 Hey there and welcome to the Fedora podcast. I'm Eric the IT guy Hendricks. I'll be your host for today We've got an exciting episode. This is episode 33. We are cooking with gas now Because today is our Birthday episode and as it so happens it's going to be a release episode as well so we'd set out to bring forth all the all the Fedora project leads of the past but Unfortunately, many of them were hiding or traveling or working or family-ing So I cobbled together who I could I dug them up out of the refuse. I See them shaking their heads in the background, so I'm gonna go ahead and bring them in All right, so joining me is the current Fedora project lead Matthew Miller and also coming back from his Not his debut his his comeback episode last the last time is mr. Neil Gampa. So Matthew you want to introduce yourself? Yeah, I am the Fedora project leader. I have Matthew Miller. I've been involved in Fedora to varying degrees since since the beginning and the red hat Linux kind of things around that before that I've been Fedora project leader for almost 10 years now. So Wait, I can't I've losing track. It was it is something like that a decade So that that's pretty impressive Since 2012 I think I Started a red hat 2012 but for our project leader in 2014. So okay, I left like cuz you did the whole weird Fedora next thing Yes, yes, I did that was that was me. That was our big One of my jobs as Fedora project leader is to try and get the community kind of going in the same direction Which is not the natural state of you know open source It's exciting when people are kind of oriented in the same way not everybody has to agree on everything But having kind of a general here's where we're gonna go Here's what we're gonna focus on kind of helps things get there and and that was that was the thing We had 10 years ago. We're working on a new one now For you know various reasons it's been a little bit of slow going but we are working on doubling the number of Fedora contributors in the next five years or so So the number of active contributors people who are like around every week though and see that number go up Because yeah, so that's that's what I'm up to. I'm sorry. I've answered more questions than you asked Let's move on Neil for those of you who missed The how do you Fedora episode last two weeks ago and Neil why don't you introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. Hi. Um So I oh gosh, this is a complicated question. Um, so My name's Neil. I exist in Fedora I guess like I'm I've been around in the Fedora project since pretty much the beginning at least as a worker like I kind of started coming in from the Red Hat Linux world into Into Fedora to see over there the wonderful Red Hat Linux box over there that represents a version of Red Hat Linux that I started with The Today, let's see the main things I think people know me for as I lead Fedora KDE I'm involved in Fedora workstation. I'm involved in Fedora cloud somewhat in Fedora server a bunch of the language stuff I do a bunch of different things and I think the most visible part is also I'm part of Fesco the Fedora engineering steering committee which helps like kind of Rationalize all the things that the people are bringing up and make sure that things are okay to keep going forward on I Think that's the best way to describe a very awkward thing. I think the first post I see you from you on the Fedora develop list is September 2007 when you ask about a Windows based install or for Fedora Linux Yes, well, so that was because I was dual booting or triple booting almost every computer. I had at that time Yes, triple booting. There was there was some hack and touch fun, too. I Do think it's an interesting idea. It's basically Install from Windows so you don't have to go through these other complicated Steps right and the content getting getting getting Fedora installed getting Linux installed is one of the scariest Barriers for people who would otherwise be interested in trying so for sure right and also you got to remember the context of way back then in 2007 was We didn't have good NTFS. We didn't we barely had a good fat driver and Networking activity forget it right like all these other things were just not there and you know at that time, I think like what was it a boon to had this wuby which was windows a boon to installer and it would Essentially download the ISO into grub for DOS Configure it so that it would boot into it and then you would boot into Ubiquity to then complete the installation and then it would Be done and you would just it would just be a loop device that would mount up and they did fancy things with NTFS 3g and whatever and To me that was interesting because like it made Linux much more accessible and I wanted something like that in fedora as well It didn't happen for all kinds of other reasons. Who knows someday. Maybe it will You know the maybe maybe won't need it Well, you know the fedora saw he installers actually very similar right you start from macOS And you go through the steps. I mean it's text based rather than a gooey, but like It goes through the same steps it downloads a fedora image onto it sets it up And then reboots you into fedora to complete the setup I don't have an m1 mac. So I am Anything back. So I haven't been able to try it yet, but as soon as apple sends me one. I will That would be a very funny day So The the original intention for this episode was going to be a look back at what 20 years now of fedora history and I'm getting that conflated because we're actually in the middle of Release season for rel as well. So I'm getting version numbers and release dates and anniversaries confused But they are they're very similar because they started from a similar from branching from the same thing. So Right and then you've got you've got red hat that past 30 years You've got rel that past 20 years because it used to be red hat linux, which is actually fedora was one of the One of the offspring of the red hat to red hat linux to rel moves and So it's a really interesting history and I think it'd be worth sharing right here on the podcast Kind of what what happened? How did how did fedora get it start? Yeah, so I think back so Like a lot like like um rel it was um It was red hat linux back in the day was just was done inside the company Developed by by red hat red head engineers made all the decisions and they they made this thing and then they would they had They released