LINUX Unplugged - Episode 53: Ubuntu with Rodent | LUP 53

Episode Date: August 13, 2014

The new Beta of ElementaryOS has shipped and we discuss where they are heading, the problems with their community interaction, and the genius move they are taking with some tricky hardware support.Plus the long term cost of Ubuntu Touch becoming successful, using ZFS on Linux successfully, and much more!

We have a little debunking I want to do. I'm going to pull up Skype right now, so that way Matt can call in while we're talking about this, because I'm about to get a little upset. Uh-oh. You guys know how I feel about Linux journalism. It's crap. It is crap, and it needs to get fixed real bad, right? Oh, yeah. Old punching bag of mine. It's not too surprising. Nothing too new there. Well, our buddy John Grogan over at Linux Journal, nothing against John, I mean, he's just doing his job writing for Linux Journal, wrote up a piece that I saw last week, towards the end of last week, he wrote this on August 8th,

so let's see, when was August 8th? August 8th was last Friday, and I remember I came across this article while I was evaluating potential stories for the Linux Action Show, and one of the metrics that I use before making a story in the Linux Action Show is, how much overall coverage is it receiving? And I noticed, particularly by tracking the story, that it was getting more and more pickup. And I thought, okay, this is one that's now definitely entered the category I need to read. And it's Linux security threats are on the rise. That's the headline. Ooh, that sounds bad. Real bad. Fade, does that scare you? That scares me to death right there.

Yeah. Well, and here's the facts. Every year, heck, every month, this is directly from the article, Linux is adopted by more and more companies and organizations as important. And, of course, I wouldn't dispute that. No. Would not dispute that. And, of course, Linux is a key part of their enterprise platform. And the more serious hardware the platform, the more likely it is to be running Linux.

60% of servers, 70% of web servers, and 95% of all supercomputers are Linux-based. So John starts out by kind of outlining something that everybody's going to agree with. I agree with that. Linux has a lot of usage. Okay. So we go through the article, and we talk a little bit about the benefits of Linux and its total cost of ownership. Then we get to a point about what's causing the increased security risk for Linux.

At least two factors John points to. And this is, I love this one. I love this one so, so much. First one, going forward. Not saying today, going forward. Love it when you just get everybody all worked up and then you preface it all on something that's going to happen in the future.

It's not happening now. Let's all get it worked up. So going forward, the sheer size and ever-growing popularity of Linux will be its downfall. Simply put, with 15.8 million lines of the most recent kernel, the likelihood of a mistake or mistakes simply increases. And mistakes equal vulnerabilities. Witness the GNU TLS bug from earlier this year.

And with more web servers running Linux than anything else, cracking Linux gets you where the money is. So he's saying more lines of code equal more bugs is essentially because the Linux kernel is 15.8 million lines of code. Therefore, there's going to be more bugs. So he's saying, so the headline is Linux security threats on the rise. What does he point to as a data point

for these security threats being on the rise? The lines of code in the Linux kernel. Now, have we not been here? Have we not done this before? This is what happens when any non-programmer looks at this and simply equates lines of code to complexity and bugs.

That code is segmented out into individual modules where they have ownership. In fact, it is extremely improper to measure the complexity or the vulnerability of a project based on its lines of code because you have no idea how that code is managed internally. And that makes all of the difference. That makes all of the difference. In fact, the senior director at engineering of Red Hat points out, he says, the most fundamental level of vigilance are things that seem very likely should be no-brainers, but they're easy to neglect and forget about.

This is the true reality of Linux security. Vulnerabilities are found all the time. So the critical piece of advice is to make sure your servers are kept up to date with security fixes all the time, i.e. patch your S, like we talked about on TechSnap. This is why Fedora Next is looking at ways to make your server much easier to have almost, in a sense, rolling. So you're constantly updating. We just had a story on TechSnap where now, based on studies, really your safest window to patch is nine days of the vulnerability announcement.

That's your safest time to patch is within nine days. And so you can see how existing Linux patching infrastructures aren't necessarily accommodating that new reality. To secure systems at an enterprise scale, one needs more than vigilance, though. Of course, he points out you've got to have a real-time continuous visibility. Back to John. More than vigilance, though. Of course, he points out you've got to have a real-time continuous visibility. Back to John.

You've got to have, in order to tackle this increasing Linux security problem, you have to have continuous real-time visibility across the entire landscape and environment and ability to establish and enforce security policies across the entire environment. Well, good news. Good news, everybody. Because it just so happens, right at the end of this article, John points out the Linux Journal is participating with Bit9 and Carbon Black for a webinar to address all of these issues where they will teach you with one click how to implement centralized security policies on Linux systems.

They'll give you the technical justification for increased vigilance and security measures as well as a roadmap to ensure that your data and your customers' data is safe and secure. Of course, the webinar is on August 27th. This entire article was to sell this damn webinar. And the reason why this bothers me is that headline has now gotten this thing in publication everywhere. And because the outlet is Linux Journal, everybody's running with it. And what I saw on Friday was a couple of sites. I now see all of the Linux aggregation news sites running this story. And it sites running this story.

And it's a crap story. It's not based on any data. It's based on the fact that lines of code have been added to the kernel and the fact that they have a webinar they want to sell. Is this not egregious? This is fairly egregious. I agree. Was there not an independent testing suite that rated the Linux kernel as the gold standard of code quality?

Right. I feel like if you're going to sell your product, can you do it without tarnishing the good name of another project, maybe? This is egregious. That's how I feel. Well put, sir. Well put. That's exactly. And I don't mean to get on John's case because I'm sure he was assigned this.

And, of course, this is probably going to be a good talk. They want to spread the word about it. I just think it's unfortunate, like you're saying, to drag the good name of a good open source project through the mud and use lines of code as your backup justification. Because it's one of those arguments that on surface almost sounds kind of good. And then when you actually think about it, it's kind of a crap argument. It sounds to me like they basically told him to write an article to push this marketing job forward. Yeah, I agree.

It's all marketing. Agreement. Mm-hmm. I just wanted to rant about that a little bit. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's powered by Linus Torvald's treadmill desk. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt.

Hey Matt, hey guess what? In studio this week, I'm pretty excited, Fate's joined us. Hey Fate. Hi there, thanks for having me. Hey, so I think what, last time I saw you, I mean I feel like we talk almost every day because you've been on summer break. Yeah. Last time I saw you though, Linux Fest. Yep. Yep, and Fate's in the Washington area but like as far away as possible. Yeah, pretty much. So he decided to join us today, Matt.

And it's good, too, because one of the topics we're discussing today is the new beta of elementary OS. And Fate happens to be sitting at the machine in the studio with that beta installed right now. He's running it. Oh, that's me. There he is right there. Oh, nice.

Nice. Oh, that looks good. Oh, you got chat on a virtual desktop? Man, that is looking fancy. Now, of course, we're not doing a review because it's beta. We're just going to give you our insights on it and maybe discuss the project as a whole, the community, their interaction with the community, which I think is very unique for elementary OS. And elementary OS is doing some extremely interesting things hardware-wise. It's not a smartphone. It's not a tablet.

No, it's much, much smarter than that. They're really attacking it. So that's coming up later in the show. But first, we do have some feedback to get to. So we're going to jump into that first, as always. That's tradition, Fade. Did you know that? Yeah, no.

Oh, yeah. You did know that. All right. Well, our first email comes in from Kyle. And Kyle wrote on a follow-up to an email we read on Sunday's Linux Action Show about the Linux desktop kind of getting him down, how he was kind of disappointed. Matt, you and I kicked this one around a little bit. Well, he writes, hey, Chris and Matt. This is Kyle, a.k.a. WiggleWaffles.

Thanks for your follow-up on today's last. Just to respond, number one, he's not going to switch away from Arch. He says Arch would have to be pried out of his cold dead hands he doesn't blame arch for his recent problems as he said in the subreddit he wasn't having trouble with arch but stuff that would be an issue on any distro because he installed the beta versions of those packages i've had to do some crazy grub gymnastics even to get a boon to the booth sometimes so it's not like arch is alone in his problems he says in fact arch never really given me any trouble itself. Number two, he took our advice about picking like a GNOME or XFCE desktop and just sticking with it.

He says he's going to give it a try. He says, I was wondering if you guys could do a how-to segment on running multiple DEs under Arch and clean up the ones you're not using. Because I remember Chris borked his Arch install when going from KDE to GNOME. That has me a bit scared. I think that was actually an NVIDIA driver issue. Oh, was it? Oh, okay. Have you ever had any problems installing multiple desktops on Arch? Not really. I mean, I never really do KDE in any capacity,

so I can't speak to that. I just don't care. But I can tell you with GNOME and XFCE, no, I've never... Those seem to play well together. What about you, Fake? Well, I've tried that on Ubuntu back when I was on Ubuntu, and I got out of the habit of it because it tends to add badly. Now, I think that's where it happens to go bad is on Ubuntu desktops

because they've got specific requirements of the version of Unity or et cetera, et cetera, right? Don't you think? No, that's probably it. You run Arch now, though, don't you? Oh, I do, yeah. And you still haven't really tried the multiple desktops? Well, GNOME is the master desktop, so how do you get away from that i don't want to draw attention to this but i had the lower third wrong and i just fixed it i just i don't want to thank my wife she just

sent me a text message like she sent me this text message look at this look at this text look at that text message episode wrong the number is wrong thank Thank you, Angela. You're right. It is episode 53 of the Unplugged show. Yeah, I would say the only thing that really bites me when I'm switching around multiple desktops is sometimes you get that mess of like I've got three text editors now or something like that. I don't know. We'll bring in the mumble room. Anybody in the mumble room have any advice for somebody that wants to install multiple desktop environments and play around? Is there any gotchas that somebody should be worried about firsthand? Craft. Lots of craft.

