 Hey everybody, welcome back to the Linux test. I'm your host Matt and I'm Tyler. So this is the Linux test. We talk about Linux things and that's usually what we do. So, Tyler. Usually. Yes, well usually. The thing about usually is that if you usually do something, there's also times where you usually do something else too and that's usually the case as well. We have a tendency to do tangents. It's just, it's part of our charm. You know, if we didn't do tangents and rat holes and stuff. Well, I mean, come on man. If we didn't actually have some banter back and forth, this would be like news like CNN or Fox. It'd be dry as hell and boring. Alright, so if you're watching the video version of the podcast and you see me switch my headphones around like this or take them off randomly, it's not because I'm gnawing Tyler's voice. It's because these headphones are murder on your ears when you're wearing glasses. Like they're so, the cups are like wearing plastic. They're horrible. I need new headphones like with actual proper cups and not like, you know, like those like $10 headphones you'd get for like a kid for like a road trip or something. And because they really, they look like beats, but they're actually came from like the dollar store. That's what these things feel like. Well, I mean, that was a good cover excuse, but we all know what it really is. You just don't want to hear me. We get it. I'm sorry, Tyler. What were you saying? What? So Tyler, what have you been doing this week on Linux? Wait a minute. Are you using Linux? I mean, there is a, my mom's laptop's running. Oh, does that not count? You know, it's bad when your mother uses Linux and you don't. I was actually, my uncle came over and he saw my computer and everything. He goes, is that Windows 11? And I was like, yeah. He goes, you're, I was just in there in your mom's computer. She's running Ubuntu. And I'm like, yeah, she's like, your mother is running Linux and you're not. And I'm like, yes. For shame, dude. For shame. That's horrible. So I haven't been doing it. Well, actually, I take that back. This week in Linux, I did update my mom's laptop. There we go. That's my week in Linux. Okay. So what other things have you been doing then? If you can't talk to us about the things we're actually here for? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, other than that, I have been developing the open source game. I, for anybody who's like kept up with a channel, like or my channel, I have been, I was working on a runner game, an endless runner in Unreal, which thankfully, this is one of the times in my life where I can say this, I have that project backed up in multiple places and it is perfectly fine. But me and a couple of other people from Discord ArtCenter and Phoenix Python, we've started working on a game that like I'm really excited about. I really like survival games. I love them. And there's not really a good open source survival game. That's, you know, first person kind of like in the vein of like Daisy, Deadside, those kind of games. So we are working on that right now and I've gotten a lot of work done and there's a devlog that'll be coming out either later tonight. I might schedule it to come out tomorrow morning, but it's been a while since I've posted, so I'm probably going to do that tonight. But yeah, I'm excited to show that off. Sounds like fun. I've seen some of the stuff like, you know, Discord will every once in a while show you what the other person is sharing in their screen, even if you're not in the thing. I've seen you guys doing some stuff. All right, so me, I've been using Linux by the way, just want to point that out. I've been messing around with any bar patch for DWM. I haven't got it to the point where I'm actually using all the, you know, getting it, you know, I've got it installed but I haven't actually gone through and done anything with it yet. But that's the next thing I just started yesterday. And then I got distracted by other things, but mostly what I've been being distracted by is actually setting up a web server for a website. I know, right? It's... But hold on. Here's the thing. Last week, last week, we were told the website existed. And we were going to get it. It still does exist. And there is a... Uh-huh. There is now an Alinode account. There is now Alinode server. It has Debian installed on it. And if you don't believe me, I have a picture in my Discord of me SSHed into that server. So it does exist. All it's left is me learning actually how to set up a static website on Alinode server, which I've never done before. So that's what I'm working on. It's just taking me some time. I've never promised that this was going to be a fast process. It's just a process. By the time... That's your saving grace right there, that you never put a deadline on it. The number one rule they tell you... Because I did freelance writing for a long time. The number one rule you learn is never be as... When they don't set the deadline, the client doesn't set the deadline. If they give you the option telling you, hey, how long is this going to take? Never set a firm deadline. Say, yeah, I'll have this to you in the next 24 to 48 hours. That gives you some time to procrastinate. These are procrastination rules. Technically speaking, last week you didn't explicitly state that the website would be up this week. You didn't say that. I've made progress and that's literally all you should expect from me at this point. It's just the truest thing. If you expected more, that's your problem. Your expectations are the ones that caused you those issues. Not me, okay? I feel like me and TFL, I don't know if we've had this conversation before, but one of the most unhealthy things that you can do is set really, or in general, setting expectations for stuff is kind of setting yourself up for failure. We talked about this last week about me and my sports teams. I always expect them to lose and then I can just cross. Even expecting them to lose, because then when they win, you're like, oh, if you just don't set any expectation at all, you're just going to everything blind, you'll typically end up having a better time, you know? Just typically. Yeah, all right. So let's go ahead and move into the contact information. I'll see if I can do this in one go. So if you want to follow us on Twitter, you can do so at the Linuxcast. You can subscribe to all of our stuff at thelinuxcast.org. Eventually, key word there, eventually, this is where I get, this is how you do it, Tyler. Eventually, there will be a website at thelinuxcast.org. It's not there yet. It's literally inching closer. If you remember math class, if you remember limits in math class, it always is getting closer to the thing, but it never actually gets there. That's the way this is going to happen. As long as we don't start talking about geometry and proofs and stuff, I'm good. I hated those things. Support me on Patreon at patreon.com. You can contact us via email at thelinuxcast.org. You can support Tyler on Odyssey and on YouTube at youtube.com. We both also have Discord servers. You can find those links in the video description. You can join the Telegram group, which I swear to God does exist. I don't know why it's there. I don't know anything goes on in there. I'm not in there. I still don't believe it actually exists. I think this is a rumor. I have links for it. It's there. I don't know why I set it up. It was just a random thing like, hey, I got five extra seconds. I'm going to set this up. Anyways, you can also- I do have a quick question before you finish it out. On the website, will you have analytics on being able to see how much traffic it gets or anything like that? No, that's way too much work. I mean, maybe someday, but right now, no. Because it's literally just HTML and CSS. There's no JavaScript. There's none of that stuff. As far as I'm aware, I'm not even pulling in anything other than a couple Google fonts. And you can do that via a URL, via CSS. Yeah, so it's not that complicated. Literally, the only reason I'm this far along is because I stole Hex DSL's website and took all of his stuff off and made it my own. That's the reason why. I mean, this is what you get for doing things Creative Commons because anybody can steal your work. Exactly. Well, perfectly. I mean, it's a point. Just come on in and take it. Hey, you know what? It's got me further along than- I mean, I've been promising a website since the podcast began in 2017. Oh, I know. So it's only five years later. We'll get there eventually. People just calm down. It'll be fine. Cool down. Don't move so fast through life. You know, you've got to take these a little slower. You can also subscribe to the channel on YouTube at youtube.com. You'll find videos of all sorts and all brands and all stuff and all sorts of shenanigans. Today, you'll find a crack video, which I was calling. It's a video that is utterly pointless about them. And it was very fun to edit and make, but I don't think most people- People are just going to laugh at it. There's also a Patreon exclusive about me switching to Windows. Oh, okay. If you want to see that troll of the week, you'll have to be a Patreon to see it. Anyways, that is it for the contact information. That was pretty good. So every week, Tyler and I scour the interwebs for news. And oftentimes we actually find news. And when we do find news, we put links in the show notes and then we talk about them here on the podcast. So, Tyler, what is your news of the week? Well, thank you for asking, Matt, because, you know, a lot of people don't ask what my news is and it gets really upsetting sometimes because this week, I actually have, like, good news. Like, it's actually informative. So there's a, like, big, like, backdoor piece of malware going around called SysChoker. And it's available for all platforms. It's fantastic. Like, you know, we're all dying for multi-platform, platform-agnostic video games. You know, like, there's nothing better than being able to play, like, games like Fortnite, you know, just with everyone on whether they're on iOS, whatever, they can all play together. Now we can all get malware together. This is the world that we should be living in. All of our malware should be written for Windows, Mac, and Linux. So I hope we're all happy. We are finally part of the real crowd. We're accepted. We're mainstream. So SysChoker is this malware that, like, on Windows, there's not as, like, I didn't dive through here too much because I'm going to assume the way it functions is, it's similar on different systems. Like, on Linux, it's a little bit different. It, like, on Linux, it goes through and it tries to, if the files and directories are created under a folder called .alibrary with capital L and then persistence is established by creating a cron job. And it, like, on Windows, it does this nasty thing. I don't know if it does a similar thing on Linux, but it goes through and it drops, like, a DLL to execute. And then once it does, the malware sleeps for up to two minutes before creating a new directory and copies itself as an Intel Graphics Common User Interface Service. So it tries to, it tries to act like it's an Intel Graphics Service. FSociety in the chat said, I should stop using Plan 9. I want to have malware, too. Exactly. Just showing the crowd you'd be filling left out. So, I have a question for the Linux version. Do you know if you just ran crontab and viewed your crontab file, would this show up listed in the crontab? It should. It should show up as any other regular cron job. And you'd be able to tell it by the cron jobs at reboot and then end quotes slash dot library, slash system services, slash update system. So all those people who are very against system D are probably rejoicing now because their cron jobs work differently than on system D. Well, and see, that's the funny part about, like, Linux has one of these weird spaces where even, like, people complain about writing software, games and stuff for Linux, because, well, Linux can be different. Like, one Linux distribution can be very different than another one. So even when you're trying to write malware for Linux, like, which specific Linux distros doesn't even affect. So even though this malware is technically for Linux, it might not even function on your Linux distro. Now, granted that most of Linux is using system D, so, you know, have fun, but... Yeah. I'm using system D right now, and I've been messing around with system D on MXLinks, which uses Sysvianet by default, but... I think that's what it's called. But anyways, so... I kind of want to use MXLinks a little bit more, but... Or switch over to, like, something like Void, like, completely different, where it's just run it. You know? I mean, where's Joshua Lee when you name him? Of course you should just use Gen2, because Gen2 uses run it or openRC or whatever hell it is. Yeah, it uses openRC. Actually, I think with Gen2, we're not going to get into it. Gen2, you can use system D, yes, but you're not supposed to. What I was going to say is, I think with Gen2, you can use any in-net system. I'm sure you can. I mean, technically, with Arch, you can use any in-net system, too. Really? Yeah, there's instructions for using other in-net systems. They're not very good instructions, but they exist. I mean, with so many binary packages... If you use Arch, you're using Arch with a different in-net system. Yeah. But there's a lot of packages that they repackage for. Because the vast majority of packages are made for system D, right? I mean, that's what I was saying. If you did install something else with Arch, almost every package you download would be built for system D, so... I mean, it'd be using any other distribution with a different in-net system. It's the same problem I've been having with MX Linux using a different in-net system. It's just... There are certain things that just won't run. For example, there's a Rofi plugin called Rofi Power Menu. It allows you to shut down and reboot and stuff like that. It won't work on MX Linux because it was written for system D. It uses system D... It tells you to shut down and reboot and stuff that relies on system D. We'll just rewrite the program. Come on. It takes no time. Let's rewrite it. It's weird because they've put in aliases in MX Linux. It may not be an alias, but whatever it functions the same way. It allows you to use the same syntax to shut down from the terminal and stuff. So you'd think that would work, but it's actually probably not doing this the same way as I was expecting it to. My news this week is that the canonical boys are at it again. They created a ISO that will allow you to install the full Ubuntu desktop on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB of RAM. Now, I do not have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB of RAM, but I would imagine that this doesn't actually function all that well, but that you could do it. I mean, getting it to run is kind of different than it being usable. This is GNOME. It's kind of sluggish on a PC that has Ryzen 7 3800 X, you know? I don't know. Do 4GB with GNOME on it? You don't have much extra space to play around with for programs. I don't know. It'd be interesting to see how it actually does run because they've gone through and done it. I think it was more like a thought experiment. The thing about this exciting is that if they can go through and make Ubuntu usable on this like a Monoram, that would then, I would think, filter into the actual Ubuntu experience and making that faster across the board. That'd be cool. Hey, I mean, to be honest, Ubuntu is kind of already pretty, I mean, it's still GNOME. GNOME is not extremely fast, but it is. It's gotten a lot better. Really, in all honesty, if Ubuntu can just figure out the Wayland issues and ensure that Wayland doesn't give me a pink hue over all my screen, that'd be great. But I don't know that GNOME getting faster. I hope this will translate over, but from everything that I see with the GNOME team, an advancement with GNOME in one area of computing does not translate over typically to GNOME in just general, sadly. Well, maybe a Ubuntu version of GNOME, it would work fine, but this stuff's never going to go upstream. Yeah. The way the GNOME developers do things is if we didn't create it, it doesn't exist. That's the way it is. But according to the article on OMG Ubuntu, this is actually fairly quick on the 2GB RAM Pi. It says it is speedy. I mean, I'd love to try it, but I have my doubts. I don't have a Raspberry Pi 4 just laying around to try it, because I definitely would because I just, I don't believe it's snappy. Okay. There's going to be that doubt, there's always going to be the doubt there. Now I'm going to have to go get a Raspberry Pi 4, but the thing is, if I were to buy a Raspberry Pi 4, I wouldn't want the 2GB of RAM 1. Hell no. Just pay a few more dollars and get the 8GB then you have some overhead room, you know? The thing about the Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi thing is, it feels like it's like one or two generations from being something like if you wanted to, in a couple generations, you could use it as your desktop computer. It seems like it's so close. I don't even think it's a couple generations away. I'm just waiting for a Raspberry Pi to announce their next product where I'm like, okay, this is the one where it's finally usable. It just seems like it's so close. It's really, really getting there. And once that happens, you imagine being able to buy a functional computer that you can use as a desktop system to do everything you'd normally do in a desktop system for like 40 bucks. That's just insane. Incredible. Especially in this day and age where you can't even buy toilet paper for 40 bucks. You know what I mean? So it's just kind of insane. I'm really, really excited. The thing is, I have a confession to make. I've never owned a Raspberry Pi before. Really? I've wanted one, but I always think what are you going to use it for? You have an extra computer there, you have five laptops sitting around. That's kind of the problem with Raspberry Pi. You're really excited, you get one from, I've owned two. And you play with them for a while and if you don't have a good if you don't need a TV that's not smart that you need to plug something up to and run Kodi or something like that to get TV on there. Then it's really nice, but practically, other than messing around with it doesn't get much use. Just sad. What I think I want to do is eventually because you can create a NAS with a Raspberry Pi 4. So you can go through and get several hard drives and kind of raid them together in a NAS. And they have these hard drive enclosures that look like NASs. But they're just hard drive enclosures. If you plug them into your computer they'd appear as five separate hard drives. And they're really cheap though. Like $150. Now granted, hard drives are fucking expensive. Which is what's preventing me from doing this. But you could go through and buy one of those. Get yourself your five hard drives and then hook it up to a Raspberry Pi which would then handle the software raid and probably use free NAS or something like that. And you'd have a NAS for like half the price of like a QNAP or one of the expensive Synology things. And that really appeals to me because I need a new hard drive. The external hard drive that I save all my stuff to makes horrendous sounds and it scares the living taillights out of me. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I am so glad you said that. I have a 14 terabyte drive that I got for Christmas. It's a USB one that plugs up. It's super nice. I love it. It makes noises that like sometimes I look at it and I'm genuinely like scared. Is it western digital? I believe so. Yes, it is. It's a my book. It's a western digital my book. This thing is not old. It's like a year. This thing is brand new. It's brand new. Mechanical hard drives are going to make noise. You've always heard in a computer old computers they make noise but this thing sounds like it's starting an engine and rumbling up a wooden gravel drive. It's horrendous. Sometimes this thing like it knocks. It's like it will like knock on like a again like I know it's not breaking or anything but it's just so weird. It feels like it's trying to crawl across your desk. Yes. I don't understand why this thing makes more noise than I have two mechanical hard drives in my computer. I use them all the time. They don't make hardly any noise but in this thing it sounds like a fucking it's horrible and it's like it sounds like it's failing and it scares me because like all my stuff is on there. Yes I have backups of it but it's not like real time backups. I have to do them with R-Sync because of reasons it's really hard to find a cloud provider that can back up like three terabytes of stuff for like a reasonable price. I'm not paying hundreds of dollars a month to back up my stuff. I just buy hard drives you know what I mean. So what I'm hearing now is that you just don't like you're poor that's why I'm here you're poor. You can't spend a couple hundred dollars to save up all your data a month. A month. This is basically like we're approaching rent territory. Anyway we need more subscription service anyways. That's true. That is it for the news let's go ahead and move on to the main topic which is dual foe I can't talk. It's like all the words just went right out of my mouth hole in different order than what they should have done. This is the reason why it's been so hard to like last week I was bragging like oh yeah I've recorded ten videos in the last five days. This week I've recorded hardly any videos because the words are coming out in weird orders. It's like I've had a stroke or something. It's really weird. Anyways the main topic which is I don't even know what I was going to say which the words I messed up I believe it was two fold. Two fold that's the word I was looking for. Wow words. You would almost think that I was a writer for a living or something. Actually yeah this is horrible. Anyways so we're going to be talking about the best ways to switch to Linux with things that you should do when you switch to Linux and then we'll talk for a little while about the best new user distro. So Tyler talk about some of the things that you think people should do when they switch to Linux. I'm highly interpreting your topic here by the way. I mean as you should. To me like when it comes to switching over to Linux like kind of one of the main things that you need to do is not actually like a physical task that you need to take care of but kind of a mental one like when you're going into Linux the whole point shouldn't I mean if you're interested in Linux the whole point should not be to do the same things that you're doing in Windows. Like if your goal with your computer is to sit down and mess with absolutely nothing and then just get in and mess around with one program if you're switching to Linux like again you're not familiar with Linux you're switching over to it don't spend a shit load of time like or be prepared to spend a shit load of time switching over because you're switching over it's different I feel like that's like a lot of people's problems when they switch over to Linux like they're in the same kind of mindset that I'm in right now like I want to work on my game that's it. If I have to do anything other than working on my game it's a problem I don't want to have to do that if that's the mindset that you're in it's probably not time for you to switch over to Linux yet like when you should switch over to Linux should be the day that you don't have anything to do that day you know you're like your day is free and open and you're ready to take on any task that like a problem that you run into and fix it because that's kind of the thing you're switching over there's going to be things to change yeah so the bottom line there is that Linux is not Windows exactly yeah like Linux is not Windows and you should you should expect to come over and do something you shouldn't expect to just install it and then be like oh well this is it done where's my Adobe where's my Adobe yeah okay alright so for me the number one alright so there's a couple things that you just absolutely have to do first of all back up your data like back it up your data on a hard drive that is not the hard drive you're going to be installing Linux on all of your data like documents photos everything you should be doing this anyways by the way this isn't just because of your switching to Linux you should be backing up your data the second thing you should do is not worry about your distro or any of that stuff but be prepared to have a dual boot I think I really do think okay let me put it this way I think for some people dual booting is still a good option for some people not if you're more technologically minded if you're someone who likes to tinker and doesn't have a problem with learning the terminal and all that stuff wipe away your hard drive and just switch to Linux if you're the kind of person who you're technological enough that you know how to burn an ISO and get into the boot menu and install Linux but there's still things that you don't know how to do technologically wise I think that for you the best thing that you could do is is dual boot and the reason why is because then when you come to a part where you don't know how to do something on Linux but you're not quite there yet in terms of wanting to learn how to do it you can but you have to do it like right now you can go in and do it on windows and you kind of use it as a safety blanket I don't think that that's the case for everyone and it's probably not a good idea for most people but I think that's one thing that you should do but to go along with that and the reason why I thought about dual booting and this is something that came up in my discord server for somebody who was switching to Linux a few days ago there's an option in almost every graphical installer that says install alongside so if you have windows taking up your entire partition a Linux installer will ask you if you want to install Linux alongside windows and it'll try to repartition your windows drive so that it can install Linux on it I beg and plead with you do not use this option it will not work okay I'm sure there's somebody out there that says well Matt I used it it worked fine you're the exception to the rule for the most part that option just does not work and the reason why is because windows is so attached to its own bootloader if you try to change that bootloader your windows install is just not going to work chances are your your Linux thing will be fine but you'll never see your Linux your windows thing again it's just because windows likes to control the bootloader so don't do that if you are going to dual boot if you're going to keep windows on there install Linux first and then reinstall windows and let windows control its bootloader or the other way around it probably would work as long as you leave an extra partition there you probably could I mean you'd have to know a lot more about grub that way but so I'd say Linux first and then windows that's the way to say um that's one of the questions that I get a lot right is that why can't I install alongside like windows will actually go through and do that if you if you in their installer it will install alongside you can do that or at least you used to be able to um but that doesn't work either so don't do that no in windows I don't think you can do alongside anymore if you've partitioned and left an open partition and tell windows to install there it'll do it um but yeah they look alongside thing it's kind of like if you're installing if you're installing a linux distro on a drive with another linux distro yeah you can install alongside and it'll work fine because like linux distros kind of respect each other yeah again you're more likely to have a problem doing it that way but typically linux distros will shake hands you're more likely to have a linux install work that way than you ever will a windows one I still wouldn't do it um just because I mean because basically what you're doing I mean obviously Tyler you know this but basically what you're doing is your windows or whatever you have on the hard drive is taking up the whole hard drive while you're explaining I'm sorry to cut you off but while you're explaining that I'm going to run to the bathroom because I have drank like almost all of this water and I'm going to die don't die in the bathroom I mean that'd be a horrible place to die um anyway so basically what that install alongside thing does is it has your whole windows drive there windows takes up the entire drive and then when it wants to install whatever you're installing it tries to push things towards the beginning of the disk I think it's the beginning of the disk and it tries to make space for your linux partition and then the problem emerges when it tries to control the boot loader in this case usually grub and the thing is windows doesn't often deal well with grub when it's installed in that manner so it's just a matter and the problem is that if you are messing around with your petitions and moving data around and stuff like that there's a good chance that while things are being moved around you're going to lose data and that's obviously a bad thing so um this is like harkening back to when I did the podcast all by myself I'm literally talking to myself and get on the stream so another thing you should do if you're going to switch to linux is be Tyler was already talking about this that linux is not windows so what you need to do is be adaptable to change because like Tyler was talking about you're not going to be able to go into linux and do the stuff the same way you plan on doing it but the bigger thing is that you're not going to be able to go into linux and find the same programs that you're familiar with so you have to be open to the idea of changing your workflow to suit the programs that are actually available on linux if you're not open to do that then like Tyler said don't switch to linux so like for example if you're used to using adobe audition to edit audio doesn't exist on linux you could probably try to get to work through wine but that's beyond a new thing to do so you're going to have to find something else whether you're using something like audacity or ardure or whatever the hell it's called you know those are going to work different than audition ever did so you're going to learn that thing so burps anyways I see you did not die in the bathroom Tyler thankfully no but it is now duly noted don't drink an entire smart water as the podcast is starting turns out not so smart yeah no no not a good idea okay so you got anything else here for things you should do to switch to linux um really kind of like I would elaborate on what you're talking about when it comes to like installing it like like obviously you're backing up your data should already be done but really if you want to have a really smooth time with trying out linux just have a whole drive just be like have a whole drive that you're just going to install linux to whether it be a separate one or the one that you have windows on already use the entire drive you're much less likely to have problems there again dual booting is an option but typically speaking you're going to have issues and if you if you enter in with the right type of mindset and part of that mindset being that that day that you're going to be trying out linux you've got all day you can just play around with your computer linux and not have a problem you're probably more likely to have a good time because whatever you have like issue wise I mean if if you don't care and you haven't spent seven hours trying to figure out the perfect linux distro to install which is again the dumbest thing ever like to me I feel like that's a lot of what causes issues people spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best linux distro to install first and then when they install it and have an issue they're like okay this is not good this is terrible it's like well instead of spending three hours trying to figure out which linux distro is the best which you haven't even tried out one yet try them out like just spend the day trying them out yeah that's the best advice that you could give is just don't choose the best linux distro which is silly because we're going to talk about the best linux distro here in a minute but try them all don't be afraid to try stuff I mean if audacity in that example I gave earlier if audacity doesn't work for your audio editing and you know recording needs try something else there's like 40 different audio editing tools and audio recording tools on linux probably more try them all if one doesn't work chances are another one will work and a lot of the times two people are like well I mean I would like to but to me the only like the best looking linux distro or the only one that I would want to use is you know like a bond to or something like that like here's the thing if you find a linux distro that looks really appealing to you but it doesn't work right on your system and the linux distro that does work right on your system you don't really like the way that it looks you're on linux you can change it yeah don't don't get it don't get attached to the desktop environments that's probably the problem that I had when I first started linux was that I I liked the way something else looks so I went and just used that and that's why I hopped so much she was but that's a good point is that understand the difference between distro and desktop environment desktop environments can be installed anywhere it doesn't matter what distro you're using and and then the distro thing would basically the only thing the only thing that matters when it comes to distro is package manager okay and that's probably the next thing that we should talk about is that the don't go while you're hopping around distros don't assume they all work the exact same way they're gonna they're gonna work mostly the same way like you can open up a file manager and your file manager is gonna mostly do the same thing every other file manager is gonna do because it's a file manager they manage files where you're gonna find differences is in we saw this in the line is tech tip things is where he tried to install something on manjaro every hop from papa west with with apt like that's I mean we made fun of him for that but that's a new user thing you assume the installing software on linux is the same across the board and it is not because they use different package managers so learn when you hop through distros we highly recommend you hop through as many distros as you want to use to find the best one for you eventually you might be like me I always come back to the to the to arco you know because it's the best or you might be like Tyler who's never found a good tiling or a good linux distro using windows okay arch is home but yeah sure anyway so try them all but understand that the package managers are going to be different depending on which one you are and this becomes harder to understand when you hop between sibling distros so for example if you hop from a boot to to linux mint they use the same package manager they are essentially the same right the same thing we're hopping from like mint to Debian or Debian to elementary OS or whatever they all use the same package manager but then you choose to go to a different family of distros so you moved him in jar or endeavor OS or arch or whatever then it uses pacman it's different so that distinction can be very hard for new users to grasp and the best thing you can do the absolute best thing you can do is when you are moving around linux and you're installing it for the first time do not be afraid to ask for help like join a discord server like the linux cast discord server or zany's lost go in there and ask for help you're going to have some people who are saying well you shouldn't use this distro you should use gen2 ignore those people okay they're just trolling you for less I will say you won't find those kinds of people in our discords pretty much at all in our discords be honest you'll definitely you'll definitely get somebody who will send you a troll message who will be like you should just install gen2 but at the same time you get that message there will be someone else who's typing out and giving you a real answer matter of fact the exact scenario happened the other day somebody asked what distro should I use one of the gen2 guys you should use gen2 and another what you should do is do sudo rm-rf don't do that either okay so you are going to meet trolls in the linux community but for the most part you're going to have a good experience with finding someone who's going to answer your question without being a douche bag about it and that's the number one thing you can do is ask for help if you don't understand something the worst that's going to happen outside of the trolls is someone's going to tell they're going to send you a link and say hey go read this they're going to send you a tutorial or a link to the arch wiki or to the ubuntu wiki or whatever that's likely to happen more often they're not telling you that they're too lazy to help you they're just saying hey this question you have to ask a lot go read this so that's the best thing and a lot of the times when it comes to linux and stuff when newcomers come over and they get overwhelmed you also have to understand the reason why it's important for you to try a lot of them is because every single linux distro is made for a different person a different use case someone who is using Debian only cares about stability they don't care about the amount of software that is available to them they don't care as long as the system stays running the terms that they need that is used pretty much everywhere on linux are available they're fine if you're someone who likes to use discord spotify you use every weird program under the sun you're like me you use unity hub as well as other weird programs you probably want to go with something like arch or another linux distro that's arch based or focuses on software availability like arch does it's you'll just have to change your way around linux a couple things we should talk about distros for a few minutes but I just wanted to make the comment that I'm not disparaging upon the character of people who like to use gen 2 I don't want to hear from you guys I hate you guys I'm always saying bad things about gen 2 gen 2 is probably a fine distribution I'm sure it is but even gen 2 users have got to admit that if you've never used linux before gen 2 is not the freaking option well yeah that and also anytime someone's asking what linux distribution they should use 99.9% of the time recommending gen 2 is a terrible because someone's going to take you seriously okay yes and I mean like gen 2 is good if you want to do everything like if you want to become a packet or a system maintainer like yeah gen 2 is the distribution for you but in almost every case when someone's asking like hey I like to use x program or my system is not fast enough what should I do gen 2 is not the option it's just not I mean I'm sure it gen 2 is the solution for when you're bored and you want to hop to a distro you've never used before or you've used gen 2 before you know I mean it's it's fine for an experiment or for someone who has the time and interested in learning how to do it it's an explicit choice distro you have to choose to do it it's not something you it's not something okay I want to distro hop I'm new to linux I'm going to go use gen 2 that's just that scenario has rarely if ever happened so the I just wanted to point that I saw some people in the comments saying well gen 2 is great like I'm sure gen 2 is great but it's the same thing I would never point a brand new user to vanilla arch linux even with all the installers now for vanilla arch linux I don't think it's a good option for new users I'm not even sure like manjaro is a good option for new users but it's at least more an option than vanilla arch is you know so um yeah that's the thing so I guess that kind of leads us to talk a little bit about if you were to switch to linux and you're brand new what distro should you choose now we've already said try them all but if you were to choose a starting point for your journey of hopping Tyler what brand new what distro should a brand new user choose um for me I it depends I really want to say elementary OS I really want to because it's so damn close to being exactly what you should give a new user because it's there's I mean you don't have a wealth of stuff to change about like aesthetics and everything like yeah you can change a few options but kind of what you're going to get windows or mag nothing insane um and it's very it's a limiting sort of desktop environment but for good reason like it makes sense I just I don't know that I would recommend it to a new user yet because you still have to understand flat hub and how to fuck all that shit to be honest if you're a new user just try linux mint like look I'm not a big fan of linux mint but linux mint it's pretty it's pretty rock solid you're killing me here don't use linux mint no alright so elementary OS is a good choice but here's my my answer to the question use Ubuntu okay and it's not because Ubuntu is the best it's because it's not because it's the best distro or it's the best looking distro or any of this stuff but Ubuntu is the most popular distro that's out there like the vast majority of people who use linux use Ubuntu or a flavor of Ubuntu but the vast majority of people use Ubuntu and the thing is is when you're a new user and you need help the first thing you're going to do is go to google and search for how do I do this thing or I've gotten this error how do I fix it and the vast majority of those tutorials are written for Ubuntu so if you're on arch and have that problem and you google how do I do this on linux you're going to get tutorials for Ubuntu and the process is not going to be the same you're going to have a bad experience so start with Ubuntu learn how to use linux use how to use the terminal learn how to use app learn how to get into the software manager how to do updates all the stuff that find the programs you want to use and experience your walking your growing pains because that way when you experience those pains and you have problems you can find tutorials because I swear to God if you're having that problem on Ubuntu 9000 other people have had the exact same problem and one of those people have a blog and they have a medium blog or something and they've put that solution on the internet somewhere that's why you should be using it when it comes to Ubuntu I think Ubuntu is not even a good recommendation anymore because of snaps? no not even that because Ubuntu doesn't work on my system like linux mint does I just want to hold you right there Tyler the vast majority of people who are running computers don't have a vertical monitor no but they do have a monitor or possibly a up-to-date graphics card like if you have let's just say that you have newer hardware like well see here's my main argument against what is linux mint like what is literally linux mint in tupon 2 that's all it is that's true but your argument is that if you have new hardware Ubuntu is going to be bad in your experience not bad but it's going to have issues the problem with that argument is that you've had issues in every distro that's a linux problem that's not well yes but ubuntu now because of it using wayland by default I understand that yes as a linux user I know that I can go down and switch over to xorg and not have problems but regardless given to a new user someone who's just trying to get into it and mess around and play with it ubuntu on my system on my regular script my vertical monitor can piss off here that's going to have issues everywhere my main monitor and that one comes with a pink queue they have a pink queue there's no way I can fix it I have no idea how to do it I have to switch to xorg to get it gone at least with linux mint on any piece of hardware that you have it just it just loads up linux mint on your new setup yet because you might have had maybe you're right then use linux mint but I would still say if you're going to go to linux mint route then you should at least understand that they're the same so you can follow the same tutorials at least then understand that I'm not going to force you to say that you should use linux mint because I know that would hurt you couldn't force me you couldn't force me to do that I mean you can use linux mint if that's what you want to do but there are better there are better options no no linux is fine I have problems with their development team that's there's my I have problems with linux mint because of that not because cinnamon is a fine desktop environment it's actually probably if you are coming from windows the best things you could do if you're looking for the best windows like experience either cinnamon or zore no s are going to be your options they're both based on a boon 2 the cinnamon vision of linux mint I mean they're both based on a boon 2 they both look and function almost identically to windows in almost every superficial way you can talk about once you get you drill into other things obviously package management they're going to be obviously different but at least in terms of look and feel they're similar so if that's what matters to you the look of your thing and you want to look as similar to windows as possible one of those is option so for example I switched my dad to a boon 2 and he's been using windows for the entire time to use a computer he's had no problems he never has to do an update I do the update so he doesn't actually realize that those things happen but with windows every time he shut the computer down at night he'd have to wait for it to say oh doing updates 10% 11% it doesn't do that so he loves that updates drive him crazy absolutely not just crazy but furiously mad why the hell is this thing doing updates how do you find the way it is so he loves linux for that if I could get my mom to switch to linux the whole family would be using linux right now but she's like the one holdout for windows and it's because file managers linux and file pickers on linux are terrible they're so bad so those are the answers if you're watching the replay of this podcast the live version you can go through the chat a lot of the people in chat had their own opinions we were kind of ignoring you guys no offense sorry if we stopped and talked to the chat the podcast would be 6 hours long that's just the way it is so that is if you're watching afterwards I'm sure there's like 4 people out there that's upset 6 hour podcast maybe someday we'll do like a 6 hour podcast I don't know I don't know an hour and a half already I want to get out of this chair but maybe for like 50,000 subscribers we'll do a long podcast that's so far away we don't have to worry about it by the time we hit 50,000 subscribers what are you talking about? I don't remember this obviously we didn't record this thing this podcast suddenly slips it just gets unlisted accidentally somehow unfortunately it's not in the free show the post show that's what would only be available to certain members alright anyway so that is it for the main topic now we have a section at the end of the show where we call pics of the week and usually we have two of those things but this week the windows user of the bunch of us didn't have one so so my pic of the week and this is available in chrome based browsers it's available on edge it's available in chromium and brave and chrome itself and they're called tab groups now I don't know how I didn't know that these things existed because they've been around for a little while but oh my god they're so good alright so basically what this is is it allows you to go through so let's just say you're the kind of person who has 50 or 60 or 70 tabs open at a time I'm not going to judge you I have workspaces like that it's good I don't have that many tabs but I usually have 30 to 40 and especially when I have opened up like a website where I like for a video idea or something like that and I just want to save it it's easier just to keep the tab open the thing with tab groups is you can go through and create groups of tabs that will color coded and then you can collapse them so that you so that they're not spread all the way along the whole bar they're just collapsed into the category of tabs that you have so right now I have ideas I have things to read and I have like stories one and they each have like 10 tabs in them and then you can collapse them so it only looks like I have 3 or 4 tabs open but really I have 40 tabs open it's so cool like how did I not know this the only downside at least in terms of the chromium based implementation of this is that by default you can't save them so it's okay as long as you have your browser set up so that it starts back up where you left off it will reopen the groups just fine then but only if you have one window if you have multiple windows and then you have groups in different windows and you close down then you're going to lose stuff you'll have to open up the open them up again they do have a chrome flag everywhere where you can enable saving so maybe that will eventually come to like the stable version but other than that so good man I just like like yeah I know you shouldn't use that many tabs and have that many tabs open all the time but I do the fact that I can now organize them in my category and collapse them is just I mean it's literally life changing it's so good yeah so good well I do have a question when it comes to your tab groups do you think this is only going to encourage you to have more tabs open most definitely like there's going to be points now where there's going to be some stuff okay so for example I have in some of my ideas category I have some tabs in there that have been open for months like they've been open for months every time I reopen up the browser they just open up right so for example I have one here of a tutorial of how to SSH into a virtual box VM and I want to do a video on that eventually but I haven't got around to it yet so I have the tab open there I mean I could just save the link somewhere I'm sure that could be possible but this is easier I also have one for when you draw river window manager it's been there for months and eventually I'm going to get to those things but now I don't see those things they're just kind of shoved into a category somewhere and I can just collapse them so yes definitely I will definitely be opening up more and more tabs I just wanted to make sure that I just knew that this was definitely encouraging bad behavior the thing is that now that I have this you don't really know how many tabs you have open total before if you had like all your tabs open and you know they got really small right you know they got really small and it took up the whole bar and you realize like holy crap I have a lot of tabs open but now I'm looking right now I have three pin tabs, three groups and three open regular tabs and that's it so it looks like I only have like nine tabs open but really there's 40 there so if I opened up like a system monitor right now why is brave taking up 12 gigabytes of RAM yeah so mh says that firefox has collapsible tab categories as well I did not know that it's been now a couple months since I've actually used firefox which is like a world record for me to me I think it's really sad that every time I go like because even though I'm on windows it's not like I haven't been trying out different Linux distros and seeing what's different I don't even use firefox in Linux anymore like why the thing I missed most about firefox when I switched away from it is the user chrome the ability to change the UI I missed that for about a week now I'm used to just use the way brave looks I still don't love brave I still have the stupid cryptocurrency ads enabled I don't know why I do it's like I'm performing a social experiment where I'm trying to figure out how many how much money I can make with that stupid cryptocurrency and I'm pretty sure that I've had those brave ads enabled for like over a month now I've earned like a dollar fifty you know definitely I'm going to spend that all in one place we can even buy a fucking world toilet paper there you go there you go you just save up you get yourself a free roll of toilet paper it'll all be worth it cryptocurrency is completely worth it it's fake it's monopoly money is what it is anyways that is it for us on this podcast holy crap we've been going for freaking ever we're over an hour we're really actually pretty consistent between an hour and ten minutes is usually where we're at much the consistent forward core times and we're pretty good if you want to get in contact with us all the contact information was provided earlier in the show so I'm not going to go through and give that again patreon.com.com before I go or before we go we should talk about our current patron Sid A. Devon East Coast Web Gen 2 is fun to, oh wait a minute Gen 2 is fun to, not actually there anymore I'm so used to saying it Sid A. Devon East Coast Web Petrico Primus J-Dog Peter Crucible Dark Bandit 6 holy crap I almost made it all the way through in one breath there I'm getting really good at it but people keep moving around it's messing with my brain so thanks everybody who supports us on patreon we really do appreciate it I can't even begin to tell you how much it just bothers my mind that people send me money for this nonsense I mean seriously thank you so much Tyler also has a patreon page I don't know what the link is is it official zany? it should be aka zany aka zany the problem is you have different you or else for everything I only have two it's zany og and aka zany but you have official zany somewhere right maybe I used to use that I don't think I use it anymore so patreon.com slash aka zany we'll get you to Tyler's patreon page so definitely support one of the two of us it doesn't really seriously matter which one just and we also do have the merch store which is kind of the best way to support the podcast there is a merch store there the link to that is in the video description in every single video that we make so definitely check that stuff out so thanks everybody for watching we record this live every Thursday around three o'clock p.m. eastern time I stay around because it's usually at least a quarter after before we even get started then we bullshit for 45 minutes recording and then it's five o'clock before we even get done and there's a reason why we had to take a potty break midway through I'm just saying we're not there yet where we are done thank you for watching coming up next week I actually don't know what we're doing next week so it'll be a surprise for you and for me so we'll see you then see ya