LINUX Unplugged - Episode 229: Taste of Linux 2017 | LUP 229

Episode Date: December 27, 2017

We break from the unformat of the show for a special holiday chat about the top moments in the world of Linux this year that impacted us the most.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 229, a very special holiday edition. Oh, hello everybody and welcome to Linux Unplugged. This is your off-schedule weekly Linux talk show where we're going to get together and have a very special holiday edition. I'm joined by the one, the only, Mr. Wes Payne. Hey, Wes. Hello. Hello, Wes. Hello, Wes. Sorry, I was stepping on your mute button. That's right, you were. You know, it's a holiday edition. I do those kinds of things.

I like to talk. You've got to shut me up sometimes. But you know what I was really doing? I was busy unmuting the only Colonel Linux of the team. Hello, Noah. Welcome. Hey. As it turns out, I have my own mute button, too. You know what?

Happy holidays. It's like it's a holiday extravaganza. We ended up getting together and saying, what could we do that we would actually like to talk about for the holiday special? Because we've got special holiday music. We've got a special holiday just us. We're all in our Christmas garb.

You know, as we sit here and record the show, there's a little elf in the background too that is going around and moving out of the studio. So it's a very special holiday episode. We thought we would look back at the year in Linux and talk about some of the top moments that affected us, that affected the show, affected the course

of Linux, and all of those kinds of things. So it's a wide range of things. And we just got done doing a little holiday celebration here in the studio. We did a little holiday burger, some holiday booze. Oh, that's important. Noah, are you doing anything special for the

holiday version over there in Grand Forks? Is it snowing yet? I'm not doing anything special. Oh, Jesus, it's snowing. We got dumbed on five or ten inches, and I finally ended up blowing my driveway out, and there's a big rigamarole

trying to get the city out to plow the streets because there's been, like, you know, there's people running here's how bad it is, Chris. I can't even make this up. There are people running into the back of the snow plows like the only thing only in grand forks dude gigantic yellow snow plows with big flashing lights on the top of them like apparently they missed that yeah you know i mean not to make you angry but but what it's like here in Washington for the holidays is I had my window open in my bedroom last night because I got too warm. So that was, so there you have it.

All right. Well, you know, Noah, it's perfect that you're able to join Wes and I for this episode because some of the biggest moments this year that we all experienced were together. The three of us had a huge year. This show and the other shows that we do gave us the opportunity to experience some significant moments up front. So I thought we would start with the most self-serving.

Absolutely. This was the year that we ended the Linux Action Show. At LinuxFest Northwest 2017. It was our last episode of Linux Action Show. Rest in peace, Laz. What do you think, Noah? Like post-mortem. Now here we are almost, it's been what, 10 months?

11 months since then? Post-mortem, what do you think? It doesn't feel that long. No, it doesn't. It doesn't feel that long. I guess there's obviously things I miss about it. There's obviously things I like doing about the show and things I miss about it. doing about the show and things I miss about it. But, you know, it's interesting because it has given the network and me personally and you personally a bunch of different new directions

that we're able to do things in a different way and in a lot of ways, better ways. And I think that's a really good thing. And I also think it has kind of future-proofed Jupyter Broadcasting because it really feels like the content we're producing now is sustainable. And I'm not sure that I necessarily believe that was true about last. Right. This kind of proves it out, right, that this is the post-last era. We weren't just riding the tailcoats of last. There's original stuff here. That is a good point.

Yeah. Really, it does sort of – was it all just because of last or was it – were the other shows also holding up the tent? Like whether or not that was a tenable argument, you could definitely make it because it was the anchor. And it somehow, even though all the rumors were going wild that Noah and I were at each other's throats, here we are all these months later still hanging out. You know, one of the things I think we did right was after Linux Action Show wrapped up, you and I packed up our families and we went to Montana and just had like some unwinding just like we're not podcasting. We're not you. You podcast. I vlogged, but it didn't feel like a work trip.

You know? No. Yeah. I don't know. Here's the thing that that was one of those things. People were people were saying we were at each other's throats long before last ended. That's true. So, I mean, it was like that's because you just catch us on a bad day.

It might actually be true. I'm wondering, Noah, do you feel any different relationship with the network? You know, like before it was kind of like you and Chris were here on this anchor show. And I mean, obviously, you're still a big part of it, but you're off in your own Ask Noah world in a way. Oh, yeah. It's true. Yeah, I definitely feel less connected to Jupiter Broadcasting, the network. However, I'd sayris and i probably talk

more now than we did oh interesting yeah you know maybe because there's a lot of stuff we would save for well there was a lot of like a lot of the stuff we'd say well shit we got to save that for the show right where now we can just we can have like a 15 message telegram thread about it right so i i think i think i think personal wise i think chris and my relation personal relationship has grown but i think definitely i've i I've I've wandered astray, not wandered astray, but I've I've become less involved with the network as a whole, for sure. Right. Although it's like, you know, we're we listen to every episode. We know when I almost almost always talk about every show of Ask Noah afterwards, like we compare notes and stuff. But in a way a way earlier today we're talking about tech snap and yeah yeah yeah exactly but in a way it also feels like it's noah's best work like not that not to take away from what you did with last but uh there is an aspect to ask noah that is sort of

uh if you give somebody some some rope they can either hang themselves or they can really do they can do like some impressive acrobatics and that's what noah's done now is like because there's a bunch of behind the scenes stuff i know about too but you know i've also i've also seen noah um incorporate some harsh criticism into a show in back into the show in a way that improved it too so that's part of it is and i feel like you'll really understand this and anyone out there that creates content will understand this. The ability to at a moment's notice say change your mind. Yeah. Change your mind. And then it doesn't matter because it's only you. And there have been there's been plenty of episodes where three hours, four hours before I've gone on the air, I've dumped a week's worth of prep and said, nope, we're doing this instead.

And it usually it works out to work to work out really well yeah i i've enjoyed then when we do get together it's like we've we sort of have pent up things to talk about so i think it's helpful yes with the yes and you know the other thing is yeah well i guess this kind of this kind of says the same thing but the other thing is is that we have different experiences than two where if you know when you're prepping a show all weekend yeah together yeah agreeing on the topics and doing, which means we're both using the same operating system, we're both using the same software, we're both doing the same things. And so when you get together and you go, well, I've been off here doing these things, and you've been off doing those things. Now let's talk about how they intermingle. Yeah. Yep. And so that was the, that was sort of the

weight that LinuxFest last year had. And now we're just around the corner going to LinuxFest again. And I feel like it's going to be one of our best ones ever just because we're going to do some show stuff there. But we're going to go more as just people to hang out, talk about open source, talk to other Linux users. I almost feel like LinuxFest Northwest 2018, I hope, will be more like LinuxFest was for me a decade ago. But we'll see. Yeah, and being able to attend that stuff as an attendee is way better. Way better than doing it as a, well, I have to sit behind this booth the entire time because people are going to. Yeah, although we are going to do, like, you're going to try to do Ask Noah there, right?

Absolutely. But what I'm saying is there's a difference between going, setting up a booth, and me doing Ask Noah for an hour, and you doing Linux Action News, and Wes coming to do Unplugged, and that's different than you and I anchoring the entire thing from start to finish. While we are talking about things

that sort of played a big role in the rest of the year, towards the beginning of the year, in January, January 10th, 2017, on Linux Unplugged, episode 179, we had a show called Project Sputnik Interview, where Barton George from Dell came on to talk about some of the new hardware for Project Sputnik. This was a bit of a snowball effect that eventually led to Noah and I at Dell in Austin, Texas later on in the year. And it took some behind the scenes setup, but this was for me, one of the biggest shifts that I've had in years, because I went in with pretty open-minded expectations and walked out of there seeing a company grappling with

deploying Linux to a certain subsect of users and like really learning how to do it. Watching a company that's gone through a transition and it really shifted my view of the Linux hardware market and the Linux user base that are actually buying hardware, like new hardware, not building PCs. I mean, there's so much in that Dell visit for me, Noah, that I feel like I almost can't even give it justice just talking about it. But I feel like if you got the ball rolling on our visit to Dell, I could probably, you could probably get me going. But what do you think? Like looking back at our visit to Dell, it seems like it was a big moment of 2017. Yeah. So we, if you think about it, what people saw, what people know, what people experienced of our visit probably represents less than 1%. Wow. We took three or four days worth of footage and condensed that.

And I can, well, us together, firstly condensed it down. Down and down and down and down and down. And then you'll well, Oh, us together. We condensed it down, down and down and down and down and down. And then, and then you'll remember, like we were literally sitting there and I was like, it was as bare bones. And I was like, man,

we barely used anything. And you're like, we got to make that tighter. And then we just cut a whole bunch more out. Uh, and so, yeah, it really represented a tiny fraction,

but the, and the thing that we couldn't really explain, and part of it was our bad as, as, as content creators for not finding a way to capture this or explain this better, was you had recurring themes and ideas that were shared among everyone in the company. And it would come up in passing conversation enough that we were able to say, okay, these people really care about Linux. It's not just an act. It's not just numbers for them.

They're really passionate people here. And that's something that I don't think the video really did justice. But when you're there and you experience that kind of energy, it changes you. And like you said before we started recording, it gives you a whole different perception of the company. Yeah. It seems like that's the narrative has changed or like how I think about it before. It was like, yeah, OK, Project Sp project sputnik that's cool dell has this like small little thing on the back burner now it also feels just in the larger community people people are aware of it dell doing linux computers is a thing now now do you remember around this time uh so while we were going you had to like backfill coverage in the show oh yeah that's right that is absolutely how is that how did that go for you like because

like i remember while we were gone i think you did a show with joe from yeah and i think maybe a coda radio somewhere in there too well how do you feel like that particular aspect of it all went good do you feel like we could improve i mean you're the you were the one in the in the in the middle of it all i think i think well overall we could definitely stand to improve, but there's a certain aspect of just kind of being thrown in, figuring it out. I really – I got to say I really enjoyed working with Joe. You know, he's obviously a fantastic friend of this here network. He's a – not only is Joe a great like on-air talent, but Joe's really good at like the back end like producing too. Yes, right.

Getting it all lined up. And so, yeah, it's always nice working with Joe because he's always got all his ducks lined up. And it was really interesting for me, too, just having seen a small subset of the stuff here, obviously watching a lot of the shows, but getting to participate more in the back-end and understand, like, what are the different constraints here?

Because my whole worldview was kind of skewed through LEP for a long time, so looking at it from a different perspective, it's been really helpful. You know what else is going on in the background while you and Joe were doing a show and Noah and I are down in Texas, in Austin, Texas. There was also Killdisk, which I don't know if you guys remember, but it was the first really popular ransomware that actually went after Linux users. Right.

And it had a $250,000 US greenback ransom, but it will not decrypt your files even when you pay it. Ugh. And at the time, there was speculation like, oh, is this Linux's moment? Are we going to go after

Samba servers and NFS servers and desktop Linux users with ransomware? Oh man, it's finally here. Kill disk. And then that was basically it. We've talked about it ever again. No, it didn't go anywhere.

Thankfully, very much thankfully. So kill disk, wow. You know, there are so many things that have come up over the year. As we wrap up the year, the Intel management engine is a huge. Continuing story. But if you had to give it to one story in in just like the desktop linux unplugged space i mean you'd have to say it's canonical dropping unity and switching it has to be yeah right 100 100 that was huge and that was back the actual announcement hit us while we were in a

conference room with the people at dell that were shipping Ubuntu laptops. Wow. It couldn't have been crazier timing. And so it was April 11th, episode 192 of the Unplugged program, where we just took a huge section of the show when I got back from Texas. And Noah joined us. And the three of us with the mumble room just went through like, what does this mean? What is going on? And that's all in 192.

And then it was a it was a six month build up to the 1710 release. And and it was it was weird. It was we didn't know exactly how far canonical was going to go with their customization of their Ubuntu version. Were they just going to ship stock GNOME? Was Mark done with the community? You couldn't tell what their motivations were. Like, are they in the desktop game at all anymore? Or are they just this cloud company?

And the commentary ran the whole spectrum from this is Canonical ejecting the desktop to Canonical is going to be more involved than ever before. And it just ran the whole damn spectrum and it all sort of i i just i saw a lot of like 80 20 to of the a bunch who no longer cares about the desktop to 20 of oh this is where how they're going to rejuvenate the linux desktop we do the we we tend to go the doom and gloom route these days they just you know i think people are getting a little bitter we're used to companies announcing now we're dropping the linux version ah screw linux users oh i can't make any money i you know and i mean it's a neglected third operating system not to not to make this about red hat but if you think about it it kind of does start when red hat announced they were done making a desktop distro and they were going to have this Fedora thing. And some of us were like, awesome, Fedora. It's like the leading edge of the enterprise version. Like, I'm going to stay ahead of the trend. This is great. And then other people were like, Red Hat no longer cares about the desktop and kills their desktop version. And that really, if you think about it, has set the tone for all of the future conversations

in a weird way, it seems to me. And there are a lot of parallels there in terms of corporate strategy and... Go ahead, Noah. But it is weird because if you go to Red Hat, there's probably more people in Red Hat using their own product than most other advocates of Linux.

Not canonical necessarily, but a lot of other – I know plenty of other projects where you go and a lot of the people, they're not using their own distro full time. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the ways I got started in Linux way, way, way back in the day before I even realized what Linux was, was a family member who was a Microsoft employee giving me a rack of Red Hat CDs. Really? So yeah, here you go. And it was one of these like four quad fold or tri-fold, I don't remember how many folds it had, had multiple folds of CDs in like the little slots. A hefty little package there.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you were supposed to go through all six disks as you installed this thing because there was no online repo. Sounds worse than Gentoo. It was a different time because there was this sort of like – there was sort of this new world that when Red Hat first emerged that seemed like an impossibility that red hat was going to come along and tame this crazy gpl software and ship an enterprise product was honestly it was um i used to work with these mainframe guys and they told jokes about it like it was such a joke they would say you're going to install your red hat on your mattel processors and pretend like it's a real pc like they would they would ridicule me about it and now you look at it and they're a multi-billion dollar company.

It gobbled up the whole world. And Canonical is racing towards an IPO with their server side. It really has, the whole thing has really shifted from when I first got that trifold or that quadfold. But it does seem like a lot of the conversations that we've had, the proto-conversation was when Red Hat killed the... Is it the same Linux? Hmm. No, I don't think so. I don't think so.

It was a simpler Linux back then. It was a more innocent Linux. It was... I could wrap my head around Linux in a different way back then than I can now, more fully. Not that I... Linux hasn't exceeded my ability to comprehend it yet, but system D was like the first time, like I had a, I had a choice. Like, Chris, you're going to learn system D or you're never going to understand this part of Linux.

Like I had a choice to make there. And so it got close. And I, and so I totally understand why people resent systemd to a degree because it takes something that you could conceptualize and visualize in your head in its totality and adds a black box aspect to it. Yeah, like when you write bash scripts all day. Yeah, what do you think, Noah? Is it different? Is it a different Linux now? I think it is for a number of reasons.

But as it relates specifically to systemd, what I have found because this discussion comes up at basically every conference, basically any group that's down there. And here's what I found. The people that really love to dig into SystemD, ask them one question. Have you ever used it in a large-scale enterprise environment? And the answer every single time is no. Because if they had, they would understand what the benefit, if you're just talking about home or on your desktop or even five or 10 servers, nobody cares

and you won't see a huge benefit to it. It's when you have a large cluster of servers or you're working with a medical institution and that you've got somebody leaning on the back of your chair, swearing at you, asking you how long it's gonna be before this thing comes back up. And you've gone from minutes of boot time to seconds of boot time. That's when it matters. And if you haven't seen that, and if you haven't experienced it,

no wonder you don't get it. Yeah, absolutely. Or like from my experience, I've worked a lot with people in like operation centers who have to go to a server they've never seen before, try to find out the status of a system. Well, good luck with the old-style sys5 system. Did they implement a status command on your service? Who knows? But system beats are right there. You've got the top of the logs all in that. It's really nice.

I do like the fact now that there's a standardized way to get status and, like, I get the PID information. I appreciate all of that. You can even add, like, doc strings to it and just, like, a whole bunch of info. The number one thing I hear from the audience is, hey, I'm kind of new to Linux and unit files on system D make way more sense to me than anything I've ever seen before. And so when we're bringing on new users, new admins, new sysadmins, I know that's something that has resonated well with them. But for me, the bigger picture item was, is it truly standardized syntax across all the distros. That, to me, that was the most valuable thing

because, like a dummy, I ran, for a period of time, Debian and Gentoo and SUSE Enterprise all in production, and there was very little commonality back then across all of those distributions. So you learned all three different methods to just do the same stuff. Oh, man. Different package managers, different status commands, different names for all the packages, different syntax for the init scripts. Everything was different across the board.

It was all on me to manage it. And it was all fine for Chris. for chris and then if go figure auditors came along and said excuse me uh your it guy is a maniac and deployed three different linux distributions and uh that's that's not maintainable so you better standardize and write enterprise linux or fire that guy yikes yeah so systemd offers like a like to me it, it offers something that Chris in a very, very, very difficult situation a decade ago could have really used. If I could have come and said, well, look, my maintenance scripts all use SSH and system D commands or whatever, there's not really an issue here. concentrated commonality across the platforms there i could have nullified their argument but because they had a completely accurate technical argument and management argument i i had no no nowhere to go i had to get rid of all the gen 2 i had that was what that's what

forced me to get rid of all of my gen 2 wow yeah it really speaks to that like where you know one of the things we love about linux is there's so there's so much choice there's so many different forks and all kinds of things where is that a value add or where does it just not? Where is it just creating extra work for us? Yeah, I suppose in a lot of ways, Canonical moving back to GNOME has added a standard to the Linux desktop. It's not great for plasma lovers. It's not great for the Qt platform, but it is really great for the enterprise platform. GNOME, GTK, and if I target flat packs or I target snap packages, I can nail all of these distributions now. From SUSE to Debian to Ubuntu to Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS,

it's all targetable now. The GNOME us from 320 on has now become has become a target and you can write applications to gnome 320 and later how long have we been wanting to be able to have a one story to tell outside developers like look you can target linux and 2017 was a really good year for the builder project for gnome builder so you can there's a tool set there's a distribution mechanism and there's a a common API now with GNOME 320 and beyond. And Canonical being in that is a very good thing for the corporate desktop. I don't know if it's great for the home user, but it's great for the corporate desktop. How have your clients taken to it?