Multiple apps, right? Multiple web browsers, stuff like that. Oh yeah, redundant apps. Multiple settings area. You're going to fill up your root drive very quickly. Selecting multiple display managers as well when you log in. I feel like SystemD made that a lot easier because it's SystemD, you know, SystemCTL, enable KDM.service or disable GDM.service.

SystemD makes it really easy to move between the different display managers. But yeah, that would be my warning. What I do is I inevitably install another desktop because I like to play. I'm a tinkerer. So what I always do is I start with the grand vision. This is going to be a GTK-only desktop with only GTK apps. And then, of course, about 15 minutes in, I remember I have to install Quazzle. So then I install Quazzle.

And then about 10 minutes after that, I think, well, I do like K3B or something like that, right? And I have to install it. What you have to do is just start as minimal as possible and then branch out from there and watch out for clutter, and you'll be fine. I don't really think there's anything. You're not going to break your KDE install by installing GNOME. That's not going to happen.

And if that does happen, switch to a different distribution. One thing I'd also suggest is if you've got GNOME going on and you want to switch up your desktop environment, Cinnamon's a very easy one to install because it uses a lot of the same programs. Oh, totally. Yeah, good point. Moving between GNOME, XFCE, and Cinnamon

is particularly painless, I think. Don't forget Mate as well. Yes, yes. Mate has a lot of its own apps, including a different replacement for G-Edit, as it were. I forget what it's called off the top of my head. And it's got its own terminal, right? Well, but look at Cinnamon has their own file manager, right?

But that's the only thing. Yeah, and their own control center, but yeah. Yeah. And the other thing to consider is that after some amount of time of messing around, you might eventually find one that you can stick with and stay with it and then it won't be a problem. Right, right.

Yeah, because it is just kind of an experimentation phase. Count Zero writes in with our next email. He says, the problem with Linux market share. Uh-oh. He says, hi, guys. First of all, congratulations on your excellent piece on the Linux Unplugged 52, where you talked about the issues facing Linux on the desktop and why the Mac is gaining market share, and that maybe Linux might be stagnated.

While there may be a large degree of truth to this problem, I feel that the real situation is a lot more complex, and that it first appears because unless you're buying a Linux machine from a company like System76, well, there's a 99% probability that the machine you're going to get will have Windows installed on it. This means that when you bought it, it would count as a Windows sale and consequently push up the Windows market share. Since it's very hard to actually go out and buy a ready-made Linux it, it would count as a Windows sale and consequently push up the Windows market share. Since it's very hard to actually go out and buy a ready-made Linux machine, it's not surprising that Linux is lagging so far in the sales statistics. The main question that comes out of all of this, though, is how do you determine Linux market share?

When Linux is downloaded for free of charge and for the home user, no support contracts or other arrangements are made that would leave a paper trail. Of course, Google certainly knows how many search requests are coming from Linux client in relation to Windows or Mac, but this is just one way of determining usage. I guess my point is that because Linux doesn't leave much or actual any kind of financial data in its wake or aka paper trail, the market research companies not only find it difficult to get accurate figures, but frankly, are not even very interested because there's no money involved. As Chase always says, you got to show me the money. And, you know, Chase does always say that.

Chase always says, show me the money. Show me the money! You know, I look back at that. For one thing, I've experienced this a lot when you're looking at various pundits and whatnot talking about, you know, the Linux market share is not there. And they always point to the same old tired crap that's not even accurate. It's not even a debate. But as an industry, we accept it as reality.

Well, there you go. There's the numbers. There's where it is. I think he's completely right. I think a lot of people are buying Windows boxes and installing Linux, and you would have no idea what those actual numbers are. Yeah, he says, my own feelings on the subject is that Linux market share is inevitably far greater

than any official figures suggest, while the Windows figure may be correspondingly less than their own market share would indicate, since many people just see Windows boxes as Linux rigs waiting to be installed. I agree. Yeah, I think the closest you get is guesstimates, right? You can look at Steam figures, you can look at web browsing figures, but those are just approximations of certain demographics of people,

and you're not going to get a true representation because there is no central database of Linux users. I think it's a combination of all of them. If you look at it, what it really comes down to is I think the closest you're going to get is the web browser

where the statistics based on Google or Bing or whoever. Or Wikipedia is one we'll sometimes quote. Some people use DistroWatch, don't they, to pin down market share. If you look at net market share, most people use a browser on their computer at some point, don't they? So it's a fair assumption to say if you have traffic coming from Linux boxes, that's a good way to measure it.

I almost feel like we have to come up with a new metric. Like Fade here, what's that new tablet you got called? Oh, it's a Kobo Aura HD. It's an e-reader. And it's Linux-based? It is. And it's got a 1080p e-ink display. So obviously it's a killer e-book reader and you can use

Calibre to sideload documents on or mount it as a USB drive. And that for you, if you, so I guess my point is, say you spend two hours a day on that device. Does it, should it now be counted as one of your computing devices and the fact that it runs Linux?

Should that be included in your mix? And even if you are a Windows user but you spent two hours of your computing time on a Linux-type device, how do you properly account for that? Because that represents a huge majority of people that have Android devices. That's true. I mean, you look at Android market share, and for the use case that you use mobile devices, for most people, it's the same use case they use desktop devices. Yeah, email, social.

We like to separate it with this delineation, but I think it's a false delineation. People use it to get stuff done, whether it's on mobile or on desktop. I agree. I think it's a bit of a— That's just a false belief. It's a false belief. It's something that we've divided in our minds because of the way we see the technology, but as new people come into it and use it, they don't have those prejudices.

Yeah, like your kids. When they're growing up, this is what they use to get stuff done. The computer is the old weird thing. Like when Dylan uses the computer, he's using the quaint thing that Dad uses, right? That's how he sees it. And when he's using a tablet, he's using a real computer because a real computer has speech capability,

it has a camera built in, it has touchscreen capability, and if you have a computer that doesn't have those things, it doesn't have all the features he wants. It's like us looking at five and a half inch floppies. Right. Or punch cards. Yeah. There you go. It is. It's very weird to think about it that way. And that's why it's all going to change. James writes in

about the Ubuntu rant that Matt and I got into an Ubuntu rant at the end of last week's Linux Unplugged, and you knew that was going to get Josh in the mumble room. I knew he was pulling his hair out while we were going. Oh, yeah. But James wrote in, I think, so that way he could say what Josh didn't want to.

Hey, Chris and Matt, one day I'll make it onto the mumble room, but in lieu of that, I had to pass this comment about your Ubuntu dropping the ball rant in last week's episode. Firstly, here we go, Matt. You know it's bad when it starts out with firstly, right? Oh, yeah. That's okay. Yeah. Firstly, one of the specific points raised, such as the software center, et cetera, weren't necessarily wrong, but I contend that every distribution has issues like this.

And the reason we are so upset about those issues with Ubuntu is that we all know deep down that Ubuntu is the closest. The problem seems that all of the glaring, the problems seem all more glaring simply because it's 99% of the way there. If it was 70% as some other distros were, then it simply wouldn't get that upset about it. I don't know if I agree with that. I completely agree with it.

I think he literally climbed inside my brain and stated exactly why I get so, that's why I get so much grief about it, because I I care about Ubuntu and it is the closest you completely totally agree so you think because it's it's in that uncanny valley and that gap is so close to being closed that we get frustrated they didn't just finish it exactly it's like they're I mean they've already got the they've got the skeleton there they've got the know-how I would argue they have the resources they may differ but I I believe they do I've seen evidence of it. I've just seen the things they've done so far and believe they can.

And it feels like they get so close to the finish line and they're like, oh, hey, look, mobile. It's just kind of like, really, guys? Come on. Yeah, I would completely agree. When you bought your Ultra Pro, it came with the Unity desktop. It did. And then you reloaded to Arch with GNOME. Yes.

To you, doesn't GNOME feel like a more completed product to you? So I like those percentages you gave. I feel like it's 99% of the way there for most people. Ubuntu or GNOME? Ubuntu with Unity. Yeah. For the needs, not wants, of most people.

