LINUX Unplugged - Episode 2: Edge of Failure | LINUX Unplugged 2

Episode Date: August 20, 2013

As the final hours countdown we chat about the fate of the Ubuntu Edge camping and debate with our live callers about the bigger picture. Plus our thoughts on the new KDE release, Steam, and a few more thoughts on elementary OS.

This is Linux Unplugged, our second episode. A show that I won't say cleans up after the sloppy seconds of the Linux Action Show, but it's definitely inspired from the Linux Action Show. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey, Matt. Welcome to number two, man. Welcome. So this week, a big part of Linux Unplugged going forward is audience interaction because we've got some smart people out there.

We want to get the community involved. Arbulus in our chat room set us up with a Mumble server on a hosted system. We actually had a couple people that did some projects projects for us around mumble it was really awesome but arbulus set us up a hosted server and we're just having a few issues i installed mumble right before the show started didn't work out but don't fret man i don't want you to stress i'm not stressed you know i think i can keep myself seated and calm oh okay good good i think i'll be right all right well well you know what we'll open up the skype line and then folks can call in as we go. Exactly.

I think, though, today, should we start with follow-up stuff from last week's episode? What do you think? Or I guess yesterday's episode? I guess that would be yesterday, yeah. I think that's a good plan because there's a lot of stuff that we've thought of and I'm sure that the audience has as well. Yeah, you know, you and I were just talking a little bit during the pre-show that you poked a little more at elementary and I realized, so I guess we should back up. Yesterday in the Linux Action Show, Sunday,

we reviewed elementary OS Luna and big review, highly anticipated. I think probably everybody knows about it. And it's funny because I definitely missed a couple of aspects in the review. I knew I would. I knew I would. And the one that struck me is I thought maybe a point that I should have made during the review was that I could see this being a really

good desktop elementary OS Luna for developers, because you got a good, clean, efficient system that really lets you focus on your work. And I think for developers, there's some value in that Ubuntu LTS compatibility and support. You get applications that are targeted for Ubuntu LTS, especially in the work sector. And with that UI and all of that, I really think it would be a compelling developer's desktop. I think it's an amazing developer's desktop

and I think once you accept the fact that they're not trying to target people that want lots of settings, it begins to make a lot of sense. I think that's the one fall down. A lot of people look at it and say, how do I do this? How do I do that? I can't find my settings. It's not necessarily designed for options on its options. You want KDE if you want that. I think that is why it didn't work for me. Because I feel like I have watched over the last couple of years, my options be removed from me as a user. And I'm just now,

I am sort of, the pendulum has swung and now I just want everything. Give it all to me and I will just deal with the complexity because I prefer to have the complexity than not to have the flexibility. Exactly.

Yeah, and that's kind of my thing on it too is that I found myself, I was drawn to the simplicity of it, but then I realized that there are other ways of making an existing desktop, XFCE or whatever it may be, OpenBox, other simplistic desktops that you can still do

that with, so I wasn't limited to going just that route. Okay. Let's put our time machine caps on and project way out in the future, and Ubuntu has really gotten some traction with. And Ubuntu has really gotten some traction with sort of carriers taking Ubuntu

and putting it on old Android devices that didn't sell very well. And now they're all running, this is like two years from now, and they're all running like Ubuntu Touch and they're selling it as like the Verizon OS and all of this junked up crap, right? And the progress on the Ubuntu desktop continues,

but it sees less and less attention as time goes on. This seems like a potential reality in a few years, right? It does. That leaves companies – and I'm wearing my System76 shirt right now, but that leaves companies like System76 in a real bad spot. It's going to force them to make some tough choices and to really look at where they want to go in future directions. And I think that they're resilient enough that they would adapt. Oh, sure. But it certainly creates a hassle.

Well, think about this. That same time is another couple of years of polish and new applications and improved on the existing applications for elementary OS. Maybe elementary OS sort of becomes like the OS X of desktop Linux that a company like System76, who is very, you know, they have very high-end products. In some regards, Ubuntu is almost not good enough for the System76 hardware, and they don't sponsor this show. I'm just saying that. Like, the hardware is better than the operating systems. And they, like, they could, I could really see, like, a slick metal System76 Ultrabook with elementary OS on it would be a really, really compelling product that would be competitive with the MacBook Air. I would expand on that and go a step further and say, in my mind, if they want to go that route, then they really need to run their own distribution. And I know that's a ballsy, heavy-handed approach. need to run their own distribution.

And I know that's a ballsy, heavy-handed approach. But let's say they go with elementary, and it's rocking and everything's awesome, and then all of a sudden, okay, well, the developer's done. Now what? Oops, they're back to square one. But if they were to borrow that code and basically do what Mint did, where they basically said, thanks, I'm going to do this,

it's great, but we're going to start working on our own projects and actually building away from that, based on the same thing. Not because they're trying to be douchey, but just because they want to make sure they're covering their backsides should the unthinkable happen. Then they control the whole stack. Exactly. But the thing is, they're focused on hardware. They are, and that's where

there's the problem. And elementary is focused on UI. The alternative to that is then maybe they begin to fund elementary. Oh, interesting. Maybe hire the dev or help them out a little bit. Yeah. And that'd be exactly do a red hat approach or a novella approach to where basically they fund the project where it's like, okay, we don't have time to manage this, but we need

to make sure you guys are, you know, that would be another alternative. They don't have that problem with Ubuntu, which is a sweet spot for them. And it, you know, allows them to do what they need to do. But, you know, they, uh, they're definitely a hardware company. And so, you know so Ubuntu doing weird things would definitely create some issues for them. Yeah, I think I find it to be an interesting

future where we go. It's good to see some of these desktops that are coming up that are really offering some serious alternatives. And, you know, I think we'll just kind of kick back and look forward to future releases of elementary OS. Absolutely. Did you have any other? Well, one last thought is I like the idea of the unified I think we'll just kind of kick back and look forward to future releases of elementary OS. Absolutely.

Do you have any other? Well, one last thought is I like the idea of the unified application stack. I don't think that's for everybody, but I think for just somebody that in an enterprise environment or somewhere, they just need simple applications to do basic things without a lot of fluff and cruft. I think that's a nice approach, and I'd like to see more of that. So KDE 4.11 hit my rig this morning before Coder Radio started. I did the upgrade and thought, yeah, should I wait?

Should I wait until after Coder Radio? But I didn't. I didn't wait, and it turned out fine. And knock on press board, Matt, haven't had a sound issue yet. No kidding. I mean, we just actually on the pre-show had a little sound problem, but that was mumble-related, not, you know. But I've been switching interfaces this morning, and so far, so far, no problem. That's awesome. And I'm hoping that that sticks, because then I'll feel more comfortable about using KDE more frequently.

