LINUX Unplugged - Episode 263: Updates from the Source

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

Docker controversy is brewing, but it's probably not what you think. We get around of community updates directly from the source, and why Debian an Intel are playing the game of he said, she said. Special Guests: Brent Gervais, Cassidy James Blaede, Danielle Foré, and Martin Wimpress.

This is Linux Unplugged, episode 263 for August 21st, 2018. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's pushing all of the buttons, installing the distros, and just happy to be here to talk about free software. My name is Chris. My name is Wes. Hello, Wes. It's good to be with you, sir. I hope you're feeling well. Oh, yeah. This smoke isn't getting to you? It's very smoky. I do feel cold smoked, but I'm persevering and more tasty. Yeah, we have some smoke in the Washington area. It is thick out there, but that doesn't stop the Linux content coming down the pipe to you. Coming up on this week's episode of the Unplugged program, Docker has found itself in a bit of a controversy and it's probably not the one you're thinking about. It's one Canonical found themselves in a long, long, long time ago, and it's one that sometimes our friends over at Elementary OS get a hard time

about. But somehow, when it's Docker, it's egregious. We'll tell you about that. Plus, Flatpak has a big release. They're making a big stink. Some new features and some really exciting stuff is coming down the pipe for Flatpak. We'll cover a couple of cool apps. We'll get an update on some community events like Academy, OgCamp 18, and one that's up just around the corner. And then, at the end of the show, it seems there's a bit of a dispute between Intel and Debian

when it comes to distributing those firmware updates that are fixing all of those problems, like Meltdown. You see, in the last couple of months, there's been some changes in licensing verbiage and the Debian project is calling Intel out. We'll tell you what's going on there and why Intel says, guys, guys, guys, there's nothing to worry about. And then let's get your life in order. Let's document things. We'll give you a way to create your own man pages in seconds on your Linux box. That's some stuff. I'm excited. And also, we have a full stack today. We have a full stack. So first of all, let's start with Brent. Brent is here. Hey, Brent. Hey, guys. How's it going? Good, good. And the mumble room is here. Hello, virtual lug.

Hello. We got a wimpy in there. We got Joe in there. We got Dan and Cassidy from Elementary OS in there today. Plus, just some favorites in there, like Mr. Mac is in there as always. Thomas from KDE is joining us to talk about Academy here in a little bit. So we just have a full room. I can't see everybody in the room, but I can see a lot of names in there. That's a good list. So let's kick things off with the news. And that is that Docker is upsetting a lot of people.

You see, Wes, they made a little change. They made a change on how downloads work. If you're downloading the Mac version or the Windows version of Docker, you now must provide your email address before you can download Docker. That you have to go through an email address that is associated with the Docker store. So you also would have to then, I suppose, make a Docker store account. Oh man, is this like one of those white papers that no one ever wants to download ever? Nope, it is Docker Community Edition, like the full Docker software.

The regular Docker install. To get that free software, you now have to log in with your store account. That's a big change, or at least it seems like it to the end user. What's their motivation here? Well, so when it was brought out to them, they said, okay, all right, well, we appreciate that this is bothering you, and we understand that this can feel like a nuisance, but we've made this change to make sure we can improve the Docker for Mac and Windows experience for users moving forward.

So the things don't need to change. We'll just close this issue. But you can feel free to continue to comment. You know, because they're going to improve your experience. You know, what's funny is like this was an issue. But then when that line started to help improve your experience, then it just blew up. Because it turns out anybody who's clever enough to use Docker is clever enough to read through a marketing line when they see one. Yeah, I think so. And so the controversy really is around two things number one that people that they're using this bullshit to improve your experience line and number two

is that it is putting essentially uh free software behind um a docker store account like a docker hub account and you have to log into that hub account to download the software now presumably you could still compile it for yourself. That's just not something users on those platforms are very much accustomed to doing. Right. And it's not like they're going to go

app get it on Windows. Do we have any sympathy, either you, Chris, or anyone in the Mumble room, for the desire? You know, we've been talking about elementary efforts. We've talked about Ubuntu

wanting more information from user installs. Is there any legitimate purpose to the side of, you know, we just want more information? And does this process actually give them that? Yeah. Like what information that's. So I, I, you know, I, I joked in the intro that both canonical and elementary OS have kind of gotten, um, heat for something similar. And that is, you know, a download button where there's a

dollar amount that you can enter. That got people all kinds of upset too. Now there's, you don't have to sign up and you could just hit zero and download. But so I guess let's start there. I'm kind of curious to know what the elementary OS guys, so Dan, what do you think about this, this move? And do you see a big difference between putting it behind a suggested pay what you want and putting it behind an account where you have to have like an account on their service?

I think requiring an account makes it a lot harder. I think we should encourage the monetization of software, especially if it's things we care about, because we want them to be around, we want them to be long-lasting. We don't want, especially for really visible projects like Docker, you don't want them to be controlled by special interests.

