LINUX Unplugged - Episode 50: Linux Look-Back | LUP 50

Episode Date: July 22, 2014

We look back at five years of Linux memories, and reminisce about the bad old days of the Linux desktop. Then the exciting future for PC-BSD, and it’s new unique desktop.Plus our favorite ways to track performance, desktop Linux app containers that are already here and shipping and much more!

You guys follow Lifehacker, right? Hey, Noah's in studio, by the way. Hello. Hey, you follow Lifehacker, right? Did you know that they do these Linux packs? Have you seen these here Linux packs? No. Yeah, they do these Linux packs every year,

and Winston Gordon did one this year. And I wanted to go through a couple of the apps with you guys, and I think some of them have been app picks on the last, but not all of them. So I thought maybe we'd go through a couple of them and see what we thought. And then it's, you know, it's like pre-show stuff. I don't think it's main show stuff,

but we'll take a look at it and see what we get. So here's a couple of the apps they picked, okay? For productivity, Matt, you might like this one. They thought the best launcher was Synapse. Not Gnome Do. Oh, nice. Not surprised. They say app launchers bring a lot to your workflow.

Now, they both note that, unfortunately, app launchers are in a weird spot in the Linux world. GNOME 2 hasn't had any major updates since 2009. And Synapse also doesn't appear to be all but abandoned now. So I guess it's probably because a lot of desktops just build that in these days. I think it's going to take it being broken for anything to actually happen with it. I think that's what will have to happen. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. You ready for the text editor? All right. Kate from KDE and Genie, which Genie's been a pick before on the Linux Action Show. I guess. I don't know.

Sublime Text 2, they gave it a mention, but... I like Kate as a text editor. You know, it's great if you're a KDE person. I don't know. I mean, that's fine. It's kind of like St. G at it. Yeah, it's great if you're a GNOME person or a GNOME person. You know what I don't know. I mean, that's fine. It's kind of like saying G at it. Yeah, it's great if you're a GNOME person or GNOME person, you know what I mean? Whatever. I want something a little sexier, more exciting.

Genie? Okay, that's cool. Yeah, Genie's alright. Noah's a Vi guy. I am. You know why? Do you know that, or are you just guessing? I knew. Well, you use Fedora, so... Well, Red Hat is what it comes from. I'm using Fedora as well.

Sorry, what does using Fedora have to do with BI? Well, here's the thing. At Red Hat, if you take any Red Hat course, you'll be so sick of knowing. You have to do everything in Vim, basically. It's all the courseware and everything for it. You don't, but the instructor will come up and go, well, I don't know how to do this. Oh, yeah, you do. Oh, you don't?

Because when I was looking at it, you did. Oh, it was all. In fact, you know what? When I was doing the Red Hat course, the guy next to me couldn't remember how to get repo configured. And he broke into the instructor's box, copied the RPMs off, installed them. Oh, no. Instructor comes over, calls Red Hat, and they go, did he use the internet? No. Did he bring in outside material? No, he passes. They don't care. They don't care how you get the objectives. No, I know that part. Yeah, I know, but like the culture of it's all it's got to be in by.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, they said best office editor, LibreOffice. Alright, we can give them that. Best web browser. Okay, let's see here. The problem is... It's negative in the freedom dimension. They gave it to Chrome. They gave it to Chrome. It's not, that's totally not... Really? Yeah, it's not necessarily negative. That's actually my next article

topic. That's really funny. Really? Okay. And then email. Interesting. Okay, I got a Thunderbird problem. There's definitely an advantage to Chrome in that it's getting Capsicum support even on Linux. Yeah. Chrome is, you know, I mean,

I keep trying to switch back to Firefox and Chrome keeps pulling me back for a few reasons. I like my Firefox. Yeah. Especially under Linux. You were saying Thunderbird, because that's one I could probably argue with you about. They say Thunderbird development has slowed down,

but they're still their favorite desktop email client. Well, yes, there's no more development to do because it works perfectly fine. Stop breaking it. The last couple of times they've tried to do stuff to Thunderbird, all they've done is made it worse. So if they're just going to stop and just do maintenance on it, I am a very happy badger. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

I think the PIMification of it, the personal information managerification of the Thunderbird, was probably where they really went south. So I think by sticking to just being an email client and doing that well, yeah, that's cool. Honestly, for me, it was mostly when they moved buttons. Leave the buttons where I put them. Yeah, they did do a big redesign semi-recently and i like it now having tabs is very useful being able to keep all my sense stuff open in a second tab is actually very useful it's just every time they move the buttons it messes up my entire workflow you got a flow i appreciate that because

that's exactly how i am about it i'm having having I was going to I was going to bring this up in the post show, but I'm having in fact, I will remind me that I have a Thunderbolt. Like it's like a UI wiggly issue that I thought I had solved a long time ago. And now I can't fix it. But let's move on in the list and then we'll wrap up because it's not too too amazing. Pigeon came in for the best instant messaging client. They gave mention to empathy VLC for best video. They gave mention to a few others. Plex beat XBMC, which I thought was interesting.

Those two, they're kind of different though, right? Yeah. Like one's for one thing and one's for another. Spotify for music. Wow. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that just hit 50 and never looked better. My name is Chris.

Hey, Matt. Hello. Welcome to episode 50, buddy. All right, already. I know. Can you believe it? It's crazy. And you know what? It's a special episode, too, because we're packing up. We're getting ready to go down to OSCON. And so Noah, Mr. Colonel Linux himself, has joined us.

I have. In studio. Noah, welcome to Linux Unplugged. Thanks for having me. Good to have you here in Meatspace. It's nice. You were still rocking the Google Glass. Have you been recording this whole thing? Actually, I did record the intro just a little bit. Okay, good, good. How's the Fedora install going?

Absolutely. Well, actually, I'm just in a terminal in the IRC, so I haven't really played with it. Okay, yeah. I loaded him up a box with Fedora 21 so he'd feel right at home because he's a Fedora guy. He shows up with an Archbox, Matt. And set it right on your desk. Wow. Respect. A curveball. Curveball. Well, we've got some good stuff to get into today. We're also joined, of course, by our virtual lug over there in the mumble room.

Glad to have them along with us. Hey-o. Hey-o, everybody. Hey, I wanted to start with some feedback like we often do. There was some pics we had on Linux Action Show

for bandwidth monitoring. I think it was NBW Mon on Sunday. And we ended up getting a note in from a Plasma Widget author named Rob. And he wrote, and he said,

Hey, Chris and Matt, on the last show, you were discussing your appreciation for a simple bandwidth monitor. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I wanted to add a quick plug for my own project, Socket Sentry, which is my favorite bandwidth monitor on the KDE desktop. So it's awesome to hear from him.