I know this is cliche to say, too, but it feels a little faster, too. Oh, well, now that I do know from what I've read that they, well, that was a big sentence. I know that I've been reading a lot of details that they've been trying to speed things up

to optimize, optimize, optimize. That's really been a big focus for them. And so that may continue and that may be what we're experiencing now with the new release. So yesterday and last, we covered the Steam stats. And we talked about how

it's probably around Linux usage on Steam is about 1.69% or something like that. And I thought, I was looking at this, you know, this is something I've been trying to track for the show so that way we can kind of have a good perspective on the growth of Steam and we can kind of comment on how Steam is doing

on Linux in general. And I've realized that there's really, nobody is tracking this number very well. There's like, we get the monthly snapshot, but nobody's like putting it in a database and charting it and like showing us on a line graph where it's going. Exactly. Show me exactly

what you're showing me, because I mean, they're just basically throwing numbers at you, which are meaningless without details. And they get in like, and how do do i you know it's kind of hard to picture how these numbers compare to three months ago it'd be nice if i could you know see a trend um and i find it interesting there's a there's a guy his name is uh horace uh horace deju he has a website called asimco and he does this for the mobile market. He goes in there and digs out all of the information nuggets out of the quarterly reports and publicly available statements. He digs it all out, gets all the hard numbers, and then he puts together these incredible graphs and charts of iPhone versus Android and iOS 7 versus Android 4, 3, all this other stuff. But it's really good from a trend analysis standpoint

to sit back and go, oh, yeah, I can definitely see where these two lines cross each other. My personal plea, Matt, to the Linux community, if anybody out there is good with graphs and numbers, maybe take on this watching Steam on Linux thing. I think that's one of those beats you can start to follow as the time goes on and will sort of grow into a larger and larger role in the Linux community. That'd be mine.

Well, it'd be awesome if someone could break it down for us, just like, okay, exactly what is truly being said here? Where are they dropping the ball? Where is it falling into the other category? Which distros are specifically involved? I would love some actual meat and potatoes details on what's actually happening, and I'm not seeing that. It'd be really interesting to be able

to really see when one distro's starting to fall off. You know, know and like oh this distro is losing popularity then we could all gossip about why that would be john bob's linux is over surpassing hannah montana or whatever you know whatever the thing may be i want to know yeah uh all right well i want to just cover a couple of bits of feedback to this show and then we'll get into some more uh some other topics but uh you know i i'm only gonna let us talk about ourselves for so long once we get to like episode five or so it feels embarrassing to be so self-indulgent but uh we got a really good response to uh the first episode so

thank you everyone we're pretty excited about that and um we got got uh a lot of people that uh were uh very very happy to see another show like it just surprised them they didn't catch the last bit on last i'm like what another show so yes here is another show. It just surprised them. They didn't catch the last bit on last. I'm like, what, another show? So yes, here is another show. The show is a little different. It's a little less visual-centric. It's more audio-centric.

Part of the reason is there's more Linux involved in the production of the show. All of my visuals here are done on all of my notes and everything, all of my webpages, my chat. Everything's on Linux. And unfortunately, I can't be hardwired into the switcher like I am when I'm in the studio, so I can't show you my screen as easy. Now, I do have a backup Apple Macintosh computer. They named them after the Apple, Matt. I'm not sure if you're familiar with these guys.

They're named after the Orange in all this time. Oh, my gosh. It's run by a guy named Wozniak. I guess he owns the company. I'm not familiar with the details, Matt. Anyways, I got one of their fruit computers here. So if we do have something we need to show up on the screen, I can. But I probably won't be using it as much. Just I wanted to kind of make that disclaimer.

And as that tech gets worked out, that'll kind of get solved. I'm trying to come up with a way to remotely get the video screen on my Linux box to a remote broadcast machine. I don't have that figured out yet. There is software available that used to work under Wine that Matt and I used to use. I kind of had to jump through some hoops to make it work, but we got it to work.

And now that doesn't work anymore either. Exactly. And before anyone mentions, yes, we're aware of Cinderella, we're aware of VNC, we're aware of all the various Linux applications that allegedly can make you do this. I wonder – yeah, I guess – But they don't really do it well. No, it really would – like VNC, like even that would be kind of – Yeah, it would not be very smooth.

That's usually what happens is someone chimes in and says, well, you can do it with a – use OpenShot over here with some Kdenlive on top of that. And then under this, you use some VNC, and then you stand on one foot and do a twirl. And then you just pipe it through blenders. And exactly. It's like, wait, what? And how do you do all this live?

It's like, wait, what now? It's like, well, you know, they got a green screen. What's a green screen got to do with an audio show?

I mean, yeah, it just gets really out of control. The other good news is because it's audio, nobody will know that this is a two beer show for me. Nobody's going to know that I'm in the clear. So I don't have to worry about it. All right.

Well, so guess what? Guess what? Pretty excited. We got two sponsors this week. So I don't have to worry about it. All right. Well, so guess what? Guess what? Pretty excited. We got two sponsors this week. So I thought maybe we'd cover our first sponsor. And then I want to talk after we talk about our sponsor this week. I want to cover a little bit more on the Steam community.

I want to talk a little bit about rolling my own mail server because I've gotten some good feedback on that. And then I'm going to cover some of the emails we've gotten into the show and we'll take some skype calls too so we got a lot coming up but uh first i want to thank ting that's right ting.com is sponsoring linux unplugged now ting is mobile that makes sense a lot of you guys are familiar with ting but matt right over there our very own matt is a recent convert. I am. Chris was kind enough to give me the Galaxy Note 2, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and it is running ting. How much larger is that Note 2 than the Droid? It's like the Droid was like – was it a four-inch screen on the Droid? It was a decent screen.

Let's see. I've got my Droid. Yeah, just looking at the screen because I have a case on it, so it kind of gives an interesting perspective. I would say about two inches. Yeah, it feels bigger, but that's not a bad thing because it does kind of solve my phablet challenge that I had previously. Yeah, well, you're not a big tablet guy, right? So this is right in the sweet spot. Exactly, because I don't really like tablets, but I would love something that could fit in my pocket, and this will fit. It's like, well, this is great. Signal strength has been fantastic.

I live in the middle of nowhere, and have verizon and i have ting and i'm actually getting one and i'm i'm being completely straight with you guys where i'm located in my home right now i have four bars on ting and two bars on verizon don't know and what's great is uh the uh the uh barrier to entry is super low like if you you know you didn't know before you tried it. Oh, right. It was super easy to set up, right? Were you able to activate it all through the website? I was able to activate the whole thing.

I had to disassociate the previous number, which was super simple thanks to their help. I went to their help thing, typed in, hey, how do I disassociate previous number? Typed it in. It gave me the numbers to dial. Did it. Bam, bam, bam. Restarted the phone. It re-recognized.

I was good to go. I was instantly calling people and texting Chris. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I was pretty impressed. And the way Ting works, so it's really like zero risk, is you only pay for what you use. So they just break out your rate by minutes, text message, and megabytes. They'll bill you at the end of the month for whatever bucket you fall into. And the base rate's like six bucks. So, Matt, if for some reason, one month even, you don't use the phone for an entire month, you're not out like some crazy amount of money. You're out what you didn't pay. It's $6 flat. If you didn't use it, you didn't use it. I love that. I literally dig through my couch to pay the bill. I love that, right?

