LINUX Unplugged - Episode 259: Proprietary Action News

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

Another potential desktop Linux app is scared away by an aggressive free software community, and we struggle to find the balance between our moral ideals, and getting work done. Plus some community news, old friends return, and much more. Special Guest: Martin Wimpress.

Grab your pitchforks. YouTube pages load five times slower in Firefox and Edge than they do in Chrome. Say it ain't so. It is so, Wes. It is so. You see, YouTube's got this Polymer redesign, which relies on deprecated Shadow DOM API controls that are only implemented in Chrome. So I was like, okay, what is this really about? I started looking into this.

First of all, my first reaction was, this really reminds me of the stuff that Microsoft used to do back in IE's heyday, where they would design stuff to work better in IE than anything else. Oh, it's an open standard. It just happens to be an open standard that we were behind that we wanted to implement, and so we implemented it first. Hey, my whole life is an ActiveX app, okay, Chris? Yeah, geez.

The good old days, Wes, the good old days. So it definitely reminded me of that. But there is a little gold at the end of this rainbow. Check this out. I came across a Firefox add-on called YouTube Classic. You got to go get this if you use Firefox. It makes YouTube like it was a couple of years ago where everything just loads and none of the UI elements are hidden

and you don't have to wait for, like, comments to load dynamically. They just instantly pop in like text. Wait, is it like a site that's whole purpose is serving videos and you get right to that? Yeah, it's weird. Suspicious. This is Linux Unplugged,

episode 259 for July 24th, 2018. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's reconnecting with friends and back in Washington. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. Hello, sir. And back in action, missing from last week, it's Brent. Hello, Brent. Hello, everyone. Hello, sir. And back in action, missing from last week, it's Brent. Hello, Brent.

Hello, everyone. Hello, sir. We have a fine show assembled here. We have some community news, a couple of stories I'm really excited about. Plus, and I told you so, I can't help myself. And big news for those of us that may be considering Chromebooks running Linux apps. Then we'll get into the Ubuntu corner. Our friends over at Canonical have been doing quite a bit of work. And then we've got a batch of apps and tips that we think will help quite a bit.

And then later on in the show, there is a couple of things in the news this week. Slackware's founder is struggling, and I really mean that, especially in light after the Slackware birthday. He's struggling to be sustainable. We'll also talk about a developer who attempted to release software for Linux, but met a lot of harsh criticism because it was closed source.

And then we'll talk about a commercial piece of software that's coming to Linux that could represent a fundamental game changer for how an entire industry perceives Linux. But I'm a little worried that the rabid user base of certain types of software will scare them all away. So we'll get into all of that and much, much more. But before we go any further, before we even get into that community news, we've

got to bring in that virtual lug. Time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello. How do you hope? Heidi. Hello, guys. So good to hear all of you. Such wonderful voices hello uh especially a special hello to one mr martin wimpress hello wimpy good to have you back sir good evening how you doing so have you been out uh traveling and uh shaking hands what have you

been doing since you've been on the show last oh yeah all of that so yeah i was out last week i was in montreal last week. And other than that, work has just been keeping me extraordinarily busy recently. Montreal, you say? Yeah, it was a mid-cycle product strategy sprint. More and more of these sprints. All about the sprints these days over at the Canonical. Yeah, this was a purely internal one. So probably about 100 or so people there. really internal one. So probably about a hundred or so people there. So this is looking at the progress towards 1810 and also to some extent, 1804.1, making sure everything's on track,

doing a bit of course correcting here and there, you know, that sort of thing. So yeah, so it's all looking good and rosy right now. Yeah, really good. And boy, you say about a hundred of you, that's no small endeavor. That is quite the thing. So, well, I'm glad this is our first show since you've been back, I believe. So I'm glad you could make it. It's good to have you here. We have had ourselves a big week since we last got here. I'm back in Washington now, and I've been going over some of the stuff.

And I want to start with something fun. I want to start with something that I've had just this huge amount of respect for recently, and that is React OS. When I gave it a go for Linux Action News, I came away just feeling like it was peak Windows. Like they had managed to just nail that Windows experience that was somewhere between Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Like in a mix of the best of. And I was just damned impressed with how fast it was and how far they'd come. And I knew the project had one major milestone. And I don't even really,

I don't even think I can fully appreciate why this is a major milestone, but they've been talking about what they call self-hosting, where you can build ReactOS on ReactOS. That, to them, has been a major milestone. It's understandable, I suppose. I think especially in the programmer community, that's

sort of a, it can be a benchmark oftentimes. The thing you've worked so hard to build is generalized enough to build the complex system that you just made, right? So you can be like, look, we're totally dogfooding now. We built this OS. We can build our OS on our OS. It's all one platform.

Yeah, and as they point out in the React OS blog, they say the ability to build our OS on our OS. It's all one platform. Yeah, and as they point out in the ReactOS blog, they say the ability to build ReactOS on ReactOS, known as self-hosting, has often been touted as sort of a milestone in an OS's maturity. But the details are far more nuanced. Compiling any large code base, whether it be an operating system or even a web browser stresses the system in a lot of ways. One of the biggest being memory usage and storage IO. Code being compiled needs to be loaded from storage into memory. And more memory is required to hold all of the compiled objects as they're linked together. Scheduling is also to a certain extent stressed as most modern build systems will attempt to spawn multiple compilation processes to speed up the process all right so you could you could see how like just building a complex

project in a way is a milestone the fact that the os can survive that yeah very much so and in the spirit of open source it was free bsd's implementation of qsword that actually helped the main developer, Pierre, bridge some of the last pieces needed to achieve this. Oh, interesting. That was FreeBSD developers. There's always hoping someone somewhere. There's also just like shell improvements and new features coming to React OS,

like several quality of life improvements, the ability to extract archives and whatnot, all baked in. And a new milestone. extract archives and whatnot all baked in. And a new milestone, compatibility for Windows in React OS is reliant on something called the shim engine. That allows the loading of slightly different versions of libraries and APIs, depending on what the application expects from Windows. React OS is much the same in this release, but they added the ability for React OS to present itself as Windows 8.1 now, and so applications looking for that version of the APIs will now get back Win 8.1. Impressive.

That's got to cover a lot of applications, I would think. Absolutely, yeah. Really, really, really nice. I'm just watching this with awe. Like, it's bizarro Windows in a reality where Windows became a community project and they focused on making a fantastic development workstation and they didn't really care so much about chasing convergence or all of the other things.

You haven't even said the word enterprise. Like what's happening here? I know, right? It does seem like this would make a great enterprise OS though. Just say it once. One day. It is fun to like separate, you to separate the old Spectre of Microsoft and then just the actual UI and experience of using Windows,

because I feel like we've twisted them in our souls, and there's obviously a lot of complicated feelings, but using the old Windows UI is just fine if you're just trying to get some work done and you're already familiar with it. I agree, and maybe one day when Microsoft moves on, it will be React OS that we go to for that compatibility shim on Linux or something.

Could happen, Wes. React OS might end up being like, you know, future Chris and Wes's version of wine. You're calling it here. It's a Chris prediction. Guys, do we have a sense of what the React OS developers are hoping ReactOS will be? It's essentially a Windows replacement with full Windows application compatibility.

And they're doing it in a way that's so bottom-up that they just might get there eventually by the time Microsoft gives up on Windows. But do you think that makes it still a goal worth pursuing, Brent? Well, that's kind of what my question was leading to. If, let's say, in five years they get to a really usable system, then, then, then what? Right. And so for me, I would say not really, cause I've done the work to get away from that, but I wonder what the usage case they're chasing. I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Why do you say that? Well, we see lots of these proprietary systems fall by the wayside eventually.

And maybe Windows will fall out of favor completely at one point and it will become a relic, a thing of the past. And perhaps React OS will be a means to preserve that, you know, vast catalog of Windows software. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. It's also just impressive that it's been going for like 20 years, and so even if it's not worthwhile or not, it's clearly providing value to the people working on it. Has it really? Yes. 1998 was the initial release. Isn't that wild?

