Chris: You know, I've noticed recently there isn't really a maintained way to convert
Chris: a website into a standalone desktop application.
Chris: Like on Linux, you used to be able to use something like Natifier,
Chris: where you could give it a URL and it would create an Electron-based standalone desktop app.
Chris: There was also App Natify, which would do the same, but it would create an app
Chris: image, which is kind of neat.
Chris: Chrome and Firefox used to have these as just features built into them.
Wes: Oh, yeah, kind of like you could do on Android or whatever, right?
Wes: So, yeah, make this into a web app, okay.
Chris: And this is, you know, there's so many web apps these days. I was looking for
Chris: this and I kind of found something, but I'm wondering if anyone out there has
Chris: something that works just a lot simpler.
Chris: I think it's pronounced Turi. What do you think?
Wes: Tari?
Chris: Tari? Okay, let's go with that. It's probably a lot better. You can use Tari
Chris: to essentially create a web app out of a website. And then there's some other
Chris: tools around that you can use.
Chris: You could even declaratively configure those in your Nix config, it looks like.
Chris: But it's a lot of a process. versus something like Natifier where I just used
Chris: to have a command line app, point at a URL, and boom, I had a local web app.
Chris: I can't be the only one that wants this. This must be a thing on Linux,
Chris: right? This can't be just dead.
Mumble: I just use a separate browser.
Chris: Yeah, I don't want to use a separate browser. I want a separate app.
Wes: Doesn't Linux Mint have a version of this that they have?
Chris: Yes.
Wes: In their X apps or whatever?
Chris: Yes, they do. They do. They do. But that doesn't work for me,
Chris: and it isn't packaged in the distro I'm using.
Wes: I think you should go with the Tauri thing because I'm now remembering that
Wes: Tauri is the term used for humans in Stargate SG-1.
Chris: Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris.
Wes: My name is Wes.
Brent: And my name is Brent.
Chris: Hello, gentlemen. Coming up on the show today, we're getting ready for two of
Chris: the biggest Linux events of the year.
Chris: We've got some folks on the ground, organizers, and surprise guests joining
Chris: us to give us the scoop before it all begins.
Chris: Then we'll round out the show with some great boosts, killer picks, and a lot more.
Chris: So before we go any further, let's say time-appropriate greetings to that mumble
Chris: room. Hello, Virtual Lug.
Mumble: Hi, Chris. Hi, Wes. And hello, Brent. Hello, guys. Hello.
Chris: It's a tight team this week. Did we piss them all off last week?
Wes: Probably. We did have some hot takes.
Chris: People were not happy about Rust. They didn't like the Rust talk.
Chris: But nice to have you in their mumble room. Thank you very much for being here.
Chris: And a big good morning to our friends over at TailScale. TailScale.com slash unplugged.
Chris: That's where you go to support the show and get it for free for up to 100 devices,
Chris: three users, no credit card.
Chris: TailScale is the easiest way to connect your devices, your services,
Chris: your applications, whatever they are, directly to each other.
Chris: It's modern networking built on top of...
Wes: Waggall.
Chris: And it's fast, like really, really fast. You'll never even know you're using it.
Chris: And it's intelligent, too. If two nodes are on the same LAN,
Chris: they talk directly to each other.
Chris: But if one of those nodes happens to move off your LAN, they continue to talk
Chris: like they're right next to each other, just whatever the speed of your connection is.
Chris: And it makes it so simple and straightforward to build a flat network of,
Chris: say, multiple different online providers.
Chris: Maybe you have multiple VPSs and you have systems on a LAN somewhere.
Chris: You can bring all of those together. And if you work in an organization,
Chris: there are so many options for how you can control things and program the networks
Chris: that the right people get access to the right resources.
Chris: It's zero trust that every organization can use, and it's painless.
Chris: And you can start with our plan for free and support the show for up to 100
Chris: devices and three users. No more inbound ports on your firewalls.
Chris: We love it. Lots of listeners love it. And thousands of companies love it.
Chris: Try it and support the show at tailscale.com slash unplugged.
Chris: We have a meetup to announce, Saturday, March 8th, 7 p.m.
Chris: In Pasadena, California. Details at meetup.com slash jupiterbroadcasting.
Chris: And we're going to El Cholo, right? You think that's how you say it?
Chris: And they have room for around 40 people. So last time we did a dinner,
Chris: about 55 people showed up. So we do want you to RSVP if you're going to make it.
Chris: Plan on bringing cash or maybe paying for meals and drinks on your own.
Chris: Cash app or Venmo is probably also the work there, I think, from the website.
Chris: And we generally do this at the yard house, which we were going to.
Chris: But they wanted to charge us, and I understand, but they wanted to charge us a $3,200 minimum.
Chris: So we called up El Cholo and they said, we'd love to have you.
Chris: We can only have room for about 40-ish people.
Chris: Some will cycle though, so don't worry. You know, you might pop in.
Chris: Some people will be cycling out. There's a lot going on that evening.
Chris: And yes, we are using the Meetup page for historical purposes for this one,
Chris: meetup.com slash jupyterbroadcasting.
Chris: Now, if you're listening, you can't make the meetup, but maybe you want to help
Chris: out with the beer budget that night or something like that. You could always
Chris: boost this episode. We'd appreciate that.
Chris: And while we are in scale, boys, we have something special.
Chris: We got nerdy and dug into eBPF. So while we're away at Planet Nixon scale,
Chris: we have a special eBPF coming out, eBPF episode coming out for you.
Chris: And this really is a superpower that's just waiting for you to take advantage.
Chris: It's in your Linux kernel right now, and there are tools that make it possible for anyone to use it.
Chris: We'll get into some of the more advanced use cases and some of the,
Chris: like, just grab this executable and run it, and you can start messing with eBPF.
Chris: We won't be live next Sunday, but our members will get a special bootleg episode,
Chris: and that'll be episode 605, the eBPF special.
Wes: And, you know, it's not necessarily our normal thing, so do let us know what you think about it.
Chris: Yeah, I'm always a little nervous about these more technical episodes.
Chris: We always get feedback from people saying they love it, but then sometimes the
Chris: metrics don't actually support that.
Chris: So we do want to hear your feedback on it too. So give us your thoughts.
Chris: Why are we doing a prerecord? Because next weekend will be Scale and Planet Nix.
Chris: So this is the Sunday before Planet Nix.
Chris: And we are so thrilled to go to the first Planet Nix because ideally,
Chris: if possible, we would love to cover every single one of them.
Chris: I mean, imagine for us how exciting this is. We get into Nix and NixOS a couple
Chris: of years ago now, before these events really existed. And now here we are,
Chris: you know, on this journey and these events are starting to materialize.
Chris: And this is the first Planet Nix.
Chris: That's pretty exciting for us. And so we're delighted that Phlox is making it
Chris: possible for us to get down there and cover it and helping with the travel budget
Chris: and just really coming in clutch.
