LINUX Unplugged - Episode 34: Drive-By Advice | LUP 34

Episode Date: April 2, 2014

We debate the validity of recent anti-Linux comments made on a Leo Laporte's nationally syndicated “Tech Guy” radio show, and the more subtle and larger “built-in bias” many in the tech community still hold towards Linux.Plus: Your follow up on the Mir/Wayland topic, Ubuntu’s Amazon lens goes opt-in, and more!

This is BSD Unplugged, your weekly BSD talk show that's too busy getting actual work done to care about your silly display server. My name is Alan. Get it out of here. Watch out, did that guy get in there? No, that's not what we're doing this week. We're just having a little fun. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Linux Unplugged.

Hey there, Matt. Hey, how's it going? Oh, good. You know, it is April Fools, and so this week we're going to stick it to a little bit of an April Fool. We're not talking about BSD, but we had to let those guys give us a little bit of a poke, right? How great was Alan's intro, too? Check it out.

Welcome to BSD Unplugged, your weekly BSD talk show that's too busy getting actual work done to care about your silly display server. My name is Alan. I like his enunciation on actual work. Yeah, you can feel a little bit of BSD superiority in it. There's a little... Well, so this week, you know, we're going to talk about somebody that I have actually quite a bit of respect for. Not only did I watch him when I

was a youngster on ZDTV and then later TechTV, but also I really respect him for what he's done for the podcast industry, quote unquote. But this last week, this Saturday, Mr. Leo Laporte went on his national radio show and trashed Linux,

kind of in a bad way. And he kind of trashed it for things that actually are its strengths. So I want to play those clips, and we'll use that as an opportunity to kind of do a little FUD debunking here on Linux Unplugged and discuss maybe what he got wrong and maybe what he could have said instead, because not everything he said was incorrect. So we're going to discuss that. And then if we have a little bit of time left over, I want to discuss Ubuntu dropping the Amazon lenses from the default search. So not in 14.04 necessarily, but starting in Unity 8, whenever that lands on whatever device you run it on, when you search in the dash, it won't by default query Amazon for shopping results anymore.

Now, technically, I don't think it's going to really query any scope particularly, but it's kind of a reversal on a position that Canonical's had for a while. So if we have time, we're going to discuss that as well. But first, Matt, a little bit of business we have to take care of. We generated a ton of feedback last week when we were talking about the whole mere Wayland situation again. And I got a lot of heat. People really stuck it to me. I guess they didn't like it when I went on a rant. But so I want to cover a couple of those things because we got a couple of different, I mean, seriously, it was probably 55, 60, you know, individual emails that address this topic. And I'm not going to put all of them in the show. Yeah. Yeah, we would need a feedback show for our feedback show

if I covered all that feedback. So what we're going to do is, I couldn't even read all of them, although I will try to make sure to get to all of them before the next Linux Action Show. But what I want to start with is the few that I did put aside that I thought represented maybe a larger majority of the opinions. And our first one came in from Merlin, and he says, Dear Chris, sorry Matt, but this one's for Chris.

Your breathless rage against me really blew me away, but not in a good sense. I share your views on a lot of the topics, but not on this one. Even if I would share your views, I would never express them so bluntly. I am very grateful that Popey was able to react so civil and polite to your rage. I admire that you try to show both sides of the story, but this time you failed. Again, thanks to Popey for showing the other side of this subject. You are very passionate about making the Linux desktop break through to the masses. You see we're very close to that point, and you are very afraid that something will go wrong. You direct that fear to Ubuntu, while Ubuntu is one of the reasons we've even gotten this far.

Why don't you have more faith in Ubuntu? How long until you see that all the dumb choices Ubuntu makes are the kind of choices Linux needs? I support Ubuntu completely. I am part of the community, and Ubuntu did not alienate me at all. In fact, the opposite is true. Ubuntu is the reason I am excited about Linux. Ubuntu is the reason I'll stick with Linux.

The direction Ubuntu is taking is the direction I want Linux to go. With kind regards, Merlin. That's definitely... So, to recap, I think what I'm mainly concerned about is Mirror and Wayland creating such technical differences at the core level of Linux that you'll have application inconsistencies across desktops and distros. You know, even if it was maybe GNOME on an Ubuntu machine after you installed Wayland or something like that, it could still be an Ubuntu base. Maybe it's Mint and they go with Wayland and they have Cinnamon running on top of Wayland. Well, so when you're

on Mint with Cinnamon and Wayland, maybe Thunderbird doesn't pop up a new mail notification. And when you're on Unity on Ubuntu, you get the new mail notification or vice versa. That kind of inconsistency, I argued, is once again Linux not bringing its A game to now a fight that is being dominated by Google and Apple, who not only bring their A game, but bring it to a level we have never seen it before in the technology industry. Now, Merlin feels that perhaps, you know, I think what I'm kind of extracting from Merlin's email is the other distributions, the community as a whole, is never going to have a chance to succeed entirely on its own. And you need a standout player to rise above the noise, choose the best, build where there isn't something that does the

job, and maybe perhaps at the cost of the others but at least one true linux will stand alone and have users and i the problem is is we if you have if you have a long perspective on linux and matt i know you totally are in this camp with me when you have when you have the long tail of perspective on linux you know that things come and go in linux um there are some things that have been around for a while, but no distro is necessarily forever. Even if it's, you know, maybe still around, it's not maybe as popular as it once was. So to bet everything on one particular commercial entity is sort of negating the benefits of having this open community where

things are being developed freely amongst multiple stakeholders. Yes, I said stakeholders. That is actually, even though it's this weird, organic, evolutionary growth that doesn't have awesome-ass keynotes where we just are blowing everybody away with a great demo, it means that there is this general-purpose computing platform that is being worked on by thousands of people with thousands of different reasons to work on it. And together, in harmony, they're moving something incredible forward that's like nothing else. And when you silo all of that up into one distribution, you're kind of negating some of those benefits.

I mean, that distribution is able to build on top of the shoulders of those giants. of negating some of those benefits. I mean, that distribution is able to build on top of the shoulders of those giants, but it's also assigning a ton of risk to one particular silo. Do you know what you think? I think that's absolutely correct, especially when you consider the fact that the biggest strength that Linux on the desktop has is the fact that there's so many different options out there. Historically, there have been very popular Ubuntu-like distributions that honestly a few people thought were really it. And, you know, things change. Priorities go a different direction.

You know, anything could happen. You never know. And to put all your chips in that one basket is incredibly short-sighted. So I agree with you there. Now, coming back to his original point, I would stand with him in the idea that I'm going to wait and see. I don't necessarily think it's going to completely go to hell until I actually see it do that. I think that we're maybe jumping the gun just a little bit.

