LINUX Unplugged

How we nearly crashed our Matrix server; what we did wrong and how we're fixing it.

Plus an update on elementary OS, GNOME's next chapter, and we kick off the NixOS Challenge.

Special Guest: Danielle Foré.

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• 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.

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Links:

• I made this bash script to build Linux from Scratch automatically.
• JB Meetup
• Farewell, elementary
• Livestream with Danielle Foré
• Plans for GNOME 43 and Beyond – Chris’s Design & Development — Since we’re right on the heels of a release, I want to keep some momentum going and share my plans for features I want to implement during the upcoming release cycles.
• Fractal
• GNOME Weather
• Various things in the GNOME ecosystem
• Synapse Workers Docs
• Understanding Synapse Through Grafana Graphs
• Jupiter Extras: March Boost Battle
• Fountain.FM — Share podcast clips and support creators with Bitcoin.
• Nix Expression Language
• NixOS Manual
• Nix Nerds Matrix channel
• nixpkgs
• NixOS Challenge - Jupiter Broadcasting GitHub
• osmbtc.org — OSM BTC is an open Fund initiative which has a primary goal to support OpenStreetMap contributors by small donations via Bitcoin.
• UserLAnd — UserLAnd is an open-source app which allows you to run several Linux distributions like Ubuntu.
• CypherpunkArmory/UserLAnd — Main UserLAnd Repository
• Termux — Terminal emulator and Linux environment for Android.

We explore what makes NixOS so powerful, and why it might be the future of all Linux distributions.

Plus we announce a community-wide NixOS challenge for the month of April.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• JB Meetups
• NixOS Wiki
• NixOS Manual
• Nix - Introduction
• Cheatsheet - NixOS Wiki
• What Is Nix — Developer Tooling
• Nix Pills
• NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems
• NixOS Package Search
• Consolidation in podcasting: happening fast
• BeardedTek-com/fEVR — frigate Event Video Recorder.

Why GNOME 42 is the release we’ve all been waiting for.

Plus, we attempt to install Linux on an M1 MacBook live on the show.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Jupiter Broadcasting East Coast Meetup
• The first Asahi Linux Alpha Release is here! — It’s been a long while since we updated the blog! Truth be told, we wanted to write a couple more progress reports, but there was always “one more thing”… So, instead, we decided to take the plunge and publish the first public alpha release of the Asahi Linux reference distribution!
• Introduction to Apple Silicon · AsahiLinux/docs Wiki
• OpenBSD/arm64 on Apple M1 systems — It has taken a while, but I'm pleased to announce that OpenBSD/arm64 works well enough on Apple M1 systems for some wider testing.
• The Best New Features in GNOME 42 — GNOME 42 features a plethora of GTK4/libawaita app ports, intros a retooled screenshot experience, and makes several notable performance upticks.
• A look at what’s new in GNOME 42
• GNOME MR - Dynamic triple/double buffering (v4) — Use triple buffering if and when the previous frame is running late. This means the next frame will be dispatched on time instead of also starting late.
• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS To Carry GNOME Triple Buffering Support
• GNOME Dynamic Triple Buffering Can 2x The Desktop Performance For Intel Graphics, Raspberry Pi
• Port Extensions to GNOME Shell 42
• Fountain 0.3.10 — Fountain transcribes each episode so you can easily create and edit clips. With Fountain 0.3.10 we've introduced better transcription accuracy and faster processing speeds.
• AntennaPod 2.5 — The key feature that we added in this release? That would be synchronisation with “GPodder Sync” app for Nextcloud, implemented by @thrillfall.
• AntennaPod Issue - Support for podcast:value

How each of us asks for features and help from free software projects, and one of our most prescient soapboxes in a while.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Jupiter Broadcasting East Coast Meetup — Saturday, Apr 9, 2022 · 3:00 PM EDT
• Obsidian — Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
• How To ADHD — Those of us with ADHD have brains that work differently, which means we need to work differently.
• Onion Share — OnionShare is an open source tool that lets you securely and anonymously share files, host websites, and chat with friends using the Tor network.
• OnionShare on Flathub
• Kevin Rooke on Twitter — 5,000 podcasts are now on the Lightning Network. 4.2 million to go.⚡️
• Heroic Games Launcher on Flathub — An Open Source GOG and Epic Games Launcher.
• Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish testing week
• Ubuntu ISO Testing Tracker
• New Podcast Apps — The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.
• The Pomp Podcast — What is the Lightning Network?
• What’s in a Boostagram?
• How the Lightning Network is Innovating Podcasting — Podcast Index allows podcasters to add their podcast and connect your podcast to your own node, or use their service and they run a node for you. Users can set a specific sats per minute to listen, and the content creators stream payment by sats.
• Fountain Podcast App
• BoostCLI — Command line tool to send and review Podcasting 2.0 Value.
• LINUX Unplugged on Podcastindex.org

We surprise each other with three different topics, hidden away by encryption in our show notes - we literally have no idea what we're talking about this week.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Jupiter Broadcasting East Coast Meetup
• trilium — Build your personal knowledge base with Trilium Notes.
• pytest-asyncio — Pytest support for asyncio.
• hypothesis — Hypothesis is a powerful, flexible, and easy to use library for property-based testing.
• brainfuck
• Brainfuck Interpreter
• Brainfuck text generator
• youtube-dl-server — Web / REST interface for downloading youtube videos onto a server.
• alltube — Web GUI for youtube-dl
• BookStack
• linuxserver/bookstack - Docker Image
• Raneto — A free, open, simple Markdown powered Knowledgebase for Nodejs
• Plex-Meta-Manager — Python script to update metadata information for items in plex as well as automatically build collections and playlists. The Wiki Documentation is linked below.
• linuxserver/plex-meta-manager - Docker Image
• Heimdall Application Dashboard
• linuxserver/heimdall - Docker Image
• Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish testing week currently
• Snowflake
• Start9 | Sovereign Computing
• Steganography deep-dive
• Steganography tools

We look at two new options that enable ANYONE to run a personal server at home or a small business.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Jupiter Broadcasting East Coast Meetup — Saturday, April 9, 2022
• Self-Hosted 65: Failing at Scale — Alex gives the new TrueNAS SCALE a go and hits a snag. Plus the future Home Assistant update that has Chris so concerned he might stop updating forever.
• Umbrel — a personal server for everyone — Run your personal server with a Bitcoin and Lightning node in your home, self-host open source apps like Nextcloud and Matrix to break away from big tech, and take full control of your data. For free.
• Ukraine / Україна on Twitter — Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations.
• Ukraine Solicits BTC, ETH, USDT Crypto Donations After Russian Invasion
• Tutorial — Change Umbrel docker compose to point to block storage.
• Writeup of Umbrel Security Tradeoffs
• Node hardening
• Umbrel troubleshooting
• Everything you need to know about Umbrel’s new license
• Value 4 Value Calculator
• BoostCLI — Command line tool to send and review Podcasting 2.0 Value
• BoostBots — Bots which posts Booots.
• Breez — Lightning Fast Bitcoin Payments

We put the sports car of Linux laptops to the test. Is it the multi-tasking machine it claims to be?

And an essential update on the show.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Kudu from System76 — Enjoy fast, steady progression with the Kudu’s powerful H-class AMD processor. The Kudu laptop is equipped to handle longer sessions so you can taste the victory of beating your schedule.
• Kudu (kudu6) - System76 Technical Documentation
• Internal Overview - System76 Technical Documentation
• MBP M1 Max Machine Learning, Sys76-kudu-ML Benchmark Comparison
• Sys76-kudu-amd, Sys76-kudu-nv Benchmark Comparison
• Value 4 Value Calculator
• Pick: Spodcast — Spodcast is a caching Spotify podcast to RSS proxy. Using Spodcast you can follow Spotify-hosted netcasts/podcasts using any player which supports RSS, thus enabling the use of older hardware which is not compatible with the Spotify (web) app.
• Pick: hwatch — A modern alternative to the watch command, that records the result of command execution and can display history and diffs.
• Pick: rnote — A simple drawing application to create handwritten notes.
• Pick: dog dns client — dog is an open-source DNS client for the command-line. It has colourful output, supports the DoT and DoH protocols, and can emit JSON.

Linux is the master of small computers, and this week it’s going to the next level. We chat with the creator of the $15 Linux box and share some significant updates for the Raspberry Pi.

Special Guest: Brian Benchoff.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Raspberry Pi Locator — It's a website to track Raspberry Pi 4 model B, Compute Module 4, Pi Zero 2 W, and Pico availability across multiple retailers in different countries.
• It’s dire: Raspberry Pi availability tracker is launched
• Ubuntu Unity Remix on Twitter — A new Raspberry Pi testing image is now available for Ubuntu Unity 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish”.
• No PC Needed: How to Install Raspberry Pi OS Over the Internet — A new version of the Raspberry Pi bootloader, which is now available in beta, allows you to download and write the OS onto a microSD card, using the BIOS and an Ethernet connection.
• Raspberry Pi OS Finally Going 64bit 🔥 — For those curious, here are some benchmarks looking at the performance improvement by switching from Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit to 64-bit.
• Self-Hosted 3: Home Network Under $200 — How far can you get with a Raspberry Pi 4? We go all in and find out.
• Self-Hosted 38: Crouching Pi, Hidden Server — Alex shocks Chris with his latest project, then lays down some quick-fire picks.
• A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15 — This is a ‘Linux Swiss Army Knife’, offering maximum utility while still being able to fit in your pocket. Is it fast? No. Can it run a GUI? Also no. But it can run scripts, ping a server, toggle a few GPIOs, and interact with a USB device. This is a minimum viable computer.
• LINUX Unplugged Mumble
• RPMLauncher — A better Minecraft Launcher that supports multiple platforms and many functionalities for you to explore!
• RPMLauncher on Flathub

There's just something off about Ubuntu these days, this week we put it all together.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Ubuntu MATE 22.04 Will Include Flatpak Support by Default — Ubuntu MATE isn’t shipping the Flathub repo (like Flathub) preconfigured, or bundling in any Flatpak apps by default. There are also no plans at present to add or expose Flatpak-friendly features in the distro’s homegrown tools like Software Boutique.
• Ubuntu 22.04 Dailies Show an Ubuntu Pro Notification on Login — The blurb mentions that Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 3 machines.
• Linux Desktop Gaming Product Manager
• Kismet — A wireless network and device detector, sniffer, wardriving tool, and WIDS (wireless intrusion detection) framework.
• Slackware Release Announcement — Well folks, in spite of the dire predictions of YouTube pundits, this morning the Slackhog emerged from its development den, did *not* see its shadow, and Slackware 15.0 has been officially released.
• Slackware 15.0 Officially Released, Powered by Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS
• Grub Init Tune: Mario Bros. Mushroom Powerup
• Grub tune tester v0.5.0
• A collection of GRUB init tunes

We all take it for granted, but it is one of the best things about Linux. We share the history of the live CD, how it all got started, and the times it saved our bacon.

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.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Linux Live Kit is a set of shell scripts which allows you to create your own Live Linux!
• K3b — K3b was created to be a feature-rich and easy to handle CD burning application.
• Finnix — Finnix is the original utility live Linux distribution. Write it to a USB flash drive or burn it to a CD, boot it, and you're seconds from a root prompt with hundreds of utilities available for recovery, maintenance, testing and more.
• Finnix 123 released
• Cluster Knoppix
• Richard Brown on Twitter — Rebrand and rescope; Old expanded support was just RHEL and just for purpose of holding customers over until they migrated to SLE; Liberty includes CentOS and Leap, and doesn’t require customers to move to SLE.
• sc-im — Spreadsheet Calculator Improvised – An ncurses spreadsheet program for terminal.