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Untitled Linux Show 245: Not a Supernova
01:32:21
Firefox Nova, Gnome 40, & Age Verification Fallout
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, this week we continue to cover the age verification apocalypse that may or may not be coming. EA is talking about anti cheat for Linux. There's a reason everybody hates Ubuntu, but maybe not a good one. Firefox is previewing unintentionally. Nova Wine 11.4 is out and Linux from scratch number 13 has made some changes. And not everybody is in love with you. Don't want to miss it, so stay tuned.
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B
Podcasts you love from people you trust.
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C
This is Twit.
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A
This is the Untitled Linux Show, Episode 245, recorded Saturday, March 7. Not a supernova. Hey folks, it is Saturday and you know as always, what that means. It is time for the Untitled Linux Show. We're going to talk about Linux hardware. We're going to geek out over it all. It's going to be a lot of fun. Glad you're here with us. It is not just me. We've got the whole crew, our normal guys, we got Rob, Ken and Jeff. And we're going to have some fun today. I'm going to start by saying that right after the show I am going to shut everything down and pack everything up because first thing tomorrow morning I am heading out and getting on a plane and I'm going to Embedded World in Germany and that's where I will be this next week. So when you guys, if you watch on the download, when you see this, I will be. So if any of our listeners are Embedded World, come and check out the meshtastic booth and say hello, would love to chat with you. Other than that, we've got a full week's worth of news. We were talking to the Discord beforehand and one of our loyal listeners said, man, it's been kind of a boring news week in Linux news. I was like, no, there's some stuff going on. At the very least, I know there's fallout from the age verification stuff and Rob has been all over that. And we're going to let Rob take it away and go through some of some of the various responses that we've seen to this new California law. Rob, what, what's, what's, what's the scoop?
- [02:05]
B
All right, well, to start off, I will not be an Embedded World this week. I will just be in bed in this world this week. So anyway, last week we talked about many of the new age verification laws popping up in places like California and potentially coming to other areas like Colorado. And I don't, I think New York happened after last week, but that's another one that's potentially coming our way this week. Let's talk about what some of the distros are saying. The theme across the board is that this is vague, it's messy. Nobody in the Linux world is excited about turning the operating system into an age checking gatekeeper. I'll start off with system 76. You know they probably Ben maybe the most direct about this CEO Carl Reichel.
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A
Rachel, it's Richel.
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B
Richel argues these laws are easy to work around and miss the real problem entirely. In his words, effectiveness is lost. With the California and Colorado style approach and with New York broader proposal, liberty is lost. His point is simple. If a kid wants around an OS level age setting he probably can, you know, they can use a virtual machine, reinstall the OS or find another workaround. System76's broader argument is that this becomes more about control and data sharing than actual protection. And a quote from a blog post of his, he says if there is any solace in in these two laws, it's that they don't have any real restrictions. There is no actual age verification. Kind of somewhat what Jonathan I think was saying last week and he says to go on whoever installs the operating system or created the account simply says what age they are or what age they want to be. You know, they can lie, they will lie. They're being encouraged to lie for fear of being restricted to a nerfed Internet. You know, I myself I've told my kids when he's like couldn't get on something, he was like in my opinion what it was, he's old enough. I'm like just change, just change your age. Just put your age as this. Anyway, Carl, sentiment really kind of mirrors what I said last week, that these laws don't work, not the way they're designed. UBA2's response has been much more cautious. Canonical says it is aware of the California law and is reviewing it with legal counsel. But right now there are no concrete plans for how or even whether Ubuntu will change. This is a pretty important signal. You know, one of the biggest, biggest Linux vendors in the world is not rushing to announce compliance. It is basically saying we hear this, we're, we're studying it, but you know, we don't have an answer yet. Fedora also cautious, but in a slightly different way. Fedora project leader Jeff Spoleta said he wanted to avoid speculation until he had a chance to sync with legal help and later added this has ecosystem wide impact. You know, the big guys want legal help. Makes sense, goes on. You know, that really gets to the heart of it. You know, this is not just a fedora problem or an uber juice problem. If the law sticks, they could ripple across distros, app stores, desktop environments and software repositories. And, you know, there's always a slippery slope argument. And then there is Midnight bsd. I've never heard of this one. But they have a nice, nice a, A blunt. They have the bluntest reaction of all. Instead of building a compliance system or finding ways to, you know, get around it or make it work or whatever, you know, it just says, california residents are not authorized to use Midnight BSD for desktop use starting January 1, 2027, because the project does not have the development time or a plan to deal with the law. So you guys just can't use it. So right now, the distro world is landing in kind of three camps. The Legal Review, the Uncertainty, or the Complete Open Resistance. And there's probably some out there that aren't responding because it's like, yeah, whatever, it's a bunch of big nothingness. But, you know, obviously those people aren't saying anything because it's a bunch of big nothingness to them. And, well, I guess that's where some of them stand. I don't know who it is, but, you know, many, many are also just hoping the dumb law gets overturned at some point in appeals or somewhere else. And that's been a sentiment from some of them too. So, you know, they're all looking at it all thinking about where they're going to go and we'll see what happens.
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A
Yeah, I think it's useful to keep in mind that like, even, even worst case, these laws, I've not looked at the New York law, but the California law, it's not doing anything. Like, you must take a picture before you can create an account, hold your ID up and take a picture. And like, there's some online services where that's what you get to do. That's not, that's not the way this would work. I don't know the thought and it's gone.
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B
An interesting thing about, an interesting thing about system 76 also is, you know, this. The law potentially coming to Colorado. System 76 is based in Colorado, so it will. It may be harder for them to avoid as they could with other states. Potentially.
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A
It might be.
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D
Yeah, I watched Lunduke, he said that Omarchi, basically, I won't repeat it, but that distribution basically told them to go
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C
pound sand and I'd love to see how they're going to track everybody that's actually working from a Linux from scratch distribution.
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A
Yeah, I guess that's the really interesting thing. Would this apply to the kernel itself? They have a California Nexus.
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B
The Linux kernel is not an operating system.
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C
Anybody can add the kernel to their own.
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A
I know that and you know that. But there's no guarantee that a judge or a DA would understand that we'll
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B
all be going to herd.
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A
I guess I will just say real quick, this is the thought I had that it flew away and then it flew back. Um, the, the response of we don't have any statement on this. We are currently working on it internally with legal counsel. That is absolutely the sort of thing that you get from a corporation who knows that, you know, the moment you open your mouth and you say something before your lawyers have responded, you're going to get yourself in trouble because you, you know, the, the corporation will be held accountable for that potentially. And so that, that's just, that's a very common thing. I have no comment until we hear back from legal.
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B
That's what I would say, no comment.
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C
And as a end user, all I can say is I'm not going to give you my eye age. I don't want you to know how old I am.
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B
They don't have enough numbers in there.
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It's going to say we already know. Ken, you're old, it's fine.
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D
You're going to miss out on a lot of things I just put O
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A
L D O L D.
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B
I'm looking forward to that senior discount on Linux though.
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A
Yeah, there you go. Senior discount Linux. All right, Jeff, why do we all hate Ubuntu so much?
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D
What's the secret? Well, most of the time on the show we talk about factual articles, what's happening in the kernel, what new revision of software is out, or other factual things. This time my first story, it's simply an opinion piece and the opinion pieces on why so many Linux users love to hate on Ubuntu. Now the author does begin with the history where the beginning it was, you know, for a long time considered the easiest Linux to set up. And it was the first Linux that pretty much worked without too much fiddling around in the command line. You know, it, it lived up to its old slogan, Linux for human beings and being simple and polished and easy to install and drivers worked and the interface felt friendly and you know, you could just get on with your life, you know. And side note, by yours truly, you know, I still have it as one of the best distributions for a brand new user and I remember the first time I used it, I was sitting down, I had my drink and my snacks because I was used to other versions of Linux that, okay, I'm going to spend an afternoon configuring files. And I installed it and it just worked, you know, this was 6.04, I think, or maybe it was 7.04. It was, it was bad, it was back a ways now, you know. So the article then goes in. Where did things start to fall apart?
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Now?