Chris: And so we wanted to chat with Ron. He's the CEO at Phlox and he's joining us right now.
Chris: Well, joining us now to share in the excitement is Ron Afani,
Chris: and he is the co-founder of Phlox and the president of the NixOS Foundation,
Chris: and an all-around great guy. Ron, welcome to the Unplugged program.
Ron: Super excited to be here again. It's almost been a year.
Chris: I am super excited about Planet Nix, and I think I want to start with the fact
Chris: that this is technically kind of a new thing. It's the first Planet Nix, isn't it?
Ron: It is.
Chris: Now we want to give us, what's the background here on, is this going to be like a worldwide thing?
Chris: Is this going to be a North America thing? Is this TBD?
Chris: What's the kind of like high level picture of where Planet Nix is and where it's going?
Ron: I mean, I think there's a lot of aspects to it and a lot of things that were
Ron: internal in the community around it and out of it.
Ron: But I think bottom line is just we wanted to keep nurturing and growing and
Ron: bringing Nix to North America, making it a little bit closer to this side of the globe.
Ron: So that was the real first intention for creating a conference on this continent.
Chris: Well, I am sure grateful. You know, we often kind of feel on the West Coast
Chris: like we're a little bit like we get left out of the fun a little bit.
Wes: Especially all the way to Europe where there's so much Nick stuff.
Chris: I have to imagine the first one is going to be kind of also a little bit of
Chris: let's see how it goes, right? The results will speak for themselves and then
Chris: you'll kind of decide the future.
Ron: Yes, 100%. I think what we're trying to do is definitely see how kind of our
Ron: ecosystem here responds to it.
Ron: We have a slight feeling that it's going to be a slightly more Nix at work feeling,
Ron: if that makes sense, right?
Ron: Like folks just seeing at the talks that are coming in from Kelsey Hightower
Ron: doing the opening to folks from Anthropik and, you know, large companies talking
Ron: about their use of Nix and how they're bringing it into their workplace.
Ron: I think it's going to definitely have a different flavor to it.
Ron: And I think that's also why we want to make sure it has a new brand,
Ron: right? there's a kind of like a different vibe to the entire thing.
Chris: It's interesting too because i wonder if that sort of is reflective of where
Chris: nix os adoption is at right now do you think that's maybe there's a connection there.
Ron: Oh 100 i mean we're i think we're seeing
Ron: again year over year we're seeing that crazy amount of
Ron: of growth both on uh usage and
Ron: the chatter and the different companies are coming in to nix coming to flox
Ron: and talking about the you know it's not just about nix itself and even the programming
Ron: language behind it's kind of also about the principles that nix brings in and
Ron: and you're seeing more parts of the marketplace kind of look to adopt it.
Chris: I want to also make people aware of flocks a little bit can you tell me kind
Chris: of the uh elevator pitch for flocks and maybe why you're connected so closely with nix.
Ron: Yeah definitely i mean the elevator pitch is that flocks fox helps abstract
Ron: away the infrastructure complexity from whatever whoever is doing the coding,
Ron: if it's your engineers, if it's the future AI overlords and agents,
Ron: but that's for the non-NICS initiated.
Ron: Bottom line, Phlox started from the fact that we, my co-founder brought NICS
Ron: in for the first enterprise adoption motion almost eight years ago now.
Ron: And our whole thing was, okay, how can we bring NICS to more folks?
Ron: How can we bring it to work?
Ron: And that's where Flux generally started. So for us, it's all about environment
Ron: management up into the build space of what Nix can do for us,
Ron: and then into software supply chain security, where I think those are the three
Ron: rising stars of Nix-based principles, obviously, as a biased person.
Chris: And I think what drew me to Flux and why I was excited to work with you guys
Chris: to do the coverage for this is it's really sort of the evolution of building
Chris: on top of some amazing open source and free software principles.
Chris: And it's not maybe fully consumable for the end consumer like an enterprise,
Chris: but with a little bit of work and a little bit of innovation from a company
Chris: like yours, you can take something so powerful and make it accessible to those groups,
Chris: which is always what happens with this best great free software we see get built
Chris: in the Linux kernel, like WireGuard and other things.
Chris: So that's what I really thought was sort of super great about Phlox and other
Chris: companies in that space is taking Nix and Breen to that next customer.
Wes: This way I don't have to teach every single one of my team members how to debug all of the Nix config.
Chris: Wes knows the pain. He knows the pain.
Ron: Yeah, we've all been there on the Flock side. I think for us,
Ron: it's genuinely Nix is amazing.
Ron: And I obviously wear two hats. And I recommend everyone go check out Nix before they check out Flock.
Ron: But then Flock comes in and it's just, you know, if you want to bring it into
Ron: the workplace where folks don't need to get into the weeds of it,
Ron: that's kind of what we made it for. And obviously there's a bunch of technical
Ron: kind of IP that's built on top to just enable that enterprise access.
Ron: But for us, it's really clear. It's like, if you're coming in, check out Nix.
Ron: And then when you're looking to bring Nix into the enterprise, come check out Phlox.
Ron: And it's kind of like a cyclical motion because even Phlox has some Nix escape
Ron: patches where folks can start diving deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole.
Ron: So there's definitely some ideological open source bit.
Chris: I mean, for sure. It's like, you know, people listening to this show could become
Chris: big Knicks fans, but it's like, how do you convince everybody else at work to
Chris: actually implement this?
Chris: Well, here's something that's actually digestible by them.
Wes: Okay i'm curious outside of the uh you know the keynote with kelsey which i
Wes: think everyone's excited for uh what are you personally most excited for for this planet nix.
Ron: I mean one it's it's honestly just
Ron: building up our our ecosystem on on this side and i know a lot of our awesome
Ron: european friends and from other places are coming over which i think is even
Ron: way more exciting i think you're seeing we mentioned that earlier right you're
Ron: seeing that that adoption of it's It's not even about Nix, it's about the principles, right?
Ron: It's about like, hey, we care about reproducibility, we care about our software.
Ron: Software is becoming insanely more complex, right? We are asking software now to write software.
Ron: And Nix at its core just comes and provides this venue to say,
Ron: hey, let's decomplexify the stack, right?
Ron: And we're seeing more folks truly be intrigued about the concepts here and come
Ron: towards it. So I think just the opportunity to keep growing this front of the globe is number one.
Ron: The second one is, I think there's a few talks I'm pretty excited about.
Ron: Obviously, I'm excited about all the talks and all the speakers coming in.
Ron: But my top of minds that I'm definitely going to be sitting in on are one talk
Ron: from Fareed, who's going to jump into kind of like a concept of Nix is unapologetically fun.
Ron: Farid has a really good way of kind of talking about Nix in a very blunt yet,
Ron: you know, whimsical aspect to it.
Ron: And then there's actually a talk by Anish from Anthropic that I'm pretty excited
Ron: about and how they're using some of the Nix principles to pretty much build the frontier of AI.
