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, the gentlemen. Well, coming up on this week's of the show,
Chris: we're going to stop the clock a little bit, pull a few loose threads from recent episodes.
Chris: And, well, some of them may unravel into something that we didn't expect.
Chris: But the idea is to catch up on a few things and then round out the show with
Chris: some great boosts and picks and a lot more. So before we get there,
Chris: let's do a little business and say time-appropriate greetings to our virtual
Chris: lug. Hello, Mumble Room!
Chris: Hello, and hello all you up there in the quiet listening and everybody out there on the streams.
Chris: Thank you for being here this morning. And a big good morning to our friends
Chris: over at Defined Networking.
Chris: Go check out Manage Nebula at defined.net slash unplug.
Chris: They've taken the Nebula project and they've made it easy for anyone to use.
Chris: When you go to defined.net slash unplug, you can sign up for 100 devices for
Chris: free, no credit card required, and try out the world's most robust,
Chris: industry-leading mesh network.
Chris: One of the things that I've learned over the years is that when I'm building
Chris: my infrastructure, I want something that will last a long time.
Chris: And when you really wrap your head around how useful a mesh network is, I mean, it's next level.
Chris: It will completely change the way you do networking for the better.
Chris: And so when you start to really think that way, you also start thinking long-term.
Chris: And what I love about Nebula is absolutely everything is self-hostable.
Chris: It's not just sort of like a secondary thing that they kind of have available.
Chris: It's how they build the product.
Chris: It started that way back in 2017 from the very get-go to protect Slack.
Chris: They had to build it ready to go.
Chris: And now they've made it easy for anyone to use. And at any point you want to
Chris: self-host the infrastructure, you can.
Chris: So support the show and get started by going to defined.net slash unplugged.
Chris: Redefine your VPN experience today. Defined.net slash unplugged.
Chris: So I want to make sure that we remind everybody that we want your submissions. We've got a nice batch.
Chris: We don't need thousands, but I'd like to have some more because just around
Chris: the corner, it's something special for the holidays. It's the great Holiday Home Lab.
Chris: It is that magical time of year. Hopefully your servers are humming.
Chris: Someone out there's NAS is running in a cardboard box, no doubt.
Chris: We want to see it all from the best home labs to the worst. Send them in.
Chris: It's our great holiday home lab. The first ever, go to linuxunplugged.com slash
Chris: holiday, where we will redirect you to a Google form.
Chris: If you don't want to use the Google form, you can make our jobs harder by going
Chris: to linuxunplugged.com slash old fart, and then you can figure out how to take
Chris: that and put it in an email with links to stuff and make it work good because it doesn't work good.
Chris: I don't know if I'm even going to have the time. I'm just telling you.
Chris: But that's LinuxUnplugged.com slash old fart. Submit some photos,
Chris: short descriptions, your hardware list. Tell us what your home lab actually does.
Chris: We're going to have some awards to give away. The Grand Rack Award,
Chris: the Silver Pseudo Award, the Best Effort Award, and then the LUP Rescue Mission
Chris: for the home lab that really needs it. And we may even make an episode out of that one in the future.
Chris: So we'll be scoring them on functionality, design, ingenuity,
Chris: efficiency, documentation, personality, effort, We've had some other suggestions
Chris: we may be incorporating.
Chris: So the entries are open right now. Get your Homelab in. It doesn't have to be
Chris: a killer, although you're welcome to show off a killer.
Chris: And later in December, we'll be kicking off the great Homelab.
Chris: What do you call it? I guess voting? No? Results? I guess it's the results.
Chris: It's the results show. The award show? I don't know.
Wes: Homelab review.
Chris: We are giving away some awards, so I guess it's technically going to be an award
Chris: show. I don't know if we'll call it that.
Chris: That doesn't matter. What matters is don't be a procrastinator.
Chris: Go to linuxunplugged.com slash holiday, get them in so that way we can all have
Chris: a magical home lab holiday thing. It's going to be a lot of fun.
Chris: Can't wait to see people send in.
Wes: Yeah, think about it. Some people will be away from their home labs at the holidays.
Wes: So this maybe will help them feel like their home lab.
Chris: So, you know, one of the challenges of doing a weekly show is finding time to
Chris: stop and talk about stuff we've already talked about. Because you're always kind of moving forward.
Chris: And sometimes we cover something and our thoughts change on it. We use it for a while.
Chris: Or a project changes or has updates. And that's really just one example.
Chris: Probably I could give you hundreds.
Chris: And it's something I wish we could do more often because there is going to be
Chris: some recency bias when we do this sort of thing.
Chris: So it'd be nice if we could do it a little more often, but as we're kind of
Chris: in the holiday season, I thought this would be a good time to look at some of our leftovers.
Chris: And I want to touch on something that came up recently on the show.
Chris: I came up with a really fun way to spin up an Ngrok tunnel on demand.
Chris: And then Wes comes along and says, why don't you try Jelly Swarm instead?
Chris: And I thought, hmm, OK. The Jelly Swarm, if you don't remember,
Chris: brings all your Jellyfin servers together in one proxy interface.
Chris: You can have multiple Jellyfin servers on private networks.
Chris: And then depending on how you
Chris: make that networking work, you can kind of watch them all from one place.
Chris: And that was essentially what I was trying to accomplish. So I do have an old
Chris: VPS that I say is sort of an orbit around Lady Joops. and that is already on my mesh network.
Chris: So that just made sense because that server can already talk to the Jellyfin server.
Wes: Problem solved.
Chris: And it has a public IP. So I quite easily installed JellySwarm on this VPS.
Wes: You probably just Docker containers.
Chris: Yeah. Really quick because it's an old Ubuntu LTS system.
Chris: And boy, that's it, man.
Chris: It's like because I already was on my mesh network, I just gave it the IP of
Chris: my Jellyfin server and the credentials. I love the way it does the mapping for
Chris: user logins and accounts.
Chris: And it works so great that I'm just totally going to rip out that Endrock tunnel for Jellyfin.
Wes: You're not going to make it, like, turn on your swarm or something?
Chris: What I'm going to do is I'm going to use that Endrock setup,
Chris: or maybe another setup I'll come back to, for NextCloud and Utah,
Chris: which I'll talk about in a moment.
Chris: But I might just leave my swarm on all the time.
Chris: I might just leave it on all the time.
Wes: All right. I like it.
Chris: I'm thinking about that.
Brent: I'm a wee bit sad because you were so proud of that Ngrok setup.
Brent: And then Wes just came along and was like, well, here you go.
Brent: It's already solved for you. And it's even better.
Chris: It is better. It's a jellyfin specific solution. And in my opinion,
Chris: if you're comfortable setting this kind of thing up, it more than answers the Plex sharing problem.
Chris: To me, it's a solved problem now. So that's really nice. But I do think there
Chris: is use for network tunnels. I still think there is.
Wes: Yeah, definitely, of course.
Chris: Sweepy posted, I was yelling Pangolin at my screen hearing you talk about the
Chris: ngrok for Jellyfin access.
Chris: Pangolin supports a variety of auth methods, including temporary share links
Chris: that you could drop right in your setup.
Chris: And it's an identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy server that comes with a dashboard UI.
Chris: You can do self-hosted version, and it has a reverse proxy server with identity
Chris: and context-aware access controls
Chris: designed to easily expose and protect applications running anywhere.
Chris: It can act as a central hub that connects isolated networks,
Chris: even those behind restrictive firewalls, through encrypted tunnels enabling
Chris: easy access to remote services without opening ports or requiring a VPN.
Chris: I am, I was aware of this project, but kind of like Ngrok, I'd never really used it.
Chris: And so for some reason, I just didn't, it didn't come to mind.
Chris: But I kind of, I kind of wonder.
Wes: Well, you're only kind of using.
Chris: Yes.
Wes: Right. Let's like set up an authenticated identity aware project specifically
Wes: to only use a temporary access part of it. Maybe.
Chris: I was wondering your take on this. Do you think this is overkill?
Wes: It depends because depending on how much friction there is, that might not actually
Wes: be a bad thing at all. And you might find, as usual with good software,
Wes: that you like other aspects of it. Or you want to use it to expose more.
Wes: Maybe you expose more of your things if they're all put behind 2FA'd proper authentication.
Chris: I do like that it's AGPL3 and you can self-host it.
Wes: Yeah, it is a neat project. I've only played with it, set it up as a test one
Wes: time. But I know a lot of people do seem to like it.
Chris: Well, Sweepy sure does. He was screaming at it.
Wes: We got multiple folks writing in about Pangolin, both in the Matrix and across a few channels.
Chris: And I saw it in his package for NixOS with some options.
Wes: Well, now you don't have an excuse. If you could just turn it on with a quick option.
Chris: Here's what I'm going to use my Ngrok tunnel for, or maybe Pangolin.
Wes: I do think it would be, sorry.
Chris: Oh, no, go ahead.
Wes: I do think it would be informative, maybe, to set it up and just see what the
Wes: actual swap out from Ngrok to Pangolin would be like as a potential way to evaluate,
Wes: like, oh, what do you like about it?
Chris: Yeah, my first impressions.
Wes: Was- Even if you throw it all away.
Chris: It was a lot. It was my first impression. It was a lot. I do like,
Chris: so it has a dashboard where you can toggle tunnels on and off and stuff like
Chris: that and see the status. And an API.
Chris: But I'm already achieving that same thing with Home Assistant,
Chris: which is already a workflow I already use and my family uses.
Chris: I imagine I could probably do the same thing with Pangolin. Probably tied in
Chris: Home Assistant, no problem.
Chris: I sort of solved for that problem already. I don't really need a dashboard.
Chris: I don't know. All right. So here's what I will be using a tunnel for.
Chris: Not for me, actually, but for the wife. And this is an app pick that we had
Chris: that was on my radar. Wanted to try it more.
Chris: Wes found it. And the audience wrote and said, this is really good.
Chris: And I'm like, OK, this week I'm going to try Utah.
Chris: It, as you might recall, is a self-hosted web app that automates downloading,
Chris: organizing, and scheduling YouTube channel content.
