Chris: It's crazy stormy in the Pacific Northwest this weekend. Wes and I have been
Chris: sharing crazy weather notes back and forth.
Wes: Yeah, you know, you got to keep up to date on where the latest power outage is.
Chris: Did you ever lose power?
Wes: No, thankfully not.
Chris: The studio did not lose power either. And I thought I was doing pretty good
Chris: because I'm out in the woods, kind of up against the mountains. The mountains.
Chris: And the power didn't really seem like it was going to flicker.
Chris: The wind didn't really seem like it was blowing too hard.
Chris: 9.50 p.m. I hear this chachunk. I'm like, uh-oh, that's not good.
Chris: It sounds like a transformer or something like that.
Wes: Large piece of electrical equipment.
Chris: And I sit there for a second, and I said, okay, I need to pay attention to that.
Chris: Yes, it's late, and I'm tired.
Chris: And I had to have a couple of drinks because we went trick-or-treating,
Chris: and they were giving out jello shots to the adults. I did not plan on that,
Chris: so I'm like, okay, thanks.
Chris: So I'm like, all right, fine. I go to check it. Sure enough,
Chris: we've lost our power. I pull it up on the map, and oh, yeah, we're out, we're out.
Chris: And I announced it to the kids. It's not really easy to tell because all the
Chris: lights are on because we have a battery bank.
Wes: The system just works, right.
Chris: So I announced it to the kids. I'm like, hey, guess what? The power's out. They're like, it is?
Chris: And the kids look around. They look out the window and they see the campground's
Chris: dark. I go, can't we at least turn out the lights? LAUGHTER,
Chris: Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris.
Wes: My name is Wes.
Brent: And my name is Brent.
Chris: Hello, gentlemen. Well, coming up on the show this week, we'll tell you what's
Chris: interesting about the new Fedora 43 release and the thing that they're doing
Chris: that we think every Linux distribution should copy.
Chris: Then we'll round it out with some shout-outs, some boosts, some picks, and a lot more.
Chris: So before we go any further, before we get into that show, we have to say time-appropriate
Chris: greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room.
Mumble: Hello.
Wes: Hello there.
Mumble: Hello.
Chris: It's quite the group.
Brent: It's on fire over there.
Chris: I know. I know there's like some work going on in the background.
Wes: Maybe I'm riding lawnmower. It's unclear.
Chris: Things are happening and I love it. Yeah, our virtual lug gets together every
Chris: Sunday and you're welcome to join us.
Chris: That's at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash mumble. And of course you need the mumble
Chris: app, which is like packaged everywhere.
Chris: So you'll be able to find that. Also a big good morning to our friends over
Chris: at Defined Networking. go check out Nebula.
Chris: Defined.net slash unplugged is where you want to go to support the show and
Chris: meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking.
Chris: It's a decentralized VPN built on an open source platform that we love called Nebula.
Chris: Top to bottom, you're in complete control.
Chris: They offer a managed product or something that you can completely self-host.
Chris: It's optimized for speed, simplicity, and it uses industry-leading security.
Chris: And Nebula's decentralized design, you know that's something I'm big into.
Chris: It means your network is resilient.
Chris: If you've got a home lab or a global enterprise, it will work for you.
Chris: They developed it for Slack originally.
Chris: Now, of course, it runs many networks. I can't tell you all of them,
Chris: but it still manages all of the Slack infrastructure. They run all of their
Chris: interconnectivity over that.
Chris: Also, every Rivian vehicle going down the road is using Nebula to protect the
Chris: data and the metrics there.
Chris: And, you know, one of the things that can be tricky if you want to self-host
Chris: would be setting up the lighthouse. That's kind of where you start.
Chris: That's where a managed Nebula is really nice.
Chris: There are easier ways to get going with a lighthouse these days,
Chris: and that's the thing that you host that's responsible for keeping track of all
Chris: your Nebula hosts and helping them find each other when they come online.
Chris: And they don't actually transfer data themselves. It's more like node discovery.
Chris: And Wes, one of the things that you and I have been watching is there's more
Chris: public nodes coming online that you can use, and there's now a way to make it
Chris: even easier to get set up.
Wes: Yeah, right. So there's this public Nebula lighthouse service.
Wes: One of the things that's neat is Nebula is so flexible that you can do this.
Wes: So you can have someone run the lighthouse, and with a little automation,
Wes: there's like a Python service that runs here around it, you can make it so you
Wes: can submit your Nebula info to it so it can work as a lighthouse for you.
Wes: There are a couple steps you want to take just for security so that you can
Wes: do this safely, but they have good docs for that that we'll have linked.
Wes: And listener Blumenstrong has taken it upon themselves to start a Nix package
Wes: for that as well. So it's even easier.
Chris: Ha ha. How cool is that? Is that something I should be looking at?
Wes: Well, maybe we should run one. I don't know.
Chris: Oh, a JB Lighthouse.
Wes: Right?
Chris: I'd be down for that. I'd be down for that. Well, thanks, Bloomin' Strong.
Chris: Nice work on that. So go check out Nebula. It's awesome if you want to self-host it yourself.
Chris: Or really, why not start with a managed product? Also could be a great option
Chris: for friends, family, or your enterprise.
Chris: It's a great way to support the show. Defined.net slash unplugged.
Chris: Redefine your VPN experience with something you can actually control.
Chris: Define.net slash unplugged.
Chris: Well, Fedora Linux 43 has been officially cleared for release probably just
Chris: about the time you're listening to this, October 28th.
Chris: That's a Tuesday, 2025.
Chris: And there's a lot to like in here. We weren't sure exactly what would land.
Chris: You know, they kind of have these windows of time and then the team gets together.
Chris: They have a go, no go meeting.
Chris: And then they decide if it's ready or not.
Wes: Yeah, it kind of keeps things interesting this time, anytime there's a release in progress.
Chris: And one of the things they do is they have a blocker bug tracker where you can
Chris: specifically see what's holding up the release. So if you're trying to kind
Chris: of plan when Fedora might land, most of you probably aren't,
Chris: but we do, it's really nice that they just publish a blocker tracker.
Chris: And you can say, oh, okay, oh, this doesn't really apply to me.
Chris: Well, then I'm going to go ahead and install it.
Wes: And true, open source, transparent, yeah, just great.
Chris: Yeah, and that's exactly what we did because the blockers that were there were
Chris: no big deal for us at all. And the rest of the bits looked good.
Chris: And this is the release where we finally get the new web UI installer.
Chris: And Wes, you've kind of been the biggest Anaconda hater on the show.
Wes: Ouch, you just had to say that.
Chris: I just put it out there.
Wes: Yeah, well.
Chris: I mean, I know you warmed up to it a little bit as time went on.
Wes: Yeah, hate's a strong word, but it's never been my favorite of the common installers. That's true.
Chris: Yep, so it's now the default installer.
Wes: It had been in use for Workstation, but it hadn't really rolled out wider. So now this time it is.
Chris: Yeah. Let's start there, Wes. Did you like it?
Wes: Oh, yeah. Actually, I am. I'm definitely a fan of the new web installer approach.
Wes: I'm still kind of getting used to the flavor and the limitations.
Wes: And, you know, I'm giving it early days and all that.
Wes: I did notice as part of that, just kind of poking around while I was getting things installed.
Wes: I wonder if our friend Neil could comment on this. Something called Slitherer.
Chris: Yeah. What is Slitherer?
Mumble: Jesus.
Chris: What is that?
Mumble: So Slitherer is a alternative, purposeful web engine runner built on QtWebEngine
Mumble: to run the Anaconda Web UI.
Mumble: And the reason it exists is because the quote-unquote default is to use Firefox,
Mumble: and that's what's used on Workstation.
Mumble: Almost every other spin experience, whatever...
Mumble: And using Firefox causes problems because then it confuses the window manager.
Mumble: And if you, for example, preload window rules for like how Anaconda is supposed
Mumble: to show up like on a tiling window manager, it will screw up because it will
Mumble: also affect Firefox, the web browser, and all these other things.
