LINUX Unplugged - Episode 22: Hurd Mentality | LUP 22

Episode Date: January 8, 2014

Does building by group consensus slow down open source innovation? We’ll look at some big choices Debian is facing and debate if some stronger leadership might produce more expedient and practical results.Plus: We’ll discuss the CentOS team joining Red Hat, and drool over some Steam Box hardware, read emails, and much more!

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode weekly Linux talk show that's still airing out the studio after a power supply failure. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. And when I say failure, I mean of the most dramatic kind. Last night, I was repurposing an old studio Hackintosh, which is a pretty nice rig, Core i7, has about 16 gigabytes of RAM, SSDs. And I swapped out an ATI like 590 something, And I put in a GTX 780. And I was going to wipe it, pave it, and make it a dedicated Linux workstation for trying out a bunch of stuff with the NVIDIA card and whatnot. And I get it all hooked up, and it's running pretty good.

And I go to reboot it because I'm going to go Integro, so I figure. I've got the Integro ISO burnt to my DVD. I put it in the drive. It boots up. And I notice the lights in my room start to flicker a little bit. I'm like, geez, this thing doesn't have that much power. So I shut off some gear. Lights are still kind of flickering.

I'm like, gosh, that's really strange. And then all of a sudden I start hearing this. Oh, no. And it almost sounded like water. And I look over the back of the PC, and because of where the fan was positioned in the power supply, the smoke is just billowing out. And it just – and it immediately starts stinking in here just horribly, right? And so thankfully – and this isn't my first time. I've seen a power supply fire before, so I don't panic or anything, but I try stupidly – try turning off the PC by hitting the power button.

Yeah, that ship sailed already. Yeah, so it's like, oh yeah, dummy. So then I just reach over and I kill the power at the surge protector. But the problem is the smoke is just going now, right? The components have melted. They're going like crazy. And so I sit there from – I have a moment of hesitation. I'm like, well, do I just let this – I know it's not on fire anymore, but there's going to be a lot more smoking.

Do I leave it in my office and close up all the doors and then just say goodbye to my office for a couple of days or do i rush this thing through the house smoke and tail and then put it out on the front porch and i opted to go that route because this because i was just like i gotta have my office back to do the show and i rushed it out and put it on the front porch and then i like had to abandon the office for the rest of the evening because it was just so strong and it's funny because my son's coming down the stairs and the first thing he says and because i'm talking to angela about what just happened it all happened so fast and he's coming down the stairs and he goes oh it smells really good in here i like that what are you cooking dad i'm like oh and then by the time he gets to the bottom of the stairs like oh that smells horrible so it was kind of a crazy and

so now i'm out my i was going to build build this awesome Linux workstation because as we move to the new studio in March, we're going to be redoing all the computer layouts. And I thought, okay, well, I'm going to get myself set up with a nice Linux workstation at the new studio. I'll get it all loaded up with Arch and Steam and all that kind of stuff. And I'll have an HDMI feed to the live stream so I can do some Let's Plays just on the stream when I want. So I'm getting this thing all configured with all these hopes and dreams and then boom fire happens and now all of the components of the computer just

reek and the brand new GTX 780 I got totally smells to high hell. And this was one of these purchases I get where I'm like well, you know what, it's 2013 if I buy this right now I'm going to use it in the new studio, this is going to be a tax write-off. You would think, yeah.

Yeah. So now I'm worried, like, when I fire up that graphics card, if it still works after a power supply freakout like that, you know, the components could be damaged. And that's a really high-voltage piece of equipment. So if anything is going to get damaged, it's going to be that. And so it could be totally fried now. I don't know. But I don't want to plug it into anything because I'm worried it's going to fire up and and make the whole room stink all over again so well that's when you take it to a starbucks you know and you just set yourself up on a table i'm a real jerk you can tell you go to somewhere

you don't really have anything invested into it you know whatever and then just act all surprised when it catches on fire yeah no the showroom thinks it was integros's fault no it was it was probably switching ati to nvidia it was putting the uh well yeah you know probably the video cards pulling more power. Although this is a high-end 1,000-watt power supply. Because I got a really good one because it was the Wirecast machine, and it ran 24-7, and it was our production machine. So I went high-end components in all of it. I wonder if it's still under warranty because that sounds kind of messed up.

But you know how we were having problems with that Hackintosh? Oh, yeah. This power supply might have been failing for a while now that I think about it. Oh, that one. Yes. Okay. That could be why.

Yeah. So I'm wondering, and so I think what happened was when I put the blank, I was going to burn a DVD and I put it in the drive and I think just spinning up the optical media was just the straw that broke the power supplies back

and there you had it. Jeez. Jeez. Well, I'm glad no one was hurt. straw that broke the power supplies back, and there you had it. Jeez. Jeez. Well, I'm glad no one was hurt. Yeah. Just the stinkiness. Nothing too bad. A good call on taking it outside, opening up a window.

It's a fast track to getting the fire department called on you. I know. Well, that's what I was worried about. I've been there myself. I actually had that happen once. All the smoke detectors here are connected, so I was a little worried that the whole house would start buzzing like crazy and didn't want that either. Yeah. Usually there's like a – I think it's like a three second delay. And then it's like, at least at ours, anyway, it's the same thing. And then it's like, after three seconds,

it's all over. They're all going off. Yeah, I wanted to play Steam. All right, I got some feedback to get to. Noah wrote in with some follow up to our predictions episode that we had a ways back. Now, before I get to this, I want to just mention for people who maybe have just started listening to Linux Unplugged, one of the things that we do here on this show is we do follow up to the big show, Linux Action Show, which gets so much email that we just simply cannot get to it all. So a lot of times in this follow-up section,

we'll pick up on threads that were started in the last. And this here from Noah is one of those exact threads. So Noah writes in, in he says in the predictions episode you talked about the death of microsoft let me start out and say i do not believe this will be happening anytime soon i think alan malali will become the ceo of microsoft and will think the open source closed argument is similar to the two nerds is similar to two nerds sitting in a room debating batman versus superman i think malali will make a new structure for windows the basic version of windows will be based on an open operating system that relies on in a room debating Batman versus Superman. I think Malali will make a new structure for Windows.