I had no idea. I've only, I mean, I know I've heard about it for years, but I've only started taking it seriously in the last six months or so. It's just impressive. There must have been a lot of days in there that it didn't work so well as what we see today, right? And still they went on. Is it just me or did they sort of hit a tipping point in the last couple of years?

Because it used to be sort of a bit of a joke, a bit of a meme. But in the last couple of years, progress has been rapid and significant. Yeah. It looks like there's been some Google Summer of Code joining in there too. So maybe that may have played a role,

got some more people interested in the project. Yeah. It does have a way of doing that. And it helps that they've reached some major milestones recently. They've been doing that now for a couple of releases. And I think that helps too, is people, oh, wow, they're really making progress here. When you start to see progress,

you start to take it much more seriously, I think. All right, speaking of taking things more seriously, I'm starting to take elementary OS's app center pretty seriously. They hit two major milestones recently. taking things more seriously. I'm starting to take Elementary OS's App Center pretty seriously. They hit two major milestones recently. Number one is 100 native apps for Elementary OS. Oh, boy.

That's a great milestone. That's a big number, yeah. And then Cassidy James is blogging over on their Medium blog about the ability now to share App Center links directly. And they're going to give out, you know, think about that from a blogging standpoint.

You want to give out a link to an application that you want to cover, and now you can link directly to it. One of them is Dippy, which I played with just recently, is a DPI calculator. So you can go in there and say, this is my resolution, I got a desktop, I got a laptop, this is what I'm looking for, what should I have all my settings at?

It's just a nice little DPI calculator. So some good progress over there. I don't know if we have any metrics really to say, oh, this has been a success or, oh, this isn't a success, but 100 is a great milestone. Now let's see how many of those make it to the next release

and I'd love to see that keep going. Yeah, I'm curious about what role in the broader ecosystem of various open source or proprietary app stores will this play and will elementary as an ecosystem play?

Okay. What the hell is going on with SteamOS? Is that still a thing? Yeah, only it's kind of just pod fading in a way. It's distro fading. It's based on the previous release, Debbie and Jesse,

which reached end of life on June 17th. Ooh. And that's kind of concerning. But they have put out some updates. Steam 2.154 came out, which contains updates that are really just kind of minor bug fixes. They're nothing major. All the standard security patches, et cetera, that roll with a big distro like that.

I mean, it's possible that they're working on a stretch version right now with a new graphics stack and a new kernel, but SteamOS has developed into, at least from the perspective of the Linux community, a bit of an underwhelmer. I'm trying to be nice about it. So it does sound like from their release notes that they've recently updated their build infrastructure and this update was intentionally kept small

in order to test the waters before more kernel and graphics drivers changes. But on what schedule? Is that going to be, that gets released after the next version of Debian is already is you know already gone yeah i think it's it's dead um for me steam os i just saw a video that linus um tech tips did with wendell and he's uh touting all the benefits of the vf vfio gpu pass-through stuff and that for me shows that steam os is dying because if someone like linus is going to approach a topic like gpu pass-through it shows that people do want to

play games on linux but they're going to run a windows vm with kvm and then pass the graphics card through and just do it that way because it's so easy now to do that i disagree so i i don't think that was how linus was wanting to run his games at all i think what happened there is wendell came on who knows his stuff and instead of demonstrating how a linux user would run games natively on linux was actually showcasing what he knew and getting bogged down in installing additional PPAs for drivers in order to make the Windows version of Wine Run in order to run Windows versions of games in the Windows version of Steam on Linux. And I just felt that it really didn't hit the mark.

I don't think it did anyone any favors in terms of actually bringing them over to Linux as a serious gaming platform because it looked like a massive hack. Thank you. Thank you. I have a lot of respect for Wendell, and I also have a lot of respect for Linus. As do I. They've done a lot of good work, but that was a hot mess. And I think it was a combination of the editing folks and Linus didn't know what was important and what wasn't. And Wendell wanted to showcase several things, how you could translate now to Vulkan,

DirectX calls to Vulkan. So there's new layers of compatibility coming to Windows Gaming on Linux. He specifically wanted to demonstrate Witcher 3 because Linus asked for that. There was a lot of things happening in that video, but it didn't really do a good job of showing native Linux gaming, which is quite strong on a lot of systems right now. And I think they did miss the mark and it did kind of make me go, okay, we have a lot of things going right now. We have, we do have virtualization pass-through, which is a great, great option for a lot of folks. We're starting to build the ability now to have DirectX calls get converted to Vulkan calls, which is going to just bring wine to the next level. Like the video

demonstrated those things, but I felt like it was, as an ambassador video from the Linux community to Windows gamers, I felt like it under-delivered in a lot of ways. Yeah. Now, what's happened is that on Twitter, there's been a little get together of Linux gamers and people interested in Linux gaming. And there's an, an effort to crowdsource five seconds of 1080p video for every Linux native game, which is going to be stitched together in a showcase in response to that video. So, uh, yeah, I'll, I'll dig you out a link you can include in the show notes because if anyone wants to get involved, they've got a big spreadsheet of who's doing the clip for each of the games. That's a great idea.

But I wonder how long that's going to be. How many games are it? It's hundreds of games already. It's going to take a while just to stitch it all together. Love it. Well, while we're talking about games, we've been discussing Linux apps coming to Chromebooks. Pretty big deal. And it looks like they're also working towards GPU acceleration on these Chromebooks that are running Linux apps. For Linux apps?

Yeah, for the Linux apps. Through the Chromebook GPU layer? Yeah, so it's part of the Vert.io subsystem for, and specifically the Vert.gpu subsystem. So, yeah, it is part of the same system. It's using some of that same plumbing that we just talked about in the Linus Tech Tips video. Yeah, really, really interesting

because not only does that give you certain games, but that's going to give you certain applications that just work better with 3D acceleration. And it also means that this is going to take this Chrome Linux app support and make it full-fledged, like a lot less limitations here. And this should be landing, some of this, beginning in Chrome OS 69.

And then the idea would be to focus on getting all of the key functionality into Chrome OS 69. And then the idea would be to focus on getting all of the key functionality into Chrome OS 70. This feels like that could now be a serious developer workstation almost for the enterprise, because they have all the management stuff for Chrome OS, or just for your kid that you want to play with Linux,

but also don't want to have to deal with having to reimage his machine all the time. Yeah, it does feel a bit like traveling to the moon and back to run a Linux app on a Linux box. You know what I mean? There's a few layers of indirection here. You could also just install the GTK libraries

and just run the damn application. I mean, that would be an option. And it's not, you know what? I'm just going to tell you, it's not going to break the system. But is it Googs approved? No, because it's not in a container, Wes. It's not in a contained environment.

Exactly. It's good to have the physical bell sometimes. So anyways, I think this is, I mean, I just, I dream of a day when I jump on a plane and all they have to bring with me is a Chromebook. You know, because I just,

I love the idea of something like 13 inches, a couple hundred bucks, it could get destroyed, it could get lost, but at the same time, I could run QO notes. I could maybe even run a few games. Like a Chromebook's all fine and dandy. I want QO notes. I want that now.

Right, you've spent a long time developing specific Linux-based workflows. You can just patch that right on top? Right. Or imagine if I could run Reaper on a Chromebook. There is some serious possibilities there. And as hardware gets faster and that price point gets lower,

it might not be totally feasible today, but it is actually possible that in a few years we could have four-core and six-core Chromebooks. And I mean, half of what it's, you know, optimized for is browsing the web, which with all of our Electron apps and other things is basically all I'm doing besides the terminal anyway. I know. Yeah. Yeah, it is going to be the year of the Linux desktop. And the thing is, they have a ton of time to work this out, to sort of shave off

the rough edges over time, and then just really wait Microsoft and Apple out. Like, imagine if Apple switched to ARM and Microsoft moves more and more to the cloud and to Azure-based revenue and pulls back more and more

on Windows over time, and Apple keeps missing the boat on Macs. These vendors are just distracted. Microsoft's going to be more and more distracted by devices and Azure and services, and Apple is and has been distracted for a long time now by iOS. So Google is kind of nailing this at the right moment. I'm not saying they're going to have some sort of huge tide of adoption here,

but they're nailing this at It's just the right moment. It's funny, too, because kind of quietly, you know, it's not a big, necessarily huge branding, marketing push. It's just rolling out and work is being done, and yet it might have some actual impacts. Yeah. We'll see. I'm pretty excited by it.