Chris: A la flat pinch or pinch flat, sorry. But a couple of things I like a little bit better.
Chris: It's a lot better at one-off video downloads. That's killer for what my wife wanted.
Chris: So this is a common scenario that happens a few times a week.
Chris: It's not horrible, but it's a few times a week.
Chris: I get a telegram from the wife that says, hey, so-and-so said we should really
Chris: check out this video. Can you grab it for us?
Chris: I'm like, yeah, no problem. That's a problem. I'll go get it.
Chris: And I've been doing that for years.
Chris: And then this comes along. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. If I combine this
Chris: with the Ngrok tunnel, she can just plug the URL in at work.
Wes: Yes.
Chris: And then when she gets home, they're all queued up on the Jellyfin server,
Chris: ready to go. And we don't have to watch them over YouTube, over our crappy LD
Chris: connection at the moment.
Wes: I love that.
Brent: You're like outsourcing your main purpose at home.
Wes: I mean, I've thought about this so much over the years, both for myself and
Wes: for past partners. Like, I think at one point I had a basic CGI form that would
Wes: just run YTTLP and dump it to like a Dropbox.
Wes: Or I've thought about, you know, a web interface you could load in videos that
Wes: would just sort of get mixed into a live stream that you constantly Chromecasted.
Wes: But now that everything just integrates with Jellyfin, I mean, that's the way to go.
Chris: So what's really great is, and I hadn't played with this before,
Chris: we talked about this as a pick, is it has integrated sponsor block.
Chris: And so that's really nice. I don't go crazy with that. But as somebody who's
Chris: made videos and audio for a long time,
Chris: I hate the double intro where they tell you what they're going to tell you.
Chris: Then they do an intro and then they tell you what they're going to tell you again.
Chris: Oh, my God. It drives me crazy. It's such a waste of time. So like Sponsor Block
Chris: lets you skip intros and stuff like that. I'm all about that.
Chris: I don't need to see their $75 motion graphics that they paid for for their YouTube channel.
Wes: Every single time.
Chris: With their music they think is super great and all of that. So it just lets
Chris: me skip all of that integrated.
Chris: But then the other thing that's really fantastic, I'm not a Plex user,
Chris: but it will still download metadata information and NFO and thumbnails and whatnot
Chris: and save them in a format Jellyfin just immediately ingests.
Chris: So when she sits down and pulls up Jellyfin, it looks like all the other videos
Chris: and it sits right nicely next to our Pinchflat videos, which I'm using Pinchflat
Chris: to download channels as they post.
Chris: So like this channel, every time they post, I'm downloading that video.
Chris: I'm using Utar, which you could use it that way,
Chris: Could, so you could just use one tool to do both.
Wes: Right, you already had Pinchflat. I already had Pinchflat.
Chris: I'm using Utah for the one-off download.
Wes: I love that.
Chris: And then I have to go to a specific spot on the file system,
Chris: so I know those are all Utah downloads.
Wes: Gets classified the right way.
Chris: And also, I've discovered now, it handles really well at recovering failed downloads.
Chris: I had a download bail on me, and that's worked nice.
Chris: The web UI works good on the wife's phone. It works good on her laptop.
Chris: So this is a winner app. I can tell already it's going to be in a category of
Chris: winners. Now, there are a couple of things I'd love to see.
Chris: It'd be nice if you could have it download channels on the regular, like I use Pinchflat.
Chris: So every time a channel posts a video, every time Jupyter Broadcasting has a
Chris: video, it automatically downloads.
Chris: It'd be nice if those could go to one place and my manual one-off downloads
Chris: could go to a totally different location.
Chris: Optional, but it'd be nice. Currently, it's all going to one spot.
Wes: You only have one place to target it.
Chris: Yeah, and if you download a channel, it creates a subdirectory for that channel.
Chris: But if you download a one-off, it doesn't create a subdirectory for just that
Chris: video. They're just in the root, and it's just not how I do my Jellyfin.
Chris: I'd like to have a cleaner Jellyfin.
Chris: But I do love it for those one-off downloads, and that's sort of a small gripe.
Chris: And since I'm using Pinchflat to manage the channels, it's not really an issue for me.
Chris: But setting subfolders for manual downloads would be great. I did see issue
Chris: 287 on the project. Actually, somebody already flagged that.
Chris: I was like, I'll just go give this a plug. one give it the old plus one but
Chris: man a couple of winners and then before I'm done with my holiday leftovers for you boys,
Chris: I got to give a huge mention to, I think, one of the MVPs of this year.
Chris: We covered it multiple times on the podcast, but we called the big D, Darowich.
Chris: It is a self-hostable alternative to Google Timeline for your location history.
Chris: And it's very comprehensive. They have a standalone app for iOS.
Chris: You can integrate it with things like OwnTracks.
Chris: If you have Home Assistant, there's an integration where Home Assistant can
Chris: collect your location and then send it to Darowich.
Chris: And it's been our constant companion. I'm running it still since we talked about
Chris: it the first time on the show.
Chris: It was the back end to our Texas tracker. It powered our Texas tracker.
Chris: And there have been many releases since we deployed. I was shocked.
Chris: So we deployed version 2.8. And they're on like version 3.6 now.
Wes: Oh, that's exciting.
Chris: 0.36. Yeah. Yeah. It's massive, massive improvements since we first talked about
Chris: it on the show. So, I mean, lots of refactoring little components.
Chris: So, like, some of the subsystems that process subtasks run a lot more efficient.
Chris: Cleanup of the UI in general. Just a little bit of, you know, fixing a bug here.
Wes: Polish.
Chris: Performance issue there. Right, exactly. A lot of that.
Chris: So that all aside, there's a few things that really stood out to me.
Chris: In the .29 release that came out a little bit after we deployed,
Chris: they greatly improved the data export. So you can move data between instances.
Chris: So if you want to export from one Darawitch instance and set up a new one,
Chris: you can just move your data and all your history comes.
Wes: That's great. That seems perfect for us.
Chris: Yep. Really nice. We will definitely be using that. And then in the next version,
Chris: well, a couple of versions later, actually version 3.0.31, they call this the
Chris: search release. They introduced a new search feature that allows you to search
Chris: for all the places you've traveled.
Wes: Oh, that's killer.
Chris: That is obviously needed. Here's a big one for me. A little bit later,
Chris: version 0.34 released on October 10th, 2025.
Chris: This is the family release. This release, we are introducing family features
Chris: that allow users to create family groups, invite members, and share location data.
Chris: Family owners can manage members, control sharing settings, and ensure secure
Chris: access to shared information. Location sharing is optional and can be enabled
Chris: or disabled by each member individually.
Chris: Users can only join one family at a time. Location sharing settings can be set
Chris: to share location for 1, 6, 12, or 24 hours or permanently.
Chris: And they're available for self-hosted instances. It will be available when they
Chris: have a cloud version in the future.
Chris: The family members layer is enabled on the maps too, so you can see where your
Chris: member markers are and turn them on and off on that layer.
Wes: Right, because before it had users, but they were all kind of separate,
Wes: right? It was more of just like a multiplexed kind of use the service.
Chris: We were each at our own map, basically.
Wes: And we combined it on our own by just pulling from the API. Oh, wow, that's nice.
Chris: It is. And also for those of you that maybe switched to Graphene OS from iOS,
Chris: Maybe you've been looking for a good Find My replacement. This could be it.
Chris: I use Home Assistant for that, but this could be even better.
Chris: You've got a nice web UI now.
Chris: That's massive. So that was on the 10th of October.
Chris: And they've had some steady releases since then. They just had a release a couple of days ago.
Chris: And so I did the right thing and updated my private instance this morning before the show.
Wes: Probably not even. Probably just skipping right from wherever you were at to the latest release.
Chris: I went from, well, thankfully, thankfully, I was just one release after a breaking change.
Chris: So if I was one release older, I would have had to do some Docker composer factoring,
Chris: and I would have to switch from one database to Redis.
Chris: I don't know what the previous database was, but there was a database software
Chris: migration to a totally different software.
Chris: I would have had to do all of that. But I just missed that, and I went and I skimmed it.
Chris: I have the change log linked in the show notes if you're in a similar position,
Chris: listener. I went through it, I skimmed it, I'm like, holy crap,
Chris: this is, oh man, this is so good, oh, I gotta do it.
Wes: I can't not have this. And you couldn't even, because you hadn't updated it
Wes: yet, you couldn't even do the export beforehand.
Chris: Nope, nope, I just yellowed in. But it worked.
Chris: It was a big download, it was almost 600 megabytes of layers,
Chris: I guess it's not horrible, but on LTE it was painful.
Chris: And rebooted the sucker, came right back up, still talking to home assistants,
Chris: still getting my location. It's fabulous.
Chris: Love having this because I've been driving around a bit for kids' sports events
Chris: and stuff like that. And so just going to different places.
Chris: And so now pulling that up on the map, like, oh, yeah, I went over there last
Chris: week. I forgot about that. I never go over there. So that's been fun.
Wes: Yeah, the pros of the old Google location tracking, but without,
Wes: you know, all the creepy downsides.
Chris: Yeah, it is. And when you set up a new family member, it gives you a QR.
Chris: If they're on iOS, they make it
Chris: really easy because they have a dedicated location tracking app for iOS.
Chris: And so you can hear a family member scan this QR code. It sets up the iOS Darowich
Chris: tracking app, and it looks really straightforward.
Chris: And even if you're on Android, there's a dozen easy ways, including just using Home Assistant.
Wes: Just do that.
Chris: Just use Home Assistant. Just do that. You only have one thing tracking your location.
Chris: Massive, massive recommendation. So that's a little bit of my holiday leftovers.
Chris: I mean, I could go on for the whole episode. We've really found some bangers this year.
Chris: But maybe I don't know. Maybe you got something for you. You got a holiday leftover
Chris: for us, Wes Payne, for the class to share? you know something to chat about.
