 Okay, this is bullshit. Wait the fact that you have to Do a podcast or the fact that you're up everything. It's all bullshit I'm gonna get with the news links loaded up because I did not do that already All right, I think we're live. So if you're in the audience and you are Listening to this and the audio sounds perfectly fine. You should let us know If it's not perfectly fine, you know, don't let us know We don't want to know if it's bad It's good. Yeah. Yeah, just give us a yay on the audio and say nothing else Let's just call it good good Lord You're gonna have to I apologize to everyone who's watching this I'm exhausted and Word you're gonna be just not, you know, my thing today At all not that they're my thing any day like It's gonna be worse it's gonna be worse today guaranteed Because I'm gonna be yawning to the whole thing. Of course, once we start BSing over stuff, I'll probably wake up They well Get triggered Ian said That's how I look stone to the wall. I'm like, yeah Probably I mean I did hit my pin, but mainly I Don't really think I hit it that hard. That's just I didn't wake up too long to go You know, it's gonna be it's gonna be a little bit For I'm fully awake That's why I'm drinking an energy drink here. There is okay So for those of you saying the there is there is fans in the background You're just gonna put up with it. It's hot in hell here No, it's it's mine I'm not I'm not doing this without some kind of fans. So I just apologize, but I do have Noise suppression enabled so it's not as bad as it could be So look what you're saying is is you're not willing to sit in a night in like a 94 degrees Like fair in height room sweat and your balls off for a podcast the entire time with no fans Why not no offense Tyler? I like you at all, but I'm not I don't like you that much Just too freakin and the thing is it's like it's it's 80 today, right? It's supposed to be 90 all next week I Don't I don't know about you guys, but this is fucking Michigan like Tyler. I understand he lives south, you know But this is Michigan land of the snow. Okay, we're basically Canada light is what I'm saying here And we don't get 90 degrees that often and it's 90 in May Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting year man, it's gonna be like 9,000 degrees in July if it's 90 degrees in May It's gonna be 90,000 degrees in in July Either that it's gonna snow in July knowing Michigan 80 that's nothing like so many people are like or not so many people at least one person's like it's it's 80 That's nothing. Yeah, I don't I don't live on the equator. Okay? There's usually a glacier outside my window It's gone now Hey, his name is Fred and I'm gonna miss him 102 out in the California desert good lord, that is that is not okay That's too hot too hot. I mean it's probably okay if you live underground but I Don't I don't think you do and that's just way too freakin hot. Oh Yeah, I wouldn't know California just there's a reason why everything's on fire California, I mean no offense to the California guys, but you probably should just move out. It's on fire. You should leave All right, so hold on a second this they say they have no water they live next to the ocean Okay, like we have desalination technology just and they say the ocean levels are rising We'll take some of the water out of the ocean and put some of the fires out It's well Matt It's not feasible. Okay. Oh No, no, no, no, I don't want to talk I don't want to hear about that because they had a plan about 15 years ago to build a pipeline from Lake Michigan Freaking California. That was their plan No, look look look what you're what what you're supposing is That California take money that it has There's there. There's the problem at the beginning They don't have any money But then if you suppose they take the money that they do have and spend it on something Smart like come on, bro Come on. That's it's California. They do cool shit. Okay None of this smart shit. All right cool shit They passed a law. I know this is not the actual law So that you don't need to correct me in the chat, but it's basically the law where each each You can't buy pork there because the the pigs each have to have their own apartment or something It's not actually the law but they have to like their own space like each you can only have so many hogs per Square foot or something so they have a huge pork shortage because they can't raise pigs like they normally would like, you know So Having a pig shortage is definitely Weird to me because like you could definitely just import like Wild hog meat from like Texas because like I know so many people who go down there and like like Go hog hunting because like there it's a literal problem because like there's a lot of pig farmers out there and like As soon as a pig gets out like it'll go wild in like 13 days or some shit Like it's it's a release like a short period of time And they'll just go completely wild and like there's physical changes to the pig like after that like as it goes wild So just it just turns into a wild boar and then people go out there and shoot them And then hmm, I mean you could just import that back into Texas or from Texas back into California But that's the thing like I Don't know It's just a lot of it's a lot of importing. It's a lot of money for California to spend money Then they have other problems like the lack of water Yeah, well, I mean like California's got a lot of problems. They got a lot of problems But I have faith that one day someone really smart Will come in there and convince everybody else in like California politics to make good decisions I hope You know, it's good to be optimistic Sometimes All right, I'm sure everyone's very enthralled with our conversations now that we've scared off the people who don't want to be here for sure We should probably go ahead and get started Don't talk about they're talking about communism in the chat like what Don't talk about communism. We are not communists. Okay, we're I don't even know what we are Linux it doesn't make us communists But what I mean false doesn't really make you but you know, whatever. I mean, what are you Joe McCarthy? All right, I think we should go ahead and get started. I Think I think I got everything going here. So yeah, let's see your way too many workspaces Three all right, so three has the notes four has the news and six has the audacity so Tyler you have the audacity installed now on your Your Linux box there Okay, good good. I'm like actually ready Actually, I'm gonna go ahead then and hit recording in OBS recording in audacity. You can do the claps when you like Perfect. All right three two one Whoa Did you even clap? No, she went way out of sync there, bro Yeah, you went all Japanese movie there for a second Couldn't keep up. Oh, it was it was probably because I just started like recording and alacrity or alacrity in audacity and then Like maybe waited waited like all of five milliseconds before I did the claps. Okay. Now we try again Okay, okay three two one Think that's good pretty good. Yeah. Um, it's gonna be pretty good. All right Someone was asking about your your Your background and the cool thing about the way we I have the Transform is that we can't see your bed in the background. So it looks like you're just in front of a blue screen yeah, I've got a green screen thing Behind me, but it's actually on the blue side that gets a double-sided green screen green screen and blue screen and for whatever reason I found that the blue screen works Much better with chroma key in OBS than the green screen does. Don't ask me why I have no Bracken clue makes no sense, but hey is what it is. Yeah, it is weird Okay, let's go ahead and Why don't we go ahead and get started Okay, so Do do do see if I remember how to do this we took we took a week off and then all of a sudden I don't remember how to do it anymore It's like coming back a complete noob Horrible that means this is gonna be a great podcast Most likely with plenty of tangents to keep people interested. Oh, I'm sure because I really don't know what we're gonna talk Oh, I do know we're talking. I know that may topic, but I don't think I looked at your news item at all So I have no clue what you picked. All right. Anyways Hey, everybody, welcome back to Linuxcast. I'm your host Matt And I'm Tyler that he is this is the Linuxcast. We talked about Linux see things With the best plan and notes. We never ever diverge from the plan ever Just to let you know we have a plan. It said they're in the show notes you can view them if you want to they're on git lab and We never diverge from those things. We never we've never had a tangent in our entire lives So it should be good Right, right This is gonna be great so Tyler what have you been doing in Unix for us related land this week Mostly messing around with Debian like it's just enjoying Debian like really in all honesty, I'm very surprised with how Debian's treated me lately I typically go Go and try Debian and get like just get some Problems that make me want to leave it and that just hasn't happened This time around with bullseye. It's really nice Adding back ports to get like a newer Linux kernel more up-to-date zero AD build Everything it's just been really easy with Debian like and Obviously like it's Debian. So I don't really have to worry about Getting on update. It's just gonna like break a whole bunch of shit. Just immediately or Really ever or have to worry about programs just like changing like Pretty much at all. I mean, okay, it's only worthwhile updates like every three months So let me ask you a question. How have you been dealing with? Some of the programming languages being like older So like the versions of like Python and stuff in there that Debian gives you in the regular repositories at least are pretty old So do you have scripts and stuff that requires? Certain versions of like Python or anything like that. That's the problem that I always ran into No, I haven't had any of any problems like that But then again, I feel like the back ports Like repository would come in handy there because I feel like you probably could get a lot of that stuff updated through back ports I'm not sure of that. I'm just saying I think so but I really have no idea But yeah, like it for me personally, I haven't had any problems with using Debian this time around Which is really nice and I've also been using fish more so I Really didn't expect like really didn't expect to like Fish as much as I did. I've seen other people play around with it. I've seen plenty of videos on fish But never really given it a good try myself like I think I installed it before and used it for like Five minutes like I mean I checked it out, but didn't really seem interested in it But was talking with few of the guys over on discord and decided to install it and try it and it was really good like It's a really good shell. I mean obviously I would never make it the system default like shell Nor do I want to like start scripting in fish or whatever like I just Couldn't care about that But as the like shell that I actually interact with like myself very much like it's very nice But that's what I've been up to what would you been up to before we I jump into mine Just if you're watching this or listening to this. I apologize for the fan noise I'm watching the meter on on OBS. Just jump up every time a blast of air hits it Can only imagine what that sounds like I do apologize that but it's like really freaking hot so I can't turn it I could probably turn it Different direction, but it's okay. Anyways, I just want to apologize for that. So so I've been messing around with poly bar and I've created a couple new poly bar like configurations with like power line symbols and stuff like that so I learned to do that on stream the other night that was a lot of fun and I'm thinking about going through and just creating a whole bunch of those because though that sounds like something fun to do also I've been considering to changing my main distrust. So I've been using Arco for a long time and Hey, like it's good. It's been good to me, right? I've been here for months and it's very stable But they've been changing a lot of stuff if they've been changing a lot of their tools and stuff and it's just Maybe I'm just old, but I don't like change anymore But I don't like some of the changes that they've been making so I've been thinking about either going to vanilla arch or and I've had people question my sanity, but I've been thinking about actually changing such Trying out gentoo again on my main system like I mean thinking about it Holy shit. I know Did you really just say it like did you really just say that I did I Just I mean I could I could totally see this from like 30 other people in my desk or But you I did not know I would not expect you to be like, yeah, I've been heavily considered chin First of all, I blame Scott because he's he's he installed gentoo the other day I was like, oh, this kind of looks like fun again Okay, and I'm thinking about doing it so I blame him But also the changes with our code just makes me think that I want to find something different And if I'm gonna find something different, I'll either just go to vanilla arch and mess around with that which is, you know, probably the sanest thing to do or I will I'm gonna try gentoo again. We'll see how that goes. I don't know what I'm going to yet But it sounds like fun Well, I mean Yeah, it probably will be fun Especially if you do gentoo, I mean it will definitely be fun for your community. I mean, I think I won't get an absolute kick Everyone loves to see me suffer. I don't think I will stream the installation. Okay, I'm just gonna put that out I don't think that I will It has it has to be like some sort of exclusive event though on discord Well, I'm like I may do something on discord for it to like to get help or whatever But the reason why I don't want to stream is because I want to be able to take my time on it I don't want to have to sit here for like an hour and a half or three hours or whatever it is to do it Yeah, just just sit down on discord You don't even got to share anything just sit on there and talk with people on discord throughout them process Take your time with it Like don't even try to get help from us unless you have like, you know, you really need it like just sit back Relax and talk That would be so great. I would be so down for that if I popped into the the VC on my discord people would shit their pants I haven't been in there ever since it's been created That's the difference between my discord and your discord is everyone like there's always almost always someone in your guys VC like always mine never Like I don't know if the people in my discord hate each other Or it's just not something that they do I don't they're probably waiting for me to be like a leader and get in there myself And I don't know it's it's weird though if you start hanging out in there People will be surprised that you're in there like I've had people like joined in on VC It's like where I'm in there Like they pop out after like 10 seconds then I get a message. Oh, I didn't realize you you were actually in the room Like is it okay if I come in and I'm like Of course it's public come on in like yeah But you got it you got you have to do that if you install gentsy Yeah, we'll we'll see Um, like I'm thinking I guess I'm thinking about gents you I'm thinking about it But it it's gonna have to work better than it did last time Like I won't will not be able to put up with screen tearing if if if Josh left gen 2 to be honest Josh left into and if that doesn't say a lot like okay Hold on just a second. Josh distro hops just as much as you do Yes, but Typically he distro hops and try his other stuff But he had all of his devices are still gen 2 devices Like he's just got like a crap ton of them But gen 2's been giving him like a lot of issues here recently And so he's looking for an alternative to gen 2 So he's been distro hopping a lot recently trying to find a good alternative now. He's absolutely genuine genuine Certifiably insane because he goes to distro watch and clicks the randomized button And then just whatever distro like that distro watch like spits out to him is what he installs and tries Which I think is absolutely insane just because I mean we all know distro watch like they will give you some pretty crazy stuff And so yeah Well, he is crazy I probably wouldn't do that but Although I did hit that randomized button the other day of to see if I could find something to do Make a video on it gave me popo s. I was like that's not random Okay, if you if you hit the if you if you hit the random button you expect to have something That's like, you know rare and stuff like that, right? But no, I love popo How you're you're clicking it and you're getting stuff like popo s and then josh clicks it and gets stuff like open man dream Like I love it Well, look at the draw I guess all right moving on to the contact information If you want to get in contact with us, you can do so you can find all of our information at the linuxcast.org Including blog posts and all the most recent episodes. I do try to keep that updated. I'm not always good at it But I try Anyways the linuxcast.org you can support us on patreon a patreon.com slash the linuxcast You can subscribe to zany who goes by you can excuse me. You can subscribe to tyler who goes by zany I was going to say it the other way you can subscribe to tyler who goes by zany online I just Screw that flip around Anyways, you can you can subscribe to tyler's channel. It's youtube.com slash zany og He's also an odyssey and discord and all that stuff There is a store that you can go find merch at if you're interested in finding some merch we You should definitely go check that out You can also subscribe to the linuxcast on youtube at youtube.com slash linuxcast All the links and stuff like that if you want to find any of this contact information You can find all that stuff at the linuxcast.org slash contact So that was a pretty good contact information a little section. I didn't stumble too many times which is good So moving on to the next section now every single week tyler you and I we scoured the internet for the most amazing and breaking news that could possibly be found in the floss world And you can't find this news anywhere else of course. We're the first to cover it's exclusive So you definitely should tune in for all of your breaking news to to the linuxcast. You should definitely do that. So tyler What was your news item of the week? A fantastic new article here about all my linux. I hadn't never heard of this distribution At all until I saw this but it's actually Pretty neat. Um, it's one of those linux that's trying to fill the shoes of centos now that it's gone So it's based off of red hat enterprise linux nine. So well nine and it's Pretty cool. Um, so like for especially people who were like really big on centos This is really supposed to you know fill the shoes and and uh, you know be what centos was um, and Kind of like it really in all honesty Yeah, there's a whole bunch of info in the in the article here about you know all the support that it's got and Different features and all that stuff. But really in all honesty what caught my attention the most is like right at the bottom there's Those who want to migrate from centos linux or rel To all the linux can use the elevate project an open source initiative designed to assist users in performing migrations between different rel linux based distributions More details can be found here, which is really cool. Um, you like there's actually a project for just Helping you migrate straight over from either centos or rel so very cool and Um, I haven't checked out all my linux, but I'd never heard of it before and it seems pretty interesting um, so yeah, I just wanted to Highlight it just in case anybody else hadn't heard of it and is interested in something that is kind of meant to replace centos So i've been asked to do a video about uh centos and Alma and rocky linux, but i haven't got to it yet So that's something that i'll be looking forward to But that tool that could migrate you between different red hat based linux linux distributions There needs to be something like that for obu to won't that be so or debian like So if you run this tool, you can navigate between obu to linux mint Whatever and it's anything with arts like if you wanted to Let's just say you wanted to use you install arch You run this tool you can navigate to arco garuda Manjaro whatever that'd be see i want i'm I want to say that like That should definitely be a thing but then like When I think about it, there's for both arch And something like ubuntu. There is so many different derivatives that do so many different things It it would be hard to get to a point where you have support for all of them You could definitely support quite a few It would have to be a one-off So you would be able to go from arch to like arco because installing stuff is way easy Then if you all you ever did was install the stuff that made arco arco on arch It'd be easy because it's just installing stuff. It would just be an install script, right? It's when you would then want to move from arch to arco Then to something else that it would become very messy because Then you start having to deal with having to uninstall stuff And if you've ever tried to uninstall like a desktop environment, it can be done It's just hard, you know, because there's all these dependencies all over the place and things come conflict and stuff So it's not It would be easy very easy to create a tool That would move you from Like arch to arco arch to minjaro, whatever Uh, it would not be easy to then move up another level And I don't think I mean Obviously some of the people in chat like I hope everybody Listening understands you can definitely do it For moving between all these different districts. It's definitely doable. It's just so much more complex Like it goes from being pretty simple to do to You know much more from pain in the ass That's what it'll be a problem If if everything that made like arco or minjaro was containerized So if you just had to uninstall that container of stuff, that'd be cool But it's not that way like it's just not not the way it works everything You install like the genome version of arco linux You're gonna you have stuff all over your distro that's based, you know, that's That thing relies on and you have to uninstall that stuff to move something different It's an interest. It'd be an interesting Like challenge to try to do but it would be it'd be hard To to automate at least right. I don't know it'd be interesting. It'd be an interesting challenge I'm like, I'm thinking about how how would I go about doing this? I mean, you can best way would be to At least if you were just going to do the install thing like if you were like saying if you wanted to move from here to here And it's just one step and then you forget about it You could you know, it would just be a a bash script, right? You just do a bash script Yeah, just recognize the system based off the system run and more like a A distro I guess distroagnostic script But just to essentially install all the things that make that distro that distro Then yeah, like run through the script and set it up how the distro would have it set up and then Move on Actually be kind of fun. I don't know Maybe that's a stream or something to happen someday. All right. So anyways, moving on to My news item of the week. Mine is a little bit more controversial So ubuntu 20.10, which is the next version of ubuntu will be shipping with pipe wire as default now I have mixed thoughts on this because Every time I've tried pipe wire It's kicked me in the ass Like every single time without exception like it works for a while and then it you know stops Every time I say that about pipe wire There's a douchebag in the comments. No offense to everybody else losing the comments but there's that one douchebag That is in love with pipe wire would and would have its babies and um Tells me that it's not pipe wire's fault. It's my fault because I don't know how to use it so It's possible that I don't know how to use pipe wire or that or it just hates me I mean, it's always possible that it just hates me But anyways ubuntu 20.10 will shoot with pipe wire by default. I don't know I it looks like it's going to ship with pipe wire in place of pulse audio. So pulse audio will not be there at all um So that it'll be interesting to see how that goes because ubuntu is a really big freaking distro Right, and if it if it goes about as well as their first switch to wailin did back in 2017 um Yeah, I don't think it'll be that bad for being honest I think it'll probably go spent like this is the thing about pipe wire is I don't I don't like the fact that we're moving it to the default for More advanced users, but for people with very basic use cases with audio. We're just I mean, you're just going to be playing You might Occasionally hop on a zoom call Like or you know, but jitsi meat call like, you know, whatever You're probably not going to have an issue with pipe wire Probably not with really basic audio use like that. It's probably just going to work Just as fine as pulse audio would and it might not forget the settings that you give it Cool, but when you've got more advanced audio usage like pipe wire can just not work like uh I mean, I'll talk about this again I had the echo cancellation module loaded in pipe wire and it worked for like the first time ever the last time I was using pipe wire and I was like, yes, like this is epic Like it was just awesome. It was super simple to load up just like in um pulse audio Worked awesome. Then after I think it was like two reboots like after a few days It just never worked again Like it still showed up as it was there, but the echo cancellation didn't nothing like the module wasn't working So Awesome, but yeah, I mean it's pipe wire. Like it's good for basic use case I think ubuntu will be fine with it. But for those of us who like to do like content creation and stuff like that Yeah, I I have a feeling that most of my problems were actually with like Because I think that in order to get so the problem that I had whenever I'm on pipe wire And this has happened to me three times now Is that somewhere along the line the audio streams get mixed up. So sometimes my Inputs become outputs and my outputs become inputs, right? And the thing is is that there is a tool that allows you that's similar to jack That allows you to like route The where your inputs and outputs go And I never used that like I just assumed that like pulse out pulse audio. It just would work You know, like I don't I don't have like a super crazy audio setup. I have a uh An audio interface And you know a DAC those are the two things that I have so I have an input and an output That's all there is now I think that the problem comes in is that the audio interface has a Uh, like an input on it as well and so or not put on it as well So you because you can like monitor headphones with it, but I don't use that so it's Maybe that was what was causing the problems But I don't know It just seems like every time I'd use it it's it goes wrong But hopefully this will end up working. Okay I don't I mean I I think for most people it'll be fine, but it's definitely one that it's it's just controversial just because it's It it it doesn't seem quite as ready as it should be for Being the default on the system, especially one as big as a boon to rain Yeah I mean when you're when you're talking about something that for most people the importance is The stability of the desktop like the stability of Being able to use the system you kind of want. I don't know code bases that You know are as robust as possible when they went to wailand for the first time in 2017 Everyone freaked out a little bit, but everyone knew that if if you Didn't want to use wailand the wailand version of gnom the x11 version was just a click away Like it was included with every install all you had to do was change your session, right? This is different like there's no session manager for which audio thing you're using You will have to uninstall pipe wire and install pulse audio if you want to switch back to the normal so Like I don't know like You're right. It's going to be just fine for most people. I think that's where we're at I think that's the reason why it's being switched to is that it's just fine for most people Even people who do a lot of like complex audio stuff They're going to be fine for the most part if they know what they're doing and they use the the jack tool Or the jack alternatives or whatever And and they know what they're doing But pipe wire also deals with video and stuff and it's going to be messing around with with that and it just becomes Maybe it feels more complex to me because it's something I'm going to have to learn in order to how to use it, right? Whereas like I I I know how to use xorg A lot, you know, so I know how to use tools that rely on xorg like obs and stuff, you know So I'm just gonna have to I gotta have to step into the future And uh, stop being an old grumpy old man Yeah, so I don't I'm a little worried about that transition, but we'll see how it goes Okay, so You got something else to say? Oh, no, no Moving on at the very least always because there's you'll be fine You'll keep it Well, if I'm not I'll just go use windows Yeah, there you go. That's a solution as as always just, you know, just use windows You can't have problems with pulse audio or pipe wire if you're using windows We just have many other problems You'll probably have like I've got to be honest. Um, I was complaining Or no, I think we were in a discord call. I can't remember who it who it was. I think it was oce linux but he was complaining about pulse audio or Some like somebody was complaining about pulse audio issues and then The same issues that they were complaining about like two hours later scott hopped on or art center hopped on and He was having the same audio issue in windows like Audio turns out as freaking hard Like I know apparently when I was a windows user back in the day uh Bluetooth sucked like trying to connect to a like a bluetooth headset was god awful. It was so hard Um, and then half the time it just didn't work so I think that audio is just something that worry we haven't quite figured out yet Probably which is weird It just feels weird. All right Moving on to the main topic so Uh, today is mine. I think this is mine Yeah, I think we've lost track of who does what by the way in terms of the topics because we have like extra topics in there And we've forgotten who did what but it doesn't matter and in the grand scheme of things It really doesn't matter But anyways, the main topic today is best window manager for beginners. So when I'm talking about window manager I don't necessarily mean tiling window manager, but it could be that way Tyler what do you think the best window manager for beginners actually is See this is like such a loaded question because You kind of need to know Who the beginner is and like what the definition of beginner is All right, let's assume that this person knows How to install our arch Linux. Let's just say That's that's their level of expertise. They've managed to install arch Linux. So they know the defaults of Linux at least I would have to say most likely It's going to be between like and and this is coming from someone who doesn't even use the first one that I'm going to say like I Really haven't used it in forever But most likely it's going to be open box or i3 like those two Open box just because it's a it's a floating window manager that has an application launcher Or an application menu, I guess I should say it's very much Documentation heavy And when I say documentation heavy, I mean there's a lot of a lot of fucking guides on how to use open box a lot You can find plenty of information on using open box And same thing with i3 They're just kind of different i3 is obviously a manual tyler, but There's a lot of documentation for them and they're both Pretty easy to configure But yeah, I think I think those would be my two two main best for beginners and The reason is just they're simple to configure and they've their documentation really heavy And a fantastic documentation Okay, so I have three answers to this because Why would I was limiting myself to just a one? So my first answer is i3 Which is for the same reasons as you Not only is it easy to configure and there's a lot of documentation But once you get into the meat potatoes of it, there's just so much you can do for it now Dt yesterday in his video where he did his tier list For the best I think best window managers. He put i3 in the the meh category, which just like what And first of all he did so for two reasons one because their default key bindings for moving stuff around Is jkl semicolon, which is A little weird, but yes, that's they do that but again Everyone has to change their key bindings. That's just the thing you do in every single window manager So it was a weird kind of stupid reason to to ding it but another reason was was because It had it has a user A friendly syntax for their configuration file So it has defined limits to what you can actually do with that syntax If for the if the syntax to do what you want to do doesn't exist you can't do it I took Umbridge with that because In the configuration file you can do You can execute a bash script Therefore you can do pretty much whatever you want you if you wanted to You do something with xd tools or something like that that i3 couldn't do you could do that also Similar to bspwm i3 has an external tool so if on on bspwm if you're not i mean you're familiar type about anybody else but It has a tool called bspc everything that bspwm does is through bspc Managing windows pre-selection Everything right i3 has something similar. It's called i3-msg does the same kind of stuff There are obviously some things that it doesn't do so things like rules and Keybindings and stuff like that you can't do With an i3 msg that has to be set through some other mechanism But you could use something like sxhkg of sxhkd If you wanted to do that that would you know, whatever so that would This turned into me bitching about dt's video, but real real fast, but Come back to the point i3 is fantastic because you can do literally anything and just like you could do i mean There are very few window managers out there where they like literally limit you into what you can do um And i would say that i3 is actually more extensible than something like um xmonad or dwm or something and not necessarily more extensible but at least more extensible for Regular users people who don't know c or haskell or lua if you're talking about awesome way to manager, right You can because it's a user friendly syntax if you know what you're doing You can pretty much do all of these things and then if you happen to know bash which is much more Likely that you would know some bash than you would know c or lua or haskell um So you can that's the reason why i3 is like you can literally do anything with it like It constantly surprises me the number of things that you can do with it Plus it's really easy to use whatever bar you want like come in I was in the discord today And someone says well, I just don't like the i3 bar like Literally you can take the i3 bar out by uncom or commenting out five lines Like that's all it is it is to disable the bar, right? And then you can use whatever bar you want you could use xmo bar you could you if you like haskell You could use polybar tint to you know, whatever like You could use whatever bar you want to so that's really cool Like I really like that so that's the reason why i3 is on the top of my list The other one That I would say it's also really good for beginners and this is going to be kind of surprising to some people It's q tile And the reason why I say it's good because a lot of people know quite a bit I mean not everybody but a lot of people know a lot of stuff about python And if you know some python q tile is a fantastic place because it's written in configured in python, but also it has I would say that it has better documentation than i3 and that's saying something because i3's documentation is fantastic, right? and q tile has As good as or better documentation than i3 does It is a little bit more technical than the i3 documentation. I will give it that But it's it's really good plus built-in bar in the bar Yeah It's extensive and laid out very well for somebody to just come in and read. Yep, you can It's just extreme. It's They have a lot of documentation, but they've presented it in a way where anybody can go in there and not be Overwhelmed by the documentation Yeah, I completely agree with recommending q tile The only thing that I will say for anybody who takes that recommendation is no good and well q tile update Frequent they break show and they don't they don't mind breaking stuff Yeah, they they have no problem with breaking things And so if you ever have an issue with your q tile config It is most likely because they've updated and changed the way that they are doing something Usually the like it's usually the bar like let's us just be honest It's usually the bar because they're like changing on one of the widgets or something And it's no longer compatible with your configuration fault. Yeah, they do that all the time That's the biggest probably the biggest problem with q tile, but yeah It's so good. Like it's it's a really good window manager. Um, the third one on on that I would recommend for new users Is open box as well open box is really a really good Floating window manager. It's really it's fairly easy to configure. Like it's not the most easy to configure, but it's not it's Has so much like you said there's so much stuff out there for it Right, if you want to add like stuff to the menu, it's really easy to do to figure out, right? If you wanted to figure out how to change the theme or whatever There's a lot of documentation out there that you can get into to figure out how to do it And uh, it's probably the best floating window manager that I know of I'll probably just bar none. Like there's so much stuff that you can do for it now everyone's because I every every time we I have this conversation with people they're like But Matt, what about awesome window manager? Like it's Really good. It's it's you know, it's in DT's great tier. Yeah, right? um My problem with awesome is lua is not great. Like it's I don't like lua all that much at all and it doesn't like me um, maybe Every time I say I don't like a Programming language is like well, that you know, that's a you problem, right? That there's not actually anything wrong with the programming language It's just because you're too stupid to really to figure it out and that's 100% true. Like that's that's absolutely true Yeah, it's a pin well like I mean we're talking about best window managers for beginners. They start all This is all opinion. Yeah, like it's not like this is objective fact and truth Like no, I mean, I'm pretty sure we all know the beginner who's like Yeah, so started out a new bun two and then I just decided I'd go gen two and BS PWM xx hkd and like, you know, did all of the like It's just all of the complex route as their first dive in to anything complex about linux and they had a great time like That doesn't mean that you recommend that for everybody, you know, like I think BS PWM is great, but compared to a lot of other options. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners Like it's this is all opinion. I don't see why anybody would get like upset about anything Honestly, I'd love to recommend BS PWM for from beginners, but the documentation is just so bad Like it's just it does not I mean if you go to their if you go to their github page their documentation is like 400 words total and like half of that is like a weird tree diagram Now they do have more documentation, but you have to know about man pages in order to know they get there like that's where the documentation is is lies in man pages and Uh, no offense to man pages, but um, they read like man pages, right? You know, that I mean, they're not good man pages. There's just well, they're not bad man pages either Like that's the problem. They're just not good or they're man pages like the like they're written like technical documents And you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that that's the way it's kind of parsed like so It's not very new user friendly, right? Um, yeah and BS PWM confuses people because especially if So this is a problem that I know a lot of people have so they start they go to unix porn And this is a problem more of a problem like a year and a half ago or two years ago when i3 was like the shit Like everyone was using i3 And like everyone was recommended i3. So everybody got on i3 and then it was no longer the fat So they moved on to bspwm One of the problems that a lot of people had and they don't realize is that bspwm does not At all not even a little bit manage key bindings like it just doesn't do it, right? And that confuses like if you've come from a window manager that does everything for you To moving to to a window manager that does Does not do everything for you and requires something else in order to actually manage the key bindings You know, that's very confusing especially if especially with a A window manager that doesn't have fantastic documentation on the web Like it doesn't do a very good. I mean it explains it, but it doesn't do a lot of good explaining about why it does this Or you know, even really how to set it up because it's just assumes that you know you have to do this like if you View the bspwm install page. It's like, you know, it tells you how to install sxhkd It doesn't really tell you why you need to do so You know And it's just You know, I love sxhkd. I use that on every single window manager that I use like every single one But it's definitely not something that you want to point a new user towards because you don't like why do you need this thing? Like I don't understand like kd plasma manages keybinding for me, you know And it's ironically it's one of those probably it's it's funny that there's so many programs out there that are just They're incredible programs to use like they will just make your life awesome like sxhkd is fantastic It is just it's an absolute great program for managing keybinds. It's super simple like There's so many of these programs that are great But that have names that if I wanted to recommend it to you or Us have a conversation about it It's a pain to say the freaking name and most likely you're going to get it wrong Like I have to watch myself every time I say it sxhkd. It's it doesn't roll off the tongue so it's just Did you did you see that video? somebody did a They put together like a mashup of me dt luke smith brody all trying to say sxhkd to like a rap song or something It was utter hilarious. It was so much fun. Uh, but yeah, yeah The linux community is great. The linux developer community community is fantastic, but they can't name shit Sxiv nc mpc pp they like what kind of You weren't even smoking the good stuff at that point. Okay Like whatever you had was definitely laced with the got good stuff Like you make a great program and you're like, how can we make it so complicated that no one will want to say it? Just name your stuff like Word of mouth is really important, but if you can't remember the order of the letters that she used It's like creating a really complicated password to get into your computer and not remembering what it was Oh man, nc mpc pp. I think I've memorized the letters, but I could be mixing them up Uh s x hk even when you think you know it you're wrong That's why I've got every time I mentioned that on the channel like in a video I like I go well nc mpc pp or whatever it's called Or whatever it's called like I know I got I might have gotten it wrong Don't at me. I don't care that much because obviously if I did care I would sit here and nc mpc pp and nc mpc mp- fuck off Yeah Okay, here's the the funniest thing in the world right now is that somebody said mc mpc pp and And youtube hit the comment So good That's great. Oh youtube you're you're awesome. Oh god. All right Let's let's carry this on just a little further just What what is tyler your favorite window manager? Now like I know at one point I I know at one point it was dwm. Is it still dwm? No, it's bsp wm it's It's so nice like And it's real it's really not it's not that it's because it doesn't have more features than other window managers um Like it's just Really the reason I like it is it's got extremely great default settings for ty like I I don't have to add other Tiling layouts or any shit. I I think you could I don't know. I don't even have to mess around with it It's just the default one is great. Um Overall the way in which it works. It's just nice Um, and it's just a window manager like that's it. It's just a window manager So do you use pre-selection a lot? No, uh, I never use it Like never that's the selling point of bsp wm and you never use I'm exactly the same way like like bsp dwm is Is fantastic, but it's a it's a it's a manual tyling window manager and you wouldn't know it Like yeah, like it's basically a dynamic tyling window manager, but it's actually not it's actually A manual, but you're supposed to use that pre-selection and I never remember that it's there like ever. Yeah Like it's it's a manual tyler. That's optionally manual. It's really weird. It's a little weird It's good. Um, it's really good like cwm like someone said cwm in the comments Or in chat and I I really like the column window manager the column window manager is nice, but I don't know the floating aspect of it just got Annoying after a while like I do really enjoy just Dynamic tylers that take care of window management for me and everything and then occasionally I'll have a floating window like occasionally So really in all honesty, like it I prefer the dynamic tyling, but once you go to those are good Once you go to a tyling window manager, you never go back I mean like unless you absolutely have to Uh for me I go back, but I typically don't stay, but you know, you don't go back and be happy about it You know, I can you're weird. You're using windows right now. I don't take I do not I cannot take you you seriously I almost made it the whole episode without saying anything about this man using windows But he's using windows And I just can't keep it in anymore. Why is he using windows? This is the linux cast god I'm done with this I'm using windows for everybody who's watching. I'm using windows. I've got an interview when I get back I'm going to help uh art center move. So when I get back, um I've got an interview a couple days after I get back and it's for a position doing stuff in unreal engine 5 And unity and like vr and kind of like Set design and stuff for video production. So I kind of you know have to oh Art center in chat is like disgusting. He's running windows. He's For those of you who just listened to that load of uttered garbage A few if you all you all you heard was excuses excuses excuses. Yeah, that's what I heard too Okay, so my my favorite styling window managers actually i3 now, um I I've been trying other window managers again like I went back to dwm for a little while and This is going to be Just so matte of me But I mean this is going to be the most matte thing I've ever said But I love the fact that i3 lets me have as many work spaces as possible And I can create winkey mindings for every single workspace that I have And there are only a couple other window managers that will allow you to do that One of them means herpes loft And well, um, excuse me, uh bspwm would do actually because you can use xxh you need to do it But the point is is that outside of outside of just that I have my setup so tuned in now on i3 It's so hard for me to go to something else like I used q-tile that and I I just got done recommending q-tile Like it's so good. Like the documentation is good. The the bar is fantastic But I went and used q-tile for like a day and I was like I miss i3 like I had to go back You know So i3 apparently is my window manager now like I can't I can't seem to leave it behind Q-tile is great. Just definitely not for you Because there's no way only now in the way Yeah, the q-tile in the way it doesn't work spaces will just never work I have been told by one of my frequent commenters that you can use more than nine workspaces on q-tile They they they even gave me the code to do it um, I never did get that implemented but um The still the the the point stands is that I'm you know I seem to have come to the point where i3 is just my window manager. It's where i'm at well and i3 like it's With q-tile like you're you you essentially are doing you're doing your own python code to Implement that functionality on i3. It's just like i3. It's just like yep. Maybe you can do it like I got you See I miss sometimes the configuration of dwm like I enjoyed like learning a lot of c in order to You know do the configuration of Of dwm. I like I enjoyed that um, but there are a couple things about dwm that just are Make it unusable for me one is that the bar is not as extensible as something like how poly bars and like you You can but it's really freaking hard and you can you don't don't at me I know you can use poly bar and dwm, but it's a pain in the ass Like it's not like if you use other patches getting poly bar to actually run on dwm is not easy Like it you should be done, but it's just not it's not easy And the the other thing is the the workspaces thing like like I It has it has 18 workspaces Which is plenty for me like I don't need I would not miss those extra two workspaces. I'd be fine I I'd brood for a couple days, but I get over It seems to be impossible in dwm to set key bindings for Workspaces on both monitors, so you can't have Dedicated key bindings for each workspace and I rely on that now all the time like going moving away from that is just Something that I've found impossible to do. So I don't know. Anyway, so that's my favorite is i3 and you should bsp Bsp is bsp. Wm is really good. Um Okay, I just feel guilty not using its main feature, you know, I mean like I feel like I'm not using Without using pre-selection it makes me feel like why am I bothering using this thing, right? I don't know why I feel that for me. I don't feel that way because I'm just I like it too much and I just don't I feel like that's functionality that's built in there just because it is a window manager and I think it's it's one of those things where I appreciate the feature being there for bsp wm because there's plenty of people that prefer Manual timers. I'm just not one of those people All right, that's kind of the way I which I think is out of order, but we have to be careful We've been talking about window managers like tiling and non tiling window managers for a minute now and uh as soon as this conversation about window managers comes to an end where we don't have any more Actual window managers talk about you're just going to scale into how much you love to know We just I just I just want to be careful there who here between the two of us right now is using windows raise your hand Raise your hand go on you can do it. You raise your hand Raise your hand. Yeah, that guy right there. I'm using windows. Yeah, I'm the one that's going to go use gnomes No, I don't think so. He's the trader out here. You know No We all know matt has a secret passion secret love affair going on with gnomes I thought you were gonna say secret. He wants his community to know nothing. A secret fetish for it Well I wasn't gonna go that far No, no, I don't like gnomes Although I okay, so I will say this Is that if you're going to use a version of gnomes you should use the buntu's version of gnomes Like you really should they've done a really good job of making that customizable like so much so that you don't need themes Like I the one thing that I always wanted in gnomes was to have themes if you use The buntu's version of gnomes their light theme is even okay But if you switch to the dark theme and then change the accent color to whatever you want It's really good Like it's actually really good. I'm not it's still not for me like I'm still gonna want tiling and stuff like that But it's so much better than like stock gnomes Uh, and yes, I know like gnomes 42 has this stuff too. Like it's gonna or they or will or does or whatever I don't even know but like Ubuntu has made it now so you can change it so that the panels no longer along the side that always bothered me like those big As fucking ugly icons along the side, you know now you can now you can change it You can put it along the bottom and make it just a like a dock, you know, and that's standard You don't need gnomes tweaks to do it. That's really that's really good Like finally like you there's customization in gnomes Shoot me dead, you know Like the gnomes the gnomes people have been Spent years telling us that customization is not an option because it's too hard to do and Ubuntu is like Bitches I got this You know I mean come on Like like they did it like it's they made it good Um now I would like that panel thing to be like a default, but it's so easy to change it, right? Um, yeah, and the fact that you can change it awesome I mean it's so good I just spent like five minutes talking about how good gnomes This is your fucking fault tyler See i'm telling you guys he has a secret love affair going on with gnomes behind the scenes that he'd like He would like no one to know about Absolutely no one. It's very private. He's very touchy about it What you don't know What you don't know and you're not gonna be able to see this tyler is that the thing you see on screen right now With the whole cup bar at the top and the The terminal on the screen that's actually gonna not that's not i3 anymore. That's just actually gonna that's that's Oh, no, see this is what he loads up for to try and deceive like everyone while we're doing the podcast It's a vm I'm a secret. I mean i'm a secret vanilla gnomes user Yeah, if you were if you were to just somehow be able to leave this environment that he's showing off right now You'd end up straight back up in gnomes I haven't changed the wallpaper either. It's like the default wallpaper Uh-huh, uh-huh, and I and I refused to upgrade to the new version of gnomes which changed the folder icon So i'm still using those beige icons Because beige is my favorite color God It's so horrible The funny part is as much as you dislike those icons If you checked out gnomes 42, like that's that's the fart that gets everybody is when you check out gnomes 42 and their icons You're like, oh my god, you guys You guys finally fixed the adue I know if they like yes, like so much better They didn't even change the shape they're the same shape just with a different color on them and they're like 100 million times better There's so much better it changes the entire desktop environment that they made those a different color That's so much better. Like You can't even it makes your speeches like oh my god. It's like So good, right? Like why did this take so long? I guess if this is the funny part is that icon update genuinely improves their file browser Like well, yeah, because it makes it usable without having to use gnomes tweaks to change the icons You couldn't use it before brother because you open it up and you saw those beige icons like oh god. Those things are fucking ugly Like it's just it's funny that they went from like turd bay like turd brown to like Beige is probably really good Like I don't know of any designer. That's like, you know Beige will really really bring out like bring out the the color here So really make everything pop hey men talk We're only talking about gnom because that asshole over there made us. Okay It's his fault. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just I just want Mets like gnomes a fair to be public. It's it's about time. You've been keeping it private for too long You were supposed to be my friend tyler. You're not supposed to bring me out like that. Okay So Since since we have like divulged a lot away from the actual like Window manager part of the talk we pretty much for everyone who ended up Coming in late to the podcast or doesn't remember we both agreed that window managers for beginners Open box and i3 is probably the two best recommendations for new users right yep All right, because I I think that's great. Like you got you those are both really good options Whether you want floating or tiling, you know, yeah, they're um, they're they're really good. Um I uh, so for those of you. Okay. So before we move on to the last bit I want everyone who has never tried a tiling window manager before to go try one I think like I know so it's not for everybody like tiling window managers are definitely not for everybody. That's for sure but I think that Everyone should try one at a certain point in their career their linux career that she could give it a try It doesn't matter which it doesn't I mean You're going to have a really bad experience if your first x window manager is probably is haskell Like an x monad right if you try x monad as your very first one You probably won't like it unless you already know haskell Like if you if you're a haskell developer x monad is probably your best friend But other than that probably not But if you try like literally any other one for the most like even if you started this with something Like a rare one like herp slough w m or something like that, you know, it'd be fine It would give you the I mean it has its quirks that aren't the same as everything else, of course, but you know It would get you there like get your foot in the door if you You know just try one of them I think that a lot of people have this idea that tiling window managers are just for the nerdiest of nerds right and Maybe that's true. Like yes. I like rising my window manager a lot and that You know it is a Thing that's just for me But I mean a lot of obviously a lot of people like doing but that's just you know something that I like to do but it's not just because Every unix porn Uh picture has two terminals with a whole bunch of code in it doesn't mean that you have to be a coder to use a tiling window manager So I really think like I said I'm a big proponent of everyone trying it like even if you are like all you do is browse like in firefox It's all you ever do use use a tiling window manager. You might find yourself enjoying it Um, no, at the very least just give it a try, you know, yeah try everything but Well, I mean within reason Don't just jump off a bridge because everybody else is doing it. Don't try that one. But you know Window manager is probably a safe try. It's not it's not going to kill you. Um, yeah Okay, so moving on to the last The last thing of the thing that we normally talk about which called cut lord It's called it's called the thingy of the week So we have no real name for this. So we just ended up calling it the thingy of the week We could have called apps of the week or pics of the week or Whatever of the week. Um, but we chose thingy of the week because it's the thing We just kind of settle on so tyler your thingy of the week Well, I like the fact that we are both going to do the same class of things. So for me, um Vampire survivors on steam It's I believe it's released for mac And windows, but you know, obviously runs fantastically through proton On linux, it's it's like a three dollar game And I've just purchased it and I'm going to be playing it On stream here eventually Probably today And I'm extremely excited about it. I've seen people play it hex dsl has a video playing it I think aspen gold stun content on it like there's plenty of dudes on youtube who have who have done content on it It's a really great casual game. Like I really really like it Um, so Yeah, that's that's my recommendation. Check it out. It's a great game. Okay. So I have two I know I didn't write this in the show notes, but I have two. So the first one is a game It's called kingdoms and castles and it is Amazing like it's so good. So it is A combination. It's kind of a combination of like minecraft 080 and city skylines if it is It's a city builder game where you Well, also kind of like civilization too Because you're playing against other like ai characters that will attack your village eventually, right? So it's it's got the a0 ad thing, right? but also like so you build like a A palace or whatever and then you build farms and houses and bridges and roads and stuff like that it Like I bought it because it was on sale for like seven bucks or something like that And I like it was like seven bucks like it and it looks cool So I got I bought it and I was like wow this thing is really fun So I ended up playing it for like four hours straight You know Like and I didn't even realize like by the time four hours like well four hours went by like it was really good Um, yeah, that's what I've spent a lot of my time doing this because playing that game It's really good and it plays really well on linux. So, um, it does have a linux native version So it just was like I said it was really really good The other one that I would like to recommend or my other thinking of the week and I'm going to show this Unfortunately, Tyler, you're not going to be able to see this But for those of you who are on screen, you'll see the new keycaps that I have here and yes I bought keycaps But all right, so these are ma profile keycaps. They are actually pretty cheap 30 bucks Uh for a whole base set and they're amazing. They're like so good The profile is not for everybody right the Because it's like it's very flat, right? So if you're not into flat keycaps without like the the definition of like a Cherry profile or something like that if you're not into that these won't be for you But if you like flat keycaps, they're really good So they're called ma profile laser pbt keycaps Very very good name, but they are Really good. Like I'm really enjoying them plus the the white on black Um aesthetic of them really nice So that curved hard about it. I don't know that I'd like that Then yeah, they're not going to be for everybody, but I saw I was like well You know, I'm going to give you to try and like man. They're really good Um, I actually found that I've been typing faster on them. So my my uh speed went from like I've usually averaged between 80 and 90. I've been getting routinely over 100 with these I don't and I don't know why because the the keycaps that I had before were xda profile, which is completely flat like There's no rounded part of them at all Like they're completely flat So it's not like I'm you using something that's a little bit different But maybe the rounded aspect of these that so there's a little bit more spacing between the keys has allowed me to Not make so many mistakes. I don't know what it is about them, but I have been typing faster. So Maybe it's just because I got new keycaps and I get excited when I type on them. I don't know Anyway, so those are the thingies of the week And we do we do have all of our thingies of the week in our show notes So if you want to go to like my get lab page You can find all of our previous things of the week in the show notes the completed episodes directory All those things are there. You can uh follow us on All of our social media networks and stuff like that. All those links will be uh the linuxcast.org slash contact You can support me on patreon on patreon.com slash the linuxcast before I go. I should thank my current patrons And uh, I'm going to read all these names now. Um, robert said devon petrick fred trainer try devil Antoine megal injecting to steve subriot linux garrick sammel kbtgb keith andy uncle blended gary ross Mitchell j. Doug carbonated jameshawn odin marnie edwardo archsner elliot mislaw merrick camp desherly peter a crucible dark Benedict six primus p.m. Arlach one and philip. Thanks everybody for watching. We record this live Every thursday around three o'clock p.m. Eastern time We have a lot of fun with the pre-show and stuff like that like today. We talked about how california is on fire so Really random pre-show thing that will probably scare away a lot of people But what are we going to do about it? Anyways, so that is uh, we record live on the linuxcast YouTube.com slash linuxcast join us then we'll see you next week