He says it's a bandwidth monitor in KDE Plasma widget that you can leave on your desktop or dock as a panel icon. What sets it apart from similar tools, though, is that it breaks down bandwidth per process or program so you can quickly see whether your network slowdown is caused by Firefox or SFTP, for example. It uses libpcap under the hood so you can filter the traffic it monitors using

the same expression language and tools like TCP dump and Wireshark. And it also goes easy on the CPU. In fact, when it's hidden in your panel as an icon, it stops monitoring until you pop it up so there's no overhead when you don't need it. It's in the AUR as KDE Plasma-Applets-Socket Sentry. I haven't updated it in a few years,

but that's mainly because it does everything it needs to do and it works under modern versions of KDE. So I'd love to know what you think and thanks. Keep up the great work. Well, I've already tried it out before. Every time I set up KDE, I set this thing up. Are you like this, Noah? your uh do you have like conky and bandwidth monitors on your desktop you know so here's the thing i test out a lot of different laptops um to see how they're going to work and how they're going to work in specific circumstances

so i switch like i have a different machine now than than when you saw me a couple months ago oh yeah because of that i try and keep it i change things as i go along it starts out stuck and then when something bugs me then i'll add it in that is that is exactly try and keep it – I change things as I go along. It starts out stock, and then when something bugs me, then I'll add it in. That is exactly how I do it, especially like right now we've been moving hardware around. I'm not even like using the same computer week to week anymore. Right. So having the ability to just keep it as close to stock means that I can get up and working a little bit faster. And then the longer I use a machine, the more I bring it under my control.

What about you, Matt? Are you a tweaker with your – do you have a CPU monitor on your desktop and all that stuff? I do. I generally prefer to kind of go with a GUI option. Usually I'll have it. It's something I can kind of peek at, although recently I found myself kind of removing myself from using that more, and I'm almost just kind of trusting what I don't know

because I find that my OCD tends to stare at it too much. Yeah, it can be distracting, can't it, too? You can be like, what's going on up there? And it really, let's be honest, computers are powerful enough and Linux is good enough at managing processes that it's not really necessary. You know what I mean? And truthfully, if you're having a problem, you're going to end up

killing it anyway, so whatever. Go ahead, Alan. Yeah, well, you have eight processors. The percent CPU load actually can matter less, and then a widget can't be big enough to display all eight threads on your CPU. Right, it might be showing one core in the widget, and you have seven other cores that are idle. Yeah, or if you have eight cores, then each one's like 13% or whatever.

And so when your CPU usage, you can't actually tell that some program is actually pegged on one CPU and would be going faster if it was multi-threaded or whatever. I don't know. I don't ever see my desktop. I always have whatever I'm working on. I might have multiple windows, but I never see what's in the background.

Like my desktop wallpaper or any widgets I would put there. If you're saying your desktop, you're not working hard enough. It sounds like he's saying, hey guys, while you're looking at your desktops and making them pretty, I'm getting work done. I think that's what he's saying. What if you're like me and you just have a monitor just for all your crap? Like I have a crap monitor sometimes in some of my setups.

I'm a bad person. In fact, that brings us to our next email from Steve-O. Now, unfortunately, Q5Sys, who rocks a six-monitor Linux setup, didn't join us today because he's working late uh but maybe he'll be able to chime in on chime in on this feedback style but steve-o writes and he says hey guys i've been researching possible multi-monitor setups for gaming under linux and there seems to be a lot of conflicting information i found reddit posts talking about how difficult it is to set up particularly with two video cards on the other hand i found posts of Pharonix, and he links to a Pharonix quad monitor review,

which seems to indicate it's fairly easy. I'm a Linux admin by trade, and I've been using Linux on my desktop since 2006. However, this will be my first time really considering more than two monitors for my home setup. Ideally, I'd like to get a six-monitor setup going. Cheers. I know, right?

Wow. Anybody tried a multi-monitor setup with gaming? Does it get weird? You ever tried it, Noah? Nope. I have multi-monitors, but I don't use it for gaming. Yeah. Go ahead.

I've tried it for flight simulation, and it works kind of, but that was also like back in 2004 when it didn't really work as well as it does now. I'm not sure about now. Riley, now a lot of times it comes down to whether the game supports it or not. Sure, yeah. If the game isn't meant to be split,

then you end up with like half your screen on one monitor and half on the other monitor. And under Linux, too, there's a bit of an extra like what toolkit or whatever did they write it towards? Like are they using SDL or whatnot? Riley, you think this is a case for awesome? Oh yeah, this would be a perfect case for awesome. It's so light and you can

just have several different monitors at that length. Awesome is very good for multi-monitors. I think I remember Q5 saying he uses Openbox. You remember what he says he uses for his setup? What's the default in Puppy? I don't know. Well, except he doesn't use the default in Puppy. He uses Openbox. He's remember what he says he uses for his setup? What's the default in Puppy? I don't know. Well, except he hasn't used

the default in Puppy. He uses Openbox. He's crazy. Oh, does he? He's crazy using Puppy. But anyways, we'd love to get your inputs because, you know what,

I just got X-Plane on Steam. It was not cheap either. That's expensive. That's on my wish list. X-Plane is... Have you played it before? Yeah. It's amazing.

Yeah. You know, they have actually hardware devices you can bring in and have like the full experience. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're crazy expensive. Yeah, yeah. I looked at a couple. It's also the only computer-based flight simulator that is certified by the FAA for

actually doing stuff and getting time. Yeah, you can log hours. What's amazing is you can take off right here at our local Arlington Airport and or SeaTac. It's just blown away by it. I could see where Steve-O's coming from here because

I'm looking at X-Plane and I'm thinking, oh, I had a few monitors. This would be kind of amazing. I'd love to hear how it works out for you, Steve. If anybody out there has any advice or feedback, you can drop us a line in the Linux Unplugged feedback thread

over at linuxactionshow.reddit.com or go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact and shoot us an email with your thoughts on what Steve could do

to win with six monitors and video games. I don't know. I'll tell you. Yeah, that sounds like that could be a bumpy ride, right? I'm thinking ZoneMinder.

That's the first thing that comes to my mind is to have a compound and to have Zone Minder. And gun turrets. You've got to have gun turrets. I want high-caliber gun turrets. I'm talking about, like, set them up on Raspberry Pis, they have motion sensing. I'm talking the whole package.

I like this. Matt, this is like the zombie apocalypse bunker that's powered by Linux. And I think there's a role to play in there for some Raspberry Pi devices, too. And you know, Matt, before that zombie apocalypse hits, you might want to get yourself a DigitalOcean droplet so that way you can back up your data and protect it from those zombies. Go over to DigitalOcean.com and use the promo

code. Get ready for this because July is almost over. It's your last chance to use it. Unplug July. How about that? Unplug July. When you check out over at DigitalOcean.com, that's going to give you $10 towards a digital ocean droplet. Run that sucker for two months. Why? Because for $5, you can create a cloud server in 55 seconds, and pricing plans are straightforward. You start at the $5 mark, and then you'll work your way up. At each incarnation, you get something really great. More storage, more bandwidth, more CPU,

really straightforward. But here's what you get for $5. You get 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, one blazing fast CPU, and a terabyte of transfer, all at a fixed cost for $5. So you know exactly how much you're going to pay. And I want to underscore that. I don't want you to go out there and get a cloud system where you get, oh, here's my CPU bill. Here's my transfer bill.

Oh, it's a $200 bill. That's actually happened to me. And it's a painful process. I had to explain it to my boss, and it was very awkward. I was like, hey, boss, sorry, yeah, I put that on the card. I hope you don't mind. Look, that's what I love about DigitalOcean. It's a fixed cost, which also means that as a contractor, if I was going to resell it, it makes it super easy.