Yeah, so I'll get to that in one second. I would argue that what is good for the corporate user is ultimately, in 99% of cases, good for the home user. And here's why. Because the corporations have the checkbooks to develop and work out the kinks that bother them. And so if you can get a desktop environment that you're going to have large corporations using, they're not going to deal with LibreOffice crashing, for example. They're going to want large corporations using, they're not going to deal with LibreOffice crashing, for example, right? They're going to want that fixed. And so if you can get some of those bugs fixed, and that trickles down to the home user. How have my clients been working out? Fairly well, although there's very few of them that have really been affected by the change, mainly because we keep most of those users on the LTS. And I've recommended that people switch and I say, you know,

this is the one exception when I wouldn't do that. And every time I've had that conversation and they say, well, but for sure, we're going to have to end up re-upgrading in April when they, when the LTS comes out. And of course my answer is yes, right? Because that's the responsible thing to do. Well, we're not going to do it. We're not, we're not going to, we're not going to upgrade, we're not going to upgrade all these machines now only to come back and revisit it in four or five months. Sure. Yeah, of course. So most of them haven't done it. Okay. Yeah. They haven't even had to deal with it yet. You know, that's something we should keep in mind. It's going to be years. It's a big deal for us on the edge

here, Linux users. But LTS users, people that are Noah's clients, it'll be years before they deal with this. Right. How long is 16 supported? Before we wrap up talking about Ubuntu and the switch and the 1710 release uh we've got to mention the trip to new york we got to mention we got to mention that um october 3rd 2017 we uh we got back from new york so obviously a big moment a big moment for the show a big moment for our understanding of Ubuntu. So I'll talk about that just as we, you know, I've got to tease it a little bit. But first, let me talk about Ting. Go to linux.ting.com.

Ting is mobile that is done right. All of us sitting here on this show right now are Ting customers for one clear reason. You pay for what you use. And if you're savvy even just a little bit, you can make it work in your advantage. The average Ting bill is $23 a month. Every time I tell people the way Ting works that are outside the U.S., they go, Chris, Chris, you know that that's just how it should work? That's just how we do it here? And they usually like the insert name of country that is not the United States. Yeah.

That's how Ting is. Ting is if you had to reboot the mobile industry and start over again. You get Ting. You pay for what you use, nationwide coverage, no contracts, no determination fees. If you just want to use data, you just pay for data. If you just want to use text messages, get a few alerts from Nagios, you use text messages. Pay for what you use. Like April, maybe I spent $18.

In May, maybe I spent $34. In June, $23. And then back in July, I'm I spent $18. In May, maybe I spent $34. In June, $23. And then back in July, I'm back to $18. It is unbelievable how much money you will save in a two-year contract period. For me, like being able to just tether whenever I need it, right, because I'll just pay for the data. I'm not like sneaking around my ISP. I'm not doing anything like that. It's just we're like troubleshooting problems.

Have someone plug their Android phone in. I can remote in over that. Done. Absolutely. Linux.ting.com. No contract, nationwide coverage, pay for what you use, CDMA and GSM. Linux.ting.com. So this whole trip to New York was very exciting. I didn't know how the hell I was going to pull it off. I had heard rumors that it was coming, but I didn't know for sure. So I couldn't I couldn't like put it on a calendar and say I'm going to be gone during this time period. Everybody plan on this because I didn't really know when it was going to be until it got just about a month out. Life is not that easy for us.

And then and then I had to do the math. Do I drive the RV? Do I fly? Do I take Dia's car? Do I take my truck? Do I go buy a camper van and move into the camper van and then take the camper van to New York and sleep on the streets of New York? All of these things were considered. And what I ended up with was driving to Dia's car, which gets about 35 miles to the gallon, which is pretty good here in the States.

And that turned out to be the cheapest way because I had the RV, which gets around 6 to 8 miles per gallon, the truck, which gets around 15 to 20 miles per gallon, or Hedias' car, which gets around 35 to 40 miles per gallon, or Hedias car, which gets around 35 to 40 miles per gallon. And in each one of these options, there was this huge savings of gas money. So the most expensive aspect of that New York trip was the hotel, which I think was like 360 a night. So Noah and I decided to shack up together. Always looking for an excuse. Here's where that camaraderie comes right back in here. to shack up together.

Always looking for an excuse. Here's where that camaraderie comes right back in here. So to be fair, first of all, I did, like the very first, well, I think the very first thing I said was, yeah, that'd be really fun. Let's do it. And then the second thing I said was, New York is like the most insanely expensive city I've ever been to, and it's going to cost us a lot of money. We're both going to go broke. Yeah.

And that's true. That is true. I mean, that's why. So that's why I ended up driving, because I just needed to save as much money as possible. True. I mean, that's why. So that's why I ended up driving, because I just needed to save as much money as possible. And as I headed out and the news of my adventure sort of trickled out through the GB audience. People started emailing me offerings to, like, stay at their house, crash on their couch or even park the RV in their driveway. And so as we got going, like it was like one email and then it was a couple of tweets and then it was a few telegrams and then it was five five ten fifteen

thirty five emails offering me places to stay along my road people watching the live tracker i just i you know the audience is so awesome because that is the idea that I could have. I could have probably taken the RV and just not even planned on a single place to stay and just had the safety net of the audience offering me places as I went along. It makes me think that maybe one day if I get a wild hair and I want to go off and do something just totally crazy, the audience would totally have my back. And as I'm going down the road, I'd be getting offers of places to stay because, you know, we've got offers at places I thought we had nobody listening. So I never even bothered asking. And I just got these invitations coming in constantly. I felt bad.

I was telling people, no, people people like, please, we'll come over. We'll make you dinner. I'm like, that dude sounds amazing. Yeah. I'm like one of these years and it needs to be soon. I just need to like go off on a road trip just to do that and take the microphone with me. But we got all the way to New York, all the way, like literally on the other side of the country. We're still getting emails the entire time about offers of places to stay. We drive across the entire country. We get in New York. And I didn't expect the situation. I don't know what I expected. It was the Grand Hyatt Hotel. And I guess I expected a parking garage. That's what I expected, is I expected a parking garage.

Now I understand there was a train station underneath the hotel, so there was no room for a parking garage. I did not have that knowledge before I arrived at New York. So I guess I thought I'd be arriving at a parking garage. So we spent a week living out of a compact Ford Focus. Production equipment, everything. Sounds roomy. A DC-powered cooler, food, clothing, everything we needed was in this car. And we get to New York after a week of driving, and it all came down to about 27 seconds.

We arrive at the Grand Hyatt, and you pull up. And the valet, you know, you get out of the car, and they welcome you, and they grab your bag, and they put you to the door, and they say, thank you, here's the valet you know you get out of the car and they welcome you and they grab your bag and they put you to the door and they say thank you here's the ticket for your car and you go wait wait wait wait wait what if i need something out of my car well you just you just you just go in there and you just tell the desk that you need a car you need your car back and we'll bring you whatever you need oh so i can just get whatever i need whenever i need it yeah you just go in there you tell the bell hop you need your car and they they'll call up the car service, and they'll bring you your car. Okay, yeah, well, I got my bag, I grabbed my laptop, you know, Hedia grabbed one of her bags, didn't grab her insulin kit or anything like that, and they took the car.

And then we get in, and we get up to our room, and we're like, well, we should probably grab your insulin so that way you can, you know, not die. And I could, you know, maybe use my toothbrush. So we go down to the bellhop and we're like, yeah, we'd like to get our cars. That way we can unload it. Okay, well, you know, that's $75 every time we bring your car out. And you're probably going to want to – and then like this is like over five minutes. He also says you're probably going to want to tip these guys too because they hate doing this. minutes he also says you're probably going to want to tip these guys too because they hate doing this so i would tip them pretty good and there's a 75 charge every time we want to every time you bring

your car out wow and that was what i was like oh man i was not prepared for new york that was like the most like oh shit used to be called nickel and diming, but these days it's larger bills. I was really glad I had grabbed all the recording gear. Right. Because I was like, I have that. So long, Hadiyah. I'm going to make some podcasts while you wither away. She eventually used the live tracker to hunt the car down herself. Yeah.

She got to where the car was at and got into it and told her, hey, I need my insulin. And then grabbed a few other things. Yeah, totally. And then took off. But it was really interesting to watch how Canonical works, to go inside a company for a little bit. A company that we talk so much about, but really from the outside. I walked away with a lot of insights. I don't know.

