LINUX Unplugged - Episode 31: Ubuntu Punching Bag | LUP 31

Episode Date: March 12, 2014

Is the Linux community’s animosity towards Ubuntu turning away new switchers? We’ll analyze what has the community so upset, and how that can color a new Linux users first impressions.Plus Vale promise to make transitioning from DirectX to OpenGL much easier, but we have our doubts, and why Wil Wheaton loves his Mac but plays with his Linux.

This is Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's doing everything it can to switch every single user to Linux. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey there, Matt. Welcome to episode 31, buddy. This week, I want to talk a little bit about something you wrote a great piece on Datamation about, and that is, are Ubuntu haters pushing away Linux switchers, potential Linux switchers? Are those people like scaring away people that are looking into Linux?

You know, with a lot of hate and things like that. And I know, I recall from when I switched to Arch, I ran into a lot of that. Did you experience that, Matt, during our Arch challenge? Oh, yeah, definitely. A lot of like, do it this way, don't do it that way. Yeah, I like to call it Archthink. I think it was basically they had a pattern of thought that worked for them, and they expect you to adhere to that pattern of thought or screw you.

Yeah, and if you don't do it that way, there's something wrong with you. Yeah. I mean, no, it's gotten a little better over time, but it's still there. I think, you know, in the context of Arch, I think that's given the community a little bit of a bad rep in some sense, is that particular kind of behavior. And I think kind of this point in the Linux community, Ubuntu haters, drinking the Ubuntu haterade is kind of like it's world famous now.

Everybody's in on it. Everybody knows an Ubuntu hater. A lot of us are Ubuntu haters now. Everybody's in on it. Everybody knows an Ubuntu hater. A lot of us are Ubuntu haters. Not necessarily. I'm pretty neutral. I know Matt's pretty neutral too. But you do have to think about it in the context of people's first impressions and how that sort of forms their opinion about the Linux community. And I think that's going to be interesting in sort of the shadow of this Sunday's last.

Here we are a year after the announcement of Mir. And we're going to break down some of the things that have made people kind of upset with Canonical, and I think Mir is one of them. So it's kind of, I think it's a perfect time to talk about this in light of that. But first, Matt, it is tradition to start with the feedback. And we got a lot of feedback last week about replacing Exchange. We've been talking about what's preventing people from switching to Linux from a technical standpoint, right? You know, collaboration software, AutoCAD. Big one. Yeah. Games, you know, just general education, you know, about the existence of Linux and the options there. There's been a lot of things,

you know, ease of use that we've covered on this show that we think are preventing people from switching to Linux. The groupware thing has definitely been one of them. So this couple of emails we're going to do will sort of wrap up that discussion around the technical stuff. And this week, we'll sort of kick off the discussion around the community stuff, the people stuff. So we'll start with an email from Dwayne. He wrote into the show responding to the whole groupware thing. He says, Hi there, Chris and Matt. Well, hi, Dwayne. Good to talk to you. He said, I listened to Linux Unplugged and I heard you mention Colab and Zimbra as possible solutions for your office.

While you're at it, check out Univention. It's meant to be an open source replacement for folks who don't want to use Microsoft software solutions to start with or are moving away from them. He says, thanks again for the sweet show. I use BitTorrent to get all the shows. Can't risk missing any of them. And he includes a link to Univention. It's univention.com. And they have a small business edition, and it's sort of like a drop-in exchange replacement. Oh, I like that. Especially if it's truly drop-in and you can just kind of slide into that. That's fantastic. Now, I think he's using Thunderbird as his front end. We heard

from a few folks that sent in different stuff, but this was kind of a popular one. Another one on the topic of the Exchange replacement, Kevin writes and he says, hey Chris and Matt, you asked what people did for email contacts and calendars, so I figured I'd share my open system with you. Basically,

I use IMAP, CalDev, and CardDev to access my mail contacts, etc. I originally used Google for all of the above, but migrated away as they shut down CalDev and CardDev support. He says I still use them for my email, though. Now, the other two reside on my local own cloud server. This is great because I'm using only open standards and everything stays in sync across my laptop, desktop, and phone. Also, because of the protocols I use, it is easy to migrate between services if I decide I don't like them for whatever reason. Now, no need to change applications or workflow, just change the host.

For clients, I use Thunderbird on my computers and my apps on my Android provide car dev and Cal dev backends for Android sync, allowed it to work with all apps. I use the Gmail app on Android. That's the only non-free part of his setup. But I also have used K9 in the past. Cheers, Kevin. This is kind of – this is interesting. It's not a full solution because he still uses Gmail for his email part. True, true.

But I know OpenCloud is a popular solution for this. I think it's an interesting approach. I mean, if he's able to make it work and he's able to make it work for him and as he builds his stuff out, it's still working for him, then I think he has a winner. I do dig his point about how

because he's using IMAP and CalDev and CardDev, the backend is really sort of just an implementation detail. And he can swap that out to another system if he decides for some reason that own cloud isn't doing the business for him anymore. That's a great point. That's actually an excellent point. Didn't own cloud just have an update like today? I believe so.

Let's go check. I think, I'm not sure, but I think own cloud six just shipped today. I have to go over to owncloud.org and take a look. But I've been considering using something like OwnCloud. There's a few other alternatives that I want to review soon on the Linux Action Show that look like they're really good systems. So I'm thinking about maybe doing a couple of, like a roundup of the one I really like, and then maybe I'll even deploy it to the studio. That's kind of the goal I'm shooting for. That would be awesome to have this totally,

because it's like starting out, it's not starting out completely fresh, but it kind of is, because it's at a new locale. You can actually start everything the way you wanted it from the get-go. The own cloud site isn't loading right now, so I don't know if they had it. Maybe that's a sign that they did have an update, because right now I'm just getting a blank page. And it's just waiting for owncloud.org.

