LINUX Unplugged - Episode 260: Thinkpad as a Service

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

We get an update from Dell’s Barton George on their Linux initiative Sputnik, cover some important community news, and the uncomfortable questions raised by Krita’s new financial boost. And some simple tips to improve your security at the edge. Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar, Barton George, Brent Gervais, and Eric Hendricks.

Look at this cool toy that Wes found. It's a bootable CD and a retro game, and it all fits in a single tweet. How is this shenanigans possible, Wes? Well, a little bit just by abusing the El Torito standard and being exceedingly clever. And then also because the dark arts, you use a little pearl. Yeah, it's a little pearl with a long string of characters. And then you pipe that through base 64, and then you output that result to an ISO image.

Yeah, exactly. And then you can, I just tested it out here, boots right up in QEMU, and you've got yourself a little retro game. The game may be not super fun, but the write-up about how this all works is a lot of fun. Back in the day, you used to try to fit an entire bootable environment on a floppy disk. Now, in 2018, it's fitted in a tweet, and it's actually possible. God, I love Linux. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 260 for July 31st, 2018. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that is surrounded by machines, trapped in a hot room, and jacked up on caffeine.

My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Mr. Payne, and of course, back again, like every week, is Mr. Brent. Hello, Brent. Hello, guys. How's it going? Fantastic. Always doing well when we're all together to do a podcast. And we have a great episode today. One Mr. Barton George from Dell will be stopping by the program to update us on the Sputnik program, how things are going, the challenges that Chromebooks may pose to the Sputnik program,

and much more, including a little looking forward. So I'm really looking forward to that chat. He's coming up in just a little bit. But before we get there, we're going to do a bunch of community news, some big news for us Neon fans. Microsoft is switching to a service model, and we wonder how that's going to affect Linux. And then we need to talk about security

and where it really begins, and that's at your home router, and some open source projects that can help you achieve better security on your edge. Then Corita's got some great news, but you'll never guess where some of their money's coming from. And then later on in the show, after we chat with Barton, we're going to wrap it up with not one, not two, but yes, my friends, three great app picks because I don't know, sometimes we just go crazy. You can't stop us. We're just finding great stuff throughout the week.

We've got to put that in the show. We've got to put that in the show. So there's so much to cover. And the only thing left to do before we can get into it is bring in that mumble room. Time-appropriate greetings, Virtual Lug. Hello. Good evening. Hello.

Good evening, good afternoon, good morning. As I always say now, time-appropriate because it's different for all y'alls. And I'm very happy to start the show off with some news about one of my favorite don't call it a distributions distributions, and that's KDE Neon. And we've all been kind of wondering, when's this thing going to land on an 1804 base? KDE Neon, if you're not familiar, is a rebasing of Ubuntu LTS, and then they take the latest upstream Plasma desktop components, cute components, and put it on top of 16.04.

It's great. So it's just everything that you might want if you had 16.04 and didn't want to go through the rigmarole of getting that Plasma desktop set up for yourself. Yeah, I mean, and its main appeal really is that you have a stable, predictable 1604 or soon 1804 base, which is kind of boring, doesn't really change a lot. But a good kind of boring. Yeah, exactly. The right kind of boring with a really aggressive, fresh desktop environment where the desktop level applications are kept pretty fresh. And that is a super appealing approach to me. And now that I'm all in on the Plasma desktop,

Neon really fit well in that spot for me. But I do admit, since Kubuntu came out based on 1804, I really haven't been installing much Neon anymore. Too little, too late? Well, no, it's just if I'm going to be building systems that I want to last for five years, I would like to base them on 1804, not 1604. Plus, I've been waiting for them to make this transition to 1804,

so that way I don't really have to weather it. I still have two Neon systems left in production. One of them is the one I'm reading this off of right now. And one of them, the other one is my XPS 13, which I've been using extensively on these road trips and other trips that I've been on. Do you notice any difference in stability or upgrade problems or any other maintenance issues between the two? I remain to have

actually I have it on three systems now, I think about it. And on one of the three I have issues where my background, my desktop goes away. Certain things break for a little bit and then I have to log out and log back in to get it to work. Nothing major. Still not great. Doesn't come up on Kubuntu. Only manifests itself on my

Neon systems. It's not a big deal. It's not the end of the world. But I am looking forward to them making that transition to 1804. And Jonathan Riddle posted over on his blog that we'll have linked in the show notes, that they're getting really close to that now. They really just have a few things to work out.

They're testing the ISOs and then it's some tidying and they're done. They already have a bunch of things that are kind of working. Some of it just has to be done a little more officially instead of like a hack or a script or something. But it looks pretty good for the neon distribution, and 1804 could be just around the corner. Then you've got elementary OS, which is just around the corner

with its base on 1804. And you now have 1804.1 that's recently shipped. So it's a good cycle right now for 18.04. And in six months, that will start to slow. In a year, we'll be out of cycle a little bit, starting to get a little old. But right now, it's really in that sweet spot. And if you're building a system to last for a few years, there's not a lot of distributions that offer a ton of desktop application availability

and five years of support. So they're really in a powerful position, more so than they've been in a long time. And that's not to downplay the competitors, who are also in a really great position and offer a lot of the same functionality now that Canonical is switching back to GNOME. But when you combine it with the overall network effect,

the application availability, the increasing Snap Store availability, and then these other really nice flavors like Kubuntu and Ubuntu Mate and even Neon, don't call it a flavor, don't call it a distribution, all offer essentially this Ubuntu base that we all know and understand with their own fresh takes on it in a way that I still don't really see happening in the rest of the Linux distribution world. Do you agree with that assessment? Yeah, it's kind of hard to put your finger on, but when you have that level of consistency on that far end of just, you know, your main core of your system, it's a part of your mind that gets to go to sleep for a while. And you don't have to think too hard about it.

You kind of focus on everything else because you don't have to fight like, oh, nope, on that system I have Phish and this system I have Apt and that one is Pac-Man. None of it. You know, I'm not even really saying this as like I'm not trying to sell anyone on Ubuntu. I'm not trying to advance like the Ubuntu agenda here. It's just an observation that I seem to have

realized is that they have a really strong market here where they have this LTS base that these other flavors or derivatives even that aren't official can base off of and as an end user that's a known quantity. It's like a brand almost. It's like

the Ubuntu base is a known brand that you can recognize as an end user. It makes you maybe a little more comfortable in other degrees of uncertainty or customization because you're like, okay, well they're not going to mess it up so bad. It's still going to be a great Ubuntu LTS base. That's what I was, yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to get to. Again, I don't say that to detract from like what the work Fedora is doing

or OpenSUSE and Arch and look at Antigros. I love Antigros or Manjaro. All of that's really kind of the same thing, but nothing has the market penetration that Ubuntu has. And in my personal opinion, if you're going to go with one of these Ubuntu derivatives, the Ubuntu Mate Elementary and KDE Neon are like the best of the best, really. Not to take away from the other flavors, but man, if I don't just... You get some

pretty unique setups and experiences even being in this one family. Yes. I find it funny that you don't mention Ubuntu, you know, main, classic, whatever you want to call it, just GNOME. You're all about the flavors. I think when you're talking about trying to get a unique, kind of interesting take on the Linux desktop that's truly different than anything you see other places, that's where these other flavors or derivatives come in. Not to take away from the great work that's happening in mainline Ubuntu.

