LINUX Unplugged - Episode 244: Plasma Predicament

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

We have some Plasma problems this week, but we’re sticking with it and still putting it into production in our most ambitious event yet. But we start with a bunch of important community news, including what looks like ZFS on Linux’s first major bug, the future of Elementary OS apps, and a proposal to revamp Ubuntu’s betas.

Going back to Popey's argument about filing a bug, this is not one I think, and I don't know, maybe it's my bias. I've been around for a while. This is not one I think is worth my time because it's… Yeah, that's what I heard for six months from the people complaining about wireless on 1604. I disagree with that. I didn't actually have that problem. Oh, my God. That would have been one that would have been.

But that's exactly the problem. Like, not everyone had this problem. There were people, like, very close to you, ranting about how wireless on 16.04 was completely busted and everyone should avoid it on 2.16.04. It turns out, no, it's not busted for everyone. It's not busted for anyone in Canonical. It's only busted for certain select people

with certain chipsets in certain environments. That's crazy. But those fuckers wouldn't tell us what the details of that system was. If you don't tell us, we can't f***ing fix it. I think this is a real problem. I think the core problem that that issue, the thing

is, is I'm not going to spend my time, I'm not going to spend, I'm not going to, like I said, if I'm working 65 hours this week, I'm not going to work 67 hours so that way I can report a bug and then watch them tell me it's an NVIDIA problem. I'm not going to do it. Doesn that way I can report a bug and then watch them tell me it's an NVIDIA problem. I'm not going to do it. Doesn't Canonical maintain a list of certified hardware?

We do, yeah. So if you're buying outside of that list, but you don't want to spend time to report the issues, that kind of seems like... Also, it's a bit cheeky to say that you're not willing to put in the extra hours when all these people who are working their day job and then in their spare time in their evenings are working on open source i agree i'm just telling you i think that's what's happening i think that's it and i think it's just human nature people are they're at their wits end with so many so many things especially in the u.s that i think that's the issue is people are out of bandwidth that you got to buy the certified hardware right i mean there's oh well and there, I mean, there's a lot of different, there's a lot of different answers, but I think the core problem of people not reporting what's

going on, like this, they're not going to get a bug report from me on this. I'm just going to either move on or, you know, I don't know what. So this, this is one of the reasons, and it's a slight change of topic, but this is one of the reasons why we want that crash reporting information from people. it's not just like you know weirdness that happens on your display but when shit crashes we want to know about that so we can fix it and we know there are plenty of people i can sit here and berate you and encourage you to file a bug but i know there are for every one of you there's a hundred or a thousand or maybe a hundred thousand people who will not

file a bug don't know how didn't know it's even possible right but if under the covers when something crashes if we can in a tasteful way take that crash report and aggregate it with all the other crash reports that are similar and we can analyze that and say okay we've got a problem we need to fix this thing we don't even ever have to interact with human beings out in the field which is how it should work fix that code right but not everything is a crash right and what you're experiencing is not necessarily a crash and that's the problem is not everything can be can be captured and fixed via crash reports well this is my long way of saying i'm switching to elementary os sweet awesome you know you're still gonna have nvidia problems so don't may you uh yeah may you have a nice time and the nvidia rng gods bless you

i'm just worried you're gonna screw this whole thing up you got a good thing going that's all so just keep it going dan don't we're thinking about putting an amazon search in oh yeah oh that would be so handy yeah yeah that's great timing generates revenue mate whatever you might think it generates revenue. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 244. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's sitting in front of so many Linux rigs I'm starting to lose track. My name is Chris. My name is Wes.

Hello, Wes. That's a little bit of a behind-the-scenes joke, I suppose. It sure is. But I'll tell you what, Wes. Everything we have to talk about is going to be in front of the scenes this week. Out in the open. Wes and I are going to be out in the open coming up really soon. We'll tell you about where you can come hang out with us

and perhaps watch a live taping of this very show. ZFS on Linux has a bit of a ButterFS bug. We'll tell you what's going on. And no, it's not actually that bad. And Steam Machines are perhaps not so dead. We kind of got down on Steam Machines last week. So we got to follow up on that. NVIDIA is taking away your cookies.

And there's a new tool out that, let's just say it's going to make your stuff look better. It's going to make your stuff look better. The stuff you back up, the stuff you back up off the web is going to look better. I'm not going to say any more than that because the copyright lawyers may be listening right now, but we'll move on. Then later on in the show, we have a new segment called Plasma Corner, which changed a little bit before the show started. But we'll talk about Plasma Vault, which is a really sweet plasma applet that gives you a front end to creating encrypted vaults and some new features that are coming to Plasma Vault really soon that I think you're going to love. And then we'll discuss, I think, the only dock you should be using, if you should so choose to do so, on the Plasma desktop. Now, I'm not saying you should.

Oh, big words. I'm not saying you should, but I found a dock, replaced my plasma panel with it, and I'm loving it. I'll tell you about that. And then, we'll talk a little bit about Falcon. A cross-platform QT web browser. Not bad.

It's not bad. So how about that, Wes? That is a full show. That's some things. Let's get into it. So let's not go any further without bringing in our virtual lug timer. Appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Hi, guys. It's good to be connected with all of you. Thanks for being here. I want to just start the show out with a plug skis for Linux Fest Northwest 2018, which will be April 28th through the 29th this year. And Wes and I will be there as well as many others from the Jupiter Broadcasting crew, including Noah and Alan Jude and Angela and others.

We'll be doing some live shows from there. We'll have a booth. We'll have some swag. We'll be chatting with people. We'll be drinking beers and hanging out and doing all the things you do when you're in Bellingham. So join us there, LinuxFest Northwest. You can find out more at linuxfestnorthwest.org just a little bit left i think um just a little bit of time left but i think not so many rooms left so that's why that's why i camp in the parking lot in my rv linux fest

northwest 2018 go check it out linuxfestnorthwest.org It looks like it's already the biggest LinuxFest this year. I mean, this year's already the biggest. You know what I mean. It's the biggest one yet because they've sold out of all the things. And we'd love to see you there and hang out with us. I think that'd be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. We may just try.

I don't know. We may just try to do like a weekend edition of this show and do it live there at the fest. That'd be a lot of fun. So stay tuned for that. Linuxfest.org if you want to go. And I may try to make it down to Southeast Linuxfest this year too, so may see you down there as well. There's other

events coming up, but I think Linuxfest Northwest is one of the best and Bellingham is a ton of fun. Just before the show, Wes and I were talking about how much we're looking forward to just going back to Bellingham. It's just a great place to hang out. It's such a wonderful place. It's a college town. There's a lot of different breweries there. There's just a lot going on. It's a cute, quintessential Pacific Northwest place.

All right, so now let's talk about destroying your data. Now that that's out of the way, you know me. I'm a pretty big fan of the ZFS. But you knew this day was coming. You knew a reckoning was in the works. And let's be honest, you still rolled the dice. I've never installed GNU slash Linux. Okay, well, now not all of us have rolled the dice.

But there is a disappearing files issue on ZFS on Linux right now on certain distributions. And I want to do a breakdown just so you can be aware of what's going on. The ZFS team is already well aware of it. And I want to do a breakdown just so you can be aware of what's going on. The ZFS team is already well aware of it. But if you are on ZFS version 0.77 on, say, like CentOS, you should absolutely seriously consider downgrading to 7.6. Or if by the time you're listening to this, 7.8 is available upgrade. Gen 2 is also affected.

Ubuntu and Debian users are not affected because they are on older versions of CFS. Ubuntu specifically is on version 0.75's a combination of a change that was made in GNU core utils in the way that CP works. Yeah. And a way and a patch that was made to ZFS and the two things collided. So I talked to Alan Jude last night and he says that he went through this whole thing and he's been kind of been following this from day one. The team's been working on this. They're already working working on the patch he says they found part of the problem is based on a change to core utils but it doesn't go to and that's why some people can reproduce the problem some people couldn't uh so you had to have a certain version of zfs and you had to have a certain version of core utils but in the version of core utils that centos is

using uh there is a hard limit that was accidentally introduced with a recent patch to ZFS. They limited the attempts to expand the ZAP, which is the... I asked Alan, what the hell, Alan, is a ZAP? It's the ZFS Attributes Processor. It's basically... Well, of course, Chris. Yeah. So the ZAP is a ZFS Attributes Processor that's basically a keystore value. Yeah. Okay. is a ZFS attributes processor that's basically a keystore value. Yeah, okay? And it's how directories are stored in ZFS.

And this bug that was introduced limited the attempts to expand the zap to two, which is not enough. And so that means two attempts. And so when you're copying thousands of files, after a couple of attempts, it would just say, oh, can't do it anymore,

and it would just start dropping the files, essentially. And so the ZFS team, Richard Yao is part of this, is working on the fixes. We've dropped everything. We have a dozen people around the world who are working on this. We have a fix. We're kind of narrowing in on the exact circumstance because you had to have a certain version of core utils. You had to have a certain version of ZFS on Linux. And you had to be doing a certain kind of copy of new files. This didn't impact existing files. Some people had to test, like, does it matter if I'm in a

mirror? Does it matter if I'm in a RAID? Whatever. All this different testing had to happen. But you can watch, we'll have a link in the show notes. You can watch them work through this over the process of days as they narrow it down. I asked Alan, like, what triggered this upstream change in ZFS that accidentally triggered this zap limit? And he says, well, they were actually just trying to make some changes to how it all worked on a case insensitive file system. Yeah. Optimizing for a totally different case. Yeah, and then that's what caused all of this. And it really shows you what a house of cards all of this is. So the moral of the story is if you're on Gentoo or CentOS or Scientific Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux,

you need to either be on ZFS 7.6 or ZFS 7.8, and you won't have this issue. So that's my breakdown of it. Unfortunately, there's really no other coverage of this, so I can't link you to like a Pharonix post or anything like that. This is it. We had to do the original reporting on this for you, but all of the information, including a better description

and quotes from Alan Jude, are in the show notes. If this impacts you, if you're using this in production, just go to linuxunplugged.com slash 244 for that information. I mean, it says a lot that this is the first thing of this scale we've seen for a long time with our handy-dandy friends at EFS. The other thing that was really fascinating is because all of

this is on GitHub, so all of the GitHub utilities are immediately put into play. They're finding the exact commits, they have the code highlighted, they're linking everybody to it. It is fascinating to watch. Yeah, everybody's on the same page. They have the code highlighted. They're linking everybody to it. It is fascinating to watch. Yeah. Everybody's on the same page. So you can say a lot of things about GitHub and about open source projects being on a commercial platform. Boy, was that useful tracking this thing down. You could really see how the team was just

busting through this at a breakneck pace, figuring it out. And then to really see Richard Yao, at a breakneck pace figuring it out. And then to really see Richard Yao, just to mention to Richard Yao, who is really just tackling this thing. He's just being a real leader in this situation. And he's going to the Hacker News and Reddit comment threads, and he's answering sysadmin's questions

that are in there saying, so this is my scenario. Do I need to worry about this? And he's specifically addressing their exact questions while he's working around the clock to help people like to help the team get the patch together so it's impressive it's unfortunate and it shows you that uh even things like zfs uh are not um uh you know infallible and of course alan had to get a dig in there that it only affects linux you're welcome alan i. I made that into the show.

Anyway, so if you're running ZFS on Linux, you need to know about that. We wanted to let you know. Just a little bit of heads up here on the Unplugged program. And we got links to everything in the show notes if you want to see the whole thing or where the exact. I'm showing it on the screen right now with that exact. Right there. Right there. That's it.

Don't do it. No. I know. That's it. Now everybody's been infected, Wes. Oh, no. Oh, wait. It doesn't work like that at all but you know it does work like that an idea an idea like ting that's right linux.ting.com go there and get 25 off a ting device or 25 in service credit that'll probably pay for more than your first month i brought over one of those old Evo 4Gs, you know, the ones that had, what was it?

WiMAX. WiMAX, yeah. And I was like, I had no use for this thing. So I brought that over to Ting, and I'm like, all right, well, you know what? We'll give you $25 in service credit. I'm like, wait, what, really? Like, yeah, just put it on that device

and see what you think for a month. And, you know, I'm like, a month? All right. At the end of the month, I hadn't even used all $25. And I was like, oh. Oh, I get it. I get it now. And you can, too.

Linux.ting.com. It's smarter than Unlimited. If you use less, you pay less. $6 a month for your line. Then your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes. Whatever you use, that's what you pay. And they have a nationwide network, GSM and CDMA, no contracts nor determination fees.

That's what I love about Ting. And you're in control all of the time, from the control panel, the great customer service, or if you want to use CDMA or GSM. And because they support both networks, you probably want to check their BYOD page. They probably support a device you already have, and then you can really save some money.

But if you don't want to use an old device, want to get something new they got a sale going right now on those motos those moto devices like three or four different moto devices that are really nice um so go check those out because those are great value and it's no contract and you're just paying for what you use linux.ting.com you go there to support the show you get the 25 dollars in either service credit or off a hardware device, which that's a great deal. And then you're good to go. You start going and you see, you know what? This is a totally different way to do mobile.

You'll see it. And it's like the veil has been lifted. You're woke all of a sudden. You're staying woke over at Ting. They ought to take that. They stay woke at Ting. Linux.Tux.ting.com a big thank you to ting for sponsoring the unplug program and go check it out because it's really uh it's a totally different

way to do mobile it's a better way to do mobile if they had to hit the reset button today that's how they do it linux.ting.com my millennials stay woke so go check it out all right so mr daniel foray as he is one to do uh joins us here on the show which we always love having him Stay woke! Oh, you're having some plasma problems? I feel bad for you, son. Oh, gnome's getting a little weird on you? I feel bad for you, son. You ought to just use XFCE. And I'll sit here and go, Joe, I don't want to use the damn XFCE. I'd fantastic. But my personal reluctance, it's just this dumb thing of somebody I think that's unique to somebody that's probably my age or around my age, and that it's that when I started using computers, you could only run one application at a time. My first computer got hooked up to a television. I put cartridges in my first computer and it could do one thing at a time. It was delightful when I could make the damn thing beep. So I've just been through a lot of iterations of the shit pile that we call

modern technology. And I've been through a lot of promises about the next great thing that's just around the corner that's going to finally make the computer better and finally make it user-friendly. And I've been listening to that promise since I could read, since I could take in information.

I am just at a point in my life where I'm done with computers being below a certain standard. And it doesn't mean I'm a Mac user or I'm some Windows 10 power user writing PowerShell scripts. It just simply means I've been through iterations of this entire industry now. And I've gotten to a point where I just expect a certain standard of living on my desktop environment. And it's not that I couldn't make do and go camping in XFCE and be totally fine with a weekend in i3. It's simply if I'm going to build a home and I'm going to live there, I got a certain standard because it's where I live. And it's not, it's just XFCE, i3, these other desktop

environments are simply unappealing to me in that regard. It's nothing about the excellence of the projects, the functionality that they serve for other individuals. It has no statement on your use of them. It's simply my esoteric preferences as somebody who has gone through the life experiences that I have. So I am really at a point where if it's not of a certain standard that's my own personal standard, I'm not interested. And that's why I'm on Plasma right now. That's why I stayed on Gnome 3 for a really long time. And it's why I follow the elementary project with keen interest. And they really kind of hit my note this week when they started talking about improving the look of the applications and start talking about building the next generation of applications for their Linux desktop. And this is something that they've been working on for over

seven years, and they've introduced multiple generations. And it's really something to see. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes to encourage you to go look at the screenshots because visually it's, again, one of these posts where you could just really see the progress visually. But there's so much more than just the visual aspect of it. So Dan is joining us. And I loved this post, Dan, because you start out with Generation 1, which is really the first version of an elementary OS, like the best shot for a new team.

And they were pretty good. I think maybe that's where some of the early criticism about design copying came from. But GTK2 was limited and you could only get so far. But now in 2018, we're in a totally different place. You know, one of the things that I think is kind of central to the story that I wanted to present in this post is that when we first started out, we didn't really know how to be a good code shop. And we actually went to the Ubuntu developer summit and we wanted to pitch some of our apps for being included in Ubuntu. And one of the Unity developers kind of sat us down and gave us a talk. And he was like, hey, listen, you guys are bad at coding.

And he told us all the things we were doing wrong and how to step up our game. And we came back from that and we picked a standard language. We created code style guides. We started doing code reviews. We started getting really serious about the quality of the code that goes into our applications

and not just what goes on top as far as design. Yeah, and boy, do I appreciate that as an end user. That's why I did this whole setup is I think this is the solution to the problem where I've seen these promises over and over again, and then we do these hard resets, or we have these big focus changes. And what is clear now, especially as we're getting close to the next release of elementary OS, is you guys have really been on a trajectory where I'd say it's refining focus over and over again. And you could definitely see it in Gen 2 of your applications. Like, they're solid looking.

They're GTK3 by Freya. Is that true? Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. So you give us some hints where things are going. So where, where do we go in gen two to gen three?

Like what's, what kind of is the next thing that we might see in future versions of elementary OS that may not yet be released? Where is this going? So one of the big things that happened is we came out with app center, right? And when we did that, a focus for us was making sure we had a lot of automated tests in place so that when developers submit their applications, we could run them through these tests and get their apps published very

quickly. And when we did that, we kind of set a set of standards for them as far as naming. We forced developers to use the reverse domain name notation so that, for example, their binaries and the names of files like.desktop files or AppStream data files all follow this RDNN notation where it's like com, github,.username application. So what's the benefit there? That sounds good, but what's the benefit? username application. So what's the benefit there? That sounds good, but what's the benefit? So the point of this is to ensure that we don't have any sort of naming conflicts, not only when developers are publishing their applications on elementary OS, but also when we're talking about upstreams repackaging. Yeah, I bet. And this is something that the

GNOME team has embraced as well. And it's pretty common on Android and other platforms like that. So we're going to a point where not only are we enforcing this for all of our third-party applications, but we want to practice what we tell other people to do. And so all of our first-party applications are going to be using RDNN from now on as well. Can you expand on that a bit? So you're working with GNOME, or it's kind of the same thing, or what's that about? I think it's more of just kind of a de facto standard that everybody's moving towards as we realize that we want to have this world eventually where we're shipping not just like

a few thousand applications, but where we have millions of applications, right? And in order to get to that world with the constraints of file-based package managing, we have to make sure that these files the constraints of file-based package managing, we have to make sure that these files do not conflict with each other. Well, I'm glad you're thinking about it. That's for sure. The hype train, it's successful, this one. I mean, I'm just thinking. I think you're caught right along. I got a machine. I got a machine that's destined for this. I think that's the case. Well, Dan, is there anything else we should mention?

Well, real quick, I do want to plug that there's a bunch of other stuff that we talk about that people can check out in the article, which you said will be in the show notes. But I want to make a point that our continuous integration suite that we've developed for App Center, we're now making it available as something that you can run through Travis CI on your own projects. So anybody can use this full testing suite that Elementary is working on, even if you're not planning to publish an App Center. Thank you for mentioning that. That's great.

Yeah, no kidding. That's totally worth it. We were just talking about Travis CI. That's so cool. Yeah, all right. So that's good. That's definitely great to check that out. The link, like you said, is in the show notes.

And now I want to just kind of, just from a big picture perspective, like how do you as a project, how do you feel like, yep, this stuff is ready to go? You must have a lot of people besides yourself testing this, maybe a small group, 10 people, a thousand people. Like how does the beta process work for elementary OS? Yeah. So right now we're kind of in a pre-release state where uh we just have some builds that we're running internally um and we just publish those on our slack channel

which has like a little over 100 people in it i think right now okay and so we've got a we've got a small group of just developers testing uh we have projects up on github which you can actually see it's a public project where we're tracking regressions and things like that. And so once we get through those tasks and we feel like we've handled all the regressions we know about, then we'll go to public beta and that'll be an open public beta anybody can download. And then we'll figure out from there how much we have left to do before we can do final release. I'm excited to hear that. Well, neat. Well, thank you for coming on and explaining this.

And I like the fact that you guys... So it's called FlightCheck? Is that what it's called? So that's the name of the component. The full application is called Houston. Houston. Yeah. Love it.

And so this part, we're calling it Houston CI. Okay. That's great. And we're calling it Houston CI. Okay. That's great. And you're making it available for anybody if they want to integrate into their projects. That's so cool. Yeah. And this is all regular open source standard stuff. Like this checks, validates metadata for.desktop files and app data files.

And it does a lot of good open source citizen stuff. And we're looking to integrate tests that other platforms use, like the Debian maintainers have a good set of tests that they use for packages. So we really want to make sure this is all open source standard stuff. That's fantastic. Yeah. And it's using computers for what they're good at, which I'm always a fan of. Might as well if you can. If you can have some of this stuff tested for you automatically.

Even if it doesn't replace actual testing, it's just another data point and it's pretty valuable. It's good to hear. That's good to hear. All right. Well, last week, we may have reported too soon. Steam machines were dead. Although I'm actually not sure it's not the case, in my personal opinion. But Valve took to the web

after last week's episode and said, we've noticed that what started out as a routine cleanup of our Steam store, where we removed all links to Steam machines, all references to Steam machines and SteamOS, and buried them, we noticed that some of you interpreted that incorrectly.

I may have editorialized it a little bit. I may have editorialized it a little bit. I may have a little bit of editorializing. But while it's true Steam Machines aren't exactly flying off the shelves, read, we haven't sold any for the last couple of months, our reasons for striving towards a competitive and open

gaming platform haven't significantly changed. Read, we're working on fundamentals. We've taken a lot of feedback and have been heads down on addressing the shortcomings we've observed read Linux was a bit of a dumpster fire nap take it a nap for sure and we think an important part of that effort is our ongoing investment in making Vulcan logical a competitive and well supported graphics API as well as

making sure it has first-class support on Linux platforms. I think that's great. Completely think that's great. Yeah. I think that is true. And they say now, here's the part that got my attention. Tell me what you think about this, Wes. You ready for this one? They go on about how we're continuing to vest a significant

resources and Vulkan ecosystem and stuff. But then they just throw this in as one sentence. It's not even a complete sentence. They say, we also have other Linux initiatives in the pipe that we're not quite ready to talk about yet. Fascinating.

What does that mean? What now? We have other Linux initiatives in the pipe. Not the pipeline, the pipe. The pipe, yep. That we're not quite ready to talk about yet. Maybe they're initiatives in the pipe. Not the pipeline, the pipe. The pipe, yep. That we're not quite ready to talk about yet. Maybe they're stuck in the pipe. That's why they can't talk about them.

They need to get them out of the pipe. I think it's VR on Linux. That's what it seems like, right? I mean, what else could it be? Does anybody else in the Mumba room have speculation on what might be in Valve's pipe? What could be in Valve's pipe that's regarding Linux? It's not SteamOS.

It's not Falcon. It's not not SteamOS. It's not Falcon. It's not the Steam client. It's not the Steam controller. Steam TV. Maybe. Steam Cody? I would so be down for that. If SteamOS could be a Cody, basically, with SteamOS on Steam integration,

that would be such a product for me. Half pipe three. Alright, so nobody's got any ideas. Alright, you guys are no good. What a mystery. It is a bit of a mystery. What would Valve have in their pipe? So let us know, linuxunplugged.com

slash contact, and send us in your ideas for what might be in Valve's pipe. So let us know, linuxunplugged.com slash contact, and send us in your ideas for what might be in Valve's pipe. I don't know. I'm thinking it's VR or AR. And sort of as a related note, screw you 32-bit users. NVIDIA is giving you the middle finger this time

and is ending support for 32-bit OSs. It's not just Linux users. It's everybody. So it's equal screwing. The times, they are changing. Oh, yeah, they're going to halt GeForce GPU driver support at the end of April, meaning users will lose access to new GeForce experience features and game updates. But more importantly, and you got a little more runway on this one, NVIDIA will end security

updates January 2019. So you can continue to use your 32-bit OS with a GeForce card at least until 2019 and get security updates. And then, you know, really in theory, you could keep running it probably for a lot longer.

It's just there's going to be security things that they won't fix. Like, I don't know, new versions of Spectre. I'm not sure what that would be. I guess. What kind of security? Actually, I take that back.

Now that I think about TechSnap, there's been a few stories where NVIDIA drivers have been involved, including even running cryptoware on the NVIDIA GPU. Oh, no. Yeah. But Wes and I were just talking about all kinds of speculative execution attacks on the TechSnap program. That'll be coming out later this week,

TechSnap.systems slash 363, I think it was, if you want to- I think you're right. Yeah, and speculative execution, turns out, is going to be a fun bag for lots of people. And we talk about some of the new exploits in that episode. So let's now talk about DigitalOcean, our sponsor for this week's episode of the Unplugged program.

DigitalOcean is what I use for a lot of our backend infrastructure. We're recording portions of the show using DigitalOcean. We're streaming portions of the show using DigitalOcean. In fact, the bot that manages our titles is using DigitalOcean, Wes. It sure is. Talk about dog food. Yeah, we really do. And it's because it's great infrastructure. You can deploy in seconds and it's super fast. You can develop locally and deploy globally. DigitalOcean, go to do.co.unplugged to get a limited 60 days, but yet it's kind of great. $100 credit. I can't believe I even get to say that. You have to go to that URL, do.co.unplugged. slash unplugged. That arms your web browser with the knowledge of the $100 deal. Once you create a new account, you get the $100 deal. I think you might have to have like a legit credit card on file, although I don't know if that's actually true. But you do get the $100 credit if you go to the do.co slash unplugged and it's a new account, you create the account, and then you

can really play around. Because really, my favorite system is $0.03 an hour. And so when you think about $100, I mean, you could really try out like their new high CPU droplet. You could be like Westpain and be spinning up VPN systems. All the time. What's the last, do you remember the last droplet you created? It was gotta be sometime earlier this week. I know.

I know. There's like, we'll be sitting here discussing like an idea for the tech snap show and we'll be like, well, let's go spin up a droplet and try that real quick. It's like, okay, that's a great idea. And that's what I love about it because it just, it's so fast.

They have a really easy to use web interface, a super straightforward, well-documented API, and then just tons of well-constructed documentation on top of that to make it easy for beginners or experts to go all the way with DigitalOcean. You can deploy a single like bare Linux rig or an entire application stack. They have tutorials. They have a lot of community meetups, surprisingly.

That's a big thing I never actually have mentioned about DigitalOcean is there is a large meetup community. Seattle has some. Wow. I had no idea. Yeah. It's a big thing. Yeah, it's pretty cool. There's all kinds of neat things about DigitalOcean.

We only get to touch on parts of them, like the fact that they provide back-end infrastructure for tons of the open-source projects that we talk about here on this very show. And of course, the fact that they're supporting for a long time now, this crazy Linux podcast that's barely structured that just talks about frickin' Linux things.

I mean, that's just kind of great in itself. Go to do.co slash unplugged to get the $100 credit and then play around. Try out their flexible droplets where you can mix and match resources. It's pretty cool. do.co slash unplugged and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring this here humble Linux program. So prominent Ubuntu community developer, Mr. Simon Quigley has joined us in the Mumble Room to talk about his proposal to dramatically change the release cycle of Ubuntu's early builds. You know, like the alphas and the betas. So, Mr. Simon, Mr. Prominent Ubuntu developer community, thank you for joining us on the show today, sir. Actually, very much thank you for making the time.

I do appreciate it. Thank you for joining us on the show today, sir. Actually, very much thank you for making the time. I do appreciate it. But what is the Quigley proposal? Because Pharonix tells me it's going to fundamentally change the way beta releases work for Ubuntu. And I'm intrigued. So right now, the way that milestones work in Ubuntu, we have two alpha releases and we have two beta releases.

So the alpha 1 and the alpha 2, the first alpha know alpha 1 comes a couple months after the you know through after the release cycle opens up then a month after that typically is alpha 2 and then there's a beta 1 and then a final beta and then from there we get release candidates and that sort of thing and actually go into the release so with this proposal as of right now Ubuntu desktop and Ubuntu server they don't they do not participate in these in the first two alphas and the first data so basically they've been for the past couple release cycles it's not longer they've been opting you know milestones so the goal here is you know to to just evaluate to see you see if these are still necessary, to see if these are still something that we need.

Looking at the past release cycle, we didn't have Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 because of the Spectre meltdown stuff. Beta 1, well, Lubuntu had some issues. Beta 1, well, Lubuntu had some issues. Other flavors had a release, but otherwise, I looked at this, you know, I looked at what happened during this release cycle, and I sort of analyzed to see what the benefit would be to taking these optional milestones away. Because, like I said, it's been optional, and flavors really drive these. So Lubuntu, Lubuntu Chillin, Ubuntu Mate usually comes in around beta 1,

that sort of thing. So the goal here would be to just get rid of these milestones completely. And instead of having a release cycle where we have set release times, we would have a coordinated testing. Now the advantages of this are with the, with the milestone releases, it's basically, you could pick any day in the, you know, in a month and you can pick a daily out of that, out of that, you know, month span of dailies, you know,

the ISO and you could label that beta one and people would install that, but that's an image that's frozen in time. And that's a blessed image. But with the nature of the release cycle, things go fast enough that the next day you could have fixes. So if you install beta one on the system, you just update your system and you know, there's really no advantage to having it frozen in time ISO. So the main goal of this would be to also make things a little bit faster and make our automation a little bit better. Because at the moment, after I made this proposal, someone followed up on the mailing list and said that Ubuntu desktop and server, while they don't participate in these initial milestones,

they do have some automated testing. So they have some testing where it just does some smoke tests that the flavors would usually do manually. So it's just overall just looking at the different milestones that we do and making sure that what we do and what we spend our time on is useful. So the goal of the testing weeks would also be to sort of coordinate everything together. And while you're not releasing something, it would also be an opportunity for flavors to announce changes that they're making in the dailies without actually having to release

something. Yeah, I like this idea of the test week or test weeks, I suppose. That's pretty clever. And I think it's sort of reminiscent of like a hack fest in a way, but it's protracted a little bit. It's not quite as intense. And it sort of elicits community participation and gives people a time to focus. And it's also in its very nature kind of a reminder, hey, the next release is pretty close. This is kind of your last chance to make sure this thing's working right.

I like that idea, Simon. And Michael Iroble liked it too, apparently, because he wrote it up and tossed it up on Pharonix. Seems like there's some decent reception so far. Yeah. Well, Simon, thank you for coming on and explaining it in your own words, because I really like it. I hear your idea. And the other thing I like what you're doing about it is you're just kind of rethinking this process. I think it's one of those things that is just sort of easy. It's a decision that's been made and let's just move on and just get the job done. And you're kind of revisiting something that's been assumed for a long time and going, well, why are we doing it this way? What if we did it this way? Right. And that was sort of the point of it, just to sort of see, you know,

if we can improve anything. One of the things that I do want to mention is that, I don't think I mentioned before, is that it's the goal, because these are optional milestones, the goal would be for, in my proposal, the goal would be for desktop and server and everybody to participate in these testing weeks. So you would see, we would improve our automated testing, but we would also have a wide variety of flavors participating, rather than just a few people who feel like they have something to release.

They, like two or three people release one blessed image and then that's just put out there. No, the goal would be for everybody to participate so we could all collaborate and we could all work together on this. I like that idea too. Especially when you've got these different flavors now

that are beginning more and more prominent. Yeah. And more and more larger user bases. So their feedback on some of this would be... Get some getting more and more prominent. Yeah. And more and more larger user bases. So their feedback on some of this would be. Get some critical mass. Yes. Get some bugs fixed.

Exactly. I have a question for you, Wes. What is your process? I mean, theoretically. I'm not saying that Wes Payne, the actual individual, does this. But Wes Payne, the presenter, theorizing in his personal opinion, what is your process for backing up movies to, like, say, a storage medium? Do you do this, and do you have a process? You know, I haven't done it for a long time.

Really? Back in the day, I'd certainly, you know, ripped some DVDs, archived them, if you would say. Do you now more rely on the public backup? Yeah, or, you know, streaming services. Yeah, that's what I primarily do, too. But I have picked up a few, I'll tell you, there's a thing about the kids

is they don't have like a high preference. Like right now they're young enough where they just don't care. They just need something. Yeah. Kind of colorful and fun. Family members are passing down a lot of DVDs to us

and we're picking up some Blu-rays at garage sale. Ange is always good at picking up like, she's part of these, have you heard of these buy nothing groups? No. Oh, yeah. It's a big thing on Facebook, especially with the people that are really kind of thrifty. It's a big thing in the rural towns that are short.

Sure, save some money. Yes. Reuse some resources. Instead of throwing something out that's still perfectly good, you put it up on a Facebook group and say, hey, I got this thing. And people, hey, I got this thing all the time, right? All the time. So like a distributed Goodwill. Yeah. I want to get rid of all my young kid stuff that we've had in the garage for the last 10 years. Would somebody like to just come grab this? It's distributed Goodwill. It's P2P Goodwill.

And so you get DVDs, Blu-rays, you get VHS, all kinds of crap. Sure, right? Like a bunch of, here's a bunch of kids movies. Have at it. My kids love all of it. And we just went on a spring break trip recently. I took the kids down to Seaside, Oregon and Lady Jupes, loaded up Lady Jupes. And I am ridiculously proud of this. And it's not even all of that elegant, but I am, I am super proud of the fact that I can disconnect Lady Jupes from, from shore power is what they call it, which is, which would be like

utility from the city, right? You power. And Lady Jupes can go into battery mode, and this transition does not interrupt the TVs or the LAN. Oh, that's lovely. The LAN, the TVs, and the Plex. You just hot swap in and boom. They all stay up.

Not a blink. I can fire up our onboard generator and it can kick in. And so technically the entire, this is kind of a big deal, the whole house will switch from DC to AC. Wow. And the TVs, the flex server, the LAN, the internet

connection all stay up. So I'm pretty proud of this. Yeah. And it's just so awesome because we have these built-in screens in Lady Jubes, these flat screens. And so when you're going down the road, the kids can like chill on the bed, like in the master bedroom, and they can like just, quote unquote master bedroom, it's a queen size bed. They can chill on the bed and watch TV and do whatever while we're going down the road. They're not distracting you while you're driving. Yeah, it's great. It's great. And so I wanted to get some of the stuff that we collected recently

into my Plex server. Right. You already have a system. You don't need to be hauling DVDs all around. Side note, funny enough, Plex took a total shit on me for an unrelated reason because of an Android update. And so I ended up just using Kodi, but that's a side note. But I needed to encode a lot of this stuff. I use MakeMKV and other tools to sort of encode this stuff. But I needed a way to get it onto my system. I needed a way to encode it. And I'm a longtime Handbrake user.

Really like Handbrake. Because really underneath the scenes, it's using FFmpeg with just a bunch of sane presets and stuff like that. And they're using, like, good codecs, like x264 and stuff. And so this week, they've released Handbrake 1.1.0, which has a total UI overhaul, a redesigned main window with consistency that's just, I don't know, I just think it looks a lot better, I'll say. And I like the way they preview the video image.

They've redone the way you select presets, no more old, like, kludgy drawer system. It's an updated user interface, updated icons, high DPI support. They've added newer presets for Vimeo and YouTube and some TV playback boxes. But there's been some nice actual specific Linux improvements too. They've added an option to configure a low disk space warning level, which this is nice because I've actually, with this version, we've moved over encoding the BSD Now program to Handbrake, and Angela's doing this on Handbrake. And so it's nice to have this because she has like a-

That's fantastic. Yeah, she has like a bin that she sends these to. And when that fills up, she needs to know. And so this gives her a warning now. It's just like the timing. It's a small thing, but the timing was just aces. They also added Intel QuickSync video encoding support. It's experimental.

It requires a very specific version of the Intel driver, so I haven't tried this yet. But that could be great. That would be really nice, yeah. That could be really great. If it's meeting your quality, you know, nice and fast. Yeah. And also, check just that. Just talk about being ahead of the curve here.

Official support for 18.04. Beautiful. Yeah. Oh, it looks like they just, as we're covering it, they just uploaded 1.1.0 to the PPA. It wasn't there right earlier in the show. Sweet. Go get your hands on it right now. Check it out.

Sweet. You know what, Wes? That's officially like some Linux unplugged breaking news right there. Like we just broke a little handbrake news on the unplugged program. This is CNN Breaking News. Unplugged. Breaking news. Yeah. Like, we just broke a little handbrake news on the Unplugged program. This is CNN Breaking News. Unplugged! Breaking news. Yeah, come on.

Unplugged breaking news. Yeah, and then there's been some updates for something called Windows. Not familiar with it, but we'll find out later. No, I don't. I think that's why I look outside.

And Mac, which is something that McDonald's makes, but they have some improvements too, but they look like bullshit stuff that I wouldn't want to use anyways. Anyway, so handbra that McDonald's makes, but they have some improvements too, but they look like bullshit stuff that I wouldn't want to use anyways. Anyway, so Handbrake, new release, link in the show notes, super great. And I used that.

So once I got them, so this is Chris's quick, if I could just summarize my long story I gave you earlier. My quick tip is use the right tool for the job. So if it's a Blu-ray and a DVD, I recommend Make MKV. Bring those onto your hard drive, and then people have asked me a lot, should I just keep that MKV or should I re-encode it as an MP4 file or something like an MKV file with an H.265 for video? You know, having tested a lot of it, X264 at a high quality bitrate, if you do two pass encoding, I would challenge you to really see the difference between that and what you rip directly off the Blu-ray using MakeMKV.

And there is a substantial, substantial, substantial file size difference. Substantial. Substantial, substantial, substantial file size difference. Substantial. I would tell you to focus more on what you're doing with the audio. Are you doing pass-through audio? Are you re-encoding that audio? Are you accidentally mixing down multi-channel to stereo? Pay attention to that, my friends.

Because the number one question you guys are sending me is, should I encode it or not encode it? And you're not even asking me about the audio stuff. Having tested this back, you know, from doing like, I'm just taking the Blu-ray, which is like an AVC H.264 encoded file. Keep in mind. Having taken that Blu-ray and looked at just raw Blu-ray versions versus re-encoded using Handbrake, I really, I cannot tell the difference. And I am particularly picky about that kind of stuff. And I'm looking in like water scenes where there's a lot of motion and fire I mean I'm talking like you know really paying attention to specific scenes where the encoding should break down and it looks good to me so I really I give a really really hearty recommendation to handbrake and the presets

that they have been including because they've really tuned those presets with this new release and the stuff just looks so great if you do the the 1080p high quality, it will be double pass. It will be good audio. It's like, it's like if it's really what I think a professional video encoder would recommend. Yeah. My, uh, my MB setup, it's not the BVS. So if I can get it to a format that's like widely recognized already and then just direct play, that's all the better too. Exactly. That's another nice thing about this is it'll let you target certain types of devices. So if you knew you're going to be playing it back on a Roku, for example, you could target that device.

You could play it on MB. It'll do direct pass-through. Nothing's getting double encoded. It's the best quality possible. That stuff really does make a difference. So anyways, that hopefully just answers a bunch of questions that come into the show, and it's a really handy tool, and it's something that we're now using on a weekly basis

for one of our Jupyter Broadcasting programs too, the BSD Now show. Yeah, congrats on the new release. Yeah. Great software. Yeah, and apparently a new, new release, breaking news. All right, well, let's take a moment and talk about something new coming from Linux Academy. They have a huge batch of updates in the month of April.

Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Go there to sign up for a free seven-day trial and support the show. It's an advanced training tool that gives you all of the knowledge you need for Linux and the things built on top of Linux. A full-featured training library. They have hands-on scenario-based labs

that they spin up on demand that you log in over SSH to a Linux box and you start working on the real applications and technologies. You write the real config files. You see the real results. They have self-paced in-depth video courses on every Linux cloud and DevOps topic. And now, in the month of April, they are launching more than 70 new courses. They've got to do challenges and learning activities.

Wow. Wow. I mean, that's a lot of new stuff. Yeah. They're refreshing old content as well. They're looking at all kinds of... The thing about Linux Academy is they're always looking at all kinds of ways to update the old stuff too. So I often talk about the new content they're adding.

But I think just as valuable is they're going back and retouching. You always know you can go there. You'll find stuff that's up to date. That's nice. Some refreshes across the course. We're 50 new cloud assessment courses, hands-on learning activities, and new challenges, as well as they have a new real-time grading platform. So you can get feedback as you're working on the lab. You don't have to wait until the end.

That's great. That's amazing, really. That's so cool. Feedback when you're working on the lab. You don't have to wait till the end. That's great. That's amazing, really. That's so cool. Fast feedback when you're learning easy resources. It's just... Yeah, and a seven-day free trial when you go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. They have study tools as well

that you can download and listen to and use offline if you need to go offline for a little bit and a community stack full of Jupyter Broadcasting members. linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. That's linuxacademy.com slash unplugged for that free seven-day trial and to support this here podcast. So I want to talk about Plasma Vault. This is our official KDE corner, if you will. And Plasma Vault is an applet and a set of services and backend services that create encrypted vaults that are easily accessible from the Plasma desktop.

Now, I do have a disclaimer that I have to make. Before this episode started, about 10 minutes, I updated to resolve another issue I was having on Plasma. And after I did that update, I lost access to my desktop and I lost access to being able to add Plasma widgets. All I have is a black screen and you can see my mouse cursor. Oh, that's all you need for a nice desktop. I can't right-click.

I can't add widgets. So minimal. I was going to tell you about this. This is a really cool application, but at this point, I actually would not be able to access the vaults I'm about to get to. So just so you guys are aware, there may be some issues that could... While you're laughing, the hackers are dropping malware into your system. No, I don't think I was... I was not hacked. It was an update.

It was an update. And I was... It was my bad. And I've been told it's related to my NVIDIA binary driver. No, say it ain't so. It appears to be so. The Plasma applet, though, called Plasma Vault is pretty cool. It doesn't really use anything that you couldn't bust out on the command line and solve yourself. It can do an overlay encryption file system where it can do a whole volume.

And it's this UI that you add. It can be a little icon down in your dock, or it could be, or actually, I'm using a dock right now, but it could be your regular Plasma desktop, or it could be a new widget on your desktop. So you click on the widget. You can say create new vault. When you do that, you give the vault a name. So like in this case, it might be you know, like LUP secrets or something

like that. Oh, so secret. And you can choose your encryption. I'm going to do INCFS. Actually, I'll do CRYFS. CRYFS, which is kind of neat. When you hit next in their wizard, it comes up with a security notice. It says, CryFS, C-R-Y-F-S, encrypts your files so you can safely store them anywhere. It works well together with cloud services like Dropbox or iCloud

or OneDrive and others. Unlike some other file system overlay solutions, it does not expose a directory structure or the number of files nor the size through the encrypted data format. But one important thing to note is that while CryFS is considered safe, there has been no independent security on it, which confirms this. So they give you that disclaimer. Well, yeah, that's nice. I think that...

They know what you're getting yourself into. You put your super secure password in there. So farts. And then you confirm that. Farts. The next. And... Oh. Oh. password in there. So farts and then you confirm that. Farts. Then next and oh, I guess next is not farts.

Type it in again because that's what I do. Farts. Hit next and then you tell it where you actually want it to store the volume. Nice. So in this case, the encrypted data location will be slash home slash chrisf slash dot local. So it's a hidden directory,

slash share slash plasma-vault slash lovesecrets.enc. So that'll be the actual path of my encrypted volume. It'll be in a hidden directory in the.local folder, and then it's pretty nested down. It's all the way down to a plasma vault folder, and it mounts now to slash home slash chrisf slash vaults, so it's going to make a vault Vault folder. And it mounts now to slash home slash ChrisF slash vaults. So it's going to make a vaults folder in my home directory. And then in there, it will make a folder called LUP secrets.

And anything I put in that folder called LUP secrets will actually go in this encrypted volume. Yep. So I do next. And I say, go ahead and create. Oh, this is something else that's kind of cool. But it'll allow you to limit the activities, which is a Plasma desktop function that this vault is even available to. I don't want to do that, so I'm not going to choose that option, so I just choose Create.

When I say open to my file manager, it asks for the password. I put it in, and it opens a vault. It's now mounted as a regular folder. I can use it. I could leave it mounted my entire session. I'm impressed with this. You know, a few extra steps steps and it feels a lot more integrated than some hacky encrypted folder that I have a bash script somewhere I also like and appreciate

the fact that they're not inventing their own encryption yeah right it's not all hand-rolled it's using you know just reliable primitives sticking together in a reasonable way with a lot of disclaimers yes that's. So Plasma Vaults is nice. You know, you could use InkFS. You can use CryFS. But here's the other great thing about it. This is coming from Ivan's blog here. He's talking about adding a new functionality to Plasma Vaults that I think is great.

And it's really in light of Meltdown Inspector. He says, we've recently seen that even CPUs can sometimes be used as attack vectors. It's common for the web browser to be, and obviously through social engineering, for a user to also be used to gain remote access to the system. For this reason, starting with the next Plasma release, if you have extremely sensitive data, you can mark a vault as offline only. This means that networking will be shut down as soon as you open the offline only vault. Any potential remote access is inhibited. Nice. I mean, not complete, but hey, one more step. That's real handy. I like that a lot. I mean, if you're using Network Manager to manage your network connections anyways,

and it's going to interface with that and shut down your network connection, so you're essentially air-gapped for a limited time, you're right. It doesn't prevent things that have been loaded on your system while you've been connected to the network. It's more of an immediate solution, but it's a one more peace of mind solution. And I like that integration. And that's where the Plasma desktop often comes in is that total suite integration, where your vault mounting mechanism can actually stop the networking. And it's not through some sort of hack, but through some sort of elegant communication system.

It feels like a cohesive designed desktop. Yeah. So anyways, that's what's coming down the pipe for vaults. I wanted to also mention this week, LatteDoc, which I have started using on one of my Plasma systems. I had this other bug recently with the Plasma desktop where my panel stopped updating. Is that, do you think a fair description, Wes? Yeah, definitely. You've seen it. And it's just, it like freezes in time. The individual like applets like Dropbox and TeamViewer and whatnot still work. And I think even the Bitcoin price thing still worked. But the clock would stop, the seconds wouldn't tick anymore. And more importantly, the taskbar would just be frozen at whatever I was at when it locked

up. So if I had, say, Console and Kate and Firefox open, they would always show as open regardless. and Kate and Firefox open, they would always show as open regardless and say that I opened Chrome and that was the only app I had open. It would, I could, I couldn't, it would never be in the task manager. It was kind of a little challenging when I was live on air and trying to switch between applications. And so, um, I, I heard that an update would come down the road and let me fix it. But I thought in the meantime, until that update arrives, maybe I'll try Latte Doc. I got to say, I'm not Mr. Doc. I don't really appreciate docs. I think they're usually just trying to be a Mac ripoff, and I tend to askew from them.

This, however, did it right, because one of the default layouts is called Plasma. And it's essentially a plasma bar, but implemented as a dock, and it's done well. And it has a lot of functionality that I do appreciate from docks, like intelligent hiding, being able to change it, being connected to the left side of my screen or the right side of my screen or the bottom of my screen or, you know, just the one icon for applications that are running or for the launcher. I don't need to have an icon for the launcher and the running task, you know, those kinds of things.

It does what I like in a dock while not feeling like it's ripping off the Mac. And it's native Plasma stuff here. Yeah, it looks clean, well integrated. It's using Plasma technology. Yeah, it's very well integrated. Smooth. It is. And I think I'm going to put it on all of my plasma desktops slowly.

It's pretty much available and in all of the repos too. This is not a new application. Producer Michael's come on the show and told us about this before. But it's all based on plasma framework, so it provides an elegant and intuitive experience, and I completely agree with their description there. And you can add regular plasmoids to it it animates or doesn't animate depending on what you want it's got a really easy to understand configuration and you can i don't know it's it's just nice and after having some troubles with the standard plasma panel i thought it i thought maybe worth mentioning this has been my favorite part of your uh your plasma

journey yeah you're finding all the apps i didn't even know I needed and hadn't found in the KDE world. And now I know. So thank you. And then one more before we just get out of here. I see, though, that Mr. Noah Chalaya has joined us. I may ask him about his plasma experience here in a moment. But one more little plug skis before we get out of here. You might remember, I think it was like Quepzilla.

Was that the name of it? Quepzilla? Oh, that sounds familiar. An old, cute web browser. Well, it was like Quapzilla. Was that the name of it? Quapzilla? Oh, that sounds familiar. An old, cute web browser. Well, it was renamed back in 2017 to Falcon. Falcon. There you go. Falcon.

And it's flying like an eagle now. It's a cross-platform, cute web browser, and it's now called Falcon. It's a cross-platform Qt web browser, and it's now called Falcon. And it's my experimental, I want something that's not Firefox. Like I want to be logged into a different Google account. I just want it on a different process or whatever. I want to be able to just alt-tab really easy to a different set of sessions. That's where I'm trying it out right now. And I've been looking for things that are Qt-based for the Plasma desktop.

So if you have any Falcon tips, linuxunplugged.com slash contact, let me know. But Mr. Noah Chalaya, are you there? Are you live, sir? And are you still on the Plasma desktop? I am. I am. And I am. Have you tried it out on any NVIDIA systems recently?

I have, actually. Our brand new XPS Edit Bay. No. Oh. Really? Do you want to tell people about that? I have actually our brand new XPS edit bay no do you want to tell people about that do you want to spill the mean yeah we can spill honestly the only reason I didn't spill it earlier was I

didn't know you know it's your popsicle stand I didn't know how you wanted to tell the popsicle this is a little LinuxFest Northwest tease you know because behind this this actually maybe gives people a better idea of what we go through behind the scenes to prepare for LinuxFest Northwest tease, you know, because behind this, this actually maybe gives people a better idea of what we go through behind the scenes to prepare for LinuxFest Northwest. You should tell people about this new machine. Well, yeah. So, you know, I think there's probably a public perception that all I do is complain about wireless on 16.4.

But that's not the truth. The truth is I actually do a lot of things. I actually fight for the Linux desktop a lot. And so one of the things that had came up was, you know, we were talking about what we're going to do for Linux Fest. And I was like, listen, we can do a lot of different things for Linux Fest, as long as we're all doing them on Linux. And he said, well, here's the thing. We've had some issues, some production issues in the past. So how can we make sure that we have an absolute rock solid machine that's going to work perfectly the entire time as if it was a broadcast grade you know device like that you would buy from

a company i said that's not a problem what we have to do is we have to buy a brand new top of the line dell xps performance system uh with the with the eight core i7 in it and dedicated graphics and a dedicated uh capture device that's pci so it's on the bus. We have four individual 1080p 60 frames per second capture device that's inside of this box. We built it, and I actually really like that system because a week before, I had started editing the Ask Noah show, and I actually purchased another one of these systems to do all of the editing on it. And so it's the Dell XPS desktop, not the laptop. It's the desktop version, but it's just a powerhouse of a machine. And that currently is loaded with KDE Neon and, of course, has the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card in it. So I am fascinated by the amount of hardware that is going into this year's LinuxFest Northwest. But I think it's also interesting that we're doing a full Plasma deployment.

You know what? It's one of these things, Noah, where by the time Linux Fest lands, 1804 will have been released. You know what I mean? We have to do all of this pre-1804. The other thing is, and maybe this is a bad way to go about this, but my plan up until this point and continues to be really, I'm just hanging out on KDE Neon until it burns me. And then once I get burned or when something happens, then maybe I'll reevaluate that. But I was thinking about this, you know, when 1804 comes out, you know, as a responsible person in the media, I feel like it's our job to, you know, to evaluate the stuff. All the flavors, really. I want to try as many as I can. But at the same time, like, I still have to be able to get work done. And neon has been so rock solid. Good to me. I've had zero, not, not a couple of things that I could

work zero problems whatsoever with it, that it's just going to be very difficult for me to wipe it off my computer. Maybe I can partition it out and live in, you know, the, the, the LTS for a little bit and, you know, just to play with it and stuff. But at this point, my plan was to just blow it completely away and go back to 1804. No, I'm having a really hard time. If I'm being honest with myself and you, I'm having a hard time convincing myself to do that. We've never really had an experiment go like this before. I mean, we've, I mean, not like this deep, right? I mean, we're like, hey, let's try this.

And then it just like, it just changes the way we work now. I was just saying on the pre-show, I've had two out of six systems start to develop issues, which isn't a bad batting average, but it's enough where I'm at yellow alert right now, and I'm like, oh, what am I going to do? But other than that, it's not too bad. And those both are my two NVIDIA rigs. So it's kind of interesting. Those are the two systems having problems.

That's why I was asking you if you tried it on NVIDIA. Yeah, and to be fair, both of those systems, one of those doesn't have the Linux VESP, which I actually just got here yesterday or the day before. And so it's sitting apart because we're putting hardware in it. The editing machine, it's been running two, whatever it has been, two, three weeks with NVIDIA. However, I've only used that machine like an hour or two a a week if i reboot or even just log out and log back in the

problem tends to go away the locked panel problem this time i've lost my desktop and all my widgets and the ability to add new widgets uh but that tends to actually get resolved too so let's let's change gears do you want to mention what you're doing in LA and why you're going to LA soon? Or do you want to just keep that a behind the scenes thing? No, sure. No, I think it's cool. So one of the things that we had talked about for Linux Fest Northwest is when you guys come out to the conference, we want to change the dynamic that exists. Because a lot of times we'll be in quote unquote show mode.

And then people are either afraid to approach the booth or they approach the booth at the wrong time. We're trying to set something up. And it just, it creates an unfriendly dynamic, and so we want to change that. And so what we're looking at doing is we're trying to create a cool exhibit. So it's not just the place that we're setting up and broadcasting. There's going to be cool things for you to look at, cool things for you to see, cool things for you to play with. And basically, we were looking for, so we're going through and we're like, how can we get the best of everything and make it something kind of cool to see? And one of the things that we wanted to do from the audio side is have all digital audio

so that there is no buzz, there is no hum, there's nothing like that. It's all digital. So I started looking for a board that we could use that was all digital. Which is not cheap. Once you say those words words you're in a certain price category right there right yeah boy yeah usually you're you're in a couple grand you know each and um and if you if anybody is in the broadcast industry or or the voiceover industry you guys may know the name joe cipriano and joe grew up on the air he grew up and he wrote a book

about how from the time he was 12 years old, he was in a radio station doing on air stuff and eventually turned it into a voiceover career. And he's one of the most next to Don LaFontaine, probably one of the most successful voiceover actors out there. If you've listened to Fox News or I'm sorry, Fox, you know, The Simpsons or anything like that, he does all of the promos for CBS and Fox and stuff like that. And heard about what we were doing, heard about what we, you know, the budget constraint that I'm working under and stuff like that. And I I just reached out to him. I said, I know you have this board. I know that you're looking to transition out of it. And he's upgrading a system. And I said, you know, could we work out a decent price? And I don't know if I want to go into the pricing, but he gave me an insane deal.

So insane that I am flying out to L. to LA at the end of this week to go pick the board up from his studio. And then I'm going to go straight from his studio, next flight, the very next day, to Seattle. I'm going to bring it there, and then we have a week to set it up and try it and play with it and make sure everything's going to work. But we're going to be using

Joe Cipriano's board. My thing was simple. If it's good enough for CBS, it's probably good enough for us. I hope so. Yeah, otherwise we're doing something wrong. thing was simple. If it's good enough for CBS, it's probably good enough for us. I hope so. Yeah, otherwise we're doing something wrong. If the Tiffany Network says it's good, then we should be able to do a live stream.

It doesn't really work on open source. Yeah. The whole thing, you know, so it's a real process to do this, but it is if you have a small budget or you have a large budget. I think this is what my takeaway is. And it's not really this show's legacy, but a big legacy of Lass was us struggling with, can we do our passion on Linux? And our passion was live production of shows.

And now the question more is like, what range do we want to do this at like what grade like if we want to spend if we wanted to spend 700 we could do this and if and if we if we want to go full noah you know we could spend money that we probably shouldn't mention on this and do this the range like there's a range available to us now noah you know what i mean like you know it really i and you know the best two examples of that, go-to examples of that I can think of are going to be this year at Linux Fest Northwest, I think is safe to say probably the most elaborate setup that we've ever done. In fact, I would go as far as to say this.

I'll put my name on it and say that I challenge you to find another conference, not just a Linux conference, but any conference that isn't exhibiting media stuff specifically. So NAB would be out, stuff like that. But anything that's a conference that's outside of the media industry that is going to have as elaborate of a setup as we're going to have. So we've got that this year. Oh, yeah. But then you compare that to what we did at System76 a couple of years ago, where we literally

didn't show up with a single piece of equipment. I mean, we showed up and we just hodgepodged it together. People were bringing in parts from their house and stuff like that. And we made a production system out of it. And that just shows the flexibility, the scalability of Linux.

The fact that I can just take a box, get all the software and necessary stuff up, open the Google Docs, put all the stream keys in, boom, we're on the air. Yeah. I think it's going to be pretty cool. I can't wait to start playing with this stuff.

And, you know, that just, you know, if you follow the timeline there, no one's going to be out here damn near way before Linux Fest Northwest because we're going to be testing this stuff. We're going to be working with this stuff. It's our passion, and it's so cool to be able to do this under Linux now. And to be able to go to a Linux event now for years. Like, this isn't our first year. This is not our first rodeo anymore.

Like, this is, we've been doing these events, covering them from beginning to end, full spectrum, using Linux. And now this is, like, the most professional implementation. Like, we're not going to be throwing together systems. Finally getting good at it. Yeah, it's kind of fun. It's fun to be at this position. Oh Finally getting good at it. Yeah, it's kind of fun. It's fun to be at this position. Oh, I'm really excited. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool and crazy Noah flying all over the place to do

it. I don't even know what that guy's up to. That's just nuts. I actually think our setup at the Linux Fest Northwest booth might make me just want to do shows from there from now on. Yeah, we'll just do it there all the time. That's it. I'm done. I don't need any of that.

I'm sick of it. We'll just do all our shows from there from now on. Anyways, links to everything we talked about today, linuxunplugged.com slash, what is this, 244? Yep, 244. And if you come over on Tuesdays to the jblive.tv stream, you can catch this show. We start at 2 p.m. Pacific.

Actually, really, the live show usually kicks off around 1.30 Pacific. All of that is converted to your local time at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. You come for the Unplugged program. You hang out with us. We have some pre-show. We have the main show. We have the post-show. And then just a little bit after that, it's that crazy Ask Noah program.

Yeah. And he's taking your live calls. He's answering your questions. And he's talking about all that kind of stuff. Hang out with Noah. It's that crazy Ask Noah program. He's taking your live calls. He's answering your questions. He's talking about all that kind of stuff. Hang out with Noah. It's a Linux sandwich. I really think you'll probably like it. Plus, you've got the chat room going. There's the mumble room you can participate in. You can join our virtual lug. You see,

any simple model of human nature is going to be wrong. You can debate things like human nature. I guess, if you like. Anyways, all of that is happening at jblive.tv every single Tuesday, and we'd love to have you there. You can get links to everything we talked about at linuxunplugged.com slash 244. Email us at linuxunplugged.com slash contact.

And that's all of, like, the meat and potatoes. So much meat and potatoes. Meat and potatoes is everything we need to cover. But I think that'll pretty much bring us to an end for at least our portion. The Ask No program will take over soon. But in the meantime, go check out the TechSnap program, TechSnap.Systems, where Wes and I are breaking down stories that are really kind of focused on the whole IT and sysadmin market. So it's like, if you've got to live in that world, you need to know what's coming up. If you have systems you have to manage, or if you have systems you have

to manage and that's not your primary day job, TechSnap program can be very valuable. TechSnap.systems. Go get a little more me and Wes. Go join us. Or at Wes Payne for his Twitter. Do it. I'm at Chris Elias.

The network is at Jupiter Signal. We also have the subreddit, linuxunplugged.reddit.com and linuxunplugged.com. Thanks so much for being here. See you right back here next Tuesday! The Unplugged Program. Wrapping up two-four-to-four. Feel it. Feeling good. That was a long one.

That went a little bit longer than I expected. Out of control. It's really your fault, Wes. You just don't ever shut up. I know. I was egging you on all day. And Dan. Dan comes in here, you know, running his mouth.

And hey, Citizen, I don't think he ever shut his mouth either. You guys. Unbelievable. Gotta get hyped. Linux hype. 2018. So let's see here Let's get some title

We got a title Noah what's coming up On the Ask Noah program Broham Holy cow We are Asking So many crazy

Flame Clickbaity questions Like is Apple Destroying the computer We got a We got a really cool guest That is starting a business And so we're gonna talk

With him about What's coming up In his business And the challenges That you face when you start a small business and how you can do that on Linux. That's lovely. Hey, did you officially change the intro tagline? I did, yeah.

Do you mind giving me a read again? Because I know it's new, but I forgot what it was. I mean, I know the music's not going. I know. It's a big ask. Hold on a second. I liked it. It was, like like way simpler and less you know you know you know what's great you know what's great about this new system here i have this touch screen as long as i turn it on there we go yeah sure look at that oh i just pushed the button and it happened oh yeah the show you've

been asking for it won't get it this is the start yet. It's going to get me flagged. It's going to get me flagged. All others second. You're going to get me flagged, dude. It can't get flagged because it's custom written. Good. All right, good. Okay, all right. Yeah, because I don't know if multispeed technologies, the Ask Noah show starts right now.

This is the show where we do all the things on Linux they said that couldn't be done. Yeah. And take your calls on how to do the same. Damn, that's good, dude. That is good. Much better, right? I do like that. I like that music better.

I like that slogan better. Because, you know, your tech and business tech questions didn't make any sense to me. I know. And you know what? Here's the problem, though. You didn't tell me that until New York. Do you remember we were having dinner?

Oh, really? Yeah, we were eating Indian food in the basement of the train station. I do remember. And you're like, what does that mean, really? Yeah, we were eating Indian food in the basement of the train station. I do remember. And you're like, what does that mean? I'm like, what does what mean? You said, taking your tech questions and business in tech question, what does that mean? And then I explain it, and you're like, okay, why don't you explain it? It makes sense, but when you say it, it doesn't make any sense.

And I'm like, we're 54 episodes in. Why am I just hearing about this now? I just didn't make it from episode one. I know. You've got to be stern from the start. By the way, nice new rock music. Yeah.

It only took four and a half months and a lot of money. But now you have it. And 52 YouTube flags. Actually, no, it's double because there's a live stream. JB Titles is not working because JBot is written in ruby and not rust oh yeah should i i guess i can we we ought to talk about maybe soliciting a community project

to rewriting jbot because jbot uh doesn't handle people going to jbtitles.com super well i'm noticing it's just it has a hard time and i think it's the just maybe because it's Ruby but that's just maybe me being a rust lover I don't know you know I'm all rust you are all right I go to night watching rust YouTube videos yeah anyways what are we gonna not wait wait I'll think so I gotta get out of here so no one can do a show so we got to cope with the title guys this is always harder than it should be too bad we don't have popi in here cursing and yelling at people to give us a title because that would