But I think version 6, I want to say version 6 came out today. Maybe the chat room knows. They can let us know. All right, Matt. Well, let's see. We'll give that OwnCloud site a second to load here. And I'll say thanks to one of our sponsors this week. And that is ting.com.

Get started by being proud and going to linux.ting.com. That's right, represent. You got to go shout it out, you guys. Linux.Ting.com. What is Ting? Well, I'll tell you what Ting is. Ting is no BS mobile service. It's simple, it's straightforward, it's mobile, it makes sense. No contract. You only pay for what you use, flat $6 per line plus taxes. And then it's just your usage on top of that. Ting takes your minutes, your message, your megabytes. They add it all up, whatever bucket you fall into at the end of the month, that's what you pay. Every Ting plan includes hotspot and tethering. This is, for me, this is so awesome because right now as we're setting up the studio, there's no internet there. And it is so weird to be in a building for hours at a time and not have internet access.

I'll just be honest with you. You can't do it. It hurts on the inside. So what's so great about Ting is if I want hotspot or tethering, I can just check the box on Android. You know, that feature that Google built in for a reason? Yeah, you just check that box. No special plan. I don't get in trouble for not having a data plan. I don't have to have a family share, whatever.

It's just part of my data usage. And Ting makes it super easy to monitor where my data usage is at with their awesome intuitive control panel. I can go in there and manage all of my devices, disable, enable, activate devices, set up alerting, set up call forwarding or voicemail options. You can really take control of your Ting account and ultimately your own bill. And they have very straightforward, plain language billing. When you see that bill, you know exactly what's going on.

There's no surprises. They also have companion iOS and Android apps to manage your Ting account right from an app on the device. And Ting has no hold customer support. You can call them between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. or 8 p.m. Eastern. And just call them at 1-855-846-4389 and a real person just answers the phone. You don't have to go through some sort of call tree or something. Well, isn't it great that you can walk into this brand new studio that's still being very much set up? I mean, it's still in disarray for the most part, and you have internet out of the box.

You don't have to worry about it. It's super nice. It's internet in my pocket, and it's actually really great internet. And today, as Ting is announcing, if you have a Sprint-compatible iPhone 5, you can now activate it on Ting. Or you can grab one if you just want to go get a new one from Ting, whichever you prefer. This is great because I know not everybody in our audience is an Android lover. And the iPhone 5 is a great device for iOS users. And now you can use it right there on Ting.

Or you can buy, they partner, Ting will partner up with Glide. And you can go through them to get a used device to get it at a great price. If you've already got one, you can bring it over. And if you're in a contract, Ting has an early termination relief program where they'll pay up to $75 per line that you had to get cancelled. They'll apply that to your account. Now,

average Ting bill before taxes is like $21 a month per line. I think mine is about $30, $35 right now. Yeah, so $75 credit, that gave me quite a month per line. I think mine is about 30, 35 bucks right now. Yeah, so $75 credit, that gave me quite a ways. Definitely, definitely. I know. Well, and I think, you know,

you're talking about people that wanting to use iPhone. I think it's important to remember that while a lot of us may be Android people, we may have family members that we're bringing onto Ting with us that perhaps would like to use iPhone. And we very much do. Yes.

And we very much thank Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Linux.ting.com, you guys. Go check it out. Just visiting there lets them know that you appreciate them supporting the Linux Unplugged show. And plus, it's pretty cool that we got Linux. Hey, oh, there we go. OwnCloud 6, yes.

The OwnCloud site loaded. Nice. And OwnCloud 6 is out today. That's something we're going to have to check out. I'll put this on my list for Sunday to do some research on and maybe even download it and check it out. Congrats to the old crowd. Yeah, there have been some reports that there's some

bugs in the new features and things like that, but it might be worth looking into. Yeah, I'll do some digging. I'll dig around. So if anybody has any experiences, please share those in the linuxactionshow.reddit.com subreddit and we'll incorporate all that into our feedback on okay so fryer tuck wrote in matt and uh this is sort of just rounding out our coverage on the

technical limitations for people switching to linux it's the other popular one autocad he says hello chris and matt i've heard you both mentioned in the in passing that the lack of autocad solutions is a major drawback to linux well, I'm a CAD technician who provides IT support in my office as needed. When I hear your discussions about the enterprise Linux adoption, I can't help but apply the issues to my own office. It seems to me that my office could get by fine in the Linux space,

except for certain engineering-related software, mostly Autodesk and Bentley software. I'd love to see a show dedicated to available CAD solutions under Linux. I've heard of Blender, but that seems to be mostly for digital animation applications, but what else is out there? Also, I'm learning about steam streaming for CAD solutions. Thanks so much for all the great informative content. I'm new to Linux in general. Oh, that's great. And, uh, my crowning achievement so far has been getting Ubuntu up and running on my old Mac. Nice. Good for him.