Wes: Yeah um i actually i have something i want to work through oh a question okay
Wes: or like maybe how to frame how to view something happening in the kernel because
Wes: i'm not entirely sure how i feel oh boy and i don't know if this is a year of vindication,
Wes: or a year of chris was right.
Chris: Oh i like it already.
Wes: Yeah i thought you might i thought you might So it turns out it's been a bit
Wes: of a busy year for our friend KSMBT.
Chris: Oh, the Samba server that got built into the Linux kernel by Samsung.
Wes: Yeah, that's right. One of your favorite parts of the Linux kernel.
Chris: Yep, yep. We can't have BKatch FS, but we've got a Samba server built into our
Chris: kernel. What could go wrong?
Wes: Yeah. How many commits do you think that thing sees in a year?
Chris: Oh, that's a great question, Wes. I don't even think I've ever considered that.
Wes: I mean, the year's in over, so I've been looking at 2025. But, you know.
Chris: In a whole year?
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: In a whole year? Oh.
Chris: I mean, you should think it'd be mostly done. So I'm going to say less than 1,000.
Wes: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was more than I thought at 194.
Chris: Well, I was going to say 100, but then I thought, well, then I thought you were
Chris: going to get me with they've had a whole bunch of security issues,
Chris: so they've had to do a whole bunch of commits or something.
Brent: I was going to guess 10 because I figured they weren't doing anything.
Chris: Doing nothing.
Wes: It is kind of that.
Chris: Oh, OK.
Wes: Because 91 of the, no, sorry, 41 of those match on a grep for something like
Wes: fix, leak, crash, overflow, use after free, recursive locking and RPC handle. Let's see here.
Wes: Fix possible ref count leak. Fix possible memory leak. Fix race condition.
Wes: There's just a whole bunch of those.
Wes: It's not all bad, though, right? So just a bit of history.
Wes: KSMBD came out in 2021.
Chris: Right, right. We were doing Linux action news at the time.
Wes: And then somewhere like late 2022, maybe it was early 2023, I think it was kernel
Wes: 6.6, it got marked as no longer experimental, marked quote-unquote stable.
Chris: Okay.
Wes: So another part of this story, I think, is what does it mean to be in the kernel
Wes: in terms of like the contract for the user and what to expect out of something?
Wes: Between even you know even after post-experimental status
Wes: right there's there's one kind of version where you want to
Wes: have access to stuff so that you get to make the call around do
Wes: i want to use that software and butterfs is another one of these things right
Wes: we've seen enterprise distros not ship it red hat particular red hat does not
Wes: ship ksmpd they specifically said they were going to take a conservative approach
Wes: and not enable it okay but maybe we feel differently about those two choices,
Wes: which, I mean, makes sense.
Chris: Huh. So this, to me, too, this is a great question because I think in the broader context...
Chris: There's been a lot of controversy around Rust and a lot of drama and social brigading.
Chris: And there has, of course, been the BcashFS situation.
Chris: And there is this situation. These are all oddities to me.
Chris: And they all seem, I think the core thing that you're getting to is they all
Chris: seem to maybe have a different standard being applied to them.
Chris: And that's really hitting me at this moment is like they really tolerated a
Chris: lot of shenanigans from Rust. and including Linus yelling at some longtime committers to STFU.
Chris: And that this Samba server is in this kernel so that way a few hundred thousand
Chris: million Samsung devices can have faster file transfer?
Wes: So that's where it's interesting. So it does continue to see development, as we've seen.
Wes: Just coming in 6.18, which maybe is out today, there's improved session,
Wes: sharing, connection, lookup performance. They're also adding a new max IP connections
Wes: parameter to better control rate limiting, essentially improved socket creation,
Wes: a bunch of nice improvements.
Wes: At the beginning of the year, I guess some users were playing around enabling
Wes: this thing on TrueNAS now that that's, you know, Linux under the hood.
Wes: And they were seeing some pretty impressive improvements specifically for on
Wes: the right side, also for latency in terms of just like if you're doing like
Wes: a lot of small operations on files or a lot of metadata, file creation, that kind of thing.
Wes: And I guess it was adopted by OpenWRT. So there are some sort of embedded use cases.
Wes: Another aspect ksmbd has is
Wes: um smb direct which is essentially rdma and
Wes: so you can set it up between linux and like two linux boxes say on a trusted
Wes: network with ksmbd enabled you don't have to bother the cpu to to offload from
Wes: memory over the network at super fast line rate so there are some places where maybe it makes sense.
Chris: I guess so um i guess what it says to me is that it sounds like we have a major
Chris: bottleneck issue on Linux for things that have to run in user space.
Chris: And if there's such a performance difference between running in kernel versus
Chris: running in user space talking to the kernel, perhaps we should address whatever that issue is.
Chris: But then the other thing that strikes me is it's kind of not apples and oranges
Chris: comparison because if you first looked at WireGuard when it first shipped and
Chris: you compared WireGuard to the Go user space versions of WireGuard,
Chris: WireGuard in the kernel was...
Chris: Way faster and way more performant. But then over the years,
Chris: operations like Tailscale and others worked at optimizing the user space binaries.
Chris: And now the performance is very comparable and in some use cases,
Chris: better in the user space version.
Chris: But they're comparing it against a version where they haven't really optimized
Chris: for that situation to a hyper optimized version in the kernel that's like a
Chris: slim down version of Samba that doesn't feature everything.
Wes: It is, you're right. It definitely doesn't feature everything.
Wes: Like it doesn't do a lot of the
Wes: active directory stuff. so it's not really suitable for that kind of role.
Wes: Interestingly, I think they were already working on it, but when KSMED came
Wes: out, Samba actually went ahead and implemented a bunch of, like the user,
Wes: the regular Samba distribution, implemented a bunch of work to take on IOU ring.
Wes: So there are cases where, like in some of that early testing.
Chris: See, now that makes sense to me, though.
Wes: Yeah, they were getting like 10x throughput.
Chris: Because that's a generic facility provided by the kernel for these types of things.
Chris: That seems like the better route to go than just shoehorning in a Samba server
Chris: because Samsung wants it.
Wes: I mean, again, there are some limitations in terms of just, you know,
Wes: overhead as well as like you're probably not.
Wes: There are just some shorter paths available and less context switching. If you do.
Chris: For sure. Yeah. So why not put Firefox in the kernel? Really?
Chris: Why don't we put NFS in the kernel? Should we put FTP in the kernel?
Wes: Yes, probably. Yeah.
Chris: Like, I mean, where do we draw the line? Because, yes, obviously putting things
Chris: in the kernel makes them a little bit faster, especially when it comes to using
Chris: subsystems like disk and network.
Chris: But you could say that about everything. Like, why not put Hyperland in the
Chris: kernel? Let's put Wayland in the kernel. Let's put effing everything in the kernel.
Chris: I mean, hell, let's do it. Let's see what happens because I don't see the logic.
Wes: Okay. So you're already on this side. But this year also saw.
Wes: And so this is where I think I do have some questions. So there's one narrative
Wes: here that says all of the reasons that we thought this architecture was a bad
Wes: idea in 2021 are kind of playing out here.
Chris: Who could have seen this coming?
Wes: Yeah. But I mentioned there was like 194 commits. 91 of those are from Steven
Wes: Metzmacher, who's a longtime Samba dev who was working in the kernel before
Wes: this, but including doing some of the work to get the IOU ring support.
Wes: But it seems like the Samba world has sort of accepted that this is there.
Wes: And I'm wondering if we're seeing this flurry of activity, does that also maybe
Wes: mean that there's enough folks that are finding it valuable that it makes sense
Wes: to invest in making this more secure and robust?
Wes: It's like at the beginning of the year, the security firm, Doyensec,
Wes: announced that they were going to start looking into KSMBD.
Wes: And then just now like in October they've been doing some more write-ups and
Wes: they actually produced a really nice well the GitHub linked for one of the CVEs
Wes: this year like a really nice reproducer with all the code open even a little
Wes: script to run a QEM UVM for you to like start running,
Wes: it wow yeah,
Wes: So that sort of says, okay, one version is just we want to show how bad this
Wes: is and it's a terrible idea.
Wes: Another version is folks are using this. We should make it robust.
Wes: And maybe now we're in a place where it can be more robust and sufficiently
Wes: tested to not be a horrible hole.
Chris: I think there's a detail in there. And that detail is they've built it and it is faster.
Chris: So, of course, we're going to use it. Right? That's the thing.
Chris: If you do this, it's going to end up having users.
Chris: And then we're going to have to keep it.
Chris: That's why you don't build it and put it in the kernel in the first place, because it is faster.
Chris: It is better for things like small arm devices, routers, things like that, obviously.
Chris: And of course, vendors want to be able to sell you a plastic box that does Wi-Fi
Chris: and has a USB port on it so you can have a NAS.
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: And so for that, we all have to walk around with a kernel that has Samba,
Chris: unless your distro provider takes it out.
Chris: Now, I think if they hadn't built it, we wouldn't be, I mean,
Chris: this, of course, like, why not put, I mean, again, I go back to this,
Chris: but if we put cups, again, if we put cups in the kernel, it would be faster.
Chris: And what would happen over time, it would take a few years, is more people would start using it.
Chris: And then the question becomes, well, what happens to traditional cups?
Chris: Samba is a project that has a 20 plus year massive legacy.
Chris: And I think they're probably safe because of the complicated nature of a lot
Chris: of Samba setups and the features that they need.
Chris: But if you put something else in the kernel like this, it would probably cannibalize the main project.
Wes: So just for a little more flavor as well, you may remember, but earlier this
Wes: year, there was a Linux kernel zero day discovered using chat GPT.
Chris: Yeah, right.
Wes: That was for KSMBD.
Chris: Oh, my. Really? Of course. That's that. Of course.
Wes: There was also, there was a couple of remote takeover bugs where you did have
Wes: to be, you did have to have valid user credentials, but like when you were signing
Wes: off, you could trigger a race condition that lets you run arbitrary code in the kernel.
Wes: There was a very easy denial of service bug, so it's a little less,
Wes: you know, it's not taking over your box, but it is taking you off the network
Wes: called KSMBD drain or KSMB drain, say that five times, which was a trivial,
Wes: unauthenticated attack.