The basic version of Windows will be based on an open operating system that relies on a central server to operate the machine, similar to how Chromebooks rely on Google for services. Then I think Microsoft will release a pro version of Windows that really will be closed and have all the goodness slash badness Windows currently has. Here's the twist. In an enterprise environment, basic workers will have the basic version of Windows, while IT admins will have top and toplevel execs will have the pro version. This pro version will give them tools to control and monitor the basic versions of Windows. Everything from various levels of access to automatically generate reports on productivity

based on time spent on certain apps. This will give Microsoft a competitive advantage over their newest business enemy, Google. This also allows Microsoft to further push Office into the subscription service because basic users will have to pay to have an advanced feature not offered in web apps. Don't get me wrong. I'm far from a Microsoft lover. I deep down wish LibreOffice and OpenSUSE could make this happen,

and ultimately the Linux user space is more concerned with defining what is good and what isn't good for the Linux community. Who knows? Maybe I've just had one too many bottles of New Year's cheer. Anyways, thanks to you and Angela and the rest of the JB team for bringing the highest quality content any nerd could hope for. Just remember, every week you make a nervous Windows user a little less scared of switching to Linux. Happy 2014. Nice, nice. Yeah, I actually agree with them for two reasons. One, they are basically pushing my argument for Microsoft's remaining an enterprise situation. That's true. They're excellent for that, and I would say that they will continue to own the American enterprise situation.

They will not, under any circumstances, be doing wondrous things overseas. I just don't think so. I can see that. I can see that. But American, yeah, I think that's true. I could see that. But American, yeah, I think that's true. So one thing that is really prevalent right now, not talked a lot about, is a lot of our apps that we use on mobile devices have, in some cases, literally Google Analytics. But in a lot of cases, there's a lot of different analytics companies that are really actually tracking all your activity in these apps to a great extent. Now, it varies, of course, depending on the app and the developer.

But they can get down to how much time you spend in a particular function of the app, what other apps you switched from, the location, the geolocation, you ran it from the Wi-Fi network, all these things, the time you spent doing different things in the app. Wouldn't it be interesting, like he's saying here, wouldn't it be interesting for Microsoft to say, well, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take those kinds of analytics, and because we're appifying the desktop, we're going to apply that kind of analytics at the enterprise space. Just like when you go into group policy and you set enterprise-wide policies for Windows machines and Active Directory where you set enterprise-level access controls, and the event log where you can have, well, not really centralized logging like you get with syslog, but you can have logging and event log. This could be one more thing that sits

on top of that Microsoft Active Directory stack is these analytic tools pointed back in at the user and provided to the company instead of provided to some sort of third party. And I think that would be compelling for places that are horrible, draconian places to work for. This would be great for the office space type corporation. However, I don't, first of all, believe it's going to be Mulally. He's currently working at Ford and he's definitely at retirement age. And second of all, I think that would require such a level of insight and vision into the computer industry. It would. That I just can't, I mean, I just can't see it happening unless there was somebody that brought this forward from within Microsoft to Malali, and he then gave it the okay.

the okay but well i think and if you look at something like yahoo here's an example if they took a superstar from google dropped her in very very talented amazing talent amazingly talented person who despite having all this amazing talent has really done not been able to do squat to really turn yahoo around that yahoo still doesn't know if it's a search engine or a directory or what the hell they are they're still a media company or a media company or an aol yeah because you don't think of the whole thing going i mean they're all over the map. Or a media company. Or a media company or an AOL. Yeah, because they've got the whole AOL thing going. I mean they're all over the map. So I think Microsoft suffers from the same thing. I think their stuff is so deeply rooted down to the core that bringing in a new talking head isn't going to solve any problems for them at all.

Yeah, yeah. And they – you know, unfortunately they're a company that has been ran by a sales team for a very long time now. And they would do good to get some engineers behind the reins. And I mean, Malali is an old school engineer. I'll give him that, but I just don't see it. I think the big problem they've suffered from is somebody who doesn't have great insights into the industry as a whole.

Right. That's it. So I have some more feedback to get to. Let's see here. Boy, we had a lot of stuff on the gnome thing. I think what I want to do is I want to cover a bit of late breaking news. We don't normally cover breaking news on the Linux Unplugged show, but this just happened about an hour ago. And it's huge. So I want to talk about that because we'll definitely cover it more in last. But since it just happened, I just want to get people aware of it. But before we get to that, I want to thank Ting.com, sponsor of Linux Unplugged.

Ting is mobile that makes sense, and Ting also offers you some great devices with some amazing rates. You only pay for what you use with Ting. It's $6 a month for a phone. And then it's whatever usage, your minutes, your megabytes, and your messages on top of that. Ting is my mobile service provider. Ting is Matt's mobile service provider. And I don't know if you recall, Matt, but a few weeks back, I think it was December, they were doing a survey where if you're on AT&T or Verizon and you took a survey and did their savings calculator, it wasn't even a survey, it was just their savings calculator, you would be entered to

win a free cup of coffee. Oh, I remember that. That was actually really popular. It was pretty cool. So Ting is a very transparent company. And this is one of the things I like a lot about them as I really pride myself on trying to research and understand the companies that I spend my money with. And so I really like this aspect of Ting. So they're sharing some of the data they got

from those savings calculator from the coffee survey. And here's what some of the results are. 92% of participants would see some savings in their monthly bill. 87 would save more than $350 over two years, enough to basically pay for a Nexus 5. 82% would save more than $600 over two years. Now, here's what's really crazy, is when you are a small business, say like around 10 devices, 100% of the small businesses with 10 devices saved money on their monthly bill with Ting. That's crazy.

So literally now Ting is validated from two different companies that 98% of the people who switch to Ting save money. And this is something, as we move forward with computing devices that are in our pockets, we are really going to enter an age where companies are going to try to take advantage of us. And we already are seeing this with the existing incumbent carriers who are big, maybe duopoly type situations here in the U.S. duopoly type situations here in the U.S. And it's really not in their interest to be customer focused, where it is specifically by the way Ting is structured as an MVNO that is in their core business DNA to focus on customer service. And as an end result, it really shows from the dashboard, from the fact that if you call them at 1-855-846-4389

anytime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., a real person answers the phone, usually like on the first ring, resolves your problem, is empowered to solve the issue, gives you their name, their number right then and there. And this is also why Ting makes their savings calculator available to you. They're just going to put it right up front. Plug in your minutes used, your text message, your megabytes, your total bill before taxes, and they'll calculate what your savings could be with Ting. And to help you switch over to Ting, they have an early termination relief program over at ting.com slash ETF. Check this out. You pick your Ting phone, you port your number over,

and then you submit your ETF claim to Ting, and they'll give you up to $75 per line that you have to cancel. That eases that transition over to buying a device that you own outright. It's not something you're financing from the carrier. It's your phone. You own it. And you're only paying for what you use. This is why I literally went from about $120 a month on my phone bill to I average around $25, $30 now. It's amazing. And that is enough money that it actually makes a difference for me every single month. So here's how you get started. Go to linux.ting.com. That'll take $25 off your first device. Or if you already have a Sprint-compatible device and you want to bring it, just check their compatibility page. And if you've got that device, they're going to take $25 off your first month. That might just pay for your first month of service over at Ting.

So linux.ting.com to get started. And a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. All right. Definitely. Before we get to any more of the feedback, I want to cover this big story that just broke. CentOS is joining forces with Red Hat. It's through

acquisition of talent. It's going to be core members of the CentOS team joining Red Hat. Now, they're not going to be working for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux division, interestingly enough. And as they put it, the new initiative is going to be overseen by a new CentOS governing board.

