Tech Over Tea - Creator Of Vanilla OS & Bottles | Mirko Brombin

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

People have wanted me to talk about VanillaOS on the main channel so I'll do you one better, let's talk to the guy who actually made it and see what he has too say about it along with his other project Bottles. ==========Guest Links========== VanillaOS Website: https://vanillaos.org/ Bottles Website: https://usebottles.com/ Github: https://github.com/mirkobrombin Website: https://mirko.pm/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brombinmirko Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mirkobrombin ==========Support The Show========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson =========Video Platforms========== 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg =========Audio Release========= 🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss 🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM 🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== 🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea ==========Social Media========== 🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9 🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/ 🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345 ==========Credits========== 🎨 Channel Art: All my art has was created by Supercozman https://twitter.com/Supercozman https://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/ DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. Welcome to episode 151 of Tech of a T. And today, I've got a guest here that... People have been asking me to look at one of his projects for quite a while, and I thought, hey, let's just do something better, and talk to the guy involved himself. Welcome to the show, Mir brongan uh try that again can you just say i've only ever seen your name written down how do you actually pronounce

your first name brombin uh your uh your your first name not don't you say miracle okay cool Miracle. Miracle. Miracle. Okay, cool. Welcome to the show. Hello. So, just pre-warning, there might be a bit of a language barrier as we're going through the episode. We'll make it work as we go, but yeah, we'll see how it goes, basically. I've got some things lined out, so, you know, it could go well. It could go really badly. It could go really well. We'll see exactly what happens.

So I guess we'll start off with, I guess, a brief introduction of who you are and what do you do? I am a UX UI designer at Fabricators, my company. And I work as a designer and I make products for the definition in our company is that we make software for the human for humans we make for um human quality right and the main things people may have heard of you for are the work you've done on bottles and now the work you're doing on VanillaOS yeah I make I'm the main developer of the bottles and VanillaOS

and that's it I think people already know what are the projects I think they know about the projects but they may not have heard anything from you did you sort of like just you know it seems like you're just getting into the work and getting things done you don't really um i guess put yourself out in the the spotlight as much as some people might do.

I'm an open source contributor. I started using Ubuntu like 12.04 a lot of years ago. Yeah, that's 10 years ago now. Wow. Yeah, that's 10 years ago now. Wow. Yeah. I remember my last Windows edition was XP. Okay, that was a while ago.

Which is a lot of time ago. And my first very distribution, which was also the one which made me start contributing to the Linux world, is Elementor US. I started Bottles. It was a poor experiment. My first application was made with JPA and Granit, the toolkit, the framework used in Elementor US.

And I was just thinking, I want to make my first application. What can I do? And I was using Play on Linux, Lutris, and others. And I love Lutris a lot. I love Lutris. But I found it a lot confusing. Because there are so many clicks around you need to take this and do this but click this

and there's so much to do I'm a UX designer so my first idea was just make this simple and this was my idea

I can definitely understand that with Luchas like when say I want to install a game for example you'll usually grab some script from the Luchas website and then it just prints out this giant

wall of text as it's going through the script, you're not really sure what it's doing and what you can really change with it. It's just doing something. You just click on Cyberpunk and you see this

wall of text and the main user will say, oh, okay, nice. What should I do with this? Exactly. And so I made bottles, and I didn't think it would go so well. Actually, so well.

A lot well. It definitely got a lot of attention, that's for sure. Yes. In just one minute, I mean, the first version was very unstable, obviously. Yes, in just one minute, I mean. The first version was very unstable, obviously. When was Bottles first made?

I don't remember. I know I've heard about it for a while, it's to be at least a couple of years old at this point. 2017. Okay, okay. A lot of time ago. So the first version was very unstable. I'll send you a picture of the first version. It was very, very, very ugly.

I think I made a post in your blog. Bottles nowadays definitely looks very polished. It's very clear that you're not just a... Okay, something that you'll see with a lot of open source projects is they have a a very distinctive a programmer made this and not a ui designer made it's clear they're designed in a way that makes sense to the programmer but doesn't make sense to you know a regular user, it's very clear that you have experience developing UIs and understand

what someone would actually need for there to be a good experience. I have to say that there are a lot of people working there. I'm not just the main UX developer, UX designer. There are a lot of developers. And the UI, I'm a UX designer, UI designer. The design of bottles is not made by me. Okay, okay.

There are January, Noel, Alvar, and other designers who made it possible. I developed it. I'm not a developer. I'm not a developer. I don't know how I turned me to put code in my project, but I started to make the developer, so there are a lot of people.

Also, David Skeleton, who you already interviewed. Yes, yes. Yeah, he's a very interesting person, has a very interesting blog to read. You say this first version of Bottles wasn't very polished, but even so, it still seems like the framework

for what Bottles has become today is still present in this early version. Yes. It was GTK, and it was GTK and it is GTK today just it's out as

GTK free with granite so I don't know if you check my picture I send you yes I'm looking at that right now the first on the left the first on the left is the 0.7 and

the 0.8 at the right and the center is just the V2. Okay, that makes sense. There are a lot of versions and UE changes which just, you know, leave it white. Okay, looking at that version on the left i can definitely see uh how it has improved a lot since then in that first version it seems like it's a very simple gtk interface uh now it's got now it's definitely a lot more polished now. Yeah. Not complete.

We are trying to follow the GNOME guidelines. But there are a lot of rules to follow, so we need some time to complete the work. We are almost here. Almost? What is the biggest thing that's missing right now? Some quality of life

improvement, probably. There are some bugs. There will be bugs forever, probably. Yeah. Like any software in the world, probably. Just some widgets not connected properly, like any software in the world probably just some widgets not

connected properly like there is a search bar in the library which actually does nothing I don't know why it was it is also instable so I don't know why it's probably my fault I don't know

but it looked good so and a lot of people seem to like what Bottles is doing so maybe we can forget about a search bar that doesn't work just yet and worry about the importance

fixing that hiding that search bar until it works doesn't seem like a difficult thing to fix. So one of the things I did want to ask you about was why... Actually, we'll go back a little bit. You mentioned that when you last used Windows, you were using Windows XP.

What made you want to stop using Windows and start using Linux instead? It was a lot of time ago, so I don't remember properly. But I remember that I bought that magazine, which has Linux as the title. And I was like, what is Linux? And I started reading the topics inside, reading a lot of things.

And I needed to try this operating system. So I started looking for a CD, because it was a lot of time ago. So now download with a 56K modem. Then start with your CD. Try installing with a lot, a lot, a very lot of problems. Because Linux was a very mess a long time ago. And today there are a lot of people which start blaming Linux because, oh, this doesn't work.

