LINUX Unplugged - Episode 20: Fidel Chromecastro | LUP 20

Episode Date: December 24, 2013

Chromecast has been called the gadget of the year, but are the better options? Or is a simple, low cost, Linux powered gadget the ultimate living room solution? We’ll debate where it stacks up compared to XMBC, Plex, and others.Plus: Some insights into why Canonical might be looking to License their Binary repos to the Mint projects, your feedback, and more!

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode weekly Linux talk show that's making our list and checking it twice. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey Matt, episode 20, buddy, and it's a happy holiday around here. I've got the Christmas tree up, but I'm going to be honest. That top star, I tried to put it on the top of the tree. I was foiled, Matt. The hole is too small.

You know, I've had that problem with more things than just the tree, but I've also yet to put decorations up, so I won't fuck. It's been a reoccurring... Boy, you better get on it, Matt. I know. Well, we've got the tree up, but we have no decorations we gotta look at it like do i really care it's a staged approach no i gotta think about this so first it's a lot like software deployment you deploy your base package make sure everything's stable you got to run that

for a little bit make sure your change control committee is signed off on the deployment and then once the tree is up you deploy the lights and then once the once the committee is signed off on that, you deploy the decorations. Yeah. Now, I understand. That's good. You're doing it the safe approach. See, here, we just do it shotgun at the Fisher residence. We just throw things on there.

I like that idea. I like that idea. Personally, I say lights and tinsel, you're done, right? Right. That's all you really need. Yeah. I'm one of those people who'd actually like to keep the tree up all year round because I just like the ambient light it gives off.

I'm one of those people who'd actually like to keep the tree up all year round because I just like the ambient light it gives off. But we have also now, because we're parents, we have used the tree as a motivator to make our children behave when we have a babysitter. So I went out and did some Christmas shopping, and my wife was going out and doing some scrapbooking. And both parents were leaving the house. It never happens. It probably happens – probably the only time it's ever happened in this year alone. And so we thought, well, we'll reserve some of the decorations and that way the babysitter can leverage the decorations to to solicit the cooperation of the children and i'm not saying you should leverage the holiday spirit when possible but personal experience does show it does seem to work

all right matt well uh our first one is something we've been getting a lot of emails about and you know i to be honest with you i haven't seen a big controversy with it so i haven't covered it on any of our shows yet but we've got a lot of emails and mark just had a really good concise email about it uh he writes in he says i just saw an article about canonical asking the linux mint project uh and maybe otheruntu-based distros to license the Ubuntu binary files in their software repo. Whatever happened to open source and the GPL? So here's the, and I'll cut through what everybody in the Linux, I'm going to say 99% of the

Linux community misunderstands about how the GPL license works. Free isn't freedom, not free isn't beer. And so when something is done a certain way and if it's allowable, if you're not actually working with the code, you're working with those particular packages and however they determine to the act of compiling them or whatever it is, whatever they've got going on, honestly, at the end of the day, I'm not really a fan of the idea.

I think it's a huge mistake. But can they do it? Yeah, they can. Well, sure, they can. Yeah, absolutely they can. They can totally do it. Can they do it? Yeah. Well sure, they sure they can. Yeah, absolutely they can. Do you remember when the Firefox Do you remember though when Firefox and Debian had their hold falling out and they renamed it to Ice?

Oh yes, over the trademark logos. So the DistroWatch ran this report based on a comment that Clem made on his blog post. Now I want to give you guys a sense of actually how old this is. So Clem made this post, remember back a few weeks ago when a couple of Ubuntu developers, and actually one that's not even, I don't think he's in the Ubuntu project anymore, Ben,

made some comments that sometimes Mint is behind the ball on security updates. At that time, Clem did a very good, very rational follow-up post that said, here's what's really going on. And in that, towards the end of that post, he made reference that, oh, by the way, I've been speaking with Canonical Legal about licensing their binary files. In fact, this is the SlashDart post on it. It's pretty brief. It says, Clem claims he has been asked by Canonical's legal department to license the binary packages used by Ubuntu. He says, to me, this is a scary thought.

Ubuntu-based distributions for many projects out there, some of them such as Mint and Kubuntu, are quite successful. Clem's statement makes it clear that canonicals approach other open source projects about licensing the write across Ubuntu's repos. They go on to ask, would derivative distributions need to pay to use canonicals packages? How would canonical enforce such a policy with lawyers by blocking access to repositories if they isn't using genuine Ubuntu? Now, I thought it would be negligent here on our part to pick our resident Ubuntu expert. Now, he, Popey, will be speaking on behalf of himself, not the Canonical company.

But I wonder, Popey, do you kind of agree with me? Is this kind of a non-story? I mean, we've seen this before, like with upstream vendors, right? And Firefox comes to mind. Firefox has contacted distributions in the past and said, hey, could you not use our branding and our slogan? If you're going to follow these rules, you either need to license this from us, or you need to come up with something else. Popeypy in your opinion is this what we're seeing here um it's tricky yeah i i'm not speaking for canonical this is my personal opinion and i can see why there's some uproar i can see why there's backlash because you know we give everything away for free right you know you get the the software for nothing and then hang on this guy is trying to make a derivative of Ubuntu. And it's seen by many as competition for us. And maybe some people see us as,

you know, butthurt that some guy's getting a lot of attention, and maybe we're trying to get some money out of him, you know, to compensate us for that. But my perspective, I don't think that's the case. I think what you've got to remember is that there's the ubuntu project itself there's the derivatives which you know your list your listener mentioned kubuntu but he mentioned kubuntu and mint in the same breath and they're not really the same kubuntu edge ubuntu myth buntu and all the other uh flavors have um have been brought into the the Ubuntu project and they have some level of responsibility

for the packages that they deliver. So the Kubuntu project actually work on their KDE packages and we have a level of responsibility to ensure that the rest of the archive works with what they make. It's kind of under the same umbrella. The same goes for all the others. Okay.

Yeah. And so we work together. We work collaboratively on the same set of packages so we don't you know ask the kubuntu developers to have some kind of you know payment licensing thing because they're working on the same set of packages that we are whereas derivatives some derivatives will take our source packages and rebuild them i can't for the life of me think of anyone who does that but that's possible in the way that SteamOS have rebuilt the Debian packages.

