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. Well, today I'll be doing my 50-day Bluefin check-in,
Chris: but first, we're going to have ourselves a little Linux user existential crisis.
Chris: I'll tell you about that. Then we're going to round out the show with some great
Chris: boosts and a blowout worth the price of admission alone pick that you're definitely
Chris: not going to want to miss and a heck of a lot more.
Chris: so before we dig into all of that let's say time appropriate greetings to our
Chris: virtual lug hello mumble room hello hey chris and hello brent hello hello everybody
Chris: joining us thank you for joining us and shout out to all of you up there in
Chris: quiet listening and of course the live chat room as well stay tuned because
Chris: we have a heck of a show coming up,
Chris: but before we get there i want to mention that the nix vegas con has extended
Chris: their call for papers which I believe you can still jump in on and our own Wes Payne has.
Wes: Yeah, that's right. So hey, come to Knicks Vegas, co-located, I guess, at DEFCON 33.
Wes: Yeah, that's right. More Knicks at DEFCON. That seems like a very good idea.
Wes: And yeah, you have to tell the, I think the end of this month to get your paper submission in.
Chris: July 31st, they have a sessionized link that we have linked to in the show notes that you can click on.
Wes: It's an easy process. So if you're just thinking about it, why not throw your hat in the ring?
Chris: And then DEF CON 33, August 7th through the 10th. I mean, people might be just
Chris: coming to DEF CON. They may want to come say hi to Wes Payne.
Chris: You should think about setting up a meetup or something.
Wes: Oh, that's a good idea.
Chris: No, I'm a little jelly. Ah, sounds fun.
Wes: Also- We got a scheme to how to get you to come with me.
Chris: Maybe. I don't know how we pull that off.
Brent: I got a fan. I could pick you up along the way.
Chris: Too bad it doesn't run on air. We also will be at Texas Linux Fest in October.
Chris: So check them out. Maybe get a taco in there and get your plans to come see us in Austin.
Wes: Yeah, that's right. You still got time for their call for papers as well.
Chris: Yeah. So there is a bit still of time in two different events,
Chris: one in the near future and one off in the distant future where we'd be happy to see you.
Chris: So this week, we want to talk about a really big macro trend that's happening
Chris: in the desktop Linux space.
Chris: And then eventually, we'll get into my experience with Bluefin.
Chris: But I want to take a moment and make sure that we all kind of appreciate a shift
Chris: that is happening in the Linux desktop landscape.
Chris: Like, just put it all out there.
Chris: Having now used Bluefin for 50 days, watching projects like Universal Blue,
Chris: which is like the source images behind Bazite and Bluefin and Aurora,
Chris: What we are seeing demonstrate out over there is containerized workflows to
Chris: build a Linux desktop experience that doesn't require forking the project.
Chris: You're building on top of images. You're building on top of layers.
Chris: Instead of, say, in the past where maybe Ubuntu would be based on Debian,
Chris: but it would be a fork of Debian with its own repositories and all of that.
Chris: we're seeing a shift in the way that the desktop is being built and it doesn't require forking.
Wes: And maybe there's a bit of a pulling apart or um you
Wes: know different organizations and people filling different roles
Wes: like what we think of as a distribution yes there was the stuff where you know
Wes: you curated a desktop environment and you kind of pick the apps that went together
Wes: and you put it all into a nice experience but you were also doing a bunch of
Wes: actual packaging and building you know the package that runs systemd and make
Wes: sure that bash exists so that you have a shell to run and like all those things.
Wes: And so I think it's interesting too to see, you know, not everyone necessarily reinventing that.
Wes: It's not a new packaging format all the time, but you do end up with a different
Wes: curated experience often.
Chris: Right. So to get say Bluefin, they don't necessarily need to have their own
Chris: set of package maintainers.
Wes: At least not to the same degree as like trying to, you know,
Wes: bootstrap an arch when you started with Fedora.
Chris: I mean, the maintenance overhead just right there is exponentially different.
Chris: That's huge, right just you know you don't need maintainers that are that are
Chris: necessarily packaging everything maybe you just have to take care of a few of the edge cases.
Wes: And i mean it's not like we haven't seen that i think it's a it's a matter of
Wes: degree and tooling especially right like you've seen ubuntu has relied a lot
Wes: on debian to have a lot of packages but then they rebuild a lot of their own
Wes: stuff and then there's some downstream distributions that pull directly from
Wes: their parent distribution with their own additional archive and some that do a bunch of rebuilds,
Wes: but now you've got you know very explicit technologies like with containers
Wes: that you can really just say from whatever version I like that is almost good
Wes: enough for me and then add on whatever you want.
Chris: Yeah before the show started I ran a command I bet it's still in my command
Chris: history right it should be,
Chris: I ran a really simple command that was just sudo boot C switch.
Chris: And then I gave it the URL to Aurora. And I said, use colon the latest image and hit enter.
Chris: And I went from having a GNOME-based Bluefin system to now a Plasma Aurora system.
Wes: And of course, this is something we've talked about being able to do in the NixOS ecosystem.
Wes: And regardless of that comparison, it's just one of those things like when you
Wes: think about doing it on a traditional distro, you just think,
Wes: I'd rather not. I'll install a new partition, a new system.
Wes: I don't know if I want to co-locate both of these in anything but like a demo.
Chris: I mean, the whole entire process we did live in the bootleg,
Chris: I mean, it was what, five minutes?
Wes: Yeah, and that included downloading, you know, four gigs of files.
Chris: Yeah, so it's interesting. You know, the Bluefin folks, they like to use dinosaurs
Chris: to remind us of the older model.
Chris: Like, you know, sometimes you've got to bury your dinosaurs.
Chris: I know there's imagery there. There's a message there.
Chris: Because I think they view this as like a post-distro model.
Chris: They don't like to call any of the UBlue-based stuff, Universal Blue stuff, a distro.
Wes: Yeah, they build images.
Brent: And is Bootsy like the meteor? Or what's the part of the image here?
Chris: Yeah, it's like a rise of a new evolution of distributions. Fedora Silver Blue,
Chris: Endless OS, Bluefin, Bazite, Ubuntu Core, Nix OS, Steam OS based on Arch.
Chris: Manjaro's working on Manjaro Immutable. Arcane Linux is Arch-based. Blend OS, Vanilla OS.
Chris: Seuss has a Plasma-based and a GNOME-based Immutable. We're seeing this rise
Chris: across all of the distro makers of these immutable or atomic distributions.
Chris: It does seem to be like it's not a trend. It's something everybody's getting involved in now.
Chris: And I think when we first started talking about it, it was like,
Chris: hey, check out this new cool trend.
Chris: With this immutable base, there are also a lot of these distros are going for
Chris: this experience where the user doesn't even really notice it.
Chris: You're not even really aware of this, you know, the fact that slash user is
Chris: read-only or something.
Wes: Right. I mean, so part of it, right, is it's changing the customization layer.
Wes: So maybe instead of adding a PPA and then installing Zoom or downloading a tab,
Wes: right, you're pushed to use stuff like Flatpak or Homebrew or,
Wes: you know, other third-party options that don't mess with that part of the file system.
Wes: And as a result, if you do that, then they can say you don't need to locally
Wes: compose that part of the OS anymore, right? You don't have to worry about stitching
Wes: it together into a working base sort of Linux system.
Wes: We'll do that ahead of time as a single atomic unit. We'll ship that to you,
Wes: and then you just switch between those, and you can keep your layers on top.
Chris: So this is where I think we have a divergence, is I never really had this.
Chris: I had a different experience when I went from NixOS to Bluefin.
Chris: With NixOS, I'm composing the entire system.
Chris: i'm doing these atomic updates where i switch into a different build it felt
Chris: like its own unique beast and so the immutability and the atomic updates were
Chris: just part of this unique beast.
Wes: And it's it's hard not to notice you're using nix os right.
Chris: Right it's.
Wes: Very different you did it very intentionally and the way you interface with
Wes: it is not really like anything else.
Chris: So when i went to bluefin where it felt like traditional linux and that it has
Chris: the standard file file architecture that you expect, the file system architecture.
Wes: The old FHS.
Chris: It felt more of an experience shift.
Chris: It was more realized that this was a system that was designed to be immutable,
Chris: that I wasn't really supposed to be modifying this directly.
Chris: And it sometimes was a problem.
Chris: But it made me realize that it is a bit of a post-Tinkerer's distribution,
Chris: these types of systems. in the sense that...
Chris: You know, this thing, Bluefin, for example, it ships with TailScale integrated.
Chris: But what if I wanted to swap TailScale out for Nebula?
Chris: That's actually a surprisingly large amount of work with a big amount of learning
Chris: to figure out how to customize that image.
Chris: You very quickly end up in, I need to customize an image territory.
Chris: If you just want to, say, swap out a component like TailScale.
Wes: Right. Yeah. And that is where if it's baked in, there's not necessarily as
Wes: easy of an option to unbake it. And so if you're doing it at the layer where
Wes: you want to switch out a flat pack you installed.
Chris: Easy peasy.
