 Hey everybody, welcome to Linuxcast. I'm your host Matthew Weber. I'm joined by Martin Burke. How are you doing, Martin? Well, doing well, mate. Thanks. How are you? I'm having a hell of a day. I'm ready for today. Just mainly because The first week we did this I talked about my football team Which is the Philadelphia Eagles? They are God awful. They're so bad They lost 27 to 17 to one of the worst teams in the NFL. It's horrible. Anyway, so that's my how my day is going Are you how about you Martin? How are you doing in this week? Yeah, not too bad. Um, I've actually installed Manjaro on KDE on my point book pro And it's looking quite responsive to be fair. I'm on a fresh boot. It's using about nine nine and sixty gig megabytes of RAM And one point two giga to the three point seven with Firefox open To see pretty responsive, but time will tell once I install a few more programs and And giving it a run for its money so to speak How about yourself? I watched a video of somebody using the arm Manjaro on a pine phone. It looks really sluggish on that They always seem to the post videos and it's like that doesn't look responses at all whether it's out slightly I don't know Proof is in the pudding. Yeah, maybe I'm gonna have to get one of those pine book pros One of these days and give it a try out. Um, so I've been I've been theming BSPWM for because I've been doing some Window manager hopping again. So Despite I3 is my you know daily driver, but I've been trying to kind of open the horizons up a little bit So I've been trying to get BSPWM to look like what I wanted to look like. I've also been going through and Doing a little bit of configuration on my I3 stuff just tweaking some Some key bindings and stuff so like now I got it so they can hit super and oh and it will open up soup, you know OBS and audacity at the same time on specific Workspaces, so you know when I record that one key binding the programs open up on the workspace I need them to be on it's really cool Thanks, and I've also been trying to figure out how to get some OBS key bindings To be system-wide specific, so I don't have to be within OBS for their key bindings to work I haven't quite figured that out yet So So if you want to get in contact with us, you can do so we just move this Contact information around each week. We never seem to figure out where we want to put it We either put at the beginning or after it doesn't matter if you want to get contact with us You can do so at the Linux cast is the email address That's not the email address. That's Twitter. I really got it My head is not in the right place for this at the Linux cast on Twitter. You can also follow me on Twitter I am at MTWB Martin's is at at Martin twit to you You can find those links in the show notes. You can subscribe to all of our feeds and such at the Linux cast or that just transfer you transfers you to our Anchor page because I'm much too lazy to have an actual website like a normal person You can follow you can also contact me as email at Linux casts the Linux cast at gmail.com and on Facebook at Facebook Dot com slash the Linux cast and you also can subscribe to the links cast on YouTube Where you'll find this podcast along with several other videos that I post every week Basically, they're all nonsense, but you know, you might find something you like there So the way we structure the show is we have one big gigantic news or Topic each week, but first we jump into two Links that we choose one each and Martin you have the first link this week Yeah, I'll cut my eye earlier was a pine phone KGE community edition Pre-orders Fritz are starting December the 1st. Now if it's like the Manjaro Community Edition it was a hundred and fifty dollars and you get 16 gigabits emc storage and two gigabytes of RAM or 199 dollars with a convergence package So you could just connect it all up to your desktop or your TV, whichever and that comes with them 32 gigabytes of emc and three gigabytes of RAM and That looks quite a I mean I've heard loads and loads of good stuff about the pine phone I know we've briefly said earlier that you see them on YouTube and they're swiping and it doesn't seem as snappy But all I've heard is good reports from them. I mean, you know Especially at that price for an open source phone I mean, it's hard to criticize that stuff because I mean all this stuff is still being worked on right? So it's gonna get yeah, yeah So it plays the so the one that I looked at Manjaro one has like the gnome version or whatever of You know the mobile operating system of gnome. Yeah gnome. Yeah, and that's the one that looks looked You know not all that responsive, but it's gnome. So of course, it's not responsive. You know, I'm You know is slow on a high-end computer sometimes so this one looks really good and I was looking through some of these These photos and I go this looks, you know really good very Highly polished and then you get to the you know towards the end and There's there's an image that explains everything that's wrong with Linux on mobile It has a picture of somebody doing click coding on a phone on a phone There's a picture of a note. I mean supposedly a note-taking app, but it says it's a text editor Yeah, if you look at iOS is like website, you don't see somebody Coding on the phone. It's just yeah, that's not something. I mean I understand that this is for developers and You know, but you're not gonna appeal to Like mainstream people by showing hey look you can write Python on your phone. It just sounds like a horrible experience I don't know. That's just probably just me Have it yourself what's caught your eye this week. All right, so um, I've always wanted so system 76 is a Like I don't know how you'd explain it's a it's a hardware vendor that focuses only on Linux-based devices and they they make Papa West, which is you know really good And some of the devices look, you know, very nice, but they're always so expensive And this one's not any you know any different but every time they come out So they've announced that their it's called the Gallagher pro Linux laptop It comes with the 11th gen Intel CPUs and I think it comes with like a it has Thunderbolt and I don't know what GPU comes with I it's like I guess like the 2060 I think Maybe the 2080. I'm not sure but um It looks really nice. It looks very high-end Almost like Apple designed it. How it's it just looks really nice it is Really expensive like all 76 like one day when I won the lottery I'll buy us this in 76 device These just look really good, but it's just so expensive Yeah, I have envy for everybody who can afford them Oh gosh, I mean it's a lovely pity up well at the end of the day all the laptops are lovely pieces But it's a price point again for Linux, I mean obviously you've got your power users that can afford that What's the price on this? $2,500 is the highest it will go Is that your top specs? Yeah, so it starts off at 999 so that's not too bad really I guess Still you know just This is a stupid complaint, but I'd like to seal. I mean Why aren't isn't there a hardware vendor out there that will I mean besides pine book obviously? But why isn't there like a regular that use an x86 vendor out there that will make a laptop or a desktop? That is lower-end like it starts at $600 I mean that's that seems like it'd be very very you know You know popular amongst some people who can't afford a thousand dollars for a laptop. I don't know. It's just me you know Yeah, I mean it's that niche audience isn't I mean obviously if I mean I don't exactly know I'm what the sales are like But if that like had a quarter of the third or the third of the sales that Dell have I suppose that price would probably drop because I'm guessing that they do I mean batches as well Like you've got a pre-order or waiting line because I can only produce 50 or a hundred at a time And get it going that way. So I mean hopefully the price will only go down But like you I mean I've got it in my e-book by Wishlist looking out for secondhand ones. It's not many in Britain, but yeah, that's the way you got to buy stuff It's by use because yeah, where you can afford it Couldn't warrant that price Okay, I mean it's dumb because I mean I spent probably $1,600 building my computer here that I'm on but You know, it's like the highest one you could build I mean that 999 one's gonna get you the lowest end one and it just make doesn't make the price doesn't really make much sense Plus, I mean I when you build the stuff yourself, you know, you yeah, you get to choose all parts and stuff Um, anyways, that's just me, you know be moaning my financial status No, no, they're lovely lovely laptops definitely, but yeah budgets on a budget get yourself a point book pro I wouldn't recommend a point out, but I definitely recommend a point book pro. Yeah, I've looked at them I just haven't had it. I always see that that warning that they put in their card or whatever Yeah, but the dead pixels like I don't know I mean, I know $200 like really cheap for a laptop and I'm complaining about the $999 one. So you really do get what you pay for do I really want one with dead pixels on it? And that's just I don't know. Yeah, I mean understand they want to warn people about it But and maybe it'd be better if they probably sell more of them if they didn't warn people That's not shade. Yeah, I must I must admit on my point tab I had a little cluster of dead pixels it and it's just what you gravitate straight to isn't it? You see those dead pixels, but yeah, my mind's been fine the point book pro So hopefully put the screen on it's lovely. It really is nice I think I'm next time I have a couple hundred dollars just and I'm definitely gonna look at looking to it because I do need a new laptop. I have a Really old Lenovo and it runs fine, but the keyboard is trash And it's just I mean like the shift button to you know, it's stuck and there's stuff underneath it I know you can replace those things, but I'm much too, you know Anyways, all right, so our main topic this week is a dual booting I think Martin specifically you want to talk about do booting Linux and Windows. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's how I'd Started my journey so to speak and so I'd delved into MX Linux Burnt it to not burn the ISO to USB and And then Had the choice to in install alongside Windows So obviously I just tried out the live USB Came out make sure I backed up all my stuff just in case Anything did happen back to pull my programs and everything and got that dual booting and I Mean in terms of dual booting I mean, it's fine You have to mess about with Windows and stop the fast boot and things like that But you just have to be careful because I mean you've got two operating systems That's actually on the same drive with their own bootloaders So you got Windows boot bootloader, and you've got Linux Running group handling everything But yeah, I mean ideally what you do want to do is have two drives I mean, I've got a running on my M2 drive with Windows and Linux But I make sure all my Windows data Gets backed up to a separate is actually on a separate drive. If anything does go wrong I've only lost my bootloaders for Linux and Windows really because I Automatically back up all my stuff anyway, but it's just It's We've all been there. We've all either installed something or Formatted the wrong drive when we've lost the data, but anybody that would want to Even your boot. I mean, I know a lot of people don't Want a dual boot, but some people have to whether it's for work or For programs that do still work. I mean, I've only got Windows on my computer really for Steam games that I haven't come through on Linux and they're Roblox for the kids All right, so I dual boot I or okay, so I say I do do boot, but I have a partition for Windows But I never use it. I I don't know if you know this about me, but I hate Windows with a passion I Just despise it. So I didn't used to be like that I used to be a big Windows user, but now that I'm in Linux. I have a problem But I have it installed and because when I built this new computer, I decided, you know It has like a high-end processor in this great graphics card So I'm gonna install Windows so they can play games. Yeah Yeah, I mean most of it. Yeah, I mean, that's the reason why install windows because you want to play some games Mainly because I mean steam is awesome and it allows you to play a lot of games on Linux that you You know wouldn't normally be able to do but when you get to things that aren't in steam like Anything made by bad all night or you know like Hearthstone or overwatch or that stuff then you have to start doing with wine and Wine is terrible Wine's not I mean wine is you know awesome, but it's also not for stupid people and I'm I'm stupid people I just can't get it to work It's interesting with the looks side to get to this game to work. You'll need wine version 4.8 or and that you're on different versions and try this version for this game. It's like Well that and it's always It's easier said than done. Yeah, it seems to me that I always get stuck on wine by a font of some kind Like oh, like oh, you're missing MS windows font TTF now. You got to go find this Crappy font and you know install it and yeah, okay. Well, I mean I've installed it but you want on on Linux there's four different places where you can stall fonts and Not every program will look in the proper place where you put it So you had to put it in all four different places then you have conflicting files. It's it's it's a mess And like I said, it's just not for it's not for me so I mean when I built the computer I installed windows on a partition thinking that you know, I'll do all this gaming and it's gonna be awesome and Yeah, I never I never go into into that partition I still have it and it's take I mean I have a terabyte NVMe drive in this computer, you know along with a 500 gigabyte, you know SSD and To two terabyte, you know hard drive so I have lots of storage um, yeah, but I just it's like that that um Windows partition has taken up like two hundred and fifty gigabytes of stuff on my main drive and I never use it, so I The question I have for myself is when I eventually have to you know reformat this drive and reinstall Linux Clearly never once in a while you you know you can pave Will I will I continue to do and I don't know um It's pointless really really isn't it so I mean you have just the bootloader and then you select it or does it time out and put You straight into Linux. All right, so when in arco it it does so the way I If it the way you learn to do it, I think I think most people figure this out or maybe it was just me But if you install windows first, especially if you are so if you use Like Ubuntu it really doesn't matter which order you do it because it just then it just whatever Operating system you install last controls the bootloader So if you install Ubuntu first and then Windows Windows controls the boot loop, you know grub And then you have to deal with Windows and all that stuff If you always install Linux last you and let Linux install, you know control the bootloader and you know grub it It does just time out, but it will at least when it times out it'll load you into Linux Which is what I want. I'd hate to have to go through it every single time I start my computer up having to you know, oh my god It's giving me three seconds if I don't get that hit that button in three seconds It's gonna boot into Windows and then I have to sit there and wait for Windows to boot up Which takes longer I have to log into Windows in order to reshoot it down But of course if you log into Windows, you have to wait for the 10,000 notifications Windows sends you every time it starts up Because Windows startup times are horrible even on NVMe like this is a fast hard drive. It takes like Five minutes to get Windows up and running to the point where there's nothing popping up and binging at you And then if you're if you're lucky you you're not you don't have to sit there and wait for oh Windows And is installing up grades Yeah, as you can tell I don't like Windows Always always install Linux last so that it controls. Yeah, that's that's Yeah, um, I mean your case anyone I know it's talked about Joe booty, but would you When you do new compave and give it a fresh install would you just stick Windows in that virtual box? All right, so I did a video not too long ago on how to do that and I would say no Mainly because my purpose of having Windows to begin with is to play games And you can't play games in virtual box I mean, I know understand you could have a second graphics card and do graphics path graphics card pass through or whatever So technically it is possible with some technical magic or whatever Um, yeah, I mean even if I was just going to do like a non-graphically intensive game like hardstone and hardstone doesn't take a lot of I mean you can play that on a smartphone But I don't think it would play very well in it in a virtual box I'm gonna try it because if I can play hardstone in a virtual machine on Windows, then I will never ever ever have a dual boot again because You know because that's really the only game that I care about because yeah because Again, because now that especially now Martin that EA has all their stuff in steam There's a good chance that you that a lot of that EA stuff that is the only other reason why you do boot into Windows for games Might actually start working with proton and stuff So I think you play the Sims and SimCity and your Madden or soccer or whatever Inside steam and that might be a possibility that wasn't really there beforehand because beforehand you'd have to before you'd have to use origin through wine and Tonight they're on windows and at the best of times it is That's reason why it was so great when they said that they were gonna bring EA's can bring all their for catalog to steam Say again Yeah, it's an origin that no one wanted to go through the hassle of downloading origin and Signing in and all that just just by the bullet stick it on steam Yeah, it's so weird because You wouldn't think I mean EA is kind of notorious for not playing well with others And yet they're bringing they're bringing all their EA stuff including their EA pass or whatever to steam They're bringing it to the Xbox store. They'll bring it to the PlayStation store so that you no longer have to use origin and then on the other hand you have epic which does you know for tonight and The one with cars that plays with soccer I can't Rocket League Rocket League, that's a totally blanket right they have that and they took all their stuff out of steam Right, it's because those two are mortal enemies or whatever And to be fair all look back into well, I don't even have to look back into Windows are just looking looking to the epic game store Weekly or fortnightly to claim a free game. I I Didn't even know they offered free games because yeah, they do some really good free games. I was I kind of got so pissed off it at Epic when they took Rocket League out of the you know, they took it away from Linux users like I like I before it was free to play It was $20, you know, so I paid $20 thinking you know Hey, this is a game that works on Linux because it's in steam. It's even Linux native, you know It's not running through proton, you know, and this is something that I can play I paid $20 for it and now it no longer works on Linux. I mean you can still use it through proton sometimes But it's not the same it's not it doesn't work it because cross play doesn't work anymore It's just I mean That's just so shady taking it from somebody somebody who feel Paid money for it and it's no longer working on the console or the platform they bought it for it's um It's just another rant Just it's just another rant that you had to deal with for Matt today In one of those moods I mean, I didn't realize that you dual booted. I mean For what you use windows for but I mean if what obstacles have you run into a view running today to loss Would you recommend dual booting? All right, so I don't really run into any problems anymore because I've done it so many times But when I first started Especially when I first started like using arch based distros arch does not like being installed first on a partition If you're going to install windows later, it just it will not work It will completely mess up grub completely and your computer just won't even load So I made that problem. I made that mistake probably three or four times because it's like, oh, you know, you know, I have I Have my arch Linux installing here. I've been using it for a while or whatever I and I want to play hearthstone and I can't get hearthstone to play through wine because See aforementioned comments about wine So I'm gonna do boot so You know I get into you know windows and windows will actually go through and like all Linux Insults will do as well. They'll actually let you repartition something that's has you know Has something already there so it'll let it will take a chunk out out of out of your Existing partition in order to do that and that was before I had this computer So I only had one hard drive so I couldn't do anything like that with a second hard drive and mess with trying to do Change the grub order and get grub to recognize a different hard drive and stuff, you know, I couldn't do any of that so At that point. Yes, I you know, I lost my entire Insult, I mean, it's not a big deal because I back up everything, you know, one or twice a week anyways and at that point I was Distro hopping a lot, you know all the time. So I mean Losing stuff at that point was like, yeah, whoo-hoo. I can try out another distro. I good Yeah, I saw it as an opportunity But right now if I had something wrong with you know windows and windows caused me to lose my Linux install now I'd be devastated because because I've spent the last six. I I can't I install I I mean you and I have only been acquainted for you know a few weeks, but prior to prior to like Like May this year You know, I was still distro hopping, you know every other month or so. Okay, you know, I get sick of you know You know Ubuntu I try Ubuntu. I try you know to open Suzer or whatever But in May, I started using Arch Linux, which is an arch-based distro And I've stayed there since May. I've never stayed that long on a distro, you know ever, you know So, you know, I got this all configured the way I want to I got you know, every You know, I spend time in getting my keybindings and all my window managers the way I want So now if windows messed that up for me, I would be so mad But like I said, most of my problems came when I first started and would I recommend somebody dual boot That's a question That that's a question Martin. I'm not sure. I guess my answer to that question would be if you have to if if you absolutely have to have some program that's on windows that you can't get to run on win on Linux Then yes, it's better it in almost every way dual booting. I think is better than running in virtual box because I'm not sure what the limitation might maybe you can explain it as this to me in virtual box You can only allocate 120 megabytes of video memory Why is that a thing still today? Why why is that some kind of technical limitation or is they just not updated it so that I mean Almost every machine out there has at least four gigabytes of RAM out there and most of them have eight or sixteen Why can't you up that to a gigabyte of memory or two gigabytes of memory? Or why can't you just choose how much ever video memory you want to give it and you know, let that I mean If it bogs down your main system, that's your problem. I mean, that's the way it should be I mean, it has to be a technical limitation, right? yeah, there must be something something to do with it hypervisor or something like that because I Was playing about the other day and I thought all right. Yeah, you've got the green and red, right? Let's stick it into the red. Let's give it a bit more juice. I just come up with an error message I had to knock it back down and But the problems I was having was I'm trying to get a USB working in virtual box once I've loaded the distro No, I didn't even get that That was a problem I was having recognized in the USB I I'm gonna have to look into it because it was just tinkering about just open up virtual box Rudd Linux Mint and then try and install Linux Mint from the virtual box onto a USB But it just wasn't wasn't discovering the USB obviously there's something silly I'm not doing but I really don't know. I mean, they're the youtubers get it working. So obviously there's something silly So yeah, I had um, I don't have as much problem than sawing Linux and virtual boxes I did windows. I like like for whatever reason it seems to be fairly easy to install Linux and virtual box but windows was a pain that you know rear-end it was it and you and I did succeed and made a video about it But like I still can't get to go full-screen I couldn't get a copy and paste to work. It was a mess. Um, so yeah, that's reason why that'd be my answer Martin it you you dual boot if you absolutely have to that's what about you would you recommend it? personally If you if needs must and yeah, you're quite technical. I mean obviously we're not gonna leave any links on Below because we don't Give you that if I still end up breaking your system I mean it if it was if I was doing it for somebody else And like you say they needed to Old laptop. Let's just say for example laptop. You can only have the one drive Unless you do to go for an external Or one that'll fit into the CD. I would probably recommend more if it was a noob or whatever is a US USB with a persistent drive Which is where I've got as a backup if I ever lose anything So I can get back to work just plug it straight in load it up from the USB and get straight to work Well to do that without any hard drives at all if you've ruined your system And I can also just take it around with me Plug it into whatever laptop and have my system up and running there and then so I mean it if needs but must I mean I Definitely say if you can get along without Windows just just new compared the old lot and stick a nice Beginner's distro like like like arch No, no, no, no man come on gentoo gentoo definitely gentoo I'm gonna try gentoo one of these days Martin. I'm going to try Man it looks hard just get a compiler kernel and everything else is that looks I mean I'm almost have to do it in a virtual machine because if I try to do it on my main machine I just scare the crap out of me All right, let's jump into our apps of the week Martin, why don't you go ahead and go first Right someone the app of found is an app called Ram box It's a workspace browser basically to manage applications Just in the the one space For example, I tried to use Skype earlier, but it wasn't working. I think I have to mess about with that a little So I've got installed in the same box Skype What's up linked to my phone? I've got tweet deck my Google calendar. I've added YouTube to it my various email inboxes and you've just got that all-in-one convenient app I mean, I've told you about different apps before with Skype and Spotify and all that but these I mean looking at Two seconds, so they've got a community editions, which is free so you can have 99 plus apps You can have pro which is $4 a month and that's 600 plus apps Which is crazy but it's Just like your normal Web page open up along the top skype. What's up tweet gmail? Whatever and you'll just have the notifications on them when stuff comes in So it is quite nice, especially if you've got a bit like yourself. You've got your own Twitter. You've got The shows Twitter shows gmail You could just have them all in in one So I mean, yeah, it seems okay up off from the Skype business, but that's user error my side note About yourself signal It hasn't yes. Yeah, it hasn't got I don't think Signals got a web app type thing to be fair. Yeah signal. I Switch to signal just for you know us, right? Yeah, their Linux app is terrible. I mean, it's just bad I mean, like it's not like On a on a like a tiling window manager when you want to put it into like a pane side-by-side with like Telegram or whatever It's not responsive So all you see is one, you know one side of it and you have to like use the little scroll bar at the bottom to switch back and forth It's very annoying. Anyways my pick is a Surprise surprise it's a terminal application called tg I know Hey, you want to know if I don't recommend a terminal application it's a you know Angels will die or something. I don't know Anyways tg is basically it's a terminal application for telegram And it has all the features of the regular telegram, but without the overhead of running an electron app And what's great about it is it allows you to use all your vim commands or whatever or your vim key key bindings To navigate the application And it has basically I mean it has some oddness because of it's being a terminal application like having to Type in the path to a picture if you want to share a picture. It's kind of annoying But you know it will allow you to go through and like share pictures and share audio and share Videos and all that stuff. You just have to learn the key bindings in order to do them. Um, so it's uh I've just started I just started using it today Um, and I actually have it open like right next to skype. It's cool. Um I don't think it's probably for everyone because most people would just like yeah telegram has its own Uh, you know regular app. Why use this is just if you like terminal applications that use little resources This is an option. Um, and it's open source and free and obviously all that stuff. So that's my pick Not cool one of these weeks you'll pick an email client in terminal Would you go down that rabbit hole? Yeah, um, the the problem with all right, so Talk about rabbit hole. Uh, nea neomut is cool But I can't get to set up with gmail and I use gmail. Um, I probably should stop using gmail Um, that probably would allow me to actually use neomut and I might do that I might do that just because you know, I'm I'm all for those terminal applications But for whatever reason it's getting gmail to set up in uh in neomut. It's just it's not It's damn near impossible Anyways, that is it. Um for this week. Uh next week, um, we're going to be talking about Uh note-taking apps. So, uh, I think we'll You know, that's an awful specific topic. I don't know why I chose that Um, as of right now, that's what we're going to talk about We might come up with a different topic because that sounds really weird. Why did I choose that? That sounds like a topic for a video And another podcast. So anyways, um, we'll have something to talk about next week and uh, we'll see you then Cheers mate, take care then