Lep has been his gateway. I like that. So, yeah. Hey, audience, if you guys know of some AutoCAD replacements, I don't – I mean, I know there's some stuff out there, but this is just not my area. I don't really know a lot about CAD software outside of really the AutoCAD commercial. Well, and someone that can help us look at the available options and say, okay, they all, to you, Chris and I, I mean, they look the same. I mean, they really, I can't make heads or tails out of one versus another, but if someone can help us understand what the benefits of one versus another are, or whether one's more

stable, runs better, one's on Java, one's not, whatever it may be. Yeah, that's exactly it. Perfectly put. Like, they all just look the same to me. You know, it's like, okay, well, I see there's some sort of CAD thing here. That's awesome. I can draw stuff. I mean, I don't really know what I'm doing with it.

Yeah. So do you remember last week at the end of the episode, we had an email from Scott, and Scott was a little concerned about the amount of commercial software that is now coming over to Linux and sort of taking Linux and sort of perverting it into this closed-off commercial money-making platform. off commercial money-making platform. Well, Mark wrote back to reply to Scott, and he said, regarding the discussion about whether we should be happy with proprietary games on Linux, here's how I see it. And I think Mark nails the way I see it, too. He says, my system, utilities, and application software, I want that to be free. If I'm browsing the web, if I'm editing documents, et cetera, I want the code open to inspection, improvement, forking in case of developing it or going away,

or maybe the development turning bad. But my entertainment, I don't care. If I watch a movie, if I've got no interest in having access to the raw footage to make my own cut, I don't have any interest in making my own raw cuts of it. If I play a game, same deal. It's a piece of entertainment that I'm paying for as a complete article. If the license allows me to be entertained by it,

and the price is proportioned to the amount of entertainment I get, then that's fine. Cheers, Mark. That's exactly how I see it. For Steam games, to me, that is not as important as the system utilities and the day-to-day applications that I have to have to actually work and I need to be able to have trust in. For me, it's sort of like buying a movie theater ticket. Yeah, I think I'm going to equate that because it's exactly the movie theater ticket thing.

It's like the rule you can't bring in your own food and drink. That doesn't feel very open, does it? But at the end of the day, if you think about it, we're choosing to go there to do this. We could very well wait for it to at the end of the day if you think about it we're choosing to go there to do this you know we we could very well wait for it to come to blu-ray that's fine or however we may get it uh but the point of the thing is is that that's exactly it it's like the the fact that the movie's available for us for our entertainment it's not it's not it's not a critical piece of our life you know it's not a critical piece of our uh job or our ability to do stuff at home so yeah i would agree with that yeah um yeah that's how it's yeah and i said that's why like for me i kind of like have this man not a big deal for games um but you know if if i like i

love the fact that my entire desktop environment is is open source uh our last uh bit of email this week mike writes in he says hey guys first of all thanks for the awesome show i listened to linux unplugged and last and i love. I just thought I'd quickly share with you one of your sponsors pleasantly surprised me today. I signed up with DigitalOcean a few weeks back. I had heard of them on your show. Being me, I know this one. Being me, I forgot to use your promo code. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. He said, so anyways, I was able to go back in and edit my order, figuring I'd probably missed out on it, but why not give it a shot anyways? I said, I went in there, applied it, and to my surprise, they actually still applied the

discount. Oh, wow. Yeah. He says, yeah, when you're in there, there's a promo code field in your account settings and you can apply the discount. And he says he's been rocking his digital ocean droplet uh ever since then so why don't i stop right here before we get into the rest of the show and thank digital ocean our second and last sponsor this week here on linux unplugged what is digital ocean digital ocean is simple

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and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. I mean, two months for free. I mean, it's like, it actually costs you money not to try it at that point. And it costs you your soul. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, okay, Matt, before we go on,

we've got a Valve update real quick. Just to talk, we've got to talk a little bit about this, like it's storming the internets right now as we're recording this show. Valve has announced they're going to solve all of our problems. Never fear Linux users. They have released a direct 3D to OpenGL transition layer. Everybody go home. Job's done. Is that right, Wizard, or did I get something wrong there? Exactly what you think it is. It's actually going to be something that you can add to your actual project after the fact to bring something else up to date. So it's going to be something like I can apply to, you know,

X old game to go and make it so that I can run it on Linux. It's not going to be something that everyone just installs in their repository and it's going to be this magic wine fix. I was going to say it that everyone just installs in their repository and it's going to be this magic wine fix that's going to replace wine. I was going to say, it almost sounds like wine then. No, it's not going to be something that you... It only goes and translates the DirectX calls to OpenGL calls. It's like the project itself is called 2GL.

So, yeah, if you want to look at it, it's on GitHub right now under the Valve software. That's pretty cool. So have you been taking a look at it? Yes, I have. It's all written in C++, so it's very readable. So this isn't really going to, I mean, now that you've kind of brought me up to date on it, it kind of seems like, I guess this is one more, what's that? I kind of find it, it it's nice but it's a little

bit overhyped yeah exactly that's exactly what i was going to say yeah and i was kind of playing to that that whole overhyped aspect of it but it's neat it's neat and uh i'm glad to see valve open sourcing software absolutely what was the license is it uh gpl good question i didn't look oh okay yeah i don't see it right here on their page either, but I know they have a license file, so I'll go jump in there. I bet you in the license file it'll tell you. But all right. Well, thanks, Wizard. I'll toss you back up to the main room, and we'll join the main room too. And I want to kick around something that came out on the web today. You guys probably saw this.

saw this. Will Wheaton took to Google Plus and made Mark Shutterworth cry when he announced that he's not crazy about the direction Ubuntu is taking. In fact, the exact quote that Will Wheaton said was, yeah, I'm not crazy about Ubuntu. I feel like the entire project

has gone in a direction that isn't for me. The big hang joke started immediately, yes. Okay, exactly. He went on to say, I love just about everything about my MacBook Pro and my iMac, so I don't see myself going to Linux full-time

again, but I really do love being able to explore tons of open-source packages and play with different kernel options, desktops, and all those things that I need to do. All those things that I don't need to do, but still have fun doing anyway. Being a hipster intensifies.

