 Welcome to another edition of HeyDT. HeyDT is a series of videos I do where I respond to viewer questions and comments. These viewer questions and comments they typically come from the videos posted on YouTube and Odyssey. Sometimes these questions and comments come through social media such as Mastodon, Reddit, sometimes through email. And the very first question I want to respond to is, HeyDT, what will happen if one day Linus Torvalds stops updating the Linux kernel? And this is a question that comes up all the time. What happens if one day Linus Torvalds decides he no longer wants to work on the Linux kernel, maybe one day he retires, or maybe he unfortunately passes away? These things do happen. And a lot of times, especially smaller, free and open source projects, many times they have a bus factor, meaning when somebody gets hit by a bus, when an unfortunate accident happens and they're gone just like that, what happens to the project? Well, the bus factor means that typically if your project is so small that one person getting hit by a bus can destroy the whole project, that's the bus factor. The Linux kernel though doesn't have a bus factor because Linus Torvalds is not the only one that works on the Linux kernel. Hundreds of people actively contribute to the project. And there are many, many people that work full time on the kernel other than Linus Torvalds. Yes, he's the lead. He maintains the kernel. He's the head of the project. But there are many people up under him that can actually do his job in his stead. And in many cases, they actually do because sometimes he goes on vacations. Sometimes he goes on vacations for a few weeks at a time, you know, he takes a leave from the kernel. And there are other people in particular, there's a fellow named Greg Crowe Hartman that acts as Linus Torvalds, essentially when Linus Torvalds is not around. So they've already prepared for this and it's already we're good on the Linux kernel. The day Linus Torvalds decides he's done because he's been working on it for 30 years, right? I mean, when you put in 30 years at a company, typically that's retirement, right? You put in your 30 years, you're ready to just start drawing retirement benefits and go away. And Linus Torvalds could step away at any time. And if he does, the Linux kernel will be just fine without Linus Torvalds because they've been planning for a long time now, life after Linus Torvalds. So I know a lot of people imagine the kernel is a lot smaller than what it is because it's hard to wrap your head around a project that's literally tens of millions of lines of code, right? But when you start thinking about this, you know, it's so much bigger than one man. And then you've got trillion dollar corporations that contribute and actively help maintain the kernel as well. And I'm talking about trillion dollar corporations like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, they all contribute or active contributors to the Linux kernel because they depend on the Linux kernel. So they would never let the kernel die, right? The kernel is too important to life on this planet. The kernel is too important to humanity. It can never go away. The world would never let that happen. Moving on to the next question. Hey, DT, love all your videos, man. I'm new to Linux and I've been using Arch as my distro for the past two weeks and I use DWM. And I'm really having a hard time setting up DWM status bar with icons. I've watched your videos, but still, I'm nowhere near setting up my bar. Would be great if you could set up status bar later in future videos. Really looking forward to it. Really love your work. Well, I appreciate the kind words about you enjoying my work. I truly thank you for that. Now, as far as your new to Linux, you've only been using Linux for a couple of weeks. You've chose Arch Linux as a distro fine choice. You're using DWM as a window manager. DWM is a tough first window manager because it's extremely minimal, meaning it's hard to set up the way you want it because a lot of people, especially if you're new to this sort of thing, they're going to want fancy things like icons and a status bar and a system tray and things that are really tough to get working in DWM because that's not really, you know, DWM is designed by a group called suckless software and they don't add a lot of features to their programs. That's just the nature of that thing. So I would strongly suggest if you're struggling with DWM and you like DWM because it's a great window manager as far as the function of the window manager itself, but you're looking for something a little bit more customizable and also a little bit more fleshed out as it already has a proper bar with icon support and assist tray and things like that. There is a window manager called the awesome window manager. It is a old fork of DWM and I mean they forked it like 15, 20 years ago. So awesome and DWM really, they don't share much of a code base anymore, but awesome the way the window manager works. It is essentially the same as DWM as far as the way multi monitors work and the master and stack layout and the workspaces or the tag system that they use all are the same. It's awesome comes with a bar out of the box and it looks really good out of the box and you can customize it and configure it and add all kinds of neat widgets to it. So that's probably where I would look and I know that's probably not the answer you were wanting. You were wanting some easy fix to getting a nice bar with DWM, but the fact is DWM is kind of designed to be minimal. For me, I use a project called DWM blocks and DWM blocks allows you to put some icons and some widgets in a status bar, but it's kind of hacky. Everything about the DWM panel in the bar is kind of a hacky kind of solution to get things in there. And honestly, if you're looking for a much more desktop environment, you know, a complete desktop environment kind of window manager, I would look at things like awesome window manager first since you're comfortable with DWM. Maybe check out Qtile, which is another really nice window manager that comes with a nice panel with some nice widgets or maybe even check out something like BSPWM, which