LINUX Unplugged - Episode 49: Rapid Fire Journalism | LINUX Unplugged 49

Episode Date: July 16, 2014

We chat about our time with the new Plasma 5 desktop from KDE, then using the latest situation with Manjaro we discuss the poor state of Linux news, root causes, and what the real solution is that has major ramifications for the open source community.Plus some fantastic feedback, a Command Line challenge update and our big plans for next week!

Do you guys all see the Enlightenment OS's post about the importance of our brand? Did everybody catch this blog post? No. I told them about it. Okay. All right. So here we go. This is Elementary OS, and they put forth sort of a, hey, community, this is how we'd like you to represent us.

Could you stop doing knockoff screenshots and then posting them online and saying it's called EOS? By the way, don't call it EOS. We will never call it EOS. Don't make e-music. Don't make e-web. That sounds stupid. We don't want that. So don't call it EOS. Don't make e-apps. And please, stop ripping off OS X because we're worried Apple's going to send us a cease and desist if you guys keep it up. So they kind of go on and talk about how important brands are. And I actually agree with a lot of what they talk about with brands.

I think this is one of the advantages the Elementary OS project has, is they get this. However, it's essentially a blog post telling people what they are allowed and not allowed to say about free software. And as you might have guessed, where the neckbeards hang out, there has been much, much angst. Popey, you said you trolled them. What was your take on it?

Oh, no, it was just one of the guys, Sam, who does some of the icons and does the Numix thing, I think. He posted a screenshot and said, you know, and tweaked it and said, this is my screenshot of elementary and didn't say it was elementary OS. And I asked him if it was EOS. Oh, no.

And Daniel turns up and he's like, yeah, very funny, guys. So how do you guys feel about it? How do you feel about a Linux distribution coming out and saying, hey, this is how we'd like to you refer to us or, hey, we don't want you to refer to us this way? I think it's fine for them to do that internally. If that's for their staff and their direct developers and their direct community members, fine. But to tell users to do that is a bit of a dick move.

Oh, it's the same thing with mate or cute or cutie. No, it's not. It's branding. It's just they're asking you to do something. Mate is a brand. And they're like, oh, don't ever call it mate. I was just having fun when I posted that in the subreddit.

I'm sorry everyone got banned out. No, no, no. That's a difference. That's a pronunciation versus... So here's more of an example. Here's something that maybe would bug me. Say somebody made a Jupyter broadcasting app for Ubuntu Touch, but they lowercased the B in broadcasting.

That would drive me crazy, even though it's a small little thing that just doesn't look right. That's not our branding. That's the kind of thing they're talking about. They don't want e-music like you have iTunes. They don't want e-tunes, those kinds of things. You're not officializing the app. So what's the problem? I mean, just tell them to drop the thing as well. You can. You own the brand. You can tell them to drop the name. Okay, is the question, are they asking people to do this, or are they telling people to do this?

That's the main question. They're just asking. Who cares? They're making a request. Well, it's very politically worded. I mean, you could almost see maybe a few years if this kind of stance could evolve into issuing cease and desist potentially. No, I don't think it's that strong. Well, no, here's why. I mean, but this is the thing. I would see that kind of communique coming out on an internal mailing list at Canonical talking about Ubuntu. I could see that. I could see someone saying,

look, if you're going to put out screenshots that are promoting the product, use the default items that are in the launcher, use the default icons that are in the indicator area, use one of the default backgrounds. That all makes sense to your own message, right? And that you're talking to people who work on the product, who are talking about the product. But when you're telling people who are in your community who are enthusiasts, who aren't necessarily contributors, and you see them as posting a screenshot, it makes them a contributor, therefore they should abide by the guidelines, I think that's wrongheaded. Well, and not only that, but it's wasted effort.

And on top of that, what you're really saying, Popey, is if you internally message correctly, and then when you talk about things externally, and you all agree on the language, and then you use that same language when you discuss things externally, your community just picks up on that and rolls with it. And that's how they start referring to things. The problem is they used EOS a couple of times themselves back in the day. Right. But messages change over time. The problem is they used EOS a couple of times themselves back in the day. Right. At least I think they did. Messages change over time. It may well be they didn't formalize their branding until recently. That's fine.

And they may have had a meeting about it. Well, and maybe a lawyer said, hey, we're a little concerned about that highly litigious fruit company that makes iPhones. And if you guys keep going this direction where, I mean, let's be honest. Elementary OS looks a lot like Mac OS X. And if you have third-party themes out there that make it look even more like Mac OS X, and then you start having things like eTunes and eWeb, I would not be surprised if Apple issued a cease and desist. I mean, didn't it happen to pair PC or whatever it was? No, we don't really know what happened there.

Well, yeah, I know. But you get my drift. Maybe that's what they're worried about. But here's the thing, though. Apple don't give a shit about image, honestly. Technically, they are worried about this way long before. Initially, as a former contributor, I should say, two, three years ago, I was contributing to the project,

and there was these talks about licensing things about the website because they wanted to protect the branding yeah yeah they had like licensing stuff that are weird they they put themselves into the google plus wall because they didn't want people to start talking about things that are going to come out i don't know what i think they are i think they're they're punching above their weight slightly. Yeah, slightly, a lot. Yeah, I think that's partially it. I think that they are very, very, very brand conscious, extremely, extremely brand conscious, and they feel like it's important to set the tone right

and to keep it that way. And I don't necessarily disagree with that because we just had a conversation about the KDE project, and I think a big part of their issue that they now face is improper branding originally or inconsistent branding. And I can't really blame the Enlightenment – or, I'm sorry, elementary guys. Obviously, they have some branding problems because I'm too dumb to remember it. I can't really blame elementary OS for wanting to have a strong brand. Yes, that's their fault that you're dumb.

Right, yeah, of course. We had the same problem, actually, when we changed the logo. Do you remember when our logo used to be three colors? Yes. They're set for friends, right? And now it's one color, and it's a specific DD4814 Ubuntu orange. And that's the hex code, by the way, DD4814. Nice, dude.

Nice. And for those of us who forget it. I'll remember that. For some reason, someone set up DD4814.com so and it's just a big orange screen so you know that that's the right color right yeah um and but the thing is when that when that logo came out people still afterwards use the old logo in um in their websites and materials and blog posts and some of our design team used to get a little bit annoyed and they'd send little pings to the people to say,

hey, can you change your fav icon because it's the old logo and we're now using the new one? Can you change that article? Can you change this? And some of them got a little bit funny and got a little bit upset about people not using the new logo. So I can see how people can get a little bit funny about the branding being missing. Right.

Exactly. people can get a little bit funny about the branding being missing. Right. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's embracing the sun and just barbecued up some tasty chicken. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt. Hey, Matt. I'm telling you, man, I went over to Savannah Meats, you know, best meat around.

I got one of those whole chickens. I put it on its – have you seen the beer butt chicken before? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, this is like an official cast iron beer butt permanent chicken fixture that you put the chicken on top of. Some oil, garlic, some bacon grease, some dry rub. Matt, best chicken I've had all year. So good.

Nice. Yeah. So I'm coming off a nice fresh chicken meal. And it turned out delicious. But that did mean we closed up all the windows at JB1 Studios. So it is hot here today. That's okay. I'm going to refresh myself with some good Linux topics.

That'll be my source of refreshment. You know, we had a lot of really good comments on last week's episode of Linux Action Show. I'm really glad you guys liked them all. And our first bit of follow-up in that area came in the topic of containers. Now, if you didn't catch last week's Linux Action Show, we talked about how the GNOME Project, GWATAC, their big conference is coming up, and one of the things that's going to be hot on the topic list is containerization and sandboxing of applications on the Linux desktop.

And we mentioned, boy, we could see how this could maybe raise some ire in the Linux community, and we suspected people might get a little upset. Well, Matt, that's just exactly where our first feedback is going to take us this week, is right to that topic. So if you want more details on that, you can jump in on last week's Linux Action Show. But you don't have to. We'll get you up to date right here, because it was Crossroads1112 that wrote in. And Crossroads is, let's see, is he in the, no. Crossroads, you should have joined us for the virtual lug. That would have been perfect.

