LINUX Unplugged - Episode 74: Proprietary Exodus | LUP 74

Episode Date: January 7, 2015

During a recent passionate speech Richard Stallman said users of proprietary software are victims, we’ll debate of that’s true & play other clips from his speech.Then we’ll look at the recent exodus of Mac developers, ponder if this a trend worth paying attention to & if Linux is ready to take advantage of it.Plus the pants debt comes due, your feedback & much more!

You're my hero. Thanks, Popey. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. So how the hell are you? Great. I see you tweeting about audio editors. I've been recently screwing around with... I've been taking another crack at the sort of the best quote-unquote audio editors for Linux.

Which, what would you say? What would you say is the best audio editor for Linux? What would you say? Probably audio. Yeah, what would you say, What would you say is the best audio editor for Linux? What would you say? Probably audio. Yeah, what would you say, Wimpy? OSUN Audio. Yeah, well, boy, boy, do I agree with you, Wimpy. Boy, fist bump.

Yeah, OSUN Audio is amazing. But, you know, the problem with OSUN Audio is it's a single track editor, right? It's great, though. It's the best audio editor out there. It's all I needed, yeah. I don't do anything complicated with audio. Right, if you just need to clip and trim and

cut, or if you want to open up a video file, like a movie, and pull a clip out of a movie, it's great for that. It's not free software, but it's free as in cost. And it's really good. Yeah, I'm just pointing it's not open source,

but it's very good. I mean, and I'm not saying it's good for Linux it's not good for Linux it's good for any operating system it's better than pretty much anything out there for any operating system I think it's actually available for all the operating systems but it's really good I use it a lot for unfilter

and I like it a lot or sometimes if I just need to grab something small but if you're going multitrack it's probably Ardour filter and I like it a lot. Or sometimes if I just need to grab something small, but, uh, yeah, if you're going multi-track, it's probably, it's probably Ardour, which I just, I have not been happy with Ardour. What happened to is I made a big mistake is, uh, when I, uh, I had this machine that I was, uh, testing mountain lion or, uh, no, what's it called uh not mountain lion uh yosemite i was testing yosemite on and uh for production and i installed audition adobe audition it's so good it is an amazing audio editor i had used it years ago so i i was kind of like

i was kind of impressed with it then but man it's it's so good. It's so, so good. It's so good. And then I opened up Ardour again going back because I edit – I'm currently editing Women's Tech Radio in Ardour. And so the pains that I've been having in Ardour kind of made me check out Audition. And so now I'm like trying to figure out if you can get Audition to run under Wine, which it seems to be currently not possible. So I think – I don't know.

I guess, see, I've always said that Linux has really great audio editing, but then I went and checked out Audition, and I was like, ooh, this is really great. And, like, some of the plugins and effects that it ships with alone, like, it does some really impressive like noise removal if you have like something in the line that you don't like. It has a, I mean, all editors have this, but it's actually really good. Like it can sample a section, and then it's really good about visualizing for you how it's going to remove that,

and then you can adjust the sliders, and it visually represents how it's going to clean that noise up, and you can preview it in real time in any section of the audio you want and then you can say it's just it's the tools that it has are really nice so now now now i'm feeling like our doors it's good but what right now i'm i think our door is really good for recording but when it comes down to doing a high level of production editing, like more than just cutting and adding music, when it comes down to really getting in there, I don't know. All right, so somebody say something here.

Can I hear? Oh, I have this thing. Yeah, there we go. Hello? Who's there? Who is it? Is anybody listening? There we go.

Here we go. Hey, there's Popey. There he is. Hey, handsome. Of course, now Popey's going to be in Mumble N there. That's weird. Yeah, there you go. Good man. Get them pants on that head, Popey. Wow, you sound pretty good for a man that uses a blue snowball. You're not going to see any picture from me, though.

Aw. I've got a blue tattoo of my webcam. What's the matter? Are you a secret agent? You can't reveal your image? Just call me paranoid, right? Okay. All right.

You can put up, if you want to hold up a picture of Bill Clinton or something, you can run and go get it. Who else do we have down here? Who else? Jitzir, what's your name, Jitzir? There you go. Hello, Mr. Corpse. You're talking to me.

Yeah, hello. What do you see back on your screen right now? From you, nothing. No, the wall. Oh, that's all you get to see? And myself, oddly. Oh, okay. That's pretty boring.

But there's also at the very bottom, there's everybody. You notice how when you speak, the light around the window pops up? Do you know who's speaking? Yeah. Oh, that's quite cool. I like that. And you can switch to whichever

video you're focusing on. Yeah, that's neat. I like that. Well, this is just like Hangouts. Yeah. It's exactly like Hangouts, only it's encrypted and secure. And can it do recording? It can do recording as well on the server, yeah. Welcome to Linux Unplugged,

your weekly Linux talk show that's putting out the welcoming mat for all of those Mac switchers. My name is Chris. And my name is Matt. Hey there, Matt. So just before the pre-show, I was asking you,

are you flooded at all? Because here up in the beautiful, rainy Pacific Northwest, it is bad, Matt. I have to put the four-wheel drive on to make it into the studio because I'm basically driving through a river. Oh, wow. Yeah, so one of the roads I take, a good portion of it is totally underwater right now. Well, I know Sylvania is just basically get your scuba gear.

Yeah, I can't get to my butcher. I can't. They closed the road. Yeah, they're done. I mean, they've got problems to my butcher. I can't. They closed the road. They're done. I mean, they've got problems. Matt, how am I going to get my meat? You're going to have to, boy, scuba gear. I mean, it's going to come down to scuba gear. Yeah. We've been spared up here so far. Nothing. I mean, as far as, but you've seen where I live. I live on a gigantic, like Mr. Burns style hill. So yeah, actually, well, one of the things I did early when we moved into the JB1 studio is I

actually built a boat underneath the studio. I just got a wild idea to do it, and so I figured we did that. And so if we have any flooding here, JB will be fine. We'll just float. Hey, coming up on this week's episode of the Linux Unplugged show, we're going to get to some great follow-up. In fact, we're going to make good on a bet here in just a moment. We're going to cover something for the community. And then Mr. Richard Stallman had a talk recently, and it was pretty standard affair. He has a pretty good talk that he gives,

but he had a couple of moments that he definitely emphasized. And I think I want to have a real talk with the virtual lug about some of the things he said, because I think there's going to be a lot of conflict in it, and it's something we need to just have an honest discussion about. It's not going to be to make fun of RMS. It will be to have a legitimate discussion of some of the points he makes and then later on in the show i i had a 2014 prediction that i'm sorry 2015 prediction that more of not all not a lot not not like millions but a noticeable percentage of high-end mac users would get frustrated and begin abandoning the Mac OS platform and switch back to Linux. Users that perhaps we had lost along the way. One, two.

One, two. Users we lost along the way that might come back. Well, over the weekend, a total S-storm developed in the Mac community. They ended up making it up onto CNBC National Television. Lots of articles written about it, about the decline of Mac software and about developers who have been around for 10-plus years switching to Linux platform. I'm going to tell you about that and maybe if there is an advantage in there for Linux. Yeah, we'll see.