I have faith in Ubuntu to at least give them enough. I'm going to give them a chance before I completely just write them off as screwing everything up. But at the same time, I would agree with you in that putting all your balls in that basket, into one distribution's basket, is incredibly short-sighted. Very, very short-sighted. I think Colby's going to kind of fall in line here. He says, Hey there, Chris and Matt. I just finished listening to episode 33, and I just thought I'd share my perspective on this issue. I agree completely with your assertion that the amateur hour handling of small details on Linux desktop is a problem for future adoption. However, while you admonish Ubuntu for making the situation worse,

I actually praise them for getting things done. I envision the following scenario happening. And I like this, Matt. So put on your theater of the mind cap. Okay. He says, imagine a table full of Linux celebrities sitting around arguing about the future of the Linux desktop. You've got Noam and KDE guys. They're going back and forth as they've been for a decade now, and you've got the GPL2 and the GPL3 guys there bantering back and forth. Of course, the video driver binary blob camp versus the open kernel driver camp and the dev versus RPM advocates are there. The rolling versus non-rolling release crew and the systemd versus upstart folks are also there,

all sitting around yelling at each other about how someone is killing the desktop Linux. At some point, Canonical pushes back their chair, stands up and says, look, you guys can sit here and argue about almost literally everything in the Linux ecosystem if you want. Have that at Haas. While you do that,

we're going to go over here and start building software and a platform that actual people use. All of you guys do good work, but it's a shame that instead of actually accomplishing something tangible, you spend all this time and energy spinning your wheels in all of these academic discussions. If you need us, we'll be over there in the corner

making and selling actual products. Later, he goes on to say, I too have given up on the greater Linux community and have adopted a more practical philosophy. The first group that actually releases something that works and is widely supported is the so-called winner. I'll let others have all the academic discussions about the future Linux desktop because quite honestly, the only practical Linux desktop that has any chance of doing anything in the marketplace is to build an ecosystem and build an ecosystem is Ubuntu. The broad Linux ecosystem is far too fragmented to ever have a chance.

It's always been that way, and it doesn't look to change anytime soon. To keep up the good work at this point, Jupyter Broadcasting has a monopoly on my media consumption. Thanks, Colby. Nice. And it kind of makes me think back

to what Alan was saying there during the intro. It really kind of brings it home. It's an interesting point because I think that the unification is going to have to happen at some level. That's not to say other distributions can't perhaps come to a group think mentality to maybe where we get two or three that are able to come on board, maybe picking up with what Ubuntu is doing. Who knows? But I've come to the realization that I think Ubuntu, like anybody, is going to make – as a group, they're going to make mistakes. realization that I think Ubuntu, like anybody, is going to make, you know, as a group, they're going to make mistakes. But historically, again, looking long term, they have been pretty darn good

about rectifying them, be it too slow for my taste, but they do rectify those mistakes. Yeah. And I think, too, that there's a valid point in actually going off and making something, but I think you have to underscore that the foundation in which they will be making that something under is QT, the Linux kernel, GNU Utils, the GPL itself, right? The community that Linux itself brings, the advocacy that that group brings. It is not something created out of whole cloth. It is something that is created because all of these groups that he said are arguing with themselves all the time actually do produce things. But the thing is, is it is it is certainly a seeing the entire for the trees amongst the whole forest where when you are standing in the forest, all you just see is a whole bunch of trees right in front of you having fights, you know, stick fights, you know, right. And also not only that, but I think, you know, like Cutie and all these sort of things, you know, they're fighting and you see these groups fighting amongst themselves. And a lot of times the things they're fighting over may not make sense to the casual user. It's lots of low-level stuff that most people are rolling their eyes thinking, God, who cares? In reality, we should care. We've established this. But again, visually, it doesn't seem that appealing. It doesn't actually execute the solution right now. I think people see Ubuntu

is coming along and saying, look, we're going to take a step back. We'll do our thing. We'll watch them do theirs. And at the end of the day, we'll probably use what's best for us. I think the point I was trying to make last week is that I think that's absolutely reasonable and a rational position to take. The flip side is I wanted to argue, and I hope I successfully argued, that there are some components within the Linux user land that our resources are so scarce and the expertise required to work those things is so high that it can literally be maybe a handful of people, five, six, a dozen people in the entire industry that know how to do this work. And so when you split our focus at that level, that split reaches from the beginning of that expertise to create a display server and reaches all the way up to developers making

desktop applications. And what it essentially creates is Ubuntu, or let's just call it, it essentially creates a mirror versus Wayland. The competition for Ubuntu becomes the other Linux distributions in some sense, not completely, not outright, because there's still an all-rising-tide-boats thing happening. But there is a sense where developers will have to make the choice, what is the primary platform I want to target? And that kind of competition internally is not something that I am fully convinced Linux can sustain. However, and we're going to have an email that makes a point about this, is I think in the long run it's not going to be as bad as it sounds right now. But honestly, the only way to make it not as bad as we're all fearing it's going to be

is to hammer these things out and figure them out and talk about them and figure out what the actual problems are in these scenarios. So that's part of this process in the open source community too, is it's a little bit of airing our dirty laundry, but at the same time, it's also coming to a group consensus on this stuff. Well, I would have one closing thought on it and I would put it this way, whatever side of the argument someone may fall onto, the one thing that drives me nuts is when they, they take the argument to a low level point. If it's like, if let's say you're pro QT, okay, that's fine.

Show me why not using it breaks blank. Show me – identify exactly where it messes with my life, it doesn't, they can't identify. Right. But you say, look, you, you go GTK and this is what's going to break. Like you brought up with the alerts and things like that, you know, as far as not being able to unify that when, you know, APIs and whatnot, all this other stuff, you know, I think you start nailing those individual actionable things to where you can point to and say, that's going to break because of this, that's going to break because of that. Then, you know, people like me start to care. Right. Then you bring it home a little bit.

Right. And then, you know what, it's the. Then you bring it home a little bit. Right. And you know what? It's the truth for anything that's extremely complicated and abstract. You could make the same argument about NSA spying and anything that's really complex. That's why no one's complaining about it. That's why no one complains about it because it's still low level. It may be complicated arguments, absolutely, but at the end of the day, if you don't – it's not dumbing it down.