I got love for it all today. I really do. But it's hard to beat those three kind of standout derivatives or flavors, whatever you want to call it. This is all kind of academic, though, compared to what the Windows world may be going through in the next couple of years. Microsoft is making some big changes, and they're getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft

Managed Desktop. This will be a desktop as a service offering instead of owning Windows, you would rent it by the month. The acronym for this is DAS, and it's not really new. Citrix has been doing this, VMware has been doing this, I think Amazon offers.

But the Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take on it. new. Citrix has been doing this. VMware has been doing this. I think Amazon offers. Yeah. But the Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take on it. It avoids the latency problem of other desktop as a service offerings by keeping the bulk of the operating system on your PC. But you would no longer be in charge of the PCOS or the hardware itself. Instead, it would be automatically provisioned by Microsoft and then maintained by Microsoft. Now, that is very vague, so I wanted to get some more details on this. So I went over to Mary Jo Foley's blog, and she actually got a Microsoft representative on the record.

So this is some serious stuff here. This isn't just like hearsay. Let's see. Let me see the name of this guy. Do you see the name of this guy here in this article? Because I think that's probably relevant. But I'll read it, and then if we see it, I'll call it out. But it turns out, she says, Mary Jo Foley writes, I'm hearing that Microsoft Managed Desktop is basically the Microsoft version of desktop as a service that will provide customers with the ability

to lease Windows 10 devices that automatically are provisioned for them and have the operating system kept up to date for more than a single monthly fee. Up to date for no more than a single monthly fee or something like that. Now here's what she writes that I think is the more insightful bit to this article. Oh, and by the way, the contact that she spoke to at Microsoft was the director of the Windows Insider Program and OS Fundamentals team. Bill Kagarugas or something. It looks like kangarugas, but do you see that?

Do you see that name? K-A-R-G-O-U. Katagunas, maybe? I don't know. But he is the director of the Windows Insider Program and OS Fundamentals team. So that's where she's getting this from. And so she says, here's the thing to think about.

Microsoft already has a number of the pieces in place to make this happen. This past year, Microsoft has been broadening availability of its Windows Autopilot Automatic Device Provisioning Service. It's been honing its device financing skills with programs like Surface Plus and Surface Plus for Business, so there's a leasing aspect to the hardware there, as well as Surface as a Service leasing program.

I didn't even know they were offering Surface as a service. Me either. Boy, they love their acronyms. And it currently offers Windows 10, Office 365, and the Intune device management and security products from the Microsoft subscription bundle, all for one low monthly price. They've been working to put all of this together into a new service.

This is what the director of Windows Insider Program talked about. He said, they're in charge of what's being called the Microsoft Managed Desktop. That's what he's been put in charge of that. And they're bringing these existing sort of separate programs that they have together under one umbrella program and then offering it to consumers. So this is a lot of Microsoft news, Chris. What does it mean to me, the Linux Unplugged listener who is trying to escape?

That's the big, big question is do we just have a whole new value story now for Linux? Did Microsoft just give us a whole new value proposition in that you download a free desktop and you install it on your hardware and then you get free updates for life. No subscription required. You know, you can use Dropbox with your LibreOffice.

You could use your Google Drive. You could use NextCloud, like whatever syncing service you want to use. The only thing is these people that will be buying this are paying for convenience. That's the market. Right. I mean, it's like leasing a car. You know, you're like, I want the abilities that you're offering, and I don't want to have to think about how you implement it

or how it happens under the hood. Yeah, and they want it to just work. They want the device to show up on their desk and just work. So the problem with the Linux approach is you can argue on the money side, but then you can't really successfully argue the tool side, because if the user has to implement their own cloud-syncing service, if the user has to implement their own cloud syncing service, if the user has to implement their own office suite, if the user has to implement their own email client,

and they have to set all these things up. You're going to have to offset it with training or dedicated staff. Contractors or something. And so what they're offering here is, well, you'll use Office 365, obviously. Of course you will. You'd use our antivirus product. You'd use our mail services.

You would use our... You'd probably get a couple of Azure credits to get you set up there, too. Why not? I think for some markets, it'll make Linux more attractive. But I don't think for all of the markets we'd hope. I wonder, I feel like we've been talking about it

maybe from a lot of the enterprise use case, but is there a security angle for people running it at home that maybe might have a better experience with Windows? I wonder if we shouldn't flip the question around and propose it to Brent as this. So if I could come to Brent and say for $45 a month, let's make it $50, let's make it kind of hurt a little bit.

So for $50 a month, you get a fully managed, fully set up, fairly high end Ubuntu 18.04 device that you choose what kind of screen, that kind of stuff. You set some of the basic parameters and that sets your monthly billing. With that is included Google Drive storage, all access to Google apps that are all branded under this initiative. So you pay 50 bucks a month, Brent. Every two years, you get a brand new Linux 18.04 machine with every cloud service pre-provisioned,

pre-paid for, pre-setup. Would you do something like that or would you prefer to buy the machine once and then set all that stuff up yourself and pay for the individual services ad hoc? I love that question because I was going to ask you, I was just going to comment like,

well, in the Linux case, we can say that you actually own your hardware and your software in a way because you have control over it, right? But now that you asked me that question, it kind of changes my outlook on it because actually I think the convenience to having a monthly fee to just have everything taken care for you from hopefully someone you trust, right? I think that's a big one. Yeah, I was thinking, like, imagine, like, it's System76 running this program or something. I think it reduces the barrier to entry for Linux, first of all, if you had that kind of option, but also just for technology, period.

Because if all of these services are already all configured for you and updated, then there's a real security benefit there and a hands-off that might be nice for the end user. Like we're already used to paying for various services like, you know, phone stuff and things like that. Well, there's obvious markets for it if they have a Surface as a service program. And this is a big appeal to Chromebooks. Let's not forget how successful Chromebooks have been. They're essentially a managed device in a less structured form than Microsoft is offering here.

And thinking about it, when Brent was answering, I was thinking to myself, well, why wouldn't I do that for my studio systems? Imagine if I could just have these three or four Kubuntu systems. Well, okay, one, two, three, yeah, four, five Kubuntu systems. I mean, I'd still consider paying 50 bucks a month if it meant I could get decent new hardware that had a consistent support contract all the time. I think I might do that. I don't know for sure.

But for the business case, I can totally see it. I would definitely be compelled to at least run the numbers. Don't you think, Brent? I think you'd be silly not to consider it. I do wonder, and maybe the Mumble Room has something to say about this, but I wonder if we think that Linux would be ready for something like this.

Yeah, and who would deliver that? And how would you deliver it? I would like a ThinkPad as a service. Well, I mean, as a small business owner, I've really been considering something like this. And I've been educating myself on SaltStack. And with everything being in a file in Linux, you can take something like Puppet or SaltStack

or something like that, and you can deploy a desktop just as easily as you could deploy a server. And then you're just restoring users' configuration files in their home directory, in their.files. So this is actually something I've been considering as a potential way to grow my business into something self-supporting. Yeah, you're right.

