We're pre-gaming two of the biggest Linux events of the year. Engineers, organizers, and surprise guests are dropping by to give us the scoop before it all begins.

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• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• SCALE 2025 Meetup — El Cholo Cafe Pasadena - Saturday, Mar 8, 2025, 7:00 PM
• Planet Nix — March 6th-7th, 2025 @ Pasadena, CA at the Southern California Linux Expo.
• Flox - Your dev environment, everywhere — Flox help teams focus on building fast by providing reproducible environments that span the entire software lifecycle. With Flox, developers can create environments that contain all of the tools and frameworks they need, binding them with the software they ship into the world.
• Kelsey Hightower on X
• kelseyhightower on GitHub
• Kelsey Hightower on LinkedIn
• Robert Hernandez SCaLE Profile
• Fireside Chat: An Outsider’s Look at Nix - Ron Efroni, Kelsey Hightower
• Learn Nix the Fun Way - Farid Zakaria
• Docker Was Too Slow, So We Replaced It: Nix in Production -
• Planet Nix FAQ
• nix.conf - Adding GitHub Access Tokens — Access tokens used to access protected GitHub, GitLab, or other locations requiring token-based authentication.
• Olympia Mike's nixbook
• peterfajdiga/karousel: Scrollable tiling Kwin script
• YaLTeR/niri: A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor.
• paperwm/PaperWM: Tiled scrollable window management for GNOME Shell
• Libro.fm — Your Independent Bookstore for Digital Audiobooks
• Pick: OpenAudible-To-AudibleBookShelf — This script automates the process of moving audiobook files from OpenAudible or Libation to an organized folder structure and updates AudioBookShelf accordingly. It handles file organization, metadata mapping, and interaction with the AudioBookShelf API.

There have been major Rust developments in the Linux Kernel; we discuss what's new and how it will impact the future. Plus, we're joined by a special guest.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Get started with River
• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Planet Nix - Speakers
• SCALE 22x
• Greg Kroah-Hartman Makes A Compelling Case For New Linux Kernel Drivers To Be Written In Rust — Yes, mixed language codebases are rough, and hard to maintain, but we are kernel developers dammit, we've been maintaining and strengthening Linux for longer than anyone ever thought was going to be possible. We've turned our development model into a well-oiled engineering marvel creating something that no one else has ever been able to accomplish. Adding another language really shouldn't be a problem, we've handled much worse things in the past and we shouldn't give up now on wanting to ensure that our project succeeds for the next 20+ years. We've got to keep pushing forward when confronted with new good ideas, and embrace the people offering to join us in actually doing the work to help make sure that we all succeed together.
• Kees Cook on Rust in the kernel — In other words, I don't see any reason to focus on replacing existing code -- doing so would actually carry a lot of risk. But writing new stuff in Rust is very effective. Old code is more stable and has fewer bugs already, and yet, we're still going to continue the work of hardening C, because we still need to shake those bugs out. But new code can be written in Rust, and not have any of these classes of bugs at all from day one.
• Linus Re: Rust kernel policy — You are not forced to take any Rust code, or care about any Rust code in the DMA code. You can ignore it. But "ignore the Rust side" automatically also means that you don't have any say on the Rust side.
• Texas Linux Fest is back again in 2025!
• Pick: treetrum/amazon-kindle-bulk-downloader — Allows you to bulk download all your Kindle eBook in a more automated fashion. This tool allows you to create backup copies of the books you've already purchased.
• Amazon removes your right to download Kindle books
• Amazon will stop allowing Kindle book downloads to your PC soon
• How to Download Kindle Books to Your Computer Before Amazon Kills the Feature
• Simplest Way to Remove DRM from Books – No Kindle Serial Number Needed!
• Pick: nping — 🏎 Nping mean NB Ping, A Ping Tool in Rust with Real-Time Data and Visualizations

