LINUX Unplugged - Episode 97: Better Open Source Options | LUP 97

Episode Date: June 17, 2015

What makes the Linux awesome? Community. This week we’ve got exclusive clips from SouthEast LinuxFest 2015 & an on the ground report from OpenTech 2015.Plus why open source needs to follow the Apple model and get started with students, creating value around open source & how Red Hat stays connected to the community.

Have you guys noticed that if you watch the show in VLC or MPV? Don't watch it in MPV, actually. Don't watch it in VLC. Have you noticed that if you watch the show in MPV, like the RTSP stream, it's like a two-second delay versus the Flash Player, which is like a seven-second delay. So if you want to interact with me in the chat room, and you want to be able to respond really fast and stuff, maybe this is how JBHawkaTruth gets all the best titles. If you watch the RTSP stream, like an MPV,

you just have to have a good connection. Yeah, I am a con. I think it's true. Yeah, how, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've been so burned by my S6 this last couple of weeks. Oh, man.

Don't get me. You're trying to get. You are trying to get me into a rant. I am a con. That's what you were trying to do. You are trying to get me into a rant. Look at him. Oh, man.

Go ahead. Go ahead, API. I want to hear that. Or AKA Andy. Okay, thanks. So those will see support RTSPp protocol i am using rtmp for the moment oh vlc is great yeah vlc is good too uh mpv is just a little better and uh um and you are right about the delay i think it does have a little. But I haven't measured it.

MPV, one of the things I liked about MPV is I was watching a stream once and I had it in Guake. I just did MPV on the command line, MPV, and I pasted in the URL of the stream. And I watched MPV as this is the codec. You just see all the cool nerdy output on the command line.

And I noticed it started saying something. And then when I read what it said, from that moment forward, I knew I would never use another desktop application to do live streaming. And it said, lip sync mismatch detected. Automatically correcting. And it automatically delayed. I can't remember if's with the audio or the video just enough how did it detect that i don't know i don't know but it fixed it for me automatically right there on the fly and i thought to myself brilliant people wrote. This software was written by brilliant people. And you know, MPV, it's got a lot of legacy to it. And so it's got a good history. And

I thought, this is the application. And I have noticed, now as somebody who watches a lot of live streams, I'm a court guy, I don't have cable television. So I consume a ton of content over live streams. And I have squirreled out some of the bad, like I have found the RTSP streams that some of the internal networks use to send content around to each other. Like I probably – I can't really say this, but I had a recent live coverage of a big tech event that I put out for our patrons and I got the master feed that they were sending out to all of their endpoint stores.

And I've got this whole stash of RTSP feeds that I use to watch shows and get content and get news. And I tell you what, VLC is very, very good. VLC is amazing for capturing and recording and doing streaming and converting. And VLC is one of my favorite applications on the Linux desktop. But if I'm just watching a live stream, nothing beats MPV. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 96 for June 16th, 2015. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's mocking the com crud.

From afar, my name is Chris and 96 is going to be a packed episode for you guys. I am Plugged your weekly Linux talk show that's mocking the com crud from afar. My name is Chris, and 96 is going to be a packed episode for you guys. I am super excited. I love this about the Linux Unplugged program, our connection to the community, and really, how crucial is that to open source? That's what we're talking about today in episode 96. We're going to get an update from the Open Tech Conference that was across the pond this weekend. And then I scoured through all of the live footage from self this weekend, and I found an amazing chat that R. Noah had with a contributor to opensource.com,

Mr. Semiotic Robotic. You may have heard of him before. They had a great chat on the live stream. It was like a 45-minute chat. I pared it down to the best of it. We're going to play that. Then we're going to meet one of the authors of the, really, the man who wrote the book on Slackware. Mr. Alan Hicks will be on the show today to talk about his impressions of Southeast Linux Fest

and the kind of fest it is and why that's so critical to how open source software is made and how he takes the lessons learned from these fests and applies them to his job as a system administrator. But first, before all of that, before all of that, we're going to get to some feedback and some updates that have occurred somehow between Sunday's show, the Linux Action Show, and Tuesday's episode of Linux Unplugged. If you can believe it or not, somehow news has actually transpired between now and then. And unfortunately, it's actually huge news that probably impacts a large, large majority of the Jupiter Broadcasting audience.

So before we dig into this first story, let's bring in the mumble room so that way we can all commiserate together. Time-appropriate greetings, my virtual lug. Hello. Okay, so I'm just, I apologize if you happen to be one of those listeners who happens to catch a lot of the Jupiter Broadcasting shows.

I hope you don't get burned out on this topic, but I feel like it's a public service announcement that we cover this on all of the shows. And I know it impacts a lot of us right here on this show. This week, LastPass announced that their services were compromised. Your individual passwords were not compromised, but potentially the salted database that's been encrypted like 100,000 times over has been stolen of your master password. Email reminders about when your passwords expire, which kind of is sort of an important bit of information for an attacker to use, and other bits of information have been revealed.

And LastPass is advising that everyone change their master password. And if you do not have two-factor authentication, if you do not have two-factor authentication, turn that S on. And now I have been a pretty big proponent of LastPass, and I fully acknowledge there are open-source alternatives to LastPass. I maintain that the convenience of LastPass, if you... I should back up. Security is always a compromise between convenience and practicality. And unfortunately, having a password for every different service I use is a very hard thing to

actually pull off in practicality when I have a studio and a house and I move around a lot and I have multiple offices and I have different computers and I don't keep everything synced. Having a cloud-based service, while inherently risky, has an inherent value to it. And to me, LastPass sort of walks that sweet spot where I have local encryption. It's available on my Android device.

It's available on an iOS device. It's available in my browser. It's available on my Android device. It's available on an iOS device. It's available in my browser. It's available on the web. So I have advocated for LastPass a lot. I've even done specials on LastPass. And I wonder now, and I want to bring this, I want to turn this over to the mumble room. When you hear about something like this, do you think, all right, this is it. This is another proprietary service I can never use.

I can only use an open source solution. I'll start with Popey because I know Popey's here. I just talked to him. Popey, is LastPass dead to you? Are you going to switch to KeePass forever? Or does this reinforce your belief? So the frustration for me is the reason I switched to LastPass was when Gawker was hacked four years ago. And I realized that I reused the same password in a bunch of places.

You know that's my story too, right? You know that's my story. Yeah, that's exactly it. So I switched to LastPass and I thought, yeah, this is the least worst option for me that enables me to have the convenience of having my password filled in when I need to, and my feeling of security that the security file, the password file, is unencrypted on my local machine and re-encrypted on my local machine with my master password, which is really long and I never use anywhere else. It's like I learned my lesson. I'm using that one password.

So part of me thinks, you know, this is a problem and i should jump ship and and go and use something open source and only store on my own computer but then who am i kidding i'm already using like gmail and facebook and twitter and i'm already using other people's computers this is just yet another thing and um i checked with our internal is people because we we at canonical use it as well uh so you know i actually have two accounts i have my personal account my work account so and i check with them and their opinion was not that you know everyone should you know nuke the world and go some gonna do something else so i trust them so i i'm gonna stick with it i set up two-factor authentication

though yes right and and and can i add something to that? And this is, of course, hindsight, right, et cetera, et cetera. But I would say this is – here's the lesson I have learned going forward from this LastPass breach. I will no longer wait for a notification on a blog from the company telling me I should change my password. I'm going to set a reminder in my calendar to just change my master password from time to time. And I recommend to you, do not wait. Do not wait for them to get hacked. Turn on two-factor authentication now. Change your master password every three months.

Why not? I mean, really, is it that hard? Actually, when I went to the dialogue to change my master password, it said your master password was last changed 1,502 days ago. I'm not going to lie. Bopey, I won't lie. I actually have a little sentimental attachment to my master password because it is a paragraph I came up with a long time ago. with a long time ago. Like before I really truly understood computer security, I thought to myself, well, geez,

a paragraph seems like a much better idea than a six-character password. And I can remember a paragraph. And so I wrote a little paragraph in my mind that I have been able to recite for the last 15 years. And I have zero, zero, zero worries that anybody will ever guess what it is because it is a completely nonsensical paragraph. It doesn't make any sense. And I came up with it and I love it. And I'm going to go change it.

I know that sounds weird, but I'm attached to it. You're just going to add a one on the end of it or something. Yeah. The full stop on the end. You really only have to change it by one character. So you can add buffers to the beginning and end. There you go. One, two, three.

So, of course, keeping our audience in mind, this sort of provokes thoughts of switching to KeePass. And I found a thread on Hacker News. Oh, did I grab it? Let me see. Oh, I might not have actually grabbed it for the show notes. As you would expect, though, the focus has changed now to key pass. Well, now that LastPass is no good. And let's be clear.

Let's be totally 100% legit honest. LastPass is a big old target. It is really the target of all targets. It's everybody's password. That's – I mean even if you could never crack it, like just the idea of that makes it a target. And by participating in the LastPass service, you are participating in what has got to be one of the largest targets on the internet. So you have to have some faith in encryption and the general technology there. And so I don't think it's unreasonable to say, I'm not doing that. The concept of just how big of a target they are is too much risk for me to assume I'm not doing that and I'm going to go with KeePass.

And I don't think that's unreasonable. But I think it is unreasonable to say KeePass is flawless. Now, we all respect KeePass. We all are thankful that they are making an offline solution. They're making something that actually has a very awesome Firefox plugin. They're making something that has awesome Android apps.

They really are making one of the best open source apps in the world. But like all open source applications they can't be flawless because they're created by humans. And there could be a flaw in KeePass as well. And so there is a lesson to be learned globally here for all of us. And I do not think it is Linux specific, but I think it is super important when so many of our credentials, so many things online, I can get so easily on a soapbox about this. But whatever the case may be, I would recommend everybody change

these master passwords often. Try to keep this, try to make this the thing that you are actually diligent about. Because going forward, these things have a way of getting away from you. So try to make this the thing, maybe relax on backups, maybe relax

on commenting your config file. I don't know what it is. But of all of the things, I plead with you, make this the thing that you are diligent about. Because good password hygiene is just a little bit of work up front to prevent so much chaos later on. And I'm going to end with this. Hashtag watch text now. Boom. That's all I have to say.

End of topic. Mumble room. Anybody have anything they want to throw in before I finish? Yeah, I would like to defend LastPass and this incident because they actually did act responsible, and they did act in a timely manner to let their users know that their data could be compromised, and they give them the tools to lock it down and secure it. Yeah, I mean – And the value of this is negative. Here's the thing.

How many lessons do we need to learn? How many times do we need to be taught that we should have used the open source publicly audited solution? I do not want to stand here and say put trust – trust LastPass. solution. I do not want to stand here and say, put trust, trust LastPass, trust everything with a proprietary solution. Because I mean, time after time after time, it feels like we sit here and we can mock what RMS says, but then like three or four or five or six or seven or 20 years later, turns out dude was right. Dude was right. The problem um only the really tech savvy people are going to be the ones that are diligent enough to do this right where everybody else is you know not and yeah like i'm gonna come was pointing out something earlier this morning open source is great and all and it

could be audited but uh we don't know the last time stuff has been audited or bugs have been found. And, you know, there are people that don't report bugs. So, you know, it's still something that boils down to the most responsible tech savvy people are going to be the ones that are going to be ahead of this. There is currently a bug floating around the Hacker News, a kind of a flaw in the.NET version of KeePass. And it could potentially expose users. Now, this audience, that doesn't affect you. You're using the Linux version.

But don't put KeePass on some sort of pedestal like the chat room is doing right now. There is today a flaw in KeePass. And like WWNSX just said in the chat room, there are people that are motivated to exploit these things. And I completely agree. I sit here and I think, just remember, it really comes down to your personal responsibility. It falls on you. Don't put your faith in an open source project. Don't put your faith in a proprietary project. That's kind of what you're saying, right, WW?