So why don't we bring in our virtual lug, a time-appropriate greetings, Mumble Room. Hello. Hello. Hey there. Great to have you guys along. Good morning to you. No.

All right, so, Popey, since you're here, let's cash in on a bet. Popey, you, in a prediction, said that if Ubuntu does not ship on a phone by the end of 2014, you'd wear pants on your head, and here you are. Boom, right there for the internet to see. Poby making good Ninja Turtles pants on his head.

I have to get them cleaned first, obviously. I hope so. I hope so. That's kind of like a trophy of shame. Now, I think you should save that, and then if somebody else fails a pants bet, you should ship the box but they have to pay for the shipping so it's not out of your pocket like you should just pass that around now

oh yeah a pair of pants every time well it could be i'm just proposing that as an option it that might not be practical but well because i mean as soon as it leaves my house i'm no longer obligated to wear them anymore right yeah well unless you fail another bet. Unless you fail another bet. So good on you. I like this. You know what? Honestly, Matt, you might have considered going this route instead of an entire monkey suit. Oh, I know, right? Tell me about it. I still got

that thing. Oh, yeah. I still got my... I might even make a reappearance here someday. I got my man in the yellow hat outfit, so he could always bust it out. You know, we were talking about production on Linux more and more recently, but on the pre-show even. And a Cadian Live fan wrote in. He said, hey, I don't know if you caught this, but there's some news about Cadian Live.

John Baptiste has got the Academy Award for the best application in 2014. Here we go. This is a poll he pulled from the forum for CadDE Live. This is, JBM is back with a vengeance developing KDE Live after being pretty much out of action for about a year and a half. He's been slaving away, porting the application to the latest version of KDE's frameworks, which means there's

not much for us Lola users yet, but what it means in the long run is that the application can keep moving forward with the latest developments of the underlying application framework for which it is built. So in other words, it sounds like KDN Live might be moving to Qt 5 and development has begun again on my favorite editor. Have you used KDN Live much? I live in it.

Oh, really? It's one of your go-tos? Oh, it's unbelievable because it used to be, you know, my favorite let's crash an editor, editor. But here in recent years, it surprisingly will take a beating. It's fast. It's stable, surprisingly. I can add to it all day long. I can have 50 lines or whatever. It doesn't care. It just works.

And it's like, yeah. And it, you know, it makes a lot of like compositing and green screen and all that type of stuff. It makes it real easy to do. Once you get used to the flow, you know, for casual usage, I would recommend it, yeah. Well, then I'm glad to hear the development continues, so thank you to Katie and my fan for sending that in. I think I've had probably more luck with the earlier versions of OpenShot, but...

I want to like it. It just, you know, I can only hit save so many times. After a while. You do have to develop a save tick. You do. And if I want to do anything with any, you know, more than three lines or, you know, oh, forget it. It's just, it needs a little work. I'm excited to see what they do in the future, though.

So I, you know, since we moved into JB1 last year, Rikai has been our editor. So I don't actually do any video editing really anymore unless I want to. So it's not really been something that I've had to really push very much. But I have – it's called AvidMux. Am I saying that right, guys? Are you familiar with this? Sounds close. AvidMux.

A-V-I-D-Mux. AvidMux. Yes. Okay. So you guys all know what I'm talking about, right? This, like for example, today I got like three clips from RMS's speech.

And what it allows me to do is I opened up the WebM file that RMS's speech is in and I was able to go in and just say here's a marker and now here's a marker out. Take these, take between these two markers and save that as its own standalone WebM file. And it doesn't do any recoding.

It just takes that section of the file out, re-encapsulates it back in a WebM wrapper, and just drops it on the file system. So there's no degradation in quality because there's no re-encoding. It's very sweet like that. Very sweet like that. Yeah, and it does it with basically anything you've got a codec for. And so you might consider if you don't need a full-fledged freaking editor, sometimes you can do quite a bit with just chopping the ends and maybe even dropping in and pasting in like maybe intro and outro clips,

and you don't even need a full thing because then you just save that out to one MKV master file, and then you run that through Handbrake to make your versions, and you're done. It's really easy. So you don't – what I'm discovering is, is I started rethinking about this and what I realized is, well, if my, if my production needs are reduced now that Rekai is really handling, handling the editing of the shows, then maybe I don't need a full-fledged editing suite of tools. And once I kind of made that shift in mindset, it really was a lot easier, but it depends on your workload. All right.

Very good. So we've got a few things I want to talk about. And Colonel Linux, are you still here? Yes, you are, but you're muted. All right. Well, stand by. I'm going to go to you, but first I'll let you get your audio sorted while I take a quick moment and talk about Linux Academy. So Linux Academy is a sponsor of the Linux Unplugged show,

and I think they're a perfect fit for our audience. We were just talking about kind of moving yourself forward a little bit and trying new things and changing the way you think about things. That's one of the things that Linux Academy has allowed me to do. Here's why. You can get started by going to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. You'll get our special 33% discount. linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And then you get access

to all of their content. I've logged in there. And I've been surprised. I kind of had a rethinking process when I went to LinuxAcademy.com specifically slash DevOps. And I realized that DevOps is actually something that I guess I was

sort of doing for a long time and didn't realize that's what we would call it. And this is an area that's guess I was sort of doing for a long time and didn't realize that's what we would call it. And this is an area that's growing like nuts. And so Linux Academy has been developing courseware specifically for that area. But they've also got courseware, anything you'd want to scratch a niche on for Linux, really from mastering Linux to absolute beginner stuff. And you can walk away from this and go get certifications. It happens all the time. In fact, I've been getting some success stories, which is awesome.

Thank you to the audience for sending that in. If you get a cert after taking a Linux Academy, of course, I love hearing about it. So keep sending them in. It's really encouraging, too, because if you ever kind of bottom out a little bit, they've got a community of support that will help you kind of get going again. But they also have a system that will give you really easy to adjust and assess time for how long something's going to take. You'll log in. You're going to say, this section's going to take this long, this section's going to take this long,

you need this much time. And you can say, you know what, Linux Academy, bro, I only got so much time, I'm a busy man. And it will automatically create a learning plan that matches that amount of time. You get downloadable comprehensive study guides, virtual labs you can work in, they'll spin them up on the back end, seven plus Linux distributions you get to choose from.

They automatically adjust the courseware to those Linux distributions. I mean, this is a seriously slick system because it's created by people that are enthusiastic and passionate about Linux. Now, if you're a listener of this show, you know what that difference means. When somebody actually cares about open source and Linux versus just a general education site, it is the final gap. It's that gap that closes the uncanny valley. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Get our 33% discount. Get access to everything they're doing.

