599: Psycho Shower Linux Power

Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris.

My name is Wes.

And my name is Brent.

Hello, gentlemen. We're coming up on the show today as we prepare physically, mentally, and emotionally for episode 600, we're going to introduce you to what might be our next challenge, if the boys can convince me in this episode, and there might be a way you can join, too. Then we're going to round it out with a killer pick, some great boosts, and a bunch more. It's a banger of an episode. Let's make this one really good so that way we

It doesn't have to be that painful.

It doesn't have to be that way. Tailscale is so much better. Try it for free on 100 devices and up to three users and support the show. Right now, just go to tailscale.com slash unplugged. We're going to keep the housekeeping short this week because we've got a lot of news to dig into. But I do want to mention that we have a lot of details for LUP 600 meetup parties and whatnot.

I did. Yeah. It doesn't look especially modern or sleek. No. But it doesn't look bad.

No.

Kind of like an older iPhone.

I imagine these are pre-production designs as well. Right.

But it's got all kinds of toggles on the top for Wi-Fi, for LTE probably, probably other things.

Yeah. Mic and camera definitely on there. I saw Bluetooth on there. It's got a RK3588S SOC. So that's a pretty good check.

Octa-core.

Yep. 256 gigabytes of eMMC storage built in, then expandable with an SD card. It has a 6.34-inch OLED screen running at a nice 2400 by 1880 resolution with a fingerprint sensor on the back and Corning Gorilla Glass for the screen. And it has a removable, I'm going to say it again, a removable 5,300 amp hour battery, 32 megapixel rear camera, 13 megapixel front camera. It also has a legitimate LTE modem, they're saying. It's at least one that I think is considered pretty good.

Well, I've been looking for a phone like this for... I was going to say five years, but I think it's been more like 10 years. I feel like many of us have, but nothing that's come out has been up to snuff. Now, this sounds very promising. It is, of course, a bunch of promises at this point. So we haven't seen any development devices. Nobody's gotten their hands on it. And it is a crowd funder. And I know you have a really good experience with how these go, right, Chris?

I think the one question I have, okay, so you make a great point that you're willing to forego a lot of conveniences and sort of quality of life stuff. But my question is, isn't there still a set of Android or iOS apps that are almost at the essential layer? Maybe not. Maybe you can kind of not, but I'm just thinking like.

Maps.

Well, maps, or I don't know, there's, is there like a, you know, an app you need to register if you're like coming into another country, or instead of having to fill out a paper form, or?

Boy, you're right. I have to go apps blunking like when I'm traveling quite a bit.

Well, I did read on their website here that they're doing like an Android jail, so you can run some of these apps if you needed to.

Okay, see, that would work.

So, Wes, for you, I got a question. Imagine this thing, it kind of lives up to what they say here, right? We have to be kind of skeptical here at this point, but let's just go with this for a second. It's using Posh, I believe, that GNOME GTK stuff that Purism and others have worked on, the adaptive GTK. That stuff's in a pretty good place.

It doesn't, you know, look bad, I don't think.

Apps that you're going to be familiar with. An underlying OS you can tweak to your heart's content. You could run, you know, an Apache server on this thing if you wanted to. Battery life, though, four hours. Is that a deal breaker for you when it's removable?

Huh.

By the way, that's not their estimate. I'm just thinking, when you've got this RK3588SOC, and you've got a Snapdragon X32 modem, and you've got a Linux OS and a 6.34-inch OLED screen, all of those things are on the higher end of power use so i think we would have to and you know especially if you're on 5g.

Right i.

Think you'd have to set your expectations to kind of mid for battery life.

Yeah i suppose uh i wonder if they were if they're gonna have good os level options for like battery saver mode or other sort of power profiles because you know if i could put it into like background mode for a lot of the day and just like hey every couple minutes wake up for notifications and otherwise kind of sleep yeah it doesn't need to be constantly.

Receiving yeah Yeah, you're right.

Especially if I can choose the granularity or switch the mode pretty easily.

Pull every 10 minutes.

Yeah.

Not constantly. Stop it. That's a great point. That'd be a freaking great OS.

It's just like so rare that I need to know.

Right now.

Yeah.

Very true.

Yeah. That's, yeah, I think the removable battery is such a nice return.

Especially if you could get a couple of them. Keep some charge in your bag.

Imagine a travel, like going back to your point about a travel day, like, yes, maybe You couldn't get some of the apps, but you could bring three of the batteries with you. And this could be your entire entertainment device, your media information, you know, like everything. And you could even install Jellyfin on this.

You might feel better about, well, maybe not from iOS, but you might feel better about some of the security risks of traveling too if you're using a Linux-powered phone.

Yeah, perhaps.

Chris, you've had, you know, multiple devices in your life for a little while. You were doing the dual phone thing for a bit there. Do you see this being an option in that respect? Like having certain apps on the everyday, always on phone and having, I don't know, most of your private life on this guy.