If I'm building an open source project or I'm using it as a back end for an app, I know exactly what my run cost is going to be. And DigitalOcean is so simple. They're dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy to spin up cloud service. You get root access. We've had users out there that have done it in under 31 seconds. It's unbelievable how fast you can do it, and they've got a brand-new London data center. They just spun up the new London data center.

Pretty cool. And some of the audience members have been jumping on that. They also have data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, and Amsterdam. Their interface is simple, and their control panel is incredibly intuitive. And power users can replicate that control panel on a much larger scale with their straightforward API, which is gorgeous.

Now, I'm not one to just talk chauvinistically about APIs, but as far as good-looking APIs go, this DigitalOcean one is good-looking. I've heard good things, and that's why you're seeing really great apps in the community prop up. Apps that integrate with the Ubuntu desktop, the Mac desktop, Windows desktop. You can manage your droplet right from your desktop, check on its status, get its IP. And then when you need to go to the DigitalOcean website, their interface is incredible. Their interface sets the bar. It utilizes the power of Linux, KVM connected to tier one bandwidth and data centers all over the world

and gives you access to do all of that in a matter of seconds. Go create yourself a droplet right now and use the code unplug July when you check out to get a $10 seconds. Go create yourself a droplet right now and use the code unplugjuly when you check out to get a $10 credit. You can use that $5 rig for two months for absolutely free. And a big thanks to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Good stuff. Yeah, man. I tell you what, we just spun up a new one here

for a little secret project we're working on in the Skunk Works Laboratory over at jupiterbroadcasting.com. Alright, I got one more kind of follow-up email from JZ, a longtime viewer of the Linux Action Show. He writes in on encapsulating Linux applications. We've been talking about containerizing applications on the Linux desktop. Guadex next week, that's the GNOME Developer Conference.

That's going to be a huge topic there. Maybe the main topic. I don't know, I'm just guessing. But it's going to be big. So JZ writes in and says, Hey, I wondered why you haven't talked much about Linux portable apps. It's really great for users that don't deal with dependencies on different distros and such. Even the portable Linux games is awesome since games are nonstandard on Linux installs. And he links us to PortableLinuxGames.org.

He says, let me know what you think and check it out. Have you seen this, Matt? No. No, I haven't. You're probably familiar with the whole portable apps concept on Windows. Have you seen the portable Linux app? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's really kind of cool. I'll tell you a little bit. It's based around this technology called App Image Kit. And App Image Kit is a format that lets you... If you're watching the video version here, I've brought up a little bit of a diagram,

and you can see it's essentially a self-contained image file. You've got an executable in there that could be 32-bit or 64-bit, and then you've got a directory structure that sort of replicates slash user, slash bin, slash lib, and slash share. So everything lives in this single image kit file, and then you can move this around, and it can link to libraries outside the image kit file, or you can have everything statically

linked self-contained in there. I basically got it right, yeah? That's it. And so the portable Linux games site has taken this technology and applied it to video games. And essentially, some of these are just a simple download and run. Some of them are a quick download. You run the shell script or the Perl script and then you have a completely containerized application that you can put on

pretty much any Linux box and just distribute as an HTTP download. It's pretty cool. Interesting. Yeah, and I think it's something I want to play a little bit with. I've heard of it, never used it. I don't know if it works out of the box on Arch or what. Right. So I'm going to give it a shot.

I don't know if this is in here to say, but I think that's how the PBI system that the new version is going to work is kind of the same idea. The app is in this virtual file system and self-contained, so you can just move it around. And I don't want to be the guy to say it,

but I think this is how the Mac does it too. Oh, really? I think it is. I think that's what it is. We've done it at least a couple of times before. So how does this compare to, say, the old Click project? I mean, it seems like there's a little bit of a correlation there. Yeah, I'm not sure how they distributed it on how they did the libraries and things like that.

I don't know if there's a correlation there or if it's more just similar in functionality and concept. And Popey's not here to talk about it. Oh, that Popey. Go figure, right? He's probably doing something Ubuntu-ish. You can find the- Chasing a chicken. Yeah, chasing a chicken.

Yes, Popey chasing a chicken is a thing. The App Image Kit is up on GitHub, and they're working on it, and the Linux Portable Game guys are working with them, too. Oh, hi there. Hey, Chrome. How you doing? And they've got a lot of good games from Quake. Look at all this stuff. They just

have a crap ton, you guys. Star Conflict's up there, too. Wow. Z NES, the emulator is up there. Zero AD is on the site. Look at all this stuff. Abuse, Pioneer, Flare. I got to check this out. I think I'm going to try this maybe on my train ride. Yeah. Why not, right? As long as that Wi-Fi connection's working. Just do a little download. I'd be really curious to see if it just works. And I guess it's supposed to support

64-bit or 32-bit. So JZA sent that in. So just for some of the details, the app image, this is something that's already out there. That's why I find this fascinating since this is becoming such a big topic. The app image is an ISO 9660 file. The contents of the file can be compressed with ZF, so you

can even make it smaller, and the standard supports that. The app contains one desktop file per the free desktop.org spec, so any desktop that implements that.desktop file, which is all of them, will be able to read the file and just add a menu entry to your desktop, to KDE or GNOME. So it even works in with your integrated desktop menu system. Now, do you think this could, on a larger scale, become a way to bring a unified installer to Linux? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think it is, actually. I think it's offering that today. I think that's exactly what it's offering today.

It's just not widespread. Do you think it'll become, I guess, culturally accepted? No. No, I think this is one of those things where something this scale, it almost has to come from somebody with the appropriate weight to move it. Oh, you know what I mean? I'm kind of saying I'm kind of saying Red Hat. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. Or canonical. Well, you don't think so?

No, I think. I think. No, no, I think Red Hat. Yeah. I mean, come on, Sousa. No, I think Red Hat. Yeah, I mean, come on, SUSE. No, I'm serious. Like, I mean, you guys know, I mean, just for the record, we know people. We like people who work for SUSE.

I used to deploy SUSE Enterprise Linux as part of my job. I thought it was the best Enterprise Linux. And I wore a SUSE hat. I mean, how is SUSE staying relevant these days? I love what they're working on, too, which is the shame of it. I love the evergreen concept they have. I love the build service, all of that, the studio. So what do you go to when you want a desktop environment that's commercially supported?

CentOS? I don't know. Well, yeah, but that's not – I mean, that's – You can buy support for it, though. Yeah, but it's meant more towards servers, though, right? I mean, you're not going to have somebody do that. Realistically, Chrome OS. Yeah. Yeah, it, though. Yeah, but it's meant more towards servers, though, right? I mean, you're not going to have somebody do that. Realistically, Chrome OS. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. I mean, that's what's unfortunate, right, is now that CentOS is a legitimate red hat project, and then you have Ubuntu, who's rocking it on the cloud space, too, that market's really getting tied up, right? I think in the back end, yes, but I don't see too many people sitting down at their workstations and using CentOS to, you know. Right. Yeah. I don't think there's, I don't think people are really competing right there right now.

I mean, I think the only person really competing there is Google. Sure. I mean, and Canonical, sure. I mean, you're seeing a lot of LTS deployments there. But I think that's despite their efforts. I don't know. I don't mean to dog on OpenSUSE, but it's just actually something

I've been thinking a lot about off-airs. Where do they really fit in in the political structure now for Linux? And when you think about moving something like this AppImageKit format forward, okay, this isn't as big, but it's almost as big as like SystemD, almost. Could you picture SystemD succeeding

if it was an OpenSUSE effort or a SUSE effort? No. Could you see it succeeding if it was anybody but Red Hat? No, but I say that primarily based on the fact that Upstart was so heavily backed by Canonical, and Canonical had so much driving force behind it, behind Upstart already. So you have to come to the table with something that offers a lot more and be backed by someone that's as big or bigger, right? Yeah, Riley makes a good point.

Go ahead, Riley. Yeah, I mean, SUSE is pretty good, but there's still that Microsoft tie, you know, and it's still RPM. Yeah, well, no, I think it's a really well-engineered, high-quality distribution. I think it may be sometimes people find the package management with Zipper and stuff is a little foreign still. It's maybe not quite as tight as they want. And you tied in.

As far as a nice GNOME or a nice KDE implementation goes, OpenSUSE 13.1 is great. Yeah, really good. I thought the point of SUSE was basically to be the alternative to Red Hat for enterprises, but I don't know if anybody really wants an alternative. Well, I think it's if anybody really wants an alternative. Well, I think it's Ubuntu LTS, unfortunately. Yeah, it really is. You've got existing market momentum that still sells. Maybe not so much on a server. I guess Ubuntu works on servers, doesn't it?

I think they've pretty handsomely surpassed SUSE's installation base. Google? Yeah, they have a specific download for installing on servers. Right, I've seen that. And on EC2, Ubuntu's got used. Yeah, I guess. When Google went to dump a lot of for installing on servers. Right, I've seen that. And on EC2, Ubuntu's huge too.

When Google went to dump a lot of their Red Hat servers, they went to Ubuntu. So, what does that tell you? Debian. Actually, and wasn't it just, was it just Spotify who just publicly announced they're switching from Debian to Ubuntu? Yeah. That's right. And the reason is, is because

they just get a slightly better mixture of packages, and they like the LTS schedule that they can set their IT clock to. And I want to make sure I'm being clear. I'm not dogging on the quality of SUSE, the people who work on SUSE, or what SUSE does. I think YAST is great. I think it's still one of the most well-thought-out distributions from top to bottom. It has saved my ass several times. They have, like, recovery modes you can go into that literally got us back up and working. I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying

the market seems to be deciding these things despite their best intentions and efforts. And so when I look at this app image kit, it feels like, you know, Red Hat and Fedora and Ubuntu would all and Debian really together would all have to get behind it to really make it work. But it has to start with somebody that has the ability to push it. It can't just, you know what I mean? Like eventually there has to be an entire consensus like we saw with SystemD eventually. And it was awful and embarrassing, but we got there. We're still kind of not there, but we got there.

Same thing would have to happen with this, right? And it has to be started off by somebody who can just, you know, champion. I mean, would SystemD have been successful if it wasn't for Lenart out there taking on every criticism or responding with massively detailed technical explanations explaining why things are the way they are? Lenart was the person who you could probably attribute a lot of publicly pushing SystemD through. Who's going to do this for the standard? Right. But if you have the GNOME group working on desktop containerization, you get some of those same people now that are going to be pushing that standard.

Right. And that might have the momentum. All you need is just a couple distributions to latch on so that it becomes you're the ugly red stepchild. Yeah. If you don't follow that standard. Right. And once you can establish that, then everything else follows.

Once you're odd man out, it's actually harder to work on your system because you don't do something. Even if Ubuntu and Red Hat, you know, you get like two or three of them that had a standardized package installer, I think everything else would follow. Yeah.

And maybe not everything. I mean, you're always going to have, like you Arch people. Or Slack. Yeah. Or something like that. Yeah.

I'm sorry, Fedora guy. I couldn't hear you over the sound of your Fedora still installing. All right. Well, I wanted to move us to something kind of cool that we have coming up. Get your nostalgia hats on, everybody.

We're going to go back in time here in a few minutes. Q5Sys has been working on a wayback machine for the Linux Unplugged show. Some of us have been running Linux for a long time. Some of us are new, but I think it's always good to go back and see where we come from. Before we do that, I want to thank this week's

sponsor, Ting. Go over to linux.ting.com. Why? Because it's got linux in the URL. Seriously. linux.ting.com. That also lets them know you appreciate them sponsoring Linux on Plug Show, but it lets you check out Ting. What is Ting? Ting is mobile that makes sense. My mobile service provider and Matt's mobile service provider. In fact,

well over a year now, and Ting rocks because it's only a flat $6 per month and just your usage on top of that, no contract, no early termination fee. And I got to tell you, that's very handy as I'm going out on a trip. I don't have to worry about any of that stuff. Yeah, I'm going to be using my phone a lot more. I'll just pay for what I use. Easy peasy. No problemo. If I get to a spot where I need hotspot or tethering, I just check the box in the OS. I don't have to be part of some sort of mobile family share program. I don't have to pay some certain amount of data just in case I use a gigabyte. I just pay for what I use, and I use the features built into the operating system.

You want to use Ting as a mobile ISP? Do it. They like it. They don't care. They like it. Plus, they've got no-hold customer service. You call them at 1-855-TING-FTW anytime between 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. Boom!

A real person answers the phone. I know. It's crazy. Your mobile phone operator boom! A real person answers the phone. I know. It's crazy. Your mobile phone operator can actually help you because they've empowered their support staff. What a concept. Plus, they have an incredible dashboard. Go over to linux.ting.com. Don't go to last.ting.com, Noah.

Except on Sundays. Well, that's true. That's true. Yeah, on Sundays. Except on Sundays. You know when the last time I went to linux.ting.com was? 30 seconds ago? Well, no. Oh. But right before I left to linux.ting.com was? 30 seconds ago? Well, no.

But right before I left, I had this problem. My wife helps me answer the phone for our company. Oh, great. Yeah, well, she's with me. So it's going to be hard to answer the phone, right? Yeah. So I hired a girl that was going to answer the phone at the times that she wasn't going to be available. Well, now she has to have a phone.

Right. But I can't give her a cell phone because I don't have an extra $200 to spend on a cell phone. Right. And then I'd have nothing to do with it afterwards. Right. So they have this Home Connect thing that I bought for like $30 off of eBay. Yep. And with the BYOD, I bring it over, I activate it, I plug a phone in, and now she's got a phone in her apartment and a laptop.

$6 a month. That's right. Easy peasy. Yeah. And you can go in the dashboard, you can set alerts. Yeah. We've hired a part-time nanny, which turned out to be even cheaper than daycare, which is great. But her phone service is super spotty. Well, she's got our kids sometimes. So we want to really make sure that we can always send her a message, always get

her on the phone. So we're just going to get her a great device from Ting because then it's only $6 a month and it's just going to be super cheap for text messaging. There's all kinds of opportunities and possibilities. Go to linux.ting.com. That'll take $25 off your first device. If you've got a device compatible with the Ting network, they'll give you a $25 credit. If you're like me, that lasted more than my first month of service. I'll tell you what,

the first time I ever had a total free month of cell phone service, that was a special moment in my life. I will never forget that. Linux.ting.com. Go get a special moment in your life and see why I switched to Ting. They've also got early termination relief programs. If you're stuck in one of those contracts, linux.ting.com, go get a special moment in your life and see why I switched to Ting. They've also got early termination relief programs if you're stuck in one of those contracts.