And it's about 70% of the way of what it could be if you really focused on the desktop, which is why I use GNOME, because they never stop focusing on it. And maybe Unity 8 will be simply amazing, but we don't know, because it's not a thing yet, other than on mobile. That's a good point. All right. So that was his first point. He says, I have to say that in comparison with Android, and we did make a comparison to Android, he said that he thought was kind of telling. Traditional Linux distros have always been just a little lacking on integration needed to produce what we've all seemed to want, and this will not change

in the next few years. Android solved that issue. So what did Android do? It took the Linux kernel and a subset of tools, and it developed its own user space, its own integrated display manager, and its own SDK. I think it's worth considering that what Canonical is doing is not getting

lost off in mobile land and ignoring the desktop, but actually doing R&D on how to pull off an Android style revamp of its desktop while at the same time pulling off a large number, or pulling in a new large number of developers. Let's be honest. Canonical is plugging

the desktop hard, but in places where Microsoft does not have a huge monopoly. Is it worth spending limited funds providing and offering to, say, 2 million potential customers in the U.S.? Or should they go to Brazil, Africa, and India and put that offering in front of 2 billion potential customers, which will provide a larger foothold to build on for developers and to build applications needed to make Linux desktop a reality?

Sure, it's a risky strategy. Unity 8 and Mirror might end up being bad. But Canonical, in this case, is like the swan. Everything looks calm on the surface, but furious paddling is occurring under the water. Only time will tell. That's a great email, James. That was actually fantastic. Yeah, I could see where they're going with that. I definitely can. My concern is that it's once again, it's grass is greener on the other side.

As soon as we get this done, Matt, as soon as we get this done, we'll be fine. Yeah, exactly. That's it. And on top of that, I think if you really look at it practically, rather than owning a market that quite honestly is not dead, yeah, it's stagnated. But again, you're not trying to get people to buy new hardware. You to people to get them to use their hardware again in ways they may not have previously instead of going that direction they're trying to get people they're basically trying to invent something no one really asked for in my opinion um geeks have asked for more mobile stuff sure joe average doesn't care so you know and being they make up most of the numbers arguably i think they're wasting their time i don't really understand the real benefit there but you know I mean they make up most of the numbers arguably I think they're wasting their time I don't really understand the real benefit there but you know they could prove me wrong it's happened before I hope they do you know effort I hope it's not wasted effort I hope they prove

us wrong I don't know I mean we'll see it it very well I think it's way awesome if they could yeah it would be it would be amazing to be honest with you would be salvation for a lot of people who are looking for a solution definitely wasn't one of the things you were talking about last week was that the Mac user experience is so great because it's got all this integration and therefore developers are willing to put the time and effort in to that user space. Well, if Linux

had something like that, would that not benefit us? I don't know if I've ever said the Mac is well integrated because I don't know if that I think when we think of integration what do we, I think when I think integration, I think KDE, right, where all of the K apps. But the real integration, the integration that matters is like the API and that type of stuff where you can write something for iOS and then with very little code surfacing on the surface rewriting, You can make that application available on Mac OS X. That's the type of integration that inspires developers to write for the platform. And then those good applications inspire users to move to the platform.

What sells consoles? An incredible game. And that's the kind of story that Canonical is pitching is you will be able to write a QMLJS or a Qt application that runs on the mobile, that runs on the tablet, that runs on the desktop with very minor changes, that's a very compelling storing and it might

result in some really decent applications coming to Linux that we might not have thought of before. It might be a pipe dream too though. They've been talking about it for years. I think the problem that we have with it isn't so much

that they're going in a new direction that may or may not be successful for them. It's that they have such a large market share and so many people rely on them that them focusing the efforts, their limited finite resources on something that's unproven and generally unwanted could result, it does result in negligence of

the platform that we all love right now. So Google has the resources to focus on anything they want to. I think it's the negligence of the platform we all love now that has us upset. And I don't think there's a really, but you can make a good case that people who we really need to have adopting it right now don't want necessarily a moving target. Take India, you know, or some, you know, like in some ways a non-moving target is a good thing. So it depends on who you want to have adoption. The part that what I really have is the end game.

This is where I truly, deeply am concerned about the canonical strategy. Let's be honest. Who's going to buy Ubuntu Touch devices in mass numbers? And I'm talking millions. It's carriers. Why? Because they're already working with carriers to develop the platform so that way those carriers can modify it. So that way it's Verizon OS. It's AT&T OS.

It's Orange OS. It's whatever the carrier is. It's their operating system with their store, with their services. What we will be moving to with Ubuntu Touch is not just operating system lock-in. What we will be moving to with Ubuntu Touch is not just operating system lock-in. We will be moving into an era of carrier lock-in where you buy an app and that app is only available from the carrier store because they control the experience from the operating system all the way up to the connection. And it will be carrier lock-in and phone lock-in. It will be a new breed of evil. The idea is you, as in the carrier or whatever, would be able to – say, for instance, Ting.

Ting would be able to develop a Ting scope that works on the Unity mobile experience. And you would be able to use their scope, or they would be able to tie in music purchasing into the music scope if they wanted to. Does that mean carrier lock-in? Yes. Sort of. Well, but if the content you're buying is only available from that carrier and you switch to a different carrier, you lose access to the content. It's not like the carrier is going to be completely stripping out

the application store from Ubuntu Touch. They're only going to be adding particular stuff onto Scopes. I agree. I don't know here because I've had those really bad prepaid phones since I was a kid, and they try and ship their store, their ringtones, their music, all of that stuff on there, and nobody buys it. Well, you don't. It's bad, but they've never had a platform that sits on a smartphone,

and when it's on a smartphone, it's shiny and appealing. And if they go to Canonical and say, hey, we'd love to ship your product if you let us do this, what's Canonical going to say? Of course. Right. They need the sale. Exactly. They have no resources.

You have to remember that when your platform is divided and used in all sorts of different facets, that's a problem that winners have. Right. Well, and let's go back to Android for a second. Thank you, Noah. So let's talk about this. Look exactly at the user sacrifices that Android decided to make in order to accomplish carrier adoption.

They conceded things that we all now hate, the ability to install software, the ability to delay updates, these types of things that we all now hate, the ability to install software, the ability to delay updates. These types of things that we all absolutely hate as Android users were done so that way they could get in the door and compete with the iPhone. Well, we are now seven years later, ladies and gentlemen. So imagine how much more locked up that is. The only way to penetrate, and I want to underscore the word penetrate, that market, is by bending over and letting them do anything you want.

And if that means making a scope, that's where it begins. It will be a themed operating system. They will have backgrounds. They will have app stores. They will have video stores. They will have e-book stores. It will be the VCAS store. It will be the VApp store.

And the reason why I hate that we are ignoring the desktop is because we are building, and I say we, I mean Canonical, are building a future in which I don't want that anyways. Like, even if we get there, the worst case scenario is that Ubuntu Touch is actually adopted. It's bad for users. It is bad for the market. Worst case scenario, worst case scenario is that Ubuntu Touch is successful. Think about it. Everything we don't like about Android, much worse. But what about the fact that the Android can be – you can install Ubuntu Touch on Android with like one button.

But Canonical can make it where you can just disable all the carrier crap with one button. Well, I mean obviously if there's something like that, then it's the Jesus platform. But right now, I don't – And you've got to look at motivation. Who's putting money in their pockets? We're not. Right. Why the hell would they do that?

If I'm a carrier, wouldn't I want to remove that functionality? I wish they would, but I can't see that. There's only one group of organizations in the entire world that are worse than banks, and that's carriers. Most of the time, the only people that upset me more on a daily basis besides the financial industry is the freaking telco industry because I have to interface with them constantly, and it's so aggravating. So giving them more power, giving them a platform, that sounds like the worst thing ever. If you create a vendor locked-in platform like that, if they're successful, which why wouldn't they be? If you're going to ship an Ubuntu Touch product, you're going to make any kind of demands you like and they're going to be met

or you're not going to ship it. The two-year contract that you're locked into, even if you don't like it, tough. You've got two years before you can do something else and by then you'll be locked in. Well, are you going to take that phone over to another carrier? It's got all the other carrier's image on it. And then we go into this argument that I love, like when I complain about the stuff about Android,

I always get the, well, you could install CyanogenMod. Well, I mean, sure, in Ubuntu Touch, you could flash it yourself. Okay, that's great for the 2,000 people in the entire world that will do that. Good job, everybody. But for the millions of people that will have no idea what that even means, it doesn't do squat. Fair enough. I was just thinking about, this is kind of down but um if you think of the tablet industry though uh that's not tied to a central carrier um somebody like system 76 or even just box stores could potentially ship i would be

more excited about that yeah i would be a lot more excited if it was like ubuntu touch for tablets and that'll probably be where i use it i'm not so excited about the carrier versions or like i would what i'm like for me personally like i'm already running ubuntu touch on my nexus like i am really looking forward to it as an enthusiast to getting to play with it what i but the thing is i have to be realistic about what the mass market implementation will be and that's damn depressing personally to play with i'm all excited for it have at it right but i don't think it's worth sacrificing the two years it feels like i don't know it feels at least like the last year has been lost on the desktop but don't you think that the people that care enough to flash their phones

are going to be the ones that flash their phones and the people that don't know how to flash their phones are the ones that probably don't care i think people don't care until they decide wait a minute my carrier's screwing me and I want to move. Or they think, oh, I don't like this anymore. Like for me, I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm a little more uncomfortable with Android than I originally realized. And so I decided I'm going to try out an iOS device. Well, there goes all the apps I've ever bought.

Screw you, Chris. Same developers. You've spent the money. Screw yourself. You're done. Regular people are not willing to make that decision. Shouldn't they get paid? Right.