a beta, but I think there's there was maybe even like a secret alpha and then a beta and then Only then did you get to see this thing that was developed that's basically how red hat linux was who was all open source Although actually some versions of it did have like a proprietary web browser and some things in it But most most is open source in general But it was all you know developed you know kind of in secret inside the company and with not really very much community input If you wanted to make a change to something it was there was no there was no way to do that um, so When red hat decided that they wanted to make money as a company instead of Losing money like I've heard a rumor and this is long before I joined the company But I've heard a rumor that they are making more money selling t-shirts and they were selling box sets of red hat linux Which is not a great business Indicator for software company. So they decided to go after the enterprise with this red hat enterprise linux product and Decided that having made that business decision it turned out that the engineering thing of wait. We're going to do open source There was there was a big mismatch so Uh After much turmoil fedora project was created There were a number of different projects Um of community led projects that were basically adding other software modifications add on on top of red hat linux One of those was called fedora dot us A person named warren to gomi in the university of hawaii. I think started started that and Uh I'm I'm not sure of the of the details but red hat decided. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna merge these together Neil if you've got any more gossip on this Let's hear it, but um They decided that um this new thing that were they almost called red hat linux project But then didn't and this would be merged together to be the fedora project That would be kind of the successor fast moving open source community driven Uh part um that would you know complement the expensive enterprise long-term rel um And yeah, I think I think this is a really interesting thing because Um for a while that those releases didn't really that process didn't really change So um there if you look back and many people still remember fedora core and fedora extras So in that merger the community part of it basically became You uh fedora extras the community is an extra and then core was corporate developed inside, you know And I say corporate developed certainly wasn't people in suits these were um, you know linux nerds and hippies and Idealists like all the rest of us, but engineers and working for the company You know in secret processes and so on um And after a while that split just started to become painful and it was frustrating that that people couldn't get very much as much done as they wanted And um like a lot of the tooling that they were using inside the company Wasn't all that great. And so eventually, uh, they Decided to merge and so some of the early fedora project leaders. I know Um Project leaders early all the early project leaders wanted this but it was hard going So eventually uh max pvk and greg de conasburg kind of got this got this done and so fedora linux Our fedora Seven was the first one that merged together core and extra is into one thing um, but I think really uh eight was the first one that was developed kind of in the community change process that really felt like this is a community thing and so um, I think um It's a it's a good progression of opening things up from the internal development to the outside like transparent development And I think I think what you read that's doing with coro s. I'm sorry centOS getting my co operating systems mixed up CentOS like centOS stream is is going in that same direction and moving the internal stuff out out to public development Public transparent development and community input. It's got some growing pains, but um, you know, it took several years for fedora Early stuff to get right there. So um a growing pains are to be expected on that um, I I think that there's kind of a nice progression of the fedora story illustrates The beginning of maybe or the early important middle. I don't know how we're scoring that Neil any uh, any color to add to that? um Well, I don't have additional gossip for the beginning times of of fedora because at that particular time Let's see. I had just moved on to red hat linux 9 and then learned the bad news that red hat linux 10 was dead uh, and uh I was very cautious about what I should do next and so I wound up running red hat linux nine As a primary all the way until fedora core 4 where I felt confident enough to like Fully cut over Which was brave of you because that was a terrible release Every time you bring this up you mentioned that I know it. I know it I so I was working as a system man at boston university at the time and actually I was working on boston university linux our Linux distribution that was derived from red hat linux And so that's kind of how I got really involved in all of this Um, I suddenly cared quite a lot about what was going to happen to think it's basically a project on um And that we actually had in fedora an early thing called fedora legacy where we attempted to extend the life cycle of fedora You know, sorry of like red hat linux 9 I think seven eight and nine Yep, and then seven two eight point oh and nine and then also fedora core One and fedora core two and I think that was actually an interesting illustration in um, I don't know what What's really hard? And what's like what's what's fun to do and what's rewarding and what people want You to give them but will not actually put resources into and that is making a long term Maintain distribution and in fact people didn't even really want us to do a long term fedora core two or three They just wanted us to keep you well seven seven and then yeah, and then nine Eight wasn't the best of those releases. Well, except for there was all those aws people that kept wanting us to keep doing eight forever That was well, that was um, that was fedora linux eight that they wanted forever Right. That's later on but yeah, but of like the fedora core one That was new stuff people who wanted this to go on forever just wanted fedora. Oh, you know, keep saying fedora red hat linux nine to run forever Um, and you know, that wasn't really sustainable and that's what you know rel is for I mean, don't mind me. I was I was hybridizing all of