Untitled Linux Show 183: One Degree of Rob

Summary

Podcast Summary: Untitled Linux Show 183: One Degree of Rob

Podcast Information:

• Title: Untitled Linux Show 183: One Degree of Rob
• Host/Author: TWiT
• Release Date: December 23, 2024
• Description: Leo Laporte brings together some of the most interesting personalities in technology to discuss the most important issues in a fun, relaxed, informative, and entertaining manner.

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1. Intel vs. Linux Performance Benchmarks

Discussion Leaders: Rob Campbell, Jonathan Bennett, Jeff Massey, David Ruggles

The episode kicks off with a deep dive into a Phoronix article analyzed by Rob Campbell. The focus is on benchmarking the Intel Core Ultra 9285 processor running on two different operating systems: Microsoft Windows 11 Professional 24H2 and Ubuntu 24.10. Additionally, variations of Ubuntu with upgraded Linux kernels (6.12 and 6.13) and different power governors were tested.

• Key Insights:

  • Performance Comparison: Ubuntu 24.10 outperformed Windows 11 by approximately 6% across 92 benchmarks, with Windows surprisingly ranking last. Notably, newer Linux kernels and the Intel P state performance governor did not yield significant performance boosts.
  • Core Utilization: The tests emphasized multi-core performance, utilizing both Performance (P) cores and Efficiency (E) cores of the Intel processor. This highlighted Linux's improved handling of heterogeneous core architectures over time.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rob Campbell at [04:00]: "Congratulations Microsoft on coming in last place out of 92 benchmarks."
  • Jonathan Bennett at [07:13]: "Windows actually wins on one or two tests and then you’ve got one here where Windows is running at half speed."

Implications: The results suggest a growing maturity in Linux’s ability to leverage modern CPU architectures effectively, potentially influencing users to consider switching from Windows to Linux for better performance in productivity tasks.

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2. LibreOffice 24.8 Update and Python Integration

Discussion Leaders: Jeff Massey, Rob Campbell, Jonathan Bennett

Jeff Massey introduces the latest maintenance update for LibreOffice 24.8, highlighting stability improvements without new features. The update addresses 55 bugs, enhances functionality, and maintains compatibility across various Linux distributions.

• Key Insights:

  • Maintenance Focus: The update primarily focuses on fixing bugs and improving stability, ensuring a smoother user experience.
  • Python Integration: Rob Campbell discusses the integration of Python scripting in LibreOffice Calc. While LibreOffice has supported Python for some time, Microsoft’s recent inclusion of Python in Excel is seen as a significant step toward enhancing data analysis capabilities across office suites.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Jeff Massey at [10:41]: "24.8 brings stability fixes and some regression fixes. It just improves the function of LibreOffice."
  • Rob Campbell at [13:16]: "Excel now is supposed to have Python built in."

Implications: The enhanced Python support in both LibreOffice and Excel underscores the growing importance of scripting and automation in productivity tools, catering to users who require advanced data manipulation and analysis.

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3. Bottles Packaging Controversy

Discussion Leaders: Rob Campbell, David Ruggles, Jonathan Bennett, Jeff Massey

Rob Campbell delves into the ongoing issues surrounding the packaging of Bottles, a GUI-based tool designed to run Windows software on Linux using Wine. The contention arises from how various Linux distributions package Bottles, leading to bugs and user frustration.

• Key Insights:

  • Upstream vs. Downstream: Bottles developers have expressed frustration with downstream package maintainers who alter the software’s sandboxed environment, causing instability. An open letter from 2022 emphasized the importance of adhering to official packaging standards to maintain user experience.
  • Recent Patch: A recent patch forces Bottles to exit if not run in a sandboxed environment, leading some distributions like openSUSE to implement their own modifications to bypass these restrictions, such as removing the donation button.
  • Open Source Licensing: The discussion touched upon the distinction between truly open-source software and "source available" repositories, highlighting the importance of license compliance and the ethical implications of modifying open-source tools outside of agreed-upon standards.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Rob Campbell at [16:33]: "Package maintainers taking advantage. They're taking advantage of this upstream code."
  • Jonathan Bennett at [26:41]: "You cannot exclude one of the distros from being able to package your software."

Implications: This controversy underscores the challenges of maintaining consistency and quality in open-source software distribution, emphasizing the need for collaboration between developers and package maintainers to ensure software stability and user satisfaction.

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4. Microsoft Releases New Open Source Python Tool

Discussion Leaders: Jeff Massey, Jonathan Bennett, Rob Campbell

Jeff Massey introduces a new Python tool released by Microsoft on GitHub, designed to convert various file formats (PDFs, PowerPoints, Word documents, images, audio, HTML, etc.) into Markdown. This tool leverages large language models (LLMs) and AI to enhance file conversion processes.

• Key Insights:

  • Functionality: The tool simplifies the conversion of complex documents into Markdown, facilitating easier editing and integration into code repositories.
  • AI Integration: By connecting the tool to models like ChatGPT 4.0, users can generate descriptive text for images and other media, enhancing documentation and accessibility.
  • Open Source Benefits: The tool's open-source nature allows developers to contribute, customize, and integrate it into their workflows, promoting community-driven improvements.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Jeff Massey at [84:46]: "This is a Python library and there's some examples of how to import it and use it."
  • Jonathan Bennett at [44:49]: "I'm immediately struck by a need I need to do some playing around with taking an image, asking LLM to give me a description."

Implications: Microsoft's foray into open-source tools with advanced AI integration reflects the company's commitment to enhancing developer workflows and bridging the gap between traditional office tools and modern development practices.

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5. Raspberry Pi 500 and Official Monitor Release

Discussion Leaders: David Ruggles, Jonathan Bennett, Jeff Massey, Rob Campbell

David Ruggles presents the newly released Raspberry Pi 500, an upgraded version of the popular Pi 400. Accompanied by an official Raspberry Pi monitor, this bundle aims to provide a complete computing solution for enthusiasts and educators.

• Key Insights:

  • Raspberry Pi 500 Enhancements: Equipped with Raspberry Pi 5 architecture and 8GB RAM, the Pi 500 offers improved performance. However, certain features like the NVMe port are not fully functional out of the box, raising expectations for future iterations like the Pi 500 Pro.
  • Official Monitor Features: The 15.6-inch IPS LCD monitor includes a full-size HDMI port, front-facing stereo speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and mounting options like VESA. Limitations include the absence of USB-C ALT mode and restricted port accessibility when mounted.
  • Educational Focus: The Raspberry Pi Foundation continues to prioritize education, ensuring affordability and functionality tailored to learning environments.

• Notable Quotes:

  • David Ruggles at [47:31]: "It's designed for PI fans. The specs come with it comes with a 15.6 inch IPS LCD display..."
  • Jonathan Bennett at [54:12]: "It's not quite as cool as it seems. Now you can do it with two cables."

Implications: The Raspberry Pi 500 and its official monitor enhance the platform's utility for both educational purposes and hobbyist projects, though some advanced features are pending future releases to meet the full spectrum of user needs.

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6. Framework Laptop Review on Linux

Discussion Leaders: Rob Campbell, Jonathan Bennett, Jeff Massey, David Ruggles

Rob Campbell shares insights from a detailed review of the Framework 13AMD laptop running Linux, emphasizing its performance, especially in gaming and multitasking scenarios.

• Key Insights:

  • Performance Comparison: The AMD 7040U processor in the Framework 13AMD model outperforms its Intel counterparts, particularly in Linux environments. Benchmarks indicate superior speed and efficiency.
  • User Experience: The review highlights excellent battery life, improved screen resolution (2880x1920 at 144Hz), and a sturdier hinge mechanism. Minor issues include sleep mode inefficiencies in Linux.
  • Gaming Capability: Contrary to previous Intel models, the AMD version offers robust gaming performance without needing a dedicated GPU, thanks to its powerful integrated graphics.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Reviewer at [63:14]: "The 7840U APU that's the graphics part of this chip is a beast."
  • Rob Campbell at [69:51]: "I was quite impressed with the 16 and so I've got an AMD framework 13 on my wish list."

Implications: The Framework 13AMD laptop exemplifies the potential of Linux-optimized hardware, offering enhanced performance and flexibility for developers, gamers, and power users seeking customizable and high-performing laptops.

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7. Linux Kernel Network Improvements: Jumbo Frames and RAC TLP

Discussion Leaders: Jeff Massey, Jonathan Bennett, Rob Campbell, David Ruggles

Jeff Massey discusses upcoming enhancements in the Linux kernel 6.14 related to network performance, specifically jumbo frames and RAC TLP (Tail Loss Probe).

• Key Insights:

  • Jumbo Frames: Allowing for larger UDP packets (e.g., MTU of 8192 bytes) improves data transmission efficiency by reducing packet fragmentation and overhead.
  • RAC TLP: An enhancement to the TCP/IP acknowledgment process that dynamically adjusts timers based on network performance, reducing unnecessary retransmissions and congestion.
  • Impact: These features are primarily beneficial for high-throughput environments like data centers and advanced networking setups but may not significantly impact typical home or small business users.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Jeff Massey at [84:49]: "RAC TLP stuff is where you've got like your data centers with that 10 gig, but then you're sending it out over the Internet."
  • Jonathan Bennett at [78:46]: "It does sort of trickle down, as it were, to our equipment eventually."

Implications: The introduction of jumbo frames and RAC TLP into the Linux kernel underscores a commitment to optimizing networking performance for enterprise environments, potentially benefiting a broader range of applications as these enhancements integrate into mainstream networking equipment.

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8. Command Line Tips: COMM and Bash Expansion

Discussion Leaders: Jeff Massey, Jonathan Bennett, David Ruggles

The podcast segment offers practical command-line tips to enhance productivity and efficiency for Linux users.

• COMM Command:

  • Functionality: comm compares two sorted files line by line, outputting unique lines from each file and lines common to both.
  • Usage: comm file1 file2 produces a three-column output displaying unique and common lines. Options like -1, -2, and -3 suppress specific columns, allowing users to isolate desired data.
  • Example Quote at [89:49]: "Column one contains lines unique to the first file, column two contains lines unique to the second file, and column three contains lines common to both files."