Yeah. You're ultimately going to be responsible for your own security. Yes, exactly. Yes. Sunsell, do you want to expand on that? Oh, I mean, just basically what David was saying, that it really is the user responsibility about their passwords, you know, keeping care of what they do with their passwords and how they manage them. Because no matter what solution you use, open source, proprietary or not, no matter what OS that you use to manage this stuff, it's still on you. It could be the greatest solution ever, and you're not managing your stuff very well. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I agree. And Sean's PC says that it's made by humans, right, and thus it likely will have flaws. Wizard, do you want to add in something here? Yeah, I just the the one thing that i can you know i i don't want to sound like the you know part of the mob saying oh yes we just keep ass but no go ahead there is yeah but there is there is kind of the it is a lot easier to protect key pass than last pass itself because at the end of the day it's like we follow things we've been following for you know as long as we have, you know, sandbox applications and, you know, make sure you have your firewall, you know, on because it does use local hosts to go and communicate. If you cover the basics, you should be OK with KeePass.

It's when you start going outside that it's when you start and you start just kind of giving up on security everywhere. That's when you screw up. Well, and Wizard, I will say to this, couldn't you make the same argument for Dropbox versus SyncThing? SyncThing is peer-to-peer. It's machine-to-machine. You don't have to worry about them indexing your files, submitting the list of your files to the RIAA for a DMCA takedown, right? It is machine-to-machine. There is an inherent advantage to just using KeePass

in that you are one person, and you have, realistically, you are not very interesting to the global hacker community, whereas LastPass is a global target. Now, all that said, I am not responsible enough. I am not judicious enough. I should rephrase this.

I care more about my children than I care about good password hygiene. I care more about my children than I care about updating the patches on my home server. I would rather have sex with my wife than manage my passwords.

I would rather have a really good rib dinner. I would rather have sex with my wife than manage my passwords. Okay. These are the, I would rather have a really good rib dinner. I would rather barbecue something that is delicious than manage my passwords. Okay. That's my personal choice. I recognize that is not necessarily your choice, the listener, but because that is my, my list of priorities, because those things become before password hygiene. If I'm being completely honest with my audience, those things are more important to me than password hygiene. and holding my hand, but yet local encryption, transparency, and empowering me to make the decisions I need to choose if I continue to use the service. And because they check those boxes, I continue to use the service. Because I have to fundamentally believe that it is more important and it is better that I use LastPass with two-factor authentication

and a great master password than it is to potentially botch some local password management solution. So that's where I live. And Rikai comes in with, not to mention, he says, why is it safer for me as an unexperienced person, oh, good point, to maintain my own security and hope I do well and trust the people to do this for a full-time job.

So he's saying, this isn't my job. This is not what I do for a living. But this is what LastPass does for a living. Even if they're a target, they know what they're doing while I don't. And Rikai is a very smart person. Like, if Rikai wanted to put his mind to it, he could create the most ultimate password storage solution. But that is not what he would want. That is not what he chooses

to dedicate his time to, and I cannot judge him for that. So he continues to use LastPass, as I will. Just as I will not judge you for using KeePass or a text file on some Lux encrypted volume. Have at it. I say it works for you. Good for it.

I wanted to cover something really quick before we move into a couple of more things. This is the week that we cannot move forward without mentioning. Guard your wallets. It's the steam sales. I have spent some money this week, but not actually that much. And Linux underscore gaming on Reddit has had a daily update on some of the best sales. There's a lot of different dynamics to this. So if you're following Tech Talk today, you're already hip to all this stuff. But if you've been kind of on the fence about trying out gaming under Linux, maybe you don't have a great video setup, maybe you're not using the proprietary driver,

and you're not sure how well games would work with the free driver, and you're not sure how well games would work with the free driver, this is a great time to create a Steam account and show Valve that they're not wasting their money. Right? Go in there. Go get some of these games for ridiculous discounts. Go show these developers that there's Linux users out there. If you've kind of been motivated to show support for the Linux desktop

but are not a big gamer, this is a great time to do that. I'm just putting that out there. I'm going to have a link in the show notes. It's a roundup of the best sales, when the sales are happening. It's a thread on Linux gaming right now. This one was created by Spinner Will.

I'm sure Linux Gamecast will have better coverage on this than I can. But they have when the deals end, how much the discount is. They have it in USD, Euros, Canadian funny money, Australian monies, and all the other monies too. And I'm mentioning this because if I don't mention it,

I get a hard time. And also, I know some of you are like me, where sometimes you might buy a product just to show the vendor you appreciate them supporting Linux. And maybe later on you'll enjoy it. This is what the Steam sale is all about.

And I've been also, like Waltif in the chat room, he says, I've been waiting for some of these games. I bought the ones that are 50% off. I've had a whole bunch of my wish list for a long time, and now I'm going through and collecting them. So I might give away some games on the live stream for this Sunday's Linux Action Show. Tune in live on Sunday, and I might give away some games on the live stream for this Sunday's Linux Action Show. Tune in live on Sunday, and I may give away a few games,

because I've been buying a few on sale that I've wanted for a while, and I might not even play them. But one was like a four-pack of a game that was normally $40, and I got a four-pack for $6.99. What's up? What you got? So check it out. We have a link to that in the show notes.

But that's all I have to say on that. It is a little bit of... That concludes... That concludes the Valve update right there. Now, I wanted to mention something real nice for Mr. Dominic. Coda Radio is... Man, what did we just talk about this week?

Oh, snaps. In fact, I'm going to save – I'll save what we talked about, but it relates to something we're going to cover a little bit in this show. Coder Radio has been going on for a while now, and Michael Dominick, he's an independent software developer, and he originally launched with a focus on macOS and iOS. Pretty understandable, really, for somebody who wants to make money. Pretty understandable, really, for somebody who wants to make money. And he has sort of gone through a transition to pivot and focus on open source and Linux. And he's launched a new company around that. And I just wanted to kind of support that initiative because he's one of our friends. He's the co-host of Coder Radio.

And so if you're out there and you need somebody who focuses on things like Docker or AngularJS or Ruby on Rails or PHP or Android development. And he can still do iOS development, obviously, as well, or HTML5 stuff, native mobile development. Buccaneer Tech is his new company. And for JB listeners, I think if you go over there, he's going to give you a free consultation on your project or your business needs. So if you've got a small business that maybe needs an app or a website and you'd like to give it to somebody who's trying to support Linux and open source and one of the Jupyter Broadcasting communities, email him

and mention in their, say, offer code Sparrow or put that in the subject line. Put Sparrow in the subject line, something like that, and he's going to give you a free consultation. I just wanted to mention this. This Buckingham Tech is this new company and I really wanted to support one of our co-hosts going out and saying, you know what? I know the big industry trend is iOS and Android and it's all Apple development right now, and Windows 10 apps or whatever the hell they're going to do.

I mean, yeah, I can totally understand why that would be the trend. But instead, he's saying, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to carve out a niche right here in Linux and open source. I'm going to try to do this. And so BuccaneerTech.com, go check that out. And use the promo code Sparrow if you want to email him. Just, I don't know, go over there and do And so BuccaneerTech.com, go check that out. And use the promo code Sparrow if you want to email them. Just, I don't know, go over there and do sales at BuccaneerTech.com and send them an email and say, hey, we want to talk to you guys. I just want to give them a mention because, you know, he's a friend of our show.

And we just got back from Self. And there's so many independent developers out there right now that are doing the small businesses marketing. And this is one of the things I talked about in Coder Radio that I was hinting at, is I recently attended some small business meetings where one in our local town where the studio is, it's Arlington, and another town that's about 15, 20 minutes north of me, Burlington. And I went to both these towns and I attended some local business, like referral meetings, business groups, where you can go to see if you want to become a member, if you're a small business owner and you want to become a member of the small business community.

That's not why I went. I specifically went with the intention of trying to get show content out of it. And I wanted to get a feel for what kind of proprietary solutions are they using? Who's developing their websites and their applications? And I just wanted to get a feel for super local businesses. How are they getting technology solutions? And for the most part, a lot of it was Linux-based, WordPress-based, and things like that. And I was pretty stoked by that.

However, the second meeting I went to, they had a guy from Microsoft show up. And he did a presentation on why Windows 10 is going to be great for their business. I couldn't even – I had to laugh. Like the guy shows up and we're at a restaurant. So they're having this business meeting at a restaurant. And, you know, because this is something they do on a weekly basis, there's, like, six things you can order. So I get, like, this pecan-crusted chicken salad.

And I've ordered this pecan-crusted chicken salad, and I see on the agenda Windows 10 for your business. Okay, I'm already, like like i'm thinking to myself chris you have a couple of options here you can just sit here and listen to what this guy has to say or you can stand up and go into show mode and give a linux pitch and i didn't know which way i was going to go like literally i sat there I thought, I kind of got a little nervous. Like I didn't have much of an appetite. I kind of ate like the pecan crusting off my chicken.

But I'm like, I cannot sit here and listen to this guy tell these people how Windows 10 is going to help their business when it's not even released yet. Like at a moral, at my moral core, I cannot sit here and listen to this man tell these people how this proprietary product, which is not even on the market yet, is going to help them. And I sat there and I ate my pecan crust. I just ate the edging of it. And the guy didn't show up. He no-showed. He totally no-showed. And I thought to myself, wow, well, I was right.

So I sat up and I did a little 30-second commercial when he didn't show up. And I gave a pitch for podcasts in general. And I advised them to go find a podcast about your passion. And I said, if you're a small business, and there's about 15 people here that are all like the owners or CEOs or whatever. And I said, if you have a problem today, if you have a need today, there's probably already a solution out there that somebody else has created for you. And I ask you, just do this one. I only had 30 seconds. I only had 30 seconds, you guys.

I said, do this. Google it. Google the solution. Before you pay for something, there may be a free and open source package that can do it for you. And that's all I could say. And that's all I could get in. And that was one of the two meetings I went to. And the second meeting, I was like, I was all

fired up. And now I don't know if I'm going to go to another one. I'm not sure yet. But Kitson Kitty, you wanted to jump in here. Go ahead. Microsoft has always promised the next product will be good. Anybody remember Object FS? Yes, this is the thing.

I started to feel a bit of an anxiety attack because I'm like, product will be good. Anybody remember ObjectFS? Right, yes. This is the thing. I started to feel a bit of an anxiety attack because I'm like, this guy cannot come up here and promise these people the world again and again and again. Somebody has to say something. That was like, that was a serious, intense situation and I wanted to enjoy my salad.

But, you know, it worked out. It worked out, and I got a good plug-in for open source and Linux and for podcasts in general. So hopefully, I think I might well, I'm finding good insights when I attend these business. So this is the second one I've attended now. And at first I was like, I'm not going to do this crap. I'm not going to waste my time doing this crap.

This is stupid. I have better things to do. But then listening to them talk about some of their problems and listening to some of the things they want to – how technology can fit in. Like a lot of these meetings have been based about the technology solutions they're going to use to solve their problems. So I may attend another one just to kind of get some more insights there. All right. Well, I want to talk to Popey about the conference that he attended this week. Well, actually, before I get too far into that, this is really – this is the part we're going to transition to some great stuff for the show.

And I want to thank – first of all, I want to start – let's start with the community. Let's start with Linux Academy. They're from the community. They've created something for the community. They're truly Linux enthusiasts. And this is – if you go back, you look at what? Linux Action Show, it's been around now for nine years, which is ridiculous. But it's been around now for nine years.