Wes: You basically just did the start of a TCP conversation and then just disappeared.
Wes: And the kernel would never free the resources that it set up,
Wes: assuming you were trying to talk to its KSMBD Samba server.
Chris: That's a good one.
Wes: And of course, because it's in the kernel, you don't have the normal sort of
Wes: out-of-memory or special handling, right? That's kernel memory that it gets to eat up there.
Chris: Yeah, your user space, out-of-memory killers, not doing anything about that.
Wes: And then probably the worst was this one that DoyenSec found this really great reproducer for,
Wes: which would be 37947, which got a 10 on the CVSS score because it allowed a
Wes: regular authenticated user with simple file write access to reliably and deterministically
Wes: without needing to win a race condition,
Wes: bypass all the modern kernel stuff, KSLR, all that, and become root.
Wes: So it is also i think as folks in the uh in our matrix rumors suggesting if
Wes: you are if i think you're right if you put this in there people are going to
Wes: use it and if you're going to use it there's going to be problems so probably
Wes: this is this isn't really screaming out for rustification if anything in the kernel it's right yeah.
Chris: Maybe maybe you know all i have to say about it,
Chris: Well, thank you. That was quite cathartic. I appreciate that,
Chris: Wes. That was a nice holiday gift you gave me.
Wes: You know, I picked that topic actually hoping that the story was going to go the other way.
Chris: Really?
Wes: And I would get to have a, like, look at how great KSMD is doing. But, you know.
Chris: Oh, that's so good. Well, Brentley, you know, one of the things that we've talked
Chris: on and off over the years, that's been years now, if you guys can believe it,
Chris: is our adventures with Graphene OS.
Chris: We're still rocking Pixel 7s all around with the Graphene OS on there,
Chris: which just recently got a new update.
Brent: Yeah, things are bolder, it seems.
Chris: Yeah, I like it. At first, I didn't like it because my lock screen UI changed.
Brent: My clock changed.
Wes: It feels snappier to me.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Like consistently snappier.
Chris: And there's a couple of nights I forgot to put it on the charger,
Chris: and I got it, and it was like 10% less.
Brent: That's nice, too.
Chris: And that's with radios on and stuff. I'm feeling really good about it,
Chris: but Graphene OS has had some challenges recently, And I think that's Brent's
Chris: holiday leftovers for us.
Brent: Oh, yeah. Not the nice news maybe you want to hear.
Brent: But this week, Graphene OS basically withdrew from France, like the entire country.
Brent: They were hosting some things over at OVH.
Brent: But French law enforcements basically continue to target encrypted communications in the country.
Brent: And the first time the authorities have directly threatened an open source project.
Brent: So this is kind of big news for, I think, open source in general,
Brent: if it has to do with encryption protocols,
Brent: which previously they have basically targeted businesses who are doing encrypted
Brent: communications and targeting criminals specifically.
Brent: But this is just an open source project generally. So the French authorities
Brent: have sent an internal message to police forces labeling all Google Pixel phones
Brent: with Graphene OS as inherently suspicious.
Chris: Oh, what?
Brent: Not what you want to see.
Wes: I've got to take my iPhone to France now.
Chris: Wait a minute. You have an iPhone?
Wes: No.
Brent: I'll have to borrow yours.
Wes: I was going to borrow yours.
Chris: I'm sure I've got a couple.
Wes: Yeah.
Brent: So this week, French media outlet La Parisienne published articles characterizing
Brent: graphene OS as a tool enabling criminal activity.
Brent: And that kind of kicked off all of this suspicion and sort of looking into the
Brent: project a little closer.
Brent: Um so french cybercrime
Brent: prosecutor johanna bros stated that
Brent: authorities would basically pursue legal action against platforms of
Brent: criminal organization ties if they refuse cooperation
Brent: that was the quote yeah and
Brent: this what stands out here for me is that refuse cooperation
Brent: i think they're trying to
Brent: get information on criminal and organizations that are
Brent: using some of these platforms and considering
Brent: you know graphene os has a pretty
Brent: strong stand on not doing that um there's
Brent: suspicion that this is basically an ask for a backdoor uh which makes you wonder
Brent: which other encrypted services that are way more popular than graphene os actually
Brent: said yes because uh if they're going after a little project like this then um
Brent: i don't know you got to start to question things I.
Chris: Got bits and pieces from the project it sounded like they also the government
Chris: might have worked in coordination with some friendly media over there.
Brent: To write.
Chris: Some bad headlines about thieves using graphene OS kind of at just the right time,
Chris: or criminals I don't know about thieves but criminals um kind of coordinated
Chris: there and so they commented a little bit on that and how how just really they
Chris: disappointed they were in the media coverage,
Chris: Just take a moment to appreciate they had to migrate all of their infrastructure on OVH quickly.
Wes: Yeah, that sucks. That's no one's idea.
Chris: You know it's serious if you're...
Wes: And it takes away from more work just on the actual project task.
Chris: That's just the thing, right? Is you know it's serious if they had to hit pause
Chris: on the project work to do this migration.
Brent: It looks like most of their communication, so Macedon, Discourse,
Brent: and Matrix servers are moved to Toronto.
Brent: So over here in Canada. So good to know that my old dear country is a little trusted.
Wes: But not French Canada, I notice.
Chris: Yeah, not the French part of Canada.
Brent: It's near French Canada. Close, but not too close.
Wes: So maybe not a bad time to consider like a little extra donation to giraffe.
Brent: That is.
Wes: If you're a partial.
Brent: A great point. They also moved a couple other things. Website infrastructure is now in Germany.
Brent: DNS services, it looks like they've migrated to Vulture and by VM.
Brent: And it looks here like cryptographic credentials. They're rotating it based
Brent: on just a security progression.
Brent: So some interesting maybe changes in how they run some of the infrastructure
Brent: as well to avoid this kind of thing in the future.
Brent: They did confirm that there were no credentials from user data or critical security
Brent: infrastructure that was stored in France.
Brent: So most of the core security features are basically unaffected.
Brent: Thank goodness, really.
Chris: Yeah, it sounds like an abundance of caution on some of this stuff,
Chris: but I mean, that's sort of the game.
Wes: Which is what you'd expect from the project, yeah. And we're grateful for it.
Chris: Yeah, very much so. So it is interesting to see them have to kind of implement
Chris: an action plan here to see what they have to do in the face of some pressure.
Chris: And I think we'd probably all three agree. It seems like they're making the
Chris: right moves, hard moves, but the right moves here.
Brent: Yeah, this got me thinking of a couple of topics.
Brent: One is, you know, if you remember Telegram founder Pavel Durov,
Brent: he was arrested in France as well. Was that a couple of years ago, 2024?
Brent: So that was maybe.
Chris: That's still ongoing.
Brent: Yeah, it was maybe a hint of what was going to come.
Brent: And I'm not up on that situation, but I remember that feeling like a red flag.
Brent: And okay, that's Telegram, but now we've got a huge red flag for open source projects as well.
Brent: It also seems like chat control in Europe is moving forward in a way that is
Brent: following these kind of themes.
Brent: So I know we're talking about France currently, but there are a bunch of other
Brent: countries who are trying to push these kind of eyes into encrypted communications
Brent: a little bit more. So it makes me a little...
Brent: Somber thinking about some of these freedoms especially in a place that is known
Brent: for having a little bit more encouragement towards freedoms and freedom of choice
Brent: and all that to be pushing in this direction doesn't make you boy sad because
Brent: uh geez it feels like graphene has had many,
Brent: different types of challenges in the last few months we see this for sure and
Brent: also you know of the changes to the Android open source releases for them.
Brent: So they got both technical challenges and some, you know, governmental social challenges here too.
Chris: Indeed. I think it might be open source that has the line of defense on these
Chris: backdoor legislations.
Chris: I don't see how you effectively mandate it into free software that's made all
Chris: around the world. and developers that get coerced.
Chris: I mean, this isn't legal advice, but you have to wonder if some of them wouldn't
Chris: consider a public resignation,
Chris: and then get a VPN that just puts them in a different country and join the product
Chris: under a new synonym or a new fake identity and, you know, call themselves America
Chris: Joe or something and, you know.
Brent: I think that's taken already.
Chris: Bob the Builder, yeah. But you know what I, you know, There's really no way
Chris: they can stop free software from being developed, and a lot of the people that
Chris: build these tools, especially these privacy tools and free software and open source,
Chris: are doing it from a path of advocacy and a source of passion,
Chris: and they're not as likely to be swayed by this stuff.
Chris: They'll just stop, and then over time, because they're compelled,
Chris: they'll find a new way to contribute.
Wes: And we have the power of cloning and forking and often, luckily,
Wes: sizable and diverse communities all over the world and from different communities
Wes: with different local laws or rules on the ground and expectations and cultures,
Wes: which can be a benefit in times like this.
Chris: I think there will be challenges for some developers. I mean,
Chris: there's going to be some developers that really feel the pressure and the heat if this stuff proceeds.
Chris: And I think that is going to be a challenging time for open source.
Chris: But I think ultimately free software and open source are able to respond to
Chris: this threat in a way that commercial software simply is unable to.
Chris: Their legal structure as a business is going to force them to comply.
Wes: Yeah, it's a very different thing if they come knocking on your door and you
Wes: have a legal entity that makes it very easy for them to demand compliance.
Chris: And Graphene OS is trying to hold that line right here. We see it happening in real time.
Chris: And I'm really grateful for the hard work they're putting in to make that happen.
Chris: And I've made this point before on the show, but the people that know about
Chris: these tools and know about free software versus people that just grab whatever
Chris: commercial app their friends link them,
Chris: There's going to be a big delta between the people that have privacy and the people that don't.
Wes: Yeah, two different worlds.
Chris: But I was kind of happy to see that the speculation consensus is coming to a
Chris: perhaps hardware vendor for
Chris: GrapheneOS's new project. So they're looking for devices beyond pixels.
