Chris: Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris.
Wes: My name is Wes.
Brent: And my name is Brent.
Chris: Hello, gentlemen, and joining us as referee this week, it's our friendly editor, Drew. Hello, Drew.
Drew: Welcome to the Thunderdome.
Wes: Uh-oh.
Chris: That's a little indication of how it's going to go today. Today,
Chris: we are owning up to our 2025 predictions. We'll see how we did.
Chris: And then we're going to make bold and powerful 2026 predictions.
Chris: So don't miss that. Then we're going to round out the show with some really
Chris: great booze, some pics, and a lot more.
Chris: This is where I'd say hello, Mumble Room, but shout out to those of you that
Chris: are up there in the quiet listening right now.
Chris: Look at them. Look at them.
Wes: Listening so quietly.
Chris: So quietly. If only my kids could be that quiet.
Brent: I don't hear them.
Chris: I know. Because they're in there quiet listening. Hello to all of you that join
Chris: us in that live Mumble Room. Going every single Sunday that we do this here show.
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Chris: Now, gentlemen, we have a little bit of housekeeping to get into before we start with predictions.
Chris: It's that time of year again. If you can believe it, the call for papers for
Chris: LinuxFest Northwest 2026 ends in just a couple of days.
Chris: December 31st, 2025.
Chris: You going to get a talk in, Wes?
Wes: Oh, boy. Well, I better go quick.
Brent: I swear, like, years are getting shorter or something. It feels like we just did this.
Chris: I know, right? I know. It's crazy. LinuxFest Northwest is back in April,
Chris: the 24th to the 26th, 2026 at Bellingham Technical College. and I believe that
Chris: big area is going to be back available to us again.
Wes: Oh, nice.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: It was a great time last year.
Chris: It was nice. If you can believe it, that's only 117 days away,
Chris: which means if you include holidays in this, except for U.S.
Chris: federal holidays, that's 82 business days away, which makes it 16 Linux unplugs
Chris: away, which means Brent needs to be on the road by episode 660.
Brent: I really appreciate how you give me the heads up because I need it.
Wes: Oh, boost in your bet by which episode he actually hits the road.
Brent: And which route should I take?
Chris: You better. Also, if you want to catch up on how the van, or a.k.a.
Chris: the bang bus, is doing, Brent stopped by the launch episode 46 at weeklylaunch.rocks.
Chris: Nature chose violence, and Brent tells quite the tale, which I appreciated.
Chris: Also, I talk a little bit about the flooding that hit the Pacific Northwest.
Wes: You've been a local weatherman.
Chris: It was quite the thing, Wes. I became an island is what happened.
Chris: I became an island for real.
Chris: So that is weeklylaunch.rocks and episode 46 for that.
Chris: And we'll have a link to the LinuxFest Northwest 2026 call for speakers if that interests you.
Chris: All right, gentlemen, it is time for predictions past. Before we get into how 2026 is going to go.
Wes: You're making us make good on it.
Chris: We got to see how we did for 2025.
Brent: Did anyone else completely forget their predictions from last year?
Chris: Yes.
Brent: I only remembered one of mine and the others. I feel like it wasn't even me
Brent: who wrote those or committed to those. But there's evidence, right, somewhere?
Chris: There is evidence. In fact, we have audio on tape.
Chris: So let's start with Brent's first prediction. For 2025.
Clips: I believe in 2025, we will see a commercially available machine be released
Clips: using RISC-V from major vendors.
Brent: That's not my best prediction sentence, got to say. Machine is not very good.
Brent: Yeah, Drew, you should have caught me on that.
Drew: Well, I wasn't judging last year, so that's not on me.
Brent: Well, we needed you. I'm nervous about this one.
Chris: For those that are new to the show, Drew is here to play referee to make sure
Chris: that we have good, solid predictions that should be measurable by the next year.
Chris: And so this is a tricky one, ref. I think we might have to start with right away.
Chris: I think you could call this technically true in the sense that Meta,
Chris: in March of 2025, started deploying their custom AI and training inference chips
Chris: built around RISC-V in their data center.
Chris: And in late 2025, the Coral MPU officially released the Coral MPU from Google that is RISC-V based.
Chris: I guess you could kind of consider that. But there's a few other like large
Chris: data center implementations of RISC-V this year that didn't exist in 2024.
Chris: So I asked the AI bot, and I want to hear what you think about this, Drew.
Chris: The AI bot says that the prediction correctly identified an inflection point
Chris: as of late December 2025, RISC-V has reached an estimated 25% market penetration
Chris: in the semiconductor industry,
Chris: largely due to major vendors abandoning expensive ARM licenses in favor of custom RISC-V silicon.
Chris: So when Brent said a commercially available machine using RISC-V from a major
Chris: vendor will be released, what do you think, Ref? Did he get it right?
Drew: So here's the tricky part, custom.
Drew: All right. So these guys are making their own risk five boards.
Drew: Is that correct? Or are they selling them?
Brent: Mm hmm.
Chris: I believe you do have them on a technicality there. I think they may be at least
Chris: having them manufactured on their behalf.
Drew: Yeah. So for it to be commercially available, it needs to be sold from one company to another.
Drew: That can't be an in-house product.
Chris: Mm hmm. I think that's fair. It's not commercially available.
Chris: It's privately available.
Drew: So yeah, if you can tell me a company that is commercially producing these and
Drew: selling them, it's a win. If you can't, it's a loss.
Brent: I think this was a failure in describing my prediction, I will say.
Brent: So I remember the sort of intention for this prediction was specifically around desktop computers.
Brent: So when I use the word machine in saying a commercially available machine,
Brent: I should have said a commercially available like desktop or tablet or single. Exactly.
Brent: So I was thinking more available for the consumer market.
Chris: Okay.
Brent: So if we take it from that perspective, I do recall that the framework did make
Brent: available a RISC-V board.
Brent: but I think I'm going to fail myself on that from a technicality unless anyone
Brent: else can help me win this one because that was announced February 4th,
Brent: and our episode was February 5th, so I feel like it's not fair to make a prediction
Brent: that happened the day before.
Chris: Oh, you didn't have to out yourself.
Brent: I'm the honest one here.
Drew: So it was announced.
Chris: Yeah, the day before the episode. He didn't know about it, but it was technically
Chris: public information the day before the episode.
Brent: At least for my limited research, which is, yeah, that's not fair.
Drew: You know, I'd say, are we doing half points?
Brent: Wow.
Chris: I could get behind half points. If Wes doesn't object, I could get behind a
Chris: half point. We could do that, like a .5.
Wes: Okay, yeah. All right, we'll be generous this year. It is the holidays.
Drew: It is the holidays.
Brent: That was unbelievable.
Drew: Half a point.
Chris: And there was definitely an uptick in the deployment of RISC-V.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Chris: Fair. Fair. Okay. All right. Well, Brantley, you win on a technicality. Congratulations.
Wes: What are we doing?
Brent: Wow.
Chris: All right. I'm going to keep this. I'm going to keep track here. I'll keep track.
Chris: All right. So, Brentley, you had a second prediction for us.
Chris: You said in 2025, this was definitely going to happen.
Clips: In 2025, the Ubuntu core desktop will be found as either a download on ubuntu.com
Clips: slash download or as an Ubuntu flavor.
Brent: I, this was like half prediction, half hope.
Brent: I was really hoping this was going to happen for Ubuntu's future generally.
Wes: I don't know if our wish casting generally works or does it?
Chris: It does not seem to work.
Brent: I know. That's where I trip up on my predictions is I just put in my own desires
Brent: in there. And sometimes they happen and most of the time they don't.
Chris: Here's the deal, ref. I looked it up. No, it is not downloadable on Ubuntu.com.
Chris: The traditional Ubuntu desktop release is shipped as scheduled,
Chris: but the ubuntu desktop that is the ubuntu core version and immutable snap only
Chris: version of the os did not graduate to a standard download option and is still
Chris: very much under development so i think that one's kind of a clear yeah loser yeah sorry brently no.
Brent: It's fine i also have to add that,
Brent: Given zero action last year, it felt like, on this, a micro prediction is that
Brent: this year doesn't feel so good for this either.
Chris: Does it?
Chris: Okay, so zero points for that one. But let's see what your next one was,
Chris: because maybe you had a vision for this next one. I was very impressed.
Clips: In 2025, we will see a tech YouTuber of over a million subscribers do a iSwitched-style
Clips: video for Linux, using it as their main desktop OS for a period of time.
Chris: Wow, did you nail that one. So, yeah.
Chris: On April 26, 2025, PewDiePie, I installed Linux, and so should you.
Chris: PewDiePie has 110 million subscribers, and as of this AM, the video has seen
Chris: 7.3 million views, and it's the third most popular Linux video on YouTube.
Brent: Yeah. It took a couple months, but that was an early win.
Drew: Very clear win.
Chris: Wow, Brent.
Wes: I mean, do we know that Brent and PewDiePie aren't friends, or there's some
Wes: sort of back-channeling?
Chris: Not only was there that, But then there was a kind of a secondary effect of
Chris: many other YouTubers making Linux content as well.
Brent: Lots of reaction videos based on it, right? It was a whole hoopla there for a couple of weeks.
Chris: In a way, you were not bullish enough.
Chris: Okay. Congratulations, sir.
Chris: So that's 1.5 points for Mr. Brentley, I believe. So not bad, Brent, not bad.
Brent: Of a possible three points, is that it? So 50%.
Chris: Yep.
Drew: Yeah.
Brent: I'll take it.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, better than zero, as has been some of my years in the past.
Chris: And that YouTuber one was great. All right, gentlemen, so it's my time to see how I did.
Wes: You're up here.
Chris: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. All right, so I said in 2025, this was my first prediction.
Chris: And this was definitely going to happen.
Clips: In 2025, inspired by NixOS, but not based on NixOS, a major distribution-based
Clips: flavor, spin, or remix will ship a declarative configuration system for a reproducible system state.
Chris: Now, there have been forks of NixOS, but I don't think that was my intention here.
Chris: BlendOS is a thing, but I don't think that's probably a mainstream major distro.
Chris: But I'm wondering what you guys think about OpenSUSE, because you have OpenSUSE, Aeon, and Kalpa.
Chris: In 2025, they announced these two different variants, and they have doubled
Chris: down on the zero-config declarative philosophy, they say.
Chris: It's based on micro OS. It uses two specific tools to have declarative setups.
Chris: You typically place these configuration files on a USB drive labeled ignition
Chris: or combustion, and it does disk partitioning, rate arrays, creating users,
Chris: writing files, system units, and software install.
