LINUX Unplugged - Episode 45: The Triple-Boot Phone | LUP 45

Episode Date: June 17, 2014

Chris shares his experience with triple booting Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch and Android on his Nexus 5 and the surprising results. Plus some grounded feedback and much more!

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode weekly Linux talk show that's raised from the ashes stronger and more in-depth than ever before. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt. Hey, Matt. Okay matt okay so i'm gonna be clear with you it's gonna be an express edition this week because i've been here since about 6 a.m and i was here until about 10 30 last night we had some hardware death death matt like you know there's like there's when hardware dies and there's when hardware has deathed and i have hardware death where it's like, I came into the room. I heard some clicking actually kind of, it kind of actually did go down like that. It happened during Coda radio yesterday.

I'm sitting here. See, we have a mixer. It's all controlled by software and has a, it doesn't even have physical switches. It doesn't even have physical, like, uh, like, uh, you know, uh, pots as they call them, where you can pull up or pull down a pot, you know, to make somebody louder, quieter. None of that. No sliders, Matt. It's slider-free.

It's all controlled by software. Well, guess what happens when the hard drive in the machine that controls it by software starts to die? You don't have access to the mixer anymore. So we won't have our mumble room with us today because I actually just got it working like an hour and a half before the show. I texted Matt. I'm like, Matt, I think we're going to have to reschedule the show today.

And then, like, last thing I try, like, I was like, while I was texting Matt, then I'm like, well, I'm going to try one more thing. This is not going to fix it. And, of course, it fixed it. So we made it just in time for the show. So that's good, which is nice because I got something kind of fun to talk about. fun to talk about. I've recently had the opportunity to take

Android, Ubuntu Touch, and Firefox OS, slap them all on my Android phone, and I'm going to tell you how reek I did it. Wow. Yeah, it's really cool. Sounds like a software sandwich. I'm triple booting. Yeah, I am. I'm triple booting the latest Android, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu Touch.

I wish we were on the Mumble Room, because I know Fate and a couple others in the Mumble Room are doing this. So maybe after the show, we'll do some post-show troubleshooting and see what they're able to do. So today, it's only a partial show because we wanted to be able to get up. We were here, but it's going to be abbreviated. So why don't we start with the feedback so that way we can get that covered because we've got some good ones. Nick wrote in. We talked last week about the whole

Alienware going with a Windows box. Remember that? I still can't get over it. It's like a bad nightmare. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and it's all going to be gone. Yeah, so to recap for those of you who didn't catch last week's episode of Linux Unplugged, at E3 last week, Alienware

announced they'd be shipping not a Steam OS box, but a Steam machine. The Steam machine is going to run, you guessed it, Windows. So we won't know exactly what their offering is going to be until it hits the market. But we had some heavy thoughts. We had some frustrations, I would say. And we talked about them last week on the show, and Nick, I thought, came

in with a pretty good response. Because we definitely took a hardline response, and Nick, you know, he's a... He's more rational than we are. He says, in Linux Unplugged episode 44, there was a debate over Alienware and it betraying Linux. In my opinion, Alienware made the right move. Although Linux is gaining

developer support for games, Windows is developing support that currently far outreaches Linux. Even when running SteamOS, a gamer would be limited on the selection of content that was available to him or her. The move to Windows allows Alienware to push out a console that allows gamers access to the array of content available for Windows while having

a better UI that circumnavigates the whore that is Windows Metro. Don't get me wrong. I love Linux, but Windows is still the OS of choice for gaming. Gaming on Linux has a long way to go. But if we're going to be seen squabbling about why gaming-related companies are stupid instead of asking the question of how to bring games to Linux, we will not be taken seriously by developers that may be looking at Linux as a viable platform.

He says, by the way, many popular games, such as Battlefield, run their own independent clients and services that have yet to be coded for Linux. These games would still be accessible for those using that Alienware Windows box. Hopefully these developers will begin developing content for Linux, but we'll have to wait and see.

He makes a good point about things like Battlefield, who have their own networking clients and all that stuff, that's just not even available. The backend for that is not even available for Linux. We'll have to wait and see. It makes a good point about things like Battlefield, who have their own networking clients and all that stuff. It's not even available. The backend for that is not even available for Linux. This is true, and it goes back to what I was saying last week. At the end of the day, it comes down to titles. Which platform has the most titles?

I guess Alienware was looking at that fairly practically and saying, okay, look, while I personally think it sucks and it makes me mad, and it doesn't shock me that the Dell slash Alienware guys would do this, I, you know, having a chance to kind of noodle it over, I do feel like that that's the decision that was made. That being said, I still don't agree with it. Yeah.