So Cassidy, I'm curious to know what you think about the messaging aspect of this. It seems like whenever you make a move like this, you put free software behind a level of nuisance, as they put it. You really have to manage the messaging. You know, you really have to be careful in how you handle that. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it's always really hard, especially when you're coming from a place where you're making a change. You know, you had this thing before and you could get it one way before and now you've making a change. You know, you had this thing before, and you could get it one way before, and now you've made a change, and now you have to provide more information or something to get it.

That's a really tough move. You know, when we basically rephrased our download to be paying for elementary OS, we were really careful to always say you're paying for elementary OS. You're not being heavily encouraged to optionally download or, you know, optionally donate or something. We just said you're paying for it. And but, you know, people people didn't like that either, too. So it's it's always really tough. Hmm. Well, let's just keep moving right along and let's talk about Flatpak 1.0. It's a big release from the team this week. And Flatpak

1.0 comes with a collection of new features that application developers can take advantage of. The number one thing that will probably make a big change in your life is developers can now mark their apps as end of life, which would indicate they're no longer supported. There is a new mechanism for apps to restart themselves, which is useful if they have to get access to something. So a prompt comes up, says, can I have access to this? And you say yes. And furthermore, Flatpak has seen a lot of stability improvements. Some of the biggest changes, though, are the ecosystem. Flatpak Hub has seen some nice updates. There's more and more apps on there now. And they're pretty proud of this release. There's several different posts

about it. And one feature that jumped out at me that I would like to poke wimpy about is this new portal system that allows apps to create sandboxes and then restart themselves. It allows applications to restart after they've been updated to start using a newer version or to increase sandboxing for parts of the application. Is this, Wimpy, is this this, I've been hearing about this XGD portal, I think it's called, which is like a system where applications could request access to, say, the camera. And then the user at the time that goes to get a prompt at the time that tried to access the camera and the user would accept or deny. So like you see in your web browser. Have you heard of this? Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with this. And we did some work with upstream flat

pack a few months ago. So that portal integration exists in snaps as well. Oh, that was my next question. Yeah, so we're all playing nicely in the same sound pit there. Yeah, I like to hear that. That's really great. I want to know more about Flatpak's peer-to-peer installs option. That's not something I'm very familiar with either. That seems like it could be interesting.

Another note here, they've gone the opposite way of Dropbox. They no longer require a file system that has extended attributes. Nice. Now, most of the things when we talk about Flatpak, they tend to be pretty technical in topic. The Flatpak team seems to really like to talk about the technical details. I mean, and those are important to get right. But you're right. That has been a lot of the messaging, maybe less so than some of their competitors.

Yeah. Like when you hear about snaps, you hear about snap packages. You hear about new applications. You don't often hear a lot about the technology. I mean, it's there if you go digging for it. It's all out there. You have a drink with a certain Mr. Martin Wimpress and then it comes out. Yeah.

So I thought that was interesting, just a different kind of communication mode. But here's a little bit of the non-technical stuff wrote by Alexander Larson. He writes, most of my blog posts are about technical details. But the reason for the existence of Flatpak is not technical. I created Flatpak because the Linux application desktop ecosystem

is fundamentally broken. As an app developer, you have no sane way to distribute the results of your work to users. Unless you have massive resources, the only realistic way is to wait for distributions

to pick up your app. But we know that's riddled with issues. There's many problems there. Not all distros will pick up an app, first of all. And when they do, it's often a chicken and the egg problem where there's maybe like a web API that has to get updated, but you have to have a different version of PHP on the back end. And so there's like this

multi-tier dependency situation that can sometimes block app updates. Right. Some applications just are not well-structured in a way, not bad in general, but just in a way that traditional Linux applications are structured. Yeah, and you also have this inevitable disconnect and middleman between the application developer and end user. So if you have a bug in Mumble, let's say,

you probably should be first checking the Ubuntu bug tracker or the Fedora bug tracker for Mumble and see what the packager has in there and see if it's a Fedora. And then you get a reply back saying, oh, this is an upstream bug. And then as an end user, you go upstream. And I think this is a huge reason

why we have all of these freeloaders of free software because it's just, it's tedious. It's tedious and it's almost just too disconnected. And so with Flatpak, the goal is for the upstream developer to have control of updates. If the developer fixes an important bug, a new stable version is released so that users can immediately use it.

Any bugs filed will be against the latest stable version. So the other thing that really does mean, I guess if you break it down, is that it means when you report bugs as a user, it's useful to you. There's a direct connection and you get immediate feedback and you get an immediate state, a new state of the app. And I think that's really a good thing for a lot of type of applications. But we are witnessing a fundamental paradigm shift in how software is deployed on Linux. And we've seen other fundamental paradigm shifts before,

and we've survived just fine. So it's nothing to get, you know, concerned about. But the repo model truly is a sysadmin model. And Flatpaks and Snaps and Docker images and app images, any way, you know, that you can easily distribute software and get it going is really the developer can easily distribute software and get it going is really the developer model to distribute software. And in the past, the sysadmins acted as a gatekeeper. The repo was like an approved application. Now, in practice, was it really that? Probably not,

right? I mean, really, come on, let's be honest. People are probably just rushing to get the work in there sometimes. They're not like doing extensive tests. That's not true for all distros, but it's probably the case for some. But it does represent a fundamental shift here. You know, you had to be root. You had to have access to the package management system. The operating system was tracking all of those packages. And you were in control of when you updated them or didn't update them.