That does make it so much nicer to support end users compared to something that has a registry or something like that. It's just a totally different level. Well, and then when your user goes and breaks their system inevitably, then you just rerun your recipe that redeploys their desktop. And within five minutes, they've got a brand new working image that's already connected to their network drive because no one saves anything onto their local disk, right? Yeah, we can tell they do. But going back to the Microsoft story, my gut, here's how I here's why I think it's going to be a good thing for

Linux because my gut wants it to happen because I think deep down it feels like that's a win for Linux somehow. Anytime you make Windows more ongoing expensive, I feel like you're making people constantly re-evaluate its worth. Whereas if I just buy it once every five years, say I'm a corporate IT environment,

I'm either subscribing to the large bulk licenses, the volume licenses, or I'm refreshing my machines if I'm aggressive every few years, but probably more likely every five to ten years. And that's when I'm addressing the license problem. As a business, that's not an unmanageable expense, especially because they are productivity tools.

They're necessary for the job. And you can probably find a good quarter where it makes the most sense, and okay, yes, we'll buy a big bulk here. We didn't spend as much elsewhere. But when it's a line item every month that you're... You're looking at that going, well, what are we paying for? Because that's what we're paying for all the time now, and it's a per head cost now.

And that adds up. That makes a difference. You can write monthly costs off as OPEX rather than CAPEX, so that's better for tax purposes. Yeah, there are advantages. Plus, if you wrap in licensing and you wrap in cloud storage, it's probably likely to be cheaper. But that bundling only gets you so far. Like the cable industry knows that too.

I think it'll also really depend on just how easy is it to administer or what's the customer service aspect like. I wonder if this isn't the real cost of Windows 10 being free. I have thought this from the moment they announced it as free. I always thought this. And why they've encouraged it, why they've called it the last version of Windows, I think this has been in the works

since Balmer was running the place. And now they've just kind of figured out how to put it all together by having different experiments with the Surface Books and their different services that have given them some experience. They managed to do it pretty well with Office 365. So it's just another checkbox on a feature list.

I was just about to say we're going to move on, but then it dawned on me too, as a Linux user, what if the price was legitimately affordable? So let's just say for a moment, it's like, I mean, it's not going to be this, but let's just say for $25 a month, you could get like a pretty decent windows 10 device in your home. As a Linux user, I might consider that just so I have a windows machine from time to time. And I'm in the,

to be honest with you, that's dropping whatever it is, a hundred, 200 bucks on windows 10 professional has been a barrier for me. I just don't want to do it. I just can't bring myself to do it. Well, look at cell phones. Yeah, exactly. You pay, I don't know how much in the States, $100 a month, but that includes cell connection. So if you're paying half that for your connection and half that for the device every month,

a laptop probably costs the same or less to make than a phone. So yeah, it's possible, definitely. Yeah, it could be. All right, I saw JJ had some more thoughts, but we'll save them for the post-show. make than a phone. So, yeah, it's possible, definitely. Yeah, it could be. All right, I saw JJ had some more thoughts, but we'll save them for the post-show. Let's move on. We don't need to talk about Microsoft that much more. I think that's probably good.

And I want to talk about security for a moment. I want to talk about something that has been very apparent on the TechSnap program for a while. This is a very TechSnap program topic, so if you're into this kind of stuff, check out TechSnap.systems. But in recent days, the VPN filter malware has been attracting a lot of attention, much of it in the wake of the May 25th public service announcement by the FBI that was also covered

by a number of announcements from vendors and security companies around routers being susceptible to an issue. You might recall the FBI issuing a recommendation to need to be rebooted. They were susceptible to runtime malware. And if you restarted and they reinitialized from the ROM, the malware would be gone, but they may remain vulnerable. So Cisco's threat blog posted on VPN filter a while ago, and we covered it in TechSnap,

but they do provide some good details on devices' impact by this vulnerability, which affected around 500,000 networking devices worldwide. Woo! Yeah. It works a lot in the way, like the Mirai, Marie, Mirai botnet did, where it specifically goes after home routers. It

also uses several zero-day exploits that the lazy vendors just haven't patched that have been known about now. Turns out that works really well. Yeah. Among the reported vendors impacted by VPN filter are Linksys and Netgear, which is 77% of the home router market, just right there. Linksys and Netgear.

Wow. Yeah. And by just exploiting typical vulnerabilities, you can get access to a lot of stuff on these two devices in the wild, including redirecting your DNS to their DNS servers and all kinds of really kind of nasty things that you can do when you're in a trusted position on the edge of the network. It's the new holy grail, too, because so many of you bastards out there are using Linux and Android devices, and you're not using Windows XP and Windows CE devices, and they can't keep writing malware for Windows and get to everybody.

You're just making it too hard. Jerks. Especially you Mac users. And you iOS writing malware for Windows and get to everybody. You're just making it too hard. Jerks. Especially you Mac users. And you iOS users. Don't even get me started. So why not go after the thing that y'all have to route through? And that is the router. And that's whenever you want to talk out to the internet, you got to go through that little bastard.

So that's the thing they're going after now. And so we should talk about security right at that spot, at the edge of your network. That's where security has to begin. And that's why open source at that part of your network, I think, is maybe one of the most critical spots, if nothing else, then as a remedy to vendor negligence. I think that's fair, like, because, you know, with these open source projects,

as long as the project's alive, they're issuing updates. It's at least an escape hatch in a world of, for a long time, it's gotten a little bit better perhaps these days, but for a long time, just not very many great options. No. So OpenWRT 1806 has just come out today. And it's a significant release because it's the first one since the OpenWRT and LED projects decided to merge.

Wow, that is a big deal. Yeah, and so now this is their combined effort under the OpenWRT umbrella. We're back together. Yeah, and it's great, right? It's been, we talked about this two years ago. Wow. That's how long it's been,

which it doesn't feel like it's been that long, but yeah. So the Linux Embedded Development Environment and OpenWrt came together and now we have OpenWrt 1806, which is replacing 1505. So it's a pretty big jump there because it's a combination of LED 1701 and OpenWrt 1505. So they just went right to 1806. It adds support for network flow offloading, which is bad ass, It adds support for network flow offloading, which is badass, modernizes support for some Atheros chipsets, a bunch of kernel updates and package updates, among other areas of improvement. And we'll have links in the show notes so you can check it out. This is the kind of thing where it's a simple step. I mean, if you've got a good hardware vendor who's updating your firmware and you feel pretty comfortable in it, then more power to you. That's great.

But this has been the solution I've taken in the past. You and I were also recently talking about maybe checking out some more microtech stuff, but this is really nice. They have a wide range. It really comes down to the chips in your box. I think you can also sometimes find a nice middle ground where, like, you know, if you can set up an

OpenSense or PFSense box, great. If you know how to set up your own router from running whatever Unix-like or Unix-based operating system, also great if you know how to do that. But you might just be someone who's already invested in one of the common router brands, but you know someone who listens to this show or whatever else, and you can go through, spend a Sunday, get that on there, and then not have to buy a new device, but have more control and have a better, more secure platform. You should be able to be completely done by the time you've finished a Linux Unplugged

podcast, I think. So try that out. Like Wes said, maybe help out a family member. There's other solutions, obviously. We could list so many other possibilities. You guys know I'm a big fan of PFSense. But if you've got hardware that is one of these devices, one of these 77% of the devices in the market that is possible to load OpenWR of these 77% of the devices in the market, that is possible

to load OpenWRT on, maybe it's just time. On TechSnap, we're constantly talking about backdoors and all this stuff that even with Linux on there or BusyBox on there, they still just screw up the basic implementations. It's not enough that it's based on Linux. It has to be well implemented.