And I, like, I'm kind of with Riley in the chat. It's like, well, then why not just wait? Just wait till SteamOS was ready for that point. Because it seems like this is a failed product already. Like, we've seen this product bail, and you're just shipping something that's already not worked, and you're going to sort of... I hope they don't draw conclusions about what SteamOS

itself would do in a marketplace, I guess. That's my... Alienware may, and good for them, fail. Go away. You know what? Yeah, maybe that's right. Let them get out of here. Get it out of here, right, Matt? That's probably a good point, because, after all, I think Alienware is... I think it's wasted effort. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, right, Matt? That's probably a good point because, after all, I think Alienware is... I think it's wasted effort. Yeah.

Alright, well, because we have a long email to get to, I want to take a moment right here, and I want to stop and thank Ting. Go over to linux.ting.com. They're one of our sponsors for the Linux Unplugged show, and it's mobile that makes sense. My mobile service provider and Matt's mobile service provider, too. In fact, I was just

talking with Matt at the beginning of the show about my Nexus 5, and Matt's got service provider too. In fact, I was just talking with Matt at the beginning of the show about my Nexus 5, and Matt's got the Note 2. Now, Matt, you might want to consider, I mean, I'm just going to throw this out there, but you might want to consider, I think, oh, I don't actually know, oh, you know what? I think this trick I did is limited to the Nexus devices. But I am doing, so I made my first call today

on Ubuntu Touch on Ting. How about that? Now tell me that's not mobile that makes sense, right? Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So this is what's great about Ting is it's a flat $6 a month. And then it's just your usage on top of that. And that's how they bill you.

They'll just take your messages, your minutes, and your megabytes. They'll add them up at the end of the month. Whatever bucket you fall into, that's what you pay. There's no contract. There's no early termination fee. And you own your device outright, which I think is really great. Plus, every plan comes with caller ID, tethering hotspot, three-way calling, call forwarding, and all the other features you'd expect.

And it's just your usage. There's no ETF because there's no contract, which is awesome. So you feel like you have the freedom to move if you need to. They have a great dashboard. But the other thing I think is really unique about Ting is their customer service. They have a no-hold customer service, and they just did a video about how they actually scale that. I'll play that for the audience out there. James M. asks, one question, how do you do it? I've had to call you once and got a live person on the first ring who was cheerful and solved my problem. I emailed another time and got an

answer in about 15 minutes. Are you a real company? Could you teach Comcast? Well, I don't know if we could teach Comcast, but we're definitely a real company. We decided a long time ago that it was just important to treat our customers the same way that we like to be treated when we call. Nobody likes being put on hold. Nobody likes waiting two, three days to get a response to their email. And it certainly happens. We're not perfect,

but we really keep an eye on how many calls we're getting and how many emails we're getting and how many new customers we're signing up and then do everything that it takes to make sure we've got enough staff here that are happy and properly trained and motivated in the right direction to make sure that they can perform up to those levels. Go to linux.ting.com to take $25 off your first device.

If you've got a device that's compatible with ting good news they'll give you a $25 credit if you're like me that'll last more than your first month of ting service it really is something when you switch over to ting and you can go find their savings calculator over at linux.ting.com and see how much you would save put in your actual usage and see what it check out to be also check out some of their devices they've got myfi only devices that's a six dollar hot spot you get that hot spot and it's just your usage and if you if you don't use it very much then you don't pay very much if you use a lot you pay appropriately and it makes sense linux.ting.com and a big thanks to ting for sponsoring linux

unplugged i uh i made so i did make that first phone call on Ubuntu Touch on Ting. It's a little beta because two things happened. Of course, now I'm ribbing Ubuntu Touch and we can't get Mumble for Poppy to defend it. So I made the call and it worked flawlessly to make the call. And it was nice because I didn't really have to hardly set up anything. But then the problem was when I hung up the other end, the Ubuntu Touch end never recognized the hang up and then like just blew through like half my battery in about two minutes wow so as you pointed out you know i'll play poppy's part here you know to defend it i would say it's beta yeah it's early it's like it's like a recent build through yeah it's a super recent

build too uh but hey it works i i'm running ubuntu touch and like a recent build too. Yeah, it's a super recent build too. But hey, it works. I'm running Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS on the Nexus 5. It's living the dream, man. I'm living the dream. Alright, Russell writes in about high DPI support under Linux, and this is a topic that we've been tracking because I fancy myself, once the monitors come down to a reasonable