Wes: Yeah, exactly. But to make your own customizations, that's where you start having
Wes: to engage in the build pipeline.
Chris: So either this is for people that really like to tinker or it's for people that don't want to tinker.
Chris: And, you know, it's not for people that like to mess with computers.
Chris: I think it's for people that want their computer just to work.
Chris: And there is a lot of people that started with Linux to play around.
Chris: Their computer was a toy.
Chris: They got to learn. They experimented with different desktops.
Chris: They distro hopped quite a bit.
Chris: As time went on, they got busy with jobs, perhaps family or other responsibilities.
Chris: And that toy turns into a tool. And then you extend that far enough out,
Chris: and it gets to the point of you don't want your computer to have problems at all.
Chris: Anything that stops you from just getting work done is very unwelcome.
Chris: And for that category of user, which I suspect is actually the vast majority of real-world users...
Chris: Immutable distros, especially ones like Bluefin, they're totally built for these people.
Chris: Like the developer that just wants a really solid workstation that is container
Chris: first, like, man, is this perfect for them.
Wes: See, that's where I have a bit of a question. I think for developers specifically, I'm less sure.
Wes: There's a lot, because that's where I feel like they're trying to market at
Wes: two different groups, right? And that's why maybe Bazite has a lot more users
Wes: than any of the rest of these, right?
Wes: Because people running Bazite, that's what they want, right?
Wes: I mean, you want a thing that just runs games and doesn't break.
Chris: Absolutely.
Wes: And I think there's a class of developers, and Bluefin especially seems pretty targeted that way.
Wes: And if you can fit into their model where you don't need to rebase, then that works well.
Wes: But it seems like if you are a developer and you do need to make any changes,
Wes: you are going to have to engage.
Wes: So I guess it just feels like on one hand they're saying, we want to build this
Wes: in a way where people who have modern cloud container DevOps skills can change
Wes: it. but that's a different class than people who just want their computer to work.
Wes: I think the people who want their computer to work don't really want to also
Wes: then build a whole bunch of container pipelines for their computer,
Wes: but there's not a lot left in the middle between run exactly the image you get
Wes: or fully engage, and that's where I wonder about the developers specifically.
Chris: It is actually, you're making it, the point you're making really is that it's
Chris: a very targeted type of developer where it just works out of the box.
Wes: Yes. And that might be the majority of them.
Chris: It might be.
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: It might be, but you're right. Like, if you want to swap out a few core components,
Chris: maybe for whatever reason, you got to go with the Docker instead of the Podman.
Chris: That's a lot of work. That's no joke. So you're right.
Chris: If you fall into this world where you get most of your stuff either through
Chris: brew or flat packs and you're good with the stuff they include,
Chris: I think these immutable distros have this very attractive set it and forget it,
Chris: actually semi-bulletproof a quality
Chris: to them that i suspect makes them a stronger competitor to commercial desktops
Chris: if you can fit and that's why it's nice we have a lot of options here but if
Chris: you can fit within their defined parameters i think these immutable distros
Chris: are a stronger contender.
Wes: Well i mean i think they're spot on the most people devs included unless you
Wes: are someone who does want to dev on the desktop, you don't care about doing the composing, right?
Wes: I might care that I need to add a package that I can run, but I don't care at
Wes: all about how the package manager works or the nuances of how the init ramifest gets regenerated.
Wes: That's exactly the stuff that you just should run in the background.
Chris: And I think we have seen the first signs of this. What do you think, Brent?
Brent: I have always been unsure about these immutable systems because everyone I know
Brent: who's been running them have been super technical and want to tinker with stuff.
Brent: but then i hear yeah this is going to
Brent: be perfect for the user who doesn't want things to break and just
Brent: wants to get things done and i wonder if like
Brent: last episode where we explored omarchie and
Brent: the whole point was to use linux for its strengths is this a version of using
Brent: linux for its strengths that might get like bazite a big input of users that
Brent: are looking for a specific thing that traditional distros didn't offer i.
Chris: Think so and i think you know bazite is a great example of where we're seeing
Chris: this if you that's bazite out of all of the universal blue projects has the
Chris: most traction and it seems to
Chris: have appealed not because it's technically interesting and not because it,
Chris: you know, includes this or that, but simply it just makes gaming on a device
Chris: like the Steam Deck really approachable.
Chris: And it solves a lot of challenges just out of the box.
Chris: And it's created this bit of a perception shift around Linux,
Chris: and I think you particularly see it with YouTubers.
Chris: It's the gaming that has sort of opened the door for these popular YouTubers
Chris: to talk about Linux and open it up to a new demographic.
Wes: And I think it's winning because it's working, right?
Wes: It just works. And kind of, especially with, like, they were pretty early, right, with, like,
Wes: getting all the graphics stuff shipped, which is exactly the layer of,
Wes: you know, desktop dev that you can be an expert at, like, using Linux as a dev
Wes: workstation and understand nothing about Mesa and OpenGA.
Wes: And there's all these layers of how graphics and gaming should work on the desktop,
Wes: and now you don't have to care.
Chris: Here's another thing that's been a weird shift for me, is now after a while
Chris: of using NixOS and now 50 days of using Bluefin, when I do jump on an Archbox,
Chris: I don't remember, we were just on Arch recently for something.
Wes: Oh, Merchie.
Chris: Oh, yeah, right. When I jump on an Archbox, I feel like I'm flying without a parachute.
Chris: Like I got no safety net, even though I'm not afraid of breaking the system necessarily.
Chris: But it feels like you're using the computer in root mode almost constantly.
Wes: Wait, I can just install packages right into my root file system?
Chris: Yeah, it's weird.
Wes: Like an animal?
Chris: And this is where I think if this idea that these immutable distributions or
Chris: desktop experiences, whatever you want to call them, become more and more popular,
Chris: which it does seem like that is happening.
Chris: And myself, I don't really see myself using non-immutable distros and ones that
Chris: are atomically updated going forward.
Chris: I just, I don't know why I would go back.
Wes: Interesting. I do think Ilmarchi and the Omicube stuff makes for an interesting
Wes: thought experiment just in terms of how we classify things, right?
Wes: Like what is and isn't a distribution?
Wes: Because like in some ways, Ilmarchi feels like a lot of what Bluefin,
Wes: especially DX is doing in terms of making a well-put-together development,
Wes: ready-to-go workstation.
Wes: they just didn't they left all the regular stuff
Wes: of you install arch or ubuntu and then run our stuff on top and then the bluefin
Wes: and you blue folks are taking going one step further back to then not be the
Wes: full distribution as we were talking about but to step into more of bottling
Wes: that and shipping it as atomic units that you can deploy and then you have all
Wes: the way up to like your fedoras building the whole thing.
Chris: But the universal blue stuff is is a more modern way to do it than the way the
Chris: omararche omacube stuff is right that's bash scripts and installing packages
Chris: from the package manager.
Wes: It's like a layer, right? It's kind of a, it's almost the exact analogy with containers, right?
Wes: It's, they took a lot of, because if you look at the structure,
Wes: there's a build.sh that sources a bunch of other build modules.
Wes: In that respect, it's very similar.
Wes: Once you're in the containerized build environment, what's actually happening
Wes: between it and omarch are very similar, I think.
Chris: Right.
Wes: But then you just stuff all of that in the OCI Bootsy layer.
Chris: But the difference, yes. But the difference is, right, it's happening on each end user system.
Chris: There's a lot of variability there. There's a lot of things that can go sideways after time.
Wes: A big part of this is shift left, we do the builds, and then we know the build
Wes: worked, and then we ship you that.
Chris: Exactly. So there is that difference. But otherwise, yeah, how they actually
Chris: get composed is at the end of the day relatively similar.
Wes: That's why I think it's so fascinating because it exposes this...
Wes: Probably a spectrum is not enough dimensions for this whole chart of different
Wes: options of where you can be on quote-unquote distribution space.
Chris: But here's where I'm going with this is...
Chris: I think Nix OS is, if you will, a divergent path in this immutable future where
Chris: these other systems try to hide some of this from the user.
Chris: And they try to, you know, maybe they offer brew and the flat hub and they try
Chris: to, like, you know, give some options there.
Chris: Where Nix OS is like you go all in and you're managing that.
Chris: You're the one that's constructing that environment.
Chris: It feels like Nix OS and will be the escape hatch where you have this future,
Chris: but you're in total control.
Chris: and you're composing it yourself on the fly with the configuration versus these
Chris: image-based ones where you're basically taking their experience and then you're
Chris: building on top of that if you know how to do that.
Chris: It's going to be two very different paths in the immutability world and the
Chris: best way to really appreciate and understand what I'm saying is to try them both.
Wes: For sure, yeah. Because I think that's where there really is an individual layer
Wes: of like what works for you what escape hatches do you actually need which things
Wes: do you want to tweak and do they fall into the the class of how easy is it to
Wes: do and which how often do you need to do it and how annoying do you find the process and.
