LINUX Unplugged - Episode 51: OSCON Behind The Story | LUP 51

Episode Date: July 30, 2014

We’ve got more exclusive interviews from OSCON 2014, and then debate if fragmentation is simply the result of winning. Plus why the Linux community needs a reality check about the popularity of Apple’s MacBook, and how poor the solutions are for MacBook owners who want to run Linux.

All right, well, before we get the show started, there is one topic. I thought this is probably going to be one of the top news stories in the Linux Action Show on Sunday, but maybe we kick it around the virtual lug first. Did you guys see the story that broke this morning that Factory for OpenSUSE is moving to a full-fledged rolling release distro? Yeah. Full-on rolling distro now. What do you guys think? That'd be interesting.

Matt. Matt. I still don't have the AUR down. Matt. Of course, the first person. Says the canonical guy, where in a year you know Ubuntu's going to be doing the same thing. Here's what I wonder. You know how they announced that this next release was going to be a maintenance release

while they worked on the back end stuff? I'm wondering if this was a one-two punch all along. Well, they knew they were going to do this, and so they had a lot of replumbing to do, and so they were working on this. And the way they're going to do this now is it's kind of an interesting system where there's still going to be some automated testing that goes in before it lands, and instead of having to do, like, big

release candidates and stable beta snapshots before a big release, is essentially they're just going to firm this thing up as a release gets closer, and then just carve it off and say, here you go. I can see this replacing Temple. So exactly like we're doing with Ubuntu. is essentially they're just going to firm this thing up as a release gets closer and then just carve it off and say, here you go. I can see this replacing Tumblr. So exactly like we're doing with Ubuntu. Yeah.

Well, only you don't make the rolling version of it like a sanctioned, what would you guys call it, a respin? Yeah, we do on the phone. This is exactly what we do on the phone. Right, right, right. And that will come to the do on the phone. This is exactly what we do on the phone. Right, right, right. Interesting. And that will come to the desktop in the future. So how does it work? So on Ubuntu, there's not, like, on Ubuntu phone,

there's just new builds all the time. There's not, like, this is RC1, RC2. It's like, nope, this is just the latest build. And is every build then QA tested? Yeah, automated testing on desktops and devices in the lab, like physical phones in the lab. Probably much the same way as OpenSUSE were doing it. And then you bless one that passes 100% clear testing.

Well, here's what they said. In the old development model, an army of packagers would shoot new packages and updates to factory, with a relatively small team of factory maintainers taking care of the integration process of all those packages. This took a long time to stabilize and rip for release. In the new rolling release development model, package submissions cannot go to factory directly. First, they have to prove to be functional and trustworthy in a staging project. Staging projects are projects in our open build service, where groups of submissions are collected, reviewed, compiled, and tested with OpenQA.

After the packages survive the staging project, they go directly into factory. So they're using OpenBuildService and OpenQA to bang on it first, and then that system then, I guess, releases it into factory. So when you're doing, on your rolling OpenSUSE release, when you're doing a daily update, you're theoretically pulling down updates that the OpenQA process has already banged on. This, to me, and what's interesting, I don't know if you guys have picked this up, I got a couple links in the show notes, like the Muck and a few other places

are really, really, really pushing that this is a comparison to Arch. They'll say, well, in Arch they do it this way, or in a response to Arch. Do you guys think this is really OpenSUSE trying to respond to Arch? There's no way they can because they still don't have the AUR. No, it's just them responding to the way that application developers are doing this. If you look at the way that Chrome and Firefox are pushing out updates to their applications, to their applications, they have a very rapid release cycle

and you can very quickly get the very latest crack on your machine by subscribing to a particular channel, be it the beta channel or Canary or whatever. And I don't think Arch matters one iota

to OpenSUSE. I don't know. Why don iota to OpenSUSE. Well, I don't know. Because the OpenBuild services supported Arch packaging for a good while now. So they've embraced the Arch community some time ago. And I think Arch has claimed a lot of longer-term Power Linux users now. But I do wonder how many of them are simply there because like Popey says, they want the freshest crack. But if you could give them super fresh crack without some of the arch hassle

or, you know, arch intimidation that some people still see. What's the arch hassle? Well, the setup, right. And not having things pre-configured for you.

So like, that's only once. You only do that once, don't you? Once you've done that, you get the daily crack every day. Well, who you're a winner well you're telling me i know that but i'm just thinking from people outside that maybe you're kind of implying that you have to go through some magical hoops to get to that goal it's only once early on yeah yeah

maybe i should clarify i don't think that open seuss's decision to do this matters one. I don't think Arch was a deciding factor, to be honest. Yeah, probably not. I don't think so. I suspect it was more to do with Fedora spinning off their core and desktop next and all the rest of it initiatives. I mean, kind of like Popey was getting to, too, though. Doesn't this just make more sense from a development standpoint? Shouldn't this be how it's done?

Oh, absolutely. But it's kind of funny because that uh testing spot spot is the new factory the and factory is the new tumbleweed yeah is the way i see it it does seem like i think so and tumbleweed i guess kind of goes into like it's still being used but it's not as directly involved anymore i'm kind of confused on that well greg crow hartman did post something in our kind of a response to it. He, at this point, doesn't know

what's going to happen to Tumbleweed as a result of this, but it's not like a huge thing for him anymore. It kind of sounds like he's just been nursing it along for the last couple of months, he says. Yeah, that's the gist I got from that. If he consolidates them both into one, then less work for everyone and more benefit for everyone else.

Yeah. Also, you know, SUSE has a kick-ass system manager, and also they've got Snap or that better FS snapshot tool built right into the system manager. So they've got a lot of cool stuff, but their PR kind of sucks. And, you know, the other thing that's interesting on the opposite of that, they have the Evergreen, which is essentially their LTS. So now they've got rolling. I guess they've got something in the middle, the other thing that's interesting on the opposite of that, they have the evergreen, which is essentially their LTS. So now they've got rolling. I guess they've got something in the middle, the stable versions that they'll release still, which will have support Windows. And then they've got the evergreen LTS style releases. So now there's a whole gambit there that they're spanning.

I really think this is interesting because we were just talking. What does OpenSUSE really have to offer the Linux community? And I think we're starting to see that come to fruition a little bit. That system manager. They really need to step up the PR, though. You know, get their team going and, like, reporting and shit. If they put the name out of OpenSUSE a little bit more so that we're not just talking about it as if it's some, you know,

loner in the corner. It might actually be good. Here's why. It seems like everybody's always talking about open-source, but nobody actually uses it. Well, I wonder if this isn't sort of a tuck and roll to make them, like, to sort of adapt to the changing way things are done in Linux and say, okay, we want to kind of pivot and become a great distribution for those of you who want to really be working on the edge of open source software. You want a system that's been well engineered and that some real thought has gone into that

has some tools to make your daily Linux driving use a little bit easier, like things like YAST and actual graphical update management utilities. Because let's remember, I mean, yes, we've been talking about Arch, but on Arch, everything's command line. Some people don't like that. That sometimes is enough for some people. They just want a graphical front end to some of these tools. Plus, you've got a big company behind it, which makes some people feel a little bit better. So now you can say, okay, I'm a developer. I'd like to have cutting-edge software, but maybe have it be a little more stable and tested,

assuming that they can keep things fresh and tested. And I want something that's well-designed. And that could be people could be looking around going, well, OpenSUSE could be the way to go. And I think this is why it is more of a response to Fedora than anything else. So then maybe this is really what they're bringing to the table. I think it's a response to the world. Everybody wants stuff faster.

They have to do something to keep their market share up. Yeah. Do you think that maybe the perception about open zoos and its marketing and its message is regional because certainly in europe open zoos is a big big thing everyone knows about open zoos that message gets through quite loud and clear and maybe in other parts of the world even here in seattle they have a office yeah yeah yeah i think it is somewhat regional um but then again i mean what we were talking about in the context of last week is if you wanted not necessarily like in like it's great. You know, OpenSUSE does really obviously has markets.

It does really well. And what we were kind of making the case was is if you were going to sort of introduce a brand new game changing technology to Linux, like SystemD or some standard desktop application container technology across the board or a universal package format, something crazy pie in the sky, right? If you were going to do something like that, could it be the OpenSUSE group that would be able to introduce it and have it take off? And I would argue we've seen some things they've done that are really cool, like OBS or the gallery that you would think that were built for other distributions to take advantage of that are, you know, like they're even paying the bill for it

and still it really hasn't gone outside of their ecosystem. That's where we were talking about relevancy before and I don't know if this changes that position or not. The problem with OpenSUSE is that they have a ton of awesome ideas and they create all these, like the OBS in the studio, all these things are just, like, concept-wise, they're awesome, but they never fully finish them and never polish them.

So there's a ton of breakage with the OBS. I mean, it's so much of a pain to use the OBS. That's why people just ignore it. I wonder if, too, by being rolling and faster and more nimble like this, if they introduce a cool technology that maybe gets faster adoption because people can get their hands on it quicker and start playing with it sooner? Maybe. Also getting packages into the factory is a lot easier as well. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that rocks a beard and knows how to use it.

My name is Chris. My name is Matt. You'll get the beard reference later on. I'm just going to leave that out there. Matt, we've got a big show today because we got back from OSCON and we're like, well, we have a huge Linux action show and we still have more stuff to play. So we have some exclusive interviews from the floor of OSCON coming up as well as our takeaway from the trip. Some interesting trends we observed

and also a plea, if you will. Plus we'll recap the trip itself. And then later on in the show, we got a little stuff that's coming up that we could use the community's input on. So if you are a Crux user or have looked at the Crux distribution, stay tuned towards the end of the show.

We got a special call out for you guys. Matt, big show today. Big show. So let's bring in the Mumble team so that way they can assemble and join us. Mumble Room, prepare your minds for the feedback because last week we dared to boldly venture into productivity land.

I had no idea. You know what people use Linux for? Getting work done, turns out. That's right. Not video games. No. No, not all silly video games. We like to get things done. Yeah, so when we talked on the topic of productivity, we apparently we sparked some feedback. So I'm going to cover

just a couple of them because I don't want to like people who don't care about productivity stuff under Linux, I don't want them to tune out. So we got two. Two I wanted to start with. Our first email this week, it came in in regards to my Thunderbird quest, which I didn't get a great answer. But this one was a really great extension. By the way, I'm looking if you have great extensions to make Thunderbird really rock. I'd love to hear about it.