Our FreeBSD Challenge comes to a close, and chances are one of us will be paying the Windows tax.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Planet Nix
• Flox — Your dev environment, everywhere
• The Launch 🚀 09: The Eagle has Landed
• The Rules of the FreeBSD Challenge
• libluksde — Library and tools to access LUKS Disk Encryption encrypted volumes
• linuxulator-steam-utils — Linux Steam on FreeBSD
• bhyve/Windows - FreeBSD Wiki
• Chapter 12. Linux Binary Compatibility
• doas - dedicated openbsd application subexecutor
• doas mastery
• Chapter 33. Firewalls
• ardour « audio - ports - FreeBSD ports tree
• jellyfin « multimedia - ports - FreeBSD ports tree
• Hank wrote in about his testing with a Pi4
• FreeBSD pi4 tweak — I got lucky - that was posted two days before I gave this a go. I installed on a 4GB Pi 4B.
• Hank's BSD Notes — IMO should get a point just for figuring out how to configure NTP and time zone. Sheesh!
• Mizutamari — User-friendly Wine front-end primarily for FreeBSD
• Oldschool Gaming on FreeBSD
• Games - GhostBSD Wiki
• What’s Coming for Future Releases of GhostBSD? — We're making some important changes to how GhostBSD is built and released to provide a better, more stable experience for our users.
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• Gene's Portable Screen
• NetBSD Root on ZFS
• Music Assistant — Music Assistant is a free, opensource Media library manager that connects to your streaming services and a wide range of connected speakers.
• Pick: HedgeDoc — HedgeDoc lets you create real-time collaborative markdown notes.
• Pick: Add Water — A utility app to easily install the Firefox GNOME Theme and automatically update it in the background. This theme keeps Firefox fashionable within the GNOME design ecosystem, and provides many helpful features to customize the interface to make browsing even more pleasant

It's week one of our FreeBSD challenge, and for one of us, that penalty Windows install looks uncomfortably close! Plus, Zach Mitchell joins us to update us on Planet Nix.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• LINUX Unplugged - 2025 FreeBSD Challenge Rules.md
• Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit
• FreeBSD 14.0 on aarch64 Raspberry Pi 4/400 - Download, Install & Configure
• LinuxBoot: Booting FreeBSD from Linux
• EuroBSDCon booting FreeBSD using Linux
• Provisioning LinuxBoot Images for FreeBSD
• FreeBSD Handbook: Chapter 1. Bootstrapping and Kernel Initialization
• FreeBSD Handbook: Chapter 15. The FreeBSD Booting Process
• How to Manage FreeBSD Boot Process?
• LinuxBoot: let Linux do it!
• LinuxBoot Introduction
• LinuxBoot on GitHub
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• Planet Nix — March 6th-7th, 2025 in Pasadena, CA
• Zach Mitchell
• LINUX Unplugged 554: SCaLEing Nix
• LINUX Unplugged 538: Surprisingly Smooth Transition
• LFNW2025 - April 25 - 27, 2025 • Bellingham Technical College
• Pick: GarminDB — Download and parse data from Garmin Connect or a Garmin watch, FitBit CSV, and MS Health CSV files into and analyze data in Sqlite serverless databases with Jupyter notebooks.

We celebrate 600 episodes, announce a new show feature, and officially launch the FreeBSD challenge.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• nixbsd: An unofficial NixOS fork with a FreeBSD kernel
• The Rules of the FreeBSD Challenge
• Speedruns - FreeBSD Wiki
• Pick: direnv-vscode — This extension adds direnv support to Visual Studio Code by loading environment variables for the workspace root.
• Pick: Warehouse on Linux | Flathub — Warehouse provides a simple UI to control complex Flatpak options, all without resorting to the command line.

On the eve of episode 600, we introduce our next challenge and explore the new wave of Linux phones.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Liberux – Privacy, Security, Freedom
• PinePhone Braveheart Linux smartphone begins shipping January 17th - Liliputing
• Mecha Comet - Modular Linux Handheld Computer powered by Open-Source Software — The Comet is a handheld Linux computer that brings extensibility in hardware and software adapting to your needs.
• Mecha Comet - Modular Linux Handheld Computer by Mecha Systems Inc. — Kickstarter
• Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers — The Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers will provide a neutral space where industry leaders, academia, developers, and the broader open source community can work together to support projects within the Chromium ecosystem.
• Wine 10.0 Released With Native Wayland Support, Better HiDPI — Wine 10.0 brings more than six thousand changes that built up over the past year in the bi-weekly Wine 9.xx development releases.
• LUP 600 Pacific Northwest Party · Colony Events
• Comprehensive Audio Stack Improvements for Modern Hardware and Software
• Detailed AMD IOMMU Driver Development for Enhanced Core Support
• FreeBSD Foundation's Sponsored Development Projects for 2024
• metapac: multi-backend declarative package manager
• decman: declarative package & configuration manager for Arch Linux.
• aconfmgr: a configuration manager for Arch Linux
• GeneBean's Dots
• Replit
• OliveTin — OliveTin gives safe and simple access to predefined shell commands from a web interface.
• Open-tv — Ultra-fast, simple and powerful cross-platform IPTV app.
• ErsatzTV — Stream custom live channels using your own media
• Deepin Linux 25 Goes (Almost) Immutable
• deepin 25 Preview Release Note – Deepin Technology Community

With more criticisms of NixOS than ever—do they have a point? We'll dig into the tough critiques and give our perspective.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• NixOS is interesting, but has fatal flaws
• LUP 600 meetups!
• Planet Nix — March 6-7, Before and Alongside SCaLE
• SCALE 22x — March 6-9, 2025 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, CA.
• LFNW2025 - "25 Years of Community Excellence" — April 25 - 27, 2025
• Nix - Death by a thousand cuts — TLDR: In its current state (2025), I don't generally recommend desktop use of Nix(OS), even for seasoned Linux users.
• Rich Hickey: Simple Made Easy — Rich Hickey emphasizes simplicity’s virtues over easiness’, showing that while many choose easiness they may end up with complexity, and the better way is to choose easiness along the simplicity path.
• Simple Made Easy Transcript
• Ansible is a Lisp
• Should I use NixOS? Short answer: no. — If words like "declarative", "generational", and "immutable" don't put your sexuality in jeopardy, you're considering NixOS for the wrong reasons.
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• OliveTin/OliveTin: OliveTin gives safe and simple access to predefined shell commands from a web interface.
• Pick: isd — Simplify systemd management with isd! isd is a TUI offering fuzzy search for units, auto-refreshing previews, smart sudo handling, and a fully customizeable interface for power-users and newcomers alike.
• Pick: planify — Task manager with Todoist & Nextcloud support designed for GNOME
• Pick: Super Productivity — A to do list to get your head free
• Super Productivity on Flathub
• Super Productivity GitHub — Keep organized and focused!
• LUP 553: Portably Predictable Productivity

We're taking on some of the toughest critiques of the Linux desktop, then taking a look at CachyOS and what makes it feel like a million bucks.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition
• Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition | Hacker News
• Why Desktop Linux Matters, Even If (Almost) No One Uses It
• Colony Events
• CachyOS — Blazingly Fast OS based on Arch Linux — CachyOS is designed to deliver lightning-fast speeds and stability, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable computing experience every time you use it. Whether you're a seasoned Linux user or just starting out, CachyOS is the ideal choice for those looking for a powerful, customizable and blazingly fast operating system.
• CachyOS/linux-cachyos: Archlinux Kernel based on different schedulers and some other performance improvements.
• firelzrd/bore-scheduler: BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) CPU Scheduler — BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) is enhanced versions of CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) and EEVDF (Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First) Linux schedulers. Developed with the aim of maintaining these schedulers' high performance while delivering resilient responsiveness to user input under as versatile load scenario as possible.
• oracle/bpftune: bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems — bpftune aims to provide lightweight, always-on auto-tuning of system behaviour.
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• Self-Hosted Toronto Crew -- Meetup2 · Gathio
• Amazon.com: Wi-Fi Smart LED Controller | WLED Pre-Installed | Internal Antenna | Designed to Control WS2811 or WS2812B 5volt Smart LEDs : Tools & Home Improvement
• Cryptomator on Flathub
• cryptomator on GitHub — Cryptomator for Windows, macOS, and Linux: Secure client-side encryption for your cloud storage, ensuring privacy and control over your data.
• Flatsweep on Flathub — When you uninstall a Flatpak, it can leave some files behind on your computer. Flatsweep helps you easily get rid of the residue left on your system by uninstalled Flatpaks.
• Buffer
• Buffer on Flathub — Celebrating transience, Buffer provides a minimal editing space for all those things that don't need keeping. Designed for keyboard workflows on desktop.

We make our big Linux predictions for 2025, but first, we score how we did for 2024.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• LinuxFest Northwest 2025: Call for Speakers — Call closes at 11:59 PM PST on
• Planet Nix CFP - Jan 6th
• Colony Events
• LUP was the #2 top show on Fountain.fm for 2024. THANK YOU!
• LINUX Unplugged 545: 3,062 Days Later
• MAGI OS: AI powered Linux
• MakuluLinux AI podcast – MakuluLinux
• MakuluLinux X – AI Integration Update – MakuluLinux
• OpenZFS Native Encryption Use Raises Data Corruption Concerns
• Debian Installer Trixie Alpha 1 Brings RISC-V & Drops i386 Installer
• After Three Years on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends
• mesa-dri-drivers-24.2.4-1.fc41 - Fedora Packages
• UbuntuUpdates - Package Search (all versions of mesa)
• Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Moving To NVK + Zink For OpenGL On Newer GPUs - Phoronix
• Mesa's NVIDIA Vulkan Driver "NVK" Now Exposes Vulkan 1.3 Support - Phoronix
• NixOS-based distributions - NixOS Wiki
• It's time for change, it's time for Linux. - YouTube
• How I Broke up with Adobe
• Automotive Grade Linux Launches New Expert Group Led by Toyota to Help Automakers Manage Open Source Activities - Automotive Grade Linux
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• Enclosed - Send private and secure notes — Minimalistic web application designed for sending end-to-end encrypted notes and files.
• enclosed - GitHub

We tested out the OpenWRT One and tried it in a unique use case. Then, Wes goes back to 1999 to solve a problem.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• LinuxFest Northwest 2025: Call for Speakers — Call closes at 11:59 PM PST on 2025-01-10. Conference is 2025-04-25 through 2025-04-27.
• Qobuz — Buy your favourite albums in CD or Hi-Res quality and enjoy them forever.
• Los Machucambos In Phase 4, Los Machucambos - Qobuz
• Los Machucambos – In Phase 4 – Vinyl (LP, Album, Stereo), 1961 [r5061780] | Discogs
• Los Machucambos - Wikipedia
• cdrdao: cdrdao is a free and open source utility software application for authoring and ripping of audio and data CD-ROMs
• cdrdao-pled: Portable Linux x86_64 pre-built download of the open source CD burning/ripping utility cdrdao that works on all modern Linux distros.
• freac.org: fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders
• k3b: Full-featured CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning and ripping application
• CD writing using cdrecord
• xfburn
• jlesage/docker-xfburn: Docker container for Xfburn
• OpenWrt One
• OpenWrt One Introduction
• Banana Pi OpenWrt One
• Banana Pi OpenWrt One PCBA Router Board
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• mjvc's 2014 nix config
• incus gpu docs
• veyman's immich-frame config
• GitHub - LACT: Linux GPU Configuration Tool
• exislow/tidal-dl-ng: Multithreaded TIDAL Media Downloader Next Generation! Up to HiRes Lossless / TIDAL MAX 24-bit, 192 kHz.
• ebb-earl-co/tidal-wave: Waving at the TIDAL music service
• DXX-Rebirth — DXX-Rebirth is a modern port of the Descent game engine, based on the late D1X and D2X source ports (which, in turn, were based on the original Descent source release and LDescent). The Rebirth Team has spent a lot of time working to improve the source code by fixing old bugs and adding some improvements, while always staying true to our philosophy: Keep it Descent!
• Descent on GOG.COM
• dxx-rebirth on GitHub