Chris: If you haven't tried one yet it might be worth doing
Chris: that just because this is such a trend that seems
Chris: like it's not going away like i said we have just about every distribution under
Chris: the sun that's taking a stab at this there's a lot of options out there so there's
Chris: some shopping you can do there's some playing around you can do there's some
Chris: experimenting you can do to really get a sense of this and at least have some
Chris: experience even if you you know don't make it your daily driver.
Wes: They're really nice too i mean you know bluefin is a sort of secondary uh os
Wes: on your machine to boot into if you have other problems or you just you know
Wes: whatever true it's really nice you know it'll be rock solid it'll update in
Wes: the background and right now i mean they're nice and fresh they got you know
Wes: recent fedora great desktops it's a good time,
Wes: and Blufin's got that fresh installer, which is also pretty nice.
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Brent: Well, we've heard from some of you listeners who've been using these immutable
Brent: systems, I don't know, since they first came out.
Brent: But I want to know, are you going to try this? Have you been using it for a
Brent: while? How has that journey gone? If you want to boost in, let us know. That would be amazing.
Brent: But mostly today, Chris, I'm curious, how has your 50 days of Bluefin gone?
Chris: Can you believe we're here at this party?
Wes: No.
Chris: Like 50 days.
Wes: Oh, I guess that means it's been 50 days since Red Hat Summit.
Chris: That's right. It was Boston. I was inspired by all the Bootsy and cloud-native buzz.
Chris: So I had a Knicks book that Olympiad Mike had just recently gave us,
Chris: and I thought, all right.
Wes: Sorry, Mike. This is the most sacrilegious thing I could do, but here we go.
Chris: So I deployed Bluefin on that laptop while we were at our Airbnb.
Chris: And then when we got back, we deployed it on what had been a Neon workstation,
Chris: which is now, well, currently an Aurora workstation.
Chris: So, of course, I played around with it here and there live, but I mostly just
Chris: put it on the two systems I use the most, which is my laptop and the studio workstation.
Chris: And it's also not only my 50-day mark of using Bluefin, but it's also the four-year
Chris: anniversary of Universal Blue, the project.
Wes: Which congrats to them.
Chris: Yeah. And they started with Bluefin, so that technically makes it four years
Chris: of Bluefin. So I'm using a distribution that just turned four years old.
Chris: There's about 25,000 weekly check-ins of Universal Blue systems,
Chris: Bazite being the most popular, Bluefin and Aurora are up there.
Chris: Of course, that includes Silverblue and Kino Night as well.
Wes: You know, regardless of if it's your community or your distro or image or not,
Wes: it's just, it's great to watch folks building and finding software and Linux
Wes: stuff that works for them.
Wes: And there's like a lot of organic excitement around UBlue and the team behind
Wes: it. And I think that's great.
Chris: And the thing that's neat too is a lot of the original team still involved.
Chris: So that gives it a unique vibe.
Chris: In fact, you could argue they're still very much the center of their community
Chris: and their community really takes place i think on their discourse,
Chris: um they don't have like a reddit presence or a big social media presence outside of that,
Chris: um but it gives a kind of a unique vibe where these people are still very much
Chris: involved they're approachable and uh you know they're making news and they're
Chris: still there it's it's fascinating it's it definitely has its own dynamic unlike
Chris: unlike other distros and i think it's good,
Chris: so let's start with the good and i'll get to the bad uh of using bluefin now for 50 days,
Chris: I think my favorite feature has been the auto update and forget it feature,
Chris: which you can turn on. It's not on by default, but it's nice.
Chris: And after about a month of not rebooting my system, because it was just rock
Chris: solid, I did get a notification that said, you should probably think about rebooting.
Wes: Nice.
Chris: That's a good touch. Yeah, yeah, it was. The Ujust command, which comes with
Chris: all of these Universal Blue-based images, is really nice.
Chris: It makes it easy to update everything. It lets you do lots of system tweaks
Chris: and additions like setting up distro box or virtualization, gaming,
Chris: turning on the command line bling and a lot of things like that.
Chris: It also has like a 2E mode where you can see all the options and get a brief
Chris: description and see what they do. So that's pretty nice.
Chris: And of course, it is immutable. So it has a read-only root file system.
Chris: So only var and etsy are writable by the user.
Chris: And that really hasn't been an issue once.
Chris: It's really been nothing but positive. I don't know, Brent, if I told you,
Chris: you know, you couldn't write to anything but Varanetsy, you'd think,
Chris: well, that's not going to work for me. But it's been totally fine.
Brent: I actually can't remember the last time I wrote to anything but Varanetsy, to be honest.
Brent: So as soon as you say, oh, no, those two folders are writable,
Brent: I was like, well, what am I? Am I losing anything? It doesn't sound like I'm losing anything.
Chris: And I think they make a lot of good out-of-the-box app choices.
Chris: They just recently decided to change from GNOME Software to,
Chris: I think it's Bazaar, which I've been trying and I liked a lot.
Chris: You do end up needing to, I think, add a lot of additional software and set
Chris: up a lot more stuff, but the base stuff they include has been really good.
Brent: See, this is one of my big hesitations, actually. You mentioned in the previous
Brent: segment how difficult it is, let's say, if you want to switch to Docker from
Brent: Podman, which is built in by default, and I'm just curious...
Brent: why not have a version of bluefin that's so vanilla but they have flat packs
Brent: that are pre-installed because that would be a lot easier to modify for instance
Brent: i'm assuming it's because these some of these choices need deeper system i don't
Brent: know integration is that the case well.
Chris: Some things are like like firefox and whatnot those are a flat pack in fact
Chris: in the build you can actually see at some point it uninstalls the firefox rpm
Chris: and then it installs the flat pack of Firefox.
Chris: Like when you go through and watch a custom build of it, right?
Chris: So that's been interesting. But
Chris: I think some things like brew have to be installed in the way they are.
Chris: So that way you can put packages on the system. So some things do require that level of integration.
Wes: Right? Like if they want to deliver the appliance part, then they need some stuff to build with.
Wes: So I think that's to some extent, right? Like if you want to install a bunch
Wes: of the bling, well, some of the fancy, you know, shell helpers come from brew.
Wes: Or if you're gonna, you know, ship images and you need a bunch of escape hatches,
Wes: then you probably need a container runtime so then you're going to have one
Wes: and it's pretty tightly integrated and hooked into the terminal and then so
Wes: if you want to options then do you have to how much work is that to swap out or parallel maintain so.
Chris: They've tried to make you just handle a lot of that stuff.
Wes: But you can definitely you know build from copy their build and from the upstream
Wes: fedora stuff and tweak stuff out that way if you'd like to.
Chris: If you really want to learn how to.
Wes: Do that we can talk more about that yeah.
Chris: We'll talk more about that but what I will say it really has been very Very minimal maintenance.
Chris: I mean, the least fussing, the least maintenance I have ever had with any desktop system, period.
Wes: Chris can't break it approved. You heard it here, folks.
Chris: It is solid. So here's the bad. That's the good. Here's the bad.
Chris: What has worked amazingly well
Chris: on my studio workstation has made me feel a bit boxed in on the laptop.
Chris: This was most felt when setting up the system.
Chris: some changes require pulling down very large images
Chris: for what seems like a simple change and i mean i'm talking
Chris: gigs and gigs of images which not a problem on
Chris: the studio workstation on ethernet bit of a problem when you're on the go with
Chris: a laptop on lte but after the system is mainly set up you will run into this
Chris: from time to time but it's pretty livable so it's not that i don't want to overstate
Chris: it but it's definitely worth having a solid internet connection when you first
Chris: set up your box you will feel that,
Chris: I will admit some of my bias here is I'm not a big brew fan.
Chris: I never really have been.
Chris: In my opinion, it's slow. It uses a lot of computer resources when it is running.
Chris: And the package availability, while decent, nowhere near AUR or Nix.
Wes: What, you didn't want a package system written in Ruby? I don't get that, Chris.
Chris: And so I found myself really suffering during the TUI challenge.
Chris: I mean, if it was something that I couldn't run via Podman or Flatpak,
Chris: i had to play this this game of distro
Chris: box roulette which package manager out
Chris: of the available distro box images can i actually get this installed in
Chris: and man was that tedious and a
Chris: real pain in my butt and you know
Chris: they have this thing called developer mode where you kind of like kick it up into
Chris: a more in more advanced user mode and it
Chris: made me think well they're not opposed to having more advanced
Chris: users and modifications so it'd
Chris: be really nice if there was like a ujustnix command that
Chris: set up the nix package manager or the determinate systems nix installer in like
Chris: a bluefin best blessed way where you had a slash nix i mean the software availability
Chris: would be incredible it would it would open up you'd have brew you'd have nix
Chris: it would be it'd be amazing you could get just about anything in the free software world installed,
Chris: But I did a little digging around, and it seems like the project,
Chris: not really a big fan of this.
Wes: I kind of find this fascinating, I was looking too, because,
Wes: I don't know if you remember, they used to ship it.
Chris: Yeah, well, if you go look it up on Google, Google AI Answers still claims they do.
Wes: And they also ship DevBox, which might have been why they were shipping it originally.
