LINUX Unplugged - Episode 63: For Forks Sake | LUP 63

Episode Date: October 22, 2014

Is it time to fork Debian? Some Unix veterans do, and we discuss. The Linux Grandma joins us to discuss Kubuntu, KDE’s outreach, and Google Summer of Code. Plus Microsoft says they really love Linux, Steam’s secret weapon against Windows & much more!

Have you guys – I think we talked about this like a really long time ago, the Sol laptop, the solar-powered laptop. Well, now we're getting prices, $495 Canadian. I don't know what that is in real actual money, but in Canadian money, it's something. Now, remember, this is the one where the – Starbucks? Yeah, where the back folds down and the panels come out and then it charges. It runs Ubuntu. And I haven't looked at the specs yet.

I was saving for the show, so let me find it right here. See if I can. Oh, yeah, specs. Here we go. All right. So it comes with Ubuntu 14.04, or you can get it with Windows 7. It has an Intel Atom 1.8 gigahertz dual-core processor, 2 gigs of RAM, 320 gigabyte SATA hard drive.

Atom. Yeah, it's got an Atom so i don't know but it's solar powered that's kind of cool right would you buy one eric if you had the if you had the cash dude if i had the cash i'd be all over that just because it's a ruggedized laptop i wouldn't have to worry about my kid hearing it or anything you You know? And then I could take it places, like into the backwoods, you know, take pictures. I'm sorry, what? Pictures also.

Oh, I got you. I was losing you there for a minute. Hey, Colonel Linux, could this be the ultimate traveler's laptop? Never have to look for a charging board at the airport again? Hold on. He says no. No, because you have to. Sorry.

Yeah, no. Well, because you have to. Sorry. Yeah, no. Well, here's the thing, right? So as far as a traveling laptop, I think it would be hard to... Charge it? I'd have to be able to actually get to Sun to get it to charge, right? Make sure you get a window seat, man. Get a window seat. Well, it also has a power cord, so it's not like you're stuck with just solar power.

Boring. That's good. All right. What about – okay, okay, Kermit. Where are the technical specifications? It's so slow, it's painful. It's got a – that's – Well, I mean, I don't know.

1.8 gigahertz isn't that bad, dual core. That's not – I mean, it's – I'm not talking about the technical specifications of the computer rather than the power intake and solar size and what it can generate. Well, that is a very good question. Frankly, I've seen some really significantly large solar panels through what I do with work, and they generate tiny little sips of amperes that barely power an electric biro.

So I'd be amazed if this thing can actually charge and power a laptop for any significant time whatsoever. Yeah, okay, that's a good point. I mean, that could be a major issue is how long it takes to charge. I notice they're not actually throwing that out on the page as I'm looking. No, I can't find. That is the most important specification item for a laptop of this kind and i don't see it readily available hmm boy look at you just dumping cold water on this like sorry sorry well the thing is is that i've got customers that would really like to use

an equipment like this because they operate aircraft for in sort of pseudo military environment so for the united nations and stuff like that and they upload their flight data over satellite phones so they would love a computer like this that they can open in the middle of africa or afghanistan where sun is available almost all the time um and yeah that bit of information isn't on here. Boy, that is an interesting catch. And, of course, one that once you think about it is sort of the critical piece of information.

I thought when we first heard about this it was going to be an ARM machine, too. Well, I'm not going to listen to it now. I'm going to go into this. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine. It's not great, but it's fine. The second issue I have with it is you live as far north as I do. Half the year

it's completely useless. Well, same around here, right, Chris? Oh, I don't know. I'm an optimist, Eric. I like to believe it's sunny. You're hoping for more sun than we actually get around. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I like to think it's nicer in the Pacific Northwest than everybody thinks it is. Like, I don't know.

I find all these things to be supplemental. What I really want is I'm waiting for the day when they can integrate a solar panel behind the LCD screen of my smartphone. And then when I just have my smartphone down on the table or on my dash, it's secretly, like, you know, trickle charging. It's absorbing the yellow sun like Superman. That's what I look forward to. Okay. Yeah. Okay, you're fine.

Sorry. And I've heard some stuff on science shows recently that they've got a completely clear glass that they're planning on putting into new phones and new tablets. I'm ready. I'm ready for that. Me too. Whether it completely charges it or just keeps it from discharging so fast,

that would be awesome. Wimpy, did you find the charging info? Yeah, and I found the information, so I'll read it back. It says, this really depends. It says, how long does it need to be in the sun to be fully charged? And it says, this really depends on the exposure you're getting. In a fully sunny day, it should take a couple of hours to get fully charged. Duration will change with conditions such as, and this is the, oh, by the way,

this is our get out of clause as to why it's never going to work. Oh, by the way, this is our get out of clause as to why it's never going to work. Position of the sun, clouds, location on the earth, and even air pressure and temperature. Yeah, that's basically, it doesn't work. It's never going to charge the laptop. That is everything you can imagine. Because where are you on the planet exactly? I'm sorry, you're not exactly on the equator, on this specific island closest to the sun. If you need that much sun, aren't you going to bake the components?

Like, aren't you going to cook the laptop? Oh, see, now you're really digging into this. So now I'm going to go off and find temperature, temperature operation and temperature conditions. I just kind of wonder. So I'm going to go and dig a bit more. I guess, see, I know. I guess I like the idea of this being a feature on almost anything

where there's some integrated self-charging. You know, like, okay, I'm not saying everything comes down to Star Trek, but it turns out it seems like everything comes down to Star Trek. And something that the Enterprise-D got really good, if you look at the back area of the Enterprise-D between the warp nacelles, that's all solar panels. And it's not their primary source of power, but it's like a solid trickle charge for their power cells.

And they don't depend on it, but it just sort of supplements. It's like multiple different ways of getting that power up. And I look at the battery technology, and I think these batteries are not getting better fast enough. I want a phone that lasts two, three days. That would really be perfect for me, or at least a solid two days. But the battery technology doesn't seem to keep up. But if they could have trickle charging through solar

and stuff like that to sort of supplement the battery shortcomings, they'd be right. So Chris, I can solve that problem for you. The phone you need is a Nokia 9660. There you go. That'll last you five days in a single charge. No problem. Really? The Nokia? That's the old... In other words,

get away from your stupid smartphone. That's what you're saying. Go back to my old dumb phone. That was advertised as a smartphone. Back in the day. I'm looking it up right now. Oh, boy. Yeah, exactly. That was too fast. What? I'm sorry, what?

Sorry, Noah. I meant to say... Oh, okay. That was too fast, what? I'm sorry, what? Sorry, Noah, I meant to say... Oh, okay, thank you. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's already preparing its defenses against the con crud. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt. Hey, Matt. I'm taking, like, vitamins. I'm trying to drink water.

I'm trying not to get sick when I go on this trip, but I'm already paranoid because I've been sleeping very well. And that lowers the defenses right there, Matt. Oh, boy. I'm starting on a disadvantage. So if I get sick, what I'm going to do is I'm going to implement a bubble quarantine. It's going to make Monday's Linux Action Show a little awkward because I'm going to be in a bubble. But we'll communicate over the microphones and headphones, so you'll still be able to hear me. However, I am going to need you

to slip the bacon through a slot. Is that okay? Absolutely. You know, when it comes to slipping bacon, I can do that. Okay, good, good. All right. Well, we got a good episode today, episode 63 of The Unplugged Show. We're going to talk to the Linux grandma. I went to a meetup recently of Kubuntu users. You know me, Matt. I'm a Kubuntu guy. Oh, yeah. So I went to a Kubuntu users meetup and met Valerie. She's going to join us today and chat about Kubuntu, KDE, specifically the KDE project. Something neat I learned that the KDE group is doing coming up right now and a few other things that come up.

And plus, just a little bit about our blog as well. Plus, we've got a ton of feedback. And then Microsoft apparently, quote-unquote, hearts Linux. We're going to talk about that as well as a bunch of other things coming up later in the show. So big show today. Accidentally did a big show. I don't even know how that happened. Huge show.

So let's start with some feedback from Sunday's Linux Action Show. Dave wrote in, and he wanted to kind of take us to the mat. Matt, get it. Oh, boy. Wasn't that good? Sorry. I see how that works. He's calling us out, though. He's like, hey, guys, great show.

I've been a listener for a long time. You ready for this, Matt? I think so. He's a Windows sysadmin. Oh, I know a few of those. That's okay. They exist, and that's why he likes listening to Last, because he likes to get info about all the OSs.

But he wasn't so hot on the negativity towards Docker on Windows. He says, I get a feeling from your and Matt's comments in Last 335 that you're irritated that Docker would dare roll out their products to Windows. Hey, Windows server guys want containers too. Why do you Linux guys got to hog all the good stuff? I would love to be able to use containers instead of virtualization to keep applications isolated. Also, you made it sound as if you could run Linux Docker containers on Windows.