It's couch money. And now also you've got a device you can take with you at all times. It has built in tethering and hotspot as part of the plan, which is just so nice. There's no add-on charges for things like voicemail, caller ID, three-way calling, call forwarding. All that stuff is built in, super easy to manage for the Ting website. No contract, no overages, no penalties when you want to turn it off, and no bundling of ride-along services. Plus, Ting has excellent customer service. We've gotten letters and letters from people that confirm when they call into Ting, you'll get an answer within one or two rings. You'll talk to a real person if you call between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

1-855-TING-FTW. They got FTW on their phone number. Okay. How cool is that? How cool is that? That is awesome. Go check out Ting. Go get a great cell phone and go get yourself a cell service that knows you're smart. That's not trying to trick you and lure you in with a carrot

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It's just awesome. There's certain types of devices, and I'd put maybe the HTC One and the first iPad, my first tablet experience, even the first Nexus. When you hold it, it clicks in a whole new way. Like, oh, this is a game changer. I feel that way about Ting and my device. When I have Ting service with a smart device like that it's like okay so so this is the future it's not as bad as these other telcos are trying to make it it's we can actually do this and ting ting makes me really excited about the future of these mobile devices

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I want to talk a little bit, just as a lead-up, probably with a topic that'll be in next week's episode. I hope we're not bringing people out on this, but listen, this Indiegogo's only got hours left on it, but Ubuntu Edge, at this point, looks like it's not going to make its $32 million goal. No, no. Not unless Trump or some rich dude,

some rich guy comes bombing in with a bunch of money. I don't see it happening. Yeah. It's not going to happen. Crash Bandicoot, he's in our IRC subreddit, and he had three points that he felt like were sort of the major reasons Ubuntu Edge was not

going to reach funding. Number one reason, no hardware to show. If people could read a review of it, they would be more inclined to actually put some money down, because everyone's been burned by big promises in the past. I think you kind of expressed that. That's very true. Yeah.

Number two, hardware specs are nice, but as anyone who's moved from a leg ridden, high end Android to a smooth as butter iOS device and back knows hardware specs count as almost nothing these days. This adds to my above point without an actual third party review, people don't have enough data to risk the money. I think this is absolutely true.

And he says, he goes on to point, you know, mentioned there's been other things like RAM and storage are locked in, but other aspects are vague. He said, we also live in a buy now, pay later society. And this is a huge issue too. And the pay now and receive later model is difficult one to sell with fundraising campaigns and the perks aren't priced as high. And so people don't mind risking 20 or 50 bucks here or there to support them.

But this is a major outlay for a lot of people who are not necessarily even paying one third of this for a phone that they'd be receiving right then and there, even though they're still really paying full price, they only see the initial outlay as the expense. Well, and I think that's the big issue right there is, I mean,

it's not only a matter, as you pointed out, of having to, you know, avoiding the whole buy now, get it later, the whole instant gratification thing, but the fact that they're saying, okay, drop $600, $500, $700, whatever it may be, and

then wait. Wow, really? I mean, that sucks. I mean, that really sucks. I mean, it's not because the phone sucks, but the experience just it, you know, marketing 101, no one wants to do that. It's like, I'm willing to outlay the money, but give me some, make darn sure that thing's in the mail. You know what I mean?

Don't make me wait for six months or whatever it may be. Forget that. No way. Yeah, I totally follow you. And I think – so what it is is it's a niche of a niche because it's a niche of people who want the Ubuntu operating system and that aren't already satisfied with the existing products on the market, which is probably the majority. But then once you take those people down, then you have to go for the niche of the people. I go back to Mark's example of the Formula Racing car. It's a custom-built, limited design.

I personally, I am more inclined to buy tech if it's a limited mint edition. If I'm one of the few 50,000 people or 80,000 people that had an Ubuntu Edge, that's a limited mint edition like if like if i'm one of the few you know 50 000 people or 80 000 people that had an ubuntu edge that's a thrill for me so i'm willing to wait the year because it's sort of like getting in on a on an indie car race car kind of thing like i do kind of see that that end of the argument only it's more at a at a at a you know at a at a wage worker's price point in a race car. Exactly. So I was willing to wait. But I think I am a minority in that regard.

Well, and I think that you touched on something that's really important. You mentioned the whole, you know, we need to find a way to add an exclusive experience behind this, whether that's a private conference call with Mark Shuttleworth or a little club to where they get to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff that nobody else gets to see at all.

I mean give me something now. I mean something even mildly compelling now, not later. And I think if they can come up with kind of a club environment to do that, some sort of a – I don't know what it would be, but their offerings kind of suck right now. I mean, the phone's cool eventually, maybe if it ever happens. And then, of course, you're on top of that battling the fact that you have a mindset of people saying, well, it's going to fail, so no one's going to bother. Yeah, especially when the price was so high. Right. The phone is a really cool idea. For anyone listening, I want to really drive it home. I'm not belittling the phone at all. I'm belittling how badly this campaign was done. It was absolutely done with the expectation that people are just going to be beating themselves over the head with their wads of money coming to the table.

Give me a break. I suppose so. I'm not trying to be – I'm just being honest, and I think the phone is a cool idea. It was good enough for Stephen Fry, Matt. It should be good enough for... So they've raised... They've gotten... This morning, when I was doing Coder Radio, they're at 11.4.

Now they're at 11.57 million. 57 hours remaining. I think one of the things I wanted to give some thought for by Sunday's Linux Action Show is, what does this mean if it fails? What are the... I mean, we know what Canonical is going to say. Canonical is going to come out and say even though it didn't reach funding, it was

a success. We started the conversation. We moved the dialogue forward. We got people thinking. We dared. Right. But that's what a company has to do, right? No, they don't have to. They choose to. I work with PR and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. I agree. I do agree.

No, you're right. You're right. It does make me cringe too and I don't like it. And it makes me roll my eyes and it makes me think, time I hear it. No, I agree. I agree. I do agree. No, you're right. You're right. It does make me cringe too and I don't like it and it makes me roll my eyes and it makes me think, gosh, that's why I like community-based stuff. And they're a great company with a great idea and a great phone

and I want to see them succeed, but they need to get off their pedestal. They're not Apple. People aren't going to just magically jump over there for the promise of air that you need to offer something upfront that gets these folks excited. If nothing more than to make them part

of the build experience, even that would be something towards like, we can't fly you out, but we can have private streaming, video streams. We can have private meetings. Just include people. Include people in the experience. Then at least they might actually get a rip because then they feel like

they're part of this phone that's not here yet. That's all. It's so obvious. I just can't put together how they haven't figured that out. That makes me want to open beer number two, so I'm going to do it. Alright, well, we'll ruminate on it. I want to talk about it more on Sunday. If you guys want to call into

Jupiter Broadcasting on Skype and share your thoughts on why Ubuntu Edge is, or maybe you still think it could have a shot. I'd love to hear that. I'd love to hear that argument. I really would. Oh, yeah, totally. I'd love to hear some theories on it, for sure.

We talked a little bit this morning on Coder Radio. We talked about two things. The second thing we talked about was the Ubuntu Edge stuff, kind of from a developer's perspective. I'm drinking a Heineken, by the way, the chatroom ass. And, you know, before you jump on me, the wife brought me home a couple cases, and I'm not going to begrudge her for bringing me home beer. Hey, anyone bringing you a Heine, you know?

Heine's a popular beer. Yeah. First thing we talked about, and this is kind of cool, Matt, is you know how, on Coder Radio, you know how Facebook has Facebook Connect and Google, you can authenticate to stuff using your Google account and Twitter? Yeah. Oh, we got a call.

Ooh, let's see who's calling in. HR is calling. All right, well, I'll finish my thought after we talk to HR. All righty. Hey, HR, welcome to Linux Unplugged, man. Hi. Hi. So are you calling in to talk about Ubuntu Edge?