Now, with a lot of these things, Chrome started it really early on on Windows and Mac, but you've just seen it take off. You've seen it take off. I'm struggling to think of a couple of examples on Linux desktop that currently auto update that aren't snaps. I can't think of any. It just really hasn't taken off on the Linux desktop side, auto update of applications. Maybe some Electron apps, but those are bringing some methods from their other environments. No, no. So with Electron, the only auto-update mechanism that exists

is for Windows and macOS, unless you're publishing, you know, via one of the container formats that supports updates. Okay. So this is a big shift, And how do we feel about that? I think I'm good with it. You know, because you got to keep in mind these things are containered.

They have restricted access. They're not updating all of the libraries on your system. They're not necessarily dependent on what version of GTK or Qt you have installed. So all of the reasons why you needed a master orchestrator

to orchestrate your packages are beginning to get chipped away. The only real argument I can still have here with it and concern would be, well, you're fundamentally taking away my control. Obviously, I could disable those update features, but defaults reign supreme. What do you think about that lack of control? Fundamentally, think about your computer.

How would you feel if we got to a point in a couple of years where the majority of your desktop applications were just self-updating all the time? How would you feel about that? I mean, I think in many ways we are there just in that so much of what we use is really just a slim front-end for back-end servers and we don't control the rollouts of those APIs

or that software hardly at all. You are right. I think you are trading some control, or at least easy understandability. Now, most cases, you still have all of that, at least for open source things packaged with these formats, but you're right. It was a time with a sysadmin where you could carefully

craft, you could seal your dependencies, you knew that, oh, yes, you've got all this dynamic linking, and here's my one little app that I run. I trust all my system libraries that are maintained in a sane way, and it all kind of just fit together, at least if you had the software you needed. The developer mindset of today, or really just the idea of, I'm getting this package. I know I'm getting it from this developer. I don't need the middleman. I just want it to work. So as long as you trust the upstream that you're getting those updates on, it might be a good thing, right? And there might be a little then more too of, you didn't have

to wait as the developer for your distribution to pick like, oh yeah, this, we're pushing out a new release, and this looks like a good version of this over here. We'll pull in that version. You get to decide, hey, it's time. I feel good about this. It's stable. Have at it. I do like that. That's why, you know, sometimes you'll have

stable versions of a Snap, and you'll have an edge version, but Brent, I'm like that. That's why, you know, sometimes you'll have like stable versions of a snap and you'll have an edge version. But Brent, Brent, I'm curious to know what you think, you know, using your computer as a professional photo workstation, you would, I would imagine, be a little alarmed if you opened up Darktable or something one day and it was a totally different UI. For anybody who's doing production, I think that it's critical to know that your system isn't changing under you. And so if you're, you know, on a deadline or something like that, then I don't know if this auto update is exactly what you will want to have happen without some kind of schedule, right? And so I know one thing I hear so often on the Windows side of things is that that Windows update just

kills everybody during, you know, presentations. We've all seen it, right? Just trying to get stuff done, and all of a sudden your computer changes under you. I think a core part of the difference there is the containerization and sandboxing, right? Chris, you've certainly experienced it. You did a bad Arch update way too close to a show, or maybe I did in reality, and your system is not quite hosed. But unless you've done a lot of other work to do a rollback, you just don't have that option, and maybe you've tainted a lot of things work to do a rollback, you just don't have that option. And maybe you've tainted a lot of things on your system with a flat pack.

Not so. Within the concept of snaps, there's a couple of things to bear in mind there. First of all, if an update happens beneath a running application, then that doesn't kill or destroy the application that you're using. or destroy the application that you're using. The update happens in a new revision, and the next time you restart, close, rerun the application, then the update that happened in the background is applied effectively. And also, as an application publisher, you can take advantage of a facility called Tracks.

So if you have major versions that introduce new and potentially breaking features then you can publish tracks by by version or whatever so that you know as a conservative user if you've opted into the 1.0 release you can stay with that for as long as you want and then you make the decision to jump from the 1.0 release to the 2.0 release for example whereas if you want just security fixes like everyone does i want those automatically features and you know improvements and maybe even bug fixes not so sure about but if it's security patches i want those while i'm not even at my computer. Right. And so, you know, the publisher will be producing their 1.0 dot, you know, whatever minor version, and they would push their bug fixes and security fixes in there.

