LINUX Unplugged - Episode 3: Go Dock Yourself | LINUX Unplugged 3

Episode Date: August 27, 2013

After rebuilding his KDE desktop better and stronger than before, Chris and Matt dig into what really seems to be troubling the Gnome project, what really makes a desktop easy to use, and if the Ubuntu Edge campaign was a sophisticated PR stunt.Plus the live feedback from our Mumble room, your emails, and more!

This is Linux Unplugged. It is a ship that sails proudly without its rudder. We have lots of opinions, lots of emails, but no script, no plan of action. Just a couple of guys sitting around talking about Linux, hanging out with our community, and really debating the important things in life, like, you know, Linux. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey, Matt.

Hey. So, I was going to ask you something before we got into all the Linux stuff. Oh, yeah. Now, where do you fall on the Star Trek fandom scale? Like, are you a pretty big Star Trek guy, or do you kind of, like, you know, you know about the cultural references, but not much further than that? I'm not, like, hard, hardcore, but I would say that I'm definitely well-versed, and I'm a big fan. Okay. To put, I mean, let me put it this way.

What was the last series you actively watched? Well, I tolerate Voyager. Oh, my gosh. Okay, that was my next question. And see, that tells you by using the word tolerate that I'm a fan. I know exactly where you're at. I'm dialed in now. Okay.

So you did, did you watch it while it was on the air or have you gone back and like Netflixed it? I went back. I actually got more out of it Netflixing the entire series going back to, you know, pre-Kirk Pike and all the way up. Oh, wow. So that, I mean, you got to do it right. I have a dream of a podcast and there's already a podcast out there doing it. I mentioned it, actually, in the unplug. That's why I just let it go.

But I love the idea of doing a podcast that just reviews every single Star Trek episode from the beginning. And it's interesting you say that because I started and I've been re-watching the original series, like, you know, one episode a week. I'll find a time where I'm working late and I'll just put it on and it's a great companion show. And so I started picking up on Voyager again. And, you know, when you can back-to-back Voyager, it's kind of like Lost. Like, I did not like Lost when I had to wait a week in between big reveals. But when I can just like pop on the next one i'm like oh that's not so bad it's like the stakes aren't so high i think you nailed it i think you nailed it because for me the first season of voyager was just painful um then once the characters really

came into their own you know and especially neelix that was kind of my uh jar jar banks character i was really having a hard time with that. Yeah, after a while I really came to, you know, I really kind of grew onto the whole Talaxian mindset. Oh, you did? You actually... Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, he's weird, but he's got wisdom going on. Well, after Kes leaves the ship, his

anxiety's kind of dialed down. He's not quite as obnoxious. That was what needed to happen. Kes was a great character, but she was a little not appropriate for that particular series, I don't think. Right, right. Well, I love the chatroom. They've locked in on that. I said we discussed the important things in life, like Linux, and so of course

they've immediately started debating which distro is the best. Now, of course, the big part of Linux Unplugged is the fact that we are live, and so to sort of jar everybody, now that we've got a Mumble server set up, now that we've got live people showing up, the best course of action would be to change the day we're doing the show on.

That is the best thing to do at that point. Now you've got everything nice and locked in. So we're going to move the Linux unplugged live recording to Tuesdays at 2pm. So same bat time, same bat channel, just a different bat day. And it'll be tomorrow, only next week, because we're not doing two shows this week.

So next Tuesday, we'll be live at 2 p.m. Plan B is on break until the end of September-ish. So I'm using that slot, and that kind of gives me some more free time to take care of some business in the Monday afternoon time. Good stuff. Good times. I'm all about the business. So quick update.

We do now have a working Mumble server. The issue was the Mumble server was working last week, but I had grabbed the Git version of Mumble from the Arch User Repo. Oh, that'll get you. Yeah, the server was like, nope, too new of a version, so, you know,

Pac-Man makes it crazy easy to downgrade. You just essentially give it the other package name, the non-Git version. It says, oh, well, I'm going to need to remove the Git version first. And I say, yes, yes, you may remove the Git version. And it just pulls off the Git version and pulls down the regular version. And I was up in business. So now we've got a working Mumble room. We've got people in the lobby and we've got a spot people can jump in and chat with us if they want. If they want to interrupt

the show. No, I'm kidding. We hope they do interrupt as we go. I'm sure they're going to do just fine. And I'm glad we got the Mumble server working. That is awesome. Yeah, so folks can join us live and then they can actually get in the show. And it's kind of like calling in only using all open source software. And another big thing we're doing, and I don't know if I mentioned this in the show, is

so the good side is that more of Linux Unplugged is essentially everything right now except for the actual part that's streaming out to the internet, is running on Linux. So we're doing the whole show on Linux, all the audio is being produced on Linux. I'm cutting and shipping the video on a Mac, but that's

just kind of like, it's almost, just like it's like a little quick little, quick quick. It's a little workhorse thing, yeah. It's because there's not really any editing involved. So, but the rest is all being done on the GNU slash Linux. You guys might be familiar with this. It was an operating system created about 21, 22 years ago by Richard King Stallman.

Are you familiar with Richard King Stallman? I am familiar with Mr. Stallman. Absolutely. Yeah, he created the BSD kernel that GNU slash Linux runs on. And I just don't know how far I can push this until the chat room loses it. Oh, yeah. They're going to come unglued.

So we'd love to have you join us. That way you can talk about this. But all right. I have a couple of things from last week's episode. I just thought maybe I'd just chat about with you, see what you thought. So you remember yesterday, right before the show started,

I went out to the garage and and I logged into my machine, and my KDE session just totally dumped on me. It went poo-poo. It was not a pleasant thing. And then for people watching and listening to the released version of the Linux Action Show, all they get is Matt and Chris griping about KDE, but they never know why we were upset, right? We just were making offhanded comments about KDE being crap,

and we didn't actually like... Because if you weren't watching live, you didn't, you didn't know that part. Well, the live chat room, um, specific, you know, blackout 24 was awesome. And other folks too pointed me in the direction of a different couple options to resolve the problem during the show. I just backed up my dot KDE for directory and started anew and logged in with a totally reset KDE setup. Which is certainly a definite fix. I mean, it allows you to start off fresh. Yeah, I was able to do that between show segments, and that was something. So then through the links in the Linux Action Show subreddit, I got I dug through the Arch form and kind of zeroed

in on where the particular problem is. So first, the last action I took before I had any problems with KDE and KDE not logging is I updated Python-SIP, Python-PYQT4, Python2-SIP, and Python2-PYQT4. So a couple of Python QT things were updated. Then I rebooted like a day later after running you know for a while and then logged in and boom i was like i was like oh yeah i forgot i even did an update um and of course the error that would kick back at me was uh executable error plasma desktop signal segmentation fault no without no further information the desktop would flash a few times and i'd just be sol but you know i got people in got people in the chat and said, all right, move that.kde4 folder. So I did that. And then

I debated, it looks like if I would specifically remove the.kde4 slash share slash config slash plasma folder, like I didn't have to remove the whole KDE folder. I could have gone- Just that plasma folder. Yeah, I could have gone three levels deep, removed just that, and I would have not had nearly as much stuff reset to default and gotten to my desktop and then being able to kind of recover because whatever was causing that would have been resolved skd 4.11 um the latest it's a good experience in that you were able to learn from it and say oh okay well now i know that if it works later i don't totally understand what caused it but i I do know, like, I see now how to fix it.

And, you know, that KDE 4 directory structure is actually pretty straightforward. And also bear in mind, folks, when this is your production machine, it's kind of a big problem when that happens mid-stream, mid-show, mid, you know, you're getting ready to do something, whatever it may be. That's definitely kind of an anxiety thing, you know, you're getting ready to do something, whatever it may be. That's definitely kind of an anxiety thing, you know? Yeah. You know, it was a little like, oh man, now great that, you know, I could just log into Gnome. And a lot of folks in the chat room and some folks in the subreddit were saying, oh, it's video card driver.

Got to be video card driver. Not necessarily. I don't know if it was, right? Because, hey, I didn't upgrade the video card driver there. And I thought I was saying on the live stream that I had just upgraded my kernel, but that actually was not true. It was an upgrade that was pending, but I had not actually gone through with the upgrade yet.