I was just sort of thinking that, right? Like, especially if you could keep, like, an older couple gen out Pixel that you just kind of have for, like, if you need it for one thing. Or maybe you take that one when you travel or.

Yeah, like something that one can RDP to the other.

I wouldn't need to bring it with me if I'm going over to my friend's house for the night, right?

Yeah, it doesn't maybe have all your passwords, doesn't have all your notes, doesn't have all your pictures, all your history. Right. You know what I was thinking, actually, is.

Especially because I already own several old Pixel phones, you know? Like, I wouldn't have to, like, get a new phone to be my second phone.

I feel like I still haven't landed on the sweet spot for, I'm going to a relative's house, I'm going to a hotel, I'm going to an Airbnb, and I want to take USB-C to HDMI, and I want to put something up on the TV. And because I just, I had my 10-year anniversary with the wife a few weeks ago, and we went to a little Airbnb nearby. And I get in there, and of course, I didn't bring anything to take control of the TV. It didn't even cross my mind.

Uh, yeah.

And a little portable phone that maybe I had a C to HDMI adapter that I could, you know, run Cody on or a jellyfin front end would be really nice. And I've tried to kind of replicate this with the Fire Stick to not really much success. I don't know. I like that idea. Maybe the audience has a device out there that's already perfect for this that they could boost it and tell me about.

At this point you know i don't know if i've tried hdmi but the pixels and those usbc little docs that have you know uh usb and hdmi My own have been fairly well compatible.

Yeah.

So if you had the jellyfin client on your phone connected to your server, maybe we'll do it that way. I don't know if you want to.

But you know, also in this space is the Mecca comet. Yeah. And this one is really out there where like this makes the Libre next seem reasonable and totally achievable because this is in a whole other level of what they're trying to do. It's a modular Linux handheld and it's extensible by slapping on different modules. We've seen these ideas over the past, but my goodness, if this isn't the most slick, elegant version.

I don't know why, but suddenly I love the idea of a phone with a USB-A port.

Heck yeah. And it has these ideas of modules that magnetically snap on and then interface with the device over USB. So they show up to the Linux OS as USB. And they demonstrated this actually functioning at CES.

So it's kind of like what framework does, but just remove the connector.

Yes. And so an example of this is you could, where you might have a keyboard, you could slap off the magnetic keyboard and slap on a controller pad for maybe a Game Boy emulator or maybe a data cable to connect to an external disk. They have right now a GPIO, I guess, accessory. You could call it a gamepad accessory and a keyboard accessory. But it's just general GPIO stuff. It's all USB, pretty basic, open source, how they make it work. So it's nothing really particularly secretive about it.

Whoa.

Yeah. Built with the tools you already know, and they list Chromium. They list Docker, Go, Cute, Rust, obviously, Node, and others. It is also... It's a, it's a Kickstarter. It's a crowdfund. It's a Kickstarter specifically. And it's in the pre-launch mode. It has not technically launched either. They seem to have prototypes because I watched coverage at CES of like a whole booth of them actually functioning and snapping pads on and whatnot.

They seem busy. They've got a GitHub link and, you know, those repos are active.

This might be better for what I'm thinking of. My kind of device, you know, a portable media server. because you could see snapping on a disc.

Yeah, this opens it up to a whole other conception than a traditional phone.

They do have some use cases here, Chris, that I think will bri you over too if you need. One of them called the Car Whisperer. You can add a CAN or ODB port to the common and start talking to your car or RB.

Okay.

The other one here they suggest is build your own tricorder.

Well, I was thinking a portable recorder. You know, if you could have a little USB interface that you could snap on to this thing. Because again, it's just USB with power pins and whatnot. It's pretty straightforward. That could, you know, for events, with the recording, like Audacity running on the little screen, right? You just use, or Reaper even? You could even use Reaper because it's available on ARM. So this is way out there.

It seems like you could sell some to just anyone who worked in like a data center or support environment just with the, you know, USB-A and the Ethernet right there on the side and having a nice keyboard, physical keyboard.

Or like what about Amazon, right? So you buy these as a standard device and then you build a custom snap-on module that's particular to the work case or something like that. I don't know, man. I could see it. Again, not sure I'm pricing. It's a crowdfunder. But these are really interesting ideas. Notable, too, that I think that both of them are running on Debian.

We've seen some, I'd say, confusion or maybe some anger in some of the Linux and open-source community over this. I think, Brent, you had a take I kind of liked.

Well, I have heard a lot of people think, well, what's the deal with Firefox? Like, why are we supporting Chromium-based stuff when we've had Firefox all along? And that's a good question to answer. I don't know who's going to answer it, but it seems like we need one.

Well, the argument I've heard is, well, it has a foundation already. It's Mozilla.

Well, I think I'd also, Brent, I think you said this, that, you know, the Linux Foundation in a way was sort of dealing with the solving for a future where maybe we don't have a Firefox or, you know, we need a healthy Chromium ecosystem because it's going to be here whether we like it or not.

Yeah, but wouldn't the way to solve for that be to support Firefox more?

Not if it's doomed. Then it's just a waste of money.

Oh, my God, that's dark.

I'm using Firefox right now to be clear.

Am I the only one that just is cooking a little conspiracy bacon on this one? To me, this seems like a hedge that the Justice Department might go through with their threats of separating Chromie Ma from Google.

And then they're positioning themselves to be ready for when that happens. That makes sense. I'm going to go with that bacon with you.

Wow. That's rare for Brent. All right. Thank you. I like that.

It wasn't even Canadian bacon.

What do you think? You think it could be like them like laying the cards out or I guess maybe another metaphor would be like preparing the deck, the seats.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know if that's the only reason or it's a direct response, but I think that and sort of a wider concerns around that, especially as we've seen, you know, more and more in Microsoft, you know, there's just like a lot of companies now tied to this code base and a lot of, uh, it's some extent the real economy that relies on it functioning. I think that probably plays a factor. Yeah.

Short Dom in the live chat also points out Electron's a factor here.

True, yeah.

You know, even if Chrome never got separated out, like Electron's such a huge thing now, you'd want to have at least some, maybe they're hoping to get input or developer influence and build influence over time. I'd love to know.

I do think, you know, I mean, the Linux Foundation, for all of its faults, it does seem to do a decent job of being able to, like, help coordinate and provide some funding and centralized, you know, dispatch or whatever for open source projects sometimes.

I feel like I'm missing a wider play.

Well, Chris, I see a big old Join Now button on their website here. Maybe we should do some inside reporting.

Maybe the Unplugged show should become a supporter of Chromium-based browsers.

What if we make our own browser? And you can just only go to the show pages.

That'd be great. That'd be so good. And then I just wanted to wrap up as far as news goes with a shout out to Wine 10.0. Now with native Wayland support and better high DPI support. And I just think this is incredible because the Wine Project was started in 1993.

They just keep going and going and going.

And it is so respectable. 2008 which we covered on this show i think every at least one of our shows wine reached 1.0 and that felt like such a huge deal you know and now here we are 10.0 is out and i think this is also going to make one of my predictions about proton correct in linux unplugged but.

We'll see we'll see it's also like maybe remind ourselves the the promise of what wine advertises that it can do seems kind of impossible in practice you know what i mean like oh yeah you could write a paper about how you could do that sure right but you're gonna keep up with the changes and make real world complicated applications work like a game turns out yeah.

OnePassword.com slash unplugged. That's all lowercase. It's the number one password.com slash unplugged. Okay, I have a question for you. Do your end users always, and I mean always without exception, work on company-owned devices and IT-approved apps? I don't think so. I don't think it's possible. So I think the next natural question is, how do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting in all those unmanaged apps and devices?

All right, well, we are one week away as we record from LUP episode 600. And that includes all of the awesome looking meetups that the community have set up.

Oh, yeah. I'm going to go to colonyevents.com right now. Let's go check them out.

Okay, and something that became clear, and thank you to everyone pointing this out, recently we've been experimenting with an earlier live time by two hours.

Eastern so that way you can join the mumbler room and listen along and pop in the on-air and give us a little shout. I would recommend showing up early so that way we can sort out mumble issues and audio issues, which we'll no doubt have. And then for the Pacific Northwest meetup, we're not having the meetup at the studio because we realized we couldn't really have a party and do the show at the same time.

There's a couple new meetups here I think I want to do a shout out to. There's a FOSDM meetup that popped up because FOSDM is happening at the exact same time. So I think that's pretty exciting.

Yeah although everybody is welcome to continue to use the colony events.com service to schedule meetups forever just if you want to meet up with other JB listeners in there and then you could always boost in or write us and have us give us a shout out so people know to go sign up. We are happy to do that. Every time we go to a meetup, Literally 100%. I'm not saying 99%, not 99.5. 100% of the time we do meetups. The people there say, oh, we should do more

That's right.

And you've recently provided some documentation to indicate that now may be the time. So make your case. I will admit I'm on the fence. I think you two are a little bit more pro than I am. I don't know. I think my hesitation is, um, I have been down this path. I've run free BSD in production. You know, I've, I've tried it. It has been a bit, but I've tried it. So I feel like this is, this is like something I've done. And you guys are like,

So you're saying prospector Chris has been there, done that. And, uh, Prosperster Chris Knows.

Back in his day, he learned a few things.

Well, I think you're a curious fellow, first of all.

Oh, okay.

And, you know, FreeBest, here, you love seeing community-driven open source.

Coming in hot and hard.

That is what FreeBest is.

Immediately going for the soft spot. Immediately.

And a lot of other people have seen that recently because 2024 was like a standout year, I think. in terms of, like, there's just been good investments and donations and improvements.

For FreeBSD?

Yeah.

Oh.

Following AMD and FreeBSD Foundation collaborations and the Sovereign Tech Fund making a big investment, the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research have announced a $750,000 USD commitment to improve laptop support. That's one news item, for instance.

And specifically, it looks like AMD laptops.

Dell, AMD, and Framework.

Okay, okay, okay.

So I think... Okay, maybe we don't have to try it immediately. That's maybe a separate case. But just in general, I think there is more and more reason to think that a couple of years ago, FreeBSD take is outdated. And for that reason alone, we might want to make sure that we're current.

I do think that's your best argument. Yeah, I do agree.

They're also working on improving their audio stack and maybe creating a graphical installer. Those are big changes.

They haven't done that yet.

Well, I mean, it's just serverless.

I guess it could be fun to not have a graphic. That could be fun.

Ghost BSD continues to be developed as well as like a, you know, desktop focus.

That's what I was going to ask you is how much, like, is this, is this like, do we do free BSD because that's the big one or is, is ghost BSD the direction we should go because it's desktop focus and that could be a fun comparison?

Yeah. Or maybe you could do a mix, you know, I think, you know, I think running maybe free BSD on a desktop or a server would be fine. And then you could do ghost BSD as the desktop component if you wanted to.

That's an interesting idea.

I think it's worth trying to make sure you use it in ways that will test the areas that are being developed and improvements.

Okay. You know what? I think that's a good parameter is it has to be tried as a server and as a desktop.

Yeah. Try to get the full sense of how you would use it if you were maybe going to try to actually replace some Linux.

That's fair. Okay. Huh.

Plus, they're making a bunch of investments in their build system and security investments and doing audits, and they're working on zero-trust builds now.

Hmm. Look at them go, huh?

Also, reproducible builds, they've got efforts there. I think at one point, at least in 2024, they were talking about maybe integrating Rust. I don't know where that conversation went offhand.

It'd be interesting to see how ZFS is integrated now that they've had it for so long.

Right. Yeah, they've got very nice boot environment support that you can get going, so we should definitely play with that.

And I have become a fan of the centralized config file. I mean, it used to be part of how FreeBSD worked, because a lot of that was just went into one configuration file, which I really liked about FreeBSD back then. Brent, what are your thoughts?

Oh, I'm in. Like I've been BSD curious. I don't know, maybe for even two years now. I mean, people have been suggesting it to us for quite a long time. Yes, we do listen to you. Don't worry. But also with all these new developments, it feels like, why wouldn't we give it a shot?

Hmm. Okay. All right. So let's think about some parameters. Got to use it as a server. see what it's like to host something like a home lab thing or a production thing.

Yeah.

I gotta try it as a desktop on physical hardware?

Ideally I guess.

Maybe I'd kind of be I'd like to try both I suppose.

Yeah.

Okay. What do you think Brent? Is there anything any other things that?

Well one question I have is how long is the challenge?

Hmm. Hmm.

How long did we do the 32 bit?

I don't know.

Was that a week?

And I wonder should we delay it so the audience could participate like we shouldn't probably we shouldn't launch it.

Yeah well and also we may want to ask if we have experienced FreeBSD folks.

Yeah I.

Bet they will have some like pointers to things we don't want to miss while trying to check it out.

Right okay so those are the things that we're going to need to know is like yeah basically we're totally noobs to this again because it has been a long time so what should we know and what should we try and are you willing to take a challenge with us I guess boost in or go to linuxunplugged.com slash contact and let us know and I think if we get some good feedback maybe we just launch it in episode 600 next week and then 600 will be the week we launch it and maybe

On bsd right.

I don't know, I don't think so. No, but what I'm saying is the previous times I tried FreeBSD, I was coming at it from like an Ubuntu user's perspective, which is totally fine. But I think there's more similarities in the way, you know, you configure Nix and FreeBSD than there would be with FreeBSD and Ubuntu. So there may be less of a culture shock this time. I don't know. I could be totally wrong, but that's my that's my suspicion. Why have you never tried it, Brent?

Well, I remember poking around at GhostBSD and even Hello Systems when we did the 32-bit challenge, because those seemed to be some of the only ones that supported the very odd CPU that I had in the machine that was sort of dropped off in my front door. But I think mostly it's just because we've never done a challenge. I don't really have a better excuse than that, to be honest.

Well, this will be great. So this will be your first time. I know you've must have run it before, Wes, right? Oh, yeah.

I've had a couple of FreeBSD servers over the years.

We've probably tried it once or twice on the show years ago.

I think we must have, yeah.

Okay. You got me with the I haven't used it in years thing. It has been a really, I mean, it's probably been pre-10. I think FreeBSD 9 was the last time I tried it.

Yeah, I even, for a little tiny bit, I was renting a dedicated server.

Really?

From Hetzner and running FreeBSD on it.

Just because you wanted to?