my red hat linux CDs to have apt rpm on them and So Yeah, right Yeah, so that's actually a good that that's one of the things you're working on in bu linux as well because the original early versions of fedora core like um red hat linux didn't really have a good update story to it and um red hat was heavily invested in a system called up to date that they were working on that was going to be This was one of the paths towards making money. They were going to sell a service where you could get updates and And they put a lot of work into this and it was really like you're part of the business plan and everything Meanwhile in the fedora world Seth fedall Who was an early and very important member of the fedora community? Took another existing open source project from a different distribution called yellow dog and made the yum Which is yellow dog update or modified yum program that was you know, um a better way to manage rpms and install updates on your system and He got that into fedora and after a Not so long time it became clear that this was a much better choice than up to date was going to be So in fedora people said we want this and it's time red hat was still you know making the engineering decisions here really a lot to Neil do you remember what release this would have been? I believe this was uh core three. Yeah, I think this was yeah, because I think core if I want to I want to say that The first intro the first discussions about The yellow dog updater being ported to fedora Actually happened all the way back in fc1 because people were talking about it all the way back at the beginning because there was this there was this competition that I don't know, but there was this competition between um Yum which sats had made and apt rpm which was made by the folks at connectiva down in brazil um, and the the sticking point Was actually multi archer back then everyone just called it multi lib But essentially being able to run 32 bit and 64 bit intel software on the same computer because fedora core one Had this very interesting thing that almost nobody wanted, but it wound up happening anyway Which was it was 64 bit x86 um, there was this kind of thing Um again like how matthew was talking about how they wanted to sell updates There was this whole other thing where red hat wanted to sell 64 bit linux And this was 32 bit linux be free and it was a very weird time. Yeah And then it just sort of happened anyway. Well, this was in what this is one of the very early releases Actually, this is justin forbs who still actually them. He's now paid by red hat as the main kernel maintainer for fedora um, he was Working, you know at home and so red hat was going to these new 64 bit architecture Like that's an enterprise feature that was going to be not we're not going to have that in fedora You're going to need to pay for rel to get that justin went and just rebuild everything and and and made it work and uh This is I think another thing, you know two red hats decision making credit They didn't say go away stop that or ignore it. They actually said, okay We're going to make this an official architecture for fedora We now do multiple architectures in fedora and I think that was actually a very good decision because ever since then um, we've had emerging architectures, you know arm and Some that have emerged and kind of demurged power i'm looking at you um those kind of things Are actually, you know, they come into fedora first and then may end up being something that red hat once for products Maybe not risk five is you know the hot thing right now. That's kind of in that same vein and I think that if There would have been an earlier like you know hard heavy-handed decision. We can't do this um, then Fedora wouldn't have ended up the way it is, you know, you know welcoming place where people can experiment with all these different kind of things um Yeah, so where fedora core one was like, hey, look it's rel 10 after our red hat linux Sorry red hat linux 10 after all I got rel 10 on my mind for some reason red hat linux 10 after all and then fedora core two was hey look here's s e linux We broke everything real hard and then fedora core three was Yeah, I guess maybe yum. Sure. Uh, then fedora core four I want to say yum. I want to say that yum actually was in fedora extras In or in the beginning, but then I think we started actually using it properly in fc3 because anaconda didn't change To using yum until sometime between fc3 and fc4 um, I don't remember exactly because gosh it was a long time ago, but uh But yeah, like there was this whole contention about You know, what we would do because basically the only thing everybody agreed on is that we weren't going to keep using up to date That was that was pretty much the only thing everybody agreed on. It was five that yum landed actually is the official Really, okay, look at a while to get there For the mess with four was in which we learned that you shouldn't update glibc Just in the middle of the distro life cycle and hope that it works Um, so that uh, I never got burned with that because I didn't have broadband so I never was able to download any updates Yeah, no, um, it was it was not great and actually but out of that everything's a learning experience So that's some of the reasons we learned you know that our six months cadence release cycle is really important And we coordinate with the tools team. And so we have you know, a mastery builds and new versions of things landing Um in an orderly way that then we go through our quality process and community quality team to try and make sure that all the stuff Works really well and by the time we have a release you can upgrade and feel confident that everything is going to Just work very nicely for you the disrupting you're getting, you know, whatever actual work you were trying to do done well and then That stability that that fedora found through the fedora couriers Really helped solidify What red hat could do Because the more stable the fedora release and quality process became the more the red head enterprise linux was able to follow that lead to to really Really build off of what fedora has done and and nowadays Little inside baseball on the on the red hat side is that I a few weeks ago. I sat in a I listened into a Meeting between red head engineering the red had business unit or the rel business unit where where my my day job is And some of the key fedora contributors talking about What