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Untitled Linux Show 189: Rustrated By Frust
01:33:45
Canonical, Rust, and Risc-V
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- [00:01]
Rob
Hey folks, this week we're talking about problems at Canonical and you can run Linux inside a PDF. Oh yes, and then there's rust in the Linux kernel and the new RISC V mainboard for framework that maybe you shouldn't buy. Hey, it's all interesting. You want to hear about it, so stay tuned.
- [00:17]
Jeff
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- [01:49]
Ken
Growth curve, T Mobile's coverage keeps scaling because T Mobile helps keep you connected for from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service report in 90 plus days device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [02:21]
Jeff
Podcasts you love from people you trust.
- [02:30]
Rob
This is the Untitled Linux Show, Episode 189 recorded Saturday, February 8th. Rust Rated by Frust hey folks, it is Saturday and you know what that means. It is pre game for the big game, no? It's time for the Untitled Linux show. It's not just me. We've got Rob and we've got Jeff and we've got Ken, and apparently there's something else going on this weekend, but we don't care about that. We are here to talk about Linux and all of the crazy things that's going on in the Linux world right now. And there are some crazy things and we're going to talk about some of them. And we're going to start with Rob, who has a bit of a warning for everyone.
- [03:14]
E
Be careful. So you know, from time to time we do bring up job postings from like Open Source and Linux companies when there's something interesting that catches their eye. And I'm not sure, but I think we have brought up openings at Canonical before. Well, this week I found a rant on Reddit from someone that applied at Canonical and although, you know, I'm not suggesting you don't apply at Canonical, I. I am giving this as a word of warning to be prepared for a four month grueling process that may not necessarily end well. But you know, and I haven't been able to obviously verify every detail this rant, but when comparing against some other posts and like reviews on Glassdoor, things seem to line up pretty well with what this person experienced. So this rant on Reddit states he applied for a software engineer job. And, and then he continues on saying that first they waste tens of hours of his time, first with endless forms that took him 10 plus, him or her, them, I don't know, 10 plus hours to complete. And then an IQ test, which that's not too crazy, or an IQ style test. I've taken them before for employment. I mean, it's been a long time. I've done mechanical aptitude tests for jobs way, way in the past. I even took a reading test once which everyone up for that job kind of thought was weird because it was actually an internal job and they made everyone take a reading and I think some other tests. But anyway, I digress. And this Reddit rant, he says he also had to take a language test. I think he means spoken language, not a programming language, even though it's a software engineer. Because he does go on to say to talk about programming language stuff later on, because after that, after all this tests and paperwork he had to go through, I counted seven interviews. First a technical interview on Python coding, second a Manager interview with the, with the hiring team. Third, another tech interview. This was on system architecture and general tech questions. Probably could combine it all into one, but fourth, an HR interview. Fifth, another manager interview, but this was from people who were not on the hiring team. Six, the hiring lead did an interview and then seventh, there was a vp, a vice president interview. And he says the hiring lead and the VP both gave really positive feedback. He basically checks all the box and like I said, him, her, them, I don't know what they are. I'm just going to say he, because that's what keeps slipping out of my mouth. So, so this seems overkill to me and a lot of, lot of management hours spent to interview one person. But if that gets them the best, then from end user perspective I suppose that may be a good thing. But, but here's the rubber and you know that that stuff is like, okay, that's grueling and, and crazier than any other job I've ever been involved in. But the rub and the real part that's really kind of sad is after four months of going through all of this, he was given a job offer. That's not the sad part yet. And he accepted the job offer. So, so after that, and they did say they were in Europe. So in context here, after that he gave his four week notice at his current employer. So he's already geared up to put his notice, he's done in four weeks, gonna start his new job. And then one week later he gets an email stating after further discussion with upper management, they decided to cancel his application. They withdrew his job offer after all this time and, and then offering accepting it after four crazy months, scoping out every part of this person's life. What could they possibly have discovered in one more week that they missed all these other weeks? In my experience, the hiring process takes two to maybe four weeks before an offer is given. And, and then in the US here the standard's kind of a two week notice. So you know, in that short amount of time I could see something being missed that wasn't discovered. But in four months that's the same. So, so what, what kind of due diligence is canonical missing in their 4 month process? How much management time is being wasted doing nothing? You know what in the comments there, what some of the things I've heard is that they often do not get the best person because in, in four months a lot can happen. They've already taken other jobs, so then they go to the next person. Oh no, they've already taken another job too. You know, you gotta be a little quicker if you want the best people. Also due diligence I guess you're gonna get the people who really really want to be with you. But there's a funny story in the comments too. Somebody said that that their wife was going for some government job and the interview is like three months later that is scheduled shows up and and HR person took him to the office. No one was there. It turns out the hiring person died two months previous. So that's just a side note that things can happen in three months and you know, to go on to and provide a little support to this On Glassdoor, canonical gets a 3.3 stars now maybe to be a little fair, people aren't normally people are more likely to go online and complain than say good things. But when I compared it against any place I've worked, 3.3 stars is less than any place I have worked. And with a rating of 53% of employees saying they would recommend to a friend and only 47% approve of the CEO Mark Shuttleworth. And a lot of the reviews on there are pointing to poor management. Others also list the hiring process is a con of Canonical. So again I'm not saying you shouldn't apply there to work there, but if you do, be prepared and maybe hold off on giving your notice to your current employer until the last minute. You know, maybe somehow try to set yourself up for success if something doesn't go as you hope.
- [10:56]
Rob
Yeah, so I the terrible employment practice seems to be just pretty typical in the tech world. I've heard horror stories like this before where you know, there's interview after interview and it takes forever to get to, you know, and weird interview practices, weird tests, asking people to do weird things for their interviews. That is unfortunate but kind of normal. I do wonder and looking through the Reddit thread, other people were asking this too. I'm actually really curious if it's even legal to make someone an offer, they accept it and then renege on that offer before employment starts. I think this individual probably does have a pretty strong case of basically a breach of contract. So it's not the four month thing that really bothers me as much as it is the essentially they failed to follow through on the obligation they had.
- [11:56]
E
Um, yeah, and I could see if that if that offer was contingent upon background checks or I know in the old days they don't seem to do it much anymore. It seems a lot of places but contingent upon a drug test or some something else like that. But I'd gotta imagine after four months that stuff was sorted out.
- [12:20]
Rob
One would hope. Well, yeah, I mean, it is. We don't, we don't have the, like, we don't have copies of the emails, we don't have copies of any contract that was signed to actually be able to look at them. So, you know, just in full fairness to Canonical, it is possible that there's more to the story than what we are seeing. But on its face, it does sound a little, sounds a little sketchy.
- [12:40]
F
Well, it is a Reddit post after all. I mean it. But we get, we got to always take that with a grain of salt. Just like yes and right. Kind of a. You know, it's, it's interesting though too, being on the other side trying to hire, you know, like hire a programmer where we, you know, we would have test. It would be interesting. We'd have tests where we'd say, okay, write this simple thing, you know, maybe a bubble sort or whatever. And you can use any language you want. You can use pseudocode, you can, whatever you want. And you'd be amazed at the number of people go, well, can I have access to Google? Can I, you know, basically I'm a script kiddie and I need to have, have Google so I can look all, look up all the answers.
- [13:28]
E
But you know, Canonical, it's a big company, thousands of employees, I think. And for, for a software engineer, you're bringing your vice president in. I don't know if that's, maybe it's vice president of a section or a, a division or something or some part of it. Maybe not like shovel horse number two, but that, that seems rather overkill too.
- [13:56]
F
Yeah, the big corporations, I haven't been involved with that.
- [13:59]
E
You don't go that high for a CEO or president. They hire a good, a good team under them and they let them do their job. You know, a vice president hires good management directors, whatever under them. Let them do their job. You know, don't try to micromanage every hiring offer unless it's the VP of HR.
- [14:21]
F
Yeah, they don't have the VPs. At most, like a big company like that, you, you probably get like a director or something because after you're about three steps away, they don't really care because they're never going to talk to you, they're never going to deal with you. It's, it's more on, okay, who, who are the, you know, their direct leadership and maybe one step, maybe two steps above them that'll have some interaction. Beyond that, it's you'll never see the person.