Yeah, well, I was trying it. I dabbled with it before and I wanted to get like more of a sense for, you know, really running it.

How did it work?

Worked well. It had like, I think, four disks in it. So, you know, I had ZFS going. I did eventually replace it. I think ultimately at that time it was an Ubuntu box running LexD with a bunch of containers.

All right. Well, Boosted and let us know if you're in on the FreeBSD Challenge and if you have any guidance for us as well, which we can incorporate. And then we'll officially kick it off next week. So you don't have to do anything yet because we're going to incorporate everybody's feedback, set all the final parameters next week, and then officially launch it.

Well, we got to do it because we already got hybrid. Hybrid's in.

All right.

So, you know, if you want to be cool like hybrid, join us.

Episode 600 is next week. Can you believe it? It feels like a milestone. It feels like a rare one. Not many podcasts get this far. And if you've been on the fence or been meaning to boost, this is your time. We'd love to hear from some first-time boosters and long-time boosters to celebrate episode 600. Maybe we'll even put it on the charts. Wouldn't that be pretty cool? Strike and Fountain tend to be the combo, the easiest to get started,

Well, that said, we do have some pretty amazing boosts here, and we do have a baller of a baller in Eric the Red.

Yes, Mr. Red writes with his 100,000 sats. Thank you for all the great shows. During the middle of the night, I started to think about how amazing open source software is. Someday, we'll learn to apply these same community-based efforts to things like energy and investing and be more prosperous. I hope so. I just updated two Nix OS machines that started on 2305 to 2411 with no issues. That is nice. Also, Jess did the same. I revived the dead Thaleo.

Oh, right.

Oh, nice.

And went from 2305 to 2411. I had to change. I had to comment out like the, something in there I like about enabling sound. Like you just don't have to do that anymore.

Yeah.

And that was it. And then it was off to the races. It was really awesome. He says, Brent's comment on not distro hopping since adopting NixOS has been true with me as well. NixOS has been a great desktop operating system.

Oh, glad it's working well for you.

Yeah, I know. That's why that take that we covered, where it was like even experienced Linux users shouldn't use it on the desktop, just felt like it really missed it. It really missed it.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that it got right.

And you know what? I also, for many years, was very happy with Arch and Fedora and Ubuntu as my desktops. So it really just depends on what gear works for you. And thank you very much for being our baller user, Eric the Red. We really appreciate you. And you got in before we clicked over to 600. Thank you very much.

Turd Ferguson boosts in with 88,222 cents. I was going to write a blog post about how Windows isn't ready for the desktop, but no one would read it.

Oh, Bert.

Coming in hot, Turd. Coming in hot.

Well, our dear producer Jeff boosted in two boosts for a total of 28,888 Satoshis. He says, I find it hard to recommend any particular distro to people these days. It really depends on their backgrounds. Wait, Chris, it's your birthday. Happy birthday, Chris, he says in his second boost here. He says, I wish I could join live today, but I'm busy earning that fiat S coin. Have you heard of S coin? so I can buy more sats.

There you go. You got to mine it somehow, right? Either directly or in the fiat mines. Thank you, producer Jeff. And I agree. Every distro is, it's like a personal recommendation based on their work and what they're doing, what their expectations are on a computer and how they're going to use it, right? It's a personal thing these days. I know it's weird to say that because Windows and macOS are supposed to be one size fits all.

But I mean, right? People have preferred tool brands. So is it that surprising?

Oh, you're right. There's so many different like electric drills and whatnot. That's a great perspective, Wes. Hybrid sarcasm comes in with 27,500 sats. Yeah, he is. Who's ready for LUP600? The Central Florida Orlando Listening Party has secured a location. Well done. All the deets are at colonyevents.com. Even Mike from Coda Radio has RSVP.

Wow.

Isn't that great? Isn't that? It's so great.

I think hybrid has more pull than we do.

Yeah, sounds like it.

All you wanting the remote meetups to be able to join on Air Mumble via LUP600? Quick shout out to the check-in or something like that. Oh, he wants us to give one. Yeah, and Hybrid's trying it today too. So ideally, you go to jupiterbroadcasting.com slash mumble. You get the mumble app installed. And then you get a microphone and you get headphones on. And you get in the quiet listening. Or there's like a joint queue actually. And we'll kind of go through and make sure your mic's working.

So I think what you're saying, Chris, is for LUP600, we'd love to hear from a variety of the listening parties happening. Just a little quick report on what the scene looks like and who's that.

Yeah, and in that case, you know, maybe it's a USB microphone and a pair of headphones if possible, and then, you know, people can come by and, or maybe headphones aren't possible. I don't know. But yeah, that would be perfect. We'll see how it goes. It's definitely an experiment. Thank you, hybrid. It's always great to hear from you.

Why is Papa John boosted with 22,222 sets? Plus, one for the Tuxies, I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't vote in 2024. I was away from podcasts for a few months and I'm just getting caught up. The Tuxies finally convinced me to set up Image, though. What do you guys use for monitoring server stats like CPU and hard drive temps? Unraid has temps in its GUI, but I'd love to pipe that data into somewhere that I'll actually see it.

Oh, wise Papa John. We would love to hear your thoughts on that. And don't ever worry about falling behind and boosting on an old topic. A, it is good signal for us to know where the audience is at in the listening backlog. So when people boost from an old episode, it's good for us to know where people are at. Just from like a content release schedule so we know what our expectations are.

Yeah, I think so. thank.

You wise papa john.

Also thank you papa john uh sent a second boost just to let me know that my split failed so just thank you for the info and uh sorry about that i will rejuggle some liquidity after i got a channel class i know i won't i'm motivated to fix that all.

Right all right.

Well distro stew was motivated sent in five boosts for a total of 20 301 sats, Per your year-end prediction about a major platform rolling out a declarative system, I think it's coming. I've been playing with some small but interesting projects around this. For example, there's a Metapack, there is also Deckman, and a ConfManager. All have different takes on the solution, but I like where they're going.

I don't know if this quite qualifies, but I'm inclined to want it to, so I'm definitely going to look into it.

It is active. It's been, yeah, there's people doing stuff around there, and it looks like it's been around for at least two years.

And a quick follow-up to our previous boost because we totally forgot to actually answer what do we use to monitor things like.

Cpu and.

Hard drives and.

Temperatures we did um well yeah net.

Data for a long time uh although there's been some troubling developments there recently oh there you guys on self-hosted talked about a great little option that's relatively new with bezel right.

Yep i would say the last episode and the episode before that really the episode before that we get into it and then we have a brief follow-up at the top of the most recent episode of self-hosted so the last two episodes kind of get into this topic uh net data is still probably my favorite but uh you know bizall is a little bit lighter a little bit more limited um but also, just totally free and open isn't trying to go for like a you know like a cloud monetization strategy.

Depending on like retention needs and scale you know you can do like a cloud native thing with the prometheus agent and prometheus and grafana or something like that or influx db is is totally fine too.

This is an area i would love to also take in input from the audience if there's other cool tools out there some real cool tools that do this that i don't know about that kind of do the net data thing.

There's a lot of options.

I know, but there's got to be some good ones.

I am sure the audience has some killer picks in this area.

Gene Bean comes in with a row of Nix. I don't get not touching your Nix config. I'm always using new tools and doing new stuff, and therefore I mess with my config a lot. Additionally, I keep most things in Nix because my system isn't reproducible otherwise. As a result, I forget to document something otherwise. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. That is the nice self-documenting. If I set up VMI flag, I won't forget about

Well, I think I was thinking about this because I saw the boost come in. And I think to some extent we were almost saying, you know, like Gene isn't running into the problems that some other folks are seemingly. So we were kind of addressing problems maybe that Gene isn't having to the same extent.

I agree. Like, when I was getting the Thalia going again and I just, like, commented out the sound stuff, enable sound.

Versus, like, writing a new helper function to set up config for multi-machine or something.

But in the last episode, when we talked about when we last touched our configs, I was literally using the last modified date, which is December for me. And I just think I get to a point where a system is pretty set up. And then anything that I add, I either do via Nix shell just to try it out or a flat pack.

Yeah. And you, uh, you are, you do use Nix shell. And I was going to say from seeing some of your Nix configs, I would say you have already accumulated a lot. Like you probably have 95% of the tools you're going to use at all. Yeah.

Yeah, I really do. You know, that's the one thing about using it every day for so many years.

You're going with like the six gig everything installed version of Ubuntu.

It's minimal in my own way.

But that's also been the promise of a Nix config was that the things you solved would just pay dividends in the future. So, yeah, you put a bunch of upfront time, but then it gets less and less and less as time moves on. And I've seen that at least to be true in my particular use case.

Yeah. I wonder though, perhaps, I mean, I'm looking at Gene's setup here. You know, he, I mean, I think he's just learning. And as he learns, he's kind of refactoring and building it better. And so that's why he's touching it more frequently, where I've kind of just been like, ah, it's working.

Yeah, that makes sense too. You can be kind of, there's different modes that you end up in.

Yeah.

And if you're actively developing.

Thank you, Gene.

I will say too, something that works okay for me is if I'm going to like make a trade-off between like I was going to try to manage the Nix, but right now I'm going to just not, is sometimes I'll just leave comments in my, somewhere in my Nix so that they're documented there of, hey, I'm managing this elsewhere. Right. Warning.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I caught my brother with his Nix config, like he was making a few changes and I was just looking over his shoulder and there's a bunch of to-do items in his Nix configs, like figure this out later. So I think that's a really nice approach too.

Shapira May. Huh? What do you guys think?

Yeah!

Shapira May boosts in with 4,321 sats. Hello! Talking about NixOS, have you guys checked out Replit.com? It's an online development platform that gives you a virtual machine with pre-installed Nix packages, depending on what language you want, and it's basically an in-browser IDE.

Thank you for the tip I have to admit, slipped my purvey My purvey Okay.

Here's a fun question Okay Follow-up boost All right, So about the old to-do list.

Yeah.

Do you ever have moments when you're in the shower?

Yes.

Some situation where you just like can't get to your phone or a notepad.

Yes.

And you remember something you have to do and an idea you really want to capture.

Yes.

Do you have a solution for that? Shower Linux, please.

You know, I've thought about this so many times. So I do sometimes bring my phone into the shower now and I have kind of above the shower, I put a magnetic mount. and then I just slap the phone up there and it doesn't really get wet and then if I have to, I can document it and that's just because I've really lost some good ones. I've lost some real good idea babies and I do not want to lose any more idea babies. So I do that, but I have thought about the whiteboard thing.

Well, I would say the shower is definitely like my sacred think tank, but I've gone full psychopath mode and I got a permanent waterproof marker and I just write stuff on the walls. And so if you saw my washroom, it just is scary.

Oh my God, are you serious?

Will you take a picture.

Please?

No, I'm not serious. Oh my God, that's good.

Brett. I love that visual.

But I have certainly thought of it because like really if I'm in this like deep thinking mode, which happens for me all the time in the shower, I want the simplest solution possible. So even the fact of like picking up my phone and having to unlock it with wet hands and then finding the app and then creating a new note that is somehow categorized and then writing the thing is that's too much friction.

It is a real shame. My other one is driving. Again, I don't have a great system for that. I can sometimes capture on the phone.

Yeah, sometimes.

Do you have a way to capture great shower thoughts?

No, I've been thinking about this. And the car, I think the car one gets me more often.

Yeah. I can imagine you're driving up to the studio. You've got like an hour.

Somehow the shower, I have a little, it's like I can, if I'm willing to stop the thread, I can kind of keep the insight.

Yeah. Yeah, I definitely have been like rushed the shower a little bit, finished up, and then like dried off quickly, got down and just wrote it down and then got back to finishing up to, you know, the whole shower routine. Too much information, but I would love to know how people are capturing that. I'm taking a lot of different sacrifices. Nothing's working.

Can you do like whiteboard paint on your shower wall?

I like that. Brett was thinking permanent marker, which I think I would have a good idea.

But I also don't want it to be permanent, so I don't know.

Somewhat Justin came in with 4,000 and 4sats. It says he just wanted to say, thank you for your mention of Bazite. I picked up an Asus RIG Raleigh. Oh, that's the machine my son has. On sale, and thanks to the show, I already knew I needed some Linux, and Bazite was a great option. What a perfect match for that laptop.

Nice.

Those things are really meant for gaming. Good call. The install was fairly easy, according to the benchmarks. It seems to perform better than the default OS, which was Windows.

That's great.

I'm not surprised.

These handhelds are so fun, excited for the coverage of SteamOS. Oh, man, I'm so excited to see where SteamOS goes, too. When it starts getting distributed, which they've kind of been hinting at, we're going to be all over that.

Maybe we could use it to run a server.

Of course we're going to try.

Wham Geek boosts in with 6,444 sets. Hey guys, when I hear tuxies, I always think of the Oscars. So I'd like to suggest aligning the annual tuxies to occur on the same day as the Oscars.

Put our tuxes on and everything?

Like we don't already.

Right. This moves them maybe away from the holiday season, but it keeps it a night of celebration and fanfare. Pairing the two adds a layer of fun spotlighting open source achievements alongside, you know, mainstream culture. Plus it taps into the shared excitement of awards season.

You know, the only flaw here is it actually almost be kind of fun in a way to do it the old way one last time. Because the Oscars are on March 2nd.

Oh.

Yeah. But if we could get, because all we'd have to do, I wonder, could we rejigger the survey a little bit and just do it one last time for fun? Now I almost want to do it.

Isn't that weird? What's the cost?

What is wrong with me? I want to kill it, and then now I want to do it again.

Well, because the stakes are different.

You're right. You're right. I'd almost be willing to do it if people are interested. Just ironically, almost. Like the spring tuxies.

We'll boost in for $600 a week.

Yeah, we'll figure it out. Let us know if you're interested, because otherwise maybe I'm just being a jackass. It really is a stupid idea. But it is, right? It's the dumbest idea I've had in weeks, isn't it? Don't you think?

I think it is. I have to go check the notes.

You've had a lot of ideas this week.

Both of you. Boy, I've had a bad week apparently. Amazing. Amazing. Outing me right now on this show. Thank you, everybody, who boosted in. We really appreciate it. Also, thank you, everybody, who streamed sats as you listen. 38 of you streamed those sats. And collectively, y'all stacked 56,449 sats. And then when you combine that with our boosters, we had 47 people participate in the value for value process for episode 599.

