 Welcome to the homelab show episode 85. How you doing Jay? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing great. We're even gonna remember to throw something on here, which is the Feedback at the homelab show we had it on the screen last time for those that watch live But for those listening feedback at the homelab show we love hearing from you So we want to make sure that we're just gonna get out there We love interacting with the audience and making sure that you know We're covering the topics that are you know in demand from the homelab audience of people getting started in this the Topic here today is the often contested and where everybody starts is by distro hopping I think that's that's how you learn Linux as you go. Oh, I have choices and now I have all the choices So let me reload all the choices as many times as possible Or do what I do and just put a bunch of distros on ventoi and then just multi-boot between them anytime I want to capture b-roll for you know, whatever I'm reviewing fun times Yeah, then toy you probably be recommended here if this is this is a rabbit hole for you folks distro hopping. It's fun I don't want to say you outgrow it, but you kind of settle down Maybe into one or maybe you don't some people just have fun doing this But we're gonna talk about the different distributions What might be ideal for your homelab and please test all these out and please feel free to have different opinions than us So we may want to get you started on here for the distros But ultimately it's your decision what you feel comfortable with and I know this is gonna be a topic that probably generates a lot of commentary as well because boy it is a It is a like a real war people have about why they like the distro they like Yeah, it's like it gets to a point where it's like a sports team where you're just really competitive You're not even playing the sport, but your team is the best. You need to let everybody know that I think that's probably true like for no particular reason you've decided this is your sports team Maybe you live in that area you like Whatever how they look and then you're like this is the sports team. I am dedicated to so it's probably a good way to Reference it before we dive into this. Let's thank our sponsor today and that is Linode They have lots of distros you can try very easily They have a cool store and you set up your Linode server and you can pick whichever distro Where whatever app you want some preloaded stuff in there Linode is a great place to host lots of your projects that you may Want to run in the cloud but maintain some control over they've been a great sponsor of the show since the beginning We do encourage if you want to sign up to use our offer code down below, which is The home the home lab show it's in the links in the description down below and in the podcast Use that offer code sign up get started with Linode. Thanks again for sponsoring Let's just jump into distros because I'm excited to talk about them and me and you will talk about them But if you head over to reddit, you will probably find people arguing about them, which is also fun You can learn all kinds of fun things that way Look it'd be fair though. It seems like reddit People aren't arguing as much about distributions as they were maybe we're just hitting a slow period after the holidays Yeah, I'm sure the argument levels and in someone mentioning that they use arch every few minutes will come back up Which is always one of my favorite means by the way I use arch which by the way I don't use arch Yeah, so what point do you can you say I use arch? Well, I guess not my daily driver, but I always maintain one installation So I do technically use it, but I don't use it. So I don't know where we draw the line there So, but I mean you have a steam deck. So true. Okay fair point. All right, so I guess I run so you play arch you play with arch That's interesting. We'll go with that. We can go with that I'm not going to go into any specific order here But before we get into this though, there's there's something that I say a lot I don't know if I mentioned this on this podcast because sometimes I you know just mention it So when it comes to distributions, I mean ultimately the goal is to pick one, right? I mean, whatever one resonates with you doesn't matter which one I'm not gonna, you know shame anyone for their choice. Even if it's Debbie and I'm kidding. I love Debbie and Debbie is actually one of the greatest. So I just there but The thing is though Picking a distribution is difficult, but you just try them out and you land on one Ultimately like you were saying but the thing is I always feel like you should have a secondary Maybe even a third not not I'm not saying you should you know Run everything in parallel with another like a two of every instance But I feel like you should always have a backup distro when you do pick the one that you want to keep Because you never know what's going to happen I mean for a little bit We thought sent to us would go away because of the red hat merger when IBM bought red hat That didn't happen. So we thought everything was fine. And then later on, you know sent to us change to sent to us stream That confused a lot of people So so even when you don't think something's going to happen or this distribution that you're using is always going to be the same Maybe it will but you should always have a backup distribution, especially companies, but I think home lab That's also true. So I think it's a good idea to just maintain a secondary or just try your, you know Installing apps on the other one just to kind of keep your toes in the water You know just in case your main distribution goes down a path that you don't want to follow For example, I'm gonna stay in the middle on this But a lot of people don't like snap packages with you know with Ubuntu But the fact is Ubuntu is run by a company. So companies shenanigans are within the realm of norm like it or not But you know as they go that direction someone may not want to follow that direction Maybe for whatever reason they don't they don't want that on their system They can go to a different distribution. It's a lot easier to do that if you are testing things on that other district So always have a plan B possibly plan C for me. It's You know a daily driver for desktops is Papa West, but just talking about servers It's a Ubuntu server number one But I maintain Debian as a plan B and arch as a plan C because you know I doubt anything will happen to Debian because of all the distros it stays the same But I maintain Debian as well. So I make sure to keep that going But that's the first recommendation I'll make is just don't put all your eggs in one basket thinking nothing's going to change And then at the last minute just scramble to find a replacement We have a lot of distros and you know things happen Yeah for me, I actually started out and of course I started in the 90s. So there was many Options back then, you know, we had well, we had red hat or we had slack wear And I think that was pretty much in Debian was in its infancy there So there was very few choices in the beginning. I actually started out in the red hat world moved over to Debian And it came down to at that time the RPMs and managing the packages the term You don't hear as often in Linux is dependency hell But boy dependency hell was a real thing in the early days of Linux This is where the package manager have come along and even though package managers vary between distributions They've all kind of learned from each other Debian being one of the first with their app system being able to say I want to install this thing I you can start with the final thing you wanted to install in Debian And they were the one the first to do this and would figure out all the supporting Things you needed all the supporting packages and load them so you could get to your final Thing you want to load This is one of the things that really sold me on that and it's also the way Debian works from the back end has also made them the Very first distro that forked so many times like it is as Jay said the basis for so many different distros and it's because Debian is a very stable predictable platform A red hat Solved many of these problems over the year but by solving problems There are sacrifices that were made like backwards compatibility in a way they do things So when they started doing some retooling and re-engineering That didn't mean that you always wanted to base your distribution output So everyone says hey look at these Debian people that have been doing the same thing for 20 plus years the same way with the same apt command working And so that's why you have a lot of things that are going to be Debian based Yep, that's absolutely true So yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there have a plan B Um, so we just start getting into distributions I think we've been mentioning Debian so many times that we could probably just start with it. Um, yeah, let's start with Debian Yeah, let's just start with Debian. So with Debian, there's going to be Three branches if you want to call it they're not technically flavors, but you have Debian stable And anytime I I say Debian, I'm actually Intending to say Debian stable, but we just simplify that down to Debian A lot of people don't specify Debian stable being the normal release that comes out. Um, actually whenever it's ready. They don't advertise a Release schedule of any kind. They might give you a release window And it'll be out around that same time But they'll have a list of bugs that need to be fixed before it comes out. But when it comes out Um Debian stable, they'll give you security updates But they won't give you like new versions of anything. So if you're Excuse me if you're just basically Getting software from the official repositories Then your library office is going to be old if you use it on the workstation All of your software will be old And that's just because of the real, you know, the release model. It's just the way they do it So security updates will keep coming in, but Debian is not a rolling release It's probably the most opposite of a rolling release Of any distribution, but rolling releases meaning there's no, you know release in the greater term It's more like, you know, you just keep updating install once updates forever basically Debian is I mean, they they have a really Reliable upgrade system It kind of makes me nervous, you know the way you do it on the command line And it just works like I I haven't seen it feel too many times if ever So it rolls you can roll it over to the new release when it comes out But it's not rolling in the normal sense of the word. It's just a stable distribution That doesn't change and I think that's a highlight for a lot of people The downsides of Debian in my opinion Is that the hardware compatibility is the worst of all distributions out there I know a lot of people don't want to hear that but I'm just being honest Because by keeping the kernel, you know back a bunch of different versions and Hardware drivers are really old I mean chances are when Debian stable comes out and you put it on a Computer that was released around the same time It's just not going to work because Debian froze like at least six months before then So there's often no new drivers But I think that's the main problem that people might run into but Debian is doing something about it They're actually making improvements there So I don't really know if that's going to be so much of an issue going forward But if you know how to install drivers how to how to find the drivers and everything It's not really a problem. I think a lot of us they use Debian We know how to work around that it's probably muscle memory at this point It doesn't faze us at all But it is something to keep in mind if you have a system and you try Debian on it You try Ubuntu on it Even though Ubuntu is based on Debian will get to that chances are Ubuntu is going to have better hardware compatibility I remember When I set up a server one time a physical server I ordered from Dell from the company You know for the company I was working for at the time and Debian couldn't see any Of the network drivers or the network cards or anything like that And it was a fully supported network card. I mean we basically told Dell we're running Linux on this and they actually do sell Linux servers Believe it or not, but it you know Ubuntu would work Debian wouldn't but as long as you know how to work around that It's not a problem. I just like to throw that throw that out there Other flavors of Debian. There's testing and unstable So unstable is where packages go first is probably the closest equivalent That Debian has to a rolling release because it just keeps getting new updates It'll break every now and then but get fixed Pretty quickly and packages will graduate into testing testing eventually will freeze And there's going to be usually like a six month period where they're fixing things up and then it ultimately becomes the next Debian stable Now another thing about Debian is that it's probably one of if not the most influential distributions of all because they In my opinion have influenced more distributions than anything else. So many distributions are based on Debian Linux just wouldn't be Linux without Debian. I think I think a lot of people will agree with that Even though Debian has some works and I just criticized it. Believe me the developers of Debian will also criticize it too So I've actually spoken to them. It's mutual. We all get it but It actually is a great distribution that has You know just done so much for the Linux community that it's just one of the most cherished For that reason and if you like stability, then I think you're going to love Debian I think it's worth mentioning too and this is goes back to the future this is one of the things that has hung up Debian is the non inclusion of the Drivers that are non free and I see Veronica explains left a comment here that says I'm often missing about Debian drivers for the future including non free is going to be swell And I I agree with that. That's this is where a bunch of Leap frog to head. We're just going to include those non free ones. We know Nvidia is not going to release an open source driver But we know Nvidia makes a high quality card that we need to use This is where that Debian problem comes in a dimension for hardware compatibility and why it never got to be Critical mass of you know the year of the Linux desktop for Debian because not as many people run it on your desktop because of that video driver support Wi-Fi card support And sound as well. Those are the three things that Debian was always slow on and their lack of inclusion of free the Any proprietary drivers as a stance? I mean great. They stood by their, you know morals and we do not include these But that came at the problems that we just mentioned Yeah, so I think it's important to kind of touch on that a little bit You know, what's the actual problem here because we also have to understand both sides Even though I have a very strong opinion here too, but the the actual argument is going to be that A distribution and I can even leave Debian out of this and just just say distribution x whatever it is If if they have a proprietary driver, that's not open source and they put that on the cd or whatever a cd What is this like 1999? It's just Pretty much. Okay, we'll go with that so If they do include those drivers on there and these are drivers for hardware Where the vendors themselves didn't upstream the drivers and and and they have a you know a proprietary driver that is not open source It's just a A blob so to speak So if