LINUX Unplugged - Episode 26: MATE Mythbusting | LUP 26

Episode Date: February 5, 2014

The MATE Desktop is about to see some big improvements, we bring on Martin Wimpress from the MATE project to discuss his new MATE Live CD, and what the future holds for MATE.Plus our renewed commitment to improving the state of Linux news, and the recent mistake that has Chris green with Hulk Rage!

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode weekly Linux talk show that's green with Hulk rage! My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey there, Matt. I'm going to tell you right now. We might get into it if we have time later in this episode, but I'm considering

banning Phronix from all Jupiter Broadcasting productions from here on out. Wow. I'm mad. I'd love to hear more about that. Well, you know, it's not his fault.

I actually respect Michael quite a bit. We've had him on the Little Links Action Show. I've got a link to it in the show notes. I respect somebody who works hard

and he has a trade that he puts a lot of energy into, and of course, maybe he's spread a little bit thin, and he's created a respectable property there, but at the same time, I get so mad when we make mistakes in the Linux Action Show, especially in the news segment. The Linux Action Show has the privilege, because it's coming on, what, its eighth year?

It has the privilege of being one of the sources of record for Linux now. It's not the only source, but it's definitely on, what, its eighth year? It has the privilege of being one of the sources of record for Linux now. It's not the only source, but it's definitely one of the most time capsule-like sources for Linux history because you can go back now eight years into Linux history and hear about issues at the time that they were happening, the drama, the things that needed to happen, and all of that, and it's sort of like reliving that experience, and it's a great way to sort of get a Linux history lesson. That's why it really bugs me when we get the news wrong, because that's a big part of that. Oh, I would think so. Yeah, well, so a mistake slipped into this week's episode of the Linux Action Show.

And it's been bugging me since Sunday. I know it's Tuesday afternoon here. And I want to talk about that in a little bit. What happened? And also, I want to give a little bit of history on how important news accuracy is to me on the Linux Action Show and about some of the actual fundamental changes we had made behind the scenes of the show over the years to try to improve that because it's so important. And this mistake happens still. And I want to try to kind of address why and kind of come clean a little bit because that's absolutely just as much my responsibility.

It's not really Pharonix's fault. But we're not going to talk about that just yet. Not yet no we have some feedback to get to um and we also have a guest is going to join us in a little bit uh his name's martin and he works uh with the mate project he does also the arch packaging of the mate desktop and is a project advocate and we're going to chat with him a little bit because we also featured the new mate desktop live CD that's based on Arch on the Linux Action Show on Sunday. And he's the creator of that live CD, so he'll be coming on the show in a little bit. But first, I wanted to do some follow-up. I wanted to do some corrections before we get to all of that.

Because there was a point that I failed to mention on the Linux Action Show this last Sunday when I was talking about the Qubox i4 Pro. And I mentioned that it has a gigabit Ethernet adapter on it, which is technically true. It does have a gigabit Ethernet adapter. But in terms of actual bandwidth, and thanks to omac777 in the subreddit for cluing me in on this, you can't actually achieve a full gigabit.

You're limited to 470 megabit actual transfer rate due to just bus limitations in that system right and it's pretty much true for all arm uh real gigabit you know you got to have a super fast pci express bus i guess i mean it's it seems to be a limitation in the speed of the arm system um and it seems to be affecting all ARM chips, which makes sense. I mean, Gigabit is pretty fast. And I didn't actually ever stress test it because I was using it as a desktop. But I thought, you know,

it has that ESATA multiplexer port. I thought it'd make a great file server. 470 megabits isn't too bad, though. So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're basically saying that the actual, you know, the Ethernet port itself technically could, in different circumstances, different bus and whatnot,

actually support the Gigabit. But because of bus restrictions, different bus and whatnot, actually support the gigabit. But because of bus restrictions, that's not actually possible. It's one of those things where it says gigabit on the box, but not quite gigabit. Gotcha. Some of these ARM systems do have some

limitations, but I think it's important to know if you're considering using it as a home file server, which it would make a pretty good home file server. It's only used like a watt when it's idle to know if you're considering using it as a home file server which would make pretty good it'd make a pretty good home file server it's only used like a watt when it's idle that's i love that aspect of it that usada port really made it makes for a good cheap portable computer for someone that might want one and might not otherwise be able to afford one yeah we're uh you know it's funny too because uh just my last thoughts on it was uh when i was looking at this thing it's $125. And I also have the Ouya. Did you remember the Ouya?

It was like this Android-based console, and it was kick-started, and it got a ton of money, and it shipped last year, mid-year. It's bigger than this QBox is. I think it's, what is it, $99? So technically it's $25 cheaper. It's so much slower, and it's so much more limited. And it shows, I mean, I really think you look at that and you see how the OUYA is kind of doomed because it's already – the OUYA looks old in comparison to this QBOX. And that's just –

So I guess in reality, I mean with both of these side by side, despite the fact that the OUYA is a reasonably new device, it's already dated just based on performance. It seems like it. I think these ARM chips, remember back in the day when it seemed like as soon as you got a new Intel processor on the market, the next one was already out and they had just gone from like, you know, 80 megahertz to 90 megahertz. And then boom, all of a sudden we're 120 megahertz and 133 megahertz. Then boom, we're at 160. Now we're at 220, you know, just 400 and 420 and 440. And it just seems like ARM is doing that right now, where it's just rapidly increasing just at a crazy pace. Well, it almost creates a perpetual buyer's remorse to where you really can't win.

I mean, you try and buy these things and it's like, OK, I'm all set. Oh, wait a minute. Now it's faster. Darn it. You know, and I went ahead and invested that money. So it does kind of create a perpetual buyer's remorse, I think, over time. But I think maybe it'll start kind of coming in its own and settle down a little bit. But it does seem like they're just going at such a rapid pace, it's impossible to win.

Yeah, yeah. Oh. That's why, you know, it's – you know what? You know what? Speaking of mobile devices and rapid pace, this is why I have Ting. This is a great – this is probably a great time to mention Ting. Ting is a sponsor of this week's podcast. And Ting is mobile that makes sense.

They're my mobile service provider and matt's mobile service provider and ting has no contracts and no early termination fees but they just turned two ting's birthday was uh earlier this week it was monday and yesterday and uh to celebrate they're giving you a gift this applies to all existing ting customers and all new ting customers and you can find more details over at ting.com slash blog. First, go to linux.ting.com to get started. That way we get credit for your visit. But when you go over to the Ting blog, you'll find out they just slashed their data pricing in a massive way. They've done a huge reduction on prices. This is a great time to go back over to linux.ting.com and try out their savings calculator because the data plans just got a lot better.

This is a perfect example of why it's so rewarding, even a year into it now, to be a Ting customer for me. So I know a little bit, I won't share too much, but I actually know a little bit of the behind the scenes details on how this worked out. Ting has had a very successful two years. And as such, they were able to renegotiate with Sprint. Ting is an MVNO of the Sprint network. So if you've got good Sprint coverage, you're going to get great Ting service. And so they renegotiated with Sprint and said, okay, well, we're making you a lot more money now. So what can we do? And they got this drop on the data rates.