For some reason, the firmware developers just don't feel comfortable unless you've got an unsecured Telnet port open at all times. And it's just baked in username and password. One of my favorites that we talked about on TechSnap was the root password was just the MAC address of the network card. So if you knew the MAC address of the router, and then you just copy and

paste that, say, from your terminal, and you could just paste that in the password prompt and log right in. It's root. Makes it easy. But there's even ones where there's like, no password necessary. Absolutely no password necessary. Just knock on the door. There's literally been some where it's like you knock on this port on a certain amount of times and you just get telnet root access. Have at it, Haas.

It's really something. So, yeah, you got to go replace these things. But you really do still have to keep them up to date. You do still have to implement best up to date. You do still have to implement best practices. It's not just a matter of the firmware, but getting something open source supported by a community that gets frequent updates is a good first step. That's how I look at it. Corita is getting some decent funding and it's allowing for one of their developers to go, if not full-time, near full-time.

Now, Corita's been publishing. Wow, this is another Microsoft story, really, if you think about it. Corita's been publishing to the Windows Store for quite some time. Not quite a year, but they've updated their store listing almost 20 times. And by far, the majority of users get Corita from the website, about 30,000 downloads a week from their website. majority of users get Carita from the website, about 30,000 downloads a week from their website. Nice.

The store downloads from Microsoft's store are about 125 a week. Still, though, the income that has been generated by the Windows Store makes it possible for the Carita maintainer to work on Carita full-time, which would never have been possible otherwise.

Interesting. 30,000 downloads from their website, and they couldn't make enough money to go full-time. 125 downloads a week from the Microsoft store, and they're going full-time. It's an interesting, different philosophy when you're in that app store idea, right? I mean, you can easily send donations through their main website, but I guess you're just in that mindset of ready to... Well, it's price per download, right? So in the Windows Store, you pay a little bit.

And you expect to. Yeah, and it makes open source development of a pretty important open source application that is competitive with things from Adobe possible. I just wonder if we should just take a moment and reflect on that. Because to me, it seems like there's a big lesson to learn from that. And I think about what the App Center, what Elementarios is doing with the App Center.

I think it's also interesting because the article goes on to discuss some of the problems they've had in that environment. And maybe that is why we do need more open source friendly things like the App Store and other efforts. Yeah, they talk about being powerless. They talk about all the rules that are made by the store. And if there's one particular store rule that gets interpreted the wrong way, the curators can just decide, you know what, no good.

And if you're not native English, then it makes it even harder to then communicate with the store curators. And sometimes things can be just simply misunderstood because of a language barrier. So what's the answer then? If you have an uncurated store like the AUR or like Snap repositories, etc., you end up with crypto software in there. I mean, there has to be somebody somewhere, I think, verifying these packages and maintaining that trust.

Is it that or is it there's a price? You know, I mean, really? Nothing says that CryptoWare doesn't sneak into these stores from time to time that are curated. But I think for Corita, the big difference here is if you want to download it from the Windows Store, if you want that convenience, you've got to pay a little money. I don't have the Windows Store on me, so

here it is. It's $9.79. If you want to download it from the Windows Store, you have to pay $9.79. At $125 a week they can go full time that seems to be the crux of the issue that's an uncomfortable thing I think because the numbers are devastating

30,000 downloads if you look at this show this show will get that and then you look at our Patreon which this is just always how it works you look at the Patreon there's much less than that on the Patreon. Totally understandable because we're also ad supported. But I think there is a massive difference when something's free and just available online. The return you get, I think, is probably often less than a percent. What do you think about

this, Brent? Trying to imagine for myself what would happen if those 30,000 weekly downloads went through a similar app store and gave them a similar revenue. That would be huge for an open source project like this who's trying to really break some ground. Yeah. Arthur, you were mentioning too that there's an open source game that sort of struggles with the same issue, perhaps even on a larger scale. There's actually several open source games. I'm involved in one of them. But recently I talked with a Zero ID developer and they have about 100K downloads a year, but they only get about $90 per month in donations

and they have $100 per month in server costs. So they're going negative each month. Yeah, boy, that is some bad math. So 100,000 downloads a year and they're making 90 bucks a month? Yeah, that's not going to work, is it? They have some slack because they did some donation drives a while ago,

but still, it's very discouraging for them and for us with our game. Especially since there are so many people happy to buy early access games for Linux, but not happy to donate to a free game. But not happy to donate to a free game. So this issue that we're touching on, in part, is often why when people ask me, why do you want more users on the Linux desktop?

Why do you want Slack on the Linux desktop if it means a slow electron proprietary service application? Then what's the point of having a free desktop? Why have new users at the cost of gaining proprietary applications? And this is my answer. Having a larger user base on Linux, on the desktop in particular, facilitates an economy to pay developers to do hard work. And as a user base grows, the demand for more sophisticated applications that connect to more sophisticated services will also grow. And if we don't have a way to facilitate financing this

work, the people that are capable of doing that work are going to go get paid to do it somewhere else. And I think it's a bit of egg on our face that the frickin' Microsoft Windows store is now paying to make creative development possible. And I also can't sit here and say the solution is that every developer should go to Patreon

or something like that because that's not going to scale either. We're getting patroned out at this point. Let's be honest, everybody is. I'm getting a little tapped out myself and I'm still trying to support people. The reality is we have to facilitate some mechanism to reward hard work. A value-for-value model has to exist for free and open-source software. And I think that's in part why I follow

what Daniel and the team at Elementary OS are doing with such interest, because that is at least a possible solution. It might not be your favorite solution, but they are definitely trying and innovating in that space. It's an incubator of what could perhaps work on a wider scale someday. And I don't know if that's the right solution,

but maybe what's going on with Corita gives us some perspective. Right, especially exploring things. It's still open source, it's still free, but maybe there's a few hurdles, or it's not the thing that you find the easiest anymore. You're more encouraged to donate. There's a lot of different angles, and I think we'll have to adapt to that

and the philosophy of it as a community. Yeah. So let's talk about how to grow that user base, especially when it comes to the hardware side with Mr. Barton George. So let's bring Barton in in just a moment. But first, I want to thank DigitalOcean for making this episode possible. Go to do.co slash unplugged and get a $100 credit for 60 days over at DigitalOcean. That's do.co slash unplugged and get a $100 credit for 60 days over at DigitalOcean. That's do.co slash unplugged.

So many great open source projects are provided infrastructure by DigitalOcean to take care of the hassle of the back-end infrastructure and just let them get work done. And you can do the same thing. It's easy to get set up. Less than 55 seconds. The dashboard's crazy great and easy. They have an API that's

well documented and tons of open source applications already built around that you can just start using. One-click deployments for tons of great open source entire stacks of applications or just deploy the base rig. They got just about every distribution you'd want to run in a server. My favorite system has 4 gigs of RAM,

2 CPUs, 80 gigabytes of enterprise-grade SSDs, 3 4 gigs of RAM, 2 CPUs, 80 gigabytes of enterprise-grade SSDs, 3 terabytes of them transfers for 3 cents an hour. Now, every system has enterprise-grade SSDs. They've all got 40 gigabit connections coming to the hypervisors, data centers all over the world, cloud firewalls that block the traffic

at the network level so they never even have to hit your rig, monitoring and alerting built-in, and much, much more. But, instead of listening to me go on about it, just go try it. Just try it. Maybe spin up a project you've been wanting to work with for a while. Something you want to learn about, or something you want to

put in production. do.co.unplugged, and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Wes and I often experiment with different things on DigitalOcean, just sort of like when we're prepping for a show. Awesome all the time. It's fun. do.co

slash unplugged. Also a huge, huge thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You can sign up for a free seven-day trial and support the show. This is a platform to learn everything about Linux and the huge industry around Linux now.

