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, this is episode 622 and coming up on this episode,
Chris: there is a big trend sweeping over desktop Linux. It's really exciting.
Chris: We're going to dig into that and take a look at it. Then we'll round out the
Chris: show with some great boosts,
Chris: some picks, and a lot more we are
Chris: not live this week but we are doing it from the great north it is canada broadcast
Chris: day it's canada day on the show i'm over at brent's house up in uh his lovely
Chris: lovely property in the bc area what do you call this general area is it like
Chris: the the kootenai area or the kootenani area or something the kootenai there.
Brent: Are the kootenai's up here.
Chris: Which kind of extend.
Brent: Down into the u.s as well but this region is specifically called the east kootenai's So.
Chris: I'm in the East Kootenays, been exploring the East Kootenays with Brent and
Chris: his family, and it's been absolutely terrific here on a family road trip.
Chris: So, of course, also I have the classic, since I didn't do a show for a week
Chris: and I'm on a road trip, I have a cold, so I apologize if I sound a little funky.
Chris: But it's pretty exciting. I think the first time I've ever done the show from Canada.
Brent: High altitude podcasting.
Chris: Yeah, we're at like 3,200 feet. We usually are at sea level when we do the show.
Brent: That's why we sound different, right?
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Chris: A big trend has been sweeping over Linux in the last week or two.
Chris: And it's really exciting to watch because it's coming really from the work of one individual.
Chris: And it's, I mean, not to minimize the work that all of the desktop developers
Chris: and all the distro developers do that make all of this possible.
Chris: But every now and then, somebody with some influence comes along and reaches
Chris: a new audience, kind of breaks into a new demographic.
Chris: And this is really exciting to watch. And we've talked about DHH before.
Chris: He's created the Omicube project.
Chris: He's extremely prolific in the Ruby community. Their company is 32 Signals,
Chris: right, Wes? And they make the Basecamp product.
Wes: Yeah, Basecamp and also, hey, the email system now.
Chris: Right. And it was a little bit ago in episode 566, Chef's Choice Ubuntu,
Chris: we talked about Omicube, where he had created a spin of Ubuntu,
Chris: targeted at developers, maybe coming from the Mac.
Chris: And it was an interesting product project and it got it got some attention and it got some users,
Chris: and he's he's continued his journey because he's a 25 year mac user who's really
Chris: kind of realized recently that for the type of work he does maybe there's other
Chris: options out there besides mac and windows and so we saw the first versions of
Chris: this with omacube and it seemed nice we liked it Obviously,
Chris: it was an Ubuntu base with some things that could be improved.
Chris: It was a GNOME desktop experience. It was fine.
Chris: It didn't rock us. It didn't disappoint us. We thought it was a good first attempt.
Chris: And I think like many of us, DHH has continued this Linux journey.
Chris: You find your footing in Linux, and then you kind of expand out from there.
Chris: Maybe you start with an Ubuntu or a Mandrake, and then you try out a Fedora, or you try out Arch.
Wes: I wonder, too, you know, before this, DHH kind of famously moved a lot of his
Wes: companies off the cloud and doing more, like, dedicated server hosting.
Wes: So I wonder, too, if there's some empowerment on that side leading,
Wes: like, hmm, with a little polish and making a couple custom tools,
Wes: I can really get this Linux thing to wherever I need it.
Chris: Yeah, I bet. I bet that sort of was an eye-opener. And I think,
Chris: too, when you start playing with Linux, when you've been, say,
Chris: a Windows user or a Mac user for a long time,
Chris: if it works for you and you stick with it, you kind of discover there's this
Chris: whole world of stuff out there, all these desktop environments,
Chris: all these distros you can play with.
Chris: And it gets really tempting, and you just kind of want to keep playing.
Chris: And you discover things that might be even better than what you started with.
Chris: And I suspect for DHH and the way he works, he discovered Arch and Hyperland,
Chris: and it kind of unlocked something in his brain.
Chris: And from that discovery process, he puts it, he just sort of went all in.
Chris: And he's taken about 60 hours of research and testing of different setups to
Chris: try to make like this ultimate, better than a Mac replacement for a developer workstation.
Chris: And he's compiled all of that into essentially a script you can run on a base
Chris: Archbox and create his next project, which is Oma Archie or Oma Archie.
Chris: So you had Oma Cube and now we have Oma Archie. And this is an Arch-based system
Chris: that uses Hyperland for the desktop environment.
Chris: They describe it as a very opinionated Arch Hyperland setup by DHH,
Chris: which we will talk about that.
Chris: But on X, he recently wrote, OmaArch is ready. It's Hyperland plus Arch,
Chris: and it's never been so easy.
Chris: Everything comes pre-configured, pre-installed, and with six beautiful themes
Chris: in the box. This is the smoothest and most pleasant operating system I've ever had under my fingers.
Brent: Wow.
Wes: Coming in hot in classic dhh style
Wes: you it's kind of great i mean regardless of the claims and if you agree and
Wes: if you like his style and setup it's just wonderful to watch someone be excited
Wes: about linux i mean we obviously all are in the audiences but the amount we still
Wes: all come at when we go to meetups and like look other nerds they like what we
Wes: like i'm getting strong vibes with that again here and i'm just here for it.
Brent: Yeah i have to say it's nice for a change to see someone just purely excited
Brent: about linux we see a lot of people complaining or whatever that something's
Brent: not working or their project is going in a direction they don't like but,
Brent: i've mostly just seen like pure joy about the discovery of linux and it is so nice i'll.
Chris: Tell you there's a meta theme that is unraveling here that i really like that
Chris: i'm seeing just sort of like play out because oma archie seems to be hitting
Chris: different than omacube did it's making even a bigger splash and it seems to
Chris: be catching an eye of a larger wave of users,
Chris: And I find this to be remarkable because Omicube is focused at first-timers,
Chris: people that are just coming to Linux.
Chris: And Oma Archie is theoretically targeted at more advanced users,
Chris: people already familiar with Linux.
Chris: However, we have been monitoring multiple reports across different social media
Chris: networks of people who I would describe as brand new to Linux that are choosing
Chris: to go straight to the Arch-based system, Oma Archie.
Chris: Here, Evelyn Perkins I'm sorry, I'm probably getting that wrong On X wrote, alright,
Chris: Oma Archie is quite something It's been a while since I've last used Linux As
Chris: a daily driver, but Oma Archie Is a breeze, it's snappy, it's intuitive And
Chris: it's a joy to use Sure, I had some personal tweaks here and there,
Chris: like adding Ghostry And it's a dream machine now,
Chris: Tahilas said on X I'm a designer using Macs
Chris: for the past 14 years I have no Linux experience I decided to jump straight
Chris: into Oma Archie And I'm loving it i've already made a small theme for myself
Chris: and i've added some key binds and i'm using s-a-t-t-y to emulate clean shot
Chris: i've replaced dropbox with own cloud on way bar etc wow.
Brent: Brand new people that already feel comfortable like swapping parts out and stuff
Brent: like that to make it their own.
Chris: I find this to be really interesting they were not intimidated by the fact that
Chris: it's described as the more technical version in fact dhh himself says go to
Chris: omacube don't use omargy This is too hard.
Chris: And they went, okay, I want the hard one. I want the one that doesn't look anything
Chris: like what I'm used to using.
Chris: And DHH was interviewed recently. We'll put a link to the interview.
Chris: And he has some thoughts on why that might be and why Alma Archie,
Chris: that we're using Hyperland that doesn't look anything like a Mac or doesn't
Chris: look anything like Windows,
Chris: might be drawing more people in than the desktops that look like something they're familiar with.
Clips: And I think in this attention culture that we're in, How do you grab someone?
Clips: You can try to grab them with lofty visions of open source and why it's better
Clips: to own your operating system. And it totally gets some folks.
Clips: And then there's an even larger group of people who just go like,
Clips: yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get it that someday.
Clips: But if you can hook them with some sizzle and you can hook them with,
Clips: wait, wait, what's this?
Clips: This is really cool. This looks amazing. This looks different.
Clips: It works different. I think that might actually be more compelling,
Clips: more convincing than going like, oh, no, no, it's super easy.
Clips: You're going to get exactly what you already had.
Clips: I've come to the conclusion that maybe we've been going around this a bit the back way.
Clips: We've been trying to make it oh so easy, oh so the same.
Clips: And in an attempt of that, we've kind of just lost sight of why would someone even do it then?
Clips: Why would they do it? They do it for the lofty ideals and you're going to get
Clips: some hardcore folks with that.
Clips: This is, there's something else here, and I can feel it.
Chris: He's right. What he can feel is that Linux distributions for far too long have
Chris: been focused on this mythical new user that does not exist.
Chris: Our next layer of demographic are these web developers and software developers,
Chris: Ruby developers, and Python developers that are on Macs and that are on Windows.
Chris: But they know how to use their computer. They know how to do a config file.
Chris: They're not scared of this stuff. In fact, some of them probably know more about
Chris: this stuff than us Linux users do.
Chris: DHH wrote, Mainstream Linux distros have been focused for too long on being
Chris: as similar to Windows and Mac as possible to ease adoption.
Chris: I've come to believe this isn't the way.
Chris: Linux needs to embrace its own aesthetic, its own ethos, unapologetically.
Chris: Lean into Rice and Tuohys.
Brent: Did you say Tuohys?
Chris: Tuohys! that's another thing that's happening here is
Chris: there's this movement of maybe you don't need some perfect graphical desktop
Chris: application that matches your desktop environment maybe all you need is a terminal
Chris: and a tui and maybe these tuis do just enough they're simple they're powerful
Chris: they're not confusing they're not getting constantly redesigned a.
Wes: Simpler aspect of the of the theming right like just by picking a consistent
Wes: color scheme not necessarily consistent like uh you know window toolkit or framework
Wes: you can have that kind of uh simpler version of the same thing that we've come
Wes: to expect but with a lot less work.
Chris: Bren are you surprised at the reports we're seeing of folks that you know 20
Chris: year mac user 25 mac 25 year mac user five years on windows after leaving the
Chris: mac and now i'm sick with windows these reports were seen i think our instinct
Chris: would have been to send them to gnome or plasma i.
Brent: Mean that has been the traditional path is send
Brent: them to a place where there's tons of support right you
Brent: can find documents on anything that goes wrong on
Brent: those platforms tons of people who are happy with those platforms it's well
Brent: understood etc etc etc so i am pleasantly surprised that hype a project like
Brent: hyperland which i don't know seems like it has an extra difficulty to get into
Brent: because it's like super custom very
Brent: opinionated, etc. It's tiling out of the box.
Chris: Well, you have to be opinionated. You need to be opinionated.
Chris: That's always been my problem with Hyperland is I don't have an opinion.
Chris: I need somebody to show me what it's capable of and then I'll develop an opinion.
Brent: Which is where this fits perfectly, doesn't it? And that was my challenge when
Brent: we came to Hyperland when we explored it a little while ago was I didn't even know where to start.
Brent: And yet this seems like it's really attracting a lot of people who have the
Brent: same goals as someone like DHH to just kind of step in, try it, and work from there.
Chris: Wes, do you think maybe it's because it's a different kind of simple,
Chris: right? It's not simple in how you change a setting or how you navigate it necessarily,
Chris: but it's simple in its scope.
Chris: It's simple in what it's trying to accomplish, right? When you look at Gnome
Chris: and Plasma and they're trying to recreate a full desktop, these are complex,
Chris: complicated pieces of software.
Chris: Hyperland is more modern. It's a lot more minimal. It's not trying to do as
Chris: much. You bring your own apps you're already familiar with.
Chris: So maybe it's a different kind of simplicity that's appealing to this user-based type?
Wes: Yeah. I mean, it's a tool you can learn, and the surface area isn't that large.
Wes: And when you pair it with something like Omarchi, that's already kind of put
Wes: the pieces together that you were going to have to discover, right?
Wes: One of the big problems in this part of it is sort of like, okay,
Wes: well, the whole idea is I put together the pieces I want and I customize them.
Wes: But like what, as you're saying, what even are the options that I can do?
Wes: Especially if you're not familiar with the idea of different desktop environments
Wes: to begin with. So if you're coming into an environment that has like, oh, here's Bluetooth.
Wes: Yes, you can see where your Wi-Fi is. Yes, you can easily launch apps.
Wes: Yeah so you can get to a terminal really quick then on
Wes: top of that it's yes there's a learning curve but it's
Wes: kind of like the vi key bindings learning curve
Wes: where it really pays off where
Wes: once you know it and if you are a person who uses a
Wes: computer for work and like actually have stuff to
Wes: get done and sometimes dealing with the
Wes: window manager or just like getting stuff going or
Wes: arranged or in the right place on your desktop is that all
Wes: slowing you down i mean you should watch dhh work on this thing because and
Wes: this isn't right this isn't new to linux users or tiling window manager this
Wes: but just you can see them fly through it and that's a super satisfying thing
Wes: and it rewards the work you put in in a way that other systems don't necessarily there's.
Chris: Another thing that strikes me about all of this what we're
Chris: seeing succeed here isn't a
Chris: corporate backed distro and it isn't a corporate backed desktop
Chris: the biggest corporate backer arch
Chris: linux has is valve and they're very much focused in their own domain in their
Chris: own specific niche and uh vaxry certainly doesn't have a corporate sponsor it's
Chris: dhh is probably one of his largest supporters now so it's to me remarkable that
Chris: these two combinations are seeming to be a winning recipe here.
Chris: And I just, I want to reflect on that for a moment that it's not a corporate
Chris: back distro and it's not a corporate back desktop.
Brent: It's like a celebrity back distro.
Chris: Well, what I mean is, um,
Chris: You know, Arch is winning hearts and minds over Ubuntu,
Chris: and I'm not trying to carve Ubuntu out, but when you think about the Steam Deck
Chris: and how they switched from a Steam runtime based on Ubuntu and for the Steam
Chris: Deck switched to an Arch base, that was a big moment.
Chris: And Valve seems very excited and interested in Arch.
Chris: And now you see the same thing happening with DHH. He started with Ubuntu,
Chris: and now he's found Arch, and he's very excited about Arch.
Chris: And these new people they're bringing over, they love the AUR and stuff.
Chris: They're loving having everything available at the command line to install.
Chris: And that's how they're able to build these scripts to build out Omar Archie
Chris: and whatnot is because of the AUR.
Chris: And I just find it, Arch is doing something right. It seems to be appealing
Chris: to more and more types of users even though it doesn't have a CEO telling it
Chris: these are our top KPIs for the next quarter.
Brent: Do you think you can put your finger on what it is about Arch other than the AUR that...
Brent: Um be causing this trajectory.