Chris: They have reportedly been working with a hardware vendor, a quote unquote major
Chris: hardware vendor, that would be updating their hardware to meet the security
Chris: requirements of the GrapheneOS project. including like the secure enclave type stuff.
Chris: And there's been a lot of speculation. OnePlus was thrown out there,
Chris: but all of them have kind of been knocked down by various members of the project
Chris: except for my original dream.
Chris: And I thought this was impossible.
Chris: But the community consensus, if there was a poly market for this,
Chris: Motorola would be in the win right now.
Wes: Oh.
Chris: Motorola.
Wes: That would be great.
Chris: I would love a Motorola phone again. I used to love my Motorola devices.
Chris: And it's because of all the requirements. It's kind of everything from timeline
Chris: to price to the fact that they also said the vendor makes a tablet that's already in the market.
Chris: Just all of these different kind of things that line up with pointing at Motorola.
Chris: And the takeaway being that potentially there could be a Graphene OS device,
Chris: a dedicated hardware made Motorola device that you buy that comes with Graphene
Chris: OS on it or you flash with Graphene OS on it, whatever it might be.
Chris: Oh boy I would love to see that Motorola makes some great phones.
Brent: Aren't you saying Chris was right? I feel like you're kind of rubbing that in our face here again.
Chris: No, no, no, because this is just speculation. You don't know.
Brent: Ah, so the jingle must wait.
Chris: I'd be curious. So we know it's not OnePlus. We've eliminated the Fairphone.
Chris: I thought there was a third phone we eliminated from the lineup,
Chris: too, recently in the members' feed, but I can't remember what it was.
Brent: I think it was Samsung devices.
Chris: Yeah, we ruled those out. I mean
Chris: it could be and I'd be curious if listeners you have a wish cast of who the
Chris: hardware vendor would be that you can either buy or easily flash Graphene OS
Chris: on if you could get an OEM phone something you could buy yourself or recommend
Chris: to friends and family too because oh boy wouldn't that be a game changer that
Chris: would be you could just tell easy answer yes,
Chris: so who would be who would be your hardware vendor of choice.
Brent: I feel like.
Chris: Jeff says.
Brent: Sony Sony he's been saying that for years right Jeff.
Chris: Maybe boost in and tell us who you'd
Chris: like to see as a hardware vendor for GrapheneOS. I'm saying Motorola.
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Brent: Well, I'd like to continue on the theme of sort of a bumpy year for the colonel,
Brent: because I feel like there's a lot more than what you've been talking about so
Brent: far in this episode. What do you got here, Chris?
Chris: I guess it kind of has been a bit of a grab bag year, right?
Chris: Because we've gotten a lot of nice releases, a couple of bangers,
Chris: and there's some in the works right now.
Chris: But I was reviewing the members version of the show to look for stories that
Chris: we should probably catch the main show up on. because a lot of times we'll cover
Chris: a story to see before we really know if it's fully developed.
Chris: We'll start tracking it in the bootleg version of the show for the members.
Chris: And then when it kind of develops, we'll bring it into the show.
Chris: But we just really haven't had a time to catch up on this stuff.
Chris: So I want to go back in time a piece to episode 590, gentlemen.
Chris: And this is where we started seeing potentially some issues with BcacheFS in the kernel.
Chris: And this is actually the first flare-up Before where we're at now,
Chris: there was a code of conduct situation because the S-word was used.
Clips: All right. Well, while we got spicy Wes, it looks like that Kent Overstreet,
Clips: the lead developer of BcacheFS, is facing repercussions for violating the Linux
Clips: kernel's code of conduct, as determined by the Code of Conduct Committee.
Clips: And committees reviewed some communications that involved Kent and another individual.
Clips: And as a result, their determination is that they're rejecting his poll requests
Clips: for BcacheFS for the Linux 6.13 development cycle.
Clips: I think really, right, it's any. He just can't be part of 6.13, basically. Yeah.
Clips: The decision does not remove BcacheFS from the mainline kernel or preclude future
Clips: submissions, but leaves the acceptance of his work for 6.14 and beyond uncertain for now.
Clips: Overstreet acknowledged the issue and issued a partial apology for the incident.
Clips: I don't know about partial. so I think it's a dispute of the apology was done
Clips: in private and the COC wants the apology done in public well and I think there's also Kent is,
Clips: It seems like he's intentionally not doing so because he'd like to raise,
Clips: make it into a larger conversation.
Chris: And that ultimately was resolved and his patches were resumed being accepted to the Linux kernel.
Chris: And then while we were, I think, in Austin, we were, I think we were in Texas.
Chris: So we might sound a little different.
Wes: Yeah, most of the time major stuff goes down while we're on the road.
Chris: Yeah, actually, it's true. I was looking at the clips. So we're in the,
Chris: so this is to kind of set the context.
Chris: This is the pre-show before we're going to actually record the main show from
Chris: Austin. And we're kind of just finding the news out as we're setting up.
Clips: Okay, Wes, this is the story I think that I've been the most disappointed to
Clips: see while we've been on the road.
Clips: And I know you've been following what's going on with BcacheFS.
Clips: Last time we talked about BcacheFS, there was a back and forth between Linus
Clips: and Kent because Kent was trying to add what you could consider to be a new
Clips: feature during what should only be a bug fix merge window.
Clips: There was a back and forth and an argument between Linus and Kent that just
Clips: kind of ended and really went nowhere after that.
Clips: And then we have a new story where it seemed positive at first because it seemed
Clips: Linus was pulling in all of the patches, including that new disaster recovery
Clips: tool, the Journal Rewind, into the 6.16 branch.
Clips: But it sounds like maybe we have bad news, maybe as bad as it gets,
Clips: actually, that Linus might not include bcashfs at all in Linux 6.17.
Clips: So what are we missing? What's going on here?
Clips: Nothing's final yet. We really don't know. In some sense, there's not much of
Clips: a story beyond watching the 6.16 develop.
Clips: There's been some even subsequent polls after this story came out.
Clips: But as a follow-up to the discussion around the Journal Rewind,
Clips: And there's some debate right there if you even want to call it a feature or
Clips: not, but around the journal Rewind feature.
Clips: And then I guess there's been going on some private maintainer mailing list
Clips: threads that we don't get to see, where Linus and Kent have been having more
Clips: discussions. And I think there's kind of, well, there's a lot going on as usual.
Clips: I think from Kent's perspective, part of it is like he sees a slightly different
Clips: definition of what counts as a feature or not for file systems in particular
Clips: in this case, because it was, it wasn't like adding some new thing the file system can do.
Clips: So it wasn't a feature in that sense. It was more of a feature in terms of like the strict code sense.
Clips: But this was entirely targeted around some like recovery stuff to try and get
Clips: users data back as quickly as possible by putting it into the RC instead of
Clips: waiting another three months to get it in the next kernel.
Clips: So it's sort of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.
Clips: Like Kent was trying to go by the spirit of the law. Hey, this thing's an experimental file system.
Clips: It's not a new feature of the file system but it's exposing that feature and
Clips: it's for users that are in trouble right now and linus is saying yes but it's
Clips: net new code you're not just fixing existing code this is net new code and that's
Clips: not allowed so it's law versus spirit in a sense.
Clips: Yes and you know can't was making the points which i think are true in and some
Clips: other maintainers have agreed on that you know it's not like that kind of,
Clips: concession or you know bend of the rules doesn't happen
Clips: i think maybe a big part of the problem here right is
Clips: that not sure kent appreciated the extent that
Clips: he was kind of still under review and being tested in
Clips: a sense to like how well can you play by the rules and i don't think maybe he
Clips: appreciates the extent that like there has not been enough trust gained between
Clips: the parties to be able to bend that rules right that happens like after the
Clips: trust happens and there just hasn't been enough of that i think.
Clips: And they're both kind of pretty frustrated, like, Kent is working really hard
Clips: and trying to support users and frustrated that, like, you know,
Clips: he's spending a ton of time not on feature development, but on, like,
Clips: bug fixes and talking with people online and in Reddit threads and,
Clips: you know, in IRC and all over the place trying to provide support and,
Clips: you know, finish all of the edge cases.
Clips: And so it's naturally frustrating when you feel opposed for that.
Clips: And of course, Linus wants to not have BcashFS be a constant thorn in his side
Clips: and distract him from maintaining the rest of the kernel.
Clips: And you can kind of argue, like, are there elements maybe of things we've observed
Clips: around maybe the larger maintainers not especially having a super strong focus
Clips: on file systems? I think you could maybe make some arguments around there.
Clips: And there's a debate maybe, which we've also had in the past,
Clips: around was this upstreamed too soon?
Clips: Also what's the definition of experimental so all of those things are being
Clips: drug up in this and it's not really clear exactly where things are land but it does sound like.
Clips: DKMS maybe some limited per distro kernel builds are possibilities in the future if,
Clips: takes a stint out of the main line. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Clips: And I really, really hate to hear that it might go out of the main line.
Clips: And I do want to underscore a point you quickly touched on.
Clips: But I'll wait. Brent, what is your first reaction? Well, I'm trying to think
Clips: of if this situation has ever happened before, like a project being included
Clips: in the kernel and then within a year being removed again.
Clips: I don't think that has occurred in the past.
Clips: Can you guys think of anything? I tried to research it and I can't think of
Clips: a single thing that has been added to the kernel with like, you know,
Clips: oh, we think this is ready enough to be added to the kernel and then kind of
Clips: backtracked from there.
Clips: So this would be a unique situation.
Clips: Yeah, you definitely see things deprecated maybe as they're no longer developed or supported.
Clips: It's like it's been in the kernel for 20 years or 10 years and we'll take it
Clips: out because no one's using it. Yeah.
Clips: Yeah. And you see it more often with drivers too when a driver's broken. you'll
Clips: see that and they won't include it in the next cycle for a bit while that
Clips: driver's getting fixed yeah no i don't
Clips: nothing comes to my mind no nothing like
Clips: a nothing like a software thing like this like a
Clips: wire guard or yeah you know and and
Clips: so here's the thing that wes touched on that i just i want to
Clips: focus on for a second because it is i think
Clips: everybody knows my my main my main issue
Clips: with all of this is the kernel developers are
Clips: are great people but they live in
Clips: their own world with their own uses and they don't appreciate how pathetically
Clips: behind and non-competitive linux is with its default file systems if you go
Clips: by the world of extended four which is the predominant file system that ships
Clips: with most linux distributions including the big red hat distributions.