Well, in his defense, I've actually, you know, I've met him before, and I will tell you, he's an old-school Linux guy. He's actually waded through it. He's slack-weared with the best of them, but he did kind of evolve into kind of a Mac mindset, if you will, over time. So he did his time in Linux kind of a mac a mac mindset if you will over time

so he did his time in linux it's not like he's some passive guy just coming through and talking smack i think it's some insights i think the linux community's pride blinds them from seeing the real threat i think maybe we also still see microsoft as the threat but i think the reality is the real competition is apple i think it's i think from they have they have compelling hardware that people a lot of people like not everybody uh the fact that they can sell so many computers without ethernet ports blows my mind but it's a thing apparently uh and they um they offer sort of a uh at least the idea of a turnkey computing solution and i think that is uh i want, I want to sort of keep that in

mind as we talk about the overall Linux community's abrasiveness sometimes when it comes to issues that they're passionate about. And Matt, you touched on this in an article you wrote for Datamation saying, is Ubuntu animosity misplaced? Kind of from a high level, like, what's the concept here? Basically, I'm looking at it from this perspective. And I always take is Ubuntu animosity misplaced? Kind of from a high level, like, what's the concept here? Basically, I'm looking at it from this perspective. And I always take the Ubuntu perspective for two reasons. One, it's what my editor would prefer. And secondly, it still covers most of the Linux universe just by default anyway.

So it's really a moot issue in that regard. But the point is, is that a lot of people come into Linux and people I introduce to Linux, they go to the forums, they go to these different places, or especially on the social media sites, and they see a lot of real negative behavior. I mean, it's really unfortunate. The kind of stuff you would expect to see in a Windows form. You know, you like to think you got away from that, but in Linux space, it can be really prevalent, and for a lot of people, it's a turn off. But also going deeper than that, I feel like that, so what got these people to that mindset in the first place? And a lot of it does come down to Unity, other aspects of Ubuntu as well.

I mean, just really nail down the list. You did a good job. You said Ubuntu simply needed to give Unity more time and development before releasing it. Because of that, it got a big backlash from the community. Simply put, you said, I believe some folks within the Linux community felt like Ubuntu was isolating itself with this move to Unity. I think that's probably a fair point. That caused some hurt feelings. Or, you know, maybe hurt feelings

is the right way to put it, but it caused people to take sides. And then you said, you know, down the road you had the Mirror versus Wayland debacle, which we're very familiar with. When it was first announced Mirror was to be Ubuntu's choice for X.org's replacement, once again the Linux community sounded

off. At the time, I took a stance on the matter that explaining that if Mirror didn't get at least one additional distro to use it as a display option, I would wear a monkey suit for the masses unless, well, it's 12 months later, and I've lost the bet and prepared to pay the price initially agreed upon. Now for the bitter pill you don't want to hear. The casual computer user couldn't care less about the issue. So long as the applications work as expected, I suspect we'll be seeing shrugs of

indifference throughout the Ubuntu masses. No, I see this as a battle of wills between developers and their opposing views. And I think you nailed it there. And I think if you look at Will Wheaton, what he just said, he couldn't give two craps about Wayland versus Mirror. And he also defeats the thing that it's only new users that don't care he is not a new user by any oh great point so i think this is something we've got to appreciate is people uh

you know as their lives get busy just because just because they might not be um uh they might be technical people but they might just decide that they don't have time for drama or they don't have time to follow this kind of stuff. And that can be a whole off-putting thing in itself. And you say the back and forth was perhaps even more heated than we'd seen than the Unity versus Gnome challenges in the past. Like the Mirror versus Weyland thing was like every time they've had something, that event has been more hotly contentious than the one before it. That's true. And it seems like the animosity is building on itself and building on itself.

And it's like this snowball that just keeps rolling. And then, of course, we get into the whole Upstart versus SystemD discussion, which, you know, Canonical and Ubuntu weren't directly involved in. But you say, unlike the Unity versus Mir debate, Upstart got the attention of a fresh new crop of Linux users as it directly affected how a Linux distro starts and stops events and services. So even if you're not a system admin or a developer, this affected anyone who uses Linux on a day-to-day basis.

Definitely. And I noticed a lot of people that normally wouldn't care one way or the other about desktop environments or whatnot because they just use something else. This affected them more so because it was under the hood. It's going to change how they do things. And you said, of course, the CLA at its core. The CLA is perceived as a barrier among many developers in the Linux community. You mentioned Linus Torvalds expressed his displeasure with all CLAs in all forms. And

that's been a real concern for some developers. And you mentioned in your closing thoughts that the Linux community is passionate, involved, and sometimes overtly loud when it comes to the direction the platform is headed in. That you say, while users such as myself try to be, try hard to remain neutral and not act as though using our computers is a religious experience, the community at large continues to make their voices heard no matter the cost. Now, what do you think that cost is? I think a lot of times the cost is that we create unnecessary, you know, contention between each other. I think a lot of times that we become so focused on stupid stuff

that we really lose focus of what's going on in other areas. For example, like, let's look at the Chromebooks and how Chrome's doing its thing and, you know, these things are selling really well and whatnot. Rather than focusing on outdoing Apple, outdoing Google, outdoing other stuff, I feel like we focus on our internal squabble so much that it really not only doesn't solve anything, it just makes us dig deeper into our own personal camps. Well, yeah. But we ignore bigger issues. I'm not sure if you're thinking about it right, because I mean, there's a lot of things that

are huge deals, you know, like what side of the window is the close button on oh my god i know oh and the and how i used to know i'm guilty of this i used to i used to bitch constantly about the lack of a minimize button and no i made a big stink about it just and i went on and on and on and on about it no one cares i mean you know it was my problem not yours right so it's like why would anyone care but i'm i'm guilty of this as well. I'm just as bad as the other guy. Riley, what are your thoughts on the Unity hate? Well, there's a thing about Unity, too.

There's a large user base who would actually use Unity on other distros if they could. Sure. People would use Unity on Arch if they could, but since they can't, they just hate on it. I actually think Unity is maybe the ultimate example of stuff that we argue about that actual users don't care about because here's the thing. Even if Unity

was quote-unquote the most terrible desktop in the history ever, it doesn't matter. If you are even slightly Linux technically inclined, you know how to use a different desktop. And if you're a new user to Linux, you really probably have no problem with Unity because, truth be told, it's not that bad, especially if you don't come in

with preconceptions. It honestly isn't that bad. It's a very pretty desktop, especially if you've used it 12.04 forward. It's actually halfway stable. I don't care what you say. I think it's something that general users just don't even know they should be caring about.

And Ick, you think somehow maybe user choice plays into all of this? Yes, absolutely. Here's the thing. We keep talking about over and over again, Linux is about freedom and choice. And it's something that I wrote actually on the subreddit. When it comes to desktop environment, use whatever you like the best and works best for you. Don't let anyone

talk you into something else just because they like it more or have some other agenda. Good advice. Rod and Corpse, you switched your mom over to a Unity desktop? I did. How'd it go? She's been using it for about two years now. She likes it, I guess? Yeah, she has no problem with it.

The thing is, I was using it at this time because I was testing it out, and I wanted to kind of, like, have her opinion on it. And because she's a completely – she doesn't really care at all. All of the DEs and stuff like that is irrelevant to her. It doesn't matter. So when I look at Unity, I find the little flaws and stuff that I don't like and a few things that I do. Like the dash, I don't like it almost at all. But I asked her what she thinks about the dash. She's like, what's that?

And I explained it. She's like, yeah, I don't care. That's cool. Yeah, exactly. Well, see, I've had – so I had my dad running an older version of Ubuntu with Unity, and he really liked it. He was coming from – it was either XP or 7. It was before Windows 8, and he was switching over, and he ran Ubuntu for a little while. And what he ran into is kind of what you touch on here, Matt, is you say – and sort of closing out your article, you say, my concern is that newer users who have just come over to the Linux side of the fence will be scared away

by some enthusiasts and their misplaced animosity towards Ubuntu. Will this color how the majority of newcomers see the Linux community? It did for my dad. Yeah, and I've seen evidence of it. I don't just, you know, I actually have people that I talk to about this stuff before I write this stuff.

Yeah, he saw it. He saw, you know, when he was, so he had two problems, I think. First problem was, is he wasn't really clear on where he was supposed to go to look up problems. And like, so he wanted to, he moved at one point

and they didn't have internet access. They didn't have like cable or DSL where he'd moved to. And so he wanted to tether to his phone. And like trying to look up and he was at work and trying to do like the Googling at work and then bring that home. He got so many different results and so many different mixed

messages on that whole thing that it, it, and I don't, I wouldn't blame it all on this, but I think it definitely, when it came time to buy a new rig altogether, he just kind of decided to go get a Mac. Yeah. Oh yeah. Because because it's an all-inclusive experience. And as much as I'm not in any way a Mac person, believe me, I really don't like them, at the end of the day, they don't sell a computer. They sell a collective experience. Yeah. They really do.

And, you know, they have the whole genius angle to it, too. So he was able to ask the guy some questions. And so this article you wrote really resonated with me here because not only did I see that through my dad's experience, but when we were taking the Arch Challenge, there was equal parts really good advice that I got from, you know, some awesome people on our subreddit and things like that. And there was equal parts really like hostile bad advice that I got. Everything from trying to scare me away from using Arch and telling me how hard it is to use and how I really have to keep the system maintained. And it turns out to be like the easiest Linux box I've ever had to maintain. That it would be unstable because you're using Bleeding Edge. That was another piece. Yep. Yep. And don't use this tool, use that tool. And I suspect this happened for you too, but it gave me pause for a little bit where I thought,

I don't think I want to deal with this. Right. And I don't like this. I don't need this. And it's even more nuanced than it is in Arch because in Arch, there's multiple ways to install a piece of software. Where like in Ubuntu, pretty much at the end of the day, every guide is going to tell you sudo apt-get install. Right. Add this PPA.

Like there's consistencies. So you can get a lot of different information, but they all kind of tell you to use the same tools and do the same things. Not the same thing in Arch. Now, thankfully that wiki is very authoritative and has a lot of good info, but when you're just switching, I felt like I had a lot of mixed messages and I can, so I'm, I think that experience might be what a lot of new people get when like, you know, they're reading a comment thread and there's just tons of Ubuntu hate in that comment thread. I would agree. And what you said about the wiki, the problem with the wiki is that it's too good.