Wes: Yeah, so there's kind of some interesting history there. You can see some users
Wes: sort of like, oh, why did this disappear?
Wes: And it's another case where people are kind of confused because kind of just
Wes: low-key change log notes.
Wes: And then I guess most of it happened on Discord conversation around it.
Wes: And so there's multiple people sort of asking and digging up how it happened and where.
Wes: And there's definitely been lots of asks over the years. So I'm kind of getting
Wes: a little bit of spicy pushback.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's usually it starts with, sorry, this is out of scope for us.
Chris: But then if the person pushes back at all, it kind of gets a little contentious.
Wes: Like, I think it's totally fair to have, you know, they get to say no,
Wes: they get to make this project.
Wes: They're totally right to point out that you can, you know, they publish a whole
Wes: bunch of docs on how to go make your own images on top of this and have a whole
Wes: workflow designed to let you do so.
Wes: So that's all totally valid. But I do wonder about that, like,
Wes: A, just that a lot of people keep asking, that's a signal.
Wes: And then B, like, if you have to add brew, is it really out of scope?
Wes: Like, I know they've had issues with SE Linux. None of them use it,
Wes: so they're not really, like, they don't want to deal with the maintenance burden
Wes: or any maintain any of it.
Wes: It's just sort of, if something feels a little inconsistent that it used to,
Wes: did it used to be in scope? What part of the scope changed where it's no longer in scope?
Chris: And as a user, it would be such an unlock. It would be such an unlock.
Chris: And my kind of next best is an Arch Distro box with the AUR,
Chris: but I'll tell you, the AUR hit rate ain't what it used to be, kids.
Chris: Like, I have a lot of stuff failed to build with AUR that I have no problem
Chris: installing from Nix packages.
Brent: Brew also seems, right out of the box, like a strange choice for a Linux distribution
Brent: to rely on as its primary place to get, you know, packages for user land.
Chris: I think they specifically like that it is distribution agnostic that's because
Chris: they don't really consider themselves a distribution right there they're built
Chris: on top of these core images and then they can layer in brew which works in user
Chris: space and is distro agnostic itself.
Wes: And a part of the issue with nix was sc linux compatibility uh and homebrew plays nicer.
Chris: With that out.
Wes: Of the box i believe.
Brent: I just feel like when's the last time you had brew on a linux distribution period
Brent: like i don't think i've ever run into it so it seemed like a an odd choice i'm
Brent: glad you got to uh at least give it a taste chris and tell us.
Chris: It is funny i i installed something recently and
Chris: the air output was about being able to undo some unable to do something on mac
Chris: os like it had some sort of post install script for max and it tried to execute
Chris: it and it failed so okay so say a guy wanted to add nix just the package manager
Chris: so you know you still had bluefin or Aurora,
Chris: you had the file system standards,
Chris: you really are in a kind of a Red Hat Fedora experience, but you just wanted
Chris: the Nix package availability.
Wes: It's a great place to run it, really, in that sense, because you don't have
Wes: to care about the OS. You can just use it for isolated dev environments or for
Wes: running whatever package.
Chris: This is an example of where you need to start making your own custom images.
Chris: And so we thought, well, this would be a neat opportunity to try to build Blue
Chris: Nixfin, which Wes Payne, you gave a go.
Wes: I did give a go. We'll also have some links. There's a few different folks out
Wes: there who have taken stabs at this as well.
Wes: Yeah, it was kind of fun to go learn more about how you go build your own images.
Wes: I tried both from cloning the whole repo for Bluefin and building that just
Wes: to see what a base from Silverblue, from Fedora, building the whole thing looks like.
Wes: But if you don't want to make crazy changes or not add, you know,
Wes: if you don't want to remove stuff that's deeply tied in, they've got an image
Wes: template repo that you can just fork on GitHub or clone locally.
Wes: It's all powered by Just with a Just file. So that's your entry point,
Wes: just like with Ujust on Bluefin.
Wes: And what this does is it's got a container file set up that runs a build.sh
Wes: script that's ready for you to add your own scripts or whatever you want into.
Chris: So is this where you would say, like, create a slash nix directory at the root?
Wes: Exactly. You can install extra software. You can add extra directories or manipulate stuff.
Chris: Because, like, one of the core complications here is you need a slash nix,
Chris: which you don't get unless you modify the image.
Wes: That's also been made more difficult recently. I believe
Wes: as of 42 they're now moving to use composefs as
Wes: the thing that like composes and puts together this read-only root file system
Wes: which has better integration I guess it also allows like hashing and checksumming
Wes: for security around like what the final file system looks like and stuff but
Wes: it means it's even harder to do hacks at like runtime without modifying the
Wes: image to make it have a and especially for Nix which is like really hard.
Wes: all the stuff that's built is assuming a slash nix at the root. So you really need it.
Chris: So you get in this build.sh, you make your modifications.
Wes: Yeah, and so that's run as part from the just file as building.
Wes: It starts from, like, it's just a container file at the start that says from,
Wes: and then Bluefin, Bluefin DX, Bluefin GTS, Aurora, you know,
Wes: whatever the base image you want.
Wes: And then it handles running your build.sh for
Wes: you in the right environment that's set up so that like rpm os
Wes: tree can run and commit your changes at the very end automatically so
Wes: you don't have to think about that so base one of just
Wes: getting nix going is yeah you just need to add a
Wes: make dir slash nix uh so that that's there
Wes: to work with and then shout out to
Wes: the determinant nix folks because they've done a lot of work and
Wes: continue to do so to not only get nix to play better i mean you don't get a
Wes: whole bunch of extra like verification but just to play better out of the box
Wes: with se linux enabled systems which is which is great and then also specifically
Wes: to make their installer work on os tree systems oh now this gets tricky if you're
Wes: trying to do it i was building my own version of their installer which is
Wes: obviously has a flake so it's easy to do which is great um because they know
Wes: to figure out basically you use slash var right so you make slash var slash
Wes: nix or something like that and then you bind mount that over the empty slash
Wes: nix that you make in the image.
Wes: And so if you leave them a slash nix and you run it at runtime, that'll all just work.
Wes: Now, it gets trickier if you do what I was trying to do, which was build one
Wes: where you could like fully bake nix in.
Wes: I got that working in single user nix mode where you'd have to use sudo or like
Wes: grant yourself permissions.
Wes: With the multi version one, it's tricky because when you're in that build environment.
Wes: Systemd isn't running, but you want systemd to work.
Wes: And I think right now some of the setup process sort of assumes that they can
Wes: write stuff and then reload the daemon and then check that that worked and other
Wes: stuff that you do at runtime.
Chris: So you're telling me to really just make it work with the Terminant Systems
Chris: Nix installer, you just needed to create slash Nix?
Chris: And it could either be var Nix that's bind mounted or whatever.
Wes: Oh, well, that can happen at runtime because slash var is writable.
Wes: You need the right name existing in the image at runtime.
Chris: So it seems like the Bluefin image just needs slash var slash Nix to exist, and then a ujust option.
Wes: Not even that, just slash nix at the base.
Chris: Okay. Well, I was just thinking then a ujust image that bind mounts it or something.
Chris: But yeah, just like a ujust option that just has an image that has slash nix.
Wes: Or, and I think this is what they would push for, right, is some community folks
Wes: who want to copy all, you know, they have, it's all integrated on GitHub Actions.
Wes: You can set it up to build automatically and build a downstream version that adds it on.
Chris: And I just feel like, yeah, yeah.
Wes: If you look at some of the issues, Their perspective is that even adding that
Wes: sort of implies support.
Wes: And I think it's folks that recognize, let's say, that Nix is complicated and
Wes: that they don't, you know, it's not a tool that they're engaging with.
Wes: So I think maybe they've had some bad experiences, perhaps. I don't know.
Chris: See, this is where I feel like, though, I am going to struggle to keep using
Chris: Bluefin on my main laptop because, like, I would like to be able to swap out some of the components.
Chris: But I don't want to go through the process that you just went through.
Chris: Where with Nix OS, I would just add it to my configuration. I need to know the
Chris: syntax, but I can find that pretty quickly and then I rebuild and now that exists.
Wes: Yeah, there is.
Chris: So that's what I'm struggling with. Whereas like on my workstation here in the
Chris: studio, I don't make those kind of changes.
Wes: That is where I think there's kind of an interesting, maybe gap isn't the right
Wes: word, but yeah, right? It's like it's optimized for different parts.
Wes: It's optimized for the appliance user and then it's optimized for like the distro builder.
Wes: Like it would be a great, it would make total sense if you were going to deploy
Wes: a fleet of machines and you wanted to bake Nixon and engage with this process.
Chris: If I was DHH and I lived in the container world, this is how I would be building
Chris: Alma Archie. I mean, how cool would it be to have this, but Arch?
Chris: Like, that'd be really something. Then you'd have the AUR.
Wes: But I agree that it is kind of, unless you're already doing a bunch of container
Wes: stuff all the time, it is, I mean,
Wes: I will say, I think you could definitely do it because for their image template,
Wes: it is, you could fork it on GitHub and then just add one line into the stuff
Wes: and then have GitHub run it probably even.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: And then have an ISO file you could use or a Docker thing.
