 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 comments posted on the videos on YouTube and Odyssey. Sometimes these viewer questions and comments come through social media such as MasterDyn, Reddit, sometimes through email. And the very first question I want to read is, HeyDT, I can't explain to Windows users the dangers of proprietary software and closed source operating systems and the freedom of using Linux and open source software. Can you please make a video explaining what potential dangers are there in closed source software? Alright, so think about all the evil, malicious things that a piece of software can and actually does do to people on a daily basis. Typically the most dangerous stuff is privacy related stuff. So data mining you, you know, stealing all of your information, spying on what you're doing, what you're reading on the internet, what you're searching for on the internet, what files you opened up on your computer, the contents of those files on your computer. Also crypto miners, you know, these days that's a very common piece of malware where people are putting Bitcoin miners unbeknownst to you on your machine. They're giving you this piece of software, say a game, you know, they, hey, download this free game and you install this game, but you can't inspect the code because it's a piece of closed source software. So you don't know that other than that game, they also installed a Bitcoin miner that's sucking away a lot of your CPU and GPU to mine for Bitcoin, not for you for this hacker, basically, that put that crap in that piece of closed source software. And many people, millions of people around the world have this kind of stuff working on their computer. These pieces of nefarious and malicious programs that are on these people's computers and they don't even know it. And the reason they don't know it is because they can't inspect the code. Closed source, proprietary software, you can't audit the code. It's not possible. It's not legal either. The license many times will, the license prevents you from, you know, decompiling the code and trying to take it apart and inspect it even if you could. And that's one of the benefits of using free and open source software. Now that's not to say that somebody couldn't put a piece of malicious code in a piece of free and open source software. The point is though, that if they did that, you could find out about it because the code is available. You can audit the code. You can inspect the code and you can see exactly what that software is doing to you, where with proprietary software, you have no way of knowing. With proprietary software, you are putting 100% of your faith in the proprietor of that proprietary software. You're trusting, for example, with Microsoft Windows, you're trusting the proprietor, Microsoft, you're trusting them with your computer basically and your data. You're trusting them because you have no way of knowing exactly what they're doing. And for people like me, I can't trust these billion dollar, trillion dollar corporations like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, because we all know better. We know these companies are built around making money. Of course, all companies want to make money, but these guys, how do they make money? Well, these days, typically, they make money by using you. They don't sell you software. You're actually the software, right? They give you programs like Windows and Office and things like that, but it's not for you to use that software. They give you that software so that software can use you so they can data mine you, get all of your information, and then either use that information to sell you other products or to sell your information to other companies that will then try to sell you products. Now, if you don't want to get into the tricky parts of trying to explain what free software is versus proprietary software, especially to new Linux users, people that have been using Windows their whole life, trying to explain to them the free software movement and the open source movement, that can be a little overwhelming to them. I would just explain it to them in real world terms. Tell them, hey, I've been using Linux for however many years you've been using Linux and tell them I've never had a virus. I've never had any kind of spyware, malware, ransomware installed on my computer. I've never opened my web browser on a Linux machine and had 18 different toolbars on my browser. I don't know how any of them got installed. Tell them that doesn't happen on Linux and then it'll click in their mind. They'll be like, oh, really? I just thought that was part of using a computer, right? Because that's all they've ever experienced. All they've ever experienced is being used by Microsoft Windows. And the next question is, hey, DT, what tool do you use to empty your trash on your main production machine? So what he's talking about here is you guys that are familiar with Windows and Mac know on the desktop, you've got the little trash can icon or recycle bin, whatever it is that they call it these days on those operating systems, where when you delete a file or a directory, it doesn't get instantly removed from your machine. It goes into the trash bin first. And if you go inside the trash bin, you can actually undelete those files if you deleted them by mistake. It's a safety measure. We have this on Linux too. So in our graphical file managers, so in GNOME, you have Nautilus, the file manager on KDE. You have Dolphin. You also have other file managers, Kaja, Thunar, PCMan, FMM. All the graphical file managers on Linux have a trash can, similar to the one found on Windows. Now what I'm assuming he's asking here as far as managing trash is command line. So in Linux, many of us use the command line for all of our file management. And that's what I do. I don't actually open a graphical file manager very often. Typically, when I want to do simple file management stuff, I just open a terminal and do it inside the terminal. But the problem is when you delete files inside the terminal with the rm command, the remove command, so I rm a file. It's instantly deleted. It doesn't go to a trash can. Now there are command line trash cans that you can install. One of the most popular is a program called Trash CLI. I've never used it, but there's several of these trash command line programs that you can install if you're