I got some of the basics. I have one that lets me see the mail agent that people use to send me emails, so I know when they're on Outlook. And I've also got, of course, the GPG encryption for Thunderbird and stuff like that. But Mark wrote in with an interesting one. It's called Conversation Threads, and he says, I highly recommend the Thunderbird Conversations extension. It displays email as a chronological thread rather than a single message,

even if the emails themselves are spread across folders, like between inbox and sent, which is pretty cool, Matt. I seem to remember this. As soon as you said conversation thread, I instantly flashed back to my Thunderbird days. Yes, it is an awesome application. It does not care where the email is. It works great. That's nice. I like that it goes across the inbox there.

I have a link to it in the show notes if you're a Thunderbird user and watching. I actually put this one on there. The one thing that it does that I don't like, and you could probably turn this off, but I haven't looked into it, is it also changes the way Thunderbird displays your email so it looks like Gmail. And the reason I'm using Thunderbird is to get away from the way Gmail displays something. Yeah, there's a little bit of getting used to. If I remember correctly, it does like little mini panes kind of overlapping and you can collapse and expand and whatnot. I was okay with it. Although the benefit

is that you can also use Enigmail for encryption and whatnot that Gmail can't do. So there's plenty of options. And some people like the way Gmail does it, right? So then it's a win-win if you do. I use it with Thunderbird when I'm using Thunderbird when I just feel like it. And, yeah, it's amazing. It just organizes it.

It gets rid of that huge, thick header bar. Yes, that's true. That is nice. Matt and I were scratching our heads on Sunday. I think, Matt, you mentioned NitroTask. I meant to mention WunderTask. We also mentioned Todo.txt for task managers under Linux. Randy

writes in with a really great suggestion. He says, Love the show. This is my first time commenting. On last 323, you had a listener asking about a task manager application. As someone who is always searching for the perfect task manager, this caught my attention, so I have a suggestion to offer. Of course, here he says, a selection always depends on your particular requirements. That's a standard

disclaimer. But here's what he wants from a task manager, and I think we'll probably all agree with this. Cross-platform, so you can use it on any OS, work, or home. Synchronized across multiple machines. Specific task management features I like, such as subtasks. Oh, that's nice. Allows me to print out my task list and scribble on it during the day. Oh, that's nice, too. And accessible from an Android the day. Ooh, that's nice too. And accessible from an Android device. All right, so this sounds perfect. He says, the solution I found and I'm pretty happy using is Task Unifier Pro.

Task Unifier, one word, pro. As a task manager, which is very full feature, gives me the kind of interface I want. It syncs with to doodle, to doodle, which gives me cross-machine syncing access on Android and as a backup. I know some of the audience might find this helpful. He says, I was able to finally settle down on one task manager after a long search. Keep up the great work, Randy.

So there you go. It's called Task Unifier Pro. I haven't tried it out yet, but that list sounds killer. Oh, it sounds like it. Because I've been kind of looking for something like that. That might actually scratch my itch. Yeah, and. And you can find it at taskunifier.com. It looks like here's a – it looks like maybe it's a Java app actually. Potentially.

Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, it works for Mac, Windows, and Linux, Task Unifier. Yeah, it's any operating system supported by Java. So there you go. I won't judge it based on the Java thing. I'm not a big Java guy, but I would check it out. Yeah. You had me until Java.

Yeah. I mean, there is that. But, you know, I already – what did I just put – oh, I got a new game. I got a new game that requires Java. So now I've got Java on my computer. So, yeah, I've already got Java. Chris, Minecraft isn't new. No, not Minecraft.

It's like Fallen Sky, I think, is the game. Have you guys seen this? It's on Steam right now. You guys follow Gaming on Linux. Remember we had the main writer from Gaming on Linux on the show a few weeks back? He did – let me go find it. He did a – he's been doing a really interesting kind of like – from time to time he's been emailing popular Linux game developers and getting them to actually release their Linux sales numbers to him. Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. And it's really, it's not awesome. It's really not awesome. Usually isn't. No. So he just posted part three on gamingonlinux.com. And the game that I picked up after this list that I realized I didn't have, he's got a whole bunch on here, and some of them are pretty good. Linux, like Spy Chameleon,

5% Linux installs. Rust says that 0.4 and 1% in July, so Rust sales are 1% in July. The Fall represents 4.5 sales for Steam. And Humble, if you factor all those in. Flashout 2, 16.1% of Steam sales are Linux. Well, that's not bad. 16% is almost noticeable. Quest of Dungeons, 1% Linux,

5% Mac, 94% Windows. Farsky, oh, that was the game I got. 0.89% Linux. That surprised me because Far Sky is actually a pretty cool looking game where you go underwater and you get to explore an underwater world and find like cool stuff. And it's got pretty good graphics too. And there's like underwater facilities. I don't know. I guess it takes place in the future. I just got it. But it requires Java. But you have to survive

underwater, find food, find items, find money. You have to grow stuff in like hibernation chambers under the water. Obviously there's fish you have to battle with. So for the kid, like the boy was like, ooh, dad, I want that game. I was like, yeah.

He's got less than 1% Linux sales. Let's boost that up a little bit. Right. No kidding. I think it would be an obvious game, but maybe it's just the fact that people aren't aware of it enough on the Linux platform. Yeah, that's what I was wondering because after I got it, I'm like, why is this not more popular, to be honest with you? Because it just gets cooler and cooler as you play it, too. So it's called Farsky, and it's let's see, it's

maybe this is why, I don't know, it's $15 on Steam. I guess that might be a little high for some folks, but I feel like we've all gotten a little out of whack with what our game pricing is. It's been out since April, so if you want to check it out, you can. Maybe boosters. Anyways, and go check out Gaming on Linux where they have more stats for Linux sales.

It's getting better. We're not competitive yet with the Mac, and I would say the Mac isn't quite on par with what the sales need to be at. So I continue to buy, and I just like to remind folks, too, that if you do want to buy Steam games, you should do it under Linux because then it counts towards Linux. Always, always. Don't ever buy under Windows because at that point you're really sending not only mixed messages, you're sending the wrong message. Yeah, exactly. I think that's pretty so. I mean $15 for a game that's going to give you hours of entertainment.

I don't get why people aren't willing to fork that over. I mean have they gotten so spoiled by like the humble bundle and all these free-to-plays that they're not willing to fork out $15 really people? I think so and app stores have skewed our perspective too. I think it's app stores, and I also think it's a matter of something that the folks on the Windows platform will do often is they reach out to folks that do Let's Plays. If you're a game

developer and you're not doing that, you're an idiot. I'm sorry. It's like you are really screwing yourself on that one. Because at the end of the day, that's how you get your word out for maximum cheapness. They've got to learn how to market to the Linux community community because they've never really had to reach out to us before and spread the word. That's all they've got to do. And I also – I look at it this way too. I think that if maybe it's one of these things where people start to – it's going to take a long time to kind of warm over the crowd because it's been – there's a culture built up around it now.

And even when we talk about it on this show, people hate it, even though it's one of the biggest things to happen to Linux desktop. People hate it when we talk about games. And we'll see what happens with it. Keep watching it. I hope their sales improve. I really do. Because I'd love to see SteamOS really take off. And maybe it will once SteamOS itself actually

ships in more homes maybe. Because you can get SteamOS now, but you have to roll it yourself. Hey, I want to talk about something huge that's happening on the GTK side that we have lambasted them for right here on this very show, because you know Gwadek's going on. And so, of course, we've got to get some GNOME news, and I think some people are going to be happy about this, be curious to get Wimpy's reaction, too. First, I want to tell you about an awesome opportunity. Head over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged right now. Go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged because they got a special promo going just for you guys. It's the summer of learning. And you know there's sunshine

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If I'm in a hard place and it's like, look, I'm looking at gaining some new skills and I've got three months to kill and I can pop 50 bucks forward. I get three months, 50 bucks, and I get a new marketable skill. That's awesome. Oh, absolutely. And there's a community there that helps people go out and get testing and gives them support and answers. And it kind of keeps you going because there's people that genuinely care. They're also doing a lot of live stream events now. So you can interact with the folks that are doing the teaching. So there's a good

back and forth there. It's an amazing resource, Matt. And what's really cool is it's essentially three Linux advocates that were like, you know, we need to have, we have between all of us here, we've got web development skills. We've got years of training experience, we can build this right, and we know exactly what other Linux users would want from a service like this. And I think that's really remarkable, because what you walk away from is a new understanding of perhaps how a different distribution does something, how to deploy something. I mean, it is genuine, tangible benefits that you get to walk away from with a service like this. Linuxacademy.com

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And thanks to everybody who supports the show by visiting our sponsors. Okay, I teased it a little bit. You guys might have saw this. It was a blog post, blogs.gnome.org. Client-side decorations is getting a revisit, and they've posted some screenshots now of different scenarios where you can have the GTK software detect if you are in a client-side

decoration environment and automatically display those big header bars. Or if you're in an environment perhaps that isn't friendly to client-side decorations, it'll drop them now and go back to a more traditional look kind of on the fly. So this is sort of them saying, all right, so the client-side decorations thing wasn't that well received. We still think it's a good idea. We'll implement it in certain scenarios and we'll automatically remove it in other scenarios. And if you're watching the video version, I'm showing you some screenshots right now.

It's kind of like what we've seen with GNOME itself, where they make these dramatic changes. There's a ton of blowback. And then you start seeing things like classic mode and extensions that kind of bring back functionality. Now you're seeing this. People were really responding like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If GTK is going off crazy like this, I don't know if I want to be using this. This seems like it's something just for GNOME. And now this seems to be them coming back and saying, all right, guys, well, look, no, we still

want you to use this in other environments. Wimpy, you're a mate guy. I'm a Tay guy. You're using GTK in all kinds of different environments. Is this good news in your perspective? It is because it's going to save us a ton of work really how so well at the moment we've had to put some patches in to kind of adapt uh client-side decorations because there are ways to override them at a system level but they can still be overridden at the application level so if you look at the new um gEdit client-side decorations, I mean, actually, it's quite nifty the way they've integrated the menus into the title bars there.

But you can't override those at a system level because it's kind of intrinsic to the way the application is designed to work now. But this approach, it does mute the critics and it does make GTK a platform that anyone can use. And it certainly goes some way to silencing the critics, saying that GTK is sort of becoming a LibNo library. Popey, did we just jump on them too soon?