But if you go back seven, eight years ago, it's rough. It's not so good. But the passion and the enthusiasm, what we wanted to accomplish, what we cared about, the enthusiasm about that, right? Like how much we wanted to share with you. That was the spark. The enthusiasm about that, right? Like how much we wanted to share with you. That was the spark. And now looking back at Linux Academy, I think, boy, maybe I should have gone this route. See, they had that same spark.

They had that same passion. But they went a different route. They took the people that were truly passionate about open source, Linux, all of the technology around that. They met up with developers and educators, and they were able to create something really unique just for the Linux audience. There's other educational sites out there that'll teach you everything. I mean, really, they promise everything from how to build a rocket to how to edit something in Adobe After Effects. I mean, they really promise everything.

Not Linux Academy. They don't promise everything. They promise to focus on Linux and the best technologies around Linux. They promise to focus on the things that'll make you more employable, to make you better at your job, to scratch your educational itch, to challenge your mind. That's what they focus on. That's Linux Academy. They have self-paced courses. You can go in there and see

how much time is available, how long it's going to take. And you can tell Linux Academy, I've got this much time available on a Monday. I've got this much time available on a Wednesday. You want to base your educational courses around when we're not live? You can do that. Linux Academy has self-setting educational plans. They'll fill in the gaps with reminders and all of that.

They have scenario-based labs, so that way you work with this technology in the real world. You get a sense of how to configure these things, so when you go out there and do it in production, it's not the first time you've done that. And that little bit of confidence makes all of the difference. As somebody who's been in the industry for a long time, when you walk into a place with confidence, when you sit down at a job with confidence, everybody around you is reassured. Everybody around you feels a little bit more comfortable because you're confident.

That's what scenario-based labs do. I want you to go to Linux Academy right now. I want you to check them out right now. I want you to go to linuxacademy.com slash unplug to get a 33% discount. A 33% discount. That's not a number that was just picked arbitrarily. linuxacademy.com slash unplug.

They have instructor help available, and I know you're busy. I appreciate you just listening to this podcast. So I want you to use your time wisely. And Linux Academy does too. That's why they've rolled out Nuggets. It's a cute name for an awesome feature. A N nugget is a single how-to that walks you through a specific task that make you better at that specific task. It doesn't necessarily belong in a big course or some big hourly, multi-hour courseware. It's a lesson between

two and sixty minutes that teaches one specific thing. And you can actually, look at this. Go to linuxacademy.com slash nuggets right now. Create an AWS EBS snapshot bash script right there. You need to back up an AWS machine. I don't have any freaking idea how I would do that.

I tell you what, if I was put in the position of being responsible for an AWS instance, and I didn't know how to back it up, that might give me some anxiety. That might make me a little stressed out. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. That's the first nugget right there. And they got a bunch of other great ones. Cloning a virtual box VM, building an IP tables firewall, creating a Pixie boot server.

What the hell is Active Directory? How do I have single sign-on with Linux boxes and Windows boxes? These are individual nugget courses. Linuxacademy.com slash unplug. Go check out Linux Academy. Linux Academy is freaking awesome. You guys, seriously, I wish I had a resource like this

when I was in the business. Linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. And a big thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program. You guys, keep it up and keep building that platform out even more and more. All right, so Kitson, are you hearing me okay or is the mumble room dropping us out? What's going on over there, guys? We've had Comcast issues all day. Seems good to me.

All right, good. For a second there during your pitch, it just dropped you, and the lips weren't red. They were just gray. Well, good. Well, then just go to LinuxAcademy.com slash unplugged, and you got it all. All right. So Mr. Popey is here today, and he and – Hello.

Hello, Popey. Hello. Boy. And Corky – I know Corky couldn't join us today, but he was here earlier this morning on Linux – or I'm sorry, Tech Talk today. And he talked a little bit about OpenTech 2015. But Popey, I couldn't attend it. I wish I could have attended it. And it sounds like it was a pretty fun event. It's been going on for a while. Could you recap with the folks that are listening what Open Tech 2015 was and anything you want to add in there? Sure. So it's an event that happens regularly, irregularly. It's happened six, seven times over the last 10 years.

And it's a low-cost tech event which focuses on what you might call open tech, which covers quite a lot of ground, actually. There was quite a lot of different talks that covered vaguely related topics, but there were also some a little bit out there ones as well um i tried to push myself to go to uh talks that were outside my comfort zone so rather than go to a talk about you know edward snowden or something that i kind of know about i might i might go to something else a little bit more weird. And there were three tracks, so three separate rooms, and they were full all day with various talks. And, yeah, it was good fun.

And it was nice to see some familiar faces there from the tech crowd in the UK. I've made some notes about a few of the more interesting talks, if you want me to go for a few of them. Yeah, yeah, I do. I guess I'll start with kind of a basic question. So it doesn't necessarily sound like it's um a linux event per se but more of a technology event that's you know anything that's open in technology is that right right so people were talking about uh you know getting access to your medical data for example or preventing someone else having access to your medical data

or they were talking about security topics or privacy topics those kind of things that are an open data getting access to data from the government and using data that's been provided by the government so those kind of topics it wasn't so much open source there was yeah in fact it was encouraged for you not to have your laptop out at all. And I didn't see many laptops there at all. Really? Because, you know, at some of the conferences, you know, if you go into a room where a talk is being given, you can see a bunch of people sat around with their heads down on their laptops tweeting about what's going on or, you know, chatting with friends, not actually paying attention to what's going on. And here it was very different. People were very engaged and discussing topics with the presenter and not focused on whatever's going on on their laptop.

Interesting. Very interesting. Now, I – Pobi, I got to ask you just sort of if you could just remove all filters, pretend like you're recording a podcast for the UK audience. to the UK audience, is there a sort of sense of – I'm trying to frame this correctly. What is the feeling of – is there a feeling that the American government is overreaching? Is there a feeling that let's talk about how to protect ourselves from the NSA at a conference like this? Well, that kind of topic kind of did come up in specific talks but it wasn't the main focus of conversation there were there were talks about um you know privacy on the

internet and uh and you know snowden and but actually there was more about european government and the uk government doing things than than the us because we're we're doing just stupid things over here as the U.S. three-letter organizations are as well. It's just as daft here, unfortunately. Yeah. Interesting. And so how many people would you say attend this thing? It's a good few hundred. I don't know.

It's not like massive event. That's a good number. It's held in a university in London. And it's got a low barrier to entry as well. It's only five pounds to get in, which is what, seven, eight dollars, something like that. And it's in the middle of London, so it's really easy to get to. It's a university, so there's plenty of facilities nearby to get, you know, food and drink at lunchtime and that kind of stuff. So, yeah So yeah, it was really enjoyable.

Now, I would love to hear some of your notes about the event itself. So a couple that stood out for me. One was to give you an idea of the diversity of the topics that were covered. There was one talk that was called Objects of Intrigue. And it was by a woman called Rachel Moteat she's on um she's on twitter as at rachel moat and she volunteers at a school for children specializes in help for children with special needs and some of these children have difficulty doing things like even feeding themselves or they have a reluctance to you know touch certain surfaces or textures.

There are certain things they just have difficulty with. And what she wanted to do was help children with their eating. And out on the stage, she had three bowls. One of them contained custard, one contained water, and one contained spaghetti. And she's constructed with an Arduino and a little speaker and some various other components, she's constructed a little setup that encourages the children to touch these bowls of food and liquid. And the way she does it is there's a touch sensor underneath the uh underneath the

bowl and when the kids put their hand in the bowl and like touch the custard or touch the water it plays music or plays a drum sound or something so they can actually make music just by putting their hands in these bowls of water and that might not sound like you know a major achievement or a particularly technically advanced thing but getting these kids to to touch stuff like custard or or spaghetti or something that they wouldn't normally touch and then when they take their hands out putting their hands in their mouth and actually eating the food afterwards is is quite an achievement for some for like a child with special needs so so that gives you an example of how someone's using um uh technology

like an arduino and you know simple circuitry in order to help someone else. And I think she's made the designs and the details available online. So it was a really nice, like, different talk that wasn't just, you know, privacy and tech and, you know, nerding out completely. Yeah. But there were some nerdy ones. One of them that I found particularly fun was there's a hack space in London, LHS, London Hack Space. And they've got a caravan, which they've converted into a spaceship.

And it's completely awesome. If you imagine being inside a really, really tiny Star enterprise i love it it's it's excellent they've got loads of control switches and buttons and dials and wires dangling and stuff and everyone's got their own screen and their own readout and then there's a main screen as well and there's a comms link and an engineer's station and a weapons station. All of that. It's just brilliant. And they wrote their own game in Unity 3D, which runs on a PC out the back. And people are invited to come in and play the game.

And it's a multiplayer game. And you're all sat inside the caravan, each taking on the role of a different member of the crew. And the people who own the caravan throw certain scenarios at you and you have to do things like you know press certain buttons at a certain time or a certain sequence of buttons uh like you would on a real spaceship but also you have to do things like um there are cables that become disconnected and you have to figure out which cables go where and you have to like get up from your seat and actually do manual stuff like you would see on star trek it's it's pretty impressive and they've got a website for it if you go to i think it's lhs um lhsbikeshed.com lhsbikeshed.com you'll find pictures of this caravan that they take to events

um and invite people to come in and fly the missions this is so cool it is it is really cool that's one of the nerdier things yeah yeah it's really good fun so the the other one of the other ones that that i found particularly interesting a woman called kat matfield i think it was she works um as a consultant developing applications and they do privacy related applications and she gave us some tidbits of information that feedback they've got from user testing of privacy based products and some of the notes I took that that kind of surprised me a little bit the the perception of privacy among normal people like not you and me but like normals out there right is a little bit strange um people focus on passwords and people they think that the password is the most important thing that i have to have a

safe password and that they they think that bad people target specific individuals they don't realize that fraudsters can just go out and buy a list of credit card details and they're arbitrary they don't care who those those credit card details come from but people seem to think that i am a target that i am the individual that they're going to come after when in fact they just like reap thousands of credit cards and take money from all of them wherever possible yes um one of the one of the interesting things that came out of their user testing uh was that adding a facebook button like for facebook login to a product or a service actually makes people more uncomfortable having that button there when you're logging into any

kind of service if there's a facebook button on the screen people in their user testing didn't like it because they felt that it associated that product and service with their personal data and that their brother or sister or friend or parent might see what they're doing on that website because of the facebook button and that made them feel very uneasy and that kind of surprised me i thought people loved the facebook button i thought they thought well that's an easy way for me to log in and i don't have to worry about it turns out exactly and and i don't have to have about it. But it turns out, exactly. And I don't have to remember yet another password. So it surprised me that people, normal people, not just you and me, but normals don't like that Facebook button.

And the funny thing that came out of this was people focus on the little padlock. They see that as a way of ensuring that the page is safe. And so in their user testing, they started adding padlocks to the page and they kept adding more and more padlocks all over the place to the page. And as they added padlocks, people felt the page was more and more safe and they, they never managed to get to what they called peak page padlock and peach page padlock peak

page padlock be the the the maximum number of padlocks you could possibly have on a page and they never got to that point they could throw as many padlocks as they wanted on the page and people would just accept that that was more secure because there were more padlocks on there it's all security theater but yes it was it was it was great to hear those kind of user experience testing uh results it was it was great to hear those kind of user experience testing results. It was great. It was a good conference. I would certainly go again.

Wow. And so do you know at this point will there be another one next year? I don't know, actually. That was my first one. I've not been to it before. Based on my experience and the people that I was chatting to afterwards in the bar, they all enjoyed it and would certainly go again so did you get a chance to say hi to any jupiter and it was the meetup page was so new when you guys launched this did anybody actually make it there yeah there was a couple of people who made it along um i was just standing there and i didn't we didn't actually

have a like a specific place to meet up or anything yeah that's the thing we got to do next time right you gotta have like specific like details. But if you don't know the venue, it's hard to do that. Right. Well, the good thing is people just walked up to me and went, hello, baby. And they recognized me. And so, you know, we had a chat.

And then later on afterwards in the bar, there were a couple of guys there from the Linux Luddites. Oh, good. We sat and had a chat with them in the bar. And then we made our way to a pub, which is the traditional British way to end a conference. Of course. To go to a pub afterwards. Yes.

Had a few beers and chatted about all kinds of stuff, including Jupyter Broadcasting and all kinds of other podcasts. All good things, I'm sure. All good things, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. It was good fun. It was really, really good fun. You know, what's funny is when we go to some of these events, people walk up to the booth or they walk up to us and they just kind of stand around for a bit.

And maybe you've noticed this. They stand around for a bit and they wait for us to talk. And then they're like, oh, you're Noah. You're Chris. And they recognize the voices after we've talked for a bit. And then they introduce themselves. Did that happen to you at all? No, they just walked straight up to me and said hello.

So they clearly recognize me. You know what that means? It's your mug. Your mug chasing that chicken is all over the internet. That's what that means. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But it was really lovely because everyone was, you know, a typical British event. Like, everyone's really understated and, like, really pleasant and friendly.

And it was good. It was really, really good. Good. Boy, boy, i tell you what if i if i was somehow able to make it next year that would that would boy that would be amazing that would be the highlight if i was in a position to be able to make it next year uh we are uh we are i mean these things these events are so awesome i would love to have audio from these kinds of things i mean probably don't you think this is one of the best things about our community yeah and i kind of i did take a handheld voice recorder with me and i was tempted to do some

interviews and record some stuff but actually i i i was on my own dime and i thought you know what i'm just going to focus on the on the talks and and absorb this stuff and especially as i i wanted to go to the ones that were out of my comfort zone there was one i'll give you one one last talk that i went to towards the end of the day and uh it was called science as art and uh it was a a woman called leah and a guy called james who are very artistic and they've been trying to use open data that's been made available by governments and NGOs and other organizations and try and represent that in different ways rather than just have graphs. And they actually made some music out of open data. It's quite hard to explain. Really?

Yeah, information about the rise in CO2 gases in the atmosphere. And they mapped that to music? atmosphere and they map that to music and yes they map that to one instrument yeah and then they took something else like the number of earthquakes or floods in pakistan for example and then mapped that to the drums and so they play a little snippet of each of these and then they they mashed it all together into into a piece of music and actually it was really thought-provoking because you knew that that big drum sound was an earthquake 15 years ago and then another one and then two in quick succession

when there were two more earthquakes or something. It was really, really nicely done. And they're looking for more sources of data and how they can map that into music or theater or anything. It's a nice way to represent data that might be a bit dry otherwise. So that also I found particularly interesting. Boy, no kidding. I bet that was actually kind of powerful to see,

to represent data through music. It sounds corny because you're going to laugh at me. There were some skeptical people in the room. You know, there were, in inverted commas, real scientists. But it's pretty powerful, isn't it? It is in a way. It's kind of, it's a different way to visualize it. Exactly.

Yeah. It sounds funny to say visualize, but you know what I mean. Yeah. And yeah, that's great. Well, thank you, Popey. Thank you so much. And thank you, honestly, thank you very much for helping, like being willing to take on the meetup page.

So we had an event, meetup.com slash Jupiter Broadcasting, if you were going to make it. And Popey was more than willing to be an event organizer. And if you want to go to the next one, Popey, let's do it again. Let's just – any events like that in the area? Because it's an area that we just don't have a lot of oversight on. And so I really appreciate you kind of filling me in on that. Because we have 30% of our audience is over there. And so I feel like I –

I know. We're really packed in on this tiny little – You guys are. We're really packed in. You probably all know each other, I assume. Oh, yeah, yeah. So meetup.com slash Jupyter broadcasting for future events. I don't know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Why? Because I wanted to do it before I ever launched the show. So a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago on the Linux Action Show, we said if we got to 530 patrons, I would go out to Noah's house.

And I would go and I would tour Noah's automated house. I would put on his freaking Google Glass, even if it stings a little bit, and I would walk around his house and get a tour. And if I find Windows I will tell you about it I will tell you about it I will search out Windows in Noah's house and we got to 530 in fact we're at 538 right now which is awesome

I'm really excited about that so we might do Linux, I don't know how the timing will work out it would be cool if we could do unplugged 100 from Noah's house I'm really excited about that. So we might do Linux. I don't know how the timing will work out. It wouldn't be cool if we could do Unplugged 100 from Noah's house. I'm really looking forward to this because one of the things I want to do, I mean, we're going out to Noah's house as a way to sort of just celebrate a milestone. But long term, I really want to do more of these event coverages. I really, really, really think this is an area that if Linux Unplugged and Linux Action Show focused on – and by the way, just wait because we're about to get into one of the discussions that Noah had at Self. And I think you guys are going to meet somebody you're probably just going to start following now, somebody who's a thought maker in Linux and open source that you probably never even heard of. And after today's episode, you're probably going to follow them on a daily basis.

Going out and meeting these people and talking to these people and you just heard Popey's description, it's awesome. And it's what's the best thing about our community. And so, yeah, we got to 530 people and now 538, which is cool. Yeah, I'm going to Noah's house

as a way to celebrate. And yeah, I'm going to do Linux Action Show from Noah's house. And it's, in a way, it's a way for me to say thank you to Noah because he comes out here all the time. But what it's really about is this investing in the content that I think is, I'm almost so positive

that if we could expose more of this in a better way than we do it now, like the event coverage we do now is like 10% of what I want to bring you. Because what I want to bring you is, I want to make it like you're there. And I want you to experience why when we go to these events, we come back so super charged about open source, about the community, about Linux. I want you to experience that. And that's why I'm excited about 530 people. Not because I'm going to Noah's house. Not because we might do a segment or the entire show from a boat. That's awesome. That's not why I'm excited. I'm excited because after we do that, we're

starting to kind of move into the next phase. We're moving to the next step. We're going to the next area for Jupiter Broadcasting where pretty soon because let's be real. What's it going to take to make it possible for me to go to self and for me to go to take to make it possible for me to go to self and for me to go to things like Open Tech and for me to go to things like BSD Can? What's it going to take? It's going to take somebody right here in the studio.

It's going to take somebody sitting here at the spot that I'm sitting at, switching. It's going to take somebody vamping. It's going to take somebody that can mix in remote locations. It's going to take a producer in studio. That's where I'm going with this. I know it's crazy ambitious, but I want to be able to raise the funds to afford a full-time person in studio. That's where I'm going with this. I know it's crazy ambitious, but I want to be able to raise the funds

to afford a full-time person in studio. And I'm willing to start part-time, couple times a week, whatever I can do. But where I eventually want to go is I want to have a full-time person in studio and I don't want to pay for it with sponsors. I'm willing to because in some ways,

it feels like the shortcut because I could get a sponsor I could get a sponsor to sponsor just that I've got two emails literally in my inbox right now from two different companies that want to sponsor our shows and I'm sitting here telling them I'm sorry I only want to have a few as few sponsors a show as possible because I only want to pick the people I use and I only want to talk about the people I think you guys would use. Right? But holy shit is that limiting. Turns out that's a super limiting model to go with

but it's the only one I can go with where I can show up at this microphone and genuinely talk to you. So what I like about this is this is giving me some runway to start budgeting. God, you know what? If we got to 600, I could start thinking about actually budgeting to have a part-time person. And then I could actually start traveling. And when I start thinking about it like that, I get really excited.

Because then I'm responsible to the audience. I'm responsible to you. I'm not thinking, how am I going to formulate this new show and make sure I got good spots for sponsors? How am I going to make sure this content is going to make enough people click that the sponsor gets enough return on their investment? What I'm thinking about instead, when it's a Patreon-inspired show, is I'm thinking, God, what does the audience really want? Does this show even need intro music? It's a 10-minute, 15-minute show. Does it need intro music? No, the audience doesn't need that. What do they need?

What do they want to know about? And when you expand that out to covering things like community events, I can't think of a better way to have coverage of community events, the fundamental foundation of what inspires our open source community. I can't think of a better way to cover that than something that is also funded by the community. And I'm not totally opposed to sponsorships. I tell you what, one way or another, I will make this happen. And if I go to commercial sponsors to make it happen, I will do it. Because I think this is the most important aspect of open source coverage that is neglected.

Because nobody can do it because it's expensive. And it's a risk. And I will make it happen. I will make it happen one way or another. If I go to sponsors and make sure that every live event we go to is sponsored, I will do that. And I will find a way to walk that line for you to make sure that it doesn't influence our coverage. I will do that for you. But it will take going that route. It will take sponsorships. It will take making sure we only go to events that have enough coverage to make sure that our sponsor gets a return on their substantial investment.

And what I want to do instead is I want to cover it for you. Patreon.com slash today. Yes, it's a Tech Talk Today page. Yeah, I get that. I know that's confusing. I understand that was a dumb idea. But Tech Talk Today is a thank you to 538 people who make expanding our coverage, To 538 people who make expanding our coverage, genuine coverage, possible. That's what Tech Talk Today is. For 538 people. I do a show for 538 people. That's dumb. Nobody would do a podcast for 538 people.

And if you do, you should stop. You can't make any money doing that. Unless it's this model. That's why Patreon makes a difference. Patreon.com slash today. It funds this show. It funds the Linux Action Show. It funds future shows you don't even know we have in development

that are focused on open source. Well, you might actually know because it got out for a little bit. And I'm not trying to shame you. I'm not trying to guilt you. But what I am trying to say is I'm going to make this happen one way or another. I'm going to make Jupyter Broadcasting the company that covers these events properly. And if you watch BSD Now this week, you're going to see the same exact thing happening for the BSD community.

And they've got a lot more together right now. And I want to make sure that Jupyter Broadcasting is the company and the community and the Linux action, Linux Unplugged, the podcast that represent the Linux community and the open source community in the Linux Action Show, Linux Unplugged, the podcast that represent the Linux community and the open source community in the light that they deserve. Because right now what we get is a bunch of bloggers that want clicks and we get a bunch of people that want to get people to retweet

and they make crazy-ass headlines. And if it's not that, if it's not people trying to get clicks for advertisers, it's websites that are set up by proprietary companies or huge companies or even open source companies that are huge in our industry that are paying journalists to write pro things about them. That's the state of open source journalism right now. And all of them are neglecting this fundamental aspect, the core community aspect. And I know I'm making a huge case right now, but I, throughout the rest of this episode, will speak for itself of how important covering these events are. This episode will speak for itself of how important covering these events are.

I am willing to go out on a ledge right now and tell you how important this is based on the rest of the content of this episode. Patreon.com slash today. Please go there. It'll help expand our coverage. I want to be able to go to things like Open Tech. I'm sick of standing here in the studio. I want to go there. I want to cover these things.

I want to bring them to you. I want to bring video. I want to bring audio. I want to bring all of it. I want to bring exposure to all of I want to bring video. I want to bring audio. I want to bring all of it. I want to bring exposure to all of it. Not for me. Alright, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. In fact, we should probably get into some of it. I know. Go ahead,

Kitson Kitty. Go ahead. Am I up my soapbox too much? No, you're good. I wasn't asking you. I was asking Kitson Kitty. But, alright. Alright. Kitson, Kenny. But all right. All right. Kitson, you say you want to say something. Jump in. But what?

Did you just leave? Oh. No, go ahead. Okay. I'm used to push to talk working on the keyboard, not in the window. Sorry about that. No, no problem. What you said, though, that's just like most of the other internet in terms of journalism.

It is all dominated by clickbait basically, and I think that is a huge problem, and I think it's great that you're looking to alleviate that through an independent means. Yeah, and I mean I know that anybody can say it. Anybody can make that claim. The only proof I have is in the content that we produce. And the only thing I can make – the only plea I can make is if you believe in the content we've produced so far and you like the direction we're going, that's the bet I'm asking you to take. Not necessarily for me. I don't even really – I don't really need a lot. I just need to be able

to do this on an ongoing basis and be able to go do these things on an ongoing basis i i don't need a lot i i i don't know i know i know it sounds like a crazy plea this i can't write code right like i know i'm just too add like i'm never gonna do i don't even submit bugs that often i do about like what a dozen bugs a year tops um it's not who i am a bad person i know i know i know but this is what i do this is what i can do and i just but when we go to these events man it's like we're so close to covering them in the way we want to cover them but yet i can see the huge gap like like sitting at a desk and talking to people and getting great people to stop by the desk and talking to them is great. That is super good content. And if I objectively observe it,

it's exclusive content that nobody else has. And I'm very, very happy. And man, did the team work super hard to accomplish that. It is awesome. It's not enough for me. It's not enough. I really want to show you how awesome. I feel like you guys never get an idea of how awesome these things are. And that's all. And I feel like if we knew that, I feel like all of the bickering and the religious wars around System D and all of it would sort of melt away. I know it's crazy. It's crazy. would sort of melt away.

I know it's crazy. But I just feel like that's my way to contribute to the community is to try to bring some sort of balance to what the commercial interests are bringing to the dialogue. I want to bring balance to that dialogue that is focused and funded by the community. And that's my goal. And I know that sounds crazy, but I feel like

the reason why that's important is open source software is created by people for people. And I know that sounds so stupid, but when people get all crazy and people start making death threats and stuff, people bail on open source. They don't develop open source software. It creates this barrier to entry. It creates this mystique about how hostile the Linux community is, and none of it is actually true. It is a small percentage of our community. It is a minority. But they get all of the attention because all of those jerks out there want to write headlines to get clicks.

And they want karma on Reddit. And they want retweets and whatever the hell the pretend internet points is that they want. That's what motivates them. And I will never be motivated by those things. Go look at my Twitter feed right now. Go look at my Google Plus feed right now. Go look at my Reddit submissions. I could not give a shit about those things.

I never will. I never will be motivated by those things. I am generally motivated by these. I truly believe that if people could see more about what happens at these conferences, about what Popey just shared with us, about what we're about to play for himself, if you could see more of this, you would understand that these are real people creating amazing things. That when they go to these conferences, it is not a hostile environment. It is real people that connect and collaborate and create and move forward. It is not like the common threads that you read online. And it is not what you have been

led to perceive by the tech journalists that want you to read their articles and click their headlines. And I know it seems like it's not a big deal, but I think if you set the tone correctly, it sets the tone for the entire community. And it creates a collaborative environment that trickles down. And I know I'm sounding like Ronald Reagan right now, but I think it's the truth. It's trickle down community. Okay, I got to shut up because I could literally spend an entire episode talking about this. It's one of the number one things I think about all the time. And it's a huge soapbox that I've been on. And I apologize that I've just wasted this much of the show. Why don't we talk about something else?

Let's take a minute. I'm going to talk about Ting. I want you to go to linux.ting.com right now. Go check them out. Listen, we would not be able to do this without Ting. They have seriously a great product here. And you know how I've often advocated you need to vote with your wallet?

That's Ting. Ting is changing the mobile industry. You only pay for what you use. They take your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes, and they add them up. Whatever bucket you fall into, that's what you pay. It's a flat $6 for the line. Now, in practicality, what that means is

we are able to give every one of our members at Self this weekend a phone. I don't have a lot of money, you guys, and I gave every one of our members itself this weekend a phone. That made production possible. That's how we were able to coordinate all of this. That's how I was able to send Noah messages saying, hey, this clip has five minutes left,

and then we need to transition to you with an interview. You need to have that person on mic in five minutes. I could not have done that without Ting. Ting is awesome. And either if you just have one phone or if you have more than 10 devices, you're going to save money. Because think about this. Current mobile industry practices are getting you to pay for plans that you don't necessarily need. You might need four gigabytes. You might need a thousand minutes. You might need 500 messages. You might not.

Me, I don't. Okay. All of my text messaging happens over either Hangouts or Telegram. Majority is Telegram. Voice calling happens over Hangouts or Viber. So I'm able to have three lines. And I only pay about, well, I think last month it was like $37 for three lines. That's an HTC One, a Nexus 5, and an iPhone 5, all on one account. See, Ting isn't based on your device. Ting is based on you. So if you want to have a MiFi hotspot, if you want to have a couple of devices, if you're a developer and you want to be able to test across

multiple devices, maybe you need iOS, maybe you need Android, maybe you need multiple Android devices, and you don't want to pay a whole bunch of fees every single month, Ting is perfect. Linux.ting.com, you're going to get a $50 credit off your first device. Linux.ting.com, you're going to get a $50 credit. And if you have a Ting-compatible device, and you might, because let's be honest, cell phones have been around for a while and ting has got coverage on gsm and cdma if you have a device you're going to get a 50 credit on your entire ting service which for me i when i signed up i got like a 25 credit that 50 credit is only good till the end of june too so jump on that and by way, Ting also has an early termination relief program to help you get out of a current contract. Get out of that duopoly!

With the Ting ETF program, you can find out more about that. And also, if you've listened to these ads and you've thought, yeah, okay, that sounds too good to be true. I've been burned by mobile service providers before. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. I invite you to check out Ting's Hangout. Ting is going to have a Hangout on Thursday at noon Eastern time. Just around the TechSnap time. So watch this and then join us for TechSnap.

And you can ask the Ting crew anything you want to know. How the hell do they make money? Are they going to be around for a long time? Why do I only pay for what I use? How can they have unlocked devices? How can they afford an early termination relief program? How do they have no hold customer service? Are you skeptical? Ask them. They have amazing answers. And I think after you watch that, you'll be impressed. In fact, they have all kinds of great tips. You can go check it on their blog.

Go to linux.ting.com, linux.ting.com right now. Get a $50 credit. No contract. Only pay for what you use. No hold customer service. Boom! That is Ting right there in a brief. Linux.ting.com. And a huge thank you to Ting for sponsoring the Linux Unplugged program. And check out this week's Linux Action Show for Noah's new Batphone, which is ridiculous.

Noah's got this new kind of crazy mobile phone that I'm going to little jelly of, to be honest with you. Now, Mumble Room, I was talking about open source journalism. And we're going to hear from somebody who has been directly involved with open source journalism now for quite a while. And I actually kind of rather enjoy this man's commentary. So Noah sat down during self, and he had a chance to talk with Brian. And Brian is an author at opensource.com. I'm a contributor to opensource.com.

I work on Red Hat's global awareness team. So he's also a Red Hat employee. And so opensource.com and Red Hat kind of have the connection there. And he had a lot of good commentary on the things that Noah wanted to chat with. And so I want to play a few clips for you from Brian. So here he sits down and he talks about how to tell whether open source is one or not. Like there's a metric that I think we could probably all agree on. Is open source one in this category?

How do you tell? How do you know once you can declare victory? Well, he's got some thoughts on that. And also knowing him chat about how you can add value to open source software when you are in the IT department and you want to say, hey, I want to switch off Microsoft Office. Let's switch to LibreOffice. And the first answer is, how could something free be better?

Turns out there's a way to make that case pretty crystal clear. Welcome. How's it going? Do you love Linux? Do you love Linux? You want to come tell me about why you love Linux? All right. Have a seat. pretty crystal clear. I just banged my head into that. Grab yourself some headphones. Grab yourself a microphone. Are you broadcasting live? Yeah, we are. I'm going to turn this around here. So we got you.

I want to see you. I want to see your face. Do you hear my mouth in your ear hole? I hear. Hey. Hi there. Hi there. Hi there.

So I'm Noah. Good to meet you. I'm Brian. Nice to meet you. Brian. Nice to meet you, Brian. So tell me, Brian, what it is that you love about Linux. Well, I love everything about Linux, but I love the concept of openness because I like collaboration.

Right, right. I am a contributor to a website called opensource.com, and I've worked on that opensource.com team for about five years. And there we tell stories about the ways that open source values make a difference in people's lives outside the realm of software. So that's what I find most intriguing about open source. I love the way that it could be adapted to different domains like the government or your health or education. Now, do you attend a lot of different conferences? I don't. This is my second time itself. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, second time itself.

I was here two years ago and loved it. I don't attend too many conferences, but I do love this one. And I live up in the Raleigh area, so I wanted to make sure I shot down and got here. Now I know why you value openness. Because here's why. For those of you that don't know, Red Hat is based in Raleigh. And Red Hat has, from my perception, from talking to other people that are from the area and around and work for Red Hat, basically everyone that is involved has had this influence on the community around them to encourage everyone to be open.

That's right. So I had a chance to sit down with the folks from Red Hat and interview them. And we were talking to them, and I would give them opportunities to pump their own business, right? I'd say, tell me what advantages you can offer over your competitors. And they would say, well, we're open source, so anything that we can offer, our competitors can offer because we're all just teammates.

And I think that goes a long way. Now, do you use Linux on your desktop? I do, yeah. Okay, which distro are you using? I'm using Linux Mint. All right. Yeah, do you use Linux on your desktop? I do. Yeah. Okay. Which distro are you using? I'm using Linux Mint. All right. Yeah. Linux Mint XFCE. So what would you say to people that say, when you walk around and you see people that aren't using Linux and they say, well, you know, I need a bash shell to get my stuff done. So I wouldn't be, I don't think I'd be

able to use Linux. I'd have to use the Mac because I also have to have an office suite and stuff like that. Yeah. Well, I'd say that those two are not mutually exclusive. So I would say that out of the box, you get the software you need to do all the things that you just described by using the software that I would suggest that you use. So instead of creating a false dichotomy between software that has and software that has not, I would try to suggest that these people look at software solutions that do everything. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, I find that the people that keep telling me Linux isn't capable of doing things are usually getting in my way of making Linux do things, right?

Right. So we were told, so our company, Jupiter Broadcasting, we were told I don't know how many times that you can't do live broadcast on Linux. Yeah. And everyone else in that business? This, I don't know how many times that you can't do live broadcast on Linux. And everyone else in that – Boy, this – I don't know. It kind of looks like Linux. It kind of looks like the answer to that question. Yeah, yeah.

No, this is actually – this is a version of Windows. It's Windows with Mate. Yeah, yeah. Windows with Mate, it looks like. But no, for a long time, everyone in that sphere told us, well, you can't do that. You can't do that. You have to have a Mac or you have to have Windows to do it. And we're fortunate, at least I feel fortunate, that the owner of the company has a deep-rooted belief in using Linux where he can.

So when I came to him, I'm like, hey, Chris, guess what? This works. It works on Linux. I mean, he wanted to see it work first. But as soon as I showed him, it took him, I bet, less than seven seconds of me flipping through the cameras and saying, look, it does it, and he goes, great, let's start the production. I mean, it was that fast. Yep, yep. Yep, I can agree, and I've done the same thing with people, you know, fixing up old computers, plopping them in front of them, and with little or no guidance, they're able to work

their way through the system easily. And I think one of my favorite success stories was my parents just bought a new computer. They got a Mac. And I said, okay, I'll help you set it up. Sure. So I helped them set it up. And my mom does a lot of word processing. So she wanted iWork on her computer. And she called me a week later and was like, look, this iWork thing, I just don't get it.

I just don't understand it. I was like, look, I'm going to try something. I'm going to come over. I'm going to put a new program on your computer. It's called LibreOffice. And we're going to see what it's like. A week later, I get a text. Oh, my God, this is so much better.