And Ting looked at that and they said, we could just not say a word and take all of this as profits. And we would be making even more money than we're making now. Or we could continue to make the revenue and profits that we're making right now and just immediately pass that savings on to our customers. And that's what they've done. They just moved that savings that they got when they renegotiated the contract and they're giving to their customers. And what's so awesome about it, because Ting has no contracts, you immediately get those new rates. You don't have to call up and sign up for another two-year plan. You don't have to get a new different type of plan and lose your unlimited whatever. No, you just get it because

it's just the next billing cycle. It's at the next rate now. If you go sign up for Ting right now, that's what you get. Ting is pay for what you use. It's $6 for a flat rate. That's it. $6 a month, and you just pay on top of that. Every single plan includes hotspot, tethering, voicemail, caller ID, video messaging. It's awesome, and it really does make sense. When you start to think about it, it's definitely a different way to do it than the rest of the cell companies, but it is the way that makes the most sense. It really is mobile that makes sense. And on top of that, Ting has an incredible customer service. You call them any time of day over at 1-855-846-4389. That's Ting FTW, 1-855-Ting FTW. And a real person will answer the phone and handle your problem right there. You're not going to get transferred. You're not going to get moved around. You're not going to have to go to the next tier. Everybody who answers the phone is the top tier. And then they get your problem resolved. They'll call you back if they need to. They're really great. And I think you'll be impressed. And on top of that, if you're a do-it-yourselfer, the Ting dashboard is incredible. Go over to linux.ting.com and

scroll down on that page and check out that dashboard. That is not a fake picture. That's really what it looks like, and it is completely functional. I've been able to do everything I've needed to do over the entire year through that dashboard. Go check it out. And now is a better time than ever to rerun through their calculator, linux.ting.com, to support this show and save yourself some money. I pay $30 a month for my Ting line. I'm using it in ways like a mofo. I use it all the time, and it's like $30.

And I got Hotspot. I got Tethering. It's great. So go to linux.ting.com. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged and their support of the Jupiter Broadcasting Network. Boy, I'll tell you, between the panel and those new rates, it's just full of win. It really is so awesome.

And it really underscores how cool they are as a company. They're like, you know, we're just going to pass that right along. And they still got the ETF relief program and all of that. It's really cool. Good, mad respect to them. I think that's so awesome. So I want to pull in a guest who's joined us in our mumble room this week. His name is Martin.

Of course, he's going by Wimpy in our – I don't know what that means, but he's going by Wimpy in our mumble room. And he works with the Mate Project. And Wimpy – I'm sorry, Martin, welcome to the show. Thank you. So can I – let's start with where we were just talking about on Lass on Sunday, and then we'll just kind of go from there. So you've been working on this Mate Live CD, and this isn't the first Mate Live CD I've ever seen,

but what caught my attention is I think it's the first one based on Arch. So, Wimpy, why Arch? Well, I'm an Arch-trusted user, so I do the Mate Mate. I'm going to gettrusted user, so I do the Mate, Marte. I'm going to get in so much trouble. I do the packaging on Arch Linux for Marte desktop. So when the idea was circulated among the team about making a live CD, it was natural for me to base it on Arch.

And how was that experience? Did you find there were shortcomings? Because I think of things like Fedora Spins and the OpenSUSE Build service and even Ubuntu, they all sort of have facilities built into them to make it easier to generate a live CD. Where Arch, what are you doing all that from scratch? How does that work? Well, surprisingly, Arch also has a facility built in. You can Pac-Man install Arch ISO which is a a suite of scripts and from there there's a base

template that if you just then run the build command once you've copied the the configuration will make you the the arch live cd that you can download off the arch linux website every month and uses the install media so you can start that, and from there you can customize the packages that are built in and a whole raft of other things. I'd never done it before, and it was really straightforward. Oh, very cool. That's good to know. I'll have to look into that. So you are a Mate. I'm going to have a hard time. I'm going to try it, though. You're a Mate advocate. Why the Mate desktop environment?

I mean, it seems to me that it's sort of seen an increase in popularity. I know we're seeing a lot more distributions included. Is it getting a lot of momentum behind it? And why did you choose to become an advocate? Right. Well, yes, it is gaining in popularity. I think there's been a lot of effort in the team to push all the packages into some of the larger distributions, such as Arch Linux and more recently Debian, and that's now circulating

down to Ubuntu. And we're certainly seeing it trending up on the Debian package install statistics. The reason I got involved with it is I had been using GNOME 3 for about 18 months or so and I was reasonably happy with it and I'd installed it on my wife's laptop some years ago she'd since got a smartphone and was pretty much using that for everything and time goes by and then

one evening she decides she wants to organise some photos and she sits down in front of this GNOME 3 thing that she really didn't pay attention to when i was showing her how to use it a year or so earlier and was hugely frustrated with it and almost hurled it at me so uh it was marriage marriage protection the spousal approval factor was low is what you're saying okay yeah so i i very quickly um yanked GNOME 3 off that machine, put the Marte desktop on,

and that restored an environment that she was familiar with because she's been using Ubuntu for many years previous and was familiar with the GNOME 2 setup there. So that's where I got started. And when I had installed Marte, I noticed that it was working okay, but there were some bits missing and there were some bits that were broken. when I had installed Marte, I noticed that it was working okay, but there were some bits missing and there were some bits that were broken.

So I just decided to get stuck in and I started submitting pull requests to the project to fix up some of the packaging. I wonder, it seems like potentially as the XP era comes to a close, if maybe more conventional, these types of standard paradigm desktops will see a big boost just because of people looking for something other to move to. Have you seen some of that when you're doing outreach? Who are you outreaching to? Well, that's a new thing for me. It's something I've decided to start doing for the project this year.

So this is the first time I've sort of done a proper promotion to talk about the project this year. So this is the first time I've sort of done a proper promotion to talk about the project and try and make people more aware of its existence. But certainly within my family and circle of friends who I've helped move to Linux, they have been more comfortable with Marte because most of them are moving from Windows XP machines. And a couple of clicks, change the menu layout, move the bar to the bottom of the screen,

and it's much like Windows XP with the start button and a familiar-looking programs menu. So it's been very familiar to them. And once they've got Thunderbird and Firefox installed, they're away. I want to do, if you'd let me, shift gears a little bit to Arch. You mentioned you're an Arch-trusted user, and I realized that there's a lot of people who probably have heard that term, but have no idea what it means. So what is an Arch-trusted user, and how did you become one? I became one through the work I'd done with the Marte desktop. So I'd done all this packaging

and I was maintaining an unofficial repository for the Marte desktop project. And then I took over all of the Marte packages in the AUR because they were very old, had been put there by the original Marte project creator some years previous and brought them all up to scratch. And I was actually contacted by another Arch Linux trusted user who agreed to sponsor my application to join the team because I wanted to get Marte into the Arch Linux official repositories. So, yeah, there's a process that you have to go through there. There's a peer review assessment and voting to actually vote you in onto the team.