Mumble: So by having a dedicated web runner that has its own name that identifies as Anaconda.
Mumble: Things like window management rules or you want to de-confuse the desktop shell
Mumble: or whatever these things, if you have things that apply to Firefox,
Mumble: they won't apply to Anaconda.
Mumble: If you have things that only apply to Anaconda, they won't apply to Firefox.
Mumble: It's basically avoiding the – and also it won't cause things like,
Mumble: oh, hey, you have mixed up profiles.
Mumble: You have settings coming gearing over for one or the other. like weird
Mumble: stuff like that doesn't happen either and so slither is basically a very very
Mumble: simple wrapper that runs the Anaconda web UI through Qtweb engine and and that's
Mumble: that's used just to make it so that we don't have these weird complicated problems,
Mumble: result in things like oh hey i can't launch firefox randomly because firefox
Mumble: gets confused that anaconda is also running and anaconda is also firefox.
Wes: Yeah well nicely done because i mean i think it's kind
Wes: of the one of the things the flexibility you get and maybe problem you have
Wes: to solve when you make a big switch like this so it's cool to see you know how
Wes: do you actually make this possible to roll out wider and i do think you know
Wes: it's a more direct it's a simpler experience it felt a little faster to me just
Wes: going through the full install to get my system them down and I was trying the
Wes: KDE spin this time around.
Mumble: Excellent.
Wes: I also noticed this time when you boot into it, it even has a nice little thing
Wes: that reminds you how much Fedora loves KDE and KDE loves Fedora.
Chris: That's great. Yeah. Also under the hood, the installer switches from DNF4 to
Chris: DNF5 for package management.
Wes: Finally.
Chris: That's pretty fun.
Mumble: Not that you'll experience any of that. No, you shouldn't. Because the only
Mumble: thing that actually uses that backend is Fedora server install DVD and the net install ISOs.
Mumble: Everything else is just, you know, it's an image-based install.
Chris: Yeah. Also, I don't know what the impact of this is, but I read...
Wes: And hey, some of us love a good net install.
Chris: I read in the notes, too, that the RPM package format is actually still version
Chris: 4, which is going to be upgraded in the future.
Mumble: Yeah, so we have RPM 6, but it's set to the V4 format for backwards compatibility
Mumble: because, like, the build system infrastructure is still running older Fedora.
Mumble: You know, there's things that are still on RHEL in the infrastructure.
Mumble: Like, moving to the V6 format would just break everything right now.
Chris: Yeah, that makes sense. Bite it off as its own thing.
Mumble: Yeah, so that's going to happen separately later.
Chris: So let's talk a few details here. We got in Workstation, we have a version of
Chris: GNOME now that is deprecating X11 support.
Chris: So, of course, you'll still have X Wayland, but that's the only way you're going
Chris: to be able to run legacy X applications.
Chris: Other spins in desktop environments still support X11. This is an upstream GNOME change that lands.
Wes: And the future is here.
Chris: I guess so. The Wayland future, I guess, is here, right? I suppose so.
Chris: So I don't have a lot of thoughts on that other than we knew this was coming.
Chris: It was signaled for a while.
Chris: And I think all of my systems have been whaling for years. So it kind of makes sense.
Wes: I mean, there are other options, so I still have some remaining sympathy for
Wes: folks where it doesn't work.
Wes: But it really has progressed to a point of regular usability, which is great.
Chris: I don't often comment on this. But what is striking is the new wallpaper.
Chris: I love it. I really think it's great.
Wes: Yeah, it's one of my favorites in the last few releases, I think.
Chris: I think it's my favorite since the DNA wallpaper.
Wes: Oh, wow.
Brent: I feel like you're a little biased, Chris.
Chris: Oh, yeah? Why is that? Because it's a rocket?
Brent: Yeah, because it's a giant, like, JB rocket, pretty much.
Chris: I think it's fantastic. I love it.
Brent: It is really nice. The backstory is really nice, too.
Chris: Do you have a TLDR version, an elevator version of the backstory?
Brent: Well, it's basically inspired by Sally Ride and Sally Ride's legacy.
Brent: She was the first American woman to go to space.
Brent: I guess that was June 18th, 1983.
Brent: So just a nice little chunk of history there. And I like that idea of doing
Brent: wallpapers based on a little slice of history.
Chris: Let's talk about some nitty gritty stuff, because I always love these kinds
Chris: of like under the hood things. And I bet you were really excited to see this. And I'm not joking.
Chris: Slash boot on a new install is going from one gigabyte to two gigabytes.
Wes: Yeah, it's probably about time.
Chris: If you're just upgrading, of course, that's not going to be the case.
Chris: But yes, how big do you make your slash boot?
Wes: Yep. I mean, at least a gig, probably two. I've gone up to five before.
Chris: Yeah. Five is my max. Two is my minimum. Two is my minimum.
Wes: I like having some excess space.
Wes: Maybe you store like an emergency ISO on there or backups and stuff.
Chris: Brent, do you have a minimum size for your Slash Boot?
Brent: Yeah, I go at least two. I've certainly run into issues on encrypted systems
Brent: where kind of everything gets stored there.
Brent: And definitely Ubuntu is when my parents are using it, let's say.
Brent: It's not great at expunging things in there. So they have way too many kernels and stuff.
Brent: And that has brought down my mother's computer more times than I care to admit.
Brent: So I now have like a task every six-ish months I had to go through and clear
Brent: that because it's a tiny little boot.
Brent: So I say, you know, disk is cheap. Make it as large as, I don't know, just go crazy. Five?
Chris: Yeah, I'd be curious. I'd be curious. I say boost it and tell us how big your slash boot is.
Wes: Why not just run the whole system off your boot, you know?
Brent: Well, and I wondered...
Wes: Fat32 is fine.
Chris: This is crazy. My system was running 6.17.1.
Chris: I believe 6.17.5 is the latest. It came out on October 23rd,
Chris: so pretty fresh kernel in there.
Chris: You get some new hardware feedback interfaces, which I think mostly is going
Chris: to impact Ryzen processors. There's also some improvements for Intel multi-core
Chris: scheduling in there, which could mean smoother multitasking.
Chris: And then I think the one, for those of you that are trying to get higher res
Chris: webcams these days, There's been an update to the IPU 7 driver in Linux 6.17.
Chris: But speaking of...
Chris: The immutable distributions, Fedora KinoNite decided to enable auto-updates by default.
Chris: And this is done via Discover, which supports automatically updating the system
Chris: in a rather safe, you know, RPM OS tree staged update. So it applies at the next boot.
Chris: And, of course, you can roll back if you don't like it or something breaks or
Chris: you can disable it altogether.
Chris: But kind of an aggressive step. Do you have any thoughts on this one,
Chris: Neil, about automatical updates on the KinoNite?
Mumble: Well, it's been a long-term goal of Timothy Reviere, who works on Kinoite specifically.
Mumble: And I think in general, for these systems, I personally am not a fan of automatic updates.
Mumble: I don't like them because I have been burned by them. But with these systems,
Mumble: the risk is relatively low that you get screwed over by an automatic update.
Mumble: It really, the main problems come in when you have bootloader and kernel updates
Mumble: that come in as part of it, that things get a little dicey.
Chris: You know, I'll say I've been using automatic updates on Aurora since Summit.
Mumble: Yeah, and it should be fine, right? Like it's in general, ideally,
Mumble: if you are making releases of OS tree commits or OCI archives,
Mumble: the new update bundles, you have made sure that they work.
Mumble: You have some way of making sure that they work before they go out to people.
Mumble: And if you don't, then you really, really need to rethink how you're doing your
Mumble: atomic or immutable or whatever you want to call it distribution.
Mumble: Because if you're not doing that, then you are just make you're putting everyone
Mumble: at risk because everything is your fault That's how that works, right?
Chris: I have some thoughts. I tried a quote-unquote atomic spin for what we're going
Chris: to get into some of our experiences with 43 directly.
Chris: And so far the updates have gone smooth, but it's like, you know, I'm a weekend.