And it was no learning curve at all. I mean, I just put the software on a machine, and that was it. That was the end of the story. And she figured everything from there. And I think what you're saying is true. Now, I'll share a success story that's kind of similar. I do a lot

of IT contracting work, and we're big into the hospitality industry. So, a lot of hotels are moving to web-based solutions, and of course, web-based solutions really lend themselves to Linux, because I don't have to worry about virus protection, malware protection, and not to mention the ability to remotely update Linux. It's a heck of a lot easier than trying to remotely update windows, right? Sure. So we

had installed this computer and, uh, I had put LibreOffice on it and the girl looks at it and she goes, oh, and as soon as she did that, I knew I said, I thought, oh, she's heard of LibreOffice. And usually it's a, oh, I don't want the Microsoft Word replacement. I want actual Microsoft Word. She looks at me, dude, and she goes, why do you have Mac software? Do I have to use the Mac version? I'm like, what do you mean the Mac version? Yeah, I'm like, what are you talking about?

She goes, oh, the school system, they all have Macs, and they have this LibreOffice, and they've switched the whole school. And I'm like, what? What did you just say? And I'm like, the entire school district is using LibreOffice. And she's like, yeah. And I'm like, so OpenSource software has gotten to a point now where it gets confused for the overpriced, overinflated Mac stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.

I think that's a huge compliment to the LibreOffice folks if you ask me. Some people wouldn't consider it, you know, but I think that's perfect. I mean, that is, that's what you need. Like, you need the, how do I put this? When it becomes a non-issue. Right. When it becomes so commonplace, you know. Clay Shirky has this bit in his book, Here Comes Everybody, where he talks about the commonplaceness of technologies.

And he says that, you know, he recalls, he recounts the story of his parents meeting for the first time. And it's a story they told him many times how they met. And he said it involved a car. And the one thing that didn't resonate, wasn't part of the story at all, was the car. The car was just a mundane thing that was there. And it was part of the story, but it didn't bear any remark at all. And that's sort of how open source software needs to function. I mean, when it becomes the default and it becomes taken for granted, we've won.

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, the nice thing about that is we've got now we're vastly approaching a point where companies are starting to they don't necessarily value the ideals like maybe you and I would, but they value the way that it can be cost effective to them. So the fact that they're not locked into a proprietary, you know, they're not locked, there's no vendor lock-in. And the fact that the, typically the cost to implement the software or roll it out is low. And, you know, a lot of things is, I worked for a large organization, very large organization, and I pitched LibreOffice to them. And because I knew what they were capable of monetarily-wise, I had recommended, I said, you know, rather than pay $400 for Microsoft Office, you know, rather than pay $400 for Microsoft Office, you know, technically we can install it for free.

Make a donation to LibreOffice and we'll install, for every copy installed, instead of paying $400, make a donation for $200, you know? And I knew, you know, we're going to roll it out over X amount of computers. It's going to add up quickly. That's really great. But the company, even though it was going to cost them money, they were happy to do it because they didn't have vendor software lock-in. They had an upgrade path. So in their mind, they're going to pay once and upgrade forever. That's awesome.

And so, yeah, I think that brings a lot of value. Absolutely. Now, I love that chat. And it's an interesting idea, like bringing value to open source software by saying, okay, we're going to use this free software, but let's donate a little money first. And you'll donate once, and then you can use it guilt-free going forward. I don't know if that would work for everybody, but I suggest that as an interesting idea, if you run into a barrier, and I've been there, and I don't know if this is still as common as it used to be, but if you run into a barrier where they say, how can this be any good?

It's free. but if you run into a barrier where they say how can this be any good it's free before the conversation ever gets to that point if you know that's your company's inclination maybe suggest to them that they start by making a contribution let's use this software and we're going to make a contribution first you're going to spend 200 per user for the rest of that user user's existence you know like you're not every three years going to spend 200 you're going to spend $200 per user for the rest of that user's existence. You know? Like you're not every three years going to spend $200. You're going to spend $200 once per user.

Maybe you even do it. Every new user that rolls out, you spend $200, right? It's still half the amount. Wouldn't that fundamentally change open source software? Isn't that a great idea? I was really inspired by that. So that was Brian's take on that. Now, Brian and Noah talked about maybe the best way to get started is to, you know, a lot of times you run into this tool bias. And this is going to be a theme of their conversation

as we go forward. Tool bias. Well, I know I can make it work under Excel. Well, I learned how to do it in. Well, I know that I've done it before under. You've heard those excuses before why you can't switch to Linux. And maybe the strategy actually is maybe Microsoft and definitely Apple got it right all along. Get them why they're young. Maybe that's what it is. Welcome. I think that's why a lot of these, I'm reading a lot more initiatives about open source and education and the way that people are not only taking open source principles and importing them into classroom settings, but what they're doing is they're trying to change computer education to talk about digital rights

and to talk about privacy rights and to talk about privacy rights and to talk about openness and to talk about the way that the tools we use define our capabilities in some way, that is extraordinarily important. Those initiatives are extraordinarily important because like you say, people, people who don't, people like us are reflexive about the tools we use. We care about them. Other people don't. And that doesn't, that's not a criticism. It's just. It is what it is. Yeah, it is what it is.

And so like to have a tool synonymous with the job, I use X to do Y. Like if I don't have to think about using X to do Y, that's better for me. Yeah. And so when I learn that X does Y, whether it's LibreOffice or Word or whatever it might be, like that's what I'm going to go to. That's what I'm going to use. And so getting started early, just as has been the Microsoft strategy, as has been the Apple strategy, getting people started early and teaching them to associate their computing experience and their computing habits with open source solutions, I feel like sounds like a great strategy. If I were to be invited to a school board and they said, Noah, tell me why we should use this software, that or the other, I would submit to them that by implementing things like LibreOffice, you empower your students with more. So it's more fair to your students.

So, for example, a financially underprivileged student is going to have a hard time kicking out. What's the education version? $100, $200 or whatever? Right. So even that is a lot of money for a high school student or even some college students to pay for. And so this idea that if a professor is going to release a presentation, why not release that in an open office or a LibreOffice where everyone can download it and use it? Right. And I have two things to say about that.

The first is that it's an uphill battle because people associate openness with price, with open source software with price. And so what they will do is they will say, oh, well, you get a student discount on Microsoft Word. There's no reason for you to use it. If you really have a problem, you can get a free copy. You can present a financial hardship application or whatever and get the software for free.

And it's like people don't understand that it's not about that, but for so many people it is, right? So we need to fight that fight. I like this idea. I want to change the conversation. When somebody says, well, look, I can get Microsoft Office for free

or I can get it with a discount, you say, it's not about that. It's about, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, you can buy today's version, but just look at how much it changes over the last few years. You can learn, see when you learn Microsoft Office, you are learning Microsoft Office. When you learn LibreOffice, you are learning skills that apply to a free platform that can be applicable anywhere in the world. There's such a huge difference.

When you learn skills that work with LibreOffice versus Microsoft, I feel like what we need to do is we need to change the card. Yeah, you can get a discount on Microsoft Office. Sure, yeah, you can do that. Of course you can. And you can become super well-skilled in a very limited-time product. But technology is always changing. It's always moving forward.

And LibreOffice allows you to stay current. You keep – for free, you can keep staying up to date. You can keep that skill set. Now, let's talk about specifically how to get past that bias of, well, I've seen this font and I like the way this font looks, or I know this application. I know it can, like Publisher. That was a huge one when I was trying to convert somebody special in my life. I tried to convert to Linux, and they couldn't do it because of Publisher.

How do you get past that tool bias? Well, Brian and Noah have some thoughts, and Noah shares his super secret trick. Welcome. On opensource.com last week, we had a new author. Her name's Leigh Bryan. She told, we have a regularly occurring column series on opensource.com called My Linux Story. Sure. And it's where people who, it's where people come on and just tell their story about how

they got started with Linux, why it appeals to them, and sort of where it's taken them in their life. And we had a really great column last week by a newbie writer, Lee Bryan, who wrote her Linux story and talked about how tough it was for her to adopt open source tools as a student. Because teachers would see that the default font was different in the documents or the margins were wrong. Oh, they rail against it. Yeah, yeah, rail against it. And it's like, you know, a lot of great comments, over 100 comments on that story.

And it's like, you know, a lot of great comments, over 100 comments on that story, people just saying they didn't understand why, you know, the criticism was about ways that things appear and the way that certain tools function and make their final product. It just doesn't make any sense. So I had a client. She had a computer and it had failed. And I went to take a look at it and she goes, can we put Windows 7 back on there? And I said, well, let me tell you about Ubuntu. It's a software we use. It is basically immune to virus spamware. We're going to put an Office suite on there. We're going to provide that for you. Mail client is going to be there.

You're going to be able to do all the same things. And she worked in an environment where all she was doing was Office documents. And I said, you know, it's really, it's going to work just as, in fact, she was even using LibreOffice. I said, it's going to work just the same as Windows, except it'll be a little bit more reliable for you and such. And I get done explaining that, and she goes, no, I'd really rather have Windows 7. I said, all right, well, no problem. We'll go ahead and get the restore disks sorted for you, because we don't have those. So I'll get those from HP.

So call HP, order the restore disks. They said it's going to be 7 to 10 business days. So I called her back and said, so it's going to be a little bit before we can get that out to you. And she goes, do you have a loaner computer? I said, I do. We have plenty of them, but I don't have anything with Windows on it. I'm sorry. It's just we can't pay for the license. It's just to be a pain. And she goes, well, I guess if it's only for 10 days, I'll

use it. I said, okay, sure. Great. Trojan horse. Right. So we get it put into her place, into her desk. Now, I paid $53 for the recovery disks, which if we had restored her computer, that would have gotten passed off to her. Plus, I would have charged her for my time to come out and install it. Right.

So I come back out and I said, hey, I just want to let you know that the restore disk came in. So we'll be there on Friday to restore your computer. And she goes, is it too late to change my mind? Yes. Because I'm not going to lie. I actually, this is working really well. And she's like, I've never had my computer perform this fast.

Now, I do have a secret weapon. When I switch people to Linux or when I get them to try Linux the first time, traditionally computers, this might change in the near future, but right now, desktop computers are typically shipping with spinning rust. And so what I'll do is I'll rip that out, and I'll swap it for an SSD. And there are a couple people

in the chat room, they always give me crap about it, and they say, wow, you're being dishonest, you're misrepresenting. And I'm like, you know, I'm giving Linux a little bit of an edge. Because, you know, when you get it on that SSD, man, all of a sudden, like, you click on something and everything flies. It's say, wow, you're being dishonest, you're misrepresenting. And I'm like, you know, I'm giving Linux a little bit of an edge. Because, you know, when you get it on that SSD, man, all of a sudden, like, you click on something and everything flies. It's like, oh, this is way faster. Well, she told me, she goes, this is just so much more faster and responsive to what

I'm used to. And could I keep it? And at that point, it's like, well, this is where the whole commitment to open source comes in because I'm just going to eat the cost and tell her, all right. So, you know, it was all set up. And so, you know, we didn't end up billing her for anything. Take one for the team. Yeah, exactly.

But the point was, what you were talking about, once you can get past your preconceived ideas of how something should function or how something should be, once you can get past that, and she didn't have a choice because we just set the computer in front of her, once she got past that, then all of a sudden Linux became a viable option for her. I like Inigora's comment in the chat room. Cost of the SSD is basically the cost of a Windows license, and it's a one-time investment. What a great point. What a great point.

So we got a couple of mumble commentary. Kitson Kitty, I wanted to start with you first. You made a great comment during that clip, and I wanted to let you jump in right now. Yeah. One of the things that I do because I work in sales is when I want to sell somebody on a product, I ask them, well, what do you like about what you're currently using? Tell me about that. And then I use that as ammunition to push the sale because I know everything about the product that I sell. So you say what feels good?

What do you like about solution A? Exactly. And a lot of times what you will find is people don't have much to say about the product that they have. Right, right. So then that lets you come in and present option B. Actually, I don't want to skip over this. This is pure brilliance. Make them focus on what they like.

What do you like about X, right? And then say, okay, well, you know what? I get that. And by the way, Y provides this and even more. And I think if you could make that case, that's a very, very, very strong way to do that. Great point, Kitson. Sun Sol, you wanted to make a comment about awareness overall. Go ahead. So I'm in the same boat as I guess most people. So I'm trying to like make people aware, especially in my small community,

people who are blind, visually impaired about Linux, kind of how it can help you, especially for how it's advantageous for them. So I always present the case of like, look, what is your current workflow and how does it work for you? And I try to show them,

this is how this can work for you. Because in my line of my line of people like they have to be shown right like people uh it's kind of like what what noah and brian have started talking about about change a lot of people are really hard on change um so when when you try to show them something new and try to show them what the benefits they're almost not willing to accept it unless you can show them a good way of how this is really going to enforce a good change wow great point and thank you for show them a good way of how this is really going to enforce a good change. Wow.

Great point. And thank you for bringing up the accessibility aspect of that, too. Great point. Great point. And, you know, I wanted to talk about, you know, as we move, as we zoom out a little bit, because that's such a good point, and yet it's really in the weeds, right? And so how do you address that at the at a global level and as somebody who has followed linux forever basically um i've never really known where to put red hat right uh i like i i grok a lot of what they do at the same time like

i i kind of i'm inclined because you know they're worth a lot of money and they're a they're a company i'm inclined to put them sort of at a far and i watch them at a distance that could all change though i don't know where i'm going to stand um i'll tell you more about this but we had something really unique happen this last week for the linux action show and red hat and uh this this clip with brian and noah touches a little bit on this i'm going to expand on this more after we play this but uh let's talk about red hat a little bit welcome i guess what surprises me so much about redhead is they're so big and i guess i'm surprised i i shouldn't be i guess but i guess i was I was pleasantly surprised at how such a big company can get to a point and still maintain their integrity.

They still maintain that really strong sense of community, and they really get it. I mean, they really, really get it. Well, you know, it's really great to hear you say that because I feel that way. And if I can just make one more plug, maybe one more shameless plug. Our CEO, Jim Whitehurst,, wrote a book about this very topic. It's called The Open Organization. And it's about Whitehurst's time at Red Hat. He's very open about the fact that he came from Delta seven or eight years ago.

Very traditional, hierarchical organization. Real button-down, straight-laced place. And he came to Red Hat, and he thought his mission was going to be, as he says in the book, I thought my mission was going to be to clean this place up. You know, this is chaotic. You know, this, this company, this company is just, you know, it's doing things in a way that I've never seen things done before. And he said, instead of changing the company, the company changed him. So he wrote this book that I just finished reading and we write about on opensource.com a little bit. It's called The Open Organization, and it's about the ways that open source principles

function in organizations, the way that they actually present a model for organizing that is more in line with 21st century business practices, right? And the way that our economy today demands, in some ways, demands that companies adopt open source principles. So what he says is that Red Hat's been a great project, and it's taught him a lot, but what he's saying in the book is that

other companies can begin to adopt these principles and make their companies open, and in fact they will have to survive. Now, this is something I'm pretty fascinated by. How connected is Red Hat with the community? And really, how tuned in are they? So we're going to do something kind of unique, something we've never done for really the history of the Linux Action Show.

We're going to totally drop the format of the show, and we're going to do a special Linux Action Show visits Red Hat on Friday at 3 p.m. Pacific. Go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that in your local time. Pacific. Go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar to get that in your local time. Self was kind of within range of Red Hat's corporate offices and so producer Q5 Sis and Noah

went out there and talked to Red Hat and we have three hours plus more than three hours of footage and we're going to try to whittle all of it down to the best of in about an hour format. And for the next week's Linux Action Show, for just that episode, we're going to kind of throw the format out the airlock, if I could use a Star Trek reference if I could. And for episode 370, it's going to be the Linux Action Show visits Red Hat's offices.

And we're going to go down there and talk to them about this. And so when I heard that interview with Brian, I got pretty excited about that. And I'm really looking forward to that. So this Friday, join us, won't you? We're going to do a special 3 p.m. Pacific, jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar for a Linux Action Show Visits Red Hat. Now, that was Brian from opensource.com. We'll have links to his material in the show notes. Thank you to Brian, too, for tuning in.

And apparently he's a big fan of the network, too, which I am, you know, I can't lie. I'm a fan of him, too. So, semi-robotic, he's known as online, and we'll have a link to his blog and more in the show notes if you want to follow up with Brian. Now, we have one more thing to get to.

Something really special. I'm really looking forward to playing this. And part of it is because when I play this next clip, I think of all of you outside the good old United States of America who don't get really exposed to that good old southern twine. Well, this next clip is going to be Alan Hicks, a longtime contributor to the Slackware project. In fact, the man who wrote the book on Slackware. He's going to be Alan Hicks, a longtime contributor to the Slackware project. In fact, the man who

wrote the book on Slackware. He's going to join Noah. He's going to talk about self. He's going to talk about Slackware. I really want to play this clip for you. But first, I'm going to talk about DigitalOcean. Last sponsor of the Linux Unplugged program. Go to DigitalOcean, won't you? And use our promo code DEOUNPLUGGED. That'll give you a $10 credit. Get a $5 rig, try it out for a couple of months absolutely for free. Now, what I love about DigitalOcean is they're a company that recognizes that, look,

there's a few key points we've got to hit. We've got to have great connectivity. Like, for example, they just built out the new data center over in Germany. 40 gigabit e-connections to each hypervisor. Their fastest SSDs yet. And, like, DigitalOcean

does like a tactical strike when they do this kind of thing. They made sure that when they picked their this new data center in Germany, it's perfect if, like, not only Germany's a great country, but you got to distribute to anybody around Germany, this is a great data center. So, 40 gigabit E-connections to each hypervisor.

They're fastest SSDs yet. That's awesome. But really what I love about DigitalOcean is they early on decided we're going to go SSD only. They made that bet way before anybody else. And, yeah, you know Linux is the obvious bet. And, yeah, KVMs are the obvious bet. And yeah, KVM is the obvious bet. But for a commercial company to go out there and base their entire company around Linux, around KVM, that's a bold bet. That's a bold bet.

I got to respect that. And that's what DigitalOcean did. But they realized it's not just Linux. It's not just KVM. We've got to have super great hardware. We've got to have SSDs. We've got to have the best, best, best data centers anywhere. And that's why DigitalOcean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, and that new one in Germany.

And you can get started in less than a minute. You can get started in less than a minute. And remember, use the promo code DL1plugged. You'll get a $10 credit. You can try out DigitalOcean a couple of months for free because for $5 a month, you can get a $5, $5 a month, just $5, that's less than a burger, 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer.

That's crazy. For $5 a month, that's crazy. And if you use the promo code D-O-N-P-L-U-G, not only are you supporting the show and keeping us on the air, but you're going to get a $10 credit. You can try it out for two months for free. Guys, go try out CoreOS. Go try it. CoreOS is like, I don't know, I love it because you know me, I'm all in on rolling.

But there are some serious disadvantages to a rolling distribution. Well, CoreOS sort of solves that, right? Between containerization, between Docker, between the rolling base OS, that's a great solution. And DigitalOcean worked with the upstream project to make sure that way you get the updates directly from the CoreOS project. I love that. DigitalOcean has the big picture in mind.

And when you use the promo code D-O-unplugged, D-O-unplugged, D-O-unplugged, one word-U-G-H-D-O-U-N-P-L-U-G-H-D-O-U-N-P-L-U-G-H-D-O-U-N-P-L-U-G-H-D. One word. Lowercase. You get a $10 credit. I want you to just experience it. Go create a machine. They have an HTML5-based console. You can get from post all the way up to the boot screen.

All HTML5. From your mobile device to your desktop. No flash required. You know you love that. You can transfer devices between clients. So if you want to make something for somebody and sell it to them, you can. They have the best tutorials on the web. I'm sorry, ArchWiki.

Fact of the matter is, DigitalOcean has you beat. Ah, you're a good number two, ArchWiki. And Gen2? Yeah, you're number three! But the DigitalOcean, it's so, the DigitalOcean documentation is so good because they're actually willing to pay people to write that stuff. And they actually have open positions right now for technical writers. That way, it's all about you can get started.

You can do one application deployment. Sure, yeah, you can deploy Ruby on Rails, WordPress, Ghost with one click. That's pretty cool. But you might run into a wall. And you might decide, well, okay, I've done this, but now I'm not getting anything out of this. That's where these really, really good tutorials kick in, and you can get a little more out of DigitalOcean.

Go to DigitalOcean.com right now, DigitalOcean.com, and use the promo code D-O, unplugged. It's all one word, lowercase. You'll get a $10 credit. You can try out a $5 droplet. Two months for free. If you've been a long-time Linux user, maybe this is the opportunity to experiment with FreeBSD because they've got those droplets as well.

Or maybe if you've been a long-time Debian user, if you've been a long-time Red Hat user, try out CoreOS. It's a different approach to doing Linux. And I think it's going to go big. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code DEOUNPLUGGED. And a big thank you to DigitalOcean for sponsoring

Linux Unplugged program. Alright, now before I completely die of heat suffocation in this freaking studio because it is freaking hot. It is ridiculous. I want to play Alan Hicks. Now you may have heard of Alan Hicks if you were a Slackware user before. He wrote the book on Slackware.

He was part of it. He's been a long, long, long-time contributor to open source, and he's one of the main contributors to the Southeast Linux Fest conference itself. So he sat down with Noah, and he talked about self. And if you've been wondering, is this something I should attend? Is this worth me spending the money to fly out there and visit? Well, this talk might give you a little perspective. Welcome. So, Alan, tell me who you are and what distro you're using. Well, the distro I'm using is obviously going to be Slackware. That's what I've been using since about 2001 when I got started. Actually, i got started but my name's alan hicks

i've been uh working with slackware and working professionally uh with linux for 14 15 years now i'm currently a system system administrator for uh well i forget what our new name is promke sports group or something we recently got purchased and we're going through name changes so i'm not sure about all that but uh i've been involved in a lot of different projects i've been one of the most frequent speakers here itself is actually the first year ever that i'm not going to be speaking presenting doing networking stuff this is the first year that i'm just taking it easy and enjoying the conference. Yeah, yeah, you are in relax mode this year.

But even on relax mode, Alan, I watched you set up tables down that way and people pull you right and left. Well, just the way it goes, you know, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Yeah, yeah. I was one of those unfortunate 20% when I was born. This is what I think is particularly kind of cool about Self, right? Is that we have

you and I, we both like Linux. And we can talk about Linux all day long. But the reality is the majority of the conversation that occurred last night was about guns. Was about guns and about politics and how the world's going to hell in a handbasket. And that is something that I don't get at other conferences. And I think part of that is because

of the nature of the open source community. We all want to build relationships with each other. It's not just about how can I make money off of this or how can your project benefit mine? When I used to travel for work, I would go to conferences and it would be a very typical conversation. We'd talk about what we do. And then at the end of it, it would be, well, I think our company would really like to work with yours. I think that you could really be an asset to us. And I think that we could really be an asset to you. And if you put me in touch with your PR people, I could put you in touch with my secretary. You know, that kind of nonsense. And that's not the kind of environment I see here. Yeah, and I've never really liked those kinds of environments. This is really the only conference I ever attend each year,

and I've only been to one or two others, and they were in Sao Paulo, Brazil for a Slackware conference many years ago. And I don't really go for the whole corporate networking thing. That's just not me. I'm not big on that. I don't enjoy that aspect. I like a one-on-one relationship with a person. Yes.

