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50 Days of Blue

Jul 13, 2025
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Chris fled a declarative-first world for the promised land of Bluefin's atomic simplicity. Fifty days in, did he find desktop bliss or just fresh compromises?

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Transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:11.477 --> 00:00:16.037 Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. 00:00:16.177 --> 00:00:16.797 My name is Wes. 00:00:17.057 --> 00:00:17.837 And my name is Brent. 00:00:18.457 --> 00:00:22.537 Hello, gentlemen. Well, today I'll be doing my 50-day Bluefin check-in, 00:00:22.617 --> 00:00:27.837 but first, we're going to have ourselves a little Linux user existential crisis. 00:00:27.937 --> 00:00:30.977 I'll tell you about that. Then we're going to round out the show with some great 00:00:30.977 --> 00:00:37.357 boosts and a blowout worth the price of admission alone pick that you're definitely 00:00:37.357 --> 00:00:40.317 not going to want to miss and a heck of a lot more. 00:00:40.317 --> 00:00:44.017 so before we dig into all of that let's say time appropriate greetings to our 00:00:44.017 --> 00:00:50.797 virtual lug hello mumble room hello hey chris and hello brent hello hello everybody 00:00:50.797 --> 00:00:53.217 joining us thank you for joining us and shout out to all of you up there in 00:00:53.217 --> 00:00:58.017 quiet listening and of course the live chat room as well stay tuned because 00:00:58.017 --> 00:00:59.297 we have a heck of a show coming up, 00:01:01.137 --> 00:01:07.077 but before we get there i want to mention that the nix vegas con has extended 00:01:07.077 --> 00:01:14.777 their call for papers which I believe you can still jump in on and our own Wes Payne has. 00:01:15.397 --> 00:01:20.217 Yeah, that's right. So hey, come to Knicks Vegas, co-located, I guess, at DEFCON 33. 00:01:20.577 --> 00:01:23.637 Yeah, that's right. More Knicks at DEFCON. That seems like a very good idea. 00:01:24.137 --> 00:01:28.157 And yeah, you have to tell the, I think the end of this month to get your paper submission in. 00:01:28.437 --> 00:01:33.497 July 31st, they have a sessionized link that we have linked to in the show notes that you can click on. 00:01:33.637 --> 00:01:37.017 It's an easy process. So if you're just thinking about it, why not throw your hat in the ring? 00:01:37.017 --> 00:01:40.917 And then DEF CON 33, August 7th through the 10th. I mean, people might be just 00:01:40.917 --> 00:01:43.077 coming to DEF CON. They may want to come say hi to Wes Payne. 00:01:43.197 --> 00:01:44.677 You should think about setting up a meetup or something. 00:01:44.757 --> 00:01:45.497 Oh, that's a good idea. 00:01:45.597 --> 00:01:49.197 No, I'm a little jelly. Ah, sounds fun. 00:01:49.897 --> 00:01:51.877 Also- We got a scheme to how to get you to come with me. 00:01:52.237 --> 00:01:54.137 Maybe. I don't know how we pull that off. 00:01:54.177 --> 00:01:55.697 Got a fan. I could pick you up along the way. 00:01:56.797 --> 00:02:01.497 Too bad it doesn't run on air. We also will be at Texas Linux Fest in October. 00:02:02.197 --> 00:02:06.597 So check them out. Maybe get a taco in there and get your plans to come see us in Austin. 00:02:06.597 --> 00:02:08.997 Yeah, that's right. You still got time for their call for papers as well. 00:02:09.157 --> 00:02:13.117 Yeah. So there is a bit still of time in two different events, 00:02:13.457 --> 00:02:17.677 one in the near future and one off in the distant future where we'd be happy to see you. 00:02:20.997 --> 00:02:25.077 So this week, we want to talk about a really big macro trend that's happening 00:02:25.077 --> 00:02:26.637 in the desktop Linux space. 00:02:26.857 --> 00:02:29.217 And then eventually, we'll get into my experience with Bluefin. 00:02:29.837 --> 00:02:34.697 But I want to take a moment and make sure that we all kind of appreciate a shift 00:02:34.697 --> 00:02:36.977 that is happening in the Linux desktop landscape. 00:02:37.157 --> 00:02:39.437 Like, just put it all out there. 00:02:40.257 --> 00:02:44.037 Having now used Bluefin for 50 days, watching projects like Universal Blue, 00:02:44.177 --> 00:02:48.797 which is like the source images behind Bazite and Bluefin and Aurora, 00:02:49.657 --> 00:02:55.637 What we are seeing demonstrate out over there is containerized workflows to 00:02:55.637 --> 00:03:01.437 build a Linux desktop experience that doesn't require forking the project. 00:03:01.697 --> 00:03:04.817 You're building on top of images. You're building on top of layers. 00:03:05.317 --> 00:03:09.557 Instead of, say, in the past where maybe Ubuntu would be based on Debian, 00:03:09.677 --> 00:03:13.177 but it would be a fork of Debian with its own repositories and all of that. 00:03:13.597 --> 00:03:18.797 we're seeing a shift in the way that the desktop is being built and it doesn't require forking. 00:03:19.577 --> 00:03:22.557 And maybe there's a bit of a pulling apart or um you 00:03:22.557 --> 00:03:25.397 know different organizations and people filling different roles 00:03:25.397 --> 00:03:29.757 like what we think of as a distribution yes there was the stuff where you know 00:03:29.757 --> 00:03:32.977 you curated a desktop environment and you kind of pick the apps that went together 00:03:32.977 --> 00:03:36.897 and you put it all into a nice experience but you were also doing a bunch of 00:03:36.897 --> 00:03:40.597 actual packaging and building you know the package that runs systemd and make 00:03:40.597 --> 00:03:43.757 sure that bash exists so that you have a shell to run and like all those things. 00:03:43.937 --> 00:03:48.717 And so I think it's interesting too to see, you know, not everyone necessarily reinventing that. 00:03:48.917 --> 00:03:52.397 It's not a new packaging format all the time, but you do end up with a different 00:03:52.397 --> 00:03:54.017 curated experience often. 00:03:54.197 --> 00:03:56.977 Right. So to get say Bluefin, they don't necessarily need to have their own 00:03:56.977 --> 00:03:58.177 set of package maintainers. 00:03:58.757 --> 00:04:01.597 At least not to the same degree as like trying to, you know, 00:04:02.017 --> 00:04:04.257 bootstrap an arch when you started with Fedora. 00:04:04.457 --> 00:04:08.617 I mean, the maintenance overhead just right there is exponentially different. 00:04:08.977 --> 00:04:12.697 That's huge, right just you know you don't need maintainers that are that are 00:04:12.697 --> 00:04:16.417 necessarily packaging everything maybe you just have to take care of a few of the edge cases. 00:04:16.417 --> 00:04:19.237 And i mean it's not like we haven't seen that i think it's a it's a matter of 00:04:19.237 --> 00:04:23.337 degree and tooling especially right like you've seen ubuntu has relied a lot 00:04:23.337 --> 00:04:26.557 on debian to have a lot of packages but then they rebuild a lot of their own 00:04:26.557 --> 00:04:29.717 stuff and then there's some downstream distributions that pull directly from 00:04:29.717 --> 00:04:34.537 their parent distribution with their own additional archive and some that do a bunch of rebuilds, 00:04:35.157 --> 00:04:39.397 but now you've got you know very explicit technologies like with containers 00:04:39.397 --> 00:04:44.537 that you can really just say from whatever version I like that is almost good 00:04:44.537 --> 00:04:47.197 enough for me and then add on whatever you want. 00:04:47.197 --> 00:04:50.757 Yeah before the show started I ran a command I bet it's still in my command 00:04:50.757 --> 00:04:52.017 history right it should be, 00:04:52.900 --> 00:04:57.860 I ran a really simple command that was just sudo boot C switch. 00:04:58.600 --> 00:05:04.160 And then I gave it the URL to Aurora. And I said, use colon the latest image and hit enter. 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:10.100 And I went from having a GNOME-based Bluefin system to now a Plasma Aurora system. 00:05:10.280 --> 00:05:14.300 And of course, this is something we've talked about being able to do in the NixOS ecosystem. 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:17.620 And regardless of that comparison, it's just one of those things like when you 00:05:17.620 --> 00:05:20.620 think about doing it on a traditional distro, you just think, 00:05:20.840 --> 00:05:24.660 I'd rather not. I'll install a new partition, a new system. 00:05:24.840 --> 00:05:28.600 I don't know if I want to co-locate both of these in anything but a demo. 00:05:28.880 --> 00:05:31.580 I mean, the whole entire process we did live in the bootleg, 00:05:31.720 --> 00:05:33.080 I mean, it was what, five minutes? 00:05:33.300 --> 00:05:36.240 Yeah, and that included downloading four gigs of files. 00:05:36.780 --> 00:05:43.080 Yeah, so it's interesting. The Bluefin folks, they like to use dinosaurs to 00:05:43.080 --> 00:05:45.200 remind us of the older model. 00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:49.440 Like, you know, sometimes you've got to bury your dinosaurs. 00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:52.560 I know there's imagery there. There's a message there. 00:05:52.660 --> 00:05:55.340 Because I think they view this as like a post-distro model. 00:05:55.460 --> 00:05:59.360 They don't like to call any of the UBlue-based stuff, Universal Blue stuff, a distro. 00:05:59.540 --> 00:06:00.440 Yeah, they build images. 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:04.640 And is Bootsy like the meteor? Or what's the part of the image here? 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:08.940 Yeah, it's like a rise of a new evolution of distributions. Fedora Silver Blue, 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:15.940 Endless OS, Bluefin, Bazite, Ubuntu Core, Nix OS, Steam OS based on Arch. 00:06:16.860 --> 00:06:22.000 Manjaro's working on Manjaro Immutable. Arcane Linux is Arch-based. Blend OS, Vanilla OS. 00:06:23.580 --> 00:06:28.440 Seuss has a Plasma-based and a GNOME-based Immutable. We're seeing this rise 00:06:28.440 --> 00:06:32.720 across all of the distro makers of these immutable or atomic distributions. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:37.360 It does seem to be like it's not a trend. It's something everybody's getting involved in now. 00:06:38.020 --> 00:06:39.900 And I think when we first started talking about it, it was like, 00:06:39.960 --> 00:06:41.340 hey, check out this new cool trend. 00:06:41.800 --> 00:06:44.620 With this immutable base, there are also a lot of these distros are going for 00:06:44.620 --> 00:06:47.120 this experience where the user doesn't even really notice it. 00:06:48.136 --> 00:06:51.996 You're not even really aware of this, you know, the fact that slash user is 00:06:51.996 --> 00:06:52.736 read-only or something. 00:06:52.996 --> 00:06:56.576 Right. I mean, so part of it, right, is it's changing the customization layer. 00:06:57.316 --> 00:07:02.976 So maybe instead of adding a PPA and then installing Zoom or downloading a tab, 00:07:03.116 --> 00:07:06.236 right, you're pushed to use stuff like Flatpak or Homebrew or, 00:07:06.356 --> 00:07:09.936 you know, other third-party options that don't mess with that part of the file system. 00:07:10.056 --> 00:07:14.536 And as a result, if you do that, then they can say you don't need to locally 00:07:14.536 --> 00:07:18.956 compose that part of the OS anymore, right? You don't have to worry about stitching 00:07:18.956 --> 00:07:22.496 it together into a working base sort of Linux system. 00:07:22.656 --> 00:07:28.116 We'll do that ahead of time as a single atomic unit. We'll ship that to you, 00:07:28.116 --> 00:07:31.736 and then you just switch between those, and you can keep your layers on top. 00:07:31.936 --> 00:07:36.356 So this is where I think we have a divergence, is I never really had this. 00:07:36.496 --> 00:07:40.056 I had a different experience when I went from NixOS to Bluefin. 00:07:40.276 --> 00:07:44.276 With NixOS, I'm composing the entire system. 00:07:45.396 --> 00:07:51.316 I'm doing these atomic updates where I switch into a different build it felt 00:07:51.316 --> 00:07:56.956 like its own unique beast and so the immutability and the atomic updates were 00:07:56.956 --> 00:07:58.696 just part of this unique beast. 00:07:58.696 --> 00:08:02.736 And it's hard not to notice your use in Nix OS it's very different, 00:08:02.976 --> 00:08:06.516 you did it very intentionally and the way you interface with it is not really like anything else. 00:08:06.516 --> 00:08:11.056 So when I went to Bluefin where it felt like traditional Linux in that it has 00:08:11.056 --> 00:08:15.056 the standard file architecture that you expect, the file system architecture you expect. 00:08:15.056 --> 00:08:15.976 The old FHS. Yep. 00:08:16.956 --> 00:08:23.256 It was more of a... It felt more of a experience shift. 00:08:23.436 --> 00:08:28.636 It was more realized that this was a system that was designed to be immutable, 00:08:28.676 --> 00:08:31.396 that I wasn't really supposed to be modifying this directly. 00:08:31.396 --> 00:08:33.396 And it sometimes was a problem. 00:08:33.916 --> 00:08:40.136 But it made me realize that it is a bit of a post-Tinkerer's distribution, these types of systems. 00:08:40.896 --> 00:08:42.336 In the sense that... 00:08:44.075 --> 00:08:47.995 You know, this thing, Bluefin, for example, it ships with TailScale integrated. 00:08:48.495 --> 00:08:50.835 But what if I wanted to swap TailScale out for Nebula? 00:08:51.955 --> 00:08:57.555 That's actually a surprisingly large amount of work with a big amount of learning 00:08:57.555 --> 00:08:59.715 to figure out how to customize that image. 00:08:59.855 --> 00:09:03.795 You very quickly end up in, I need to customize an image territory. 00:09:04.095 --> 00:09:06.855 If you just want to, say, swap out a component like TailScale. 00:09:07.035 --> 00:09:10.615 Right. Yeah. And that is where if it's baked in, there's not necessarily as 00:09:10.615 --> 00:09:15.135 easy of an option to unbake it. And so if you're doing it at the layer where 00:09:15.135 --> 00:09:17.595 you want to switch out a flat pack you installed. 