Yeah. Sorry, my feed's got... Oh, yeah, caller, you have to mute your radio when you call into the... Yeah, otherwise it's going to be a mess. Yeah, yeah. It's like good old-fashioned radio call-in shows where people call in and they're in the car and they have their radio on in the car

and then the radio host is like, caller, turn down your radio. It's the same thing here on the show. Yeah, yeah. You know, what I was talking about was between live feed and Skype, there was like a major difference. Yeah, yeah.

Well, something that kind of like live feed and Skype, there was a major difference. Something that kind of got my attention about the whole Ubuntu phone thing was the fact that everything they wanted to use and were saying they were going to use was stupid

high-end. You didn't believe it possible? Yeah. The pricing for just the specs of the phones by itself, you'd most likely be able to afford, I don't know,

two or three iPhones. Exactly. On contract, though. On contract, not off contract. Yeah, on contract. The manufacturing cost alone for these phones would be just, like, stupid. I mean, they could go with lower, like, not lower crappy end, pardon the language, but, like, not as nice. Like, what was the last again? Ruby Glass or whatever it was? Daffy Glass. Metal case.

Daffy glass. Maybe even using a Firefox phone as an example of that, because I think you nailed a point. Because the Firefox phone, they have phones available now on eBay and they're lower end phones. Yeah, but if you're asking people to shell out 700 bones, I think you've got to make it a high end device.

I think it's got to be premium. Well, then again, if the device was being made out of such high-end quality material, you wouldn't be asking them to shell out $700. You think it'd be more? I think you're probably right. It'd probably be less. I don't know. I think when you're doing limited runs, I think it could be $700-$800 a unit.

I really do. In fact, I think Mark Shuttleworth alluded to that when he said, the reason why I'm not going to close the funding gap on this is because I expect this to overrun on cost, and I'm going to have to cover that cost. So he's expecting it to be more than what it is.

What you'd probably have, HR, I bet, is instead of, you'd probably have, HR, I bet, is instead of, you'd probably have a slightly slower CPU, or maybe a lower class storage or something like that. They might have to cut in that area. Well, good thoughts, man.

Comes with a floppy disk or something. Alright, dude. Well, thanks for calling in. Have a good one. And that opens up the line, folks, if you want to call in. But good thoughts on, you know, I do kind of, I see his point to a degree. I think, you know, you mentioned they're not Apple and they can't expect people to jump like Apple gets people to jump. And I'd argue to some degree, you know, Apple has sort of channeled this amazing marketing machine with this rabid fanboyism. But the other thing that Apple does is when they're up there on stage and they say, and boom, this is the iPhone 5, it's available next Friday. It's in his hand.

He's not holding a shell. And then the press, they get up and they go into this little room and they get handled in there where they get to get shown the new toy. And it's this – everybody buys it because you're going to get it in four or five days. You're going to get it in seven days, worst case, maybe 14 days. So it's not a year away. Right. I mean, and see, that's exactly it because at the end of the day, I'm going to get up on stage. I'm going to have a shell in my hand.

I'm going to tell you how cool it is. If everything goes well, maybe kind of sort of, you'll get it in a year. Hey, by the way, I'm going to secure $600 or $700 probably on your debit card because a lot of folks are using debit versus credit. All these things that pile up against them. And on top of the fact that, oh, hey, by the way, our ecosystem is completely new and unproven. But don't be worried about that. Get really excited. It's like, come on, guys.

I mean it's a great idea, but wake up. Jeez. Oh, jeez. It could be a buzzkill, but I mean I was really excited to see this come about. I think it's cool. I'm excited for the Firefox phone, too. But it's just disappointing because it was so mishandled. That's where my frustration is.

Yeah. So. So, all right. I think we'll move on. I was just going to mention in Coder Radio this morning, we talked with a guy named Dan at the Mozilla project, and he's working on a persona, which is their authentication system to compete with a Google authenticator and are not the,

not the, not the two factor app, but like Google connect and Facebook connect. It was a good chat. It was a good chat. And they're working on like a vendor neutral sort of open standardized login system. I was really impressed by it.

That'd be really nice because honestly logging into anything with Facebook and whatnot scares the hell out of me. Yeah, it always is weird because you don't know what kind of information they're getting. Is it a token or is it my entire profile? Exactly. And I'm about to go and maybe check something out. Will they suddenly decide to change their policy one day and all of a sudden it's appearing in my wall? Yeah, exactly.

All right, Matt. Now we've got Corey calling in. Hey, Corey. All right. Hey. Hey, man. What mean, who knows? Yeah, all right, all right, Matt. Well, now we got Corey calling in. Hey, Corey. All right. Hey. Hey, man, what's going on? What's on your mind? I'm going to continue with the Ubuntu Edge.

Do it. Yeah, well, you know, with the price, I understand that the price is really high, but if they really want to get the niche of the people that want to have that high-end phone, you know? Yeah, I feel like I agree. I think metal, glass, these are all high-end components. I think that's one of the dings against the Samsung Galaxy S4 right now in reviews

is that compared to the HTC One, it feels a little cheap because it's plasticky. Right. Yeah. I think the high-end component was a good one but what do you so uh but so you think price-wise non-issue or do you still think it was a barrier for this thing to succeed well i understand that uh the price what price-wise it probably is a bit of a barrier with this thing succeeding because people aren't used to paying this much for a phone. Right. They aren't used to having to shell out, you know,

and acquire almost $700 just to get a phone. But, you know, I've got the Indiegogo page up right now, and I'm looking at it, you know, 4 gig of RAM, 128 gig. How many phones do you know with 128 gig of internal storage or 4 gig of RAM? I don't know of any. I mean, there might be one, but I don't know any. But maybe in a year, that might not be the same. I mean, yeah. Because they are building this thing for a year from now,

and they've got to be competitive with what's on the market in a year. But I think even then, I think it could still be a competitive device. Or at least comparatively. It's still going to be competitive how many of them do you think are really going to also function as a desktop if you so choose to use it that way how do we know that really works though i mean at this point in time and we so we've seen what we've seen demoed is dude takes a phone dude puts it in a dock dude opens up a program but that's not convergence that's i can run two, and with one's large screen,

I start that environment, and with one's small screen, I start that environment. That's desktop switching. That's not convergence. Convergence is I'm in an instant message with Matt about an app on my couch, and then Matt sends me a link, and I decide I want to open it up on my desktop, and I dock my phone, and that same instant message conversation moves into an application or is available to an application that is formatted for the desktop.

And if I click the link, it launches my desktop web browser. But if I kept the phone in my hand and click the link, it would launch the mobile browser. That to me is true convergence. I don't think we've ever seen anything like that demonstrated. What we've seen is you can put in a dock and you can use it, and if you store all your stuff on the same file system, you can probably get to it, but I'm not actually even sure that that's how that works.

Yeah, I suppose. And I have one thought. Now, the closest I've ever seen to that personally, and that's certainly not there, but it's way closer than anything Ubuntu's got, AirDroid. I pretty much can go back and forth with messages. I can access applications to back them up or whatnot. I can browse the web.

