LINUX Unplugged - Episode 32: Do Me a SolydXK | LUP 32

Episode Date: March 19, 2014

The co-founders of SoyldXK join us to discuss their origins, what they focus on, how they hope to make a profit, and what the future might hold. Plus we have some “solid” AutoCAD replacements for Linux, your emails, and more!

This is Linux Unplugged, episode weekly Linux talk show that's stockpiling bananas in preparation for this Sunday's Monkey Suit Spectacular. My name is Chris. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey there, Matt. We've got a good show lined up today. Falling right on the heels of our review of Solid XK on last, we'll be discussing the distribution with the co-founders themselves, coming up in a little bit. And I don't know, I'm really conflicted because there's a lot we could talk about this week,

but I also kind of have to keep it a short show because right after we get off the air, I got a run to meet up with an electrician at the new studio. That's going down like crazy. Rikai landed yesterday. We got him all, he's at the studio. He's out actually getting goodies right now to get ready in preparation to prepare his body for editing of these shows. So he's got to have sustenance. So Angela's out with him right now taking care of all that. It's been a pretty crazy couple of days, driving back and forth a lot of gear. And so one of the other things I have to do for all the studio shenanigans is meet with the electrician. I've got to start up a new conversation with a new contractor.

I know why contractors have a bad name now, Matt. Let me tell you. Well, yeah, I'll tell you. There's a lot of back and forth. Although I will give a shout out to your previous contractor. He did kind of have some life circumstances. That's true. What are you going to do, right?

The universe is a cruel place sometimes. True. But nonetheless, we're going to just go for as long as we can and get as much covered as we can today because there's been some interesting developments, even just since Sunday, that I want to discuss. And I'm really looking forward to talking to the SolidXK guys. So stay tuned for all of that stuff but first I thought maybe we cover a little feedback and see if we can't solve a mac user's problems yes that's right because he wants to switch to linux okay we should also tease in case we forget later in the show this sunday on the linux action show it is monkey

suit time the bet comes due this Sunday. Now, for those of you that don't remember, Matt made a bet, and he's willing to pay up, that Mirror would ship on another distribution outside of Ubuntu within a year, and it didn't happen. Now, I think some folks at Canonical at the time probably agreed with Matt.

Oh, yeah. I won't say there were promises because that's not fair. But I will absolutely say that support was given on my behalf. They said they would do their best, but it didn't work out. But we're going to actually, we'll just use the opportunity to kind of just look at the state of MIR development, alternative display managers on Linux. And if everything goes as planned, we'll have Kevin on from Canonical to talk a little bit about the state of MIR. So I think we'll act, well, you know what?

We're going to have monkey suit shenanigans. We're going to have a good conversation around where all of it's at a year later. So it'll work out to be a great episode coming up on Sunday. But why don't we start by, see if we can help out Simon's problems here. Simon really wants to switch from the Mac. He says, Hey there, Chris and Matt. I'm a web developer

and a Mac user, and I feel it's time to move on. I feel Apple is not focusing more and more on their iOS platform and losing sight of its desktop power users. I'm not blaming them. That's where the money is. I get that. But that's not the computer experience I'm looking for. I have some experiences with Linux, both on the server

and on some older desktop machines here at home, but I want to go all in and use Linux on my desktop, the machine I need nine hours a day to get my work done. But now I need some help from you guys. What distribution should I go for? I'm tempted to go with Ubuntu as I feel it might make the switch easier for me. He says maybe I could even replace an iPhone with an Ubuntu touch device down the road when it's ready. It's close to the Mac user experience and might be the smoothest transition without preventing myself from getting any real work done. Later, I learned the pros and cons. Maybe I could switch to a different distro at that point. But with most

Linux users, they don't seem to like Ubuntu. Lots of you complain about Unity and Mirror, but no one likes to explain why. What's up with that? It's simply a matter of personal taste. Is it envy because of canonical success? Is that the reason for the hate? Thanks for helping me choose. Simon. Boy, you know, I think the first question I would have to ask him is, what is he using for web development? Are there legacy applications at work that could potentially create a bit of a hurdle making the switch completely?

Now, if he's just doing this straight from like a notepad or something like that, no big deal. Yeah, he said web developer. So I'm going to just give him the benefit of the doubt that, you know, he could probably, maybe he's using a sublime text on the mac he could use sublime text on linux sure okay so let's say he's going that route i think if he's going that route i think a boon to does make sense simply because it does feel very natural to a lot of mac users uh my wife if she's going to use linux will generally prefer a boon to simply because she

finds the flow is more familiar to her, generally speaking, compared to other distros, although she's pretty comfortable in most distributions. It's really not such an issue with that. And I also think the App Store coming from the Mac also then going to Ubuntu is also fairly familiar in that regard as well. What do you think as far as hatred, though? What about the idea of making his Linux desktop match whatever web server platform he's deploying on? So if he's deploying on a CentOS box, maybe Fedora might make more sense or CentOS itself maybe? I can't think of very many situations where a newcomer in Fedora would ever fit the same sentence.