Wes: I mean i think part of it like you touched on it's simple
Wes: and it's darn fast right plus you
Wes: pair that with the existing arch wiki so there's sort of
Wes: instructions for what you need to do and when you actually need to
Wes: do something it's easy and it's
Wes: simple and it's and it's fast like it just does not get into your way
Wes: and i think while other systems that
Wes: you come into might have like oh you you feel that more like
Wes: everything is more completely solved or like the edge cases are
Wes: really covered but to like understand how
Wes: to tweak it or modify it there's a lot more you have to learn and
Wes: i think in this case again it's like you're going
Wes: to get rewarded because there's not that much happening with
Wes: arch and most of it is really just packaging upstream stuff and so
Wes: once you've seen it strung together and you've got instructions for
Wes: how to modify it or tweak it right like the aur and
Wes: package builds work because they're also very simple it's basically
Wes: a bash script with some you know a bunch of helpers to
Wes: make it easy and a whole lot of recipes you can copy and
Wes: arch you know with their keep it simple stupid
Wes: sort of mentality i mean you know i like
Wes: more niche things like nix and very opinionated and
Wes: philosophical sometimes but like arch is just very
Wes: pragmatic right they don't have thoughts on purity that are going to get in
Wes: the way of you running running whatever random thing you download that's why
Wes: half the you know um package builds out there are extracting app images or deb's
Wes: and you could pretty much get them to work on arch so i think it's just a very
Wes: compatible hackable ecosystem as well i.
Brent: Wonder if the pace of development of arch and also it's like lean towards modern
Brent: software like quick updates and updates you can get right away is part of the
Brent: reason as well especially for developers.
Wes: Right you do get good hardware enable with that right you.
Chris: Get latest kernel stuff i think that makes it special you're trying to run it
Chris: on like a new framework or a new B-Link kind of thing.
Chris: And then you combine that with the AUR, it's a nice package.
Chris: In fact, it was really, really nice, I have to say, revisiting Arch this week
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Brent: Well, as you heard there, we gave Omarchi a try this week.
Brent: Now, we saw that there are some suggestions DHH gives for Linux hardware that
Brent: might work really well for this.
Brent: And works really well for other Linuxes, too. So he suggested things like the
Brent: B-Link, which we've had our eye on for a while. There's one sitting right here
Brent: in front of me. The Framework, he also likes.
Brent: But he also recommends like Mini's Forum stuff, System76, Tuxedo Computers.
Brent: But the main one that he recommends is the b-links in the framework 13 and also
Brent: i guess he's got a desktop he likes a lot so we did the right thing this week
Brent: and uh pulled out the old odroid h4 plus that i've had collecting dust here
Brent: from building a project server and uh we threw it on that.
Chris: This thing it's such a nice little machine the odroid
Chris: is such a great small size and brent has a mini itx adapter for it so it's like
Chris: a little computer that uh just you know it's gonna be great for a nas we'll
Chris: talk about that more later um and we did talk a little bit in self-host 138
Chris: i think dhh would like the o droid h4 if you looked at it it's essentially an
Chris: all intel system that's silent,
Chris: um it just requires a little diy uh but of course arch is a total breeze to
Chris: install on that thing it's absolutely no problem and maybe we should start there
Chris: arch has gotten way nicer to install,
Chris: You just, when it boots up now, because that was one of the things I was wondering, by the way.
Chris: It's like, how are all these guys that have never ran Linux getting going on Arch so easily?
Chris: Well, because all you got to do now is type in Arch installer,
Chris: and you get a quite nice NCurses installer that walks you through all the basic
Chris: questions and manages to give you a pretty powerful setup.
Wes: This is not your grandpappy's Chris Lass Arch, no, no.
Brent: This was the first time you used that installer, Chris. And throughout the process,
Brent: you were like, wait wait wait wait this is so easy.
Chris: I loved it i loved it and i'm so it doesn't need to be
Chris: graphical it doesn't need to be it just needs to be competent and
Chris: and just enough and so i got you know a
Chris: really nice butterfs with sub volume set up uh the
Chris: networking was all set up and uh it was just a minimal mvp install of arch which
Chris: is all you really need because once you have a basic arch install or you can
Chris: do it from an existing arch but once you have a basic arch install you just
Chris: you know do the right thing and w get that script throw it right into bash and
Chris: uh it should be safe No problem at all.
Brent: One little note here while you're installing that I thought was interesting
Brent: was that Omarchi requires disk encryption.
Brent: That's just as it's designed. And I thought, you know, me and encryption,
Brent: I think that's a really nice thing.
Brent: Because why not use it everywhere? So I thought that was a nice,
Brent: you know, this is a, I don't know, I'm doing air quotes distro because are we calling it that yet?
Brent: But it's a distro that is opinionated. And I like this opinion.
Chris: It's not a distro yet.
Chris: I think he mentioned it is a goal. It's tricky.
Chris: I wonder if there's some issues with software distribution because he's distributing
Chris: a lot of different types of software and technically you're running the script
Chris: and pulling those things down.
Chris: So there may be a difference there in distribution.
Chris: I don't use encryption by default unless it's a very specific system,
Chris: but the logic makes sense here.
Chris: They set up auto-login by default and so they just want the system to be a little more protected.
Wes: I think it works too in the sense that the systems I don't care about having
Wes: auto-login on are also the ones I don't care about encryption on and sort of vice versa.
Chris: Yeah, that's probably true. It's worth 10 minutes reading through the manual.
Chris: They've set up a nice, simple manual that gives you kind of the overview of
Chris: the tools they've selected. Again, it's opinionated.
Chris: And the key bindings that are set up, and there's a lot of them.
Chris: And some of the defaults that you should know about and the way to execute applications.
Chris: So the manual, it's lean, mean, and great.
Chris: So I want to give a big plug for that. We'll have links to that in the show
Chris: notes because you're going to need that.
Wes: You are, because you really can't do anything until you know at least some of
Wes: the keyboard shortcuts, because by default, you can't actually click on anything
Wes: to get much to happen besides, I don't know, maybe setting up Bluetooth.
Chris: Yeah, there's a couple of icons you can click to get like, you know, Btop and whatnot.
Chris: But it is a keyboard first environment. It's meant for you to embrace the keyboard.
Chris: Obviously, you can use the mouse inside your applications and whatnot,
Chris: but manipulating the windows, launching applications, changing their location,
Chris: all their size, all of that, it's meant to be done with the keyboard.
Chris: So you want to just take a minute to go over those.
Brent: You know i was hesitant to be just thrown into hyperland
Brent: by default like this because the last time we tried hyperland i
Brent: kind of bounced off it pretty pretty hard but coming back to the manual again
Brent: it's a actually one of the best introductions i've seen to hyperland and like
Brent: how to come to a tiling window manager like this and not bounce off it immediately
Brent: and so i would argue it was one of
Brent: the best descriptions of how to embrace Hyperland and that style of dealing
Brent: with applications and moving Windows around.
Brent: So I would, even if you're not gonna use this, if you're interested in Hyperland
Brent: and finding success with Hyperland, it's a good place to start.
Chris: Yeah, it gives you an idea of what you can do with it. And that was what I really
Chris: appreciated about this is it gave me a sense of, oh, okay, so this is how I
Chris: could configure Hyperland.
Chris: And boy, it is smooth. It is really nice.
Chris: I liked a lot of the options. Using LazyVim, I think it's nice. It's a nice touch.
Chris: Having NeoVim set up in their TUIs like LazyDocker and whatnot and LazyGit are
Chris: included. I think that's really great to see.
Chris: Some of the design seems like it's really more focused at people coming from
Chris: Macs. You noticed the Chrome zoom issue?
Brent: Oh, I did.
Chris: Yeah, that's, I think, because a lot of people that are coming from Macs that
Chris: are high DPI. And so some of these things just expect you to have a pixel double display.
Brent: You mean the display I plugged into the O-Droid is not compatible with that?
Chris: No. See, some of those things didn't quite work right.
Wes: You can tell because they also ship the specific Apple display brightness control utility.
Chris: Yes. Yeah, Wes, so there's an element of this that I'm sure they've received
Chris: a lot of feedback about because they have an FAQ on the website that's like,
Chris: how do I remove the software I don't use?
Chris: There's a lot that gets included that I don't use from, you know,
Chris: just a whole litany of things.
Chris: I'm wondering how you felt about that as somebody who usually,
Chris: you know, is very specific, has very specific control over the software that goes on their machine.
Chris: How do you, how do you feel about that process?
Wes: Yeah, it's not necessarily my favorite out of the box. I think it is very much
Wes: optimized for like, this is the machine I use for my corporate development work, right?
Wes: Where I need Zoom because I do Zoom meetings and one password to log
Wes: into my company's account and you know a bunch of things
Wes: like that so for my personal development work
Wes: yeah not exactly optimized but i will say right
Wes: like at the end of the day this is just a series of pretty
Wes: nice bash scripts with different
Wes: you know essentially modules for the different components so uh not only can
Wes: you of course rely on you know pac-man and yay to remove things at that level
Wes: if you'd like to after the fact you could definitely fork it and comment things
Wes: out or add on stuff that you want to install that doesn't get included by default.
Chris: Yeah, it is a bash script. And so you could just modify the bash script. And...
Chris: I'm just going to take a moment. We'll just go down this lane just for a moment.
Chris: This is where you begin to go, oh, if DHH understood what Nix was,
Chris: we wouldn't be doing this with Bash.
Chris: And DHH does not understand what Nix is. He posted on social media,
Chris: he said, quote, I don't think Nix OS is for me.
Chris: Where I think Nix can fit in supremely well is for isolated development environments.
Chris: Basically what DevM is doing.
Chris: So he seems to maybe grasp like, five
Chris: percent of it but it hasn't clicked and i
Chris: i only bring this up because out of all of
Chris: the people out there where nix is a good use case people building
Chris: systems like this have got to be at the absolute top of
Chris: the list right like i'm i'm number 25 on
Chris: the list and i'm very satisfied when i use it he should be
Chris: like number one or two on the list so i really do hope that his journey continues
Chris: and that after he you know has exhausted his excitement with arch he does take
Chris: another look at nixos because if he distributed this as a module where i could
Chris: just turn certain things on or off it would be absolutely chef's kiss perfect.
Wes: Yeah it would take hackability and shareability i
Wes: think to the next level and then one thing too is it would be kind of maybe
Wes: an optimization in the sense that the plus side
Wes: to having everything be separate bash scripts is like i said
Wes: right it's pretty easy to modify in terms of just disabling them removing them
Wes: adding stuff to it the downside is they each
Wes: just run right like it goes through and does each of the bash scripts
Wes: that it needs to do and that means each one of those doesn't have any idea about
Wes: which other ones are running and it doesn't do anything fancy like compile the
Wes: total list of packages to install after running all them so what actually happens
Wes: is each module does its own like pac-man and yay build which doesn't make anything
Wes: faster it also makes me wonder like how well does Is this more,
Wes: how much item potency can you bake in in terms of like changes or updates?
Wes: Is it going to be easier to just pave an arch system and install a newer version
Wes: if there's radical changes versus be able to involve a place? I don't know.
Chris: Right. How does it deal with AUR rot and things like that, too, are a question.
Chris: But, you know, when we were going through it, a couple of things aired out.
Chris: And it made me realize, too, if this was a Nix process, it would build.
Chris: And it would verify it builds before it actually implemented. and
Chris: that would also mean that all of the updates the DHH
Chris: ships would be atomic and would be built and then you
Chris: people would switch over to them and so system system updates going forward
Chris: would be more reliable for all the OMA Archie or OMA Nix users so the the two
Chris: things that I missed setting up is that it doesn't it like Wes said each individual
Chris: component and process isn't really aware of the other so there isn't like a
Chris: global check and build that verifies everything's working and everything's available.
Chris: And then there isn't this sort of atomic update and check down the road as they
Chris: issue more updates. And they've already done a round of updates.
Chris: And one of the things too, that as a system builder, if DHH is listening to
Chris: this, they recently just switched from VLC to MPV. Great choice.
Chris: With Nix, when you switch to MPV, it was like VLC never existed on that system.
Chris: Like it was never there. It was never in the DNA of the system at all.
Chris: It's gone. And if you change out any other component, it's like that as well.
Chris: It's very clean. It's surgical. And the one thing you will find with Arch over
Chris: time, you might not want to remove a lot of software.
Chris: As you start uninstalling things on Arch, as you have more things installed,
Chris: it will start to get a little gamey with you. And you'll have to start answering
Chris: questions and doing some dances.
Chris: Those scenarios do not, will not, cannot exist in Nix. It's very clean.
Chris: Because you're building essentially a new state. One that VLC never existed, now MPP exists.
Chris: And so that is built like it was always that way. And it's so elegant.
Chris: And especially when you're distributing software. Okay.
Chris: End of the Nix diversion. I just, I had to make that point if you're building
Chris: a system. It seems like the way to go. But, that aside.
Chris: I thought, really well put together system if I just took off things like I
Chris: don't need Zoom. I don't need a couple of other things.
Chris: And I do like a couple of things that were included. Like the Web2 app,
Chris: I think, is a really nice addition.
Chris: It's essentially, I think it's a bash script that creates a local-looking application
Chris: out of a website. It creates a .desktop launcher.
Chris: It downloads a PNG icon. It looks really great.
Brent: It was also extremely easy to
Brent: use. I made a little web app out of the JB website in about three minutes.
Brent: And this has been a feature you've been asking for, Chris, for years now.
Chris: Yeah. So I think it's, I don't know. So I'm not saying all the additions are bad.
Chris: I think some of them are actually really great. Wes, what about anything you
Chris: saw that you're like, oh, I don't know if this is going to work or anything
Chris: you thought was really nice to see added?
Wes: I thought it was interesting that they're using Mise as a mise en place, which is,
Wes: not really a Nix alternative, not really a brew alternative,
Wes: but is specifically targeted at developers.
Wes: And maybe you've seen things like RBN, basically, hey, I'm working on different
Wes: projects, and they each need a slightly different version of Python or Ruby or Node.js.
Wes: And the kind of thing that like
Wes: your, you know, the system package manager isn't really optimized for.
Wes: And so Mies has got all of that, including included also as like Elixir,
Wes: there's a wide language support so it can install those things and manage them
Wes: per project for you and it can also handle environmental variables secrets and
Wes: it's got a task runner kind of like just or make all built into um one little app.
Chris: That is a pretty clever inclusion i like
Chris: that um the other there's other just small things
Chris: that they've done so they have super keys to go right
Chris: to a music player so super m launches spotify i'd probably
Chris: swap that out to something else uh super t launches
Chris: your activity monitor super g launches
Chris: signal super d launches lazy docker super o launches obsidian there's a lot
Chris: of little things you can map to these hotkeys and once you learn this i would
Chris: love like some sort of printout of all of this you really can move on the system
Chris: so i'd say probably after two hours of playing with it i felt like i wasn't
Chris: even going to my mouse and then,
Chris: i was in a chat and i realized that they have mapped uh hotkeys for emojis yeah.
Brent: So useful yeah.
Chris: Yeah and so they use the cap locks key cap locks ms is a smile right or like
Chris: cap lock key and then m h is a heart emoji lock yeah it's yeah caps lock is
Chris: now the emoji lock key basically it's so fun you'll.
Wes: Also notice that when you uh when you get installed it asks for your name and
Wes: email because that is also set up with an auto-completion key,
Wes: which I think maybe says something about DHH's general workflows.
Chris: I think a lot of this, I'm like, I think I got a lot of impressions of his workflow
Chris: through this, actually.
Wes: I do want to add really quick that the Wofi, the launcher, is very nice.
Wes: And, you know, with the rest of the theming, which DHH did a great job with,
Wes: it really integrates nicely.
Wes: I mean, you don't need it a ton once you learn all the shortcuts or add your
Wes: own, but as a fallback, that's just right there.
Wes: I mean, it's, you know, giving krunner a good run for its money yeah i agree.
Brent: One thing i'm enjoying about these like hyper
Brent: opinionated versions of linux is that we
Brent: get a little tiny peer into how someone uses their computer and you know that's
Brent: one of my favorite things like just watching west solve a problem is a very
Brent: different way than i would approach it and you learn new things so like these
Brent: little shortcuts for instance is like oh wait i can integrate that into my computing
Brent: life And my lifestyle gets better.
Brent: And so I hope we get to see more of these from more people. Like there are lessons
Brent: learned on how to do this maybe a little bit better.
Brent: Or that will be more well supported in the future you know when you think we're
Brent: trying it today but what happens six months down the road when this is like
Brent: crufty and stuff but but i want to get more like insights into how people are
Brent: using their computers it.
Chris: Is it is out of all of the you know distro isn't it yet but out of all of the
Chris: custom linux desktop setups it's the one where i feel like you're the most connected
Chris: with its creator and you have the most insight into how he uses his computer.
Chris: And I think A, DHH is a well-known figure in the Mac community,
Chris: the Mac development community.
Chris: And B, since he's a 25 plus year Mac user, he's probably just by osmosis shaped
Chris: the way he sort of views his workflow.
Chris: And that I imagine is true for a lot of other developers that have been on the
Chris: Mac workflow for a long time.
Chris: So because he was sort of a Mac native creating a Linux workflow,
Chris: I think he's created something that appeals to so many of those same
Chris: people like i i saw i saw on reddit somebody that
Chris: uh you know they have a mac studio and they
Chris: went out on amazon and for like the cost of
Chris: the upgrade of ram on their mac studio they bought an entire b-link computer
Chris: amazing the entire computer hooked it up to their apple display and put omar
Chris: g on there and they're using that now and they they got it you know they spent
Chris: they spent all that money they spent like you know several grand on a mac studio
Chris: and now they're using like a 600 dollar b-link.
Brent: It kind of breaks down the value proposition of the apple ecosystem a bit doesn't it.
Chris: Yeah i mean i i hope apple's paying attention well
Chris: actually i don't i don't i i
Chris: like it and i what's also what's so great about it is it's winning because it's
Chris: not competing on apple same terms right like what you're seeing here the framework
Chris: that's an anti-macbook the b-link it's an anti-mac right you can open up those
Chris: b-links you can put your own memory and you can You can put your own hard drive in.
Chris: You can put multiple hard drives in them. They're the ant, and they're cheap.
Chris: They're as much as component upgrades for an entire Mac. So like they're the anti-Mac, right?
Chris: The Hyperland interface and all of this stuff that they're installing.
Chris: It's so anti-Apple. There's no App Store involved. There's no Gatekeeper at
Chris: all. It's all free software. It's all maintained and getting updated.
Chris: It's the antithesis of the Mac in its interface and how you use it, how it's distributed.
Chris: And yet it's winning. That's what's brought these people over.
Chris: We have created, well, not we, the world of free software. And then DHH has
Chris: brought it all together and created something that's like the anti-Mac.
Chris: And that's what's appealing to these people.
Brent: Well, I wonder if they're realizing that they've reached the limits of what
Brent: the Mac is offering them,
Brent: much like I did when I moved to Linux, and then seeing like,
Brent: oh, wait, if I just have a little bit of a learning curve, like you do on any
Brent: new pieces of hardware or software that you use, you get a whole new set of superpowers. Yeah.
Chris: You got to go into it accepting the premise it's going to be different and that
Chris: you're not looking for one-to-one replacements. But if you're lucky,
Chris: you may find something that's even better, that's even more efficient,
Chris: that helps you get work done.
Chris: So, man, it's exciting to watch.
Chris: And I was excited when Omicube came out. And it's nice to see this hasn't faded,
Chris: this passion and this drive.
Chris: And then when he does this, you see this whole wave of people.
Chris: I mean, we could sit here and I could read you 30 different posts that I collected
Chris: over the last week and a half of people talking about switching.
Chris: It's just absolutely bonkers. So great work from DHH.
Wes: I thought it was interesting watching him comment on it and just that one of
Wes: the things that stood out for him is he got excited seeing stuff on Unix porn and people's setup,
Wes: and seeing that like the potential was there, sort of acknowledging all that
Wes: Linux could do and seeing like, oh, this really just needs more visibility and
Wes: a bit of the stumbling blocks removed.
Wes: And he sort of saw himself as being in a perfect position to solve both of those.
Wes: And then goes and pours, what'd you say, 60 plus hours of work into that.
Wes: And I think kind of hit it out of the park.
Chris: Unraid.net slash self-hosted. Unraid is a powerful, easy-to-use operating system
Chris: for self-hosters, home labbers, for servers and attached storage.
Chris: It makes the most out of your hardware, no matter what you have on hand.
Chris: Really, the possibilities are limitless with Unraid. You hear us talk about
Chris: a great application or a great home lab thing you can do.
Chris: You can build it with Unraid. And now they also include built-in tail scale
Chris: support. So they bring secure remote access with no port forwarding.
Chris: You don't have to worry about static IPs changing with your ISP.
Chris: No complex firewall rules.
Chris: And thousands of applications with active network support.
Chris: Just boom, check a single box. And the application you deploy on Unraid is now
Chris: on your tail net. They also support virtual GPU support for VMs.
Chris: Including sharing amongst multiple VMs and making templates for those VMs really easy.
Chris: Obviously, they support things like XFS and ZFS if you want to do some fancy
Chris: ZFS file system stuff. In fact, one of the things I think is really useful is
Chris: they will import your existing ZFS pool from, say, like a FreeNAS or Ubuntu or Proxmox.
Chris: That is really nice. It also makes it really simple to get Windows going in a VM.
Chris: If you want something that maybe you have one Windows box on your network that's
Chris: just contained in a VM and then you want remote access to it.
Chris: And maybe it has access to a GPU that you also put in your Unraid.
Chris: You can start playing around with that too. And of course, all of the Steam
Chris: Valve streaming stuff, absolutely there's applications for that.
Chris: Jellyfin, Plex, NextCloud, Home Assistant, it's all there. And I think what's
Chris: really great about Unraid is they're built on top of modern Linux.
Chris: So that means like with the most recent version, great wireless support right out of the box.
Chris: They're not doing that thing where they ship like some super ancient kernel
Chris: and they just like apply all their crazy out-of-band patches on top of that.
Chris: They're really smart about this. And they have a real revenue model here that
Chris: makes the development of this actually sustainable.
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Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged. It really does let you go from zero to 100 with
Chris: a system that you can rely on that's built well, doesn't have all these crazy,
Chris: crazy, crazy layers of stuff in between there.
Chris: It all just makes sense with good common sense stuff you can deploy on your
Chris: own when you need to, like, you know, standard troubleshooting skills backed
Chris: by a great community, something I don't really mention enough.
Chris: They have such a great active community over there as well. So go check it out. Support the show.
Chris: Get it for free for 30 days. No credit card required. It's Unraid.
Chris: Unleash your hardware at unraid.net slash unplugged.
Wes: Well, Chris, you've now spent a week up north. I'm wondering,
Wes: do you have any observations, perhaps, that have occurred to you,
Wes: or any oddities you'd like to share with the show?
Chris: You know, Wes, I don't know if this is uncouth, but we came straight to Brent's
Chris: family property, met the family, and I gotta say, Wes, all these Canadians look
Chris: alike to me. They, I mean, almost identical.
Chris: It's really something. So there's that. That's been strange.
Chris: Like, it's hard to tell them apart. I have to be honest with you.
Wes: That sounds offensive, but in this case, I think it's actually true.
Chris: You know something's been on my mind during our travels here because you know
Chris: as always you take some time off and then like a whole bunch of stuff goes on
Chris: and uh in the last week or so one of the largest youtubers in the world pewdiepie
Chris: discovered arch discovered graphene os
Chris: discovered self-hosting and you know sovereignty and data and things like that
Chris: and of course we just talked about dhh and discovering arch linux and hyperland
Chris: and things like that i guess i thought Nobody was ever going to talk about these
Chris: things but us and the Linux community in general.
Chris: Because it just seemed like these topics that we've been talking about for four
Chris: or five years, we're just never going to break into the next echelon of community and conversation.
Chris: The next wider group of users.
Chris: And then PewDiePie comes along and he manages to make a successful video around
Chris: graphing OS and Arch and rising his setup.
Chris: And it made me realize that we were early by years to some of these things.
Chris: We were so early that it's to our deficit. It's to our own self-harm.
Chris: Because we talk about these things before they're
Chris: interesting to a wider population which because what it means is we're
Chris: making things that for an audience that is that is smart enough to
Chris: understand and appreciate why talking about these things before
Chris: everybody else is important and that's what made me
Chris: realize how much this show is going
Chris: to only live or die on support from
Chris: this audience because we are making a show for such a niche like
Chris: i i we talk about things so early so ahead of the rest of the mainstream that
Chris: i actually just thought the rest of the mainstream was never going to talk about
Chris: these things because it's been years and i just thought okay well this is just
Chris: to our little circle this is
Chris: just for us to know but no it does eventually break through we were just,
Chris: early which means you as a listener were early which means we're making content
Chris: for a very select group of people and that group of people if they want to keep
Chris: it going we need their support so i'm so grateful for our members who do support
Chris: this show some of you signed up after our member special preview last week.
Chris: We could use some more. I think that promo is still going from last week.
Chris: And then, of course, we have folks that boost us and support each individual episode. And...
Chris: This is a very unique product in this sense. And that's what I realized.
Chris: When we start seeing PewDiePie and these others talk about this stuff,
Chris: we were so, so early that only a few of you weird ones got it and have listened
Chris: and supported us. And I'm very grateful. Thank you, everybody.
Chris: And we do have some boost to get into in that regard because you can support
Chris: each episode with an entirely open stack using peer-to-peer software with a boost.
Chris: And Fountain FM has had some major improvements.
Chris: Totally new playback UI, brilliant refactoring of the library,
Chris: architecture tweaks that save battery life.
Chris: And now if you're a premium member too, you can have one open up right to your
Chris: library, not the home feed.
Chris: And they're making it easier and easier to boost for first timers and long timers.
Chris: So if you've ever thought about trying out Fountain FM and you want all the,
Chris: you know, the transcripts, the chapters and all that stuff and the boosting,
Chris: it's a great time to boost and try out Fountain.
Chris: And we have a boost from Mr. Turd Ferguson, who is our baller booster this week.
Chris: 44,880 sats says, I hope you enjoyed the week off. Did you do anything fun? Yes. We went swimming.
Chris: We went hiking. Well, not much hiking, but we had to hike to go swimming.
Chris: He says, if you guys were traveling back to the 80s and could only bring one
Chris: piece of modern technology, which would you bring with you?
Wes: Ooh.
Brent: Wow.
Chris: At first I thought cell phone, but it's kind of pointless because you wouldn't
Chris: have a way to charge it necessarily.
Brent: Yeah, then I thought laptop, but internet is not really widely distributed or anything like that.
Chris: Like there's no data. There'd be no cellular data. so there's really no point
Chris: in having a cellular phone, or a lap, well maybe a laptop,
Chris: What would you do with it?
Brent: Would you bring your ASP32s?
Chris: Yeah, but there's no Wi-Fi to connect to.
Brent: Oh, yeah. God, I keep forgetting that.
Wes: Yeah, I think you guys are forgetting that this is as much a smuggling operation as anything else.
Wes: So if you do bring a laptop, right, you can include the Linux kernel source
Wes: code on that laptop, as well as maybe some minor stock price, you know, data.
Wes: And then you'll be able to be the creator of Linux. And then,
Wes: Chris, you can, you know, approve whatever you want for the kernel.
Chris: You're right. That's how I get BcacheFS in earlier. I like this,
Chris: Biff. That's a good plan.
Chris: In fact, that's how you could just, you could become Sneaky the top contributor.
Wes: You know, or like the Bitcoin white paper, you stick that on the laptop too.
Brent: Ooh.
Chris: I think the play though is more like a Star Trek villain play where you want
Chris: to like accumulate a piece of technology that you can like reverse engineer
Chris: over your lifetime and just keep getting rich and rich and rich as you like,
Chris: you know, reveal one more piece of like a robot hand or like a chip or something
Chris: like that you know what i'm saying like that's the move so when i'm thinking
Chris: about that kind of thing i'm almost wondering like,
Chris: what about a uh like an automobile like a modern day automobile because they
Chris: got computers they got combustion you know like parts in there for the engine
Chris: like there's stuff in there that you can get rich off for the rest of your life so as.
Brent: You were saying that i was imagining like the mars rover and the mars helicopter.
Chris: Because they.
Brent: Got some fancy stuff.
Chris: In there I'm thinking that's the way to go. It's like a whole vehicle.
Chris: Because these things are basically cars on computers now, right? So that's my thinking.
Chris: Thank you, Turd. Appreciate the boost.
Wes: Otter Brain boosts in with 10,000 sats.
Wes: Inspired by the two-week challenge, I took a deep dive into NeoVim configuration on NixOS.
Wes: Really, a rabbit hole of telescope, tree sitter, and lap.
Wes: I eventually discovered NixVim. Wes, have you seen this?
Wes: Greatly simplified and tidied up my configuration. I mean, Helix is great too,
Wes: but I really get that little squirt of dopamine customizing a tool.
Wes: Is there a name for this condition?
Chris: Yeah, what is that? When you're on that, yeah, I love that.
Wes: That dialed in ever so right.
Chris: The dopamine configuration.
Wes: I have not yet tried Nixvim.
Chris: Wes, you know about it, but Brent, you know about it too. You both,
Chris: you guys have seen it, but don't use it? Like, come on.
Brent: Well, during the TUI challenge, I, as you know, tried to dive into learning
Brent: Vim and I decided, well, like these NeoVim people must know what they're doing,
Brent: so I'm going to dive in there.
Brent: Maybe they have some sane defaults and then immediately ran into,
Brent: oh yeah, I got to customize this thing.
Brent: And so I did find Nixvim and I thought, it sounds amazing. like exactly the
Brent: thing we want to get and would make this much easier if you happen to be on Nix OS.
Brent: But then I spent about another 30 minutes deciding that I was just going down
Brent: a massive rabbit hole and I was going to very quickly lose the TUI challenge
Brent: doing this. But I did put a little note.
Chris: I just choose to use a desktop OS that isn't so complicated.
Chris: It needs its own Vim editor. That's all. So I don't have that problem.
Brent: Interesting.
Wes: Yeah, I'm trying to, I've so far avoided a complicated NeoVim setup.
Wes: I'm partially afraid of that exact reason, Brent. But yeah, I do think NyxVim
Wes: would be what I would use were I or to eventually go down that path.
Brent: We did see a couple notes from listeners who were doing the Tui Challenge after
Brent: our episode who also mentioned that NyxVim was a nice place to land.
Brent: Well, we received a row of ducks from a dude trying stuff.
Brent: Howdy, y'all, from the big TX, medium-time listener, first-time booster.
Chris: Hey, thank you!
Brent: So, sort of some newbie questions about the show here. First one,
Brent: why does Brent hate building computers?
Chris: Do you hate building computers, Brent?
Brent: I think there might be a little clip of me suggesting I might.
Chris: I think you love building computers. Can we get that?
Brent: Well, you know, you and I built a computer together this morning.
Chris: That's true, we did.
Brent: And it was a computer, I have to admit, I tried to build previously and forgot
Brent: that I needed to buy a hard drive and memory for it.
Brent: So it's been sitting like literally on my tea station for the last four months, maybe.
Chris: Did you see the ending here? P.S. You all got me to watch baseballs. Oh, that's so great.
Wes: The whole show is just for that.
Chris: So, thank you, by the way, for the first-time boost. Always appreciate that.
Brent: There's a last question here if you want to see if you can answer it, Chris.
Chris: I don't know if you know this one. Why don't we go through all of them?
Chris: Why is Tuesday, why is it a Tuesday on a Sunday?
Chris: So the show used to be on Tuesdays. And, you know, they used to end the show
Chris: See You Next Tuesday. And I always liked that better than See You Next Sunday.
Chris: So I just wanted to keep it. And so it's a Tuesday on a Sunday.
Chris: I'm glad that you watch baseballs.
Brent: If anyone else has any other questions on what the heck we're doing over here, please send them in.
Chris: It can be a little weird at first, I suppose. Thank you for the boost.
Chris: Nice to hear from you, a dude trying stuff. Podbun comes in with a row of ducks.
Chris: I've moved to Linux Mint from Nix due to issues with NVIDIA drivers.
Chris: I wanted to play games and it refused to work. I'm listening to episode 616 on June 27th.
Chris: On the 27th, June shot. Oh, it's July now. Oh, my gosh.
Brent: Yeah, episode 616 was From Boston to Bootsy. So that's our Boston episode.
Chris: Doing a little time travel check-in. Thank you, Podbun. I always appreciate that.
Chris: I'm sorry to hear you had NVIDIA drivers, but if Linux has been solved before,
Chris: I suppose that's always a positive.
Chris: It's frustrating when you go to play the game and the driver isn't working and
Chris: you just want to play the game. I understand, Podbun.
Wes: Jordan Bravo boosts in with 4,444 sats.
Wes: Pewdiepie just released a video about degoogling he's using arch graphene os
Wes: nextcloud self-hosting and more i don't normally watch his channel but it's
Wes: great to see these topics get some more widespread exposure.
Chris: I agree i was i was uh you know going on about how they're late and where we
Chris: were blah blah early like that made it sound negative i am actually really glad
Chris: that uh this is getting wider attention i actually kind of given up the on the
Chris: idea that it would i agree.
Brent: Can i just say i think this solidifies one of my predictions from earlier in.
Chris: The year i think you're probably right damn it i hate that i hate that too mr.
Wes: Bravo goes on to say if a graphene project dies i would probably go with another
Wes: privacy focused android such as calyx or maybe even a linux phone there's just
Wes: no way i could put up with the creepy surveillance of a stock android and unfortunately
Wes: ios is just too restrictive for my liking.
Chris: Yeah there's that i.
Brent: Would agree with all of that.
Chris: Yeah yeah that that app store control with apple is really a problem there was
Chris: even just a slightly more complicated third-party way for me to distribute my
Chris: own apps i'd feel a lot better yeah i agree i think yeah we should really give
Chris: calyx a try graphene os goes away thank you jordan appreciate that.
Brent: Well rotted mood boosted in 10 000 sats,
Brent: This one's very simple. One character. Just an emoji of the Vulcan salute.
Chris: Ha ha. Thank you for the value, Rotted Mood. And of course, hope you live long and prosper.
Chris: Pickle Arts comes in with 4,444 sats.
Chris: Listening to episode 615 right now, future check-in from A1A, Canada.
Brent: A1A. Do we have a map for that one?
Chris: Do we have? Is that a... Also, thank you for the check-in. Thank you for the
Chris: time travel check-in. I appreciate that.
Wes: Yes, it is.
Chris: Is that a map thing? Because I know you both have maps. Oh, my gosh. Look at... Oh, whoa!
Brent: Wes, while you're trying to, you know, unfold that to the right sector,
Brent: I think having an A1A postal code is like, you're at the top, right?
Brent: You've got the very first postal code in the, like, at the top of the list.
Brent: I think... I don't know where this is, but I think it's amazing.
Chris: That's where they started.
Brent: I'm getting jealous.
Chris: I'm a little jealous. Whoa, Wes, careful.
Brent: Oh, the corner's sharp.
Wes: Yeah, I know. You guys went to Canada, but I've been investing in new maps, so hey, hey.
Chris: Clearly.
Brent: Is that a backroads map book?
Chris: So where is he, Mr. Maps?
Wes: Well, the Canadian postal code region A1A is located in Newfoundland, in Labrador.
Wes: Specifically within St. John.
Chris: Ah!
Brent: Can I just say it's very strange that we start our postal codes from right to
Brent: left, it seems. Why is it way up in the right? Shouldn't it be up in the left?
Chris: I've been asking this every day.
Brent: We'll get the answer at some point.
Chris: I don't know if we will i.
Wes: Think i blend history i'm just gonna say that.
Chris: I like that i like that all right well that's fun thank you and hey proper proper
Chris: for this is canada day on the show so perfect and.
Brent: Actually if you just say it a1a it's got canada all over it.
Chris: A1a hey a1a hey a1a hey a1a all
Chris: right all right we had our fun thank you picolars nice to hear from you.
Wes: Marcel comes in with 5000 sets.
Chris: Hey, Marcel.
Wes: Oh, Marcel's following up. We asked folks to share their electronics projects,
Wes: and Marcel shares github.com slash you'd better run.
Wes: It's an ESP8266-based e-paper screen that shows me how much time I have to catch the bus.
Brent: That sounds so useful.
Wes: That's great. Another project is an autonomous robot I helped make for a robotics competition.
Wes: It runs NixOS, by the way, and although it wasn't supposed to have ESPs, only some custom PCBs.
Wes: We had to add one at the last minute because of some hardware problems.
Wes: So we used the ESP to bridge USB to CAN bus.
Wes: Well, really USB to UR to SBI to CAN. Wow, you are doing some things,
Wes: Marcel. Thank you for writing in.
Chris: That's so awesome. So the You Better Run thing is so great. He's got it in a
Chris: picture frame and he's got the e-ink display inside the picture frame.
Chris: And then it's just got the in-the-city and out-of-city different times at the
Chris: different stops. It's simple and also very, very useful. That's an awesome use.
Chris: Thank you, Marcel. We'll put those links in the show notes. That's too good.
Wes: I love that it's elegant. I mean, it's like a minimal display,
Wes: but with the picture frame, there's something artsy about it. Great.
Chris: Yeah.
Brent: Marcel also included a little YouTube link here of the Eurobot Germany finals
Brent: first round where this thing is included.
Brent: Marcel, when I met you, why didn't you mention any of this? This sounds right
Brent: up our alley Thanks for sending it in Well Gene Bean boosted in a row of ducks,
Brent: Stumbled across this tonight and thought it might fit into Linux Unplugged or
Brent: maybe even that Twib show.
Brent: Or maybe a little bit of both. The tech seems very Linux Unplugged,
Brent: but Cashew sounds very Twib.
Brent: They seem to have recently restored around Nostra 2, so Cashew may not be part
Brent: of it any longer. I just can't tell.
Brent: And he links us to a little GitHub here for Tollgate.
Chris: Tollgate. You got to pay the toll to get on the Wi-Fi. It enables Wi-Fi routers
Chris: to accept Bitcoin payments for internet access. It allows the users with a router
Chris: and an internet connection to operate as an internet service provider.
Chris: Hmm. They say one of the reasons mesh networks haven't been widely adopted is
Chris: the infrastructure operators didn't have a simple permissionless way to transfer
Chris: the operating cost of the infrastructure to users.
Chris: But thanks to Bitcoin and eCash, Tollgate operators can transfer the cost of
Chris: the internet gateway to users of the access point in a granular matter.