worried about accidentally removing things at the command line. The way I handle this, though, is I actually make my remove command an interactive command. So rm, mv, and cp, all three of those commands have a dash i flag for interactive, where when you run those commands on a file, it will ask you if it's going to override a file or delete a file. It will ask you yes or no. And that's what I do. I alias my rm command to actually be rm space dash i. So when I remove a file, it always asks me yes or no. I always have to answer that question. So I have two chances. So I never really accidentally remove a file doing it that way. So I don't actually need a trash can manager. But those of you that do, yeah, look into trash CLI or one of the other trash can managers for your command line. And moving on to the next question. Hey, DT assalamu alaikum, wa alaikum assalam, you did not tell what the difference between vlc and mpv. So would you please explain this? So this was from my Garuda cutal video. I mentioned something about vlc and mpv and I actually installed both on my machines because I like both. But what's the difference? Well, the main difference is mpv is much more minimal as far as design mpv is strictly a frame around a window. You don't really get any menu systems or any kind of graphical settings. mpv is extremely powerful, much more powerful than vlc. But the problem is most of those settings involve you manually adding config files or doing things at the command line. Because again, you don't have all the GUI settings and menus and things inside mpv the way you do a program like vlc vlc. Now you do everything through the GUI and vlc is it's really intuitive and very easy to use. That's probably why many, especially beginner user friendly Linux distributions, desktop Linux distributions, they almost always install a program like vlc for a video player rather than mpv. Again, because mpv is so minimal, people that are new to mpv would probably find it a little off-putting. Now the reason I usually install both mpv and vlc on my machines is a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've been using Linux for so long years ago, you know, 15 years ago, you know, about the time I was starting to explore desktop Linux, you know, many Linux distributions back then didn't install multimedia codecs needed to play a lot of your audio and video multimedia formats, right. And one of the ways around that typically back then was to just install vlc because vlc as a multimedia player depends on all those multimedia codecs and it would pull all that stuff down for you so you could play all your dvds and blu-rays and things like that. And, you know, because back then that was a challenge 15 years ago on Linux, you know, getting to your video formats to play correctly. Nowadays, though, that's not really needed, you can install any video player because these days, many of our desktop Linux distributions are no longer as concerned with legal issues as far as multimedia codecs. Most of them just ship them all by default anyway. Another reason why I also like to have vlc installed is playing audio. vlc has a really nice feature right there in one of the menus where you can actually on a multi-track recording. So, you know, you've got two tracks on a recording or whatever, you know, you can play a single track. So, you know, if you had a right speaker, left speaker, I only send sound through the one speaker, you know, on the one track. And that's a really nice feature of vlc that's just there out of the box. MPV, I'm sure could do the same thing, but again, I would have to jump through some hoops to do something like that on MPV. Moving on to the next question. Haiti, yes, Windows is spyware. But nowadays, almost all of us have to use spyware or have spyware on the hardware level, such as Intel, ME, AMD, PSP, and that's said. And he's right, that is said. So, this is more of a comment rather than a question. So, what he's saying is, you know, I complain about proprietary operating systems and proprietary software being spyware, things like Windows, Windows 10, absolutely is closed source proprietary spyware. Windows is spying on you, their data mining, you Windows kind of admits that. So, it is a piece of spyware. And he's saying, I guess my complaints about Windows are really not justified because we have things like Intel, ME, the Intel management engine on Intel processors and AMD, PSP, which is platform security processor on AMD processors. We really can't get away from some of these companies on the hardware level spying on us. So, why am I complaining about Windows, I guess? Well, just because other companies are also spying on us, doesn't make Windows spying on you any less egregious or evil, or we should just stop complaining. Like, well, everybody spies on you, so you should just accept it. No, no, we never accept this. This is not something that we should ever get used to or just accept as normal. And when I say we shouldn't accept Microsoft spying on us, I also think we shouldn't accept companies like Intel or AMD. We should really, once we get the solution as far as open source software solved, you know, and I think we're winning that battle. I think people are starting to realize free and open source software is better than closed source proprietary software. We're winning that battle. The next battle we really need to start fighting, of course, is the battle for open hardware. And the next question comes from one of my videos. It was either one of my shorts videos or something where I had a time limit I was trying to meet and I was talking really fast. He says, hey, DT, are you on meth? No, actually, when I do those shorts videos or even these hey DT videos where I talk kind of fast, so it's not an hour long video. What I'm actually on is a Joe's brand coffee. I have a coffee cup here and I'm heavily caffeinated right now. Joe's brand coffee is one of the best brands of coffee available. Of course, you get that in the little curing cups or you can get it in loose coffee grounds as well. The next question I want to read is one I get all the time and it's typically hey DT, can you try some piece of software once I've recently got or hey DT, can you try the sidekick browser or the my pal browser, et cetera, some other browser because I'm always trying out new browsers. And the problem why I haven't tried out a lot of