647: Plausibly Postulated Prophecies

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, and joining us as referee this week, it's our friendly editor, Drew. Hello, Drew.

Welcome to the Thunderdome.

Uh-oh.

That's a little indication of how it's going to go today. Today, we are owning up to our 2025 predictions. We'll see how we did. And then we're going to make bold and powerful 2026 predictions. So don't miss that. Then we're going to round out the show with some really great booze, some pics, and a lot more. This is where I'd say hello, Mumble Room, but shout out to those of you that are up there in the quiet listening right now. Look at them. Look at them.

Listening so quietly.

So quietly. If only my kids could be that quiet.

I don't hear them.

I know. Because they're in there quiet listening. Hello to all of you that join us in that live Mumble Room. Going every single Sunday that we do this here show. And a big good morning to our friends at Defined Networking. Defined.net slash unplugged. Go check out Managed Nebula. This is what you want to build on. It's a decentralized VPN that is built on top of the open source Nebula project that we already trust and love. It's out there. It's fully open source.

Oh, boy. Well, I better go quick.

I swear, like, years are getting shorter or something. It feels like we just did this.

I know, right? I know. It's crazy. LinuxFest Northwest is back in April, the 24th to the 26th, 2026 at Bellingham Technical College. and I believe that big area is going to be back available to us again.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

It was a great time last year.

It was nice. If you can believe it, that's only 117 days away, which means if you include holidays in this, except for U.S. federal holidays, that's 82 business days away, which makes it 16 Linux unplugs away, which means Brent needs to be on the road by episode 660.

I really appreciate how you give me the heads up because I need it.

Oh, boost in your bet by which episode he actually hits the road.

And which route should I take?

You better. Also, if you want to catch up on how the van, or a.k.a. the bang bus, is doing, Brent stopped by the launch episode 46 at weeklylaunch.rocks. Nature chose violence, and Brent tells quite the tale, which I appreciated. Also, I talk a little bit about the flooding that hit the Pacific Northwest.

You've been a local weatherman.

It was quite the thing, Wes. I became an island is what happened. I became an island for real. So that is weeklylaunch.rocks and episode 46 for that. And we'll have a link to the LinuxFest Northwest 2026 call for speakers if that interests you.

You're making us make good on it.

We got to see how we did for 2025.

Did anyone else completely forget their predictions from last year?

Yes.

I only remembered one of mine and the others. I feel like it wasn't even me who wrote those or committed to those. But there's evidence, right, somewhere?

There is evidence. In fact, we have audio on tape. So let's start with Brent's first prediction. For 2025.

I believe in 2025, we will see a commercially available machine be released using RISC-V from major vendors.

That's not my best prediction sentence, got to say. Machine is not very good. Yeah, Drew, you should have caught me on that.

Well, I wasn't judging last year, so that's not on me.

Well, we needed you. I'm nervous about this one.

For those that are new to the show, Drew is here to play referee to make sure that we have good, solid predictions that should be measurable by the next year. And so this is a tricky one, ref. I think we might have to start with right away. I think you could call this technically true in the sense that Meta, in March of 2025, started deploying their custom AI and training inference chips built around RISC-V in their data center.

So here's the tricky part, custom. All right. So these guys are making their own risk five boards. Is that correct? Or are they selling them?

Mm hmm.

I believe you do have them on a technicality there. I think they may be at least having them manufactured on their behalf.

Yeah. So for it to be commercially available, it needs to be sold from one company to another. That can't be an in-house product.

Mm hmm. I think that's fair. It's not commercially available. It's privately available.

So yeah, if you can tell me a company that is commercially producing these and selling them, it's a win. If you can't, it's a loss.

I think this was a failure in describing my prediction, I will say. So I remember the sort of intention for this prediction was specifically around desktop computers. So when I use the word machine in saying a commercially available machine, I should have said a commercially available like desktop or tablet or single. Exactly. So I was thinking more available for the consumer market.

Okay.

So if we take it from that perspective, I do recall that the framework did make available a RISC-V board. but I think I'm going to fail myself on that from a technicality unless anyone else can help me win this one because that was announced February 4th, and our episode was February 5th, so I feel like it's not fair to make a prediction that happened the day before.

Oh, you didn't have to out yourself.

I'm the honest one here.

So it was announced.

Yeah, the day before the episode. He didn't know about it, but it was technically public information the day before the episode.

At least for my limited research, which is, yeah, that's not fair.

You know, I'd say, are we doing half points?

Wow.

I could get behind half points. If Wes doesn't object, I could get behind a half point. We could do that, like a .5.

Okay, yeah. All right, we'll be generous this year. It is the holidays.

It is the holidays.

That was unbelievable.

Half a point.

And there was definitely an uptick in the deployment of RISC-V.

Mm-hmm.

Fair. Fair. Okay. All right. Well, Brantley, you win on a technicality. Congratulations.

What are we doing?

Wow.

All right. I'm going to keep this. I'm going to keep track here. I'll keep track. All right. So, Brentley, you had a second prediction for us. You said in 2025, this was definitely going to happen.

In 2025, the Ubuntu core desktop will be found as either a download on ubuntu.com slash download or as an Ubuntu flavor.

I, this was like half prediction, half hope. I was really hoping this was going to happen for Ubuntu's future generally.

I don't know if our wish casting generally works or does it?

It does not seem to work.

I know. That's where I trip up on my predictions is I just put in my own desires in there. And sometimes they happen and most of the time they don't.

Here's the deal, ref. I looked it up. No, it is not downloadable on Ubuntu.com. The traditional Ubuntu desktop release is shipped as scheduled, but the ubuntu desktop that is the ubuntu core version and immutable snap only version of the os did not graduate to a standard download option and is still very much under development so i think that one's kind of a clear yeah loser yeah sorry brently no.

It's fine i also have to add that, Given zero action last year, it felt like, on this, a micro prediction is that this year doesn't feel so good for this either.

Does it? Okay, so zero points for that one. But let's see what your next one was, because maybe you had a vision for this next one. I was very impressed.

In 2025, we will see a tech YouTuber of over a million subscribers do a iSwitched-style video for Linux, using it as their main desktop OS for a period of time.

Wow, did you nail that one. So, yeah. On April 26, 2025, PewDiePie, I installed Linux, and so should you. PewDiePie has 110 million subscribers, and as of this AM, the video has seen 7.3 million views, and it's the third most popular Linux video on YouTube.

Yeah. It took a couple months, but that was an early win.

Very clear win.

Wow, Brent.

I mean, do we know that Brent and PewDiePie aren't friends, or there's some sort of back-channeling?

Not only was there that, But then there was a kind of a secondary effect of many other YouTubers making Linux content as well.

Lots of reaction videos based on it, right? It was a whole hoopla there for a couple of weeks.

In a way, you were not bullish enough. Okay. Congratulations, sir. So that's 1.5 points for Mr. Brentley, I believe. So not bad, Brent, not bad.

Of a possible three points, is that it? So 50%.

Yep.

Yeah.

I'll take it.

Yeah, I mean, better than zero, as has been some of my years in the past. And that YouTuber one was great. All right, gentlemen, so it's my time to see how I did.

You're up here.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. All right, so I said in 2025, this was my first prediction. And this was definitely going to happen.

In 2025, inspired by NixOS, but not based on NixOS, a major distribution-based flavor, spin, or remix will ship a declarative configuration system for a reproducible system state.

Now, there have been forks of NixOS, but I don't think that was my intention here. BlendOS is a thing, but I don't think that's probably a mainstream major distro. But I'm wondering what you guys think about OpenSUSE, because you have OpenSUSE, Aeon, and Kalpa. In 2025, they announced these two different variants, and they have doubled down on the zero-config declarative philosophy, they say. It's based on micro OS. It uses two specific tools to have declarative setups.