But see, what Fate just said, I underscore, is I don't necessarily hold the developers guilty for that. But like Fate said, normal people look at that and say, well, geez, that's about another phone's worth of apps I've bought. I'm not switching. And they're already locked in. Now, add the carrier level to that, guys. I mean, just think about that. That is freaky. But we'll see.

You know what? We shouldn't get too worked up, honestly, because who knows what could happen. There could be a way to strike a balance here. And maybe Canonical is the one that could set a tone for the rest of the industry to follow. And if not, Yolophone. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I'm rocking one right now. And if not, Yolophone. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I'm rocking one right now.

It's not loaded up with a bunch of DNA bloat. Yeah, and you know, Alan from TechSnap just got the fire, or the spark or whatever it is from the Mozilla guys, and he likes it. He doesn't need a lot of functionality. It works for him. All right, well, we've got a couple more emails just to bust through real quick. This is the one Faith's been waiting for,

and I like this guy. His name he submitted from Australia. You know what? That's all you need to say. It's like, I immediately am like, that's awesome. Okay, so he writes and he says, hey Chris and Matt, I watch your show weekly and I really enjoy it. So I just wanted to let you know and I think he was responding to some of my ButterFS grousing I was doing. I've been using

ZFS on Arch for one and a half years now. Never had a single issue. I run it on two servers, about 24 terabytes of data, and on my notebook. I use it for my data partition only. Storing data on my ZFS makes me sleep better, and I'm sure Alan would agree with that. I use ZFS Git package. He's using the Git version of ZFS from the AUR, and it works like a charm.

I thought you would be interested, and maybe you can give a maintainer a quick shout-out. His name is Jesus Alvarez, or Jesus, whichever. I'm going to go with Jesus. He really deserves the name. I agree. Also, he's known as the demonizer. He made my life so much easier. Maybe yours, too. I've included commands to start

using ZFS. It's Vase's caution. It's very easy. See on LAS and TechSnap. From Australia, thanks for the update. You, sir, have balls making your data partition based on the ZFS Git. The Git version of your files. Wow. And I know ZFS is supposed to be stable and all, but.

On an unsupported platform. Wow. This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. Okay. Mumble Room, this one's for you. Q5, are you still in there, Rotten? Are you guys in there?

You guys got your ears on? Because this was submitted nine hours ago to the Linux Action Show subreddit from... I'm going to go with Ion D-Bagger. Ironic Badger. Ironic Badger. That's actually me. Okay. Ironic D-Bagger.

Wow. Okay. Wow. All right. Well, I'm glad you're here because I made it much funnier. So, Ironic D-Banker. Wow. Okay. Wow. All right. Well, I'm glad you're here because I made it much funnier. So, ironic D-Banker wrote, hey, guys, apologies if this is a show. Yeah, apologies. But he wants to know if we would be interested in doing a LUP review of Open Media Vault,

a do-it-yourself NAS based upon Debian. It really has some neat features for the home NAS solution. Hopefully, a range of people could test it out on various different RAID setups, drive pooling options such as SnapRate, AUFS, MHDDFS, and so on. We could always use more discussions surrounding how people store their TBs, terabytes, at home. I use SnapRate with AUFS. For now, XFS across my data drives.

Always love the good talk on this topic. I'll be in the Mumba room tonight, hopefully. Well, there you go, Crunchy. I also would like to be, I would very much like to get a community review of Open Media Vault. It's one of these things where it's hard for me to review because I've got a FreeNAS and a

Plex server. I'm kind of already all dialed in. I'm not really in a position where I need to do this, but I've always wondered about Open Media Vault. So is anybody in the Mumba room interested in doing an Open Media Vault review? We could do like a roundtable review. I'm in. Yeah, I'll take part in that.

Seeing as I posted the thing, I'll definitely say yes to that. Alright, so we've got three. Alright, well we'll start from there. We'll talk more in the post show. So we'll do a community review of Open Media Vault soon. So out there, if you're interested and you're normally one of our Mumble participators, or if you're not and you still like to be involved, you can go over to the Linux Action Show subreddit and we'll have a feedback

thread for episode 53. And it is episode 53 of Unplugged, not 52 like the lower third said. Last but not least, I'm going to give you guys a little Oculus updates as we wait for the Linux version. Now, you will recall I was complaining at a Linux action show that on the Oculus DK2 pre-order website, they list Linux support. However, I do not have a working DK2 under Linux.

No, sir. No, actually, they've just today updated their SDK for Mac. So now Windows and Mac have SDKs. But us Linux users? Pfft. Bubkiss so far. Bubkiss. So the Oculus update remains.

It's still negative in the Freedom Dimension. Cannot use it under Linux. Not yet, at least. But a little birdie tells me they are working on it. It's going to take some time. Kind of a bummer. Yeah.

Kind of a bummer. Kind of a bummer, man. I'm going to show it to Fade afterwards and it's like, okay, well, should I show Fade on the Windows box or the Mac? Not great options. No, not at all. Right? People come over and they want to see the Oculus and I got to boot into Windows. It's disgraceful.

It's disgusting. You feel dirty afterwards. Well, I always, that's why I always ask all my guests if they'd like to take a shower with me. I always just figure it out. It just got awkward. I could actually see his eyes get wide. Oh, hey, Faye, by the way, after the show, I had something I wanted to ask you. I asked you.

All right. Before we get into our first main topic of the day, I wanted to thank our first sponsor, and that is Ting. Go to linux.ting.com. We were talking about some of the problems with the mobile industry, and talk about something that Ting can help clean up. Here's the thing about Ting. No contracts and no early termination fee, but maybe my favorite part, and probably Matt's too, is you only pay for what you use. It's a flat $6 a month. It's $6 a month, and then it's your usage.

Ting takes your minutes, your then it's your usage. Ting takes your minutes, your megabytes, your messages. They add them all up, whatever bucket you fall into. That's what you pay. And then the man comes along. He's like, excuse me, Ting. I got to put a little percentage on that. So then the man gets his cut. But after that, that's all you pay. It's whatever you use plus the man's cut and that flat $6. And by the way, it's $6 per line. So you add more devices. You can pull your minutes together. $6. I've got three phones. It's crazy. They're all on one account and my bill is outrageously low. It's great. Plus they've got a ton of phones you can buy. They're yours. You own them outright. They're not subsidizing the cost. They don't trick you into paying for that phone over the life of that two-year contract. You buy it up front and own it like you do a

fricking computer. It's yours because these are freaking computers. And then Ting, if you want to use Ting as your mobile ISP, do it. Cairo don't care. Ting don't care. Use them as your mobile ISP. They like it. Go over to linux.ting.com. It'll take $25 off your first month of Ting service.

And one of the great things about Ting once you become a Ting customer is you can take advantage of some of their really advanced functionality, like their dashboard. Ting has an incredible dashboard. You can go in there. You can activate devices, deactivate their really advanced functionality, like their dashboard. Ting has an incredible dashboard. You can go in there. You can activate devices, deactivate devices, transfer devices, check your minutes. They have cool fuel gauge status indicators of where your minutes are at, set up short names, set up call forwarding, all the bouncing rules, all of that kind of stuff you might want to do. And then if you ever get stuck or you just don't want to be lonely, you just want to talk to somebody, guess what?

You can call them. 1-855-TING-FTW. 1-855-TING-FTW. Anytime between 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. East Coast time. And a real person, a real Canadian, empowered to solve your problems, answers the phone. And they're cool, too. We've had stories of our audience members getting postcards in the mail from Ting afterwards, like signed by the person that they talked to on the phone.

Be like, hey, I was just thinking about you. I miss you. You know, that kind of stuff. Maybe not the miss you part, but you get my drift. And every Ting plan includes hotspot, tethering, picture messaging, caller ID, three-way calling, all that stuff you'd expect. Oh, you want a hotspot? You just tap the checkbox.

You know your operating system's got to belt in. Why do you have to pay your carrier some extra special like crazy ass package to get wifi just tap tap the link

and just use the feature built into your operating system and then Ting just considers that to be data usage linux.ting.com that'll take $25 off your first device if you've got a Ting

compatible device and you might you can check out their BYOD page if you've got a Ting compatible device they're going to give you a $25 credit. If you're like me, that $25 credit lasted me more than my first month. I'm now saving over $2,000 by switching to Ting.

It's ridiculous. I could buy, I could almost, almost, almost afford a MacBook Pro with the savings I've switched by Ting. Almost. Good thing Noah would never let me have it. But I could easily buy an Ultra Pro. That would be a better choice. Yeah. I've already got the money. I've already got the money for it. Wow. Because I've switched by Ting. Almost. Good thing Noah would never let me have it. But I could easily buy an Ultra Pro. That would be a good choice. Yeah.

I've already got the money. I've already got the money for it. Wow. Because I've saved the money. I just got to convince Angela of that now. You think that logic would work with her? No. Maybe not.

I'll keep trying. You know what I'll do is I'll keep telling her to go to linux.ting.com. You can go to linux.ting.com too. By the way, linux.ting.com is in the URL, right? I mean, just go rock it for us. Would you let them know you appreciate them supporting the Linux Unplugged show? Check out their site. They've got a great blog too. Go check out their devices and that savings calculator. Linux.ting.com

and a really big thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. All right, Fate. So you've been sitting in front of that elementary OS. We're running the brand new beta. It was just released last night. And what's it called? Freya?

That's what I hear. Freya. I wrote it down, and then I lost the paper I wrote it down on. It's not ISIS anymore. They changed the name. You actually pronounced it correctly. Oh, good. So, Faye, what do you think?

This is just a super basic install. It has been exactly one year since the last release of elementary OS. So Freya Beta 1 is available for developers and testing. Now, they do highly, like right up in the announcement, put up their, hey, this is not for production use. Do not put this on a production machine. It is beta. It is meant for developers. It has issues that need to be worked out. So they're really upfront about that.

So the first thing I did is I promptly went out and downloaded and installed it. I want it. So did you, Wait a minute. Did you just drag that mumble application between desktops by dragging its icon down below? No, it turns into an icon. Oh, it turns into an icon. That is so cool. Yeah,

it's fantastic. You know, art is cool and all, but no, I want this. So they say a few more stages remain in the development process. They'll be addressing serious bugs before the final release. That said, this post is going to be more technical. So they get into some technical stuff. They're going to talk about user features in the future.

It's based off Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, Linux kernel 3.13 with the new updated drivers and graphics stack. It includes support for EFI and stub loading, which is a kernel feature that enables booting directly from UEFI without the need for an additional bootloader such as Grub, which is awesome. And we'll get back to this in a minute. One of their developers had created a step-by-step guide to actually load elementary OS natively on MacBook Pros, which I was just grousing about two weeks ago. Additionally, we'll be shipping the latest GTK Plus release, version 3.12, rather than Ubuntu 14.04's outdated 3.10. They say they're also working on the online accounts, the Pantheon online accounts. It's not necessarily a fork of Ubuntu, or I'm sorry, of GNOME. Unlike Ubuntu online accounts, it's GLIB-based.

Unlike GNOME online accounts, it's fully extensible. With Pantheon online accounts, you get the best of both worlds out of the box. They're going to have Facebook, FastMail, Google+, Microsoft, and Yahoo support. And then you'll be able to add more integration for other stuff. Like right now, they don't have own cloud. This online account thing is actually a little neater than I originally kind of gave it credit because you set this up, and now you can tweet from your desktop. Your calendar syncs.

So when you click the little calendar, all of your Google Calendar, whatever you synced it up to, Microsoft, Yahoo, all show up in the calendar. It's kind of a neat service. And the fact that their supports plugins is nice. They also out-of-the-box client-side decorations. One of the new features of GTK 3.12, obviously, is the ability to use client-side decorations. So they've made extensive use of the feature they write. Every GTK 3.0 window in Freya is decorated on the client side with no extra work needed

from the app developers. That's also important from a Wayland standpoint. The Wayland developers strongly believe that things should be client-side with no extra work needed from the app developers. That's also important from a Wayland standpoint. The Wayland developers strongly believe that things should be client-side. They say there's still a few hundred bugs, though, like CalDAV syncing issues, search issues, and things like that. But, Matt, what we have is a beta 1 that is very functional-looking, really polished. Let's phrase this. Let's set this up. We're in an era now where we've obviously spoken about some discontent with Ubuntu.

And there is a need for something stable, something elegant, something that maybe we would look at home on one of the more popular netbooks it seems to be selling these days, the MacBook. Is elementary OS enough, Matt? Is it enough of a desktop operating system that it could be as successful as Ubuntu proper? I think potentially I would need to spend a little more time with it and more importantly how I foresee it

or how I use it as a material it's how I drop it in front of just people that might be Ubuntu targets and how they perceive it if it's successful in that space then potentially but I think that's something that needs to happen is we need to get it out of the echo chamber and actually get it in front of real people and how they perceive it, if it's successful in that space, then potentially. Then potentially. But I think that's something that needs to happen is we need to get it out of the echo chamber and actually get it in front of real people. So, Josh, I know you're running it in the mumble room, right?

What do you think so far? I'm loving it. Interestingly enough, one of the things I was most excited about is the fact that the calendar is actually useful now. You can actually sync stuff with it now, which is like, I know, how could they ship a calendar that doesn't even let you sync with Google? But it does now. Files now has search functionality,

and it doesn't have the stupid type-ahead stuff that the current Nautilus has. Oh, I like that. Yeah, that's nice. That's frustrating under Nautilus. Yeah, it's nice. That's frustrating under Nautilus. Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. The music app doesn't screw up when you have a large amount of music now, which is nice. Josh, does it feel too much like an OS X clone to you?

I mean, you know, it's got the metal. It's got brushed metal look. It's got a dock below. Right, but I mean, you know what else has a dock? Xubuntu. got a dock below uh right but i mean you know what else has a dock zoom in too you know it's just like it's a different way of handling your current running application maybe it's better you know what else has a dock unity is just on the left hand side my gnome desktop yeah you know i i like it uh but the brushed metal right i mean that isn't that the thing that stands out the most is i mean you look at Midori under this.

It looks like Safari to me, right? Yeah. Does that bother you at all? Yeah, I mean, I like it. It does have a lot of strong resemblance to OS X, but, you know, they have done a lot of specific things to elementary OS to make it different from OS X. different from OSX. And I think the line to walk is, can you be inspired by a desktop but yet still do your own enough unique take on it

that essentially what you're doing is adopting some of the best elements and innovating in your own areas? And I think it's fair to say that elementary OS does that. I feel like it. What do you think, Fadi? You've been using it for a little bit. I think it's pretty,

and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You might make comparisons, but any comparison you see in a negative light could just as easily be interpreted as a beneficial a benefit um for example people that might be familiar with that look or yeah even just subconsciously aware of it from commercials or whatever it looks good and it works really well well there is something about it like when you see it when you see a screenshot of elementary os on a piece of hardware it looks good. It does justifiably look good. But, Eric, it's not all about the look or the applications or the unique apps that they've built for it.

There's also, at least for Linux enthusiasts, the whole community aspect of it too, right? That's absolutely true. One thing that has been bugging me about the elementary OS, I think they're probably a great group of guys. I've never had the pleasure of meeting them, but here's what I've been seeing. Their community management sucks. And the reason I'm saying that is because there are people who want to be involved with the project to help them get

some of these bugs down so they're not taking so freaking long to get the distro out there. There are people who want to help, and they're like, no, we don't want you helping. We don't want you helping. We're going to do this all ourselves and take so freaking long, and it'll be ready when it's ready. Well, they want help, but they want it via BountySource, right?

For them, they say, we have over 5,000 worth of bounties remain unclaimed on BountySource.com. Anyone can contribute to fix and earn bounties. Eric, here's where I think you're getting confused. The people that were saying, oh, you know, I want to report these bugs. I want to help fix it. Those were individuals that were running unofficial, unstable ISOs or ISOs that they've built themselves. They were not running any sort of beta.

What they were doing was they were saying, okay, i'm going to use this build script and create my own thing that might resemble elementary os so of course the developers are going to say no no if you want to help go fix the bugs or contribute monetarily if you know you don't have any programming experience or you don't know vala and gdk but that doesn't i mean i mean yes you're right they should they should have been downloading the ISOs according to them, but then how does anybody do any bug reports? That just doesn't compute. Then the beta is used to figure out any issues that the core development team couldn't figure out that the community knows of. And then those issues get resolved before stable. Okay.

They are the only Linux distro community I know of that does that. There's a lot of things they do that are unique. When this beta hit, I'm like, so – because I don follow it super closely, and there's not really a lot of public postings about it, I wasn't sure, like, is this one also based on 1204, or is it based on 1404? I didn't know any of that. I had to ask people in the community, because I don't grok how I'm supposed to be receiving information from the Elementary OS project if I want more than just when they make big announcements like i want more than that but i don't need much more than that that's my other point is that when they do give out information they don't give enough yeah i can understand they're trying maybe they're trying to do some sort of skunk works project and branding it's a little bit about branding and creating a little bit about branding yeah but the thing is, there is this community of people who just wants to help.

I have a degree in volunteer management, basically. I know what it takes to make volunteers work. If everybody has a common vision, it's great. The thing is, it's harder to manage volunteers. I can understand that because you're not holding a paycheck over their head. But at the same time, you need to let people get involved in your project. Yeah, it is kind of. Yeah.

And I think at the same time, though, I want to, in a way, give them room to try something unique and different than all the other distros are doing. I feel like we need that because maybe that will be the right combination that finally results in massive success. Because from a usability standpoint and a consistency standpoint, I think they're getting there. And what we have seen so far is a distribution that has decided it doesn't need to quite follow the standard distro mold. And that might, while it would be hard for us to sort of figure out how to fit into our established paradigms of interacting with Linux communities, may be a little bit of medicine that we need to swallow eventually down the road.

But I think the problem is them as a project figuring out what that means and how to pull that off and how to do it successfully is going to be changing for a while as they grow and get established. Does that make sense? Well, I think they've also – I'm sorry, Faye. Go ahead. No, it makes sense to me. One thing I just wanted to throw in while we're talking about it is that their choice of Midori, I think that's an excellent choice because not only are you providing something that consistently is elegant in its design, providing something that consistently is elegant in its design.