Oh, this is not fantastic. Oh, this is not a Waze. Yeah, trust me, it is a Waze. Trust me. Yeah, trust me, it is a waste. Trust me. Well, I have a lot of issues with the way that Linux works now. So I can only expect that as it was a much younger project then,

those issues were a lot greater and a lot more prevalent. But you've worked through it clearly and you've kept using Linux and now you're working on bottles. Actually, you started working on bottles, but how did you initially get interested in wanting to just? wanting to make Any sort of project not just not bottles itself

But how did you get started doing any development or any any UI stuff as well? Yes, I Remember that my approach was looking at other source code. I was not very familiar with GitHub. GitHub, I don't know how it's pronounced. Yes, GitHub, yes. And I was looking at the code. I had a little bit of skill for Python.

So I started looking at Python code and just start from there. So I started copying this. Okay, this can... I can put this here and I can try to change this. Well, this works.

Okay, I can start reading the documentation. Because if you are a Python developer, which I am not, you have a lot of experience with documentation references. So you just take the reference, look at the function, this, this, this, and so just copy this and use, and everything starts from there.

So it's been a slow learning process since then to the point where you can really make your own project. Yes. It takes me like three years to start making something which actually works something like that before you made i presume so bottles is the first thing where it's a you know a real project that other people want to be using but before you were doing that how did you go about learning different things with programming did you just do little uh little project like little small projects on the side or

did you work on other projects for things you might want to be using how did you go about doing that i made another application before that uh I was already working as a developer because I'm not a developer, but I work as a developer. I don't know. I'm using Django, which is a famous Python framework. Yeah. So I already had a bit of understanding of what I'm doing. Before, after,

I made another application which is called Football. It should be in the elementary app center, if I'm not wrong. And it just showed Football score. Oh, okay. It was my real first application. That would teach you

basic things like interacting with an API and basic GUI stuff as well but it's not this big application like Bottles is now. Yes, that's football. One thing about Bott about bottles is bottles makes it very clear that flat pack is the recommended way to install it and i've talked to um skeleton about uh distributions shipping bottles in the native package manager and how that can cause different issues depending on how their dependencies are set up um one thing i did want to ask is why why flat pack specifically and not snap for example because flat pack is actually in flat pack works snap has a lot of problem okay i think that snap is probably the the best for developers because as a lot of things are a better

documentation multipass a lot of things i i love Snap. I love developing Snaps. But they are slow, a lot slow. There are many issues. At the time, there were no portals for something. We needed some hatches, etc. Flatpak just is probably the best solution for software. Not just bottles, just software.

Because it is in the developer's hands so we can make our own Flatpak, test it in many architectures, test sound dependencies at a specific version

we have a lot of less effort than just experimenting with Ubuntu, Fedora and other repositories specific for that distribution ok I think I've explained it pretty well so okay i think i've explained it pretty well um so why actually well also along with that um why is it that a native package manager would not be recommended to install something like bottles

because i know it can cause issues but what sort of problems have you experienced with people reporting issues that you know don't exist in the Flatpak but exist with the packages that they are saying they exist with? If that makes sense. What problems does using a Flat pack solve as opposed to using a regular package in the case of bottles the main difference is that we actually only tested

the flat pack one which used a dead dependency at that version so we know that libyaml works very well with that version because we tested it with that version. We had a lot of issues because maintainers, packagers, which does not properly pack, repack bottles. And so these bottles

was a project that had two releases per month, like the 13 and the 28 at each month. And it was

a big problem because we had the 35 release and a lot of users started reporting problems with the 21. And it was very problematic to fix because we don't test hours. Yeah. Well, you can't really test every single distro package.

If Ubuntu is going to package it in one way, they're going to have certain dependencies and dependency versions on their system. Then if you look at a distro like Arch Linux for example, the versions available on that are going to be completely different.

And I can understand why that would be a mess to actually test and keep things in line. Flatpak is just universal. We built it, test it, and it just works everywhere. Just you need Flatpak setup. I did notice that Bottles has a section in there

for app image as well, but that's not currently available. Is there a plan to bring that back, or is that now deprecated and gone altogether now and just gone all together? We started distributing bottles as AppImage only at the start with Vichu, but there are a lot of problems with Wayland and other libraries and dependencies.

and other libraries and dependencies. Okay. We started working with Probono, which is the founder of AppImage, but there are still many issues, so this is not ready. We are still working on it. I think it is ready sometime. Okay, so it is

possibly going to be there in the future, just not right now. I hope. Hopefully. So, you did mention wanting to conform to the GNOME standards earlier.

Why is the GNOME standards important for what you're trying to do with bottles? Because of consistency. When users use GNOME, and every application looks the same, with the same user experience, the same colors, theme. And so don't themes up, please. And this, if bottles use the same user experience, the same workflow, same colors, same themes, same everything,

it's just simple to use for the user which does not know how to do things. I have heard from Skeleton there have been issues with people using a theme with an application like Bottles and that causing UI issues that were unexpected like certain UI elements get misplaced and these get reported as issues to the application developer when it's not really a this one GNOME theme and this isn't the thing that you're trying to do you're trying to make the application

along this one set of guidelines and anything else outside of that is going to be unsupported yes just because when your team has an application, we are just hacking that application. I mean, we have our application with that design. We are following Adwaita.

But this is the design which shows for our application. So when you start tweaking using that theme, but with Tessico icons, you are literally hacking the application. So like any other product, those bottles is a product, actually. You will not get support because you are breaking the application actually

so why does bottles use because obviously you could have made bottles with something like QT instead why did you go with GTK is that just because that's what you had

any interest in at the time, or is there some other reason why GTK is what you've gone with? I started using GTK, so I made some tests with Qt, but I found

it very complex, problematic, and less more versatile flexible you can do a lot of things with qt which you cannot do with gtk but it is missing the guidelines so you are in the far west when you try to make an application with qt. And I need to have some guidelines to make things because it's very complex to make a new interface without having some guidelines for your desktop. Because it's not well integrated.

You mean UI guidelines? KDE doesn't provide the same... Do they have... I actually don't know. Does KDE have any sort of guidelines at all for UI design? Or are you just entirely on your own? I think they have Kirigami, which is a toolkit like Libad White is for Qt, for GTK.

But I think every user can do whatever they want. Because I personally, I don't find the coherence in the KDE applications. I can see that application that is made in this way, but another application that does that thing in another way and it's the far west probably.