architectures should we go after next? And it was fedora saying that this is these are the architectures. We are looking at Red hat brothers and sisters. What do you think? Is this this is along the lines of where where rel is going to go? Where can we collaborate? and it was really interesting as someone who Who is on the fedora podcast but also works for rel that that To kind of watch this process and to watch just how smooth this process is And and and if if you don't want to take my word for it, then just look at the release notes For the last few versions of rel in the last few versions of Fedora is there have not been any real major breaking changes There there's been no in it to To system d there's not been any huge changes in how the kernel is developed and added new features to It is just very very I don't want to say slow because there's nothing slow about a six month release cadence But there's something very methodical and very strategic about how for fedora linux is being developed And that really helps to translate into now sent to a stream and then next to uh to rel nine and Like you matthew i've got rel 10 on the brain because on top of this release. I'm also in some of the planning meetings for rel 10 so i'm Version confused here. Yeah, so I um, I feel like I spent some of the early years as fedora project leader uh fighting against people skiing saying bleeding edge fedora is bleeding edge and I know bleeding edge is Bad for most people you don't unless you're a vampire maybe people. I think it's bad for all people. I mean so like right um Some people enjoy being in the fray. I'm imagining a um, you know, barbarian fantasy movie kind of thing, right? Like that's that's that's that's some people's thing, right? And and for that like, you know, it's great that we have people who are, you know Putting together, you know the latest like give me everything that's built from anything upstream right away as soon as it's out Let's run that on my system. Um, and you know, we do of course have Fedora we have raw hide which is our development branch which is not quite that fast but still You know things haven't gone through our qa process yet and we've got you know Breaking changes landing there. Um, but we do have some people who run that as their daily os because they they like the thrill um, and it's important that people do that because um That I don't know that helps make it safe for civilization. I guess I don't ever back away from the sporters I don't know that my metaphors are terrible to stop with these tortured Things because like it's it's not it's not torture. I'm again, um, I really You need to read more fantasy books. That's all I'm saying I read plenty of fantasy and fanatics. It's fine. The thing is But yeah, torture is not what we want to deliver We want to deliver things that are like we want to deliver the leading edge of software that is functional and useful and is Uh What you can do to actually get your work done rather than just messing around with making sure your software works today Right. I mean and also I'll just make the very small pitch about rawhide. First of all It has been a very long time since rawhide releases have not been tested Right because they go through all the automated testing that we currently have that actually is part of our quality process for stable releases uh Now we don't necessarily I think no, I think we just started failing composes on them now, but we used to not do that uh, so like You're actually less likely to get completely screwed on a rawhide installed than you would have been I think like three or four years ago. Yeah it uh The changes I'm talking about more are um Like oh your desktop is entirely different today for some reason or um Maybe some big regression that is specific to your thing That hasn't been caught by a wider audience or or yeah, just um Oh now I've got a new version of lever office and I wasn't expecting a new version of lever office today A lot of the time you'll you'll tend to see like snapshots and development releases of stuff land in rawhide That doesn't necessarily mean that they're all broken or whatever because a lot of times if they are actually broken Uh, they won't get released. They'll they'll get held back until they're fixed But but it is it is an integration point and a very critical one for For being able to support newer software more quickly I think it's also generally a case of the software world overall has become more conscientious about quality and release health and Releasing frequently. I think it was um incrementalism is I think where where you see you see a lot more of a trend towards like Yeah, I was gonna say maybe there are examples of rapid releases with breaking with brokenness all over the place but In the last few years, we tend to see Um a a nice trend towards incrementalism things aren't there are sometimes where there's a big change the world kind of event But they are much rarer now than they were 10 years ago. Like I remember You know going from let's see. What was it fedora corp 4 to fedora? uh To fedora 7 to fedora 12 to the 15 Like each of those was everything changed for some reason and we've gotten to a nice point where architecturally Things aren't churning to the same degree that they were back then things are still changing things are still upgrading things are still improving, but you were not really seeing Those kinds of you're not seeing upheavals at that kind of frequency where we were seeing upheavals like at least once a year Back of the day now it's maybe once every five years or once every 10 years Yeah, I think it was a fairly common method for developing software was you'd make you build up to a big release You have all your features you release that and then you start working on the next version You might rewrite half of it from scratch So some of the features that the previous version don't even work yet And you got all the new ideas coming in and so now you're working on version two And then you three years later you're like, okay time to release version two and then surprise here's version two and Yeah, and and then with fedora integrating so many things from everywhere all around We're bound to hit some version two landing at a time. So that's not happening so much I think like you said people are making smaller releases I think there are still some big interesting things that happen And so one of the other things is trying to