You've got to identify how it affects things in your life you care about. That's so important. You just have to, you have to connect it to something that people care about. Right. And I'll tell you about something I care about. And that is our first sponsor this week. That is Ting. Go over to linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com is where you want to get started. And let me tell you, Ting is a mobile service that has zero BS, no contracts, no early termination fee, and you only pay for what you use. Have you ever been on your phone and you've gotten a text message from your carrier? It's like, hey, dog, you're about to go over your data limit. I just wanted to let you know. What data limit? How about you just let me pay for what I actually want to

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I love it. So go to linux.ting.com. See what I've been talking about. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Happy April Fool's, Ting. That's pretty good. That's great. So John wrote in.

He's got a different angle on this display server thing. So this is one of two last emails we're going to read here. He says, Hey, Chris and Matt, I want to keep this short. The display server problem is proof that Ubuntu is changing from a Linux distro or a Linux variant to a completely standalone OS. That's really what Canonical wants. Wouldn't you think? Ubuntu will become closer to what Android is, an OS created from whole cloth.

They have a competitive advantage over basically every other Linux distro, and though it might be cheap, Mirror is one way of ensuring that people don't switch to something else. So in my opinion, your frustrations are completely valid. I think the free software world is justified in feeling taken advantage of. They piggybacked on all of the goodies that Linux provides, and they took a huge chunk of the user base, and now they're creating something completely different. This isn't going to cause problems. Oh, he says, this is going to cause problems. But because of Ubuntu's market share, I think there will come a time that other Linux issues

will be forced to work with Canonical just to stay competitive. Then again, maybe they crash and burn and Mir sucks, so they will switch back to Wayland. Cheers, John. That's a nice ending. Just kind of, eh, whatever. You know, or it could be completely opposite of what I'm talking about.

It's always nice to, you know, he learned from my monkey suit debacle. You know, always keep your butt covered. Yeah. The monkey suit lesson. It lives on in our audience. All right.

Our last email on this topic, it comes in from Netlore, a.k.a. James. He says, Hey, Chris and Matt, I completely failed to get on Mumble for the last Linux Unplugged. Don't forget, we do loop in our virtual lug. And if you join us live on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. Pacific, you can take part in that. He says, because there's a point I wanted to bring up.

If there are things which have no – okay. So this is a point he would have made if he was going to be on the Mumble server. And this is the point I wanted to kind of hold on to make so he could make it, because I think this is a great point. If there are things which have no abstraction, which the applications have to hit the display server directly to solve, those things need to be abstracted. This in itself will make Linux more mature and quote-unquote better,

and it will solve the issues with all of the machines still running X11, including BSD and Solaris, etc., for a long time, as we all are going to be solving these Malin to Mir issues now, not to mention the possibility down the road of X12. Also, what happens if we go through this again? Really? I mean, Linux has always been into playing the long game, and Malin will be old and obsolete at some point, or maybe we just need to be updated. So making sure we abstract all those functions benefits us now and benefits the maintenance of all display servers over time

and makes it easier to migrate to something new in the future when things change again. Finally, it's my understanding that part of the reason Mirror was created was a failure of the Wayland developers to work with Canonical to help them use Wayland. Surely, if the project alienates one of its largest potential users by refusing to work with them, then surely complaining when they decide that they need to do their own thing is somewhat disingenuous. Overall, I agree that having this fragmentation will hurt Linux a little in the short term,

but it's already happened. It's not going to go away. And if we embrace it, we can make Linux stronger. So why not do that? I think that's really the best option. And I know that for the people that actually have to do that work, a.k.a. the developers out there who are raising heck right now, to them they're like, well, yeah, screw you guys.

Of course you say that. But in reality, that's kind of what has to happen. Well, that's kind of what has always happened, I think, at some level. I don't know. I mean, I think history will end up dictating how all this works out, but I think right now, I think we just need to focus on the positive, let go of the negative, and just

let's just see where it all falls down. And let's see, let's make Linux stronger where we can, and we'll keep following it as things develop and we start to get a sense of what direction things are going, we'll talk it you know and we'll just keep an open dialogue as we go oh my goodness cnn breaking news we have a little breaking news right here on april 1st 2014 matt i don't know if you uh caught the headline it's it's taking the internet by storm but jupiter broadcasting announces they have bought linux gamecast weekly uh the new

media tycoon chris fisher owner of Jupiter Broadcasting and Hairstyle Extraordinaire, has reportedly bought Linux GameCast for approximately $14.4 billion. Holy cow, you've been holding out. Or two bitcoins. Yeah, I bought it in bitcoins. RootGamer.com had a little fun today, poking a little fun at us. I thought that was a great one. Those Linux Gamecast guys.

That was great. They just got done reviewing the Goat Simulator. Have you seen that? Oh, I was playing it all day today. As a matter of fact, I tagged them. Dude, it's like if you've ever wanted to take barnyard action and bundle it with postal, that's this game. Now, is this the game where the goat gets a jetpack? Does he get a jetpack?

It's literally you walk. The goal of the game where the goat gets a jetpack? Does he get a jetpack? It's literally you walk. The goal of the game is, I mean, obviously to level up and stuff. But basically, I just run around running people over, bowling them over. It's literally like postal minus the shovel. And you're a goat the whole time, right? That's crazy. It's fun. Oh, my God.

Did you get this on Steam? No, no, no, no. I found the executable. Oh, okay. I got you. I got you. I got your gist, Matt. I got your gist. But yeah, anyway, yeah. You can do it on no, no. I found the executable. Oh, okay. I gotcha. I gotcha. I got your gist, Matt. I got your gist.

But yeah, anyway, yeah. You can do it on Steam, though. The same principle applies. You're still going to have to do it with wine, though. I want to get to our topic du jour today. But first, I want to thank DigitalOcean for sponsoring this episode of Linux Unplugged. What is DigitalOcean? Man, you need to find out.

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So I want to get into an area. It's difficult because I have a lot of respect for Leo Laporte and the Twit Network. And I respect what he's done to legitimize the podcasting medium. And I enjoyed watching the screensavers back before it was, you know, really mainstream. Like I had a satellite dish

and I was watching ZDTV before they would call it tech TV. In fact, I even saw him a little bit on MSNBC you know, really mainstream. Like I had a satellite dish and I was watching ZDTV before they would call it tech TV. Um, in fact, I even saw him a little bit on, uh, MSNBC when he was playing, I think it was called dash or something like he was a virtual character. I've been following him for years. Um, and one of the things that we played on Sunday's live stream was his old interview with Linus Torvalds, right? So he's given Linux a lot of mentions in the past. And in fact, even on his nationally syndicated radio show that was airing this last Saturday, he did have some sort of fame praise to give Linux. Most of the web runs on servers powered

by Linux. That's how reliable it is. Android phones are based on Linux. All Android phones run Linux. That's the operating system. You're probably using Linux all the time. Maybe you don't even know it. So you can get a free version of Linux. There are many, as I mentioned. Ubuntu is a good one. Ubuntu.com. You can download it and install it on your XP machine. In fact, I would wipe out all of XP and just install it. It doesn't run Windows software very well. It does, in fact, run it, but not very well. But that's okay because it has an entire Office suite available for it for free, LibreOffice. It has all the software, you know, Photoshop clone called the GIMP.

