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 challenge each other to get
Chris: one of the best games in history working on Linux, and then pit us all against
Chris: each other to fight to the death.
Chris: Then we'll tell you a bit about my new retro handheld gaming device that just came out.
Chris: And if you should get one, it's pretty cool. And if we have time,
Chris: we'll get into some of the technical reasons why games still never going to
Chris: quite work on Linux. There's just going to be some games you're never going
Chris: to play. But don't worry.
Chris: We'll round it out with some great boosts, some excellent picks, and a lot more.
Chris: So before we go any further, time-appropriate greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room.
Mumble: Hello. Hey, Chris. Hey, Wes. And hello, Brent.
Wes: Hello.
Chris: Hi. Thanks for being there. And hello. Wow. Hello, everybody up there in the quiet listening, too.
Chris: And a big good morning to our friends at TailScale. TailScale.com slash unplugged.
Chris: TailScale is the easiest way to connect devices and services to each other.
Chris: Wherever they are, protected by WireGuard. Yeah, it's modern networking.
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Chris: It's easy to deploy within minutes. If you've got five minutes,
Chris: you'll get it working on three machines.
Chris: And it is so handy once you have it up and running because all of your devices
Chris: are now represented on your tail net, which is this flat mesh network.
Chris: You could have systems across multiple data centers on your LAN, your mobile device.
Chris: It is really powerful. And when you go to tailscale.com slash unplugged,
Chris: you can get it for free on 100 devices and three users, no credit card required,
Chris: not a limited time trial.
Chris: And also, you might want to try it at work.
Chris: We started using it personally, and now we use it for the back end of JB.
Chris: So it is Instacart, Hugging Face, Duolingo.
Chris: Thousands of other companies use Tailscale at work, too. And it fits and integrates so well.
Chris: So try it for yourself. or try it for your business. Go to tailscale.com slash unplugged.
Chris: 19 days left until LinuxFest Northwest.
Wes: Why do you keep saying that?
Brent: That seems so scary.
Chris: Yep. And if you're listening to this on Monday, 18. And if you're listening to it, it's sooner.
Chris: We'll have a link to the schedule. And we have a poll.
Chris: And I would love it if everybody would just take a moment, go to the show notes,
Chris: linuxunplugged.com slash 609 or in your podcast app.
Chris: And please go vote in our poll. Would you tune in to a live Saturday LinuxFest live stream?
Chris: Just let me know. because we could stream Saturday. We could definitely have
Chris: stuff on the stream all day, but we don't want to necessarily set it up if people,
Chris: maybe you take Saturdays off or whatever it might be.
Chris: We will, of course, be live Sunday. We'll have our traditional Sunday live stream
Chris: at LinuxFest Northwest.
Chris: And then Wes has a talk in HC204 at 1.30 p.m. after that.
Chris: So there is things coming up on Sunday and we'll be live for part of that in
Chris: our regular 10 a.m. time slot.
Chris: But if you'd like to tune into a Saturday live stream, let us know.
Chris: Go to the poll in the show notes.
Chris: And boat, please. And we are still raising funds.
Chris: We have a couple of trips coming up. We have the bus trip. We have LinuxFest
Chris: Northwest and Red Hat Summit.
Chris: And then later in the year, Texas LinuxFest.
Chris: And we're trying to get some good, high-quality headsets, the SMD,
Chris: or I'm sorry, the HMD-26s from Sennheiser, which are very pricey but good quality.
Chris: And we're trying to raise some sats via boost to purchase those before the event
Chris: comes up, which is like this week.
Chris: So really, it's like this week you've got to get them in because I've got to get the orders in.
Chris: So if you'd like to help us with the Road Gear Fund, send us a boost and support the show.
Chris: So we're finally doing a game night on the show we don't talk about gaming much
Chris: and if we're going to finally do it it felt like we should do the absolute best
Chris: video game and we should try to get the best video game working on linux of.
Wes: Course i mean and we don't want to do things in the wrong order right.
Chris: No i mean wait what us we would never we would never do things in the wrong order.
Clips: Saturday before the show, four men assemble to conquer the galaxy. It's StarCraft time.
Clips: Before we can play, though, we've got to get it working on Brent's system.
Clips: What? Hey, why is it always me?
Clips: We were going to ask you that. Well, to be fair, you were traveling.
Clips: Oh, right. He has an excuse this week.
Clips: Yeah, we'll let him have it. Oh, I have a script here of several excuses if you need them.
Clips: You've got Lutris, right? Yes, that was great advice. Thank you.
Clips: I know not what Lutris is, but you will tell me, right?
Clips: Well, you could think of it as like a free game, a multi-game library.
Clips: So you can put multiple different game libraries in there, sync them to Lutris and install them.
Clips: Like, for example, you can go to their website and they have a massive library
Clips: of games and then little installer scripts that Lutris can run and execute.
Clips: And kind of just set everything up for that. So great. That sounds like exactly what I need.
Clips: It is kind of nice because Starcraft 1, which we're playing,
Clips: is a Windows game. And so you do need a wine environment, and you need a Battle.net
Clips: software launcher and account and all that kind of crap. And so Lutris helps you get all that going.
Clips: Or if you're on the Lutris site, you could just search for StarCraft there and
Clips: pull down the... But it's probably, if you're in the app, yeah, hamburger menu away.
Clips: Okay, I'm seeing many options here.
Clips: You have a games option. Yeah, you just want the Battle.net installer.
Clips: At least that's what Chris and I did. Yeah. So add games.
Clips: And then you want to search the Lutris website, I guess?
Clips: Yeah, I got StarCraft 98 Mac and Windows, StarCraft 64. I hear that's a good one.
Clips: We're doing the OG StarCraft, which is 1998 for Mac and Windows.
Clips: But are we trying to get him to do Battle.net through this or not?
Clips: Yeah, so when you choose that one, it'll give you two options.
Clips: And Battle.net will be the top option. Yeah, I've got two options here.
Clips: Wine Battle.net or Wine CD plus CND Raw.
Clips: So I'm assuming that's if I have the disk.
Clips: Oh, see, I just installed Battle.net itself and then installed StarCraft through it.
Clips: Totally can do that too. That's essentially what this is going to do is it's
Clips: going to install Battle.net and then you're going to close it after it's done
Clips: installing and then it's going to launch it again and you're going to log in
Clips: and install StarCraft. I see.
Clips: I was under the impression that Brent had already done this.
Clips: Me too, me too, you know. Hey, I spent all morning thinking I would do this.
Chris: I mean, that's at least some effort. So one of the things about StarCraft is
Chris: there's a lot of different ways you can actually get it installed on Linux.
Chris: It is a classic real-time strategy game from Blizzard. It launched in 1998,
Chris: and it's still beloved to this day.
Chris: It's a huge hit, and it's been free to play since 2017, but you do have to have a Battle.net account.
Wes: Which involves uh maybe the worst captcha system ever devised.
Chris: Yeah yeah by far.
Brent: The worst one i've ever experienced which i think it's worth even if you don't
Brent: want an account here just go try that captcha it is life-changing.