And you sort of have to prove your worth and how you're going to improve the team. The main responsibilities of Arch Linux Trusted Users, they are the moderators, if you like, of the AUR. So there's the mailing list where people can say, can you merge these packages? Can you delete these old ones? Can you rename these? If anyone needs any help with package creation or wants their packages checking over, that's something that the trusted users do. The trusted users can then pull packages that they're interested in

or that they see in the AUR that have got good adoption, so plenty of votes and something that can be redistributed. We'll then choose to adopt that package and pull it into the community repository and then maintain it as part of an official package. And then some of the TUs have other responsibilities within the team. So there'll be forum moderators, people that are working on backend infrastructure and things like that. Well, Arch and Mate seem like actually a pretty good combination, because you could have a pretty tight, lightweight system with on there. So that's why I was drawn to that live CD,

and obviously I just had a pretty strong interest in Arch these days. But is there anything else, Martin, you want to touch on with the Mate desktop or Arch before we jump to our next topic? If you don't mind, I mean, one of the things I worked on was I did the initial porting to get Marte working on ARMv6 hard float and ARMv7 hard float. Well, you know, I was just using that this last week. That's awesome. Tell me about that.

Well, curiously, that Qbox that you've got, I've got the previous generation, the Qbox Pro. So in air quotes, I created a cluster at home of two raspberry pies and two cubox pros to actually do the the package building for um for the arm ports and the reason i did that is i had this aspiration to get it into the official repositories and i knew if it hit the official repositories it would automatically percolate into the build surface for the arch linux arm project and i wanted them just to flow straight in without any problem um so i was building the packages in

the unofficial repositories um for four architectures for x86 x86 64 and the two two arms so yeah i've got some of those cubBox or the older generation of the Q-Boxes, but it's hilarious. It takes about 50 minutes to build the whole Mate package tree for Mate 1.6 on a relatively modern PC. And it takes about 28 hours to build it on two arm boxes. Wow. Well, I can't tell you how happy I was when I was sitting, I had LXDE was what I started with. And I thought, okay, LXDE is fine, but I really would like to have, like, I was when I was sitting, I had LXDE was what I started with. And I thought, okay, LXDE is fine, but I really would like to have, like, I was trying to think if I was going to actually use this as a workstation to do like server work and stuff like that, I would probably want more than

LXDE. That's just me. And I, you know, it went off. I was sitting there and I couldn't really decide what to go with. And it was, it was like a, it was like a light bulb. I just knew all of a sudden, you know what, I got to go with Mate or Matee because it, it's, a it was like a light bulb i just knew all of a sudden you know what i gotta go with mate or matee because it it's it's gonna be lightweight and i didn't know if it was gonna be available for arm so i just i went to the command line at a pac-man dash s and i said mate and i think that's all i did and before i hit enter i went and did a google search or to the over the arch wiki and made sure i did like the right package and hit enter and boom everything was there and i got a full desktop and I really made that QBox go from, this is something that's really limited to, okay, now I can have a full desktop experience.

And I think it's perfect for that kind of device. It really is, and something that I'm working on, the next little project I'm working on, is an image for the Raspberry Pi, which be um arch linux with the mate desktop installed but with a series of tweaks so that it really it really flies in fact i've got i think you had one of those lap dock devices in a previous show yeah i've got one of those sat in front of me here with um two i've got two of those and two raspberry pies, and I've started working on this. So soon enough, there'll be a Mate image you can download with it all set up, ready to go with Arch Linux. Wow. Well, so Q5Sys, who owns that laptop I was using, wants me to ask you if you know anything about Mate and their plans with Wayland. Have you heard anything about that?

Yeah, I have. So Mate 1.8 currently on the roadmap is to support Wayland. Have you heard anything about that? Yeah, I have. So, Marte 1.8, currently on the roadmap, is to support Wayland. And the precursor to that is to provide GTK3 support. The work on GTK3

support is largely complete, but there are some Marte 1.7 development tarball releases. I've got an unofficial repository for Arch Linux users where you can go and install it and try it out, although my build is currently still GTK2, but I've got a GTK3 version that I run locally. So that GTK3 work is there as the precursor,

and then the Wayland support will follow. So I've got to ask the obligatory, any discussions around Mir? Has anything changed there? As far as I know, it's not planned to be supported. Well, I'm glad to hear that you guys, I think the compatibility, or is that the right term? You're not switching to GTK3, but you're supporting GTK3? Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. So we're retaining the GTK2 support and adding GTK3 support. switching to gtk3 but you're supporting gtk3 what's that is that right yeah that's right so um we're retaining the gtk2 support and adding gtk3 support so at build time you can choose which toolkit you you want to build against that's cool um and this is so for example um the raspberry pi at the moment um there's not a decent accelerated driver that's available i think that's going to come in due course so it would make sense to continue to build the packages for the raspberry pi against gtk2 and keep it that little bit lighter but then for the for the desktops then maybe gtk3 would make more sense um and what i'm wrestling

with at the moment is do i really want to um support both toolkits and i think the answer is i'm going to have to but that's going to effectively double the number of packages that I'm responsible for. But that seems like, to me, I know that means more overhead, but gosh, that's a great combination. If you can have GTK2 and GTK3 playing together, everybody's happy, it seems like. Best of both worlds. Yeah. And although the GTK3 toolkit support is not in Mate 1.6, GTK3 applications will integrate seamlessly with Mate, even though the desktop is GTK2.

So all of the theming and everything is transparent. So, for example, if you run network managers in the live CD, for example, you won't notice that that's any different from any of the GTK2 applications. That's really great. That's really great. Gosh, sounds like, you know, people have a misconception about the Mateo project being sort of old-fashioned and out of date, but it sounds like you guys are right there on the cutting edge and some exciting stuff coming. In some respects, I mean, yes, that is one of the myths that, you know, I'd like to bust about Mateo. You know, it is seen as that as that you know everything got forked and it was a great big dirty hack that sat on top of you know the the forked project but um in recent years um our lead developer um stefano he's really put a lot of

effort into turning it into a proper project so there is a roadmap i mean a lot of the obsolete libraries from from the gnome 2 days have been either replaced with the modern alternatives or just thrown out altogether. So that's one of the reasons why Marte is lighter than GNOME 2 used to be. But, you know, Gconf has been replaced with DConf and Gsettings. And there's a whole raft of other changes like that. And that will continue to be the case going into the future. So we're trying to align more with the gnome libraries that provide the functionality that we need whilst preserving the Marte desktop and its traditional desktop metaphors. Well, Wimpy aka Martin, thank you very much for joining us today.