And then you can choose when you want to hop onto the, you know, the new release train via a track. And there are lots of publishers that are using that mechanism. It will soon be possible with snaps to also install different versions of the same snap in parallel side-by-side, so you can have the old version and the future version installed side-by-side. Yeah, all right. We've got to move on,

but I'm going to give Dan the last word on this. So, Dan, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think something we also got to consider is that we're coming from a world where we're used to applications only really being able to be updated every six months or every year or whatever your distro release cycle is. And app developers that are targeting the Linux desktop

have really long release cycles. Mainstream apps that are already used to faster release cycle models or software as a service and things like that. They're used to doing more incremental changes. I think we're going to see more developers doing incremental changes. I don't think you're going to see like big, massive reworks of entire things that break your workflow. It's going to be little tweaks and refinements and you won't really notice changes like really rapidly. That makes sense. And it would probably be much well received by

end users. You know, small incremental changes, just steady improvements. It's also easier to get some feedback and make quick course corrections that way as well. Yeah. All right. I know we have more to talk about it. Maybe we can jump in in the post show if we have time. But I just wanted to give you a couple of picks just from Flatpak while we're talking

about Flatpak and Flatpak Hub. And the first one is PulseFX. PulseFX is an audio manipulation tool. And it's really great because if you just want to pop on a compressor or do a high pass or a low pass on some audio or run it through an EQ, like maybe you got a podcast that's a little hard to understand or something like that, PulseFX will do that for you. And then on the Snap side, I noticed a new Snap package came out this week that looks really neat. I always like having like an alternative web browser. Like I've got my main browser, which is Firefox, and I've got Chrome, and I even have Opera installed.

And the Opera would be like the one that I do like that one-off log into or, you know, when it's like minimum extension, so it's always really fast. You've got a lot of, maybe you've got a big session going, you want just another mindset. Yeah. I noticed there is a tabless browser that just showed up in the Snap Store. I'm looking for the name for it right now. I don't know if you happen to know it off the top of your head, Wimpy, by any chance. It's Calibri. Calibri.

Yeah. And it's a little hard to find when you search for Calibri. So if you want to Google it, search for like Calibri browser or just do a Snap Find. And that looked pretty neat too. So that joins Opera recently as several browser options in the Snap Store. It's pretty neat. It makes it real easy when you want to bootstrap a new system, that's for sure. Yeah. All right. So there is some community news. We're going to do a tight episode today because I got to get out of here for a doctor's appointment just in about a half

hour. So it's going to be like a tight show. So I want to get to Academy this week because that just wrapped up and Thomas has joined us. He is a board member over at KDE and he went to Academy. And so we thought we'd use this opportunity to pick his brain about what Academy is and what kind of happened there and why KDE has an event like this and all that stuff. So Thomas, welcome to Linux Unplugged. Yeah, thank you. Hi. Hi. So why don't we start with a little bit about yourself and then we'll get to Academy. Okay. Yeah, so I've been in the KDE community since about 10 years or so.

And I've actually joined in the user experience usability team since now two years I've been on the board of directors of KDEV, which is the official organization of KDE. And we do things like, for example, organize the academy, which is the yearly KDE community and contributors conference. Very good. So if I recall correctly, it's a two-day event within like a couple of days or a few days of workshops and whatnot and birds of a feather sessions

and things like that. So what's the goal of Academy? Is this really like a time to bring people under the KDE umbrella together in one spot? Yeah, exactly. That's about it. So it's, as you said, the two days of regular conference with talks where people just update the continuity on what they've been up to.

It can be application developers, plasma developers, designers. It's really just seeing what others have been doing. And then this is followed, as you said, by what you call both days, seeing what others have been doing. And then this is followed, as you said, by the what you call WoF Days, which is workshops and just communities discussing what they plan for the upcoming year. Or just some people gathering around a specific topic and just trying to come up with new ideas.

Yeah, absolutely. So give me an idea of what got done this year at Academy. One very interesting thing this year was that we had several hardware vendors at Academy who are going to use our technology in the near future. So we had Pine64 who are making an ARM-based cheap laptop who are now going to use Plasma as a desktop available on there. We had Mycroft who, as you probably all know, are making desktop AI and virtual digital assistant. And they've become interested in us when one of us created an integration of Mycroft

into Plasma Desktop and are now looking into more tighter cooperation with us. And we also had Slimbook, who have now been doing the second KDE-focused laptop. And we also had Purism, who will offer Plasma Mobile as one of the operating systems for their new phone. And yeah, having all of them at Academy was really interesting

because they also talked among each other and thought about how they could collaborate and also learned about what kind of ways they could use our technology in their hardware. So that is something which is fairly new for us and it's really exciting to be working together with the industry, with hardware vendors. No kidding. Yeah, I bet.

That sounds like it was immensely valuable to have everybody there and have specifically those hardware folks there. That is really exciting to see that interest in KDE and I assume the Plasma desktop too. So one of the number one questions that always comes into the show whenever we mention, oh, Academy happened, is do you release any of the talks or any of the sessions or any videos of the event? Yeah, we do. So it's all on the Academy website. If you go, I think they're

not available yet, but they will be available sometime in the coming weeks. Just go to the academy.kde.org website, then go to the program, and then you have all the sessions, and then, yeah, there's the video and the slides if the presenter has uploaded them. But definitely the video is available for all the talks. Great. And it moves around, right? So I imagine it'll be somewhere different next year?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. We haven't decided on a location yet. So if somebody has an idea and has a team of people who would like to host an academy, then yeah, we're still open for suggestions. And yeah, so far it's been always within Europe, but we're also open to any locations outside of Europe. So it will be interesting to see where Academy will happen next year. All right, Canada, you heard it here first.

Canada, you could totally host Academy next year. I'm just saying. Brent, you could get that going, right? We're going to work on it. I'll see what I can do. I'll talk to my people. You should all get in one big room, chat it out. I'm totally back seeing this now before Popey hears about it.

Yeah, he went. I was going to, I'm hoping to hear hiseing this now before Popey hears about it. Yeah, he went. I was going to – I'm hoping to hear his impressions on the Ubuntu podcast soon because – You will hear all about Popey's impressions of Academy on Thursday when we release the next episode of the Ubuntu podcast. Well, I will, as always, be listening because I'd be curious to hear that. Well, Thomas, thank you for coming on and telling us about it. Is there anything else you want to relay to the audience? I'll have academy.kde.org linked in the show notes so people can check that out and keep an eye out for when the videos come. Is there like any other resources they should probably know about? There's also dot.kde.org, which is our main news site and which

had a summary of each day and both the conference days and of the both days. So that can also be a quick entrance point. I see. And there's some video up there too. Yeah. All right. Dot.kde.org, which is something people, if you're a Plasma and KDE fan, something you should be checking out. Anyways, well, Thomas, thank you very much for coming on and taking the time to tell us about it. Sounds like it was a great event. I'm really happy to hear that. Now, while we're talking about community events, I would like to pick Mr. Wimpy's brain,

and perhaps Joe, if he wants to share with the class too, about OgCamp, which is another event that I have not been to. OgCamp just wrapped up, OgCamp 18, on August 18th and August 19th in 2018. And it sounds like it's a pretty fun event, at least according to the guys' voices, which sounds like they had a little too much to drink. So why don't we start with Wimpy? How was your trip to Ogg Camp, Wimpy?

Well, as always, brilliant fun. So started on the Friday. I rolled out the Ubuntu podcast battle bus, picked Popey up from the local station. Then we drove to meet mark at his house and then all the way up to sheffield and then uh out for the social event on the on the friday evening the first meet up at old camp which took place in a pub in the town center and we pretty much took over the whole top floor of uh of this pub which was which was good nice to see people you don't see very often,

like Joe, for example. I only see Joe maybe two or three times a year. So good to catch up with Joe. Yeah. Now, what actually happens there, though? I mean, what you just told me was you went out and had a good time. And that is part of what happens, right?

Isn't it, Joe? That's everything that happened for me, I'm afraid. Honesty to the last. Yeah, yeah. Why is that a bad thing, though, really? I mean, if you go in there, you have a good time hanging out with Linux folks. It's worth it, right? Yeah, I just made the mistake that I drank too much on the Friday and then ended up not actually waking up in time to see any of the talks

and then making the exact same mistake on the Saturday. But thankfully, Wimpy and Popy and Co. actually managed to get up. So, yeah, fill me in, man. I was there, but I didn't see any of it. So what did I miss? So, OgCamp is a free culture unconference. And the organizers do arrange, like, a talk every hour or so so that there is something happening on the main stage so

if you just turn up and everyone's feeling shy there is something to sort of see and learn from so there were three stages the the main auditorium and two smaller stages and then there was also a coda dojo which was run by ben Nuttall from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. And that was basically a full weekend of teaching kids how to get started with programming and make interesting Raspberry Pi projects. And it was just chock full of games controllers and micro bits and robot parts and projecting equipment and musical instruments and all manner of stuff that they were, you know, furiously plugging together and hacking about with and making projects out of it. It was pretty fantastic to see. I bet. And then in terms of the talks, there's obviously the scheduled talks.

Some of those this year included somebody talking about, you know, configuration management via the various tools that exist and giving people a primer on that. And one of my favorite talks was by a guy who was running mainframe emulators on a Raspberry Pi, which is just brilliant fun. Yeah, really good fun. So if you think that, you know, those are the two extremes of what you can expect to find and everything in between. You know, a little bit about, you know, cooperative organizations and, you know, the free culture and open source communities.

and the free culture and open source communities. And I think one or two live podcasts this year. So we did a big mashup with Joe. So that will be coming out on Joe's channel. He'll have details about that. And most of the podcasts in the UK sort of meet there, and some of them do their live shows from our camp as well. I'm only just a little bit jealous, Chris.

I know, I know, me too. I was like, ah, ah, I want to go one of these days. One of these days, I'll just come hang out. One of these years, anyway. Yeah, I want to ride in the battle bus. Me too. That sounds like a good time. The battle bus is fully Wi-Fi operational with power sockets for all popular makes

and models of laptops. Very nice. That is a battle bus. That is a bus that's designed for an event. It probably is. Now, I guess I should also give a mention to Foscon. I won't be there, but I thought I'd mention it. It's going to be in Philadelphia, and it's coming up very soon.

So go check this out, foscon.us if you want to go. And they are doing it, I think, August 25th. Yep, August 25th. So if you are in the Philadelphia area and would like to go to a free open source software-focused event, Foscon 2018 in the International House of Philadelphia. Huh. How about that, Wes? Looks like it should be a good time. I don't suppose you're just going to randomly be in Philadelphia in a couple days.

Alas, no. No, no, no, probably not. No, no. No, neither will I. But it does look like a good time. For everyone who's lucky enough to be around that area. So what's the verdict? Is there going to be an Ogg camp? Is this an Ogg camp?

Is it going strong? Is there an Ogg camp next year? Is that being discussed yet? Does anybody know? There are already discussions about how to put on an og camp again next year and the wonderful john spriggs also known as john the nice guy spriggs is uh starting to bootstrap things there is there is already a trello board and there has been some activity this morning very good so let's take a moment and thank the sponsors of this year's show. And like I said, we're doing a tight one this week,

and I want to get to this Intel stuff, and I want to get to making your own man pages with this cool command because it's just the best. So let's start by thanking Ting. Go to linux.ting.com to get $25 off a device, or if you bring your own device, you get $25 in service credit. The average Ting bill is just $23 per phone per month because it's smarter than unlimited.

If you use less, you pay less. You pay for what you use wireless. Nationwide coverage with no contracts. However much you talk, text, or data you use, that's what you pay. That's why I've been a Ting customer for over four years and they've got a great control panel, radically good customer, different than everybody, just better, better than everybody, customer service. I mean, it's seriously better than everybody. And a bunch of really great devices. ting does a a really good job of sorting through devices that should get a lot more attention but they just from like the general like tech press from like your verge outlets and not they just don't get that attention and there's

so many good phones out there you don't have to spend a thousand dollars on a smartphone um and whatever you are comfortable whatever you are comfortable spending you go to ting site and you own that phone outright you know it's it's yours. There's no contract. There's no other termination fee. It's yours. Oh, they have a, look at that. They have a 10-inch tab on here. Oh, I haven't seen them sell on a tablet for a long time.

$170 when you go to Linux.Ting.com. That is not bad. Yeah, with a 10-inch display. Yeah, that isn't bad. Anyways, it's a great service. Been a customer for a long time. I think you'll love it. So go to Linux.Ting.com. Something else I've been a customer for a long time. I think you'll love it. So go to linux.ting.com.

Something else I've been a customer for forever. Digital Osh. Digital Ocean. do.co slash unplugged. Give you a $100 credit when you sign up with a new account for 60 days. And you can try out their infrastructure for 60 days. With that $100 credit, you can do just about anything. Wait, are you sure that's right?

$100 credit? I know. I'm waiting for them to figure out that they accidentally are still giving us that promo. So hurry. I'm like, guys, go out there and use this because they can't keep doing that. Can they? I mean, I don't know, man. It's a great deal, though, because you can do so much stuff. And every system has

SSDs. And they got 40 gigabit connections coming into the hypervisors. A great dashboard. It's only getting better. They brought a bunch of new dashboard changes that are just really good. Like how often does that happen where they do like a big shift like that and it's not a total controversy. I logged in and they had made some

changes and it didn't stop me at all. In fact, if anything, it was more intuitive. Yeah, they really do get the design of that kind of stuff. It's a great platform to get you up and going with Linux box in seconds, really. Probably less than 55 seconds. And you can play with something you've been wanting to try for a long time up on their crazy fast infrastructure and then pop it into production. So go to do.co slash unplugged.

And thank you to Linux Academy. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. It's a platform to learn everything about Linux. The stuff that's going to look good on your resume, the stuff that's going to give you critical thinking skills, and the stuff you should just know. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. Every member has access to so much content, and they're always adding new content.

They've been expanding out their Google Cloud platform, Azure, security, and of course, the essentials of Linux itself. It's interesting to really see how the market is growing so, so fast and how Linux Academy is impressively managing to keep up despite the fact that their content is so rich and deep that it can take, I don't know if they've ever released a number publicly,

but making content is always much harder than you think and they can spend more than several months working on one set of courseware. Yeah, something that takes you just a few minutes to click through or an hour or two to finish. Yeah, and they will spend, because it's like developing a full product with labs and interactive diagrams and videos and voiceovers and text guides and study cards and downloadable stuff that you can listen to,

like audio or personal study books. It's really comprehensive. And then if you ever get stuck, they audio or personal study books, like if it's really comprehensive. And then if you ever get stuck, they've got a real human being that can help you that are topic experts that, you know, are folks from the industry that Linux Academy has hired to not only create the courseware, but to answer your questions with it too. So a lot of times when you get stuck, you are asking the person that created that courseware. So not only are they a topic expert on that subject, but they're the ones that created that courseware. So not only are they a topic expert on that subject, but they're the ones that created that course.

So it's really helpful. It's so, so valuable. And that's just part of why Linux Academy is such a great value. And you can try it seven days for free when you go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. That's linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You like my mic grab there? Oh, man, that was just... I'm sure the audience...