really doesn't act too much like DWM. It's very minimal though, but it allows you to use any panel, any bar you want to typically people use poly bar with it and it has a ton of really nice looking widgets. If you're wanting something that's a sexy desktop, I would check out those window managers and probably just move on from DWM at this point if it's just not working for you. Moving on to the next question. This comes from a video I did where I said before running any script, you should actually read the script and I actually used Arch package builds as an example. I went to the AUR and I read some package builds, just went through the script line by line just to show you exactly how easy it is to read a package build, even if you don't really know that much scripting, most people can read a package build and this comment came from that video. Hey, DT, can you also show some package builds with something wrong in them? That's how we can understand where to pay some caution. So I said, you know, we need to read these package builds for safety reasons, but all the package builds I read on camera, of course, there was nothing wrong with them, right? And hey, can I show some package builds, some examples of things that were doing something scandalous, nefarious, you know, something that would actually damage a machine. No, I can't really show that unless I just make one up myself because I'm not going to go to the AUR and find a package build that's like really bad, that's going to do something nasty to your computer because typically, if I discovered that, you know, somebody else probably has already discovered that and it's been removed from the AUR, right? It's already been taken care of. 99.999% of the AUR package builds are perfectly safe. So it would be very difficult. I would probably have to spend weeks scouring the AUR to find a package build that actually did something crazy. So that's why I didn't show you any bad package builds. Could I just make up one as an example? I guess I could have just imagined that somewhere along the way reading a package build, we came across the line RM space dash RF space slash, you know, we're going to forcibly remove the root directory, right? That's what that command means. You know, if you found a line like that in a package build, you probably shouldn't install that program. And the next question is, hey, DT, can I use GTK to build a Discord clone? Can I have the same GUI features as the real app? Well, so I've done some GTK videos, mainly GTK with Haskell showing you how I can create some simple GTK applications on Linux. I'm not much of a developer. GTK has a steep learning curve, right? There's a lot to it, even creating some of the simple applications that I built took many, many hours just to get them to the point where I could actually show them to you on camera. Now, can you build anything with GTK? Yes, can you build a Discord clone with GTK? Yes, you could. It would take it would be a massive amount of work. One person couldn't do it. You would need a team and it would probably take you months before you're even ready to release like alpha level beta level software, right? Discord is a massive kind of program that does a lot with audio and video. And honestly, Discord, really Discord is doing it the right way. Discord is not a GTK app or a cute app. Discord is actually an electron app, a web app, essentially, right? Kind of like a browser front end. Matter of fact, you can actually run Discord in the browser, or you can run the Discord desktop client, which is an electron app, essentially a Chrome browser as an application, essentially is kind of what electron is. And that's really how you should approach a program like Discord. I know not everybody likes Electron, but there are some programs, some applications where Electron completely makes sense. And something like Discord, for example, makes total sense to be an Electron app. And honestly, if you were trying to create a Discord kind of application, I would suggest that you check out Electron. And the next comment comes from my last HeyDT video, where I mentioned I hated people that posted, HeyDT, please pin this comment. So this guy writes in, HeyDT, don't pin this comment. Don't worry, I'm not going to. The next question, HeyDT, have you used the package manager Homebrew? I've had this question a few times here recently. And Homebrew is a package manager for Mac OS. I don't use Macs. I haven't owned a Mac ever. And I have been actually used a Mac computer or had to for like school or work, oh, in at least 25 years. And Macs weren't even not modern Macs, right? So we're talking old school Macs, nothing like the operating system now. So no, I've never used Homebrew. I would never have a need to use Homebrew. I'm strictly a Linux user. I never use Windows. I never use Mac. I know a lot of people want Windows and Mac related content, but you're never going to get it on this channel. There's plenty of channels that give you Windows and Mac coverage. It's just because I don't deal with those operating systems in my life. You're not going to get that here. As far as Homebrew, I know Homebrew, even though it's a Mac OS package manager, I know you can install it on Linux. And I know you can kind of use it on Linux. But of course, Linux, we already have package managers on Linux, right? So we don't really need Homebrew. Homebrew is not something that solves a problem on Linux. Yes, you can kind of use it on Linux. But Homebrew, of course, solves a real problem on Mac OS because Mac OS needed a package manager. We're on Linux. Yeah, I'm not that interested in trying out Homebrew on Linux. And a similar kind of question that I've been getting a lot here lately. Hey, DT, will you take a look at Asahi Linux? Asahi Linux, I heard a little bit about it. I know it's a Linux distribution designed to run on the latest M1 MacBooks. I don't own any Macs. Again, I don't have any Apple hardware. So it doesn't make sense for me to even think about something like Asahi Linux because it's designed for equipment that I don't own and I don't plan on owning. So unfortunately, you're not going to get that kind of coverage here either. The next question is a