And I'd love to have you stick around for the rest of the show and jump in and comment with the rest of us as we go forward. And please feel free to stop by any time. I love getting perspective from people who work with the projects and also people who work with Arch Linux. I'm a huge Arch fan. So thanks very much for joining us. You're welcome. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. Good stuff. Yeah. Hope we'll see you some more. All right, Matt. Well, before we go to the topic of the little snafu that got me all in a hulk rage this week. Oh, man. I got to tell you, I'm actually glad we're doing all in a hulk rage this week oh man i gotta tell you i'm actually glad we're doing this on a tuesday because i was really fired up about this

monday and i probably said some things i shouldn't have encoded radio uh this week but uh i've had some time to think about it and uh you know accept some of the responsibilities so i'm going to talk about that but first i want to thank our second sponsor this week and that is digital ocean digital ocean is simple cloud hosting and they're dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. Now, Matt, you know I've been on here bragging about my 47 seconds, right? Oh, yes, you have. Yeah, well, so of course, of course. You know, you leave it up to our audience.

Mark writes into the show. He says, I beat the champ. I spun up a DigitalOcean cloud server in 40 seconds. Whoa. Seriously? He got it in 40 seconds. Yeah. And he actually, this is, he knew I wouldn't believe it because see, I had 47 seconds as the, and DigitalOcean says you can do it, users can do it in 55 seconds, right? And I always got it down to 47. I was feeling pretty good. Mark clocks in here at 40 seconds and he even included a tiny, you can't really see it. Sorry, actually, I was trying to get a shot of it for you guys, but he included a tiny screenshot.

He got it in 40 seconds, his DigitalOcean droplet. So let me tell you a little bit about DigitalOcean. You can create a cloud server in 55 seconds. If you're like myself, 47 is my record. See if you can beat Mark at 40 seconds. I don't think it can be done. See if you can beat him. Mark can create a cloud server in 40 seconds. Pricing plans start at $5 per month for 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, one CPU, and a terabyte

of transfer. Now, this SSD actually makes a difference. I've had a DigitalOcean droplet running Arch Linux. Yes, I've got a server in Arch Linux, and yes, it's been fine. It's actually been great because I've been keeping real close to the updates to BitTorrent Sync because this is a BitTorrent Sync server. Now, Mark said what he's doing, he said, hey, I know you enjoy hearing about what people do with their DigitalOcean VPSs. This particular one is used to host a Starbound server, which Starbound is just exploding on Steam right now. It's like the number one Linux game on Steam, and it's cray-cray. I should talk about it at some point, but I know how much you guys hate it when I talk about games, but it's really good if you want to check it out. So he's running a starbound

server on there. I've heard from people who are running Yasi search engines up there. BitTorrent sync is great. Michael Dominic from Coda Radio uses it to work with his clients. He'll either use it for temporary backend hosting, or he'll actually set them up a server over there because what's great about DigitalOcean is it's fixed pricing. So you know exactly what you're going to spend and clients love that. It also makes it really easy for budgeting of projects and things like that. Or just, I know, every month I can pay in $5. We have people in the audience now that have webmail up there and they just know it's $5 for my mail service.

That's perfectly reasonable to have full access. And of course, DigitalOcean has a super great control panel that lets you image it and set up backups and deploy. You can configure a machine and up backups and deploy. You can configure a machine and save that and deploy it later. They also have data center locations in New York, San Francisco, and Amsterdam. So go check them out. Go see that intuitive control panel. And you can also replicate it with the API if you want for your own tools. And DigitalOcean also has a vast collection of tutorials in their community section on their site. And users can submit articles to the community and they get paid $50 per published piece. But here's the deal. Here's where we're going to get

you a little something something, because you're a Linux Unplugged listener, and we love you. We're doing this for you, so go take advantage of this, because why wouldn't you? It's cray-cray. If you use the promo code LinuxUnpluggedFebruary, let them know that you appreciate they're still here. They've been here for a few months. Go use this promo code LinuxUnpluggedFebruary to say thank you for continuing to come back for another month of Linux Unplugged. We appreciate you supporting Jupyter Broadcasting and the Linux Unplugged show. And plus, that's going to get you a $10 credit.

That'll let you try out that $5 machine for two months for free. You're going to get root access. You can run Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Arch, Linux, Debian, whatever you want, son. Go do it and see what I've been talking about. This is a great thing to learn and experiment on or use in production, and it's super fast with those SSDs and their Tier 1 bandwidth.

So thank you to DigitalOcean for supporting Linux Unplugged and Jupyter Broadcasting, and thank you to everyone in our audience who uses that promo code LinuxUnpluggedFebruary to get a $10 credit. You can also click the link in our show notes, and a big thank you to DigitalOcean. Boy, 40 seconds. That's just wild, isn't it? It's really. I mean, like, I wonder if he had to, like, create a few of them.

Because you can make them real quick, right? Right. I wonder if he, like, ran through it a few times and then timed it and then just sent me his best one. Do you think he had a Rocky montage happening while he was doing this? That would totally motivate him. I like that. That's what I'll try. Maybe that's how I'll beat him.

Okay, so on Sunday, I was filling out the news and we had this KDE story about designers coming over to the KDE project to help spiffify up the next version of the Plasma desktop.

And I thought, okay, this is good, but it's really early days on this story, so it's not a full story in itself. I need a little something else to go with this story to kind of, let's spend a minute, this qualifies it to be in the news segment, right? That kind of thing. So when I found this article, and I was not thinking clearly, and I fully admit that I was sort of just looking for something to round out the overall story. And so I kind of cheated. And just when I saw the headline, I grabbed it.

And it was an article ran on Pharonix. KDE Plasma Next gets a release date. And in here, it talks about the plan to do a feature freeze in March, which we talked about in the show, beta in April. And then the final version comes out in June, will be called 2014.6, should it actually ship. Now, nowhere in here does it say this was a proposal. And I didn't report it as such because I didn't realize that. And that was my bad because I made it sound like that's an actual planned commitment on the KDE projects point. And I have a lot of respect for the KWin developer, Martin. I'm not even going to try to get Martin's last name because I know I just got to convince him to come on the show so he can pronounce it for me.

But, you know, there's some developers I follow in the open source community, and Martin's one of the ones that I hold in the highest regard as far as his talents and his insights. And so I felt pretty bad when he went to G+, and he said, reasons why I sometimes hate the openness of free software. We were not able to discuss anything without the media reporting about it on the same day. Sigh. Dear free software media, you can leave the internal discussions as internal till there is a public statement. Thank you. And so what he's saying there is so that Pharonix post was a post from the mailing list on, you know, whatever mailing list it was on. And that was where the discussion was having on the Plasma Devel on, and that was where the discussion was having

on the Plasma Devel mailing list. That's where the discussion was taking place, and it was being discussed as a hypothetical proposal. It got ran as KDE's Plasma Next gets a release date, and then I grabbed it to round out a story. And so you can see how we just sort of perpetuated this mistake that sort of all of a sudden commits the KDE project to a timeline that they never actually agreed to and were just discussing in their mailing list. You know, I can see – yeah, and I'm looking at this as a writer. Definitely, I'm fine with the title, but I think it needed to be in big, bold print within the article that this was a proposal.