they include that the benefit is that everyone's hardware will have a better chance of working So if you play games your Nvidia card is going to work better Because you'll have that driver on there But the trade-off though is that the I think one of the fears is that people might think ill of the distribution If it's crashing and it's unstable, you know, how people are like I hate this distribution It's so horrible and it keeps dying on me When the problem could just be the proprietary driver and then the opinion of the distribution goes down because Well, I mean They can't do anything about their users complaining about bugs and the proprietary driver because they don't have the code But then if they don't include the driver then People's hardware won't work to the fullest potential which is also going to potentially develop a negative opinion So it's really a lose lose situation in every single regard I cater towards Veronica's point though because I think it's important to you know, stand for your ideals, but don't punish your users for it That's never okay. Like I understand you might hate the proprietary drivers. I do too But the opinion of linux is never going to get better unless compatibility gets better And like you said, some of these companies just won't open source the driver and if we Vote with our wallet so to speak they don't care because we're a smaller market share They're they're selling to windows users So it doesn't bother them at all not even a little bit And we just don't have the footprint if everybody revolted to make them care so it's a lose lose situation in every regard but The bottom line is when someone has hardware they want it to work They didn't buy a piece of hardware to put it on the shelf and you know display it They bought the hardware because they want to use it and if Even though we hate these proprietary things. They exist unfortunately and they need to work There's no excuse make them work. Don't punish your users for that I think WN understands that now because that's exactly what they're looking into doing like Veronica says they're Looking into putting those drivers right on the installation media. I think that's fair They could put up a message and say, you know, these are not Supported because we have we don't have the source code But check this box during install if you have the hardware that you have and you need it I think that's fair. I think that's a good compromise and I think that being is going on the right direction here Yeah, it's as well as things. I I don't mind it being a checkbox so to speak like I'm make me aware I'll you know have my opinions on I check the box. I've agreed and say all right. I know this is something to do So it is a it is a challenge though It really is and the last thing I'll say about that is The verbiage could just simply say something like By checking this box, you agree that We're not responsible on our side for anything that could happen And then if somebody goes in the forum and says, you know, like distro sucks because In my nvidia card isn't working and then someone to say well, remember that check box that you would have checked during installation That's kind of what we were talking about. I think that builds the understanding there. I think that's I have I know that legally there's other Issues that make that more complicated. I won't go into but I do want to say I'm really excited for this new debian release I I just can't wait until it comes out to review it The final version because I I just can't wait to see what that's like being, you know a bit easier to set up and Um, who knows it'll probably be a great release. Yeah, no it will changes. It's just took 20 years to happen It's a coming of age. Um, I I think but debian stable being what it is It takes longer for them to um go that direction But so yeah, I spent a lot of time on debian. I'll try not to spend the as much time on the rest I think it's kind of important though because debian is the foundation for so many distributions So I guess it kind of makes sense that I spent more time on it. Yeah, I think the um obvious thing to transcend or transcend into is ubuntu at this point because Um, there's pros and cons there as well and since ubuntu is one of the distributions that's built on top of debian It's a natural segue here. So ubuntu is the distribution that some people love to hate it gets a lot of controversy Uh, for a couple of reasons. I mean you have canonical making decisions that may or may not resonate with people and Sometimes people just hate things because it's popular or someone might just dislike it because they dislike it but um ubuntu is a very solid distribution. They I feel like they actually Fix a lot of the problems that debian has by You know, like we said earlier including the drivers that are needed to make things happen They add additional technologies on top of their distribution You know lex d for example is a great example of that they have other solutions like Maz metal as a service. I probably just said that wrong. So sorry in advance, but you know, it is what it is Um, but they have all these different technologies that they build on top of it So they actually sync from debian unstable But then they stabilize it themselves, which I kind of feel is a lot of unnecessary work in my opinion There's probably a better way to do that, but it's been working out for them They release every six months. So there's a new release every six months. Uh, every other April is a lts or long term supported release supported for Three years on the desktop five on the server if i'm not mistaken At least the five years is correct. It's been a while. I've been on the buntu server book for a long time So I've been kind of living in that world So a lot of people will just use the lts releases the non lts releases are only supported for nine months So I don't think it's very likely that a lot of people will run that because they'll have to keep updating it So I wouldn't recommend it anyway, but if you want to preview what's coming then those are a great way to get that But lts is usually the way to go Another thing that ubuntu does that I like is they have hardware enablement updates that usually land With the point two point release. So for example 2204 came out then 2204.1 came out and 2204.2 is coming out So the point two release will grab the driver stack for the most recent interim release And pull it in to give you an updated kernel updated drivers So that's why you could download ubuntu and have a greater chance of it working with the hardware because they keep that updated Which I think is a great thing for them to do But then again debbing is fixing that too. So maybe that won't even be a problem So ubuntu is just um a fantastic distribution in my opinion both on the desktop and the server There's also the other desktop spins like zubuntu for xfce kubuntu and so on but the server version is what we're going to focus on and um, I highly recommend it, but then again debbing is great I think if ubuntu server is your primary distribution and you're looking for a plan b Then debbing might be that plan b if it isn't already your plan a if that isn't already your main because Transitioning away from ubuntu to debbing is not the hardest transition to do in fact It's probably the easiest one because the majority of the packages are going to be you know named the same You have the same commands And they both use the app package manager. So there's a lot of similarities there And I think you could go either direction you could flip a coin and probably for the most part Unless you have like bleeding edge hardware probably be just fine on uh debbing or ubuntu Yeah, and ubuntu they they have a lot of little niceties that they add like with their installer When you're installing the server being able to just throw your github in