Chris: You do it with a human-readable butane YAML file, which is then compiled into
Chris: a machine-readable ignition JSON file.
Chris: And it can run any bash command, install any RPM package via whatever,
Chris: transactional update, set up your networking, et cetera.
Chris: So I think maybe you could argue that OpenSUSE is dabbling with this declarative setup.
Wes: I have three questions.
Chris: Okay.
Wes: Three things.
Chris: Fair.
Wes: Well, I guess one of them is combined. So you made some notes here.
Wes: The length of the notes combined with the fact that it's you talking about OpenSUSE
Wes: makes it seem like a stretch automatically.
Wes: my other question is like i don't think the ignition stuff is new i don't know
Wes: about the butane so how much of this is a thing that was net new to 2025.
Chris: Well the announcement of aeon and calpa was 2025.
Wes: But was is the declarative or tech they're using well.
Chris: No i don't think so But the distribution that uses the.
Wes: Declarative tech was.
Brent: Yeah. The wording is a major distribution-based flavor or spin or remix will
Brent: ship a declarative configuration system.
Brent: So it only had to ship in this year.
Drew: Okay. Questions.
Brent: All right. What do you think, though?
Drew: Can I download this today?
Chris: Yes, you can.
Drew: Okay. Yeah. So ignition files are not a new thing at all.
Chris: No. No.
Drew: I mean, Cloud in it and the like are...
Chris: Very old but this is this also gives you desktop zero config declarative desktop
Chris: open source setup yeah it's like they're silver blue you could maybe kind of well.
Wes: That's okay see that seems yeah
Wes: i do think maybe you might have to install this on airmaster if you get.
Chris: The point.
Drew: All right so calpa and aon are brand new for 2025 using these ignition setups.
Chris: And butane yeah yeah butane and ignition yeah sure.
Wes: Well you can't have ignition without the fuel source.
Chris: Right see you get it yeah see they're good at naming.
Drew: I'm fine with it.
Chris: Oh! Yes!
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: One point. All right, one point for me. That was a hard point I had to earn,
Chris: but I'm going to take it. I had to work for that one. Yeah.
Wes: Do you feel good about what you've done?
Chris: I mean, I was hoping to see more. I really was. I was hoping to see more.
Chris: And when CacheOS Server Edition came out, I was hoping that would be something like that.
Drew: And this one was a hard one for me to say yes to, because an admission file
Drew: is not really the same thing as a Nix config.
Drew: It's just not. But...
Chris: No.
Brent: But it's arguably declarative, right?
Drew: Technically, it is a declarative config.
Chris: It is, right?
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: You can install your software, your networking, get it all set up.
Drew: Begrudgingly, you get the point.
Chris: I think this next one's not going to be super easy either. Here is my second prediction for 2025.
Clips: In 2025, Debian 13 Trixie will ship, and every desktop that is capable of supporting
Clips: Wayland will have Wayland support turned on by default.
Chris: See, this is going to be a nuanced thing because there are desktops that are technically...
Wes: How many desktops does Devin even ship?
Chris: Well, I pulled the top four.
Wes: Okay.
Chris: I pulled the top four, and once you know it, it's right down the middle.
Chris: So, GNOME 48 is shipping with Waylon by default in Trixie.
Chris: So is Plasma 6.3. Those are both shipping with Waylon by default.
Chris: However, LXQ 2.1 is using X11 by default and does technically support Wayland
Chris: via LabW or LibAWBWC something, but is experimental.
Chris: And XFCE 4.20 also ships with X11 by default, but the team considers it experimental
Chris: and should not be used for regular users and should only be used for testing only.
Chris: so it's literally split down the middle where the two that are on X11 could
Chris: technically support it but are not yet recommended by the projects to run it.
Wes: What does capable mean.
Drew: Hard fail.
Chris: I really, if I just would have left, I could have just kept it a little more vague, you know?
Wes: There is an art to that.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Drew: No, that's a hard fail. Sorry.
Chris: All right. Okay.
Drew: I was hoping.
Chris: I blame XFCE and LXQT.
Drew: Experimental means technically capable.
Chris: Okay.
Drew: Turned off by default means you fail.
Chris: It is technically, if I hadn't said technically, I think that would have been a winner.
Chris: Okay, well, I feel a little better about this next one, although at the time
Chris: I was like, hmm, this is going to be a winner, a slam dunk.
Chris: It actually was a nail-biter almost up until the end.
Clips: In 2025, Valve will release Proton 10.0.
Clips: They will tout brand new types of compatibility with Windows games,
Clips: and it will be released before the end of 2025.
Chris: I expected it to actually become much earlier in the year,
Chris: but Proton 10.0 beta was released in April, but Stable did not actually ship
Chris: until November 13th of 2025, and a major update just went out to 10.0,
Chris: version 10.0-4 in late December.
Chris: So this one, I actually just got in under the line when I thought I was getting a slam dunk.
Chris: But, I mean, that one's cut and dry, easily measurable.
Chris: The stable version of Proton 10 shipped on November 13th. What do you think,
Chris: Ref? It's a winner, right?
Drew: What types of new compatibility are there?
Chris: Ah, so many games that previously required Proton Experimental were now moved to the stable branch,
Chris: and they addressed issues with certain games, like Assassin's Creed Shadows,
Chris: that had video playback issues, And another game that had issues that didn't
Chris: work before was Resident Evil Village, which began working with Proton 10.
Chris: There's other games, obviously, but those are the ones that stuck out.
Drew: Okay. Yeah.
Chris: Good. Good to go.
Drew: Yeah. You've taken the lead.
Brent: Dang.
Drew: That brings you up to a two.
Chris: I have two points, Wes Payne. Let's see if you can beat a 2.0.
Wes: I certainly can't.
Chris: I love, well, what I love about you, Wes's predictions, he often shoots for
Chris: the stars and makes it fun.
Chris: So let's see what Wes said would happen in 2025, his first prediction.
Clips: I predict that in 2025, Chris Fisher purchases a RISC-V device that is a RISC-V
Clips: device that has a RISC-V processor as its primary CBU.
Chris: Uh-oh.
Wes: Yeah, you really failed me on this one.
Brent: There's still time. There's still time.
Chris: That is true, but nothing's in my shopping cart, Wes.
Wes: Well, why not? What are you waiting for?
Chris: What do you think, Rev? I think that's a fail right there.
Brent: I'd like to ask here, what was your motivation, Wes? What was your thinking on this one?
Wes: He buys a lot of gadgets for himself, and there's just been a lot of chat about RISC-V.
Chris: Ah, you see, I didn't buy many gadgets this year.
Wes: Yeah. I blame inflation.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: I was hoping you were right. I think we were feeling like it was going to be
Chris: a big year and it was but just not in a way that impacted and like.
Wes: I could have seen like you know was there like some kind of little tiny like
Wes: old school phony size gadget or terminal or.
Chris: Little development.
Wes: Board that could I don't know.
Chris: Or like a little laptop thingy sort of thing but I think that's a fail ref that.
Drew: Little emulation thing that you bought from like Alibaba or whatever that that doesn't run risk 5.
Chris: It does not then nope sorry,
Chris: All right, zero points.
Brent: Risky prediction.
Chris: Fun prediction. That's one I wish would have happened.
Wes: Maybe you'll get it in this year.
Chris: You never know. Could be the year of RISC-V. You never know.
Chris: All right, Wes's next prediction for 2025.
Clips: I predict that in 2025, a distribution or spin or addition will feature BcacheFS
Clips: as default file system, by which I mean you can go to the website, download an ISO,
Clips: click through the defaults of the installer without having to change anything,
Clips: and you will get BcacheFS as your main file system.
Chris: What do you think.
Wes: Wes? You know. Sadly, this is one I was hoping for, too.
Chris: Yeah. In a way, I think that's gone the opposite direction. I think it's a good setup for 2026.
Wes: True, yeah. We're getting to a point of, I mean, the experimental label might
Wes: actually be off here real soon, too, so that's probably a reasonable precursor
Wes: before it's likely, at least. But I was being hopeful.
Chris: What do you think, Rav? It was hopeful, but seemingly misses the mark?
Drew: It missed the mark. Yeah. Sorry. That's a no go.
Chris: All right. Well, let's see. He may have made up for it with his last prediction for 2025.
Chris: Wes Payne said this was absolutely going to happen in 2025.
Clips: I predict that at the end of 2025, all three of us, Chris, Wes,
Clips: and Brent, are using NixOS stock, you know, regular NixOS, not a derivative,
Clips: as our primary workstation desktop operating system.
Chris: All right, we got a little nuance here. Because this is technically true,
Chris: but technically not, because I'm running Hypervibe on my systems.
Wes: I think Hypervibe counts.
Chris: I think so.
Wes: Because you're just using Nix packages.
Chris: Right, right.
Drew: When you install Hypervibe, do you install Nix and then switch it into Hypervibe?
Chris: Yes, technically I do right now. So is that the moment it switches? I like this line.
Chris: So yes, I am installing mainline Nix, and then I destroy it.
Wes: And there's nothing that you couldn't get with what you have from just a Nix
Wes: file. As long as you could just do that and get what you have.
Chris: Yep. What about you, Brantley? NixOS is your main daily driver?
Brent: Well, I kind of feel like it was my daily driver before the predictions episode from last year.
Brent: So I haven't changed it, I don't think, at all this year.
Brent: So I'm NixOS all the way.
Chris: It is a possibility. It could happen.
Wes: Yeah, we try a lot of distros over the years, so you never know.
Brent: So there's a lot of trying, but I always seem to come back.
Chris: Okay, so what do you think, ref? Can we excuse the hyper-vibe technicality and
Chris: consider this one a winner?
Drew: It's not even a technicality. He just gets it.
Chris: Hey! All right.
Wes: No shout-out.
Drew: That does put him in last place, but I mean.
Chris: That does. One point for Wes Payne. All right.
Chris: So as far as last year's predictions go, Brantley comes in at a 1.5.
Chris: Well done, Brantley. Very nice.
Wes: That half point.
Brent: I didn't even fight for it.
Chris: I come in at a victorious two points.
Wes: Ha ha ha.
Chris: And Wes Payne ranked in at one solid point, which honestly.
Wes: Big beefy point. That's what I say.
Chris: Hey, that one point's doing a heavy lift. That means none of us got a zero.
Chris: That's not too bad for forecasting the future. Really, if you think about it,
Chris: those are pretty good odds.
Chris: I bet you most weathermen aren't that accurate. So we have that going for us.