That's where I see the big – that's where I think I have the biggest issue with it is that this needs to be very clear. I get the attention-grabbing title. That's fine, whatever, but be clear in the article, and I didn't get that just when I was reading that. It definitely felt like that should have been made much more clear. Mixed feelings on the list though, honestly. If it's on a public list, as long as it's made clear, and that part wasn't done in this case, but as long as it's made clear, I don't see that as a big problem as long as it's really really really really clear yeah i think it's i think it comes down to um my mistake was in not going to the mailing list itself and reading it and the reason

why is because i get so sick and tired of reading mailing lists because from an outside perspective uh you know i'll give you an example so we had another story this sunday on the linux action show about open susa uh getting some changes at open susa where uh folks from sus proper would give you an example. So we had another story this Sunday on the Linux Action Show about OpenSUSE, getting some changes at OpenSUSE where folks from SUSE proper would not be working on OpenSUSE for the release. They'd be working on the ancillary services around OpenSUSE. I first found out about that by following the mailing list, but I was so confused on what I saw that I wasn't going to run the story because it seemed to be saying that people from SUSE wouldn't be working on OpenSUSE anymore. And to me, that was like, no way am I reading this right? Because first of all, English isn't the primary language in some of these mailing lists.

There's assumed cultural references and assumed knowledge that people have to other people on the mailing list that is really hard to follow. Sometimes these conversations are 30 emails deep. Sometimes they're not. And so it's one of these things where a lot of times I've sat on a story from a mailing list. But one of my sort of self-checks is if I see another publication like LWN or Pharonix run the story, then it kind of confirms what I found, and I usually will then go with it. And in this case, with the OpenSUSE thing, not only did LWN confirm it, but even before LWN had a story up, oh no, it was after LWN had a story up, I reached out to an old friend of the show who now works at SUSEProper.

I don't know if he's made that public yet. And I had a 45-minute conversation with him to try to really try to figure out, am I really reading what I'm seeing? Now, that resulted in five minutes of coverage in the Linux Action Show, but I probably spent two hours on that story to verify it, just because it seems so massive. Now, I can't do that for every story, and in this case, I was being lazy. And I could have gone into the KDE mailing list and saw that they were saying proposal, but I just went with the Pharonix headline. That was my mistake. But it seems like, I think potentially, what bothers me about this Pharonix mistake here is I actually think he probably wasn't even aware it was a proposal. Either it got sent to him and he ran with it,

like somebody posted it in the forum, and then he republished it, or he grabbed it and he was working quick and he didn't read it all the way, and he made the mistake. And that perpetuated the mistake. Now, I also perpetuated it, so it's my fault too. Well, I think also that another differentiator is essentially at its essence, it's essentially a blog versus a major publication like an online magazine or something like that. So like the CNETs of the world, while I gripe at various publications online, usually there's multi-tiered editing that happens and fact-checking that happens in written format. And so when we read something on these sites, we trust that that information is in fact actual. And Phronix has been – we would assume had that same level of clarity.

But in this case, we were kind of let down it feels like. I feel like – OK. So I want to give you guys – so this really bothers me when we make these mistakes in the show because i so i don't remember what it was exactly but this whole problem of somebody reading something on a mailing list and then it getting reported as news isn't unique to the kde project like i remember this happened to arch i was reminded recently that uh the announcement when they were just discussing arch switching to system d people grabbed that and ran with it as Arch is officially switching before it was actually officially switching.

So it happens all the time. And so originally I was trying to think, well, how can we improve that process? And I think, you know, when the first, so the last time the show had a kind of a, I can't even remember what the gaffe was, but there was a, we covered something wrong in the show. And that was the inspiration for the creation of the Linux Action Show subreddit. The idea was, if we're going to have the podcast a record for Linux, I want to minimize mistakes as much as possible,

because every time there's a mistake, it really eats at me, at least in the news. So I thought, okay, I could drop the news, because I'd rather not do the news. Well, and I don't think you need to drop it. I, and not to cut you off here, but I want to point out that if I had a dollar for every time I misquoted or got something wrong, that's what corrections are for. And that's what this show is, is it allows for a correction and that's, that's allowed.

So I thought, okay, dropping the news, that's going too far, but I just want to show you, I want, I'm trying to illustrate my commitment to trying to get this right is I would rather not do it at all than make the mistake. So that was the inspiration for the subreddit was here's what we'll do. We'll assemble an army of informed Linux enthusiasts and the crowd knowledge will sift through all of the news. And I won't let a story. And in fact, I even think I said this on air. I won't let a story into the show until it's been vetted by the community.

However, that was a good theory, but the problem is, I think, first of all, Linux news is sort of going through a slow period right now, so it requires a lot more digging. So hence the going to the mailing list, right? And so you can't expect the burden of a loose group of community enthusiasts to actually do all that digging and try to do original reporting and submit it to a Linux Action Show subreddit. So I take that burden on because Linux Action Show happens every single Sunday. And the one thing I can count on is that I will get something in place for it. So I take that on and I do the digging. So sometimes I fall short a little bit. And what happens is, is if I do digging outside the subreddit, which I always am doing,

because I'm always trying to one-up the subreddit too and try to find something they didn't find, it means it never gets vetted through the show because it doesn't go through that process. And so I'm either left with not covering stories that don't go through the subreddit, which doesn't seem very likely, or trying to come up with another way to sort of improve the quality of news. And I'm kind of wondering, I kind of want to open this discussion up to the Mumble Room and, of course, to you too and see what people think are ideas on ways we could improve the news. And one idea I had – I'll tell you my idea up front was maybe we drop the amount of news we cover and focus on a couple of stories and maybe one or two or three of the stories. Maybe it's four stories. I don't know what that mix is.

But one of them we try to get an interview on with the person who's making the story now the problem with this is is this would actually just require like somebody from the community become a producer for that and they track down the story then track down the person and line up the timings that way we can chat with them because i just that's not something i have time to do i it is it's more work than it sounds it sounds like it's not a lot of work it It's, it's probably four, four to six hours of work. Oh, it's tough. I mean, you're calling Google, you're calling LinkedIn, you're calling pretty much any place you can think of to hopefully find an email address. And then there's a few tricks that most people don't know. And then there's, then there's the 30 email back and forth lining up

and answering all of the questions. I mean, it is this massive process that it takes a ton of time. So, but I feel like if, if the show's on eight years, and I feel like we could take it up a notch by sort of having the newsmakers come on and make the news right there and say, I think if we established the Linux Action Show news segment, you're going to hear from some of the newsmakers every episode. I think that would be a huge upgrade for the news segment. every episode. I think that would be a huge upgrade for the news segment, and I think also it would sort of establish, like, people eventually would figure out, hey, we're about to have an announcement, let's schedule something with Lass. So I don't know, what do you guys think? Yeah, go ahead, Tyler. I think what you said, what I've managed to gather is most of your common mistakes seem to be coming from generally one news source, and that's Pharonix.

Yeah, I mean, there is that. But at the same time, everybody was claiming he was wrong about Steam, and then it turns out he was right about Steam. Wait, is this what Unplugged is for, though? So you can get feedback from the news segment? So you can correct yourself on Unplugged if you need to? Yeah, we do.

