LINUX Unplugged - Episode 61: Don’t Feed the Soap Opera | LUP 61

Episode Date: October 8, 2014

The Linux community is at each others throats this week, from Lennart Poettering’s well intentioned rant, to the rage quit of GamingOnLinux’s lead writer. You’d think it was high school all over again. But what’s the larger ramifications of this public fight & what causes them? Plus can we put the blame at the feet of Linus Torvalds? Our thoughts on structuring a productive community, your emails & much more!

Who wants to tell us about Ogg Camp? So, uh, cause we, you know, over here on the stateside, we don't get to hear much about it. So who wants to tell us about it? Popey, you want to start? I think so. Popey should start. Okay. Because I'm an Ogg Camp newbie.

All right, Popey. You've been going since... During the show or pre-show? Oh, well, I mean, if you talk about it right now, we'll include it in the show. So it'll be actually in the show. So, um, it's got a really ridiculous name, Odd Camp, but it came about in 2009 when the Lug Radio Live stopped happening. And the people who ran Ubuntu UK Podcast and Linux Outlaws, so that's all the Fabian Scheschel, Dan Lynch, myself, Laura, tony and so on we we all uh wanted to continue having a uk-based free culture free software you know unconference type thing so when you say uh this is something

i've wondered when you say culture is that like creative commons music and things like that or what does culture kind of mean yeah it can mean that it can mean anything it could mean electronics yeah exactly i mean it's evolved into some of that as well i mean at the first one we had someone who was doing analysis of people's psychology by the way they draw a picture of a pig or something as a presentation awesome that sounds really fun this year few years later, we had a teletype that would print out anything that you tweet at it, which was brilliant. It's like a full-on mix of technology from the 1950s and technology from now, being able to tweet at a thing that would print your tweets out forevermore. The Linux voice guys were there. Loads of other people doing exhibition stuff there was loads of kids there people who came

along to the event brought their children along and it's a safe environment for people to bring their children I gave a presentation about Ubuntu phone while kids were eating their lunch and walking yeah I was able to step over them having to step over them while I was giving my

presentation but it was all fine that sounds really neat and you were saying earlier to step over them. Having to step over them while I was giving my presentation. But it was all fine. That sounds really neat. And you were saying earlier. It's a really friendly atmosphere. It's about 400 or so people, right, or in that range? It depends each year. But yeah, it can vary between about 200 and 400.

And that's a really good size where it's big enough where you can still meet new people for sure, but see people that you, like, this is kind of like your chance to see them again. And, you know, the other thing is we are about to today, we're going to talk about all this internet drama, right? And I'll tell you one thing that I cannot put a value on quite right yet, but something that I have noticed every time I go to one of these conferences, Linux Fest or OSCON or whatever, I walk away with something I didn't expect at all. Like this last time, I made two really great contacts at OSCON that I'm still talking to them and we're developing some new show ideas that are really exciting that I didn't go to OSCON expecting that to happen at all. They walked up to me at the conference and we started a dialogue. They walked up to me at the conference and we started a dialogue. And same thing like, you know, like I really the only time I ever get to see Blaster is when we're at a conference. And it has the side effect of kind of re-energizing people creatively and refocusing them on the actual work. Like the social interaction, you walk away from that with a new vigor for the mission.

the social interaction, you walk away from that with a new vigor for the mission. And I think so often, like we're going to talk about the drama today, I think so often that is the lacking piece is that we as human beings are not particularly good at this form of communication over a long period. We can use it to fill in gaps, but there is something about that physical meat space that and the reason why I think this is a big deal is because I was somebody who thought that was crap for a really long time. I thought technology was finally going to flatten the world and solve this problem. You know, I thought web cams and Google Hangouts and Skype and all of that would solve this, but it is not still quite the same. You know, the video helps, but there's just something about like going to an event,

working together for the event, being there as a group, all of the effort that's involved with that, the mass amount of all working together that happens right in that moment that sort of reconnects that work ethic and all of those things. It's almost an intangible value, but it's so important. And having a meal with someone too. Yeah, right. Yeah. And projects start at conferences like that. value but it's so important and i'm having a meal with someone too yeah right yeah yeah and project and projects start at conferences like that i know i know at least two projects which are in embryonic stage that have resulted out of conversations at our camp stewart language

talked about having a portable device in your pocket that you could use for giving presentations he's called it splinter um and he started a whole project around developing a device that so you don't have to carry your laptop to a uh conference you just plug it into a project plug this device into a projector and then use your phone to wirelessly cast your presentation hold on now hold on now he's now he's talking now he's stepping on ubuntu touch that's what i want my ubuntu touch device to do well it's good give me hdmi up hoping i'm good and then we had a guy from mozilla james huggman he's a fantastic lovely guy yeah he was talking about um the offline world and going completely offline and uh you know how how someone in a remote village in the middle of

nowhere manages to keep in contact with people in the next village or people around the world and how we should enable offline access to information and uh and services and these are things i just would not have thought of going to right right so so to dovetail with that poppy i've i've been exchanging emails and had long conversations with james as a result of meeting him at odd camp because the extreme offline being in a remote rural location where you're connected to the internet by a shortwave radio means that i have some experience in how you get online and i was asking about that and and i looked around to find you in the in the presentation when he was talking about that yeah no i caught i went to see his second his second presentation

and had a chat with him afterwards, and I put him in touch with the people that I worked with, and also his, no, he's not in here, Colonel Linux, you know, was talking about the Microtech devices and how they have all of the bits of that, you know, that jigsaw that can be fitted together to solve this problem. That is particularly he gave me one of those

but he gave it to me right when I was doing the studio move and I put it in a box somewhere and it's so damn small I cannot find it. But that's what I think I want to do for my firewall here at the studio but I'm still going to look. I don't know. PF sense. I just don't know. Just one last follow up from the

odd camping there you were asking about the free culture up front i'm just about to post it into the irs oh okay now okay there were these guys there pepper top and they make um creative commons uh sci-fi web comics oh this is great i had a good long chat with them they make really good quality material and the best bit was is they went ah you're a martini but we use martini for our entire workflow no way and they were all in the front row of my presentation all smiling and beaming away this is great this is really really are so they're are they doing like this with inkscape and all that yeah yeah the whole thing is open source top to bottom, and all of the assets are freely available. So the other thing I was helping them with was sorting out their hosting because they need large-scale storage and lots of bandwidth to distribute this stuff.

Jeez, I bet. Maybe they should talk to Alan, too. And they're the guys that do the comic in Linux Voice as well. This is really – as well this is really that's exactly what I was thinking and that's fun because I think as Linux gets I don't know if boring but as the desktop gets boring I've been in last trying to shift the discussion

not to so much about stats and features about Linux and why Linux is better than Windows and all of that but more about okay well, well, let's just assume you're on Linux now for a reason, and everybody has their own reason. Now, what the hell can you do with it, right? And this is like, I would love to get these guys on last and talk to them, because I think

I want to showcase in the Linux Action Show more, this is what Linux can enable you to do. And if you thought you couldn't do this on Linux before, well, now you can. It's hit and miss. I try to put a little bit into each segment, a little bit, but I'd really like to showcase it more. I can totally put you in touch because they're actually going to write an article for the Marte desktop to explain how they're using the Marte desktop and why they've chosen to use it

as an essential part of their workflow. But the flip side of this is that the Ubuntu Marte project something that I'm working on at the moment is precisely what you've just described once you've got this Linux computer in front of you what do you use it for so I'm starting to curate something that looks like an App Store but that there's no money involved and it's for people that are familiar with the app store content to have web installable apps and content so popey and i discussed this idea of a trimmed down version of the software center with just those

essential app picks that describe if you want a tool to do vector graphics then you click the inkscape icon don't tease. Do not do this to me. Don't do this to me. Come on, guys. Don't do this. The follow-on from that is a content section which links you to

Creative Commons albums, books, comics, art, and all of that stuff. Please. Oh my. You are blowing my mind right now.

You know that gif with the guy with the fireworks in his mind? That's me right now. I have never understood why we do not have some of that stuff in a Linux store like this. I am, oh my gosh, this is, whew. But it's not a store. It looks like an app store.

Right, right, yes. It's just a way to discover stuff. And every week we'll announce one new thing. So a new application one week, a new album the next week, a book the week after that, some artwork or something like that. You know, the thing that I use in App Store, or we've got to come up with a different term really, but the thing that I use these sort of App Stores for is really the discovery. Like, all right, I've sort of played with my stuff. I kind of want to see if something's new.

And honestly, for a long time I did use, well, not for a few for a while i use the software center like that and that is one of the things i find more appealing on ios than android although don't freak out because if you want to hear my thoughts on android go listen to this week's quarter radio l is awesome but in ios like i can pop open that app store and they they do really good at that curation. And I just look at the curated ones. I'm like, oh, that looks good enough. Pop. And I grab it.

And I used to do that in the software center. But it doesn't need to be a quote-unquote app. It would be awesome if it was a comic book. Like, I was looking at the Monsters, Inc. or one of the comics that, you know, you just linked us to, Wimpy. And I was thinking, gosh, you know, I'd like to read this with my son. I would like to be able to go on, download something that the – okay, I want to back up. So I'm a big believer in you should put your money where your vote is, and I think sometimes we get all worked up about Netflix on Linux

and, you know, ripping Blu-ray and all this stuff. And in my opinion, it's like what we really need to do is just stop buying it. We have to just – it's like what we really need to do is just stop buying it. We have to just, it's a bad habit. It has been manufactured to make us want it using a combination of the best abilities of Hollywood to make this stuff combined with the best marketing in the world, literally in the world, right? And so it is very enticing. And I totally understand that because I like this stuff too. But if you really want DRM to start up you have to stop buying their stuff period end of story and the thing is is there is a lot of good creative commons music there is a lot of good work out there that is free that people

are giving away just just like in podcasts where people are downloading you know tv shows and movies and meanwhile podcasts content creators are giving away their content for free that is absolutely legal for you use that you can redistribute. Just like in podcasts, the same thing is true in video series. There are people making TV shows online that are completely Creative Commons and free. There are people making music and books and audio books and comic books. And we do not do a good job of exposing it. There are websites out there, but they're not very popular.

And they're often not very well designed either, and their search usually sucks. So what you're saying right now is you're going to try to solve some of that and put it in a nice application on my Linux desktop? On a website. On a website that's part of the Ubuntu Mate website.

So how do you trigger like a... So would it just be like a downloading of a DAB? It could quite easily be, yeah, a contained website within a view and then you download a dev or the content that – yeah. Or content that's easily unpackable. Yeah, it could be a zip file with a bunch of MP3s in it. It doesn't have to be a dev. Yeah, I got you. I just put a link in the chat room to Brad Sucks.

He is basically an artist who chat room to Brad Sucks. He's basically an artist. Brad Sucks? Yeah, he's an artist who has a lot, all of his music, he claims it as open source because you can actually rearrange the tracks if you want to. And, you know, I just take this moment to point out that the Jupiter Broadcasting shows are Creative Commons, share alike, with attribution.

Yeah, there you go, easy. I don't know if people know, but there it is. I think Wimpy's being rather conservative, saying new content once a week. I think you could quite easily up the rotation and have a comic on Monday, an audio file on a Tuesday, an application on a Wednesday.

You could certainly theme each day of the week, even if you only did it for the five working days. Yeah. You could. And the thing is, in order to do that, I'm going to have to get some community involvement in order to actually do that. How could you? Is there a way to make, you know, like it seems like in this day and age, you could

almost, there should be a way where if something was requested enough or submitted enough or something like that, that it would maybe pop up on a list and then you could approve it or something. It seems like there should be a system. It could be curated. Yeah, it can be. I mean, I've been using the community to give me direction on where the project's going already by holding votes and polls on decisions about what should be default applications, default settings, and things of that nature. And what I'm thinking is using, because the community is growing quite rapidly, is actually asking them, tell me about some of your favorite Creative Commons music, TV, podcasts, books, comics, and actually using them to get the ideas.

But the whole Ubuntu Mate website is all marked down and it's all rendered using a conversion script. So you don't need people that are super techie in order to actually add content to the website. So I'm hoping that I'll be able to open that up so that they can actually add the content. Gosh, you guys are speaking my language right now. This is awesome. This is really freaking exciting. It's not coming this release though. It's after 14.10, this idea.

Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that is powered by an inappropriate amount of Snapple tea. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt. Hey there, Matt. I hope you brought your wine and cheese for this week's episode, because there's a little drama in today's show. I know how you are. I seem to be a magnet for that lately. I know how you are about the drama. It's like your favorite thing ever, right?

Oh, yeah, I love it. You keep a little log of all the drama that's going on so you can check back up on it because what you like to do, Matt, is spend a lot of time and energy on it, right? Yeah, absolutely. Apparently, that's what I do. It seems like I'm drawn into it. I don't know if we're going to be able to accomplish my goal today, but I want to discuss some of the things that are going on in the Linux community

that from the outside might look like we're ripping apart. And maybe we could talk a little bit about what we think we could do differently. And maybe we'll talk a little bit about if this really is a problem from the top, as it has recently been put by Mr. Pottering that sometimes the fish rots from the head down. Is that really true?

Can we blame all of the recent drama on Mr. Torvalds? We'll discuss that as well. Plus, we've got some news we're going to get to and, as always, some feedback. So, Matt, we are armed to bear with a huge mumble room today. Hey, mumble room, how you guys doing? Everybody just say hi. It's going to be nuts for a second. Just say hi.

Hi. Hello. Now, that's kind of musical. That was almost kind of beautiful. You guys have been hanging out way too musical. That was almost kind of beautiful. That was, yeah, had a harmony going. You guys have been hanging out way too much. That was way, that was, you guys harmonized. What the hell? All right.

So our first email comes in this week from viewer Mark. And Mark writes in and he says, I had a suggestion for that mumble room. Now this is totally optional, guys. So we're going to start with this. It's just kind of putting this out there. But Mark suggests a distro for the community to review. It's called Play Linux.

It is a distribution that is entirely designed for gamers. You can find it at play-linux.com. He thought it would be good for the Unplugged group to go through this one. So I checked it out a little bit. I'll pull it up if you're watching the video version here. First of all, it has a really interesting website design compared to most Linux distributions. It's really well done. I mean, to me, it looks like it's directly appealing to folks that have heard about this Linux thing.

It can play Steam. And right here at the beginning, you get an Ubuntu logo, a game controller logo, and their logo. And it makes it pretty simple. So Mumble Room, I know not all of you are big gamers. Is this something you'd be interested in trying? Does anybody want to step up and say, yeah, I'd take a look at Play Linux? Yeah, sure. All right.

There's Pokemon in it, yeah. My reaction would be this is the dumbest idea ever. Right. So that's fine. If that's what you think, that's fair. you have to agree there poppy yeah so we have eric and poppy willing to check it out uh all right so no no i'm willing i'm willing to say this is the dumbest oh don't check it out all right so here's what i'll just tell you a little bit about it uses cinnamon for the desktop uh it's it's basically like it's mint because it's using mdm the mint desktop manager

for the login comes with spot. It comes with their own installer for Skype and a few other of their own tools. It looks like they're integrating some of their own tools with it, though. So there could be some uniqueness. No? Going once? You know, they had me until I realized they had LibreOffice installed.

Why the hell would you have LibreOffice on a gaming distro? Oh, ouch. Well, I'm just saying. I mean, I was like, okay, I'm feeling it. I'm flowing. Wait, what now? And they kind of lost me at that point. Yeah.

I got one thing. Okay. To me, this seems like another partition I'm going to have to put on my drive to have another thing to dual boot to. Why on earth would I want to do that when I'm trying to stop doing that? I guess, yeah, if you were going to have a dedicated Linux installation for gaming, you might just go Steam OS, right? Steam is stupidly easy to install. Right. Why would you even bother?

And then if you were going to use the installation for much else, you'd probably just go with straight Linux. Well, I think it depends on the point in time you're installing Steam and what tool you're using to install it. Because, I mean, there's certainly been some history there. But these days, I would say yes. Although I'm not as critical of the idea as you guys are. I actually think giving folks a really clear path for landing when they're coming to Linux to game is a pretty good idea. You know, one of the things we discovered when working with our buddy Chase and getting him to switch over to Linux was for him, and I still am kind of gobsmacked by this, but for him, the big barrier was there was too many

distros and he didn't want to pick the wrong one. And to me, and just from my light trolling of Linux underscore gaming on Reddit, it seems like about once a week or so there's somebody that comes in and says, hey, what's the best distro for gaming? And so if there was something we could just say, go get this. It's based on Ubuntu 14.04. It comes pre-installed with a Skype installer and all the stuff you need.

It has Cinnamon, so it looks a lot like Windows 7. I would recommend Ubuntu over Steam OS. Well, if they wanted to do anything else besides game. Like if they wanted to use it as a desktop OS. If they wanted to do anything else besides game. Right? Like if they wanted to use it as a desktop OS. But if they wanted to use it as a desktop, why don't they just

go straight up Ubuntu? Well, I mean, yes, obviously. But I'm talking about people that are going to be trying to discover this on their own. They're not going to have the host of the Linux Action Show to ask what distro to install. They're going to have to go find out on their own. So you're saying that you have someone that's – gaming is their primary focus.

Anything else is basically secondary, but this is basically mostly for gaming. Yeah, because then – and plus, I mean, I want to also make it clear. I think some of it's a little smoke and mirrors. Like, yeah, this is a distro optimized for gaming. So go get it, gamer, because it's optimized when really it's just Linux, right? But, you know, it's a little bit of marketing. Yeah, it's a little marketing it's just linux right but you know it's a little bit of marketing yeah it's a little marketing too because we want to make linux look like an awesome place to switch to so if we have a distro that's optimized for gaming

yeah that might work i think they have some cool ideas with the having wine and wine tricks and play linux all installed at the same time like for you that that'd be nice but i think that the distro um method is not practical. If they just did a package you could install all these at once and it did it for you, that would be awesome. Now Wimpy brings up a good point. Go ahead, Wimpy. Oh, right.

Hang on, I'll just hit return again. Yeah, I was curious. Are you allowed to redistribute Steam? So if you've created your distribution and you install Steam, before it's done its unpacking, you know, downloading, unpacking, are you allowed to redistribute that? As I understand it, yes.

This is asked by all the other distros. When Steam came out and there was a big brouhaha that it was all about Ubuntu and they would recommend Ubuntu, every other distro got a little bit butthurt, and they asked Valve if it was okay for them to redistribute Steam, and the general answer is yeah. As long as they don't muck about with it. No, actually, I think Valve even updated the EULA to reflect that, didn't they? I'm not talking about redistributing it in repositories.

I mean actually a distribution pre-installed with that little download and install of Gizmo. You don't need to though. All you need is the stub and you're done. It doesn't matter when you make the ISO Valve are going to put out

an update. So like right now most of the time in Arch when I install Steam from the repository Steam launches and just does a self-update. And then it pulls down the Ubuntu environment and all that. I think someone said earlier, why does it have a LibreOffice? It's probably because of the tagline.

That's true. And I guess it's something people recognize. It includes Office. I guess it's a checkbox thing. Spotify. Spotify. Spotify again. So, final call. Is anybody interested in giving this? Eric, you seem like you might be interested, right?

I might take that. Do you have a machine to load it on? I mean, if you don't want to, you don't have to. It's totally voluntary. I can easily use Clonezilla to swap out a partition. No big deal. You know, we should do a segment on that. Alright, so anybody else interested in reviewing this? Anybody?

Going once, going twice. All right, Eric, I'll leave it. If you feel like doing it, no pressure. But if you feel like doing it and want to come back next week and tell us about it and let us know how it went, I'd be really curious. Because I actually don't think it's that bad of an idea as long as they get it right. All right. So Fake Moth wants to get us all fired up. You know, we haven't had it.

Microsoft just isn't the boogeyman it used to be. So how about we tell you a little tale of government corruption and Microsoft buying off folks to do what they do best, sell more software and get people hooked. But before we get to that, I want to tell you about our first sponsor this week. That's the great folks over at Ting. Go to linux.ting.com, so that way Linux Unplugged Show gets a little bit of credit for your visit, and you get a $25 credit on your Ting account if you have a compatible phone. And if you don't have a phone yet, well, they'll take $25 off your first phone. I'll talk about that more here in just a second. Linux.ting.com. Everybody go there right now. Linux.ting.com. It's my mobile

service provider and Matt's mobile service provider. And I think after all this time, the thing that really stands out about Ting is really the huge savings has come in paying for what I use. I'm not at my two-year mark yet, but it is truly unbelievable to see the savings difference by switching to Ting. So I have three phones. I have an iPhone 5. I have an HTC One and a Nexus 5, all on my Ting account. And two of the phones get heavy usage. One of the phones, well, one of them's Rikai's. It doesn't get a lot of usage. But Rikai, I'm just teasing. He's all on the Wi-Fi, that's why. Actually, Rikai uses it a ton, but he uses it on Wi-Fi. This is, by the way, a huge advantage to Ting. Because if you are at an

office place or at home where you have Wi-Fi most of the time, why are you paying for data and minutes that you will hardly use? Just in case you might go over? That sounds like a scam to me. And that's where Ting is different. You only pay for your usage. It's a flat $6 a month for your line. That just gets you the line right there. That's unbelievable just starting there. right there. That's unbelievable, just starting there. And then it's just your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes. Individually, whatever you use, Ting just adds it up at the end of the month. Whatever bucket you fall into is what you pay. So for me, for three lines, for three smartphones, it's like $40-something on average right now. I don't know. It's literally low enough that I just don't care. If it was in the hundreds, I absolutely would care. And because I'm still looking back from when I had a traditional mobile carrier where I was paying $140 after taxes a month, the fact that I'm paying $100 less a month, it blows my mind. And on top of that,

if that wasn't enough, then you have Ting's customer service. They have a no-hold customer service if you call them between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on business days. You just call them at 1-855-TING-FTW. And a real human being actually answers the phone. But the best part is these human beings are like smartphone geeks that Ting has hired because they love smartphones. Like these are the people that in their family and friends and community groups, they were the tech person. So Ting hires them to come do their tech support. So then you end up talking to somebody who likely knows Android better than you do. Yeah, I know. I don't mean to offend, but it's very likely. I'm talking,

these are enthusiasts. That's genius. But for me, because I'm a busy guy and I usually don't get to this stuff until late at night when everybody's asleep and it's way after business hours. Well, they've given me the tools to make sure I have control over my account. Ting has an awesome dashboard with a great heads-up display that gives you feel usage, so you can see your minutes and your messages and your megabytes all right there. And not only that, but Ting will be like, hey, bro, this was your average last month, and this is kind of where you're trending at right now. Here's your highs, here's your lows. This is where we think you might be. And it's brilliant. It is absolutely brilliant. And right there in the Ting dashboard, I can turn a device on or off. I love that aspect of Ting. So here's what I want you to do. Go to

linux.ting.com right now. Click on that savings calculator. Put your actual cellular usage in there, you know, what you actually use, and click that calculate savings right there. I'm just saying you might be surprised at the amount of money you could save. You'll likely be able to buy a laptop every two years by switching to Ting. And right now over on the Ting blog, they have another Ting contributor's top five app picks. Oh, I'll have to tell Angie about MapMyWalk. They have some good ones over. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. We see you have somebody a little. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So go over there. You go to linux.ting.com and check out the blog.

They have another top five app picks. And by the way, if you've been kind of on the fence about switching to Ting, they're moving warehouses. They're getting a bigger facility. And while they move, they're like, we really would rather not move these devices. If you would like to buy them, we will sell them really cheap. And so they have a great deal on the notes and even the feature phones. It's some incredible savings. And remember, if you go to linux.ting.com, you're going to get a $25 discount.

So go check them out right now. And they're also now taking the iPhone 5S and 5C. So if you've got an extra one of those now, you can move it over to Ting and get a $25 credit. linux.ting.com. And a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged show. Okay, so you ready for this Microsoft corruption story,

as it were? Fake Moth sends this in. He says, hello, I'm a big fan of Vlas and Texnop here in Romania. You know, the country that has gigabit Ethernet speeds every house for years because our ISPs all use Unix. Well, it seems no one is paying attention. So this is going to be a long email because he's got to get the word out.

In fact, he expresses his frustration that nobody's talking about this. I've been working in the IT field for 10 plus years, and I'm very passionate about technology and open source. The problem is I consider myself a moral person. And for years, it's sickened me to work in corporate IT sales. I know I'm avoiding this area, but he says it's hell and doing anything else in IT is also hell. He seems to have a hard time with IT, but he says, I've been watching something from afar that I've been witnessing with my own eyes that is driving me crazy.

Microsoft is buying out our government. It's a whole food chain, make no mistake. The problem started back in 2001 when Romania began buying equipment and licenses for the education department. Since then, all other institutions like the police, the justice department, the army, everyone also then started buying Microsoft licenses at 200 to 300% of the market price, and more licenses than computers they had to run them. Hundreds of thousands of licenses, Windows licenses, client access licenses, office licenses, SQL licenses. Simply put, instead of paying less for education and government, or at least for the high volume they were buying, Romania paid at least double the highest regular price on the market. Why? Simple.

Corruption. Now, the USA and the Romanian DNA, which stands for National Agency Against Corruption, I don't know why they don't put the C in there. I guess they just like DNA as the acronym. They have discovered an offshore account through which the payments have been made to various Romanian officials, allegedly by Microsoft, because all of them have been tracked back to the U.S. Microsoft headquarters.

Also, Fujitsu and Siemens seem to be in on it. So perhaps that's where the hardware sales are going. He says, I'm surprised that the international press doesn't talk much about this. We're talking about tens of millions of euros lost by the state. Around 30 millions are only on the provable bribes. On the provable ones. He says, the huge benefits for Microsoft and their local partners, mainly Sevco, are licenses bought even though it wasn't necessary to do so.

He says, thanks for the great shows. Keep them going. Best wishes, Fake Moth from Romania. So anybody surprised by this? And how can open source ever compete with that? How can that ever happen? It's old hat. I'll toss it to... They're more blade overseas, though. Well, that's... So, Daredevil, I'd like to get your European perspective on this. So the first thing I'll say is this is most likely actually something the Romanian government

wants to be able to have a justification to increase their actual hardware. To start with. Oh, interesting. We have all these licenses. Now let's buy the hardware to use them. Yes. So it is a process of technology modernization. A lot of governments actually do this.

All right. modernization. A lot of governments actually do this. And then I don't think it will actually be a long-term problem because Romania is going through the process of being more integrated with the rest of the European Union. The result is there is going to be more tighter control. So get that money. Yes, you're doing that. But also notice some of this money is not necessarily coming only from Romanian people. It's coming from all European services. But eventually it will kind of standardize and put in equal footing. So we've seen this in the past and things eventually worked out. So it's kind of like they're taking advantage of the situation while they can,

but in the end it will all wash out? Yes. I think it's unavoidable because people not only get tired, it's also that time that Microsoft no longer has the play it had. Yeah, that's very true. And they really no longer have a lot of the same arguments they had. The big one used to be office interoperability. It was unquestionable that if you were in, this is just from my experience in contracting in the Seattle area, so this may be a little skewed, but in my recollection, when you were a business, there was an assumed cost with every PC,

Mac or Windows, that you would have to buy Office because you had to be interoperable. That's no longer really the case with LibreOffice's converters working very well and Google Docs and Office 365 even. Just that right there has fundamentally undermined their relevancy because it changes the conversation from unquestionable, it's associated with the cost of buying a new PC, to it just changes the dialogue to, do we really need this? I don't know if we need this for this station.

That right there is huge. And it's just going to continue. Unless, of course, Windows 10 will turn it all around, I'm sure. Bernardo writes in. And he, you know, I didn't roll this story in because I figured everybody's going to think Chris is an Arch fanboy. So I avoided even talking about this, plus, you know, statistics and all of that. But Bernardo writes in and just points it out and wonders if it's a trend. He says, hello, Chris.

Hello, Matt. You probably already noticed this, but I read an article on Pharonix in which it says that Arch Linux is about to overtake Ubuntu's first position in the benchmark usage. So i.e. distributions that are running the open benchmark software. Right now, Ubuntu has been dominant. Now, here is the interesting thing, though. This, who knows, right? But if you look at this chart, that's actually kind of telling in a sense.

look at this chart, that's actually kind of telling in a sense. And for those of you not watching the video version, it is unmistakable that as the Ubuntu decline has been in there, the Arch is increased. Now, what do you think we are to take from this? Is it perhaps folks who are benchmarking their machines have more custom builds, so they've sort of migrated to Arch? See, I would disagree with that to an extent, but that seems like it's a potential answer. Matt, do you have any theories right off the top of your head on this? Not really. It's one of those things I would want to watch more and dive deeper into before I start inserting myself on that, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Yeah, what I wonder is if it really is indicative of anything. I think the only way you could say it is is if you saw several other kinds of trends where other sites and other things are observing the same thing. I think for benchmarks in particular, that's a hard one. That seems like something

that particularly Arch folks, because you're going to have a lot of folks that are building a custom rig, right? And then they want to get the most out of that. They're going to want the latest kernel and all of that stuff. So it seems like they would skew more towards Arch. Now, that kind of supports my theory that perhaps Arch is becoming the new distro of the more advanced Linux user, the more long-term experienced Linux user.

I don't know. Anybody else have any other thoughts on this? No? All right. Okay. I have one No? All right. I have one thought. All right. Okay. Go ahead, Matt. Give it to Matt, and then we'll go to Wimpy next. Just real quick, I was going to tell you that if you stop and think about it, benchmarking is a lot like trying to measure a river with a ruler or a yardstick.

Theoretically, you can do it, but you might not always get the most accurate results, especially depending on which end of the river you happen to be measuring from. So there's a lot of truth to that. And I think we're kind of looking at the same thing. It's one of these things to where it can become an absolute thing real quick. And I'm not real clear that we have all the details yet. Yeah, but that sounds like an Alaskanism. I like that, Matt.

Oh, absolutely. Wimpy, you were going to make a point, and then I'll go to Popey next. Yeah, I was just going to say that if you were into doing benchmarks, then Arch Linux is a sensible platform to run your benchmarks on because you've always got the latest stuff. You've got the latest kernel, the latest file system, user space, the latest drivers, the latest X. So if you want to see what's changing and what's improving, then doing it on Arch would be the platform to use

because it's low barrier of entry to actually get the latest stuff. Okay. All right. That seems like a pretty plausible explanation. Popey, do you have any thoughts? I can imagine that there's certainly some Ubuntu users who run benchmarks on their system, but I would imagine the typical Arch Linux user is the kind of person also who would run benchmarks. I don't know whether they've got something to prove or whether they just – They're measuring something? They're measuring something, yeah, maybe.

But I would imagine that there is a significant number of Ubuntu users who don't measure their benchmark. It's interesting though, right? I think it's – It kind of depends on who you're coming from. It's a self-selecting. Well, yes, it is. You're right. In the grand scheme, yeah. Because really, though, there is value in benchmarking on Ubuntu

if you're trying to see what the average Linux consumer quote-unquote is going to experience. But Zerolock, he wants to come in and say, you guys are all wrong. Arch isn't an advanced users distro, so perhaps Zerolock is our theory bogus? Well, the thing is, we always make Arch out to be

this advanced distro of people who have experience in Unix systems, but really, it's not really an advanced distro as much as it is a distro for somebody who wants to learn or really knows about their system. Or wants an easy button for new software. Some people want the just works and other people want to tinker with stuff.

So here's where Arch is actually in a lot of ways for lazy noobs. The AUR. Okay, let's not kid ourselves. What the AUR is all about is getting the latest software without having to download the tar.gz, go in there, make it, make install, right? Let's be honest. That's what the AUR is about. It's about making it super easy to get the software I want because I want it right now. Now, where you need to be an advanced user to use Arch is these burnout stories we hear about.

And so this is our next topic, actually. Gabriel 3 wrote on the subreddit, has anyone else left Arch for another distro? And which is your after Arch distro? Because he says he took the Arch challenge, and after that, he burned out and switched to OpenSUSE. And his problem has been not in building software and installing it, because that's easy under Arch. His problem has been keeping it running. That seems to be where maybe expertise and past experience

play a key role in using Arch. And that does seem like the type of user who also would be benchmarking. So I kind of agree with this theory overall. I don't think it indicates any kind of usage trend other than maybe more advanced users are using Arch more than they used to. And the fact that the two lines are kind of, I mean, I think it might suggest that's a possibility, but I don't think it means it. Yeah.

So here's what he wrote. I want to get into Gabriel's post, and let's kick this around. He says, hi, guys. I just want to share with you and this wonderful community what happened. He said, three months ago, I moved to Arch. The beginner's guide was great, and he moved around from Mate to XFCE to GNOME, and then eventually back to Mate. He tried out KDE and the Plasma desktop for a little while.

And so then eventually, once he decided he liked Plasma, he moved over to OpenSUSE 13.1 because in the long run, he had to keep fiddling to keep his Arch running. He says, I was willing to fix small issues, but it just got annoying after a while, so I switched to OpenSUSE. And this is kind of my point is like you can have somebody go download Antigroth or any of the other Arch derivatives. But if Arch is hard to maintain and hard to keep running, then it probably is for more advanced people. And the thing is, I think what the key – and I don't know why this is because I'm not like some sort of Jedi here. Because I'm not like some sort of Jedi here. But I have three or four arch installations in this building that are at least, you know, six months old. Maybe some of them are a little younger than that.

Some of them are over a year old now. And none of them are ever having problems. And I think part of it is just switching around the desktop. And I wondered if, like, is this just a unique experience for me? And I read through the comments, and I actually see people in here commenting, saying, I've been using the same install for seven years. This guy says he's been using the same install. He's even moved it between motherboards.

But then other folks are saying, yeah, I've had the same problem. So I don't – Poby, go. What is this? What's going on here? Sorry, you were just saying you never have problems on Arch. Well, I never knew problems that would make me want to switch, and I have a low threshold for that kind of thing. I mean, I have... I remember an episode of this show not

that long ago where you were ranting about how stuff was broken in the studio. Yeah, but I don't think that was Arch's fault. I don't think. I don't remember. Those were mostly Harvard failures, as I recall. Huh? I did take some Stockholm Syndrome.

Well, maybe. Yeah. And that's what I'm wondering. I mean, so, like, here's why I think... Here's where I'm coming from. You know, I really... If something gives me much trouble, I'm more of a nuke and pave than I am a troubleshooter because I just have a lot of stuff to do. And I've never, my

threshold is for if it's broken is, have I ever gotten to the point where I just want to format and reload the installation? And none of my arch systems have gotten to that point. I had issues with some kernel modules that, you know, would break after a new kernel. But then once I figured out, oh, yeah, dummy, use DKMS, like, that hasn't been a problem. Like VirtualBox has never broken since. And that was like, you know, a year ago now. The things I more struggle with are like, you know, a GNOME update that breaks extensions, or the fact that ButterFS is a bastard, and it's using up a ton of my drive for metadata and whatever the hell else and those kinds of problems. But I don't really have a problem with Arch itself.

I'm not trying to make this some big Arch promotion here. Well, technically you could argue that some of those are Arch problems themselves because you're getting bleeding edge crap straight from the hose. But I could have the same. You wouldn't get that from Ubuntu from the past, 10044 or 1204 you wouldn't get it from debian stable you wouldn't get it from suzo you know 12 or whatever is their stable version i think i think you're ascribing the brokenness to some upstream right package whether it's Butterfest or whatever, when in fact it's actually a byproduct of you running

bleeding edge stuff, surely. Exactly. I think that's the arch contract in a nutshell right there. That's it. You just nailed it. And the advantage that something like OpenSUSE has or something like that is it's not going to

change very much, or 14.04 or whatever. Unless you're in factory. Right. But I would. You see, I guess that's my core point is I'm not going to run any of those things, right? Like today, if I was going to install Fedora, I wouldn't be installing Fedora Stable. I would install the latest build that they're working on right now.

If I went to OpenSUSE, I would go rolling. I would use Ubuntu 14.10. I would use Debian testing. I would not use any of those stable things, none of them. None of them are current enough at all. So since if you accept that, if that is your outlook as well, and I'm not saying it should be, but if that is, in fact, it's probably not a healthy one, you might want to consider it,

but it's mine. And so for me, if I accept that fact, then out of all of of my choices arch seems to be the one that's best at delivering that but that's great i think i think it's fabulous that arch serves a market that is out there of people who want the absolute latest bleeding edge but you've got to be able to cope with yes the you know the brokenness when it happens and it does happen. You're deluding yourself if you think there's no brokenness at all. No, I agree. Because that happens with every disc.

You know what it is? I'm a bit astonished it doesn't happen a hell of a lot more. To be honest with you. Really. Because it probably happens every, you know, I don't even know, really. But I update all the freaking time. You'd think it would happen more often. So my point is, is perhaps what this chart does show us is there's a lot more people out there thinking the way I'm thinking over time. It doesn't mean everybody is, but it probably means the segment of type of people that do benchmarks are kind of thinking more the way I'm thinking.

That's, I think, really what it shows us, potentially. I find it striking how, back in May of 2014, this year, how they start to mirror each other. Ubuntu and Arch. Yeah, exactly, yes. It's really weird. That was kind of the interesting thing. Anyways, we'll have a link in the show. That's enough.

That's enough on that. It was a good email. And it was something I wanted to talk about, but I didn't let myself talk about it because I was like, oh, Chris is a fanboy. But when somebody emailed in, they gave me an excuse to bring it up. Hey, Chris is a fanboy. But when somebody emailed in, they gave me an excuse to bring it up. Hey, Chris. Yeah. Well, you know, Arch is for experienced users. It has become a lot easier in the past few years than it has been in the past.

But it is for advanced users or at least someone who isn't scared to get a little bit dirty. We never recommended it before. It was more of a try it out, dip your toe in the water, see if you like it, and then determine whether or not it floats your boat. Otherwise, it might not work. Seuss might just fit his bill. Right, right. And thank goodness, too,

because there's a lot of hard work going into that distribution, so I'm glad there's people out there that it's filling a market need for. Same with all the other ones. I think we're about to get into all the drama stuff. And I think it's important to keep in mind that if that's what pulls your chain, that's totally fine. There's really absolutely not even a little bit anything wrong with that.

And we need to keep in mind, as we are about to get into all this stuff, that at the end of the day, as we are about to get into all this stuff, that at the end of the day, what we are all fighting over, all the stupid hairless monkeys are fighting over is things that flip bits on either magnetic storage or solid state storage. Okay. And it's really not that big of a deal. So let's keep that in mind as we get into the, some of the drama that is going on in the Linux community. And I think just even that little distro discussion there reminds us that there's some strong feelings on all ends, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. Like, you know, 100 years from now, so let's keep all of this in perspective

as we get into some of this drama stuff because I don't want this to get out of hand. But first, before we transition to that, since I think that's going to be kind of an in-depth topic, I want to talk about DigitalOcean. Go over to DigitalOcean right now, won't you? Because it is awesome. It is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. And you could probably get started in about 55 seconds or so. I've gotten reports of 12 seconds, 33 seconds came in today. It's nuts. The reason why is DigitalOcean's infrastructure

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a 20-gigabyte SSD, one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer. That's an amazing value. A terabyte of transfer alone for $5 is incredible, but you also get the SSD drive and their super fast CPUs. And DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and in London, a brand new one in London, actually. It's gorgeous. And their interface, it's super simple and intuitive. The control panel is amazing. It's kind of remarkable in a sense. And they have

this ability for you to take all of the functionality in the dashboard that you might want to automate. Maybe you want to write a shell script for it, or you want to snap it into your existing management infrastructure. Because you could also consider DigitalOcean as a way to offload when you have to really meet capacity, when something big is about to go on. Your project is about to launch something. A new version is about to come out, an announcement, something like that. With their straightforward API, you can integrate DigitalOcean right into your solutions, spin up the droplets as you need them,

and their management interface makes it so simple to take snapshots. So that way you can make sure you have a good backup before you make a major change. They have DNS management baked right in. One-click installations for things like GitLab, WordPress, the entire LAMP stack. And of course, Digital Ocean's all about Docker. They're all about KVM. They're all about Linux. And they're also letting you experiment with CoreOS, directly from the CoreOS project as well. I've got several Ubuntu LTS systems up on CoreOS, one of them running my own cloud, which I sync all of my mobile devices to now. And it's, for me, $5 a month is a no-brainer. But here's the best part. We can get you a $10 discount. So that way, you can try out Digital

Ocean for two months for absolutely free. Now, we're in transition this week, so you can use the promo code UNPLUGGEDSEPTEMBER or UNPLUGGEDOCTOBER. That'll give you a $10 credit. Try it out. Try the $5 rig, or you can go getgedoctober. That'll give you a $10 credit. Try it out. Try the $5 rig, or you can go get yourself a fancier rig. Just give it a shot and see what you think. I think you'll be pretty damn impressed. Go over to digitalocean.com and use the promo code unpluggedoctober when you check out. And a huge thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.

And by the way, they also have guides up for the Shellshock vulnerability. And next week, I'm going to tell you more about how you can contribute to DigitalOcean's tutorial community and actually make a little money too, which is really awesome. DigitalOcean.com, Unplugged October. And that really is something you've got to check out. I am amazed at what they can do now with DigitalOcean, especially if somebody used to deploy that stuff for clients. That's something else you might want to consider, is if you do have clients that need a website or some backend infrastructure for something they're doing, or they just want to do off-site backups,

you could spin up a DigitalOcean droplet for them and even manage it for them. At $5 a month, there's probably a little profit to be made in there. Okay. All right. a little profit to be made in there. Okay. All right. So this week has been pretty rocky in the Linux community.

And I'm not going to lie, it's pretty disappointing to watch it go down. Eric and I were sort of commiserating about this on the Tech Talk Today pre-show that we almost are kind of sick to our stomach in a sense. Right, Eric? Yeah. I'm just face palming at the entire thing. I'm just – it's sad. It's sad to watch a community blow up like this. So there's several things that are going on.

I think the one that's created the most waves this week and the one that's really gotten a lot of response is Lennart Pottering went to Google Plus and made a post. And I won't read the whole thing. I'll have it linked in the show notes if you want to read it. But I'll start a little. I'll read a little bit of it. He says much of the open source community tries to advertise the community as one happy place to the outside. I think maybe you could contribute a little blame to Linux Action Show and Linux Unplugged for that. We do try to highlight the best things about the community. And sometimes, well, in this show, we go more in depth on some of the more unseen elements. But in Linux Action Show,

it's more of a showcase about what rocks, right? So I take some of that blame on here. He says, where contributions are valued only by their technical quality and everybody meets at conferences for beers. I think sometimes we do perpetuate that theory too. But he says it's not like that. In fact, it's quite a sick place to be in. He says, I don't usually talk about this much.

