LINUX Unplugged - Episode 233: Living Inside the Shell | LUP 233

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

Everyone’s Linux desktop is getting better this week, well… Almost everyone.Plus why Linux users should be using Firefox, some Gnome and MATE news, communIty, why the Linux desktop isn't seeing as many native apps these days & more!

This is CNN Breaking News. And OpenSUSE has responded with a blog post where Richard writes, ever wondered how to manually set up ButterFS root file systems the same way we do in OpenSUSE? For all of you other distributions that are getting ButterFS wrong, you're simply just setting it up wrong. Like the words of the deceased Steve Jobs, you're holding your ButterFS wrong. And one of our listeners tweets back, I'm still concerned about file system issues, free space issues. I just don't think Butterfess has a place on production desktops. Richard Brown responds, Thank you for your feedback.

But those issues have been long addressed. There you have it, everybody. There you have it right now. This is CNN Breaking News. Live from OpenSUSE, confirmed all of ButterFS's issues have been resolved. Format ZFS and install ButterFS. Have at it, kids.

Did I mention I jumped from OpenSUSE? No, really? You are our OpenSUSE guy. What are you talking about? Now all we have is Gabriel. What are you talking about? You are our Open susa guy what are you talking about now all we have is gabriel what what are you talking about you are open susa guy eric yeah well here's the thing um it has problems with audio production oh really there's just not enough software availability software fails to compile on it that would normally compile, like, say, on Fedora, which is why I jumped to the Fedora Jam remix.

Oh. So... Oh, hold on. I think Mr. Payne's at the door. Continue on. I thought that the build service was a solution for that, though. Yeah, the build service is a solution for that, but the problem is getting the spec files to go,

it just ended up being a hassle, whereas it was all available on fedora already so i don't have to go through that hassle i can just set up a system and boom done really all of a sudden i have a linux box able to help me with my audio production i'm gonna check that out i gotta say if um if fedora is easier then it must be pretty bad over there. You know, it follows my old rule of shades of niche. And it goes a little something like this, my friends, the closer you are to Windows, the better time you're going to have as far as application compatibility, support, performance and reliability. This is not an argument to run Windows because the platform

is trash. But the closer you are to Windows, the better your chances are going to be. Now, then your next step out, the next niche step out is Mac OS. Mac OS, you could say the same thing. A little bit more application compatibility, but not great as good as Windows. More people writing software for the Mac, but not as much as Windows. And then you go another step out, and that's Linux. Really, that's Ubuntu. Ubuntu has the next, the third niche out is Ubuntu. Now, if you want to go a fourth step out, now you're looking at Fedora, you're looking at Arch, you're looking at general Linux. And then there is yet another step out, and that is OpenSUSE. These weird Germans who have a very particular way of building things.

They got to have their own build system. They got to have their own boot splash. Oh, wait, no, they don't. That's dead. And then there is yet a fifth dimension. And that is FreeBSD. And that is really out on the fringes. The least amount of desktop application compatibility, the least amount of industry desktop support. And that's where you live on FreeBSD. And you just got to pick which flavor of niche is right for you.

You know something? I did try Ubuntu Studio and just raw Ubuntu and it didn't hold a candle to Fedora Jam. Fedora Jam? Yeah. It didn't hold a candle. You gotta try it, Wes. What do you think, Wes? Fedora Jam. Tasty jam. I do like

jam. Yeah, me too. Spread it all over. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 233 for January 23rd, 2018. Ooh, welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux podcast that's downloading distros and preparing for a canonical invasion. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. Glad to have you back. I hope you're feeling much better. Oh, much better. Ready for Linux?

Yeah, well, we have a lot of Linux to get into, sir. An old friend is back in the news. Yeah. The LadyTube that is here to save us all. The LadyTube that represents freedom. The original LadyTube is back with an update. the lady tube that is here to save us all the lady tube that represents freedom the original lady tube is back with an update then we'll get into a few a smattering a batch a corner if you will of ubuntu and gnome 3 news as well as firefox news which damn if it's not time to switch your

firefox is definitely going to be after this week's episode. Two, count them, one, count them, two different app picks this week, including one that Wes found that's so damn cool, we almost saved it for an entirely different show. We'll tell you about that. And then a critical tool that we use on this network, a lot of streamers use it, it's crushing the proprietary competition, has gotten a major update this week. It's crushing the proprietary competition. Has gotten a major update this week.

We'll tell you about the new OBS Studio and why it may just wipe your bottom. Stay tuned for that. And then later on in the show, rumor has it, the Mate project just got a little bit better looking. And one of the original Linux news sources has been around for 20 years. We'll celebrate 20 years of LWN at the end of the show and then we'll end it with a question. Is native Linux app development in decline?

And why is that? What caused the state of app development? And I can tell you as somebody who used to do weekly app picks, the answer is yes. So we'll talk about that more. But first, we've got to bring in our virtual lug time appropriate greetings. Mumbaroo! Oh, hey there. Hello. Oh, hi there.

Hey, guys. There's a lot of people. Did you hear all those people? I sure did. That's a little weird. This'll be a good episode. They're all just right there in our ears. So, we've all been wondering, what about Mycroft, right? Haven't we all been kind of like, hey, what about Mycroft?

Yeah. Well, obviously, what about Mycroft? Well, obviously the solution is another crowdfunder. Introducing Mark II. Mycroft has announced specs for a new voice assistant. They've been building towards this. They recently did a blog post about the lessons they learned from their previous crowdfunders. So they've kind of been setting the groundwork for this, and they've been sort of giving everybody a reminder of why open source is better for privacy and it's better for these kinds of devices inherently.

And today they're announcing the new Mycroft Mark II, which will be more like a speaker tube, an upright standing tube that has a very large touchscreen. I believe it's touchscreen on the front of it. It's an informational screen. So who wants to just get a whole jumble of words when you can get a display? And they're going to be launching this on, I think it's called Thunderclap, if I recall. Yeah, Thunderclap is where they're going. And I think it's happening the Thursday of this recording. So depending on when you're listening, it could be happening right now. And it's a brand new version of Mycroft that is more competitive. It's more in the line of the big, large super speaker that you're seeing with Apple's HomePod and the Google Max. And it's also more in line with the Echo Show or the Echo Spot, which all have screens on them.

And then they have what they call hero cards that display information along with the verbal request. Minecraft, you're my hero. What do you think, Wes? Is this it? Is this going to crack that nut? It's at least further along the way. If they can make it look that good, I'm intrigued. Now, really, of course, what it comes down to is, like,

what's the level of voice interaction? How painless is it? And can it meet, you know, what the other large vendors are doing? That, time will have to tell. If anybody in the Mumble room has any thoughts at this stage, you're welcome to jump in. I see, JJ, you have something you thought might be worth mentioning. Go ahead. Yeah, I guess there's sort of interest in me pursuing a little bit of open source. It's Linux Linux especially.

I'm sort of interested in what Mycroft has to offer in terms of competition, in terms of an alternative to the data-sucking lady tubes that we know. Well, thanks for the term. Lady tubes that we know, such as Google and, um, the credit Amazon word that I'm not supposed to mention. She who must not be named. Don't trigger. Don't trigger.

Yeah. Okay. Beard, talk me down. Um, uh, what do you think? Or maybe you think, maybe you'll agree with me. Uh, I think, uh, desktop Linux, the year of desktop Linux has a better shot than this does as a, as a product. of desktop Linux has a better shot than this does as a product. I think that the Librem 5 has a better chance of selling 5 million devices than this does as a product. In other words, I think

it's a long shot. Can you walk me back from that position? No, I agree. Yeah. Okay. Another poignant argument. What do you think, Wimby? Can you walk me back from that argument? Probably not. What about the slow burn effect of open source? What about that long, slow and steady approach 20 years out? So, Microsoft released a video recently of it being adapted for use in a car. And I imagine that that was some kind of prototype that they were doing as a proof of concept. But maybe the success of Mycroft isn't consumer sales, but integration into other equipment and devices.

Right. That is definitely what I was thinking in the past. And then this year, CES happened, and Amazon's Echo is literally built into everything from light switches to toilets. Literally. Microwave oven toilets literally uh microwave ovens toaster ovens uh you know how we all joke about linux running on toasters well the echo software is literally running on toasters now um on user air this week we're going to talk about a flex home that is a prefabbed home that is everything built in is smart every light every blind your heater your water, everything is like one of these quote-unquote smart devices,

and the home just pre-ships with an Amazon Echo to control it all. I think that ship sailed too, unfortunately. Yeah, I think it is hard that they can't even just be as good as the competition. They really need something to separate out, and I don't think privacy is enough for a large enough audience. On-premises support would be a pretty big product differentiator.

So if you could run the Mycroft service on-premises. Yeah, right. Yeah. Updateability and patchability. Yeah. Part of me is so sort of bummed about it, but then part of me is like this idealistic, hopeful person. So the same part of me that really wants the Librem 5 to succeed wants this to succeed.

All right. Well, let's talk about how Didrox is solely making me fall back in love with GNOME and is helping bring rational discussion to what otherwise is just a bunch of clickbait. Yeah, let's please. So the new version of GNOME is nigh. And of course, it'll be arriving in all of our favorite distributions soon. And the big controversial change, which we've given some mention to, is the removal of desktop icons. So we're going to do a smattering of GNOME news here.