Perfect. As long as you correct your mistake later, then it's fine, in my eyes. You can't really expect everyone to listen to. Yeah, we do. Yeah. As long as you correct your mistake later, then it's fine in my eyes. You can't really expect everyone to listen to two podcasts, though. No, but you can't expect someone to go back to an old article, either, that I published, or someone else publishes and say, oh, wow, I was completely wrong.

They've already read it, they've moved on. So all you can do is put your retraction out there and let the chips fall. Maybe what you ought to do is have your new studio troll do the research for you well see here's the other thing too is i think what i'm trying to address this is a problem and this is actually when i scratch down my thoughts on this what i actually titled this as is fixing linux news because what what we've talked about on this show uh it was episode 11 of linux unplugged we titled it bankrupt linux news because it is there is just not a lot of

good Linux. There's some, there is some, and I want to give them credit, but there's not enough. And I thought, maybe we can improve the quality of news coverage in LAS and at the same time, improve the overall state of Linux news coverage, like actually become a news source. And in that sense, that's why, because we have this access to communities, we have these personalities and these developers that we can reach out to. I think we have an opportunity to have, instead of getting misquoted blogs and Reddit posts from... See, the problem is, this is not a problem that's going to go away because you've got Reddit, you've got Twitter, you've got Google+, people are going to be grabbing stuff and misreporting stuff constantly.

Pharonix made the mistake today, but all it takes is some Reddit enthusiast to post it and it could quickly become the top vote on r slash Linux and be completely inaccurate. Right? So it's not just Pharonix. It's a larger problem that I think I'm trying to solve here. I'd say just it would require some more research before it even makes it into the show. And ultimately, if you do want to bring somebody in for an interview, make that for the main section of the show, not necessarily the news section.

I think I'm thinking the interview would be like two minutes long. So you bring somebody on, you say, okay, so we saw there's a new version of this that shipped today. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Boom, boom, super quick. Then we move on and we do a couple other news stories. Like a pundit. Yeah, they come in and they just

tell us what they're up to. Or the other thing we could do is in lieu of getting the person that actually is behind the story, maybe we could get the person who broke the story and ask them and clarify some of the questions right there and get it on the record. That's a pretty good idea, but I think as long as you can catch it ahead of time, like if you find it

and you can catch it, as long as you just catch it ahead of time, like if you find it and you can catch it, as long as you just put it like a little thing in his show notes and a little comment on a YouTube channel, I think you're fine. I mean, everybody's human. Like people make mistakes. As long as you actually like catch a mistake and own up to it, I think you're fine.

So, uh, Q5 sis pointed out in the chat room that, uh, he, he said that maybe, um, since Pharonix is beingaronix is getting more and more ads, maybe it was a clickbait type title. And regardless of whether or not that's true, maybe the same philosophy that you applied to Unfilter, that news should be without sponsors, maybe that needs to be applied to Linux news as well.

No, the easiest fix in my opinion is to basically subdomain this out on news, have the news story posted, always have two separate unrelated citations as to where it came from. Maybe it's a mailing list and an actual statement or blog post from that developer or whatever it may be, and then it can actually – and if you can't obtain two, then it is then flagged as speculative, not news. So that way you can – If we're going to have pundits, we're going to have to have this Fox News or CNN sound effects. I don't think pundits is the right descriptor. I would be more like the developers. I mean pundits who actually know what they're talking about. Chris, we need a situation where we're pulling except for you. Yeah, you know, and the thing is, the more I think about it,

I mean, it's really, it's almost infeasible production-wise on a weekly schedule like that. But it would really have to, I would be something I'd be willing to take on if we had somebody in the community who wanted to sort of step up and be that coordinator, sort of be that production person. Q5 seems like he's definitely willing to do that.

He's actually mentioned he's trying to get in and wants to comment on this, but he did indicate in the chat room that he would be interested in taking on that role if that was something you wanted to do. Oh, well, all right. Well, I'll talk to him more often because that way. Yeah, I'm definitely down for that if you want to make headway in that direction. Yeah, okay. Yeah, let's talk more because, I more because I don't want to convert every

last news segment into an interview segment, but I feel like if nothing else, I want to maybe, yeah, if the big stuff, if we can get stuff in there, and if we can just, I just want to try to get as accurate as possible because it really bothers me when we get the stories wrong. So you and I will chat more, and maybe we can

work something out there. I got to ask, are we going to have a situation room? Cause we really need to have a situation. I don't want a wall of. That's what I've been saying this whole time. You get like three screens all over the place. I mean,

all right. All right. Here you go. Here you go. This is CNN's Wolf Blitzer and you're in the situation room. Matt, I'm reporting live on the scene from the mailing list right now. I can tell you I've reviewed the thread. I've actually read every single email, and I can confirm these dates are simply proposals. Situation. Situation.

Thanks, Chris. Now we're all going to get flagged on YouTube. Oh, that is hysterical. Or we could do like Fox News and have those oversized monitors of death. I got that too. Chris, I've got the wall of screens already taken care of. Yeah, you do. That's right. You are in the Situation Room. You got like, yeah, you got Shep and Wolfbeat. Actually, speaking of last Sunday,

I was wanting to plug something. Back to the desktop app you picked, the Livestreamer, I actually found something really cool this weekend. It's called YouTube Viewer. It's actually a command line tool to view YouTube in your terminal. So it's YouTube Viewer? Yes, it view YouTube in your terminal. So it's YouTube viewer? Yes, it's YouTube in a terminal. That sounds like it's going to, that's a pretty generic search, but actually I found it right

here. It's on GitHub. All right. So is the video then ASCII? I mean, how's that work? No, you load YouTube viewer in a terminal and pops up. You can log in. It's like you can see all your subscriptions, and it'll give a video,

and it'll just have a number beside a video. So you press 1 and then a video, and it'll play it through M Player. Does it use like a VLC as the back end? You can use VLC as M Player or M Player, I think. So, and you just what? You just put the command in the command line, and then you just put the YouTube URL in there, and then Bob's your uncle? just, what, you just put the command in the command line, and then you just put the YouTube URL in there, and then Bob's your uncle?

No, you don't need a URL. Like, you search for the video in the YouTube viewer, and it'll, like, display them, and you just hit the number next to the video, and it'll play it. Oh, I like that. And you can actually select the video quality, too. I could, like, dash 7 for 720p, like, dash 10 for 1080. That's really cool. I just put a link in the show notes and in the chat room, so you guys.

Yeah, I just want to get that out real quick before we get off air. That is cool, and there's also an app called YouTube DL to download from the terminal. That's a GUI one, though. Or is that terminal? It's not GUI. No, it's a terminal. Yeah, there's another one that's a GUI, but this one's a terminal one. So I want to talk a little bit about my news process.

