LINUX Unplugged

We try out what might be the most fun Linux distribution around. It started as a laugh, but now we’re in love.

Plus, the reunion road trip hits a bump, some community news, feedback, picks, and more.

Special Guest: Brent Gervais.

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.
• A Cloud Guru: Students will install and configure various use cases for Apache, Squid, and NGINX, including virtual hosts, proxy and reverse proxy servers, HTTPS/SSL, and load balancing. We’ll also discuss how to collect Apache metrics, as well as the differences between Apache and NGINX.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• The Light Phone — The Light Phone II is a premium, minimal phone. It will never have social media, clickbait news, email, an internet browser, or any other anxiety-inducing infinite feed.
• Ingenuity Is So Good, NASA’s Mars Helicopter Mission Just Got an Exciting Update — Given its stunning and unexpected success, NASA has extended Ingenuity's mission indefinitely.
• KDE’s Plasma Wayland Session Is “Finally Reaching Stability” Following Many Fixes — "Gazillions of bugfixes...Including many for the Plasma Wayland session! It’s finally reaching stability. I know it’s taken a while, but I think we’re very nearly there!"
• This week in KDE: gazillions of bugfixes
• Nftables reaches 1.0 — The release of nftables 1.0.0 can be seen as a signal that it is time for the laggards to get more serious about making the switch. While it is hard to imagine iptables support being removed anytime soon, it's rather easier to foresee that enthusiasm for maintaining it will continue to wane. It only took 13 years, but this transition finally appears to be heading into its final stage.
• nftables wiki
• Garuda Linux — Garuda Linux is a rolling release distro based on Arch Linux, which ensures always getting the latest software updates.
• Garuda Whoogle
• Garuda Startpage
• Stickers | Jupiter Broadcasting Garage Sale
• Pick: yt-dlp — A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes.
• Pick: ytmdl — A simple app to get songs from YouTube in mp3 format with artist name, album name etc from sources like iTunes, Spotify, LastFM, Deezer, Gaana etc.

A surprise server outage at the studio requires we jump into action with a few last-minute solutions and deploy one of our favorite open-source tools.

Plus some community news, handy picks, emails, and more. It's a special edition of the Unplugged show.

Special Guest: Brent Gervais.

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.
• New JB Stickers: Own a bit of Jupiter Broadcasting history, while making way for the new!
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• SCO v. IBM settlement deal is done — Documents filed in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware last week suggest a settlement payment of just $14.25 million will see the matter closed.
• ChrisLAS on Twitter — "My spot to record in Arizona today."
• Ventoy Adds a Web GUI — Ventoy now ships with a web-based graphical user interface since version 1.0.36.
• Ventoy — Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
• “Apps For GNOME” Launches To Highlight GNOME Apps — There hasn't been a comprehensive, modern, user-friendly web-site for outlining all of the GNOME apps and inviting participation until now with this Apps for GNOME.
• Apps for GNOME — Discover the best Apps for GNOME.
• nebula — A scalable overlay networking tool with a focus on performance, simplicity and security.
• TheOrangeOne's Blog — Nebula mesh network - an introduction.
• Jon the Nice Guy's Blog — Nebula Offline Certificate Management with a Raspberry Pi using Bash.
• Nebula-Cert-Maker — A script that allows you to create new host certificates and keys.
• Gardiner Bryant on YouTube — I wasn't prepared for how much growth System76 has experienced in the year and a half since my last visit.
• Stickers | Jupiter Broadcasting Garage Sale
• Pick: psst — Fast and multi-platform Spotify client with native GUI.

We share some stories from our Denver meetup, the strange reason we found ourselves at a golf course, and some news you should know.

Special Guest: Brent Gervais.

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.
• New JB Stickers: Own a bit of Jupiter Broadcasting history, while making way for the new!
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Brent Gervais on Twitter
• Stickers | Jupiter Broadcasting Garage Sale
• JB Telegram
• Razer bug lets you become a Windows 10 admin by plugging in a mouse
• jonhat on Twitter — Need local admin and have physical access? Plug a Razer mouse (or the dongle), windows Update will download and execute RazerInstaller as SYSTEM, then abuse elevated Explorer to open Powershell with Shift+Right click.
• Join us for dinner 4:30 local time at TheViewHouse in Colorado Springs
• Btrfs Set To Land Support For IDMAPPED Mounts In Linux 5.15 — Back when IDMAPPED mounts functionality was added to the Linux kernel, the initial implementation came for FAT and EXT4. XFS support has also been in the works while now for Linux 5.15 the Btrfs support appears ready.
• IDMAPPED Mounts Aim For Linux 5.12 - Many New Use-Cases From Containers To Systemd-Homed — Idmapped mounts make it possible to easily share files between multiple users or multiple machines especially in complex scenarios. For example, idmapped mounts will be used in the implementation of portable home directories in systemd-homed.service(8) where they allow users to move their home directory to an external storage device and use it on multiple computers where they are assigned different uids and gids.
• FOSDEM 2021 - Idmapped Mounts
• brauner/mount-idmapped — Helper utility to use IDMAPPED mounts until upstream support exists.
• Ubuntu 21.10 Systemd To Finally Ship With Cgroup v2 By Default — Ubuntu has been sticking to the legacy cgroup v1 hierarchy because their prized Snap support hasn't supported Cgroup v2. Upstream Snap still doesn't have the support yet but there are patches pending that are still expected to be merged this cycle.
• Fedora 35 To Support Restarting User Services On Package Upgrades — What this ultimately means is that user services like PipeWire can seamlessly restart when upgrading them via Fedora RPM updates rather than needing to manually do so or restarting the system for the upgrade to take effect.

Live from Denver, we chat with old friends and new. We get the inside scope on what has been going on at System76, and what's coming up next.

Plus we catch up with a few members of our crew, and find out what Linux tech they're loving these days.

Special Guests: Aaron Honeycutt, Alex Kretzschmar, Brent Gervais, Carl Richell, Cassidy James Blaede, chzbacon, and Ian Santopietro.

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.
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Gadgetbridge for android — Gadgetbridge is an Android (4.4+) application which will allow you to use your Pebble, Mi Band, Amazfit Bip and HPlus device (and more) without the vendor's closed source application and without the need to create an account and transmit any of your data to the vendor's servers.
• tldr: Collaborative cheatsheets for console commands — The tldr-pages project is a collection of community-maintained help pages for command-line tools, that aims to be a simpler, more approachable complement to traditional man pages.
• Energy Management in Home Assistant — Today’s release of Home Assistant Core 2021.8 contains a new energy dashboard. The goal is to make it super easy for users to get insight into their energy usage.
• Death of man pages? — "I'm seeing a sad pattern lately. Software for Linux is being distributed for Linux as containers such as flatpaks, appimages, etc. or as straight binaries but the documentation that come with these formats in very limited or non-existent. I've also not seen any applications distributed this way contain man pages."
• Jupiter Broadcasting Garage Sale Stickers

Big things are happening in the world of WireGuard, Jim Salter joins to catch us up.

Plus we chat with Daniel Foré and Cassidy James Blaede about the just released elementary OS 6.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais, Cassidy James Blaede, Danielle Foré, and Jim Salter.

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.
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Denver Meetup
• Jupiter Garage Stickers
• JB Telegram Group
• Principal Software Engineer in Redmond, Washington, United States
• elementary OS 6 Odin Available Now — It’s been a long road to elementary OS 6 but it’s finally here. elementary OS 6 Odin is available to download now. And it’s the biggest update to the platform yet!
• Valve working with AMD to support Windows 11 on Steam Deck — “There’s work looking at TPM just now. We’ve focused so much on Windows 10, so far, that we haven’t really gotten that far into it. Our expectation is that we can meet that.”
• Valve dumped Debian Linux for Arch Linux with SteamOS 3 because surprise - faster updates — "We were making a bunch of updates and changes to specifically make sure that things work well for Steam deck, and Arch just ended up being a better choice for them."
• Web UIs for WireGuard That Make Configuration Easier
• wireguard-manager — wireguard-manager enables you to build your own vpn under a minute.
• easy-wg-quick — Creates Wireguard configuration for hub and peers with ease.
• wg-manage — An awesome command-line tool to manage Wireguard configurations.
• dsnet — Simple command to manage a centralised wireguard VPN. Think wg-quick but quicker: key generation + address allocation.
• dsnet-gui — A simple gui for dsnet.
• subspace — A simple WireGuard VPN server GUI.
• subspacecommunity/subspace — A fork of the simple WireGuard VPN server GUI community maintained.
• wg-ui — WireGuard Web UI for self-serve client configurations, with optional auth.
• wireguard-ui — Wireguard web interface.
• wg-easy — The easiest way to run WireGuard VPN + Web-based Admin UI.
• drago — Securely connect anything with WireGuard® and manage all your networks from a single place.
• WireGuard Home Assistant Community Add-on — WireGuard is pretty simple, however, can be quite complex for user that isn't familiar with all terminology used. The add-on takes care of a lot of things for you (if you want).
• autowire — Automatically configure Wireguard interfaces in distributed system. It supports Consul as backend.
• wiresteward — Wireguard peer manager with OAuth2.
• wireguard-p2p — A tool for setting up WireGuard connections from peer to peer.
• wesher — Wireguard overlay mesh network manager.
• netmaker — Netmaker is a platform for creating and managing fast, secure, and dynamic virtual overlay networks using WireGuard.
• wiretrustee — Connect your devices into a single secure private WireGuard®-based mesh network.
• headscale — An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.
• innernet — A private network system that uses WireGuard under the hood.
• Pro Custodibus — Pro Custodibus is a SaaS with a web GUI that makes it easy to add users and devices to WireGuard VPNs, manage their configuration, and monitor their usage.
• New WireGuardNT shatters throughput ceilings on Windows — The WireGuard VPN project announced a major milestone for its Windows users today—an all-new, kernel-mode implementation of the VPN protocol called WireGuardNT. The new implementation allows for massively improved throughput on 10Gbps LAN connections—and on many WI-Fi connections, as well.
• 2.5 Admins
• JingPad A1 (DVT) review, part 1
• PIck: ethr — Ethr is a Comprehensive Network Measurement Tool for TCP, UDP & ICMP.

Yabba Dabba Distro! Run every major distribution on one native host. How we hijacked a Fedora install and turned it into the ultimate meta Linux box.

Plus Valve and AMD team up to improve Linux performance and the duct-tape solution holding our server together.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais and paradigm.

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.
• New JB Stickers: We've got new high-res stickers in the Garage, grab more than one and the shipping savings is NICE.
• A Cloud Guru: This course is designed to be a deep dive into the topic of systemd, the most widely used service management scheme in Linux today.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Jupiter Broadcasting Garage Sale Stickers
• Salt Lake City Meetup
• Denver Meetup Meetup
• AMD + Valve Working On New Linux CPU Performance Scaling Design — Along with other optimizations to benefit the Steam Deck, AMD and Valve have been jointly working on CPU frequency/power scaling improvements to enhance the Steam Play gaming experience on modern AMD platforms running Linux.
• Linux has finally hit that almost mythical 1% user share on Steam again — If we take how many monthly active users Steam has which Valve reported at over 120 million at the start of this year, that would give us an estimated 1,204,000 monthly active Linux users on Steam.
• Watch Ingenuity explore intriguing Raised Ridges in new video
• Chris Hijacks Fedora 34 (Image Gallery)
• Bedrock Linux — Bedrock Linux is a meta Linux distribution which allows users to mix-and-match components from other, typically incompatible distributions. Bedrock integrates these components into one largely cohesive system.
• Bedrock Linux: Frequently Asked Questions
• Linux Action Show 316 — Introducing Bedrock Linux
• Bedrock Linux presentation at Ohio Linuxfest 2012
• Chris Fisher on Twitter — I joined the @latenightlinux boys to cover my @syncthing setup that just hit the two-year mark, and we chat a little @teamsilverblue, the problem of OSS grifting, and more.
• JB Telegram
• JB Mumble
• Pick: imgdupes — Find and delete near-duplicate images based on a perceptual hash.

We try to pull off a show while recovering from an epic server crash. Then we build the ultimate remote Linux desktop—in the cloud!

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.
• Entropy: 15% off your first project a mobile app, a web app, a Linux app, anything! Promo Code: LUP13
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Live Starlink Satellite Map
• Salt Lake City Meetup
• Denver Meetup Meetup
• Framework Laptop review: pick your ports — In other words, upgradability is the reason to buy the Framework laptop.
• Latest Framework Laptop DIY Edition/Linux topics — Setup guides, advice, troubleshooting, and more, for those of us who use Linux-based Operating Systems on our Framework Laptops.
• Which Linux distribution do you want to use on your Framework Laptop?
• [Video] A COMPLETELY Upgradeable Laptop?
• Framework: The Touchpad and Fingerprint Reader — If you’re a Linux user, we’ve got you covered too! Our firmware lead Kieran submitted a patch to libfprint, and support is making its way into various distributions to be able to work automatically.
• FreeBSD Working On A New Installer, Updates To Their Linux Compatibility Layer — A variety of improvements to FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer for running Linux binaries on FreeBSD.
• Gaming sessions on Steam Deck are run via gamescope, a Wayland compositor — This also suggests that SteamOS 3.0 requires Vulkan, and specifically support for async compute.
• Element raises $30M to boost Matrix — Element, the startup founded by the team who created Matrix, just raised $30M of Series B funding in order to further accelerate Matrix development and improve Element, the flagship Matrix app.
• Webtop — Alpine and Ubuntu based containers containing full desktop environments in officially supported flavors accessible via any modern web browser.
• LinuxServer.io: Meet Webtops A Linux Desktop Environment In Your Browser — A lot of different Docker GUI solutions exist today, but what we always found is they were just missing some common sense stuff.
• Webtop - Running Linux Desktop inside a Container in the Browser
• JingOS — Future Mobile OS based on Linux
• Chris Fisher on Twitter — I joined the @latenightlinux boys to cover my @syncthing setup that just hit the two-year mark, and we chat a little @teamsilverblue, the problem of OSS grifting, and more.
• JB Telegram
• PIck: docker-wine — Docker image that includes Wine and Winetricks for running Windows applications on Linux and macOS

Could the Steam Deck mean fewer native Linux games? We chat with prolific game developer Ethan Lee and get his perspective on the negative impacts of the Deck.

Plus, our thoughts on how Valve might successfully ship Arch to consumers, a batch of feedback, and more.

Special Guest: Ethan Lee.

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.
• Entropy: 15% off your first project a mobile app, a web app, a Linux app, anything! Promo Code: LUP13
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• CBL-Mariner Stories
• microsoft/CBL-Mariner — Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge appliances
• Linux Action News 186
• Ethan Lee on Twitter — "If you have released a Linux version of your game on Steam and are directly approached by Valve about using Proton instead, please get in touch (DMs open). They’ve already done this a few times, but I would like to see how aggressive they’re planning to be going forward."
• Ethan “flibitijibibo” Lee May Retire from Programming Due to Valve’s Proton
• Destination Linux 235 — Valve’s Steam Deck & Right To Repair Goes Mainstream
• Rocky and Gred Spin BS to avoid coming on LUP
• I agree with Johnny Hughes - CentOS Project dev and Board Member - if Stream does not do the job - Alma seems like the way to go
• Jupiter Broadcasting Meetup(s)
• Salt Lake City Meetup
• Denver Meetup
• JB Telegram
• Pick: Hotwire — Hotwire allows you to study network traffic of a few popular protocols in a simple way
• Hotwire Screenshot
• Pick: RustScan — 🤖 The Modern Port Scanner 🤖
• RustScan Screenshot
• “Head of Strategy” of Muse Group (Muse Score, Audacity, Ultimate Guitar) continues to threaten developer in public

Have you noticed the Linux news has gotten a little weird? Michael Tunnell joins us to break down the changes we've observed over the last year.

Plus, we set up private and secure location tracking and tell you how and why.

Special Guest: Michael Tunnell.

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.
• Entropy: 15% off your first project a mobile app, a web app, a Linux app, anything! Promo Code: LUP13
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• NASA is mapping out plans for bigger, more capable Mars helicopters — One concept is the Mars Science Helicopter, advocated as a way to greatly expand the exploration zone on Mars — including possible deep dives into Red Planet caves.
• This Week in Linux - TuxDigital — This Week in Linux is a weekly news show that covers the latest news in the world of Linux. We cover a wide variety of topics from application / distro releases to Linux Gaming and even news about core system items like the Linux kernel itself.
• Destination Linux Network — DLN is a media network powered by Linux & Open Source designed to bring passionate creators together to spread our love of open-source, technology, and Linux.
• Salt Lake City Meetup
• Denver Meetup Meetup
• Colony Tracker . LIVE — Track the Colony and join us for Micro Meetups!
• OwnTracks — OwnTracks allows you to keep track of your own location. You can build your private location diary or share it with your family and friends. OwnTracks is open-source and uses open protocols for communication so you can be sure your data stays secure and private.
• What it does - OwnTracks Booklet
• HTTP - OwnTracks Booklet
• Example: OwnTracks recorder in a container on Fedora with Let’s Encrypt and nginx
• Installing Owntracks recorder on FreeBSD – Dan Langille’s Other Diary
• Rocky and Gred Spin BS to avoid coming on LUP
• Current sitting CentOS Board Member Recomends People use AlmaLinux — Hey guys .. Igor and all .. I want to wish you all the very best. And for anyone out there who wants to move from CentOS Linux 8 to another downstream RHEL community build , this is the definitely the one I would recommend. I have known the Cloud Linux team for a while .. and I very much trust them.
• IRC Transcript from LUP 413
• Greg was too busy talking to the Reg to come on the show
• Feedback: Michael Staggs on Twitter — @ChrisLAS You mentioned recommending Deepin to new users. I know in current political climate, China and security are hotbutton issues, but I don't feel we can give Deepin a pass on security. So bad that OpenSUSE audit team won't audit them anymore.
• Portal:Deepin/Security Issues
• Jupiter Broadcasting Meetup(s)
• JB Telegram
• JB Mumble

Linux server admins don't know where to turn next; how the cult of personality might be shaping Linux's most important market.

Special Guest: Jack Aboutboul.

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.
• Entropy: 15% off your first project a mobile app, a web app, a Linux app, anything! Promo Code: LUP13
• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• name cannot be blank on Twitter — "The Linux Foundation announced a game engine, the build instructions are only for Windows 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️”
• Linux Foundation to Form New Open 3D Foundation
• IBM President and former Red Hat boss Jim Whitehurst quits — The CEO said Whitehurst had "played a pivotal role in the IBM and Red Hat integration" and was "instrumental in articulating IBM’s strategy" but alas "Jim has decided to step down".
• (YouTube) What I learned from giving up everything I knew as a leader | Jim Whitehurst | TED Institute
• Salt Lake City Meetup
• Denver Meetup Meetup
• Rocky Linux Community Update — After seven months of long, hard work, we are beyond excited to announce that Rocky Linux 8.4 has reached General Availability for x86_64 and aarch64!
• SpecialInterestGroup/Hyperscale - CentOS Wiki — The Hyperscale SIG will focus on enabling CentOS Stream deployment on large-scale infrastructures and facilitating collaboration on packages and tooling.
• Events/Dojo/May2021 - CentOS Wiki
• dotnet/maui — .NET MAUI is the .NET Multi-platform App UI, a framework for building native device applications spanning mobile, tablet, and desktop.
• Stack from Rocky Bows out of Responding