Tech Over Tea - Who Needs A Plan When You Have Linux | NoPlan

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Today we have the members of NoPlan on the show, a channel with a tech leaning but besides that a channel that truly has no plan.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thenoplanchannelTwitter: https://x.com/NoPlanYTChannel==========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 Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://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. I'm as always your host, Brody Robertson. And today, well, I guess the simplest way to say it is we have no plan. Welcome, no plan. How are you guys doing? Doing good. Thanks for having us, Brody. Absolutely. Thank you. For anyone who doesn't know about the two of you,

just introduce yourselves and we'll go from there. Yeah. Jack, take it away. Well, my name is Jack Frank. I co-host No Plan with Micah. Hence the title, the whole thing is that there's no plan. We knew that we wouldn't be able to stick to a certain type of content just because of our many interests and what we've got going on. And so we thought this would be the perfect way to have an all comprehensive channel that has kind of, it's more tech related,

would you say, Micah, now? Yeah, we've definitely found our way into being a tech channel. We both have a huge interest of similar things in tech, in just gadgets and toys, you know, and cars as well. We're both big car people and everything. And so a lot of that melds well with a lot of communities. And so we were very excited to be able to, you know, make a channel that kind of includes all of it.

But the goal of the channel really is kind of summed up in the last, I don't know, 30 seconds of our very first video. We kind of failed at our goal of supercharging a moped. And the moral of the story though was just because it was a failure to supercharge it doesn't mean it was a failure of a good time. And us as friends were able to have a great time, you know, making that project happen. So that's kind of the whole purpose behind this channel, really. Yeah, I definitely did notice the model of a tech leaning, but then there's just, as we were saying before,

there's just random things in there, like just the roof rack one or the sparkling water one. It's like... one or the sparkling water one is like Sparkling water one was one of our favorites to shoot sadly has been probably our least successful video But it was it was a blast to do. Mm-hmm It's actually a very expensive video compared to some of the other things that we were doing By a lot of sparkling water. How many did you try in that video? I to buy a lot of sparkling water.

How many did you try in that video? I think we did. What was it like? Eight regular, maybe six regular sparkling waters with no flavor. And then we tried like eight different flavors and we had to get everybody blindfolded. We brought in a bunch of friends

and we were trying to see, can you actually taste the difference? Right. So like, oh, I guess it'd be like a 40, 50 dollar budget on that video, something like that. Yeah, that was a lot at the time for that one. Which for a video that didn't do great, that is kind of... It's a cool idea for a video, but it is kind of sad that it just...

Nothing really went anywhere with that one. It's like a dollar per view, basically. There's that tiny little explosion in the distance. You show it on macro shots and it just seems big. And then you just zoom out. It's like. Mm hmm. But like the way that I look at this channel is, as I was saying before, you know, you'll see those channels where they upload one video

10 plus years ago and then randomly the YouTube algorithm's just like, hey, here you go. Why are you recommending me a video made in Windows Movie Maker in 2025? It was, it's not even like a joke version of it. It's just a 10 plus year old video. It's on something I have zero interest in. I don't know why this is here whatsoever,

but at the same time, I'm gonna watch it. Yeah, that's kind of the hope. I mean, hopefully some of this stuff is so random, it gets picked up, you know, a little bit more than it is on launch, but we've got some videos that have done really, really well. I'm very glad about that.

The Pine Phone videos are number one watched video. And we've got some System 76 stuff behind that and everything. And there's a clear need, I guess, for more tech content, I guess, even though it's a very crowded space. People seem to love it. And, you know, we've got some pretty unique angles at it. So we're glad that those have done well. Yeah, I think the...

It is a very crowded space, but also there's a lot of content where it's very much just the same content and this kind of applies to a lot of... when people talk about like YouTube being crowded, YouTube being you know what's the word um... when there's too many people too... Oversaturated. That's it. Thank you. I think the problem is a lot of people don't really know how to carve out a niche. They sort of just see what somebody is doing and then basically just make the exact same

thing and when that's what you're doing, like, what, like, unless you have some sort of fun delivery to it, like what really is the appeal to doing the same thing that hundreds of other channels are doing? Yeah, that's a good point. I think, I mean, nothing against any techy space, but I guess we wanted to, we would love to get the newest hardware and check it out. I guess one thing is because we haven't been able to schedule or budget, we've tried to figure out something different. I've been looking at our catalog,

certain things such as the PinePhone or one of our top videos I know is putting Linux on a Microsoft Surface. Even though there's people that have done that in the past, a lot of the big YouTubers aren't covering it and trying to put our own sort of twist on it. Because we had not been able to sort of, I guess, follow the trends, we've had to kind of make our own, which I think has worked out. What do you think, Mike? Do you think that's worked out? Yes and no. I mean, we could play the algorithms more and do more of what is definitely hot

right now. But Jack and I have a very big affinity for content of old, like 2014 YouTube and stuff like that, where YouTubers were just like, doing the most crazy random things because they wanted to. And there wasn't really an algorithm then. It was all keyword based. It was a lot more of just like, people are looking up this item, people use this kind of device and stuff like that.

So maybe I'll do something off of there, but then I'll do whatever I want. And I feel like YouTube has kind of definitely, YouTube is one of the best social media platforms as it's grown, but it's also still got plenty of its own flaws. I mean, it's one of the only places where you can make money quite like, pretty much better than Facebook, Instagram,

anything like that when it comes to the monetization side of things. However, they have got some real, like when was the last time you searched something and got anything related to what you searched? It's bad right now. You get maybe three or four videos and they have the whole for you section. I mean, so for us, it's like, you know,

we have a love of that, that very chill content or we're just gonna do this, you know, being a film guy, if anybody else out there is into film, one of my favorite channels was Indie Mogul. And that one was just incredible back in the day, all the way up until about 2017 or so. They were just making banger after banger after banger. And that's just a kind of content style

that just is no longer there. And so we kind of want to bring some of that back a little bit with No Plan. Right, I went to the channel just now and four years ago was the latest video and it kind of just became camera videos by the looks of it. They were bought by Aperture Lighting and then that's basically just turned into a marketing YouTube channel for themselves. That's sad. That you don't hear about channels being bought that often. But like when you do and you go, especially when you go back to it like years later.

Yeah. I think the best example a lot of people are going to think of is when Smosh changed leadership and now it's sort of gone back to the original people. So like there was that like period where it's not necessarily bad. That's the thing right? Maybe in this case, turning to an ad channels. That's a different a different case, but like When you lose that original spirit of what the content was It is kind of sad to go back to it. Like obviously you can't keep things the same, right?

like if if you are still making the same videos as you were, you know 15 plus years ago It's just like for some people that works right like some people they they have like a hyper niche they've stuck to it forever they kept getting better and better at it and like it just works, but If nothing changes you can find people eventually sort of I guess fall out of the content as they age into other things especially if you have a kind of content that sort of, I guess, fall out of the content as they age into other things, especially if you have a kind of content that sort of targets a certain kind of demographic, and if you don't really change

and you don't really improve stuff, like, you know, it can get boring over time. At the same time, you can change too much or it can become like too polished and too professional and it just seems kinda... It just seems like something's off when you go back and watch it. For sure. Oh yeah. It's a shame. I can't really think of any YouTubers that are sort of, that I used to watch that sort of robot.

I mean Smosh, I used to watch Smosh a lot and I kind of get exactly what you're talking about where it's just different. It's about where it's it's just different Yes, not bad, but it's just a different and I think it feels less Organics not the word. It doesn't feel like two guys just having fun Mm-hmm, you know and I think that's kind of what the old YouTube a lot of people love is where just like we were saying For you people just doing it not because of the algorithm test It was just because this is well, let's just try it. Let's see what sticks on the wall, you know

yeah, I think a very simple sort of example of this is Sort of you know You see a lot of like big youtubers move from eventually they start in their bedroom And then it's like they move into like a nice studio where it's like Oh, we have you know the the sound padding over the walls. We have very production lighting everything like looks it looks good but it's It's kind of like how you hear, you know, the tick tock accent It's it's that thing where it's it's not necessarily inauthentic. They might be doing it because they enjoyed it. It just

it doesn't feel as personal I guess like Even if I did move stuff into a studio I would still want it to actually like feel like a normal place like have being it like I Say this in videos every so often like I'm just a guy in my bedroom Like I'm not doing anything serious here And I and I think I think losing out on that does definitely take something away. I think a great example of this is um

I remember watching Linus Tech Tips back when they were in the house and Doing stupid things like the whole the whole room water cooling which was a I don't know what they were thinking with that one calling which was a I don't know what they were thinking with that one that went horribly well but like now it's it's in like a studio of a kitchen which you know like it's it it kind of captures that vibe but it's still when you know how it goes it kind of feels a little off it feels a little too productiony I guess And that's just an example. Nothing bad to say about LTT, but like, I think it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I feel like LTT is also a good example of increasing that production value while still keeping a general sense of what made you you initially. And, you know, I definitely disagree

with Linus on a lot of things, especially when you listen to him on the WAN show. But the thing about it is I don't believe there's always a direct one-to-one correlation on increase of production value equals losing spirit. I think that you can do that and still keep the spirit of what it all was. You know, everybody wants something a little bit cleaner, a little bit better, better microphones, better cameras, all that kind of stuff. But you gotta remember what you're doing it for. And I think content is key.

What are you making, how are you presenting it, and who are you, and are you still approachable? Because I think that's one thing too, is a lot of the smaller YouTubers and stuff like that. I mean, your channel's a great example. Our channel's pretty small and everything. Just very approachable. You is a great example. You know our channels pretty small and everything just very approachable You know you're you're a regular person

You don't it's like when somebody goes from being a young child actor and you see them in that movie for the first time And they're just kind of like a normal kid or whatever Then they grow up and they're 40 years old now and now they just seem like another one of the bot Hollywood people right? You know it's you you have that but then you you also have the actors who grow up and do great things and still have that natural approachable nature about them. And I think that you can definitely kind of increase that production value and keep your soul, but it's a very difficult game to play. And it also says more about like you and your character and who you are as a person than just, you know, your content. Mmm.

Yeah, no, I think that's fair. Like it's... With the... One more thing about LTT, I think they do have a problem where they like have... They grew really fast and kind of have... It's a very difficult ship to turn now. Like if they wanted to do something different, it's like... I don't know how many employees they have and how much that works out to

Be a budget per video, but you look at the credits for each video and it's like Very long like every video has to kind of do well otherwise You got some problems And think yeah, that's definitely something that, especially a channel that size, like, it's not like they're locked into necessarily chasing the algorithm or establishing it, but definitely, like you're saying, they have to, there's certain things they have to do, whether it be sponsors, stuff like that, that need to keep up, keep up like, because it's not just blindness in the house anymore.

It's, you know, there's a whole team behind it. And I think, like Michael was saying, I think they do a good job, although definitely I see the, the, it's hard to, to word to kind of, it's not like a loss of personality. It's just, I think it's, I think it's when I really am having a hard time thinking of a channel that sort of lost

that and became soulless. You know what I'm talking about, Micah? Yeah. Not like this. Not a bad thing. I'm not saying anything bad about anything. Yeah, because also, like if someone does sell like a YouTube channel or something like that, or the upgrade or start doing ad deals that doesn't necessarily Mean sure sure they're oh, they're selling out although because you know you don't this financial situation

They might be in or stuff like that, but I definitely see the loss of that original spirit. You could say Yeah, there are definitely plenty I can point to I think that kept their soul Preston goes as a great channel that as he's grown, he's kind of kept the same the same spirit of his channel and everything. Papa Meat is another one. He's grown. Well, actually, a great example of just keeping the spirit is like most critical. Like he does. Yeah.

If you go back and watch videos he's put out 13 years ago, it's basically the same thing, except now he has a more expensive camera and has more things in his background. Nice. Oh yeah, it's always funny seeing because it's the same thumbnail. Oh yeah, well, zero effort thumbnail as well. I see people when... This is something I see people sort of

Misunderstand they see channels like some ordinary gamers or like most critical which put like zero effort into thumbnails and then assume that Thumbnails just don't matter because of that rather than looking at channels like that as that is their thumbnail style That is the exception to the rule. It works because they are the only, like, you instantly recognize it as the style of the zero effort thumbnails. Oh yeah, it's definitely like, and like, I guess in regards to growth, like, you know, like, whenever you see their face, you immediately know their style, you immediately know their style, you immediately know. And because they've already got that popularity behind it, it's almost like instead of like

following the algorithm, they're setting the algorithm before themselves. And I think that in regards to establishing, like we're trying to do no plan, you know, we're still working out certain things with our style like Setting out kind of and trying to more original Versus like it's trying to follow that learn to emulate that style that would that would turn out badly I don't think we'd get much success from that versus trying to establish our own style Yeah, our style has varied widely as we're playing with it and having fun. That's part of it, too We just enjoy the production process as well. So we intentionally will play with it a little bit

But I mean we've got things shot, you know almost entirely on like DJI Osmos To a red cinema camera. Oh We've kind of got a wide range of production quality and value going on right there. Yeah, one of the ones I really enjoyed which one What was it? It was. You were ripping the stereo out of a car. What was the video called? That is one of my favorite videos. It's the trailblazer radio, Crutchfield radio install.

That's yes, yes, yes. That's Crutchfield for those who aren't familiar. When you buy a radio, they also have the ability to like for. I'm saying like the fact that the there's a internet cable going how See it's pretty cool, isn't that okay? I'm back. Are we back? Yes. Yeah Discord every so often will just even if you could hear me discord like hey, I'm just gonna kill your audio Enjoy have fun Discourse not a fan of the trailblazer video We'll just even if you could hear me discord like hey, I'm just gonna kill your audio. Enjoy. Have fun This course not a fan of the trailblazer video Yes, so the

That's what was yeah, that was But the trailblazer video has been one of our favorites since we released it just because we handed the camera to my wife she went completely, you know nuts just getting all the angles she wanted to. And we just installed the radio and had fun doing it. And that is still to this day, one of our one of our favorite ones that we've done. Yeah, what's funny about that, actually, we filmed speaking of LTT, we filmed that video like in December of a year before last, I guess.

Last year, maybe. I don't know. But we filmed it quite a while before we actually released it. Probably about a good six months. We sat on that one for a while, actually. And what ended up happening is from the time that we filmed it and the time that we released it, right in between there, LTT released their own video about upgrading an old car with a new radio.

It was like exactly what we did. But we had filmed it well before they released their video. We were like, well, now everybody's going to think we just copied them. Let's have a couple of things. If the pine phone or it happened with a with a couple videos I know for sure. I think maybe some of the System 76 stuff. And it's just like, we're so close to getting ahead. But yeah, it's not exactly a competition.

No, I think why that video worked so well is it was just purely personality. You didn't really know what you were doing You kind of just it's just like that obvious well I'm not a car guy. It was pretty obvious to me But it I never installed a radio like that before and I think that's pretty clear have you ever watched the garbage time channel? It's Dank Pod's car channel. Yes. Yeah it. I've heard of Dank Pod's but I've not watched it. Okay

so he has a car channel called garbage time and it's very much that same sort of vibe where he just you know that that channel he's bought like $500 cars just for the purpose of doing really stupid things to it like what happens if I replace the oil with eggnog and then he left it in there for like three months and Eventually a few months later. He drained it out and that was basically the video I Did watch that video actually I think it was that specific one showed up in my algorithm one day Yeah, that one did really well and just other random ones like absolutely trashing these cars Some of them are more serious like oh, here's like an actual project car I have that's like, you know, I actually want to treat it well, but yeah, it's always him with one of his friends just like.

Chatting half the video isn't even on topic. It's just. I don't know, it's just a video where it feels like you're hanging out rather than necessarily this is a this is a tutorial on how to do this thing. And I think I think that's what's great about it.

It's almost about just call it like experimental stuff. It's not just kind of a throwback to when people were just trying whatever works and just have, or they weren't trying whatever works. They were just having fun. I think you see that and you feel that when people are having fun and they're just, they're not like trying to act or make a skit

or something like that. It really, you can really feel it and it feels much more organic. Yeah, and Jack and I have been friends for years and I think that that comes across when we're on camera together and everything in the show and something that's kind of fun getting into the tech side of things. You know, Jack is a Windows user. I had to throw him under the bus there, but I've been a diehard Linux guy for about 11 years now. And what's kind of been fun about that though, is we get to bring great perspectives

to a lot of different tech. Because I've kind of brought a lot of that Linux side and how it all can work and the options that are out there and everything. And then Jack comes from the kind of the ease of use and some of the driver out there and everything. And then Jack comes from the kind of the ease of use and some of the, you know, driver availability world of Windows and stuff. And I think that plays well into our content quite a lot.

So what is your thoughts on the current direction that Windows has been going the past? I don't even know how many years now, but like the direction with I saw a video the other day where there's like seven co-pilot buttons in Word now, um, and they all do the same thing. You're you're like adding fuel to my fire. Let's get started. All right. You're about to get it started.

Yeah, I'm, I'm the, the crazy Linux friend of the group and all that kind of stuff. Like Jack is a Linux user. He has a couple of laptops and stuff like that. He's used Timo West for a while and everything as well. So he's definitely, you know. But Windows 7 is what I was using when I switched to Linux full time. I started off dual booting with Ubuntu 12.04, and that was during early bad Unity days and everything. So it still wasn't all that great. But eventually, I just found myself never even booting into Windows,

so I wiped the drive entirely. But Windows 10 was too far for me on a lot of things with some of the things that they were doing with that back then Cortana and all that kind of stuff all the ads in the in the start menu and I remember going back to Windows 10 because I had to when I was working in television and they had all Windows 10 systems and I'd been using Linux entirely for years and I'm like, wait, when did they add ads into here? Advertisements.

It's like, that was already too much for me. But Windows 11 for me, especially Copilot and things like that, it's just too far. But also for me, I don't even like to, like, I like to rip on Windows, yes. But I don't like to rip on Windows in the sense that like you know some of those issues like Cortana or our co-pilot those are easy targets but for me it's honestly I like the choice of Linux I like the honestly like I said 11 years ago is when I started I remember having to install flash just be able to watch YouTube videos and having to use spoofers in the web browser in order to watch anything DRM protected.

Linux has come a long way and it's way easier than it was. Nowadays, I got my mom on Linux and she can hardly tell a difference because it's that easy nowadays. I love the choice of the desktop environments. I love just kind of the open nature of things just are kind of built into the kernel. I haven't had to install a driver in years. Now that has its own issues and stuff like that, sure.

But I like talking about Linux more from the perspective of like, what makes it better, not what is worse about Windows. Sure, sure. And now Jack can rebut and tell me I'm completely wrong. Before you do that, there was one thing I did see recently where I actually would need to install a driver. I went down a rabbit hole looking into sim racing.

I don't know if you've ever cared about it, but sim racing actually works't I don't know if you've ever cared about it but I'm racing yeah it actually works basically perfectly on Linux like most of the stuff is up streamed into the kernel it's just like all the logitech stuff just works out of the box it's I think the rust master some of the thrust master stack and some of the Moses stack you still need drivers for everything else just works. I had no idea that somebody had even done this work.

So just a random bit of a side tangent. Jack, Windows, tell us about Windows. So my thoughts on Windows, and I guess, well, I'm currently on Windows 10 still. I never was able to really, yeah, I have not, I'm holding off, even though I literally got an email from Windows again saying it's ending. You have to hold October.

And basically, I don't know what I'm going to do still. I do not like Windows 11, a lot of the stuff that's that's in in it. But I'm not really prepared to make the jump to Linux, because I'm kind of waiting to see when steam os or steam os when steam finally releases the most officially for desktops. I don't know windows has been one of those things that like. I've i've always to work in it and so that's maybe not why i like when is kind of simultaneously why I dislike it but because I know how to work on it that has made it usable for me because with Linux if something happens I'm kind of helpless like I don't know really what to do when it starts bugging out but because I know how to fix windows that's that's not really why

I like it's know how to use it. I feel it's just kind of like a familiarity with Windows. It is, and I kind of am disappointed. I'm very disappointed. I really like the way Windows 11 looks. I think Micah, you love the way it looks, right? It's actually frustrating because Windows 11, but when you when you don't click on too many

applications and bring back the old, you know, Windows 98 UI, Windows 11 is one of the most gorgeous operating systems I've ever seen because of the way they've gone to the whole glass morphism look and it just everything does look really nice and polished. But I've been able to replicate that on Linux a couple of times. Magic Linux right there, see? Can't help it. Yeah, that's a Linux answer. I'll just make it myself.

So is there anything actually holding you on Windows at this point, or is it just you feel familiar with it and you just don't really want to make that move just yet? Two words. Just a couple? Two words. Sony, couple? Two words. Sony, Vegas. Ah, yeah, I see. Vegas, yeah, I primarily still use Vegas for a lot of stuff.

And that's of course Windows only. But there's certain like modding applications or modding games and stuff like that, that I just are like I was wanting Beat Saber. I'm only really familiar with that aspect of it and also because I also have remote utility software that I use to help my family members if they have issues. I guess I just I know how to use this suite well enough to be dangerous with it. I'm not willing or don't really have the time right now to learn a whole new suite. It's, I don't know.