Do any of them stand out to you? When you go inside like you've gone inside red hat now we've gone inside dell and we went inside canonical this year it's a lot of different inner workings does anything stand out at you i guess the thing that stood out to me the most uh was how laid back everyone was like if you think about look at the the workshops that we were sitting in right right? Like these people are there, they're paying atrocious amount of money to be at this hotel. Atrocious. We split it, thankfully, and it was still over $1,000.

Yeah, yeah. But you think about this. So you and I, two yahoos, walk in there with some cameras. And people like Martin Wimperis, they just stop what they're doing. Hey, meet Chris and Noah. Hey, these are guys from JB. They're here to hang out and whatever. Well, is there anything we can shoot? No, shoot whatever you want. You're welcome here.

And then we sit down and obviously I got a chance to, I got pretty close to Neil Gompah, who was one of the Fedora guys that was there that was working with the development team. And so he would sit down and I'm like, yeah, I don't really understand development. And so he'd walk me through at a very elementary level what they were doing

and stuff like that. And the fact that they are not only comfortable, but encouraged to do that, it was, it was really interesting. You can see how the, how you can, how you can hire a lot of really smart people and how they can get a lot of really great work done working under that environment. Yeah, the other thing that really struck me about it is you hear a lot of people debating, is it possible to get remote work done? Can you have a remote workforce?

Is this a thing that could even be possibly accomplished? Three years ago, there was huge news when Yahoo announced that all remote workers were coming. Oh, yeah. Right. Canonical is a company that was launched post-internet. And so it's just an assume that with a lot of these different tools, you can just work remotely. And then you have get-togethers. So what you see when you go to this event is a company built around the concept of we don't need to be region-specific.

For some jobs jobs we do. But for other jobs, we can just grab the best talent all over the world. Especially when you have this like open source pool. You have people who are interested from other regions. You need some flexibility. Yeah. And there is a – I don't want to be a – I don't want to ruin everybody's holiday spirit. But there is a awkward – there's an awkward element to this, and they really handle it with grace.

And it is you have a bunch of different cultures all coming into one space. Some people, a good portion of them, are not even native English speakers. And they all come together. And all of that doesn't matter because this sounds so corny, but it's really true. And it's actually how it feels like at fest too. All of that doesn't matter because it's the Linux and the open source stuff that matters.

And they're so busy debating all of the nerdy aspects. That drive is there. The stuff that we talk about every single week, they're all having that conversation there. And that's what they talk. that's what they care about. They don't care about somebody that might have a disability. They don't care about somebody that doesn't speak English. Like what they care about is the conversations that we all have here.

And so it's really interesting because that adds like an immediate commonality to everybody who doesn't normally work together. And it kind of makes that whole remote. Everybody's remote. And then we come together every now and then. It kind of makes it all click because not only have you had a bunch of online conversations, but you have this common ground

that you can immediately have a discussion about. So I think it really works for Canonical in a way it might not work for some other companies. That's my theory, at least. Because I haven't really seen it, I mean, I think it's an underplayed aspect of Canonical because I haven't really seen a lot of other companies pull it off. It was cool to see it.

I think there's other companies that do it. I think they're just size comparison wise, I think you might be onto something. Like, you know, if you look at like, obviously Google has tons of people that work remotely. Red Hat, they don't care if you work remotely or not. So I think it's being done. But I think what's interesting about Canonical is the size and what they're able to do. Because they just got recently done

paring the entirety of their company down, big time. Right. Hit the button. Hit the button. We lost you. Hit the button. Oh, God. There you go. You're back. They have done a particularly good job, as you said, finding the best talent wherever they exist. Yeah. And I'll say this.

The 1710 release ended up being pretty solid. Like that was the real rubber meets the road aspect to all of this. We could say all this stupid shit about it with a, you know, you can have your big blog post or you can have your big conversation end of the desktop, their biggest investment ever. Like all of these people can have all of these different discussions. But the reality was the rubber met the road when 1710 shipped shipping or shut up and we all looked at and went not only was that a pretty decent release just in general like stability and

performance and bug fixes but it was done the right way it was polite light forks of the dock it was a gnome session implementation of their customization instead of just a whole bunch of extensions stacked on top of gnome right we haven of just a whole bunch of extensions stacked on top of GNOME. Right. We haven't spent a whole bunch of time talking about all the drama between Ubuntu and GNOME. Like it just hasn't been a thing. No. Now they're on the advisory board and they had a big banner up saying that GNOME loves Ubuntu. In some ways, like the best things that we had hoped for or speculated on way back when that was announced kind of came true. Okay. So I have a theory on the biggest loser of the year

as a result. And loser is a harsh term because I just mean loser in terms of user exodus. So we'll get to that in just a moment. You ready? Are you guys with me? I'm excited. Because you might disagree.

You may disagree. Yeah, all right. So before we go there, let's talk about DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean.com. Go over there and use our promo code D-O-Unplugged. It's one word. D-O-Unplugged. You get a $10 credit. You spin up a droplet. You can install Linux.

You can get working with something that really matters really fast. You ready to get off Dropbox? Fire up NextCloud. If you're out at family events and the whole family's looking for a way to share the photos from the event, maybe have a shared calendar for people's birthdays, why not spin up a NextCloud instance?

You can also get file sync with that. If you're ready for a blog or something that's unique and yours, you could build it from scratch, or you could deploy an entire stack with Ubuntu LTS, Nginx, a database, and Ghost, which is an awesome Markdown-based blogging platform that's really simple. And the nice thing about DigitalOcean is the price point, especially when you use our promo code DL Unplugged,

means that you could just use it for an education. You could just use it to learn, get started with something, test. But their infrastructure with all SSDs, the dashboard, the API and data centers all over the world means you can put it in production and leave it in production. That's a really unique combination. DigitalOcean.com. Use our promo code D-O-Unplugged, get a $10 credit,

and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this holiday edition of the Unplugged program. So I think the biggest loser may be, and it hurts deeply for me to say this, Arch. I thought that's what you were going to say, yeah? Yeah, and do you agree? That is not what I thought you were going to say. Really? What did you think I was going to say?

The biggest distro that lost out this year on users? I don't know, but that is just not the answer I was expecting. Well, you know, when I announced that I was going to switch to 16.04 and just sort of stabilize there, I mean, this is anecdotal information, I probably heard from a hundred and something people who said yeah I'm doing the same thing I've been running Arch for years some people even said I've been running it since your Arch challenge and

I love it I love it too the software availability can't be matched but you and I even before the show Wes were talking about how you always whenever you use Discord you're always using the web app version now because you just you're not keeping your Arch installation up to date enough for Discord to even work anymore because some of these packages,

you've got to stay on top of it like a madman for it really to be a smooth Arch system. We're talking daily updates. And I was all on board with that for years, and then something slipped, and then it just slipped more, and it slipped more, and then it got two months, three months.

And then that is really negligent Arch use. And that's when I realized, oh, I got to go to an LTS. Well, and I think there may have been somewhat of an Arch bubble, right? And it hit this time where, like, lots of people using Linux. You want that software. There's a lot of good software you can get. And there was, you know, flatpaks and snaps. They hadn't matured.

No app image. Exactly. And that's not the problem anymore. So I think there will always remain this core Arch. can get and there was you know flat no snaps they hadn't matured they hadn't no average exactly um and that's not the problem anymore so i think there will always remain this core arch i mean i still want to put it on systems especially systems that i really want a lot of control and understanding of the system because like i mean i use them onto all the time i use it at work but it's a fatter it's a fatter os than an arch os that you make for yourself right and it has some things that i don't agree with that are harder to change. But if all your goal is like run these three systems and do so in production,

there's a lot of reasons not to use it. I don't know about you, Noah, but I have not installed a single Arch system since Ubuntu 17.10 came out. Oh, so really what it has come down for me is, and I've said this for years this is nothing new but i just don't believe personally that arch has the same amount of polish that a distro like ubuntu has and what do you have what is polish yeah define polish because i could either

completely disagree and call you a jerk or i could totally agree depending on your definition of polish so when you look at So, when you look at Ubuntu with Unity, for example, you can tell that somebody, one person or a group of people have sat down and gone left to right, top to bottom, and said, what is this experience going to be like?

And if, when you get to Arch, obviously you install particularly with GNOME, because that's really the only experience I have. So you install Arch and you install GNOME, because that's really the only experience I have. So you install Arch and you install GNOME, and the first thing that you sit down and go, this is terrible. And then the answer you get is, well, GNOME is designed to be extensible, so it's just kind

of the core thing, and then you add the things that you want. Okay, so let's go with that. So you go out and you start installing extensions, and you install a dock because you want a dock, and you install this top icon thing because you want that, and you try and do this. And then you find out that sometimes certain icons don't show up at the top sometimes they still go down to that bottom drawer thing and the dock doesn't really quite work because it kind of overlays over the website because you can't really tell where the web browser edge is because that

and then you go back and you complain to people and you say but this you know this you told me to use this extension this dock doesn't work and then well, yeah, I just kind of gave up on the dock. Well, you gave up on the dock because it sucks. If I was back on Ubuntu, not only does the dock work functionally properly and doesn't create five different telegram icons on the left-hand side, it also does little things. Like it changes the color of the of the dock, depending on what the underlying background is. Or progress bars. And yeah, right, right. It has a little progress bar underneath and the little dots to tell you which application is running. There are so many little things that Ubuntu has done because they have just beaten, hammered this thing home.