make those changes land more carefully when there are big changes. So I think like there's this big thing with the caro s and silver blue and the container based updates instead of having you know, rpm os tree server side things and that's a pretty big change but I think that's going to land hopefully in a way that most people Won't even really need to think about how there's been a big underlying architectural change in what they're doing But it will actually be pretty fundamental and empower people to do a bunch of really cool new things if it all works out as As it as it could from the plants of seeing Which are we we covered on this show? Immutable desktops and silver blue and some of the inspiration behind that and why Immutable is a terrible name for for a type of operating system. I was about to get you for that That that by and far was our most controversial and most followed episode of the podcast since Since we moved to video. So I'll throw a link to that in the episode or in the show notes Listen the word immutable the controversial part or something else mostly immutable there there are some other opinions that were shared that Brought some interesting conversations in the chat, but it was a great episode. I learned a lot which Don't don't tell the people that I work for that. That's why I do a lot of these things is because it means I get to learn stuff from other people I basically schedule my own enablement and I just record it that um I'm a support that seems like a good plan Anytime I want to learn about a new feature. It's like is there a guest I could bring on Who can teach me and then I can go do it in my home lab. That's pretty much how that works So I don't think we're going to solve the word immutable but we have for for desktops in fedora set We went back to the project atomic people who had such a great logo and said hey You're not using that anymore and we started this out as Fedora atomic desktop So could we have atomic name back again? And so we do So we're going to be using atomic as kind of a grouping brand for silver blue and kina white and so on which hopefully I know it's fun to come up with lots of new names, but It is it is a headache To have too many different minerals that I have to take too legal for trademark approval among other things And just it's confusing to people to try and remember what Which minerals are what thing and it makes kind of a We needed something collective too. So we have that name Wow Well, if one thing engineers are really really good at is naming technology. Yes famously so Sarcasm is also a thing I need to I need to I need a sarcasm sign or or like a lower third. There we go So we're going to take a quick pause because in today's episode I've got a bit of trivia for you neil. You cannot answer But I want to mute us up real quick going to give you all of you watching live a few seconds To to ponder this and then we'll be right back. So here's here's your trivia question If you may have noticed we changed the background for today's episode Now because I haven't had time today in the middle of rel release season to upgrade my my workstation to fedora 39 and grab the And and grab the wallpaper from fedora linux 39. We decided to pick a different one So I want to mute us up so you can see the wallpaper and then Put in chat what version of fedora this was from we'll be right back Sadly, there's no easy way to bring us all out or back in so all right If you know what version of fedora that's from we'll give you some like kudos some Maybe some it guy coins This this one's from a long way back and and this was neil's suggestion. So neil, why don't you tell us what version this is from This is from fedora 10 This theme I think it was called solarized. I want to say that's what it was called gosh, I can't remember anymore but it was the Now solar that's what it was. It's called solar. I was close and it was basically the The important thing about this is it's a bit of a dark horse of the theme because this wallpaper is in every linux distribution somehow because it was fedora's Fedora 10 was also the release that introduced plymouth and plymouth used this to create its splash screen that it shipped in the package. So In every distribution, there's this. I think it's called plymouth solar or solarized I forget what the plugin is actually called and it basically gives you an animated version of this wallpaper as your splash screen and so it's kind of everywhere even though Even though, you know, uh, I don't think a lot of people remember that it came from fedora in the first place trying to find this Plymouth theme on f39. Is it still here? It should be So I kind of gave away the teaser um in Announcing our little trivia challenge. So today's also going to be our fedora release episode for fedora 39 which came out, uh, yesterday, didn't it? Was or was it officially today? This morning. Yes, this morning. We released we released on Tuesdays. Um, traditionally for some reason that was declared in the dawn of time Mostly it gives it gets we we usually do the go no go on Thursday And so that gives the weekend for things to propagate out to mirrors and everything and then monday for us to decide if We made a horrible mistake. I think which uh hasn't hasn't happened yet, but uh, oh god, please don't Don't you said that now? You know, uh Horrible mistakes don't listen to me about whether they should happen or not because they did then So I need I need a stage hand or producer or somebody if anybody no, okay We're going to say somebody needs to bring me some caffeine because yesterday was fedora's birthday Today was the release of fedora linux 39 Oh my goodness, I need a vacation And the only reason it's not 40 is because we had a release That lasted for way too long. It was yeah as part of that fedora next thing I said away at the beginning I wanted to do things very differently Relief in engineering and the quality team said you will kill us if we do that So we said what would it take for you to be able to retool to do this? So we paused for a year to do it, which I think was an okay decision at the time But Um, I made a joke somewhere about we need to do three some year to try and get back to the Even number scheme and it's not the worst idea really because there there's I think our six months cadence is good because it fits in nicely with other Projects. I don't really I don't really want to do this But going faster going to that