Were they going to do this all along when we just didn't let White out to see the final version? Maybe. Maybe they've seen what Apple are doing with Yosemite and they're following up and very quickly posting what they've been planning all along, I'm sure. You think so? So why not come out from the very beginning and say, we're working on this, but for non-gnome 3 environments, we're going to have an answer for you soon.

Why not say that from the beginning? They're under no obligation to do that. It's an open source project. There's no reason why you stamping your feet and demanding that they tell you what their future plans are means that they have to do that. But doesn't this go to what we so often see in the community where there's this abrasive sort of way of presenting the future from the gnome project and then the community reacts and says oh once again gnome is shoving something down our throats and doesn't care what we have to say there's this like this visceral reaction that you see on on reddit and and and on on discussion forums all over the web and it's

kind of like if they would just come out and maybe communicate slightly differently and say our long-term plan is to solve something for everyone. I do wonder if maybe those initial reactions wouldn't be so much. Oh, Gnome is once again cramming something down our throats. I think if Gnome spent all their time responding to Reddit and the rest of the peanut gallery, then they wouldn't actually get anything done. Fair point. I think they're doing the right thing here. Yeah, they definitely are.

I mean, it sounds like it's a good change, regardless of if they're going to do it all along, or if this isn't about face. This seems like a great change. It's one of these things, too, where I look at it and go, this is perfect, because I really, genuinely have some GTK applications that I'm going to use, regardless of what desktop I'm on, and this

has been a problem. And we've seen some of those horrible screenshots of, like, Archiver on Cinnamon before Cinnamon supported client-side decorations. Really much better. Well, they had to start somewhere as well. True. Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose they could have done this from the beginning, but yeah, I suppose so. Alright. Even if it wasn't their idea, I mean, like, if it wasn't their long-term solution and then, you know, they meant to just do what they did and

then people had backlash isn't it kind of a good sign that the gnome project is showing that listening and they're actually trying to solve the problem that they are you know being informed about yeah that's a great point is it does seem like either way they're listening more um i have go ahead i have a high hopes for gnome, to be fair to the NEM developers, they've communicated quite well what their intentions were with regards to client-side decorations with the development community through their blogs and through their documentation effort. and arms let's say through some projects that are dependent on gtk the the developers that were affected by these decisions didn't um throw their toys out the pram and didn't get too worked up about it it was quite a pragmatic um reception and certainly from marty's point of view in addition to adapting to the system overrides we also abstracted some of the toolkit to change the way that GTK3 works to suit better the style that Marte works with. But most of the backlash and vitriol that you see isn't from people that know what they're talking about.

Well, I don't know if I agree. I think our favorite K-Win developer probably was the most vocal about it, and he's very of that about the place as if they're expert on the subject and don't really know what they're espousing at all. And it comes down to something we were kind of discussing on the live stream on Sunday. Sometimes what happens is drive-by technologists that can come in and kind of fire shots over this. drive-by technologist that can come in and kind of fire shots over this. But looking back at this now, there was certain people in the community that did very loudly condemn it. And what we don't know now is if it was that vocal pushback. Before I get on Martin for going to the blog and going to Google Plus

and sort of ramping up sort of an anti-client-side decoration campaign, perhaps it was that very effort that sort of convinced the GNOME project to make these changes. We don't know. Well, when GTK 3.11, which was one of the development cycle, it was one of the point releases for 3.11, I know that a couple, I think three of the developers from the Marte project were talking to some of the developers from GNOME and explaining some of the difficulties we're seeing and how it could be better implemented.

And we already got a feeling that they were like, yeah, okay, we're going to address this in a later release and we're going to change the way that this is applied. So, you know, from our point of view, we kind of knew that that wasn't a step down as such, but a change of direction to be more accommodating to other projects. Yeah, and I also noted when they originally started talking about the whole client-side decoration thing, it was couched with a lot of, this is in development,

this is a work in progress, this is something we're moving towards, what do you think about us putting the buttons here? You know, there wasn't like a, it wasn't an ironclad, this is how it will be designed. It was, this is what we're thinking about. And I remember specifically like blog posts were like, here's a mock-up of how we could do it. And it was very, I actually think it is an indication of how the Gnome project has changed. Not just with client-side decorations, but really starting with about Gnome 3.10. The way they have been communicating their future changes to me is much more open. It's much easier to sort of grok some of the new stuff coming towards GNOME.

And I think they're firing a lot better on the communication cylinders now. It's definitely improving. Yeah. I mean, I think this is another bump in that direction, another trend bump, you could call it. Definitely been my experience. It's good news. It's good news for everybody. I think so.

And also it's good news because Arch and Noah are going to take over Linux in a couple of years. So, I mean. What? Wait, what? Back that truck up. All right. Hey, we have some OSCON stuff to follow up on. Got some more goodies from OSCON.

And both Eric and Noah went down there with me. So I have a few photos I wanted to show. So if you're watching the video version, you can just watch that. Or I will have the link to the photo album in the show notes. So don't worry. We're not going to do like a big slideshow. But I just want to talk a little bit about our trip and say right off the top, a really special thank you to Noah.

Noah went all out for this trip. Not only did he and his family fly out here a week before they needed to be out here for a wedding they were going to, but they also rented an SUV so that way they could haul our butts around. Noah FedExed out camera gear and microphones overnight. So this is Noah and I driving down. Noah took me down to the train station where Eric and I went to the Union Station, Eric? That is King Street Station in Seattle. We went down to King Street Station, which was really nice.

Riding the train is so much more chill than riding on the plane because you just walk up. There's a gal at the front. She's like, where are you going? And I tell her where I'm going. All right, go sit over there. And then they announce over a horrible speaker when it's time to get on the train. And then you just walk up to the train and get on after they stamp a thing and you go past a guy. So it's pretty casual because you can just, you know, it's like, I don't know, you just walk right up and get on there. The train was nice too.

I think this is an underrated way to travel. And plus, you get a nice view the whole way you go. Eric got the seat view both ways. Both ways. Oh, no kidding. Both ways, really. Yeah, I don't know how I pulled that off. Did you get any good pictures? You know, I did.

I should probably post those. But I got some great views. Like, the train goes right under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which is a huge suspension bridge in Washington State. And I got some really neat pictures of that. I got some pictures like what Chris is showing on the live stream right now, the St. John's Bridge going over the Willamette River. It turns out Eric is like a walking Wikipedia of road trivia. He's got like highway and bridge trivia out the wazoo. It's ridiculous.

That's awesome. Which makes it the best. I was picking you up from the train station. What about that? What about, so here's Eric and I at the train station where we had an opportunity to spend about an hour and 45 minutes. Yeah. Well, to be fair, it wasn't really Noah's fault.

So, I mean, to give Noah credit, so Eric and I, we get on a train, right? And we're all being super, like, cash. The train has Wi-Fi the whole way down there, so that's really nice and easy. It's kind of spotty, but you get Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, Noah and the family, unbeknownst to us, are going through, like, a special, like, welcome to Washington hell trip. Where, like, the mall they go to gets evacuated and all they want to do is just eat and pee. So then Noah drives the whole family from Seattle down down to portland oregon while eric and i are on a train then he goes miles an hour yeah and then he goes to pick us up and google maps

sends them like 25 miles in the wrong direction oh no well see that's your first problem you weren't using ways this is the night before oscar right so and so noah's like noah finally after a while like i'm like i first didn't at first I didn't want to bug him. Because I wasn't sure, like, you know, he's got the whole family. Maybe, you know, like there's some stuff to settle before he leaves. So I'm like, about 45 minutes go by, and I'm like, so how's it going? And he writes me back. He's like, just so you know, man, this is nowhere near the hotel.

I'm like, uh-oh. Dude, it's like seven minutes from the hotel. What are you talking about? So then we start sending each other map screenshots back and forth to compare notes. All over Viber. Oh, my God. Noah got a nice tour of the Portland, Oregon area. Well, I think he was driving too fast to see most of it, to be honest with you.

Oh, true, true. Yeah. When he got there. When he picked us up, he came to a screeching halt. When he got there, the vehicle smelled like burnt rubber. The brakes on that vehicle worked very well. He picked us up. He came to a screeching halt. Yeah. It was like – When he got there, the vehicle smelled like burned rubber because he – Yeah. The brakes on that vehicle worked very well. That's all.

Yeah. So here's what's funny. What put us behind the curve to begin with was we wanted Indian food, and we went to the Indian food that was supposed to be – Well, you probably did. Well, yeah. Well, no. My wife likes it too. But so we go to this – to go to this restaurant, and the restaurant is closed.

So we go down to this mall, which is another like 10 blocks in a different direction. And, yeah, somebody pulled the fire alarm, so they evacuated the mall. The funny thing was on Sunday when we got back into Seattle, we went back to eat Indian food again, and we found an Indian restaurant literally like three blocks from where that mall was. Oh, wow. Go figure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we stayed at the Red Lion Hotel, which was nice because it was only, you know, five minutes walking distance from the convention center.

Not a great hotel. You can see here, this is my curtain. This looked like something that Sound of Music would make dresses out of. They were, like, just really distracting. But, you know, what was chiefly important, OSCON day one, I figure I'm in Linus Torvald's territory. It's safe to rock socks and sandals. I proudly rocked socks and sandals at OSCON. I'll do that anyways.

It's super comfortable. It's the way to go. And then we got some food. There's Noah rocking his Google Glass and Eric taking phone calls there at the food table making business deals, of course. Oh, yeah. And we saw one of the coolest things at OSCON was the hardware alley table, making business deals, of course. Oh, yeah. And we saw one of the coolest things at OSCON was the hardware alley, and I got some more of that in a little bit,

but this here is... Noah, do you remember the details of the split keyboard where the guy had handwritten all of the info, and they felt so good? Yeah, so essentially it's a customizable keyboard, so you can take the keys and you can arrange them any which way you want. Do you have a picture of the metal one i know that board those keys those keys what he's showing on the wooden they're not stuck in that pattern like you can slide those keys any which

way you want there's not in the picture it almost looks like there's there's specific spots where they have to go but you can put them anywhere on the board yeah i mean somehow they work yeah they're really neat and they feel really good um We saw some custom like little arm Game Boy like machines. The guys were super excited about making them. Arduino. Yeah. Yeah. We saw the open. So I think I in a little bit I have the open source laptop. And of course, Eric would know it. So there's Noah's camera and there's Eric. They're getting set up because we had an interview with Chris DeBona. I think that was one of our highlights of the trip was getting to chat with Chris DeBona. And it's funny, man, because when you walk up to these places, the way the conversation goes is, who are you? Who are you with? If they don't

recognize you, how many subscribers do you have? And then you give them the answer and either you pass the test or you fail the test. And thankfully we passed the test test uh yeah that happened a lot yeah and here's a here's a great example like uh zen you know the virtualizer they had a booth and they had well funny enough they had like an imac mounted in the booth and then they had like linux stuff being displayed on the imac uh but they had a pretty cool booth to sit at and linode was there uh rocking some cloud hosting information um and we saw saw all kinds of funny makeshift things. This was a four-node cluster that was built out of these little machines. Red Hat had a pretty good booth.