very general question. It's, hey, DT, what do you think is the best free and open source webcam software? So I mean, it depends on what you're trying to do with your webcam. If you're just wanting to start up a webcam and record yourself like I'm kind of doing here, I use OBS to record all of my videos. And OBS is great at recording your webcam. So I would look into that, especially if you're actually thinking about doing proper videos like on YouTube or Odyssey or other video platforms, you really need to learn OBS because that's the de facto standard because it's got so many features. Pretty much every content creator, every video content creator uses OBS to make their videos. Now, if you're looking for something a lot simpler, you don't need all the features of OBS, you're not trying to be a video content creator, you just want to start a webcam and record a couple of minutes for something. You're not really trying to make a proper video. There are many simple webcam applications on Linux. One I've used in years past was called GUVC View and I still have it installed. I sometimes pull it up. It's an okay application to record video from a webcam. There's also things like cheese. Cheese is probably one of the most common webcam applications on Linux. I believe it's part of the GNOME suite of applications. Another really easy option as far as just recording you from your webcam would be using like a video conference software such as Discord or Zoom or Jitsi because obviously you just fire up your webcam. You open a Jitsi call and nobody else has to join the call. It can just be you, one person on the call and you can record that by recording your desktop through something like OBS or maybe record your desktop through an application like Simple Screen Recorder. But again, I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do with your webcam, but I've used all of the solutions I just talked about. I've used them all in the past and they all work just fine. Next up is a rather lengthy comment so bear with me. Hey DT, I'm grateful for all the top notch content. Truly some of the best around. I appreciate that. But I really wanted to thank you for helping dispel the idea of the Linux gatekeeper mentality. You've struck a great balance between being direct and to the point without clinging to the elitist mentality. For that I always point new and novice Linux users to your channel for your accessible delivery of intimidating topics without being condescending. Thank you. I appreciate the kind words and your comment is great because in just a couple of sentences you've really described the mission of what I do as far as my YouTube channel because I really obviously I do some more intimidating topics as you talk about more intermediate to advanced topics sometimes, but I approach them from a new user, from a novice user. And I think a lot of people try to, a lot of people that do Linux content, they don't approach it in a way that I think they should because a lot of people really just do basic surface level, you know, day one trying to switch people from Windows to Linux or whatever. And then they tell people, hey, Windows and Linux are practically the same. Just move to Linux and everything's going to be great. And you don't really have to learn anything. You never have to learn the terminal. You don't need to know any of the commands. You don't have to know about scripting. You don't need to know about how to configure your software to get the most performance and power out of it. You don't need to know anything. And I totally disagree with that. I think people need to know about extensible text editors and scripting and the command line. People need to know about window managers and some of these advanced nerdy topics. They need to know everything that they can possibly learn with Linux to get the most out of it. As far as a desktop operating system, that's what I'm trying to get out there. I know some of the topics are a little deep, but here's the thing. I have faith in you guys. A lot of people that do Linux content assume nobody can possibly learn the terminal or scripting. They don't even want to approach those topics because sometimes the content creators themselves, they can't handle those topics. Sometimes they imagine that the rest of the world can't handle those topics. I'm not like that. I have faith in you guys. I think a lot of you guys are perfectly capable in grasping some of these deeper topics. In many cases, I think a lot of you guys are much more equipped to grasp some of these topics than even I am, and that's great. That's what I want. I want people to grow in Linux. I want the Linux community to grow not just in numbers, but also in knowledge. I want to help educate the next generation of Linux maintainers, developers, contributors. I don't want to just convert people to Linux because all I'm doing is just getting more people using Linux. I mean, that's something, but that's not really at the end of the day. Is that really accomplishing anything? No, I want to educate the next generation of people that actually create on Linux. And speaking of creation, the next comment I know is a touchy subject and it's off topic, but I get this comment all the time. I thought I would address it here today. Hey, DT, what actually is your spiritual belief? Are you agnostic, atheist, or do you believe there is a guide? Well, first of all, I don't want to get into what all of my spiritual beliefs are because honestly, that's a deep topic. There's no way I could answer that in just a couple of minutes. I couldn't answer that in a couple of hours, right? There's no way. That's such a deep topic. And honestly, it's kind of a personal topic anyway. And typically, I don't go into really anything in my personal life on camera. And that's why one of the things about content creation, many people want to know the details of their favorite content creators, you know, personal lives and everything because you see me on camera. I've made, you know, like 1,200, 1,300 videos at this point and people feel like they kind of know me, but they don't really know me and they want to know, but we're not going to get into, you know, all of my spiritual beliefs. But the question, are you agnostic, atheist, or do you think there is a guide? Now, that question I will address. And this question isn't easy to answer because honestly, what is God? And the problem here is one of semantics, one of labels, because when I ask a person, what is God? Depending on the person that I ask, they're going to give me radically different answers, depending on where they're currently born and living, how they were raised, what faith they were raised in, or if they weren't raised in a particular faith, just a lot of things, economic status and things. And when I ask somebody, what is God? Everybody has their own imagination of what God is, their own definition, and no two definitions are the same. And that's why it's, I find it kind of odd that we try to label people as theists, atheists, or in some cases, we try to find this weird middle ground agnostic, which is kind of strange to me because honestly, I think none of these labels really matter. I don't think they make any sense. Honestly, I think most people that call themselves atheists are not really atheists. I think many of them believe in a higher power. They don't call it God. If they called it God, then they probably wouldn't label themselves atheists, right? But certainly they believe in more than themselves, right? And the same thing with your spiritual people, your theists, right? Your Christians and Muslims, whatever faith you happen to be, those people, they believe in a power higher than themselves. They just choose to label it as God. It's just a label. They assign it, the the atheists, he's going to label that something else, fate, the universe, nature. He sees things that are beyond him, that things he can't understand, things more powerful than him. The atheist does, but he just, he doesn't label it the same way as that churchgoer, right? And honestly, if you study a lot of the great world religions, and I'm a big fan of religion in general, you know, I've studied, obviously, Judaism and Christianity and Islam. Obviously, you guys see the statue of Buddha behind me, you know, I do a lot with various world religions because I find them fascinating. And also, I find a lot of similarities between a lot of their beliefs and a lot of their teachings. And ultimately, when religions talk about a God, they're typically talking about something unknowable, this unknowable force that they talk about. Oftentimes, they talk about a creator, but they're talking about the beginning, something before us, something we can't possibly have any knowledge of. Now, from a logical point of view, are there things out there that are unknowable to us, things we can never know? There's knowledge that we're never going to be able to access. It's completely hidden from us now, and it will always remain hidden from us. Now, the person of religion, they're going to label that as God, the atheist. He believes in all of that too, right? Everything I just said, he would agree. There's unknowable knowledge out there, knowledge that humans will never be able to attain. It's just beyond us. It's just something completely way above us. He's just not going to give it the same label. That's why I don't, it's a false dichotomy. Theist, atheist, I really don't think those labels really mean anything. I think the people that take those monikers, you know, certainly I've seen many, especially the militant atheists that really just degrade religion and those that follow religion, right? Because they see themselves as so much better because, you know, they don't believe in the fairy tales and all of this, what they don't understand about myth and parables. Obviously, the things in these ancient religious books, are they meant to be taken quite literally? No, right? If you read the Bible, you read Jesus, right? He often talked in parables, right? And a parable can mean anything practically to anybody, right? What is the meaning behind a parable? Well, if I read it, I'm going to have a different interpretation than you. Ultimately, the meaning is really what you make of it. And if it helps you in some aspect of life, that's great. That's the beauty of myth and that's the power of myth. And I think a lot of, especially the more militant atheists, don't understand that. Although many of them, oddly enough, enjoy books. You know, they love things like The Lord or the Rings, you know, or movies, you know, like Star Wars and things like that. And oftentimes, those kinds of things actually can become a religion. There's actually a Jedi religion out there, right? Where people take the Star Wars universe and have kind of made it into a religion because of the stories, the myths, the parables, you know, the characters, some of the characters, even mirror characters that you would see, for example, in a religious book like the Holy Bible. Ultimately, answering this question, are you agnostic atheist or do you believe in a God? I don't see things as black and white as some people, right? You're not going to pigeonhole me and make me have to pick one of these labels because when I do that, then the people that love to argue religion and the people that love to argue politics and those two topics, especially, right? They want to pigeonhole you and then they can try to force you into this corner, into this box and try to project these opinions that you may have or you may not even have. And if I wanted to deal with that, I wouldn't have deleted my Twitter account about four years ago, right? I'd still be hanging out on social media. I don't want to deal with all that crap. So no, I'm not actually going to give you a direct answer to this question. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. And of course, I'm talking about Dustin, Gabe, James, Matt, Maxim, Mimit, Michael, Mitchell, Paul West, Why You Ball, Homie, Alan, Armored Dragon, Chuck, Commander, Ringry, Dio, Guy, Dylan, Greg, Mars, Drum, Erion, Alexander, Paul, P. Swartz, and Fedora, Polytech, Realities for Less, Red, Profit, Steven, Tools, Devler and Willie, these guys, they're my highest tier patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this episode would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys. Peace.