And no, it's not pretty and flashy and not much has changed from 1204 to 1610. But the little things have gotten just really, really clean. And I still have yet to find a Linux distribution that has the insane amount of multi-monitor support that Unity has. And I was talking to you about this earlier before the show. I have a machine that's running Arch and I need it to run OBS. And I go to open OBS, and OBS just doesn't open up. That's just a frustrating thing as a computer user, because the reality is I know if I go to the Arch wiki, or the AWAR, I know that somebody has the answer in there, and I have to roll back a package or install this or do that. But here's what I also know.

If I had Ubuntu 17.10 on there, I wouldn't be asking those questions. They would just work. It would just work. I'm 100% sure it would. So it all depends on what you want to do with the computer. Do you want to play with it? Is it a toy to you or is it a machine to get work done? So it seems like to me, the ideal would be that GNOME 3 itself as an upstream project is so polished, is well done is so refined that when you install arch or fedora or susa or banjero or whatever and you or solace and you chose gnome 3 shell as the desktop you would just get this great refined experience and then you have systemd underneath that and then you have the linux kernel under that and you're good to go right i think it speaks to that like part of that polish and the advantages.

You do have this company with, like, we have an end goal in mind, whereas Arch is really maybe the best of, but an assemblance of open source software. You assemble it yourself. And so maybe part of the Ubuntu thing that's really good about this is you're right. Like, instead of having this weird Unity with a bunch of forked libraries that no one wants to bother to install on a different operating system, now we do have that in an upstream. I do agree with what Noah's saying, though, man. When I logged into Unity 7, and I don't even remember, I think I started using Unity 7 more and more because that's what Noah put on the Skype machine.

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, that's right. We were just trying out all the different, everything from Plasma to Mate to XFCE and GNOME 3. And each time, like, we would hit these walls and be like, well, shit, I can't use this now. Fuck. And then the entire time, this Unity 7 machine was just sitting here like a jerk, not doing anything wrong. And I thought, well, wait a minute, why aren't we talking about this?

And so I tried out another system. It was great because when I started to use it, I had that experience that Noah was talking about where it's like, oh, shit, somebody really thought about this. Like they really gave some time and they changed the way this thing behaves to make it better. And it's nice, but it is getting old. It is a limited time option.

Like I'm sort of like um it's great right now but in a year in two years i feel like i'm three years i feel like i'm on a polar i'm like that polar bear on a melting ice cap right now and i'm floating down the water i'm like i'm gonna have to jump to another ice cap uh soon but i probably have another year's worth of ice cap and you know you're gonna get wet and frigid cold in the process. And the problem is the ice really started melting. I mean, really, it's been kind of stagnant since 2012. The ice hasn't really grown at all since 2012, and so now we're just rapidly shrinking. But what gives me hope is if Canonical can put that much effort and get that kind of experience out of Unity that they're developing themselves,

if we really believe what we always talk about on these shows about open source and open source development, there is no reason, absolutely no justifiable reason, why GNOME shouldn't be as good and exceedingly better because you have both Canonical and Red Hat working on the same thing. As well as others. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's, I hope, maybe in 2019 that's what we'll be talking about.

Maybe at the end of 2018 it'll be like, wow, how do we ever even exist without it being like this? In the meantime, I can't get past a spooky concept that is one of the reasons I'm not on GNOME if I'm being completely honest with you guys. If you look at what has been super successful in terms of desktop platforms, like the desktop that has persevered the longest, I think a lot of people would agree is Windows XP. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. That basic model. Yes, yes, yes.

It's going to be Unity 7 because you have this Unity 7 remix that's already in the works for 18.04. You have people running 16.04 that I'm hearing from over – I mean think about it. If I'm getting over 100 emails about one topic, this can't be a small thing. To me that – I know it's an anecdotal thing but to me that's a pretty big bellwether. And so you're going to have Unity 7 without the negative connotations is the XP of the Linux desktop. But what do we take away from that? What we take away from that is users like stability. They like to know where the gas pedal is at.

They like it when the gas pedal remains in the same place for years. And developers like multiple years to work on something and iterate on something and ship something so they like super stable, super easy to target platforms like Windows and like Unity 7. There is a true user advantage to having something stay the same. Look at mac os like every for all of the hype they get it's it's been basically the same basically the same the mac os like 10 years yeah right and like we get really excited here on the show about new features but you know jane doe out

there doesn't care because you can still just open your window go to facebook and use your computer what do you think, Noah? I think the best thing about Linux is that we can have both. I think that the people that want the latest and greatest thing, I think those people are more than welcome and able to stay on Arch. But what you're saying, and I think the really important thing here that even the people that want to be on Arch have to understand is when Microsoft goes to package Skype, they don't sit down at the Grand Hyatt with a bunch of Arch users. They sit down with Canonical and have a conversation

about how they can target Snap packages. And if you can give Microsoft a, here you go, target this particular thing, make this package, and you'll get all of the Linux peoples. If you can make it that simple for them instead of, we're going to target ubuntu but that changes every five years and then this happens and then there's a lot of people that use arch because they don't they have this problem with canonical and some people don't like unity so they're over red hat right or that just you get lost and it just and no forget it we'll just not do linux that's a mess we're not touching it i think things like everyone you know with ubuntu or canonical agreeing on gnome and i think with the advent of universal packages, I think we have a real shot at getting some really great industry support.

And that will trickle down to Arch. You know those Arch guys are going to find a way to make anything that somebody targets for Ubuntu work on Arch. And if it snaps, it's a done deal. Yeah. You know how you know this is true. If you want another interesting example you could cite is there is a likely reason that Valve chose Ubuntu 12.04 and not Manjaro Linux for their Steam runtime. You know, there's a reason there. There's a reason why they chose Debian for SteamOS and not something that's like Fedora. There is today as we record this,

well, I shouldn't say that, but this is going to date a little bit. I don't know if you guys saw this. You know what? Maybe we'll make this news. This is a little newsy, but there is a major company that just announced their own Linux distribution.

And you guys know the company. I have not seen this bit of news. I guarantee you've never used their distribution. I'm betting. I actually can't guarantee it, but I'm betting because it's so new. I bet you've never used their Linux distribution. All right? Is that a good tease?

I'm excited. A holiday tease, Wes. Yeah, woo! You got me all excited. Linux Academy. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You go there, you support the show, and you sign up for a free seven-day trial. This is a good chance to try out the Linux Academy platform.

Bang it around a little bit, see what it can do, download some of the guides, listen to some of the study audio. It's like a podcast that you can listen to to teach you about Linux. Plus, they'll spin up virtual servers if you're ready to do that. And one of the things I love is you choose very early on. I want to base it all around Debian or Red Hat or Ubuntu. You know, there's like more than seven distros you can choose from. You choose the distribution and then it will then modify the courseware. So all the syntax and all of like the language matches the right distro.

But behind the scenes, they also spin up the virtual servers on the back end as the courseware dictates. And they match the distro you've chosen, right? Like all these things that happen in the back end are all centered around that because they truly get Linux users. And they have human beings that are ready to help whenever you need it. They're constantly adding new courseware to make your subscription more valuable. And they have flashcards that are forked by a community. So there's new things that are being contributed there to help you study constantly. If you're going for certs, they've got courseware

just for that. And if you just want to learn more, they've got a really good system where you can say how much time you've got, what you kind of want to go for, and they'll work around all of that. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. Go there, sign up for a free seven-day trial, and a big thank you to Linux Academy. LinuxAcademy.com

slash unplugged. You have a guess? I think you could guess this. I'll give you a hint. I'll give you a hint, Wes. It is a Seattle-based company. So I was going to say Amazon. Yeah, Amazon launched Amazon Linux 2.

I was going to say, I was like, they already have one. So that's not new, but it's two. So what they had before is, well, what they had before was like their Linux AMI instance, which you could deploy on Amazon infrastructure. Yeah. Amazon Linux 2 is based on Red Hat Enterprise 7. Hey, that's nice. And I actually have a copy of it running upstairs because they are distributing it for local on-premises deployment. VMs, Docker, they're not releasing an ISO. There's no website you go to download this.

Like you can't go to like the Amazon website and download an ISO and burn it to a thumb drive. That's not who this is for. No. You can go to Docker Hub and you can grab it. This is a new way for companies to distribute Linux. It is designed to run in a virtual environment for on-premises development. They're creating a virtual box, VMware, and a Hyper-V image. So you can build locally.

You can run it in Docker or build on your VM, and then you can deploy up on EC2, obviously, using Amazon Linux 2. Now, it is, quote-unquote, based on Red Hat Enterprise 7, but I played around with it a little bit, and it is so basic, bitch, you can't do anything. Like, it doesn't even have PS, top, nothing. All of the repos are pointed at Amazon servers, so all of the updates, all of the packages. And then they have, like, an Amazon Linux extras repository, which is going to have partner software, like current partner software,

whatever that might be. That must be a feature, right? So that you can be like, hey, we're an Amazon partner. You can get the latest software if you run in the Amazon Linux. And then the other thing they're doing is they're basing it around the Linux kernel 4.9, which is an LTS release. So this is going to be supported for five years. This is an Amazon version of CentOS that's been pared down with more up-to-date versions of GCC, binutils, Node.js, Python, like a bunch of the stuff.

It's making RHEL 7 relevant for right now. RHEL 7 with modern application libraries and whatnot. Interesting. Yeah. Available for on-premises deployment. It's funny too because this is like, out of the Linux is out there. I'm sure Amazon Linux accounts

for a huge number and we just don't ever talk about it. Oh yeah, well and think about this too. Like you're sitting in like some big meeting and you've got your CTO there and your CEO and your developers and your art people and you're all talking about this big application you're building. I have been in these meetings and you're like,

well, we got to definitely, like back then it was, we got to run it on the Facebook platform. This is how old I am. We got to make sure this application runs on the Facebook platform. But today, you'd probably be talking about how you're going to be a huge success and you got to be able to scale and you got to be able to meet demand.

And so you got to deploy it on EC2. So you can now write your applications on your LAN running in, like, I have it on my stupid Linux box upstairs in Docker. I've got Amazon Linux running right now. I could write applications on that, and then when I'm ready to deploy to the world, I just upload the whole damn thing to Amazon,

and it's the same exact thing I was running on my local machine. I wonder how much of an impact, like, I wonder what Ubuntu feels about this, because that's one of their big selling points, right? It's like, you can run this everywhere, and they want to have that huge cloud presence. Noah, picture yourself for a moment. Like, this is years down the road. This is actually not going to happen. But picture for a moment, you're down the road, and you're like, yeah, we're going to install Amazon Linux for you, because it is a free Amazon-backed version of Red Hat Enterprise 7.

There's no way. I'm not seeing this at all. So here, there's a number of problems I see with this. The first is, the reason why Amazon AWS is as big as it is, is because people were able to download Ubuntu, get comfortable with it, build applications in it, and then that was a really easy way. It was way easier, back in the day, to run Ubuntu in the cloud than it was a really easy way it was way easier to my back of the day to run ubuntu in the cloud than it was to run a microsoft windows server and that accounted i think for a

huge number of people that came over to things like aws right but that was that was that was pre-containers that was now you guys also pre-aws dominance right like if you're a startup i'm not disagreeing with you fully i'm just playing devil's advocate i mean if you think about it like you think about in the terms of i'm going to deploy an application a container and in this application is going to be a container and i'm going to put it up online as a container um you don't want all of ubuntu in there dent but what what is the advantage of taking on the overhead of maintaining a software distribution if you're just going to run the software in a container anyway? Like it would run – containers run just fine on Ubuntu stock and that's somebody else's headache. So profit-wise –

But you need a Linux inside the container environment. You need like a minimal Linux in the – the container itself is also – what do you think, Wes? Right? Yes, that's true. I mean, I will also say... That's why Clear Linux is... Ubuntu does have pared down, you know, cloud versions.

I will also say that like the overhead, I think, to Amazon is just so negligible. And I think it's also interesting to think about like, here's Amazon employing, like they have people doing this. Like there are people employed to develop this Linux version.

Yeah, I do kind of follow what Noah's saying, though. It's like what makes Ubuntu popular. I'm just wondering what the advantage is. Well, I think the advantage is it's like a target. Also walking. Well, for Amazon, that's the advantage. But the advantage for a developer is this is an Amazon-backed target. And if I write to this and then I deploy on EC2, I'm almost guaranteed to have a good time.

I imagine there will be a lot of documentation. Right, I'm almost guaranteed to have a good time. Imagine there'll be a lot of documentation. Right, exactly. You have to manage the game. So what's the advantage to Amazon? Well, if you're already going to deploy on EC2. You see what I'm saying? Like say you were like building an application with the intention to host it on EC2, which is common. Oh, yeah.

Once you've like, right, management decided we are an AWS shop and that's where you're at. Yeah, we're not running our own servers. We're not building a data center. We're an AWS shop, and that's where you're at. Yeah. We're not running our own servers. We're not building a data center. We're an AWS shop. Very few companies, less than they should, but very few are doing both Google or Azure. Most of them are all in on AWS, which we have seen from time to time. We have all witnessed that from time to time. And so this, to me, seems like it's like an insurance policy.

Think about it from a business predictability standpoint. insurance policy. Think about it from a business predictability standpoint. This is the Amazon Linux, which it's actually called that, the Amazon Linux, which I'm going to run on the Amazon infrastructure. There probably also are actual optimizations. Already, there are extra packages, extra drivers that you install when you run on AWS. This will come with those pre-shipped. They can tailor for their environment. And then you go one geek layer down and you discover it's actually based on Red Hat Enterprise 7, which is also a super

solid Linux. So you, like, when you go down the stack, and then you go even further, you go, oh, well, and then on top of that, it's based on the Linux kernel 4.9, which is an LTS release, and it ships with modern versions of Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, et cetera. It seems like there's a lot of vertical integration.

So it's like Red Hat Enterprise 7 backed by Amazon built for EC2 with modern backend packages. Garrett, I guess I just keep hearing vendor lock-in. I guess that's what comes out to me. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Me too. That's what comes out to me. Their entire business, their entire desktops all are hosted on Amazon. Like the management just said, we're going to do the Amazon remote desktop system, and everybody's just going to have a remote desktop powered by Amazon here at our company. And that's the entire fleet. Huh.

That's interesting. Yeah, I guess I'm having a hard time seeing it, but I understand conceptually what you guys are saying. I wouldn't want to do it. I'm not saying I wouldn't want JB to do it. I'm not saying it's a good idea. With the amount of developers that are going to be getting their – because people don't start on AWS, right? That's what the whole light sale thing was supposed to be about was to try to get people started. was to try to get people started. Because there's a lot of people that,

unless they, like you said, unless they're already an AWS shop, the guy who has an idea, that guy isn't on AWS. He's on DigitalOcean or he's on Voltaire. Or he's got a Ubuntu box or a Fedora box at home. Absolutely. I'd spinning it up on his home or right here.

Or she, yeah. Or she. So, so, just about got into a discussion about pronouns. So then, that's what I was going to say. Like, if you're going to say she and he, then we better get in re and they and them. But anyway, so what you wind up with then is, where is the start of this?

Is that only is going to apply to people that are starting with AWS? And maybe AWS has grown to the point that that's just the de facto standard now for any large-scale thing. And so any company that's looking to host in the cloud is going to apply to people that are starting with AWS. And maybe AWS has grown to the point that that's just the de facto standard now for any large scale thing. And so any company that's looking to host in the cloud is going to go, well, you know what? I can just start with this light sale thing. And if I need to scale, I can go from my $5 up to full on AWS. Maybe that's the thing. I wonder how many times you're the person with the idea and then you go to get VC funding. They're like, oh, you're on this DigitalOcean thing. You should probably build that on AWS. So we're not giving you the money. Or maybe, I mean, it feels like DigitalOcean thing, you should probably build that on AWS so we're not giving you the money. Or maybe, I mean, it feels like DigitalOcean would probably be big enough. Any of your rack spaces, your DigitalOceans,

they would probably be big enough. But like, oh, you've rolled your own infrastructure? Yeah, no way we're funding that. That definitely feels like a thing. I mean, I don't have a lot of personal experience with that. And they get you right to the other part about Amazon is they have all these managed services. So instead of, like, you can be a guy with an idea, instead of hiring a DBA, you're

like, well, we'll just pay money to have Amazon be our DBA. From the conversations I've had with a lot of different listeners, the situation they end up in is they need to get confidence in either an investor or a CTO or somebody who says, there's no way in hell that's going to work. And if you put a name on there, sometimes that name is IBM. Sometimes that name is Microsoft. And now more and more, that name is Google or Amazon.

The name changes, but it's that same idea. Oh, God, if that isn't true. Yeah. And when you put, yeah, well, we're going to be running this on Amazon's infrastructure. What that is shorthand for is we're going to be able to answer every web request, everything's going to be fast, and it's going to stay up all the time, and somebody else

is going to manage all of the IT aspects. That's shorthand for we're running on EC2, it's not our problem. And that is predictable risk to investors and to companies and to small businesses, and that's why it's appealing. I'm not saying it's a good idea. Right, whether or not that's true or makes sense for particular cases or not. Yeah, because all that could be true with just Ubuntu stock. All that could be true with...

Yep. Dude, if you had a great IT team that had been obviously rocking it for years, where you could even just quoting tickets or bug fixes, where you could say, look at our team, they're just crushing it for years and years and years. It doesn't matter to these people. That's been my take is there is value in the brand name.

There's value in going with the trend even if it doesn't ultimately work out, which is a sick, perverse aspect of this industry. It's really kind of gross. Well, we see it. We see it in programming languages. We see it all over the place, right? Whatever is hot now, if that's not what you're doing, you're just not trusted. Yeah, yeah. I don't like it.

All right, well, let's talk about something positive. Let's wrap this up on a more positive aspect of it. So this year, I think, if I'm doing my math right, you and I will hit 250, where we have a lot of things. Oh, boy. We have a lot of things in store um no i know that when you and i were doing the last linux action show we've i think you and i both agreed like we finally filmed last the way we would like to film it where we had a camera on noah we had a camera on me we just sat back and had we just did whatever the f we wanted to do and the cameras were just rolling.

It's funny. If you go ask audience members, they will agree with this. The best episode was probably the least planned Linux Action Show we ever did. At least you and I together. We ever did the least planned one. We had a general idea of what we were going to talk about

and you prepped the news stories, but that was it. And then we sat down and the entire main segment it was a it was second to last because i don't know if you remember this but after we got done with the very last one we went back and said man we almost should have just called it at the at the second to last one and just because that was such a good episode i would have been a good one i do remember yeah and and and you're right and it was just that completely laid back let's just have a discussion not necessarily unlike what we're doing today and it wound up a great episode we're we're working on uh and we'll i don't know if we'll get there 250 may be too ambitious because i want to crowdfund it if possible

because yeah it's always been i just i always want to like this is for me for me i don't i don't do this for the money i do it because i want to to make content and I want to have a connection with the audience. And I just always feel like crowdfunding is sort of the third piece to that. It's this ideal of like it makes sense in the feedback. So I set 250 as sort of our goal to see if we could get there. Put a couple of cameras in here and you and I just hanging out. Today we're drinking – what is this? I'm drinking a Black Butte porter from uh docious and what are you what are you drinking we also have pray for snow a winter ale from 10 barrel so we'll be sitting back you know maybe

drinking a beer hanging out it'd be a really nice you know behind the scenes kind of version not like the green screen not with the studio lights that's what we're trying to get with Linux Unplugged and 250 to keep the low-key audio show. Unplugged. But give people something to watch if they're watching on their Kodi box. Feel closer to us. They're watching on YouTube, something like that. So that's kind of our goal. I'm kind of curious, Noah, if we could get a little preview of where you've thought about Ask Noah going in the next year.

I mean, I know you're moving to a new live time. You're going to be following up. Is that right? Yeah, it's going to be us and then Noah. So if you come in on Tuesdays, you're going to get LUP and Ask Noah back to back. That's going to be killer. I think it's going to be like a Linux Tuesday. So I know that's coming down the pipe for Ask Noah. But what else do you feel like is coming down the pipe for 2018 in the Ask Noah program? Anyone that knows me or has been around me more than a week has probably figured this out. If you're looking for somebody

that's going to change a lot of stuff, I'm not the guy for that. I'm very much a once I get into the swing of something, I'm fine. Now, interestingly enough, I have moved the entire Ask Noah studio into my basement. Really?

Yeah, I had a hint of that when we took five and you're like oh uh a little noah just came down here to hang out with me and i'm like what what do you what what you're not at the office you didn't like you didn't go across like five miles of snow like what's going on yeah yeah so what happened was um i i broke down and i so we the guys that that worked for me did a really fantastic job kind of setting up a studio and programming all the stuff, and they can handle all the technical stuff, that's great.

What they don't understand, what they don't know how to do is the acoustics. And the psychoacoustics. So when you speak into a microphone... I'm sorry, what? Psychoacoustics? Okay, acoustics and psychoacoustics? That's a new field of science.

Noah has a pine ear. I'm just a podcaster now. I'm not a radio guy. Right. Well, no, it's anyone that likes audio. You're into high-quality audio, so you understand this. So there's a difference between saying and found that the right compression ratio is 2 to 1 and the gate should be this and the trim should be this and this should be this.

That's one way to do it. And you can make something sound reasonably good. It's entirely different when you have a studio engineer that has spent his entire life training his ears to have you sit down in front of a microphone and talk into that microphone and say the EQ needs to be adjusted

just a little bit here. We need a little bit more compression. Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, i'm like 10 years into that process i think i got another 10 years to go tech side and there's actually the end result yeah i'm gonna be like 20 30 years deep into this business so i don't i don't want to wait 20 or 30 years to be able to actually do that and so i just hired somebody and so these guys are coming to me what they're gonna do what they're doing right now why i had to get the studio out of the studio, is first they are treating the walls.

So they're putting things in the corner and they're putting things over flat walls and they're using special paint and they are putting in special ceiling tiles and we're getting special lights and stuff that are aimed specifically at the control surfaces and they don't reflect onto the VU meters. We have an overbridge, I think they call it.

Basically, the meters go left to right instead of up to down. So I'm looking at them straight on so I can keep my audio level consistent. And, but to do all of that, we had to take everything out of the studio. They are bringing in, they're running special conduit in the ceilings for all of the audio lines and they're running a line to my office. So I can have a microphone and a set of headphones in there. That way, if I'm busy or doing something, I can just dial into the studio and say, okay, I'll just do the show from here tonight. I'm getting worked up.

I'm getting turned on right now, dude. You are turning me on right now. This is hot, dude. This is great. So they're dealing with all this, and obviously they're going through and showing you how to use my audio console that I bought. So all of those things are happening and i there's there's zero we're hoping that it was only going to be done for two weeks now with christmas and

i'm going to be gone for this funeral and it's looking like it's going to be closer to like a month so that's probably not be done until after the new year and after the time change and all of that but once yeah i mean before you tell me before it's done i mean just to lead up like as a tease uh i mean as it's a holiday special will you share with the class like i mean what does this cost if i wanted to do something like this like for for the main studio here like what am i looking at is it a bitcoin put it and put it in the terms of bitcoin is it a bitcoin it? It's not cheap. Is it a Bitcoin? It's not quite a Bitcoin. It was a couple thousand to have them

come in and do that, and then the engineer just said to have him come in, and for his time, I think he was charging me $2.50 an hour or something like that to help programs, which it wasn't terrible. I've spent far more money in equipment than I have. And you know, it's funny too. I get requests all the time. People are like, oh, show me the inside more money in equipment than I have.

And, you know, it's funny, too. I get requests all the time. People are like, oh, show me the inside of the studio. I'm scared. I'm scared to show. People will think, because here's the thing. I look nuts. Well, and it changes all the time.

It's like if you did something two weeks ago or a month ago, it's a totally different studio now. I mean, that happens here, and this is a fairly static setup. it's a totally different studio now. I mean, that happens here, and this is a fairly static setup. Really, at least equipment-wise, really hasn't changed much at all since I started. So I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead and finish up.

Where were you going with this? Because, I mean, this is a remarkable investment that you're doing. We're going to have to move to North Dakota to stay SAP. I mean, as soon as the snow melts, I'm going to be out there to do all my podcasting, basically. It's actually funny you say that, because one of the things that we did when we built the studio. For those that don't know, I have two studios.

I had one that I put together myself, and I set it up as specific. The entire thing was constructed top to bottom, centered around the Linux Action Show. So everything that I tried to match the dimensions that be on me, so I would have the same amount of space behind me as your single camera has on you. And we talked early on, we said, okay, dark backgrounds are very difficult for the encoder to process.

So I went with a plain white wall and just hung some pictures. Like everything was designed around less. Well, the problem with that is because I was on camera, because I wanted to look like as similar to you as possible, that meant that the audio board and everything was on the other side of the room. And so when you're doing a radio show and you have people that are calling in or I want to bring somebody in on mumble or I want to mute somebody who has their car horn. Hey, this is just what we you and I just went through this for Linux Fest Northwest. We redid the whole studio around audio.

Yeah, right. I totally know what you're going to do. Yep. Yep. yep. Yes, and what's funny was, actually, that was a large inspiration for this. In fact, if you notice, that's when I decided to do a second studio because once we completed your studio,

I just found myself wanting to sit down there and work all the time. In fact, it got to be a joke with Rekha. You can ask him about this. For whatever reason, the first word I say on the air, what's the first word I say when I start the Ask Noah show?

I don't know now. That's the first word. I don't know, the first word I say on the air, what's the first word I say when I start the Ask Noah show? I don't know now. That's the first word. I don't know what the first word is. I'm trying to think of it. I'm trying to think of it. You always have to say it. Live from alt-to-speed, right? It's always live.

Sometimes it's alt-to-speed. Sometimes it's somewhere else. But the first word is always live. And so when I started to, when I was testing. Live, live, live, live. Right, right. And so I was testing. Live, live, live, live. Right, right. And so I was testing this stuff. Check, check, check.

Rakai started making fun of me because he'd come into the studio and there I am. And I just, I used to say like a little, you know, the first intro or whatever, just as something to say that I could test it with. And then it just got shortened to live. So then he started coming in, walking up to a mic and going, no man you know what i do i do two two i used to be one two three one two three but the thing is is that two two has the the loudest punch right and that's really important that's all i needed so i just shortened it now and. And I sit down and I get to the mic and I get my headphones on. I get the mixer turned on. I go, two, two, two.