I think that definitely makes sense. When I see an application built in GTK, it's very clearly a GTK application even if it's not clearly a GTK application even if it's not perfectly in line with what GNOME is doing it's still very clear that this is a GTK application

I've seen a lot of Qt apps where I had no idea until I'd actually checked that that's what it was using. So I can definitely understand that UI coherence argument. Because some have a menu bar, others have a sidebar, others use something like the TSD as GNOME. It's a mess. I think you can maybe make the argument

that having that freedom does allow developers to express themselves in their own way for what their specific application is trying to do. But if the goal is trying to build an environment like GNOME is trying to build, having a clear set of guidelines, like this is something that Apple does really well. They have a clear set of guidelines on what is an interface that fits in with what we're trying to do. And for building a desktop like that, I totally get why that makes sense. And if you're building something with GTK, why it then makes sense to follow along with that so you can fit into that into that theming style yeah i mean i'm pro for the freedom to develop your your things in your way but you have to

think about the user which is actually actually who will use that application. So I know that some users, some developers will say, I know, but I have my vision, so I want to do things in my way. But that user must learn about your user experience. So I don't have just my desktop with one user experience. I have my desktop, which is Gnome, KDE, and your desktop, and Discord, which is this user experience,

and Lutris, which is another user experience. But I have Chrome, which is another user experience. But I have Chrome, which is another user experience. And please help me in this ocean. Every developer is trying to design their own twist on the user experience, but it's not giving you a a consistent a consistent experience across all of them.

I think that's what you're trying to say. Exactly. Well, that goes back to what I was saying earlier about it's very clear that you have a more a ui designer perspective on this as opposed to being a programmer first as i was saying earlier there's a lot of projects out there

where they're very clearly designed by a programmer they haven't really thought about the user, thought about what goes into making a consistent UI. What they've thought about is how do we fit the features into this program and let's just lay out the UI in a way that

makes it work, but not actually laid out in a way that makes it work, but not actually laid out in a way that makes it easy and logical to use. Yeah, you understand if an application was entirely created by a developer, if it has a thousand of functions. Because the first error you made in the in a ux designer is making a function for every single action like kta probably i i don't i don't blame katie i love kda i'm friends with nicola vegeroero. But I love KDE, but there is a lot of problem with the UX.

And just make thousands of functions to make everything. It's just, oh, it looks nice. I have this function to make everything I want, but I don't know where they are because this list is very big yeah well that's that's one of the good things even though that might not be good for a you know for a easy user experience this is one of the good things about about the fos space you can have something like GNOME,

which is trying to be this coherent, well-laid-out design guidelines, trying to go for a simple user experience in the same space as something like KDE, where you have a lot of user functions being exposed to the user in giant lists, which may not be the easiest way to go about it, but some users are going to say that that is the experience they want to have. like a window manager like I'm using and there's no coherence at all. I just pick and choose applications

as I feel like it's going to achieve my goals. This is one of the great things about Linux. You can have all of these things at the same time. There's no one stopping you doing that. I think that it uh, is good to have, uh, uh, two different desktop, like normal, like ADA, because the first user is, uh, the one who need to use the computer as it is. I mean, I can add an extension to have a system tray.

I use a system training, you know now because I need a system tray. But I think that it's good to have something like KDA, XFCA, MATE, and other, which I don't know if they are still alive, to be honest. Because I think that KDE is made for hackers. That people, we need to make the taskbar look at certain things, to have the desktop with icons, without icons, the dockbar, sidebar, etc. So I think it is good.

This is also the best thing of Linux, to have the personalization, the customization. So it's good. This is also the best thing of Linux to have the personalization, the customization. So, it's good. It's good. It's good. I think that's the best way to sum it up. It's just good. Well, let's talk a little

bit about Vanilla OS, because that's the other thing that is getting, especially right now a lot of attention a lot of attention and a lot of pressure it got a lot of attention pre-release but now that you know now that it's had the the release recently a lot of people are talking about it and well let for anyone who hasn't heard about it let people know what vanilla OS actually is

what is vanilla OS is a phone it is a television no it is a system operator operating system the funny the funny thing It is a television? No, it is a system operator. Operating system. The funny thing with Vanilla OS is how the project started. Because I was typing with one of my best friends and we were talking about how many distros we tried in our experience. And we started writing a list of problems. Fedora is a wayzoon, but why do I need to install at the second time I installed it, I want

NVIDIA driver because I can't even click an icon using Nouveau there are a lot of stuttering, glitch and other things like that the Nouveau developers do a lot of good work

but I've not heard a lot of good things about the quality of the drivers. I'm sure they're all great people, but that's a really big task to take on. Yeah, Fedora's always... I love Fedora. I used Silverbrook for like one year. Okay. And it's an away zone distribution,

probably the best before vanilla. And so we started making the writing data list and there was Fedora with that problem. Ubuntu is the best because it can pre-configure

for Optimus laptop which I use. Arch Linux, no. Simply no, because it is broken. I don't know if people can use it. It is broken. I don't know. I can't even upgrade my system.

What would anyone do with Arch Linux? By the way, I don't use Arch, man. You stay quiet. I've not been using Arch for the past three years. By the way, I don't use Arch, man. And so... You stay quiet. I've not been using Arch for the past three years. They can shoot down your video because of this. So we started discussing with... Can we make our own

distribution I think it is almost simple because it's just a bunch of packages and everything is there so why not so we start cleaning up

the nom in Ubuntu because it's very very blotted a lot cleaning up GNOME in Ubuntu because it's very, very very blotted a lot. It was fine because I made that repository just for me

and some people found it and started writing and reaching me to ask me, so me can you distribute it can we have a Ubuntu with stock GNOME so I made a

Discord server for the project and everything started from there How long ago was that? 3000 of people When did you start that Discord server? September thousand of people. When did you start that Discord server? September. Oh, that was really recent. I thought

maybe you've been working on stuff a bit longer than that. No, that's very recent. The first version is completely different from the version we have now. We have dropped probably 99% of the code and everything. So the real project started at November.

Okay. Okay. So it's, what are we in? January now. So it's been going really for three, two and a half ish months something like that yeah okay so vanilla gnome why vanilla gnome why what what's wrong with what ubuntu is doing with gnome uh i am in the gnome foundation as a member and Because I love GNOME, I love everything of GNOME. The user experience of GNOME starting since GNOME 30 is a waste.

GNOME 3 was a mess, probably. A very problematic text of environment. a very problematic text of environment. So I was using Ubuntu because it works for Optimus laptop, NVIDIA, it's just a way of because everything just works as expected. Yeah. That's the snaps and the bloated GNOME experience. So, we started cleaning it up to make

it pure to provide the pure GNOME experience to the user, which is actually me. Because I need GNOME in a pure way. So everything was perfect about

Ubuntu, but you just didn't like the customizations that that ubuntu was making you wanted to have a you wanted to just have that pure gnome experience which is is certainly a i've heard a lot of people complain that pure GNOME there's something wrong with pure GNOME and you need to add extra things onto it but from what you're saying

you prefer that pure experience yes I love the entire workflow of GNOME like starting from the overview to just the missing minimize icon, because I started using GNOME as it is.