Chris: Yeah and.
Wes: If you don't want an account it's better because you can quit when you're bored.
Chris: And it also just be great to point
Chris: to as the worst implementation ever so we're stacking a few things here so we
Chris: have lutris which is this incredibly useful game launcher that is helping us
Chris: manage the wine stuff and pull down the files we need to install battle.net
Chris: which then installs starcraft that's
Chris: we all but there's a lot of different ways you could go at it that's.
Wes: The way we went at it when you say it like that uh it almost sounds like it
Wes: shouldn't work and yet this was like a super ultimately reliable method to have it work yeah.
Brent: I was wondering halfway through going through this, but you guys were pressuring
Brent: me so much. I just kept going. But why in the world do we not just use Steam?
Chris: So you can do it with Steam, but it's a little bit more of a rigmarole.
Chris: So you have to add the game, run it, and then you can use Proton to launch it.
Chris: But you kind of have to do like the manually add stuff.
Chris: Because one of the things that really sucks about gaming since StarCraft came
Chris: out is everybody has their own platform.
Chris: Everybody has their own launcher. Everybody has their own login.
Chris: And we're going to talk about a retro handheld gaming console in a little bit.
Chris: But one of the things that's been drawing me to old ROMs is I am sick of all
Chris: of this. I'm just sick of having to have accounts everywhere.
Chris: And I was willing to go through it for StarCraft. But yeah, because everybody
Chris: has to have their own kingdom is essentially the answer, Brent.
Chris: And you can do it with Steam, but it's a little more manual.
Chris: But then you can have Steam Managed Proton, which is kind of nice.
Chris: So yeah, that was our initial thing. But we got it running, actually,
Chris: you heard it there pretty much in real time. And then it was time for game one.
Clips: So here we go. All right.
Clips: Starting in five seconds. I'm getting nervous.
Clips: Okay, so on the menu there, go to...
Clips: Oh, no, sorry, the bottom left. Diplomacy, where the little handshake is.
Clips: Click allies on all of us and vision on all of us and allied victory and then accept,
Clips: Nice so Brent the first thing we're gonna do is click that one building you
Clips: have and the one thing it can create that's gonna be the guys that can like
Clips: mine for you and build for you and.
Wes: Not only did we have to get Brent with the game installed, we had to teach Brent how to play.
Chris: Mostly, me too. I probably hadn't played since like 2003, 2005.
Chris: It had been a really long time.
Brent: Yeah, I confess I had never played it, which is, I don't know,
Brent: a little bit of a crime for our kind of people. But I had played a lot of Red Alert.
Brent: I also have an extra confession, which is I tried to get my brother to play
Brent: for me instead because he's played StarCraft in the past.
Brent: And I was going to try to just slot him in without you guys noticing.
Chris: But oh my god he.
Brent: Got busy yeah so maybe next time.
Wes: I will say i hope i hope this was um,
Wes: satisfying for producer jeff uh because he has been trying to get us to play
Wes: some starcraft for like way too long so it's on us for taking so long and i
Wes: think he rightfully pointed out at one point that you know brian if you'd listened
Wes: to him earlier you would you would have been upskilled on starcraft.
Brent: I should listen to jeff more often that's probably the truth.
Chris: Jeff was our teacher during this too um he
Chris: you know he had probably the most experience followed by wes i guess uh or
Chris: maybe i'm not sure we'll get to that but um
Chris: i sat down in the studio so we could record the audio of all of us and the studio
Chris: is set up for recording not for gaming and one of the things i have in the studio
Chris: which i don't have on any other computer is one of these giant kingston track
Chris: balls because i can move my mouse silently while recording it.
Wes: Is actually pretty legit a great little hack for live presentations.
Chris: So i sat down i said chris you're gonna be a man you're not gonna complain about
Chris: the fact that you're playing starcraft on this horrible horrible trackball you're
Chris: just gonna suck it up and never even mention it to the boys i.
Clips: Gotta clean my trackball real quick it's getting bad uh-oh what do you got in
Clips: there i don't know dude but it's it's causing accuracy issues oh sure hey excuses
Clips: begin yep i just spilled tea all over my mouse Oh, you guys.
Clips: Oh, no. Talk about excuses.
Clips: It's hot tea, too, that works.
Chris: Pretty quickly, it goes from excuses to just straight-up dying.
Clips: Uh-oh, I'm under attack. I'm under attack, boys. I'm under attack.
Clips: They're getting me, boys. Oh, I was doing so good, boys. There's a lot over
Clips: there, too. I don't even have that many yet. No, I'm dead.
Clips: I had such a good... Where are you? I'm in the bottom left. Right.
Clips: I'm in the bottom right. Oh, no, boys! It was such a beautiful paradise!
Clips: I got to kill you, guys. We were a little too slow.
Clips: I can try to send to you. I don't have a ton. It was so beautiful.
Clips: Yeah, I've got a couple on their way. I had all the basic structures.
Clips: Oh, you got double whammyed. Marines are there, too. Both units are there. We were way too slow.
Chris: So maybe starting as a couple of rookies with computer opponents wasn't a great idea.
Wes: On a fastest map.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. So we all kind of pretty quickly died and started game two.
Clips: Are you guys ready? It's kind of great.
Clips: I'm distracted because if I move my mouse all the way from one screen to the
Clips: other The StarCraft cursor shows up on the non-StarCraft screen That's fun It's
Clips: just trapped at the edge though,
Clips: What do you mean it's not working, Chris?
Clips: No Are you just trolling? I'll hit and go,
Clips: So typical Round two.
Chris: What I realized as we started playing is that I just love setting everything up. Clicking stuff.
Wes: Yeah, you were really keyed in on building the society, which was kind of fun.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: And there's a lot to build.
Chris: I just, I was really vibing on just making a thriving science-based society
Chris: and clicking on stuff. I was really enjoying that part.
Clips: I just like building a cool base. I just, that's all I want to do is build a thriving society.
Clips: We could play Siv That works on Linux If.
Chris: Anybody that knows Starcraft probably knows How that ended up for me but we'll
Chris: get there First there was some trolling Hello Wes.
Clips: Goodbye Wes,
Clips: Oh, what happened? Hey, that's mean I'm just saying hi.
Chris: A little strategy of coming around and just pecking at us From time to time,
Chris: you know, just Decimating a few of our troops Just making sure we weren't getting
Chris: too far rolling it back a little bit, wasting some of our resources.
Clips: Yeah, I kind of manage things all day. Why am I doing it now for gaming?
Clips: What's going on here? How did I talk myself into this? Resource management's exhausting.
Chris: There was always probably the likelihood that some kind of plan would have to
Chris: formulate because now it was the three of us. We're on an open world map.
Chris: Eventually, we're going to bump into each other as we grow, right?
Chris: And so we have to kind of start sorting things out.
Clips: I have like a very, very, very rough idea of kind of what I want to do, but not really.
Clips: And then I'm constantly just failing to execute on that as I switch between
Clips: managing way too many tasks that I'm managing very poorly. Yeah.
Clips: I think you guys are doing great.
Clips: Thanks. He's like, I know exactly where everyone is, and I have a plan.
Clips: No plan. I'm just doing my thing. That's all.
Chris: And then, you know, I noticed, at first I thought it was PJ.
Chris: But then I realized, once I
Chris: realized this who was who, Wes was doing a little poking around early on.
Clips: Hey, I was just scouting around. Oh, scouting around with a bunch of really powerful guys. Okay.
Clips: What they died they had real quick they weren't powerful,
Clips: you know the Protoss shuttle really it's just not a powerful but the high Templars
Clips: you know they're they're not powerful either.
Chris: Brent and I were playing the Terrans I think it's kind of an easier one to start with,
Chris: and Brent you were really good you manufactured pretty quick I also noticed
Chris: you had a sneaky strategy one that I used to employ back in the day which once
Chris: things started to get a little more aggressive you started stashing your workers
Chris: all over the map in like hidden little spots that.
Brent: Deeply saved me in the future.
Chris: Yeah Brent's.
Brent: A survivor because I didn't trust myself to keep myself alive so I figured I
Brent: would just trust obscurity to keep me alive and that paid off.
Clips: A little piece of advice Brent those tanks are called siege tanks for a reason Let's see. Oh...
Clips: Oh, jeez, that's cool. All right, thank you.
Clips: That siege mode gives them much, much better range and much better attack.
Chris: Brent started to get the hang of it. Started manufacturing.
Brent: Pretty sure Jeff regretted telling me that little trick because I used it against
Brent: him quite a lot, let's say.
Brent: And I realized at that point I would sneaky use some LLMs off screen.
Brent: I didn't tell you guys this, but I would get a little stressed.
Brent: Because I was like, I've never played this before. I don't even know what I
Brent: can do with these people.
Brent: As soon as Jeff said, hey, you're missing one of the key elements these players
Brent: can do, I was like, I need some help.
Brent: So, yeah, you know, multi-monitor, you can sneak in some LMs there.
Brent: So I got some strategies.
Chris: Oh, you clever boy. I should have done that because while I had a thriving,
Chris: beautiful, peaceful society, it started to become painfully obvious.
Chris: We're running out of room and I was going to need to retool.
Clips: Well, my once beautiful society has had to refactor around war,
Clips: thanks to Jeff. Hey, I haven't attacked anybody except for Wes.
Wes: Or Wes.
Clips: I mean, that's a loose definition.
Chris: However, with my limited resources, a path began to emerge.
Chris: The boys started talking about something. I had gone kind of quiet at this point.
Chris: And I was focused on one thing and one thing only. And I don't know if Wes had
Chris: kind of maybe thought about it, but I was already down a path.
Clips: I would also like to point out that I believe you guys have access to nukes.
Clips: What? Where? Yes, they do.
Clips: Yeah, Terrans can build nukes. Yeah, so... It can be hard to pull off,
Clips: but... The command center has a couple expansions that can be added,
Clips: that can add to it, so you might want to have a couple command centers.
Clips: One of them is a SATCOM, which can see invisible things anywhere on the map.
Clips: For a limited amount of time. The other is a nuclear silo, which then you use
Clips: ghosts to aim and fire your nukes.
Chris: As you guys are talking about this, I'm like actively churning out ghosts, doing the research.
Chris: I was like down that path, and I'm like, yep, yep, yep.
Clips: Uh-oh.
Clips: Nothing. Uh-huh. Nothing in my ass. I heard it. I just don't know where it's
Clips: going to go. I don't know what you're talking about.
Clips: I wouldn't make stuff up.
Clips: Oh, Brantley.
Brent: That's my CG.
Chris: Oh, it felt good. That felt good. That felt so good. You know,
Chris: once I had nuclear capabilities, I kind of had to, you know, see what I could do.
Clips: Someone keeps doing nukes. Yeah, but they're just at my door.
Clips: You know, it's basically my own neighborhood.
Clips: You know, like. Just a little backdoor nuke. Yeah. A little backdoor nuke.
Clips: They're basically my Nevada.
Clips: You guys are just in the space.
Chris: Now, listening back to this, it kind of sounds like I provoked this war.
Wes: It does, yeah.
Chris: I was just defending my territory.
Clips: Damn. All right. All right, I see that. It's all good.
Clips: Just because they're there at the door Again You wouldn't even know how to do
Clips: if you weren't at the door,
Clips: So I think So why don't you try getting a nuke Have you considered nuking something
Clips: a little closer to home That's all I'm saying Or like a little closer to Jeff's
Clips: home Oh well the problem is the ghosts get detected,
Clips: He's got ghost detectors Sure but if you work on that Is there another thing I can do This.
Chris: Is a turning point because this is really like, I am going to solely focus my
Chris: society on producing weapons of mass destruction.
Chris: And I think maybe Jeff realized that was going to be a problem.
Clips: Now, don't come, now, come on, come on, come on, come on, don't come over here.
Clips: Don't come over, come on. I got a good thing going over here.
Clips: I got a good thing going over here. I've rebuilt a new, oh, come on! Bro!
Clips: Bro! I don't even have any defensive systems. It was a peaceful society! Bro!
Clips: That was the best! There is no peace in this universe.
Clips: We were a society of science.
Chris: I will admit, I took it rough. I did manage to get a few of my guys to escape.
Clips: You should be destroying Jeff's base while he's distracted, murdering me ruthlessly.
Clips: You both should get on it. This is your window of opportunity.
Clips: Oh, God. Oh, God. I just built that. I just built that.
Clips: If you want to send a guy down to me, I can let that happen. Oh, it's too late, Wes.
Clips: It's too late. I didn't have any defensive systems.
Clips: I didn't even build nuclear capabilities this time. It was a peaceful society.
Chris: It wasn't a peaceful society, and I already had men on their way to Wes's base.
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Brent: You know, since I was just learning the game, I took a lot of cues from the vocals.
Brent: And Chris, as soon as you said, hey, I'm going to head to Wes's base,
Brent: I thought, huh, that's a brilliant idea. I can hide some guys over there.
Brent: Wes seems like he knows what he's doing.
Wes: Party at my base.
Clips: And Wes comes in for the save. Can he save Brent's one last guy?
Clips: Probably not, but you know. Brent, bring him over to my base. What?
Clips: No, you're going to...
Clips: No, not that way.
Clips: Or maybe go to Wes's base, actually. It's probably safer there.
Clips: You should go to my base, yeah.
Clips: I don't know which one's which. Wes is down in the right corner. Yeah, go bottom right.
Chris: So we, all three of us, cram into Wes's territory. It was tight.
Chris: My guys, I had to go super far to get the resources and weave through all of
Chris: Wes's guys, because Wes really packed them in there.
Wes: Well, yeah, I mean, I had filled most of my land with photon cannons,
Wes: so there wasn't a lot of room to begin with. You were welcome,
Wes: of course, as allies, but...
Brent: I was actually lucky to survive at this point because, Jeff,
Brent: I used to love you, but you came to my base and just decimated everything just
Brent: because I was sieging a little bit.
Brent: And it turned out I had lost track of one of my builder guys,
Brent: the SVGs or whatever they're called.
Brent: And he was actually trapped behind some of my last buildings.
Brent: So I couldn't actually move this character the entire game because I had trapped it there.
Brent: But I guess Jeff never noticed. And that was my last. I had like the one unit
Brent: left and I quickly dashed over to Wes's base and survived. And Wes,
Brent: thank you for the real estate.
Brent: I was able to rebuild and siege again.
Chris: Rebuild quickly. You did. I focused on nukes. Brent began building a new force.
Chris: Jeff started getting worried.
Clips: Nuclear launch detected.
Clips: I think Wes is going to have me. He's just got way too much defense.
Clips: I might just have to give it up. There's no way I can get through those cannons.
Clips: Look, there's just a few. Just a few.
Chris: This is really when the siege set in. I mean, Jeff put up a heck of a fight,
Chris: and Wes brought a ton of carriers.
Clips: Holy cow, that's a lot of carriers. Now you're playing how I like to play.
Clips: Send a hundred carriers, let's go.
Clips: Come on guys, come on, do I have an air defense? Nope, they got nuked.
Clips: Alright guys, come on, get him!
Chris: This is probably the moment that was always destined to happen,
Chris: where all three of us begun working together on the attack.
Clips: Pay attention to what these guys are firing at. Oh no, siege tanks. No!
Clips: Brent! Brent! Brent! Yes! Brent! Yes! Yes!
Clips: I gotta return the favor, you know? Oh no!
Chris: Brent comes in with the siege tanks. I drop the nukes.
Clips: Oh, you guys are awesome, man. Yeah, the nuke at the same time as you come in,
Clips: I'm just, there's no way I can find it. There's no way.
Clips: I won't have enough time. Done. Nice!
Clips: That was so good! I like hearing that. That was so good. I like hearing that a lot.
Clips: Holy cow!
Clips: Get out of here, Arbiter.
Chris: Over three hours into it, like, really, a hell of a fight. I think the end was
Chris: in sight around the three hour, 15, maybe 10 minute mark.
Wes: It just took some time because, you know, Jeff had really built himself a nice base.
Clips: You're building on my base. You guys are getting in. Look at this. This is insane.
Clips: I've never seen nothing like this.
Clips: Holy cow. Oh, the shuttles. Oh, Templars. No.
Clips: Look at this chaos. Oh, I'm so done for.
Chris: Send it all in. And then I started focusing on resources because,
Chris: you know, I didn't want Jeff's economy to hold up.
Clips: Oh.
Clips: No. No! No, she detected.
Clips: Where are you? There you are.
Clips: Oh, you got him. Okay. Not fast enough. Dang, you must have an upgrade on your
Clips: nukes. Those things are coming quick now.
Clips: Jeff, you forced me to be a society from peace that focuses on weapons of war.
Clips: How does it make you feel? Oh, that's a lot of Archons.
Clips: Oh, that's a lot of Archons. Affirmative.
Chris: Now, I really saw, you know, the sort of twisted side of Brent come out during the end of this battle.
Wes: Oh, really?
Chris: Yeah. Oh, no.
Brent: I don't really. I kind of blacked out.
Clips: Oh, he's wrecking Brent's upper base. He's wrecking Brent's upper base.
Clips: Brent, you got guys there that aren't doing anything up there.
Clips: It's because all my rally points were in Jeff's base.
Clips: Do you set your base rally points straight to the base? Yeah.
Clips: That's funny. Yeah, to your base.
Clips: Oh, I love it. I love it.
Chris: Brett's just cranking out guys and just sending them right to Jeff's base the entire time.
Wes: Very pragmatic.
Mumble: My annihilation was swift and complete.
Chris: Yeah, really, the best part, though, was when the economy collapsed. That felt good.
Clips: Focus your attacks. Focus your attacks. Oh, there's more. Oh.
Clips: No, and that's it. That's it. There's no way,
Clips: I'm just gonna start talking Brent just because,
Clips: His base has gotten way too big over there,
Clips: You guys you guys put up a damn fight here So do you see one-on-one Whatever
Clips: that would have been fine, but this this is treachery.
Clips: I Was peaceful dude,
Clips: Same same I don't think that's the name of the game As much as you want to tell yourself.
Clips: Oh nuclear launch where's that coming from?
Clips: You gotta go sit here of course how'd you get rid of my lurkers oh the uh cannon
Clips: the turrets their detectors nice,
Clips: yeah these guys are not focusing on nothing come on at least get one more carry
Clips: there's so many down oh no that's it nice oh that is it oh man where goes my economy,
Clips: me. I can't even make one more little guy.
Chris: Now, it wasn't quite it. There was a couple of floaters, and you can understand,
Chris: as a society that was now built around creating weapons of mass destruction,
Chris: I had quite the pipeline, and well, I had more birds to fly,
Chris: and my society has the view you can't make an omelet without cracking a few
Chris: eggs, and sometimes it's worth finishing them off.
Clips: Nuclear launch detected what are you blowing up buddy,
Clips: Oh, man.
Clips: Actually.
Clips: Oh, yeah, he did. Oh, no, he blew up. Either himself or Brent.
Clips: Hey, sometimes you got to crack a few eggs. There it is.
Clips: Good job. Oh, I see. Are the tides turning? Good job.
Wes: Yeah, this is where Chris decided.
Clips: I was just trying to get rid of one guy left.
Wes: It was worth nuking Jeff's last guy.
Wes: You know, if you had to take out some of my cannons and a bunch of my units, it was no problem.
Chris: A couple of Brent's soldiers, too, I think.
Brent: Yeah.
Chris: But, you know, it was a dramatic way to end it. We captured our immediate thoughts after the game.
Clips: Well done, gentlemen. Jeff, you only lasted four hours. Oh, my God.
Clips: So, looking at the units, Wes had...
Clips: You did the best of it. Holy cow. Uh, no, well, not according to mine. I did so poorly.
Clips: Oh, total. My total score is higher, but that's because my structure is higher.
Clips: At the end, I just entirely focused on nuclear capability. I just, that's all I did. Yeah.
Clips: Which was great. What does units mean? Like, how are you building that many
Clips: things? Just constantly building.
Clips: I mean, Zerg builds fast. I can't click fast enough. Oh, I see. Yeah.
Clips: For Terran, you have to use multiple barracks, multiple buildings,
Clips: and then you queue them up. You do four or five at a time or whatever.
Clips: For Zerg, I can double-click. There's these little grubs that are next to the
Clips: hatcheries, and there's three of them per hatchery, so I can build three at a time.
Clips: So if I double-click them, I got a bunch of hatcheries, I can click 12 and build
Clips: 12 of the same unit at the same time in parallel.
Clips: It's the kind of game you could literally play for 20 years. Oh, yeah.
Clips: And look at that. We just played for three hours. Three hours and 20 minutes
Clips: and not a single glitch on any of our Linux boxes. No, of course not.
Clips: I even, I was using alt tab and I got multiple screens going.
Clips: Oh, he's looking up strategies.
Clips: What are you doing on this? Oh, he's on perplexity. That's what's going on. Okay.
Clips: I definitely have a perplexity strategy screen up. Oh, wow. I should have thought
Clips: of it. That's great. I didn't do that either.
Clips: I actually stopped looking at it, but at the very start of the game,
Clips: I did ask for a sort of like, if I want to build a lot of Archons, what step should I do?
Clips: Now I know. Now I know. That's the secret. Well, good job, boys.
Chris: All right. All right. Well, so Brent, I want to hear your thoughts on it.
Chris: How do you think the game held up, how it worked on Linux, getting it going, all of that?
Brent: Yeah, I was running this thing on my dev one because I figured, you know, why not?
Brent: And it ran great. I would say the most painful part was the setup only because
Brent: I was unfamiliar with like all these launchers and things like that.
Brent: That's what friends are for, right? To guide me through that path.
Brent: But as far as install goes everything was
Brent: super smooth no errors at all and throughout
Brent: the gameplay i kind of completely forgot that we were doing a thing that wasn't
Brent: meant to be done by the original makers of the game so total success from that
Brent: perspective i understand it's an old game but very very playable i enjoyed the
Brent: heck out of that and would totally uh defeat jeff with you guys again you.
Chris: Were on nix os uh you were on nix os as well.
Wes: Indeed yeah it was kind of great Because I just did Nix run Nix packages hash
Wes: Lutris dash free to get started. I didn't even have to install anything really.
Chris: So I tested a few different install scenarios with Lutris on Nix OS.
Chris: And my experience was is the flat pack didn't work as well.
Chris: I got errors during the installation of things. But if I use the Lutris dash
Chris: free package in Nix packages, that worked just fine.
Chris: So on Nix OS, my advice would be to use the built-in Nix package.
Chris: On my Kubuntu slash Neon system here, which is a little bit older,
Chris: uh the debbie and i installed first actually got the same errors that the flat packs got on nix os,
Chris: and so i uninstalled the deb package on ubuntu and i
Chris: actually went with the flat pack on ubuntu and that's worked great for me
Chris: on ubuntu is the flat pack so depends you
Chris: know your your success may vary there so there's those little weirdness but
Chris: that's not anything to do with starcraft it's just the state of game launchers
Chris: i suppose on different linux desktops i think the game holds up incredibly well
Chris: we had all three of us playing flawlessly across different systems uh jeff what
Chris: distro were you playing on.
Mumble: I was on uh arch windows.
Chris: Yeah i.
Mumble: Was on arch.
Chris: Arch okay there you go so it's it's wonderful because really wine's doing the
Chris: bulk of the heavy lifting there,
Chris: and so as long as you can get a good wine environment and you've got you can
Chris: play games i was i was even doing on an intel arc system on here in the studio you.
Brent: Know i believe i was watching some of the command line stuff go by and i believe
Brent: uh even lutris was using proton on the back end to do this stuff.
Chris: Yeah i.
Brent: I'm not that familiar with how all that stuff works out but i think,
Brent: this is we're so lucky can i just say that like 10 years ago this was just a
Brent: dream to get gaming especially more modern games working but this is uh i feel
Brent: like the golden age for linux we're just getting better and better okay.
Wes: Just one final follow-up question here brent did you have a good enough time
Wes: did we convince you to try the single player campaign.
Brent: I will say immediately after we hung up like our four-hour phone call i was
Brent: like i should go play campaign so i know what i'm doing and next time i could
Brent: like you know resist the jeff let's say.
Chris: I'll tell you one thing that would be useful is if you go through some of the
Chris: initial tutorials they start very very basic very straightforward goals and
Chris: one of the things they do through story is they introduce you to some of the
Chris: key characters that have special abilities that you can then deploy in game
Chris: later on and you kind of understand more about what they can do.
Wes: Chris also offers a paid online class if you want to base your society around nukes.
Chris: Yeah, definitely.
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Brent: Now, with all this gaming talk the last couple of weeks, I think you got a new
Brent: little something in your hands, right? Chris, you've been teasing this thing,
Brent: but you haven't really given details.
Chris: We talked about the older version of this a while ago on the show.
Chris: These little portable gaming handheld retro consoles, the R36S is what we talked
Chris: about on the show forever ago.
Chris: You can get them on Amazon or other places for around 60 bucks,
Chris: and they come with, you know, thousands of ROMs. Well, in March of 2025,
Chris: the R36 Max came out, a brand new updated version of it.
Chris: And it's a little more expensive at the moment because it is brand new.
Chris: But one of the things that it features is a larger one-to-one screen.
Chris: It does run Linux. I couldn't tell you much about it.
Chris: It has an ARM64 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor that goes up to 1.5 GHz.
Chris: It's got a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU.
Chris: And it has a little bit of built-in storage 64 or
Chris: 128 it depends on the one you get and then it has an expandable tf
Chris: card slot too so you can you know you can load that
Chris: up with as many roms as you want it's got a 4000 milliamp battery
Chris: which is plenty six hours of gameplay lasts forever for me and it's um you know
Chris: about the size of a game boy but with a lot more screen and wes i wanted to
Chris: have you take a look at the screen because a lot of the games that you play
Chris: on this are not actually formatted for that resolution.
Wes: Ooh, it's crisp though.
Chris: It is. So it's a 720 by 720, four inch screen. Yeah, Wes is playing a little Metroid there.
Chris: It's slightly skewed perspective. Can you see that?
Wes: Yes, I do. Yeah, the aspect ratios has been stretched slightly,
Wes: but it's not realistically interfering with the gameplay.
Chris: I haven't found it to be a problem. However, Purus might, and you can pop it
Chris: into native resolutions.
Wes: Oh, okay.
Chris: Yeah, you can pop it down, and then you just have sort of a black bar.
Wes: Okay, so how many different platforms? Am I on Super Nintendo here?
Chris: You are on Game Boy Advance right now.
Wes: Game Boy Advance, okay, I see.
Chris: So I know it supports NES, SNES, Sega, the PSP, the Nintendo 64,
Chris: the PS1, MAME machines, PCRK, and a lot of others.
Chris: It's a lot of platforms. This particular one claims to come with 18,000 ROMs preloaded.
Chris: Other numbers say 16,000. So it's, you know, it's suffice to say so many games
Chris: that you have to come up with tricks to navigate all of them.
Chris: And they have some folders of popular ones and you can mark favorites.
Chris: But the biggest problem this thing has is that there's so many games.
Wes: Because you just have to scroll through the giant list of games which you want to play some subset of.
Chris: But that's also the upside. You get this thing out of the box.
Chris: Mine was charged actually and everything's loaded and good to go.
Chris: There's no account to create.
Chris: There's no Wi-Fi. It does actually have Wi-Fi built in. I don't know what you
Chris: would use it for. There's no Wi-Fi you need to sign on to.
Chris: Nothing. You turn it on, you select your game and you play.
Wes: That is pretty compelling and just like, Oh, I ordered fun game time from the
Wes: internet, and then it just showed up and I can use it.
Chris: Yeah, and this beautiful IPS screen makes these games look the best you've ever seen them.
Chris: And you're not stretching them up to 1080p. It's 720 by 720,
Chris: so they actually, they still look pretty good.
Chris: The fact that you can also pop in storage and add more ROMs is really nice if
Chris: you have, like, some custom hacked ROMs.
Chris: It's USB-C. It's got two USB-C ports on it, actually.
Chris: It's got a power port, and then it labels the other one as the OTG port.
Chris: It's got a headphone jack on it.
Chris: And then it's got your typical D-pad and thumbsticks with a YXBA and start and select.
Chris: This is where the cons come in. The controls could feel a little better.
Chris: I don't know if you noticed that.
Chris: They're not like a high-end console controller. They're a little squishy.
Chris: You're a little tight because it's a small device.
Wes: Right. This is not what Uncle Jeff would want to use for competitive gameplay.
Chris: Right. It took me five or ten minutes the first time I played this for games
Chris: where you really got to move fast and you really have to be accurate.
Chris: It took me five or ten minutes to get my thumb in the groove. But then I got there.
Wes: Okay. Okay, I see it's also got, what, like four trigger-y type buttons on the
Wes: back there? How are those?
Chris: I don't use them much except for like some of the games that support,
Chris: but you can use them for different things and triggering.
Chris: They can hold them down with other combinations to trigger system events.
Chris: They're good. I don't find that I mispress them.
Chris: The new one has more ergonomic grip. So I've got the old one here in the studio,
Chris: Wes, and you can see the old one's kind of got a flat back.
Wes: Yeah, it's just like a rectangular construction primarily.
Chris: Right, where this new one kind of has...
Wes: Ergonomics may be a hand to shape, I suppose, depending a bit on your particular hands, but still.
Chris: And the new one is definitely taller, too, because of that wider screen.
Chris: So the new ones, I actually think, having played them both quite a bit,
Chris: the older one, you know, for $30, if you could pick it up, is still kind of the way to go.
Chris: The keys might be a little nicer on the older one.
Chris: And it still has a lot of games. If you really want the best screen,
Chris: though, you've got to get the R36X.
Chris: It really is something. So the D-pad's okay, they're not great.
Chris: The analog sticks are okay, they're not great. They're definitely serviceable.
Chris: They're just sort of what you get for this class of device, right?
Chris: And there is this silly soccer ball on here that doesn't do anything and that kind of stuff.
Chris: But when you bring it all together with the 720 by 720 one by one aspect ratio
Chris: screen that just really pops, the fact that you power it on and you're playing
Chris: immediately, like I have it suspended right now.
Chris: I press one button and the game immediately fires up.
Wes: It does seem perfect for just taking it on the plane, carrying it in your bag
Wes: for a little downtime here and there while you're waiting for whatever.
Chris: I keep it on the couch. And, you know, if I'm waiting for the wife or something
Chris: before we watch, I just pull it and start playing for five minutes.
Chris: And I hit the pause button and it goes back to sleep.
Chris: I've been playing this one level of Metroid for like three days.
Chris: It's nice. It's fun.
Brent: Chris, I'm wondering how the old one held up. You've had it, what, for a year now?
Brent: And have been playing it pretty consistently from what I can tell when I visit.
Brent: How did it hold up from a hardware perspective?
Chris: Well, about three months ago, I let it go really dead, apparently,
Chris: and I cannot get it to hold a charge anymore.
Chris: And it won't work if you take out the battery and plug it in directly.
Chris: So I found a replacement battery on Amazon for like $6, and it's going to be
Chris: here today. So my hope is I can plug a new lithium battery into that thing,
Chris: and then it fires up, and then I've got both of them.
Chris: And then the wife and I can both play. But we'll see. Otherwise,
Chris: it's been great, and I would still give it a recommend.
Chris: If you're really you know if you really like nice graphics then i would say go for the,
Chris: r36 max because it really does pop but that still really holds up um and then
Chris: you know you cannot get away from the fact that it's just it's it's kind of
Chris: a conversation starter it's adorable out of the box and you can just start playing
Chris: you can hand it to anybody i handed it to the wife,
Chris: she went through the games picked the one she wants spent 10
Chris: minutes playing a game it's really easy to use and
Chris: again you could like say for a road trip
Chris: buy a couple of these take them out of the box hand them to
Chris: the kiddos or whoever they get in the car they're ready to go they don't
Chris: need a connection and they'll play for a six hour drive and when
Chris: they need topped off you just plug them into usbc you really
Chris: can't beat it so the r36 x max right now
Chris: it'll come down but right now because it's brand new is 99 but
Chris: you can find the older version which i
Chris: still think is pretty great for like around 30 bucks where you look for it maybe
Chris: on ebay to 60 bucks on amazon and again they come with all the roms that can't
Chris: last forever that's probably gonna eventually get shut down so that's why i
Chris: mentioned it from time to time because it's such a great deal and it's nice
Chris: to have in one and when linux fest comes around i'll have it here in the studio
Chris: so people can check it out.
Brent: Well thank you everyone for sending boosts in this week it's a kind of strange
Brent: here i think he was trying to pay us off our baller booster this week is producer jeff,
Brent: Now, there's many boosts here. The first one I see is 100 sats for a test.
Brent: You sent in a couple boosts, but the second one is the baller.
Brent: It says, to the headset fund.
Chris: Hey!
Brent: Let's go to gaming.
Chris: Yeah, all right. So we have Zonotic here, Urban Terror, Tux Cart, Velorin.
Chris: I don't know about that one. It's got the Starcrafts in there,
Chris: of course, for the proprietary. Left 4 Dead is a great one. Payday.
Wes: Oh, Castle Crashers. Yeah, that's fun.
Chris: Broforce is fun.
Brent: Broforce. Yeah, Jeff and I played Broforce when I was there last. Very, very good.
Chris: Thanks for the sats for the headset fund, PJ. Appreciate it.
Chris: Frigolet comes in with 50,000 sats.
Chris: And just says headphones. We know what to do with that. Thank you very much.
Wes: The Muso comes in with 50,000 sats.
Wes: Unplugged headset fund is go.
Chris: All right. Thank you, Muso. Nice to hear from you, too.
Brent: We have another boost here from, not sure, not sure who that is, 30,000 Satoshis.
Brent: And this is another headset boost, says new headset boost. Who doesn't love new gear?
Chris: Yeah, hopefully we love them. One arrived, that one that I ordered,
Chris: and I'm waiting for the cable, which all these things take a lot of time.
Chris: So I'm thinking this is the week, Monday or Tuesday, I have to finish all the ordering.
Chris: The cable requires signature. and while we were recording yesterday the StarCraft
Chris: stuff, they knocked on the door here at the studio and I didn't hear it.
Chris: So, I'll have to catch it next time but appreciate that.
Chris: WH-2050 comes in with 20,250 SATs.
Chris: Plus one for a Linux gaming episode, I'd like to better understand why anti-cheat
Chris: doesn't play well with Linux.
Chris: I don't play many games that use the tech, but I know several people that would
Chris: switch to full-time Linux if they could play things like League of Legends.
Chris: So we looked into this WH, and as you probably are somewhat aware,
Chris: the primary problem comes down to these games implement anti-cheat at the Windows kernel level.
Chris: And they are just simply, they're simply not a one-to-one comparable offered on the Linux side.
Chris: Then you add to the sort of
Chris: complexity or what i'm trying to say is proton
Chris: could be used as a way to kind of suss out
Chris: api calls that games are making and you
Chris: could even devise a fork
Chris: of proton that makes cheating even more possible and so i think some of the
Chris: game developers are a little leery of that as well so you have technical implementations
Chris: aren't available in the linux kernel that we're probably never going to add
Chris: and these are essentially rootkits on windows so let's be clear about that yeah there's also.
Wes: The like human sort of cultural problem beyond the technical problem in that
Wes: sense i would argue on the windows side but here we are.
Chris: And then often when there's cheating at scale that's done on linux so a lot
Chris: of these developers are lazy when it comes to the stuff and they just say well
Chris: we won't allow linux because then we don't have to worry about this problem
Chris: which is a real crap cheap kind of way to go but it's just the way it is now
Chris: there are some workarounds being created.
Chris: EAC, for example, offers Linux builds, but developers have to enable them in their game.
Chris: There are some user space anti-cheat solutions where you could actually use
Chris: SE Linux and AppArmor, but obviously if you have root on the box,
Chris: you could disable that stuff, so it doesn't really solve it for the game developer.
Chris: Then there is the fact that there's a lack of widespread secure boot adoption,
Chris: so it makes it harder for anti-cheat software to verify that the system hasn't
Chris: been modified in some way, like something at the kernel level.
Chris: And so on Windows, they can verify that the kernel they've rootkitted essentially
Chris: is the kernel that is in use.
Chris: They don't necessarily have that mechanism on Linux unless you're actively using Secure Boot.
Chris: And would you really want to have to use Secure Boot just so that way you could
Chris: play a proprietary game that uses anti-cheat rootkits?
Chris: So that's the TLDR essentially of it good question and on topic so thank you wh20 appreciate it.
Wes: Tr selby boosts in with 8 000 cents,
Wes: Where the rubber meets the road. Use towards getting the Brent Bus new rubber
Wes: boots so you can roll on home.
Chris: Oh, thank you.
Brent: Thank you. Yeah, that old rusty can does need some love, which we will be giving it next month.
Brent: And thank you. Really super appreciate the support.
Chris: Yeah, that's definitely going to need new boots. Hey, look at this.
Chris: A Mr. West Payne boosted in.
Wes: Oh, me?
Chris: 3,222 sats.
Chris: Saying hi to PJ. I love it. Good. Good. KyloDog came in with 2,001 sats.
Chris: I had thought while listening the other day, it would be funny to have a sound
Chris: effect to boost values right at or just above the 2,000-sat cutoff,
Chris: like doing the bare minimum or something like that.
Chris: We kind of have like a basic pew-pew that we use from time to time for like
Chris: the 2,000-sat, but I don't use it that often. I just like playing around.
Wes: Soli86 boosts in with 2,000 sats. regarding
Wes: the sleep mode with framework laptops i found that my framework doesn't sleep
Wes: when an application is stopping hibernate in plasma sure my other issue may
Wes: be closing the lid while plugged into a dock and then pulling the usbc cable
Wes: ah oh confused with a hardware disappearing and what state to be in i.
Chris: Could see myself doing that closing the lid and then pulling the cable as i
Chris: walk away brent do you think it could be that an application you have is telling plasma don't sleep.
Brent: Considering the number of applications you guys know i always have open i would
Brent: say probably yes but uh the real trick is figuring out which one i don't know
Brent: where to start there so happy to happy to look into it if you have any tips and tricks dear.
Wes: Listeners i think we uh you know we write a little script it kills processes
Wes: at random and then it just records that so then you can you know yeah trace it back from there that.
Brent: Seems completely reasonable.
Wes: Make sure to.
Brent: Vistro's stew boosted in 5,555 sets.
Brent: In regards to signing PDFs, I've had success with Journal++ for many years.
Brent: Just keeping around an image of your signature.
Brent: But these days I use Firefox because its built-in PDF reader now supports forms and images.
Chris: I did not know that. You got me with that. Yeah.
Brent: I did use Journal for a long time, but this is an awesome hack. Thank you.
Chris: Yeah, it is. thank you for the tip Coffee Bacon Linux is here with 5,000 sats,
Chris: new gear day enjoy loving the show keep up the great work he says he also meant
Chris: to send a second sat boost because he wanted to send a little more for the headsets.
Wes: Little top up boost.
Chris: Thank you.
Wes: True Grits boosts in with 17,000 and 10 sats,
Wes: Oh, it's a little announcement. True Grits is officially coming to LinuxFest Northwest.
Wes: Ah, but Grits does have a question mainly for you, Brent.
Brent: Uh-oh.
Wes: I think I'm going to do some car camping if possible. Do I need permission from
Wes: the college to do so? Any tips?
Brent: Are you asking because I've specifically done this exact thing at my first LinuxFest
Brent: Northwest and did not ask for permission because I was actually in a car, was SUV at the time,
Brent: although Chris did catch me brushing my teeth, so I didn't go completely undiscovered.
Brent: But I think it's pretty okay.
Brent: I would say if you're riding a rig like Lady Joops, like we do,
Brent: maybe you need permission because it takes up like, how many,
Brent: 10 parking spaces, something like that.
Brent: But otherwise, if it's just a small camping rig, I think you're fine.
Chris: Yeah, that would be my approach, is if it's small and discreet,
Chris: you're better off just probably not bringing it
Chris: up and don't ask but if it's a if it's a large you probably
Chris: shouldn't do it or you need to get permission that's probably the yeah
Chris: that's probably the way to go forward humor come thank you great boost can't
Chris: wait to see you there it's gonna be awesome forward humor comes in with a row
Chris: of ducks libra office draw has great pdf editor built in just open your pdf
Chris: in the libra draw and you can insert a png image of your signature in a few
Chris: seconds export is pdf and you're done.
Wes: Hey that could be a pretty easy one.
Brent: I started doing this recently and i agree it's
Brent: great um i realized when we asked the signing pdf
Brent: question there's a whole bunch of different meanings to that one is which we're
Brent: seeing here is just having a photo of your signature they just plop on a bunch
Brent: of documents which i think is the simplest one but digitally signing is a whole
Brent: other ball game so uh which i haven't figured out yet so i would love some tips
Brent: on how to do it you know the right way.
Wes: Sat stacker seven moose in with 10 000 sats,
Wes: plus one here for the idea of making all those great ai songs available for streaming.
Chris: There's some.
Wes: Real gems in there and i would love to browse through.
Chris: Yeah the members usually we kick off the member stream with a custom song some
Chris: of them are hits some of them not so much but we'll have more on that soon i think.
Wes: And just a general thanks for the great work.
Chris: Well thank you nice to hear from you sat stacker.
Brent: Next high five connoisseur sent in a total of 10,864 sats across two booths
Brent: first one here here's some treasure for the headsets for your lovely gents.
Chris: Thank you another.
Brent: Shout out to the bootleg version of the show it is the best way to listen for
Brent: sure join that jupiter party.
Chris: I do think we could probably plug the bootleg a little more there is a lot of
Chris: show in there it's clocking at an hour 42 right now yeah someone.
Wes: Has a habit of overproducing the.
Chris: Bootleg yeah anonymous sent us some stats to test out their setup thank you
Chris: and tomato came in with 13 337 stats,
Chris: Some sats towards a pair of lead headsets for Wes and Brent.
Wes: And our last boost from Bronze Wing with a row of ducks. Headphones and gaming.
Chris: Yes! Great.
Wes: We're well in progress on both there.
Chris: Yeah. I would love to know how the gaming episode was received, too.
Chris: If you're looking for a reason to boost us, 600 episodes, we've done two, three of them ever.
Chris: And we really don't know. But we'd love to hear your feedback on that.
Chris: It's just something maybe we would do in another 100 episodes if you liked it. I don't know.
Chris: In the back of my mind, I thought, if we can get StarCraft working for us,
Chris: maybe we could do like a game session at Linux Fest or something like that with StarCraft. We'll see.
Brent: Careful what you suggest because you're going to start something here.
Chris: I know. I know. Well, maybe that's my intention.
Wes: Get your ghosts ready.
Chris: Thank you, everybody who boosted below the 2000sat cutoff too.
Chris: We just read above 2000sats for time, but we have all of your boosts and keep them in the dock.
Chris: And also a big shout out to all of you who stream those sats as you listened,
Chris: which you can do with those podcasting 2.0 apps, 33 of you did so,
Chris: and you collectively stacked 46,271 sats.
Chris: When you combine that with our boosters, this episode, 609, stacked 358,561 sats.
Chris: If you want to get on the fun, maybe support the Headset Fund.
Chris: You can get started with something like Fountain FM.
Chris: Strikes a great way in over 110 countries to get sats. Solid company too.
Chris: And of course, River is one of our partners, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash river.
Chris: You get those sats in a podcasting 2.0 app, and then you begin boosting the
Chris: show and support us directly.
Chris: And of course, tip of the hat to our members who also support the show with
Chris: their Fiat Fund coupons on automatic mode every single month,
Chris: unplugged.com slash membership, or for the whole network, jupiter.party.
Chris: Thank you, everybody, who makes this crazy independent podcast possible about
Chris: a topic that only us geeks could love.
Chris: Well, we got too many picks, so let's start with Brent's. I'm going to say it's pronounced Kua.
Chris: It's Kua. What do you think? Do I get it?
Brent: I was going to say Kua, but I like yours a little smoother.
Chris: I kind of like yours. So what'd you find?
Brent: I found this little app just like minutes after the show last week,
Brent: and I've been looking for, I've got to say, probably like a year and a half,
Brent: for a very simple screen recording app.
Brent: I used to use Peak quite a bit to, as you guys know, record a bunch of bugs.
Brent: I find when doing bug reports and issues on GitHub, it's really helpful to even
Brent: just have a screen cap of sometimes the behavior that you're seeing.
Brent: It's a really great way to communicate to the developers what's going on.
Brent: And it turned out in this transition to Wayland, And a lot of those tools just
Brent: weren't compatible anymore.
Brent: And Peak is one that just they decided they weren't going to make it anymore.
Brent: And it just kind of went discontinued and wasn't really useful on modern Linux
Brent: desktops. And I have been looking ever since.
Brent: I know the built-in one on Plasma has been adding this feature,
Brent: but I don't love how it works. And it's a little, I don't know, not my thing.
Wes: You answered my question, I was going to say. You got to give Spectacle at least,
Wes: you know, a little dimension.
Brent: Yeah, Spectacle has added this feature recently. and I've been trying to use
Brent: it, but it seems I just trip over the feature sets.
Brent: Like it, I don't know, it doesn't work for my brain. It's not doing it for me.
Brent: Although I use Spectacle constantly every single day.
Brent: But KUHA has been really doing it for me. It's nice and simple and elegant and just works.
Brent: So I would say if you like that kind of thing, it's great. It is also licensed GPL v3.
Brent: And I think it's 96% written in Rust.
Chris: Yeah, we'll have a link to it, K-O-O-H-A, and that'll be in the show notes.
Chris: Yeah, nice find. And then, Wes, you found a doozy, too, so we had to do two picks this week.
Chris: You came across VTT Summarizer, which summarizes VTT files, which,
Chris: if you don't know, and I'm sure most of you probably wouldn't be unless you're
Chris: a podcaster, those are transcript files.
Wes: Yeah, like SRTs or subtitle files, basically.
Chris: Yeah, it could be a subtitle for a movie, too, right? and we use them to all
Chris: of our episodes since 600 have had transcription and you found a tool this vtt
Chris: summarizer that uses open source llms to essentially go through this and summarize
Chris: it could also do with meeting notes tell me about this thing.
Wes: Uh yeah i haven't actually had a chance to try it yet.
Chris: It also looks kind of new like i don't even see a license right on there yet.
Wes: It's just basically like a python file that hooks into um all the you know apis
Wes: we have around open source LLM. So here's how it reads.
Wes: This script extracts structured information from VTT files, such as Zoom meeting
Wes: transcripts or closed captions, and converts it into JSON and Markdown formats.
Wes: This includes an overview, participants, main topics, key points,
Wes: decisions, and action items.
Wes: It uses open source LLMs to handle the data extraction and summarization,
Wes: ensuring everything can be run locally without the need to share with third parties.
Wes: But presumably also, if you wanted to, you could plug in a third-party QPI provider as well.
Chris: Very nice. Link to that in the show notes. Also, shout out to Llama4,
Chris: which came out today. That's exciting. We'll be digging into that at some point in the future.
Chris: There's a lot going on. And remember, LinuxFest is just around the corner, 1918 days.
Chris: And I'd love it if you participated in that poll. And just let us know if you'd
Chris: be likely to tune in for a bit during a Saturday stream.
Chris: And if you would, boost it and tell me, what would you want to hear from that stream?
Chris: I've got a handful of ideas, But we have about 20-ish days, so it's a great
Chris: opportunity to help influence that coverage as well.
Chris: And we are trying to raise funds for that headset.
Chris: So there's several things you could boost in and help support the show.
Chris: Now you can make it a Tuesday on a Sunday by joining us at jblive.tv or jblive.fm
Chris: in whatever audio player you like.
Chris: We start at around 9.30 a.m., 10 a.m.
Chris: Pacific. but we have it at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar in your time
Chris: and we also mark it pending and go live in podcasting 2.0 app so you can just tune in right there,
Chris: links to everything we talked about today how to contact us,
Chris: our mumble, our matrix info our membership, all of that,
Chris: linuxunplugged.com and this is linuxunplugged.com slash 609 thanks so much for
Chris: joining us on this week's episode of the Unplugged program we'll see you next Tuesday as in Sunday.