it works. You fork the code, and you make any changes that you want to make. Have at it. You open up a pull request. If there is general approval from the community, the pull request will be merged automatically by Chaos Bot. Chaos Bot will automatically update its own code with changes and then restart itself. And then the process repeats itself. And then the process repeats itself.

Here's some things they feel like this might accomplish. Number one, it could provide some useful service to people. Number two, could be malicious. Yep. Number three, it could recreate itself in a different programming language. Very likely. And number four, probably the most likely, it could break itself and die. There's no set purpose.

It's up to the community. Have at it. I think it's kind of interesting. What do you think, Wes? Can we see some interesting results from this? I mean, it's interesting just as an idea. It's crazy as an idea. And yes, it does seem like it's either going to break or the internet is going to evolve itself

another malicious bot. I'd like to see it. I'd like to see it. So go contribute. Yeah, help it not be evil. Be part of the chaos. Go make a download Jupyter Broadcasting podcast. Oh, yeah.

That's what we should do. That's what we need. We'll have a link in the show notes. All right, linux.ting.com. Go there to sign up. Switch to Ting. It's mobile done differently. In fact, if mobile had to start all over again, this is how they would do it.

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It used to be like a Sprint device or something. It had a CDMA radio, and it had WiMAX, which was going to be the next big wireless technology was WiMAX. And I took it out of the desk and I thought, well, you know what, I'll try it out on Ting. And I switched it over to Ting. And I was like, well, holy shit, why am I not just doing this all the time for all the things? This is just fine.

It works great and it matches my mobile usage perfectly. And then from that point on, I've switched everything over. Now I've got multiple devices and I'm super, super happy. Linux.ting.com, go there to get $25 off a device, or if you bring a device, get $25 in service credit. Linux.ting.com. And a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged program. So I've been having some troubles with user, I've been having some troubles with GNOME I've been having some troubles with GNOME,

which I outlined in user error. There, that was the sentence I was trying to get out. And it's mostly around performance. It's actually been getting me today during this show while we were recording. We had to stop and restart because GNOME crashed on us. And for some reason, and I don't really understand why, and I'm starting to suspect maybe it's a graphics driver issue, is when GNOME crashes, it also kills our audio and OBS for like 15 to 30 seconds. It's a real bugger.

I'm very, very excited about the new Plasma 5.10 release. And this guy from the Plasma team over there has a video about it. And I thought maybe we'd cover it. He covers it all right here, the new features of the Plasma desktop. After a few months of intensive work, the KDE community is pleased to announce Plasma 5.10, which brings many improvements and features to your desktop. Due to the popular demand, we've changed to Folder View as the default desktop, which allows users to put whatever files or folders they want on their desktop. Due to the popular demand, we've changed to FolderView as the default desktop, which allows users to put whatever files or folders they want on their desktop.

Spring loading in FolderView makes drag and drop files powerful and quick. When you search in KRunner, it can now list non-installed applications in the software center. The icon size in the Vertical Task Manager is now configurable to support more and more popular vertical panel usage cases. Speaking of the Task Manager, it's gained options for middle mouse click, so you can group and ungroup applications. Place's jumpless actions are available to the File Manager launchers, so Dolphin in Task Manager gives you quick access to locations,

like your downloads and your pictures. The audio volume applet has a handy menu on each device, which you can use to set the default or switch the output to a different port. Interactive notifications now support a context menu on previews, giving you access to actions such as open the containing folder, copy, and open with. It is now possible to resize widgets on the desktop by dragging on their edges and moving them with alt-left-click, just like a regular window. Plasma menu launchers gained a new category for often-used documents and applications. Lockscreen has gained support for media controls,

so you can switch between your favorite songs without the need to unlock your desktop. controls so you can switch between your favorite songs without the need to unlock your desktop. Discover Software Center has gained provisional backends for flat packs and snap packages. It's now possible to use the virtual keyboard on the login and lock screen. If you enjoy using Plasma, please consider donating to KDE so we can... Man, I am so glad I recorded that video because I really had to go to the bathroom during the show and I was not sure what I was going to do. I was not sure. I was not sure how I was going to take a pee during this show because it's

live, but that, uh, that was how I did it right there. And, uh, it was with that that also gave us a chance to share with you all the new features.

Now I actually thought it was worth playing the video too, because it really, to me illustrates a continued steady stream of improved Plasma desktop releases over and over again. Yeah. I was shocked this last week or last... yesterday. Yesterday? It's all a blur. It's all a blur. I hate the internet, internet dude the internet makes everything go by so fast anyways so yesterday when i when linux action news came out joe told me that he's planning to well he's considering i shouldn't say planning joe resington is considering switching

to the plasma desktop xfce oh is this you're doing or is this no no this is just he's just been looking at it and it really is because i think they've had about five or six solid releases after the other that have been better than the one before it. And they're adding features that are legitimately useful. So imagine you get a Plasma desktop notification that a file has changed in a directory from one of your sync software. Well, now you can right click on that thing and open up the folder. Just look at it. It's nice. Yeah, now you can right-click on that thing and open up the folder. Just look at it. Nice. It's nice.

Yeah, that's very convenient. Anyways, the Plasma desktop is just getting better and better. And so I've been thinking about switching back again. Can't even finish that whole sentence, can you? I just feel like such a jerk. But the reality is, so I outlined it in User Air 10, but there is a performance issue with GNOME 3. On systems that you run for, say, more than 20 days, that's been about – at least for me, and this is with the NVIDIA, like, 9-series graphics cards. I get about 20 days before I start getting about 15 frames per second when I open up the activities window on GNOME.

And it's really stuttery and it's really noticeable. And you combine that with other little problems like the fact that GNOME 3 is crashing on our OBS rig or yesterday I was copying a bunch of files and X crashes and it just screws up my whole system and like I don't I can't do anything because I know Nautilus is still copying files because the process is still running but X is unusable and there's I've just I'm I love GNOME but I'm having so many problems in the last say two months with

it and I could be the one common thread is all of them are on NVIDIA system so I'm I actually am willing to consider that it's NVIDIA, not GNOME. But it's got me wondering if maybe I shouldn't just switch back to Plasma for a little bit. And so this new release, it looks pretty good. And if nothing else, it's continued solid improvement in the right direction. And Qt seems to have a good future in front of it too.

So anyways, congrats to the Plasma folks. They seem to have a good release. Yeah. What would it take for you to try it, Wes? Not a lot, I don't think. I mean, I'm down. It looks like a good release.

Yeah. I could give it an install. But you got GNOME there. I do. Yeah. It's running GNOME. Like if you were like just doing an install tomorrow,

would you hit GNOME or would you do Plasma? You'd probably do GNOME, wouldn't you? I would mostly because I've got a real minimal Gnome setup with like just a couple extensions and a theme

and it works okay and it gets out of my way. You know, especially like, I only use like what, six applications and so the, just hitting,

you know, the old super key and typing my thing and then it starts up. That said, I really like KWin. KWin is great. And I think if I put in enough time, you know, just like really sunk my teeth into Plasma.

I figured it minimally. I think it would work. I tried to do that and I ran into – I just ran into usability issues I guess. Wimpy, have you seen any of the stuff I'm talking about with GNOME 3 performance? I don't know if you had a chance to hit user error but essentially the activities pop a pop-up area and whatnot is noticeably slower and slower and then if you do it on if you run it on wayland it's it's really bad really i've um i've not tested gnome 3 extensively enough recently to encounter that i've i've been running it a little bit for these external gpu and comparisons, but I've not had a system up for 20 days or anything like that.

What's your opinion of the difference? How would you describe the perceptual difference of a system, say, the Mate desktop, where the interface is being rendered by the CPU versus where the interface is being rendered by Comp is? How would you describe the difference there? versus where the interface is being rendered by a comp is. How would you describe the difference there? Well, if you take a button in Mateo and you switch between the two, there's no real difference in the speed at which things pop up and render.

I disagree. To me, I perceive a difference in the way the windows move around, the way the windows draw on the screen. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. What do you describe? That's what I'm definitely so how what do you describe that's what i'm talking about what do you describe that what do you describe that difference as well i mean the first thing is is that reduced all the lack of screen tearing so you just get this sense of smoothness yeah there's a smoothness to it yeah a fluidity and a consistency and actually i would say that as good as comp is and compton are at eradicating screened hair um until you've seen something run on mia and wayland you don't

realize just how good the pixel pushing are in those technologies by comparison because they're a level up again i feel like this see that is exactly how i feel like when i switch between the gnome shell desk like there's just the gnome 3 desktop and and anything that uses k1 but obviously the plasma desktop that's that is my like that level of like like i've just stepped up in the way that and i i keep coming back to like these things like i mentioned it with the tech center earlier it's like do these things actually matter or are they just like nerd things that i've decided that matter and i think it depends on the person and i think no i think they do matter don't they i hope so because they matter to me an awful lot but you're asking like is this like the old compiling your software for your cpu

thing right does it really matter or is it like a yeah 0.05 yeah that's a good way to think about it because to me it feels like it matters a lot because i notice it and if i notice it then it matters yeah and i i know i'm i've said before, I'm a big film fan. And, you know, when I'm watching YouTube videos, for example, or any sort of video playback, and I see that it's dodging around and that the image is tearing and all the rest of it, it drives me bananas. Now, not everyone sees it, but it's not just like video it's simple things like you know in some cases scrolling up and down a web page for example can can be really stuttery and you can actually lose your spot in the text because you can't maintain a consistent view on where the text is scrolling to so you lose lose sight of that, and that's frustrating.

So I think it's something that people will appreciate and will notice. It feels good that you say that. It feels good that you say that. It feels good that the chat room is agreeing with me because this is something that I've commented on in my past reviews and gotten a lot of like, shut the kind of stuff up. Chris, you're crazy. Yeah, I'm just like, okay, all right, maybe it is just me. Because that stuff does really matter to me.

So that's where I'm at. Those kinds of things are where I'm at with Noam right now. I'm getting a stuttering. I can make the motion with my hand, but I can't really describe it to you. It's rough. It is rough. I had to watch the hand thing. It's rough. You should be glad that you didn't see that.

Thank you. Thank you, Wes. I don't know where this brings me. Plasma 510 is out, and I'm considering, once Arch gets it updated, I'm considering rolling it out. I have been also experimenting with a new way to try out my Plasma. And I want to talk to you guys about the application I've been using to do it. Whoa. And why I think it's really exciting that it's coming to Linux.

I tried out, for the first time ever... Let me guess. Let me guess. It's Seuss running on Windows. That doesn't even exist yet. That doesn't even exist yet. And here we are. It is May

30th, 2017. Build was forever ago, and we still have no information about what version of OpenSUSE or how that's going to work exactly. My only conclusion is that Microsoft hasn't given the projects any information, and they have no idea when this thing's actually going to ship. So they can't tell us what version they're going to ship because they don't know yet. Side rant. Sorry, go on.

Anyways. No, I tried out the new plasma desktop in docker i know whoa i know i'm sorry i'm sorry if i just triggered any of you haters out there i apologize uh and it it was so easy it was so it was so smooth i have to tell you about it it was an app that i just actually was funny i thought it was only available for mac and windows and i was really bummed in fact i told the beard i was like shit rikai if this came out for linux i'd make a whole episode about this this is so awesome and then rikai did a little digging around and he found a linux port whoa so i'll tell you all about it but first I'll tell you about our friends at Linux Academy. Go to linuxacademy.com

slash unplugged and sign up for a free seven day trial. Not only will you support this show, but you get the seven day free trial, you get to try out the Linux Academy platform, which is built around learning more about Linux. Get the essentials around Linux, but also get all of the

cool technologies that are going to make you real money around Linux. You know, stuff like OpenStack, Azure, AWS. Oh, AWS, how you have burned me in the past. When I was first playing around with AWS, I logged in, put all the credit card information in there, created a system. Like a sucker. And then got busy for 24 or 25 days and didn't realize that they were billing me just for having creative system. Like a sucker. And then got busy for 24 or 25 days

and didn't realize that they were billing me just for having this. You're like, I'll just transcode that and I'll spin up this queue. I wish. I didn't do anything with it for like 25 days. I had no idea they were billing me. And that's what I, you know,

like I walked away, oh yeah, okay. That was my first lesson. This is very expensive. That was my first lesson. And Linux Academy, they just do all that spin up for you as part of your subscription. So you don't get that particular lesson. You actually learn how to use the systems.

They got video courses, self-paced in-depth video courses, hands-on labs, which really are scenario-based, which give you a real experience. Instructor mentoring with real human beings that are happy to advise and answer questions. Course schedulers that you can set a time frame and you can actually set to it and make sure you meet your learning goals. And of course, if you're going for certs, they've got courses created specifically to prepare you for those exams. And then when you're busy, not only

do they have nuggets, which are like deep dives into single topics, but they have an availability planner that will help you create a content plan around your CrayCray schedule. Just get started. Go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged and sign up for a free seven-day trial. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. So this is a bit of a gimped tutorial. I was planning to walk you through this a little more in-depthly for this episode. Did a whole bunch of stuff on a couple of machines up in my office and then came down to the studio to show it to you. And it turns out that Docker services are offline. Yeah. Yeah.

Docker, that thing that enterprises use that is supposedly the next big wave in Linux technologies. Yeah, it's down. The Docker hub is down 404 for all images. I can't really demonstrate this to you fully, but let me just kind of set it up for you. So the piece of software I want to talk about today that makes Docker approachable and usable, it makes using Docker easier than using VirtualBox. So if you've ever even flirted with VirtualBox or VMware Workstation, this is easier than that. And there's a lot of great Docker images you can take advantage of right now. Containers that you can just search for and install right away. Things that, I mean, everything, guys. Stuff from like, you know, Usenet indexers and downloaders to Nginx servers, Minecraft servers. Like, it's just so much stuff is available in Docker. Basically,

all of the world's great open source software is available in a Docker container. And if you've had your head in the sand around Docker, this is your opportunity to really take advantage of it. It's called KiteMatic. And they'll tell you it's available for Mac OS and Windows 7. I don't know. I suppose it probably is good for them. To me, it sort of sniffs of an Electron app, but I'm not quite sure. We'll get to how you can get on Linux here in a second. But it's a one-click install to get Docker containers running on your system. And it gives you a GUI configuration to set up things like X11 forwarding. It gives you a configuration to set up your network hosting. It has a really nice output for the log. Of course, it has integration with the hub, so you can just search for stuff and automatically download it to your system and get

going. It makes it easier. It's also great because it doesn't supplant the Docker CLI, so you can use it in conjunction with the Docker command line. Now, I guess you don't really need to care about any of that stuff. Really what you need to know is it's a really simple GUI to just look at all of the great Docker containers and essentially get them running on your system with just a couple of clicks. And before today's episode, I thought this was only really available for Mac and Windows.

Turns out, pretty straightforward to get it working on Linux. There's a dev available put out there that works best on recent Ubuntus, but there's also an AUR repository. Nice. Wow. Yeah. I got to say, I've heard of this. I've had people at work and other places who are like-

Mac users have told me about it. Yeah, a ton of Mac users. They love this, which admittedly, Docker is a little harder to use on Mac. So this goes – it's a little more useful, I think, for those platforms than it is on Linux. But for anyone who's wanting to play with Docker, intimidated by the constantly changing Docker ecosystem, it really does, I think, bridge the gap to make it like, I can start playing with this. Well, it takes Docker from an idea to, I want to try, I want to run a Minecraft server. And if that's what you want, I want to run a Minecraft server. You launch KiteMatic, you type in Minecraft, and within 45 seconds, you're running a Minecraft server.

And I think that's pretty sweet. For Arch, they have KiteMatic, which uses straight-up Docker. And then they have KiteMatic Git, which is not only a Git version of KiteMatic, but also uses the Git version of Docker. And so there's just a couple of things you have to do on your GNU slash Linux box before you can use this. And I've outlined them in the show notes. It's essentially you complete the post installation scripts

that I have linked in the show notes. It's make sure you have a Docker group, make sure you start the Docker service, basic things like that. And at least on Arch, where I was testing this, I had to run KiteMatic with pseudo privileges. Otherwise, it can't create the containers it needs. And once the Docker service is started, you run pseudo KiteMatic, you get a graphical interface for deploying really all of the great Docker Hub images. And so I was trying out the Plasma 510 desktop

using Docker. And it was great. That's awesome. It was super cool, dude, because I didn't even have to bother with a VM. I didn't have to bother with downloading an ISO.

I just was able to take advantage of the native performance of my workstation. Anyways, KiteMatic is, if you look around online, it looks like it's just something for Macs and maybe Windows, but us Linux users can get it too. And I have a link to how to set that up in the desktop.

And if you've never really thought about messing around with Docker before, it kind of makes it approachable. It kind of makes it real. It makes it real. And they have two different containers for neon spin of plasma. They have KDE Neon Plasma, which is sort of just the base plasma desktop, and they have KDE Neon All. Both of these are containers available, and All is like the entire software suite. It's like a 4-gig image, and then just the plasma desktop is like a 2-gig image.

There you have it. You can go fly a kite. Go fly a kite matic go fly a kite matic wes i don't know i'm working on my slam it's not it's not very good it's not very good i'm sorry i apologize i forgive you thank you thank you thank you anyways it's pretty neat and it was one of these it was one of these where i felt like oh screw screw the damn Mac users and the damn Windows users. Docker is supposed to be a Linux technology. This is a Linux thing. And here they have this GUI that makes it super easy to pick out the Docker containers you want and just deploy them on your system. How dare they?

This is our technology. This is our thing. And then Rika was like, like actually I found this link here and uh yeah you can make it work on Linux that's awesome I actually had not done that either and so like I'd seen it and I was like well yeah I guess I'll just keep figuring out the Docker CLI yeah and it's fine it works

and this doesn't necessarily supplant it you can still use both yeah I'll have links to all of that in the show notes go to jupyterbroadcasting.com look for Linux unplugged 199 and you'll have links to all of that in the show notes. Go to jupiterbroadcasting.com. Look for Linux Unplugged 199, and you'll find links to that, plus the Razor Core that Wimpy talked about, the Samba vulnerability we mentioned, that crazy GNOME extension if you want it,

and also the rest of that Plasma 5 video that I used to take a leak. All of that over at jupiterbroadcasting.com. Just look for episode 199. And just a slight reminder, we do have that barbecue coming up. We'd love to have you come hang out at the studio for the 4th of July. That'd be pretty cool. Oh my gosh.

That'd be pretty cool. Do it. Also, you can join us in the mumble room. Just do a bang mumble over at jblive.tv. And we'll see you next everybody. Jambytitles.com. Let's go name this thing. Let's go name this thing.

Veritunda, it was good to see you again, man. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Oh, absolutely. Mr. Lou, we didn't hear from you this week, but good to see you too. ZubZero, good to see you. And we have RobotTheArm.

Roboter, something like that. Good to see you too, man. It's awesome to see all these people. And then we had a couple people filtering during the arm. Roboter something like that. Good to see you too, man. It's awesome to see all these people. And then we had a couple people filtering during the show. It's nice getting a chance to listen to the show, Chris. J.B. Tidals! J.B. Tidals! Docker Apocalypse!

GoFly Kite-matic! Kitty Makes Plasma Great Again! A Package for your package. I like that one. A package for your package. Oh. I like that one. No, you don't. No Samba, no cry.

That's not bad either. That's kind of clever. Yeah, that is pretty clever. I get that. I get that. So, Mr. Wimpy, are you doing the eGPU thing separate from the review of the laptop that you and I were discussing? Because I've been waiting for that one, too. Yeah, yeah.

So the eGPU is this Thursday, and the laptop review is the following Thursday. Man, I have to wait even longer. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So, Wimimpy are you doing any any of these tests that you're running are you going to be comparing them at all to windows performance and let's say how much of the uh third uh the bus is being used etc

so i can't compare with windows because i just don't do Windows, so not even interested in making that comparison, because it's personally meaningless. In terms of things like GPU utilization on the bus, then yes, I've actually, although we don't talk about that when we were discussing it today, but yes, I did make a note of how saturated the GPU was under load. But yes, I did make a note of how saturated the GPU was under load. And I've looked at what other people have done with measuring the comparative performance deltas.

I haven't done it myself because I have no means of making this test. I don't have a desktop PC with Thunderbolt that I can mount the graphics card on the bus and then plug it into the core on a thunderbolt port so i can't do that test to see what the you know relative performance difference is so other people have done those performance tests and they're interesting because some people have been more thorough than others and what you learn is is that you will see banded around numbers of like you'll get a 20 to 30 percent um reduction in performance when you use an external gpu wow really that much but well but it depends right so it depends on the on the game it depends on the cpu requirements of the game and interestingly as you drive up the resolution that you're running the gpu at the higher you drive the resolution the closer the delta gets to the installed speed so when you're doing 4k gaming

that delta is like five percent not twenty percent wow so uh and this is because you're doing 4k gaming that delta is like five percent not twenty percent wow so uh and this is because you're pushing the gpu harder and you know the the bus speed is irrelevant at that point um but all i was interested in was does it run well and i define well as can i run it on my 2k display with everything pushed to ultra or high or whatever the maximum settings is and it run a decent frame rate and the answer to that question is yes uh yeah one of the things uh from one of the people that i saw that um did an egpu test on windows was that there's a difference between right uh hooking the egpu up to a let's say desktop system and running the display off of the desktop system and then you uh utilizing the display out on the egpu instead of the desktop system yeah so i'm not

sure so i have i have done that one so i have done the uh drive drive the external display solely and also reflect the display to whatever the laptop screen is because you can do either and there is a slight performance penalty of directing the display to the laptop screen but it's it's almost immeasurable for most most titles is in the realm of a couple of percent in my testing unless is this is 1080p screen and of course if you're an intel if you're an intel graphics user if you can even get within i mean if you can even play the games with decent settings that's a pretty big win well we're talking about the difference between running some of these games at like barely 20 frames per second to over 100 frames per second. Exactly.

Exactly. And this is 20 frames per second at low versus, you know, 100 frames at everything dialed up. What was the out of the box config? Was it pretty extensive or pretty plug and play? It was really easy the core itself um it's just got a magnetic release to pull the the chassis out of the casing uh one thumb screw to you know where the card goes in plug the card in just like you plug it into the bus on a pc thumb screw in close it so that whole process takes about 30 seconds uh and then you just uh

plug in power to the GPU. And then you plug a Thunderbolt port between the GPU and the computer. Come on. I mean, it is somewhat remarkable that in this day and age, something like this, an external graphics card by a vendor like NVIDIA. You know, the graphics card's in NVIDIA. The enclosure is by Razer, and you're connecting over a technology created by Intel, and you just plug it into Linux

and it's working? Like, this is not something that would have happened five, six, seven, eight years ago. Yeah. This is a huge piece of equipment that you are externalizing and just connecting to your PCI bus, and it's just working and it's no big deal.