That's not the case. Containers share the kernel, so Windows Dockers will only run on Windows containers. I think we actually did make that point pretty clear. So you know what it was, Matt, is we get these terms in the industry that just drive me crazy. And I think Docker is turning into a buzz term almost. Because when you start taking out the Linux component of

Docker, it doesn't seem like Docker anymore. Now it just seems like you're taking the concept of containerization and you're just calling it Docker. Pretty much. I mean, it becomes a branding thing at some point. Yes, that's what I was rolling my eyes at. Right. In a way, it also shows what a player Linux is right now in the market

because not the first OS to do this, right? I think those BSD guys would have you check out something called Jails, and I think they're pretty proud of it. In fact, I think they think it's still a lot better. So Docker comes along, and it kind of're pretty proud of it. In fact, I think they think it's still a lot better. So Docker comes along, and it kind of does stuff that other things can already do, except for it has this great Docker hub where you can pull down images,

and it goes from that to now it's this, it's like the concept of containerization is just, it's like when we started calling DVRs TiVos, and it's like, no, that's not a TiVo, that is your cable company's DVR, or that is a Play TV, you know, it just, that's where I was rolling my eyes at. Well, and going from my perspective, what kind of irritated me about the whole thing is that I have no problem with Microsoft getting on board with this.

What I have a problem with is the fact that, as per usual, they waited to the very last minute to where they didn't have to innovate anything. Then they kind of slopped, they kind of belly flopped onto the platform out of the pool, limped along a little bit and said, oh, hey, look at this granular thing that we're coming up with. It's so awesome and we're so innovative. Just the entire experience that they're presenting had a very – it just felt like they were doing something unique and different. It's like, but that's not the case. You're a Me Too product.

I'm sorry. You're right. And like Linus Tech points out in the chat room, I mean, they're depending on LXC. Docker's built on that. And Wimpy, you wanted to remind us of a little history, right? Well, yeah. I mean, OpenVZ has beenXC. Docker's built on that. And Wimpy, you wanted to remind us of a little history, right? Well, yeah. I mean, OpenVZ has been around for a long, long time now, and that was sort of the original Linux container platform.

And I've been using that successfully at work, and I was a late adopter for about five years now. So, yeah, Docker is great. I've had a go with it, and I can see the advantages and how it extends on what OpenVZ offers. But containers, jails, ch-routes, it's not new. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I've got Proxmox here in the studio, right, and I've been using LXE on that. A lot of times we as the technical crowd, we see that the groundwork was already there and we fail to recognize the innovation in making it all work really simple in a way that a lot larger of an audience can grok. gray area that's called DevOps, where you've got developers who maybe didn't fully understand

containers and namespaces and virtualization and Zen and KVM and LXC, but they get GitHub, right? And they get that Docker has this GitHub-like functionality, and I can pull down this container, and now it's just working. And from end to end, it is presented in a product-like fashion that you can completely wrap your brain around. You understand what it is from a concept and so it's easy to talk about, it's easy to understand. And then you understand that it has this GitHub-like functionality for images, it clicks. And I think we as more technical users sometimes fail to fully appreciate, sometimes just bringing it a little bit more polished, bringing it to that edge,

can really make the difference. Obviously, look at that's what Apple really makes their money on, right? What's the number one comment you always see after a new iPhone or iPad is launched? XYZ Android device had it first. Apple Pay is a great example of that, right? My Nexus 5 device is ancient now in the smartphone land, sort of. It's had wireless payments this entire time. I've never used it once.

The difference is that final 10% gap, closing that seems to be where you can make the difference, and that's what Docker did because there's other operating systems that have it as well. So good for Windows. I don't think Windows is a fantastic platform for servers to begin with, but that's probably not too much of a surprise to anybody. And so, yeah, I mean, that's pretty much – that's kind of where I'm at with this. Like, hey, they want to have a go with it. That's great. But, you know, lose the, oh, my gosh, we're so – they're trying to be like Apple in this regard, it feels like.

They're just – it's like they – it almost feels like they're saying they innovated this whole thing. And it's like, but you didn't really have any, no, you didn't. I mean, not really. All right, I want to do open the floor to feedback on the Ubuntu 14.10 review that we had in Sunday's Linux Action Show.

We got several different emails and comments about it, but there wasn't any one particular theme that jumped out. So just as sort of as an open door to the mumble room, did anybody have any feedback, follow-up, corrections, or arguments they wanted to make from our review of Ubuntu 14.10 on Sunday's show?

Now is your chance. Hold your... Going once, going twice. Sold. I like the style of it. Looking at the different flavors, you think that worked out? Because that was kind of something new we were trying. You think that worked out okay? Yeah,

at least for me, it feels like a deeper look into the different flavors, because I never liked the first Ubuntu I tried, but I really loved both Kubuntu and Ubuntu, but there was

a little less information from reviews and all that on those flavors. Right, so maybe now somebody looking for more about Ubuntu will see that and learn about those other flavors. And obviously Mate played a big role in our review, so Wimpy, you want to

give a chance to follow up on some of that? Well, first of all, thank you ever so much for covering buntu mate in your roundup not least because of buntu mate is not an official flavor yet but also because it's really good to get um good feedback so there was a few things that you mentioned in your review which if you dig into the buntu Marte website a little bit, this is one of the links that isn't in the top there. On the roadmap, I've got a few things outlined that you touched upon. So would you like me to expand on that a little bit?

Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So there was a few things. Obviously, you'd gone all Compy's addict mode there, and you'd turned on wobbly windows and all that good stuff. Who, me? Never. Yeah. I would never do something like that.

I don't know what you're talking about. Way, way, way back in Alpha 1, there was actually an Ubuntu Mate-Compy's meta package, which was put together based on the feedback of one of the guys from the Ubuntu Mate community. I quickly worked out that this was going to require a bit more work than I had time to put in, so I put that on the back burner. But what we're going to do is Compiz is never going to be a default option for Ubuntu Mate, but it will be a meta package. So Compiz is still hugely popular in the Matea community so i'm going to make a meta package

available so that you can install comps via a single package you get a sane set of defaults and you get that traditional um comp is experience for those people that love it now you know next then you're gonna people are gonna ask for barrel support so that way they can get their crazy window decorations. Yeah, I'm not going to go there. I love wobbly windows. I draw the line at 3D cubes. But there is actually a practical application to all of this, and that's with talking to Jonathan Nadeau

from the Accessible Computing Foundation. In his opinion, the best desktop Zoom application for individuals with low vision is the Enhanced Zoom plugin from Compiz. For all the fun and games, there is actually a practical application for making Compiz

easily available. You know, I used to use, I totally even forgot about that. I used to use that during shows to demonstrate something on a specific area of the screen. I would just zoom into it. Yeah, yeah. I forgot all about that.

Super useful. Yeah, yeah. So for all the wobbly windows fun, there is actually practical application. And a couple of other things you touched on was launches and docs. If I actually sent you a screenshot of how I run Ubuntu

Mate, I think it would make a lot of Ubuntu Mate or Mate users shriek because it's unconventional. I have a doc at the bottom so I have a single panel at the top with your applications, places and system and a few applets to tell me when the disks are

rattling and all of that sort of stuff and then your system tray. A dock at the bottom, and I use Plank for that. Yeah. And then I have an oversized auto-hiding panel on the left of the screen with a huge workspace switcher on it, which is remarkably like what you find on the right-hand side of the screen in GNOME 3 with their workspace switcher.

So that's how I drive my system. So I'm obviously looking at a way to integrate docs. What? What's so funny? Oh, Valerie just showed me something. I forgot to mute the mic. Oh, boy. Well, I like that setup. Those KDE users, don't listen to them.

I know. I felt I was being laughed at. My fans are waiting. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll move on. I'll move on very quickly then.

So, again, docs won't be – well, they may be a default setting. I'll ask the Ubuntu Mate community if they want that as a default setting. But one of the things I'm planning on working on is that the working title is Shapeshifter. So you can choose a workspace setup. So not just the panel arrangements, but also things like docs launches and the general appearance. You know, one of the other things we've been seeing a lot is people want to see that like the whisker menu or something like that, that they can use. Yeah, and that's something else I'm looking at is some of the launches. So I use Synapse, for example, which gives me all of that stuff that you were looking for.

Yeah, you can hotkey type T-E-R-M and hit return and there's your terminal. Yeah, I was actually suggesting that in the chat room, but you weren't looking. No, no, guys, I mean, we've talked about Synapse multiple times on the show. return and there's your terminal. I was actually suggesting that in the chat room, but you weren't looking. Guys, I mean, we've talked about Synapse multiple times on the show. Obviously, I know about it. And also, Gnome Do, although when I installed Gnome Do, it locked my Mate session up. Chris can't shut me up about Synapse.

We know about it. The thing is, I just wanted to find a project that was still active and I just haven't found one yet. So Synapse has got a PPA. It's recently been restarted, so that's under active development. Oh, really? Oh, well. Active development again.

Yeah, yeah. Docky and Plank have merged. So if you look at the latest Docky and Plank, they're effectively identical. Oh, interesting. And in addition to Synapse, there's SlingSkull, which is another launcher, which looks very interesting. And another one, I think it's called the Duck Launcher. And there's one other that I found. So what we'll be doing is looking at these, having a conversation with the community,

finding out which ones they like the most, building some meta packages and some default configuration, and then providing utility when you install Ubuntu Marte for the first time. You can have a, this is a visual representation of the different ways the desktop can be arranged and the tools that are on offer. And you can say snap and go. And in some little way, that's available now. So if you deeply, deeply want a Windows XP classic look, there's a Redmond panel layout. And if you go to the Ubuntu Mate website, you'll find in the release notes the instructions on how to enable the Redmond layout. And that's the first baby steps towards the sort of shape-shifting, create your desktop with a single click the way you want it to be.

Oh, I cannot wait to see that. Well, I'm still running it here. In fact, I was just thinking today as I set up, I really appreciated how snappy it was. I feel like even my web browser starts faster, and I don't know why the desktop would make the difference. Obviously, granted, it probably uses less resources, but it's not like I'm starved for resources. Yeah, and it's not about saving resources. It's about preserving resources for the things that matter. So by having less resources allocated to your desktop,

you've got more resources available to your Steam client or your web browser, for example. Good point, good point. Less fluff, less fluff. Well, great work on the Mate edition. Well, thank you. And it was good for the Mate desktop team to see as well because this is an opportunity for them to see their work showcased as well.

Sure. Well, I look forward to keep checking out. Boy, it sounds like some of those improvements are going to be really, really incredible. So I think Valerie's been waiting long enough. Before we get to that, I'll thank our first sponsor this week, and that's Linux Academy. Here's where you need to go right now. Stop what you're doing.

Oh, my gosh, what are you doing? You've got to go there right now, linuxacademy.com slash Linux or slash unplugged. I think both of those work, but I like Linux. Boom, why not, right? linuxacademy.com slash unplugged to get you the discount. I know that. Lock that in. Go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged to make sure you get the awesome discount.

You can get up to a 33% off. And the great thing about that subscription is you just constantly get all of the new content. You get access to everything. Pick and choose what you want to start with. So have you heard about Linux Academy? You should go check them out right now, linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.

You can get step-by-step video courses. They'll walk you through all kinds of things. One of the things I like about Linux Academy, too, is I've used it to just sort of test the waters and see what topics interest me, but you could absolutely, surely use it to just sort of increase your skill level in whatever your industry's in,

or maybe get yourself up to that next level if you've been just thrusted into a project and you've got to move from like a Red Hat box to a Debian box and things like that. Because one of the great things about Linux Academy is whatever courseware you're taking, you're going to be able to choose from seven plus Linux distributions. And then they structure all the courseware off the distribution you pick. That's a great opportunity if you're moving between distributions or you need to refresh or you want to figure out maybe the way the other

side does things. And I'm showing you some of the courses you can take now if you take some of their Linux training. It's awesome. All kinds of things you can take. All kinds of courses over there. And one of the best parts is they have these learning plans now that will automatically customize the amount of training time you have just based on the availability you select. And it can send you reminders about courses, and it gives you an idea and a snapshot. Okay, it's going to take you this long to get through this course when you log in. And by the way, you can download these study guides. Some of them are in audio and video, and listen to them on the go. Seth, Scoogie Sprite, sometimes joins us during Linux Unplugged or Tech Talk,

listens in the shower. Most people listen in the car, but Seth listens in the shower. And you know, I realized I do some of my best thinking in the shower, so maybe I would do some of my best learning in the shower. That could actually be total genius. I don't know. How cool would it be to have, like, some sort of a shower-proof whiteboard that as you're coming up with these ideas,

you can quickly jot it down? Well, it's funny you say that. He actually mailed me, I'm not even kidding, a waterproof notebook. All of the pages in the notebook are waterproof. And he hangs it, I'm not even kidding, this is not made up, he hangs these in his shower with the right pens,

and he takes notes in there, and he sent me a set. Like, this is what he does. This is his system, and it works for him. This is what's awesome about Linux Academy is you can literally customize it to whatever your scenario is. I've gotten emails from people recently who said, Chris, I'm going to be a dad soon. I'm a little worried about keeping my skill level up. Linux Academy can customize to your availability. Or you're like Seth. Your only free time is when you're in the shower, he still makes it work and finds value out of it. They're constantly adding new things. And they have scenario-based training, so you'll actually implement something. So say you take an AWS course, you'll implement the S3 backend storage, the EC2 front-end boxes,

the load balancing, the DNS management. You'll do all of that. And as each part in that lab, in that scenario-based training, not only will you be implementing the actual stuff, the actual application, so you'll have hands-on experience, but they will spin up the service for you as you need them on demand. Just part of their service. It's really cool. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Time to go do some more training.

It's always time to learn a little bit more and it's never been a better time. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged all right well i would like to welcome uh valerie to the show she is hanging out with eric uh they might sound like they're at the bottom of a pool but they promised me they're not swimming right now but you never know with those two but uh we're definitely not swimmery you're just lounging in in sitting at a table. Oh, okay. That's not sure. How would we know? It's an audio-only show. How would we know? Well, Valerie, welcome to Linux Unplugged.

And I feel bad. I shouldn't call you the Linux grandma, but that's what you go by, isn't it? I don't know. I don't know. But that's what you go by. I go by. You embrace it, and I think I love that. Yes.

In fact, Valerie. I have a grandchild, and I love him. You break a lot of stereotypes. We met Valerie at a Kubuntu users meetup. And when we got there, Valerie showed up with the thumb drives preloaded with Plasma 5.1. So that way we could all get installing if we didn't have you. That's how cool Valerie is. And so I wanted to kind of start with your involvement in the KDE project.

And I don't know if you wanted to jump right into it. but you told me about something that I didn't know KDE does. It kind of reminded me of the Google Summer of Code. So you can start wherever you want. What you do at the KDE project is probably a great place, but I'd like to get there. So tell us what you do for KDE. Well, Google Summer of Code, I'm one of the administrators. Summer of Code, I'm one of the administrators. You're actually largest or one of the largest users and contributors, I guess you'd say,

because I don't know if your listeners know about Google Summer of Code. Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. So Google puts up the money and then the free projects actually do the mentoring for the students. And so the students work for a summer and get paid for it. And we possibly get new members of the community.

Right, like KDE Connect was started as a Google Summer of Code project, right? Exactly. Yeah. And all kinds of cool stuff. And there are two other, actually two other mentoring projects that we do. One is called Season of KDE, which has no money. And we're just actually, we're kicking it off late this year. It's just kicking off now. It'll go through the end of January. Participants get a t-shirt and a

certificate and it's open to students. It's really open to anybody who finds a mentor and wants to do it. And then Google Code-In is relatively new. I think Google's only been running it for four or five years. That is for junior high and high school students. It is awesome. And our mentors come up with small tasks that students can do in a day. And the top prize, which I think about 10 kids win, is a trip to Mountain View for two or three days. Oh, what a treat.

For your parents. Oh. Yeah. And you can see that that's really awesome for Google because they get a first look at all of these uber smart, uber driven kids. Of course, it's wonderful for the projects. Of course, it's wonderful for the projects. When I got involved, I had just started writing user documentation for Amarok, and I set up a page for every little sub subject. And then the students did, wrote the page, did the MediaWiki coding, and did the screenshots. And all I had to do was clean up after them. It was wonderful.

And then years later, up at LinuxFest Northwest, I met my prize student who was working for Ownplot by then. Wow. Yeah. So it's just a win in every way that you can think of, although the mentors work really hard, and it's right during the winter. So are you serving as the interface, like the go-between between the Google reps and the KDE project? Like are you helping coordinate some of that,

people that are getting involved in the Summer of Code? I'm one of the administrators, yes. So we get all the infrastructure set up. We make sure that mentors are around to talk to their students. How critical to the project, how critical to the KDE project would you say the Google Summer of Code involvement has been? project would you say the google summer of code involvement has been i think that especially in india it has helped us a lot because it has spread the word because it's google spreading the word and not just us spreading the word and we have had we've had two kde conferences in india that the students themselves started with like hundreds of students each

and said the EV paid for you know KDE people to fly over there and do the talks and stuff it was really cool but we've got we have some American students not as many as I would like but also lots of European students so that's yeah, it's pretty cool. One place we're lacking is Africa. I think the word is just not spreading, and I also think that there's not good enough connectivity for African students to get involved. Well, so let's talk a little bit about organizing a community

and getting involved. So we did this meetup. It was fun. It was, what, like eight or nine of us? Eight of us or something like that? Not very big. You know, I'm about to get on a plane and fly to Ohio Linux Fest,

which I suspect will probably be one of the larger Linux events of the year. And it's such a huge, like, one-to-one difference. It couldn't be two more opposite sides of the spectrum. However, I kind of think there's probably, we should be doing more of these small group meetups. I feel like this is, it was interesting because we had a gentleman there from the visual design group at KDE. We had the developer of KDE Connect there. We had

yourself there and we had folks that are involved with deploying KDE on recycled machines and a whole range of different areas. And it was just a nice one-to-one conversation. Everybody had a chance to chat. We were having so much fun talking with each other, we didn't eat the cake. We forgot to eat the cake. Like, we forgot to eat cake. Right.

So when does that ever happen? It was a good cake. It was a good cake. Yeah, we did finally, like, at the end. Yeah, we had to have a little at the end. I mean, come on. Can't waste it. So what would you impart on Pundit?

Is it just, do you think part of the issue is that we as geeks are just too antisocial so we won't just take the next step and organize the meetups? What is holding us back with tools like Meetup and all these ways to organize? Why aren't we seeing more of these local events, do you think? Well, I think in this case, Andrew, I didn't even know him. I had never met him before. I'd never talked to him before. I was talking to the KDE Connect guy, and he's like,

I just moved to Seattle. Let's get together. And I said, okay, well, let's have a release party. So he's like, oh, there's this Meetup thing. I'm like, what? You know, a couple of days before somebody had set that up. So I think that it's just people taking the initiative. Yeah. Years ago, my first computer was an Coleco Atom. And I didn't know how to use it. So I started, I started an Atom users group. And we met for about five years we became such good friends

I mean we were meeting when none of us were even using the Coleco anymore because you know 80k doesn't cover wasn't it Bill Gates that said 640k is all you'd ever need exactly well we had 80 man that's nice because we had 16k of VRAM

oh my gosh. It is ridiculous now. It has gotten so far around that. You know, I don't know how many people started a user group because they didn't know what they were doing, but that's what I did. I was like, how else am I going to find out? Let's find some experts here. I know that there are some. Yeah.

I guess the Internet kind of slowed that down for a bit, though. The Internet came along. We got Hangouts. them. Yeah. I guess the internet kind of slowed that down for a bit though. The internet came along, we got Hangouts, we got Mumble, and we all just kind of stopped going and meeting up in person. You know, you used to have to go to the computer store to get a boxed copy of your distro. I try to figure out what it is because I'm just as guilty of it, but I want to try to get out and see people more because it's neat to actually meet and discuss stuff. That is true because remember the computer user newspaper? Yeah.

I used to wait for that every month. And that's how we got users actually was advertising in there. So free advertising, of course. Yeah. I think part of it is time. Everybody seems so busy. Also, a lot of people who started as teenagers are now getting married and having children. Right.

And that sort of puts a cramp in your style. Yep, that's right. Guilty. So, you know, here I am. Now I'm retired and I have time. That's really why I got involved in open source. I had been using Linux for over 10 years and I thought, I have time now. I should give back.

That was my next question for you because, you know, we just got through a couple of weeks of pretty tumultuous community drama. And sometimes some of the KD community members are involved in some of the drama. I don't think they were this last round, but that can happen from time to time. And I wondered, so when you get to the point where you're ready to retire and kind of just indulge a passion. You go pretty far into the community. You're in all the IRC rooms. How do you deal with the drama? Does it bother you? What's your approach to that?

In KDE, I'm on the community working group. And that is a group that the EV got together to actually deal with conflict in the community. I am not scared of conflict. I think that when people are fighting about things, that means they're passionate, there's energy there. So what's usually happening, though, is that people are talking past each other rather than thinking together.

And if there's a lot of energy around a subject, there's obviously a problem. Therefore, we need to think together. So rather than clashing, we should be listening to one another and thinking together and trying to work our way through whatever the problem is. Yeah. And I think sometimes what would help is if we stopped talking to each other through our blogs and talked to each other through maybe chat or mumble or the phone.

Or Google+. Yeah, face-to-face. Face-to-face, to me, there is, back to what you were saying, the small groups, there is absolutely nothing better than sitting and talking to somebody. Right. You know, it's funny, too. Like, for example, in a face-to-face meeting, you could have a bunch of Linux users, and if one of

those linux users pulls out an iphone nobody would say anything but on the internet if one if one of if you're having a group chat and somebody somehow figured out you had an iphone they pulled it out all of the linux users would jump on that person say oh you have an iphone you have an iphone what are you doing like over the internet we're just we're just a little bit more sometimes of jerks to each other like we just don't quite care as much but in person you know we're we're nicer we're more understanding we listen a little bit better uh and maybe yeah you don't think so part of the reason no well part of the reason that i'm in kde i mean kde runs on windows and it runs on mac so we actually have as part of our community people who work oh sure on making sure everything works on windows and works

on mac and it's true every once in a while they get disparaged no and i shouldn't leave that i shouldn't leave out these bsd either but i was just making kind of a like a dramatic comparison because really yeah it's it's just showing we're more critical over the internet than we are in person is really what happens and it's just i think that's why even these small meetups are really good because it can happen in small little doses too. It doesn't have to be these huge events. I think it's, uh, it's happening in our culture at large. If you look at our politics, same thing. And it's starting to happen, not just in the U S but around the world that we're

getting these polarized groups. And so we need to figure out how to you know and some people say that that's because people used to have more time and used to pull together and maybe maybe there's something to that i don't know well and honestly what you're taught what you're saying is something i am actually trained in is i have a degree in leadership and everything that you're touching on is exactly what i was trained on in in terms of um chris you're mentioning these small groups but also you're mentioning um getting together face to face you know talking on the phone over as opposed to over each other's blogs that speaks to everything that i was trained you voice communication and personal communication is

so much more important than say oh uh just fighting over blogs that's just ridiculous to me well fighting over fighting is generally not very constructive anyway but it does show you that there's there's a point around which there is a problem and there's energy that means it can be solved and seriously i have a lot of hope both in the political sphere and, you know, look at all the energy that there is in free software. We can. We can get past these things and we can solve the problems. I really do.

I like that. That's optimistic, too. I like that. All right. Well, Valerie, I'm going to move you and Eric up into the main group here, and we'll just move on with the show, and Valerie and Eric, stick around, and we'll chew through a few more topics, and I'll open up the mumble room to any questions for Valerie as well.

And we have a couple of emails that I want to help some folks with some switching to Linux problems. So everybody stick around. Don't go anywhere. We've got a lot more to show. But first, I want to thank our next sponsor, and that's Ting. Ting is mobile that makes sense, my mobile service provider, and Matt's mobile service provider. Oh, yes.

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And on their own, Matt, they went to Linux.Ting.com. They got a $25 service credit. They found the Ting user form where there's Moto G users in there talking about how to get it to work. I'm not exaggerating when I say the Moto G is one of the most popular phones among Linux Unplugged audience members, and it's not even a phone Ting sells directly. This is what's super cool about Ting is they have a support network in their forums where you'll find people that are trying out things like Firefox OS, Sailfish OS on different phones. And Ting doesn't go in there and go, shut up, stop talking.

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They also got an early termination relief program. If you is in a contract, they'll pay up to $75 per line you gots to get cancelled. Go to linux.ting.com and a big, big thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Okay, so let's see if we can help and then we'll

get into one of our topics. So I want everybody, get your heads together. Jose writes in. He says, hola, Chris and everyone in the JBU community. I'm writing to see if there's a way you guys can help me out. Before I go on, sorry if I get any of the technical terms wrong, I'm a forensic psychologist,

and I've started to learn more about computers and tech stuff. So naturally, because he's gone down the right path, he's wound up at Linux. So here's his problem. I want to switch to a Linux distro full time. Currently, I'm a Mac and Windows 7 user. This guy, I love him already. Mac and Windows 7 user. This is our bread and butter right here. However,

I've been playing around with MintDebian, Arch, and Ubuntu on VirtualBox. So far, I love it. There's just one huge issue that's keeping me from doing the change. I think it's my HP laptop's hardware. Every time that I try to boot from

an ISO, the kernel starts up, I see it do its thing, and after the screen goes black, it never comes back. I've tried Arch, Mint, Ubuntu, Manjaro, Fedora, you name it! The only two that I've managed to boot up and install is Mint using compatibility mode

and Manjaro with the hardware detection tool. The problem is after installing, it happens again. It starts to boot up. I see some kernel stuff and then black. I got an HP Pavilion with an AMD Radeon HD. He doesn't say specifically which. Eight gigs of RAM. He's got a SATA 640 gig.

Blah, blah, blah. What can I do? Is this a stupid mistake? Can you help me? He just wants to switch. And I don't have an HP. Anybody in the Mumble Room have an HP Pavilion laptop that has experienced any problems with booting up and getting their display showing? I know it's not super uncommon, but it's not a problem I've had for a while.

I haven't had that exact problem in an HP book, but I've had that problem numerous times on other laptops, and the way I've always fixed it is booting with the no-mode set. Yeah, that's a good idea. Valerie and I were kind of discussing here that it almost sounds like he's having a UEFI secure boot problem. He just needs to have a disabled secure boot or something. We said it's Windows 7, right?

Well, he's a Windows 7 user, but the system may not have come with Windows 7 for all we know. I've tried. I have an HP laptop. It's a pavilion that has that issue every once in a while. I've actually had a couple computers that have

a problem where HP has this weird flaw in some laptops where the display is actually working perfectly fine, but the brightness level is completely off. Yeah. So you have to manually add the brightness higher, but you can actually do a script that will also automate it. So DogZ in the IRC says he has an HP Pavilion laptop. No mode does work. No mode set to get his Gen 2.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. So here's the problem is, I think Jose kind of got that when he did like compatibility mode. It probably like the option in Grubb probably just appends no mode set. But the issue that he's been running into, well maybe not, but like he got that far. But the problem is, he maybe could append it to the live set, but the issue that he's been running into, well, maybe not, but he got that bar.

But the problem is he maybe could append it to the live CD, but then he has to remember to also, once the system's installed, he's going to have to hit E at the grub menu there and append it to his installed boot menu too until he gets his graphics situation worked out. And then maybe if he gets a new graphical environment, installs the proprietary driver. I don't know. At least with Ubuntu and Fedora, if you, when you boot, when you're going through the installer,

if you append no-mode setter in Ubuntu, I think you can actually hit F6 and there's a thing for options and you can choose it. It will automatically add it to your grub config so it's persistent. Can you do that in Ubuntu? Yeah, you can. I believe so. Absolutely. Yep. I think it's F6 and whatever it says,

modes at the bottom, and then you can just check no mode set. So you're saying if you hit F6 and you add that, and then you boot up the installer, the installer will then append that to the final installed version of Grub? Yes. But don't quote me on the F6. Quote me on whatever at the bottom. Yeah, right. When it boots up, you see English.

Hit English, and then it will give you an option, install or boot to live environment. At the very bottom, there's F keys, and whatever one says mode, you click on that. I think it's F6. It should be F6. The last time I installed, it was F6. The other thing you can do is just add it to the kernel parameters in Etsy default grub. Right. Yeah, if he's already got it installed, he could

do that. Boot to a live scene. Okay, so once he's up and going, what, do we think a proprietary graphics driver would solve the problem long term so once X starts, he'd at least get a desktop again because it's never coming back? And if he puts it in no mode set, won't that be like low resolution once X starts up? No. With an AMD card, I would go proprietary just because you're already dealing with a problem set up as far as I'm concerned. AMD cards, especially on laptops, are just a nightmare.

dealing with a problem set up as far as I'm concerned. AMD cards, especially on laptops, are just a nightmare. I would go proprietary based on the experience I've had with AMD cards on laptops. I've banged my head on this for so many years. I would if it was me. It depends on how old the card is. Yeah, because you just have Radeon HD. Yeah, that is the thing, right? If it's an older Radeon.

And Rikai has a great suggestion in the chat room as well. It might just be an issue of function F3 to manually up the brightness. Oh, yeah. It can be. Maybe, yeah. But on my triple E, my Asus triple E, I actually have to go in and code in. There's an actual grub information you have to add in to actually get it to any of your function keys to work at all, including your brightness. I'm wondering if I have an HP Pavilion.

I can't remember. It's like a 70-inch laptop with a Radeon 5800-something in there. I can't remember if I have this problem. So I might power it up tonight, and so it would be no mode set. I'll add that to the boot options and see if I do have that problem. Now, here's a foolproof way to know for sure if it's a brightness issue or if you're truly getting a no-display server. You take a flashlight, and I'm dead

serious about this, go into a dark room, and with it booted up, shine on there, you'll see whether or not, if it's on or not. A couple people think it's a brightness issue. Yeah, because the pixels are there, the backlight just doesn't shine bright enough. Well, like, for instance, my machine, my machine, actually, the backlight inverts, so, like, when it boots up,

it sets the backlight to 100. I guess, if it's inverted, it sets the backlight to 100. I guess if it's inverted, it goes to nothing. So I actually have to have a command line to invert the brightness. Oh, I don't know how you guys deal with this crap. Seriously, Jose, what you do is just stick

with Windows until you can afford to buy a computer just to run. No, I'm kidding. I don't know, though. I mean, like, killing about these issues, it feels like we're back in the 90s all of a sudden. And I guess... But it does develop good skills. I guess the other thing I was going to suggest is, I wonder if he couldn't just hook up, I mean, maybe

just a troubleshoot and maybe look at logs and stuff like that, an external monitor? I mean, I'm sure he's probably thought of that, but... Probably, especially, it depends whether or not if he's going, like, you know, S-video, HDMI, or VGA. Depending on the age of the laptop, it could be VGA or S-video. I mean, it, it depends whether or not if he's going S-video, HDMI, or VGA. Depending on the age of the laptop, it could be VGA or S-video. I mean, it just really depends.

But if it's VGA or HDMI, it'll probably work. If it's S-video, shoot yourself in the foot right now. Yeah. All right, we've got two bigger, thicker topics I want to get to. But first, I wanted to just talk about SteamOS for a second. Because we have no idea what's going to happen there but I like to speculate and Zach the Penguin wrote in he says hey guys long time since I wrote I was messing around with Steam's whole Steam from a Windows computer thing which is pretty awesome and the thought popped into my head what if the

long-term goal here is for Valve to stream games to Steam boxes like OnLive did? It would completely eliminate the Windows-only problem and adds value to Steam as a service. I know right now it's only a local network deal, but it might be possible for Steam to do this from their own servers in the future. So, here's what he's suggesting. Is that perhaps the LAN

Steam streaming we see today is the early groundwork for something that Valve would then deliver over the internet down the road. So you buy a Steam box. You don't have to have a local Windows PC. They go all on live on you and they stream the game. Let's say this is Valve and if they do it, they're going to do it right. So let's assume it's going to work right. Let's just take that as a granted. We'll see. All the piping challenges gone. Right. That kind of thing.

Right. Do you think, A, this is something Valve would consider, Matt, and B, would this sort of solve a huge problem for Steam Machines as in you get all of these great native Linux games, and if you want a legacy Windows game from the quote-unquote PC era or whatever they would call it, we'll stream it to you from the Valve online service. Would you see them doing this?

Only two ways I see this working, realistically speaking. If I'm Valve, the only way I would reliably do this, especially with games that might require a little bit more back-and-forth data, would be to team up with Google. And the reason why is because then you know for a fact that you've got a partner who has a vested interest in connectivity that you guys can kind of sync up what's needed to get that data back and forth. Boy, that sounds dirty, though. But, yeah, I could totally see that.

It totally sounds dirty. If you go with just Joe Blow's ISP Emporium, you know, they may not care. They may be like, oh, yeah, you want us to help, you know, saturate our network. Yeah, but you can go bite us. We're not going to help you. So that would be the downside. Otherwise, lower-end games, maybe, uh you know i don't know right vault uh vault you say nvidia tried it and it didn't work yes they if i remember correctly they tried making a um it was

displayed during e3 or something i believe It was sort of like a cloud hosting for your games where it was speculated like, oh, you can put it at your ISP and the ISP can actually deliver it to you. Yeah. They store it for you and then stream it to you?

Yeah, sort of like that. These people or companies can be oh, we want to buy a rack or something of these dedicated processing and then rent it off to our customers. Yeah, I don't see Steam ever wanting to get into that kind of infrastructure investment to want to render all these games and stream it to people and all the ISP agreements. It just sounds like so much bureaucratic telco BS. I just don't see anybody at Valve having the will to suffer through it. And it will never, ever be comparable to local gameplay. And I think Valve, at the end of the day, cares a lot about the local gameplay experience, and they know that people are willing to pay to have slightly more powerful systems if they want

to play those kinds of games. I think the Steam streaming is what it is. It is a transitionary tool to migrate from your old crappy piece of junk Windows PC that has all kinds of problems into this nice new Steam box. Now, I think it was a little bit envisioned during the time when everybody thought tablets were going to rule the world and PCs were going away, but I think it still has some potential. Hmm. Well, that's tough.

Yeah, that's a tough one. All right, so we do have some big topics, including Microsoft announcing that they just full-on love Linux now. Satya Nadella. I don't know. Did you see the picture? No. He was up on stage doing a live stream,

and Satya Nadella behind him on the projector has Microsoft Hearts Linux. I got a picture for those of you watching the video version right there. Is there a knife sticking out of Tuck's back? Oh, I see it now. Isn't that something? Microsoft Hearts Linux. So we're going to talk about what that means and where Microsoft is going with that. And then also, you might have heard about the initiative to fork the Debian project,

or at least some veterans are considering it. And then forking Fedora came up. But that conversation ended fairly quickly. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But first, I want to tell you about DigitalOcean. Head over to DigitalOcean.com right now and get yourself ready for this one. You're never going to guess it. Unplugged October. That's the promo code, right? All lowercase, one word,

unplugged October. We'll get you a $10 credit over at DigitalOcean. You're like, what is DigitalOcean, Chris? Because I live under a rock and do not know about super awesome services that are blowing up like crazy. Well, I'm glad you asked me. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. Some of you can get started in about 55 seconds. Some of you can get started in about 32 seconds, 22 seconds.

It's nuts. Send them to me. Take a screenshot. Email them. Chris at JupiterBroadcasting.com. You guys is crazy. And by guys, I mean guys and gals. Just a little disclaimer. Here's what you get for $5 per month. 512 megabytes of RAM. A 20 gigabyte SSD.

Yeah, they're all SSD. One CPU and a terabyte of blazing fast transfer. Why? Because DigitalOcean has tier one bandwidth providers at their data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. It blows my mind, you guys. I log in there and I like updating my system just because I like seeing download numbers that high. I'm not even joking at all. It's that awesome. And one of the great things about DigitalOcean is that dashboard. It is super simple and intuitive, but yet extremely powerful.

You can take snapshots, backup migrations, move, transfer droplets to different users, You can take snapshots, backup migrations, move, transfer droplets to different users, DNS management, one-click installs of the entire LAMP stack, GitLab, WordPress, all sitting on top of KVM. It's really slick. And I think the best part is that API. And you can use that API to take advantage of some of those services on a much larger scale. And DigitalOcean right now, for a little while, I don't know how long, because it's crazy to me. I think this is nuts. But I understand why they're doing it, because they're crazy about getting the quality of their tutorials up. Crazy DigitalOcean, I tell you what. They're willing to pay you up to $200 if you write a tutorial for them. And they have editors that'll work with you,

so you don't have to be like a wordsmith. You don't got to be a wordsmith. They'll work with you. If you've got a great tutorial, they'll pay you for it. And that's DigitalOcean's commitment to getting the tutorials up on their site the highest quality possible because their dashboard is all about getting you going. The way you even fund your account is about making it as simple and out of the way as possible. The API, all of it, everything is about making sure you can get your infrastructure up and running as fast as possible to get onto your work. And that's why they're trying to have the best documentation as well. DigitalOcean.com.

Use the promo code UNPLUGGEDOCTOBER to get a $10 credit. And you can try out that $5 rig for two months for absolutely free. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Okay, Matt. Put your crazy hat on because you're not even going to believe some of the ridiculous shenanigans going down right now. So our buddy, friend of the show, Satche Nadella, was up on stage today talking about how great Azure is and how wonderful Linux is with Azure. He says, did you guys know it's like peanut butter and chocolate?

That's not actually what he said. Isn't it more like peanut butter and motor oil? I mean, I don't know. He did talk a little bit about how great Azure has become. And I just wanted to touch on this because this is the new Microsoft. This is the Microsoft that is now competing with Linux, not on the desktop, but in these service-like infrastructure type ways. So Microsoft has rolled out 300 major new features and services in the last 12 months to Azure, bullet point number one. There are 10,000 new Azure customers per week.

There are currently 350 million active directory users on Azure, so they have active directory up on Azure. Over 2 million developers are using Visual Studio Online to connect directly to Azure. And customers are using once we're only using basic Azure services 60% are now using higher level services and number one CoreOS

is now supported in Azure. The container optimized Linux distribution with a minimal memory footprint is available starting today in the Azure marketplace. So they are all about Linux, guys. Is this – okay. So I'm an old fart when it comes to Microsoft.

I grew up in Microsoft's backyard. I've been in and out of there chatting with friends for years. I've watched them for a long time. And the one thing that I'll tell you that really stood out is they are some competitive SOBs over there at Microsoft. And can I really trust that they're all in with Linux? Or is this embrace and extend again? Matt, I go to you first. Personally, I feel like that. Yes, in the sense that they've tried like butting heads with, you know, the Linux direction, the Linux ideas, the Linux, all the anything to do with Linux, they that. It didn't work. That's kind of the baller error. I think in this case they realized that if they're going to remain relevant 10, 15 years forward,

they're going to have to start playing nicer with their neighbors. So you think it's legit? I think it's legit for selfish reasons. They're not there to be your buddy. They're not there for nice reasons. They're there out of preservation. And keep in mind, I know people that are Microsoft admins that work

for Microsoft events that put some behind-the-scenes stuff. Yeah, it is. But because they're being... And they're not thrilled about having to learn this stuff. They're literally in lockdown mode learning stuff in a hurry because suddenly this has become a thing. Long-term, you know,

they're hoping... They're basically just trying to remain relevant. I think that's the big piece of it. Will it matter 10, 15 years down the road? I don't know. But I think it's legitimate, but it's not legitimate for the reasons why people might think, oh, they've changed their mind and they're being nice now. That's not it at all. It's survival, honestly. It's being able to remain competitive with things that are frankly free.

So it's a pragmatic Microsoft. Pretty much. Wimpy, why is it that you and I kind of feel a little dirty when we talk about this? What is it? Why do we have this bias? What's going on? Well, it just feels uncomfortable. This is not Microsoft's area.

I used to work as an enterprise architect for Windows platforms, and before that I was a Unix admin, and since then I've worked exclusively in Linux. And these are not the same market spaces. And I would be really interested to know how sort of the Windows admins feel about this statement from Microsoft that they love Linux. They must be shitting their pants right now.

That is a good point. I didn't think about it from that perspective. Let's ask Valerie since she has some perspective on the matter. Valerie, do you buy the new Microsoft or are you skeptical? Well, she's not in the room right now. What do you think, Eric? You take it. Well, here's where I'm at with the new Microsoft or are you skeptical? Well, she's not in the room right now. What do you think, Eric? You take it. Well, here's where I'm at with the whole Microsoft thing.

Adela really wants to go towards more of the cloud infrastructure. Sure. And he knows that Linux does better in cloud than Windows Server does. so I just think he's come to the realization and the company is coming to the point where they can't survive with just Windows Server alone they have to start branching out and using something like Linux and I think he's trying to take the company

in the right direction in terms of the service market yeah I think it's interesting to watch and it's more options for more deployments of Linux. That seems like a good thing. Okay, anybody else want to comment on that before we go to the next kind of crazy thing that I was like, what, this week? That just made me kind of flat-footed.

All right, next one. Did you guys see the roll up your sleeves? We may need to fork Debian site. Did you guys catch this? And I'll just read the first paragraph here. We are veteran, which is bolded by the way, veteran Unix admins, and we are concerned

about what's happening to GNU slash Linux Debian edition. And they're considering forking the project. I want to stop right here. Okay. I think that's a great idea. I think fork it. Like, instead of delaying the progress of the distribution or the direction, yeah, fork it and go your own way. That actually seems like the right approach to take, especially if you're never going to be satisfied with the system D version of Debian.

That seems like a pretty reasonable response, and I hope they do. I think the competition would be good. a pretty reasonable response. And I hope they do. I think the competition would be good. The thing that I can't get past, and it seems like a lot of other people have picked up on it, is the language used there.

Veteran Unix admins and Bolded. What that does is sort of projects old farts. And I'm not trying to be derogatory. I'm just saying, like, from a messaging standpoint, people are saying, that makes you sound like a bunch of old farts, and then people sort of write it off. Ah, what do they bunch of stick in the muds and it's sort of like it immediately

makes people not take it very seriously well you know looking at from my perspective i think it's a combination of quote-unquote old farts as well as people that are of the mind that if it isn't broke why fix it at least from their perspective And so you might have an inner mixture of individuals in that space. Wimpy, do you think they're just crazy? Well, they're exercising their right to free speech and all power to their elbow and everything. And if they want to have a go at forking Debbie in, then I think everyone should just stand back and let them get on with it and let themselves burn. See how it goes. Yeah.

Well said. Let's just take those two words together. Fork Debian. Okay. Forking is hard. I have firsthand experience of forking really small projects in the comparison with Debian. So they want to fork Debian. with Debian. So they want to fork Debian. Just think about all of the infrastructure that's involved there and all of the platforms and everything. It's just crazy nonsense. And

Ian Jackson's obviously got an opinion about this and he posted his thing to the mailing list to suggest that this was you know evaluated one last time very expressly stating he didn't want to turn this into a system d versus whatever in its system debate and then the internet explodes with system d inferno again this is so disappointing it's just it's just laughable and and if they want to fork debby and yeah go on do that do that thing um i'm all for it i'm gonna watch that gleefully from afar yeah i would be pretty skeptical myself and vault uh you think uh no no don't fork don't don't do that we need more resources as it is not less people working on the same stuff well that, that's obviously my actual practical point is, no, don't fork it.

Find a way to accommodate multiple init systems in Debian. I'm starting to change that. But if you want to fork Debian, yeah, go on. To me, if they're never going to be interested in being involved with the project in that state, then they should just fork it. You're not really losing resources because if they weren't going to cooperate anyways, you're not losing them. They're already lost.

So let them go off and do their own thing. Well, no, the thing is, is that, no, well, yeah, okay, if they want to fork WM, fork WM, but there's system BSD, there's use less D, there are shims around system D. If they were really serious about coming up with an alternative they would be looking at those projects in terms of developing them and supporting them within the debian community rather than saying we're going to fork debian which is frankly insane well yeah you're talking the biggest distribution there is the mother of most of our distributions. And, yeah,

that's a huge undertaking if you're even thinking about it. Would you do a complete fork, or would it be more like sort of a clone of straight-up Debian where you're just constantly swapping out the systemd parts for something else? Well, one thing that comes to mind that I want to point out here is that

now, last time I checked, most computers with blogging platforms attached don't have breathalyzers ready. So it's entirely possible they were fit-shaped, and they got on and, yeah, blimmy, blimmy, blah. Maybe. No, I'll tell you who's a little S-faced. How about this one? How about this one?

Forkfedora.org. Shall we fork fedora? And then here's the next line. Not really. It's doing great. Maybe we're not veteran enough. That's great. That's really great. That is fantastic.

They sound like they're really housed. You know what? Yeah. They're really housed, right? I've already verified this is a factual thing. Yeah, no, Matt did prove that he did actually later up on G+. All of my tent people on the whole internet, but still, we exist. Yeah, that actually getting housed is a term. It's got a ridiculous origin, though, or something. I don't remember.

It's abbreviated from the other word. Sorry, guys, you should have seen Valerie over here. It was hilarious. Okay, but this fork business, like, shall we fork Fedora, time to fork Debian, I've never... Well, actually, we have. The only time I think we've ever seen the Linux community

this riled up and just unable to just move forward for a long time was, like, the Microsoft Novell deal deal where you had boycott novelle prop up and you had all this stuff and there was such decisive lines and it went on for like two years but really not i mean you know it was it was not as bad for two years but it really went on for a while and this is like we haven't had a good old classic drama like this since then it's like the good old days again. Hooah.

I remember the old Novell thing and I'm sitting there going thinking, that's great. I'm going to go watch TV now because I'm just like, this is going to be a week long thing and people are going to blow it over. Yeah, that still cracks me up. All right, Wimpy. Go ahead. Ask the question that's on everybody's mind.

Well, I'm putting myself out there again as the blo the bloke that says you know system d is really quite good but i i often wonder reading what some of the people say about system d and also listening to other podcasts and what they have to say about system d and i'm left with the impression of you've never actually used it not only have you never actually used it you've never actually sat down and written a unit file you're not a package maintainer you haven't had to deal with init scripts and you haven't seen the benefits of migrating a package from an init script to systemd and and the many other benefits of systemd now i can

appreciate that people are very very firm in their opinion that they like the way things are and and there's a place for that but i think a lot of the speculation and uh commentary about systemd is being had by people who simply do not know what they're talking about. Now, I'm not suggesting necessarily that fork-debian falls into this camp. They would claim to be seasoned Linux administrators and devian veterans quite. So maybe they do know what they're talking about. And they have legitimate reasons as to why they feel systemd is not going to suit them. But there are some podcasts where i've heard them debating the uh the various init systems and talking about the

pros and cons and then admitting part way through their you know slagging off of system d they've never used it yeah i think well so how are you qualified to have an opinion my uh my so my stance on the system d uh discussion i think if you look over the history of this show has an arc where i'm pretty neutral don't give a crap and then i become pretty pro system d and then i get to a point where i was a little belligerent to people who didn't who didn't seem to think going forward with system is a good idea because the reason i i don't know belligerence right word but i'll just label it that. The reason why I felt that way is because as a sysadmin of like 14, 15 years, there are literally things that I see in system D that I think,

if I had that when I was managing servers, I would have hated my job so much less. Like, it's not just small stuff that I see in system D. Like, it's not just small stuff that I see in SystemD. Some of the things that SystemD brings as a whole, I see as fundamentally necessary for Linux to remain competitive at scale. Like, without those things, free BSD could easily eat our lunch, really. Because essentially, we're just as capable. But systemd offers so many things. The problem is you really don't know how important they are until you've deployed Linux at scale or you have a very network demanding thing or you have something that has to be as absolutely minimal as possible and support socket activation or you need something that's integrated with

namespaces. All these things that are edge cases but together matter so much and are so important at keeping Linux competitive, not just on the server but also in mobile, that when you argue against systemd, what you have to realize is you have to really come with something that's extremely compelling because what you are arguing for is essentially removing what I, in my personal opinion, and I'm not saying it's right, but in my personal opinion, are fundamentally critical features to keep Linux competitive. So if you're going to say no system, you've got to have an answer for those problems.

And yeah, I don't think you and I can have a debate about this because I think we're clearly on the same side of the fence. And we've got our personal opinions. It sounds like for largely similar reasons. So really what we need is somebody to step up and tell us why we're wrong and i i i think part of is some of the more vocal people debating this are not the same people who are as impacted by it like i think there's a group of people that care a lot but they're just not as vocal about debating it um i think i'm trying to, because I get emails that seem really well-reasoned, but even then, I've still not been convinced.

The biggest things that convince me that it might be a problem are always the what-if scenarios. And I think, yeah, if that happens, we could have a problem. But that's not a today problem. That's a what-if problem. Quite, quite. Anyways, so how do we get talking about... Oh, yeah, the forks.

Yeah, so there you go. The system deconversation once again has been stirred back up by these project forks. And, you know, what's interesting is you check the Linux forms, like r slash Linux and just general discussion forms, and people are constantly still asking about it. It is genuinely a topic that even though it seems like we've talked about it ad nauseum, people still seem to care about. I guess that's sort of the fun of being a Linux user, is you get to care about such nitty-gritty things

like your display compositor and systemd and all that stuff. So I guess that's why we do it. Alright, well, so you probably already know this, but Linux Action Show won't be live on Sunday. It's going to be on Monday, and I think, I don't know if Ange told you, Matt, so you probably already know this, but Linux Action Show won't be live on Sunday. It's going to be on Monday.

And I don't know if Ange told you, Matt, but I think we're going to try to start at 2 o'clock, so you probably want to get to the studio around 1.30. 1.30, okay. And we're going to try to fit in a foe, too, and then we'll be able to show all the highlights from Ohio Linux Fest. So if you're going to be in Ohio this weekend, come say hi to some of us there.

Some of the crew will be there, and we'll be going out and getting our party on in the evening, so join us for that as well. And then join us for Linux Action Show Monday afternoons. We'll have the time in your local times and over at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. And Eric is reminding me, dutifully so,

that you can also say hi to him at Seagull. Is there anything you want to plug about that, Eric? I don't know. Valerie will be there as well, so that's a good thing. Nice. Say hi to Eric and Valerie at Seagull, right? That's how you say it? Yes. S-E-A-G-L.

And you can find it at just Google for Seagull, but I think it's like seagull.org. And it's a Seattle Linux users group meetup, right? Or who's put on it? It's a Seattle GNU Linux conference is what they're calling it. Thank you. I don't know why I can't remember that. But so we got a lot going there's a ton of stuff going on so come out and say hi to us valerie thanks a bunch for uh coming on and uh i can't wait for

our next meetup maybe in december or something like that too bad we didn't get to talk about kaboom too yeah well is there anything you want to mention before we wrap up we have a like a couple of minutes uh you know what you know why is because we we uh up? We have like a couple of minutes. You know why? It's because we talked about it quite a bit on Sunday's show. So we just kind of got our kaboom to them. But if there's anything you wanted to mention or specifically with the 14.10 release, have at it.

We have the release. It's going to be pretty stable. It's coming after a long-term support. So we usually are wild and crazy. This time, we are doing an alternate ISO for the Plasma 5 stuff. Oh, awesome. People should not expect that to be completely stable, but we sure would love to have some testing. And we don't know if it will be ready

six months from now for a release and without testing it won't be it's actually that plasma 5 ISO is what I used for Sunday's review when I did that so it's reasonably stable some people have had some problems

getting things to work getting it set up but once they get it set up, it's pretty cool. Awesome. Oh my gosh. We need bug reports. We need it and bug reports. And if people wanted to connect with you online, what's the best place for them to find you?

NIRC or Valerie at KDE.org. B-A-L-O-R-I-E at KDE.org. Awesome. All rightL-O-R-I-E at kde.org. Awesome. All right. Well, I look forward to our next meetup

and I'll remember to schedule time for beers next time. I will not make that mistake again, Valerie. I will not make that mistake again. So I apologize for that.

All right. Well, that'll wrap us up for today's episode of Linux Unplugged. We'll be, our regular Linux Unplugged time next week. I don't think

the Ohio Linux Fest will affect our regular scheduled Linux Unplugged. We'll be, our regular Linux Unplugged time next week. I don't think the Ohio Linux Fest will affect our regular scheduled Linux Unplugged. So it should be on Tuesday, which is at 2 p.m. Pacific. You go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that converted to your local time. Well, Matt, so it's going to be a little extra longer.

You're going to have to go an extra day before you get to see the hair again. Are you going to be all right? I think I can get by. Okay. You know what you need to go an extra day before you get to see the hair again. Are you going to be alright? I think I can get by. You know what you need to do is just like marathon a TV show. You've got Saturday and Sunday to just really pound through something and then just show up Monday ready to do a show.

There you go. Alright everyone, well thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Don't forget, we really want your feedback. Go to jupyterbroadcasting.com click the contact link, choose unplugged from the drop down, linuxactionshow.reddit.com is another great place to go. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode. See you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

There we go. All right. So, Valerie, we'll record the post-show, too, if there's any other Kupuntu bits you want to get in there. Well, everybody go to jbtitles.com right now and vote. jbtitles.com. Everybody vote. Jack, you're breathing into the mic again. Jack, your mic's open.

Jack. I'm taking off my socks. Eric, make sure you give Valerie a super high five for us. Super high five. Super high. Yeah, I heard it. That's great. All right.

For fork's sake, that's pretty good, Creepy. That's pretty good. JBTitles.com. Let's vote, everybody. JBTitles. JBTitles. JBTitles. JBTitles.

All right. So, yeah, there you go. There you go. Once again, we got into another System D conversation where Wimpy and I painfully agreed with each other. I know. It's a bit awkward isn't it we need we need to encourage some people to to have a rational um argument for not system d because i think both you and i have different well similar but different reasons as to why it suits what we're doing and we really need somebody to come along for the show yeah well it's quite there are alternatives isn't it

oh i know there are alternatives. And I'm familiar with some of them. And I've obviously used a lot of them. But I need somebody to remind me why it's there better. Because I've forgotten. Do we really think... Oh, one second. I want to respond to Imacode.

No, no, no. The Fork Fedora thing was a joke. It's not. It's just a joke. No, we're not. I still want to buy it. All right. Sorry, I didn't respond to iMac no no no the fork fedora thing was a joke it's just a joke I still want to buy it alright sorry I didn't mean to interrupt go ahead I was just going to say one of the distros I tried recently

was Phoenix it's a live CD distro that uses runit and it's very functional Microsoft hearts Linux. Fork you, Debian. Fork it all. Linux grandma bakes KDE.

That's really cool. I like that too. So I've used Runit in the past for demonizing some processes because it has some features that traditional Linux didn't have. So, yeah, that's very good. Valerie, you should twist Eric's arm to leave the mumble info behind so you could join us in the future whenever you feel like it. Yeah, I actually did paste that into the Kabuntu off-topic chat room, did I not?

Oh, good, good. Yeah, so whenever there's anything Kabuntu-related that you want to get the word out about, or KDE or anything, you can always just pop in the mumble room and we'll give you the floor for a couple of minutes. Okay, so let's go to JB Titles. And so are we liking Fork's sake? We like that? Not KDE or not ForkDebian? I like that Wimpy is like, think about that. Fork

Debian. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I was like, wow, really? That'd be quite the task. So tonight, Ange and I are going to mail out, hopefully, a whole bunch of boxes of swag and stuff we're going to bring to Ohio Linux Fest. So that should be cool.

Colonel Linux, are you in here? I am. Oh, you haven't said anything for so long. I thought maybe you left. I missed you. He died. No, I'm still here. Rest in peace. So, yeah.

So I'm looking forward to that. I didn't want to come off too strong in the recording, but I'm, like, 100% sure that no-mode set will fix that guy's laptop. Okay, cool. Yeah. And I thought, for some reason, for some reason I thought no modeset just sort of put X in the crappy mode. Do you know what's funny?

I actually couldn't tell you what it does. I can just tell you this. It doesn't do, it stops kernel mode switching happening. Yeah, but what does that do? But how does that? It doesn't do the resolution detection and auto-resolution adjustment. It just goes with the basic BIOS resolution.

But why is it then not being resolved when X starts, if it's that? If it's the console resolution, then how come when X is starting, it's not fixing the problem? Because wouldn't that... Whoa. Don't know. That was a Opus spike. That was nasty. So that was the only thing

I wasn't sure about. It seemed like to me that if no mode set would fix it, then it shouldn't be happening in X. I thought the only thing... But I don't know. I don't really ever have to... I seriously have bought System76 laptops for so long now that I haven't had to fight with someone.

Here's how sure I am. Put a filter on that guy's name. If he sends you another email saying no-mode set fixes it, you pick out a beer you want and I'll send you a 12-pack. Because I'm not wrong. I'm looking right now. There's other people talking

about no-mode set on AskAbuntu.com too. Here's the other thing. For instance, for my machine, it will not run a kernel older than 3.12 efficiently. 3.11, I have to use no mode set, otherwise it doesn't render graphics at all. Several people, like Recon Chow, are saying it could be a brightness issue too.

So, let's see. All right. So, for fork's sake, it's currently at the top here, so we can just go with that, I suppose. All right. Noah, Noah, can I ask you a question about your Ubuntu Unity review? Yeah. You mentioned about Crypt Setup.

Can you just talk me through what you saw exactly? Because I've got some background in this, and I just want to hear what you saw precisely. What I saw? Well, okay. So, excuse me if this is a little too dumbed down. background in this and i just want to hear what you saw precisely what i saw well okay so uh excuse me if this is a little too dumbed down i i apologize but so i opened my laptop i clicked on my encrypted drive and it said unable to decrypt kernel linux or well slash media slash kernel linux uh no crypt setup found and then I had to get onto Wi-Fi, sudo apt-get install crypt setup,

and then I was able to then decrypt my hard drive. So this wasn't at boot time when Plymouth should give you the password prompt to put your passphrase in. Correct. However, the fact that that option exists, that I can encrypt my hard drive at boot time, means that the package, which I found out was all of like four megabytes, is clearly included in the install media. So why not just install that? What possible reason would I not want the ability to decrypt encrypted drives?

What advantage does that serve? In talking to Popey, it sounds to me like that's something he'd need a few people to fix right away. If Popey was here, as if. So I've been trying to get... I have been chasing people around at Canonical

for two months about this issue now. And I've been pestering Popey until he's probably bored of hearing from me, because the only thing I mention now is, by the way, you can't decrypt full disk encryption with the new version of Plymouth. And it's one of the things that I attempted to fix in the current release candidate of Ubuntu Mate. And I have effectively fixed it.

It's actually a Plymouth bug. And I think Canonical have just released a fix for it this evening. So Crypt setup does get installed. The issue is that Plymouth doesn't pass the pass phrase through properly, or wasn't passing it through properly. The absolutely ridiculous thing is, I understand, so OpenSSH server

doesn't come with default, but that I get, right? Because there's a security implication. I cannot think of one single reason of how having that package there, other than the fact that it occupies four megabytes of disk space, which even in today's world of solid-state drives that are ridiculously small still is negligible.

So it just infuriated me. I had four hours. I couldn't get to any of my files. And I'm like, really? And here's the other thing, too. 1204, 1210, 1304, and 1310 all had CRIPup installed by default. I guess they didn't check if 1404 does.

But really, like, what the hell, guys? Yeah, Crip Setup is installed by default. That's not the issue. It's the fact that Plymouth doesn't invoke it correctly to decrypt your drive when you've chosen to do full disk encryption. And like I say, there's been three of us in the Ubuntu Marte team aware of this for months and we've been adding logs and messages to

about eight or nine bugs in Launchpad about this for months now and it's just got fixed today. Well, at the same time, Plymouth has quite a bit of breakage. I mean, even in Arch, like 0.9.0, the version that's on the AUR,

it's broken. It's broken in Fedora. It's broken upstream. It's frankly not fit for purpose. It's horrible. So I've backported 0.8.8 and given it a version of 0.9.0 plus really 0.8.8

and fixes all the things.9.0 plus really 0.8.8. Wow. Fixes all the things. There's a package management in section there. Yeah. Jeez. I have to switch to Mate, the Ubuntu Mate edition.

Mate. Mate. Mate. Dang it, dang it. All right. Whatever you like, matey. Whatever you like. We should wrap,

but I wanted to leave with this. If anybody in the Ohio area who's listening to this knows of some great places right around where the Linux Fest is going to be at that we could go to, some holes in the wall or something like that, tweet them at me, at ChrisLAS. You're my intelligence network.

I need people on the ground is what I'm saying. I need people there. Boots on the ground. Boots on the ground, taking care of the situation. They're not combat boots, though. They're just there as advisors to advise me about Ohio, Columbus, Ohio. You need boobs on the ground. Also, any boobs on the ground would be great, too.

If it's not right around the hotel, that also should be okay because we have vehicular transportation. Right, right. Oh, there you go. All right. So, Chris, just before you dash, do you want one little bit of inside information? Always. But I'm recording still. Wait, do I have to stop recording?

Is it okay? No, no, you can record. You don't have to put it out necessarily. And I'm not going to give away any names because I don't know them all yet. All right. But you remember the whole Gummelsbach deployment on OpenSUSE and Marte and that good stuff? Yeah. Small town of 50,000 people.

And you asked me what I knew about that, and I said I don't know very much. Well, I know about the next one. The next one is going to be in Germany. The next one is going to be a remote terminal services deployment based on X2Go. And I happen to know that the desktop operating system they're going to be using is Ubuntu Mate. Boom! You know, I should do an X2Go segment while I still have Mate installed.

I mean, not that I wouldn't uninstall it, but I'm probably going to go back to my old three. You can use it on a number of distros. But get this, I've got an expenses-paid trip to Germany at the end of the month, and I am getting to stay in, get this, I've got an expenses paid trip to Germany at the end of the month and I'm getting to stay in, get this, the Linux hotel. Oh, you've got to take a picture. Take a picture, send it in, I'll make it the Runs Linux.