And because I do, I think maybe there might be the wrong assumption that there's not a lot of research done on them now. So right now, first of all, I think one way we could address this problem is I'd like to call on a new focus in the Linux Action Show subreddit on news correlation. I'm not saying off topic. I'm not saying off topic, I'm not saying all the other discussions aren't fine, but please just want to remind everybody, if you see a story, let's post it there because I've been noticing some stories that I'm tracking that are not showing up in the subreddit, which is normally used to be the subreddit was like the best place to get the latest breaking stuff. So I just kind of want to maybe refocus on news there too. And I also, along with that, it's equally important that people vote up and down

the stories they think should be in the show. And if you know something's wrong, please say so in the comments, or if you have an alternative take, or if you have some additional thoughts, please engage in the comments. All of the stuff, all the other community stuff that happens there right now is awesome. I love that subreddit. It's funny because I was starting to say, you know, we created it because of a mistake and it was just going to be a news vetting tool for the show. And it has developed into this vibrant, awesome community that is really, you know, one of the driving forces behind the show. And so I don't want to break what it's doing, but I also want to call for a focus on using it really as a tool for content that should be in the show and vetting out the stuff that's crap. Well, here's an option.

Like you said earlier that you try to compete with the subreddit about breaking news and stuff. And instead of doing that, you could post the articles on it and say, this is a potential for a news for the show. Yeah, I've been doing that now. But you know what the problem is, is like if you got, I want to every now and then have a few surprises in the news segments. That way, if somebody goes to that subreddit several times a day, they can turn on last

and still maybe hear a story they didn't see in the subreddit. I don't always get there, but. Hey, Chrisris i wasn't necessarily saying you weren't doing the research it's just you are very busy with all these shows going on and you know maybe having somebody like rick i help you out would be a huge benefit yeah i think i i am going to try to build out a little team there because there's other you know and that could benefit the other shows too. It's not just last. Not to bash it or anything, but I don't use stuff like Ars Technica or Gizmodo or stuff like that. I usually try to find the primary source because I feel like that sometimes when you have things like Ars Technica or gizmodo or or kodoku or or whatever website that is i i feel that it's sometimes opinionated right and and i'm i'm very factual so i i like to get just straight to the facts and i don't want to hear about oh well you know

it could be used for this feature i i can kind of discern that for myself, but for the most part, I use primary resources. If I could build on that, I think some of the biggest offenders in the Linux world would be like Foronix or OMG Ubuntu. Yes, definitely. Definitely. The sites like that do kind of have the advantage that A, they give new users easy-to-digest information,

and they also aggregate stories so that a new user who wants Linux news wouldn't necessarily have to go find the mailing list or something like that. That's true. I just feel that sometimes when we reach out into those type of sources that it sometimes is a little bit too opinionated to one side than it is to the other. I just don't like the idea of putting Veronix in the same area as Network World. Because if you really want bad coverage, anything from ZDNet, I mean...

Well, this is the problem, you guys, is everywhere is bad coverage. It really is pretty bad. There's a handful of legitimate community-based or even business-based outlets that get it right, but they're in the minority. Yeah, and just to pipe in on this a little bit, just to give you guys some perspective, the bigger the company, the worse it is, honestly. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be real blunt with you. It's just the way it is. Now, if it's technical information only, it's not so bad.

But if you're trying to actually – your job is to grab eyeballs, that's what your job is. Be factual if you can, but by all means, come heaven or hell, get eyeballs. That's really what – And that's why I love the Linux Action Show because of not only your commitment but the community's commitment to accuracy. Right. Yeah, we do try. I realize this probably isn't possible, but I think it'd be great if we could get, like,

jupiternews.com and have, like, the community write pieces. That's interesting. Jasani, you wanted to, before we go too far from Ars Technica, you wanted to make a defense there, right?

Well, yeah. Oh. Well, yeah. Ars Technica, it depends it depends if how long the article is when i really love their coverage of like uh jihots and the whole sony hack and the whole doxing of of um ah that one security researcher by anonymous that was a great article yeah i think so i don't think it's a black and white thing like i think pharonix does some good work too with benchmarking and they do

some good work with the steam coverage that they had there so i don't think it's all black and white i think um with sites like gossip news it most of it's bad on pharonix if it's like gossipy type stuff but like if it's benchmarked and things like that that's where pharonix has its place i think i think when it comes to sites like Pharonix, a lot of what I see is the writers are typically people who use Windows or OS X and they give Linux a try and give it a review based on, okay,

they're giving Ubuntu a try for a week or something. A lot of times. And also, a lot of times, usually when something inaccurate happens, a lot of times you're looking at a slow news week, and so they're combing through mailing lists, looking for any hint of something that can maybe tweak into something that's not or exaggerated a little bit. I mean, it's a problem that really happens.

But when you have really good coverage, that's not a reflection of how awesome that site is. That's a reflection of really awesome news being there available that week. All right. Wizard Jed there has one last remark on phronics, and i think we'll close the book on phronix okay yeah i just wanted to say uh for even phronix even for benchmarking you've really got to take a good look at it uh he's gotten better with time but if you look at any of his old stuff i think he's been learning with time that you know to get closer and closer and to use the same hardware with everything but if you go back he, he'll go and you'll use the same processor and say,

yeah, this is the exact same benchmark. But he's using it on a board that has a lower bus speed than the other one. So it's never going to be the same benchmark at all. He puts his hardware in an advantage. One of the things he's testing already has an advantage versus the other thing. But he did that for a couple of things like even file system tests and stuff. I think I'll shift gears. I think I'll wrap up the news discussion with just sort of this comment is I think I'm thinking more about this stuff too as we reach episode 300.

So it's my commitment to Martin and the KD project and all of the listeners of the show that At Post 300, I really want to improve our quality of news, and I want it to be as reliable as any news outlet for Linux. LAS isn't about breaking news. It's about analyzing the news of the events and commenting on that development for that week. Every week, we're taking a slice of what happened in the Linux and open source world and analyzing it and trying to pull out the most important things that happened that week. And it's sort of every week we're taking a slice of what happened in the Linux and open source world and analyzing it and trying to pull out the most important things that happened that week. So if you only listen to one thing, I want the Linux Action Show to be the thing you

can listen to and know that you're getting the best stories of the week. And my goal isn't to sort of try to change that model. It's just to improve it and say, you know, if we can go directly to a source in some cases and just get them on the show and get it right out of them and quickly as we're doing some of our other coverage, I think that'd and just get them on the show and get it right out of them quickly as we're doing some of our other coverage. I think that would be a good improvement to the show. I don't know if that's the end goal because that is a lot of work, but we'll see. Post 300, I'd like to

see if we can't get there. We'll at least try to make improvements where we can. I'd like to just say one more thing regarding LAS. The great thing about Linux Action Show is even if it's a slow news week, the other main section of the show

can really provide something to give that show some oomph compared to the news section. Sure, yeah. Oh yeah, that's... We always try to make sure that with Lass, even if you don't like the main topic, there's going to be news and feedback and picks, and if you like the main topic,

it's a win-win, etc. There's always something there for everybody. I got an email from somebody named Cash. I love that name. And this is an argument that I think I've heard kicked around. I've even considered myself. He says, hey, guys, I'm a big fan of Linux Action Show and Linux Unplugged. It's a great video podcast. I have a question, though. Do we really want Linux to be a mainstream OS? For example, imagine everybody in this world able to drive a Ferrari or some kind of rare car. It doesn't feel special anymore. Once again, do we really, really want Linux to be a mainstream OS? Thanks, you guys, and keep up the good work. Cash in Malaysia. That's an excellent point. I mean, I think for myself personally, I'm okay with – I want everybody in my circle of influence to enjoy it.