Anybody out there going to get a Chromebook and try this? Anybody going to actually put their money down and buy one of these suckers? No. No? No. No. No.

Hmm. I might. I might, but not. Fake computer. Noah's already bought one. Well, of course he has. Noah is already. We're talking Noah.

He already got one. And I'm not even sure if he's got the right model or not, but he just got one. It does seem like if you had a really nice Linux gaming desktop setup, that that could be the perfect little cheapo satellite that you replace every couple of years. Yeah, I know. Is that the draw, or is it a

cost thing? Well, actually I use a Chromebook that's provided by my IT department. Well, we got those devices because it's tough to go into our ticketing system with a mobile device. And that and also it's another way to easily type emails and respond to clients easier than on a mobile device. And it's pretty reliable when it comes to Wi-Fi connectivity.

It's one of the cheapo acers. It does support the Play Store too. But I'm not sure if it supports the Linux apps yet. I could definitely see it as like, I'm going to go do some emails, I'm going to just do some basic web browsing, and I've got hardware on either end of where I'm traveling. I have a machine at home, and I have a machine in the studio.

Can I see it less maybe for people like us, as well as people casually interested in Linux, or maybe people who are professionally using Linux as developers or other things, but don't have very much interest in managing a whole Linux operating system? Yeah, well, yeah, there's probably a lot of, you know what, you know, the reality is we should just acknowledge here. So that way we just, it's the elf in the room. There are millions of more people that fit that description than the people that are interested in managing a Linux

box. There are millions of more people, right? So let's be real about what the market is here. My wife wanted a laptop two or three years ago, and I got her a ThinkPad for 150 pounds. It was at that point two years old. And if cost is your main argument, then I think the used laptop market is perfectly serviceable for Linux. But then if we're talking about this mythical new Linux user who comes out of the swamp and wants to use a new box, maybe a Chromebook's a good shout, but I don't see too many of those to be fair. So that new user, there's been, I don't know if you've seen these, there's been a couple of articles in Forbes this week. Yeah, I casually, via Twitter, invited him on the show and I haven't heard back. Yeah, so I'll give you

some background on that. So first of all, these articles were really good timing because the first one came out like about two minutes before I was about to give a presentation last week in Montreal. And it perfectly sort of summarized

everything I was talking about, how, you know the 1804 releases joined up all of these things we were working towards and this is an operating system we can be proud of and people are using it and finding the software that they want and this article said all of those things so i was able to flash it up as the sort of concluding point um the author of that article has said that this is the, these two, um, posts he's done about switching from windows to Ubuntu have been, uh, 10 times more successful than anything he's written previously, which is why he's going to continue the series.

And he's actually reached out to, to us at work, uh, and asked us to help with the next installment, um, which is a throwback to our earlier conversation about gaming on Linux. This is the thing that he's going to be looking into next. Aha! I'd love to know how sticky that switch is for a lot of those new Windows users. Because I know personally, a few years ago,

I switched probably several times a year. And then, oh, there isn't this one thing. So I went back to Windows. I'd love to know sticky linuxes for these guys i think what's changed at least from talking to him is that he first of all installed linux mint and that didn't stick and then he installed ubuntu 1804 and the and i think the main reason why it stuck was because the first run wizard gives you this, you know, flash up of here's some interesting software you can install. And that included all of the things that he wanted to install.

He wanted to install Telegram and Spotify and Skype and all of that stuff that's presented there. And I think that was like a tipping point of, ah, here's all of the things that I need. And that encouraged him to then stick with it for a bit longer and explore a bit more deeply. It really does make a difference. It seems to us technical users like such a small thing.

It almost seems irrelevant, but it makes all of the difference to users that are coming to the platform for the first time. And there is real value in brand recognition. There's real value in seeing brands that you recognize on that Linux desktop. I mean, oftentimes that's all you have, right? It's like sort of a proxy for trust and for reliability and just like, can I get my work done? So what else can you tell me about that? Because it sounds like you know more about the story. Well, I know what

the next, well, I was saying the next piece is going to be on gaming, but looking at the comments on Twitter and the comments on the articles, there seems to be not, I mean, there's only hundreds of thousands of views on the article itself. But there seems to be a lot of people who have been thinking about making the switch and needed some sort of confirmation in the mainstream media because they don't follow you know our communities in these corners of the internet where we live and it's given them confidence to go out and try and what's been really good to see uncharacteristically is other people out there who are running linux of one flavor or another and saying yeah there's lots of good reasons to switch you know that um you know here's this software that could fill this particular need for you. So it's been quite a positive thing and uncharacteristically so, considering what we

normally see, you know, when you get these articles about, you know, switching to Linux, and then it's a big bun fight about you're using the wrong Linux and all the rest of it. What do you suppose is different now? Why is that? Why has that not been, oh, you should have tried Arch. Oh, you should have tried OpenSUSE. Why has it instead been, because you're right. I've been following the discussion as well because I wanted to, I wanted to ask him about it if he came on the show. And it has been a lot of more like, can I help you? Can I, is there anything I can do for you? Do you have any questions? What do you think's changed? What's shifted? I don't think anything's changed.

I disagree. See, I think it's a switch to GNOME. I think Ubuntu switching to GNOME and then working upstream and being at Guadec and all of those things, I feel like have maybe changed the response possibly. I think a lot of people are exposed to a lot more Linux at work now than they ever were before with the rise of AWS. You end up with a lot more people doing quote-unquote DevOps that was traditionally the sysadmin's domain, and they never touched infrastructure. And I think that's made quite a big difference. With regards to GNOME and the reception that ubuntu is getting these days i

think it's two things yes i think to some extent it's it's returning to gnome doing that in the right way contributing upstream very visibly i think all of the publicity and the blog posts that were done through that 1710 cycle to sort of chronicle that laid things out and i think there's you know a return to involving the community you know with the new community theme that's um that's in development and will feature in 1810 which has now got its name but i think what was different with what i saw with the commentary here it is it wasn't posted in the usual places the linux community whatever that is hang out it wasn't in our linux it was in the comments of forbes and

the comments of the tweets from the journalist where our usual community don't hang out and i think maybe the response was more positive because the people that were were following on there who had some experience with linux are maybe a little bit more pragmatic and level-headed and not so sort of bipolar in terms of which distribution that they would, you know, insist you have to use. Right, so the areas in which it was spread and talked about, the usual grouches didn't organize. Yeah, that's my feeling at least anyway. Huh. Yeah, I mean, I think there is, we, you know, especially as enthusiasts,

people who put a lot of identity into our use and love of this operating system, it's very different than just sort of the thing you're like, oh, some casual news about how maybe that makes my life easier or a plus one for that thing I like. Yeah, and I would actually add to that a bit. And Brent, I think you could probably echo the sentiment a degree as well. And Brent, I think you could probably echo the sentiment a degree as well. And that is when you want to just try switching over your workflow to Linux and the first bits of feedback you start to get are, oh, you're dumb, you chose the wrong distribution.

That's a big turnoff. That's a big, that's like this big, like almost judgment that gets passed on you right away. And it comes across feeling sort of like you just get shut down in this what was otherwise an exciting adventure. And that kind of feedback isn't exclusive to user adoption. Again, I think it was this week or last week, Hiri posted a blog about their experience

bringing a proprietary application to Linux. And they touch on this, that they went to seek out the Linux community and where they started their journey was on our Linux. And based on the feedback they got there, they dropped their plans to have a Linux client. plans to have a a linux client uh hiri by the way is a an email client uh specifically targeted at the exchange in office 365 and it's multi-platform but they wanted to do linux and they were really dissuaded from doing so because of the reception that they got there um and then um as it happens alan popey actually saw their application randomly some weeks later and contacted them and worked with them and helped bring Hiri to the Snap store.