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D
The author doesn't point to a single thing, but kind of a few different choices. So it's kind of a conglomeration of things. Now, Canonical is the parent company of Ubuntu, and so Ubuntu is both a community project and a Canonical product. And ultimately Canonical makes the big calls. So over the years, some of those calls rub people the wrong way, such as the Amazon affiliate search results during the Unity era, the closed source back end of the Snap store, which, you know, they have been opening some of that stuff up, some of the Snap stuff up, choosing Snaps over FlatPaks, AppArmor over SELinux and other decisions that they kind of felt like the not invented here syndrome. It's like Canonical just couldn't handle anything that they didn't invent, you know. Now even though Canonical's reverse course and some of the controversial choices, you know, the distrust has been hard to shake, you know, but you know, there's still people that say Ubuntu has settled into what some, what some people are calling boringly stable. For, you know, many people, that's exactly what they want. You know, some people just don't care about the latest thing, they just want the thing to always work. The author does go on to say one of the biggest reasons also they got mocked today is Snaps. And you know, he does point to some faults in Snaps, but he also points out that Snaps have improved dramatically, startup times are better, integration is smoother, and for many apps, Snaps offer easy installation, automatic updates and simple rollbacks. So it's not as bad as it, it used to be. And most importantly, the author calls out, ubuntu doesn't force you to use Snaps. You know, Flatpaks, native packages, other formats do what I said, it kind of
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B
does, but I'll comment on that later.
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D
Okay, but you're not forced. You can, you can still get around it. The author does admit that Ubuntu isn't the perfect distribution, but which one is? You can always find something to nitpick about, use case dictates, code need for the final thoughts, they wrap up by saying Ubuntu gets a lot of backlash because it's a visible, familiar and a lot of people started their Linux journey there and it's an easy target. But despite the means and criticisms, Ubuntu continues to do the quiet and glamorous work and keep the Linux ecosystem moving forward. Now that's the author saying that. Not my personal opinion, but I would vacillate a little bit on that one. It may not be perfect, may never reclaim its early days of glory, but it has. It's earned its place among the giants and still proving its value every day. And you know, he says maybe, maybe it doesn't deserve all the hate. But take a look at the article linked in the show notes as I summarized a ton of the article and left out a lot of details. So to look for all the full points of the author and see if you agree. Have a look and happy reading.
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A
You know, there's one thing that you didn't mention. I'm not sure I saw it in the article either. And I think it's worth pointing out is that is, we, we Linux folks, we tend to be a hit back at the man kind of mentality. And once, once Ubuntu became like the, the man. The man, yeah, he became the man. Then, you know, some, some percentage of us just couldn't put up with that anymore and we had to, to go be more on the edge somehow. And so I think, like legitimately, I think that's part of it.
- [15:30]
B
So also, let, let me, let me touch on that. Forcing. Okay, so maybe forcing kind of isn't the right word. They definitely are tricking. When somebody does an apt install, you're expecting the native Debian style package. And when Ubuntu redirected certain packages, I think it was Firefox or was it Chrome? It's probably both now, I don't even know.
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D
And there's a few others. But yeah, Firefox.
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B
Yeah, so I think Firefox was the first one. And you know, when you go an app install, you know what, if you don't want me to get it native, supply it natively, just tell me. This is not available. Would you like to install as a snap? Don't all sudden install it as a snap and then boom, I have Firefox installed as a snap and I did app install. And you know, as far as forcing, there was even, I think it was Popey who had a open source project called Unsnap, I think it was. And I I, I was following that. I wanted to have that as a show tip at some point but it kind of didn't really go very far. It maybe kind of worked at the beginning but I, and I tried it later on. It had problems anyway. I think with that kind of almost tells you is somebody who, who worked at Ubuntu in the past for Canonical had a hard time setting up a project to rip snaps out of it. That's pretty, I mean okay, it's not forceless, there's always a wear on everything but it's pretty heavy handed,
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D
I would give you that. They're heavily suggesting you use snaps and it's a lot of the defaults like
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B
the Mafia heavily suggests you pay your share.
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That's a nice computer you got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to you.
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C
Exactly.
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Those are some pretty nice knees you got.
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B
Yeah, it's pretty close. There's always a way around everything. Like if and when they get the age verification nobody will be forcing that because you can always get around it. It's Linux, nothing's forced anywhere. But yeah, well.
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D
And, and I'll be honest, one of the reasons I did leave Kubuntu on my gaming machine was because Firefox it with the snap and stuff. It started, I was running into the firewall or the internal security sandboxing. Yeah. And it was like I had problems getting the hardware acceleration working and rather than go oh let's. I thought, you know, Rob was egging me on to try something else. So. So I jumped and I'm still here. So I've got, I've got my main server still on Kubuntu LTS and then I've got my main system. You know, I'm doing cutting edge.
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B
That all said, I still use Ubuntu on my servers and I still recommend it to new users all the time. Doesn't mean I don't like things about it.
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C
Which version are you recommending to them?
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D
The latest stable.
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B
Oh, you mean like Kubuntu? Ubuntu.
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C
I say it as well as the. Do you recommend that you go with an LTS or the latest Bleeding Edge?
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B
Oh, I always recommend an lts. I say Ubuntu if you really like the Windows interface, do Kubuntu as it's more Windows E by default but they're all configurable.
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D
I recommend the latest stable just so that they get the more up to date hardware drivers because I'd hate for them to load LTS and then find out the current, you know. Oh, that kernel version didn't have the latest hardware.
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True. All right, well, speaking of Windows, Ken, there's a sort of a bone thrown to Linux users that want some Windows compatibility. What's new in Wine?
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C
Well, we can thank Bobby Borisov for writing about the Wine project releasing version 11.14. Excuse me, 11.4. Now, according to Bobby, a key update is the reimplementation of the SAX reader in the Ms. Xml. Now this modernizes XML parsing using Microsoft's XML technologies. WINE developers also improved audio performance by optimizing resampling in direct sound, increasing efficiency and reducing overhead when processing audio streams. Now, Wine 11.4 also lays the groundwork for implementing CFGM GR32, what's also known as the Window Configurations Manager API, which enables applications to interact with hardware and Systems system settings. Wine 11.4 improves Unix time zone matching, which is going to really be handy for us that actually depend on that clock that appears in our panel on the screen. Wine 11.4 release notes also list various changes since 11.3, including updates to Lithuanian and Polish translations and resolve issues and Bluetooth testing protocols for Windows 1064 bit excuse me, 64 bit versions of 1507 and 1809. I'll let y' all look up to see how old those are, by the way. Now you can always read Bobby's article for more details to include the links to the change notes so you can see the date of those versions I mentioned.
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A
Been around for quite a few years, eh?
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C
Yes, well, considering Windows 10 has finally reached end of life, I would say so.
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A
Yep. I'm looking through the actual change log here, trying to see if there's anything that really sticks out. Looks like just a lot of. A lot of little things. Not to so far at least. No, no huge changes have popped out at me.
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C
No, that'll happen when they start trying to incorporate Windows 11.
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A
Yeah,
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I just hope they don't incorporate the requirement to set up a Microsoft account.
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I saw somebody post that Windows 12 is going to be based on Linux but locked down so you won't get the benefits of Linux.
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Yeah, I'm sure.
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C
So does that mean you can build do a Windows from scratch? Eventually.
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I mean, if you're willing to run an old version of it, you can build Windows from scratch. Now they released the. What was it, Windows 98 source code 95, 95 or 98. Yeah, you can build the old stuff. All right, well enough about Windows. Let's get back to Linux. Rob, you've got a piece here on the next version of gnome, and we're going to jump to that right after this.
