LINUX Unplugged

Which distro is best for friends and family? We have a unique take on this common question.

Plus new insights into the future of CentOS, and Chris falls in love with a 14-inch screamer.

Special Guest: Carl George.

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.
• Datadog: Datadog - the unified monitoring and analytics platform for comprehensive visibility into cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
• 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:

• The unanswered question at CentOS community Q&A: How can we trust you now? — The CentOS board conducted a public Q&A just ahead of last week's FOSDEM 2021 open source conference – and there was an awkward silence when someone asked whether changing the end-of-life (EOL) date for a released project is something that might happen again.
• Events/Dojo/FOSDEM2021 - CentOS Wiki
• CentOS Dojo 2021: Board of Directors - YouTube
• Ubuntu Backports a Major App Update to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS — Ubuntu 20.04 LTS shipped with Thunderbird 68.x but this version is no longer supported upstream. This leaves Ubuntu developers will a problem: backport individual security fixes to Thunderbird 68, or port the newer (and still-supported) Thunderbird 78 to LTS users?
• Subscribe to Coder Radio
• Jupiter Broadcasting Telegram Channel
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• EndeavourOS Issues First 2021 Release For Easy-To-Use Arch-Based Linux Distro — For those that have been meaning to try out an Arch Linux based distribution that is easy-to-use and not time consuming with sensible defaults, EndeavourOS is out with its first new spin since 2021 -- and in fact their first fresh ISO release since September.
• Our first release of 2021 has arrived – EndeavourOS
• ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G14 14" Ultra-Slim Gaming Laptop
• Linux on Laptops: ASUS Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS | Ars Technica
• AUR: snap-pac-grub — Pacman hook to update GRUB entries for grub-btrfs after snap-pac made snapshots.
• Feedback: Browser Sync
• xBrowserSync — Browser syncing as it should be: secure, anonymous and free!
• Feedback: Gaming on Wayland
• A free, open-source future for Mailspring - Information - Mailspring Community — Today, I am excited to announce that I am open-sourcing mailsync - the C++11 core of Mailspring that performs email sync - under the same GPLv3 license used by the rest of the app, making Mailspring entirely free software.
• Pick: ht — Yet another HTTPie clone, written in Rust.
• PIck: fddf — Fast data dupe finder, written in Rust.
• Pick: bottom — Yet another cross-platform graphical process/system monitor, written in Rust.

We try out GNOME 40 and its new workspace layout. Who we think this works well for, and who might want to avoid it.

Plus Wimpy, Ubuntu's Desktop lead, chats with us about his future after Canonical.

Special Guests: Carl George and Martin Wimpress.

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.
• Oh Dear: Oh Dear monitors uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks, and more. We send out notifications when something's wrong. All that paired with a developer-friendly API and kick-ass documentation. Promo Code: LINUX
• A Cloud Guru: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• VideoLAN is 20 years old!
• Refreshing the Ubuntu Desktop Installer — We have started working on the new desktop installer, and plan to have a preliminary version ready for testing in the 21.10 release; due in October 2021. This paves the way to transitioning to the new installer for the next LTS release, which will be 22.04, due for release in April 2022.
• Martin 🙂 Wimpress on Twitter — I’ll soon⏳be leaving Canonical. I’m very excited to be joining the fine people @SlimDevOps😃Despite the change, I’ll continue to lead @ubuntu_mate; it’s my passion💖project. Naturally, I’ll remain an enthusiastic #Ubuntu & Snapcraft community contributor💪
• Slim.ai
• OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T seeing work for mainline Linux kernel support — Thanks to the existing minimal mainline support for the platform, features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3D Acceleration are already working at the current stage of development.
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• Unplugged Hangout Stream Live 1-26-2021 - JupiterTube
• GNOME 40 Approaches Its UI Freeze, Easy Means To Start Testing It — GNOME Shell recently merged its new horizontal workspaces, among other changes. The official GNOME Shell & Mutter development blog put out a new post on Monday highlighting their latest efforts. They are working to get the remaining big items in place over the next two weeks before the freeze and then an “intense period of polishing and bug fixing.”
• Another Shell UX Update – GNOME Shell & Mutter
• Welp, Ubuntu 21.04 Won’t Ship with GNOME 40 or GTK4 — Ubuntu devs cite the redesign of GNOME Shell in GNOME 40 and its potential impact on GNOME extensions (of which Ubuntu ships a few by default) and the Yaru GTK theme as reason to “stick” to GNOME 3.38 this cycle.
• Triple Buffering Likely Not Landing Until GNOME 42
• Ubuntu 21.04 Will Use Wayland By Default
• Quick Demo: Gnome 40 Multi-monitor Demo - JupiterTube
• Carl George on Twitter — I’ve been a @gnome fan/apologist for a long time. Dynamic virtual workspaces spanned across multiple horizontally arranged monitors are so damn wonderful to use. Productive. Efficient. Spatial.
• Carl's Workspace Layout Drawing
• Feedback: Chromium Woes
• Feedback: Ventoy
• UGREEN M.2 Enclosure for SATA NGFF SSD
• Silicon Power 256GB A55 M.2 SSD
• Pick: Ticker — Terminal stock ticker with live updates and position tracking

Successful open-source projects all seem to struggle with one major gorilla. Who it is, and what their options are now.

Special Guests: Drew DeVore and Jonathan Corbet.

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.
• Oh Dear: Oh Dear monitors uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks, and more. We send out notifications when something's wrong. All that paired with a developer-friendly API and kick-ass documentation. Promo Code: LINUX
• A Cloud Guru: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Security Disclosure 2: vulnerabilities in custom integrations HACS, Font Awesome and others - Home Assistant — Multiple custom integrations were found that allowed an attacker to steal any file without logging in. Previously implemented fixes were not sufficient.
• FEDORA-2021-48866282e5 — security update for chromium — Fedora Updates System — I gave a lot of thought to whether I wanted to continue to maintain the Chromium package in Fedora, given that many (most?) users will be confused/annoyed when API functionality like sync and geolocation stops working for no good reason. Ultimately, I decided to continue for now, because there were at least some users who didn't mind, and if I stopped, someone else would start over and run blindly into this problem.
• Introduction to Elasticsearch - YouTube
• Stepping up for a truly open source Elasticsearch | AWS Open Source Blog — In order to ensure open source versions of both packages remain available and well supported, including in our own offerings, we are announcing today that AWS will step up to create and maintain a ALv2-licensed fork of open source Elasticsearch and Kibana.
• AWS, as predicted, is forking Elasticsearch | ZDNet
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• Jellyfin 10.7.0 Release Changelog — SyncPlay for TV shows and Music, significantly improved web performance, an upgrade to .NET SDK 5.0 for improved performance in the backend, and more!
• Jellyfin 10.7.0 RC3
• LWN.net - Wikipedia
• Welcome to LWN.net [LWN.net]
• Jonathan Corbet - Faces of Open Source
• Pick: polybar — A fast and easy-to-use status bar
• Pick: dust — A more intuitive version of du in rust
• Pick: Waybar — Highly customizable Wayland bar for Sway and Wlroots based compositors.

We showcase a tool that will change your Linux game.

Plus our thoughts on the recent Btrfs FUD, a bunch of feedback, and a handy pick.

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.
• Oh Dear: Oh Dear monitors uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks, and more. We send out notifications when something's wrong. All that paired with a developer-friendly API and kick-ass documentation. Promo Code: LINUX
• A Cloud Guru: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• [ANNOUNCE] nano-5.5 is released
• Ubuntu 21.04 Will Finally Stop Making New Home Directories World-Readable — Ubuntu 21.04 will do away with the existing practice on Ubuntu Linux systems of making new user home directories world-readable.
• Linux 5.10.8 Kernel Released - Finally Fixes That Btrfs Performance Regression — Linux 5.10.8 is out today as the latest stable release for the Linux 5.10 LTS series. Making this point release notable is that it finally addresses the 5.10 Btrfs performance regression.
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• Ventoy — An open-source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
• Ventoy on GitHub
• Feedback: openSUSE and FOSS Adventures
• Feedback: Neon Success Story
• Feedback: Next Tuesday
• Feedback: ThinkPad X12 Detachable
• ThinkPad X12 Detachable | Windows Tablet | Lenovo US
• Feedback: Google forms?!
• Feedback: System76 Prediction
• Pick: PGHoard — pghoard is a PostgreSQL backup daemon and restore tooling that stores backup data in cloud object stores.

Wendell joins the show to cover the state of graphics on Linux, and what Intel has in store for the future.

Plus why we're excited about PeerTube again, some feedback, and more.

Special Guest: Wendell Wilson.

Sponsored By:

• Oh Dear: Oh Dear monitors uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks, and more. We send out notifications when something's wrong. All that paired with a developer-friendly API and kick-ass documentation. Promo Code: LINUX
• 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: In this course, ACG covers the skills and concepts necessary to pass the Red Hat RHCSA exam, using a mix of lessons and hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Linux Action News 171 — We explain the recent Qt upset, and then go hands-on with the new PeerTube release. Plus Wendell from Level1Techs joins us to discuss his thoughts on porting Linux to the Apple M1.
• Our new PeerTube instance
• Coder Radio 395 — Their lives change forever when they meet a handsome, tormented, laptop.
• Level1Linux: We’re ready for One GPU – Two OSs. Intel Xe, SR-IOV and thoughts on VMs
• Intel Xe MAX Needs Two Linux Kernels For Now - Meaning You Need To Use A GPU-Accelerated VM — The good news is the Xe MAX graphics can be used for a GPU-accelerated Linux virtual machine. The bad news is the Xe MAX support doesn't yet allow for dGPU usage by the host outside of a virtual machine context as it needs "two different [Linux] kernels" for operation in conjunction with the integrated graphics.
• Intel GVT-g - ArchWiki — Intel GVT-g is a technology that provides mediated device passthrough for Intel GPUs (Broadwell and newer). It can be used to virtualize the GPU for multiple guest virtual machines, effectively providing near-native graphics performance in the virtual machine and still letting your host use the virtualized GPU normally.
• Dell XPS 13 Laptop | Dell USA
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• openSUSE Feedback — I'd like to make an argument about Yast. OpenSuse definitely should be clearer in who it is intended for. But here is my humble opinion. It is not for folks who have been using Linux for years.
• openSUSE/opi: OBS Package Installer (CLI) — Search and install almost all packages available for openSUSE and SLE.
• openSUSE Docs Telegram Channel
• Richard Brown on Twitter
• Feedback: Try Alpine! — Overall, Alpine is a small, simple distro with a lot of tricks up its sleeves. It's definitely worth a look!
• Pick: GPU-Viewer for Linux — This project aims to capture all the important details of glxinfo, vulkaninfo and clinfo in a GUI. The project is being developed using python 3 pygobject with GTK3.
• New Core Contributor Promo Code — 2021

We have some strong opinions about the state of openSUSE Tumbleweed. We've secretly been running it for the past week, and share our experience.

Plus Microsoft's path to dominating the Linux desktop becomes clear.

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: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• bucklespring — This project emulates the sound of my old faithful IBM Model-M space saver bucklespring keyboard.
• Valve’s Steam Data For December Points To A Huge Dip For Linux Gaming Marketshare
• Valve Revises Steam’s December 2020 Linux Marketshare To 0.74% — Valve has updated their numbers and point to Linux still regressing percentage-wise but not as bad as originally reported.
• Linus Torvalds On The Importance Of ECC RAM, Calls Out Intel’s “Bad Policies” Over ECC — "The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage... Now even the memory manufacturers are starting to do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to."
• Microsoft is building a new Outlook app for Windows and Mac powered by the web — Project Monarch is the end-goal for Microsoft's "One Outlook" vision, which aims to build a single Outlook client that works across PC, Mac, and the Web.
• Bug: Mailspring is an abandoned project. · Issue #2231 · Foundry376/Mailspring · GitHub
• Taking FOSDEM online via Matrix — FOSDEM will have its own dedicated Matrix server at fosdem.org.
• KDE Plasma 5.20.5 Released as the Last in the Series, Update Now — The Plasma-NetworkManager applet received a fix for an issue with the password entry jumping to different networks when searching for Wi-Fi networks.
• KDE Plasma 5.21 Desktop Environment to Ship with a New System Monitor App — The Plasma System Monitor app promises not only a fancier and modern user interface, but also a simpler way for monitoring system resources on your KDE Plasma-based GNU/Linux distribution.
• Get openSUSE
• SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE Wiki
• New Core Contributor Promo Code: 2021
• Planner — Task manager with Todoist support designed for GNU/Linux 🚀.
• AUR (en) - elementary-planner
• Tuxies Feedback
• Tuxies Voting Suggestion
• Feedback: Gnome 40 Changes

Friends join us for a special edition of the show to review last year's predictions, and forecast the future.

Special Guests: Alan Pope, Alex Kretzschmar, Brent Gervais, Drew DeVore, Joe Ressington, and Neal Gompa.

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: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• LINUX Unplugged 281: 2019 Predictions
• LINUX Unplugged 334: Particularly Poor Predictions
• LINUX Unplugged 335: Practically Perfect Predictions

We reveal the winners of the 2020 Tuxies.

We've tallied the audience votes for the best open source projects, desktops, distros, editors, games, and much much more.

Special Guests: Drew DeVore and Nate Graham.

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: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Adventures in Linux and KDE
• DS920+ — Scalable NAS with SSD cache acceleration capability.
• find.synology.com
• Synology QuickConnect — Synology QuickConnect allows you to access your Synology NAS anytime, anywhere, from any device and browser, without having to set up port forwarding.
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows

It's light as a feather, fast as hell, and everything is upstream. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon ships with Fedora, and this week we put it to the test.

Plus community news, feedback, and a great pick.

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: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Cast Your Nominations for the 2020 Tuxies
• CloudLinux to invest more than a million dollars a year into CentOS clone — Project Lenix will be a free, open-source, community-driven, 1:1 binary compatible fork of RHEL 8 (and future releases).
• Feedback: Mike’s Stream Struggles
• Matrix Client: Fractal — Fractal is a Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust. Its interface is optimized for collaboration in large groups, such as free software projects.
• Matrix Client: nheko — The motivation behind the project is to provide a native desktop app for Matrix that feels more like a mainstream chat app.
• This Week in Matrix
• Lenovo begins rollout of Fedora Linux on their laptops, Ubuntu systems due soon — As the Fedora team mentioned in the original announcement, it's coming without any bloat as they said Lenovo "respects our open source principles". The only software they will have is from the included repositories, no extra fluff.
• ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 Spec (PDF)
• HW probe of Chris’ ThinkPad X1 Carbon
• LENOVO 20U9CTO1WW - Geekbench Browser
• chrislas’s Profile - Geekbench Browser
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• Feedback: Rob’s Academic Tuxies
• Rob’s blog: FOSS Academic
• Feedback from Marcus: The Best Top Tool
• Glances — An Eye on your system
• Pick: pbgopy — Copy and paste between devices.

Red Hat just made big changes to how CentOS works, we breakdown the good, and the bad.

Plus how you can DIY a cheap IP KVM using a Raspberry Pi.

Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar and Hector Martin.

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: Hundreds of courses, thousands of hands-on labs.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Cast Your Nominations for the 2020 Tuxies — Nominate your favorite projects (the term used loosely here) and devices for the 2020 Tuxies.
• CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream — The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release.
• FAQ - CentOS Project shifts focus to CentOS Stream
• CentOS Stream: Building an innovative future for enterprise Linux — Since its introduction, we’ve seen great enthusiasm from partners and contributors around CentOS Stream and the continuous stream of innovation that the project provides. Given this, we’ve informed the CentOS Project Governing Board that we are shifting our investment fully from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream.
• When Red Hat bought CentOS in 2014 they said…
• CentOS Git server
• OG CentOS Founder Wants to build another CentOS — I am considering creating another rebuild of RHEL and may even be able to hire some people for this effort. If you are interested in helping, please join the HPCng slack (link on the website hpcng.org).
• LUP 320: RHELhide
• Pi-KVM — A very simple and fully functional Raspberry Pi-based KVM over IP that you can make with your own hands without any soldering!
• Check out Self-Hosted — Discover new software and hardware to get the best out of your network, control smart devices, and secure your data on cloud services.
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows
• Hector Martin is creating Linux for Apple Silicon Macs | Patreon — The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device.
• Hector Martin
• Pick: radeontop — View your GPU utilization, both for the total activity percent and individual blocks.
• Pick: bpytop — Linux/OSX/FreeBSD resource monitor