Some great new Docker courseware just went up. Also the Puppet Professional stuff. The Puppet stuff they've got now, you start at total noob. You know, I know Puppet's this thing that lets me manage servers, and you go to like, okay, I'm ready to go get the cert. Seriously, it's all the way through, and you can do stuff in practicality they have scenario based courseware it's so great linuxacademy.com slash unplugged go check them out and a big thank you to linux academy for sponsoring the linux unplugged show all right mr colonel linux are you back now i got my voice back

hi there i missed you so i wanted to talk about some upcoming conferences. The first one on the list is Scale 13, February 19th to the 22nd. It's a big one at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport. Are you still on your radar planning to go to this? to scale so this will be my first time at scale and i have to say the thing i'm most excited for is apparently you can paint with uh you can paint with like they have like a bio lab and you can um and you you can take the the biological material and paint make like drawings and stuff with it whoa yeah i also see they're doing the traditional pgp key signing party which is great now do you know anybody else on the crew? Is anybody else yet confirmed going? Not that I know of. So we're going to start organizing something around scale.

So that's coming up. And if you're thinking of going, make sure you say hi to Noah and anybody else that ends up making it on the crew. The next big one for us, where we really go all out, is LinuxFest Northwest 2015. It's going to be the biggest LinuxFest ever, Bellingham, Washington, April 25th to the 26th. This, I think, is going to be a huge year for LinuxFest because it's just been getting bigger and huger every single year. And every year, the feedback is always so positive that it just seems to continually grow. I know this one's pretty far away because it's right up in our corner of the Pacific

Northwest, but I'd love to encourage the audience to make it out. We're going to go all out. We're talking to them about having two booths so that way we have enough room to spread out. And if you know what that's like, having two booths at a conference like this, that's really quite an event, and I think it's going to be amazing. And hopefully, not everything's lined up yet. We're all at the very beginning stages, but hopefully we'll be able to live stream the entire thing

and we might even be able to do that using Linux so stay tuned for information on that so we'll have links to both those in the show notes if you want to check out

more details love to see you guys at LinuxFest Northwest I think we're going to go all out and I hope we're going to get as much of the crew out here as possible

so we'll find out and that's again April 25th and the 26th 2015 in Bellingham, Washington. LinuxFestNorthwest.org for more information. Mr. Rotten Corpse, are you still here or did you have to jet off? I'm here. All right.

And are you ready to talk about the new pick site that you set up? Yep, sure. All right. So it's at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash lastpicks. And now with the complete entire essentially essentially nine-year history, runs Linux. This is unbelievable. It made me realize how old the show. Episode one, Linux Action Show.

My TiVo runs Linux. June 10th, 2006, which is quite a long time ago. So Rotten Corpse, tell us about this pick site and how maybe people could contribute, fork their own, etc. The pick site is written in PHP. So if you know PHP, you can help out with that in that case. But if you don't, you can actually contribute through adding data from the GitHub site.

So if you go to the GitHub page, you'll see that there is a folder that says site and then inside that folder is the GitHub site. So if you go to the GitHub page, you'll see that there is a folder that says site, and then inside that folder is the data file, and everything is stored in the data file. Oh, okay. So there's a template in the data file, so you just copy and paste and add it to the bottom of the file, and it's that simple to just change the numbers

and then add the name of the pic and the URL, and that's pretty much all you have to do. And just send a pull request. And I have a tutorial that I'm working on that explains how to do everything. But also another tutorial to keep your stuff up to date with the main branch. But one of the things I like about the site is that it's mobile friendly. So if you pull it up on a tablet or a phone, it will responsively adjust itself to fit everything. And one of the coolest features I like is the calendar jump.

So you can just click the top right button, and you can choose just between. Oh, look at that. That's neat. So you can go back the top right button and you can choose just between. Oh, look at that. That's neat. So you can go back to 2012 or whatever. Oh, that's slick. It's especially useful on the Runs Linux one. Boy, you're making me feel really old, though, when I realize how old the show is.

That's kind of honestly tripping me out a little bit. To see all of it linked and noted here, this is really the first time I've seen a list of the show like this because the back catalog is in such disarray. I've never actually seen it visualized like this. As funny as that might seem. Yeah, it took quite a while to set it up, though. There's a lot of people that helped on it.

You can go to the GitHub thing and see in the contribute section who helped out. So it was really, I couldn't have done it by myself, but one of the cool things that I set up is an API so developers can take all the data out and you just go to the contribute section and there's

an API link. Right now it's just JSON, but there will be other output formats as well. And you made this video here about it? Yeah, the video is actually just the keeping your sync. I'm still working on another one. Oh, people want their own list, their own copy. Yeah, if they want to help, they need to fork the original repo, and then once you make changes or someone else makes changes,

it might confuse people who have never used Git before. So this video is just to help them keep their repo in sync with the master. Well, it's pretty neat to see all this and this is a common request and it's something we've tried in different forms thanks to various volunteers in the past you know they've done unofficial lists on their own they've tried doing it in different capacities but this one it's much easier to find for one because it's just

jupyterbroadcasting.com slash laspix so that's nice but also I like that the community can also keep it up to date. If anybody can contribute and you don't need to know how to code at all, just go to the contribute section and, you know, just walk through it and then fork your own repo and that's it. Not to repeat myself, but if you get a new Android device or a new Linux desktop,

I totally recommend going to the desktop apps or the Android apps and checking out some of the picks. There are some super, really, really good apps. I really like this list. I work really hard to pick these apps to make sure they're as good as possible whenever I can. It's not always possible, but I really stand by all of these app picks. And so if you've got a new rig to set up, that's a great list to start with right there. And you can, again, jupyterbroadcasting.com slash lastpicks. It's just a great resource for the community.

And thank you to everybody who's helped Rotten Corpse, and a big thank you to producer Rotten Corpse for creating that for us. Well, it was such a goldmine, because, I mean, I remember AirDroid when you guys featured that. You know, I was just like, that's what really sold me on Android right there. I was like, I can't do this on my other device. This was awesome. Well, it's also nice for me because I have a pretty good idea of what I've covered before,

and I can always do a site search, but to have the list and just be able to go to the list and search to see, have I picked this app before? Exactly. Sometimes there's ones I'm like, oh, how could I have skipped this? Oh my gosh, I need to go pick this right now. And then it's so I go search to see if I've done it and I haven't. I'm like, oh, this is my app pick. Also helps for no duplicates too. Yes, exactly. Oh, totally.

That's what I'm saying, man. That's what I'm saying. Thank you, sir, very much. And it'd be interesting to see if any developers managed to pull that into their app. That could be a neat like when you're listening to an episode, if they could pull in like, here's just the picks boom from this episode right there. You never know. All right. Well, I'll tell you about something I pick. That's DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean.com, sponsored Linux unplugged program. And use our promo code. We've got it just for a little bit.

We're hanging on to it because we're retro, because we're hip but not stirs. It's unplugged December. That's a $10 credit for DigitalOcean, unplugged December. And what's great about DigitalOcean is you just go in there and apply it to your account, and you don't even have to put a credit card in there to try out DigitalOcean. So what is DigitalOcean is you just go in there and apply it to your account, and you don't even have to put a credit card in there to try out DigitalOcean. So what is DigitalOcean? It's a simple cloud hosting provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way for you to spin up your own server that you get root access to. And you can start in less than about 55 seconds, maybe even less than that.

I often see a lot less than that. And it starts, get this, $5 a month. That'll get you 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer. And they have data centers in New York and San Francisco and Singapore and Amsterdam and London, but they're beautiful too. And they have multiple data centers in those locations. You can do private networking within the data centers, which doesn't count against your bandwidth totals. So if you want to have a front-end web server and a back-end database server or some caching, that's a really, really nice option.

You could also do something like have a couple of front-end servers and a back-end NAS server. Put OpenMediaVault on there. There's all kinds of things you can do once you get access to the box because you've got root control of it. And what's really great is it's all powered by this dashboard that DigitalOcean has created. And it's so great. I mean, they've got the super powerful hardware with the SSD drives and the tier one bandwidth, all running on top of Linux using KVM like a boss. And then they came up with this interface. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you serious? You've made it this easy? It's so intuitive. And power users can replicate the interface on a larger scale with DigitalOcean's straightforward API. And so there's tons of great

community apps because once you get a good API for a popular service, well, if you make the API, they will come as Kevin Costner has taught us. And DigitalOcean knows it. So they've made that. We were just on the pre-show checking out MeetJitsi implementation that's running on a DigitalOcean droplet. Fully encrypted, exactly like Hangouts where it does the auto switching and you get the little tiles below of who's talking. It's all built into the browser, running on a DigitalOcean droplet right now. It's so many opportunities. And there's great tutorials because they're willing to pay money for those tutorials. In fact, we've got a link in the show notes. DigitalOcean can pay up to $200 if you've got something you can write. Here's an example of one I think I'm going to go for, especially as my son gets more and more into reading and then pretty soon my daughter.

of one I think I'm going to go for, especially as my son gets more and more into reading and then pretty soon my daughter. This is how to create a Calibre e-book server on Ubuntu. Yes, I said Ubuntu. Yes, I said Ubuntu 14.04. Right there, you go get the DigitalOcean droplet. You use our promo code, unplug December, you get the $10 credit,

you go create yourself an e-book server. Calibre is amazing. It's something I want to do an entire episode on at one point, but now I'm thinking this is step one for me. Try this out. It's just another use of the really millions of possibilities you could use a DigitalOcean droplet for. Unplug December, DigitalOcean and a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring

the Linux Unplugged program. Alright, so Richard Stallman had a talk recently, and it's a pretty standard affair. Freedom in your computer and in the net. He says, for freedom in your own computer, the software must be free. For freedom on the internet, we must organize against surveillance,

censorship, software as a service, and the war against sharing. Pretty common approach for Mr. Stallman. And a message that's definitely worth listening to. In fact, that's why I encouraged people at the end of last week's last to go listen to it. However, where I run into is a little bit of

the practicalities. And this is what I want to discuss with you guys. So I've pulled three clips from his talk that he normally goes down this path, but he emphasizes these points pretty hard in his talk. And I think I'd like to hear from all of us who have worked in any kind of software industry where that company's goal has been perhaps to have some level of profit and make money. And I think that could be a lot of us that work in the contracting capacity, people who develop software and sell it.

And so in Richard Stallman's talk today, he talks about how these companies that use software as a means to make money are simply doing it for a greedy purpose. And I want to play the clip, and I want to talk about it, because in his opinion, there's no way around it. It's evil by nature. Users of proprietary software are being victimized by proprietary malware.

Of course, the reason they do this is typically for profit. It's not that they're sadists that enjoy mistreating people. No, they're totally egoistical and they do this for profit. The more users they make captive, the more they can sell to somebody else. And in effect, proprietary software is all a swindle. software is all a swindle. And they're not even ashamed of it. They have conferences where they talk about their latest advances in how to make users captive and mistreat them. In effect, the proprietary software world is one where the ethical standards of treating the customers or the users have disappeared. Any mistreatment of those users is okay. There may be some pesky laws or regulations they have to find an excuse to bypass.

So his point is that fundamentally it's going to be an evil motive. So his point is that fundamentally it's going to be an evil motive. And I guess, are we victims of commercial software in the sense that we are not allowed to have control over it in the end, which is what his point was? And here's why I ask this, because right now we are in the thick of CES. The Consumer Electronics Show is happening right now. And just like Richard said, these companies are up on stage and they're bragging about the ecosystem. They're bragging about the lock-in. I watched the ACES keynote and I literally felt belittled.

I felt like he's holding a phone up there and he's like, and for those of you who like to think out the box, here's three models you can pick from because you're a renegade. And it felt like they were formulaically looking at the audience and saying, well, these people identify as this, so here's their product. And these people identify as this, so here's their product. And it felt like they were actually, their intention was the exact opposite of their message. It felt gross. And again, it's about locking me into their system. So what RMS says is very extreme,

but yet when I look at the background of CES happening right now, I think long-term, I think he might be a little right. Well, you know, I look at it as this. From just a nuts and bolts point of view, he's accurate. What he's saying is true. Unfortunately, and I know that he doesn't care about this, but this is a reality. Convenience always, and will until the end of time unless we end up in some apocalyptic world will always trump privacy.

And that's just the reality. We give way to it every single day. Oh, you want to use a club savings card at your grocery store? It will save you $0.30. Sure, you're giving up your privacy, but it's saving you a little money and it's convenient. We'll always give way to that. Now, that's not to say everybody will, but I think that that's the underlying issue. Does that make what Richard says wrong or bad in some capacity? Not at all. No, I think that what he's saying is fine. I have no problem with it. But I would point out that no one's going to suddenly change their mind unless they experience that victimization that he's speaking of. Okay, Colonel, show me the money. What do you think? You think it's all about the money?

Right. So he's right when he says that those companies make a lot of decisions based purely on capital. And why wouldn't they? Those businesses exist to make money. And they don't care about users' freedoms. And why would they? That's not a profitable aspect to them but if you make it a profitable aspect to you know to them either by one as users if we say i'm just not going to buy if if i can't buy a device that i have administrative

access to or can get administrative access to then i just won't buy it i'll buy all i'll buy this device or this competing device and you don't give them your money, that's one way you can show those companies that if they want, give them a way to make money by supporting users' freedoms. The second way you can do that is I've gone into, I can't count how many businesses I've gone into and said, you shouldn't use Microsoft Office, you should use LibreOffice. Now there,

the concept of freedom and the concept of users' rights, they couldn't care less about. But when I tell them, well, instead of paying $300 a year or $400 a year to upgrade to the newest version every year, you just go to this site, you click on this download link, and it's free for all 60-year computers, and you start putting that on paper and shove it in front of a president's face, now they care. Now it means money. Well, okay. Wimpy, are you a victim when you buy your amazon fire tv are you now uh a victim well richard stallman would say that i'm a victim i'm just uh uh a slave to

convenience i suppose really aren't i yeah uh i'm a pragmatist much more of a pragmatist than stallman is that's for sure rotten corpse you think in the long run, though, RMS is right? Yeah, I mean, I think RMS has kind of already proven that the message is right because when he started doing this, there was basically no options for, like, as soon as the proprietary stuff took hold,

there was only proprietary stuff. And now there's actually people who have joined the argument in projects like Firefox and stuff that are trying to keep things in a way for freedom that's important to them and I think in the long term it will be eventually

people will realize but in the short term it's really hard to convince them other than the stuff that's free money wise but I think that what Mad Dog said is also a really good point that instead of trying to explain the freedom, explain the fact that you're technically a slave to the products. Okay, Wimpy, go ahead. Take your shot.

So you think Fire TV and freedom, there's an intersection here. You're ready to defend it. Go! No, I'm not going to defend it. What I was going to say is that for me, the Fire TV is a convenient device because it was inexpensive and I can plug it in and it works and it does what I need it to do. I needed to exercise my freedoms, then I'm perfectly capable of building a XBMC or Kodi set-top box using a Raspberry Pi and streaming the content over NFS from a server in the house. So I have my choices. I've just chosen convenience over protecting my freedoms in this case. And let's not forget, the content that I'm consuming on my Fire TV or my XBMC Kodi box is proprietary and copyright and license encumbered anyway. Fair enough, but Daredevil, let me ask you this. If those of us who have the option to implement a free system don't elect to do it, then who will, and will those options fade away?

Long-term here, I'm talking really big picture. This is, in a way, the expression of human thought. It is something that maybe should be protected, and if those of us who have the means to implement the version that protects that thought for the future generations don't implement those options, daredevil, I'm asking you, don't we sort of condemn those options? Yes.

But I feel that we have an option to still make a transition easier. But currently the tools that we have at our disposal have been really hard to push to the public. But there is a place that we're starting to get our feet in, which is in government institutions because of cost. And through this, we can influence a future road path that actually makes sensible copyright law, that actually fixes the problem at its core, not

just, you know, we're still on the fight, corporations, free software, and sometimes the corporations align with us, and then it gets fuzzy, right? So I feel that... RMS would disagree with you. So you sound like an optimist. That's nice. RMS would say, no, it's not going to go that way. In fact, RMS says what our duty, it's not going to go that way. In fact, RMS says,

what our duty is, is we have to protest these companies. Now, we have to fight back. For instance, we have to protest whenever the representatives of the companies that mistreat people show up to speak, recruit, or whatever. to speak, recruit, or whatever. If there's an Apple or Microsoft or Adobe or et cetera recruiting team coming to your university, well, organize a protest and explain to people why that company is doing harm. So, Popia, I know this is maybe a point that you might have contention with do you think the

appropriate way to express this is through protesting like the apple genius bar well yeah i have i mean you've obviously poked something there where i i have i i don't like some of the the means by which this is done. I think the positive way to do things is to write good software, write good free software, to continually berate companies that make proprietary software. It isn't working. I don't think it ever has really worked.

I think what has worked is producing great alternatives to proprietary software in the form of free software and how do you and also market that software well and yeah honestly it even fails the core our economies are based on intellectual property the real exports of nowadays modern societies is intellectual property. If you don't fix it in a way that incentivizes business to move away from that direction, then you're killing yourself. It's not just asking to the corporations to stop, it's asking the country to stop. And that doesn't make sense to anybody. So I feel that there needs to be a tangible way to make a transition. If you don't offer a transition to people, they won't care because they will look at the benefits of these proprietary software and actually discard some of the inconveniences.

Right. We need to teach people in one hand, but at the same time, we need to provide a transitional. And not just with quality software because quality software can be transformed into proprietary. Look at PSD license, for example. Explicit explicitly allows this and i feel that if you don't fix the core issues you're going to run into them later or sooner it doesn't matter you will run into them rms would argue that i think it needs to begin with the individual developer at the end of the talk he did a q a and the question came up well what if i want to make money People might like to make a living out of selling their software.

So which business model would you suggest? Okay, the first question is, they might, point is, they might like to do that, but if they, but that doesn't justify or excuse doing it in an unethical way. Proprietary software is an injustice. They shouldn't do that. But there are, there are many free software business models, like there is selling support. There is constructing custom solutions paid by the clients. You can deliver the solution as free software. The client's still going to have to pay.

There is crowdfunding. There's just plain asking for donations. There's a GNU package called LilyPond for editing musical scores and the maintainer gets enough money just from users that are happy and send it. There are others as well. There are big companies that fund development of useful free software. Governments fund a lot, especially in Europe. So yes, there are ways to do this. But if you don't find one, that doesn't excuse non-free software. Next. So that's a pretty radical stance. And I think that's where it starts to lose the message with a lot of people. Daredevil, do you have any follow

up thoughts on that? Yes. And this is as a software developer, I have to agree, you can actually because your client, especially when it's a client that doesn't have the technical understanding, you can claim that this is the appropriate way of doing. And I work on my own bucket, so I can decide these things. But I understand that

the models and the great companies currently didn't, weren't like, in the United States, you have a Red Hat, and we here kind of have OpenSUSE, right? So SUSE. But it's still a round of a hybrid model. You still have Canonical, but it's still a hybrid model.

So there has some benefits on the hybrid model. Otherwise, it wouldn't be the selected model, right? selected model, right? So unless there is a fix on the policy, I don't think there will be not even a fight that will actually make a dent in solving the issue. We as developers, we can bring up, but most of us can actually argue that we're already doing free software for the companies. We give our copyright to the company that paid us. So as developers are really committing a crime, perhaps the company model is. But at that point, it's like me saying, I'm going to enforce anyone that got my software, do not use it somewhere else. Can I just interject here and point out that this isn't actually an abstract argument because what rms is

talking about is a framework of social justice that is around software but is in terms of technology that we're using now for technology that can be more important to us in the future things like you know heart pacemakers kairai you know smarter tv smart cars exactly now the point is okay how ethical is it for someone like a right, to not have access to the safety aspects of those devices to make sure that they are safe for them, okay, when some company decides, okay, right, to lock it up, okay, right, and throw away the key? I look at it from a completely different perspective from that, too. I look at it from a 200-year perspective. I try to think ahead, and I try to think, looking back at our history and our creations, if these things are locked away behind these proprietary licenses and walls,

in the long term, they're a loss. They don't better the whole, which is kind of sad. Well, it is human nature to share things. I mean, the whole point about proprietary stuff, okay, is that that you know when man discovered fire okay it wasn't something he hoarded himself okay right and kept for himself right there's a question okay you know everyone knew benefit from the idea okay of you know making fire that's because inherently okay it's a human nature okay to swap ideas going to discuss and

to things it's this in sort of you know commercialistic aspect okay that's made us sort of very um selfish it is against human nature like uh that's made us very selfish. It is against human nature. That's why I think a lot of people get into software on the commercial desktops. I think that's why a lot of people get into piracy. I think that's why a lot of people share stuff. Before I knew about music piracy, I was making mixed tapes with friends, and we were sharing them. I didn't know that was stealing music.

That was just sharing something I liked with my friends. Oh, hell, back in 1982, okay, I was sharing all these Spectrum games on tapes and everything else. Very much so. Very much so. So the whole talk is linked in the show notes if you want to check it out. One thing is the message is always very strong, and then if you think about it a little bit,

sometimes you get to the truth underneath it. I'll tell you about the truth of my savings. That's Ting. Go to linux.ting.com, sponsor of the Linux Unplugged show. And now I have turned the corner on my two years with Ting. Whoa. Yeah, I know. I know. It's awesome. And it's great because I've only paid for what I use. I've got no contract, no early termination fee. And remember, Ting's got that savings calculator. So if you're noodling around how much you would save, go put in your actual monthly usage. So you make a lot of calls. Let's say you make 100 minutes. I doubt it.