I just installed the system tree icons. And at the beginning, I had problems because where is the minimize icon? I had to minimize icon, but I have nothing in my desktop. So why should I minimize my windows? Should I hide something? Probably not. So that icon is just... i don't need it you were just used to it because you came from windows xp where minimize it exactly yes it's always been there

a lot of people come from windows or mac os the primary system operating systems the primary operating systems, and they look exactly for the same experience. So Windows had minimize, maximize, close buttons, and they wanted the same buttons. But we are not Windows. Windows probably should learn from us. I don't know.

It makes sense on Windows because it's common to have desktop icons Whereas that trend is sort of faded out on Linux. There's there are ways to do it It's just no one really cares enough to make them good Yeah, we just don't care a desktop icon so unless you really want to see your wallpaper there's not really much of a reason to minimize and if you really want to see your wallpaper you can go to an empty desktop and get the same experience yeah or you can use the shortcuts i mean i think there is a shortcut to minimize the minimize the Okay, okay. There is one to maximize it, so it is the same to minimize. Okay.

I have a bit of experience using GNOME. My main experience using it is there are certain people in my audience who get very angry when they see GNOME. So I make a habit of every time I do anything on my channel with a virtual machine i have to have gnome installed oh no he's talking about the gnome let's put down the vote of this video thumbs down now man

i also did the same with systemd just because there just because there is a small but very angry, loud set of people that their entire existence on Linux is based around not liking SystemD. I'll blow up your video app. I'll blow your video up just saying that I love system D. I really love it because you can make a lot of things with it, with timer, mount point, units. It's just a weasel. A lot of things in Vanilla OS is just made with system D. So it's a weasel a lot of things in vanilla os is just made with systemd so it's a weasel right so i presume that you didn't expect the attention that the vanilla os has had over this very short period of time. What has it been like going from having this distro

that you basically just made for yourself to it now being this thing where... I don't know if I have the article, but I remember someone writing this blog post. It was something like Vanilla OS is the future of Linux distros or something like that what is

what has that experience been like having this suddenly popular distro I'm still trying to figure out which is my mood, because Luca Di Maio, which is the Distrobox developer, is also my friend. And he's also involved in the Vanilla OS development.

And he started writing me, oh, the register made a good article talking about Vanilla OS. And I was, oh, nice. And just some days ago, oh, ZDNet do the same. And this one made a lot of video, which is saying Vanilla OS is the future. Is this, is this? And I was, oh, it's fine. Nice. Okay.

It's a waste, but it's just my project. I mean, I don't know. Thanks. It's a waste, but I'm not ready for this probably because the register is a big name yeah absolutely ZDNet is another

big name I remember that I was reading it when I was a child and I just turned it into a 2019 so thanks and I just turned it into a 2019 so thanks well I don't think the attention is going to stop anytime soon there is

now that a lot of applications are starting to be available as a flat pack there is this growing interest in the idea of an immutable Linux distro, which I hadn't heard this term prior to maybe a year ago, but now I know a lot of people who use Fedora Silverblue, a lot of people who use Fedora Silverblue and a lot of people now are really interested in seeing sort of that same style but with an Ubuntu base instead and I'm curious to see where this goes. For anyone who may not be aware, can you give a brief explanation on what an immutable distro actually is?

An immutable distribution is... It was introduced, if I'm not wrong, by macOS or Chromebooks, Chrome OS. Because Chrome OS and Mac, also Android, they are all immutable operating system. The primary thing is that the system is almost or entirely locked down. So you can't just install things change something the route because you want

i don't know one pony in your route something like that um you can just install software in your home space in your home directory or in the host system the in the root system, using Flatpak, other universal packages which does not install libraries and other files in your root system. And Vanilla OS is just something like that, but not really, because Vanilla OS is immutable, but not really because vanilla os is immutable but not entirely you can make change to your atc folder like some configurations and something like that you can still install flatbacks to the host to the root system which please don't don't do it just don't wait, because the root partition of an NIL OS

is very small. And we had some reports of people installing everything in the root system and started blaming after the project. Because why I have left of space? Because we say things and you don't read things. So please listen to me next time. And this is the main the main difference so

but you know so the real folder which is uh um really mutable is the usr1 which is the one we who host who has the the the packages the software. And normally in distributions like Micro S, Silverblue and Vanilla, you have to install things in your route like drivers, custom kernels

and something like that using a transactional system. So the transactional system is just the atomic way to install something. And the anatomical procedure is that you start to make the installation. You just start to make the installation. If something goes wrong, you can just the entire transaction is just dropped,

and your system is never touched. So you have no difference. You have no missing configurations and something like that. And this is what the SilverBrew Micro S and Vanilla OS does to make the change to the system, because you actually need to install something like NVIDIA drivers and custom kernel. This is the way to do. I know this is the term that we are using now, but I don't really like the term immutable distro.

It gives this impression that it's something it's really not it makes sense that if you think about what the term means it makes sense because we're saying that the core of the distro is immutable but I've seen some people confused by the fact that oh but this part is writable and that part is writable, like just your home directory for example, which obviously needs to be writable for a distro

to be usable. If we could go back in time, I wish we could have picked something a bit better than a mutable distro, but I guess at this point we're stuck with it and it's the term that we're going to be using going forward I think the same

I mean the term immutable is probably complex because the people the user can think that I cannot do whatever I want with any distribution. But this is not true. You can do whatever you want with any distribution always. There is also a trick in Vanilla OS to disable the immutability. It is not documented because you should not do it, of course. But you can do everything you want just when you are in the mentality to do that thing is because you know what what

what you need to do what's your need So if you are in the step to disable the immutability, it's because you know what are you doing. Or you know enough to be dangerous, but you don't know enough where you should be doing it.

There's definitely going to be those people. We have a lot of reports of people using the transactional shell, so the one to install the packages in the system. A lot of problems because they try to install everything in the root partition. And Vanilla OS has two root partition, both of 20 gigabytes. They are used because when you make a change, when you boot the system for the first time,

you boot into the root a partition because this is a ad root partitioning and when you may change you may change in a overlay the current root partition which is probably a the first time and if the transaction uh, works, the changes are applied to the second partition, which is probably B at the first time. So when you boot again your system, you boot to the B root partition. So this is the trick we made to obtain the transactional system. trick we made to obtain the transactional system. You make the change to the second partition,

which we call the future partition, and you put to the present partition. It's complex to explain. I think I have a

basic understanding of it. Yeah, you're definitely right. It seems like it's a complex system, but it does... It provides, in the end, this system immutability that... Actually, one thing I did want to ask. Why is this immutability actually something that mattered in the first place? Why didn't you just make an Ubuntu distribution that has vanilla GNOME on it?

Why did you want it to be this immutable system? The first reason is that I like experimenting so it is cool like an immutable Ubuntu. Yeah.

The second thing is that linux is probably not ready for the consumer because there are a lot of problems the fact that you can access your root partition and change everything you want just from your file manager is uh it is a wrong people and a lot of problem start because uh people just copy past things from the internet so how can i install vs code or you can use Flatpak, because now I want to just copy this to my terminal and install everything I want in my Ubuntu. Like, I don't know why that command is asking me to remove the Ubuntu desktop, but yeah, it's fine. This is why immutable is probably the best solution.