And we'll start with this, a smattering. We did some smattering of Plasma news last week. Now it's a smattering of GNOME news this week. A smattering. We did some smattering of Plasma news last week. Now it's a smattering of GNOME news this week. So in 1804, you've probably heard by now that Canonical has made the choice to ship an older version of Nautilus in their 1804 desktop. The number one comment I've seen is, and I quote, Oh, here we go again. I can't even believe how many times I've seen, oh, here we go again. I can't even believe how many times I've seen, oh, here we go again.

Here goes Canonical, crazy-ass Canonical, not happy with the upstream GNOME arrogance. And so they're running off and forking their GNOME desktop all over again. This has been the common response to the announcement that Canonical would simply be shipping one version behind of the file manager. So what's going on here? Why is GNOME dropping icons? Is it because they hate users or is there something else more sophisticated and complex happening? And DidRox just has this great post that really kind of explains it all. And DidRocks is a great sort of nonpartisan position to cover this because he's been maintaining code as part of Unity for years

that dealt with this very code path. So he has hands-on experience with the very feature that's being deprecated. And he's the guy that for some reason, which we'll get to, is going through all the hassle of backporting the old version of files to Ubuntu. So how did we get here? And why is GNOME removing icons off of the desktop at the very time, at the very time when Plasma is switching to icons on the desktop by default? How did we get here? What happened? Well, you've got to understand the background.

There is a lot. There has been a lot of discussion for years about this, about these icons on the desktop. So they're not really put there by GNOME 3 shell. They're put there by the Nautilus file manager. And they use this really interesting X layering to be on the bottom layer. But it's this really weird thing that did rocks goes into more in his his blog post. But yeah, it's making me shiver just right now. It is one of those it is one of those moments where you realize this has been kind of

this hacky thing that they've been dragging along for like three years that they've been they've been trying to come up with a way to kill this feature. And it has been a controversial discussion for over three years. And it has been also one of these features that they have been openly discussing. You can find a recent blog post on Planet Gnome back in December where they sort of outline their thinking on all of this and why this might be coming. And on top of that, by reading this post, you discover that the gnome folks also gave a heads up to Didrox and said, hey, we're thinking about making this change.

What do you guys think? And it did put Canonical in a bit of an awkward position because they kind of were left with three sort of mediocre choices. They could stick with Nautilus 3.26, the current version, and keep icon support. They could ship Nautilus 3.28 and also ship Nemo Desktop to support desktop icons, but then they're shipping one file manager and part of Nemo, which is a fork of that file manager. Or they could ship Nautilus 3.28 and use a brand new extension that's in the works to draw the icons on the desktop. The issue there being that the mechanism that that extension uses isn't even finalized in GTK yet. And it hasn't been tested.

Ooh, on an LTS. And canonical shipping in LTS. Yeah. Exactly. So they're in a position where we've got to ship an LTS, we want to do the most rational thing, and we don't want to remove icons on the desktop that's going to be around for five years. And so when you stack all the bad choices up, the best choice is to just ship Nautilus 3.26. And that was also the suggestion of the GNOME project. Is that right?

Which is an interesting point. And to that end, D did rocks includes uh sort of like a sub blog from one of the gnome developers explaining the rationale on this and anytime you can kind of reduce variabilities then it's easier to test those code paths it's easier to ensure reliability and whenever you start forking uh big things like say they were to bring on gnome 3 or i'm certainly sorry noddles 328 and also that gnome shell extension those are all new things that they would have to be testing against on NOM3, or I'm sorry, Nautilus 328 and also that GNOME Shell extension, those are all new things that they would have to be testing against. Which would probably not be a good idea for the LTS.

But there is a long, I guess the long term answer, if you want icons, is this extension that they're working on. So there's hope yet for you desktop icon lovers out there. I guess. The whole post is a fascinating read because did rocks goes into how he got this working on unity over the years and some of the little tricks that he did to position the icons correctly to sort of sense where they should be

and you really reading it between the lines the message i get is man x11 is just a big cluster i hate touching this it's really a mess and then it oh, yeah, that's why we got to go to Wayland. Some of the stuff you read, you go, oh, geez, God, that's yeah, get rid of the icons. I can't believe they're doing that hack to show my icons on the desktop. Oh, and by the way, this code path hasn't been maintained for I mean, it's been maintained, but it really hasn't been modified for like three years. It's just time to go. And and you know what? I got to say this post by did rocks changed my position on this i was a little skeptical like oh really guys you just it's like you just constantly are shooting down work but then going through this it's like they just why was it implemented

via nautilus in the first place why isn't just a fundamental function of gnome shell and that's because nautilus was the shell you know previously right so in gnome 2 nautilus was the shell in the same way that today in mate kaja is the shell and to me kaja has the option to go ahead it's far more useful where it would be so so what do you say so so heavens your, is yeah, but now Nautilus is, is less useful and Kaja and Nemo are more useful. Well, when you're running a program, what screen space is being used, it kind of overwrites the desktop.

Yeah. A dog can like slide out and be visible whenever you want it to be or always visible. That's more persistent than a desktop icon. Yeah, fair enough. Wimpy, sitting there with a Mate desktop in front of you right now, what are your thoughts on this fundamental discussion of the code path to maintain desktop icons is antiquated, it's not maintained, it's sort of been a hack for a long time,

and it's an X11 hack on top of that, but yet it's a feature users want who i'd be curious to know what your thinking is on this yeah i mean i'd agree with all of the um comments about it being you know legacy code and what have you we've we've really struggled to maintain all of the desktop interaction features that exist within Marte and Kaja as we've migrated to GTK3. And it's hard work and there are things that could be improved and that's even harder to resolve. I think one of the fallouts of this is that longer term, you know, these APIs to do this are deprecated now and they're going to be going away in gtk4 yeah so

the likes of the mate desktop and xfce and the others that are doing the traditional desktop metaphor because after all you can't call it a desktop if it doesn't have any icons on it anymore because the metaphor is broken at that point so it's just you know a shell you know you can't claim it a desktop because it isn't um but one of the things we've been discussing in the mate project is perhaps we need to create a library lib desktop which is a whole cloth implementation in order to broker this kind of you know uh interaction if that's the the route that we decide to go whilst we're on gtk3 we can stay the course with the improvements that we've made but when gtk4 comes along we'll have to review you know what our plans

are wow wow wow that is a lot for me to take in so the possibility of having to implement your own desktop something that feels like it should be a first class baked in citizen of the core desktop experience if that's something you want. That's a really – that's a tough road to hoe. And I have to say on systems where I have desktop icons, I just make a mess. I just make a mess. Yeah, I don't have any systems that have them anymore. Really? No.

And then systems where I don't have them, I just make a folder structure that's also a bit of a mess. Yeah, I don't have any systems that have them anymore. Really? No. And then systems where I don't have them, I just make a folder structure that's also a bit of a mess. But it's a folder structure within my home directory. I just adapt. It's weird because I'm working on this project where most of our users are really interested in keeping that desktop. If you look at a lot of Marte users' desktop,

it's just at full of icons now i've i've never done that i have a directory i create in my home directory called cruft and anything transient just ends up in there and periodically i have to go through and sort it out but a lot of people use their desktop as that space for cruft so personally i wouldn't miss uh icons on the desktop because that isn't part of my workflow yeah the problem is is we have to be mindful of the workflow of all of our users and a significant number of them value that feature because it's in their muscle memory that's that's how they've been doing it for years and years you know my my mom who is a graphic artist on the computer she very much uses the drag-and-drop paradigm.

So she'll drag an image from an application to the desktop and from her desktop to another application. And the desktop is sort of like this intermediary holding bin where she can then drag it to another icon on her dock. I mean, it seems like for some users, the desktop is how they interface with the computer, right? That's how they conceptualize it. To not have icons that they have on the other platforms.

I can see that being a big deal. Yeah, yeah. And then for me, it's like I'll use it if I have it, and it's always a mess. And then if I don't have it, I just make like a cruft folder like Wimpy does. Although I don't have such a clever name for it. I'm going to start using that.

I'm going to steal that. Speaking of stealing. You're welcome. Gnome Photos is stealing a few features from Darktable, and I'm all about it. I think this is a great idea. Talk about a nice open source kumbaya. This is not a huge story, but Gnome Photos in the next version is getting nice.

And while we're talking about new Gnome stuff, why not? They're implementing shadows and highlights from Darktable into Gnome Photos. Oh, that's awesome. Isn't that great? Yeah. It's just a super great idea. New crop features, new scaling features, new easy way to kind of get like a grid on there when you're trying to get a nice photo. Basically what I'm telling you is if you just need a nice

program to sort photos and make them a little bit better, maybe increase exposure, contrast, highlights, and crop them a little bit, you know, that you shot on your phone, this is it. It's getting there now. And Gnome Photos is making steady progress. So I'm excited to see that progress. It's really excited to see that progress. It's really kind of getting to that point where I don't need much more than a file manager. So this is just about it. Those final touches, you know, before I consider it done. And then last but not least, while we're in the Gnome News segment, Firefox is – so 58 is next.

