LINUX Unplugged

The five most common problems when trying out an immutable Linux distro like NixOS. Plus, why one Linux dev says just target WINE.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• New Flathub Site in Beta - Big Things Coming — [...] next steps are to flesh out the donation infrastructure with the aim to allow app pages to have their own link to donation/purchase.
• Win32 Is The Only Stable ABI on Linux — I think this whole situation shows why creating native games for Linux is challenging. It’s hard to blame developers for targeting Windows and relying on Wine + friends. It’s just much more stable and much less likely to break and stay broken.
• The Offending glibc Commit
• A glibc Bug
• The ABI status of ELF hash tables — If EAC were free software, of course, chances are there would already be a patch circulating to deal with the problem. As it is, only its owner can deal with this problem directly. Meanwhile, though, there is another workaround available: distributors can easily patch the glibc build to restore the DT_HASH section and make the problem go away for now.
• Jupiter JPL Meetup Form
• JB Meetups
• West Coast Crew Matrix Room
• Endless OS — The Endless Operating System is simple and easy for anyone to use. It is fully equipped with essential apps to learn, play, work and connect.
• Different methods to run a non-NixOS executable on NixOS — What are the different methods to run a non-NixOS executable on NixOS? I'd like to see also the manual methods.
• nix-ld: Run unpatched dynamic binaries on NixOS
• vscode with extensions nix package
• vscode FHS compatible
• toolbox-vscode — Toolbox Visual Studio Code integration
• Self-Hosted 67: The No Container Theory — Why Chris is moving away from using Containers, Alex's new project, and some great follow-up.
• Podcasting 2.0 Apps — Grab a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app, and boost into the show.
• Heroic Games Launcher — Heroic is an Open Source GOG and Epic games launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS. Also available on the Steam Deck!
• Heroic Games Launcher | Flathub

Our garage Linux server has died, and this time we’re looking at data loss. We attempt to revive our zombie box and reflect on what went wrong.

Special Guest: Alex Kretzschmar.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Microsoft open-sources over 1,500 of its cute 3D emoji designs for anyone to use
• The NEW Jupiter Broadcasting Website
• Upcoming Jupiter Broadcasting Meetups
• Get your name in the hat for our JPL tour
• LINUX Unplugged 468: The Read Only Scenario
• Operating System development tutorials in Rust on the Raspberry Pi — Learn to write an embedded OS in Rust.
• Podverse — V4V is now available in Podverse F-Droid beta 🥳
• FluffyChat — Open. Nonprofit. Cute. Easy to use (matrix) messenger. Secure and decentralized.
• FluffyChat on Flathub
• FluffyChat in F-Droid
• lrn — Command-line tool for learning by repetition.
• Columbus Club Ohio LinuxFest Matrix Meetup Room

We present a buffet of budget Linux boxes. From $40 to $400 you'll be surprised by what we found. Then we attempt to find the perfect distro for them.

Special Guest: Alex Kretzschmar.

Sponsored By:

• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• 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:

• NASA greenlights two new Mars helicopters and lengthens Perseverance’s resume — Perseverance’s high-flying robotic companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, has inspired the design of two future rotorcraft that would swerve over the Martian terrain to pick up other samples.
• Get your name in the hat for our JPL tour — Join the JB Crew at JPL! We only have 15 spots. Please enter your info, and our happy little python script might just pick your name from the virtual hat.
• Upcoming Jupiter Broadcasting Meetups
• remembertoremember on Twitter — I haven’t really had major Linux woes in a long time and I use new hardware with 4k but always shop with Linux in mind.
• New $160: Beelink MiniS Mini Pc with 11th Gen Processor N5095,8GB DDR4 128GB SSD Mini Desktop Computers
• Acer Switch One SW1-011 Intel Atom x5-Z8300 @ 1.44 GHz 2GB Ram 32GB Storage
• Lenovo IdeaPad 3 14IML05 14" 128GB SSD, Intel Pentium Gold, 2.40GHz, 4GB
• Acer Mini PC Atom x5-Z8300 2Gb RAM 16Gb EMMC WiFi Bluetooth Linux CloudProfessor
• nixos-generators — The nixos-generators project allows to take the same NixOS configuration, and generate outputs for different target formats.
• MinisForum DeskMini UM350 Ryzen Mini PC
• Dell Wyse 5070 thin client
• New Features in Linux Mint 21 ‘Vanessa’ Cinnamon Edition — Linux Mint 21 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2027. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable.
• Linux Mint 21 Released - Built Atop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
• Office Hours 9 — We Hate Crypto Too
• ManageIQ
• Usermode FTP Server on Flathub
• gh4a — Github client for Android
• OctoDroid on F-Droid
• OctoDroid for GitHub
• JB Colony Matrix Meetup Rooms

Is the Linux desktop hard to love? A long-time user experience developer argues it is, and we respond to his criticisms.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• JPL Lottery — Join the JB Crew at JPL! We only have 15 spots. Please enter your info, and our happy little python script might just pick your name from the virtual hat. - If you don't get picked, don't worry. We're having another meetup while we are in town!
• Jupiter Broadcasting - Meetup.com
• London Meetup, Fri, Aug 5, 2022 - Meetup.com
• Google’s in-house desktop Linux - Computerworld — The best-known Google operating system is Chrome OS, but inside Google itself, the company also uses its own Linux desktop distro — gLinux.
• X220 - ThinkWiki — An overview of the ThinkPad X220
• The Linux Desktop is Hard to Love — I want to love the “Linux Desktop”. I really do. But I’ve come to the realization that what I love is the idea of the Linux Desktop. But I just can’t stick with it. I always end up back on macOS. And I’m starting to understand why.
• Run Chrome in Toolbox on Silverblue
• Distrobox — Use any linux distribution inside your terminal. Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with.
• Rclone — Rclone is a command-line program to manage files on cloud storage.
• Cryptomator - Free Cloud Encryption for Dropbox & Co — Cryptomator encrypts your data quickly and easily. Afterwards you upload them protected to your favorite cloud service.
• Cryptomator— Linux Apps on Flathub
• New Podcast Apps

A fundamental change is coming to desktop Linux, and Silverblue might be our hint at where things are going.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Pre-show: PSATA HATs support up to four drives on Raspberry Pi 4 or Rock Pi 4 — Radxa’s Dual ($25) and Quad ($35) SATA HATs work on the Raspberry Pi 4 or Rock Pi 4 at up to 400 MB/s via USB 3.0.
• JPL Lottery — Join the JB Crew at JPL! We only have 15 spots. Please enter your info, and our happy little python script might just pick your name from the virtual hat. - If you don't get picked, don't worry. We're having another meetup while we are in town!
• Fedora Silverblue User Guide — Unlike other operating systems, Silverblue is immutable. This means that every installation is identical to every other installation of the same version. The operating system that is on disk is exactly the same from one machine to the next, and it never changes as it is used.
• Fedora 34 Silverblue on Raspberry Pi 4 / 400de
• RPi4: Raspberry Pi 4 UEFI Firmware Images — This repository contains installable builds of the official EDK2 Raspberry Pi 4 UEFI firmware.
• Self-Hosted 67: The No Container Theory
• Ventoy
• Endless OS
• Fitting Everything Together — TLDR: Hermetic /usr/ is awesome; let's popularize image-based OSes with modernized security properties built around immutability, SecureBoot, TPM2, adaptability, auto-updating, factory reset, uniformity – built from traditional distribution packages, but deployed via images.
• Steam Deck Guide — A guide covering Steam Deck including the applications and tools that will make you a better and more efficient with your Steam Deck device.
• Podcasting 2.0 Apps
• BoostCLI — Command line tool to send and review Podcasting 2.0 Value.
• Podcasting 2.0 Podcast — The Podcast Index presents Podcasting 2.0 - Upgrading Podcasting.
• Podcasting 2.0: “Bells Out” — Adam & Dave discuss the week's developments on podcastindex.org with Chris Fisher from Jupiter Broadcasting.
• Impervious API — Impervious API is a programmatic layer that sits on top of the Bitcoin Lightning Network
• Pick: Audio Sharing — Running Audio Sharing will automatically share the current audio playback in the form of an RTSP stream. This stream can then be played back by other devices, for example using VLC.
• Audio Sharing on Flathub
• Bottles on Flathub — Run Windows software on Linux with Bottles! Our built-in dependency installation system grants automatic software compatibility access. Use the download manager to download the official components: the runner (Wine, Proton), DXVK, dependencies, etc.

We try and bust a common Linux distro myth. Then what surprised Chris about his new Steam Deck.

Sponsored By:

• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.
• 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:

• Pre-show: Microsoft is selling tech pants for $150. — Wait, what are tech pants?
• London Meetup on August 5th at 6pm GMT
• Southern Oregon Meet Up, Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 6:00 PM
• Sacramento Meet Up!, Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 6:00 PM
• Southern California Meet Up, Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 6:00 PM
• Portland Meet Up, Fri, Oct 7, 2022, 6:00 PM
• Steam Deck Tech Specs
• (Video) Steam Deck Teardown — Everything Valve Said Not to Do!
• Chris' Known Good USB C Docking Station
• Boost Pick: Furtherance — Track your time without being tracked.
• Furtherance on Flathub
• Impractical Python Projects
• Understanding all of Python, through its builtins
• Larix Broadcaster
• Pick: Droidcam — DroidCam turns your phone/tablet into a webcam for your PC.
• Droidcam with Linux
• v4l2-loopback

We were fixing servers all night, but at least we have a great story. A special guest joins us to help make a big show announcement.

Special Guest: Tim Canham.

Sponsored By:

• Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices!
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft
• Brunch with Brent: Quentin Stafford-Fraser
• Brunch With Brent: Tim Canham — Brent sits down with Tim Canham, Senior Software Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We explore topics including the hardware and software powering NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter; JPL's switch from Solaris to Linux; the open source projects, tools, and philosophy at JPL, ...and more.
• JPL Free Public Tours
• West Coast Crew Matrix Room
• Jupiter.party - The JB Network Membership
• ptpython — A better Python REPL.
• IPython — A powerful interactive shell.
• bpython
• Jupyter Notebooks
• Nextjournal
• Joe’s minimal implementation of Git ~300 LOC
• Podcasting 2.0 Apps
• Pick: dua-cli — View disk space usage and delete unwanted data, fast.
• dust — A more intuitive version of du in rust.
• parallel-disk-usage — Highly parallelized, blazing fast directory tree analyzer.
• dirstat-rs — (fastest?) disk usage cli, similar to windirstat.
• dutree — a tool to analyze file system usage written in Rust.
• F’ — A Flight Software and Embedded Systems Framework.
• quickemu
• Play webtorrent’s with mpv

The one shared secret behind some of the world's most powerful open-source projects.

Brent's Node : 03cf7e9b79a3230749db642ad690889065ec35b9ded184266d4fce424ab75470fc

Sponsored By:

• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Git from the inside out — The essay focuses on the graph structure that underpins Git and the way the properties of this graph dictate Git’s behavior.
• gitk — The Git repository browser
• ungit — The easiest way to use git. On any platform. Anywhere.
• Trustix — Distributed trust and reproducibility tracking for binary caches
• Kexec and Kdump on Raspberry Pi
• Install NixOS on Oracle Cloud
• Kexec and Kdump on arm64
• An update to Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye — So with this latest release, the default “pi” user is being removed, and instead you will create a user the first time you boot a newly-flashed Raspberry Pi OS image.
• Build a Raspberry Pi Linux System the Hard Way — The instructions below will explain how to build a Linux environment for a Raspberry Pi 3B from scratch, focusing on extreme minimalism. I will build most components from source code and use BusyBox as the only user application on the target.
• NixOS Wiki: NixOS on ARM/Raspberry Pi 4
• Installing NixOS on a Raspberry Pi
• NixOS on ARM/Raspberry Pi
• nixos-pi — How to install NixOS on raspberry PI
• Generating Raspberry Pi Images with NixOS
• NixOS on a Raspberry Pi: creating a custom SD image with OpenSSH out of the box
• nixos-docker-sd-image-builder — Build custom SD images of NixOS for your Raspberry Pi (or any other supported AArch64 device) in 5-20 minutes.
• NixOS + Raspi4
• Installing NixOS on the Raspberry Pi 4
• How to Setup NixOS on a Raspberry Pi
• NixOS on Raspberry Pi 4
• Kernel Support for miscellaneous Binary Formats (binfmt_misc) — The Linux Kernel documentation
• Cross-compiling the Raspberry Pi OS Linux kernel on macOS | Jeff Geerling
• NixOS on ARM
• Cross Compiling - NixOS Wiki
• ARMing Yourself - Working with ARM on x86_64
• Debian Wiki: qemu-user-static
• ARM64/QEMU - Ubuntu Wiki
• Emulating a Raspberry Pi with QEMU
• Emulating ARM on Debian/Ubuntu
• Raspberry Pi Documentation - Remote Access
• Emulating ARM with QEMU on Debian/Ubuntu
• Using QEMU to build arm64 experimental environment
• How to set up an ARM64 playground on Ubuntu 18.04
• Emulating ARM with QEMU on Debian/Ubuntu
• NixOS — tmpfs as root
• Erase your darlings — immutable infrastructure for mutable systems
• Umbrel — A personal server OS for self-hosting
• Umbrel Troubleshooting Guide
• JB London Meetup — August 5th 6pm, Jubilee Park & Garden
• Home Manager Manual — This manual will eventually describe how to install, use, and extend Home Manager.
• Tutorial: Getting started with Home Manager for Nix
• Merkle Tree
• Git Book - Git Internals
• Commits are snapshots, not diffs - The GitHub Blog — I believe that Git becomes understandable if we peel back the curtain and look at how Git stores your repository data. After we investigate this model, we’ll explore how this new perspective helps us understand commands like git cherry-pick and git rebase.
• Fear Not The SHA! - Git Internals - YouTube
• Git Internals by John Britton of GitHub - CS50 Tech Talk - YouTube
• Merkle tree in Bitcoin - BitcoinWiki
• Merkle Tree with real world examples - YouTube
• What is the merkle tree in Bitcoin? - YouTube
• OpenMPTCProuter — Internet connection bonding
• Podverse — NEW: Embed a Podverse player on your website! 🥳
• Nebula v1.6.0 — Experimental: nebula clients can be configured to act as relays for other nebula clients. Primarily useful when stubborn NATs make a direct tunnel impossible.

We're going back in time to witness the early days of a critical tool to build Linux, then jump forward 15 years and join our buddy Brent on his journey to learn that very tooling.

Sponsored By:

• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• WSL 2 distros are now supported on Windows Server
• Ten SpaceX Starlink Updates
• Dish calls out Elon Musk for tweets about Starlink and RVs, planes
• Dish begs FCC to deactivate Starlink setups used in moving vehicles
• SpaceX: Starlink Risks Becoming ‘Unusable’ If Dish Gets 12GHz Spectrum
• JB London Meetup - Aug 5 “6pm London time”
• London Colony Meetup - Matrix chat room
• Linode Guides — Migrate a PostgreSQL Database to a Managed Database
• Tech Talk: 2007 Linus Torvalds on git
• Oh My Git! — An open source game about learning Git!
• Getting started with Git: Terminology 101
• Tech With Tim - Git And GitHub in ~30 Minutes
• JB GitHub - Website Rebuild Ideas & Explorations · Discussion #8
• Git Tutorial for Beginners - Git & GitHub Fundamentals In Depth
• Cleanup by Brent · Pull Request #29
• GitKraken
• awesome-git — A curated list of amazingly awesome Git tools, resources and shiny things.
• ungit — The easiest way to use git. On any platform. Anywhere.
• Hugo: The world’s fastest framework for building websites
• Celebrating 15 years of Git — An interview with Git maintainer Junio Hamano
• Brunch with Brent: Quentin Stafford-Fraser — Brent sits down with Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser, computer scientist, serial-entrepreneur, inventor (perhaps) of the webcam, Augmented Reality Ph.D. who ran the very first web server at the University of Cambridge, among much more.
• Office Hours 6: Peer to Peer Future — Interview with Mitch Downey, co-founder of Podverse.
• Fountain 0.4.0 — Listen to Earn, Promotions & Paid Likes
• gpodder.net — gpodder.net is a libre web service that allows you to manage your podcast subscriptions and discover new content. If you use multiple devices, you can synchronize subscriptions and your listening progress.
• Source for gpodder.net
• GPodder Sync in the Nextcloud App Store
• Podverse: Podcasting 2.0 certified player for Android, F-Droid, iOS, and the web.
• [Album] The New Deal
• TinyPilotKVM: Control any computer remotely.

One of the pioneers of the web, VNC, Webcams, and more joins us; plus we'll update you on a few projects we love.

Special Guest: Quentin Stafford-Fraser.

Sponsored By:

• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.
• Bitwarden: Bitwarden is the easiest way for businesses and individuals to store, share, and sync sensitive data.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Brunch with Brent: Quentin Stafford-Fraser - Jupiter Extras — Brent sits down with Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser, computer scientist, serial-entrepreneur, inventor (perhaps) of the webcam, Augmented Reality Ph.D. who ran the very first web server at the University of Cambridge, among much more. We explore topics including computer science as an art-form, the origins of the Raspberry Pi and T9 predictive text, philosophies around innovation and invention, challenging the patent system, and more.
• JB London Meetup
• DNS Toys — A DNS server that takes creative liberties with the DNS protocol to offer handy utilities and services that are easily accessible via the command line.
• Mars helicopter needs patch to work around failed sensor — The patch inserts a small code snippet into the software running on Ingenuity's flight computer, intercepting incoming garbage packets from the inclinometer and injecting replacement packets constructed from IMU data.
• Software upgrades help Mars helicopter keep flying
• Umbrel 0.5 — Umbrel 0.5 brings the very first redesign of Umbrel’s UI since we launched. We went back to the drawing board to design a completely new homepage, a refreshed UI with beautifully crafted glass-like elements, a new dock-based layout, and the option to pick and choose from one of the 16 gorgeous, hand-curated wallpapers. And, of course, there’s a dark mode.
• Dr Quentin Stafford-Fraser's Website — I’m a computer scientist, entrepreneur, part-time academic and full-time gadget enthusiast based in Cambridge, England.
• Quentin Stafford-Fraser's Blog
• Jellyfin 10.8.0 has been released!
• Jellyfin Release v10.8.0 — After a rather long development cycle the Jellyfin team is proud to announce stable version 10.8! This release post will mostly cover the highlights with little prose, as there is so much to cover!
• nix-bitcoin — A collection of Nix packages and NixOS modules for easily installing full-featured Bitcoin nodes with an emphasis on security.