Rather than a business-to-business relationship. And while there's plenty of businesses here who have their wares, their offerings and stuff on display, and will happily work with you. Self is really geared towards that one-on-one relationship, person-to-person. Yeah, and my experience has been the same. And it's not that I particularly enjoy corporate networking. I just sometimes feel like I don't have much of a choice because if I want to provide a competitive advantage to my clients,

then what that forces me to do sometimes is to become knowledgeable. And I have to work with those people. And a lot of those companies, the way that they want to do business is they have it all situated. They have everything kind of set out the way that they want you to follow a process. And they'll deviate from it. And you're exactly right. When you want to talk to, you have a problem with the SQL database, you can go find the guy that did SQLite.

You have a problem with Red Hat. I can go talk to Red Hat right there. There's a guy right there from Red Hat. If I want to talk about Slackware, I'll ask the guy that wrote the book and you'll tell me about Slackware. That's what I love about these conferences, you guys, is I've sat down at lunch

and had a barbecued salmon with the guy that wrote my SQL. And that's different. It's different. It's an experience. And so Southeast Linux, I got to go next year. I got to go to that. It's a really cool experience. And thank you to Alan Hicks and thank you to Brian for stopping by and chatting with Noah.

to Brian for stopping by and chatting with Noah. And I can't go forward without saying a huge thank you to Noah for all of his crazy hard work. It's only I know how hard he worked and I really really, really, really, really, really

appreciate it. He is awesome. Now, one of the other guys that's awesome is producer Q5Sys and he had a talk itself that I think might be right up your alley. He talked about creating your own Linux laptop, building your own Linux laptop. This is an hour and five-minute talk. I can't play for it. I cannot – I'm sorry.

I cannot do it. But I wanted to grow – I went in about six minutes into his talk. I have the whole thing linked in the show notes really if you've ever wondered about building your own laptop now is a better time than ever uh i i joe i jumped in about six minutes where he talks about batteries so you want to get a board that's going to be power efficient and still be able to accomplish the tasks that you're going to want to accomplish as for for the screen, who's the innovative fruit? I love this. If anyone that has their hands up,

is anyone next to them that is a friend of them that doesn't have their hand up? This question right here is Mr. Q5Sys. Producer Q5Sys. Perfect. This is what it's like to work with Mr. Q5Sys. He's so great because

once he researches something, once he understands something, he perfect. This is what it's like to work with Mr. Q5Sys. He's so great because he, once he researches something, once he understands something, he evangelizes it. Don't we all do that? And he's so great about that. Not your friends. I want to back up a little bit. I want to play a little bit of this for you. I want to back up. Oh, hold on, hold on.

I want to play a little bit of him talking about this for you. So go find, you can find the whole talk, and there is a couple of minutes where you might have some audio issues. Do not worry about that. There was a little bit of him talking about this for you. So you can find the whole talk. And there is a couple of minutes where you might have some audio issues. Do not worry about that. There was a little bit of YouTube issues. Talk to needed enhancement. Oh, there we go. Oh, sorry, sorry.

So he notes to me here that there's a couple of minutes where YouTube didn't quite capture the Hangouts audio. So if you listen to the – I have a link to the show notes. Mr. Q5 says he talks about battery issues, 3D printing your own laptop, building it around a Raspberry Pi, all of those topics are in his talk, and I have it linked in the show notes. It's over an hour, so I can't play the whole thing, but I really recommend you check it out. And it is also, like Micra89 points out, available in the Linux Action Show subreddit. Oh, yes, the Linux Action Show subreddit. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Make this show better. You weren't happy?

What? What? We didn't do it? What? We didn't do... You weren't happy? Okay. I'll take that.

Submit a bug. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Make it better. Seriously. I listen to the community over there. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Go check it out. I will also, by the way over there. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Go check it out. Also, by the way, we'll have a feedback thread for this episode.

I am trying to figure out what all of you are doing in response to LastPass. What are you doing? What is your response to LastPass? Let me know. LinuxActionShow.reddit.com. Go find the feedback thread for episode 96 of the Linux Unplugged program. And let me know. Are you going to switch to keypads?

I want to know. The anime says he's doing nothing. Okay, all right, I'll take that as well. Go over there, let me know what your plans are for this and other things LinuxActionShow.Budget.com. And also, if you want to hook up with us at a future event, meetup.com slash jupiterbroadcasting. Go there and sign up and future events will be there. I was planning to do episode 100 in Seattle, but now I think I might do episode 100 of the Linux Unplugged program on location with Noah.

Patreon.com slash today if you want to get in on some of that. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. And by the way, you can make this show better right now by going to linuxactionshow.reddit.com. I will leave you with this. Episode 96 marks what I think is one of the coolest, coolest episodes we've ever had. I love talking to Brian. I love Self.

Thank you so much to Noah. Thank you so much to Rikai for editing all of this together. Thank you so much for producer Q5Sys. Thank you so much for Blaster for communicating remotely. Thank you, everybody. Go to meetup.com slash jupiterbroadcast and the community members. Thank you to Popey for giving us an update on Open Tech 2015. I hope I can be there next year.

It's a great episode, you guys. Thank you so much for making this possible. Patreon.com slash today if you want to see us do future episodes. Episode 96 in the can. I cannot, I know it's 96. I'm looking forward to 100. Join us back here next week, Tuesdays.

JupiterBroadcasting.com slash calendar if you want to join us in the virtual lug. See you right back here next week. All right. In the IRC right now, kids and kitty, you've submitted a straw poll. I won't steal your thunder. What is it about?

Go ahead. Kids and't steal your thunder. What is it about? Go ahead. Kids and Kitty, go ahead. I don't hear you. Are you muted? Still having trouble with that mic, Kit? So, Kids and Kitty asked the live stream, will you be migrating away from LastPass? And it's just a simple yes or no question. And I'm going to vote

no right now. But I'm curious. Ooh, it's split. It's literally split right now. 50-50. 50-50 in the live stream. Ooh, wow. Wow, you guys. Really? Really? You should have had third options. I'm using key pass and there's no option

for that. No, no, no. Because that's a no. If you're going to key pass, that's a clear no. No, I like this. Two options is good. It's good. I specifically did that intentionally. Yeah, make good man. Because the question is, would you move away?

Right. So it's irrelevant whether or not you have last pass now, per se, as if you were using it, would you move away? Are we going to be talking about fedora again no i think we're all done why do you have something to say i just tried it out this week it's awesome should i try it out last week i'm sold i'm sold i wiped the The SUSE partition after I used it for a few days. Whoa. So you're like switching, but you're that sold?

I am that sold, and I'm a hard sell from SUSE. Okay. All right. Okay. What is the big diff? Because, I mean, like at the end of the day, they're both RPM distros. One's got the build service. One's got copper.

What? What's the big difference? You know what sold me was the fact that everything was just so consistent. I didn't have to, pardon the language, dick around with four different software managers to do what I wanted to do. I could go into software or I go into DNF. Oh, yeah. It is a bit of a – it's a little... I sometimes feel like OpenSUSE is a little bipolar. It's a little

chaotic in that sense. There's a lot of different tools available to you. And that honestly maybe is my bias of all the transitions they've done with their package manager. But when I sit down to use it, I feel like there's a lot of places I go to manage sources. And I just... But I felt like with Fedora okay i've got dnf

repos and i've got gnome software boom boom i can use it on the command line or i use it in the gui is that how you felt uh largely and the other thing is that i noticed is uh every time i wanted to do uh something with uh installing software at one point it wanted to drag a bunch of packages in because they were part of the meta package that I had installed. So I had to taboo those in Yast. Right. And they would still want to install. And heaven forbid you have to do any kind of conflict resolution through Yast.

That's where it kind of gets hairy because I feel like when I have to do conflict resolution for RPMs and dependencies and because the meta package wants to be able to replace a package that another meta package wants, all of a sudden I feel like I'm back in 2006, 2004 Linux, and I kind of just start shutting down. And I think my time could be spent better than this. But, okay, come on, chat room. Come on. Strawpoll.me. Strawpoll.me.

All right, well. See, the problem is like 40 to 50% of the people are not even in the chat room. So I got to give it to them over air. The Strawpoll.me slash four six five three seven eight strawpoll.me slash four six five three seven eight two and there's a link in the chat room uh we have 19 votes right now, 20 votes. I just can't see moving away from LastPass.

It seems too practical to me. But at the same time, part of me recognizes they are a huge, huge, huge target. On another note, I kind of wish that Colonel Linux would have been here to join us, because I wanted to ask him if he ever saw anybody show up to self in full leather bondage. Confused. Okay. All right.

Okay. All right. All right. Okay. So going on at the same time of Southeast Linux Fest is the Southern. I don't even know the whole acronym, but it's like Southeast Leather Fest. And it's a leather fest. And last year, if you search Twitter for self, you got pictures of 65-year-old ladies in leather.

Now, this year, they coordinated and there was self and then there was the Southeast Leather Fest. And they had their own hashtag separate from self. But no, Noah, very, very much so. I believe I'm not positive. I think he's in Amsterdam right now. So what Noah does is Noah works at like 300, 400 percent. And I'm not exaggerating. I've never known anybody who's ever worked harder in his life.

I don't know how his wife and his kids accommodated, but nobody worked harder than Noah. And so he goes out to these conferences and then he's hooking up with a buddy of his and I think he's in Amsterdam right now. So he goes out and he just totally goes all in on these conferences. And then I think right now he's like on his way home,

on his way home from self he's stopping by Amsterdam and he's having a party with his buddy and then he's gonna go home like and then we'll and then he'll be back by Friday so that way we can do the Linux action show that's pretty crazy but I think that's how he rolls so that's why he couldn't join us today Swift I'm okay I'm a little stressed out Swift, I'm okay. I'm a little stressed out. Yeah, it has been very difficult to make all of this happen centrally,

and it has been very hard to watch all of it happen remotely, if that makes sense. So it has been very hard technically to pull it all off because Jupyter Broadcasting has grown, technically, to pull it all off because Jupyter Broadcasting has grown. And so we have Roku devices and TiVos and audio streams and web browsers and VLC that when you think you can tune in live and watch, you think you can go to your Roku app

or you think you can go to the Kodi app or whatever, or XBMC app, whatever, and just watch live. It takes a crazy amount of coordination behind the scenes to actually deliver content at all of those endpoints. And thankfully, Rikai and I, really Rikai, managed to pull it all off. But it was very stressful. And it was also stressful because I wasn't there. I really wanted to be there.

But otherwise, I'm okay. I'm good. I'm very happy. I think NOAA is an incredible asset. So I'm very good about that. And Rikai has been amazing. So everybody say thank you to Rikai for how hard he worked this weekend. We don't pay him to work over the weekend. And yet, he did. And he made it possible for us to stream the content from self live to all of the Endpoint destinations.

The beard made it all happen so thank you to Rika and as all things our poll is completely split down the middle if you're a long time listener or viewer you know everything every freaking poll every time

goes 50-50 you know when this happens you know this if you've been following for a while. 16 votes say... This is so ridiculous. I can't even... Okay. We've had 31 votes

from the live stream. Incredible. I didn't expect anything less. 16 people will move away from LastPass, and 16 people will not. It's literally split right down the middle. You guys are such sons of bitches. You are so hard to please because you are literally split on every single topic.

And you know if you've been watching for a while, you know this is true. You know I always run into this. You are so hard. I love you, though. I love you. Chris, blue bricks or red curtains? I'm sorry. Well, last week it was blue bricks, and the week before that, it was red curtains, obviously.