There's all the software you'd want is free and available on the Linux platform. So I wanted to play that because you can see he's giving some praise to Linux there. So the question was, and this is something that's been coming up on his radio show a lot, is look at XP. It goes kaput this week. What should I do, Leo? I'm thinking I don't have the money to buy a new machine. Should I keep XP? Should I try this Linux thing? That was the caller's question. And this is where things went off the rails. There's all the software you'd want is free and available on the Linux platform. All of that's well and good.

Here's the downside. And this is why I asked Cy, do you know about computers? And he does. Linux has never really been for real average people. And Linux has never really been for real average people. It's really designed by and used by computer enthusiasts. And so you'll use Linux for a while, and then you'll run up against something that's just weird. And unlike Windows, there's so few people that use it as a desktop operating system.

It's sometimes hard to figure out how to get around these roadblocks. Things don't work right. I'll give you an example. Now, before he goes on, I mean, I'm kind of like, okay, I can kind of see where he's going. I don't necessarily 100% agree at this point, but you know, to be absolutely fair, it is challenging for most average users. Okay. So at this point, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. Okay. All right. I was running a version of Ubuntu and I decided to use the open source version of Google's Chrome browser. It's called Chromium on it. And then I updated Ubuntu, got the newest version, and Chromium stopped working.

It just wouldn't run. Now, I was able to figure out what was wrong. It was a library. This is the kind of thing that happens with Linux. So I actually watched this happen. And if folks who watch a lot of our live shows might remember, I talked about this. I watched Leo got the Dell XPS Sputnik developer laptop. You remember this thing?

I remember this, yes, very clearly. So I watched Leo on the live stream on like a Saturday or Sunday. I can't remember. I think it was after Linux action show. Actually, he was unboxing it. He pulls the Sputnik out and he boots it up and he's reading this chat room. And before he's even logged into the computer for the first time,

and Dell has this little first time setup wizard, the chat room says, Leo, you've got to remove unity, uninstall unity, app, get removed, purge Ubuntu desktop,

app, get installed, Zubuntu desktop. And Leo.purge.ubuntu.desktop, app.get.install.zubuntu.desktop. And Leo just kind of blindly did it. And he created a lot of problems for himself when he did that immediately. He never even gave Unity a shot. He just immediately uninstalled it. And then the chatroom said, Leo, Leo, that is Ubuntu 12.04 on there.

You should upgrade to Ubuntu 13.10, Leo. Do app.get.dist.upgrade. And then he did an app.get-dist-upgrade, and this is where he started running into problems. Now, he never mentions that. And again, that kind of use case scenario would never happen to an average user. There was a library that Chromium needed.

Remember, I was talking about those DLLs. Linux has them, too. There was a library that Chromium needed that the people who make Ubuntu decided didn't really need to be included in the new version. So they took it off. So I had to find the library, download a copy of it, put it on my operating system, and then Chromium worked. It's not the kind of thing you want to do, and it's certainly not the kind of thing people who are used to running Windows XP want to do.

So my general recommendation is that Ubuntu is a good choice if you're an enthusiast and you like messing around with them, tinkering around with computers, you enjoy that. It's great for kids. It's a great way for kids to learn how Linux and Unix-based operating systems work. These are the fundamental workhorse operating systems of the whole internet. So that's a great thing to learn. But for the average person who just wants to surf a little bit, open the email once in a while, might not be the best choice. And, of course, that's patently false because that's exactly who should be using Ubuntu or any kind of Linux. It's somebody who wants to browse the web a little bit, read email a little bit, do social networking. And his recommendation is stick with XP.

Stick with XP. And the problem is what he is parroting right there is, think of it this way. Think of a Mac user or maybe a Windows switcher that goes out and buys a MacBook Pro. Okay? And I'm trying to put this in parlance that Leo would understand because he's a Mac user. And he goes out there and he buys a MacBook Pro. He brings it back home and he immediately formats the drive and puts Windows 8 on it. And then he notices, hey, you know what? This is great. It's got good performance, but my fans are running crazy. Like the thermal cooling

on this thing really sucks. MacBooks don't have good thermal cooling at all. It keeps overheating and shutting down. MacBooks are awful. Apple makes bad products. When in reality, he's using the product differently than how it was intended, because Apple doesn't make drivers available for Windows for the thermal management system. So it's down to emergency cooling. And if you look at that, if you look at what he's done here, he took a product, the Dell Sputnik. He immediately uninstalls with a purge command, the Unity desktop, installs Zubuntu, then complains and then does it, then installs Chromium and does a desktop grading, complains about a library problem.

Now, he never says that on air, but then he takes that experience and he says, can't use it. Not good for regular users if you just want to browse the web, if you just want to go out there and do a little Amazon shopping. In fact, he goes on even further. It's for people who like to mess with computers. And you know who you are. If you're somebody who doesn't want to mess with it, I just want to surf the, just want to buy something on Amazon, send an email to my kids, look at some websites.

If that's you, you don't want to mess with it, probably not a good choice. I think the Chromebooks are a good choice i think a new version of windows would be fine windows 8 if you can afford it a macintosh if you've got even more money that's a good choice it's only for the enthusiasts that i'd recommend uh ubuntu and the thing that is and i was gonna let this go because we played the clip on the last live stream and i was like all right bygones be bygones water under the bridge sure it was on a national radio show sure maybe potentially a million people just heard you kind of crap on linux for your own mistake what really bugged me as and maybe this is maybe this is just you know a little too inside baseball what really bugged me is then twit took the clip of leo laporte dumping on linux and made it the highlighted

clip for that show so every super long show that twit does they release what's called a twit bit where they put a couple of minutes from that show on their youtube channel for twit and it's sort of like here's the best moment of that show and this is this is what we want you to watch to get you hooked to watch the whole two-hour long show. And this is the moment. This moment where Leo has taken a big stinky dump on Linux is the moment that they chose to highlight from his three-hour radio show. Because this was so important. And this is the part that made me angry. arrogance and irresponsibility of somebody who has a national radio show who didn't properly do the work who screwed it up themselves but is still too arrogant to admit that then dumps on the