Linux.ting.com, and a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Okay, let's go back in time five years ago, July 2009. That's not too long, but it's a long time in computer history, right? Especially in internet time. Here's a couple of things that happened in the Linux world. And then you guys jump in at any point if there's anything you want to nostalgitize about. But let's talk about probably the one that just is most relevant to the conversation we were just having. In July 2009, Google officially announced Google Chrome OS. They say, we've designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web, searching information, checking email,

catching up on the news and shopping, or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating system the browser's on, the people browse on, were not designed in an era where there was a web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome, the

Google Chrome operating system, in our attempt to the Google Chrome operating system, in our attempt to rethink what an operating system should be. So there you go. Five years ago, Google Chrome was born this month. Do you feel it? Does it feel like it was five years ago to you? You know, I seem to remember all the going back and forth about how it's,

oh, well, it's never going to happen, or, you know, Google's never going to actually do this sort of thing. Then it happened, and everybody seemed to be almost in denial about it. There was a lot of rumors for a long time. They were like, well, it's not going to last. you know the google's never going to actually do this sort of thing then it happened and everybody seemed to be almost in denial about it there was a lot of rumors well it's not going to last microsoft will squish them you know no big deal five years ago i don't think living in the cloud was as feasible as it is today right it did seem more crazy didn't it yeah i was just starting a university at the time and then when they announced Chrome OS to actually be, or Chrome, to be released, I predicted they would make a friggin' operating system based on Chrome. And that was

right when they released Chrome when I first started university. So when they started Chrome OS, I was like, yes, now I don't have to build this damn thing on my own. They're gonna build it for me. Yeah, it was like GooBuntu. Like, a lot of people thought there'd be GooLinux. Like, they thought they were gonna do something. I was going to call it for me. Yeah, it was like Goo Buntu. Like a lot of people thought there'd be Goo Linux. Like they thought they were going to do something. I was going to call it Talks Prox.

I will admit. That was the distro's name. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure I was a naysayer about it. Because I just thought this was a dumb idea. Well, to me it seemed like netbooks reheated. I still think it's a dumb idea. But I think it's a dumb idea because I can't. I bought a Pixel.

I bought the nicest Chromebook money can buy, right? Yeah, you did. And I left Chrome on there for almost 30 seconds. I tried really hard. But it just doesn't work. I can't live. I'm a traditional keyboard, mouse. Right.

Yeah. Do you ever just use Chrome OS? Do you have it on there? Do you ever go back? Literally the first 30 seconds, I tried it just to see what it was like. And then I went, oh, I plugged in my thumb drive where I have all my files. But they're encrypted with Lux. So I couldn't get to them.

And that was the end of Chrome OS. You know, that's so funny you say that. Because my experience with my C720 was I basically gave it about a minute 30. And at the end of that, I was like, okay, well, I can't get to this. I can't get to that. All right, time for Arch. And that was it. And I kind of regret it a little bit because I feel like maybe I should have given it a go.

Because now that was over a year ago. Now here we are and now I'm going between the studio and the house all the time. And there are more days than not that I just don't bring a computer with me when I move between places and I just have everything synchronized between the two locations. And I sit down here at a computer and I sit down there at a computer at the house and everything's there and some of that is because of google docs and google chrome sync and stuff right but the problem is you're going to have to make significant compromises in the fort fisher project to be able to make that happen right that's why i got yeah i know that's why the good part the good opportunity or advantage of chrome os is that you cannot have to worry about getting binary updates from whoever gives you your updates. You can patch or check the source code or the freaking code and fix the problem yourself on the Chromebook if you really want to

instead of needing binary packages all the time. Riley, do you think this last five years has been a hit to privacy? No, I was just making a joke. It's definitely been a hit to privacy. I don't think it's actually a joke. I would say this last five years has been I think unequivocally privacy out of all things has suffered the most in the last

five years. So but you have to you have to prioritize though right like if our goal as Linux users is to switch as many people as we can to Linux the fact that Chrome runs in Linux and now everyone's going to because let's face it we're only moving more and more towards browser based applications. The fact that Google Docs

works as absolutely as well as it does under Windows or Mac is a huge win for Linux. And I had to ask myself a couple months ago when Matt, back in the predictions, Matt made the prediction that Chrome OS would be the new face of Linux, right? And my, I had to sit down and ask myself, am I okay with that? Would I be

okay if when everyone thought of Linux they thought of Chrome OS? And I'm okay with that? Would I be okay if when everyone thought of Linux, they thought of Chrome OS? And I'm okay with that up to the extent that things start happening for Chrome OS that don't translate to Linux. Insert Netflix, right? Like, why does Netflix work in Chrome when it's on a Chrome OS?

But if I install Chrome on my Linux book, then it doesn't work. And so if that becomes more prolific, then we have a problem. Then we're right back to where we started. Well, and you are starting to see that because now you're going to have things like Evernote run under Chrome OS, but there's

no Evernote for Linux. See, that's bad. That's really bad. That's actually worse than we were before. Because everyone hated Microsoft Windows. I don't think everyone's going to hate Chrome because it won't hang up all the time. And it doesn't cost as much as Windows. Well, now, I mean, if it's in Chrome, theoretically, anything they add to Chrome

OS, if it's actually in the Chrome browser, could come to regular Linux eventually. Right. Well, to kind of update the whole prediction thing here today, and I forget exactly where I saw it, but basically there's a news article talking about how it's actually up 250% as far as how they're selling. And then the same comparable notebooks for Microsoft are just at a standstill. Yeah. So, you know, the market's speaking loud and clear. Microsoft says they're going to have a $99 Windows competitor by holidays.

They have to. Look at what the majority of home users are doing. They go on Facebook. They write letters. They check email. They go on Spotify. And so if those are the things that you're doing, you can do that in a Chromebook. So why would you spend more than $200?

I say Microsoft should bring it because think about you know what, those are all going to become cheap Linux boxes. Most of them are going to eventually become Linux boxes. Make a $99 laptop. I'll run Linux on that. It won't take that long. So I'll have to have to see on there or something. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I would do.

Thanks for the nice hardware, Microsoft. Yeah, thanks for the nice hardware. Let me just put Linux on that. Also in July, OpenSUSE 11.2 got firmed up. Sabian 4.2, rocking it five years ago. In fact, there was a review of it. People thought it was maybe one of the best GNOME desktops if you wanted Compiz Fusion. And you didn't want to use a but to.

Yeah, CrunchBang version 9.4 came out. Let's go take a look. Q5 got us a little time machine link here. Let's go see what CrunchBang was doing five years ago. Much improved boot... Oh, yeah, boot time. Everybody was talking about boot time five years ago. Every distro was talking about boot time.

That's when we were seeing Upstart make its way throughout Linux. This transition over to transmission, Openbox and GTK themes are now installed. You know, basic stuff. It's curious to me to see which distros we're still releasing back. Oh, there's one thing you can't forget, though. It's libjpgturbo.

Right, got to have libjpgturbo in there. Hey. Did you see Mozilla just announced their version of jpgturbo that makes smaller jpegs? Yes, yes. And there was an article at Top of Tech Meme today about WebP from Google about why they want WebP to take off. Come on, everybody.

Hey, Alan, you'll like this one. Five years ago, 2009, PCBSD 7.1.1 was released. This version was a maintenance release that they said this is the Galileo version of PCBSD is the most stable release yet, is what they said. It was.

7.1. 10.1 is going to be amazeballs, though. Oh, yeah? Gets its own DE, doesn't it? Is that when the new desktop comes out? You can use the new desktop on 10.0.1 as a beta, but I doubt it'll be ready in time. 10.1 is like three months away at most. Oh, man.

It'll come out probably around the end of October, beginning of November. I'm pretty interested to see what they do with that. It's all QT-based. You talked to... Go ahead. Pretty much, from what I've heard about it, it's pretty much kind of like what LXQT is, right? I think it's a little fancier. I think it's a little smoother.

Q5Sys was talking about it when he went to Self, and he said that it looks amazing. The guy that wrote it. Yeah, he talked to Chris's brother who's working on it, and it's all QT-based. Sounds, from what I've heard, and I don't know, I think I might have saw a little tease of it, it looked pretty impressive.

Like way more polished than I was expecting for something this early on. Imagine PCBSD. Man, it lands with ZFS out of the box. This brand new QT desktop is pretty nice, right? Like PBI system. Starting to get pretty serious. You won't really need the PBIs unless you specifically want portable apps because the package manager in FreeBSD has gotten so awesome now that you just use it. Well, there you go.

That's why PBIs have been reformatted to be more like the Apple DMGs because the need for them has basically been supplanted by the awesome work. Now, you know what Chris needs to do, Chris Moore? He needs to mail Gabe at Valve a PCBSD rig with a nice video card in it so we can get native Steam. We're working with the 64-bit Linuxulator to be able to just run the Linux version of Steam. Oh, there you go. Because we already have better than Linux and video drivers. Oh, snaps. Here we go.

So speaking of snaps, do you guys remember one of the early canonical controversies before the dashboard, before Unity, before buttons got moved to the left? Do you remember what we used to always get on canonical sack about? Do you remember what the big controversy was? What? Fucking Brown. Oh, the Brown. Yeah, that's true. That is one of them.

What can Brown do for you? No, but no actual controversial like canonical hates freedom because of they're doing this. It was a big upset. Anybody? VK1? I'll give you a hint. It's something that the Canonical project uses that no other open source project used at the time, but now it's a little more popular. Oh.

VK1? What is it? I don't want to say Launchpad. No, you're close, though. It's not Launchpad. It's, yeah, Landscape. Landscape. Yeah, Landscape was the big upset. Well, five years ago, though. Landscape. Yeah, Landscape. Landscape. Yeah, Landscape was the big upset.

Well, five years ago. What's Landscape? It's sort of like it's a bug tracker. It's a forum. It's an issue. It's all of this stuff in one. You know, like, go here. Here's the public.

It's sort of like everything. Hosting all of it. Do you know what's much better than all of that that we're moving towards? What, Alan? Fabricator. I like the name, at least. It actually came out of Facebook, but the guy that created it at Facebook spun it off in its own company.

We're still using, we just moved to Bugzilla, so we're not going to adopt it, but it's a code review tool that also has Bug Tracker and a wiki and community and all this cool stuff. But just the way it handles code review and stuff makes it very, very valuable for any open source project. Fabricator. So they actually open sourced the code five years ago.

They were under a free software. Actually, let's go look at that announcement. Q5 is, by the way, a lot of the stuff we're talking about, Mr. Sis has linked us up in the show notes. So I was trying to remember. I don't think they did GPL, though. So it was still kind of an upset. Ah, this article doesn't say what the license was.

That's too bad. That's too bad. It links to something else. But I do remember that being a big moment. moving on you ready for this one amazon fails in its irony detection i thought this was interesting as linux users and pulls george orwell's 1984 directly out of kindle ebooks that readers already had purchased you remember when they did this i wasn't a kindle actually I'm still not a Kindle user, really. But it was a big controversy. Yeah.

Well, it was the publisher that made them do it for a reason, wasn't it? I forget. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they were getting sued. But yes, it kind of showed that you could buy something and then have it unbought. Well, and the thing was, in the Linux community back then, we were really grappling with DRM.

What did all this DRM mean for Linux users? Should we as Linux users reject all things DRM? And this was sort of the key thing that all of the anti-DRM group, which obviously it doesn't take much to be anti-DRM, that that group would say, look, this is the perfect

example of why DRM is a bad thing. And the Free Software Foundation jumped on it. And then you started to hear the swindle. That's where swindle came from, was after this. That's where they coined the swindle term. It was huge. We talked about it on the Linux Action Show, even though it's not particularly Linux-related, because Linux users were so impacted by it,

which I thought was... I don't know. Yeah, I remember that, and I remember going, eh, and I went back to reading my Kindle. I was just kind of like, yeah, well, you know, that sucks. But, I mean, it didn't affect me personally. And I'm really selfish that way. I don't know why.

But it's like, wow, it's not affecting me directly. I just don't care. I'm not really – I'm not feeling the pain point that the other folks are feeling, I guess. Well, and also, you know, you and I come down to it now because the debate has been sort of reignited with Steam games having DRM in them. Well, and Netflix. If you want Netflix, it's going to be html5 with drm right right and to me all of these things they they fall into a category of like casual entertainment like as much as like the same category that going to a movie falls into i don't get all worked up that i only go to see a movie once but i still end up paying like $30 when I go to the theater. To me, it is, you know, if you want to— Well, if you try to bring a backpack and they search you, you might feel differently because they want to make sure that you don't record it.

Listen, the monkey wants to punch a button and have his entertainment. And if they want to charge me a certain amount that is fair, then the monkey will pay that amount. And if the monkey's entertainment is wrapped up in a controlling scheme, it doesn't really matter because, to be honest with you, the monkey has a short attention span, and he's going to move on to something else anyways. And just because the monkey has a predilection to collect everything and hoard everything like some sort of squirrel preparing for the winter, it doesn't necessarily actually mean that is a thing you should be doing,

and perhaps maybe not having so much digital clutter is actually a good thing. That's what the monkey thinks, at least. Here's the other thing, too. So your end goal, or the end thing too. Your end goal or the end idea would be that we'd all be able to use games on any platform we wanted and they would all be... For years. Steam could shut down 10 years from now. And they would all be DRM free. But the reality

is in order to get there we have to take small bites, small steps. And the first step is to be able to actually run the games on Linux. After we have all the software working and Linux becomes a usable platform for the majority of people, then we can worry about finding better solutions

that are more free. But at this point, I feel like the fact that Steam's on Linux at all, let's stop there and celebrate that for a year or two

before we start complaining. Yeah, I think, you know, we're talking about five years ago. You go back five years, nobody would have believed

where we're at with gaming now. Nobody. It's unbelievable where we're at now. I mean, just the fact we're talking about X-Plane. I'm playing freaking X-Plane, and it's awesome.

I think X-Plane, I could be wrong on this, but I think X-Plane actually had stronger Linux support because the flight schools all run Linux. No, I know, but I'm just saying, like, there's this quality of games now on Linux. Five years ago, it just blew my mind that we have these now. I remember, like, when y'all were making fun of Pharonix for always recording on Steam

coming to Linux. This will never happen. Are you kidding me? Actually, I think I actually kind of gave him a little... I was coming down on the bit of I might believe it. I was starting after a while. There's a saying in the news business where there's enough smoke, there's probably a fire. And it started to see there was a lot of smoke.

I think I've heard something though. Pharonix would report something, but nobody would believe it. Well, yeah, because they a lot of stuff. I think I've heard something, though. Like, Foronix would, like, report something, but, like, nobody would believe it. Well, yeah, because they were pulling what he was doing early on, where Michael got onto it early on. This was probably about two, three years ago, was he was finding, like, screenshots or something in the Windows binary or something. Like, he was taking stuff apart, or, like, the installer, and finding references to Linux. That's how it started. And everybody was, like, they just explained it away as, oh, that was just for some testing

stuff, blah, blah, blah. Don't pay any attention to that. Valve doesn't even have a Linux developer on staff. That's what everybody was saying. They don't even have any developers in staff. Well, it turns out. Well, that's what they got. They hired all the developers.

Sorry, go on. No, you go. You go. i'm sure sorry go on no you go you go i was just gonna say i'm sure there was a period where michael was saying that he was going into valve's offices and talking to them about it but that he wasn't allowed to relay exactly what he was talking about you know uh to anyone but just simply going it is happening i promise you i've gone in and seen it but i can't show you any kind of real proof or anything like that. Right, yeah, that's always people, you know.

Then that depends on your reputation, and everybody has a different interpretation of that. Hey, so we're working on more retro lookbacks. We're just getting started. This is just a new concept we came up with. Episode 50. Let's celebrate our 50th episode by doing just a little lookback

over the history of Linux, and we want to do one next month too so if something happened a few years ago in August that you think was a sentimental moment or maybe even not just something that's fun to talk about in the Linux space email us go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com click the contact link and send it in to Linux Unplugged

you might see it in next month's retro look back we're going to try to do this from time to time if you guys like it so you got to let us know because you're the boss. Hey, before we get to the end of the show, and I've got a little question and maybe a problem the audience can help me solve. I know our audience. I know somebody out there is a Thunderbird user who is empowered to solve my problem. And it's a big problem.

What's the problem? Well, I'm going to tell you after the ad spot. Because first I'm going to talk about Linux Academy. Another problem that Linux Academy solves. Are you busy? Are you a busy person like me? And are you sometimes wondering if you're in the right groove? Are you working on the right product? Are you doing the right type of technology?

Should you get into web services? Should you get into OpenStack or virtualization? Do you want to just kind of see how other distributions work? Or do you want to take your skills to the next level? Well, then go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. That'll get you the Summer of Learning discount. This is a great opportunity to take your skills to the next level and make you more employable. Make that next review have an extra checkmark that said you accomplished this thing.

Or give yourself the opportunity to expand your skills. Like, take Noah here. He's a Red Hat guy. But let's say he got thrusted into the Ubuntu world. Well, one of the great things about LinuxAcademy.com is you have seven plus Linux distributions to choose from. Whichever distribution you choose, the courseware automatically

adjusts to that distribution. They have comprehensive study guides that you can download, MP3s, video. They have self-paced courses. You see exactly where you're at. So if you work for maybe a half hour, you log off for the night. You come back a couple of days later. You can resume right where you're at. You see your percentage.

If you feel like you need to double-check yourself, they have self-testing, a community that will keep you motivated and on the right track. And if you go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, you'll get that 33% discount. That's $50 a quarter. And they're adding new stuff every single week, new AWS courses. If you've got an AWS gig coming up, go do a scenario-based lesson on it. Learn by actually deploying a web-based AWS application. And on the back end, they'll spin up the virtual machines for you. Now, here's a question. Do they have instructors

that you can ask questions? Oh, yeah. They've got a full crew, and they've also started recently doing live sessions. So you can go there and ask questions and interact with them, and then they'll make the video available if you weren't able to attend the live session later on. So it's a really cool back and forth, and interact with them. And then they'll make the video available if you weren't able to attend the live session later on. So it's a really cool like back and forth. And it gives you an opportunity to ask because they're real, you know, they're educators. When I first started doing professional training, one of the things that really bothered me was I had to block off an entire week of work to go do this.

And then the other thing was, too, is because you were in a classroom full of other students, you would ask the instructor a question and he would tell you, you know, go grow up a man page. That's not really helpful. No, it's not, is it? No, it's really not. The fact that I can do that at home and send an email in and then get a response and then read that when I have time and move on, that's appealing.

One of the things I've found that I've really liked with my subscription is I hear about something new and it's like, well, why don't I just go jump in for a half hour and see how much of this technology I grok and see if I have an innate talent for it. And it's really cool because I don't have to spend the time of setting up the VM, loading the software stack and all that. It's like when I just go through the course material, I get the fundamentals. And when it comes to that spot, they manage that part for me. And what's awesome is if that's on AWS, they're covering all the cost of that too. So I'm not

paying out of pocket while I'm learning AWS. I just go right over to linuxacademy.com slash dump plug, get the Summer of Learning discount. This is a great sponsor for our network, and I'd love to have you guys support them because they're an independent team who have built this system from scratch, and we're an independent team who have built our system from scratch. And it's really cool for us to be able to connect together and work together in a common area like this.

linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Well, Noah, you're here. I am. and work together in a common area like this. LinuxAcademy.com slash unblogged. Well, Noah, you're here. I am. And you sent in that awesome Runs Linux from the radio station. I'm glad you enjoyed it. You set the benchmark, man. You set the benchmark. You know, I've been making a call to have people send in their Runs Linux,

like a YouTube. You did it perfect. You took the YouTube. You took a video. You uploaded it to YouTube, sent in the link. Or you submitted it to the subreddit? I did, yeah. Even better, because then I'm more likely to see it than email.

Yeah. And that worked really well. Honestly, I've given up with you and email. I know, sorry. Like completely, totally. That's all right. You've got other methods. I remember getting Facebook messages. They're like, hey, Chris, get that message? I'm trying to help.

I'll check, and I'll contact Chris, and he'll be like, no, I'm good there. I'm trying to help after all. Yeah, it's funny. I don't know. I think I mentioned in the show, but did you edit that on your Pixel? No. Okay. I have a production rig.

On Ubuntu, though. Yep, 12.4. So you do use Ubuntu. Son of a gun. Yeah, I think I had Ubuntu on the Pixel, right? No, but everything from start to finish was done on Linux. Yeah, it runs on the Pixel, right? No, but everything from start to finish was done on Linux.

Even the Glass that everyone likes so much, even that at its core is technically running Linux. That's true. That's true. Very nice. How is it working with Lightworks? I know you've been doing it more and more. Yeah, we actually switched. So we do professional video editing, and we actually just switched. Well, actually a couple months ago, but we switched to all Lightworks based and on Linux.

So, yeah. There's no longer any proprietary operating systems running. They call it open source, but it's really not. Lightworks is, yeah. It's a very liberal definition. But you get to use it on top of Linux, which is the key thing. Yeah, which is what I care about, right. Yeah, I've got Lightworks installed here on the Bonobo, and I've been doing a couple of custom projects here and there on it,

but I just haven't gotten enough time in it. It's a pretty big change-up from what I'm used used to did you come from a previous editor i did i so when i went when i went to school for for uh for broadcasting we used obviously final cut yeah and then when i was done i spent half my time in adobe premiere and half my time in sony vegas and between the two i didn't really have a huge preference and when i went to lightworks it like i i swear some developer at edit share sat down where they're, what is the most confusing way we could lay out a GUI for people to use? And then they made it a little more complicated and then that's what they went with. Because it doesn't work like any other NLE out there.

No. But once you get in the way of Lightworks editing, I wouldn't go back. Really? Absolutely. Oh, that gives me some encouragement. I look at it almost like an operating system. What's neat is because it takes over your screen, it doesn't matter if you're using it on Windows, Mac, or Linux,

everything is the same. I do dig that. The thing is, for me, it's so different, and I don't necessarily think it's different in a good way. So it's hard for me to switch. It was one of those things, too. I walked away from the computer two or three times, and I went, that's it, I'm done, never going back.

I'm not using this. Really? Yeah. It took a while. Oh, man, yeah. I'm a little conflicted, but I'm going to, what I figure is I'll just keep working on like little projects that I just don't like. It's not critical that if things go wrong and that's fine and I'll just keep poking away at it over time and we'll see. I'll give you guys a report. Maybe I'll do a review soon. Hey, before we wrap, I wanted to ask and I'll ask the mumble room in the post show, but I wanted to ask you out there in the audience, what are your tricks to work with Thunderbird?

Because, you know, I am serious about this fortress, Chris, and I think one of the things is when I move off of Google Apps for Jupyter Broadcasting, I'm probably going to be using Thunderbird primarily. The other reason I want to use Thunderbird is I really dig the GPG encryption plug-in tools, and I want to get more into that too. And so the two go hand in hand. But there's a few things I have that bother me about Thunderbird. And you got to keep in mind, I'm trying to use it at a scale where maybe each inbox is getting 50 to 120 emails a day

and maybe there's four or five inboxes. So it's at a scale where you need to build a process. So my question for the audience is what extensions, what tips and tricks do you have, themes, anything, to make Thunderbird rock? And I know some of you are going to be like, Thunderbird rock? That doesn't even make any sense.

But if you're using it, you know what I mean. What do you do to make it rock? Do you use Thunderbird for anything? Oh, yeah. That's my email. I'll tell you the main bugaboo, and I'll ask the Mumble post show. I'll tell you the main bugaboo, and I'll ask the Mumble post show, but the main bugaboo for me, this is huge, dude, for me, is in Gmail and Outlook, you get in the actual message list. I'm not talking the preview box. I'm talking in the message list.

You get like a one or three line preview of the email. Sure. The reason why that's critical is because you can get a quick sense of what the email might be about without clicking it and thus marking it red because, of course, my system is if it's red, it's processed. If it's unread, it's not processed. So if I click something just to get a sense of what it's about and I don't want to respond to it that moment, I will never go back to it again because it's now marked red. I swear there used to be a way in Thunderbird to get that preview. I swear.

So I just want to get tips and tricks, and I might do like a little collection on the Linux Action Show of things I did to make Thunderbird work well for me. Because I'm going back. So SnakeDoc says that Thunderbird's capable of it. I know. I think so too, but I can't figure out how. Well, apparently SnakeDoc does know how.

Well, SnakeDoc's smarter than I am, Noah. Yeah. Maybe he could do a team viewer session and system administrate your computer. That'd be a great idea. What could go wrong with that, right? Hey, so I'm going to be out at OSCON with Noah and Eric, and while

I'm gone Tuesday and Wednesday, I've pre-taped two episodes of Tech Talk today. Tuesday's episode is great. We've got some Tesla security information in there, which is actually Linux related, and some really deep dive into the dirty details of some of the Google quarterly results. But on Wednesday, this is the one

you guys are going to want to tune into. Tech Talk today on Wednesday is a retrospective look back at the birth, the humble beginnings of the Internet. And from ARPANET up to the Proto Podcaster, we take about a 15-year span of the early humble beginnings of the Internet and just go deep dive into that. It turned out to be such a fun episode. That will be out on Wednesday.

I think it's going to be episode 31 of Tech Talk today. So go check that out. I think you guys really like it. It's going to be a good episode. And you can also support the network funding-wise, patreon.com slash today. If you want to help invest in us, we're trying to keep it weird here at Jupiter Broadcasting, and we need the audience's help to do it. We're going off to OSCON and things like that. Your funding makes projects like that possible. Patreon.com slash today. You can find out more information about that. And last but not least, don't forget, we do definitely want your emails.

Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com, click the contact link, and send us in your feedback if you would, so that way we know what you're thinking about, and we can cover it at the beginning of our show. You can also go to linuxactionshow.reddit.com and leave your feedback right there in the feedback thread.

We want to read it. We want to talk feedback thread. We want to read it. We want to talk about it. We want to chew on it, spit it up, gurgitate it, and then put it back into your ear hole. Kind of like a mom to her baby birds, but instead of their mouth, their ear holes. Yeah? It's an interesting analogy.

Yeah. Yeah. I actually have a visual I can't shake now. All right. Well, Noah, thanks for joining us in studio today. Hey, thanks for having me, Chris. It was great having you here. It's always good to have an in-studio guest. Matt, I'm looking forward to seeing you on Sunday. I'll have OSCON

stories for you, okay? Sweet. Alright, I'll see you then. Alright, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. We'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Bye. I already got a tip from the chat room about the Thunderbird thing, but it didn't work. I went to the message pane and I checked the message pane thing layout. Here, I'll show you. Here's what my Thunderbird inbox looks like right now. So if you're watching this, this is my Thunderbird inbox.

And see what I want is in the list here, in this list, I want each mail item to take up an extra couple of rows and give me inline previews a little bit. That's what I want. I research it. It's not possible right now. Like Gmail does. Gmail does. I swear Thunderbird used to do that, guys.

My Gmail doesn't do that. Sure it does, yeah. Mine doesn't. But what I would say there is a couple things. Do you like the wide view that you're using? I was trying it. Yeah, I bounce around. The wide one is just for people that were coming from Outlook.

Yeah, I just was trying it to see if it turned it on because I know Outlook has that mode. I use the threaded thing instead. Half of my screen is a message preview. I work the same way you do with the marked as read, except for I have my setting is don't mark the email as read until I actually mark it as read. Mark it.

That might be a way to do it, I suppose. There's also an option to just say don't mark it in red unless I've read it for at least 30 seconds or something like that. That's what I do. Yeah, maybe that's why I hate that setting sometimes. I think the default is like four seconds. But sometimes I want to just click it, and I also want to mark it red really,

but I could just do the mark as read button i might try just change it up like that uh what i do is uh and your screen's not so oh we're down oh there he is uh but um on mine in the list of messages there's a little green circle a little green light beside each message and if you just click the light it marks it yeah that's, that's true. Yeah, I can turn that on. You know what I like about you over users that I support is when you say I have problem A, if I go, well, change your workflow to B and then you'll be able to do that. You're not like, well,

that's not what I asked you to fix. I don't mind changing it. Yeah, see, that's really helpful. Yeah, it is. That does count.