Chris: But I just love seeing them kind of push the envelope a little bit there.
Chris: And then it's a pretty accessible thing for users to disable. It's in Discover.
Chris: It's not like they have to go digging through a config or even the command line.
Chris: And I think that's a nice balance there too.
Chris: Wes, is there anything else? Like I know there's a new compression for init.
Chris: But, I mean, there's a few other things in here. Anything else jump out at you?
Wes: Yeah, I mean, you just get, like, a nice modern OS, right? So you get Python
Wes: 3.14, which is an excellent Python release. Definitely worth upgrading.
Wes: Also, Postgres 18, which just came out, has some fancy new IOU ring support.
Wes: I mean, yeah, there's a lot to like. I do think better compression of the NNRD
Wes: that goes along with your improved slash boot support for just, you know, more robust.
Chris: Yeah, just get a little more out of that.
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: Let's get a little bit more. Let's squeak a little bit more out of that.
Wes: I did see downstream there's kind of some interesting things.
Wes: Build Fedora Core OS using container files.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Podman now. That's a big change. So look at that marching on.
Chris: It is nice to see. Okay. So that's sort of some of the technical stuff about
Chris: 43 that we thought was interesting.
Chris: Now I think it's time to talk about our experiences with it hands-on and the
Chris: bit that all the other distributions out there should be ripping off.
Chris: 1password.com slash unplugged. That's the number one password and then it's
Chris: unplugged. It's all lowercase.
Chris: Go there to take the first steps for better security for your team,
Chris: for your company, by securing credentials and protecting every application,
Chris: even the unmanaged stuff you didn't know about.
Chris: Learn more at 1password.com slash unplugged.
Chris: If your employees are bypassing security to use unapproved apps,
Chris: they might not even realize they're doing it.
Chris: They probably feel they have to do it to just get their job done.
Chris: And you can kind of connect with that viewpoint, but it's a very challenging position for IT.
Chris: And if you're experiencing this, you're not alone.
Chris: Fortunately, 1Password Extended Access Management will help you get your hands
Chris: around this. You can be careful about security.
Chris: You can't help it if users are going up and signing up for things and signing
Chris: up for applications perhaps you're even already paying for, but they're doing
Chris: it under their own credentials.
Chris: This is where Trellica by 1Password
Chris: really comes in. It inventories every app in use at your company.
Chris: They have pre-populated app profiles that can assess the different risks,
Chris: and they let you manage access, optimize your spend, and enforce best security
Chris: practices across all the apps your employees are actually using. That's right.
Chris: And for me, the thing that I was always struggling with and every client I always
Chris: went to seemed to struggle with, they needed a process to securely onboard and off-board staff.
Chris: Sometimes you'd have one that would last for a little while,
Chris: but you really want something these days that will also help you meet compliance goals.
Chris: Well, Trelica by 1Password provides a complete solution for that.
Chris: Access governance is solved, and it's just one of the ways extended access management
Chris: helps the team and you strengthen compliance and security.
Chris: You know about 1Password and their award-winning password manager,
Chris: of course, is trusted by millions of users.
Chris: Take a second and ask yourself, how many SaaS applications are being used at your company right now?
Chris: If you can't keep count, you're not alone. So go to 1password.com slash unplugged.
Chris: Take the first steps to better security for your team by securing credentials
Chris: and protecting every application, even the unmanaged stuff.
Chris: It's really powerful. It's a great way to support the show, and you can learn
Chris: more by going to 1password.com slash unplugged.
Chris: That's all lowercase. It's the number 1password.com slash unplugged.
Chris: Check compliance off your list with a system of record for your app inventory
Chris: and employee lifecycle workflows.
Chris: 1password.com slash unplugged.
Brent: Well, while I was on the road this week getting back home, you boys really did a deep dive.
Brent: And Chris, I feel like some of what we learned on the trip might have spilled into this review.
Chris: Indeed. I thought this would be a quick visit, and I ended up moving in.
Chris: I really like the idea of pairing Cosmic Desktop with an atomic Linux base.
Chris: There's something to me that seems like it's a really nice match because the
Chris: way they do it, you get all the updates in one, and that desktop is fairly frequently
Chris: updated, so it all comes down as an image update.
Chris: If something doesn't work right, you just roll back, but obviously it hasn't been a problem.
Wes: And Cosmic has that kind of nice, it's already pretty simple,
Wes: but it's also kind of got that clean separation, right?
Chris: It does.
Wes: It'll just have all your data in your user location.
Chris: Yeah, and the config and the application state are separated in a way where
Chris: I could be backing that up too separately or taking snapshots.
Chris: So there's a lot of safety mechanisms I could put in here.
Chris: So you get a modern desktop that's frequently updated with sort of an insurance
Chris: policy that if something breaks, you can roll back in a pretty stable base.
Chris: So I find that to be true with Hyperland, by the way, as well.
Chris: I pull from the main branch on my system at home, and some days when I'm working
Chris: on something, I'll update Hyperland two, maybe the most has even been three times in one day.
Chris: I don't know, man, that guy's cranking it out like crazy. And it just works
Chris: because, you know, I'm crazy, I guess, but it's just worked.
Chris: And I'm months into the setup, and it's been working great.
Chris: So I really like it. And so I thought, well, let's take a look at all the different
Chris: atomic spins. And I saw the cosmic atomic spin.
Chris: Boy, was I surprised. Boy, was I surprised. I'm trying this on the Dell Knicks
Chris: book that Olympia Mike gave us, which is a low end. It's a bit of a dog.
Chris: It's a little tired. It's a little tired. The battery is dead for the most part.
Chris: And running Fedora Cosmic, I could not believe how instant. I meant to bring
Chris: the laptop into the room for you, Wes.
Chris: Like you click the file manager icon and it's immediately on the screen.
Chris: You click the terminal icon and by the time your finger is coming off the mouse,
Chris: the terminal is up on the screen.
Chris: The text editor, everything launches so fast.
Chris: It's like, I mean, how long have we been using this laptop? When did Olympia might give this to us?
Wes: I think LinuxFest Northwest.
Chris: LinuxFest, so since April. And I've been-
Wes: You've tried a lot of different things on there.
Chris: I've had Bluefin on there. I've had Nix on there. I've had Hypervibe on there.
Chris: I've never experienced the performance like this. I've just was absolutely blown away.
Chris: And, you know, if I'm using a really minimal desktop, that's not too surprising.
Chris: But this is a full-featured desktop, what I've customized the look on and everything like that.
Chris: And to experience it on what was – it's essentially – it was a thrown-away laptop.
Chris: It was a thrown-away laptop.
Chris: Okay. I mean, like it's blowing my mind. So I just had to stick around and keep using it. I was sold.
Wes: How much have you customized? Have you like made yourself a custom workflow?
Wes: You kind of just taken the defaults.
Chris: So the things I mean, I'm mostly doing is playing around with the theming. I have this.
Chris: I have the second desktop set to tiling. The first desktop set to floating. Loving that.
Chris: For me, like Firefox is still not great, but like the main desktop is so responsive.
Chris: Like I'm showing my wife. She's like, okay. I'm like, she's like,
Chris: that's probably how it should be. I'm like, yeah, well, I know that's how it
Chris: should be, but it hasn't been like that.
Chris: She didn't care. She didn't care at all.
Wes: I got a little windows on there to make a really good comparison.
Brent: I got the feeling you didn't choose
Brent: Cosmic specifically for its speed improvements. So was that a surprise?
Chris: Yeah, I was, I just thought, well, I wanted to try one of the more recent builds of Cosmic.
Chris: And, you know, after we'd gone down there, the one I had tried,
Chris: I rebased my Aurora to Cosmic, but it's an older build.
Chris: And because I think it's based on what's ever packaged for 42.
Chris: So I wanted to try it since this is, you know, the current hottest stuff.
Chris: And wow, really impressed.
Chris: So that was my review rig. I think I might have hit a bug in the Cosmic Software
Chris: Center because I had network connectivity issues when I was trying to add the
Chris: Flatpak repo and had to reboot the machine.