there and have it grab your keys out of github and throw them Right in no cloud in it. No special config just know your github id have your keys and github for ssh And it'll grab your public keys throw them in there and let you ssh in some of those little things like that make it kind of nice they also have some cool configuration scripts that kind of Build it out a little easier And I think debbie and there where you can just choose some pre-defined things that they have As an option when you're loading it. I think just makes it really uh pain-free for setting up the ubuntu server And I love the version numbering by having the version numbers as opposed to this is sometimes I don't like when the The uh debbie and naming scheme which follows toy story If it's all a debbin 11 12 But I think is I think do call it that but man some of people they'll say oh, this is bullseye or this I'm like Yeah, the version is bullseye. I set the double I get it mixed up in my head occasionally I like numbers and I know when the release was because I I don't know when debbie and 11 came out or debbie and nine came out, but I know when a bunch of 22 came out Oh 2204 The year 22 for month. I actually just Anyone in software if you're using that type of naming scheme to understand the versions So I know the date that version was released. That's just a lot I don't know if everyone could do that. I think that'd be great But ubuntu doing it makes it really simple and the fact that they throw the letters lts for long-term support right after it That gives you a nice predictability about the ubuntu server And if you're someone distributing applications and recently I I did a talk about the sysco business dashboard Which runs on one of the lts releases? That makes it very clear like hey, this is the lts release you want to use for this Matter of fact, it's very specific with some of the installers because they've created packages that are super interdependent Unusually one of the ubuntu distributions because of that more predictable nature Yeah, yeah, those are all really really good points there too So a lot of these a lot of the issue here is the complexities around the distributions because there's You know gonna be things they do well some things they don't do as well. Um getting back to the name thing I kind of feel you know in order to play devil's advocate here But this is my opinion anyway the the date naming scheme can backfire pretty easily Because ubuntu gets away with it because they they release every six months So they don't have to worry about the preconceived notion. Oh, that was released two years ago Yeah, I don't know, you know, because if they don't have that release schedule It's pretty good ubuntu has then someone might think of it as old and they don't want to use it If debbie and did that I mean could you imagine there'd be like What 2204 and then 2507 or something? I don't know. I'm just making up numbers here because you never know when it's going to come out So people could think the most recent release is old Well, technically kind of is but even though it's kind of not because it is the most recent release But I just think that could backfire. I think for debbie and You know 1112 and so on is is great But everyone does use the release code names which can be a little confusing but then again I was on the let's encrypt site the other day looking at if their ubuntu instructions have changed And I had to select ubuntu 20 and I'm like ubuntu 20 Okay, 2004 2010 can you be more specific because that's something that a lot of people do that I don't like but Because there's a very big difference between ubuntu 2004 2010 or 2204 and eventually going to be 2210 But you know, I I mean community members saying that is fine But let's encrypt was a little surprising to me. But uh, either way, there's confusion confusing version numbers I mean, we have windows 11 now. Whatever happened at nine. Don't answer that So, yeah fun times All right, now what's the next just show we should dive into here I want to mention l pine linux really quick. I haven't used it personally, but it's a very small distribution and um Very popular on containers like for containers that could run in just, you know, eight megabytes of space If you want to have it installed to the metal, I think it's around 130 140 megabytes megabytes. Oh my gosh, like You know, I've seen dos installations that had more data than that It's it's crazy how small it is It's more of a specialist distribution for more advanced users that want to kind of just, you know Have something small to base Whatever it is they're building on top of so I hear a lot of good things about it I I can't speak too much about it myself, but It does exist and it if you're into containers It's probably definitely something to check out for sure because that's a really small footprint and if you run it as your Distribution on the metal let us know I want to hear about that because I think that'd be interesting to hear about someone's experience running l pine outside of containers and actually, you know Actually installing it on a virtual disk or a physical disk even just to see what that's like, but yeah Alpine Linux Alpine Linux So again in no particular order One I think one that a lot of people don't really think of is fedora when it comes to home lab because The first so tom, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of fedora? Oh you know I you see I get the when I think red hat. It's always the dependency hell Turned me off years ago But I always think of it as the more they're You know, and I'm actually a little confused by this because I I get it mixed up So I know you understand it better to me the rel versus the Red hat, you know their business editions versus the fedora, which is the you know public facing editions So first one is the confusion. Which one is the paid one is the first question I I have I know I know what they are But it is one of those things that always makes me pause and think about which one one is paid support One is free that you can get Yep Well, I think the the first thing people think of is workstation Because that's part of the name and we just say fedora, but a lot of times people Are actually talking about the workstation version that includes the gnome desktop and it is for your laptop or desktop Probably not what people are running in their home lab But there's also fedora server, which is another one that You know, you could download and it's actually pretty good But a lot of people don't think of fedora when it comes to servers, but it is pretty Comparable. I mean, it's actually a really good distribution. They even have a have core os fedora core os Which is weird because fedora started as fedora core. That was its original name on the desktop And now we have they they took the name or the part the core part part out of it But then later on Um after the core os purchase now we have fedora core os Which is not the same as fedora core back in the early days not confusing at all But fedora core os is for running containers So it's a distribution that is built just for that purpose and then fedora server is your Probably your closest sent os equivalent on fedora even though fedora, excuse me sent to us as part of the same landscape But if you're wanting something more bleeding edge because fedora tracks newer software They're not older like debion. They have newer bleeding edge things And maybe you want to benefit from the newer technologies on your server as well So when they come out with a new release even the desktop release they they're coming out with the others as well So fedora server is a real version fedora core os is a real version. They're all free So to answer your question, you could just download it just like anything else And I I used to not really like fedora to be honest, but nowadays it's come around. Oh my gosh it is actually really good now and um, you know, it's just one of those things I always thought The performance lagged. It was always slow. It had um far fewer packages than any other distribution It became a chore to find things to install even open source applications, I remember one time cmus A bunch of years ago open source media player for your terminal trying to find it in fedora not available But nowadays that's really not a problem anymore It just isn't an issue and fedora has fixed probably every complaint that I've ever had about it And it's a really good distribution and it's highly recommended. So Try it out in your server try out the server version. You might like it. So Something worth looking at. Yeah, but I mean now now we're talking about fedora We may as well talk about centOS and this is where things get, you know, really This is part of the reason why I think we wanted to do this because we did a linux episode sometime back But this is more of an updated look at at the ecosystem a lot has changed A lot has changed and I'm trying to remember when we talked about this It wasn't the consensus that we did that episode before the centOS Switcheroo, is that correct? Yeah, I think so. Well, I think there was some announcements But no clear path forward. So there was announcements of things changing I think that's around one really step. So but we didn't know it was before the existence of rocky linux So and there was that delay from announcements to then rocky linux and some of the other things that happened afterwards Right. So actually I think that was more the reason when we brought up alma linux and rocky linux. So I'll start with red hat. I think that's probably a natural segue into centOS and everything else because red hat is I mean people might be running this in their home lab because you can get a developer license That a lot of people don't know that you can actually get that if that's something you want you get your updates and everything Um, so if you wanted to check out red hat, that is something you could do You have to sign up for an account if you're okay with that and then you can have that Um, but it wants a support agreement that that's kind of how this is set up It's open source software anybody can recompile it As long as they remove the branding call it whatever they want. That's fine. You can download everything and and people have A lot of people have so, um If you want red hat proper then there's a support agreement if you're using it for a company But depending on how many licenses they let you have it'd be kind of a challenge unless you only have one server So in your home lab, which some people may maybe you're they're running red hat. You can absolutely do that It's a very stable distribution Um, not unlike debbie and but not quite the same either. They sometimes have interesting Changes that they make for example butter fs isn't available I'm sure you can you can install this but it's at least not the default and fedora butter fs is the default and they want that to be the default because They want to set the example To convince red hat to go back on their decision to remove butter fs as the default And that's so fedora in some ways is the proving ground for some of these technologies But I don't want anyone to think that fedora becomes red hat because that's not true But anything in fedora might graduate into red hat possibly So, you know fedora is sticking with butter fs for example to set that example for red hat proper But then largely sent to us has been the open source totally free to download and get updates for distribution a re-spin Of red hat without the branding just recompiling everything and it was At one point it seemed like a bit of a thorn in red hat side because At first sent to us was not actually owned by red hat. It was its own community project That's part of the name community enterprise operating system Which is kind of like a weird thought now considering what happened but anyway, um What it was really great though because the relationship worked if you wanted to um Test something out on let's say, I don't know red hat seven or whatever it is Just download sento s7 and test it out You don't need a license and then if if you're working in an enterprise and you you need that license Then you could buy the license But at least you have a proof of concept first to get buy-in support for that Because you need buy-in support to get a license, um, which is one of the downsides there But it is a stable distribution. It's um recognized by a lot of people there's certification tracks around it So it's very very popular in the enterprise So it might be a really good fit for those of you that are working in enterprise or want to someday And then sent to us now we're getting into sent to us So sent to us like I mentioned was that open source free re-spin eventually red hat owned it And we thought it was going to go away. It didn't thankfully IBM bought red hat and then we're thinking again sent to us is going to have some problems But you know, nothing happened and some time has passed and everyone forgot And then eventually red hat You know, basically just or IBM or both just came over and said hey, we're Changing everything all of a sudden so figure it out Now I know this isn't what a lot what a lot of people want to hear But a distribution is is allowed to go any direction they want and like I mentioned earlier They can go any direction at any time with or without notice Which is why I should always have a plan b So I don't have an issue with sent to us doing what they did because they have every right to do it My issue is how they went about doing it. It was sudden They didn't give people a lot of time like in companies to switch So basically what it is is that they decided to end support for sent to us eight which would become sent to us stream Which confused a lot of people I'll get into that in a minute And all of a sudden companies had to figure out what to do and that really upset a lot of people And some people might really enjoy the idea around sent to us stream and they might be excited about that And they want to try it out But maybe they won't because you know, they messed me up once they could do it again You know, but what's the next thing that's going to happen? So I feel like it's hurt trust a bit But sent to us stream also kind of gets some negativity which I'll get into but Everything I've set up to now is sent to us as we've known it for most of its life Now sent to us as we know it is sent to us stream And the consensus is that it's a rolling distribution You know that is based on red hat But it's not and this is why it's so confusing because that's what everyone thinks it is and They even removed the rolling terminology from at least one of their pages where they actually claim that themselves But it's not a rolling release But the term stream kind of makes it sound like it is But what sent to us stream actually is is the upstream development branch of red hat So it attracts ahead of red hat. It's not technically a rolling distribution It is kind of in the sense that updates are constantly coming, but there are releases It's it's almost like a hybrid of sorts like a hybrid Development point release if I had to guess so it's a little confusing, right? I think that's why a lot of people are kind of put off by it, but Um, when this all came out you had all malinux and rocky linux at the same time Um, say hey, we're going to save the day and we're going to do our own recompile of red hat To make it what sent to us used to be which was which is great because that gave a lot of people something to fall back on and being a drop in replacement like that is is awesome because Then you don't have to redo as much of your tooling as you would have had to otherwise so, you know kudos to