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Drew: All right gentlemen it is the time that we've all been waiting for it's our 2026 predictions,
Drew: now you guys are really going to have to impress me on this i am not going to
Drew: take any slack on this your predictions need to be concise they need to be accurate
Drew: and what you say and how you say it matters.
Drew: So let's go. Brent, you're up first. What is your first prediction?
Brent: Well, after that, I'm feeling pretty nervous because I didn't workshop any of my predictions.
Brent: So I might need a little help. So I'll give you the premise here.
Brent: So this is my first shot at it. I believe in 2026, we will see local AI assistants
Brent: like Lightspeed, be available in two other major distros.
Brent: So two other major distros will ship something akin to Lightspeed.
Chris: Okay, so not Lightspeed specifically, but something akin to it.
Brent: Yeah, something like their own version of it or their own flavor or their own
Brent: take on it, something like that.
Brent: I'm not saying exactly how it'll be architected, just that someone will implement
Brent: this sort of AI in your pocket.
Wes: What do we mean by Lightspeed?
Brent: Yeah, what I mean is like having an AI companion be available in the distro,
Brent: like a distro native available feature.
Drew: The word you're looking for is agentic.
Brent: Gross.
Wes: Can we get that as a...
Brent: Yeah so maybe i need a little help wording all that because there's a lot of
Brent: buzzwords and stuff but really it's just like uh in 2026 two other major distributions
Brent: will make available a native agentic ai i.
Drew: Would go with in-house.
Brent: Okay all right i.
Drew: Think that's getting at what you're what you're trying to describe here.
Chris: So when we say in-house does that mean say it has to be like a canonical developed LLM.
Brent: Hmm.
Chris: Is that what, when we say in house means.
Brent: I don't think so because that's a much bigger lift than just,
Brent: having some blessed interface is.
Chris: The definition then that it's a local thing it's not running on a cloud provider
Chris: like open ai or something like that but it's something that.
Brent: Runs on premise that's also
Brent: quite restrictive i don't know if i want to commit to that okay okay i but i
Brent: do think the interface itself has to be created by the distro so oh this is
Brent: something like the distro So it's part of their like path,
Brent: their feature set to offer this as a, as a, I don't know, service.
Drew: So a minor technicality here, but that's not quite what.
Brent: Those are a lot of them.
Drew: That's okay. Yeah. That's not quite what Lightspeed is. Lightspeed is like a
Drew: helper for specifically Ansible, right?
Brent: Oh yeah. But that's kind of the ish I'm aiming at.
Drew: Uh red hat does have its own in-house agentic ai for rel red hat enterprise
Drew: linux and i think that's really more what you're getting at.
Brent: Okay sure i i couldn't remember what it was called.
Drew: Well and it's that's fine and it's worth pointing out that that particular agent
Drew: can be configured to talk to multiple different llms yeah.
Brent: So my my real aim here is that it will be specifically aimed at helping you
Brent: manage the distribution.
Drew: Okay so i think what you're looking for is an in-house interface to talk with
Drew: llms to answer questions about your operating system is that.
Brent: Uh yeah i guess.
Drew: That's what we're looking for yeah.
Chris: Like uh like in-house By in-house, we mean distro-developed, right?
Chris: So a distro-developed interface to communicate with an LLM to help manage your system.
Drew: I like it.
Chris: How's that, Brent?
Brent: I'm noting it down because to communicate, I went, yeah, yeah.
Chris: A distro-developed interface to communicate with an LLM to help manage your system.
Chris: And that doesn't necessarily specify local, right? It could be, you know.
Brent: I mean, local would be nice, but I'm not going to restrict myself to that.
Chris: I mean, if I'm Shuttleworth and I'm looking for some AI money,
Chris: I'm probably thinking, how do I add a little AI magic to the canonical cloud
Chris: and really get everybody worked up?
Brent: That's where I'm going. All right. I think I can try a first go at a lock here. You ready?
Chris: Yeah. Give us a first pass.
Brent: In 2026 i believe two other major distributions will make available an in-house
Brent: distro developed interface to communicate with an llm to help manage your system what.
Chris: If you just changed other to non-redhat i don't know because you're not other
Chris: we might not know who you're.
Brent: Talking yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah fair other.
Chris: Than that what do you think i think it's pretty good that seems.
Drew: Workable yeah real close.
Chris: Okay brantley.
Brent: Lock her third time's jam I believe in 2026,
Brent: we will see two major non-Red Hat distributions make available an in-house distro-developed
Brent: interface to communicate with LLMs to help manage your system.
Chris: All right, it's officially locked. Number one is down, Brent.
Brent: It's anxiety-inducing.
Drew: It is, isn't it?
Brent: What did I just commit to? what.
Chris: Is uh your second prediction for 2026.
Brent: Uh this is going to ride a little on the success of my
Brent: youtube prediction from last year uh so my prediction will be that a youtube
Brent: personality will start an opinionated distribution a la omacube or omarchie
Brent: and it will be reported by its foss and the news stack to make it measurable.
Chris: Why are you specifying particular news outlets, though?
Brent: Because they're like any old YouTuber. And I didn't want to say,
Brent: like, someone over a million subscribers or something, but I'm open to,
Brent: like, suggestions for better measurability.
Chris: I don't think I would limit it to any.
Brent: How do you make it measurable, then?
Chris: Well, just any of the Linux news outlets that we follow, I think.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: What if Pharonix wrote about it? And then you didn't.
Brent: That was my exact first thought, but Pharonix did not write about Omar G or
Brent: Omocube. So I was like, oh.
Chris: That's true. Yeah, they probably wouldn't. You're probably right.
Chris: But so you're saying essentially the core of what you're saying is that we're
Chris: going to see a YouTuber distro.
Brent: Yes. Yes. That's really the core of it.
Chris: Interesting.
Brent: And so.
Chris: What do you think of that?
Wes: Like a Prime OS?
Chris: Oh, yeah. For Primogen, I can see a Prime OS. Or you can see a PewDiePie distro.
Brent: Mm-hmm.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Brent: So it just needs to make that prediction measurable because I think it's gold.
Chris: Well, I think we'd find out about it.
Drew: I mean so we could see linus linux too right yeah sure right.
Brent: Well ref what what is a good measure for you at the end of the year.
Drew: Major youtuber with x number of followers minimum creates a youtube or it creates
Drew: a linux distribution would be the way i would do it and not mention where it's.
Brent: Reported at all all right all right okay yeah i don't know if i want to say
Brent: a million that's a lot yeah i'll say 500k okay.
Chris: That seems fair yeah.
Brent: Yeah all right i.
Drew: Mean you know 100k is like the base of like you've kind of made it right so 500k is yeah you're.
Brent: It's like someone with some recognition you're not
Brent: like the biggest of big yeah all right yeah i believe in 2026 we will see released
Brent: a youtube personality that starts an opinionated distribution similar to Omacube
Brent: and this YouTuber will have more than 500,000 followers.
Chris: Okay. A YouTuber distro.
Brent: I can only imagine how great that's going to be.
Chris: Can you imagine reviewing that?
Wes: Well, Brent's going to have it.
Drew: Oh, God. It better be called Influencer OS.
Chris: Oh, man. That would be good. That would be good.
Chris: Okay, Brent. Why don't you dazzle us with your third prediction for 2026?
Brent: Okay. This one was hard, but you'll help me.
Brent: In 2026, I believe the Linux Foundation will start a new foundation.
Chris: Are you serious? Are you serious?
Brent: No, I'm not serious. The question is, how many tens of foundations will they start?
Chris: That would be a fun one to guess. Or could you do a range like more than three?
Drew: Yeah, over, under.
Wes: Within abundance.
Brent: 10 to 13? Or is it more like 13 to 15?
Brent: All right. I have a real one if you need one.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brent: All right. In 2026, I believe there would be an XZ style breach in another widely
Brent: used open source project, specifically an inside man style compromise.
Chris: Ooh.
Chris: An X, Z style breach. And then you say specifically an inside man.
Chris: So somebody that already has like commit access to the project is kind of what you're saying.
Brent: Someone who's infiltrated a project and gained some trust. And then,
Brent: you know, we discover that, oh, wait, they're not the person we thought they were.
Brent: And they're trying to do some maliciousness.
Chris: So you could say something like a vulnerability via trusted commit access.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: Or something, right? Is that seeming? and I'm you know it would depend on that
Chris: actually getting coverage but for us to find it probably but assuming it's even
Chris: if it's close to xz style yeah.
Wes: Right if it's if it has an impact then there'll be some kind of security coverage you'd think.
Chris: Yeah it seems reasonable what do you think refs yeah yeah.
Brent: No notes I missed the verbiage you used there you said vulnerability via trust.
Chris: Base I think it was something like a um a vulnerability will be discovered in
Chris: an open source project that what did i say after that yeah.
Wes: Right because it's not that it's not just that there's a vulnerability in the code it's.
Chris: That this was.
Wes: Put there by.
Chris: A trusted somebody has access yeah yeah
Chris: because that
Chris: is a stinker that is a real stinker and you know it seems
Chris: plausible because a revenue source really could become this
Chris: is horrible to say and awful when you consider open source projects need more
Chris: funding but a twisted development of this could be a revenue source is becoming
Chris: this already where you sell a well-respected well-established trusted account
Chris: and you can make more money than the free software project makes in an entire
Chris: year just to sell that account to get you know it's just awful.
Brent: It's not i feel really bummed about my prediction.
Chris: Yeah don't put those ideas in.
Brent: There nobody listens to this show though right.
Chris: All right i think you got something all right all right i.
Brent: Believe in 2026 we will see a vulnerability in an open source project via trust
Brent: commit access, similar to the XZ style breach.
Chris: Okay, that's three pretty solid predictions there. What do you think?
Chris: Raph, this is your chance to get a few in. Enjoying the fun.
Wes: Stretch your wings.
Chris: Yeah. You got a prediction for 2026?
Drew: I do. I've got a few. So first one is maybe the spiciest.
Drew: I think that NVIDIA is going to potentially exit the consumer sector.
Wes: I like that.
Drew: The way that I would state this is that NVIDIA releases no consumer hardware cards in 2026.
Chris: Oh, man.
Brent: So, like, similar to what Micron has done, they just kind of pivoted to non-consumer. Wow.
Chris: That would really hurt. But again, like, I guess it wouldn't really impact me
Chris: because I haven't been able to buy NVIDIA cards for about six years.
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: I keep waiting for the prices to come down.
Drew: They just keep going up.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Brent: This is dark.
Chris: Boy, this would really be a sideways tilt to the PC manufacturing business.
Chris: So that's pretty solid. I mean, NVIDIA exits the consumer business is a pretty
Chris: solid, succinct prediction.
Chris: I don't really have any notes there. Yeah, I think you can lock that in.
Drew: All right.
Drew: In 2026, NVIDIA will release zero consumer graphics cards.
Chris: I hope you're wrong. I hope you're wrong.
Drew: Me too. But, you know, I mean.
Chris: Because, like, where else am I going to get a used card in five or six years?
Chris: Right? That's what I'm looking for.
Drew: AMD and NVIDIA, or no, AMD and Intel are both working it.
Drew: And there's that Chinese company that's trying to start making cards.
Drew: I don't remember their name, but, you know, maybe it gives some breathing room
Drew: to the market. We'll see.
Chris: Come on, Ark. Come on, Ark. This is your moment. Okay. Mr. Drew,
Chris: do you have a second prediction?
Drew: Sure.
Chris: For 2026.
Drew: So my second prediction is security-based. I believe that a major vulnerability
Drew: of CVSS 9.0 or greater will be found somewhere in the base Kubernetes components.
Chris: Ooh. 9.0 is putting a real number on it.
Wes: Mm-hmm.
Chris: Not an eight. You're going for a nine.
Drew: Major.
Brent: Wait, is this like inside baseball? You got some kind of...
Chris: It's just a very complicated stack. There's a lot that can. Yeah.
Brent: Have we seen any of these previously? Like, is this a trend?
Chris: I mean, I almost feel like it averages out to one a year, but I'm not sure.
Wes: The only possible issue I can see is in the base Kubernetes component.
Chris: What is that?
Wes: Yeah. Could you argue for some optional networking component that you were labeling as base?
Drew: No, no. I'm not talking like no CSI drivers that are outside of base Kubernetes,
Drew: that sort of thing. uh we're talking like in kubernetes uh not add-ons right okay.
Chris: So base as in like but how do you define what you would define is what you would
Chris: define as like the base thing to just have kubernetes operational.
Drew: Yeah um that is a good question of how to how to state that effectively well
Drew: and it it is also worth stating that some csi drivers are in base kubernetes right,
Drew: All right. All right.
Chris: There's nuance here.
Wes: And a lot of yellow.
Chris: What about something like, what about like using sort of cheat language in a
Chris: way like a vendor shipped version of Kubernetes?
Drew: I'm thinking more that it's a component that exists within the Kubernetes GitHub.
Wes: Okay. That's okay. That's concrete.
Chris: Yeah. GitHub. Okay. Yeah. That could be lockable right there, I think then.
Drew: All right. So let's go with, in 2026,
Drew: a major vulnerability of CVSS 9.0 or greater will be found in a component of
Drew: Kubernetes that exists in the Kubernetes official GitHub.
Chris: True, bringing the spice. Damn, sizzle to those.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: Okay, all right. So do you have a third prediction for 2026?
Drew: Yeah, yeah, this last one's cheap. I think global use of Linux will breach 10%
Drew: in the Steam hardware survey.
Wes: Let's hope so.
Chris: So you think it's going to, I mean, that would technically be a double. That would be a double.
Drew: It's trending up, yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Drew: And a Windows 11 has been really biffing it. So, I don't know,
Drew: maybe, and Steam machines are coming back.
Chris: You know, I heard somebody say this weekend that's been using Linux for a few
Chris: months, and they said, you know,
Chris: I feel really great because I'm early to Linux. And I thought, you know.
Brent: Wow. Well, it depends who you're comparing yourself to, I guess.
Chris: And which adoption wave you're thinking of, right?
Brent: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris: Yeah, so you may be right. There may be a whole wave coming,
Chris: and 10% may be. I think it's the PewDiePie effect.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: I would love to see it. I would love to see it. All right, well, let's log it in.
Drew: All right.
Drew: In 2026, global use of Linux will crest over 10% in the Steam Hardware Survey.
Chris: Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
Brent: Wow.
Wes: Let's go Linux!
Chris: I like it. It's a couple of hard hitters and a really positive one there,
Chris: like a moonshot. That's great.
Chris: That's a nice mix. That's a nice mix. All right, Wes Payne, are you going for
Chris: a W this year? What do you think? How are your 2026 predictions looking?
Wes: We're about to find out.
Brent: I wonder if Wes's theme will be the dark one. this year or just the very like
Brent: kind of spot on well calculated one you always flip.
Wes: Well i'm going with hopeful for my first one okay a consumer oriented nas is
Wes: announced that uses bcash fs under the hood oh.
Chris: And now could that be an existing vendor that just updates their os.
Wes: That would be my intention whether or not i've conveyed that or not we should decide.
Chris: And it doesn't necessarily mean that when you install it it uses bcash by default
Chris: but it just has support for Bcash?
Wes: I think that means it's using it.
Chris: Okay. Okay.
Brent: I have a question. Is this, when you say consumer-oriented NAS,
Brent: do you mean hardware or do you mean software?
Wes: Either.
Chris: So it could be an ISO, it could be a product pre-built.
Wes: Yeah.
Brent: Okay.
Chris: I'd love to see it. It does feel a little long-shotty.
Brent: It does feel a little long-shotty.
Chris: So you're basically, You would lock in a vendor, a NAS vendor will announce,
Chris: doesn't mean they shipped it.
Drew: Just announce.
Brent: Announce.
Chris: Bcash FS being used under the hood.
Brent: Oh, that's a good trick. They don't have to actually make anything.
Chris: That is. It might not ship until 2027, but it's announced in 2027.
Brent: Cheater.
Chris: What do you think, ref? I think that's actually, I think that's, I don't know.
Drew: I think we're close. It's a little weaselly.
Chris: But it's clever.
Wes: It's reasonable.
Drew: Maybe offers Bcash FS as a default option Because a lot of these NAS vendors,
Drew: you will have an option of what underlying file system to use, right?
Wes: Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay. So what do we think here? What was the phrasing you liked for the NAS?
Drew: Like it's in the dropdown? I don't know. I don't know exactly how to describe it.
Brent: So not necessarily the default, but an available file system feature.
Drew: But it is available by default during installation.
Chris: Oh, during installation. Okay.
Drew: What do you say to that.
Brent: I guess?
Chris: Well, because here's what it is. This is going to be, so say Unraid,
Chris: for example, they support NTFS and Extended 2, but during installation,
Chris: it's not going to deploy those on the disk, but if you put a disk in with NTFS,
Chris: it would support it, and you could use it.
Drew: So maybe not during installation, but during setup.
Chris: So then for this to, right, because then by that definition,
Chris: for this to win, Unraid would just need to ship an update that includes BcacheFS support.
Brent: Yes, true.
Wes: A NAS vendor announces BcacheFS support?
Chris: I think that would be the way I'd go because it's still kind of a long shot.
Wes: I'm down.
Brent: Next week, Wes gets hired by a NASDA company.
Chris: I hope you're right.
Drew: Supported Bcash FS support?
Wes: Okay.
Drew: Does that make sense? Like, it's an official part of it. It's not like an extension.
Wes: Yeah, it's not a janky.
Drew: It's an officially supported Bcash FS option.
Chris: Right. It's not like some vendor, or it's not like some community mod or something.
Drew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris: Okay. All right, Wes Payne, lock it in.
Wes: I predict that in 2026, a NAS vendor announces official eCacheFS support.
Chris: I hope you are right about that one.
Brent: Wow.
Chris: I really do. I really do. I like that a lot, Wes. That's a good, solid first one.
Chris: It's a risky one, and if it wins, it's going to be such a payoff.
Chris: All right. Do you have a second prediction?
Wes: Yeah, all right. Here's a safe option. I predict that in... Sorry.
Wes: I predict that in 2026, we will see Linux kernel version 7.
Chris: Whoa! I didn't even think of that. I like that a lot.
Brent: Wow, that's so nice and simple.
Chris: Very easy to measure.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: Can I ask you a couple of qualifying questions?
Wes: Of course.
Chris: Does a RC count?
Drew: That was my question too.
Chris: Does a beta count? Yeah. Okay, what do you think? So, because how are you defining 7.0 release?
Chris: Is it stable or is the code out there and we could run it? Like where's the line?
Brent: Is this like announced versus shipped? Is it you did pull in one of those again?
Wes: We will see that the next version will be 7. so we'll have an announcement that 7 is the next.
Chris: Okay that's.
Brent: Sneaky that buys you.
Chris: Like a couple weeks that seems probable actually that actually seems probable,
Chris: I can't believe I didn't think of that damn it I wish I would have thought of
Chris: that one alright Linux 7 announced is essentially what you're saying well.
Brent: You said next version so it needs to be like.
Wes: Well a version we will see.
Chris: Right because 8 is going to be the actual next stable version right and seven
Chris: would be a development series? Is that how they still do it?
Wes: Well, because we're at six, 19.
Chris: 19, yeah.
Wes: So I'm saying that in 2026, we will go into the seven series.
Wes: We'll get out of the six series into the seven series. However,
Wes: we will think that's best said.
Chris: How about, what about something like, what do you think of this,
Chris: Ref? Is something like in 2026, the next series of the kernel,
Chris: the next major series of the kernel will be announced? Something like that?
Drew: Well, no, it's got to include the seven. That's a pretty crucial part of it.
Brent: And do they start on that development branch?
Brent: Is that one way to measure it?
Chris: Just announced. I think announced.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: I think announced is...
Drew: They announced they're bumping the major kernel version to 7.
Brent: Okay.
Drew: At that point in the future.
Chris: Either that or they're taking this thing to like 30-something. You know, I don't know.
Wes: Okay, how about... I predict that in 2026, the Linux kernel community will announce
Wes: they are bumping the major version to 7.
Chris: I think that works.
Drew: Yeah, I'm cool with it.
Chris: All right, Wes Payne. Lock it in.
Wes: I predict that in 2026 the linux kernel community will announce they are bumping
Wes: the major version to seven.
Chris: All right there it is i like that.
Wes: All right i wish.
Chris: I would have stolen that one i wish i would have thought of that one you got a third one.
Wes: For us some backups in the doc if you want to steal any of those thank you i
Wes: do have a third one here um by the end of 2026 when we review predictions next year.
Wes: It will have been at least a month since you, Christopher, hand edited,
Wes: without LLM assistance, your main NixOS config.
Chris: Whoa.
Brent: I mean, that might be true for this year's predictions.
Chris: How do we define main?
Wes: Yeah, we could...
Chris: Because I have, you know, my server config that I use.
Wes: Yeah, we could probably switch that out.
Chris: But the nut of what you're trying to get at here is that I'll have gone a month
Chris: without having to have touched a config file because I'm telling the machine.
Wes: Yeah, there we go. Maybe that's it. Okay, yeah.
Chris: That's that's probable how.
Brent: Much are you paying him for this one.
Chris: I mean it's possible it is surprisingly possible actually because i've been
Chris: i've been trying to push it as far as i can okay.
Brent: I have a question like yeah go this assumes he's still using nixos at that point
Brent: right yeah he's not using nixos then obviously he wouldn't have edited it right.
Chris: I would say yeah i have used uh i have used it to um edit an ubuntu config file
Chris: so if you just made a config file.
Wes: Yeah, it'll have been at least a month since you've hand-edited without LLM
Wes: assistance a Linux config file.
Chris: That seems pretty good, ref, right?
Drew: Yeah, so anything in .config.
Chris: Etsy,
Chris: Dockerfiles, Yeah, Dockerfiles, NixConfig, a lot of things, Wes,
Chris: that just need a quick edit. That is spicy.
Chris: Alright, lock it in. I'll be honest.
Wes: I predicted that by the end of 2026 when we're reviewing these very predictions
Wes: it will have been at least a month since chris hand edited by which i mean without
Wes: llm assistance a configuration file like a linux config a docker config an open source app config.
Chris: We shall see. All right, so I have too many predictions.
Chris: I have to whittle this down a little bit, and I have to go with my winners and losers here.
Chris: And I'm going to start with kind of, I think, maybe an aspirational prediction.
Chris: And I think that in 2026, Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation as the recommended
Chris: download when you go to the Fedora's download page.
Brent: Wow.
Chris: Yeah.
Brent: What's this based on? What's the hunch here?
Chris: Well, over 2025, the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee has been kind of
Chris: moving towards making the image-based system the main stable Fedora.
Wes: So it's not based on the Aurora install you're talking about wiping?
Chris: Nope, nope, nope, nope. It's based on the three years of the steering committee
Chris: slowly working towards this.
Chris: And I have to imagine this could be the year we actually see their efforts come to fruition.
Chris: So I think the way to verify this would be you'd see changes at GetFedora.org
Chris: where essentially a Silverblue-based download would be the default.
Chris: Silverblue Workstation, perhaps.
Brent: So year of the Fedora Atomic Desktop is what you're saying.
Wes: Okay, so when I go there now, I get Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, and Fedora Server.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Well, then there's also three more under that. So there's like a row of...
Wes: Is it just offered there?
Chris: The top ones. The premiered featured workstation gets replaced with the Silverblue Workstation.
Drew: Okay. Yeah. Another, so there's also fedorproject.org slash spins is currently all standard spins.
Drew: And then atomic dash desktops is a list of all their atomic stuff.
Drew: So you could also say that those would swap where atomic desktops become spins
Drew: and spins becomes legacy or something along those lines.
Chris: The shorthand I was thinking of using for that is just, it becomes the recommended download.
Drew: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Okay, so my lock-in would be Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation as the recommended
Chris: download. Just sort of, you think that works? Does that work?
Brent: As long as it's measurable, right? As long as we feel like there's a way that
Brent: we can see that a switch has happened?
Chris: Well, if they did make that switch, it would be huge news.
Drew: It would.
Brent: Okay, all right.
Chris: It's kind of a long show.
Drew: I think we do need to be a little bit more specific about what recommended means.
Drew: Recommended as the default download of the ISO.
Chris: On the primary download page.
Drew: Yeah, something along those lines would make me happy.
Chris: So Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation
Chris: as the recommended download on the primary project download page.
Drew: Works for me.
Chris: And if it doesn't change there, then the prediction... Yeah.
Chris: Okay. All right, I'll give that a shot.
Chris: In 2026, Fedora Atomic will replace Workstation as the recommended download
Chris: on the project's primary download page.
Chris: We shall see. So that's one. Now, I got to pick one that I think is a real curveball here.
Chris: And I don't think this one's going to be a winner. But if it is,
Chris: I'm going to feel like Nostradamus over here.
Brent: Not Nosferati.
Chris: Here's what I'm thinking about going with. I think Framework might launch their own distro in 2026.
Brent: Framework computers. I want to know more about what you think it'll look like.
Chris: So I think in part, we have seen them finance multiple projects this year,
Chris: and that could be a great way to lay a bit of goodwill before you announce your own thing.
Chris: And what made me think about this is they kind of need a framework edition OS
Chris: just so that way when they do new edge products like their Snapdragon X Elite
Chris: laptop that we talked about in LEP 641,
Chris: In LUP641, we talked about how the generic kernels weren't enough for this new
Chris: hardware, and that's been a pain point for Framework.
Chris: If they have, like, a Framework Lite edition ISO, it might not be,
Chris: like, a full-blown distro, but it's, like, a slightly, you know,
Chris: amended distro that you could just download from them, and you could,
Chris: say, install on a RISC-V development system or on an ARM.
Wes: Not saying for points or anything, but just I'm curious. Do you have any ideas
Wes: what they, in this hypothetical world of yours, how are they building this district?
Brent: Well, they would make it arch-based like everybody else is doing.
Chris: I think so. Yeah. I mean, if I were, I'm not going to put this in the prediction,
Chris: but I would think maybe they do a little contract with DHH's company.
Brent: Wow.
Chris: Do a little business contract.
Brent: Wow.
Chris: Something that has some terms.
Wes: Now that's a prediction.
Brent: Yeah.
Chris: I know. That is a prediction. I don't want to be that.
Drew: No. Yeah.
Chris: Interesting it could just be a fedora spin at the end of the day and that would still count.
Wes: Sure i mean.
Chris: This is kind.
Brent: Of what we saw so 776 do right is they saw that having an officially supported
Brent: os was easier for their hardware support and all that stuff fascinating so.
Drew: You're thinking like an omaframey.
Chris: Yeah basically a framework distro light.
Brent: Why light sorry why are you.
Chris: Well because i don't i don't think it's going to be a massive departure right
Chris: i don't think they're going to have a customly in-house built desktop environment.
Chris: I wouldn't expect it to be, I mean, it could be, but I wouldn't necessarily
Chris: expect it to be, say, like SteamOS where it's image-based and things like that. I'm picturing...
Wes: But it's more than them installing Ubuntu and putting a wallpaper on it.
Chris: It could be as little as that, or it could be more than that.
Chris: Basically, the key is it enables their hardware to run out of the box.
Chris: So you ship with a kernel that has the right drivers that are signed and so
Chris: forth for that particular hardware. That's the nut of what they're trying to accomplish.
Chris: You can put any distro you want on there that's supported if it has the upstream
Chris: drivers. But the idea is you can buy it with something that works out of the
Chris: box. It doesn't run Windows.
Drew: Framework branded distribution.
Brent: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, framework branded distribution.
Wes: Okay.
Chris: Yeah. Okay, so how about in 2026, Framework will announce a Framework-branded distribution.
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: Does that work?
Drew: Works pretty good to me.
Chris: Here I go, gentlemen. In 2026, Framework will announce a Framework-branded Linux distribution.
Chris: Watch him do it with FreeBSD.
Brent: I noticed you said announce there, not ship. Interesting. Yeah,
Brent: well, things are hard. I'm seeing a trend here.
Chris: Things are hard. This is where, okay, I could use your guys' input.
Chris: I have a couple of extras to go with. Yeah, let's see what you got.
Chris: I don't know which direction to go with.
Chris: One prediction is that a distribution, a rolling distribution,
Chris: will replace sudo with run zero from systemd.
Wes: Okay.
Chris: And then my other prediction, and this is a little spicy, kdelinux
Chris: misses a 1.0 in 2026 and maintains in the you know beta and rc state building
Chris: a distro is hard and the last 10 15 is the hardest and then and this is the
Chris: one i think is my weakest prediction but i feel the most conviction about so
Chris: i don't know how to square and.
Brent: You should go with that one clearly yeah.
Wes: I said second brent.
Chris: Okay here's the prediction in 2026 refurb used and upgrade not replace becomes
Chris: the top Homelab narrative showing up as a dominant theme across Linux and Homelab
Chris: channels on Reddit and other communities.
Wes: Oh yeah, I think that's a good one.
Drew: That's a good one, but that's real hard to prove.
Brent: That's going to be true, but impossible to measure.
Chris: Yeah, I know. Well, so I figured the way you'd measure it is there'd be a couple
Chris: of scoreable success criteria.
Chris: You'd have to look at our Homelab and our self-hosted and our Linux and see
Chris: how often keywords like refurb, used, e-waste, old hardware,
Chris: upgrade, DDR4, DDR5, SAS, enterprise surplus were used.
Chris: Maybe two major outlets like Serve the Home, Level 1 Techs, Pharonix, the LWN.
Chris: They have articles or videos explaining, you know, centered around surplus, refurb hardware.
Chris: And this probably doesn't count, but I would also imagine it becomes a topic
Chris: on this show too. It'll become a topic throughout the show.
Brent: Isn't it already?
Chris: Because, well, I mean, it's already so bad. And with the RAM and...
Chris: and the disk prices and GPU prices already crazy, I really think it's going
Chris: to be a year about getting every inch out of the hardware you already have.
Chris: And honestly, there is room. Stock distributions have room for improvements. We've played with this.
Chris: And you can get better performance if you are willing to dig into it.
Chris: So I think that type of system optimization and reusing hardware is going to
Chris: be a major trend for 2026.
Drew: Okay. So here's the way I see it.
Chris: Do you like that one more than the KDE Linux one?
Drew: I do. I think it's a more interesting prediction.
Chris: Okay.
Drew: I also think it's the one that's going to piss you off the most when you actually
Drew: have to go and collect the statistics.
Brent: 100%.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Drew: It's your funeral.
Chris: Yeah, if I could think of a really good way to measure it, I would feel better about it.
Brent: But also, who's going to verify your measurements?
Drew: Yeah.
Chris: Well, no, I think, no, it would have to be like, it would have to be.
Wes: Submit the code for review.
Brent: Yeah.
Wes: Ideally, should we build stats, start building stats now to see what the baseline is?
Drew: Right.
Chris: Yeah, you'd have to be based on, like, coverage, community discussions.
Drew: You got to bring your homework. Podcasts and YouTube videos.
Drew: Is the thing. When you go to prove this out.
Brent: You could do it another way. You could say, like...
Brent: the trend becomes so powerful that like there's a new pod, three new podcasts
Brent: that start specifically angling that or like an, you know, 10 new YouTube channels
Brent: are specifically about refurbing or something like that.
Wes: My old home lab.
Chris: This old home lab. That's less. You should have sent that URL. That's good.
Drew: Micro center has a, a used home lab.
Brent: There you go. There you go.
Chris: Honestly i want to do a this old home lab segment where we go
Chris: out and we refurb on listeners home labs so i
Chris: want to do that i mean this is to me seems
Chris: like it's at least going to be a strong narrative for most of the year if it
Chris: dominates 2026 is yet to be seen but like drew if your prediction plays out
Chris: where nvidia pulls out of the consumer market and if the uh who was it also
Chris: was just announced that they might be leaving the consumer market just just
Chris: yesterday or the day before on Friday.
Chris: Another company announced that they're probably pulling out of the consumer
Chris: market. It's getting rough out there.
Chris: So, yeah, the measuring it, the proof is going to be to measuring it at the time.
Chris: And I guess if we said two major outlets, so if I said something like two major
Chris: outlets on YouTube and in writing and dominant themes on our home lab self-hosted in our Linux.
Brent: Is that the dominant themes is hard to measure right yeah.
Chris: It is mm-hmm,
Chris: But probably achievable.
Brent: Well, you could sort the posts for the year, and if the top five,
Brent: I don't know, 50% of the top 10 posts are about it.
Chris: I don't know if it'll materialize like that or if it would just be a lot of chatter.
Brent: Well, you got to measure this thing.
Drew: Yeah.
Brent: It's a good prediction, but it's nebulous.
Chris: Primary verification signal to me seems like news coverage and just frequency
Chris: of YouTube videos, subreddit posts podcasts like if like if you know at the
Chris: end of the year if we can measure that somehow all.
Drew: Right look if i'm judging again when you go to prove this out there had better
Drew: be a pepe sylvia style board behind.
Chris: You yeah.
Wes: There we go build the board prove it out yeah and i.
Chris: Recommend working.
Drew: On this thing through the year.
Chris: I mean maybe i shouldn't go with this one because like the KDE Linux doesn't
Chris: hit 1.0 would be easy to measure, or say Tumbleweeder Arch switching to run zero.
Brent: But it's quite plain as a prediction.
Chris: I'll give it a go, and if I can't argue my case, I'll have to take the L next
Chris: year. Probably going to hate that I did this, but I could do it.
Brent: What about like a well-established podcast takes it up as a topic that they
Brent: would have never done in the past? Because it's like...
Chris: I just don't know if I'd notice that.
Brent: Well, that's up to you, man.
Chris: Can you imagine me spending my entire year You're scouring the web.
Brent: Isn't that what you do anyway?
Chris: I must be right.
Brent: If you can measure it, I think it's a good one.
Drew: Yeah, it's a really good one. I like it. But, yeah, you've got to put in the legwork.
Chris: Okay, how about reused, refurb, upgrade, not replace, becomes a top homelab
Chris: narrative showing up as a dominant theme across YouTube, Reddit, and news outlets.
Chris: Not a dominant theme across news outlets, but showing how about as a reoccurring theme.
Chris: I don't know if that's also very – See, this sucks, you guys. This one sucks.
Drew: It's tricky.
Wes: How bad do you want it?
Drew: Recurring theme isn't terrible. It could probably be improved.
Chris: Come on, chat room.
Brent: How do you yes or no the prediction? That's the real question.
Brent: What's the tip over point?
Chris: What about Google Trend words?
Brent: Oh.
Drew: Ah, yeah, okay.
Chris: So as measured by Google Trends?
Wes: Yeah, but would you define a set of...
Brent: You have to take a base for it.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: ...thing you plug in.
Chris: Yeah. I have them here in the doc. Refurb, used, e-waste, old hardware,
Chris: upgrade, DDR4, DDR5, SAS, enterprise surplus, those types of things.
Drew: If they trend strongly upwards.
Chris: Yeah, okay. In 2026, refurb, used, upgrade, not replace, terms that get the
Chris: most out of old hardware will see an uptick on Google Trends. That's pretty...
Chris: we gotta move on so I'm gonna lock it in even though it's crap no I think that's
Chris: okay it is okay we'll argue it next.
Wes: Year it's fine see the terms say see the terms in the doc yeah.
Chris: Yeah terms of fable in show doc there you go I love that alright okay okay I'm gonna try this,
Chris: in 2026 refurb used upgrade not replace these types of topics become a top narrative
Chris: on Homelab subreddits YouTube and news outlets and I will have terms in the
Chris: doc that can be used for Google trend searches and others good enough,
Chris: not great but I like the sentiment because it just feels like and I think it's
Chris: an area where Linux is kind of super positioned to do really well it's a sucky
Chris: position for us all to be in but this is like our moment to shine too so the
Chris: Linux wave continues that's strange our.
Brent: Show doc just changed with new tags in it.
Chris: Yeah it seems.
Wes: To be dynamically updating throughout the year.
Chris: Join crowd health dot com and use the promo code unplugged.
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Chris: The season where the health insurance companies hope you're just going to sign up and pay for more.
Chris: It's expensive every single year. And then when you really need it,
Chris: it's awful. And if you're a small business owner, well, the story is just a
Chris: nightmare here in the States.
Chris: You should really go check out crowd health. Join crowd health dot com and use
Chris: the promo code unplugged. CrowdHealth is a community of people that fund each
Chris: other's medical bills directly.
Chris: No middleman, no networks, no nonsense.
Chris: It's stress-free. I've been a member for over three years, and I've saved thousands
Chris: of dollars. My wife's a member, too.
Chris: You can get health care for under $100. You get access to a team of health bill
Chris: negotiators, access to low-cost prescriptions, lab testing tools.
Chris: Man, has that been handy.
Chris: As well as a database of low-cost, high-quality doctors that have been vetted
Chris: by CrowdHealth. And they've been around for a minute now.
Chris: I mean, I've been a member for over three years, and they were around before I started.
Chris: But they've been really refining that app, giving you access to all of this in just seconds.
Chris: It really is a nice way to go. And when something major happens,
Chris: you pay the first $500, and then the crowd steps in and helps you fund the rest.
Chris: It's really the way things should be working, and it's a great option for a
Chris: lot of us. But I think, don't take my word for it, you should go check it out yourself.
Chris: Go to joincrowdhealth.com, and if you sign up, use the promo code UNPLUGGED.
Chris: You become part of the crowd who want to help pay for each other's bills and
Chris: save money on insurance.
Chris: I mean, it's it really doesn't need to be so expensive. And the system,
Chris: the system is so broken. They're just they're betting your stay in it.
Chris: And I opted out several years ago.
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Chris: in health expenses because they refuse to overpay for health care.
Chris: It is open enrollment season, so go take your power back. So go join CrowdHealth
Chris: at joincrowdhealth.com, and you'll get started when you use our promo code UNPLUGGED,
Chris: $99 for your first three months. It really is awesome.
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Chris: You can opt out. You can take your power back.
Chris: This is how we make a difference. Join crowdhealth.com, promo code unplugged. Join me in the crowd.
Chris: Join crowdhealth.com, promo code unplugged.
Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged. Unleash your hardware and start 2026 off right by
Chris: reducing your dependency on the cloud.
Chris: Go build the system you have right now or your dream server.
Chris: Unraid will grow with you.
Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged to get you started. 30-day free trial.
Chris: It's really something. And recently 7.2 came out.
Chris: There has been some incredible improvements in there, really nice improvements
Chris: to the web UI to make it responsive so you can work on your couch,
Chris: on your mobile device, which, come on, that's actually really great.
Chris: You're sitting there watching kind of a low-key show.
Chris: You can sit there and poke on your home NAS, right, install a new application.
Chris: And with the Unraid API available now, there's some really cool,
Chris: powerful applications and dashboards being built, and they've expanded their ZFS support.
Chris: They have NTFS support now for Grampus Photos, and the really great thing is
Chris: the growing community app repository.
Chris: I don't think there's been an application we've talked about on the show yet
Chris: that isn't just essentially a click away on an
Chris: unraid system and they have different versions depending on your
Chris: hardware so if you have an all intel system well they'll
Chris: have builds optimized for that or if you have an nvidia or
Chris: amd etc etc you'll find community versions of some of these apps where it really
Chris: matters they'll they'll special optimize them for your different gpus meaning
Chris: it's a one click install to get something that's optimized for your particular
Chris: hardware be it with gpu or without and that's just kind of a taste it's really
Chris: it's such a powerful aspect to unraid is those community applications.
Chris: And now, really, that new responsive web and that API. You bring it all together.
Chris: Unraid's built on top of a modern Linux system that they've been maintaining
Chris: now for over 20 years, and they're going strong from strength to strength.
Chris: It's so great, and I think you're going to love it, especially for those of you that have a weekend.
Chris: You've got some hardware in your closet right now. You want to try a project.
Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged. You get started right away and you get going.
Chris: Check it out. Support the show. Unraid.net slash unplugged.
Brent: Well, happy holidays, everybody. As we're nearing the end of the year,
Brent: we have some baller boosters this week.
Brent: A baller booster of baller boosters. Chris, you want to take this one?
Brent: You saw it come in and you kind of like lost your cool.
Chris: Well, Optic Gray is our baller booster.
Chris: And get ready for this, gentlemen. Brace yourselves. 1.5 million Satoshis.
Brent: Oh, wow.
Wes: I...
Chris: It's absolutely amazing.
Wes: I don't think baller is the right word anymore.
Chris: No, no. Hello, Chris, Brenton, and Wes.
Chris: Happy holidays. I don't know if you remember, but I wanted to reminisce about
Chris: a trip I made back in 2019 to the Texas cyberside.
Wes: Oh.
Chris: The conference itself was meh. Yep.
Chris: But it was completely overshadowed by the evening I got to spend with you two.
Chris: Carl, special thanks for paying chauffeur and cheese and a bunch of other JB
Chris: fans while gallivanting around San Antonio.
Chris: The night remains one of my most cherished memories, and I'm still incredibly
Chris: thankful to all of you for being so gracious.
Chris: Wow. Well, thank you, Optic. That's amazing.
Chris: And he said that in where he had some trouble with Fountain,
Chris: he was persistent and kept going anyways. We really appreciate that.
Chris: And I would say it was that evening that was the singular highlight of our trip.
Wes: Yes, definitely.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: We'll have to run into another, some kind of event, hopefully a better event, but some kind of event.
Chris: Yeah. Hopefully we'll be down in Texas next year. That's my prediction. We go to Texas in 2026.
Brent: It's a good one.
Chris: Hopefully we'll see you there. Thank you for that baller boost.
Chris: We tremendously appreciate it. Fantastic way to wrap up the year and kick off the new year.
Chris: The Dude Abides comes in with 247,000 Satoshis.