But most users that you're installing an OS 2 that aren't technically savvy, they're probably going to be using the web browser most of the time. And choosing something that's so low resource would indicate that it would perform well, as long as they have the graphics to support the compositing. Yeah. And, you know, it's very fast. It's very functional. It does feel like a perfectly integrated app. Now, for me, I'm like, oh, well, what about my Markdown plugins and stuff like that? But for regular folks, it's fine. They have some extensions, but there isn't a lot.

Yeah, no. Yeah. I've played with it a little bit. I like to use it for one of my Google account logins. My gripes aside, I think they're doing a fantastic job. I was just – No, I think it's a fair point to make because it's something I've kind of grappled with too. It doesn't quite click. There is sometimes

I go in there and I'm like, am I even supposed to be reporting on this? I wasn't sure if I should even be talking about this story today or am I going to get crap from the elementary project for talking about something that isn't ready to be talked about yet. Honestly, before we even went on air, I was like, maybe we shouldn't do this in the show because

I don't want to piss them off. And then I thought, you know, if they're putting out a beta, they're obviously okay with some. And we're not reviewing it as a distro yet. We're going to wait until it gets finalized. Right, right. But I guess what I'm saying is that thought would never have crossed my mind with any other Linux distro, ever. Never has ever in the history of any show I've ever done. This is the first time the thought has ever crossed my mind, and it's one

of the reasons I don't like covering some of the commercial software spaces, because who wants to worry about that crap? It's nice that it's all open source. The key thing is, like, you wouldn't do any logical individual, wouldn't put a review up, whether it be a video or something, and, like,

point out, oh, you shouldn't be running this operating system, like, if it's a beta. Say, for out, oh, you shouldn't be running this operating system. If it's a beta, say for instance, Ubuntu 14.10 beta 1 in the future, it wouldn't be logical to do a completely different video review or something.

You wait until it's stable. I think, too, let's be frank. Whatever they're doing is working from a PR standpoint. Because before this beta hit, the first story I saw on the subreddit was a countdown. Like, we got the countdown thing to the beta release, and everybody, oh, my gosh, a countdown page is up.

And everybody started talking about the countdown page. And then within a couple of hours after the countdown page, boom, beta hits. And then links on every single freaking Linux website in the world. They're linking to the new elementary OS beta. OMG, Ubuntu's got a write-up about it before they even have made an official post. And everybody's freaking out.

Now we're talking about it the next day. It generates buzz. Well, and it works. And I think you kind of nailed on something very important. The reason why they make a lot of stuff that we take for granted really difficult to do

is because they've looked at other proprietary models that have done the same thing and they found that it works um is it attractive to us no uh is it attractive to people that want to talk about it yeah apparently so i guess so it's working yeah well and it's almost like they give us enough for us to talk but not enough that we all fill in the gaps and it's almost like the apple approach where they where they eke out a little rumors they give us enough for us to talk, but not enough that we all fill in the gaps. It's almost like the Apple approach, where they eke out a little rumor, like they give some to the Wall Street Journal. That's exactly what they're doing.

Yeah. It's kind of funny. Here we are getting played, but I kind of like it. At the same time, it's fun to kind of conjecture about it, too. So they got me. All right. Well, they're doing something really smart. I think, you know, we talked about mobile devices and phones and tablets.

The elementary OS project, though, I don't even know if it's all that official, is doing something incredibly smart when it comes to hardware support that might give them the edge up in the long run. But first, I want to thank Linux Academy. Go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. That'll get you the Summer of Learning, 33% off. And Linux Academy is an awesome resource created by some really passionate Linux enthusiasts, always adding new content to which I love. Their training division is so passionate about this stuff. So, have you checked out Linux Academy?

Because you really should. They've got step-by-step video courses. They have downloadable comprehensive study guides you can grab on your MP3 player and listen to while you're in the go. If you're like, listen to Seth, you can listen in the shower, no judgy. It comes with your own server, too.

So if you need to spin up a virtual server during the coursework, don't worry about it. They got it covered, man. You get there in the coursework, boom, on the back end, they spun up a virtual server. You're doing AWS, good on you. Don't pay for AWS. Linux Academy has it covered. You get to the point in the course where we need a virtual server, they spin it up. I think that's incredible.

Plus, you can choose from any seven plus Linux distributions and they'll automatically adjust the courseware to match that distribution, which I think is pretty sweet. And one of the things that I like about their system is it's not just adding content every single week, but they're also now involving live stream Q&A. So that way you can go right to the educator and ask them a question. And then they post them up later on too. So even if you aren't able to attend the live event, you can still benefit from the Q&A session. They have self-paced labs as well. So if you're somebody like me

who just wants to go in and tinker to learn something and just have a little intellectual stimulation and advance my skill set from time to time, that's perfect. But if you're also somebody who needs to land that next contract, if you're somebody who just wants to better themselves, and I've thought about this a lot.

And one of the things I like about Linux Academy from a Linux user standpoint is it allows me to stay competitive and keep my skills up even when I'm not necessarily working with these technologies anymore because as I've pulled back from the contracting world I've had this weird sensation

where I feel like maybe some of my skill set has slipped or maybe I'm just not quite as sharp as I used to be so in a way I get to test my mettle with Linux Academy and there's very few things in my life that I have control over. I just have to be honest about that. But my own bettification, my own education, that is something I do have control over. I think it's so important to go in and investigate the things

that intellectually stimulate me and to sort of indulge in that. And what a great way to entertain myself too. It really is a form of entertainment. And what I love, and it's no pressure, because I can look at the courseware and beforehand, I'll see how long something's going to take. And I can say, you know what? I can dedicate 15 minutes or I can dedicate an hour tonight. And then when I go back in, I can resume right where I left off. I can go test myself too, to see if I've slipped at all. It's really fun. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Go get that

Summer of Learning discount. There's never been a better time to better yourself just a little bit. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Go check them out. I think you'll be really impressed. Also, they've got a great community as well, which us Linux users know is super important. So I want to talk about something I think the elementary project is not even officially embracing yet, but the people that are involved with the project are doing. And if it continues and they're successful with it, it almost is answering a couple of topics that we have covered on the Linux on Plug show for a couple of weeks now. release announcement, they linked to a step-by-step guide to getting elementary OS Freya or Isis on a Mac using Refi, and you can dual boot or single boot, and it is an out-of-the-box native elementary OS experience on a Mac.

And I think more, I want to give them so much credit for this, because more distributions need to come to the realization that people are buying MacBooks and they need to make their crap work on the MacBooks. And I know in some people it's a bad, bitter pill to swallow, but it is the reality. And the fact that elementary OS is just like, here you go. You want to try out our beta? Not only can you do it, here's a step-by-step guide for this beta. Genius. Genius on their part.

Could be huge. Because I don't know if you guys have heard of this thing called YUM? Do you know what YUM stands for, Fade? I don't know what it stands for. I know what it is and what it does, but no. Yellow Dog Update Manager. Bingo. And why is Yellow Dog Update

Manager still remembered? Because there was Yellow Dog Linux. And what was Yellow Dog Linux known for? And why did Fedora adopt YUM? Because it ran on Macs. It was the distro. Yellow Dog Linux. And what was Yellow Dog Linux known for? And why did Fedora adopt Yum? Because it ran on Macs. It was the distro. If you were going to run it on a Mac, this was the distro you went to. They became world famous for that.

And elementary OS could be going down the same path, only not just Mac anymore. Not just for Mac, because they also have released a really easy way to install elementary OS on Chromebooks. So now they've got Chromebooks and Macs that is super simple to get elementary OS running on those bad mamas. I think that is sweet. I think that is a super smart move on their part. They call it Chromius, Chrome E-E-O-S. Of course, don't call it E-O-S. Users will be able to boot into either Chrome OS or elementary OS, whichever they like.

Right now, it's been tested on the Acer C720. It's also been on the HP Chromebook 14. And I guess the Acer C720 Profile Edition, I'm not sure. And the Acer's partner Chromebook also has been tested and verified. So here you go. Elementary OS is saying, here's the new hardware landscape reality. On the low end, you've got Chromebooks and we've got millions of them. And on the high

end, you've got MacBooks and we've got millions of them. We want to be the distribution that is easy to install. Noah, I'd really like to hear your thoughts. I think sometimes you get the impression that I don't want people to own MacBooks because I have something against

people owning MacBooks in and of itself. That's not the case. If you told me I'm buying a MacBook to install Linux on it, I think that would be fantastic. I just don't believe it happens. And I think it worries me, even if somebody thought, honestly believed

that they were going to go to Best Buy and they were going to buy a MacBook and then they were going to take it home and install Linux, I would be really concerned that when they get home and they get into OS X, they're just not going to leave OS X. Whereas I have a lot higher confidence that if somebody bought a Windows 8 machine, they're for sure putting Linux on it. Why wouldn't they?

Right, but see, I argue that I still think in your scenario of the MacBook buyer, there's still a percentage of peel-off from that, the people that are unsatisfied with the sandbox and want out. And even that percentage of that peel-off is still more people probably collectively that are using the Linux desktop all told. And so if we give them an escape hatch that is 5, 10, 15 steps, and they pull that lever and now they're out of the operating system on their hardware they already own.

I think that's genius. So could you clarify that? You said that you think that the number of people that are using MacBooks that want to progress to something else is greater than the entire desktop Linux user base currently? Potentially. And I'm talking over years, right?