both of those projects rocky linux and all malinux and I think the obvious question is which one to use which one wins between all malinux And rocky linux and and what I say is flip a coin I don't have a preference at all. I mean, they're the same the branding is going to be different There's going to be different communities what I would suggest Is look at the communities just browse the forums Find out, you know, how people treat each other the mindsets and things like that and just find out which community You think you might want to be a part of and then make your decision based on that I'm not going to push anyone in one direction or the other. I think they're both great So if you if you want just flip a coin and go with it and you probably won't regret it because it's going to be compatible. So I think the whole enterprise linux space just got a lot more confusing But I'm hoping that's helped some people understand where the situation is today Yeah, and it's going to be going forward Um, there's choices and there's a whole write-up and I see people discussing like xcp and g and zen server Xcp and g is sent to sbase in current times here in january of 2023 But they have entire write-ups up because we talked about this on our last episode. So we'll not rehash it much But essentially they're controlling Because they're an appliance the spin so to speak and all the different packages and updates on there But going forward There's a lot of things free pbx and many other and we mentioned as I said in that last episode That are all sent to sbase So they're going to have to make a choice probably at some point of we want to maintain this ourselves Essentially making a distribution or we're just going to go ahead and borrow from rockier alma and fit those in as needed So it is going to create some changes going forward over the next few years So there's a comment in the chat room. I want to highlight here And i'm trying to find it now because I might have already um scrolled but basically um, I found it So looks like jan is saying alma linux has commercial backing rocky linux is purely community effort Um, actually, that's not correct. It was correct for a very short period of time. And I think that's where this comes from. So the um You know cloud linux is a company that's on top of tux care. They've sponsored the channel um They did start alma linux. They got that going um They called it project linux le and ix when it was in development and then until it got its proper name of alma linux when they released the Stable version there. So what they did and I thought this is so cool. They um They gave control of the community And then after they developed it they developed this they removed their control because what the idea was They want it. They want to build trust. They don't want Someone to say well, it's just another company controlling this. So why would I go that direction? So they actually removed control. They created a steering committee around this to make sure that um something like that couldn't happen again Um, you know cloud linux, I don't think they would be the type of company to do that But you know corporations, you know, what if another company buys another company and this happens that happens So right out the gate after it was developed. They wanted to remove that So it is a community uh distribution now in in exactly the same way rocky linux is I think the difference is is that for a brief period of time while it was in development It wasn't but then when it came out they um later removed the um Control and the and the chair of the board is actually um in lansing just 40 minutes for me actually So, yeah, that'd be small world, right? So um and I've met her. She's awesome. So Her name is benny. She's great. So there's just a lot to love about it But considering they're both community distributions, even though I've you know engaged with all malinux and their community more I still say they're both great. Just flip a coin and either direction is going to be solid Yep Now one of them that was creating some chatter and I've never tested it I i'm well aware of it because I actually have a few of them Hey a few of their stuffed animals hanging on my wall behind me is Open susie. Is it susie susie? I'm susa susa Yeah, there's a weird video if you could go on youtube and find it where it's just people saying it for like I don't know how long one or two minutes straight is over and over and over again Open susa and susa I made the mistake of thinking they're the same youtube channel. They have different youtube channels But they both have the same angle one's more comedy than the other But yeah, there's a video about that. So Susa is a distribution that I quite enjoy actually I don't cover it as much lately Not for any specific reason just because you know, you can't cover everything But I've spoken to the the people from the community I've had an interview with at least one person on the channel from that community But there's different variations of susa. So there's susa enterprise, which is going to be the Red hat equivalent where you need a support agreement for it Open susa is their Freely downloadable distribution that you could just install on whatever you don't have to pay anything for it What they've done lately. I thought was so novel like so amazing they Moved their open susa to the same base as their enterprise linux So nowadays if you install open susa, you're getting the same packages that you would get in the enterprise Version that you would otherwise pay for so you get that stability for free on your desktop or laptop I mean, how cool is that that that's just so cool of them to do it and it's a win-win because they don't have to develop You know, obviously they're yes, they're developing more than one distribution, but it's not As much development when there's one base Because now you just develop a base and then the differences between the enterprise and the one you could freely download There's also tumbleweed, which is their rolling release and it's actually pretty good. I actually like it quite a bit So they're not going to be as bleeding edges arch linux the packages aren't going to come as quickly But they do so you just install it once upgrade forever, which is you know, how that works rolling release, obviously So you have enterprise you have open susa, which is named leap Is how we differentiate that leap versus tumbleweed leap being the stable one tumbleweed being the rolling one The only thing i'm a little concerned about is their Migration to the advanced linux platform. I think that's what alp stands for I'm not quite sure What form that's going to take I do like the direction they're going so i'm not against it it's more like having a replaceable master Blob so to speak, but it's not proprietary It's imagine like, you know on a phone you have a operating system In a secondary you can go back to the other one or it flips in the other direction and you download the entire thing When it updates so some people don't like that idea and I totally understand that But I think there there's a lot of good that can happen there And it doesn't stop anyone from customizing their distribution like a lot of people think It doesn't stop any customization at all. You don't lose anything But my concern is You know, they just switched they made a lot of changes. They just switched the base over to enterprise They just came out with leap and then tumbleweed and now they're they're going to change again So I'm not against the change. I just think you know, can we just settle on one thing for a while before you go in this other direction Can we just like enjoy this for a few more years until we you change it up on us? Because you know, it's more for the stable people than anything else. I think My mindset is okay that they switched to alp. What's next are