00:09:18.095 --> 00:09:19.135 Easy peasy. 00:09:19.295 --> 00:09:23.435 Yeah, exactly. But to make your own customizations, that's where you start having 00:09:23.435 --> 00:09:25.195 to engage in the build pipeline. 00:09:25.415 --> 00:09:31.415 So either this is for people that really like to tinker or it's for people that don't want to tinker. 00:09:32.155 --> 00:09:36.615 And, you know, it's not for people that like to mess with computers. 00:09:38.755 --> 00:09:41.475 I think it's for people that want their computer just to work. 00:09:41.915 --> 00:09:45.475 And there is a lot of people that started with Linux to play around. 00:09:45.595 --> 00:09:46.495 Their computer was a toy. 00:09:46.635 --> 00:09:48.815 They got to learn. They experimented with different desktops. 00:09:48.915 --> 00:09:50.615 They distro hopped quite a bit. 00:09:51.715 --> 00:09:56.075 As time went on, they got busy with jobs, perhaps family or other responsibilities. 00:09:56.675 --> 00:10:01.735 And that toy turns into a tool. And then you extend that far enough out, 00:10:01.755 --> 00:10:05.815 and it gets to the point of you don't want your computer to have problems at all. 00:10:06.235 --> 00:10:09.315 Anything that stops you from just getting work done is very unwelcome. 00:10:09.935 --> 00:10:15.115 And for that category of user, which I suspect is actually the vast majority of real-world users... 00:10:16.777 --> 00:10:21.757 Immutable distros, especially ones like Bluefin, they're totally built for these people. 00:10:23.737 --> 00:10:28.457 The developer that just wants a really solid workstation that is container-first, 00:10:29.397 --> 00:10:30.717 man, is this perfect for them. 00:10:30.757 --> 00:10:34.877 See, that's where I have a bit of a question. I think for developers specifically, I'm less sure. 00:10:35.377 --> 00:10:37.237 There's a lot, because that's where I feel like they're trying to market at 00:10:37.237 --> 00:10:41.737 two different groups. And that's why maybe Bazite has a lot more users than 00:10:41.737 --> 00:10:42.837 any of the rest of these, right? 00:10:42.917 --> 00:10:45.517 Because people running Bazite, that's what they want, right? 00:10:45.517 --> 00:10:47.477 I mean, you want a thing that just runs games and doesn't break. 00:10:47.697 --> 00:10:47.897 Absolutely. 00:10:48.217 --> 00:10:52.257 And I think there's a class of developers, and Bluefin especially seems pretty targeted that way. 00:10:52.737 --> 00:10:58.757 And if you can fit into their model where you don't need to rebase, then that works well. 00:10:58.817 --> 00:11:01.657 But it seems like if you are a developer and you do need to make any changes, 00:11:01.837 --> 00:11:03.357 you are going to have to engage. 00:11:03.497 --> 00:11:07.417 So I guess it just feels like on one hand they're saying, we want to build this 00:11:07.417 --> 00:11:12.977 in a way where people who have modern cloud container DevOps skills can change 00:11:12.977 --> 00:11:17.977 it. but that's a different class than people who just want their computer to work. 00:11:18.317 --> 00:11:21.137 I think the people who want their computer to work don't really want to also 00:11:21.137 --> 00:11:24.437 then build a whole bunch of container pipelines for their computer, 00:11:25.297 --> 00:11:29.337 but there's not a lot left in the middle between run exactly the image you get 00:11:29.337 --> 00:11:33.097 or fully engage, and that's where I wonder about the developers specifically. 00:11:33.377 --> 00:11:38.637 It is actually, you're making it, the point you're making really is that it's 00:11:38.637 --> 00:11:41.217 a very targeted type of developer where it just works out of the box. 00:11:41.337 --> 00:11:43.857 Yes. And that might be the majority of them. 00:11:44.037 --> 00:11:44.277 It might be. 00:11:44.397 --> 00:11:44.537 Yeah. 00:11:44.677 --> 00:11:47.577 It might be, but you're right. Like, if you want to swap out a few core components, 00:11:47.957 --> 00:11:52.417 maybe for whatever reason, you got to go with the Docker instead of the Podman. 00:11:53.357 --> 00:11:57.237 That's a lot of work. That's no joke. So you're right. 00:11:58.157 --> 00:12:01.297 If you fall into this world where you get most of your stuff either through 00:12:01.297 --> 00:12:05.017 brew or flat packs, and you're good with the stuff they include, 00:12:05.217 --> 00:12:11.597 I think these immutable distros have this very attractive set it and forget it, 00:12:12.728 --> 00:12:16.868 actually semi-bulletproof a quality 00:12:16.868 --> 00:12:24.008 to them that i suspect makes them a stronger competitor to commercial desktops 00:12:24.008 --> 00:12:27.928 if you can fit and that's why it's nice we have a lot of options here but if 00:12:27.928 --> 00:12:32.788 you can fit within their defined parameters i think these immutable distros 00:12:32.788 --> 00:12:34.308 are a stronger contender. 00:12:34.308 --> 00:12:39.648 Well i mean i think they're spot on the most people devs included unless you 00:12:39.648 --> 00:12:44.408 are someone who does want to dev on the desktop, you don't care about doing the composing, right? 00:12:44.648 --> 00:12:48.088 I might care that I need to add a package that I can run, but I don't care at 00:12:48.088 --> 00:12:52.448 all about how the package manager works or the nuances of how the init ramifest gets regenerated. 00:12:53.248 --> 00:12:55.768 That's exactly the stuff that you just should run in the background. 00:12:56.308 --> 00:13:00.148 And I think we have seen the first signs of this. What do you think, Brent? 00:13:00.408 --> 00:13:05.288 I have always been unsure about these immutable systems because everyone I know 00:13:05.288 --> 00:13:09.608 who's been running them have been super technical and want to tinker with stuff. 00:13:10.708 --> 00:13:13.528 but then i hear yeah this is going to 00:13:13.528 --> 00:13:16.608 be perfect for the user who doesn't want things to break and just 00:13:16.608 --> 00:13:20.248 wants to get things done and i wonder if like 00:13:20.248 --> 00:13:23.028 last episode where we explored omarchie and 00:13:23.028 --> 00:13:30.128 the whole point was to use linux for its strengths is this a version of using 00:13:30.128 --> 00:13:35.348 linux for its strengths that might get like bazite a big input of users that 00:13:35.348 --> 00:13:40.608 are looking for a specific thing that traditional distros didn't offer? 00:13:40.948 --> 00:13:46.548 I think so. And I think, you know, Bazite is a great example of where we're seeing this. 00:13:46.908 --> 00:13:51.088 If you, that's, Bazite out of all of the Universal Blue projects has the most traction. 00:13:51.808 --> 00:13:59.488 And it seems to have appealed not because it's technically interesting and not because it, 00:14:00.392 --> 00:14:05.252 you know, includes this or that, but simply it just makes gaming on a device 00:14:05.252 --> 00:14:07.032 like the Steam Deck really approachable. 00:14:07.252 --> 00:14:10.212 And it solves a lot of challenges just out of the box. 00:14:10.372 --> 00:14:15.312 And it's created this bit of a perception shift around Linux, 00:14:15.312 --> 00:14:17.792 and I think you particularly see it with YouTubers. 00:14:18.692 --> 00:14:23.332 It's the gaming that has sort of opened the door for these popular YouTubers 00:14:23.332 --> 00:14:25.812 to talk about Linux and open it up to a new demographic. 00:14:26.072 --> 00:14:28.772 And I think it's winning because it's working, right? 00:14:28.852 --> 00:14:33.032 It just works. And kind of, especially with, like, they were pretty early, right, with, like, 00:14:33.692 --> 00:14:36.552 getting all the graphics stuff shipped, which is exactly the layer of, 00:14:36.652 --> 00:14:42.432 you know, desktop dev that you can be an expert at, like, using Linux as a dev 00:14:42.432 --> 00:14:45.792 workstation and understand nothing about Mesa and OpenGA. 00:14:45.792 --> 00:14:49.572 And there's all these layers of how graphics and gaming should work on the desktop, 00:14:49.572 --> 00:14:50.832 and now you don't have to care. 00:14:51.572 --> 00:14:55.592 Here's another thing that's been a weird shift for me, is now after a while 00:14:55.592 --> 00:15:00.472 of using NixOS and now 50 days of using Bluefin, when I do jump on an Archbox, 00:15:00.572 --> 00:15:02.372 I don't remember, we were just on Arch recently for something. 00:15:02.492 --> 00:15:02.892 Oh, Merchie. 00:15:03.112 --> 00:15:08.372 Oh, yeah, right. When I jump on an Archbox, I feel like I'm flying without a parachute. 00:15:08.932 --> 00:15:13.392 Like I got no safety net, even though I'm not afraid of breaking the system necessarily. 00:15:14.252 --> 00:15:19.192 But it feels like you're using the computer in root mode almost constantly. 00:15:19.192 --> 00:15:22.432 Wait, I can just install packages right into my root file system? 00:15:22.512 --> 00:15:23.172 Yeah, it's weird. 00:15:23.452 --> 00:15:24.152 Like an animal? 00:15:24.432 --> 00:15:29.672 And this is where I think if this idea that these immutable distributions or 00:15:29.672 --> 00:15:33.612 desktop experiences, whatever you want to call them, become more and more popular, 00:15:33.632 --> 00:15:35.432 which it does seem like that is happening. 00:15:36.477 --> 00:15:40.777 And myself, I don't really see myself using non-immutable distros and ones that 00:15:40.777 --> 00:15:42.077 are atomically updated going forward. 00:15:42.657 --> 00:15:44.657 I just, I don't know why I would go back. 00:15:45.117 --> 00:15:50.317 Interesting. I do think Ilmarchi and the Omicube stuff makes for an interesting 00:15:50.317 --> 00:15:53.917 thought experiment just in terms of how we classify things, right? 00:15:53.977 --> 00:15:56.177 Like what is and isn't a distribution? 00:15:56.437 --> 00:15:59.557 Because like in some ways, Ilmarchi feels like a lot of what Blufin, 00:15:59.617 --> 00:16:03.577 especially DX is doing in terms of making a well put together development, 00:16:03.577 --> 00:16:05.017 ready to go workstation. 00:16:05.017 --> 00:16:07.917 they just didn't they left all the regular stuff 00:16:07.917 --> 00:16:12.557 of you install arch or ubuntu and then run our stuff on top and then the bluefin 00:16:12.557 --> 00:16:16.677 and you blue folks are taking going one step further back to then not be the 00:16:16.677 --> 00:16:20.197 full distribution as we were talking about but to step into more of bottling 00:16:20.197 --> 00:16:23.877 that and shipping it as atomic units that you can deploy and then you have all 00:16:23.877 --> 00:16:26.377 the way up to like your fedoras building the whole thing. 00:16:26.377 --> 00:16:31.157 But the universal blue stuff is is a more modern way to do it than the way the 00:16:31.157 --> 00:16:34.857 omararche omacube stuff is right that's bash scripts and installing packages 00:16:34.857 --> 00:16:35.877 from the package manager. 00:16:36.217 --> 00:16:40.237 It's like a layer, right? It's kind of a, it's almost the exact analogy with containers, right? 00:16:40.337 --> 00:16:43.037 It's, they took a lot of, because if you look at the structure, 00:16:43.437 --> 00:16:46.277 there's a build.sh that sources a bunch of other build modules. 00:16:46.637 --> 00:16:48.357 In that respect, it's very similar. 00:16:48.757 --> 00:16:51.717 Once you're in the containerized build environment, what's actually happening 00:16:51.717 --> 00:16:53.637 between it and omarch are very similar, I think. 00:16:53.697 --> 00:16:53.797 Right. 00:16:54.197 --> 00:16:57.357 But then you just stuff all of that in the OCI Bootsy layer. 00:16:57.477 --> 00:17:01.417 But the difference, yes. But the difference is, right, it's happening on each end user system. 00:17:01.697 --> 00:17:06.077 There's a lot of variability there. There's a lot of things that can go sideways after time. 00:17:06.677 --> 00:17:10.977 A big part of this is shift left, we do the builds, and then we know the build 00:17:10.977 --> 00:17:12.157 worked, and then we ship you that. 00:17:12.317 --> 00:17:15.137 Exactly. So there is that difference. But otherwise, yeah, how they actually 00:17:15.137 --> 00:17:17.617 get composed is at the end of the day relatively similar. 00:17:18.077 --> 00:17:20.437 That's why I think it's so fascinating because it exposes like this, 00:17:21.017 --> 00:17:24.577 probably a spectrum is not enough dimensions for this whole chart of like different 00:17:24.577 --> 00:17:27.637 options of where you can be on quote-unquote distribution space. 00:17:27.797 --> 00:17:29.557 But here's where I'm going with this is... 00:17:31.389 --> 00:17:36.009 I think Nix OS is, if you will, a divergent path in this immutable future where 00:17:36.009 --> 00:17:40.969 these other systems try to hide some of this from the user. 00:17:41.229 --> 00:17:44.909 And they try to, you know, maybe they offer brew and the flat hub and they try 00:17:44.909 --> 00:17:46.409 to, like, you know, give some options there. 00:17:47.249 --> 00:17:50.449 Where Nix OS is like you go all in and you're managing that. 00:17:50.609 --> 00:17:52.409 You're the one that's constructing that environment. 00:17:52.709 --> 00:17:57.369 It feels like Nix OS and will be the escape hatch where you have this future, 00:17:57.649 --> 00:17:59.449 but you're in total control. 00:17:59.449 --> 00:18:05.349 and you're composing it yourself on the fly with the configuration versus these 00:18:05.349 --> 00:18:10.289 image-based ones where you're basically taking their experience and then you're 00:18:10.289 --> 00:18:12.689 building on top of that if you know how to do that. 00:18:13.589 --> 00:18:18.369 It's going to be two very different paths in the immutability world and the 00:18:18.369 --> 00:18:21.109 best way to really appreciate and understand what I'm saying is to try them both. 00:18:21.249 --> 00:18:24.949 For sure, yeah. Because I think that's where there really is an individual layer 00:18:24.949 --> 00:18:29.989 of like what works for you what escape hatches do you actually need which things 00:18:29.989 --> 00:18:34.569 do you want to tweak and do they fall into the the class of how easy is it to 00:18:34.569 --> 00:18:39.409 do and which how often do you need to do it and how annoying do you find the process and. 00:18:39.409 --> 00:18:42.549 If you haven't tried one yet it might be worth doing 00:18:42.549 --> 00:18:45.989 that just because this is such a trend that seems 00:18:45.989 --> 00:18:49.309 like it's not going away like i said we have just about every distribution under 00:18:49.309 --> 00:18:54.309 the sun that's taking a stab at this there's a lot of options out there so there's 00:18:54.309 --> 00:18:57.429 some shopping you can do there's some playing around you can do there's some 00:18:57.429 --> 00:19:01.089 experimenting you can do to really get a sense of this and at least have some 00:19:01.089 --> 00:19:03.909 experience even if you you know don't make it your daily driver. 