Firefox 58 will be out on tomorrow if all goes as planned, I think. Yeah. No, today even. Is it out today? I can't remember if it's out today or tomorrow. Looks like they're planning to put in the release channel today. Okay, yeah. Okay, so it's coming out. Heck yeah.

Yeah, so a new version of Firefox is coming out. Now, that's not specifically known, but I guess while we're talking about it, I'll tell you what's new. It's a whole new way of handling user profiles, which means it's going to do a user profile migration, and your user profile will not be compatible with older versions of Firefox. So heads up if you use portable Firefox, something like that. Oh, somebody get on the phone with Joe Ressington. Oh, yeah. Oh, crap.

There's also the improvements to the Web Extensions API, and they're making some claims with hard numbers about performance. They say they have improved off main thread painting in Firefox, and that the rendering time is improved noticeably. 30% improvement for Firefox 58 when compared to Firefox 57, and JavaScript bytecode cache is reduced by quite a bit from like having to start when you start navigation to when the event is fired via JavaScript. There has been on average a 43 millisecond reduction. They're actually giving out a hard number there, 43 millisecond reduction in Firefox 58, as well as improvements to the screenshotting tool, which I've actually begun using a bit more. Some fixes for audio playback on those Windows desktops.

I'm not familiar with that. That sounds like something that's in my house, as well as other nice things. But that's Firefox 58, which comes out like about now. That's interesting. Hit download right now. 58, go get it. Yeah, okay.

Go get it, guys. Everybody go. I'm getting it right now. But that isn't GNOME-related. What is GNOME-related is Firefox 59. Always looking at the next version, aren't we? We're always looking. Oh, yeah.

And if you follow the bug tracker, it looks like all of the blocking bugs to convert Firefox to GTK3 and GTK3 only have been cleared. All of the blocking bugs have been cleared. And with that marked now as resolved, the migration to move Firefox to GTK3 has been marked as completed. And if all lines up, Firefox 59 will be the first version of Firefox that is solely 100% GTK3, which I believe leaves GIMP as the last GNOME application, the major GNOME application, big GNOME application, that has not moved to GTK3. Ironic considering that GIMP is the father of the GTK toolkit. Right? It is, isn't it? It is. But it also strikes me as if you're a Linux user, Firefox is currently catering to you right now. Both 58 and 59 have a lot of nice improvements that are specific to Linux users.

It's never been a better time to be a Firefox user. I'm really looking forward to these new profiles. I'm hoping that that could be. It's really difficult to get unwedded from the profiles in Chrome and Chromium, and I'm hoping that this is going to be it. Yeah, I hope so too. I am waiting with anticipation. I'm all in now on Firefox.

The computer I'm sitting at right now is my last computer using Chrome. And I think it's just mostly because of workflow on air. But that could even get changed soon, too. It's just so great. It's so great, and it's so nice to have them, at least to me. Firefox renaissance. Yeah, it feels like they're back in a way and that they're focusing on Linux users. And GTK3 means we're probably going to see all kinds of cool stuff.

It's also just nice to have some more. I mean, we're in an era kind of right now with that and with Brave and other browsers that there's a lot more competition going on. Hopefully, that's good for us. It does seem to be. It does seem to be. Speaking of competition, Ting is bringing the competition to the mobile market in a huge, huge way. It's just pay for what you use wireless. Oh, man. competition to the mobile market in a huge, huge way. It's just pay for what you use wireless. That's, oh man, that would just totally, if the wireless industry had to restart today,

had to restart right now, say right this moment, Ting would run the table. You just pay for what you use, a fair price for however much you talk, text, and data you use. And it's just $6 for your line. You want one line, it's $6. You want two lines, it's $12. You see what I'm saying here? And it's just $6 for your line. You want one line, it's $6. You want two lines, it's $12. You see what I'm saying here? Uncle Sam takes his tax, you know, in your local area like he do, Wes. We sure do.

He do. He takes that cut. But then you just pay for what you use, nationwide coverage, no contracts, no quote-unquote agreements, and a dashboard for days. One of my favorite things about Ting is their GSM and CDMA network. Why do I like that? Because when I'm traveling, I pick whichever one works better for me. And even realistically, in different spots in Washington, there's just sometimes I'm in a terrain

with the trees and the hills where CDMA works better. And sometimes I'm in a place where GSM just totally rocks. Like here at the studio, I'm always on the GSM network. And I love the flexibility because I have a couple of different MiFi devices and at just $6 a month, it's no big deal. If I don't use Ting that much that month on that particular MiFi, that's a really flexible way to work.

Plus, during LinuxFest Northwest, we'll spin up an extra couple of lines, hand out some cheapo phones, and stay in contact. It's great for small businesses. The average Ting bill is just $23 per phone per month. Linux.Ting.com is where you go. Linux.T month. Linux.ting.com is where you go. Linux.ting.com. Go there, take $25 off a phone or bring a device and get $25 in service credit. Linux.ting.com. So I'm a big fan of different launchers. I've tried Synapse throughout the years. I've tried Noom, Do, I've been using the launcher built into Unity quite a bit.

Wimpy was recently talking to me about some different launchers on Mate with Brisk, you know, got my interest peaked there. So I just wanted to give a shout out to an application launcher for Linux that I've come across recently that's scratching that itch. It's fast. It works sort of like all typical launchers do work. It's pretty quick. It supports fuzzy search. It has shortcuts and different extensions that you can load. It can also browse directories, which is pretty nice for me because I have scripts in a bin directory in my home directory.

So I can do tilde slash bin and then the name of the script and it just executes it. It does, you know, like rough math in the launcher. It's great. It's called emoji support. Look at that. I know that's how you know it's modern, right? It's called you launcher at you launcher dot I O. And it's wonderful. It's great. It's fast and it loads pretty easily. And once you put it on your system, you can use that to start up all the damn applications. And they got an AUR available. They got a Fedora package available. They got a SUSE package available. They got a SUSE package available. And they got a PPA for

Ubuntu, which is pretty great. And the projects, it's kind of new. It's up on Patreon. They're taking that as well as Bitcoin. But they also have the extension plugin, which is great. So you can, speaking of Bitcoin, have a Bitcoin plugin, type BTC in the launcher, and it comes back with the price

or can do Bitcoin conversions for you in your launcher. Welcome to 2018, right? There's a KeePass plug-in. Really? I'll just say that. There's a KeePass plug-in. There's an open-end browser, so you can say hgoogle.com, and it'll launch in the right browser. It'll support your Chrome bookmarks or your Firefox bookmark.

It supports logging out of the desktop if you want to get some specific extensions for cinnamon and one thing that's actually pretty handy that i think i'm going to load this on my lady's computer for is it has a timer built in which she uses a lot for work like set a timer for 15 minutes that's great and it's built right into the launcher i mean once you install the extension so extension. So anyways, this is one of my favorite finds recently. I don't know if we, I don't think we've talked about it before. The boys are great. Ulauncher.io, and it's probably in your local repo right there.

Wimpy, did you want to give any mention for the Brisk launcher stuff that you and I were chatting about recently off air? Yeah, sure. the brisk launcher stuff that you and I were chatting about recently off air. Yeah, sure. Um, so there is a new feature coming in the next version of brisk menu, which enables you to change the way that it's displayed to present a dash style,

uh, launcher rather than the, you know, a pop down menu. So, um, we're running, um,

a patched version of that in our dev branch for ubuntu mate at the moment and when you enable the mutiny layout now on ubuntu mate 1804 it tweaks the various magic settings so then when you hit the super key you get this dash uh which is full screen large icons text search category buttons to touch and you know the whole thing is is touch capable so that will be landing in Ubuntu Marte 1804 which is good because it's one of those little details that I knew we would get to and I knew everyone would point out was missing in 1710 and they did. Now it's in there for the 1804.

That's great. Yeah, it's getting there. Yeah, I've got one bug to fix and then that's good to go. I love Brisk. It's a great project, so really cool to see that. Yeah, and that was another great collaboration with the Brisk team. There's a developer in Solus called Stefan, and we offered a bounty for the work and he did the work and Ubuntu Mate funded it. So that's really great. That is. So there's this next application I wanted to feature today.

Wes found it. We almost sat on it just to talk about it exclusively in the new TechSnap program, because that's where all our best stuff is now. I'm kidding. But I did really enjoy last week's episode. That was good. Wes gave us an introduction to configuration management. And this application is an advanced user interface to manage... It's like a dashboard, really.

You know how we love dashboards here in the Linux Unplugged program? Dashboards for days. Days! This is an advanced dashboard for quick managing and inspecting of containers and images for Docker. And it's all on the command line. It's totally NCurses based, which is the part I love about it.

Because, like, when you say dashboard, you're probably thinking, like, a web page. Sure. Ha! Gotcha. No, it is an NCurses application. It shows you you're running Docker containers, your overall system utilization. Picture it, Sicily, 1987, you SSH into your server, you bring this up, and you have a full overview of everything that's going on. I can't tell you how useful this is going to be for me on my DigitalOcean droplets.