platform as a whole because they screwed it up on their own applying a use case scenario that no average user would ever do and then tarnishing the platform as a whole that is irresponsible and i that's what upsets me about it you You know, it's kind of funny, too, because those people who he mentioned are who only browse the web occasionally and shop on Amazon are the people who are going to be getting the viruses and need protection when it's provided. Right. That's the thing. That's what has me kind of irked about it is he's actually, in a sense, like he's completely

got it wrong. Like maybe if that caller was a PC gamer enthusiast or a video editor, like that would be the person to give that speech to. But somebody who literally wants to read email and shop on Amazon, guess what? Go get Ubuntu. It's got Amazon built in. You know what I'm saying? Like that's the perfect operating system for somebody who wants to shop on Amazon. It is false on its face. And this kind of old school FUD still, I think, is the predominant narrative that Linux has to combat. This is not what he says is not true. Am I wrong? I mean, I think what he's trying to say is that it's not good for the average user

if you're stupid enough to blindly delete things that you have no idea what they do. But you can say that about any operating system. Exactly. Anything. Why is it that easy to break the library dependency? In the FreeBSD Packaging Manager, it'll be like, you can't delete that. It's required by this.

They have an integration package for the Unity desktop for Chromium. Of course, if you uninstall all of Unity, which Chromium has this nice little integration feature involved, kind of like GNOME has the extensions in the browser, it's kind of nice and integrated there. Of course, it's going to kind of blow something up or at least kind of cause an unusual problem.

It seems like there's an undeclared dependency there that should have resolved it. The issue is that he removed the integration feature. He was taking random commands from people in chat room or whatever and running them on his machine. For example, he removed

something that Ubuntu created and then he tried to install something that Ubuntu made from and then he tried to install something that Ubuntu made from the Ubuntu repo that depended on the thing he removed. So why did the repo let him do it? He did a purge. He did a purge.

He did a purge. I don't know what that means. That means force it, regardless. Just rip it out of there. I don't care if there's errors. If you want to kick back a warning to me, screw you. Pull it out anyways. Right.

Chris, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wait, wait, wait. Chris, sorry. Purge means something completely different. All right, hold on. Okay, hold on. Let's break it down.

So, Ick, I wanted to get, before we go too far, I know, purge means fully remove. I know. Ick, you and I both have experimented with moving our parents over to Linux. What has your experience been with their sort of that average user scenario? Has this been a problem? Well, the biggest thing about that clip that I wanted to mention is that my parents heard the clip. And immediately they said he was full of crap. And my parents are not techie.

That's nice. And immediately they said he was full of crap. And my parents are not techie. And wait, and my, my, but now as far as the use case scenario for somebody who just uses Linux to browse the web and do email and write stuff, I would say that that use case would be my wife. My wife would be the exact use case that Leo was describing. He has no problem.

Of course, I'm there to help her if something goes weird but at the same time it's it it's not that huge of a deal to just say app get install chromium and everything's all better but um my parents my dad especially was just like that is completely false he's making assumptions based on stuff he didn't even do any research on. Right, this is... And he picked up on that right away. I think this is true. Now, let's discuss Alan's point. Alan's point is, you know, maybe the system should be smarter than that.

If you give it the force flag, then that's your fault. Well, he didn't give it a force flag. He gave it a purge flag. But let's... But what if the chat room had said... I don't know what the difference is. What if the chat room had said rm-rf slash, right? He could still be blaming Linux for that.

I think at the end of the day, like, he essentially, he got engaged in a scenario in which no user who got a machine preloaded with Ubuntu would ever go through. Unless they knew what they wanted ahead of time. Well, do you know what he actually hit? It was a thing, a dependency in which the Ubuntu package did not declare. If the Ubuntu package did declare it, it would have been resolved. And it does now. That has also been fixed. This was, it was a bug. You're right.

It didn't declare dependency. Popey. Damn it. Popey ruined everything. You know, Matt pointed out, I mean, hell, even Kim Commando, though, has been better spoken in this area on this topic. And I wonder if Leo is just maybe falling subject to just a pervasive narrative that has just kind of bubbled up through the tech industry for years. Because I don't think this is even a justified issue. Yes, there was a bug in declaring that dependency.

But again, this isn't something somebody would have gone through normally. So what can we do to sort of – and I have a theory. The big question is how often does doing the regular updates that you should be doing actually break something? Almost. Very rarely. Yeah, very rarely. Very, very rarely. I guess it depends on someone's definition of very rarely.

It depends on if you rip out your desktop before you try to do an upgrade. Yeah, I also run Sid. Running Sid even is fine, and I've been running Sid for a long time. It's a little dangerous, but even it's almost not exactly experimental, but if it's going to be a problem,

it's going to be a problem in Sid's going to be a problem in SID. And SID is pretty good, or I love it. I have a question. All right, well, hold on. I want to give Daredevil one second. Daredevil, go ahead before we get too far. Go ahead and make your point. I would actually just give a suggestion to distributions.

If anyone is listening, install at least bugs by default, and you will solve the most problems you have, because the users see, oh, there's a bug, I'm not going to update right now. And that's it. In FreeBSD, we have something like that called the updating file that explains the problems you will

run into while trying to do an upgrade. Go ahead, Crash. I think this is a problem that the community has though is that like this guy's made this thing and what the actual issue was whether it was an ubuntu issue or a chromium issue whatever is sort of missing the point slightly because the real issue here is that hundreds of thousands of millions of people watch his show and get the wrong impression and that's and that's the thing it reminds me of the chris you probably remember

that guy many years ago who did that thing about is linux good for servers and he installed centos and then try to install aptitude on it right it's the same as that yeah it's exactly the same as that where the guy has and then he makes this blog post and everybody reads the blog post and they assume, because he's speaking, you know, he's a trusted person that they trust his opinion, they assume that he's correct. And this is the real thing that we need to be fighting, whether But the real issue is that there's a perception, like he says, that it's not for average users when Ubuntu is perfect for average users who probably wouldn't even try to install Chrome and they would just use Firefox because it's there. Right. Go ahead, Riley.

It's kind of funny, too, because I remember watching a while back he did a show that was only repurposing old hardware to use Linux. And they did Puppy Linux on it. Oh, cool. And they just got the flash drive, and they put the ISO on it, and they used Unix, and they put Puppy Linux on there. First tier 5 when you need them. Yeah, I mean, he's given good lip service to Linux in the past,

but I feel like he's never given it a good... That actually might be why. He should know better, though. He should know better, is the thing. That might be why, because if you look at Puppy, Puppy is awesome. It is great for what it's designed for, to get as much as you can

out of the hardware, but it is not designed to be completely user-friendly. It is not for average users. People using XP should not be using Zootoos, because their hardware is that old. Unity is not. The latest versions of Unity are much more light. Go ahead. Let's give Daredevil a chance to go.