Okay. So it's solving that issue of... Users will break things if you give users the chance to break something. Exactly. Because people love to do black things well you know there's always going to be

issues that arise there but if you can eliminate the most obvious ways that something can be broken then it is going to limit the amount of damage that a user that has enough knowledge to do something, but not enough knowledge to do something well, it'll stop some of the most obvious places

where it's going to go wrong. If you have enough knowledge to copy and paste a random command you see on the internet into your terminal, but you don't have enough knowledge to know what that command's going to be doing, yeah, it might make sense to have a system where you limit the amount of damage that can really do

yes I think the main problem of people is that they don't think about what they are doing it's just just, yeah, I copy-paste this in my terminal, it works. Probably, probably not. But I copy it, but I don't know. Mm-hmm. So, I presume the reason that you decided to make Vanilla OS based on Ubuntu is because of that uh that support you already saw there with your Optimus uh setup uh is there any reason why you

couldn't have just got that working with Fedora or some other distro, or did you think there was not really any benefit in doing so because you already have this system where you know it works and there's no point reinventing the wheel where you have a perfectly good system here you can base off of? I think that there is something magic in Ubuntu which made everything just work. I don't know why, but I made a lot of benchmarks, and I'm not the best person to make benchmarks, so don't take my words as they are. Okay. I made some benchmarks to Arch Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu,

and another one, Solus. I don't know why, with the same exact setup, the same hardware, almost the same driver, the same, almost the same driver, because Ubuntu used to have

old packages. Let's pick another. And Ubuntu just works very well. In Fedora, I had a lot of problems with stuttering less FPS frame rate and some problem like that.

So I was just considering the distribution to use as a starter for my distribution. And I was thinking, Ubuntu just works. Why use Fedora and other? And Fedora is amazing. It's probably the best distribution.

Something like that. But for what you're doing with your Optimus setup it just made it just works better you just know it works and there's nothing else to worry about there

exactly it just works as expected well there are some problems like in Vanilla OS like I can't use my webcam right now because I'm missing some drivers, probably,

which are reconfigured in a stock Ubuntu, so I did something wrong, but it works. Not entirely, but all my hardware almost works. What webcam...

Is it a webcam built into the laptop that... Or is it an external webcam? It's an external USB. What webcam do you have? Logitech? No? Asus. Oh, okay.

I didn't know they made webcams. I bought that laptop. This laptop is from Asus ROG. And the webcam was external. Also, Asus. Okay.

Right now, the one you're seeing on Discord, if the video is still there, it is still there. That's a Logitech webcam, and this one, it uses the V4L2 drivers, so it just plug and play and it just works I'm guessing there's some other software you need for that

ASUS webcam that I'll take a look just because my webcam works with Ubuntu and Fedora so I'm probably just missing something hopefully you can work that out you actually have a working

web care yeah so this podcast planned and I you're not the first person I've had you're not the first person I can probably test my webcam before but yeah you're not the first

person i've had that they either didn't have a webcam or their webcam just wasn't working that day so having the picture there isn't it's not a major problem and i have uh there's a lot of people who listen to this and don't watch the video so for them it doesn't matter at all yeah if you don't like my picture just put a window on top of it that's certainly an option but i look away so so you did mention being interested in you know trying out different tech with making this distro and one of those things is with the the way the package manager works which i didn't know about this until i was like reading more into vanilla os but tell people about is it apex apx how do you say the name Apex? APX? How do you say the name?

Apex. Apex, okay. That is a really interesting... A really interesting idea, and sort of only can exist because of the work that Luca has also done over on DistroBox. Just give a brief overview of what this package manager is. Apex is not a conventional package manager because it is not really a package

manager. It is a wrapper for Distrobox and it is started by Luca Di Maio, the developer of distro box um it is a manager of containers so you can use apex the command line to install packages from Fedora, Ubuntu, our repositories, and Alpine now. We introduced it some time ago. I don't remember. And the thing is that when you install a package, you don't install it in Vanilla OS,

but you install it in a container which is located in your home directory. So when you install it, it does not change anything in your system. Just place some files in your home directory. And thanks to the big work that Luca Di Maio made with Distrobox, everything just works. Everything is just integrated with the system. So audio, sound, video, everything just works.

Like I'm using a steamer to play some games inside an Apex container. Oh, wow. Yeah. I didn't try it with anything like that, but that's really cool that that works as well. Yeah, because you can install software from any distribution. You can actually enter that container, make changes, blow it up,

and just re-initialize the container when you change something which goes wrong so for anyone who hasn't heard of Distrobox basically the idea is it's a wrapper around

why am I forgetting the program Podman or Docker thank you, those ones it's a wrap around podman or docker uh which are programs to basically create i guess you would call it like a mini distribution sort of thing it's it basically it's a way to run an application in this container. It's a containerized distro, and distro box takes those, uh, things from, uh, Docker and Podman and integrates them more tightly into your core system than they would be out of the box.

Normally you'd use them in a server environment where you want to have them separate from the rest of your system. But in this case, they've had them been opened up a bit so you have more access to your core system resources. And you can sort of... Rather than them being really containers, rather than them being really containers, it's more like, I guess, these little frameworks that the application can sit on. And it basically lets you install something on Arch Linux, for example, when you're using Ubuntu so you can have this AUR application installed and

The application thinks it's running on It knows it was installed on Arch, but and has everything there that Arch would have to make it run, but it's You're it's getting all of the resources from your core system to make it act like any other sort of application. And that's why something like Steam would just play like it's a regular system application. I think Distrobox is a really cool project. And I'm... I, like... a really cool project and I'm I like I think it's really cool

that that showed up on the scene and Luca's done great work with that Luca did a very nice work a very polished work because the entire project is written in PESH with shell scripting polished work because the entire project is written in a PESH

with shell scripting, but he made a lot of functions, a lot of things of quality of life improvements. He just made every container just work with your system with no time. You can just drop it, just enter your container, install things, and everything just works perfectly. Thanks, Luca, because it is also involved in the Panillo S project. Amazing. You should probably make a podcast with him. I will get something planned.

The problem is when we started talking, it was December and, you know, December is a... It's a messy time to get anything like this planned. But... The worst months the year absolutely uh but something uh something will happen assuming that um schedules line up and we'll make something happen soon hopefully um but i was mentioning earlier that now that flat packs are becoming a more popular way to

distribute applications, immutable distros are becoming more popular, but something like Apex completely eliminates that need for relying just on flat packs and obviously you can use distro box by itself on something like silver blue but i think it would be really cool if like the the problem with distro box is distro box exposes a lot of things to the user which aren't really that important if all you're trying to do is Get something running. I think something like Apex would be it would be really cool if other immutable distros started doing something similar and using distro box in this

package manager fashion that people are familiar with with the way they would use a package manager on other distributions we made Apex distroagnostic as a purpose because it can work with any problem on any distribution. Like some day ago, probably yesterday, one guy published it on the AUR repository.

Oh, I didn't know that. It is available, yes. AUR... We don't provide support for that package because it is not in the vanilla OS. That makes sense, but it is really cool. Oh, it also mentions the fix for X11 applications

where in many environments GUI apps won't run because you need to share your X server with the local user Thank you that someone left that comment. That's really cool that that exists on other places and it's really cool that you made that as as a distro agnostic thing because it would you know you it could just be this thing that only exists on vanilla on vanilla OS but having it be this distro agnostic thing as I said I do hope that other immutable distros start to use this or maybe fork the project

or use something that, something like this because it does eliminate that major issue that immutable distros had which is how do we install software actually

also the abroot software which is the one we use to make the immutability in vanilla os is also this drug agnostic so you can also use it i tried to make a elementary elementary Fedora and I'm trying to do the same with Arch. And I was able to make those distributions immutable using Abirute with completely zero effort. Because it just works everywhere. Wow, that's really cool. Yeah. Let's make an Arch Linux immutable,

which is probably the worst idea. Valve already did it. They made SteamOS. Yeah, yeah. Which is something different. You don't use SteamOS to install everything. No, you use it to install everything

because it's just Archer, so you do whatever you want. Mm-hmm. I think that's really cool. This focus around... One of the things that I just find

boring about the distro landscape is a lot of distros are basically the same thing. It's, this is Ubuntu with GNU. I guess that's Ubuntu. This is Ubuntu with KDE. This is Ubuntu with XFCE. But Vanilla OS is... Sure, it's based on Ubuntu,

but it's very clearly doing its own thing and trying to... trying to... experiment with these different technologies. And I think... I think that's really cool. And I think that's part

of the reason why it is getting so much attention, it's not just it's not just another Ubuntu distribution it is vanilla OS, it's based on Ubuntu, but it's very clearly it's own thing

because I like to do what I want its own thing. Because I like to do what I want like a QG developer. We tried to fix some problems that are common in a lot of distribution like I hate

updates in the Windows like I want to start my PC. Oh, there is an update. Oh, okay. In Vanilla OS updates are in the background

completely automated so you don't have to worry about anything. There is a function that is the smart update, which is not something very complex, just a bunch of conditions. Like, if there is internet, we can proceed. If the CPU does not exceed the 50%, we can proceed. So there are some checks to allow an update only if all the conditions are respected. So if you're playing a game, if you're watching a video, playing some music and something

like that, there will be no updates. And this should fix some problems with users who do not want to update. Like Arch users, which probably sometimes do not upgrade their system for months, and everything just blows up. Those packages, things like that. The most common problem you'll see on Arch is your PGP signatures, your PGP keys being out of date and everything

just dying but yeah you can definitely especially when a lot of dependencies names dependency names change and other little things that might happen over a period of time yeah you're always worried that something is going to go wrong when you're using Arch but if you've used Arch for long enough you basically

learn to expect something is going to go wrong every so often but if your goal is using your PC as a tool not use your PC as part of your hobby something where it's done seamlessly and always works assuming there's no bugs seems like the better choice honestly i don't know if you can be sure your updates are going to be

are going to like the update you get is a it's only going to go through if it's going to function that seems like it's going to be better for the the user trying to get a a good experience that makes sense um i i i don't know how to answer this maybe i maybe i wasn't um phrasing it in the best way uh we'll move on from that um so now that vanilla os is out to the public and anybody can go and use it. What is the plan going forward? Is there anything that you have that you want to do in

the next month, next couple of months? What's the roadmap looking like for middle OS going forward? We are trying to fix all the reported bugs, because there are obvious bugs. This is a very young distribution, so we expected it.

We will focus on Lunar, so the next Ubuntu release, which is 23.04. Yeah. 23.04. Yeah. Not this month, probably not February. So there will be some delay because we need to fix some things, make some decisions. But our focus right now is to make everything work the best to consolidate the distribution.

So users should not expect that we will follow the Ubuntu release cycle very strictly. Hmm, okay. Next, our next move is to make a core version, minimal version of Vanilla OS, so everything can have the same without

GNOME. Just installing KDE, XFCE, everything they want. Okay, okay. This is the main focus right now. So if someone wants to get involved

and help out with the project, what's the best way they can go and do so? We made a page in our website which is actually Get Involved, in the top right. And there

you can start translating, developing, designing, writing documentation. We also have an handbook, which is handbook.vanillawest.org. We are looking for people who start making documentation in there.

Have you had much support for the things outside of the development so far, like with those translations and with the documentation, or what does that outside help really look like so far? A lot of people started joining the developers team. Someone started working to cover applications of Vanilla OS. Others started typing, writing documentation, others translating. Weblate gave us the open source license for the project, so we can manage our translation in their platform. We have a lot of people started working with us to make everything just works better. So it's a way so. The project's only a few months old. So I can expect that a lot of stuff still needs a lot of work.

There is still a lot of work to do. Because we started distributing the release candidate of the project. But there was a lot of change on go. Like we changed completely the kind of immutability of the system. Because we've written a utility which is called

almost, which provides an immutability using the immutability flags of file. Like capture. Something like that. And that was the first release candidate.

But we had a lot of problems with that kind because there was no atomic transactions. transactions, everything was just too much complex to manage. And so we started making Abirute, and that takes one month, probably. So when we ended the development of Abirut, some users or tester, which was 3,000 on Discord, a lot of tester, reported some bugs, but not critical ones. So we chose to just distribute the stable because everything was working. When not everything was working,

there was some problems, but we expected it. And we fixed almost everything with the third revision of the distro so besides wanting to try out this this new way of doing this new way of doing mutability

why wouldn't you have just used something like OS tree which silverblue uses and I believe steamOS uses as well I had some experience with LibOS3 because of

Bottles, we made some experiments or something it's just too complex to integrate to manage to manage to maintain very complex

it's an amazing technology truly amazing technology but too complex to

integrate we wanted something that is more simple to use completely agnostic

and AB root was the best choice well it seems like so far it's going well it seems like so far you've got this thing that works and it needs polishing still but there is this idea that a lot of people are interested in working with a lot of people interested in discussing talking about how it's the future of the linux distro and i think i think that's that I think, I think that's, that's really cool. I think that's just really cool where, where, it seems like,

this is going. It's going. So, actually, do I have anything else on this list I wanted to ask you? That is, um, I mean, Actually, do I have anything else on this list I wanted to ask you? That is... Um...

I think I do, actually. With those translations you mentioned before, what currently is... What sort of translations are currently available? Is there anything that's in a sort of remotely usable state? What languages have you seen people offer translations for? How's that going?