00:19:03.909 --> 00:19:08.789 They're really nice too i mean you know bluefin is a sort of secondary uh os 00:19:08.789 --> 00:19:12.029 on your machine to boot into if you have other problems or you just you know 00:19:12.029 --> 00:19:15.089 whatever true it's really nice you know it'll be rock solid it'll update in 00:19:15.089 --> 00:19:18.229 the background and right now i mean they're nice and fresh they got you know 00:19:18.229 --> 00:19:21.149 recent fedora great desktops it's a good time, 00:19:21.349 --> 00:19:23.989 and Blufin's got that fresh installer, which is also pretty nice. 00:19:27.529 --> 00:19:33.749 1password.com slash unplugged. 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It's by 1Password, and it makes security 00:20:07.264 --> 00:20:11.904 simple for every employee with every application they use, even the apps that 00:20:11.904 --> 00:20:13.604 IT didn't necessarily know about. 00:20:13.844 --> 00:20:17.184 There are so many SaaS applications floating around companies right now. 00:20:17.464 --> 00:20:21.424 And if you can't keep count of every one of them, I know I can't. You're not alone. 00:20:22.044 --> 00:20:25.424 That's the superpower that Treleka gives you by 1Password. It helps you discover 00:20:25.424 --> 00:20:29.484 and secure access to all those SaaS apps, even the ones that are unmanaged. 00:20:29.724 --> 00:20:32.824 There really is more than just securing passwords these days. 00:20:33.324 --> 00:20:36.684 Managed and unmanaged applications, for instance, are a big issue. 00:20:37.144 --> 00:20:40.664 So what I'm saying is you can check compliance off your list with a system of 00:20:40.664 --> 00:20:44.724 record for your app inventory and employee lifecycle workflows. 00:20:44.944 --> 00:20:48.384 With Treleka by 1Password, employees are empowered with secure, 00:20:48.564 --> 00:20:53.724 flexible app access with a self-serve app hub, simplifying the process for users 00:20:53.724 --> 00:20:57.464 to gain or request access to tools, which enhances security and productivity 00:20:57.464 --> 00:20:59.284 for your entire SaaS ecosystem. 00:20:59.464 --> 00:21:04.564 You can really reduce unnecessary costs and get a handle on app usage and identify 00:21:04.564 --> 00:21:07.464 and eliminate unused licenses and redundant apps. 00:21:07.624 --> 00:21:12.804 So go to 1password.com slash unplugged. Take those first steps to better security 00:21:12.804 --> 00:21:16.444 for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, 00:21:16.704 --> 00:21:18.884 even the unmanaged shadow IT stuff. 00:21:19.044 --> 00:21:22.664 I've been there. I know how hard that is. Go learn more. Support the show. 00:21:22.964 --> 00:21:28.604 Go to 1password. That's the number 1password.com slash unplugged. All lowercase. 00:21:28.864 --> 00:21:33.304 It makes the difference. Check it out at 1password.com slash unplugged. 00:21:36.168 --> 00:21:39.308 Well, we've heard from some of you listeners who've been using these immutable 00:21:39.308 --> 00:21:41.368 systems, I don't know, since they first came out. 00:21:41.788 --> 00:21:45.308 But I want to know, are you going to try this? Have you been using it for a 00:21:45.308 --> 00:21:49.428 while? How has that journey gone? If you want to boost in, let us know. That would be amazing. 00:21:50.228 --> 00:21:55.348 But mostly today, Chris, I'm curious, how has your 50 days of Bluefin gone? 00:21:55.868 --> 00:21:57.948 Can you believe we're here at this party? 00:21:58.288 --> 00:21:58.328 No. 00:21:58.568 --> 00:21:59.248 Like 50 days. 00:21:59.848 --> 00:22:03.468 Oh, I guess that means it's been 50 days since Red Hat Summit. 00:22:03.468 --> 00:22:07.428 That's right. It was Boston. I was inspired by all the Bootsy and cloud-native buzz. 00:22:08.008 --> 00:22:11.928 So I had a Knicks book that Olympiad Mike had just recently gave us, 00:22:11.968 --> 00:22:13.288 and I thought, all right. 00:22:13.648 --> 00:22:16.248 Sorry, Mike. This is the most sacrilegious thing I could do, but here we go. 00:22:16.288 --> 00:22:20.868 So I deployed Bluefin on that laptop while we were at our Airbnb. 00:22:21.228 --> 00:22:25.788 And then when we got back, we deployed it on what had been a Neon workstation, 00:22:25.828 --> 00:22:28.808 which is now, well, currently an Aurora workstation. 00:22:29.208 --> 00:22:34.608 So, of course, I played around with it here and there live, but I mostly just 00:22:34.608 --> 00:22:37.808 put it on the two systems I use the most, which is my laptop and the studio workstation. 00:22:38.048 --> 00:22:43.028 And it's also not only my 50-day mark of using Bluefin, but it's also the four-year 00:22:43.028 --> 00:22:45.708 anniversary of Universal Blue, the project. 00:22:45.868 --> 00:22:46.908 Which congrats to them. 00:22:47.068 --> 00:22:51.008 Yeah. And they started with Bluefin, so that technically makes it four years 00:22:51.008 --> 00:22:54.848 of Bluefin. So I'm using a distribution that just turned four years old. 00:22:55.008 --> 00:22:59.088 There's about 25,000 weekly check-ins of Universal Blue systems, 00:22:59.668 --> 00:23:02.268 Bazite being the most popular, Bluefin and Aurora are up there. 00:23:02.428 --> 00:23:04.828 Of course, that includes Silverblue and Kino Night as well. 00:23:05.108 --> 00:23:09.208 You know, regardless of if it's your community or your distro or image or not, 00:23:09.368 --> 00:23:13.548 it's just, it's great to watch folks building and finding software and Linux 00:23:13.548 --> 00:23:14.808 stuff that works for them. 00:23:15.108 --> 00:23:19.008 And there's like a lot of organic excitement around UBlue and the team behind 00:23:19.008 --> 00:23:20.428 it. And I think that's great. 00:23:20.568 --> 00:23:23.788 And the thing that's neat too is a lot of the original team still involved. 00:23:24.108 --> 00:23:25.748 So that gives it a unique vibe. 00:23:26.408 --> 00:23:29.728 In fact, you could argue they're still very much the center of their community 00:23:29.728 --> 00:23:32.348 and their community really takes place i think on their discourse, 00:23:33.408 --> 00:23:38.188 they don't have like a reddit presence or a big social media presence outside of that, 00:23:39.128 --> 00:23:42.028 but it gives a kind of a unique vibe where these people are still very much 00:23:42.028 --> 00:23:46.568 involved they're approachable and you know they're making news and they're still 00:23:46.568 --> 00:23:50.328 there it's it's fascinating it's it's definitely has its own dynamic unlike 00:23:50.328 --> 00:23:53.068 unlike other distros and i think it's good, 00:23:54.028 --> 00:23:58.128 so let's start with the good and i'll get to the bad uh of using bluefin now for 50 days, 00:23:59.467 --> 00:24:03.147 I think my favorite feature has been the auto update and forget it feature, 00:24:03.247 --> 00:24:06.747 which you can turn on. It's not on by default, but it's nice. 00:24:07.087 --> 00:24:10.847 And after about a month of not rebooting my system, because it was just rock 00:24:10.847 --> 00:24:15.167 solid, I did get a notification that said, you should probably think about rebooting. 00:24:15.427 --> 00:24:15.647 Nice. 00:24:15.747 --> 00:24:20.767 That's a good touch. Yeah, yeah, it was. The Ujust command, which comes with 00:24:20.767 --> 00:24:24.147 all of these Universal Blue-based images, is really nice. 00:24:24.247 --> 00:24:27.907 It makes it easy to update everything. It lets you do lots of system tweaks 00:24:27.907 --> 00:24:31.467 and additions like setting up distro box or virtualization, gaming, 00:24:31.767 --> 00:24:35.347 turning on the command line bling and a lot of things like that. 00:24:36.007 --> 00:24:39.647 It also has like a 2E mode where you can see all the options and get a brief 00:24:39.647 --> 00:24:42.047 description and see what they do. So that's pretty nice. 00:24:42.627 --> 00:24:45.707 And of course, it is immutable. So it has a read-only root file system. 00:24:45.847 --> 00:24:48.587 So only var and etsy are writable by the user. 00:24:48.927 --> 00:24:51.187 And that really hasn't been an issue once. 00:24:52.207 --> 00:24:54.887 It's really been nothing but positive. I don't know, Brent, if I told you, 00:24:54.907 --> 00:24:57.567 you know, you couldn't write to anything but Varanetsy, you'd think, 00:24:57.687 --> 00:25:00.827 well, that's not going to work for me. But it's been totally fine. 00:25:01.027 --> 00:25:05.547 I actually can't remember the last time I wrote to anything but Varanetsy, to be honest. 00:25:05.727 --> 00:25:08.427 So as soon as you say, oh, no, those two folders are writable, 00:25:08.547 --> 00:25:12.087 I was like, well, what am I? Am I losing anything? It doesn't sound like I'm losing anything. 00:25:12.467 --> 00:25:15.147 And I think they make a lot of good out-of-the-box app choices. 00:25:15.987 --> 00:25:18.747 They just recently decided to change from GNOME Software to, 00:25:18.867 --> 00:25:21.487 I think it's Bazzar, which I've been trying and I liked a lot. 00:25:21.967 --> 00:25:25.587 You do end up needing to, I think, add a lot of additional software and set 00:25:25.587 --> 00:25:28.707 up a lot more stuff, but the base stuff they include has been really good. 00:25:29.027 --> 00:25:33.747 See, this is one of my big hesitations, actually. You mentioned in the previous 00:25:33.747 --> 00:25:37.547 segment how difficult it is, let's say, if you want to switch to Docker from 00:25:37.547 --> 00:25:39.807 Podman, which is built in by default, and I'm just curious... 00:25:42.391 --> 00:25:48.371 why not have a version of bluefin that's so vanilla but they have flat packs 00:25:48.371 --> 00:25:52.571 that are pre-installed because that would be a lot easier to modify for instance 00:25:52.571 --> 00:25:58.631 i'm assuming it's because these some of these choices need deeper system i don't 00:25:58.631 --> 00:26:00.331 know integration is that the case. 00:26:00.331 --> 00:26:03.271 Well some things are like like firefox and whatnot those 00:26:03.271 --> 00:26:06.051 are a flat pack uh in fact in the build you can 00:26:06.051 --> 00:26:10.191 actually see at some point it uninstalls the firefox rpm and then it installs 00:26:10.191 --> 00:26:13.871 the flat pack of firefox like when you go through and watch a custom build of 00:26:13.871 --> 00:26:18.351 it right so that's been interesting but i think some things like brew have to 00:26:18.351 --> 00:26:22.451 be installed in the way they are so that way you can put packages on the system 00:26:22.451 --> 00:26:24.491 so some things do require that level of integration. 00:26:24.491 --> 00:26:27.671 Right like if they want to deliver the appliance part 00:26:27.671 --> 00:26:30.371 then they need some stuff to build with so i think that's to some 00:26:30.371 --> 00:26:33.271 extent right like if you want to install a bunch of the bling well some of the fancy 00:26:33.271 --> 00:26:38.691 you know shell helpers come from brew or if you're gonna you know ship images 00:26:38.691 --> 00:26:41.411 and you need a bunch of escape hatches then you probably need a container runtime 00:26:41.411 --> 00:26:44.311 so then you're going to have one and it's pretty tightly integrated and hooked 00:26:44.311 --> 00:26:47.451 into the terminal and then so if you want to opt your options then do you have 00:26:47.451 --> 00:26:51.491 to how much work is that to swap out or parallel maintain so. 00:26:51.491 --> 00:26:54.071 They've tried to make you just handle a lot of that stuff. 00:26:54.071 --> 00:26:59.951 But you can definitely you know build from copy their build and from the upstream 00:26:59.951 --> 00:27:02.731 fedora stuff and tweak stuff out that way if you'd like to. 00:27:02.731 --> 00:27:04.451 If you really want to learn how to. 00:27:04.451 --> 00:27:05.571 We can talk more about that yeah. 00:27:05.571 --> 00:27:12.071 We'll talk more about that But what I will say, it really has been very minimal maintenance. 00:27:12.431 --> 00:27:18.771 I mean, the least fussing, the least maintenance I have ever had with any desktop system, period. 00:27:19.271 --> 00:27:22.091 Chris can't break it approved. You heard it here, folks. 00:27:22.331 --> 00:27:26.251 Right. It is solid. So here's the bad. That's the good, here's the bad. 00:27:26.611 --> 00:27:28.571 What has worked amazingly well 00:27:28.571 --> 00:27:33.091 on my studio workstation has made me feel a bit boxed in on the laptop. 00:27:33.771 --> 00:27:36.011 This was most felt when setting up the system. 00:27:36.771 --> 00:27:41.291 Some changes require pulling down very large images for what seems like a simple change. 00:27:41.491 --> 00:27:45.471 And, I mean, I'm talking gigs and gigs of images, which, not a problem on the 00:27:45.471 --> 00:27:46.731 studio workstation on Ethernet. 00:27:47.371 --> 00:27:51.131 Bit of a problem when you're on the go with a laptop on LTE. 00:27:51.691 --> 00:27:55.891 But after the system's mainly set up, you will run into this from time to time, 00:27:55.991 --> 00:27:56.751 but it's pretty livable. 00:27:56.831 --> 00:28:00.331 So I don't want to overstate it, but it's definitely worth having a solid Internet 00:28:00.331 --> 00:28:03.311 connection when you first set up your box. You will feel that. 00:28:05.256 --> 00:28:09.276 I will admit some of my bias here is I'm not a big brew fan. 00:28:09.476 --> 00:28:10.816 I never really have been. 00:28:11.296 --> 00:28:15.176 In my opinion, it's slow. It uses a lot of computer resources when it is running. 00:28:15.876 --> 00:28:20.636 And the package availability, while decent, nowhere near AUR or Nix. 00:28:20.916 --> 00:28:24.176 What, you didn't want a package system written in Ruby? I don't get that, Chris. 00:28:24.396 --> 00:28:29.796 And so I found myself really suffering during the TUI challenge. 00:28:30.076 --> 00:28:34.036 I mean, if it was something that I couldn't run via Podman or Flatpak, 00:28:34.776 --> 00:28:38.436 I had to play this game of DistroBox roulette. 00:28:39.116 --> 00:28:43.596 Which package manager out of the available DistroBox images can I actually get this installed in? 00:28:44.036 --> 00:28:47.216 And man, was that tedious and a real pain in my butt. 00:28:48.436 --> 00:28:51.496 And, you know, they have this thing called developer mode where you kind of 00:28:51.496 --> 00:28:53.936 like kick it up into a more advanced user mode. 00:28:54.776 --> 00:28:59.636 And it made me think, well, they're not opposed to having more advanced users and modifications. 00:29:00.716 --> 00:29:03.916 So it'd be really nice if there was like a ujustnix command. 00:29:04.836 --> 00:29:08.936 that set up the Nix package manager or the Determinant Systems Nix installer 00:29:08.936 --> 00:29:11.776 in like a Bluefin best blessed way where you had a slash Nix. 00:29:12.096 --> 00:29:15.616 I mean, the software availability would be incredible. 00:29:16.116 --> 00:29:21.896 It would open up, you'd have Brew, you'd have Nix. It would be amazing. 00:29:21.896 --> 00:29:24.596 You could get just about anything in the free software world installed. 00:29:25.636 --> 00:29:32.956 But I did a little digging around and it seems like the project not really a big fan of this. 00:29:33.436 --> 00:29:37.156 I kind of find this fascinating i was looking to because i don't know if you 00:29:37.156 --> 00:29:38.576 remember they used to ship it. 00:29:38.576 --> 00:29:43.436 Yeah that well if you go look it up on google google ai answers still claims they do. 00:29:43.436 --> 00:29:47.756 And they also ship dev box which might have been why they were shipping it um originally, 00:29:48.676 --> 00:29:51.796 yeah so there's kind of some interesting um history there you can see some users 00:29:51.796 --> 00:29:56.236 sort of like oh why did this disappear and it's another case where people are 00:29:56.236 --> 00:30:00.476 kind of confused because kind of just low-key change log notes and then i guess 00:30:00.476 --> 00:30:02.556 most of it happened on discord conversation around it, 00:30:02.636 --> 00:30:06.456 and so there's multiple people sort of asking and digging up how it happened and where. 00:30:08.003 --> 00:30:12.003 And there's definitely been lots of asks over the years. So I'm kind of getting 00:30:12.003 --> 00:30:13.823 a little bit of spicy pushback. 00:30:14.143 --> 00:30:16.663 Yeah, I mean, it's usually it starts with, sorry, this is out of scope for us. 00:30:16.743 --> 00:30:19.963 But then if the person pushes back at all, it kind of gets a little contentious. 00:30:20.103 --> 00:30:23.383 Like, I think it's totally fair to have, you know, they get to say no, 00:30:23.463 --> 00:30:24.403 they get to make this project. 00:30:24.523 --> 00:30:28.023 They're totally right to point out that you can, you know, they publish a whole 00:30:28.023 --> 00:30:31.343 bunch of docs on how to go make your own images on top of this and have a whole 00:30:31.343 --> 00:30:33.883 workflow designed to let you do so. 00:30:33.983 --> 00:30:37.123 So that's all totally valid. But I do wonder about that, like, 00:30:37.703 --> 00:30:41.163 A, just that a lot of people keep asking, that's a signal. 00:30:41.323 --> 00:30:46.343 And then B, like, if you have to add brew, is it really out of scope? 00:30:46.623 --> 00:30:49.763 Like, I know they've had issues with SE Linux. None of them use it, 00:30:49.843 --> 00:30:51.763 so they're not really, like, they don't want to deal with the maintenance burden 00:30:51.763 --> 00:30:53.343 or any maintain any of it. 00:30:53.863 --> 00:30:57.463 It's just sort of, if something feels a little inconsistent that it used to, 00:30:57.523 --> 00:31:01.003 did it used to be in scope? What part of the scope changed where it's no longer in scope? 00:31:01.163 --> 00:31:04.723 And as a user, it would be such an unlock. It would be such an unlock. 00:31:04.723 --> 00:31:10.503 And my kind of next best is an Arch Distro box with the AUR, 00:31:10.663 --> 00:31:14.623 but I'll tell you, the AUR hit rate ain't what it used to be, kids. 00:31:14.863 --> 00:31:19.023 Like, I have a lot of stuff failed to build with AUR that I have no problem 00:31:19.023 --> 00:31:20.103 installing from Nix packages. 00:31:20.743 --> 00:31:26.423 Brew also seems, right out of the box, like a strange choice for a Linux distribution 00:31:26.423 --> 00:31:31.923 to rely on as its primary place to get, you know, packages for user land. 00:31:32.423 --> 00:31:36.463 I think they specifically like that it is distribution agnostic that's because 00:31:36.463 --> 00:31:39.223 they don't really consider themselves a distribution right there they're built 00:31:39.223 --> 00:31:43.763 on top of these core images and then they can layer in brew which works in user 00:31:43.763 --> 00:31:46.103 space and is distro agnostic itself. 00:31:46.103 --> 00:31:51.323 And a part of the issue with nix was sc linux compatibility uh and homebrew plays nicer. 00:31:51.323 --> 00:31:51.903 With that out. 00:31:51.903 --> 00:31:52.543 Of the box i believe. 00:31:52.543 --> 00:31:59.683 I just feel like when's the last time you had brew on a linux distribution period 00:31:59.683 --> 00:32:04.063 like i don't think i've ever run into it so it seemed like a an odd choice i'm 00:32:04.063 --> 00:32:07.443 glad you got to uh at least give it a taste chris and tell us. 00:32:07.443 --> 00:32:10.583 It is funny i i installed something recently and 00:32:10.583 --> 00:32:14.463 the air output was about being able to undo some unable to do something on mac 00:32:14.463 --> 00:32:18.523 os like it had some sort of post install script for max and it tried to execute 00:32:18.523 --> 00:32:25.583 it and it failed so okay so say a guy wanted to add nix just the package manager 00:32:25.583 --> 00:32:27.703 so you know you still had bluefin or Aurora. 00:32:28.063 --> 00:32:33.103 You had the file system standards. You really are in a kind of a Red Hat Fedora 00:32:33.103 --> 00:32:35.943 experience, but you just wanted the Nix package availability. 00:32:36.203 --> 00:32:38.403 It's a great place to run it, really, in that sense, because you don't have 00:32:38.403 --> 00:32:41.683 to care about the OS. You can just use it for isolated dev environments or for 00:32:41.683 --> 00:32:42.803 running whatever package. 00:32:43.503 --> 00:32:48.083 This is an example of where you need to start making your own custom images. 00:32:48.663 --> 00:32:53.063 And so we thought, well, this would be a neat opportunity to try to build Blue 00:32:53.063 --> 00:32:56.723 Nixfin, which, Wes Payne, you gave a go. 00:32:56.723 --> 00:33:00.303 I did give a go. We'll also have some links. There's a few different folks out 00:33:00.303 --> 00:33:02.223 there who have taken stabs at this as well. 00:33:02.957 --> 00:33:06.397 Yeah, it was kind of fun to go learn more about how you go build your own images. 00:33:06.737 --> 00:33:12.597 I tried both from cloning the whole repo for Bluefin and building that just 00:33:12.597 --> 00:33:17.497 to see what a base from Silverblue, from Fedora, building the whole thing looks like. 00:33:17.777 --> 00:33:22.637 But if you don't want to make crazy changes or not add, if you don't want to 00:33:22.637 --> 00:33:26.877 remove stuff that's deeply tied in, they've got an image template repo that 00:33:26.877 --> 00:33:28.937 you can just fork on GitHub or clone locally. 00:33:29.317 --> 00:33:32.637 It's all powered by Just with a Just file. So that's your entry point, 00:33:32.717 --> 00:33:35.297 just like with Ujust on Bluefin. 00:33:35.897 --> 00:33:40.617 And what this does is it's got a container file set up that runs a build.sh 00:33:40.617 --> 00:33:43.897 script that's ready for you to add your own scripts or whatever you want into. 00:33:44.177 --> 00:33:47.477 So is this where you would say, like, create a slash nix directory at the root? 00:33:47.717 --> 00:33:51.957 Exactly. You can install extra software. You can add extra directories or manipulate stuff. 00:33:52.097 --> 00:33:55.197 Because, like, one of the core complications here is you need a slash nix, 00:33:55.237 --> 00:33:57.617 which you don't get unless you modify the image. 00:33:57.857 --> 00:34:00.617 That's also been made more difficult recently. I believe 00:34:00.617 --> 00:34:04.697 as of 42 they're now moving to use composefs as 00:34:04.697 --> 00:34:08.857 the thing that like composes and puts together this read-only root file system 00:34:08.857 --> 00:34:12.617 which has better integration I guess it also allows like hashing and checksumming 00:34:12.617 --> 00:34:15.837 for security around like what the final file system looks like and stuff but 00:34:15.837 --> 00:34:19.877 it means it's even harder to do hacks at like runtime without modifying the 00:34:19.877 --> 00:34:23.557 image to make it have a and especially for Nix which is like really hard. 00:34:24.296 --> 00:34:29.776 all the stuff that's built is assuming a slash nix at the root. So you really need it. 00:34:29.916 --> 00:34:32.376 So you get in this build.sh, you make your modifications. 00:34:32.976 --> 00:34:37.516 Yeah, and so that's run as part from the just file as building. 00:34:38.676 --> 00:34:42.556 It starts from, like, it's just a container file at the start that says from, 00:34:42.776 --> 00:34:46.916 and then Bluefin, Bluefin DX, Bluefin GTS, Aurora, you know, 00:34:46.996 --> 00:34:48.196 whatever the base image you want. 00:34:48.376 --> 00:34:52.996 And then it handles running your build.sh for you in the right environment that's 00:34:52.996 --> 00:34:57.456 set up so that like RPM OS tree can run and commit your changes at the very end automatically. 00:34:57.636 --> 00:35:02.336 So you don't have to think about that. So base one of just getting Nix going 00:35:02.336 --> 00:35:08.296 is, yeah, you just need to add a make dir slash Nix so that that's there to work with. 00:35:08.456 --> 00:35:12.076 And then shout out to the determinant Nix folks because they've done a lot of 00:35:12.076 --> 00:35:15.996 work and continue to do so to not only get Nix to play better. 00:35:16.216 --> 00:35:18.796 I mean, you don't get a whole bunch of extra like verification, 00:35:18.796 --> 00:35:23.176 but just to play better out of the box with SE Linux-enabled systems, which is great. 00:35:23.456 --> 00:35:27.336 And then also specifically to make their installer work on OS tree systems. 00:35:27.716 --> 00:35:30.956 Now, this gets tricky if you're trying to do it. I was building my own version 00:35:30.956 --> 00:35:34.036 of their installer, which obviously has a flake, so it's easy to do, 00:35:34.116 --> 00:35:39.956 which is great, because they know to figure out, basically, you use slash var, right? 00:35:39.956 --> 00:35:43.576 So you make slash var slash nix or something like that, and then you bind mount 00:35:43.576 --> 00:35:46.196 that over the empty slash nix that you make in the image. 00:35:46.616 --> 00:35:51.156 And so if you leave them a slash nix and you run it at runtime, that'll all just work. 00:35:51.416 --> 00:35:54.636 Now, it gets trickier if you do what I was trying to do, which was build one 00:35:54.636 --> 00:35:56.536 where you could like fully bake Nix in. 00:35:56.776 --> 00:36:01.516 I got that working in single user Nix mode where you'd have to use sudo or like 00:36:01.516 --> 00:36:02.376 grant yourself permissions. 00:36:02.896 --> 00:36:06.856 With the multi version one, it's tricky because when you're in that build environment. 00:36:07.916 --> 00:36:12.336 Systemd isn't running, but you want systemd to work. 00:36:12.416 --> 00:36:15.076 And I think right now some of the setup process sort of assumes that they can 00:36:15.076 --> 00:36:18.436 like write stuff and then reload the daemon and then check that that worked 00:36:18.436 --> 00:36:19.916 and other stuff that you do at runtime. 00:36:20.276 --> 00:36:23.716 So you're telling me to really just make it work with the Terminant Systems 00:36:23.716 --> 00:36:26.976 Nix installer, you just needed to create slash Nix? 00:36:27.356 --> 00:36:30.156 And it could either be var Nix that's bind-mounted or whatever. 00:36:30.456 --> 00:36:34.196 Well, that can happen at runtime because slash var is writable. 00:36:34.336 --> 00:36:37.496 You need the right name existing in the image at runtime. 00:36:37.596 --> 00:36:42.636 So it seems like the bluefin image just needs slash var slash Nix to exist and then a ujust option. 00:36:42.636 --> 00:36:45.396 Not even that, just slash Nix at the base. 00:36:45.836 --> 00:36:48.676 Okay. Well, I was just thinking then a Ujust image that bind mounts it or something. 00:36:48.836 --> 00:36:52.636 But yeah, just like a Ujust option that just has an image that has slash nix. 00:36:53.476 --> 00:36:57.336 Or, and I think this is what they would push for, right, is some community folks 00:36:57.336 --> 00:37:01.296 who want to copy all, you know, they have, it's all integrated on GitHub Actions. 00:37:01.416 --> 00:37:06.056 You can set it up to build automatically and build a downstream version that adds it on. 00:37:06.316 --> 00:37:08.116 And I just feel like, yeah, yeah. 00:37:08.476 --> 00:37:12.796 If you look at some of the issues, their perspective is that even adding that 00:37:12.796 --> 00:37:15.236 sort of implies support. 00:37:16.149 --> 00:37:22.169 And I think it's folks that recognize, let's say, that Nix is complicated and 00:37:22.169 --> 00:37:24.789 that they don't, you know, it's not a tool that they're engaging with. 00:37:25.129 --> 00:37:28.629 So I think maybe they've had some bad experiences, perhaps. I don't know. 00:37:28.709 --> 00:37:31.469 See, this is where I feel like, though, I am going to struggle to keep using 00:37:31.469 --> 00:37:36.909 Bluefin on my main laptop because, like, I would like to be able to swap out some of the components. 00:37:37.589 --> 00:37:40.289 But I don't want to go through the process that you just went through. 00:37:41.389 --> 00:37:46.029 Where with Nix OS, I would just add it to my configuration. I need to know the 00:37:46.029 --> 00:37:49.769 syntax, but I can find that pretty quickly and then I rebuild and now that exists. 00:37:50.489 --> 00:37:50.889 Yeah, there is. 00:37:50.929 --> 00:37:53.389 So that's what I'm struggling with. Whereas like on my workstation here in the 00:37:53.389 --> 00:37:55.609 studio, I don't make those kind of changes. 00:37:56.449 --> 00:37:59.709 That is where I think there's kind of an interesting, maybe gap isn't the right 00:37:59.709 --> 00:38:02.009 word, but yeah, right? It's like it's optimized for different parts. 00:38:02.149 --> 00:38:06.549 It's optimized for the appliance user and then it's optimized for like the distro builder. 00:38:06.829 --> 00:38:09.109 Like it would be a great, it would make total sense if you were going to deploy 00:38:09.109 --> 00:38:12.429 a fleet of machines and you wanted to bake Nixon and engage with this process. 00:38:12.429 --> 00:38:16.029 If I was DHH and I lived in the container world, this is how I would be building 00:38:16.029 --> 00:38:19.329 Alma Archie. I mean, how cool would it be to have this, but Arch? 00:38:19.709 --> 00:38:21.589 Like, that'd be really something. Then you'd have the AUR. 00:38:21.789 --> 00:38:27.509 But I agree that it is kind of, unless you're already doing a bunch of container 00:38:27.509 --> 00:38:29.949 stuff all the time, it is, I mean, 00:38:30.569 --> 00:38:33.769 I will say, I think you could definitely do it because for their image template, 00:38:33.949 --> 00:38:39.689 it is, you could fork it on GitHub and then just add one line into the stuff 00:38:39.689 --> 00:38:42.169 and then have GitHub run it probably even. 00:38:42.429 --> 00:38:42.669 Yeah. 00:38:42.769 --> 00:38:45.569 And then have an ISO file you could use or a Docker thing. 00:38:45.769 --> 00:38:46.309 It's definitely doable. 00:38:46.509 --> 00:38:46.689 Yes. 00:38:46.689 --> 00:38:46.749 Yeah. 00:38:47.986 --> 00:38:50.626 Maybe, you know, because there are things that I do like about it. 00:38:50.806 --> 00:38:54.986 And it is a cost where like once you figured it out and you can even use GitHub, 00:38:55.246 --> 00:38:57.826 it's all set up to like push to GitHub repo and stuff. 00:38:57.846 --> 00:39:01.966 So you could have it run, bake it in, and then you could just rebase locally. 00:39:02.006 --> 00:39:05.486 And then once you set it up, you can even set your system to just follow that for updates. 00:39:05.806 --> 00:39:09.966 So then you go into GitHub, trigger the action or whatever to build a fresh one. 00:39:10.086 --> 00:39:13.886 Right. That's how you'd want to do it. Yeah, it could be worth looking at because 00:39:13.886 --> 00:39:17.306 like I've mentioned it a couple of times in this episode so far, 00:39:17.306 --> 00:39:22.186 but having the file system hierarchy standard actually on your system turns out is handy. 00:39:22.946 --> 00:39:29.066 Because what you get is every application that you run, it just sort of seems 00:39:29.066 --> 00:39:33.026 to understand it's on a Linux box, it knows where stuff is, where this can sometimes 00:39:33.026 --> 00:39:35.726 be an issue with Nix. True. Nix OS. 00:39:36.426 --> 00:39:39.666 Not an insurmountable issue, and there's tools to help mitigate it, 00:39:40.026 --> 00:39:43.826 but it is something you just have to think about, and it's something you don't 00:39:43.826 --> 00:39:44.786 have to worry about with Bluefin. 00:39:45.046 --> 00:39:48.746 Right. It might be somewhat more incompatible because things can't write to 00:39:48.746 --> 00:39:49.826 all the places they might want to. 00:39:49.966 --> 00:39:53.646 But for the most part, you probably don't want them writing there without very explicit permission. 00:39:53.926 --> 00:39:57.006 And I don't have to decide which version of VS Code I want to install. 00:39:58.306 --> 00:40:04.426 There is also something nice about the fact that they support writing to etsyudevrules.d. 00:40:05.786 --> 00:40:09.686 Now, this is intended to be writable. So when you install a package, 00:40:09.686 --> 00:40:14.386 if it's adding hardware support for a device, it can write it to rules.d. 00:40:15.286 --> 00:40:20.646 The way this works in NixOS is you declaratively define a UDEV rule in the configuration, 00:40:20.646 --> 00:40:22.706 and then it generates that rule for you. 00:40:22.926 --> 00:40:26.286 Now, that's probably a better long-term way to manage a system, 00:40:27.006 --> 00:40:29.406 but an example is like... 00:40:30.609 --> 00:40:36.049 You know, you want to connect a quick hardware device to flash it or a steering 00:40:36.049 --> 00:40:38.129 controller to play a Steam game really quick. 00:40:38.209 --> 00:40:41.509 And you forget that, oh, yeah, I got to actually go define a UDEV rule for this, 00:40:41.709 --> 00:40:46.089 where with this type of system where it has an actual rules.d that you can just 00:40:46.089 --> 00:40:50.609 write UDEV rules to, those devices tend to just work because a package adds that rule. 00:40:51.189 --> 00:40:52.929 And that experience is a little smoother. 00:40:54.349 --> 00:40:57.769 Perhaps not the best long-term way to do it, but is a smoother end-user experience. 00:40:58.149 --> 00:41:01.769 Yeah, there's some more escape hatches in that way. Which I think is kind of 00:41:01.769 --> 00:41:06.329 interesting because there's, you know, it is more of a, like a component composed 00:41:06.329 --> 00:41:08.769 system in that you have like this core bit and then you do have, 00:41:09.029 --> 00:41:12.849 you still have a mutable, writable Etsy that's going to be per device on there 00:41:12.849 --> 00:41:15.309 in a way that's a little different than like how NixOS does it. 00:41:15.369 --> 00:41:17.549 Then you've got like the flat pack layer that you might install and then the 00:41:17.549 --> 00:41:20.989 homebrew layer as well that all act together to get you your final system. 00:41:21.269 --> 00:41:23.889 The experience I've had though with the studio workstation, I mean, 00:41:23.909 --> 00:41:26.889 this is such a no brainer for a headless server. 00:41:26.889 --> 00:41:29.789 if you just took out the desktop graphical environment and just ran this. 00:41:29.789 --> 00:41:33.229 This thing, this low maintenance, if you're running everything as an image anyways, 00:41:34.329 --> 00:41:38.269 man, it's just such a great way to run a server. And I know they're working on something. 00:41:38.389 --> 00:41:43.149 Yeah, they're working on a new one. So they had one based on CoreOS that I had 00:41:43.149 --> 00:41:45.409 not tried, but we'd been poking at. 00:41:45.969 --> 00:41:49.649 So they have a new one called KO. Yeah, there we go. A boot C server image for 00:41:49.649 --> 00:41:50.829 your self-hosting needs. 00:41:51.009 --> 00:41:53.309 And yeah, you could totally see how this would make a ton of sense, 00:41:53.669 --> 00:41:57.009 especially where on a server, you might not need to do nearly as much of that 00:41:57.009 --> 00:42:00.669 kind of, you know, base level changes or customization, especially if you're 00:42:00.669 --> 00:42:04.029 mostly just running a bunch of containerized workloads already. It'd be killer. 00:42:04.789 --> 00:42:07.209 I feel like I'm sticking with it. I mean, I think they also. 00:42:07.369 --> 00:42:10.309 They do note they like include ZFS out of the box too. So yeah. 00:42:11.029 --> 00:42:14.569 Not only do I just sort of have everything set up, but I just rebased the studio 00:42:14.569 --> 00:42:18.049 workstation to Aurora and I haven't really played around with the Plasma version 00:42:18.049 --> 00:42:20.349 yet. So it seems like an opportunity to keep doing that for a bit. 00:42:20.509 --> 00:42:21.389 Yeah. What'd you think of the process? 00:42:22.049 --> 00:42:27.929 Super smooth. I really really liked the boot C command line stuff is really simple to understand, 00:42:29.126 --> 00:42:32.166 one-liner did the whole thing literally a one-liner did the whole thing. 00:42:32.166 --> 00:42:35.266 And kind of just like what you're used to from nixos right like if you reboot 00:42:35.266 --> 00:42:36.466 you could go choose the other one. 00:42:36.466 --> 00:42:41.586 I could roll back i could roll back that's a big deal i mean it really has been super bulletproof, 00:42:42.066 --> 00:42:46.146 to the point where it had to remind me to reboot you know and that i think is 00:42:46.146 --> 00:42:48.746 a pretty good stamp of confidence right there too it's a really solid system 00:42:48.746 --> 00:42:51.846 and i feel like it's being built on top of, 00:42:52.586 --> 00:42:55.946 fedora 42 you know the latest fedora stuff which is really good but always just 00:42:55.946 --> 00:42:57.946 needs a little bit extra and they're adding that yeah. 00:42:57.946 --> 00:43:01.966 It definitely you know uh definitely a lot closer to like a shiny workstation 00:43:01.966 --> 00:43:04.886 than you get with with base fedora as lovely as it is. 00:43:04.886 --> 00:43:09.326 And i'm a lot closer to more like a rolling fedora i mean they have they have 00:43:09.326 --> 00:43:13.186 to do the updates and they have to rebase when fedora 43 comes out but they're 00:43:13.186 --> 00:43:16.906 going to deliver those updates to me and i'm just going to continue to just have more stuff. 00:43:16.906 --> 00:43:19.626 In flat pack and brew which you can update more on your own timeline. 00:43:19.626 --> 00:43:23.686 Yeah and then you know there if you use the you just auto update not only will 00:43:23.686 --> 00:43:27.866 it do all of the image updates for your system, but it also will do all the 00:43:27.866 --> 00:43:30.166 brew and flat pack updates in the background for you too. 00:43:30.666 --> 00:43:34.686 And the idea is, is embrace the reboot from time to time, which I need to get 00:43:34.686 --> 00:43:38.106 better about. And then you just come into a fresh system that's with everything up to date. 00:43:38.306 --> 00:43:41.166 Well, you'll just have to start telling us your system uptime and we can shame 00:43:41.166 --> 00:43:42.326 you until you reboot more often. 00:43:46.126 --> 00:43:50.526 Unraid.net slash unplugged. Go unleash your hardware with Unraid. 00:43:50.686 --> 00:43:54.986 It's a powerful, easy to use NAS operating system for those that want control, 00:43:55.346 --> 00:43:58.006 flexibility, and efficiency in managing your data. 00:43:58.546 --> 00:44:03.946 Unraid is built on top of modern Linux, and it allows you to mix and match drives of any size. 00:44:04.926 --> 00:44:09.086 That's a big one right there. That means what you have in your closet right 00:44:09.086 --> 00:44:11.626 now, you could throw into production and start utilizing. 00:44:11.866 --> 00:44:15.886 It also includes built-in support for tailscales, so just like check a box and 00:44:15.886 --> 00:44:17.326 the applications on your tail net. 00:44:17.806 --> 00:44:21.486 Static IPs, of course, are supported, but even better for those of us that can't 00:44:21.486 --> 00:44:23.986 run it, It now also supports Wi-Fi out of the box. 00:44:24.146 --> 00:44:29.326 But the thing that really sings are the thousands of applications and the super active community. 00:44:30.256 --> 00:44:33.696 Not only are they great with support, but they're always coming up with stuff. 00:44:33.876 --> 00:44:36.776 I just noticed a community member, John M, 00:44:36.956 --> 00:44:42.016 recently submitted a script that can automatically monitor the CPU usage of 00:44:42.016 --> 00:44:47.056 your Unraid box and then shift power profiles so that the Unraid box is using 00:44:47.056 --> 00:44:52.096 the most efficient power profile per CPU demand. And it can do it dynamically, too. 00:44:52.476 --> 00:44:55.536 It's just that kind of stuff. There's just a brilliant, brilliant, 00:44:56.056 --> 00:44:59.896 passionate community around Unraid, which means that when you do run into some 00:44:59.896 --> 00:45:02.236 sort of challenge or you have a question or something you want to try, 00:45:02.496 --> 00:45:05.856 you're generally going to find somebody else that's done it or can help you figure it out. 00:45:06.036 --> 00:45:09.116 The other thing that's really nice and just saves you a ton of time, 00:45:09.616 --> 00:45:15.976 the VM stuff for like passing through a GPU or sharing a GPU or getting templates 00:45:15.976 --> 00:45:19.156 so that way you can just design something and then always build from that. 00:45:19.776 --> 00:45:23.896 All really, really straightforward with Unraid. Probably the most efficient way to do it. 00:45:24.276 --> 00:45:28.216 And then in 7.1, they took the ZFS support that's been in Unraid for a little 00:45:28.216 --> 00:45:32.256 bit, and they really brought it to the next level by making it possible for 00:45:32.256 --> 00:45:37.236 you to migrate from an existing Ubuntu system or a Proxmox box or a free NAS. 00:45:37.576 --> 00:45:39.976 You know, when you're ready to go something a little more powerful that has 00:45:39.976 --> 00:45:44.176 a bigger community and more applications, a little more flexible, well, that's Unraid. 00:45:44.636 --> 00:45:47.776 And so it's really something that lets you get started with a lot of the stuff 00:45:47.776 --> 00:45:50.116 we talk about on this show in just minutes. 00:45:50.816 --> 00:45:55.876 So go learn more and support the show. You go to unraid.net slash unplugged. Go check it out. 00:45:56.036 --> 00:45:58.896 You've probably heard about Unraid, but have you actually tried it? 00:45:58.956 --> 00:46:02.176 They do a lot of neat stuff, and they have a great model over there to make 00:46:02.176 --> 00:46:06.236 sure they can continue building that thing and following the latest developments in Linux. 00:46:06.476 --> 00:46:11.336 Check it out and support the show. Go unleash your hardware without having to 00:46:11.336 --> 00:46:12.936 lock into some sort of rigid setup. 00:46:13.496 --> 00:46:15.736 Unraid.net slash unplugged. 00:46:19.057 --> 00:46:21.877 Well from last episode we received a little feedback from 00:46:21.877 --> 00:46:24.777 zach writing hey i haven't had a chance 00:46:24.777 --> 00:46:28.377 to try it yet but when you guys were talking about omarchie and 00:46:28.377 --> 00:46:31.617 having a better update mechanism to remove things that you 00:46:31.617 --> 00:46:34.517 didn't want in there first thing that came to mind was the 00:46:34.517 --> 00:46:37.257 common arch project seems to be 00:46:37.257 --> 00:46:40.457 very similar to the boot c and bootable container 00:46:40.457 --> 00:46:43.517 projects but based on creating arch and other distro 00:46:43.517 --> 00:46:46.737 based containers instead of being tied directly to os 00:46:46.737 --> 00:46:52.137 tree and like boot see is in theory you could basically run the omarch install 00:46:52.137 --> 00:46:56.757 script at container build time and then have a bootable image that could just 00:46:56.757 --> 00:47:01.557 be installed directly and updated atomically i haven't played with it yet but 00:47:01.557 --> 00:47:05.817 i'll be sure to report back if i do and see if you guys give it a try. 00:47:05.817 --> 00:47:08.557 Oh thank you zach yeah this looks 00:47:08.557 --> 00:47:11.597 very interesting i don't think i've heard of common arch 00:47:11.597 --> 00:47:14.977 before but having a similar idea 00:47:14.977 --> 00:47:17.957 right like i think one of the strengths of these kinds of approaches 00:47:17.957 --> 00:47:21.577 is just like containers worked to wrap whatever language 00:47:21.577 --> 00:47:24.877 and runtime that you needed right they can work to wrap whatever linux 00:47:24.877 --> 00:47:27.497 you've needed as long as you've got the right sort of hooks to make it 00:47:27.497 --> 00:47:30.497 deployable and runnable so if common arch does 00:47:30.497 --> 00:47:33.557 that part of it uh that sounds great 00:47:33.557 --> 00:47:38.457 we've got a link here from zach to their github org i don't know if they have 00:47:38.457 --> 00:47:43.897 any more docs i see iso builder system base uh core which is a docker file so 00:47:43.897 --> 00:47:47.937 i don't know the best way to find out more but if anyone else does i think it'd 00:47:47.937 --> 00:47:51.417 be definitely something we'd take a look at it might be pretty new you. 00:47:51.417 --> 00:47:57.097 Know on a quick uh i'm archie update i saw dhh post that they're working on 00:47:57.097 --> 00:48:00.917 um getting it down to a five minute install from a fresh system so. 00:48:00.917 --> 00:48:02.217 Essentially like an iso. 00:48:03.296 --> 00:48:09.016 It has like a five-minute setup. He's also been joking about creating Omicron, 00:48:09.196 --> 00:48:10.896 a Linux conference with Vibes. 00:48:12.996 --> 00:48:14.296 And he just did a... 00:48:14.296 --> 00:48:15.356 Did you promise we'd go? 00:48:15.916 --> 00:48:21.496 No, not yet. He did a six-hour Lex Friedman interview, and I skimmed it. 00:48:21.576 --> 00:48:26.676 I don't think Omarchie itself came up, but his thoughts on open source and WordPress 00:48:26.676 --> 00:48:29.436 and removing his systems from the cloud did come up. 00:48:29.576 --> 00:48:32.816 So it sounds like there's a lot more still coming to Omarchie, 00:48:32.816 --> 00:48:36.336 and we'll keep an eye on it. I think it's a fascinating project. 00:48:36.816 --> 00:48:39.856 I suspect you do too. I don't know, what do you guys think? You think it's fascinating, 00:48:39.936 --> 00:48:42.656 right? Like not something we're necessarily using, but it's definitely noteworthy. 00:48:42.696 --> 00:48:48.016 Yeah, absolutely. It's great to see people messing with, building on, 00:48:48.216 --> 00:48:51.456 tweaking, configuring, and sharing, cross-collaborating on Linux. 00:48:51.576 --> 00:48:54.196 I think the thing we're most excited about is the demographic he's going after, 00:48:54.356 --> 00:48:56.696 the way he's talking about it and advocating it. 00:48:57.136 --> 00:49:00.236 I'm definitely going to check back in soon. I think that's something we should do. 00:49:01.676 --> 00:49:06.276 a couple of shout outs I want to try to do this more often so I want to just 00:49:06.276 --> 00:49:09.776 give shout outs to people that are contributing value back in time and effort 00:49:09.776 --> 00:49:17.096 to the show and two solid folks that do this on a near daily basis are CG bass 00:49:17.096 --> 00:49:21.056 player and Chance M in the web chat, 00:49:21.596 --> 00:49:24.376 they're always working on the website just making sure things go 00:49:24.376 --> 00:49:27.256 but recently they had to help with a migration we moved this 00:49:27.256 --> 00:49:30.656 week in Bitcoin to be fully hosted on the jupyter broadcasting website 00:49:30.656 --> 00:49:33.356 there's a lot of little bits there they had to pick up for us 00:49:33.356 --> 00:49:36.636 so i wanted to give them a shout out and then i wanted to solicit 00:49:36.636 --> 00:49:39.516 you listening if you notice somebody in our community who's extra 00:49:39.516 --> 00:49:42.696 helpful or helping with the show in some way and sending value back call them 00:49:42.696 --> 00:49:46.036 out either with a boost or a message in matrix we want to try to give those 00:49:46.036 --> 00:49:49.736 people more attention because it's uh the community members that are doing those 00:49:49.736 --> 00:49:53.676 things that really make a big difference we really appreciate it so shout out 00:49:53.676 --> 00:49:56.736 to all of you out there who contribute some value back in time and talent, 00:49:59.529 --> 00:50:02.449 And, of course, we have those of you who contribute your time, 00:50:02.789 --> 00:50:06.529 talent, and treasure, and the treasure in the form of a membership or a boost. 00:50:07.329 --> 00:50:11.389 And we have a couple of great boosts here. In fact, I'm going to say it's KS 00:50:11.389 --> 00:50:15.569 Koba, who is our baller booster this week with 50,000 sats. 00:50:19.449 --> 00:50:23.769 Hey, right. Hey, guys, I'm a new listener to Unplugged coming over from the self-hosted podcast. 00:50:24.049 --> 00:50:28.029 I tried to get into Linux a few times over the last year to have a more work-focused 00:50:28.029 --> 00:50:32.789 computer. I'm an academic and an emergency room doc, which means writing lots 00:50:32.789 --> 00:50:34.729 of research manuscripts or journal articles. 00:50:34.909 --> 00:50:40.589 This means collaborating with others on Word.doc files that has the track changes, 00:50:40.869 --> 00:50:45.969 the comments, all the stuff, and needs a reference manager software. 00:50:46.469 --> 00:50:47.509 That sounds painful. 00:50:47.729 --> 00:50:52.609 This has been, as he puts it, my friction point, bouncing me off of Hyperland 00:50:52.609 --> 00:50:56.189 and Ubuntu for the last two times, ultimately giving up and going back to Windows 00:50:56.189 --> 00:50:58.189 where I can't find a comparable program. 00:50:58.189 --> 00:50:58.549 Fair. 00:50:59.049 --> 00:51:00.869 Any recommendations for others 00:51:00.869 --> 00:51:03.509 doing this kind of work or ways to interact with Windows colleagues. 00:51:03.689 --> 00:51:07.509 I dream of whizzing around my desktop using hotkeys, Tuis, and workspaces. 00:51:08.790 --> 00:51:09.950 This is such a good question. 00:51:10.130 --> 00:51:13.830 It's interesting for that kind of environment too, where I would assume if you 00:51:13.830 --> 00:51:18.970 can optimize your keystrokes to save you time in any way, it is welcomed. 00:51:19.710 --> 00:51:23.250 And if you get used to something like a tiling window manager, 00:51:23.470 --> 00:51:25.730 that can certainly do that for repeated actions. 00:51:25.850 --> 00:51:29.810 So I could see why there's this desire. 00:51:30.890 --> 00:51:33.530 But interacting with other colleagues with Word documents. 00:51:34.330 --> 00:51:39.190 This is tricky because if you still live in a world where everybody's using 00:51:39.190 --> 00:51:43.350 the desktop application workflow and they're using this reference manager software 00:51:43.350 --> 00:51:47.550 that's Windows-specific, that's where you get jammed up, right? 00:51:47.610 --> 00:51:50.930 What's liberated Linux users over the last decade has been the migration to 00:51:50.930 --> 00:51:53.150 web apps where it's all web workflow. 00:51:53.230 --> 00:51:54.410 Doesn't matter what platform you're on. 00:51:54.650 --> 00:51:54.910 Yeah. 00:51:55.450 --> 00:51:58.670 Back in the day when I had to use some Windows apps like that, 00:51:59.450 --> 00:52:04.050 I ended up just running it all under VM. So I just have a Windows VM and I would do it in there. 00:52:04.630 --> 00:52:08.170 At that time, I was using VirtualBox, which had the functionality to pop out. 00:52:08.170 --> 00:52:09.410 Windows from. 00:52:09.410 --> 00:52:14.110 Inside your windows vm so i can't say i would recommend that setup to anyone 00:52:14.110 --> 00:52:17.270 sane but you know there are things you could do like that but it would depend 00:52:17.270 --> 00:52:20.990 on how much of you know if it just means a single giant vm window and you don't 00:52:20.990 --> 00:52:23.670 get any of the benefits that's probably not worth it if it's like you can run 00:52:23.670 --> 00:52:26.770 a couple apps in a way where you can still take advantage of your window manager 00:52:26.770 --> 00:52:28.990 and linux shortcuts maybe there's something there. 00:52:28.990 --> 00:52:34.290 Yeah i was hesitant to recommend the vm route just because that can be painful you. 00:52:34.290 --> 00:52:37.370 Also need hardware that's going to do it in a way that isn't awful to work with. 00:52:37.370 --> 00:52:40.650 But you could just have a dedicated like windows virtual 00:52:40.650 --> 00:52:43.590 desktop and you you know you just run windows full screen on that virtual 00:52:43.590 --> 00:52:46.330 desktop when you switch over to it you're in windows and then you switch back and you're 00:52:46.330 --> 00:52:51.210 doing all your other work i mean it's doable let us know if you find anything 00:52:51.210 --> 00:52:55.070 uh ks and if anybody has any recommendations please send them and we will pass 00:52:55.070 --> 00:52:59.230 them along because uh i have been in that spot i've been there and i really 00:52:59.230 --> 00:53:02.930 feel feel for you also thanks for boosting and listening to the show. 00:53:03.330 --> 00:53:04.130 Nice to have you on board. 00:53:07.703 --> 00:53:11.163 No stromo boost in with 25,000 cents. 00:53:13.583 --> 00:53:19.223 We got some weird looking stuff and maybe improperly or incomplete base 64. 00:53:19.403 --> 00:53:21.643 Did you have to fix his improperly encoded message? 00:53:21.803 --> 00:53:28.203 Well, it looked like base 64. So it wasn't totally happy, but it did spit out 00:53:28.203 --> 00:53:30.903 hi with a smiley face. So we'll take it. 00:53:31.003 --> 00:53:34.223 Hello there. I like that you had to razz him on his improperly. 00:53:34.243 --> 00:53:36.643 I mean, it could have been my software processing it too. Who knows? 00:53:36.643 --> 00:53:40.003 I mean, you could have just not called him out. I mean, I'm just saying. 00:53:40.263 --> 00:53:41.423 It could be my base 64. 00:53:41.803 --> 00:53:43.303 Oh, yeah, no. You're walking it back. 00:53:43.463 --> 00:53:43.803 He's back there. 00:53:44.303 --> 00:53:45.063 Yeah, there you are. 00:53:45.123 --> 00:53:47.423 I wasn't trying to blame you, Stromo. 00:53:47.643 --> 00:53:49.503 Thank you, Stromo. Appreciate the boost. 00:53:50.263 --> 00:53:52.983 Well, there's a mega rove ducks here from Derivation Dingus. 00:53:53.923 --> 00:53:58.803 Hey, Chris, I think you nailed it with the point about how early we are on everything 00:53:58.803 --> 00:54:01.383 here at Linux Unplugged. We aren't wrong. 00:54:01.703 --> 00:54:03.583 The rest of the world is just slow. 00:54:03.923 --> 00:54:05.963 At least that's what I'm going to tell myself. 00:54:06.643 --> 00:54:11.183 You know what they say, stay humble and stack sats, you lovely bunch of trendsetters. 00:54:12.503 --> 00:54:16.203 Oh, thank you, derivation. I've been reflecting on that. I still feel that way. 00:54:16.663 --> 00:54:19.143 You know, we're out there a little, we're too ahead of things sometimes. 00:54:19.503 --> 00:54:24.363 And it means that we don't necessarily address the mass market we could potentially be addressing. 00:54:24.563 --> 00:54:28.123 But hopefully you're all still listening in 2050, the year of the Linux desktop. 00:54:29.543 --> 00:54:33.623 One day we'll be right. One day. Mixit, that's how I say it, 00:54:33.703 --> 00:54:36.143 comes in with 20,000 sats. 00:54:39.923 --> 00:54:44.803 please more unhinged ai audio as you come across it you have no. 00:54:44.803 --> 00:54:47.043 Idea what west creates on a weekly basis. 00:54:47.043 --> 00:54:54.083 Daily basis let's be honest oh man do you have any recent favorites west there's been some good ones. 00:54:54.083 --> 00:54:54.863 There have been. 00:54:54.863 --> 00:54:58.183 Yeah yeah i love it when you get the voices that's always my favorite. 00:54:58.183 --> 00:55:00.283 Well that british van lifer was pretty decent. 00:55:00.283 --> 00:55:02.623 That was that was good that was. 00:55:02.623 --> 00:55:07.223 But i'll keep that and try to pick a very good one sometime. 00:55:07.223 --> 00:55:07.723 For you there. 00:55:07.723 --> 00:55:08.103 Mixip. 00:55:08.323 --> 00:55:08.703 There you go. 00:55:11.103 --> 00:55:13.403 Doornail 7887 comes in with a row of ducks. 00:55:15.011 --> 00:55:15.811 First boost. 00:55:15.971 --> 00:55:17.031 Hello. Thank you. 00:55:17.251 --> 00:55:19.851 Yeah. Coming in from Podverse. Nice. 00:55:20.291 --> 00:55:23.811 Wow. So not only is it their first boost, but then they also set up AlbiHub, I'm imagining. 00:55:23.991 --> 00:55:24.651 Probably, yeah. 00:55:24.871 --> 00:55:25.411 Well done. 00:55:26.971 --> 00:55:30.331 Episode 620 hit home for me. Brent loves building things. 00:55:30.771 --> 00:55:35.851 I have 11 ESPs spread across a larger property with a barn, greenhouse, 00:55:36.111 --> 00:55:38.071 and a garage, all separated from the house. 00:55:38.191 --> 00:55:38.551 My guy. 00:55:38.971 --> 00:55:42.391 Zigbee and Z-Wave never really worked, but Wi-Fi solved my problem. 00:55:42.991 --> 00:55:46.891 One ESB8266 is a custom thermostat for our greenhouse furnace. 00:55:47.111 --> 00:55:48.711 All powered by Home Assistant. 00:55:49.051 --> 00:55:51.131 Saves a ton in propane costs. 00:55:51.851 --> 00:55:56.451 Now, I can't seem to get fountain working at all. Email codes just say, that didn't work. 00:55:56.611 --> 00:56:00.991 Any ideas? No. That's a very odd, that's a very odd error message. 00:56:00.991 --> 00:56:03.871 But they do have a Telegram group. If you're on Telegram, you might pop in and 00:56:03.871 --> 00:56:05.531 see if somebody can help you there. 00:56:06.451 --> 00:56:09.931 Way to persevere, too. But, you know, bouncing off fountain and you still set a boost. 00:56:10.051 --> 00:56:15.551 No kidding. No kidding. Absolutely. gosh dang it this i like you you're a hot 00:56:15.551 --> 00:56:22.171 ticket thanks doornail i have fantasized about using home assistant to automate 00:56:22.171 --> 00:56:25.631 a greenhouse because it just seems perfect both from the heating and the cooling 00:56:25.631 --> 00:56:29.311 and the humidity monitoring you could also do soil sweet. 00:56:29.311 --> 00:56:30.631 Plant dashboard yeah. 00:56:30.631 --> 00:56:31.731 Yes dude you've. 00:56:31.731 --> 00:56:37.451 Also fantasized about using esps to get a custom thermostat in lady jupes. 00:56:37.451 --> 00:56:40.611 Oh for sure like to run the furnace yes absolutely one. 00:56:40.611 --> 00:56:46.251 Day one day well bhh boosts in 2000 sets, 00:56:50.009 --> 00:56:54.609 Hi, guys. I just looked into SniffNet, which was the pick from last episode. 00:56:54.769 --> 00:56:58.109 That GUI toolkit is iced. Just figured I'd let you know. 00:56:58.689 --> 00:56:59.469 Oh, thanks, PJ. 00:56:59.749 --> 00:57:06.769 Yeah, nice to hear from you. Thank you for the boost. Well, PJ's here with 12,140 sats. 00:57:09.489 --> 00:57:13.309 Ahead of the curve with Linux stuff, this boost amount is how long ago the last 00:57:13.309 --> 00:57:15.989 Arch Challenge was prior to the release of this episode. 00:57:16.249 --> 00:57:18.749 Can you figure it out? It's 12,140. 40. 00:57:19.129 --> 00:57:22.809 I remember thinking, it's about dang time. Yeah, fair, fair. 00:57:22.969 --> 00:57:25.209 Yeah, we're done. That's the crazy thing about our audiences. 00:57:25.389 --> 00:57:26.969 They're ahead of us on a lot of this stuff too. 00:57:27.609 --> 00:57:29.729 So Wes, did you do the math there? 00:57:30.209 --> 00:57:32.089 Well, let's see, we got some hints, huh? 00:57:32.369 --> 00:57:36.989 Yeah, the first two digits is years. Ignore the zero. So... 00:57:36.989 --> 00:57:39.069 Is that 2013 if we subtract 12? 00:57:39.289 --> 00:57:39.689 Yeah, yeah. 00:57:40.349 --> 00:57:42.709 Okay, and then ignore the zero. 00:57:43.249 --> 00:57:46.169 Oh, how long ago? Oh yeah, that's a tricky one. I was going to say 12. 00:57:46.409 --> 00:57:47.749 It might be 2012 it's close. 00:57:47.749 --> 00:57:49.149 Could be 2012 too yeah could be. 00:57:49.149 --> 00:57:52.169 Yeah 2012 2012 2013 seems like the right range. 00:57:52.169 --> 00:57:57.969 What are we doing with the 14 though it's 14 clearly yeah month 14 that makes. 00:57:57.969 --> 00:57:58.269 Sense, 00:58:00.409 --> 00:58:01.529 14 2012. 00:58:01.529 --> 00:58:03.209 Got it all. 00:58:03.209 --> 00:58:05.949 Right nailed it let us know how we did pj let us know. 00:58:05.949 --> 00:58:13.409 Rotted mood boost in with 10 000 cents ah this is a check-in boost from episode 00:58:13.409 --> 00:58:20.249 618 the two-week challenge kickoff we got some live long and prospers and mood 00:58:20.249 --> 00:58:23.049 says getting caught up on old episodes a. 00:58:23.049 --> 00:58:28.589 Time traveler check in thank you sir appreciate that that's nice see we're getting some data. 00:58:28.589 --> 00:58:29.489 That's great yeah. 00:58:30.689 --> 00:58:33.009 Pingu98 boosted in another row of ducks, 00:58:35.252 --> 00:58:40.152 Keep up the awesomeness. I'm a recovering Linux on Chromebook addict. 00:58:40.492 --> 00:58:45.772 Finally got working audio on my 2019 Pixel Go, running Ubuntu 2504. 00:58:46.312 --> 00:58:50.812 It's like having a new machine. I could probably have done that ages ago with 00:58:50.812 --> 00:58:52.592 Arch, but I'm not quite there yet. 00:58:53.472 --> 00:58:57.832 Nice. You know, we all got into some kind of weird thing. I, 00:58:58.012 --> 00:59:00.432 instead of doing Chromebooks, got into Netbooks for a while. 00:59:00.492 --> 00:59:01.472 Oh, yeah, I had a Netbook. 00:59:01.672 --> 00:59:03.232 Thought that was going to be a big thing. 00:59:03.272 --> 00:59:03.952 It was a great size. 00:59:03.952 --> 00:59:08.152 We did get unity out of that. Thank you, Pingu. Appreciate that. 00:59:08.432 --> 00:59:10.212 Marcel's back with 5,000 sats. 00:59:12.412 --> 00:59:15.512 Brent, I didn't tell you about these projects last time I saw you, 00:59:15.552 --> 00:59:19.032 simply because they didn't exist yet. I'd be happy to talk about them next time 00:59:19.032 --> 00:59:21.032 you're in Germany, though, wink, wink. 00:59:21.272 --> 00:59:24.952 I can even bring the e-paper screen. I know you love Berlin, 00:59:25.192 --> 00:59:27.612 but Bavaria is worth a visit, too. 00:59:28.232 --> 00:59:32.512 I'm noting how a lot of these European cities start with bees. 00:59:32.512 --> 00:59:35.092 So all the B-Cities must be the good ones, right? 00:59:35.412 --> 00:59:37.332 Makes me hungry. Makes me think of breakfast. 00:59:37.732 --> 00:59:41.612 Yeah, I did call on Marcel last episode because he mentioned all sorts of really 00:59:41.612 --> 00:59:45.112 great projects that the last time we were together, we didn't get a chance to chat about. 00:59:45.372 --> 00:59:48.432 So glad to hear you're learning new things and always pushing the envelope. 00:59:48.652 --> 00:59:51.132 Sounds like we're on the same path. I like that. 00:59:51.552 --> 00:59:52.972 And it is nice to hear from you, Marcel. 00:59:56.772 --> 01:00:02.772 Confi, blue sin with 2,500 sats. No message, all sats. thank. 01:00:02.772 --> 01:00:03.692 You sir appreciate the value. 01:00:03.692 --> 01:00:07.212 But gene bean comes in with uh double ducks oh. 01:00:07.212 --> 01:00:09.752 That's 4444 sats. 01:00:13.512 --> 01:00:16.252 Oh and this one's directed right at me wes how do 01:00:16.252 --> 01:00:20.812 you deal with the fact that esp home in nix is always way behind ah fair i've 01:00:20.812 --> 01:00:25.292 tried going that route for building updates but it lags behind uh haos and the 01:00:25.292 --> 01:00:29.672 associated add-in too much so far for me i've resorted just using a virtual 01:00:29.672 --> 01:00:34.932 environment on mac os to do builds so that the version versions match and builds are fast so. 01:00:34.932 --> 01:00:41.132 I'd be curious to know actually in practice why you need the latest versions of esp home that's what, 01:00:43.521 --> 01:00:47.361 But generally, unless you're doing something pretty new, I don't really know if you need it. 01:00:47.541 --> 01:00:50.881 Like in practice, I don't know how much it matters. And I'm curious if Gene 01:00:50.881 --> 01:00:53.241 Bean has a reason why. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. 01:00:53.281 --> 01:00:55.901 How often do you need to update if you're not making a change or whatever? 01:00:56.061 --> 01:00:57.241 I don't think it's going to impact you. 01:00:57.481 --> 01:01:00.421 I did a little bit of looking. And my first honest answer, Gene, 01:01:00.481 --> 01:01:03.341 is I just really haven't used it really in anger yet. So it may be that I run 01:01:03.341 --> 01:01:04.401 into exactly this problem. 01:01:05.061 --> 01:01:09.261 I do suspect I may, I'll probably start pretty small and may not need to update 01:01:09.261 --> 01:01:12.481 them a ton once they are working. So we'll see how much that matters. 01:01:12.481 --> 01:01:14.961 So, I mean, you're talking about setting up pretty basic, like, 01:01:15.121 --> 01:01:17.041 IR blaster, temperature sensor type stuff. 01:01:17.161 --> 01:01:20.681 Yeah, that's where I'm starting anyway. And I've been surprised how well it has worked. 01:01:20.781 --> 01:01:24.481 I did look, and right now, or at least as of whenever this boost came in the 01:01:24.481 --> 01:01:28.521 other day, it was up to date in terms of the ESPHome package in Nix. 01:01:29.041 --> 01:01:32.701 And it looks like the last few updates are pretty much just the real good kind 01:01:32.701 --> 01:01:35.921 of Nix packages updates, where it's basically just changing a version, 01:01:36.041 --> 01:01:39.101 the URLs all stay the same, the dependencies stay the same, and you just need 01:01:39.101 --> 01:01:40.481 a new hash and a new version string. 01:01:40.481 --> 01:01:43.721 and those are really pretty easy if I did need to, 01:01:44.381 --> 01:01:48.161 hack that in to myself to get a new version I'd be willing to do that or even 01:01:48.161 --> 01:01:52.021 just clone the package or whatever so may do that with an escape hatch but I 01:01:52.021 --> 01:01:55.341 think right now this is homework for me to do some more ESP work this summer 01:01:55.341 --> 01:01:58.981 so I can report back on if this is actually a problem in practice and if. 01:01:58.981 --> 01:02:00.581 Gene has any examples I'd love to know. 01:02:00.581 --> 01:02:02.641 Totally yeah I'm curious more about your setup there Gene he. 01:02:02.641 --> 01:02:04.981 Also had something we should check out which looks like it's some Hyperland 01:02:04.981 --> 01:02:06.921 setups that are kind of like ready to 01:02:06.921 --> 01:02:11.421 go for like different And it's like Jakoolit, I think is how you say it. 01:02:11.461 --> 01:02:11.881 Okay, yeah. 01:02:12.061 --> 01:02:12.981 Put a link to that in the show notes. 01:02:12.981 --> 01:02:15.961 I've already played with the Fedora one and plan to try the Ubuntu one today. 01:02:16.121 --> 01:02:17.401 I mean, that's neat. Cool. 01:02:17.641 --> 01:02:21.121 A passionate Linux enthusiast. Okay. And tech hobbyist. 01:02:21.701 --> 01:02:25.061 Neat, but sharing cool setups. Yeah. Fedora Hyperland, Hyperland Ta, 01:02:25.301 --> 01:02:28.921 Debian Hyperland, NixOS Hyperland's in here. 01:02:29.141 --> 01:02:29.281 Yeah. 01:02:29.441 --> 01:02:29.701 Okay. 01:02:30.101 --> 01:02:30.241 Yeah. 01:02:30.421 --> 01:02:31.261 Cool. Thank you, Gene. 01:02:32.501 --> 01:02:38.441 Well, Magnolia Mayhem sent us, not quite a row of ducks. It's 3,333 sets. 01:02:40.441 --> 01:02:43.321 all caps it says go podcasting. 01:02:43.321 --> 01:02:50.301 Yeah go podcasting thank you go podcasting nice to hear from you mayhem appreciate 01:02:50.301 --> 01:02:54.421 that that came in this morning as uh the live stream was getting set up so uh 01:02:54.421 --> 01:02:58.301 thank you that's a fresh boost fabian came in with 2 500 sats, 01:03:03.136 --> 01:03:07.696 Also, a fresh boost came in on our live stream. I disagree that Google isn't crawling more. 01:03:07.876 --> 01:03:10.796 Every website I manage is getting hit by bots, including Google bots, 01:03:10.896 --> 01:03:17.956 way more than I've seen in the last 15 years, especially in a faceted search page. A lot harder. 01:03:18.516 --> 01:03:23.456 I have also been seeing a lot of noise about the bots intensity increasing. 01:03:24.316 --> 01:03:27.476 We were talking about in the pre-show, like there's this number they have now 01:03:27.476 --> 01:03:32.396 of something like, what did they say, 1500 bots scrapes to every one user visit? 01:03:32.396 --> 01:03:36.956 Yeah, and I think maybe, because I think they were trying to say more that the 01:03:36.956 --> 01:03:40.396 visits were going down, not necessarily anything about the scraping traffic. 01:03:40.636 --> 01:03:42.096 But the scraping traffic is also going up. 01:03:42.156 --> 01:03:42.636 That would make sense. 01:03:42.736 --> 01:03:46.696 So it's a two, what they're getting at is that the problem is that a lot of 01:03:46.696 --> 01:03:50.376 times information is either provided directly by Google or an AI assistant now, 01:03:50.396 --> 01:03:51.576 so you don't need to go to the website. 01:03:52.056 --> 01:03:55.256 And they're scraping more often. And of course, people want to have more current 01:03:55.256 --> 01:03:59.616 information. So that's probably another reason why the scrapers are turned up. It is a problem. 01:04:00.556 --> 01:04:05.716 I don't know if, like, it could be maybe we level off. 01:04:05.856 --> 01:04:08.056 Like, it's really hard to say where this goes. If people have other insights 01:04:08.056 --> 01:04:11.436 on this or if you've noticed traffic, your project, I'd really like to hear that. 01:04:11.436 --> 01:04:13.936 Yeah, I wonder if we'll see more, right, like Cloudflare's trying to do more, 01:04:14.076 --> 01:04:15.736 like, hey, if you paid a scrape. 01:04:15.836 --> 01:04:19.536 And we've seen, like, the Anubis project you all talked about on Self-Hosted coming in. 01:04:19.716 --> 01:04:19.936 Right. 01:04:20.156 --> 01:04:20.456 So. 01:04:20.856 --> 01:04:23.696 Well, thank you, everybody, who supported the show with a boost. 01:04:23.816 --> 01:04:27.856 You helped make Episode 623 directly possible with your support. 01:04:27.856 --> 01:04:30.736 shout out to all 24 of you who just streamed those sats 01:04:30.736 --> 01:04:34.096 as you listen you just sat back and sent some value collectively you 01:04:34.096 --> 01:04:37.196 stack 63,227 sats 01:04:37.196 --> 01:04:42.036 just by streaming them when you combine that with our boosters we stacked a 01:04:42.036 --> 01:04:50.316 total of 226,810 sats this week not too bad not too bad would love to see that 01:04:50.316 --> 01:04:54.616 number creep up a little bit but we still appreciate all the support it really 01:04:54.616 --> 01:04:55.776 is one of our favorite segments. 01:04:56.076 --> 01:04:59.136 We get the interaction with you, new ideas come into the show, 01:04:59.176 --> 01:05:01.876 and the messages are extremely motivating for us. 01:05:01.976 --> 01:05:06.056 And on top of that, the entire thing is built on open source and open standards. 01:05:06.296 --> 01:05:09.336 There's no middleman, there's no Stripe, there's no PayPal taking a cut. 01:05:09.496 --> 01:05:13.096 It just goes from your podcaster wallet to our nodes. 01:05:13.436 --> 01:05:18.196 And each of us are set up in a split directly, including the podcast app and the podcast index. 01:05:18.556 --> 01:05:21.256 Thank you, everybody who supports with a boost. You can do it with Fountain 01:05:21.256 --> 01:05:22.996 FM. That's the easiest way to get started. 01:05:23.376 --> 01:05:27.156 but there are other paths like Podverse and AlbiHub if you like to do the self-hosted 01:05:27.156 --> 01:05:30.896 thing and of course you can use the Podcast Index if you have AlbiHub too so 01:05:30.896 --> 01:05:31.836 there's some other options there. 01:05:32.176 --> 01:05:34.176 Thank you everyone and thank you to our members. 01:05:43.152 --> 01:05:48.172 Now the show actually begins, because this week our pick is a doozy. 01:05:48.352 --> 01:05:51.412 It's a brand new project that's only about a week old. 01:05:51.692 --> 01:05:56.672 It was started on kind of a lark, I believe by Jack Dorsey, and now has been 01:05:56.672 --> 01:05:59.372 picked up by a rather large community. 01:05:59.592 --> 01:06:05.532 The project is called BitChat, and it is Bluetooth Mesh Chat with IRC vibes. 01:06:05.752 --> 01:06:09.892 It is decentralized peer-to-peer messaging that works over a Bluetooth mesh. 01:06:09.892 --> 01:06:15.432 No internet required, no servers, no phone numbers. You can do private chats. 01:06:15.432 --> 01:06:16.672 You can do public group chats. 01:06:16.832 --> 01:06:21.912 It is very early days, so we're not necessarily counting on the security, 01:06:22.072 --> 01:06:24.292 but it has a lot of great security ideas implemented. 01:06:24.612 --> 01:06:26.912 We'll want to see how it goes. It is an open source project. 01:06:27.072 --> 01:06:31.592 But what's really insanely neat is that it is decentralized mesh networking, 01:06:31.792 --> 01:06:34.892 not like MeshTastic, which is using low-powered radio. 01:06:35.252 --> 01:06:38.452 This is just using the Bluetooth in your phone. So it's a much shorter range 01:06:38.452 --> 01:06:42.232 thing, but you could think of, you know, at an office, at a group event, 01:06:42.852 --> 01:06:46.792 during a protest, you could actually really see different scenarios where being 01:06:46.792 --> 01:06:50.772 able to stand up mesh group chat very quickly could be really valuable. 01:06:51.312 --> 01:06:54.952 I'm blanking. In a past episode, I tried one I used on the plane. 01:06:55.312 --> 01:07:01.752 It might have used the Wi-Fi, maybe use Bluetooth, but it was not nearly as slick or easy. 01:07:02.452 --> 01:07:07.232 Besides the permissions step, which is standard these days, it really just worked pretty quick. 01:07:07.352 --> 01:07:11.452 I mean, you and I popped right on. Yeah, you updated yours, and then we were 01:07:11.452 --> 01:07:12.272 able to immediately chat. 01:07:12.532 --> 01:07:18.092 And it has such, such awesome IRC vibes. And I've really been missing IRC recently. 01:07:18.212 --> 01:07:22.572 You do a slash, and you get this beautiful menu of all your different commands. 01:07:22.752 --> 01:07:26.772 You can set up a new channel. You can hug someone. You can slap someone with a trout. 01:07:27.212 --> 01:07:29.312 A lot of the classic IRC stuff. 01:07:30.252 --> 01:07:34.212 it has emergency wipe too you can triple tap and clear all the data, 01:07:35.092 --> 01:07:38.312 ios and android versions exist they 01:07:38.312 --> 01:07:41.112 use lz4 for message compression it has 01:07:41.112 --> 01:07:44.332 really good adaptive battery modes and they really worked on optimizing the 01:07:44.332 --> 01:07:51.652 networking it's really fun and early but each device acts as both a client and 01:07:51.652 --> 01:07:55.592 a peripheral that does the transmission it does automatic peer discovery it 01:07:55.592 --> 01:07:59.852 has stored and forward offline message delivery so wes was able to DM me a message 01:07:59.852 --> 01:08:01.252 even when I had the client closed... 01:08:02.688 --> 01:08:04.428 I mean, it's pretty neat. 01:08:04.508 --> 01:08:05.268 That's so great. 01:08:05.488 --> 01:08:08.288 Right? And, again, needs to be tested early days. 01:08:08.448 --> 01:08:11.728 Don't go using it to exchange a whole bunch of your most precious secrets. 01:08:11.928 --> 01:08:14.908 But they are trying to use really good encryption technology here, too. 01:08:15.268 --> 01:08:18.308 Okay. And, yeah, it does look like, what, there's Android and iOS? 01:08:18.308 --> 01:08:20.868 It was iOS first, and then they ported it to Android, I think? 01:08:21.008 --> 01:08:22.788 So there's, like, a Swift and then Kotlin version. 01:08:22.988 --> 01:08:24.648 Yeah, it's basically two different projects, right? 01:08:24.808 --> 01:08:28.888 At least the Android one is MIT-licensed. I have not checked on the iOS one. 01:08:29.248 --> 01:08:33.128 I saw TechCrunch did a really lazy takedown. The headline is, 01:08:33.308 --> 01:08:37.268 quote, Jack Dorsey says his, quote, secure new BitChat app has not been tested for security. 01:08:38.408 --> 01:08:42.408 I mean, like, the dude wrote this on a Saturday and a Sunday. 01:08:42.488 --> 01:08:46.108 And then, like, on a Tuesday, they're giving him a hard time for not having it audited. 01:08:46.768 --> 01:08:49.688 Right? And Dorsey's created a white paper, which is what people are following 01:08:49.688 --> 01:08:51.208 to do the different implementations. 01:08:51.548 --> 01:08:56.388 So it's really lazy and cheap to take a shot at something that's, like, seven days old. 01:08:57.188 --> 01:09:01.248 But that's the entire pitch of the TechCrunch article. So, you know, 01:09:01.348 --> 01:09:03.408 this is, of course, going to get parroted by anybody that... 01:09:03.408 --> 01:09:04.068 Hey, you clicked. 01:09:04.388 --> 01:09:08.088 Well, it got me, yeah. It's just, it's very clicky. 01:09:08.488 --> 01:09:10.688 IOS version is under the unlicense. 01:09:11.048 --> 01:09:11.388 Okay. 01:09:11.748 --> 01:09:15.328 Yeah, which is basically straight to public domain, as far as I can see, 01:09:15.528 --> 01:09:16.668 which is really interesting. 01:09:17.188 --> 01:09:20.888 Yeah. I think it's a little harder to get the iOS version because you have to 01:09:20.888 --> 01:09:23.568 go through TestFlight at the moment and there's a 10,000 max. 01:09:24.228 --> 01:09:24.628 Right. 01:09:24.628 --> 01:09:27.868 But, you know, with Android, and especially if you use Obtainium, 01:09:28.068 --> 01:09:31.488 you just point at the GitHub repo and it just installs the APK. 01:09:31.748 --> 01:09:36.088 It's really nice. It's so fast, and the battery life seems to be very minimal 01:09:36.088 --> 01:09:39.848 because I've had it installed for days and I haven't noticed any major impact. 01:09:40.068 --> 01:09:44.288 I could also see this being just a great chat with the wife and kids around the house. 01:09:44.828 --> 01:09:47.468 Like, why do we need to be doing anything over the Internet? 01:09:47.688 --> 01:09:51.808 And one of the things that I've always been looking for is some sort of offline... 01:09:52.870 --> 01:09:57.170 We could be camping without internet chat. And I was thinking NextCloud chat, 01:09:57.310 --> 01:09:59.370 but that's a lot of, it's a lot of overhead I have to run. 01:09:59.850 --> 01:10:03.890 These are just really simple apps that we could just use for just quick messaging 01:10:03.890 --> 01:10:07.450 back and forth when like one of us is inside and one of us is outside or we 01:10:07.450 --> 01:10:08.470 just want to send each other notes. 01:10:08.710 --> 01:10:12.190 Yeah, and it's just so easy to get going. And the idea of a little Bluetooth 01:10:12.190 --> 01:10:15.210 app, Bluetooth mesh is so cool. 01:10:15.790 --> 01:10:19.070 I did look, Briar was the other app that I'd tried previously. 01:10:19.190 --> 01:10:22.390 It does Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it's a little more involved. 01:10:22.870 --> 01:10:26.230 This would be really fun for us to use at conferences whenever we meet up with 01:10:26.230 --> 01:10:29.010 the JB community, just so we can all have a shared experience. 01:10:29.030 --> 01:10:33.030 And I know we did that with MeshTastic. At scale. 01:10:33.650 --> 01:10:34.610 Well, we did that at scale. 01:10:34.990 --> 01:10:37.950 Yeah, we did it a couple times. It was fun, but not everybody has a MeshTastic 01:10:37.950 --> 01:10:40.790 device, etc. But everybody has a Bluetooth on their phone. 01:10:41.290 --> 01:10:41.890 That's the thing. 01:10:41.930 --> 01:10:44.070 Where in the giant expo hall are you guys? 01:10:44.230 --> 01:10:47.050 Well, and you could have channels, so you could see how that could be really useful. 01:10:47.310 --> 01:10:51.110 And the thing that's nice is, A, no account or phone numbers required. 01:10:51.110 --> 01:10:54.830 so people don't have to go through a sign-up process that's always finicky when 01:10:54.830 --> 01:10:57.490 you're trying to do anything like that at scale. And there's no server. 01:10:58.050 --> 01:11:01.130 So you don't have to worry about setting up a server that people can get to 01:11:01.130 --> 01:11:04.050 from the event Wi-Fi. It's none of that. It's just a Bluetooth mesh. 01:11:04.810 --> 01:11:10.710 But the other thing that I think is fun and awesome to see is that this was 01:11:10.710 --> 01:11:13.810 essentially a vibe-coded idea with a white paper, 01:11:13.810 --> 01:11:19.030 and it's gone from that to a community building out both iOS and Android versions 01:11:19.030 --> 01:11:20.790 and creating something real here. 01:11:21.350 --> 01:11:26.790 in like seven days. So it's a perfect example of how sometimes open source software 01:11:26.790 --> 01:11:30.470 can just catch fire and really take off. And maybe it doesn't go anywhere. 01:11:30.650 --> 01:11:33.290 Maybe it ends up having security flaws. But in the meantime, 01:11:33.490 --> 01:11:37.090 it's a lot of fun to check it out. And like Wes says, it's not the distribution. 01:11:37.510 --> 01:11:41.290 It's the fun you have composing the distribution along the way. 01:11:41.410 --> 01:11:44.470 And troubleshooting strange, esoteric. 01:11:46.250 --> 01:11:50.250 Anyways, link to BitChat, both for iOS and Android, and some of the details 01:11:50.250 --> 01:11:53.690 about how it works in their encryption, which looks like they're really taking 01:11:53.690 --> 01:11:56.870 a good shot at making this a private communications tool as well. 01:11:57.010 --> 01:12:00.650 But you just kind of want to wait and see how that works out in actuality. 01:12:03.099 --> 01:12:06.319 All right, that's it for us. Don't forget, we'd love to hear your experiences 01:12:06.319 --> 01:12:09.099 with immutable distributions. If you've tried it, if you're willing to try it, 01:12:09.179 --> 01:12:12.219 if you bounced off of it, any of that, boost in and let us know. 01:12:12.339 --> 01:12:16.499 It's one way you can support episode 624 and get your message read on the show. 01:12:16.619 --> 01:12:19.339 Anything above 2,000 sats does get read. 01:12:19.519 --> 01:12:22.119 Now, if you want more shows, we're wrapping up and you're wishing we weren't 01:12:22.119 --> 01:12:24.799 done yet, you're probably a great candidate for the bootleg. 01:12:24.959 --> 01:12:26.939 That's at linuxunplugged.com slash membership. 01:12:27.439 --> 01:12:31.959 Right now, the bootleg's clocking in at like two hours and 35 minutes with lots 01:12:31.959 --> 01:12:33.159 of extra content in there. 01:12:33.979 --> 01:12:36.739 And then last but not least, we should mention, Wes, we should try to mention 01:12:36.739 --> 01:12:42.499 every episode that we have both transcripts and chapters. 01:12:43.139 --> 01:12:46.199 That's right. So you can find what we've talked about. I just, 01:12:46.379 --> 01:12:48.659 I got an email from an individual that says, gosh, I wish you'd put the names 01:12:48.659 --> 01:12:50.279 of everything you talk about in the show notes. 01:12:51.019 --> 01:12:54.899 Well, one next best thing to that could be you check the transcript. 01:12:55.099 --> 01:12:59.179 We try to link everything we can at linuxunplugged.com slash 623 or whatever 01:12:59.179 --> 01:13:03.199 the episode number is. but the next best bet would be the transcript. 01:13:03.479 --> 01:13:03.619 Yep. 01:13:03.979 --> 01:13:07.479 And those chapters mean you can go right to the segment. So if you want to replay 01:13:07.479 --> 01:13:09.119 the bit chat segment, you sure can. 01:13:09.619 --> 01:13:14.299 But then the real power move is to join us live. Make it a Linux Tuesday on 01:13:14.299 --> 01:13:16.819 a Sunday. Come on over to jblive.tv. 01:13:20.579 --> 01:13:23.999 That's right. JBLive.tv at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. 01:13:24.399 --> 01:13:27.839 Eastern. That's where our virtual lug gets together in our mumble room, 01:13:27.879 --> 01:13:31.239 our matrix chat chats, along with us and helps us title the show. 01:13:31.479 --> 01:13:35.859 It just gives that live vibe. You know? Just that live vibe that we like so much. 01:13:36.099 --> 01:13:40.339 Yeah, if you come, you can hang in a certain Chris Lasta as a little DJ and 01:13:40.339 --> 01:13:42.459 sometimes you had some great picks this morning, let me say. 01:13:42.639 --> 01:13:45.099 Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you got to get a little early for that. 01:13:45.459 --> 01:13:48.299 All right, well, that's everything we talked about. Links at linuxunplugged.com. 01:13:48.459 --> 01:13:49.919 So that's everything right there. That's it. 01:13:50.359 --> 01:13:54.759 Also, you can check out notes.jupiterbroadcasting.com if you want to do some backlog searching. 01:13:56.279 --> 01:13:59.019 notes.jupiterbroadcasting.com. Thanks so much for joining us on this week's 01:13:59.019 --> 01:14:01.319 episode. We'll see you next Tuesday, as in Sunday!
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