(drumming)
Welcome back to Linux Prepper.
This is a special episode.
It is celebrating six months.
That's right, six months of the podcast.
All right.
(
( laughing)
Yep, yep, six months, six months.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
This is the technically sixth episode
since we started with zero.
And happy to have you all here.
Gonna go get caught up on past material basically for the episode.
So I've recorded various things, not released it.
I want to throw it all out there so that we can get to longer form interviews after this
episode.
The Linux Fest Northwest Conference, which is coming up April 25th,
the 27th in Bellingham, Washington, you're all invited to go if you would like. It'd be fun.
We'll talk about leaving Linux actually played around with Mac OS and the latest Windows 11
after buying a new laptop. I got to test AI models and turns out do some
gaming on which I haven't done a long time. So we'll go into that. I'll also talk about my
experiments in running NixOS on this new laptop as well as Kubuntu 24/10, the absolute latest release.
And we'll get into some tools, some audience recommendations.
And it should be a fun episode.
All right, please enjoy this episode of Linux Prepper.
So I'm excited to announce my first audience suggestion.
Previously, I don't know,
Quileer on the podcast.
I ask people if they would submit projects
that they recommended to be clear.
These aren't projects that I'm using.
So in this case, I haven't used this yet.
I'm aware of it, but this is an audience suggestion.
And I'm very excited and feel free to send me more.
They can be hardware software, anything,
just cool things you like.
So this project is similar to GitHub
and it's a fork of GITEA,
okay, existing project.
And that's been forked into what looks like an English
Forge Joe, Forge Joe, or for show, you know,
like for show, Forge, Forge Joe.
I'm gonna guess that it's pronounced for, for,
for show, right?
Like loosely bad Spanish, like fordgeau, forgeau.
Let's let's hear what it actually is printouts like. I think you know it's a different
language so a lot of times in Linux right and open source. Worst project names of all
time they make no sense but this is a different language so it's cool but let's hear the actual pronunciation I'm saying it's
English bad for Joe or for show
for show uh or for show
I am so off
(laughing)
I am so off. (laughing)
What the heck?
Man, that is so ignorant.
(laughing)
Okay, seriously, how would you pronounce this name though?
F-O-R-G-G-G.
What's your robot board time? F-R-G-O. F-O-R-G-O. F-G-G-L. What's your robot board time? F-O-G-L. F-O-G-L.
I was close.
[laughs]
Alright.
F-O-G-L. I'm not even gonna get it, you guys. I'm sorry. I don't speak that language. I'm so sorry.
Uh...
F-O-G-L. [laughs] speak that language. I'm so sorry. For Jet, for Russia, this is a free software
platform for collaboration and productivity. It's software development. Well,
this is very dry. It offers a familiar environment at GitHub, easy installation,
maintenance books on security, scaling, federation, and privacy. So as a platform, it's great. You're taking something like
GitHub and you're just running it locally or you're running it for your business, but it's a really
like, "Wow, white, white, white, white, flat, sorry." Like, what the totally losing it, man.
platform sorry like totally losing it man okay so it is probably just work around it T I'm just gonna leave this dish well I don't care okay a soft work of Gity. Either way, it's a great platform that is easy to run.
I have installed it on some older ARM devices, no problem.
I would say if you want to test it, if you look it up, if you just type in
Internet Search and like test, you'll find test instances that are hosted online.
I would recommend going with disroot.org. I just
think that they're a great service out of the Netherlands disroot.org. They offer this in addition
to other services as well, but it's a good place if you want to try playing with a, say,
get repository and mirroring it or connecting it to a GitHub account. You can always run get locally on your machine.
You can just install Git on any computer and run it,
but it's kind of nice to have a web interface,
either for personal projects or to share with others, of course.
So, check out--
- Thurgio.
- On the terminal app side of things,
I've found a very useful tool I've been doing
some maintenance on my remote systems and I found this great little terminal
application called television which is nice because it is really easy to
remember and it looks like a nice little interface and it's the most
cool television is a cross platform fast and extensible fuzzy finder terminal interface it integrates with your as it's cool. Television is a cross-platform fast and extensible, fuzzy,
finder, terminal interface. It integrates with your shell. Let's you quickly search through
any kind of data source, such as files, gate repositories, environment variables, docker images,
you name it, using a fuzzy matching algorithm and is designed to be easily extensible.
So I really like television. It is insanely easy to use.
You just call it and then you can basically set a little configuration file, which it calls
channels and using your remote, you can sort of switch between these different channels.
So you're looking through, say, the Docker images on your system, similar to something like Doc J.
You're just looking through the Docker images
on that system, browsing through them,
or you're browsing through specific directories.
And it's a fuzzy finder search,
so it's sort of filling in the blank
of what you're looking for.
And then at any point, if you use the keyboard,
you'll just exit out of television.
So you can almost use it as like a file manager search tool and it's just like instantaneous. It's just easy and then exiting
in it is similarly easy. It also has built-in syntax highlighting. So it tells you exactly
what you're looking for and it has a key binding support and it has some nice little theme and support. So I've had no problem whatsoever using television. I used it to dig through
files to find some stuff that I needed to delete and it worked really well for that. So I can
definitely recommend the terminal application television if you find yourself in the terminal
and you want something that's not quite a file manager. This will fill in that gap. If you're looking for a
full file manager I've had a really good luck with Ranger and also with Midnight
Commander also known as MC. I might talk about those another time but if you're
looking for a terminal file manager either of those excellent I'm sure people in the audience have other suggestions. Otherwise, I recommend considering
television, link in the show notes. I want to take a moment to give a shout out to a self-hosted
project that I have found incredibly useful, actually too, and thereby the same person, Lewis Lamb.
And Lewis Lamb is created a tool called Uptime Kuma.
That's how I'm going to pronounce it.
Uptime Kuma.
So Uptime Kuma is an easy to use self-hosted monitoring tool.
Well, why do we care about that?
Well, after setting up a few different kinds of services,
realized it kind of made sense to make sure that everything
was working.
And I decided to
spin up this tool called uptime Kuma. And in my case, I decided to put it alongside my ad blocker
DHCP server on my home network. The reason is because it's a very easy to install
self-hosted application. But also also it made sense to add it to my
DHCP server, which I wouldn't normally do. But the truth is, if that is offline, then all
of my services are in trouble anyway. So I might as well add my monitoring on the same device because if either is not working, then
my local network isn't trouble.
And I actually, uptime Kuma has already been worth it because I set it up in the last month,
and then just this morning I actually had an issue related to the podcast service that
I run.
And it told me that there was a problem.
So I woke up and I saw it's like,
hey, your podcast doesn't work.
And I was like, what?
And it turned out that it wasn't.
And it was an easy fix.
But you know, stuff happens.
And uptime Kuma will literally tell you
if something goes offline.
It just sends a little ping and it'll
tell you.
You can easily expand it to monitor all sorts of things.
Uptime Kuma is a simple little tool that will provide basic monitoring.
It's used extensively.
Uptime monitoring for HTTP, TCP, keywords, queries, pings, DNS records, Docker, Steam, notifications on 90 plus
different services.
Everything you could possibly imagine works normally on a
20 second interval.
It's available in a number of different languages as to
factor support.
It's just a great tool.
If you want to see it in action,
you can go to status.disrupt.org,
which is a nice free software provider,
and you can actually see what status page looks like.
And when you install this tool,
you add your tools, you can group them together,
and then show them as these status pages,
because different people might want to see
the statuses for different things. This is very simple and it works very, very well. They also have a demo,
which I'll link in the show notes so you can also see a demo of it and dink around on it.
You basically just add whatever service you want and then you'll be able to start
monitoring it and it'll give you what it calls Quick Stats.
It just says with basic coloring,
you can look at it and you can see
if something's been down or inaccessible at any moment.
And then it gives you information related to what's down.
And if you want, you can add further,
like you can schedule something for maintenance.
So that it won't be confused when something's offline on purpose.
So that's the basic idea. Up time, Kuma, way to share statuses with others, works really, really well.
Also want to give a shout out to another project from the exact same developer,
and that is called Doc J, D-O-C-K-G-E.
Oof, continuing the most confusing names possible.
DocJ is a Docker compose manager.
And I know that we haven't talked about containers on the show, really, but it is a amazingly simple tool as well. It's wonderful.
It's just something that you point at a directory
of Docker compose files.
And then it will automatically know
where those services are.
And it will provide you with a handy clickable link
to visit that service.
So I highly recommend Doc J if you are a Docker compose user.
It worked immediately. It also gives you the links which I find more practically useful than a
normal dashboard application. So I can also recommend Doc J as well as uptime kuma to excellent services. I didn't know I needed and now I'm using them.
There's also a portainer, but that's something
that I don't find useful at all
because I use compose files.
And like I said, that's a whole nother topic.
We won't get into today, but because I don't need
a basically a graphic interface,
web interface for compose files.
And just portanement no sense
because I would just look at the compose file.
But since Doc J is also looking at the compose file,
it makes total sense.
And it's great specifically because I have a indie droid
Nova little 16 gigabyte arm 64 device,
which I gave to HB, who was my guest in the last episode
as a sort of thank you and experiment fun thing.
So we're connected over a VPN and with Doc J,
it's just easier to access services
because otherwise I actually set up a dashboard application,
which is just something that you is like a static site you add your applications to.
But that was actually harder than just spinning up DocJ, which automatically knows what
compose files were running between each other.
So yeah, it's worked great.
All of these services work really, really well.
You know what?
I'll shout out another one on another great tool,
which I didn't know I needed until I had it.
And it's awesome is HomeBox.
That's H-O-M-E-B-O-X.
And HomeBox, just pull it up here,
is an inventory management tool.
And the reason that I started using it, and maybe there's better tools, you know, it's like anything. box, just pull it up here, is an inventory management tool.
And the reason that I started using it, and there may be there's better tools, you know,
it's like anything.
Maybe there's better tools, whatever.
So HomeBox is inventory organization system built for the home user.
And it's very simple.
It has a pretty interface.
You basically just spin it up and that's about it.
And it allows you to keep track.
It's four devices, right?
Like exactly like what in previous episodes
I talked about giving, you know, little arms servers
to other people, pies.
So this is a tool for keeping track
of what you gave to whom or where it is
and also for keeping track of things like your warranty coverage. So it'll tell
you if you have like a warranty issue or you can generate bills and materials and QR codes.
And it's nice. It's written and go and it works very, very well. I'm not confused by
it at all. I mean, yeah, you could keep a spreadsheet.
This is what they say about a spreadsheet.
If your needs can be fulfilled by a spreadsheet,
we'd suggest using that instead.
We have found spreadsheets to be pretty unwieldy.
When you have a lot of data, it's hard to keep track of what's where.
We also wanted to be able to search and filter data in a more robust way
than a spreadsheet can provide.
And we wanted to leave the door open for more advanced features in the future related to maintenance, moving items around or whatever.
So yeah, I'm really happy with with home box. And like I said, I'm sure that there are other
inventory management tools that are like far more feature rich or whatever. But I have to say that
home box has a wonderful interface. I basically
snap a photo of the device and it'll add a little QR code and I can keep track of what
devices I'm giving to what person. And because now I've actually given out a number of devices
to friends and family, for me personally, it's good. And yeah, maybe I'll convert over to
a spreadsheet in the future, but it's another nice service. Home box. Anyone can run it super easy
Link in the show notes
Let's take a moment to give a shout out to the sponsor of the show our only sponsor here on the podcast
It is a Mera Droid that is a Mera Droid.com. They're based in California about a hour and a half away from me
Went and toured their facility recently Recently, it was great.
Everyone works there.
It's just normal, friendly people.
They've got all kinds of awesome goodies,
which I've been purchasing since 2017.
And if you're curious, I would recommend going
and checking out all of their home assistant gear.
They have the most recent iteration
of their hardware of the home assistant green,
which is being used at Sequoia Fabrica. That is a maker space. I'll be talking about later. They also have some interesting
tools like the home assistant voice preview edition, which is a little Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
piece of hardware. I'm in the process of testing right now. See how it works. And it's
very interesting. Also have a 16 gigabyte indie droid Nova,
which is similar to a Pi, but has less power consumption
and a lot of power behind it.
So they have fast and easy shipping much easier
than ordering from someone like Pine 64 overseas direct
or hard kernel for O droids.
Instead, you have a US-based location with great customer
service.
They pick up the phone. I tested it,
I called them no problems. They're a great business and if you're curious you can go to
Ameradroid.com and use the code Linux Prepper at checkout. Otherwise I'll have some referral links
in the show notes for the devices I like, but I would recommend checking out the Home Assistant green and also their
Home Assistant sky connect. It's a Zigbee Matter USB controller. I've been using it for
a year, year and a half. I've had no problems with dropout or any issues at all. It's cheap. It's like
35 bucks. Anyway, I'll have some links in the show notes and we'll discuss those more at a later
time. But please do check out a meradroid.com
and use the code Linux Prepper at checkout.
I'm gonna give a project highlight
specifically to whisper.
That is whisper AI.
And yes, AI's a thing, people are scared of it.
I'm scared of it.
But whisper is a tool that is created by OpenAI.
It is open source software. It was released in September of 2022 But whisper is a tool that is created by OpenAI.
It is open source software.
It was released in September of 2022 under the MIT license.
And it is an excellent tool that is designed to be run offline and locally.
So the reason I got into whisper is because podcasting videos,
YouTube, if you go on YouTube and you watch a video video you probably have noticed that when you're watching a video you
can generate subtitles. You can generate subtitles in your language for
example if you don't speak English or if you don't speak a different language and
most of this is provided by whisper usually or maybe there's another tool but
whisper works very very well and you can run it on
stripped down versions of it. There's Whisper and faster Whisper, other iterations of it
that you can run. Sorry, it's a lot of information. I'll try not to rush. Whisper itself is written
in Python. It is a transcription software. Because of it, there is an expectation which I have
discovered as a podcaster. People expect transcriptions of the spoken word, including what I'm
saying right now, into text. And you can see it in most podcasting apps now. You can see transcriptions,
not to mention, you know, video platforms like YouTube,
peer tube, etc. People expect transcriptions and
show notes and what is called chapters, which is a thing in modern podcasting 2.0 clients where you can have
chunks with photo references and it's kind of like watching a video.
So this is a new world for me personally
that I've been figuring out.
But whisper makes transcription possible.
Because of this, I have been experimenting with whisper
and I decided it would make sense for me to invest
in a new computer because the computer I've been using
is a 2014 MacBook Air. It's just what I was given in the last
six months and so it's been something that I've used in the podcast but it has eight gigabits of
soldered RAM it's not powerful it's old and it really chokes with these kinds of audio tools I
noticed specifically and I want to be able to run things locally and offline.
I want to have control.
So I decided to buy a new laptop, which
is a whole nother story that's coming up.
But I want to mention Whisper and the version of it
that I have been personally using is called Whisper-Hifen Web.
Unfortunately, I found that Whisper, while it's generating transcriptions as text, which
is great, and maybe someone in the audience can give me suggestions for converting text
over to SRT subtitle format.
I used a branch off of their GitHub that includes SRT support, and I've been running that
to generate my transcriptions
for my podcast.
So some of you notice that there was not a transcription
for episode three.
And that is because I was trying to generate it all myself.
And I was having some trouble with that.
So that should be added at this point.
Sorry for not having it sooner. But it's just part of figuring this out myself.
So I can recommend Whisper Hyfinn Web, specifically the SRT branch, which is not merged
into the master yet.
So if you've got get skills, you can play around with that or curl skills.
You can try that on your local machine.
You don't necessarily need a powerful machine,
but in this case, I was running, I needed x86 and I just bought a new laptop. So get more
into that later. But whisper has been a great tool for offline usage. I am genuinely
confused about chapter generation. And this is, I guess, state of the podcast kind of thing too, but chapters need to be in a specific format
similar to transcription seem to be in a specific format and I am confused by that. I'll put some links in the show notes. If people want to submit
Welcome to join our Matrix. You're welcome to email me podcast@james.network or you're welcome to fill out the anonymous feedback form, which is linked in the show notes. But I can
definitely recommend Whisper. And if anyone knows a better way to run Whisper, let me know.
I'm just trying to move forward, right? So I'm running it as is for the sake of getting the show done. But if you have suggestions
on better ways to run whisper locally in Linux, I am very interested. But as a sweetheart
recognition tool, I think it's pretty good. Take a look at the show notes. I'll also post a
comparison I have. But the main issue that I found when I'm generating any kind of show notes with Whisper
Is that it doesn't include URLs, which is something that I add to all my shows
Believe it or not adding URLs to the show notes takes like hours to refine and it just it takes a lot of time trust me
And that's something that is not handled by the AI like it doesn't obviously know if I'm talking about a project to include links to the specific repository.
If there's a way to do that, I guess again, let me know.
Whether there's a tool, another AI tool that's fully open source,
so if hosted I can play with, I'm interested in trying it.
Otherwise, I'll keep doing it by hand. It's just time consuming.
But I do recommend
whisper from OpenAI as a local first tool, especially if you generate any kind of content.
It's just an expectation requirement in modern podcasting video. It is what it is. So yeah,
if you need a spoken word to text transcription, that's the tool that you use if you want
to do it yourself.
All right, whisper by open AI, link in the show notes.
I know that AI is a buzz wordy thing that people are annoyed by and equally terrified by,
but I just want to say that it's something because I have needed it for
transcriptions and I decided to buy a modern computer.
I've been continuing to experiment with tooling for AI.
And I'm not going to fall totally into the weeds.
I'm probably going to talk about it with HB, who was the guest on the last show.
We are in the process of testing some AI's together.
A mayor of the sponsor was nice enough to give me an
Indudroid Nova, which I gave to HB.
And we are using it over VPN to play around with some
of these different tools, AI tools,
that we can run ourselves.
And if they help me get things like show notes together,
I don't know if they will or not.
I'll let you know.
If you have suggestions, let me know.
So what we're testing specifically is this RM64 device
with 16 gigabytes of RAM.
It's supposedly rated for AI usage, whatever that means.
I'll put a link to the device in the show notes.
I'm not going to pretend that I understand it because I'm literally in the process of testing it right now.
But I also can test things locally on my computer as well, right, which is regular X86.
But if there's anything you recommend testing, hit me up, send me your suggestions.
I'm very interested. Like something I was considering was like next cloud with some level of AI
functionality or other kinds of tools. I don't know if there's something totally unrelated, but it's
you know fully open and you think it's worth trying. Hit me, and I will do my best to give it a shot.
We also have a, there's a discussion going on Lemme,
where we're talking about AI tools and people
who are using them.
I'll drop a link to that if you're curious
and you wanna see it, talking about different models
and different things people are testing.
So I found that that is a more engaging way right now
to ask about these kinds of topics,
or you know, in a specific forum, then doing it on my own website.
I might as well just go where people are already having these discussions and self-hosting
and stuff.
So link for that.
In the show notes, more AI discussion to be had, for sure, but trying to use it in a way
that's productive.
So, I know that sounds ridiculous,
but you know, that's where we're at.
Why not?
And these are intensive things to run, so.
I'll keep you updated, but please do send me suggestions.
You'll see the Lemme thread people have made many suggestions
and happy to get them.
So the AI discussions will continue in related to things
that are fully and locally hosted.
Other kinds of tools feel free to recommend them. It doesn't mean I'm going to recommend them on the show.
I might mention something, but
yeah, the goal of this show is always to do first and foremost everything you can yourself.
So it doesn't mean we'll get there, but that's what we're trying to do.
and yourself. So it doesn't mean we'll get there,
but that's what we're trying to do.
All right, that's enough about AI
and segments for the future.
Now's a good time as any to talk about my laptop adventures
in leaving Linux.
So just relative to like talking about running whisper
and running some of these other demanding things,
basically audio and general is demanding.
And realizing that
you know I'm running tools that I need to get some power behind. Oh you know what before we go
into the laptop thing this is a good moment to mention an excellent tool that I'm using.
It's called Femio Stereo Tool, T-H-E-M-I-O Stereo Tool.
It's available as a VST.
It can be run on ARM 64 ARM devices.
I think 32-bit devices, as well as it has GUI command line
interface.
So I've been running that for doing more audio balancing.
It's been great.
I still need to get better at audio balancing.
If people have suggestions on balancing audio,
hit me up podcast@james.network.
Please give me suggestions.
Super appreciated.
So, the theme is been great, but it's too powerful to run
on the crappy MacBook Air hardware
that I was given in the last few months
that I've been using for the show.
I've been running it successfully on a Pi for with SSD. It's been running fine.
Yeah, I've been doing that over VPN. So, FEMIO command line version has been easy to script.
For moving the files back and forth, I've been very happy with
SCP, so I'll give a shout out to the software package.
SCP, it's a SSH based copy program that you can do to copy something to
remote location or from a remote location. So I do that through my WireGuard connection and
it's been awesome for moving a file, processing it and then moving it back. I'm actually
looking to script this process right now as another aside.
I'm going through the learning Linux TV bash scripting series about 18 segments.
I'm roughly halfway and I'm learning more about bash scripting and I don't know about you,
but it's something that I get overwhelmed by things because I'm not a developer, but I want to learn.
So I'm halfway through the series.
I'll drop a link.
If anyone else wants to check out this series,
it's great.
A guy J gives very clear information,
and it'll walk you through the process
of understanding Bash and basic Bash scripting.
So I can already say halfway through.
I'm learning a lot, and I think it's an amazing series.
And I highly recommend you check out
learning Linux TV Bash scripting.
But, jumping back a sec.
So, let me know,
Lemme stereo tool, cost money,
it's about 50 bucks for a license.
I didn't even bother with using the free version of it,
but it's available as a VST, so
you just plug it into whatever audio program it is awesome.
So that Mio Stereto is great.
The SCP program is great.
Ooh, another thing that I've had excellent time with is using FFmpeg itself to do audio
extraction.
I've been very happy with that.
I'll include the exact command in the show notes for extracting
audio out of an MP4 video.
Why do you want to know that?
Well, if you're forced to use something like Zoom for a call, which is what happened in
the last episode with me and HB, I actually used F of MPEG to extract the audio I needed
to then send to them.
And it worked perfectly. So FFmpeg is such a beast. It's the tooling behind MPV and all these other
great media tools, just a Swiss Army knife tool, you know, but there's always a cool new thing to
learn in FFmpeg. All right, back to the laptop adventures. So I wanted to get a new machine.
My original intention was to get something like a framework.
Reality is the framework I wanted with the video card
is gonna cost me over $3,000.
I have not bought a new computer in like 15.
Ever.
I built a computer in college
and I guess that counts. That was so long ago.
I haven't bought a new machine. I've kind of bartered and found machines like think pads and
you know classics, but I haven't bought a new one and I wanted something with a video card.
So because I've had older computers it wasn't even possible for me to do much
in the way of gaming and these things.
But I decided to buy something.
$3,000 honestly is really steep.
Personally on this show, like so far,
I haven't actually gotten a dime yet.
Getting a sponsor helps, but just where I'm at right now. But I ended up settling for a Lenovo
idea pad 5i Pro, which I found at a big box wholesaler, but it has a 90 day return policy.
So I decided it was on sale, Basically ended up costing me about $1500.
But keep in mind that's with tax.
So I saved almost two thirds the cost of the framework.
Granted the framework is so cool and I get that the framework is cool.
But the Lenovo IdeaPad, it's got a RTX 4050 video card, which for me is is plenty coming from the
fact I didn't even basically have a video card. It's got a 2K 120 Hertz high resolution display,
which using it made me actually realize that my my vision starting to go a little bit my
close up vision. It didn't realize that, but yeah, upgrading the display made me realize that I have some
of your cited issues.
So it works really well though.
The speakers are crap.
It's like Dolby Atmos sounds supposedly, but the built-in speakers are not good, even running
M150% volume.
But overall, it's an amazing computer for me.
I'm happy with it.
It has soldered 32 gigabytes of RAM, so that part sucks.
I hate soldered RAM.
But it's performing really well.
For my needs, it's performing really, really well.
So far, whatever, man, I just needed something to get the show moving, baby.
It's been good, but as part of that, it gave me an excuse to try Windows 11.
So the computer of course came with Windows on it.
And in this case, Windows 11,
I have not used Windows since Windows 8.
That's the previous version of Windows I used
because my friend had it installed on their desktop.
So I used Windows 8 and just plugged it into the tooling I'd normally use things like, um, keep ass and next cloud and that was all fine.
But I was curious about Windows 11 and my thought on it, you know, having not tried it in so long,
I was surprised at the level of AI integration. Um, I mean, I'd heard about it, but
the thing I would say that I felt
like in Windows 11 performance wise, it seemed fine, but I don't like the clutter, like
the sort of cover flow. It feels like you're looking at a photo album or something, and
I think that's been in Windows for a while probably, but it was the same problem I had back with Windows Vista when I left Windows.
I didn't like that.
I don't like the clutter of things coming at me.
I want to have a make the decision of what I see, right?
I kind of want more of a clean desk approach if that makes sense.
I don't want to have things coming at me. And so in that way, I'm happy to not be on Windows. I kept my license so I can
run it in a VM or whatever, but the truth is, is like, I'm not running Windows. I don't really
care. So I just deleted it. I was like, whatever. I was curious, so of course I installed a game on it,
I was curious, so of course I installed a game on it, just to try it, and I haven't played games a long time, and that was interesting, but then I just deleted the whole thing and
wiped it.
So that started my coming back to Linux journey, of course, because I'm a, you know,
Foska.
So the first thing I did was I tried a tool called anti-X, live boot disk.
I tried anti-Xx a couple things. So first thing it did not properly
see my monitor. It's that if thought it was a 1600 1200 monitor, which it's not its higher,
and it thought it was you know 60 Hertz refresh rate. It's not. It also did not see my Wi-Fi,
and oof, that's a no go for me. That makes me feel like we're back in 20 years ago.
And that's just not acceptable.
I'm sure that more could be done with it.
I was just curious how it would be.
But for me, anti-X, I like the minimalist interface,
but not having even Wi-Fi and it's seen my hardware wrong.
Makes sense, because this is a newer machine right? This machine's within the last year.
So, and year two years.
And that's why I wanted to try a new piece of hardware right?
I haven't done it forever.
So, anti-X dropped that right away.
I'm sure more could be done with it, but I'm just not interested.
So, ditching anti-X, I then went
over to NIX. Oh, I did a brief stop in KDE Neon. I had never used KDE Neon, but I've been
running Kubon to write, as I mentioned in my very first episode for a number of years in the LTS, basically Ubuntu Studio. And I was curious to see what the latest KDE would run like, and I was trying to look
up different distros, and that's when I realized what KDE neon is.
KDE neon is just a test environment of the absolute latest KDE plasma.
Why?
So that you can just see how it's running.
It's not meant to be kept on your system.
I don't know why anyone would do that.
Just think of it like a demo car.
It's like, oh, I've always wondered
what it's like to drive this car.
That's what it's for.
You throw it on, bobs your uncle, and it should work.
And in this case, as opposed to the anti-X, it did.
It was awesome.
I put on Kati Nautott Katie E. Neon and boom
It's like 120 Hertz refresh rate. Here's your exact model of monitor and everything was
Popped up Wi-Fi popped up everything's on there
I was like yes, that is good and this was with KTE 6 3 and I was like, okay
I had news KTE 6 I've been on KTE 5 so I was like, okay
interesting I had news KTE 6. I've been on KTE 5. So I was like, okay, interesting. This is looking good.
And I thought I will install something with the latest KTE and that brought me to NixOS.
And of course, NixOS is like right in the hype train really hard. Let's talk about NixOS. So NixOS is a immutable Linux distribution. And by immutable, you are defining what is on
the machine, right, in a configuration file. To me, it feels a lot like using the open box
window manager. If any of you have ever run something like a crunch bang or if you remember arch bang. It doesn't
really matter. But I think there's also what Alex see. It's so if you're using open box,
you're using this minimalist window manager that's like a right click interface. And it's
all XML. So you just have this file and you're writing how it's what's listed, what it means,
what it does. And I love OpenBox for this reason. And I also kind of annoyed by it for
the same reason. So you have a file. And in that way, it's like a binary choice, right?
It either works or it doesn't work. You make a change, you forgot a bracket or something. It's written as code.
So it's like a text file, right?
XML file.
But if something's wrong, it is just broke.
It's like, nope, I'm broke.
I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke.
And it's cool.
And I created an open box system.
And I just said like the internet is internet.
Email is email.
And I gave it to my mom and she used it for two years.
It was actually an arch box.
And she loved it.
She said it was the best computer she'd ever used.
Because everything was, you just right click
and then all the items are listed as you would expect.
And you can do really interesting customization
within open box of auto generating menus
based on specific parameters. it gets pretty wild for being
something so minimal. It's also a really good pair with XFCE if you're listening to this and
your XFCE user, I recommend playing with open box or a derivative. So this felt like that,
but for the entire distribution. So you're editing a configuration file and you're
saying like, oh, I want to, you know, keep SXC and then you're reloading that file. And
now it's just pulling everything in and it's doing as fast as possible. And the thing
that was so interesting about NIX is when I looked back through my bash history, it was
like less than a third of the screen size. Like there was barely
any commands that I'd issued on the box. And that was, you know, me as a longtime person
setting things up, configuring. I did very little on that machine, which is amazing. You
know, normally my history would be huge of commands that I'd issued. So that is a props to Nix and I think who is Nix
for? Honestly, Nix is for people who already know what they want. And if you Nix is for
people who already know what they want, it is for someone who already knows how the thing
works. It just is. And already knows how the thing works.
It just is.
And there's no way around that.
I know it's been in development for two decades,
and it is an amazingly powerful platform.
Do I recommend it for the average person?
I'm gonna just go out there, and I'm gonna say,
"Mm!
If you have an older machine that is fully supported by Nix
already as a turn key solution then yes
I do recommend it. So if you have a piece of hardware that you're like, I'm good
Then heck yeah, immutable go for it. That's awesome. Like I think for a desktop or a server
Nix is an excellent choice
But for me with this new laptop, I did not have that experience. And I asked the next community
through Matrix and stuff. I asked questions and related to tooling I could use to
switch my concerns. And I got a bunch of suggestions. But here's the thing I'm coming from
Ubuntu. My question was, is running nicks more difficult than just making the changes in Ubuntu that I'm already using?
So that's the rub. But I did give nicks a decent shake. I was on vacation for a week. So I brought my existing
my existing laptop right, and which I still had, so I wasn't worried about it. And then this new laptop running nicksLS.
worried about it. And then this new laptop running NixLS. And I took the week to experiment around with it, change things. And that's still at the end of the week, man, just having
a few lines of that history. Wow. So that's crazy. But certain things, you know, worked,
certain things did not work. And I would say one place where Nix is really hurting, really hurting is documentation.
Okay.
So if you're using this platform and it's saying, oh, you know, edit the configuration file,
add this option, add that option.
Well, if they don't work, now you're jumping through random forums or there's a footnote
that's a sentence long.
It's not answering your question and that is not new user friendly.
I think in this way too, in general, and feel free to chime in, nicks people, but the
thing is is like, if you're going to set up a configuration file, you already know what
you're looking for.
It's kind of like being an auto mechanic.
An auto mechanic isn't looking at a car that they wanna custom build and be like,
what's a car?
No, they're like, I wanna M5 wrench,
I want this, I want it to be,
this many millimeters from this,
I want this to be space, this way from,
and that's what Nix is.
So that is what it is.
You know exactly what you want.
You're like a surgeon and you're like,
I need you to take one step to the left.
If you know how to do that
and Linux how to be that specific,
then you are gonna like nicks.
But if you gotta get in the weeds on stuff,
to me it starts to feel like 2010 era,
you know, like I said, the open box kind of thing.
It works, it doesn't work.
But also kind of like using 2010 era, like arch
menjaroe time where things work or they don't work. And it's this, they it's like ongoing
project, which is why I say, if it's already configured for you, then that's awesome. But one of
the things I noticed in nix is there was over a half a dozen pieces of hardware that were missing
Right that like Nix wasn't quite sure like oh, what is that? What is that?
It wasn't sure on my like brand of you know the exact details of my monitor and my and
These other refresh rate these other things and it's like I
Can go and tweak them and I did for a week, right?
But at a certain time I'm like I wonder what'll happen if I just leave this.
The beauty of Nix, I did not mess with flakes or any other kind of stuff, right?
Just base configuration.
Is I was able to export, I exported the vast history because why not?
I exported my configuration file into the basic text file.
I can reclaim it at any moment and go back to where I was. So that part is rad.
And I, you know, the great thing about the next journey is I can resume it at any moment
and I probably will. But for the moment, I was like, I wonder what will happen if I try
going back to Ubuntu. So after backing up my configuration file, so easy, I deleted Nix, definitely the future,
but in the present, I'm like, "Mm, this is waiting to take way too much of my time." And that's not my
goal. My goal is to keep moving forward. I want to test our models. I want to do all the stuff,
and I want to do it now. So I installed Kubuntu for the first time as opposed to a bunch of studio, I installed Kubun 2, 24/10, not the LTS, 24/4.
I installed 24/10 and I set it up and I was so impressed by the fact that it automatically saw the basics that I was hoping.
It's Plasma 6-1, so older version of Plasma than Nix.
But, it's like you have 120 hertz monitor.
All everything was on there.
With one command, I was able to add all of my Nvidia drivers,
which is something that was confusing me on Nix over the course of the week.
But the full driver install command, one command,
not only did I get my Nvidia drivers I also got the the kuda related
drivers for AI function everything was done I actually timed out how long it would take me
just so you know to configure kubon 2 to taste keep in mind I have scripted out this
this ability for me to remove things like snaps, like things I talked
about earlier episode, but I decided to do it by hand because I was just curious having
done the process, you know, different times.
How long it would take me?
So the installation of Kubuntu 24 10, it took 20 minutes.
All right. And then after I had everything installed on the machine, I was like, okay, how long will
it take for me to do tweaks?
So at the point of me, let's see, removing snap, setting dead priorities, adding flat
packs, adding app image support, making other little changes, that took me a total of six minutes and 10 seconds.
After doing that, getting all of my different
little settings into Plasma, and doing a lot of
just manual tweaking, the total time added
additional 10 minutes.
So that means at 36 minutes and 10 seconds, I was done.
At that point, I'm like running whisper,
I'm doing audio transcription,
and I've moved on.
So I understand why I would go back to Nix,
but I got to say that the amount of time to undo
the things about Ubuntu that I don't like,
which is annoying, was still not that big of a deal.
So when you take away the actual installation itself,
the whole process of tweaking was 16 minutes, 10 seconds.
Right?
That's not much, man.
And like I said, I have an Ansible script that would do it in one command.
So that's one area too where I'm a little bit confused by Nick's still and I can get
clarification if you're listening and you want to give me clarification of if I can just
do all these tweaks anyway on one command, what am I really missing out on in terms of
the operating system?
Anyways, that's where I'm at with that. And I think Nix is great.
I will come back to it, but for me running something
and I wanted all the drivers, I wanted everything running,
it was easier for me to get Kubuntu
and undo what I didn't want
than it was for me to continue trying to configure Nix,
which I will come back to in the future.
But that is my journey. So things on Nix, I said things I like, things I don't like.
NixOS is easy to pick up. Yes, it is. NixOS is very easy to pick up.
But it jumps on the screen. It's going. Wi-Fi is working. You know, things are working.
Okay, so that is important.
And it just shows how good Linux is in 2025.
It has never been better.
It's insane how much better it is.
And it wasn't the past.
It's just awesome.
Okay.
Also, it is very easy to configure.
I'm just gonna give another positive.
Thirdly, the commands, the basic commands for nicks
are very clear.
So that part is good.
Things I don't like, the documentation is lacking.
The documentation assumes you did this,
maybe you try one other optional thing.
It's like a short comment.
Then you're just searching through the internet for whatever information.
So I think the documentation is greatly improved for when I glanced at it over a year ago, but it is still
weak sauce. And I know it's it's such a deep program. And that's the other thing that I would say on a negative about NixOS is that it is a system that in the end is designed for professionals.
It just is.
You're somebody that knows the difference between
past and key past.
If you're using Nix, you're not some guy
that never used Linux before.
You're a professional, you know, this is hardcore.
It's writing the line between being an enthusiast
and being a literal programmer. So that's how I feel about Nixo as, specifically on really new hardware.
But I had a great time with it. So yeah, I am now running the coupon to 24/10. Well, I regret it.
Maybe.
Speaking of which, I want to give a reaction to a piece of news that I read recently, which
is that Ubuntu apparently, I haven't done this before, I'm doing a news reaction.
Ubuntu is going to be, they're going to be moving away from the GNU core utils to you utils, which is a rewrite
in rust.
So this is a bad change, in my opinion, and let's talk about it.
Why?
Because the core utils are sort of at the basis of everything
in the GNU Linux Linux free software foundation basis of all this tooling, right? It's like the basic copy program like I mentioned SSH a CP earlier copy command that I like and
RM for removing things replacing that with a rust implementation
Let's talk about the good.
The good is that, supposedly, it is six times faster, at least.
So, wow.
And that's why people make changes, you know, for convenience.
The bad is that the license is changing over to an MIT license.
And free software, open source tools, you know, are typically with the
GNU license, the GPL license. That's the kind of tool you like to use. But Ubuntu
in maybe even the next LTS is going to move to the UUID. So obviously there's
speed improvements. But the MIT license in no way prevents people who make
changes from withholding those changes. Like it allows commercialized companies in no way prevents people who make changes
from withholding those changes.
Like it allows commercialized companies
to not contribute back.
And they're gonna basically design something similar
to like, you know, they embrace extended,
extinguish idea that Microsoft
and who, you know, take your pick,
company has done over the years
where you're making improvements to something
to kill everybody else off.
And it's not contributing back to that community,
you know, and having the free and open community,
like that's why this podcast exists, basically.
And there's a lot of different topics
I wanna talk about, but I think it's sad
that for the sake of convenience,
the creator is not willing to keep that same level of permissive license.
MIT is definitely...
it is a permissive license,
but not permissive like the GPL is.
And I am worried about that for the future.
And honestly, to be honest,
if that is what's happening, I will probably attempt to
personally, this is just me. I'm not the only person you know, I'm going to get rid of it.
I'm not going to use that. I'm going to continue probably with the regular core utils,
but it's also for me, it's a strong reason that I will be leaving Ubuntu entirely.
I mean, I'll take it one step at a time.
We'll see what happens.
But man, that is a bummer,
and it could have an amazing impact on the future of Linux
and free software in the future.
And we'll see what happens with you, U-Tills,
and I really hope that someone else comes with the GPL
variation of this.
Yeah, feel free to send in your thoughts.
I will be happy to read them on air in a future episode in regards to the UUTILs MIT licensed Rust implementation of the core U-TILs as a rewrite as a drop-in replacement that is coming.
And people can play with it now, but yeah, that licensing issue for me, that it's not good, man.
That's not good at all.
Let's take a moment to discuss the state of the podcast.
So I've been experimenting continuously with podcasting 2.0 support for this podcast.
That is a Litecoin
sat support for podcasting.
It's supported in most a lot of podcast apps.
You can look up podcasting 2.0 after curious.
People have been, you know, want to get in on this.
There's other podcasts that are doing it.
And so I thought, whatever, I'll try it.
I set it up previously.
I was on a podcast called the Volunteer Technologist.
And for that, I was asked to set up a podcasting 2.0 account,
which I did with git alb.com.
And I have now, they've migrated away
from encouraging people to use their site,
which makes sense for podcasting 2.0 transactions.
Basically, you listen to a podcast,
and you make a set contribution.
And maybe it's stupid, but you know what?
It is an open source thing.
It's an open source data.
And we shouldn't embrace it and try it, because why not?
So I've been slowly playing on that.
I realized that I'd set it up incorrectly.
Good news is, at this point, the show So I've been slowly playing on that. I realized that I'd set it up incorrectly.
Good news is at this point, the show is properly set up for podcasting 2.0.
And it allows me to do cool things like give splits of a donation to other people and
fun things like that.
So right now, who I'm giving a split to specifically I'd like to mention is IPFS, IPFS Internet Planetary
File System is a decentralized way to access this show.
IPFS podcasting.
I'll drop a link.
It's also listed in my links on podcast.James.network.
But you can check out IPFS podcasting.
And if anybody wants to help post this show, you will get a percentage of donations.
So
it's interesting and if people want to
donate in this way now that it's actually working if someone tried in the past obviously it failed, which is what I was told.
So now at this point if I raise the equivalent of 40 bucks
so 50,000 sets, I can use that to I set up Albi as a self-hosted instance
on, um, on a remote pie device. And so I will add that I need 50,000 sat buy-in to
basically set myself up within this network for self as a self-hosted podcasting 2.0.
Platform.
So if people want to contribute to me in that way, I'll be using whatever sat donations
towards that.
You can also support me directly through PayPal, link in the show notes.
If you do, you'll be the very first person to do so.
No one has done it so far.
That's fine. The main way you can support this show
if you want to support me is you can spread the word.
If you like this show, please share it.
I'm happy to say the most recent episode
with HB, my first guest, that increased the listeners
by two fold.
So huge increase in listeners.
And that's awesome. I think because we were responding
to their hot hands feedback, almost no one gave me feedback about my feedback episode.
I think they realize they're like, Oh, I say something. It's going to be on this show. So nobody
said me anything. But feel free to send me your thoughts.
Anyway, I did think that was humorous.
All right.
Short of that.
Coming up in the future,
Long Format interviews.
Long Format interviews with a journalist,
Long Format interviews with open source developer.
If you have any questions, suggestions,
let me know and you can look forward to that.
I am looking to increase my release schedule
from once a month to twice a month.
I'm not promising more than that,
but I'm gonna try, I'm gonna try twice a month,
see how that goes.
I feel like it's good for the time being.
And if you know anyone that would like to show,
please do share it.
Tell 'em, spread it on social media.
It really does help,
'cause almost nobody knows about my little show,
and I really appreciate your help.
Oh, you could also hire me.
I stopped doing the stonemasonry for the time being.
It's just so hard on the body,
and I am available for creative consultation, for work.
If you're curious, you can go on YouTube
and watch me give me three different talks
at the next cloud conference, I was nervous,
but between this podcast and that,
you can kind of give an idea of who I am.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode
of Linux Prepper and a happy six months to us
on the show and this journey together.
I want you to know that because of the
very large backlog of material at this point, rather than release a multi-hour episode,
I've decided to split it up. So my intention is in the next two weeks to release another episode.
In that, I will talk about my recent touring of a maker space in San
Francisco, Sequoia Fabrica, as well as talking more about the upcoming Linux
Fest Northwest and chatting with a volunteer there. So that'll be fun. More
terminal tools getting into music recording, which I've been playing with as well as zine printing
and paper crafting and making your own paper print and play games for having fun at home.
So there's all kinds of material not to mention interviews with developers and journalists.
So there's a lot of material which which also means coming up, I might start
a sort of subscription service. If I'm releasing more material than once a month, I'll
either do an offset release where, you know, the material comes out. And then it gets released
more publicly after, you know, a couple of weeks or something like that, um, to have
us kind of subscribe our system.
In addition to the regular release I do now, which is, you know, one episode a month.
So I'm still open to suggestions on that.
It's in process.
So for the moment, you know, anything coming out, it's just coming out to everybody.
But something to look forward to for the future, having more of a subscriber program.
So I can make that happen somehow. But in the meantime,
I just want to say thank you so much for enjoying this episode. Please do send me your feedback.
Please do share this episode with anyone that you think would enjoy it. You know, if you know
anybody that would be into this stuff, send it out to them. I really, really appreciate it because
almost nobody knows about this show. That's the truth. And spreading the word is the best thing
that you could do to support me.
Otherwise, I look forward to seeing people
at the end of the month at Linux Fest Northwest
and you will hear more in the next episode.
Have a wonderful time.
Take care.
Love you all.
Bye.
(dramatic music) [MUSIC]