• Bash Expansion:

  • Dot vs. Asterisk (. vs. *): Jeff Massey illustrates how . and * behave differently in bash expansions, particularly in file searching and pattern matching.
  • Common Pitfalls: Misunderstanding these operators can lead to unexpected results, such as missing hidden files during recursive searches.
  • Example Quote at [90:03]: "If I change that asterisk to a dot, now it's going to search in the current directory instead of enumerating what it can see."

• FBI (Frame Buffer Image Viewer):

  • Functionality: fbi allows users to display images directly in the framebuffer, useful for headless setups or embedded systems without a GUI.
  • Usage: Commands like sudo fbi -T 1 -A -t 3 file1.jpg file2.jpg enable continuous slideshows with auto-zoom features.

• ACIDY (ABCDE) CD Ripper:

  • Functionality: abcde is a command-line tool for ripping audio CDs, offering support for various formats like FLAC and MP3.
  • Usage: Simplifies the process of extracting and converting CD audio tracks into digital formats.

Implications: These command-line tools and tips empower Linux users to perform complex tasks more efficiently, leveraging the power and flexibility of the terminal to streamline workflows and enhance system management.

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9. Shoutouts and Final Thoughts

Discussion Leaders: All Panel Members

As the episode wraps up, the hosts exchange personal anecdotes, discuss software preferences, and share plans for upcoming episodes. Special mentions include efforts to support Linux migrations, hardware preferences, and community engagement through donations and social media interactions.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Jeff Massey at [84:46]: "If someone can donate about 700 coffees, I think we'll be good."
  • Rob Campbell at [101:42]: "Roses are red, my server is gray. I'm a computer nerd, don't expect me to rhyme. Have a great week and a great holiday, everybody."

Implications: The casual and personable exchange reinforces the podcast’s community-centric approach, fostering a sense of camaraderie among Linux enthusiasts and encouraging listener participation and support.

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Conclusion:

Episode 183 of the Untitled Linux Show, titled "One Degree of Rob," offers a comprehensive exploration of current Linux and open-source topics. From performance benchmarks and software updates to hardware reviews and command-line tips, the episode provides valuable insights for both novice and seasoned Linux users. The engaging discussions, notable quotes, and practical advice make it a rich resource for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of Linux and open-source technology.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Rob Campbell [04:00]: "Congratulations Microsoft on coming in last place out of 92 benchmarks."
• Jonathan Bennett [07:13]: "Windows actually wins on one or two tests and then you’ve got one here where Windows is running at half speed."
• Rob Campbell [13:16]: "Excel now is supposed to have Python built in."
• Jeff Massey [84:46]: "RAC TLP stuff is where you've got like your data centers with that 10 gig, but then you're sending it out over the Internet."
• Rob Campbell [16:33]: "Package maintainers taking advantage. They're taking advantage of this upstream code."
• Jonathan Bennett [26:41]: "You cannot exclude one of the distros from being able to package your software."
• Jeff Massey [89:49]: "Column one contains lines unique to the first file, column two contains lines unique to the second file, and column three contains lines common to both files."
• Jonathan Bennett [44:49]: "I'm immediately struck by a need I need to do some playing around with taking an image, asking LLM to give me a description."

---

Recommendations:

Listeners interested in the detailed topics discussed should refer to the show notes for links to the Phoronix article, LibreOffice changelogs, the new Microsoft Python tool repository, and other relevant resources mentioned throughout the episode.

Transcript

[Jonathan Bennett]

This week we're talking intel in some Windows vs Linux showdowns and then a new release of LibreOffice. Microsoft open sourced a thing a new tool. This time Rob has a story about why we don't support bottles. Or maybe we do support bottles. You have to listen to find out what's up with that. And oh yeah, it's time to shut down X. It's a lot of fun. Stay tuned.

[Rob Campbell]

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[Jeff Massey]

Merry Holidays.

[Rob Campbell]

Glad to be back.

[Jonathan Bennett]

It is good to have you to have you back. And we are actually going to start off with Jeff talking about some intel news, this one not directly related to their CEO, but related to some hardware that just came out or their chief.

[Rob Campbell]

Financial officer for those keeping up on the news. But you know, today I'm going to bring a couple stories about Intel. You know, got to give them a little love somewhere. This first segment though, we're going to focus on a comparison of the Core Ultra 9285 aerolike processor running on two different operating systems, Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.10. To be more precise, we're looking at Microsoft Windows 11 Professional 24H2, fully updated with all the latest Windows updates and Drivers as of December 15th. And we're comparing this to Ubuntu 24.10 straight out of the box, running Linux kernel 6.11 and with all updates as applied by December 17th. But the story doesn't end there. Michael Erble at Phronix also explored Ubuntu 24.10 with a few key modifications. First, he upgraded the kernel to version 6.12. Then he tested with the 6.13 development kernel, and finally he ran Ubuntu 2410 with a 6.13 development kernel. But this time he switched from the default Intel P state power save mode governor. Oh, that's a mouthful. To the Intel P state performance governor. In the article linked in the show notes, Michael Erbil explains his motivation for this comparison is he wanted to examine how both Windows and Linux are handling the P and E cores of this intel processor. For those who are new to CPUs or perhaps haven't heard this terminology before, P cores stand for performance cores, and E cores stand for efficiency cores. And they're literally how they sound. P for higher higher power, more performance, and E handle the lower level easier tasks, but more efficiently. Michael was particularly interested in seeing how Linux has matured in its handling of this hardware and as some of you may recall, and we've discussed this in the podcast in the past, how initial scheduling of tasks between the P and E cores and Linux was a bit problematic. However, that was quite a while ago, and the Linux Scheduler has seen significant improvements since then. Because the Core Ultra 9 285K processors designed as a productivity workhorse rather than a gaming cpu, the benchmarks Michael conducted don't include any games. Instead, he uses a variety of tests focusing on different workloads. These include database sets, blender, renders audio and video compression, decompression, transcoding, as well as common tasks like zip file creation and extraction, which of course involve compression and decompression. These tests are designed to push all the cores of these high end CPUs, focusing on multi core utilization rather than single core performance. So how'd the comparison turn out? Well, I got some bad news for Windows. Congratulations Microsoft on coming in last place out of 92 benchmarks. Michael ran the stock Ubuntu 2410 installation that it was approximately 6% faster than Windows 11. Now here's where things get interesting though. Surprisingly, the newer kernels didn't have a significant impact on performance. And even more surprising was the fact that the Intel p state performance governor was actually slower than simply running straight 6.13 kernel. Now typically a performance governor provides a small performance boost, but that wasn't the case in the testing. I do want to point out that all versions of Ubuntu were actually very close. And you know, some of these fell into Pro or probably did. I didn't do the math, but probably fell into the margin of error. I mean it was really close. The, the big gap was between Windows and Ubuntu. For the details on each individual benchmarking test, I encourage you to take a look at the article linked in the show notes so you can go through all the details and see all how each test performed and the based on your workloads. Because like I said, the 285 is not a gaming CPU. So if you're thinking oh I'm going to have cores and gaming and no, just no, it's strictly productivity. That's it. So take a look and love to hear feedback.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, interesting stuff as you flip. This is the case every time we look at one of these. When you flip through the individual results, there are some very fascinating standouts. You've got some where it's like Windows actually wins on one or two tests and then you've got one here where Windows is running at half speed, almost exactly half speed compared to everything else. There's a lot of them where Ubuntu 2410 with nothing else is faster than the new kernels. And yeah, it's real fascinating.

[Rob Campbell]

So what this was going to say, I should say this is with a geometric mean that it was 6% faster. So that kind of takes out, mathematically takes out some of the flyers.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yes.

[David Ruggles]

So with this new breaking news that you have here, are you going to be switching then from Windows to Linux?

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah, I, I plan To I think about 2011. 2010 is when I plan to switch.

[David Ruggles]

Sorry, I was talking to David.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Oh, guys, that's brutal. That's brutal.

[Jeff Massey]

Might be brutal, but it's fair.

[Rob Campbell]

Yes, brutal, but fair. There's a show title for you.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah. All right, David, since we're on it, let's talk about some software that you can run regardless of which OS you're on. Windows or on Linux.

[Jeff Massey]

Absolutely. I have got an article about the fourth maintenance update to 24.8 of the LibreOffice software package. And I picked this article in honor of Ken. Since I am covering for him as he is being the real Santa and helping all the Amazon packages get where they need to this Christmas season and he normally keeps us up to date on LibreOffice. I wanted to pull this story out specifically for him. This being a maintenance update, they addressed a total of 55 bugs. The details are linked in the two change logs, RC1 and RC2, but there are no new features. So it brings stability fixes and some regression fixes. It just improves the function of LibreOffice. The deb and rpm packages are available for download. Source Tarball, of course is available if you want to compile your software from source. And who doesn't want to do that? I mean, you know, you really got to know your nuts and bolts there and it is getting pushed out to all the repos for the various distros out there. 24.8 was released on August 21st of this year and there was a big privacy push in that release and they're just continuing to maintain it. So they do, in their, in their press release for this, they do remind everyone that this is just the Community edition and there are ecosystem partners that offer LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications if you need support.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, very cool. It's neat to see that coming along and LibreOffice continuing to be a great product. You run LibreOffice quite a bit, don't you David?

[Jeff Massey]

Mm.

[Jonathan Bennett]

On Windows, yeah.

[Jeff Massey]

Actually I'm a multi desktop individual.

[David Ruggles]

He uses Mac OS also.

[Jeff Massey]

Yeah, no, I am anti Apple. Everybody else I'm okay with. It was actually a Asahi Linux story that came up this week. They released the spin based off of Fedora 41 and I looked at that and I was like, well I hate Mac. I'm not going to touch that.

[Rob Campbell]

So. So Microsoft is okay and Apple's not. That's the line. Okay, we see it.

[David Ruggles]

I mean as far as companies go, I agree. I hate Apple as the company. I don't have an issue these days. With Microsoft, but I do have Apple products.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I study the company.

[Rob Campbell]

You were just going to Forget the last 20 years?

[Jeff Massey]

Okay, hey, Microsoft. Okay, first off, I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but most of my development is on backend server infrastructure. So run Linux, VMs and Hyper V and stuff. And I wind up having to support a lot of Windows users. So being familiar with it is valid or not valid, but is helpful for some of my job stuff. But I also have two laptops sitting here that have Kubuntu on them. So I jump around.

[David Ruggles]

Microsoft is just another company full of people. And the people, there's a lot of people that aren't the same today as they were 20 years ago.

[Jeff Massey]

Exactly.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Hey, at least on Windows you can install applications even if they're not available in the Microsoft Store.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah. Going back to the original story though, one thing I think I need to look at is because I'm really intrigued about how Python's coming into spreadsheet programs more and more. And I know LibreOffice Calc has had it for quite a while, but I need to take a look and see how hard that is. Because for a while, scripting in Python at Calc now this was probably a few years ago when I last looked at it was rather hard. I mean, it was kind of one of those you could do it, but there was multiple steps and hoops you had to jump through to do it. And I'll have to revisit that, see if it. Unless somebody knows if it's easier now to.

[Jeff Massey]

Interestingly, I don't do any Python in LibreOffice, but I create Excel files, Calc files from Python using other packages. So I go the other way. I haven't done any Python inside.

[Rob Campbell]

Well, Excel now is supposed to have Python built in.

[Jeff Massey]

Yes.

[Rob Campbell]

I don't know if it which version or when they turned it on, but.

[David Ruggles]

You said Excel does.

[Jeff Massey]

Lou. Lou Moresco, he's used to host one of the Twitch shows, the Enterprise Twitch show, and now he's on main Twitter occasionally. He's heading up the Python in Excel department and he's really excited about it. He mentions every time he's on.

[David Ruggles]

Well, if those work across both those systems, Libre and Office, that would be a very strong reason to go that direction because a lot of the other things that, you know, one or the other has done weren't cross compatible.

[Rob Campbell]

Oh, and the real power is when you start doing a lot of data analysis because then you have access to all those Python libraries that, you know Python's pretty strong in data analysis, you know, as far as languages go. And I that's kind of, I am very involved with data analysis. So I, I'm like, oh, this would be nice.

[David Ruggles]

Quite a powerful choice.

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[David Ruggles]

All.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Right, so Rob, you found a fight. You found quite the dust up to talk about here. First off, what is bottles? And then what is the deal with bottles?

[David Ruggles]

So before I get going into the story, I want to thank sean for donating 10 coffees to the cause for getting me to try Linux Mint for two months. I haven't switched to it yet. I'm about the first of the year and I'll. I'll do it for January and February and I thought there was a second donation but last time I looked it wasn't there Song if I got withdrawn or if I was imagining it but. So I want to thank him because as I get ready to switch over to Linux Mint, this next story suggested maybe it's a good time to move on to something new as I have been using OpenSUSE for quite a while and it's been good but recently there has been some some petty bickering between open source package maintainers and the upstream developers of Bottles. So I have my opinions but I'll first tell you the story and let you guys see what you think. So Bottles is a GUI based tool to help run Windows software on Linux with through the use of Wine and you know, similar to like Lutris or Play on Linux, other things that just make it easy a good front end to make it easy for you. The developers have designed Bottle software to work in a sandboxed environment like flat packs and, and, and say the official supported packages for Bottles is the ones in the Arch, Aur and flathub. So because of this architecture, packaging and running un sandbox often causes issues that leads to bugs and you know, problems that end users then often overwhelm the Bottles developers with these bug reports and issues that are often caused by how the downstream package manager packaged the bottles and distributed it. A letter back in 2022 titled Please don't unofficially ship bottles in distribution repositories outlined this and offered help to package managers saying our invitation is addressed to all those who are packaging Bottles incorrectly and or do not provide adequate tests, thus invalidating the user experience. We are happy to help anyone who would like to keep their package adapting it to our quality standards, I. E. Making the application work as intended. So that was a couple years ago, over a couple years years ago that this open letter saying what's officially supported if you want to package it, you know, let us help you so it could be packaged correctly and work and not cause all these tickets to come upstream to us. About two weeks ago a patch was applied to Bottles. So I guess Bottles was kind of tired of all these downstream back to to them and the patch is to exit the program if not being ran in a sandboxed environment. So this essentially blocks downstream package managers from packaging the software without removing that bit of code first. Well this led to a lot of arguing on the pull request calling calling the software no longer free and open source and the package manager packaging Bottles for open Seuss. Well they took their own approach they into their own hands as they made their own modifications. Removing the upstream patch that stops Bottles from running, that's, that's fine. Stops it from running outside of a sandbox environment. And then also adding their own patch that removed the Bottles donation button with, with a patch file called don't support dot patch file. Now, for, for some of my opinions, Bottles is designed a certain way to work best with sandbox environments. That's how they created it, you know, and it's hard to improve a product when downstream providers package in a way that causes bugs and then instead of supporting those bugs themselves that they kind of created, you know, they get pushed upstream to the developers. So then only supporting officially package setups makes perfect sense to me. Package maintainers taking advantage. They're taking advantage of this upstream code. It's like, yeah, we're going to use your code and put it in our distribution for their own distribution. And then removing things like the upstream donation button. You know, they need to eat. We often talk about needing money and, you know, being able to support themselves and pay their bills and, you know, they're removing that, but they're not like taking on that support role for packaging. You know, it's all legal, sure, because it's open source, but it is awfully sketchy and you know, there are distros like Fedora that I think took a much better path. They changed the code that kills a software when not ran in a sandbox. And they changed it to a warning, a warning saying that, you know, I don't remember exactly what it is, but basically this is not an official package. Be careful. But I believe, I believe I also saw that support links for Fedora are also directed to go to Fedora. So if you have an issue with the Fedora package, come to Fedora, come to our community, we'll help you out. Obviously, if Fedora developers, package maintainers, like, yeah, this is a, this is an upstream issue. I'm sure it'll get sent up. But you know, when I have a problem with software, I first contact my vendor and then if they can't solve it, they contact their vendor, you know, which eventually gets back to the developers. You know, I don't go all the way, skip all the chains. So, you know, you should follow the chains of support. Other package maintainers on Reddit have said they follow that, they follow the request of the devs and, and they, and some have said, you know, if, if you don't want to package it as requested or support what you package, maybe stop packaging it it's, it's already available on Flatpak or flathub, which you can get on pretty much any Linux system out there. If that's the official way it's supported, there's not really a need to repackage it another way. You know.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I find it interesting. So in looking through this, my first thought was, well, are there any distros that package this with the sandboxing? And I don't think so. I think what they're actually doing is what the patch does is it checks whether it's running like as a Flatpak, right?

[David Ruggles]

Yeah, I think pretty much, yeah.

[Jonathan Bennett]

So it's. They. They intentionally, they intentionally added a patch to make the thing difficult to package. Right. And that's interesting, but it's also comes.

[David Ruggles]

After years of having problems with downstream package maintainers.

[Rob Campbell]

Right. Having to sort through all the bug reports that aren't. That shouldn't. They shouldn't be getting because of the.

[David Ruggles]

Downstream, which then distracts them from actually making real improvements to, to the, to their officially supported channels and products. And that simple patch. I, for a developer maintainer, I'm sure it's rather easy to just comment that out from what I saw and move on if you really want to do it in an unsupported method.

[Rob Campbell]

And I, you know, I think Fedora did it right. You know what, we're doing this. It's not fully supported, but we're taking it upon ourselves to handle the support of this so we're not bothering the original developers and we're, we're going to take the brunt because we're doing something that's not officially supported.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Apparently the Fedora patch has a problem though. It's got a little checkbox to not show this again and that doesn't actually do anything. Whoops.

[Rob Campbell]

Side note too, this Bottles is not Codeweaver Bottles, because when you first were talking about this, I thought this was Codeweavers and I was looking at the article and I'm like, oh, okay, this is not Codeweavers because they also have bottles.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, it's its own thing. It is its own application. Yeah, it's interesting. If you actually go to the pull request in the bottles GitHub, you've got somebody trying to argue that this makes it not open source software, which is not true. I understand the point that Tim77 is making, but he is incorrect and does not understand how open source licensing works.

[David Ruggles]

Yeah, I don't even think it does anything to the spirit of it, really.

[Jonathan Bennett]

No, no.

[Rob Campbell]

I mean, at Worst you could argue it's bad coding, it's still open source. Oh, it won't run well, that's just bad code. That's not. That's the mean you can't see it.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, it does bring about like an interesting question though. And I know what the answer is. But if you were to say, well, I want to write a pack a piece of software, I want to write a piece of software and I don't want Fedora to ever package it, I do not want this to be in the Fedora packages like the text of the gpl, the text of any OSI approved license really. So anything we would call open Source, you basically can't do that. You cannot exclude one of the distros from being able to package your software. And so on the one hand you may just kind of think about that and go, well, it makes sense that you would want your software. Like if somebody wrote software and really didn't want it to be in Fedora, like shouldn't they be able to do that? And so on one hand, I mean, yes, you could write a license like that, but it would not be open source. And the reason is because if you could say I don't want this in Fedora, you could by the same sort of legal strategy, say I don't want anyone in the country of Germany, England, whatever, to be able to use this software. And then I think it becomes a little bit more apparent why that's problematic. And you know, that's a road that just gets worse and messier the further we go down it. So there is a reason that open Source software is available to be run by anyone the way that it is.

[David Ruggles]

This does make, Go ahead. I was going to say this does make me wonder. I've tried bottles, I don't know, a couple years ago and it didn't work very well for me at all. And I don't know if I don't remember now if the one I used was in unofficial package. And maybe that is why I had a very bad experience with it. So it really makes, it really makes me think I have to try it again with a, with a, an insurance, an officially supported package.

[Rob Campbell]

You know, it's almost like a kind of a test too. If you have just a little patch in there and it stops it from running. It's like if you can't easily go in and remove that, if you're, you know, repackaging this for a distribution, you probably shouldn't be messing with it. You know, I would think somebody at that level. Well, really, because somebody at that level, I would think would just, I mean, this would be like, oh, yeah, done, you know, and I mean they're, they're not going to spend a minute on this. And yeah, we'll recompile, we'll do this. It's done.

[David Ruggles]

Recompile, do the thing, ship it out, don't worry about it. Again, it's like, yeah, if you can't at least do that and you probably can't support it either.

[Jonathan Bennett]

So there is one more thing that I will mention here and that's because we have somebody in the chat room said, doesn't it just mean that if the source code is available to the public, it's open source? And no, that's what's called source available. And that is different from Open source. And the reason that we have that distinction is you've got some companies out there, I think Terraform was one of them. There's been a couple of big database pieces of software that have added clauses to their licensing that basically says you cannot sell this commercially. And again, that is not an OSI approved license. Right. So you've got the Open Source group, osi, Open Source Institute initiative, something like probably initiative. Anyway, that's the group that sort of handles the Open Source licensing right now. And back when the, back when the term Open Source really became solidified, what it means in the software world, the people that worked on that, they came up with some things that it's like it's got to have for a license to be considered Open Source. It's got to have this and restriction, no restrictions on use was one of the things that it absolutely had to have. And in addition to that and sort of tied to it, it's like there cannot be a morality clause and be considered open source. So you can't come along and say, you know, I don't want, and here's the reason why is because nobody can agree on morality, right? So you can't come along and say, I don't want anyone of this religious group to be able to use my software or I don't want anyone in this business venture to be able to use my software. Because, you know, some people would consider the manufacturer of alcohol to be morally problematic and other people think that that's a ridiculous argument. People do not agree on that. And that's one of the reasons why in the Open Source definition you're not allowed to include that sort of morality statement in your license.

[David Ruggles]

This summer we talked about a similar issue with winamp Open sourcing And they did it. Open source. They said, you can help us, you can view it, you can help us, but you can't do anything with it.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yes, they made it source available.

[Rob Campbell]

I was going to say that very same example. That's the first thing I thought of.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yes. All right, well, we have whipped that one to death.

[David Ruggles]

Well, you know, David works with a lot of closed store stuff. What's your opinion?

[Jeff Massey]

Oh, I was still trying to figure out when you said osi. I was thinking Open Systems Interconnection, which makes the OSI model of networking. And then that made me think about how we say DRM all the time, which is Digital Rights Management or something to do with memory. And I was just like, there's too many acronyms. So I'm sorry, I prefer open Source licensing and software and I apologize to everyone very humbly that I'm using Windows.

[Jonathan Bennett]

All right, Jeff, let's talk about something Arch is doing and. Yeah, what is, what is. It's another intel story, isn't it?

[Rob Campbell]

It is, yeah. We're giving Intel a little love today. Like I said, you know, they're taking quite the beating recently. But so this ties in with the first story I had and I was actually going to make it one segment in the show, but I kind of hit a couple pages and I thought, you know, this probably is too much for one segment, so I'm just going to make it into two stories. So now this is also about the Intel 285 processor, just like the last story and. But now we're going to shift our focus to comparing various Linux distributions to see which performance which performs best on the Intel 285 processor. Now, Michael Erbil still included all the Ubuntu 24.10 variants that I mentioned earlier. You know, with the different kernel versions, the performance Governor version, all that, it's still in there, but they've added some new contenders. So Fedora Workstation 41, we have an old favorite and you know that a lot of people know Clear Linux version 42790. You know, historically it's been a speed champion. We've got Arch Linux in there because I know they've been at a lot of people been asking Michael Arable to include Arch in a lot of stuff and Cashy os. Now, most of you probably are familiar with many of these distributions, but Casheos might be new to some. I know I wasn't really up on it, so I looked it up and it's basically a distribution specifically designed for speed and stability and it's based on Arch. So the benchmarks that were used today are largely the same workload focused tests that we discussed in the first story. So there's no gaming benchmarks. This is all production style benchmarks and it's, it might be almost the identical run. If not, there's a huge overlap. That Venn diagram really overlaps a lot. And you know, the results I think you find are quite surprising. The lowest performer was Fedora Workstation 41. Next up, you know, a little bit faster was stock Ubuntu 2410. Now those two were close enough that the difference could be within a margin of error. I mean it just, even if there's statistically a difference, realistically there's not. It's too close to even notice. But then came Clear Linux, just slightly faster than out of the box Ubuntu. And following, you know, still going up the ladder was Ubuntu 2410 with the 613 kernel and the performance governor. Faster still was Ubuntu 2410 with just the plain 613 kernel and the, the stock governor. Arch Linux edged that out in that configuration by a small margin. And at the very top spot was cache os. Now if you've been looking at Phoronix for a long time, if you've been listening to this show, Clear Linux usually comes out on top and often by a noticeable margin. You know, it's kind of the performance juggernaut and kind of has been the benchmark for a long time. So to see it in the middle of the pack was quite a surprise. Now it's important to keep in mind though that the results were close enough that even the slowest to fastest day to day use, unless you're specifically looking at timing benchmarks, you know, you're really not going to see a difference. It's, it's still just a few percentage points. So it's, it's not like holy cow.

[David Ruggles]

This is a lot faster.

[Rob Campbell]

It's, it's, it's going to be just very minimal. But you know, it's interesting that you know Clear Linux, which is known for tuning and things like that of performance workloads and it's not really meant to be a user friendly distribution. I mean you can run it but it's geared towards more enterprise and tuned for intel processors. But you know, take a look at the second article in the, or take a look at the article in the Show Notes, the second article on intel for the full breakdown of benchmarks because again there's going to be certain ones that one one distribution runs away and then there's another one where it's way behind and you know, but so this is again geographic mean or geometric mean but you know, to. To remove the flyers. But overall Cashios was number one. And on a personal note, I, when I was looking at it, I see that it runs KDE in their desktop variant. So if I was going to jump from Kubuntu, that could be a real contender. You know, just totally go away from something. I know I'm, you know, I ran Debian for a long time. I've been in the Fedora. I've ran some Fedora stuff over the years. This would be totally new. So maybe, you know, time will tell, but maybe, maybe this will be if I'm going to jump to something. Maybe, maybe Cache's my new OS in the future.

[David Ruggles]

There's also news out today that you haven't touched on about catchy OS is that they've changed and optimized their kernel even further. It's now being built using a compiler auto fdo and so I don't think he's done any benchmarks on it yet. Now they've changed this. But it, it may be even faster.

[Rob Campbell]

It could be, but now in. In kind of the devil's devil's counterpoint here, Ubuntu on 2504 is also now supposed to compile with the O3 option and have some performance enhancements in it as well. So it people are really starting to be a little more aggressive on the performance on Linux all over, I guess.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah. Interesting. One of the other things that came to my mind reading through this is that Torvalds in the past month has come out against the micro architecture versioning for x8664. The whole v1, v2, v3, v4. There are some articles on Pharonix like December 4th or 5th and he comes out and says this is really dumb and we are not introducing this into the kernel because, and this is absolutely correct, it's not as linear. This is taking CPU capabilities and trying to make them linear when they are not linear. And obviously we've seen that because intel is now shipping new CPUs that don't have the AVX512, so they're still stuck on X86 64v3. So I get why a distro like cache or Fedora or what have you would want to be able to do that and say, well, we're just going to starting with this version, we're going to compile against this new new microarchitecture version. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily work in the real world when the two major manufacturers don't agree on which features and functionality is absolutely required for new designs.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah, it's definitely a generalization. But on the flip side, the compilers, that's how they're classifying some of this stuff. So I mean, Torvalds can say whatever he wants, but if CLANG and GCST are going well, here's how we're doing it, you know.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, yeah, I suppose it's fair though to say that like the kernel does not necessarily need to have any of that. It doesn't necessarily have to be aware of that. It can still use the old, the old way of doing it, like it's. GCC will sort of magically make that work and the kernel doesn't have to care.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah, well, like 5, 512 instruction set. So even this, this brand new 285 processor does not support 512 instructions natively. Now they get around it with software and whatnot. Yeah, but it's not like amd, so. But that's, I believe, handled all in the compiler, not the kernel itself.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yep, yep, that's fair.

[Rob Campbell]

But getting into, into my gray area here, so I. Yeah, if somebody knows better, let me know.

[Jonathan Bennett]

All right, well, let's talk about a Microsoft release. Is this open source software? It's a new Python tool. I think David's got the scoop.

[Jeff Massey]

Yeah. Before we jump into that though, I have just one quick question. How many coffees is it going to take to get you on Cashios?

[David Ruggles]

Well, I have to get through the Linux Mint challenge first and hopefully I have time before the Cosmic Popos. Cosmic is new. Cosmic Desktop is fully out, but you know, I guess another 10 copies.

[Jonathan Bennett]

We're charting Rob's history hopping for him like three or four hops away now.

[Rob Campbell]

And I think Rob needs to go into March a little bit because I think he's trying to shortchange somebody by doing it in February. So he's a few days shorter.

[Jeff Massey]

Okay, I just had to.

[David Ruggles]

We'll give those. Well, I'll add those days on there.

[Rob Campbell]

I'm always looking at the data.

[Jeff Massey]

I saw several news articles pop up over the last week about a new Python tool that Microsoft has released on GitHub as open source. I linked to NEO in because I like to spread the love around. Didn't pick them out specifically, but this is a news article by Pradeep Vishwanathan. Microsoft releases A new Python tool for converting files and Office documents to Markdown. So if you do any code development, most of the readmes and stuff, even if you don't do any development yourself, but you're clicking through to the source code repositories on your open source projects, most of the readmes and stuff like that you see are written in Markdown and they have an MD extension. So the focus of this release is all about leveraging large language models and AI. But I think that there may be some opportunities here for people that just need to convert stuff into Markdown. Not specifically for the AI side, but their focus is on converting PDFs, PowerPoints, Word documents, Excel, images, audio, HTML and various other text based formats into Markdown. This is a Python library and there's some examples of how to import it and use it. One of the interesting things that you can do with it is if you have a large language, if you have access to a large language model, you can actually connect it to Markdown and use it to describe images into Markdown. So you can connect it to a large language model. In their example, they're connecting it to ChatGPT 4.0 and then you convert an image and it's going to give you text describing that image, which the image description is actually one of the things that LLM seem to be getting pretty good at. That's pretty cool. It is open source and it is super fast. It's easy to use and it's something fun to play around with.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I'm immediately struck by a need I need to do some playing around with taking an image, asking LLM to give me a description, and then feeding that description back into LLM and seeing what it gives me.