That's true. I think Fedora is a great distro, but it is not. And anyway, I couldn't picture that. Unless it's maintained for them, and then that's different. What do you think, Mumbleroom? So you've got a Mac user. He's a web developer. His name is Simon.

And he's thinking about switching from the Mac to Linux. What distro would you say he should pick? I did something very similar. Okay, go ahead. pick i did something very similar okay i came i came from mac to linux and i felt very comfortable at the time with unity on ubuntu i mean it really depends on you know what sort of workflow he's desiring if he's desiring a mac-like workflow i'd almost recommend elementary os yeah that's what i was wondering and therefore maybe gdDK. Please no, please no. Yes.

Ouch, wow. Their packages are so out of date that it's not worth using them. They're based on a stable 12.0 for LTS. Right, if they just updated their packages, that'd be fine. They update the security stuff, but they don't update any of their packages. Like, for example, my app hasn't been updated in Ubuntu for like two years. So by default, the package in elementary is also two years old. There will probably be an update when the new LTS comes next month.

Yeah, that'd be good. Yeah, I'd probably recommend Ubuntu, maybe. Partly because it's awesome, but partly because with the LTS just around the corner, he'll get a nice, shiny new kernel, long-term support,

and every app he needs, basically. To be fair, I think the hate against Ubuntu is purely Unity and pretty much preferences. I don't like the Dash, but everything is purely Unity and pretty much preferences. Like, I don't like the Dash, but everything else in Unity I like. Like the local menus, it's in Fortune 04. Awesome.

Okay, so he could get the benefit of having the kernel and switching to use XFCE or Gnome Shell or any one of a bazillion other desktops that are all in the repository. You don't have to switch to some random distribution from some guy in his bedroom. You could't have to switch to some random distribution from some guy in his bedroom. You could use Ubuntu and just not use Unity if you don't want to. That's fine. You should just try out some different distros.

Maybe start with Ubuntu and just see what he likes because we're not going to be able to You're saying Linux and Scratch? I think he was saying Gentoo. I think I would recommend SolidXK. That's what I would recommend. I think he was saying Gentoo. I think that's what he's saying. I think I would recommend SolidXK. That's what I would recommend. Seriously, that might be worth consideration.

And the other thing I want to recommend to Simon is he said that in his letter, he said that he's got some older machines that he's had some experience with Linux on, both a server and an older desktop machine. I would not recommend you say switch from a relatively recent MacBook Pro to a several-year-old PC machine and load Linux on it and experience. You're not going to have a great experience because you're going from pretty high-end hardware to lower-end hardware. So give Linux a chance to breathe. If you're used to – if you work at a machine, like you said, for nine hours a day to get work done and you're used to that machine being very powerful, then don't limit yourself with a resource-limited machine just because that's the one you can load Linux on. So position your hardware correctly.

Try out some different distributions. Try Integros. Try Solid. Try Ubuntu. Try SUSE. Try all of them, really. I'm betting like most of the chat room, you might end up liking the more recent Ubuntu versions. Yeah, and I go back to what I said about the user interface.

For a lot of Mac users, that's a big deal. And I think Ubuntu nails a pretty close match for my experience. Yeah, GNOME 3 is pretty refined these days too. Yeah, GNOME 3 is okay. GNOME 3 would be all right. I could see that, especially with a little dock action going on. Yeah, a little dock action. But I just say just try it out and like you said it sounds like you're pretty

open to the idea of moving later on the ubuntu hate kind of just comes from there's a lot there you basically just listen to the back catalog of the show and it'll actually explain it pretty well right yeah listen to that last episode yeah listen to the last episode exactly that that actually covered it pretty well um and i think that if you're comfortable with the things i discussed and i think you probably would be uh like we got an email from a viewer who said, you know, I'm long time. Actually, I think I have it in the pile here. I'll see if we can get to it because I think I do have an email from, yeah, we have an email from somebody who's going to touch on that. So we'll get to that in a minute because I think there's a lot of people who just

don't care about some of the things that get people all riled up. And then there's a lot of advantages to Ubuntu. There's a lot of advantages to all of them. Try them out, Simon. Keep listening. Check out our back catalog. I think that'll give you some help. But the big piece I wanted you to take away from my recommendation is don't straddle yourself with lower-end hardware and then expect to be blown away. You're not going to have a bad time necessarily, especially if you go with something like Popey was saying with XFCE or Solid X. But you probably won't need the same amount of hardware. But I am somebody who's very sensitive to low-performance hardware. 16 gigabytes of RAM, an SSD, and a high-end video card, and then I switch to something with a spinning drive, maybe an integrated GPU, and a Core 2 Duo or something like that,

I don't think I would use that machine very long. And I think I would have a pretty bad time. And I think that would influence my opinion of that operating system in general. Because it just would feel restrictive. Well, it's an excellent point. I think it also goes into the bigger point of it is too, is that I don't care what version of Linux you're using, what distro you happen to go with. If you're using a lot of resources such as like a browser with a bunch of tabs open, you're going to care about the hardware it's running

on. Really, you can run lightweight desktops all day long. I also agree with iMacon in the chat room. I'm not a big proponent of putting Linux on a Mac. You can do it, but there are always compromises, and people who tell you there aren't compromises haven't been running it long enough. Or at all.