Anyways, he wrote in. He said, here's my concerns with containerization of software on the desktop. He said, let me preface this by saying that it's not a rant. I'm not yelling or screaming about the possibility. It's very possible that my concerns will be addressed and these will be non-issues. So he seems like he's being pretty rational about it. He says, up first, my first concern, which is the exact same thing you said on the show on Sunday, Matt, updating. As Matt said, putting software in containers could make updating more difficult. And I actually, I think that's funny because I think the way he's thinking about it is like through a software manager,

like, you know, or I'm sorry, a package manager like Pac-Man or Apt, I think contained applications are going to be delivered through app stores. I really do. You've got the GNOME Software Center, whatever they're calling it, that they're working on, right? KDE's got something they're working on. I really think when you get these apps, they're going to be distributed. A lot of the distributions are doing this already. Like if you have Fedora today, you can use the GNOME Software Center,

and it uses PackageKit to install applications for you. Pretty much one of the few distributions it doesn't work on is Arch. There's no PackageKit interface to Pac-Man. That aside, if you look at that, maybe that'd be one way they could handle it. So, Crossroads, I wouldn't worry too much about updating, and I also think your package manager will still be available to you. He says, there could also be possible app compatibility. Now, this is the one I was worried about. I forgot to mention it in the show. He says, what if I need software A to interact with software B,

but no API to allow those two to talk, right? Because they're both individually in sandboxes. They can't even see each other. They're not even aware each other are running. And so if there isn't an API to allow them to communicate, then there's not going to happen. He says, obviously, this wouldn't be a problem for probably about 95% of interactions, but for the 5% it would be

a huge problem. That's a great question. I'm sure they actually have talked about a solution to solve that problem. They have a good name for it, too. I just forgot what it was. I don't know if anybody in the Mumble room is aware of the name that the GNOME project is talking about to allow applications to communicate. It's like

the way the Android system works. It's like the way Windows Mobile does and the new iOS extensions. It's that same kind of, there's an infrastructure in place and then applications can communicate via that infrastructure. So they have addressed it, but I don't know the details on it. And then last but not least, this is the one I think probably resonated with a lot of the folks. The Linux way of installing software is better than the Windows way. I don't want to go hunting around the internet for software containers like I do on Windows. I want to install software either from the terminal

or a GUI, either it be Synaptic or Pacman XG, Ubuntu App Store, et cetera. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the AUR and the ability to install pretty much any package without internet hunting. And that's a great point. But again, I think if they deliver it through app stores, I think that could help.

Now, I'm not saying app stores are the future of Linux. I'm talking about a specific kind of apps, like no maps, right, and things like that, that will be available through these software centers that at first will seem very awkward and clunky to use on a Linux desktop because we all love our, you know, Pac-Man-S. But it's one of those things that i think after a while will just seem natural like all of your main tools will still be available at the command line i mean now this has to be the way of the future right well so here's the way i see it and i'm and correct me if i'm wrong but potentially if we did go with the pack you know a package manager for say containers for

example instead of installing applications wouldn't you just be able to just install the like a new container over the old one? Yeah, exactly. So in essence, it really becomes a moot issue. You could literally arrange it to where you could still use the command line. You could still use a GUI. You know, Bob's your uncle. Yeah, very much so.

Wimpy, you wanted to key in on the Android aspect of this? Go ahead. Well, APK is a containerized application just by another. Well, APK is a containerized application just by another name. The APK contains everything that the application requires, including libraries for multiple architectures, and your user data lives elsewhere.

So, yeah, I think delivered through an App Store-type presentation, it would work. And the GNOME extensions already, you know, deploys the extensions via the extensions website, which is App Store-like. I don't know what the big fuss is about. This is nothing new to anyone, really. We've been doing this for years now.

Popey, this is probably a problem that's being solved on Ubuntu Touch, correct? Yep. We have click packages, which are containered applications they can't talk to each other directly but they can talk to each other via content hub for example so they can pass messages backwards and forwards and like you know your gallery app can get a photo from the camera or you can download a music file via the web browser and send it to the music app that kind of stuff same kind of stuff that happens on Android. And yeah, we have a central app store, but equally the same as Matt

was saying, you can still install stuff via the command line because the click packages you could go and download or someone could build one for you, a custom one, sideload it on the phone and install it. I don't think there's anything terribly bad going on here. It makes total sense. And yeah, it's got an app store, just like you makes total sense. And yeah, it's got an app store, just like you say. Yeah. And I think people, one of the other comments I've seen as well, man, one of the things I love about Linux is that everything is dynamically linked. I don't think that goes away. In fact, you could have these packages work in a sense where if the necessary libraries are there and they're the correct version, it uses those. And if the

necessary libraries are not there or the correct version is not present, it uses something that's internal or statically linked or something like that. So that's a possibility. But also you think about it. I think the way I'm envisioning this is layered, right? So you'll have the very, very top layer of a Linux desktop system or laptop system that has sandbox applications, a sandbox display manager, a sandbox desktop, sandbox web browser, and it truly guarantees or gets as close as we can to guaranteeing a safe, private, open source desktop. Okay, I think that's the top layer. Then just below that, you have all the GNU utilities, you have all of the command line stuff, all the package manager stuff, all the shared libraries, it doesn't go away. It's still there. And then below that, you have like systemd, and then you get down to the kernel. And that's essentially how I'm

seeing this structured, right? And it does mean things a little differently. And I wouldn't be surprised if these containers were just simply installed to your home directory. Maybe there'd be like an apps folder in your home directory. And then you just back that up, and you've just backed up all of the installed applications on Linux. And one of the things they talk about in the GNOME sense is if you have these containers, these bundle files, these APKs, then the GNOME desktop can be aware of those and what they are. And you could have a descriptor file, a.desktop file in those APKs, and you could automatically have the shortcuts added to the GNOME menu regardless of where they're at as long as the GNOME desktop reads that file. added to the gnome menu regardless of where they're at as long as the gnome desktop reads that file so you could back up that entire directory do a clean install drop that entire directory back

into your home folder point the gnome menu at it it would reread all the desktop files and recreate all the links in your gnome application menu for those apps it's pretty cool and it makes backup a hell of a lot easier and if you think about like like you know how my mom backs up her mac right now is this she doesn't like she never even thought about it any other way she never like easier. And if you think about like, you know how my mom backs up her Mac right now? She never even thought about it any other way. She never thought about how I should back it up. She got an external USB drive, and then she went and took her Photoshop folder, and she clicked it from her applications

folder and drug it to the hard drive and said, okay, I've backed up. And to her, she's backed up the program now. And that's how she thinks about it. Right, exactly. So this is something that regular users have a hard time understanding and they have certain expectations that binaries are portable to them by their very nature. I should be able to pick up a binary

off one computer and drop it on another computer and just run it. And if you can't do that, then there's something wrong with the operating system because that's the operating system's job is to run applications. That's how they see it. They don't think about libraries and all that kind of independencies and all that kind of stuff. And I think this could go huge to addressing it. They don't think about libraries and all that kind of – independencies and all that kind of stuff. And I think this is going to go huge to addressing that because I don't think it's going to neuter the power users.

You guys know me. I'm the first person to be like, screw the fictional new user. Focus on the power users. You know that's using my mantra. But in this case, I think it gives enough benefits to new users and enough benefits to power users and enough security and privacy that I think it's a win-win,

and I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of desktops implement this. Oh, definitely. I think if we're in a position to where it's like, look, I can still pop a drop-down terminal and pound out what I need to to get my software updated or installed, I can't see why anyone would have a problem. That's just my philosophy. There you go. All right.

Ben wrote in to update us on his command line challenge. Quick thank you, too. We got some reports in. Some folks were like, dude, I had a netbook running Arch. It was my only machine because my main computer died. I had it for like three months, or I think it was two months. Only could use the command line. It was no problem.

However, Ben, who wrote in last week about starting the command line challenge, wrote in this week to give us an update. He says, hey, guys, I just wanted to give you an update to the command line challenge. I hate to say it, but I caved. I caved. On Thursday, I logged back into my desktop, fired up Iceweasel. I just couldn't do it anymore. The nice thing is I'm now way more comfortable in the command line than I was before. Great point. That's a great benefit. He says, thanks for the show. So the command line challenge didn't last too long for Ben. Hey, Ben, no judgy here. It wouldn't last much longer.

We got an email. I was like, dude, as a longtime sysadmin and pen tester, how do you not understand living in the command line? And I wrote him back, and I was like, dude, you don't understand at all. I live, I fight for the GUI. I fought for the user. I was there through the bad days and all the industry crap that we had to slog through to get decently performing GUI desktops. I don't want to go back.

And I like my web browser. I like my VLC. I like my instant messaging client and all that stuff. I don't want to go back. I could do it. Just because you can doesn't mean you won't do it. Right, exactly. That's exactly it.

That's how I felt about it. It's like, but dude, dude, command line. I'm like, bro, I know. I love the command line. Alright, Roy wrote in with two questions for the virtual lug. He says, hey, all, my name is Roy. Over the last year, I've set up a couple emails. I've sent a couple emails you mentioned on the show about my moving to Arch experience.