- [14:49]
Rob
And yeah, I don't know how Canonical does it. I know I've read about some, some businesses here in, in the States that big, you know, rather large. They'll do things like they'll have skip meetings. This is something that SpaceX does, something Musk does that seems to work out well for them. And it's the idea that no matter who you are in the business, you can say, well, my manager's not listening to me, but I really believe that I'm onto something here. And you can jump up a couple of ranks in the hierarchy and that's pretty interesting. This is totally unrelated to Canonical. It just came to mind. It's not that unheard of for even a business the size of Canonical if there's multiple VPs for one of the VPs to be involved in hiring decisions. And it also depends on, depends upon what level you're going to hire someone on at. Right. So like this could have been just another engineer that was going to be, you know, taking care of mitigating CVEs or whatever. Or maybe they were hiring an engineer to be the lead of some new feature. So I mean there's a lot of wiggle room here that is possible to at least imagine.
- [16:00]
F
Yeah, the company I'm at, we do skip levels. We, we have it every so often.
- [16:05]
Rob
Yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's a great idea. Personally, I like it a lot and.
- [16:09]
E
I, I have been familiar with companies where the VP does get involved in hiring decisions, but they work with the directors and the managers and they listen to like. So I had this interview with them and you know, they were great at this, not, not so great at this, blah, blah, blah, what do we all think? And they offer their input, but getting in on an interview, that's just. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know what kind of software engineer job he was going for.
- [16:42]
Rob
Yeah. So I think that's really the takeaway here is that there's a lot of information we don't have about this. But I think it is also worth warning people, not just about Canonical, but on the job hunt in general to, you know, be careful. And sometimes companies aren't necessarily. Well, I think you can just generically say companies are not looking out for the interests of their potential employees. Like you're two different. You're two levels away from what the company is actually looking out for. So a good company will look out for its actual employees in addition to looking out for you Know its customers and the things that it's trying to do. Even, even less of a, A requirement, I suppose, to look out for the interests of its potential employees. So you just keep that in mind when you go and have an interview.
- [17:35]
E
Yeah.
- [17:36]
F
And honestly, I wouldn't.
- [17:38]
Jonathan
To become a customer of that company.
- [17:41]
Rob
What's that, Jeff?
- [17:42]
F
I, I was going to say, you know, I wouldn't resign from my current job until I had the, the next one, you know, nailed down and I had an actual employment contract. Yeah, just really get. Let the ink dry a little bit.
- [17:55]
E
He had an offer and.
- [17:59]
Rob
Yeah, so that's right. Like that's the question. He had an offer. He said he accepted the offer. But was there an employment contract? Was there ever that final. Yes, you have it. Quit your job. We don't, we don't know. Right.
- [18:09]
E
There's just some questions. I've never gotten an employment contract before the day I started working. I've never, you know, oh, I have offer. And then they said, here's a contract. You're all signed up. It's, here's a contract. Come in this day. And then you fill out all the onboarding stuff. I've, I've never worked anywhere that gave a contract ahead of time. So that's not a thing anywhere I've been.
- [18:35]
F
All right, let's. But it wasn't a full contract. It was like, we are hiring you. We are. So there's. They were legally saying, we're engaging with you to hire you.
- [18:46]
Rob
Yeah, a letter of intent. In some cases that gets called.
- [18:49]
Jonathan
Do we need to do a YouTube video showing how to get hired?
- [18:55]
Rob
That was kind of clunky, Ken, but we are going to hand it to Jeff to talk about YouTube channels. What's this about, Jeff?
- [19:04]
F
Well, as Linux users, we all have to start somewhere. And this first story or my story is going to help beginners, intermediates, and possibly even advanced users as well. If you take a look at the link in the show notes to a How to Geeks article, you'll find a list of 10 YouTube channels that the author says made them a better Linux user. Personally, I've learned about several new channels because of this article. I mean, some I knew of, but many I was unaware of. But going through the list, you know, number 10 is the Linux experiment. And the author comments that this is their favorite channel, which I guess maybe 10 is the best instead of 1. I don't know. This is, this is in their order, so I'll have to let them talk to that. But they said the channel covers a lot of content such as news updates, exploring different distributions, going over new tools, guides and a lot more. And the author calls out some of their favorite videos they do is where they answer Linux misconceptions. Number nine is Distro tube and personally I'm familiar with that one. Like the last channel, it covers a wide range of distributions, guides, tools and answers questions. The creator creator especially loves the distro tube. DT loves tiling window managers and has written some scripts that users can use if they want to copy his setup. Number eight is Learn Linux TV and the channel focuses on command line tools, how to guides and covers bash programming. The channel is especially suited for new users who have just switched or are considering switching to Linux, making the content very beginner friendly. Number seven is Switch to Linux and this is also geared towards the very beginning Linux user. And there's also a dedicated website for the Linux news and tutorials linked in the channel, so they have a kind of a sister website to go with the YouTube channel. Number six is Michael Horn. He's a content creator from Australia and like many channels he covers a wide set of topics in the open source arena. Something that's a little different though is that in addition to covering common Linux questions, he also covers desktop environments and is pretty passionate about Linux gaming. And I agree with the author here that not many Linux channels cover Linux gaming beyond a passing comment. Number five is Tech hut. Now this one's a little different because it covers Linux, Windows and Mac systems, and in this channel you see a lot of comparisons between the different operating systems side by side, so you can see how Linux stacks up. They also cover Linux servers and delve into hardware along with their normal guides. Number four is not a stranger to this channel as we've Talked about this YouTube channel in the past. Brody Robertson his channel is a little different that he doesn't make a lot of guides, reviews or tutorials like unlike, you know, like other channels do. Most of his videos are news, opinions and discussions. He can be a little controversial and polarizing depending on if you agree with him or not. Number three is Infinity Galactic. The schedule for video releases is not as rapid as other content creators, but he is noted for having interesting, unique and alternative takes on Linux that you don't normally find in other venues. The author calls him out on his video for productivity apps, for example, which help the author find a lot of hidden gems that he's come to love. Number two is Linux text. The author notes that the videos are more like documentary style videos and when Reviewing different distributions. The content creator doesn't go into reaction videos but rather goes into in depth research and gives all the good and bad about distributions. So this channel is for those who really want a deep dive when comparing distributions. Number one is a bit of surprise to me as it's nine to five Linux. The author talks about how the channel covers a wide range of topics and mentions that they also have a website. I think listeners to this channel would know they have a website and maybe not realize they actually have a YouTube channel. That was me. I only know the website, not the channel. One bonus that I personally was going to throw in here, you know and you, you get this for. For free. I would like to add, you know if you enjoy level one techs, they also have a level one Linux channel. They do a lot of hardware on Linux content but they do hit software as well and it's, it's a little more enterprise geared but I really enjoy Wendell over there. So take a look at the article linked in the show notes and whether you're a beginner or to advanced user, there's probably something in there that you can find helpful and enjoyable. So happy watching.
- [23:47]
Rob
I'll add one more to that list and that is another friend of ours, Jeff Geerling and he is sort of famous for the let's run full size GPUs on the Raspberry PI among other things. But Jeff is also another one to tune into if you're trying to keep so your your finger on the pulse of the single board computer world of Linux.
- [24:07]
E
So I'm not a huge consumer of YouTube content. I kind of go there when I'm looking for something specifically. But I'm going to call out one of those on your list. Learn Linux TV. I have gone there for some Proxmox stuff when I was first setting it up and I know he used to be a listener if he's a listener anymore, but he was the one who ran with one of my great distro ideas. Yeah, so that is one that I am familiar with really only because when he was in our Linux chat I kind of checked him out after that.
- [24:48]
Rob
Yeah, pretty cool.
- [24:49]
Ken
Like your favorite startups growth curve, T Mobile's coverage keeps scaling because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of via virtual prepaid card last 15 days qualified unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption Required card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [25:20]
F
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- [25:45]
Rob
Get more with Geico all right, so let's talk Caliber. This is the ebook reader, right Ken?
- [25:55]
Jonathan
Yes, it's my favorite choice for managing ebook. And we can thank Marius Nestor since he wrote about the latest update to my favorite ebook management software. Here we're talking about caliber 7.25. The highlights according to Marius include support for importing KFX files from 2024 Kindle devices that use the MTP protocol and a option to adjust the size of the link and note icons in Book Details. You can now set custom icons for items in the tab browser by right clicking on them and choosing Manage icon for this value. Calibre 7.25 also fixes a few bugs, including an issue in the Nook driver to make the glow light floor ebook reader work on Windows systems and and an issue in the MTP driver where internal storage and SD card were swapped on some devices that have buggy firmware that assigns a lower ID than the internal storage to the SD card. This release adds several new news sources including Alternatives Economics, Africa, Exit 21, Orient 21, and Football League World if you're into those sorts of uses. I was looking to see if there was anything new as far as the Linux side for news sources available through there. Didn't see anything recent.
- [27:37]
Rob
Yeah, you know, I don't find myself using an ebook reader especially on the desktop, hardly ever at all. But it is nice that it's out there. I boy I really I do audiobooks these days either audiobooks or like paper I will still occasionally sit down with a paper book.
- [27:54]
Jonathan
Plugins for Calibre is for overdrive so you can link to different overdrive websites or libraries and it's actually been upgraded so you can use it to link to your Audible books.
- [28:13]
Rob
Oh cool.
- [28:15]
E
And also Ken, you can use that to manage your ebooks while reading that on like a tablet device too, right?
- [28:21]
Jonathan
Yeah. In fact, when I first started with It. I was using it to manage the ebooks that I had bought through. I can't think of the name of the site now, it's been so long ago, but they had ebooks that were designed for the Palm pda.
- [28:42]
E
So. Jonathan, you don't have to be a reader of ebooks on your desktop to utilize caliber. You just need to. I just manage it there.
- [28:50]
Rob
Yeah, I've got all of one device that sort of makes sense, and that's actually. I've got an iPad that somebody got me, but it's still not my favorite thing to read on.
- [28:59]
E
You could get the Pine E Ink. I don't remember what they call it, but there's that E Ink Pine tablet. And then read these.
- [29:09]
Rob
Yeah, I don't know, that could work.
- [29:11]
Jonathan
But I went from my Palm PDA to the Nook. I think that was the second version. Still got it around here somewhere. It's just so old that I can't get updates for it anymore.
- [29:25]
E
And I want to apologize to Jonathan's wife for implying that he should buy anything.
- [29:33]
Rob
Yeah, for real. It's the Pine Note.
- [29:38]
E
There it is.
- [29:39]
Rob
I'm trying to see. Yeah, there it is. For $400. Oh my goodness. It's kind of expensive.
- [29:46]
F
It's going to take two weeks.
- [29:47]
Jonathan
Yeah, and I've actually got a recommendation for Ebook reader to put on there.
- [29:52]
Rob
Oh, Fbreader fb. Is that for what? For Android or.
- [29:57]
Jonathan
It's available for Android. There's even a Linux version.
- [30:00]
F
Nice.
- [30:02]
Rob
All right, well, let's steam along. And speaking of running on Linux, Rob, where else can we run Linux?
- [30:12]
E
So over the years, many people have shared fascinating places that Linux can run, you know, but, you know, you don't see a lot of that these days because Linux runs on almost anything, you know, but with the story, you know, I have to bring back the trend as this is just too weird not to share. You know, you've heard of Linux running on ATMs, Linux running on toasters, coffee makers, refrigerators, probably. But would you believe the Linux can run on a PDF file? PDF, the portable document format. The thing you used to, you know, print documents and sometimes fill out forms. Well, VK6, also known as adding 20, 2010 or Allen, a high school student with a obvious passion for programming and I guess web development. Cyber security has managed to run Linux inside a PDF file on the browser. I checked it out. You can even download it and run it locally on your browser. You can't run it in, at least not in the. In the Mac OS PDF viewer. That's what I was using it on. At the moment I haven't tried on actual Adobe, but I'm guessing it's just a web only. So this work that he did builds upon an earlier project of his where he got Doom running within a PDF, you know, the other software that runs everywhere. He now released what he calls Linux PDF powered with a modified version of the tiny EMU RISC V emulator that has been compiled to ASM JS using an older version of EM scripten so users can use the virtual keyboard to interact with Linux PDF run commands. I checked out briefly, it didn't have an Internet connection, but I was able to do an IP Space A and see that the local IP was 12700. I don't remember what the last was, but maybe one or you could send keystrokes to a virtual machine using the text box. So, you know, it's pretty amazing that Alan has been able to programmatically running within a PDF, get Linux running within a PDF. But it kind of begs the question, do PDFs have too much ability to run whatever? You know, this is supposed to be for documents? I think PDF's power may maybe should get dialed back a bit. You know, if you could run Linux on it, you can run anything on it. You can, you know, any malware can be ran on a PDF. So, you know, don't be clicking any of those PDFs in your email, guys, because, guys, girls, folks, because, because that. But besides that, this is another fine example of a high schooler that has an amazing career ahead of him. Compare this to what I was doing at that age. Well, let's.
- [33:50]
Rob
So I've got another link. Before this guy made Linux work, he made Doom work. We covered it on Hackaday. And so there is a Doom PDF that you can go and run in your browser if you want to. It works in Chrome. I was playing Doom, I will not lie. I was playing Doom while Rob was talking. The way that this works is that, yeah, there's a little script engine inside of PDF renderers because the PDF spec calls for it. They've got JavaScript running in there and once you have JavaScript running, you're sort of in a position to bootstrap the whole world.
- [34:32]
Jonathan
Yeah, sounds very safe.
- [34:35]
F
And we do have, we do have a question, Aunt Pruitt. On a PDF, why? It's one of those. Yeah, it's, it's just a dumb trick, you know, it's just like, hey, wouldn't this be wild? It's the only Reason, but it could be too, because Adobe said, you know, we got rid of Flash, how else are we going to be the main leader in security vulnerabilities?
- [35:02]
E
It. It does, yeah.
- [35:04]
F
We got to do something to get that title back.
- [35:06]
E
I thought you were gonna say something else. I don't know. I thought you were gonna say it's gonna replace Flash in some other quality way. And I was gonna say that the, the video of it is not the best, but. No, you. You got it right.
- [35:21]
Rob
No, I mean, it is, it is really. It is sort of amazing. And there's this, there's this. Once you sort of have control over a device, the next thing that you just have to do as a hacker is run Doom on it. We've covered Doom on so many different things over on Hackaday. People will do things like, I think it was the Nintendo Entertainment System, which does not have enough horsepower to run Doom. Someone hacked a cartridge together to where they could. I think they did it wirelessly, but they could flip individual frames over into the cartridge and then display the frames on the TV so that you could run Doom on an nes. I mean, just the crazy thing I've covered people running Doom on SIP phones everywhere they can possibly. It's just, it's sort of a rite of passage.
- [36:11]
E
Ilag says first JavaScript, then the world.
- [36:17]
Rob
Yep, yep, very much so. All right, let's move on to something else that'll run Doom, and that is that FANCY Nvidia overpriced 5090 graphics card.
- [36:31]
F
Oh yeah. Well, this is a two in one segment here. So first, something we haven't covered yet is Nvidia's released the 570 Series Beta Linux driver with support for the 5000 Series of GPUs. But in addition to supporting the 5000 Series cards, there are a number of new features and bug fixes included in this release. The Nvidia Settings Control panel will now use NVML rather than NV Control to control the GPU clocks and fan speed. This allows related functionality to work when using Wayland where the NV Control X extension is not available. So they do make a note as some operations which were previously available to unprivileged users due to the privileges of the X server may now require elevated privileges. So basically because of the greater security in Wayland, you might have to use your sudo to get things kicked off correctly. Now they have added support for variable refresh rate on systems with multiple mon, multiple displays, and they've added an application profile to improve performance on Indian Jones and the Great Circle. Along with that with they've also fixed some with a profile where there were some corruptions and it should fix Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Assassin's Creed Mirage. There was also a bug fix that would cause some Vulkan applications to crash when responding to window resize events. And they've also updated GPU overclocking to be available by default in GPUs that support programmable clock control. Now we had this before, but previously that was only available once bit 3 was set in the Cool Bits X config option, so now it should just be standard and you don't have to go through that. They have enabled 32 bit compatibility support for the Nvidia GBM backend and if you have an HDMI monitor that would not work with some DVI outputs that's been fixed and the bug they found was actually introduced in the 555.58 driver. Take a look at the article in the Show Notes as it has all the information to the driver updates and a link to the actual Nvidia page where you can see all the additional changes they made in this beta driver. There's a lot more improvements and fixes and whatnot. I just kind of hit the high points because now let's talk about some hardware. The second article linked in the Show Notes is where Michael Larabel over at Pharonix reviewed the RTX 5080 and the RTX 5090. Michael received both the cards and he benchmarks them in gaming versus several 200030004000 series cards along with the AMD 7000 series cards. So a big pool of graphics cards that you can compare what you're running to what these new cards will do. Now Michael is using the 570driver that we just talked about and he does mention that it's working good and hasn't found any instability or performance issues. Since the cards have been out a little bit, people interested probably have already looked at a lot of the Windows benchmarking and the Linux benchmarking falls right into line where the cards are roughly 30% faster for the 5090 versus the 4090 and the 5080 is roughly 14% faster than the 4080 Super. It should be noted that the 4080 super, the 4080 and the AMD RX 7900 XTX, you know they're almost the same performance, so you're not getting a lot there. How did the 5000 series cards do with Heat Again, you probably already know, but pretty well they tend to shed heat quite efficiently, which they had to because when you look at the power numbers, they are power pigs. The 5000 series takes a lot of power and the 5090 for example pulled a peak of 578 watts in Michael Erbil's testing. Basically it has a 37% increase in power for the 30% increase in performance. The 5080 had a much smaller increase in power, but it also had a much smaller increase in performance. The real bottom line comes to should you purchase the cards? If you're on a 4000 series card, don't upgrade. It's not worth it. If you're on a much older generation, then possibly. But the problem right now is the 5090 and the 5080 have had such a small volume ship, it's almost a paper launch. And some people have said it basically is because so few numbers have gone out the door to retailers. If you want to get one, I would plan on playing the long game. Don't expect to get one for several months, but if you watch all the websites and check in every once in a while, maybe you'll get lucky and come across one that's actually priced reasonably. Almost all of them you'll find out there right now are either double the retail suggested price or more and it's all because scalpers have them. I would not expect any relief in price or supply until AMD releases their cards in March or April. Personally, I think it's because A or Nvidia was trying to get AMD to release hardware before they were ready and I don't think Nvidia was ready either but they had their drivers in a better place. So I think they were trying to make AMD look bad and when AMD then pushed out they said we're not ready, we're not going to play Nvidia's game. We're going to. We're going to take those few months, make our driver and polish everything up better. I think that took Nvidia off guard a little bit and they just didn't have any of the hardware. I don't think they were quite ready to truly release. But that's just my personal opinion. Take a look at the article linked in the show notes if you want a deeper dive into the individualized performance results. But until then, happy gaming.
- [42:34]
Rob
Yeah, it's interesting. I've been doing a little looking on what AMD is offering, rumored to offer and you know, they first came out and said oh yeah, we'll kind of release the 9070 in March. And during their earning call, Lisa Su said we're going to release it in early March and as of right now it looks like March 6th is their release date. So I think they have kind of pushed things forward a little bit in response to Nvidia, but to your question of should people go out and buy an Nvidia card, the new one. No, you should wait a month and you should buy an AMD card.
- [43:10]
E
I found one for about $3,000. Is that too much or.
- [43:14]
Jonathan
Well let's see. $3,000 for one Nvidia card or for PS5 and an Xbox.
- [43:23]
F
Yeah, it's, they're about way. Yeah, three grand is overpriced.
- [43:28]
Rob
They're, they're getting scalped is what's happening. People are, people are buying them and then selling them for ridiculously high amounts.
- [43:36]
F
And for here we have a big retailer called Micro center and there's a lot of them that are, I mean, monstrously big computer stores. And they had some that were getting, you know, some didn't get any and several got single digits, you know when they could sell hundreds of them.
- [43:55]
Rob
Yeah.
- [43:56]
F
So it, there's just, they just did not have supply.
- [44:03]
E
Yeah, Quippy's reminding us. That's a lot of coffee.
- [44:06]
Rob
So that is you guys.
- [44:08]
E
If anyone wants me to get a 4090, do the math. That's a lot of copies.
- [44:14]
F
You can't get, you can't get a 4090.
- [44:16]
E
Oh, that was a 4090 I looked up.
- [44:18]
Jonathan
Oh, how many bitcoin does that equate to?
- [44:21]
Rob
Less than 1 by far. Yeah, I'll accept bitcoin donations. Warn me so I can go make a new address that I actually have access to.
- [44:35]
E
Yeah, I, I can't find a 50 90. I could find a 40 90. No 50 90s.
- [44:39]
F
There you go. The 50s are all scalped and they're, they're running. There's some of them, almost $6,000. People are buying them. That's the sad part.
- [44:51]
Jonathan
And now they're just sitting there waiting for somebody in the AI community to buy it.
- [44:57]
F
Yeah, well now that you know that could be. There is a legitimate case for the 5090 because it's got 32 gigs of RAM in it. If you compare people say, wow, it's really expensive. Even at say $5,000. When you look at the higher end Nvidia professional level hardware, that's still pretty cheap.
- [45:24]
Rob
Yeah, yeah, that's always the interesting thing is that it's a lot More reasonably priced than the Pro, the workstation cards and the, the server cards for doing this stuff.
- [45:34]
F
Yeah, and when you look at the power, people go, oh my gosh, 600 watts. That's crazy. Not at the enterprise level. Yeah, I gotta save money.
- [45:44]
Jonathan
Is that why Microsoft bought a nuclear reactor?
- [45:50]
E
I gotta call this one out from Eric here. He said a big store called Micro Center.
- [45:58]
F
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:02]
Jeff
25 years ago, a small group of business and government leaders met in Washington D.C. they envisioned the creation of an independent nonprofit organization with a mission to help people, businesses and government mitigate the growing threat of cyber attacks. Today, the center for Internet Security embodies that vision. For 25 years, it's worked with with a global community of IT and cybersecurity experts to develop the CIS benchmarks and CIS critical security controls. These proven security best practices defend against common cyber threats and streamline compliance with industry frameworks, regulations and standards. Today, CIS provides cybersecurity services, threat intelligence and critical resources to help public and private sector organizations alike strengthen their Cyber defenses. Visit cisecurity.org today. That's the letters cisecurity.org to find out how CIS can help your organization as we create confidence in the connected world. Listeners, are you looking for a shortcut to better auto insurance for you? Something that takes all the research off your plate. Something that's easy. Something that matches you with lower rates. Something genius. That's where NerdWallet comes in. Their nerds already did the work for you. Just answer a few questions and ta da, you'll be matched with top insurance providers in your area. Find the right rate for you@nerdwallet.com after all, using NerdWallet is more than smart. It's genius. Not all applicants will qualify for the lowest monthly payments. NerdWallet Insurance Services Inc. California resident license number OK 92033 like your favorite startup's.
- [47:34]
Ken
Growth curve, T Mobile's coverage keeps scaling because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch. Up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Last 15 days qualified unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [48:03]
Rob
All right, let's move on. Let's talk about what's new with FWOPD again has the story.
- [48:12]
Jonathan
Yes I do. And according to Marius Nestor FWOPD2.0.5 introduces support for more Elan fingerprint readers as well as support for emulating devices reading EFI keys, support for skipping device test by CPU architecture, and support for the Starlight Magnetic keyboard from Star Labs. This release also fixes several bugs to clean up Dell Kestrel devices when disconnected, to ignore the boot X entries that do not exist when checking the dbx, as well as ignoring EFI binaries that are zero sized or not well formed. If you do want to find out if anything that you're operating hardware wise is being supported in this way, this one I do recommend checking Marius's article. I've got it linked in the show notes because there is quite a bit that was added there as well.
- [49:17]
Rob
Yeah, FUPD just sort of runs as part of your update process these days on a lot of distros, right? It's very possibly there on your Linux install and doing its thing and you're just not even aware of it, right?
- [49:30]
Jonathan
I know in KDE discover it's actually pulls it up sometimes, but I always run it under top grade because that top grade lets me hit the system updates, the flat pack updates, Snap updates, Homebrew as well as Flip D. Yeah.
- [49:56]
E
Yeah, it's not like the old days where where they'd say don't update your firmware unless it's broken because you might break it.
- [50:04]
Rob
I mean, let's be honest, that's still kind of true.
- [50:10]
F
But with everybody pushing everything out so fast now, it probably is broken half the time.
- [50:16]
Jonathan
Well, it's broken as soon as you install it until it gets that update.
- [50:22]
E
It's not quite like it used to be.
- [50:24]
Rob
It's not quite like it used to be. Leisure Title all right, speaking of things that are different, let's talk about the let's talk about the mess. Rob's going to tell the story this time instead of me. What's the new Linux soap opera drama thing that we get to talk about today?
- [50:45]
E
So people who listen like to know that I often like to share all the awesome things that Asahi Linux and Hector Martin are doing to get Linux running on the Apple Silicon computers. You know, the M1, M2 Macs. I don't know if they got M3 or M4s yet, but you know, and the amazing work that they have been doing has always been upstreamed to the mainline Linux kernel to where even Boyd Linux a week or two ago was recently able to provide their own Apple Silicon version of their distro. Well recently there has been some arguing in the kernel mailing list against having rust in the Linux kernel and apparently this was too much for the Asahi lead developer Hector Martin, as he has removed himself from being an upstream maintainer of the ARM Apple code. So the patch he put in just yesterday, if you're watching Live Friday, states and I quote, I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or community management approach. Apple slash ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree I may or may not, anyone who feels like fighting the upstream fight themselves is welcome to do so. So at this point Asahi, you know they're going to continue to move forward with their code, but they may no longer upstream it into the Linux kernel. So other people's like Void can use it. I mean I guess they can. It's just not going to be in the kernel right out of the, right out of the box. Others, you know, they're free to wrangle the patch and upstream them as they wish, but it won't be Hector and you know this for all the, all the good things have been going, it's kind of not really a good thing for Linux on Apple Silicon. Who knows what the future may bring but there is a small potential light in the dark sky that may keep things going upstream. As co maintainer Sven Peter commented just shortly after he says give me a few days to figure out what we'll do. I think we can keep tree going forward. So Hector isn't going to do it, but maybe the co maintainer will or maybe he's going to bring Hector back in. I don't know that that statement's open to interpretation how they're going to do that. And you know, I haven't given a chance to to dig into the actual argument and Asahi Linux itself isn't. It's not written in Rust, so I'm not quite sure how it directly affects them. I guess, you know, he kind of just lost faith in general in the maintaining process of the kernel. So you know, hopefully that's not a bad sign for the Linux kernel itself. But I guess maybe there's too many passionate views but Jeff has a scoop and more details on that argument and what was going on there.
- [54:14]
Rob
Yeah, we're going to move right through and let Jeff pick it up at this point because he's got the other half of the story.
- [54:19]
F
Yeah, we've got to say it was kind of a co story here. So as a longtime listener of the show, you've heard us talking about Rust becoming more and more common inside the kernel. And it could be said the friction really started to surface about Rust being in the kernel last September, when Microsoft engineer Wedson Amedia Filho stepped away from the Rust for Linux project because he was frustrated with the pushback he was receiving. Last month things boiled over again when a proposed abstraction to allow Rust written device drivers to call the primary C based kernel Core DMA API met with resistance from kernel maintainer Christoph Helwig. He's Helwig is quoted as saying no Rust in kernel/dma please. He further went on to say, keep the wrappers in your code instead of making life painful for others. Interfaces to the DMA API should stay in readable C code and not in weird bindings, so that stays grepable and maintainable. Hellwig was then challenged by Red Hat software engineer Denleo Krumich, and Hellwig was not happy about that and said don't force me to deal with your shiny language. Shiny is what he said of the day. Maintaining multi language projects is a pain and I have no interest in dealing with that. I have no interest in dealing with. If you want to use something that is not C, be that assembly or Rust, you write the interface and deal with the impedance mismatch yourself. As far as I'm concerned, Hellweg wants all the Rust abstraction maintained at the in the driver's code, and he doesn't even want it in a central section of Linux which would because which would then require another maintainer. So he went on to say if you want to make Linux impossible to maintain due to a cross language code base, do that in your driver. So you have to do it instead of spreading this cancer to core subsystems. Now the article in the show notes goes on to talk about how Rust is actually safer language because of how it handles memory, and the argument against it continues on about having multiple code bases complicate support. They do also mention there are initiatives and projects like Trapcast or Mini C and Safe C that actually tried to make the language the C language C language less vulnerable to memory bugs. Linus Torvalds and Greg Cohartman have not chimed in on this debate and the author actually tried to get a comment or but no, nothing was no no replies. So now reading the comments on this article it seems like things fall into one of three buckets. The we should use Rust to make things safer group. The C is perfectly safe as long as you know what you're doing. And having two different languages in the kernel will make things a nightmare group and a minority group saying everybody should use fill in the blank of some other language you probably haven't heard of because it's so much better. Now there is anecdotal talk from people who've had to maintain projects with two different languages and felt it was a nightmare. There's also people talking about how Rust cannot fully replace C. Now there is also a comment that while there is a comment that while compile time checking makes a lot of things safe, it's never truly safe. So take a look at the article in the Show Notes for more details. I'm sure by the time you hear this, there's many more comments that will have been made to that article. But you know, I'm honestly curious about what our panel here, you know, what, what they think, you know, they program more than I do. And what do you think about whether Rust and two languages in a project overall are safer or will it be too much of a nightmare to maintain? And you know, the safety of Rust that Rust brings is not worth it. So, thoughts?
- [58:35]
Rob
So there is another, and I've linked to it. It's a message on the kernel mailing list that is actually pretty. It's pretty important to realize that this is part of the context of what's going on here. And there's quite a tale on this. But Hector Martin made the statement, if shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas. And then Torvalds, and this is on February 6th. So right before Hector stepped down, Torvalds responded with how about you accept the fact that maybe the problem is you. You think you know better, but the current process works. It has problems, but problems are a fact of life. There is no perfect. However, I will say that the social media brigading just makes me not want to have anything at all to do with your approach. Because if we have issues in the kernel development model, then social media sure isn't the solution. Technical patches and discussions matter. Social media brigading? No, thank you. So there was pushback on more than just technical things. There were more than just technical problems. Hector Martin has also deleted his Mastodon account. So like there's just. It's a. It's a multi pronged story. There are multiple problems. It is unfortunate to see sort of the players not getting along and not being able to make the progress that they wanted to. But at the same time, sometimes you just don't come to conclusions and you have to go separate ways. So I don't know. Other than that I don't have real strong feelings. I understand why the maintainers are not interested in having Rust code in what they maintain. Right. Like that makes sense if I don't speak Rust at all. I really don't want Rust code in the section of code that I'm responsible for. That's a pretty, that's a pretty reasonable take. At the same time, if I'm a Rust developer, I don't want some old C developer to stop me from being able to get my code in the kernel. That's a pretty reasonable take too. And so we're just kind of caught between these two viewpoints. And every once in a while somebody like Hector, he's not the first one to do this, he's not the last one to do it, but every once in a while they get tired of the fight and they just decide to pack up their toys and go home. And that's sort of okay too. Yeah, Jeff and then Rob.
- [60:51]
F
Oh, okay. Well, the, one of the things I can see is, you know, it's one thing to say, okay, I can learn Rust, but as the languages evolve over the years, you know, you can have things change and then that interaction might not be as compatible. You know, it's going to require more heavy lifting because maybe C adds something or Rust adds something that used to work, but now it doesn't and it's, it's the long term support. I could see where it could be problematic, but I, I don't know.
- [61:23]
E
Yeah, I think they both, like, like Jonathan pretty much said, I think both sides there make good arguments and you know, I can understand both perspectives and really thinking about, you know, I've always thought, ah, cool, adding Rust, but really thinking about it, I'm probably more on the side of not having Rust in it just because, you know, it's a complicated project already and you know, this is a C project, maybe it's more maintainable to keep it as C. There is another project out there. I can't remember what it is right now, but where the kernel is Rust based, I think there is Redux.
- [62:10]
Rob
Redux os.
- [62:11]
E
That's right, Redux. And I don't know, maybe for people who want Rust to be the future, maybe going to that and making that a better kernel is a better path and maybe someday that could take over and replace Linux.
- [62:31]
F
They call out in the article. I think it's tra. I'm trying to look, it's like Tractor, I think is what they called it. Yeah. And it automatically converts C code to Rust. So that would help, you know, that kernel, you know, kernel and Rust project.
- [62:49]
E
Even though there is something that can convert C code to rust, I bet it's not going to convert the entire Linux kernel perfectly. And if, if you ran it, I bet there's a lot of tweaks and fixes that would have to be made.
- [63:04]
Rob
Yeah.
- [63:06]
F
Oh yeah, but it would say.
- [63:08]
Rob
But it would seem so.
- [63:09]
F
It would do a lot of the heavy lift sometimes.
- [63:11]
E
Yeah, I've used them to upgrade, I don't know, old versions of PHP to new ones. And it's, you know, that, that seems like a pretty simple upgrade and it's still. It. I still had to go through and fix a bunch of bugs afterwards.
- [63:28]
Rob
Yeah, the kernel is not exactly normal C code.
- [63:32]
Jonathan
Does anybody remember upgrading from Python 2 to Python 3?
- [63:37]
Rob
Yup, yup, yup. Have those scars?
- [63:40]
E
Well, migrated any code, but.
- [63:42]
F
Well, in defense of keeping the rust, the kernel C, you know, they've been working hard to get rid of the assembler in it too. Now there's, there's a few little bits they don't think they can probably replace, but they've been trying to get as much assembly code out of it as well, just so that it's all in.
- [63:59]
E
C. As awesome as I think Rust is, I'm gonna vote for leaving at C. Maybe that's an unpopular opinion and a vote.
- [64:10]
Jonathan
Anyway, I got a feeling what we'll see is, as time moves forward, a co project for translating all of the C code to Rust, maybe.
- [64:27]
Rob
I will tell you what I think we're going to see. We're going to see things continue as they are. So there are going to be some developers that are still wanting to do rust in the kernel. And so long as there are developers that are willing to work within the kernel process, more and more Rust code will land in, the kernel will start getting more and more rust drivers, and so long as there are rust developers that want to make that happen, that will continue forwards with some pushback from some maintainers, obviously, because that's what's already happened. What may happen is that enough of the rust developers get enough pushback that they get tired of it and stop wanting to work on it. At which point Torvalds will come along and say, ah, nobody's using this Rust stuff anymore. We're going to yank it out of the kernel and it's all going to go away. Those are pretty much the two different directions that this can go I don't know.
- [65:17]
F
I see a middle. Yeah, I see a middle ground in there. I bet you as time goes on, there's going to be more Rust code and we will have that central abstraction section of the code that they'll have a separate maintainer. It's going to be enough in there going, okay, let's make it more efficient. Let's just have one centralized translator between Rust and C, and the Rust people will have to take care of the translator. And the C people still have their C code.
- [65:49]
Rob
Yeah. There's challenges, though, because when you then go to change something on the C side, you've also got to make the updates to the Rust bindings to be able to make it continue to work. Part of the problem is the people working on the C code want to mess with those Rust bindings, and that's part of the central tension here. There's a video rather famous at this point, of one of the kernel maintainers going, you can't make me learn Rust. You're quite passionate about it. And I think that's sort of the central conflict here is that there's just developers that want to continue writing in C and don't want to mess with Rust. Well, yeah, it's just not clear exactly how that's going to get fixed.
- [66:36]
F
Yeah, when I was saying the central repository, I don't know what you call it, the branch or whatever that does a translation, that would be up to the Rust maintainers to maintain. The C people are not going to do that.
- [66:49]
Rob
Yeah, but so here's the problem. So say you change the way the internal. Because, okay, Torvalds makes the statement over and over again. We don't break user space. That does not extend to the kernel API. The internal kernel API, they change that every other Tuesday if they want to. They have no compulsion to keep that the same. In fact, sometimes I think they change things on purpose just to break out of tree code, but that's totally beside the point. Well, so you've got. In that case, your Rust code essentially becomes the same as that out of tree code. And so when you've got a maintainer that's going to redo something in the API that's going to break those Rust bindings. And then when they push their patches to redo something in the API and it breaks the Rust bindings, that's going to break kernel compilation for people. And so there's either. Right. So like, either you've got somebody writes C code and Rust code makes the changes and makes it in both sides or you work together, the C people and the Rust people work together to make the changes on both of them at the same time. Or they just mess each other's stuff up and it doesn't work. Right. Like, there's not a whole lot of room because it's in the kernel and everything is so tightly wound together. There's not a whole lot of room for just ignoring each other and going on. If you have both kinds of code in there.
- [68:15]
E
Yeah, you're selling me on it, keeping Rust out of there.
- [68:19]
Rob
Well, but I mean, there's a few places where it makes a whole lot of sense, right? Like you want to write a driver for some USB program or some USB device and you don't necessarily trust what's on the other side of the USB device and so on the other side of the USB cable. And so you want to make sure that you're going to handle all that incoming data in a memory safe way. Well then, hey, let's write that driver in Rust. And if you've got the bindings to be able to do that, then great. And so there's a few places like that where it makes a lot of sense and it's a really neat idea, but I just don't know if it's going to last. I don't know if they're going to be able to pull it out and fix all of the interpersonal things that go with it.
- [69:01]
E
Well, you know, I think you're basically.
- [69:04]
Jonathan
Saying that once you've got this driver for this set of devices written, no matter what language it is, you need to lock down the API in the kernel to never change. As far as working with those drivers.
- [69:24]
Rob
I can guarantee you that is entirely a non starter. That is one of those things that has been suggested in the past. In summary, you kicked out the door is no, we are not going to lock down our API.
- [69:37]
E
I think no matter whichever way this goes, one side or the other is going to be frustrated. Frustrated.
- [69:45]
Rob
They're going to be Rustrated.
- [69:47]
E
Frustrated. Rusted. F Rust stated frustrated.
- [69:56]
Jonathan
So we need to hire a counselor.
- [69:58]
Rob
Yeah, I guess I will say one thing, that the whole idea of going out to social media and complaining when people inside the mailing list don't agree with you is not. It's not great. Like, it's just kind of in bad taste. So don't, don't, don't do that. Don't make the problem. Don't, don't put the problem in a bigger space than it already was.
- [70:17]
E
Hey, I know whenever I get burned by a company and they, they won't like, give me a refund or something. You go to social media and they get it to you pretty fast. They listen much quicker that way.
- [70:29]
Rob
Yeah, but if you're an employee of the company and you try to do that, that's sort of a different ballgame.
- [70:34]
E
Yeah, that's, that's a good way to.
- [70:36]
Jonathan
Become a customer of the company.
- [70:40]
Rob
All right, let's move on. And Ken has one more update for us, and then I've got some news too. Ken, what is new in LibreOffice?
- [70:52]
Jonathan
Well, my third article is coming from Marius Nestor again, and he informs us about the Document Foundation's release of LibreOffice 25.2. Now this release introduces a new privacy feature that removes all personal information associated with any document, such as author names and timestamps, editing time, printer name and configuration, document template, author and date for comments, as well as track changes. Now LibreOffice 22.5 also brings support for for customizing the color of non printing characters and the background color of comments, and for customizing the theme independent of the system or desktop environment theme. Marius also writes about a couple of experimental features, such as provisional support for font relative first line before text and after text paragraph indentation in LibreOffice Writer, and a new MacRomanager dialog that combines the functions of five existing dialogs used for basic macro and scripting framework macro language management into one dialog. There are also some new accessibility features in LibreOffice 22.5, such as improving warning and error levels in the Accessibility sidebar, with an option to ignore warnings, support for user interface elements to report, an accessible identifier that can be used for assistive technologies. Are we talking about AI here? And the ability to correctly report positions of user interface elements in Linux systems, including on Wayland, on the accessibility level. Now I've just touched on some of the highlights. If you want all the gritty details, I do recommend reading Marius's article where he does have a link to the changelog as well.
- [73:03]
Rob
Yeah, so that's interesting. You mentioned AI, and in the context of LibreOffice, I had over on Floss weekly had an interview. I had the interview last week. It's going to go live this upcoming week with the the product manager from Thunderbird, and we talked about both their potential merger with Liver Office several years ago and them looking at what to do with AI inside of Thunderbird. And that was. That was a lot of fun. We sort of concluded that there are some very limited places where AI might make sense in Thunderbird in the same way that there are very limited places where it makes sense inside of something like LibreOffice.
- [73:40]
Jonathan
So you mean assistive technology.
- [73:44]
Rob
So assistive technology usually refers to things like a screen reader or, you know, even text to speech or speech to text or magnifying glass even. Those sorts of things are usually what you think of with assistive technologies, but sometimes they can be AI driven. You could probably make the argument that anytime you're doing text to speech, you're sort of doing AI. I don't know, maybe I'm not an AI expert. Don't me, bro.
- [74:14]
F
Anyway, well, I use it for work. I use AI in my office products. And yes, I use Microsoft because I have to at work, but it's pretty handy. I use it for a lot of. It's like grammar and spell check on steroids. So I was showing somebody I work with, I wrote just three sentences and they were very outlineish. You know, check with this person about this thing. And it was three sentences, kind of like that. I had it in Word. I said, make this a nice outline, format it, spit it out in a nice format, made it a little, you know, cleaned it up. Then I fed it into PowerPoint and said, Give me a presentation on this. And it generated slides with images based on what I'd said. Now there was stuff I would have to fill in, but it shaved off a lot of what I would have to do as far as, oh, let me go find a picture and let me put it here and make it look nice. And it just, just did it.
- [75:20]
E
Yeah. I haven't used any of that in Office, but I could see it being. I was going to disagree with Jonathan and say I could see it being useful in LibreOffice. I did not know that the Office suite was that far along with AI.
- [75:38]
Rob
Yeah. So I'm humored that the only way that Jeff can get the indenting and the bullet pointing right inside of Microsoft Word is to get AI to do it for him. Although that checks out. It is a pain.
- [75:55]
F
Yeah. But also it does good. I find for search for like it's kind of a fuzzy search and it picks up a lot of things. So I can see it being useful to like I said, spell check on steroids. Better search.
- [76:12]
Rob
Definitely.
- [76:14]
F
Yeah, yeah. It's not revolutionizing anything, but it's just making things a little faster.
- [76:20]
Rob
It's so. I mean, in Firefox, one of the things they're looking at doing or already doing, I don't remember which is when you come across an image and it does not have the alt text filled in. They have the ability now to ask an AI what is this image showing? And be able to generate alt text. Which you know, that's pretty interesting. And there's a few other places where it really makes sense. Translation from one language to another is another one where it really makes sense.
- [76:52]
F
And I will to reply to David Crosland commented. He said yay Clippy everywhere. But it's not there until you actually say help me now or it's it stays back and you don't have to use it at all. It's not dancing around the screen or anything goofy like that.
- [77:10]
Ken
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- [77:36]
Rob
Months.
- [77:41]
Jeff
All you homeowners have unique needs. Some feel the need to leave up holiday decorations year round. Others have the need to use their garage as practice space for their new metal band. And because each homeowner has unique needs, GEICO helps you get the right coverage for your home and what's in it. That way you get exactly what's right for you, even if your needs are unique. Get more with geico.
- [78:08]
Rob
Yep. All right guys, have we talked about the framework risk 5 main board? Have we talked about the fact that it's actually now available?
- [78:18]
E
We talked about it being announced. I don't think we mentioned it being available.
- [78:23]
Rob
Yeah, okay. It is now available. The Deep Computing RISC V mainboard for the framework laptop 13 is now available and you can get the main board for just $199, which is really interesting. They also have I don't have the link to it here, but with this they've also now started selling a kind of bare bones framework 13 that does not have a mainboard in it. That way you can get both of these things and put it together yourself. It ends up being, I'm trying to remember it was several hundred dollars, under $1,000. I don't remember exactly what it ended up being. It was enough that I was looking at it going man, should I buy this? And it was also enough that I decided, no, I can't spend that much money right now. So that is now available, which is really interesting. But I've got a second link here. Off to an X.com user, the social media network previously known as Twitter. Lori Wired security researcher and otherwise Linux geek, I believe, who says don't buy the Framework RISC V board. No, hate. But the U74 cores it's based off of are really old and don't support vector instructions. If you're looking for a RISC V dev board in 2025, you want something like the SpaceMit X60 or the Zonti C908 cores. And then she gives a couple of options here, like the Banana PI BPIF3 and the Canon VK230 are good boards to play with that actually have this newer spec. And so it's. This is kind of like the X86 64 levels that we've talked about in the past, where some of them have an extension and others don't. I'm trying to remember what's the name of the extension that the original Pentium and then the Pentium 2 had? MMC is what's coming to mind. And that's totally not right. I don't remember what it was actually called, you know, the fancier.
- [80:37]
F
I'm drawing a blank.
- [80:38]
Rob
The fancier math. Oh, well, I can't remember what it is.
- [80:41]
F
The math copressor.
- [80:43]
Rob
Not the math coprocessor. It's instructions built into it to be able to do more math.
- [80:49]
F
Mmx.
- [80:50]
Rob
Yeah, Keith says mmx. Thank you.
- [80:52]
F
Thank you, Keith.
- [80:53]
Rob
SSE is one of the other ones. Yeah, there's been a couple of these different extensions that get added. And so this is sort of the same thing in response five, where they have added one of these extensions, one of these sets of instructions to the processor, to these new designs. And so, you know, you can buy the old 386 equivalent, but they're making the Pentiums now. That was interesting to call out.
- [81:20]
F
If you use the Deep Computing RISC V mainboard and you run deep seek on it. Have you gone off the deep end?
- [81:30]
Rob
Swimming in the deep end of the pool at least. Wow. Oh, goodness.
- [81:35]
F
Anyway, I gotta have a dad joke in there.
- [81:37]
Rob
I know, I know. So I was very interested in this framework, but risk is moving a little bit faster than framework is at this point. And so maybe this is not the Risk board that you're looking for, but I guess at the same time, I hope it does do well. Because I would like to see more experimentation like this, particularly in the framework space.
- [82:03]
E
You're saying we shouldn't take a risk on this one?
- [82:06]
Rob
Yeah, skip this one. It's too risky. It's too risky by not being risky enough. It's just not enough risk.
- [82:13]
E
Risk isn't risky at all.
- [82:15]
Rob
Wow. All right, let's move to some command line tips. And Rob, every time, every time I go to write a Cron command, I have to Google the Cron format and you're about to tell me there's another way to go about this.
- [82:31]
E
Yes, there is another way. So a little bit of background for those who don't know what CRON is. Cron is just the Linux scheduler or not the Linux. It's a way to schedule jobs in Linux.
- [82:46]
Rob
It's the other Linux scheduler.
- [82:48]
E
Yeah. It's not the process scheduler. Sometimes we talk about it is the scheduler to scheduler. It's a task. Yeah, Task scheduler is not the right. Anyway, but you can schedule things like this command to run every night, every Monday, every day, every minute, if you want. And so, you know, a quick, quick little example here. And I'll just remind you that Jeff did talk about Cron and Cron tab in episode 37 way back then, if you want to go back and check that out. But if you look at this, this is the default Cron tab. I just uncommented what was there and you see like a05 *, *1 and then this is the, the command here is tar-zcf the two files. So it's, it's a tarring up the home directory. But you take a look at this and you're like, what's that? 05 star. If you want to build your own, it's like, how do you do it? And like Jonathan said, like I always do, I always Google it and, and find some formatter. But there is, there is a new tool on GitHub written and go that you can use to. You don't even have to leave the kernel. You can use a tool called EasyCron and it's still early. It's basic. It will give you the format and tell you a few things. I'm kind of hoping that Easy Cron will progress further and actually write it into the Cron tab for you. But right now, what you could do. So for those watching, I'm gonna run Easy Cron and it comes up. It has, has your five stars or asterisks there and it's pointing me on the first one that says minute. So you know, I want that to be every minute of the day. I, I space over to hour. I want to be at 3 and day of month. If I do star, that's going to be every day. If I do month, that's going to be every month. And if I do day a week, that's going to be every day. So once I have that filled out, it's going to say, it tells you at the bottom there that what I've written in there is going to run at 3am and then it tells you when your next ones are going on run. Now you know, if I back up and say one now it's going to do 3am only on Mondays. So 3am every Monday. And you know, you can, you can go through there and say let's say that also it's 3:30 day of the month. That's gonna be weird. So at 3:30am on day four of the month and Monday. So that's a weird one. I am assuming what that's. Well, it tells you 210, 217, 224. I don't know how that one actually works because to me, my logic tells me that they should only be when the fourth day of the month lands on a Monday. But maybe that's the fourth day of the month and Mondays, that's what it must be, I think. But anyway, this little tool here, that's all it's going to do. It's going to show you how to format it properly. You can kind of go through and see what it's. What it's going to do. So right there, like I didn't know what that did I. I guess that's the fourth day of the month and Monday and then you can take that and put that into your contract tab. And I'm hoping, like I said this, this first posted in January on GitHub, the first release. There's been 25 commits since then. And you know, I'm really hoping they add more features like the ability to input your commands and write it right to the Cron tab. I think that'd be really slick. But it's a good start.
- [86:57]
Rob
It's neat little neat little tip.
- [86:59]
F
Maybe it only go. It calculates that out only where your cursor is. So if you went over and filled out, maybe it would.
- [87:06]
E
It doesn't have anything to do with that. But let's see. What if I did the 9th? So see there it's going to do it on the 9th, which is tomorrow because it's that and then the 10th because it's a Monday. So it's, it's a and is how that works. So I've. I've learned something myself right here just by playing around with Easy Cron how that actually works. So it's a. It's a and not a or or.
- [87:34]
F
No, it isn't or.
- [87:36]
E
Sorry, it's an or or not an.
- [87:37]
Rob
And Logic is hard. Sorry to interrupt your tip, Rob, with my maniacal laughing that I quickly muted, But I read Keith's 512's comment that everyone playing the Risk drinking game is now under the desk drunk and that got to me. He broke me. All right, Jeff, what if we need to dig?
- [87:59]
F
You know, it's funny that Rob mentioned me and his command tip because Rob actually did this one in episode 48 long time ago, but it was part of kind of a toolbox. So dig, which stands for Domain Information Groper, it's a powerful network tool used for querying DNS servers and it's essential for diagnosing and resolving DNS related issues. So if you're a network maintainer, this is a must have in your toolbox. And like I said, we covered this in the past as part of a group of tools, but I thought it deserves some individual attention and for our newer listeners, since it was back in episode 48 so quite a while ago, you know, it's it's good to be aware of this tool. So you can you can find the article in the show Notes that explains how to install and set up Dig across several major distributions. They give you cut and paste if you're a little unsure of the command line. But given the depth of dig, I'm just going to touch on the high level workings and leave the detailed research to you. So for example, the basic syntax for the command is dig space server space name space type now server's optional. It can be the IP address or name of the DNS server you want to query, but if it's submitted it just defaults to the servers listed in the etc resolve.config file the name this is the domain name to query and then type. This is also optional. Some of the supported record types are A or mx and ns, but if you leave it blank it defaults to the A record. Now that's not all it supports, it's just giving examples of some that it does. There are several options available to customize the output, and the article lists several of the common ones. It's not exhaustive. Now, I'm not going to dive further into the details here, but the article continues with examples of, you know, tracing paths, querying specific servers, formatting output, performing reverse DNS lookups, and verifying your dnssec. It also discusses practical applications of the program. So there's a lot of good information in there, and it's a lot of here's what you're pasting in. Here's the expected output, and it talks about the output of what it is. So if you're a network administrator and have never heard of the dig command before, definitely check out the article in the show notes.
- [90:36]
Rob
Yep, very good. I dig it. All right, we've got Ken up next with another pipe wire command, I believe.
- [90:44]
Jonathan
Yes, this time we're going to be I'm going to be covering how you can dump that information into a JSON file JSON format anyways. In fact, let me go ahead and bring up my command line.
- [91:10]
Rob
And that doesn't look like a command line.
- [91:13]
Jonathan
No, it doesn't. Not the command line I'm trying to show. Anyways.
- [91:26]
Rob
We can just talk through it. You got to link up to the pictures.
- [91:30]
Jonathan
Yes, I do. In the show notes, you'll see I have a link to the screenshots I covered. It starts off by showing what you see when you type in PW dump space dash h which as with the other commands, it gives you the pw dump. Then the where you'd put the options and if you needed to, where you'd put an ID dash h or dash dash help will show you that help information. You can also do dash dash version to show what version you're using. In my case it was showing that it's compiled with Libpipewire 1.2.4. And as with the other commands, if you are wanting to do a remote pipewire daemon, you do a dash r or dash dash remote followed by the daemon name or the daemon id. It can also be used to monitor changes on the command line, though there's so much changing that it's kind of hard to keep track of it. I actually found that I prefer doing pw d PW dump, then using the greater than sign and then putting the name you want to put it on. In the show notes, the screenshot I took is showing me putting dumping it to 2025-02-0801 13 JSON. That way I've got a date timestamp for when I did that and then you can open it up as a in whatever text editor you Want and let it display that. And it's got quite a lot of information in the JSON format which can actually be useful when you're using some of the other commands where you may need to use the JSON formatted metadata as part of the command, one of which I'll be demonstrating next week.
- [93:57]
Rob
Very cool.
- [93:59]
Jonathan
But it's a great way to get a snapshot of how your pipe wire setups looking instead of trying to do a graphical one. But you can do that from the command line as well. And that's going to be one of the future commands.
- [94:15]
Rob
Yeah. So I am. I don't know if we've talked about it. I've got a command that I'm now inspired to talk about and remember to do this next week because I've got a different one for this week. Continuing on with my ROK M theme. Let's see here. That button. There we go. So I have here a command running and that is ROCKM smi. And that will give you this output. Output which is just. It's super useful for monitoring your ROCK M gpu. And you can see right now, mine is running along at 51 degrees and 33 watts. Oh, excuse me, I've got. Is that my. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 33 watts of power it's using right now, 50 degrees. It is capped at 211 watts. It's not what it's using now, but it can. The fan is only running at 14% and it is tooling around somewhere between 2 and 6, maybe up to 10% on the GPU usage. It's because I've got a video that is playing back behind me. You can't see it because of the TV does not show up on the camera, but that is what that is doing. And so this is super useful for keeping track of what your AMD card is doing and how hard you're pushing it. So if you think that someone is mining bitcoins on your rig rock MSMI might be one of the ways to check it out and find out. But I'm going to have to talk about jq. I don't know that we've talked about JQ on the show. And it would be super useful for dealing with the output from the pipewire command that we just talked about. So maybe next week I can get to that. All right, well, that is our command line tips and I think we're going to dive into our closing and we're going to let Rob go first. He's itching, ready to go. I saw he Jumped to it. Rob, what you got to plug?
- [96:20]
E
So first I want to follow up with about my command line tip. It is not the EasyCron.com or.net that somebody pointed out. You will have to go to GitHub and it's. It's by Elliot 40404 and look there for easy crime. Or the easiest way is to find our show notes and there's a link to that. Now on to my closing onto your.
- [96:48]
Rob
Regularly scheduled and closing notes Onto the.
- [96:51]
E
Regularly scheduled closing notes. My name is Rob Campbell and my website is Robert P. Campbell. If you go there, you can find some great links such as the one to my LinkedIn, the one to my Twitter, the one to my blue sky, the one in my Mastodon. And you can come here and you can connect with me and be my friend because I need friends. And I left the best one for last. I always do right here. If you love what I do and you think it's just amazingly awesome and you want me to keep doing it or you just want to show me some love for, you know, whatever reason, you could donate a coffee right here on this little coffee cup icon and I'd much appreciate it.
- [97:44]
Rob
Yeah, very cool. And on to Jeff.
- [97:49]
F
You can find me at my GoFundMe page for the society to help Rob over his coffee addiction. Taking pledges there? No, but actually this week it's Poetry Corner and I have a haiku. It's not DNS. There is no way it's DNS. It was DNS. Have a great week, everybody.
- [98:15]
Rob
Yeah, I think they make that one in T shirt form. All right, Ken, anything you want to plug?
- [98:21]
Jonathan
Yes. Want to let everybody know that issue 217 of PC Linux OS Magazine is out and it's got some good articles and two recipes you may find helpful.
- [98:36]
Rob
All right, very cool. I do want to mention first off that you should know about Club Twit. And of course that is the way that you can support the show and you can support Twit. It's Club Twit. There is a QR code right there. You can scan that to join the club. It's about the cost of a cup of coffee per month. Definitely worth looking into if you want to find my work. Otherware, I am on Hackaday and we've got Floss Weekly there. A really cool episode coming up this week and a really cool one coming up the week after that and every week after that. Of course. I've also got my security column goes live there every. Every Friday morning. That's a lot of fun to keep track of the the newest happenings in the security world, at least the things that I find interesting. Other than that, we just, we appreciate everybody being here watching the show, coming along with us and those that get us live and on the download. Folks, we will see you next week on the Untitled Linux show.
- [99:44]
Jeff
Geico makes it easy to get affordable renters insurance in as little as 90 seconds. That way you have more energy for harder things like the laundry. Why is it so difficult to fold clothes? They just end up wrinkly anyway, or on the floor in a pile that just sits there taunting you. But with renters insurance through Geico, at least you know that those clothes and the other things you love are covered. Get More with geico, Beautiful Anonymous changes each week.
- [100:13]
F
It defies genres and expectations.
- [100:16]
Rob
For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a.
- [100:20]
F
Murder attempt by her own son.
- [100:21]
E
But just the week before that, we.
- [100:23]
F
Just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting.
- [100:28]
E
In languages that are not your first language, or what it's like to get weight loss surgery.
- [100:33]
F
It's unpredictable, it's real, it's honest, it's raw. Get Beautiful Anonymous Wherever you listen to podcasts.