And this blog post then talks about how this turned around their perception about dealing with the Linux community because they were dealing with a different Linux community once they came into that platform and they were welcomed and they were encouraged. And then their blog post is very even handed. I think it points out some of the drawbacks of, you know, targeting Linux and some of the plus points. And some of the plus points are actually Linux users are specifically helpful in debugging and raising issues and giving you technical insight into your application. But here you have gone from being turned off to a year later, they're now making 25% of their revenue off the snap. Yeah, so I want to talk about that, because I think that is a really interesting story.

And I think it's also fascinating in the context of Reaper just coming out for Linux, which is the editing software we use to produce our shows and record right now this show, and also the dictator, benevolent dictator for life of Slackware coming out today saying, I'm completely broke and I've been getting scammed by the Slackware store. I feel like all of that is, I think that's what we should move to. So before we switch to that, so Wimpy, that was the tease. Brent, I wanted to, I know you were going to say something there. I wanted to come back to you for a moment.

Just wrapping this, putting a button on this conversation just so we can move on and talk what Wimpy just shifted to. Is there really, is there a big turnoff if you were switching over to Linux and people come at you and say it's the wrong distro? Could you just talk to that for a moment? Yeah, I feel so. I've helped several users move over as a professional service, I'll call it. But what I've noticed is that it's hard enough to get someone to think about changing their entire workflow. And so to get

that sort of discouragement of someone saying, oh, you did it all wrong, or whoever helped you suggested the wrong thing is a real turndown. But what I like hearing here is that when there is a suggestion that, you know, any distribution is better than what you had before, then I think that's really the direction that we should be applauding people who are new users and to encourage them to really explore instead of being discouraged, right? We shouldn't be saying, oh, why'd you do it that way?

You should have done it this way. Instead, the conversation would be, oh, hey, you should try this one too, right? You're striking out from Windows or you're striking out from the Mac. Congratulations. I couldn't agree more with that. When we were doing Fustalk Live

a couple of months ago, one of the segments in the Late Night Linux live podcast was, what do you wish would change in the next five years in Linux? And Will Cook made the point that he just wished everyone could just get along. We all believe in the same thing.

Yeah. We've all got a slightly different thing that we believe in. But when people come to the thing that we believe in, we should welcome them and we shouldn't fight. And I nearly stood up and applauded when he said this because I felt so strongly that he was correct about this. And I really wish we would see this sort of mentality change this this this fighting this infighting um people adopting uh party lines factions you know within the community and and slagging each other off is just really tired and frustrating yeah and um I think I think we've probably we've probably talked it as much as we can on this show in the past.

This is an area, though, that both Wimpy and I care a lot about, and if you do too, I would encourage you to check the back catalog. I'll just really quickly say every week I hear a story or two from somebody who's burned out just because of that issue. And they don't want to make a big deal about it. Not everybody wants to, like, burn down the web with a blog post. They just kind of quietly go off into the sunset. And it's like we should come up with – maybe if we came up with a term and we had a website and a logo, then maybe it would get more attention then.

All right. So Wimpy really just – he just cracked that can of worms right the heck open just a moment ago. Mentioned – if you've heard about Hiri, H-I-R-I, it is a really fancy-looking, super well-designed email client that we haven't talked a lot about. In fact, if you read the blog post, podcasters have outright refused to talk about it.

Joe! Joe Resington! Podcasters have outright refused to talk about it. So let's talk about what they're claiming, about some of the difficulties they've had about moving a commercial product over to Linux. And then I want to conclude it all by discussing why I think Reaper coming to Linux is a massive deal, even though Ardour is out there and open source. And the shitstorm I'm getting just for saying that already, which is amazing. I want to talk about all of that. Plus, we'll end it all on a few ways for you to examine the performance of your Linux box, look at perhaps the PSI of your system, if Facebook has their way, and then a tool that will give you essentially a quick snapshot of all the essential information

you need on the command line about your GNU slash Linux box. And yes, that situation going over at Slackware. So let's take a moment and thank DigitalOcean for making this episode possible. DO.CO slash unplugged. So you got to go to the DO to the.CO to the slash unplugged. So that way you can get the $100 credit over at DigitalOcean. And you know, they're not going to offer this forever. So go take advantage of this while you're hearing these words of wisdom come from my mouth hole into your ear holes. Do it right now. do.co.pl to get a $100 credit for 60 days when you sign up with a new account over at DigitalOcean.

Now they have industry-leading price and performance. I don't say that lightly. My favorite system, the 3 cents an hour rig, is amazing. And they have systems that go up to nearly 200 gigs of RAM. I know. 80 gigs of SSD, 3 terabytes of transfer, two beautiful CPUs, 4 gigabytes of the random access memory, and I get that all for 3 cents an hour.

You can get one that's $5 a month. That's $10 for every two months. You can imagine how far you can get, though, with a $100 credit. They also have flexible droplets where you can mix and match the resources depending on what your application needs, and you can deploy the entire application. So you want GitLab. We actually are doing that right now as we record.

There is someone mysterious in the background who has been on the show before in the Mumble Room, but is not here today and may be here next week, who is deploying GitLab on a DigitalOcean droplet to manage some projects for us over here at Jupyter Broadcasting. What? Wow. Yeah, and it's just one of those nice things where because we have a team account, he has access to my resources, he can deploy it under my account. So ultimately

I have total control over it all, but I can have someone in the community work with me. And I just love the flexibility that DigitalOcean brings, and the interface is super easy to use. So managing DNS or SSH keys is easy, and they have lots of documentation as well. So go to do.co slash unplugged

to get a $100 credit. That's, you know, I mean, $100. Oh, man, I can think of all the fun ways I could burn through that credit. I mean, even on a Seattle budget, $100 is not bad. You know what I'm saying? That's some vertical spending money. Speaking of Seattle budgets, Ting.

Let's go over to linux.ting.com right now. Linux.ting.com, it's smarter than unlimited. If you use less, you just freaking pay less. Here is the best part about it. It's just $6 a month for your phone plus what you use. So if you're texting the ladies or the guys a lot, you're going to pay a little more for texts. But if you don't text the ladies or the guys a lot,

then you won't pay anything for texts. If you use a lot of data, you'll pay for data that month. So like last month, I used more data. I'll pay that month. But for the other 11 months of the year, I pay a lot less because I'm always on Wi-Fi. I also do not use the phone. I've got Slack.

I've got Telegram. I've got Skype. I've got FaceTime. Why would I actually make an actual phone call? In fact, little fun ting fact for you. I spent, you know, the last collectively two months in Texas and never made a single phone call. Spent a lot of time on the FaceTime with my internet phone from Apple.

So fancy you. Using the FaceTime audio. And then you add that with some earbuds and stuff. It is a great way to go. Never, never used them in it. I mean, what do you want to be on that publicly switched telephone network for? Anyway, that's last century technology. Please, Wes. So beyond that. Please.

I want my voice in packets. And that's why I love Tink. So when I'm on Wi-Fi, I just use Wi-Fi. And if I need the cellular network as like a data backup, I've always got it. They've got nationwide coverage. Tink has you covered from coast to coast, and they have CDMA and GSMs. They're both of them.