I'm not talking instantaneously right now. I'm talking about future MacBook sales, too. Okay, fair enough. Because I think you get there. I hear from developers, like we just read an email on Coda Radio on Monday, and the guy's name is Texas Linux user, and he's switching to a MacBook.

And I think guys like Texas Linux users will switch to a MacBook, and then about a year later or two years later, they'll be like, hands up in the air, I can't take this anymore, I'm so bored. I've mastered this system. It's not changing. They're going in a direction I don't like. I'm ready for something else.

And you'll find something like elementary OS and be able to load it on that MacBook. Recently, I was looking for a computer. I ended up with a System76 because I wanted to support Linux as a whole. But when I was looking, a lot of people want a laptop to do their work on because it's portable and there aren't a lot of good laptops. Here's why the MacBook math, here's how it works out. Because everybody's like, oh, it's so expensive. Well, okay, make this list of requirements.

I want a usable resolution on my screen. I want an i7 processor or i5 processor. I want SSD. I want it under this weight, and I want it with this much battery life. Depending on what your answer is to those questions, you very quickly come down to almost only a MacBook or a ThinkPad or maybe like a high,

there's like three machines, four machines really to choose from that are great. And so the fact that the MacBook's getting picked a lot isn't that surprising when you look at it for that lens. And I'm with you, Faye. Like if I was out to buy one right now, out of that list that I just said, it would be the Ultra Pro for me because my primary operating system would be Linux. Would I consider a MacBook? Maybe if the support was perfect. I'm a developer.

I get a MacBook. Yeah, I think some people would too because they're like, the other thing is like the MacBook's like, well, I have this option. Like if Linux doesn't work out for me, I can bail to the Mac. Like I think some people look at it that way too.

So that's where I think elementary OS just being here, having an operating system that's very well designed so you're not going to feel like you're having a big experience downgrade by switching from Mac OS to elementary OS and the fact that they've got this guide to install it on and dual boot too

and the Chromebook Who else is doing this? What other distros doing this? The Chromebook though, that's great I mean hey, I see you got a Chromebook. You want to use something other than a web browser? There you go. Yeah. I can't.

I mean, it is possible with any distro, but I don't know of anybody that's making it this easy. Matt, do you think that makes a difference? I would definitely agree with the Chromebook. I think you're on crack when it comes to people. You and I live with Mac users. Let's be honest. Yeah. You could light them on fire before they switch to Linux.

It's not going to happen. Yes. I mean, they would use it over Windows, but my wife especially. She'll use Linux. She just begrudgingly, but she won't touch a Windows box with a 20-foot pole. But she's trapped in an ecosystem of does it provide me what I want? Yes, good, great, I'm done. It gives me the tools I want to do stuff with.

So going back to the Chromebook, however, that I would agree with because Chromebook's experience is great if you're like 18 and going into college, but I think if you want to actually, you know. Or on the other end too, like you're retired, maybe all you need to do is check in with the kid's Facebook feed. Exactly. Or you want to, yeah, exactly.

You want to, it's like, and then you discover, oh yeah, I wanted to use Skype. Sorry, too bad. You know, little things crop up like that. All of a sudden, elementary OS then makes a lot of sense on that type of machine for sure. And there's a lot of them out there too, right? And the price of the Chromebook is so low that you're not that afraid to experiment with it a little bit.

Maybe your fancy MacBook is a little riskier because it could be like a $2,000 computer, whereas a Chromebook could be like a $200 computer. Definitely. Go ahead. Do you remember last week when I said, I don't think it was on the show, but I said last week I bought a Chromebox and I was playing with it. And I really liked it, but I never put it into production. Six hours later, I get a call from one of my clients. They said, one of the computers died and we need a new one here right now. And I said, well, Dell is 24 hours, 48 hours before I'm going to get a new one out.

And they said, well, we need something right this second. Right, of course. So like an idiot, I take the Chrome – because they're using Linux. Like an idiot, I take the Chrome box, I install Ubuntu, and I think to myself, why would anyone restart the Chrome box within 24 hours? Of course not, right? You can sit there for 24 hours. No need to, right? Yeah.

Turns out she walks into the room and goes, I don't like which plug he plugged that in because the cord drapes across my desk. Unplugs it, plugs it into the different plug,

turns the machine on, it says, press spacebar to enable... Hits the spacebar, dumps the OS, and then I said to myself, didn't I just tell Chris

six hours ago I'd never put this in a production because this exact thing would happen? It's the worst, Noah. So there are risks to running Linux on. If you're not an experienced user, you don't understand.

I mean, if you're putting it on yourself, you probably know what's happening. But this idea that we can install Linux on Chrome boxes like we do on everyone else's laptop, I'm hesitant to do that. That's an excellent example. You'd want to be able to. Because there is a way to disable that spacebar thing, right? But you have to do it within Chrome OS. You have to be able to write to the firmware. CBIOS?

Yeah. And so on certain Chrome devices, you can take out a write protect screw. I haven't figured out how to do it on the Chrome box yet. Hmm. Yeah. And I know there's different ways for different machines too. Yeah, that's the tricky part. Boy, isn't that just a little dose of reality though? It's what I deserve. I was like, well, that would have been really great if that would have worked out.

No kidding. Well, you know what? No, I feel for you. I think it'll be interesting to watch elementary OS, though, when the final version hits. Do they sell it all as one big, this is your one platform for your MacBook, your PC desktop, and your Chromebook. The one distribution. Of course, they all do it, right? But they'll sell it as the one distribution that runs on all of them. It'll be interesting to see when the Isis version 1.0. I'm trying.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's difficult interesting to see when ISIS version 1.0... Freya. Freya. Freyo. I'm trying. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's difficult. I liked ISIS. I liked ISIS before ISIS took it. Okay? Yeah, that's true. I'm not thinking of the Islamic State of Syria. I'm thinking about the Linux distribution, okay? You are now thinking about that. Well, I am now, right.

Also, we are bombing them, but I'm not thinking about that right now. That's tomorrow. That's tomorrow's problem. All right, well, we've got a couple of interesting things coming up. In fact, one of them involves NOAA and a couple other things that – oh, I've got a call-out too. Oh, shoot, let me grab that right here. First, I will thank our last sponsor for this week, and that is the great folks over at DigitalOcean. I am now the proud operator, and I consider myself an operator, like in the Matrix style of operator, of three DigitalOcean droplets.

Why? Because DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. Users can create a cloud server in about 55 seconds. If you're a boss, you can probably get it done in less than 55 seconds. And the pricing plans,

they only start at $5 a month. And here's what you get. 512 megabytes of RAM, gigabyte ssd one cpu and a terabyte of transfer for five dollars okay that's cheaper than like a lot of pro services for like file sync and you could do everything on your own drop lock on your own digital ocean drop box droplet thing if you want you can make it a drop box make it a bit torn sync make it a syncTorrent sync. Make it a sync thing. I'm using OwnCloud. Make it an OwnCloud thing. At $5 a month, it can do all of the things. And what I love is that 20 gigabyte SSD gets you that density.

You need to do that. And DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, or London. So you've got a lot of geographical locations to choose from. But let's talk about that control panel. It is simple and intuitive. The DigitalOcean control panel rocks, and power users can replicate it on a much larger scale with their straightforward API. It's all done in HTML5, no Flash required, nothing funky like that. You just get in there, you get access to the console, you can watch it from post all the way

up to boot. It's awesome. It's really awesome. All done in HTML5. You can deploy a droplet easily. They've got lots of Linux distributions you can choose from. They've got one-click application installs, which is super handy if you want to do WordPress or GitLab. DNS management, droplet backups, private networking, all running on top of Linux, all using open source technology, wrapped around this incredible dashboard for an unbelievable price. But we've got a deal for you. If you use the promo code unpluggedaugust, that's all one word, and just like your file system, like it should a deal for you. If you use the promo code UNPLUGGEDAUGUST, that's all one word, and just like your file system, like it should be, lowercase.

Case-sensitive here, all lowercase. You know why it's case-sensitive? Linux. Linux. So go over to digitalocean.com, use the promo code UNPLUGGEDAUGUST, and you'll get the $10 credit. Then you could try out that $5 rig that I've been using for a while for two months, absolutely free. DigitalOcean.com Unplugged August when you check out

and try out a DigitalOcean droplet. Do you have your own root server up in the cloud? You should because you can do anything with it. You want to make it a game server? Do it. You want to make it a web server? You want to make it the back end for an app? You want to do anything? OwnCloud? Do it, boy. Go over there. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code Unplugged August when you check out.

And don't forget, DigitalOcean rocks hard. You can actually apply those promo codes retroactively. So if you forgot because, I don't know, maybe you were drinking while you were listening. Are you drinking right now? Put the beer down, go over to digitalocean.com and put in that promo code unpluggedaugust that'll let you retroactively apply it.

Digitalocean.com, unpluggedaugust when you check out. And a really big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged August when you check out. And a really big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Alright, guys. Couple of last bits of business to take care of before we get out of here. You know, I got Linus Torvald's treadmill. Did you know that? I did. That's how I power the studio

now. I'm not doing it right now because I have a guest, but if you weren't here, I probably wouldn't. So it's the treadmill before or after the shower? I mean, that's really the big question. I need a shower after the treadmill, Matt. I'll tell you what. Hey, we have a couple of upcoming things I want to tell you guys about, just to put them on your radar.