Chris: And when I came back, I didn't have any options to add either the FlatHub repo or the Cosmic repo.
Chris: I was able to add them at the command line just fine.
Chris: And so I haven't had a chance to reproduce that. But I'm not sure what happened there.
Chris: But it was otherwise so great. I mean, really,
Chris: other than I can't just, like, drop to the terminal and DNF install whatever
Chris: I want, I wouldn't even – actually,
Chris: for the first five minutes, I forgot I was on an atomic system because I was
Chris: just – you know, I'm just using Flatpaks and installing it, and it just completely
Chris: felt like a regular Linux box that was just super fast.
Chris: And I want to speak more to that when we get to what other distros should rip
Chris: off, but I think that's enough for me. What did you think, Wes?
Chris: I think you tried the Plasma edition, you said?
Wes: Yes, I did.
Chris: All right.
Wes: How'd that go? So I finally got the, yeah, the installer over there, which was great.
Wes: And as I was mentioning, right, when you kind of first come in,
Wes: you get this Fedora loves KDE, Katie loves Fedora.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: And it really shows because it's like within living memory, right,
Wes: that the KDE spin was a little bit second class. And these days it is nothing but first class.
Wes: And it's totally usable outside of the box. And, you know, I'm running Plasma
Wes: all the time and it's just, it's a really nice, I don't find I need to do much
Wes: to be able to just use it as a very productive computer. Yeah.
Wes: Which I like. Except this time around, well, it turned out that just the way
Wes: things aligned, Plasma 6.5 had just come out, but it hadn't really made it into Fedora yet.
Wes: But SIG member Steve Cassette went ahead and made a copper that you could enable
Wes: and easily get that. So, you know, I had to.
Chris: That is awesome. Oh, great. So you get absolute fresh plasma.
Wes: Yeah, fresh kernel.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Fresh Fedora. Fresh plasma.
Chris: I do know he says, Steve says, every so often, KDE releases a new Plasma version
Chris: smack at the start of Fedora's freeze period for a new release,
Chris: forcing us to wait to create a new release in Fedora.
Chris: This is fine for most users, but for some of us with the shiny syndrome, I have to admit that.
Wes: Yeah.
Chris: That hit a little bit.
Wes: Us?
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: No.
Chris: Those of us that want to see what's new in KDE Plasma 6.5, and we want to be
Chris: able to update as soon as possible.
Chris: My name is Steve, and I'm one of the KDSIG packagers, and I got a bit annoyed
Chris: about the state of affairs, so I decided to do something about it.
Wes: And we sure appreciate it.
Chris: That's so great. So how did the installation go?
Wes: Easy. I mean, I pretty much, there's like a one-liner to add the copper and
Wes: then update your system, and I rebooted just, you know, for good measure, and I had it.
Wes: And then after that, it's just been great because I've been playing with Plasma
Wes: 6.5, which is excellent.
Chris: Are you enjoying your rounded corners?
Wes: I am, yes. You get rounded corners. You also get automatic light to dark theme
Wes: switching based on time of day, which I don't know, just feels like it must
Wes: appeal to you, right? I do like that.
Wes: Based on your love of home assistant automations.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Wes: I like seeing, because I'm a huge clipboard manager, plasma addict,
Wes: and so they've added pinned clipboard items with 6.5.
Chris: Oh, brilliant.
Wes: Yeah, so if you have stuff you kind of just want to leave around,
Wes: you know, while you're working or forever. Your password, your password.
Chris: Something like that.
Wes: Yeah, you can do that. There's some drawing tablet improvements,
Wes: which is kind of nice to see.
Wes: They've also transformed what was the Flatpak permissions page into a general
Wes: application permissions page, where you can configure apps ability to do things
Wes: like take screenshots, accept remote control requests.
Wes: Speaking of big improvements for the built-in RDP server, you can share the
Wes: clipboard for one, which is pretty convenient when you're remote.
Wes: You're also no longer required to manually create separate RDP accounts.
Wes: You can just use the regular accounts
Wes: as you expect using the regular credentials in the RDP client app.
Wes: So be careful with that. Don't go exposing that everywhere. But it's nice because
Wes: it's been a long time to have like robust remote desktop Wayland era Linux world.
Chris: And it feels like both on Gnome and on Plasma. It's like you really got options.
Chris: It's just pretty much like check a box.
Chris: On most distros.
Wes: We tried this on our recent trip, and there's really mixed support in general
Wes: on platforms, but on Plasma, the QR code sort of sharing of Wi-Fi networks, that's getting better.
Wes: And they just actually show you the password too. So if the QR code doesn't
Wes: work like we were experiencing, you have the password right there to share as well.
Wes: There's been some audio improvements, which is nice just because there's a lot
Wes: you can do with Pipewire these days, and some accessibility improvements,
Wes: including the zoom effect can
Wes: now be configured to jump to the position of your text insertion point,
Wes: not just like to the mouse, which is kind of cool.
Chris: Yeah. I do like to see that.
Wes: There's also some new stuff like playing a sound when you plug in a device.
Wes: Just to make it super clear, you also get a notification as well,
Wes: but you can turn all of that off if you don't like it.
Chris: You know, I'm like back in the XP days.
Wes: Oh, yeah. I wonder if I can get that file.
Chris: If anybody has a link.
Wes: KRunner, the wonderful launcher on Plasma, that's getting some improvements too.
Wes: It now uses fuzzy matching to look up applications in a more robust way.
Wes: So even if you misspell an app's name, it'll probably still find it for you.
Chris: Boy, that'll be useful for me.
Wes: Yes. Also, the way that the search results are ordered has been improved and it's faster.
Wes: It now provides these results after the very first character is typed.
Wes: So all things that you want in a launcher.
Wes: Discover's getting nicer too, right? You talked about Kinoite getting updates
Wes: this time around. So Discover will be improving to help with that.
Wes: It's also got support now for Flatpak plus HTTPS URLs, which means the install
Wes: buttons on FlatHub actually work.
Chris: Yes, yes. Which is great.
Chris: A long-awaited feature.
Wes: There's also some improvements to the emoji picker, which is just nice,
Wes: because that's turned out to be a pretty handy...
Chris: People use that.
Wes: They really do.
Chris: Not us, of course.
Wes: No, never. There's also some nice KWIN improvements, including the much-talked-about
Wes: overlay panes, which sort of reduce compositing when you have a full screen or a game going on.
Wes: They've also optimized various stuff like the splash screen code,
Wes: rearranging some of the startup steps, reducing the duration of the login animation.
Wes: A lot of things to make, not only long-time applications and windowing faster,
Wes: but also just getting to your desktop.
Chris: I'll mention, because that's all great, I will mention that GNOME 49 ships in the workstation spin.
Chris: And we have talked about this before a bit, so I'll just mention a couple of quick highlights.
Chris: There's a new document viewer papers in here, new calendar updates as well.
Chris: But I wanted to actually touch on the similar thing here.
Chris: They've increased or improved, enhanced is the word they used,
Chris: the remote desktop capabilities. and they provide more capabilities for those
Chris: that want to connect to GNOME desktops from otherware, otherware like multi-touch.
Chris: So I guess probably if you're coming in from a tablet, that could be really nice.
Chris: Relative mouse input is required by some apps and it's particularly relative
Chris: to those playing games over a remote connection.
Wes: Okay, what? I want to see that bug report.
Chris: See, this is, okay, this is impressive. Extended virtual monitors.
Chris: It is now possible to have additional virtual monitors when using GNOME as a remote desktop.
Chris: Additional displays can be added to the remote desktop session from the remote
Chris: desktop client even when there aren't additional displays physically present.
Wes: Brent's going to make so many of these.
Chris: Oh, I want to do this.
Brent: That sounds like I want that.
Wes: I think we might need to have some sort of remote desktop competition.
Chris: Oh, that's a good idea. You should write that down. We've mentioned this before,
Chris: but just really quickly, the lock screen has had some security improvements,
Chris: specifically around media controls and the way it runs.
Chris: The Do Not Disturb toggle has been moved from the notifications is listed to
Chris: the quick settings for more consistent experience.
Chris: Power connected status with the battery icon on the top bar now indicates when
Chris: the computer is connected to power or if it's charging or not,
Chris: like the preserved battery health setting.
Chris: And you now have better HDR brightness controls. And you can also reboot and
Chris: shut down from the lock screen in a way that is implemented in the,
Chris: I guess you could say, secure and improved way.
Chris: And there's also image loading that's been sandboxed. We mentioned this too
Chris: before, but GTK apps now have sandboxed image loading.
Wes: That is a big thing.
Chris: Yeah, so a really nice GNOME 49, and you can get, if you like,
Chris: if you're crazy, you can even get the absolute latest Plasma in 43.
Chris: So there's a lot to like between the spins and just the flexibility of both
Chris: Workstation and the KDE spin. There's a lot to like.
Chris: But I think there's something in here, and you touched on it earlier,
Chris: that just about every other distro could focus on a bit more.
Chris: And Fedora's not perfect, so I'm not trying to, as the kids would say, glaze them here.
Chris: And the more familiar you are with anything, the more flaws you see.
Chris: But one of the things that we notice by going through the release notes of the
Chris: different distributions is Fedora is constantly...
Chris: tidying things up and moving forward in technical areas and in little areas
Chris: that I think other distributions maybe ignore for a few years longer than they should sometimes.
Wes: Yeah, not only is there like a sort of modern aspect to it, but you're right.
Wes: There's sort of like an attention to detail, a dotting the I's,
Wes: crossing the T's, making sure as upstream changes, you are still doing like
Wes: the integration and configuration of those components the best way that you can.
Chris: And sometimes, you know, people don't like some of the changes.
Chris: Like an example this time might be, they're rolling with GNOME removing X11 support.
Chris: But there's other things in here. In fact, I did some recent examples of just this sort of thing.
Chris: In Fedora 33, SystemD, ResolveD, and it was enabled by default.
Chris: ButterFS was also in Fedora 33. PipeWire landed in 34. WirePlumber in 35.
Chris: They were really early on that.
Chris: They were also aggressively early on smarter out-of-memory handling.
Chris: They rolled out a first version in 32 and improved
Chris: it in 34 switch to ntfs tables
Chris: in the 32 to 41 releases unified
Chris: user bin and slash user sbin with a
Chris: symlink in fedora 42 and so on and
Chris: etc like there's to small things to large
Chris: things like audio subsystems where they're constantly pushing
Chris: this stuff forward in a way that has
Chris: been a very consistent user experience the
Chris: end result that i get is something that feels clean and
Chris: modern it's a weird thing to say because all linux especially compared to its
Chris: commercial counterparts all linux is very modern but fedora feels especially
Chris: leading edge and modern even compared to arch and and rolling mix os it's just
Chris: because it's not just about the packages right.
Wes: Yeah there's something you get extra it's not just uh straight upstream,
Wes: In a good way.
Chris: Yeah. And I think this sort of attention to modernization in detail and trying
Chris: to track upstream is something that other distributions could ape from a little bit.
Chris: Some of our other large distribution friends out there, they kind of build up some technical debt.
Chris: And then they come along and they make big dramatic changes,
Chris: big sweeping changes. And that's very exciting.
Chris: Right. But Fedora is very iterative. It's always like and it's only when you
Chris: look back at three or four releases and you go, whoa.
Wes: Which is also meant I think as you've experienced yourself right like it's also
Wes: something where you get a lot of updates but you're happy to do the updates
Wes: especially with you know DNF under the hood which is every time I use Fedora
Wes: it's just it's a great package manager I'm.
Chris: Using RPMOS tree now Wes so I don't I don't use DNF but that's real nice,
Chris: Join crowdhealth.com slash unplugged. If you've followed me for a while,
Chris: you know I have really struggled with trying to figure out healthcare.
Chris: A small business that's a really small team, there's really no great options.
Chris: My wife also is a type 1 diabetic, and so that makes things extra expensive
Chris: for her, and she also runs her own small business.
Chris: This has been something that has just really been a big stressor for us.
Chris: But if you've noticed, I haven't really complained about it much recently.
Chris: That's because just over three years ago, I joined CrowdHealth.
Chris: And right now it's open enrollment, the season where the health insurance companies
Chris: are going to hope you sign up.
Chris: Even though things are getting overpriced, they're becoming a political football,
Chris: and there's lots of confusing fine print.
Chris: But don't take my word for it. Go over there. Check it out.
Chris: Just see if it might make sense for you and your family.
Chris: DrawingCrowdHealth.com slash unplugged. I wouldn't be talking about it if I
Chris: hadn't tried this for myself and my wife for a long time.
Chris: And it's something I'm very comfortable with. In fact, it's something that gives me peace of mind.
Chris: I found the entire game of trying to pick insurance, pay the different prices
Chris: all the time, and then, of course, you know on the back end they generally try
Chris: to weasel out of actually helping you.
Chris: CrowdHealth is different. It's a community of people funding each other's medical
Chris: bills directly. No middlemen, no networks, no nonsense.
Chris: Now, for me, when I signed up, I didn't really know what I'd be getting into
Chris: because it's a new idea. But CrowdHealth is actually something that's been around for a while.
Chris: The idea is just modernized with the ability to have apps and the Internet.
Chris: And now, three years into it, I'm really glad we went this route and we have saved a ton of money.
Chris: You've got to check out CrowdHealth, the health insurance alternative.
Chris: Healthcare for under $100. You get access to a team of health bill negotiators,
Chris: low-cost prescription and lab testing tools, as well as a database of low-cost,
Chris: high-quality doctors that are vetted by CrowdHealth.
Chris: They also have a fantastic app that they have improved on over the three years
Chris: that I have been a member, and it just makes it so easy to get started with the process.
Chris: From, oh, I think something's wrong to, hey, I have a bill.
Chris: It really is pretty powerful. And if something major happens,
Chris: you pay the first $500, and then CrowdHealth steps in with the crowd to fund the rest.
Chris: It feels like the options we used to have before Obamacare, in my opinion, messed everything up.
Chris: As a small business owner, it has been disastrous since then,
Chris: especially if you have two of us in the family.
Chris: And, of course, you'll join the crowd, a group of members just like you that
Chris: want to help pay for each other's unexpected medical events.
Chris: The system is betting that you'll
Chris: stay stuck. You'll just use the same overpriced, overcomplicated mess.
Chris: And this year, it's even more complicated because most of the ACA subsidies
Chris: are set to expire, which means your prices could go sky high.
Chris: So far, CrowdHealth members have saved over $40 million in health care expenses
Chris: because they refuse to overpay for health care.
Chris: This is open enrollment. Take your power back. Join CrowdHealth to get started.
Chris: Join the crowd with me for $99 for your first three months.
Chris: $99. Just use the promo code unplugged at joincrowdhealth.com.
Chris: Join crowdhealth.com, promo code unplugged.
Chris: CrowdHealth is not insurance. Opt out, take your power back.
Chris: This is how we win. Join me over at joincrowdhealth.com, promo code unplugged.
Chris: Unraid.net slash unplugged. Unleash your hardware with Unraid,
Chris: a powerful, easy-to-use NAS operating system.
Chris: For those of you that want control, flexibility, efficiency,
Chris: and you want to just take advantage of some of the apps we talk about,
Chris: with what you have in the closet right now.
Chris: Build your ultimate rig or take advantage of that laptop sitting in the corner.
Chris: You can really unleash the hardware that you have right now.
Chris: And Unraid is cooking, my friends.
Chris: The new RC is out for version 7.20.
Chris: 5,000 different Unraid members help test the RC.
Chris: That's awesome. They have lots of nice fixes, polish across storage,
Chris: VMs, the web GUI, and the stable is just around the corner.
Chris: Unraid goes from win to win. And
Chris: recently, they have been laser-focused on making that web UI even better.
Chris: Their community app store is bonkers.
Chris: You get access to support, to the community, to all of those apps,
Chris: and the continuous improvements of Unraid built on top of a modern Linux kernel,
Chris: which means you get the best in virtualization, the best in containers,
Chris: and the best in file systems.
Chris: So check out Unraid and support the show. You get a 30-day free trial,
Chris: which lets you test out Unraid. no credit card required when you go to unraid.net slash unplugged.
Chris: It's pretty powerful and it just keeps getting better.
Chris: And they just recently crossed the 20 year mark. And it feels like they've got
Chris: all the steam and energy from like a startup. It's really pretty impressive.
Chris: Check it out. Support the show. Unraid.net slash unplugged.
Brent: Well, this week we want to do a nice shout out to Vadim, who's a new Jupiter.party
Brent: member. Thank you for joining the club.
Chris: Woo!
Chris: Thank you. Thank you, Vadim. Appreciate that. Boys, we got a bunch of emails
Chris: on recommendations for a low-power but semi-powerful home lab sent in via the
Chris: contact page in the booth.
Chris: Thank you, everybody who did that. I'm processing all of them.
Chris: And yeah, a couple of themes came through.
Chris: Some Lenovo hardware and some Beelink hardware, a couple of themes,
Chris: definitely. And they're really good options. So, yeah, I'll have more on that in the future.
Chris: Tell you more about that. We got an email from Lep Listener,
Chris: and I feel like maybe we've had a blind spot here, and he kind of brings it to our attention.
Chris: He says, I'm moving off of Windows 10 now, and I'll be trying out Zorin OS or
Chris: Winix for moving from my SDR and HAM software and hardware.
Chris: At first, Winix seems better, but time will tell.
Wes: That's a Linux, but with a W.
Chris: Maybe this could be a topic and could get some new listeners.
Chris: And, you know, I don't think we've given much attention to this end of Windows
Chris: 10, but this is a big moment for a lot of Windows users.
Chris: Lupfan brings up a good point.
Wes: This is true.
Chris: So I'm not a big fan of Winux. This is my opinion, and it's not a particularly well-researched one.
Chris: But what it is, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, and this is,
Chris: I'm just, it's a paid distribution.
Chris: And what they've done is they have packaged Ubuntu and they put a Windows theme
Chris: on top of it and then they sell that to you and you buy a pro key.
Chris: So Winux 64-bit is based on Ubuntu 24.03 LTS and you could just get this theme
Chris: for free on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and the pro key. Let's see. Does it tell us?
Chris: They call it a donation. Isn't that interesting?
Chris: So the Pro Key is $35. You get the appearance and the control of Windows-inspired themes.
Chris: You get a Windows-style control panel, improved support for .exe and MSI applications.
Chris: So they're basically making wine.
Wes: Yeah, I think they say they have Winboat.
Chris: Oh, okay. Active Directory support, native graphics, support for OneDrive,
Chris: native OneDrive File Explorer, Android subsystem, power tools,
Chris: improvements to the Copilot and ChatGPT subsystem, lifetime key is $35.
Chris: Yeah, I think it's your decision if that's of a personal value to you.
Chris: I think you would probably be better served by just using Ubuntu LTS.
Chris: There's kind of an idiom in Linux that goes the further out from the most commonly
Chris: used system, the harder that is.
Chris: And like, so you're picking something that's a derivative of Ubuntu.
Chris: and so if it ever breaks you're only going to get support from them and their very small user base or.
Wes: If the thing that supports Ubuntu that you try to run on it that that breaks,
Wes: probably on you to figure out the delta.
Chris: Yeah there's that where there's millions of users that use Ubuntu and there's
Chris: a giant support community out there and there's also people you could contact
Chris: that's just something to consider,
Chris: Zoran may be worth trying I haven't spent a lot of time with Zoran,
Chris: maybe we should I'd be curious to know if people would like to know our opinion
Chris: on Zorn I'd kick the tires we should.
Wes: Probably run some windows again for a bit and then,
Wes: switch to Zorin.
Mumble: I would be concerned about the people who rely on these pseudo-Windows experiences,
Mumble: to adopt Linux because you're going to get burned eventually.
Chris: Yeah.
Mumble: I know people often say, oh, you know, KD Plasma is the Windows-like experience
Mumble: and GNOME is the Mac-like experience, which is completely and utterly wrong for a lot of reasons.
Mumble: Neither KD nor GNOME are actively trying to aim towards that direction but there are people who,
Mumble: want to see patterns that aren't there, for example, and the problem is that
Mumble: if you start reinforcing it with other things then what you wind up having is
Mumble: you're subtly tricking the users into thinking this is the same system that they had before,
Mumble: and as soon as that superficial skin breaks,
Mumble: the users will be more upset than they were before.
Chris: I'm glad you're touching on this. I think another way to put this because i
Chris: i thought about this when it came in and i forgot to mention it neil but you
Chris: reminded me is it creates a misalignment of expectations exactly and i think
Chris: that's the core problem is people expect it to be to behave and function and
Chris: do the things windows does and it's not windows well.
Wes: We got another email here from adam who's also a member thanks for reviewing
Wes: my nix config it was really fun hearing what others thought of it so another
Wes: plus one for nick's config.
Chris: Oh all right uh.
Wes: Chris you were right my machine boomer oh i remember this one.
Chris: Of course yeah yeah isn't.
Wes: My only host it's named after the battle star galactica character and because
Wes: it's my desktop with the most horsepower it booms.
Chris: I like it i do i do prefer our theory that it was this config for your parents,
Chris: that makes sense too.
Wes: Uh does send you a little shame uh shade here though uh chris yeah not sure
Wes: how you missed my prowler.nix file sitting right next to sonar.nix and radar.nix.
Chris: That's my bad i will uh i will count those points towards you again sorry i
Chris: docked you for that that's good i'm glad to hear those are by the way things
Chris: people should look into if they haven't that's all i'll say about that uh he
Chris: does call you out a bit but not in a bad way.
Wes: Yeah i mentioned um that but Adam has a nice structure with explicit modules in his Nix setup.
Wes: He credits his old Puppet experience showing, because in Puppet you write generic
Wes: modules that you can reuse across machines, and Adam's trying to do the same
Wes: thing with Nix, and it definitely shows.
Wes: Portable configs makes a match anywhere.
Wes: As an example, Adam mentions his Telegraph module, which runs on every host.
Wes: Also using my Flake for Ursa, which I need to update. I started doing that and
Wes: got distracted with other things.
Wes: sounds like maybe here though reports on getting hardware acceleration when
Wes: i play stream and vtop shows gpu activity,
Wes: Ersets reports hardware acceleration as enabled, but the logs always complain,
Wes: unable to determine VAPI compatibilities. Please install VA info.
Chris: But you're seeing activity in...
Wes: Oh, so we commented, yeah. So that last commit was my vain attempt to fix that.
Chris: Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. Oh, the newer QSV method, he notes, has a bug where the
Chris: audio lags about two seconds behind the video. Oh!
Wes: Yeah, so had to set the FFmpeg profile to use VAPI acceleration with the IHD
Wes: driver for the N100 media server.
Wes: Also mentions maybe to fix some of those issues with vappy maybe we need libva
Wes: utils yeah we could definitely i could take a look at that when i touch ersatz
Wes: next so thank you for uh testing that because i've only i haven't had as much
Wes: time to actually get it really going as i'd like.
Chris: I had ersatz going on three screens over the weekend i.
Wes: Was looking that they've done some nice looking updates like their changelog is full of good things.
Chris: One of the things that i like doing this is an aside
Chris: but i like to set up holiday channels so i have
Chris: right now a halloween channel which i'll turn off and then
Chris: i'll start i'll turn on a Christmas channel and then I turn them off after
Chris: the season's over so that way people don't otherwise the kids
Chris: just watch them and yeah being able to have a go on multiple screens is so great
Chris: it's so fantastic and I'll just I'll sometimes I'll just go on YouTube and find
Chris: some of those long Halloween video loops you know with the different music and
Chris: stuff and throw that in there you can throw all kinds of stuff in there it's
Chris: such a great application and then another fun thing you can do is,
Chris: have the kids pick the colors for the different smart lights that can change
Chris: colors go around and have them pick they love that Well.
Brent: We have another note here from Alan Bacon, who says, hey there,
Brent: long time party member, first time writing in.
Chris: Hey!
Brent: I was just listening to the latest Unplugged episode where you guys were looking
Brent: for a name for the audience, and I think I have something not half bad that
Brent: might just fit the Jupiter Broadcasting brand.
Brent: The Colony. It keeps in theme with that space theme, Star Trek,
Brent: the launch, et cetera. What do you think?
Chris: We have in the past. In fact, that's the domain name for our matrix server.
Chris: I think that's the way to lean into then, the Colony.
Chris: So that's when we're talking about the audience, we'll just refer to it as the Colony.
Chris: That'll be our, you know, our cute love name. Only those of you that listen
Chris: to this specific episode will know what the hell we're talking about.
Wes: Subscribe. Grow the colony.
Brent: Mr. Bacon also says here, have a good one from up north in French,
Brent: Canada. The real French, not like that wannabe Brent.
Chris: Oh, Brent. I'm sorry. I didn't know that was in there.
Brent: Well, those Acadians, you know, you gotta.
Chris: Is that a thing? Is there tension between the, you know, like the half French
Chris: Canadians and the real French Canadians? Hey, what?
Brent: What does half mean? I mean, I think what you're hearing in my voice is the answer is yes.
Wes: You know, after like 5,000 miles in the States, you're really becoming one of us.
Brent: Louisiana has some French down there.
Mumble: I mean, Chris, it's a problem in all the Francophonie speaking areas.
Brent: Francophonie?
Mumble: That's a whole.
Chris: I love humans.
Brent: They're so great.
Chris: We're just the best. Love it. Thank you, everybody, for the emails.
Chris: Appreciate it very much. LinuxUnplugged.com slash contact.
Chris: And, of course, you can also send a boost into the show, support us,
Chris: and get a message. If it's above 2,000 sats, we read it.
Chris: And our baller booster this week got it on discount. It's Turd Ferguson with 43,000 sats.
Chris: 43,000 sats for Fedora 43 Review. Always look forward to hearing your takes
Chris: and realize it was valuable to me. Ah, this is a live boost.
Brent: Nice.
Chris: Thank you, Turd. Appreciate that.
Wes: Now to the pending. Cool.
Chris: I appreciate that, Turd. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, we mark, if you have a podcasting 2.0 app, we mark the live stream.
Chris: and schedule it pending ahead of time. So if you ever wonder,
Chris: the guy's going to have a live show today or what time is it at or did it get
Chris: rescheduled? We mark it as pending.
Chris: I try to do it about 24 hours before the live stream and it'll show up in your
Chris: list of apps. Or I'm sorry, your list of podcasts.
Brent: As a baller here, I'd like to mention that about half the fuel that went into
Brent: the van on the way home was from sats that we received from listeners.
Brent: And I got those just directly into the gas tank.
Brent: So I wanted to say a huge thank you everyone who boosted in and also fake boosted
Brent: in to allow me to get home. Thank you. That made a huge difference.
Chris: And get there.
Brent: Right, right, right.
Chris: Thank you, everyone. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, indeed.
Wes: Tom H.O. comes in with 9001 Satoshis.
Wes: Here's a little power usage data point for you, Chris.
Chris: Okay.
Wes: My NetBSD desktop, so not a big hog like Linux, but is a ThinkCenter M710Q,
Wes: generation older than the 720.
Chris: The M710Q, I think, was probably one of the number one recommendations.
Wes: Aha.
Chris: Okay, so I'm interested to hear an in-the-field report.
Wes: They can both take 32 gigs. Mine has 16 in the second disk.
Wes: Measured from mains, it idles at 12 watts and uses around 25 to 30 under load.
Wes: and for the listeners how about jovenauts.
Chris: Jovenauts well.
Wes: If you want to opt self-opt into that.
Chris: Yeah we won't complain uh 12 watts idle
Chris: is a bit high but not unreasonable 30 watts
Chris: is dangerous but if it's only under
Chris: massive load and i've consolidated i can see that working
Chris: if i could get 32 gigs of ram in that puppy and a couple of discs and then you
Chris: know i probably have to do a couple external discs that's the thing i don't
Chris: like is i don't see a way where i could have a large internal array and it needs
Chris: to be solid state so it gets expensive pretty quick externally but uh that is nice considered.
Wes: Um towing a small fission reactor.
Chris: Good idea that's some good real world uh i really appreciate the actual power
Chris: usage numbers if anybody else has that for their mini pc home lab machine please
Chris: do send it in especially if you could beat 30 watts under load love to see that.
Brent: We've got op1984 here with 4 000 sats,
Brent: Well, this was a timely episode. Thanks to the AWS outage, my smart things automations all failed.
Brent: And that was all I needed to stop putting off making the switch.
Brent: Bonus, my 70-plus-year-old mother has, after 10 years of resisting, agreed to try Linux.
Brent: Linux Mint specifically, since her Windows 11 laptop is having tons of issues
Brent: and I'm always having to fix the darn thing.
Brent: A year with LibreOffice instead of paying for Microsoft 365 five just got her
Brent: to see FOSS as a user friendly option and not just for the hacker man.
Wes: Wow, that's wonderful to hear.
Chris: LibreOffice coming in as the sale closer there.
Wes: Well, you can tell you're taking a thoughtful, long term approach to make this
Wes: happen and it's finally really paying off and that's that seems great for not
Wes: only your mom, but also you as the support person.
Chris: Yeah, love that. Nice win there. Thanks for sending that our way. Love hearing those.
Brent: I always love when some kind of power outage or service outage also moves people
Brent: to bigger and better things. I'm assuming home assistant here.
Brent: So go call any members.
Chris: A follow-up, since I did the YOLO delete of the random zombie adapter,
Chris: the Zigbee network has been totally solid.
Brent: Nice.
Chris: Totally solid. And that's even after going down and relocating,
Chris: which you never know. It's all been good.
Chris: Thor comes in with a supercharged roe of ducks, 2,444 sats.
Chris: More Nix is good, and yes to more config confessions, please.
Chris: Also, I can identify with Colony. It's on the theme of JB.
Wes: Well, there we go.
Chris: Thanks, Thor. Appreciate that.
Wes: Augustin Bussin with 3,714 sets.
Wes: Just wanted to give a shout-out to an email server called Mox, M-O-X.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Wes: For anyone who feels crazy enough to self-host your own email,
Wes: it's a modern Go-based email server that I found very easy to set up,
Wes: which is saying something because email servers are not always easy to set up.
Wes: Been running it for the past year on a VPS without issues. There's even a NICS package for it.
Chris: You know, this had come across in one of my searches, and I had not heard any
Chris: reports of it. And I'm just looking at it now that you bring it up.
Chris: This is great. We're getting some super good in-the-field reports.
Chris: Really, really high value there. Appreciate that a lot. All right,
Chris: so that's mox. It's xmox.nl.
Chris: That's xmox.nl.
Chris: If you want to check it out.
Chris: Thank you for that. Appreciate that one.
Brent: Distro Stu comes in with 11,111 sats.
Brent: I loved the NixConfig reviews episode, and there are so many interesting ones in GitHub as well.
Brent: Every system I have has an alias U that updates everything regardless of package manager.
Brent: And I did it this way in Nix for quite a long time, but eventually it started causing issues.
Brent: So now I have it broken out into more granular aliases, and he does link us
Brent: to those aliases in their NixOS repo. feel free to roast the configs of course
Brent: while you're there and p.s.
Chris: Uh thanks.
Brent: For showcasing my reader app saver.
Chris: Oh yeah yeah well done that's great
Chris: all right we'll save that one i think we're gonna have to start building a stash
Chris: i think so thank you distro stew appreciate that kiwi bitcoin guides here with
Chris: 3456 sats i like that thank you kiwi says uh thanks for the explainer on the
Chris: distros uh more questions to follow and plus one for a deep dive on the albi hub stuff,
Chris: yeah indeed we're talking more about that something we'll do i don't we don't
Chris: have anything planned yet so if you have any specific questions you can still
Chris: get them in and we'll it'll help inform the coverage.
Wes: Anonymous boosts in with 2021 sets about to start my home assistant journey.
Chris: Oh let's take a moment oh to be at the beginning oh coming in with.
Wes: Podverse too nice.
Chris: This is my Picard moment when he's dying in the cave and Wesley's,
Chris: you know, leaning over him and Picard's like, to be young again.
Chris: You know that moment I'm thinking of? That's how I feel right now.
Chris: Do keep us posted. Very excited. I think you're going to love it.
Chris: Start, you know, start with like a small win. Don't go crazy.
Chris: Don't go crazy. But then once you get the small win, go crazy. Obviously.
Brent: Well, adversary 17 is here. 16,384 sets.
Brent: Yeah, I got a name for us listeners. The Jupitiers. We are pioneers of the false space.
Chris: I can't help but picture the Rocketeer, you know?
Wes: Oh, yeah?
Chris: Remember that movie?
Wes: Uh-huh.
Chris: I don't know, adversaries. I don't know.
Wes: You have to unsee Colony, I think.
Chris: Yeah, I love Colony because we already have it in so many places.
Chris: The Jupitiers, maybe the Jupitiers are the individual members of the Colony?
Chris: I don't know. You know, because the Colony could be the whole.
Chris: We could workshop that. We could workshop that. Hey, look who it is,
Chris: boys. The Golden Dragon is here with 2,222 sats.
Chris: I listened to this week, but I don't remember what I had to say as it was late.
Chris: Here's some support for the excellent episode, Howard.
Wes: Oh, you still boosted. That's so sweet.
Chris: Oh, God, that's great. I love it. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Chris: That's pretty good. That's pretty good, Golden Dragon. Also,
Chris: thank you to everybody who streams sats as you listen.
Chris: We had 24 of you do that, and collectively, You stack 26,238 sats.
Chris: When you combine that with our boosters, it's not a super strong episode.
Chris: But you know what? It's not also a disaster. I'll say that. We stacked a grand total of 123,691.
Chris: 123,691 sats.
Chris: The easiest way to boost the show is with Fountain.fm. It's also a podcasting
Chris: 2.0 app, so it means you also get the podcasting 2.0 chapters, you get the transcript,
Chris: you also get the live stream integration with the pending, and a bunch of other
Chris: special features, including the ability to boost, and they self-host all of that.
Chris: Or you can go down the adventurous route of AlbiHub, and then you compare that to a number of apps.
Chris: On iOS, Castomatic is absolutely fantastic. Podverse is a popular one in our
Chris: community because it's GPL3.
Chris: You can also just boost from the podcast index.
Chris: There's lots of options. And of course, we want to take a moment and say thank you very much.
Chris: Let's just pump the brakes and say thank you to our members who also said it
Chris: and forget it with either the party membership or their core contribution.
Chris: We couldn't do it without you
Chris: either. So thank you everybody who supports this show. We do it for you.
Chris: Okay, two picks. And I put this first one here for you, really.
Chris: I just felt like this is something you and I could geek out on.
Chris: But every now and then we get into this stuff, and somebody else in the audience loves it too.
Chris: And so this week we're highlighting Millisecond.
Chris: It's an app that lets you sort of audit and optimize your Linux system for excellent,
Chris: low-latency, beautiful audio.
Chris: And that's why it's called Millisecond, because it does just that.
Wes: Yeah, I like the name. That's clever. and it just does one thing really well.
Wes: So you get a clean little GTK application with some different groups like user,
Wes: CPU, kernel, and then some nice little icons and displays where it'll tell you
Wes: just sort of default, like how do your real-time priorities look?
Wes: What about group limits, CPU frequency scaling?
Wes: Gives you like a warning or this is bad or you're looking good with a green check mark.
Wes: And there's a link with explainers over at the Linux audio wiki where a lot
Wes: of these tips are accumulated and you can just kind of drop things down to get
Wes: like more of a inline help tip as well.
Chris: This kind of is in the broader context of a collection of tools now that makes
Chris: audio production on Linux absolutely just top notch.
Wes: And it's GPO 3.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.
Wes: And I made a little flake for it too if you want to run it on next.
Chris: I saw that.
Chris: Okay, how about this next one? I never even thought about this,
Chris: but would you like a lock screen for your just standard old TTY?
Chris: Then I would like to introduce you to Lemurs. It's a customizable TUI,
Chris: and it's kind of a login manager written in Rust, sent in by Lupfan,
Chris: who we read his email earlier.
Chris: It's got both Apache and MIT mixed in there. It creates a small,
Chris: robust, yet customizable login manager, which can be served as a front end to
Chris: your TTY, X11, or Wayland sessions, as also the backend support for PAM.
Chris: So it just plugs into your existing authentication infrastructure.
Chris: And the UI is a very simple login and password lock screen.
Chris: And I've never thought about locking my TTY before until now.
Chris: And I can't believe I've never thought about it.
Wes: You're going to keep them all locked now.
Chris: Yeah, dude, I'm going to log all of them in and then I'm going to lock them.
Chris: That's what I'm going to do.
Chris: Because I like it that way. I don't know. I just, or maybe you're SSH'd in and
Chris: you got to leave it up on a machine that you can't lock the screen of or something.
Chris: Like, there's times where you want to lock this stuff.
Wes: It does have a very classic 2-y look to it. You know, it kind of looks like
Wes: an older DOS machine almost vibe.
Chris: Yeah, and if maybe you were ricin' towards that vibe for your Wayland desktop,
Chris: you could just use this as your lock manager for Wayland, too.
Chris: It doesn't have to be for your TTY, but that's what drew me to it. What a great idea.
Chris: And how did I never think of that before? I'm embarrassed. It never even crossed my mind.
Chris: I, you know, I just log in this route.
Wes: Yeah, well, it seems to be a dual license, It's Apache 2 and MIT.
Chris: I don't really log in as root. Don't do that. I mean, I pseudo a lot.
Chris: And maybe I pseudo without a password. I might do that. But I don't run as root
Chris: all the time. You know what I mean? I don't do that.
Wes: Yeah, but you're always in the Docker group.
Chris: Definitely, definitely in the Docker, in the wheel group, in the video group.
Chris: You know what? Sometimes I'm in the floppy group.
Chris: I love the floppy group. All right, so I have a few things to let you know before we get out of here.
Chris: This show is live. We do it on a Tuesday, which is actually a Sunday.
Chris: And it starts at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, over at jblive.tv.
Chris: Wes Payne, we have a few pro tips for them as well. You know,
Chris: I mentioned it earlier, but I think it's worth iterating because we work hard
Chris: to make these things nice.
Wes: Yeah, that's right. If MPEG layer 3 is not enough and you want more metadata,
Wes: We've got a JSON file in the cloud with chapter information.
Wes: Yeah, skip right to your favorite stuff. Skip the boring parts if you want to.
Chris: One would think, too, that it would be a pretty easy way to sort of parse through
Chris: the topics of the show. There's some data you could work with there.
Wes: Yeah, indeed. Those are the major moments.
Chris: And speaking of data you can work with.
Wes: That's right. Yeah, if you want way more data, how about VTT and SRT files for
Wes: you? Also in the feed for transcripts.
Wes: more and more of the players out there can use and display and even play and
Wes: show the transcripts as you move throughout the episode.
Chris: With speaker names.
Wes: Yeah, and since they're in the feed, you can download them, process them,
Wes: throw them at an LLM, whatever you want.
Chris: And we go extra far and above. We process each host track individually so that
Chris: way it has the best chance of recognizing the speech correctly and identifying it.
Chris: So we really put some effort into those transcripts. Check them out.
Chris: Links to what we talked about this week, those are over at linuxunplugged.com slash 638.
Chris: Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of Your Unplugged Program.
Chris: We'll see you right back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday!