 Hey everybody, welcome to the Linux Cast on your host Matthew, and I'm joined by Martin Good evening, Matt. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm using Windows. Let's just put it that way Yeah, it's it's horrible so I bought a Audio interface. It's a scarlet solo something or the other in order to use so about maybe five years ago I bought this like $400 microphone Yeah, and How many will use it because I don't have like because it only works with SLXLR and stuff So all right, so I had to buy an audio interface and it doesn't work with with Linux all that much So that's gonna be something I'm gonna be troubleshooting in the next week. Anyway, so Martin. How are you doing this week? Yeah, doing well. Thanks Matt. How was your Thanksgiving by the way? It was different. I'm guessing yes without all the family around it was definitely different But me my mom and dad we managed to you know, we cooked a ham and just Had a little family get there. It was it was fine, you know, nothing normal You guys don't do do you guys do Thanksgiving in the UK? I don't even know No, I didn't But just thankless people over there, you know Obviously, I'm kidding UK people are they're just lovely people I make a lot of people. It's alright. No, we make the big deal in Christmas to be fair. We have we have Easter as well Not really we get together on mind holidays really You guys are probably the smart ones. Canada does their Thanksgiving like a month early, which is confusing. Yeah, I Personally, I think that they do it a month early just so that they can do Christmas earlier than the rest of us But that's just mine What have you been doing on Linux the last because there's been a couple of weeks as we've record been recording So what do you've been doing on Linux lately? Yeah, I'm not a great deal on Linux I was in the depths of ebay and I saw a couple of Linux format magazine which I've Started my subscription when back in March. It's really good magazine Tells you all the info that you actually need to know of no filler and you get a DVD with it to try out Okay, but so I'd won 24 magazines off this guy It was 8 pound postage and packaging so he's combining up So I missed out on some other auctions. I it messaged him and I Bring the story to a close. I've ended up with 82 issues and about 75 discs spanning 2010 to 2019 So I've got a hell of a lot of reading, but it's a really good magazine. I think you can have it You can subscribe to it in the USA. I think obviously you'll pay a fair bit of tax But it's a really good magazine covers everything and Linux related Span up fair and OS to give that a look and so far. It's nice and clean distro quite impressed Just need a bit more time to it to draw any conclusions stroke distro hop KDE desktop like I said nice cleaning to face. Yeah, quite happy. Maybe it will be a daily I'm quite happy with KDE neon, but Yeah, I'm always looking to find the perfect one But I'm more than happy with KDE neon to be fair, but yeah, just something different to look at You know what we like is fair and based on Ubuntu. I Think so. Yes for the KDE desktop. Mm-hmm Yeah, I But I've been I used to booting like a virtual machine this last week. So you should be proud of me. I Missed the AUR immediately Did I did you? She went straight back on to the command line and dropped a few What's this PPA nonsense, it's horrible I'm doing I'm gonna do a video about No taking apps and the one of them that I'm gonna cover is Joplin and it's broken on arch the arch package it just won't launch So I had to get you could sign into the Groovy Gorilla and install it through there. It was and it was a snap package It was like it's a snap package. I haven't used snap in ages. It's so adorable So personally I've been messing around with a new window manager called DWM. It's a made by the suckless guys and it's Very very minimal out of the box and very very complicated. It was a pain in the rear end to get set up But I'm really very proud of how well I've done with it because it's I don't know any C programming language at all And this is a program. This is all configured in C. So I've done quite a bit of learning in C the last couple weeks So business kept you quite busy. Yeah. Yeah, it has it's nice because I like you know I've pretty much stopped distro hopping. So I don't I just stick on arco or arch But I like switching back and forth between the window managers because it gives me something new to to look at So DBWM is what I've been doing there. And then I've I've been trying to go browser agnostic with my bookmarks basically to use either Rofi or The menu in order to like access like a bookmarks file or whatever so I can when I switch between browsers I just have to you know Press a key binding and do that. I finally found something called Boku that Basically has a D menu script where it will set let me Save all my bookmarks and stuff and then I can just you know, press a key binding type in a few letters of whatever the title of the Bookmarkers and I can go there and it will just open up in whatever default browser I have set at the time. So I'm actually quite proud of that as well. So I've been geeking out on stuff like that Because I use Firefox currently I've noticed if you're right click on Firefox and click on pin tab I've never ever to pin tabs before always. I'll obviously keep my book box relatively Tidying in a decent order, but the pin tab options quite good. Just puts it to sleep in the corner and just Show you any notifications if you've got any and so that's quite good Just to leave it there not really using a lot of memory or anything Yes, but the most often we turn bookmarks recently Yeah, I do some I usually have like three pinned. I always keep Tweetdeck pinned over there second Well, I don't spend as much time on Twitter as I used to all right. Anyway, so Let's go ahead and jump into the contact information if you want to give us a I was gonna say give us a ring, but this isn't the 1990s where we use phones If you want to contact us or get a whole of us or follow us or whatever you can do so at Twitter on Twitter At the Linux cast is the main email or main Twitter account Basically that just tweets out about new episodes every once in a while. I'll retweet something from you know, nine to five Linux or something You can also follow me on Twitter. I'm at MTWB Martin's Martin Twitter you can find these links in the show No, you can subscribe to all of our podcast feeds and Such at the Linux cast org that just transfers you over to our anchor page You can also contest contact us via email if you're You know still use email the Linux calm the Linux cast at gmail.com making also like us on Facebook for People who use Facebook Facebook comm slash links You know, I derided everybody's who who uses every platform and I like if you use Twitter You can do this. I mean who uses Twitter anymore if you want to use Email I mean come on. What are you 50 years old? If you want to subscribe to us on YouTube, you can also do that at the link in those show notes We don't have a pretty URL for that yet because we don't have enough subscribers So make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel because I've been doing a Video every day. We also post the podcast there almost immediately after we record it. So Definitely a lot of good stuff there. So The first things on the agenda are to our two news links that we said now I've Ha in interestingly enough, I just made a video about my first one. So Martin, why don't you do the do yours first your first link? Yeah, no problem. Linux on Apple M1 Let's face it. We all like actual whether you don't Apple architecture and the smooth lines and the way they present battery life and things like that But a guy called Hector more Martin Also known as Mark and it's recently launched a patreon project to reverse engineer the Apple M1 Mac to run on Linux natively Now he's got a patreon. He's got three pound five fifty and ten pound fifty a month He wants to earn enough so he can do it as a full-time job basically. He's currently sitting on 966 patrons, so there's a lot of interest now. I think the interest with this guy Is mainly because of his history Did you ever have a Nintendo Wii? Oh Yeah for about maybe 10 minutes I'm one of those silly people who threw the Oh the thing you know was playing the golf or something and ended up tossing the The controller and end up breaking that and I just never replaced it. Yeah, well, he's what this guy actually worked on Jailbreak in the way and helping create the homebrew channel, which was basically Stick your ISOs on the drive and it reads them and plays them is also put Linux on the ps3 Is he's done that on the slim and up-to-date ps3 units is also ported Linux onto the ps4 so this going If anyone's going to do it this guy is So I think if anyone is interested hop on to patron. I mean I'll probably have the Disapple M1 in about what 12 years when I can actually afford it You can buy it on eBay for really cheap. Yeah, but it'll be absolutely I mean if you saw the reviews of it, I mean, it's it's just a gorgeous machine Obviously not power hungry with the arm Relative slightly cheaper than the usual premium point. I think it's still Still too high for me, but yeah, just I mean the only Apple thing. I've really got sir an iPad, but it's just Like Linux it just works doesn't it does the job, but with Linux on the same one. It'd just be phenomenal. I think How about yourself what new what news is intriguing you all right, so There's a new Ubuntu Remix out to call the Ubuntu web and I just did a first look of it on a video Yeah, actually yesterday on the podcast and I actually didn't plan as I put this link in this this link in your ages ago It's it's supposed to be a Chrome OS thing but based on Firefox, but I Was reading I've really lambasted this in the video that I did yesterday But I read afterwards that the developers like ten years old so I feel really bad about it I was like this is dumb. Why does this exist? Why is the developer wasting their time on this? It's really stupid and then like said he's ten apparently he's ten years old I read this on the internet. I have no clue if it's true or not, but I feel terrible I'm not taking the video down because everything I said is still true Fair play to the guys say it again Martin fair play to the guy. Yeah, well, he's um He he's doing though. He did the there's a What what unity version version that he's doing he's doing something called the unity remix basically It just uses a unity 7 for Ubuntu so apparently he knows his stuff, but this this This web remixes basically just a good note version of Ubuntu with a GNOME with a couple extensions installed and then a whole bunch of Like links to Firefox tabs that you have to sign into to some really shady weird like eCloud service It's just it's really really weird But I mean the idea behind it is cool I mean, it would be kind of awesome to have like a really low-powered Version of Linux that runs on web technologies. It's just Firefox. I mean Firefox try to do this with Firefox OS, right? So it'd be cool to do that, but that's not what really what this is So it was just disappointing to me just a bit But then like I said the guy's 10 years old, so maybe he'll do better. I mean you gotta learn Oh, yeah, great future. Definitely. Yeah, I mean he already knows how to create a distro I don't know how to do that. So I mean, I couldn't create an ISO on my own if I had to right so Definitely couldn't burn an ISO back at the age of 10 put it that way. That's about as far as I could get to I can put on a USB, but I couldn't actually create my own anyway, so If if you're interested in it, you should I got the links links to both of those things in the show notes. So Moving on to our main topic now When I was still doing this show solo, I did like five reasons why you should use Arch Linux And I got some comments on that like you're you're such a lit Arch fanboy and And I didn't have a good comeback for it because I am indeed an Arch fanboy. So Martin you're like an Ubuntu only kind of guy, right? Like you make basically your favorite distros tend to run be based on Ubuntu. Yeah, and deputy and really Yeah, I'm the opposite. I don't like Ubuntu at all. So I thought that it would be interesting to talk a little bit about how the reputation of arch is kind of Transformer the last four or five years into being something that Like the whole I use Arch Linux by the way, you know, like it's some kind of badge of honor to wear because I know I'm guilty of it because like like I'm proud to use Arch Linux And it's dumb to be proud of what distro you're using because it's not as if you had any hand in making it so I Had a couple videos here that I that I linked to basically it was just saying that Luke's video is basically here's the reason why you should use Arch Linux And I can't actually remember what the other What the other video was because I've looked at this been eight years ago. Oh It was just one that I dropped in the notes It was just I said arch Linux memes No, there's a hole. Oh, that's cool Yeah, I should definitely have to take a look at this Wait, is it in the wiki? All right So I probably not watch the video right in the middle of this, but that's hilarious. I Mean, it's good. Sorry. I mean it as you say that you didn't build arch Linux But essentially you do don't you really? Well, and because it's so much harder to When you install Ubuntu or something that's based on Ubuntu you get in there you get the the unity installer or whatever it's called You know, yeah, you go through six steps, you know, you choose your you know and enter your password and you're installed Right. It's not like that with Arch Linux. You have to jump through all these hoops You have to use the TTY, you know, and it's it's pretty complicated a new user And this they're really really good at following instructions and have fused a TTY before in the past probably can't do it. So it gives you the sense of Pride that you you know, you're at least smarter enough to have installed arch Linux And then you have to look and you find someone who's never installed arch Linux And you have to look down on them because they're obviously so stupid. They can't do it That's obviously the case, right? I mean it's it it's silly because that's not really the case but it's because I think it's because the I mean If gentoo was more popular you'd probably have this same kind of thing because you have to Compile your own kernel and that's not something that you know a noob could do So right so That installation process I think is what has led to the entitlement of arch Linux users for at least For them, you know in some ways Yeah, I mean, I suppose the arch way I mean the interdates a hard way. Let's face it I suppose you do get a bit of understanding exactly how Linux does work. I'll guess in I mean, I'll just Plug in the there's just so you just get whatever distro want to run up. I don't have to type any command lines or Or things like that, but then again you get your system set up exactly how you want it I mean, I I've tried it before and I've just thought No, because it literally is a hard way. I'll just find a nice release That's not full of loads of packages. I'll never ever use it and just stick to that So I mean and yeah, I'll use this probably do look down on other users for not reading the f in manual and things like that It's going back to tribalism, isn't it at the end of the day? I mean Everyone thinks a distro is better than someone else's and recommends a distro I don't particularly like the fact that our tuners users will recommend arch because I'm bloody I don't ever recommend that to probably Well, you wouldn't recommend it to anyone that's never used Linux at all. I mean if there was High up in IT and do this stuff then then possibly if the new bits and pieces and was quite happy on the command line I'd agree. I'd agree with that for vanilla arch, but I mean arch-based distros. Maybe not so much because You know kind of set up for new years, but even then rolling distros in general kind of She's shy away from new users because of all the you know because things do break right? I mean and if you don't if you're not Interesting you're willing and willing to put in that investment towards you know Solving things when things are broken because when I first started using Linux, I wasn't really invested in Fixing things when something broke. I just switched to a new distro. I mean, I was like, oh You know, there's a problem with this thing I'm using so I'm just gonna go to Ubuntu or I'm gonna go to you know, you know Solace or whatever So but I don't do that. I think now that I've used Linux more from longer I'm more interested in solving this problems, but you're definitely right that is that my distros better than your distro and What what's really interesting though Martin is that um The arch Linux users can look down on each other based on their knowledge, right? So if you use the arch Linux for ages But you still have to ask a question and you didn't happen to go through and look at the arch wiki You're in so much trouble because they're obviously going to be very kind of sending about pointing you towards the documentation Yeah, yeah, it's interesting Mentioning Manjaro. I've just checked term distro watch Manjaro's gone up to number two So I've got MX Linux number one Manjaro number two and Mint and then pop OS So I mean it's a body uptake to Manjaro's is it's getting ever popular especially to knock mint off number two Yeah, it I feel like a what I saw Manjaro at like number one for a while like a couple years But I could be that could be just in my brain. I mean I could be completely making that up I mean it's a case with all the troubles they had internally. It just dropped down a bit and Well, it's easily forgotten about that and it's in pieces in tech Isn't it? It is it's not as bloated as Arco. Arco is my favorite arch based distro, but Manjaro has a certain aesthetic that kind of I don't know it doesn't appeal to everybody that green and you know weird stuff and then a Choosing which desktop environment you want to use it was a little bit. I know it's not it's not quite as upfront as like You know open to or whatever. Thank you. You download Ubuntu. You're getting Ubuntu I mean they have different flavors, but if you're a new user and you download something Called Kubuntu. You're not really thinking you're downloading Ubuntu You're thinking you're downloading Kubuntu. You think it's something completely separate. I mean because you change there You don't know what the difference is Yeah, it's just um, I Feel like I suppose somebody reviewed a Debbie and vase version of A version of Debbie and that was running some different in its system some different assistant either day and they're claiming like they were reviewing it as if some New user was going to come in and it's it was called Devon Devon something like that Linux Yeah, basically the person who was reviewing it said that you know I'm gonna review this as if it's a brand new to Linux users like Come on. First of all the discovery on that thing I mean, you'd have to be really depth that deep down the rabbit hole of Google to find this minimalistic version of Debbie and Chances are if you're a new user, you're not gonna find Arch really you're gonna. You're not gonna find Manjaro You're gonna you're gonna Google. What's the best? You know Linux is for new users and they're gonna point you towards Ubuntu or mint, right? Yeah, so That was completely off topic, but um, so You have you I'm gonna I promise I won't look down on you Have you ever installed like vanilla arch Linux on a system Martin? I think when I'd started up I thought let's have a look at this arch business. They seem to be far superior according to what's wrote down and I just thought Soda just Put something else and I thought I can't be asked going through all that as a new user anyway Using the command line. Yeah We'll say I don't copy command lines from the internet, but you've still got to do it to get started, but arch I just thought no I'll just stick to the user-friendly Distros and typing the odd commands when if and when needed, but I could say I'm a gooey guy You're a command line guy, so I Definitely am yeah, but the but the thing is I've installed arch Linux successfully one time Exactly once and it was good. It was fun It made me feel Proud of myself But since then I've realized that I'm just much too lazy to do it So I mean when I have to reinstall on my main computer I just use Arco or you know, I'd use manjaro or some kind of because I'm always gonna be on an arch basis I prefer the a you are I can't stand PPAs. I can't stand snaps So I I'm gonna use arch, but I'm gonna use an edge arch-based distro that has an easy to install You know a staller, so that's just me being completely lazy I mean the arch user repository. I mean That's not monitored easy No, I could upload anything essentially I could do a program eagle I mean obviously some of the guys will spot it or spot some sort of malicious script And things like that, but I'm quite happy with current Debian's setup of knowing that that's whatever on if I'm just browsing through or synaptic or whatever Pleased to know that I'm not gonna don't download anything that's gonna Malware or damaging or some sort of key logger. I mean that with one thing that I Yeah, I can't see the a you are I did I mean obviously it's superb help to yourself and God knows how many packages, but they're quite bloody. I gotta defend my a you are man tens of thousands go on then Defend it. All right, so you're right about snaps snaps is it comes from a proprietary store that the snap stores Proprietary is close or so they monitor that stuff but Snaps are fairly new and a lot of things still come from random PPAs on the internet and those are not monitors Those are just just like they you are you get those you go to a website like you're on windows and find a PPA that you Want to install for of a program and you know, that's Those aren't I mean that could be just random people too. So I mean, yeah Yeah, if you come out of if you go on the web obviously you're gonna find some Some at the my world don't damage your system, but I will usually Use unless it's a new package that I've read about or heard about I will use well currently. I'm using a discovery on the KDE but Yeah Okay, I love plasma plasma is one probably if I didn't use a desktop environment I would definitely use plasma, but this cover is so in my brief The other day I was using the boom to store and it's it's like a fork of genome web genome not gonna I'm gonna know software. It's got so much. It's so good. It looks like an actual like You know, that's an actual store front. Yeah, and then you know, you log into plasma and the Discovery looks like it's did like five or six years ago. It hasn't made any hardly any changes at all Yeah, I will agree with that. It's not the Visually pleasing as everything else to do. I mean, obviously you could drop into your Your games your internet and things like that, but yeah, I'll give it to no man and various other stores that Once you load up the store nice and pretty yeah a couple of applications that they the favor at the start, but It's just over all the knowledge experience Everyone seems to agree that elementary OS has the best-looking store front All right, I have so many problems with elementary OS. We should do it. We should do it Different show on that just so I can rant about how much I hate it. Um, I'm very very grumpy lately Subjective stores With arch do you not get sick? I mean blah blah blah bleeding edge this that or whatever. Do you not get just Overwhelmed by the amount of updates that you do get through. No, I just do updates once a week. I'm good You just do it once a week. Yeah, I have it said via a cron job You remember I nerd at heart here. I do things in the terminal So I you know I set up a cron job for this thing and you know I just runs once a week at midnight and it will update and then we'll restart the computer It's just a little strip that I wrote Automatically but so but so you've never got anything flashing up. You've got updates things like that. It's all taken care of That's not too bad. No, see that it's not like a boot to like a boot to like if you don't do the updates It'll do a little pop-up once you know once everyone's once yeah, it's like once a month or something It's not it's not like windows like oh my god. You have an update. I'm restarting your computer Oh, you're doing something important. I don't care. I'm restarting anyways screw you As you can tell I'm using Windows. I hate it I'm sitting here. Don't say that because it you'll have a reboot soon. Yeah, I'm sure I will it's because I haven't done Software up that dates on isn't probably like four or five months. It's horrible. It's probably screaming at me in the background I'm just trying to ignore you. Yeah, yeah Like Arch won't tell you at all of it you have updates You'd actually have to go out and install a specific package to warn you about updates Otherwise, you just do it whenever you want to do it Now granted the longer you wait the more like you are to have like conflicting packages or something So that's the reason why I do it once a week I'm you know, and I've been doing that for I've been I've had this install of Arca, which is just basically Arch for oh Probably five months now just and I haven't had a single problem I mean a fair play to watch Arch users. I mean you carry on testing that software. So when it comes to me, it's no Yep, you keep testing that software I Will take one for the team. All right, let's jump into apps of the week Martin. You're at your app of the week Right. It's not Possibly used most frequently to be fair Belina etcher Now this is for Windows and Linux It's an app image and I use it just like I say flesh and ISOs to USB all my EMS EMMC module for my pine book part works. Well, how do you physical drives to save any mistakes? I'm quite happy with that Whatever I log into I'll always bring up Belina etcher instead of using the onboard one That's my app of the week to be fair probably One of the main apps I do go to For installing OSOs and things like that. Do you ever use? Have you ever used Belina at all when I'm lazy? I will in fact do it. Yes. I'm not Easy, isn't it that probably came across as me calling you lazy Martin? That's not no, that's not what I just meant that I Preferred just using DD Gosh, no, I know it's dangerous, but I I live on the edge of insanity and If you don't risk ruining your entire hard drive every time you don't want to burn an ISO, what's the fun in living? Four clicks and I've got my eyes so sorted. Thank you. I stick to Belina etcher, but that's my pick I F then profile of the out profile and then you know Status equals progress and you know, you know, whatever It's just you know, all right, so my pick I I'm one of those people who like to play at being organized I'm not really organized, but I like to find tools that supposedly will help me be organized and Call it a day But I've recently started like I said, I started doing a whole bunch of videos for the the YouTube channel And I've been trying to do some I've Originally started out just completely winging those videos. I mean probably could tell I would just sit there and babble and Oh and oh my god, and I don't know I lost my place and it's what was it was it was bad And they're still not good But but they're getting better because I went through and started actually writing some you know Taking notes and making sure I was prepared for these videos beforehand. Yeah, and the tool I've been using to kind of schedule videos and make scripts and Organize things is a it's an app called notion. It's a web app it has native apps for Mac OS and Windows, but it doesn't have a native app for Linux, but somebody Took and took the web version and put it in a container and they called it lotion L-O-T-I-O-N Very clever. It's obviously free. It's not open source because it's just basically it's basically like an electron wrapper over a proprietary piece of software Yeah, but there's some there I mean I couldn't even go through and tell you all the things that notion can do it you know it can do tables and and databases and you know all sorts of things it's kind of like a very souped-up version of like a Evernote or something, but you know it does so much more. It's kind of awesome and it's also Free to use. I mean you can go through and you Use it as much as you want. They used to limit you to like a thousand notes or whatever, but now it's completely unlimited So I'm actually thinking about pointing us towards using it for the show notes Yeah, really awesome, and it'll allow us to kind of put them all in one place But we'll talk about that later. We'll do well, too. Sorry, would you rather link that to your Android phone? Yeah, it has a has a notion has an Android app. Yep And like I said, it's a fairly good Android app because it just uses it does everything the desktop app would do So, yeah Oh, I've got a joke for you actually. All right, I'm up for that How do you know that a person is an orchid Linux user? Hmm. I'm not sure. He will tell you about it 100% true. I definitely use Arch by the way I should I need a teach. I need a t-shirt and a mug, you know, I You know, you can't use arch without a t-shirt and a mug. So I'm gonna have to do that. Anyways, that is it for us this week What is our topic for next week? I'm not even sure next week. I think it Linux hardware and laptops Yeah, we're gonna talk about system 76 and hardware software vendor school That should be fun We will both talk about a hardware that neither of us can afford Yeah, that's what I was just thinking Like neither one of us have ever had a seven system 76 device I'm pretty sure because they're like $3,000. I like when I was looking for a new computer, you know, I was like I'd like a system 76 and then I went through and built one. I was like, holy I Can't afford that Anyway, so Oh, they're oh, they're awesome. I just Anyways, we'll talk about that in much more detail next week and we'll see you then Thanks for watching. Cheers. Bye. Bye