So I don't think it was graphics driver related. And because Gnome Shell worked and StrikeSuit Zero was working just fine, I don't think it was that. I don't think it was. And I think the key, you know, kind of a troubleshooting 101 thing you pointed out is that I did not change the graphics driver.

So erring on the side of obvious here, if you didn't change the driver, it's probably not the graphics card. It's kind of like – so I think for folks to say it's the graphics driver, if it hasn't changed, nothing was executed to cause an issue in that space. So yeah, clearly we got to catch it to get along as far as in that one directory. Got it backed up. Now you know what to back up in the future. You're good to go. Yeah, I should just make a backup of my.kde4 directory, right? But I decided to go the boss level route, and I just rm-rf the whole kde4 folder.

I said, to hell with precision. So that put me back at square one with my kde config. Now, I did something different this time. Okay, so here's the reason, too, because I got logged in, and I sat down, and I needed to get immediately to work on Lass. Like, I thought about it and I thought, okay, I could spend 20 minutes. But it never works out that way. Yeah, you'll get sucked into it. That's true.

And it also, like, it pushes, it would push, like, the whole release of Lass out. Like, everything, like, when at that at that level sort of like compounds because a bunch of different actions then take place later than they should and so it's like yeah no i'm just gonna get right to work and so i just sat down and started encoding video and working on the art and all that kind of stuff immediately and so i thought well you know while the video is encoding uh the bonobo is so is so damn fast that i am encoding hd x264 and i got to rip it on all cores and meanwhile i'm like installing updates i'm back and i'm back in a packer and i'm installing more arch updates and i'm configuring all my stuff and what i decided to do this time

matt is i'm not going to try to keep things default see my first time on kde i was like keep everything default and only change the stuff that really grades on me. But what that causes to happen is I don't make the change until I'm really annoyed at something. And then I'm like, I've got to go change that. So basically, instead of being reactionary to it, you're trying to map out something that's going to provide you with the experience you want. I'm going to say, you know what, I need to customize it and I'm going to embrace that. So what I did this time, so the first of all that took off this whole like, uh, judginess that I had, like, you know, is this the way I want it?

Just got rid of all of that. Cause when I had a stock KD, I'm very judgy, you know, default KD, I'm, I'm full of judginess. So I opened up the system settings app and I just went down every single icon row by row by row until I had changed every setting the way I wanted. And by the time I was through most of that settings application, that's pretty much done. And this time around, my KD setup is even more amazing than before. And I really love it. Like, I thought I liked my old setup and I remember I was kind of bummed, right? I was kind of like, oh man, I can't believe I lost believe i totally no man i like my new setup

way more i went a little simpler you know i'm not trying to do like the launcher icons and all that kind of stuff like i was trying to do with the unity stuff i went no i'm just i'm going to actually took your advice matt oh i'm going this it's not i'm not using snaps i'm using the built-in krunner launcher thing good okay but i'm just saying i'm going to just launch everything with keyboard commands so that way like i don't get muscle memory about where an icon is. And then later, when I finally get frustrated and switch to XFCE, I'll just load up Synapse, and I'm good to go. That's what did it for me.

For those of you that are not familiar with this, I use Synapse in the fact that I don't, as long as it's Linux and I have that installed, I honestly don't care what the desktop environment is that much because I don't launch anything from anything else other than that. It's also how I find my documents and find pretty much everything. It's how I manage my desktop. I don't have to know where anything is.

I just start typing. That was one of the things that bugged me on GNOME was that I felt like the launcher only being able to search applications in this day and age was old. I'm used to my launcher being able to search document names. applications in this day and age was old. I'm used to my launcher being able to search document names, so if I have a notes file that I type stuff into frequently, I can pull that up just like I can pull up an application.

Exactly. So we got a lot of feedback on a lot of things from yesterday's episode of Linux Action Show, but maybe we could start with the GNOME 3 stuff, because that seemed to be the stuff that really pissed people off. Oh, yeah. I think that's a great place to start actually um i'm see i'm gonna go i'm digging maybe should we start at the highs that would be the youtube yeah let's start with that uh so um

i'm gonna dig through here uh here's a good one from uh chili de per. Matt, shut the fuck up about a doc. You know, and that's a fair statement. It's like, okay, clearly this is someone that really loves docs. No, I'm just kidding. No, I totally get it. No, you know, you are right. You are right. A doc is, like, old.

And you see, what I don't know if people know about is Del made an entire Ultra book that was cordless like even the like you could hook it up to a dock oh okay i had a dock but it was a cordless dock so you'd set this dell ultrabook on top of this base station but there was no wires and it would do usb bluetooth uh video external video everything charging everything no wires so you're not crazy and see that's that would be more see for me it's it's a matter of i'm trying to actually look at this as progress and asking me to use technology that granted it's doing something new and compelling and exciting i think that's great i don't want a dock i want to use technology that i already use on android i don't want to step backwards because for me personally i don't personally really see how a dock is fun or

it just it sucks it's i'm sorry dude it sucks i just there's no way around it i can't make it not suck and so for me it's like i don't want now i know there are people that are okay with it that's great you you go dock it up. Go dockity-dock-dock. All right. Yeah, no, no. All right. What about this stinging critique on our evaluation of GNOME 3?

Here we go. Damn Harem writes, seriously, stop whining about GNOME, you retards. It's the best desktop environment out there. Everything you see on screen is configurable with JavaScript. User-shared GNome shell utils js to i give him points for sticking up for obviously sticking up for desktop he's very passionate about that's fine no problems there um you know i only will gripe about something if i care if i don't care here's a little tidbit you guys may not know if i'm not complaining about it it's not because i don't have

an opinion it's because it's i'm not emotionally in it. I may still care to a degree, but I'm not emotionally invested in it. If I'm ripping on GNOME, it's because I want them to not suck. I want them to do awesome things because I know they can. They have been in the past. They probably will in the future. It's not happening right now, though. I think we're just critical of this philosophy.

Now, one of the things we got as feedback, legitimate feedback about the GNOME stuff, I thought was from Olek here in the Linux Action Show Subreddit Feedback 3. He says, a little harsh in the show today about GNOME, but I don't think it went over the limit. As far as I know, GNOME Maps is mostly a Google Summer of Code project, so it's been done by a few new faces in the GNOME Linux community. I kind of speculated about that in the show. I remember I was like, well, yeah. There had to be a reason for it.

But it is kind of a slap upside the head with a brick, though, when you say, oh, look what I can do on my KDE desktop with a globe. Oh, hey, we got maps on GNOME. You know, you're going to go – people are going to come to that conclusion without our help. They just will. We're just kind of helping that along. I don't know. He says it's still lacking plan functionality since the new geolocation tech just landed recently. He includes some screenshots.

He says the ones in the blog post that we looked at were already outdated. He also wanted to point out that while we were poking fun at the display manager in GNOME, he then links a picture of the KDE one, which looks like a train wreck. Like, it looks like a train wreck hit a U. I mean, it's just awful.

But, I mean, come on. Comparing something to KDE like that's not really a fair comparison. He says there's lots of stuff that GNOME developers are working on at the moment. Many of them are going to be landed in GNOME 3.10, like the high DPI, CSD,

Wayland support, OS3, free desktop.org application installer, sandboxing, etc. All those technologies and features are going to be available for Cinnamon,

Elementary, and many other desktops automatically. Your show, your way. But I'm still a little disappointed at the way GNOME was presented sometimes. It gets criticism from the exact same things that other desktops

get praises. But anyway, very good overall. Interesting discussion. Now, do you think that last part is true? Do you think we criticize... Oh, I think it was extremely fair, but I would put an asterisk on that in saying that, personally, myself, and I don't know about you, I wasn't aware of any of that other stuff. I have no knowledge of it. and maybe the reason why i wasn't aware of it is

not so much that i wasn't trying to find it it's just that it's not a visual thing you can point to you can't say i see the sandbox or i see that right and we mentioned like the the whalen stuff was a footnote in that blog post and you're right it's a hard thing to to visually show but i would love now here let's put this out for the known guys, if any of you guys are listening, we'd love to interview you and talk about how awesome those back-end things, because that's something we can then wrap our heads around, because we can't really visualize what that's

going to be like otherwise without some context. I'd love that. I think that'd be cool. I'm looking forward to the next few years as really Weyland hits. i think we're going to see some interesting stuff we're going to see people break uh with some of the old and go with new technologies and we'll see where things shake out um i think at the end of the day my overall

anxiety for the uh gnome desktop and why i it's ironic i was paranoid that a arch update would break a gnome shell because i had one one shell break and it made my session crash. So I stopped using GNOME and then, of course, a few weeks later, KDE broke on me after an update. And I had to log into GNOME to get any work done. And then it becomes a matter of – really, it wasn't a matter of a GNOME or KDE fault. It's just that's the nature of the upgrade process and sometimes things happen. And I want to live with cutting-edge software, so I'm cool cool with that but sure so maybe i have been too hard on gnome it's only because i i i've i know i touched on the show yesterday i just feel like it's heavy-handed vision it is

and see part of it i come from a gnome 2 mindset i i As boring a sin as it was, I loved it because it was simple for a long time. And so my expectations are deeply rooted in, I don't know, prejudice and hatred. I don't know if you want it. And at the time, I wasn't necessarily a big fan of KDE either. And that's what, of course, drove me to XFCE. And, you know, I've looked into Mate and other ones and whatever. But so, you know, I don't know. I have high hopes for GNOME. I'm not belittling them because I want to see them fail. I'm belittling them because I want to light a fire under their butts. And I want to learn more about those back-end features that I'm not hearing about.

That's all. Blackout24 responded. He said, I do understand Chris's problem with the GNOME vision problem. We're a Linux power user. We want powerful and a thought-through desktop. We don't care about having GNOME 3 on touch devices. Every move that shifts the balance towards mobile

and therefore ruins a desktop will be met with criticism. GNOME is catering to a target group that doesn't even exist. They're just plain wrong. Imagine your parents would spend most of their time with imaginary invisible children instead of with you. That's just it. When I present various desktops to non-Linux users, I never,

ever have had a person that took a look at GNOME 3 and said, ooh, I like that. Most of them said, okay, what the hell? How do you use it? Yeah, I mean, they went from being the usability desktop to the what thethe-hell desktop. And that's not to say they won't correct that, but right now, I'm just not feeling it.

And most people that I know aren't either. So, you know. Yes, sir. All right, so one last point. Blackout24 says that the reason why this might make someone angry is Linux, 10 to the power of 10 window managers and desktop environments. But let's face it, there's only three projects that have the manpower to deliver a desktop that is as polished enough to compete with the Windows and the Mac OS 10. That's GNOME, KDE, and Unity. If one of them acts irrational, it pains us as Linux users. Just look at the

GNOME Weather app. Why on earth would someone want this on a desktop? I have no idea. And that's, you know, it's like, even if I try not to belittle the stuff, it's like they do it for me. I mean, really. It's like you don't want to criticize someone's work because you really appreciate that people are getting out there

and creating code and all of that. Sure. I guess if it comes free, like if it's part of like a, you know, crazy Google's giving out Google bucks and, you know, just go out there and create some code that nobody needs and then, well, somebody created this and it's GTK and it's super minimal. So let's put it in GNOME. Is that what's happening? It seems like it.

And it's obviously stuff that they're passionate about. And a lot of times a lot of open source projects are in fact derived based on personal needs. Someone needs something made for themselves, for their company, whatever it is, and they'll go out and create that, and that's fine. But it does feel like a lot of that mindset is being incorporated into GNOME in that almost the shuttleworth style of I know best. And if you don't see what I know and you don't understand why this is a benefit, screw you. You're broken inside and you don't understand. And then more power to them. That's their view of it.

For me, I'm just not able to fall in love with its current direction. I don't, they're building for a touch interface that nobody wants. They're incorporating things that I don't understand. And the really cool stuff that this person listed off in the email earlier, I want to hear more about that.

I want to see less of the map thing. And I want to know more about the sandbox. I don't want to know more about all this stuff in the back end that does sound compelling, that does interest me. That sounds worthwhile. That has value to a lot of people. I don't know. Blackout went on to make some really other great points. The chat room wants me to read his whole point, but I'll just say it's really good. I mean, he kind of points out how people will say that it's not really designed for a touch UI, that it's not touch first.

But it really is when you kind of consider it. I was going to say, that's frightening. If it's not, then my God, what are they? Yeah, wow. Okay. I mean, he makes some good points about the notification area as well. So I wanted to – we have – I want to talk about the Proxmox project. They've just recently done an update that is not going very well for them.

And we've covered Proxmox on the show. A lot of people, a lot of people have ended up using it because of our coverage. I was thinking about deploying it here at my house, kind of coming up. But now there's a bit of a road bump. I want to talk about that. Maybe we could also talk about some of our favorite ways to customize our desktops now that I just kind of got done tweaking my KDE setup. Yeah. And then DHVL in the subreddit has some tough questions for you and I about Canonical and Ubuntu.

And we got a ton of Bitmessage stuff. Like the Bitmessage stuff went over well and some people sent over some really neat projects around Bitcoin. So we got some good stuff, Matt. But before we go any further, I want to stop and thank our first sponsor this week, Ting. Ting. Ting.com is mobile that makes sense. And if you go to linux.ting.com, now this is a different code than for the big show,

linux.ting.com, not co, dot com. And this will get you $25 off your first device or your Ting service. Now, friends, you might say, Ting service, Chris, do tell me more. Well, Ting is pay for what you use and not a cent more. You don't end up putting a bunch of money into a big contract that you don't end up actually needing all of. And also, there's no bundling. There's no secret hidden things that show up on your bill. It's just what you use and any legal taxes Ting has to charge you. That's it. And on top of that, you also get things like a hotspot in Tethering.

That's all fine and good. I really like Ting as a company that lets you either be completely hands-off, completely hands-off, or completely just dig in and get into the community aspect of things, get into the tech behind things. They've got resources for both sides of the camp. They also have some small business. If you've got maybe a group of people, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, more, Ting has some really innovative business,

small business plans. You might want to go check out. Ting makes an excellent option for a small team. So go over to linux.ting.com and check out their rates. Check out their payment calculator. You can go over there. They have a little savings calculator. You put in your bill into that. Tell that bad boy what's up, how much your bill is, and you'll see the savings. You'll be pretty shocked. And at that point, I think you're going to be compelled to go forward. Also, Ting just rolled out a brand new service

where they'll go out and find you a refurbished Ting-compatible device. And when you use our... Actually, it's a URL. We don't have a code. Linux.Ting.com. You get $25 off that device. Boom! I'll tell you, as someone who just recently switched to Ting, I am amazed at how simple it was to set up, how easy it is to manage, and the fact that I know exactly what my bill is going to be based on what I do. It's totally in my ballpark.

The dashboard is super easy to use, super straightforward. You go in there. You get gas gauges that tell you right where you're at, give you a visual representation. It tells you right now, this is how much you're going to look at paying. Like if I go in there right now, it's like 16 bucks for me or something like that. Yeah. Same here. It's like literally it's like 12 or 16 bucks. It's crazy. Yeah. And they have a bunch of really great devices, including the wonderful, magnificent Note 2 and HTC One. And I have it on, a little birdie tells me we're going to see some really exciting devices

coming here very soon as well. They've got a great deal right now on the Samsung Galaxy S3 16 gig edition. This is unlocked, no contract. You own this. You are in complete control of the relationship

with the mobile provider when you go this route. Think about the difference that is there. I just have to put it in the stark terms that it is. In the traditional telco setup, you're essentially a victim. They lock you into this contract.

They incentivize you with this phone that they subsidize to a lower price because they charge you so much more than what it actually costs them to have you on as a customer. They make so much profit off you, they subsidize those cell phones to a lower rate. When you buy in at that level,

you always are behind the ball. You always are disadvantaged. The position of power is always held by the telco. Ting flips all of that on its head. You're in power. It's your phone. It's your contract. You own it, and you only pay for what you use.

Go to linux.ting.com, and thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. I think that's what you really nailed it there is that the other telcos have you in an enforceable contract. Now, think about that. I mean they're in control of when you are in or out of their service, not you, and that sucks. And we've seen what they do with that. We've seen what they do with that. Oh, my goodness yes it's and that was what that is what makes me so nervous about payments going to phones like i know that's a huge thing that android wants to do with the google wallet i'm

sure apple's gonna do something i'm sure microsoft would if they could and i i the anything that puts these i mean the the telcos and the banks together really like that's something we want like like the worst thing of all. Now, if only we could get a bunch of regulation involved so the government's got a heavy hand in it, too. Absolutely. And we'll make sure that the people doing the regulations are the people that used to work in those industries. Right. That's important. Of course. That way they have experience. And a vested interest. Cough, cough. All right. So why don't we start with the Proxmox stuff because this is just kind of quick.

And the chat room is just saying, hey, you should mention this before the show. But we do have a few folks in the on-air channel. So I thought we'd go to them and see if anybody in the on-air channel has anything they want to chime in with before we move on because it's an open floor right now, guys. Nice. They're probably listening on delay. Well floor right now, guys. Nice. Now they're probably listening non-delay. Well, oh, go ahead, Lickety. Yeah, I just wanted to kind of weigh in on it. And I don't know if anybody's read the article or any coverage of it yet, but they released 3.1.

And what they changed is that you have to have a subscription in order to access the stable repo. Does that mean you only can use the beta version of Proxmox if you don't subscribe? Essentially, but the source is still available. So if you get the source, you can still compile it yourself and do it that way. You just won't have that easy-peasy access to the repo right from the get-go once you put your subscription in there. And are you a Proxmox user? I am a Proxmox user.

I've been running it for several months now, and I really like it. It's very easy to use and things like that. They've actually introduced a subscription that's low enough. It's meant for community users, and I believe it's $50 to $60 annually that will give you access to the stable repo. So if you don't really need help or support and things like that, you're capable of taking care of things on your own, you could just get this community subscription, which in the long run isn't terrible. I believe Xbox Live costs more than that.

And you can still have access to the stable repo and things like that. But the concern from the community seems to be that there's not a clear indicator as to what's going to go into the unstable repo and what people are going to lose. repo and what people are going to lose. So it seems like the devs are the one that are handling the PR of this situation. And they seem to be doing it poorly because their interaction within their forums seems to become more and more negative. And right now, it seems like they need to release something that is more clear cut about what's going to happen to the community of people that don't pay for a subscription but they really enjoy their product. So Lickety, just so that I am kind of tracking you, so what you're saying as an existing Proxmox user, if future updates right now it looks like if you don't subscribe will only be quote-unquote unstable updates. Am I following you? And you don't actually, will only be quote-unquote unstable updates. Am I following you? And you don't actually know what is going to happen?

That's what it seems like. I haven't delved deep into it as to what the details... Like I said, they haven't really come out with a lot of information about what goes into the unstable. But if you had, let's say, a 3.0 installation right now and you upgraded to 3.1, you would lose the stable repo and you would only have the PVE test or the testing repo. And I don't know if you actually lose any features from 3.0. I don't believe you do. You just won't have the stable repo for you. So it sounds like, you know, best case scenario, the direction they're going, that you have a working setup, they offer an upgrade.

If you choose not to do a subscription, you're either basically stuck with what you have, or you can then go to source or basically end up in beta. Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay, wow, wow. Exactly right. Okay. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

So it sounds like, too, that – and now this sometimes happens. It's kind of hard to read, but they say that over on their official forums, the developers are, like Lickety said, are the ones that they're interacting with. And sometimes when the threads start to get a little hostile, they're shutting them down. That's not too uncommon. And that's the wrong approach. See, one of the gigs that I work is I'm the guy that works in between developers and the community. And that's bad. You don't do that. You never do that. You have a dialogue with those folks.

Even if they're ripping you a new one, have the dialogue. Get it out in the open. Talk about it. Don't hide it. Don't run away from it. Oh, that's bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't do that. All right. Any other thoughts here in the on-air channel? The floor is open. Going once? Going twice. The floor is open. Going once. Going twice. Okay. All right. Well, I'll leave the channel open if somebody's on delay and they want to

tune in. Well, I appreciate you guys bringing the Proxmox stuff to our attention because, yeah, we've covered them and be thinking about running it here at my house because right now I have two physical machines and I have VirtualBox headless on one of them. And I would like to maybe just consolidate down

to one physical machine and go Proxmox and say goodbye to VirtualBox and say goodbye to two machines because when it's warm out, it is a real pain in the ass to have all these computers on. Oh, yeah. It just makes you alive out there. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Before we get to the KDE custom or just desktop customization stuff, let's clear out the canonical stuff. Let's get this done with. We talked a lot about Ubuntu Touch yesterday and specifically the Ubuntu Edge campaign. Right. And I thought we had some good points on there. And overall, pretty good feedback.

Some people thought we were a little hard. DHVEL in the subreddit says, the question is not simply about the ubuntu edge campaign uh i should say i'm an ubuntu user i'm not an ubuntu user i'm a fedora 19 user with katie and i love it my question is what exactly is canonical slash ubuntu's focus right now consider this wow now this is kind of ironic now i'm not sure what he's about to say next matt okay but i do find some irony in a red hat user asking what another distro's focus is but i mean a photo user but that's okay i don't know judge no judge uh fedora is a red hat test bed for new technologies op see they hate it when you call it that and red hat is going to use that red has going to use for enterprise linux open susa is a

distro that is perfect for kde and has good security, and it has YAS 2, which is one of the best GUI configuration tools ever. Arch Linux is for Linux users who don't mind any amount of hassle and want bleeding-edge software and like to have a fully customized distro. But what the hell is Ubuntu for? I can't say it's for new users because Unity's not really all that user-friendly. Neither can I say it's good for introduction to Linux because, well, no other distro that I know of uses Upstart or Unity or PPAs or any of that stuff. Oh, so it's not good for learning other cross skills, I guess. It's not. And if you guys haven't seen it yet, a really

good video to watch is Chris Perillo's dad uses Ubuntu. And that is a great example of what you were just saying as far as it's not really a great distribution for new users because they don't know where the hell to find anything. It's something that gets activated they don't know how to deal with it or how to get out of it or minimize it or whatnot um yeah i'd say that's uh pretty spot on abun2 is definitely kind of losing its edge there i've parked people in front of i mean the videos i was i was on your i was with you until i saw that video and it's like this is someone that's been using computers longer than a lot of our audience has been alive. Well, okay.

You're right. I mean, so I would grant you if your only usability metric is how easy it is to figure out how to – well, I mean, Unity's got that big old bar on the side with big old Firefox icon in there. Launching is easy. It's managing that can get a little weird. Yeah. I mean, launching is brain-dead simple. I mean, it's really – it's not that hard to do but yeah i think where he really got lost is when you went into like the multiple desktops and he was trying to figure out how to

get back now we of course know how to get out of that but a lot of people are thinking okay what happened did i break something what's what's going on with my display they're they've never seen it before all right so i think you got for that type of user i think maybe your elementary os might be a better route right right pantheon desktop experience as it were but then i look at you got your user who knows how to use the computer sure and they're comfortable enough maybe like maybe they've set up a printer before you know that kind of level of user right okay sure i feel like for them ubuntu is the quote-unquote easiest distribution to use because there's such a broad amount of resources out there for somebody making the transition, somebody new.

There's so much. There's Ask Ubuntu. There's OMG Ubuntu. There's all of the web update, all of the different sites out there that tailor to Ubuntu users. How do you do this? Click this button. Install this software. Copy these commands.

this click this button install this software copy these commands not necessarily always the greatest advice but very straightforward for anybody that has at least savvy enough to craft a half reasonable google response you know they're going to get they're going to get instructions yeah they will when i used to regularly update my matthartley.com website most of the people i had coming in were were refugees from bad advice from the Ubuntu forums. The advice that a lot of the people were getting there was so overcomplicated, overdone, overbaked, burnt, bad advice

that it about made me cry. So there's that. And then on top of that fact, putting the community totally aside, I'm not ranking on the community. I'm saying there's a lot of very active people that don't know what they're talking about. On top of that, the fact that the desktop is constantly evolving, I think it was the next release of Ubuntu that Unity is almost unusable.

This is a problem. This for new users is a huge issue. And, you know, the reputation is – so I watch this. There I am Sunday. I'm editing the Linux Action Show. There I am, Sunday. I'm editing the Linux Action Show. A lot of times I pull up Uncle Leo,

and I'm watching what Lappert is doing during his national radio show, right? And he gets the Dell Ultrabook that runs the Linux. Oh, the Sputnik or the… Yeah, yeah, yeah, made by Dell for developers, right? So he gets that thing. He opens it up, puts it on his desk. He's got the IRC chatroom going right there on his screen. And immediately, before dude is even logged into his brand new Sputnik, chatroom starts telling him, get rid of Unity.

Unity is no good. Can't use Unity. And Leo's like, oh, I got to get rid of Unity? Well, so what do I do? So first thing he does, dude, first thing he does, he opens up the Terminal Sudo app, get Zubuntu Desktop. And so then he installs his Zubuntu Desktop on top of

the standard Ubuntu Desktop, which is not exactly perfect. It's pretty messy, yeah. And then, he just logs out and starts using it. Never even bothers. Like, he got through the intro video that Dell puts on there, and then closed it, and so then Caller calls up, you know, a few days, a few weeks later, I can't remember, this, I think, so he, I think he got this Sputnik, like, this was months ago. And then closed it. So then, Caller calls up a few days, a few weeks later.

I can't remember. So I think he got this Sputnik. This was months ago. And then I was watching Lafferty this last Sunday. Caller calls in because it was a Linux birthday. And he says, hey, Leo, I'm thinking about getting a computer to run Linux. What do you think? And Leo says, gosh, I tell you, I bought the Dell Linux laptop, and it was such a horrible out-of-the-box experience.

First of all, it comes with this desktop environment that Canonical's made that nobody likes. He never even tried it. He says nobody likes it. He says million listeners, national radio show, and he says, so don't buy the Sputnik laptop. Just go buy a Windows laptop and put Linux on there if you want. That's not necessarily – Which is absolutely wrong on every possible level it's not the problem is the problem is it's not necessarily based on any actual practical use it's based on like this folklore that happens so often on the

internet this this it folklore where we pass legends on to each other about something and we just accept it so i guess my point is is i i feel like i feel like maybe cinnamon maybe you know maybe elementary os is a better new user desktop just because it's more familiar yeah i agree with that see this is this is the rub i don't hate canonical i don't hate abun too i don't i dislike unity for the direction it's going see See, again, people tend to run hot and cold when I'm explaining this. I want to be clear on this. I don't hate Unity. I hate where Unity's headed.

It's current Unity on 12.10. I could, you know, it's a very nice desktop. I have no problem with it. It works fine. But I think where it's headed is it's heading in a very bumpy, beta-like direction that's not going to give a good experience to people. Now, Leo, of course, is just talking out of his backside on that because he's not tried it, and it was just basically going based on community feedback, and that's unfortunate. But I think that the Ubuntu core itself, when you are free to try out Cinnamon, you're free to try out these other desktops or even try other related distributions, is actually a very solid experience.

It really is. Now, again, do I hate Unity? Absolutely not. Do I hate where Unity is headed? Yes. Current Unity 12.10, you know, it's a very comfortable desktop. Oh, 12.10. You know, 12.04, 12.10 is fine.

12.10, they're just the Amazon stuff. Yeah, I think I'm running, what the heck am I running? 13.04. 13.04 was probably, I thought, one of their best implementations. Yeah, I think, no, that's what I'm running. I'm sorry. It's 1304. I get all their numbers and names all mixed up because they've got all the weird stuff going on.

But yeah, so I'm running 1304. I just checked. But yeah, I don't know. It's a rub. I want to toss it to the Mumble room. I see that Riley just joined us, and we have a few other folks. And I don't know if you guys in there have any thoughts on so i do mumble folks do you agree with uh dvh on the subreddit that canonical is lacking focus for ubuntu they his argument and

his is that they're not focusing enough on the desktop matt's argument the desktop isn't user friendly enough anymore anybody in the mumble room want to agree or disagree yeah yeah i'll Yeah, I'll give an opinion. I've been, I tend to be the IT person for friends and family, so I end up, you know, handing out USB sticks with Linux on it and trying to get people to install it when they're complaining about it's not working right or so forth because Windows is sort of just messy and I don't like dealing with it. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So what I end up gravitating to is trying to get people on Linux Mint. It has a very easy interface,

which I would say is, I would say it's a lot like XP or where XP would be if they built on top of it and stuck very closely with it. And I've heard other people sort of say similar things to that effect. Right. I can see that. Yeah. And for me, I used to use Ubuntu. I'm sorry, I'm not structuring my sentences very well.

But when they introduced the Amazon lenses in the Unity HUD, I lost my faith in Ubuntu as a distribution to deliver a trustable distribution. I thought that was... I thought, you know, you're trying to market towards me. You know, it's enough to put a big button in your application asking for donations. That's fine. But to actually put marketing, I mean, that would be the equivalent of in the Windows 8 start menu.

You had like Google ad boxes. Yeah. I mean, I think that's just ridiculous. And I jump ship. I gotcha. Anyone else want to chime in um yeah um go ahead corn i was just gonna say that uh i i used to be a big long time uh ubuntu user back like what maybe 10 10 at least before they went to unity i didn't like unity so much back then when it first came out i think like when 1204 hit i went ahead and i went tried to do the whole unity thing i didn't like Unity so much back then when it first came out. I think when 1204 hit, I went ahead and I tried to do the whole Unity thing. I didn't like it so much.

But if I were to, I guess, suggest a Linux distribution for some first-time users, I personally would choose Zorin OS because, yeah, it is based off a derivative of Ubuntu. But it's just more like window user friendly and i yeah i had someone had a computer problem where their hard drive was going bad i later found that out and uh i didn't really want to install windows because obviously i didn't own windows and i didn't have anything free so i was like i'll just sneak a windows like clone on there and i threw zone rs on her dude had no idea what what what was. He thought it was like some new version of Windows and he was like, oh and there's

an app store? This is amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, Matt, remember with Zorin OS was the one we looked at where it's like, which UI would you like to emulate? Mac? Windows? Windows XP? That was kind of a, it was like, oh yeah, this is totally for Windows Convert. Nice one, Coren. That sounds exactly what it's Yeah, I think that's a great example.

What were you going to say, Riley? Yeah, I'd actually take that a step further and even say Manjaro is easier than Ubuntu. Whoa, now... Because when you think about it, hey, when you think about it, Manjaro, you never have to reinstall. It comes with all your proprietary codecs and your graphics card support. And on top of that, you got the AUR. I would add to that.

I would say that, yes, I'm running Manjaro full-time, and I'm very happy with it. I would say that, being honest, and I used to support people that knew nothing about computers. I used to teach classes on this stuff. I'm fairly familiar with people that know nothing of PCs. If it's set up for them, absolutely, 120% agree with you. Gosh, that's XFCE? That is the the best looking xfce i have ever seen wow that's not even with the thing the thing about using something like manjaro too is the forums and community oh if you add something in the abutu forums good luck i remember back you said something about this a while back in the last... I think it was during the Arch review,

but if you have something in the Ubuntu forums, dude, you got 20 different people telling you to do something different. Conflicting advice, too. Yeah, on Manjaro or Arch, it's this way, and that's pretty much it.

Right. That's exactly right. Yeah, I would totally agree with that, because for me, I've actually looked at setting up Majuro on some computers for family members with me setting it up so I know that they're not having to try and figure out why Pac-Mac is doing something weird or whatever. There's little bugs that come along because it's still a little bit beta to a degree. But it's a really good distribution once it's set up. And what's cool is if you outgrow the GUI stuff and you want to just roll Pac-Man and just go straight terminal, you can do that too. It works really well. And of course you get

your Arch repos. Now, I've got to state this for the record, Manjaro is not Arch. It's based on Arch. I want to be very clear on that. So it's a very, very, very different experience for very, very different goals. But it's a great distribution, and I'm really happy with it. And you do have the regular straight-up...

I mean, it has the AUR, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Anything you do on Arch package-wise is doable on Manjaro. So I keep thinking if I have to reload, I'm either going to try Antairgros, or however you say it, or Manjaro, but I'm not sure which one. I don't know. I mean, I might just go straight Arch again,

but everybody keeps raving about these. I want to just see them. I want to try it. See if it really does break. Quotes on Manjaro, they actually have the wiki on the CD itself, so you don't have to go to a website to view the wiki. It's all on a PDF document on a CD. Ooh.

And it's got Ubuntu-style hardware detection, too. I mean, there's no... I don't do anything hardware-wise. The only thing that was a little funky was the printer setup, and that was just my own idiocy. That was literally just a forehead slap later, and I was fine. But yeah, generally speaking,

there's going to be some bumps when you first install until you get a package update. Pac-Mac might throw up an error or whatever. Just go to the forms. You'll have it straightened out in no time. But once you get it set up, it's great because I'll never again have to upgrade Squam. But for a new user, Matt? For a new user? For a new user, if it's

set up for them. That's the key factor. Once it's set up, you're fine. I've not had one problem. Setting it up? No. Absolutely not for a new user. But I'd say, unless they're maybe an experienced Linux user coming from a... These mythical new users we always talk about.

I mean, if they... There's two types, though. There's the new to Linux, and then there's the I can run Windows kind of. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, one category, though, isn't going to be able to install a distro no matter how easy it is

because they can probably barely install Windows software. Exactly. And so that, of course, is your category if you're installing it for them. And you would with Windows anyway. So my philosophy is if you're installing Windows for them, you're going to install Manjaro for them. If they're installing Ubuntu themselves, they can probably install Manjaro just fine.

I wouldn't say there's really a big deal there. Interesting. All right, guys. Well, before we go to our next topic, and so Mumble Room, if you guys want to think about something for your, if anybody has something they want to say, think on that. Take a quick break, though, because I want to thank our second sponsor this week, and that is UnitySync from Directory Wizards. Now, Matt, back in the day, Directory wizards. Now, Matt, back in the day, back in the day, Matt. Back in the day.

So I worked two types of jobs that dealt with this issue where you have these, well, we called them data islands. I don't know if it's an access database, all kinds of stuff. You'd have one server that has this for this application and one server that has it for another application. And the two types of jobs that I ran into this all the time, I happened to do this kind of work for a very long time. So it was a constant struggle. I worked at a bank that was constantly buying smaller banks. And these smaller banks always had their own systems, always, always. And I worked as an IT contractor, and I was constantly going in right after a merger, and the IT guy had quit or been fired. And there was always data islands.

I mean, I lived this problem that UnitySync solves for so long. So what is UnitySync? It's a centralized service that synchronizes data between directories. So think LDAP, maybe Exchange LDAP, eDirectory. We're talking all of them. Oh, yeah, definitely. The goal of UnitySync is to provide an organization with a unified view of their different directories. UnitySync can scale from a small directory with hundreds of objects to something like the enterprise scale,

consisting of hundreds of thousands of objects without requiring any kind of extensive training. It's got a super easy-to-use web UI. You load it on your Linux box or a Windows box, log into the web UI, set up your commands, run dry runs, get email reports, check on what's going on, interact with the Perl scripting interface if you want to go even deeper, and then synchronize directories. That's really what it's all about. You can get the different account information between directories. So each information contains a unified view. You could just do single attributes. By defining an authoritative data source, you can have one system update individual attributes of both

existing objects of another. And you could also do both. Of course, it works on Active Directory, Exchange 5.5, you've got an old Exchange box, Oracle's Internet Directory, Zimbra, which I love. We haven't been talking a lot, but I love it. Lotus, group-wise, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Access,

which, oh my god, that would have saved me so much time. Oracle Sybase. Oh, no kidding. Access alone. Oh, man. Oh, the initial front-end teller system that the bank that I worked at had all ran off of Access. And each branch required, because of that, each branch required its own terminal server with its own access database. So at one point, we literally had 44 different access databases for each branch, and then we would have to pull data together from all of those.

I mean, UnitySync would have literally saved multiple jobs. I mean, it is absolutely incredible. So if you're not a programmer, no problem. But if you are, then you can get into that Perl interface. You throw it on your Linux box. Enterprise-grade software under five megabytes. Some huge customers. Go over to derwiz.com slash UnitySync.

Check out that customer list. And then you know what I'm talking about. The companies in that list are quite impressive. And I got a good deal for you, too. If you click on that download link, enter in the code Linux, and you'll get a 30-day trial, an extended trial, and your first year of maintenance for free if you decide to pull the trigger. That's a pretty good deal. Nice. Yeah. So thanks to Directory Wizards for sponsoring Linux Actions. You'll love to

see this kind of software. And by the way, moved over to Linux based on customer demand. Ported to Linux and built from the ground up to be a great Linux solution, and it runs right on that machine. It's super easy to use with that web interface too. So go to derwiz.com and check out Unity Sync. You'll probably become the hero of your IT department. Nice. Oh, I would think so. I mean, imagine not only time you're saving,

but just the amount of man hours and dollars. I know, right? Okay, Mumble Room. Last chance before we move on to our final topic for the day. Anybody got anything they want to add to the conversation i just wanted to say if i can yeah go ahead that um it's very clear to me that if we're talking about new users that we're talking about a windows-like experience where the elements of the forms don't move into like the header bar like they also are going to

do now in gnome 3 which is why I don't like that. And the dock thing, that's very Mac-like. If people move to Mac, that's also very different, but if people move to Mac, that's a conscious decision. If people move to Linux, they're already skeptical. That's an excellent point.

Actually, that's an excellent point. So where does that leave us then? So what you're saying is maybe it's futile to try to emulate the legacy desktop? Or are you saying if we don't emulate the legacy desktop, then we won't be that refuge? I think things like Cinnamon are a very good incentive for people to move from Windows XP to Linux. And that's why I think things like Cinnamon are good. And also desktops like Unity are very good for people that like them,

but they're not very good for new users because the close button suddenly moves into the top banner and people lose it and stuff. Moving UI elements kills... And hiding elements... And Canonical knows this is a bad practice, but the way they hide that file and edit menu...

Users... This is why Windows 8 has suffered, they are not like the techies that we want to dig in and we want to find. I love finding all the Easter eggs. Almost every other day, I discover something completely new about KDE, and it's just so awesome. That is not their outlook at all. That is not a good thing in their mind. If a UI element moves to them, they're not going to go hunting for it. They're not going to tuck their mouse in the corner to see what happens. They're not going to hover over a blank area and see if all of a sudden a mythical menu that should or should not be there pops up.

Or is it in the gear this time? I'm not quite sure. This doesn't work. time. I'm not quite sure. This doesn't work. Well, I think it's a great point because it's like the way we look at computers is the way a chef might look at gourmet cooking. I burn cereal. I literally pour it up all and it sets itself on fire. It's just not my skill set. And so not everybody's going to want an advanced experience in everything they do. Some people do, some people don't. So I think computers definitely fall into that category. And I agree completely that for newer users,

the stick and the carrot really is a desktop that feels similar to where they're coming from. I think that's more appealing in getting them to try something newer to make the switch completely. All right, but then let me ask you this. Maybe Canonical's right all along. Maybe Microsoft is right. Maybe they shouldn't have fired Balmer

because maybe the only answer really is, is screw us old fogies. Somebody in a YouTube comment said, five years from now, we're going to look back at yesterday's episode of Linux Action Show and think it was quaint that we had all these opinions about convergence. Sure. Fair point. Because we're sticking the muds, is essentially what he's saying.

You guys are sticking the muds. This problem you guys are trying to solve, is this UI good for new users or is that UI not? Eliminate all of it. Just get rid of all of it and just reboot. You have one device. You learn to use that device.

It does multiple things. You learn it once and you just use that thing to do all those. Well, let me paint you a very, very real picture. And it actually involves an article about the myth that young people are really great with computers. They actually showed that that was false. They're really good with mobile devices. They're not good with computers. They're absolutely useless with computers. And that's because that's how they were brought up into the touch thing that Chris and I have talked about on the show. Now, the adults, the people that were brought up with keyboards and mice and whatnot, that's the world we live in. And unless

something's changed and we've become Lord of the Flies, the kids have not taken over quite yet. So we have a transition period that we still need to cater to people that still want to use things in a legacy fashion. Now, for the future, I completely agree that we're going to laugh at the way we use computers. I totally understand that. But you can't just go hot to cold water. You need to warm it up a little bit.

You need to make that transition slow. And I think that's what Ubuntu is trying to do with their integration with the desktop and the phone and all that. But what they did with Unity was they pushed pretty hard, and that's fine, and it's serving its purpose and whatnot. But I think that people coming from Windows, you're still leaving a lot of them on the table. A lot of people aren't going to necessarily adapt themselves to Unity right out of the box. So I'm not running hot and cold on any one subject. I believe there's a time and a place for everything,

but I think that this, well, you're either in one camp or another. It's just silly. Yes, this is actually the article. There you go. And read it it will it will you know i i spent time i think i mentioned it recently i spent time uh at uh at the local school district and i definitely felt that i definitely felt like kids would go with mobile but they actually just it wasn't that they were bad with computers they just didn't hold any

interest there was when i say they're bad, my nephew, 16 years old, very bright, he's shown me stuff on my Android phone I didn't know about. You park him in front of any operating system, I pop open a terminal or I do anything remotely like installing a driver and he thinks I'm a hacker. I'm not kidding. This is our future. And so, read this article.

I'll just leave it there. Read this article. I will link it in the show notes for folks. And I've been putting together at this show, no show notes ahead of time, assembling them as I go. Yeah, that's great. Good stuff. But yeah, I mean, long story short, different strokes for different folks. I mean, that's really what I'm saying. I'm not belittling any one thing or nothing of that sort. I'm just simply saying there are no absolutes in this space. There really aren't. Yeah. And I want to – I just want to – before we wrap up today because I don't think we're going to get to the desktop customizing stuff. But maybe we'll talk about that maybe next week. Yeah.

We got more show coming. There's more show. More show. But one thing that really did quite well, the BitMessage segment seemed to play really well with the audience. So looking at my BitMessages right now, they've been rolling in all day. That's awesome. I've been getting people trying it out. So also at my BitMessages right now, they've been rolling in all day. That's awesome. I've been getting people trying it out. So also sent along, we were talking about one of the things that was kind of holding BitMessage back potentially would be

the integration with existing services. That way you could have like essentially like a multi-client, like Thunderbird could have a BitMessage option, right? I love that idea. Yeah. So Anonymous on BitMessage, because using BitMessage if you want to, but you can be totally anonymous. He says, I found something interesting that you might be able to use with BitMessage. It's called BitMessage Email Gateway. It allows you to view your BitMessages in an email client such as Thunderbird, Outlook,

et cetera. You just have to enable the BitMessage client API, which is easy to do by adding a few settings in a Ddat file. Also, the developer of this program has a hosted solution with a webmail UI for sending and receiving BitMessages, plus it also supports sending and receiving

regular email as well. There's a hosted solution at bitmessage.ch and there is also a version you can download the code yourself interesting i love that yeah well i'm gonna check that out so bit message.ch for the uh i'm gonna go let's go look at that maybe show notes that sucker too that sounds really cool uh and uh we also got uh just like tons of people like hey how's it going i'm trying out bit message write me back so i know

it works you know and and so I do. I try to, at least, because I don't want them to think it doesn't work. Well, I'm going to open up one. So here was a BitMessage we got in at 1.48 p.m. today. It says, hello, Chris and Matt. In your last show, you've been very busy complaining about Canonical's Ubuntu Edge Indiegogo campaign. And I have two things to say about that. Number one, I have another theory that why the campaign failed.

There could be the possibility that Canonical set the goal at 32 million on purpose so it doesn't succeed because they may not really be willing to take their own phone to make their own phone at all. I think they just did this campaign to get public attention and the attention of mobile service providers out there so they could get software delivered at all. Number two, I really don't want you to turn the Linux Action Show into the Ubuntu Edge Show. Maybe you can focus a bit less on Ubuntu Edge. Well, it's funny. Why would you be writing that in at the end of the campaign? Obviously, the campaign's over. It ran for 30 days, so we covered it during its run, and now it's done. But all you write is at the end of it and

say, don't cover it anymore. It's over. It's over, so we won't be covering it. I think he was afraid that we might have additional afterthoughts. You mean like we're doing right now? Yeah. Well, that's why we have this show. It allows us to not have to loop it into an entire another last. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. You know, now as far as his point, you know, honestly, that would make whoever is in charge of this stuff brilliant, whoever comes up with these schemes. Now, that being said, boy, I don't know. That's a pretty big stretch, but it would be an interesting point. Max is not the first person to make this suggestion. I have also seen that this was – I mean I have watched somebody I know make one embarrassing, embarrassing public disaster of a situation after another and yet the pr only seems to continue on i mean it only seems there never seems to be a negative cost to it so i have sort of come around to the potential that perhaps all pr is good pr and there so maybe

he's i mean shuttleworth has to be crazy like a fox and And do you remember all those Macs we saw in the promo video? I mean, remember how they had all the drawings on them? They were really working on it. So I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah, because that to me isn't brilliant. And so it's kind of a wash to where if this was done, and this is, I've been part of similar things in the past. So if that's what he was describing, and that's why I say if he did, it was brilliant because I've been a part of that sort of stuff and that is really brilliant. It wasn't my idea. It was somebody else's.

But point being, I don't think that they have the wherewithal to actually put that together at this point. I think that it's Shuttleworth's way or the highway and I don't mean that with a derogatory statement. I mean that he's the lead vision for the company and the direction he wants to go is the direction they're going to go. And I don't

think that's something he would come up with on his own. You know what would have been awesome? I don't think so. I think what might have maybe made a bit of a difference is long time ago, one of the things that kind of put Ubuntu on the path of legitimacy is Shuttleworth like escrowed some funds for the project. Like here's money that I have dedicated to the project. Do you remember this? I do remember this. And it was much more transparent visible back then yeah yes if there was something like that that's like here is a very public display of canonical's ongoing commitment to making

a very very good desktop here it is here's an escrow account i have funded this division of canonical they will operate as if they were you know they like they are just their own division Here it is. Here's an escrow account. I have funded this division of Canonical. They will operate as if they were, you know, like they are just their own division. They can continue to work their asses off while we focus on mobile, and they'll focus on that, and we'll meet up in the middle. And here's the thing.

And maybe that's exactly how it's structured, and maybe not. Don't know. Well, that's the whole point of this. They're always talking about transparency, but I've yet to see the podcast shows about the latest stuff they're working on. That is not that they can talk about, of course. I want to see more behind-the-scenes stuff.

I want to see these guys using their own product for God's sakes. I mean, I don't really ever see that. I see a lot of Macs, but I don't see a lot of Ubuntu usage. And I want to see more of that in their transparency approach. I want to see a podcast. I want't see a lot of Ubuntu usage. And I want to see more of that in their transparency approach. I want to see a podcast. I want to see not just audio, but I want to see video.

I want to see actual footage of them using their stuff, brainstorming, bouncing ideas, shooting down ideas, accepting ideas. I want to actually feel like I'm part of that experience. Bring that to me. That's what I want. Yeah, it is a good opportunity. They could be the – this is going to sound so corny when I say it, but if you give it some thought, yeah it's good it is a good opportunity you know they could be the this is going to sound so corny when i say but if you give it some thought maybe it's not so corny they

could be the social company they could be the social operating system company i don't mean make a bunch of twitter integration into into ubuntu what i mean is they could they're lean and scrappy enough that they could be utilizing well i mean mean, they do utilize G Plus and YouTube quite a bit, but I They talk at you. Yeah, exactly. Alright, well, let's get off the I'm really getting sick of talking about Kanana. Me too.

If you've been burned out on it, I feel like I'm spent. We're right there with you. One last email I just want to cover because it's kind of positive. The bright future of Linux servers came in via BitMessage. We got a lot of emails, too. This is crazy, Matt. Maybe next week we will only do emails.

I don't know. That's probably a good way to kind of clean out some of the bot sites. It's too fun, though. We're just having too much fun. Yeah. And, you know, we can spread it out, too. That's true. That's true.

We got a long haul ahead of us. All right. Mike B. here says he's a new supporter of Unfiltered got a long haul ahead of us. Alright, Mike B. here says, he's a new supporter of Unfiltered, by the way, which we appreciate that, Mike. He says he's currently got a Xeon E3 server at home. He runs ZOL, which is RAID Z2, as Alan

would say. What that breaks down to is eight 2TB Western Digital Red drives. So he's got eight 2TB Red drives. Red drives. 2TB Red drives. 2TB Red drives. 16GB of RAM. And he's running Ubuntu 12.04. Server host, it's like a NAS, a BitTorrent, Usenet, SickBeard, SpotWeb, SabNZB. Awesome!

Nice. Mumble server, an IRC server, Nginx. Dude's got it loaded, right? Hook me up! I know. That's awesome. He says he's been looking to try to migrate his data off of Google. He doesn't like getting tied into that ecosystem. He says he's worried about data leakage, but he says crawling away seems really difficult. Therefore, I've been looking to set up a mail server implementation with OpenVPN and SSH and give some replacements.

One thing I've been unsatisfied about is the lack of isolation I have on the server. Some replacements. One thing I've been unsatisfied about is the lack of isolation I have on the server. Several of the apps I run are straight off of the Git repos, and everything is executed the same user space. Per your mention of Docker on last episode a few weeks ago, I've begun to move my applications into their own containers. I feel the data security on a VPS is an issue that isn't mentioned enough. Like the old saying goes, if someone has physical access to all your servers, all bets are off.

That's true. I do agree. It kind of depends, I suppose, how the VPS works. If it's a Zen level or KVM VPS where you are in your own isolated KVM machine, I'm a little less worried about that. If it's user space applications that are simply running as a Matt user, Chris

user type VPS, that I definitely worry about a lot. That would be a concern, sure. It's interesting. He goes on to talk a little bit more about Docker. And Michael Dominick from Coda Radio is currently working on a project, and he's investigating the use of Docker. Remember we covered Docker? We had that photo with the rainbow.

Oh, yes. That was great. Docker is huge, he says. It isn't touted enough as removing the barriers of application packaging. I can choose per container targets to target the best stream of packages, updates for that particular app. It's OS agnostic, yum, deb, targ, z, pacman, whatever. It doesn't matter. So what he's saying here is you could be on Fedora 18, and I could be on my latest, greatest Arch,

and I could package up BitMessage and put it in a Docker container and send it over to you, and you could deploy that Docker container and run it just fine on your machine because all of the dependencies, all of the executables, the Arch environment would exist in that Docker container to the extent they are different from your machine. That would be fantastic. It could be a really cool way to deploy software. Oh, I'd say it. I can't see a better way. I mean, that sounds awesome. And everything is contained within that security zone too. So he says, sorry to frustrate Alan,

but he thinks that the Linux future looks brighter than BSD and ZFS being enterprise ready and working on Linux is just a win-win for Linux. So all in all, he says, keep up the great work on Jupyter Broadcasting. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, it's good stuff. I disagree somewhat.

I think that BSD and Linux cater to different needs, different folks. They just cater differently. So I can't say one's brighter than the other. I definitely could not say that. I think they're both very bright, though. And I may or may not say that there could be a BSD podcast in the near future. I don't know. Who knows?

How could somebody know that? Who would know that? Who would possibly have knowledge of that kind of thing coming? I can't imagine. I mean, the speculation alone. I know. The speculation could just get ridiculous. And if there were people that the community loved that were going to be on the show on a regular basis, that would be really outlandish.

And I don't know where people are getting that from, Matt. Anarchy. I'm a little incensed. People are just making – what did Alan say in the are just making What did Alan say in the chatroom? Oh. Well, I don't know who this Alan guy is. I don't know who you guys are talking about. Alan who? Not familiar with Alan. Not familiar. Don't know any Alan.

Alright, so I put the story of my KD troubles in the show notes if people are curious of the process I went through and the packages I updated and how I fixed it in case you have that same problem. You can just copy my commands if you want. Just be careful. I claim no warranty. I also put links to the email gateway for BitMessage, Olyx Thoughts on our Ubuntu Edge coverage,

the kids can't use computers and why that should worry you article Matt mentioned, as well as the BitMessage email gateway. And I also want to give a special mention to that wiki page. People are starting to work on it right now, which is awesome. We'll be talking about more. If you didn't know, which I doubt at this point,

but we created a wiki entry over at linuxactionshow.reddit.com, and we are trying to get the community to come together on really flushing out all of the different options and solutions for rolling your own email system, taking your email back onto your LAN or putting it on a VPS, whatever is best for your situation, whatever that might be, and how to do that, what software is available, what things have people tried, what worked best, what didn't work, what do people need to know about DNS-wise, what do people need to know about spam filter, all that kind of stuff. We want to make a living document repository of this kind of thing. So that way, as it comes up, which I, for some reason, suspect it will more and more,

we have a resource to point people towards, something that is up to date and current. Oh, I'm excited about it because really, I've looked at other attempts, and they never really hit the mark. They're always missing massive components or things you need to know. And the way ours is shaping up, I'm really excited about the prospect of it.

I'm looking forward to running it myself. Yeah, I haven't really picked a domain name yet that I'm going to use for my home, but the wife and I have been kicking around a few ideas. So I'm going to use our Linux 249. I'm going to use for my home, but the wife and I have been kicking around a few ideas. So I'm going to, I'm going to use our Linux two 49. I'm going to pick up a.com. I'm going to get,

you know, it's just, I'm just going to start fresh. I'm going to give it out to some people, the email address. I'll probably let it slip on the show on accident. That's fine. That's fine.

Whatever. But like right now, my quote unquote personal email account, my Gmail is a mess. It's decimated, man. It's definitely sure. I'm sure. And then my business email gets all the show emails.

So that's decimated, Matt. It's decimated. It's decimated. And I try and keep mine pretty carefully quiet. I have a contact page I hand out. And some people have my personal, and it's fine. But I try to keep it under control because I can still manage it right now. Well, I thankfully, early on,

G Plus had this little thing, G Plus had this little thing or Buzz had this little thing that just released my email address to the public. So everybody had it. I was like, all right, I'm done with that. That was your problem. You participated in Buzz. I was buzzless.

Yeah, I did. I did. So if you want to go over to the wiki, it's linked right now. You know what? I'm going to link it in the show notes too, but it'll also be linked at the top of the Linux Action Show subreddit.

It's a wiki. So you go into the self. In fact, I'll link right to the self-hosted email section. You go in there and just start working. You create the page and then you link it just like you would on a regular wiki. One little thing that's different. I love it, but it's probably going to be weird for somebody who's used to using like Wikipedia or something. It uses Markdown for the formatting.

Markdown's awesome. We use it for all of our show notes so they actually the really kind of nice thing about uh the wiki that we're creating over there is i can literally go in and edit a post and copy line by line the markdown and paste it like we needed like a reference for our show notes and i can paste it directly into the show notes and it will be formatted perfectly for the for the post oh that makes for a nice smooth transition going back and forth so it's a little wonky maybe if you're new to markdown but for the post. Oh, that makes for a nice smooth transition going back and forth. So it's a little wonky maybe if you're new to Markdown, but for the production purposes of the show,

it's actually extremely convenient. So I figured since we already have a good community over on the Linux Action Show subreddit, that was a good spot to toss it. I wasn't sure where to put it at first, but that just seemed like a good spot for it to go. So we'll have that link too in the show notes. Definitely. And if you're new to the Markdown thing, just Google around.

Once you get used to the syntax syntax it's really not that bad yeah and there's some really good um online markdown preview utilities so you can you can experiment like in one pane it's if you search markdown online preview or something like that preview online uh one pane is the markdown code one pane is the html code and you can in real time tweak your markdown and see how it formats in HTML. It's super nice JavaScript. Don't need to load any software. Wham, bam.

Thank you, ma'am. Well, Matt, I think we'll leave it at that today, but we're going to maybe hang out a little bit with the guys on Mumble after the show. Yeah. Let's do that. We're not all done, but we'll wrap up the recording. Thank you guys for joining us today. Matt, thank you for joining me.

Don't forget Tuesday next week. Tuesday. Got the note, got the calendar. We're all set. We're moving. I'll update the Jupyter Broadcasting calendar right after we get off the air. Email us, linuxactionshow at jupyterbroadcasting.com or send us a bit message. Start a thread in that subreddit.

We're in there all the time. linuxactionshow.reddit.com. Hey, thanks for joining us for Linux Unplugged. We'll see you right back here on Monday, or Tuesday, actually. And we'll see you on Sunday for the big show. Thanks, everybody.