The system is completely translated in probably any language, because we use the same translation of Ubuntu. Okay, that makes sense. For core applications, I have no idea. Just let me check. Mhm.

We have a lot of translators, so I think we have a lot of... Yeah, probably... Okay yeah probably everything is already covered there are some translations which are not not even started but almost everything is just covered I'm looking at the table

yeah wow I guess that's one of the benefits of I'm looking at the table. Yeah. Wow. I guess that's one of the benefits of the project getting a lot of attention. Things like translations can get a lot of work very quickly. Yeah, I had an idea, honestly. It's amazing. The project is... Okay, 48.

48 languages. The project is three months old and it's grown so quickly that you have no idea what's even happening anymore. It's amazing. It is really crazy. How is this possible? I had no idea really

well like you should like like what was I trying how would I phrase it like I think you deserve it like you've been doing stuff like

bottles and you've been doing stuff like bottles, and you've clearly been working very hard in this space for a long time. So getting attention for the work you're doing, honestly, you deserve it. And it's clear that you're trying to make something that is fixing an issue that obviously you had but it's an issue that clearly many other people are having as well and the way you're trying to go about it is it's it's aligning with what other people other people want to be using as well and yeah that's

really cool it's really cool I'm still digesting the popularity of bottles but I'm confused about vanilla OS because I don't know there's so many distros out there that it seems weird that

this one that you made is the one that everyone is now talking about. Yeah, there are a lot of distributions. So why use Vanille? Just use Manjar. Go, go. Don't use Vanille. Don't use Arch Linux. Give me a loan with my distribution.

Well, I think I've covered everything that i want to talk about if there's anything that you specifically wanted to get into that we hadn't discussed so far um we can talk about that otherwise we can start to wrap up the episode i think we are okay. I just want to say, by the way, use Vanilla OS to make some terrorism to the Arch Linux users. You really have a vendetta against Arch Linux, don't you? Yeah. Because I know that Arch Linux users are trying to use Vanilla OS, but they don't want to say anything.

They are hiding with their laptop with Vanilla OS, and they are crying because Vanilla OS is magic. I'm just... Don't take my words, I'm just joking. I'm very aware you're just joking. Don't cut my...

Look, as I said, I've been using Arch Linux for a very long time. I think there are definitely some people in the Linux space who take themselves a bit too seriously but everyone else I think is well aware that this is just a joke I have a plan to make some documentation to use

Abirut and Apex in any other distribution I will probably start with elementary and Arch which I already probably start with elementary and Arch, which I already tested. I'm actually testing Arch Linux now. So there will be some documentation in the Vanilla OS documentation

to port AVRoot and other Vanilla OS technologies to other distribution. I think some users will find it useful. Were there any other Vanilla OS technologies we didn't talk about? We talked about Apex, we talked about EBRoot, was there anything else, at least right now, that is worth mentioning? There is a Vanilla System Operator, which is the one who operator, which is the one who takes the task to upgrade the system in the background. Oh, okay. There are some big works going on in that project because we are making a task system. Like you can make

tasks which run on a specific condition, like when your battery reaches 30%, or when you are disconnected,

connected, log in, log out, etc. Something like systemD, but completely at home side, user side. We are also working to an interface to make this more simple to use, like the automator in the macOS system. Hmm. That actually does sound really cool because I know there's a lot of stuff that you can,

if you know which system details you're looking for, can be automated fairly, like, in a fairly straightforward way. The issue is working out which tools do what things and exactly how you're supposed to go about using

them. So bringing all of that together in a simpler way, once again, thinking about the user, there's definitely some value there as well. Yes. We are trying to simplify a lot of things.

I'm trying to... I don't know where I put my screenshot of the automator. I want to share with you. Have a look at it. Take this. screenshot of the automator I want to share with you. Have a look at it. Take this. This is not even public, but you can do whatever you want with this. This is going to be

a... Let's make some spoiler. Podcast first. Okay. So, automated tasks, send SMS on low battery. name description I guess whatever normal stuff event on lower battery okay

the project the idea is that you can make your own event like when you start your computer at a specific condition, the automator can prompt you to start your routine. So like you start your computer at the morning, the automator

prompts you to start your routine, so opening all your common applications, like VS Code, Chromium, Telegram, etc. So like the Apple Automator, which you have in iOS devices, Mac OS devices, you can automate every single task in your pc like when you receive a notification you can streamline it to your smartphone using a dedicated application

you can do i used mac os for five years i actually didn't know automator ever existed Five years. I actually didn't know Automator ever existed. I can see how it's definitely inspired by it, though. That I think is really cool. You can go into the toilet and keep your monitor to your smartphone. Watch your monitor to your smartphone using this application. Because I know when you go to the toilet, you are taking your time. And your time is

precious. Vanilla S is made for toilet. Laughter Laughter Laughter I think this is definitely something that that people

people outside of... outside of Billiard West, just on any sort of distro would be interested in seeing. Obviously, AB root is a very... it's a very... specific kind of application. If... if you have no interest in an immutable system a b root isn't going to matter but this this is something that i'm sure a lot of people would be they may not think they want something like this without it being presented to them but once they see it, this is going to make a lot of things you're trying to do just easier to work with. As I said, you can do all this stuff just working with SystemD and various other utilities directly, but giving a simple interface where even someone who has a

Basic understanding of how Linux works can go and set this stuff up. I think that's cool and when this is a When this is a thing that is just You know out there and easily available it's something I'm definitely going to have to have a look at for my own system yeah the project, the idea is that

you can get rid of your terminal soon, but not immediately because Linux is just not ready for this but we are working on this hmm right, no, that makes sense Linux is just not ready for this, but we are working on this. Right, no, that makes sense.

So, yeah, Linux is still... I see that that definitely is the direction that desktop environments are going, trying to, especially GNOME for that. GNOME is trying to do as much as it can in the GUI. Obviously, there are still those cases where, and I think this will always be the case, it's even the case on Windows, where there are some things that can only be done from the terminal, but as a regular user

everything you should want to do on a on your day to day use of your system should be done in a GUI a GUI is just a it's an easier it's an easier system to understand

exactly a Jaeger it's an easier it's an easier system to understand exactly but they want to copy paste my script no you don't obviously we never want to get rid of having the terminal there for those more advanced users who want to go and do so but it shouldn't be something that you need to do just to get

basic things done maybe you don't like the terminal you do want to get rid of it, I don't know I love the terminal I use it to build vanilla OS it is important to have a terminal in a console

in a distribution because console is better. we need a console terminal, whatever you want, but I think that customers, the final users, should not ever

want a terminal. Because why? What do we want to do with a terminal? Your PCs should just work as expected. But this kernel, they say this is a ways of a cake. I can install it. I have a better gaming experience. Just play your game and don't let me

but here i can copy past this no you don't you don't trust me there are many people that start reporting i can't use an apt this distribution is broken this is incredible i can't use a dpkg because they are not even present in vanilla os so you can use them only during a transaction yeah but i want to install this package just read the documentation installed during a transaction i made this but the transaction goes wrong and i don't have my changes applied on next boot because the transaction was wrong. So your PC is safe. Trust me. Assuming there's no bugs.

