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: Well, hey, gentlemen. Coming up on the show today, we're going to really focus
Chris: on the Linux kernel again.
Chris: There's been a lot of hoopla about the state of Rust and going-ons there,
Chris: so we're going to recap the latest and then dive into what Linus and Greg have said recently.
Chris: We'll also chat with Hannah from Scale, who's going to give us the four-on-one
Chris: on what you need to know to go to Scale.
Chris: And then we're going to round out the show with some great boosts,
Chris: some picks, and a lot more.
Chris: So before we get to any of that, I've got to do the right thing,
Chris: and I've got to say time-appropriate greetings to that virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room.
Mumble: Hello. Hello, Chris. Hello. Hello, Brent. Hello.
Chris: Hello. That's a serious showing. I like it.
Wes: It's a little echoey because we had to get a huge room to fit everyone.
Chris: Yeah, a lot of people in there. Thank you, everybody, for joining us over there.
Chris: It's nice to have you. And a big good morning to our friends over at TailScale.
Chris: Well, tailscale.com slash unplugged, that's where you go to get TailScale for
Chris: free, 100 devices, three users, no credit card required.
Chris: This is a modern networking solution for connecting your devices securely to
Chris: each other, your applications, servers, systems, whatever it might be,
Chris: to each other directly on a mesh network protected by WireGuard.
Chris: It really is what we've all wanted to see from the moment we heard WireGuard
Chris: was coming to the Linux kernel.
Chris: Secure remote access to your systems that just works so intuitively.
Chris: And it's easy to deploy. It actually is a zero config, no fuss VPN.
Chris: I've been running it for years now. You set it up and it just goes.
Chris: You don't really have to think about it. And with the 100 device plan,
Chris: you can use it on just about everything you got and support the show.
Chris: So you go to tailscale.com slash unplugged. You get it for free on 100 devices, support the show.
Chris: And then you might do what I did, and I inevitably rolled it out in the company.
Chris: It's great for your back-end infrastructure when you have multiple different
Chris: data centers and you want to bring everything together.
Chris: Thousands of companies do this, like Instacart, Hugging Face,
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Chris: The free plan is at tailscale.com slash unplugged.
Chris: Well, as you listen to today's episode, we're going to get into the Linux kernel,
Chris: and we have a question you'd like to answer.
Chris: Just something put in the back of your mind, and when it comes to you as we're
Chris: talking about this stuff, boost in.
Chris: If you could be Linus Torvalds for a day, what would you change or get done?
Wes: Oh, that's a fun one.
Chris: Think about that.
Wes: You know, the pet thing you've always hated in the kernel, the one tweak you'd
Wes: make, or is it something different?
Chris: Bigger, broader. I think we're going to get some good answers.
Chris: Whatever it might be, though, boost in and let us know.
Chris: You've been hearing us talk about Planet Nyx, and that's coming up really fast,
Chris: and that runs right along Scale. And so we wanted to get you up to speed on
Chris: what you need to know if you're going to attend Scale 22X this year.
Chris: And Hannah from Scale, she is the chair of publicity, joins us to talk about that.
Chris: Hannah, welcome to the show. It's great to talk to you.
Guest: Yeah, thanks so much. I'm so happy to be here to talk about Scale.
Chris: We are really close. Scale 22X is coming up on March 6th.
Wes: That's less than two weeks now.
Chris: Yeah. And so we wanted to have you on to help everybody kind of know what they
Chris: need to do in order to attend and what they should do once they get there, like on day one.
Guest: Yeah, of course. So I would be remiss if I didn't give you the quick spiel about
Guest: what SCALE is first before how you can attend.
Guest: SCALE stands for the Southern California Linux Expo.
Guest: We're in our 22nd year, and we're hosted in Pasadena, California.
Guest: And so we're so excited to be back and if
Guest: you've never heard of scale or have not been it
Guest: is all things open source we're an entirely volunteer run
Guest: conference scale is run on love and passion for open source and so it is a great
Guest: time to get together and talk and meet other people who care about all things
Guest: open source and the other thing that i absolutely love about scale is we have
Guest: been around for a long time.
Guest: We have great roots in Southern California and beyond.
Guest: And we also use scale as a launching pad for other open source communities who
Guest: might not have the infrastructure or want to plan a conference.
Guest: So you might see some of your other favorite open source events co-located at scale.
Guest: So DevOps Day LA, Kauai Summit, Planet Nix, Linux training even.
Guest: So we have a little bit of everything if you are in the open source world,
Guest: which I imagine everyone listening here is.
Guest: So now that we've got kind of the details out of the way, if you want to come
Guest: to scale, we would love to have you in a little under two weeks.
Guest: You can go to our website, socalinuxexpo.org and get registered.
Guest: We really pride ourselves on the conference being approachable.
Guest: And I think we're probably one of the only conferences that run a four-day event
Guest: for under $100 for a ticket.
Guest: So we think it's really good value. But if you want a little extra motivation
Guest: to get your ticket before the event, you can use the promo code Linux for 50% off that ticket.
Chris: That's great. Great. Okay. Promo code Linux. And so also I just want to say,
Chris: I do love these side events that have been happening over the last few years.
Chris: It's such a brilliant idea because you folks really are the experts now at the
Chris: infrastructure and the event. And that is such a massive undertaking for smaller
Chris: projects or groups or communities to undertake. It's a really incredible thing you're doing.
Guest: Yeah, we're quite proud of it. Event planning is no joke. And we have hundreds
Guest: of volunteers that make this conference run year round.
Guest: And it would not be possible without volunteers.
Guest: So another shameless plug is if you ever want to volunteer and help with the
Guest: conference, you can always, there's an email on the website where you can volunteer
Guest: either the week of or if you want to work on our network or marketing,
Guest: shameless plug for my team,
Guest: we're always taking volunteers to do it.
Guest: Yeah, we love having other events there that would not have the resources otherwise.
Guest: So there's a place for everyone who cares about open source here,
Guest: and it's in Pasadena in two weeks.
Chris: That's great. I feel like, too, getting involved like that would really build
Chris: some skills that could be marketable in the workplace there.
Chris: I just kind of want to make it clear, when people show up, they do need to proceed to it.
Chris: There's a proper registration process and all of that that they need to follow
Chris: when they first get there, or at least get their badges and whatnot, right?
Guest: Yep. So we're a pretty standard conference. You can register for your tickets
Guest: ahead of time at SoCalLinuxExpo.org with that promo code Linux.
Guest: And you're all registered. You will go to the building that says,
Guest: welcome, there's a big Linux penguin.
Guest: That'll give you an idea of what buildings we're in. The Pasadena Convention
Guest: Center is a little confusing. It is two buildings with a theater in between.
Guest: So if you're facing the convention center, the building on the right is where
Guest: you check in your first day.
Guest: And we've got self-serve systems where you enter your name and your registration
Guest: number and it'll print your badge and then you get a swag bag like most conferences
Guest: full of open source swag and then you get to go in and see all the topics for the four days.
Guest: So make sure you go to the right side building on your first day,
Guest: get your badge and once you have your badge you can go to all the events throughout the four days.