So Valve have rebuilt the Debian packages for SteamOS. They've built their own binaries based on the Debian source packages. So that's seen as okay. Whereas Linux Mint are not doing that. What Linux Mint are doing is delivering an ISO image which points to our archive and our mirrors which are maintained by people that we

pay and our community work on our project and they're getting the benefit from that. So I can see how I can see both sides of it but I can certainly see why Canonical would be not. Is there a financial terms here? Have you heard of anything like that? I have no idea. Because i can in a way uh i suppose you

can make the same argument with somebody like integros right where um they're building a product but they're using the hosting of ubuntu so mint is building their desktop but if you turned off one night if boom all of the Ubuntu repos were turned off, Mint would become unfunctional. It would be dysfunctional. And I don't actually think Mint accounts for a huge proportion of the traffic to our mirrors. I know people might think that Mint actually, given its ranking on DistroWatch, think that it's got twice the number of users Ubuntu has. That flat out isn't the case. No, I know. I not sure it makes a significant

dent in the archive in the in the in the mirrors the traffic but it's it's just to me it's irresponsible for them to put out an iso image which depends on what is, in effect, their competitor's product. You know, you wouldn't have... But can't you make that same exact argument? I mean, you can't make the repo argument, but you can make the derivative argument between Ubuntu and Debian itself. We rebuild every package. Right, I know, I understand. You host it.

We have developers who are paid to do the patching and and um maintain those packages in ubuntu yeah sure there are some that are just straight out rebuilds yeah we've imported them from debian and we've real build them on our vast array of servers and we host them on our servers and then our mirrors you know mirror them um so i don't think it's the same. No, you're right. Because it's more akin to more like Red Hat and CentOS is a relationship in a sense. Yeah, and SteamOS and Debian. Yeah, exactly.

SteamOS is also taking on the burden of the infrastructure and the rebuilding of many of the packages, just like CentOS rebuilds all the packages, takes on the burden of hosting those packages and those repos. packages takes on the burden of hosting those packages and those repos uh so imagine imagine for example if linux mint said um you know whatever desktop they're using mate cinnamon whatever it is and they said okay here are all the packages that for where we are different from ubuntu let's try and get those in the archive in the ubuntu archive yeah and then once they're in the ubuntu archive linux mint is for want in the Ubuntu archive, Linux Mint is, for want of a better word, a flavor of Ubuntu. It can still be called Linux Mint, I'm sure. You can still have your default desktop that isn't Unity, if you don't like that, and isn't Gnome 3,

if you don't like that. You can still have whatever bits and bobs you want. But they're in the archive. They're well-maintained. They get security updates timely fashion that i know ollie and ben alluded to in that in that blog post but there there isn't this um our competitor building on the stuff that we've we've already built for them if that makes sense and and the other thing i i personally think is a bit is a bit rude is taking the ubuntu archive and not only reusing it, but then going Go ahead. What happened? Did we lose him? I guess. I think he was about to make his best point yet.

We'll come back to that point. I think that, you know, from my perspective, and I think he brought up some really good points, I have concerns over the political capital that actually is played into it and that, you know, regardless of what company it may be, any public-facing company that's put into that really tough position has to make a – is about to make that play. Are they in a position to actually back that up?

Are they in a position to potentially deal with – even if it's unfair fallout, to deal with what's going to be fallout over that? We've seen this with other stuff, other challenges that they've faced. So I have some concerns there. And it is interesting to look in there in the – Oh, there we go. We got him back. I think you're back. I think you're back.

Hi there. We were here the whole time. I know. I don't know what happened. I think it was – so I don't know if you guys have seen Thor, but the five realms are aligning, and sometimes there are phases between the realities. I think that's what happens. I blame Thor. Isn't it that way?

So did I drop out partway through what I was saying? You were just about to. You were wrapping up your thought on the use of the repos, I think. Yes. The last thing that I think is just a little bit rude is if you're going to use someone else's archive, don't go through replacing all the affiliate links, which I know Mint do. Ah, right. Oh, interesting. No, that definitely wins a douche

award absolutely you know i don't mean to harsh on mint but there is there is some sort of um there is a like boy it's almost like the mob a little bit like you got the ubuntu boss and then you got the guy working under the ubuntu boss who maybe should be kicking up a little bit to the boss right because he's the boss letting him work in his district i've lost track of who's the boss now well yeah but that was a very popular show at one time i don't i don't necessarily think i'm ready to take sides on this argument but i think i think the canonical argument is one to be considered because uh yeah they're you're you're basing a lot of mint success on ubuntu in fact i i i was having a discussion in our chat room early this morning that somebody was in the chat room who was having

some troubles with Linux Mint Debian Edition. And I love that Linux Mint Debian Edition exists. And I think that's a really good thing. But I don't see the purpose of it compared to straight up Linux Mint. Because straight up Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. And the primary advantage I see there is Ubuntu compatibility, i.e. if you want to install something for Ubuntu, it installs perfectly on Linux Mint. Well, that's not entirely true either. I mean, they claim binary compatibility with Ubuntu, but that's not entirely true. No?

No. And we get, I know we get people asking us for support on Mint. There's things that don't work on Mint that work on Ubuntu? Really? Yeah, I've experienced that. It's not terribly common, but when you hit it, you hit it like a brick wall. Well, I suppose so, yeah. Also, y'all forget the whole browser search engine thing.

Yahoo pays them to not use Google in the web browser. For Firefox, they replace the searches is if we worked together right and had a set of a set of packages which you know were robust well tested secure i think for our users and mint users i think poppy what you're saying there is a great idea if things were started today. But when I look back, I look at Clem as a crazy son of a bitch who has taken on way more than he can. And by my estimation, should have burned out like two or three years ago. But the man just keeps moving on. And really, I believe at the end of the day, it is because he focuses on creating a desktop that he believes should truly represent what the Linux desktop is capable of. And what he's primarily focused

on is creating that thing. And like for me, for example, there are many things in my life, in my professional career, my personal career that fall to the side, because I am so focused on making that next show. And that's all I think about. And I think he's the same way about Linux Mint. He is so zeroed in on that. The idea of collaborating and working with a company where you got to go through three or four levels of management, maybe through the PR person, it is definitely an absolute appropriate proposition. But if you told me that, I'd basically tell you to go fuck yourself. I got better stuff to do, right? I got to focus on my work. I don't have time to play politics.

And I think that's where he's coming from, appropriate or not. And I would maybe suggest that Mint has reached the size where that is no longer appropriate. Yeah, I think he does feel, you know, from the way I've read his blog post, that a lot of this kind of politicking is a massive waste of his time and resources. And he has a lot better things to do. And I can see that, you know, given he's a small developer team. Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with Mint existing.