was more smaller increments does have advantages. So I don't know That is assuming that anyone can get anything done in that time frame Well, you you have to go to a model where you you don't expect to necessarily get it done in land Then you can you can decide what you want to land if you have a train a release. Yeah, exactly And the way we have it right now. We don't have it set up to do a release train like that basically We have This one. I'm not sure I want to do that. Yeah It it's a difficult thing and especially when you know, we uh, really there are so many Volunteer work that goes into making fedora where we can't you know kind of that here's the thing Get get get to it. Like that's we don't have that people people do things when they can and when they want to when they're interested in So moving to like I'm not proposing moving to that faster cadence right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the future that that Just makes sense I think mo would fall over dead if we decided to do Uh, if we decided to do three releases and have more wall papers more wall papers We may have we may need need a new wallpaper process as well. Yes so, um I let me pull up the release notes But is there anything about fedora 39 we'll start with you matthew that uh, you're really excited about Um, I'm supposed to say yes, I'm thrilled. I think that I've Honestly, I really like it genome that the little active word activities is gone. Um, oh that Bugged me for years. Um, and it's not because it was evil or anything It's just because that was actually when genome three first came out There was part of a theory of design that actually you see in like the sugar on a stick or the sugar operating System that's for the one laptop per child. It's this activities oriented desktop So instead of being kind of window oriented or even like workspace oriented you you'd have activities of different things you would go together so Um, maybe you may be like all your audio production software and you're set up for this or here's your setup for You know writing a book or this and that it things to be oriented around the activity And so the workspaces in genome are kind of especially in genome three They're supposed to be set up to do that But it didn't really ever get Beyond that first idea. This is what we're going to do and then once it was you know out in the general public and the genome Developers discovered there were lots of other feedback about where they should go with things Like the activities thing never actually really got developed and I think operating systems In like os desktop os Didn't go that direction But there the word activities sat up there at the top and in like some ux research I saw like people thought that the operating system was called activities or that the Desktop environment was called activities at least like people who we brought in you know people who were not familiar with it before That was their natural assumption. So We've got a little test switcher icon there now. I I would like to make it fedora blue. I think I have to talk to the People about that because I think that would be nice. I still want that to be a fedora icon Instead. Yeah, I think a fedora icon would make sense as well I think people especially those coming from windows background would find that actually even the mac os background Would would find that very very comfortable Yeah, I there's a um That the argument is that thing they let what you get when you click on it. That's not fedora That's not the it's not fedora linux. It's not the fedora project. That's just like a little indicator there and It should it may be be some sort of like fedora workstation logo or maybe a Whatever I don't know something else. I don't know um I I would I would like it to be a little more fedora themey, but um, I'd be happy with the blue um Other things so there are a bunch of changes and a lot of you know, a lot of new software integrated there Some of the biggest things that I was excited for Are going to be coming next release or the one after that we'll see but of the new Web-based anaconda ui. I think that's that is not there But we're actually hoping to have some demo like test days of that sometime soon So people are interested in that stay tuned for that um I know We've got images in Microsoft azure cloud now. I think that's useful having Having our software more accessible more easily to more people whether it's, you know Buying a slim book and it's pre-installed or starting up a cloud instance. It's there. I think that's Big and that's actually a whole lot of work because it'll all be legal wrangling and so on behind the things to get things in those environments um Speaking of themes. I like that. We've got a colored Bash prompt now. That's nice. It's maybe not I don't know. I have to get used to it I've had my own prompt set for years and I unset it to see see What I think about how we how we've done it now. I've got developed some opinions. We'll we'll see I use fish. I already I had a colored prompt for like yeah, there's there's a lot seven eight years now I don't know. We might need to take ourselves a notch see But yeah, this is is very nice um I don't know I have wrote a whole release announcement about this, you know earlier so I should have it fresh in my mind, but I think this This is another thing where there's a lot of small changes and a lot of things They're going to matter to different people when it's in their area But yeah, like we were saying there's not a lot of big like shocking bow. We did something dramatic here um, but I think it is a nice Solid release neil. Do you have anything you when I you'd call out? I mean for me there was this wasn't supposed to be an exciting release like, you know from the fedora kd perspective We didn't do anything Fedora workstation just gets its regular gnom upgrade and so it kind of just inherits everything gnom does Um, the other desktops do their thing. I think like budgie, you know, they got there They got their atomic variant with the fedora onyx out the door I was gonna ask if you remembered what mineral it was. Um, that would have been a I know Of course, I know the minerals. I'm a dork and every time I think uh fedora onyx I think now fedora is branding their laptop or their their spins based on pokemon Oh, that's uh, that's how we would get into a whole lot of trouble I don't think nintendo would appreciate that Or maybe they become a