Ohio Linux Fest registrations are now open. Mr. Q5Sys, Noah, and myself will be traveling over to Ohio in October for Ohio Linux Fest. We will attempt to do a live stream, and Matt will be here in studio, and I assume, or somewhere on Skype. And this is going to be fun. It's going to be like this weird, complicated remote setup that I'm strangely looking forward to trying out.

I don't know what's up with that. So you can go over. I'll have a link in the show notes. If you want to go to Ohio Linux Fest 2014 and see us there, that would be awesome. We do a little fist bump. And before that, even before then, Mr. Noah, Colonel Linux there in the chat room,

is going to be at LinuxCon in Chicago on the 20th, I think. So if you're going to be at LinuxCon and you want to fist bump Noah, say hi to him. Or if you are a project that would potentially like to chat with Noah, email us, production at jupiterbroadcasting.com and maybe we can get in touch. Noah, I've already had people ask me from the Fedora camp that want to meet up with you. So you're already

in demand. Alright. So that'll be fun. You guys can say hi to Noah. Because of the short notice, we weren't able to make it, but it was actually kind of a cool thing that happened. The Linux Foundation saw our OSCON coverage, and also the self-coverage and the LinuxFest coverage, and they just said,

we would love to have you. What could we do to get you guys to LinuxCon? And I said, well, a time machine, because it's 20 days from now. Actually, it's less than that now. And she said, well, I don't have a time machine. And I said, well, let me email Noah and Noah, being awesome, was like totally down.

Noah, you know what Noah said to me? Yeah, just let me know, oh, by the 18th if I need to go there to Chicago. That's great. I know, right? So LinuxCon coming up and then after that Ohio Linux Fest in October. LinuxCon will be this month.

We'll have interviews and clips in our shows just like you've come to expect from some of our other coverage and Noah always does great interviews. I also have a little tech support question I want to put out there to the audience. This problem has been eating at me literally for freaking years. You probably noticed it too. It's probably bothered the heck out of you.

Let's solve this problem together. The freaking Linux Action Show RSS feed in podcatchers never shows the damn badge. So if you subscribe to Linux Action Show in a podcatcher, all your podcasts have got their beautiful artwork in there and you're scrolling through your list and there's herpa derpa Linux Action Show with the default app badge because for whatever reason,

feed burner's a jerk and it won't show the image. I have troubleshot the snot out of this. If you would take a look at our Linux Action Show RSS feed, like say grab the MP3 RSS feed right off our site. Run that. If you're some sort of RSS whiz or something like that, please take a look at that SOB and tell me what we're doing wrong

because we have verified our local XML. We have set up feed burners six ways to the sun to try to support an image. All of the other shows on all of – every show we've ever done on the network, don't have this problem. Frickin' Linux Action Show has this problem. And I almost wonder if it's because the feed existed before iTunes existed and before

artwork in a feed was common. I don't know if that's what the problem is. Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope audience. I've literally been fighting this for a long time. I would love your input. And I have a link in the show notes for more information about that. So please. It's just one of those things

that's annoying. I'm looking at it now, and this thing's bigger than my house, as far as the logo. That's the more... No, I upped it, because I thought, well, maybe it was too low-res, because it was really old. It was like this old picture of Brian and I on a Mac.

Right. Because we were doing the computer action show. I have old RSS stuff. Yeah. And then I put the new logo in there. I'll go through my old notes because I actually ran into this a few years ago, a long, long time ago, and I actually found a solution for it. So let me see if I can dig that up.

Oh, Otten in the chat room says it's because I'm on a rolling distribution. That makes sense. Well, that's it, clearly. You don't use HTML5. You don't use HTML5. You guys are jerks. You use Open Broadcaster, right? Wait, why not?

And Mumble. Actually, I do use Mumble. All right. We want your feedback. Go to jupyterbroadcasting.com. Click the contact link. Choose Linux Unplugged from the drop-down and send us in your incredible thoughts.

Or go over to linuxactionshow.reddit.com. We'll have a feed just for this here show where you can give your feedback. If you've got any tips, any topics you want us to cover, or if you'd be interested in taking a look at that community review of Open Media Vault, we'd like to hear your thoughts on that as well. That subreddit would be the best place for that if you actually want us to see it. Last but not least, do join us live, won't you? We do this show over at jblive.tv. We start at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays. That's 2 p.m. Pacific. You can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar

to get that converted to your local time zone. And then you can be, I mean, sure, if you want to be in our chat room, that's great. If you'd like to join our mumble room, that's great. You get to help us title the show either way, and we always appreciate you being here. Matt, is there anything else we want to cover on this episode of Linux Unplugged before we wrap this up?

I think that's about it. Nice. All right. Well, I'll just mention real briefly that we have some good interviews coming up on the Linux Action Show, potentially this Sunday, depending if everything works out, and definitely the next Sunday. So don't miss episodes of Linux Action Show. We're in the can. So, Matt, prepare your brain for that and your body.

Maybe double up on the underwear for this Sunday's Linux Action Show, in the can. So, Matt, prepare your brain for that and your body. Maybe double up on the underwear for this Sunday's Linux Action Show, okay? Sounds good. All right, Matt, I'll see you on Sunday. It's a little dirty. I'm sorry, Matt. I'm sorry. All right, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode. Fate, thanks for joining us in studio, buddy. No problem. My pleasure. It was good having you here. It's nice having somebody here to look over at and be like,

boom, what do you think of that? Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. All right, everyone, don't forget we want your feedback. Go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com, contact, join us live. I've told you all of that stuff already. And last but not least, go grab one of our RSS feeds. And this show's RSS feed actually has the artwork.

So, hey, that's good too, right? That's a good bonus. All right, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. We'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you. I don't want to freak anybody out, but we totally just podcasted. Yay! Whoa, what just happened? I changed my underwear. Yeah.

All right. On the RSS thing, I was going to mention to you real quick. The first two things that come to mind immediately, and these are things I'm sure you've done five or six times, so I'm going to mention them anyway, is changing file names on the image and turning off the browser-friendly for testing purposes on your feed burner. I don't know about that last one. Those would be the very first two things to try. I'll take a look at that last one and try that. Yeah. That's a good one.

Yeah. Because, I mean, those are two things. I'll take a look at that last one and try that. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, because I mean those are two things I know that just historically I was looking through some of my old notes and that's actually something I don't know if it still applies or not, but. The image that it all shows is a picture of you and Brian as well, Chris. That's the video feed though, right?

I think so. I'm looking at audio feeds here. Yeah, I'm thinking about the MP3. Yeah, some of them need to be updated, but the one that just doesn't work at all is the MP3 feed. That's using podcast addicts on Android. JBTitles.com, everybody. Go both. I love Antlers.

Spank that file name, too, definitely. Ubuntu with Rodin. Especially for the imagery. Spank that Rodin. I love it. Okay, do we just need to – see, I've actually – it's funny. The audience has brought me back onto the Ubuntu soapbox. I'm actually kind of done ranting about Ubuntu.

Because I just feel like now we just need to wait. But then it comes up again, and I get all worked up again. And I get into these big Ubuntu rants I didn't even mean to. That was a pretty big rant. You essentially said the worst thing that could possibly happen is the advance of Ubuntu market share. I did say that, yes. That is kind of a puppy be gone. You're a hop, skip, and a jump away from canonicals to antichrist.

Well, I mean, I'm looking at the end game, man. I got in my mental time machine. I went to the future, and I saw a world dominated by carriers. And I came back to warn the people. I'm like John Connor? No. Maybe a little bit if I built a robot version of myself people. I'm like John Connor? No. Maybe a little bit if I built a robot version of myself. Maybe I'm a robot.

Now I'm John Connor. Ribbit. So a side note, Ray. When you were talking about DigitalOcean, it came to my mind when they, as an elementary team, released the ISO, a lot of people were complaining team, released the ISO, a lot of people were completely like,

oh my god, it's so slow. You know, because no one decided to seed. So I fired up a digital ocean droplet and the two terabyte transfer one, you know, because I was just going to have it go for a day. Let them seed it. Yep. All it cost me in total, because I've already destroyed it because I only wanted to run for that day, six cents. That's it. Just give him some. Yep. All it cost me in total, because I've already destroyed it because I only wanted to run it for that day, six cents.

That's it. Nice. That's actually, you know what? Why don't more Linux distros just do that on their own? Like on a release day, they should just throw up a few seed box on DigitalOcean and just. Seriously. That's what I, when I downloaded the ISO, I let it seed it overnight just to kind of help him out. Yeah, because DigitalOcean is perfectly fine with it.

They're like, yeah, if it's a legal torrent and whatever, perfectly fine, whatever. We don't care. Hoomy, I agree that the whole communication side of it is dominated by the carriers, but the apps, the music, the video, the content, the e-books, all of that is still carrier independent. The experience? Yeah, it's not red themed for Verizon, pink themed or purple themed for T-Mobes or whatever it would be. Hey Chris.

Red what? Speed test requires flash. Nobody uses flash.