I have no problem with them using, personally using the Ubuntu archive. I just want it all to be above board and for people to stop slinging mud at each other. And it also seems like I can see the perspective too. It's like, well, look, if you, you know, if your success is going to be kind of based on our labors, if you're going to stand on our shoulders, maybe we can work together as much as possible to make it an equitable position for everybody. And I think that's actually completely reasonable too. So anyways, so that's our thoughts. If you guys have been wondering where our stance is on this

whole thing, I know we've had a few threads in the Linux Action Show subreddit. We've also had plenty of emails about it. So Mark, thanks for emailing in and kicking that topic off. I think that was a good discussion to be had. And I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on it too. So go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com and pop that contact link. Choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown and send us in your thoughts. And we'll read them up as follow-up in next week's episode. But before we go on, I want to thank our first sponsor this week. And that, my friends, is DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean has opened my eyes that cloud hosting can be one part awesome, two parts simple, straightforward, and also under your control. And that last little bit there,

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end of December, so you better use it while you can. That's all I'm saying. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Love those guys. Woohoo! Good stuff. those guys. So Filio Polymath wrote in. I don't even think I'm screwing that up. I actually think that's straight up how you say it. And he has a follow up on our tiling window manager challenge that we're going to be taking in the early 2014. He says, a fan of the show. And I heard

about the potential tiling challenge and figured I'd shoot you guys a message, which is good, Matt, because I feel like you and I, we have vacationed in tiling window managers, but we have never stayed there. Right? Is that true for you? This is true. I'd say it's more like timeshare, but with the high pressure sales pitch. Right. And that would be coming from the chat room.

I spent like a week, I think, once in Awesome for the Linux Action Show. It was like forever ago. He says, I posted in the subreddit, but I thought maybe I'd send this in just to make sure you guys saw it. Uh, he wants to this Matt also, by the way, I think my,

this might be the way to go. He says, if you're interested in different window managers, I would suggest you check out Linux barbecue. It has a distro called gang bang. All right. Okay. So,

okay. You got, you got my attention. I'm interested in the, in the window manager. I mean, I'm just saying, man. So maybe this would be the way you'd dip your toe and figure out what you're comfortable with. You could swing from desktop to desktop just to see what you like.

He says it has dozens of window managers to check out in a live distro. He says a crazy group that has developed through CrunchBring, if I'm not mistaken. In fact, there's a link in CrunchBank's forums where someone tested out 30 window managers in 30 days. I've got to be honest. I've been wanting to try that

30 things out in 30... Anyways, a lot of that info is experiment in Linux Barbecue's wiki. We've mentioned Linux Barbecue in the past. He said, I also want to say I completely agree

that what was posted before, I think mentioned last week's show, which would be better to make your own complete desktop environment. You're kind of rolling your own distro in a sense. He says, this is how I do it. For example, I have Debian testing net install, which brings me to a console. Then I upgrade to SID, I install systemd, and I just start configuring. I use i3 window manager or FB term with tmux, depending my mood i set my background vff and i not and or nitrogen lately i've used x xfe or midnight commander as a file manager i bring in the tools that i think

are best borrowing from other window manager and desktop environments as i see fit and i piece it together into my ultimate desktop environment but i'm a little crazy with things like linux barbecue group i use terminal programs like rsi and UMSI Pop and Piano Bar, etc. when I can. And I've been known to throw some heavy GUI apps on the screen when I need or want to. So I want to say, give it a little time. Have some fun with it. Get inspired and follow other people and their configs like unixporn.reddit.com. By the way, unixporn.reddit.com which is, by the way, unixporn.reddit.com is a

great place to be inspired by your desktop config. And I love to hear how you guys fared after some much-deserved vacation time. I wish both of you and your families a Merry Christmas. Philo Palio Math. Well, you know, I never thought at 40 years old I'd be saying, hey, Chris, let's go check out this gangbang, but apparently

that's what we're going to be doing. I like that it's got barbecue in the name, too, Matt. It's like totally going to be doing. I like that it's got barbecue in the name too, man. It's like totally right up my alley. Well, and it's got barbecue. And if it has the barbecue sauce, then we've made the connection. So one of the things, this is just a big go figure. I haven't been using my Bonobo for think zeroed in on the most amazing kd configuration that has ever been conceived on the planet earth i mean i i look at i'm looking at it right now because you're you

know you're skyping on it i i mean matt i'm telling you i look at the screen and it is like a freaking piece of art so now now i got this pressure from the linux action show audience to try out these window tiling window managers i mean here i am i got kd just the Linux Action Show audience to try out these Tiling Window Managers. I mean here I am. I got KD just the way I like it. Yeah, I mean because it's apples and oranges as far as what you're gaining from each. I mean the Tiling Windows Manager I guess is – I still don't really understand the appeal. I guess it's for if you have limited screen real estate.

No, I think I got it. I think I got it. I think I got it. So what I discovered when I did the Arch Challenge, and which ended up appealing to me, is I kind of was, I was taking all of my experience from every other distro that I've used and bringing it together in one configuration

that I really liked. And what I mean by that is, because you pick at each layer in Arch what you want to use, from your sound system to your font rendering, right? And so I knew I liked this from this distro, I liked this from this distro, and at the end, even though it's labeled Arch Linux,

it's basically Chris's OS. It is exactly like my custom-built system. And so what... Two things. On a rolling release, the more complex your GUI is, you know, GNOME and KDE, the more complex your GUI is, the more, you know, GNOME and KDE, the more complex it is, I got to believe the more higher likelihood it's going to break on a rolling release. So there could be motivation when you're using a rolling release

to stick with a more simple streamlined window manager that something like i3 or awesome because it's less likely to break. So I think that could be one motivating factor. But second of all, like Polymath is saying here, he's pulling in the terminal programs he likes. He's pulling in the file manager he likes. He brings in the compositor that he thinks has the fanciest or whatever effects he likes. And he is essentially taking that philosophy

of building your core linux system and he's bringing it all the way up to building the whole entire desktop environment right it's like the ultimate customized system it's like you custom build your car and you even custom build the dashboard display right and i guess that's what it is i think the i think dashboard display is really what he's what people are into i guess I guess with this, that's tough. Yeah. I, um, I,

I get it. Cause I get it. Cause like with arch, it's like, I totally get that. Cause it's like, you're customizing your experience with this. You must be customizing your, your user experience.

And so, but it just seems so minimalist. I guess that's kind of what you're going for. I don't know. Casey, 50 senses in the chat room is a TWM can really look cool, but dang, Chris Elias needs his Katie connect.

You know why he jokes, but I like my Katieas needs his KDE Connect. You know what? He jokes, but I like my KDE Connect. I like my widgets and I like my photo slideshow on my desktop, right? I like having my CPU meters on the desktop and in my menu bar. I mean, because for a lower end machine or an older computer, I can totally see going minimalist as much as possible. But for a higher end machine, it's just kind of like i i would have to i would have to understand the psychology behind the reasoning behind it more from a financially sensible standpoint from a practical standpoint from a system resources standpoint i can totally understand it but from a i want shiny yeah and here's why i think I'm justified in wanting Shiny because I have lived through all of it, okay?

