 It's time for another edition of HeyDT. This is where I answer some questions and comments that I've been getting in regards to the YouTube channel. The first question I want to address today is one I've gotten many times in the last couple of years, but I've never really addressed it on camera and it goes something like this. HeyDT. What's the point of ViSudu? Why can't I just edit that file in Nano or Vim? Well, the point of ViSudu and when he's asking this question, there is specifically a file on your system, slash etsy slash sudoers. It's your sudoers file and sometimes you have to go in and edit that file and typically you will see this especially on minimal Linux installations like my Arch installation video I have to go in and manually edit that sudoers file and you have to run the command ViSudu or you don't have to, but you should. ViSudu is designed basically to prevent you from breaking your system because if you edit the sudoers file badly, if you mess up the syntax, then it's going to completely screw up sudo on your system. And on many Linux installations, the only way to obtain root privileges for your user is to invoke sudo because on some systems there, you can't just eschew, you know, you don't have access to the root user. You have to use sudo and if sudo is broken, then you've pretty much broken your system and then you have to try to rescue the system, get into some system rescue mode or maybe cheroot into the system. So that's really the point of ViSudu and just because it's ViSudu doesn't mean you actually have to use ViSudu as the Vi editor. You can actually specify ViSudu to use the nano editor if you prefer. All you need to do is in the terminal type editor equals nano space ViSudu and it will launch slash XC slash sudoers inside nano for you, but it will still run those system checks to make sure that if you bugger up that file in some way, you know, you won't break your system. The next question or comment that I have gotten literally thousands of times since starting the YouTube channel. It goes along the lines of something like this. Hey DT, why do so many YouTubers steal each other's content? And when they say steal each other's content, they could mean two different things here. Typically what is actually legit stealing somebody's content would be this here. I make a video and then somebody else downloads my video, an exact copy of my video, uploads it to their channel on YouTube and tries to pass it off as their video that is legitimately stealing my content. But typically people don't do this. At least they don't steal my YouTube video and then upload it to their YouTube channel because they know YouTube will detect that stuff pretty quickly. What they'll do is they'll rip off my video and then they'll upload it to some other video platform, you know, to their channel on some other platform and pretend that that's their content or pretend that they're me and try to make a few bucks on that other platform. That is really stealing somebody's content. But 99% of the time people ask this question, why do so many YouTubers steal each other's content? What they're really asking is why do so many YouTubers cover the same topics? Well, there's two things you have to understand. The people that ask this question, I don't think realize how many people are on YouTube. There are millions and millions, probably tens of millions of YouTube channels, hundreds of millions of videos on the platform now. And with that much content, you are going to find videos, multiple videos on any topic you search for. You're not going to ever have one video on a specific topic. The fact that you guys assume that video creators can make a video on a topic and nobody else can ever touch that topic is a little strange to me. I don't understand why people ask this question. I think some people, they ask this question like, hey, you stole that topic from this guy or that guy stole that topic from you. Think YouTubers will go and watch somebody else's video and then make the exact same video. I don't ever see that. I have never, you know, I often cover topics other people have covered. People cover topics that I've made. I mean, I've made nearly 800 videos. It's hard for other content creators, especially in the Linux space, not to cover some of the same topics that I cover. But I've never watched somebody else's video on a topic that I've already done and it actually be the same video. You know, everybody has their own take on everything. And it's nice actually to get two, three, five different looks at something from a bunch of different people's eyes because the way I take a look at something is not going to be the way somebody else takes a look at that particular subject. And what makes this question really interesting is I think a lot of viewers think that all these YouTube creators watch each other, even in small niches like Linux, you know, but even though Linux is a small niche, there are probably legitimately hundreds, probably maybe even thousands of people that do occasional Linux content. I don't know all the people that make Linux content and I definitely don't watch all these people. I rarely watch other people's content because I simply don't have time because I'm doing my content. I have absolutely no free time. I'm never sitting around watching what other people are doing on their channels. I wish I had that time, but I don't. And even if I did because I spent so much time doing Linux stuff, you know, in my spare time, I'm not going to watch Linux YouTube videos. But this kind of content, I don't think people realize how much work goes into this content like I'm making this video right now. And I'm going to publish this video the day I recorded it. But you have to understand I'm going to spend probably at least an hour, maybe two hours recording this video. Then I will spend two to three, maybe four hours editing a video. Although this kind of rent video probably won't take that long because I'm not going to do massive editing of this thing. But then I have to create a thumbnail that can take a while. I may have to take a picture, snap a picture, you know, for my face on the thumbnail is what I'm probably going to do for this video. Have to upload it to YouTube. It's going to take some time to upload a video, create the description, create the tags. It seriously could take me four to six hours to make this video today. And you guys, I'm saying that because I don't think people realize how much time goes into this. Like they will see two YouTube creators publish a video within hours of each other. And then the one that I guess published second stole the other one's content. So everybody, oh, you saw such and such as video and you made a video on that same topic. No, they didn't. There's because most people. And when I say I could spend six hours on this video today, most people spend days making their content legitimately. They record a video and then spend multiple days editing that video. And they rarely publish on the same day they recorded. A lot of times you guys are watching videos that that guy recorded the day before, three days before, sometimes two weeks before they actually publish the video. They never saw anybody else's content on that same subject. You know, people and I've had this happen with me, complete coincidence, where me and another creator have published the same video, sometimes within minutes of each other on a topic that is way off the beaten path. Like a topic nobody would ever think about. It's not common, you know, Linux topics or, you know, as like I will find some really obscure piece of software. And I plan to make a video about it. Nobody's ever heard of it. I've never seen a video about it. And, you know, 15 minutes after I publish my video, somebody else publishes their video. You know, they didn't just spend 15 minutes making that video. They probably recorded. They probably recorded it before I recorded mine. I just published mine first. You know, it's just coincidence. When you have millions and millions of content creators all making videos on YouTube, these things happen. And I'm telling you, 99% of the time, it's complete coincidence. If you just happen to be following, you know, two creators and they happen to post a video on the same subject, you know, within days or weeks of each other. Matter of fact, it's so common. I've gotten to the point. I really don't care anymore. Like if I make a video and I go through the all the hassle, the countless hours of recording the video and editing the video. And then I see somebody else publishing a video on that same topic. Maybe before I get mine published. I'm not just going to scrap all the work I did. I'm still going to publish my video because it's going to be different anyway. Whatever I did on camera is going to be different than what they did anyway. And sometimes I will get other content creators. I'll publish a video and then they will be like, dang, DT. I was making a video on that exact same topic. And now I'm just going to have to scrap the whole idea or maybe they had already recorded it. They just haven't finished the editing. And they're like, all that work for nothing. I can't publish it now. And I'm like, no, guys, publish your videos. Who cares? Who cares about the people that? Hey, man, you stole somebody else's content. I know you didn't steal my content, just like I didn't steal your content. And we're not making the same stuff. And I doubt I have ever made a video on a topic that somebody else has also made. And we actually didn't make different points on the same subject. So you guys don't worry about that. If you're a YouTube creator, don't worry about stepping on somebody else's toes by covering the same subject, especially, you know, people worry about this with educational, like tutorial kind of content. But nobody worries about covering news kind of content. Like if there's a hot news story out there, people just accept that a thousand different YouTubers are going to cover that news story, usually in the same way. People are OK with that. But when it comes with legit, educational, how to tutorial kind of stuff, it's like, no, we only need one person to do that video. Come on, guys. The next comment I got recently was this here. DT, I've got a channel and they delete content even when it's not violent content or pornographic content or anything that's questionable. They remove channels all the time that they disagree with politically. Can you DT, can you talk more about YouTube alternatives? And yes, I could. I haven't explored that many YouTube alternatives, but know this, if you are a content creator, there are other platforms that you can publish your content to in addition to YouTube. Nobody wants to just jump off of YouTube because all the viewers are on YouTube. If you're going to have people legitimately like thousands and thousands of people watch video content, your video content that you create, you need to be on the YouTube platform, unfortunately. But we're getting close. There is an alternative and one I've been on for a few months now, and I really like I really like library LBRY and it is exploding in popularity. The user base of library is just becoming very, very popular. So many creators are joining it every day. We're getting so many more viewers on the library platform and the platform itself is seeing new features at it all the time. Now there's comments on the videos and now there is some analytics where, you know, before there wasn't it's really improving as a platform. If you guys are not on library and you have a YouTube channel, sync your YouTube content to library. It's very easy. You can set that up in a couple of minutes. And every time you publish something to YouTube, it gets automatically published to library. There's no work involved. And you can make some money publishing to library because when you're viewed on library, you earn some money. Also, your viewers can tip you on library. They tip you in LBC library credits. And I've earned a substantial amount of money actually being on library. I don't get a tenth of the views on library that I get on YouTube. But I probably make half as much on library as I make on YouTube. And that is kind of surprising. And I think it's only going to get better with time. I think as more and more people realize that YouTube is doing their content creators kind of dirty because they are really going a little overboard in the censorship and everything. And I think more people are going to look for a more free platform. By the way, library is free and open source software. So that is a big plus. So if you're a content creator, put your content on library. And if you're a video consumer, check out your favorite creators on library. If they're not on library, encourage them to join library. The next comment is one I got the other day. It goes along the lines of something like this. Hey, DT, I see that you always patch ST and DWM for alpha transparency. So you can have a transparent ST terminal or a transparent panel in DWM. But you don't have to do all of that, DT. All you have to do is just set up a rule in Compton or PyCom and change, you know, DWM or ST have them have an opacity rule where they are whatever level of opacity you want to set. Yes, you can do that, but that is not the same as actually patching ST or DWM for transparency. Because when you patch ST for the transparency patch, the alpha patch, it only makes the background of ST opaque. It doesn't make the text of the terminal opaque. And that's very important. What you're doing in PyCom by setting that opacity rule for ST is making the entire ST window opaque, which means the text is also opaque. So if you set opacity below 90 percent, for example, the text is going to become unreadable. That is not real transparency when we talk about transparency. When we talk about wanting a program to be transparent or opaque, we really are talking about the background of that particular program. We're not talking about the entire program and we certainly don't want the text to ever be opaque. Other than this guy's comment about ST and DWM transparency, I've also had people ask me about Emacs because I've been using Emacs as my editor and a lot of people use VIM in the terminal, a terminal with transparency and they have some transparency with VIM. And people are like, hey, man, can you make Emacs transparent? Yes, you can, but not really because Emacs does not support having just a background opaque. So to make Emacs transparent, you can add a function in Emacs that actually makes the entire Emacs window opaque. Or you can do like he was suggesting with PyCom, just set it opacity rule inside PyCom and make Emacs opaque. But again, it makes not just the background opaque. It makes the entire window, which includes the text. And again, the text becomes unreadable. That's not real transparency. So typically, unless a program actually supports real transparency as far as meaning just the background, I don't even bother. So X term, X term, you can't really make just the background opaque. So I never bother with transparency in X term. Emacs, you can't really make just the background opaque and not the text. So I never bother with transparency in Emacs. The next question is one I've gotten several times since making this video a couple of weeks ago about you guys that are nano users. You know, maybe you guys should check out the micro editor. And I got this question the other day. Hey, DT, why does it hurt you so bad if I use nano? Why is nano so bad to you and to these Linux experts? Can't someone just explain to me why nano is so bad? All right. So nano is not bad, but nano is very limited. I'm not saying that nano is a horrible piece of software. And I'm not saying you're a horrible person for using it. I'm just saying that if you really want to get where you want to be as far as editing a lot of text very quickly, you need to start using extensible text editors like Vim or Emacs, especially. But even if you don't want to get into that, you know, micro was a step up from nano. But again, that's your choice. I'm just presenting the choice to you. I'm showing you all this software that's out there. If you don't want to use that, I don't care. I don't know what you think I care. Does it hurt me if you use nano? No, it doesn't hurt me at all. It might hurt you a little bit, but whatever. The next question I want to address is one I got the other day. Hey, DT, why do you feel the need to always point out when a particular piece of software is quote proprietary? Well, I want people to know that a piece of software is proprietary because some people care. That's why I will always point out like, you know, the video I did the other day on Linux Mint is the one where I got this comment is because Linux Mint sublime text was in the software center. And I said, well, sublime text is IDE, but it's proprietary. And people were like, why do you care if it's proprietary? Well, I do. What do you mean? Why? You don't have to care, but I care because I choose to use free and open source software where possible. If you don't care, that's fine, but I'm not talking to you. When I say a piece of software is proprietary and you say, you don't care. OK, that that comment wasn't toward you. Anyway, it was to the people that do care and there are people that care. And I want to make sure that they know sublime is proprietary garbage and that Vivaldi is proprietary garbage and Chrome is proprietary garbage. And I know for the people that don't care, you know, for some reason, it hurts your feelings. But I don't know why because you don't care, right? So but then again, maybe you do care. Think about it. If you're getting angry, then you do care. You do care. I mean, if you didn't care at all, you wouldn't care about me talking about free and open source software versus proprietary software. But if you're getting angry, then, you know what? In the back of your mind, you know, you shouldn't be using that proprietary garbage, you know, you should be supporting free and open source software where possible. And I think it's not me that you're mad at. I think it's yourself that you're mad at because you know what you should be doing and you just haven't got the resolve to actually do it yet. And the last thing I want to address is I made a video the other day and I mentioned something about wine and I said, wine is a Windows emulator. And I purposely said it that way on camera because I knew I was setting you guys up for this and just like moths drawn to a flame. When I said wine as a Windows emulator, I get about 500 comments from people. Hey, idiot, wine is not an emulator. It literally stands for wine is not an emulator. W I E wine is not an emulator. Yes, I know that. And I think you guys know I know that I was making a point, though, when you're talking to especially newer to Linux users, which I'm kind of that's what I was talking to mainly on that video. It was a video about the latest release of Linux Mint, Linux Mint 20, which is a LTS version of Linux Mint. You're going to have a lot of people coming from Windows over to Linux for the very first time, maybe trying Linux for the very first time with that particular distribution and they're going to wonder what wine is and the best way to explain it to a new to Linux user. Wine is a Windows emulator. That's basically what it is. I don't care what the acronym stands for. I think you guys know that I know what the acronym stands for. I don't care. Wine is a Windows emulator. That's the same as GNU GNU GNU literally stands for GNU is not UNIX. But we all know GNU GNU is basically UNIX. Whether Richard Stallman chose to say it's not really UNIX. That's probably more for legal reasons than actual factual reasons. GNU is UNIX and wine. It's a Windows emulator. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of the show. I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Pablo, Nate, Corbinian, Mitchell, Interp, UK, Arch 5530, Chris, Chuck, DJ Donnie, Dylan, George, Omri, Paul, Sean, Tobias and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this very lengthy and kind of rambly rant wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen, this is all my supporters over on Patreon because this channel is supported by you guys, the community. You'd like to support my work. You'll find DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys. Peace.