Chris: Yeah. Okay. I'm writing both of those down.
Wes: How did I get more excited? I don't know.
Chris: Now, okay. Kind of along these lines, do you have any tips or anything people
Chris: need to know if they're going to show up, if they want to get some work done
Chris: while they're there too?
Chris: Do they need to bring a pencil and paper? What should they know?
Chris: What should they bring with them?
Ron: I mean, first of all, shout out to Elon and the SoCal Linux Expo team, Scale.
Ron: We love them. They help us make this possible.
Ron: The venue is incredible we have uh
Ron: this year we have two two giant rooms for one
Ron: for a workshop so you can get you know down into the details from beginner stuff
Ron: to advance things by nix experts from the globe um and then we have the talk
Ron: track but in the middle there's a huge huge huge kind of like open space where
Ron: we do hacking and birds of a feather and uh flox,
Ron: because Flux is hosting the entire thing we've been giving tables to different projects,
Ron: so there's going to be a lot of that if you're coming in come with like,
Ron: your laptops, come with an open mind come with your biggest problems everyone
Ron: and anyone that's going to be able to help you is probably going to be out there very happy to.
Chris: That's exciting and a GitHub token get your GitHub token sorted out before you show up,
Chris: that'll help too well ron i'm sure you've got a lot of packing to do i have
Chris: an incredible amount of gear to pack we are going to be hosting a dinner saturday night,
Chris: so if you can sneak away for a little bit and uh you know we'll grab you a beer
Chris: 100 all right ron thank you for joining us on a sunday and we'll see in a couple of days.
Wes: Well, after all that, I'm getting even more excited for Planet Nix.
Wes: And I've already been taking a sneak peek at some of the talks.
Wes: And I can see already I'm going to have to make some tough choices about which
Wes: ones I attend and which ones I can't make, because some of them happen at the same time.
Wes: But there is a keynote I think everyone's excited for, and we got ourselves
Wes: a little bit of a preview.
Clips: Joining us on the show right now is Kelsey Hightower. And, Kelsey,
Clips: I think people that are listening to this show that are familiar with the whole
Clips: world of Kubernetes probably know who you are.
Clips: But could you give us a brief introduction for folks that are new to you,
Clips: especially like us Nix folks?
Clips: A 25-year veteran, retired about a year and a half ago as a distinguished engineer at Google Cloud.
Clips: A lot of people know me from my work in the container world,
Clips: spent time at CoreOS, a contributor to Kubernetes.
Clips: Before that, I spent time at Puppet Labs working on things like Puppet Configuration Management.
Clips: And then the rest of my career, I probably spent time having jobs like the rest
Clips: of the listeners, from storage administration to software developer.
Clips: Wow, that is fantastic. Down in the trenches.
Clips: And not that we were like, you know, e-stalking you or anything,
Clips: but we did notice in December of 2024 on LinkedIn, you'd posted about dipping
Clips: the toes into Nix, trying out Phlox.
Clips: And one of the things that sort of appealed to me about your talk with Ron is
Clips: this outsider's perspective.
Clips: You have all this experience, but you're coming to Nick's now with sort of fresh eyes.
Clips: And that is intriguing to me because I think it's something we struggle with
Clips: on the show from time to time is just kind of getting outside of that Nick's bubble a bit.
Clips: And I'm just sort of curious to know what getting introduced to the Nick's community
Clips: has been like and how that's gone. Yeah, it looks like there's this whole other world...
Clips: Of software management that went down a different fork in the road.
Clips: Yeah. You know, 15 years ago, I went down the RPM, Debian packages.
Clips: One app per VM to create isolation.
Clips: And it seems like configuration management grew up around that, right?
Clips: Like this idea that you will have lots of these tiny machines.
Clips: So now we need frameworks to manage them all.
Clips: And so if you come from the Linux distribution world, pick your package manager,
Clips: app, git, yum, does it matter?
Clips: And then we got this second wave of package managers, again,
Clips: going down this fork in the road of, we just need a better package manager.
Clips: So if you're Ruby, you have RubyGems.
Clips: If you're Python, you have 7,000 package managers.
Clips: Just figure out what your dependencies need and you'll be all right.
Clips: And none of that really worked.
Clips: But then we came up with things like virtual int, which is these isolated ways
Clips: of having dependencies match the thing you were working on.
Clips: I mean, we went full brute force down this path, which ultimately led to things
Clips: like Docker, right? Docker just says, you know what?
Clips: If this is the path we're on, and the challenge we have with one app per VM
Clips: is that it gets super expensive.
Clips: And if we can just leverage, you know, the low level details,
Clips: like just create isolated file systems, you know, the old school charoot.
Clips: And look, if you want to use RPMs and RubyGems, hell, you can use all of them together.
Clips: And what we'll do is just put them all in one big bundle, call it a container image.
Clips: And then we did something I think that was unique at that time,
Clips: which was we finally decoupled the application from the machine.
Clips: And so when I arrived to Nix, you know, that's like a 20-year path.
Clips: When I get to Nix, Nix is like, hey, wait a minute.
Clips: You don't need to do all of that. What you can do instead is just treat all
Clips: your dependencies as a reusable thing, make them very explicit,
Clips: lay them out on the file system, and then link them when you need them,
Clips: and then you can ignore all this other brute force effort.
Clips: And I'm like, hmm, that's interesting. That would have been good to know 20
Clips: years ago before we went down this road.
Clips: Yeah. I think we've heard a lot of that, especially with folks who are very
Clips: comfortable with Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes, and as you mentioned,
Clips: things like Ansible or Puppet and configuration management. They've already
Clips: solved these things at scale, so it's kind of hard to want to unlearn everything.
Clips: 100%. And I think that's the big challenge now. So anyone that reads the Nix
Clips: paper now, I think a lot of people will agree that that is a great way of solving the problem.
Clips: You know, the one thing that I'm still trying to comprehend is it just feels
Clips: to me like Nix is still machine-focused, meaning it needs that file system to
Clips: be a first-class entity for anything else to work. And then in many ways,
Clips: you're going to have to modify...
Clips: The binary itself, the startup and linking process, you're going to have to
Clips: do a lot of work that assumes that you have access to the whole chain in order for it to work.
Clips: So I think there's going to be this happy medium between can I create reproducible
Clips: software, but then decide how to distribute it.
Clips: And I think a lot of people now are using, you know, things like Kubernetes,
Clips: which is a way of managing thousands of machines if you wanted to,
Clips: but decoupling the app from the server.
Clips: So you could imagine building a Docker image using Nix as a thing that brings
Clips: in all the dependencies, creates that kind of chain of trust,
Clips: if you will, but then allow me to use other tools to distribute.
Clips: And I think that's the new crossroad that we face, given that Nix is a viable
Clips: solution to this problem.
Clips: Yeah, that strikes me. You know, I think we've got a lot of questions on that
Clips: because it is a kind of new of like Nix being mature enough and the rest of
Clips: the ecosystem to breed them together.