And what I mean by that is that the information in the wiki blows other distributions out of the water as far as accuracy. But the problem is locating and knowing what to search for to find it. That's the rub for a lot of people because you don't always know. Like when I was trying to figure out the whole battery life for, you know, the battery life situation for my network, I wasn't necessarily finding exactly what I was looking for until about the third or fourth search and then it clicked. And the information was fantastic, but it was

finding it. So I think if they can hone that a little bit, the information is gold. There's no problem there. Some people actually suggest people to look at the Arch wiki to find the information, which is a good idea, but they'll also suggest to people who are not using Arch, which is very awkward. Yeah, that's true. You were going to say it depends on the existence of users of Linux to make regular user experiences a little more easier? Right. I was basically just going to say that when people talk about moving people to Linux, they always think about telling the advocate why Linux is good

and why they should use it. But they don't necessarily make that transition easy. Like, for example, with my mom or my roommate or my neighbor I've moved over, I set up their computer. I find out what they want. I put the Linux thing that I think fits best for them, the distro, I mean, and then I put on the different apps that they want. Like for one of them wanted WoW, so I had to what they want. I put the Linux thing that I think fits best for them, the distro I mean, and then I put on the different apps that they want. Like for one of them wanted WoW, so I had to put Wine in,

so then I put WoW Connection. And if you give them Linux set up where they can have it just the stuff they want to use and the things that they would be used to, like the way they get Windows when it's already installed, if you do that for them, the transition to Linux is almost negligible as far as whether it's hard or not. That's true. That's true. I used to support Linux at a small bookstore in a town north to me.

And I actually – the service calls were – well, they went from a ton of them to none as long as I maintained the machine. Yeah, I definitely noticed during – I used to joke when my clients would ask me, like, so what should we do here for this desktop? And I would tell them, you know, I would say, thankfully, a lot of my clients use Windows. I'm very thankful for that because it gives me 10 times the amount of business that I would have if they ran Linux. And that's not just me, like, guessing. That's, like,, from my experience, I can put Linux in, and once things are set up and stabilized,

like Rotten Corpse is saying, I would go in there, and I would configure everything for them. And I would even set it up so it would take snapshots of their configuration settings and all that kind of stuff and back those up, and we could restore them very simply. And Webmin was a great tool

to help their local tech gal set up users and stuff like that. And that worked so well that I would literally lose money on those clients. Exactly. Yeah, when I switched to Linux full-time is about the time I got out of repair. Don't know. Ick was going to say our problem here is that we've been conditioned by Microsoft. What's going on there, Ick?

Well, let me just go ahead and set the Way back machine to like 1995 when Windows 95 first came out. People were up in arms that their programs were not right there in front of them like they had on the program manager of Windows 3.1. Now, fast forward 19 years later, now everybody is looking for that start menu. If they don't see that start menu they are up in arms it's just like okay uh now microsoft has conditioned us to operate this way and see that's the thing people are assuming that a desktop environment such as humanity is unintuitive just because they're not used to it i suppose yeah that's the thing you get give him the ding you want that that man has earned a ding all right well here you go there the ding you get. Give him the ding.

That man has earned a ding. All right. Well, here you go. There you go. You get a ding. Dave, you were going to say that maybe we just need to cater to each specific user? That's your go, man. That's your go right there.

No? All right. Well, that's what I think what he was going to essentially say. And I don't know. He has a little bit of lag, by the way. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's complicated. No, what I was simply going to say is every user has their own sensibility of how a desktop should and should not be. I mean, you have people who use Windows 8 perfectly with and without touch.

And you have people who see the Macintosh interface and see that's the perfect desktop. They can't use anything else, regardless of, you know, whatever it is. So every user has their own sensibility of what a desktop should be and what their workflow should be. So while we're arguing about what the perfect one is, we're thinking of a hypothetical magical user that doesn't really exist. That's true. Exactly.

That's very true. That's what I'm kind of driving at is that intuitiveness is subjective. Yeah. True. Yeah. And I think, so this goes going back to Apple is the big threat here. I think the thing about Mac OS that you got to wrap your head around is that it's not a great desktop in a lot of ways. Like when I use it for, you know, I have several machines here in the studio.

And, you know, to have several machines here in the studio. And, you know, to me, it feels very old. It feels like, it feels like I can, you know, I remember the Macs from the 80s, and I still see a lot of influence there. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's that amazing of a desktop. I think it's what Matt's saying, is that with Apple, it's this hardware, good enough software, better than the alternative, which is Windows, and that support package. And I think when you're somebody like Wil Wheaton and that price isn't a factor, because that's, I'd say, the number one argument. Once you take out all the freedom and the open arguments, which if you don't even know to be concerned about that, that's not even part of the equation. even know to be concerned about that,

that's not even part of the equation. If you take away that, and you take away the cost barrier, because for a huge segment of people, that's not going to be an issue, I think Apple is a fierce competitor to Linux. I think it's much more of a threat on the desktop than Windows is. Well, it is, especially for someone coming from Linux,

because they can drop down to a command line and do anything they need to do. I mean, that's the other thing. Like, look at Miguel Itacaza, one of the original GNOME developers who eventually just threw his arms up in the air and said, you know what, I'm going to go get a MacBook. But you could sort of get that equivalent on Linux easily if you go with something like Ubuntu and System76.

I mean, they have excellent customer support, magnificent hardware, on top of, generally, they ship on, what, like, LTSs? I think this is an important piece is this is this is why i'm a system 76 fan is because they they are also creating that entire end-to-end experience but the problem is is we don't have enough people doing that and it's right you know it's like whereas apple has this massively established presence and brand uh And I just, you know, we do our part just to spread the word about System76 because I think it's a

really important, I think that whole entire product package is super important. And I think one way we can achieve that today is in larger installations, like at schools and at businesses where you have a person that comes in and rolls out a system for a whole bunch of people. That seems so ripe for the Linux desktop picking to me. It's ridiculous. It's just maybe a few software applications, but that just seems so ripe. Whereas, you know, that home user who's, you know, a 30-something hipster that just wants to go down to the mall and buy a metal MacBook, I don't know if we're going to be able to get that person. But I think schools and businesses and any time where

you can take the experience and you can build it around the need, I think Linux is such a slam dunk for that. Well, that's sort of already happening now. We see Chromebooks and ChromeOS, which is technically Linux-based in educational areas all the time now. It's becoming increasingly popular. That just makes me sad. So I think the formula to making this work is the fact that it takes a multinational company to make this happen.

Right. What I would say is that it boils down to the same thing that Matt has said a bunch of times, and that is marketing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mac's stuff, the software, is okay, and it's built on stuff that was already there.

It was already good in the first place. So it's like if you took LXDE, put a dock on it, it's very close to the way Mac works. Or like GNOME 3, or if you spend a couple hours configuring KDE, right? Yeah. I really believe you can have a more modern, experienced desktop that has better efficiencies, especially, I think, for GNOME 3 can be more user-friendly. I agree. This is such a problem that I just kind of want to, I guess I want to bring this back to how the community can make a difference here.

And we're not going to convince everybody to, you know, lay down arms and embrace each other in a kumbaya, but... I have an idea. What? What if the GNU project, because they always want Linux to be called GNU slash Linux, they put up money for marketing to make it GNU slash Linux. I'll do one. I don't know. I think it's close. I think it's close.

Get a GNU start with GNU slash Linux. Well, here's an actionable formula of how this could actually be done. First of all, you get yourself a Kickstarter project or however you want to fund it, some sort of a collective funding process that gets a bunch of advertising dollars together. however you want to fund it, some sort of a collective funding process that gets a bunch of advertising dollars together. Then everybody in key metro cities goes to the Google AdWords program that allows you to advertise on your local cable channels, take a Fiverr voiceover of one of those really good movie voices, slap together some great video capture from OpenShot or whatever, just really show off what the desktop can do, make it sound like a movie intro, launch those in each one of those metro areas on television. Stop this internet crap. On TV where regular people actually get their media and

watch what happens. I think you might be in front of viruses. Isn't this part of the problem though? There's no Linux Inc. There's no company that needs to capitalize on this opportunity that could capitalize. There's individual companies that are all kind of scattered about. And I think that's one of the reasons

Ubuntu has such name recognition is because there's a company behind that. And Red Hat has such name recognition and brand recognition. But there's no one company who's got the money and the presence to do that. And so maybe let me, let me shift the conversation here. Is this why everybody is so hard over mobile? Because it's a, it's the grand reset of this technical century that we get to start all over again. And, you know, uh, everybody is, everybody is a fresh and new and the possibilities are endless. Is that why everybody's so hot on mobile? Hmm. Well, maybe it's because they have right now essentially

two platforms that they have to look at only and they're so massively widespread now that since it's easy for people who are not computer users, even just regular people who just want a tablet so they can watch something like Netflix or something, it can bring that so many more people to look at your stuff. So people are

just kind of like jumping on the bandwagon of any kind of mobile device of all. Yeah. Well, I mean, and it's a lot easier to get mobile devices in the hands of individuals around the world. And the fact that, you know, there's billions of individuals around the world that still don't have a mobile device. That's a huge user base that a company could target. Well, like Dave is saying in the chat room, everybody loves a computer in their pocket. But Wimpy, what kind of tipping point do you think we're at? You say we're at a tipping point right now? Well, 20 years ago, Apple was in – excuse the colloquialism – it was in the shitter.

And they've really turned their fortunes around. And the two companies that are really driving popularization of cutting-edge technology at the moment are Apple and Google. So I think the tipping point that we're at right now is that Microsoft is

on a downward trend. They're hanging on to traditional markets and really not succeeding in that. And I think the tipping point we're at is with Apple and iOS and macOS 10 and then Google with obviously Android and then Chrome OS. And I think it will be a battle that's fought out between macOS and Linux in the guise of chrome os

well i think the big problem with windows is it's sort of like become a tainted name like i know people who won't buy windows phones because they think they'll get viruses it's a black mark yeah i agree i think the windows name is now a black mark on a product and i think the general consumer thinks it's something old and it's not hip. It's not cool anymore. I think that's what's holding back a lot of these Windows mobile devices and desktops. And I think that's... Well, I feel sorry for Microsoft because they can't

win. They try and be hip and then everyone says, oh, we don't know how to use Metro. And then they try and be like old school and everyone has a go at them for not being different. It is kind of bad for them. They're trying to be hip again. They're just trying to do it through a bunch of you know people dancing around holding tablets and that just doesn't work clicking them together exactly

because you know i'm always running around my office smacking the monitors together to try and get it to accomplish tasks i mean really yeah i That's an interesting concept. So, you know, the whole idea, is it going to be MacBooks versus Chromebooks in the future? And you'll have everybody who wants to save a buck running Chromebooks, but they'll be inextricably forever linked at the hip to Google. And you'll have everybody that wants to drop some cash. We're talking in large percentages here, buying MacBooks, and is Linux going to be, is the predominance of Linux going to be this bastardized, closed down, souped up for

their commercial cloud services client-side OS? Wait, you said commercial software. Would that be, would that honestly be so bad? I mean, this is open source. People can do whatever with it that they choose, and people can implement it the way they want.

And if Linux adoption requires that companies like Google and whoever change it the way they need to, or the t-boilization of Linux, would that be so bad? Because isn't that sort of the original idea? It's negative in the freedom dimension. I don't know. It's not what I hope for. And I think also we can't really have this conversation

without keeping in mind that Linux will dominate on the server side too, and that's going to be all different kinds of operating systems. But it does make you wonder what the future future holds for these desktop focused distros and uh if eventually they're not just going to be kind of you know just can be the ones yeah the ones that survive will be the ones that are maintained by community enthusiasts yeah i've noticed uh myself like especially and i don't know if it's just the point of my life i'm at but i see my parents and my grandparents and all these people around me going and saying, I don't know what to do anymore. They've always had go with Windows if you want business or go with Mac if you want media. And now they don't know where to go.

And it's kind of this weird point where people that once thought they knew what they had to do don't know anything anymore. Yeah. Kind of sad. It is. It's a weird – we're in a weird transition. And I think what we're trying to wrap our brains around on this show is what do we need to change to get Linux in position to sort of be there to catch a certain amount of people who are dropping away from Windows? And are there things just as a community we could do? And I think we've identified guides, you know, informing people. And one of the things that I want to accomplish

with HowToLinux once we launch it is I think the easy wins are the enthusiasts, the technically inclined people, the folks who want to solve a particular problem with Linux. And my hope with HowToLin Linux is that we can provide an on-ramp where we're going to, we're going to say, here's your problem. Here's how you solve that problem with Linux. And that hopefully will be an on-ramp there. And then maybe as people play with it, they'll be like, Hey, you know, I could load this on my laptop. I could try it out on my lap. And you know, that's what I'm hoping we can do as a network to help linux but i wonder as a whole wide community what what can we can we just dial it is it possible to dial it down a notch

turn down the haterade the systemd debates are done the mere debate seems like it's pretty much you know where it's going to be at uh you know i monkey suits will be worn can't we all just use this as an opportunity to kind of take a snapshot of where we're at and say, you know, let's just dial it down a little bit and just welcome everybody in. How do we do that? Is that possible? Well, you were saying with the how-to Linux,

and I really appreciate the work you do because that's how your videos is what really got me into Linux. But I think the key really is shorter videos because i remember i might only want to watch the maps you know how-to section and i'd have to you know watch all episode it'd be nice if we just sort of had like lots of little really informative videos right shot of information. They only cover something. Yeah, because most of the question I get brought up loads is, oh, I've downloaded this tar.gz file, now what? You know. That's not true.

That's like the biggest question I get. Yeah. But that only takes maybe three minutes to explain. We're working on it right now. I'm happy to announce that Ick in the mumble room here and Crash Bandicoot will be joining us. Ick will be our lead producer, and Crash will be our associate producer on HowToLinux.

And we've got a bunch of really great applications. We're going to continue to go through those. I think we'll probably develop a bench of producers who can be working on content, so that way they can work at their own pace, at their own speed, on the things that scratch their particular itch. And we can have several people working.

And if HowToLinux takes off, if it's a hit, I want to be able to scale that show up big, maybe multiple times a week, all kinds of topics, guides, written tutorials, all that kind of stuff. Where it's all still early planning stages,

we're not ready to pull the trigger on any one particular thing, but we're assembling our team right now. We're getting things ready in place. And I feel like even if moving forward, we only capture just the technically inclined, the Windows Power users and the sysadmins who've ran Linux for years, but now are thinking about switching on their desktops. I think that's a great percentage. That's a big percentage of users that we could bring over to Linux. So I'm excited about that. Now, before we wrap up this week's episode, coming up on Sunday's Linux Action Show, we're doing a review of the SolidXK desktop. Now,

you can go over to SolidXK.com. That's S-O-L-Y-D-X-K.com and download this. I'm using, we're going to do the home edition, Matt. Okay. So we're going to grab the home edition. Cause that's like our latest and greatest. This is a Debbie and Bay semi rolling release that uses the XFCE desktop. And we want to do something kind of new this week. We want to get your review of it. So try it out. And between now and during the last live show,

we've send us your review on Twitter and use the hashtag action review to tweet your thoughts about the solid XK desktop right now, between now and during the last live show. And then in the feedback segment, Matt and I will pull up all those hashtag ActionReview tweets and read your mini reviews there at the end of the show so you have a chance to get your thoughts in. And if everything goes as planned, Matt,

the Solid XK developers will be joining us on next week's Linux Unplugged. Sounds good. Yeah, so load up your testing box, Matt, the Solid XK developers will be joining us on next week's Linux Unplugged. Sounds good. So load up your testing box, Matt, and we'll give Solid XK a spin on Sunday. I'll see you then, okay? See you then. Bye-bye. Alright, everyone. Well, thank you for tuning this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. We'd love to have you join us live. Go over to jblive.tv

Tuesdays, 2 p.m. Pacific. Remember, Daylight Savings is in effect now. And you can go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that converted to your local time zones. We've got computers that will do it for you. Also, we want to get your feedback into the show. That's where we get a ton of our content from.

Click that contact link, send it in to Linux Unplugged. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next Tuesday. Bye-bye.