Brent: Wow.
Chris: 247. Sounds great number. The dude abides writes, hey, alas,
Chris: boost of the year. I finally caught up.
Chris: I always like to listen to the full members episode, so it takes some time.
Chris: I enjoyed the last episode with Kent and Carl.
Chris: Keep them coming. Also, thanks for the IPTV suggestions.
Chris: I almost had no idea this existed. I managed to submit my home lab in time,
Chris: so I'm excited to listen to this episode, although not sure if I'll catch it live.
Chris: But it would be fun to have Alex on the show to roast our setups.
Chris: Oh, that would be a great addition.
Drew: That would be good.
Chris: That would be a great addition to next year, wouldn't it? We should consider that.
Chris: Thanks for the holidays, gents, and the company. Well, thank you, the dude abides.
Wes: Keep abiding.
Chris: We really appreciate that.
Brent: Do we have to redo the boosties because of these two boosts?
Chris: I know, right? Also, we should mention, these are not even all of the boosts
Chris: because we're a little out of time.
Chris: We're going to do another batch in the next episode. So if you do not hear your
Chris: boost read this episode, we have it banked and it'll be in next episode.
Chris: So thank you very, very much for sending it in.
Chris: Just for time, we're doubling them up and also because of the recording schedule.
Wes: Nostromo boosts in with 37,879 sats.
Chris: I like that.
Wes: Thank you for another year of great entertainment, and happy new year to all of you.
Chris: Happy new year to you. Thank you very much, Nostro. Appreciate that.
Chris: Appreciate that value, too. It's good to hear from you.
Wes: I'll take Amunday here, too. Amunday Boosin with 24,444 sats.
Chris: Not too bad.
Wes: Ah, and answering a question. Yes, Signal is still absolutely the best secure messenger.
Wes: Or maybe MOLLE, which is just an alternate but compatible version of the Signal
Wes: client with a handful of security improvements and optional settings made mandatory.
Wes: There's periodically FUD varying ridiculousness around Signal,
Wes: but it carries on through the noise.
Wes: I'm continually impressed by how everything Signal does is from an explicitly
Wes: security-first position.
Wes: The one maybe legitimate criticism of it was that it used to require a... Oh, that got cut off.
Chris: Oh!
Brent: I believe it's...
Chris: Phone number.
Wes: Yeah, exactly.
Brent: But that was recently addressed.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Wes: Also, Amadei here wanted to say that they really enjoyed the conversation with Kent.
Wes: So we've seen more continued support there.
Chris: We really do appreciate that signal. You don't have to send us a huge boost,
Chris: but that is a big signal for us to continue that kind of stuff. That's a great boost.
Chris: Really nice. Thank you, Amadei. Appreciate that.
Brent: Well, Johnny Castaway sends in 19,045 sats under two boosts.
Brent: boosts and one of those boosts is a one two three four five satoshi boost oh.
Chris: Sneaking in there well let's give them a little let's give them some fruit loops
Chris: which everybody loves thank you very much and of course a little space balls nicely done.
Brent: The johnny here is a long time listener and jupiter signal member just saying
Brent: hello from the south coast of england that's in devon uk oh hello Oh.
Wes: Thanks for sending the letter all this way.
Brent: I've just upped my Knicks game and now running Knicks Flakes with BcashFS,
Brent: ZSwap, FBE, Plymouth, Gnome, and Neary desktops.
Brent: Oh, by the way, some little tail scale with a work in progress to give Nebula a try.
Brent: I'm off to Fosdom early next year, my first Linux expo, and very excited.
Brent: And have some mince pies on me with some Santa sets.
Chris: Thank you very much. You ever had mince pie with?
Wes: No, but I think we got to go get some.
Chris: I think so. Also, if you are interested, and this goes out to everyone too,
Chris: but especially to you, Johnny, if you would like to send us a Fosdom report,
Chris: especially from a perspective of a new person, we would very much love to read those on the show.
Chris: That would be a good signal. If you're interested.
Wes: Good idea.
Brent: Johnny continues here with the second boost. Just wanted to say I enjoyed the
Brent: show on Bcash FS. amazing work by Kent and the JB crew for the great content.
Brent: As always, this gave me the extra motivation I needed to switch up my daily
Brent: driver, a Nix OS T460P ThinkPad with Bcache FS, Cache OS kernel using my favorite
Brent: terminal emulator, Ghost TTY and Neary desktop.
Brent: It's been rock solid. And by the way, the boost amount is cryptic,
Brent: but related to Bcache FS.
Chris: Oh, interesting. 6, 7, 7, 100. Oh, Maybe a commit number?
Wes: I think my prediction should have been something about how much of the audience is running Bcache.
Chris: Really?
Brent: Yeah.
Chris: I love to hear how it goes. Keep us posted on that, too. And CacheOS Kernel,
Chris: I agree, is pretty great, even on NixOS.
Chris: So good to hear. Thank you for that.
Chris: Thor's coming in with a row of ducks. That's 2,222 sats.
Chris: And he says he loved the People's File System episode. Now I really need to
Chris: try out Bcache FS. I have an upcoming reinstall for sure.
Chris: Yeah. I do that thing, too. Like, I'm thinking about my next install,
Chris: and I'm like, okay, this time around, I'm going to do Bcache FS.
Chris: I'm going to do a two-gigabyte boot.
Wes: New install dreams.
Chris: Yes.
Wes: Yes.
Chris: Even when the system's totally fine, I already start planning the next system.
Wes: You got to think about something while you're falling asleep.
Chris: That's true. Thank you, Thor. Appreciate that. Boost.
Wes: Adagia boosts in with 6,969 sets.
Brent: Cryptic.
Wes: Love the chat with Kent as well as the one with Carl today. Our pal Carl from System76 of course.
Chris: Yeah, and the new Cosmic release.
Wes: The technical episodes are some of my favorite, but then I often find myself
Wes: not knowing what to say, kind of addressing boosting or not.
Wes: I also need to remind myself that when small boosts still give you signal even
Wes: though I can't afford much beyond the party membership, and we really appreciate
Wes: the boost amount I mean a huge amount of the value is just the message.
Chris: Yeah and thank you for being a party member.
Wes: Also Brent's comment reminded me have you guys read ADHD is awesome would 110%
Wes: recommend wow got it on yeah and then there's some links and we can find some
Wes: links maybe to it to add to the show notes thank you for the recommendation.
Chris: ADHD I think the answer is no.
Brent: This is a great.
Chris: Recommendation I have not heard of that thank you yes I will look into that.
Wes: Sounds like there should be an audio book available as well Oh.
Chris: That's probably the route I'm going to go, you know, with ADD and all.
Chris: I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Wes: Thank you, Daja.
Chris: Thank you very much.
Brent: Well, the Sithy Penguin boosted in. This is two boosts with rows of ducks.
Brent: Hello there, JB Crew. I'm a medium-term listener question. What is the minimum
Brent: time required for a long-time listener anyway?
Brent: Either way, I've been listening for a few years now, and it's my first boost
Brent: to any of the shows, but I did leave a voicemail on launch earlier this year.
Wes: Nice.
Chris: Well done. Thank you.
Wes: A vocal boost.
Brent: I am dropping my nix config for the next config confessions it's about 95 percent
Brent: vibe coded with flakes and hyperland which i have yet to fully grasp but the
Brent: next nerds room has been great.
Wes: Oh good i'm glad to hear that it is a very helpful room.
Brent: We didn't even open the next config confessions and we're already getting submissions this is great,
Brent: Second Boost here says, hey, question for the crew. Do you ever collaborate
Brent: with any of the other podcasters out there?
Brent: Aside from all the stuff you guys have done since I tuned in,
Brent: we'd love to see more collaborations with other Linux podcasts.
Chris: That's a great – in fact, I meant to mention at the top of the show,
Chris: Michael Tunnell from Tux Digital and Destination Linux was going to join us
Chris: today for this episode but ended up with a sore throat and was traveling,
Chris: so the two combined just couldn't make it work.
Chris: because we do want to do more of that, but the reality is all of us are super
Chris: busy making the shows that we make.
Wes: Yeah, the double calendar system.
Chris: I mean, just trying to schedule this week's episode was a little tricky,
Chris: right? And then also additionally, there's time zones.
Chris: So some people are on opposite times and stuff like that.
Chris: So that is a compounding issue. So you'll often find a lot of us are just very
Chris: heads down. But around the holidays, we try to reach out a little bit.
Wes: Hopefully we can do some more collabs in 2026.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And as far as what makes a medium-term listener?
Chris: Well, so it's tough to say because the show's been going for a while. So maybe a year?
Wes: Or maybe we need like, you know, like there's sort of like geologic eras.
Wes: Maybe we need that for the show.
Brent: Like E-Pons.
Wes: Different eras.
Chris: That is often a thing, right? That is often the way people...
Wes: As a reference point. I kind of joined in this, yeah.
Brent: Were you here for LUP 600 or not, you know, the pre-600 or post-600?
Chris: If you're here before 600, you're probably no longer medium term.
Chris: And if you're here before 300, you're probably a long time. I don't know. You could cut that out.
Wes: Going forward, pre-van and post-van.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. The van era. Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Chris: That's great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for setting up the booze
Chris: stuff, too, and setting that in.
Chris: Really appreciate it. I know that takes a bit of work. And the beginning of
Chris: the journey is the hardest guy.
Chris: Thank you, Penguin Guy. Appreciate you. Hybrid sarcasm. There he is.
Chris: Comes in with 10,000 sats.
Chris: And he just says, Merry Christmas, boys.
Wes: Oh, Merry Christmas to you too, Hybrid.
Chris: Thank you, Hybrid. Merry Christmas.
Wes: Pot Bun comes in with a row of ducks. It'd be interesting if we could somehow
Wes: get a count of how many times you guys have said Graphene OS or Rust.
Chris: Oh.
Wes: I'm sure people would have other ideas.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: I mean, we have transcripts now.
Chris: That could be something that's done. And I would love if anybody ever wanted
Chris: to cut together like a cut of our Rust coverage or our Graphene OS coverage.
Chris: And we could do a highlight thing. And then one day we just, here you go.
Chris: We're off for this week, Drew. Here's somebody made this for us.
Drew: A supercut.
Brent: Theme supercuts. I like that.
Drew: Yeah, I thought you could write a Python script pretty easily that would go
Drew: and search all the transcripts that we have available and give you a count.
Brent: Drew, I'm going to say every time pod bun boosts in, I think ear buns.
Brent: Not your buns, but your bunnies.
Brent: Well, Odyssey Westra boosted in here at 20,000. Oh, sorry, 2,052 Satoshis.
Brent: Sigh. It's just wet, cold, and windy on the east side of the state.
Brent: That's Washington State.
Brent: Winds didn't cause too much damage, though, on this side. Definitely not what
Brent: you are all experiencing over there on the other side. That stays safe.
Brent: Also, a little birthday boost since you released the episode on that same day.
Chris: Oh. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Yeah, the studio with the winds lost power
Chris: twice, which really stinks because the UPS is last 15, 20 minutes,
Chris: and the power was out for two hours one time, and then it was out for quite a while the second time.
Chris: And it was one of those things where both times I wasn't here, so I showed up.
Chris: And you start putting it together like, uh-oh, that's not right.
Chris: That's not right. Oh, no.
Chris: So there's always a bit of a job there. I'm glad you're okay over there, Odyssey.
Chris: Mr. Mayhem's here with 2,323 sats.
Chris: A new challenge suggestion. Oh, good. I was hoping we'd get one of these.
Chris: He says, I just found out that damn small Linux has started showing signs of
Chris: little life after 15 years of a hiatus.
Chris: At least they were in 2024. A new challenge that I'd like to see is to find
Chris: out how long the crew could last on damn small Linux while running the kind
Chris: of hardware that DSL is made for.
Chris: Is it the same as 30-bit challenge? Kind of. But it goes farther and embraces
Chris: the ability to use modern software so long as it's small.
Brent: This to me sounds like a vote for like co-host suffering.
Chris: Yeah. I, I do think 2026 is prime for a new challenge. I, that's one of the
Chris: things I enjoyed over 2025.
Chris: I liked the home labs too. That was a lot of fun. We had some great challenges
Chris: that really did push us. So like, how do you do more than that?
Chris: I keep thinking, I just don't know how it comes down. I keep thinking we need
Chris: to go out into the real world and get ourselves into a real situation with real
Chris: time constraints and fix and solve something.
Chris: And I think that would be a great challenge.
Wes: I like this idea.
Chris: Three days to like refurb somebody's home lab or three days to get a business
Chris: network operational and, you know, that kind of thing.
Brent: Can we bring epoxy?
Chris: Yeah. We're going to need a lot of epoxy.
Wes: Buddy.
Chris: We're going to need a lot of epoxy. All right.
Chris: So, like I said, if you did not hear your boost read, don't worry.
Chris: We have it. We're saving it for next week's episode just with the recording schedule.
Chris: We do appreciate you sending that in and we will read them next week.
Chris: So here's what we have for this episode so far.
Chris: And first I want to start by thanking those of you who stream SATs.
Chris: As you listened, we had a really, well, that's pretty good. 27 is pretty good
Chris: for total streamers because I was looking at the total streams.
Chris: It was 2,183 total streams. And the SAT stackers streaming it right in here.
Chris: 92,359 stacked by you streamers. Thank you very much. That's a very nice, healthy number.
Chris: But get ready for this. When you combine it with our boosters this week,
Chris: we are rounding 2025 out really strong.
Chris: This episode got tremendous support with a total stats of 1,952,729 Satoshis.
Drew: Whoa.
Chris: Unbelievable.
Wes: Woo.
Chris: Thank you, everyone who supports the show with a membership or with a boost.
Chris: Fountain FM is making that easier and easier, but there's an entire self-hosted
Chris: infrastructure with Albie and lots of great apps.
Chris: You get not just boosts, but new features, transcripts, pod chapters,
Chris: all kinds of stuff like new release announcements, all that right there in the
Chris: app, including live streams. Thank you, everybody who supports the show.
Chris: It really means a lot to us. you know, I, at times, right, as a small business
Chris: owner, the thing that really stresses me out, if you'll allow the cliche,
Chris: the thing that keeps me up at night is often how am I going to fund the next quarter?
Chris: At the end of the year with the holidays, all of it so much is up in the air,
Chris: that if I was prone to, you know, ulcers, I'd probably have a real,
Chris: a real zinger right now. Thankfully I am not.
Chris: But when we get support like that, you know, I know this sounds trite and cliche, but it is true.
Chris: I am going to sleep better at night knowing that we have that now in the bank.
Chris: And even if I don't get contracts signed, you know, we're going to survive for
Chris: a little bit longer with the members and with the boost.
Chris: It truly makes a bigger difference than you can appreciate.
Chris: Thank you everyone for supporting the show. It means a lot.
Chris: And with that, it's time for a few banger picks. We couldn't help ourselves once again.
Chris: And the first one is for those of you that are still living the TUI lifestyle
Chris: after our TUI challenge.
Wes: Which I hope is everyone.
Chris: And it's, I don't know, how would you say this one, Wes? Emildung?
Wes: Actually, that was better than I thought you were going to do. Yeah, I think ship it.
Chris: Emildung is a...
Wes: Elmildung? I don't know.
Chris: Yeah, I'm sure I'm getting that wrong. It's a TUI RSS reader based on the Awesome
Chris: News Flash library, mostly written in Rust.
Wes: And with a flaked Nix in its repo.
Chris: It does indeed. It's also beautiful. It's strange to say about a TUI,
Chris: again, terminal user interface RSS reader, but it is actually very beautiful.
Chris: And I think nicer design than just about every GUI RSS reader app I've ever used.
Chris: And it could be just a really great way to bust through some RSS.
Chris: And also, I'd love to know if there's interest. I have recently set up my own
Chris: fresh RSS instance with a few integrations, summary tools, and different plugins.
Chris: If you're out there and would like me to do a segment on fresh RSS, let me know.
Chris: Send us an email at linuxunplugged.com slash contact, or even better, send us a boost.
Chris: Because I have, I think, been very surprised with my time with fresh RSS.
Wes: Ooh.
Chris: Now, this next pick I put in here because I really wanted to get your take.
Chris: You could educate me on this because there's a few things I don't know about.
Chris: And the pick is, it's an app. It's called ZeeBridge.
Chris: And it's a contract bridge game, which I guess is a...
Chris: taking card game for four players i don't really understand but it's the.
Wes: Game of bridge.
Chris: Contract bridge yeah based okay based on bridge and z
Chris: bridge is an online bridge club where you
Chris: can play in learning mode you can play with other
Chris: people in multiplayer you can play against a quote-unquote game
Chris: ai you're jethro is that what it's called play with jethro that's a competitive
Chris: bridge bot so jethro is available but uh i know nothing about bridge and uh
Chris: you on the other hand know quite a bit about bridge so i'm wondering if this
Chris: passes the westpain sniff test the z bridge app.
Wes: Yeah it does look like it is a flat pack of an electron packaging for the service.
Chris: Yes it's it is there's they have a website but that makes.
Wes: It pretty easy to get going.
Chris: Yeah and.
Wes: Uh i like the idea that you are learning bridge so i'm gonna say a thumbs up.
Chris: All right i got the thumbs up all right i like that.
Brent: When i read the title z bridge i thought it was like a zigbee bridge for home
Brent: assistant or something and then the description much better threw me right off did not expect that.
Chris: Also no license was found for that one.
Drew: I've got a quick pick for you guys if you want a third one.
Chris: Yes, we do.
Drew: All right. Yeah, I always like bringing you guys some audio visualization fun.
Brent: Yes.
Drew: This one's called Cavalier. It is based on the Cava graphics engine.
Wes: Sure.
Drew: And it's also written in .NET 8.
Chris: Oh, this looks really nice.
Drew: And it's MIT licensed. But, yeah, it's just a little visualizer.
Drew: You just connect it and Pipewire does the rest.
Drew: It will automatically connect to your main out monitors, or you can manually
Drew: connect it to something else through Helvum or QPW Graph, whatever your choice is.
Drew: And it has a lot of little options that you can make it your own.
Drew: It's really cool, small, fancy, and fun.
Chris: Take the best part of Winamp and make it into this app is what they've done.
Chris: The visualizer with customization options where you can have in a window.
Chris: It's really cool looking, too. It's a nice, modern Linux desktop app.
Wes: Rad.
Chris: Yeah. All right. That's a good pick. And so it's Cavalier, and we'll put a link to that.
Wes: MIT license?
Drew: Yep. Available as a Flatpak or Snap. Looks like they have it in Arch as well.
Chris: Very nice. Drew, thank you for joining us and playing referee.
Chris: It's always good to see you and catch up.
Drew: You're very welcome. It was my pleasure and my honor.
Chris: And I think we got some good results. I think you got good results out of us.
Chris: So that's always appreciated.
Wes: So we have someone to blame for next year.
Chris: Yeah, right? Yeah. Even when Drew is not here, of course, the friendly hand
Chris: of editor Drew touches every episode.
Chris: So thank you, Drew. Round of applause for all your hard work there.
Drew: Thank you. Thank you.
Chris: Now, we encourage you to make it a Tuesday on a Sunday and join us live Sunday, 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m.
Chris: Eastern over at jblive.tv.
Chris: And if they're getting us on the download, depending on their podcast client,
Chris: Wes, there's some fancy features they can take advantage of.
Wes: Yeah, how do you feel about a magical cloud-based JSON that comes right to you
Wes: and tells you where we talk about what?
Chris: And you know what I like about that? We can update it dynamically when we make a mistake.
Wes: Yeah, it's got like you can put in images and all kinds of fancy features,
Wes: which we don't even fully take advantage of yet, but we will.
Chris: One day, the more people use it.
Wes: And you can also just get a whole transcript. Maybe you want to count words
Wes: that we say way too often?
Chris: Maybe you do.
Wes: Yeah. Well, that could be one way to look at it. Or if you just want to be able
Wes: to follow along or double check something we said, or I mean,
Wes: it's just nice to be able to read.
Chris: It's all right there if you just need to double check something or whatever
Chris: it is. And also makes it more accessible as well, which is a big thing.
Chris: And links to what we talked about today. Those, my friends, are linked over
Chris: at linuxunplugged.com slash 647.
Chris: Sometimes these holiday episodes a little lighter on the links,
Chris: but we tend to have pretty copious show notes.
Chris: So it's always worth checking out. There's usually more in there. but links
Chris: to like the apps we talked about and whatnot some of the news that i'll
Chris: be in the show notes at linuxunplugged.com slash 647
Chris: you'll also find our rss feed our mumble room info
Chris: our matrix info membership info boost info all of it it's a website with links
Chris: at linuxunplugged.com and then you can go check out the launch recent episode
Chris: had brent in it or this week in bitcoin all of that and more over at jupiterbroadcasting.com
Chris: thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of Your Unplugged Program,
Chris: and we'll see you right back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday!