 Hey everybody, welcome back to Lynxcast. I'm your host Matthew. I'm joined by Tyler. How you doing Tyler doing good? I apologize for the mic for whatever reason. This is in a different position than normal So I probably come across as much hotter than normal But we'll figure that out in editing. That's what it's for anyways. So what have you been doing in Linux this week? I mean to be honest it this week has very much been a Relax kind of week. I'm treating it sort of like The eye of the storm week. I'm gonna have to start diving deep into blender and get Just progress my skills and blender quite a bit and I've been procrastinating and I'm sort of just decided Give it the full week get all of this procrastination out that way I feel like crap and I feel like I need to be productive So that way next week, I'll just I'll just hit the studying and Getting better even harder. So I've just been ricing playing around with DWM and also Diving deep into my steam library because I have way too many games that I'm never gonna actually play Playing some games, huh? Well, I have not been playing games. I won't surprise you at all No, you've probably been torturing yourself Oh, I don't even I didn't even open steam because I know because WASD is not in the right place anymore W is where it's always been and a is but it's always been but S has moved over one and D's moved over two So it'd be really weird, right? Cuz R&T would be in the middle. It's suck up So if you don't know what I'm talking about if you haven't been following me on Twitter or on the community page Oh, I've switched forgot to switch back to the the main scene here But if you have if you haven't followed me, I switched to the Colmack keyboard layout now if you don't know what that is Don't worry. You don't ever need to know But basically The the promise of Colmack is that all the letters that you use the most are under your four homeroe fingers every single one of them. So A R S T N E I and O Okay, and then everything else that you use semi Frequently is directly underneath those so BK XC FNP and so on and so forth, right? So they're you move your fingers around as little as possible and There are several Keyboard Layouts that do the same thing But Colmack is the one that is kind of the least different from courty It's supposedly the easiest one for courty users to actually use because it doesn't move the paste keys around so ZXCV stay in the same place QW stays in the same place. So Those things are not like the outsides of the keyboard don't move around so it's easier to You're really only training your fingers for a few new keyboard keys But oh my god, man, all right, so first of all, I will say this this is day four I am it's night and day how much faster I am today than I was the first day. I try so sure I'm making progress and I'm sure that next week when we talk. I'll be even way better than I'm now As long as I stick with it There's been there's been several times in the last four days where I said the fuck this I'm going back to courty, but I Promised myself that I'm gonna give it at least 30 days So So you have at least changed around your keys, right? Yep, the keys have been moved around on this and on the keyboard behind me and on my phone So I even switched to it on my Android phone so that I'm not using a QWERTY keyboard at all Oh my god, okay, so really typing is the least in my worries just like So I type for living right so it's been it's been a problem, but I haven't been very productive the last four days But I've been working on it, but the The biggest issues I've been having are in two places one with my key bindings in my window managers Right, so I haven't been window manager hopping. I just changed my key bindings in DWM So that they're a little bit easier to do in DWM So I like moving the keyboarder moving the windows and stuff around used to be hjkl, right? So I moved it to any I know Okay, that makes sense because that's where hjkl and I'll used to be all kind of I'm Any I know are actually shifted over one. So it's you would have been Jkl and semi-colon which is you know, the home rope die Well, I mean like let's be honest the I3 guys would tell you that's how it's supposed to be I mean if you're using touch typing, that's where your fingers are supposed to be You're not supposed to it's the the hjkl is actually shifted over one row, right? So I've changed that and it's okay I'm getting slowly used to the key bindings in DWM. It's Vim that's fucking me out, man Because because I is now what J used to be So I'm getting into insert mode is it's just Fine ball going in the back. So I just haven't had a chance to do it There's a so I've gone through and I've been able to go through and rebind So hjkl and L are now an E. I know I haven't had a chance to go through and rebind for insert mode and stuff like that and I don't know if I want to Understandable mainly because if I if in A month I say well, you're not Good experiment, bro Move on going back to party. I don't know if I want to go back through and and have to relearn Vim again So I I think I am going to go through and rebind for insert mode But I don't think I'm going to rebind any of the other Vim keys. So things like DD and P and stuff that those are going to stay where they are Even though the keys are in different places So Vim is the thing that's messing me up and honestly of all the letters that I've I've been trying so I've been using a website called key br and It trains your muscle memories for your for your keys to actually learn how to touch tight And I'm still in the home row like I'm still in the home row. I haven't made it far far. It's not even the whole home row It's just rst n e and i that I've been training with an l and l's in the upper upper row And uh, I've been I've been training with those and it's just I I'm not like I'm not fast, but it feels like I'm making progress. It's but it's man. It's a mess. I don't Even remember what made me think I wanted to do this anymore Like there have been times in the last few days where I like Matt. Why did you think that this was a good idea? Well, I guess my main question would be Um, hopefully you stick with it, but my question would be if you do stick with it At the very least do you plan on doing a video talking about whether or not the Learning curve is worth the benefits of having a keyboard layout that's more centric and more ergonomic Yeah, I will be making a video on it whether I'm successful or not Um, probably after 30 days, maybe after if I'm if I decide at 30 days I'm gonna that I'm gonna keep going I will probably push that out to 60 days because they take it to tell you takes you two to three months to get back to Where you were with courty? I don't think I'm gonna get there in 60 days because I was 120 words per minute with courty so Like I don't think and right now I'm at 15 words per minute with colbex I gotta put the ways to go but granted that's 10 words per minute faster than I was four days ago, so And the thing is I know where the keys are now like I can tell you exactly where all the keys are now It's just a matter of reminding myself where they are in my head Without looking at the keyboard because and especially man The e is just driving me bunkers because the e went from one side of the keyboard all the way over to the other side of the keyboard and is Completely a different hand like it used to be where f is and now f now it's where k was Like I never used the letter k. Why is e the most used letter in the language? In the spot that I used the least It's really It's really messing with my mind. So yeah, so that's what I've been doing with linux I've also been still messing around with debbie and back down my computer So so I can do that long term review I really like debbie and like I really really like it. Yeah Um, I'm using bspwm and I really really like bspwm too. I'm thinking about switching to bspwm on this computer here, but I could see myself using debbie in long term. That's how good it is stable uh Dabel debbie and stable or debbie and testing it's testing now It started on stable. I moved to bullseye because it's very very close to being the main thing And I wanted to try the new stuff plus I in order to install poly bar. I had to be on testing So gosh, um, because uh stable doesn't have poly bar in the repos uh testing does and uh The only piece of software I found that I can't get Is a lacquer like there's no way to get a lacquer down there without installing a ppa And I'm the the thing about that is I'm refusing to install anything with a ppa I'm just not doing it. Uh, like I will install something from a snap sure Uh, if I have to I don't want to but I will but I will not use your crappy ppa system I'm calling that the the the stupid a u r because it's so bad. It's Technically the a u r and the ppa system works at, you know, basically the same idea Sort of yeah Community hosted repository, you know, basically the same But the a u r just feels like it's one place where, uh You have several repositories for the ppa stuff and like I kind of know what you're downloading on my computer That's exactly like, you know, it's going to be porn or Cryptocurrency, montanon sensor, whatever There's going to be at least one in there, you know, eventually Yeah, all right. So anyways that I Probably for the next three or four weeks My adventures with coal mic will probably be one of the things we talk about because it's just gonna It's going to be one of those things. It's just it's constantly on my mind and it's kind of the thing is I I bit you about how frustrating it's been But it's been refreshing kind of to do something new Like this is something that I've never done before Right and yeah, it's hard and it's pain in the ass But I kind of wake up in the morning like now, this is kind of cool It's kind of like learning how to use a computer all over again Because I really have to truly think about every key press I do Um The thing the one thing I'm gonna have to change though I'm gonna tell you this right now is I've been using super d to open up rofi for ever Right, I mean I think a lot of people use super d to open up rofi or d menu or whatever And uh, I gotta change that because they're too far away from each other And I keep pressing s like s is where d used to be And I keep doing that. So I think super s is probably going to be my new rofi menu thing I don't know. Maybe I'm the weird person, but I I'm one of those who do uh Like super and inner is my terminal and super shift inner is for d menu or like any run launcher that I use I've always had that that set up. I don't know if that is it like have you seen other people do I don't think you're weird, but I I try to avoid three key presses. So on things that I use all the time. I want just two creep presses I don't want to have to think about having to go through and do a third key press. So I use rofi and I use my Rofi uh scripts all the time. So if I had to do super sift c with Super shift c in order to go through and get my clipboard clip d menu or clip menu d or whatever Uh, I I'd drive me nuts. So it's just super c And the emojis is super e which is that's going to have to change too because that's We haven't gone off the keyboard Yeah, so I've still got work to do It'll be it'll be it'll be interesting to see if this time next week I'm still saying oh, it's an experience and it's an adventure. I'm probably either going to be saying You know, it's just normal now or I'm going to say oh man, I'm just going to die You know, well, I mean I I think the funny thing is is most likely as long as you're going to stick with it till like the end of At the very least the end of halfway through next week. I have a feeling that you're going to come back and sit down and be like, okay He here's what here's what it is. I am proud to be at 30 words per per minute Like for for for most like people 30 words per minute is like the average standard and I think I think we're switching over to a keyboard the reason that it is Even remotely interesting to anyone is you can you can be happy at those small milestones again as a You know person who's used a computer for a long time. Yeah Yeah, I'd be pretty happy at 30 words per minute. I really I don't I don't really have a number in mind I just want to not feel slow Because right now I feel like I'm hunting and pecking and I I never want to feel this again You know, uh I was talking so there's another youtuber. I don't his name is yawn. I don't remember what his last name is He's from Germany. I think and he does videos on keyboards and He did one on colmack dh and cool and that's basically where they moved the So they moved d and h and replaced where the k and the V is I think It's really weird because they don't want to it basically keeps you from having to move your index fingers inwards I don't really get it. Why that's a good thing But everyone says that it's it feels better. Like no, I don't want to switch again Like everybody was like, well, why did you why didn't you just go full colmack dh for the first thing? I don't even know how to switch it because colmack dh is like a it's like an unsupported version of it So I don't know how I go about switching to it. But also Like I'm here now. Like I'm not going to go through and change again The only way I change is to go back to qwerty That's the only way I foresee myself changing because there's another one out there called workman That is kind of like this and they say that it's better But I didn't want to try that because colmack it changes a lot more Um, now what about devorak? Yeah, that one changes even way more than workman. So there's so there's qwerty and then there's colmack They're very similar in terms of where things are Not really similar but more it doesn't move nearly as much as say colmack dh and then there's workman Which changes even more from qwerty and then there's devorak where everything kind of shifts all over the damn place Um, it's completely different. Yeah, it's completely different and I didn't I didn't want to go that far, man I mean because I cop. I mean everybody copies and pastes a lot, right? And uh, I did not want to move the copy and paste keys Uh, yeah your muscle memory. I mean talk about just completely gone. Well, you have nothing to fall back on And at least with like the key bindings for dwm and stuff like that I can change those Changing the copy and paste key bindings. I don't even know how you'd go about doing that I mean that stuff's hard coded into the operating system. I think I mean I don't think that's on a per application basis. I'm pretty sure that that's just something that's built into linux It's probably part of the core utility or something. I don't even know I mean, I I I would have no clue how about how to go about changing I'm kind of curious now, but um, you know, it's definitely It's very weird Anyway, so we we we've spent entirely too much time on my woes with the keyboard, but um Add on top of that. I got up this morning and for whatever reason the keyboard had forgotten that it was on pole mack and it switched back to So Yeah, I don't know why that happened it Really done. This keyboard is stupid for whatever reason. There's like a blinking green light and whenever that happens the keyboard just stops working Like I don't understand it at all. It's like it's like And it won't like it's supposed to be a bluetooth keyboard, but it won't take a charge And I don't understand why it's really weird. Anyways I have woes Um, that discord keeps fro freezing. Um Yeah, discord's been scurry for for me for a while too telegram has been crashing so I I actually I haven't installed I haven't opened it in so long because literally when I When I was trying to log in to it it would not let me log in it would crash after I Had done the login on my phone instead of like logging in and showing stuff just full crash I think it's just for everybody and like you think like it's been a week now You think that they would be fixing that shit, but no How they got better things to do than fix their own program But no like no we like you guys use linux. I mean there's like five of you Go use windows All right, and I'm like no I'm much more likely to go use whatsapp than I am Do you switch to windows? I mean seriously, I have whatsapp installed on my phone. I still don't know why Anyways, if you want to get contact with us you can do so. We're on twitter at the linux cast That's me tweeting about colmak mostly these days You can also subscribe to all of our audio feeds and all that kind of stuff at the linux cast.org Um, you can contact us via email. Amy. Yeah, I can't talk. We're good. Damn That's good one of those days He was the tired one by the way. He was the one over there yawning now. I'm the one that can't talk We pressed record and I started yawning uncontrollably And and matt lost his inability to speak english. Excellent. You can thank you You made me laugh enough to wake up You're welcome You can contact us via email email at the linux cast at or you can support us on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast You can follow Tyler who goes by zany on the internet on youtube and odyssey both of those links will be in the video description below I don't say the links because they're ugly links and that's just the way it is So go definitely check out in the video description or in the podcast description And subscribe to him on both of those places even though odyssey has been running really bad Like the last three four days it's been so bad I was like sometimes like not even like i'm like not even won't even load bad Yeah, um, I will say uh as of last night and this this morning using it is it does seem to be better That may also just be for me because again, it's been really finicky the past few days It was a little slow But at least loaded for me this morning like because I went in there to check some comments But and they at least loaded But it did take a long time. They really need if they want to survive they're gonna have to fix that stuff because uh I'm actually surprised at how many big names you can find on odyssey Like there's some big people on there But it's not gonna it doesn't matter who you can find on there if the damn service won't work Anyways, you can also subscribe to us on youtube at youtube.com slash linux cast where you'll find videos pretty much loaded Up every single day Coming up. I got some a really good rant on screen tearing on saturday And I will be streaming something on sunday night. I don't know what I'm going to be streaming on sunday night I still haven't chosen topics. Maybe one of youtube Can I just say youtube has really screwed me when it comes to seeing your notifications with your live streams So many times youtube makes the time look like like the way they present it Almost always I see your notifications for a live stream and I see the time and I'm like, okay, perfect Set a reminder and then like if it's a few hours from now I'm like, where's my reminder and then I go back and check and it's for like two or three days out I'm like youtube stop getting my hopes up. Come on. Yeah, a lot of times I'll schedule them several days ahead of time I've probably missing around with a lot of people's hopes and dreams that way but Just just just remember it sunday night every night six thirty your time I stream So I don't know what the topic is going to be this week. I still haven't chosen one It's not going to be a rising topic because I've done that quite a lot um Maybe I'll just sit there and do keyboard uh key key typing tests the whole hour I'd be down. I mean, I have to be honest. I I really do like all of your rising streams I honestly don't think you can do too many rising streams Uh, well, see I like the racing streams, but a lot of people don't like the racing streams I don't know I have a video actually that will go up today about how I'm addicted to racing. So yeah, that's that video is already recorded and scheduled and and it's on patreon. So if you want to Get some of those videos early. You can definitely subscribe on patreon Because I do I have been doing really good on the early access stuff. Um, so anyways My mind is just It's not in a position to actually talk about anything so Every week we go through and we choose news items one link each so tyler, what was your news item of the week Mine is uh garuda desktop they've uh Well, the the whole article here is just more of talking about uh garuda and their unique look and um, I mean they do go through and explain some stuff like um A lot of people don't really know like garuda as far as I know it defaults to wailand. Um, I'm pretty sure it defaults to wailand And I know they're using wayfire as their wailand compositor, which Is interesting But more more or less the the article goes through and breaks down a lot of their Look and you've got a lot of pictures for the people who aren't familiar with The again, I'm gonna have to call it unique look of garuda I have to ask you Do you like the look of this distribution? For someone else Same I know there's people out there that definitely like this look and really really think it's unique I mean, I do think it's unique. I don't know why they think that's unique though. I don't I mean, they stole that look off from unix porn Like somebody else did that you that that rice Five years ago and thought it was unique now. It's just the same look that everybody uses those are the candy icon That's candy icon. Yeah, that's what it's called. Uh, that's why everybody thinks it's unique Like everybody uses that icon and it's like other than al capitan or whatever it's called It's probably the most popular icon set It's it's actually the third on ganone look. It is one of the most popular icon sets out there in the wild, right? I mean, it's like like this is don't get me wrong. It looks fine. It's definitely it whether the look Whether the look and feel is for me or not the fact that they've gone through and actually spent some effort into Customizing how it looks is actually good Um, because a lot of distributions, uh Fabian They just put I mean, it's your Uh, prerogative to install with desktop environment you have but it comes from their repos and all of their desktop environments look like stock Desktop environments. Well, you know 40 looks like gonna 40 xfc. It looks like it came from 1998 So it looks like xfc. You know, I love xfce but and If you look so there's a there's a youtube channel I'm just pimping pimping everybody's youtube channel today, but there's a youtube channel called linux stoop I think and all he does is go through and Rice stuff like it makes them look I mean fantastically awesome and some of the stuff he does with xfc. Like why don't the xfce people do this Like everybody would use xfce then. Um, so I I like the fact that garuda has gone through and uh, you know Put some effort into it, but Calling it unique would really piss me off. Like no, that's not unique. Look on unix porn. There's 50 other things That look exactly like it I I think to me like Like when I say it's doing something unique I think what it's doing is taking like, uh, a risers like Desktop making it usable for everyone and then just being like, hey So if you're the type of person who you're interested in linux, you need a solid foundation but you're like what you're most interested about is Customizing Here's a desktop that's already been heavily customized to to look a certain way Um, again, I would say it's customized to look unique not that the theming is unique But you're not going to find another distro. That's a good point. Yeah. Uh, what I find more interesting about Garuda is that it uses the zen kernel. I think So you're always going to be on it kind of Very much aimed towards a gaming kernel and trying to support as much hardware as possible And stuff like that. So if you if you have like top of the line hardware Garuda would probably be a very good distribution for you because it does a lot of stuff for gaming It also like you said uses Wayland. So you're going to have better support for high dpi displays and such like that um, so The stuff that they've done underneath is actually much more interesting than the shocking Uh colors that they've chosen, right? So, yeah I mean also, I'm glad that she said that because I don't know of any other distribution that actually um Not just comes with the zen kernel, but encourages the zen kernel at all. I know The only one I know that makes it So like manjaro doesn't ship with the zen kernel, but it makes it really easy to switch between kernels. So uh and I think There was a I I think it was bodied linux that I tried has a That's not an arch based distro But it has a tool for switching to different kernels and those the only two and I may be wrong on the second one It might have been a different one But those the only two that kind of come close to being able to be very easy to get to a zen kernel If you just install arch you have to go look up a tutorial on how to switch to a kernel Like because I mean I don't even know how to start doing it from like the command line It's so nice to have a tool and this has this has the gerudo tools or whatever that has Allows you to go through and change a whole bunch of stuff. So it's very interesting Uh speaking of that since you're on debian now, I would be very interested if down Down the line this might be a video idea for you, but uh Figure out whether or not if it's super difficult to switch to a zen kernel on debian I would be interested to know if that's difficult to do. I mean, I'm sure I know it I know it could definitely be done. I just don't know how difficult it would be Yeah, get it done on debian and that could be a video idea I don't know how well it would do on that laptop back there because that laptop is old So I don't know how well it would work, but When I mean it would probably work just as well. You just probably might not see any benefits whatsoever, right? Um I'm maybe Maybe when I'm done with the review Like shooting and stuff Uh, and I don't mind if I break it, you know, I I mean if it's the end of a break, so it doesn't matter. I'm done with I'm gonna wipe it and go on to the next thing Anyways, um, anyways, so yeah, gerudo's cool I feel like I've tried to install gerudo to do a review, but I couldn't get to install on a virtual machine They're very not for virtual machines I don't know if it's because of wayland if it was because of butter fs But I for whatever reason I couldn't get butter fs to work with Because they as far as I know they use butter fs by default as well So they're not as unique on that as as it used to be like now open suzer uses butter fs Um, I think fedora uses butter fs I mean, there's quite a few distros now that use butter fs by default and I'm using butter fs on my main machine now Um, oh really? Yeah, um, I haven't even noticed a difference. I mean, it's just every time I do an update It does a snapshot in the background Before it does the update that's little. I mean literally takes five seconds. You don't even notice Um, and if you need to go back you just use timeshift to go back That's incredible. Yes I have noticed zero differences Other than I just know it's back there and it's kind of makes me feel safer because I know if If an update breaks I can just hop back to a different, uh Uh a snapshot. Yeah, so I think butter fs is kind of the future. Is that I know, uh, uh, zed fs I think it's zed fs zfs the one that's the one two is Yeah, zfs. Um, I know that depends on where you're from in the world if it's zed or Like all the podcasts I use are from british people. So they always call it zed. So I've just gotten, you know, zed fs, you know, whatever Um, but anyway, supposedly that has the same kind of functionality as butter fs I just don't know if it's as fleshed out, you know, I think it's more for servers I don't know why I get that uh That thought in my head because maybe it's not even true. I don't even know Okay, uh, yeah gruda looks cool uh If I weren't so, uh Happy with parko Maybe but the thing is is I would go I install gruda And change everything right? I don't like the look so I'd have to go through and I change the icon set and stuff Whatever um now at that point why even go gruda? I mean I mean you really have to want to use the underlying features like butter fs and the zen kernel For it to be worth it at that point and for me it really wouldn't because my hardware's older And I don't I don't think I would really benefit anything from the zen kernel Uh, I could be wrong about that. I don't know All right, so my uh News link of the week is duck duck goes introduce email protection to hide your email and block testers now The details behind this Really don't matter to me whatsoever. I don't really care specifically how the service works uh, I What I do care is for like The main reason why I chose this one is because I wanted to make the comment of duck duck go Before you start branching out into you know other things make your search engine good Um, okay full stop Thank you Just thank you. That is exactly what I was thinking reading this I'm like This would be cool But the fact that I still have to resort to google for quite a few searches is unacceptable Just like make your search engine. You know what this reeks of this reeks of mozilla You know what I mean? I mean, this is exactly what mozilla does like mozilla stop doing other shit and make your browser good So Focus on one thing Perfect it and then if you've done that Then you can move on something else like understand no no no you're gonna be wrong email protection is a huge deal like protecting from phishing and scam attacks and all that kind of stuff huge deal But stand your lane duck duck go, you know, and that's you're not an email service your browser You're a search engine, you know do that well and My biggest problem with it like I said Uh Like and like you said duck duck go Enjoy the time. I use it. I have to research to you know with google and for the search thing like every time I I say something about about duck duck go every there'll be somebody in the comments saying Uh, I use duck duck go and it does perfectly fine and I think that that's probably true for people who are willing to scroll past the first page Like you can find what you want to search for on duck duck go If you Are willing to search past that first page because it's probably there like duck duck go probably did find what you were looking for But see I can't even confidently say that Because I've gone to second pages and sometimes that stuff's not there and I'm not I don't know about you You might be willing to go and dig through there. Oh, no, but I'm not willing to go past the first page like I'm one of the guys I The thing is like say what you will about google They know how to search and if you're using an ad blocker Usually the thing you search for is the first thing on the search pit like almost always right even weird esoteric searches oftentimes are the first thing and That's really hard for duck duck go to compete with I understand like We understand being a privacy focused browser where you can't go through and actually mind for data as much as you want to without pissing people off It's hard like I don't think anybody is saying What duck duck go has tried to do it's easy but That doesn't mean they should abandon the game and focus on something else Um, so I'm glad you said that because like the way I've been looking at this is sort of like through the lens of Like a game developer this reeks of feature creep where like I mean if you really want to make a great game You you want to have like figure out your core Your core needs your core features and then anything else other than that that's cool Like sure you can write it down But you're not going to actually try and do it because to make that core game you can't keep adding on features You're not going to make a a browser like duct or a search engine like duck duck go Better when you're focusing on other crap that doesn't make the search engine better Right because email has nothing to do with search engines If they if they were adding a feature Uh, I don't even know what feature that ad Is like literally anything that has to do with searching you know to make it better By all means, I mean sure make another product that would help you with search engine, but This has nothing to do with that and it's really We're supposed to be talking about the link and like I said the link for this will be in the video description I didn't want to talk about the thing basically Let's just for a minute. We'll just talk about it So basically what they're going to do is it's an email protection feature that will Allow you to be able to alias email and also remove any creepy email trackers that come with it. So this Basically will keep you from being tracked on the internet What does that have to do with Search engines, but more over that sounds like a browser feature Right. I mean it sounds like a browser matter of fact. I think it is a browser plugin I mean, so what what exactly I mean, it's just it just It's so out of the left feel like it like yes It has to do with the internet, which is your general category But so it's porn and you didn't go do porn either, you know So it's it's really really odd and I just Like I want duck duck go to be good man I want I so want to leave google behind for everything that has to do with search I just really really want to I don't want to be searched I don't want to be tracked and and all that stuff when I you know do my searches But for that to be happen, you have to be decent like It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfectly google in order for me to use it a lot It just has to be better than it is right now And you're not going to get there by doing this yeah, and um I mean the The sad part is is the the argument when it comes to this link is not is this a good like feature or good I mean, I know they're not selling a product and that I feel like that's what duck duck go wants the the conversation to be like this is a good product, but it's it's not the the conversation is Completely elsewhere. Why do we have this? Well, I mean and then add to add on top of it is the service that they're offering He's an open source Like it's proprietary So Like add on on top of everything else Uh, it's not even open source, right? I don't even maybe that's not even something that's weird for duck duck go I don't like I don't maybe duck duck go doesn't even care about open source It's possible. Maybe you know in which case screw you guys. I don't want to use you anyways If you're gonna be proprietary about it, I might as well just use google Yeah, you know because I then I don't know what you're doing in the background. You could be taking my email I mean literally if I'm My email and everybody's email has probably the most personal data you have available on the internet, right? I mean everybody you know bank emails receipts from things you buy on the internet whatever I mean it has the most personal data that you have available on the internet And you're giving someone access to that email That isn't offering their service as an open source thing So, I mean you can actually look at the code and see that they're not shipping your data off to wherever Uh, no, don't do that That's not a good idea My response uh for anybody who might be watching this and who's like working at duck duck go If your argument is going to be hey, well, um, we are Like we we may be proprietary, but we are truly privacy focused Here's my argument to that google is privacy focused. Yeah, that's what they say, right? Exactly. I mean that's what they say because we know otherwise they sell your data Now we think that you know that goes very trustworthy, but how do we really know? See they might be really privacy focused in Privately keeping the fact that they sell your data like if you're proprietary It's really hard for the community not to have any trust Because they don't know I mean, that's like that's like the loan shark of your local town being like I don't get why people don't trust me Yeah, yeah, like I'm such a friendly guy You know, I mean I gave you money when you needed money. It doesn't matter that charge 400 interest and if you don't pay I'm gonna break your legs All right, all right, let's let's move on to uh, the main topic which is is federated social media the future and I think we can Uh, kind of add on to that is federated social media as it is right now any good um, so those two questions are the things we're going to be talking about so I will pass this on over to you. Do you first of all, do you use any of the federated social media? I've tried it. I've tried it. I don't use it Yeah, I think I'm in the same thing. Like I have a mastodon thing like when when district tube did his video like after he moved on to He got kicked off at one server and created his own or whatever. I joined his instance I think I've logged into it three times. I think I have like 30 followers over there But I don't know what they're following me for because I don't I go nowhere. My follow me on twitter Right, so you're even more dedicated than I am. I've logged into it. What? Yeah, so so mastodon has definitely not been the thing, right? But there's also things like what matrix is another federated thing. I think Uh, and there's just several of these things. So I think our use cases of those things have been very low. So as it is right now, I think we both probably agree that federated social media is kind of bad Right, and it's not necessarily at the after bad. It's just that there's nobody there. I mean, what's good is this? Well, there are when it comes to mastodon there are there are people there the problem for me when it comes to like mastodon and um Like decentralized social media in general the only problem that it solves is um centralized control and essentially like It's better at uh stopping You know, uh, or protecting free speech and supposedly Yeah, supposedly and to me the the thing about How federated social media and social media in general like my problem with social media is not that it's a centralized service My problem with social media is it's social media like Being on a platform like I mean, I was on mastodon for quite a while before getting on distro tubes Server or whatever and And The people and the conversations that you can get into on mastodon can be just as toxic and useless as twitter So to me, I don't really to me. It's more of an argument of I don't really use social media and I don't see a value in um social media in general I I hate to sound like one of those like I mean like or maybe possibly sound like a boomer I don't know but like I think social media is not a good thing for most people um Something like discord or like having like those smaller type communities where it's like you and maybe at the most like 100 200 people that you know interact with each other on a very regular basis That to me is it makes a lot more sense than The wider social media where anybody is interacting with a lot of people You're just much more likely to get crap Yeah, um now see I use social media and uh I used to be a big user of facebook, right? So not necessarily like the personal stuff of facebook but facebook groups where you kind of Is very much like a smaller community within facebook Uh, but even then In the last year or so those groups have just been kind of going downhill in terms of Participation because everybody feels like they're kind of just leaving facebook, right? Yeah, no, no twitter is something that I enjoy more But mostly because it serves as a way for me to find information that people tweet out. So like, uh You follow people who are more famous or whatever And they tweet out things about their lives and I'm not talking about like celebrities I'm talking about like people in the linux sphere or whatever. Um And that works for me quite a bit and then for like the the account for that I use for the linux cast Is just linux related stuff. So I ignore all the other Fiffle faffle on twitter. I don't ever get into any of that stuff, right? So, uh Fertma, excuse me. I just burped It could have been worse could have came out the other end No, um Anyway Just be lucky you don't have a microphone like mine where it's hyper sensitive and it would definitely pick something like that Yeah, um anyways, uh, so I don't even remember what I was gonna say before the thing happened. We were we were talking about a twitter Any like so the way I use twitter is just Very much Uh a centralized thing based on a few topics Like for my main twitter account Uh mtwb by the way follow me on twitter For that for that account, I just follow people who enjoy fan fiction. I follow people who like the san francisco Giants and people who like to fill it off the eagles. That's all I follow. That's all I pay attention to Every once in a while the people who tweet about the giants or whatever will tweet out a political post and I will ban them Like I'll unfollow them and walk them because I don't want The thing is is I forget enough political shit Elsewhere in the world and I don't need that on my social media thing. So, uh, uh Unless I know you personally I'm just gonna get rid of you and if I do know you personally I'm gonna try as much to not know you anymore if you're gonna talk to me about politics So now going back to the the actual topic My problem with federated social media is that While I go While I do focus on a very narrow number of people on the social media networks that I use That field is so much narrower on federated Media social media in terms of actually the number of people in those fields So it feels like it's much more of an echo chamber because there's only so many people that out there I mean, it's not so bad Like in on mastodon because the number of people on mastodon who also use linux is actually pretty high the percentage of people Who use linux and open source software is actually pretty high Uh, but most of those people are just like me. They don't use mastodon, right? They have mastodon things because it's something that if you if you support plot software It's something you you know Feels like you have to do you don't actually use it you use twitter or you use, you know, whatever Or you use mastodon to look at I don't know like say distro to like and his mastodon page And that's about it. Like you're more there to view content than you are to post content, right exactly And the question then becomes Does that ever change? Right because in order for federated social media to actually become a future as I posited in the question that we're being asked People actually have to use it And and I'm not talking just about the fos community has to use and I'm not just talking about the small Isolated nerdy community. It has to be every day people saying you want to want I need to use something other than twitter or facebook or whatever and Like for for example, just you know When what's up came out with their privacy policy late last year or whatever and people are like I hate this privacy policy because they're going to steal all of my data which You know, they were already doing anyways without telling you about it. So But everybody was like freaking the fuck out and like, oh, let's go use telegram and let's use signal. So it be For me personally, I think that it's in order for Federated social media to actually be become more popular. The big social media is they're really going to have to Fuck up and the thing is nobody cares. Yeah, I mean Twitter and facebook have messed up. I mean in an incalculable number of times, right? Nobody don't care. Yeah Or or certain groups believe so like when facebook started banning social media or conservative Like groups and stuff like that Um, mainly because they can't stop saying oh, hey, let's shoot people, you know Again, then if you get that's perfectly fine or whatever put, you know, like, hey, you know what? I'm with you, man I'm like I can be considered as conservative as the next person But maybe don't put your murderous tendencies on the internet and expect to be okay with it Free speech protects a lot. It doesn't protect you Protect you, uh, just openly being like i'm down for a murder like no, no, that's not how it works Yeah, yeah so so When that happened when they started banning that people moved over to me we and like Like that's when my mom did because she she started, uh, um She got banned a couple times on facebook for posting some trump stuff I'm glad we have failing members whether or not like Right, I mean it's just it's just as you get older you get more conservative. It's just the way it is Uh, I mean it's the way humans work But she moved over me because me we is literally anarchy like they they don't move remove anything, right? And I mean first of all, what kind of fucking name is me? Can we just hold on for a second like that's just the the dumbest name in the history of names, but Yeah, they don't remove anything right and that's why a lot of people use it And that's why parlor was so popular before you know, and then they got kicked off because You can't promote you can't promote violence. It just turns out that that's just the thing that you can't do And then you'll you'll say oh, we weren't really doing that. We didn't mean that like you can't even joke about that kind of stuff I mean, I think that's the problem with federal federated social media ever becoming the standard or the future of social media It doesn't address the the problem with social media Because like let's just say that twitter and facebook Just completely messed up and everybody started moving over over to mastodon if everybody was to come over to mastodon What's going to start happening? Well big instances driven by corporations will come up and they'll start getting like even though You can have the option to be on the federated use other instances It's just going to slowly become a more and more centralized service Until it is essentially a centralized service, but just under the guise of being decentralized Yeah, well, I mean all right, so the promise of of a federated system Is that it protects free speech and allows you to Use your instance however you want to use it. That's the that's the promise But really all it does is it moves takes the problem that twitter and facebook have which is moderation Right, that's their biggest problem is that the way they moderate can seem unfair to some people and perhaps it is You know, I'm not here to argue one way or the other But you have to understand that facebook has 2.5 billion people Nobody no computer system in the entire world that has ever been created can can moderate that number of people Successfully it's just I mean humanity as a as a whole just We haven't created that kind of technology yet. It's just impossible and while twitter is much smaller It's still very hard to moderate that kind of stuff. So Their moderation systems are imperfect and that's what people have an argument about against those, you know systems so they move over a federated federated social media and It takes it from that extreme of moderation and Imperfect moderation to no moderation at all You know and that mean and I mean while anarchy fucking bug While anarchy sounds good like a great idea It's not All that does is allows a group of ash holes to get together and start shouting at each other with one voice You know, I mean that that's all The lack of moderation does and but It doesn't solve the problem Like I said, it takes the imperfect moderation of the main social media networks and just removes it completely What we need is to figure out how to actually moderate a social network Uh in a better way and the way to do it is through community moderation and I think that some federated media Uh Servers and stuff that do some community moderation Uh, but when you get kicked off a server that has community moderation, what do you do? You just go create your own instance. You haven't been banned from anything You just create your own instance and then you can do whatever you want. You don't have to have moderation. So uh Well, I think the uh like the sort of argument that I that that I have towards it is Uh Even if federated social media was to become the standard, there is going to be an economic incentive for companies to make it financially um in unattainable for you to manage your own instance um and create like a viable alternative as soon as maston becomes the number one platform There's going to be enough business incentives that there will become a A future in which yeah, maston might be the future But there's so many centralized instances on it and running your own instance is so economically expensive You can't afford to do it. Yeah the the community asked or the corporation aspect of it is Because you you know that that would happen mm-hmm And it would probably be the same companies that are behind the social media networks now So face would do start their own server and twitter would start their own server and because those companies are so popular People would be on those servers the most. You know exactly. So you'd just end up with the same thing you have now um It again like that that's why to me federated social media. It doesn't That's why I say it doesn't address the problem with social media Because we all know there's a problem, but I to me. I don't I don't think it's necessarily the moderation of social media like yes Yes, yes, people do get banned and yes twitter is Has their own bias and takes it out against people But you're going to see that anywhere you go unless you go full anarchy and so the the middle road is us is how do you have a platform Where you have complete levels of different moderation for whoever you are And And how do you balance that or I think the more relevant question is Is it even feasible to have a platform or not feasible? But is it Isn't actually what we want to have a platform where People who rightly get banned off of other platforms Should there be a place for literally anyone to have a conversation? Should there literally be a place for people who are very For violence to get together and talk about how to enact violence Yeah I don't really know the answer to the question right The real question is do we want social media at all? And I think for me personally I can go ahead and answer that no I don't like it. I hardly ever use it if I have to use it. Yeah, I think it's I wouldn't I know that I miss it now see like I use facebook a lot less now that I'm not in the groups that I was in before Uh And maybe I've visited once a day may maybe once every other day and really it's for like You know half a minute maybe a minute or something I go make sure I don't have any notifications from family or whatever and then I leave it behind I'm on twitter all the time because I have sweet dick open up in the background But again, the way I use it is just to find you know information that's been tweeted out Like sometimes it's links to news or whatever Well as somebody who quit I will go ahead and tell you it's it's more of it's not really that you'll miss it But for the first few days after it's very It's almost like you miss it because you've built a habit of of being there It's like switching keyboard Yeah, no. Yeah, uh, it's just not as long like you're not going to spend two months getting getting over the hope of being over social media But to me, I think the most worthwhile Think about being off of social media is being around other people and them talking about like what's what's what they're fired up about And hearing them talk about just something that has nothing to do with them It affects them in absolutely no way, but they read it on facebook or Twitter or wherever and they're really upset and you're like, I don't have I didn't even know I hadn't heard that like I I could care less. It doesn't affect me. Yeah, it's a nice feeling But then again, I understand that social media is valuable for quite a few people out there It wouldn't be being used if it wasn't as long I think social media is fine as long as you don't become obsessed with it When I when I first started using twitter in 2009. I was obsessed with it like like and for stupid reasons like I I got really pissed off if I missed anybody's tweet that I followed I followed like a thousand people like so I had to find a certain Twitter client that would always remember your position from wherever you were at so that I could always go through and read each and every tweet that I was on Luckily, I got past that point I feel like eventually like I can't continue on with this anymore Now if I miss a tweet, I don't care like it doesn't matter to me. It will get tweeted again Uh, if it was really news or something that I need to know, I'll just find it on a news channel Um Not that they'll tell me the truth on those either so and and that is one of the to me I think the dangerous parts of uh of social media Is you start to believe all of the news that you've heard on social media if you weren't on social media and didn't hear about it You'd be missing out Um, there's so much stuff that goes on on like news wise that goes on on social media that I don't hear about And I'm when I do hear about it. I'm like, oh, that's cool But I'm not ever upset that like oh darn like I wish I was on social media So I would have known about it sooner because the real big stuff like I don't know valve announcing a steam deck Like you hear about that stuff other places. That's why that's why the verge exists. No All right, uh, so that is uh the end of that topic. Um, it really went off into some controversial places So I'm probably gonna get cancelled People come hit me up too. They'll be like, hey, you need to stop sharing your opinions, man Yeah, don't go woke on us. It's okay Anyways, uh, so every week we choose uh picks of the week So we go through and we can choose an application a website or whatever. So tyler Why don't you tell us what your pick of the week is? Mine is amphora. It is an absolutely Fantastic, and I do mean fantastic tech space browser for jimini um If you're unfamiliar with jimini jimini is a web protocol similar to HTTP and you know the worldwide web However, it's plain text and uh, it uses a sort of strict down version of markdown Very simplistic. It took me I think all together 30 minutes to set up a jimini capsule Which is on jimini websites are called capsules So it took me about 30 minutes to set up a jimini capsule using digital ocean It is soup. I mean it takes absolutely no time to understand how it works If you're familiar with how to make an index page or like If you understand building websites even in this slightest, it is super simple You probably won't even have to learn anything to get a jimini capsule set up and um Overall jimini has been a joy to use and amphora. It's really easy to config file for it Super simple if you want to do a little tweaking Get rid of a few things change colors and stuff like that That config file is very very simple and straightforward and amphora is not slow by any means So it's really nice sounds interesting. Uh, I thought about doing a jimini thing for The website that I'm promising forever But I'd be worried that like most people couldn't get to it, you know, because most people don't use jimini but uh, hex dsl has gone through and um made it so his jimini stuff gets automatically synced to his actual website They're basically the same. So, uh, I wish he would do a tutorial on how he did that Because I wouldn't want to do that I I don't know that he's done a tutorial on it But I know there's if you search his if you search hex dsl and jimini In one of the videos him and drew are talking about how he did it And I'm pretty sure drew was the one who wrote the script for him that takes care of it And as far as I know that it's available on his um repositories I'll have to take a look at that because that would be really cool to be able to manage it through jimini But just had it pushed up to uh The the actual website Uh, okay, so uh as you heard at the beginning of the uh episode I have switched to a different keyboard layout and that means I have been doing typing tests like crazy and uh There are several of those that I've been using I mentioned one before it's called key br Uh, that one's good, but it's weird and specifically Aim towards people who have switched to a different keyboard layout so that you can actually go through and train your muscle memory to Learn where the keys are Um, if you're just looking for a regular typing test, there are a couple that are really good. So 10 fast fingers.com is a Uh, it's just a typing test. It's literally all there is they do they do competitions and stuff like that You can make it as complicated as you want. You can change your time and stuff like that Uh, it's not the best designed or whatever But if you're if you want to be where there's a whole bunch of people and you want the social aspect of it 10 fast fingers is really good If you're more interested in open source monkeytype.com is open source is much better designed And uh, it's awesome. I mean it's really really good. It doesn't It has a social aspect of it kind of like where it has leader boys and the whatever But it doesn't have the competition aspect of 10 fast fingers that you can actually get into now There are a ton of other ones that are way more competitive than 10 fast fingers but monkeytype if you're just looking for a A typing test that has a ton of different options like you know Putting the speed on the screen putting your errors on the screen having a like a A ghost racer so that if you've used it long enough, they'll actually have your your average time racing you is really cool Um, it has a it has a ton of different things you go on there You press the escape key and you'll just show you a ton of different themes and stuff that you can change Uh, just remember you're there to practice typing not miss around to the theme I have a very hard time Uh, actually remembering that because you know, I like to change themes a lot. That that's the thing that happens Uh, I like that you're one of those people who talks about that openly like yes That is something that most most of us have to struggle with I feel like if you're using italic window manager, you are that type of person who likes to tinker around with themes Yeah, like I talk like I'm talking about the video that we'll post this year on thursday Uh, I have an obsession with changing themes and stuff like that. I always have all right So here's a story. Um Settle down story time with uncle matt Uh When I first got started in stuff like on the internet wanting to be like a entrepreneur or whatever, which is you know, whatever Uh, I started a tech blog like a tech news blog like because I mean, that's what you do when you're I don't know in college and you decide you want to make money on the internet uh, and um I started with vulcantech online.com. Okay horrible name, but you know, whatever Uh, it did not succeed. Obviously. It's not around today. You can't I don't know I don't even even no longer own the the the domain Uh, but I change that was on squarespace and I changed the theme like every day I mean literally I changed the theme every day because it was there's always something new about that So, uh, then I moved on over to word plus and and moved to uh, tech I moved it to tech t3 the number three kd And that was actually fairly successful like I got up to like a thousand views a day or whatever was really good But the problem with with wordpress if you change the theme too often it's a database based Theme or a database based system and the more Times you tweak a database the more often you're likely to come up You know with data loss like so like there were multiple times where I just lost the entire website because I was Like there's this place called envato. It's like it's called theme forest and it has just hundreds of thousands of themes for wordpress and like That is like catnip for cat for me Because I was like I was changing those themes all the time and and and by the time I'd actually been successful enough where I had made some friends And they were there like blogging with me and they got so pissed off every time I lost all their articles and stuff like that because I'm always crying. I'm just imagining you losing all the websites data and then just a new theme like A new theme on your screen. You're like, ah, but it's worth it The the thing was as a young computer user. I was not good at backing up data on a server as we all are so um When a theme inevitably broke wordpress I lost everything and I had to start over again and I The thing is I still do a podcast that I've been doing since 2009 With one of the guys that I met through blogging tech logging And if he were here right now, he could tell you how many times I changed the themes like it was ridiculous And the thing is with that podcast is I've changed the name of that podcast at least four times Uh, we started off with tech weekly. So that was for the actual tech news And we did like the tech news for the the website and then we changed to the three cast and then we went to um Never safe for work Which I really liked that name. I should have stuck with that name. It didn't it didn't last very long And then I moved to the untitled show Just like And then we went back to the three cast, which is what we are now like we I haven't changed it in years But I've been tempted uh, so just be prepared tyler if you stick around long enough the name of this podcast she'll change because I don't have the attention span for you know, not changing things like Like I've thought about changing the like the themes of my thumbnails five or six times And I have like if you go through the the thumbnails on the channel You'll notice that they change a lot because I I'm always doing something new with that because if I don't have I I can't stick with anything I'm in the hyperactive child. So it's it's it's It's one of those personality flaws and I I think that's why actually Bricing is so good for me because it allows me to focus my attention on changing things and Rethaming stuff to miss my personal stuff without having to mess around with Important things like the the podcast name or the channel theme, you know, I mean because if I didn't have window manager stupid bug If I didn't have the ability to write something my stuff I'd probably be changing the background to the podcast and stuff like that All the time. I mean it would be so stupid Okay, so that is it for us this time next week next week You'll definitely want to tune in because we're having a bash challenge. Tyler and I have gone through it We have written or are writing in my case I'm going back through and redoing mine. I was doing stuff. I found out real wrong It was working, but it's not the way you should be doing. Okay, so I just want to put this out there You're gonna kick my ass in terms of this because when we're when we're done I'm putting up a poll on the community page and people are gonna vote on the winner Oh god Yeah, so uh, my idea is so simplistic a monkey could do it and I think I've already broken one of the rules I'm just gonna put that out there so The stupid thing is friends. I'm the one that came up with the fucking rules So Anyway, so make sure you tune in for that. That's gonna be awesome that's episode 50 of the linux cast and Which is just I mean mind bogglingly insane And you wouldn't think so because my other podcast has done 500 episodes Yeah Like we've done 500 episodes of the other one. So I wouldn't think 50 was much and we've been doing the other ones It's 2009 this one here since 2017 the linux cast has existed now. There was a whole year there where I do any episodes Uh, and it was my friend ricky. We started it because he's like a linux nerd just like me and it was good um But I think the production values have gone up quite a bit So, uh, make sure you turn in next week for episode 50. It's gonna be really exciting We still have to figure out how we're actually going to be showing each other the the scripts and stuff like that So tyler and I will probably be here for two hours next week trying to figure out how to do this And just to go ahead and prep everyone for that next week video just so you know behind me this green screen is going to be gone. I'm getting uh, It's uh tax-free weekend. So I'm going and getting a whole new desk and uh, I'm going to get some accent lighting and uh, put some stuff back here to sort of Represent the channel. So this whole behind me is going to change for that too Just so everyone doesn't hop in it's like holy crap. What has changed? There's something very different about the background He's gonna look way more professional. I'm because I don't have room for a green screen back here I don't know if you've noticed this but there's no way for there's no place for a green screen in my room Anyways, uh, so that is it for us this time before I go. I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons Devon Marcus, Meglund Sven, East Coast Web, Donny Chris, Kellogg Devils, Mitchell, Mr. Fox, American Camp. Thanks everybody for watching We'll see you next week. Say yeah