these browsers, people suggest, is they're either licensed under a proprietary license or in the case of the my pal browser, I couldn't actually find a license for the thing. I go to the GitHub, there's not even a license mentioned on the GitHub. If it is either licensed under a proprietary license or it doesn't have a license at all, I'm assuming that qualifies as proprietary. So I'm not going to review anything unless it specifically says it's free and open source. I just won't do it. Sidekick is not free and open source software. My pal, it didn't have a license when I checked on it a couple of weeks ago. I checked on it again yesterday because I knew I was going to make today's video and I was going to respond to this question about my pal. And now the GitHub has been completely deleted and the guy that was maintaining it says he was kicked out of the project. So I don't, I don't even know what's going on with that. But again, these products, I've never heard of them before these people asked me about them and then just checking on them. They don't seem like they're stable projects and they don't seem like they're free and open source either. I am never going to cover proprietary software on this channel, at least proprietary software where there's clearly free and open source alternatives, such as Brave and Chromium and Firefox and the millions of free and open source browsers that we have available on Windows Mac and Linux. The next question is another one I get all the time and it's typically something like this. Hey DT, do you have a telegram chat group or hey DT, do you have a discord? Hey DT, do you have some other proprietary service that you hang out on? No. Again, I try to stick with free and open source software where possible free services where possible as well. So telegram is not free and open source software. I've never had an account. I don't plan on ever having an account. I just, it's not something I'm interested in. I don't chat anyway. So I don't like being on those kinds of services anyway. I'm definitely not going to sign up to a proprietary one. Same thing with discord. I do have a matrix chat room. I don't hang out there much, but we do have, you know, like a thousand people that hang out there on a regular basis. Linux nerds that talk Linux and free and open source software and many other topics, Vim, Emacs, Tiling, Window Managers. If you guys want to go hang out in my matrix room, feel free to hang out there and talk with others about Linux and free and open source software. Matrix is free and open source software for those of you wanting a great desktop matrix client element is probably the most popular matrix client. And the final question is, Hey, DT, it looks like you're using the awesome window manager. I haven't figured out how to configure my monitors and have it save because I have to do it every time I reboot. Do you have any recommendations? So what he's talking about here is something that we all have to deal with those of us that use standalone window managers, tiling window managers. He mentions awesome window manager, but this could be any standalone window manager. If you have multi monitors, typically, you know, however, those monitors get plugged into your graphics card, you know, the monitors could be out of order when you log in. And depending on the ports on your graphics card, you may not be able to get them in the correct order just by plugging them into the graphics card. So instead of having monitor one, two, three in the correct order, you have monitors one, three, two, where you moving the curse around the first monitor and then it's over on the third, the second monitor over here really in the third position, then it's in the middle monitor. And obviously, you have to correct that. And how do you correct that is typically you can do it through a command line program, X Render X R and R. But that's kind of complicated for people that don't know how to use that program. Typically, what I recommend you guys use is a R and R, which is a graphical front end to X R and R. So use a render. It's in everybody's repose. Many Linux distributions actually ship it by default, some of the more minimal ones, especially the ones that use tiling window managers. Now how a render works is it's a graphical program, you launch it, and it gives you a visual representation of all your monitors. So if I got three monitors, it'll have three boxes. And it'll tell me exactly what the names of those monitors are, such as DP one, DisplayPort one, DP two, HDMI one, whatever, you know, however many monitors you have, and however they're connected to your graphics card. And then all you do is you click on it with your mouse, the monitors, and you rearrange them in the correct order, graphically right there inside the GUI. It's dead simple. Hit apply, and magically your monitors are saved in the correct configuration. Now when you reboot, they will not be in that same configuration. You'd have to do that again. But a render has this great thing. It saves a config file for you. So when you click save, it will save, I believe it saves it to a dot screen layout is the name of the file. I don't know, but when you save it, it'll tell you the name of the file. And it's basically a shell script that executes the X render command to rearrange your monitors in the correct order every time. So when you save that file, and you find the location of that shell script, make sure in your auto star hook for the awesome window manager or whatever window manager you're using, that shell script gets executed every time you log in, and your monitors will always be in the correct order. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this show. I need to thank Gabe, James, Mitchell, Paul, Scott, Wes, Akami, Alan, Chuck, Commander, Angry, Yuki, David, Dylan, Gregory, Heiko, Lee, Maxim, Mike, Nitrix, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Fedor, Polytech, Raver, Red Prophet, Steven and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This episode of HeyDT would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well. All these names you're seeing on the screen, these are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. It's just me and you guys, the community, if you like my work and want to help me out, please go check out DistroTube over on Patreon. I'd love your support. All right guys, peace.