sponsor I Yeah, I don't have an answer to that That's probably best Some of the other features like like you mentioned, there's fedora onyx And then uh gnom 45 landed in fedora 39 Of course a lot of the desktop flavors kde xfce cinnamon and others have, uh They've gone to their own refreshes right as they as they needed I think um Yeah, I think next next release may end up being a little bit too exciting because um As people may know with um redhead lengths coming out every three years and branching off of fedora, um This is the time coming up. So there are a lot of redheaders who would really really like to get their features done to land in uh in this next release. Um, and so That's going to be a lot a lot of interesting things there. We will Still stick to our it is important for this to be useful and good for our users. It is not that they It is not the dumping ground for stuff that wasn't ready for rel yet, but you wanted to get it in quickly So if there are redheaders listening take it to heart. Let's let's um, let's work out a plan So we can get things where they need to be Um, but we want to make sure that those things land nicely in the distro I suddenly made that negative again. I don't know too much stress today It's positive There's going to be a lot of a lot of interesting changes that that are going to be coming in the next year Whether they make that release or we have them land to the next one I think there'll be a lot of exciting things. Um, the new installer being one of the ones I really am Looking forward to so I think that's that's one of the things people have been you know expressed frustration with for a while and they've taken a lot of things we learned and made a um A simpler experience for workstation installs, especially Well, I mean I've got a fix for the anaconda solution. Let's just use image builder There are too many tools for building images Oh, don't don't give me that neil. You know, I I am in love with image builder Whether it's red head insights image builder rel image builder fedora and image builder The only one I haven't used is sent to a stream image builder, which is odd considering That's one of my subsystems that I cover for rel so But to be fair my home lab has been under reconstruction for like six months. That's how crazy things have been this year. So I Everything's not quite ready to go yet Um, so we got a few minutes left and if uh, if you're catching this after we uh after it aired I highly encourage you to try and meet with us and Uh and hang out with us on the youtube chat We've got over 24 people watching right now and the chat is just blowing up people sharing features that they're That they're excited about with this release or the next release. So if you can we are live mostly every other Mostly every other Tuesday, uh right around this time. It's We started at 4 p.m. Central time. Uh, that's us time So, uh, and in fact nico jet neil says that you do a great facepalm So, uh, we have a lot of fun. There's usually banter. There's extended discussion. Sometimes the discussion even Frames the conversation that we have so if you can catch us live Otherwise, uh, we're out on youtube. We're considering others streaming platforms I think the one that rose to the top of that list was uh, twitch So we're looking at how to go about getting that started. So definitely well worth the time to come and hang out with us live um This time slot has a special place in my heart because people like matthew and neil and And others I actually met from the community by being a part of other podcasting communities like Linux unplugged comes comes to mind off the top of my head, so We're we're working on that we're trying to be in more places But of course you can always catch the audio podcast or watch the youtube stream after we've gone live Leave your comments be sure to like and subscribe this content like and subscribe to this content hit that bell So, you know when we go live, uh, our team has been posting like crazy. We've we've got episodes of fedora podcast. We've got Uh breakdowns of some of the talks from some of the different conferences like flock. Those are all up there now. So Tons of awesome content on the fedora youtube channel Um with then the psa is over and I mentioned we've got a few minutes left Because I actually have another presentation to give after this about rel 9.3 So It's backed backed for me today. Which is probably why I'm scattered So with with a few minutes that we have left neil, I'll pitch this one to you first What do you see in fedora's future? What what are some of the things that you're most excited about? What are some of the cautionary tales you might spend? So what do you think neil? World domination. Yes. I love it. That's as a pro or con Yes No works. Yeah. No, I I think we have a lot of growth That goal of doubling the number of active contributors is really It's a that's a real goal We want to get more people involved because it's hard to predict where technology is going to go and anybody who says they can Tell you what's you know what ai is going to look like in five years is Vastly mistaken. I don't know. I don't know what I don't know what it's anything except for that They're wrong with their predictions. Um, so we can't really Plan for that, but we can plan to have an active healthy community that's excited about things and you're working with everywhere everyone in the rest of the open source world to Bring all these things to the project and we'll be in good shape for that and you know building our network of fedora friends Eric, I also wanted to say I like your my hair is too long. Let's get rid of it Approach I've you may have seen I've gone gone the same route So Excellent excellent winter choice So funny thing is I I finally gave up on it when kansas city was at 105 for about 105 fahrenheit for about a week Like nope. I'm done At the like that weekend. I said, you know what? And this has been a fun experiment, but I'm just not feeling anymore I'm going to go back to my to my skin fade and and the short hair on top But I'll wait till spring Because you know, I've got built-in earmuffs with with the long hair, but uh, it hit 105 for a week and I was like no We're done And then uh, and then of course a week ago. I was regretting that decision because kansas city dropped to about 35 degrees Yeah, but now it's easier to wear like a hat and then you don't have hat head. It's great Very true. I mean I style my hair like this and I'm done And uh, I'm not I'm not supposed to use hats in fedora Marketing for reasons, but um, just mention hats This this is one that my Daughter crocheted for me. Oh cool logo there. That's her first try at the fedora logo, but I think that came out pretty well um So I have that for ready for winter here This conversation took an interesting turn from from fedora future to uh to hairstyles and hats so That is a sign everyone that we are exhausted The the end of year break can't can't come fast enough True So any any closing thoughts matthew? I'll I'll uh bring this one to you first Um, thank you for this. Um, I really appreciate all the energy in the comments in the chat It's exciting to see all of this and I think that's This this is what does help fedora grow. So thank you very much Neal closing thoughts Ah, this has been fun. Uh, it's nice to kind of reminisce a little bit about the the beginning and the the the Blast the beginning blast the magnificent middle and talk a little bit about maybe what looks like You know what goes on into the end. Um, but you know, uh The the the story goes on and on In fact, David Duncan mentions that We're we're doing a window subsystem for linux just for you It'll be for me too. I someday will tell some stories So it's it's funny because I have I have a work issued mac book I've got like two different fedora systems But then I have a windows laptop that all it does is games. There's literally nothing else on it But a week or so ago Plex server froze up or something. It's like I'm sitting here. I'm playing baltars gate 3 And now I have to go downstairs and and fire up either the laptop or the workstation and Log in and fix that but there's actually a community version of A fedora on wsl But you know baltars gate 3 runs great on my fedora system I was gonna say eric. What's up with that? You should just be running your games on fedora to be fair My fedora system is in desperate need of a gpu upgrade So while it could play baltars gate all you do with the windows system is play baltars gate 3 What's it busy being a windows system for? Um when when blizzard officially will support me playing starcraft On fedora linux Without banning me Well blizzard's owned by microsoft now, so I guess who the hell knows hey, there you go Either that or they come out with blizzard linux or something. We'll we'll all be in trouble I don't have a whole lot of hope for that. I don't have a whole lot of hope for anything going on with blizzard now Well before this conversation Descends too far into anarchy. I've got one more quick public service announcement. We mentioned the fedora linux 39 release with that always comes a release party so You are required to register, but There there's no cost associated with it. You just sign up and show up. It's it's a great time Uh, I think I'm booked this year unfortunate or this release unfortunately But I'll try and make it if I can Bunch of bunch of folks hanging out just talking about the new release having a great time um, so definitely an exciting virtual event and uh, actually I didn't prep you on this Matthew, but could you uh, could you give the quick 30 second pitch to uh For the social hour. Yes, that's a great idea I was busy looking up starcraft as it worked on Lutri, it you have no excuse nori the chat is too. No excuse. Um, yeah Yeah, so we do a fedora social hour every thursday We're actually not doing it this week because we got the release party Which is like an extended social hour in a lot of ways, but every thursday either uh us evening um Or uh us morning eu evening We try to cover gasm time zone coverage there, but every thursday go to discussion fedora project.org find the page about it We do a one hour thing. It's on matrix. We just start a video call and it's basically like this except for everybody can talk We try to keep it, um, you know Generally civilized It's not recorded. That's true or or broadcast. Absolutely. So you can don't don't need to feel like you need to do that And if you want to show up that video on that's fine as well um, and we We for a while we had a no talking about fedora rule Um, just to make things shake things up a little bit and we still uh, do talk a lot about about other you know, whatever interesting, um Hobbies and goings on um But the rant about time zones. Yes. Oh, you know people from indiana have strong feelings about time zones And and there's a lot of fedora folks who are Hoosiers Yeah Maybe i'll show up to the next one and share my opinions because i have. Yes, you're welcome in fact, I went on a rant the other day on uh on mesadon about how I'm really frustrated that the united states continues to stick with the imperial system instead of metric I can I can do powers of 10 all day, but Not sure who decided 5,280 feet was what constituted constituted a mile. So I mean a mile is a thousand a mil so it's um 1,000 steps of a roman soldier who I guess had a slightly big stride Paces um Well, yeah, because paces used to be a unit of measure. Yeah, it's a pace 1,000 paces, that's a mile. It's uh, yeah 1,000 paces is a mile. It is Perfectly perfectly What's a meter based on some kind of like Plutonia it is based on a proportion based on the cross section of the of the diet of the um I don't know what it's part of it's part of sure sure it is Um, this powers of 10 so I don't care where it came from Yeah, no, um You come to the social hour. I I I've got more thoughts I can share All right folks, thank you so much for joining us live Neil Matthew, thank you guys so much for uh for joining me on short notice Um, and thank you to the fedora marketing team for trying to help wrangle up some guests this episode for this episode I honestly have been I've honestly just been buried and as of tomorrow morning, you'll all know why Hint I I said nothing so no one can go and tell the BU that I'd announced anything. So there's a thing tomorrow morning Keep an eye on on the socials and you'll find out what So that said in two weeks, uh, we we are not going to have a regularly scheduled episode Because I will be on a long much needed disconnected Uh Well, it'll be a staycation, but I'm not going to be doing anything that involves a camera conferences or anything. So, uh With that said, thank you all for joining us and I look forward to seeing you all In about a month, uh, we'll announce the the next episode and we'll see you all then Bye everyone