LINUX Unplugged - Episode 246: The Bionic Bet

Episode Date: April 25, 2018

We get the inside scope from the Ubuntu flavors prepping for the 18.04 release, and then we finally make good on a long running threat. Plus the quiet shuttering of the Windows division inside Microsoft, and how they could help save Linux from Apple.

Noah's just outside this studio right now setting up, like he's soldering, he's wiring, he's unboxing our whole Linux Fest display, really. It's more than a production this year. It's a bit of a display, really. The FedEx guy is like, I got some packages, and he comes up with the first cartload. I'm like, okay, thanks. He's like, oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. I have a lot more.

I'll be back. So many more. So we just stand there holding the dogs, and we're like, well, we can't let the dogs out, but this guy's taking like three trips back and forth. Fills up the whole kitchen. The whole kitchen got full of box. And now the living room's full of boxes. We got gear everywhere.

But I don't know. I kind of think this year, more so than any year, the booth itself could be an exhibit. Oh, yeah. Like really high-end Linux production equipment. Like the highest-end stuff we've ever done. Noah did some last-minute flying around to secure a really high-end production digital mixer for us. That's why you're soldering wires,

because it turns out when you go into a certain category of hardware, they don't, like, just make average consumer connections anymore. You've got to, like, custom-build everything. Yeah, if you look at an XLR cable, you figure there's three conductors. You know, the wire's that big, right? And we put this big old honking connector on it. Why? In a live

environment where you're unplugging and plugging things in, you need that flexibility. But in a studio environment, you're putting the microphone in and it's going to stay there for 15 years. And so we're going to put XLR cables in so that we can unplug them and plug them and take them to Linux Fest. And then we're going to move it to Linux Fest. We're going to have a heck of a show.

All right, Brownberry, you come back in later on the show and you chat with us as we talk about more what we're doing. But you go out there and keep unboxing. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 246 for April 24th, 2018. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your wiggly Linux talk show that's flying a little blind this week, a little raw, and there's a lot of plasma all around me. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. It has been a reinstall-fest, Mr. Wes. That almost looks beautiful around here.

So fresh, so clean. You know, it's been really nice. It's been a lot of fun. We'll talk about our adventures in Kubuntu 18.04 coming up a little bit here in this here show. But we have so many other things to get into. As always, we have ourselves some community news. We'll get through all of that in the beginning, including an open-source modular router that's being crowdfunded,

the Linux terminal coming to Chrome OS, the state of Thunderbolt in Fedora 28, a re-evaluation and an update on Ubuntu's beta milestones, and then very quietly, recently, Microsoft disbanded the Windows division. There's no more Windows division at Microsoft anymore. Let that sink in for a second. They've been merged into a larger group that's responsible for just general consumer devices.

The biggest empire inside Microsoft is gone. So we'll talk about what that could mean for their Linux future. Then I've got a couple of app picks for you. A great update on that big no memory leak and the fallout of the conversation and the discussion in the community that took place because of that memory leak. And then, after I talk about my new favorite backup program, we'll reveal the big changes we've

been making in the studio, the new investment in Linux that we're making, and discuss some LinuxFest Northwest plans coming up. Ooh, I'm excited. Which is just this weekend. Can you believe it? No, that's crazy. Oh! Yeah, that's going to be a big deal. But before we go any further, we've got to bring in our virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumbaroo.

One big nut to solve. Hey, to you. Oh, man, that was a thick introduction. I liked it. That was nice. So let's start with something that is really, really, really, really potential for, has a lot of potential for fixing a big problem in the consumer market. One of the things that just drives me crazy is the state of routers, home routers, those cheap routers that people are buying from electronic stores or from Amazon or wherever. They throw them in, and then three years later, they never, I haven't given a second thought.

Then three years later, they never have given a second thought. They've missed 16 updates, and they're just little vulnerability boxes that are waiting for some sort of attack, some sort of attack, either just monitoring or some sort of DNS attack. They're just such a sad state. And they're really the early canary in the coal mine for Internet of Things. Very much so. And we blew it. And we still haven't really solved it. And there's tons of good open source projects. We've talked about MonoWall. We've talked about

PFSense. But there hasn't been this consumer-focused all-in-one solution that us geeks could really wrap our head around. Anything else is like a cloud-managed service that manages the updates for you. I know that may work. It doesn't really fit our features.

I mean, Noah might prefer a cloud-connected router. He sure would. But not me. No, not for you. So this has left a spot in the market for somebody to fulfill and enter Turris Mox. I think I might be saying that right, but who really knows? It is a modular open-source router that is currently being crowdfunded. And the goal of the campaign is to make a modular that has three individual components.

This is where the modular part comes in, depending on what you need. They want to give the user the ability to put together a custom router that fits your network's requirements. And they say it's probably the first router that's configurable and easy as a sandwich. You just choose the parts you actually want, and you assemble it like you would a sandwich. To make it happen, there's five modules available, but really you could just focus on a couple of them, and they hired a fancy voiceover guy to do it, so I'll have him do it instead of me. Your perfect router can consist of these modules.

Basic, Extension, Ethernet, and SFP. The basic module is powered by a passive-cooled Marvell Armada processor, has a microSD card slot, USB 3.0 and a gigabit WAN port. With the Wi-Fi card alone, it can serve as a pocket-ready router, or you can connect it to your router, for example Omnia, as an access point. If you need faster wireless speed, just connect the extension module with a 5 GHz Wi-Fi card connected to the MPCI Express slot. Or you can switch the Wi-Fi card with an SSD to make a NAS. Or you can insert a SIM card to the slot, connect an LTE modem, and use this module as a backup connectivity solution.

You can also connect the Ethernet module with four gigabit ports. Hoorah! Man, tell you what. That is the worst voiceover ever. Got me all fired up. Yeah, tourists. Didn't make you want to buy, huh, Wimpy? They could have paid Popey to do that for twice as much and got better value. They might have been able to hire the Mycroft device and got a better value.

I'm not sure. But the idea is pretty neat. You've got this router that has the different components depending on what you need. If you need lots of gigabit, you can even do it. And then they have software features like OpenVPN server, NSSH Honeypot, parental controls. That kind of neat thing is the Honeypot is set up to be involved in a research project.

So it is involved in a wider Honeypot collection metric thing. That's kind of neat. So Saturus mocks. Neat idea. I don't think they sold us, though, did they? They didn't sell us how's their funding so their funding is their this is their second round they have they've had success so uh they've uh

west did you were did you fund the last one because you got an email i think i just subscribed for updates oh yeah yeah yeah so i was clearly interested in the past yeah it's a neat idea does anybody know what are what chip they have from Marvell because from what I understand, Marvell's best chips are your mother, our mother's latest chips and those are based on A72 Cortex ARM which are vulnerable by meltdown

and stuff. I'm sorry, I was already not buying much of their premise because I think it's duplication of efforts of Freedombox. I want somebody to come in and make a device that looks good, that fits just the general consumer. But I believe that there's a project for that already. And if they could actually bring a consumer perspective to that project, I would be very glad to support it.

But also the stuff that I'm hearing doesn't make it much better. And most of Marvell chips are Cortex-A72 and A53, which are both vulnerable. It says here it's based on the Marvell Armada 3720 with a 1.2 gigahertz dual core. Yes, that's a Cortex-A53. I'm just checking it right now. And that's vulnerable. Oh, good meltdown. Because better security. Great. Awesome.

Also, it'll be using kernel 4.14 LTS, which is the same as OpenWrt 18.5, which it is based on. It's Czech Republic. Chaotic says in the chat room is where they're from. So there you go. You know, I like the idea. I actually like it. I'm not going to back it myself. For me, I've sort of moved on to larger hardware for this kind of job.

Yeah, I have as well. Neat idea, though. And the pricing is not bad. Early bird is $130. It's bad. Routers are becoming expensive. Routers were always cheap and most of the times even offered. Yes, I'm not advocating for the offers that ISPs usually provide,

but they've always been cheap. And out of a sudden, they're becoming this expensive thing, like they fix your problems and they never fix your problems. Yeah, also, do you need your router to be a NAS? Like, I don't ever want my router to be a NAS. By the way, Dart, I would like to issue a correction.

Good routers that are expensive, those are expensive. The cheap ones are like, don't really have much security and don't really have updates, just to give you a little bit of a contortion. I understand. What I mean is it should never be something too expensive. Look at the hardware that they bring inside.

Most of the times, what they bring as a benefit, the higher range ones are not really on chips, but rather on design for antennas on ways of actually capturing signal, which is what a router is supposed to do really well. Of course, when you're talking at a high bandwidth, that has an impact on the chips you're having there and of course increases the price. But oftentimes when you're going to the $500 range, what you really mean is you should

be paying a hundred something dollar range. I do like that it's open source. So it has like, there is a premium as a particular type of consumer that I'd be willing to pay, but it's not a premium that I think the average consumer would be willing to pay. But we'll have a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out after the show. But this is actually the story I was going to start the show with, this next one. And it's going to be one of these revelations that I think is going to be received in two different ways in the community. Oh, good, more Linux and open source users. And the other one is, oh my God, Chrome OS is going to crush Linux. Sort of like the subsystem for Linux on Windows

has been. This is happening. It just seems nothing but absolute at this point. There is additional screenshots that have surfaced indicating that a terminal app that gives you access to the bash shell on Chromebooks is shipping soon. It started back in February when there was some code base that revealed that Chrome OS would have some capability of running Linux applications using a container, which we talked about a little bit, but there wasn't a lot to go into. a container, which we talked about a little bit, but there wasn't a lot to go into. Now, it appears that additional builds have come out, and more evidence of this feature has appeared in the Chrome OS dev channel, and several Reddit users did some digging, and they found a new terminal app that's been added to the app drawer, and when you click

on it, it explains the feature. It comes up with a dialog, and the dialog says, you can now develop on your Chromebook. You can run your favorite native apps and command line tools seamlessly and securely. Installing the terminal will download 200 megabytes of data. Probably a container, huh? Wow, interesting. And then when you try to do it,

it fails at this point, because it's not actually done. Look at that little logo. Fits right in. What do you think about this, Wes? Terminals on Chromebooks. I mean, that would go a long way to alleviating the needs I have just to get more work done. Sure, web browsing is fine, but if I could get even just SSH into some servers very easily, that would be maybe a sweet spot.

Not for me still, but I think a lot of people could use it. Google is learning that they need to actually attract developers, and that's the tool to attract developers. I think it's a little bit too late, and that's the tool to attract developers. I think it's a little bit too late, and not really a threat for Linux. Yeah, I don't think so either. In fact, I think more so,

I think about my son who's been issued a Chromebook, and I think my daughter gets issued one next year as part of his school curriculum. And potentially now, my son will have access to a terminal. That seems like it has way more upsides than it does downsides and i'm sure google's going to implement in a way that he can't go like rm-rf root or something so we'll see that maybe maybe it won't matter because we'll all switch to a bollock i don't know how you actually say it it's uh block block what's your mouth bellock what do you think guys b what is it west blloc. What do you think, guys? B.

What is it? Was B. L. L. O. C. No, there's no a no bollock or bollock or what block like everybody switching to bollocks. Yeah, it's all it's all bollocks, my friends.

No, I think I think block like a like a block of wood. Maybe it's kind of like a word. It's it's it's a phone that is focused on simplicity, simplicity. It's easy for me to say. It's a phone that is focused on simplicity. It's easy for me to say. They say a plain, minimalistic smartphone that combines a power-saving operating system with efficient hardware and an easy-to-use messaging platform. And it's monochrome. The whole thing is monochrome. How about us buying it?

I don't know. Can I hit a sharp look? That's my plan. Another messaging platform. Well, it uses WhatsApp. It uses, like it has Uber and Facebook Messenger and it has Google Maps. So like they're bringing somehow, they're bringing a small set of applications. Instead of multiple distractions, we aim for focus.

Instead of fragmented conversations, we strive for continuity and fluidity. Booking your flight, checking weather, or ordering on Uber, it all happens in one place, the root. So they have this UI system that they've designed, which looks a lot like Windows 8 tiles, only maybe a little more minimal and clean. And the whole UI is built around monochrome black and white. You mean it looks like Fushio OS? Kind of, yeah.

I would say more Windows phone, possibly. Yeah, like a combo. It's a combo of them. It's a combo and then black and white. And like if you were going to design today, it's got four gigs of RAM, which seems like a ton for a device like this. It's got an octa-core 2 gigahertz ARM A53 Cortex processor. It's got a 3,000 milliamp battery. It's got a camera in it,

a decent Sony 13 megapixel camera in it. USB-C. Yep, USB-C. It's got a headphone jack. It's got fast charging. Let me see if I got it right. So we took years and years of developing excellent cameras

to then see them in a monochrome screen. Yes, yes. And years and years of all these mobile applications to just have them on a simple black and white screen. I think that – I don't know if it's going to work, but I'll tell you, I know what the market – I just know it. They're going for people that kind of want a feature phone, but they don't want to go that far back in time.

They still want to be able to book an Uber, and they still want to be able to use Google Maps. And so they need something that isn't full-fledged smartphone because they've determined that's the evil thing in their life that's wrecking their life. And so if they purge the smartphone from life, but they get something that's still capable of booking a ride and nav, then they're not a crackpot that's trying like a pager or something in 2018. So I think there is a market for it. It just, it can't be $350. It can't be some boutique thing. It'd have to be sold at scale, at carriers. It'd probably have to be something from a Samsung or a Nokia, in my personal opinion. Yeah, that's 360 euros, so it's like 440.

Oh, okay. That's even more, yeah. And Doug and Doug and Doug, I didn't see a lot of references to Linux or Android in there, but it must be. It must be Android. I don't see how much frequencies bands it supported either. It's a weird device, but it's also, it is one of those devices that if you had this device, it would stand out.

It sure would. I would say if somebody really wants something like it, they would get a Yotta phone. Is that the one with the ink? Yes, it has a back of ink and the front is an actual screen, but you can actually just get away with using the ink. Yeah, yeah, that would be cool yeah the difference between the yada phone and this phone is that the yada phones is russian is very low very low in frame rate yeah but that's the thing if you said it is because it's russian i mean if the person really wants to get away from the modern smartphone and have this as an excuse to I'm cutting down on this yeah the only downside would

be that it's kind of Russian it's the only really mini mic you make a good point that they might be overshooting with that screen not because it's monochrome but because of the size huh yeah if you're a really feature phone user you don't want a 5.5-inch phone. You want a smaller one. I'm looking for a small 5-inch phone again, but you don't find some. Only Sony does some. Yeah, I've looked at that Sony one a couple of times and went, oh, that'd be sweet. I had a Sony Ericsson back in the day

that could fit in my coin pocket. Just this tiny little phone, a little GSM feature phone. The neatest little thing. Lasts for days. Yeah. It doesn't have to do much except make phone calls. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's take a moment right here and thank Ting then for sponsoring the Unplugged program.

This seems like a natural spot. Go to, you ready for this? Linux.ting.com. You get to put Linux in there, linux.ting.com, and you'll get a $25 service credit or $25 off a device. It's smarter than unlimited mobile. It's pay for what you use. So right now, Wes, myself, and Noah are sitting here at the studio, and all of our phones are on Wi-Fi. Every push notification we get, every telegram we get, it all is coming in over Wi-Fi. And I think that's why when you're a geek and you kind of understand that there's different networks and some are like you own them and you can use as much data as you want and some are like rate limited by a service provider or monitored.

Like if you just understand that concept, that's the only hack you need to get a ton of value out of Ting. It's pay for what you use, just a fair price for how much you talk, text, and data you use, and you can rock that. I download my podcast. I pin my music on Wi-Fi, and that covers most of it. I text message over Telegram, now Bob's my uncle. They have nationwide coverage, and, like I said, CDMA and GSM, so you can bring a device, or you can

just pick one up from Ting directly and choose whatever works best in your area. And when you go to linux.ting.com, you get $25 off a device. If you bring one, they'll give you $25 in service credit. And if you ever get stuck, you ever have a question, the best customer service in the industry, I wouldn't say that unless it was true. It is absolutely 100% true. They have the best customer service in the industry. And you can just get a taste of it when you call in. Linux.ting.com, that's where you go

to get started. And speaking of those feature phones, they got a good smattering of them. They have around $60. You can get a couple of great ones. And then they have one as low as $49, the Ancetel Go Flip. It's got a monochrome, speaking of monochrome, a monochrome screen on the front. So you can get a clock and stuff like that. And you open up, it's got a full color screen. Even these have like cameras and stuff.

Yeah, totally. It's like even then, like the reason why that camera is nice on these feature phones is for like insurance situations or whatnot. Just a casual picture doesn't need to be great. Just a quick document. Come on. You know what you're taking pictures of. You don't need it to be that high resolution. You know what I'm saying.

Linux.ting.com. A big thank you to Ting for sponsoring this year Unplugged program. And thanks to Ting and thanks to you guys for not only for sponsoring to Ting, but for you guys out there going out there and using linux.ting.com to keep us going. 246 episodes. Keep on going over at Fedora, too. Fedora 28 is just around the corner. And one of the cool features in Fedora 28 is how badass their Thunderbolt 3 support is.

It really all starts upstream with Bolt. Bolt's been getting development for a while. We've covered it once before on the show. Bolt is a project that's been moved now over to freedesktop.org that works with the security models of Thunderbolt 3, a Dbus API, and in this case, GNOME and some kernel changes to give users control over Thunderbolt 3's permissiveness. So you hook up a device. If it's Thunderbolt 3, it's essentially on your PCI bus. It's like you just put a card inside your case. And so that gives you access to things like memory contents that are on the PCI bus. You might not want that,

especially if you're in a more secured environment or there's other people around. You may want to be able to say, no, don't give that access to all of the things like my keys that are being stored in RAM right now. So there's bits now that have been added in GNOME Shell and backported to the GNOME Shell that's shipping in Fedora 28, which is part of why Fedora 28 has a little bit extra sauce here. Ooh, a little extra magic. Yeah.

GNOME 3.30 will have these changes upstream. I suppose anybody could probably backport them. But it comes with a new panel in GNOME that allows you to manage all of this. And it gives you features like being able to temporarily disable authorization if you don't want to do anything for a little bit. In technical terms, without authorization on the PCIe tunnels, no new tunnels are allowed to be created on the bus, and then you get a failure mode,

and the Thunderbolt port, yeah, it's hard for me to say, Wes, will still function as USB and DisplayPort, but it will not act as PCI. Oh, wow. So it'll still kind of work. This is sophisticated. Yeah, you'll get options in GNOME, and you set those.

It'll support firmware updates. If your screen is locked, if you're away, you know, if your machine's asleep, it'll automatically default to disable. Oh, perfect. Some smart stuff like that. Yeah. So that's coming in Fedora 28 is some really good Thunderbolt 3 support. This is some, like, quality desktop operating

system level feature right here. I don't think you even get, you don't get that crap on the Mac. My other favorite part is that they're calling the activity indicator the cable snake. That is good. Good catch. That is a good part of it.

You're right. The cable snake. I don't have a lot of Thunderbolt 3 devices to test, but I bet Wimpy, actually, you probably have some of the most in the room because all your eGPU shenanigans have been over Thunderbolt. Have you thought about

the security model stuff with this? Is this something you're concerned about when it comes to Thunderbolt? Well, by and large, I've been using NUCs in the house. So I've just been turning on the open it all up, you know, mode. I've got a couple of laptops that I've used and I've been toggling the BIOS settings and I've been going out and about with those. And I have been tracking this project and it's something that I want to look at during the Ubuntu 18.10 cycle to try and integrate. Because like you say, it's a bit niche, right? You need to be somebody that's using this stuff in order to appreciate its value. So something I'm going to be looking at over the next six months. Neat. Yeah, it is something that not a lot of us have a need for yet, but I could see it coming down the road,

especially if eGPUs get more and more common. I'm really kind of excited about the potential of getting a low-power laptop and then hooking up an eGPU to it. So I could see this becoming more common, but it'll probably take a little while to warm up. I can see it for compliance reasons, too. There may be

things that you need to be able to prove about attaching peripherals to devices that the subsystem can support now. You know, I mean, enterprises have been getting their pants in a lot about USB devices for years. And this is an interface where you're basically plugging into lanes on the CPU. So it needs to be well controlled and managed.

Yeah, fair enough. All right, I might need somebody to translate a little canonicalese for me here. But a couple of weeks ago, and covered on the Ubuntu podcast, well, was the Quigley proposal, which was a re-evaluation of Ubuntu's testing milestones. And now this is where I need the translation.

So Simon made the proposal, and it came on LUP, and we talked about it a little bit, and it sounded pretty solid. The general idea is, starting from now on, there will be an opt-in milestone, or I guess that's going to be discontinued, that's what it was, and there will be testing weeks from now on, starting with the 1810 cycle. And different flavors, I believe, will just say, I'll opt in, I'll do the testing, other flavors won't, and there will just be a period of focus testing.

And this is just going to start happening with the next cycle. Is this all? Is this all accurate? Anybody want to correct me on that? Okay. So I, I, well,

Popey, do you want to go for this or should I knock yourself out? All right, I'll do it then. You can do the next one. Yeah. Good. I hope it is actually,

we should make it mate and make Popey do it. Actually, that's a really good idea. Let's do it. If you have any suggestions, though, I need a suggestion. Oh, maybe, hmm, I don't know. Despite his blushes and refusals, he's an expert, by the way. I believe it. So did I get my coverage of the milestones, shift rate, the testing weeks?

What's going on? Yeah, so we currently do the flavors in ubuntu currently do like alpha 1 alpha 2 beta 1 and then at beta 2 that's when ubuntu steps in we all do beta 2 we all do rc so right now you know ubuntu 1804 is two days away so we're on our second release candidate image right now for those people that are following the QA train and testing stuff. What the flavors are going to do for 1810, and we've all bought into this, is we're going to drop those alpha ones and those alpha twos and those beta ones. And as a community, those flavors are going to replace those milestone releases with this is a week that all of the Ubuntu community get behind to say this is a week we're going to do testing this is a week where you can go and grab the daily image for any of your favorite flavors and perform the testing and we're

going to coalesce around a week of testing as a community in the whole rather than what we have now is silos of of the flavors doing testing within their own you know organizations and we're going to be replacing some of the manual testing that we've been doing with the automated testing that already happens within ubuntu proper so that will mean that we can focus the flavors can focus on the new and interesting things that they're working on rather than making sure the mechanics of installing and upgrading the distribution work. So we can move away from manually testing that stuff to just focusing on the good stuff. Now, how does this exactly go down? So Simon makes a proposal and essentially nobody says no. And so then it just becomes the way it goes now. It wasn't out of the blue for anyone that's in the Ubuntu

developer community. Simon had had the good grace to contact us all on a one-to-one basis beforehand and sound us out. So his proposal was crafted around feedback he'd got from those one-to-one conversations. So this wasn't from left of field, you know, this was Simon presenting, you know, an idea that everyone was already aware of and had already opted into to some extent. I guess I was more commenting on what seems to be a low level of friction to implement what is a rather significant type of testing change, which is a good thing, right? It doesn't have to go through 10 levels of counsel before it happens. But it just, that was interesting to see go down. It makes sense if you discuss it ahead of time, you communicate it ahead of time to the stakeholders, quote unquote,

and they're on board, pretty safe bet it's going to sail through smoothly. And I think there's only a couple of flavors have represented this. There's only one downside. And the downside that I see is that the only version that people are going to adopt early now will be the final beta. So Ubuntu proper and the flavors

are going to have a version that's available on the same day. And that's going to make it difficult for the flavors are going to have a version that's available on the same day and that's going to make it difficult for the flavors to grab a news cycle so traditionally we've kind of argued the toss between us about you know i'm going to make a big grandstanding announcement for alpha 2 and you're going to make a big grandstanding announcement for beta one. And we know that those new cycles are clear for the flavors and those are going away now. So that's the only downside. But we've decided by and large, we're prepared to give that up in order to work towards better testing methodology. That's interesting. Thank you for that insight. I appreciate that. And I guess, to me, I look at it as sort of, it draws in the focus. Like it seems that's what I loved about

the proposal is it just, it just sort of focuses everyone's attention on a period of time. Yeah, exactly. Now, Pobi, you want to do add something to this mix. Why don't you jump in? Yeah, something you've, you've highlighted the fact that Simon just brought this up on a mailing list, and then it becomes law, right, is something that i think is a bit of a misconception about ubuntu people seem to think that canonical dictate all the decisions in ubuntu and all the flavors and nobody has any autonomy which is like this this shows just how far from the truth that is that anyone within the project if they've got a good idea and they can articulate it well and they can specify what the advantages are and what the costs will be then people will adopt it and it's the new way

forward it's that's exactly how Ubuntu works is people all around the community putting in their suggestions and coming up with ideas on how to improve the project and it's not all just mark sitting in a gold chair dictating how the project is going to be run. It's brilliant. I love it. Yeah, it's like you always say, Popey, the proof is in the pudding. I think you've always said that. You've always said that. Every time. I've never said that. I've literally never said that. Well, I thought I heard that.

Yeah, good point, though. And I guess we'll see this play out in 1810. Right now, I think we've probably spent enough on it because we should probably start focusing on 1804 coming up because gosh knows I have. I'm excited. Gosh darn it. But I want to talk about this Microsoft story just for a moment because it's one of those where it really slipped through the cracks because the corporate speak around it is all positive.

You know, so-and-so has departed from the company and we will be moving this group under this new group that we've just formed. And this new group is fantastic because it's future. And future is good and the future is bright. And everything is good because future. And that's essentially the announcement that came out two weeks ago. And it's taken me a couple of weeks to process what's happened. Noah was here with me last night while I was doing the prep. I was like, I will not go off of one story.

I don't care if it's trajectory. I don't care. I want three additional sources that are citing this. And so we found three additional sources. We have them linked in the show notes that are citing this. Using Google food to the maximum. Yeah, both of us were. The thing is, it's sort of a huge, huge development. So I didn't want to come on the air and accidentally overstate what had happened

because when you're digging through this corporate speak, it's early to misunderstand. But there were clues that kind of all led to this. There are, say, maybe dots that could have been connected. The first big clue about Windows Future was that Microsoft's Windows and Devices group is now called the Experience and Devices group. They've dropped the Windows thing, and it includes now Windows Office and Surface. Microsoft's Office Chief is now in charge of the division. So the guy that runs Office 365 is now in charge of the people that are developing Windows, which Windows used to control the shop.

Windows used to control the shop. Windows and Office were really the two major fiefdoms in Microsoft that really fought. And then SQL came up. I mean, in the good old days of Microsoft, the whole company, the balance of the entire company was shifted towards Windows. And now it's being run by Office 365, which Microsoft internally just considers to be a smashing success. So experiences instead of Windows was really the first big hint. But you could see really kind of signaling from Satya Nadella. You look at the numbers, really, it's kind of obvious if Microsoft just took their heads out of their arse and looked around, they'd see that there's 2 billion monthly active Android devices,

and there's more than a billion monthly active iPhones, or Apple devices, iOS devices, all around the world. Well, Microsoft claims there's 1.5 billion Windows users total, and 600 million Windows 10 users as of November. So Windows is now a tertiary platform, really. That doesn't make it tertiary, though. So here is how I will say it does not. The customers that pay the most are the ones that are obligated to do so,

and those are enterprises and governments. How many governments are using OSX? I wouldn't look at it from the desktop perspective. In that case, you could flip that question around and you could say services. And there would be, why would they even be going to cloud services? And a lot of times it's because they're trying to address a massive mobile demand. I mean, that was a huge source of my client base towards the end of my IT career was companies scrambling to redo their services because of the demand from mobile clients. I think if you look at it,

every Windows user has an Android or an iPhone. So it's just huge in terms of end-user reach. And you look at companies like Uber, who are worldwide phenomenons, and they've never written a Windows app. Those haven't written necessarily an Android app or an iOS app. You could make a point that they might be using Windows to make the Android app. So I'm not trying to discredit Windows,

but my point is, if Microsoft has their head out of their arse, they've got to be seeing this. Windows isn't the biggest game in town anymore. They've got to be seeing that. Chris, you are preaching to the choir. I'm the person in here who made the prediction Microsoft would have a Linux distribution,

which they now do have. Okay, all right, fair enough. Just a moment. Yeah, you did get that. Just a moment. You got that. And not only, I will tell you that in a year and a half to maximum of two years,

they will have a desktop environment that is proprietary on a Linux machine. Wow. I mean, I would have said no way last time. I want to say that now, but you never know. I mean, I would have said no way last time, so I can't say now. Yeah, I just, boy. I mean, you just never know. It just makes business sense.

It does. They have the subsystems, which they can now start building their own apps against the subsystems. And the devices, so they sell already Android phones. They sell Samsung S8s, by the way.

So that's actually how they acquired already Android phones. They sell Samsung S8s, by the way. So that's actually how they acquired the skill set. They bought Android apps, businesses, so that they would get the skills without indicating to the market that they would be ditching Windows. That's how they wanted to get the developers. They got the developers by acquisition, not by hiring. Because you can't lie on a hiring job advertisement of what the person's going to do.

Otherwise, you don't hire the right person. Don't you think, though, that it is sort of like the biggest anticlimactic ending to the Windows empire? No, it's actually strategic. Oh, sure it is. So I don't think it's actually strategic. Oh, sure it is. It is. So I don't think it's even anticlimactic because what's going to happen is you get the Windows experience. Like the thing that Microsoft always gives you,

which is continuity with partners. This is the thing that Windows and Microsoft have always guaranteed to you. Yes, it was not the perfect operating system. It never was. It never intended to be. It was never the unified experience, but it always works. And when you got a peripheral from a partner, it always worked. Yeah. You know what I would do if I was Microsoft is I would look back, you know, with the same classes that they're looking at the rest of the market going, God,

look at all these iOS and Android devices. I'd look back and go, well, so what is the market for Windows? Because when you've got a billion users and 30 years of user base, you're not going away. You know, just like IBM, you're going to be here forever. They won't go away. How could they? They won't go away. Well, I mean, eventually.

But what could they do right now, say in the next 10 years, to make Windows super relevant? And I would look at the technical and development market, the people building applications and services. That seems like where Windows goes. Too slow, too little for Microsoft. See, my prediction here is the following. Google has invested in making their system the best as possible,

and they've captivated people into using for alarms and things like that. So it's already useful, right? Yeah. Microsoft has been trying to put the assistant mostly on professional fields first. For example, Skype for Business includes live translation. Things like that in China, you know. So things like that are the most powerful to integrate. For example, you also look into Cortana. Cortana is

not intended to just do calendar and stuff. It's mostly for you actually to try to find files, to run applications. It's kind of more of an assistant design strategy. And that means that if they get it right over time, Microsoft has the capacity to, oh, we sell you an Android phone, which includes Cortana. And by the way, we sync it with a desktop. And really, when Samsung comes out with a phone, which is like about one to two years different distance from now, which is going to be full glass, there's not going to be buttons on it. The Assistant makes full sense. It's just the phone that the Assistant shows you some stuff. Sure, yeah. And you talk to it.

I agree they would love that. That would be really big for them. Okay, I want to give Reaver a chance to get in here because he tagged me. Reaver, you still think there's a spot for Windows to be pretty relevant, don't you? Not really, no. I can tell you the situation that I have right now at work that's happening. I manage probably 40 or 50,

maybe 60 Windows desktops and I can tell you 99.9% of the applications that they are running are open and free source applications. Really? And we're just, I'm on a precipice right now of developing a Linux desktop for them. And they can just take away the entire overhead of running Windows desktops. There's just almost no necessity for it. Yeah.

The problem I'm facing now is a cultural one. They don't want to switch. They don't want to switch. They don't want to get, you know, from my cold, dead hands. They really don't want to get away from that. But I am in a fortunate position where the entire backend infrastructure is Solaris and Linux. So it's really going to dovetail in quite nicely if I can make it happen. And the other thing really to think about is most users don't care what's running underneath.

They just want to get into the apps. You guys are really kind of clarifying the strategy here. I think it's the right one for Microsoft to be making. And maybe they should have even done it a decade sooner, you could argue. No. No, you don't think so? No, I don't think so. If they'd done it a decade sooner, they would not get the support of the people.

I agree with that. I think they screwed up enough now that people are like, yes, yes, do not spend money doing this stuff. Just keep on doing what's already tested. And the staff inside Microsoft know it too. They can see it. And they see Satya Nadella making the choices to – I'm not trying to put this on Satya. But they see the company shifting away from Windows. They see it.

There's got to be internal support because the stock price, if, okay, so I looked at the stock price since they started talking like this years ago. And then the more they've talked like this, the more shifts they made, the more they've de-emphasized Windows, their stock price has continued to climb. The staff see that, the management sees that, the market sees that. I mean, I think it makes sense, right? They seem more like they're big tech companies now, right? Yeah, I think of them, it's almost like Google

had bought Windows from Microsoft and running it that way. Except they're doing it with the Microsoft way and Azure, right? I'm going to even say something bolder, Microsoft will save Linux from Apple. Whoa, okay. This is reality. So look at this, Apple has got the most of normal users okay with their devices and now they're getting education which is how you hook up it's the old

microsoft strategy first those is free and then forever you pay for it right so now they've got education and they've also got governments. Most governments tend to use Apple devices because it's simple to use. They've now managed to make a singular programming language, which actually has attracted a large sum of developers that would otherwise not work in Apple devices and made it all super appealing. They have made the good headlines in the privacy sector.

Even though we know better technologically, we still know that most of the common Joe picks up that and says, oh, Apple sticks up to us. And ultimately, Apple is running the game. Google has the best services by far, but Apple is the platform where those services run the most part. the game. Google has the best services by far, but Apple is the platform where those services run the most part. So

it becomes really hard. Yeah, the industry does seem to follow their lead in a lot of areas. So if Microsoft really picks up on this desktop world of Linux, then yes, Microsoft will be the most popular Linux distribution on the planet. I'm going to need to have a few drinks

before I can even think more about that one. Some prophetic stuff right there. Yeah. And their money is going to be made on the cloud, and they know it, so it's not a problem because, hey, they can play the cool guy that has everything open source and everything is nice, but ultimately you buy an Xbox and run your Linux games because that's your Steam machine, by the way.

It's an Xbox. No, you're crazy now. You're crazy now. Come on. Come on. I'm telling you like a 10 year plan, right? So in two years, they'll have the desktop. And I already can tell you this.

And in about 10 years, I expect these to be your normal things. Like, when you look at Tron, when you look at Tron, that there is this company that has one OS that everybody uses, that's Microsoft, but that OS underneath will be Linux. Yeah, they do like that. And you could also see their IoT platform, Azure Sphere, what starts out very humble, scaling up to a very high-performance system

10 years down the road. I mean, 10 years, there's going to be a lot of different types of CPU developments and memory. They've got the head on collision with AR. They've built the most sophisticated AR display system for actual professional world. They are not even kidding about making entertainment pieces. And guess what? When you go to your doctor, your doctor is going to use HoloLens, not Oculus stuff, not Vivo stuff, not iPhone stuff, not Apple stuff. It's going to be HoloLens because that's the talking about Vive and Oculus. So where's this shift to HoloLens going to come from?

Okay, I can tell you already, for example, Portugal, Spain, Finland have already done government contracts where HoloLens is being deployed in hospitals for remote surgery. Whoa. Well, the idea of a dedicated piece of hardware that comes from a company like Microsoft, that seems like that'd be more appealing than a doctor holding up an iPhone to a patient. So I definitely get that. I don't know if we'll see. That'd be remarkable, remarkable developments. There are a couple of things, a couple of threads that you've touched on that do seem very Microsoft.

Like their ability to sell to business channels for a HoloLens type device is something that Microsoft's going to do better at than anybody else making a device like that. And the fact that they do really want one OS that they can run everywhere. I think that's in the DNA of the company, but just Windows is no longer that OS, and so they're in

an awkward teenage transition phase right now. They lost every knowledge that they had about Windows that was relevant. They hired ReactOS guys to help them understand Windows. It no longer makes sense to do that. They just bought a few Android apps

companies. People with knowledge about the Linux operating system, and now they hope to keep it on because it's open source and it's easy to go and read and learn about it. It's making my head spin thinking about this. You mentioned React OS for a second. I gave it a go for Linux Action News 50.

I gave a little mini review on Linux Action. Wow. I'll just, short TLDR is, I'm going to be following that project with some interest. It's like peak Windows is how I describe it. Peak Windows. It's hitting that sweet spot right for you. It's a little tricky to get up and running,

but they really have something there. I thought I wrote it off as a joke, so I never tried it because I thought the only reason I would ever use Windows would be to run applications that are proprietary that I can't run on Linux. So why would I want to run React OS, which would probably be like trying to use Wine? But I'll tell you what,

that was a mistaken assumption on my part. This is an amazing, impressive, open-source operating system they've built. And I forgot how Windows 2000, the Windows 98 SE 2000 era UI is just hard, cold efficient. It's hard, cold efficient. Pretty simple, just straight up.

You're very familiar with it already. That sounds familiar. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Oh, yeah, I was supposed to throw a Mate hardball at Popey. Popey, could you tell me specifically, what's the major stuff I'm going to be missing if I install Ubuntu Mate 1804 Minimal Edition? So the Minimal Edition for

Ubuntu proper stripped out only a few applications like LibreOffice, but the Ubuntu Mate developers went a bit further and stripped out pretty much everything. So there's very little left for you. So for example, you might think, oh, I'm losing stuff because I'm ripping it out, but actually it makes a great base to start from example, if you, I mean, you might think, oh, I'm losing stuff because I'm ripping it out. But actually, it makes a great base to start from, because if you install Ubuntu Marte minimal, then you could maybe make it auto-login,

install Steam, and there you go, you've got your Steam box. Hmm. What do you say? What do you think? I'm welling up with pride right now. Yeah, he did so good! Yeah, he did! You know what, I'm going to give you... Don't tell me how I know that. Because I did that yesterday. Nice! I'm going to give you an RMS. I've never installed GNU did that yesterday. Nice. I'm going to give you an RMS. I've never installed GNU slash Linux.

You earned that one. You earned that one. That was good. All right. Well, you know, as we get down the show a little bit, I'll talk about my experimentations recently with a minimal install. And loving it, but I'll tell you more in detail in a moment. But let's talk about DigitalOcean for just a moment here. do.co slash unplug. DigitalOcean is simplicity at scale. You can get started in less than 55 seconds.

You spin up a rig on DigitalOcean and get off to the races. If you want to use a base system and build it from there, you can, or an entire application stack. You want a simple markdown-based blog? WordPress is too much? Deploy Ghost in one click. You decided it's time to use your own GitLab? Deploy that with a single click.

Or you want to build something from the ground up. You go deploy Fedora, Debian, CentOS, or of course Ubuntu and others, including FreeBSD, and you're good to go. In less than 55 seconds, you'll have a machine. It'll have predictable pricing. It's secure. It's reliable. It's easy to scale up when you need more.

And if you go to do.co.unplugged and you have a new account, you sign up, $100 credit. A $100 credit at DigitalOcean. It's designed for developers, but it works for everybody. A new user, an experienced user, you'll be really, really impressed. That's why tons of open source projects use DigitalOcean. Companies like Slack use DigitalOcean. And they have block storage. They have S3 compliant spaces. spaces, they have network-level firewalls, and they have super-fast systems with SSDs everywhere, 40-gigabit connections coming to the hypervisors, and 12 data centers all over the world.

We got the memo right here to prove it. do.co.unplugged. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. do.co.unplugged. And get that $ you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. DO.co.unplugged. And get that $100 credit. Oh, man, that's a great credit. Hey, a wild Dan the Rabbit enters. Hello, Dan.

Good to see you. Nice to have you. Hey, how's it going? It's going good. How are things going over in Elementaryland? Oh, they're going great. Yeah, I bet. I bet it's busy days over there, I would imagine.

I saw you guys had a new app spotlight this week. That app center is cranking, cranking. We're 87 apps now, I think. I wonder if you'll get to 100. Is that 87 or 86 or 88? Can you be more specific? Yeah, right? Yeah.

Well, it's just, you know, they're coming in all the time, so it's hard to keep track of how many there are. That's the right answer. How many are electron, Dan? Oh, zero. Oh! All right, I do want to change topics for a moment. I want to talk about this infamous GNOME shell leak,

which was more like a memory misbehavior problem, which I broke down in Linux Action News, so I'm not going to recap it here. But it does look like a fix is in the works. So I want to talk about another part that they bring up. After all the technical discussion in this post is complete, there's some final thoughts. And the author writes, I'd like to raise an interesting discussion about how people reacted to the memory leak news and reflect upon this. And screenshot some comments, which I think might be from OMG Ubuntu,

but as you know, it doesn't really matter. It's comments are comments on the internet. And when you read through there, you see people saying things like, oh, of course, this is GNOME. This is how they always do it. They don't know what they're doing. I know you all ask, but the answer is no.

A fix for the big GNOME memory leak is not going to come. There's all these negative things about GNOME. And the author says, as a regular contributor for the last few years, this kind of comments, they sound alien to me. These comments sound so completely disconnected from the reality of the development process of gnome. It completely misses the individuality of the people involved. Maybe because we all know each other, but it's just plain impossible for me to paint this whole community as a they, but it's just plain impossible for me to paint this whole community as a they,

or as, quote, the gnome developers. To a deeper degree, it misses the nuance and the beauty of the community-driven development and each and every individual that make it happen. It almost feels, now this is the part that really got me, because it's true, it almost feels like there's a wall between the community and the users of the community for what it produces, which is weird. We are an open community with open development, no barriers for new contributors. And yet there is such a distance between the community of users and the community of developers, design, outreachers, etc. Is it a communication problem from our side? And how can we bridge this gap?

It's a communication problem from their side because Red Hat continuously sponsors events about talking about the GNOME project, embeds everybody into the GNOME project. When individual applications drive within the GNOME project, they make it a GNOME application. And now they expect the credit or criticism to be attributed individually, get real.

And I'm a GNOME supporter. I see your point. It's sort of been their branding, in a sense. It's been their public persona, has been this cohesive GNOME environment. Absolutely. I know that projects are individual. Once you try to contribute, you learn about it. But if you're a user, you never see it.

That's the truth. Like, even the Git or the source trees goes under GNOME slash browse source, and all projects are listed there. Never expect that to be a non-unified team of people. Yeah. One issue that I've run into, just from an outside perspective, is when things get published on like planet.gnome.org, you know, and then people take that as like, oh, this is, you know, news from GNOME. And then people in the GNOME community will say, no, no, that's just like a random individual's blog. We're just aggregating it. So it's really unclear what is speech coming from GNOME officially and what is just some guy that

happens to work on something tangentially GNOME related. Is this a symptom of how open source software gets made? It's a symptom of Red Hat. Sorry, Chris. You think so? No, it's not. It's not unique to Red Hat. We've had this

as well. It's because there's concentric circles of activity and you've got people right at the core. You've got someone like Daniel and Cassidy who work on elementary and then there are people in the periphery around them and then people further out. aren't afraid to use it and will voice that uninformed reckon on the internet and won't be engaged with those people right at the center of the circle. And that's unfortunately how all open source projects seem to work right now. Yet when Canonical says something, I can usually know that Canonical said it or an individual person said it. And you guys, actually Ubuntu has made an extreme effort of demonstrating what is community related. And you coming in this show many times clarified what is a community effort, what is a canonical effort. And it has always been kind of clear as a developer trying to contribute on things.

When it came down to GNOME, not as much. I wouldn't characterize it as we do it differently or better than them in inverted commas. I'm saying as somebody that has done the outreach, right? I'm just some guy. So as I developed it, when I tried, I felt better about Ubuntu communication and canonical communication than I felt about GNOME. And I'm a GNOME user.

I'm telling you that personally I've had this experience. I don't want to make this about me or us because it's not. It's about the known project and the way they manage their projects. But myself and Martin, we're not paid to be here. Canonical don't tell us to come on this podcast. We do it because we want to as individuals. It's nothing that is part of my job. I would be here whether I was doing this job or not because I enjoy it.

And I'm pretty sure the same goes for Martin. Look, that's great. And that benefits Ubuntu and Canonical to the point that there have been cases in the past that we have detected and I have felt that there was a confusion. And because you were here, it clarified. Now, I cannot say the same about the GNOME outreach team or paid or not paid. I have not seen people that were clarifying it and because there's people in the ubuntu and canonical community that understand it and explain it to people it's easier to understand that was my feeling okay dan usually comes here and also does the same effect to to elementary and it's kind of just it makes enriches the experience. Yeah, I guess there could be stronger voices,

multiple voices coming from GNOME that are making it clear what they're doing and trying to reach out to different mediums. I think that would be helpful. I think it's a little bit difficult because they've now got this perception that there is the them and us, there is that barrier between them,

that whenever they do put their head above the parapet, they get shot down quite heavily. And I know Daniel has seen that as well. When he puts a public post out or when Cassidy puts a public post out, they get a lot of abuse. And some people just aren't prepared to put their head above the parapet. Yeah, you'd rather keep your head down and develop and create. Yeah, that's understandable.

I wonder where they're going to take this, but it seems like maybe there's some self-awareness of the issue, and that is, as they say, the first step, you know, is that starting with— We're talking about it now, right? Yeah, and they're talking about it. Yeah. I want to share, I guess, an app pick that I came across this week that I thought was pretty neat.

I've just begun experimenting with backing up different aspects of my Plasma desktop configuration, and I wanted to create some sort of standardized method to do that. And so I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll look for an app that would do it on the Linux desktop. And I came across KBackup. Surprise, surprise. KBackup is an application that lets you back up any folders or files in a tar archive to a local folder or a locally mounted device or a USB stick or a remote URL. So it's pretty simple, straightforward. You can set up profiles and things like that. I can see why you like this. It just screams Chris to me.

It is nice. Simple, nice graphical tool. You like tars. I mean, I do. Clear to see what the target is, clear to see where it's coming from. I could say this is my config backup. These are my documents backups. Like you have different profiles in there and you can set up jobs and whatnot. So it's simple, easy, and I'm all about the Plasma desktop these days, so it's kbackup. Nice. I was reading too, speaking of the Plasma desktop, that in Plasma 5.13, there's going

to be some implementation for a pipewire support for remote screen sharing on Wayland. Ooh. And I think that also includes like screenshots and stuff. So we'll start getting like screen sharing. Look at how things are going. Maybe even OBS screen capping, remote desktop, which remember all the haters for years have always said, I can't go to Wayland. I need access to network transparency.

Well, looks like they're building into KWayland. I think you accidentally planned like a happy themed episode here. K. Wayland, I know. Oops, I know. Oops. So 5.13 is going to have the early piping for Wayland's desktop session with remote screen recording and sharing in Plasma 5.13 it looks like.

So I'm looking forward to that. Some good news. Some good, good news. It's tradition for us to destroy our studio and rebuild it just hours before LinuxFest kicks off every year. It's the one time of year where Noah and I just set like a week aside before LinuxFest. And so all of the things we've been thinking about all year, we can bust out. And this year, you guys have heard me threatening for many, many weeks now to load my systems up with Kubuntu 18.04 and use that as our production OS here at Jupyter Broadcasting. But a son of a gun thing about the timing of LinuxFest Northwest is every single damn year,

it falls right around the release of the next major Ubuntu, which always means every dang year, we end up in this perpetual debate cycle. Should we use 1804? Or, you know, whatever the next release is. Should we use the current stable interim release? What should we do? If we install the current interim release, we're going to have to upgrade in a few months to the next release. And all this could break. Or should we roll the dice and go with something that's a release candidate but not officially released yet?

Could have some last-minute changes. You never know if software compatibility is there. It has been tiring and obnoxious, because it happens every single year, because we always land on this schedule. And we've chosen different routes at different times. I think it might have even been what kind of led us to start using Arch in production,

is we just needed current OBS and FFmpeg packages, and we were sick and tired of this. It just doesn't exist there. It just doesn't exist. But we're back. We're back on Ubuntu in production. Full circle.

We decided to just commit to 18.04 and try to make it work and put it in production. So since our last episode, we have reloaded many systems here in the studio to Kubuntu 18.04, which, as you know, I've gone into a tirade about every time our GNOME 3 system crashed on us and our recording was interrupted. I'd go on about how Kubuntu 18.04 is this beautiful mix of LTS Qt and LTS Plasma and LTS Ubuntu, and it's just going to sit there and be an appliance,

and it's the perfect solution. But when it came down to it, we almost went with XFCE. Almost. Almost ended up going with XFCE 16.04. Wow, really? Yeah, I'll tell you about that story and why we ended up on... This would be a different episode.

I know, it would be. I know, it would have been titled Joe was right. But first, let's talk about Linux Academy, linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. They have a huge, huge month. April is big for Linux Academy. 70 plus new courses and challenges and learning activities. It breaks down like this.

20 new courses with some refreshes, 50 new cloud assessments, hands-on learning activities, and new challenges. And if you're watching live today, you can catch Linux Academy's live stream. They're doing some giveaways tomorrow, Wednesday, and it's a big month for them. It's been really impressive.

They've been staffing up and adding new people. They have instructors that are there to help you, and they're writing new courseware. They're refreshing the old courseware. When you're a subscriber to Linux Academy, you just get all this stuff, all this new content, all these courseware refreshes, all the new things they're developing. You get that. And, like, for example, the Orion Papers is a huge success for Linux Academy. If you haven't checked it out yet, go check them out. Just go, you can go Google Linux Academy Orion Papers.

It's an example of some of the content you get that is like nothing else anybody else is doing. Because Linux Academy is stacked full of Linux enthusiasts and lovers, and they've got educators and developers that have come together to create this platform to help you learn more with self-paced, in-depth video courses, hands-on scenario-based labs, and like I've mentioned, those human beings that to help you learn more with self-paced, in-depth video courses, hands-on, scenario-based labs, and like I've mentioned, those human beings that can help you.

And they have a community that's stacked full of Jupyter Broadcasting members because we've been working with them for almost five years now. And so people have been subscribing from Jupyter Broadcasting at Linux Academy. It's a nice community over there. We like seeded it with some of the best people. It's true. I take credit for that.

Now it's just great. Friendly. Yeah, and they've just grown and grown and grown. And they have a course scheduler that's amazing. It'll work with your busy day to help you set a learning goal and stick to it. They have practice exams to help you get ready to test. And if you need certification training, they've got that too. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.

Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Go there and sign up for a free seven-day trial and support the show. linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. All right, so we did end up on Kubuntu 18.04, but we almost went with XFCE's Ubuntu 16.04 because there was a few unknowns when you're going with a yet-to-be-released version of an operating system.

And we tested against 16.04 quite a bit with our capture cards and the whatnots. We loaded XFCE up. I keep saying XFCE because it doesn't matter which distro it was, but it was the desktop we were going for. But it was Ubuntu 16.04. And it was okay. It was actually pretty good. I liked it.

But we started noticing a couple of little oddities. A couple of our production applications we use use system tray icons. And I didn't expect this with XFC, but they just stopped showing up. Really? They weren't showing up. And so we were like, okay, maybe we can fix that. And then we had a couple of other little glitches where it looked like things were, like, I had this issue with one of the panels were flashing when I would move the OBS when it's just small things. And Noah and I looked at each other and we thought, you know, neither one of us are using XFCE on a daily basis.

All the other machines in the studio are Plasma. We're both using Plasma as our daily drivers. This is just the OS. I mean, it's just the interface we're getting the most familiar with. And when you're using something in a live production environment, you really want it to be something you're hyper familiar with, so that way you can use it almost with muscle memory. Yeah, just second nature. So we talked about it, and you know what? Okay, alright, let's put

Kaboom 2804 on there and see how it does. And it's been pretty great. It's really been problem-free, actually. OBS loaded up just fine. Our production software, the mixer software is working just fine. Our remote control surface is working great. Stability has been top-notch.

Really, I have no complaints. It's been solid. Hey, Brown Bear, if you want to come here and talk, come on in. Come on, get in here. Come on, Brown Bear, get in here. Come on in. So Noah's been here since Thursday of last week

and we've been retooling different aspects of the studio, which really starts with the reloading of the operating systems. That's really how we start. That's the root of it.

Yeah. Okay, what machines do we want to reload first and how critical are they and what shows can we do this in? And we had a small production window

when he got here where there was no shows being recorded until Sunday. We didn't end up on CentOS, so there you go. Yeah, yeah. So we got the machines. We got the machines reloaded basically Thursday until Sunday. We got all the machines refreshed, reinstalled.

We still have a couple of machines to swap out because we found some problems as we went along. But it's been smooth, right? Yeah, I think so. I think what's been really exciting for me is I can tell, you know, pretty much early on, I can see when you're comfortable with something and when you have some reservations and it's never the first, um, the first few days, it's never the first week that I'm worried about, right? It's one month in, it's two months in, it's six months in. That's where I know where something has come

because while I'm here and while you can say, hey, brown bear, come here and fix this problem. That's not an issue, right? It's when something becomes routinely problematic and it starts as like, well, this is a little bit of a problem. But you have to solve it week after week after week by yourself. That's when you stay. You hit a limit and you say, okay, that's it. I'm done with this. And so far, we have not hit any of those things where you're like, well, this is even mildly frustrating.

So, I mean, time will tell, obviously, if this work pans out long term. But it seems like you're making a whole new investment, you know, even a year in to this entire Linux infrastructure. Well, I think the way to put it is we just, we had too much vodka. We sat around the studio living room and we said, all right, if we're going to hit the reset button today and just did like a, you know, just a total, alright, if we're going to hit the reset button today and just did like a, you know, just a total

restart, would we stick with Linux? Do you really, really want to stick with Linux? And we ended up putting another Linux box in and we're switching over our multi-track recording system which for a little while was being done on Windows 7 using Audition as we were just experimenting with something that could record 32 tracks off of a

USB interface. But you know, it's expensive and it's Windows and it's proprietary software. And we couldn't find something that was true top to bottom open source, but we did manage to find something that does multi-track recording

on Linux really well. You've been using it a little while for Ask Noah, so we knew it was a pretty safe bet. Yeah. And it's called Reaper. And they don't want you to know it's available for Linux. They won't even give you a link to download it.

But if you know how to find it on the internet, you can get a binary, you download it, and it's a full-fledged production quality, multi-track editor and recorder that we're using right now to record one, two, three, four, five channels. I used it last night to record a 16-track band. Yeah, really? And what do you, five channels. I used it last night to record a 16-track band.

Yeah, really? Really fantastic. And what do you think of it? I love it. I've got a Yamaha A1V96i and it picks up all the inputs and I sign them in and just streams it straight in and records them all. Yep. Let me ask you something. What kind of milk do you guys sell in the state of Washington?

Why is that? I'm just curious. Do you have Land O'Lakes here? I don't think we have that as butter, but not as milk. Okay. Well, we have Lando Leet. I mean, sorry, not Lando Leet. Lando Lakes. Not Lando Leet. I meant to say Lando Lakes, not Lando Leet. But yeah, Kukos, the company who makes Reaper, they won't let you have the download link to the Lando, or not Lando. Why do we keep saying Lando Leet? They won't let you have the download to Reaper. You,

you just have to Google it a little bit. Yeah. You Google it around. You giving us a hint there. Is that what you're trying to do? You give us a hint right there. No, I just,

I really felt like milk. Milk. Yeah. It's a hint. Okay. I see. I see what you're doing there. Okay.

I don't know how to decode it, but I know there's some hint there. But yeah, they, they like won't even let us share the link. Right. We can't, they,

they will, they will come after us. So just get yourself a glass of milk and you'll be set. Okay. Okay. I'll try to remember that. But I was really, uh,

sort of like, uh, relieved because after, uh, you know, being really kind of stuck with final cut and then looking at going, oh man, now,

now we're, now we have audition. Like this is just not the right direction to go in. It's a big relief to find something like Reaper that does really good multi-track recording in a production environment. And it has all these other little aspects like the right direction to go in. It's a big relief to find something like Reaper that does really good multi-track recording in a production environment, and it has all these other little aspects that I like about it.

So it's great. One of the things we should talk about, too, is when we started talking about actually using a machine, you're pretty OS fluent. You can jump on a Windows machine, you can jump on a Mac, you can jump on a GNOME desktop,

you can jump on a KDE desktop. And one of the things that you said that really resonated with me early on in this project is, man, I sure would like to have one desktop environment that just runs everywhere because your hands start to get into that muscle memory thing of launching applications and where to find individual settings and stuff like that. And under stress, particularly in a production environment, the ability to know where all of that stuff is and not have to look or find it is a huge plus, right? So if we can get all of these machines running identically, I think that bodes very well for the future of Linux in here. Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of famously the rolling release person, but the truth of the matter is there's a super, aspect to combining a desktop that I'm really excited about right now with a distro that's super well supported in the industry and a couple of applications that are getting good support too.

Because at the other end, so Reaper is for our audio, but on the other end, we have OBS Studio, which is also getting a ton of good support. So it's like this is a really sweet spot to be in in terms of well-supported application from the community, from the developers, upstream. Like all of it's all pretty solid right now, ground that we're on. I'd say this ground feels more solid to me than if I was doing all of this on an Apple machine

and I'm looking at how Apple is floundering with the professional market right now. That feels way, way shakier ground than what we're on. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You know, especially, you know, they can put pressure on a lot of these software manufacturers. So, you know, like Final Cut isn't going anywhere, even if they do dump x86, go to ARM.

But what might happen is Reaper may not decide to port their, well, actually they already have it on ARM. I'll use Audition, may not decide not to port to this new, you know, Mac platform. And they'll say, you know, a lot of the people, you know, especially in the video side, they're sticking on Windows. And so if that's the case, are they going to port that code base over? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. And so the ability to be able to buy any machine and then the interchangeability of these machines too. So we were talking about just early before we went on the air. We've got one machine that's dying. We've got another machine.

Now, if you had to square up the fact that, well, this is an all-in-one and doesn't have PCI ports and this is the older one that has the PCI ports and this is the new one that has the, you don't have to worry

about any of that. They're all interchangeable. Any one of these machines can serve any purpose. They're all different PCs. Well, actually, we have similar PCs, but they're not like,

it's not like a fleet of iMacs in here. Yeah. But it's the same desktop environment, it's not like a fleet of iMacs in here. Yeah. But it's the same desktop environment. It's the same OS. It's the same exact software. Yeah. And that is really nice from somebody who's working on a tight budget.

I just need something that's high-quality production that I know we can drop in that's going to be stable. And realistically, I might be able to hang out here for five years on these 1804 machines if I so choose to. You only got to make it a year and I'll be back. Yeah, I know, right? Well, if we get it right, it just keeps working. Well, I knew this time we had a pretty good shot because if this doesn't work, then he can't do the Ask Noah show here. So he had to get ready.

So that sort of sealed the deal, I figured. And then we just have been really sort of just doing acrobatics around the shows, trying to like break components of like, well, we know yesterday or no, just this morning. This morning, we didn't have an OBS machine we could control. It wasn't done yet, but we didn't need it to do tech snap. So we didn't have to fix that until the afternoon.

It did kind of bite us, though, because I forgot to set up love. Yeah, there was that. We started a little late, but that's just the sort of fine wire we're working on. But hopefully, we'll get this all done. We'll even maybe have a chill day on Friday and then go to Linux Fest. Yeah, right, I know.

I know. That's a pipe dream. Never gonna happen. For extra credit, we're going to try to get down to Wes's pad tomorrow and maybe set up a little local studio

for Wes down there. Oh, yeah, right. My days are running together. Yeah, that's right. We still have more things to do here first. But yeah, so we can point you

to Reaper.fm, Reaper.fm, but you won't bind to download for Linux there yeah so we can point you to Reaper FM Reaper.fm but you won't bind to download for Linux there but there is we can tell you because I'm recording this very podcast in it there is a Linux version

and it meets my persnickety needs I'm pretty picky when it comes to this type of software and it's meeting my needs we've recorded three shows with it so far

and this will be the fourth and for the listeners using Arch it's in the AUR. Don't need to click on any links. Making a snap now. Are you really? You know what else needs a snap badly?

I can pick up on the clues. I've deciphered your code. I've found it. Right on. That is huge for me. Let me tell you something. You can't just find it by Googling it. And I'm a pretty proficient Googler, and I know a lot of people in both the Linux world and the audio world.

You know what? You must suck at Googling because with your clues, I Googled it up in no time at all. Yes, once you know the name. But if you don't know the name of the site, you're not going to find it. Yeah. Anyway, but I'm not going to do the snapping. Popey, are you listening carefully?

Because the reason I'm not going to do the snapping. Popey, are you listening carefully? Because the reason I'm not at LinuxFest Northwest this weekend is because I'm at Ubucon Europe this weekend. I fly out tomorrow. So I'm away. Popey, however, he's got nothing better to do, so he can work on snapping this up. Wow. Yes, boss.

Yeah. I was looking forward to that. And for extra credit, somebody ought to snap up, but the broadcast using this tool, B-U-T-T, it doesn't work on modern versions of Ubuntu, but it's one of the only graphical tools for Linux to do a live Icecast stream. And there's other ways to do it,

like with Dark Ice and Liquid Soap and whatnot. You know, there is another tool that I just, I don't know why I didn't think of this when we were looking at this, but so stupid. Mix has a, I had that same thought. Has an option for taking a local input, you specify an audio device, and it'll just, boom, it'll seal it.

I had that same thought. That's a lot of software. Yeah, it is. To run for that. The other problem with Mix is it captures the audio device. So that is the only thing that can use that particular audio device. So Bud is just a really old X app that just depends on a lot of old libraries. You've got to load a whole bunch of stuff on your Linux box,

and then you've got to build it from source. And it can be done, but then the results vary. But it's so nice because it's – Oh, man. Man, I'll tell you what. We may be in a future where our OBS is a snap, our broadcast software is a snap, and our editing software is a snap. OBS is a snap.

I know, I know. We trust us. We know. It's great. And I'll tell you what, it's making me really excited about even another level of stability because then we can keep updating these operating systems and not worry about this stuff breaking. Like I'm saying, we're standing on firmer ground than both Windows and Mac OS, I say.

May I be so bold. But I think we are. The future is bright for production on Linux. And we're going to make an example out of that at LinuxFest Northwest. Hopefully. I think we will. Heck yeah, I think we will. People that can make it out, we'll give you an example there at the booth how we're doing it on Linux.

I mean, the truth is, if I can assemble even a haphazard setup while you're on the air without making too much noise soldering on the back end of a cast iron skillet, I think by the time we actually have some time where I'm not prepping a show with right hand and soldering with the left hand, I think it'll really be a cool display. Probably should work pretty good, imagine. Wimby, will you be sharing any stories from your trip in the Ubuntu podcast in the near future? I hope so. Me too.

We haven't fleshed out everything that's happening the week that I'm back from that, because obviously it's following the 1804 releases. There's a lot to talk about there. And nobody wants to hear about me gallivanting around Spain and having a great time and socializing with everyone in the Ubuntu community. Oh boy. No, we would hate that. Who would want to hear that? Hate it. Who would want that? Yeah, I know. We might do our

1804 review live from LinuxFest. I think that might be what happens. Looking forward to that. And I don't know. We may try to record a Linux Unplugged from there, so keep an eye out for that. And then we'll release it at our regular time the following week. So that could be happening as well. It's all kind of up in the air, but those are the things we're aiming for.

So if you want to join us on a Saturday, I would bet. Have you seen the timesheet? Do we have LEP on the timesheet? I don't know. I can tell you for sure that Ask Noah will be live at 2. On Saturday? Yes. Maybe.

That's our time, you bastard. It's 2 p.m. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. It's fine. It's fine. You take my time. Maybe we'll do it a different time. I'll take the Ask Noah time.

There you go. I'll take it and I'll stink it up. There you go. I'll fart in your time slot, dude. Don't fart in my time slot. I have to live in that time slot the rest of the year. Yeah, you can go catch more Noah at the Ask Noah show. Go get more Noah.

Do it. They'll be coming up live in just a little bit. You can get more Wes, techsnap.systems, and I'm on there too. And, of course, you can follow the whole network at JupyterSignal. And you heard me mention that there, Ubuntu Podcast. You can go get the Ubuntu Podcast. Go search YouTube. It's up on the YouTubes now, and you can watch it there.

Isn't that a development? We are living in the future. Now, rumor has it that we got to clear out of here because Brown Bear is going to take over and do even more Linux coverage. Destroy everything. That's true. That's true. That's true. That's how it goes.

Yep, every day. If you want to participate in that Shenanigans Live, head over to our neck of the woods. We start all around 1.30 Pacific on a Tuesday at jblive.tv. You can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that converted in your time zone. Now, we've got lots of links.

We've got RSS feeds and additional podcasts. All that good stuff at linuxunplugged.com and links for this episode at linuxunplugged.com slash 246. And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday! Unplug. Unplug. Unplug program. All right, it's post-show time.

A little post-show. Who wants to get their post-show on? I thought you were out there soldering while we were in here doing a podcast. Who needs to worry about show prep, right? There are wires that must be connected. They must be connected properly. Now you got a new toy. That's all you're worried about.

All right. So elementary OS, in my personal opinion, got right the fact that they have a toolkit for UI, which makes it consistent across the desktop. They've got it right on using mostly one language for development, even though it's not required that the apps are like this. Now my challenge is gonna be how about start integrating smart file system

management like music recognition so it automatically sorts by genre, category and like of your user. If you're interested I can give you the research papers, I can give you pseudocode. I can give you an example project. And you would be essentially the first operating system in the world to have intelligent file system organization. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Are you just talking about an API that apps can tie into? No, no API. It's something that can run locally.

The software is all open source. You can benefit from it. I'm willing to give you all of the source code about this. The first category that is already done, it's music. But what does it mean? How do you use it? recognition of the music and because you have the music players already on the system you can actually track the amount you know the quantity of times that was listened to appreciation of music and basically do organization based on it so this is like zeitgeist but it only does music no this is not zeitgeist zeitgeist just keeps track of, you know, history of usage, right? And tries to make those things accessible or preloaded. This is about making actual your music's files sorted. So the algorithms recognize genre, recognize style, and recognize music patterns of likings.

And all of this source code is open source. So you can use it the idea is that you actually get it so that it sorts the music for your users so even if it's just thrown up in the download folder you can actually categorize that music you can say give me all the rock and it will give you all the rock

this is like tracker this is like your file system's terrible mess I've been watching this for years the big problem with those kind of things This is like tracker. This is like your file system's terrible mess. Benji's done this for years. Yeah. The big problem with those kind of things is it's like it just leaves your file system this horrible mess. And then people end up touching it and it breaks and it's slow. And it's better to just like actually manage the files. So here is the part that I'm going to tell you.

If you don't do it, Microsoft will do it first. And then they will have those users. That's all. Didn't Microsoft just shut down their operating system department? Yeah, because they're going to use Linux.