Whatever you want on the multiple of the frequencies. And here's the best part. The contracts, they don't got them. No early termination fees, no quote-unquote service agreements. You just pay for what you use, and when you're done, you can stop. You can do it all through the website,

or you can talk to one of their really great customer service reps. So go check it out. Just go to linux.ting.com. That'll take $25 off a phone if you want to grab one from the Tings. And if you bring one, and like I said, they got the GSM and they got the CDMAs, then you could just get $25

in service credits. And Wes is going to sit here and tell you that's going to probably pay for more than your first month, right, Wes? I would be very surprised. Or you have a lot of friends and, hey, that's not a bad problem. You know what? You're right. Oh, so what you're saying is the reason why my Ting bill is so

low is because I don't have any friends. I mean, I was hoping you wouldn't make that connection, but yes. You know what? You might be right, actually. You know what? Plus, I talk to them all over Telegram, right? It's all those gifts you send buddy it is right anyways

go check him out linux.ting.com and a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Unplugged program linux.ting.com

first sponsor first sponsor of the show right there deserve it I gotta also say big thank you to Linux Academy

number two sponsor of the show boom right in there hot after Ting was Linux Academy linuxacademy.com slash unplug that's where you go to sign up and of the show, boom, right in there, hot after ting, was Linux Academy. Linuxacademy.com slash unplug. That's where you go to sign up and support the show and get

a free seven-day trial of a platform that is growing like crazy. They just had a live stream today where they announced the essentials of AWS Lambda, which is awesome. They completely rebuilt their Lambda courseware. Nice. AWS Security Essentials was also announced.

Oh, that's important. Last week, Red Hat Enterprise Security Essentials and a bunch of container management courseware as well as Salt and OpenStack has been announced. They are rolling out more than 150 bits of new content, courseware challenges, and more at Linux Academy. And you can try it out at linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. They have so much in the works.

I just got a taste of some of it. And I got to tell you, there's never been a better time to subscribe because they are super fired up about creating new content as accurately and as fast as possible. And they are building a team around checking things, making sure things stay up to date

and that the best people are on those topics, your subscription will be worth it. Go to linuxacademy.com slash unplug to learn more about anything that runs Linux or that Linux runs on top of. And why not go check out their YouTube channel? Not only do they just recently announced some new Google platform courseware and some really good stuff, including you get some videos of some of the different people behind the scenes. But their live streams, which I've been on for a couple of them, and the one they had today are all over on the Linux Academy Com YouTube channel. So you can see everything they've announced recently. You can see my live stream appearances, including me eating a cupcake that had gold dust on it that then got in my beard,

which stayed in my beard for the rest of the live stream, and that's why even after 13 years of broadcasting on the internet, I haven't learned to not eat gold cupcakes on a live stream. You can see that as well. That's a thing that happened. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. But it was delicious frosting. And nobody else was eating it. It was like a poppy

seed. Oh, I love poppy seeds. Yeah, it was like a poppy seed batter that they had for the cupcakes. So like, I mean, this is a fancy cupcake also, so I know. I think you can be forgiven for indulging just a little. That's how they celebrate OpenStack's birthday. They know what they're doing. Yeah, they're fans over there. LinuxAcademy.com

slash unplugged. Okay, so let's talk about a couple of tools you can use, and then, you know what, we'll cover those later. We'll cover those later. Screw it. Let's get into the topic. Let's talk about Hiri and that email client. We were going to talk about the tools, but I just want to move right to this.

This has been something that got me personally fired up because they took a shot at Linux podcasters and they called our Linux part of the Linux community. And those two things make me very, very, very angry. And I don't know what to do for these guys because they did their best. You know, they reached out to Canonical, they worked on making a snap package, and you can't expect them to spend 15 years in the community and learn every esoteric aspect of our tribe before they try to launch a product. So I don't have any good advice for them, but there are several things in this post

that really piss me the hell off. And I feel like they are representative of a much, much, much larger problem that is becoming worse than ever, than I have ever witnessed. I've been using Linux since the 90s as an end user, and I have never seen this headwind against commercial software. So I want to cover all of that. Let's start, though, with how they tried to interact. Six months before they went to market with their Linux app, they went to what they considered to be the Linux community, reddit.com slash r slash Linux. And they wanted to see if people there would pay for a proprietary product. That's kind of like going to a free water bar

and trying to sell bottled water. I mean, like, I don't know how else to, like, and I don't blame them because where else do you go? Right, you're like, oh, I want to find the community for that. Well, there's probably a subreddit, and sure enough, there is. Yeah, where else do you, like, there's nowhere else you can go where you can start,

like, anyone can just start a thread asking a question and then get engaged. Yeah, where else do you, like there's nowhere else you can go where you can start, like anyone can just start a thread asking a question and then get engaged. Like you go to Reddit, like there's no other option. And the problem is, is every single person over there is a son of a bitch.

All of them. I'm one of them. I'm a son of a bitch. I was going to say, yeah, I'm over that. I mean, accurate enough. Yeah, I mean, our Linux is a,

we've also just sort of tracked these things over the years at Jupyter Broadcasting because we have Telegram, we have email, we have YouTube comments, we used to have website comments, we have Reddit comments, we have tweets, we have Facebook comments. And so we really kind of watch all of this stuff

across all of these different platforms that allow for audience engagement and feedback, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And there is a really, really, really close parallel to YouTube comments and Reddit comments. Same topics, same people they reference, same everything. The vernacular, the grammar, all of it is it's the same crowd. It is the same people that are commenting on our Linux are a lot of them, not all of it is, it's the same crowd. It is the same people that are commenting on our Linux are a lot of them, not all of them. I'm not trying to, I shouldn't paint in such broad strokes, but

many of them are also on YouTube making comments. Like there's a lot of similarities there. I just been doing this for a really long time. I watch all of the comments and then we also track some of them in spreadsheets to try to get idea of general audience feedback. And, you know, it has gotten to the point where Angela can read a comment to me, and I can say that's a Reddit comment. That's a YouTube comment. That's a tweet. That's an email. Before she's even told me the source, I can tell you where that came from because of the type of commentary we would get in the different sources.

This was super, super, super, super obvious to me as we were wrapping up Linux Action Show. In fact, it was a point of discussion that we made just because it was an interesting data point, and it's something we've followed since the last 10 episodes of last or so. We have followed it in a very close way, and I can tell you that the kind of commentary you get out of RLinux

is some of the most hostile, least informed, bigoted type of commentary that you will get in the Linux community. A small percentage of it is well-informed, well-intentioned, and the other percentage is toxic. And so that right there is, I think, a huge issue because our Linux is going to be representative of the community to so many people that are investigating the Linux, quote-unquote, market for the first time. I mean, you're absolutely right. And it's hard, too, because I think many of the reasons that Reddit is a powerful platform, it can also be kind of a dangerous platform.

And there's so many of us that just love Linux and are just trying to get things done and go about our lives. And I certainly go over there, but I don't spend a lot of time there. You know, I might see what people are talking about, pop in a few threads here or there. But if you're completely outside the bubble.

But, oh, yeah, I mean, you have no way to know. Where else do you go? And it's hard because you don't know about all the best blogs or the Google Plus pages or, you know, it's a hard community to key into. And then especially hard, I think, for the product area they're targeting, because it's, again, it's kind of the theme of this whole show, the casual Linux user who doesn't love it enough that they want to go,

you know, spend all their free time at home on the Linux subreddit, but would love to have this, you know, exchange client for their work email. Yes, exactly. And so as Wimpy implied a little earlier, they got a pretty negative response when they went to RLinux asking about the interest in this. They cite a couple of examples here in their blog post. One is, quote, this is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary-based source

system to Linux users. Many use Linux because they have bought into the idea of open source. But good luck with it anyways. And then another user writes, if it were free and open source software, I would have downloaded it and compiled it 20 minutes ago. So they say after reading these comments, they, quote, promptly shelved their Linux ambitions.

But the guys at Canonical were persuasive. They had a vision. They wanted to bring Ubuntu to the widest possible audience. To do this, they needed to attract more software to the OS. More than that, the software should be easy to find, update, and install. They created Snaps, a software deployment and package management system. The results would be available on the Ubuntu Software Center, amongst other places, which is essentially like an app store for Linux.

We bit the bullet and spent some time creating the Snap. The opportunity to reach a new market and spent some time creating a Snap. The opportunity to reach a new market and scale was too good to miss. By far, most of our Linux downloads now come through Snaps, although tracking exactly where those Snap installs are coming from isn't possible at the moment, as Snaps are available online and they're available for other distros. But success in any app store is contingent on the amount of exposure you get on the front page and editorial areas.

But financially speaking, I do believe you can make a living out of selling software to Linux users alone, but we couldn't rely on just Linux users right now. I'd say it nearly pays for itself, and the numbers are gradually increasing, but the main challenges remain getting the word out. Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and podcasts simply won't give us the time of day. If Linux as a platform is going to succeed, Linux users should think about the riches of the entire ecosystem rather than to seek to limit it.

There's just a lot in there. There is just a ton of that. I mean, so much of it, I think, also comes down to how we represent ourselves or how, you know, disparate parts of the community self-organize because, you know, proprietary software used to be for a long time the norm. And in many ways, an open source free software was a reactionary movement against that. And so I think it is legitimate that there can be sub-communities that say, like, no, I want to build a life for myself on this stuff,

and frankly, I'm just not interested in your proprietary product. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to do that as part of the community. And then how do you identify that? How do you know who you're talking to? I guess I feel like I wish he knew he could come on this show. We have an open mumble room. He could come in here and they could tell us about this cool application they're building. Like, they didn't have to ask for permission. They could

just be here and telling us about it. And they say that the podcaster has turned them down. That's not true. You know, I mean, maybe some podcasts did, but other podcasts would be interested in what you're doing. There's different markets. You know, like I think you and I both have a sort of a realistic look at like there's people out there that are trying to use Linux in environments that have been traditionally Microsoft-centric. Very much so, yeah. That was me early on.

If it wasn't for Crossover Office and Zandros and later on Evolution with its Exchange Connector, I wouldn't have been able to switch to Linux in the workplace. And now when there's applications like Hiri here, H-I-R-I, that support Exchange,

well, that's a question we get every single week is how do I use Exchange under Linux? So I would have been very happy to talk to this person, but they don't know. When they're outside the community, when they're outside our bubble, when they're outside our echo chamber, like Wimpy was talking about with the Forbes editor, they just don't simply know. So what can we do here, Wimpy?

I think the first point that we start with is where do people go and find the Linux community? There's no like one place to go and visit and be part of it and sound it out. You know, our Linux is just one of the many online communities for Linux. So, yeah, that's a tricky one because, you know, we've got like 900 distros out there now, so it's quite a fragmented space. Yeah. Otherwise, it seems like the problem is going to get solved at the other end by business interest,

which in some cases, like this, canonical, getting them to use snaps, I think, is a good thing. But that's going to be the other driver in this. And I don't know if that's what the community wants necessarily for everything. What do you mean? Well, if we don't have an organized spot for outside people to find that is truly representative of the community and different resources, then it's going to be left up to businesses to solve that problem where they can fund somebody like yourself to reach out and convince them to package this thing up in a snap. And while that's

certainly a decent effort, Canonical can't solve this problem all on their own. We need something that is more than that. Yeah, I agree. You know, this is a real thorny problem, right? So you only have to look at how distributions are maintained and how many hundreds of people are responsible for managing the archives behind those distributions. In order to scale the distributions up, the distribution repositories up to encompass all of the software that's available, up, the distribution repositories up to encompass all of the software that's available, you would need an order of magnitude more people packaging up that software. And clearly this doesn't work. So when you look at the likes of the iOS store and the Android store, there's millions of

applications there and the model is simple. The developer or the vendor publishes their application directly to the users. That scales. And so this is the model that we need to pursue in order to give Linux as a whole, a better footprint in the desktop market, because there is more software out there than the free and open source software that we have in our distribution archives. There's also tons more free and open source software out there that is not in our archives, and we need to find a way to get that software to users. Finding more archive admins is not the way to do it.

Yeah, in a way, that's a pretty good response to recent criticism that that model has led to malware or crypto because i agree like making software more more available is the ultimate end goal there yeah and that's a compromise that you have to make and you know we have to improve the safeguards that we put in place to detect that stuff automatically just in the same way you know apple and google and mic Microsoft do in their stores. So they say the takeaway is it's not so easy in their case to sell to an open source platform because what everybody has told them in feedback is, well, just open source it. And that is so easy for us to say, but they point out like we have professional VCs that

have funded this and they want us to hold, but they point out, we have professional VCs that have funded this, and they want us to hold on and own our intellectual property here. And there's really no wiggle room. Plus, the support model won't pay for the whole thing. And that's a real problem that a lot of developers face. A lot of shops face that. When Linux users tell vendors that nobody's interested in proprietary software, they are blissfully ignoring the fact there are 700,000 Linux users on Steam.

So that percentage of the Linux user base is quite happy to buy proprietary software, no problem whatsoever. And there are other examples. If you're paying for any of these web services, nine times out of ten you're buying into proprietary systems. So I don't believe that people aren't prepared to buy proprietary software. I do believe that there is a section of our community who are absolutely committed to the notion of free and open software, and that's all that they will use.

And there are good reasons why they believe that and why that's the way they want to use their computing environment. And that's brilliant. Those people are well-supported and have got plenty of software available. But that doesn't mean to say that for the rest of us who've got a more pragmatic outlook shouldn't have access to proprietary software available. But that doesn't mean to say that for the rest of us who've got a more pragmatic Outlook shouldn't have access to proprietary software on Linux. I wonder too if maybe we should pivot this discussion or just think about it like if

they had gone out to survey all of the Outlook users or Exchange users and said, how many of you would be interested in this software running on Linux? How much different would that be? That's a great question. Right? Or gamers, if you were like, hey, how many of you would use a Linux system if you had the ability to do so with our Steam client? But that's just harder to do, right?

And you think about it, I think we often think about it in the reverse. So listening to this week's LAN when you brought up Reaper, Chris, Joe just shut the conversation down. It's proprietary nope not talking about it and and sometimes i think that can be just as harmful to the discussion as things like on rlinux being toxic because you know if for example this company was listening to that podcast they go oh well i'm gonna have 50 of my users that think this is great and 50 i mean maybe that's an unfair brush but maybe you get my point um and hopefully i think the thing about the linux community for me

is that it is made up of lots of different individuals you have some freedom respecting storming types who are you know to the to the, free and open is the only way to go. And then you have people like me who I am essentially a pragmatist at heart. And if I see something like Hiri come up and it solves a genuine problem that I'm having, I'm going to think long and hard about whether I run a proprietary piece of software. But at the end of the day, if that's the only option and it adds a feature to Linux, it's going to mean that more people can use Linux. I think on balance, that's probably a good thing. I agree. And my understanding is that's the vast majority of the audience's belief. But there is a portion that do have strong, you know, strong moral beliefs around

using only free software. And I feel like the news that Reaper is coming to Linux officially is, you know, an effing game changer. I've been trying not to talk about this because it hasn't officially been available. It's been on like a website where you're not allowed to share the link and all of that kind of stuff. But since the beginning of 2018, we've been recording every single damn show at Jupyter Broadcasting in Reaper. And Noah was doing it before that as sort of like my test guy. You know, he was my canary in the coal mine to see how it worked. And so when Reaper was officially announced, I am elated because it now makes Linux the best podcasting platform. It is the best platform to record podcasts, and that industry is exploding right now.

The podcast industry, and that is now an industry, is blowing up in a way that scares the shit out of me, to be honest with you. But there is more and more people looking to produce podcasts, and the fact that you can now say there is an entire workflow that is Linux-based that is superior to the commercial offerings, including Macs. So extrapolate that argument to photography. I know we've got Brent here as well.

I use Lightroom very heavily for all of my photography stuff. I would absolutely love Lightroom to run natively on Linux. I know it's a proprietary thing and I know you have to pay for it, but the fact that a commercial grade piece of software would run on Linux would just be life-changing. It is important and we don't all get to live in the world of where, in many cases,

yes, and for many people it does work. And we spend most of the time on the show celebrating the fact that open source and free software is just so freaking awesome. But there are times and places where you need other things. And while we can all say, like, how do we help open source grow in this area? Does it make sense for open source to have a replacement there? A lot of times for people who are just trying to start their journey, they just need to have it happen so that they can continue to explore things while still getting stuff done. Absolutely. There's only so many hours in a day.

Unfortunately, yes. And I think one thing that we should keep in mind is that choice is really what we should value. We should have open source choices like, for instance, your Lightroom alternative is Darktable and that's come a long way in the last few years.

It's what I use for 80% of my professional photography. But you should have the choice to continue using Lightroom on Linux if you want to. Maybe that's a workflow that works better for you. Maybe it's something you're used to and you just don't have the time or energy at the moment to learn another piece of software. But we should be celebrating the fact that we have choices, not that we only have free and open source software choices.

Absolutely agree, 100%. Yeah, we don't want to live in a little sandbox, right, where we only have our open source or free software apps that don't feel that little competitive pressure to have to compete on the same platform with other commercial software. I think it's a balance. It's a balance, really. It's a balance between what is free and what is closed.

And I think if you have too much in either direction, well, I'd say you can't have really too much free, but you can have too much in the closed direction. And so it's a balance. And in a way, when you have a free base operating system and a free kernel, and all the libraries are free, and the UI is free, and the applications on top are free, and you're running one or two commercial applications,

one or two commercial or proprietary applications, I think that's not a bad balance. And I think that we as a community have to be more accepting of that idea. The idea is to strive for as much free and open software as possible, but we shouldn't completely shut down anyone who wants to have something commercial. And I have gotten tweets and telegrams since Sunday when we released Linux Action News. People are shaming me for using Reaper when Ardour is out there and available. And I have gotten tweets and telegrams since Sunday when we released Linux Action News. People are shaming me for using Reaper when Ardour is out there and available. And I respect Ardour. I think it's a great project.

And I've actually donated money to Ardour before, even though I don't use it. I just prefer to use Reaper for people don't know what it takes to record 32 tracks of audio in real time to a multiple different RAID arrays and to a NAS. So how dare they judge what software I choose to use to accomplish that task? But yet still, I have received quite a bit of criticism in the last three days because I'm using Reaper instead of Ardour. And here I'm just happy that we're producing all of this in a high-quality way on Linux. You go back, I don't know, was it three years ago when last was video? And how much of that workflow was done? You had Wirecast going in a Mac and all the rest of it.

And you think, well, where you are now running one proprietary application on Linux is much better than running your entire workflow through a Mac, surely, isn't it? Yeah, and I kind of have been trying to get to a spot where I'm not judgmental what anyone uses. You know, like there was people that I've met recently that I thought were just super, super hardcore Linux developers that are on a MacBook, and I had to really kind of sit with that for a minute. I know that seems like a weird thing, but I had to sit with that for a minute.

And I had to be mindful about not judging them for using a MacBook. I thought you were this big Linux person. I thought, like, I know somebody who is a massive, massive Linux personality on YouTube who I've recently discovered has been using Windows for a year plus and is still purporting to be a Linux person on YouTube. You're talking about Noah, right? Yeah, that'll be the day. If there is one person you can guarantee will never be that person,

it is Noah Chalai. That will never be that person. It is Noah. It is Noah July. And that will never be a problem with Noah. And I also had to sit with that for a little bit. And it's like, it doesn't change. Like if you're, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I have to leave room for that. I have to leave room for that because there is space for open source and free software on all of the platforms now. And I have to leave room for some people to have a more closed down, locked down, proprietary, spying operating system at the base level and using free software at the top level. Just like we should make room for having a free operating system

at the base level and a privacy respecting kernel at the base level and a free and open source backed community operating system and desktop. But maybe we use a couple of proprietary applications at the top level. Like who's to say one's better than the other? And that's something I have to remind myself because I have been the guy that has come on this show and been like, yeah, Wes, I saw 15 MacBooks and I saw six Lenovo's at this conference

or I saw 35 MacBooks. You sure have. I's at this conference or I saw 35 MacBooks. You sure have. I have. That has been me for a long time. And I, you know, that is a form of judgment that I have passed on people. And who the hell am I? I mean, I think I can go both ways a little bit maybe. And I think it's a big difference between like someone who really supports and values Linux and like maybe a Mac just works.

Or maybe they got it free from their employer and it just makes financial sense. There's like a thousand reasons, but in not all cases is that a detriment to the free or open source community. It can be, right? If we still lived in the old days of a pervasive, like, you can't do that on Linux and you'll never do it on Linux world. But we're slowly not there.

And so we need to win on our merits. In the case of Chris's example there, saying that there's a high profile Linux developers or high profile Linux YouTubers using Macs. One is a Mac, one's a Windows guy. So it's both. Right. But they are still forwarding the open agenda, are they not? And that's got to be more valuable than having them, I don't want to say restricted, or have a workflow that is less productive for them.

I don't know if I agree that the answer is yes, actually. I would actually like to open that up to the audience a bit and get their take, linuxunplugged.com slash contact. I mean, I feel like if it came out that I had been using Windows all this time, wouldn't you feel like I was a fraud? Is that part of the question that you're asking, though? Yes, because you've specifically gone on about Linux so much in your workflows. Yeah, I know.

But if you just never talk about the topic of production, if you had a better produced podcast that could reach more ears highlighting the values of Linux versus a worse podcast. Yeah, that was our argument for doing LAS and having it edited on a Mac. That was the argument that we used for a long time. But the thing that Noah and I just kept going back and forth on,

and we kind of just, you know, there's just no way around it, is like, how can you legitimately be a proponent of something that you can't use yourself? Alex's point is, it's more about spreading the message. So take the guy that runs the Linux Foundation. He was recently seen using a Mac. But he's, you know, doing good work with the Linux Foundation in some cases. Which one is more important to you? Linuxunplugged.com

slash contact. I'd love to know, actually. Just one more point. Yeah. Don't forget, there's lots of different types of Linux there is desktop Linux and server Linux and IOT Linux so to be a Linux user you don't necessarily have to be glued to a desktop the whole time you can prefer something and not also be arguing that the other system can't do it I might just like a Mac workflow even if Windows or Linux can do the same thing

I had lunch with a couple of Azure guys from Linux Academy who live, eat, and breathe Linux from their Windows boxes. And it was a real, it was a thing. Like, it just took me a bit like, really? Really? Okay. But you know what? That's their workflow.

And they make their living on Linux and they live, eat and breathe Linux and they connect from their Windows boxes. And I was just, I sat there and I go, you know, that's probably happening a lot more than I realized. So who am I to judge? Because it works for them. And so I am concerned a bit about this strong headwind that is building more than I've ever witnessed. Like, in the past, people just would have been happy that we're making content under Linux and that we're able to do it at a certain quality level. But now it's not good enough.

Now every single application, every single application, every library, everything in the entire pipeline needs to be free software. And it's not always possible. Because if you think about it, you can't even really boot your system without a couple of blobs. So where do we draw the line? And that chorus, as Linux has grown,

and as people have gotten more and more into the free software message and started to grok why it's important, more and more people have become radicalized and advocates, which is understandable because when you really understand the importance of free software, you kind of do get sort of passionate about it. And that passion is turning away people

that could be making tools that enable Linux to be approachable by even more people. And that crowd is now dominating areas that quote-unquote represent the Linux community. I have two podcasts, Linux Action News and Linux Unplugged. Those two podcasts, no, I mean, I'm not sure about Ubuntu podcasts. I think they do quite well. They are one of, and maybe each one of them, maybe the largest Linux podcasts, if not some of the largest Linux podcasts in the world.