It's mostly a pick-based show, and then we do some other segments on the side.

I think if anybody skips this, they're missing out, especially the last few weeks. And I think one of you found Olive Tin this week.

No, no. It came from a booster last week.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Right. And we wanted to make sure we kind of brought it forward again. So Olive Tin is a safe and simple access to predefined shell commands from a web interface and so picture a interface that would work with big buttons on a mobile device or on your desktop and you have just things like ping the internet or check d message logs delete old backups restart a docker container just buttons to do stuff.

You combine that with a mesh network and bam.

Yeah or um you know i could see on my tablets there could be like a little like hey wife i need you to take care of stuff screen and it brings this up and there's buttons where she hits a button and it restarts the server channel you know i like that i could just be.

Paired with your stream deck for instance.

Could totes you could totes probably do that hmm i would like physical buttons so that could be kind of nice all right and then this next pick is open tv and i have really been enjoying ersatz tv which lets me have a television network inside my home you create custom live channels using your own local media and they show up as iptv streams and you can have different iptv players that can pull in like the scheduling data ersatz also generates scheduling data so i can see when

I don't want to have to set up Jellyfin just to enjoy.

That is, yeah. Or like maybe you could tune VLC into one of the particular streams if you're a maniac. OpenTV has been recently rewritten, and they're also making a plea for contributions via GitHub, Patreon, PayPal, or Crypto. But it is a desktop app that runs on the various desktop operating systems that gives you a front end to any IPTV system. It doesn't have to be URSATS TV, but that's what I'm using it for.

Yeah, this looks pretty sleek.

And it is a DVR as well. So it'll import the M3U file and the metadata for the playlist. It'll record while you're watching. It can record multiple streams at once. They have crazy optimize it for super low RAM usage with really fast UI.

Okay, well, now I want to try this for me to like record my favorite hits from your ersatz stream.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, there's also a surprising amount of public IPTV streams.

Yeah, that's true.

Especially like Europe news. Like there's a lot of European news stations that just make an IPTV stream of their station. There's not as many in the States, but there are a couple. And there's a couple of public broadcast stations that do it as well. So you don't even have to have any service in particular. But if you have AirSats TV and you want something to watch it and DVR on your desktop, you can use OpenTV to sit in front of that.

While we're here, license check. What are our pick licenses today?

Oh, you're right. Thank you. I've been, you know what? I've been really trying to.

We've been hit or miss, but we're trying.

I've been trying to add them to the notes. I did not add them to the notes this week.

Well, I can report on Olivetan here. It looks like we've got a, Olivetan is AGPL 3.0.

Very, very nice. And Open TV is GPL 2. So we got some very, very fussy picks for you this week. Very nice. Thank you, Wes. I should have noted that in the notes. I need to have like a checklist of picks now.

Yeah, maybe we should add it to the template.

Yeah, that is a great idea.

I'll do that.

Well, it looks like your ersatz TV here is a license. I'm not sure about. Zlib license? Have you heard of this one before?

Better check the FSF list.

I mean, I know Zlib. I like Zlib a lot.

It's extremely simple. It's four paragraphs, not even.

Really?

Yeah, worth looking at. I don't know if this applies, but.

I don't know if the SFF would approve.

Yeah, see, this is paying dividends already.

Remember, we want to hear your thoughts on if you would be willing to crowdfund either the Mecha Comet or the Librex Nex. Have you been sufficiently burned? Or is the dream of a Linux phone still alive in your heart? I genuinely would like to know. And then ultimately, we need your guidance on the FreeBSD challenge. Are you willing to participate? What requirements or rules should we follow that we haven't mentioned in the show already?

Plus, I don't know, you know, maybe you can't make every live stream. I bet 600 is going to be especially fun.

Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. Even if it's not 600, we still had a good time. We hope you did too. And of course, links to what we talked about there at slash 599. Thank you so much. And we'll see you right back here next Tuesday as in Sunday. Whoa! Some breaking news. That was a news eagle.

Yeah, this month Deepin25 came out, which is a distro. We don't really follow that closely, but they are implementing some big steps towards immutability powered by OS3.

No!

And in their own system, they're calling Solid.

Deepin's going immutable?

Yeah, and Atomic.

I gotta look this up. Where is this?

It's in the release notes for 25. But yeah, they're mounting the core directories read only. This is powered by OS tree. And then they're doing the like, you know, atomic style reboot into the new system approach. I don't know if it's like for everything, but they're at least starting to adopt it.

The solid, the deep and immutable system focuses on the stability and security of the system. It provides users with a stable, reliable, and easy to maintain experience through the technology such as read-only protection, atomic updates, and snapshot management.

Yeah. And it's also got the like, you know, if it fails to boot, it'll automatically roll back to the previous version. It's happening folks It's happening.

I mean it's just a better way to compute Come on.