The initial board will comprise of the existing CentOS core team members, and also they're going to add new members, one nominated from the community, and three members that were nominated by Red Hat directly, which I thought is kind of interesting. They said further down the road, the CentOS Linux platform won't be changing. The process and methods built around the platform, however, are going

to become more open and more inclusive because now that they're working directly with Red Hat Legal, they're going to be able to clear some hurdles like doing Q&A out in the public and things like that. So there's a lot of good interesting things. There are some things that are going to be changing, but I think the bulk of that will find out.

I think this could be a real stepping stone for them. I this could definitely be kind of that uh someone said legitimizes them i think it's more it adds to their credibility but and just expands on what they're already doing that's awesome you know i don't know if legitimate legitimize might be a little strong but yeah i i watched centos from the beginning um and um scientific linux and other ones too. And I know early on when I had a customer who had Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there was selling on my part to convince them that it was even okay to try CentOS on the testing machines, then let alone a whole other round of selling I had to do

to get them to try it on production. Where now, everyone who made a bet on CentOS, and for some of them, there might have been just a little wiggle of doubt in the back of their them, there might have been just a little wiggle of doubt in the back of their mind, oh, this isn't a legitimate copy of Reddit, Enterprise, Linux, or whatever, which even though it's technically exactly the same, that doubt now is completely washed away. Everybody who had made an investment in CentOS on their server farms right now, all of the hosting companies, all of the small businesses and large businesses that have CentOS

deployed, this is a huge validation for that deployment. And that just gave them a huge peace of mind, I would think. If I was still running a bunch of CentOS servers, I would be very pleased with this news. I would think so. So I'll be curious to see where it goes. We'll follow this story throughout the week, and if there's further developments, we'll cover it on Sunday on the Linux Action Show. Yeah, I think it's still pretty early. Yeah, we'll definitely kind of have to see where it all translates into. Literally just happened.

Yeah. So it is very early. Okay. So we talked about GNOME 3 on Linux Action Show on Sunday and, oh, geez, Reddit isn't working right now. Lots of feedback. Lots of feedback in the Reddit thread that we do every episode of Linux Action Show gets tossed in LinuxActionShow.reddit.com where people can comment and give us feedback on it.

There are so many good ones in there. But you know what? Reddit is totally down right now. Oh, it is? There it goes. I was going to say I got it running. I was getting the pile. The dude gets piled on, you know what I'm saying?

Oh, yeah. There's like too many upvotes. Reddit alien had a fit. Reddit, get your crap together. Gosh. I'm sure. These cloud stuff. I'm sure. Geez. Cloud stuff. I'm sure.

Yeah. All right. So there's so many in here. I'll link to the whole thread in the show notes, but I did pull out a couple. Weem Wham wrote in. He says, my main problem with GNOME 3, which has always been, is removing core functionality and then expecting it to be implemented as a user-developed extension. This is bad.

I'm sorry. It just is. This is a point we heard a lot. I don't know if I agree with it, but a lot of people made this point and he just summed it up really good, so I highlighted his. So, for example,

like the minimize button, right, or certain things that have been taken out that you then have to go back through some other third-party method to get that functionality back. What's your take on that, Matt? Boy, you know, I don't know. I'm going to really kind of have to wait

and see where everything ends up in the long haul, but right now, I just feel like it still'm going to really kind of have to wait and see where everything ends up in the long haul. But right now, I just feel like it still needs a little more time in the oven. I like the overall aesthetic direction they're going, but I feel like there's just certain little bits of functionality that – while extensions do address them and sort of great tools like the configuration tools they offer. I just feel like that – I don't want to rush to judgment, but I definitely feel like I'm not ready to make that permanent switch. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it is. It's still kind of early days.

For me, I like riding that early wave of these desktop stuff. It's always kind of one of the most entertaining aspects of using Linux for me is being right there on that edge. And so I see it where it's at now. And so I've kept using it. I thought maybe I might go back to KDE, but I kept using it after the Linux Action Show. And gosh, I really like it. I can use GNOME over KDE.

Because there's other desktops out there, of course, that I enjoy. So I would say at this point, I could see myself using GNOME over KDE, but at the same time, on an older machine, it's still bloated. I'm sorry it is. Just factually speaking, if you know, on an older machine, it's still bloated. I'm sorry it is. I mean, just factually speaking, if you run it on an older machine, it definitely feels bloated.

On a new machine, it's fine. What do you think of this one? So Obermeiser was writing, he says, Working dual displays across four virtual desktops and then apps remembering size and position for me is a serious requirement for integrations and productivity. I find it annoying that opening up six to 12 apps across virtual desktops, it's annoying and unproductive. I'm surprised by it being a non-issue with the user base out there. What he's talking about is like under KWIN or KDE, it will remember the position of a window, whereas GNOME and GTK take the point that, well, this is up to the application to store

the position and then restore itself to that position. Well, and see for myself, it's like, okay, so you have your virtual desktops. And then of course, oftentimes a lot of people have dual monitors or maybe even more than that. I run everything full screen. And so, you know, I'm doing side by side with whatever I'm working on in one workspace. And then if I need to switch to another virtual desktop, I do. No big deal.

And so I just full desktop. I just, it's just never been a thing for me one of the one of the bits of feedback we got uh on the gnome 3 stuff is if you want a tip for working with gnome 3 is every time you decide to start a new task or open a new window move it to its own virtual desktop so don't think of virtual desktops as just a spot to store a new window but every time you begin a new activity you you you instead of opening a new window you move it you open it to it in a new virtual space. And so I've been trying this even like with, uh, with like multiple web browsers. So I had a, I have the email up in one web browser and I have the, the Slexi paste bin, uh, site up in another browser. And so I, I highlight the email in one and I just, I slide

down and I paste it and it actually has been working quite well for me. So I'm going to continue to try that out instead of having a bunch of Windows on one virtual desktop. Because what I've always done before is, this is my web browsing virtual desktop. This is my email and IM virtual desktop. This is my terminal virtual desktop. And it's always been very structured in my mind. And now I'm going to do it more just based on,

hey, I need a task. So I'm just going to create a virtual desktop. Because he pointed out in GNOME 3, you can create and destroy virtual desktops at whim just like you can open and close Windows. So there's no real disadvantage to doing it. Yeah, exactly. That's really it. And I mean a lot of people think, well, why the hell would you run everything full screen?

I mean for myself personally, it just comes down to usability. I don't – I'm very, very easily distracted. So I don't want a lot of crap on the same screen on the same monitor. Yeah, I have noticed actually. I can't deal with that. It is easier to focus. Especially for videos and chat rooms and stuff like that. Alright, well, one little bit of

news that just broke, too, and we're going to be covering it way more in Linux Action Show on Sunday. We'll be covering all the best of Linux. It's already, first day of CES, it's already been a blowout for Linux there. WebOS made a comeback. Intel has an amazing

SD-sized x86 PC that runs Linux. And Valve has demonstrated, showed off some of their new Steam boxes. And Matt, we're seeing Steam boxes from Alienware, Alternet, iBuyPower, CyberPowerPC, and they are

looking amazing. Well, if you think about it, especially with Falcon Northwest and Alienware, those are probably my two favorite examples. These are people that are being told over and over, oh, the desktop's going to die and it's all about mobile. This is their bread and butter. So they're not only embracing this as an opportunity

to show folks that it's not dead, that they can, in fact, adapt and evolve, but in the fact that it can actually be really awesome. And I think it's going to be really exciting to see how some of these machines perform. Gigabyte is showing one that does use Iris graphics, so that might be a limiting factor, but it's like, I think they're talking $400 or something.

Yeah, I mean, they've got the... It's a little high still, but... Yeah, I think a little bit high, but I mean, they got the lower-end machines to the crazy... One was like between $17,000 and $6,000. Yeah. Yeah, $6,000. You can go real hardcore, One was like between $17,000 and $6,000. Yeah. You can go real hardcore, yeah.

I'd love that one. Yeah. Oh, man. I'll tell you what. I have seen – so one that I thought was really compelling is one that actually mounts behind the TV. Oh. And it has a rack, and it slides out. There's been some really interesting Steam boxes showing off.

So pretty exciting. Is that video card right there in the picture is the one I installed in the computer last night that caught on fire? Someone needs to Photoshop fire on that. Yeah, no kidding. So really so far it's been a great CES for Linux. So I'm looking forward to our CES chat. Well, I like the variety. I think that's like my number one thing that I'm really most excited about. Even if you're not a gamer, you have to appreciate the fact that they are bringing back the desktop at some level.

Yeah. You know, various forms. And it's so cool to see these different takes on it. Like Falcon Northwest is doing like a very cool paint job on the side of the case. And there's so many different approaches to this problem. I think this is going to be awesome. I think it's going to be really cool to watch. Great opportunity. Yeah. Now I just is going to be really cool to watch. Great opportunity.

I just want one, Valve. I just want to remind Valve that Matt and Chris are within a couple hours of driving distance. We will drive to you guys. Let me put that out there. We will literally bring you lunch. Whatever you want. We will dress up like butlers and

serve you. Whatever you need. Let us hook up with one of these. Man, you're always throwing the dress-up stuff. I know, yeah. I got like Valve cosplay, right? I don't even know how that works. Dress up like a PC. One more bit of feedback or follow-up I want to get to is we talked about the AC – or UC.

UC Pi, the turnkey Raspberry Pi-based internet search engine that Q5 just started a Kickstarter for. Raspberry Pi-based internet search engine that Q5 has started a Kickstarter for. He's got 44 backers as we record this episode. And he joins us right now in the Mumble Room. Mr. Q5, how would you say the Kickstarter is going? Are you pleased? I am very pleased.

I at no point expected to be at almost 25% within three days. The response has been fantastic. So I think that reason is because I would guess for the same reason you started doing this, why did you want to make Yossi more accessible to people? What's your motivation there? As you've talked about on Linux Action Show and within Linux Unplugged about bringing these services that we've kind of allowed other people to take care of for us, to bring them back into house. That's been something that's been of a lot of interest to me. And also just the privacy aspect that it gives a user to be

able to do searches locally and not have Big Brother or Google or Bing sitting there cataloging every single thing that you're searching. Sure, sure. And now, so why make it turnkey? Just so that it's the simplest possible implementation for someone who's not extremely technical oriented. To set up Yossi, it takes some configuration. You've got to work to find what the best settings are going to be. And there's a lot of people that I know would like to use software like this, but don't have the technical prowess to be able to set it up themselves. This way, everything's done. They get the item.

They plug it in. they're good to go. Now, they may have to set a port on their local router so that the actual unit can talk out to the rest of the network, but that they can do just in their basic router settings. I guess my first question when I saw this is, is the Pi powerful enough to pull this off? Has it got enough juice? To do searches, yes. It has enough juice. To do searches and also crawl and index the web, no, it doesn't. The Raspbian image, which is what most people

have been using for running Yossi on Pis in the past, Raspbian is a great release. It's a great distribution, but it has a lot of overhead because it's intended to be a full-fledged OS for everything. So you can get it and you can run an entire full-built Linux distribution on your Raspberry Pi. What I am doing is I've built a custom Puppy Linux ARM release specifically for the task of running Yasi.

So it does not have any of the extra overhead or anything else that it doesn't need. It's as trim and as slimmed down as possible so that it can achieve the goal and nothing more. Very nice. And so I've got this picture up on the stream of your little Raspberry Pi cluster that you're testing different images on. And what are you kind of doing to test the performance of it here? I've got several different builds of the ARM release of Puppy Linux itself, testing different variants of compiling BusyBox and seeing, okay, well, can I get better performance if I compile it with certain options and not other options?

Using the Debian RML binaries, just kind of picking through which ones are going to be the best for what I need. And then once that's set up, testing just basic one Java implementation and saying, okay, which of these OS setups works the best? And then the next step I'm going to go to is to figure out what's the best Java choice to use because there are several that we can do. And then once that's chosen,

then take the next step of, okay, what's the best way to configure the actual settings within Yasi so that the performance is the most stable? Wow. And so, are you hoping to sort of raise awareness of the Yossi project with this too? Because I think a lot of people are seeing this and they're going, well, maybe I'll just roll this myself. Are you okay with that outcome? Actually, I am perfectly fine if the campaign is a failure. It does not bother me. If this gets word out about the Yossi network and it gets people interested in it and it gets people actually deploying it, whether it's on laptops, their home, whether they get like a DigitalOcean VPS, you know, a little $5 a month instance and throw it up. As long as it brings higher visibility to the project, I will be happy. This is probably a great use for a DigitalOcean

VPS, wouldn't it? I think it is. Have you considered reaching out to the Yossi project and saying, hey, are you guys cool with this, or have they talked to you? I actually was contacted by Michael Christian, who is the maintainer of the Yossi project.

I got a message from him today, had a couple emails back and forth. He is totally on board with it. You know, he said, you know, I... Hold on, let me see if I can actually pull it up real quick. Hold on a second. So that's great. I was actually in the middle of emailing back.

I wonder if he... He must have... No, maybe he was watching the last. Maybe he's a viewer. Maybe. You never know. Possibly. You never know. Well, hello if he's a viewer. You never know. Possibly. You never know.

Well, hello if he is a viewer. All right. So we got 44 backers. There's 42 days left to go, folks, if you want to pledge. We'll have a link in the show notes to this. Or you could go over to Kickstarter and search for YACYPie. Okay, I have the email up right now. It goes on.

And part of it, there's already been discussion if YACYPi, my project, is good or bad for the Yassi network. And if a production of commercial Yassi type products are liked or disliked by me or the other developers. He said, let me clear this out right now. I like the YassiPi project and I'm happy to support you. Awesome. And I responded back to him. I said, look, my goal is not to actually start producing these commercially and selling them. The Kickstarter campaign is to help defer the development costs of actually being able to do this. Once that's done, the SD card image will be completely released freely. They will have a copy of it. It'll be on SourceForge. I'll have it on the actual website. So anyone can then at that point, go get the SD card image, burn it onto their own SD card if they have a Raspberry Pi and go. That's awesome. My goal is not to make money off of this. It's to raise awareness and to get the tools into people's hands so that can actually be used. Well, you are a gentleman, sir. I have been borrowing, quote unquote, a really nice,

not just the Raspberry Pi, but also an HP dock that was made for the Atrix, I think it was, like way back in the day. And so I've been experimenting with different uses for the Raspberry Pi. And I think if you get that performance spot in there, that is perfect for a device like this. It's essentially a search appliance for your house. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, Mr. Q5,

is there anything else you want to share with us before we go back on to other business? Not really. Just I hope that, you know, anybody who is listening to this or is, you know, considering it, if you don't have the money to donate, that's okay.

Just instead help spread the word. Well, good work. And I think it's awesome you'll be releasing the image if we reach that goal too, because then other folks who already have the pie. Well, good work. And I think it's awesome you'll be releasing the image if we reach that goal, too, because then other folks who already have the pie can take advantage of it. And there are also, if you don't have a pie yet, he's got backing levels, which will get you a complete solution,

and you just take it and go. Well, good work, sir. And stick around if you'd like, and join us for the rest of the discussion here in a moment. Congratulations on the progress so far. That's really awesome. Yeah, yeah, that is really great. So I want to take a moment and thank our second sponsor this week. And that speaking of DigitalOcean, we were just talking about them is DigitalOcean.

DigitalOcean is simple cloud hosting dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. Users can create a server in 55 seconds and pricing plan started only five dollars per month 512 megabytes of ram a 20 gigabyte ssd one cpu and a terabyte of transfer for that five dollars a month digital ocean has data center locations in new york san francisco and amsterdam the interface is simple and it has an intuitive control panel which power users can replicate on a large scale with an api and digital ocean also offers a vast collection of tutorials in their community section, and users can submit articles. And if DigitalOcean publishes that piece, 50 bones, folks. You'll get $50 from DigitalOcean. You can get the link to it, more info about that in our show notes. Now, here's the thing. You guys get to be part of the hip club.

We got a special thing. We're still using the special promo code from last month. Now, I know you're going to think, but Chris, this is January. Trust me, dear viewer, listener, I know that. But I like every now and then to get you guys in on the club. We like to sometimes stick it to the man, right? Well, guess what? You can still use Linux Unplugged December when you're over at DigitalOcean, and you'll get a $10 credit, and you can try out that $5 machine for two months for free when you use the promo code Linux Unplugged December. I want to recommend you do it. And you know, Q5sys kind of inspired me.

I kind of want to go throw a C on my DigitalOcean droplet or maybe spin up another one. Hey, I'd pay $5 a month for my own totally private, completely self-controlled search. I think that's totally worth it. Oh, definitely. Jeez, I think I'm going to do this. I mean, I think that's totally worth it. Oh, definitely. Jeez, I think I'm going to do this. I mean, I think that's a great idea. So DigitalOcean has all kinds of great technologies. KVM for the virtualization, SSD hard drives for the speed,

amazing hardware, flexible API, great bandwidth, and of course they also offer incredible pricing. You can get a $5 a month machine, 512 megs of RAM, a one-core processor, 20 gig SSD, one terabyte of transfer. You go up to $10, then you get a $5 a month machine, 512 megs of RAM, a one-core processor, 20 gig SSD, one terabyte of transfer. You go up to $10, then you get a gig of RAM, you get 30 gigs of storage, and two terabytes of transfer. You go up to $20, there's two gigabytes of memory, two cores of CPU, 40 gigabyte SSD,

and three terabytes of transfer, and on and on and on. They also offer hourly pricing if you just need to do a little testing. If you're working on a web app and you want to have your client take a look at it, you want to have a few folks just do some Q&A or maybe some critiquing for you, you could toss it up on a DigitalOcean droplet, turn it on, and then you just pay by hour and the rates are absolutely, I mean, nobody beats these rates. It's awesome. So go over to digitalocean.com and use our special limited time promo code LinuxUnpluggedDecember to get that $10 credit. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Oh, definitely $10 credit. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.

Oh, definitely. Those guys are so awesome. I love the fact that you can just basically run it any way you want. They don't treat you like you don't know what you're doing. You just get a blank box and you get to go for it. Absolutely. I love the droplets and I love having root access on my machine. I mean, that's a huge deal for me.

All right. So I want to open this up to discussion here with the Mumba Room. Last week, I asked the question, does open source governance by consensus of the community inhibit innovations? And I'll point out a couple of things. What we're watching happening right now, for me, seems to be a great example of this with Debian. They are down the path now of choosing something besides SystemD primarily because they are concerned about portability to the BSDs. Even though, according to the voluntary software survey for Debian users, only 0.8% of Debian users would be affected, or it might even be less than that. It is an infinitesimal small portion of the Debian community

that would be impacted by the switch to SystemD. But the switching to SystemD would be, I would see the positives of that would be much more interoperability with Linux at a larger scope. So I look at this and I think if this was, for example, if they had a Mark Shuttleworth or they had a Steve Jobs or they had a Larry Page, whoever, sitting at Debian who was responsible for making these decisions, he would look at this and he would say, hey, you know what? Portability is great. It's something to aspire to. But let's be practical and let's get real here. We have to make a competitive product that a lot of people can use that will stay relevant in 2015, 2016 and beyond, let's go this direction. And I feel like that would be, I actually feel like that's the most, it is so blatantly obvious that's the way to go.

The only reason we're not going that way is because the way community works is a small minority, if they push the right buttons and if they're vocal enough, can influence the herd into a certain direction where all of a sudden it becomes a sacred cow to sacrifice portability. That's Debian's core vision. You can't sacrifice portability. You can't do that. And if really, if you took a rational look at it, and if somebody who is a leader, a

dictator, if you will, or a benevolent overlord looked at it and said, come on, this is just not practical. It's not tenual. Let's get real here. I feel like that's what would happen. Yeah, go ahead. I beg to disagree there do it because first um it might seem a bit uh weird that debian has such a strong feeling about its principles but that's just it principles openness diversity and nobody

knows what the future will hold is it principles or is it almost like, well, we don't want to tell ourselves? I think it's ego crap. To me, it feels like we don't want to say, even though it's not true, I feel like a little bit is, well, we don't want to bet the whole farm on Linux. Because maybe 10 years down the road, Linux is going to die and we want to be this portable system that will move to whatever becomes the new king. It's almost like a fear to commit to Linux in a sense. Even though it sounds ridiculous, that's almost what it sounds like to me when I look at it. I don't know if it is principles. I feel like principles is a way to cover up that fear.

Unless they can cite something concrete besides ego-stroking, I'm just not buying into the whole – SystemD stuff is already coming through on SID and testing. So, I mean, we all know that they're going to go SystemD. Well, I don't actually know. It's not looking like they are going to go with SystemD. You think they're going to do Upstart? No, they're going to open RFC, I thought.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what they're going to go with, but now it's looking like, according to what I read on Linux WN over the weekend, it looks like they're not going the system direction. I think it's interesting that when you introduced this, you said, you know, maybe if Debian had a Mark Shuffleworth type person or, you know, benevolent dictator, that this might not happen. But the fact is that even the Ubuntu project has a technical board and they have discussions like this. And Mark doesn't swoop in and, you know, kick everyone to one side and say, nope, this will be the way it happens. Take, for example, a discussion happening just this week about whether we should re-enable Suspender Disk on Ubuntu.

And the whole technical board are weighing in on the pros and cons of re-enabling that thing. are weighing in on the pros and cons of re-enabling that thing so and so i think all debian are doing is the same kind of thing that the one two technical board would do which is evaluate all the options given their principles and make a decision based on technical and other merits that is true however what mark has a very public thing very public mark and they don't have time scales like like you know they don't have a release date like we do i think but see mark can set the tone right mark can say convergence is the future and then that frames the conversation that everybody has from that point and just that ability is huge because you you fundamentally alter the state of the conversation that the group has when you set

the cadence like that and debbie doesn't that. To some degree, but they have their free software guidelines. They have their principles. They have a long history of doing the right thing. And I think they want to continue doing the right thing, whether that means it's systemd or upstart. They want to do the right thing. And I think their influence is just not one guy or a set of contracts that Canonical may have with OEMs. It's principles that they have. I could agree. See, at what point do you reevaluate the principles? Because it almost seems like insanity to me to make this level of sacrifice just to maintain compatibility with BSD.

When in reality, do you know anybody that runs Debian BSD in large-scale production? No, it doesn't happen. It's a dream. It's a hope that the Debian project could get utilized for something that the BSD guys have already got covered. They're pretty happy with their package management, and they're going off doing their own thing anyways. It seems like Debian's principles drive them to aspire to something that is ludicrous.

Well, I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how it turns out. At this point, unless I can actually see a working table citing exactly what the hell they're dragging their feet with and why, because for just the average guy looking into this, it's mind-boggling. It's just like, oh my god, make a decision already. I mean, seriously. I feel like... But this isn't the first time that the Debian project has... Oh no, Debian's famous for it, but it does kind of

get old after a while, though. Well, the problem is they are not just five guys, they are several hundred guys, and they just have different opinions, and they need to talk about it. It's fine, by the way. It's absolutely fine, by the way.

But it is good. I don't mean to keep cutting you off, but I want to respond to each point you're making. That is true to an extent, but it also allows for stagnation, and it allows for a washing down to the lowest common denominator. And instead of making something amazing and streamlined, you can make something that makes everybody happy. And I talked about this with Noam on the Linux Action Show, is when you have design by community, you really get something that's not that great.

And when you have design... I'm sorry, that was true. No, I didn't say it. But you are making my point for me. It is exactly that. And I feel like you could apply that scenario to Debian. As the larger the community gets, the more discussions that happen,

it actually turns out that the more arbitrary aspects of the community are able to wield a larger influence. And I think if this could be streamlined, more arbitrary aspects of the community are able to wield a larger influence. And I think if this could be streamlined, the pace of innovation would be a lot higher. It slows us down a lot. It really weighs things down, I think. Well, Chris, wait, wait, wait, wait. The first thing you need to remember is either way, it really does not matter how the outcome is in this discussion. System D is already in Debian

as is Upstart and OpenRC, I don't know if OpenRC is in it, but it doesn't really matter how the outcome is because both init systems are already in Debian. True. So you can choose whether you want it or not. But we do know that the discussion is just

yes, the discussion is just about the default. Right. But I think that is just as the default. Right. But I think that is just as good as only having one. And also don't forget what we're all navel-gazing and bike-shedding about. This same thing will have been happening on that mailing list over the years, and nobody would have been looking at it. There would have been no Twitter. There would have been minimal podcasts. There wouldn't have been everyone sharing on Twitter links to, oh, so-and-so said this on the Debian project mailing list because nobody cares. or the people who do care are the people who are already on that list and having those discussions. It's the sharp focus of the 24-hour news, the Twitter generation of people who are having an opinion and want to express that opinion rapidly and in 140 characters, when in fact that's not how Debian works.

And I don't think Debian should work that way. I think what it is is we are reaching an influx point in Linux where, think Debian should work. I think what it is, is we are reaching an influx point in Linux where, I was just talking about this in Coder Radio, where the core between the distributions with SystemD and a lot of other things, you know, big changes in the kernel too, is becoming less and less chaotic. It's actually becoming, we could see a future where developers don't look at Linux as this crazy wild west of all of these different fractured, I mean, you talk about Android fragmentation, let's talk about distro fragmentation for a minute, but that is kind of coming together. It's kind of congealing a little bit. And Debian is now at a crossroads where they could choose to go down that path, or they could choose to be

fragmented and different. And the hope is because Debian is so important to all the people built off of it. And because Debian is such a critical distro to Linux itself I want to see more great development come into Linux and I feel like the more consistency we have there in in the middle of these distros the better the better time and we're going to have from our dev you know the better applications we're going to get the more applications we're going to get the more people that will target Linux and the more fractured we are the less likely that's going to. You're going to continue to see software that only works on Red Hat or software that only works on Ubuntu. And that's what I think people are worried about.

A laundry list of reasons why it's a benefit. It's great and it's awesome and all this choice. I'm sure we can't get two things to run the same way in the same district. It's such a critical thing. If we have a future in which we can start to smooth some of those differences out, I don't want to, you know, sacrifice something important to get there.

But I also want to make sure that if we don't go that direction, we have some damn really good reasons. Like, I mean, really good. That's what I'm saying. Really good. Go ahead. I think DeepWard is making itself be way more of a big deal than it is. Remember when Arch switched to SystemD? Everybody

just went insane. Two months later, it was like, oh, yeah, that happened. It's a bigger deal, though. Remember when we moved the buttons over to the left-hand side? What absolute shitstorm happened there? You moved my buttons? Yeah when the skies opened up when we

switched to uh pulse audio well that was kind of crappy uh first so but i think this the stakes are a little bit different in this one because it's more about what future linux is going to look like and how compatible each distro is going to be with each other. And, you know, if skills learned in one distro, like how to stop and start services are applicable to another distro. And those small little things like all to us, those of us who use Linux on a regular basis, they seem trivial. But people who are maybe like a Windows admin for their whole career, and now they've just got Linux boxes. These are the little details that make night and day difference for them. And anytime, you know time we can reduce the differentiation between the different distros, the better it's going to be for all Linux adoption as a whole. And I appreciate that they have a lot of technical requirements and principles to follow, and that's what makes Debian as good as it is.

But I guess I have to wonder, again, if you took out the community element of the decision-making process and you just put a CEO in there, I think he would come down pretty handedly on the system D side of the discussion. Are people really arguing for benevolent dictatorship and to import this corporate borg into Debian, really? No, no. I mean I wouldn't want that. Groupthink is not a problem. People look at Group Thing as horrible. And it's great, and also it's got massive flaws. But if you had, like, say a board of three people

that were in control of the Group Thing and saying, this is the direction we're looking at, and then they have a mediation situation, then you could get input from everyone, but at the same time, and you give input, but you also get like, you give everybody who's putting their input as a valid, you know, they have the same amount of input or the same, their merit is the same. They don't have any kind of skewed. If you have a CEO, then everybody's just going to listen to the CEO and then the opinions are going to just dwindle. Yeah, the technical board is, I think, probably the right answer, I guess. I just look at this. We actually got a really good email in on this that really kind of, I thought, did a

good job. It came from Kyle. And you guys can feel free if you think Kyle is off the rails to interrupt. But he wrote, I'm writing regarding your question in this week's Linux Unplugged about whether Linux has too much endless squabbling and consensus decision making that inhibits innovation versus a top-down organization like Apple or Canonical that can follow a singular vision. Oh, don't get Popey started again. Essentially, your question comes down to an argument of the merits of democracy versus dictatorship. an argument of the merits of democracy versus dictatorship. While I appreciate you raising the question,

I have to say the implications of your argument seem to distinctly be negative in the freedom dimension. Oh, hold on. It's negative in the freedom dimension. He says, I've got to bust it out. I think your question doesn't just have to do with innovation, but also the common argument that Linux is bad because debates within the community are too heated. I'm sure many others will write in with technical or practical opinions on this question,

but I thought I'd bring in a little bit of political theory since I have a liberal arts background that others might not. I would argue the Linux community is like the Roman Republic. It has its own sorts of dictators, consuls, tribunes, and any number of other competing powers. It has an armed citizenry, just like Rome did, where users are largely free to contribute code and start projects, and it is driven by a chaotic political structure that leads to competition and expansion. Like the Spartans, Apple is careful in its expansion plans, choosing to occupy particular upscale segments of the market, and it certainly has a lot of success with that.

Like the Leonians, the 300, Apple's elite of workers could be said to punch above their weight in terms of innovation. But when you look at the big picture in terms of install base, and not just the direct market value, Apple is dwarfed by the chaotic, Hydra-like expansion of Linux and open source. Our liberty is the condition for our success. We are positive in the size dimension because we are positive in the freedom dimension. So just as Romans occasionally found the need to elect dictators to lead them, we may occasionally find the need for executive powers to get things done. But let our envy of Apple not lead us to expand these islands of tyranny to the point that they crush the liberty

that makes Linux so great. I agree with a lot of what they said. I cringed when he used Rome as an example because I, for one, enjoy my Roman citizenship. Oh, wait, that's right, we're not, because it collapsed. Well, you never know. I like some of the things he said,

but man, I was just cringing the whole time with the whole Rome thing because it's like bad example. This is why Debbie wants to keep that BSD competitive. Horrible, horrible. Rome was moved to – over to Byzantium. The capital Rome was moved to Constantinople by Constantine, and it's just basically propaganda by Roman Catholics or whatever, that it's been collapsed, but it lasted for a long time before...

It lasted for a long time, and it brought forth amazing successes, as did Greece and a lot of other things, but empires fall. I mean, at the end of the day, that's kind of the point. The parallel Kyle was drawing there is that the essentially chaotic and sometimes competitive nature of the political structure of Linux sort of leads to its always growing expansion into new areas and new territories.

I agree with that. No, I agree with the points. The whole Realm thing just really rubbed me the wrong way. Also, I think you're missing a bigger point here, too. Linux is not bigger than any one disk show. It's a kernel, so it doesn't matter what one disk show does. There's always going to be another disk show to replace it. Yeah, and I'll tell you, the other thing I've really noticed over the years of doing these shows

is the things that seem like the biggest, biggest technical upsets or the thing we really got to be concerned about have yet to ever actually be that. You know, like I look back and remember the amount of upset around Novell signing that deal with Microsoft? I mean, it was like, we did like three weeks of coverage on the Linux Action Show back to back to back discussing that issue because it was so red hot, right? Or, you know, a lot of other things that has happened in the past always seem like these massive problems.

X11, Twainland. Yeah, everything, right? So say Debian doesn't choose systemd. Somebody will just figure out a way to still make things compatible and work. I mean, we all, that's what happens, right, every time. But it is interesting to sort of look at this and think that every now and then I wonder how much further would we be if we had a few more benevolent dictators in these communities? Because I think where you do see real progress made in open source

is these little fiefdoms we have of like, you know, here's Camp Apache over here. You know, here's Camp Ubuntu. There's Camp Fedora. There's Camp, you know, or even more granular than that, there's Camp System D. And they have their sort of appointed chiefs that sort of push them forward.

And then as a collective whole, we all benefit. But it's kind of like in a way the body all works together. It's sort of this weird organic creature that has some ugly spots that we all get to just look at and watch because it's all happening out in the open. I've often made the point that if these types of discussions happen at the Microsoft's and at the Apple's and the Oracle's of the world, but they're all done behind closed doors. So we have no idea where the way those conversations went. This is true.

This is true. I also think that the open way of doing things is more holistic. Sure, it may not be as fast, but it's definitely more holistic in the way it grows. Hey, I wanted to shift gears. While we got the mumble room here, what do you guys think about the CentOS team joining Red Hat? What do you think that means? Nobody?

I don't know whether I'm happy then or scared. The way they say it, they talk about it, it sounds like it's going to be a backing of the CentOS project, not necessarily an overtaking. I hope that it's not going to make it for sale and kill the CentOS team in the process.

Yeah, I would say financial backing, it's a good thing. But if it's a complete redo of their initiatives, it's going to turn the project into something else. They made it sound like it's going to keep going as is. it is, it's going to turn the project into something else. They made it sound like it's going to keep going as is, but the part I'm wondering is what I talked about during the Fedora 20 review is the Fedora project is redoing, they got Fedora

Next, and they're talking in that proposal about potentially having a server spin of Fedora. At the time, I looked at that and go, that sounds like a CentOS competitor, and I wonder if maybe there's some sort of collaboration that might happen there, but I just don't know. Is it more of an Ubuntu server

competitor in the cloud space? Not so much the server space, but the cloud space. And is this Red Hat buying themselves into that space? That's what I'm wondering, right? Because CentOS has huge deployments in a lot of the cloud services and cloud hosting. I use CentOS.