Clips: It's a joke. Compared to NTFS or APFS, it's pathetic.
Clips: And Apple, in particular, has managed to lap us.
Clips: We've been talking about this for so long that they have now lapped us with this.
Clips: And they have better file systems on their internet phone than we do on our supercomputers.
Clips: And it's pathetic. And it makes Linux look old.
Clips: And it's an entire ginormous,
Clips: incredibly large sector of the tech industry is simply solving storage using
Clips: all kinds of hacked together solutions
Clips: because Linux doesn't solve this inherently at the platform level.
Clips: And so we have to throw tens and tens of thousands of dollars at stupid boxes
Clips: that run hacked together Linux kernels with patched up file systems to provide
Clips: support that Linux should be able to offer out of the box.
Clips: It's embarrassing and it's gone on way too long.
Clips: And if this was a product made by a company, whoever's in charge of that company
Clips: should have been fired over this because what pays the bills for Linux is the
Clips: server software. It's not you using it on your laptop. It's not your Steam Deck.
Clips: It's people running it in the servers. And this is an absolutely critical and
Clips: necessary feature for a server platform.
Clips: And the kernel developers do not get it. And ZFS ain't it, chief, because it is not GPL.
Clips: I don't care how great it is. I don't care how mature it is.
Clips: I don't care how wide the support is.
Clips: It cannot be baked into the kernel.
Clips: You have to have something that can be baked into the kernel or else the platform
Clips: technically does not have the feature.
Clips: And Bcache FS is it. Because we've all trashed the ButterFS brand,
Clips: so it ain't going to be ButterFS.
Clips: Bcache FS is it. I think that's something that's important to add here.
Clips: There's just that there is that backdrop and it doesn't always get commented
Clips: on, but I think Kent feels it, right?
Clips: Like, Kent has a sense of urgency. Some of that may be his own self-pressure
Clips: or pressure from users, like the kernel community is not obligated by that.
Clips: But you can appreciate how Kent wants to push really hard on not losing data
Clips: and helping users get data because we're living in a world where ButterFS just didn't get trusted.
Clips: And so I can see how Kent maybe feels a bit of a catch-22 in terms of like trying
Clips: to go whole hog on maintaining the reputation of his file system,
Clips: but then, you know, having the Linux community maybe push back and be like,
Clips: yeah, well, these people should be building their own kernels.
Chris: All right, back to present time. Of course, some time has passed,
Chris: and the sting of it being removed from the kernel has lessened,
Chris: I think, as we see sort of a workable solution get developed.
Wes: Yeah, I mean, development continues. The DKMS path so far is marching ahead.
Wes: We'll see. I mean, it's still somewhat early days, right? Like,
Wes: if 6.18 comes out today, then it'll be the first kernel that,
Wes: like, truly doesn't have Bcache at all.
Wes: And folks, you know, folks move slow on kernels and file systems.
Wes: So I think we'll see a bit before we know, see everything all switched over
Wes: to DKMS. But it's coming.
Chris: So this is sort of a make good because this entire thread has been a long,
Chris: ongoing story. So we just wanted to get you updated on it.
Chris: Brent, do you have any thoughts before we sort of do the final piece of the story?
Brent: I think it's more of a question. My question, just reliving that moment back
Brent: then, is considering it's been pulled from the colonel, what are the chances it might be back?
Brent: You know we we back then i think was thinking this is maybe a temporary pull
Brent: out till they figure things out and they'll try again but i'm not so sure anymore.
Chris: It's a good question i think only a few people could probably answer that and
Chris: linus might be one of them yeah.
Wes: I think i wouldn't set my timeline to anything shorter than a few years.
Chris: Yeah i don't know um but you're.
Wes: True i have no special insight.
Chris: So last bit of this thread from the bootleg version of the show this was the
Chris: moment we documented where the actual removal process finally happened.
Chris: So we go back to episode 635.
Clips: We also got an update on the status of bcachefs in the Linux kernel,
Clips: and I guess it's a necessary step.
Clips: Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty much the consensus.
Clips: Linus wrote, bcachefs was marked externally maintained in 6.17,
Clips: but the code remained to make the transition smoother.
Clips: It's now a DKMS module, making the in-kernel code stale, so we're removing it
Clips: to avoid any version confusion.
Clips: And with that, 117,000 lines are removed from the kernel tree.
Clips: BcacheFS users should now use the DKMS kernel modules. Wow.
Clips: We did get some news on the DKMS kernel modules as well, and overall, it's pretty good news.
Clips: Yeah, Kent came out with an official announcement. As of Linux 17 and BcacheFS
Clips: tools, which are the user land side, version 1.31.5, BcacheFS is switching to
Clips: distributing as a DKMS module.
Clips: That means a normal make and make install of bcatchfs tools will also install
Clips: the kernel module sources, which on a system with a normally functioning DKMS
Clips: will then be built and available as like any other kernel module.
Clips: And of course, generally, this will
Clips: all be handled by our distribution or packaging or, you know, whatever.
Clips: And he went on to kind of go into, well, one, big thank you,
Clips: because a lot of folks have seemingly stepped up to help with this new packaging side of the project.
Clips: So that's great to see. That is, yeah. He also touches on he's going to be providing
Clips: for now a nightly release.
Clips: Well, he'll have two channels, I should say. One is called nightly and one is called release.
Clips: The nightly is as you expect, right? But the release channel,
Clips: it's the latest tagged release. It has code that has been deemed stable.
Clips: And Kent has been really good about communicating this, too.
Clips: So not only is there, you know, obviously community discussions about this,
Clips: but Kent is directly posting on his Patreon blog sort of just status updates
Clips: for everybody so they know where things are at.
Clips: He did mention also that they are looking eventually post-experimental status
Clips: being dropped to have a real stable release channel as well that'll lag behind
Clips: and just get sort of backboards. So that's coming. We're not there yet.
Clips: For those LTS type folks. Right now, Nixos and Arch get what's labeled first-tier support.
Clips: They're providing apt packages for Debian and Ubuntu, so you can get those added.
Clips: And they're also looking at getting BcacheFS tools back into Debian proper. So, TBD on that.
Clips: Fedora has long had a well-supported BcacheFS tools package,
Clips: and Kent shouts out a friend of our show, Neil Gampa, on that. So that's great.
Clips: Hey, Milo! The one caveat, though, now is since bcachefs isn't in the kernel,
Clips: bcachefs tools, the package itself can no longer be supplied as part of the
Clips: main Fedora distribution due to a policy in Fedora about how to treat kernel
Clips: modules, I guess. So instead, there's now a copper available for that.
Clips: But it sounds like otherwise it's sort of, you know, a long,
Clips: a well-tested package. And if you're on Nix or Arch, you're pretty much going
Clips: to get first-tier support. Yep.
Clips: That's what it, that's what they expect. Okay. Well, I mean,
Clips: works for us. Yeah, I think they're not sure yet on the status in OpenSUSE. That's ongoing.
Clips: And he has some more notes about Slackware and a few other distros in the post,
Clips: if you're curious for more deets there.
Clips: So DKMS lifestyle it is for us. That's right.
Chris: Okay, well, I thought, let's do one more clip from the bootleg that sort of
Chris: puts a cap on this. And that is Linus himself.
Chris: He was at an event and he was doing a Q&A with Dirk.
Chris: And they don't directly say the name, but some of these issues come up.
Chris: Like also this year, we've had a lot of Rust maintainers quit.
Chris: In fact, I believe now we're just down to one Rust for Linux project leader
Chris: as the sole maintainer for the code while there's a couple of Rust reviewers.
Chris: So the Rust folks have had a rough year. There's been this issue with Bcash FS.
Chris: And so Linus takes a moment to reflect on it. And this was just a couple of weeks ago.
Clips: Yeah, we had this year was a bit tumultuous. We had a lot of disagreements to
Clips: the point where parts of the kernel was made external just to avoid a lot of friction.
Clips: To be fair, that was not the first time it happened. But it's been a while.
Clips: We've had pieces of the kernel that were not being used or had serious enough
Clips: issues that we had to excise from the kernel. It's rare.
Clips: In 35 years, it's happened only a handful of times, so it's not an enjoyable experience.
Clips: But at the same time, I feel that we've been able to deal with it fairly well.
Clips: Any big project where literally thousands of people we have every single release
Clips: we have over a thousand people involved and that's,
Clips: every two months right you will have personal
Clips: disagreements you will have professional disagreements you
Clips: will have friction and and that's all part of life and and i think we're mostly
Clips: one big happy family i i think i would more describe it as a very mature group
Clips: of people who have figured out how to work with each other but yeah i'll go
Clips: with a happy family that's.
Chris: I think his way of saying you know it wasn't necessarily easy on him either
Chris: the whole process i don't This story isn't over yet, but that is our coverage
Chris: so far as it was in the bootleg that hadn't made it in the main show.
Chris: Do you have any follow-up thoughts or any?
Wes: Oh, I do want to underscore. It does seem like we were looking just now,
Wes: and the last update to the pcachefs tools repo was like 14 minutes ago.
Wes: And I have continued to see Kent out there engaging with the community, providing support.
Wes: I think things have just been a little quiet because we're in a stabilization period.
Chris: Kent is known for listening to the show on occasion. So if you have any production
Chris: systems out there or home lab systems or whatever you want to call it that are
Chris: running Bcache FS in the enterprise or on your own laptop, let us know.
Chris: Send us a contact or send us a boost.
Chris: And that might be useful in a future episode. So send those in.
Chris: Now, I was just looking at the chat room there.
Chris: And, you know, our buddy, Hybrid Sarcasm, big supporter of the show,
Chris: awesome member of our community, he says in here, Chris Rants are the only reason
Chris: one needs to become a member.