So he says, I figure people are not very aware of this, but the open source community is full of assholes. And I probably, you know, I'll just stop right there for a second. You know, he goes on in his post to sort of say that it's kind of unbelievable. He's all the crap that sling to him. Now, for those of you not familiar, Lennart was sort of the lead advocate behind SystemD. He's on the development team. He was the same for Pulse Audio and a lot of other things. And he's had a very vocal voice in the past. He's probably been one of the people slinging mud a little bit. And he kind of comes on here and says that it's getting out of control these days. He even mentions that there has been an effort

online to collect Bitcoin to hire a hitman to kill him. Oh, my God. Yeah. And he goes on to say that perhaps some of the blame should be lied at the feet of Linus Torvalds because Linus sets the tone for the community in his verbose sort of way and his direct way he's setting a tone for how dialogue should go to get things done and he says he's not opposed to the use of the f word but he's opposed to the way it's being used and his words are that a fish rots from the head down and so this is a tone that's putting put out there in fact even though when I read Lenart's post, I did not feel like he was putting it

on the feet of Linus, but it is how now it is being picked up. ZDNet, Matt, your buddy, Stephen Jay over there has his headline, Lenart Pottering's Linus Torvald's rant. And Lenart did

address the mailing list and whatnot. So, Popey, I want to open with you because you and I had a pretty good discussion about this sort of off there, quote unquote. Where should we start? What holes am I missing in the filling in the story right now? Well, first of all,

the hitman argument seems to be a single comment from a guy on a random dude on IRC somewhere. Okay. And so you could take that as some weirdo on IRC. We get a lot of weirdos on IRC all over the place. The second thing I would say is Leonard is an incredibly clever guy. He has created some amazing software, both

like SystemD and then before that, Pulse Audio. I love Pulse Audio. I didn't love it when it first was shipped in Ubuntu, and now I do. I think it's fantastic. I just, do you know what? I'm using Mumble right now. I've watched YouTube videos. I use

Skype, and it just works. It's fabulous. And it just works. It's fabulous. And before that, he helped develop Avahi on Linux, the zero-conf stuff. The guy is an accomplished developer. He does good stuff for the Linux community. He gets way more flack than I think he deserves. Yes, sometimes he can be a bit of a dick.

And in the past, when he was younger, he was somewhat abrasive and people found it difficult to work with him. But then when I was younger, I was a bit of a dick. And I was probably someone who was somewhat abrasive and hard to work with. I think, you know, he's gone past that. And I think, you know, given the body of work he's made, and the effort that he's done to make the

free software desktop a better environment for users, I think the guy should be cut a bit of slack. Okay. All right. Now, Daredevil, I want to give you a chance to chime in. I'd just like to ask Leonard if he's listening. You are a public figure, and that comes with a price tag. And it's a public figure within a niche, but it's still a public figure for all that matters. And yes, you may have legitimacy on some of your complaints, but at that point, not everyone that is addressing you is always a community member. And we deal with things like that in kind of any career, as long as you happen to be in a spotlight.

He has done great things, like Papa said, and he should take everything with a grain of salt. said, and he should take everything with a grain of salt. Learn how to get away of the things that lead them to that kind of behavior. And now just a quick comment on what you said. I wouldn't take any blame on showing the positive side, because the same way there's people that show the negative side, someone needs to show what is actually good about it. We happen to have a great group in here a lot of times, and we enjoy it. So should we not talk about it? Well, you know, I'll take devil's advocate here, and I'll defend Lenart in that, specifically, the discussions around SystemD in this show have gotten more hate mail in my inbox than pretty much any other topic we have ever discussed. And I'm surprised because it seems so over the level of anger.

Not always. Oftentimes there's very rational emails, too, that are just really good emails. But there are some that just seem so angry about it that I don't quite – it almost seems disconnected from the reality of the situation. So, and that's just, that's just in my coverage of it. I'm not one of the guys that created it. So I can only imagine the volume and amount he's getting. And so I do have some sympathy for that. And I think I can understand a little bit how it could be wearing. And to be honest with you, it has crossed my mind if it was taking a toll on him based on the amount that I was getting long before he made

this post. And it has also crossed my mind how kind of impressed I am that he's continued on under what I assume has been heavy criticism. Now, this sort of confirms that. But I think out of all the things he's done, maybe that might be something I respect him the most for, just having a slight understanding of probably what he's under. Now, that said, it's something that he's also participated in. And I liked the way that Aaron Seigel said there's four paths for this kind of the way communities can go. And he said there are many people who just simply don't interact with the community at all. They just write code. They put out useful technology.

And that's kind of it. They interact as little as possible. Some communities have adopted the stance that the most important thing is the creation of technology for everyone to be nice to each other at all times or else. That's another path. It's usually motivated by the right intentions. But it can sort of steal the focus away. Everybody has to be nice. Everybody be nice.

Everybody be nice. And then there's the technology co-creation path. And this is the one that resonated with me. He says there is a healthy path where people focus on technology creation first and foremost. And the one would do well as to get as many free software communities on. In these kinds of environments, social interactions are something that happens as a happy byproduct of making great technology together. Now, I want to take that sentence and I want to read it to you again, but I want to use different words. Instead of technology, let's use the word podcasts. Okay, so he says here, this is a healthy path where people can

focus on the podcasts, first and foremost, where the content matters. In these kinds of environments, social interactions are something that happens as a happy byproduct of making a great show together. And that is sort of where the Jupyter Broadcasting community comes from. A lot of us have become friends as a result of working on the content. The content comes first. The show comes first. The content comes first. The show comes first. And within that paradigm, if I yell at Eric or I yell at Q5 or they yell at me, it's because we want to make a better show together. It's not because it's an ego thing. It's not our personalities combating. It's because we both, first and foremost, care more about the show. And so there's a mutual respect that is shared between us that we're really just trying to make the product better. And sometimes that requires talking a little tough because when it's a creative thing, just like software can very much be a creative process, there's a lot of passion involved. That's the nature of it. And unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. If you want to make something great, you want to make something better than everybody else is making, then it takes that kind of personal commitment where you're really all in. And when you're all in on something like that, you go to the mat for it and you fight for it.

And sometimes that causes controversy. I mean, I wish I had a better term, but an adult detached perspective you can take where you can have a robust, sometimes hard conversation, and then 10, 15 minutes, everything's okay, and now you're back to working on the product again. And that, I think, is bared out in our community right here. Go ahead. Go ahead and take it, buddy. Go. immunity right here i kind of i kind of 50 agree with you because i spent the weekend when i was at a conference i spent probably about 45 minutes arguing with stewart language about something admittedly i was like 10 pints under and so was he but that's the best time apparently but but at the end of it you know we have a conversation and and it's it's a it's robust but i think there's a difference between

that and then someone barking orders at someone right i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna point this at you directly chris there's been a couple of occasions on on mumble where you've been quite abrasive to people here uh as a result of you feeling like what what what's the perception is that you're feeling that that the input is not not warranted not wanted and and what you've just explained is that the creative process is king, that the content is king, that actually what matters is what you get out at the end. Hang the fact that you're like kicking people along the way. And I don't think that's the right way to do it. Right. I can see.

I think there's not a. So I think I do see what you're saying there. And I would I would say if that person, you know, if they're I wouldn't be one of those things where the conversation ends completely. They could continue to advocate their case and my mind could be changed. That happens all the time. But I think sometimes, specifically for content creation, maybe not software creation. I don't know. I don't have as much experience there.

There eventually has to be somebody who says, this is how we're doing it. And we're doing it this way because i know the best about this because this is my area kind of and this is kind of why sometimes i see how linus operates and i think yes he is setting a tone that is not healthy at the same time what the hell is he going to do this is the reality of the environment he's in and these are the people that he needs to motivate like right and i see that i see that as well with you know mark shuttleworth who has his opinions on the direction of ubuntu and you know there are people who are contributing their spare time in the same way there are people contributing their spare time

to help you out with jupiter and there there are people who are helping lennart out with system d or whatever you know there's always this this pool of people who are sometimes on a bit of a knife edge you you push them too far you're going to push them over and they're going to stop contributing and they're going to walk away and i hold that thought i want to i want to i want to because that's our next uh that's sort of where we're going to get to uh in in the gaming on linux stuff so i think you're going you're going in the right direction but hold on you're going there too soon. Eric, I want to give you a chance

just sort of somebody who's been in the process where we've been working things out to kind of chime in and you can also throw me under the bus if you want. Well, what I wanted to talk about

was how much you and I and you and Q5 and Q5 and me and Rikai and whatnot, everybody who's a part of the crew has had a lot of disagreements with each other about a lot of different things. It shows up all the time. At the end of the day, we are going towards a common goal, and that's to produce good content. And I think we are constantly getting there.

Do you think, though, that – see, this is where I'm trying to get to. that, see, this is where I'm trying to get to. I guess at the end of the day, like, the fundamental question is, like, is there a place for where you just sometimes have to come in and say, no, we're doing it this way. Everybody F off. Well, yeah, and that's where you come in because you're the guy in charge of the show.

So that, so when you do that, we have, it's basically, it's your baby. We're just here to help you take care of it. Well, okay. So, okay, we'll go back to that. First, I want to give Heavens a chance to go and then we'll go to Daredevil. So go ahead, it's your baby. We're just here to help you take care of it. Well, okay. So, okay. We'll go back to that. First, I want to give Heavens a chance to go and then we'll go to Daredevil. So go ahead, HeavensRevenge. Well, in our community

there is, there tends to be a lot of extremist opinions. One that we don't usually knock on too much because we love him so much is RMS. He is very extremist, but we love his opinions. Yes. You know, I was going to point that out. Is he also, I mean, we're kind of dogging on Linus here, but let's be honest.

RMS has said some things, right? And, you know, they're needed in a way. But I like to compare it like this. We have captains in our community. They are the figureheads or the people that kind of give us direction. There's one important word that explains this. It's called a mutiny. When people don't like the direction of the captain, like you, Chris, if you are the captain of the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, there's the captain of certain projects.

When people don't like the way the direction is going, they will mutiny and they will be very violent and try to do everything they can to try and make that problem not a problem within their minds and this it gets visceral whoa oh man are you thinking what i'm thinking are you thinking about the the twit stuff that's going on right now is that kind of what you're referring to no okay so i'll get to that in a second daredevil i wanted a big good well it is okay so i'm going to mention this right now is this is an interesting thing about community. And this is something that businesses are not really equipped well to understand and handle. And I won't go. I don't want to make this a JB Twit thing, but Twit's having major problems with their community right now. And so much so that their community has organized a blog with with several contributors and a separate chat room.

community has organized a blog with several contributors and a separate chat room. And they are really organizing to go after Twit in a very organized troll fashion. And it's really spinning out of control. And I'm kind of amazed at the amount of energy that is being spent to go after something that these people once cherished. And it's exactly, to a T, what you just said, Heaven. So we're watching this right now happen to the Twit Network. And I like at one time, you know, I feel bad for them, but I also see how they are not managing the situation and not respecting the community and sort of adding fuel to this fire. And so it's a really interesting thing to have sort of spin out of control.

Daredevil, I want to give you a chance to chime in. Recently, there was an article that actually was posted on Reddit about SQL, MySQL trademark issues. And one of the actually points that was very well made is that there are open source products, and there are open source projects, and there are differences on how they are handled. So I think Lenard, in this situation, is kind of a hybrid of it because he's working for Red Hat, which definitely creates things like SystemD, which are more of an open source product coming out of Red Hat. Sure. the community more impulsive, like Heavens was pointing out, towards trying to make it a project so they are sure if it's going to affect their distribution, they will have a say on it and there is going to be some consensus.

So it becomes a project rather than a product. And I think that is really just something that you cannot avoid if you're in a position like Leonard is. He has made great things and that's called attention. I don't think particularly that's a bad thing. So is your basic argument that if you want to be successful on the Internet, you have to have a super thick skin and prepare to have just the worst stuff ever said about you and to you?

To a degree, yes. I mean, society has always been like this. I can accept that as an answer. I mean, I don always been like this. I can accept that as an answer. I mean, I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but I want to transition to something that's a little more recent to kind of show you, we're kind of talking about this in the abstract, I want to kind of narrow our focus a little bit and talk about what's going on with a couple of friends of this show,

the Linux Gamecast and GamingOnLinux.com, both of whom I just gave plugs to in this Sunday's Linux Action Show, thinking kumbaya, everybody loves each other. And the reason why I don't, you know, we don't need to get into the specifics of the drama, but what I want to get to is I'm building a case to why this stuff actually matters and how it actually impacts not just Linux, but adoption of Linux and the way the outside community perceives us. And I think this current example that we have today clearly lays it all out there,

and it shows us the real-world cost of this. Because right now we're talking about it in sort of the abstract and for Lenart and et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of where I want to take this. But before we get to that, as you might expect, we have one more sponsor to get to. And it's one that I think you're definitely going to want to check out. And they have a brand new website too, Linux Academy. Linuxacademy.com to get a 33% discount on tuition. Linux Academy has a brand new website.

And Matt, this website is looking slick. They've really done a great job. And they're adding more courses too. It's not just that, it's like it's amazing how hard these guys are working these days. And it's really awesome because it's Linux enthusiasts that came together with designers and educators and it's really that symbiotic relationship that's paying off now.

And you can go check it out. So what is Linux Academy? Check this out. Think about a repository of knowledge for managing anything you might want to know from Linux to AWS, OpenStack, or if you want to get into DevOps. They've got courses on all of it, step-by-step video courses, downloadable comprehensive study guides for you to read offline. And as your courseware requires it, it comes with its own server. They spin up a server on demand.

You can choose from seven plus Linux distributions. Then they automatically adjust the courseware so it matches that Linux distribution. And I cannot underscore this new feature enough because this is, oh man, if I was kind of maybe wanting to sort of step out, or if I was curious about what other technologies I could get into, or if I just had gotten thrown into a major project and I needed to know how to deploy GitLab or manage OpenStack or integrate AWS, this would be my salvation. They have a new system called Learning Plans. Learning Plans allow the user to select your daily availability. Based on your availability, the study plan is automatically generating and it gives you lessons and quizzes and labs. It'll

send you reminders when those are due. You can retest yourself and you can continually sort of adjust based on your availability. You know, go take some Chef Fundamentals, Puppet, CentOS 7, Ubuntu, OpenStack. You can do a scenario-based lab too where you actually implement something on AWS or deploy a server and get it up and running.

They have so many cool things up and coming too and once you become a Linux Academy subscriber, you just get all the stuff. You can just keep going, use all, just keep learning, keep trying out new things and try out the new courseware.

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you might want to consider. Setting up a remote GUI desktop, they've got courses on that. Working with Nginx, Nagios, oh my gosh. Nagios is such an awesome tool if you're in an enterprise or even a small business and you're not doing monitoring, go take the Nagios course. It's worth it right there.

LinuxAcademy.com slash unplug. And a huge thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged show. Okay. So to bring the drama home and talk about what's going on now, we've had Liam on the show. The Gaming on Linux, he's Liam, right? That's his name? That's right.

That's right. Yeah. He's been on the show before and gave him a plug on Sunday. Today, this morning, he says, I'm moving on from gaming on Linux, I'm quitting, I'm no longer going to write here again. And he lays the blame square on another podcaster.

And I did some digging into this and it appears there's been some barbs back and forth. Essentially what it boiled down to is just for those of you who care, a game developer contacted LGC, Linux Gamecast Weekly, said, hey, would you like to review our stuff? Who knows what happened? Maybe they gave them a bad review, whatever. A lot of times these developers are essentially expecting the blogger or the podcaster to be so excited that they're being contacted by the developer and that they got free keys that they almost expect a good review and very likely knowing the lgc guys if they

didn't like the game they were pretty honest about it usually they are and what i gather is the developer wasn't super happy about that and so liam's you know like tweeted at him or something like that and said well you know if you're not happy with your review, maybe you should consider reaching out to other media outlets. The LGC crew are kind of known for being rough or something like to that extent. Right. Which then started a series of back and forth and name calling and things like that, which eventually led to Liam posting a resignation. I think this is something that's happened before. Drama, drama, drama. Here is the practical outcome that is likely going to affect Linux. We have two problems now.

Number one, gaming on Linux will continue on. It's community funded. They're funded until December, according to comments from him. But likely less content, right? Because he was the chief editor, the number one contributor. Here's why that matters. If you're a game shop and you're releasing your game for Linux, it is really hard to figure out who the hell you're supposed to talk to, to generate some buzz, to get some reviews, to inform the community that your game's there. Because there's a lot of games that come out that

nobody even knows about. And so what gamingonlinux.com became was sort of that first stop, because it's something that these development shops who have been living in the Windows or console ecosystem their entire existence can wrap their brain around. They understand what the site's about. It's in the name. They see they have lots of reviews. They have decent traffic, decent enough, whatever it is. I have no idea. And they can grok it. And that is sort of to them, it's their on-ramp. There's other outlets, but I got to tell you, from my own personal experience dealing with these people, they have no clue what the hell they're doing. They have no clue how to do this. They are completely at a loss. They are desperate to have a way to do this, because this is really established in all

the commercial gaming platforms. I get emails constantly with keys where they're just asking us to review the game because they're desperate to get attention. They don't have any idea how to do it. And the problem is, is now one of the obvious and clear paths for them to do that is going to decline. And all of us will suffer to some small degree because of it. The result is, because of bickering, between two people who are essentially fighting over the same tiny market share, even though really they are sort of co-complementary because one's a blog and one's a podcast,

but because, you know, they had to measure each other's dicks constantly, now everyone suffers. Instead of treating each other like human beings, instead of to measure each other's dicks constantly, now everyone suffers. Instead of treating each other like human beings, instead of just staying on their own respective lawns and focusing on their content, they had to focus on the ego and the argument and the pride of it all. And now, one of the key resources for developers looking to announce their game for Linux users could decline because of it. It's kind of disappointing. So this stupid drama that none of us can stand, that none of us want to really pay attention to, does actually have some kind of impact.

Who knows how bad, but it has some. It's kind of disappointing. it's kind of disappointing. And, you know, if you guys want to read into it, you can read the links in the show notes. I don't really feel like getting into the nitty details. But all right, let's start taking Mumble Room comments. Go ahead, Daredevil, and I'll open it to you first.

So the first tip is go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact. Ask Chris to review the game. Second tip is join the IRC. It's also available on the site. You can watch it there. And there's a lot of people that will do the work either freely or even if you pay them the beer, they will gladly help you get the process done. There you go. Okay, there you go.

Good tip. Great tip. Matt, I think you said it best in the process done. There you go. Okay, there you go. Good tip. Great tip. Matt, I think you said it best in the subreddit. Come on now. What is the matter with us, Matt? I mean, this seems like we need a little common sense. Well, so I mean, regardless of who peed and whose Cheerios, because at the end of the day, it really doesn't make any difference.

You know, as far as like how the reactionary stuff's gone back and forth I mean regardless of who peed and whose Cheerios because at the end of the day, it really doesn't make any difference. As far as like how the reactionary stuff has gone back and forth and whatnot, both parties involved need to just kind of take a step back and be like, honestly, this isn't really worth it. Now, as far as him wanting to leave the work he's been doing, I think that's concerning because I think he's done some good work, and I think that's unfortunate. And I also would point out then to anyone that produces content, you better have a thick skin. If disagreements come up, you really ought to. And I posted some examples of some public rippings that I've gotten in that subreddit. One of them was very public, and you learn from those experiences. And so in this particular case, regardless of who is right or wrong, you know, let this be a lesson to everyone that, you know, words certainly matter. But at the same time, you can't control other people's behavior. You just can't. You have to really decide on how you're going to react to it. At the end of the day, it is your choice on how you process it and how it affects you, because it really is just some other hairless monkey at the other end of that wire that's saying what they think and it really doesn't matter and you can make it matter you can

choose to make it matter but I think I don't know I guess I don't I guess what I worry about is that I don't want to get lumped in with this drama I don't want I don't want it to come across the whole community looks like that what are your thoughts on that I agree I don't play I

play games and I use Linux so so I'm a Linux gamer, you would think. But I think the short answer is I think Liam overreacts and I think the other guys are dicks, in short. And I think probably they best avoid each other. It feels very similar to playground shenanigans where he said this and she said that and it's just separate them out. Leave each other alone.

How do we actually practically do that though? Why would we? It's nothing to do with us. It's one dick online calling someone else a silly name. But if it has ramifications for the entire community. If you let it, yeah. Okay, one other thing. Lunar, if you remember when you were a dick and we put up with you,

then just put up with someone new. Yeah, I guess that's the thing. I'm not a fan of the grow a thick skin argument. That's the thing. I'm not a fan of the grow a thick skin argument. I think, yes, you need to be able to avoid whatever mechanism you need to use. You need to avoid abuse. Now, whether that means blocking people on Twitter, putting people in a kill file or whatever that means. Yes.

Do that. yes um do that but equally you should be able to do your job whatever that job is whether it's making a video podcast or writing articles about gaming on linux you should be able to do that without fear that some lunatic on the internet is gonna start giving you abuse and you shouldn't let them give you abuse you should do whatever you need to do to block that and i will go ahead man i was gonna say in the past i've had bodily harm threats before you know they're like said there's a certain tier of things that you have to take it the first attempt obviously to try and work it out if it can be worked out which i'm in the process of actually working it out with the individual you know is involved in this um that's great you

know that's awesome now going forward if someone is just making it their mission in life to just troll you essentially i mean even to the point of it being abusive, at that point, you do need to take a step to do everything you can to block them out. But it's about – it's not about right and wrong. It's about effective behavior. If you're cornered in a schoolyard and this kid is going to kick your butt, you got a couple of choices. One, you can try and beeline and hope he doesn't tackle you or you can pop him in the nose and then go on with your life. I choose the latter. And so that doesn't mean it's right for everybody. And it certainly doesn't mean that, you know, responding in kind is the right approach. I think that's

not the message to be taken there, but it's a matter of what is the most effective behavior that's going to get you a result to where you can resolve this, whatever that may be. Right. It's unique. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's unique. I think in this particular instance, someone, whoever it may be, needs to just stop and walk away. You can't have an argument without two people. I have a couple of closing thoughts, but one thing that I wanted to ask Wimpy about is – and I'm wondering what Wimpy thinks about this because I was in the – like I mentioned earlier, the Linux underscore gaming subreddit, and I saw a post in there from a Windows user. And he said – he said, you know, I was just thinking about switching over to Linux,

but I was just browsing the various subreddits. I'm seeing a lot of drama. Am I in for a bad ride when I switch over? And Wimpy, do you think that this is something that we need to worry about as a public perception of all this infighting? Yeah, I think

we, in quotes, look silly to the tech world at large. And unfortunately, it isn't the luminaries in the open source community that are making us look silly. majority who are slinging the mud and making the noise, who are discrediting Linux as a platform and they're saving Apple and Microsoft a job because

they don't need to discredit us because we're doing it to ourselves. It's a good thing they need the technology we make so damn badly. And anyone that tells me a Mac person doesn't discredit, I got a MacLope article I'll have you read sometime because I will tell you Mac people are quite verbal. I would disagree with that. Not all of us are like this.

No, not all of us. And I had it coming in that instance. But just pointing out, they're very vocal. I kind of want to wrap on this closing thought here. And then we'll put this topic to bed hopefully. I think one of the things that keeps coming up in all of these threads, I've seen it now in essentially every comment thread about this and in some of these blog posts, it's the Linus angle.

You know, let's blame Linus. Boy, that is, yeah, I can see the pretty valid argument there, and I don't want to discredit the people, some pretty smart people in our subreddit that are arguing that case. I think there is some merit to that. But, you know, I was recently reminded that you can have the worst influence growing up or whatever it is, you know, in your work environment, in your community. At the end of that, though, you are the one making the decision, not Linus. It's not Linus that's making you use the F word and yell at somebody. Just because you're choosing to excuse your behavior because you saw him do it doesn't mean

it's his fault. It's your fault. And when you are going on the internet and you're yelling at people for the bits they are flipping on some spinning magnetic platter remember it's your choice to do it not linus's choice not lenart's choice it's you and it really is something you need to consider and blaming linus while cathartic and also a great scapegoat at the end of the day is crap it's It's you. So you have to stop it. It's each one of us. It's every one of us. We just all have to be cognizant of it.

And at the same time, we need to grow up a little bit. Maybe stop arguing on the internet. And maybe have a little bit of a thicker skin. And it's really kind of a balanced approach to all of those things. It's not one or the other. It's all of those things balanced together that make interacting with other hairless monkeys through a wire manageable. And, you know, I go back to this is why we need to get together in meat space more often.

It changes the dynamic. It changes everything. It changes the way we treat each other. It deepens the connection. Well, especially if the guy you're messing with turns out to be 6'4 and 200-some pounds, you know, and you're just a little dude sitting in front of a keyboard. All of a sudden, you're not so tough. You know, and that changes the equation pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah.

And I want to also, just a quick plug before we get out of here. This is the last week to take a simple system D survey that Producer Q5 has put together. And he says he'll be sharing the results in about a week. So you can go to systemdsurvey.com. And we're just trying to, or he, he's just trying to get a little background info about either side of the fence. It doesn't matter. It's just kind of a general survey.

systemdsurvey.com. If you're a user or a hater, you can go take a survey. Just kind of curious to see where the results land and I'm sure we'll talk about them in next week's Unplugged. So Matt, I think that's everything we have. So we just kind of have like a couple essentials to let people know about. Number one, you might have noticed this is kind of a community-driven show. We're pretty proud of that's everything we have. So we just kind of have like a couple essentials to let people know about. Number one, you might have noticed this is kind of a community-driven show.

We're pretty proud of that. And we'd like you to be involved with it. You can go over to jblive.tv. We do it on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. Pacific. If you don't know what that is in your time, because I know. I know it's crazy. Just go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. The robots will convert it for you. But more importantly, I'd like to ask you to engage.

Specifically in the subreddit, linuxactionshow.reddit.com. We'll have a link in there for this episode where you can give us feedback. I'd like to hear your thoughts on all of this. This is definitely one of those episodes where everybody should try to treat each other a little bit better in that thread. And let's just have a really good conversation. And you know, the Linux Action Show subreddit, while it can get heated, as far as online communities goes, is really one of the greatest. It is filled with some of the smartest people that really have great conversations. And, yeah, sometimes it gets rough. And, hey, I've been at the end of that gun before.

But it really is a great community, linuxactionshow.reddit.com and jblive.tv for the live show. And really, last but not least, go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact and choose Linux Unplugged from the drop-down. Send us your feedback. It's a big part of this show. If you can't be in the Mumba Room or you don't use Reddit, that's still a great way to contribute. Just go over there, jupyterbroadcasting.com slash contact. All right, Matt. Well, have a great week.

I'll see you on Sunday, okay? All right. You too. I'll see you then. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Head over to jupiterbroadcasting.com. Click on episode 61 to get all of the links for stuff we talked about.

And maybe while you're there, you could grab an RSS feed and get this show automatically every single stinking week. You don't even have to think about it. Put it in your favorite podcast catcher. Why not? All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back think about it. Put it in your favorite podcast catcher. Why not? Alright, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next week! All right. All right.

A little post-show time. Okay. So I had, I don't know. I can't even remember. Mumbler, do you remember what the hell I wanted to talk about in the post-show? I don't even recall now. It's been, it feels like. I think it was something to do with you getting the snip, wasn't it?

No, we talked about that. Oh, my. I wonder, maybe, I don't, should we put that in here? I don't know if we want to put that in the release version. Oh, my. I don't think we do. No, it was something else, but now I've totally forgotten what it was. Dang it.

I had something. Yeah, go ahead. Italy court actually ruled in favor of consumers in the case of Microsoft Windows X. So coming pre-installed, and it's now mandatory that computer sellers in Italy to sell without, the user does not want to refund them the Windows license price. So do you suppose, okay, let's go to jbtitles.com. By the way, great news. That's great. I just got to get titles. jbtitles.com. Right now, Linux soap opera is way, way, way, way up there.

But I'm kind of leaning towards don't feed the Trolls, even though it's number third in the list, but Don't Feed the Trolls seems like the actual message. Yeah, it really does. Hey, Chris, at some point in time, do you think we could have, like, the most pop-tart, or rainbow-shitting pop-tart cat-eating

positive show ever, instead of all this negative kill each other i know but there's these little specific things that rape people up the ass so hard and it fucks up the rest of our view. We need that beauty that we see. It's like a jewel. It's like a ruby or something. You reminded me of my post-show topic, though.

Everybody go to jbtitles.com and vote. You still have a chance to bang suggest, too. Here's what it was. This is totally hippy-dippy, but I give it some serious consideration. What if... The only reason I mention this is because This is totally hippy-dippy, but I give it some serious consideration. Okay, what if? And the only reason I mention this is because I hate using this card because it sounds like such a douchebag thing to say. But I've honestly been doing this for a while, and I've kind of noticed a trend. And the trend is when the media is really hyping something scary like, oh, I don't know, ISIS and Ebola,

it feels like everybody is really stressed the hell out. And it comes out and like people are taking things way more seriously than they should. Maybe they hyper focus on something to distract them from the boogeyman that's being constantly fear porn pushed down their mouth hole and their ear holes and in their face. And that maybe this constant Ebola outbreak, ISIS taking over the east, going to war, going back into Iraq, constant boom, boom, boom, slamming us over the head with fear is causing us to kind of treat each other kind of like shit because we're all stressed out in the background. It's like a background anxiety. Maybe we're not even fully realizing it. It's like this background thing that's stressing us out because it's this bad thing.

And you could be on either side, right? You could actually be buying all of this ISIS propaganda and think they're the boogeyman, or you could be really mad at your government for going back into Iraq for the fourth time and be really stressed out about that. You could be on either end of the political spectrum, and it could still be bothering the hell out of you, but maybe you're internalizing it and focusing down on the technology to distract yourself from it, and so you're taking all of these technology matters really super seriously, even though really at the end of the day you're trying to avoid the actual really scary thing that's going on in the real world. That's a nice idea. I'd counter that with I've just spent the weekend with 300 random people

who I've mostly never met before, and they were all super positive and really friendly, and the world's troubles didn't crop up in conversation. But that's like that happens when you get together as a group. and really friendly and the world's troubles didn't crop up in conversation. But that's like that happens when you get together as a group. Like it becomes different. But then maybe when you're back at your house, and again, and the thing about the internet is it doesn't take all of us. It just takes a few of us in the right spot to be bothered by it

to cause a big dust-up. And I'm not even saying it's like it's pushing us. It's just sort of like this background agitation that just sort of makes us a little more on edge normally. A lot of people don't even remember that people behind the keyboard are people, too. I remember someone here said this before. It might have been Popey or Wimpy, but they're humans, too. And they've got, you know, they care sometimes about what you have to say.

That's my biggest pet peeve is that people don't understand at the end of the day we're all people behind that monitor behind the keyboard and you have to even some people have a problem where they can't associate that and it's a thing and i'll put our pants on one leg at a time right exactly everybody puts the first time i'm happy at like all these conferences and you know beers handsh, pats on the back. But when we get behind the keyboard, it's shank or be shanked. We're assholes, always. Yeah, first time I met Leonard Pottering

was at an Ubuntu developer summit when we invited him along. I think it was in Prague. And I remember sitting around, having beer with him, and everything was cool. It was all fine. But, you know, behind a keyboard, you know, on both sides of the fence, everyone gets a little bit more grumpy. Yeah.

Yep. And I think, you know, when Lennart said we all like to talk like it's roses and sunshine, what we like to talk about is not something that's manufactured. It's real, but there's just, like, everything a gray area. And we like to talk about the happy spectrum more than we talk about the bad spectrum. And so, I don't know, maybe this show has gotten negative recently,

but at the same time, it feels like there is a little self-analysis that needs to be done here to shore up a few things. And I don't know if we're helping the dialogue at all, but it's making me feel better. Well, a lot of people hate change, too, since leonard is causing a whole lot of change in our ecosystem a lot of hate's going to be poured onto the guy so um i first of all i completely agree with heavens that we need a bit more positivity in the show i think that that's a good idea on that point about

uh leonard is um causing change no no lennox isn't causing change we need to separate the man from the software here lennox is a software developer it's system d that is held in change in the linux community and that's what people should actually be angry about if that's how they feel about it it's system d that they should be debating and challenging it is not hurling mud and insults and abuse at one of the developers okay okay well all i would say is that when one of the developers goes and happens to treat other people's poorly even if it isn't his really his fault because he's responding poorly after he's been treated badly by someone else that

doesn't that doesn't do anything but continue the awful cycle. Yeah, your point's well taken. I kind of wanted to go back to the positivity thing because I think it's good to get your guys' input on this. So I agree. And really what it is, the thing is, is what really works best for a discussion show like this is topics that people can have an opinion on. And sometimes that's some of the negative stuff, right? Because if it's just if it's just specs and features, there's not really a lot of space in there for you guys to chime in with your opinions and for us to sort stuff out. So some of your shows benefit from, you know, I'm not trying to pull the curtain away and show The Wizard of Oz.

But some of your shows benefit from you being a grumpy old bastard and the rest of us coming in here. I'm not that grumpy. I really am not. Yeah, you are. As long as there's bacon, he's fine. Otherwise, I'm a crook. Actually, at the weekend, I had three or four people come up to me in person and say, do you know what?

It was good that you were on Unplugged. Keep it crystallized. I know, right? Yeah, exactly. I've had a few people say that. I guess. And I'm not trying to get, you know. I think sometimes people forget I'm in the business of having an opinion.

Sure. Got to pass the piece. And I'm not complaining. No, no, no. I think it's great fun. I know. I have a good argument. Yeah, exactly a good yeah exactly it's it's a lot of fun uh and so i'm all about being more positive but we have to if we're going to do that we have to find it has to be something where everybody can have a good chance to get in and dig in on it and i and the other thing the other thing is it can't be it can't be lego movie

everything is awesome right right, right, exactly. And on top of that, a lot of it is just driven by, you know, what the hell's going on. And unfortunately, it seems like it's been kind of shitty recently. Yeah, a lot of the newsworthy stuff tends to be negative anyway. Right, because like, so a couple of weeks ago, it was Debbie and moving away from XFCE. So we talked about the XFCE project, which I think a lot of people are getting some of that negativity from. Also, you know, it's been pointed out to me that sometimes people just sort of prescribe

any opinion mentioned in the show. They sort of assign it to me. They say, you know, it's Chris's opinion, or Chris thinks this, or Chris has been very negative. Well, when you start getting a little bit shouty, then I can see why. I mean, but yeah, and I why. I can agree with that because I've put opinions out there and it got attributed to Chris.

I'm like, what the? Seriously, guys. My opinions are my own. They are not the opinions of Chris. There's actually one subreddit comment where someone said what I said was Chris's comment. I'm like, no, let me explain what I actually said.

Right. And that is more common than you'd think. And I think what it is is people are sort of in passing. You know, maybe they're doing something else. Some people are doing something else

while they're listening. And so they don't remember exactly who said it, but they remember it was in that show. And maybe when they think of the show, they think of me or something like that. But again,

I am actually not disagreeing. I am negative because I am, i think what it is is i'm disappointed i'm disappointed in the in the behavior of our community right that's what it is and i know but really shouldn't i be like isn't there a lot to be disappointed with like look at all the stuff we just talked about this week look at all this silly i mean i i mean i feel bad for the people that are involved because to them it's not silly. But to those of us on the outside – The positive stuff, look at how much free software is made all day, every day.

But where's the discussion there? Well, yeah, exactly. It doesn't generate clicks. It doesn't generate JV titles. No, it's not about that. No, no, it's not about that. It's really about – I think it's really about finding something we can chew on. And, you know, something that is, okay, so I'll tell you how, I'll tell you a little bit how I pick topics for this show.

Because this show is sort of unscripted. But what I do is I look at what I think a lot of people seem to be thinking about in the Linux community this week. That's essentially right there in a bullet point how Linux Unplugged is put together. What are be thinking about in the Linux community this week. That's essentially right there in a bullet point how Linux Unplugged is put together. What are people thinking about? No, I'm just kind of for everybody's information. And so a lot of times, you know, it is

stuff that isn't super positive because it's something we're struggling with. And so this is sort of a forum to sort of a lot of times we walk away trying to, you know, kind of put it all into perspective. And unfortunately, that does mean sometimes we deal with stuff that is not of the everything is awesome nature.

Now, that said, I do try to counterbalance some of that in LAS, right? LAS is more of a showcase. LAS is the news. This is what happened this week. These are awesome app picks. This is something we're spotlighting. This is how you do something. This is what happened this week. These are awesome app picks. This is something we're spotlighting. This is how you do something. This is what the community wants to know.

This is how awesome 1410 is. Yeah. Well, it does happen because the news is, I know, it does happen. The news, again, is opinion. It does happen. But the majority focus of Lass is, I would call, a showcase. Where I'm plugged, it's more of Linux users grappling with what Linux users are thinking and caring about.

Right, and it's good fun. But it's reflective of what's going on in our community. Right, and you present multiple points of view and you give people in the Mumble channel the opportunity to throw in. I'm not trying to get you to do that. What I'm trying to just say is like I'm not going out of my way to find negative stuff. I'm not saying you get you to do that. I'm not trying to get you to do that. What I'm trying to just say is, like, I'm not going out of my way to find negative stuff. I'm not saying you're trying to. I'm saying it does. It's a matter of fact.

But then do we just ignore it, though? Like, that's tough, too. And that almost seems disingenuous. Sure. You know, that's where I struggled because, like, if we didn't talk about this – and, you know, Eric can attest to this. I was saying this morning on the Tech Talk Today pre-show I really didn't want to talk about this, and Eric can attest to this, I was saying this morning on the Tech Talk Today pre-show, I really didn't want to talk about this today. Like this isn't what I wanted our episode to be about. So I found this.

Sorry. It's true. I was just going to say, so I found that when you go in, you start looking at them and talk about super technical things because a lot of people just aren't cynical and they aren't watching the show to hear super technical things so the things that you have to talk about are the things that are kind of more on the things that they're really taught you know something you want to talk about things that are very polarizing and these are the things that make you say i hate this or i love this right and and and where there's an and also i look for i look in our subreddit where there's good debates on both sides. Like somebody's making a good case for one side and I'm like, oh, okay.

So there's obviously a spectrum of discussion to be had here. And a lot of times with the good stuff, it's just good and there's really nothing much to say. But I guess bullet point though that I want to walk away from this whole chat is I'm totally down to focusing more on the positive stuff. And to that end, we've had discussions about maybe working in some more of the maker type stuff and some of the cool creations into this show and then graduating in the last if it really seems to take traction and stuff like that. So we've had some discussions internally about how to sort of introduce more of this is what's awesomely happening. And let's talk about that. But that for a particular talk show format is a little trickier than you might think i think instead of right and and i i

think it's it's good that you have multiple points of view i think i think the whole this runs linux uh you know kind of thing is brilliant because it's a voyage of discovery for all of us finding out all these machines that are randomly positioned around the world running Linux. But then you also need the counterpoint to that, which is, you know, this German guy has decided that his city should not be running Linux. And let's discuss that. Or, you know, these people are being assholes. Let's discuss that as well.

I think it's good that we talk about that. I think a lot of times we come away debunking some stuff. like the full-on meaning of it but like uh we walked away from that specifically the germany thing you know kind of debunking what was happening there and really hey it's not that big of a deal the press is just kind of having some fun with this yeah and i don't see that i'm covering that stuff and discussing it as a as a negative thing at all i see that as a positive um aspect you know Talking about positive things, we turned that story on its head. But I was almost

certain that this is what would be discussed on today's show because it's played so heavily all over the internet. Right, you've intuited the essential formula here. Yeah, but I was unsure if it was a good idea to go with it, though.

Right, right. Because, I mean, Steve Vaughn Nichols really, a shameful article that he posted. Yes, yes. Because he basically just used the names of the personalities and two other words, and it was just horrible clickbait. It's one of his worst in a long time. And I was really disappointed when I saw it. Yes. But also, I was concerned that because this show has a platform, that this would just further the dragging, you know, the Linux community through the mud.

Well, you know, I was really worried about when we started or when the topic was announced. Because, you know, Chris, I would say that, you know, the Jupyter Broadcasting and Linux Action Show and Linux Unplugged are the most popular Linux shows around. And remember, we have a hive mind when it comes to our open source things. So when you kind of get negative, everybody gets negative because you have so much power. In a way, you know, with power comes responsibility here. You're telling me I'm Spider-Man up in this business? I don't think so.

I always wanted to say that, but it does suit the situation. But look how I ended, honestly, but go back to how I ended Linux Unplugged here is it's, you know, it doesn't, you know, it's individually our choices. Yeah, whenever we get negative, everyone will. And when everyone kind of has a good time, the whole group has a good time. I'm not sure that's the case.

I think Chris does have quite a platform here, but I don't think we have the hive mind that Heavens was saying. I don't think everyone thinks, oh, Chris says, you know, he's a jerk. And does it not happen if my user's a jerk? I think maybe we're... Hold on. I think there's a lot of people who will react the other way

to whatever Chris says. Yes, we're conflating two things. So sometimes in the mumble room we'll get into a collective groove and kind of into a line of thinking but have no illusion. People listening are not in that same collective groove at all in some cases.

And they will very much make their voice heard. They get pissed off. Yeah, and honestly, I think we do a decent job of generally trying to stay out of that groove. But it does happen sometimes because points build upon each other and people start going, yeah, that can happen. So it's – yeah. Well, even last week, I mean, obviously we don't always stick to what Chris says because even last week me and Popey were arguing against what he was saying in the show. That's what we're here for. Yeah.

I mean – yeah. So anyways. You're not bitter about that, are you? Observations are taken, and I think hopefully the community is – I hope people listening understand that it's not that we're trying to focus on the bad aspects. We're kind of – this is therapy. We're trying to work – these are things Linux users are thinking about, and we're trying to work through it. And I hope more often than not – and I'm sure it doesn't happen all the time, but I hope more times – I hope on average we get it right. More times, I hope on average, we get it right.

I hope on average we walk away feeling a little bit better, having a better understanding, and maybe changing the discussion a little bit for the better.