Oh, great, Roy. He's like, okay. And this is what I love about Roy, because he's right where my head's at right now. He says, I'm all in on de-clouding. And for almost every service now I use, I attempt to establish in my own – I'm trying to set up my own service on my own fanless Arch server at home. Nice. So I was looking at email servers, and I think he's directing this at you, Mumble Room,

and I recently found the Colab suite. Does anyone have experience with Colab, i.e., is it any good? And do you know – this is the second part, do you know how to install it on Arch as I failed to find it? Anybody have Colab? Anybody tried it on Arch in the mumble room? We've got a big group here today. Nobody.

I haven't tried it on Arch, but I have tried it. What do you think of Colab in general, Wimpy? It's quite good if you haven't used something better. Oh! That's what I'd say. So, yeah, I did try it at work. We've been using Zimbra for some years, and we're looking to decide whether we're going to upgrade to the new Zimbra

or move to something else. So I've had to go through all of the sort of big collaboration suites that you can run on open source platforms, and Colab was obviously one of those I tried. And it is very good, but it doesn't stand up against Zimbra very well. Oh, that's what I was going to ask you to see. That's exactly what I'm finding too. But the counterargument there is that these days Zimbra isn't that open source friendly.

It's not as open source friendly as it used to be a couple of years ago. So there's not the packages that are available for the different distributions now. It's a lot more heavy lifting involved. It's not as well documented. So it swings and roundabouts. So, you know, Colab's definitely very good. Not as good as Zimbra, but I'm probably not going to use Zimbra either. Go ahead, Eric.

You had a question about... Yeah, my question about that app is this. Is it open source, and does he know how to compile it? If not, then I'm sure somebody could walk him through it. Colab? Yeah, and there's packages too. Although, I've looked at it. I haven't tried it extensively.

The one of the bunch that I've actually had production deployments, probably a version or so ago was Zimbra. And, you know, this de-clouding thing, it's definitely something I'm starting to take very seriously. Before, it's always been sort of intellectual masturbation for me. Like, how would I accomplish it? I feel like I spent the last year kind of intellectually masturbating different ways to get out of the cloud. And sort of, again, my favorite new word, digesting, like, what are the ramifications that we're learning? And if you guys watch Tech Talk today and unfilter, you might have heard about some more recent revelations that came out that are just uncomfortable. They make me uncomfortable. Today, I ran a story on Tech Talk today about the U.S. government saying the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to data stored in cloud services. Oh, seriously?

Yeah. That physical protections don't apply to digital goods and that that authority allows them to not just reach within the U.S., but they're trying to currently get data off of a Dublin server that Microsoft has for a drug trafficking case. get data off of a Dublin server that Microsoft has for a drug trafficking case. And to me, I don't think I'm going to be targeted, but I feel like that, A, is something that I'm not comfortable with, and I need to vote with my own body, with my own usage. And B, I feel like in order for these independent options to exist, people have to be using them. There has to be consumer demand for them to thrive, or else they'll just go away if they don't have a user base. And I'm somebody who's in a position to use them. So I sort of almost feel a responsibility in some sense. So the big one for me is Gmail,

Google, calendars. And the Google one's a big one, right? Because that's really very integrated these days. I really got to be honest, like Google calendars is my favorite calendar implementation. Gmail is probably my favorite web mail, right? And so I've been trying to think of how do I move out of the cloud, but not just move out, but make it a better experience for me. And how, and the way I'm looking at it is I'll try one thing for a little while. And I'll see like, okay, if I do this off of Google, like I've tried Hackpad for a little bit, and I'm looking at setting up Etherpad for a little while and trying that and maybe, you know, switching to BitTorrent Sync more instead of Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync. These kinds of things I'm trying to find out how I can kind of

not get off the grid, but have more of a say in the services I choose. Because one of the things I'm discovering too is like with Android in particular is, you know is once you opt in at one level, you kind of go all in. And you end up on the grid regardless. You don't have a choice. If you wanted to use a device, like this is why I'm so excited about things like Ubuntu Touch from Firefox OS, because I want to have a device where I can elect to use maybe BitTorrent Sync for my Photo Sync, maybe my own LDAP server for my contacts and my own IMAP server, and have that experience be a first class experience. Not have it be hobbled because

I'm not using the Gmail app, because I'm not using the calendar app, because that's what you get on Android now, is if you choose not to opt into the Google experience, all of the Google services, you get second rate applications. And that I'm sick of. I'm so sick and tired of that, is that force opt-in, you're all in, balls deep, you got the tracking, we got data on you, you've got an account with us, you've got a Google Plus account now, have at it, bro, welcome to Android. And that I'm sick of. That I'm sick and tired of. Because there's other ways out there, there's other services out there. You know, maybe I want to use Amazon for my music. You can do all of it on Android today,

but it's becoming less and less of an option. And that drives me crazy because it's all running on top of Linux. And that's one of the things that really gets me. And so I'm totally right where he's at right now, where I'm looking at like, what can we bring in-house? Not only can I have it on the LAN so it runs better, but now I don't have to worry about this weird, like, sure, if the US government wants to come get emails that were sent to me by some listener, then they'll have to come knock on the actual studio door and hand me a warrant. They can't just deliver it through some automated system to Google, and then Google just extracts it from my Google account and delivers it to them. They have to come to me to get it. And at least that's something.

At least then I know it's happening. But I'm legitimately in a position where people send me confidential information that's encrypted. I communicate with people that are all over the world on a daily basis. I research stuff that's obviously going to, in some cases, be considered by some agencies worth monitoring. I mean, at what point do you start going, okay, maybe I should start taking some steps to preserve my own privacy and put things under my own control?

And then I start thinking about it from a father's perspective. And I start thinking about when my son and daughter come to me for school or whatever, and they say, okay, Dad, we need an's perspective. And I start thinking about when my son and daughter come to me for school or whatever, and they say, okay, Dad, we need an email account. Do I want to say, okay, guys, go get a Google account. Have a lifetime of your information being observed by Google. I don't think that's a good idea. So I want to set some stuff up too.

So I'm thinking about it a lot, but it's really hard to make a move and not take a considerable hit in functionality these days. I feel like with – Well, it feels like there's a lack of out-of-the-box options, you know, really. Yeah, that's for sure. And if you really want, like, the stuff that everybody's really excited about, you know, you've got to kind of opt into the system a little bit. Mm-hmm. So it's something – so I have right now on my Nexus 5, I'm triple booting – I'm going to put L on there. I don't have L on

there right now. I just have the latest Android, but Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS. I tell you out of the three, Android is obviously the one that's the most feature complete for me because it's got things that I use like Waze and Evernote, which I only really use when I'm traveling, but it's nice to have them when I do need them. So it's not like I need them all the time but Ubuntu touch you know as far as like then compared to Firefox OS I definitely think I prefer the Ubuntu touch experience so I figure I'm going to triple boot that for a little while and see what that's like but at the end of the day I have to be a realistic I want a smartphone that has a great camera because I have three adorable children and I want to be able to send those pictures to my wife when I take a great picture and if I I get lost, I want to be able to launch Waze.

And I don't think that's unreasonable to expect from a smartphone. Well, and I think what's scary is that if I'm not – and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Google actually purchased Waze. So that app that we all love. Yeah, I know. Yeah. So it's like – so what they're doing is you're like, okay, Google, I'm finally free. Oh, you got that one app I really like, and Google's like, we own it. Yeah, and it sucks because it's like, okay, so what's your alternative?

Some podunk GPS thing? I'm going to have to use Nokia Hear Maps or whatever they're called. Well, in fact, Google Maps actually uses information from Waze now. Yes, it's actually kind of handy. I mean, all of it's very... And the value of this is negative. It's all very negative. But I tell you...

And the solution, of course, is Bing Maps. Yeah, there you go. I'm thinking about it. There you go. I'm thinking about it. Yeah. I think part of it, and this is... Actually, I should probably take a little break right here

and thank our first sponsor, because to get to it, Ting is part of that stack, right? And this is a part that desperately needs addressed, and that's why I'm really enthusiastic about Ting. So go to linux.ting.com. That'll get you $25 off your first device, or if you already have a device compatible with Ting, $25 of credit. Now, here's why Ting's great. No contract. They just kill that, and you only pay a flat $6 per month per line. The reason why this is huge is it changes the value model completely.

Instead of trying to trick you into paying more than you need so that way you don't go over, you just pay for what you use. And if you need hotspot and tethering, you check the box and now it's just your data usage. That's genius. Ting is open like that too. I tell you what, I had Ubuntu Touch on the Nexus 5, fired it up, got right on the Ting network, started making calls. Couldn't hang up with the Ubuntu Touch operating system, but I could make calls on the Ting network. That was cool. And the hanging up part was a bug, which is fixed now. And it's really great. I just have that freedom and flexibility. Plus they have fantastic support. You can call them at 1-855-TING-FTW and a real person answers the phone. How nice is that when your phone's not working and you're frustrated

and you just want to get it solved. You just want to get it solved. That's right. And they'll help you get out of your contract. If you go over to ting.com slash ETF, they have an early termination relief program. They'll pay up to $75 per line that you have to get canceled. So that'll get you out of your contract. Then you can go contract free. And check out their savings calculator when you go to linux.ting.com. Put your current details in there, your actual usage, not what you're paying for, not how they're scamming you,

but what you actually end up using and see how much you would save. And I've been talking to the folks over at Ting about my current frustrations with vendor lock-in, and so they sent me over an iPhone 5 for free. I'll be trying out iOS 8 and doing an iOS 8 and Android L head-to-head comparison in the future. So if you've got any thoughts on that, I'd love to hear it. Noah, don't cry, though. Don't cry, Noah.

I know he's up in the mumble room right now like, what? Yes, I'll probably have an iPhone 5 running iOS 8 at OSCon. I know, it's egregious. know. But what I'm really curious about is how do the two operating systems stack up? And Ting's like, dude, we'll send you an iPhone 5 to try it. So I got an iPhone 5 for a little bit. I'll be kicking the tires, and I'll give you my thoughts on that in the future and see how L and iOS 8 stack up. Both maybe as the OSes get a little closer to maturity, I'll do that comparison. Go to linux.ting.com.

They've got a lot of great phones. The Nexus 5 runs amazing on the Ting network. That's my daily driver. You can get the iPhone 5 through their partners at Glide for $250. You own it. $250. You own it. Off contract, $6 a month. They've also got MiFi devices if you need a data connection. So you can go over there and rock that for a flat $6 a month. It's a $6 hotspot at that point. linux.ting.com. Go see what I've been talking about. Go see why Ting rocks so hard. And now I've got three devices on my Ting network. How about that? Three devices. Look at me. I'm like a phone roller, the phone ranger over here. So I'll give you my report soon. Linux.ting.com. Go check them out. Go get yourself a great phone. They got feature phones, Android phones, Windows phones, all of it. Linux.ting.com.

And a really big thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Love that. Good deal. That's sweet. All right, Noah, are you okay, Noah? Are you okay? I'm calming down. I'm glad that you're bringing an iPhone because I was hoping we could make it to the gun range.

Nice. No, I think Noah's going for large caliber on this. Noah's going to be like, you know, I know he's got a Nexus 5 with him, so if I end up destroying the iPhone, I know he's not going to be out of communication. So there's a little risk is what he's thinking. Walking in with a Desert Eagle, yeah. Hey, you know, we talk a lot on the show. Actually, I said the wrong way to describe this.

One thing that we never talk about on the show, but people who watch the video version see this all the time, is my desktop setup. And we got a request in from Kaz21, just to kind of go over a little bit of what I use. And some of the stuff I use, I know a lot of the Mumble folks use. So here, I'll show you. Kaz, if you're watching the video version of Linux Unplugged, here is essentially what I use on my GNOME box.

So for the theme, this is, I guess I should say, this is the latest version of GNOME. My window theme is Numix. The GTK theme is Numix. My icons are Numix Circle. My cursor is Oxygen White. That way it pops and I can see it. And I have this Equido shell to get the nice transparencies,

which are cut off on my camera shot. You can't see them. My Konki setup you asked about. I'm actually just cheating. I'm using Konky Manager, an app pick before that sets it up. It's actually a little broken right now, but I like the way it looks. And I have Global Dark theme turned on. So it's a nice

yes, flat. I know. I know. It's flat. It's a nice flat GTK theme that I like quite a bit. Mumbaroom, you guys have anything you do to tweak your desktop? Oh, the other thing I do is I have a bunch of tweaks installed for Firefox, but you guys can't really see those most of the time. So that's kind of it.

Oh, I guess I could cover my extensions. I have a ton of extensions, actually. Numix kind of changed. Once Numix came out, I kind of went all in on Numix. But my favorite GNOME desktop extensions are the audio output switcher, which allows me to toggle my audio sources really super quick, which is great since I'm doing that all the time. The caffeine extension, dash to dock, must have.

It's my favorite dock, and it's just built right in now. Extension update notifier, to-do.txt. Top icons, you guys can't see this either, but all of the notification icons that normally go down in the tray on GNOME are now up along the top, like old school, sort of applet style along the top of my bar, which is nice. And oh, this is the best one. I got to find it. Where's the best one? It's like minimum workspaces or something like that. Top icons. This is the one that made GNOME finally really work for me. And what it does

is it essentially establishes a set of fixed desktops. So it kills the dynamic desktop thing. So I always have at least four desktops available to me. And then once I use the fourth desktop, then it begins to do dynamic workspace management

and create virtual desktops for me on demand as I need them. So I thought it was called Minimum Workspaces, but I'm not seeing the extension now. I totally recommend you get that one, though, because for me, it totally helped me wrap my brain around the way virtual workspaces work in GNOME. So, yeah, there you go.

Anybody in the Mumba room have anything they want to chime in with their favorite setup on GNOME or KDE? Any new themes? Yeah, I would suggest, as far as Konky goes, Numix has a really cool Konky layout. Oh. And it looks like Google Now, but you can make it blend with your desktop as well.

But there's also, I love gTile extension. Yeah, it's gTile? Yep, for Firefox and Thunderbird and whatnot. Oh, no. Oh, that's hTile, sorry. That's hTile, but that's gTile for Firefox and Thunderbird and whatnot. Oh, no. Oh, that's hTile. Sorry. That's hTile, but that's hTitle. gTile is an extension for GNOME that gives you tiling window manager features. Oh, right. Yes, I've used that for a little bit.

Yeah, it gives it – yeah, it auto-positions windows for you, and it'll tile them as you open up more windows, right? Right, and you can control like this. as you open up more windows, right? Right, and you can control like this. You can set it to be automatically turn, tile them and set for certain sections based on what app you're opening and stuff like that. Very cool. That's a nice one.

And we did like a GNOME customization episode ages ago. So if you go dig through the Linux Action Show archive, you'll find info on that. Hey, we have just a little bit of breaking news. That's right. Plasma 5 has been released today. The Plasma 5 desktop is out, and we've been kicking the tires a little bit. I meant to do a demo on last, on Sunday. I'll try to do one this Sunday. Eric, you've been running it for a few days now.

What do you think? Are you impressed with it? Oh, he's up and staging. Well, when he gets back, I'll ask him. I wonder if he's impressed with Plasma 5. Here's a couple of the highlights. So today, July 15, 2014, KD proudly announces the immediate availability of Plasma 5.0, providing a visually updated core desktop experience that is easy to use

and familiar to the user. Plasma 5.0 introduces a new Breeze artwork concept, which you guys might have to go set. I don't know if it's turned on by default, actually. At least on by default, actually. At least on my system, it was. And I've been using the Project Neon ISO to play with it for a little bit. Now you have a fully hardware-accelerated graphics stack, OpenGL,

with the updated modern, clean-looking theme sitting on top of Frameworks 5. It's definitely a.0 release. The testing I've done is 5.0, and it's had some crashing in the limited use I've had. So I would say at this point, this is a good time for you to jump in and help the KDH project out. Don't expect it to necessarily be great for your daily driver,

just like Joss warned us earlier last week. I'm very excited about it for some reason. I don't know, man. I don't sense a lot of excitement from you. I feel like I got all the excitement and you're kind of like, okay, well, I'll give it some time. Yeah, I'm one of those people. So I'm weird when it comes to updates. I'm one of those.1 guys,.2 guys.

I like to let things sit in the oven for a while. I don't know. But at the same time, I want fresh packages. But when it comes to desktops as a whole, whether it be KDE, whatever it may be, I feel like leaving it in the oven a little bit doesn't hurt anything. It's okay. Yeah, for sure. It's okay to wait. Of course, no wonder you say that.

You're a big XFCE guy. Yes. And look at this. There you go. Look at this hip music they got. Oh, yeah. Plasma 5.0 visual feature guide, everybody. Coming at you with a screencast for Plasma 5.

Ick, are you back? Yeah, I'm back. Yeah, I saw you were staging somebody. Did you want to share any of your impressions with Plasma 5? I know you've been working with it for a few days now. What do you think? Well, today I am actually running it completely as my main desktop, just to really try it out, really get into it. I have noticed a lot of graphics glitches, a lot of bugs that still need to be worked out.