Clips: And then also just, unless you understand kind of both container orchestration
Clips: tech and the NIC side of it, you might see how at the high level it's possible
Clips: to mingle these things productively.
Clips: But actually, how do you go about doing that in a concrete and battle-tested
Clips: way is maybe an open question.
Clips: Yeah, I mean, the answer I've been drawing out, I have my notepad,
Clips: I'm looking at like, what would be the answers to this problem?
Clips: And I just keep going back to thinking about things in layers, right?
Clips: So I think we have the operating system, pick your flavor, you grab your kernel,
Clips: those ABIs tend to be pretty stable.
Clips: But then the next part of this layer has to be that programming language and its runtime.
Clips: So if you're in a JVM, for decades, you've kind of seen yourself somewhat isolated
Clips: from the low-level OS, right?
Clips: You have your class path, the JVM kind of abstracts your app and the bytecode
Clips: away from the machine in hopefully a portable way.
Clips: And then you have things like Golang that takes us to the extreme,
Clips: that builds your app with the runtime bundled in and all of its dependencies,
Clips: even to the point where you're not even relying on libc sometimes.
Clips: So now you have these languages that are also self-contained,
Clips: building statically linked binaries.
Clips: And so you ask yourself, like, what use does Nix have? And the truth is,
Clips: there's still some use because not every app is going to be written and going.
Clips: Not every app is going to create a statically linked executable.
Clips: And also there's this trust problem. And this is where I think Nix jumps in.
Clips: The trust problem is we have all of these dependencies.
Clips: We're not sure who they're written by. We're not sure what version they're at.
Clips: And so on one hand, we're trying to create things like S-bombs.
Clips: If you haven't heard of those, this is this idea that we can produce a software
Clips: bill of materials when you buy a car or TV.
Clips: Ideally, someone knows every component and where it came from.
Clips: So if there's a need for a recall or to make sure that those things are safe,
Clips: we can always go back to those hardware bill of materials.
Clips: And that's what we're trying to do on this side. But how would you use them
Clips: together? I think a logical first step for a lot of people is.
Clips: If you take Nix as the trust layer, meaning you trust that Nix packages are
Clips: built by people that are doing the right thing, they're building from source,
Clips: there's a lot of transparency with that.
Clips: If I can take the Nix build process and let's say stick it inside of a Docker
Clips: file, so in this case, Nix would be replacing RPM, Nix would be replacing kind
Clips: of my ad hoc pulling things from GitHub and putting them in a particular directory.
Clips: Instead, you would say, all right, let's use Nix because Nix is going to give
Clips: me hopefully a reproducible way of building my software and having that then sit inside of an image.
Clips: So for the Docker people out there, you will still push your Docker image to a Docker registry.
Clips: You can run it in a serverless platform. You can run it on a VM like you're used to.
Clips: But when you peer inside of it, now the Nix ecosystem opens up to you and you
Clips: have a lot more transparency on how things are linking to other things.
Clips: And I think that will be a really pragmatic next step for people coming from
Clips: the Nix world or coming from the Docker world and looking for a little bit more
Clips: transparency at the library and dependency layer.
Clips: Yeah, I think especially, you know, anyone who's had to look backwards and try
Clips: to piece together, maybe it's a couple different layers of Docker files,
Clips: and one of them's pulling from Alpine, and one of them's a custom node or a Go builder.
Clips: And then all of that kind of gets munched together into one final layer.
Clips: If a lot of that was Nix, yeah, maybe you'd have to learn next,
Clips: but it might be a little easier to introspect.
Clips: Yeah, that's the big opportunity. Can these two worlds merge?
Clips: And I think that's going to be key.
Clips: User experience tends to dominate the tooling in this space because a lot of
Clips: people are just not that interested in like building software. Let's just be honest.
Clips: Most people are interested in capturing their ideas in their IDE,
Clips: turning that into an artifact that they can ship to their customers and users and being done with it.
Clips: And so if we make them focus way too much on this low level detail,
Clips: my guess is they will skip it.
Clips: Right, I'm trying to get this feature done. There's a lot of pressure on me.
Clips: I really don't have time to learn this thing that I don't really care about
Clips: build systems anyway. They're just a detail.
Clips: 100%. I mean, the other, I think, equation here is how many people or different
Clips: entities do we need repackaging the same software, right? Debian does this work for themselves.
Clips: Red Hat does this work for themselves. The Gentoo community,
Clips: let's not forget about them. They do this work for themselves.
Clips: And now you have kind of the Nix maintainers doing all of this work for themselves.
Clips: And I think the tricky bit here is if I go look at a NICS package.
Clips: I have to ask myself, who is this person that packaged this upstream software?
Clips: And typically what I find, it's not the maintainer.
Clips: And so now we're adding this additional layer of trust, like did this person
Clips: do something in between what the source code and the maintainer had in mind
Clips: to what's finally inside of this next package?
Clips: And that's the part that the industry is still trying to work out.
Clips: Can we have a really reliable software train of trust?
Clips: And that's where I think things get tricky and also what happens when packages
Clips: go unmaintained and so you also have the quality question is this the best place
Clips: to get this software or should I just go get the sources and build it myself,
Clips: right and you know even now we've seen somewhat I think of a rise of more projects
Clips: on GitHub having a default.nix or a flake.nix file but as you say there's still
Clips: that question of okay well if I go with them maybe it's oriented for like nightly
Clips: development or exactly how they want it but then if I go with maybe the nix
Clips: packages version or some other downstream Well,
Clips: that's been maybe massaged a bit to fit more comfortably with the assumptions
Clips: of the rest of the system and trade-offs abound.
Clips: 100%. This doesn't sound like somebody who's retired, Kelsey,
Clips: I have to say. You said you started by saying you're retired.
Clips: There's no retirement. What I've learned is you will always do work.
Clips: It's just how much control over the work do you have?
Clips: And for me, that means I like to do my own cleaning. I've learned some trade
Clips: skills, everything from pulling permits to running my own electrical wires to
Clips: patching up the drywall and spraying texture on it so it matches the surrounding area.
Clips: And to me, I think that's the thing that you work for, right?
Clips: The idea is that you want to work on things that you think make the most impact.
Clips: So in this capacity, that's going to be a lot of startup advising.
Clips: You know, I still love the conference speaking. And look, I still have a knack
Clips: for learning new technologies and putting my hands on the keyboard.
Clips: Yeah, and I really appreciate your perspective on this, and it makes me even
Clips: more excited to see the talk with Ron.
Clips: Kelsey, is there anything else you want to touch on before we run?
Clips: No, I think, you know, people always ask me, like, what's the future of this?
Clips: What's the future of containers? What's the future of Nix?
Clips: And it's like, well, look, the future is typically determined by the people working on it.
Clips: And so if you're working on Nix, it's on you to kind of draw that line from
Clips: where you are right now and what you want the future to be.
Clips: And there are people, if you're listening, they're giving you feedback.
Clips: Here's why I can't use Nix.
Clips: Here's where I've tried to use Nix and it didn't work for me.
Clips: If you listen to those things in earnest and you chip away at removing that
Clips: friction, and look, you're competing, whether you know it or not,
Clips: you're competing with all the other solutions out there.
Clips: And if you take those two things and create a feedback loop and you solve those
Clips: problems, then you will decide what the future of Nix is.
Clips: And if it's usable, if it lives up to its promises, you might just find a world
Clips: where, I don't know, 30, 50% of Docker images are using Nix at the base layer
Clips: to provide the solution to reproducible software.
Clips: And just make sure you zoom out and understand the big picture.
Clips: Where does Nix fit in and what people are trying to do every day?
Clips: And I think those are just the huge takeaways as a technologist.
Clips: I love the tech. I love it's cool. I know some people have a printed out version
Clips: of the original Nick's white paper and sit next to them like the Bible.
Clips: But you got to remember, that's just one component of the whole.
Clips: And whoever bridges that gap will determine what the future looks like.
Clips: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it very much.
Chris: OnePassword.com slash unplugged. That is the number one password.com slash unplugged, all lowercase.
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Chris: the things you actually have your hands around, like managed employee identities.
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Chris: the shortcuts that have worn through the grass and turn out to actually be the
Chris: straightest line from point A to point B.
Chris: Those are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps, and non-employee identities like contractors.
Chris: There's just all these incentives in the world for users to inevitably drift this way.
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Brent: Well chris as you mentioned scale is coming up it's
Brent: one of my favorite times of the year and we've been going for years now
Brent: and i think you both would agree it's just a highlight of the year as well this
Brent: time around we're lucky to have another guest joining us this episode one of
Brent: the legends of scale who's been helping there for oh a decade now and giving
Brent: us a little insight into the tech.
Chris: Scale is just days away, and one of the things that makes it one of the best
Chris: events is it routinely has solid networking, which you can't say for most events,
Chris: let alone community-run events.
Chris: And I think one of the keys to that success, especially over the last nearly
Chris: 10 years, has been Scale's tech chair, and Rob joins us on the show now.
Chris: Rob, welcome to the Unplugged program.
Rob: Hey, Chris, Wes, Frank. Great to be here.
Chris: Hello, hello, sir.
Wes: Hello.
Chris: So you're just a few days out. Are you at peak anxiety right now?
Chris: Are you feeling like everything's kind of going as expected?
Rob: You know, I'm feeling pretty good. Things are busy, but not up to my eyeballs
Rob: and, say, tech debt or anything.
Rob: The team works year-round.
Rob: We do a couple of work parties to prepare for the conference.
Rob: Uh so we've we've been able to do uh three three to four this year um and everything's
Rob: looking pretty good uh and yeah we're we're i'm just packing up the car and
Rob: i'll be heading heading to pasadena uh this evening okay.
Wes: You mentioned a team there what's the how many folks you got all working to make this happen.
Rob: So we've got about 30 folks uh that
Rob: are contributing in various ways from cabling to
Rob: the networking to servers access points
Rob: even signage so that's yeah it's really just a group effort some folks are working
Rob: across these multiple sub teams but we've really got a great group that's you
Rob: know really focused on making sure that the conference is you know as good as
Rob: it could be for our attendees.
Chris: And is everyone volunteer, Rob?
Rob: Yes. Yeah, actually, the entire conference is volunteer run.
Rob: The thing we like to say is that it's the largest community run open source
Rob: conference in North America.
Chris: I mean, the organization alone of just getting these work parties organized
Chris: throughout the year is really commendable.
Wes: It's hard to manage a team that size, even when they report to you because you're
Wes: paying them, let alone their volunteers.
Rob: Yeah, I mean, as long as it's fun, I think people want to come back.
Rob: They want to learn new things.
Rob: You know, a lot of folks, maybe they start out on the cabling team and then
Rob: make their way to maybe helping out with signage or, you know,
Rob: learning some things about, you know, Linux administration.
Rob: So I think that's really one of the selling points is, you know,
Rob: you can get your hands dirty with some of the tech that you might not otherwise have at hand.
Chris: Does it help for their resume too?
Rob: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things that,
Rob: you know, that's why I started to show up nine, ten years ago was I was thinking,
Rob: hey, you know, I don't necessarily get to do a lot of these things day to day.
Rob: You know, a lot of at the time my job was on AWS and I was kind of losing some
Rob: of the things that you were doing within a physical data center. Hands on stuff.
Wes: Yeah, the racking and stacking.
Rob: Exactly. Exactly.
Chris: I follow you.
Rob: I wanted to get back into that. And then also, you kind of add in the little
Rob: bit of the stress factor where you've got to get this thing,
Rob: you get this network set up in, you know, four days, right?
Rob: We show up on Monday, and it's got to be ready to go by Thursday.
Wes: You know, this almost sounds like a TV show kind of set up.
Chris: Yeah, like a reality. It could be a reality show. Yeah, they should maybe stop
Chris: doing the America's Talent thing and just film you guys.
Chris: I mean, it's because it's not only do you have like just a few days to get it working.
Chris: But it's a serious job for Wi-Fi, like the all the devices people have now, especially this crowd.
Chris: I'd love to know a little bit about the back end system that makes it actually work.
Rob: Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that you mentioned the Wi-Fi and one of
Rob: the big things that has happened this year in partnership with OpenWRT and the
Rob: Software Freedom Conservancy was the partnership that got us 120.
Rob: Uh open wrt ones so we'll be
Rob: deploying those across the conference as our access points so that we'll have
Rob: wi-fi six uh and just to make sure that the connectivity is as best as we can
Rob: make it uh while still having a open source uh software stack and hardware stack.
Chris: Wow that is so you know okay so two things strike me first of all that's so
Chris: perfect for a conference like this But second of all, I thought I recalled last
Chris: year there was a pretty big back-end switch over to like NixOS.
Chris: Like it sounds like every year there's a pretty big infrastructure switch is on the table.
Rob: Yeah, there's a lot of iteration, right? So we have a year to kind of think
Rob: about, okay, how did things go last year? What can we do better next year?
Rob: And then just start to chip away at that over the course of these work parties
Rob: and just, you know, async or remote communication, you know, throughout the year.
Chris: So is there a process during this if somebody wants to do kind of a wild card,
Chris: like swap out all the Wi-Fi hardware or, you know, put everything in crazy VMs or use NixOS?
Chris: Like, is there like this process where somebody pitches it and then has to like
Chris: win everybody over? How does that work?
Rob: Like, I think it's a little bit of a, yeah, you got to sell the idea, right?
Rob: You can't just have this crazy idea and, you know, then even if you wanted to
Rob: implement it, does it really work for the attendees, right?
Rob: So we've got to make sure that this is good for the folks that are showing up
Rob: to scale that are going to be able to enjoy the conference. It's got to work.
Rob: So proof of concepts are always welcome. and then we just kind of iterate on
Rob: it from there and just try to figure out, does this fit for what we're doing?
Rob: There's a couple of folks that
Rob: have been doing this just as long as I have across the various platforms,
Rob: things in the conference you know whether that be signage or the
Rob: servers or the network and so
Rob: we just kind of try to figure out okay if this can fit
Rob: is this an appropriate next step in
Rob: the next evolution and the you know you mentioned chris the the switch to to
Rob: nix os um you know i i've done a little bit of uh the the server side management
Rob: like i've been the one that's managing some some of the services.
Rob: And I just made that switch because we had had some other difficulties with
Rob: the previous tools that we were deploying.
Rob: And it was the, I think, the most stable thing we could go to.
Rob: And that's the other thing is it's, you know, from my perspective,
Rob: if it's stable and boring, that's fantastic.
Rob: A lot of these services are, you know, they're core networking services,
Rob: so they have to work or else really no one's going to be able to present or
Rob: be able to, you know, just kind of have basic network functions.
Rob: So, you know, running that stuff on NixOS gets us those guarantees.
Rob: That was, you know, from a group or team perspective, that was,
Rob: I think, a pretty straightforward next step for us.
Rob: And a lot of the folks are also in the NixOS community, the Nix community,
Rob: and everybody was pretty on board with that.
Chris: And you got the Planet Nick's crew there, so you got some of the heavy hitters
Chris: in case something really goes sideways, right?
Rob: Yeah, we've got plenty of folks on hand should something really come up that we were stumped on.
Chris: So I was wondering, and maybe this does happen, I don't know how you'd have
Chris: the bandwidth for it, but do other conferences like Texas Linux Fest or others,
Chris: do they reach out to your expertise and be like, can you help us have a great
Chris: Wi-Fi and networking and internet setup?
Rob: You know, we've offered that. No one's taken us up on it.
Rob: But that that would be i think a really awesome partnership
Rob: to have you know the the equipment we don't
Rob: have a use for it except for the you
Rob: know the four days uh for scale so if
Rob: it can be used elsewhere you know that we
Rob: would be happy to figure out how to make that work and that's also why you know
Rob: all of the the code all of the utilities and and the um scripts and things that
Rob: we have that go into building the conference and provisioning it and running it are also open.
Rob: And that's kind of the whole intent is someone could take this and then apply it.
Rob: Maybe that, like you said, if that's Texas Linux Fest or another conference,
Rob: that's definitely something that we're interested in figuring out how to make work.
Chris: Rob, I owe you a beer or three. So if you're around Saturday,
Chris: 7 p.m., we're doing a meetup and we're going to have a dinner and we'd love to buy you a beer, too.
Rob: Oh, fantastic. I will be there. That sounds awesome.
Chris: Good, good, good. Well, Rob, thank you so much for sharing all this with us.
Chris: And I look forward to actually seeing you at the event.
Chris: And we just really appreciate the work you and the whole team does.
Chris: I gained a much better insight and appreciation for the level of work.
Wes: You know, especially as tech folks here, it's just so nice to have us all work
Wes: and not have to be involved with it at all.
Rob: Well we're happy to do it you know we just want to make sure that there's,
Rob: uh you know a great experience for all of the attendees and
Rob: just keep that going forward year after year so i
Rob: hope everybody uh that's going to be there enjoys the conference and swing by
Rob: the knock if you want to check out anything about you know what goes into the
Rob: network i'm happy to give a behind the scenes tour uh so just go ahead and find
Rob: me uh we'll be in the conference building Very good.
Chris: Thank you, Rob.
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Brent: We received a little digital postcard here from longtime friend of the show
Brent: Olympia Mike. Thank you Mike for sending a little note.
Brent: It reads, Hey guys, it's been far too long since I've been able to hang out with the Lupp family.
Brent: I'll be attending and speaking at both Planet Nix and LinuxFest Northwest this
Brent: year and really hope to see as many JB community folks as possible.
Brent: The talk I'm giving at both events is called Building a Chromebook Replacement with NixOS.
Chris: Ha ha ha. Love it.
Brent: I've been working on it for about a year, and it's my attempt at a Nix OS that
Brent: you can give to your kids or parents who know nothing about Linux or Nix.
Brent: It's a Chromebook-type experience without all the creepy Google stuff.
Brent: If anyone wants to check it out, the project or the talk, I'd love all your feedback.
Brent: But most of all, really, I can't wait to hang out with the JB crew again.
Chris: Oh, Olympia Mike, I hope you can make it to our Saturday dinner.
Chris: Check out his project. It's github.com slash Mike Kelly XP slash Nick's book.
Chris: We'll put a link in the show notes too.
Chris: Good to hear from you, Olympia, Mike, and looking forward to seeing you and
Chris: looking forward to your talk too.
Chris: I think it's a great project. And I know you've been iterating for more than
Chris: a year. You've been iterating on the idea.
Chris: One of the things Mike does is he goes out and finds discarded but still quite usable old ThinkPads.
Chris: And he's been iterating on this idea with those too for a couple of years.
Chris: So Chromebook idea is a great angle.
Wes: I love it, too, because we've all talked about personal successes with being
Wes: able to deploy things like NixOS for family and friends. And this is just taking
Wes: that to the next level where, you know, you don't even need the curated levels
Wes: of support that we provide.
Chris: Yeah, it's pretty great.
Chris: Well, we don't have any baller boosts this week, but we still have some great
Chris: boosts to read, and Promise Kunix comes in with 2001 sats.
Wes: Promiscunix!
Chris: I thought you had a read on that. First time boosting, I think, at least live.
Chris: Keep up the Knicks love and watch out for my new Knicks YouTube channel coming
Chris: for newcomers to Knicks. Love you guys.
Wes: Yeah, this was actually a live boost that just missed our live boost cutoff last episode.
Chris: Top of the stack. Thank you.
Wes: Maybe boost us back or send us another way, your channel, when you get it all
Wes: going, because we'd love to promote that.
Chris: Yeah. Once you've got it launched, send us a boost and let us know. We'll promote it.
Wes: Lime Elephant comes in with 5,000 sats. Got a challenge idea.
Wes: Daily drive a scrollable tiling window manager, like Paper WM,
Wes: Neary, or Carousel, for at least two weeks.
Wes: Not as hard as BSD, but it could be fun.
Chris: Hmm. This is an interesting one, actually.
Wes: I like this, too, because there's always a background pressure on Chris from
Wes: the audience to, like, you know, just go tiling already.
Chris: Paper WM is a GNOME shell extension which provides a scrollable tiling of windows
Chris: and per-monitor workspaces.
Wes: Hey.
Chris: It's inspired by paper notebooks and tiling window managers.
Chris: Technically an extension.
Chris: It's a large tent built on top of the GNOME desktop rather than merely extending it.
Chris: Okay. All right. This is weird, but I think worth considering.
Chris: Looking at screenshots, it's a little weird.
Chris: But I think we'll put it up for discussion when we get back.
Chris: I like that. That's a good suggestion. Thank you for the boost.
Brent: Well, Soham sent in 3,000 Satoshis.
Brent: A little bit of an opinion here. They read, I'm sorry, but this needs to be done.
Chris: Uh-oh.
Brent: The matrix protocol is far too complex, and the implementation is just bad.
Brent: Firstly, I don't need a miracle dags happening each time I send a shitpost meme.
Brent: Then, what are the room upgrades? Also, if Synapse source code is readable,
Brent: then I am the king of France.
Brent: For the longest time, they had an environment variable which they themselves
Brent: didn't know the behavior of.
Brent: Dendrite replacing synapses like ibv6 replacing v4 and we know how that goes,
Brent: i recently found out they anyway don't bridge with the most popular irc liberal
Brent: chat no wonder they keep running out of money every two years that's.
Chris: A solid spicy take that's a that's a hot take and um boy what do i think i do
Chris: kind of agree dendrite replacing was sort of a uh I guess a mislead.
Chris: Like, I'm glad we didn't go down that route now that it's sort of end of life.
Wes: Yeah. And I mean, I'm impressed in many ways with Synapse, but it is a sprawling app. That is for sure.
Wes: And I think that, you know, I don't need a Merkle, Dag, et cetera comment.
Wes: I interpret that one way is sort of hitting on that thing I said, right?
Wes: Like, I think maybe the goals, the enterprise-y goals of Matrix are not what
Wes: everyone is looking for necessarily.
Wes: And to solve that maximum case has meant, you know, a complicated implementation.
Chris: I love that boost. That's great. Thank you very much. Magnolia Mayhem's here with 2000, one set.
Chris: Well, I finally got bound and fixed right before you guys skip a week. Oh, face bomb.
Chris: With that the case, I'll just hold off on my BSD boost and tell you about my monitor setup.
Chris: I've always had at least two. My optimal setup was three horizontal screens
Chris: with a vertical off to the right for monitoring things like maybe documents.
Chris: Most I've ever had, though, was eight screens, and that was just out of screwing around.
Chris: We just got married, and I remember my wife walking past the room and noticed
Chris: me surrounded by monitors like a crazy person.
Chris: She just shook her head and walked away.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, I think I get that look whenever I use the VR headset,
Chris: but I don't know for sure because I can't see.
Chris: But I assume I'm getting that look. It's kind of awkward.
Wes: I had a landlord I just moved in. This was in a past relationship,
Wes: and she had a lot of monitors too.
Wes: So we probably had like six or seven monitors between us when we'd set up both
Wes: of our desks, and the landlord was just like.
Chris: What's going on? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we're day traders. No. Thank you,
Chris: Mayhem. Good to hear from you.
Wes: Outdoor Geek comes in with 10,000 sets.
Wes: Chris, in response to your AM LAN ping woes, I wonder if maybe your router's
Wes: power is dirty for some reason.
Wes: Like, is there a new large load nearby? EV chargers?
Wes: Although, if other devices on your LAN are working okay, then the issue is probably something else.
Wes: But regardless, I hope the fix is quick and cheap.
Chris: I can't imagine it would be PJ or Brent's wiring. Can't imagine it'd be that.
Chris: Right? No, that's impossible. So I do have new neighbors.
Chris: We do share that wall where the router and switch are plugged in.
Chris: I love that theory. I don't think it affects my other devices though.
Brent: I thought we burned it all down and built it up again.
Chris: All right. All right. I like this.
Wes: Token ring this time.
Brent: Well, Bronze Wing sent in three booths for a total of 6,666 Satoshis.
Brent: Number one here RIP Coder Radio.
Chris: Aww yeah we do have a temporary not a replacement but some content out there
Chris: called The Launch New Show and we got about three new episodes out right now
Chris: weeklylaunch.rocks if you want to check it out The Coder Show continues under
Chris: Mike's stewardship but it is not a JV production anymore,
Chris: Bronzo Wing's also switching to Fountain. They did try AlbiHub for a bit, but they've had issues.
Chris: I think one of the things people run into with AlbiHub is it does sometimes
Chris: cost money to open channels.
Chris: So if you're not using it, this is my commentary, if you're not using AlbiHub
Chris: for anything other than boosting the shows, something like Fountain or Breeze is a much simpler setup.
Chris: So that's what they switched to, but now they want CarPlay to work like other
Chris: apps where you don't have to open it on your phone first.
Chris: Well, here's a little insider scoop. I don't have all the details I can share
Chris: with you, but CarPlay and Android Auto are about to get major attention in Fountain.
Chris: And I think you're going to see much, much better CarPlay implementation and
Chris: Android Auto implementation probably in the next couple of months.
Chris: And also, yes, Graphene OS does have Android Auto. It's one of the apps you
Chris: can install. It is sandboxed, and it seems to work great.
Chris: I've had it crash on me once or twice, maybe ever. So that's pretty good, right?
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: That's pretty good.
Wes: I will say, just for the AlbiHub curious out there, one of the nuances here
Wes: is that AlbiHub is not necessarily optimized out of the box for boosting as your primary use case.
Chris: Yeah, right, right.
Wes: If you get what they call a liquidity service provider, an LSP,
Wes: that's kind of optimized like
Wes: if you were a merchant wanting to receive payments from your customers.
Wes: And so you pay them and they open a channel for you. But most of them say like,
Wes: well, if you don't use it enough after a month, we're probably going to close it.
Wes: The alternative is if you have money you're willing to commit,
Wes: because it takes committing some liquidity to a channel, you can also open your
Wes: own channel to one of our nodes or a big node out there.
Wes: So there are some options, but all of that takes the desire to want to run this infrastructure.
Wes: So fountain and breeze are way better if you just want to send an occasional.
Chris: And sometimes there's, you know, there's the Bitcoin questions chat room and
Chris: the Bitcoin main chat. And you can sometimes find people in there that are exchanging nodes, too.
Wes: And actually, Hybrid started a boost support room. I'll get a link to that,
Wes: and that's another spot you can ask for help.
Chris: Well, there you go.
Wes: Turd Ferguson boosts in with 9,333 sats.
Wes: Aw, here's to a great trip, boys. Buy a beer on me. Done.
Chris: Thank you, Turd. We'll get Brent a nice gluten-free beer on you.
Brent: If we find gluten-free beer, that would make me happy. Cider will do.
Chris: No, it's going to be in Cal. Okay, all right. I'll join you in a cider.
Brent: Well, Spectra sent in 5,000 sets. On the topic of owning your books versus leasing
Brent: them, I think I learned of it on Linux Unplugged or self-hosted,
Brent: but someone boosted in about Libro.fm, and gotta say, it's great.
Brent: DRM-free downloads. If anyone is interested, my referral link is linked in the show notes.
Chris: Haha, nice.
Brent: Also, since I don't stream sets, any suggestion on how to set up a recurring payment with AlbiHub?
Brent: I see a Zap Planner, but that doesn't seem to support splits,
Brent: so suggestions are welcome.
Chris: I gotta look into that.
Wes: Yeah, good question.
Chris: There has been other options in the past. Zap Planner, it doesn't seem like it.
Wes: Maybe in conjunction with something else.
Chris: We will have to investigate. Thank you for the boost. The Doodabide is here with 10,000 sats.
Chris: Peace, NixOS and Justice? No, rock and roll, NixOS and Justice.
Chris: Right? Is that how you read that? It's emoticons.
Brent: I get it. It's rock, Nix, and scale.
Chris: Oh, scale. Of course. Ah, well done. Well done.
Chris: Well done. Thank you, everybody, of course. We really appreciate everybody who
Chris: boosts in above the 2,000 sat cutoff for time.
Chris: And then, of course, a big tip of the hat and shout out to our sat streamers.
Chris: 37 of you just streamed those sats as you listened.
Chris: You did a heavy lift this week. You guys stacked us 90,126 sats, which is pretty great.
Wes: That's over half. Wow.
Chris: Not bad, right? And then you combine that with our boosters.
Chris: It wasn't a particularly strong episode.
Chris: I think maybe the Rust and Colonel stuff didn't go over super well is kind of
Chris: my takeaway, but that's totally fine. That's on us.
Chris: But we really appreciate everybody who did step up. Collectively,
Chris: we all stacked 144,427 sats for this episode.
Chris: We really appreciate you. And don't stop at one bit. If you'd like to boost
Chris: the show, like I said earlier, the easiest way is probably with Fountain FM.
Chris: Or if you just don't want to hassle with accounts or anything like that or even
Chris: switch podcast apps, Breeze Mobile, B-R-E-E-Z, Breeze Mobile, makes it really easy.
Chris: Thank you everybody who supports this Value for Value production.
Chris: We distribute this episode for free, and our members make it possible.
Chris: Thank you to our members.
Chris: You also get a fantastic bootleg special only for you next week.
Chris: Thank you, everybody, who supports this production. That is our supporters for episode 604.
Wes: If you pick music this good.
Chris: I know. We just listen to the music. We do have a really fantastic pick.
Chris: You should see if you can get this working while we talk about it. Okay?
Chris: So Steve Ovens, longtime listener of the show and co-host of the Ask Noah program,
Chris: has worked on making a dream of mine reality.
Chris: It's called Open Audible to Audio Bookshelf.
Chris: Now, you guys know I've talked about how I purchase books on Audible and then
Chris: I extract them off of Audible and then I manually, like a caveman,
Chris: load them over the network onto my audio bookshelf server.
Chris: Well, what Steve has created here is a script that automates the process of
Chris: moving audiobook files from the open Audible app, or Libation,
Chris: your choice, to an organized folder structure, and then updates Audiobookshelf
Chris: accordingly. I think it pings the API.
Chris: Yeah, he says here, it handles file organization, metadata mapping,
Chris: and interaction with the Audiobookshelf API.
Chris: And, of course, it is GPL3.
Wes: Yeah i saw you uh tag this for the show and immediately that just seemed brilliant.
Chris: This is something that the people have needed it's uh you need python he's got
Chris: he's got the prerequisites just requests.
Wes: And py yaml for dependencies though.
Chris: Totally reasonable i also asked him if he's open to the community contributing
Chris: ideas or fixes or updates and he said he totes is he would welcome uh the feedback
Chris: from the audience out there this is such a great idea right like you could see
Chris: yourself just pulling down your books from time to time this kicks in moves them up to the uh
Chris: to the bookshelf server just so ah you know because the problem is now it's
Chris: like i've actually even resisted buying books and like ah then i have to go
Chris: fire up libation copy and it's not like it's a huge deal but libations ui is
Chris: weird it's just enough friction so.
Brent: What are you going to do with all your time chris.
Chris: I'm going to listen to more audiobooks clearly you know now,
Chris: nothing holds me back it's pretty cool so it's uh open audible to audio bookshelf
Chris: and uh we have a link in the show notes gpl3 made by mr steve ovens fantastic
Chris: work sir you know what you get a you get a nimoy for that that's so good here you go right here steve,
Chris: That's some serious value for value right there.
Wes: Well, I'm not quite there, but I'm pretty sure a flake can come pretty quick if we want one.
Chris: You think we could have it before the end of the member stream?
Chris: I mean, that's a big task. We've got other work to do. But, I mean,
Chris: come on. I've got to get this going. I need a flake.
Chris: All right. That's it. Remember, we have the eBPF special for you next week.
Chris: We'd like to hear what you think of that.
Chris: And if you'd like to buy a beer at the meetup on Saturday, even if you can't
Chris: make it, boost the show and just say it's for the beer budget.
Chris: And we'll allocate it as such.
Wes: Yeah, and then maybe we cheers to the folks that do that at the table.
Chris: I like that idea. Yeah, we'll pull up the report on the laptop and we'll give
Chris: you a shout-out there at the meetup.
Chris: Now, we won't have the live stream. We do have a bootleg for our members,
Chris: but we won't have a live stream since we're going to be on location.
Chris: We've decided to just sort of focus on getting the content for you,
Chris: and then we're going to bring you back the best stuff when we get back from all of it.
Chris: So join us in two weeks on Sunday at 12 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern.
Chris: Maybe one day AI can generate a version that says, see, in two weeks.
Chris: You know, because right now there's nothing I can do.
Brent: Jeff could do it.
Chris: Links to everything we talked about and more, linuxunplugged.com slash 604.
Wes: Also, do remember we won't be live next week.
Chris: Yeah. So, yeah. But you can find Mumble info. So when you do want to participate,
Chris: contact page over there, our
Chris: matrix info, because the matrix is always going. We do have a scale chat.
Chris: And so we'll be poking in and out of there during the event.
Chris: You can always find us in Scale Chat if you want to know where we're at.
Chris: I think that's it, though.
Chris: Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode, and we'll see you right
Chris: back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday.
Chris: Okay, real talk. Have any of us actually packed yet?
Brent: No.
Wes: I've been thinking about it.
Chris: Oh, I've been thinking about it.
Wes: I've got like a semi-sorted list in my head.
Chris: Yeah, I don't. I haven't packed clothes or gear yet.
Chris: I mean, I kind of have a, I kind of know, but I'll tell you the truth.
Chris: We have not done a live event since Linux Fest Northwest last year.
Chris: And so like everything's in the, we got to pack up the booth in 25 minutes and
Chris: put it in this huge crate box.
Wes: And you told me it was safe to store that info on tape and that you'd get the
Wes: archives ready so we could load it back into our brains, you know,
Wes: a couple of weeks ago, but that hasn't happened yet.
Chris: Yeah. Turns out it wasn't a good plan.