We stopped. We'll have a chat with one of them here in just a minute. There's me rocking the OSCON. Boy, towards the mid of the first day, I was starting to feel a little ragged because there's a lot of walking around. It's hot. But then we started to see the fun side of OSCON, like this giant chess set that they have on the floor there. There was a ping pong table. And then we got to chat with Karen from the Software Freedom Conservancy, which was exciting.

Because she's really, like, she's passionate. So that got us all fired up again. And then we walked around. We saw the open source laptop. This is such a cool. I mean, I think, Noah, was this maybe your favorite stop that we did? The hardware laptop? Yeah, the hardware laptop? Yeah, the hardware laptop with the stagnographer's keyboard that you wanted to switch to over Dvorak.

You know, it was really cool. I'm not going to deny that, but I have to say my favorite booth, which I don't even think we have pictures of, was the Orange of S, the booth. Oh, right. That's the alphabetized social that was cool. We don't have any pictures from that, but they're working on a really cool open source, Oh, right. That's the alphabetized social that was cool.

We don't have any pictures from that, but they're working on a really cool open source post to all social networks at once, kind of like your HootSuites out there, but totally open source and free that you can self-host. So if you're a company and you have to manage a social media account like a lot of distros do and things like that, they have essentially just go to their GitHub repo, check it out, and you throw it up on your own server, and now you can manage multiple social networks with this one open source suite. And they also do other stuff, like a parallel file system and all kinds of other stuff, but that was what we were really excited about.

I'm going to look at the file system too. It looks actually pretty cool. There's another shot of the open source laptop. Really neat. I just love a wood laptop. I mean, it's no MacBook Air or Ultra Pro, but it's pretty sweet. And the guy was really passionate talking about the different hardware and stuff. Noah got a great interview with Simon St. Laurent.

We're going to have that here in just a minute. He is a senior editor at O'Reilly and also one of the chairmen of OSCON. And then Noah drove us back. I think this is almost it right here. Oh, this was cool. I really liked this at the Libre office booth up on the projector. They had it in a Libre office document projected up on the screen. Guess what?

This morning the UK government announced that they're standardizing on ODF, the same format Libre office uses natively. That was a pretty fun thing to be there to see them celebrate that when that was announced. They were so excited about that. I cannot tell you. I mean, we had like a five-minute conversation before I drug you guys over so we could get an interview of them. So it was just something they were so excited about. And while Noah was talking to the LibreOffice folks, I was talking to one of the guys from the Software Conservancy, one of the developers of PHP My Admin. And I was like, man, I love your project.

Thank you for making it easy for my clients to back up their SQL databases. Like, you've enabled them to use MySQL. Thank you. That's kind of neat. That's just who you bump into while you're there. And we just start chatting up. It's like, yeah, I love the Linux Action Show. How cool is that?

Nice. Yeah. That's so awesome. Also, Michael Dexter of the Portland Linux Unix group, he was pointing us in the right direction for people to interview. I just wanted to give him props, too, if he's listening. Such a nice guy. It's always fun.

He's always at these events that I go to, and it's so great to bump into him because it's like seeing an old friend. And he also got us to hook up when we did the live stream of the Linus Torvalds chat at the Portland Linux Users group. So let's get to, we interviewed Ruth, I think her name was, from PyDora. And, you know, this is a really fascinating project to see Fedora get into the whole ARM space, to get into making a serious distribution for the Raspberry Pi. They're writing books about it now.

They're getting really serious about it. So I want to talk about that. But first, let's thank our next sponsor on the Linux Unplugged show. And that's the awesome folks over at Ting. Linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com will get you $25 off your first device if you've already got a device. Well, good news. You can bring that over to Ting. Check their BYOD page and it'll just give you a $25 credit. Everywhere I went when I was in Portland, I was rocking LTE coverage. And even more to the point, which is really unique, is while I was on the floor at OSCON, I was able to take pictures and send them back to Angela, who was sitting back at JBHQ and then posting like, the guys are on the floor

interviewing Chris Dabona, the guys are on the floor interviewing Christian Hellman. All of that was happening while I was on the floor. And to actually be able to get LTE or sometimes 3G, because it's just crazy in these conventions. I had to give mad props to Ting. Linux.ting.com. Go find out why Ting is awesome. Here are the highlights. No contract. So no early termination fee.

And you only pay a flat $6 per month. No data caps. No minutes you have to use up or don't get to take advantage of. It's just what you use every single month added up. $6 for the line, and then whatever the tax man's got to take. To give yourself a little taste, go over to linux.ting.com and click on that savings calculator. Now, for purposes of demonstration, enter in exactly what you actually use, not what you pay for. Because one of the hardest things about switching to Ting is you have to kind of change the way you think about wireless. You don't have to buy like a

certain set amount of minutes that you might use and a certain set amount of data that you may or may not use or text messages. You only pay for what you use. And if you think about the way the mobile industry should have been structured, this is it. What Ting has done is hit the reset button and it makes so much more sense once you kind of change the way you think about the way the mobile industry should have been structured, this is it. What Ting has done is hit the reset button. And it makes so much more sense once you kind of change the way you think about things. So I've plugged in actual usage here. So minutes used per month, let's say 400. That'd be very generous for me, but let's say it's 400. Text messages, 500. I'd say that's probably about right. Megabytes used. Let's say this month I'm at, you know, I'm about three gigs. So I'll just put three gigs in there. Now, before I switched to Ting, my bill would have easily been $149.99 before taxes, $149.99 US. If I click calculate savings, I can see that if I would switch to Ting over a two-year

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Linux.ting.com. And a really big thank you to Ting for sponsoring. Linux unplugged. Love it. It was awesome having LTE down there. Okay, so let's cover some of our first interviews. This first one is just something fun. It didn't quite fit into the show.

But one of my favorite booths at OSCON was the GitHub booth. Yeah, the GitHub booth. Because they had an actual DJ. And they weren't, like, crazy with the music. It wasn't too loud, but it was good. Like, you knew when you were near the GitHub booth because they had an actual DJ and they weren't like crazy with the music. It wasn't too loud, but it was good. Like you knew when you were near the GitHub booth because they had music going. So I chatted with one of the guys from GitHub and I said, okay, why GitHub and music? So I noticed here that you have a very handsome looking DJ booth over here. Is GitHub going

to be rocking music all day? All day. So tonight during the booth crawl, you'll find us, we'll basically be blowing the place out and we'll throw out the breaks and whatnot today. Yeah. That's awesome. So why GitHub and music? We have a lot of creative people at GitHub. You know, that's one of the attributes we hire for. So music is one of the parts of our culture. We have a lot of code-based parties around the city and whatnot. So yeah. And it was, it was pretty cool. It was pretty neat to have, it's have a different take on it. Every booth that's major tries to do something interesting. So we had to stop by the Red Hat booth.

And Ruth was there. And Ruth has talked to Noah in the past. In fact, Ruth and Noah are like best buds. They just started catching up. How you doing, Ruth? Oh, I'm good, Noah. They just started catching up like old pals. So Noah talked to Ruth about Pydora and all of those goodies at OSCON.

We're here walking around at OSCON 2014 here in Portland, Oregon, and we ran into Ruth from the Red Hat Project. How are you, Ruth? I'm great. How are you? Doing all right. Now, Ruth, I had the opportunity to hear you a couple months ago talk about the Raspberry Pi and all the interesting things. I think you had a suit that you had made, and it was all powered by a Raspberry Pi. Now,

I understand that there are some major changes that have come out hardware-wise on the Raspberry Pi. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, just last week, they released the Model B+. And the reason it's not Model C is because it's still the same chip, the same RAM, and all of that. But it has some significant improvements. There are four USB ports now instead of just two. The corners are rounded, you know, some easy things like that. It's a nicer form factor. The composite jack is gone.

The option is still there through the audio jack, but it just kind of streamlines things. The other significant change is they've switched it from an SD card to a micro SD card. And the biggest thing about that for me is the SD card holder was plastic. And if you, depending on your case or what you were doing, it had a tendency to break off. And so the new micro SD card holder is metal, which is a really nice improvement. That's outstanding. Now, does that SD card, does it still stick out a little bit? Or with micro SD, is it completely encased? It looks like, I don't have one yet. They've only been out for about a week. And of course, they pretty much instantly sold out. They're getting easier to

come by now. But it looks like it's going to be flush up in the system and not have that piece sticking out. Yeah, that's one thing that always bothered me, particularly when you're trying to deploy a Raspberry Pi as an appliance based device where you don't want it to be so much hackery as you want it to look more professional. Now, on that note, I wanted to ask what some people would say that the Raspberry Pi is really primarily meant as a learning tool and not really meant for anything remotely related to production, even though many people are using it. Says the guy with Google Glass on his face.

I think I even saw a couple maybe a year ago or so, somebody was using it for a biomedical purpose. So what's your opinion? I mean, can the Raspberry Pi be used as a series production tool? The Raspberry Pi was designed for education. That is its original intent. It was inspired by the BBC Micro, which was a computer back in 1981 that was designed for educational use. But that said, the reason we all love it is because it is so infinitely useful. And the new Model B Plus has 40 GPIO instead of the old 26. You can do so many things with it. And on top of that, it's cheap. And so it's not the fastest. It's not the greatest. There

are so many other of these small boards, but a lot of them are $80 or $90. And the Pi is $35. And that makes it infinitely useful. And so if it meets the needs of those projects, then sure, it's perfectly sufficient for all sorts of things. As long as you have the right power. As long as you have the right power. As long as you have the right power. Can you tell me, so you've spent a lot of time looking, not only doing your own projects, but looking at what other people have done with Raspberry Pis. If I were to ask you what's the first coolest project that comes to mind, what would you say? I think my favorite is still the bilingual functional R2-D2.