Chris: And so it is the Black Friday, Cyber Monday season.
Chris: And we do have a promo code, promo code bootleg, which takes,
Chris: I think, 15% off a membership if you would like to sign up.
Chris: And I will, just for you, hybrid, I will play a rant that actually ends with
Chris: a little bit of an update from this week.
Chris: So this is from LUP625's pre-show.
Clips: It all comes down to the damn enterprise distros. It's all because of the damn enterprise distros.
Clips: Because these things lock us into these 10-year windows of time where something
Clips: that crops up can be an issue in this world, right? These problems...
Clips: Are only problems for small windows of time if you regularly update your system.
Clips: And God forbid, maybe you even have an immutable box with the applications and
Clips: the data separately and you just continuously update the immutable base and
Clips: you update the applications as the business need require or compliance requires.
Clips: God forbid you go that route because if you did, then these problems are like
Clips: a problem for 15 minutes and then you just deploy the patch.
Clips: And all of these conversations should be keeping that in perspective.
Clips: Is these problems are problems for small periods of time and then are fixed.
Clips: And something that doesn't do something can do something later because we can
Clips: add functionality and features to the software and update it.
Clips: But if you're running some crazy esoteric business fork of Linux and your world
Clips: doesn't update, that doesn't mean the rest of us are living that.
Clips: And I think that has to be included in the conversation because it's looked at.
Clips: I think we all go through this default bias filter of, Well,
Clips: they're enterprise systems in the 10-year update cycle.
Clips: So, you know, if you have a problem and a vulnerability in this library,
Clips: then it could be an issue for tens of thousands of systems that don't update.
Clips: Yeah, well, they're doing it wrong.
Clips: And we shouldn't, I don't know why we bend over backwards to enable a way to
Clips: deliver Linux that is not compatible with the way Linux is developed.
Clips: And not only is it incompatible with the way Linux and features are developed
Clips: and distributed, but it's not great for security.
Clips: And it's the the issue holding us back is your application vendor compatibility
Clips: with the vendor requires that we run this on susa linux or it requires we use
Clips: rel you're the customer tell them every year we want this in a container we
Clips: want this in a vm whatever it takes,
Clips: and and then we can start the process of rolling out updates as required and
Clips: it doesn't have to be this big thing it can just be the way the system works.
Clips: It can just be the way that iOS and Android have solved this problem,
Clips: and we don't see it become a huge issue.
Clips: And like when I see what the trickle down culture of that is,
Clips: is this sort of I don't need to update my view.
Clips: I don't need to reassess my stance because, you know, it's probably valid for
Clips: a decade. And it inbreeds this laziness and this anti-intellectual approach
Clips: to understanding how the software is developed and how it works.
Clips: And then it creates this culture of bashing these things like IOU ring or butter
Clips: FS or Bcash FS or whatever the next thing is.
Clips: And it's based on these outdated or misinformed assumptions that really I think
Clips: stem from enterprise Linux.
Chris: And I felt like Red Hat must have been listening because this week they introduced
Chris: Project Hummingbird to accelerate cloud-native development and,
Chris: quote, zero CVE strategies.
Chris: So I think what this really is, is you could think of it as a version of their
Chris: UBI images, but instead of being based on RHEL, they're based on Fedora.
Chris: And I think maybe even like the Rawhide version of Fedora.
Chris: So these are coming in with like super hot patches.
Chris: They call it the zero CV status, meaning Red Hat hummingbird images are shipped
Chris: free of known vulnerabilities.
Chris: The functionality testing already completed, confirming that their images are
Chris: also genuinely useful and stable. Genuinely useful and stable, Wes.
Wes: Yeah, I think that's their way of saying we're testing these well.
Wes: But the phrasing is a bit odd. They do also seem to focus on them being very
Wes: application-specific, right?
Wes: So languages and runtimes, so .NET or containers ready to go for Java or running
Wes: Node apps, as well as stuff like MariaDB or Postgres, Nginx,
Wes: Caddy, that kind of thing.
Wes: So maybe more focused than some of the general UPI stuff.
Chris: Um, love to see it. Don't know what kind of adoption UBI is getting and what
Chris: kind of adoption Project Hummingbird will get.
Chris: Things like they include a lot of things companies like.
Chris: Um, so they have minimal releases and they have hardened versions.
Chris: They have a total bill of materials in there enabling, quote,
Chris: users to verify contents.
Wes: Yeah, that's what I was going to call out was, um, maybe trying to compete with
Wes: some things like Chain Guard or similar that are offering, like,
Wes: here's a tiny image. It does one thing.
Wes: And also here's the list of everything in it and exactly where we got it.
Chris: Yeah. You can just get it from us. You can just get it from us.
Chris: I do like that Fedora gets a proper call out in here, right?
Chris: So they say, again, I said this part, Project Hummingbird is built on the open
Chris: source development process originating from Fedora Linux components.
Chris: And then they go on to say, and they didn't need to save this part,
Chris: Fedora Linux serves as the upstream source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux development.
Chris: I just, every time we just sort of, you know, cement that a little bit more
Chris: into the RHEL culture, right? We just, Fedora is a vital part of RHEL.
Wes: We're putting it in this press release?
Chris: Yes. I like that. I like that a lot. probably not
Chris: something i'm going to use but it is interesting to
Chris: see when when i have a caricature in my mind of
Chris: these enterprise linux distros that i was ranting about in that clip from forever
Chris: ago it's these rel systems that haven't been upgraded in three releases because
Chris: of the difficulty of it which is what i spent a lot of my early years fixing
Chris: was systems that were three or more releases behind consistently.
Wes: I do think like putting on my dev hat if i were at a company that was in this kind of environment.
Wes: This would seem like a pretty nice offering that I'd be able to pull in from.
Chris: Look at them go. Look at them go. So you're missing some content if you're not
Chris: a member, and it is a great way to just put your support on autopilot.
Chris: There's also an ad-free version of the feed if the bootleg isn't for you.
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Brent: Well, we've got a baller boost this week from someone dear to my heart, A.A. Ron.
Brent: A.A. Ron sent in 96,670 sats across three boosts.
Chris: Oh-ho!
Chris: Coming in, going to be doing a big lift for this episode. Thank you, Aaron.
Wes: Here with the baller for sure.
Brent: I heard a while back mention of Talos OS and it intrigued me.
Brent: I haven't had a chance to play with it until now.
Brent: Anita rose for a dev Kubernetes cluster, so I figured I would give it a try.
Brent: It's stupid easy how Talos makes it.
Brent: What was originally a week's worth of effort was done in like five minutes.
Brent: I'll be playing around more with it, but very happy so far. And as always,
Brent: love that show. Thanks for all you do.
Wes: Yeah, keep the experience reports coming. Talos does look quite good.
Brent: Of course, A.A. Run had some other ideas. Here's a little extra for the holidays.
Brent: I think a home lab special is a great idea, and I'll be submitting mine as soon as I can.
Brent: Maybe you can include an award for the longest running server.
Chris: Ooh, uptime, you mean? Like an uptime award? Also slash oldest kernel.
Brent: Is it, you know, you can do uptime, But you can also do like longest age of
Brent: initial, you know, deployment.
Chris: I wonder how long people, how many people out there could beat fake NAS,
Chris: which has got to be, we've been having, we've had it running for a decade,
Chris: but it was used when we bought it and had been in production for three or four years when we bought it.
Chris: So that server is probably 13 or 14 years old and amazingly power was cut to
Chris: it twice last night as the circuit blew and just picks right back up.
Brent: Why the circuit blow Chris is really strange that that would happen because.
Chris: I use the microwave. Oh, so yeah. Studios got some original weird wiring the studio itself.
Chris: We redid the wiring in this room out the rest of the place.
Wes: You don't want to know.
Chris: Yeah, you could you could you could build it fast. you can build it cheap or
Chris: you can build it right and they picked two so it is what it is.
Wes: Bob the nut comes in with 4 000 sats.
Chris: Hey it's bob hey bob i i guess i know i think it's bob i think i know him,
Chris: I think I know which Bob this is.
Wes: Bob says, cheers.
Chris: Well, cheers to you.
Wes: Thanks for the boost.
Chris: Thank you very much. Well, look who it is, guys. It's Chlorifora.
Chris: Chloriflora. Am I getting it? Chloriflora. Chloriflora. He comes in with a row of ducks.
Chris: 2,222 sats. Looks like I really need to change my nickname.
Wes: It might have something to do with what just happened. I don't know.
Chris: Yeah, maybe. You know, I apologize. guys. Uh, it's a deficiency of mine.
Chris: I'm, I'm definitely, I'm going to nail it though. One of these days,
Chris: it's definitely, I'm going to get better about it. It's going to happen.
Brent: If you don't nail it, you're going to start collecting some adversaries.
Chris: Yeah. Or adversaries.
Brent: Yeah. Something like that.
Wes: Monty comes in with 4,444 sets.
Wes: Yeah, double ducks. Gadzooks! I run a very similar switch for external access
Wes: to what Chris just set up.
Chris: Ah!
Wes: Mine skips the ngrok and incorporates something I picked up from you guys,
Wes: which is tunneling a reverse proxy over a mesh network.
Wes: I have a VPS that runs Caddy, and it proxies any service I want publicly available over tailscale.
Wes: At the very bottom of the Caddy file, I import. Looks like he's got an Etsy
Wes: Caddy secure and then a .caddy folder.
Wes: Nice. In that secure subdue, I have files such as secureservices.caddy.disabled.
Chris: Okay.
Wes: Then in Home Assistant, I have a switch that triggers the shell command to rename
Wes: that file to secureservices.caddy.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Flip the switch off, and it names it back to disabled.
Chris: That's a clever way to do it. There's so many ways to do that.
Wes: And then Monty continues with a plus one to config confessions round three.
Wes: I really like hearing about unique ways people approach solving problems through declarative configs.
Chris: Well, thank you, Monty. And I love hearing your setup there.
Chris: That's a great way to do it.
Chris: And yeah, if you've got the VPS and you got a little NGINX foo under your belt, 10-minute job.