You're a professional broadcaster. They appreciate a good mic grab, I bet. Grab me by the mic, I always say. Wes, I've always said that, haven't I? I've always said that. Let's talk about this Intel firmware thing. So Debian has labeled Intel firmware as now unredistributable by all OS vendors. They're speaking for everyone there.

And, you know, this is something that catches my attention because Debian is very careful about licensing. And they really go through this kind of stuff. And so here's essentially a breakdown of what happened. Intel pushed out a new firmware update recently. And they reached out to some of the projects, like Debian, and said, hey, new firmware needs to go out. Can you package this up and send it? To which Debian promptly

responded, no, we can't because you changed your license in an incompatible way a month ago, and now we can no longer redistribute firmware updates. And they link them to the text file that says, sorry, we can't do that. And some folks have tweeted rather strong feelings about the situation that Intel is putting users in. Here's one. Intel really effed up on the Foreshadow and SSBD microcode updates beyond any of my wildest thoughts. They added a long license to the microcode

that doesn't allow redistribution, which is why Linux distributions won't be getting patched. Well, we know that's not true. They are already getting patched. Right, and there are other distributions that are distributing these already. So yeah, not universal.

So it was like, we tried to figure out what's going on here. And I dug around and I found a tweet by the corporate vice president and GM of Intel's Open Source Technology Center. That seems like a good source to go to, right? So dug in there and here's his reply. He says, this is just simply not true. You see, this is, now we can get to the legalese. The license section two, subsection three

grants rights needed for redistribution. Specifically, and he's quoting, distribute an object code representation of the software provided by Intel through multiple levers of distribution. We're happy to work with them if there's still concerns. So now we have a Debian says and Intel says situation. And it sort of created this impasse. And it's so funny how we get hung up on this kind of stuff. And I'm sure eventually get resolved and it'll probably be resolved in a way that's beneficial for end users. But it has caused quite the upset on this particular thing. Lots of finger pointing at Intel for screwing this whole thing up. And so the response has been, well, so now what? So now what do we do? So

Debian looks at a little further and they say, well, here's the problem. Above where you just told us to look, it says that, but before that, that we can't redistribute it. So we have ourselves a conflict within your license. Your license says you cannot distribute. And then further down says you can distribute. We don't know what to do here. And as far as I know, the last time I looked into this issue, that's where it has landed. It's landed on, eh, Debian's not really sure what to do. And, I mean, it does seem like they are working with Intel, and I've seen some other, you know, asking people to don't just go harassing Intel.

They have their own channels, and things are being worked on. Yeah, they are, yes. It is kind of confusing, too, because, like because if you go download some of the tarballs here, the previous microcode release doesn't have the license file in there. But when prompted on the website, it pops up a thing that you do have to agree to the license to get the link. Now, once you have the link, you can just download it. On the latest one, no such pop-up, but a license in the tarball.

So clearly there are some changes, and I can see why Debian does have a long history of caring a lot about open source licensing. And while often as end users we might feel it can be pedantic at times, it is actually pretty important. So I can understand why they would want to take the cautious side. Yeah. Yeah. And I should also add that for a lot of these things, you know,

you can rebuild the package yourself pretty easily. You can install the microcode manually. If you are a, you know, a big cloud provider, this is not the problem that you're having. It's more of a problem just for people like you and I. Fair point. Yeah. Just us end users. Just us end users getting screwed. Yeah. All right. Well, I have a sense this is going to get worked out. I really do. And if anybody knows anything different, send me a tweet, let me know where this is going. But I have a sense it's going to get worked out. All right. Well, then let's end on a way for people to create their own man pages. Man pages are one of the greatest things that I didn't know

about when I switched to Linux initially until like six, seven months in. Because I was very fortunate that I started playing with Linux in high school. And so that meant there was other high school kids that I could mess around with. And we all just bounced off each other. You know, look what you can do here. Try this out. Oh, this is Red Hat. This is this. You know, this is Debian.

This is, you know, we just, that was our mode. We didn't, and there was no Google because I'm so old. There was no like web search to go like look up commands. So like not knowing that man existed was a huge oversight. It's a way, you could get away with never using man today and just searching everything you need on Google. Now, I don't recommend that you do that, but you're totally right. You absolutely can.

And you'll probably just find some online man pages. Yeah, so this is why this is egregious, because there was, early on, and some of you might remember this, there was the Linux Documentation Project. I don't know if that rings a bell for some of you out there. And it was a valiant effort by a community on the internet to create a central repository of documentation on how to do things, which was outdated immediately and obviously was only applicable to certain distros, et cetera. So it never really was that great of a resource. And it couldn't compare to all of the other communities

that are writing specifically about their distros that Google now helps you surface. So it took me a little while to find man. But once I found the man page system, I was so impressed. Like, wow, they just have this built-in right here at the command line. Like, I can see example commands here.

And that's when I really went, you know, when I realized you could bring up a man page and generally if you went all the way down to the bottom, there's a few example commands offline, just all of this knowledge right at your fingertips. I feel like it's a bigger deal than we are capable of appreciating right now. And I don't know if that sounds silly, but I feel like today it's like, oh yeah, no big deal. But if you think about what life was like when you couldn't just easily search for stuff that really, really helped. And that's how life is today for things that are sort of unique to your own setup or your own world. And wouldn't it be nice if you could have your own man pages so you can remember how to do stuff?

Well, that's where this handy command that I love the name of comes in. It's called um. Um um, um, how do I, and um, is a command line utility for creating and maintaining your own set of man, like help pages, man being short for manual. If you didn't know, uh, and I love this. These man pages are written to be comprehensive, but what humans really need are just bullet points. So you could use, um, to just write your own bullet points, and they would come out on the command line. And they include a couple of basic syntax formatting tips

and a couple of basic commands you can run. And it's so neat. It's only available for macOS right now, but I just sent off a letter to the developer today saying, hey, edit. And, you know, I think that is also just because they've only packaged it in Homebrew, because I've got it running right here, Chris. Well, that's awesome. I was going to say, yeah, hey, there is some ways to get this installed on Linux that don't use Brew. So I sent off a note to him today, so maybe we'll see something there.

But, yeah, you can build it yourself. And what do you think? Well, okay, so there are already ways to make man pages extensible. And there's a lot of design in the man page system that, you know, just to facilitate that a bit. That said, I think there is something of a disconnect between people that are experts in how to do that. And then especially know, you know, how to typeset and create man pages in the proper or at least historically correct ways. I think, again, where this tool maybe shines, and we'll see how popular it becomes,

is that casual developer, you use man pages somehow, you don't really understand how it all works, but if you can just type a command and you just have to edit a markdown file, it uses Pandoc and other stuff behind the scenes to convert that, display it with man-like utilities. It does look nice, and I just added a couple and it was really easy. So I think that's the kicker right there.

Cool. Now, Brent, you've got a whole solution for your own management right now. Well, I would say it's my attempt at cobbling something like this together in the last several years. And I'm sure I'm not the only one doing this, but I've just kind of started haphazardly keeping text files of notes of solutions and tricks and little shortcuts of various commands and in basically just text files in a folder that gets synced to all my machines. And so it would be interesting to see it in a little bit of a slight, ever so slightly easier to access solution like this. I kind of like this idea.

Yeah, getting it to sync would be the next thing, right? Sinking it across. Maybe even it wouldn't have to sync continuously, just when you update. And there are already some efforts for collaborative sorts of documentation. It would be interesting to see some of those prepackaged and sets you could maybe go grab.

Oh, I'm a Ruby developer. Give me a set that has a bunch of common Ruby tools, and away I go. Wow, I'm a Ruby developer. Give me a set that has a bunch of common Ruby tools, and away I go. Wow, I like that. Hmm. Hmm. Alright, guys. Well, like I said, it is a tight one today because I have an appointment that I cannot miss. And so we're going to get out of here a little early

today, but the Unplugged show is live on Tuesdays. If you'd like to make it out next week, go to jblive.tv. And it's also available in your local time at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. Go get more Wes Payne. He's on the TechSnap program, techsnap.systems. Go get more Wimpy. He's on Ubuntu podcast. Go get that this Thursday. Sounds like it's going to be a great one. You can find Dan and Cassidy over at Elementary OS. We'll have

their respective Twitter handles linked in our show notes. And a big thank you to Thomas for coming on the show today and chatting with us about Academy. Much appreciated, Thomas, for that. So even though it's a little short today, we're going to wrap it up there. I'll leave you with just a couple of bits of wisdom. We would love to have you subscribe to the RSS feed if you're not already. You can go to linuxunplugged.com to get links to all the stuff we talked about, specifically linuxunplugged.com to get links to all the stuff we talked about, specifically linuxunplugged.com slash 263

for links that are specific to this episode. But while you're over there, you can go to the subscribe page and you can get all the different ways to get this here episode every single... And there's a lot of them. There are. There's different podcast directories and whatnot.

We try to make it wherever you want to be. So you can find all of those resources at linuxunplugged.com. In the meantime, we're out of here. I'm going to go get checked up. Wes is going to go surf the smog. And then that gives everyone plenty of time to prepare their questions for Ask Noah. That's right. See you next Tuesday. Thank you. Oh, it's the Unplugged Show.

The Unplugged Show. Well, it was the Unplugged Show. Yo. Yeah, it's all done now, isn't it? I gotta, I gotta, I never sing on mic. I don't know, it's like, it's instinctual, because I'm like sitting here fiddling with buttons and stuff, and I can't help it. Next episode, I'll just bring a little ukulele.

You can back you up. We'll just embrace it. Get the unplugged band going. I like that idea. I like that. Well, guys, thank you for making it, and it was really good to hear from all of you. Appreciate it very much. Sorry I had to cut it short this week, but it's so hot in here, it's actually not that bad.

If we're going to cut it short, this would be the week to do it, I guess. Perfect. Woo.