To be fair, most users don't even uninstall things. If you actually do any maintenance, they don't even uninstall. They just keep installing. So as long as it works. Right. Yeah. And so, Poppy, I wanted to give Poppy, because Poppy, did you try to pop up with something that we don't know? Well, so I can see his point. He made a bunch of points that, you know, are fairly valid that, you know, it has been for geeks in the past.

Right. And it's still for a lot, you know, i3 and you could argue, you know, KDE very much for geeks, right? I think GNOME is a geek. I think I embrace that too at the same time. Like, I'm glad there's an OS for me. But the flip side is... I wouldn't say KDE is only for geeks, right? I think GNOME is a geek. I think, and I embrace that too at the same time. Like, I'm glad there's an OS for me. But the flip side is... I wouldn't say KDE is only for geeks. No, not only for geeks. No, no, no, I mean... Oh, I don't mean to make, I don't make KDE to sound like it's only for geeks. I mean to say, like, it's an operating, it is a desktop environment that appeals to geeks for a lot of reasons.

Oh, yeah. The two things that struck me as problems here is, one, we shouldn't let users break their desktop in quite that bad a way by typing a couple of commands, by removing... Yeah, but then you're making the Mac. Then it's a Mac. No, no. There's certain situations that we should not let happen. Like, you know, removing Ubuntu desktop. We try not to let you do that. But unfortunately, people do that. And for years, people have removed Ubuntuuntu desktop for whatever reason maybe they wanted to rip out Unity or rip out some bits and they removed Ubuntu desktop and the upgrade tool that they when they come to do an upgrade later on from one release to another the upgrade tool depends on that being there and what happens is you end up upgrading and not not installing packages that should be there and would be there if you had

Ubuntu desktop there in the first place the number of systems that I've seen broken that have been fixed by simply reinstalling that package and pulling in all its dependencies and then magically everything's fixed so the big problem that he had was following instructions from clueless numpties on IRC yeah who who felt that they were experts in this realm, when in fact they've typed that once and then probably bitched six months later when their own upgrade failed, which was their own fault and nobody else's. Right, and unfortunately that IRC room is always full of fresh fools

who are trying it for the first time. Riley, you wanted to make a disclaimer? Yeah, like, Popey, here's your thought on that. Like, why don't y'all put this, like, whenever you want to make a disclaimer? Yeah. Popey, here's your thought on that. Why don't you all put this, like whenever you want to add that to upgrade, why don't you all put a disclaimer in it, like warning, this can break your system or something to that end? We do, but we don't recommend dist upgrade as a way to go from one release to another. We've got a graphical upgrade tool that tries to do a whole bunch of sanity checks.

It's called Update Manager, and it's got a button that you press to upgrade from one release to the next, and it's got a whole lot of sanity checks. It's called Update Manager and it's got a button that you press to upgrade from one release to the next. And it's got a whole lot of sanity checks. It does things like disable PPAs and check for the existence of certain packages. And it tries to figure out

that kind of stuff. If you work around it, we've got to let you work around it. Otherwise, we're giving you a walled garden like an iPad and one big button in the middle.

Yeah, I think people, even like Dave right now, I think you guys are missing Ubuntu Desktop isn't Unity. It's like, I think you guys are missing, like, Ubuntu desktop isn't Unity. It's like, and maybe this is what people get wrong, it's like a lot of the bits that make it Ubuntu. And so that's why when you pull that, and that's what he did.

I mean, and I go back, there's no, I just, again, that's not a real scenario, use case scenario. Maybe you should have, Ubuntu should have a feature where when you try to remove it, it says, Leo, is that you? Matt, what do you think? Matt, should Ubuntu should have a feature where when you try to remove it, it says, Leo, is that you? Matt, what do you think? Matt, should Ubuntu or distros like it maybe make it a lot harder for the user to break it like that?

Well, the first flag is forward. Two things that come to mind on this one. These are the two important things to keep in mind on this. First and foremost, anybody that's been in technology as long as Leo is concerned, taking advice from an IRC chatroom should be slapped at that level. If it's a new operating system you're not that experienced with, don't take advice from a chatroom. Just don't. If you want to take advice from the chatroom, that's fine, but

then verify it. Make sure it actually matches documentation. The second piece of information is as far as the warnings are concerned, I think that Ubuntu warnings are excellent, but I think that they're a little soft. You know, you're talking about people as a whole, especially as a community,

tend to be pretty boneheaded, and unless you make it in big blinking red text, they're going to ignore it. So maybe, you know, maybe yeah, I mean, you know, spice it up a little bit, because it is really soft. I've seen the warnings, they're not really that compelling. We talked about this on TechSnap.

There was a study a university did about the language used in the warnings and saying this file could be dangerous isn't helpful because it doesn't tell you why it could be dangerous and so on. So saying this upgrade could break your computer and they're like well, yeah, okay, whatever. Whereas

it says doing this may cause Chromium not to work. Right. Maybe something more clear. There you go. This is how it actually affects you. That's good. It was like two or three months ago in Hexnap,

there was an actual paper from a university about updating these warnings, specifically they were talking about the ones your browser gives, so that people clicking through the warnings and then getting spywareware and then being like, why did I get spyware? Because you said, I accept

responsibility and will take this file. But the warning's vague. My computer tried to warn me, but it did it in such a way that I ignored it. In general, this is a little bit overblown. This is a little bit over-exaggerated. Yes, it did cause a big problem, but this is a package problem that could

have been like it was a tiny problem it would never usually come up under normal circumstances darren devlin wouldn't you argue that maybe the package manager has a role and perhaps we get good information before we install but what about information before we uninstall yes because i mean if you were uninstalling the desktop environment these should say like all right you're not being not going to be able to then have a graphical interface and maybe a little link or description of what actually that means. So when you're removing Unity, you know what that means

and what that will impact. But at the same time, this is also the problem with not having properly curated documentation, right? Yeah. He's taking advice from the chatroom because, in general, with Linux, the chatroom is the best place to get advice. But if the chatroom is an official chatroom and not some random Twitch chatroom. Even if it's an official chatroom, there are other people there. Yeah, it's his chat, right?

If he'd gone to Hashabun too there is no way anyone would have told him to pseudo app get remove unity and i'm going to sit in that channel and tell that to everyone now you gotta understand though that like leo that's his irc room he trusts those guys you know he's got he's got regulars in there that he looks at you know just like me i like my chat room i i got people i i take advice from and things like that so i think i i i can't i i think what it is is he went into that situation not knowing what to do and people that he knows who's given him good advice before told him what to do and he did it um and then he based his judgment on on what happened as a result of that but maybe moving away from leo because like we said it's a bigger problem overall uh i I wonder if this isn't exactly why what's happening with Ubuntu and Convergence has to happen.

Because we have to almost just come at this from a whole new fresh perspective where we say, yeah, you want to use this because then you can have the operating system on one device. And yeah, it's Linux, but it's this Ubuntu version where they've kind of made this whole new interface and it works on all your systems. I wonder if we need a reboot of it all together. And that's perhaps why Google doesn't even say it's not a Linux Chromebook, right? It's Chrome OS. It's a Chrome OS Chromebook. And I think it's that same exact philosophy there. Interesting point. Interesting point. I think at the end of the day, a full screen that pops up and says you have to – you actually have to type out the word I am an idiot if you uninstall this thing. Because literally you're not only acknowledging the fact you are in fact an idiot, but you're also acknowledging the fact that you are going to be doing something potentially stupid.

I say that solves all the problems. Think about all these controversies around think about all the controversy around Mir and how different that makes Ubuntu and how I think I don't know. Who knows? But I would be if I was a betting man I would bet in the next year or two the conversation around

Ubuntu and the desktop is going to switch from all this heat about systemd and all that and mirror to, God, all these apps feel like big blown up mobile apps on my desktop. And we're going to go through a period where those get refined for both types of environments. And they're going to get tons of crap for that for a while. But I think all of these controversies will build toward this overall narrative that Ubuntu is different than Linux. And so if you've ever had a problem with Linux, well, there's this Ubuntu one different than Linux. And so if you've ever had a problem with

Linux, well, there's this Ubuntu one where they went off and they polished off some of these rough edges and they have this convergence system where you can get a phone and a desktop and a TV thing. And it's kind of neat. And, you know, like if you ever had a problem with Linux where you have this weird software problem, well, Ubuntu, it takes care of all that because they have a software app store just like the iOS does. And only it works on your desktop too. It's really cool because you just buy the app once. Like I could see this, almost all of these controversies are almost contributing to an end result narrative that almost helps establish the differentiating brand that Ubuntu needs to sort of break away from all this noise and these old assumptions that old guys like Leo

are making. And I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing but i almost wonder if at the end of all of this all the stuff we're talking about today eventually adds to this perception that sort of gives linux a push and gives ubuntu a push does that make sense yeah i think so i think so i i you know there's aspects of it that have me concerned, but I think the latter point of the old way of thinking, the old way of doing things, legacy way of doing things isn't always better. Just because we've been doing it all along doesn't make it right. So I think I'm about more responsible journalism in the sense. I think, you know, Leo perhaps owes it to his national audience to actually get a Linux machine for a little while and try it as the vendor intends. Like I would love, for example, for Leo to get contacted by System76 and give him a whole inclusive like here's a laptop. Well, actually, you know, something like that, I don't know if he could just try it over with a Dell. He already has the machine, but if it was some sort

of here's the whole product, use the product as it's supposed to be. Like, here, Leo. Somebody sit down with him. If there was somebody who could go to Twit and sit down with Leo and be like, this is this, this is that and not... The problem is I don't want to repeat the same scenario that just happened again and have it reaffirm. I don't want to repeat the same scenario that just happened again and have it reaffirmed.

I don't want to reaffirm that. There's only one rule you need to ask him to follow, and it's not a vast list of commands and tutorials. It's just don't copy and paste dumb commands pasted by idiots on the internet. It's really simple. I know, but here's what I want. I want, I want...

I don't... This is now something he'll just continue to perpetuate, and I think a lot of people do it. I'm trying to figure out a way we as a community could maybe evangelize. Maybe there's people in our audience that are Twit fans and Linux Unplugged fans

that could go to the Twit studios at some point because they have an open studio, and maybe they could take their laptop there and they could show it to Leo how it's supposed to work. Like maybe one of the ways we could address, like seriously address some of these problems is by just getting a little boots on the ground here and using the spread of our audience to say, hey, if you ever have an opportunity to give somebody a guided tour, do it. And it like, I don't know i i think this this is the the problem that he had yeah okay we can talk about why it happened and the bugs and the stupid commands

people ran but it's a a symptom of his mentality that you know gung-ho going in and trying this thing out i i don't think that fixing that one guy, despite his large listenership and viewership, I don't think that fixing that is going to necessarily undo what he's already said. It'd have to be a lot of people. I know. He's just an example of a problem that affects – it's a much larger problem. I think he's well aware of how the system should work. He knows exactly what should happen. The problem is he has an immediate perceptive bias of the system when he sees it.

It's this immediate assumption he has going in, whereas this is… No, I think he just had a very valid point. The point he was making, and he was using a rather contrived example, but the point he was trying to make was sometimes you get weird error messages or odd situations that are difficult to fix and that is true um it's it's probably right it's more true for linux i go back i don't know i go back i go back to bias the entire the entire reason leo laporte and i'm not even bsing here the entire reason leo laporte has a national radio show is because Windows users constantly have problems

and he can stack a phone bank of Windows users having issues. So it is a problem that affects every single operating system. So it is a bias to say it only applies to Linux. If you F around with your registry on Windows, if you go download CCleaner and wipe that

registry one too many times, you're going to have all kinds of weird software problems and all kinds of DLLs that won't start. Ripping out Ubuntu desktop is equivalent to taking a hatchet to the Windows registry. And you cannot say that it's something that is unique to Linux or something that is unique to Windows. And so that's why I say there is a little bit of a bias at play here. That's not even a little bit. The nice thing about Linux is the issues that he had,

if he just stopped, they could have been fixed and very easily fixed with a couple of app get commands probably. We could have got him back on track, whereas taking a hatchet to the registry is actually quite a hard thing to back out of. But all of these systems, Windows, Linux, and Mac, they all require experts on hand to help you when you get into a tricky situation. I don't think Linux requires more experts,

or it just requires experts with different knowledge. That's all. Yeah, exactly. And I don't know. And I wonder if there is some sort of new magical product category, maybe the perceptions and the and the biases would be put aside and they would start anew they would you know maybe he wouldn't feel like he should just gung-ho and go in like a cowboy maybe he'd feel like this is something new that i need to understand and spend a little time with and that's for a road trip to petaluma yeah i know we should you know we should do is a live linux action show from twit like while they're doing twit and like oh wow that would be funny.

Well, so here's the thing with Leo that most people don't understand and I only know of because I know people that used to work with him. So let me put this to you point blank. At the end of the day, Leo doesn't like to be wrong. And so when something goes wrong, that's my impression. I know. I know. Nobody does. Nobody does. You know, that's my impression. I know. I know.