Chris: Just get it on your mesh network and go to town. I mean, in a way,
Chris: Jelly Swarm is doing some of that for me.
Chris: Only on top of it, it's layering over that interface to combine the Jellyfin
Chris: servers and do the user ID mapping and have the UI.
Chris: So it's doing a bit more than just the NGINX bit.
Chris: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Gene Bean comes in with 8,922 SATs.
Chris: Chris, it's time to get on the home manager train. Whoop, whoop.
Chris: Oh, boy. You know, I feel like there is.
Wes: Gene Bean coming in with the truth.
Chris: Oh, man. I feel like there's just no stopping this. I can feel the home manager train.
Chris: He says, it is a simple way to do so many of the things that you try to do,
Chris: and it enables a lot of, like, nixing-type stuff on Ubuntu and the like,
Chris: you know, like your studio machines.
Chris: Also, plus one for config confessions part three. I'm catching up on episodes
Chris: after falling behind and totally missed round two.
Chris: If it's practical for round three, give us a month notice along with concrete
Chris: deadlines so we can help staving off procrastination.
Wes: These are some quality tips.
Chris: Well, Gene, this is why we're giving you a heads up about the Home Lab Challenge,
Chris: right? We're trying to give you a heads up, but there's only so much time for the holidays.
Chris: But we could, like maybe set a date that's a few months out.
Chris: For the next one. This round's been great, he says.
Chris: He also wants to know whatever became a Steam OS getting released as a general distro.
Wes: Yeah, what did become of that?
Chris: Their answer when you ask Valve now is, well, we've done a lot of work to make
Chris: it work on many AMD devices, so give it a shot.
Chris: Okay.
Brent: Thanks.
Chris: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Also, plus one listener Alex's comment about the ATL being
Chris: ripe for a live show. ATL?
Wes: Atlanta.
Chris: Oh yeah all right i like that i like that a lot.
Wes: Soham g comes in with two thousand cents,
Wes: okay about git my semi-hot take
Wes: is that git is poorly designed and even in computer science very few people
Wes: actually use it efficiently because of this teaching people git is a fool's
Wes: errand whoa i use fossil for my nix configs and mirror them to github see the
Wes: talk by fossil and and sequel-like creator Richard Hipp on YouTube for more.
Chris: Huh.
Chris: Coming in hot. What do you think? Is it a waste of time? I can't agree.
Wes: I don't know if I'll go that strong, but I do think wanting improvement is good,
Wes: and Fossil and some other stuff like the jujitsu tool.
Wes: There are some promising better tools than Gets. So I don't think it's,
Wes: you know, it may be a local optimum. It's definitely not a global optimum.
Chris: All right, we'll take that.
Brent: Well, hybrid sarcasm boosted in 15,000 sets.
Brent: Hybrid says, pew, pew, boosting to remind everyone that the Boosties are right around the corner.
Brent: Get your baller boosts in to boost your chances of winning a free year of the
Brent: Jupiter Party membership.
Chris: Yeah, Hybrid is going to gift the Jupiter Party membership to somebody who is our Boosties winner.
Chris: And if you already have one, then he can give it to somebody else or you can as well.
Chris: That's going to be great. And we really appreciate that. Hybrid,
Chris: you're a good guy. You know what? He's a good guy, right?
Brent: Yeah, a real good guy.
Chris: Real good guy.
Wes: Real good guy.
Chris: Real good guy. Morris comes in with 5,000 sats.
Chris: Jelly Swarm solves a problem I didn't know I had. Yeah, I agree, right? It was so great.
Chris: Have some sats? Is that what he says there? What's he saying there,
Chris: Wes? You look like you have an idea.
Wes: No, a signal? Sigma?
Chris: Sigma sats.
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: I'm going to go with that. Thank you, Morris. Yeah, Jelly Swarm,
Chris: Wes came in clutch on that one. And I mean, I'm glad I had a chance to build
Chris: my whole tunnel thing because I can use it for a couple of other things.
Chris: But boy, oh boy, I was off on the wrong track on that one.
Wes: Well, I'm just so excited to see more and more stuff being built on Jellyfin
Wes: like that. It's been calling out kind of for various tools like that.
Chris: The last year has been really good for things building around Jellyfin.
Chris: And I think it's going to be a matter of time before our friends in our circle
Chris: that still have Plex will probably give Jellyfin another look.
Chris: Because there's just so many great apps around it. Thank you everybody who supported
Chris: this episode with a boost.
Chris: It's a value for value production, and that means if you get some value out
Chris: of the show, we'd really like it if you set it back our way.
Chris: There are several ways to do it, and one of them is a boost.
Chris: And we had 23 of you stream sats as you listened.
Chris: You collectively stacked for us 33,724 sats. Not our strongest showing ever,
Chris: but, you know, it's there. It's there, and we appreciate it.
Chris: So you can say that about it. And then, of course, when it comes to our total
Chris: this week, we stacked 172,522 sats.
Chris: Thank you everyone who boosted in. Fountain.fm is making some big leaps forward
Chris: on the interface and some of the features.
Chris: So if you haven't checked it out for a while, now's a great time and it makes
Chris: it easier to boost than ever.
Chris: There is a completely self-hosted route with things like AlbiHub and there's
Chris: a plethora of great podcast apps over at newpodcastapps.com. Head on over there.
Chris: See if one fits your needs. Support the show with a boost.
Chris: And, of course, a big thank you to our members who put their support on Autopilot.
Chris: Shows like this, they're not going to last long term without audience support,
Chris: right? It's a niche audience that we make the podcast for. And that is you.
Chris: Thank you for your support.
Chris: Before we get out of here we're going to leave you with a couple of picks well
Chris: a pick with a couple of links and uh wes you're speaking to my heart with an
Chris: old school emulator this week And I honestly haven't had a lot of experience,
Chris: not good experience at least, with the Nintendo 64 emulators.
Chris: So you're bringing to the class today Gopher 64. Tell me about it.
Wes: Yeah, I was chatting with my bro. We both love this era of gaming as well.
Wes: And I guess he was trying out a few different emulators, had a problem with
Wes: some of them, and had found Simple 64, which was supposed to be a very widely compatible emulator.
Wes: So i took a look at that just wanted to go check
Wes: out if it was open source could you could i find it and i noticed it was archived
Wes: and at point and it said go check out go for 64 i don't know about simple 64
Wes: but go for 64 when i went and searched it immediately popped up with linux support
Wes: so i was super pleased to see that and now then i looked a little closer and,
Wes: it's also a gpl rust app.
Chris: Oh that's great.
Wes: V3 yeah.
Chris: So it's GPL3 built in Rust, but also very cool for this type of thing is it
Chris: has a net play server as well.
Wes: Yeah, it seems like it's pretty widely compatible so far. It's targeting like
Wes: not crazy high specs needed to be able to play.
Chris: They've got a Docker composer, really Podman, really. Look at the Podman. It's Podman.
Chris: Podman, you pull this container and you get a little discoverable LAN server
Chris: for running different games on.
Wes: Yeah, and then it is also published as a flat pack. So pretty easy to get started and play.
Wes: I was able to test out just playing a few ROMs and worked no problem.
Chris: That's great. Now, this is, I think, is a nice in-between because what I'm using,
Chris: and I've talked about it before on the show, is ROMM. ROMM?
Wes: Yes.
Chris: That's a web app that has a bunch of different emulators baked in,
Chris: but they're not top-grade emulators.
Chris: Like the N64 one's not great.
Chris: The Super Nintendo one's fine, so I'm happy about that. so this is really nice
Chris: especially with that netplay capability it's.
Wes: Got xbox style controllers with a like a default mapping for those so those
Wes: should work pretty much out of the box.
Chris: Go for 64 i'd like also if anybody out there has any of their favorite favorite
Chris: uh classic game emulators let me know i'm always i was just this weekend i was
Chris: playing with my little rx whatever it is handheld game device yes i just every
Chris: now that i'm in a mood for a classic game and.
Wes: You know boost in what which ROM's your plan.
Chris: Of course. Now, Wes, before we go, we got some pro tips for you.
Chris: And it's actually, it's great to see more and more apps are supporting this now.
Wes: Yeah, the magic of the podcast namespace from Podcasting 2.0.
Chris: Yeah, we got transcripts and cloud chapters.
Chris: And it's, I think, Podcast, what is it, Pocket Casts, and Apple Podcasts have
Chris: just recently added that stuff. Of course, all the podcasting 2.0 apps as well.
Wes: Well, of course, yeah, they are ahead of the game. But yeah, you know.
Chris: It's spreading.
Wes: More and more of your regular old podcasting clients are implementing some,
Wes: maybe not all, maybe not as much as one, but some.
Wes: And like, you know, once you have the namespace in your RSS feed,
Wes: it makes it even easier to start using more of those features.
Chris: And when you switch to a new app or when your app, your legacy app gets these
Chris: features, we have been putting transcripts and chapters in since episode 600.
Chris: So you're going to get a massive back catalog now of weeks and weeks of this
Chris: stuff, which is going to be fun, I think, when we find different ways to use it.
Chris: So that's available to you. And then probably the biggest resource is going to be our website.
Chris: We'll have links to everything we talked about, the projects we mentioned.
Chris: All of that stuff is linked over at linuxunplugged.com slash 643.
Chris: That's where you're also going to find our contact page, our membership stuff, all of that.
Chris: And of course, there's only a couple of more live streams left this year.
Chris: So we would love to have you join us live. We do it on a Sunday.
Chris: We call it a Tuesday on a Sunday. It's our special thing. We start at 10 a.m.
Chris: Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern over at jblive.tv.
Chris: Or you can put it in your audio streamer of choice at jblive.fm.
Chris: We have a mumber room that's going during all of that. Our LUP plug gets together
Chris: before and after the show and hangs out with us.
Chris: You can also join that mumble room yourself. It's available to anyone.
Chris: And all the resources you might want over at linuxunplugged.com.
Chris: Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of Your Unplugged Program.
Chris: And we will see you right back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday.
Chris: Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.