Chris: Yep, and then it's easy after that. That's the hardest part is just figuring
Chris: out which building to go in and get your badge. It's not too bad.
Guest: I would say the hardest part is picking which talks to go to.
Chris: Yeah, really.
Guest: So many good ones that happen all at once. And the other good thing about our
Guest: conference is don't get FOMO, because if you have two concurrent talks,
Guest: we stream and record all of them.
Guest: So you can go back and listen to the ones you missed as well.
Chris: Also, no small feat, which we really appreciate, too.
Guest: Yeah, the tech on that is insane. It takes dozens and dozens of people all year
Guest: to get those recordings up.
Guest: But we're quite proud of them. You can always check out our past talks from
Guest: events on our YouTube channel as well.
Guest: So if you're still on the fence, you don't know what kind of content,
Guest: check out the YouTube channel from the years past.
Guest: We've got a lot of great content there, and it gives you an idea of what we're
Guest: putting on for the week as well.
Chris: For sure. I will say it never quite captures the social element and the hallway
Chris: track and, you know, going out and having lunch and all that stuff.
Chris: But that's just the bonus that you get to come discover on your own when you visit.
Chris: So sounds like they need to get registered. They can use promo code Linux to
Chris: save some money. Anything else we need to let folks know?
Guest: Yeah, just like you said, like the hallway track is really the highest value
Guest: add. So if it's your first time coming to scale, introduce yourself.
Guest: I always hang out at registration. So you're always welcome to say hi to me.
Guest: So you already have one friend, but get to know other folks.
Guest: We love the cross population of communities and it comes to really amazing things
Guest: outside the conference. So I would really encourage you not to be shy and make
Guest: some new friends there as well.
Chris: Absolutely. Hannah, thank you for taking some time on your Sunday and joining us.
Guest: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And I hope to see everyone listening at scale in March.
Wes: Wonderful.
Brent: Well, I know the world is full of news these days, but geez,
Brent: the colonel has been seeing some newsworthy notes from day to day.
Brent: And you guys have been doing a deep dive. My favorite thing.
Brent: Should we go through what's been happening and dust them off a little bit?
Chris: Yeah, we started capturing this for the members in the members bootleg,
Chris: and then it really has developed further.
Chris: So let's go back, like Brent says, and kind of just briefly just cover what's happened here.
Chris: Obviously we've talked about Rust in Linux kernel a bit last September we did
Chris: an episode about it and that was sort of the recap on the state of things.
Wes: Right an ongoing effort to add the ability to write new code to add drivers
Wes: to the Linux kernel using Rust which is a secondary language in the kernel and
Wes: it's a big change and that's why it's been a slow and long effort and why we're
Wes: continuing to talk about it The.
Chris: Idea of adding another language is a big deal, right?
Wes: And of course, you know, you have to say Rust is not new, but it's still moving
Wes: fairly fast and does things.
Wes: It's a very different language than C. So you've got that to contend with.
Chris: So with our current event, we actually need to go back to late January of 2025.
Chris: And the Rust DMA patch proposal sparks a bit of a conflict on the Linux kernel
Chris: mailing list. A patch is proposed to enable Rust-written device drivers to call
Chris: the Linux kernel's core direct memory access, or what is referred to as DMA.
Chris: Obvious drivers need this, right? The goal here is to expand Rust's usability within the kernel.
Chris: Christopher Hillwig, though, had some, I would say, concerns.
Chris: And probably raised the largest rejection. There's a quote from him that says,
Chris: no Rust code in kernel slash DMA, please.
Wes: Yeah, there's a lot to digest here. For the first part, you know,
Wes: fairly simple patch, not a huge amount, three files changed,
Wes: 273 insertions, and the text of the commit, or the request reads,
Wes: add a simple DMA coherent allocator Rust abstraction.
Wes: And that abstraction has a specific meaning here.
Wes: There's sort of the automatic bindings that get generated to be able to like
Wes: talk to the C data structures from the Rust side of things.
Wes: But then there's the like the higher layer part of really using Rust and Rust
Wes: type system in what they're calling abstractions,
Wes: which is where you do the work to wrap the C side at a semantic level to sort
Wes: of encode how to safely use where possible the C side from Rust.
Wes: So then you have this abstraction layer that kind of sit between.
Wes: And it's actually, for the most part, for non-exceptional cases,
Wes: you're not even allowed to go call the C directly in drivers.
Wes: You're not supposed to. You want to use this abstraction.
Wes: So that's where this code is trying to sort of bridge the gap to enable downstream
Wes: Rust things to be able to use the bus.
Chris: The DMA bus. And that's the idea, is that downstream Rust things could read the DMA bus.
Chris: And the very events that transpired this week come back to this very patch and this very discussion.
Chris: So this event that happens in January is pretty noteworthy as time goes on the
Chris: discussion kind of escalates,
Chris: you'll see this there's several people in there that are kind of anti-Russ there's
Chris: folks in there trying to explain stuff there's other folks that seem to be just
Chris: kind of in a watch and see mode.
Wes: Maybe it's worth also touching on um as you
Wes: said uh helwig said no rust code in kernel
Wes: slash dma and what that's referring to is sort of the various trees
Wes: inside this kernel source tree itself
Wes: uh so that's we'll see coming back to this already if you just look at the diff
Wes: you know how you view whether it's a part of the subsystem or not versus like
Wes: where it lives in the source tree could be a whole separate question but this
Wes: was all under rust slash at the top layer so it's all kind of in the.
Chris: Rust subtree.
Wes: In its own it is of course wrapping code that lives in the dma side but.
Chris: Yes and so it's in its own container that is important to
Chris: understand later so this kind of brews for a bit you know there's a there's
Chris: fosdem there's a talk about rust for linux there held by miguel odeja is that
Chris: oyeda oyeda and he's the lead maintainer of rust for linux he presented at fostum
Chris: uh he liked so he highlighted there some of the progress and some of the things
Chris: that landed in linux 6 6 13 also.
Wes: Tried to go and get i believe a bunch of quotes from various uh maintainers
Wes: both you know neutral for and against i think it did seem to have he's able
Wes: to get more responses from people interested in the project but it was an interesting survey.
Chris: As you can imagine though after that talk the debate kind of heats up again until later on,
Chris: linus and hector martin kind of start to get into it and
Chris: hector martin takes to social media to call out
Chris: the process as being you know just really hard
Chris: on the contributors who are trying to get rust in the linux kernel that very
Chris: act sparks a debate on the linux mailing list about social brigading and trying
Chris: to influence the kernel process through social media posts linus steps in says
Chris: this is essentially social brigading says it pushes him away from supporting the patch,
Chris: says to Hector, maybe the problem is you.
Chris: And that got quite a bit of attention just a couple of weeks ago.
Chris: To kind of try to take us from the dust up over that to actual,
Chris: like, tangible policy, Miguel introduced what he's calling, on February 11th,
Chris: the Rust kernel policy, which is meant to clarify how Rust should integrate
Chris: with the kernel, hoping to reduce tensions.
Wes: Yeah, he wrote, given the discussions in the last days, I decided to publish
Wes: this page with what our understanding is. Hope it helps to clarify things.
Chris: Did it clarify things, Wes?
Wes: Well, that probably depends on who you ask. There was obviously some pushback.
Wes: But maybe it's worth looking at kind of like what it was.
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: You know, it had some points about, like, who's pushing this?
Wes: It's not the Rust project or the foundation or even necessarily.
Wes: There are companies interested, but it's like its own, you know,
Wes: they're kernel contributors who want to add Rust.
Wes: Then I mentioned some key folks, maintainers, other people that are involved.
Wes: Here's some quotes.
Wes: Some subsystems may decide they do not want to
Wes: have rust code for the time being typically for bandwidth reasons
Wes: this is fine and expected now in the kernel maintainer summit 2022 we asked
Wes: for flexibility when the time comes that a major user of rust in the kernel
Wes: requires key apis for which the maintainer may not be able to maintain rust
Wes: abstractions for it this flexibility,
Wes: is the needed counterpart to the ability of maintainers to decide whether they
Wes: want to allow Rust or not.
Wes: It also says some stuff about what happens if things break.
Wes: So on their FAQ, who's responsible if a C change breaks a build with Rust enabled?
Wes: That's been a big contentious question, right?
Wes: Well, this site's position, their understanding is, the usual kernel policy applies.
Wes: So by default, changes should not be introduced if they are known to break the build, including Rust.
Wes: However, exceptionally for Rust, a subsystem may allow to temporarily break Rust code.
Wes: The intention is to facilitate friendly adoption of Rust in a subsystem without
Wes: introducing a burden to existing maintainers who may be working on urgent fixes for the seaside.
Chris: That feels like a big compromise from the Rust side, where they're essentially
Chris: saying, we're willing to let Rust code break for a while, and we'll try to sort
Chris: it out if it just means the seaside will roll with us here. That's a big give.
Wes: And you've seen various versions too, right? Like that's where there's,
Wes: you know, some subsystem maintainers are interested in figuring out some of
Wes: the rust stuff for themselves.
Wes: Other ones appoint like a co-maintainer or like a, you're maintaining the rust
Wes: side of this subsystem while I'm going to do the C side or all kinds of other mixes.
Wes: And some of this flexibility on both sides, at least...
Wes: As some people felt was kind of an agreement before, was to accommodate all of that.
Chris: And the idea would be if the Rust code does break, you actually fix it before
Chris: it gets to Linus's tree and it actually ships. It's not like you ship broken Rust code.
Chris: There's an idea that gets caught, but that is still a pretty big compromise.
Wes: Now, there are concerns with some of this in practice, particularly around like,
Wes: okay, you say it's fine to break it, but am I going to get yelled at still?
Chris: Who knows it's even broken?
Wes: You have to make sure that you've set up, and I don't think they're not doing
Wes: this, but just, you know, you have to make sure you've set up,
Wes: like, who do you then, if we've all agreed you're not going to fix it,
Wes: but it being broken is a problem, then, like, who is actually in practice fixing it?
Chris: Yeah.
Wes: Helbig also said, I don't think having a web page in any form is useful.
Wes: If you want it to be valid, it has to be in the kernel tree and widely agreed on.
Wes: It also states factually incorrect information, e.g.
Wes: Some subsystems may decide they do not want to have Rust code for the time being. We read that.
Wes: Helwig continues, while Linus in private said that he absolutely is going to
Wes: merge Rust code over a maintainer's objection.
Chris: Yeah. And this has been sort of the, one of the complaints has been mixed messaging here.
Chris: Like, oh, it's a maintainer's choice, but also I am going to be publishing Rust code.
Chris: But Helwig's been kind of emerging as maybe the most vocal critic of Rust getting
Chris: in and I think has probably raised the most points in the most recent rounds of going back and forth.
Chris: And he's kind of calling out Linus here. He says, quote, yeah,
Chris: like you said, while Linus in private said that he absolutely is going to merge
Chris: Rust code over a maintainer's objection, he says this is a very dishonest way of communication.
Wes: Yeah. And that was pointed at Miguel over including that quote about you don't have to take it.
Chris: Right.
Wes: And that's where there's a bunch of nuance and we'll eventually see spoilers
Wes: that Linus sort of does eventually chime in.
Wes: But I think there has been a question in many folks minds of like.
Wes: Where, you know, has there been enough communication? We've seen Greg Cage chime
Wes: in a few times in various small ways, especially to clarify stuff about,
Wes: oh, what was broken in this previous case that people were pointing to at one time.
Chris: You know while this is going on right so we start in january we're mid-february right now,
Chris: maintainers are hitting a wall hector martin resigns right uh burned out disappointed
Chris: with leadership in the kernel frustrated with their post approach to rust integration
Chris: ceases maintaining upstream linux kernel code for the arm stuff you know the
Chris: solid project has to rework that now,
Chris: um we've seen others that burned out like that that
Chris: is so you understand the context in the background while all
Chris: of this is sort of playing out while also at the same time publicly greg and
Chris: linus kind of would from time to time say fairly pro rust stuff even though
Chris: this superheated debates happening in the background during all of this you
Chris: know you'd see comments from both of them saying oh yeah no rust is coming yeah.
Wes: And i think there has been maybe some lack of clarity in
Wes: general or at least there's been some confusion around the like okay so
Wes: it's clear that rust has been kind of an experiment in the kernel but
Wes: to some people's mind experiment means it's not
Wes: been like like we're not doing it whereas i think maybe in some of the higher
Wes: maintainers minds experiment means well we don't know how we're doing it and
Wes: we're figuring out the right way to do it and it may be painful and bright things
Wes: but like in general we're doing it we may decide we ultimately don't want to
Wes: do it and stop doing it but for the moment we're doing it.
Chris: I gotta say one of the debates and it's just like a hard line is we just should
Chris: not have a multi-language project like this.
Chris: We should not just introduce for us this is going to make it hard to maintain
Chris: this is going to make it more of a bear.
Chris: We should just improve the sea stuff if we want. If we want we should go back
Chris: and retrofit that. And I think,
Chris: What they're ultimately pushing back on is, well, where do you draw the line?
Chris: Do you completely rewrite the Linux kernel one day in Rust? Is that where this leads to?
Chris: Every time we find a bug now, are we just going to write a Rust version and
Chris: essentially this is going to become a Rust kernel?
Chris: They don't want that. That's ridiculous. We should just fix the problems and
Chris: see is what they're – I'm sure you've seen that opinion in the mailing list.
Wes: Yeah, well, and I think it's also like it means you have to have double the infrastructure.
Wes: Sure you're now at some point maybe become dependent on
Wes: the right version of cargo and you
Wes: can just imagine right if you are a maintainer who spent years knowing the
Wes: ins and outs of you know how to
Wes: maintain a complicated and important c project uh
Wes: even if you can you know even if you're willing to take like a co-maintainer
Wes: path it's a lot of trust it's a lot of change and you are going to have code
Wes: that's either making you know has expectations of you or is directly interfacing
Wes: with code that you're using that you don't maybe have a full understanding of
Wes: and that's imagine a situation.
Chris: Where you're trying to push a feature and it does break something in rust and
Chris: now you're kind of trying to be polite so you're trying to wait for the rust
Chris: stuff to get fixed but now maybe you've missed the merge window like you can
Chris: understand there there is a little bit of concern there that does seem legitimate.
Wes: And that's where this is you know a complicated question because it is ultimately
Wes: one like most things in the real world of trade offs right like there are real
Wes: costs to having multiple languages regardless of the language and there's real
Wes: costs for the Rust in particulars and it's a big change.
Wes: But what the Rust for Linux folks and as we'll see some others are advocating
Wes: is that especially maybe if we focus this on net new code and new drivers in particular,
Wes: there's a lot of upside and a lot of wins that can help the kernel overall.
Chris: 1password.com slash unplugged. That's the number 1password.com slash unplugged, all lowercase.
Chris: And you're going to want to go there because this is something that if I had
Chris: when I still worked in IT, I think it would have sustained me for many, many more years.
Chris: The reality is your end users don't, and I mean without exception,
Chris: work on only company-owned devices, applications, and services.
Chris: Maybe you get lucky and they mostly do, but I don't find that to be the reality
Chris: today. And so the next question becomes, how do you actually keep your company's
Chris: data safe when it's sitting on all of these unmanaged apps and devices?
Chris: Well, that's where 1Password has an answer. It's extended access management.
Chris: 1Password extended access management helps you secure every sign-on for every
Chris: app on every device because it solves the problems that your traditional IAMs
Chris: and MDMs just can't touch.
Chris: And it's the first security solution that brings unmanaged devices and applications
Chris: and identities under your control.
Chris: It ensures that every credential is strong and protected, every device is known
Chris: and healthy, and every app is visible.
Chris: This is some powerful stuff, and it's available for companies that use Okta
Chris: or Microsoft Entra, and it's in beta for Google Workspace customers, too.
Chris: 1Password changed the game for password management, and now they're taking everything
Chris: they've learned there and expanding it to the login level and the application level.
Chris: You know what a difference it makes when people have proper password management.
Chris: Now let's have proper login management and authorization.
Chris: 1Password also has regular third-party audits and the industry's largest bug
Chris: bounty. They exceed the standards set by others.
Chris: They really do. So go secure every app, every device, and every identity.
Chris: Even the unmanaged ones.
Chris: You just go to 1password.com slash unplugged, all overcase.
Chris: That's 1password.com slash unplugged.
Brent: Now, with all this happening, Greg and also Linus did chime in just a few days ago.
Chris: Greg came in with a rather compelling case, actually, for new drivers,
Chris: at least, to be written in rough, like Wes was saying. He says,
Chris: quote, yes, mixed language code bases are rough and hard to maintain, but,
Chris: We're kernel developers, damn it. We have been maintaining and strengthening
Chris: Linux for longer than anyone ever thought was going to be possible.
Chris: We have turned our development model into a well-oiled engineering marvel,
Chris: creating something that no one else has ever been able to accomplish.
Chris: Adding another language really shouldn't be a problem.
Chris: We've handled much worse things in the past, and we shouldn't give up now on
Chris: wanting to ensure that our project succeeds for the next 20-plus years.
Chris: We've got to keep pushing forward when confronted with new good ideas,
Chris: and embrace the people offering to join us actually doing the work to help make
Chris: sure that we all succeed together.
Wes: Yeah, I like that. I really think Greg's done some good, you know,
Wes: just sort of on the edges and a little stronger here, but just with a very nice tone.
Wes: It's so positive. It makes you want to go help make Linux better yourself.
Wes: And I think it's right to call out that, you know, whether you agree with the
Wes: mission or not, you have to agree that the Rust for Linux folks are trying hard.
Chris: You know, I noticed, I think it was a week or two ago, they're working on the
Chris: Phobus, and Greg posted on Masto about it.
Chris: And he made sure to call out, you know, from the get-go, this has Rust API bindings.
Chris: It's ready to go for the Rust crew.
Chris: We're introducing a C-side and a Rust-side, and it's good. Try out the Phobus.
Wes: Well, I think that's been influenced, not some small amount,
Wes: by, you know, he's been super involved with, you know, maintaining the stable
Wes: side of things and dealing now with the kernel CVE process.
Wes: So he started that post by saying, as someone who's seen almost every kernel
Wes: bug fix and security issue for the past 15 plus years,
Wes: well, hopefully all of them, and who sees every kernel CVE issued,
Wes: I think I can speak on this topic.
Wes: The majority of bugs, and here he's trying to be clear, quantity,
Wes: not quality or severity, are...
Wes: The majority of bugs we have are due to the stupid little corner cases in C
Wes: that are totally gone in Rust.
Wes: Things like simple overwrites of memory, error path cleanups,
Wes: forgetting to check error values, and use after free mistakes.
Wes: That's why I'm wanting to see Rust get into the kernel.
Wes: These types of issues just go away, allowing developers and maintainers more
Wes: time to focus on the real bugs that happen, i.e.
Wes: Logic issues, race conditions, etc.
Chris: Yeah, the memory problems developers create themselves. And then,
Chris: so a moment that really impressed me was Linus.
Chris: And, you know, I've been critical of him recently on some of his decisions,
Chris: but I really felt like Linus showed he still really got his hands around this entire thing.
Chris: He popped in on the mailing list a couple of days ago.
Chris: And remember, this went all the way back to January, the beginning of the nuance of all of this.
Chris: And none of it missed Linus's catch. And I was impressed by that.
Chris: And he was responding to Hillwig, I believe, when he writes,
Chris: you're not forced to take any Rust code at all or care about Rust code in the
Chris: DMA code. You can just ignore it.
Chris: But the, quote, ignore the Rust side, end quote, automatically also means that
Chris: you don't have any say on the Rust side.
Chris: You can't have it both ways you can't say quote
Chris: i want to have nothing to do with rust and then in
Chris: the very next sentence say quote and that means that the rust code
Chris: that i want to ignore cannot use the c interfaces i maintain maintainers who
Chris: want to be involved in the rust side can be involved in it and by being involved
Chris: with it they will have some say in what the rust bindings will look like they
Chris: basically become the maintainers of the rust interfaces and.
Chris: What Linus did here, in my kind of short, horrible read there,
Chris: is he recognized that what Hillwig was originally complaining about wasn't really applicable here.
Chris: The Rust folks weren't asking to change anything on the C side.
Chris: They weren't touching anything on the C side for the DMA bus that we originally talked about.
Wes: As we touched on it, it was in a separate subtree.
Chris: It's in its own separate subtree. And all they would be doing is reading the
Chris: DMA bus like anything else might in the Linux kernel. And that is a line too far for Linus.
Chris: You can't be not involved and also say what these programs can and cannot use in a Linux kernel.
Chris: As he puts it, it just simply does not work that way.
Wes: Like he says, but that wall of protection goes both ways.
Wes: If you don't want to deal with the Rust code, you get no say on the Rust code.