Nobody does. Nobody does. I'm trying not to make this an anti-Leo thing because I am going to get so much hate mail from our audience for saying anything bad about Leo. He's a nice guy. I just don't agree with this approach. And the reason why we are doing this is, A, quite literally, it's available in audio. in audio. B, it was on a national radio show in the United States that also streamed on the internet and listened by thousands of people.

And then downloaded by about another, you know, 100,000 people. And C, it was made Twit's spotlight special. And that just pulled my irk chain. This isn't necessarily about Leo. Leo is representing a common bias that is out there that many people, that maybe a lot of people even

in our audience have. So I not trying i'm not trying to flame leo but he exactly he knows better and what he really owes if you're gonna if you're in the position if you're in the position of acting as a radio personality on a nationally syndicated radio show giving technology advice i would argue it is perhaps your responsibility to actually have experience with some of these things before you give such a definitive answer on the topic. The issue is probably – it kind of goes back to a – every tech person has the same kind of opinion where they don't want to – if someone asks me a question, they just don't want to say, I don't know. If someone asks me a question, they just don't want to say, I don't know. They could say, I don't know, and someone move on and get help. But we want to say we want to be helpful even if what we say is not helpful.

Right. You got to have an answer, especially when you're on the radio. Yeah. The difference is when I'm wrong, it's a friend of mine having a problem that I have to figure out how to fix it versus millions of people he is never going to talk to. However, I would just like to say, I mean, the only, I know Popey made a good point, you know, like changing Leo's mind in the big picture really is just a drop in the ocean. But I actually think it's a drop we could make happen. So if somebody is in the California area and wants to go up there with a, like a, like a ultra pro or something like that, or if somebody has a nice ThinkPad running

Ubuntu or Linux like that, go show it to him. Go up there Sunday, go after the Tech Guy show, so show up about 2 p.m., and you'll have an hour between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. where he's just screwing off, sitting at the Twit table, and you can sit down and you can talk to him, and you can show him how to actually use it, and maybe

you can change his mind. And maybe next time... HTML 404 in the chat room said he lives 10 minutes from Petaluma. Well, there you go. And the next time he's on a nationally syndicated radio show, asked what should I do when I replace XP, maybe he'll have a slightly different answer. And maybe if you're even comfortable explaining to him what the problem was

and kind of where he went wrong, that help that might help and equivalent make it equivalent to you know taking a hack to the registry make you he'll understand that and i think if we can at least change one voice on the radio especially at a time like this when literally i guarantee it next weekend it's the weekend after xp support ends he's going to get calls asked what i what should i do with my old xp machine this is a change we could actually make but i would say a more productive approach is to just reach out to kim commando quite honestly because i think they're about as equal they're equally relevant in my mind personally they're both nice people i have no problem with them personally but i i i've i there's things that there's there's so much stuff behind the scenes that just makes me livid it's like oh leo this

leo that leo's a nice guy but he's but he's not the second coming. He makes mistakes just like any one of us might. He's human. Yeah, he's human, but at the end of the day, let's – I don't – I think it's cool to show him and stuff, but I think honestly going out into someone that's actually going to be more receptive, I don't think he's going to be as receptive as people think he's going to be. I really don't. Yeah, maybe not. No, you might be right, Matt. I really don't. Yeah, maybe not. Maybe instead of sending someone, like if someone goes there to teach them how to use it or show them how we could take it, somebody would do that,

but bring their parents with them and say, here's an actual average user. See what happens. There you go. Yeah, that would be interesting. That would be cool. All right. Okay, well.

So the final thing, or there is one thing that we have to worry about is that Leo's been lulled into a false sense of security by steve gibson because he said xp was okay to run for certain power users who apparently know what they're doing this is this is also something i do take a bit of an issue with essentially they're saying xp is fine in fact you don't even have to have the latest service pack of xp or even the last update since that latest service pack, all you have to do is don't run as a user. Well, I can tell you, as somebody who has had hundreds and hundreds,

literally hundreds and hundreds of users that I was support for, and almost the vast majority, at least, the vast majority of them, I would say almost 90% of them were all running as regular users on XP, had incredible amounts of problems. Yes, running as a regular user is still a good idea. It keeps that drive-by malware problem. It helps IE stuff, tamps that down. Whoever unclean nailed it.

Leo needs a co-host. That would be awesome. I say Stallman. Problem solved. The problem is this recommending XP, literally recommending XP over Linux is a little, I think it's a little almost dangerous. Oh, it's beyond dangerous.

It is dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's why I'm so angry about it. It's just because it's like it's so irresponsible. It's one thing if you don't know better, but come on. But what Gibson said doesn't even make sense either because if power users – even if they're a Windows power user, they are fully aware that they should not be running XP. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. I mean, yeah, this is, okay, let's put this in perspective here. This is the level of bias that we're up against. The option is actually for them in their minds, it is a better option to continue using XP. For somebody who wants to use Amazon and check email, it is a better option for them to use XP than use Linux. That is the amount of bias that is out there. That, to me, seems like a Berlin Wall level of bias. True. You know, XP could be secure if you remove all drives, all USB ports, and totally disconnect it from the internet. I mean, it's the most secure operating system in the world

at that point, right? There you go. Just run it from RAM and never restart. Exactly, see? Yeah. All right. Problem solved. So we got to go because I got to go see the electricians at the studio. And I hope this didn't come across necessarily as bashing one person. Well, and direct your bashing to me because I'm the one bashing and he's the one sticking up for him. So throw it my way because I'll defend it. So I think we'll have to bump it to the big show. I think we'll take more on the topic in the post show. But the topic we'll have to bump to the big show is Ubuntu makes the Amazon product results opt-in.

Love to know your thoughts on this one, guys. So leave us some feedback either in our main subreddit thread where we always post these shows or you can go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com, clicking that contact link, and choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown. What do you think about the changes coming to the Ubuntu scopes? Do you care? Are you glad? Is it about time? Is it a huge reversal that is outrageous? I'd love to know your thoughts. Just send them in to us.

Don't forget you can join us live on Tuesdays, 2 p.m. Pacific, over to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar, and line us on Thursday, 7 p.m. on jblive.tv. Go to the calendar to get that in your local time. Matt, I'll see you on Sunday. Download Sabby and load it on your machine and get an opinion, okay? Okay. Alright, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to this

week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Join us on Sunday for the big show. We'll be reviewing Sabby and Linux. If everything works out as planned, next Tuesday on Linux Unplugged. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. We'll see you right back here next Tuesday.