Everything that runs Linux or Linux runs on, they basically have coursework for that. From the essentials around Linux, which just got a refresh today, or the big topics like AWS and Azure and OpenStack and the nitty gritty of these, and now also really a lot of great content around security. But something that I don't talk about very often,

and maybe something you should be made aware of, is they have a really epic team system. So if you're in an IT department, or if you're at a business that wants to train up new staff, or have staff get up to date on something, or just provide continuing education, Linux Academy will work with your business to set up a team plan for all of them

where there's metrics for you to look at and all kinds of cool dashboard stuff for you. And you get to work hands-on with a salesperson that can actually help you get the right stuff for your business. Like it's a full professional package that I don't normally talk about because normally I'm talking to you individuals out there.

But this is something to consider too is if your work is interested in something like that, you might pass that along to them because that was a big area that I didn't realize that they operate in, but it makes total sense. It would be awesome as an IT department to have that as a resource. So today, Linux Academy launched a whole bunch of new content. They've been doing this for over a month now, been releasing more and more. They were claiming 150 new bits of content. I think it's over 200. I mean, I think they just way overshot. They under-promised and over-delivered.

Today, they just updated the LPI DevOps Tools Engineer certification as well as a ton of other Azure and other great things like just basic Chef courseware. Nice. Yeah. I'm going to link in the show notes the link to the video

because I think they had the chief community guy on from Chef on the live stream. And they just streamed this earlier today where they announced the new Azure Concepts courseware, the Microsoft Exam 705033, which is implementing Microsoft Azure infrastructure solutions, and a whole bunch of Linux essentials, certified Jenkins engineer courseware,

just a ton of stuff. And like I said, the chef community guy all got announced today. So check that out. I'll have a link in the show notes at linuxunplugged.com. And get started at Linux Academy by going to linuxacademy.com. And a massive thank you to Ting for all of the years of keeping this show on the road, literally, while I'm on the road and literally, while I'm on the road

and while I'm figuratively on the road. Like, I don't know, maybe I'm just out of the office mentally, but they've still kept me on the road. You know what I'm saying? They're so good. They just know what's happening. They really do because it's smarter than unlimited wireless. If you use less, you pay less and it's just $6 for a line. And then when you need it, it's there. Holy crap, has that been useful? The average Ting bill is just $23 per phone per month because it's paid for what you use wireless. Minutes, messages, megabytes, whatever you use, that's what you pay. $6 for the

line and then just your usage on top of that. Well, I think I should probably also mention, sometimes, depending on your area, Uncle Sam has a cut. You know what I'm saying? He's got a cut. Uncle Sam. But that ain't Ting's fault. They can't help that. He's got his hands in everything, Wes.

Watch out. I know. No contracts, no early termination fees, and a great control panel to manage it all. Turn individual services off, get complete usage at a glance, take control of every aspect of your account, and turn things on or off. Like I've activated several devices just through the webpage.

And they also have a bunch of great devices you can buy directly, including just getting a $9 SIM card. Is this? Oh, whoa. Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't tell me. Do not tell me they have a $1 sale. Oh, snap.

They got a $1 sale going on the Ting SIM. What? Right now. No. At least the GSM SIM. I've been waiting. I'm going to put a link in the show notes. That's the best deal of the year right there.

The $1 SIM is when Noah and I – I'm going to send a link to Noah, too. You stock the best deal of the year right there. The $1 SIM is when Noah and I, I'm going to send a link to Noah too. You stock up on these SIMs, you just put them in your bag. And then when you need data somewhere, you pop it in there, you're good to go. It's $6 a month and you turn it off when you're done. And plus, when you get that SIM at a dollar,

if you go to linux.ting.com, they'll give you $25 in service credit, which is probably going to pay for more than your first month of using that thing, maybe even the first two months of using that thing, depending on how much you use it. So, go grab a $1 Ting SIM card. I'll have a link in the show notes. And then get started at Ting by going to

linux dot ting dot com. That's awesome. It's like, that is like Christmas in July when that happens. Now you can be a cell phone hero, you know? Friends are out of data. You have someone visiting from another country. Boom, Ting's got your back.

A cell phone hero. I love it. Linux.Ting.com. Big thanks to Ting. And thank you, everybody, for supporting our sponsors. And, you know, that helps keep us going, too. All right, so every now and then I like to sit down with Barton George. You guys remember Barton.

He was the guy that really kicked the whole Sputnik project off at Dell and was an advocate and used some internal funding they had. Like there was their own seed funding internally, if you will. That's not what they called it, but it's kind of like, it was like, here's some project money. See what you can do with this. It wasn't a ton. It wasn't a ton, but with that money, Barton assembled a small team and they begun working on the Sputnik project. Well, just a ton, but with that money, Barton assembled a small team and they begun working on the Sputnik project. Well, just a few months ago, they released the seventh generation of the XPS 13. And then last week, they just updated it unusually quick to 1804. And there's been a ton of excitement

around that. So we brought Barton back to the show to do some high level talking about all this stuff. Well, a big hearty welcome back to the show to one Mr. Barton George. Barton, welcome back to the Unplugged program. My pleasure as always, Chris. This is one of the things I enjoy doing most. Oh, he says, with I'm sure 100% legitimacy. Of course. It's equal to all the podcasters. What? Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Of course. Of course. Good on you. Good on you. In fact, I'll have to tell you, there was another podcast I was going to be doing, and I don't know, they heard through the grapevine I was doing this, and they said,

oh, why don't we push it off for a little bit? Once you come on one of the Jupiter Broadcasting shows, you basically, you've met, you've reached all of the audiences, I think what that's about. Well, exactly. Exactly. There is, you know, there's no more. There's, yeah, there's no competing. So, of course, if you're here, that probably means there's some new things to talk about. And I wanted to just kind of recap with maybe a few of the general updates to the whole Sputnik line. Where have things changed? Where have things gone in the last few months? Maybe it's, what has it been, six months, almost a year since we chatted? What's changed? What's new? Well, I'm trying to remember, you guys came down here to Dell and you did the whole

shebang as far as what are we doing with regards to Linux and you did things like on the client side the server side you did our HPC stuff that was uh last April right yeah and then you did in fact that you did also the coffee maker which also runs on that's right yeah you covered the whole the whole nine yards um well since that time lots happened, in November, we celebrated our fifth anniversary. And then we, in January, we launched the seventh generation of the XPS 13. So, and that at the time launched with 1604. Fast forward to now, and we, about a month or two ago, we launched, we're starting to refresh our whole Precision line, which runs on the Precision Mobile that runs on Ubuntu. So there's

four that make up that line. In fact, I think you have one from the last gen. There's the 3530, the 5330, the 7530, and the 7730. You've got to give these some names like the Ferrari, you know, like these names that stick. No, they do. All internal code names that I never remember. In fact, yes, they actually do use like Testarossa and other various fast car names. That's great. Yeah.

So, but you have, which one did you get? Did you get the 7720? Yes, that is what it is. Exactly. I was just going to say it's almost within arm's reach, but yes, the 7720. And it's a beast of a machine. One of the things I love about it is I can throw just about any workload at that sucker and it never fails. It just churns and churns through it. I've done literally almost 40 hours of straight encoding on that machine before.

Yeah. Dang. It really holds up. Yeah. encoding on that machine before. Wow. Yeah. Dang. It really holds up. Yeah, and it just keeps getting beefier. Yeah. So, and then just to decode the 77, the 7 stands for 17-inch, the 75, the 5 stands for? I'm going to say AMD. I don't know.

I'm just taking a wild stab. No, it stands for 15 inches. But anyway... Oh, that makes way more sense. That's a good guess. And I thought you were going to Google it and find out. Oh, I should have. The 35 is the one that's the value price. And then the 5530 is the one that most developers want to get. So my favorite thing on Hacker News was somebody who wrote,

Dell makes a better MacBook Pro than Apple. And I just thought, wow, and that was the 5520 at the time was what he was talking about. And then he put, you know, didn't see that coming. So it's been great. That's just to get to wax nostalgic. When we launched originally, now a little over five years ago, it was just the XPS 13. And we just had one config. And what we got was a lot of people

saying, oh, that's cool, but that's not going to do it for me. I need something big and beefy. cool, but that's not going to do it for me. I need something big and beefy. And we kept sort of getting more and more of that feedback. And what we did was Jaron Dominguez, who's our OS architect, Linux OS architect, took one of the M3800s, that's the first precision mobile system, and in his spare time, he got Ubuntu up and running. So he posted that to his blog or to the Dell technical blog and got tons of excitement, but that didn't satiate the folks. They still wanted it to become real. And so the next year we were able to release that as a real system. So then from there, it was one system. And then we did the current line. They went from 10, and then the next generation ends in 20, which is what you have.

And as we said, now the next one is 30. Okay, so it does kind of make sense when you break it down. Oh, yeah, yeah. Once you get the decoder rigged. Once you have the key. I was looking at the original specs. The original XPS 13 Developer Edition wasn't, I mean, it wasn't bad. It was 8 gigs of RAM, 256 gigabyte SSD.

The biggest weak spot really was the screen compared to what you have now on the XPS 13. It was a 1280 by 720. We got a lot of nasty comments about that. You know, my phone has twice that, et cetera, et cetera. Luckily, we were able to fix that within two months. So we launched in the States, then two months later, when we launched in Europe, we were able to fix that within two months. So we launched in the States, then two months later when we launched in Europe, we were able to get a higher resolution screen. The other thing too is when we first were doing the beta work, it was only four gigs.

So when we got to release, it was eight gigs. So yeah, not so bad. But just to finish my linear story of what's happening, we announced the new Precision line. The 3530 was available first. That's the value one. And then the two super beefy ones, the 15-inch and the 17-inch, we announced two weeks ago. And as I said, that's the one that you have. And the other thing too,

is we're targeting the higher end, the 7730 at AI workloads. Does that mean more GPU? What does that mean, really? Yeah, it's the cards that go in there, and you're going to start getting me out of my depth. So I'll just say it was a 7-depth. Yeah, but it's like the hard—I mean, people throw it around, but there is like a hardware, a software stack that goes into it. And I find that to be really interesting because it's really a lot of it is starting on Linux. You know, like this whole AI workload and machine learning is so new. And it's, did you see, I mean, not to derail, but did you see that coming?

I didn't really quite see it being so strong a few years ago. Well, I mean, I think that's sort of where it began, right? If you think of what data scientists and people in the educational space, that's what they're going to start off with is Linux. And then they get used to it and they really like it. So it's carried over from there. And it's actually, so we've got one system on the mobile workstation, but then the four desk side ones we offer, those are also well-targeted at AI.

I mean, it seems like a sweet spot where you can do, you have both a user-friendly desktop and a production machine that can run real workloads. Exactly. And so you can do stuff locally and then you can always push it to servers on the backend. I know you were kind of wrapping this up, but before, you touched on something

to go back to your story a bit. You mentioned, you know, you shipped it with the one screen and then pretty quickly realized it needs a better screen. Prototypes had four gigs of RAM. Final version had eight gigs of RAM. There's something that kind of caught my attention with just the most recent cycle of machines is, if I'm not mistaken, they launched with 16.04, but then within a couple of months now, we're seeing a Dell sanctioned upgrade path to 1804 and I believe new units will be shipping with 1804 what's that like I mean why does how does that happen exactly because the timing of the new XPS hardware and the timing

of the 1804 release were really close together I'm imagining behind the scenes there must have been some some consternation over is it worth holding back and shipping 1804 originally or what? I'm just curious, how did that transpire? Yeah. And I think sometimes we get luckier than others depending on, right? So it was the seventh generation that we're talking about. So within those seven generations, sometimes we get lucky with the timing so that if it's, I don't know, 1404, it came out in, say, August or October. So we're pretty close to that number. And then other times, unfortunately, this is where we end up on the wrong end of the lucky factor.

Because, first of all, after it's launched, then the OEM drivers and bits like that have to be finally put together by Canonical. The OEM drivers and bits like that have to be finally put together by Canonical. And then we need to do the work. And there's a certain amount of lead time so that people think, well, gosh, your system came out in, let's just say, May. And 1804 obviously came out in April. What's the deal? What's the deal, man? Exactly. And so, unfortunately, the way that the cycle works, it comes out with what fits in the time frame of getting the release from Canonical for the OEM, as well as the whole lead time

with the product. Yeah, that makes sense. So, in the case of 1804 on the XPS 13, we're the first large OEM to launch with 1804 on the XPS 13, we're the first OEM to launch, large OEM to launch with 1804. So what we did is we wanted to, we knew the timing was coming up. And one thing I learned too, because we were taking stock the other day, we have over 150 systems that run Ubuntu. And I had no idea it was that many. When you say systems, what do you mean? Like servers, IoT devices, desktops, laptops?

No, these are just clients, right? So it would be things like Precision DeskSide and mobile as well as Impostor, Optiplex, blah, blah, blah. And just as an aside, the difference between, and we've done that now for over a decade. The difference in Sputnik is that when I pitched it, I said, you know what? Developers will really pay for our best looking system running Ubuntu. And that was counterintuitive because we had done really well with Ubuntu on some of the lower end systems and they still sell extremely well. But the idea that somebody

would be willing to pay for our highest end system, which is the XPS 13, and then put a free operating system on it, why would they want that? So that was the difference. But anyway, if I get back to, but I digress, if I get back to that 150 systems, there's a bunch that would be launching within a certain timeframe. And what we did was we said, because this is a big deal with 18.04, let's pick our flagship Ubuntu product, which is indeed the XPS 13. And so let's go and let's recertify that. And so that's how we made the choice with this one. Because traditionally, it would be just you certify once, and that's the way you stay. Yeah, that's what I was expecting. And I'm curious if you have any initial impressions

on the customer's reaction to the switch from Unity 7 to the GNOME shell environment now? Have you gotten any kind of signal on how people are receiving that, even with your own team internally or customers? You know, I haven't. I think internally, well, I won't speak for others, but I think just from my sort of high-level view, it seemed to make sense. They had gotten some traction with Unity and it was a great idea. But at some point, when you're looking to focus resources, unfortunately, you look for something that you can leverage. It's not something that you have to put a ton of resources in. And so, you know's it's interesting in the blog i did for the launching of 1804 um uh which was just last week that i i did what was since we launched with 1204 and

i wrote what was going on just quickly with a boon tube back then and that's that's when they were saying that we had that you had the HUD, but the other thing too, is that's when people were saying Unity is actually gaining traction and it looks like it might be pretty cool. Right. And just to be clear, what you're talking about is the original Sputnik launch back in 2012. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, 1204, um, the specs that you just quoted earlier on. Um, but yeah, and then as I say, fast forward to today and you have the big switch over. Um, so as with that specifically, I, I don't, I haven't heard yet from. I suppose in a way, no news is also good news at your level.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there was one comment about it, you know, usually either through comments on my blog or through Twitter, somebody, if they like or don't like something, they're pretty, they're pretty good either way of saying, oh, I'm so glad you did X or why the heck did you do Y? And I haven't really heard anything. Good. I think that's probably a good thing. I have just a couple of more questions for you and then I'm pretty much done. But the next kind of couple of questions are looking forward a little bit. I think that's probably a good thing. I have just a couple of more questions for you and then I'm pretty much done. But the next kind of couple questions are looking forward a little bit. I've been really kind of pondering this whole Chromebooks running Linux apps situations. It seems like all of a sudden Google has figured out what you figured out more than five years ago with Sputnik. And that is that you can hyper-target this developer market

with a reliable Linux workstation. And now they're adding the capability on Chrome OS to actually run Linux applications. So you could run things that you normally would have to have a full Linux desktop for. Do you perceive that as competition to the Sputnik line? And I guess another way to frame that is, why would I necessarily buy an XPS 13 over, say, a future Chromebook in a year or so from now that has pretty decent specs, maybe is $300 and can run Linux applications? Yeah, I think, well, it's interesting

because they obviously took the idea from us. I think so. Five years ago, when we were looking to sanity check this, we went out and talked to them. So they stole the idea. They just waited five years to act on it, right? I mean, it was insidious.

But, you know, I think at this point, I think you're talking about Fuchsia as opposed to Cristini with the running of the Linux apps. And Cristini is the one where, and I don't know a ton about this, I can just throw these names around, is the one that's more developer targeted.

And so I think there will be certain use cases that Chromebook will be fine, but there will also be, you know, they're going to be different a year from now, as will we, right? We keep progressing. We're not standing still. And it will be interesting to see which areas in particular they'll target. I know just from anecdotally, my cousin works on backend systems at Google. And so when he started there, he wanted to get a Ubuntu-based system. And then he found out that you really can't work locally.

And so he just got a Chromebook. So it depends on what kind of a use case you're using. If all you're doing is connecting back in, then you really don't need something powerful. But if you're doing a lot of hacking on the plane or on the train or at conferences, then that's something like the XPS 13 makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I think just like macOS, only more pronounced Chrome OS has walls that more technical users will run into pretty quickly,

and that can be a source of frustration. And something like the XPS 13 is a tool to do your job, and it's worth investing in the right tool. So I don't think it spells doom for anything, but it is interesting to see Google executing on what is clearly a Dell idea. I mean, it just, it just, it looks like it from just the outsider's perspective, even, which is fascinating. I wonder what took them so long, you know? Well, exactly. They were just trying, they were plotting and they were trying to figure it out. And then one day, boom. They're waiting to see if you made any money and sold some units.

Yeah, exactly. In the first couple of years, it looked like it wasn't, but yeah, And one day, boom! They're waiting to see if you made any money and sold some units. And then they realize. Yeah, exactly. In the first couple of years, it looked like it wasn't. But yeah, no, we've all of a sudden, it's gone like a hockey stick. It's crazy with Sputnik. And I think it's because it's the network effect, right? So it's more of a word of mouth. We haven't bought any Super Bowl ads yet, although we will this year. That was a spoiler. I shouldn't have told you that.

Really? Yeah, a Sputnik Super Bowl ad. I'm paying for it out of my own pocket. No, you're joking now. No, no, totally. Totally. Gosh, you got me excited. You got me excited there. Well, we'll do a Kickstarter. Go fund me. That is exactly what it's going to say. So if you want to see us in the Super Bowl, please, it's under Barton George, move to Bermuda account. That's just sort of a way we've set it up. Yeah, it seems legit.

Yeah, exactly. So, again, I digress. But I was just talking about how things have done, how it's really going up, which is real. It's really nice. It's been really gratifying. I bet. in the beginning, there's quite a few people who saw this as a distraction because any company, you've got X number of resources and why are you going to put them on this niche market as they saw it with a group that Dell really doesn't target or work with, meaning developers. And then now it's the money we've made, but also the amount of positive feedback, thanks to the community, reviews and press, et cetera. It's been great. I mean, the things that people say on Twitter are

just, they're awesome. It's really nice to know that there's a group that really was looking for something just like this. Yeah. And it has net positive brand effects for Dell. I think it really does. Even outside the core market that the Sputnik is targeting. Yeah, I've seen comments where people saying that, I didn't consider Dells before, but now that you got this, I'm very interested in checking out Dell. So that's been great.

It's also because it's a net new area for us. We weren't cannibalizing Windows. Right, interesting. That's a great. It's also because it's a net new area for us. We aren't cannibalizing Windows systems. Right. Interesting. That's a good point. And that turns out to be pretty important politically, I imagine. Well, Barton, I always enjoy our chats. Is there anything else you want to touch on or mention?

I'll have a link to your blog and your Twitter profile in our show notes so people can get that pretty easily. notes so people can get that pretty easily. Yeah, I think the one thing I would say is the interest in this, in the 1804 release on the XPS 13 developer edition, I had no idea it would have generate this much interest because the platform itself has been around since January. You know, it's 1804. Great. That makes sense. But I mean, this is like, just for example, the first day I posted my blog, I got 8,000 views. The next day I got 13,000 views. And the days before, I'm looking at 122 views, 73 views, 127. So, and this happens with anything Sputnik I post, it's exponential compared to the others.

But this is, this in and of itself, just in these first few days has put it in my top 10 blogs. And like I said, I didn't think this was going to be a big deal. I didn't think people were going to be that interested. So shows how much I know. There's something about the two combined that just makes a hot pair. Yeah, there's been a lot of interest we've seen in the audience from 1804 as well, and I follow with a lot of interest too. I think a lot of people right now,

I don't know, maybe I'm projecting, but I think a lot of people are looking at their next few years wanting to get work done, and 1804 kind of landed right in that window for a lot of folks. Yeah, and then we obviously standardized on the enterprise the LTSs, as would make sense, because particularly if you're selling to enterprises, they're not going to want the interim releases and have everything change every six months. Yeah, exactly. And plus, this is why 18.04 is still kind of the freshest. It's still new, so it's still competitive features-wise and all of that.

And it's had time to bake a little more, you know, now that it's stable and most of the bugs are ironed out. Yeah, the.1 shipped. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so because the timing wasn't kind to us, we were able to recertify, particularly given, like I said, we're the first to certify in 1804 and this is our flagship. So we really went out of our way. We could have put it on one of the ones that was more likely to ship at this point. So we really went out of our way. We could have put it on one of the ones that was more likely to ship at this point. So we've got one coming up soon, but we said, let's make a real effort to go a little bit before that and do it on the XPS 13. Very good, Barton. Very good. I really enjoy our chats and I'm really pleased to see the continued upward trajectory of the project.

Well, that's great, Barton. Have a great rest of your day, sir, and thank you very much for coming on the Unplugged program. Well, thanks for the opportunity, Chris. Keep on keeping on. We will, Wes. Are we sure? He can't stop us. No, he can't stop us.

Now, we have so many other things to talk about, but I do kind of want to keep the show a little bit shorter. I've been trying to keep it under an hour and 15 or so, so we'll probably leave a few things for the show notes. But it was a super great chat with Barton, and I'm really pleased to see the progress of their project. Now, we need some, like, balance in the show for, like, next week. So if somebody from Red Hat wants to come on and talk about, I don't know, CoreOS or something, I mean, let's just balance it out a little bit, because we had a lot of Ubuntu this episode.

You know, and that's, well, it's fine. It's a great product, obviously. Core OS or something. I mean, let's just balance it out a little bit. Because we had a lot of Ubuntu this episode. And that's, well, it's fine. It's a great product, obviously. Here's the platform. I feel like we've got to, yeah. Or maybe we should have somebody come on here and talk about, not Gentoo, we've done that plenty. I don't know. But it's something we'll think about.

In the meantime, let's talk about some app picks. We've got a couple for you that we wanted to cover before we get out of here. And what is more fun than stressing the hell out of your system? So we got an app for you. I'm going to call it S2E? S-T-U-I? The Stress Terminal UI. Yeah, and you've got it installed on your machine over there.

It is a super slick looking, is it technically a terminal app? Yeah, it runs right in that there terminal. It's a terminal app. It's a Python terminal app? Yeah. It runs right in that there terminal. It's a terminal app. It's a Python terminal app that runs right in your terminal. And it's going to be some of the coolest looking visuals to visualize out the utilization of your system, like CPU frequency, temperature, overall clock utilization, and the power it's drawing in this really tight looking UI. How would you, I mean, you almost described it as like pastel colors. I don't really know how to describe that.

Yeah, the color scheme is lovely. Yeah, it's nice. And it's not going to like bombard you with a whole ton of information about just every little process on your system. It just gives you a nice, easy-to-interpret, holistic view of what's happening. And it kind of works best with a companion tool, right? Yeah, if you also have stress-testing tools available, then you can stress-test your system and then watch how it responds.

And that sounds like the most fun, right? Is when you get a new box, which I have fantasies of. I could also see maybe you have a couple boxes you're evaluating, maybe for a big enterprise buy or just because you're a picky consumer. Heck yeah, man. You got to try it out. You got to try it out. This is a simple tool that Joe found that we're going to include in the show. It's called Odeo. And it does one gotta try it out this is a simple tool that joe found that we're going to include in the show it's called audio and it does one job and it does it pretty

well you copy a youtube url you paste it in the terminal you run this program and it extracts the audio from it and that's it so if you got like mp4 audio you want to get from it or something like that audio will download your favorite music to the current working directory of your terminal and try to get the highest quality audio version it can off of YouTube. It does depend on your favorite YouTube DL and FFmpeg utilities, but it's pretty nice. And you could just install those from the repo and then go get Odeo. Yeah, this looks like, I mean, I'll be honest, that's definitely a common workflow for me. Oh, I do it all the time, yeah. Mostly for Unfiltered, but absolutely, I do it all the time.

Now, we're rocking it here. I think we may overshoot, but we're moving right along. Last but not least, this is a really cool tool that Joe also found. And it's not going to work for all of our shows yet, but it may work if you want to go pretty far back for our shows and a bunch of your favorite podcasts. It's called rewind.website. Hey, there's speaking of top level domains. There's a good one. And it is a really cool concept. You go back in time and listen to a podcast from its very beginning. You can also put an iTunes URL in there or a SoundCloud URL in there. So the whole idea, and it's the course,

by the way, the core code's up on GitHub, which we have linked in the show notes. The whole idea is start with a podcast from the very beginning and then choose the frequency in which you would like new versions of that episode to be delivered to you. So you sort of re-experience it as if you were listening during the time those episodes are being released. So you sort of re-experience it as if you were listening during the time those episodes are being released. So you can set a wait frequency of daily, weekly, and monthly, and then it will deliver you a new episode from the back catalog of your favorite podcast. Oh, that's super handy. Yeah, and I love that it's AGPL. You can go find it. You can go run it yourself if you don't want to trust them to run it for you.

Yeah, yeah. The rewind.website is sort of like a demo, really. I mean, it's up and running. It appears they're offering it as a service. But you can get Cast Rewinder for your own system and then get it up and running. Again, another Python app. It's the best of all worlds. Look at us. We're all Python for the app picks, just about.

So that's a neat idea. So you can check it out, rewind.website, or go to the GitHub page and throw it up on your own box if you're comfortable with Python. And yeah, like Wes said, it's AGPL version 3 if you want to host it yourself. And I think that is such a neat idea to resubscribe and relisten.

It's, oh man, is it painful. You know, when you're used to marathoning something and you listen to it weekly, you're like, how do people do this? I know, right? But in that suffering, there is some amount of gain and appreciation, and you won't just take it for granted. Yeah, yeah. So anyways, you can check those out in the show notes,

linuxunplugged.com slash 260. And yeah, there we go. We're going to get out of here on our own imposed deadline, not because we want to do less show, but simply because we know you have a lot of podcast options, and sometimes it's good to get a little tighter in here. So I'm pretty pleased. I think it's a good place, and there's a lot more to talk about.

There's more to do. We may put it all in the post show, but in the meantime, go get yourself some more Wes Payne. Where are you at, Wes? TechSnap.Systems or at Wes Payne. There you go. There you go. You can also get more of me at Chris Elias, the whole network at Jupiter Signal. And check our website for links to Brent's page.

I think we're going to start putting other folks on there from the community as well. So if you want to get more of them, find out what they're up to, what their websites are. That's all going to be posted at LinuxUnplugged.com as well. So it's going to be a pretty great resource because we also have links to all that stuff that we talked about. Hey, did you know you can join us live? You can participate in that virtual lug. You just need a working microphone, some headphones, pass the audio check, and then you can join us. Check it out. Oh! next Tuesday. There, I got it in there. Nice.

How's that, Brent? Thank you. That and a bell ring would make the show. Oh, okay, all right. There you go. Thank you. You got the actual bell, too. Yeah, all right.

Boy, I'm really glad I worked out with Barton because he has meetings and peoples and things like that. Important laptop related business. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. And they're in the middle of prepping the next release. So that was cool. I loved how he talked about the community feedback, how he's so, so positive. And that was a bit opposite to what we heard last week about that Hiri stuff. So that was good to hear. Very good point. Would you like me to put the word out uh asking for somebody from core os well or anybody in the area yeah they would like to come on and get some representation talk about something they're working on or anything like that absolutely i would love that i will drop a message in one of the internal mailing lists and let you know what

happens thank you yeah amazing and you know you could say, uh, I mean, legitimately, uh, canonical and Ubuntu are a big part of the discussion because they're showing up and, uh, that is, Hey, you got me. I know. And I really appreciate that really put in part because of that. Um, uh, because, uh, there's not an inherent intent to, to cover one, uh, company or distribution more than the other. Yeah. It's the Ubuntu action show up in here. Well, it's always going to be balanced on its dominance in the market and the news making.

I mean, if it's legitimately making news and dominating markets, then it's going to get coverage regardless. But if there was other folks here like yourself that are representing other distributions and other community projects, I think it would be good for the show. The thing is, we're not as enterprise-y focused on this show, are we, as Red Hat's core is going to be. Yeah, I appreciate that.

But that doesn't mean that we can't make something work.