So I don't think Fedora will ever directly compete with CentOS in the server market just because they target different areas. I mean, I guess Fedora could work well as in the cloud space, but CentOS is a much more concerned distribution than Fedora is. Right. And so it will act more like an Ubuntu LTS or RHEL itself. Because I've been in companies where we're still using RHEL 5 and it's still – or CentOS 5 and it's still supported.

And you're not going to upgrade versions because it's such a huge effort to do so. And if you're on Fedora, if they have the current release cycle and they're releasing every – I guess every six months, right, it would be impossible to support that. Yeah, I think, so the way they're working this in Fedora Next is they're going to have like rings where the first ring will be like the cloud version of Fedora that sees more conservative changes. And then there'll be the set of stuff on top of that. That's the next ring.

Maybe it's like more network services. And there's a third ring, which is like the desktop services that sit on top of that that's the next ring maybe it's like more network services and there's a third ring which is like the desktop services that sit on top of that and the idea is is you could pull out just that middle ring and you would have just a very minimal core uh literally you're going to call it fedora core again um and then that could be their hope i think is to have that be server ready to make that make that core not change that much and that that would be what people deploy, like on DigitalOcean, VPSs, and other places. And it is kind of like, you got to figure, Red Hat's been sitting back and watching Ubuntu eat its lunch on EC2 and a lot of Rackspace deployments. I mean, Red Hat has a presence there, but they're not staying competitive

with the LTS Ubuntu releases. So I think the big picture is it's probably to compete there, but I don't see exactly how. It's good news for the CentOS team, I think. It's one of these things where I'm not quite sure if the audience is that interested because it's all server stuff.

So it yanks my chain because I used to be a server guy and I don't know if it really well if centos becomes a you know a really uh popular option in the cloud space then red hat have an upsell there you know pretty easily to go in the same way that oracle upsell from mysql to oracle database you can upsell from MySQL to Oracle database, you can upsell from CentOS to RHEL licenses. Yeah, totally. It seems a no-brainer for them. Yeah, really, that aspect of it totally makes sense.

That's exactly what it is. And, yeah, it's probably going to work. Red Hat's going to make more money. Surprise, surprise, everybody. Yeah, right. Red Hat doing this is actually interesting for CentOS, too, because Red Hat was making it harder for CentOS to make their – using the Red Hat source code to make it. They modulized everything, and they made it piece by piece.

CentOS had to – to get past the legal issues, they had to kind of put a lot of effort into making each release. lot of effort into making each release. So now maybe CentOS could actually improve how fast they do things. So they can make it easier, thanks to Red Hat funding it. So CentOS could actually improve in a lot of ways very quickly. I wonder, so in a post-NSA revelations world where we know there's distributions out there, isn't Red Linux, that Chinese Linux distribution that's based off CentOS, and they wanted a distro that wasn't attached to a US company? That's why they spun that? I wonder how that impacts stuff like that now.

Fork, maybe? Yeah, maybe a fork. Yeah, they could just fork it and maintain it. Maybe it's not a big deal. Yeah, but CentOS was just a hack. Well, not really. Yeah, it was. It wasn't compatible with Red Hat. And anybody I know that was running it in production, I told them absolutely not.

What are you talking about? It's entirely compatible. Yeah, that doesn't sound right. It's entirely binary compatible. But what way have you found, Don, that it's not compatible? Mostly upgrades and packages that were, uh, critical to Red Hat EL, um, and trying to run some applications that were, uh, suggested for Red Hat EL, uh, trying to run in CentOS. It was just a nightmare. I've actually been pretty fortunate. I've even gone as far as taking, I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but I took a CentOS 5 installation, or I'm sorry, I took a Red Hat 5 installation and repointed the repos over to CentOS 6.

And I actually upgraded the release of that installation of CentOS 5 from Red Hat 5 to CentOS 6. I went to a whole new version and switched from Red Hat to CentOS. It's not recommended, but there was this server where there was just absolutely no option other than that. And I did it. And I was like amazed to me. I was stunned because I went from Red Hat 5 to CentOS 6 and I changed repos and all that kind of stuff. So there I would have been quite successful. But I suppose you could always have an application that would maybe double check to make sure it's on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and then just kick you up a refusal to operate. Is that what you ran into, Don? I don't think it was anything in the app itself. It definitely

had something to do with libraries that were renamed and re-labeled kind of thing. Maybe to take out the branding or whatever and like a file name or something. Huh. Plus I had a major problem trying to go from 5.8 or whatever up to 6 something. There just wasn't an easy way to upgrade.

There you go. Well, there you go. That's a good little piece of feedback. And thanks to the Jack in the Box, too, for voicing a good dissent there. Because, you know, I mean, he brought good points in defending Debian. And my only – I guess my closing argument would be is Debian's got to do what's good for Debian and whatever that is. Yeah, and at the end of the day, I don't know enough about what they do to make any broad judgments.

I just would like to see them kind of pick their direction and embrace it and then continue to crawl along at a snail's pace as usual. I would love to see them choose something that makes Debian work better with Linux at all. And I would love to see them not make a bad decision just because they're not questioning principles from time to time. But as long as those things aren't happening, I'm happy.

Whatever they go with, right? I had something to say about that too because I come from the Unix side. You know, I'm all for SystemD. I use it in Arch and everything. It's something new. I don't see why Debian should be, you know, holding back. My problem is that now Linux is sort of getting away from the init RC world.

Right. And now I'm in the Unix side doing RC, and now I've got to come up with a whole different. Yeah. There is that. It is a big change. It is a lot different. All right, guys. Well, good show.

Thank you very much for all of the input. That was a good discussion. And we'll have links to the stuff we talked about like a Q5 sys Yassi Pi or Yassi Pi turnkey solution maybe go back him if you like the idea and we also have a link to that CentOS news and we'll have further discussion about all the stuff that happened at CES

Matt coming up on Sunday including the Steambox stuff Steambox stuff will just be part of our overall coverage so it should be a great show assuming Chase's flight isn't delayed he'll be joining us to cover what he saw. He's on the floor right now at CES. So we'll have a great wrap of that. Following all that,

if you see some good CES stories that are Linux related, please link them up in the Linux Action Show subreddit. I'd love to go through that as we're preparing our coverage. So Matt, have a great week and I'll see you on Sunday, okay?

All right, see you then. All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us this week. Don't forget you can email us. Just go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com and pop that contact link and join us live on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. Pacific over at jblive.tv and jblive.info for the audio edition.

All right, everyone, have a great week and we'll see you on Sunday. And if not, we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you.