[Jeff Massey]

That could be fun.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yes, yes. That's kind of like you take a recipe and you translate it back and forth from Chinese and English several times through machine translation. You try to figure out what it is at the end of it. I feel like your images would be very similar.

[Jeff Massey]

Or that's one of those tricks from college where you don't want to get dinged for plagiarism. So you take content and you translate it several times and then back into English.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Wow. We do not condone, do not condone any such shenanigans.

[David Ruggles]

Thanks for the tip. I am considering some new classes next fall.

[Rob Campbell]

So the previous discussion was for entertainment purposes only and not to be actually used for actual academic.

[Jeff Massey]

It was something I had to be aware of when I was a part time instructor at a local community college.

[Jonathan Bennett]

There you go.

[Jeff Massey]

Now When I went to college myself, it was well before the advent of easy translation services.

[David Ruggles]

Okay, but even if you are aware of it, what can you really do?

[Jonathan Bennett]

There are some different places out there that are trying to offer like is this written by LLM detection technology? So you could feasibly try to get the same thing for Is this translated by a machine?

[David Ruggles]

Yeah, but is that a thing yet?

[Jeff Massey]

But yeah, from an instructor standpoint, you basically just kind of have to be aware if the product of work you're getting from a student suddenly seems more impressive than the student has been up to that point.

[David Ruggles]

That's always a thing though. Even before LLM.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah.

[Jeff Massey]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Jonathan Bennett]

That's crazy. I do notice talking about the market down the library itself, it supports PowerPoint, it supports Word, it supports Excel, no library Office formats. A little disappointed. Maybe they'll take a pull request.

[Rob Campbell]

Well, I thought all those Microsoft formats were supposed to be open source. That's what the brochure said.

[Jonathan Bennett]

They're sort of open in a way.

[Rob Campbell]

No, I know the reality of it.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Rob, you want to talk about the, the thing that we disappointed you by not talking about last week?

[David Ruggles]

I think he probably disappointed Ken more than me. So this is going to be another episode of, of something Ken should buy. So if you're listening, Ken, which I know you are, I've seen you in the discord. This one's for you because here is your next PC. So I can't remember if we talked about the Raspberry PI 500 being released. I know we have fans, many fans in our panel and users out there of the Raspberry PI 400. And the PI 500 is much the same, but improved with the Raspberry PI 5 architecture and 8 gigabits of RAM. The, the position of the GPIO header and, and 3x USB A ports swapped over and the location of the USB C power ports moved. The same, the same ones as before in the, in the 400, just a different order. And, and all this is available for US$90 from Canada kit. It's, it's actually there. I looked at it today. I really thought about clicking the buy button, but I didn't think I could get it to Ken in time. So maybe next year. But this isn't the big reveal. You know, we all knew the PI 500 was coming. We, we. And we knew it would be great. And you know, it's, it's the PI 400 with the, the PI 5. But when nobody speculated on was the official Raspberry PI monitor there you know there are many portable monitors out there. I have one myself for for traveling. But for PI fans like you and me, this one is designed for you. It's designed for PI fans. The specs come with it comes with a 15.6 inch IPS LCD display with anti glare 1920 by 1080 at 60Hz max brightness of 250 nits, 45% color gamut, 80 degree viewing angle, full size HDMI port, front facing stereo speakers. Has two 1 by 2 watts so don't expect a whole lot from that. And courage. It has the courage to add a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. The courage that Apple has lost years ago and Samsung and all those makers. But Raspberry PI foundation keeps that courage going on.

[Jonathan Bennett]

It's hilarious.

[David Ruggles]

It also has physical buttons for volume, brightness and power. Has mounting options including a kickstand. The portable monitor display I have does not have a kickstand. It has this just a cover that doesn't even stick to it just kind of fits over the top and if you fold it upright you can kind of sit in there but it doesn't hold it up that great. So kickstand would be a great option. Or it also has a standard Vesa mount so you can, you know, mount it to anything. You know, an arm, a desktop mount or whatever. Vesa is the standard mount that is on almost all monitors. This monitor is powered by a 1.5amp 5 volt USB C powered with dedicated. You can power with a dedicated power supply or through a USB A to type C cable powered directly by a USB port on the Raspberry PI or or another device such as a monitor with with one limitation or I guess two limitations that the the brightness is limited to 60% and volume to 50% when the monitor is powered by a USB port. And all this just a little bit more than the PI 500 itself. US$100. So you get the PI 500, you get the monitor. US$190 plus tax and whatever shipping, other fees are in there. There you got your full computer right there and perfect for Canon.

[Jonathan Bennett]

So I've seen a couple of complaints about the monitor. One complaint in particular about the monitor and that is that the ports are behind the Vesa mount. So if you have. Yes. So if you have anything connected to the Vesa mount, you really can't get to the ports on the monitor, which is not that big of a deal I don't think because like once you have it mounted up with your Visa mount, do you really need to Be getting to the ports to unplug and plug things in. But this is a complaint.

[Jeff Massey]

Is it saying that you can't get to them or are they like blocked where it can't be used?

[Jonathan Bennett]

I think you just can't get to them. I think you can still have things plugged in because of the way it.

[David Ruggles]

Enough of an indent or whatever. So that way you could still get them in behind whatever base plate you have there.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah. So your, your ports on this thing, you know, you're looking at your monitor, they actually plug in sideways. There's a, there's a well, so the cables run in and plug in sideways. You just. You cannot get to it because that well is directly underneath the VESA mount. So that is, that is one complaint I've seen people have. I sort of have another complaint and that is that none of this stuff supports USB C ALT mode. And when you talk about a portable monitor, that seems to me to be like the killer feature that you really would like to have. So I would have loved to have seen the ability to just put the whole thing on USB C and get, you know, HDMI over USB C or, you know, one of the other. I don't remember if USBC ALT mode is HDMI or if it's DVI anyway.

[David Ruggles]

Oh, so you can't just have a single cable even?

[Jonathan Bennett]

I don't think so. I've never, I've not seen anywhere in the specs that it supports it. Even if you could though, I don't think any of the Raspberry PIs support that. I don't think there's a Raspberry PI that has. Has USB C. Right.

[David Ruggles]

Because it said it's USB A to USB C. Yeah. Oh, that, that is. This, that's. That is disappointing.

[Jonathan Bennett]

So it's not quite as cool as it seems. Now you can do it with two cables. So like it's still, it's still usable. It's just not like a top of the line portable monitor. Right. And so this is something else I would actually like to see on a future Raspberry PI is a fully featured USB C port that can do power delivery out. This is something that I know is sort of niche, but I would love to see power delivery out from Raspberry.

[David Ruggles]

PI well out and the end. The display all in one cable or.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Well, yeah, that's what. So on a laptop there's USB C ports. You can do that. It'll do USB C power out and it'll do ALT modes that you can just have a Single cable to run your display.

[David Ruggles]

Oh, PI having the out.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I would love to see The Raspberry PI 6 have a fully featured USB C port on it.

[David Ruggles]

I thought you meant the display so you could daisy chain them.

[Jeff Massey]

Would beefing up the components and board to support the power out increase cost significantly?

[Jonathan Bennett]

Oh, I'm sure. Yes, I'm sure. Right. And so that's why they haven't done this. And that actually leads nicely into, if we're talking about the Raspberry PI 500 as well. The big disappointment that everybody has with the PI 500 and that is that it's got an NVME port on the motherboard, but none of the components populated to actually make the thing work. So, like, the traces are there, but there's just no NVME header and there's a couple of, let's see, there's the header itself to actually physically be able to plug something in. There are two little tiny surface mount capacitors and then a 3.3.3 volt power supply. That is what is missing to be able to get an NVME port on the PI 500. And the fact that the case, so the actual plastic case, the bottom of it, there's no flap there to be able to get to it. Right. There's a couple of other really interesting things. Jeff Geerling was the one that really tore the 500 apart and looked at this. There's also a place that seems to be for power over Ethernet, which is also very, very interesting. That Raspberry PI foundation was thinking about PI 500 with power over ethernet. And so these are two for certain people. For me, for some of us, these are really, really cool features that we didn't get that, you know, we would love to have. And I'm pretty sure what we're seeing here is it's just. There's going to be a PI 500 pro, right? That's, it's. It's almost inevitably coming. And the reason they didn't just make these things standard is it would, it would increase the price, right. So they, they wouldn't be able to sell it for 90 bucks. They'd have to sell it for, I don't know, 105, 110, something like that. When you talk about adding all these different things to it.

[Rob Campbell]

So yeah, the circuit board to increase the power wouldn't be that much. I mean, you'd have to beef your traces a little. But cost wise, it wouldn't be terrible. It'd be more. The components you'd have to add in any licensing that goes with that.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Right. So with the 500, with the PI 500, the actual keyboard, the traces are there. It is on the board itself. They literally have the traces there. In fact, there's a Hackaday article we cover this where someone sourced the components and made the NVME slot work. It's just there's like four different components you have to add to it. At least four, maybe even more than that with some resistors on there. But again, it's going to increase the bill of materials, which is going to increase the cost of it. And they were hoping to keep probably a sub hundred dollar price point is what they wanted to hit. And you start adding a bunch of things to it and it's going to be over that. So all of that to say the PI 500 itself. Yes, on a CPU side, it's an upgrade, but it doesn't have enough of the killer features for me. I'm not ordering a PI 500. I'm holding out for the PI 500 Pro PI 550. I don't know what they're going to call it. PI 500 XL, that's the one that I'm waiting for.

[Jeff Massey]

Include Visa mount Vee amounts.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I hope so. I legitimately hope so. I asked Evan, I interviewed him and I asked him, I said, ben, we need the Visa mounts on the PI 500. I was disappointed to not see it. I'm hoping it's coming on the Pro.

[David Ruggles]

Model where you'd mount a monitor directly to the.

[Jonathan Bennett]

No, it doesn't necessarily have to be Vesa, but I have just thought for the longest time that it would be nice to have on the bottom of the PI 500 keyboard. So you know, your PI 500, it's a keyboard, you mount it to things. It would be nice to have a couple of certs in there, whether it be the Vesa mounting pattern or not. Just a couple of places in there to be able to actually bolt something to it. To be able to mount it on.

[David Ruggles]

A swing arm then. Just like the monitor.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Exactly. You know how cool that would be to be able to have a PI 500 on a swing arm connected to a, you know, a Raspberry PI monitor also on a swing arm. That'll be cool. Cool.

[David Ruggles]

I could see some use cases there first, you know.

[Rob Campbell]

You know, I was just kind of looking too. You know, when you're adding components to a pie, you know, there's some nuks that get kind of cheap in there too. And at some point you're gonna, you know, Cross over if you. Depending on how much you. Yes. Throw into it and you kind of. Then go on. Well, I can have a low end PC for what?

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yep.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah.

[Jeff Massey]

And that is the nuc is it comes with a Windows license.

[Rob Campbell]

I don't. The one I was looking at, I don't know as it did.

[Jonathan Bennett]

It may or may not be a legitimate Windows license, but it may have Windows installed on it. Sure. Yeah. I don't know that I would trust that install of Windows, but it's probably on there. Yeah, no, that's. Well, the other thing you have to think about too is that Raspberry PI Foundation. They're very much still thinking about the educational side of things. And so they are. They're. One of their main focuses is they're making these computers for education. And so trying to keep the cost down for that is a big deal for them too. So like, I don't. I. It does not bother me that they made the PI 500 and that they made it with the reduced feature set. The thing that annoys me the most is that there wasn't also an announcement that something more was coming.

[Rob Campbell]

Well, think of it this way too. Here's. Here's a heck of a technician, electrical technician trainer. Okay. In today's class, we're going to get the parts and we're going to surface mount parts onto. Onto this and we're going to make this thing, the NVME work and we're going to make the POE work.

[Jonathan Bennett]

And those coupling capacitors are so tiny. They are very small.

[David Ruggles]

There's your educational focus you're looking for.

[Jonathan Bennett]

That's true.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah. And there's, there's people that I've got buddies that they solder under microscopes. I mean that's, that's kind of what you have to do now. The old days of the big old spool. And that's.

[David Ruggles]

If you got pretty much skills for that, you might as well just go be a surgeon and make lots of money.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah, but if you pop a capacitor, you're not.

[Jeff Massey]

Yeah. Your downside's a lot higher.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I suspect that the guys that can do that with the soldering irons actually make more than the surgeons do in some cases.

[Rob Campbell]

I don't know about that, but they're making good money. I will say that.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Believe it or not, in a lot of cases. Totally off topic. In a lot of cases, though, most of that money you spend $100,000 for a surgery. Most of that goes towards the hospital and not the actual surgeon. So anyway, let's move along to something more technical related before we move along.

[Rob Campbell]

I have a little bit of hardware. It wasn't enough to make a story kind of a side note but. And I would love to hear if anybody has an experience on it. But I'm kind of looking at the Flint 2 Wi Fi 6 router. It's from Glass period inet I guess is how you say it. And it basically runs Open WRT it. They have a kind of a customized version. But I was doing some research and you can go between the generic Open WRT and their little customized version easily back and forth. It's pretty close to stock Open WRT and it's just new WI Fi router that's basically built to run.

[Jonathan Bennett]

You might also consider the Open WRT one.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Bennett]

If you can get it now. I don't think Amazon has it locally yet so it's still AliExpress but those are a couple of the really. Couple of the really impressive ones right now. I've used GLI Net before and they make good products as well.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah. So I. And it seems pretty open source friendly if they're using Open wrt. So they're, you know, some nice, nice hardware and it comes with the WI Fi where the one doesn't really. I mean it's not the.

[Jonathan Bennett]

You can get it with WI Fi. The big downside of the OpenWT one is that it only has a single 2.5 gig port whereas the Flint I think has at least two of them.

[Rob Campbell]

I think it's two 10 gigs and it's, it's. It's got, it's got several networking ports on it. There's two, there's two 2.5 gigs and there's four 1 gigs.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah.

[Rob Campbell]

And it's. It supports Wi Fi 6.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah. That is.

[Rob Campbell]

So it's kind of the step up from the one.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, it's cool.

[David Ruggles]

The price isn't bad for, for all that either.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, no, it's really good.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah. So there's just more hardware out there that we might be.

[Jonathan Bennett]

So Jeff, you jumped in to tell us about hardware right before it was time to hand it back over to you to tell us about hardware.

[Rob Campbell]

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[Jonathan Bennett]

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[Rob Campbell]

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[Jonathan Bennett]

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[Rob Campbell]

Yeah, so laptops, you know, and I bring this up every once in a while. I kind of keep watching them evolve and it's kind of exciting. Well, my last segment here is about a review that someone did on the Framework 13AMD laptop on Linux. So you know, we often discuss the Framework laptops on this podcast, but I found this particular review quite unique. Not only does it focus on the AMD 7040U processor, which is a new processor from AMD for mobile, you know, laptops and whatnot, but it also takes a gaming and Linux centric approach. And it goes beyond the simple listing hardware specs and delves into the actual user experience and impressions of Linux on this machine. Now the review does cover some of the hardware improvements, such as a better screen. Now it's got a 2880 by 1920 resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate. And the reviewer also mentions an improved hinge compared to older generations of the laptop. And there's other enhancements that you can read about in the article, but you know, they've had the previous generation, this one, so they can kind of compare and contrast the changes that framework is still making to their product. But what we're most interested in here is the Linux experience. Now the author describes installing Ubuntu 2404 on the laptop and noting that they aren't a typical Ubuntu user. I mean, and they even provide instructions on how to completely remove Snap packages from from the distribution and prevent them from being installed again. You know, but that's not the main focus of the story. But there's a bit of a rant in there about Snap packages. It's just one little paragraph, so it's not huge. But the review includes benchmarks comparing this 13th generation framework to an Intel 12th generational model. And the AMD system performs very well and is noticeably faster than the intel system. And the intel had a core i7 1260p CPU and both CPUs have 16 threads. The intel does have some P and E cores, so there's some of the E cores don't have hyper threading where the P's do. But bottom line they both can take 1616 threads. The author also discusses battery life, and while it's generally good, they point out that sleep mode isn't working perfectly in Linux. They said closing the laptop at 9pm and opening it again at 9am results in a 5 to 10% battery drain. However, they also mentioned that the battery is larger on this model, so it's not as significant of an issue as it was on the previous version. Interestingly, the older intel version had issues with gaming because the drivers weren't mature enough and some games failed to launch. But the author's very enthusiastic about the AMD version version's gaming capabilities. Not only can it launch games, but it also plays them very well, even without a dedicated GPU. To quote the author, the 7840U APU that's the graphics part of this chip is a beast. The author's happy with the laptop after two to three months of use, which gives us review more depth than the typical I used it for a week review. So you know, they, they do mention a few minor issues, but nothing show stopping. So it's, it's pretty detailed. Having used it for that long, you know, they really got the ins and outs of it. I appreciate the article, not only for its detailed analysis, but for its comparison between this year's model and last year's model. And I highly recommend checking out the article linked in the show notes for a thorough review of both the hardware and software experience. But bottom line, it was really good and he loves this laptop and thinks it's a lot better than the previous years.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, so I bought a framework 16 for my dad, he had a job change and had a work laptop, needed to get something and so he went to me, he goes, can you build me a laptop? Like, well, actually I can if we go with this one company. So we did a framework for him and so I got to play with it a little bit, getting it set up for him. And I was quite impressed with the 16 and so I've got an AMD framework 13 on my wish list. So if someone wants to donate to me $1644 worth of coffee plus tax. I'll have to work that out later. Exactly what that ends up being a lot of coffee.

[Rob Campbell]

But you say what, 1600.

[Jonathan Bennett]

It's 1644. Is the framework 13 as I would want it set up? Yeah.

[Rob Campbell]

200 something, 329 coffees.

[Jonathan Bennett]

There you go. That's a bunch of coffees. He did the math.

[Rob Campbell]

I did the math.

[Jonathan Bennett]

But anyway, yeah, I'm a huge fan of the framework. Something I've been thinking about here recently is doing some custom 3D printed framework modules to go into the slots. There's, there's some fun ideas I have.

[Rob Campbell]

For that now to, to be, to truly review though, I think you also need to get a system 76 laptop so you can compare and contrast them. And, and it the newest model of both companies.

[Jeff Massey]

Yeah, the 76. They just released a one based on Ryzen 9. I saw that article come across my feed. I don't, I can't put my fingers on it right now, but it looked impressive.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah. So as soon as you can find a sponsor to take care of the cost on that, I will be glad to pick up those laptops and review them for you.

[Rob Campbell]

Well, I think safely, if someone can donate about 700 coffees, I think we'll be good.

[David Ruggles]

Yeah, yeah, let's quadruple that and get one for all of us.

[Jonathan Bennett]

There you go.

[Rob Campbell]

Well, that would be two for all of us. Well, right, so if we had a good 12, well, probably 1300 coffees, we could each get one, you know, spare change for some people, you know.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, yeah. There are probably more cost effective ways to do that rather than going through buy me a coffee anyway. Oh my goodness. We are so far, we are so far off the path. Now let's talk about, oh, jumbo data packets. Interesting stuff happening in the Linux network stack.

[Jeff Massey]

Yes. So in, let's see, the patches have been merged to next. Net Git, making it material for the networking code in the next kernel merge window, which is Linux 6.14 and it should be Opening up late January. But with that context, what we're looking at is jumbo data packet transmission and Rack TLP coming to Linux. The jumbo data packet transmission is code. So David Howells of Red Hat has been working to implement this. And it is code to enhance the ability to send UDP packets that are significantly larger than the default MTU of 1412 bytes. MTU is maximum transmission unit, and it is a number that tells networking equipment how large a packet of data they can transmit at one time between endpoints. The MTU could actually fluctuate because depending on the path you're going over, some networks may be able to handle jumbo frames and some may not. And so that's where you get packet fragmentation and things, which is where they have to break up a packet to get it across a segment of the network that doesn't have, well, has smaller MTU sizes and then reassemble it. But some of the things that he mentions is an MTU of 8192 would allow five of the standard 1412 UDP packets to be transmitted as one. And then you also have the issue. And he said an alternative and possibly more efficient way would be to be able to expand and shrink the capacity of each data packet to match the MTU and thus save on header and tailgap overhead. Tail gap is where your packet is smaller than the maximum ntu, but because it's smaller, you still have to fill up that full size of the MTU. And he mentioned specifically that IPv6 over Wi Fi doesn't. The MTU is smaller even than the standard 1412. And I haven't looked into it, but I would assume that's because the header information for IPv6 with the larger address fields would be taking up more of that 1412 maximum capacity. The other interesting thing that he talks about is RAC tlp and RAC TLP is an enhancement to the TCP IP acknowledgement process, taking advantage of. So the original ACK process is where the server sends a whole bunch of packets. Then the client, when it gets the packets and it's reassembled them, it acknowledges them, it sends an ACK back, and then the server waits for that ACK for a certain amount of time. If it doesn't get it, it goes, oh, they must not have got it. So it resends it again. Well, if the timing is off, if some of the packets didn't arrive or they arrived out of order and the reassembly didn't happen quickly enough, you can get into situations where you're retransmitting data that was actually received, and then that's just adding to congestion. So an enhancement that they made to it a while back was called SAC or selective acknowledgement. And that's where you can acknowledge specific parts of the entire window of data that you're supposed to receive so that you can say, hey, you know, I got these three, but not those two. And then RAC builds on that with some timing, some dynamic timing. So basically it's constantly monitoring the transmissions and the ax, it's getting the sacks, it's getting back to see how long it's actually taking. And each time it gets a selective acknowledgment back. It adjusts that timer so that it has the actual time plus the buffer so that it's not wasting time on resending, but it's also not just resending stuff without knowing that it didn't get there. And if you click through to the RFC that's linked, which RFC is Request for Comment and is how pretty much all of the standards that operate networks and the Internet are developed in the open. They actually go through an example in there of how that can look where you're having multiple losses, but it just brings a lot of efficiency. And then the Rack tlp, the TLP is tail loss probe, and that is where at the tail end of a network communication or conversation, you can wind up not sending as much data because maybe there's not as much to go. And so you get a situation where you don't have this windowing information. So it can actually intentionally send packets just looking for acknowledgments just to be able to rebuild that windowing information. Anyway, these two enhancements being built in, they've already been developed and they're being implemented in network equipment, but having them here in the operating system is just going to make for more efficient networking moving forward, which is always a good thing.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Interesting stuff. A lot of that doesn't have a whole lot of use case for small network. It's more like big iron stuff where we've got like 10 gig backends and you want to be able to just smash as much traffic as possible through there.

[Jeff Massey]

But a lot of that Rack TLP stuff is where you've got like your data centers with that 10 gig, but then you're sending it out over the Internet. So you need to be able to adjust your MTUs and stuff on the fly so that you're not using your 10 gig to crush your Internet connection or two or three ISPs out.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yep. Neat stuff. Of course, you see these things, they'll land in the kernel, they'll get used in data centers, and the next thing you know, somebody will have some implementation in a router that makes use of some of it in one way or another. Right. So it does sort of trickle down, as it were, to our equipment eventually. Right. Rob, is this a. Is this a political statement about a certain social network?

[David Ruggles]

Yes, it is time to get rid of X. No, I'm. I'm not talking about Twitter. I'm talking about X11 or X.org or, you know, whatever name you want to call it this decade. You know, the X that was X long before Twitter. And that's why you don't name your company a name that's already taken, you know. You know, whenever I've started a company, I've, you know, I usually Google first. Like, anybody got this? No. All right, I'll take it then. But, you know, usually the first hundred names I pick are already taken. And so I.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Company names are just like email addresses. All the good ones are taken.

[David Ruggles]

Yeah, So I don't. I don't take. I mean, acts. I mean, come on. Anyway, I'm talking about another X that is also circling the drain as one of the last major desktop environments has finally implemented Wayland as an experimental feature. And that desktop environment is xfce. The desktop, long known for being slow to change but stable as a rock, has released Xfce version 4.20 and only two years since their last release of 4.18. And it. But 4 wants. It's kind of packed with new features, and the biggest new features is experimental Wayland support that can be started with a simple start. Xfce4 space dash wayland. However, it's still super early, with several XFCE components that aren't going to work yet, such as XFWM for The Window Manager, XF Dashboard, XFCE4 screensaver. Who needs a screensaver these days? XFCE4 Windows CK Plugin and XFCE4 XKB Dash Plugin. I don't know what most of these do and haven't had a chance to look into them. Sounds like a lot of things that don't work yet. Maybe you can get by without them, I don't know. But the XFCE dev say quote so far, XFCE does not feature a compositor which supports Wayland. If you want to run XFCE in Wayland, Lab WC or Wayfire will give you the Best Results Plans are underway to add wayland support to XFWM4 while preserving its existing X11 functionality. However, such a restructurization will be a major effort and we cannot tell yet when slash if it will be done. So please don't hold your breath. You know you got another couple years for the next release and then you know there'll be a little more there and a couple more years and we'll see Other changes included in this there's support for SVG wallpapers on large screens support for setting custom colors for icon labels and icon backgrounds a new option to store folders before files enhanced context menus support for configuring all XF desktop shortcuts Thuner XFC's file manager received support for IPv6 remote URLs along with other improvements New toolbar buttons search improvements Like I always say, I'm still holding out for IPv8. There's also more configuration options for the panel launcher improvements Better support for handling dark themes, which many people love, and many more the desktop environment, you know, that rarely changes is improving and if all goes well, hopefully XFCE will be fully Wayland ready in a few years or so. Just the time to fully finally deprecate X so if you're looking to get your hands on a new XFC 4.20 desktop environment Slackware based Porto 1.8 spelled because I don't really know how to say I even looked on Google how to say it and it sounds French and I can't. It was tough for me. So it's spelled P O R T E U X and the X is capital. So I don't know if that means it's Porto X or if it's portox or I don't know. So that's how it is. That's what it is. It's a Slackware based Slack we're not known to be one of the easier ones so it's probably not one of the easier desktops for for people new or who just want something easy, I don't know. But it is one of the first to ship with XFCE 4.20. But you know, within the next couple release cycles just around the corner, we'll likely see 4.20 coming in many other more mainstream distros in the next few months.

[Jonathan Bennett]

420 is one of those interesting numbers I just. I just can't help but notice.

[David Ruggles]

Were you giggling every time I said it?

[Jonathan Bennett]

Sort of, yeah.

[David Ruggles]

I mean it really made me think of X and Elon Musk also. But yes, that's why it's just all tied together.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yep.

[Jeff Massey]

Yes, I was totally expecting you at some point to say that it will have Waylon finalized just in time to start deprecating fabricating Wayland.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah, I I thought that's where you.

[David Ruggles]

Were going to I have much higher hopes than that.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Just because X lasted for a long time, you hope Wayland will for a few more years.

[Jeff Massey]

Oh, I know, I know. The point is not that Wayland's on the way out. The point is that XFCE moves so slowly.

[David Ruggles]

I I just have higher hopes. Wishful. Thank you. Thinking maybe because X needs to go and Waylon needs to take the lead.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, everywhere indeed. Interesting stuff. After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and at and t@t.

[Rob Campbell]

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[David Ruggles]

Let me silence my phone real quick so I can tell you that US Days at US Cellular is back again. Exclusive offers just for customers. Just to say thanks. Right now you'll get $1,200 off any phone, plus $400 off any tablet. Amazing, right? But my family is so excited about their new devices, they keep texting me during the show. They're all about us days. Deals like $1,200 off any phone plus $400 off any tablet. Terms apply. Visit uscellular.com for details. This ad was an actor's portrayal.

[Rob Campbell]

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[Jonathan Bennett]

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[Jonathan Bennett]

All right, shall we move into some command line tips? I think it's time.

[David Ruggles]

Let's do it.

[Jonathan Bennett]

All right. Jeff is up first with Com.

[David Ruggles]

Yeah.

[Rob Campbell]

So today's command line tip, and it's actually a command line tip, is the COM command C O M M. So this command allows you to compare two sorted files. That's an important detail. Sorted line by line, identifying lines that are unique to each file and those that are common to both. And this is particularly useful if you have lists or log data you need to compare. So this is a little different than like, say, diff or something like that. So the COM command performs a line by line comparison and by default generates a three column output. So column one contains lines unique to the first file, column two contains lines unique to the second file, and column three contains lines common to both files. Now, if you look at the example in the show notes, there's a nice article in there about using it, but, you know, and the three column format should be easy to visualize because it's just three columns. Now, most commonly used options for this Command are a dash 1, a dash 2, or a minus 3 or can be and 3. So these options simply suppress what you specify. So, for example, using Dash1 with the command will suppress the first column. You can use more than one of these options at the same time. For example, using 1 and 2 together will suppress both the first and second columns, leaving you with only the lines that are common to both files. Conversely, using Dash 1 and Dash 3 will show you only what is unique to the second file. There are other switches you can use with. COM as well, but they're not really that common. I mean, that wasn't trying to make a pun there, but it's just the dash 1, 2 and 3 are kind of the most used ones. Take a look at the link in the show notes or consult your man page, you know, man space, C O M M to learn more about this use command.

[Jonathan Bennett]

All right, very good. Let's see. Up next is David talking about expansion Bash expansion. David is muted. We cannot hear you, David.

[Jeff Massey]

Yes, I am. So let me pop over here. All right, so I am confident that Bash expansion has been talked about before, but it has been a long time ago. And as we often mentioned on here, while we sometimes find brand new command line tips, also sometimes we either have to deal with a problem or get bit by something. And I got bit by BASH command line expansion, specifically dot versus asterisks. So I'm going to explain why that's a big deal. So I Created a example directory here. And if I do an ls, I see I've got a dir one and a file. But if I do an LS minus A, which is going to show everything we can see. I have some hidden objects here. I have a hidden Dir 2 and a hidden file. So what was happening was I was trying to locate some contents in the file using grep. So we've talked about grep in the past. I'm not going to, I'm going to use grep in this example, but I'm not going to explain it. But it lets you search inside the files and you can give pack a dash R for recursive searching. So if I grep zz, I'm sorry, if I grep ZZ in the current files, it's going to tell me that dir1 is a directory and file contains zz. Now if I add R like this, that's going to tell it recursive. So now it's going to actually go down into dir1 and it's going to tell me that inside dir1 there are two files. File, which has zz and dot file, which is a hidden file which also contains zz and then my file zz, but it's missing the entire dot der2 folder. So if I change that asterisk to a dot, now it's going to search in the current directory instead of enumerating what it can see. And now it'll give me all of the examples. But if you notice, whereas before it said dir1file dir1 dot file file, now it's saying dot slash and then that same information. But it also has the hidden dir2. The reason for that is because the dot says search in the current directory, but the asterisk is just doing the same thing as a basic ls and it is saying here's dir one and here's file. And we can actually see that by echoing the asterisks, which will give you the same results as doing just an ls. So it's not a big thing. But it was something that bit me because when I was in a subdirectory I was getting a different result than when I was in a root directory. And I realized what it was was the directory I was changing in and out of was hidden and it wasn't showing up. And I was like, ah, forehead smack. And I was like, hey, you know, I'll share this, have a good laugh at myself and just remind everybody that, you know, sometimes these things matter indeed.

[David Ruggles]

You know, I've always Just been using all that with dot, slash, but I suppose that slash is unnecessary.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Just one extra keystroke that you don't need.

[David Ruggles]

And I've never saved the keystrokes. I never even thought to use the asterisks. But now that you've taught me the difference here, and also that I don't need that extra keystroke, that'll save me lots of seconds that will add up over the years.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah. A lot of RSI saved as well.

[David Ruggles]

Yes.

[Jonathan Bennett]

All right. Jeff has been in contact with the FBI, apparently.

[David Ruggles]

What? That's not Jeff's.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Is that not Jeff's?

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Bennett]

I'm like, wait, wait. Rob has been in contact with the FBI.

[Jeff Massey]

Sorry.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Let's try not to blow your cover, Rob.

[Jeff Massey]

And that is much less surprising.

[Rob Campbell]

Yeah.

[David Ruggles]

All right, let's show my screen here, because this is a command line tip. And you all viewers need to see this one because it's, it's a visual one, Even though it's command line, it's visual. So FBI is frame buffer image. It's a frame buffer image viewer is what FBI is. So right here, those watching this is on an Ubuntu server. No gui, no desktop environment, just Ubuntu server.

[Rob Campbell]

It's.

[David Ruggles]

It's a vm. But what you're seeing here is the equivalent of just a TTY if you had a monitor attached with no gui and it just boots up into your command line. So FBI. If I type F. Oops, let me type that on the right screen here. Put my cursor over here. FBI. And then dash T1, that's the TTY, so you can have it show on TTY, 1, 2, 3, whatever you have there. And then I'm going to put a dash A is going to auto zoom to fit. So it's going to, it's going to make it the image fit the screen. Then I'm going to do a dash t space 3, which is dash t, and the 3 is second. So it's for a continuous slideshow. And then I've selected two files that are in the. The directory that I'm in. And you do have to use sudo, from what I've noticed, because it needs access to tty. Maybe there's some other way around it. So I have sudo, FBI, space, dash, capital T, space 1, space dash A, space, dash T space 3, space, ULS, JPEG space, RobertCampbell, JPEG. So I don't need to have all those. But I'm going to show you a bunch of different commands here or flags that you can add onto this and so you could use this. So if maybe you want to just do a screensaver and you don't want to. You have like a screen, a Raspberry PI attached to it. All you want to do is have a slideshow. That's what I meant to say. You don't need a full GUI for this. You don't need a full GUI for this. It will do it right in the frame buffer. Now that's a really small picture. So that's why the picture of me is blurry. But yeah, you don't, you don't need to install a gui. This will just. That's all you need is just a basic Linux install and, and, and you can do a slideshow. Now I removed the dash A so now it's not zooming it in. That's how small the the picture originally is. There's more details on the bottom. You can't necessarily could see the images behind me. The image name way over on the right. The. The size 100 and then it has the actual size. The. The untitled Linux show is 600 by 600. The second image is 150 by 202 and there is an H for help but yes, escape out of that. So you can have it just boot up into that and easily have a slideshow or whatever other purpose. You know, maybe it's a headless machine, but for some reason you have a monitor on and you want to just boot up some logo or I don't know what you want, but you could have images in the frame buffer without X or Wayland or any GUI on there.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Frame buffer. Interface. I like it.

[David Ruggles]

Interface. There we go. That's what the is.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yes. All right, so my tip is one, I actually used this. Not this week, a couple of weeks ago. It's absidy or abcde and that is a better CD encoder. And this is a really simple CD audio ripper for the command line and for most uses you just go to the folder you want and you can just run ABCDE and it will go out and find your CD drive, rip it. I think it goes to flak or mp3 by default I think but you know, there's all kinds of flags you can give it to give it to tell exactly how you want it to do it. But yeah, and it just. For me at least it just works. And I had a CD and I needed to get the audio off of it. I've got a link to their main page which has links off to documentation about how to do things. It is. It is pretty simple, though. And from what I can tell, ABCITY is installable from the repositories in most of. The. Most of the major distros. I know it's in Fedora and it appears to be in Ubuntu as well. So if you need a simple command line, CD ripper. There you go. Fun stuff. All right, we have made it through the show, and I want to give the guys, each of them a chance to plug whatever they want to and. Or if they want to get the last word on something. We'll start with Rob, and he is asking for a whole lot of coffee.

[David Ruggles]

Lots of coffee. I'm thirsty, guys. All right, as always, you can come connect with me. Find my links at robert p.campbell.com on there. There's links to my LinkedIn, my Twitter, my Mastodon. I'll get Blue sky up there someday. And here's the important one where you can click on this little coffee cup to donate me coffees. Sean recently donated 10 coffees, so that way I would have to use Linux Mint for two months, as I said on a previous show. And I'm not sure if he's the same Sean, but if you guys remember, there was a Sean that donated coffees to everybody and then donated coffees to me when I felt sad because he didn't donate to me. So I don't know if it's the same Sean or another Sean. Maybe it says if I click in, but, you know, Sean's are good guys.

[Jonathan Bennett]

So shaking Sean down for coffee money.

[David Ruggles]

Thanks for this copy, Sean. Sean or Sean's, I don't know.

[Jonathan Bennett]

All right, David.

[Jeff Massey]

Oh, so to be slightly serious, but also, you know, not to be depressing or anything, but this time of year is. Can be uncomfortable for some people that you can be going through stuff. And I only mention this because I've had this situation myself in the past, and so I'm very aware of it. So if you're listening to this and you're. This just isn't the best season for you. Just know that there are people that care for you, that you are important, and reach out, reach out to a friend to find some support structure to be around you. But you're important.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[Rob Campbell]

All right, Jeff, you can find me on LinkedIn and Mastodon. Just go find Rob and then I'm connected to him in there. That'll. That'll work. But more importantly, for this last show of the year, so we got to make a good one. Poetry Corner. This has got to tide you over for a week or two weeks. Roses are red, my server is gray. I'm a computer nerd, don't expect me to rhyme. Have a great week and a great holiday, everybody.

[David Ruggles]

So to be clear to find Jeff, you go to robertpcampbell.com click on LinkedIn, which was the far right one. As you look at the screen, click on that, search for Jeff Massey and you'll be there. That's hilarious.

[Jeff Massey]

Technically you should be able to find me that way too.

[David Ruggles]

All right, David Ruggles is there too.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Yeah, we're all one degree of Rob.

[Jeff Massey]

There's the show title.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Oh, all right. Just a couple of housekeeping things. We will not be having a ULS next week. That is the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's. We're taking the day off. I think all of Twit is taking off that time period off and get some much needed rest and relaxation. If you are a FLOSS Weekly listener, we are taking a couple of weeks off there as well. We will actually be back on floss on the 31st to talk about FR routing, which is a really cool project doing some deep Internet routing stuff and I don't know, maybe I could talk Rob into coming with me to be the co host on that one. We'll see but that's what's there. And then you can follow my work over at Hackaday on Not Only Fossil Equals so the security column. We didn't run one this Friday not because of the holidays but because I was sick as a dog on Thursday. I spent all day out here staring at my computer trying to write security article but just I had the brain fog. Too bad I couldn't do it. We should be back next week for that as well. But yeah, you can follow me there and appreciate the guys being here for the show today. And we appreciate everybody that watches and listens both to get us live and on the download. We will see you in two weeks on the Untitled Linux show. Thanks. Now AT T Mobile get four 5G.

[Rob Campbell]

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[Jonathan Bennett]

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[Rob Campbell]

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[Jonathan Bennett]

CT mobile.com this holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts. Tickets to see their favorite artist live. Choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows, including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman, and so many more. Share a memory together or give a gift they'll never forget. Find the most exciting gift for every [e-mail] Gifts that's livenation.com Gifts hi, I'm.

[David Ruggles]

Chris Gethard and I'm very excited to.

[Rob Campbell]

Tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast.

[David Ruggles]

Where I talk to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number.

[Jonathan Bennett]

Thousands of people try to call you.

[David Ruggles]

Talk to one of them. They stay anonymous.

[Rob Campbell]

I can't hang up. That's all the rules.

[David Ruggles]

I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings.

[Rob Campbell]

Crazy, funny ones.

[David Ruggles]

I talked to a guy with a.

[Rob Campbell]

Goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as.

[David Ruggles]

A pirate on the weekends. I never know what's going to happen.

[Rob Campbell]

It's a great show. Subscribe today. Beautiful Anonymous.