Nobody approached me about a commercial piece of software that we could talk about. Nobody approached me. So how do you define what represents the Linux community? I would argue that it's each to our own, to which area we look, which lens we use to look in on the Linux community. I would argue that it's each to our own, to which area we look, which lens we use to look in on the Linux community. And that's a problem too,

because when you don't have one company representing you, when you don't have a Steve Jobs, when you don't have a Mark Zuckerberg, when you don't have somebody like an Elon Musk who can be your front man, who can be your singular point of focus, you end up trying to go to the different quote-unquote communities. And what you get are a bunch of shitheads. And that's what our Linux is, and that's what a lot of the Linux community is.

I say that as one of them, and completely, as somebody who's there every single day. I am absolutely one of those sons of bitches. And it turns away people. And I know that because I've been doing this for a long time and I get emails all the time telling me that. And it's super frustrating to read those emails and I never have a good answer for them. And they're not wrong. And at the same time, we also have to balance that with advocating free software. Like we can't just sit on our hands and not advocate free software and not encourage people to try to open source their software because my God, if we did that, where the hell would we be? So it's not a simple problem to solve. So, you know, I have a penchant for

containers. Uh, I've long made the argument that, um, they, they were the reason that I ended up finally understanding Linux because I didn't have to go on the forums and admit that I didn't know how to do apt-get install basic thing. I just ran this magic black box and this container just ran Plex. It ran all sorts of other stuff, right? And it reduced that barrier to entry. So I think anything we can do to make it easier for people to join the community whether that's packaging software with snaps docker containers whatever proprietary companies that who's it's in their commercial interest to make it as easy as possible

as demonstrated with hiri going through the snap process i think anything we can do as a community to encourage new people, more people to contribute and be part of this community, the better. And if we can get away from the cesspit of YouTube comments and Reddit comments as well, then it's so much the better because I don't think anybody really likes them.

Isn't it interesting? I feel like free software would be better off if Reddit and YouTube were to go away. And that is a sad state of affairs because that's not going to happen. Me, myself, I've actually, I'm still what I consider myself a noob. I've actually, like, still am going through this journey of trying to discover gaming on Linux. And through that the Telegram channels and all that sort of community shows the positive side of what people on Linux are willing to discuss

in terms of solutions to problems, as well as directing new users such as myself, who still do a boot, who are still trying to get through this market of applications, regardless of proprietary or commercial or free and open source. I do see there is a positive side to versus that yang that you mentioned about Reddit and YouTube. I think also to that point,

it's unfortunate, it also is one of the interfaces where occasionally, like in this instance, the wider world sort of stumbles onto our little community in ways that are not good and maybe ways that we talk about less

that are good, or at least it we talk about less that are good. Or at least it becomes a mixing ground and that's probably a lot of work and a lot of misconceptions get generated, but maybe some other things happen too. All right, well, I'm going to sort of wrap this up by asking Brent if perhaps maybe the solution isn't worrying about it from a general user standpoint,

but the niches, niching down, like people that are coming to solve a specific problem, photography, gaming, data science, web development, that's where we need to focus our efforts. And those particular communities might be where people end up actually finding themselves. What are your thoughts around that, Brent? Like, perhaps this overall problem is too big to solve, and we need to solve it by breaking this up a bit and figuring out what people need to do on their Linux boxes. In some way, I probably represent the non-developer, non-SysAdmin user here in some ways.

And so I got introduced to Linux just to get stuff done, but get stuff done in a way that felt a bit more secure and a bit more empowering for me. So I think a lot of users might have that same approach to coming to Linux. And so you mentioned, you know, maybe there should be these sub communities in photography or in design or in engineering or those different vocations. And wouldn't it be great if those niche communities existed because Linux was spread a little bit everywhere, right? When I go to any photography, anything, there's absolutely no one talking about Linux. As far as the professional networks that I'm part of,

I'm kind of the black sheep there. I know there's a lot of Linux advocates who play with photography and get a lot done that way, but coming at it from the other angle doesn't always happen. So I think in a way, if we can spread the word

starting at those vocations and those careers and coming back, that might be a new interesting approach instead of having them come to the Linux community, which is, as we're seeing, a little bit of a mess. Yeah, and it would really be solving it one workflow at a time in a way. And I think I could see that working. It would take a long time,

but open source is pretty good about sticking at it over the long haul. I think we could probably find some professionals or advocates in each of those fields easily. And we just need to lean on them a little bit. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. Worth exploring perhaps some more. Also, I have a link in the show notes about the situation over at Slackware. I encourage you to go check that out because it's an area I think that really could use some love. And if you have ideas on how we could help, I would love to hear at linuxunplugged.com slash contact. I was thinking about running a GoFundMe campaign or something

for the Slackware developer, but I don't know. I don't know if that should be coming from us. I don't know if that should be coming from the community. I would happily dedicate some of Jupyter Broadcasting's time to help manage something like that. If you have ideas on how a show like ours could help in a situation like Slackware, please let us know. And if you don't know what I'm

talking about, please go check the show notes and read up on it and then send me your thoughts. Serious thoughts only, please. LinuxUnplugged.com slash contact. I'd like to make please. Linuxunplugged.com slash contact. I'd like to make a difference in situations like Slackware. We have a project that's been around forever that's working on their best release of all time and their core developer is suffering with holes in his house and driving around in a car on a spare tire

because I absolutely know exactly how that feels. And I would love to help make a difference in somebody's life if you have ideas and thoughts on that, linuxunplugged.com slash contact. If you want to get more Westpain, where should they go? Ooh, go check out TechSnap, TechSnap.systems, or I'm over at, at Westpain. Boom. Mr. Brent, why don't you give a plug skis for your social media profile or somewhere where people can get more of you during the week? Sure. Yeah. There's a little bit on Twitter. So at Brent Gervais, just spell that out. B-R-E-N-T-G-E-R-V-A-I-S

And then, before we go, we have to plug the excellent and always competitive Ubuntu podcast and Mr. Wimpy, I have to ask you, sir, is there anything else we should mention or give a little plug-ski here before we run? I've got a plug for some proprietary software.

Let's have it, baby! I love it okay go ahead well might as well stay on topic hey yeah um so a while ago uh poppy snapped the minecraft launcher uh that's the you know the java the old the old Java UI. And this week we've released into the store. Minecraft is now using the new launcher that they released a few days ago. Yeah, I saw that. Very excited. As a parent who is installing that for his kids, very excited. Couldn't be easier.

That's awesome. All right, very good. Well, thank you very much. Yes, go check out the Ubuntu podcast and go check out more of Wes Payne over at TechSnap. And if you heard us making vague inferences to Joe, you can go get more Joe over at Late Night Linux. And he joins me on Linux Action News every single Sunday over at LinuxActionNews.com. And you're welcome to check that out. Hey, why don't you join us live on Tuesdays?

We do this show at around 2, really kind of starts around 1.30 Pacific over at jblive.tv, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendars where we have that converted. And you come hang out with us. You get a bunch of pre-show. You get some post-show. And then you get the Ask Noah show. It's a whole lot of show. Thanks so much for joining us.

And we'll see you right back here, not now, next Tuesday you know one thing we didn't get to mention in the show but is absolutely awesome is that powershell was launched as a snap this week that That is so cool. Yeah, so PowerShell was something that I worked on that originated in the Snap community as it happened. So Chris, you'll remember when you're in Seattle, you met Dan, he was there from the community and he created the initial PowerShell Snap and at that event in Seattle handed it over to Microsoft in person and then since then it's been in legal review and then uh released just this just this week uh this week last week back into last week they really do take this quite seriously don't they yeah impressive yeah I mean that was months and months and months ago yeah we're finding this so we were

just talking about all these companies doing proprietary software this is actually powershells actually open source software but they've spent five months doing the legal review to make sure that all of the libraries that they're now distributing in the snap all of that licensing and copyright is all um above board um they're very thorough and that's the experience we've had um dealing with all of these organizations, proprietary or open. When they publish their snaps from sort of big vendors, they take that stuff very seriously. Yeah, as they probably should. And I would imagine it's going to be a process for quite a while. And then it'll probably get a little bit smoother. They'll

round out the rough edges as time goes on. It'll get faster and faster. Yeah, let's hope so.