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oTing. It's pretty great. linux.ting.com and a big thanks to Ting for sponsoring the linux unplugged show so one of the things we noticed kernel linux and i when we're at these events is they're in a wash of macbooks it is gross it is full of macbooks so we're going to talk a little bit about this and i want to say at the beginning of the segment if you're listening to this show and mac os X works for you and the Mac hardware works for you, no judgy. Good for you. I have no problems with that. This is not going to be an attack on your choices.

I acknowledge that for many it works, probably many. So I want to just disclaim that right now. This is not an attack on those of you who choose to use the Mac. I want to just disclaim that right now. This is not an attack on those of you who choose to use the Mac. But I made the prediction in our predictions episode that I felt like people are going to start getting really burned out with Mac OS X. The quality isn't so good. You start to feel the walls of the sandbox pretty quick. And you kind of get tired and burned out on what I call like – I don't have a great term for it.

But I think of it as like the marketing debt of OS 10 like there's a there is a direction that Apple as a company is going in and in order to make the whole product line look like it's going in that direction Apple will unnecessarily do things to OS 10 to fit that like you know all of a sudden rebranding the way it looks with unneeded transparencies that slow it down or yearly release cycles. That way it feels like your phone's firmware and you think of it as a firmware, not an OS release. And in the meantime, they don't have enough time to do Q&A. These kinds of things I feel like will begin to grate on people. So that's where we begin today. Marco Armet, who is, he was the guy that originally wrote Tumblr.

He created Instagram. He's the current developer of Overcast. He hosts the podcast, Accidental Tech Podcast, and he used to be the publisher of the magazine. And he's one of the top sellers in the iOS App Store. And he wrote on his blog over the weekend that Apple has lost the functional high ground, that Apple's hardware, while great, is not matched in OS quality. In fact, he goes on to say that it's gotten pretty bad. And he goes on to cite that a recent developer, a well-known developer, who's switching to

the Linux desktop. So Marco's argument here is that essentially what my prediction was, is that Apple's marketing is pushing the OS in directions and at a pace that they cannot sustain internally development-wise, that the quality has been on a rapid decline. In fact, word for word, he says, I suspect the rapid decline of Apple software is a sign that the marketing is too high a priority at Apple today.

This is a long-term Apple developer who makes his money on the Apple platform saying this, not Chris. This is not Chris saying this. This is Marco long-term Apple developer who makes his money on the Apple platform saying this. Not Chris. This is not Chris saying this. This is Marco saying this. And I think that's remarkable. And this also comes just after Jeff Wozniak, or Geoff Wozniak, I'm not sure how you say his name, 10-year developer of OS X switched to Linux in late 2014, and he says it was the best tech decision he made all year. He says he started using OS X in 2005 when OS X was at version 10.4 Tiger. He was having troubles with Linux,

and he moved over to OS X. He was happy as up to OS X.6 Snow Leopard thought it was pretty good. Then things started to show up that he didn't like in OS X.7. Features like Launchpad that didn't really resonate with him. And things progressed he became increasingly annoyed and disconnected with the environment he said he found he'd stopped using the majority of the primary apps that shipped with os 10 like mail safari itunes and the apple creativity apps like the ilife suite for the most for the most part he says he ran essentially firefox mailmate and a terminal most of his work was done in terminals the culture of the operating system at this point was more about sharing than it was personal productivity. In short, he says,

I was working against the grain of the environment. I was working against the grain of the environment. I was in a gradual transition, but OS X, it went from a useful tool that got my work done to obnoxious ecosystem that I no longer wanted to be part of. He goes on to talk about how it was daunting that there was a complete lack of transparency in future software development and a decline in quality as he perceived it, which makes it a tenuous relationship when you're using it as your development platform. And then he says 10.10 Yosemite hit. The upgrade was egregious, he says. Messages in 10.10 is a complete shitshow. It's a stunning regression, he says.

At this point, my default position on Apple software in OS X has moved from probably good to probably not okay. They seem more interested in pumping out quantity by the way of upgrades. It's death by a thousand cuts, but it's death nonetheless. He says, I came to the realization I was frustrated and disappointed by OS X, and I didn't see it getting better. So I quit. Now he goes on to admit, I've gone back to running Linux, and I consider it somewhat inferior,

if not markedly inferior, to OS X in terms of usability. But it feels like a personal computer again. I'm enjoying the experience and look forward to working with it, even if it's a monumental pain in the ass. And then he links to Pulse Audio.

Yeah, he links to Pulse Audio at the end. You know, that was probably the most truthful article I've heard in a long time because he nailed it at the end. He nailed it in the middle. Yeah. Ten-year developer on OS X. Plus you've got Marco Armit, one of the top iOS developers. Now, to top it all off, Panic,

one of the longest time developers for the macOS platform. Panic, one of the biggest independent development shops for OS X. One of the most respected and well-known creators of iOS apps and OS X applications. Did a year-end post.

And they talk about the challenges in this 2014 review. iOS upgrades. They talk about how iOS upgrades have not been very well done. They talk about how they had to leave the Mac App Store. They say that it hasn't been going very well in the Mac App Store and that sales after leaving didn't suffer. They talk about the app review process being atrocious. But here's the most devastating number of all. They break down their sales. 51% of panic sales are on iOS. 49% of panic sales are on the Mac. Okay, 51% on iOS, 49% on the Mac. But revenue? Only 17% on iOS, 83% on the Mac. But revenue? Only 17% on iOS, 83% on the Mac. Even though they sell more on iOS, they make dramatically less money, which I believe a lot of developers are learning about the whole

entire Mac ecosystem. And the whole premise of getting developers to buy these MacBooks, to get Xcode, to get a Mac, is so they can get in this app store, this goldmine. But these are top-tier Apple developers, top-tier Apple developers saying it doesn't make economic sense. They say iOS represents just 17% of our total revenue, despite selling more than half of our total unit sales. That's huge. It's crazy huge. Mobile users won't pay enough money, but there's a lot of problems there.

So I think this promise of the App Store has pushed a lot of people to buy Macs, but this promise seems to be flopping on its face. You've got these prominent developers that are saying, look, these things aren't right. Quality's down. Marco Armit in his post says, the stuff that we used to give Windows

users a hard time about, like, we've got no room to talk. Windows is getting nice and stable. Meanwhile, our crap can't run very well. And I totally concur with that. Like, you know, we just upgraded the Wirecast system to Mavericks, which is 10.9, even though 10.10 is out, because the

quality of the releases takes about a year before they're usable in a high production workload. It's getting pretty bad. So I wonder, is Linux in a good position to pick up this mess? Because it's going to get pretty bad before people are going to switch. And that could take a little while. And legitimately so, Windows 10 isn't that far away, right? I mean, Windows 10's a couple years away. They're going to have a really strong message, especially to power users. Azure's looking pretty good.

People could want to get in on that. Matt, do you think Linux is in a position to pick up some of these? What about these folks who switch to the Mac that might be switching back? Do you think we're in a position? Are we ready for that? I think so. Well, let me preface that. Yes and no. Yes,

in that we have the bare bones stuff necessary to make this happen. Yes, it's absolutely in existence. If we could actually get, I don't know, the word out beyond the echo chamber, that would be an amazing thing. It's yet to happen. I hope it does. That's what needs to happen and where Microsoft will be picking up the pieces if we don't get our heads out of our butts and get that happening. If we can get the word out, hey, there is an alternative. You guys should check this out. Then get some of these developers to actually utilize it and then share the software, I don't know, developed for Linux as an option, I think we might actually see a shift.

But until that happens, I think that we're going to perpetuate the usual circle jerk. I really do. And it's sad. It's so sad. Here's a case study. Michael Dominick, co-host of the Coder Radio program, longtime Mac developer, needed a second workstation. And he grabbed a Dell laptop or a desktop, I'm not sure. And he installed Ubuntu Mate 14.04 edition that Wimpy and team have put out.

And for him, he says, you know, at the end of the day, Chrome is Chrome, Sublime Text is Sublime Text, and I needed a terminal. And I was able to get all of the work done I needed to do on this machine. And I think that's significant. I think it is. So I think that, to further preface this even more,

for developers, absolutely, we'll see a shift. I don't think there's any question of that. I think where we're going to continue to fall down, though, is that they're going to be using Linux boxes to make to fall down those that they're going to be using linux boxes to make software for windows and they're going to be using linux boxes to make software for you know for other platforms probably a lot of mobile and web services big time on web services i don't see anything really happening on the linux desktop and and that's sad no i mean as far as the developers that are actually developing for it yeah they're doing their thing but as far as the developers that are actually developing for it, yeah, they're doing their thing. But as far as the big migration that we're hoping for, no one – if I go outside and scream, hey, I'm using Linux, no one has any idea what I'm talking about.

I mean that's not changing. We don't actually get out there and change that. We talk about it, but no one actually does anything. Well, and if we're just looking at the high-end technical users, the users that are looking for an exodus from the Mac platform, Wimpy, make me feel better. Are you saying you're seeing a pretty good percentage of Mac hardware? Yeah. Within the Ubuntu Mate community, I was really surprised at how many people there are that are using Mac hardware. That's a mixture of Intel Mac books.

Is that what they're called? I don't know. I've never seen one. uh mac uh books is that what they're called i don't know i've never seen one um but also some somebody uh somebody in the community has put together a power pc build of ubuntu mate which runs on the um the you know ibooks the g4s and what have you um so i'm actually working with them to try and um improve that so i when when I had some hardware difficulties that some of the Jupyter Broadcasting community helped solve for Ubuntu Mate, and this is things like UAFI because, again, I've never seen one of those, whatever a UFEI is, most of the people that volunteered to help were running MacBooks of some description.

Yeah, I've gotten emails from folks on MacBooks, on PowerPC MacBooks specifically, saying they're doing Mate edition. I had 30 people participate in the testing and the feedback, and 24 of them were on Mac hardware. And this was in the real early days of Ubuntu Mate when it was in the alphas, and I was genuinely surprised by that. And, of course, what they do is they stick Planck or Docky on it, and they recreate a Mac OS X type workflow, because Mac OS X is a traditional desktop, by and large.

Right. Colonel Linux, this is why we've got to make Linux work better on the MacBook hardware, don't you think? At Kernel Linux, this is why we've got to make Linux work better on the MacBook hardware, don't you think? I think that's a great first step, but that won't entirely solve the problem. Because if you have, if let's just say everyone, let's just say we have a Mac's exodus from the Macs and everyone comes over to Linux and now everyone installs Linux on their MacBook, that's a great first step.

But when those people go out to buy a new computer, it can't be a MacBook again. If they go out and buy a MacBook again, they continue to give Apple their money, and they continue to put Linux on it, then Apple continues to win. They're going to continue putting out... But what's the difference if I buy a Lenovo with Windows on it? Nothing. Nothing. And that's where things like System76, where the Librem laptop come in, is where you're not supporting Microsoft by buying a Lenovo laptop or where you're not supporting Apple by buying a MacBook, although I will throw this in there. I think that Apple goes a lot further out of their way to make it difficult to run alternate

operating systems on their computer than Lenovo does with Windows. Lenovo would more than happily sell Linux on their laptops if people were willing to pay for it. I don't know that Apple feels the same way. Sure. Although I would argue that we've solved greater challenges. And also, I think, you know, obviously what you say is ideal. Like if, you know, we get hardware that was ready to go with Linux, that'd be amazing. In the stores, that'd be great. The reality is the store experience is awful. It's only getting worse. And the Apple stores are better than going into Best Buy to buy hardware from a consumer standpoint. So that's where they're going to go. And I think it's impractical if we don't assume that not only

is the MacBook appealing, but that Apple's not standing still. They're going to make better, newer MacBooks. Like there's a rumor right now that the next MacBook will only have one connector, the new USB reversible C connector. One connector. One connector, you guys. Okay, I don't know if that's true or not, but you could see a world where that happens, and you know what? It's still going to sell. The reality is it's still going to sell, and if Linux isn't there for it, it's our loss. That's true. And I also think that you talk about that single connector, you can guarantee there's going to be lots of add-on connectors so that you can adaptively connect other legacy devices and whatnot.

Poby, did you see Lenovo's new X1 Carbon announced at CES? Yeah, and the new X2 X0 series, the 220, 230, 240. Looks like they've gone back to the proper keyboard, not the stupid one that was on the X1. Only problem is they're all 8 gigabyte max RAM. Yeah. Which is stupid.

Yes, yes, yes. No good. That's entry level these days really, isn't it? Yeah. Yes. I've got virtual machines to make doubles, I have to get here. Okay, go ahead. So, Pierce, I boycott Apple products, but to me this seems like it's possibly clinging to a single example in order to move an opinion that this community tends to lean toward. Are there other examples?

I would say it was actually three examples, but yeah. Well, to be fair, I'm not the software itself admitting to the fact that there was a caveat that their product was aimed more towards power users, which iPhone and iPad and other similar mobiles aren't really as capable. What it really is is I have a gut sense that – because when I have to sit down and use OS X, I become very aware of certain limitations that I think to myself, anybody who's sitting there that just has a job to do, you don't give a crap about what the company's big overarching goals are. It's really none of your crap. That's why I think, honestly, Ubuntu Mate Edition is so appealing to so many people because it is the representation of the idea of the classical desktop before the vendor's vision altered what the desktop must look like so that way it matched their bold steve jobsian vision and i think people

are rebelling against that and that's why there's such a strong appeal to ubuntu may i think i think that same sort of undercurrent where you're in os 10 you feel like you're going against the grain you feel like it's it's in an ecosystem that's not used for you. You don't want any of the native apps. That is something that transcends a lot of people. That's something that I think a lot of people will feel over time. So that's where some of this comes from. But what we're citing is three examples. Marco Armet, George Wozniak, or whatever his name was, and Panic, which is a huge development shop for Mac and iOS. So it is arbitrary examples, but it's three pretty solid examples as far as examples go. But there is an angle that I actually would like to just bring some light to,

which is it seems that people are forgetting. One of the things that made Apple as successful as they are now is exactly that they didn't have functionality, and someone could make money out of making that functionality. Maybe they're abusing on the removed functionality and the people using to build things there are feeling that pain. However, that's exactly what gives them money in the first place is that the platform is lacking functionality. They provide a core basis and they give you the grounds to start running. And you start running and put the functionality

in and people buy. That's why there's a market there. That's what actually makes it even difficult to get into Linux. You have almost a version of something always there. So you have to be really good. On the flip side, did you see that yesterday HP announced a $180

stream PC that runs Windows? It's like a Chromebox for Windows. And, of course, the number one question is how do you put Linux on that? And could that be maybe the ultimate new low-cost Linux machine that ships with Windows? And, like, you know, unfortunately, yes, you're voting for Windows with that purchase. But if you can pull it off and make it a cheap Linux box, that could be a nice little rig too. How much better are you going to get than some of the Intel NUCs, especially the lower priced ones like the Solaris?

Nah, it's just cheaper. It's like $180. Well, I don't think they're going to risk selling these in Europe as many countries apply the law that allows you to avoid the Microsoft tax. I don't know how they feel about it. Avoid it? No, I don't think so.

Italy actually by its Supreme Court ruled out that you cannot charge for DOS if the user rejects the license. So they actually have to refund Windows. So it means the device will be even lower. I've heard a few stories where it's actually worked too, which is really cool.

That's really cool. Mr. Corpse, am I correct in remembering that we have an interview with a Mate developer this weekend on the Linux Action Show? Yes, Stefano will be there. Wimpy, who is Stefano? Will you tell the audience? Stefano

is the lead developer and project lead for the Mate desktop. And what should I ask him? You got any burning questions? Oh, boy. I don't know. I don't know. Ask him anything you like. Ask him anything you like. That'll be on Sunday's Linux Action Show. He's a super

bloke. Very friendly. I'm looking forward to it a lot. And I think he's got good timing. Alright, well so that'll wrap up this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. We've got links to the articles and blog posts that we discuss. If you'd like to read the numbers over for yourself you can find them in the show notes. And of course, you can always go over to

jupiterbroadcasting.com slash contact and send in some feedback to the Linux Unplugged show. We like to start every episode with your feedback, so it's an important part. Also, linuxactionshow.reddit.com to give us your feedback. We want it in our face holes, so go over there, put it in there,

and our robots will deliver it. Matt, we're going to have a great chat on Sunday. So I'll see you then. All right. See you then. Okay, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us. Oh, hey, why don't you join us live?

You can do that. Tuesdays, 2 p.m. Pacific, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get in your local time zone. JBLive.tv is where it happens. JBLive.info for the audio. You can also find our apps on Android. Why not? You can listen on the go. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Unplugged.

See you next Tuesday. I wasn't going to put it in the show, but you know where all these Mac users are switching to, don't you? Don't even doubt it. They're switching to Arch and GNOME 3. Don't doubt it. Don't doubt it. It's happening. If our Linux is to be believed, at least, according to the most recent package survey stats for the Arch Linux project, Firefox comes in at the number one browser.

Chromium comes in at number two. Nano is the number one editor. VI at number two. The number one desktop on Arch Linux? GNOME 3, followed very closely by KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, LXDE, Mate, and Enlightenment. Number one file manager. No. Not files or Nautilus since Gnome. Nope, Thunar.

Hmm. Hmm. There you go. Why would they switch to elementary? Gnome with Thunar. I wonder how they're measuring that, though. I might have to dig into the gut because I know the guy that put these stats together. Yeah, you have to have that voluntary I forget, it's like Pac-Man stats or something like that. There's like a stats package.

Yeah. Well, there's two things. First of all, you need that stats package installed, which is like the popularity contest on Debian and Ubuntu. But also you have to nominate of implies that xfce is therefore the largest desktop deployment and that could it be that what they're using to measure the gnome shell installs is actually some generic thing that most people would have on their system people just prefer thunar because i kind of prefer it. I actually don't like Thunar but there's people who want it for the lowest resources

so they feel like they're tallying window managers like i3 and stuff. And here's why I think it might have a leg up because definitely if I'm using KDE I'm mandatory of Thunar because if I'm going to connect to any SMB share I want that as a GVS mount. I do not like the way Dolphin handles SMB shares.

So the minute I go do anything on my network, I fire up Thunar. So I think a lot of KDE desktops probably use it for that reason too because it's just a really easy way to get a Samba mount on your – SFTP master race. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That was very loud.

Very loud. Eric is mobile and opinionated. JBTitles.com, JBTitles.com, everybody both. You mentioned that HP device that was released earlier today. Yeah, the Steam PC, or the Stream PC, sorry. Yeah, the Stream. It is ugly. Ooh, I like proprietary Exodus.

Well, it's an HP. Did you see the silver and white one? Yeah, that's still ugly. It looks tupperware yeah it does yeah it does can't you not order them with no os installed from hp i don't know no no no not these no not these stream pcs because i think microsoft's a subsidizing part of the cost subsidies okay that's what i thought we've got a local um local computer vendor that sells the genuine Intel NUCs and also the Gigabyte Pocket, which is a NUC-style device. And you can – yeah. And the box does that when you open it.

It's weird. But they'll sell them without licenses, so looks very official, which says that you waive certain things and that you waive all of your technical support with them because you want no operating system. But you fill out this form, and they'll send you the stuff with no OS on it. That's cool. This thing is actually built on a Celeron,

so it can run anything you want. Well, how do they lock you into it? That's the question. What are they doing to get you to keep running Windows 8? There might be something. I don't... I'm probably missing something here, but the cellular on Nook is

140. Oh, is it? I thought it was 200. No, no. 140. RAM is $22, and you can use a compact flash card, 32 gigabyte compact flash card. You have the same thing, except it's not... You're not locked in flash card and you have the same thing except it's not you're getting close and it's not all pre-built and it's not from HP and the price is getting close but yeah

I agree. But it doesn't look like Tupperware I don't understand why the nut doesn't sell more crazy. I think you gotta put it together oh it's not that hard it's more screws you stick the RAM in people who are buying are not gonna be wanting to do that we're buying them like crazy at work. Let me put it to you this way No, no, no. OEM should do it. The majority of people who are buying are not going to be wanting to do that. Yeah.

Well, okay, here's the thing. We're buying them like crazy at work. Let me put it to you this way. Anyone who's buying one of those HP boxes to put Linux on it, it's going to be easier to install RAM and a hard drive in a nook with the directions. Yeah, way better, too. Than it is to buy that HP. And then you can get iOS graphics and so on.

People who are installing Linux on these things probably know how to put a RAM and a hard drive in. Yeah, well, exactly.