Yeah, it seems like something that will find its way into a TMUX session near me. Exactly. It's exactly what I'm going to do with it. session near me. Exactly. It's exactly what I'm going to do with it. And I have been experimenting with different like click and run type setups for Docker. Just totally like, I forget what the, I covered Encoder Radio months ago, but there is an application, I think I might've talked about in this show too, that will search the Docker directory, pull it down, set it all up, and you just click that one thing oh yeah this is sort of this is sort of more like inspecting the existing docker stuff that

you have set up it doesn't quite do that part of it um but it's i i don't know there's something broken about me about end curses user interfaces when they're when they're done right they're i i will take an end curses user interface in my terminal over a really well done graphical interface any day of the week. Even if I'm on like graphical desktop, I'll just run it in a terminal window. I just prefer the flexibility. I can reshape them to the size I want. There's context switching too. I mean, even though I have a web browser open, I feel like go shift my attention. Mm-hmm. And then this last one here for this week is something that the beard slotted in at the last minute.

It's the new version of OBS Studio. OBS Studios, I like to say. Version 21 is out and it's huge. huge. It is, if I was Telestream and I was making the Wirecast product, I would be extremely nervous about this little ankle biter called Obb Studio. It's extremely competitive now, and they've just introduced Lua and Python scripting support, which the ramifications of that are going to be huge, because you can set up control devices, and you're going to be able to set off entire actions now with this. And the fact that they're supporting both Lua and Python is pretty great. They've included some examples like countdowns and all this kind of stuff. But

in the background now, they're getting to the point where they're adding really high-end professional, like I used to pay $2 thousand dollars to get access to the to these kind of features um they're adding 7.1 surround sound support they're adding higher bit rate support they've revamped the audio meters so that way they break out individual sources and microphones they're also supporting microphone multi-sources it's um it's really professional grade what do you think beard is there one feature on this list that we really need to have like it's almost would be worth the hassle of upgrading the arch box um i think that you would mostly like the um the side chain ducking oh yeah yeah explain that. Basically allows you to automatically lower

the level of one input based on the level of another input. Yeah. And you can see how that would be useful for like audio clips or maybe even the mumble room. That's how they do it in radio, right? The caller automatically gets ducked when the host starts speaking. It's nice. I had been staring at the OBS interface now for a year because it's how we record all our shows and how we live stream. So this is a really critical piece of software for us. And I've been wondering how they're going to improve the audio meter interface. I don't know if I love this, but it's better than what I expected. Here's the feature I'm actually the most interested in.

The preview mode now, you know, so in the studio, we have a dedicated 1080p monitor that is just a preview output from OBS. Wes and I look at it all the time. All the time. It shows us whatever's on the live stream on a dedicated monitor. It's extremely useful. Yes, absolutely. And now they're adding the ability to

have eight scenes on that screen ahead of time. So I can have all of the shots, like a director's room. Just sitting right there. All of the shots on that screen, and then I know which one to go to. Well, you and I have some ideas about where to take this show post-250 that involve multi-camera

setups, and you'd be on camera, I'd have a camera we'd have a screen camera like they're adding the very features we might just need to take the show to the next level multi-track recording multi-camera preview this is the kind of thing where this free open source project is coming along and adding stuff that costs tens of thousands of dollars all all told and they're just doing it for free. And at the same time, we have these ambitions and goals where we want to go with the network and with the show specifically.

And it's just lining up perfectly. So it's pretty exciting. There's other things that I really appreciate in here. And I hope I'm not going too far off in the weeds. But having managed these systems for like a decade, there's like a couple of day-to-day operations. There's just like a few little things, too, that have bugged me for so long. Per scene transition overrides, which allow you to select a specific transition to use for a specific scene.

Sometimes I want a slow fade. Sometimes I want a hard cut. It sounds like a small thing. But when I want it, I really want it and I want it how I want it because it's really important. If I'm transitioning to like our standby screen, I like a nice slow fade out. If I'm transitioning from this to our chat room, I want a quicker fade, and it actually kind of bothers me right now. I can't quite get what I want. It's not quite there. It's driven me crazy, and they're fixing that. They've also bumped up the developer documentation, made some fixes for those of you that are stuck on Windows and Mac OS, like now they're using

a dark theme. I didn't realize that Mac and Windows users didn't have a dark theme because we're using a GTK. Everything's dark. We have everything set to dark on our GNOME desktop, so it's always been dark. Oh, no, no. They already had a dark theme. They just added a new theme in addition to that one. And now it's

default, right? And they've also changed the default too, which I just didn't realize that OBS had themes because theme. They just added a new theme in addition to that one. And now it's default, right? And they've also changed the default, too, which I just didn't realize that OBS had themes, because it's always just matched whatever my GTK theme is. There's also one small little audio bug fix for audio monitoring on Linux, and some fixes for AMD users

with AMD GPUs. Go ahead. Oh, just one last thing. They've reduced that. I was telling you about the. Oh, just one last thing. They've reduced that. I was telling you about the preview pane, the 8 preview pane. They've reduced the CPU usage by about 8% on that, which is pretty significant. Anyways, Beard, go ahead.

I think you're actually going to love the new audio meters. This is probably the best implementation of an audio meter I've seen in any program ever. Yeah, it is nice. And they have different options for, like, monitoring the peaks and keeping track of them. And I would say that's an area where they've been particularly weak in the past. I picture, I'm going to talk about it on User Air 43.

So tune into this week's User Air. It'll come out later in this week. I have a new podcast studio I'm building and it's going to be tighter and it's going to be more confined than ever. And so the fact that OBS is doing more might make it a good candidate for that setup. I'm building, and it's going to be tighter, and it's going to be more confined than ever. And so the fact that OBS is doing more might make it a good candidate for that setup. And I'll talk about that in the near future. But that's a good batch of open source updates this week.

A really solid launcher, a great update on OBS. The Mate desktop is getting better than ever. Wimpy, are you up for talking a little more about some of the things in Monty? Some of the other things we talked about? Yep. Okay. Hold on to that. We'll do that soon. There's some other really good stuff coming as well as 20 years of LWN and why I really

believe they're doing journalism right. And then we got to talk about that application problem. Everything's electron. It's all electron these days. And we've talked about that application problem. Everything's Electron. It's all Electron these days, and we've talked about that before. But there's another shift, and darn if Joey over at OMG Ubuntu didn't just put it into perfect terms. So we'll talk about that as well. Lots more to come up. So let's take a moment and thank DigitalOcean for sponsoring this week's episode of the Unplugged program.

Go to DigitalOcean, create an account, start up, and then use our promo code DOUnplugged. Deploy entire application stacks or just machines in less than 55 seconds. Everything is SSD-based. If you're doing something that's $5 a month all the way up to the systems that have hundreds of gigs of RAM and lots of CPU and tons of transfer, they're all secure and reliable. They have built-in, baked-in monitoring and metrics right into the system. They've got load balancing as a service. And then you'll also notice, and sometimes it's not even self-evident, but you'll also notice like firewall features. Oh, that seems like a good idea. Except for their digital ocean firewalls. They're quote-unquote cloud firewalls. What makes it a cloud firewall?

You don't have to touch IP tables. It's at the network level too. Yeah, also that part. Both of those things. That's not what I'm excited about. Yeah. No kidding, right? There's two different things there that are really great.

They're both true. They set it up at the network level so it never even hits the machine. That's the number one thing I like. And the number two thing is you don't got to screw around with IP tables. You can deploy an entire stack or just the base system. We were just recently playing around with a new way to do VoIP communications, where you have this one central server that sort of proxies the connection. And it just, once the connections are set up, it's a WebRTC direct point to point. I didn't need a very fast server. So in about a minute, I spun up the $5 a month droplet, which with their new pricing is

better than ever. And if you use our promo code, you could try it out two months for free. I was able to try it out, see if this thing worked right, and then I destroyed the droplet 10 minutes later. This kind of flexible aspect of DigitalOcean means that sometimes I use a machine for half a day, and sometimes a machine has been in production for four years. My oldest box is an Arch machine on DigitalOcean that's over four years old, and I still use it to this day. They have great reliability, great performance, and great pricing. Go to DigitalOcean.com, use our promo code DOUnplugged, get started, create your account, and see what's possible. And then when you're ready to go to the next level, they have fantastic documentation, a straightforward API, and lots of open source code built around the DigitalOcean infrastructure.

DigitalOcean.com and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the show. And thanks to you guys for continuing to use that promo code D-O-Unplugged. It keeps this show going and by goodness, we may just make it to episode 250 and maybe even 300 because you guys keep supporting our sponsors. DigitalOcean.com, promo code D-O-Unplugged. You know, Wimpy, I was looking back at the Linux Unplugged archive. And if you fast forward just a couple of weeks, it was almost a year ago that you and I were talking about you loading up Ubuntu Mate on your XPS 15 and getting high DPI support. In fact, I even found the post that I used during the show to show on the live stream while you and I were talking about this. So the fact that today you and I were having a conversation where even

more is happening really shows how you've been like a dog with a bone on this particular issue. how you've been like a dog with a bone on this particular issue. Yes, although I have little credit to claim in this story, but the news is today we've landed the last of the patches to fully implement high DPI support in the Mate desktop. Hallelujah. Thank you, God. Sorry to interrupt you wimpy but i have been trying like crazy to get mate working on a macbook 15 inch from 2013 it is a high dpi display as well

and i swear i am so thankful for you guys to do that because i gotta i gotta tell you i have been wanting to try out mate on my Mac, and I got to be honest, OS X is just killing me to the core. With the DPI support, yeah. It's just way better. Yeah. I mean, every desktop I've tried, XFCE, Stock Gnome, everything, it is just a freaking nightmare. Mate got close, and I tried it on a few, and it definitely was usable, but it felt like there was a pretty big gap. Yes.

Yeah, it was. pretty big gap yes yeah the screen size yeah because i tell you the mac has a beautiful retina display but mac os is just going to be a pitter because i hate it and i have wanted to just dump the thing for months but i couldn't find the right desktop to do it well for linux maybe i love mate i love gnome 2's interface but mate and being more modern and i would love to run mate on a mac but hopefully this will fix that niche so what's going on with me so the changes that have landed are to really uh smooth those rough edges that you would have seen so i i put some patches in about four or five months ago that kind of helped make it work a little bit better um but frankly uh it wasn't

finished but um there's a guy in the community victor his name is we found him through solus he actually did the work on the super key and modifier key capabilities in Marte and Brisk and a bunch of other places that made all of that super key and HUD stuff work, you know, that you can use those keys as actions now. And I approached him a little while ago and said, did he fancy, you know, tackling the last of the issues with high DPI? And he dumped a load of patches last night and i've been uh testing them this evening and we are dangerously dangerously close now to having a really good implementation of high dpi so now that so that i fully understand i mean what was missing from the high dpi support as it stands now so previously for example the example, the panel, you know, the little panels at the top and the side, I got those so they actually fitted to the screen, but we were having to force

those to use one-to-one scaling to actually appear on the screen in the right place, which meant that they appeared in the right place and the things that were in them were rendered correctly. But if you right clicked on the context menus, they were all absolutely minuscule. And the same was true for the window manager and a bunch of other places where things just weren't right. And things like when you sized the panels, when you changed the size, before that was literally happening one pixel at a time and although you're going up in increments that look like you're adjusting it to 23 24 25 pixels behind the scenes maths is happening and it's actually adjusting that scale for the high dpi screen so the big change is is that before you used to have to go and configure a bunch of different things in about

seven different places in order to enable this, and it wasn't quite right. Now there's a single option. It's in Mate Tweak. It's under High DPI. Enable High DPI. You tick that box. You log out, log in, and everything is then High DPI enabled.

Well, shoot, that is a big improvement. It sure is. That's no small thing there um what what what does it look like from like a user standpoint what am i what am i going to do now to get this well um from ubuntu mate's point of view uh this is going to be in 1804 and i'm hoping we may be able to squeeze a preview in for alpha 2 um there may be a couple of rough edges there but it's it's very very close now but hopefully get that in for alpha 2 for for mate itself mate desktop we're very close to releasing mate 120 and i'm trying to work as fast as possible in the evenings to test and figure out where the remaining issues are on this to try and land this in time for mate 120 so that it's actually a feature of mate 120 that would be wonderful so um i guess the part i'm

still not totally clear on is uh so if i go into Mate Tweak and I turn this on, am I at that same time also switching out from Marco? Is that not an issue as well with high DPI support? Right. So at the moment, that is happening, yes. So at the moment, when you enable high DPI, it also turns on Compiz as the window manager. Okay, okay. So that's where we get the scaling of the window controls from, because we haven't actually done that work in Marco yet.

But Compiz has. Compiz has done that work. But Compiz has done that for a long, long time. So we can cut some corners in Ubuntu Mate by utilizing Compiz. And that's a fair assumption, because the set of people that have UHD displays and a computer not capable of running compis is zero. Yeah, no kidding, no kidding. And it actually would be something I would almost want to turn on anyways if I was using it. So this is really, really close.

But I know from our discussion, it seems like the piece that might still be missing is auto detection of the high DPI display. Like that's still a tougher nut to crack. It's not a tough nut to crack. It's just like choosing your battles. We've decided to just like get the thing working and then we can revisit how that's handled. Fair enough. In terms of dynamically detecting that you are on a high DPI display. It's halfway there.

The Greeter determines if you're on a high DPI display and auto scales. Then you log in and you get an unscaled desktop and you have to go and press a button. So it's not perfect, but it's way, way better than Xamarin. Can I ask you a crazy question sure and this is probably the this is this is probably the wrong place to do it but what about uh as sort of a front and center option in the mate welcome screen where it says yeah absolutely yeah you're already thinking that yeah yeah yeah i think i think we can do the detection in welcome very quickly, as in implement it very quickly,

and detect that and actually present that as a, we see you've got a high resolution screen, would you like to enable high DPI? And then have that flip switched automatically, and then they can log out, log back in, so it will smooth the edges. So that could be the route. That could be the route you end up taking uh yes it's an option the option to actually do this dynamically

is still not off the table it's all a matter of time you know sure we've got to choose what we can do in the in the time remaining yeah and at the moment there are some other little rough edges that are more important than we'll fix but you know today on maxps 15 i've been running um ubuntu mate with scaling i opened every shipped by default application widget and window and everything is scaled including things like cute applications so we're passing through all the necessary scaling information from our environment to the Qt application. So, for example, VLC is all nicely scaled, which is a Qt application that we ship by default. And then you install Electron applications,

and we push all that information through to Electron as well, so they're all scaled appropriately. Shoot, this is like full-grown, all-grown-up, real high DPI support here. And those of you that are familiar with gnome 2 or mate will or may remember that in the um appearance control panel there was a fonts tab and one of the things you could do in the fonts tab was change the dpi of the fonts and that was like the og you know yep you turn that up yeah so that was that was how it used to be in the good old battle days now originally i envisaged that we would just lose that feature and that we would

do the font scaling you know bound to uh the integer scaling um of the screen but victor has retained that and this has a really nice side effect in that we're keeping the font scaling separated, and it automatically adjusts the font scaling. And when that happens for GTK2 applications, which have no high DPI scaling support whatsoever, other than the font scaling, they get a font scale that is accurate to the screen so while gtk2 applications aren't going to look great by default they look the best they can be on a high dpi display by bumping those fonts out to the right sizes wow is any other desktop doing that i don't know i haven't looked that carefully because i don't know how many of them, you know, had or retained that feature to adjust the font DPI. Yeah, that is great. It's going to be the premier GIMP workstation. Well, yeah, with some, you can get icon sets for GIMP, which are like oversized.

Yeah. And when they're on high DPI, it actually makes GIMP usable. actually makes GIMP usable. This is so cool, Wimpy. And, you know, it has to be mentioned that this was the butt of so many jokes. Oh, you're going to take that gnome 2 thing, that old busted paradigm, which for those of us who loved it, like myself, was an insult, because it was like it was passing judgment on how I like to use computers. Somebody was telling me, a lot of somebodies were telling me that the way I like to use computers was old and it was part of a bygone era. And that the future was touch. The future was mobile.

The future was a total redesign of the desktop paradigm. And then this crazy ass Mate project came along and forked GTK2 based GNOME 2 and was this total stick in the mud, not going to go anywhere desktop. Ha ha ha. Look at this. This is the butt of all jokes here of desktop Linux. And fast forward to freaking 2018

and it sounds like one of the most complete high DPI implementations that I mean, it's just, it's just i i there's few other desktops really there's gnome 3 uh the pantheon desktop even plasma well uh yeah i mean as somebody who's used the most current plasma on a high dpi display it takes two or three or four settings changes to get it accurate to get it right all right okay yeah i i wouldn't know but that's interesting to hear i think you're i think

you're in the lead there i mean you're not elementary os and maybe not gnome 3 but you're pretty damn close now and this is supposed to be the joke desktop but don't you know that i had heard yeah i think this is probably something that the other desktop environment developers can learn from yeah yeah real quick question though go ahead so um would this lead to any sort of future uh feature toward uh window management as in like having four like a quadrant style window windows in some way shape or form yeah interesting that you should ask that question so one of the other features of marco the default window manager from mate is that we've fully implemented quadrant and top and bottom

panel tiling that has actually been there for a long long time but it was it was only activatable through key bindings but now if you drag to the corners and the tops and the bottoms it will snap to those locations and not just do side by side tiling now so that's in that's nice that's nice and glx acceleration for marco and um i'm hoping there's another couple of patches for Kaja that make that a bit more interesting as well. Oh, how so? But, well, I'm looking at trying to land tracker support for Marte 120. For search?

Yeah. Yeah, for desktop search. Yeah. Yeah, because at the moment that's the old desktop search and it's slow. And the tracker implementation is much improved in recent years so that's looking quite interesting is that what files is that what files uses uh yes it does yes okay i thought so and uh and then other changes that we've made in ubuntu mate just over the weekend is that um indicators are now enabled by default in all layouts

so it's indicators all the way that's awesome yeah um and that's there's another project i'll speak about another day because i don't want to go on too long that's that dovetails with that and then the other change we've made in the traditional layout so this is the og gnome 2 panel layout um one change we've made is if you remember it's applications places system it now reads menu places system and the menu is brisk menu with super key support but retains the places and system piece that people like so you still get that traditional ui but you get the benefit of super key for those people that like to mash the super key boy you are making my life so much harder you bastard right now I can't even with this I the

Mate desktop is so appealing I when I went through this whole rash of switching from Arch to Ubuntu I went Unity on almost all of the things were the were the Unity guy. Except for two computers, my workstation and my office upstairs, and the machines that I, actually it's three, because one's a VPS, that I X to go into. That doesn't count. No.