That thing is so awesome, and it's a year or two old now, but it's still one of my favorite projects. And I think part of it is that a guy made it for his girlfriend. He decided to make this life-size, functional, takes commands in Japanese and English R2-D2. And then she married him. So clearly it was a successful project. You obviously, you work for Red Hat, and I understand that Fedora has a distribution that runs on the Raspberry Pi. Is there anything you can tell me about PyDora specifically? My favorite thing about PyDora, and I tell people, obviously, as I work for Red Hat and I work on Fedora a lot, Fedora and PyDora are my preferred distributions. But when you're working with the Raspberry Pi, you should choose the distro that most suits your needs. But my favorite thing

about PyDora to that end is that so many of the fun hackery projects are headless. They're too small. They run away from you. They don't have a monitor attached. And so my favorite fun PyDora fact is that you never have to connect it to a monitor at all. If you add this little file when you flash the SD card, you can have it flash the IP address out the LEDs, and then it reads them out the speakers in a delightful British accent. Voice out the speakers, huh? Yeah reads them out the speakers in a delightful British accent. Oh, yeah, voice out the speakers, huh?

Yeah, yeah. I knew about the lights. I knew that the lights flashed, but I didn't know about the speakers. Now, is that something that script is specific to PyDora? I believe that you can grab the files off of GitHub, and I think you could probably use it. I've never tried using it without a district. Why would I? Why would I use something besides PyDora?

I mean, really. That's right. Why ever straight from Red Hat? So if people wanted to find out more about the Raspberry Pi or about projects with the Raspberry Pi or about Piedora, where could somebody go? For Piedora, you would go to piedora, P-I-D-O-R-A dot C-A. That is the site for Piedora. For Raspberry Pi stuff, raspberrypi.org. If you're interested in other red hat community projects besides piedora or besides fedora rather uh community.redhat.com is our place for all of the red hat upstream community projects perfect well thank you so much for taking time to speak with us ruth

oh piedora that's cool that was a cool interview no i liked hearing about piedora haven't followed that much uh The other interview that Noah managed to grab right on our second day, right outside the opening of the Expo Hall, and this is a little behind the scenes. Who Noah got to interview was a great, big

thinker in the community, Simon St. Laurent. He's SimonSTL on Twitter. He's Senior Editor at O'Reilly. He's one of the chairpersons of OSCON. And so Noah being like instinctually the great interviewer that he is, is like, I know what I'm going to do. We didn't even discuss it. We were just on the same wavelength.

Like we were just sharing the same brain wavelength. Noah's like, this is the chairman. I'm going to set this up as the opening interview. We'll roll this as the first interview in the Linux Action Show. It's going to be great. It'll be the setup. And you'll hear Noah do a great job of setting it up as like we're here at OSCON and right outside the Expo Hall about to go in.

And right in the interview, the guy kind of blows it. And what I love is if you watch Noah's face, you can see Noah's like, ah, damn it. I worked really hard on that. All right. So here is Simon St. Laurent, a great chat and a thinker. Welcome to OSCON 2014. We're here right outside the Expo Hall where many exciting things are about to happen. Outside here we have Simon, who you are affiliated directly with O'Reilly,

the company that is putting on OSCON. Thank you so much for taking time to be here with us today. How are you? I'm great. The show's about half over. Everything's going smoothly. The pieces are coming together. Outstanding. So tell me a little bit about what it is that you do for O'Reilly and what it... And I know this might be a loaded question, but what exactly it took to get OSCON to come together? Okay. So most of what I do historically has been editorial. So I've been an editor. I started out bringing in books.

I focus on a couple of different areas, but mostly these days it's web stuff. I'm also co-chair of our Fluent conference, which is the web show. So I have two shows. I have Fluent and I have OSCON. And then I'm also helping us figure out what stories we should be telling about the web,

whether it's in print or in conferences or online. So that, yes, there are many things there. OSCON is special for me in that it goes outside of my usual boundary zones. This works really well that I have two co-chairs. Sarah and Matthew make that much easier. And we also are trying to connect things to more of the stuff we're doing internally. So the web stuff, I know really well. The stuff beyond that, I know less and less well. But there are also pieces that make me really excited. So we mix it up. So tell me a little bit how the web

connects to OSCON. I mean, you know, it's not necessarily live coverage of OSCON or anything like that, right? So the web is sort of the background in lots of the talks here. People are doing Python this or PHP this, and the result is a web app. We have a track that does cover front-end stuff, but it's a fairly small part of it because of the historic programming languages and the open source in general is really compatible with the web, but a different thing. So it's sort of a piece of it. We have a lot of things that are more specifically programming.

We also are starting to get really into the open hardware stuff. And we're also, there's a lot that you can do at a conference that hasn't been done enough yet with, like, what we're calling geek lifestyle right now. So, you know combining these different pieces to look at the way we we live in a different way so i would consider myself in the truest sense of the word to be a geek tell me a little bit about this geek like lifestyle it's it's varied year by year and it's a it's a very flexible category it could be everything from home automation there was actually a great talk a few years ago on

garden automation um it involved like making sensors and then the the speaker was a linux kernel developer so everything was in c++ and you know using that to control garden hoses uh you know it's become more normal i mean the nest obviously is doing a lot of these things and we're seeing these things happen it's still people at OSCON still tend to be a few years ahead of what's normal out there. So we try to bring in as much of that as we can. So, and as I've walked around, I've certainly seen a couple of those booths. I mean, they had the OpenHacker laptop. You know, it's absolutely fantastic.

And projects like that, you know, just really just lights a spark in my eye, right? But one of the things that I guess I was a little disappointed with and maybe you can speak on is why at a conference that is primarily geared towards open source do we see so many closed source solutions? If you walk around about, you know, the operating systems that some of these people are using, they're not open source operating systems. I'm wondering why do you think that is and what can we do to change that? So this is a lot harder of a question to ask than it sounds. When Noah asked that question, it almost seems natural. But if you think about it, this is one of the chairmen of a convention. We're saying, hey, we've noticed a lot of the people coming here are not necessarily practicing open source themselves in some regards.

And I want to touch on this more in a few minutes. We have an interesting conversation I want to get into. So listen to his answer and then keep that in mind as we go forward. Well, there are a couple of different stories on that. So one is that, you know, when Apple was first coming out with OS, it just, it was, they had an open source story at the core of it. There still is an open source story at the core of it. It's just become less and less of the story. And that and the Unix tools gave developers a sense of, hey, I can do this. I'm shifting the other direction these days. I'm

running Linux at home. I'm, you know, moving further and further away from that. The other thing that's happened though, less with Apple, more with Microsoft, is that I'm seeing the companies that used to be these completely closed systems opening up more and more and more of it. So like Scott Hanselman gave a talk yesterday on like the Visual Studio ecosystem and how that was changing. I was like really happily surprised to see that like Windows is actually like part of their open source story here. Not as much as I'd like, but they're coming down the road with us finally.

That's a pretty good answer too. And something I noticed too is even companies like Microsoft are integrating a lot of open source services now and making it more. Maybe the right approach is making their software more accommodating to play in that field. So it was a pretty good answer. So we'll continue on. So I always look at those things as like a wolf babysitting your child. Do we really trust these companies that have been so wrapped up in proprietary, closed source software?

Do we really trust them, even if they are willing to venture out into the open source world? I mean, is that really what we want to see, or would we rather see, like you were talking about before, these real grassroots hacker-type projects where it's somebody doing something themselves? I'm always going to be happy with a grassroots hacker project, unless it doesn't work, but, you know. Which is frequently. Right. The trust question is hard.

I mean, for me, like a lot of the sting, I have a natural tendency to cheer for the underdog. Yeah. And when I see companies that are no longer in the powerful positions that they used to be, and they're adapting open source. I feel it's odd. I feel sort of, it's not just that I'm happy that they're changing or happy that they've fallen. It's that they're less powerful. And that makes me feel a little better that it's probably a nice wolf, maybe. Once, so much of it comes down to, you know, what people think they can get away with. And even the best companies, these things can change suddenly when people change.

So as power gets a little better distributed in this system, I think we're going to see more and more, okay, we don't have to control everything. Well, let's hope that the direction moves that way because that would be a fantastic world, I think, that we'd all like to see. Walking around the expo hall, you've been in there. What has been your favorite booth exhibit so far? I'm really, really fond of the Hardware Showcase. I do some soldering. I do make some things, but I've never made anything like what they're doing. And the combination of open with things you can touch

and play with and, you know, just having the creators there to explain what they're doing has really been the most exciting part easily for me. Yeah, it really is. And it's a fantastic conference. Is there anyone, is there any place that you would point people to or anyone you would point people to directly if they wanted to become involved with OSCON, find more information about OSCON, or maybe a plea for people to join us here next year, 2015 OSCON? Well, we're just getting started on what OSCON 2015 will look like. It'll be here. We know that.

It'll be similar timing. But the program, you know, we'd love to get input. What did you love about OSCON? What didn't you love about OSCON? We're starting that conversation not quite tomorrow but pretty close to tomorrow so we're trying to get as much lead time into figuring out what the shape of oscon should be before we start asking for specific proposals so by all means let us know oscon.com is the easy place to find us um but you know to contact me contact our co-chairs. We're just happy to have

the conversation about what's working, what more do you want. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for taking time to speak with us. We really appreciate it. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, really, thank you very much to Simon for joining us. It was a great chat. And so he touched on a lot of stuff there that I want to kind of circle back on. I know, Heavens, you had some thoughts on Microsoft going to all of these Linux and open source conventions and really trying to have a presence there. What do you think it's about? Well, considering Microsoft has been a little bit more, they're not so desktop focused anymore and more putting a lot of their development and money into Azure. And Azure is generally for the web. So Node is one of the big things that they focus on for their Azure platform.

They've finally tasted Node and how the Node package manager works. And they've got their own little NuGet package manager. They're starting to build their own software repo in Windows inside Visual Studio to get all their package updates, library updates, all that crap. They're tasting open source and they're like, I see why everyone's starting to like this. It's got good stuff.

In fact, just recently they moved their TypeScript development from their sort of isolated codeplex website to GitHub, which is pretty big. They were talking about how they're going to be putting more stuff on website to GitHub, which is pretty big. Yeah, they were talking about that. They were talking about how they're going to be putting more stuff on GitHub.

Now, it is interesting. We asked them and we said, so how many people at Microsoft work in the open – I think they call it the open source division. And, you know, before the Nokia acquisition, Microsoft has a headcount, I think, of around 50,000 before the acquisition. And she said 100. 100 people at Microsoft are working on open source. Now, but she did point out, she emphasized that it's because in a lot of ways they're using open source in different areas throughout Microsoft now. So where it used to be contained to a singular group, now more and more of the departments and divisions at Microsoft are looking at how they can use it. So she's like,

that 100 number doesn't really quite equate to anything anymore. But that's the group that's like, their core focus is you have a budget to go to these events, demo, interface with communities. That's what that core group does. So it's kind of an interesting deal.

We had an interview with Chris Dabona in the Linux Action Show last Sunday, and he touched on a pretty big interview, and I didn't see a lot of response from the community on some of the things that he said. So I wanted to pull out a couple of quotes and then bounce it around with our virtual lug to get your opinion on it. So the first thing that DeBona said that I thought was, obviously it's a Google way to look at it, but I want to ask you guys if perhaps the concept isn't potentially worth considering. He mentioned that the fragmentation that Android now faces is simply a problem because winners have fragmentation,

and the reason why we think it's a problem is because open source itself is used to losing. Here, I'll play it. But yeah, Android, though, it's just a whole different world. I mean, the thing about the billion devices that Sunder mentioned at Google I.O. during his keynote that a lot of people sort of didn't parse was that he was just talking about the devices that register with Google. That's not counting the hundreds of millions of other devices that ship in fractional shares from Chinese factories, the Amazon Kindle Fire. those things are all Android too. And it's like, this is how you know that Android is really open source.

This is how you know that Chromium is really open source, because other people ship it. And we're not going, oh no, you can't ship it, because we're not that company. We really shipped it under a real open source license that people could use. And it's kind of cool. Now, do you think that providing that level of freedom also provides the ability for companies to abuse it? So, for example, when I bought my Verizon Samsung phone, I have a lot of Verizon apps.

I have a lot of stuff I didn't really want on the phone that isn't really part of the Android experience. It's just Verizon wanted that stuff on there. And the ability for those OEMs to modify that operating system could be seen as a detraction for some users, right? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I hate to say it, but that's a problem winners have. You know? You know your platform's winning when you have those kinds of problems.

Fragmentation is a problem winners have. And I think that open source was so used to losing, losing the desktop, losing this, losing that, even though we had done such a great job winning in the server, that feeling the win in a consumer market felt like betrayal for some people. Okay, so let's take that on. Is the Android fragmentation simply a result of its popularity?

And is maybe the reason why we react to it as a bad thing is because open source is so used to losing? That's a pretty big concept. So before we get into that, I want to thank our last sponsor this week, and that is the awesome folks over at DigitalOcean. And DigitalOcean is rocking it these days, you guys. Go over to DigitalOcean right now because we've got a promo code for the month of July, and I would love to represent for Linux Unplugged. Use the promo code UNPLUGGEDJULY when you check out,

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That'll get you started on your own CDN for two months for free. Right? Go check it out. DigitalOcean.com. UNPLUGJULY when you check out. And a really, really big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged show. Okay. So let's kick it around to the mumble room.

Is Android fragmentation simply a result of it being success? I want to start with you, Noah, since you were talking to DeBona. What was going through your head when he gave you that answer? Were you agreeing or were you like, ah, this kind of sounds a little bit like spin? Okay. that answer were you agreeing or were you like ah this kind of sounds a little bit like spin okay so my problem with android i think it's i think it's one of your gripes too is that android because it was late to the game had to make compromises in their operator in what they would have liked to have seen as an ideal user experience in order to cave to what the carriers wanted. And I think that makes for, and yes, it makes it much more prolific than I'm sure. He says, what does he say?

85% or whatever of all devices are running Android. And that's great, but it's a crappy Android experience. There's a lot of really crappy Android devices out there. So I kind of think it's a crap answer. He acknowledged too that it falls down when it comes to the security aspect of it. But the way so I want to take particular like I actually kind of agree with it is a problem that winners have in the sense that when you reach a certain mass adoption, there's so many people are going to start experimenting with your operating system or just going with it. Like when I had a chat with Aaron Saigo about challenges of building the Vivaldi tablet, one of the things that really stood out to me that he said was, when we talk to these manufacturers, if we tell them it needs to be Android compatible, it clicks. They know exactly what we want. They give us all the specs. But when we tell them it needs to be Linux

compatible, they have no idea what we're talking about, right? And so part of that, so you just see there's this adoption level that's through the entire stack from people making software all the way down to the people assembling it on the manufacturing line. So there's just this mass adoption level where Android almost can't help but have all kinds of weird incarnations of it because it's almost a de facto operating system.

It's like it has become one of the general purpose platforms, at least for low power devices. So that part I agree with. The part that I take issue with is I don't agree that open source is used to losing. And he gave kind of a mention to, well, except for in the server, but let's be honest, Apache crushes the competition. Nginx is rock solid. There is so much open source technology that is winning. Android itself is open source technology that is winning. So to say that open source is used to losing, I think that is a mischaracterization.

I think you could argue perhaps the desktop is used to losing. But to say open source is not just used to winning, open source has won. Well, here's my perspective on it. When I look at this, and I've interviewed Chris before, so I kind of get where his mindset is coming from. He's looking at it as if I walk up to Joe Blow on the street and say, oh, yeah, you're using an open source product, they're going to look at you with a blank stare. They have no idea what you're talking about. If you say Android or something they recognize, then in fact you've actually made that connection. So I think he is talking about the desktop, and I also think he's also expanding on the branding, the recognition.

Do people understand that they're benefiting from this thing called open source? People don't. desktop and i also think he's also expanding on the the branding the recognition do people understand that they're benefiting from this thing called open source um people don't they understand they benefit from android i agree if we're only talking about linux enthusiasts who critique android but in reality it's not just linux users who critique some of these problems with android but it's actually the entire technology industry who really you know doesn't even follow the linux desktop necessarily so i don't know if that's actually the entire technology industry who really doesn't even follow the Linux desktop necessarily. So I don't know if that's influencing the way they see it. I do agree that maybe we're not used to seeing what success looks like in some regards on the desktop.

I don't know. I think it's also how we define success. I mean I think geeks and casual folks definitely when it comes to technology, we define success very differently. I use myself and my mother-in-law as an example. For her, success in technology is when the button she pushes on the remote works properly. And for me, it's when I solve this amazingly complex problem that took a lot of work to do. So usually I think it just differs from person to person. All right.

Well, I know the mumble room has a couple other thoughts on that, but I want to move on because here was Chris's response to why fragmentations actually gives Android its edge. And he thinks, yeah, okay, if we accept there's fragmentation, I'm not even sure if it's a problem. And the thing is, if you look at the Verizon builds, if you look at the, you know, it's funny, actually I don't want to sound like I'm betraying my people, but I actually prefer the Moto X build to the stock

Nexus build right now, because it has this really cool feature where you can shake it and take a picture. Yeah. You know, so you don't have to worry about unlocking it in other ways. So I can whip it out of my pocket while shaking like, you know, like I'm having a seizure. But it's fine, though. And then I can take my picture really fast. And I really like that feature.

And I really like the Bluetooth trust feature in the Moto X. And those are things that Motorola brought to it. And Motorola is not part of Google anymore, so I'm not just kissing corporate butt here. Right, right, right. Motorola is not part of Google anymore, so I'm not just kissing corporate butt here. And I think that it's not wrong to try to excel by adding new things to an operating system. Now, I would hope, I would love if those were open source and brought back into the platform or they were available through an app or whatever. I can accept that.

So he's saying, look, sometimes the way you get some of these new innovations is by having different people try stuff. And don't we see that in just Linux distros itself? You know, you look at things that have come through, like different installers, where one distribution really lands on a good way to do an installer, and you'll see a lot of other distributions pick that up, or things like that. So sometimes in the fragmentation, there can be

sort of this organic, slow evolution of a consensus. So that I can buy on to uh but he goes on to kind of say you know if you think about it in some sense on he calls it open source but i really think he means linux when he's saying this he's like you guys are forking all day long so you got to check yourself before you come all up on android's territory that's why i'm also pretty unimpressed by fragmentation arguments and that kind of thing. And I'm like, you know what?

You know, in the open source world, everything's a fork. Every time you ship a distribution, every time you ship a program, you're forking it. You're putting a moment in time, and you're sticking with that moment until they upgrade again, or until they update, or you're forking

every time you do that. So, the measure of us as programmers, or as app developers update or you're forking every time you do that so the measure of us as programmers or as app developers or as carriers or handset manufacturers is how we keep up with those updates how we keep bringing the future of software development to our users right and and that's why android's at 84 boom so he says, if you look at it this way, when Ubuntu LTS 14.04 ships, that's a fork. Yeah, I think he's splitting hairs on that one. I can't defend that one at all. I disagree. I think that I see what he's saying, and he is definitely including software in addition to Linux distribution.

So he's kind of using the true open source broad term, but I disagree with him. I think that he's wrong in stating that merely by putting an open source license on a product that you've instantly forked it because magically someone else is going to come along and do something else with it. Not necessarily. Yeah, he's messing up with terminology a little bit. Same with how in programming we say that monads are the most evil or they're really weird little named things and no one ever likes to talk about them i kind of see his point to a sense though i've always kind of felt like when you take i've always felt like maybe one of the reasons rolling distributions make the most sense

is because when you carve off a stable linux distribution you're introducing sort of a fake structure where none inherently exists and this is something that just us humans do all the time we always have to go in and create structure everywhere. Got to set up a system. Got to make sure we follow a process. Everywhere we go, we got to organize it. And I feel like perhaps it's kind of like trying to set up a dam and a river. Like you can hold back the water for a little bit,

but eventually it's got to break through. And whenever you stable snapshot something, essentially it's a race against time as it deviates further and further away. And like if you look at what Red Hat Enterprise Linux does, is they literally have to backport stuff from future fixes to the old stuff because they are, in a sense, maintaining their own fork of the Linux kernel in Red Hat Linux and then all the other stuff, too. Debian as well.

Yeah, all of them. All of them. Yeah, they really actually fork, but sometimes it's just a snapshot of time instead of a fork. See, I think that's where you can play semantics. Is it a snapshot in time, or is it a genuine fork that's maintained for, like, ten years? And that's where Red Hat is just going to— Well, you also think about it this way. Like, for instance, you know, he was talking about how fragmentation is a—it shows how much success is going on in Android. Yeah.

it shows how much success is going on in android yeah um well one thing i was thinking was that's true to a certain extent because if you look at debian it's got to be the most forked yeah distribution on the planet yeah and it is the biggest in terms of packages so and it's probably the biggest in terms of development as well. You've got Ubuntu. It's kind of a quasi-fork of it. And it's got all sorts of forks of its own. So there's definitely something to be said for that. Yeah, very true, right? Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

It's in the full interview. But one of the other things he said that jumped out at me is he said, the way I look at all of this, the way I look at Android on that phone, the way I look at Android on Noah's Google Glass and the Android that's going to be on your watch, this is DeBona. He says, to me, I see those as different distributions. Those are different distros in my world. That's an interesting way. I don't, again, I think you could play semantics there. You're redefining what it means, but it's an interesting way to think about it. Now the elephant in the room for Noah and and i at least there was one there was

one topic of conversation our entire trip at oscon that really sort of dominated basically anytime we stopped to take a breather noah and i would kind of turn to each other and and talk about um the unbelievable indescribable amount of macintosh laptops we saw at OSCON. I was right there with you. Yeah, yeah. And to give you an example, kind of funny, when we were walking up to OSCON, and there's this hallway, and this hallway is lined with tables and chairs. And every table and every chair had at least one or two people working on a MacBook all facing us.

So as we walked into OSCON, we walked down this hallway that was end-to-end lined up with Macs and that white glowing Apple logo as we walked into OSCON. And I can't underscore this enough. Literally almost every computer there was a Mac. Now, there were for sure some PCs, but most of those were like at the registration booths provided by OSCON or like somebody's work Lenovo that they brought with them to the booth. But more often than not, I mean, kernel Linux, jump in here with me, right? I mean, it was unbelievable that the ratio, right? And so here's, and this is what I've been waiting the entire episode to dig in on. I'm sure're well this is what this is what bothers me right so we have we went to a convention that's called oscon oh the open source convention the place where i'm

supposed to be able to go as an open source user and feel like i'm at home i'm at home with open source software and here's what here's what i took away from the conference and it's a lot like like linux con their mentality is that twitter was there for example twitter uses i guess because they're at oscon they use open source software sure yeah on the back end who cares who cares i don't care what twitter's using on the back end i cared 10 years ago because i thought 10 years ago that if these big companies picked up linux and adopted it and put a bunch of money into it then it would eventually trickle down to the desktop. And as I see that not happening, it infuriates me. Well, I think you're conflating two things. So let me back up. I think, think of OSCON a little bit like this.

This is something I came to. It's as much as for us, the community, to go see how business is like the end product of open source are these companies. Like everything we talk about, you go there and see the end results of how they actually use it. I think that's beneficial for the community itself to see. But you can flip that around too, Noah. Like if you noticed, when we talk to some of these folks, like we are also, it's them reconnecting with the open source community.

So I think it's by going to these events like OSCON that they kind of connect back to the original roots that everything starts from. So I think it's a two-way street in that regard. And I kind of tip my hat to the OSCON folks. But what I think the core thing you're getting at here is essentially, supposedly, here's a bunch of people making money off of open source. A lot of developers were there, a lot of people there from their profession, and they're all pretty much at least, I would say, a ratio of 20 to 1 using Macs, and probably a ratio of 7 to 10 using iPhones to Android devices. And that's being generous on the one side.

But the thing that really irks me is that the companies that benefit the most from the backs of the community in open source, then those people that are in the community are the first to get shafted when desktop clients come out for things like Netflix. Or Google Drive. Right. I feel like you should eat your own dog food.

If you're going to come to a conference and talk about how everyone should use free and open source software and open source is the best, use it. And not just on your server and on your back end. Boot into it. Use it as a desktop daily. Here's what I think the problem is. And it comes down to a little bit of market dynamics.

So Apple just released their quarterly results a couple of days ago, Friday or something like that. Their Mac sales grew 18% in the last quarter. The rest of the entire PC industry is down 2% overall. Apple is up 18%, and everybody else on average is down 2%. They are seeing, because honestly, they're well-built machines, I think they're seeing a huge adoption curve right now. And this is a trend I've noticed over the last seven years as I've gone to these conferences. It's more and more Macs. And it started with some Macs to now it's all Macs. It's all Macs in the booths. It's Macs in the users. It's ridiculous. And I think part of the problem is a lot of times in professional uses, people are using Linux on the server. So

all they really need is an SSH session to that Linux box. So they get a Mac because it's trouble free. It runs Netflix. It runs Photoshop. It's got all the commercial software. It honestly has all the open source software too. You put Brew on a Mac. Now you've got a package manager. Bob's your uncle. You're installing stuff from the command line. Then you SSH into your Linux box. You do your development all day long in Sublime Text. Yeah, you're happy. You go home. And for them, they just buy this laptop. It's got 10 hours of battery life, it's fairly trouble-free, and it gives them SSH right out of the box. I know it sounds trivial, but I really think that's what's selling these things. And I think as a community, what we've got to do is nut up, and I'm not using that sexually,

I mean in the terms of like, let's seriously come to a realization that our boat is sinking, and that these people are jumping ship to the Mac like crazy. But the reality is, eventually they're going to get bored. They're going to want something better. But we're not there when they're ready to jump. Linux runs like butt on these MacBooks. These freaking MacBooks are selling more than any other PC in the industry right now, and we can't manage to get Linux working on them. Oh, you want Thunderbolt? Go F yourself. Sorry. Oh, you want a high DPI resolution? Hey, it kind of works, depending on which desktop you choose. Oh, you want thermal management? Sorry. Apple has an SMC controller. We can't do that. We won't even bother trying to reverse engineer it. Obviously, it's not an ideal

solution. But the problem is, a huge, huge number of our community is buying these machines. And we do not, as Linux, have a solution to make a great out-of-the-box experience on these MacBooks. It's half-assed. You've got trackpad problems after sleep. You have no Ethernet support. You've got crappy to zero thermal management. And it's still a pain in the ass to make it work in the first place. So what are we going to do? I think the problem is actually even bigger than what you're talking about, because that

is assuming these people want to come to Linux in the first place. And the reality is, I don't see a lot of Mac OS users complaining about their Mac OS experience and wanting to come to Linux. And the best way to get those people, the best way to get those users is right now while they're on Windows, when they're looking for something to jump off the instability and and and the bugginess of windows that's the time to get these users because once we lose them to the mac it's going to be twice as hard three times as hard five times as hard to get them to come to linux well there as somebody who came from mac as somebody who came from mac i gotta say what's going to might be the major driver is when they

have to upgrade their computer every two years just to keep current software i can't i had that problem i was like i cannot spend that much money on computer hardware i'm switching to linux because i know that i'll future proof my machines wimpy you think the targets move right out from underneath us well i just listening to your discussion it strikes me that you know a few years ago we might have been having this discussion about people using Windows machines, and now we're talking about people running Mac OS X on Apple hardware. So is now the principal target for Linux adoption the Apple Mac audience? I feel like what Noah's worried about will apply to probably the majority percentage of people who switch. However, there will be still a large number, let's for fun say 20% of people who switch

that are technically inclined switch after a year or two from macOS to Linux. I don't think this is actually all that unusual. I've seen threads about coming from Mac to Linux because people get bored after a while. And I feel like when that happens, and for a lot of technically inclined people who are intellectually curious,

I believe that you arrive to a point in Mac OS X without after that long of usage where you've essentially mastered the operating system and you realize, okay, I'm now seeing the walls of the holodeck. I would like a better program than this. And you go look for Linux. Maybe you start as a dual boot and then you could switch over if we were there and ready to supply this hardware. And I think at the end of the day, what's selling is the MacBook.

I think the MacBook Air – I mean, Linus Torvalds uses a MacBook Air for God's sakes, right? I think it's this hardware. No, I think he still has one. No, he still uses it. Yeah, he still has it, I think. He just has more than one machine, but he also has a Pixel, right? So, I mean, he's got a few machines. But I guess the point I'm trying to get at is I feel like the target, like Wimpy said, the target has moved, and we are not responding.

We need to be working on better Thunderbolt support, better high DPI support. We need to get, you know, we need to reverse engineer the SMC controller in these Macs so that way there's thermal management. And then the battery life will be better too. And all of this stuff, and it definitely set off like the red alert. We have a major problem and nobody's talking about it. And I guess I kind of also feel like until you go to one of these events and you see it for yourself, when you go to an event filled with your peer groups and none of them are using Linux, I mean, it really, it's one thing to hear about it through a podcast. It is another thing entirely to be standing there and seeing it and realize, oh, man, we have a huge problem.

Well, I would expand on that. Go ahead, Matt. Go ahead. man we have a huge problem well i would expand on that go ahead matt go ahead oh i was going to say one thing i would expand on and this is something with a wife that uses a os 10 and actually uses a mac that i experienced is the number one reason why people use macs and she and i bet angela probably attest to this as well is uh it's called apple care it's not an extended warranty we the logic board pops because Mac logic boards are crap. I'm sorry, they are. They're garbage. But the user doesn't care because they know they can go to the Mac store like we did. It's under AppleCare. She exchanges it. They fixed the logic board. It didn't cost us anything. It took three days, and she never missed a beat.

The experience was completely seamless. Her data was safe. She didn't have to care. That phrase right there. The other thing, especially for folks who are not technically inclined, is they really need a brand that they feel like, well, at least I know this brand puts out quality at a certain level. And I don't know about RAM. I don't know about megahertz. I don't know about SSD. But I know that Apple is known for a certain kind of machine. And if I'm willing to spend the money, I I know that Apple is known for a certain kind of machine, and if I'm willing to spend

the money, I can get that, and I think a lot more people are willing to spend the money than we realize. Because a lot of these folks now are buying a machine and they're using it for like five plus years. So it's not as huge of a deal. I mean, I have an old... I mean, I don't use it hardly, but I have an old iMac that I'm running off an external hard drive. The point is, is people are buying

these things because they understand the experience. They don't give a flying crap if it runs on hamsters. They know what it does. They understand it. They're able to wrap their brains around it. Macs have now gained in global market share for 32 of the last 33 quarters in a row. Not surprised. I'm not saying they're the largest machine, but I'm saying we're just ignoring them. Go ahead, Heavens. No, it's not even an experience. It's a company that people can blame or sue.

That is the backing thing that will make most people or companies decide on what to use. They just want someone to blame. No one wants to have the responsibility to need to own up to your own hardware. That's why Apple or that's why a lot of companies which sell a lot of software or os's are no that's crap the reason they disagree i completely disagree the point of it is is that people that value their time that aren't willing to are interested in spending their time doing that maybe they're a chef an artist uh i don't know maybe they make music whatever it is the point is they don't want to geek out they don't care they want that experience i've worked closely with chris perillo he'll tell you the same thing.

He buys these machines because of their experience. He knows how the stuff works, but he doesn't care. Chris Fisher, for example, runs it because it does certain tasks well. I'm not a Mac person. I freaking hate them with a passion. But I'm not naive enough to think that it's this – we look at it from a very technical point of view and Joe Average doesn't care. Right. Just don't give a rat. Well, what I'm finding, though, and what I guess struck a chord with me because I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment there, Matt.

What struck a chord with me is now we're going to OSCON. And also, by the way, I'm coming from like a multi-year trend, too, of this whole thing. Sure, sure. Now we're going to like the geeks, like the people writing software, the people that are creating server platforms. And, you know, like you go to Rackspace and Rackspace has the Rackspace cloud and they're deploying bare metal servers with Core OS. And everybody there has a MacBook. Yep. I really don't see why that is an issue, though.

I mean, if they're developing open source software, software I could go out in the world and say even if it's gpl3 and download and use i don't give two craps what they are using on they could be developing on windows 8 i don't think they care either yeah i think you nailed it of apple most of the time it's like what you said before there because someone is they just want the ecosystem i always explained or tried to compare apple to be this metaphor of being a stick or a stake in the ground on a chain you're on this chain and in this bubble of happiness that's apple that's it's nice environment it's a beautiful little bubble everything is desired or given to you and you're very happy whenever you want to get outside that bubble, you're screwed. You cannot

leave that place. I think the point that hey, at least these people are making open source software is a valid one. We should underscore that. My point is what I want to try to begin to push onto the community, at least to think about, is if we want these people to someday switch, because

I would think, I mean, I as a desktop Linux user really want more desktop Linux users because I want more of what I need to do on Linux to be more available to me and I want it more available to everybody. I know kernel Linux feels the same way very passionately. More people using Linux is better for everybody. And I just want that when these MacBook users who are professionally technical and decide they do want to try something else, wouldn't it be amazing if we could make that transition actually work? Because right now, that MacBook in some ways is a prison. The only other direction they have that's even kind of halfway supported is Windows. Right. That's so true.

And I think Colonel Linux would actually agree with this assessment in that the direction to get people to begin to use Linux starts with the PC repair techs. When they come in with a broken Windows machine, send them out with a Linux install. Give them the option. Say, look, you're doing this, this, this, and this. Nothing that can't be done on Linux. Give this a try. Let me know how it works. I'll go ahead and mirror your drive

with it fixed. If you don't like it, we'll put it back on. But give this a shot. That's where change happens. We can talk about it all day long, but unless we're knocking on doors or something, you know, action. I see that on a daily basis, exactly what you're talking about, Matt, but what I just posted in the chat and I'll reiterate it, I would rather be running

all software like Steam and Netflix and all this proprietary stuff on my Linux box, I would rather have that flexibility than have the flexibility of running all open source programs, but I have to do it on a Mac. So I do care. I do care what those developers are using. I do care what operating system they feel is most valuable

and they think the market owns. If everyone has a Mac, they're going to write software that works well on a Mac. I'm sorry. I think that's a completely closed-minded mindset, to be honest with you. It is. Well, no.

Hold on. The last point he was making is a good one, though. If everybody's using a Mac and they're writing software, then it's going to no hold on the last point he was making is a good one though if everybody's using a mac and they're writing software then it's going to work better on the mac than it does on your linux desktop and that's a valid concern don't you think josh i always see them all around the place on most of the conferences i look at i watch tons of conferences and they all have macbooks all over the place well maybe it's apparently really good apparently we should be launching the MacBook Action Show.

Apparently, based on the demographics that I'm seeing. Stay tuned for future developments. One last thought I wanted to leave you guys with. What I want everybody to absorb on is that instead of just talking in circles about it, what do we do to fix this? I was pointing out to Noah, Noah nailed it.

So it's like, okay, let's introduce this to our customers. Let's introduce this to our, okay, let's introduce this to our customers. Let's introduce this to our family members. Let's introduce this to people that might be interested before they take the Mac bill. You know what I mean? Yeah. All right. Hey, Noah, I wanted to tell folks maybe you could give us a little info. There's this great place, especially if you're in the Grand Forks area, called altaspeed.com,

where people can find out all kinds of information about Noah and his company and the services they provide. So check out altaspeed.com. Give them a look. I've had the pleasure of working with Noah out in the field. I've seen how he works with his team. As somebody who's done IT contracting in the past, I could tell you that I spotted a good one, and Noah and his team could definitely handle it. Altaspeed.com.

Check them out. They've also got products available to buy there, too. All right. I appreciate the plug. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, we run, every technician that works for a company runs some form of Linux. Every software piece, every piece of software we use runs on Linux,

and that is the primary desktop we install for any customer that comes to us with a PC problem. Yep, and Noah's even like, alright, here's your work machine, this is Linux, feel free to break it, I don't care if you break it, just have fun, and if you break it, we'll fix it together. I like that, that's great. Yeah, alright,

well, let's wrap it up there. Just a couple of bits, and we can maybe talk about this more in the post show too, but on Sunday, we're going to do a review of Crux Linux, and I would love to also maybe enlist some of you out there, some MumbleRoom, stay tuned after the show. We'll talk about this in the post show,

about helping us do a review. Because on Tuesday's Linux Unplugged, following Sunday's Linux Action Show, the next upcoming episodes, on Tuesday we'll have a developer from Crux Linux join us. So I'd like to get the Mumble's Room thoughts on it so we can kick it around.

So tune in on Sunday for last. We'll do the review of Crux Linux. We're also going to have Frank on from OwnCloud to talk about the new OwnCloud 7 they've just released. And then on Tuesday, we'll do a community review of Crux Linux and talk to the developer.

And if you are interested, or if you're a Crux user, or if you have questions about Crux, go to linuxactionshow.reddit.com. We're going to have a Q&A thread up there, sticky probably right there at the top, where you can ask your questions to the Crux developer for Tuesday's show. And if you're a Crux user, I'd love to get your insights

or anything you'd recommend we try. Look for that thread. It'll probably be posted soon if it's not already. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com to get in on the Crux action. And last but not least, a quick plug. We'd love your feedback. Go over to JupyterBroadcasting.com. Click that contact link and choose Linux Unplugged from the. I know, it's so confusing, but it all makes sense because what

we have is an automated system where you can send in your feedback, our robots process it, and they send it to us humans for reading right here on the air. All right, Matt. All right. Well, that's going to wrap us up today. I want to say, I'm going to see you on Sunday. Go download Crux, Matt, if you haven't already, because get ready we're going to do the action review. I've never tried Crux before. Never tried it. I'll be checking it out. Yeah. So

I'll be curious to hear what you think on Sunday. So I'll see you on Sunday, Matt. Alright, see you then. Alright, everyone. Well, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Don't forget you can join us live on a Tuesday. Go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get the showtimes. jblive.tv is where you'll find the embed for the chat room.

You can also get the mumble info there if you'd like to join our virtual lug. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning this week's episode of Linux Unplugged.

We'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you. The show cannot prosper if people listening don't tell other people about it. The show cannot prosper if people listening don't tell other people about it. I think part of the problem is that people mistake Jupiter Broadcasting as passive entertainment. That's incorrect. This is active participation. You are encouraged, and in some ways, like, gently encouraged with a poker, to get involved, share content, ask questions, disagree, agree, share ideas, and just yak in general do something well and i

guess i kind of feel like i don't know because people see some sponsors they assume oh well they've got plenty of money they don't need my help and it really was like yes spread the word tell people about it help us grow i mean i mean i'm not you know at the end of the day we still make great content that's what matters but i was just a little disappointed because we do need to help really bad it's not like you know some pr yeah we do need the help really bad. It's not like, you know. I heard some PR. Yeah, we need some PR help. You know, there's the Patreon page, patreon.com slash today.

There's funding there to help cover costs like this. Anything, resharing it helps, all that kind of stuff. Being here live, you know, I appreciate everybody who shows up live. That's really great to get the instant feedback and stuff like that, too. And the mumble room, you know, all this stuff is incredibly helpful. So I'm very, very, very grateful in so many, so many ways, in so many ways. I just kind of felt like this last week we went above and beyond and it kind of fell flat and I felt bad. I take it very personally because I follow this stuff very closely. What do we think of the new final

Mozilla CEO, Chris Beard? The man doesn't have a beard, but he's got a great last name. He's been the Mozilla project since before Firefox 1.0 shipped. He seems to have worked in almost every aspect of the project. It seems to be a good change, right? Well, I think my number one positive on this is that finally, you know, your facial hair has gotten a job. That's fantastic. You know, because I think that's been overdue. No, in all seriousness, I think he sounds like a good candidate. I think he could potentially be a performer. That's why we're the show that has a beard and knows how to use it.

That's right. In a way, I'm unhappy that someone even needed to fill in for the CEO. Brandon Eich was fucking awesome. He was a really great guy. Chris Beard was the interim CEO during this whole mix-up, too. So he kind of was already doing the job. Yeah. As long as someone took the helm.

Yeah, take the helm as it is. That's it. You know, fresh blood. Cross your fingers. Yeah. All right, let's go see what our title is, and then we'll get out of here. We'll get.

Okay. JBtitles.com, everybody. Last chance to go. What's the guy's qualifications compared to Brendan Eich? I mean, obviously he didn't invent JavaScript, but... Brendan Ike was awesome. Like, decompiling hex codes and server script and server

binaries and shit in the back day. I can decompile hex code in my head. No, as in the binaries and backtrack doing the debugging. That's what gave him the idea to make a tracing JIT compiler. Backtracking through hex code. Covered his bugging. That's what gave him the idea to make a tracing JIT compiler. He went back tracking through X. Or, you know, just looked through one.

Covered his qualifications in today's Tech Talk today. He does have some good qualifications. So that would be one to watch if you want to...