LINUX Unplugged - Episode 67: Debian Community Divided | LUP 67

Episode Date: November 19, 2014

We recap the recent mini-exodus in the Debian project & discuss how the tone of discussion around systemd has had some terrible consequences. We follow that with some concrete ideas of what we can do ...to change that tone.Plus we take a stroll down fantasy lane and wave our magic wands and solve our top three Linux pain points, some great follow up & much more.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 What do you guys think? Nokia jumps in with an Android tablet. Are you surprised? Also, I hear the optics on the camera are quite nice. And Intel CPU. If they didn't put their Nokia Z launcher thingy on there, I'd find it more appealing. I think it's all about the hardware. I mean, it's Android, so it's Android, Android, Android. Yeah, yeah. Who cares? Well, and you can always install it.
Starting point is 00:00:26 You can always put a different launcher on there. Uh-huh. Wow, that does look like a... I quite like the look of the hardware. It does look like a great tablet, doesn't it? Yeah. I'm looking... How much is it?
Starting point is 00:00:36 The N1. $250? Yeah, $250 is what it says on Engadget. Oh, really? Yeah. That could be pretty compelling. I was trying to find out information about the camera, though, because I heard people talking about it, but I don't see the details on their page there.
Starting point is 00:00:51 $250, 7.9-inch N1 tablet. It'll be on sale in China first for the Chinese New Year, which is February 19th. So it's going to be a little bit. So we won't see it here in the U.S. Probably a long time ago. Isn't this interesting? Boy, they break up with Microsoft just for a little bit. It's going to have a 2048 by 1536 resolution.
Starting point is 00:01:14 I predicted this when they sold off the mobile business to Microsoft because there was a clause in the contract that said that they could start reusing the Nokia brand in 2015. I was just like, yep, they'll definitely have something ready for them. Did you catch that it's also using that new Type-C USB connector, which is that new reversible connector that's not out in the market yet? The very first USB connector that doesn't suck. Yeah. 2.4 gigahertz quad-core Intel Atom Z3580 processor,
Starting point is 00:01:47 2 gigabytes of RAM and a 32 gigabyte storage, 8 megapixel rear shooter and a 5 megapixel on the front. Not bad. Hey, we got a little video. Should we watch the video? This looks pretty awesome. Oh, yeah, it's already cool. Go, Nokia, go.
Starting point is 00:02:04 Oh, yeah. Look at them holes there. I guess stereo speakers, yeah. Look at them holes there. I guess stereo speakers, possibly. Yeah, if you hold it. Wow, it looks a lot like an iPad, doesn't it? It does, yeah. I didn't really see it until I saw it in the video. Oh, I like it, though.
Starting point is 00:02:21 I like that a lot. That is, I think, an extremely compelling tablet. Oh, man. Yeah, it does have that Z1 launcher. Android 5.0. Hey-o, it's coming with L. There's another check in the box. Damn. Boy, I think they nailed it, didn't they?
Starting point is 00:02:38 Good for Nokia. Boy, that's great. I love Nokia hardware. Really love Nokia hardware. So that's great. Yeah, I like the... It clearly shows that they really aren't in bed all that much with Microsoft because – It's a different company.
Starting point is 00:02:51 No, I understand that. But that whole philosophy is sticking with Windows-related stuff. I'm ready for my Mego-based Nokia tablet. Hey, did you guys see that people are warning that – Well, YOLA are doing something new tomorrow. What? They're announcing something tomorrow as well. Oh, okay, hold on.
Starting point is 00:03:09 All right, screw the BitTorrent thing. Tell me about this. Go to YOLA.com. YOLA.com! Yeah, I'm really hoping for a YOLA 2, but I mean... Oh, I heard about this. That's right.
Starting point is 00:03:20 You know what? I saw this, I think, before last started, but I forgot to put it in the show. That's right. This is... So you think, before last started, but I forgot to put it in the show. That's right. This is, so you think it's a tablet, Popey? Could be. If you go to reviewyola.blogspot.com, they actually have a good write-up on it where they show the corner that YOLA shows compared to a tablet, a generic tablet, and the UI is almost similar.
Starting point is 00:03:51 Wow. So there's people already dissecting the teaser image? Oh, I see. The corner of the device? I have the picture up on the video stream if you're watching. Yeah. Interesting, you guys. We could have some cool hardware coming soon. Some cool hardware.
Starting point is 00:04:06 I'm really happy with my ULA one, except for the camera and screen. Wow. You know what? I'm really hoping that we get something interesting out of them. Boy, maybe they'd have time shipping for Christmas. I could put it on Santa's list. So I was going to say, there was a story about these hackers claiming, quote unquote hackers, claiming that BitTorrent Sync should not be trusted for sensitive data. I haven't read through the story.
Starting point is 00:04:34 Has anybody read through this yet? Well, it shouldn't be trusted anyway, and we've been telling you that for ages. Right. Because it's proprietary software. It's proprietary software. It's negative in the freedom dimension. Exactly. That's something that- It's negative in the freedom dimension. Exactly. That's something that...
Starting point is 00:04:45 It's negative in the freedom dimension. That's something that our friends over at Pulse definitely have going for them, is that it's open source. Now, we've also discussed many times the benefits of BitTorrent Sync. So I think a lot of people understand there's pros and cons to both. But I think it's pretty obvious at this point. If it's not open source, don't trust it with your data. And you know what's funny is I don't necessarily...
Starting point is 00:05:08 Because SpiderOak isn't fully open source. I think the client is. I think a lot of the protocols document. I don't remember where the line is with SpiderOak, but I have more trust there. So if you can't use Pulse and you don't want to use BitTorrent Sync and you've got to use something, check out SpiderOak. Pulse, and you don't want to use BitTorrent Sync, you've got to use something, check out SpiderOak.
Starting point is 00:05:29 Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's celebrating its cheat day. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt. Hey, Matt. So it's been a few weeks, almost a month, that I've just been kind of going like really light on the breads and stuff. Not like 100% cut it out, but really light,
Starting point is 00:05:47 you know, just really going back to that, getting back to that. And it's, oh, it's been great, man. It's been great.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Uh, but today before the show, we're working on something huge for tomorrow. And I don't, you know, it's like in the, it's like in this last stage where it's the most work and you don't know if you're going to make it in time,
Starting point is 00:06:01 but we have something really big for the Jupiter Broadcasting Network tomorrow that we're working on today. But I'm like starving and I'm like, okay, I gotta order a Jimmy John's sandwich. I can't leave. You've been listening to the radio. No, it's just like, I know, I gotta get this work done and then I gotta
Starting point is 00:06:17 go do the Unplugged show. I gotta go do the Unplugged show. So I figure I'll order a Jimmy John's, but I'm going to be a good boy. Lettuce wrap that sandwich. I'm going to get a lettuce wrap, right? Yeah, yeah. A little roughage, sure. So I order Rikai's sandwich because, you know, he's working on this project with me. And I order myself a nice big lettuce wrap, double up on that meat, Matt. I get double up on that meat. And it shows up at the front door. I grab the bag. I go upstairs. We get all
Starting point is 00:06:37 situated in our offices. We sit down and we start working again. And you know what? They put it on bread. And at that point i was so hungry i i and i've been wanting a sandwich so bad man i've been wanting a sandwich so bad i ate the whole sandwich matt and i got a little bit i think if i went to the doctor right now they would say chris you are clinically diagnosed with food coma you are currently in a state of food coma and so we're going to get through today's episode it's going to be kind of a thick episode. There's a lot of things going on with the Debian project. You've probably seen some of it. And I want to walk away from today's episode after we talk about what's happened. change the tone of the discussion and the discourse and encourage merit-based discussion again and sort of back away from sort of the tribal war.
Starting point is 00:07:28 Even though it's a natural tendency, what can we do? What could Jupiter Broadcasting foster to promote that? Like more like, you know, at a base level. And I think there's a few possibilities there. So we're going to recap what's been going on with Debian, then transition into that. We've also got a few other interesting follow-up things. We had a big system D survey done.
Starting point is 00:07:50 Producer Q5Sys put that together. We had almost 5,000 respondents, and we're going to go over some of those responses in regards to SystemD in today's episode. And then when we have a chance, we're going to get to something that might sound like it's pondering a negative, when in reality, I think we're going to find a few strengths of desktop Linux that we can promote to future switchers. So we're going to have a lot to accomplish, plus the feedback in today's episode. So let me bring on our panel of experts, our mumble room. Time-appropriate greetings, mumble room. Time-appropriate.
Starting point is 00:08:16 Hello. Hello, guys. Hello. Hello. I'm excited because I think we're going to accomplish something big today. I feel like if we can pull off even a little bit of what I want to discuss, I'm going to be really proud of the Unplugged show. But before we get to that, we've got to follow up on probably what everybody else actually cares about.
Starting point is 00:08:36 That was the whole Chromium Firefox thing. We got a couple of emails. Colton sent one in about the Chromium Challenge. He decided after last week's show, he's a Firefox user, he says, you know what, I'm going to take that Chromium Challenge. I'm going to take that Chromium challenge. He decided after last week's show, he's a Firefox user, he says, you know what? I'm going to take that Chromium challenge. I'm going to take that Chromium challenge. So after watching your Firefox challenge, I decided to take it. I'm now on Chromium, and I'm really amazed
Starting point is 00:08:54 at what a difference there is between the two. Bugs I once attributed to Linux, I now attribute to Firefox. For instance, I had some weird full-screen flash video issues in Firefox that are completely gone now that I'm using Chromium. No special config required. It also makes much more sense to use Chromium since I have a Chromecast.
Starting point is 00:09:10 However, I didn't realize that. I don't know. It clicks with me now. Anyways, thanks for the great show. Colton. Now, we got some emails that said, oh, yeah, I had a few problems. But Lionhead here in the Mumba Room actually took the Chromium challenge. And his story isn't quite as positive as Colton's.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Lionhead, how was your Chromium Challenge week? Well, for me, it was thrilled with several minor annoyances that when repeated a thousand times will make you go mad. Like, what happened, man? I felt that way about firefox so that's interesting well one of the things i do is that i dark theme everything and that is a serious thing for me and when i browse reddit which i do quite frequently it loads the white page right before it goes dark and when do that, a lot of times it gets... It flashes. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:08 So one of your favorite little modifications didn't work under Chromium, probably in a difference in the way they render the web page. Probably another thing I also like to have is the way that Firefox handles pinned tabs, which was just adding an extension, but again, the whole thing about why should I use something that needs an extension? but again, the whole thing about why should I use something that needs an extension.
Starting point is 00:10:27 When it's built into your other browser. The third problem I had was, for some reason, in the last three days, I had random tab crashes all the time. Do you think it was a plug-in or just something else? I have no idea, but even empty tabs just said, oh snap, crashed. Didn't you feel great at that off-snap just something else? I have no idea, but even Empty Tabs just said, oh snap, crouched. Didn't you feel great at that off-snap air, though? Yes, but
Starting point is 00:10:52 still. No, that's fair. So you're switching back obviously. Have you already switched back to Firefox? I'm back on Firefox now. You made it the week, though. Wow, I'm impressed. Well, yeah, that goes to show you. Different strokes for different browsers?
Starting point is 00:11:08 I don't think I have that quite right, Matt. We need to refine that. You and I, I think we can come up with a slogan there, though. Something. I don't know. We'll have to work it out. All right. Different trousers for different browsers.
Starting point is 00:11:18 Okay, that's good. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Oh, that really hits home. I would love to do something. I hardly wear trousers. If there was something that could work in a gecko, you know, for the Gecko render, like different – I got nothing, though. I'm not that quick.
Starting point is 00:11:29 I need some time. And then I got it. Are we talking Gecko the lizard or Gordon Gecko? I was thinking Gecko. No, I was thinking Gecko the rendering engine. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. So Producer Q5Sys ran this, what he, quote-unquote, simple system D survey.
Starting point is 00:11:45 And he's now published the results. And so he had 4,755 individuals who responded. The survey responses show that 47 of the respondents are in favor of system D. But I want to dig into this because I have some questions about this survey. And what it shows about desktop usage versus server usage and all these kinds of things i think are a little fascinating so before we do that why don't i thank our first sponsor and that's digital ocean head over to digital ocean right now and start checking them out while i talk about it digitalocean.com it's worth a visit i think you're
Starting point is 00:12:18 going to be pretty impressed so what is digital ocean it's a simple cloud hosting provider and they're dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up your own cloud server. And if you go over there right now, DigitalOcean.com, check them out. You can create an account in just seconds. It's pretty impressive. And we also have a promo code that you can use. Unplug November to get a $10 credit. You apply that to the balance of your account.
Starting point is 00:12:38 No credit card required. You can get started with a droplet for two months for free. Because DigitalOcean droplets start at only $5 a month month and you can get a droplet spun up in seconds. Pricing plans at $5 means you could easily afford your own own cloud instance or a WordPress installer or GitLab or several different things or BitTorrent Sync, Pulse. Maybe you want an off-site Pulse server. A DigitalOcean Droplet could be a great way to do it. And you'll get a 512 megabyte RAM rig. You'll get a 20 gigabyte SSD, all SSD. You'll get one blazing fast CPU on that droplet and a terabyte of dedicated transfer just to you.
Starting point is 00:13:15 And DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. I had an email from someone on Coda Radio on Monday who said that he was taking part of a competition and it was a programming competition where your response had to come in in under a minute. And that meant you coded the response. You actually wrote up the code for the response and then had to deploy it and that would be your answer. And he kept kind of just under, just like barely missing the minute mark. Just like a minute, five seconds, a minute, three seconds. You know, all these, like, what am I doing? A minute, one second. And then he realized the server was located in France.
Starting point is 00:13:53 So he deployed a DigitalOcean droplet over in Amsterdam, cut down that latency time, and now he's in the top leaderboards. Nice. And DigitalOcean, you've seen the power right here on Linux Unplugged. Last week when Wimpy deployed the brand new version of Ubuntu Mate Edition live on the show, he used DigitalOcean's resources to do that. And their interface to do all of it is crazy simple and intuitive. And they have an API where you can get started on your own and write some code
Starting point is 00:14:17 and interact with this stuff automatically. Or integrate it in with your management infrastructure or take advantage of some of the things the community has already written. It's really slick. And they're paying for tutorials because they're trying to get that up to a really high level. So if you've got some experience with something, go work with DigitalOcean. We have a link in our show notes and write up a tutorial. They might pay up to $200 for that. That might be worth your time. They've also got a position open right now for an editor. So that could be an opportunity as well. DigitalOcean.com.
Starting point is 00:14:45 Unplugged November. Go create a droplet. Try it out. Maybe play with CoreOS for a little bit and see what all the buzz is about. Experience Docker. Try out GitLab. You might be able to tie in your own local machine configs to a GitLab deployment in a DigitalOcean droplet that you have full root control over.
Starting point is 00:15:04 That'd be pretty cool. I'd love to hear about it if you do something like that. DigitalOcean.com, unplug November, and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged show. Okay, so Q5 broke out the stats in a pretty digestible way, but he also published the raw data if you want to play with this yourself. And I know some of you do. I've seen some of the comments.
Starting point is 00:15:25 So first he asked, do you consider yourself in favor or against SystemD? 47%. 2,247 people responded in favor. 22% responded against. 30% undecided. In the age range, 52% are 20 to 30 or 20 to 29, and 28% are 30 to 39, 7% 40 to 49, which is interesting.
Starting point is 00:15:50 That particular number there doesn't really reflect other demographics I've seen, but who really knows. How many years have you used Linux? 40% responded 6 to 10 years. 23 responded 11 to 15 years. And 16 to 20 years said 10%. And 27% said 0 to 5. What was your first Linux distro?
Starting point is 00:16:13 OpenSUSE came in at 6%, Debian 41%, Fedora 18%, Arch Linux 3%. Current distro, Arch Linux 37%. Fedora Red Hat Hat, 11%. Debian, 28%, which I assume also includes Ubuntu. And Where Do You Live, 46% North America, 42% Europe, and then the others fall in. Primary use, web server, 44%. Desktop, 90% of the people that took the survey are using it as a desktop, Linux. What's more important, stability or bleeding edge?
Starting point is 00:16:45 32% said stability, 20% said bleeding edge, 47% said flexibility. So flexibility was 47% of the response. And who would win in a face-off? Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Leonard Pottering, or Captain Jean-Luc Picard? Captain Jean-Luc Picard won with 39% of the vote. So there you go.
Starting point is 00:17:05 And the raw data is in the notes. One thing I wanted to ask you guys about, what do you think about this number here, System D in favor, 47%? Rotten Corpse, is that in line with what you would expect from this survey? Actually, yes, pretty much. I thought it might be. And why is that? Actually, yes, pretty much. I thought it might be, and why is that?
Starting point is 00:17:32 I like SystemD, and I don't see most of the technical issues that people have problems with SystemD are fixable, and have already been fixed, most of them. Roger that, yeah. I could see that, too, and it seems like maybe the people that are in favor of desktops might be more in favor of SystemD, too, and there's a lot of desktop users in the survey. That's kind of what jumped out at me. The desktop thing is the most interesting, and I think it's also because of the different distros that have jumped to SystemD as the default is probably a big aspect to that. It's worth noting too that once Ubuntu makes their full switch to SystemD, that number is going to be significantly higher as well. Yeah, and that could happen in 1504.
Starting point is 00:18:04 That could be the higher as well. Yeah, and that could happen in 1504. So it could be the next big release. And I know that this is just one survey, and you can't make all of your assumptions off of this, but so we're going to get into this Debian stuff, right, Matt? And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, geez, when you get these surveys, it seems like the majority are actually okay with what's going on with SystemD.
Starting point is 00:18:24 So as we get into this, are we talking about people that are, say, harassing maintainers and stuff? Are these people on the fringe? I don't think it's necessarily that they're on the fringe. I think it's that they're so passionate about their belief that they – and a lot of times when you're not in the largest of numbers, you tend to be a little louder to make your voice heard. And sometimes that's done with eloquence and sometimes that's done like a raging chimp. It really depends on the person. I've seen both from all
Starting point is 00:18:52 sides. I've seen raging chimps on all sides and I've seen some really eloquent blog posts from all groups as well. It's kind of hit and miss. That's a good point. I encourage you, if you have any questions or anything like that, I have a link in the show notes to Q5Sys' blog post.
Starting point is 00:19:07 You can download the – he put it like in an ODT file or something. One of them open formats, I believe. It was not text, however. It was not text. It was one of them other formats. And you can download that, and you can plug it into your spreadsheet of choice. So Andreas writes in, and he has a question for our panel. And I'd like to hear what you guys think about this.
Starting point is 00:19:28 He says, hello, Chris and Matt. I have a thought that I have a question that I think all of you could maybe discuss and have maybe a good roundtable. He says, what could we do as a community to improve Linux? What is it like if you could like have a magic wand today and just improve it to make it more approachable to the Linux? What is it like if you could have a magic wand today and just improve it to make it more approachable to the mainstream? Would it be something like an app store? More integration between distributions?
Starting point is 00:19:52 Industry support, et cetera, et cetera. What could be done to Linux just to kind of spruce it up a little bit and make it more palatable? And Matt, I wanted to go to you first because I think this is along the line you write about a lot and the space you think about
Starting point is 00:20:04 is make it more approachable to users. If you could give somebody a Linux box and remove just a couple of immediate pain points, what would those points be? Ooh. I think the first thing I would do is make sure that if it's not necessary or it's likely to just create new problems, I would do my best to hide it. With the asterisk that I would like to show them how to use it properly later on, but I think giving them immediate access to a more advanced package manager
Starting point is 00:20:32 versus a simple one, things like that. Do you think an amazing app store is necessary, or is that just a nice app? Well, I think it is only from the sense of discovery. I think once, if you know the application you're going to get and you're willing to do whatever you want to do to get it, I don't think it's critical. But I do think for just Joe average, it definitely is a bigger selling point.
Starting point is 00:20:52 It's a little bit like the spinning cube stuff we were talking about. A little bit of wow goes a long way. Yeah, good point. And it grabs their attention. In fact, our next – And then you can kind of settle them down and get them grounded as you go. In fact, our next notes are going to come up. And then you can kind of settle them down and get them grounded as you go. Josh, in the mumble room there, how much is a really key hardware OEM a part of this?
Starting point is 00:21:11 Like somebody that would have like a storefront filled with Linux machines. Is this an important piece? Is that a pain point you would resolve? Yeah, definitely. I mean, a key issue with Linux is, well, I'll put it this way. A key issue for end users is hardware compatibility because they want to be able to boot up their computer and know everything works. They don't have to go on Askaboon 2 and see,
Starting point is 00:21:37 oh, I have to download some weird drivers in order to get something to work. If we point users to OEMs like System76, then they know immediately things are going to work out of the box, and that's pretty powerful. Inagogo, you think what we need is some good advertising. Yeah, because Windows has a ton more advertising than Linux, and what it really needs is advertising so people can hear about it. But it also needs a bit of fixing in some circumstances.
Starting point is 00:22:09 So Daredevil, and you think it's a problem with software quality? No? Okay. Well, I can answer that. Oh, he's back. It's more of a problem. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:22:19 I'm thinking more it's a problem of actually making developers happy on the platform. I mean, we have all the tools and all the languages, but distributions, like Ubuntu right now is doing a great effort on that department, but it's pretty much almost the only one doing it. Right. We need standardized protocol to develop an app and ship it. Yeah, they want- Once we have that, we have developers.
Starting point is 00:22:43 Developers that are approaching the platform being Linux for the first time say, all right, what SDK do I download to start making applications for this? And then the answer is, well, what are you going to do? And usually it all wraps around, oh, what tool do we want to use? And we don't support one tool really well. And the problem is if developers are making the apps that users want, OEMs look at that and they say, there's no reason to support the platform. I mean, there's no one writing apps for it. Rotten Corpse, do you want to expand on that a little bit? Yeah, I think the actual
Starting point is 00:23:15 developer thing is more than just the SDK. It's also the repos. As the community of Linux, people just talk about, you know, use your official repo because that's the safest. And it is true, but it's also the most annoying part for developers because every single repo is going to have a different version of your project. And then you have to contact these people, beg them to update, beg the next one to update, and it just continues and continues. And you have no control. Frank from OwnCloud, when we were at Ohio Linux Fest, said, you know, we have this very problem.
Starting point is 00:23:48 The issue is, is that in Debian, stable today, a very, very old version of OwnCloud ships that is no longer supported by the OwnCloud project, and it is a poor representation of what their project is about today. It doesn't represent their quality of code. It doesn't represent anything about them. But yet, if you app get install own cloud, you get this. And to them it's a major problem and it is a disincentive for them. Now their options are to, and I think very wisely, they have utilized the OpenSUSE build service and they generate repositories.
Starting point is 00:24:15 So if you just did a monocle of research on the own cloud website, you'd know that would be the more appropriate way to install it. But not everybody does that because you expect that functionality from your distribution and you should be able to. So I think the Rotten Corpse, I think the point about repositories is a very good one. It's like it's one of the best strengths, but it can also be a disincentive to some developers. The other thing is they lose some download stats. So it's hard for them to quantify how many Linux users they have. We all hear this about the
Starting point is 00:24:45 LibreOffice project. They're not exactly sure how many Linux users they have because most people get LibreOffice from their distro. They don't download it from the website. But most Windows users and Mac users do download it from the website, so they get most of those counts. So when you look at that data right there, the Linux users are massively underrepresented, and it's, in a business sometimes, hard to really wrap their brains around that. Yeah, I think it's – the download stuff is very important because there's basically no way to find out. The repos don't provide the information. Like, the different package managers don't do anything. You can't find out anything in any distro
Starting point is 00:25:25 you just have to hope that people use it some applications they work around this and this is not necessarily a good thing by pinging home maybe it's to check for an update or just whatever to the server just send one ping off one ping only
Starting point is 00:25:41 hey bang suggest chatroom by the way don't forget to bang suggest today one ping only and you go out there and you ping the server and you, hey, BangSuggest chat room, by the way, don't forget to BangSuggest today. One ping only, and you go out there, and you ping the server, and you're like, okay, now we know we have LibreOffice user 115-115-57892 on a Linux box. I don't know. But then you get people who hate you for doing that, and then it just creates a bigger issue that you don't want to deal with, so you don't do it. And there's really no practical way. You have to rely on the distros to give you information, and they don't do it.
Starting point is 00:26:04 So those would be some areas I think we'd probably improve. And this is one of the things that are the kind of the good end result of some standardization on systemd is it does normalize some of that middle section of Linux across all the distributions. It is something that developers will be able to wrap their heads around that is a cross-distribution commonality. That is a positive thing for software coming to Linux, system-deed controversy aside. And so as we get closer to this discussion, that's one thing to kind of keep in mind.
Starting point is 00:26:37 But before we go there, MJC6370, rolls right off the tongue, submitted to the subreddit 23 hours ago. He says he gave a presentation. And this is so cool. He says everyone in the group uses MacBooks except for me. I've got a Lenovo Ultrabook and I run Linux. What was a little nerve-wracking about it, though, is I had to go hook up the HDMI to the projector. He was a little worried because, you know, those Mac users are walking up.
Starting point is 00:27:01 They're plugging in their MacBooks with them HDMI ports, and they're getting up on the projector. He's like, okay, here I go. I've got to show up these Mac users. He goes up there with the Lenovo. He plugs it in. Works. No problem. After the presentation, four of the 13 people came up to say, hey, what are you running on your PC? It looks amazing.
Starting point is 00:27:19 One even asked what version of Windows it was. Anyways, it makes me smile and he says the Numix icons seem to be catching people's eye. I thought that was neat in light of our interview with the Numix guys. And we always talk about, oh yeah, like Compiz grabs eyes and things like that. But them
Starting point is 00:27:33 Numix icons are grabbing some eyes too. No, they're not for everybody. But I thought that was a great story. It's pretty cool. And as a fanboy, I would point out that in his article he mentioned that a big point of getting to catchle's eye is Gnome. Yeah, I think it's pretty smexy. I think it is really smexy.
Starting point is 00:27:51 Cinnamon's good looking too, but Gnome has that modern look to it. It looks like something a little bit different, but you immediately know what it is. Of course, my Gnome is different than most people's Gnome. I think his too. I think a lot of times people have docks on the side. In my case, I have a full-screen dock that kind of makes it look like Unity. I mean a full sidebar dock. Hey, okay, all right.
Starting point is 00:28:11 So we've got to get to this Debian stuff. We've been talking about it on and off. Before we do that, let me give a mention here for Linux Academy. Linux Academy is a great service, and it's a great opportunity if you haven't checked it out. Start by going over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged and take a look at what they have to offer. What I love about Linux Academy is unlike some of the general online learning courses and sites that are out there. And there seems to be more and more all the time. People seem to figure out some sort of CMS. They throw up a bunch of content on there. Maybe they
Starting point is 00:28:38 throw some things on YouTube or maybe they have something really high end where they just have so many videos that sit there and rot, right? You know there's a whole range of services. But none of them are built by Linux enthusiasts and advocates. They teamed up with friends that are educators and developers. And they've created Linux Academy for you, for Linux users, by Linux users. And they cover the whole spectrum of stuff. And when you go over to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, you're going to get a discount on your tuition, a great discount. It's like a 33% discount.
Starting point is 00:29:07 It's an amazing resource. You get step-by-step video courses. When you log into their dashboard, you see all of the courses outlined, all the different options you have. And they're adding new stuff all the time. They just added a whole bunch of Puppet stuff. You can go check out Introduction to Puppet. If you've been thinking about getting into that,
Starting point is 00:29:21 if you have more than a few servers, you should probably think about it. And they've got courseware on it now. And they're adding more stuff all the time. You log in, you say, okay, I'm going to do this puppet course. It then opens it up. It shows you all the different sections, how long each section is going to take, where you can download audio and PDFs and videos. It's so nice. And if you get to a point where now it's time to do some puppet configuration and deployments, they'll automatically spin up a virtual server for you on demand.
Starting point is 00:29:43 They give you logins to it. Now you're working in a production environment. You're actually using the tools along with the courseware, along with the video guides, and they have live stream events where you can ask the educators questions directly too. They also have communities, kind of give you that boost when you're feeling a little down or bottoming out a little bit, need some encouragement or need some direction. That's a great resource. And they've expanded so much on their AWS and OpenStack stuff too.
Starting point is 00:30:05 It's pretty cool. And I think one of the courses I like to recommend from time to time is their rsync backup course. So if you want to get a nice solid backup system with the holidays coming up, you've got all these photos you're taking, why not back them up? rsync is a great tool to do that. Take it from your rig, it's maybe your desktop or your laptop,
Starting point is 00:30:21 send it off to your NAS or move it just between devices or send it over the internet, move it up to a droplet. rSync is such an incredible tool, and they have a great course on it. It'll really make you an rSync expert. But that's just the beginning. They've got courseware on DevOps, Python, OpenStack, Android, Ruby, AWS. I mean, the list goes on and on and new stuff all the time. LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged.
Starting point is 00:30:42 Go find out what courseware by Linux users for Linux users is actually like. You know that makes all of the difference, and that's why you want to go there. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged, and a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. You guys rock. Okay, so we don't need to dwell on the Debian stuff that much. It's kind of a bummer. Oh, you know, I should mention now before. I'm sorry. I keep doing this. A couple of brief bits of business next week.
Starting point is 00:31:10 Linux Unplugged is going to be an hour earlier at 1 p.m. Pacific. So you can get that in your local time at jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. Please join us. It's the 25th. So that's not a great day. And I apologize about that. But we're going to do it one hour earlier, so hopefully we can get a decent turnout. Because after the show, and this is why we're doing it one hour earlier,
Starting point is 00:31:30 we're going to team up with the Mumble Room. We're going to try to recruit as many people in the Mumble Room as possible. And we're going to hunt for the best moments of Jupiter Broadcasting throughout 2014. Because our idea is, our hope is, to give all of the hosts everyone the week of christmas off and the only way to do that is if we can generate some best of content now and the only way to go through that is if we all work together as a team we'll sit down we'll divide up the work we'll communicate we'll get a real-time doc and form that you'll be able to fill out so we'll all be collaborating off the same set of notes we'll work together as a team reek i'll be joining us
Starting point is 00:32:03 to go through so he can be here for editing notes. And we're going to try to go through and discover some of the greatest moments. So if you've got some in your head, we'll have the form available probably later in the week. I'll try to make it available during Linux Action Show or something like that. So keep an eye out for that. I'll probably tweet it out when we have it done. But it'd be great if you could join us next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Pacific and help us hunt for all of that stuff. Also, I should probably mention at this point, too, there is a Jupiter Broadcasting Polo. A lot of you have asked for it, and this is the one to get.
Starting point is 00:32:31 This is something that we worked tirelessly with Teespring to make sure it's going to be perfect. It's an embroidered Jupiter Broadcasting Polo, and you can find it at teespring.com slash jbpolo. There's a couple of different colors, and they've also added now the ladies' tee, which is nice. It's really nice. So you can check that out. Teespring.com
Starting point is 00:32:48 slash JB. Ooh, I like that gray a lot. That is slick. Schnazzy. Yes, very schnazzy. Oh my gosh, it's going to look so good with the white embroidered logo. Teespring.com slash JB Polo. Get your Polo on or give away some as a gift. We've got more at
Starting point is 00:33:03 jupiter.gift. More shirts and stuff too. But yeah, so a little bit of business. JB Polo, get your polo on, or give away some as a gift. We've got more at jupiter.gift, more shirts and stuff, too. But, yeah, so a little bit of business. JB Polo's out and also our early next week, and we're going to need your help. We will be recruiting as many of you as possible. Okay, so now on to the Debian stuff. This week we've seen some more resignations from some pretty important folks in the Debian project, and this isn't the first round we've seen some more resignations from some pretty important folks in the Debian project. And this isn't the first round we've seen either.
Starting point is 00:33:31 And they all seem to be generally, and anybody, if you disagree with me, speak up. No hard feelings. But they all seem to be related to the tone of the SystemD discussion, but not because of SystemD. Would everybody kind of agree with that? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's mostly the bureaucracy around Debian. Yeah, so we had resignations from the Debian Technical Committee.
Starting point is 00:33:52 We've had resignations from one of the System D package maintainers, from the package maintaining team for System D. We've had a resignation there. Bruce Perrins, a former Debian project leader, commented on LWN about System D and about the hostile politics around it. And it's been – what appears to be in most cases people are sort of reevaluating their life priorities and deciding I am not putting up with this anymore.
Starting point is 00:34:19 They're being harassed. They're being attacked because of their position or involvement with either whatever aspect of this process. And it's really kind of a sad thing to see happen. It's, you know, watching people who are contributing their time and their energy to free software be attacked for working on free software. And I don't know what the levels of attacks are, but it's such a hard thing to watch. And I think it represents sort of this really hostile tone that our conversations in the community have taken over these things. And I don't know. I don't think you could blame system. The system seems to be the catalyst around it. Matt, are you seeing what I'm seeing? pieces of it. It's a little bit like when you're walking through a war zone and a little bit the shrapnel are buzzing by your head. So that's been more my experience of it.
Starting point is 00:35:08 I don't know the deep details, but it does seem like that it has been escalating. And, you know, at the end of the day, I just, I feel badly for these guys, but I think it is going to be a matter of finally, you know, they're going to end up with an echo chamber of like-minded people if they keep this up.
Starting point is 00:35:24 All the people that disagree see things differently. All right, Dare Devlin. So you specifically in the – focusing on the Debian aspect of these latest fallouts, you think it's maybe a symptom of getting too big, too bureaucratic? No. I actually think it's particularly to the tone. So the bureaucracy, I guess these people were fine with it. So far, they've been able to get through situations through this bureaucratic process. It seems to me that it's rather the tone that was passed on the bureaucratic systems lately.
Starting point is 00:35:59 Like, you should do this, which was never the case. It was up to the maintainers. And suddenly, there's decisions being made, and the maintainers are just taking quote-unquote orders. And in a position of if you don't like it, just drop it. One of the more poignant comments that I saw was Bruce's, the former Debian project leader. And really what he said is internally inside Debian, they've lost empathy towards the end user. He said that it's sort of become this cold, calculated system, and it doesn't take into account the fact that there are certain things that end users care about, and there are certain things end users couldn't care less about. And I wonder if this is, and I hate to think about it like this, but is this the result when you sort of have a, quote unquote, democracy
Starting point is 00:36:57 type style leadership for a distribution? So let me explain why I think this before I dig myself too deep into a hole. Arch. Here's how Arch made the transition to SystemD. Hey, guys, we're thinking about doing this. There was some turmoil. They said, okay, well, here's what we'll do. We'll support both systems as long as there's somebody that maintains the init scripts and all the stuff for each systems. And then when that ends, then we'll just transition to one system.
Starting point is 00:37:22 And that's exactly what happened. People stopped making scripts for the old system, and they transitioned entirely over to SystemD. And it happened fairly soon. And in fact, because they did it so orderly, I don't know the details on this, but I think, and maybe some of the Mumba Room has told me this, I think, one of the guys at Arch now works on SystemD for his full-time gig because they really did such a professional job of transitioning over to this. And I think that might be because Arch essentially is controlled by a small group of developers. And they just make a decision and they go for it, right?
Starting point is 00:37:55 And other distributions have people that just make, you know, Mark Shutterworth makes a blog post and says, all right, yep, well, now we're going to SystemD. And I'm sure there was internal discussions about it. But once it's declared, it's declared. And I know I've raised this point before, but it seems like every few years, and this is the worst one I think I've ever seen, Debian goes through these mini implosions. And I look at this and I think this has to just be because as human beings, we're just not very good at this kind of thing. Boy, you know, the more I think about it, I think really when you compare the Arch and the Debian communities, I honestly think back to the introduction to Buck Rogers, the intro of the show, to where it has all the things happening through time.
Starting point is 00:38:31 That's how I see Debian in a lot of ways. I feel like that, as you said, they have many implosions. But I also think the fact is that there's a lot of ego that floats around in that circle. Arch users honestly like Arch or go away. They don't care. You know, I've never really got a sense of ego from the Arch community that I've gotten from other distributions. And so that may play a part too to where
Starting point is 00:38:51 yes, it was just stated, this is what we're doing. Like it, lump it, or leave. And the Debian people are like, well, you know, we've got to have this big community thing about it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I do feel like there's a lot of ego stroking going back and forth. I don't know. Am I wrong? Well, Derek Delvin, do you think it could be that it's more of a, hey, I didn't sign up for this kind of mentality? Yes, I didn't sign up for doing the work for that particular thing.
Starting point is 00:39:13 And now suddenly there is that expectation. In the past, that's not how it was done in Debian. It was up to the maintainers. And now this is being moved up to whoever is leading and the folks are just saying, okay, I'm going to drop it. So it is a little – it's like it's egos combined with a bureaucratic structure mixed with people who are like, well, this isn't what I signed up for. I don't want to do this, and all of these things come together, and you have a toxic situation. Now, here is where I want to move the discussion towards. have a toxic situation. Now, here's where I want to move the discussion towards. I still maintain that I think a fanning of the flames, and I think that's putting it very generously, I would almost
Starting point is 00:39:52 say throwing fuel on the fire is a more inept analogy, is the quote-unquote open source tech press who has fueled these battles to drive clicks. And I still believe that it's sort of like this secular cycle where the news, the tech, quote unquote, bloggers and press write about this. That almost sort of becomes reality. And what it does is it moves the goalpost of the conversation. So it changes the tone to be much more dramatic, much more decisive, much more amped up. It makes these community discussions turned into reality television shows for the web is what it does. And when it does that, it moves the tone of the dialogue in that community.
Starting point is 00:40:30 It moves that forward into a more aggressive tone and it begins to reflect the very thing they are writing about. Have we not all seen this? And so once again, don't we come back to the tech press has a responsibility here to get the story right and to stop overblowing all of these things that fan these problems. And now I think you could attribute some of that to causing major strife inside a critically important Linux distribution. What do you think, Derek Devlin? I think that that does have an influence. And perhaps we could, I'm not saying like just a suggestion, try to invite.
Starting point is 00:41:09 When we see something, instead of the first thing be comment about it, just actually invite someone that is participating on the actual process. Right. So they're willing to come up with that. This was my thought is like there must be something we could just do ourselves, something that has to be done that could be our contribution, something that we could figure out
Starting point is 00:41:30 to move the tone back into a more merit-based conversation where it's technicalities and there is room for philosophy, but it's not a war. It's not a holy war. It needs to be a space where it's perfectly fine that I think plasma TVs
Starting point is 00:41:47 are better than LCD TVs. And you think LCD TVs are better than plasma TVs. And that's great. And we're both happy with our choices. And that's fine. We need to be able to have those kinds of conversations where when somebody says, I think Chrome is better than Firefox, instead of having a battle and calling somebody uneducated or saying they don't know how to use computers, it's like, oh, that's interesting. Now, I find that Chrome might be better for me because of this. Kind of like we've started now do, you know, Lionhead today.
Starting point is 00:42:15 He reported on his Chromium experiment. We didn't jump on him, those of us who think Chromium is better, and there's several of us here. We're like, okay, great. Glad you gave it a shot. Thanks, man. Thanks for the feedback. And that, I think, is more valuable discussion. So the the question is is what can we do to sort of encourage that
Starting point is 00:42:29 everywhere what could we do at the base level my thought was that too is like maybe we could bring more people on but the thing is is that's easier said than done to be honest these are people that are working they're in different time zones sometimes they don't speak english there's a lot of problems in that but i agree that could be one thing we could do. We could also take the third time of actually reporting it to get more context. Let it run first, then report it and actually have a comment. And I think we do actually here on this show, I think we do do that fairly well. So I want to make sure it's like what I was thinking.
Starting point is 00:43:09 So I wrote down a couple ideas, and you guys tell me what you think of this. Maybe we could utilize something like Hangouts and do roundtable discussions where we'd bring on several people like a counterpoint, point counterpoint discussion. And, you know, we try to keep it civil. I don't know how exactly we'd pull that off and timing wise, but it could just be like people we could make. We could send out invitations, say, hey, we'd pull that off in timing wise, but it could just be like people we could make. We could send out invitations, say, hey, we'd like to have a nice civil discussion about this. And then people and then what would be the ideal output of that would be a video that when the when the debate comes up on Reddit or on some form or in an IRC room or wherever these debates happen, you could send somebody that YouTube link and be like, yeah, these guys discuss this here. And, you know, this is a pretty good point-counterpoint discussion. So that was one idea I had.
Starting point is 00:43:49 But that is not an easy thing to do, to schedule these people in the different time zones and organize all of that. So it might be a little pie in the sky. Go ahead. What I think was fueling this System what's it called system d debate is for prejudice people people judging system d before actually using it sure i'm sure there's a little prejudice and predetermination in it it's a whole mix of stuff and there's because scheduling sorry i was just gonna say besides scheduling scheduling things live is very difficult especially with multiple individuals why not have like a group email thread where those people can reply to each
Starting point is 00:44:29 other in a timely fashion. And that can be summarized on say Linux unplugged. It's pretty boring for the end, for the listener, but it's definitely something happening. It's yeah. Yeah. Uh,
Starting point is 00:44:42 Chris has like mentioned something. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So, um. Chris, I'd like to mention something. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so I have a different view on the matter. Actually, not everything is technical. And, of course, System D is superior, and it does things better and so on, and we can praise it all day long. But it's not only about that.
Starting point is 00:45:02 There's also philosophical or belief-based opinion here. And this is actually... This is the same with Chrome versus Firefox as well. This is why... Not to interrupt. Before you go too much further, I just want to say this is... Actually, you're making the point. This is why
Starting point is 00:45:19 and Skookiesprites also mentioned in the chat room. This is why I was thinking instead of an email thread, a Hangout or whatever it would be, web RTC session or whatever is better because what we have happen a lot is people start talking philosophies across each other's faces. They're not talking to each other.
Starting point is 00:45:34 They talk across each other about philosophy and things like that, and the conversations go totally onto deaf ears. And so if they talk to each other person to person, Fred, I feel like then that would be something they, when people engage directly with each other, they're more civil and they listen a little bit better instead of having to read a wall of text. What do you think? Of course, I absolutely agree with this, but my point was actually about, you know, attacking developers due to, or
Starting point is 00:46:02 developers essentially resigning from their positions because of a problem like that, of debates going on like that. And what I wanted to mention was, it's the same, you experience that when you say, you know, I prefer Chrome because it works so much better and so on. You're right. Chrome does work much better in a lot of cases, a lot more than Firefox.
Starting point is 00:46:24 And SystemD does a lot better than SysV and its scripts. But there is a philosophical side. I get upset when I see somebody like you who really praises Chrome that publicly. Because there is something called market share. And market share is information and power. And we should not be putting all of our eggs in one basket and so
Starting point is 00:46:50 I personally I never touch Chrome even if Firefox crashes on me I just tolerate that I try to report bugs I do everything I can just not because it's Firefox it's not about open web it's not about anything like that it's just about preventing a monoculture right you Preventing a monoculture.
Starting point is 00:47:06 Right. You don't want a monoculture in web browsers. Yeah, absolutely. That's why I took the Firefox challenge. So this sort of segues to my next thought is maybe instead of trying to house discussions, maybe what we should try to do is hyper-focus on ways to get people more involved with open source. involved with open source. So there's more people coming in instead of shouting from the stadium at these developers, let's get more people in there contributing. And maybe instead of being commentators in peanut gallery, they'll actually have some skin in the game. And so my thought on that was the way we would do that is in an episode or two, we would take a project and say,
Starting point is 00:47:40 this, I don't know, let's just pick because I love it. Let's pick the Gary project. this, I don't know, let's just pick, because I love it, let's pick the Gary project. This is the Gary email client. This is how you get involved specifically with the Gary project. Maybe we bring on one of their developers and ask them, what would be the most helpful type of contribution? What would be the way people can get a hold of you? How do they start submitting code?
Starting point is 00:48:01 Where should they go to submit patches and things like that? And really give people concrete, like if you want to walk away from this episode today, you will know how to start working with this open source project. And maybe we can sort of get more people involved in that aspect of it and get people out of the playing, you know, sports commentator and actually running the ball. Huh? Look at that analogy.
Starting point is 00:48:20 I see what you did there. Sports ball. But would that actually be appealing though? I'm already doing it. It's just that thing, like bringing more people to develop, you need the one-stop shop that I've been talking about. Yeah. If developers don't have that one-stop shop, it's really hard to introduce someone because they have to detach from their tools or their ways. And there's also like these floating guidance.
Starting point is 00:48:47 Right, right. There's no channel for them just to get in and from end to end, this is how you do it. This is something we've talked about on Coda Radio is when Mike was looking at writing one of his apps, he's like, well, do I go grab the Ubuntu SDK? Do I just go start writing? Do I go grab Eclipse? Which toolkit should I use? Yeah, he's looking for sort of... Which tool clip should I use? Yeah, he's looking for sort of a, this is the path
Starting point is 00:49:07 you take. And it doesn't have to be the only path, but it's sort of like, here's a pretty solid path that you're probably going to be able to make a pretty decent app using. And it's not too intimidating, it's well supported, and it's going to get you on most modern distributions. Like, that's really all we need. We just need something kind of like that.
Starting point is 00:49:23 There's different things out there you can absolutely put together yourself, no doubt about it. But what the guys in the Mumbler are saying, and what Michael Dominic was saying, is they don't even know where to start there. So they can't go figure out how to put all this stuff together, because they don't even know those things exist. Yeah, I'm actually already doing some work. I'm not going to advance much about it, but I'm already doing some work and I'm actually going to propose to all the distros, see if we can get some consensus on getting something going. See, this is a major area. If we could get more people contributing instead of just being on the sidelines, I feel like if we got the right, I don't know, like that could be a great way to really sort of move things forward and hopefully make a positive impact. And it's something that's
Starting point is 00:50:03 so low level that it, I don't know if it'd be community changing, but it would at least be putting things in the right direction. I don't know. It's something I think we should think more about, and I'd like to get the audience's thoughts on it. To expand upon that, go over to jupyterbroadcasting.com, click the contact link, choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown, or we have that feedback thread in the subreddit LinuxActionShow at our reddit.com.
Starting point is 00:50:23 You can submit your thoughts there. Any closing thoughts, Mumble Room, on that topic before we move on? Yeah, I mentioned the Firefox and Chrome thing, and I just wanted to clarify why I mentioned this point. You can make the analogy with systemd and Debian, and Debian is about, you know, it has a history of being careful and doing things slowly and taking their time and doing things right and not screwing up users and now that you introduce systemd which is essentially turning most of linux into a monoculture because even if you want to do something that is not systemd you then have to do a lot of work, such as you can do so much work to the extent
Starting point is 00:51:07 that you're actually forking parts of desktop environments just to make things work without systemd. And I think people in the Debian project are really worried about this, and I think they should be, because essentially systemd is not a community project. It's a Red Hat project, and Red Hat can be exercising political power using technical manipulation. All right. All right.
Starting point is 00:51:29 Okay. All right. We're done on the topic because I don't agree with half of what you said, but I really don't want to debate it anymore. And it's not a Red Hat project. Yes, Red Hat's involved in it. I think that's one of the reasons it's been as successful as it has. And, yes, I would be also concerned if I was a big competitor of Red Hat about that. But to be truthfully, to call it a Red Hat project, that's sort of disrespectful to all of the engineers at Intel and all of the engineers at SUSE that are developing on it every single day, the developers at Arch that are writing code on it every single day. I mean that's disrespectful to all of the people outside of Red Hat that are contributing to it.
Starting point is 00:51:57 So I don't want to – we don't need to be this extreme when we talk about it. Yes, it has its downsides. A monoculture can be bad, but we don't have to exaggerate it either. It is what it is, but I don't want to discuss it anymore. The system D thing, to be honest with you, until something more changes, I feel like it's, I feel like
Starting point is 00:52:15 as a community, we've talked it to death. I mean, I talk about stuff for a living and I'm done talking about it. It's just whoo, you know? I really think it's an interesting topic. I do, talking about it. It's just, you know? I really think it's an interesting, I really think it's an interesting topic. I do.
Starting point is 00:52:28 I do too. I do too, but I also have to respect a lot of the audience doesn't care anymore. Well, and I really don't understand why we make this
Starting point is 00:52:34 more complicated than it needs to be. It's like, look, okay, we get a kiddie swimming pool loaded up with mud, maybe a little salsa
Starting point is 00:52:40 and mud wrestle. Whoever wins, wins. You know what? If we could solve it that way, Matt, I'd be all for it. I mean, honestly, I could continue to debate it. I agree.
Starting point is 00:52:50 And I think it's a fascinating thing. But at a point, the conversation starts getting into a lot of different areas that I just – I feel like we've just read it too many times. Absolutely. Maybe – you know what? I'm not shutting the conversation down forever. I just want to give it some time to breathe and develop more before we obsess on it. Put it on the windowsill for a bit, sure. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 00:53:11 So, you know what, let's take a break to sort of change gears. And then we're going to work on, there's sort of a theme to today's episode. And we're going to round it off with a final topic. And I think we'll have some good answers. But first, I want to tell you about my good answer. And that's Ting. Go over to linux.ting.com, linux.ting.com, and you'll save $25 off your first Ting device.
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Starting point is 00:53:57 no whole customer service, which is crazy great. 1-855-TING-FTW. Anytime between 8 a.m. or 8 p.m., any human being answers the phone, and they solve your problems. They have a great dashboard. I mean, it really is great. It's better than any mobile carrier's dashboard, and I know because I've tried them all. You can activate, deactivate lines, transfer devices, set nicknames, alerts, thresholds,
Starting point is 00:54:15 all kinds of really crazy stuff. You wouldn't believe. You could even pay for your Ting account with your Amazon Payments account if you've got some cash in there. And if you've been kind of eye-spying that Nexus 6, you know, that big old Nexus 6, well, it's coming real soon to Ting,
Starting point is 00:54:29 so now is the time to grab your SIM if you're looking for the Nexus 6 on Ting, which would be an awesome combo. Nexus 6, Android L, Ting. Only pay for what you use. No contract, no early termination fee. Kind of awesome. So go order a Ting Nexus SIM card. Go get that. Then you grab your No contract, no early termination fee. Kind of awesome. So go order a Ting Nexus 6 SIM
Starting point is 00:54:45 card. Go get that. Then you grab your Nexus 6, pop your Ting card in there, then you go over to their website. Bob's your uncle. Now you got Ting service on your Nexus 6. Linux.ting.com Linux.ting.com. That lets them know you appreciate them supporting the Linux Unplugged show. Linux.ting.com and it gets you that
Starting point is 00:55:01 $25 credit. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged show. Okay, all right, okay, okay, all right. Shake it off, guys. Everybody's good. We're good. We're good. Because I don't want this to be a negative thing.
Starting point is 00:55:14 Because I've seen this kicked around a couple of times, and I saw it land on Reddit today. And he said, oh, I'm sorry, it was yesterday. He says, what are the drawbacks of Linux? I've been considering moving from Windows to Linux. I use my computer a lot at work, and unfortunately, the business world is riddled with Windows. I'm currently on a Mac. Oh, I misread that.
Starting point is 00:55:31 I'm currently on a Mac, and the good thing with that has been there's Office for OS X. I don't like Office, but it makes life easier. But more importantly, besides the small things like MS Office, what other drawbacks should I take into consideration about Linux? I'm fully aware of how awesome some software is, but he wants to know from the perspective of longtime users. So I read through some of these comments, and I thought to myself, I think coming out of it, that the most complicated thing about Linux
Starting point is 00:55:59 is also the strongest and best thing about Linux, and that is there's a lot of diversity. There's a lot of things going on. There's a lot lot of diversity. There's a lot of things going on. There's a lot of different projects. There's a lot of different efforts underway all at once. And when you step back from the big picture, that's a great thing. But when you get down into the weeds, it looks like insanity. Or maybe that's vice versa.
Starting point is 00:56:17 I'm not so sure. Okay, so I know everybody probably has a few ideas. I saw that WizardJed tossed his hat in the ring. So, WizardJed, what's your take on this? So I know everybody probably has a few ideas. I saw that Wizard Jed tossed his hat in the ring. So Wizard Jed, what's your take on this? So there's a lot of really, really high-level software out there right now that is extremely complicated. And things like high-end parts of LibreOffice and high-end parts of specifically Microsoft-style products like SSMS, they're pieces of software that aren't necessarily really nice,
Starting point is 00:56:50 and it's not that they don't have an alternative. Ah, this is your drawback. Well, these are just general things. They'll just be something that will be there, and people will say, you have to use this. And you're using this because there's no training for the other thing. So we're not even going to look at it. It's not even an option. All right. So my drawback was sort of like, it can be a mess a little bit, but you can avoid that. And when you say software support, you're coming at it from like the things like,
Starting point is 00:57:17 like you said, the large management suites, like from Microsoft, maybe the AutoCAD, that's a popular one. But I feel like those are well-known drawbacks. That if you are working maybe on a Mac now, maybe it's not a problem. Because you're probably not plugged into an SMS management infrastructure or using AutoCAD that's on Windows. So that might not be as much of an issue. I'm trying to think of drawbacks that would smack you more in the face. But I could see definitely software availability being one that if you didn't research first could surprise you. Rotten, why don't you take the next one? I think there's another thing would be one is just the package, you know,
Starting point is 00:57:52 just discovering the different packages and applications you can get, then also discovering which one works for your distro, and then also to find out which version that you want to use because, you know, there's a lot of the time the stuff that's in the official repo is out of date and you have no idea. So people who are coming into Linux and are expecting to be able to search Google or something, they're probably going to have a huge disconnect up front. Now, what do you think? How important is that, like that local tech support angle? If you've got a Windows or a Mac, there's a good chance you can either go talk to the geek squad or there's somebody in your local social group that probably knows how
Starting point is 00:58:28 to troubleshoot the problem maybe not the case if you got a linux box right don't you think go ahead all right go ahead matt you take it okay basically what i was going to say as far as you know you're talking about like the local geek squad situation and things of that sort. That's a big thing because, you know, I used to do a lot of home repair way, way back in the day. And that's one thing that I ran into is if I was going to switch someone over to Linux, I better not retire because I'm going to be the one supporting it. No one else is. I think that's definitely a problem because for whatever reason, local techs just don't seem to think that there's any money in it or they're not able to learn or whatever their individual vices may be against it. But that is definitely a problem.
Starting point is 00:59:09 Yeah, and people get confused by choice. But I feel like – Sure. I think this is a problem that us geeks obsess about way – okay, here's my final thought on this. And then Mumbler and I'll let anybody else that has any closing thoughts. But here's my final thought is this is a problem that us geeks worry about way more than end users worry about. They don't think about it. See, they don't think software first.
Starting point is 00:59:30 They think, I've got to buy a device first. That's how they go. And they don't, you know, I mean, so there's all this choice, all this complexity or randomness, whatever you want to call it. It doesn't matter to them. They never see it. Like if they, if you get somebody and they say, okay, I've decided I want to do this Windows thing and Mac isn't for me. And they go say, grab a System76 Ultra Pro. They will never really have to worry that there's a dozen different desktop environments if they want. You know, they don't, they don't ever have to consider it.
Starting point is 00:59:58 So I think it's a problem that really exists in the minds of geeks and not so much in a problem of end users. And then, of course, then you get into the gray area where you have your more advanced users that want to be able to go out and grab a piece of hardware or something like that, obviously. But for the users we're really talking about here,
Starting point is 01:00:14 I don't think it's a big of a problem. Anybody disagree? No. At that particular point, no. If they have access to something like that, that'd be great. If they're just trying to find Linux because they've heard about it, then it's really hard to find people to help you.
Starting point is 01:00:30 Like, there's lugs, but they're hard to find themselves, and sometimes the lugs aren't very organized, so they might show up one day and then change it the next week, and, you know, good luck with that. But yet, that survey shows that so many of the people in that survey were using Linux
Starting point is 01:00:46 on their desktop. So it happens. It doesn't happen very easily, but it gets out there and it's really, I think, I don't know, I think once you discover it, if you are technically inclined, it's pretty attractive. And I think that's more of our user base. I think if we're true to ourselves, because of these barriers we've talked about in today's
Starting point is 01:01:02 episode, the problem of discovering it and the problem of, you know, all these little issues that we've've talked about in today's episode. The problem of discovering it and the problem of all these little issues that we've just talked about. I think it's more practical to expect that it's higher-end users that are going to be finding and discovering and implementing it, and that's why we're all obsessed about this stuff because that's all who we are. It's a big echo chamber.
Starting point is 01:01:17 And if you step outside the echo chamber, it's not that big of a deal. That's my thoughts. Hey, I'll give a plug for Your Run's Linux. Send it into the show, won't you? We want to see Your Runs Linux, like a picture of your setup, maybe a video of your setup. Send it to linuxactionshowjupiterbroadcasting.com and put Runs Linux in the subject line
Starting point is 01:01:33 and we'll feature it in a future episode of the Linux Action Show. And don't forget, too, we're covering all kinds of general technology stories in Tech Talk today, Monday through Thursday, jblive.tv, 9 a.m., noon Eastern, and then available for download a little bit after that. Tech Talk today, general tech news from an open source advocate Linux perspective. And we have an open Mumba room, too.
Starting point is 01:01:52 It's cool to join. So there you go. And one last final reminder, an hour early next week. So prepare yourself for 1 p.m. Pacific. Go over to jblive.tv and join us in there and help us maybe even dig out some of the best from last year. And you can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get it
Starting point is 01:02:09 converted to your local time. jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact for feedback to the show. Alright, Matt. Well, I'll see you on Sunday. Have a great rest of your week, okay? Alright, I'll see you then. Okay, everybody. Well, thank you so much for tuning this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. Hope to see you live an hour early next week. And don't forget, if you do join us live,
Starting point is 01:02:25 you get to not only participate in our chat room and suggest titles, but you can also join us in our mumble room. It's our open virtual log. We just check to make sure your mic's working, and then you can come on in. Okay, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode
Starting point is 01:02:37 of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next Tuesday. All right, everybody go to jbtitles.com. We've got a boat on this thing. See, I don't know if we're going to get something out of this. It's a mess. What a mess. jbtitles.com. Hey, I had a question.
Starting point is 01:03:33 I wanted to ask everybody, chat room, anybody listening. I'm doing some improvements in my Twitter feed, my Twitter feed, and I'm wondering if there's, if anybody could toss links in the IRC for interesting folks in the Linux community that you follow that maybe I should follow. So put links in the chat room. All right, jbtitles.com. Did we get any titles at all? Anybody suggesting titles? We got a lot. Yeah, there are some titles there.
Starting point is 01:03:59 Oh, good. Good. Oh, yeah, we did. Okay. All right. Debian disintegration. Ouch. That's... Ouch. Beating the systemd horse. Ouch. Debian community divided. Systemd, mm, shiny. Disasterd, oh, that's not bad. The systemd debacle. Ayo. Naked Linux dating. You know, I got to tell you.
Starting point is 01:04:20 Yikes. Yikes. Systemd gate. And also, if you happen to be listening at home and have anybody you follow I'd send it in to the show and who cares get that twitter feed I think it's worth remembering that it's just two guys
Starting point is 01:04:35 in the end of the day it's just two guys the project's still awesome sure sure sure jbtitles.com it's just two guys that'd make a good title right there. It's just two guys. Two guys and a podcast. The real issues. I'm biting my tongue.
Starting point is 01:04:50 I'm not saying a word. The real issues of Linux. How do you like that? Yeah, well. The real issues of Linux. I still like Debian community divided because it's not inaccurate. Yeah. It really isn't.
Starting point is 01:05:03 And that's not necessarily negative. It's isn't. And that's not necessarily negative. It's just factual. I mean, you say community divided, and that's true for all of it. Yeah, I mean, really, what community isn't? It has division at some point. The drawbacks of Linux? Because I feel like the Debian part was more of an overall discussion.
Starting point is 01:05:20 Okay. I mean, it could be just about Debian. I mean, that's not bad. I think that's... I hate to say it, but there was so much of it that was that it would feel disingenuous to try and, like, spin some happy little bunny time thing in there. I don't know. Alright, well, we'll let democracy decide.
Starting point is 01:05:36 JBTitles.com, JBTitles.com. The vote is on. Democracy. I think it's wasted effort. Hmm. Beating the System D horses. Debbie and Community Divided is still rising. Two sides, one System D.
Starting point is 01:05:53 That's not bad. That's not bad. It's a little dirty, though. Okay. I think Debbie and Community Divided is our winner, ladies and gentlemen. I think we're going to go that way. All right. So, hour early, early everybody see you next week thanks everybody

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