And if I'm ever live, I sound ridiculous. The engineer that I'm working with says to use the word toast. Because it apparently contains all of the things that you would, all of like the uh and the oh and the ah. And then, like you said, the plosives at the beginning and the end. So apparently toast is a really good word to use. I got to give you one of these. I have been thinking about hiring a consultant from Guitar Center to come in just because, I mean, otherwise what I end up doing is I end up stacking all of these projects. I'll have like 10 projects when Noah gets here for Linux Fest and we just – we don't really hang out.

We just go crazy. And I'm like, what if I hired a consultant and I had this guy come in, and he just solved all these problems and Noah showed up and there was nothing to do? Like, what would we do? Wow. You know what we'd do?

Put your uncle back home. No, you and I would hang out. First thing we'd do is we'd get Indian food. That's the first thing we would do is we'd go get the healing Indian food of Taste of India at Mount Vernon, Washington. Go there. It's the best food of your life.

It will heal your body. Taste of India, Mount Vernon, Washington. Go there. Even if you don't go there, go on Yelp and give them a good review, please, because it is necessary for Noah and I to continue doing these shows that that place exists. Hey, Noah, this is not related to the show at all, but I really have been wanting to tell you this because I feel like you'll understand. I have developed a new routine that I think you will completely agree with Thursday or Friday. Can we go back to your can we go back to your ad for the Indian place and just do they have a dashboard?

No, they don't have a dashboard for days. Unfortunately, they they do have a menu, but they don't even take online fashion. I's like the old-fashioned. I got a call. Maybe if they teamed up with some of our other sponsors, they could build that dashboard. This Friday, I called them, and as the phone is ringing, I say to Hadi, I'm like, this is the only restaurant I'm willing to call. Like today, we got burgers before the show, and we got burgers because I could order the burgers online. The thing is, if I order over the phone, it adds more possibility for error. Yes, I don't have a problem with talking to people on the phone. I'm fine with talking to people. It is the back and forth. The bandwidth of the phone is not sufficient for people. The resolution is not sufficient for people to hear my orders sufficiently. And so they often screw it up.

I'm being generous, but I assume this is the problem, is that phones are low bandwidth. And so if I ordered online, the onus is completely on them to fuck it up. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And it's very easy for you to review, ensure everything is correct. In fact, which we did. I reviewed with you and the beard before we placed the order today on the phone. So Taste of India is the only place I'm willing to actually call because it is restorative food that actually heals my body.

So I'm willing to call them. So I call them up, and I have a typical order now. And I think you'll appreciate this, Noah, is I order three butter chicken, two garlic naan and one chicken tiki masala. And I eat one of them that order. I like at lunch and then I save the rest for like the whole weekend. I'm eating Indian food, but it's all in the fridge and and just go to it as necessary and i'll even go breakfast i'll even do breakfast noah about indian food is it fills

you up and you stay filled up like anyone that eats chinese you know how you eat it and then like four hours later you're hungry again that never happens to me with indian food like if i eat if i get filled up i'm full for a day. Yeah. Yeah. There's actual anti-inflammatories in Indian food as well. So depending on the ones you get. So if you get butter chicken, there's anti-inflammatories in there. That seems like a good thing to me, Wes. And you know, when you're sitting there typing all the time, you get the carpal tunnel, eat some Indian food. I'm just saying, maybe it helps. Drink a little beer, Indian food. Could be the perfect recipe for the Linux user.

I could be wrong, but I suspect it's true. So here's what I decided is next time Noah comes out, we got to have the least amount of work possible. No projects here. Well, that's never going to happen, I don't think. But maybe you can do the projects you want to do and not the projects you have to do. We would just find stuff. If I came out there and there was nothing to do, you and I would invent something to do. Like we would start a new project. That's what would happen.

Yeah. Like build an audio studio in the RV. And the other project that I wouldn't mind, now this is really a holiday special. We're going off the rails here. But the other project I wouldn't mind is building an audio studio at Wes's house. Oh, yeah. Because Wes is doing more and more stuff. It's more and more of an ask for Wes to come up to arlington because he lives in seattle like a maniac that's right so you know a little sound booth with like a a nice dynamic microphone

that sounds really great yeah so there's some down to us we could bang that out here so anyway i want to get i want just want to finish one last thing up and then then we can move on but but uh so you were saying uh you're saying i want to come to north dakota so interestingly one of the things i made sure to do when we were putting this together was we built it future proof. So we I only need four channels realistically to do the ask Noah show. I need my mic. I need the phones. I need the the if I have a remote guest and I need the the music bed stuff. And, but, but we built it with 16, uh, 16 inputs. And, uh,

I think we've got, uh, eight, no, we got 12 outputs. So we can do a, basically an unlimited. And then with the software drivers that allow us to pull audio in and out,

we can do basically an unlimited amount of mixed minuses. And so, and the reason that I, we splurged to get the, the extra capacity was if, if the day ever comes where you call me up and say, I'm going to do shows from the road and Beard doesn't live in the studio anymore. So I need some place to remote into to put all of the people together or whatever. We can accommodate.

Oh, man, we're halfway there already. Right, right. So if you want to come to Grand Forks, not only can you come to Grand Forks and come do shows from here, you know, while it's nice and warm, we can go to the lake, whatever. You can do shows on the road on the way here. Oh, right. So if you want to come to Grand Forks, not only can you come to Grand Forks and you can come do shows from here while it's nice and warm, we can go to the lake, whatever, you can do shows on the road on the way here. Oh, man. Man, isn't that going to be something, Noah? That's great. That's great because Beard's actually, as we record the special holiday edition of the Unplugged program, he's over there packing up right now. The Beard's moving out and it's... It's a new era for the studio. It's a little empty nest syndrome here. It is.

It is. Your baby has grown up and moved out. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's true. It's true. You're going to show up here in the morning getting a bunch of work done all alone. No one to complain to.

No one to gripe about. That has actually been so nice. Just off the record. But at the same time, it's lonely. Pantsless in the studio. now now i go from like you know home to here and i don't talk to anybody i just have my dog levi me and levi at the studio so i'm gonna have to come visit noah you got him i'm glad noah built all this because i'm gonna have to go i'm gonna have to either hit the road to visit with listeners or i'm gonna have to go move to

grand forks if it wasn't for west coming up here every now and then to do this show, I'd be totally alone. And yet, I'm perfectly okay with that. I am not a big... I've never been big on the walk and talk at work and bumping people into the hallway. Because when I was in my... No, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay, you must have not worked in a big office because... Oh, I did. It's bump into people at the copier. Or the water thing. Or just the hallway from the lunchroom to the IT room. It was the landmine of IT requests that were never documented. So I developed this instinctual, like, I don't want to have a conversation. I want to walk from the lunchroom to my desk and sit down and get my job done. if you talk to me, you're not putting in a ticket and then I can't track it. I can't account for it and I'll forget to do it.

And so I developed like this weird anti like bump into each other and just hang out and chat at the workplace. And yet at the same time, I find it to be one of the most valuable sources of creative inspiration and discussion. And so it'll be like something I miss the most and something that'll be the most like not beneficial, but like I've been missing it. Like just the total solitude. Like nobody interrupts my thought process. At the same time, I will miss the creative exchange of ideas and all that. So I'll just have to come hang out with you at work, Wes.

Yeah, absolutely. Does that feel good? That feels good? Yeah. All right. Oh, well. I think that's it. I think we've done our holiday due diligence.

I hope you've had a good – did you enjoy your holiday burger? Oh, very much so. What about you, Noah? Did you do any holiday-related festivities over there in Grand Fork? Did you have some mistletoe or something in the office? I mean, come on. I need something. I actually have a new thing that I'm implementing at AltaSpeed this year, and it's called Mistletoe instead of Mistletoe.

And so basically what we're going to do is we're hanging mistletoe up, and you have to fight. If you find yourself under the mistletoe, then you have to fight. Mistletoe. Fight? Well, I think it's just in the spirit. You get all your rage and aggression out. You go into the new year friends again.

We have the worst Christmas music ever right here. There you go. Boom. Actually, sorry. It's not Christmas. It's holiday music. We have the worst holiday music ever. And we have you.

We have me. We have Noah. It feels pretty good. the only thing that's missing is the lug but yeah this was a special edition I hope they're all at home they're all

enjoying the holidays instead of having to go put themselves out and help us they get to relax with their family put on some Linux and totally enjoy

a random show they never expected it's just been recorded to just our little present nobody knows it's our present from us to the audience.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Unplugged program. I hope you have a great holidays, whether you celebrate the Christmases, the Festivuses, the Hanukkahs, whatever it might be. Or just the time where you don't have to do any work. Yeah. Yeah. I'll celebrate that. I'll tell you what, my friend.

And also check out the main feed. Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com. And on the right-hand side, there's a drop-down. Grab the audio feed of the Unplugged program. And a special mention for the Ask Noah program. Hey-yo. Go check that out. And the brand-new, totally revamped TechSnap.

Find that at techsnap.systems and the RSS feed at techsnap.systems slash RSS. That's pretty exciting. Oh, I'm so excited. That is. We have so many things in the works. If you work in IT, that's a show for you. Go check it out, techsnap.systems. In the meantime, have a great holiday.

Thank you for joining us. And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Get it out of here. you