price level, I fancy myself running the GNOME desktop on a high DPI display. So he says, hey, Linux support for high DPI screens has been brought up here and there lately, so I thought I'd chime in with my experiences. I bought a 4K monitor a month ago and tried several different desktop environments with it, and the winner by far is Unity. How about that? He says, I was an Arch user on GNOME. I got my monitor around the same time 3.12 hit the repos. I heard 3.12 had high DPI support, but apparently that wasn't in the binaries in the repo, and I would have to recompile Cairo and GTK, and I didn't want to get into that for something that should have just

worked. GNOME was bad. KDE was bad. XFCE was better, but anything lower than that required too much configuration, often on a per application basis. I tried Ubuntu 14.04 and it looked really good. It has GUIs for setting up the window and font scaling and everything looks as it should. I'm sure high DPI support will be more of a priority for desktop environments and distributions as time goes along, but right now it looks like Ubuntu is the clear winner. Also with a GTX 770 graphics card on Ubuntu, I'm playing Dota 2 on max settings at 3840 by 2160 at 80 frames per second. That's pretty cool. Keep up the good work, Russell.

Holy crap. That is an insane resolution. 3840 by 2160 at 80 frames per second. Okay. Yeah, that works. I want it. I want a four.

He got a 4k monitor. He must've, he must've dropped a pretty penny on that because I think like even the cheap ones are like around two grand right now. Still. I remember when LCDs were asking and I'm a little fuddy though. Oh, what's the,

what's the, you know, it's like, I do. HD is nice. it's great, but can you visually, with human eyeballs, really notice a difference? And the value of this is negative.

Yeah, I think you can, actually, but just barely. I mean, I wear glasses, and I don't know. I think you barely can, and I don't think it's worth that kind of money. I think it's like, it's one of those things where you look at it, and you're like, oh, man, that text looks particularly good. That's kind of money. I think it's like, it's one of those things where you look at it and you're like, oh, man, that text looks particularly good. That's kind of it. Like, you know, I mean, it's not like when you went from

VHS to DVD. It's not that kind of jump. It's like when you went DVD to Blu-ray, I can sometimes, you're like, okay, it does look better, but it doesn't look that much better, especially if you have a great DVD player and a good TV, right? And I think it's kind of the same thing like i have a monoprice uh korean display that's uh it's got a high res it's like a 2k resolution and it looks all right you know it looks pretty good but i don't know matt it's coming it's coming i i just remember when just lcd screens were two thousand dollars oh yeah no kidding well i've still got a plasma set that's my main tv we have a led tv in the bedroom but our main set's a plasma and and I'm happy as a clam with it.

I don't know. It's like one of those things where it's like, I would probably, if I sat in front of it and actually had a side-by-side, then I might be sold, but I'm just not there yet, and then again, I'll probably wait like the prices need to come down for 4K. I feel like the Linux desktop applications and environment sounds like they still have some work to do. And I also want something that's like, you know, 22 inches or 27 inches. I don't want like a 15 inch high DPI display. I want like a big, big screen that, you know, is going to look awesome. And yeah, I don't know. Maybe, heck, if that's a year away, I mean, I'll definitely jump when it's, you know, in the few hundred dollar range. I think that's when I'm going to pull the trigger, when it's like $380 for a really, you know, like a well-respected brand or something like that that people are talking all about. Then I'll be like, okay, I'll jump on to that.

Exactly. All right. Our next email comes in from Dave, a.k.a. Skullplate in the IRC and in the subreddits. aka Skullplate in the IRC and in the subreddits. He says, I've been playing with the DigitalOcean server for a while and finally decided to put it to work. A short while later, I got my own Debian cloud server,

own cloud Debian server up and running with fail to ban LogWatch. And I also disabled root login and many other tips. I've picked up listening to the Great Jupyter Broadcasting Podcast. Oh, thanks. And reading the JV subreddits. He says,

Most impressive is the performance. I'm getting the syncing of folders to my DigitalOcean server easily 10 times faster than Dropbox. So I just want to say a big thanks to Chris and Matt in the JB community and even Alan too.

It was really easy considering a year ago, I didn't even really know how or how to use Linux at all. Thanks again, Dave, aka Skullplate. Yeah, you know what? Go over to DigitalOcean.com.

Use our promo code Snap, or I'm sorry, UnpluggedJune. Not Snap. I was thinking of TechSnap because of Alan. UnpluggedJune for DigitalOcean. That'll give you a $10 credit. You can try out their $5 rig for two months, or you can go hourly, and that $10 credit will get you quite a ways. Are you not familiar with DigitalOcean?

Let me tell you about it. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. And I gotta tell you, they've nailed it. Users can create a cloud server in about 55 seconds and pricing plans start at only $5 a month for 512 megabytes of RAM. A 20 gigabyte SSD,

one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer. That's all for $5. You know exactly what you're going to get for $5. And DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, and Amsterdam. Their interface is amazing. Their control panel is intuitive. And power users can replicate that control panel with their straightforward API. Son, get in there and replicate that, won't you? They have a straightforward API and people call it beautiful. A beautiful API. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code unpluggedjune. Go over there and get yourself a droplet.

I've been hearing from folks that use it for an IRC server. An own cloud server seems to be very popular. And recently, more and more folks are jumping on DigitalOcean to deploy GitLab. Now, DigitalOcean is sitting on top of KVM. They have a droplet system that lets you manage your instances. You can back them up, replicate them, move them between data centers, manage your DNS, access the console via their HTML5 console written in Go, select your data center anywhere in the world, then choose your distribution, the architecture of that distribution, and then deploy. And you can do it all in about 55 seconds, and you can be up and running. And with our promo

code UNPLUGJUNE, you can try it out for two months for absolutely free. Go get yourself an SSD-powered server connected to Tier 1 bandwidth. Partner with the amazing hardware providers that DigitalOcean has chosen over at DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code, UnpluggedJune. And a big thanks to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Yeah, UnpluggedJune! You know, here recently, I've been doing this whole WordPress thing with them, right? Because I've already got a BitTorrent sync set up with them.

So I set up another instance because I wanted to try the WordPress thing. Oh my gosh, it's stupid simple to do. Yeah, it's awesome. I couldn't get it. I was like, why the hell is everybody else doing this with so much more difficulty? This is great.

And you know what I would always just keep in mind is... Zombies don't run Linux. So you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about zombies. Okay, so I want to tell you, just before we wrap up the Express Edition of Linux Unplugged, I want to tell you about this wizardry that Rikai pulled on my Nexus 5. So I've been having some...

I'm trying not to hate on Android, Matt, but I just keep having these problems that are just driving me crazy. And so Rikai just kind of jokingly said, well, why don't you try... Or actually, I think it was Marissa in the chat. I mean, Rikai was like, yeah, do that. Why don't you just try out Firefox OS for a couple of days, Chris, and see what you think? I was like, oh, yeah, well, if you can put it on my Nexus 5, I'll take the Firefox OS challenge.

Oh, well, then guess what? Guess what happened? He put Firefox OS on my Nexus 5. Oh, my. Our buddy Jordan has a guide on the XDA forms on one way you can do it. I'll have links in the show notes, too, so if you guys want to follow along. Check this out, Matt. Now, it does require that you root the device, but on the Nexus 5, that's not like a crazy process.

And then once you've rooted the device, you can go out and get a piece of software that's like a – it's not called ROM Manager anymore. I have a link to it in the show notes. Let me see if I can pull it up for you. Multi-ROM, that's what it's called. It's called Multi-ROM. This is an app that you install from the Play Store once you've rooted your device, and I'll have a link to the Play Store in the show notes. Once you've rooted your device, you install this Multi-ROM, and it essentially is a multi-boot menu. So when I power on now my Nexus 5, if I tap the screen, otherwise it just boots right into Android,

but if I tap the screen when a little prompt comes up, I get a very nice GUI bootloader where it says, okay, do you want to load Ubuntu Touch? Do you want to load Firefox OS? Or do you want to load Android? And then whichever I choose, that's the OS it boots right into, and it rocks. It's full native.

It's like when you partition a PC and you install multiple operating systems and then load a bootloader. It's not running under emulation. It's not running under Android. It's truly Ubuntu Touch and truly Firefox OS on the machine, on the Nexus 5. It's pretty awesome.

It's pretty cool. It's a good way to play with these things, and I think the Nexus 5 is going to make a killer rig to have because you have things like this multi-ROM, which right now only supports the Nexus 5, 4, and 7 series, 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7. And now the chatroom is asking about space. I have a 32-gigabyte Nexus 5,

so I think maybe I've got a little more room to play with than if you had a 16. Yeah, just a 16 yeah yeah yeah but it's pretty good now i'll tell you i don't know if i could live in any either one of them that's why i really like that android's still there yeah you have to wipe the phone too because when you root it and set this up it wipes all of them and then you know you do a recovery and reload android and you have to to set it all up. So it means reconfiguring all my damn apps and all that stuff. But you do it once, and then you have the triple boot forever, which is kind of cool. Well, here's the $10,000 question. So we've got the whole – obviously, there's probably some sort of a battery bug, or maybe it's not fully optimized in the Ubuntu OS for the phone, and that's fine.

But for Firefox OS, what was your feelings on that? Because that has me curious, especially on the lower spec phones. Yeah, man. Firefox OS, it's funny in some ways how much is like Android in like the way you pull down the notification tray and there's all your notifications and the way the icons kind of look and stuff. And it's got some funky stuff too about it. Like the bottom row has like a home button, but it's not a home icon.

It's a World Wide Web browser generic icon. And you push that and it takes you back to the home page. I was hoping it would perform better on the Nexus 5 because I've played with it on lower end hardware. And I kind of assumed perhaps the performance was because it was on low end hardware. And I thought and I think that was part of it. But it also, I think, is maybe it's just not totally optimized for my device. Like the camera doesn't work under Firefox OS. And it doesn't detect my SIM card.

That might be it. Yeah. So it could be a driver problem. So I wasn't quite as enamored with it as I was expecting. But I think maybe if we keep updating it and keep tracking it, honestly, between the two, Ubuntu Touch seems like it's in a better state on the Nexus 5. And it's not great. Like, it crashed on me, right?

It drained all my battery. So they're both a little ways off, but it's fun to play with. Interesting. I don't know. Maybe I'll do a video on it in the future if people are interested. Let me know, guys, on the Linux Action Show subreddit, linuxactionshow.reddit.com, we'll have a thread for this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Let me know if you guys are interested

in getting more coverage. I don't really have a good sense if you guys care about this kind of stuff, but I know we have talked a lot about Firefox OS. We've talked, obviously, a lot about Ubuntu Touch. So it's kind of neat to have one device I can carry with me and play with those right now. So I think that'll help. I really appreciate like,

Oh, here's the, here's some screenshots of the multi boot for those of you watching the video version. So when you boot up the phone, this is the interface you get. It says auto boot, but you touch anywhere on the screen to interrupt the auto boot.

And then when you do that, you can choose your distro or I'm sorry, I guess ROM that you want to boot. And you can see in this case, like you could load Tizen on there. You could even load different like CyanogenMod and different Android ROMs on there too. So it could also be a way to play with different Android ROMs. It doesn't have to be radically different operating systems.

It's pretty neat. And I think it's another reason to get the Nexus 5 too, because people are able to write that kind of stuff for it. They're cool. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. All right. So before we run, since we're doing an express edition,

that way I can wrap up here and tear apart the audio and try to get things like the mumble room working and a couple other problems that we've currently band-aided over so that way we can get on air. But if you're like, hey, Chris, not enough show. Not enough show, brah. Well, then here's what I have for you, brah. Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com and check out Tech Talk Today. Episode 10 came out. Matt, do you remember an old piece of software called PointCast from like the late 90s?

to change the web because the web was too hard to use and the web was too slow to download multimedia, so you had to do it in batch processing. Well, because we were having so many problems this morning, I did a retro tech edition of Tech Talk today, and we looked back at Pointcast and the technology that almost shaped the future of the internet, but then petered out, and those who bet big and lost. We covered that on Tech Talk today. And of course, of course, go check out the first two episodes of How To Linux. Getting that off the ground right now. We'll have more information on that show very soon

as well. So two shows you can go check out right now if there's not enough show. And I'm sorry that we did have to cut it short, but we do have these problems. I want to get fixed that way. By the time it's like, you know, getting towards TechSnap and Linux Action Show, hopefully we'll have everything all ironed out. So. Alright, Matt. Well, heck, guess what? That's it right there. We're going to wrap it up. We're all done. towards TechSnap and Linux Action Show, hopefully we'll have everything all ironed out.

All right, Matt. Well, heck, guess what? That's it right there. We're going to wrap it up. We're all done. That was a quick and easy one, huh? Quick and easy. Yeah, I thought maybe we'd have to bail and do it on Thursday,

but I think this worked out okay. This worked out quite nicely. Now, I do want to encourage all of you to join us on Sunday over at jblive.tv at 10 a.m. Pacific for the Linux Action Show. You can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to encourage all of you to join us on Sunday over at jblive.tv at 10 a.m. Pacific for the Linux Action Show. You can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get all of our live show times. And don't forget, when you join us live, you get to bang suggest. So chat room, last chance to get your title suggestions in there.

All right, Matt, well, have a great week. I'll see you on Sunday, okay? You too. See you then. Bye, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next Tuesday. Bye. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next Tuesday. Bye. Thank you.