Chris: It's definitely doable.
Wes: Yes.
Chris: Yeah.
Chris: Maybe, you know, because there are things that I do like about it.
Wes: And it is a cost where like once you figured it out and you can even use GitHub.
Wes: It's all set up to like push to GitHub repo and stuff. So you could have it
Wes: run, bake it in, and then you could just rebase locally.
Wes: And then once you set it up, you can even set your system to just follow that for updates.
Wes: So then you go into GitHub, trigger the action or whatever to build a fresh one.
Chris: Right. That's how you'd want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It could be worth looking
Chris: at because like I've mentioned it a couple of times in this episode so far,
Chris: but having the file system hierarchy standard actually on your system turns out is handy.
Chris: Because what you get is every application that you run, it just sort of seems
Chris: to understand it's on a Linux box, it knows where stuff is, where this can sometimes
Chris: be an issue with Nix. True. Nix OS.
Chris: Not an insurmountable issue, and there's tools to help mitigate it,
Chris: but it is something you just have to think about.
Chris: And it's something you don't have to worry about with Bluefin.
Wes: Right. It might be somewhat more incompatible because things can't write to
Wes: all the places they might want to, but for the most part, you probably don't
Wes: want them writing there without very explicit permission.
Chris: And I don't have to decide which version of VS Code I want to install.
Chris: There is also something nice about the fact that they support writing to etsyudevrules.d Now,
Chris: this is intended to be writable so when you install a package,
Chris: if it's adding hardware support for a device, it can write it to rules.d.
Chris: the way this works in NixOS is you declaratively define a UDEV rule in the configuration
Chris: and then it generates that rule for you.
Chris: Now that's probably a better long-term way to manage a system.
Chris: But an example is like...
Chris: You know, you want to connect a quick hardware device to flash it or a steering
Chris: controller to play a Steam game really quick.
Chris: And you forget that, oh, yeah, I got to actually go define a UDEV rule for this,
Chris: where with this type of system where it has an actual rules.d that you can just
Chris: write UDEV rules to, those devices tend to just work because a package adds that rule.
Chris: And that experience is a little smoother.
Chris: Perhaps not the best long-term way to do it, but is a smoother end-user experience.
Wes: Yeah, there's some more escape hatches in that way. Which I think is kind of
Wes: interesting because there's, you know, it is more of a, like a component composed
Wes: system in that you have like this core bit and then you do have,
Wes: you still have a mutable, writable Etsy that's going to be per device on there
Wes: in a way that's a little different than like how NixOS does it.
Wes: Then you've got like the flat pack layer that you might install and then the
Wes: homebrew layer as well that all act together to get you your final system.
Chris: The experience I've had though with the studio workstation, I mean,
Chris: this is such a no brainer for a headless server.
Chris: if you just took out the desktop graphical environment and just ran this.
Chris: This thing, this low maintenance, if you're running everything as an image anyways,
Chris: man, it's just such a great way to run a server. And I know they're working on something.
Wes: Yeah, they're working on a new one. So they had one based on CoreOS that I had
Wes: not tried, but we'd been poking at.
Wes: So they have a new one called KO. Yeah, there we go. A boot C server image for
Wes: your self-hosting needs.
Wes: And yeah, you could totally see how this would make a ton of sense,
Wes: especially where on a server, you might not need to do nearly as much of that
Wes: kind of base level changes or customization, especially if you're mostly just
Wes: running a bunch of containerized workloads already. It'd be killer.
Chris: I feel like I'm sticking with it.
Wes: I think they also, they do note they include ZFS out of the box too.
Chris: Not only do I just sort of have everything set up, but I just rebased the Studio
Chris: Workstation to Aurora and I haven't really played around with the Plasma version
Chris: yet, so it seems like an opportunity to keep doing that for a bit.
Wes: What did you think of the process?
Chris: Super smooth. I really, really liked the boot C command line stuff is really simple to understand.
Chris: One-liner did the whole thing. Literally a one-liner did the whole thing.
Wes: And kind of just like what you're used to from NixOS, right?
Wes: Like if you reboot, you could go choose the other one and boot it to that.
Chris: I could roll back. That's a big deal. I mean, it really has been super bulletproof
Chris: to the point where it had to remind me to reboot.
Chris: And that, I think, is a pretty good stamp of confidence right there,
Chris: too. It's a really solid system.
Chris: And I feel like it's being built on top of Fedora 42, the latest Fedora stuff,
Chris: which is really good, but always just needs a little bit extra.
Chris: And they're adding that? Yeah.
Wes: Definitely you know uh definitely a lot closer to like a shiny workstation than
Wes: you get with with base fedora as lovely as it is.
Chris: And i'm a lot closer to more like a rolling fedora i mean they have they have
Chris: to do the updates and they have to rebase when fedora 43 comes out but they're
Chris: going to deliver those updates to me and i'm just going to continue to you also have more stuff.
Wes: In flat pack and brew which you can update more on your own timeline.
Chris: Yeah and then you know there if you use the you just auto update not only will
Chris: it do all of the image updates for your system, but it also will do all the
Chris: brew and flat pack updates in the background for you too.
Chris: And the idea is embrace the reboot from time to time, which I need to get better
Chris: about, and then you just come into a fresh system that's with everything up to date.
Wes: Well, you'll just have to start telling us your system uptime,
Wes: and we can shame you until you reboot more often.
Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged. Go unleash your hardware with Unraid.
Chris: It's a powerful, easy-to-use NAS operating system for those that want control,
Chris: flexibility, and efficiency in managing your data.
Chris: Unraid is built on top of modern Linux, and it allows you to mix and match drives of any size.
Chris: That's a big one right there. That means what you have in your closet right
Chris: now, you could throw into production and start utilizing.
Chris: It also includes built-in support for tail scale, so just like check a box and
Chris: the applications on your tail net.
Chris: Static IPs, of course, are supported, but even better for those of us that can't
Chris: run it, it now also supports Wi-Fi out of the box.
Chris: But the thing that really sings are the thousands of applications and the super active community.
Chris: Not only are they great with support, but they're always coming up with stuff.
Chris: I just noticed a community member, John M.,
Chris: recently submitted a script that can automatically monitor the CPU usage of
Chris: your Unraid box and then shift power profiles so that the Unraid box is using
Chris: the most efficient power profile per CPU demand. And it can do it dynamically, too.
Chris: It's just that kind of stuff. There's just a brilliant, brilliant,
Chris: passionate community around Unraid, which means that when you do run into some
Chris: sort of challenge or you have a question or something you want to try,
Chris: you're generally going to find somebody else that's done it or can help you figure it out.
Chris: The other thing that's really nice and just saves you a ton of time,
Chris: the VM stuff for like passing through a GPU or sharing a GPU or getting templates
Chris: so that way you can just design something and then always build from that.
Chris: All really, really straightforward with Unraid. Probably the most efficient way to do it.
Chris: And then in 7.1, they took the ZFS support that's been in Unraid for a little
Chris: bit, and they really brought it to the next level by making it possible for
Chris: you to migrate from an existing Ubuntu system or a Proxmox box or a free NAS.
Chris: You know, when you're ready to go something a little more powerful that has
Chris: a bigger community and more applications, a little more flexible, well, that's Unraid.
Chris: And so it's really something that lets you get started with a lot of the stuff
Chris: we talk about on this show in just minutes.
Chris: So go learn more and support the show. You go to unraid.net slash unplugged. Go check it out.
Chris: You've probably heard about Unraid, but have you actually tried it?
Chris: They do a lot of neat stuff, and they have a great model over there to make
Chris: sure they can continue building that thing and following the latest developments in Linux.
Chris: Check it out and support the show. Go unleash your hardware without having to
Chris: lock into some sort of rigid setup.
Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged.
Brent: Well from last episode we received a little feedback from
Brent: zach writing hey i haven't had a chance
Brent: to try it yet but when you guys were talking about omarchie and
Brent: having a better update mechanism to remove things that you
Brent: didn't want in there first thing that came to mind was the
Brent: common arch project seems to be
Brent: very similar to the boot c and bootable container
Brent: projects but based on creating arch and other distro
Brent: based containers instead of being tied directly to os
Brent: tree and like boot see is in theory you could basically run the omarch install
Brent: script at container build time and then have a bootable image that could just
Brent: be installed directly and updated atomically i haven't played with it yet but
Brent: i'll be sure to report back if i do and see if you guys give it a try.
Wes: Oh thank you zach yeah this looks
Wes: very interesting i don't think i've heard of common arch
Wes: before but having a similar idea
Wes: right like i think one of the strengths of these kinds of approaches
Wes: is just like containers worked to wrap whatever language
Wes: and runtime that you needed right they can work to wrap whatever linux
Wes: you've needed as long as you've got the right sort of hooks to make it
Wes: deployable and runnable so if common arch does
Wes: that part of it uh that sounds great
Wes: we've got a link here from zach to their github org i don't know if they have
Wes: any more docs i see iso builder system base uh core which is a docker file so
Wes: i don't know the best way to find out more but if anyone else does i think it'd
Wes: be definitely something we'd take a look at it might be pretty new you.
Chris: Know on a quick uh i'm archie update i saw dhh post that they're working on
Chris: um getting it down to a five minute install from a fresh system so.
Wes: Essentially like an iso.
Chris: It has like a five-minute setup. He's also been joking about creating Omicron,
Chris: a Linux conference with Vibes.
Chris: And he just did a...
Wes: Did you promise we'd go?
Chris: No, not yet. He did a six-hour Lex Friedman interview, and I skimmed it.
Chris: I don't think Omarchie itself came up, but his thoughts on open source and WordPress
Chris: and removing his systems from the cloud did come up.
Chris: So it sounds like there's a lot more still coming to Omarchie,
Chris: and we'll keep an eye on it. I think it's a fascinating project.
Chris: I suspect you do too. I don't know, what do you guys think? You think it's fascinating,
Chris: right? Like not something we're necessarily using, but it's definitely noteworthy.
Wes: Yeah, absolutely. It's great to see people messing with, building on,
Wes: tweaking, configuring, and sharing, cross-collaborating on Linux.
Chris: I think the thing we're most excited about is the demographic he's going after,
Chris: the way he's talking about it and advocating it.
Chris: I'm definitely going to check back in soon. I think that's something we should do.
Chris: a couple of shout outs I want to try to do
Chris: this more often so I want to just give shout outs to people
Chris: that are contributing value back in time and effort to
Chris: the show and two solid folks that do
Chris: this on a near daily basis are CG
Chris: bass player and Chance M in the
Chris: web chat they're always working on
Chris: the website just making sure things go but recently they had
Chris: to help with a migration we moved this week in Bitcoin
Chris: to be fully hosted on the jupyter broadcasting website there's a
Chris: lot of little bits there they had to pick up for us so i wanted to give them a shout
Chris: out and then i wanted to solicit you listening
Chris: if you notice somebody in our community who's extra helpful or helping with
Chris: the show in some way and sending value back call them out either with a boost
Chris: or a message in matrix we want to try to give those people more attention because
Chris: it's uh the community members that are doing those things that really make a
Chris: big difference we really appreciate it so shout out to all of you out there
Chris: who contribute some value back in time and talent,
Chris: And, of course, we have those of you who contribute your time,
Chris: talent, and treasure, and the treasure in the form of a membership or a boost.
Chris: And we have a couple of great boosts here. In fact, I'm going to say it's KS
Chris: Koba, who is our baller booster this week with 50,000 sats.
Chris: Hey, right. Hey, guys, I'm a new listener to Unplugged coming over from the self-hosted podcast.
Chris: I tried to get into Linux a few times over the last year to have a more work-focused
Chris: computer. I'm an academic and an emergency room doc, which means writing lots
Chris: of research manuscripts or journal articles.
Chris: This means collaborating with others on Word.doc files that has the track changes,
Chris: the comments, all the stuff, and needs a reference manager software.
Wes: That sounds painful.
Chris: This has been, as he puts it, my friction point, bouncing me off of Hyperland
Chris: and Ubuntu for the last two times, ultimately giving up and going back to Windows
Chris: where I can't find a comparable program.
Brent: Fair.
Chris: Any recommendations for others
Chris: doing this kind of work or ways to interact with Windows colleagues.
Chris: I dream of whizzing around my desktop using hotkeys, Tuis, and workspaces.
Chris: This is such a good question.
Brent: It's interesting for that kind of environment too, where I would assume if you
Brent: can optimize your keystrokes to save you time in any way, it is welcomed.
Brent: And if you get used to something like a tiling window manager,
Brent: that can certainly do that for repeated actions.
Brent: So I could see why there's this desire, but interacting with other colleagues with Word documents.
Chris: This is tricky because if you still live in a world where everybody's using
Chris: the desktop application workflow and they're using this reference manager software
Chris: that's Windows specific, that's where you get jammed up.
Chris: What's liberated Linux users over the last decade has been the migration to
Chris: web apps where it's all web workflow.
Wes: It doesn't matter what platform you're on.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Back in the day when i had to use some windows apps like
Wes: that uh i ended up just running
Wes: it all in a vm so i just have like a windows vm and i would do it in
Wes: there at that time i was using virtualbox which
Wes: had the functionality to pop out windows from inside
Wes: your windows vm so i can't say i would recommend that setup to anyone sane but
Wes: you know there are things you could do like that but it would depend on how
Wes: much of you know if it just means a single giant vm window and you don't get
Wes: any of the benefits that's probably not worth it if it's like you can run a
Wes: couple apps in a way where you can still take advantage of your window manager
Wes: and Linux shortcuts, maybe there's something there.
Chris: Yeah, I was hesitant to recommend the VM route just because that can be painful.
Wes: You also need hardware that's going to do it in a way that isn't awful to work with.
Chris: But you could just have a dedicated Windows virtual desktop and you just run
Chris: Windows full screen on that virtual desktop and when you switch over to it,
Chris: you're in Windows and then you switch back and you're doing all your other work. I mean, it's doable.
Chris: Let us know if you find anything, KS, and if anybody has any recommendations,
Chris: please send them and we will pass them along because I have been in that spot.
Chris: I've been there and I really feel, feel for you.
Chris: Also, thanks for boosting and listening to the show. Nice to have you on board.
Wes: No stromo boost in with 25,000 cents.
Wes: We got some weird looking stuff and maybe improperly or incomplete base 64.
Chris: Did you have to fix his improperly encoded message?
Wes: Well, it looked like base 64. So it wasn't totally happy, but it did spit out
Wes: hi with a smiley face. So we'll take it.
Chris: Hello there. I like that you had to razz him on his improperly.
Wes: I mean, it could have been my software processing it too. Who knows?
Chris: I mean, you could have just not called him out. I mean, I'm just saying.
Wes: It could be my base 64.
Chris: Oh, yeah, no.
Brent: He's back there.
Chris: Yeah, there you are.
Wes: I wasn't trying to blame you, Stromo.
Chris: Thank you, Stromo. Appreciate the boost.
Brent: Well, there's a mega rove ducks here from Derivation Dingus.
Brent: Hey, Chris, I think you nailed it with the point about how early we are on everything
Brent: here at Linux Unplugged. We aren't wrong.
Brent: The rest of the world is just slow.
Brent: At least that's what I'm going to tell myself.
Brent: You know what they say, stay humble and stack sats, you lovely bunch of trendsetters.
Chris: Oh, thank you, derivation. I've been reflecting on that. I still feel that way.
Chris: You know, we're out there a little, we're too ahead of things sometimes.
Chris: And it means that we don't necessarily address the mass market we could potentially be addressing.
Wes: But hopefully you're all still listening in 2050, the year of the Linux desktop.
Chris: One day we'll be right. One day. Mixit, that's how I say it,
Chris: comes in with 20,000 sats.
Chris: please more unhinged ai audio as you come across it you have no.
Brent: Idea what west creates on a weekly basis.
Chris: Daily basis let's be honest oh man do you have any recent favorites west there's been some good ones.
Wes: There have been.
Chris: Yeah yeah i love it when you get the voices that's always my favorite.
Wes: Well that british van lifer was pretty decent.
Chris: That was that was good that was.
Wes: But i'll keep that and try to pick a very good one sometime.
Chris: For you there.
Wes: Mixip.
Chris: There you go.
Wes: Doornail 7887 comes in with a row of ducks.
Wes: First boost.
Chris: Hello. Thank you.
Wes: Yeah. Coming in from Podverse. Nice.
Chris: Wow. So not only is it their first boost, but then they also set up AlbiHub, I'm imagining.
Wes: Probably, yeah.
Chris: Well done.
Wes: Episode 620 hit home for me. Brent loves building things.
Wes: I have 11 ESPs spread across a larger property with a barn, greenhouse,
Wes: and a garage, all separated from the house.
Chris: My guy.
Wes: Zigbee and Z-Wave never really worked, but Wi-Fi solved my problem.
Wes: One ESB8266 is a custom thermostat for our greenhouse furnace.
Wes: All powered by Home Assistant.
Wes: Saves a ton in propane costs.
Wes: Now, I can't seem to get fountain working at all. Email codes just say, that didn't work.
Chris: Any ideas? No. That's a very odd, that's a very odd error message.
Chris: But they do have a Telegram group. If you're on Telegram, you might pop in and
Chris: see if somebody can help you there.
Wes: Way to persevere, too. But, you know, bouncing off fountain and you still sent a booze.
Chris: So, props. No kidding. Absolutely. gosh dang it this i like you you're a hot
Chris: ticket thanks doornail i have fantasized about using home assistant to automate
Chris: a greenhouse because it just seems perfect both from the heating and the cooling
Chris: and the humidity monitoring you could also do soil sweet.
Wes: Plant dashboard yeah.
Chris: Yes dude you've.
Brent: Also fantasized about using esps to get a custom thermostat in lady jupes.
Chris: Oh for sure like to run the furnace yes absolutely one.
Brent: Day one day well bhh boosts in 2000 sets,
Brent: Hi, guys. I just looked into SniffNet, which was the pick from last episode.
Brent: That GUI toolkit is iced. Just figured I'd let you know.
Wes: Oh, thanks, PJ.
Chris: Yeah, nice to hear from you. Thank you for the boost. Well, PJ's here with 12,140 sats.
Chris: Ahead of the curve with Linux stuff, this boost amount is how long ago the last
Chris: Arch Challenge was prior to the release of this episode.
Chris: Can you figure it out? It's 12,140. 40.
Chris: I remember thinking, it's about dang time. Yeah, fair, fair.
Chris: Yeah, we're done. That's the crazy thing about our audiences.
Chris: They're ahead of us on a lot of this stuff too.
Chris: So Wes, did you do the math there?
Wes: Well, let's see, we got some hints, huh?
Chris: Yeah, the first two digits is years. Ignore the zero. So...
Wes: Is that 2013 if we subtract 12?
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Wes: Okay, and then ignore the zero.
Brent: Oh, how long ago? Oh yeah, that's a tricky one. I was going to say 12.
Brent: It might be 2012 it's close.
Wes: Could be 2012 too yeah could be.
Chris: Yeah 2012 2012 2013 seems like the right range.
Wes: What are we doing with the 14 though it's 14 clearly yeah month 14 that makes.
Chris: Sense,
Chris: 14 2012.
Wes: Got it all.
Chris: Right nailed it let us know how we did pj let us know.
Wes: Rotted mood boost in with 10 000 cents ah this is a check-in boost from episode
Wes: 618 the two-week challenge kickoff we got some live long and prospers and mood
Wes: says getting caught up on old episodes a.
Chris: Time traveler check in thank you sir appreciate that that's nice see we're getting some data.
Wes: That's great yeah.
Brent: Pingu98 boosted in another row of ducks,
Brent: Keep up the awesomeness. I'm a recovering Linux on Chromebook addict.
Brent: Finally got working audio on my 2019 Pixel Go, running Ubuntu 2504.
Brent: It's like having a new machine. I could probably have done that ages ago with
Brent: Arch, but I'm not quite there yet.
Chris: Nice. You know, we all got into some kind of weird thing. I,
Chris: instead of doing Chromebooks, got into Netbooks for a while.
Wes: Oh, yeah, I had a Netbook.
Chris: Thought that was going to be a big thing.
Wes: It was a great size.
Chris: We did get unity out of that. Thank you, Pingu. Appreciate that.
Chris: Marcel's back with 5,000 sats.
Chris: Brent, I didn't tell you about these projects last time I saw you,
Chris: simply because they didn't exist yet. I'd be happy to talk about them next time
Chris: you're in Germany, though, wink, wink.
Chris: I can even bring the e-paper screen.
Chris: I know you love Berlin, but Bavaria is worth a visit, too.
Brent: I'm noting how a lot of these European cities start with bees.
Brent: So all the B cities must be the good ones, right?
Chris: Makes me hungry. Makes me think of breakfast.
Brent: Yeah, I did call on Marcel last episode because he mentioned all sorts of really
Brent: great projects that the last time we were together, we didn't get a chance to chat about.
Brent: So glad to hear you're learning new things and always pushing the envelope.
Brent: Sounds like we're on the same path. I like that.
Chris: And it is nice to hear from you, Marcel.
Wes: Confi, blue sin with 2,500 sats. No message, all sats. thank.
Chris: You sir appreciate the value.
Wes: But gene bean comes in with uh double ducks oh.
Chris: That's 4444 sats.
Wes: Oh and this one's directed right at me wes how do
Wes: you deal with the fact that esp home in nix is always way behind ah fair i've
Wes: tried going that route for building updates but it lags behind uh haos and the
Wes: associated add-in too much so far for me i've resorted just using a virtual
Wes: environment on mac os to do builds so that the version versions match and builds are fast so.
Chris: I'd be curious to know actually in practice why you need the latest versions of esp home that's what,
Chris: But generally, unless you're doing something pretty new, I don't really know if you need it.
Chris: Like in practice, I don't know how much it matters. And I'm curious if Gene
Chris: Bean has a reason why. You know what I mean? Yeah, right.
Wes: How often do you need to update if you're not making a change or whatever?
Chris: I don't think it's going to impact you.
Wes: I did a little bit of looking. And my first honest answer, Gene,
Wes: is I just really haven't used it really in anger yet. So it may be that I run
Wes: into exactly this problem.
Wes: I do suspect I may, I'll probably start pretty small and may not need to update
Wes: them a ton once they are working. So we'll see how much that matters.
Chris: So, I mean, you're talking about setting up pretty basic, like,
Chris: IR blaster, temperature sensor type stuff.
Wes: Yeah, that's where I'm starting anyway. And I've been surprised how well it has worked.
Wes: I did look, and right now, or at least as of whenever this boost came in the
Wes: other day, it was up to date in terms of the ESPHome package in Nix.
Wes: And it looks like the last few updates are pretty much just the real good kind
Wes: of Nix packages updates, where it's basically just changing a version,
Wes: the URLs all stay the same, the dependencies stay the same, and you just need
Wes: a new hash and a new version string.
Wes: and those are really pretty easy if I did need to,
Wes: hack that in to myself to get a new version I'd be willing to do that or even
Wes: just clone the package or whatever so may do that with an escape hatch but I
Wes: think right now this is homework for me to do some more ESP work this summer
Wes: so I can report back on if this is actually a problem in practice and if.
Chris: Gene has any examples I'd love to know.
Wes: Totally yeah I'm curious more about your setup there Gene he.
Chris: Also had something we should check out which looks like it's some Hyperland
Chris: setups that are kind of like ready to
Chris: go for like different And it's like Jakoolit, I think is how you say it.
Wes: Okay, yeah.
Chris: Put a link to that in the show notes.
Wes: I've already played with the Fedora one and plan to try the Ubuntu one today.
Chris: I mean, that's neat. Cool.
Wes: A passionate Linux enthusiast. Okay. And tech hobbyist.
Wes: Neat, but sharing cool setups. Yeah. Fedora Hyperland, Hyperland Ta,
Wes: Debian Hyperland, NixOS Hyperland's in here.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Okay.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Cool. Thank you, Gene.
Brent: Well, Magnolia Mayhem sent us, not quite a row of ducks, it's 3,333 sets.
Brent: all caps it says go podcasting.
Chris: Yeah go podcasting thank you go podcasting nice to hear from you mayhem appreciate
Chris: that that came in this morning as uh the live stream was getting set up so uh
Chris: thank you that's a fresh boost fabian came in with 2 500 sats,
Chris: Also, a fresh boost came in on our live stream. I disagree that Google isn't crawling more.
Chris: Every website I manage is getting hit by bots, including Google bots,
Chris: way more than I've seen in the last 15 years, especially in a faceted search page. A lot harder.
Chris: I have also been seeing a lot of noise about the bots intensity increasing.
Chris: We were talking about in the pre-show, like there's this number they have now
Chris: of something like, what did they say, 1500 bots scrapes to every one user visit?
Wes: Yeah, and I think maybe, because I think they were trying to say more that the
Wes: visits were going down, not necessarily anything about the scraping traffic.
Chris: But the scraping traffic is also going up.
Wes: That would make sense.
Chris: So it's a two, what they're getting at is that the problem is that a lot of
Chris: times information is either provided directly by Google or an AI assistant now,
Chris: so you don't need to go to the website.
Chris: And they're scraping more often. And of course, people want to have more current
Chris: information. So that's probably another reason why the scrapers are turned up. It is a problem.
Chris: I don't know if, like, it could be maybe we level off.
Chris: Like, it's really hard to say where this goes. If people have other insights
Chris: on this or if you've noticed traffic, your project, I'd really like to hear that.
Wes: Yeah, I wonder if we'll see more, right, like Cloudflare's trying to do more,
Wes: like, hey, if you paid a scrape.
Wes: And we've seen, like, the Anubis project you all talked about on Self-Hosted coming in.
Chris: Right.
Wes: So.
Chris: Well, thank you, everybody, who supported the show with a boost.
Chris: You helped make Episode 623 directly possible with your support.
Chris: shout out to all 24 of you who just streamed those sats
Chris: as you listen you just sat back and sent some value collectively you
Chris: stack 63,227 sats
Chris: just by streaming them when you combine that with our boosters we stacked a
Chris: total of 226,810 sats this week not too bad not too bad would love to see that
Chris: number creep up a little bit but we still appreciate all the support it really
Chris: is one of our favorite segments.
Chris: We get the interaction with you, new ideas come into the show,
Chris: and the messages are extremely motivating for us.
Chris: And on top of that, the entire thing is built on open source and open standards.
Chris: There's no middleman, there's no Stripe, there's no PayPal taking a cut.
Chris: It just goes from your podcaster wallet to our nodes.
Chris: And each of us are set up in a split directly, including the podcast app and the podcast index.
Chris: Thank you, everybody who supports with a boost. You can do it with Fountain
Chris: FM. That's the easiest way to get started.
Chris: but there are other paths like Podverse and AlbiHub if you like to do the self-hosted
Chris: thing and of course you can use the podcast index if you have AlbiHub too so
Chris: there's some other options there.
Chris: Thank you everyone and thank you to our members.
Chris: Now the show actually begins, because this week our pick is a doozy.
Chris: It's a brand new project that's only about a week old.
Chris: It was started on kind of a lark, I believe by Jack Dorsey, and now has been
Chris: picked up by a rather large community.
Chris: The project is called BitChat, and it is Bluetooth Mesh Chat with IRC vibes.
Chris: It is decentralized peer-to-peer messaging that works over a Bluetooth mesh.
Chris: No internet required, no servers, no phone numbers. You can do private chats.
Chris: You can do public group chats.
Chris: It is very early days, so we're not necessarily counting on the security,
Chris: but it has a lot of great security ideas implemented.
Chris: We'll want to see how it goes. It is an open source project.
Chris: But what's really insanely neat is that it is decentralized mesh networking,
Chris: not like MeshTastic, which is using low-powered radio.
Chris: This is just using the Bluetooth in your phone. So it's a much shorter range
Chris: thing, but you could think of, you know, at an office, at a group event,
Chris: during a protest, you could actually really see different scenarios where being
Chris: able to stand up mesh group chat very quickly could be really valuable.
Wes: I'm blanking. In a past episode, I tried one I used on the plane.
Wes: It might have used the Wi-Fi, maybe use Bluetooth, but it was not nearly as slick or easy.
Wes: Besides the permissions step, which is standard these days, it really just worked pretty quick.
Wes: I mean, you and I popped right on. Yeah, you updated yours, and then we were
Wes: able to immediately chat.
Chris: And it has such, such awesome IRC vibes. And I've really been missing IRC recently.
Chris: You do a slash, and you get this beautiful menu of all your different commands.
Chris: You can set up a new channel. You can hug someone. You can slap someone with a trout.
Chris: A lot of the classic IRC stuff.
Chris: it has emergency wipe too you can triple tap and clear all the data,
Chris: ios and android versions exist they
Chris: use lz4 for message compression it has
Chris: really good adaptive battery modes and they really worked on optimizing the
Chris: networking it's really fun and early but each device acts as both a client and
Chris: a peripheral that does the transmission it does automatic peer discovery it
Chris: has stored and forward offline message delivery so wes was able to DM me a message
Chris: even when I had the client closed...
Chris: I mean, it's pretty neat.
Brent: That's so great.
Chris: Right? And, again, needs to be tested early days.
Wes: Don't go using it to exchange a whole bunch of your most precious secrets.
Chris: But they are trying to use really good encryption technology here, too.
Wes: Okay. And, yeah, it does look like, what, there's Android and iOS?
Wes: It was iOS first, and then they ported it to Android, I think?
Wes: So there's, like, a Swift and then Kotlin version.
Chris: Yeah, it's basically two different projects, right?
Wes: At least the Android one is MIT-licensed. I have not checked on the iOS one.
Chris: I saw TechCrunch did a really lazy takedown. The headline is,
Chris: quote, Jack Dorsey says his, quote, secure new BitChat app has not been tested for security.
Chris: I mean, like, the dude wrote this on a Saturday and a Sunday.
Chris: And then, like, on a Tuesday, they're giving him a hard time for not having it audited.
Chris: Right? And Dorsey's created a white paper, which is what people are following
Chris: to do the different implementations.
Chris: So it's really lazy and cheap to take a shot at something that's, like, seven days old.
Chris: But that's the entire pitch of the TechCrunch article. So, you know,
Chris: this is, of course, going to get parroted by anybody that...
Wes: Hey, you clicked.
Chris: Well, it got me, yeah. It's just, it's very clicky.
Wes: IOS version is under the unlicense.
Chris: Okay.
Brent: Yeah, which is basically straight to public domain, as far as I can see,
Brent: which is really interesting.
Chris: Yeah. I think it's a little harder to get the iOS version because you have to
Chris: go through TestFlight at the moment and there's a 10,000 max.
Wes: Right.
Chris: But, you know, with Android, and especially if you use Obtainium,
Chris: you just point at the GitHub repo and it just installs the APK.
Chris: It's really nice. It's so fast, and the battery life seems to be very minimal
Chris: because I've had it installed for days and I haven't noticed any major impact.
Chris: I could also see this being just a great chat with the wife and kids around the house.
Chris: Like, why do we need to be doing anything over the Internet?
Chris: And one of the things that I've always been looking for is some sort of offline...
Chris: We could be camping without internet chat. And I was thinking NextCloud chat,
Chris: but that's a lot of, it's a lot of overhead I have to run.
Chris: These are just really simple apps that we could just use for just quick messaging
Chris: back and forth when like one of us is inside and one of us is outside or we
Chris: just want to send each other notes.
Wes: Yeah, and it's just so easy to get going. And the idea of a little Bluetooth
Wes: app, Bluetooth mesh is so cool.
Wes: I did look, Briar was the other app that I'd tried previously.
Wes: It does Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it's a little more involved.
Brent: This would be really fun for us to use at conferences whenever we meet up with
Brent: the JB community, just so we can all have a shared experience.
Brent: And I know we did that with MeshTastic. At scale.
Chris: Well, we did that at scale.
Brent: Yeah, we did it a couple times. It was fun, but not everybody has a MeshTastic
Brent: device, etc. But everybody has a Bluetooth on their phone.
Chris: That's the thing.
Wes: Where in the giant expo hall are you guys?
Chris: Well, and you could have channels, so you could see how that could be really
Chris: useful. And the thing that's nice is, A, no account or phone numbers required.
Chris: so people don't have to go through a sign-up process that's always finicky when
Chris: you're trying to do anything like that at scale. And there's no server.
Chris: So you don't have to worry about setting up a server that people can get to
Chris: from the event Wi-Fi. It's none of that. It's just a Bluetooth mesh.
Chris: But the other thing that I think is fun and awesome to see is that this was
Chris: essentially a vibe-coded idea with a white paper,
Chris: and it's gone from that to a community building out both iOS and Android versions
Chris: and creating something real here.
Chris: in like seven days. So it's a perfect example of how sometimes open source software
Chris: can just catch fire and really take off.
Chris: And maybe it doesn't go anywhere. Maybe it ends up having security flaws.
Chris: But in the meantime, it's a lot of fun to check it out. And like Wes says,
Chris: it's not the distribution.
Chris: It's the fun you have composing the distribution along the way.
Wes: And troubleshooting strange, esoteric.
Chris: Anyways, link to BitChat, both for iOS and Android, and some of the details
Chris: about how it works in their encryption, which looks like they're really taking
Chris: a good shot at making this a private communications tool as well.
Chris: But you just kind of want to wait and see how that works out in actuality.
Chris: All right, that's it for us. Don't forget, we'd love to hear your experiences
Chris: with immutable distributions. If you've tried it, if you're willing to try it,
Chris: if you bounced off of it, any of that, boost in and let us know.
Chris: It's one way you can support episode 624 and get your message read on the show.
Chris: Anything above 2,000 sats does get read.
Chris: Now, if you want more shows, we're wrapping up and you're wishing we weren't
Chris: done yet, you're probably a great candidate for the bootleg.
Chris: That's at linuxunplugged.com slash membership.
Chris: Right now, the bootleg's clocking in at like two hours and 35 minutes with lots
Chris: of extra content in there.
Chris: And then last but not least, we should mention, Wes, we should try to mention
Chris: every episode that we have both transcripts and chapters.
Chris: That's right. So you can find what we've talked about. I just,
Chris: I got an email from an individual that says, gosh, I wish you'd put the names
Chris: of everything you talk about in the show notes.
Chris: Well, one next best thing to that could be you check the transcript.
Chris: We try to link everything we can at linuxunplugged.com slash 623 or whatever
Chris: the episode number is. but the next best bet would be the transcript.
Wes: Yep.
Chris: And those chapters mean you can go right to the segment. So if you want to replay
Chris: the bit chat segment, you sure can.
Chris: But then the real power move is to join us live. Make it a Linux Tuesday on
Chris: a Sunday. Come on over to jblive.tv.
Chris: That's right. JBLive.tv at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m.
Chris: Eastern. That's where our virtual lug gets together in our mumble room,
Chris: our matrix chat chats, along with us and helps us title the show.
Chris: It just gives that live vibe. You know? Just that live vibe that we like so much.
Wes: Yeah, if you come, you can hang in a certain Chris Lasta as a little DJ and
Wes: sometimes you had some great picks this morning, let me say.
Chris: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you got to get a little early for that.
Chris: All right, well, that's everything we talked about. Links at linuxunplugged.com.
Chris: So that's everything right there. That's it.
Chris: Also, you can check out notes.jupiterbroadcasting.com if you want to do some backlog searching.
Chris: notes.jupiterbroadcasting.com. Thanks so much for joining us on this week's
Chris: episode. We'll see you next Tuesday, as in Sunday!