I can do a lot of my battery status and whatnot. I can do that with AirDroid, and it's done without a dock. See, for me, the dock is a real hindrance. I don't care for that at all. In that post I was reading from Crash Bandicoot, he says that convergence is an answer to a problem that doesn't exist. I don't know if I totally agree, but I kind of... I think Corey and I would love

to have a really... You think about five years from now, these phones are so freaking powerful, it's stupid, right? You might as well do something with all of that. Why not use it as a desktop? Sure. I think it's a good idea, but not with a dock. I think it needs to be over the air. And it's not like the technology doesn't exist. It has for

quite a while now. Just use it. I suppose over the air would probably be a lot better. It's just more convenient, really, than I better put it in the dock. Yeah, it just makes, it's like, I'm going to be getting my Palm Pilot out, and I'm going to have it dial in, and I'm going to check

the Enterprise server. Make sure you've got your com port enabled there. Right. It's like, what a buzzkill. But the phone itself is a cool idea. I'm excited about the phone. Well, I was excited about the phone. But I feel like that I think you're right on the specs. I think people do want

high-end specs, but I think people would rather take that same $600 or $700 and just go buy a really nice Android phone with the ecosystem that they can get today or tomorrow or even in a few weeks. Well, what I don't understand, and not to take too much from our conversation on Sunday, but what I don't understand is, to me, it seems more capable and more likely to do some sort of middleman convergence using a tablet. Like, first of all, tablet space is pretty competitive.

It seems a little less locked down to me than the phone space does everybody's got a phone already right nobody really at this point anybody who has the scratch to back that indiegogo campaign there's none of those people don't already have a phone that's just those two things don't exist in this universe but they might have a little room for a new tablet not only only that... I don't have a tablet. Right, right. And you're not married to the tablet like you are the phone. I mean, you're married to the phone. And a tablet could also be its own display. So you don't have to worry about

this weird switch-off, hand-off between desktop and mobile applications. Maybe you just create some sort of dock that holds the tablet, and you have a USB mouse and keyboard hooked up to that all the time. The Note 2 does this. The Note 2 that Matt now has has a dock. You put the Note 2 in a dock. You can have a USB mouse and keyboard hooked up to that all the time. The Note 2 does this. The Note 2 that Matt now has has a dock. You put the Note 2 in a dock.

You can have a USB mouse and keyboard perma hooked up to that dock. And when you put the Note 2 in that dock, it becomes a device that works with a mouse and keyboard. That's right. They could have done that with Ubuntu Touch. I bet you, I bet you, I don't know if it would have even been 32 million because you don't have to worry about all of the cellular stuff or nothing like that. You don't have to worry about this. You could have even gone a route of like what Google does with the Nexus.

I mean let's be honest. The Nexus isn't some custom-built piece of hardware. It's made by Asus, and then Google takes it, and they OEM it. They could have totally done that. Right. They could have. Yeah, that's kind of my theory of it. There's so much they could have done, and I feel a little bit like they rushed into it.

I like what you guys are saying about the tablet aspect. I think that would be an interesting approach. Maybe they still will. I mean they are working. We've seen images on the Nexus. Well, and I guess when I take away from this and all the Matt Hartley dramas pulled away from this whole experience, and we really look at this with practical eyes, the investment thus far has been figuratively minimal compared to had they actually invested millions of dollars in this, had it flopped

and then say, oh wow, we should have done a tablet. So once, you know, withdrawing my own drama from it, you know, this may just have been a learning experience for them. And if it is, then more power to them. I get excited about a tablet then. Cool. Corey, any other thoughts before we let you go? Well, I suppose really

it's kind of, currently it's just one of those things that gets in with the geekiness of people, you know, those ones that small niche, that idea that they could have this phone with 4GB of RAM and they can plug it in and it'll, you know, just work on your Ubuntu desktop.

And one that's meant to dual boot too, that's cool too. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I like that feature. Well dual boot, too. That's cool, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I like that feature. Well, hey, before I let you go, chat room is asking, they want a little more Luna talk. Have you tried out elementary OS?

What do you think? I haven't tried it out yet. I was thinking about trying it out later, though. Have you watched our review on it yet? No. Oh, yeah, I've watched reviews. All right, well, I want you to try it out and then let us know what you think, okay? It's important to the. Oh, yeah. I've watched some. I've watched reviews. All right. Well, I want you to try it out and then let us know

what you think, okay? It's important to the chat room, Corey. It's important. All right, Corey. Thanks for calling, buddy. We'll talk to you later. All right. Well, that was good.

Good thoughts on Corey's part. Thanks, Corey, for calling into the chat. Appreciate it. All right, Matt. Well, we'll leave that line open. This is apparently a hot topic. You know, it's because

it's about to... It's about to... It's like time, right? It's time. It's really time. The last few hours. And I think a lot of people are passionate about it from one direction or another. They either are excited and want to see it happen. They're angry and they think this is a

misfocus for Ubuntu and that they should concentrate on software. There's a lot of emotion. Yeah, I feel like that's me. Yeah, no. And I'm kind of, you know, I'm so detached from them these days that I want to see them do well, whatever they're doing. No, I hear you. All right, well, before we get into some of the last feedback, I thought I'd cover an email that was feedback addressed to this show.

Yeah. Ryan emailed us and he said, I've been watching Last for a little over a year now, and I just wanted to touch on Too Much Choice Episode 1 that I just listened to about two hours ago. I'm very happy that you guys added Too Much Choice to the lineup, or Linux Unplugged as the case might be. I have a few thoughts regarding the Linux desktop frustrations.

I find myself working with Unity because it works mostly out of the box, and I don't have to deal with it crashing or audio not working randomly during the day. I would like to use KDE, but I truly don't have time to tweak and fix it. Hmm. You know, that's actually a fair point. I've found that to be generally true. I've certainly had my own issues with Unity from time to time, but, you know, in its current state, it's not too bad.

KDE, the new release is out. We'll try that. Maybe they've dealt with their audio stuff. KDE, the new release is out. We'll try that. Maybe they've dealt with their audio stuff. It is definitely a desktop for those that like to tweak and to massage into their own needs. Yeah, we got a lot of interesting feedback. A lot of folks are like, yeah, I have the same audio problems you guys do.

And then a lot of folks are like, I've never had an audio problem. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Well, someone in the chat room earlier commented. They said, well, you know, Skype for Linux is crap, and a lot of that is, in fact, because of the whole Pulse Audio thing. I will go on record and say this Skype call that I'm in right now

for the show is on Ubuntu in Skype. It's fine. My CPU usage is, I can't even see it moving. The latest, it's actually pretty good. So, is audio okay? Eh, you know't even see it moving. It's actually pretty good. Is audio okay? It's not bad. It's not bad in Ubuntu.

He goes on, he wants to know if we could share some of the sites we use on a daily basis to stay up to date on Linux and IT news happenings. He'd be curious to know what we do to kind of stay abreast of the news. Now, do you have any particular sites that you love to troll on a regular basis?

Oh, goodness. I try and make it work for me as much as possible. I do a lot of Linux.com or Linux Today because it does a lot of the curating for me. Tux machines. I have Google Watch, watching for various keywords, things of that sort. I don't have any real specific brand loyalty to any real websites outside of Datamation where I will be writing for again here in a couple months. Nothing real specific.

I used to check H online pretty regularly. Yeah. But obviously that's not really an option anymore. Of course, the Linux Action Show subreddit is actually seriously one of the best resources. I also probably every day visit Linux Insider. Yeah, that's good. I visit there about once a week.

I go to lwn.net. If I'm just browsing for headlines, lexer.com is pretty good. OS static blogs are good for a post here and there. Honestly, I know good old Michael Larble over there at Pharonix gets a hard time from time to time, but I try to check out Pharonix once a day. See what they're up to. Yeah, I check out Pharonix.

I don't do Lexer just because we have a long angry personal history with variety of people there. That was something I started a fight with them a long time ago. It was my fault. It's totally old history. I'm sure you guys could probably find out a lot there. If you need a website to be dead to the show, we can make a site dead to the show. By the way, Gawker is

dead to Jupyter Broadcasting because I think they're a bunch of pricks. Oh yeah, they totally are. Lexer is just a hyper Linux user. Very, very passionate people that get angry real easy. I also troll the Linux subreddit, which

apparently is full of people who are super grumpy. Wow. You know, different strokes for different folks. Most of the people in the subreddit are super awesome. Every once in a while you get somebody with a stick up his backside, but that's okay. Yeah, yeah. That's okay. And you mentioned TuxMachines.org, I think.

TuxMachines.org. TuxMachines is pretty cool. Linux Today. Any of the products is good, too. Yeah. The subreddit is a no question, obviously. That is the best resource because if there's something good on pretty much any of those sites, it'll eventually show up in the subreddit and usually within a few minutes.

It's pretty good. Okay, Marlon wrote in. He said, hi, Chris and Matt. You've both recently talked about too much choice in the Linux world and how this can potentially get a little bit over your head. While I don't necessarily disagree per se, I think you failed to consider some implications of this. You've had some issues with KDE. Sorry to hear that. And basically said that OS X and Windows users don't have the same

immature problems. However, I have to disagree. Because as someone who spends a lot of time troubleshooting Windows boxes for home users, I know for a fact that this is exactly the sort of problem Windows and OS X users face as well. However, because they cannot switch desktops, sound servers, etc., they usually don't complain about it

as loudly as you do, and because they don't have a podcast. The difference being that in Linux, you can at least attempt to fix these problems while Windows OS X, you're stuck with what the factory manufactured for you. Excellent. First of all, excellent feedback. I think you made some valid points there. I used to be in PC repair myself, and that's actually

it was Windows Vista that pushed me out of it completely. That was at that point I just stopped. And so I totally hear where you're coming from. I would disagree in saying that I don't – I don't believe I suggested that Windows didn't present frustration experiences because, believe me, I feel your pain. They really do, and I'm right there with you in being the guy that has to tell the person that it's not your fault, the tech. It's the fault of the operating system they're using. So I understand completely.

Yeah, I definitely feel where you're coming from. I don't think it's a matter of – I think the people that you're dealing with in those situations honestly don't know any differently where Linux users do. We have experienced different experiences, and so we are in fact looking at it from a different perspective. We have experienced different experiences, and so we are, in fact, looking at it from a different perspective. I would have, as somebody who's used Linux in production on and off, I would say that audio subsystems have been more reliable, especially on OS X, than on Linux. Windows, yeah. I mean, Windows, it always comes down to how good the driver is. It's always about the driver on Windows. If the driver is shite, then the application compatibility is going to be shite.

He goes on to say, he says, P.S., I've never had a sound issue in KDE, and I'm running three sound cards on a desktop, with one of them being a USB DAC and an amp, but it may be worthwhile to look into text configs. So, you know, in my setup, I've got three sound options. One of them is a USBb m audio adapter you know and sometimes the issue for me is that kde just doesn't see the device it just does not even show up but if i log in to gnome it's there well and that's just it i will literally

have not touched uh usb heads everything's left as it was today before i will boot up and it's saying oh hey such and such sound card. It's not there anymore. What do you want to do about that? Do you want to ignore it? Wait, what? That's not something that... That's where our frustration comes from. And so in a Windows experience or an OS X experience, usually you don't get the nag in Windows or OS X.

It just won't work. And then, of course, the casual user just says, oh, well, I'll just call my tech. Linux users are a hands-on crowd to where they're thinking, oh, well, I need to massage this and figure out why it's not working. Plus, I'm seeing a nag about it. So that's usually the difference, I guess. I think – But great feedback, though.

Yeah, I think it's worth considering. And I'm willing to kind of – I'm kind of willing to monkey around with my setup to see if maybe I'm just doing something wrong. I'm willing to accept the possibility, Matt. I can accept it. I just want to refer people. I'll try to remember to link to this. You know what? I got some notes I've started right here for the show notes.

Ooh, in the subreddit said he started a thread. It's called, and I know this is so great as a longtime Linux user, Linux games. Before it was cool. You know, it's like games before we had actual games and i don't mean oh yeah i remember those days he says i'm a gamer i like games it's great that we have steam now and most indie games are announcing linux support and we've even seen some triple a stuff like how cool was that space game i showed in last on sunday it was awesome that was really awesome like i realized like uh linux has gotten to the point now where i'm checking what new games are in steam on a weekly basis and i'm getting one or two a week oh yeah maybe one a week this is amazing matt i mean this is a i'm getting one or two new video games from Steam a week for Linux.

Did I remember, like, it was a big deal because we had Unreal Tournament and Postal. Yes! Yes! And Postal, I mean, come on, who hasn't played Postal? I mean, everybody likes to be... Remember how appreciative we are when Unreal Tournament 2004 came out for Linux and we were like, thank you! Thank you!

That was the only game I played. I ignored a Windows partition completely because of that. It was so funny. Yeah, and I just want to take a minute. Ooh's post in the subreddit made me think about that, and I just thought, I've got to reflect on this, on how we've had such a fundamental shift now, and really good games in Steam, very excited,

and I don't believe this shuts out the open source games at all. I think this sort of lights a fire. I think we're going to see a new generation of open source games coming soon. Anyways, in his subreddit post, he linked to NetHack and Hedge Wars, Broken Sword, a bunch of really good old games. So if you guys want to get your retro

gaming, he's got an Android alpha build for a couple of these. If you want to get your retro gaming on, I'll try to remember to put it on. In fact, I just closed it before I got the link. I'll put the link right now. I'm writing it down for my notes so that way you guys can go check that out if you want to go get your nostalgia. Why not, right? Good times.

Good times. All right. I'm going to read another email. This one is sent in from Ian, and it's on the topic of mail servers. You know that's been a hot topic of mine recently. Oh, man. It's been burning up the subreddit. It says, Dear Matt and Chris, I just

watched the first episode of Linux Action Show Unplugged. He called it Untangled, which is pretty good. That's pretty good. If we would have had like the, you know, like back in the day of old time radio, you'd have like one sponsor that was like the beneficiary sponsor of your entire show. You'd even name the show after that sponsor

in some cases. If Untangled was that for Unplugged, we could have done that. That would totally work. Radio theater and the whole thing. Theater of the mind, Matt. He said he found it very informative and interesting, and he said, since we asked about different setups of mail servers of the viewers, he decided to send an email from his own mail server,

which he does not keep up 24-7 by the way. He's okay with that. I just recently switched from Ubuntu to Arch, and I found Arch to be a great distribution. I tried to set up a mail server for my family with courier mta which is an imap and smtp solution rolled into one application right uh there was an excellent wiki page on the arch wiki but i was not able to get relays working correctly so i switched to post fix for smtp and courier imap for im. The combination has been working wonderfully and I used the tutorial and he links me to a tutorial on HyperX

dot, or Hyper Xer, H-Y-P E-X-R dot org. With a few modifications to be able to set it up, I checked out the tutorial and it actually looked pretty good. I also decided to set up a webmail system with PHP and Apache. He used AfterLogic

Webmail Lite as his webmail package because it was easy to configure and has a nice and easy to use interface and because, of course, it's open source under the GPL3. Gotta love that. So good to see that happening. A second email came in here to the show. This one came from

Dimitrios? He says, Hi Chris and Matt. On last season 28, episode 3 and on on Linux Action Show Unplugged, you spoke about remote desktop solutions. For years, I've been using multi-user remote desktop based on NX called NoMachine. It's easy to set up, runs over the SSH port, and it's very customizable. And best of all, it behaves like a terminal server in Windows in that multiple users can be logged in to their own desktop over RDP at the same time.

It's very customizable and scales well. He says, by the way, congrats on the new addition, my hat's off to you for being able to not only run the network, but also get some salt, but on probably what I assume is only two to three hours of sleep. He's right about that.

So, No Machine and NX. Wowx wow talk about it a while ago have you familiar have you seen it i have it's been so long since i played with it it's it's one of those things that where it's powerful but it's not exactly uh like team viewer you know what i mean you're not just gonna walk into it and get it working you actually have there's some minor configuration involved so i think it has its place i think i certainly think it has its place with anyone that's experienced with such things um it's not for everybody and i think it's something that each individual would have to try to decide whether or not it's a match for them but it is very cool and very powerful i'll give it that yeah yeah i have i have used it and um it is amazing it is the

performance is incredible. I had a machine set up in Texas. I would remote into that machine and I would work out of that machine all day long. I could watch videos. I'm talking YouTube videos, everything through this remote connection, through NX. It is incredible.

However, Splashtop is a little better for like that remote desktop solution where you actually, and this was key, need to get the console that is up on the screen. Because I will start an application in the studio right there in X, I'll launch Handbrake, and then I'll walk away and go make dinner. And I want to be able to just fire up on my tablet or go into my home office and just pull up the studio machine and just see where Handbrake's at. Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And I know that I felt so bad for a few people that have had struggles getting it to work in Arch.

I didn't have that hard a time with it, but I know folks that legitimately have. But at the same time, it's just so fast and so easy to use. And I can use it on my phone. I can use it on another desktop. I can use it from anywhere in the world. It's just brain-dead simple to use once you get it installed. It really is. And I could see what Arm's saying in the chat room where TeamViewer is – it's a little more available for other distributions.

It totally is. And I use TeamViewer actually on another desktop, and the performance is also good. It's not – and I love TeamViewer, and I want to be clear on that. I'm a user. But the performance is not even remotely as good as Splash Top. And I say that as a TeamViewer fan. I like them. I think they're great. I use their app every day.

There is no contest. There just isn't. No contest? Well, and I would say no contest. If you want to dumb down the appearance of your desktop, yes, it's comparable. If you want it to be like you're sitting there with all the colors and the graphics and the sound and everything, no. I'm sorry. I'm saying that using both applications. Yeah and everything. No. I'm sorry.

I just – and I'm saying that using both applications. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you too. But I like TeamViewer. It's a good app. I use it a lot. This episode, Matt, our second sponsor, this episode is the 30-inch Sony Trinitron on eBay that Microcode has linked to us in the chat room. That's right. For $350, you can get a 30-inch Sony CRT.

No, I'm kidding. But he did link a, well, I don't know why he linked a 30-inch CRT in our chat room. I guess if somebody out there wants a CRT, maybe you really want to get your retro on. Remember earlier when I mentioned getting your retro on? Well, that is, yeah. Although it does say HD, so there's that. There is that. Really?

Yeah. I guess it doesn HD, so there's that. There is that. Really? Yeah. I guess it doesn't say what resolution, though. Oh, I take that back. It's CRT, doesn't it? It'll go up to 1080i. Actually, a 1080i CRT, I wouldn't mind seeing that. Well, I mean, it's like I know the refresh rate. Would you like to burn your eyeballs out or not?

I know that matters, but if anything below 70 is going to make you get a headache. But yeah, it's just kind of like, eh. Hey, Matt, guess what? It's Energy Star compliant. Oh, well, that's important. Especially when you're bringing in a 300 pound monitor onto your desk. I'm going to bid now. I'm going to place a bid. It's not even available for Pi now.

You've got to bid on this thing, on this bad boy. Oh my god. No, our second sponsor this week is UnitySync from Directory Wizards. Woo-hoo! Here's the thing, you guys. I'm just going to save you a lot of trouble. I'm going to make you the IT wizard. Hey, if you've got a directory synchronization problem, then you know what I'm talking about.

If you've got desperate data stores that don't talk to each other, that need to talk to each other, UnitySync is going to solve this. And if you're in that position, you're going to become the IT hero. You're welcome. I just made you the savior of your IT department. You guys have been looking bad. Maybe your HR department keeps things up to date but doesn't update your other database so that way it gets pushed out to all the users. It's not current. Yes, I'm familiar with that situation. UnitySync is going to solve that. But it goes way, way, way, way beyond that. If you've got Microsoft SQL database, Access databases, OpenLDAP, eDirectory, Active Directory, iMail, LDIF file, CSV file, Sun, whatever it is, if you need to move directory data between two different types of directories, you want to do it intelligently, and you want to do it maybe with some templates, you want to maybe throw a little Perl script in there to get extra flexibility, UnitySync is going to do that for you. Directory Wizards has created UnitySync to solve this problem, and it's available for Linux.

You can actually have two separate Active Directory domains that are completely individually apart from each other. The UnitySync is running on a Linux box, keeping those two Active Directory machines in check. You know what I'm saying? You bring in the Linux box. You could put it on a Windows machine if you're that guy, but you're not that guy.

You're going to put it on a Linux box, and you're going to say, hey, boss, here's what I got for you. I got this Unity sync. We're going to load it on a rig, and if we use the code Linux when we download it, I'm going to get 30 days on a trial. So we can try it out for a month

to make sure it's doing what we want, and if you use that code Linux, you're also going to get a year of maintenance for free. So the boss is going to like that. I say, this is the way to go. He said, Hey, look, look, we can get a year of maintenance on this. And unity, unity sync has a very, very competitive model where they charge based on the directory, not the users and not the size of the database. Think about how nice that is. If you have something that's growing over time, you're not going to have to worry when it comes up time to renew that maintenance. So many vendors try to ding you for the size of the directory.

That's ridiculous. That's not how computers work. Go over to derwiz.com, click on Unity Sync, and put in the code Linux for your trial download, and you'll unlock the extra bennies. While you're over there, check out some of their notable customers. Matt, have I showed you this list yet? No, I have not seen the list. Well, there's a few people on here like the Air Force Command

and Control Information Systems of Canada. Oh, no one's heard of these guys. They use UnitySync. The Army. DC Council uses UnitySync. The list goes on. Fiserv uses UnitySync. The U.S. Marines use UnitySync. The NFL. Anheuser-Busch uses UnitySync. The U.S. Marines use UnitySync. The NFL, Anheuser-Busch uses UnitySync. I mean, this is enterprise grade, man. I mean, come on. I need, every time Anheuser-Busch needs to update something about Budweiser

to their Redhook directory, UnitySync's taking care of it for them. And the nice thing is UnitySync can either just move a record or it can move everything in that directory. It can be super intelligent. It can be safe. No per-user cost makes it super nice for scaling. And of course, it's great for backup too. So use the code Linux when you're downloading the

demo and check it out. Go save the day. IT can get run over by the other people in the company when these kinds of problems aren't solved. And I have been there. That leads to burnout. That leaves people feeling a little hostile. Oh, yeah.

We don't want you to have a hostile work environment. No, I keep it out here. No, no, no. We're hooking you guys up. And so is UnitySync. So thanks to UnitySync for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Good stuff. All right.

So I got a couple more emails I want to make sure we get through. Yeah. We're almost running out of time and I still have an inbox full of email, Matt's like we're gonna have to just keep doing this so uh david wrote in he says go for unplugged hi chris and matt i look so excited to hear about the extra show and it's absolutely excellent my suggestion don't change the format at all from what you have done already it's excellent it's open it's frank and the discussions are great you've done what you've done for the it's excellent. It's open. It's frank. And the discussions are great.

You've done, what you've done for the Linux world is perfect. I've presented the new show with the same professionalism and from the heart nature of Lass. He says, I have released episode nine of Linux Down Under podcast,

LDUP for short, which is my own small contribution to the Linux industry with an Aussie view. Keep up the good work and thank you so much for giving us the extra awesome show. Spend time to listen to

all things Linux unplugged. He says, by the way, Matt, don't hate on Fedora too much. He's a Fedora and a KDE user. I'm a big Red Hat company fan, as far as Fedora's concerned. I just keep revisiting it, and my mind could totally change one day. It could

totally happen. I don't know. I feel like I should keep reading. We got so many emails that came in, and I haven't even gotten to the bit messages. By the way, what would you think about us doing like an in-depth, hey, what do you think about doing this week slash Etsy on bit message? Ooh. It's just kind of like I could just show it. Because someone like me that's not using it would love to know more about it. I get to watch it as kind of a participant in a sense from afar, but not really using it would love to know more about it. I get to watch it as kind of a participant in a sense from afar, but

not really using it daily. So one of the things I was thinking we could show is one of the nice features about BitMessage is you can have an address that multiple people subscribe to. So we could have a feedback address for this show. When people send to that, it goes to both our BitMessage inboxes.

I like that. I do want to roll my own email server because I have to talk to the rest of the world. But at the same time, I really feel like, you know, email's broken fundamentally from a security standpoint. And BitMessage really, really addresses a lot. Like even if BitMessage was unencrypted and clear text, I would still think BitMessage is a good idea just based on the peer-to-peer nature. The peer-to-peer nature has some downsides in that everybody's downloading everybody's messages, but you can only open those messages if you have the right cryptographic answer to the question,

which means there's no metadata to collect. There's no monitoring that can happen. There's this blockchain concept. People download it. They have the answer. They unlock the content, and then they can read it. And I think whenever we see something that comes out like this that fundamentally solves a privacy issue or a security issue like encryption by default and it's open source, I wouldn't mind focusing on that in our shows, giving attention to that. Absolutely.

I think that's a great idea. And it'd be kind of fun to experiment and see what it is. Because I remember when RSS was a big deal, solving different problems, obviously, but it was solving the newsletter problem and the spam folder problem and all that sort of thing. And it never really took off as much as people thought it would. You know, it was the email killer and all this. But with BitMessage, I think it does go a step closer than RSS does.

One of the interesting aspects of BitMessage is in order to communicate something to the network, you have to do relatively a costly proof of concept work. You have to do a proof of work. You have to do some math. You have to calculate for the network. You have to crunch numbers. And that is not

a big deal when you're firing off a few bit messages. But if you want to spam on a mass scale, the CPU cost is extremely high. Exactly. It destroys profitability for spamming. It's not impossible to spam the bit message network, but the cost to do it CPU-wise is really unsustainable. So that's one of the interesting things about BitMessage is

without actually charging money, they have found a way to introduce cost to prevent spamming. That's a really interesting point. And not only that, but it's inherently easy enough to do for a newsletter-type environment, like you talked about, basically a community bucket to where everybody can pile into that. It's going to be interesting to see where it evolves to. And again, I'm a total

newbie to BitMessage, so this is going to be interesting for me as an end user to be introduced to it and to really get my feet wet. Alright, Matt, I'm going to say, last chance for anybody that's watching live that wants to call in, Skype us at jupiterbroadcasting.com. Hopefully next week we'll have the Mumble deal all figured out. Just got an email from David

at the Elementary OS Project. He says he says hi there elementary os developer here i'm uh curious about coming on the show and talking to you guys i don't have skype set up right now on linux but i'd love to join you on mumble in the future so there you go that sounds like a great idea there you go david we'd love to have you on a linux unplugged in the future and hopefully we'll have mumble set up where matt and i are thinking we're gonna have uh uh hopefully if everything works out we'll have a mumble room for people just to hang out out in general oh yeah specifically to hang out during live shows linux unplugged in particular just a lobby for people to chat then we'll have a screening room where you'll get moved into you can join on your own volition where people can just get in there and say hey i'd like to go on air and we'll have an

operator in there who will check your mic make sure your audio is working make sure you don't have your stream on you know the call or any radio thing and then they're going to move you into what we'll probably have as a showroom where anybody in that room can go on air and it's not like you have to jump through some sort of crazy hoop it's just you have to pay basic flight checks and and then eventually you'll kind of i would love to even have people who have a known good status and they can always just enter the room directly and contribute away. I think that'd be great too. That would be awesome. Yeah.

Kind of a green room, if you will. Yeah. We'll have a green room to make sure you're all ready for flight. And then we'll actually have the flight deck where when you go in there, you're on air and you just boom, right in there. And I think that's going to be a great way for people to contribute to the show in real time. So, yeah, I think, I think we'll call it right there.

I got so much more stuff, man. I got so much more stuff. I know, it's just like overflowing out of the... Yeah. I mean, we could go for another hour and still only have scratched just the bottom of the barrel of these emails. Just not even... Like a little nick, Matt.

A little nick off the top. But I'm glad we were able to get to the ones we could. I actually have a few more. Gosh, I hate to wrap up, Matt, but I got to go make dinner. I got to go make dinner. Dinner thing. That's what it is. Huh? Yeah. It's that dinner thing. It's that food thing, Matt. but I got to go make dinner. I got to go make dinner. Dinner thing. Yeah, it's that dinner thing.

It's that food thing, Matt. Got to eat. Got to eat. Yeah. Plus, I ran out of beer. Well, that's it. There's your sign. Once I'm out of beer, that's kind of the indication that the show's over.

All right. Well, I want to make sure everybody joins us next Sunday for the big show. We'll be talking about one of the things we'll be talking about is Punto Edge, among other things, like probably BitMessage, and a few other nice little surprises, plus the news. Don't forget, we'd love to hear your feedback. You can just email us, linuxactionshow at jupyterbroadcasting.com, or start a thread in our subreddit over at linuxactionshow.reddit.com. And you can join

us live Mondays at 2pm Pacific over at jblive.tv. Always great to have you guys. Love to see you next time. Hey, Matt, have a great week. You too. We'll see you soon. Alright, everyone. See you right back here next week for Linux Unplugged. Thank you.