So you're not – I'm not – it's not quaint for me. It's not quaint for me to have the computer that can't figure something out where I have to tell it to do something. That's not fun. That's something computers should be good at by now. And I sit in the camp where I want my goddamn window to wiggle because, damn it, I lived through a time when we didn't even have separated GPU cards. And then we had Matrox video cards. I had to have special video games. And you had to have all these special drivers. I lived through all of it. rewards of being there on the front lines, trying everything out, pushing things forward,

talking about them, experiencing them, blowing my money on crap that never worked out. But the few things that did succeed, I have worked so damn hard over the last 15, 20 years. Why would I forfeit all of that now to just give it all up? And it's not that I, I don't, I just don't disparage anybody who chooses to do so because there are completely legitimate reasons that I just laid out. But for me personally, I feel like kind of like going back to Thor, I have defended the realms. I have earned my right to party now, and I want to party like it's 2013. Is that so crazy? Is that really so ridiculous?

Just because I run Linux doesn't mean I shouldn't party like it's 2013. I don't think it's crazy. I think it's pretty reasonable actually. It's interesting that there's a collective mindset for that. And there's certainly – again, I'm still trying to understand the desire to go with that whole minimalist point of view. But for me, yeah, why do we feel like we have to make do unless there is actually an advantage to that? No, my desktop should be as absolutely freaking badass as possible. And I am personally willing to spend a $500 premium or whatever it is to buy a machine that is resource capable of delivering that.

And when I cannot afford to do so, I just don't buy. Right, right. And then I, you know, anyways anyways i just so but but here's what i'm willing to i i was very opinionated about the whole arch thing to begin with i think i mean i think if you look back at 2013 that was obviously a big a big lesson for chris and matt was this oh yeah right so i'm totally willing to give the uh tiling window managers a go because i do grok the benefit of like that custom-built feeling all the way off to the very top,

to layer seven right there with me. I get it. I'm willing to give it a go because at the end, I might walk away and say, oh my God, everybody, the real light is totally tuning in the perfect desktop

that makes you the ultimate productive son of a bitch, right? Oh, yeah. And then I'll be all on board. But until that point right now, I'm just saying from somebody who hasn't jumped into the tiling window manager challenge yet, I think you guys are a bunch of crazy son of a bitches,

but I'm willing to jump in with you. Well, so it's like, okay, imagine Tron re-imagined with the awesome window manager. Are you going to want to see that on the big screen? Wow. That,

that, that literally looks like flash Gordon from the forties or thirties or whatever the hell it was. It's just kind of like, why? But again, there may be something to these Windows managers that are besides performance increase that I'm not aware of. Maybe it does something for me that I'm just not cluing in on. I'll tell you one of the things when I sit down in front of a Mac that drives me totally wonky crazy is like the totally mixed keyboard support. I do totally grok.

Like, and honestly, when I sit down in windows, like I love back when I was a consultant, I loved the problems when the mouse wasn't working. Cause I was like, F yeah, what's up?

It's all keyboard time. Cause everything was just right at the keyboard. And I can totally see how that's great on a tiling window manager. I love the F out of that on KDE. So maybe I'll, you know, I'll, I'll throw away my mouse. I'll become one with the keyboard and it's tiling managers manager. I love the F out of that on KDE. So maybe I'll throw away my mouse.

I'll become one with the keyboard and it's tiling managers from here on out. But we won't find out until early into 2014. Let those gray hairs start coming into the beard there. Yeah, I mean, it's total gray beard on it. You know, I don't know. That's a toughie. But I definitely think that it's going to be interesting to see how that pans out. But I don't know, man.

We'll try it. We'll find out. I'm still skeptical. It'll be, I don't know when, because we got a lot of things coming up. But I don't know, man. We'll try it. We'll find out. I'm still skeptical. I don't know when because we got a lot of things coming up. But I want to tell you about something else I'm passionate about and that is Ting.com. Now, Ting are sponsors right here of Linux Unplugged.

Ting is mobile that makes sense because there's no contracts. There's no early termination fee. And here's the part that makes the most sense. You only pay for what you use. It's a $6 flat line. And then they just take your messages, your minutes, and your megabytes and they add it up at the end of the month. You buy your phone,

you own it outright. And what's brilliant about Ting is not only do they have a support staff of Canadians ready to answer your call as it comes up. Ting is from the guys that made 2Cows. They've been changing this stuff for a long time. Everything Ting gets into or everything 2Cows gets into, they really want to make a difference. Ting is very passionate about this because they feel there is big changes to be made in the mobile industry. And let's be honest, there are. Because all of these mobile plans you buy into adds a ton of waste to your monthly budget. You pay into some sort of minutes or megabytes you don't end up using, or you go over where Ting will just take your messages, your minutes, and your megabytes, add them all up at the end of the month, whatever

bucket you fall into, that's what you pay for. Unlimited devices on your account for just $6 per month. So if you're a small business, if you're a family, if you're a team of folks, you can make it super easy. If you're a developer or if you're IT support and you need to have multiple iterations of Android devices or BlackBerry devices or Windows to phones or even the iPhone 4 or 4S, which now work on Ting, and you want to have them on one account so that way you can test things for your clients, for your apps, whoever it is. Ting makes that super easy because you only pay for what you use on those devices. Add a whole bunch on your account. You just pay that flat $6 and then what you use on top of that. That makes testing super straightforward. Plus, when you combine that with the Ting dashboard, you're really cooking with gas because it's a super

simple interface, but it also gives you tons of controls from activating deactivating devices setting up call forwarding voicemail rules matt you know when you signed up for ting did you call or did you use the online dashboard completely i used the online dashboard completely and that was what was awesome because even when i had the uh to basically de-attach you from it and then reattach myself from it i was able to figure out how to do that completely from their help file or their help section, which is super easy to use. And literally did that. Boom, done. Completed.

Refreshed my dashboard. I was good to go. I couldn't believe how stupid simple it was. It was great. You know, when I got my Nexus 5 from the Google Play Store, it came in the Ting portfolio. And in there, they had just a little business card. You pull out the business card. It says go to ting.com slash activate or something like that. And it's just step by step by step all through

the web interface. I never had to call, but I always know if I get a position where I need to call, a real support representative, if you call between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern, we'll answer that phone. And they really are empowered not only to solve the problem, but they're actually enthusiasts of Android and all the other mobile devices that Ting carries. That's something they specialize in, which is really kind of peace of mind. You recommend it to family, you know, that kind of thing. Well, and totally the one takeaway, if I could like institute one thing to everybody and just really push this forward, they don't live on scripts.

And having dealt with the various companies recently that are script-based, you're going to love that alone. I mean, that by itself just makes my day. Yeah, Ting hires, their support representatives or folks who are champions of mobile and Android in their peer groups. And so Ting says, why don't you come work for us and help out our customers? So here's how you get started. Go over to linux.ting.com. That'll take $25 off your first month of service, or it'll take $25 off your first device if you don't have one yet. They are a MVNO of the Sprint Network,

so if you have good Sprint service in your area, you're going to get amazing Ting service. So go to linux.ting.com. And a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. All right, so brace yourself for this one, guys. I've got the Times, the Time Magazine, top 10 tech gadgets of the Year. Number 10, I won't go through all of these.

Don't worry. I'm not going to – it's not going to be that boring. Number 10, the Nokia Lumia 1020. Okay. It's got a good camera. It does. It has a good camera. Well, that's like saying a cinder block has a great camera.

I mean, okay, you take a cinder block and I tape a really great camera to it, but really? Xbox One made number six. Apple iPhone 5S made number five. Pebble Smartwatch number four. Oculus Rift number three. Apple's new iPad number two. But the number one Time Magazine gadget of the year is the Google Chromecast, a Linux-based device. Can you hear that?

Listen closely. Can you hear the sound of the residual checks being cached? I can. So I have a Google Chromecast, and Matt, I've got to be honest, I have not really had an opportunity to try it out. I just don't understand why. I genuinely don't get why anyone cares. I don't understand. How about this?

Sunday, remind me. Why don't you take my Chromecast home and try it out? I'll try it out because maybe I'll hate on it less. Because, I mean, for me, it's just kind of like if you don't have an existing option. Okay, cool. That's awesome. So here's what the advantage is. Okay.

So it's a little device. You plug into your HDMI port. You also need to have USB power nearby or they include an adapter. It runs Gen 2 Linuxux with a chrome os binary that runs in the background and from your android device you can come across a netflix video a youtube video um yeah there's plex now has support for chrome cat okay well now that now i'm starting to care right right okay so picture this you take the plex app you put it on your note 2 okay because first of all note 2 has an amazing screen for watching Plex videos.

Yeah, right. So, but $35 for the Chromecast, okay? So you could put a Chromecast on every TV in the house that has an HDMI port for $35. You start Plex on the phone. You select your video. You hit play. You say send a Plex or you say send a Chromecast. your video you hit play you say send a you said you say send a plex or you say send a chromecast it sends the commands and it creates the connection between your plex server and the

chromecast directly and then you could turn your phone off and now you don't have to have a roku you don't have to have anything else you just have to have a 35 chromecast connected to your tv and you can send your plex media to it you can send send your Netflix, your music, those kinds of things. So the differentiator as far as like why you and I would care, for example, is that for us right now to run Plex, we're actually using a computer. I'm using it or a Roku. Or a Roku. Yeah, well, I mean – You still have to have a Plex server. You still have to have a Plex server at the Chromecast.

Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So even with the Chromecast, you still have to have a Plex server then because that was really my big thing is that it sounds like – because I there's actually airplay options for roku be it they're not awesome i mean they're they definitely have a long way to go but uh yeah i'm gonna have to i'll have to play with it and really wrap my head there's another limit though what the chromecast uh plex support requires the plex subscription to send anything at all through plex yeah you gotta have the plex pass yeah that's that's fine i mean that's just i plex is so awesome it it's just douchey. I have a Plex Pass

because it is so awesome, but here's what Time Magazine said. They said, instead of trying to do everything, like Google's famously ambitious and unsuccessful Google TV, this thumb-sized gizmo does one thing and does it simply as possible and does it for the impulse purchasing price of $35.

Plug it into one of your TV's HDMI ports and you can fling videos and other content from your laptop, your tablet, or your phone to the big screen with no wires involved. Lots of companies have built devices to do this, but Chromecast is the first one to get it right. And I think there's another

important point to point out, wow, is you can get an extension for Chrome and you can send individual tabs to Chromecast. Now that I care about. So you're saying that I could go to like abc.com and actually send that to my now I care. Now I care.

I would expect not to work too well. But why couldn't you just get a $5 10 gig USB stick and put XBMC on there? Like XBMC Ubuntu or something like that on there. And it'd be way better. Well, I mean, for us, yes.

But for the average user, what we have is we have a really big problem in the living room. And Chromecast is, first of all, it's solving the price point. But the beauty is, is everybody's got a smartphone now. And all you need is the $35 Chromecast and a smartphone. They see each other like some kind of internet magic. And you just push a button on your smart device and it just sends it to your TV. And it is very simple. And I'll be honest, until you've tried it, it doesn't sound like it's that amazing. But we've got an iPad and an Apple TV.

Well, not anymore. But we used to have an Apple TV in the house that my dad got me for Christmas a couple years ago, which I don't have anymore. Oh, yeah. We've got a jailbroken one. Yeah, totally. That whole, like, you're on the iPad and you push one button and all of a sudden everything you're watching on the iPad is on the TV. And it is so effing seamless. And then you can, like, continue to use the device for other things.

It honestly feels like the effing future. It feels like what 2013 should feel like. And Chromecast brings that down to $35 and anybody that wants to build that into their Android app. It's interesting because a lot of people probably don't know this. The Roku, I think it's the Roku LT, oddly enough, experienced a recent price drop to I think $35. Oddly, again. Obviously, the timing is just perfect for that. So it's going to be interesting to see how they stack up

because I think I have one of the XT or whatever the hell it is. And just to kind of get an idea on performance, what its capabilities are, does it really woo me? Because I'm a rabid Roku fan. The problem is all of these things are not, in my opinion, good enough. So first of all, the Google, number one problem with the Chromecast is tied to Google. I don't like that.

Second problem with the Chromecast is it's tied to Android. Not a huge fan of that. XBMC is great, but doesn't solve the AirPlay like functionality. And I think that's a big gap. It is. I run XBMC on my old jailbroken Apple TV, and honestly, ever since moving

to Plex, I just don't really use it anymore. It's just not really happening. It does actually support – it does solve the XBMC thing. The XBMC solves it because I'm building a project to solve it. Tell me about it. What do you mean? That's true. I'm calling it XBeamMC.

So you beam the stuff from your laptop to, or your desktop to XBMC and play it however you want. And it's going to support everything that you're talking about, like YouTube. But it also, like, for Chromecast you require Plex to do local files. So you require a subscription to do local. Otherwise, Chromecast can't

do local files. Mine is going to for XBMC supports everything that XBMC can support. So MKVs, MP4s, whatever. Local files, internet files, streaming. So is this like an app you install in XBMC? No, it's an app for Linux.

So you load XBMC on top of Linux and then on the Linux system you install the XBMC beam, the Xbeam. Right, but it also works with any kind of XBMC, regardless of what you put it on. So it works on RaspBmc, like the Raspberry Pi and things like that. So you can

just right-click on YouTube, send to XBMC, it'll send it to it and start playing immediately. Hmm. Very cool. Sounds rather cool. What is the ETA? Um, probably like a week or two weeks. Nice! Cool! Keep us posted. It plays from where you're at on your probably like a week or two weeks nice keep us posted

it'll pick up from wherever you're at it doesn't start the video over it depends it can kind of do that but it's really if the plugin for XBMC supports that it can do it, if that plugin does not

it will not. See that that's important for me. And what I really dig about the Chromecast is podcasts and videos that I'm watching on my way home. I walk inside and I put them on my TV. So it like picks up where you left off. What app are you using to do that? That's just Chromecast. So it's a YouTube thing. Oh, so you're watching.

So say you'd watch Linux Unplugged on YouTube. Yeah, it's usually you guys. So it's whatever podcast, BeyondPod on my Android, or whatever through Chrome I'm doing. Does BeyondPod support Chromecast? It does, but you can pay for it. I'm interested in the plugin myself. I'm interested in seeing how that works with XBMC,

because that appeals to me. I like the fact it's not Google. Yeah, mine will also support the time thing for YouTube so that you can play it, but it might not for other ones, but I'm going to try to support it as much as I can. But the main thing is the first version

might not have all the features that Chromecast does because I'm not Google. Exactly right. You kind of lack the billions of dollars and endless resources, totally. It feels like, though, here we are, like Google is getting closer to cracking this problem than Myth TV has, than XBMC. Well, I don't know if that's appropriate,

but like for the masses, right? This whole, the whole like the smarts and intelligence and the picking and the content selection is all done from the mobile device. And then the Chromecast is really like this totally stripped down little ARM device that just plays the stream. Okay, well, here's my thing about the casting of tabs. It's experimental right now in Buggy, but as much apps as Google is trying to move to inside the browser. So eventually your apps will just move with you onto whatever device you've got your Chromecast plugged into.

Well, that's one of the cool things about it, and maybe even Netflix at some point can do that. But for right now, like, for example, Amazon is a horrible experience because it does not work. I mean, you can kind of like give it some work around and like wiggle it around and it sometimes will work. But for the most time, it doesn't. Well, I do SSH sessions in my browser on people's computers

that I don't want to install anything on. I can just, within Chrome, do an SSH session. And it's really interesting to be able to see what else I'm going to be able to Chromecast. Well, to me, I mean, the thing is, is like the Chromecast in a sense almost solves the front-end problem. To me, the Plex solution seems like the superior solution because I take one of these $35 dongles and I plug them into my HDMI TV and then I have a central Plex server that has one centralized library of all of my media,

one index, everything's, if it's marked watched once on tv it's marked watched everywhere else it's it's all one place plus it has the mobile aspect where i can watch videos out on the go on my mobile device it seems like to me chromecast is going to usher in i don't want to say this but i think it begins to i think it's the first nail in the coffin of things like xbmc and myth tv well the the xbmc thing is that the what chrome chromecast brings to the same like xbmc does all this stuff but the problem is that it requires you to install the piece by piece to make it all work like there's for for saying something has been watched, you can do that, but it requires a plugin for that. And for like mine, it requires,

my app is going to require certain types of plugins. For example, XBMC does not come with YouTube by default. You have to install the YouTube plugin. And it all works just fine. It's just, there's a kind of an introduction kind of thing you need to know how to install the plug-ins and things like that. Well, I also think they're two totally different audiences too because if you think about it, I mean Chromecast is essentially, like it or not, it's a hardware appliance. I mean it really at its core really is.

It's something you physically plug into your TV. Right. Isn't that perfect though because it's not a whole computer. It's not a PC. Yeah, it is. No, that's good. It's $35. Yeah, but XBMC, it's like Plex didn't kill XBMC.

They're related. I mean, they're cousins to each other. They're based on some of the same code and all that, or a lot of the same code. But the point is, that's finance based on it. But how much of the price of the Google device is offset by Google's plans to make money off it from advertising or selling media and other things? Right, right. Oh, yeah. Let's Google do it.

But the average user doesn't know that, though. Right, I'm just saying that it would be hard for someone else to build a competing device to the Google one because they can't afford to lose money on it like Google can. Right, exactly. That's true.

Well, XBMC also works on the Raspberry Pi. And you can't kill XBMC because it's open source. So naturally, it's always going to be somebody that's going to want to continue it. It's kind of a different approach to the same problem. But one thing I've been waiting for for a long time now is Wi-Fi Direct on Linux. Because you get a wireless display straight from your laptop. But Intel refuses to support it under Linux. But if they did i could

just hit a button on my laptop and have everything on my laptop on my tv and for that that would solve it for me yeah not everybody's embraced ydai and i feel like the chromecast is still like it's it's just at 35 it really is that impulse purchase price on amazon like i add it to my cart i just buy it and it doesn't matter if my TV has YDI support or DLNA. All they need is an HDMI port, and I know my Android device can support it. And I feel like now that Plex is supported, it is now incumbent upon XBMC to support transmitting to the Chromecast, or they're going to get left behind. Because it is, let's be honest, I love XBMC, but if I can get almost the same exact results, and actually, in some cases with my kids, it's easier for them to use a tablet. It would actually be easier for them to start a video on a tablet and send it to a Chromecast than to use XBMC.

I'm going to just buy a bunch of Chromecasts. There's actually a way to do that with XBMC and Android. It's a replacement app instead of using the official remote control app. Which is terrible. Use something called Yahtzee. Oh I've got that. Yahtzee is. It has the same kind of features.

It has a bunch of other things. It's just awesome. But it does have the ability to send YouTube stuff. From your Android device to XBMC. No matter what your XBMC is built on. I just hook up my laptop to my TV and use my phone to control

the XBMC. The thing I kind of see this as all is, one is software solutions and the other one is a hardware solution. The Chromecast is a hardware solution and it has its bonuses in that right, but it also has the downside in the fact that, once again, this is something that people are

going to buy and think, oh, my Chromecast is outdated because I don't have the V2 Chromecast. Whatever. Well, things like XBMC, things like that are going to be around, are going to be installable on new devices. Is that an issue when it's $35? And it seems like it's pretty much just a streaming recipient. So as long as it can handle a 720p or 1080p stream, it doesn't have to be installable on your devices. Is that an issue when it's $35? And it seems like it's pretty much just a streaming recipient, so as long as it can handle a 720p or 1080p stream, it doesn't have to be that complex. It'll probably last quite a while. Software updates that it gets. Well, it's like

you run a point with XBMC and you get updates, you get everything and it's essentially the same. Right, you don't have to go through Google. I agree. Someone should package that up and sell it as an appliance. This is what I'm saying. Well, someone in the chat room actually put up something called Airtame.com

and essentially this is the Google dongle. I mean, I'm reading this over and it's like, this is the same freaking thing. Yeah, they essentially bill it as wireless HDMI for everyone. This is cool. I'm looking this over. With Airtame HDMI dongle,

you can display your computer screen for Mac, Windows, or Linux on your TV or projector wirelessly. Now this is a, an Indiegogo thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's in crowdfunding mode,

but it kind of does solve the problem, doesn't it? Yeah. And apparently they got their funding. That's cool. Oh yeah, they did. Didn't they get 186% of their funding?

And they still have 31 days left. But the issue is that this doesn't exist yet. So that's cool. The Google dongle as well. Totally different audiences of people. Really, at the end of the day, Chris's wife, my wife, they don't give a rat's behind about XBMC. They don't care. They just want to watch TV. Just make it happen. And so however we can as end users make that happen for the others in our house, great. Otherwise, if they're just doing it on their own, they're going to go with the complete solution, whatever that happens to be, I think. Yeah. Well, the benefit of mine is that – of XBMC and the way it's built is that with my project, people can look at the code of my project and then see how you can send something to XBMC and put it on whatever they want.

Right. That is cool. What we need somebody to do is productize the XBMC platform so that applications like yours have an opportunity to shine like Chromecast has productized streaming for Android devices. And let's be honest, really, the Chromecast is a response to the Apple TV because AirPlay has been in iOS since, what, iOS 4 or 5? Yeah, something like that. I mean, they're actually behind the ball on this,

but they've really nailed on something here. I mean, they got Time Magazine's number one gadget of the year for whatever that's worth. The PR they get is so it tells you something though it tells you there's a demand oh no there's definitely but it's it's comical because i say the roku should have been more so i don't know i'll i'll review it but i also runs linux yeah yeah it also runs linux and it's quite frankly back when it was the netflix box generation one roku which i still have by the way my you know rather you know now gone uh

stepfather used to run this, and he didn't know anything about computers or anything else, and he was able to run it with no problem, even as it evolved. It was always usable for all generations of people. So, yeah, I don't know. I think this is just a Me Too product based on my early impressions, but maybe not. Question. Can you root or unlock the Chromecast and install straight up XBMC on it? I guess there was

like a way to do that, but then an update got pushed out that sort of nuked it. It was like a month after they released it. There was a crack. I still have the original OS. It's evil though, isn't it? No. Not evil. I still have the original OS on my Chromecast that I'll lend to Matt.

Matt can kick it around. I'll definitely be brutal on it. I mean, I'll be very honest about my experience with it because I'm a rabid Roku person. I have a feeling it is one of those things that you are skeptical of until you get it, and then you're like, wait a minute, this is really easy. Right, well, it's just like, oh, I'm, you know, because it is very easy to be like, oh, I'm going to go down to the living room, and I'm going to watch something. So as I walk into the living room, I take my Note 2 out. I start the Netflix app. I find the movie I want to watch.

I tap play. I send a Chromecast. And by the time my TV is turning on, the Chromecast is already streaming it. Well, let me ask you this because this will decide it for me right here because this is what's going to come down to my wife. How does Ange compare it to the Roku? What's her impression? Well, no, she hasn't tried it yet. But she's totally comfortable selecting media on her mobile device.

So as long as you're comfortable doing that, it just – when you have a Chromecast on your network, a new button shows up that you just tap and then you say send a Chromecast. Interesting. Okay. I don't want to be annoying about it, but is it okay if I shield my website for the project? Yeah, totally. I think people – XBMC users would be interested in that. Yeah, definitely. It's xbeammc.com.

The site right now is not ready, but by the time this is aired, it will be. X-B-E-A-M-M-C. Okay. Is there an email alert or an RSS or something just to kind of keep people up to date? You know what? You should put a link in the subreddit, too. There will be tomorrow. Yeah, okay.

When your site's live. I'm not posting the subreddit every time. There will be tomorrow. Yeah, okay. When your site's live. I'm not posting the subreddit every time. Yeah, put it in the subreddit when your site's live and people can upvote it and check it out. Isn't all of this just attempts at trying to do what we want? Is that our application should go from device to device seamlessly? Convergence? Basically, yeah. Hello?

Basically? I don't know. I don't know if it's that. I really don't need my gedit document or my kate document to go between devices. But I do need my blu-ray rip of Bolt to move between devices. Are you sure you don't want your document

between devices? Well, I probably do, but I never really... If you're writing your show notes on your desktop, then you want them to show up on your tablet so you can use it as a teleprompter. Sure, sure. But what about you? Own cloud. But I never need it on my TV.

Are you sure? No. Yeah. You never know. Maybe I'll be in the studio one day and I'll want notes up on a big TV screen. So actually, I shouldn't say that. I could see that happening, actually. Well, with Docs, you could do like a presentation method.

Are you talking about Google Docs? No, I'm talking about if you wanted to send a doc to a TV, you could do it for like presentation. So you do like PowerPoint or something. That's true. I was thinking actually for Chromecast, I tried. So where my Chromecast is right now, it's plugged in the back of my broadcast machine because I thought it'd be a cool way to send the tab that I'm currently looking at during Linux unplugged to the Wirecast machine. Because right now, I have no way of... Wirecast supplies an add-on product called Desktop Presenter, which allows you to capture your screen

and transmit it over the network, and it comes into Wirecast as a camera device. Extremely handy. Very nice feature. Obviously, it's Windows and Mac only. Doesn't work under Linux. But the Chromecast, if I had a physical HDMI device plugged in the back of my Wirecast computer, and then I had the Chrome extension installed on my Chrome browser, and I could transmit my tab to the Chromecast, I would then have a way to, over the network, send the contents of my Linux desktop's browser session to my Wirecast machine. And I thought that would be great, but I couldn't get it to work.

I don't know why. So there's potential there. And I think, actually, a lot of internet producers could find use for that. We'll see what happens. All right, well, I got an email I wanted to get into before we wrap up for this week's episode. And maybe the Mumble Room will have a few.

I don't really have anything for this one. So I'm going to pitch this to the Mumble Room. It came in from Jonathan, and he says, I really need some help. I got a comic book collection of around 2,000 issues. And I used Comic Collector Live over at comiccollectorlive.com or comiccollectors at comiccollectors.com software for cataloging my collection. But I've recently switched

full-time to Linux. Of course, good man, as he should, morally so. I had thought about redoing my database until recently. I found nothing useful for my needs. I'm willing to spend money if I can get a good program but I can't find anything. Please, help a geek out and let me

know, is there something in the Linux community for cataloging comic book or graphic novel collections? These are not physical books, they're downloaded comics. Thanks. So, Mumble Room, anybody in here have an app they use to organize their comic collection on Linux?

I use Comics. It's C-O-M-I-X. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's a good one. I can also use Calibra. Calibra Office? No, Libra. No, it's a collection software. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Calibra. Okay. All right. So, C-O-M-I-X is the one I'm the most familiar with. I'm not familiar with Calibra. If I'm not mistaken, there's an

XTNC plugin to actually view comics, too. Seriously? That's awesome. That is really good. Alright, what's the other one? He does it in a slideshow manner. Link me the other comic, the Calibre one, and I'll put that in the show notes. It's supposed to be pronounced Caliber. Ah, Caliber.

Sorry, my bad. It's an e-book. It's the e-book reader reader the guy who wrote it um was a an engineer i think stanford and he wrote this as an ebook um management app and um he just happened to get it at the right time when nobody else had written one and it's the only ebook app that everybody uses and many of the ebook reader manufacturers like kobo and sony and all that they recommend you use that application and he he only takes donations via a link in the in the app and people send him money so he does extremely

good yeah okay really really good okay and it supports comic books or cbz files and things like that cbr i think it supports everything. Everything you can imagine. I think it even supports barcode readers, if I'm not mistaken. It's been a while since I've looked at it. And the add-ons are amazing. Yeah, I have one of those little wildcats or whatever the hell. It's shaped like a cat.

I can't remember what the hell it was called. You get them unlocked from eBay. And it's still under active development, too. They just had a release on the 13th. Yeah, it's good software. Well, that's good. I mean, QCAT. Yeah, QCAT, thank you.

Yes, that's exactly it. Yeah, I've got one of them around here somewhere. Got an unlocked one. So we've got like 150 of them. Yeah, that doesn't everybody. Sorry, I also use the wiki generator. There's a plug a plugin available for it where you can quite literally specify an ebook page

and it will auto generate you a PDF on that exact page including references and all links available very nice Peacemaker in the chatroom says also there is an Android app that works with Calibre called Beam which will

kind of like a Chromecast effect. It'll beam books from your Android device. That's pretty cool. That's interesting. Now, back in my day, we used cardboard boxes and plastic bags and index cards. Right. And that's how we actually kept that. I mean, this is back before computers were a thing. Yeah.

You know, I am more inclined personally. I would be. Actually, I am. Without question, I have a much larger digital comic collection than i have i have like i probably total i have a dozen comics maybe oh yeah and they're all star trek i'm gonna be honest they're all started but i sold all my stuff off when i was like 17 18 for gas money so right just a quick clarification uh that thing for android that peacemaker's talking about it's called uh caliber uh companion oh okay caliber companions he was using the term beam to kind that thing for Android that Pacemaker's talking about. It's called Caliber Companion. Oh, okay.

Caliber Companion. He was using the term Beam to kind of talk about what I was called, my name is called. That's cool. That's cool. So, all right. And that's in the Play Store, I would assume.

Cool. So I've amassed a small collection of digital comics myself, and I just kind of go, I just do it all by the directory structure, which is not very interesting not very yeah not that works for you right it does work because i don't have a huge collection but i could see if you had thousands i could see how that could get a little uh

unmanageable oh yeah and they can't i hit my collection was it filled a room let's put it that way but i but again i pissed it away on girls and gas back in the day i see what i do right now is i store in in Dropbox, and then I have an app on my Android device, or on the iPad, too. I suppose I've never tried it on the iPad, but it probably works just the same. There's devices that will connect into Dropbox

and then import all of the CBR files and then do them that way, too. So that's how I've always managed it. Right. Because I've never really been all that motivated to sit on my computer and read something on the screen for an extended period of time yeah i can't either i know whether i have we have a kindle proper you know like the old school kindles that's definitely i'll do that any day over the week for over books no question but not on it not like on a android

device or something like that not so much yeah one thing i do is uh i manage all my books in caliber and then it lets you um beam your books from caliber to your kindle uh over the internet because you can set up a kindle email address well you you get one just for having a kindle and once you set it up in caliber you just select the book in your library that you want to read and it sends it directly to your kindle if you have 3g then it doesn't even matter if you're connected to the wi-fi it just works all the time nice that's kind of cool that is kind of cool. Okay, thank you for letting me know.

Then I could put it on the Kindle. I could go sit down on the couch and read it on that e-ink display, which would actually be pretty cool. All right, Matt. Well, I think that'll kind of wrap us up. I thought, I just finished a book last night. I was driving home from watching Thor. I don't know

if you've noticed the Thor references. Thor 1 or 2. It's Thor Dark World. It just came out. It's in the theater right now. I went and saw it with my buddy John last night. And it was a good movie. And on the way home, I finished an audiobook. And I just want to make a pick because I know the holidays are coming up and sometimes people have a little extra time on their hands. A lot of shows you might listen to are wussing out and they're taking the holiday off. And so you need that content. There's a book I want to recommend for you. It is an audible book and I'll put the affiliate link in our show notes. If you get this, you do support the show. It's called Star Trek X,

The Lost Years. And it is a story of what, sort of a side story of McCoy, Spock and Kirk. And what happens between the end of Star Trek, the original series and Star Trek, the motion picture, the movie. Oh, nice. Yeah. A little background and why like Spock decides to take the Kulinar. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then go screw yourself. But if you know what the Kulinar is, then this is a book you should go listen to. I follow you completely. Here's what's awesome. Narrated by James Duhon, Scotty, and Leonard Nimoy. James Duhon is actually one of the secret talents that James had.

He was really a lot of the voiceover talent for the animated series. Of course, Scotty was an accent. He was sort of an expert at doing different voices. He reads this book, and it is so engrossing because he assigns each character their own dialect, their own language.

I mean, he just owns every single character. And then, whenever Spock comes into the story, it's voiced by Leonard Nimoy. So I'll play a sample. That's cool....parchment at the slightest touch. Around the middle of the night, the stains on Sackle's handcloth changed from dark green to bright. And the healer who had nursed him for several days left him both signs that he would be dead before sunrise. The relief on the healer's drawn face was evident. She had attended her patient with loathing and terror.

For this was Zackal the Terrible, the greatest of all the Kholinar masters. So that's James Duhon right there doing the reading on that. That's incredible. Yeah. He was so awesome. He's really giving it all he's got. It was so good. And the sample mix there has the music background audio a little higher than it actually is in the book. And what's cool about what Audible lets you do is you buy the book, and if you use our trial and you sign up, if you decide to cancel when you click our link, you still get to keep that book.

And the Android app and the iOS device app are really nice. And if you have multiple Android devices or if you have, like, an Android device and a Kindle, it will sync position among them. Oh, wow. That's awesome. Yeah. So you can pick up where you left off between devices it's it's uh it's an abridged version it's only two hours and 56 minutes so i just i wanted to toss this out there because if you have a little extra time over the holiday season and you want essentially something that's like a podcast or like you know something that's the length of like unfilter and the supporter show you could go grab this it's star trek uh x the lost year star trek i guess the 10 i don't could go grab this it's star trek uh x the lost year star trek i guess the 10 i don't know why they call it that star trek the lost years i'll have

a link in the show notes i just finished it last night and it really kind of bridges the gap between what happened from the end of the original series and star trek the motion picture and as a fan of star trek obviously that was pretty cool for me i know it doesn't apply to all linux users uh but that's your mistake not mine all right Well, that just about wraps up this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Of course, we'll be back here next Tuesday live over at jblive.tv at 2 p.m. Pacific. Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that in your local time. And don't forget, we want to hear from you. Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com and pop that contact link, choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown and give us your feedback. You know, Matt?

Yes? I was thinking on Sunday, it's the end of the year, it's the last Linux Action Show of 2013. It's time to look back at our 2013 predictions and make our 2014 predictions. So I think that's what we'll be doing on the big show. So I'll see you on Sunday, okay? See you Sunday.

All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next week.