 is. Oh, yeah. Oh, wait, actually. That reminds me. Um, I'm probably going to have to plug in my headset. I mean, we're thinking about that. All right. And we're live. And if we have anybody actually watching, that's if we could get some yays or nays on the audio, which probably until Tyler's saying some words. Me saying words. I am. I am saying words right now. Man, if I could get you to also talk, so I'm going to try to see if I need to plug in my headphones. Well, I also have some words. They're not really good words. And there's a lot of, you know, bad words interspersed in there. But, you know, words. Also, it's not capturing it. I don't need to plug in my headset. Eat. Thank you, Windows. Not like it's not like it's a good thing. But, you know, like it genuinely, this upsets me so much. Windows has a massive amount of money behind it. And yet there is nothing like an echo cancellation module, like for their sound thing, like there is on Linux. So when we sit on post audio a lot and Windows doesn't even have like basic functionality that's in pulse audio. What? So let me get this straight. When I get the audacity recording from you later, I'm not going to hear myself in the background. Am I? No, I'm pretty sure I just did. I just tested it. And that should not happen because I didn't pick up any way for it. All right, because if that happens, I'm blaming you because it actually would be your fault. Yes, yes, using a real man's operating system. Look, I'm only here for Deadside. And I swear it it upsets me because I love Deadside so much. Like they're a it's a great survival game. It's fantastic. Also, they have it on sale right now. So if you want to get it, go ahead and get it. I mean, you would I would die before I used Windows. Look, look, all right. That's here's the thing for for game development. Windows is obviously where it's at because the Linux method for like steam and everything is just proton taking care of like like the whole idea of proton is like for game developers, don't worry about switching because it's that's too much of an ask for a lot of game development studios. So like instead of asking them to take on more work and everything, just develop for Windows and steam and proton will take care of everything. I think that's a great idea. The the only thing, though, is is some game developers, like with especially multiplayer games like Deadside, they are using anti-cheat services and now easy anti-cheat. You could just enable an option that would allow it to work through proton and they still don't do it like and that's what gets me about Deadside because it's it's a super small team and I understand that. But also, damn it, boys, press the freaking button. Just just press it. I want to be able to play you on Linux and then we're good. We're like we're all good. Literally, that's the only reason I still use Windows is for Deadside. That's it. Sure, sure. Only GTA five works. I mean, like most stuff works on has nothing to do with you being Bill Gates, you know. Dude, how can you even say you're the one who got me off on that Microsoft rant on my channel? I know. I had like by the end of that rant, like there were half dozen people like just because he's your daddy doesn't mean you don't have daddy problems. I mean, OK, that's that's good. I made us at the Windows machine. Look, I'm not big on Windows. I just it's still better for some games because they just don't support it. That's it. It's OK. I will be booting into my open BST machine here shortly because like I do I do want to do some more stuff. And I want to see because I have yet to watch your video. I've I've been saving your video on the window manager, DK or whatever. I'm kind of excited to watch that video. The only reason I haven't is because I've heard from now about five people that it's really good and like you're definitely going to like it. And I haven't watched it because I'm like, I don't need to try a whole new window manager. First thing like just first thing in open BST. It's probably not a great idea. It's it's like if you took DWM and mashed it together with BSPWM and I3. Like all together, it's it's it's a dynamic Tyler, so it's different than I3, but it uses the same kind of. Like it's not the same kind of like ease of use of like customization because it uses the shell scripting of BSPWM and has the like the BSPC style thing in it. But it's really good. Yeah, I'm I'm definitely going to like that. That sounds really appealing. The biggest downside I've found so far is that it has scratch pads, but it's kind of a hacky scratch pads, just a script for scratch pads. So it doesn't really work all that well that. But you can have as many workspaces as you want, like literally as many as you want. That's where the I3 cut thing comes in. You can have I said, I said it's 20. I was like, yes, so good. Oh, it's ridiculous. You know, it's good stuff. You enjoy your workspaces too much, too much. I mean, well, I mean, I say that, but you got to have a use for all that 64 gigabytes of RAM, you know, got to. We're having some issues with buffering on the stream. I'm not sure what the hell is going on there or how to fix it because I'm getting green in OBS. Yeah, every everything on my end looks good. So I'm getting a warning here and I saw somebody say buffering in the chat. So if it's if it is buffering for you, I apologize for that. Wait, are you getting a warning in YouTube? Yeah, it says air. Don't pay attention to that. That means absolutely nothing. I get I used to get that like it happens super randomly and it means nothing because I've been live streaming before and had that warning and asked people, like, is there any problem and like seven people came back? Like, no, it's all good. Well, one guy said David said it was buffering for him. I don't see anybody else saying anything when it was causing buffering. It's definitely Tyler's fault. Yeah, definitely. Just blame it on Windows. Yeah. I mean, it's all that telemetry running in the background. It affects stuff. Well, there's no bandwidth left, obviously. Well, actually, oddly enough, so one of the guys on my discord is is doing like a dual boot with Windows for Deadside to just just to play Deadside and one of the funny things that he had, like he's using Windows 10 and on his computer, there was just this runaway process. I don't know if he's in chat, but it's a Modi and he has a runaway service on on like Windows that was using up a hundred percent of his disk, but reporting that it was only using one megabyte. And he was like, I don't know what to do. Like everything's completely borked. Like, have you tried turning it off and back on again? He's like, that's such a stupid recommendation. Does it? He had to do updates for like hours and then it got like hung doing updates for hours and then it updated. It was fine. Updates on Windows are so bad. Like sometimes they really do take hours to download. Like I don't know what mirrors they use, but it's really weird. All right, it doesn't matter. We're not going to talk about Windows anymore. If you're watching this afterwards, I apologize that you had to sit through all the discussion of Microsoft Windows. This is a Linux podcast. We just haven't started yet. Um, one of us knows that is a Linux podcast. The other one, not so much, you know? I mean, I'm I'm just like the like Linux foundation people using Macs. So I made that video yesterday about how kidding life sucks. First of all, I had about, I don't know, 20 maybe 30 people tell me that I was I was entitled because apparently because I'm not a developer, I don't have the right to complain about things, which is, I mean, that I wouldn't have a channel because I can play about everything. I mean, seriously, that's what I do. It's kind of it's kind of the whole thing that I've cultivated here. Kind of an asshole. My stick. Yeah, yeah. But also I don't remember where I was going with that. That's going to happen a lot today. My brain is going to be going in one direction. Then it's going to see something shiny over there. Like, oh, cool. I might have been working too much. That's what it is. You know, I need a vacation, but damn it. I took a day off on the on the channel and I had my views have not recovered yet. It's so fucking stupid. YouTube is not like you to take days off. Now, when you've trained it to see new content every day, if you've basically trained the algorithm that, you know, if you could get off, I will go ahead and say, I just just I'll do this publicly. I don't care. We're going on a trip to Florida. If you can get off work and and meet us down in Florida next Saturday or meet up and I can pick you up and go down to Florida. That's fine. You're more than welcome and we can do content at the beach, which is we'll literally pertain nothing to Linux other than just two nerds talking on the beach. That's it. And it was it's a very nice offer, but it's a little not enough notice to Tyler. Oh, I know, I know. Yeah, like a week out is like kind of a lot. That's why when my mom told me about the trip, I'm like, you only like, I think I think we had like a month's notice. I'm like, that's not all the time. Are you guys flying? No, we're driving down. Yeah, I was going to say, they probably cancel your flight because of canceling every flight now. Mm hmm. Yeah. All right, they're going to go ahead and get started here. We've been bullshitting long enough. So are you ready to go? Did you finally get audacity installs? Yes, sir. And it is tested and ready. All right, cool. I'm going to record in audacity. I'm going to hit record, you know, be asked so that I have a backup for when you're fit, when you're recording it inevitably fails. You can do the class on every like. Go ahead and do the class, Tyler. All right. Three, two, one. Seems good. Seems reasonable enough. Yeah. OK. I think we're going to go ahead and just jump right on in. No sense in recination. Save that for later. OK, all right, let's. I think I'm ready to go. All right. Hey, everybody, welcome. I should start over again. False start. I need to put a little bit of space between what I was saying before in the beginning. Otherwise, cutting it will be a pain in the ass. All right. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Lynxcast. I'm your host, Matt. And I'm Tyler. This is the Lynxcast. He is Tyler, and we are both using Linux right now. I'm a lying liar who lies. He's not using Linux. That's just switch over to Windows 11. All right, every time I'm the one who's using Linux. OK, like that is the biggest, baddest lie you've ever told. I would never do such thing ever. Like I can even I could show you my screen right now. I'm not using Windows. Thank God. Always this is fake news. Don't listen to it. All right. It's all right. Anyways, this is the Lynxcast. We talk about Linuxy things most of the time. We have never had a tangent in the history of the show, by the way, never. And I promise that we won't have any tangents in this one either. So just to let you know that that's absolutely true. And something's biting me in the back. Thank you very much for that random thing that happens. That doesn't happen ever, I should say. It's like the random things that just don't don't happen. I'm going to keep getting all right. Not prepared for this episode at all. So those of you who've been watching or listening for a while, you'll say what else is new? Yeah. All right. So, Tyler, what have you been doing in the world of FOSS this week? Ah, well, I showed you earlier. Now, the question is, is can I move my webcam around without disorientating everyone on the live stream? Because I can show off what I've done. Hopefully this will not be obtrusive to anybody. But my plan was to take my computer over there, my Rosewell computer input. I've got an Intel board in it. And I took out my AMD mini ITX board and put my mini PC back together. And the plan was to have this mini build be an open BSD machine and have that one over there run Windows just so I could play games and stream them to this one using a service I found called Rainway. And it would have worked if my Intel board posted right, but it didn't. So I'll have to get a new either a new motherboard, which I need to upgrade the CPU anyway. It's an old one. So I'll have to do that eventually. But I ended up keeping a Windows partition and an open BSD partition. I've got two NVMe drives in here. So I've got one for when I want to play games. And well, technically, I could have booted in my open BSD machine today. But I feel like synced up audio is probably nice. So I stayed here, but I've got an open BSD partition and this one and I've been needing to update my open BSD dot files over in my GitLab and update my guide. It needs a small edit so that it's like actually right with my dot files. Because you were using CalmWindowManager or something, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And well, I'm not really sure that I don't think I have my DWM and ST dot files anymore. So I need to remove that section from my guide or redo my DWM and actually upload it up to my dot files. But probably in the next couple of days, like I'll have a full edit and everything in my dot files will be much more up to date. So just in case anyone cares about or wants to check out my open BSD dot files, check them out. But just know they're not really super up to date. So like if you don't really know a lot about open BSD, don't assume that everything is perfect with the dot files. Everything that's there should work. But some of the stuff in my guides like won't be relevant like building DWM and ST. I know that part is not relevant. And I think there are some other things like applications that I install that I no longer use. But that's that's pretty much what I've been working on. It's just getting all my computer stuff situated and dealing with the loss of my my old Intel board. That's been so reliable for years. But it's time to bury it. It's a sad day. What about you, man? You had a better time. Yeah, so I have three things that I want to talk about in this section. And normally I try to let myself to one and limit myself just to Linux stuff. But I have some things to talk about. So first I'll talk about the Linux C thing that I want to talk about. The I've been messing around with a window manager called DK. I made a video about it. It is really, really good. And it may become my daily driver. I'm not sure yet. I'm still kind of switching back before that. And I three will see. I have it installed on hardware. I've been using it on that computer behind me and it's really good. I mean, it's just it has been around for a while. Like two or three years, I think, at least. So it's not as new as I thought it was. But in comparison to like other window managers have been around for like 20 years, it's still fairly new. And it's astonishingly full featured. Like it just has so many features that you just expect to be there in a window manager that had been there for a long time. Now, it's not the best documented ever, but it still has pretty good documentation. Like it has a good man page, all of it, the everything in the configuration file and the SXHKDRC file is well commented. So you know exactly what everything is going on. It's just not up to the level of like I3 or a Q-Tile or whatever in terms of documentation. But it's actually really good. And I highly recommend if you have a chance to give that a try and whatever, you know, you're on Linux or BSPD or whatever it is. It's really good. The other thing I want to talk about other Linux-y thing that I want to talk about for a little while. And this is hard for me to say. I've I'm considering a switch away from Vim. And no, I'm not going to Emacs. I knew that one. When I say I'm switching away from Vim, it's not that I'm abandoning them. I'll still use Vim as my editor for like scripts and the show notes and all the stuff you'd normally do in the terminal. I'd still be doing that. But I don't know, like probably four or five months ago, I made the switch. So I do all of my like forward aid writing and editing in Vim. And I've been doing that now full time for like five months. In Vim, I matter of fact, I've only opened up library office like twice in the last like five months. And that was when I had to like edit a Word document, you know, and I had to worry about the formatting and stuff. The problem I'm having with Vim and I've been having this pretty much since the beginning is that when I open up a document or a Markdown file that is like over 50,000 words and I get these things a lot. Like I have to edit these things. Like once or twice a week, I get an article that takes like that long. And it's so slow. Like sometimes you hit the like J and K and it takes like fractions of a second, like half a second for it to actually move to the next line. And it's annoying. Really only happens in insert mode. Once you're in normal or excuse me, it really only happens in normal mode. When you're in insert mode, it seems to work fine, which is why I've been able to continue to use it. So I just basically stay in insert mode the entire time and use the arrow keys to navigate. But it's just, it's just so slow. So I've been thinking about finding a different Markdown editor that is more capable of handling word counts that high. Something like Obsidian or something like that along those lines. Those are more meant for writing of that kind. Now, like somebody, when I mentioned this in one of my videos, somebody said, well, you know, I code for living and I have like 10, 15, 20,000 lines of code. Like yes, that's true. Vim does not bog down when you have lots of lines of code. But the difference between lines of code and a history article is that these are actually full paragraphs full of stuff. When you have 20,000 lines of code, you maybe have, you know, 10,000 words, you know? Cause it's not a full paragraph, you know? So it's different. For whatever reason, Vim just does not handle that amount of words all that well. Now, it's possible that it's a plugin that I've had, but the problem is that I've disabled all the plugins that I don't need. Like if I disabled Goyo and I disable the light, house, light room, light show, whatever hell it's called. But to disable those two, there's no reason for me to use Vim cause those are amazing things that I want to use. You know, I want to use that distraction free thing. If I have to disable them, then I have other than the Vim keys, there's no reason for me to use them other than being a nerd, you know? So anyways, that's the I'm thinking about switching away from Vim for my writing, which is, you know, it's been a good experiment, but it's just, it doesn't seem to be working all that well. It's a shame. The last thing I want to talk about is something I need to ran about first a minute. So, and this has nothing to do with Linux. So I apologize to begin with, it really has nothing to do with computers, actually, has something to do with mobile phones. And that is, I'm having this problem where when I'm at home, I get no service. And I've always had this problem with T-Mobile. I use Ting, which is, you know, they're an MVNO and I have a T-Mobile SIM from them. And when I was on the iPhone, I didn't really notice the problem because I had Wi-Fi calling and I just, you know, set up the Wi-Fi calling and it just worked fine. On the Android phone that I got, that doesn't have Wi-Fi calling through T-Mobile for some stupid reason. I contacted Ting, they said that T-Mobile had turned the feature off or something. I don't even know. So, this morning, I was like, I've had enough of this going in and out of service. Like, I can walk from here to the bathroom, which is like right next door. I can have service in the bathroom. I have no service when I'm sitting here. It's stupid. My mother wonders why I spend all my time in the bathroom. It's not because, you know, it's not for the usual reason. It's just because that's the only place I have service. It's just because of all these things. It's just because of all these things. Oh, God, that's good. I didn't even know it was gonna go that direction, but it did. Anyway, anyways, I contacted Ting this morning. I was like, I'm just done with this. And they have another partner where they're an MVNO of. So they are partnered with Verizon as well. So I was like, what will it take for me to be able to get a Verizon send just to put in my phone? Cause my phone is unlocked. It'll work with Verizon. Here's where the rant comes in. In order to switch to a Verizon SIM card on Ting, which is the same company. So I'm just gonna be moving from Ting to Ting, right? They just ship me a SIM card and I put it in my phone. That's the way it should work. But no, the way you have to do it is you have to open up a new Ting account with a new email address. And then you have to switch away from Ting to some other carrier and then port your number back to Ting in order to switch to that new SIM card. I swear to God, that's actually what the guy told me you had to do. And I was like, okay, why would I come back? Like, why would you come back? Like, if I have to go through, I mean, porting a number is a pain in the ass. And you want me to do it three times or twice? Whatever it is. I mean, it's just so, it was so stupid. What? Like, how does that make any sense? I would have understood, like, I would have, it was still been stupid, but I would have understood if I had to port it from one Ting account to the other Ting account, that would have made sense to me. Like one from one Ting to the other Ting. That would have made sense, right? Still pretty stupid that you can't just say, hey, Douchebag has a new SIM card, switch the service over to that. You know, that would have made sense to me, but you know, one from one Ting to the other Ting would have made sense. But the fact that you have to go from one Ting to another carrier back to Ting, the new Ting account, it's just, I mean, it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. That's genuinely like, so that's like you go to a car dealership and like you have, like it's like you go to a Chevy dealership. You already have a Chevy and you're like, I would like to get a different one. And they're like, well, for you to get that one and for you to trade in yours, you're going to need to go to a Dodge or a mother place. A different dealer by a Ford. Trade that fucker in back on your Chevy. It's just, it was so, like I spent a half an hour in their chat this morning trying, I tried to understand like, why is this the case? And the guy didn't know, it's just, that's the way they'd been doing it forever. That's just like, can I just, can I speak to like a chief member of the company and just, can we just talk for like five minutes about how dumb this is? Like, what? Like, why would you make somebody go to one of your competitors to get a different plan? Right, I can't answer the question. Also, I can hear myself in the background there, Tyler. Again, excellent news. Like, I can hear myself twice. It's, it's fantastic. That's so good. If you want me to, I won't get up and go grab my head, my headset. It's right over there in the closet. I will try to just use the OBS thing. It won't be quite as good quality, but it'll be all right. Sad day. Next time, just use your headphones. Be a normal person. Use Linux. I'm just, just, you know, just use Linux. I'm just, you know what, I might just end up doing that. Just for the, just for the shits and giggles. I might just, it's going to be hilarious because this is the way it's going to work Monday through Thursday and Saturday and Sunday. Tyler is going to be a Windows user, but in the morning on Friday, he's going to wipe his windows install, install a random Linux distro just so he can use Linux on the podcast and then switch back to Windows. That's so. I have an extra drive. So instead of just rocking a open BSD, I'll just put, I'll put, I'll definitely still be switching constantly, but I'll put Linux on that and just use it. Like the sad part is, is like, you're completely right. Most of the week, I will be running Windows because I am heavily addicted to Deadside. I have quickly went from like 100 hours in the game to like 160, 175, something like that. I've been spending too much of my days and nights in Deadside. I've been living in that game. You could do, you could, if you had to deal with Ting in order to switch between operating systems, you'd have to go from Windows to BSD back to Windows in order to switch to Windows. It was that complicated to switch. I can almost guarantee you I'd stop. That's how I could probably stop myself from distro hopping is make it to where I have to contact somebody to get like a verification code before I can switch and they make it a hassle. I get transferred like seven times. You weren't alive yet when in order to use Windows, you had to activate it through the phone. There was no internet, Windows 95, yes it had internet, but there was no activation servers at the time. So in order to, when you want to install it, you'd have to activate it like literally by calling someone. It wasn't really until XP where they had the servers where you could contact the internet, do it through the internet. Can you imagine if that was still the case? Like every time you installed Windows, you had to get online or you had to open, you had to open up your phone, dial a 1-800 number and then try, because the way they had it set up was that you had to read out like a 16 or 18 or 24-digit number with letters and stuff like that to a robot. And you gotta remember, this was like 1995. So robots weren't really all, and they weren't really good at listening to you. So you could try, it forced you to try three times and they'd never got it right for three times. Then you'd have to wait for them to transfer you to someone so you could read them the same number and then your Windows would be activated. I'm just trying to imagine someone with like a thick Midwestern accent or something like that. Just trying to read off numbers and just getting so pissed off. I got the machine like, no, I didn't say A. Like I didn't say, oh God. That's too much of a hassle, man. Like, no. We do have a lot of convenience nowadays that's overlooked. Now these days we just use Linux. Yeah, yeah, it fixes a lot of issues unless you wanna play an easy anti-cheat game where they could just press a single button and make it work on Linux, but they don't, which integrates the shit out of me. It's one button, just devs, press it, watch, come on. Oh yeah, Shadow, I know that you still, still if you wanna activate Windows, there is an option to call them. And if you are trying, if you do, okay, so this has become the Windows cast, but I just wanna talk about this for a minute. Even as recent as the last time I used Windows, I refused to buy more than one product key. Like I would never buy more than one. So I used the same Windows 7 product key for, I don't know, 15 years. It actually may have been a Windows XP product key because they let you upgrade, right? And I use it on all my computers. You're only supposed to use it on one. But the thing is, is that it recognized if you tried to activate it online through their little servers, it would recognize that you're trying to activate it on more than one computer. So it would say, hey, you already have using this on one computer, but if this is not true, give us a call. So if you called them, read out that stupid long ass number, it would still tell you, you are trying to use this on one one computer. But if you contacted, if this is an error, press zero, and you can call somebody, if you lied to them and say, hey, I'm just reinstalling it on the same computer, they'd go ahead and activate your version of Windows. Even if you weren't actually installing it on the same version or the same computer. I did that over and over again. First of all, it was stupid, but I did that over and over every time I reinstalled Windows, whether it was on this computer or on a laptop, all for all my family, that's the way I did it. I just refused to buying more than one key. So yeah, that was very where that you can still do that. I'm not pro lying, but I'm not really against that. Like, you know, I don't have a moral objection to installing Windows on a more computer. Like, I'm not paying $110 for your license. Like, this was before you could easily get like a manufacturer's version of Windows where it's like 10 or 15 bucks. It was back when you actually had to go like to best buy and buy a actual physical CD with like a Windows key. And it was $110, like I'm not doing that to put that on my grandmother's computer. Or, you know, just it's not, that's not going to happen. Like it's not worth paying that amount of money. Like it feels bad, like a family member, you're not worth paying $110, but not when you can deal with 10 minutes worth of hassle and get it for free. So anyways, okay, why are you people still watching this? This is supposed to be a Linux podcast. I promise we're going to talk about Linux very soon. So let's move into the contact information. If you want to get in contact with us, you can do so any number of ways. You can subscribe to all of our feeds and stuff like that at thelinxcast.org. All of our links and stuff like that will be right there. You can, there you'll be able to find the latest episodes, which is not true because I haven't updated it in a long time, but you can find some of our episodes. Anyways, some recent blog posts, again, those haven't been updated in a long time, but eventually I'll get a system where I can actually update that stuff. Anyways, you can email us at email at thelinx, or I think it's email at thelinxcast.org, is the email address. I don't actually have that written here for some reason. I don't know why. You can follow Tyler who goes by Zany online at youtube.com slash Zanyo G. He's encroaching 3,000 subscribers close? Yeah, it's kind of wild. Nuts, it's nuts, like this guy's famous. It's insane. It's good. Anyways, you should definitely go subscribe to him if you enjoy game development and random, like, Linux-y stuff every once in a while, openBSD. He's literally, like, I'm surprised he hasn't done videos on like, wildlife exploration or something at this point because the guy's all over the place, I tell you. He could not have chosen a better username than Zany if he had tried. I mean, I have videos of me building a wagon, so, you know. It's true. He does. So anyways, go subscribe to him. You can subscribe to thelinxcast at youtube.com slash thelinxcast. All of our contact information, including our links to Twitter, Mastodon, all that stuff will be at thelinxcast.org slash contact. So also links to the store are on that website as well. So check out the store. Okay, so that is the contact information. We're going to move on now to the news. Now, before we move on to the news, I'm just going to make a change to the podcast that Tyler has nothing, he knows nothing about. We're making a change to the podcast. So starting next week, we're going to be stripping out the news for one week, and we're going to be doing a listener feedback during this period of the show. So we'll be doing that every other week. So next week will be listener feedback. The week after that we'll go back to news, then we'll do listener feedback and so on and so forth. So if you have, when I say listener feedback, I mean like questions, comments on the things that we're talking about, whatever it be, you can get those things to us any number of ways you can email me. You can leave a comment on this video here or you can tweet at me, I guess. This would be a good way to do that. Email is probably the best way to do that. So email at thelinxcast.org if you have things that you want to say. So that'll be next week in place of the news. So Tyler, every week, you and I, well, not every week, previous to this, not anymore. It's, they're just going to have to deal with our news being slightly delayed from now on. So we'll be doing it every other week, but usually we have the most latest breaking news. Here on the podcast, I should have like a sound effect or something like the CNN breaking news thing. Definitely should have that. So you have a news item thing for us. So what is your news item thing for us this week? This article about GNOME web is now like one of the best browsers on Linux because it has extensions now. Awesome. I mean, like, I don't, I don't really, I don't really know what to think about this article at all because it's very much praising GNOME web and essentially it all boils down to like, now that it has extensions, it's one of the best browsers on Linux. And I wanted to bring this up because I don't know that that's true. Like, Yeah, like this is a difficult one because you're like, well, I mean, like, look, extensions being added is a great thing. But I don't, like, I, I've never used GNOME web and been like, all this needs is extensions and it's great. What web engine does it use? Like, does it use Gecko or is it a front end for Chromium or is it like QT web engine or something? It's either QT web engine or, or crap, you said the first one that she said the Firefox Gecko, yeah. It's, I believe it's one of those two. I don't know. I think it's, I think it's a Gecko. Well, it has Firefox sign-in. So I'm assuming that it's Gecko then. Yeah. So, OK, let me just pause this question. If that's true. And, you know, neither one of us are experts. We don't really know. We're just guessing out of our ass, as usual. Um, if that's true, though, why would you use this and not just use Firefox unless you're so attached to the way, you know, design software? Like, if you really want a GTK browser, that had to be like the only reason why, right? Well, I mean, like, I think the only two options are either you really like, like GTK applications or you're using, you know, like. That would probably be the only two. Well, the thing is, is that the Linux experiment, he did a browser thing where he was trying to find a new browser for himself. And he used GNOME web for like a month or something like that. And he had so many problems with websites rendering because, of course, you did. They couldn't use it. It was it was unusable. Adding extensions doesn't fix that. OK. Yeah. No, no, I think it needed extensions, but I don't think extensions solve a lot. Like when I've used it, like my main thing with GNOME web is like YouTube is either like doesn't load properly or loads properly, but just slow as shit. So like I don't I don't think an extension. I don't think I could get an extension to be like, oh, yeah, YouTube's fast now. Yeah. See, the thing is, is that if this, I think we might be a bit a little bit hypocritical here. More mainly because if this was a browser saying it had extensions now, we'd be both be jumping down up and down in the in the streets. You know, if it's if we could get real ad blocking in Kube browser. Like, yeah, I'm never using Firefox again. You know, I've I've heard that some people have gotten, like I don't think it's you block, but they've gotten some extra way of doing, like ad block in Kube browser. I think they call it grease monkey or something like that. Well, grease monkey, I know, is like, I think grease monkey is there, like extension, like method, like you use grease monkey. I don't know. All I know is that every time I say, oh, Kube browser doesn't have ads, somebody points me at grease monkey, but there's no as far as I know, there's no good documentation on how to run it. But the thing is, is like, like last year or two years ago, whatever they implemented braves ad blocking in Kube browser. And like this sounds good on paper, it still doesn't block all the hats into a good job. So if Kube browser had extensions, if that's what the story was, we'd be much happier and we wouldn't make me making as much fun of. But then I made the same comment about conquer. Like, do people like do you do people still like actually use epiphany and get on web? Like, is there actually like somebody out there that says, yeah, this is my daily driver. I don't have any other browsers. Yes, because if if there's a lot of people out there that are using the. And what it's called the Libra Wolf or whatever browser, like, and they rave about it. Trust me, there are definitely people that use good on web because Libra Wolf can't render like fucking 80 percent of the web. And there's people out there that are like swear by it. Love it. And like major websites that like I've had to use for work or like clients and stuff like just don't run at all. Like they literally like it blocks so much JavaScript that I think it blocks all JavaScript. So there's a lot of websites that just won't load. And if people are using that, then there is definitely people that are like, you know, web is fine for me, which is not like it's not like that's a problem. It's well, you can use whatever you want. I'm just it's it's like. It'd be like being on that's really offensive. I'm sure that the thing about you can make fun of them on the Internet. All they want, they're never going to know. Just it's really, really horrible. I don't mean beautiful people. They're just I made just this joke on Twitter the other day. Like they're you you you pass by you you're driving along. You you pass an Amish guy with his horse and bugging. He's passing a gas station, just laughing his ass off because he doesn't need it. You know, but anyway, it's all completely out of the point. Using using GNOME web would feel like you're living in the Amazon jungle. You know, I mean, it's just or, you know, living in the boondocks off the grid, whether you're theater or Kaczynski or something. You know, the Unibommer, you know, it's like, yeah, technically you can browse the web, but it's not a great experience. So you probably don't do it all that often. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's it's like if you wanted to put as much pain in your in the way of like cat videos as much as possible. Like you don't want to watch cat videos anymore. So you use the worst possible browser ever. Well, I mean, I think I think there's a lot of people that don't need a lot like they don't really like going to heavy sites and they tend to avoid them. And for stuff like that, like I think the more simplistic browsers are fine. Like they're just fine. Like you wouldn't notice a problem, but. You can't recommend that for most people. Like most people are going to need a fully featured browser, which is. I think we all agree that that's not really the future that we want. Like we don't want our browsers becoming a secondary. We don't want it to become evolved. Is what you're saying? Yes. I mean, Vivaldi is atrocious, man. Like it's just it's atrocious. I made this tweet about a month ago. Actually, it's like Vivaldi is the Emacs of browsers. So it has everything, man. It's just you have a web browser. It's a base thing that's meant for browsing the web, but you've built so much stuff on top of it. But you would have to give it also the spin of it also pulls like a lot from open source. And it's just like we don't steal our shit. Like our five percent of our browser that like we made don't touch it. Like that's ours. Like it's special at this point. I was like, I'm. There was a point where both you and I were big proponents of Microsoft Edge. So we don't have a lot of room to talk in terms of proprietary browsers. So that that's just but whatever, it doesn't matter. Before we move on to my news, I just want to take a moment to apologize to anyone who's related to an Amish person because I know that I know that I'm going to get an email saying, well, that was really offensive. You shouldn't have said that. I know. I know. I apologize. Don't cancel me. I don't I don't think that was something that you need to apologize to. I don't think so either, but I'm covering my basis. I I love like the Amish man to like my favorite thing in the world. There's an Amish community not too far from here, and they sell like a whole bunch of bread and stuff. They make the greatest shit, man. Like I don't know what they put. They're definitely putting wheat or something in their food because it's really good. It's so good. Like we had some Amish potatoes. Like they had always had a stand of before Walmart's like we're like everywhere. Like you like on the same corner you could go to, you know, now you can see Walmart. But before there used to be like one Walmart. It was like 30 or 40 miles away from us. But we wanted to shop there because it was like really cheap. It's got to remember this is the 90s. But along the way there, there was an Amish community. And along the road, they had their little stand, right? And they had some of the greatest food, just so good. Um, yeah, no, I'm going to I'm just in case anyone is not like really used to the US or like rural parts of the US and you ever start traveling out to rural areas. If you ever get to a place that's pretty rural, ask if there's an Amish community nearby and then go get food there because it will be amazing. Particularly if you can get preserves from like an Amish community almost every Amish community that I've ever bought like stuff like preserves or bread at it is incredible. It is like treat yourself. It is so good. And you also kind of get to meet like some like they live completely different. Like it's an interesting way of life. Like it just is and they're very different and they're always really accepting and nice. So if you ever are traveling, check it out. Remember the beginning when I said no tangents, right? And it lasts long. OK, moving on to my news of the week. Mine is going to kind of play into the main topic a little bit. So my my topic was or my news this week was a Fedora 37. They proposed for Fedora 37 to allow unrestricted access to flyhubs. So if you've used Fedora in the past from from 36 behind ever since flat pack became a thing, you'll know that the actual use of flat pack was very handicapped and they didn't have access to like the repository. Like flat hub is where everything is when it comes to flat the flat pack. And by default, Fedora did not have this added to their system. And they had no way to do it outside of the terminal or the software center. You had to do this through using either a flat pack itself so you could go to flat hub, hit a button and it would install into your software center or you could use a command line, a script or whatever. So it's interesting and the reason why that's the case is because flat hub contains software that is proprietary. So it had like Google Chrome is there, you know, it has like DaVinci Resolve on there. There's a ton of software that is licensed under something that is incompatible with the Ethos of Fedora. So reason why you can't get Nvidia drivers out of the box on Fedora. You have to enable a repo in order to get them. They don't do anything that is proprietary, except for the kernel blocks, obviously. The point is, is that, you know, they're thinking about allowing flat hub to be enabled by default in Fedora 37, which I think is is huge news and also great news because, you know, I'm not a I'm always going to be an AUR guy. But Flatpak is quickly becoming the secondary package management system. I'm all on my computers. Like when there's a something that I either can't get from the AUR or I'm just more, I just I'm more interested in it being like 100 percent stable. And I'm not interested in constant updates. I install the Flatpak version of it. And I think that Fedora, finally embracing Flathub sees Flatpak becoming more like a first class citizen, not only on Fedora, but everywhere else, too, because it's really good. And I think the reason why they're doing is is something we can talk. We're going to talk about later is that they're more and more focusing on the development of silver, blue and white. And if you want to have access to a lot of software, you had have to enable Flathub. Having it out of the box means that both of those containerized immutable systems have access to way more software out of the box. And I also don't see this being like I don't really think that you can construe this as being a bad thing. Like it's not it's not like having easy access to proprietary stuff is a bad thing. Like I don't for the people that want proprietary stuff from Flathub, you're only making it easier to get it for the people that want it for your users that want it. And then for the people that don't want it, they don't you don't have to get it. You don't install it. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's it's not like that, like Flathub or the Software Center is deceptive about the licensing on something. They make it pretty clear, like they have a section for like they show you what it's licensed under. So I don't think this is a problem. And if you're against this, I don't understand why. It's this is only making things easier for people and more convenient. And if you're against the proprietary aspect of some of the things that you can get on Flathub, then you don't have to install them. They're not being shoved on you, but you just now you'll be able to see them. Which I don't I don't again, I don't think that's really annoying. Like I'm not that big, not that big of a deal. Well, I mean, just I've never understood this idea that if you hide away the proprietary software, you can just kind of pretend it doesn't exist. It's like eating a whole pan of brownies in the bathroom, just and then saying the calories don't come. That really the way that kind of stuff works, you know what I mean? Yeah, you know, so just because it's it's it's there and it's one of the like this is it's the same argument we had when we were trying out elementary OS. And like we talked a lot about this, about it being a new user focus distro that when they switched over, I think it was like either six or six dot one, I can't remember which one we were trying out at the time. But when they switched over, they were relying only on flat packs and because they most of their native applications were not flat packs and they weren't pulling from FlatHub, their software center was like a barren wasteland. It was and they weren't even doing it because of the liberating. They were doing it because they wanted only FlatHub or flat packs that. A conform to their design standards, you know, they only wanted ones that looked like they were designed for elementary OS, which. What are you doing? Yeah, you had you. I mean, when they announced that they were going to switch to flat pack only, like I was like, that's a good idea because you know, you're going to have access to all of the software. It's going to be amazing. Like me, but no, that's not how it worked. You can even install Firefox. Like the only thing you had was epiphany. It was the only thing that was there and you couldn't install Firefox without enabling FlatHub. And this is a new user distro. You know what I mean? This is for people who aren't going to know how to install FlatHub out of the box. You know, it was just I was. And elementary OS design scheme caters more towards Mac OS users. And could you imagine someone who has never tried Linux has maybe watched one or two Linux videos in their life before and they install elementary OS successfully boot into it. They're all excited and then they go into the software center expecting to see something like the app store on Mac OS and then see that. Like, I mean, we both check that out. There was like maybe 50 applications in there. Maybe it was a wasteland of applications. Like what are users can't do anything and expecting someone to know how to. For one, add more flat packs is wild. Like you expect them to know to go to FlatHub, go to the quick start section, click on the distro, then copy the command line at like like thing and run it. Like. I would understand that if there was a pop up that explained exactly a step by step process to do it, but that didn't exist. So it's it's just it didn't make any sense. And also, why would you not like there's no I get the design scheme thing, but that's a pretty loose argument that elementary always has been about as much control over their operating system as possible. And when you enable a third party repository, you have no control. But like, then why did you switch the flat pack? Why didn't you just come up with your own random, you know, package formatting system if you want that much control? I mean, nobody would hardly ever use it and you would just make it much harder for developers to make their software available across, you know, all of Linux. But then you'd have your typefisted control, because that's the thing about elementary S that is always bothered me is like they've tried as much as possible to make this thing as Apple like as possible. The entire ecosystem from the design language to not having like a minimized button on their on their windows to all of this stuff. They've tried their hardest to be as much like Apple as possible. And the thing is, is that by tightening down their their desktop environment and their package management strategy so much, they've made it less good. You know, the thing about Apple, like you can say all you want about Mac OS, but that thing is full featured like that thing has all the features that you probably want. It does things in weird ways. It definitely is closed down. But if you want to install an application from the web, you can do so. And it's going to pop up all these warnings that are going to tell you that you're going to die if you do this. And, you know, you you should download everything from the Mac App Store. But you can do it. It's it's full featured. The problem just to expand on what you're saying, you mean software wise. It's full. Yeah, software wise. Again, like it has all the things that you need to use. And while it has restrictions, you can use it as an is an operating system, right? With elementary OS, they like they took that ethos and just kind of made it so constricted. And, you know, they kind of had to because it's a really, really small team, right? They can they can focus on making such a, you know, it's the reason why it took them so long to get that last that six dot O version out and why even when it came out, it felt incomplete because it's a really small team. But the thing is, is that when you are a small team, the greatest thing about open source software and Linux in general is that other people are there. Like this is a huge mungus community that does a whole bunch of stuff. We do look at it for all over the place. There is no reason to be so tight-fisted on your idea for what you want with a distro to put yourself in the foot, basically, by saying, hey, we got to do it this way and not have like why hub is there? Like, like it was it's there. You used to think I think this is something that trips up a lot of distributions and to bring it back to Fedora. I think Fedora doing this is a fantastic decision. If as long as they go through with it, with making FlatHub just there by default. A lot of distributions have. Oh, either a handful of goals or a singular goal in mind and they. Not lose focus, but can sometimes forget that what makes the powerhouse operating systems that most people use is software. Like if you if you forget that having the software that people need is an important thing, then you can't complain when your user base shrinks or is just extremely niche and very small. Because for most people, what is a make or break is do you have X application that I need? And if you're artificially limiting yourself, software, software wise, it's not a great thing for new user. Like, like not I almost had retention, but like bringing in new users. It's it's not a great thing. People need, especially when you're focused or at least potentially focused on new users, the ease of that getting that new software is the most important part. If your process of getting applications or software is a little bit more in depth, like, let's say, like with the AUR, like, you know, you're not just going to like install an ArchDistro. And then if it doesn't already come with an AUR helper in there, it's not an immediate knowledge thing for a new user of knowing how to install an AUR application or anything. But with Arch, their documentation is so good that once you find out that a certain application is on the AUR and you're like, how in the hell do I install something from the AUR? There's tons of guides on it step by step guides to do it. And if if your distro is not like that, like like Arch, where it's more aimed towards advanced users or really advanced users just mean somebody who's used it a lot and probably has experienced that problem and then figured out how to solve it. If your distro is not focused for that, it's focused on new users. Getting that software and making that process as simple as possible is the most important thing. That's how you get new users. And I think for right now, like retaining Linux users is not hard. Linux has gotten so good nowadays, bringing in new or like not bringing in, keeping Linux users and not having them have to go off to use Windows for some reason, like Zoom or something for business. It's gotten to the point now where that's really not a problem. The thing now is, is how can we make Linux easier for everyone to use and everyone to get an attractive for new users? And that's where elementary went wrong is because the thing elementary has always had for is that they had a very vocal community of people who used it and recommended it to new people. And when they took two and a half years to go from version five to version six, they lost a lot of that word up because a lot of the, you know, people who were big proponents of it moved to other places. They moved to other districts because they needed things that are updated. They needed a newer kernel. And they bought new hardware and they needed kernel that would actually run their new graphics card or whatever. So they moved to different, you know, they moved to Ubuntu because it has a newer kernel or whatever. You know, so they shot themselves on the foot by taking so long to update. But and then when it finally did come out, it was worse. You know, like, yeah, it had some cool features like the dark mode in elementary OS, gorgeous. Like it really looked really nice, accent colors, fantastic. But then you can download Firefox, you know, like you can download or like it doesn't have to be far like I just say Firefox because that's the open source browser that everybody uses on Linux. If you're going to use the open source browser, that's when you're going to use. Never mind what most people would want to install, be Chrome. You know, like you could you could install Chrome easily because you can't install a web package out of the box on on on elementary. I think the biggest thing with that with that release of elementary OS, which I mean, we're talking a lot like negatively about elementary OS. It's not like it's a terrible district, which wasn't even the freaking topic, by the way, just exactly completely moved off. But all I will say is I think what really hurt hurt them in that way, that release would have brought back people who already use elementary OS and moved away from it because it was just older kernel or, you know, it's just it had just gotten not as easier to use. It probably brought them back in and they enjoyed a lot of the newer features and were fine with just getting flat hub or whatever. But I think for everybody, like when that release came out, it's been so long that people were very vocal about it. And there was a lot of hubbub about the new release of elementary OS. And so there are a lot of people who are new and are like, oh, a lot of people are talking about elementary OS. I guess I'll give this a shot. They shot themselves in the foot big time on that release because there are definitely plenty of new users that tried it out. And then we're like, no, and left and we'll never give it another shot. Just along those lines so we can seriously we need to move on. But I don't know if you know who Paul Throd is. He's a big Windows blogger, right? He has been a Windows blogger for like 30 years. All he covers is Windows. So it doesn't matter if you don't know him. But that's the point is he only covers Windows. He has a blog about Windows and he logged about the elementary OS 6 release. Like that's how out there this release was because everyone, even like some people who are just kind of follow Linux, you know, in the periphery, they paid attention to that release. And that's how bad it was. Like you got on there, like everybody knew this. They had an inflow of new people and they got real. They realized once they got there, it was not good. You know, that's that's I mean, one of the things we didn't talk about was the whole fallout of elementary OS, because like the co-founders like got in a big, you know, Brujaha and one of them left. And one of them decided that they're going to leave and that they had to kind of fight over who owned the company. Who knows if they're going to be a version seven at this point? Who knows? Anyways, we were we were talked about flat hub and flat packing. The reason why I said that would lead well into the main topic is because our main topic this week is containerization. And when I say containerization, I mean snaps, flat packs, those things, but also immutable file systems where basically they've containerized the entire Linux stack, like the only thing that you have access to is the home directory, that's where you're going to live. You can make no changes to the, you know, the underlying root file system. So I wanted to talk about that and the reason why I want to talk about that is because I've been using Kino White now for almost two months off and on. Most of my time has still been spending been spent in arch just because I have work to do and that's where all my stuff is. And it's just easier that way. Also been having problems with KDE, but that's kind of beside the point. So I've been using Kino White. And Kino White is the KDE version of Silver Blue, which is the immutable file system for Dora. Just a brief talk about how that's going. It is good, but also amazingly restrictive. Like there are some things that you just if you're a Linux nerd, you're kind of used to being able to do like and add an X sessions file, you know, can do that in Silver Blue. Not easily anyways, or compile DWM in like the slash opt file directory, which is something some people do. Can't do that on Kino White or Silver Blue, at least again, not easily. And that's kind of the point is that the idea behind the future of Linux is that when you download a distribution, you have access to your home directory and you can do whatever you want. You can install whatever programs you want, usually from a containerized package manager like Flatpak or Snaps, probably Flatpak at this point. And that's how you get all of your applications. But you can, if you want, download things from a terminal file, terminal package manager like RPM Austria, I believe is where it's called. And you can do that if you want to. And that will then force you to actually reboot your computer in order for that application to be installed because you've made alterations to the file structure that you don't actually have permissions to do until you reboot your system. But the future of Linux is that that underlying root file system is the same on every person's distribution or every person's computer. So it's exactly the same. That way, when they do an update to that system, it's easy enough for them to do it without having to worry about different changes without any of your the user facing changes, having conflicts with things that are that are going to be in the update, a better Delta Delta style update so that you can just kind of put in the bits and pieces instead of having the whole kinkaboodle downloaded. You know, so the future of Linux is supposedly this and I've been using it now for two months. And it makes me sad for Linux. So, Tyler, before I talk about why it makes me sad, what do you think about the future of Linux in this way? To be honest, the mutable file systems I don't think are the future of desktop Linux at all. I think they're more relevant to like enterprise like environments where like essentially like call center environment, stuff like that, where you have hundreds, if not thousands of people all working at computers, doing seeming like pretty menial. That like, you know, like not very intensive, like system wise, demanding tasks, like they just need to be able to take phone calls, log notes, do all that type of stuff. I think in enterprise environments, immutable file systems make sense for that because you can't have, you know, an employee just do something stupid and then like break the system or whatever. They're limited to like their shit, like where they should be on the system and they can't really damage anything. I think it makes sense for that kind of environment. And then having a lot of your applications be containers makes sense too, because that also means that, I mean, it takes care of a lot of security issues or it doesn't really take care of them, but at the very least, potentially mitigates a lot of security issues. So, I think that is good. On the desktop though, I don't think immutable file systems make much sense. They, especially if you know what you're doing and you like to customize stuff on your system, like, yeah, that's not, it's not fun. It's not a good solution. I really just think container, like containers for when it pertains to the future of the desktop Linux space, I think containerization is only a good solution for mass distributing like big applications. Like, you know, your small like window managers and stuff like that. I don't think it's ever gonna be popular that those are distributed in like flat packs or snaps or anything like that. But for applications like Discord, bigger applications like Steam, Blender, OBS, stuff like this, I think it makes a lot of sense for them to start using containers for that just because it makes it easier to distribute stuff. Like, and it's easier on, I wouldn't say new users, but just casual users. It's easier to, especially on something like Fedora, like, even adding, after you've added FlatHub or let's just say they make it to where it's just immediately there, getting a flat pack is not hard at all. Like it's super easy for everybody. I think for those types of bigger applications, it makes sense and it'll probably move to, most big applications I feel like will probably move towards distributing mainly in containers. They'll probably still have the option to get it from source and, you know, well, assuming it's open source, obviously they'll still have that option there. But, you know, like when you go to their website, the download link will reference a flat pack or a snap or whatever. I think that's probably like the way that we're moving and I don't think it's a bad thing. For bigger applications, it's fine. If you don't want it in a container, it's open source. You don't have to get it in a container. That's fine. Yeah. But it just makes it easier on developers and ensuring that they're able to get it out to users in an easy way. I think that's good. A beautiful file systems, though, I don't think they're gonna take off. I don't think they're great for the desktop. Yeah, let's see, okay. So a couple of things about the things you said. So containerized applications make a ton of sense because one of the, like, for example, it's not a great example, but just bear with me for a second. If you've ever downloaded Pandoc, I use Pandoc every single day. And basically what Pandoc does is it allows you to convert file formats from one to another. So for example, let's say you had an HTML file, you wanted to translate it to or convert it to markdown. You can do that with Pandoc. But Pandoc is written in Haskell. And if you know anything by Haskell, you'll know that it has a ton of libraries, like a literal ton. It's the same thing if you download an application that's written in Python. Python has a ton of libraries. You download those things, whatever. And it doesn't really matter if it's a GUI or a terminal thing. You're gonna have to deal with libraries. And the thing about containerized applications that makes it so appealing to developers is that they can package the libraries and everything that their application needs right inside the container. And they don't have to worry about version numbers or any of that stuff. So you can just get that thing. It's always going to work forever and ever. That's the reason why containerized applications make a ton of sense, right? The reason why they've become so popular. It's a really good idea. Now, we've had some problems with the idea in terms of actually implementing it. So in traditional Linux fashion, we couldn't agree on a format. So we've created a couple, you know? That's the way we've done it. And Flaphack now seems to have been the format that most distributions seems to have kind of settled on. There are a few that still use snaps. And snaps, I think the reason why that hasn't caught on more in outside of Ubuntu is because of the, you know, it snaps and they're not very good. So containerized applications make a ton of sense. But the immutable file system, you said you don't think it's going to catch on. And I'm gonna have to disagree with you, unfortunately. And I'm saying it, unfortunately, for a good thing. And that's the reason why I say that is because the Steam Deck, it has an immutable file system. And as more and more people are introduced to Linux through that type of thing, we're gonna see that more and more. It's almost guaranteed. And I've been listening to people who are much more smart about this than I am. Like there's a good podcast called Two and a Half Admins. Those guys know a lot of stuff. Another one of the late night Linux versions has Martin Wimpress on it. And they were talking about this. And all those guys are pretty much convinced that this is going to be the future of Linux. If you wanna download a distro, you're going to be downloading something that has an immutable file system. And I can understand that thing. Like from, like, let's just take the Steam, the Steam, the Steam Deck, I don't know why that word was hard. Let's just take that as an example of the reason why it's a good thing, right? When you have a product that you're selling to people who have no idea what's how they're doing, they don't care that this thing is Linux, they're just buying it to play games on. You don't want them to have access to the file system. It'd be like giving people access to the file system on a PlayStation or an Xbox, you know what I mean? It would probably break the PlayStation or the Xbox if they didn't know what they're doing. You know what I mean? That's the reason why an immutable file system in that situation is actually a really good idea. Because you're dealing with people who don't know anything about Arch Linux. I mean, seriously, that thing's Arch Linux and you're giving it to people who have no clue how to spell Linux, let alone use it. You know what I mean? I don't know. I think the problem with this example though is because we're talking about a game console. I mean, that's really what the Steam Deck is. At its core, it's just a handheld console. People are going to see the success of that in people being able to use that and say, maybe this is a way to get more new users. I mean, I don't think they're actually, actually, I don't think that that's true at all. I don't think that they're going to see that and say, that's how you're going to get new users to use Linux. Instead, I think that they're going to see a way to make development of Linux easier across Linux distribution. So it doesn't really matter what distribution you're using. If you have this setup, it's easier for the development cycle to continue on in a steady pace because you're not worrying about different versions of the kernel. You're not worrying about different versions of the file system. It's all exactly the same. And that's how you deal with updating it. You don't have to worry about there being 12 different versions of Ubuntu out there. They all use exactly the same one. You know what I mean? Every single one uses exactly the same one. That doesn't really pertain to the immutable file system though, because every distro is going to have different kernel versions, even if regardless of an immutable file system. Not if they use an immutable file system. For example, let's just say Ubuntu and immutable tomorrow. Every single flavor would then be using the exact same file system across the board. The only thing that would be different would be the layer on top of it. That'd be it. Obviously it'd be more complicated than that. So don't at me and tell me how I'm drastically oversimplifying it. I don't care. That would be the point is that they would be able to significantly lower the development time over having to create an ISO for every single version of Ubuntu. Let's just ignore the flavors. Ubuntu itself has four or five different things that they have to put out. They have Ubuntu Core, they have Ubuntu Server, they have the Ubuntu Desktop. They have a whole bunch of different Ubuntu ISOs that they have to take care of. And that's just this version. They also have to take care of every single version since like 14.04 is still being updated. So if they had an immutable file system where they knew that that underlying operating system was exactly the same on every single computer so they didn't have to worry about different, hardware blobs and the kernel and stuff like that. All this stuff that developers have to deal with, it's all exactly the same. It makes it easier for them to develop. Now obviously not a developer so I'm sure I got some of that wrong. But see the immutable file system has nothing to do with that because different distros are still gonna have different like layout. What does Ubuntu care about what Arch Linux is doing? They don't, this is not about how, you know. Ubuntu is not the software developers. They're just the distro. Software developers, like I don't think many software developers have an issue with the layout of a distro or that really causing problems. No, it has nothing to do with the layout. It's all, it's the root file system. It has nothing to do with anything, the other stuff. That's the reason why Kino White and Silver Blue are basically the same underlying system. You can update them both at the exact same time. It pulls from the same source of code. Even though one uses KDE, one uses GNOME. You know, the KDE and the GNOME part doesn't matter whatsoever because it's living in an abstraction layer above the root file system. You know, that root file system is exactly the same on Kino White as it is on Silver Blue. And that means that they can update them both at the exact same time with the same stuff that they had to put into them without having to deal with, hey, I have to, all right, so I have to go update the stuff on Silver Blue and then go do the exact same work slightly differently on Kino White. That makes sense. And it's not, we're saying, I'm saying this like it's the future of Linux but regular Linux isn't gonna go away like tomorrow or even 20 years from now. You're still gonna be able to download Gen2 and do all of your compiling as much as you want to. There's zero percentage. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying. Like all you're saying is that for the majority of people in the future, they'll probably running an immutable file system. Because it's so much easier for developers. I don't think that, I think that you're right that this doesn't give a, and from my experience over the last two months, this doesn't give regular users a lot of benefit. For developers, yes. If you're a developer, Kino White and Silver Blue are fantastic because it gives you an opportunity to mess around with containers and deal with the toolbox in both Silver Blue and Kino White in a way that you can then kind of start working on developing your own containerized applications. That's the reason why it's really good there. And it makes it easier for you to test software too because you know that the underlying system where all of this stuff relies that your application might rely on is exactly the same no matter what computer it's on, right? So for developers, it makes a ton of sense. For regular everyday users, I don't think most, I mean, you and I are gonna care. Like we, we're tinkers, right? And that's the reason why I said earlier that it makes me sad for the future of Linux is because one of the reasons why I like Linux so much is because you can, you have control over everything. Like you have, if you wanna go delete your Etsy file, you can do that. I mean, you have a broken computer at the end of it, but you could do it if you wanted to do that. With this, you couldn't. There's no way you can, you don't have access to the Etsy file or directory. It's just not there. Well, I mean, it's there, but you can't delete it. Yeah, you're very right. I think for us, it's just going to be, we now have, like, I think the sad part is if you're right and the immutable file systems do become more popular, and more and more distributions switch over to them, that just means we're gonna have, like a lot of the distributions that we, you know, like, or maybe spin-off distributions, like let's say like Arch doesn't go immutable file system, but like most Arch derivatives, like ARCO, Endeavor, you know, all of them start switching over to more immutable file systems and everything. I think like, it'll be sad for us because we'll lose out on the, how much we enjoy that distro. But I mean, I agree with what you're saying. I think for most people, it will be better. And it's, my thing would be is if we have any software developers in this live stream, come over to like, if you would, come and message me on my Discord personally or in programming chat or something like that and let me know if software development-wise an immutable file system makes your life easier or at least potentially easier. Because my thinking is like, if it's an immutable file system, if you're an actual Linux distro developer, it obviously makes your life easier because when you're updating a system, you don't really have to worry about someone like changing out different core aspects of the system and in an upgrade cycle that causing some issue for them. Ripping out system D. Yeah. Yeah. Like you don't really have to worry about any crazy crap like that going on when you push out an update for all your users. But I don't see it making software development that much more easy. It might make it easier in some ways, but from what I've been told about software development, the aspect that helps the most is the containerization with having libraries, not like you specifying the libraries you need and no one accidentally changing or updating or whatever. The thing about that is that you gotta remember, I'm not a developer, so I haven't been able to test any of that stuff. Like the toolbox functionality of KinaWide is there and it's basically, I don't even really know how to explain it because I haven't been able to use it in its intended use. Like I've created a toolbox where you can, like you can install apps through, cause like DNF does not work on KinaWide, right? Cause it's, that's how you'd install on regular Fedora. You use RPMOS tree and KinaWide and silver blue, but you can use DNF inside of a toolbox to install software. And the toolbox is like a containerized version of the operating system, like where you can actually make changes and stuff like that. You can, I'm just assuming here that you can, if you're inside of that toolbox, then you can make, you can do your development work inside of there and kind of like emulate certain, like I don't even know, it's really hard to explain it. And I can't explain it well cause I'm not a developer. So I don't know what the actual benefits of this for a developer are, but I'm just, from what I've heard other people say is that it's easier or better to do development work on a immutable file system. Now, somebody in the chat said that containerized applications and immutable file systems aren't the same thing. We know that. Like we're not trying to say that they're the same thing, but they, they definitely do go hand in hand. Like there's a reason why the primary way of installing applications on silver, blue and KinaWide is flat pack or flat, yeah, flat pack. And if you're using a boot to core, it's not. They're not related, but they might as well be, you know? Like they're used in, in tangent with each other a lot. Cause trust me, if the only way to install software on KinaWide was to use RPM AusTree, no one would ever use it. Cause you'd have to, you'd have to reboot your computer after every single installation. That's worse than Windows, by the way. That'd be worse than using Windows because at least with Windows, there are some applications that you can just use without rebooting. It'd be like installing a virus software on your Windows machine every single time because you have to reboot it after every single. It'd be horrible. Doing it once, you're not supposed to use RPM AusTree. You're supposed to use flat pack. That's the reason why it's acceptable that RPM AusTree does things that way. So, yeah, gosh, it's art says that it's basically desktop or Android on desktop. That's exactly it. Cause Android has an immutable offering system. No. And to go along with both, Tyler and my point, it makes it hard to use Android as an enthusiast because you don't have access to all the cool bits. Like you don't have, you don't have, you have to root your files, you root your phone in order to install really cool, awesome pieces of software. You know what I mean? And that is why it makes me a little sad that this could be the future of Linux. And then it makes it harder. It makes it feel like it's taking part of what makes Linux good. You know what I mean? Part of the things that makes Linux like fantastic for the enthusiasts. I'm not talking about regular people. I mean, I'm talking about nerds. I think it's better. Instead of saying it makes it good, makes it fun for us. Yeah, exactly. It's much more like the way Android and like Fedora Silver Blue and everything is going is it's a safer environment for users in general. Like you're not as likely to break things. You're also the things that you're using are less likely to break themselves. It's the whole system around is just safer, but it makes it less fun when you want to like play with shit. Yeah. And Jane in the chat says you can apply live with the RPE Monster thing. I am aware of that. I just don't remember it when I use it. And because you're not supposed to use it very often, right? Like you use it to like install H-top or something. You know what I mean? You're not going to use it for the vast majority of your software comes from FlatHub and FlatPak. And that's fine. That's the way it's supposed to work. So that's the reason why I never remember the live patch thing. So anyway, she also asks, do we read the chat? Obviously, we just read the chat. So boom. We don't do it nearly as often as we should throughout the podcast. Yes. Just because we already get on tangents ourselves. So we don't need help from chat. And the chat talked about Amish for like five minutes after we were done. So that's the reason why we don't read the chat. That was our fault. We spawned it. But still, anyways, OK, so. To bring you back to containers, would you agree with this statement containerization is only going to get more popular in Linux? Yes, absolutely. I'm right there with you. I think it's going to get more popular. And I think for most use cases, it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Although, if containerization becomes the point, if it becomes the way that open source developers only, like they only package their software as containers or in container like flat packs, snaps, if that's the only way that you're going to distribute your code and you call it open source, but that's the only way someone can get you. Don't like allow someone to just compile it or at least do the regular stuff that most. Yeah, I don't think that that's going to happen because most developers use some form of get to do their stuff, which means all of their software is going to be there. You would just then have. They may not provide instructions on how to build it, but you could if you wanted to, you know what I mean? You can download anything from get and build it if you have the knowledge to do so. I don't know. I think a lot of the people who are against the future of having more and more things available as containers or primarily installed as containers, I think the people who are scared of it are also the people that are the reason they're afraid of it comes from the fear of, well, what if they stop giving instructions or people stop focusing on making it not easy, but at least explaining it and making it easy for someone who can follow directions to compile and install from source. I don't think that's going to happen, but I do understand the fear and I don't think it's something to completely not worry about. Like I think it's something to still talk about and ensure that developers at least hear people talking about it because it's kind of important to be like, if everything is going to be super easy to get as containers, that's great. But for the people who want it from source, who want to tweak it or do that, there should be an emphasis on allowing that to be easy or at least having it documented. Yeah, the real problem is going to come not with the ability to build stuff from source, which I do think will probably be a little bit of an issue, but the real issue is going to be the fact that we have at least three ways of containerizing this thing. And in true Linux fashion, most applications you want can be available through all three of different ways. So you can get it from a snap, you can get it from a flat pack, you can get it from an app image. You can do those things like if you want Firefox, you can get it all three ways if you want, whatever way. But the problem is that they're all going to be maintained by different people. So the person who maintains the snap version of Firefox and the person who maintained the snap or the flat pack version of Firefox, they're two different people. And one may be more reliable at keeping something up to date than the other. So if you're using the flat pack version of Firefox, you may be like, I mean, this is just an example, you might be like a version behind than the version of Snap, which is the official version. Same thing with OBS. OBS has an official version in FlatHub, right? That's where you're supposed to get OBS from. There's also a Snap version of OBS, but it's maintained by somebody different. So you may be a version or two behind. Also, they're going to be compiled in different ways. So the Snap version of OBS has a ton of plugins already installed for you. It's kind of the reason why people would want to use the Snap, it's really good. But the flat pack version's not going to have that. It's just going to be the regular old flat pack version of OBS. So that's going to be an issue that we're going to kind of have to face is that you're going to have three systems where they all have the same applications probably, but they're maintained by different people. They're compiled in different ways and have different features attached to them, at least in some cases. I mean, it's not as big of a deal if you're talking about a really simple application. If you're talking like Flamishot or something, you're not going to worry about it. But things like OBS where there are different flags that you can compile it with so that it has different features, like the browser plugin and animation plugins and all this stuff, like support for NVENC and stuff like that, you can compile it in different ways. You're going to have to, it makes an extra or at least a different decision about how you download your software because in order for that system to work, you kind of have to have a knowledge that those things are different. And the idea behind containerization is twofold. We've already talked about it in terms of developers a lot. Like it makes it easier for developers to do things because they can compile all the stuff into a container, including all the libraries, not worrying about different version numbers and stuff like that. That's the reason why it's good for developers. For users, it means that it's really, all the libraries are there. You don't have to worry about it. But most users, most new users at least, they don't know where they download their software from. They go to, they open up their Ubuntu thing, close their eyes and then change the wallpaper. And then they go into the software store, download a piece of software. They don't know that that thing comes from Snap or the Debian repositories or Flatpak. Obviously those things aren't enabled on Ubuntu, but you get the idea. You just download a piece of software. They don't care what version it is. They just download it. That's the way most people get their software. And that's a good thing, right? But it also means that once they get past that idea, they're gonna have some extra issues. Like if they move from Ubuntu to, say, Silverblue or Ubuntu to Fedora, the way they do their, like that, they might download OBS on both of those things and realize that, hey, the OBS version on Ubuntu and the OBS version on Fedora, completely different. Either they're different versions or they have different things enabled. And that is going to make it a little bit harder for people to move around on Ubuntu early, and maybe not harder, but more complex, at least a little bit. So, yeah. I don't know. I think the, I don't know. Really, in all honesty, I think the flat pack snaps and everything, the debate between which one is going to like win out and get the CV, the best development, like the, or really the most development focus. I think one of them is gonna have to win out eventually, like not saying that like the others will just fall into obscurity and like completely wither and die, but they will just fall into that obscurity, whether they're still available, there's still plenty of them around, but they're not a focus. Yeah, I disagree with that completely. And the reason why is because flat pack has technically won at this moment we're in right now, but Canonical has a lot of money and they're the most stubborn mules in the history of the world. So that means snaps is going to be continuing to be there for a long, painfully slow time on Ubuntu. And Ubuntu, whether you like it or not, is still probably the distro that most people download for the first time. That's the reason why snaps is going to, I think you're probably right in that like flat pack, like outside of the Ubuntu world, flat pack is going to be the thing. You know, we were pretty much there. App images never had a chance. Sorry, app image guys. Like I made a video about app images and mandated that there's a lot of people off. One of the app image guys, man, I freaking love app images, but I wouldn't like no, they've lost. Like, oh, I'm not going to get into that because that pissed a lot of people off. Like they did not like that video at all. But the point is like flat pack everywhere, outside of Ubuntu, definitely going to be the thing. Inside of Ubuntu snaps is the thing. Like it's going to be the thing for a long time because I don't see canonical ever admitting defeat in that area because they want that control because you gotta remember, whereas flat packs were created for the desktop, they were created for us. You know, the people who use Linux, snaps weren't created for us. They were created for enterprise and servers. That's where they were created for and that's where they work really well. They were adapted to work for Ubuntu desktop. And that's the reason why they have so many problems because they weren't really meant for Ubuntu desktop. And because they were developed for the enterprise and that's where Ubuntu makes their money and they want all of that control, they're not going to be abandoning snaps anytime soon, if ever. Well, I mean, as far as control, I don't know. Cause hasn't Ubuntu or canonical open sourced the server side of snaps now too? No. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. The snap store or whatever it's called, it's still proprietary. Well, all right. See, like the thing is, I don't know, man. Like I know Ubuntu and canonical are stubborn as shit and they're going to continue with snaps. But I think flat packs should just be the way that everything's done. It's really not a difficult task to get flat packs set up on pretty much any distro. You and I can, we agree on that. You and I also both think that Linux and open source is amazing. We both agree on this as a reason why we do the podcast, right? And one of the things about open source software in general is that anybody can do whatever they want. That's the reason why we have 14 different package managers and 300 or 3000 different distributions. You know, say what you want. The differences between, you know, elementary OS and Ubuntu on a fundamental level aren't that much. You know, they both use the same kernel. They both use the same package manager. One's a little bit more restrictive than the other, but they basically are the same. But one is still a different distribution. You know, they broke off from Ubuntu, you know, same thing with Linux Mint, Arco Linux, you know, Manjaro, all these things. That's the reason why we have so many different things. And that's the reason why we're never, ever, ever going to agree on just a single thing. And whether or not we even want to is a debatable. Like if we said we just all have to use this one thing, like there's a reason why so many people hate SystemD, right? SystemD is fantastic. Like it really works, really good. And everybody, like you and I both agree, everyone should use SystemD, like at least every new user should just use SystemD. But there is a very, a very small community that absolutely hates SystemD, they won't use it. So they'll use RunIt or they'll use OpenRC or Sysvnit if you're gonna use, I mean, you know all about Sysvnit, Tyler, you and your LFS adventure, you know? That's the reason why. Like there are no standards in the Linux community and there never will be, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I think it's a bit of both. Well, see, I kind of just, so like my point wasn't that anything was gonna, and I know you know this, but just in case anyone misunderstood what I was saying, it's not that I think like one, like I personally think flat packs are going to win out by like majority use, like that's what most people use. And I feel like app images, which pretty much already have, but app images and snaps will kind of fade more into obscurity. They're obviously still going to exist. People still use them swear by whatever, like they'll be there, but it'll be much more of a niche thing. There's not many people that rely on it. So do you think that what will end up happening is that because the vast majority of people use flat pack, the vast majority of developers will develop for flat pack only? Is that weird? No, that'll be where their focus is. Like they might, you know, like a good example is like open array or zero AD, like games like those open source game, like projects that are pretty big, like they'll probably still release because they're good at doing that. They give out multiple different versions and have multiple different software, like containers and packages available. They'll still do that. But I think the majority of work will shift towards one. Like you might have other ones that are available, but the flat pack is the one that we guarantee, you know, like this is the one that we work on, we know it works. If you install this, you're guaranteed to have a good time. Just like this is the one that we recommend. I think that will end up being flat pack for most developers and that's what they use as a standard. Kind of the same way that Ubuntu is like the unspoken standard of Linux. Like if you're going to pick something to like release to everybody, most of the times you make your guide based off of Ubuntu or you focus your development around Ubuntu. I kind of think that's going to happen more with flat packs. I don't think Ubuntu is going to be the same way with the desktop anymore. Like I kind of feel like they're- The desktop Ubuntu, sad, because of snaps. Snaps killed Ubuntu. I think canonical killed Ubuntu. And I don't think it's anything that they did to, like I don't think they've made like a egregious mistakes on the desktop, but it's just because of their core focus on enterprise, they're losing that touch on what people want on the desktop or the ways that people want solutions fixed. Like, I mean, snaps is a good solution to, like it's a container, so it's a solution for that, but it's not the solution or implementation for the solution that people want on the desktop. Like, people don't want a proprietary solution on the desktop for Ubuntu. Like, you're kind of catering- To be fair, most of snaps is open source. It's just the store part of this proprietary, but that proprietary little bit is like the proprietary little bit at the beginning of Evolian, you know what I mean? It's just like, technically, yeah, 90% of your browser is open source, but that 5%, it's not, it's just going to piss a lot of people off. Okay, we really, really do have to stop. We've been going for an hour and 30 minutes, so it's time to move on to the last section of the podcast. Otherwise, we're gonna be here for a while. We have no more time for tangents because we could talk about Ubuntu for quite a while, I'm sure. Maybe that's something that we should do in another episode. The death of Ubuntu sounds like a really good title. So, moving on to the last section of the pod, and this thing is creatively called thingies of the week. Now, we could have called this thing literally anything else because there are tons of options. We could have just stolen from someone else, but thingies of the week seems to have, you know, kind of stuck. It's the thingie of the week. So, Tyler, your thingie of the week. Have a feeling of what this is. Is, of course, Deadside. Been heavily addicted to this game. It's available on Steam right now. I believe they have it for like 40 or like 50% off. I can't remember how much it is. If you like survival games, it's a realistic survival game where there's base building and the base building they've done. It's a small team of developers, I believe based out of Russia or someplace like, I believe it's Russia. I'm not sure, and Russians typically make the best survival games and it's extremely good. A lot of real-world experience there, is what we're saying. Look, they do a great job. I'm still gonna get canceled by the end of the show. I'm just gonna put that out there. It's a great game. If you like survival games, I recommend you check it out. There's no like zombies or anything in it like that. There's just AI that patrols roads and you can go and do missions. You get a whole bunch of loot. It's multiplayer, it's a fantastic game. All I'll say is that we are on a Linuxcast, so I have to go ahead and let you know it does not run on Linux as far as I know. They still have not, they use Easy Anti-Cheat and because of that, it doesn't work even though if you don't know this Easy Anti-Cheat now supports Linux. There's an option that they can click to enable it. So, if you look at the game, you're interested in it, you'll like it, I recommend you purchase it and then just leave them a review or send them a message, they are active, they have a Discord, they're fantastic over there. Go over there and let them know that you'd like to play the game a lot, but you run Linux and they need to enable support. And hopefully if enough people want to play the game and let the devs know and they hear enough people asking for it, they'll do the simple work to do it, but they're a small team, they're working on getting vehicles added in the game. They've got a lot of work to do and it's a great game. I reckon we'll check it out. Jonathan, the name of the game was Deadside. Deadside, yes. Yeah. And it is on Steam. Okay, so mine is an oldie but a goodie and it's time shift. So, I've been messing around, getting prepared to make a video about ButterFS and it's turned into a complicated thing because ButterFS is one of those things that really, really need to explain really well. And I don't wanna make that video and realize that I got half the shit wrong. So, I'm in the process of that. And so, I never had actually used time shift before. Usually I used a couple of other tools to do my snapshots and stuff like that. So, but time shift has been proving to be really kind of good. Even on a window manager where it doesn't really look all that great, just functions really nice. It does weekly, I've set it up for weekly backups and it does the weekly snapshots just like it normally would. And I also go in there every time I update and do a snapshot by myself. I prefer to use, God, I can never remember the thing that I usually use. Snappers, I think it's snapper in the command line. That sets it up so it doesn't automatically when you do an update. It might not be called that, could become, miss me remembering it. But I'm just decided to try timeshift because that's a GUI tool that people can use to create butterfly snapshots. So, it does if you are not on butterfly FS and you wanna use it for a backup tool, you can still use it. It just uses arsenic instead. So, okay, yes. You guys are funny in the chat. You're all 14 year old boys. Okay. Anybody who wears a hat indoors? I don't know a lot of people who wear hats indoors. Now, if he was wearing sunglasses, I'd be worried a little bit. Like, what are you hiding behind the sunglasses? Major douche-maid. Like, he obviously has bloodshot eyes and didn't want anybody to know. Yeah, okay. Anyway, so those are the thingies of the week. So, that is it for the Linuxcast this week. Coming up next week, we're doing, let's see here, is Linux too customizable? That should be a good one. That's a good question. That's a good follow up for this one. Yeah, so that is coming up next week. If you wanna watch us live, we do this show every Friday at three o'clock p.m. Eastern time or thereabouts. It's usually around quarter after by the time we actually get our asses in gear and actually just hit the live button. But we do record every Friday around that time. If you wanna watch live, remember if you wanna submit user feedback to do so at the email address email at thelinuxcast.org, you can do that there and we will get to some of your user feedback next week. We're gonna do that every other week, so that should be fun. Before I go, I should take a moment to thank my current patrons and you can support me on patreon.patreon.com slash linuxcast. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube, I truly do appreciate it. I can't even begin to tell you how thankful I am. Also, if you are interested, you can support Tyler on Patreon too. He has a Patreon page as well. That link will be in the, I think I have that link on the website, I'm actually sure. But anyways, thanks to everybody who supports me on Patreon and YouTube. Thanks everybody for watching. We'll see you next time.