Chris: So you kind of like stream sats. This is actually what you do.
Chris: You stream sats while you use it. like a small amount, 200 sats a minute or
Chris: something like that, while you use the Wi-Fi.
Wes: Fascinating. And it's specifically designed for open WRT routers,
Wes: so that's a pretty great building block.
Chris: I would way rather use something like this than, you know, oh,
Chris: spend $40 and you get 24 hours of Wi-Fi or something like that. I hate that in the hotel.
Chris: So this is a really cool idea. Thanks, Tollgate.
Chris: You've got to pay the toll to get on the Wi-Fi. Thanks, Gene Bean.
Chris: Thank you, everybody, who boosted it. We didn't have an absolutely outrageous
Chris: week this week, and we would love to try to see to get these numbers up a bit.
Chris: We had 31 of you stream those sats as you listen, so your streamers collectively stacked 46,420 sats.
Chris: Not too bad at all. Thank you, everybody, who just sats that thing on stream
Chris: and lets them go as you listen to the podcast. It means a lot to us.
Chris: And then, of course, when you combine that with our boosters,
Chris: everybody who sent a message into the show, we stacked a grand total of 131,654 sats this week.
Chris: If you haven't tried out Fountain FM yet, it is getting so great.
Chris: They've really been working on that and making it a great package.
Chris: And it makes it really simple to boost. Of course, you can keep your podcast
Chris: app and you can boost with something like the Breeze app, which is a lightning
Chris: node in your pocket. You can find that at B-R-E-E-Z.
Chris: It's just the Breeze app. It's really simple. And again, thank you to our members
Chris: who also support us. We really appreciate all of you.
Chris: Now we got two picks before we wrap up our special Canada episode.
Chris: And the first one you've been playing with this morning, and it's making some waves online.
Chris: It's the Gemini command line, an open source AI agent that brings Google's Gemini AI to the terminal.
Chris: What do you think of it so far, Wes?
Wes: Okay, so the front end is Apache 2.0 licensed, so it is open source.
Wes: Obviously, the back end is powered by Gemini, so that comes with all the usual caveats.
Wes: But it's pretty slick and it's a perfect fit for this episode
Wes: because out of the box it comes with themes
Wes: and it looks really nice as a 2i interface
Wes: i sent you a couple pictures they've got some on their github as well
Wes: it's already in nix i'm sure it's in a bunch of other places
Wes: otherwise you can have installation instructions as well and
Wes: it makes it quite easy to get started interfacing with
Wes: gemini and not only is it
Wes: just like a chatbot interface right but it's an agent in the sense that it can
Wes: access with your permission your local file system so i was able to have it
Wes: quickly write me a script to tell brent a secret message it not only spit out
Wes: the code for that right but it saved a file it made the file executable and
Wes: then it even ran the file all from the same little tui interface and.
Chris: It does it looks like it's it's built to run on omarchie like it just looks
Chris: right at home with the theming and the terminal and all of that it's it's pretty great,
Chris: it's neat to see it on the command line honestly.
Wes: It doesn't feel like a it doesn't feel like a google product in a good way.
Chris: Yeah you wouldn't even know it's it's worth it's a
Chris: wild it's a wild future we live in all right and then not one
Chris: but yes folks two picks this week and this one is sniffnet comfortably monitor
Chris: your internet traffic you can say sniffnet is a technical tool but at the same
Chris: time it strongly focuses on the overall user experience most of the network
Chris: analyzers out but they're rather cumbersome to use where SniffNet's Cornerstone
Chris: is to be usable and easy for everyone.
Chris: It's Apache licensed and it is written in Rust.
Wes: Yeah, boy, is it written in Rust. 98.7% Rust, according to GitHub here.
Wes: I don't even know what toolkit it's using.
Wes: It's kind of got a custom looking UI, but it has a very nicely developed UI.
Chris: Yeah. Oh, and I guess it's available for Windows and Mac OS as well.
Chris: You can choose a network adapter. You can set a set of filters.
Chris: You can view overall statistics about your net traffic. You can have real-time
Chris: charts about the intensity of the traffic generated.
Chris: It's a great way to keep an eye on your network even when the thing's minimized.
Chris: You can export and import PCAP reports. It identifies 6,000 upper-layer services,
Chris: protocols, even Trojans and Worms. It just identifies them in the internet traffic.
Chris: It really is a cool app. this is like the kind of tooling that,
Chris: uh, I used to actually use professionally just to analyze and discover networks
Chris: and kind of learn what they're about.
Chris: And I think people should probably run these on their home network about once
Chris: a year and just kind of see what's going on.
Brent: I'm just noting Chris, that you're visiting here, the great white North and
Brent: my wireless networks and such.
Brent: And all of a sudden your pick is this sniffer.
Chris: I couldn't, uh, couldn't, uh, I don't know why that came up. I just, uh,
Chris: Your Wi-Fi working better today, though, right?
Brent: Oh, it seems quite fast. Like double the speed I've seen previously.
Brent: So you let me know if there's any other weirdness going on.
Chris: Yeah, well, don't worry. It's all taken care of now.
Brent: Thanks.
Chris: Yeah, it's a nice little app. Of course, we'll link to it in the show notes
Chris: at linuxonplugged.com slash 622.
Chris: I'd be curious to know if anybody out there has actually tried the Gemini command line.
Chris: Or if our audience is too afraid of it. Are you too afraid? Does it scare you
Chris: because it's Google and it's AI?
Chris: Or are you actually using it out there? or you like wes and you're just out
Chris: there abusing it making it do horrible things i.
Brent: Would love to know what he's done to this thing up to now.
Chris: Yeah yeah i do like that you can have it just go and look at stuff and build
Chris: and then i assume if it fails it figures out from there i mean it's pretty useful actually.
Wes: Yeah and you can you know it can it can handle bigger code
Wes: bases do things beyond gemini's already quite generous one million token context
Wes: window it can you know you can feed it in sketches or pdf so like anything gemini
Wes: can do you're unable to do on top of it just but like tied in more to your local
Wes: file system and it can also talk to things like other mcp servers and stuff too useful.
Chris: Let us know if you give omarchie a try you can
Chris: find it at omarch y.org and we'd love to know what you think of the hyperland
Chris: setup and all of that kick the tires get a blank arch install and run the script
Chris: and give it a go you can try it in a vm i don't think you're going to get the
Chris: same experience but it will run in a vm and report in boost in and let us know what you think of it.
Chris: It's probably not going to be for most experienced Linux users because of some
Chris: of the choices that have been made, but it's beautiful.
Chris: There is a lot of great ideas in there.
Chris: We would love, love, love to have you try it and report back to the show.
Chris: Give it a try. Kick the tires.
Chris: I think that's it from our Canada special show.
Brent: Should we hit the hot tub next, Chris?
Chris: Yeah, you got anything for us to eat before we hit the hot tub?
Chris: You've got to have a snack before we get in the hot tub.
Brent: We got moose steak sitting in the fridge waiting for us.
Chris: Of course we do. We will be back in the studio next week, live at our regular
Chris: time to make it a Tuesday on a Sunday.
Chris: Of course, you can tune in at jblive.tv or jblive.fm.
Chris: The time is at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar, or it's posted early
Chris: in a podcasting 2.0 app for you.
Chris: We'd love it when you join us. We have that mumble room, that matrix,
Chris: all of it. It gives it a real nice live vibe.
Chris: And of course, you can catch the release version all cleaned up by editor Drew
Chris: at linuxunplugged.com.
Chris: We have the RSS feed posted there. And if you're a member, be sure you're checking
Chris: out the bootleg or the ad-free version We've got a couple of extra special things just for you Alright,
Chris: thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Unplugged program
Chris: And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday As in Sunday!