Yeah. I mean, it's just, unfortunately, it is the truth. Like, for example, whenever I had tried it on a Mac, I've always had issues with the webcam. There's a blob that you have to load up at the time of boot up that you have to... I guess the Mac operating system actually loads like a firmware onto the webcam every time Mac OS X starts, and you have to replicate that under Linux. And you have to go extract that firmware out of a Mac, move it over to your Linux install, and then follow some sort of guide online to make that work. There's other things that don't work, like on more recent, like say a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. I'm reading a discussion thread here that was a really good one on Reddit

over the last weekend. Wi-Fi is extremely flaky for this guy. He says he doesn't have any problem under Mavericks, but when he's under Linux, his Wi-Fi drops out. Reduced battery life. Under Linux, he gets 4.5 hours compared to 8 hours under OS X. Once the video and video blob loads, he's unable to switch to one of the TTYs by doing Control-Alt and hitting F1 or F2 or F3. He says the touchpad is extremely quirky. He says,

I've ironed it out as well as I can, but I'm still not completely happy with it, particularly when typing from the web like this one. A little more than just a slightest touch or reposition of my typing cursor in the position of the mouse cursor. It can be infuriating at times. He says I've had to reread this exact post three times just to make sure I'm catching the errors that this one single issue has caused. So don't necessarily load it on a Mac and expect it to work well. Different Macs have different success rates. Generally, the newer the Mac, the less things that work. So also consider that, Simon.

You might want to consider a dedicated machine that's really going to give you a better experience. And if this was Linux Action Show, I'd say go over to check out System76 because they're going to give you a Mac-like experience as far as hardware compatibility and setup. True. Something to consider.

I will mention one of Linux Unplugged sponsors right here, right now, and that's my mobile service provider. And by the way, Matt's mobile service provider. That's right. That is ting.com. You guys go check out Ting, mobile that makes sense. Go to linux.ting.com, linux.ting.com. That'll get you started. That landing page will also tag your shopping session to take $25 off your first device. Or if you're going to bring your own device, $25 service credit, which for me paid for my first month. Now, what's unique about Ting? I'll tell you. You only pay for what you use. It's a flat $6 per month plus taxes, and then just your usage. It's really straight. You can wrap your brain around that, which is great because, hey,

guess what? I needed hotspot and tethering over the last few weeks when I was working out of the studio for a few hours. I just checked the box on my phone, and now all the devices that we had with us were immediately on the internet, and I'm getting 14 megabits download at the studio using my Nexus 5. Oh yeah, they support the Nexus 5. You can go buy the Nexus 5 directly from the Google Play Store, a device that you own outright, that you pay a fair market price, you bring it over to Ting, you activate it, $6 a month, no contract, no early termination fee. You only pay for what you use. Plus, Ting has an awesome, awesome dashboard. I love this dashboard because I was just setting up Reek Eye in the new studio with the HTC One. Oh, it hurt. I gave away the HTC One, Matt. It pained me so deeply. That was the hardest phone I've ever had to give away.

I've given away a lot of phones. And the HTC One cut deep. That's a great phone. It's available on the Ting network. And what's so nice about it is that Ting dashboard now lets me manage these accounts so transparently and smoothly. I can let them see where they're at with their usage. I can set up alerts. So if all of a sudden Rekai is using like 10 gigabytes of data on that phone, I can have Ting send me a push notification to my Android app.

I can log into their dashboard, which supports web standards from a mobile device or from your desktop, whatever it is. I can set up caller ID options. I can turn off voicemail. I can turn on voicemail. I can set up where a call forwards. I can activate, deactivate lines, transfer lines, voicemail. I can set up where I call forwards. I can activate, deactivate lines, transfer lines, set up account managers. It's so awesome and it's so smooth. And here's the best part. If you've been considering switching to Ting and you're stuck in a contract, Ting has an early termination relief program. You can find out more going to ting.com slash ETF. And that early termination relief program will pay you up to $75 per line that you have to have canceled. And the other thing I like about Ting is I like to be an informed consumer. I like to make sure

that I am voting with my wallet, that the money I am spending is going towards a company that is promoting something that I believe in. Ting is trying to clean up the wireless industry. They're trying to shake things up, and I think they're doing it successfully. You're seeing some of the bigger players try to copy what they're doing, but it's not genuine. Ting is genuine, and they put it all out there. You can go over to ting.com slash about, and you can get videos from just the CEO, the EVP, the VP, the director right there, VP of marketing, the CFO. They also have behind-the-scenes tours with just the service reps, the people who are on the ground, because they have a fantastic customer service program. When you call them anytime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., a real person

answers the phone. I don't know of any other cell provider that does that. If you're in a business, if you've got family or friends, or even if you just need to solve a problem yourself, it is so nice to know that when I handed Rekai that HTC One, and if we had a problem at any point, I knew that I would just call up Ting and we'd have it resolved within a few minutes. It wasn't going to be a big waste of my time. And lately, a lot of people that I've had to deal with over the phone have been wasting my time. And it is so great to know that people that I'm spending money on every single month for my mobile phone are not wasting my time. Ting really is changing it up. And you can help them do it by becoming a Ting subscriber. So go over to linux.ting.com. That'll take $25 off your first month or $25

off your first device if you don't have one. And it also lets them know you heard about it here on this show and you appreciate them supporting Linux Unplugged. So go over to linux.ting.com and a really big thank you to the really great folks over at Ting for their awesome support of Linux Unplugged. Linux.ting.com. All right, we got a couple more emails to get through. Last week, we asked for folks to send in their autocad replacements because this is something we hear about all the time i can't switch to linux because autocad and it seems to be a lot of people in this field are interested in linux but autocad so uh scribbleton writes in he says hello awesome duo he actually wrote that so i just that made it right there uh he tells us about draft site it's a professional grade and

free as in beard 2d cad program made by the same company that produces solidworks okay now solidworks I've heard a lot about they introduced it as a way for engineers to convert autocad dwg files to dxf files although I think they're also trying to steal some of autocad's market share it behaves so much like autocad it even uses the same command lines that a co-worker and I completely switched over in just a matter of days. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it can be found at draftsite.com. He said, I also have a comment after watching Linux on Plug 31, the Ubuntu punching bag episode that we just recommended Simon listen to. He says, I'm not a programmer, a dev, or an IT guy. I'm just an average user that loves to use Linux.

Yet, I have not missed an episode of Last since I found it in 2011. As a small business owner, I watched Last to keep up with Linux developments and learn about new programs. As you were discussing, I don't care about the internal battles of Wayland vs. Mirror systemd. I just want my stuff to run as simply and reliably as possible, so I can get my work done. So, Ubuntu has work just fine for me. Someday I may want to try Integros, but only after I find some spare time. Keep up the good work.

I'm really looking forward to the new how-to show so an average guy like me can effectively implement all this great stuff. Scribbleton. Great comment, and I think he echoes a lot of the silent majority there. That's why I wanted to read it. I think he's definitely on to something. So Esquerro Tamero

writes in, Matt. I don't know how you say it. He's got a whole list for us, Matt. He says I used to do drafting for my family's business, civil engineering related, and I tried some of the solutions a while back while trying to find a cheaper alternative to AutoCAD. I haven't used all these solutions, but they're all present for Linux and they're related

to CAD. He says, here's one you could try. FreeCAD. This is an application used to 3D models. LibreCAD. This is basically a fork of the community edition of QCAD. BLRCAD. Haven't used this one, but he says it's another option.

QCAD. This is a program with a free and paid version. And then he says there's commercial software like DraftSight, which we just had recommended to us. VeriCAD, a 2D, 3D CAD program. Ares Commander Edition. This is a compatible 2D, 3D CAD program with a ribbon interface. And BricsCAD. This is probably the most complete solution for Linux, along with Ares CE.

But it's as expensive as AutoCAD. And it seems to stumble on 64-bit systems he says that could be a problem you know i mean you would think okay i can just go ahead and switch over to this but i think so many people are using 64-bit systems that would be kind of a buzzkill he also says dwgs are not exactly supported in fa software as far as i know support is limited and there are gpl compliance issues incorporating into other programs. This is a good list, and I really wanted to say thank you for sending this in. It feels a little bit like the list I get when I ask people for their favorite Linux video editor,

and then I get a list of a lot of really good options with links and names, but then I actually go sit down and I'm like, oh, well, when you actually use these programs professionally, you discover a lot of limitations limitations and i kind of feel like this might be a little bit of that i think so uh it's hard to say so we will link we'll have we'll have a full list in our show notes you can go check out it sounds like the one people are really uh going on about though is draft site from i guess the same folks that make solid works uh and draft site is technically it's free as in cost but it is commercial software it's not it's free as in cost, but it is commercial software. It's not open source. And they have it available for Windows, Mac, and

Linux. They have an RPM for Fedora available. Okay, well I think anytime you have something available for Linux, even if it's not perfect, at least it's there. They have a DAB as well. They have a DAB. So you've got a couple options there. So that's DraftSight. And hopefully that helps some folks out there that have been looking for AutoCAD solutions, because it's been a surprisingly options there. So that's DraftSight. And hopefully that helps some folks out there that have been looking for

AutoCAD solutions because it's been surprisingly popular one. Art of Illusion. What's this? Art of Illusion is a free open source 3D modeling and rendering studio. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. Many of its capabilities rival those found in commercial programs. So here's another one. Art of Illusion.

I'll add that to the show notes too. Thanks, Nexuiz. That's a good one. So, all right, I'm adding that right. There we go. So thanks for sending those in, guys. That was a good list. We had a few folks round up. We also got four or five emails on it as well. And so I just linked to a couple of them, but we got a lot of good feedback on it. So I really appreciate all of you guys sending that in to us. Matt, before we get our guests on, I want to thank our second sponsor this week, and that is DigitalOcean. What is DigitalOcean? Oh, man, you guys have got to check this out.

If you're thinking about learning how to do something on the server, if you have something you need to deploy in production, you've got to check out DigitalOcean. It's simple cloud hosting dedicated to offering the most intuitive way and easy way to spin up a cloud server. Users can create a cloud server in 55 seconds or less if you're our audience. And pricing plans are only $5 per month for 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, and a terabyte of transfer. I've got an Arch box I've had running up there. Yes, I said Arch running up there for months now. And it's just constantly doing more and more stuff. And as I am moving between the current studio and the new studio, and I start thinking about, well, wait a minute, I need to have shared resources between

these two locations. I got to tell you, this $5 DigitalOcean machine, it's just starting to get more and more valuable because I just keep thinking of things I can do with it. And by the way, DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam, and now they've even got them in Singapore. They have a very simple interface, an intuitive control panel, which power users can replicate on a larger scale with the company's straightforward API. They got KVM on the back end. It's all running on top of Linux, sitting on these SSDs in pair with their tier one

bandwidth. And the reason I can say all of this is because I've been a DigitalOcean customer for a long time now, and I have not had a single outage. I have never, ever been disappointed with the performance, and I am constantly impressed with the feature sets and the things they're adding. And DigitalOcean is a company. They are growing like crazy. They're hiring right now. You can check out their hiring page. They have it linked at the top of the DigitalOcean website. They just recently got a good round of funding, too, so they've got a ton of runway underneath them. This is a company that is going places. And I'm really excited because not only is that all great, but it's just a really great service to use. The technology is great.

The interface is great. Their droplet system is super smooth and straightforward. And they have an API that if I ever wanted to get fancy and I ever wanted to do something like start automating stuff, I know that API is there to make it easy for me. So go over to digitalocean.com and get a $10 credit by using the promo code LinuxUnpluggedMarch. LinuxUnpluggedMarch will get you a $10 credit. You can try out that $5 rig for two months. Try out that $5 rig. Even if you're just using it to explore what you can do on your own server, why not use this instead of something like VirtualBox? Go up there, deploy this. You can take snapshots before you break anything. Yes, it actually, in a sense, can have training wheels. That droplet system can really help you get out of a jam. And it also helps you

deploy a new system immediately. My co-host from Coda Radio, Michael Dominick, uses DigitalOcean for the backend infrastructure for a lot of the apps he develops for his clients. It's a super easy system to deploy. He can do it with reliability. He can quantify the cost for them. They can totally wrap their brains around it. And $5 a month doesn't break the bank. And they have a really straightforward pricing system where it goes from $5, $10, $20, $40, $80, depending on what you need. And each tier brings a whole bunch more stuff, more processor, more storage, more bandwidth, all of that stuff. And if you just want to do some testing, maybe you've got a web app you want to try out.

Maybe you've got an app that needs some back-end infrastructure for a little bit, but you don't need it for an entire month. They even have hourly pricing. DigitalOcean has hourly pricing. Yeah. Think about that $10 credit at that point. Wow, I mean, that's crazy. That $10 credit is going to get you away. So go use the promo code LinuxUnpluggedMarch when you check out over at digitalocean.com. Try out that $5 machine. See what we've been saying. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.

That's awesome. And what you were saying about the whole virtual machine thing, that really resonates with me because I don't always have a machine handy that can really support that as well as I could at virtual, you know, going to another setup. There's that. There's the resources of it. There's the, you know, if you're on a laptop, it makes your laptop run hot. There's all these reasons. And you don't have the performance drag. Plus, you're actually up on the web where you can try some things you might not be comfortable

bringing into your house. And you have that droplet system. So if you mess something up, boop, Bob's your uncle. You revert right back. Just like you would on VirtualBox. All right, well, I'm really excited to welcome the co-founders of SolidXK onto the show. We have, and I'm going to try to get this right, we have Shilja and ZeroZero. I don't know how well I did, but guys, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, and happy to be here. Well, we were pretty... Hello. Hello, ZeroZero. We were pretty impressed by the distro, and we checked be here. Well, we were pretty... Hello. Hello, ZeroZero. We were pretty impressed by the distro, and we checked it out on Sunday. So I just had a couple of questions after we kicked the tires that I wanted to throw your guys' way. And what I'm going to do is I'll just go in the order. So I'll start with Shilja, and then we'll ask ZeroZero, or you guys can just bounce it around.

But let's throw this first one to Shilja. Could you guys give us a little background? Is SolidXK based on Linux Mint Debian Edition? Is it just inspired by Linux Mint Debian Edition? We noticed that it uses the Mint tools, such as the Mint Software Manager and the Mint Updater. But is it actually like, did you clone the Linux Mint Distro repos and build a build on top of it? Or did you start with a Debian base and just pull in those tools? We just started from scratch, from Debian. Okay. At that time, I wanted to

do an LNDE version. Right, right. Go ahead. I and Kleiner Lefebvre didn't have any plans for that. So you decided to break off on your own and create one sort of based around the same ideas of Linux Mint Debian, but with the desktops that you had a passion about. Yes, yes. And at first, we planned to make it an official version of Linux Mint.

The Mint team, well, didn't want to support that. My choice was just an edition or go on my own. ZeroZero was very in favor of going on our own, so we did.

Very good. Let me ask you this question. So could you explain to me the difference between the business and home versions of SolidXK? I know that the business, for example, says it has a focus on stability and security, but the home version says it's stable and secure. So what really is the difference between those two? The business edition, it's based on the stable. Ah.

And the home edition, it's based on the testing. That is the main difference. So then we build the business edition based on stable with our tools and with our interface, with our ideas. And we give the home edition with the latest software and more up-to-date software. So they are two different concepts that we give to the users. So I gather that you guys both have an interest in KDE and XFCE, but we got a couple of questions that came in primarily around the Cinnamon desktop. You guys, how does the support look for Cinnamon desktop on SolidXK?

Does it use it? Do you guys have like a repo that you're going to set that up in? Are you going to just pull it from Debian? Or is that something you're not really even worried about if the users want to figure it out, they can? We're not planning on supporting Cinnamon on SolidXK. Okay. That's because the name SolidXK

does not include C for cinnamon, so we're going to have a problem with our site. I take that as the same answer then for, say, something like Mate, even if, say, Mate really takes off on Debian stable at some point. Mate

is to be included very soon in Debian testing, so our users will upgrade Mate when they want. Gotcha. Cinnamon was in Debian testing until a few months ago. until a few months ago. Then the transition from GTK 3.10 broke Cinnamon. Right.

And Cinnamon was removed from Debian testing. At the moment, it's not available upstream. There's a few how-tos in the forum, how to get Cinnamon from the Linux Mint Debian repo. But that's it. We have to focus. That's our main focus in the two DEs that we support and the distributions that we support. I'm going to have a solid Mate desktop. Would I end up having to pull down a whole bunch of KDE libs or something like that to use some of the tools like the Software Manager? Those packages don't have any KDE dependencies.

Okay. Now, here's the other thing we got some questions about. And I decided during the review not to really tweak the look too much, thing we got some questions about. And I decided during the review not to really tweak the look too much, but some people thought it was pretty surprising to see the Oxygen theme under XFCE. And is

that just personal preference? You guys like the Oxygen theme? Or is it consistency? What's the story there? So is it? Yes. When we started, we needed to decide on if we wanted to make it look like two totally different distributions. Coincidentally, maintained by the same people.

Would we like to have some consistency between the two? So we chose for the latter. Okay, so it's a consistency thing. Yes, yes. And the Oxygen theme was the only one working on both KDE and XFCE without a problem. So the choice was easy. So now that you're at this stage and you're seeing your community grow, are you guys concerned about long-term scale?

Are you worried about how to hold it all together if more and more people start using the distribution? And what are your kind of, how do you plan to address that? It's, of course, always, we're now at a time that we are at a fast growth in our user base. Last year from

zero to more than 1,200 users on the environment. About 20 or 30,000 users for our systems. It's growing very fast.

We're still looking for a suitable business model. I think a solid-scale more... You are hoping to make a little bit of a profit at doing this. Do you hope to turn it into a full-time job? Well, yes. Realistically seeing now that it's not possible, but it's so much fun. I would like to do that.

Yeah, it definitely seems to be something that has challenged many companies and people to turn a profit out of a desktop distribution. Yes, the business models in open source, especially for Linux distributions, are very difficult. I'm searching that at the moment. I'm a business consultant by trade. So do you hope that the business edition might lead to some sort of revenue model of some kind? hope that the business edition might lead to some sort of like a revenue model of some kind? I don't think that the products are going to bring the revenue we need.

So you think it might be like a service-based thing? People will contact you for support? Services support, maybe some products that we can provide as a service, like cloud solutions or integration solutions on backend systems. Okay, so that's sort of a long-term thing then, because the distribution would have to see quite a bit of growth before you'd probably reach a phase where that'd turn enough of a profit, right? So it's a long-term thing here. Yes, when you...

...d different phases. So you have to think about what do we do on the short term so we could think about sponsorship or something like that. Right. But you also have to think, what is our vision? And is it clear for the community what that vision is?

And how can we shape that so so you do you do you believe then that uh do you believe that the need is strong enough for a rolling distribution with this update uh with this quarterly update pack cycle do you think that that is solving a big enough market need that would obviously then be – the thing you could assume from that is companies like Red Hat and Ubuntu are leaving this need unfulfilled. And so there's a space for Solid to come up and say, well, look, we're going to offer you the advantages of rolling with this safety net. And you think that's a big enough of a market need that you might be able to carve out some business support for that? you think that's a big enough of a market need that you might be able to carve out some business support for that? Yes, especially for non-profit organizations and governmental institutions. So when you're pitching somebody, I'll give Zero Zero a chance to jump in.

Zero Zero, when you're pitching somebody... Business, business, business, it's with Joe Jay. Well, I was going to, I was going to actually. It's his department, it's his department. I wanted to shift gears and actually change to the rolling release. I would like to get both of your opinions on why, what, what do you, what do you convince somebody of a rolling release? When they say, why do I want rolling? What do you tell them?

well first of all the non-reinstall again as you said Sunday Nuke and Pave I think it's the biggest selling point in that pitch.

So you don't have to reload. You finally get it all set up and you're not forced to reload. Yeah. And if we can offer, as we are trying to address with the update packs, if we can offer an increased safety I think it's an extra bonus because with the home edition

we are sitting on top of testing testing might not be always stable so that's why we opt for this quarterly update.

Right. I think it makes sense. It's rolling with some safety. With a safety net, exactly. So, basically this. And we offered as well, because we are with testing, we offered as well, an updated user land and system and base system. system not necessarily interesting for everybody but can be

can be interesting for some of the of our target audience very good alright well guys is there anything that we touched on in the review that you wanted to amend

or add during Sunday's Linux Action Show? No. I think it was a great review. You both were fantastic. Oh, thank you. Oh, jeez. We enjoyed it. Yeah, it was fun to take a look at it. We enjoyed it. Yeah, it was fun to take a look at it.

We saw that you enjoyed it. It was good. Very good. Well, Mumble Room, as we wrap up, if you guys have any questions, go ahead and... Shoot. Yeah, shoot. Yeah, exactly. ZeroZero says shoot if you have any questions. I just wanted to say one thing. I've been watching

that project ever since. It was just kind of getting mulled around on the Linux forums. And I gotta say, it's been interesting to watch it evolve from an idea about a KDE release to full-blown distro

taking on the XFCE from LMDE, so that was pretty good. So I just want to say kudos to both of you for doing such a good job and adding to the community in that way. Yeah, it's going to be a really interesting distro to watch. I wish you guys the best of luck. If you guys want to hang around,

we're going to kick around a few topics unless anybody else, anything else they want to throw in there. I want to do... I have one more question. Oh, go ahead, Rod. Okay. Yeah, we can do it. The update packs, they're not for...

They're just for the home edition. They're not for the... Only for the home editions. Okay. Only for the home edition. They're being disabled. Okay. I had one question.

How about to secure boot UEFI in the installer? We are testing it right now. Jorge finished the installer UEFI capable last week, two weeks ago, and we are testing it right now. So the next ESOs during the month of April, second half of April, should be UEFA-capable. Very good. Wow. If all the testings go as so far they are, go according to planning. Right. I have one more question. Yeah, sure. If it's a long-term – like for someone long-term usage, let's say I have someone who I want to – I'm considering moving to solid because the whole reinstall thing, not having to do that, is very nice.

the whole reinstall thing, not having to do that, it's very nice. But the issue I have is that they have this one computer that they would have. So far, they've been using the same version distro for two years, maybe three years. And it's kind of gotten to a point where the updates on this distro is kind of not working anymore. They're just kind of stalled.

is kind of not working anymore. They're just kind of stalled. So the solid solution, if I put them on it and then three years later, would the update packs with the home edition still make it – obviously it's not LTS, but would that continuously make it – even for that many years? As long as Debian keeps the testing branch open, we'll keep supplying update packs. Sounds good.

I like that. Hopefully, unless something really bad happens, that's going to continue on. We can predict the future but we can hope that debian keeps testing branch open for for another two three years yeah i think it's safe i think i think it's safe to say that oh i was going to ask you guys what do you think about the whole debian system d thing how does that affect solid uh we'll follow upstream uh when they move so we've been testing we've been trying systemd yeah uh it's not exactly All this, you use it to not using.

Systemd is still a bit old, so it's not completely usable. But when Davian moves to systemd, we'll move to systemd as well. Okay, I got another question. Let's say you have a system that you want to have stable and you want to have the updates kind of thing. So you want a home edition and you want the updates, but you have it where they don't necessarily have an internet most of the time. Do you have the updates? Are they possible to do like an offline package update? Not a solid SK solution. package update? Not solid SK solution,

but the tools in APT for that. Okay. Yeah. Okay, yeah, you could just, yeah, right. Yeah, right, you could. Well, guys, great work. Keep it up, and I hope you can build out the team so that way you don't burn out. That's my big worry.

And I always worry about that with Clem too. Thank you. And it sounds like you guys said the one thing that you guys, the one thing you said that sort of resonated with me that I hope will help you prevent that is focus. You said you know you're focusing. Yeah, that was one of

our first decisions. Focus, do less, but try to do it well at least according to what we think would matter good on you I know Q5 wants to take us out with the final question go ahead Q5 yeah I was just wondering what your guys

plan is for when Debian locks down their updates because they're going in you know getting ready to merge into a new branch are you guys still going to be providing updates or are you guys going to freeze just like Debian does? On the home edition,

we follow upstream. Coming next November, Debian will freeze. So we will on on most of the updates, we will freeze as well. There's a lot of software that will keep updating. Firefox, Thunderbird, our specific software, that it's independent from Debian. But most of the, all the rest of the software that comes to Debian will follow upstream in there.

Unless in the very specific pieces that we find issues during the update packs, and that was defined in the beginning, we can pull to solve issues or breakages. We can pull from, for example example seed to solve a particular situation so we we have some freedom in there we are not we follow we follow testing we follow upstream but we are not absolutely tied to right yeah i noted go ahead to. Right. Yeah, I noted... Go ahead. Just wanted to say that the review was really well done. No, I was just going to say

thank you for clearing that up for me because that was something I was kind of wondering about and there were a couple in the chat room who were curious too. Yeah.

All right, well, I think that if you guys haven't checked out our review yet, you should go watch the Linux Action Show but I think they got some serious potential there

and maybe... Oh, one other question for you guys. Are you guys looking for folks to get involved? Are you guys keeping the team lean right now? What's the plan there? We can still use a lot of testers.

I would like to find somebody who would like to think about possible business models for SolidXK. Okay. So where should they go to get a hold of you? They can do that by going to our site, SolidXK.com. There's a form, or you can directly mail me at skulear at SolidXK.com.

There's a lot of possibilities. Okay, very good. And we'll have links to their G Plus and Twitter handles and the website and all that good stuff in the show notes if you guys want to check that out. Before we run, we don't have time to get into it today because I have to run to a meeting, but I wanted to pitch

a question to the audience. Maybe we can incorporate it into next week's feedback. This week, Mark Shuttleworth took to his blog and he said the title of it was ACIP, ACPI, Firmware and Your Security. And he made the case, and the one that I resonated with was he said, if you read the catalog of spy tools and digital weaponry provided by Edward Snowden, you'll see that the firmware on your device is the NSA's best friend.

Your biggest mistake might be to assume the NSA is the only institution abusing this position of trust, though. And he goes on to argue that we need to have a new way of doing firmware. And I'd like to get your guys' take on this. I've also shared my thoughts in the Linux Action Show subreddit. I mean, I feel like this ship has already sailed, especially in mobile. But perhaps the opportunity could be opening up again in ARM in the server room and on future desktops

as sort of these big incumbents sort of have less entrenched interest and move into mobile, maybe they'll lessen their grip on the desktop. But I'd like to get your guys' feedback. So go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com, click on the contact link, and choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown. And what do you think about Mark Schaller's rant against ACPI?

I mean, I think nobody here has any love for ACPI, right, Matt? You know, I think that he may actually be on to something. I mean, because it's one of those things no one really ever stops to think about. So I think the fact that he's addressing it, whether or not it's founded or not, I don't know. I haven't spent a lot of time. I think it's important to ask ourselves that question.

Do you think his point's right, that we're sort of at a point again where we can re-ask some of these questions? I think if we're not there yet, we're approaching it like a freight train. I think we are essentially there. I think we really are. All right, well, very good.

So send us your thoughts in on that, we'll incorporate in the next week show as well as send us in your thoughts about anything we covered on this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. We'd love to get your feedback. And don't forget that subreddit, linuxactionshow.reddit.com. Matt, I hope you're washing and brushing off the monkey suit because Sunday should be a heck

of a show. Got it all vacuum sealed and ready to go. Okay. Well, I'll make sure to set aside the bananas, so that way we have plenty of entertainment. And I'm looking forward to it. So join us on Sunday for Linux Action Show for the Monkey Suit Spectacular and the retrospective look at Mirror.

And don't forget you can join Linux Unplugged live on Tuesdays over at jblive.tv. Just check jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar for your local time. And we'd love to have you here in our chat room. All right, everyone. Thanks so much

for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you.