I'm sure they'll get worked out because, I mean, I've just got standard Intel graphics for the most part. So that's going to get fixed. Typically, it has to do with the compositor. going to get fixed um typically it has to do with the compositor if you set the compositor right make you know make sure you're using open gl if you want the effects um but for the most part it looks great it it works great it feels like it's missing a few things compared to uh the the previous experience with four but it i i honestly they've already said that they're going to add to that, so I can only see it getting better with time. Right, and the artwork team is continuing their work.

It's interesting. They went to great lengths to replicate essentially the same basic functionality of the previous Plasma desktop to better and worse. I think they've improved it in some areas. The typography definitely looks a lot better.

There's animations that look smoother. To me, I'm excited about this because I love the technology at work here, and I don't know if I'm going to switch now. I'm tempted. I also saw, especially I'm a little more tempted now because Billy BigRigger linked in our subreddit how to install Plasma 5 on Arch right now.

It's in the repos. So now that I can put it on an Arch box, I can just log into it, and that would just be one of my mini desktops. Yeah, I'm going to do it. Yeah, look right here. I'm going to do it. Pac-Man-S K5 and K5-AIDS, and that's it. That gets you Plasma 5 and Frameworks 5.

That's it, right? Like how am I not going to do that? Because even if it doesn't work, I could just switch back to GNOME. So, yeah, I'm doing that tonight, probably. It depends on my hard drive space. And I know, Eric, you were talking about loading up on an Archbox, too. That, to me, is a sweet spot. I really like to try that. Because then you're going to get more updates quicker, too, I would think. Oh, yeah. Well, I would think, except right now i'm tracking the daily with the um right

project neon yeah that's true that's true but honestly um i i want to see what the difference is where arch is at with it as opposed to where you're running it alongside kaboom to essentially one of i think the most uh uh well-supported desktops on Arch is KDE. They get day of updates and whatnot. I think one of the core Arch guys is a core KDE guy, but I might have my details wrong on that. But it's like day of. I think one of the main distro Arch guys is the maintainer of KDE for the packaging, and he just gets it done right away.

Great. Super awesome. Well, we have an old soapbox that we haven't gotten on for a long time. We're almost at episode 50 now, Matt. And something happened. We talked about it on Sunday. It got producer Q5 really upset. And we're going to talk about that next.

But first, I want to thank DigitalOcean, sponsors of the Linux Unplugged program. DigitalOcean is rocking some stuff right now, you guys. This is the time to get in if you're not yet a DigitalOcean customer. Plus, if you use our promo code UNPLUGGEDJULY, you'll get a $10 credit. Now, why would you want a $10 credit? I'll tell you why. Because DigitalOcean rocks. They're a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. If you're quirky, you can get a cloud server spun up in, what did he do, like 33 seconds? It was amazing. It was amazing. But most users get a cloud server spun up in about 55 seconds.

And pricing plans start at only $5 per month for 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, a blazing fast CPU, and a terabyte of transfer for $5 a month. And if you use the promo code UNPLUGJULY, you get a $10 credit. So you can try it for two months, absolutely free, nothing out of your pocket. Plus they have hourly pricing. That's another great way to go. And DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and now London. And that's where Corky set up his new DigitalOcean droplet and where you got the rock and speed. Their interface is simple. Their control panel is super intuitive and power users can replicate

that control panel on a larger scale with their new API. DigitalOcean has grown like crazy because they've combined an amazing interface with an efficient system powered by KVM and Linux. And congratulations to DigitalOcean. They announced the London region today. So you can go build yourself a London DigitalOcean droplet right now and use the promo code UNPLUGJULY. DigitalOcean Droplet right now and use the promo code UNPLUGGEDJULY. And if you're doing backups, why not do a DigitalOcean Droplet in the U.S. and do a DigitalOcean Droplet in London and sync between them?

It'll be $10 a month. And you could do it for two months for free. Why not do it? Go check it out. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code UNPLUGGEDJULY. Go get yourself a root box up in the cloud that you control. And they have a great droplet management system, too, with backup snapshots, all kinds of good stuff.

DNS management and HTML5 console, too. You can even watch the thing post and boot. It's pretty cool. DigitalOcean.com, Unplugged July. When you check out, thank you. And thank you for, you know, when you used Unplugged July, that lets them know, hey, I appreciate them supporting the Unplugged show. So thanks, you guys. That's right. Well, I'll tell you, I keep opening up new droplets. I keep thinking, oh, hey, I appreciate them supporting the Unplugged show. So thanks, you guys. That's right.

Well, I'll tell you, I keep opening up new droplets. I keep thinking, oh, God, I can do that one thing. Oh, yeah. And I keep popping up a new one. And then I'm like, oh, you know, I can connect these together. It's been definitely become something I spend a lot of time doing. It's a lot of fun. And Wimpy, you were just telling me in the chat room here, you moved over the Ubuntu Mate Matea Remix repos to DigitalOcean London?

I did. We're using build servers in Amsterdam on DigitalOcean. I took some snapshots, spun up two instances in London, and restored the snapshots, and then destroyed the Amsterdam boxes, and all done. Isn't that awesome? Isn't that so cool? I love it. I love it. And it makes such a cool technology that we all hear about in the abstract actually applicable to all of us.

It makes it accessible to all of us. DigitalOcean.com. And also, they really are fast because the SSDs make all the difference when you're building an ISO image. And then when you've got two 1-gig ISO images and you can copy them to your distribution servers in 18 seconds. That's pretty great. Yeah, buddy. That's awesome. Or like Corky spinning one up in 31 seconds. 31 seconds.

Okay, 31 seconds. How crazy is that? Nuts. That's nuts. That's crazy. He's breaking in the London data center right now. I love it. Okay.

So speaking of breaking things in, Manjaro. Boy, did they have a rough weekend. So you guys probably heard us talk about it. Pharonix ran apiece. The Manjaro developers suffer a mass exodus was the headline. Turns out not to be exactly accurate. Producer Q56 is pretty upset that this is still a problem. And it's been a particular soapbox of mine.

It's one of the reasons I launched Tech Talk today. It's something we've talked about here on Linux Unplugged before. The state of Linux journalism and news blows. I mean, there's exceptions, and there's different types. There's casual journalism and writing, and then there's actual news and event coverage, and that's where we're particularly weak.

So to recap, and I don't really mean to go after Michael in particular, because I think it's more of a symptom of the requirements of the industry, and not a reflection of his personal character. So Pharonix came by some information that the Manjaro developers were leaving the distribution. No big deal. That happens sometimes. People move on. But that's not sexy enough to drive clips, Q5 writes. He says, so what we had here was a really fragrant title, like Manjaro Linux developers experience a mass

exodus because it drives clicks. It hurts the distro, but it drives clicks. Now, in the real world of news reporting, of course, he says there's a thing called verification, where you independently verify from multiple sources when possible. He goes on to point out that the open source community is pretty available. A lot of developers are available on Twitter or Google+, or on mailing lists. Not always, and not all projects, but probably more so than most commercial operations where journalists have to verify information from commercial companies. So he thinks it's perhaps more egregious that the verification isn't happening

in open source news coverage. And he says it's because the first to report is the first to get clicks in this world, and clicks equal money, so we've sacrificed truth for convenience and money. You have any thoughts on that part, Matt? I think he pretty much nailed it. See, the problem is that you do dance a balance. Content as a revenue source these days or as a job or as a business is tough. It's tougher than it's ever been.

And so a lot of companies and a lot of people that write get sucked into that vacuum of having to make some tough choices. They want to make sure they're breaking the news, but they don't always do a real good job of saying, hey, we heard through the grapevine, or this has not been substantiated. This is merely a rumor. Instead, it comes out as being a factual thing. And as Q5 points out, that's not acceptable. You can't do stuff like that. And it does blow up in your face, and it does create problems and hardships. Here's the other thing that he goes on to touch on. This is something that I think makes it one of these problems that isn't going to get fixed.

So what happens is you have a lot of misinformed users. The project takes a PR damage. It looks bad in the image. The way you and I touch on it is even if there was a max exodus or not, the point you and I were making on sunday's linux action show was it's a stain on the reputation regardless it's a stain on the reputation and it's now in the common consciousness uh but q5 says there's even a more ugly side intentionally not verifying information can sometimes create a lot of drama and drama my friends equals clicks so what's our mantra get the story out first if it's wrong and creates drama no problem that's a plus it'll drive more traffic to the site we can

later retract any false information once we actually have been presented with the correct information it's really quite simple math drama equals clicks clicks equal money thus drama equals money cheers rod and corpse go ahead i was just going to say is that he said it was being kind of easier or more egregious because there are so many ways to get contact with these different people. And that's true. And it's a good thing and a bad thing because you think about it, it makes it harder to find out where these people are. So some projects in the open source community are almost impossible to find contact where these people are. So some projects in the open source community are almost impossible to find contact information about particular people. But some are really

easy. Manjaro is one of the easy ones. All you need to go is go to their team page on their about section and you're done. Right. Yeah. And this is one of those problems where I understand it's a lean operation. He wants to post as fast as possible. It's a good scoop if it's true. And he also has a – it's rare to be able to legitimately, totally, originally break a story. You can be one of the first people to jump on a story often in tech reporting, but to actually have like a source and run an original story that then you become the originator of that story and everybody links to you, that's more than your average

drama click. That's something that sustains for a few days. And so that's a really tempting morsel to go after. And that's influenced by the economies of that type of site. That's why, and I don't, see, Jupyter Broadcasting isn't at a scale where we could do something like this. But I would love to have a written component to our shows. Because if our main focus is to generate revenue from the shows and potentially through Patreons and things like that, then the news reporting becomes a function that supports our shows.

And thus, the more accurate and detailed it is, the better it makes our shows. And so as a byproduct of producing our shows, we could produce better news, potentially. I don't know if that's true, but I do know we don't have the scale for it. But we can take steps at Jupyter Broadcasting. And that's why on Sunday, Rob from the Manjaro Project is going to join us

on the Linux Action Show. And we'll just chat with Rob and find out what the hell is going on. And we'll get it straight from the horse's mouth. And we can ask our questions. And Matt, as a longtime Manjaro user, anything you want to throw his way, you can ask him. And we'll just get it straight, right? Definitely.

And I'd actually welcome that, because I like the project. I just, I was very frustrated by the fact that I felt like there was a lot of unknowns. And because it was an important box, I had to make some tough choices. But who knows? Maybe I can come back. Yeah, maybe you can be drawn back. Daryl Devlin, go ahead. You had some thoughts? Yeah but who knows? Maybe I can come back. Yeah, maybe you can be drawn back. Daredevil, go ahead. You have some thoughts?

Yeah, I was wondering, I mean, doesn't people that read Foronix already have some grain of salt while reading? I mean, he also iterates really quick, the articles. It's not that it's up there maliciously for too long. I can't see really that big of a damage. It's only as much as the original developers make it a damage. Like, oh, we are concerned

and Fronic said this. Well, no. I mean, the original reputation damage that he puts out without actual researching the topic, it doesn't matter if you update your comment. That article, that title is still the same thing.

He didn't change the title because he would be changing the SEO stuff. He does pretty bad clickbait titles. Yeah, sometimes. But so do I sometimes. Here's – let me – just fun fact for you guys that are not in content. If you want to survive in this industry, you better get used to clickbait or forget it. Just stop. Just don't even bother.

I mean like we try to draw the line. We won't say like,, Manjaro was dead. Like, we didn't title last that, right? Exactly. But, I mean, there's definitely a line you can cross. But you do want to kind of – honestly, you want to excite people. You want to cross the malicious clickbait titles. Right.

You don't want to – that's the line. Oh, yeah. Malicious stuff is horrible. Yeah. And that's the thing is, like, what he should do, and I don't understand why he doesn't, is, okay, he's got his title. It's totally drawn in. It's obviously Okunin.

And then when you read the article, in a nice, I don't know, grad color at the very top, it says rumor mill or we heard through the grapevine. And then that way people know, hey, we have not substantiated this, but you might want to know this is potentially a thing. I'd be OK with that. That'd be fine. That's a much better idea, I think. Here's what also resonated with me. Go ahead. Normally on news articles like on CNN or they, you know,

if it's stuff they haven't confirmed yet, it says like breaking. This is not confirmed. We've heard blah. You can't just make claims and then update it after the fact. If you happen to be wrong. So if you do enough appropriate couching, like this is a developing story. I could see that. And I think it has to be used carefully.

You have to make it clear that you don't know this for a fact. And when you claim you know things for a fact, then it's the opposite. Well, and this was Q5's point, and maybe this is where the community comes in. He says, for me, the saddest part was and is the community continues to allow this to happen. Several times a year, we have an instance where some news site will get something so horribly wrong that it creates a huge cluster F. I mean, at the end of the day, doesn't the buck actually stop with the reader? Partly, but you can't just go and claim, well, it's foronics. Everybody should know to take it with a grain of salt.

Right. That doesn't work. That doesn't scale. Right. I didn't know that. it with a grain of salt. Right. That doesn't work. That doesn't scale. Right. I didn't know that. Yeah. The same thing has happened before. There was some journalist over at ZDNet read something on the previous D-Wiki and literally started a holy war for no reason.

Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about. Yep, yep. Yeah. Isn't that funny how that happens too? And so I don't know what the right answer is

i think i think i honestly i think part of the answer is slower journalism and it's something alan and i have talked about i think just more professional journalism like i understand it's it's a website but you could try harder do less stuff i see i think the problem is is that he goes for he not i'm not trying to he doesn't go for quality, because sometimes you can tell he worked really hard. He had this huge, massive GPU comparison where he did 50 GPUs or 60 GPUs. That obviously took some work. I'm not saying it doesn't work hard,

but he also goes for quantity. Then you look at... There's other sites out there, like the link blogs, where it's maybe one or two posts or three posts a day, but those three posts, you almost guaranteed want to read them. Like it's all good stuff. And that also means like you could go once a week and get a whole bunch of stuff.

And I think that slower journalism, like one of the mantras we have with TechSnap is TechSnap is not about breaking news. We don't try to break stories in TechSnap ever. In fact, sometimes we like it if maybe a week's gone by because then we do a deep analysis of all – because you have things that come in bursts of information. And then there's a slow, long tail where things get clarified and corrected and people think about it and write up posts about it. And then intelligent thinkers like Bruce Schneier and Brian Krebs write about it and you can take in what they say. And then you can really deliver something that's a good, concise analysis that's accurate. But when you're reporting on the moment it happens, fast journalism, it's just rife with errors. And so I think as an audience, we need to say, hey, maybe we can slow it down a little bit. What do you think of that, Matt? Well, here's the real issue. The journalists are definitely the causality, but at the same

time, everybody forgives the aggregator. Now, I've actually worked closely with a couple of websites to help them get listed with Google News. It doesn't just type in automatically. There's special site maps and all that sort of stuff. The thing is that the aggregators are never punished for rewarding this crap. See, that's the thing. Whether it be Google Search or Google News or whatever the search engine or news aggregator may be, we don't penalize these things because they are in fact rewarded for repetition. They are rewarded for quick uh being

being first on the first on the scene and so based on those things then writers are then put in an interesting position sure to game it as much as they can yeah do they want to stay employed throw their morals to the wind or would they like to be uh absolutely wonderful people and sign yeah i mean that's that's really what it is i mean i hate to say it but it's the yeah the writers are responsible but at the same time you know i always tell people never get into writing it sucks it really does so i mean at the end of the day that's the thing people got to remember is also be willing to penalize your aggregator yeah be your own aggregator that's even better there's no site loyalty there's no page loyalty there's no brand loyalty when it comes to articles

no one gives a rip who it's coming from they They care about the title and they care about the, oh, is this interesting to me? Well, it sounds like Wimpy agrees with you. So Wimpy, let me ask you this. Isn't that also then sometimes going to run the risk of overreach and censorship and things like that? And now all of a sudden we're asking maybe somebody like Google to be the arbiter of what's legitimate and what's not. And that's maybe a bad position to be in, Wimpy? Well, my agreement with Matt is not necessarily about Google as the aggregator, but in this case as Pharonix,

as the aggregator and publisher. I think that sometimes the articles that they post they know full well are inaccurate, but they are sensational, and it will drive traffic to the site. And what's potentially damaging there is that it then tarnishes projects, in this case Manjaro, or it causes problems for projects unnecessarily.

And all that happens here is Veronix profit. And I don't want to dog on Veronix because it's one of those sites that I read every day. Because, like you say, there are little gems in there that I don't have to go off hunting for. You know, in the blend of all of the other technology feeds that I consume, it's useful for actually picking up the news. That's a good point. But there does seem to be a trend at Pharonix of deliberately posting what are obviously trolley articles, you know, to drive traffic to the site and that you only have to read

from what some people have submitted what they want reporting to see that it's bogus. Well, Alan, let me ask you this then. Is what Wimpy is saying is it becomes the responsibility of the consumer to pick the right aggregator?

It can because sites kind of fall into different categories, right? Some sites are just aggregated. They just go out and kind of pick and choose a bunch of stories and link to them and maybe they have a summary or whatever. And then there's the other sites that actually write original content. Like on Brian Krebs' site, it's kind of a combination, right? A lot of the stuff is his own research and then he also points to other stuff. But some sites are obviously there just to collect content that other people have written and those can be very good and you basically have to choose to trust that site to pick the

right articles for you right right you you can punish them by not returning if they don't find a different one and that's kind of how tech snap right? I don't write most of the content that we present in the show. I'm just picking through all the news that's out there and deciding which things I think are important to the viewer. Right. Very much. I think it's a lot of our shows kind of work there. Same with Tech Talk today as I try to go through and pick the stories from the day that are worth discussing. And sometimes that means at the end of the week some of them maybe didn't pan out to be great, but most of them do.

And I think that's, we have so much to look at, so much to consider, that that's really what we have to do now is pick and choose. We have to learn sources we can trust. And to be honest with you, to sort of pull back the curtain a little bit, that's why we do so much live stuff.

So you guys can show up and hear us when we're just screwing around in our raw, natural selves, and you can listen to us as actual human beings and decide if you trust that person. If you trust that human that's telling you information, and maybe you don't want that, maybe you do, but the live stream gives you a little bit of that experience, and I think that's one of the things that's really great about this form of broadcasting is there is a direct avenue for you to kind of learn a little bit more

and kind of decide what you think about that person and i think that's great uh let's go uh two last comments and we'll wrap up this topic at pc whiz you say don't blame the ad agencies bro ad agencies have to make money it makes money when they direct you to a person who's paying for ads so if you're being served an ad from Google's ad network to buy some rubbish on Amazon, and you buy that rubbish on Amazon, then they don't care. Doesn't care where they got referred to.

Well, yeah. I mean, you really can. I mean, at each stage, in fact, I think that's kind of Rotten Corpse's point, is we're all a little bit to blame, aren't we, Rotten? Yeah. I was just about to say, I mean, in a way, everybody's at fault, if you think about it because like the aggregators, the article writers, the editors, even the people who are reading it. If they don't even research what these people are saying to fact check it, in a way they're kind of spreading misinformation as well. Yeah.

And it is – I mean I hate to blame readers because you don't know what the motivation is of the person who's just sitting there reading the site, but I don't know. I think it's kind of – in a way, it taints the sites themselves, but it also kind of taints the idea of news as a whole. Right, yeah. Oh, it's been tainted for a long time. The problem is that we can high and mighty ourselves and pat each other on the back all day long, but at the end of the day, we're all going to read it, most of us anyway. The other factor is that until there is a reward-slash-punishment system implemented by somebody, I don't care who or whatever, it won't change. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the beginning of that sort of pushback that eventually forces a market correction, maybe. Well, I think the solution is basically look more toward ethical human aggregation and less toward automated aggregation. For sure, right, yeah.

I mean, that's what we do here at Jupyter Broadcasting is we are human aggregating the good content from crap. Robots don't do that. One way, and this is going to sound all hipster, which will work great with my new iPhone 5 I got from Ting. The other way is, honestly, if you curate who you follow on Twitter, and I know that those two words I just said, curate and Twitter together, I apologize. I will punish myself later. But if you do, if you're very choosy about who you follow, it essentially becomes like

an RSS feed. So if you say, okay, this person makes good stuff, this person makes good stuff, this company makes good stuff, and you follow them, and maybe it's only like 80 to 100 people you follow, every time you go to that feed, it's essentially good stuff from people you know. And that's one way to kind of stay up to date. Until we can perfect

the BS detector. Once that happens, it's all good. Well, I was going to mention the same thing, because I've noticed that when the odd time I go to Facebook, the same thing because I've noticed that when the odd time I go to Facebook the stories that are presented are always the link bait crap that I don't want to look at

whereas Twitter because on Twitter I'm following not so much people I went to school with as on the people in the industry that are going to tweet things that I might actually care about I do wish that Twitter had some more tools and settings though because a lot of the people I follow are international and so when they tweet in French and Danish I would like

to just filter those ones out. Yeah. I only want to see when they're tweeting in English. Although with you know when people tweet with all the acronyms and stuff I'm pretty sure it's hard to tell when it's English and when it's not. Oh Rotten Corpse points out Yahoo Pipes. Alright Daredevil you'll get the last word. You wanted to

say Google Plus? what the F? Yes, Google+, integration in the search results, if you're logged in while you search, actually allows you to like a URL. And you can see which friends of yours from Google+, like that URL while you're in your search. I've never actually once found that useful, though. The theory of it makes sense to me, but essentially it's gotten to the point now that when I see a Google Plus result in my Google search results,

I just ignore it. Like, I completely don't even see it anymore. I tune it out like an ad. Like, I do not even see it. Because to me, it has yet... Because usually, at absolute best, it is a Google Plus post where somebody is linking to a post, where if Google would have just given me the link one link deeper, that would actually be what I want. But because they want to drive traffic or something to Google Plus, I feel like it's very hit and miss.

But I'll try it again. I'll give it another shot if you find it useful because I haven't tried it since they rolled it out. No, I think you got me wrong. What I mean is actually any search result in Google allows you to put any. It doesn't require to be a Google Plus post. It can be any search result. I guess the problem is their implementation currently only allows you to put like while you're still on the search page. So people are usually going to still find the content inside that website and then not rate the site.

Good point. Because you could rate the site. All right. We should move on. I think I'm going to close that topic. Q5, good post. It's something we're all thinking about. We're taking baby steps here at Jupyter Broadcasting Network to do what we can do.

So we've got something really I am very excited about next week. I am so excited. I want to tell you about it first, though. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. If you would have traveled back in time and told Chris of five years ago that he'd have a sponsor like Linux Academy, he would have hit you in the face and told you to stop teasing him because that's mean. This is the perfect sponsor because not only are they Linux enthusiasts themselves, it's a group of guys who created the system from scratch because they freaking love Linux.

And they want to help people learn Linux. They want you to be able to do it at your own pace, at your own leisure, on your own system. You can download the study guides and read them offline if you want to. They've got audio and video components. So if you're a podcast listener, trust me, that's going to snap right into your existing flow. And linuxacademy.com slash unplugged will get you the Summer of Learning discount. So go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged right now, brand new URL, to save 33% 50 bucks per quarter.

linuxacademy.com slash unplugged is also a good place just to go check them out, give them a hit, so that way they know that you heard about it here on the Unplugged show and you appreciate them supporting us. Go check them out, you guys. They've got seven plus Linux courses you can take, or they support seven plus distributions for their courses. So you choose your distro.

So in my case, let's just say I wanted to brush up on Fedora because as soon as Arch blows it in my face, I'm switching to Fedora. So I go up to LinuxAcademy.com. And seriously, you could literally, I'm not even joking, this is exactly what you could do. You choose Fedora from the options. They automatically adjust all of your courseware. So now it's all Fedora specific, right? So now for somebody who's an Arch guy but I want to brush up on Fedora from the options, they automatically adjust all of your courseware. So now it's all Fedora specific, right? So now for somebody who's an arch guy, but I want to brush up on Fedora,

now I'm living in the Fedora land with a guided tour. I can do self-paced tests to see where I'm at. I have step-by-step guides. This is okay, Chris, you're this far into it. You're going to be taking this next. I can generate reports at any time. I can talk to the community, see how they're doing. I have course notes and study guides for my Fedora setup. If I want to deploy a LAMP stack, a bind server, an open stack, whatever it is, they've got courses for it. They've got real-world scenarios too, which is super handy. Like if you have an AWS project coming up and you've never worked on AWS

or maybe you've worked on AWS but it's been a while and you need to load up a Linux box on there and get a web server going, they've got courses on that. And you can just go through that and you'll see how long it's going to take you to do this. Take it at your leisure. Download to this stuff and listen to it on your commute if you need just go through that and you'll see how long it's going to take you to do this. Take it at your leisure. Download to this stuff and listen to it on your commute if you need to. It's really awesome. How to get a Linux job

is also a course. And then they have communities discussing that. It's really awesome stuff. I've been a subscriber now for I think since the beginning of the year, actually. What's really cool about it, Matt, is they have a team support. So if Rikai ends up getting to a point where he's banging on some stuff for JBot and he needs to get a little under the year, actually. Oh, wow. And what's really cool about it, Matt, is they have a team support. So if Rikai ends up getting to a point where he's banging on some stuff for JBot and he

needs to get a little under the hood, I can just add him to my account as a group account and he can get in here and now we can work with each other. So it's really cool. If you're in a team, you can do that. Or if you just want to work on your own, you have some time. It's a really cool system. They've added support, too, for more and more AWS courses. And then as you need a server in any of the courses, they'll just spin one up on the back end.

And they're adding new courseware all the time, so there's always new stuff to go check out and learn. And you don't have to create a new VM every time you want to go learn something new. They manage all that for you as part of the service. And when you're taking AWS courses, that means you don't have to pay for AWS because it's all included with the service. LinuxAcademy.com slash doneplug. Get that 33% discount and take your skills up to the next level. There's really never been a better time. And this is such an amazing sponsor.

It's a perfect match with our audience. It's working with another independent startup company who's doing exactly something that, honestly, if I had multiple lives, if I had clones of me, I would love to run a site like Linux Academy. It's such a perfect companion to your Jupyter Broadcasting experience because we talk about this stuff. And then you can go get nitty-gritty with that stuff. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged. And thanks to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged show. You know what's awesome about it? I'm always hearing from people via email.

It's like, you know, I'm looking to advance my career in this field, and I really need to gain some skills, and I really don't have time to go to a brick-and-mortar school or, hey, I'm unemployed, and I'm looking to get some Linux skills in the first place or whatnot. This is a great place to actually get your feet wet and get it done today. Yeah, it's so great, and it's such a neat system, and they built it just to do this. So a couple of things. Also, just a reminder, join us on Sunday at the Linux Action Show, 10 a.m. Pacific, jblive.tv to ask your questions to Rob from Manjaro. And keep an eye out on the

Linux Action Show subreddit. We might start a thread up there with your questions. But keep it civil. I mean, I don't think you wouldn't, but I'm just saying. And I'm kind of excited. Noah, Colonel Linux, and Eric and I are all heading down to OSCon. We'll report back. Matt will tell you how it went. And guess what? We decided heading down to OSCon. We'll report back.

Matt will tell you how it went. And guess what? We decided I went for the train. Going to ride the train down. Oh, nice. I'm really looking forward to that. So Eric and I. I'm excited.

Yeah, we're catching the train in Seattle. And it's kind of an evening one, so Noah's going to pick us up in Portland like at 930 at night. It's late. But it's a three-hour train ride, but it's got Wi-Fi pretty much the whole way there. So I figure, you know, bring the Kindle, bring a few podcasts, work on some show notes during the drive, and we'll just kind of hang out. I don't know if they're

going to feed us, Eric, because of the time or what, but we'll figure that out. Yeah, that's a good question. Well, yeah, we'll definitely figure that out. I'm sure they have some sort of food on board. Yeah. Yeah, I imagine it's fire. Most trains will have, like, kind of a snack cart galley type situation. Yeah, yeah, okay. Bring water because otherwise you'll be paying through the nose for it.

That's my big tip. So definitely bring lots of water. And bring little snacks like granola bar type things. Anything like that would do well. Good idea. Here's my tip. My tip is don't eat anything on the train. Buy me dinner when you get to Portland.

At 9.30 at night, though? There you go. I mean, I'm down for that, but all right, I'll have a snack. I'll hold me over and maybe a snack and a flask. I'll bring my flask and a canola bar, and I'll be all right. I'll make it worth the trip. So because of our OSCon shenanigans, and of course that means we're going to come back with a bunch of interviews and stuff like that, but because of our OSCon shenanigans next week, we're going to record episode 50 a bunch of interviews and stuff like that. But because of our OSCon, or OSCon, I shouldn't call it OSCon, OSCon shenanigans next week,

we're going to record episode 50 of Linux Unplugged Monday at 1 p.m. Pacific at JBLive, right after Coder Radio on Monday. So the way it's going to work on Monday, Tech Talk today in the morning, Coder Radio, and then Linux Unplugged immediately following Coder Radio. So if you normally join us for the mumble, wow, look at this. We have a huge room today. You guys, please show up on Monday and hang out with us because we're going to pre-record for Tuesday.

So that way when we get down to OSCON, we go balls to the wall. We don't have to worry about stopping to do a show because we'll just be getting interviews and clips. We're only there for two days, so we really got to make the most out of it because Ick and I hop on the train to go back Wednesday afternoon so that way I can make it back here for TechSnap because you can't miss the streak of TechSnap. So we're only there for two days,

but if you're going to be down at OSCON or if you're in the Portland, Oregon area, the 22nd or the 23rd, tweet me at ChrisLAS or shout out in the Linux Action Show subreddit. We'd love to meet up with you and shake your hand and maybe buy you a burger or a beer or something like that. So that'll be, it's going to be, you know, it's perfect. It's perfect because it's a three-hour train ride.

We go down there. We get some great interviews for the show. We spend the night or two nights down there. We come back up. It's my ideal kind of coverage because you can just do it in a couple of days. You don't have to fly anywhere. That's low stress. Yeah, low stress.

And Noah, you know, once again is going to be awesome, and he's going to bring some cameras and equipment for us, and hopefully he'll be wearing Google Glass. None for the interview. Oh, come on. Oh, gee. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves Google Glass, right?

I'm told it's not that popular. Oh, that's weird. That's weird. Yeah, he's got a good watch, too. See, people are checking out your wares, Noah. You're becoming a bit of a celebrity, I think. All right, well, I'll wrap us up there. Who's got an open mic?

Who's rotten? Rotten, you got an open mic there, Rotten. Okay, so I'll leave us there. I just want to also mention Tech Talk today. I do that Monday through Thursday, jblive.tv, 9 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern. We often talk about Linux-related stuff in the general tech news

as it applies through the filter of an OS or of an open source advocate and a Linux user. So, like, sometimes I have a poke at Microsoft. I'll admit it. But I can't help it. It's in my nature. By the way, I think we still have a good time. So if you want to catch that, you can also join us live from there. We have our virtual lug.

It's kind of like a technology call-in morning show, only instead of call-ins, we have a mumble room. And it's way cooler than a call-in show because it's doing it like you would do it if it was the year 2014. So Tech Talk today, Monday through Thursday. And one of these days, Matt, when there's not a faux show or something like that after the Linux Action Show, we should have thought of this. I should do a Tech Talk today with

you while you're here as a pre-record. I should have thought of that. Oh, that'd be awesome. We'll think about it. We'll discuss it off air and figure out a time we could do that because it'd be fun to have you on Tech Talk today. I think that'd be a good time, Matt. That'd be a good time. All right. Well, I'll leave it right there, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you so much for joining us this week on Linux Unplugged. Don't forget, you can go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact and choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown or even better, linuxactionshow.reddit.com. We do this show normally on Tuesdays, but we do it on Monday Monday, 1 p.m. Pacific, next week for episode 50. 50 episodes. Wow. Holy cow. All right, Matt. Well, I'll see you on Sunday, okay?

All right. See you then. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. If we don't see you on Sunday for the big show, we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you. Guess what? LibreSSL, the brand new port, not secured on Linux. In fact, there seems to be a pretty major error found in LibreSSL. The problem resides in the Pursuit of a Random Number Generator that LibreSSL relies The problem resides in the pursuit of a random number generator that LibreSSL relies

on to create keys that can be guessed even when the attacker uses an extremely fast computer. The failure results in cases where the same 16-bit PID is used to designate two or more processes. Linux ensures that a process can never have the same ID as a child process that it spawned, but it remains possible for a process to have the same

PID as a grandparent process. The condition appears to be an edge case, but it's one that many believe is possible with the Linux fork underscore RAND program forks if it does it enough times to produce identical PIDs. OpenSSL, the open source program called LibreSSL, aims to replace, has always had ways to recover from such cases. However, LibreSSL does not, at least on Linux at this time. The website isn't working anymore. LibreSSL.org is down. Really? Wow. Yeah.

You know, it's early days. It's too soon to be relying on LibreSSL right now. I mean, that's a given. It's a brand new project. You know, but I... True. I have seen some threads where people have already put it in production and it's like, whoa, wow. It's one of these another malicious headlines.

They also made a lot of claims like they were going to fix everything and then, nope. Well, it takes time. I would say this is the more prominent or... one that shows most promise. Yeah. Well, then there's Google have got boring SSL, which is a fork of open SSL now.

Right, right, which is like intentionally trying to avoid problems like this, isn't it? Did you see they put a post up yesterday about how the Linux 3.16 kernel is like super fast. Ubuntu with that kernel. I'm not saying it was Ubuntu, but Linux with that kernel is faster than OS X on a MacBook. And then the entire

comment thread was arguing about Linux versus GNU slash Linux.