Wes: Put another way, the nobody is forced to deal with Rust does not imply everybody
Wes: is allowed to veto any Rust code.
Chris: I think I just want to reiterate. You know, people have been saying,
Chris: Linus needs to say more. Linus needs to chime in.
Chris: Linus, if you look at this mailing list thread, he's chiming in pretty frequently,
Chris: not all the time, but pretty frequently throughout.
Wes: It does seem like, I mean, it seems maybe it failed, but he did clearly also
Wes: have some private communiques with Miguel.
Chris: But I was impressed that the original nuance all the way back in January did
Chris: not miss his grasp. And that was a fundamental nuance to kind of saying to Hillwig,
Chris: hey, I respect your arguments.
Chris: You're often right. You call and Linus even says you call me on my BS.
Chris: I'm calling you on your BS here.
Wes: That's the other thing. If you just hear the parts we read, the most intense
Wes: parts of the, you know, the debate and Linus putting down his policy.
Chris: Right.
Wes: But he also says things like, you know, you're saying like, I respect what you're
Wes: saying. He also says, I respect you technically and I like working with you.
Chris: Yeah. I'm not looking for yes men. And I like it when you call me on my BS.
Chris: I say some stupid things at times. There needs to be people who can stand up
Chris: to me and tell me I'm full of S.
Chris: But now I'm calling you out on yours.
Chris: It's pretty good.
Brent: It's a very different Linus than we've seen previously. I love it.
Chris: I think one of the MVPs in this thread is Miguel. Don't you think?
Wes: Yeah. I will say there's been, you know, we focused on a lot of the,
Wes: you know, the more intense parts, as I was just saying.
Wes: But there was a lot of good interactions in there as well.
Wes: You know, I saw James Bottomley asking a lot of, like, legit and good natured
Wes: questions, a lot of developers trying to learn more.
Chris: Kent Overstreet chiming in how this could be beneficial for BcacheFS or how,
Chris: you know, how to maybe reframe things from time to time.
Wes: Yeah. And, you know, there's just there's there's a lot of different levels of knowledge, right?
Wes: Some folks have used Rust, but
Wes: like for user land stuff and never thought about the kernel side of it.
Wes: Some people have never touched Rust at all. So you get levels of like,
Wes: do you is your understanding of Rust accurate?
Wes: Are you are you asking about a nuance of like where the type system isn't complete?
Wes: Are you asking sort of like you don't understand you know how the compiler side
Wes: of it works there's a lot of areas and yeah uh miguel has just sort of been
Wes: seemingly tirelessly and for
Wes: the most part quite you know politely uh answering trying to clarify this.
Chris: Has not been an easy process for the community and it has not been without its
Chris: costs of some really good contributors you know and uh,
Chris: I know that it's cliche to say the process is messy, but sometimes when you
Chris: actually see the mess unfold, it's hard to watch.
Chris: Neil, did you have any thoughts from sort of the Asahi side,
Chris: you know, watching that project as closely as you do now being tied in over
Chris: there at Fedora? Did you have any thoughts on this?
Mumble: I think part of the—my personal feeling on this is that I think Linus should
Mumble: have stepped in two weeks ago about this.
Mumble: Not because he hasn't stepped in and doesn't have good thoughts about this but like,
Mumble: the downward spiral that this whole the whole conversation has had could have
Mumble: been completely avoided,
Mumble: if he had said this earlier I get why he didn't I understand the desire to have
Mumble: the community sort itself out I just think that this is one of those things that is going to require,
Mumble: more tough love type stuff as we keep going.
Mumble: Because there's this contention with groups of people saying,
Mumble: oh, this can't ever be enterprise ready, and so it's a toy.
Mumble: There are people saying, I don't want to deal with this because multi-language is terrible.
Mumble: Ignoring the fact that the Linux kernel actually been a multi-language project
Mumble: since almost the beginning.
Mumble: It's been C in Assembler, and then C, Perl, Python, and Assembler,
Mumble: and Makefiles, and Shell, and like there is code in there that generates code
Mumble: that generates code that is then used to compile code.
Mumble: Like it is a morass of complexity all the way through it.
Mumble: Not acknowledging that and then kind of complaining about Rust bringing in a
Mumble: new thing of multi-languageness and complexity I think kind of is missing the
Mumble: forest for the trees there.
Mumble: There's a lot more complexity in the Linux kernel today than there ever has been.
Mumble: So basically, I think a lot of people are going to need reality checks fairly
Mumble: frequently as this keeps going on.
Mumble: Now, I'm not going to say that I'm like the most amazing fan of Rust.
Mumble: I think that there are things about Rust that I'm not the biggest fan of.
Mumble: But it is pretty clear at this point that there are significant drivers towards, pun intended.
Mumble: Towards Rust in the Linux kernel and people who are interested and enthusiastic about it.
Mumble: And I think the job of a good community leader is to encourage and support the
Mumble: people that are doing these sorts of things to enable the next generation to be successful.
Mumble: Like the Linux kernel has a very very big
Mumble: problem that it's that it can't that it hasn't really started
Mumble: looking at addressing which is the churn rate
Mumble: of maintainers in the Linux kernel is unbelievably low
Mumble: most of the people that are maintaining subsystems in Linux kernel have been
Mumble: doing it since almost the beginning of that subsystem and you look at the progress
Mumble: of bringing in new people to stay in for the long haul and it's not terribly
Mumble: high and that can be concerning as everyone's getting older.
Mumble: And what's going to happen when a critical subsystem loses a maintainer for reasons?
Mumble: Like we lost wireless subsystem Larry Finger last year.
Mumble: And this is not going to be a new thing. This is going to keep happening.
Mumble: And so we have to start, I mean, we, the people in the Linux kernel community,
Mumble: the subsystem leaders and whatnot, have to start acknowledging that.
Mumble: There has to be some give and take. There has to be some give to be where the
Mumble: people are or where the people want to be.
Mumble: And some people want C++. Some people want Rust. Some people want to be on Forges
Mumble: rather than using mailing lists.
Mumble: This is all going to be things that have to be dealt with because you need the
Mumble: next generation or the project dies.
Mumble: So this is something where I think Linus is going to have to take some tougher
Mumble: leadership on because otherwise I don't know what's going to happen.
Wes: I thought maybe we could end. I saw a nice post during part of this discussion
Wes: from Keys Cook, who's been a long time leading the kernel self-protection project
Wes: and doing a lot of good security vulnerability focused work on the C code in the kernel.
Wes: And Chris, you mentioned kind of the contention of like, well,
Wes: where does this end? And are we trying to rewrite the whole kernel?
Wes: And what is the goal of this experiment, really?
Wes: So Keyes wrote, Speaking to the what is the goal question, I see the goal as
Wes: eliminating memory safety issues in new drivers and subsystems.
Wes: The pattern we've seen in Linux with security flaws is that the majority appear in new code.
Wes: Focusing on getting new code written in Rust puts a stop to these kinds of flaws.
Wes: And it has an exponential impact, as Android and Usenix have found.
Wes: And then he included a bunch of citations.
Wes: In other words, I don't see any reason to focus on replacing existing code.
Wes: Doing so would actually carry a lot of risk. But writing new stuff in Rust is very effective.
Wes: Old code is more stable, and it already has fewer bugs.
Wes: And yet, we're still going to continue the work of hardening C,
Wes: because we still need to shake those bugs out.
Wes: But new code can be written in Rust and not have any of these classes of bugs at all from day one.
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Chris: boosts on the show, Bitcoin was around $30-something thousand dollars,
Chris: and now it's around $100,000-something dollars?
Chris: Now, why did that happen? It's because of a couple of things,
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Brent: Well, it is certainly conference season coming up, and we have one who's planning
Brent: way ahead. Texas Linux Fest is, of course, back again this year,
Brent: but with a new season, October 3rd to 4th this year.
Brent: That's in Austin, Texas. And there's a call for paper open.
Brent: You have until August 3rd, so no excuses for getting a talk in.
Brent: But we would love to see what you can throw at Texas Linux Fest.
Brent: Make it good. That way, we feel like we have to go.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great little fest. They're looking for sponsors, too.
Chris: 2025.texaslinuxfest.org for more details and I think Austin in October is going to be wonderful.
Chris: October 3rd through the 4th at the JJ Pickle Research Campus.
Chris: Is that real? Is that real? Is that not right?
Brent: I think I named that one maybe.
Chris: JJ Pickle?
Wes: Yeah, it is a different location from last year.
Chris: That's a good old Texas boy name right there. JJ Pickle.
Brent: Get some culture in too while you're at it.
Chris: Is it close to barbecue? That's what we need to figure out.
Wes: I mean, Carl is, I believe, involved, so...
Chris: You would hope, right?
Wes: Right.
Chris: Yes, it is, and Vamax is our baller booster for episode 603,
Chris: the only 603 there will be, and he came in with 100,000 sats.
Chris: Not bad at all. It says, I am, of course, advocating for a K-8s challenge. Yes, I know.
Chris: And after that gets shot down, maybe some kind of exciting network challenge?
Wes: Ooh.
Brent: They know us so well.
Chris: Yeah, they do. Also, I randomly saw hybrid sarcasm in the Gavio contribution
Chris: release logs as I was getting it set up.
Chris: Really? That's cool. Condesas, cheers to hybrid. That's really neat.
Chris: Okay, so a networking challenge.
Wes: You skipped right over the first idea.
Chris: What was the first idea? Oh, because as he knows, the K8s challenge.
Chris: That was an obvious skip, right? That's obvious.
Chris: I mean, unless you want to do, I do have plenty of Raspberry Pis.
Chris: We could do like a pie thing, but I don't know if we have enough pies for all of us.
Chris: The idea of networking, quote unquote, as something we should do has come up
Chris: about a bajillion times, though.
Chris: So we do need to hone in on networking and figure out what we can do there because it's come up a lot.
Chris: Thank you very, very much, Vey. We really appreciate that. You are the Max.
Chris: Thanks for the boost. And if anybody has any networking challenge ideas that
Chris: we could realistically pull off, because remember, one of the things we do like
Chris: is if the audience can participate too. Please do send those in.
Wes: We just have to not take down the live stream while we're doing the show.
Chris: Right, right, right.
Wes: The Doodamide comes in with 42,000 sats.
Wes: I didn't have time to get on with the BSD challenge, but it was fun listening to your adventures.
Wes: I'm wondering, how would it be if you use something like PFSense or OpenSense
Wes: or TrueNAS Core as a base for the challenge?
Wes: Technically, they all use free BSD, so would that still count?
Chris: No.
Wes: Oh.
Chris: I'd say no, but I think it would count as one of the, you know,
Chris: because one of the points is like a re-spin of free BSD.
Chris: Because otherwise we'd have to say ghost BSD counts and ghost BSD didn't count, right?
Wes: Well, I was just going to be nice and say, you know, make it your own challenge.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Wes: If you learn something about how the BSD works.
Chris: Oh, yeah, sure.
Brent: Okay.
Chris: Everybody gets a trophy.
Chris: And what do you think, Brent? You get a tiebreaker here.
Brent: Oh, if you put me in that hard position. I think we gained a lot of background
Brent: and knowledge and context running FreeBSD.
Brent: And that meant that when we went into running a non-FreeBSD,
Brent: you know, one of the derivatives, we had all of that context and it gave us a bigger appreciation.
Chris: So you're siding with me, I think, is what I'm hearing there.
Brent: I was trying not to choose a side.
Chris: But yeah, I guess I did. I think it was. All right. But I still,
Chris: like Wes said, I think it's very valuable.
Chris: And also, worth checking in on OpenSense. They've been doing a lot of good stuff over there.
Brent: Well, I think it also says something that all these projects are based on FreeBSD.
Brent: So there's certainly value to diving into any of them.
Chris: Yeah, they don't like the GPO.
Brent: Well, adversaries sent us in 32,768 sats.
Chris: Adversaries, of course, obviously.
Brent: I try to get it right to the way you get it wrong, and then I get it wrong.
Chris: So my trick is just do both.
Brent: What?
Chris: Yeah, adversaries, adversaries, you just, you know, use both.
Brent: Okay.
Wes: Or, you know, we get a little more colloquial in 17.
Chris: Yeah, it's Big 17!
Brent: Lucky 17 came in and says, I loved all the BSD coverage. What a wild ride that must have been.
Chris: Oh, thank you. I'm glad to hear it was positive. I know this sounds silly,
Chris: but we did have the discussion, like, should we be talking about BSD in our
Chris: Linux podcast? So I'm glad that people liked it.
Chris: Thank you for that. It's always good to hear from you, Big 17.
Wes: I heard Chris had to go and reinstall ifconfig on his next box.
Chris: Hey, I still got one machine with ghost BSD. It lingers.
Wes: Oh.
Chris: It lingers. Turd Ferguson's here with 24,500 sats.
Chris: How's about a video game challenge? Three of you get a co-op game working on
Chris: Linux. Extra points if the audience can join.
Wes: Oh.
Brent: Oh, that sounds super fun. I'm in.
Wes: It does sound fun.
Chris: Okay, also, Turd says, what about a no-build Gen 2 challenge?
Chris: Same rules as the BSD challenge, but no building software.
Wes: How does that work? I mean, they have a binary cache, right, now?
Chris: Could you get Nix working on Gen 2? That'd be hilarious.
Wes: Does it strap a small little alpine on there?
Chris: If we could somehow do the Gen 2 challenge without doing the Gen 2 challenge,
Chris: I think turns on to something here.
Wes: You know, you get the pre-built stage 2 or whatever.
Chris: Okay, and then here's a philosophical question for you, Brent.
Chris: If your favorite Linux distribution was a pizza topping, what would it be and why?
Brent: Oh, man.
Brent: Well, I think I have to say pineapple because it's so divisive.
Brent: There's a Linux for everyone.
Chris: Pineapple?
Chris: What.
Wes: I'm challenging the question just a bit because instead of distro specific i'm
Wes: just gonna say nyx and i don't know if this is technically a topping more of
Wes: a sauce but uh i'm gonna say nyx is like pesto because it goes with everything.
Chris: Oh all right not the cheese or the dough no pesto okay all right i was gonna
Chris: say it's the sauce but all right okay all right okay well so uh i do kind of
Chris: like that we have never done a video we have not done a video game thing for
Chris: a while on the show. We've never done a video game challenge.
Chris: Like, wouldn't that be fun if we did a stream, like, sometime in,
Chris: like, an evening during the week where everybody got in, we could do,
Chris: like, a big co-op session?
Wes: Why don't they make Race the Sun co-op edition?
Chris: Right. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Thank you,
Chris: turd. Appreciate the boost.
Wes: Our buddy, our pal Gene Beanboosin with 4,444 sats.
Wes: Oh, first question. Did y'all play any with Beehive? Yeah, I did a bit.
Wes: Not as much as I would have liked to.
Wes: I got a Linux VM going. I started down the path of trying Windows on it.
Wes: I'd like to come back to that and get that working a little better.
Chris: I did not this go around. Beehive is the one thing I've played around with before
Chris: where I've loaded FreeBSD just to try Beehive.
Chris: And I think I've also, at some point, tried some sort of version that's on macOS.
Wes: I mean, I haven't done anything in anger with it.
Chris: Yes, X-Hive.
Wes: But it's neat to see. I mean, you know, KVM has worked so well for us on Linux,
Wes: and FreeBSD deserves a great virtualizer, and now it has one.
Mumble: At least they're starting to integrate VertIO support. So we may actually see
Mumble: things like USB redirection, GPU, para-virtualization, that sort of stuff show
Mumble: up in Beehive in the future.
Mumble: I mean, like Apple integrated it with their hypervisor framework for macOS,
Mumble: so it kind of supersedes XHive in that respect. But, you know,
Mumble: I'd like to see the virtio stuff be usable in more hypervisors.
Wes: Agreed.
Chris: You know, Wes, I'm looking here. Do you see this here? It seems like maybe the
Chris: message got degraded. I'm trying to connect and pull it again.
Chris: I think the facts got cut off for the report, but I think he had something about
Chris: skipping the Gentoo challenge in there. Did you see that?
Wes: Yeah, Gene's trolling us here. Rightly so. Oh, you say you're in need of another challenge, huh?
Wes: How about that Gentoo challenge you've been putting off forever?
Chris: I'm not from Gentoo.
Wes: Never heard of it. No, that was Brent's challenge.
Chris: Yeah, right.
Brent: I take offense to that. I don't think we've been putting this off.
Brent: I think we've just been focused elsewhere.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Mumble: All right. I.e. putting it off.
Chris: We'll let you know, Gene. We'll let you know.
Brent: Neil.
Brent: Well, Neural P sent in 5,000 sats. No message on this one, just a kind little send.
Chris: Well, Monty came in with a row of adorable ducks, 2,222 sats.
Chris: I got my AlbiHub set up, he says. Congratulations.
Chris: That's a nice little journey. Tried several times to get Nick's Bitcoin up and
Chris: running, but just couldn't get it to build.
Chris: AlbiHub, though, I had it up in 10 minutes. Any suggestions on the simplest
Chris: way to boost from AlbiHub?
Chris: For this, I installed the Albi browser extension and opened up Linux Unplugged on the podcast index.
Chris: That probably is the simplest way, actually, really, if you have Albi Hub.
Chris: So here's the order if you're curious about boosting. Fountain makes it the
Chris: easiest because it's all hosted by them. Okay, that's the easiest.
Chris: Breeze is the next easiest because it's all hosted inside the app.
Chris: You get a lightning node in the app.
Chris: You put some sats in there. You can go find the podcast. You can boost.
Chris: You don't really have to change podcast apps. That's Breeze, B-R-E-E-Z.
Chris: And then the next tier, which you're hearing people talk about, is AlbiHub.
Chris: And AlbiHub is where you self-host the entire thing. I mean,
Chris: it is, after all, an open source peer-to-peer network, and anybody can participate.
Chris: And AlbiHub is a stack of basically a lightning demon and a bunch of great software
Chris: and a nice UI on top of that to manage all of this.
Chris: But you don't really need it to boost. But if you want to go to,
Chris: like, you know, Chad-level tier tech guy, then you go the AlbiHub setup.
Chris: But if you just want to send some sats to the show, something like Fountain
Chris: or Breeze, B-R-E-E-Z, make it really easy.
Chris: And then you can go chat-o-matic if you want later on. And congratulations, Monty.
Chris: I'm really impressed. And I'm also really impressed you tried the next Bitcoin
Chris: route, too, and still ended up on Albie Hub and love it. It's great to hear.
Wes: Distress 2 boosts in with 10,000 sats.
Wes: Short and sweet. Planet Nix, y'all.
Chris: I agree. Planet Nix, indeed.
Wes: Yeah. Looking forward to hopefully seeing you there.
Chris: Yeah.
Brent: Well, Kongaroo Paradox sends one, two, three, four, five Satoshis.
Brent: They're sending in a late update on their free BSD challenge.
Brent: I tried out OpenBSD on a Raspberry Pi 4 as a server, but busy life with two
Brent: young children didn't let me do much else apart from the manual install and installing Neovim.
Wes: Hey, you got the important work done.
Brent: I will say that I very much liked the vibe of OpenBSD. The installer is very guided and clear.
Brent: And once rebooted, you have a message that states that you have mail.
Chris: I do like that. I love the old Unix Mail system when you got messages in there.
Brent: Said Mail has very interesting information for newcomers. I think I'll keep
Brent: playing with this in my free time. And once I get a feel for BSD, on to NixBSD for me.
Brent: P.S. I'll let you guys decide if this suffices or if I'll have to go server with Windows 11.
Chris: I'm feeling like it does because we didn't get very many open,
Chris: or if all, open BSD reports. And I think it's extremely valuable to get an open
Chris: BSD report. And he got it on a Raspberry Pi 4.
Chris: So I'm saying even though it's not free BSD, I think he wins.
Chris: I think he wins right there. So no Windows 11 for you. You've at least avoided that.
Chris: Enough points to avoid that. Autobrain comes in with 5,000 sats. That's a Jar Jar boost.
Chris: My dual monitor. Oh, good. I've been hoping to get more dual monitor setups.
Chris: By the way, I want more dual monitor setups out there.
Wes: Boost them in.
Chris: Multi monitor setups. Autobrain says, my dual monitor setup for work is a 2K
Chris: fast refresh display on an X-Pen display drawing tablet. Whoa.
Wes: Ooh, interesting.
Chris: Whoa. Really? A drawing tablet? And it works great on Nix with GNOME.
Chris: A drawing tablet on the desktop for Linux. Autobrain, I'd love to know what
Chris: you're doing there. That's interesting. That's really interesting.
Brent: See, Chris, I think I have a problem with these requests for multi-monitor setups
Brent: because it just makes me really jealous.
Wes: Yeah, how come it doesn't come with a budget?
Chris: You know, that would be a great, oh man, you know how much, if JB had like,
Chris: you know, like some of these YouTubers that just get these stupid ad deals and
Chris: they just go spend money like crazy.
Chris: Ours would be, we do tech makeovers, like we go to Brent's cabin,
Chris: we do a total tech makeover.
Brent: Bring it on.
Chris: Oh, I would love it. That'd be so great. One day.
Chris: One day when Linux is the most popular thing ever and everybody out there cares
Chris: about it real hard. I'm sure we'll get to do that. That'll be an opportunity.
Chris: Thank you, everybody who boosted
Chris: the show. That's all the boosts above the 2,000-set cutoff for time.
Chris: But I want to give a special shout-out to our sat streamers.
Chris: 35 of you streamed 70,762 sats to the show.
Wes: Dang.
Chris: Just as you sat back and listened, thank you very much. When you combine that
Chris: with our boosters, that means we stacked a grand total of 309,141 sats.
Chris: Thank you very much. That system is nice and easy. Once you get set up with
Chris: Fountain or Breeze or something like that, you can boost. And also check out the splits.
Chris: You never know. We're sometimes sending some sats to a project.
Chris: Editor Drew gets a set. It's just the way the whole system works is so freaking cool.
Chris: And you just need a podcasting app like Fountain or something like that to try
Chris: it. You can find them at podcastapps.com.
Chris: And then you can also listen to the live stream in your podcast app and all
Chris: that kind of stuff, too. and you're using a decentralized index instead of like
Chris: apples or Spotify's, you know? Mm, or Spotify.
Chris: We have a couple of picks, and this one's kind of a time-appropriate pick, if you will.
Chris: That is because Amazon is about to remove your ability to download any e-book
Chris: that you've bought from them in the past.
Wes: Yeah, I think this takes effect on the 26th, February 26th, 2025.
Chris: Yeah, it's just a few days after the show comes out, so we wanted to get this
Chris: in here, And the app pick that we have for you is Amazon Kindle Bulk Downloader.
Wes: Yeah, right. The backstory here is since time forgot, you could go and download
Wes: like an actual file and then transfer it over USB or even email things to your Kindle.
Wes: And, you know, then you could use open source tooling to strip DRM and then
Wes: have like a proper backup file or something you could use with a different e-reader if you wanted.
Wes: Or, you know, like any of the things that you might think that you want to be
Wes: able to do with the thing that you purchased. Yeah.
Wes: Well, now Amazon's doubling down on the whole, you didn't buy this.
Wes: It's just a license. No, you can't download it.
Chris: Oh, yeah?
Wes: But, so, you can still do that. I think you have to have a compatible device,
Wes: because maybe they've already stopped this for newer devices or something. I have not tested that.
Chris: Okay.
Wes: You can go onto their site and download them one by one. If you have a few books,
Wes: that's fine. But if you have, you know, maybe you have a big library.
Wes: So, I don't have a crazy library, but I had, you know, 100 or so.
Wes: Didn't want to do that. So I was able to find a little open source app.
Wes: Actually, no, an unlicensed app. I think they intended to be open source.
Wes: So fire beware on that one. There's not yet a license file.
Wes: I'm thinking I'll open an issue on that.
Chris: Licensed TBD.
Wes: But, you know, you're archiving Kindle books in a rush anyway.
Wes: So maybe that's not your biggest concern. You can get the code and run it on
Wes: yourself, on your computer, all you like.
Wes: It's a TypeScript app set up with Bun. So I just did it in like a little Ubuntu
Wes: container and that worked totally fine. and then you just give it some nvars
Wes: with your Amazon login info.
Wes: And it's not very big, so you can go check out the source.
Wes: And then it'll do, it spins up a Chrome instance to control via Puppeteer to
Wes: then go like auth into Amazon.
Chris: Okay.
Wes: If you do it locally too, I didn't have a problem, but they do have support
Wes: for actually not doing it headless and popping the browser up if you need to
Wes: do like a manual login if the auto login doesn't work.
Chris: That's nice. Yeah.
Wes: It worked quite well. Just downloaded real fast, had progress bars and everything.
Chris: Get your books, people.
Wes: Hopefully that helps.
Chris: Get your books. Get your books.
Wes: And go find somewhere else to download them.
Chris: We have a bonus pick. This came in from Bear, listener Bear, and I love it.
Chris: I double-checked. I cannot believe we have not picked this before because it
Chris: is 100% up our alley. It is called N-Ping.
Chris: It is a ping tool, and it is developed in Rust.
Chris: It supports concurrent ping for multiple addresses, and then it,
Chris: on the command line, gives you a visual chart display with real-time data updates and other features.
Chris: Look at this, boys. Look how beautiful this is.
Wes: Yeah, okay. I like it.
Chris: I am experiencing a very strange problem with my one workstation up in my office at the studio.
Chris: Particularly in the mornings, it's dropping packets. I can't even ping my router, so it's on my LAN.
Chris: And then it kind of seems to like settle out by the afternoon and
Chris: it never happens but like it sucks because i get
Chris: here early in the morning like i was in at the studio at 4
Chris: 30 a.m today to do the show and that's when it's absolutely the worst no and
Chris: so it's like come on i'm here early to get this done and it doesn't and it wasn't
Chris: until about oh i don't know nine eight a.m somewhere in that you know hour it
Chris: starts to smooth out so being able to throw this on there i could actually visualize
Chris: the issues which was really cool.
Wes: I was gonna say you know this seems like something you maybe traditionally would
Wes: use a tool like smoke ping for but having this in a zelige session exactly in
Wes: the background could be a nice way to do it i just need for a.
Chris: Couple of hours you know run it there so n ping we'll put a link to that and it is mit licensed.
Wes: I like it so by default you get like a graph per thing that you're pinging you
Wes: can ping multiple things has a slick little graph going and it shows you the
Wes: recent records that target resolved to and the latency to each of them.
Wes: So there's a lot of handy info right there.
Chris: You know, I think next week might be our last live episode before we take off to scale in Planet Nix.
Wes: Whoa.
Chris: And we may or may not do a live episode from there. We probably will have a pre-record.
Chris: All of this, we'll try to get this on the Jupyter Broadcasting calendar,
Chris: and of course we'll try to mark it pending in podcasting 2.0 apps.
Chris: But I do know we have one more regular live show next Sunday coming up.
Chris: So join us for 12 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern.
Chris: Now, don't forget, links to what we talked about today are at linuxunplugged.com slash 603.
Chris: You can use that promo code Linux to take 50% off your scale tickets.
Chris: And of course, we're really excited about Planet Nix. We want to see you there.
Chris: And the team at Phlox is making it possible for us to attend Planet Nix.
Chris: And we'll have so much great coverage for you coming soon.
Chris: And last but not least, I'd really encourage you to consider setting up our
Chris: Mumble Room. We have it going now for the launch on Tuesdays and for LUP on Sundays.
Chris: And it's a great way to just listen and get high-quality opus right from the mixer.
Chris: But if you just listen, that's all that really matters. Thanks so much for joining
Chris: us on this week's episode of the Unplugged program, and we'll see you right
Chris: back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday!