 Welcome to the homelab show episode 105 homelab workstations. How are you doing Jay? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing great You know typing one-handed is still less fun But I can get my arm out of the sling a little bit so I can get my fingers by the keyboard and type For those who want to know I was in a motorcycle accident blog Episode 341 I give the details because no need to repeat. I'm here, but nonetheless, Jay had an interesting topic idea of You know we talked about the servers and the software a lot But we never talk about what you're using to connect to those and right interact with them I mean granted sometimes Probably less and less anymore. You do plug a keyboard Maybe a mouse but definitely a keyboard I monitor directly into a server to get it set up but that's generally not your day-to-day interaction with it unless it Breaks and has a button stock or something like that because Jay me and Jay were late because he had to tell me about the button stock story Which is pretty hilarious actually. Maybe I'll share that too Yeah, it was a yeah funny story. We'll get to that it will get to that But we want to talk about the workstation to use and by just sheer coincidence I had because of a project that's now finished. We have a pretty much unused at my office Mac M1 version so a little bit the first-generation air and I said, you know, what if I could use this as my workstation I've been Linux person for over 10 years on my desktop and I'm not someone who's ever actually used a Mac But it kind of made me think once I started using it that this is actually not a bad interface because it's I mean I'd prefer it to be Linux, but I was shocked at how well it worked and this kind of just spiraled into a What's a good workstation discussion? And we thought we wanted to share that with some use some of the different thoughts we have on there And we can even go backwards in time because I did and look up because I know Jay reviewed like the pine book And there's a lot of people who build even raspberry pi workstations to interact with things It also highlighted Something I've been wanting to do and why I didn't spend as much time with the Mac was I decided to build a jump box Because I was like, oh, I'm used to managing all my keys in my very familiar linux environment This is a little bit trickier. So why don't I build a special box? A jump box if you will so I can just connect to each one And I think isn't your jump box like a raspberry pi j It was I You know, I switched almost everything over from raspberry pi to proxmox not because I have anything against raspberry pi It just kind of happened like I moved that first. I'm like, well, this is a lot faster. Uh, what's kubernetes like on this? So I I spun up the cluster and the next thing I know I just moved off a raspberry pi unintentionally but once I saw how much faster it was but it currently has a vm on the The stack now I might move it back to a pi because there's something novel about Having your jump box outside of everything else in its own little contained Thing so that could revert back to the other direction I I built mine inside of true nas and the reason for it was because one I wanted it in my studio and I don't have a virtualization server here And don't really need one for anything and true nas has lots of memory And it takes very very little memory to run a jump box because it just needs to boot up and make sure all my ssh Keys in there but I want to step further to help protect my ssh keys Which we've done a whole episode on ssh keys as well But one of the things that's important to me is that when it boots it requires a password with lux So in order to boot it that way if anyone ever copied it Stole my nas or whatever They would not be able to actually boot this thing up because it would not have a password on it for them to start Extracting the keys. So I've got the partition encrypted on there Just one extra layer the likelihood that someone's going to come in Take my nas and also be someone smart enough to know how to Extract ssh keys is a pretty far reach But hey, you know It's just a password it stays running all the time. So it's not like I have to type it in very often Yeah, if you want to like go crazy You could you could just get like a raspberry pi and then power it via usbc Which is of course the only way to power it but plug it into your computer to power it Plus have a local You know ssh connection to the pi over usb and then Have it, you know, you could have tail scale or something to have a Nip you could have your jump box in your pocket And nobody hack it if it's not even plugged in if it's just in your pocket Plug it into your computer while you use it and then disconnect when when you're done A little involved, but it is something someone asked. What is a jump box that I should probably mention what that is first In our chat room someone asked that yes, so it's also known as a bastion host where you have It's your entry point into your network. It needs to be the most secure device of all So basically ssh passphrase Like a key a physical hardware key added on top of it with some other checks and balances You really have to have to lock this one down And the idea is it's your again, it's your way into the network. It could be a vpn It could be something else but generally speaking bastion host jump box Um are the same thing. I don't really use mine as a jump box So I I don't really think I I think I should probably stop calling it that because I'm always home I don't need to like access my network. I live where my network is so I don't really connect inwards I don't have my jump box so to speak externally available at all It's it's internal only so what I use it for is more of a tmux server where I want One device where all my terminal sessions are So if I reboot my laptop my desktop, it doesn't matter I don't lose anything because the sessions are all on that and I just use mosh to reconnect mosh is a You know kind of like a wrapper on top of ssh that'll reinstate your connection For example, if you take your laptop out of the house, you were connected to a server You come back it'll reconnect you automatically as long as you keep the window open So use that too. So it's more or less a central Uh terminal work server, I guess you could call it and there's something novel about keeping that off your computer because then Your computer, you don't care about rebooting as much because you don't have to worry about losing a work session The other side of this though is it doesn't help with video editing unfortunately You can't I mean you can but it becomes way more expensive to have a Central box for editing videos. So there's a limit to everything Yes And because we're mostly doing things in ssh. That's why it kind of works for us I'm just using tmux on mine So I will start my sessions with tmux and if my laptop It's disconnected or I change my location. I can just reattach that tmux session You know if i'm rebuilding something or have something being monitored. It's pretty easy We also have home lab show episode 29 is where we dive into bastion servers or jumpbox servers as a topic We talk about all the different ways you can run it So we've actually covered this pretty well before if you want to drive back a little bit in history and listen episode 29 How did you believe that was that was 70 something at 70 episodes ago now? I forgot we did it like like it's getting to a point where I wonder and I think Like are we like we're gonna cover this we've already done it and then we're like far enough along But you know, it's been a long time. We should go back and update which I think will regularly You know revisit older topics, but yeah, we did cover it. Yeah Yeah, so definitely um, it kind of saves that but let's get back over to the workstations and talk about choices there And the first challenge I kind of ran into and I think a lot of other people do is you start looking for And I'm as I said, I'm a big open source advocate, but I I have the macbook So I wanted to try the macbook air and uh, I I don't I would have been the person to make I will I have been the person I should say to make plenty of jokes at the expense of Apple and mac and making fun of people who use them and then I found out jay was the user to you know I said, oh man. I can't make fun of jay for it. Can I though? We probably can because I I I don't use it as much. I mean it's It's kind of like I like it, but I don't love it if that makes sense There's there's a lot to like on mac, but when it comes to like my productivity Um gnome just rules everything for me. Um And we might as well start with mac because I kind of feel like we're already talking. I mean we are already talking about it But it isn't a choice the the mac the macbook m1. We'll just say this right here I was wrong about any assumptions. I had about it the battery life on it has I haven't charged it since monday. We'll just say that it's it's now wednesday And I pulled it off the charger monday and I've used it for my usual usage It's going to be sending emails replying to more emails Discussions on slack with business things. I'm working on and I'll take some notes and things like that I may be doing for a video, but it's kind of like it's not like I'm sitting here using it all day But you're talking about a a small laptop with a nice keyboard Good tracking that you want to use to do things like well. I did update a few ssh And I had a the new version of zen orchestras outs I was like, oh cool I'm gonna go build new versions of this and I have several servers So I was updating them and things like that So it's more mundane tasks where it's it may as well be called a dumb terminal So it's not like I need the power at the workstation And this is probably true for a lot of people in the home lab is if you're just going to go Hey, I just want to log into these other servers these other devices update my nas Maybe make some changes You don't need a lot of horsepower on that side And that's where it gets my first challenge was trying to find something because there are some really nice Like thin laptops, but they have such heavy-duty processors in them. That's just so not needed It's gonna even the mac m1 only has eight gigs of ram It's what I think that makes a three or four year old laptop because they have twos out now And it still has incredible battery life doesn't have much power But it really is not a bad choice because man once I add cessation to my jumpbox from there I got to all the things I need to get to I'm able to manage all the servers You can still use things like proxy chains and stuff like that which I've done videos if you look up I've got videos on proxy chains that one might need to be updated because Uh, that's a that's a fun way to pivot through networks But for all the things I need to get to it actually works really well And I didn't want to like it this much after I started using it But that keyboard's nice and it just makes a nice interface for being able to talk to all my servers and just kind of You know, I had to get a few uh, we'll just say videos that we wanted to watch You know, all completely legal ones, you know and stream them You know to get them from where they are until you get them into your mb server So you could stream them to the tv that's easier to manipulate on a little laptop moving some files around It just makes it really easy for that. I actually think it's a pretty good choice that you can find for a some reasonable prices on there Yeah, I do agree. I think the hardware You know a lot of people will argue that mac is more expensive, which is kind of true But that argument always breaks down when you compare like to like like you have to understand The difference between pc and mac is pc you have several different What I want to call this like audiences where you have like the you know Average users that just don't care you have the people that care a lot and they're just power users and everything in between um Sometimes it just makes sense to have something simple for an audience and I think for the mac it um It fits a lot of that, but you know, it depends on your use cases and everything I have Um Just just to kind of get this out of the way. I'm a technologist. Yes, linux is number one But I love technology So to be well versed in technology What I think is required is to have a sample device of every type, right? So I have you know a windows computer somewhere in the house if I need to it's a it's a think pad I think it's like a t480 that's windows 11 on it. So if I need to capture footage for windows 11 I can do that The mac exists for anything. I kind of use it for my Oh my gosh, I got to really use a proprietary device device. It's that device So if if I get one of those crummy websites that detect User agents or just make things hard or the one-off things that require something proprietary It's kind of like fine, you know, I'll pull that out But I like to have a sample device in every category just so I could stay up with what apple's doing what microsoft is doing And if there's a chrome book in the house somewhere um ipads you name it um But getting back to the mac For me, it's a you know, I like it, but I don't love it. Um, there's a lot to like and starting with the hardware um It is cheap and getting back to my original point. Um People will say I could get a pc for $300. Why am I gonna? You know spend $1,300 on on a mac and then the the reality is If you are considering or if you're comparing pc and mac you have to compare like to like you have to compare a business class Computer to a mac book because they are targeting the same audience You can't compare a mac book to a $300 computer from wal-mart that'll last you six months. You just can't do that um, likewise, you also can't compare a More um expensive chrome book to a cheaper pc or even a more expensive pc to a cheaper pc So we have to keep the same argument now if you look at what dell and in uh, you know, lenovo are offering In apple as well. You're gonna pay about $1,300 for that class of computer around about give or take it's about the same But then it depends on you know the operating system the platform Whether you want to be in that platform and that's when it starts to really um, You know go into many different directions on my end I think the hardware is great I really I just have issues with the operating system and none of them are With mac os are like so huge that it stops me from using it. They just there's things that make me grumble. So For one thing, you know with my intense adhd Bouncy icons and things flashing all around the screen are just not pleasant to me Like I just cannot filter those things out it like my brain can't tune out noises that I hear in the background I also can't um, you know stop looking at something that's blinking if if mac the os mac os is wanting me to look at something but worse I would be typing in a terminal And then it takes me out of the terminal when there's alert on another workspace There used to be a way to disable this in the command line. They call it auto swoosh Which is weird. Um, and the command line trick used to work It doesn't disable it anymore because my line of thinking is regardless of whether I'm on you know, which work mode I'm on if I'm typing in a terminal leave me alone, right or even when I was writing a book. I tried Um, what it was like I couldn't even finish a single chapter on the mac book because it kept taking me out of the Document that I was writing in just to look at something else. I didn't ask to look at I didn't have any Control I said oh, we're gonna just force you to stop and bring you over here Um, those are the type of things that really drive me baddy on mac os and the other interesting thing I ran into Most recent time I tried it was if you right click an icon on the um I think they call it the what they call the panel the taskbar at the bottom the dock It's the doc. I almost didn't think of it if you right click an icon and then choose show on all workspaces It works sometimes Sometimes it'll work for like, I don't know some amount of time and then Like it's weird that mac users don't seem to notice this like the show on all workspaces Doesn't really work At some point It'll force you to look at it on a single workspace and after three updates They didn't even fix it. So it's like all these weird issues. None of them are too big But if you take those out, it's fine. I mean, it's not in my mind a Really amazing interface, but it's good enough and I think for the average user or somebody who's not picky like me Is probably perfect, but for me. I just have all these things happening and it just drives me crazy I'm like, I just want a simple Leave me alone. Let me get my work done os and that is linux. So that's why it continues to still be number one for me Yeah, and it's one of the things that uh, we should probably mention next is if you're looking for some linux laptops Let's just go right there and we'll start at the premium side And I because we talked about the macbook air, which I think it's a reasonable price And I I'm still eyeing and maybe I'll have to talk to jay about this or come out and hang out with them for a little while System 76 makes nice linux laptops jay's reviewed several of them. The quality is good I'm also looking at frameworks got some new. I think they're rising ones coming out That are the thinner smaller ones framework is really nice But there's definitely a price premium on any of the linux laptops and it's really it's a volume issue There's not an easy way for those companies to move the volume that gets you those discounts So you're kind of buying into and I don't mind I you know spend a little bit of extra money on a premium product But it's just something that people should be aware of if you look at the lemur the oryx and some of the models that they have They're the build quality is really nice on them Your reviews are pretty positive on all those you tested am I right jay? Yeah, I I don't so the price premium I don't know there's a couple ways to look at this because When I compared specs and one of them that I compared was the think pad x1 extreme Whatever one was the current model at the time and this was a couple years ago Against I think it was the oryx pro if I'm not mistaken When you compare like to like for the most part until you start peeling it away It kind of looks like it's more expensive But what I found is that system 76 usually has higher specs in at least one area So for example the think think pad x1 carbon Ended up being no extreme sorry the think pad x1 extreme ended up being more expensive Then the equivalent system 76 laptop with half of the gpu power And at the time I looked at the oryx pro no laptop that I was aware of even had that That much horsepower for gpu. So they usually go a little bit higher One issue one thing that I like to make people aware of Before they go in any direction is whether you need accident protection warranty You know some of us are cluts, right? We just have we just we have accidents. It happens Do you want to be out $1,300 if you accidentally drop it? Would you pay more money to have an accident protection warranty on it? I like to protect my investment So I do that and it's paid off as well But if you're not a klutz then it doesn't matter But the problem is if you go with for example a think pad you can you can buy on site Literally on site repair warranties on these You can't do that with system 76 the problem and I I feel like they're the number one pc provider for me However, it is a big problem for me, especially as a business That if my laptop breaks even if it's my fault Um, I can't get one quick. It's going to take a couple of weeks to replace it I don't have a couple of weeks on site warranties are great because Someone comes to you with the part and they fix it. Sure. You pay a premium for that If you have the budget for it and if you're clumsy you may as well But with system 76 you don't get that choice. They don't even have accident protection warranties at all so If that's you and that's something that you care about then that would be um a reason to go with in my mind think pad Over system 76 depending on you know, what's important to you But I just want to make that point clear before anyone just starts opening up their pocket book Yeah, and i'm not going to lie the from the business side of me That's what we actually settle on as a company is everyone gets the think pad spot for them with the warranties They're just a really solid system And they're very linux friendly This is one of the reasons they get recommended so much because I've already had the like particularly because I didn't buy The xps. I really wanted and this is the laptop. I'm probably going to throw up for sale It's a really nice del i7 laptop with an OLED screen I bought it because I didn't want to admit I was probably could use some glasses Um, it just doesn't run linux quite as well But I've actually learned this is this is more of an intel bug than it is a Problem with the laptop running linux is it doesn't it still uses a lot of power when it sleeps There's a discussion going on with level one Wendell on twitter today or whatever to help twitter's call today, but The uh a discussion about laptops still using power not going into sleep properly and doing it inside of windows And that was one of the first annoying second one is kind of bulky and heavy And I said, okay. I want something light. That's why I moved over there But the think pad series kind of fits all the above where it runs linux. Well, no corkiness The screens are nice. They're lightweight and This is something especially for the homeland people who don't have bigger budgets You can find these on the secondary market that are a few years old that still work really really well and picking these up on the refurb markets actually Pretty easy uh to find them between amazon and uh ebay There's always some of the refurb ones for sale that are just a few years old But work great and of course once they're a few years old You can really confirm quite well if you go over to like even a bantu Even if you're not going to run a bantu if you go over to the a bantu compatibility site And if it says compatible with a bantu you can pretty much Say it's going to work because it's more of a matter of the kernel It's going to work with other distributions that you may want to run on there I agree. I think the linux support side is is probably really good to talk about and I should have mentioned this before um One thing I always like to mention. I think it's been a while since I mentioned it on the podcast So I'll mention it again for those that are new um linux has the best hardware support on the planet, but it's not 100% Okay, let's let's be honest. It's no nothing is 100. There is not a single piece of hardware Out there. That's 100 compatible with anything. For example, you could buy a gpu doc right now It doesn't work on your macbook if it's m1. They just don't allow that so There's an example of something that's not working that you have to research sure that's not linux related But that but my point is there's no such thing as 100 compatibility. Right now if you want to run linux You you either a buy a computer that's born to run linux You don't have to worry about it or b you research the compatibility before you buy it don't buy a computer And then put linux on it without researching it just because you know you heard it's 100 compatible which is on true And then you know some people will think that linux sucks just because they happen to buy it or try it on a computer It wasn't meant for Because you know you I mean think about it this way try running windows On a mac not you know via a vm or anything on the metal you'll find out real quick just how much compatibility is important and how it's not um a separate issue here Mind line of thinking is if you buy a computer and the sticker says Certified for windows made for windows or whatever the heck they put on laptop stickers now You forfeit your right to complain if it doesn't work on linux period Like this is something in the community that drives me crazy where someone will you know just Really just insult linux and i'm like linux never promised to work on that computer So what's your why did you buy that computer if you didn't know it's going to work? So I always tell people do your research first now. I'm not saying that in the community We won't help you Because we all want linux to work on everything so people in the community You know if you approach them the right way they might have solutions Um, they might tell you where to file a bug report if they think it's a bug There's ways to get through this situation that I think is a proper channel um, but just keep in mind that You know if you buy a computer and you want to run linux Even if you're thinking about running linux and you're not sure about it Then just research that first and it's especially strange to me that somebody will buy a mac book Like an m1 that doesn't even have full linux support on it Like like there's a a sahi linux is working on it. I don't know what the compatibility is It's not going to be a good experience yet because it's new but I've seen people buy these to run linux. I'm like, well They're probably not right. I like the hardware, but they're probably not the first choice if you run linux They're they're a good choice if you want a project and that project is helping the a sahi linux That's exactly what I was about to mention if if you want to be a developer and Really help that project along. I encourage you to buy a mac book if you have the time and the money To donate time, you know to that project and help them out. That's always a great thing to do and Doing things like that is what's really going to help linux gain even more popularity But as long as you approach it like, you know Each platform has its own pros and cons and different hardware And you you buy according to what you want to run as long as you always follow that rule You'll be fine to the issue though. I think a lot of homelab people have computers in their closet So maybe someone might be trying to run linux on something they just happened to have that they didn't buy for that purpose That they want to repurpose that's perfectly fine You'll have mixed results maybe but it's still perfectly fine and it gives you an opportunity to troubleshoot that and learn it So I think a lot of people in homelab are approaching this from I already have the computer So I'm not I didn't research compatibility because I never knew I was going to run linux in the first place but since I have it Can I do it and one thing I find is a great way to do this is if you run Even on a live image without installing it you boot the computer and then you run lspci And then you could find the hardware string for whatever piece of hardware isn't working google linux And then that hardware string you'll find your answer even if it's a bug report But I want to say at least 90 of the time I find everything I need to know just from doing that When it comes to compatibility Yeah the um Other side, let's swing it by the other way now And I was I was pulling up the specs on my system Because what if you wanted to build and you're going I don't need a laptop I I don't leave my house and even though jay doesn't leave his house a lot He does have some laptops, but recliner homelab and you know hacking is really great by the way But building it when he comes to like a workstation This is another homelab option that you can consider and I seen someone kind of mention this but let's go all out like I have a nice system here and it is a rise in nine with On what model is this again? I had to pull up and move the screen other than mine is a uh, it's okay. It's a couple years old now, but it's a Rise in nine thirty nine hundred acts. I know there's some faster processors out today It was pretty good when I bought it 32 gigs of ram And one of the things you can do is virtual box and I'm running this in linux virtual box or you can Put kvm in there or some other things you can do But don't discount running how simple the simplicity of running virtual box is because the UI is easy And it's a simple and a manage But you can actually you have one really beefy workstation and then run all your virtual machines in there not have multiple machines This is something you can definitely do It can be your everything machine for all of your experimentation And for a long time and well even now sometimes if especially if there's anything graphical i'm doing I don't spin it up in my xcp and g server I'll spin it up in virtual box because the compatibility is so good That i'll just pop something on there if I want to look at another desktop if I want to look at a different distribution It's kind of nice to have and build a decent machine for that now because i'm using like the asus Oris ultra gaming board. It's all pretty standard stuff The support for linux for things like that is really good It's not challenging Matter of fact because of this studio setup I'm using for I do my recording right now This is my 1080 screen that I record on but I also have an ultra wide over here Multi monitor all that works so well in linux Matter of fact multi monitor makes it handy because I have two keyboards in my setup So when I turn my chair the other way I'm facing my big giant widescreen But then when I face when I'm facing the camera for my tutorials I want a standard 1080 so I got two sets here But I also when people see me and it looks like I'm running windows or recording that that's just a virtual box I pop open windows. I set up something test something test the theory to a tutorial I can load another distribution building your workstation still is pretty valid and It's cost savings in some ways because you can build one really high-end system and just do everything from there You can also buy small and upgrade if you buy a motherboard if you you know around a super budget Buy a decent motherboard that has a lot of compatibility of cpu and memory and things like that and just just buy the bare minimums as long as you can You know upgrade it You're building it you should be able to upgrade it So buy a motherboard that has a lot of future use in there And you know, I remember when I first started I would buy like a very small amount of memory and like a starter cpu that was barely even usable and then You know waiting a few paychecks later I would buy faster bigger memory and then buy a better cpu And then I would just keep kind of stepping it up and it kind of worked out well for me Back then also I want to just just point out. I did a video about the nebula cases from system 76 recently That allow you to essentially build a thelio, which is their brand of desktop computers and You know, that's actually what led to this topic or one of the things because it's something I was working on anyway And I figured yeah, we should probably talk about this So I have a whole video about it, but the nebula cases are Unfortunately pricey. I'm just going to throw that out there, but they could they could literally probably stop a bullet These things are super strong now. I'm not saying anybody should shoot their computer, but And I'm not saying I know anything about bullets enough to know how much metals required to stop one, but I'm pretty sure that The stick is that isn't as heavy as they are on the end Probably be fine um But they They have like the probably one of the best cooling that I've ever seen and it even worked out strangely well And this is another video. I'm going to do a touring pi 2 board Which is a itx mother board that lets you slot raspberry pi compute modules They can share the same backplane. So it's essentially a you know multi server server I guess blade server, but it's not quite quite the same thing raspberry pi compute modules the The way that the thelio case is built and this is hilarious been a great way like You put on the the shroud where you know, although air is directed And the it goes right over the compute modules blowing air across all of them on the way out of the case It's a coincidence a very happy coincidence, but you have to take one of the Try to remember like extend one of the fans because you can kind of on the inside of the shroud Kind of move them around you want to move them further apart Put them down of along the compute modules and you'll keep them cool too, which is pretty cool Um, I'll be doing a video about that at some point But yeah building your computer is great if you want to do that it it comes down to time and preference if you want to Micro manage your desktop. There's no better way than to build it because you can micromanage everything Um, but if you want something turnkey buy it I'm glad someone suggested this thing too because one of the things you're using right now I believe in your editing system You can get those cards now This is something you'll have to do a little bit of reading on to Depending how you want them set up if you want the full performance And it's the number of PCI lanes and how you would bifurcate them You have to look for motherboard to support this But if you have a motherboard that supports proper PCI lanes and bifurcation you can get a up to four mvmes on a PCIe card so You can build these workstations and still have really fast storage a matter of fact I for Some testing I was doing when I was building some xcp and g systems But you can do this as well as any linux workstation I just set up mdm md adm raid uh right on those devices So I have my raid built in so I got my boot drive I got a raid array that's really fast plenty of storage or maybe you want to just uh Go all out and just make it one giant storage for all of your vms and not even worry about redundancy Because it's all for testing. This is another thing that's become a lot less expensive to do to have really high speed storage And that can eliminate some of the other virtualization bottlenecks You may run into of some of the i o limitations and getting it over to your nas And it's definitely a fun way to play. I've seen someone mentioned in there And I think don't you have at least one large? mvme extra in here like an add-in card Yes, I have an eight terabyte mvme drive That I use as my cash drive for For editing And you may think that's a lot it is it is a lot of space But when you work on a raw video project I could fill that entire eight terabyte mvme with three video projects Just three and sometimes two really large ones Because when you are editing on compressed video, they just Jump to a ginormous size. It's insane So I thought well, this is cool. I could just have all the cash on on one drive and it doesn't even matter My my thelio is getting the motherboard replaced right now because of some weird noise It's a long story, but it's under warranty. So that's if anyone's wondering what where where the heck is that thing Um, I I took the of course I took the nvme drive out of there because I didn't want them to accidentally I'm not saying system 76 would ever, you know miss a drive But when you pay as much as I did for a nvme, you're gonna you're gonna take that out of there Make sure you retain that and put it in your door and keep it safe because you know, that's a I don't think i'm going to buy another one. Let's just say that Now let's swing it one I think the final thing to cover is kind of swing it the other way is I brought up the pine book What do you think of some of those because I I got to admit the idea of running like an arm or raspberry pi And I've seen some really neat diy projects that allow you to kind of build a laptop If you will out of a raspberry pi. What do you think of some of those projects? So the one issue about these types of computers, especially when you have arm is We don't really have a standard we kind of do we have, you know, raspberry pi imagine you're in these flashing utilities But think about it like this with a pc you could put in a flash drive You turn it on there's a bios or uefi screen that comes up and you can hit a boot menu We don't have that as a standard thing on arm. Yes, you can do that on arm It is possible to have that same Exact experience, but when you boot a pine book or a raspberry pi a pi 400 or any of these It's going to expect you to have already flashed the storage. You have to do that externally It's not terribly hard. You just have to follow the directions and how to That's how you load a linux distribution onto these. Obviously the pine book would come with one I don't know what it comes with today, but that's kind of the only challenging part It might involve usb to access the emmc in these laptops to flash the storage that way Or in the case of the pine book, you could boot off of an sd card and then flash the emmc right from a Working session We don't have uefi as a standard here, but aside from that the You're going to have lower performance on a pine book. It's the thing that people I wanted to make sure you said that because that is the one problem people really run into And I love watching the projects. I've seen them on hack a day build your own laptop and some really cool projects Around that as a topic But at the moment you open up a browser and that pretty much is what so much was have to do There's so much cool things that they can now render with the latest html 5 I love how the ui works and different things. It's like wow, there's so much power to think i'm manipulating entire virtual machine infrastructures all with this web interface, but If you have a slow processor, you'll even watch the processor really get chewed up That was actually what I really had to test on the mac m1 was how does it render these pages? does it choke because that is the Thing I need to be able to use these tools which load a lot into the browser which is essentially its own Pretty extensible operating system into itself. You can of course play doom But I'm impressed with some of the other games you can play in here It's way beyond the early days of flash, but that all means it's got to be processed and to further hamper that processing The sandboxing that's done by modern browsers, whether it's firefox chromium based ones They are segmenting things more and more for security reasons, which is wonderful that comes at the expense though of Not running all the processes in a way that is quite as efficient There's always trade-offs when you start sandboxing sounds sandboxing sounds great And then when you do it you're like, oh wait, we just lost some of our efficiencies because we don't want to share caching between here We don't want to share any of these resources So we got to create them all in a series of spawned silos that go all the way down Which costs more memory and can cost more cpu time So it's one of the things you really have to be aware of with the slower or even older computers In especially the arm and raspberry pi based ones. That's an immediate challenge You're going to be acutely aware of when you try to open up modern websites So, um, I think it's worth to mention, you know, what's the difference between like an m1 and you know arm on anywhere else because on an m1 I mean you on the on the right one you can edit video like Pretty much just as well as a pc with a dedicated gpu and For and you say you could run some games. You could literally run final fantasy 14 on an m1 Okay, I'm not kidding and some of the games that I've seen people play on this Nate, you know, just running it through their, um, rosetta It works very well. Now. Why is that though? Why is it that? Arm is good when you're on a mac book, but it's slow as dirt when you're on a pi 400 or you know, uh, a pine book and The thing to understand is that with arm you have a reduced instruction set that's part of the name So you have a programmer has to write more code To do the same thing on an arm processor, but an arm processor is more efficient It does have to work harder, but with with apple and the m1 They've they've created extensive tooling and essentially created instruction sets on a reduced instruction instruction set and put these things in the m1 To make it perform well where it's like, oh you're editing video Well, I have that codec built right into the cpu because they're going to have that built right in So the things that people use are built in then you have, you know extensive work being done on rosetta that is helping to translate the api calls or whatever So essentially you have a lot of work around this now when you don't have That big layer on top of arm and you just have arm and you're running a linux distribution that Wasn't necessarily built with arm first. It was compiled for arm not not that there's anything wrong with that You're going to have additional overhead. That's just the way that it is I hope that we get to a certain point where we could put that same layer of attention to detail on top of arm And I think we'll get there but right now apple is doing it better. It's just the truth Yeah, it is the way it is So that's why with apple you can have your cake and eat it too with arm You have to do some hacking But I say arm, but you know, I meant like arm. That's not apple but you could get a little clever though because you could run a You know like a virtual machine with a bunch of cores for example And install firefox google chrome whatever you use on there and then use x to go to forward the application to your pine book To your raspberry pi and essentially you could have like You know 32 gigs of ram worth of browsing on a machine that has just eight gigs of ram because all of that is being sent over to the server Which can give you that it's not going to be as fast You're not going to be able to do like, you know chat voice chat over the browser That'll still lag But you could essentially just have your apps on another server and use x to go to forward them to your You know lower powered machine your pine book whatever even your phone and all of a sudden, you know that 4 8 gig ram Limit isn't really a problem for you anymore because you could just totally work right around it So I kind of think with arm as homelabbers. We kind of have this opportunity to Let our oppositional side come out. Oh, yeah, I'm not going to just accept it as is I'm going to just make this way more complicated than it needs to be but it's going to be awesome Yeah, that's exactly how we do it and I think there's a great opportunity now. I do love the pine book. It's great Um, I haven't used mine in a long time. I probably should Take that out and you know run updates on it. It's been a long time But I do have a lot of love for those you just have to really Understand that it's not going to be sure they're better than computers were, you know at some point in the past Like if I brought a raspberry pi Back in time to when I just started out It would be like a super computer compared to what we had back then but With the reduced instruction set that overhead just kind of limits that a little bit But I think from here it's just going to get way better And you mentioned x2go someone asked in the very beginning about a good vdi solution I think that's proud and it's I'm not going to say it's great. I'm not going to say it's going to solve all your problems But this is one thing you could do is where you essentially are just using Let's say something as low powered as a pine book But you're connecting with x2go and you're you have this monster of a server you built That is another way to do it Essentially you're going back to as someone likes to point it out Or going backwards or going back to dumb terminals, which actually you're not You're you are in some ways So just leveraging the power you have and using it more efficiently and it's not really Dumb turnable But in some way it is because I think the computer can do more But if you move all of that rendering over there There's even the other tools out there that can bring the whole desktop Managed inside of a browser when you do something like that once again All you have to do is have a machine fast enough to bring that data to it as a display And connect to those other servers that can be through and a bunch who does this and I think they do it Okay, it's not something I really use a bunch of Supports and maybe papa west does too rdp protocol as in it actually acts as an rdp server You can enable it's not something I've done much testing with but I have done videos on x2go I don't use it all the time, but it's pretty neat I think j had tried it for rendering and me and j came to the same conclusion The idea is cool But it is a little buggy for actually rendering like to connect to a fast server to render our video It's not quite good enough for that for day-to-day tasks. I think it works, but Rendering video. I remember it was a fail for me. And I think you tried it too. Didn't you? Yeah, it was actually a success. It wasn't that that was the failure It was kaden live being a buggy mess that could be running five minutes let alone to render a video It was fine for 1080p But as soon as I went to 4k and then even at 1080p it started crashing And my last draw was when I had a timeline that was perfect and might well perfect enough And I played it back on the timeline. It was great And then I render it and all the scenes are in a completely random order not in the order They were in the timeline Kaden live is just the buggest piece of software I've ever used in my life That was um the reason why I think it failed But it worked well when it worked the idea worked because I would have sync thing Syncing the directory where all my video file assets were with the same path on both my local workstation and the server So the kaden live project file Wouldn't have any problem with where things were it would just find things of the same paths So I would I would edit it on my computer, but I wouldn't render it I would save the file Close out of kaden live all my files including the project file would sync over there Then I just open up an x2go window And bring up kaden live open the project hit the render button And it had I had like 64 gigs of ram dedicated to this when I didn't even have a single machine that had 64 gigs of ram So I would hit the button I would just hear the server just all the fans because I had everything cranked to the max The server would just roar and like the fans are going crazy almost like you're doing a firmware update That was just rendering a video and because it was synced be a sync thing I would render the video right into that same folder it would sync back to my computer and I would upload it the problem is keeping kaden live running you know to do this and That insult to injury even with 64 gigs of ram it could take three hours to render one video because it didn't do gpu rendering so but it did Work well in the sense that my computer wasn't tied up the issue was when kaden live is rendering You can't use your computer for anything else. You're done. You just walk away from it I didn't want my computer tied up by this anymore So that was uh, definitely A a fun project, but I think it's kaden lives bugging this that ultimately caused it to fail Yeah, vdi solutions I don't really see too many people pushing for them And the reason why is because web applications are kind of replacing that problem That's kind of solving the problem is people go Oh, you know anytime I see someone using it for example, and of course also for example citrix has a Really popular vdi solution that always seems to have another popular bug because it's public facing But the only people I would not the only but there's a lot of the Legacy systems is almost always where I see that in use So that's in if someone's going to fix the system They don't go let's write a better vdi to get these applications They go no We're just going to use a web-based application because it's a better delivery method than trying to virtualize a desktop And send it across and pipe like all the settings of a desktop and stream the video over there versus Hey, we're just going to load a static web page, and then it doesn't do anything until it submits more data Interactively, so that's that's pretty much why I don't I wouldn't predict the future Is going to be bright for vdi. It's one of those it supports legacy applications And oh it's not going to go anytime soon because there's no shortage of legacy applications in the enterprises that aren't getting rewritten anytime soon, but Eventually and slowly we will see these things unravel and with a lot of vulnerabilities that always pushes people going Huh, this thing's kind of getting hacked a lot. I guess we should probably look at a better way of doing this So hopefully I'm happy to see those things go away actually But there actually is potentially a vdi solution for linux that doesn't I don't think we've ever talked about it before I haven't finished looking at it. So i'm not going to say this is an endorsement I've begun looking at it and um, they might become a sponsor. I don't know yet I have to like it first before I end it anyone else But um, so take this with a grain of salt until I you know, maybe come out with an official recommendation If they become a sponsor that means I like it. Um It's called chasm with a k. Yes chasms reached out to me as well And and they and I looked at it is it is very novel It's like you could run it in your home lab there So you could basically run it, you know yourself if you want which is going to be a win I think for a lot of people that, um, they don't want to run everything somewhere else So you can run this locally and I've done it and essentially what it'll do is if you want a Ubuntu desktop, it actually spins up a container Of an ubuntu desktop that you could then use within your browser So I would at least give it a trial and and see if this is something that you like because I think that Might be my potential content Contender for this type of thing. Um, I will know because if this works out and I like it I might do a tutorial on it and um, you know, there'll be some ad reads or something if it works out well But if I put my sponsors through hell sometimes because it could be two months of evaluation before I actually Agree to have them on so they're being very patient. They're happy to be patient. So that's a pretty good sign I guess we'll see but if you want to try it as chasm at least give the website a shot again It's uh chasm with a k Yeah chasm with a k Um, I've seen people ask this is I'm just going to mention this before we uh end this podcast Someone says can we get rid of the thing on the live stream that shows the hearts? I have no idea how to get probably some custom css. We'll get rid of it But there's not an on and off option that I can see inside of uh here So I actually just use uh you block origin right click and say block element. You're done. Oh, that's true. I could Probably block that assuming it doesn't you know link to anything else, you know, it could backfire if you have to play around Usually there's a right click option with you block origin Yeah, but that is a little distracting. This is like an example of my adhd like If I'm I'm looking at my recording monitor and I can't stop looking at the heart like I'm not looking at any text It's like I can't on see The the hearts and all those things going over the screen. I'm trying to look at the text So focus interruptions are bad developers. Please understand this. Yeah, people It showed up on the live streams and here it is I mean, I mean could you imagine, you know, someone on the autistic spectrum spectrum? For example, we'll especially hate this and I feel like people don't really take these things in mind when they Create things whether you have adhd Or you know, you're on the spectrum or you're not you just actually legitimately hate this stuff then, you know It's like the joke you made a long time ago that comic strip like putting qr codes and all the things I can't remember what it was. Um, yeah, the management for a software project It kind of seems like these fluttery moving things all over the screen Please don't please don't please don't do that. Yeah, and and uh, you are correct Someone said network chuck likes chasm. Well, this is the thing network chuck also did a sponsored video with chasm So this is uh, we're we're always very clear that chasm if they reach out to one person on youtube They usually reach out to numerous people on youtube in this similar category So yes network chuck has done a video and they've reached out to us Me and jay are just very careful before we say yes to things because we are professional technologists who have worked in this field for a very long time at a professional level So we are very Uh careful at which sponsors we take and we don't want to ever see our people the wrong way of what we recommend It's a neat tool and feel free. It's open source. Feel free to try it yourself and make your own assessment Uh, but it me and jay's professional opinion comes from our long time Consulting and working as architects and designing these systems for many years as this admins It's kind of funny when uh, you know, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone say chasm in the chat room So I looked at the comment I thought it said network chuck likes corn and i'm like, oh, he's got good music tastes I oh, yeah, and then I realized they're talking about chasm You know because of my brain like if you look at the word chasm from a distance and almost kind of looks that way Especially for already fan. That's pretty funny. But um, yeah, I didn't even know he did anything on uh chasm I see he did one and I think that would That was sent out because they'll say hey, we sponsored the sponsors will reach out to us like that Like except me and jay are very careful Um, and we always clearly mark anything that is sponsored content And we are always like to we just want to be very very honest with all of you all the time and share our experience And hopefully get all of you more into homelabbing. I think that's all we have for today Um, yeah, I think the only thing I want to mention is just a shameless request if they're just so happens to be anybody associated with the Framework laptop project that just mowsy down into the chat room. You never know sometimes we have Oh, yeah, we have stars in there if you want to just send some units out to tom and i to Yeah, and I would totally be okay with that. I would not mind with it at all My address is on my website if you want to send me to I'll drop one off at jays, you know There we go We'll be more than happy to do an extensive review on it that offers on the table get it into the studio I don't care if you ship it send it via like some crazy Pterodactyl that just drops packages everywhere. I don't even care get it over here. I'll review it Yep, all right Well, thank you everyone and we'll see you next time. See you around