I might eventually upgrade to Windows 11 and just put like a big network ad blocker on my, cause I actually run AdGuard currently on my network. I might just try to like beef that up, but that's kind of the rock and the hard place I'm in right now. Yeah, on the topic of Beat Saber mods there is a Linux modding guide that exists. Apparently most of the mod managers don't work but there is one that does but you know considering

the mods are made in with Windows in mind like There might be additional bugs and things like that. Yeah, I understand that perspective. I It's got a lot better for sure but Especially like trying to Dealing with file paths and stuff like things that might be located in slightly different locations, and you might not have documentation on where that stuff is, because most people doing it are on the Windows side. So you kind of have to have an understanding of where it might be placed on a Linux system, which, once you work it out, it's not a big of a deal, but trying to work it out is... I get that being kind of annoying. Once you work it out, it's not a big of a deal, but trying to work it out is I

Get that being kind of annoying. Oh Yeah, and I I do again waiting on steam or valve Please valve release steam OS cuz that would that honestly I think would like I'd be able to like okay I'm making the switch officially because I have a HTPC that I was running Linux on, but I swapped back to Windows because I was gaming on it so that I probably can swap it back to Linux. We should make a No Plane video about that. Exactly.

There's a No Plane video right there. But I don't know. I'm still comparing everything. And also, I feel like part of me staying on Windows is because it annoys Micah. That's the thing. I've tried shutting up a lot about it over the last few months because I'm like, come on, Windows 10's death is coming. It's going to happen.

But now Valve, Valve obviously, it's not exactly an unsung hero. Everybody in the Linux community is definitely praising Valve for what they're doing. But it needs to keep happening because they are Luke Skywalker bringing balance to the force. I mean, if it was not for Valve with Proton and all that kind of stuff, which also the credit to the Wine developers for keeping things up for so many decades because they would not be

able to, you know, Valve would not be able to do what they're doing without the Wine project and everything, but it's just, it's getting so easy to use Linux now. I'm just really hoping that somebody can put some good attention towards making Proton work for regular desktop apps, because I think that's one of the biggest things that we're missing is just some sort of Proton-like compatibility tool.

Bottles is great and it makes a lot of things easy, and you've got some wine tools out there and stuff like that, but if somebody could just create a better front end to where it's like single click install almost like using an exe file that would be golden there are definitely some command line tools that do let you hook into proton has to be gooey yeah if we want actual adoption it has to be good I'm not aware of any gooey ones I I don't see any gooey ones. I I Don't see any reason why someone couldn't do that if they wanted to it's just you know

Most people interacting with proton are doing doing so through steam So I I know those there's been work to interact with proton through tools like Lutris I don't know how far that has come along, but that would probably be the most obvious route to get there. But I get what you're saying as well, like just making like, having it, even just having it be like a daemon

that runs in the background, and you can just like click an EXE and it like sets everything magically up for you. Zorin does a great job with some of that already, but it's like, maybe they need to switch to Proton, proton or maybe they still is just still need some work or something like that It's not quite there. It's not as reliable as it should be but I've watched a video the other day actually of somebody taking the affinity suite and using Lutris to get the affinity suite running which actually the affinity suite runs

surprisingly well on Linux, but of course the classic problem in why Valve is making things work as well as they do, but a classic problem is it works today, an update happens, and it doesn't work tomorrow. When you're talking about software that you've got to be able to rely on, you've got to be able to have a company like Valve behind it or Code Weavers or something like that. Maybe somebody can make something happen, System 76 maybe, but somebody can make something happen that actually is like, okay, updates happened, it bricks some software, let's send a patch out.

Right, right. Yeah. Well, at least there are things like, yes, the Finisweet is cool and I, I, I've been meaning to try it at some point honestly, like I've heard so many good things about it. It's, I don't do, I don't do anything complicated enough to really justify learning it, right? Like as limited as tools like GIMPAR and Kdenlive and things like that For what I'm doing like I don't I'm not doing like high production work stuff where it really matters to me that much but if you are someone who is and you were you have your workflow built around that like You know even just moving tools can be

rough. You've just sent Micah down a tangent. I'm just warning you real quick. I do want to send you towards DaVinci at some point. Yeah, well, I'm we're on full DaVinci with work. Jack and I actually are together in a video production company. And we are on a full Linux pipeline. And that's where I'm going to disagree with you because like GIMP sure it doesn't have some of the preset type

stuff as Photoshop and of course it doesn't have the kind of like Jack's talking about Windows the long history of people having tutorials for it and making things easy like that but I use GIMP on a daily basis for professional work and it does fantastic. Especially GIMP 3.0 has been incredible. Like the work that we're seeing there in GIMP 3.2 is getting ready to come out stable and that's got some really great improvements as well.

It's getting better and better, but I've used GIMP for years and I've had graphics on television and stuff like that that were all made in GIMP. And it does a great job. The biggest thing is you've got, I think, a big issue because I've worked with alternatives to everything for years. And I think a big issue that a lot of new people come into with their mindset is they expect it to replace this thing.

It's like, I don't know, maybe using an impact drill instead of a drill driver or something like that. I can't think of a great example here, but you know, a lot of people need to stop thinking like, oh, this is going to be my new version of Photoshop for me. No, it's an entirely new tool with an entirely new way of working. And once you learn how that works, you can work around maybe some of the limitations, but also utilize some of the strengths and You just kind of got a you know to quote Yoda. That's a second Star Wars reference, which is funny because I'm a Star Trek guy but you must unlearn what you have learned of the old tools and Really just kind of come in with a an open mindset to learn the new tool for what it is. Mm-hmm

of come in with an open mindset to learn the new tool for what it is. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. I've not really heard that perspective before. So what is your... You mentioned you have a Linux pipeline for this work. What are you using in this tool? So you've obviously got GIMP.

What else is in the pipeline? So DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic is another kind of unsung hero. They are an unsung hero, I would say, of Linux adoption because DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic is another unsung hero, or they are an unsung hero, I would say, of Linux adoption, because DaVinci Resolve has been incredible. But DaVinci Resolve is the primary tool that we're using on a day-to-day basis. I've used it actually ever since it went. Back in version 15, they added native Linux audio support,

and that's when I switched to it from Lightworks. So we've been using DaVinci Resolve there the whole time. It's fantastic. So Gimp, DaVinci Resolve, Jack prefers Krita over Gimp, and then we have Only Office is an incredible Microsoft Word replacement. We host a Nextcloud server for project management and chat, note keeping, few other functions.

Then we also have, we see Shutter Encoder is a fantastic transcoding application that we use. Trying to think of any other pipeline items that we use. What's something I'm missing, Jack? I mean, I don't know, back end stuff can run on Unraid, which is technically a Linux server. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is most of it. Unraid is probably like the least controversial thing you could suggest.

I feel like that's just like kind of a default for a lot of people anyway. Unraid's awesome. I wish I wish there like there's if you've mentioned that you've probably heard of space invader one He's like the the savior of everything Unraid related, but it's just such a great server operating system. Mm-hmm So Go on. Oh, go ahead. I was gonna say

So what actually made I was gonna say, so what actually made you go with the Linux pipeline here? Cause I, how long has, how long have you guys been doing that? Or just doing this work in general? Yeah, so I've been in the video production world for a long time. I'm coming up on 10 years of doing it professionally.

And I've been playing with video ever since I was 13. So it's my big passion and all that kind of stuff. And so, I mean, long story short, it all started when I was three years old. No, I'm joking. But long story short, I got into Linux because I was into video. And back in 2014,

there were not very many free video editing options out there. HitFilm didn't even have a free version. And I was, you know, I was a teenager, I was broke, and all this kind of stuff. And I heard about this program called OpenShot. And OpenShot did not have a Windows version yet. And I'm like, well, it only runs on this Linux thing well what's that and so I installed Linux next to Windows and it was a whole new phase of discovery for me and I was a huge blender guy that got at the time still am oh that's another big pipeline blender yeah yeah I use it so often I forget about it but the the thing that was kind of interesting was how many tools I was already using on Windows and so I just started installing them on Linux, and then eventually I just stopped booting

into Windows. And so from being a teenager and kind of getting into my first jobs and all that kind of stuff, I got a job in television. And I worked in television for five years. I became the marketing director of a TV station And we were on a full Windows pipeline for all of that and I would go home and I would use Linux for all my personal stuff and my other channel Premiere prep and I just way preferred it and you know, I'd have my headaches on Linux and then I'd go deal with my headaches on Windows

They both have their problems but I was way preferring the headaches on Linux and then I'd go deal with my headaches on Windows. They both have their problems. But I was way preferring the headaches on Linux. And switching to DaVinci Resolve made it a lot easier to say we could do this on Linux. And so basically, COVID happened and everybody was sent home. And instead of taking my work computer home, I just used my at home computer. And so for a long time, I was using Linux in television at that point. And so basically after everything was said and done, I decided I wanted to start my own company. And that's where Caution Glass enters the picture.

And when I was setting up my company as a Linux guy, I choose a full Linux pipeline. And so just from there, uh, I've started hiring, you know, friends and, and, um, some non friends and former coworkers and stuff like that. And, uh, now we've got a team of five people and all of us are using, uh, Linux from top to bottom. So when it comes to onboarding people with tools like DaVinci, I feel like people are going to be using in many cases on Windows anyway,

like it's a fairly common tool. But when it comes to onboarding people with the other tools, like how does that really go? Jack loves it. No. So I think it's a mixed bag because you know, like I said, we're close friends. We've been friends for years. Well, before I hired him and everything. And I think there is maybe some picking and stuff that goes on. But in general, from my perspective, the hardest thing is a lot of people get tools that they love and they remember a button being a certain place,

and so they want to go use that button and it's not there. So there's difficulties in that. There's some learning new tools and things like that. But once you learn the workarounds and the systems kind of in place, it can just work. Now, Jack can speak more from his perspective because I mean Jack went from being full Windows guy to you know jumping onto Linux for creative work and stuff like that. So I mean honestly speak freely. I'm not your boss right now. Just just say it. Well I think I honestly swapping from Windows to Linux for work wise isn't that bad. The hardest thing was just like learning a new program like DaVinci, which honestly,

learning something new versus unlearning something and starting, it's way easier to learn something from scratch. And because I was starting to really get into using Linux regularly and learning that whole system, it actually wasn't that bad. There's been a few issues and bugs that have sort of happened and occurred that I'd say that's been really the main gripe

and sort of that's resulted in some workarounds. But overall, it's not been that bad to really get used to it and get proficient on working on a Linux platform. And if I can, Bertie, I think one of the things you were wanting to talk about was kind of like what is Linux missing? And I feel like this is kind of a good segue to that. Yes. One of the bugs that I think Jack is probably referring to is about three months ago, we

started setting up some new systems and our distro of choice for four years now basically has been Kabuntu. It's been stable, reliable, it's great, easy to install NVIDIA drivers, everything. Cool. Well, our tool to get DaVinci Resolve working on there was MakeResolveDeb. Ah, yes. MakeResolveDeb is a fantastic tool. It's still great. If you guys are running Kabuntu and you want to run DaVinci Resolve on there, I'll highly recommend it.

But the problem came into, for some reason, on 24.04.1 or something. We don't know exactly when it happened. There is some sort of a package change. There's something that happened where now if you are using DaVinci Resolve, your web browser basically freezes. And that meant that we could not preview any music that we're trying to find. It meant that we couldn't use, we use stock libraries and so we can't use those. We can't use YouTube.

Like everything, like it seemed like it was just like DaVinci Resolve was hogging all of the GPU resources and not letting any other program use it. It is very wild uh-huh, and this the thing that's funny is I have a Thelio Mira and That has had DaVinci or yeah, it's had DaVinci Resolve installed on Kabuntu 24.04 Yeah, it's had DaVinci Resolve installed on Kabuntu 24.04 since 24.04 came out, and it worked then. There's been no issues. For some reason, the initial release of version 24.04 of Kabuntu works fine with DaVinci Resolve.

But when we came back to install with 24.04.1, it just would not work. And we've tried rolling things back, we've tried all kinds of things, and it was enough of a headache that we just said, screw this, we're done with Kabuntu, and we're gonna go full Rocky. And so Rocky is the official distro

that Blackmagic supports and everything. So we've gone to a full Rocky Linux pipeline and honestly it's been working great. We've had a little bit of a networking issue and it turns out it's a bug with KDE frameworks. And that's the thing is it's like, you turn around and fix one bug, another one kind of creeps up.

But it's a bug that's already been fixed. It's just not in the version of KDE frameworks that ships with Rocky 9. So we're kind of having to work around that. It's not a huge deal. But I would say that kind of one of the biggest things that Linux misses or is missing is Unity. And I don't mean the desktop.

It's Unity between what everybody wants to do. And that's the beauty of Linux, but it's also the big downside of Linux because things, you know, look at Darktable. Darktable is a fantastic raw editor. Oh, there's another tool we use on a daily basis. Sorry. You're gonna keep remembering throughout the episode.

It's all good. Yeah, I'll probably remember another three or four at least. But Darktable, you know, the original creator of it built this great application It's been open source for a long time But then they had a big spout and then the answer was basically fork it you know and that happens all the time with applications and also underlying technologies and You know there has been so much improvement in Linux. And I feel like one of the best things to happen in Linux in the last several years was Flatpak

and containerized applications in general, App Image, Snap. And the reason is because it brought a target. It gave a place for developers to go, this is how I need to make my application. And now you have Lightworks making a flat pack for all of Linux. Anybody on any version of Linux basically can use Lightworks now without issues. It's fantastic. And that's a Hollywood-grade editor, by the way. And you've got Fender. Fender just used Presonus' Studio One to create Fender Studio, and they released it as a flat pack. And so I think that what would be most beneficial to the Linux platform is for people to come together

on some sort of a standard, even if it's not the one that everybody agrees on. We can always add to it. We can always add new features. And I'm not a software developer. I use the GUI as much as possible. I'm a very normal person using Linux as it comes. And I am looking at all of this, and it's like, if we could just decide on certain underlying technologies

and features and functions of software development and standardize it, then that gives somebody a target that they can go for. And I listened to a great interview with the head of Proton. And they were talking about porting the Proton applications. I think it was like Proton VPN. Oh, sorry, that Proton.

OK, yeah, that'd be good. Oh, sorry, that Proton. Yeah, yeah. But he was talking about porting, I think it was Proton VPN. And one of the things he was talking about is it's just, it's so difficult to target Linux because there is just so much fragmentation going on. I could go on to a rant for probably four or five hours about this because it's something

I'm very, very passionate about. I hope that we can see some continued unity towards certain standards and everything like that. And we honestly are, I think in the 11 years that I've been using Linux, it's gotten way more unified, but I would love to continue to see that to happen because it would help bring applications to Linux and applications bring people. Because if somebody's missing their app,

that one app that they just got to have, that will keep them from switching to Linux entirely. So that's the big thing I think that Linux is missing. So you said 11 years. What was that, especially when you first got started with actually doing professional work on Linux, what was the experience first like? It was different than it is today Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah

I remember having to you know, you install a bunch who and the first thing you do is sudo apt install a bone to Restricted extras, you know and you go down your whole list of things to find but restricted extras you know and you go down your whole list of things to find but considering that like I think the first professional work I was doing because I was doing freelance before I worked in television I think the first video editor I was using at the time was probably gonna be Kaden live and then I went from Kaden live into Lightworks right and it was honestly good I mean there wasn't a whole lot about it that was that crazy.

I mean, besides getting the initial setup done, the hardest thing was some of the non-work related stuff. It was getting flash installed so you could watch YouTube. It was spoofing Netflix. It was things like that that got a little bit odd, but overall, after you got codecs and stuff installed, it was things like that that got a little bit odd. But overall, after you got codecs and stuff installed, it worked pretty well. But I would say when Linux finally got to the point where I would say that anybody could use it,

would probably be about between five and seven years ago. Once you started having everything baked into the browser, once you had DaVinci Resolve add native audio support, once you had, I don't know, there's probably some other good examples I could say there, GUIs made for all the different applications and functions you need. That's when it just got to the point where I, I truly do believe that anybody today

could install Linux and use it without an issue, just as long as you have the understanding that you might have to swap out a couple of applications. It's gotten so good and so easy. I don't know, what's your perspective on that, Jack? Because I mean, you're coming at this as a little bit newer of a Linux user. Yeah, how long have you been doing that?

I mean, honestly, legitimately, like playing around and using Linux was only on a laptop has been only the last three, four years. I had it on like a laptop that I would I want to like do all my finances and stuff, you know, be a little more secure. So doing it on Windows. Um, for me, I like my favorite flavor of distro is Zorin. OK, OK. And that is, I think, a perfect example of how good Linux can be, because that was one

I just installed. And then if I needed an application, I'd go to the application store, I'd download it. It honestly just worked and worked really well. And I actually got my brother into using it. There was, however, a weird file. It's not encryption issue, but a file. It's not a glitch. It's just the way it has it to where the only one user can

access these files and no one else can. Which if you're working with other people, makes it a little bit tricky. There's probably a way around it, but like Zorin, and I keep a heartbeat about it, is I think the best example for me because it just worked. Like whatever you need to do. I didn't game on it, which I can't say about the performance of that, but whatever I need to do, office related, web related, program related, it did a great job. And honestly, if things moved more in that direction with the various districts, I'd be really pleased with Lansley, probably would more consider it.

And honestly, I know funding is a big thing that gets talked about a lot. And, you know, I talk about funding a lot. Yeah. And it's a very important thing. Zorin is also a prime example of how to do a good job with that because quite frankly, I've bought Zorin Pro before and Zorin Pro you know it's it's minor tweaks and improvements sure it's anything you could do yourself with a few more plugins or something like that but it's giving you a clear easy way

to take out your credit card put in some numbers and and fund and and all that kind of stuff because it's kind of difficult when that somebody gives you an open book and just say, here, fill in a number of how much you want to give us. And when somebody like Zorin Pro comes out and they offer a benefit to you purchasing their upgraded version, I think that's a fantastic model for self-funding. And I would love it if, you know,

even projects like Kdenlive, like if Kdenlive was able to bundle in some new, like, I don't know, even projects like KdenLive, like if KdenLive was able to bundle in some new, like, I don't know, rock support or something like that, and they were able to offer a pro tier or something like that, I think that'd be fantastic. And if they're always open sourcing it on the back end, that's fine. Somebody else can compile it and use it for free if they want to. But you know, if it gives us better features and functions, I think a pro tier or just other options and features to give a better benefit for a little bit of monetary,

you know, compensation is a fantastic way of doing it. So I think Zorin is right on point with that. Mm-hmm. With that file issue you had, the easiest way that I could think of to address that would be, I don't know if there's a nice GUI to change it or like what Zorin has available in regards to this, but you could definitely add both users into a group and then make the file writable by that group. I don't know how to do this on the command line. I don't know if there's like a nice GUI way to do it though.

Yeah, the issue was pretty weird because it went like into like on his server, everything was locked to the user and stuff like that. It even got kind of picky about DaVinci Resolve and everything like that. So it was just it just needed to be like opened up, like the permissions were locked down to that single user. And so after it was all said said and done it was an issue I'd never encountered before in all my years of using Linux and if that is a default I would love to see Zorin change that default because quite frankly that got him to go back to Windows. Right, right. But he was loving Linux all the way up until that problem. Like if Zorin didn't have that issue he probably would be

on Zorin to this day. What brought you to Zorin? Because I know a lot of it's it's one of those more modern suggestions I've been hearing and I haven't personally used it myself. Like when I started using Linux, the suggestion you probably heard this as well, Mint, like Mint is what everyone was suggesting. Or if like Mint, it looked like Windows 7. Or if you weren't gonna suggest Mint, it would just be just use for door or something like that.

Zorin though, like I don't know how long it's been around for, but I definitely have noticed in the past maybe three or so years, it's gotten a lot more attention as like, here is the thing that is, I guess a good transition point. Oh yeah, like, Zorin is a fantastic... If you are used to Windows, like, I could probably get someone who had been using Windows as long as they weren't doing like a bunch of coding and technical stuff to swap to Zorin

and they'd be perfectly fine. And you mentioned Linux Mint. It's funny, Linux Mint was actually the reason I looked for a different OS, because I had a HP all-in-one PC that I had fixed up that was gonna sell. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna put Linux on it. If I'm gonna sell it, let's try to get more people using Linux.

And I installed Mint on there, and it would not download any Wi-Fi drivers. Like, or it just couldn't find them at all. And I was searching, I looked everywhere and I was like downloading here and there and I was eventually like, okay, hold on, let me just, maybe something's wrong with your computer. Let me try something different. So one of the ones that people had recommended that, you know, it just works was Zorin and I did it. Boom. I didn't even do any updates and it found it. And that kind

of was like, that sealed the deal. Like, okay like okay this isn't all this wasn't even like a rare machine it was just a very standard all-in-one and that fact that Mint did not have these default features and that I was having to search for it and like try to install things like via the command line that's what kind of put me on to Zorn is there was one recommended for it's super easy to get into. It's very simple. There are a lot of things that are kind of locked down about it, but that also means that you can't really mess it up.

Right. Okay, okay. I should definitely give Zorin a look. And I do think that model of having like a paid version is really cool. It's not the same as like Zoran Pro but Critter is available over on Steam and you can just buy Critter. I think it's like $15 something like that basically acts as a donation to the project. I don't know how it would go. It's a bit weird in the the FOSS space because you have people who are very much sort of, I guess,

ideological purists with it where if you did have a version where they were selling a like a version that had more features there would be people there would definitely be a lot of like uproar about that. If the code codes available and you can compile it yourself like it's not it's nowhere near as bad right people are going to complain about that but like you still have everything there but i i don't know it there is there are a lot of a lot of opinions about how Things should be managed and what should be done I think I think having a donation built into the download is I don't think anyone really has a

Reason to complain about that like elementary OS does when you download it There's the option to pay a certain amount or you can enter zero and just download it directly That I think is I think anyone people are to whine about it because they see the word purchase and they don't read and they don't see actually what's happening. But I don't know, it, I being in the position I'm in, I've heard a lot of different voices from all like levels of interest in free software. And I just know, like I just I just know there would be a lot of voices that would have things to say about it. Yeah, it's one of those things you can't put the genie back in the bottle,

I think, as a term, right. And, you know, for those who are already just completely free, if there would be outrage I'm gonna imagine GIMP suddenly charging $10 per download or something like that What I'm like the basic download, but I think having a pro version like the the basic download I can understand why people might be annoyed but even just additional things like a Maybe like maybe there's some codec that you need to pay for to include or something like that for a video editor. My viewpoint on it is, look people, these things aren't free. Not only the developer's time, obviously,

we've been already sweeping that under the rug for a long time, but you also have to pay for codec licensing and things like that. H.264 I think is owned by, it's Nvidia, right? Sounds right. Somebody owns the codec for that. And so, obviously FFmpeg has done a fantastic job of kind of making it to where you can use it and stuff like that. But there are so many aspects

that go into software development. And again, just the labor of the developers themselves is worth some money right there. But it's like, if you add a pro version, like DaVinci Resolve, it's not open source, but they have a free version that's fully functional. You can use the free version and you might have a couple of workarounds,

because again, codex for that situation. But it works and you can just go use it for free. So if you're somebody who wants to do that, go use it for free. But a professional like myself who needs the extra codecs and plugins and stuff, I have I think five or six copies of DaVinci Resolve Studio. So I mean, I've gone out and I've come with cameras, I've bought and stuff like that too, but I've bought DaVinci Resolve Studio. So, I mean, I've gone out and I've, you know, some have come with cameras I've bought

and stuff like that too, but I've bought DaVinci Resolve on its own and it's worth it to me. Those extra codecs, the extra, you know, noise reduction features and stuff like that are worth it. And if, you know, is obviously, you know, not a charitable work on the side of Blackmagic Design, but somebody like ZornOS, you know, if I've got on the side of Blackmagic design, but somebody

like ZornOS, you know, if I've got five computers, upgrading every once in a while for 50 bucks sounds like a great deal to me. I mean, Windows is 150 itself. So why not support a project I believe in and give them, you know, another extra set of wallpapers and themes and stuff for it. There's something fun about our windows there about the price of windows. I was at a McDonald's the other day and I don't know how it happened but their kiosk software crashed and it was on the Windows desktop. I look in the bottom corner. Activate Windows.

in bottom corner activate windows. They have written on that license. See, the funny thing is like I'm probably very opposite of a lot of Linux users. I'm fine with paying in many cases. I want to pay, you know, but honestly the donation thing is kind of a hard one even for me because it again that open-ended question of like, you know, hey, if you want to support us, send us some money, you know, it's and I've done it and it's a good thing to do. But it's like if you give me an actual reason to put in my credit card, it's far more justifiable. And for businesses coming from as a business owner perspective,

I don't know what country you know, different countries do and all that kind of stuff, but at least in the US, there's, you know, certain benefits to buying things. And so giving, giving things out in a pro tier just, it just makes sense to me. I think that's a great way of doing it. I mean, a Kdenlive Pro would be fantastic because I've wanted like Blackmagic raw support for a long time. So if they came out with that, I would not be upset at all. So you'd much rather have a clear place that the money is going to rather than just putting it into the Aether and it just going to the project. Yeah, there's something about like actually buying a product versus You know hopefully the developers maybe get this it goes into a pool I don't know

But you know there's there's a little bit more of a transaction there between the developer and the user when there is an actual Set price for this item because it comes with these extra features Okay, I can understand that I guess you're approaching Linux from more of the professional perspective in that way. I've obviously been using it for like 11 years and you are like a Linux user, but a lot of the people in the Linux space are kind of, they are, a lot of people I know in Linux space, they only use Linux as a hobby.

They don't use it as a professional. Like maybe they use it as a professional in the context of, you know, they don't use it as a professional. Like maybe they use it as a professional in the context of, you know, they are a developer or they are a server maintainer, things like that. But even in that case, in a lot of situations, you're just interacting with free stuff anyway. Like if you're a web developer, the majority of your stack you're probably not paying for. Like, let's say you're using like VS Code and then the library you're using is gonna be free, most likely open source, and then like any plugins you're using are probably gonna be free and open source as well.

Like, or if you're maintaining a server, you're probably running maybe like a Debian or something like that. Like, but if you're, I guess from the video production side, it's fairly normal for professional software, professional grade software to have some sort of price tag attached to it. Oh, it definitely is. I mean, you're paying $700-ish a year for the Adobe subscription. DaVinci Resolve is $300. It's one time, their pricing structure is way cheaper than anything else and DaVinci Resolve is way better. And you know, everywhere you turn, yeah, absolutely, there's more ways to spend money. I mean, trust me, we have many cinema cameras that's not cheap. We have many tripods, which when you get the professional ones, they're a lot

more expensive than you'd think. The lighting, the sound, there's money all over the place that has to get spent on this and so I am more than happy to you know pay for our software on on Linux. And that's the thing is if any developer comes out with a... I'll be honest I haven't used Lightworks full-time in a long time but I always renew my light work subscription and Download and install the the Linux version because I I like the fact that they're there and they're offering such a great cool for Linux Autodesk or sorry not Autodesk

Autograph Was very similar But they just got bought by Max on so we'll see what happens with that. But, so it's just like, if you guys, if a developer brings your tool to Linux, I'm definitely gonna be using it in one shape or another. And I know I'm kind of abnormal in my thought process on the way to charge for it and stuff like that,

but I think it would be one of those things, it's as long as you offer the free version and you're kind of like we were talking about, honestly, a callback to what we were talking about with some of the YouTube channels. As long as your spirit is still there, the same nature of your project is still there, you're offering it as an open source project

and all that kind of stuff. Your compiled version with these extra features being charged is fine. And it helps you fund your developers. It helps you bring a better product to the table. Please do it. Yeah, I just had a look at Lightworks and it's actually a lot cheaper than I thought it was. It's not that bad.

Yeah. I don't know if it's converting it to Australian price or this is the US price, but the one-time pro purchase is $420 which Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. I think it's a bit cheaper than DaVinci is DaVinci is $300 one time okay, okay For the outright license, but there's been talk about whether they're going to charge for it again or something like that, but The free version of DaVinci resolve is definitely far more capable than the light works version Just because like light works you're limited to 720p on the free version

So that's a little frustrating if they could at least offer 1080 that would be that would be a lot nicer Yeah, that feels like we have a free version, but like, we don't actually want you to use it. And I think there's a 30 minute edit limit, but I could be wrong on that. But I don't know. It is what it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, hey, there's DaVinci, so use DaVinci. Do you use DaVinci? Yeah, exactly. No, it's cool's DaVinci. So use DaVinci. Do you use DaVinci? Yeah, exactly. No, it's cool that there are options like this that do exist. Like I use the all the just free and open source stuff, but I know there are a lot of people in the Linux space who do use tools like DaVinci. I want to say Nick from the Linux experiment uses DaVinci,

but I could be mistaken there. And I know a couple of other people do as well. Yeah, I think he does. I've been tempted to learn it, but I even if I did, I would just be doing the very little editing I do anyway, which is basically splicing clips together. Honestly, I could do the majority of my video editing.

I could do with a command line FFM peg script. Yeah. Now you're, uh, did you say you're using Kdenlive? Kdenlive, yes. I love Kdenlive. I mean, I still have tutorials on my channel way back when, when I was using Kdenlive full time. It is a fantastic tool. And I will say an open source tool that just does so well at looking and Feeling like a professional product Kden live is is I would say one of the gold standards I mean like the gold standard is blender like blender is sure almost industry standard It's being used by so many in the industry and it is so capable

But Kden live is actually getting better and better. And I love the fact that they're not shying away from AI entirely and they're giving you things like Magic Mask and DaVinci Resolve where you can, the AI will automatically mask somebody out. And speech to text is also an AI driven tool. And they're trying to, if you don't keep up with the trends, you're gonna get left behind. know they're adding these tools in which

are necessary in today's professional world and that's very nice to see. NuxTux Creative, if you're looking for a YouTube channel with great KdenLive tutorials, NuxTux Creative is the gold standard for KdenLive tutorials. I mean he does a fantastic job showing you how to use it. And he just like released a promo for Kdenlive the other day. And it's just fantastic. I think he's a Linux Mint user,

but he uses Kdenlive and he shows how to do stuff. And I'm like, that's easily on par with what you're able to do with DaVinci Resolve. I will have to check this channel out. I was not aware of it. Yeah, anybody who wants to KdenLive tutorials, definitely check that channel out. Yeah.

And he's also in our Discord group. Ah, I might have to reach out to them and see if they wanna come to the show then. That could be fun. Yeah, creative Nate, I think, or something like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, okay, there's one problem I have with Kayden Live right now which has

which has kind of tempted me to just go and learn DaVinci finally. If you rescale the so I record in 1080p um but YouTube because of their bitrate nonsense and hyper compression to hell

I like to rescale the video to 4K and then you can get, the problem is right now, at least from what I can tell, and I haven't been able to fix it, if you apply transforms to any images, things like that, that you wanna show on top of the video, they break in the 4K scale. The transform is based around the 1080p and then when it scales It's like just like sitting in a little corner of the the output

I got you. Yeah. Yeah you maybe a good workaround then would be to Export in 1080p from Kden live and then throw it into Handbrake. Right. And scale it from there. Yeah. That might get your effects to work okay and everything, but you have to go through another transcoding process. Yeah, I might have to take a look at that.

It's actually not a bad idea. Hmm. It would be nice if I could just do it in one step, but, you know, again, I've been tempted to learn DaVinci anyway, so maybe this is gonna be a reason to do so Yeah, yeah, it'd be nice if YouTube could actually give a decent level of compression Yeah, well they're rolling out AV1 and I've been seeing people talk about it and apparently It looks worse in some cases about it and apparently it looks worse in some cases because they're yeah they've been like they're using AV1 but then they're also crushing the bitrate

even further so you know you're getting it apparently it was a bug we'll see we'll see how that goes though I'm excited about AV1 I mean being open source and everything like that like codecs can be a real problem Look at h264 and AC audio inside of resolve and stuff like that But AV1 is is a super exciting, but it's gonna be a long painful process of everything supporting it the way it needs to yeah Yeah, I think I think AV1 support we should expect a Bit easier just because it is open source. You don't have those codec licensing fees, all that sort of stuff.

And most of the things that I want to interact with, I don't know if the tools I use support AV1. I assume KdenLive does by now. I don't know. I don't have AV1 on my GPU, so I don't use it. Yeah, and that's the thing is it's very hardware driven. I know Intel is with the ARC GPU supporting it a lot better than most, but I think the latest Nvidia cards are also offering a direct

latest AMD as well. I am a generation behind, so probably my next upgrade will be AV1. But my main thing I'm kind of waiting for is, so YouTube they support AV1 streaming, Twitch I think it's still like a invite beta. I don't think it's fully rolled out yet, which is annoying. So even though I had an AV1 card, I couldn't stream an AV1 because I multi-stream. Right. But, you know, hopefully, hopefully they get sorted out eventually.

I'm excited for it. Yeah, I am as well. I am very much as well. So with, with tools like, like GIMP, I've had like GIMP developers on the show before and I think GIMP 3 was a major, major improvement. Just like the basic workflow of the tool honestly, just being, you know, being able to select multiple layers at once was, it's such a simple thing, but not having it there was so annoying. And now that

it's there, I don't know how I ever use the tool without it. I was doing some food photography in GIMP the other day, and we had like 140 photos or something like that of all these different food items. And I, I could have taken them into Darktable and done it there, but I'm just more comfortable with the color tools in GIMP. And with non-destructive editing, I was able to rip through those things. I did all of my color grading and stuff like that on a layer group or group layer. And I was able to just throw in the next photo into that group layer. And it was just automatically applying those, those color grades.

It saved me so much time. Yep. Yep. was just automatically applying those color grades. It saved me so much time. Yep, yep. What do you feel is, what would you like to see in GIMP that is not necessarily there right now? Like maybe a workflow improvement or maybe a feature that's entirely missing.

Obviously you're comfortable with it, that's why you're kind of using it, but is there anything you are kind of hoping to see? Yeah, there's. There's a good bit. I definitely want to toss this question to Jack, actually, because he's used GIMP a little bit, but he goes to Krita. I also want to hear about Krita as well.

What you what you might think needs to be added to that. Yeah, the the thing that's interesting is like when I worked in television, for instance, everybody was on Adobe at the start. And then when I took over the department, we turned it into DaVinci Resolve. But that meant we had Photoshop. And I tried using Photoshop a little bit, but I liked GIMP, so I stuck with it and it was free

and I was able to install it on the computer, so I did. And pretty much everything I did was in GIMP. So it's kind of hard to say like, this feature of Photoshop is something I want or some other tool or whatever. But I think the biggest thing is kind of just plugins. Oh, there is definitely one I can tell you. That would be AI driven object selection.

We had AI driven object selection, that would be incredible. That would be nice. We use a tool called RemoveBG. Jack actually introduced me to it. And there's a officially endorsed plugin that they have that allows you to integrate it directly into GIMP.

And you can actually do AI background removal with a single button inside of GIMP. And you can actually do AI background removal with a single button inside of GIMP. And it is a fantastic tool. It is premium, you gotta pay for it. They do have a free version for lower resolutions. But it is a fantastic tool. But it would be really nice if something like that was more baked in, baked into GIMP. But the plugins thing I think is huge. And luckily with GIMP 3.0, they've changed the way they are implementing plugins. So hopefully we'll see a lot more happen here before too long.

What about you Jack? GIMP 3, oh sorry, I was gonna say GIMP 3, they've working on a new plugin framework and like they'd wanna like actually make it. Cause before they had plugins, but it's like you to put the files in specific weird locations and know about that They're working on like an actual plugin format where you just download the plugin file It just does everything it needs to do and then you're good I will have a look at that removed BG plugin because I spend so much time

cutting out backgrounds like my thumbnails, right right? Like I do those by hand. I don't use the like, cause the selection that Gimp has is not great. Unless you have like a plain, if you have a plain white background, it's great. I don't have that wall back there. That's not big enough to take the pictures. It's a little bit too small.

Yeah, no. Yeah, and they have a great desktop tool, There that's not big enough to take the pictures. It's a little bit too small. No Yeah, and they have a great desktop tool, which is an app image by the way Mm-hmm, they are able to target one format. There we go But they have an app image Desktop application where you can throw in a whole batch of images I've done 150 at a time and it just goes through and removes the background of everything in there and it is is life-changing. Okay, I'll definitely have a look at this though. You can even have it just swap your background too. It doesn't have to just remove it to transparency. It'll even swap the background for you. Okay, so Jack, tell me about Krido. Okay, so I come from a background of using Photoshop somewhat professionally. And so when I started, I swapped to try to use, I tried using Gimp first.

And I think the biggest problem I had was coming from that Photoshop mindset to GIMP. They're very similar in how they look, how they operate, but ever so different that it just confuses me. And I just like, I couldn't get out of the Photoshop mindset to use it. But Krita, while similar, was different enough to like, I was like, okay, this workflow makes it, I have to relearn it. I don't have to workflow makes it's I have to relearn it I don't have to relearn I have to learn it right so that means it's a I can start from scratch and kind of figure it out a little more and I don't know it always seems to just look a lot nicer to me GIMP has always seemed a bit I guess brutalist if you could say that an architecture style and how the program

looks I know it's gotten a lot better But Krita has always just been something that has been easier to Learn it's it works very well, and I like a lot of its tools Although like Mike was saying be nice if it had some more AI driven tools Like one thing I know that Photoshop has and I think it could have might have, I haven't experimented with a lot, is they had the old eraser tool where you just click once and it just removes everything, and that was before AI.

And that's- Or us, Krita does have that actually, I'll show you. Oh, okay, that's something I haven't figured out. But again, that also shows how much I use Krita. I don't use it a whole lot. I think though that it's definitely, it's because of my Photoshop background that kind of screws me up in a lot of ways. Yeah, when I recommend new users to a tool, if they've used Photoshop before, I definitely

recommend Krita over Gimp just for those reasons. But Gimp 3.0 definitely shortens that gap when it comes to feature parity in a way, largely because of non-destructive editing and things like that. But there's also a, there is a project that I know of called, is it Photo GIMP? Yes.

Or something like that. Yes. And it basically will make the UI look and act or it changes the keyboard shortcuts and stuff to be more Photoshop in nature. I've never tried it, but that's definitely something I really want to give a go. And honestly, maybe we try that with you, Jack, and see since you are a Photoshop guy, see how it kind of makes it. I think I've heard about that from-

It might trip you up more because it looks, again, it's that thing of it'll look similar but things won't exactly be correct. Yeah. I might see, I think I heard it when PewDiePie swapped to Linux, that was one of the tools he was using to get basically GIMP to operate like Photoshop. And so I don't know, I might give it a shot. I have to see. That should be an interesting test. If you don't want to use all of it, you can like pick and choose what you want. So if you just want to have the hotkeys, you just want to have the UI layout,

like you can just take those individual files. But yeah, the photogame is really, really cool. I am glad that it does exist because it does sort of... I get it really depends on who you are and your approach right like some people find it more annoying to use because of the similarities similar to things like Linux Mint or even in many cases Zorin where it looks close enough but things are not exactly right where it like... I think if you go into it with the right mindset knowing this is not Photoshop I think you know you'll have a better experience. If you go into it directly as a Photoshop user without an experience with GIMP, like it's, you know, it's gonna seem, it's gonna seem wrong.

Oh yeah, it's definitely daunting and I think that's the mindset of like rather than learning it if it's like I could just, you know, do it in Photoshop and be done with it. That's kind of what, what inhibits from like, like fully being like, okay, committing and go full send and learning it. Right, right. I did want to talk a bit about the work that Caution Glass does. Yeah.

I haven't really touched on that that much. So yeah, I guess explain. I okay, I will say the name is not amazing for SEO. Look up caution glass net caution glass signs. Give me one second. I'm the actual website. Hey branding super easy. We just go to, you know, Walmart buy a bunch of caution glass

signs and we're set. Anyway, yes, caution glass. Yeah, so caution glass is a video production, graphic design and marketing company. We do a lot of social media content, YouTube content, social media management. We do web design, everything like that. And it's been kind of a journey in the last few years, but this is a company that I started when I stepped out from television. The name Caution Glass comes from the sign

that was on my door when I was the manager. There you go, I guess it maybe is correct then. I want to cut it off, sorry. Yeah, yeah, and I passed by that sign every single day for years. And when I was starting the name of my company, I named it that. And so it's been a lot of fun. It's a very interesting field to get into. But it's entirely ran on Linux.

Like I said, we have five people. We got Kabuntu on most machines still, but the editor machines are switching over to Rocky as we go. And yeah, we create lots and lots of content. I mean, we probably produce hours of content a month. We're pushing a lot of stuff out there. Awesome. So I did see there are some examples of like work that you guys have done.

On our website is probably pretty outdated too. Sure, sure, sure. We're rebuilding the website as we speak actually. But I did see you guys have shot like commercials. What is like what what is the process of even handling something like that? Obviously different different things are gonna be different like you might need to get like drone footage for things and different things like that but like where did like where does that even begin? Like what do you sit down and say, this is how we're gonna approach it with the company? Yeah, so when we're working with a business, a lot of it first starts off with,

are they a client that we've worked with for a long time, or are they somebody fresh and new? If there's somebody fresh and new, we wanna find the kind of the culture of the company first, like who they are internally, what it's like to deal with them as a customer, things like that. And then it's a very open-ended question, right?

Because you're talking, is it a service-based business? Is it a product or retail business? Are they selling to construction workers or are they selling to moms? So it's like there's a whole lot of variance that happens in there. But the general idea is you kind of want to find out who they are as a company, what's differentiating about them between their competitors. And really, the big thing is tell a story. You know, I've, I've always loved to be able to create like 30 second spots and stuff, because it kind of forces you to work within a box. And a big piece of that is just finding ways to tell stories within 30 seconds.

But nowadays, if things have altered and changed, things aren't broadcast television anymore. You aren't working with linear streams as much either. And so you're not stuck to just 30 seconds or 15 or a 60 or something like that. You really have free reign. A lot of the stuff that we make these days is not even standard length commercials, even though we still make probably a good seven or eight of them a year or so.

A lot of them are just content, Facebook content, YouTube content, be it vertical or horizontal, long form, short form. And then we utilize a lot of those pieces as ads because the people who end up finding them interested, they'll stick around and they'll watch it and get the full message of the company. And a lot of times we're working with general brand campaigns. We're trying to find that, like I said, that clear message that we want to convey to people. And so all of our content for that year or so will kind of fall underneath that, underneath that campaign. Like we're working with a mattress store

right now that we're using the campaign, the Sleep Lab. They're kind of the scientists of sleep and everything that they're doing is kind of underneath that sort of thing. And so they're wearing, you know, lab coats and they're looking in beakers and trying to find that perfect formula for a good night's sleep. And that kind of bleeds into everything that we do, whether it is directly tied into that theme, or if it's a little bit more soft and we just kind of end the commercial with like a little message about that. So it's a lot of discovery over time, trying to figure out that best angle, and also what people respond to. Analytics are huge in what we do.

Okay. So it's very much a... You kind of have to learn what your... Learn what the business is like, learn what the audience is for it is like, and then also it's very much a trial and error thing like over the time you've been doing things the thing that's weird about today is We are in an age where everything is so fragmented. Mm-hmm Just also an interest in mindset is really what I'm saying is, you know

Like you go to Spotify if you are only into the 1950s do op age of music you can listen to that for hours and get every single song that was ever written And then if you're into very niche like alt rock whatever you can listen to that for hours on end and People can get into very specific camps and interests and stuff like that. Whereas before, people were generally listening to the same radio stations, watching the same TV channels. They were, you know, even in early days of internet, a lot of people were going to very

similar websites and stuff like that. And everything was very much unified. And so a lot of people's interest in like, hey, did you watch that show? Well nowadays it's more like what show on what platform, you know? I still have no watch breaking bad. Oh, that's a great show. You got to watch it. You got to watch it. But that's the thing is it's like, you know, everybody can get into

very specific interests and niches. And so there's a lot of discovery, you know, our underlying technology. We need open source source discord that's what we need go back to team speak I actually had a friend who wanted to do an episode on team speak but he couldn't get it to work on his distro it works for everyone else's distro for some reasons is breaking on his weird yeah we got it We got to go to mumble. You know, we got to get we got to go all out. I just saw it.

OK, now again, you were saying shared interests. Yeah. Yeah, so there's a lot of there's a lot of split now in people's interests and it just gets very difficult to target specifically who's going to fill a fall within the interest of that particular product. Because even things like we work with a company that makes bait lures, fishing baits, you know, and they have a very specific theme and everything like that.

And there's division in the fishing industries or the fishing worlds. You know, you have people who are very old school and only want to deal with, you know, bamboo rods and all that kind of stuff. You got the guys who want to have like the very, you know, done up boats and whatever else. So, you know, there's very specific niche areas where you can target. It can be a benefit, but it's also a very difficult thing to find specifically what a company needs.

Right, right. Yeah, I definitely... You made a really good point there about people sort of having a very split sort of... It's very split culture where you... I definitely saw this... I think I would say this first sort of happening probably around the like early 2000s right like Where you could really as you started seeing more? More like place like reddit grow and early YouTube grow like even I would say even early YouTube right there was still a fairly

shared sort of a right there was still a fairly shared sort of a fairly shared sort of idea of what is popular like everyone's seen those like hyper viral videos But now like nowadays there are these videos that have a hundred million views that I've never even heard of Or like though they'll get a hundred million views on tick tock and I don't use tick tock So I have no idea what's even going on on that platform Yep. Yeah, you can even choose your platform nowadays. Mm-hmm on TikTok and I don't use TikTok so I have no idea what's even going on on that platform. Yep. Yeah you can even choose your platform nowadays. Oh yeah that's one of the craziest things is people like that's it's no longer YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagramers, you know well maybe not Facebook I haven't heard anything on Facebook but

you have people specific. Maybe Facebook is a couple of years ago. But definitely, I don't know, it's one of those platforms where everyone in the world has an account. This is a problem that Meta has where they have no idea how to grow the platform anymore. This is kind of why they were just expanding out into random things like Metaverse and why they bought Oculus and because, you know, sure. Yeah. Well, when, when the, when maybe, right. of us and why they bought Oculus and because you know sure yeah well when when the when baby right or like another thing that would do this is why they

were trying to bring internet to developing countries because they ran out of people to bring Facebook to yeah and they're totally okay with bot accounts mm-hmm like that's a. Not like purchased accounts like bots. And it's just they're in a really weird spot. And they don't they have like so many things they could take advantage of but they choose not to. We have to deal with problems on a regular basis with meta because of just how bad their stuff is. They are the worst software company in the history of software companies because they can't even get so much of their own back-end

correct. When it comes to like their advertising platforms and their posting systems and stuff like that, it is way better to use a third-party tool that plugs into the Facebook or the Meta API than it is to use MetaZone tools because it is just so awful at being able to be reliable or even like you cannot find the tools. The amount of time I call it the meta loop, you get into the meta loop where you click on this button, which brings you back to this button, which makes you click on this button again, which brings you back to that button. And eventually you're trying to find the answer and it's everywhere.

And you look up documentation and they've changed it five times in the last year. And now, oh, they're getting ready to already change it again and they're going to go to something new and it's going to break five other functions and buttons. And this is their own tool and they don't have to deal with anybody else developing for it. It is so, so bad. You're very passionate about it. It is it is a problem that I've had days and days lost just because of these problems. So yeah, I'm a little little uptight about that subject. No, I definitely felt the same way when YouTube was changing their studio like really really often like ice when I started doing YouTube that was near the end of the old studio, the one that

people really, really, really liked that had a lot of really useful features. They're just like, no, you don't get those anymore. Bye. Yeah. It's getting better again, luckily. They've added some good stuff, but the changeover, I understand, is rough. It's kind of like, you know, choosing a new piece of software when you switch to a new operating system. Right. I get the buttons not in the same place. I miss that button. But we're not talking about that with a lot of these platforms. We're talking they straight up strip things out and make you

literally stub your toe on rocks and fall on your face because they're like, eh, we're we're dominant, we're number one. Deal with it. Google's just about as bad too. Oh, speaking of, uh, speaking of Google, this is the thing that was just getting attention today. Um, so you know how all of these platforms are doing this, uh, cheaper ad supported tier? Guess who else is doing it? YouTube. YouTube premium ad supported. It's half the price, but you have ads

now. There's still like the there's the premium premium, which is the proper premium. But there's like the premium light where there's ads. Like, yeah, what's even like, I don't know, what's the point of that?

I don't know. There's two point of that? I don't know. There's two there's two features I can think of that would make sense or that they probably have in there. I haven't seen this yet. I've not heard about this. I would guess that they are including the ability to download and background play. Let's have a look. Those are probably the two features that you probably are going to want to get with the with that tier.

Very nice, but still, it's just like... Apparently they were rolling out a while ago, it's just people started talking about it today. Wait. Oh, maybe Uptbitrate. That might be another one. Wait, what? Oh yeah, premium like premium 1080p. Wait, we're actually so con-

We've- wait, no it doesn't- what? Wait, hold- Wait, what does it include? Wait, I'm actually so confused. No, it doesn't include background play. I don't even know what's included then. Are they just not listening to features properly? Wait, testing premium light.

Donation to YouTube. It's a donation to YouTube. You get the premium trap match. We are so poor. Right balance of features. What are the features? Things like YouTube is losing money. That that's the biggest joke I've ever heard.

Well, they were for it wasn't profitable for a long time. I think it's been like past five years to be profitable. But people just don't even know that anymore. But I still hear people talk about that all the time, about how YouTube loses money and is like, yeah, no, it hasn't been for a long time. Also, I mean, Hollywood is great at this. You can make money, but you can lose money. I from what I can see, it's.

Is it literally just less ads? Maybe it does not have downloads or background play. It's just less ads. I bet they're getting away from like the minute, like the minute and 30 second long ads. That's probably what it is. They're just, you're just going to have the five second skippables. Which is still ridiculous. So basically you're paying for YouTube to be in the state it was in like 10 years ago.

Yeah. But again, you're ready for me to be in the state it was in like 10 years ago. Yeah. Again, you're ready for me to be abnormal. I'm in between both camps when it comes to YouTube with ads. It costs money to run servers. It costs money to pump out Internet. I am fine with ad support. In fact, I think ad support is fantastic.

I mean, I know I work in advertising, so maybe I'm a little bit biased on that front. But I mean, you know, linear TV, you know, CBS, NBC, if you're here in the States, you know, BBC or whatever, it's had advertising ever since its inception. And that's been a fantastic way not only to provide money for the platforms that are putting it out there, but also I'm a big believer in the need for advertising for small businesses and stuff like that. Because when that's the only way for you to get your message out to people who may not know about your business, it's a very nice thing to be

able to have those platforms to let people know that you exist. I've been scrolling through more of it. It seems like it's no ads on like news and gaming and Like a lot of general content. I so I don't know what they're putting ads on then Like they've specifically listed gaming fashion beauty and news with no ads so Just keep it there for the kids content, it's just there on baby shark and nothing else No telling a bunch of AI ads going off God

No, I totally understand an ad supporter tier But I think the issue is when people feel like they're something's being taken away and then being offered back to them with less You know here's the thing if it's ad supported. I think it needs to be free like the idea of a charged sure plan It's all right. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes, right. Yeah, no, I'm saying that like I'd supported is fine to me But when you're sitting charging a premium price as well Right, I'm not a fan of that. You're paying to get rid of that. And I think it was LTT kind of showed at 1.2,

the channels do actually make more money with views from premium YouTube premium accounts, which is awesome. So I don't see why you need to create a mid-tier on that. Honestly, if they want, I do think a premium light makes sense Just get rid of background play get rid of them Downloads and then get rid of like YouTube music and that can be your light because I don't really care about those features anyway

Download is nice if you're going on a long trip or something That's really used that before on premium But I could definitely get that being part of a light tier, though, like still make it so it's no ads, which people would still pay for. Right. They would pay eight dollars a month for no ads, even with no download. We just look to be sure you can download through other methods anyway, if you want to. Um, YouTube does not like to I cannot tell you why.

YouTube has given me a strike for telling you why before. But yes, we love YouTube here here's a revolutionary idea choose which feature you want and that is X amount of dollars a month that's going downloads two bucks a month you want background play 250 a month you know and then you can just build out what plan you want that yeah right yeah I do that that that. That would be nice, but that would be a good user friendly feature. And we can't have that. That would be too much against YouTube's current policies.

We want this to do well in the algorithm. So YouTube is wonderful. We love it. It's the best thing ever. One thing I don't like with the direction like web contents go on is we kind of see like this this rebirth of cable TV on the web where you know, you saw The reason why people move from cable TV To web content is you could just get a Netflix sub or like maybe you know

Hulu came along and like one or two others and now it's like every company has a sub and then You know, you can get cable TV packages through YouTube TV as well Which is also fun so you can have that on top of everything else but like I'm an anime fan and there was a time where like everything was through like one platform And now the problem is you have Disney buying up licenses Netflix is buying up licenses a bunch of other companies are buying up licenses.

So if you actually want to pay for everything, you end up paying like, you know, close to a hundred dollars a month just for one type of content, let alone anything else you might want to watch. Oh, it's terrible. I wish that there was a good aggregator of streaming platforms where it's just that single monthly subscription You get Netflix Hulu Disney or something like that I don't I see that as a very possible future too because when you look at it so many people are ditching individual streaming Platforms just because they're tired of having that one and they haven't used it in so long

Yeah, they go to one show right like you know, I know people that bought a Disney sub to watch like The Mandalorian and that was it. Yeah. And then they cancel as soon as it's over. Or they forget to and then Disney loves you. Yeah, they're banking on that. Yeah. If the ease of use disappears,

like obviously people are gonna pay more if it's easy to use, but if the ease of use disappears, it's like, why does that exist? Right, right. And so many things fragment. It is very much like back to kind of cable TV. It's like this full circle essentially. Mm-hmm. Yeah, at the same time that's why like piracy is on the rise as well. Like, Gabe Newell said it many many years ago piracy is a service problem that like if you can offer a service like steam where you know

There was a there was a period where gaming was kind of going that direction where like Ubisoft was doing their own stuff and EA was doing their own stuff blizz was doing their own stuff But now they're all sort of coming back to it. And there's problems there as well, right? Like there's definitely problems with one platform being the thing that everyone sells through. I would like there to be like multiple Steams, but they all have everything, where you don't just have games exclusively on the platform, it's just everyone, you know, like you go to a game stop, but then there might be some like little store that also has all of the same games They're not just selling knockoff games

It's just people distribute to different stores that would honestly that would be the best world we could be in and I guess in a sense Epic is kind of turning into that but It not as much. Yeah, it's it's way further behind in that respect I think that was the most disappointing thing about, I've not used the Epic Games Launcher that much, just so that a lot of this comes from other people's opinions, that are friends. But the biggest downside was it wasn't better than Steam.

It actually was lacking a lot of the features that Steam had. Because there's a lot of features other than just games. There's community, there's modding, there's all this stuff around the games. And the fact that like if they were launching a competitive service and they didn't have these, it has no chance because I love Steam or I love Valve, I love Steam. But I would like there to be some competition. I think that would be healthy. I think that would be fair because I mean, who knows what happens after Gabe Duel passes, you know, there's no telling, but

unfortunately, as long as they use Proton. There we go. Exactly. I just, I think Epic and a lot of these other game companies just were trying to sort of, I don't know, they're trying to strong arms. I know like Epic did a lot of free games you could get if you got into the service. And didn't they give you like GTA V at one point? I think so. They got quite, there was quite a few popular titles. I think Overwatch may have been one of them, but like you could just, you know, you get them for free, but you have to play them on the platform. And I think that is good for getting

that short-term player base. And obviously they have Fortnite. I mean, that's massively, massively popular. And that might be one of the reasons why they haven't innovated because why would you if it's working? But in the long term, I think that'd be great if they create a very competent service

or better service than Steam so that they would actually butt heads and be able to improve each other. At least what's really good is Valve is doing it right. And I think that's one of the reasons why they are so dominant and so popular. But believe me, I fully agree. There needs to be multiple platforms. You know, the more diversity of platforms you have, the better it is for all users and it creates competition.

But Valve is so odd as a company because they're still private and they do what they want. But then like I have the Lenovo Legion and it's running Steam OS and they have official guides and recommendations of how to install other people's games outside of Steam. You know, it's crazy like just how open and how much Valve is wanting people to just use their tools and services at the best that they can be. And obviously they're for a profit, they're trying to make money, but they found ways to do that and make their users extremely happy and still not create such a walled garden that you're basically up a creek, you a creek with their devices.

That's why if SteamOS does come out, when SteamOS comes out for more regular download and install on machines, which I know they have an official ISO, I think, already, but it's limited. It's AMD only, as far as I know. Right. But luckily, it's arched, by the way. So hopefully it won't take too long before we get some some Nvidia in there. But and ARC. But. The thing that's interesting about them is just how much they allow you to do.

And I think that if Steam OS were to take off and now we're looking at like 10% market share for SteamOS, then I'm not really concerned about Valve being even nearly as bad as Microsoft at trying to lock things down and be as closed as Microsoft is, or Apple, you know, even worse. I think the nice thing about Valve being like a private company is yes, they're not, they're not running a nonprofit, right?

Like they still want to make money, but they're not driven by how do we take as much money out of this platform as possible? Like how do we, how do we inject as many things to get people to spend money? Like, they've been... They have done things that, in many ways, actively harm their profit margin. Like, um... A while back, they added this requirement where you firstly have to mark a game as an AI game.

Like, so that's a new thing they've done. Also, if you're selling a battle pass, you have to say what's in the battle pass. You can't just say, oh, you might get some, you might get one map pack, you might get a hundred map packs. Now you actually have to say the minimal set of things that the battle pass is going to include, and that is gonna harm sales of battle passes. But it is so much better for the user. gonna harm sales of battle passes, but it is so much better for the user. They know that by providing, by creating that goodwill with the user, they will have continuous people coming back.

Cause that's, I've got a friend, like he doesn't play as much, but every time he knows every time Steam sale comes around, he might pick up a couple of games. Might not touch them. I think sometimes he hasn't touched games for like a couple of years. I've done that too, but it's that that goodwill I'm like, you know, oh hey this game lose $30 is like five. Oh sure I'll pick it up, you know, even though it might be losing them money It's getting me kids keeping me reminding me of the platforms that when there is a game that like 60 bucks

I'll pay steam for that and you know that it will still be in your library five, seven years from now. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, even if they remove the game, you can't, like, there's a couple of games, like Roller Drone was one that got removed from Steam, but you could, if you have it in your account, you can still play it. And also if you buy a key, you can still put that into your Steam account, even though it's no, you can't buy it anymore, and that's just fantastic. Yeah, I don't know how many Steam games I have that I have not played. I would say the majority of them. If you want to feel sad there's a website that tells you how much your Steam account

is worth yes. I've gone to that and I was like it was it was hard. Yeah. Don't go there. No bad idea. Yeah. Um, I don't I don't I don't know the number because I had the account for like 10 years now. So probably quite a bit. Yeah. Keep that keep that away. And that's and you'll still keep enjoying buying games and playing games. Yeah. Which by the way, the Lenovo Legion is fantastic.

Speaking of Steam and all that, I've been, I don't even have the Z1 Extreme version. I have the Z2 Go and that thing has just been a blast to play on. It's getting me more into gaming again. Yeah, I've got a Steam Deck right there. I don't use it as much as I should but I definitely do like to have it. I tend to use it as like an indie machine. I like playing like older RPGs on it.

I'm very bothered by frame rates so any games where it's like oh you can play this but might have frame drops I'd much rather play it on my desktop But if I'm gonna play some JRPG from 1990 like it's good. It's gonna run perfectly fine on the Steve neck Maybe battery life for a JRPG might be a bit rough, but maybe I shouldn't play a game for 12 hours in a day Yeah, I've been able to play triple- and occasionally you have to, you know, drop them down to 720p and medium settings or so, but I'll get, you know, between 40 and 60 FPS pretty much no problem. It's definitely a good upgrade from the original Steam Deck. I've seen a lot of videos where it's kind of on par with the Steam Deck OLED, I think,

in a lot of cases, but once you plug it in and you get that extra wattage, then you can easily play AAA titles at good settings. So was there anything else you guys wanted to touch on? Or is that, there's definitely things we could keep talking about, but I did want to wrap this up eventually. Yeah, no, no, no, I mean, I could talk for days on Linux as Jack knows. But no, we just appreciate you having us on the show.

It's been a blast talking and pleasure, you know, keep on. Yeah, thanks for having us on. We really appreciate it. Absolute pleasure. We'll let people know where they can find the channel, where they can find anything else you want to direct people to. Yeah, so one of the first things

that I would love to be able to plug is our Linux Creatives Discord group. That never came up. I completely forgot about that one. I created this Discord group because it's, there's a lot of great Linux groups out there, but a lot of them are very centered around gaming or coding or something like that,

but there's not very many, if any, that I know about that are just purely about Linux creative. So if you search for Linux creatives, let me see, yeah, just Linux Creatives on Discord. You'll find it. We've got a great group of people going there. It's a great place to ask questions if you have issues and you're running into problems running Linux for creative purposes.

Or you just want to share your work. We have fun polls all the time. If you've got YouTube videos you want to share and stuff like that, definitely jump into that Discord group. It's a blast over there and it's very helpful for a lot of people. So we'd love to see anybody who's into Linux as a creative platform over on that Discord group. Then Jack, you want to plug NoPlan?

Yeah, NoPlan channel. This is something that hopefully, maybe it might be later this year or perhaps even next year, This is something that hopefully, maybe over the, it might be later this year, or perhaps even next year, we're gonna really try to kind of put it in overdrive. We're actually gonna be, like tomorrow, trying to do our own starter podcast with No Plants Talking About Tech in general.

We're gonna start that tomorrow. We're still figuring out the time right now, I believe. But that, we're really trying to get- If you have any ideas to bring on, feel free to reach out. Oh yeah, no, for sure. We're trying to basically get things in overdrive with no plan and get it definitely more pushed

in the tech direction. But as with the title, we're definitely, it's definitely gonna be the odd video here and there. Maybe not anything about sparkling water or roof racks in the title, we're definitely, there's definitely gonna be the odd video here and there. Maybe not anything about sparkling water or roof racks in the future, but there'll be some odd ones in there just for fun. Yeah, and probably one last plug is, you know, my channel that I've had for a long time, Premiere Prep.

It's basically taken a focus on Linux filmmaking, but it's also just about video production and graphic design in general, but everything is done from a Linux focus. And so if you want to check that out, we got a video coming up soon comparing the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro with the Red Komodo 6K camera. And so that's going to be a lot of fun. And that whole channel has got a lot of that kind of content Mm-hmm. And of course then there is also caution glass as well. Can't forget about that one yes, if you own a business and you're looking for marketing services and You're probably watching this channel and you want to use somebody who uses an entire Linux pipeline. Give us a call

Sweet. Um That everything you want to mention? Nothing else? Nothing we missed? I think that's it. Okay. Well, absolute pleasure to have you guys on. This was a lot of fun. Um. Yeah.

I guess I'll do my outro then. So, main channel is Brody Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week. Sometimes also stream. I've got a gaming channel, Brody Robertson, I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week, sometimes also stream. I've got the gaming channel Brody on Games. Right now I'll be playing through Kazan the First Berserker, and I don't know what will be in the other slots, so check that out. We're gonna play a new game because the other one, Joys of Linux, the game decided to just stop working and I have no idea why and I've not been able to fix it,

I've reinstalled it, I've done every possible thing and the game will not open so I Don't know it works my same deck doesn't work my desktop system anyway If you're watching the video version this you can find the audio version on a pod on Every podcast platform you can think of there is an RSS feed it is on Spotify Spotify has video Which is cool if you want to see the video version that is on YouTube. Spotify has video, which is cool. If you want to see the video version, that is on YouTube at Tech over T. How do you want to sign off the episode? What do you want to say? Well, we got a few. My, my like buttons hit that subscribe. Remember to live your life one frame at a time and I will catch you next time.