Despecialized

[Music]

Recently in software upgrade land, I upgraded my venerable Ubuntu Studio Desktop.

Now, I have been running Ubuntu Studio since 2004.

You look at the calendar that was six years ago.

So for the last six years, I've been on Ubuntu Studio on my desktop for the sake of getting

work done.

So when I first started with it, it was on XFCE, which was perfect because I'm an XFCE

guy historically, that an open box, like them both.

So there it was on Ubuntu Studio, 2004, a couple of years ago by the new LTS comes out,

2204, and WAN-WAN, it turns out it's unsupported by the Ubuntu Studio project itself to do a

distro upgrade from 2004 to 2204.

In fact, you are encouraged to uninstall and reformat the disk or whatever you got to

do to then install a fresh installation of Ubuntu Studio 2204 which now features

KDE Plasma. Hmm, I thought I wonder what the deal is with KDE Plasma. So I

actually installed KDE Plasma on a PineBook Pro, which is an ARM64 laptop by

Pine64.

I tried that out and I was shocked to find that KDE Plasma actually ran just fine on

4GB of RAM.

Because in the past I'd used KDE 4.

I don't even want to tell you how long ago that was.

And I hated it.

It had all these just stupid widgets and it performed very badly.

I was very unimpressed.

Fast forward to KDE Plasma. It's an excellent experience. In fact, it's just as good as XFCE.

So, I was very pleased with that and coming back, I realized I'm ready to migrate personally

from XFCE to KDE Plasma.

Two things I like. Two things I don't like.

All right, I love the fact that Ubuntu Studio makes it easy to use things like Jack.

And all the packages you need are built in

for doing basic graphic design, audio work.

It's not a problem.

I have had zero problems doing it

and it saved me time on that front

Is it perfect? Who cares? It works great and it gets better with each release that part's good

What I don't like is that the 2204 release was not supported I

Mentioned this and there was a bit of hostility about it

Which I was surprised by because I figured if anything it was a good thing that I was able to make this upgrade.

So that's weird.

I still use the project, but it was just kind of awkward.

Another positive thing I like.

I have spent less time finagling with my computer, which is great.

So here I am, six years later, running Ubuntu Studio. Life is great. So here I am six years later running Ubuntu studio life is good. I

Was even able to use my Ubuntu studio desktop by changing power settings and running VLC

hyphen hyphen

No hyphen OSD for no on-screen controls for the play button and stuff

I was able to play video in full screen and switch between that and Gwen View

and run a slideshow for a live theater show,

paid theater show from Linux,

and it worked perfectly.

So I can tell you Linux works

for professional presentations in a seamless manner.

I was very pleased,

and I had no problem running a video

and a photo slideshow.

So Bota Studio kicks butt and Ubuntu also kicks butt.

But another thing that I don't like about Ubuntu in general is that with each upgrade

things are changed.

So Firefox turns into the snap.

It's just not for me. So what I did was I

completely removed the snap file system from my machine and I replaced it with flat packs.

But more than anything, I'm just running basic repositories of software. However, that doesn't

change me getting these different messages and notices, specifically

in the terminal.

So what I've done is I've removed them all.

I've removed the message of the day and each ESM, pro license, snap message has been one

by one removed from my machine.

All you have to do is every time you see a line, drop it into a search, like a duck duck

go search, and you'll see how to remove it.

And I recommend doing that.

Every time I've reverted a snap install,

my existing data, both in Firefox and Thunderbird,

has immediately returned, which is great,

because I'm very invested in those tools.

And I've been happy that I've been able to recover it

both times.

So it's the good with the bad, but that desktop is a monolith.

And I want to move away from that probably in the future because I want to, you know,

despecialize my machine.

That's something that's important to me.

And I want to encourage anyone running a machine to always despecialize that machine.

Just make it a tool.

Don't make it a special machine with a special name.

If it's a pie, just call it, you know, if you want to go binary, call it P0 or P1.

And when you connect to it, always treat it in that way that it's not special. It's just another

machine that can be replaced and treat your data the same. Back it up, make sure that it's

replaced and treat your data the same. Back it up, make sure that you can replace this machine and move on. As long as you do that, you'll be happy. Just like I'm happy because

I know that life goes on and I can afford to lose things because I have the backups and

I've done the work. And I have backups using a program called TimeShift. It's all time

shift over our sync and also supports ButterFS.

And I was able to test and confirm

that I could restore my system.

I was shocked at how easy it was to use Grub

to do a restore on TimeShift.

Back to a previous installation, I had Snapshot,

if you will, R-Sync Snapshot of my operating system.

So with that in mind, I thought, I'm going to move 2204.

So rather than follow what the maintainer had told me to do, I thought, I'm just going

to try it myself because I can.

So what I did was first, I installed KDE Plasma.

I guess you call this Kubuntu.

I basically switched to Kubuntu more or less by installing the KDE packages

and removing all of the Ubuntu Studio packages.

Once I'd done that, I had zero problems with the upgrade.

And then I reinstalled the Ubuntu Studio packages.

Once I confirmed, I was on KDE Plasma and everything has worked fine.

And now, here I am in the modern day and I am on 24041, which Ubuntu Studio has supported,

and I have successfully kept Ubuntu Studio running

for the last six years.

And it's been great.

It's worked fine, it's actually gotten better

with each release and I have no complaints about it.

What's really kept me happy with the whole setup is the fact that I have consistent snapshot

backups that I can restore to.

And I would recommend anyone who has not done so to immediately run out by some sort of

external disk, hook it up, install time shift, and begin making regular, daily at least snapshot backups.

You will never regret it. It's a great system.

And realizing that that might go down and in the spirit of being prepared, I've begun migrating myself to Trunas scale. Trunas scale in this case is running a

mirror VDEV that's two disks. It's a 50% data loss. However, it is the fastest

system to rebuild and it's also very fast to expand. So because I'm dealing

with two disks, I can migrate to two other disks and it's a very simple process. So I

have moved all of my disk images away from time shift. I'm still using time

shift by the way but I've moved all of my system-based snapshot storage and data

storage into TrueNet scale which is currently available over samba shares

and sync thing and that's been

no problem whatsoever. I think I might run our sync as well on there at some

points but all of it's been great. My next step is to migrate my Raspberry

NAS. So Raspberry Pi 4 NAS with a RASSA case and. And I am attempting to migrate that data into trueness scale to sort of sunset

the Raspberry Pi system, which is great. But I have completely maxed it out and I need to move

into something more powerful because 8 gigabytes of RAM specifically is just not enough for me and my needs and I also want to migrate into a cluster

system. So that's for a future episode. Let me share two things that I like about

the Raspberry Pi 4 with Radsahat in case and two things I don't. Alright, first

thing I like is the build quality. It's an aluminum case. It's very nice and it was easy enough to assemble.

Something I don't like. The case was designed explicitly for Ubuntu 2004 or 2204 as opposed to just general Debian. To me that makes no sense, but their form support was responsive and

was able to get everything working. Something else I like, there is a beautiful little

readout, like a LCD readout on the top and it tells you your current IP address and how

much load is on the RAM and the CPU by default.

Love that.

And I think it's a cute little machine and that's nice.

Something I don't like about it is that the fan is very noisy.

It's like a little 40 millimeter fan and I think it's just like noisy, noisy, noisy.

It's just annoying. So it's in the basement.

No one ever hears it.

But I definitely don't like that part about it.

Overall, I think it is a nice case.

What I recommend it to anyone.

Sure, but now that the Raspberry Pi 4

is sort of on the way out, thanks to the Pi 5,

I understand if people wanna move to the Pi 5. I understand if people want to move to the Pi 5. Personally, I don't want to move to the Pi 5 because it's starting to walk

that line of too much power consumption. Too much power consumption, requiring

active cooling, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Why don't I just get a thin

client like everyone else has done and move myself over to thin clients. So that is exactly what I've done at this time.

I have run multiple thin clients into a prox-mox cluster.

Subject for another discussion.

But between that and trueness, I've got a nice ZFS setup with virtualization that I

can move all of my existing services out of, and I

look forward to talking about that more.

This is being hosted on Cast-upon.

Cast-upon is a fully open source podcast platform.

You can run yourself.

It supports podcasting 2.0 as well as all the typical broadcast networks.

For now, I am not broadcasting to basically anywhere except to the matrix chat and through an RSS feed.

If you like this show, please do share it with others.

You're welcome to join the matrix chat, which is Linuxprepper@matrix.org chatroom.

It is not listed in the public search.

I have found from being an admin extensively in matrix that you get so much spam.

At least for now,

I would rather not even publicly list it.

Thank you so much for listening.

You can also email me, podcast@james.network with any thoughts on the show.

Okay, let's give a game of the day. Just cause why not.

This is a fully open source game, and it is called Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead.

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is a ASCII based game which you can play from your terminal

over SSH.

It was developed on an Azuz EPC.

It can run on a machine with 64 MB of RAM.

It is a zombie survival game in the spirit of NetHack, another fantastically good game

I recommend.

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is available on Steam for purchase, but nothing stops you

from installing it and running it on your local machine. There's no need to purchase anything. It runs

beautifully. It has amazing glisteny ASCII art. If you've never seen ASCII

reign it's worth booting up a game just to see that ASCII reign. The game is deep

deep deep. Another one that you might remember is Dwarf Fortress. Well this is

in the same vein.

There are tile sets available, but I really recommend the ASCII style.

If you've never been attacked by a letter on your keyboard, this is the game for you,

and you kill it and leave that beautiful little mark behind that signifies, "What is that?

Is that another dead body?

Is that another monster?

I don't know what that is."

If that sounds like fun to you, I recommend this game.

Cataclysm, dark days ahead, available, source available

to anyone, anywhere in the world,

thanks to the power of open source.

I'd also like to do a hardware shout out.

'Cause I've had some great hardware that's open and the one I'm thinking of specifically

is the Pine 64 Travel Charger. The Pine 64 Travel Charger is excellent excellent excellent. I've

had it for several years and I do mason ran landscaping which means dirt dirt dirt. I have destroyed chargers. I have destroyed all sorts of items non-stop at work

But the travel charger

No problems that thing is tough. It is made of basically brick

You can just knock this thing around all day. It works and it charges phones

I've never had a problem charging any phone on it. It's got two USB-C

and a USB-A, at least the iteration I have. Works awesome and has a tiny not very bright light

indicator. I did put tape over it because it was too bright for me so that's something I would say

I don't like is but I think this is true of anyone you know. I don't like lights on when I sleep.

So I don't actually charge it in the room with me. I leave it in a different room.

when I sleep. So I don't actually charge it in the room with me. I leave it in a different room. But the Pine 64 Travel Charger is about 20 to 30 dollars.

Totally worth it. I strongly recommend it. I love the fact that the cable is

separate, meaning you can replace it because that's the part that will get

damaged and you can always get a new cable. So I think the travel charger rocks and I strongly

endorse the Pine 64 travel charger to anyone who is interested. Great, great

charger.

Alright, have a great day and thank you so much. Love you all. Bye.