You know, if that makes sense. Did he say they were a bunch of hipsters now? You know, that's kind of where I, so I come down on two minds of this. I'm with Matt at the same time. I'm like, hey, as long as it makes me happy and makes anybody that I get to use it or wants to use it happy, that's all it really needs to do. And it's up to everybody else to figure it out on their own. wants to use it happy, that's all it really needs to do. And it's up to everybody else to figure it out on their own. And then at the same time, I don't know, I think maybe it's a little bit of

that Richard Stallman in me. Get it out of here. But I wonder if we don't sort of owe it to try to make this free and open platform available to everyone who doesn't want to be restricted by the computer systems that are really just designed to monetize them and lock them down and keep them locked into ecosystems. Linux sort of provides this general computing platform that frees people from the corporatization of computing. And in some ways, it almost feels like a duty to make that available to everybody else. But the other way, I'm like, it doesn't mean we need to sacrifice making an awesome desktop. I don't know. What do you guys think? I disagree with the fact that it shouldn't be mainstream. I personally would

love to see more stuff like Netflix be easily available on Linux to be able to click and watch without having to use something like Pipelight and have to worry about some bug in wine preventing me to be able to watch it. Or some graphics drivers getting better.

See, even if Linux does go mainstream, you can still be a hipster if you use awesome or X9. That's true. Well, so I think WizardJet here brings up a good point. He thinks we've gotten as far as we have because we haven't been limited just to geeks. Go ahead, Wizard. Yeah, we've always taken in input from everyone else

because Linux only exists because the community has made it exist. You know, just the kernel doesn't make all of Linux. Just the GNU userland doesn't make just all of Linux. It's because we've all gotten together and made certain parts. And because everyone's had input, we've made what we have today. And it's only through going and, you know, having more people in there that I can only see benefits of having, you know, the Linux get better. I know this is going to make a lot of people fall out the mouth, but I think Canonical's efforts

in the past, what is it, eight, nine years, that they have done to bring Ubuntu to it used to be Linux for human beings, but now it's, I guess, mainstream. That has helped bring Linux so far to where it is now. I think it's, I guess, mainstream. That has helped bring Linux so far to where it is now.

I think it's wasted effort. I think they did what LinSpire attempted to do and wasn't able to do successfully, but they learned from their mistakes and built upon it. Yeah, yeah. I agree. They've helped a lot with getting a lot more people to try it. And you just look at the adoption you've seen in business, too.

That's not quite fair to all the other projects that went to an email to exist if it wasn't't for them too. So there's a lot of love to go around. But I think I agree. In the end, bringing more and more people in all the time improves Linux. So look at it in a different way. Linux has seen such an... We're going to cover a story on Sunday that I've already been researching about where the code growth is in Linux over 2013. And the Linux Foundation put out their analysis. You guys probably all saw the link now.

And it, to me, it so underscores how bringing in ARM and going to mobile, even though we see a lot of companies like Google and Android and Samsung sort of using Linux for all these different things, it actually has brought so much to Linux itself. So many new features, so many new improvements have come from that work and continue to come from that work, efficiencies too. And that's by bringing in a new class of people and a new class of hardware partners, because it's not just users. It's not just desktop users, it's developers, it's hardware manufacturers. It's business interests. And we've brought them in. And because of that, we've gotten better.

We've gotten stronger. And I would argue that we used to bang on TiVo for the TiVoization of Linux, but I don't think it's harmed Linux one little tiny teensy bit. Here's my only fear. And you can call me Richard stallman for all you care but but um i just don't want to see that we have a whole bunch of developers developed to a point where a lot of the linux kernel or a lot of the linux stuff that's in there is closed off from people so like only the development comes from the developer teams. I would prefer to see kind of like a symbiotic relationship between the developers and the open community just a little bit because say like, you know, like how we have Adobe killing us on flash. So we have to figure

out ways of working around with flash a little bit more, it would probably be more beneficial if, yes, I do think that we need more people, but we also want to have people that would be willing to contribute to the community, not just in a software fashion, but also in a communication fashion. I don't even necessarily think they have to directly contribute, but if somebody is helping support them or if it's a support team that may run into these issues, the more people using it, the more issues that get highlighted and fixed. I think Wimpy fills this role really well right now with the Matei project where he's here.

He's advocating Mate. He's very informed about it. He's communicating with the developers. He's working with a large distribution. It's exactly what a lot of these projects need. And so I think he's a great example. Another reason I'm glad he could join us this week. Well, there you go, Cash. There's the

community's virtual Lugs thoughts on Linux Day and Mainstream. It sounds like for the good of Linux, we have to continue to grow. We must assimilate all, as the Borg would say. All right, Matt. Well, I think we'll wrap it up right there at that point. I'm not going to say what we're going to talk about on Sunday. I'm just not going to do that

anymore because every time I commit, something comes up and we have something else. But I will say there is a possibility, according to the forecast, that we'll have snow. So if Matt ends up Skyping in on Sunday, then you can assume we got a good snow dump in here in Washington. Yeah. And because of where I live, I live in a valley, but I also live in the highlands. It's kind of hard to explain, but we get the worst of it in town. So you never know, but we'll find out. And I live on a nice hill. Yeah, you do.

Oh, that's right. Oh, God, I just remembered that. Yeah, depending on what it looks like, I'll either – I may be Skyping in. We'll find out. There's a long route you can go that's not quite as steep, but yeah. I should make a programming note here, too. If you're a JB Live streamer and you watch TechSnap, check out TechSnap. It's going to be a double TechSnap on Thursday.

We'll be starting at 11 a.m. Jupiter Broadcasting time, that specific time, 11 a.m. But you can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com to get it in your local time zone. And we're doing a double show because TechSnap won't be live next week. But TechSnap never misses a show. Just like this, actually. Here we are, 26 weeks in. We've never missed a show. What's up?

We know what's going on. So here, why don't you come participate? Join our virtual log. Hang out in our chat room. You get to help title the show. You guys get to get your thoughts in there. I'm watching that the entire time. Go over to jblive.tv on a Tuesday.

We start at 2 p.m. Pacific. jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar watching that the entire time. Go over to jblive.tv on a Tuesday. We start at 2pm Pacific. Jupiterbroadcasting.com has that in your time zone. We'd also like to get your feedback on any topics we discuss. We like to feature that in every show. We put it right at the top because you guys matter to us. Jupiterbroadcasting.com click on the contact link. Choose Unplugged from the drop down. Alright Matt, I'll see you on Sunday. See you Sunday. in December.