Exactly. Which is always the worry. There's always going to be something that could possibly go wrong. Exactly. This was a funny moment with a user. They started, they asked me how to install

a package in Vanilla OS in the root system. I said I linked it to the documentation. They tried to install, to make some changes, and when they exit from the transactional shell, everything goes wrong. So nothing was uploaded, nothing was changed. And they were starting blaming me because where are my changes?

The system literally showed you that everything goes wrong, so why do you want to still apply? I need to still apply. Okay, just exit zero in your console. But everything now does not work. Hey, you are a monkey my friend? I can't even boot right now, just switch the partition, but I blow it up again. Oh you are a fucking monkey it sounds like you've had some interesting interactions with people not understanding what Vanilla OS is. It's the funny part of the project. Well, at least you're having fun with it and you're not taking every issue you see made really seriously and letting it,

letting it seem like a personal attack. No, no, there was a, some personal attack, like in the Omeg Linux review, one user commented like, I,

this project is a shit. I hope the developer stop wasting his time to develop it and I was like ok ok

I love you I think that's the best approach you can't let there's always going to be people that as soon as something becomes popular, they're going to start to hate it for no reason. And you cannot reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into they just

don't like the idea of gnome or an immutable distro or you or anything else they just want to find something to be angry about and they're going to be angry about it

i take it easy it's just funny i mean i love my projects um there are a lot of people that uh is reaching me almost every day who say me that they love my project they are giving me a lot of ideas. There are also a lot of people that are reaching me on Discord like I don't want

to say a lie but like 1000 of people started asking me how can I make my own distribution? Okay. I'm not surprised that you got a lot of those messages yeah I had your

friendship request on discord and it was completely hidden by the other requests of people asking me, why can't I make this distribution? I want to make the best one in the world. Okay.

And I was just ignoring your request, but there is Calico contacted me to say, oh, there is this guy which will you should... Ah, okay should okay thanks I was literally ignoring your request because please don't ask me

how to make a distribution again that's no that's totally fair that's why I asked for the skeleton to send send a message over just to make sure you saw it And send a message over just to make sure you saw it. I love people.

I love the people, yes. Well, at least those people are... They're not going to the right person to ask, but at least they respect the work you're doing and see that you made a good distro and uh and want to know how they can do so themselves maybe they should ask someone else but at least they're not being mean about it and maybe unless you tell them you're not going to help them, then they might be mean, but up until that point, maybe they're nice. Yeah, I think that

the real problem is that there are no easy documentation to make a distribution because there is not one way, one method to make a distribution. Because there is not one way,

one method to make a distribution. Distribution is just one term. It's just a word. You can make it from Sketch using Linux from Scratch, using Gen2 as a base, Arch Linux,

SquashFS file system. There are a lot of variables to consider. Gen2 as a base, Arch Linux, SquashFS, FI System. There are a lot of variables to consider. And some people, and I did the same error at the time. I wanted to start making a distribution a lot of time ago. And I was typing on the internet, how to make a Linux distribution because I am better than everything. There are no solutions because, as I said, there is not one way, one method to make a distribution.

You just have to learn about what is a Linux distribution, what is Ubuntu, what is Arch Linux? And make your own. Yeah, that part's the important part. If you don't want to put in that effort to research the tooling you need to know, no matter what you were planning to do with that distro anyway, it wasn't going to be... It wasn't going to be worth your time. Go and learn the tooling you need to know,

and then we can think about what you... what you're going to be doing with that distro. Whether you're going to be building it on OS3 or changing up the way the nabuntu builder work or anything else like that expand the knowledge you have and then you can work out what you want to be doing i think the only issue i think the only issue there is there's not really a... A lot of those resources aren't exactly clear where to get started. That I can understand.

I agree. I think if you have a clear idea of what you want to do, what to make, if you reach me with an idea, with something you started making up, probably also if it is wrong. You started making something, but it is probably wrong. started making something but it is probably wrong if you come to me with this information

I can I can help you I cannot help don't start asking me help please but if you come to me with something clear I can give you some answer.

I'm not the best, I'm probably the worst in the world, but I can help you in some way. But if you come to me with, I want to make this, I fork your project, and I want to change this thing. No. If you forget my project, you should also know how to make change to it. Don't just, I want to make it, I don't know, flash my screen. I don't know. If you forget it, you should just know whatever you want to do.

Well, on that note, I think we should end off the show. Let people know where they can find you, where they can find the work you do. Where can they go? You can't. Okay. You can find me on

Vanilla OS Discord. Obviously on Vanilla OS. I blocked my... I am on Mastodon. I left Twitter one month ago because you know hello

that big boy when Twitter was on fire I want to steal Mastodon Mastodon I want to say this thing. You can't because you are my competitor. You are kicked from my service.

You stupid. So I left Twitter. I'm on Mastodon. You can reach me on there. You can reach me on Discord. Just don't message me. Don't ping me every time because in Vanilla OS server, there are a lot of mentions because I love this distro ping me.

I love you too, but please don't because I'm also, when I'm working, I have a job, obviously. Yeah. And I receive a lot of notifications. And my company has a lot of products online. I'm always scared because I receive a lot of notifications at the same time, a lot of ping from Discord and on iOS, I'm using iOS the notification

sound is almost the same for every application so I am a bit scared because oh no, what's happening? and now it's just a ping because you want to make your fucking distribution I've noticed that you do use Do Not Disturb very often.

Yeah. Seems like a good idea. Yes. Is there anything else, any other things you wanted to mention? Or is that all of the places where people can find what you're doing and find you? I think it's all. Okay. I will leave the links to all of that stuff in the description down below.

If there's anything that you forgot to mention, just send me a message and I'll make sure to include it. Yeah. As for me, if you're listening to the audio version of this, the video version is available on YouTube. If you're watching the video version, the audio

version, you can find on any podcast platform. There is an RSS feed, all that fun stuff Search tech of a tea and you'll probably find it I've got a gaming channel that is a Brody on games right now I'm playing through Kingdom Hearts 3 5 8 over two days and also doing a Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire randomized Nuzlocke Solink with Rogue Wren. We are at the sixth,

no, we finished the sixth gym. We're going to the seventh gym, and if you want to see my main channel where I do Linux videos six days a week, that is Rudy Robertson, but you're probably from that channel anyway, so i don't know why i mention it uh i'll give you the last word what do you want to say to close out the show peace and love don't use don't use art don't use any loess true okay use the way i use money loess thank you guys for watching