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B
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
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D
Switch upfront payment of $45 for three
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month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee full terms@mintmobile.com Gnome50 is almost here and the release candidate has now landed ahead of the full release that is planned for March 18th. That's not too far away. That means one of Linux's flagship desktops is just about ready for primetime. And this update looks focused on the kind of improvements that make the whole desktop feel more modern. And I always love a modern desktop. Some of the biggest changes are under the hood, but they are the kind that kind of matter. Mutter is bringing better Nvidia performance, so Jeff, you'd be happy with that one. Better HDR support, Who wouldn't be happy with that? And a new SDR native color mode. GNOME remote desktop now supports explicit DMA buffer synchronization and enable, zero copy, Balkan and VA API rendering by default. There is also HDR screen sharing support, WP color management, V2 support and other core improvements that continue pushing GNOME toward a more polished and capable desktop experience. And it is worth pointing out that if you want the full benefits of Gnome 50 and where Gnome 50 is heading, Wayland is a necessity. All these features like performance, hdr, you know it's just a requirement for a modern desktop. And a lot of the most important work around display technology, graphics and desktop responsiveness is happening there. And GNOME continues to build with that feature in mind. They know where the future is and they're building to it. Beyond the deeper platform changes, there are also some nice user facing improvements. GNOME Calendar now supports arrow key navigation in month view, GNOME software remembers its window size between restarts, GNOME Maps improves transit transitions, and Orca gets updates that should make reading long pages and following chats smoother for screen readers. There is one notable delay session save and restore has been pushed back to a future release, so that long awaited feature will have to wait a little longer for another day. Even so, Gnome 50 is shaping up to be A strong release, a beautiful milestone in their progression towards the future. And the focus here is clear clearly on performance, accessibility, graphics and modern desktop capabilities. And with the final release just around the corner, Gnome 50 looks like another solid step forward for the Linux desktop. And our Wayline feature.
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A
Does the session, save and restore work on x11? I think it might.
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B
Let's cut that out.
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A
This is, this is one of the, this is one of the irritations that a lot of us have with Wayland is that there are some things that are needed to make features like session, save and restore. And the gatekeepers of the Wayland protocol have consistently gone no, either, no, you're not allowed to have that, or sure, we could do that. Let's spend three years fiddling through all of the minutiae about how to make it work. And you know, there are pull requests over on the Wayland protocol that have been open for years.
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B
I mean, who, who shuts down their desktop session anyway?
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A
Well, the reality is that it crashes and it'd be nice if the very things open back up after a reboot. After a crash.
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B
Okay, that's pretty rare in my experience, but
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C
usually that's what caused the crash is what was open.
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A
Well, yes, because we're doing something though.
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C
Well, just curious, this is gnome 50 we're talking about. That's going to be coming out soon. How old is gnome actually?
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A
When was the first GNOME release?
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C
Oh, the first official initial release was March 3, 1999 for Gnome 1.0.
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B
I told you, late 90s. And Ken, why did you ask the question if you already knew to lead into it?
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A
He's like a lawyer. Never ask a question if you don't know the answer. The first thing they teach at lawyer school.
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C
Now, the development of GNOME started back in August of 1997, so that, that's a long gestation period. Is that the term to use?
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A
That'll work. Yeah.
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D
Well, I'm just thinking gnome 50.
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B
Wow.
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D
They're. They're about due to totally redo the interface and torque everybody off again.
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B
I thought they did that every, you know, 10, every five years.
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A
So. Yeah, yeah, Yup, yup. Now, at some point are they going to give up on this numbering scheme and go back to, you know, the next one's going to be like 6.0 and then after they'll be number 6.1 or are we stuck with the 50s, you know, KDE.
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B
KDE was released before Gnome was even started development 1996, about a year before GNOME even started.
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D
Yep.
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A
Been around for a long time.
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D
Yep.
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A
All right, let's see now. Debian, Debian and AI. Ooh, Jeff, I saw this story. Interesting stuff going on here. Take it away, tell us about it and then I have thoughts.
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D
Well, this is not just AI, so this is a whole set of notes from. Basically it was an update on 5 March from Andreas Teitel, who's the Debian project leader. And there's several topics which he posted about. It's one gigantic email. The first point, you know, was, was talking about Debian needing to become more diverse. And to quote Andreas, when we speak about diversity in Debian, we often focus on gender and geographic distribution. Both remain important. A project that aims to serve users worldwide should reflect different backgrounds, perspectives and lived experiences. But diversity also includes generational diversity. We need contributors at different stages in life, people bringing decades of experience and people just starting their technical journeys. A healthy mix ensures continuity, fresh ideas, mentorship, and long term sustainability. Now, I did say diversity does not happen automatically. It requires awareness, openness and active effort. It requires us to make space for newcomers, to value different communication styles and to assure that contributing feels possible for people in different circumstances. Now, Andrea Andreas then tied this into retaining contributors and the need to thank them better. So he said in Debian, a changelog entry might feel like sufficient acknowledgment for someone contributing for their first time. However, an explicit thank you can make a real difference. Debian runs on volunteer energy and a few words of encouragement cost a little, but they have a lasting impact. And he also then went in and gave an example where someone made some very good contributions, code and other, other cleanups for the very first time. And that's. That made him think of better ways to try to keep those high quality contributors because they're having problems with getting enough people to contribute. That's why they want younger people. They want, they're, they're reaching out and trying to get people to stay, to stay longer, keep contributing. The he then took the discussion and moved it to AI. And should those submissions be allowed? Now he did go into a lot of details about saying AI is a rather broad term for many different tools and some that the kernel has used for some time that people think, I don't know if that's AI, but other people say yeah, they kind of fall under AI, so where that line is gets to be a bit fuzzy. And you know, he talked about several people who were having the discussion on the topic and summarized how some various points they'd each brought up and you know, and even talked about how the tools and how co development changes over time and you know, not using modern tools doesn't make them go away, but instead limits the benefits of which Debian could get from those tools. And you know there was a lot of subtleties in, when he was discussing too of well, what, which tools, you know, how, how, how much can you use them, how, you know, he, he mentioned, you know, sometimes he uses them for translation. Does that make it bad? Does you know, it's a hard line to draw. And he said his personal thoughts were that were based on a certain principle. AI based contributions are acceptable only if humans remain fully responsible for quality, legality and review which I, I, that's kind of where I fall as well. Next, thanks were given to the DFSG team, which is a team which vets new submissions and determines if a package can make it into the Debian archives. You know, basically does it meet all of Debian standards and license legality? And they, they've been doing a really good job. So he, he called them out a little bit that they've been chewing through a lot of backlogs that they'd had. Then they had a summary of the Debian Med sprint which he acknowledged that the sprint was a success for the work done. But he did say that they didn't achieve the goal of engaging upstream developers and potential new contributors. He said acknowledging that certain things weren't really a success will also help with making corrections to change that in the future. And you know, he had a few, few suggestions on how to do that. Basically we can't correct a mistake until we admit we have a mistake or we have a gap. Finally, Andreas said he's not going to run for the Debian project leader spot again and he was encouraging people to step up and take the helm. He mentioned that it's hard work but rewarding and that, you know, the turnover in the position is needed to keep the project fresh and healthy. You know, he's very much of a we need some new blood and it's time for somebody else to take the helm. Take a look at the article linked in the show notes and in that article you will find a link to the original mailing list email. And like I said, the actual email is probably seven times longer than the story I did here. So you know, as you can guess, I left out a lot of details and points. So I encourage everyone to read, read the article linked in the show notes and then follow it and read the original to get the full understanding of what Andreas was saying.
- [35:05]
A
Yeah, I Saw a, I saw a comment on this that actually quite agreed with and that is, I am annoyed that this call for age diversity is sort of couched in this and forgive me but this woke up language because you know, it gets old. But there is actually a need for a project to have both old and young people as a part of it. And so like the, the, the central point there is absolutely true and it's something that people are thinking about in the kernel, people are thinking about in, in various open source projects because you do need young people to take over the project for when you're old. People get too old and die. It's just one of the facts of life. So that I'm glad that they are thinking about that. And that's a very real thing that every project that's been around. We were just talking about how long Katie and Nova been around. Every project that's been around for that sort of, you know, you just beginning to measure it in decades. You got to start thinking about that.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And you got to think, you know, the younger generations, the ones coming up with a lot of times usage of new tools, new programming methodologies, new, you know.
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A
Yeah.
- [36:18]
D
New dynamics that maybe the old timers don't have and there is a better
- [36:22]
A
way now stay off my lawn with your fancy AI junk.
- [36:29]
D
Yell at the clouds.
- [36:30]
A
Yell at the clouds, indeed. I know that there's a lot that can be done with it when someone is skilled at using these tools. But man, I'm also, I am face to face on a daily basis with the mess that it makes.
- [36:46]
C
Don't get give an AI to a kid.
- [36:49]
D
I deal with it all the time at work. And yeah, I mean to me it's just a double edged sword. And I think he really hit it when he said basically someone has to be responsible for the output because I've made it do wondrous things and speed up my workflow tremendously. But I've also had it just do really boneheaded things as well. And you just have to kind of, you know, trust but verify kind of thing. You know, double buddy, check it to make sure that it. The output is real.
- [37:19]
C
Get a second pair of eyes.
- [37:21]
A
I think, I think Jeff, where you and your company uses it, you've got the advantage that there's some somebody writes the checks for these people. And so it may not be you directly but you can essentially go to somebody's manager and say look, this kid is sitting me junk reports for three weeks in a row. Go tell him to knock it off with the AI. Whereas we have, you know, 500 pull requests come in that are, you know, basically anonymous because we've never heard of any of these people. And they're all AI. And it's like you can go out and say stop it with the AI and you're basically yelling at Clouds. You've got some, you've got some accountability and some retribution, some repercussions at a business like what you, where you guys are at that the rest of the open source community doesn't necessarily please.
- [38:14]
B
You know, it's, it's funny how I'm always the person on here saying yay AI. You know, and all that and, and arguing for it. Yet just today or yesterday I, I'm on a post somewhere where somebody's like, is it even worth learning to program with AI with AI being a thing?
- [38:35]
C
Oh, especially with AI.
- [38:37]
B
Well, I, basically my response was like, yes, somebody still has to be there to review and check and correct and adjust it. And then I can't believe how many people I had arguing with me that it can correct itself. I'm like, yeah, doesn't mean it's always going to.
- [38:56]
C
I mean, yeah, it's like asking a five year old to babysit a four year old.
- [39:01]
A
Yeah, you know, the, that what, that's what it is when you let Rob use AI. Even, even the most bullish people that I know about AI still make the point that we're not sure because AI works right now. It works really well as like an intern to junior programmer. But to really get good results out of it, you still have to have a senior programmer running it. And so guys like, like, like Randall make this point and then we'll ask or make the statement. I don't know how future generations will then get from everybody being beginners to like, how do you get new senior programmers if you don't have to go through that junior phase if AI is doing all of that work for you. And like those are the people that are bullish on this, that think that it is great, are still wondering how do we make this work? So I, I have, I have, I'm, I'm worried about things even someday, you
- [39:57]
B
know, I don't know, 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, whatever it is in the future when AI can do all this all by itself, it's, it's gonna break and somebody's going to need to be around and know how to.
- [40:12]
C
And nobody will know how to fix it.
- [40:14]
A
I've read that novel. That's, that's how the human Race ends up knocking stones together to make fire again.
- [40:20]
B
Yeah, exactly, mate. And that really implies that, I mean, so many.
- [40:23]
C
So it makes you wonder how many times we've actually got to the point where we had AI around.
- [40:32]
D
I don't know. I guess I, I see it as just, you're going to have. Programmers are going to learn to program, but they won't spend as much time programming and they're going to be more kind of doing code architecture going in. And because some of it too is complex projects, you still need somebody to go in and go, okay, you can't just say, Claude, here's this extremely complex thing, make it. You got to have somebody in there. You know, we're going to write the different modules and how they're going to interact and how, you know, and like I said, kind of reviewing and overseeing the output, I guess.
- [41:04]
A
I guess the hesitation is how does, how does a programmer develop that sense of taste? This is something Torvalds talks about a lot, is having good taste as a programmer. How does the programmer develop that without actually having spent the time writing the code?
- [41:18]
C
And just to get to a more basic question that's. I'm gonna go and ask how many of y' all remember when you were in school having to learn the multiplication table or memorize them to be more accurate?
- [41:35]
A
I have memories of, of doing.
- [41:39]
C
Are they still having kids memorize the multiplication tables?
- [41:45]
A
I think so.
- [41:47]
D
My kids did
- [41:49]
C
okay.
- [41:50]
A
I know my kids are working through their additions right now, but at home I think, well, yes, we're kind of oddballs here. All right, let's move towards something else in the Debian world. But what happens when you put Debian on arm? And we're going to let Ken talk about Armbian, but we're going to do it right after this.
- [42:12]
B
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- [42:28]
A
This episode is brought to you by
- [42:30]
D
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B
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- [42:49]
D
Sip for yourself. Shop Vertuo up exclusively@nespresso.com Jonathan this week
- [42:56]
C
we can thank Bobby Borisov, Marcus Nester and George Witter for all writing about the latest release of Armbian 26.2. It adds support for new armboards and chips including Space MIT Muse PI Pro, Red Rock 4D, Orange PI RV2, Orange PI 4A, O, Droid M2, Lamota, R1, Codis Mine, Orange Pie 6 Plus, Minis Forum, Ms. R1, Numaker IoT, MA35D1A1 Spacement, Muse Book Friendly, Elec, Nanopie 02 DG, SVR865 Tiny and Red E24C and if I've completely lost everyone that I do apologize but RMBN 26.2 also introduces board level extension to mask Wayland desktop sessions, Cinnamon desktop builds for uefi, GNOME desktop builds for Stable Targets, Edge branch support to Community Targets support for KDE Neon desktop Builds, RISC v Xfce desktop support and support for Linux kernel 6.18 LTS on stable targets, while the latest 6.19 kernel is now supported on the Edge branch. According to Marcus, the RNBM devs were busy modernizing the products infrastructure and build tools, as well as cleaning up and optimizing Armbian's code base. According to Bobby, version 26.2 introduces a board level extension to, as I said, mask the Wayland desktop sessions. And according to George, the release strengthens RMB's position as one of the most versatile operating systems for single board computers. Now, as always, more details are available in Bobby, Marcus and George's articles and you can actually read what I was trying to say for the various boards that I was covering at the earlier there.
- [45:46]
A
I just think it's hilarious. The Alphabet soup of board names, the various crazy things that they call these naming scheme of some of these guys is just hilarious.
- [45:58]
C
They're actually easier to read than say yes, yes.
- [46:03]
D
Do they have someone from the USB committee join them for naming?
- [46:08]
C
No, I just think they were copying them.
- [46:14]
A
So the most interesting thing here to me is that they're doing KDE Neon builds for these ARM boards, which is pretty interesting if you want to run up to date KDE code that is
- [46:27]
C
pretty and also being able to do that masking for the Wayland desktop systems.
- [46:37]
A
Yeah, we I interviewed the the Armbian guys a few months back and talked to them about what they were doing then and just the number of boards they support is wild. We've got hundreds of them. It's crazy.
- [46:52]
C
Five pages worth of names.
- [46:54]
A
Yeah, a lot. Yeah. And all of them are about as much fun as the one that ones that Ken just read out for us.
- [47:00]
B
Depends what font you use Ken.
- [47:05]
C
The smallest font possible would get it into five pages.
- [47:09]
A
Oh my. Maybe the smallest legible font.
- [47:15]
D
Anyway, it all makes sense in wysiwyg.
- [47:19]
A
I don't know that I've ever ran RMB on. On anything. I don't know if I have or not. I can't say for sure.
- [47:28]
D
I don't think I have
- [47:31]
A
Raspberry PI OS on a lot of devices. A lot of Raspberry PI's.
- [47:36]
B
What's on the pine book?
- [47:38]
A
I don't know. I don't have a pine book.
- [47:40]
B
I. I do. I have the original pine book.
- [47:43]
C
What was on it or is on it?
- [47:45]
B
I don't know.
- [47:46]
D
Shouldn't you be the one answering that?
- [47:48]
B
Yeah, I don't know what it was. It was Lennox
- [47:53]
C
pga, was it?
- [47:57]
A
No, it's not. Some pine. They probably called it Pine os and it was probably something else with the skin on it. I don't know. That's the. That's the thing. A lot of these don't actually ship with Armbian. That's not. It tends to not be the distro that like whatever company that makes the thing will use. They'll use something else, like Art or sometimes it's Ubuntu, sometimes it's Debian. I've seen Linux Mint before.
- [48:19]
C
They'll ship with and how old in a version?
- [48:23]
A
Yeah, usually ancient. Usually an ancient kernel.
- [48:26]
B
I should get my pine book working again.
- [48:28]
C
Are they up? Are they starting to see a 6.0 at least versions of the kernel coming out?
- [48:35]
A
Well, you know, it depends on which one you're talking about. I've not. I've not bought one of these single boards for a while. I have. I've moved my attention onto other embedded devices that have intrigued me recently.
- [48:48]
C
Communicate.
- [48:51]
D
Go ahead, Ken.
- [48:53]
C
That. Communicate to other devices.
- [48:55]
A
Well, yeah, that's where a lot of my attention has been. What were you saying, Jeff?
- [48:58]
D
Oh, I was going to say I almost did a story. It's not ARM or anything or Risk, but it's the Zima board two. They got their little home mini server out as well.
- [49:10]
C
Isn't that got an intel in it?
- [49:12]
D
Yeah, that's why I said it's not a risk or arm.
- [49:15]
A
Yeah. All right.
- [49:18]
D
The small little form factor. PCs are hanging.
- [49:22]
C
In other words, there's no risk at all there.
- [49:25]
B
Yeah, there's no risk when you choose Intel.
- [49:27]
A
No risk. All right, Rob, what about risk when it comes to gaming? What are we going to do about Anti Cheat?
- [49:38]
B
So, as a Linux gamer, one of the biggest frustrations, you know as you and everybody, except for maybe Ken knows is not performance, you know, it's not the driver support and as you already said, it is the anti cheat. Often, you know, Linux players run into the same wall. The game might run, Proton might work, the hardware might be more than capable, except for in Ken's case. But the Anti cheat says no, you can't go on our online servers with Linux, you know, and that has been one of the the last major barriers really keeping Linux gaming from feeling fully equal. And that's why this new development at EA is worth keeping an eye on. So EA has posted a job listing for a senior Anti Cheat engineer focused on bringing its in house Javelin Anti Cheat to Windows on arm. Okay, that part makes sense on its own kind of I guess especially with, I don't know, more Windows, more ARM based gaming hardware on the horizon.
- [50:58]
A
I know people, a certain group of people very much want that to happen. I'm not convinced that it's going to, but continue on.
- [51:04]
B
Yeah, but I mean is ARM gaming on Windows really that big? I mean even compared to Linux on arm? Because I mean I know of way more people that have Linux on ARM systems than Windows on arm. I mean nobody anyway. And there's a big, a big company called Valve that's also working on Linux on ARM and gaming. So you know that line, the line that should. But the line okay, so, so there's that part of that. But the line of this job post and that should get Linux gamers paying attention comes later on in the listing where EA says the role will help chart a path for Javelin Anti Cheat to support additional operating systems and hardware in the future quote such as Linux and Proton. So I mean that's kind of the big news here. But you know, now you know that doesn't mean Linux support is arriving tomorrow. Windows on ARM is strangely the first priority here, which is dumb. Even you know, as a Windows user I think that's dumb. Nobody's using a Windows on ARM Windows people aren't using Windows at arm, especially not to game anyway. But you know, it's still just a hiring at this point, not a project announcement. But it does mean that EA is at least thinking seriously enough about Linux and Proton to put it into a job description. And for Linux gamers that matters because Anti Cheat has been a big painful sticking point in modern PC gaming. Proton and the Steam Deck have helped Linux gaming growing far beyond where it was just a few years ago. But kernel anti cheat systems have still blocked some of the biggest multiplayer titles and it's it's been a blocker for a lot. EA itself pulled Linux and Steam Deck support for Apex Legends back in late 2024, citing security concerns around cheating on Linux. But with the Steam Deck releasing more Linux based gaming hardware hopefully this year, that's the plan you would think game developers would start to pay attention to, you know, pay a little more attention. This story suggests that at least one major publisher is starting to see the importance and you know, look at moving forward with that. I don't know how far off it is but. And like I always say though, whatever is good for Linux gaming is good for the entire Linux ecosystem. So there's no reason it can be done. EA's looking into it, so let's. I hope they get it done because more games you can play, the better.
- [54:06]
A
Yeah, you know I'm, I'm trying to think through how anti cheat would actually work on Linux because on Windows you've got, you've got the Windows kernel that you know is going to kind of be in a certain state. You can run a kernel driver and then talk to that kernel driver and have a pretty good idea that you know something is not happening or is happening on your system. With the, with a Linux anti cheat solution like to actually make one that would, would actually work.
- [54:37]
B
They can't be bypassed.
- [54:38]
A
Yeah, that you couldn't just trivially bypass. You would almost have to do like a secure boot system which you could do under Linux. You can do secure boot and run only signed kernel modules. That wouldn't be the worst way to go about that.
- [54:56]
D
Well, they have, I don't know, easy anti cheat and Battle Eye which are two anti cheat methods that they're able to run on Linux. It's just a lot of times game companies don't turn them on. So there's anti cheat systems that all they have to do is flip a switch and say it's, you know.
- [55:13]
B
And I think the argument is they're not kernel level.
- [55:17]
A
Yeah, I just, I'm kind of wondering like how effective are they on Linux? How easy or difficult is it to circumvent? Is it easier to circumvent one of those anti cheat on Linux as opposed to on Windows? I don't know. It's not my area of expertise.
- [55:34]
D
I'm not a cheater. I don't know.
- [55:37]
A
I'm not a cheater.
- [55:40]
D
There's a show title.
- [55:41]
A
Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking. All right, well hey, let's talk about browsers then. Jeff is going to go nova on us. Right after we take a quick break, then we're going to talk about Firefox Novo right after this.
- [55:59]
D
So Firefox is looking to make changes to its default look. The new design is the Novo redesign, and it has more curves and color than we have now. For those unaware, this is not the first time there's been an interface redesign of Firefox. In 2014, the Firefox interface was redesigned under the internal project name Australias, followed by Photon, and finally Proton in 2021. The new Firefox design Mozilla is currently working on, as previously stated, is called Nova. It's not yet known which Firefox version the new design will where it will debut. Development is still in the very early stages. So this is pre beta. This is, you know, I'm not even sure it's to the alpha stage yet. The link in the article has some images to show possible directions, but these are, you know, like I said early in the process, they're most assuredly things are going to change and they're only mockups, so they're not even implemented really yet. However, it's reasonable to assume that the mockups reflect at least the general intended design direction. So it'll give us some cues where they're going. Now, we can take from this how there's a lot, you know, they're, they're really leaning into rounded shapes. Not only are the tabs and the address bars much rounder than before, the, the top area, you know, consisting of the tab bar, navigation toolbar, you know, they form as a rounded unit, as do the sidebar launcher, the website context area, and elements on the Firefox start page. They all look like kind of like floating elements, though. I don't know if they actually are, but they're kind of, you know, how they're separated a little bit. So it looks like they could be, but. But maybe that's simply going to be visual only. They do show vertical and horizontal tabs. But you know, something interesting it looks like they're thinking about is grouping tabs. Now, I don't know if that's even possible now, but it does show an image with a highlighted area which covers two tabs, which also correlate to split screens with two different web pages on them. Now, they're in the same window, though, so it's a little different than pulling them out into their own window, like you can do now. So it's, it's, it's not a separate complete window. It's, it's just they split the screen now, you know, maybe this is. This could be just me, my own personal opinion here, but I'm not a fan of rounding, you know, and you're gonna say I'm autistic or something, because they said to me the computer screen is based on square or rectangular shape. And rounding, to me anyway, generates a lot of lost space. Now, again, it's very early, so we'll see what comes out of the redesign, but I at least hope they have it opening to the public at some point for user feedback. While all the surfaces have previously been solid colors, Mozilla is now using subtle gradients in some places within Nova. The mockups also show a noticeable tendency towards violent tones. However, it cannot be ruled out that the accent color is influenced by the theme or a user setting. So, example on the screens, the example screens, they show kind of a mint green Firefox start page with a matching color scheme applied to the browser interface. We'll see how, you know, are they playing a lot or they thinking maybe that's a default? I don't know. Now, also interesting, Firefox has a compact mode where the interface takes up less space, and, you know, it's had that for, you know, many years. However, the feature is no longer officially supported and can only be activated through a hidden option. The mockups explicitly show a compact mode and a visible setting for it, which suggests that Mozilla may officially support such a mode again in the future. You know, personally, I'm a big fan of compact modes. Again, I don't like wasted space. You know, just jam all the data in there. So take a look at the article linked in the show notes for more details. And it also has a link to the original German blog, which covers the story. And when I say German blog, it's all in German, but the pictures are. It's got a ton of pictures in there, so you can. You can see. See a lot of the stuff they're thinking and let us know what you think on the discord.
- [60:27]
B
So, Jeff, if I'm. If I'm listening, understanding, right, this Nova design, you're. You're not a big fan. So in your opinion, it's. It's Nova, not Supernova.
- [60:39]
D
It's. No, it's. It's not a. It's not a Supernova.
- [60:44]
C
It.
- [60:44]
D
You know, I. I'll be honest, I don't like the lighter colors because I sometimes have a hard time seeing the difference between the gradients. So I like more vivid colors so I can easily pick things out.
- [61:01]
C
Contrast.
- [61:03]
D
Yeah, I need more contrast. Some of the buttons being rounded isn't that big of a deal, but I don't like the general UI direction where a lot of stuff is taking more and more space and they're. They're getting big. I call it like a Duplo Blocks interface. And for those who don't know or outside of the country, Duplo is. It's like Legos, but it's for really little kids, so they're super big and they're easy to snap together because they're monstrous.
- [61:35]
C
I'll bet even after they come out with it, they'll have the option to theme your Firefox.
- [61:41]
A
Oh, I'm sure.
- [61:42]
D
Oh, I'm sure. And if they bring back compact mode, then that takes care of it. It's not spreading so much space, you know, around that. That's just kind of wasted. I don't need, you know, tons of room between my buttons.
- [61:58]
C
Now, I was reading in the blog that the compact mode is no longer officially supported, but there is a hidden option that allows you to activate it.
- [62:12]
D
Yeah, I haven't turned it on because one, I didn't realize that there was the hidden option. And two, when it's unsupported, sometimes it can be a little funky. So I would like a nice, officially supported compact mode.
- [62:28]
A
I gotta say, looking at this screenshot, actually kind of like it. I do not hate this at all. I think it's cool that they're playing around with something different, and it's a. It's a unique, very different look.
- [62:42]
D
I don't hate it. I. I don't hate it. I just want to make sure there's ways to tweak it a little better. And like I said, some of it could be theming. So if I could get the vivid colors higher, contrast, you know, squishy together. Yeah, squish some of those rounded corners together.
- [63:04]
A
Squish them corners.
- [63:06]
D
Yeah.
- [63:06]
A
No, I. I kind of like it. I.
- [63:09]
B
You know, I think we've said this before in the past that Jeff likes his corners sharp. So he hurts himself or something.
- [63:16]
A
Something like that, yeah.
- [63:20]
D
Sharp tool.
- [63:23]
C
He likes sharp edges.
- [63:26]
D
Yes. Hey, when I'm cutting wood with my chainsaw, I don't want those rounded edges. I want good, sharp teeth, you know?
- [63:33]
A
That's true.
- [63:37]
D
Well, it just seems like where all the rounded corners meet up, you got a little bit of dead space in there. And everything on the computer's very rectangular and squarish, and it just kind of snaps in together. Yeah.
- [63:50]
A
I will say that that little bit of dead space can help Your eyes quickly parse what you're looking at though. And particularly good UI design will take advantage of that. It will use that dead space very intentionally to help you parse what is what
- [64:07]
B
I like. Okay, so I'm looking at this now too and it's like very rounded. Like I like rounded corners. Fine. But this is more like oblonged ovals or whatever.
- [64:20]
A
It's.
- [64:21]
B
It's more than just a full corner. It's. The whole side is round.
- [64:24]
C
No tangle was oval corner.
- [64:27]
A
It's not that bad. Oh my goodness.
- [64:29]
B
I'm looking, I'm looking at the screenshot from the, the show from, from the, from the block, from the article. And I mean, okay, right at the top, there's that tab there. Those aren't round corners. That is completely rounded on both sides of that tab where it says long page titles fade off. That is round. That's not like a corner round and a corner round. That is completely rounded side.
- [64:56]
A
Yes. Yes, Rob, thank you. That is a round button, not a. I can't take Rob anywhere.
- [65:04]
B
It's too round. I would like Jeff.
- [65:07]
D
Yeah, I would like to mention WX Roamer who said Jeff is a sharp corner dressed guy. Thank you.
- [65:15]
B
Thank you. It's not bad, but it's a little too round for me too. I think
- [65:22]
A
we're, we're splicing pixels here at this point. I don't. I like it. I think, I think it has a lot of potential.
- [65:28]
D
I think it has potential and these are mock ups. So there's. There's a long way to go yet.
- [65:35]
A
All right, Ken, before we get. Before we drown in Firefox rounded corners, let's Talk about the 13th edition of Linux from Scratch.
- [65:46]
C
Well, that's what I was going to tell you about, especially since Bobby also wrote about the release of Linux from scratch, 13.0 and also beyond Linux from Scratch, or I got to abbreviate this BLFS 13.0. Everyone already knows that Linux from Scratch is a project that provides step by step instructions for building your own custom Linux system entirely from source code. Or am I assuming too much with that statement? Now, according.
- [66:22]
A
Most of our audience knows what it is.
- [66:24]
C
Now, according to Bobby, a key change in this Release is that LFS 13.0 is the first version available exclusively as a System D Edition. LFS 13.0 also includes significant upgrades to core components. It features Venutils 2.46, glib 2.42 and 36. Count them, 36 updated packages compared to the previous stable version. The base system now uses Linux kernel 6.18.0.10 LTS ensuring the build instructions reflect recent kernel releases. Now BLFS 13.0 provides instructions for installing a broad range of additional software, including desktop environments such as gnome, kde, Plasma, XFCE and lxqt. And as always, for further information, I do recommend reading Bobby's article.
- [67:38]
A
It the. The big thing is System D. What did it. What did. What did Linux from Scratch use previously?
- [67:44]
C
It gave you the option between System D and System V in it.
- [67:50]
A
Cisp in it is kind of.
- [67:54]
C
You use that recently?
- [67:56]
A
No, no, that's what I was just thinking about. It's been a while.
- [67:58]
C
Do you want to use that?
- [68:00]
A
Not really, no. I remember parsing sysv in its scripts and some of those were gnarly.
- [68:08]
C
If you want systemv INIT scripts, there's always chaos.
- [68:13]
D
Yeah.
- [68:14]
A
Wasn't there like an official. No. A semi official fork of Linux from scratch that was doing the C in it?
- [68:26]
C
You could probably go back to the previous version and use it to do that fork if you really wanted.
- [68:35]
A
Was. I saw another story about this and I thought it was one of the. One of the previous. One of the other guys that had worked on it was doing a fork. I can't find it now.
- [68:54]
D
Well, I was just going to add in there. There is a group of people that really don't like systemd and they want to go back to System init.
- [69:03]
A
Indeed.
- [69:04]
B
I know the first time I saw. The first time I saw systemd and I was used to the old init, I was a little like, what is this? I don't understand it because I had all those nice simple scripts before. It's still scripts, but it's just more organized to be controlled more centrally. Better. I think now it just took me a while to figure that out and I think there's just other people who are taking a lot longer to figure that out, that's all.
- [69:34]
D
Personally, I was never deep enough into the OS that it, you know, oh, they changed okay. Everything still seems to work. I didn't. I didn't care about that. But. But the hard part is when you really like, oh, I like this old system. Unless you have a team of people still actively developing and pushing it forward, it just kind of gets left in the dust after a while.
- [69:55]
B
Like the old system. Like I was way more into the guts of Linux probably back in the day then. But you know, I think you could. You could boot it up into an AT zero, which would be. That was just a root startup and they had all the Init levels you could boot into and I don't know
- [70:14]
A
I still have that though. That still exists with System D. Does it? Yeah.
- [70:22]
D
I didn't know that.
- [70:22]
A
I've done a boot into run level zero.
- [70:26]
D
It's been so long since I have.
- [70:28]
C
Finding that there's a fork from Linux from scratch where the build method changed right around LFS 9.0. I just post the link to the GitHub for that in the show notes or in the discord.
- [70:45]
B
There's forks of everything. Doesn't mean it's going anywhere.
- [70:50]
A
No, that's true.
- [70:52]
C
It's only four years ago since the last update and one.
- [70:55]
D
One contributor.
- [70:57]
A
Yeah, that's the thing about these.
- [70:59]
B
That's not a real fork, Ken. That's just somebody that Click Fork on GitHub and I've done that before. It doesn't mean I'm maintaining a new fork.
- [71:09]
C
I've got a fork of a BASH file. Yeah, I think Jonathan originally created the BASH file.
- [71:17]
A
It could be.
- [71:18]
D
Well and we actually talked about this I think two weeks ago or a month ago about how there's a lot of people that fork something or start a distro and then realize oh, it's easy to fork it, it's hard to maintain it and people burn out. And that's where you get these distributions that just wind up kind of dying on the vine because they. It's just like, whoa. There's a lot of work every day to make this function.
- [71:45]
A
Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's easy to fork, but it's hard to maintain.
- [71:52]
D
Yeah,
- [71:55]
C
I was looking at some of the other projects that, that the person that did the forked LFS has. He's got a. Another one that's Muscle Dash LFS Linux from scratch using muscle as lib C.
- [72:09]
A
Oh, the, the, the. Oh, I forget what that stands for. It's like an embedded libc.
- [72:17]
C
And then there's a single built muscle Linux from scratch that he's got a. As a fork or. And as. As one of the projects he's done.
- [72:30]
A
Yeah, I'm looking to see where I, where I saw the Linux from Scratch news to see if I could figure out what. Who, who it is that I saw was doing a, A, a fork of it and boy, I just can't find it. If I find it I'll. I'll put it in the show notes. It's a newer one than the one that you found, Ken, but anyway, but
- [72:52]
D
three and a half years old with two maintainers,
- [72:56]
A
something like that.
- [72:57]
C
But here's a good article for anybody that wants to know why you don't see more people forking Linux versus just copying another distro.
- [73:14]
A
Yeah. All right, let's move into some command line tips. We have one more break to take and then as soon as we get back from that, we're going to let Rob talk about Waydroid. Not sure this is quite command line or quite Linux, but we'll let him get away with it. And we'll jump to that right after this. Zootopia 2 is coming home to Disney.
- [73:36]
B
Let's go get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time.
- [73:40]
C
New friends Gary the Snake and your last name the Snake dream team and new habitat.
- [73:45]
A
Zootopia has a secret, secret reptile population.
- [73:48]
D
You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.
- [73:50]
A
Disney Zootopia 2 streaming March 11th on Disney plus rated PG.
- [73:55]
D
And right now you can get Disney plus and Hulu for just 4.99amonth for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months plan auto renews at 1299amonth term supply.
- [74:05]
B
All right, so I don't know what you mean. This isn't a command line or Linux. This is absolutely a Linux application that you can start with the command line. In fact I got a command line terminal up here that I started with myself in Cashios. So my command is Waydroid. And what Waydroid is, is it's the application to run Android in in Linux. So it's not Wine, you know where wine is translation layer. It's. And I don't know if it's actually an emulator or what, but you are running a full Android system so it's an emulator of sorts I guess. And one of the key features of this is the word way in there which means you have to have Waylander on it. Sorry. So anyway way drawing so you. But the default install does not have the Google Play Store. So it makes it a lot harder to do a lot of things that we're used to doing. But it may be the way we want to do it in the future. But the way I did it is with the Google Play Store and that's just because I don't know, it's just easier to get apps. So for those looking this, this at the bottom here I just clicked on the application I already have running this way. Droid. This is Android here. So I, I did put some things because it wasn't necessarily easy to get up, I had to install Waydroid and then I had to initialize it with the gapps. I guess that's Google Apps. I didn't even think about that what that is. But basically sudo way Droid in it dash S G A P S and that's going to install it with Google Apps and you know, or the Google Play Store. So for those looking, I got the Google Play Store right there. I can open that up. And then I had to do a sudo systemctl enable dash dash now space waydroid container and then wageroid session start and then as you saw on the screen, I did a waydroid space show dash full ui. Now initially the Google App Store doesn't work. It says it's not a certified Google device, which it's pretty easy to do. I'm not going to tell you the command. You'll have to look in the, in the notes and really I would find something online to help you with this. But there is a, a command to get the Android ID out of it. It's a pseudo way Droid shell SQL like command basically to pull it out of the database and then you can go to google.com Android uncertified and you can register that Google ID and then it's all going to work. Well also I also had firewall problems. I had no Internet this is even back further. So I had to go to. I had to open up the firewall which is a cash os. It's a UFW firewall. But after that I was able to get it all working and you know I can look at and install whatever Android app from the Play Store store I want. Well not whatever the first app I like for game I like for said this will not work on your device. So there, there are limitations. I was able to install other things and play around but that's pretty much the way if you if you want need to run Android on your Linux device, Waydroid is the way.
- [77:54]
A
That's cool. That's very cool. Now I bet it does not have like widevine and so DRM stuff's not going to work. So for instance, I would imagine that Netflix would not play well. I don't know if you.
- [78:05]
B
I will try that and I will post to my Mastodon and Blue sky. So follow me there and I'll let you. You'll find out if it works. I'll put in the Discord too.
- [78:20]
A
I was gonna say you got to put it on Discord. I'm not following you on those other places.
- [78:23]
B
You already call me a mastodon yeah,
- [78:26]
A
but I don't ever check it. And while you guys do that, I have a mastodon.
- [78:31]
D
And while you guys do that, I'll just run Netflix natively on Linux.
- [78:35]
B
Yeah, there's no reason to, but it's still an interesting experiment just to see because maybe there's some other program that
- [78:42]
A
I made on wasn't that long Android
- [78:45]
C
only application that you need to run.
- [78:50]
A
There's some games that are Android only that don't have native ports. I'm thinking of one that I'm slightly addicted to. Neither here nor there. All right, Jeff is up next with speaking of systemd. Journal D is part of that. And he's got a Journal CTL tip for us.
- [79:12]
D
Yeah, and we've covered journal CTL a while. You know, we've covered a couple times over the past, but this one I just covered because this week's command is something I needed. So I was noticing some errors when booting and shutting down. And the errors it was for USB device that was having issues communicating. It gave me a USB 4 port 2 location. But running LS USB wasn't a help because it didn't match the error, it didn't give me any mapping, and I don't have a USB 4 port. And even the manual for the motherboard was no help. It didn't nothing matched. There was no hardware mapping. Well, that's when I found the journal CTL space dash f. Or you can also put journal CTL space dash dash follow. It's kind of like a tail command to follow the systemd journal only when the log file is closed and new ones open. This one keeps going, so it's just always giving you the output. Now, the follow option will only show the log entries of what the user has permissions for. So if you run it as your normal self, or if you run it as root, we'll give you a little different output it. So I ran it as root using the daft dash f. And you know, I. You can, you can also use a vertical bar which is the pipe option, and grep space error space dash I. So then you're only getting the error messages because sometimes you plug things in and out, you do things. It's going to give you kind of little notifications that there aren't errors. It's just telling you what's going on. So in my case, I did that and I could see the errors and I could leave the screen up because I was getting an error about every 3 seconds or 4 seconds. Then I could plug and unplug USB devices till I was able to find the offending one and take care of the problem. So I just thought, you know, that would be kind of a handy little tip that was very applicable to me this week.
- [81:21]
A
Yeah, very cool. With journalctl, you can also do a dash U and then your unit name, which brings you to a very fun command that you have to be careful with. And that is if you want to follow a particular unit, it's dash fu and then the name of the unit.
- [81:42]
D
You want to explain what a unit is.
- [81:45]
A
That's the name of a service basically.
- [81:47]
C
And you can see where we first covered it if you go back and listen to episode one. 51 Episode 51 Excuse me.
- [81:56]
A
Yeah, we've talked about Journal CTO quite a bit over the years, but the dash F is super helpful. All right, ken, what is MusicBrainz Picard?
- [82:06]
C
Well, this week, as you mentioned, I am covering a cross platform music tagger that I use to update the metadata for my audio files. I use it to organize my music collection. It can rename music files and sort them into a folder structure exactly as I want. You have a variety of plugins that are available to use in assisting you. You can even write your own custom plugin if any of the available plugins don't meet your needs. Now, Music Brain Picord supports a wide range of audio formats and can also look up an entire CD for you. And let me go ahead and bring up the application so you can see what it looks like. I want to go to the about first this I'm running version 2.13.3. I've got it installed as via flat pack myself, but as you can see, I don't know if that's big enough for everybody to read, but it's got a long list of formats that it supports, basically all of them, any type of audio format. And you've got a help of course that you can use to get help. View your recent activity history, a support form that you can access. You can even report a bug that you may come across from within the application itself. Basically what you do is you take you've got a directory tree shown over here and as you can see I've cut a directory tree for going into my albums. I've started ripping some of my comedy albums as well as the album I want to say it's actually a total of five album vinyl records that's part of this album called this Was Radio and one of them has audio file called Great leaders that's about 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, where you have snippets from Franklin Delaney, Frank, President Roosevelt, Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, where you can hear where they're doing various speeches, like President Roosevelt's first inaugural address. And if you're looking down at the bottom, you can see that it's got tags for title, artist, album, track number, length, and comments that I've entered based on the information off of the vinyl record itself. And you've got the option of where when you do it, you can actually create new tags. I'm going to go to one that I've already done and here you can see that there's a lot more tags that can be set up and some of them even indicate that They've got a IDs that are used within the Music Brains database. Now, this is a cloud database that you can contribute to through this application.
- [85:42]
A
Yeah. Now, does. Does musicbrains Picard. Is it. Does it let you rip or is this just for managing tags?
- [85:51]
C
Well, you can. It's Primarily for managing DAGs, but you can go in and read from the CD ROM for getting the information. You don't actually use it to rip.
- [86:04]
A
Okay. So it's just. It's for getting your. Your metadata right on your. On your existing library. One of the things I saw that it did here that I thought was super cool is it uses the acoustic ID audio fingerprinting system. And so if you've got a song and you don't know what it is, it can do a lookup in a crowdsourced database of audio fingerprints and try to figure out what it is and then match it and give you all of the correct metadata for it. It's super cool.
- [86:32]
C
Yes. In fact, you can even say with this one, I can do a lookup and browser and let me go ahead and bring that tab over here.
- [86:52]
A
And it'll bring you right to the. Right to the entry in the Music Brains database. Cool.
- [86:58]
C
And you can even create a account for you to keep your database in, for example. I can look that up and it's gonna. If I wanted to, I could log in, but.
- [87:22]
A
And then what? Mark that this is part of your library.
- [87:25]
C
Yeah.
- [87:26]
A
Cool.
- [87:28]
C
That way you've got a database that you can access from anywhere of what you actually have.
- [87:35]
A
Yeah.
- [87:36]
C
Or what you've got entered so far.
- [87:38]
A
Right. Neat stuff. All right, I've got a quick tip. Not exactly a command line tip, although it's definitely something you work with on the command line. And this is something I ran into this week, and that is block Devices and character devices. And I had to go and refresh my memory on what exactly those are and how they're different. And these are both files, files, pseudo files that you will find down in dev. Well, block devices, those are things like your hard drive, your CD ROM drive, your loop, your mounted loop devices, basically anything that you could mount or that you could open with FSCK or fstab, those sorts of things are your block devices. And technically the way this works is your driver communicates with these by sending entire blocks of data back and forth. So it reads a block of data off the disk, it writes a block of data to the disk, and then the other kind of device that going to find in there, the other kind of file is the character device. And technically speaking, you interact with those by sending and reading a character at a time. Now that's not entirely accurate because you'll sometimes send more than, you'll write more than one character at a time. Write a whole line. You can write up to 124 characters, but you still, you interact with those character files much more like they were a text file as opposed to the block device, which doesn't show up as anything like a text file at all. And so block devices, you have things like obviously hard drives, USB cameras will also show up that way, some of the things. But then character devices, you have serial ports, parallel ports, sound cards. Those are the three examples that are given here in this page. I will also say that your modern GPIO drivers, those are character devices. And coming from the old way that Raspberry PI used to do it to the new way that everybody's doing gpio, that Linux GPIO now I had to learn a decent bit about these character devices. And so this is a fairly interesting difference between these two. I think maybe next week we're going to come back and talk about system calls because that is the sort of the third way that you interact with your system. And it does also interact with these two things where you might write something to a block device or a character device and then make a system call to do something with it. So interesting stuff, stuff looking around a little bit in the under the hood way that Linux works. So there we go. All right, that is the show. I'm gonna let the guys plug whatever they want to. Rob already plugged his Mastodon and Blue sky, so he's not allowed to mention those, but he can plug everything else.
- [90:28]
B
Well, I never told you where to find my Mastodon and Blue sky
- [90:35]
C
and
- [90:35]
B
those are on my website. First, Robert, at Least the easiest way. My website, Robert P. Campbell.com and on there you'll find links to my LinkedIn, Twitter, Blue Sky, Mastodon, and a place to donate a coffee if you like. And you know what? I'm going to give you all freebies so you don't have to get on my Mastodon. This week I installed Netflix, installed fine. And when I tried to play, it said didn't work for the device. I tried Paramount plus, installed fine. Everything looked like it was working, but nothing played. I don't know. I am also running that in a vm, so there could be something about video acceleration, but later in a VM
- [91:22]
C
on a hard drive within a host.
- [91:28]
B
Yeah, that is what it is. So I don't know. Anyway, either way, it'd be cool if you come connect with me. I did get a game installed that is loading up right now, though, and it's Battle Cats is a game I've played in the past. I know all my kids likes to play it. And yeah, nobody reads that stuff. You just click agree and hit next.
- [91:51]
A
But
- [91:54]
D
you never saw that south park, did you?
- [91:56]
C
Okay, you just. Just gave away your firstborn.
- [92:01]
B
So, yeah, anyway, yeah, come connect with me. That's how you do it.
- [92:07]
A
Fun stuff. All right. And I think we'll go Ken, next.
- [92:12]
C
Well, I've got a link in our show Notes to an article by Reina Berthelson where he writes about three mistakes that even experienced users, including myself, can and do make over time. Go ahead and read it to find out what they are.
- [92:33]
A
I see the three of them and yes, those do hit home. I was looking at one of those in one of my systems just the other day going, where did all of this come from? All right.
- [92:43]
D
And Jeff, nothing much to plug other than, hey, I got a new bookcase. If you're on the video, you can. You can see I've upgraded my set. Other than that, I just have a haiku. Seeing my great fault through darkening blue windows, I begin again. Have a great week, everybody.
- [93:06]
A
All right. Appreciate you guys being here. I will say that if you want to follow me, there's of course, Hackaday. That's where Floss Weekly is at. Where skipping a week this week because I am going to be at Embedded World. And if you happen to be around, we're in Hall 3, Booth 3, 652. And if somebody is there from the show, if one of our listeners is there, you absolutely should stop by. And I think I can get you a business card, maybe some swag.
- [93:35]
C
I don't know.
- [93:35]
A
If we have swag or not. I'm not in charge of the swag, but anyway, I'll be glad to say hi and would love to meet anybody there. Other than that, just, just want to say to everybody listening and watching, thank you. Whether you are audio or video, whether you get us live on the download, we appreciate it. And we'll be back next week on the Untitled Ancient.