they just going to wipe the floor with that? Just just wipe it out and go a different direction again Are they going to bump the version number up to 80 next time? Because leap was leaping the version number ahead. You can't make this stuff up Right. I just feel like there's a lot of uncertainty there, but that's my only complaint open. Suisse is great. Suisse in general is great Um on has a chameleon for the mascot. I mean, how cool is that and then do cool videos and parody videos But I will answer a question that I've seen more than a person ask and says why isn't it more popular? And the easy answer is going to be popularity is often driven by Tutorials and availability of information on a distro If you search for how to set something up Whether that's gray log or any of the other projects and some of them do have some instructions for some of the other operating systems But as you look around you'll find the majority of applications They'll suggest either debbie and a bunch to or occasionally red hat But debbie and a bunch to pretty much documented all over the place for whatever app you want to run and a lot of times people are driven to Start with what's their goal? I want to run this particular application They look up the instructions on how to run it and this is a question that even comes up for me The instructions for how to run something I'll cover it on how to do it in debbie And or maybe I'll use a bunch to because that will be the package retainer and people start asking for support I can't get this working in suce and I'm like I don't know I don't know I don't have any instructions I don't know the differences and matter of fact the person who wrote the installer Has a dependency checker all using apps. So that's why it works on debbie and a bunch to So that's one of the reasons some of these don't get as popular and anytime they create any confusion like jade just kind of went over You don't encourage people who are maintaining software to write tutorials to Do it because then they have to start figuring out which version it works on or what the differences are that break and they're going This works. It's free. You can get a bunch to for free. You can get debbie and for free They both use apt here's the tutorial on how to make my application work on that platform Now docker changes the game a little bit because docker compose is going to be docker compose on different systems But nonetheless, that's one of the reasons the popularity of the debbie and based in a bunch of age distributions Yeah, that's absolutely right another reason why open susa susa in general isn't as popular You have to also understand too. There's regional popularity. That's a that plays a big part here because Um susa is not very popular in the united states. It doesn't have a presence. Absolutely I have seen these servers in the wild. I know they exist But far fewer than others But in other countries you might find the opposite you might find susa is more popular And it is more popular overseas and it is here So there's going to be a lot of that going on too that for some reason it just didn't catch on as much here as it Did um overseas so just keep that in mind sometimes regional plays a part too Yep Now the next one is going to be I probably I don't know much time we have left but probably the last one here Um is popo s it's an interesting idea me and jay are both big fans of the distro It's a hardware company that's getting into the distro game to be able to create a really nice experience and I think the polish that popo s adds on top of a bunch too is Great and I don't just say that I've been using this my daily driver in what we are recording this podcast on What I do my video editing on what I do my daily business on is all systems running The popo s now desktop distribution not focused on server But if you're in jay has definitely got plenty of reviews on this channel of their hardware from their laptops to their desktops Even their keyboards. They are doing a great job of creating that level of integration So you're never worried about any hardware support. You're going to get top notch support You're going to get really good Experience using now you can of course load other versions of linux on their hardware because it's still linux compatible But I think popo s is is definitely one for the desktop that I really like Yeah, it's it's just such a godsend to linux. I mean It is so good I mean the one of the things about it is a lot of people think it's just a reskin of ubuntu I can understand why they think that even though it's completely false and there's no truth to that at all Is it based on ubuntu? Yeah, it is it has those repositories too, but they have um popo s is actually a semi rolling release And not a lot of people know that so If you get uh, if you install ubuntu for example, there was a time where ubuntu froze the version of thunderbird And uh, didn't want to go to a newer version at all But popo s had the new version because they have a rolling repository that they add on top of it It's not a full rolling release because they don't Give you rolling everything. It's just ad hoc, right? If a lot of their users are asking for the newer version of thunderbird or this That wouldn't otherwise be in ubuntu's repositories. They'll put it often in theirs And you'll get it on their platform So that's a good thing too. There's a lot of um performance improvements like for example z ram is now the The default in popo s. So That's going to have a higher priority over swap which is going to You know compress some things in memory. Just let your memory go even further offer some performance improvements Your games will probably run faster now after they made this change One of the issues though is that and this is why people think it's just a reskin of ubuntu They're very modest. They don't brag, you know, they don't Release a blog post very often saying hey look at this amazing thing that we've done sometimes they do But I remember one time I was in their chat room randomly And they were talking about switchable graphics and this is before that was really common. I'm like Wait a minute. You've enabled switchable graphics. Yeah, we did like did you want to announce that anywhere? Um, did you want to come out the blog? It's just there for people like How are people gonna like know or just you know value your hard work if you're not telling people what you're doing so some people think that it is a Reskin of ubuntu based on that they're not banging the drum every time they do something But they they make so many improvements to everything because they understand what desktop users are looking for and the experience that they want And they go the extra mile with it. I just think it's an amazing thing They're in a state of transition right now to a new desktop environment that they're creating so Um, there there are going to be some warts here and there while they make that transition because the developers are developing the new thing While they're also fixing bugs on the old thing. So they're going to be spread a little bit thin but this is very important for their future because Um system 76 has never really wanted to be beholden to uh another platform's decisions Right. Um, and that's why they do this because gnome Is a great desktop environment But the changes that they're putting on top of it are getting you know to be quite a few That in and of itself can cause bugs because you're making gnome do things that gnome wasn't meant to do and at what point you say Okay, we're just forcing gnome to be Something else. Why don't we just develop the something else that we want it to be And that makes more sense, but unfortunately there's a transition period there. I'm not saying it's unstable or anything I had one issue Since I think last fall that uh their documentation helped me fix which may or may not have been because of this but Honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal to fix and I didn't really mind all that much But that was like the only issue I've had with it. I think it's been very stable very solid They enable your hardware in just the right way. They're all about performance And they have flat pack support built right in I can go on and on the tiling is amazing It's just a fantastic distribution for sure Yeah, so it's it's one I've chose for even I have a brand new uh del laptop that I'm running it on So whether using their hardware or not, um, it works great I'm actually surprised how good the support is for my del with the minor exception j helped me with was um Well, we talked about a little bit. I should say the power problems And this is Does the kernels are not as up to date in linux right now to take advantage of some of the low Powered states so there's still some more drain on it when it's in idle and sleek modes But that's something I know will get fixed over time and it's not that big of a deal to me Yeah, I like the fact that you can easily engage with them in the chat room and find out where things are because I I purchased a you know one of the new amd GPUs. It's still in the box I can't wait to try it out. You can get it to work in linux I I've seen at least one blog post with all the stuff in there. You have to do You need a newer version of mesa. You need a specific kernel for this to work and an amd upstream this So the the code exists. It just takes a while for the distributions to get a hold of it So if you were to plug in one of those new GPUs right now, you're not going to have a good experience yet But I just asked popo s. I'm like, is this something that you're looking at and they are, you know They are looking into this and they do Want to get this enabled and I predict they'll probably get it enabled before ubuntu will because they'll probably um in their repository include the newer Driver stack and everything that's needed for everyone and they probably won't make an announcement I wish they do a better job of that. I think it's I think they should absolutely make an announcement when the new amd Our dna3 gpus are supported. That's a pretty big deal. So hopefully they they let everybody know that but I literally Messaged them. I'm like, yeah, I don't know if you guys are even planning on doing an announcement Is this on your radar? It is they're working on it. So I like to know that they have that Pulse in the community where you could just kind of find out where they're at on something rather than Not know if the hardware is going to work or when it's going to work. I think that's important Yep, um, probably we can't leave this podcast at least mentioning arch Yeah, you know, I I think Arch Linux is a fantastic distribution and and I think it's great for servers and I know that's surprising Some people are like what it's rolling. Yeah, I know I feel very strongly that rolling is the future And I also feel very strongly that rolling does not necessarily mean less stable. It does now Yes, but it doesn't have to the the whole idea behind rolling doesn't mean it has to be Um, something that can break or something that most likely will breakers on stable Um, you could do a rolling distribution the right way and it'd be great And with arch Linux the fewer packages the better So even if you just had like docker and you're running docker containers and you just had that one package installed I mean, that's a pretty small support surface and the benefit is there's no new release So you don't have to like redo all your servers again. Just make sure you keep them updated You do have to watch it a little bit. Um, arch Linux the difference here is that They don't make changes to things like a boon 2 for example Is going to add performance tweaks to gnome. They'll upstream that whatever it is Um, they'll add those tweaks for their users arch is more We'll give you the software as the developer intended. We're not going to make any changes Most bug reports probably won't be anything more than them linking to the upstream bug report because everything comes from upstream So you have to keep that in mind. Um, you might have an experience that's not going to be as stable just based on that But if you had a distribution that's rolling on the server that You know, maybe it wasn't as bleeding edge and people fine tune things more and you had a competent team of developers behind it That could keep it going Absolutely rolling is a great way to go and I think it's the future but arch Linux is also great. You just have to Um have a bit of a different mindset when you manage it on the server And I I do feel very strongly that it's great for servers I mean in linode even offers it on their platform They even have kelly linux by the way, which is actually kind of weird, but they just added that so Yeah, that's another quick mention kelly linux, but i'm not going to get into that uh, rabbit hole That's a whole other story Yeah, kelly's good. It's it's kind of dedicated for hacking if you don't know in it's pretty much It's has all the tools loaded up pre loaded in and that distribution. So um, it's not really something we'll dive into as a topic here But definitely if you're into the Hacking stuff, I've actually looked at uh parrot. I haven't looked at it recently But if you can dig around on my channel you'll find a review of parrot, which is a competing one There's some differing opinions. So there's parrot and those those are both dedicated hacking Linux distributions Yeah, yeah, there's so many distributions and I know we're going to get comments. What about x? What about y? We know We know how many distros are out there. So um, and it's impossible to cover them all but maybe If there's enough of these we might either handle it and one of the follow-up or q&a episodes Or maybe we'll do a part two someday if there's too many that we didn't mention but I think it's more just um An update on the ecosystem around linux as of today because again, we've done a video on linux before But I think it's important to kind of go back and say okay. What is this state kind of like? Picard on the enterprise when he enters the bridge like damage report the linux log And then yeah But yeah, there's there's a lot going on there's a lot going on there and um Yeah, there's there's all those things that it's a debated topic But it's a little bit simpler and as you work your way up and you start doing this professionally You'll see a lot less variety there. The variety does not exist as much once you get into the enterprise space It's pretty much a lot of things running on a redhead enterprise, you know with Support a lot of things a lot of servers built on debbie and and a lot of things built on ubuntu And some of their support and knuckles support they offer for that So your less variation, but hey, it's fun to play. This is how you learn That's why we bring the show to you give you some ideas Let us know hit us up with some feedback feedback at the home lab dot show We love hearing from you and uh, this is a fun episode and we're looking forward to seeing you guys next week See that final thoughts j user just sure makes you happy, right? Yeah, user never makes you happy avoid the drama and the toxicity I I see so many people saying oh that distros garbage like really like like could you like share your notes with me? But he came to this conclusion Um, because apparently it's garbage so nobody uses it like it's just so silly when people things say Then they say things like that. I understand if you don't like it, you don't like it It's perfectly fine to say that but let's just be nice because I mean everyone has their preference and it doesn't matter Let them use what they want. Yep. All right. Well, thanks for joining us and uh, take care