And out of all of them now, here we are several months into it, they have been my go-to workstations. They have been so solid, Wimpy. I am such a fan of the project, having, you know, I'm almost, almost what five months four months into using them as it's just been so great so uh huge huge thank you to for specifically for

ubuntu mate because that's what i'm using but the great thing is is i mean is has there been anything we've discussed that isn't available upstream to the mate project itself for all distros um no everything's upstream. It's down to the different distro maintainers as to how they want to implement Mate itself. The one conversation that we've had today is that we've landed the turn-on high DPI in Mate tweak, which although is cross-distroro it sits in the ubuntu mate github organization sure so uh we've been talking about moving that to the mate project and actually making it a you know a full mate thing because that's that's now got a a feature that other distro maintainers will likely want but mate Mate tweak is used quite widely now anyway.

I'm just struck by the fact that before you even, or before 1804 has arrived, before the big Ubuntu Mate LTS has arrived, even with the Ubuntu Mate 17.10 release, you've managed to take what was the butt of a joke and turn it into a desktop that uh is one of my favorites and with these improvements it just sounds like it's going to be even freaking better yeah high dpi support desktop icon it's you and a lot of folks i mean i don't want to i don't want to

discount the work but uh i know that it's a lot of it's it's there's a driving force behind a lot of this and that driving force is yeah there is and for a lot of this, and that driving force is you. Yeah, there is. And for a lot of this, I'm a mouthpiece. Yeah, sure. The Marte team, I play a relatively small part in. I turn up and do this sort of thing from time to time, and I test bugs and triage bugs and raise bugs. I have little coding time for Marte itself because what coding time I have I put into ubuntu mate in the ubuntu mate specific things um but you know there is there is a small group of people who are very dedicated working on mate and you just have to look at the github uh churn you know there are there are that it's quite the

commit rate you know it moves every day it's not slow moving it's a fast fast moving project and Ubuntu Mate I made it for other people and I was maintaining it for other people and I was using it because I felt I needed to because that's how I would see what the rough edges were to improve it for others but with Ubuntu Mate 17.10 so after three years of making this thing, I finally had a desktop environment that I was really proud of and was happy to use, really happy to use on a day-to-day basis. And with 18.04, I feel that even more. I actually feel like, you know, I've made something here that I'm really proud of and I'm happy to use. And those two features we've talked about today, the dash menu in Brisk and this work on high dpi both of those projects were funded through the generous support that we get through our patreon so you know big thanks to

everyone who's supporting ubuntu mate on the patreon because you've supported that development that happened in the solus project on brisk and this upstream development in the Mate desktop. And all of these distros get to benefit from that. So well done you for supporting the project, everyone. Thank you. It's been fascinating. It's just been, it's been a lot of fun really to watch the development of this. Patreon.com slash Ubuntu underscore Mate if you want to get in on the action. Boy i uh i don't know how i'm going to contain myself it's almost too many good options you know i've got so i've got unity seven of course it did rocks is pulling me back to gnome three like there's some weird draw i have to going back to gnome there's something about gnome it pulls me back kd kd plasma is doing

great stuff yeah i i hear rumors coming out of another flavor in Ubuntu that there's some interesting stuff going on there as well. So I think this year is going to be a good year for the Linux desktop in terms of the desktop environments. I've got a 2013 MacBook Pro running Arch Linux that has the Plasma 512 desktop. And it was one of those things where I was really putting off the updates. We talked about this recently. I brought that whole damn machine. I mean, it could have been as much as I hate to say it, I hate to say

it, four or five months behind, which is a bad move on Arch. That is a bad move, but I've been on the MiFi, you know? And I was just convinced after a couple of months that Plasma desktop would break like a bitch after I tried to update it. And I sat down. I got through all of my GPG key errors.

I got through all of these little esoteric, like, package conflicts problems that just took, like, a little bit of time to work through. Command here, command there. Yeah. And I finally got every damn package on that MacBook that you set up live on the show. Right. Updated. And I was convinced after the reboot Plasma wouldn't log in. Because that was my experience in the good old days.

Oh, yeah. I know that feeling. And sure enough, I rebooted, logged back in, and my desktop, the Plasma desktop, was exactly, exactly where I left it and performing better than ever. Just snappy as hell. It's clearly faster than macOS on the same hardware. So it is a good year. You got folks that are doing a Unity remix. GNOME 3's got more attention than it's ever had

in its entire existence. More hands on the code, more eyes on the code, more companies working with the code than have ever, ever been. And the Plasma desktop, the 5 series, is in a super stable position. They're about to release their next LTS.

They've really matured the project, so that's in a really good spot. And then Mate is bringing in these killer features for high DPI and the new launcher. We've got all kinds of options. It's too damn much. Yeah, it is. So we just need a few applications. That's really what it takes is we just need a few more good apps.

Before we go there, though, I just want to say happy birthday to LWN.net. 20 years of service from LWN. And Jonathan Cobert writes over here. He says, over the following years, we've borne witness to a long series of events that none of us could really have predicted. Linux got caught up in the dot-com boom and, with the VA Systems IPO, came to epitomize its success. But when that went boom, Linux was still there, stronger than ever. The SCO group tried to steal our community and work it and turn it into its own rent-generating machine. community and work it and turn it into its own rent generating machine. In the process of fending them off, it was made clear that the Linux kernel had one of the cleanest code bases around.

Companies discovered a little hobbyist system and invested billions into it, massively accelerating the development at all levels of the system. We learned how to scale development communities from dozens of developers to many thousands of developers. The security environment, which was initially defending against script kiddies playing their own form of capture the flag, became a fight against spammers, organized criminals, and nation-states with vast resources. Google bought an obscure phone operating system called Android and used it to dominate the phone market, and as a result, we got mobile devices that are far more open than they would have otherwise been. Linux became a base software supporting the bulk of the internet economy. Some of our biggest contributors do not

distribute Linux at all, but they use it internally, want to help, and they want to make it better. It's been quite a ride. We in the free software community set out to change the world and we exceeded and succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. And that's in the last 20 years. And you know, JB has been there for half of that ride. And a lot of that we've seen ourselves. And so here I am like 11, 12 years into covering this area. And I look at Jonathan, I think 20 years. covering this area and i look at jonathan i think 20 years that's truly impressive so congratulations to him and i've been a subscriber for many many years in fact uh even about about two months ago i i ran into a bug on his website and uh it unsubscribed me even though i was only that right i was only a couple of months in and i had to resubscribe so

he got p i paid him twice this year for my LWN subscription and it was money well spent. Totally worth it. It's real good journalism, you know, without the spin, without the hype. You look at this whole GNOME desktop icons issue and that's the result of advertising-based media where they have to get a certain amount of clicks for those images on their website in order to justify paying that writer. And so they run these articles that say GNOME's development team is arrogant, removes all icons. Really incentivizes the drama that you try to put into your stories, even when it's not really there. Yeah. And so it also serves to divide the community as well.

It's huge. You then get tribes building up on those that are going to defend GNOME on this decision and those that are going to rally behind what they feel is a bad decision. So this kind of journalism is self-serving for the publications themselves because it doesn't do our communities

any good whatsoever because it just creates conflict and it's one of my pet peeves and I hate it. Wimpy, if you and i had 12 hours for a podcast we could not get half of why this is bad in that show um but in brief the linux community isn't like the mac community or in the windows community the it is we we are we are much more exposed and so when the discussions when the discussion is set low,

when you have clickbait YouTubers and clickbait bloggers that just want to get clicks, and so they start the discussion at the lowest common denominator. They start the discussion in the mud. And so that creates the spectrum of conversation. And then you have people on the other side and you have people in the middle and it just turns out into a full-on turf war.

And it's just simply because of the way the advertising model works. And it's one of those things that I think I say maybe 200 times out of 233 episodes. I think I've maybe mentioned this in 200 episodes. But if you're not in the business and I'm not like I mean, I'm just barely in the business. But even if you just get a peek, if you just see behind the curtain for 15 seconds, you realize what's going on here and how it directly damages an open community. When you have a bunch of employees behind a closed door at Apple that are doing what Phil Schiller tells them to do or they're doing what Craig Federici comes up with or they're doing what Johnny Ive tells them to do, or they're doing what Craig Federici comes up with, or they're doing what Johnny Ive tells them to do, it doesn't matter what some jackass on Hacker News or on Reddit says. They can say whatever they want all day long. Johnny Ive told them what to do. But when a person is volunteering their personal time, maybe even at the exclusion of time with

their friends and family, to work on an open source project. That stupid thing that somebody says on Reddit has ten times the impact on an open source developer. Or that stupid thing that somebody said on YouTube that they made a video about can completely derail a project. And there's people in this community at all of the major companies that you know of. If I say to you, listener, think of an open source company, I've probably had conversations with people at that company that are no longer working on projects simply because they can't take community reaction anymore. And you name a major open source company and I've had a conversation with somebody from there about it. It really makes a difference. It's something I hear about all of the time and I can't really underscore how much of a difference that outlets like LWN can make in this. And that's why I am a subscriber because the focus for LWN.net is not pissing off their subscribers. Not, how many clicks can I get so that way I can go get the new HelloFresh advertising contract. It's, can I make the people that are paying me on a monthly basis happy? First, what I think LWN has been so dependable for me for how many years,

that it is just indispensable, included with its built-in comments section below Forum of Style, even though it's a new site. Yep. It is beautiful. Yeah, and it kind of makes me wish that Patreon didn't get oversaturated, because I also think that the things that make LWN great are the same kind of things that could make an open source project great. You know, if an open source project is held responsible to its primary patrons, then it's not going after the trend of the week. If a podcast network is held after its

primary patrons, then you're not worried about them trying to just build up enough clickbaity content so that way they can get yet another sponsor. And it just is a shame that every Tom, Dick, and Harry that lives in a van or makes a song or writes a video game

has gone to Patreon because it's saturated the market and it's lowered the value in the audience's mind of sponsoring people on Patreon. But the reality is it's all about the money. You've got to follow the money. It's like why Wes's really good buddy, his long-term friend, Tobey Maguire, always says, show me the money. Show me the money! Show me the money! You follow the money. And that's why I think LWN, after 20 years,

is looked at as one of the most reliable news sources. And the only evidence you need of that is look at all of the coverage for Meltdown Inspector, right? Absolutely. You and I know this because we've poured through all of it for TechSnap. There's a lot of the people that really matter in this discussion, the people that really know what the hell's going on, are constantly referring to LWN.

Absolutely. As LWN was on top of this for months. LWN was following this when it was rumors. LWN was accurately, technically covering this the entire time. I hope 20 years from now, people will say the same damn thing about Jupyter Broadcasting. And I say good job, Jonathan. Keep at it, and I'm going to be a subscriber. I'm going to continue to be a subscriber.

Same here. All right. Just one more thing to get to before we're all done this week. It's exciting. It's important. And it's a great piece that was written by Joey. So let's mention Linux Academy. Linuxacademy.com.

That's where Wes goes and I go to learn more about Linux. Every day. Full featured training library with everything you need to learn new skills and advance your career. Now, that's easy to say, but the actual implementation makes all of the difference. It's not just one of the things they do. It's all of the things. All of the things they do is Linux. all of the things. All of the things they do is Linux. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.

Go there to support the show and sign up for a free seven-day trial. Self-paced in-depth video courses on every Linux, cloud, and DevOps topic. Hands-on scenario-based labs that give you real experience. And they got human beings that can help you whenever you need actual real help. Whether you're an experienced sysadmin or new to the world of Linux, Azure, and AWS, OpenStack, and DevOps, a sharp skill set is an absolute necessity to succeed. Meet Linux Academy, an online Linux and cloud training platform that uses self-paced video courses and hands-on labs to give you real-world experience for a wide range of skills. Train for

your certification, learn the latest DevOps tools, and grow your skill set to do better work. Linux Academy is not just a video library. Our scenario-based server labs and quiz system allow you to learn hands-on. We also have full-time human instructors who answer questions and help you earn that certification or promotion at work. We add new training every week, so you'll always be up to date on the latest tech. Sysadmins of every experience level use Linux Academy to stay on the bleeding edge of the Linux ecosystem. You should too. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. I think it's just a combination of their sole focus, the continual improvements, the full-time human beings, and the community that's stacked full of Jupyter Broadcasting members. That doesn't hurt.

Yeah, it's a resource like no other, and that's why it's a perfect fit right here on this show. Linux is one of those platforms. So Linux is one of those platforms. If you're coming from Windows and you're getting into Linux, one of the things you quickly realize is really you can do anything with Linux. You just need to know how. And sometimes you got to bend it in certain ways. Sometimes you have to know certain incantations. And Linux Academy is a library full of all of that.

And now with public profiles, so that way the new job you're trying to get, the new client or your current employer can see exactly all of the awesome work you've got done. Yeah, show off all that hard work. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. I don't know if everyone in the audience got a chance to see this piece by Joey, but he nailed it. Big fan of Joey's work just because I know how hard he hustles. He really is. He really does. He's a hard worker. And he has had the opportunity to sit back and sort of showcase all of the good stuff that comes to the Ubuntu desktop, which generally if somebody writes a Linux app, they tend to write it for Ubuntu.

It's over there. And he's talked about it. Yeah, he's known about it. And he says, well, what the hell is going on? You like that? You hear that? That's me getting into it. That's me, like, getting into position here to talk about this.

That was that. That's how I can tell you're excited. And Joey says some stuff here that I just completely agree with. He says, once upon a time, I was writing about yet another music player. And it was almost meme-like. It was such a weekly occurrence. And just that first sentence right there resonated with me. You know, when we launched the Linux Action Show PIX, it was a conversation that went something like this.

There are so many apps that we're not getting to that we need to just stop waiting to review each one of them and just talk about them because there's too many apps and we've got to just talk about them. And so we carved out an app pick segment that we ran every single week at the top of the show that was yet another application for the Linux desktop. And we started that segment because there was an abundance of apps. It was easy pickings, right? You had a whole bunch to choose from. By the end of the Linux Action Show, that was one of the most brutal segments.

I mean, it was a matter of just scavenging and going to producers and Beard and yourself, and it just meant just digging and digging for something new that wasn't a web application and that wasn't Electron. And then it meant installing it and trying it. It became the one of the most tedious parts of the show. And now here in this show, we just like throw them in there. We had a couple of great ones because, you know, they come in spurts now, but it's not every single damn week anymore. And I think Joey's noticed that too. He says, same goes for video players, download managers, instant messengers, torrent apps,

image editors, Twitter apps, image viewers, text editors, photo uploaders, you name it. I probably wrote about it and it seemed like for a long while app developers were out there in mass creating quality apps to satisfy a full gamut of end user needs. These days, though, availability of new native Linux apps, which cater to users of the most popular Linux distributions, seem few and far between. But we do have lots of Electron apps. Go ahead. There's no winning here, man. But we do have lots of Electron apps.

Go ahead. There's no winning here, man. So when I look at these Electron apps, it's a sensible cost efficiency thing. Also, the people developing have changed. I think a lot of people that used to develop for the Linuxes used to be people doing it for a hobby. That's why so many yet another video player is usually you want to start with something you can look at a reference of implementation. You were doing it because you wanted to. Yes, and a lot of people then learned the brutal way

that you can't make money if you're not doing, like a business, market research on what you're building, if you're just building something that you have a lot of competition in. And nowadays, the people writing apps have two other categories, which I think is the primary focus, right? So if you're developing an app for Ubuntu, you know that there's some commercial backing. So the system and the platform that you're building and targeting is not just shifting out random. You can reach somebody to know what they're going for, and that gives you stability, but also means that a lot of the apps is not consumer or front user facing, but rather

actually enterprise facing. And that's the part that is harder to see on the repository, but it exists actually in higher quantity. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many ports of developer tools even from proprietary building software companies. OK. Fair enough. I mean I'm picking up what you're putting down. But I think I kind of disagree in some ways. I can't really fully disagree with you, Daredevil. agree with you, Daredevil, but I mean, looking at this, I have to point to our friends over at

Elementary OS, which have an abundance of native applications right now. They just have a smattering, if you will. A buffet. I think the Elementary OS has one thing that is what distinguishes

them and makes it appealing for developers, which is, a lot of people are good at developing, like developing code, but they're not designers themselves. Then having this semi-authoritarian view on how things should look like presents a design. And if you're a developer, you don't really want to do design stuff, but you want to write that cool app. Well, you go with them because that just does the design for you and then you implement that design.

Don't you feel like you're underselling what they're doing? I mean, aren't they really saying, here's a set of toolkits you can use so you have consistent design. Here's a set of really good, easy to read, easy to understand, and oh, by the way, easy to find documentation. Oh, and then you want to monetize that son of a bitch? Well, here's an app store with a payment system that's built around Stripe that you already trust and know. Sounds like iOS.

I mean, it just seems, yeah, it just seems like, yeah, you could say it's authoritism. You could say it's a design vision. But to me, it seems like just a practical path for bread. There's a breadcrumb path for developers to follow. Look, that breadcrumb path for developers to follow look that breadcrumb path has been there since day one but the thing that catered most of the developers that i've talked to that moved to elementary to build their app is hey there's this guy this he's good in design if i wonder if he has input on my app and i'll build this thing yeah because they're not designers

right they're they're just one like i want to spend my time writing this new cool machine learning technique, and I want to implement that in the music store or whatever, right? In the music player. How can I do that? But then I don't have the outreach to users, and everybody feels useful if they can help somebody. And that's the part that if you know users are going to find your application pretty, they will use it, even it sucks for the beginning because it's pretty. And this is, I think, the strategy Apple has figured out. If you have a pretty app, even if it sucks in the beginning, the user will put up with it because it's not as unpleasant to be there. And if it's a productivity app, you probably don't mind using if it's ugly because you

know you get your shit done, essentially. Yeah, and as long as they show that they eventually add more stuff and make it better, you're more likely to say, okay, yeah, I'll live with this on the rough edges. JJ, I know you had a comment about how perhaps Snaps and Flatpak could help sort of even this whole problem out. Well, maybe Snaps more or less because a lot more of the mainstream applications are coming via Snaps, such as Spotify and other apps that are seeming more... Yeah, Slack, you know, we should mention Slack is now being distributed as a Snap as of last week's episode. That's huge. Yeah.

Yeah, and also, and this being an ease of entry for bigger app creators to get into Linux, it sort of makes the jump from going from Windows and OSX to making this less of a jaunting task and having to develop for a lot of distributions and only focus on one form of that app. And you don't have to be specific to a specific subset of apps. I know most of the time that Nix developers usually initially do Debian application packages, don't they?

Well, it depends on who they're trying to target. I actually have a... Before we go... Okay, go ahead to target i actually have a i before we go okay go ahead and then i have a question for wimpy about some technical limitations with snaps go ahead though the only thing i just actually wanted to say is that actually the example of the apps demonstrated in here are just yet another reinforcing point to the companies being the primary target nowadays see if you are spotify Spotify and Linux user base is not easy to quantify because of the self-reporting part of it.

And before you decide to invest in making an app for Linux that is going to be native there, it's going to work there, it is hard for you to justify the price, except if you can actually know of many other services that are being used by enterprises.

And then, you know, at least this quantity of people because it's more measurable you can say this company has these many users so then they become capable of saying it's worthwhile investing here because we have these many customers accessing from this platform right now and and if we actually make an app they will be better served and as a consequence we, will have better customers willing to pay higher premiums. And it's better outcomes for normals who want to transition over to Linux because they feel fed up with OSX and also they don't have to mess with Wine as much. Well, that's a fair point.

So let's talk about Flatpaks and Snaps. And I have a question for Mr. Wimpress. talk about flat packs and snaps. And I have a question for Mr. Wimpress. Is it possible with snaps to ship like a runtime in the snap? And what I mean by that is, could I ship a enterprise Java application where the Java runtime is just all inside the single snap? Could I ship TeamViewer that uses some sort of wine runtime where that is all packaged inside the Snap. Is it possible that some of these like gap covering solutions that we've come up with, these things that help people transition from Windows to Linux, could those just be included as one single Snap? So I, as an end user, I Snap install TeamViewer. Of course, I recognize

TeamViewer 13 as native now, but I, as an end user for this example, install TeamViewer. Of course, I recognize TeamViewer 13 is native now. But I, as an end user for this example, install TeamViewer via snap, and I just get the wine runtime and all that stuff inside the snap. Is that technically possible right now, Wimpy? Yes, and there are snaps that already do precisely those things that you outlined. Okay, I thought it wasn't for some reason. I thought that was something that Flatpak could do that snaps couldn't. Yeah, I thought it wasn't for some reason. I thought that was something that Flatpak could do that Snaps couldn't.

So in the case of Java, JetBrains have published the vast majority of their product portfolio. Yeah, that's right. And those are all Java-based, and they have their own custom build of the JVM inside the Snap in order to make those work. Yep, yep. to make those work yep um and then uh our friend alan pope has made a snap of zzt which is an old dos based adventure game and that ships dos box inside the snap and then uses dos box to launch the game and uh one of the ubuntu podcast listeners uh mcphail has done the same with Blades of Agony, which is a Doom mod or re-implementation, and that uses DOSBox embedded. And I happen to know it's not publicly available, but I happen to know one of my colleagues at Canonical

created a snap of Internet Explorer by using wine. No! What? I love it. Of course, you know, of course, why not?

Right. That just makes me. So I'm struck with one thing that I take away from this is we are as Linux users experiencing something that the wider market is currently going through. When you install Slack on windows 10, I've got news for you. That's also an electronic app. When you use Atom on your Mac, same thing. Yeah, it's not just a Linux phenomenon.

This is happening to the entire market. This is the consequence of mobile and the web becoming predominant platforms. The web and mobile are what people are writing for today that are spending millions of dollars on developers for the most part. And the desktop is sort of a second class to third class citizen now in this new world that we see ourselves in 2018. Many people would rather write a LadyTube skill than a Linux desktop application. Simply put, it would be more valuable.

You know, I'll give you an example. There's a lot of different podcast networks that are writing LadyTube apps right now so you can listen to podcasts on your LadyTube, and they're not really all that interested and don't really give any shits about the linux desktop that's just not on their radar it's a simple market dynamics market force that we are also at the whim of just like mac users are i've got some i've got some thoughts about this that put this into context.

Approximately, there are 46 GNOME applications that make up the core GNOME applications, right? Interesting. Okay. Okay, more or less. a fine job with their developer outreach and their developer program and their app store and they now have 70 apps in their store which is a fantastic achievement considering the size of their team i think they're punching above their weight in that respect yeah absolutely there are 30 to 40 000 packages in the debbian and Ubuntu archives. That includes libfoo and devthis and all the rest of it, right? Okay.

There are approximately 50,000 Electron applications on GitHub. Oh, boy. Well put. Right there. That's it, isn't it? That puts it all in context. It sure does. Right there.

Thank you, Mr. Wimpress. Go find out more about what Wimpy's up to and his whole crew. The Ubuntu podcast. There's plenty of fine episodes ready for you to listen to. The season hasn't started yet. The new season. Although rumor has it, it may come around. Is that right?

Possibly. So go get more of that Ubuntu podcast. Go get more Wes Payne at Wes Payne. And also TechSnap.Systems. Brand new episode just went out this morning where Wes breaks down configuration management for thousands of systems to your personal Linux workstation. I'm at Chris Hellyes.

Network's at Jupyter Signal. See you right back here next week. All right, guys. That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this week's episode. Wow, that was kick-ass. Thank you. And that's really wimpy. That really puts it all into perspective, too, doesn't it?

You're trying to hit an hour and a half for episode length. Well, you know, we've got to make room now for the Ask Noah show. This is a bit of a longer show, but we've got to make room for Noah. He's coming. You can't stop him. No, he can't stop Noah. Don't even try chris yeah yeah i got a quick question about wi-fi adapters um so my dad's looking to get me a usb wi-fi adapter

for my machine oh that's nice yeah you see i'm upstairs in my room right now talking to you guys on my phone but my desktop it has a d-link dwa125 wi-fi adapter it's usb n only and i need an ac adapter and i was wondering if you had any suggestions for me oh i i don't i don't i mean i have so many things uh there's a lot going on with with with what you just said and uh boy you know um what's your budget? So let's start there. My dad said he's willing to go at least 60, but he'd prefer to keep it a little bit lower. Okay. All right.

And what kind of machine you're plugging in? It's got to be USB? It's a tower. It's a custom-built machine, and it does have USB 3.0 capabilities. Maybe you should ask Noah. Hey, citizen, by the way, I got to say, Ohai DPI is really funny. That's really good. That's a good title, by the way.

I'll ask Noah, I guess, when he comes on because he may be the better person to ask. Does anybody have any hardware recommendations for that? Asus, Dongle, they have one that is pretty good. I'm trying to find it. And is that Asus one, is it like an Intel chipset on the inside, or what is that? I just posted it in the chat. Oh, yeah? Okay, very good.

Okay, Rekhi. There you go. And Best Buy's got it, too. So it's an Asus dual-band wireless AC USB network adapter. And I'm fairly close to St. Matthew's portion of Louisville, Kentucky. So that should hopefully, I might just have him go down and pick it up. It takes just one thing. Oh, and that's nice.

That's just basically the size of like a mouse wireless adapter. Yeah. Just one small thing, though, because you're using in tower, and the tower itself can interfere with wireless, make sure that you have an adapter in case you need like a cable, an extension cable. Yes. You can actually get a USB extender cable.

He's absolutely right. So get a USB extender cable and then put this at the end of it. I have had that same exact problem. That is good advice right there. Yeah. My current one is sitting up on the wall right now. Oh, yeah. There you go.

So you're hip to it. Okay. If you ever also. Well, I'll definitely look into that. That's what I usually do. What do you think, Wes? now oh yeah there you go so you're hip to it okay if you ever also uh well all that even not what do you what i usually do what do you think west oh just in the same situation in the past i've ended up uh if you have like some some of the cheaper and like older wi-fi hardware just sitting around you can flash a lot of those routers add them as just a wi-fi adapter plug a bridge yeah that's what it's funny you say that that's what i was actually gonna say until he said

this asus thing i was actually going to just recommend just bridge it. Just bridge it. I got to tell you, at the end of the day, all my devices that are Wi-Fi bridged, I just like better. I just plug them into the Ethernet port. The machine is none the wiser. It doesn't have to futz with the Wi-Fi stuff. It has no idea. And the bridge is always connected to the Wi-Fi network.

And that is my preferred. Provided your Wi-Fi doesn't change a lot. It works pretty well. Yes. That is my preferred way to roll.