I have three questions.

Okay.

Three things.

Fair.

Well, I guess one of them is combined. So you made some notes here. The length of the notes combined with the fact that it's you talking about OpenSUSE makes it seem like a stretch automatically. my other question is like i don't think the ignition stuff is new i don't know about the butane so how much of this is a thing that was net new to 2025.

Well the announcement of aeon and calpa was 2025.

But was is the declarative or tech they're using well.

No i don't think so But the distribution that uses the.

Declarative tech was.

Yeah. The wording is a major distribution-based flavor or spin or remix will ship a declarative configuration system. So it only had to ship in this year.

Okay. Questions.

All right. What do you think, though?

Can I download this today?

Yes, you can.

Okay. Yeah. So ignition files are not a new thing at all.

No. No.

I mean, Cloud in it and the like are...

Very old but this is this also gives you desktop zero config declarative desktop open source setup yeah it's like they're silver blue you could maybe kind of well.

That's okay see that seems yeah i do think maybe you might have to install this on airmaster if you get.

The point.

All right so calpa and aon are brand new for 2025 using these ignition setups.

And butane yeah yeah butane and ignition yeah sure.

Well you can't have ignition without the fuel source.

Right see you get it yeah see they're good at naming.

I'm fine with it.

Oh! Yes!

Yeah.

One point. All right, one point for me. That was a hard point I had to earn, but I'm going to take it. I had to work for that one. Yeah.

Do you feel good about what you've done?

I mean, I was hoping to see more. I really was. I was hoping to see more. And when CacheOS Server Edition came out, I was hoping that would be something like that.

And this one was a hard one for me to say yes to, because an admission file is not really the same thing as a Nix config. It's just not. But...

No.

But it's arguably declarative, right?

Technically, it is a declarative config.

It is, right?

Yeah.

You can install your software, your networking, get it all set up.

Begrudgingly, you get the point.

I think this next one's not going to be super easy either. Here is my second prediction for 2025.

In 2025, Debian 13 Trixie will ship, and every desktop that is capable of supporting Wayland will have Wayland support turned on by default.

See, this is going to be a nuanced thing because there are desktops that are technically...

How many desktops does Devin even ship?

Well, I pulled the top four.

Okay.

I pulled the top four, and once you know it, it's right down the middle. So, GNOME 48 is shipping with Waylon by default in Trixie. So is Plasma 6.3. Those are both shipping with Waylon by default. However, LXQ 2.1 is using X11 by default and does technically support Wayland via LabW or LibAWBWC something, but is experimental. And XFCE 4.20 also ships with X11 by default, but the team considers it experimental and should not be used for regular users and should only be used for testing only.

What does capable mean.

Hard fail.

I really, if I just would have left, I could have just kept it a little more vague, you know?

There is an art to that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that's a hard fail. Sorry.

All right. Okay.

I was hoping.

I blame XFCE and LXQT.

Experimental means technically capable.

Okay.

Turned off by default means you fail.

It is technically, if I hadn't said technically, I think that would have been a winner. Okay, well, I feel a little better about this next one, although at the time I was like, hmm, this is going to be a winner, a slam dunk. It actually was a nail-biter almost up until the end.

In 2025, Valve will release Proton 10.0. They will tout brand new types of compatibility with Windows games, and it will be released before the end of 2025.

I expected it to actually become much earlier in the year, but Proton 10.0 beta was released in April, but Stable did not actually ship until November 13th of 2025, and a major update just went out to 10.0, version 10.0-4 in late December. So this one, I actually just got in under the line when I thought I was getting a slam dunk. But, I mean, that one's cut and dry, easily measurable. The stable version of Proton 10 shipped on November 13th. What do you think, Ref? It's a winner, right?

What types of new compatibility are there?

Ah, so many games that previously required Proton Experimental were now moved to the stable branch, and they addressed issues with certain games, like Assassin's Creed Shadows, that had video playback issues, And another game that had issues that didn't work before was Resident Evil Village, which began working with Proton 10. There's other games, obviously, but those are the ones that stuck out.

Okay. Yeah.

Good. Good to go.

Yeah. You've taken the lead.

Dang.

That brings you up to a two.

I have two points, Wes Payne. Let's see if you can beat a 2.0.

I certainly can't.

I love, well, what I love about you, Wes's predictions, he often shoots for the stars and makes it fun. So let's see what Wes said would happen in 2025, his first prediction.

I predict that in 2025, Chris Fisher purchases a RISC-V device that is a RISC-V device that has a RISC-V processor as its primary CBU.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, you really failed me on this one.

There's still time. There's still time.

That is true, but nothing's in my shopping cart, Wes.

Well, why not? What are you waiting for?

What do you think, Rev? I think that's a fail right there.

I'd like to ask here, what was your motivation, Wes? What was your thinking on this one?

He buys a lot of gadgets for himself, and there's just been a lot of chat about RISC-V.

Ah, you see, I didn't buy many gadgets this year.

Yeah. I blame inflation.

Yeah.

I was hoping you were right. I think we were feeling like it was going to be a big year and it was but just not in a way that impacted and like.

I could have seen like you know was there like some kind of little tiny like old school phony size gadget or terminal or.

Little development.

Board that could I don't know.

Or like a little laptop thingy sort of thing but I think that's a fail ref that.

Little emulation thing that you bought from like Alibaba or whatever that that doesn't run risk 5.

It does not then nope sorry, All right, zero points.

Risky prediction.

Fun prediction. That's one I wish would have happened.

Maybe you'll get it in this year.

You never know. Could be the year of RISC-V. You never know. All right, Wes's next prediction for 2025.

I predict that in 2025, a distribution or spin or addition will feature BcacheFS as default file system, by which I mean you can go to the website, download an ISO, click through the defaults of the installer without having to change anything, and you will get BcacheFS as your main file system.

What do you think.

Wes? You know. Sadly, this is one I was hoping for, too.

Yeah. In a way, I think that's gone the opposite direction. I think it's a good setup for 2026.

True, yeah. We're getting to a point of, I mean, the experimental label might actually be off here real soon, too, so that's probably a reasonable precursor before it's likely, at least. But I was being hopeful.

What do you think, Rav? It was hopeful, but seemingly misses the mark?

It missed the mark. Yeah. Sorry. That's a no go.

All right. Well, let's see. He may have made up for it with his last prediction for 2025. Wes Payne said this was absolutely going to happen in 2025.

I predict that at the end of 2025, all three of us, Chris, Wes, and Brent, are using NixOS stock, you know, regular NixOS, not a derivative, as our primary workstation desktop operating system.

All right, we got a little nuance here. Because this is technically true, but technically not, because I'm running Hypervibe on my systems.

I think Hypervibe counts.

I think so.

Because you're just using Nix packages.

Right, right.

When you install Hypervibe, do you install Nix and then switch it into Hypervibe?

Yes, technically I do right now. So is that the moment it switches? I like this line. So yes, I am installing mainline Nix, and then I destroy it.

And there's nothing that you couldn't get with what you have from just a Nix file. As long as you could just do that and get what you have.

Yep. What about you, Brantley? NixOS is your main daily driver?

Well, I kind of feel like it was my daily driver before the predictions episode from last year. So I haven't changed it, I don't think, at all this year. So I'm NixOS all the way.

It is a possibility. It could happen.

Yeah, we try a lot of distros over the years, so you never know.

So there's a lot of trying, but I always seem to come back.

Okay, so what do you think, ref? Can we excuse the hyper-vibe technicality and consider this one a winner?

It's not even a technicality. He just gets it.

Hey! All right.

No shout-out.

That does put him in last place, but I mean.

That does. One point for Wes Payne. All right. So as far as last year's predictions go, Brantley comes in at a 1.5. Well done, Brantley. Very nice.

That half point.

I didn't even fight for it.

I come in at a victorious two points.

Ha ha ha.

And Wes Payne ranked in at one solid point, which honestly.

Big beefy point. That's what I say.

Hey, that one point's doing a heavy lift. That means none of us got a zero. That's not too bad for forecasting the future. Really, if you think about it, those are pretty good odds. I bet you most weathermen aren't that accurate. So we have that going for us. Onepassword.com slash unplug. That's the number one and then password. And it's unplugged, all lowercase. If your employees bypass security to use unapproved apps that they feel they need to do their job, you're not alone.

All right gentlemen it is the time that we've all been waiting for it's our 2026 predictions, now you guys are really going to have to impress me on this i am not going to take any slack on this your predictions need to be concise they need to be accurate and what you say and how you say it matters. So let's go. Brent, you're up first. What is your first prediction?

Well, after that, I'm feeling pretty nervous because I didn't workshop any of my predictions. So I might need a little help. So I'll give you the premise here. So this is my first shot at it. I believe in 2026, we will see local AI assistants like Lightspeed, be available in two other major distros. So two other major distros will ship something akin to Lightspeed.

Okay, so not Lightspeed specifically, but something akin to it.

Yeah, something like their own version of it or their own flavor or their own take on it, something like that. I'm not saying exactly how it'll be architected, just that someone will implement this sort of AI in your pocket.

What do we mean by Lightspeed?

Yeah, what I mean is like having an AI companion be available in the distro, like a distro native available feature.

The word you're looking for is agentic.

Gross.

Can we get that as a...

Yeah so maybe i need a little help wording all that because there's a lot of buzzwords and stuff but really it's just like uh in 2026 two other major distributions will make available a native agentic ai i.

Would go with in-house.

Okay all right i.

Think that's getting at what you're what you're trying to describe here.

So when we say in-house does that mean say it has to be like a canonical developed LLM.

Hmm.

Is that what, when we say in house means.

I don't think so because that's a much bigger lift than just, having some blessed interface is.

The definition then that it's a local thing it's not running on a cloud provider like open ai or something like that but it's something that.

Runs on premise that's also quite restrictive i don't know if i want to commit to that okay okay i but i do think the interface itself has to be created by the distro so oh this is something like the distro So it's part of their like path, their feature set to offer this as a, as a, I don't know, service.

So a minor technicality here, but that's not quite what.

Those are a lot of them.

That's okay. Yeah. That's not quite what Lightspeed is. Lightspeed is like a helper for specifically Ansible, right?

Oh yeah. But that's kind of the ish I'm aiming at.

Uh red hat does have its own in-house agentic ai for rel red hat enterprise linux and i think that's really more what you're getting at.

Okay sure i i couldn't remember what it was called.

Well and it's that's fine and it's worth pointing out that that particular agent can be configured to talk to multiple different llms yeah.

So my my real aim here is that it will be specifically aimed at helping you manage the distribution.

Okay so i think what you're looking for is an in-house interface to talk with llms to answer questions about your operating system is that.

Uh yeah i guess.

That's what we're looking for yeah.

Like uh like in-house By in-house, we mean distro-developed, right? So a distro-developed interface to communicate with an LLM to help manage your system.

I like it.

How's that, Brent?

I'm noting it down because to communicate, I went, yeah, yeah.

A distro-developed interface to communicate with an LLM to help manage your system. And that doesn't necessarily specify local, right? It could be, you know.

I mean, local would be nice, but I'm not going to restrict myself to that.

I mean, if I'm Shuttleworth and I'm looking for some AI money, I'm probably thinking, how do I add a little AI magic to the canonical cloud and really get everybody worked up?

That's where I'm going. All right. I think I can try a first go at a lock here. You ready?

Yeah. Give us a first pass.

In 2026 i believe two other major distributions will make available an in-house distro developed interface to communicate with an llm to help manage your system what.

If you just changed other to non-redhat i don't know because you're not other we might not know who you're.

Talking yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah fair other.

Than that what do you think i think it's pretty good that seems.

Workable yeah real close.

Okay brantley.

Lock her third time's jam I believe in 2026, we will see two major non-Red Hat distributions make available an in-house distro-developed interface to communicate with LLMs to help manage your system.

All right, it's officially locked. Number one is down, Brent.

It's anxiety-inducing.

It is, isn't it?

What did I just commit to? what.

Is uh your second prediction for 2026.

Uh this is going to ride a little on the success of my youtube prediction from last year uh so my prediction will be that a youtube personality will start an opinionated distribution a la omacube or omarchie and it will be reported by its foss and the news stack to make it measurable.

Why are you specifying particular news outlets, though?

Because they're like any old YouTuber. And I didn't want to say, like, someone over a million subscribers or something, but I'm open to, like, suggestions for better measurability.

I don't think I would limit it to any.

How do you make it measurable, then?

Well, just any of the Linux news outlets that we follow, I think.

Yeah.

What if Pharonix wrote about it? And then you didn't.

That was my exact first thought, but Pharonix did not write about Omar G or Omocube. So I was like, oh.

That's true. Yeah, they probably wouldn't. You're probably right. But so you're saying essentially the core of what you're saying is that we're going to see a YouTuber distro.

Yes. Yes. That's really the core of it.

Interesting.

And so.

What do you think of that?

Like a Prime OS?

Oh, yeah. For Primogen, I can see a Prime OS. Or you can see a PewDiePie distro.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So it just needs to make that prediction measurable because I think it's gold.

Well, I think we'd find out about it.

I mean so we could see linus linux too right yeah sure right.

Well ref what what is a good measure for you at the end of the year.

Major youtuber with x number of followers minimum creates a youtube or it creates a linux distribution would be the way i would do it and not mention where it's.

Reported at all all right all right okay yeah i don't know if i want to say a million that's a lot yeah i'll say 500k okay.

That seems fair yeah.

Yeah all right i.

Mean you know 100k is like the base of like you've kind of made it right so 500k is yeah you're.

It's like someone with some recognition you're not like the biggest of big yeah all right yeah i believe in 2026 we will see released a youtube personality that starts an opinionated distribution similar to Omacube and this YouTuber will have more than 500,000 followers.

Okay. A YouTuber distro.

I can only imagine how great that's going to be.

Can you imagine reviewing that?

Well, Brent's going to have it.

Oh, God. It better be called Influencer OS.

Oh, man. That would be good. That would be good. Okay, Brent. Why don't you dazzle us with your third prediction for 2026?

Okay. This one was hard, but you'll help me. In 2026, I believe the Linux Foundation will start a new foundation.

Are you serious? Are you serious?

No, I'm not serious. The question is, how many tens of foundations will they start?

That would be a fun one to guess. Or could you do a range like more than three?

Yeah, over, under.

Within abundance.

10 to 13? Or is it more like 13 to 15? All right. I have a real one if you need one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right. In 2026, I believe there would be an XZ style breach in another widely used open source project, specifically an inside man style compromise.

Ooh. An X, Z style breach. And then you say specifically an inside man. So somebody that already has like commit access to the project is kind of what you're saying.

Someone who's infiltrated a project and gained some trust. And then, you know, we discover that, oh, wait, they're not the person we thought they were. And they're trying to do some maliciousness.

So you could say something like a vulnerability via trusted commit access.

Yeah.

Or something, right? Is that seeming? and I'm you know it would depend on that actually getting coverage but for us to find it probably but assuming it's even if it's close to xz style yeah.

Right if it's if it has an impact then there'll be some kind of security coverage you'd think.

Yeah it seems reasonable what do you think refs yeah yeah.

No notes I missed the verbiage you used there you said vulnerability via trust.

Base I think it was something like a um a vulnerability will be discovered in an open source project that what did i say after that yeah.

Right because it's not that it's not just that there's a vulnerability in the code it's.

That this was.

Put there by.

A trusted somebody has access yeah yeah because that is a stinker that is a real stinker and you know it seems plausible because a revenue source really could become this is horrible to say and awful when you consider open source projects need more funding but a twisted development of this could be a revenue source is becoming this already where you sell a well-respected well-established trusted account and you can make more money than the free software project makes in an entire

It's not i feel really bummed about my prediction.

Yeah don't put those ideas in.

There nobody listens to this show though right.

All right i think you got something all right all right i.

Believe in 2026 we will see a vulnerability in an open source project via trust commit access, similar to the XZ style breach.

Okay, that's three pretty solid predictions there. What do you think?

Stretch your wings.

Yeah. You got a prediction for 2026?

I do. I've got a few. So first one is maybe the spiciest. I think that NVIDIA is going to potentially exit the consumer sector.

I like that.

The way that I would state this is that NVIDIA releases no consumer hardware cards in 2026.

Oh, man.

So, like, similar to what Micron has done, they just kind of pivoted to non-consumer. Wow.

That would really hurt. But again, like, I guess it wouldn't really impact me because I haven't been able to buy NVIDIA cards for about six years.

Yeah, yeah.

I keep waiting for the prices to come down.

They just keep going up.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

This is dark.

Boy, this would really be a sideways tilt to the PC manufacturing business. So that's pretty solid. I mean, NVIDIA exits the consumer business is a pretty solid, succinct prediction. I don't really have any notes there. Yeah, I think you can lock that in.

All right. In 2026, NVIDIA will release zero consumer graphics cards.

I hope you're wrong. I hope you're wrong.

Me too. But, you know, I mean.

Because, like, where else am I going to get a used card in five or six years? Right? That's what I'm looking for.

AMD and NVIDIA, or no, AMD and Intel are both working it. And there's that Chinese company that's trying to start making cards. I don't remember their name, but, you know, maybe it gives some breathing room to the market. We'll see.

Come on, Ark. Come on, Ark. This is your moment. Okay. Mr. Drew, do you have a second prediction?

Sure.

For 2026.

So my second prediction is security-based. I believe that a major vulnerability of CVSS 9.0 or greater will be found somewhere in the base Kubernetes components.

Ooh. 9.0 is putting a real number on it.

Mm-hmm.

Not an eight. You're going for a nine.

Major.

Wait, is this like inside baseball? You got some kind of...

It's just a very complicated stack. There's a lot that can. Yeah.

Have we seen any of these previously? Like, is this a trend?

I mean, I almost feel like it averages out to one a year, but I'm not sure.

The only possible issue I can see is in the base Kubernetes component.

What is that?

Yeah. Could you argue for some optional networking component that you were labeling as base?

No, no. I'm not talking like no CSI drivers that are outside of base Kubernetes, that sort of thing. uh we're talking like in kubernetes uh not add-ons right okay.

So base as in like but how do you define what you would define is what you would define as like the base thing to just have kubernetes operational.

Yeah um that is a good question of how to how to state that effectively well and it it is also worth stating that some csi drivers are in base kubernetes right, All right. All right.

There's nuance here.

And a lot of yellow.

What about something like, what about like using sort of cheat language in a way like a vendor shipped version of Kubernetes?

I'm thinking more that it's a component that exists within the Kubernetes GitHub.

Okay. That's okay. That's concrete.

Yeah. GitHub. Okay. Yeah. That could be lockable right there, I think then.

All right. So let's go with, in 2026, a major vulnerability of CVSS 9.0 or greater will be found in a component of Kubernetes that exists in the Kubernetes official GitHub.

True, bringing the spice. Damn, sizzle to those.

Yeah.

Okay, all right. So do you have a third prediction for 2026?

Yeah, yeah, this last one's cheap. I think global use of Linux will breach 10% in the Steam hardware survey.

Let's hope so.

So you think it's going to, I mean, that would technically be a double. That would be a double.

It's trending up, yeah.

Yeah.

And a Windows 11 has been really biffing it. So, I don't know, maybe, and Steam machines are coming back.

You know, I heard somebody say this weekend that's been using Linux for a few months, and they said, you know, I feel really great because I'm early to Linux. And I thought, you know.

Wow. Well, it depends who you're comparing yourself to, I guess.

And which adoption wave you're thinking of, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so you may be right. There may be a whole wave coming, and 10% may be. I think it's the PewDiePie effect.

Yeah.

I would love to see it. I would love to see it. All right, well, let's log it in.

All right. In 2026, global use of Linux will crest over 10% in the Steam Hardware Survey.

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

Wow.

Let's go Linux!

I like it. It's a couple of hard hitters and a really positive one there, like a moonshot. That's great. That's a nice mix. That's a nice mix. All right, Wes Payne, are you going for

We're about to find out.

I wonder if Wes's theme will be the dark one. this year or just the very like kind of spot on well calculated one you always flip.

Well i'm going with hopeful for my first one okay a consumer oriented nas is announced that uses bcash fs under the hood oh.

And now could that be an existing vendor that just updates their os.

That would be my intention whether or not i've conveyed that or not we should decide.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that when you install it it uses bcash by default but it just has support for Bcash?

I think that means it's using it.

Okay. Okay.

I have a question. Is this, when you say consumer-oriented NAS, do you mean hardware or do you mean software?

Either.

So it could be an ISO, it could be a product pre-built.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'd love to see it. It does feel a little long-shotty.

It does feel a little long-shotty.

So you're basically, You would lock in a vendor, a NAS vendor will announce, doesn't mean they shipped it.

Just announce.

Announce.

Bcash FS being used under the hood.

Oh, that's a good trick. They don't have to actually make anything.

That is. It might not ship until 2027, but it's announced in 2027.

Cheater.

What do you think, ref? I think that's actually, I think that's, I don't know.

I think we're close. It's a little weaselly.

But it's clever.

It's reasonable.

Maybe offers Bcash FS as a default option Because a lot of these NAS vendors, you will have an option of what underlying file system to use, right?

Yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay. So what do we think here? What was the phrasing you liked for the NAS?

Like it's in the dropdown? I don't know. I don't know exactly how to describe it.

So not necessarily the default, but an available file system feature.

But it is available by default during installation.

Oh, during installation. Okay.

What do you say to that.

I guess?

Well, because here's what it is. This is going to be, so say Unraid, for example, they support NTFS and Extended 2, but during installation, it's not going to deploy those on the disk, but if you put a disk in with NTFS, it would support it, and you could use it.

So maybe not during installation, but during setup.

So then for this to, right, because then by that definition, for this to win, Unraid would just need to ship an update that includes BcacheFS support.

Yes, true.

A NAS vendor announces BcacheFS support?

I think that would be the way I'd go because it's still kind of a long shot.

I'm down.

Next week, Wes gets hired by a NASDA company.

I hope you're right.

Supported Bcash FS support?

Okay.

Does that make sense? Like, it's an official part of it. It's not like an extension.

Yeah, it's not a janky.

It's an officially supported Bcash FS option.

Right. It's not like some vendor, or it's not like some community mod or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. All right, Wes Payne, lock it in.

I predict that in 2026, a NAS vendor announces official eCacheFS support.

I hope you are right about that one.

Wow.

I really do. I really do. I like that a lot, Wes. That's a good, solid first one. It's a risky one, and if it wins, it's going to be such a payoff. All right. Do you have a second prediction?

Yeah, all right. Here's a safe option. I predict that in... Sorry. I predict that in 2026, we will see Linux kernel version 7.

Whoa! I didn't even think of that. I like that a lot.

Wow, that's so nice and simple.

Very easy to measure.

Yeah.

Can I ask you a couple of qualifying questions?

Of course.

Does a RC count?

That was my question too.

Does a beta count? Yeah. Okay, what do you think? So, because how are you defining 7.0 release? Is it stable or is the code out there and we could run it? Like where's the line?

Is this like announced versus shipped? Is it you did pull in one of those again?

We will see that the next version will be 7. so we'll have an announcement that 7 is the next.

Okay that's.

Sneaky that buys you.

Like a couple weeks that seems probable actually that actually seems probable, I can't believe I didn't think of that damn it I wish I would have thought of that one alright Linux 7 announced is essentially what you're saying well.

You said next version so it needs to be like.

Well a version we will see.

Right because 8 is going to be the actual next stable version right and seven would be a development series? Is that how they still do it?

Well, because we're at six, 19.

19, yeah.

So I'm saying that in 2026, we will go into the seven series. We'll get out of the six series into the seven series. However, we will think that's best said.

How about, what about something like, what do you think of this, Ref? Is something like in 2026, the next series of the kernel, the next major series of the kernel will be announced? Something like that?

Well, no, it's got to include the seven. That's a pretty crucial part of it.

And do they start on that development branch? Is that one way to measure it?

Just announced. I think announced.

Yeah.

I think announced is...

They announced they're bumping the major kernel version to 7.

Okay.

At that point in the future.

Either that or they're taking this thing to like 30-something. You know, I don't know.

Okay, how about... I predict that in 2026, the Linux kernel community will announce they are bumping the major version to 7.

I think that works.

Yeah, I'm cool with it.

All right, Wes Payne. Lock it in.

I predict that in 2026 the linux kernel community will announce they are bumping the major version to seven.

All right there it is i like that.

All right i wish.

I would have stolen that one i wish i would have thought of that one you got a third one.

For us some backups in the doc if you want to steal any of those thank you i do have a third one here um by the end of 2026 when we review predictions next year. It will have been at least a month since you, Christopher, hand edited, without LLM assistance, your main NixOS config.

Whoa.

I mean, that might be true for this year's predictions.

How do we define main?

Yeah, we could...

Because I have, you know, my server config that I use.

Yeah, we could probably switch that out.

But the nut of what you're trying to get at here is that I'll have gone a month without having to have touched a config file because I'm telling the machine.

Yeah, there we go. Maybe that's it. Okay, yeah.

That's that's probable how.

Much are you paying him for this one.

I mean it's possible it is surprisingly possible actually because i've been i've been trying to push it as far as i can okay.

I have a question like yeah go this assumes he's still using nixos at that point right yeah he's not using nixos then obviously he wouldn't have edited it right.

I would say yeah i have used uh i have used it to um edit an ubuntu config file so if you just made a config file.

Yeah, it'll have been at least a month since you've hand-edited without LLM assistance a Linux config file.

That seems pretty good, ref, right?

Yeah, so anything in .config.

Etsy, Dockerfiles, Yeah, Dockerfiles, NixConfig, a lot of things, Wes, that just need a quick edit. That is spicy. Alright, lock it in. I'll be honest.

I predicted that by the end of 2026 when we're reviewing these very predictions it will have been at least a month since chris hand edited by which i mean without llm assistance a configuration file like a linux config a docker config an open source app config.

We shall see. All right, so I have too many predictions.

Wow.

Yeah.

What's this based on? What's the hunch here?

Well, over 2025, the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee has been kind of moving towards making the image-based system the main stable Fedora.

So it's not based on the Aurora install you're talking about wiping?

Nope, nope, nope, nope. It's based on the three years of the steering committee slowly working towards this. And I have to imagine this could be the year we actually see their efforts come to fruition. So I think the way to verify this would be you'd see changes at GetFedora.org where essentially a Silverblue-based download would be the default. Silverblue Workstation, perhaps.

So year of the Fedora Atomic Desktop is what you're saying.

Okay, so when I go there now, I get Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, and Fedora Server.

Yeah.

Well, then there's also three more under that. So there's like a row of... Is it just offered there?

The top ones. The premiered featured workstation gets replaced with the Silverblue Workstation.

Okay. Yeah. Another, so there's also fedorproject.org slash spins is currently all standard spins. And then atomic dash desktops is a list of all their atomic stuff. So you could also say that those would swap where atomic desktops become spins and spins becomes legacy or something along those lines.

The shorthand I was thinking of using for that is just, it becomes the recommended download.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so my lock-in would be Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation as the recommended download. Just sort of, you think that works? Does that work?

As long as it's measurable, right? As long as we feel like there's a way that we can see that a switch has happened?

Well, if they did make that switch, it would be huge news.

It would.

Okay, all right.

It's kind of a long show.

I think we do need to be a little bit more specific about what recommended means. Recommended as the default download of the ISO.

On the primary download page.

Yeah, something along those lines would make me happy.

So Fedora Atomic replaces Workstation as the recommended download on the primary project download page.

Works for me.

And if it doesn't change there, then the prediction... Yeah. Okay. All right, I'll give that a shot. In 2026, Fedora Atomic will replace Workstation as the recommended download on the project's primary download page. We shall see. So that's one. Now, I got to pick one that I think is a real curveball here. And I don't think this one's going to be a winner. But if it is, I'm going to feel like Nostradamus over here.

Not Nosferati.

Here's what I'm thinking about going with. I think Framework might launch their own distro in 2026.

Framework computers. I want to know more about what you think it'll look like.

So I think in part, we have seen them finance multiple projects this year, and that could be a great way to lay a bit of goodwill before you announce your own thing. And what made me think about this is they kind of need a framework edition OS just so that way when they do new edge products like their Snapdragon X Elite laptop that we talked about in LEP 641, In LUP641, we talked about how the generic kernels weren't enough for this new hardware, and that's been a pain point for Framework.

Not saying for points or anything, but just I'm curious. Do you have any ideas what they, in this hypothetical world of yours, how are they building this district?

Well, they would make it arch-based like everybody else is doing.

I think so. Yeah. I mean, if I were, I'm not going to put this in the prediction, but I would think maybe they do a little contract with DHH's company.

Wow.

Do a little business contract.

Wow.

Something that has some terms.

Now that's a prediction.

Yeah.

I know. That is a prediction. I don't want to be that.

No. Yeah.

Interesting it could just be a fedora spin at the end of the day and that would still count.

Sure i mean.

This is kind.

Of what we saw so 776 do right is they saw that having an officially supported os was easier for their hardware support and all that stuff fascinating so.

You're thinking like an omaframey.

Yeah basically a framework distro light.

Why light sorry why are you.

Well because i don't i don't think it's going to be a massive departure right i don't think they're going to have a customly in-house built desktop environment. I wouldn't expect it to be, I mean, it could be, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be, say, like SteamOS where it's image-based and things like that. I'm picturing...

But it's more than them installing Ubuntu and putting a wallpaper on it.

It could be as little as that, or it could be more than that. Basically, the key is it enables their hardware to run out of the box. So you ship with a kernel that has the right drivers that are signed and so forth for that particular hardware. That's the nut of what they're trying to accomplish. You can put any distro you want on there that's supported if it has the upstream drivers. But the idea is you can buy it with something that works out of the box. It doesn't run Windows.

Framework branded distribution.

Yeah.

Yeah, framework branded distribution.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay, so how about in 2026, Framework will announce a Framework-branded distribution.

Yeah.

Does that work?

Works pretty good to me.

Here I go, gentlemen. In 2026, Framework will announce a Framework-branded Linux distribution. Watch him do it with FreeBSD.

I noticed you said announce there, not ship. Interesting. Yeah, well, things are hard. I'm seeing a trend here.

Things are hard. This is where, okay, I could use your guys' input. I have a couple of extras to go with. Yeah, let's see what you got. I don't know which direction to go with. One prediction is that a distribution, a rolling distribution, will replace sudo with run zero from systemd.

Okay.

And then my other prediction, and this is a little spicy, kdelinux misses a 1.0 in 2026 and maintains in the you know beta and rc state building a distro is hard and the last 10 15 is the hardest and then and this is the one i think is my weakest prediction but i feel the most conviction about so i don't know how to square and.

You should go with that one clearly yeah.

I said second brent.

Okay here's the prediction in 2026 refurb used and upgrade not replace becomes the top Homelab narrative showing up as a dominant theme across Linux and Homelab channels on Reddit and other communities.

Oh yeah, I think that's a good one.

That's a good one, but that's real hard to prove.

That's going to be true, but impossible to measure.

Yeah, I know. Well, so I figured the way you'd measure it is there'd be a couple of scoreable success criteria. You'd have to look at our Homelab and our self-hosted and our Linux and see how often keywords like refurb, used, e-waste, old hardware, upgrade, DDR4, DDR5, SAS, enterprise surplus were used. Maybe two major outlets like Serve the Home, Level 1 Techs, Pharonix, the LWN. They have articles or videos explaining, you know, centered around surplus, refurb hardware.

Isn't it already?

Because, well, I mean, it's already so bad. And with the RAM and... and the disk prices and GPU prices already crazy, I really think it's going to be a year about getting every inch out of the hardware you already have. And honestly, there is room. Stock distributions have room for improvements. We've played with this. And you can get better performance if you are willing to dig into it. So I think that type of system optimization and reusing hardware is going to be a major trend for 2026.

Okay. So here's the way I see it.

Do you like that one more than the KDE Linux one?

I do. I think it's a more interesting prediction.

Okay.

I also think it's the one that's going to piss you off the most when you actually have to go and collect the statistics.

100%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's your funeral.

Yeah, if I could think of a really good way to measure it, I would feel better about it.

But also, who's going to verify your measurements?

Yeah.

Well, no, I think, no, it would have to be like, it would have to be.

Submit the code for review.

Yeah.

Ideally, should we build stats, start building stats now to see what the baseline is?

Right.

Yeah, you'd have to be based on, like, coverage, community discussions.

You got to bring your homework. Podcasts and YouTube videos. Is the thing. When you go to prove this out.

You could do it another way. You could say, like... the trend becomes so powerful that like there's a new pod, three new podcasts that start specifically angling that or like an, you know, 10 new YouTube channels are specifically about refurbing or something like that.

My old home lab.

This old home lab. That's less. You should have sent that URL. That's good.

Micro center has a, a used home lab.

There you go. There you go.

Honestly i want to do a this old home lab segment where we go out and we refurb on listeners home labs so i want to do that i mean this is to me seems like it's at least going to be a strong narrative for most of the year if it dominates 2026 is yet to be seen but like drew if your prediction plays out where nvidia pulls out of the consumer market and if the uh who was it also was just announced that they might be leaving the consumer market just just yesterday or the day before on Friday.

Is that the dominant themes is hard to measure right yeah.

It is mm-hmm, But probably achievable.

Well, you could sort the posts for the year, and if the top five, I don't know, 50% of the top 10 posts are about it.

I don't know if it'll materialize like that or if it would just be a lot of chatter.

Well, you got to measure this thing.

Yeah.

It's a good prediction, but it's nebulous.

Primary verification signal to me seems like news coverage and just frequency of YouTube videos, subreddit posts podcasts like if like if you know at the end of the year if we can measure that somehow all.

Right look if i'm judging again when you go to prove this out there had better be a pepe sylvia style board behind.

You yeah.

There we go build the board prove it out yeah and i.

Recommend working.

On this thing through the year.

I mean maybe i shouldn't go with this one because like the KDE Linux doesn't hit 1.0 would be easy to measure, or say Tumbleweeder Arch switching to run zero.

But it's quite plain as a prediction.

I'll give it a go, and if I can't argue my case, I'll have to take the L next year. Probably going to hate that I did this, but I could do it.

What about like a well-established podcast takes it up as a topic that they would have never done in the past? Because it's like...

I just don't know if I'd notice that.

Well, that's up to you, man.

Can you imagine me spending my entire year You're scouring the web.

Isn't that what you do anyway?

I must be right.

If you can measure it, I think it's a good one.

Yeah, it's a really good one. I like it. But, yeah, you've got to put in the legwork.

Okay, how about reused, refurb, upgrade, not replace, becomes a top homelab narrative showing up as a dominant theme across YouTube, Reddit, and news outlets. Not a dominant theme across news outlets, but showing how about as a reoccurring theme. I don't know if that's also very – See, this sucks, you guys. This one sucks.

It's tricky.

How bad do you want it?

Recurring theme isn't terrible. It could probably be improved.

Come on, chat room.

How do you yes or no the prediction? That's the real question. What's the tip over point?

What about Google Trend words?

Oh.

Ah, yeah, okay.

So as measured by Google Trends?

Yeah, but would you define a set of...

You have to take a base for it.

Yeah.

...thing you plug in.

Yeah. I have them here in the doc. Refurb, used, e-waste, old hardware, upgrade, DDR4, DDR5, SAS, enterprise surplus, those types of things.

If they trend strongly upwards.

Yeah, okay. In 2026, refurb, used, upgrade, not replace, terms that get the most out of old hardware will see an uptick on Google Trends. That's pretty... we gotta move on so I'm gonna lock it in even though it's crap no I think that's okay it is okay we'll argue it next.

Year it's fine see the terms say see the terms in the doc yeah.

Yeah terms of fable in show doc there you go I love that alright okay okay I'm gonna try this, in 2026 refurb used upgrade not replace these types of topics become a top narrative on Homelab subreddits YouTube and news outlets and I will have terms in the doc that can be used for Google trend searches and others good enough, not great but I like the sentiment because it just feels like and I think it's an area where Linux is kind of super positioned to do really well it's a sucky

Show doc just changed with new tags in it.

Yeah it seems.

To be dynamically updating throughout the year.

Join crowd health dot com and use the promo code unplugged. The clock is ticking and these are hard decisions that need to be made. It's enrollment time. The season where the health insurance companies hope you're just going to sign up and pay for more. It's expensive every single year. And then when you really need it, it's awful. And if you're a small business owner, well, the story is just a nightmare here in the States.

Well, happy holidays, everybody. As we're nearing the end of the year, we have some baller boosters this week. A baller booster of baller boosters. Chris, you want to take this one? You saw it come in and you kind of like lost your cool.

Well, Optic Gray is our baller booster. And get ready for this, gentlemen. Brace yourselves. 1.5 million Satoshis.

Oh, wow.

I...

It's absolutely amazing.

I don't think baller is the right word anymore.

No, no. Hello, Chris, Brenton, and Wes. Happy holidays. I don't know if you remember, but I wanted to reminisce about a trip I made back in 2019 to the Texas cyberside.

Oh.

The conference itself was meh. Yep. But it was completely overshadowed by the evening I got to spend with you two. Carl, special thanks for paying chauffeur and cheese and a bunch of other JB fans while gallivanting around San Antonio. The night remains one of my most cherished memories, and I'm still incredibly thankful to all of you for being so gracious. Wow. Well, thank you, Optic. That's amazing. And he said that in where he had some trouble with Fountain,

Yes, definitely.

Yeah.

We'll have to run into another, some kind of event, hopefully a better event, but some kind of event.

Yeah. Hopefully we'll be down in Texas next year. That's my prediction. We go to Texas in 2026.

It's a good one.

Hopefully we'll see you there. Thank you for that baller boost. We tremendously appreciate it. Fantastic way to wrap up the year and kick off the new year. The Dude Abides comes in with 247,000 Satoshis.

Wow.

247. Sounds great number. The dude abides writes, hey, alas, boost of the year. I finally caught up. I always like to listen to the full members episode, so it takes some time. I enjoyed the last episode with Kent and Carl. Keep them coming. Also, thanks for the IPTV suggestions. I almost had no idea this existed. I managed to submit my home lab in time, so I'm excited to listen to this episode, although not sure if I'll catch it live.

That would be good.

That would be a great addition to next year, wouldn't it? We should consider that. Thanks for the holidays, gents, and the company. Well, thank you, the dude abides.

Keep abiding.

We really appreciate that.

Do we have to redo the boosties because of these two boosts?

I know, right? Also, we should mention, these are not even all of the boosts because we're a little out of time. We're going to do another batch in the next episode. So if you do not hear your boost read this episode, we have it banked and it'll be in next episode. So thank you very, very much for sending it in. Just for time, we're doubling them up and also because of the recording schedule.

Nostromo boosts in with 37,879 sats.

I like that.

Thank you for another year of great entertainment, and happy new year to all of you.

Happy new year to you. Thank you very much, Nostro. Appreciate that. Appreciate that value, too. It's good to hear from you.

I'll take Amunday here, too. Amunday Boosin with 24,444 sats.

Not too bad.

Ah, and answering a question. Yes, Signal is still absolutely the best secure messenger. Or maybe MOLLE, which is just an alternate but compatible version of the Signal client with a handful of security improvements and optional settings made mandatory. There's periodically FUD varying ridiculousness around Signal, but it carries on through the noise. I'm continually impressed by how everything Signal does is from an explicitly security-first position.

Oh!

I believe it's...

Phone number.

Yeah, exactly.

But that was recently addressed.

Yeah, yeah.

Also, Amadei here wanted to say that they really enjoyed the conversation with Kent. So we've seen more continued support there.

We really do appreciate that signal. You don't have to send us a huge boost, but that is a big signal for us to continue that kind of stuff. That's a great boost. Really nice. Thank you, Amadei. Appreciate that.

Well, Johnny Castaway sends in 19,045 sats under two boosts. boosts and one of those boosts is a one two three four five satoshi boost oh.

Sneaking in there well let's give them a little let's give them some fruit loops which everybody loves thank you very much and of course a little space balls nicely done.

The johnny here is a long time listener and jupiter signal member just saying hello from the south coast of england that's in devon uk oh hello Oh.

Thanks for sending the letter all this way.

I've just upped my Knicks game and now running Knicks Flakes with BcashFS, ZSwap, FBE, Plymouth, Gnome, and Neary desktops. Oh, by the way, some little tail scale with a work in progress to give Nebula a try. I'm off to Fosdom early next year, my first Linux expo, and very excited. And have some mince pies on me with some Santa sets.

Thank you very much. You ever had mince pie with?

No, but I think we got to go get some.

I think so. Also, if you are interested, and this goes out to everyone too, but especially to you, Johnny, if you would like to send us a Fosdom report, especially from a perspective of a new person, we would very much love to read those on the show. That would be a good signal. If you're interested.

Good idea.

Johnny continues here with the second boost. Just wanted to say I enjoyed the show on Bcash FS. amazing work by Kent and the JB crew for the great content. As always, this gave me the extra motivation I needed to switch up my daily driver, a Nix OS T460P ThinkPad with Bcache FS, Cache OS kernel using my favorite terminal emulator, Ghost TTY and Neary desktop. It's been rock solid. And by the way, the boost amount is cryptic, but related to Bcache FS.

Oh, interesting. 6, 7, 7, 100. Oh, Maybe a commit number?

I think my prediction should have been something about how much of the audience is running Bcache.

Really?

Yeah.

I love to hear how it goes. Keep us posted on that, too. And CacheOS Kernel, I agree, is pretty great, even on NixOS. So good to hear. Thank you for that. Thor's coming in with a row of ducks. That's 2,222 sats. And he says he loved the People's File System episode. Now I really need to try out Bcache FS. I have an upcoming reinstall for sure. Yeah. I do that thing, too. Like, I'm thinking about my next install, and I'm like, okay, this time around, I'm going to do Bcache FS.

New install dreams.

Yes.

Yes.

Even when the system's totally fine, I already start planning the next system.

You got to think about something while you're falling asleep.

That's true. Thank you, Thor. Appreciate that. Boost.

Adagia boosts in with 6,969 sets.

Cryptic.

Love the chat with Kent as well as the one with Carl today. Our pal Carl from System76 of course.

Yeah, and the new Cosmic release.

The technical episodes are some of my favorite, but then I often find myself not knowing what to say, kind of addressing boosting or not. I also need to remind myself that when small boosts still give you signal even though I can't afford much beyond the party membership, and we really appreciate the boost amount I mean a huge amount of the value is just the message.

Yeah and thank you for being a party member.

Also Brent's comment reminded me have you guys read ADHD is awesome would 110% recommend wow got it on yeah and then there's some links and we can find some links maybe to it to add to the show notes thank you for the recommendation.

ADHD I think the answer is no.

This is a great.

Recommendation I have not heard of that thank you yes I will look into that.

Sounds like there should be an audio book available as well Oh.

That's probably the route I'm going to go, you know, with ADD and all. I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Thank you, Daja.

Thank you very much.

Well, the Sithy Penguin boosted in. This is two boosts with rows of ducks. Hello there, JB Crew. I'm a medium-term listener question. What is the minimum time required for a long-time listener anyway? Either way, I've been listening for a few years now, and it's my first boost to any of the shows, but I did leave a voicemail on launch earlier this year.

Nice.

Well done. Thank you.

A vocal boost.

I am dropping my nix config for the next config confessions it's about 95 percent vibe coded with flakes and hyperland which i have yet to fully grasp but the next nerds room has been great.

Oh good i'm glad to hear that it is a very helpful room.

We didn't even open the next config confessions and we're already getting submissions this is great, Second Boost here says, hey, question for the crew. Do you ever collaborate with any of the other podcasters out there? Aside from all the stuff you guys have done since I tuned in, we'd love to see more collaborations with other Linux podcasts.

That's a great – in fact, I meant to mention at the top of the show, Michael Tunnell from Tux Digital and Destination Linux was going to join us today for this episode but ended up with a sore throat and was traveling, so the two combined just couldn't make it work. because we do want to do more of that, but the reality is all of us are super busy making the shows that we make.

Yeah, the double calendar system.

I mean, just trying to schedule this week's episode was a little tricky, right? And then also additionally, there's time zones. So some people are on opposite times and stuff like that. So that is a compounding issue. So you'll often find a lot of us are just very heads down. But around the holidays, we try to reach out a little bit.

Hopefully we can do some more collabs in 2026.

Yeah, absolutely. And as far as what makes a medium-term listener? Well, so it's tough to say because the show's been going for a while. So maybe a year?

Or maybe we need like, you know, like there's sort of like geologic eras. Maybe we need that for the show.

Like E-Pons.

Different eras.

That is often a thing, right? That is often the way people...

As a reference point. I kind of joined in this, yeah.

Were you here for LUP 600 or not, you know, the pre-600 or post-600?

If you're here before 600, you're probably no longer medium term. And if you're here before 300, you're probably a long time. I don't know. You could cut that out.

Going forward, pre-van and post-van.

Yeah, yeah. The van era. Sure, sure, sure, sure. That's great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for setting up the booze stuff, too, and setting that in. Really appreciate it. I know that takes a bit of work. And the beginning of the journey is the hardest guy. Thank you, Penguin Guy. Appreciate you. Hybrid sarcasm. There he is. Comes in with 10,000 sats. And he just says, Merry Christmas, boys.

Oh, Merry Christmas to you too, Hybrid.

Thank you, Hybrid. Merry Christmas.

Pot Bun comes in with a row of ducks. It'd be interesting if we could somehow get a count of how many times you guys have said Graphene OS or Rust.

Oh.

I'm sure people would have other ideas.

Yeah.

I mean, we have transcripts now.

That could be something that's done. And I would love if anybody ever wanted to cut together like a cut of our Rust coverage or our Graphene OS coverage. And we could do a highlight thing. And then one day we just, here you go. We're off for this week, Drew. Here's somebody made this for us.

A supercut.

Theme supercuts. I like that.

Yeah, I thought you could write a Python script pretty easily that would go and search all the transcripts that we have available and give you a count.

Drew, I'm going to say every time pod bun boosts in, I think ear buns. Not your buns, but your bunnies. Well, Odyssey Westra boosted in here at 20,000. Oh, sorry, 2,052 Satoshis. Sigh. It's just wet, cold, and windy on the east side of the state. That's Washington State. Winds didn't cause too much damage, though, on this side. Definitely not what you are all experiencing over there on the other side. That stays safe. Also, a little birthday boost since you released the episode on that same day.

Oh. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Yeah, the studio with the winds lost power twice, which really stinks because the UPS is last 15, 20 minutes, and the power was out for two hours one time, and then it was out for quite a while the second time. And it was one of those things where both times I wasn't here, so I showed up. And you start putting it together like, uh-oh, that's not right. That's not right. Oh, no. So there's always a bit of a job there. I'm glad you're okay over there, Odyssey.

This to me sounds like a vote for like co-host suffering.

Yeah. I, I do think 2026 is prime for a new challenge. I, that's one of the things I enjoyed over 2025. I liked the home labs too. That was a lot of fun. We had some great challenges that really did push us. So like, how do you do more than that? I keep thinking, I just don't know how it comes down. I keep thinking we need to go out into the real world and get ourselves into a real situation with real time constraints and fix and solve something. And I think that would be a great challenge.

I like this idea.

Three days to like refurb somebody's home lab or three days to get a business network operational and, you know, that kind of thing.

Can we bring epoxy?

Yeah. We're going to need a lot of epoxy.

Buddy.

We're going to need a lot of epoxy. All right. So, like I said, if you did not hear your boost read, don't worry. We have it. We're saving it for next week's episode just with the recording schedule. We do appreciate you sending that in and we will read them next week. So here's what we have for this episode so far. And first I want to start by thanking those of you who stream SATs.

Whoa.

Unbelievable.

Woo.

Thank you, everyone who supports the show with a membership or with a boost. Fountain FM is making that easier and easier, but there's an entire self-hosted infrastructure with Albie and lots of great apps. You get not just boosts, but new features, transcripts, pod chapters, all kinds of stuff like new release announcements, all that right there in the app, including live streams. Thank you, everybody who supports the show.

Which I hope is everyone.

And it's, I don't know, how would you say this one, Wes? Emildung?

Actually, that was better than I thought you were going to do. Yeah, I think ship it.

Emildung is a...

Elmildung? I don't know.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm getting that wrong. It's a TUI RSS reader based on the Awesome News Flash library, mostly written in Rust.

And with a flaked Nix in its repo.

It does indeed. It's also beautiful. It's strange to say about a TUI, again, terminal user interface RSS reader, but it is actually very beautiful. And I think nicer design than just about every GUI RSS reader app I've ever used. And it could be just a really great way to bust through some RSS. And also, I'd love to know if there's interest. I have recently set up my own fresh RSS instance with a few integrations, summary tools, and different plugins.

Ooh.

Now, this next pick I put in here because I really wanted to get your take. You could educate me on this because there's a few things I don't know about. And the pick is, it's an app. It's called ZeeBridge. And it's a contract bridge game, which I guess is a... taking card game for four players i don't really understand but it's the.

Game of bridge.

Contract bridge yeah based okay based on bridge and z bridge is an online bridge club where you can play in learning mode you can play with other people in multiplayer you can play against a quote-unquote game ai you're jethro is that what it's called play with jethro that's a competitive bridge bot so jethro is available but uh i know nothing about bridge and uh you on the other hand know quite a bit about bridge so i'm wondering if this passes the westpain sniff test the z bridge app.

Yeah it does look like it is a flat pack of an electron packaging for the service.

Yes it's it is there's they have a website but that makes.

It pretty easy to get going.

Yeah and.

Uh i like the idea that you are learning bridge so i'm gonna say a thumbs up.

All right i got the thumbs up all right i like that.

When i read the title z bridge i thought it was like a zigbee bridge for home assistant or something and then the description much better threw me right off did not expect that.

Also no license was found for that one.

I've got a quick pick for you guys if you want a third one.

Yes, we do.

All right. Yeah, I always like bringing you guys some audio visualization fun.

Yes.

This one's called Cavalier. It is based on the Cava graphics engine.

Sure.

And it's also written in .NET 8.

Oh, this looks really nice.

And it's MIT licensed. But, yeah, it's just a little visualizer. You just connect it and Pipewire does the rest. It will automatically connect to your main out monitors, or you can manually connect it to something else through Helvum or QPW Graph, whatever your choice is. And it has a lot of little options that you can make it your own. It's really cool, small, fancy, and fun.

Take the best part of Winamp and make it into this app is what they've done. The visualizer with customization options where you can have in a window. It's really cool looking, too. It's a nice, modern Linux desktop app.

Rad.

Yeah. All right. That's a good pick. And so it's Cavalier, and we'll put a link to that.

MIT license?

Yep. Available as a Flatpak or Snap. Looks like they have it in Arch as well.

Very nice. Drew, thank you for joining us and playing referee. It's always good to see you and catch up.

You're very welcome. It was my pleasure and my honor.

And I think we got some good results. I think you got good results out of us. So that's always appreciated.

So we have someone to blame for next year.

Yeah, right? Yeah. Even when Drew is not here, of course, the friendly hand of editor Drew touches every episode. So thank you, Drew. Round of applause for all your hard work there.

Thank you. Thank you.

Now, we encourage you to make it a Tuesday on a Sunday and join us live Sunday, 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern over at jblive.tv. And if they're getting us on the download, depending on their podcast client, Wes, there's some fancy features they can take advantage of.

Yeah, how do you feel about a magical cloud-based JSON that comes right to you and tells you where we talk about what?

And you know what I like about that? We can update it dynamically when we make a mistake.

Yeah, it's got like you can put in images and all kinds of fancy features, which we don't even fully take advantage of yet, but we will.

One day, the more people use it.

And you can also just get a whole transcript. Maybe you want to count words that we say way too often?

Maybe you do.

Yeah. Well, that could be one way to look at it. Or if you just want to be able to follow along or double check something we said, or I mean, it's just nice to be able to read.

It's all right there if you just need to double check something or whatever it is. And also makes it more accessible as well, which is a big thing. And links to what we talked about today. Those, my friends, are linked over at linuxunplugged.com slash 647. Sometimes these holiday episodes a little lighter on the links, but we tend to have pretty copious show notes.