Linux After Dark

We wonder what old concepts in the Linux and open source world are due for a comeback.

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Gary’s recent (mostly) good experience with an Arm Chromebook makes us wonder about the current state of proper Linux on Arm laptops. Plus follow up on why the Wyse 5070 has some limitations, but is still a great little x86 box.

Chris mentioned a FOSDEM talk

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/linuxafterdark to learn more.

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Gary’s recent trip to FOSDEM made him wonder if the type of Linux user who goes to FOSS events has changed. Has the demographic shifted more towards “normal” people who use Linux as a tool rather than something to tinker with? Plus more on planned obsolescence, and a quick prediction about the Apple Vision Pro.

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/linuxafterdark to learn more.

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We come up with our FOSS extremes. The funniest, the coolest, the cleverest, the most useful, the dullest, the most exciting, the most dangerous and problematic, the [something]est open source software.

Projects we mentioned:

alsamixer

Glow

Apache

nginx

HAProxy

Redis

VLC

Kodi

Nextcloud

Coreutils

Audacity

Asahi

Immich

antennapod

UniversalBlue

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/linuxafterdark to learn more.

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How do we decide which devices and which software we trust?

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/linuxafterdark to learn more.

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We look back at what we wanted to happen in the Linux and FOSS world in 2023, and talk about what we want to happen in 2024.

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The child’s toy that Chris hacked makes us remember the various other proprietary hardware and software that we’ve taken control of using free and open source software. Plus our mixed feelings about doing an accessibility challenge.

Lunii

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When the Raspberry Pi 5 was announced, we all said that most people would probably be better off repurposing an x86 thin client so we bought some dirt cheap new in box Dell Wyse 5070 machines to see if we were right. Spoiler: we were.

Dalton’s post about trying to break Synology RAID

Parky Towers

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Our memories of early positive experiences show us how communities have changed over the years, and the best ways to keep the experience positive these days.

Late Night Linux Family communities

Practical ZFS

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Half of us constantly change our hardware and software setups, and the other half like to keep things as constant as possible. Are we changing things to avoid personal technical debt, or are we just bored? Plus more on locking down phones.

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It’s the spinning rust challenge! We try installing and running our operating systems on mechanical hard drives and learn that Linux is much less painful than Windows on a spinning disk.

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The vast majority of desktop computer users in the world use a Windows-like interface, so why do all the major distros ship GNOME which is totally different? It can’t just be because of accessibility and inertia, can it? Plus more on government attacks on end to end encryption.

HelloFresh

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Something has gone wrong with the timeline and all software is free and open source. What does that world look like? Plus more on biometrics and desktop scaling.

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What hardware we recommend for desktop Linux users in 2023. Is it really as simple as buying a 5 year old ThinkPad?

HelloFresh

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Governments around the world are trying to undermine end-to-end encryption. Are they going to get away with forcing in backdoors, and what does it mean for open source? Plus what we stubbornly refuse to use our computers and phones for.

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Factor

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The bits of Linux and open source software that we regret putting off trying, and what made us wait. From the security and complexity of containers to the hype of ZFS and WSL. Plus why we still haven’t embraced Nix.

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All four of us have been Ubuntu users for a long time but we’ve been dabbling with different distros to see how they compare. Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE all have their appeal, but are we likely to switch permanently?

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Factor

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What ever happened to convergence? The dream of having one computing device just never came true, and we get to the bottom of it. Plus how to avoid drama in open source projects.

HelloFresh

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The things we feel like we are missing in Linux, and what we miss from Linux when we use proprietary platforms.

We mentioned Dalton’s tool called Boomstick.

HelloFresh

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The oldest machines we’d be willing to daily drive including a ThinkPad with Libreboot, the ways that old laptops are sometimes better, and why Microsoft’s silly Windows 11 requirements are great for the second hand Linux-friendly laptop market. Plus why we missed the climate change aspect of speculation about the future.

HelloFresh

With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep.  Get 16 free meals plus free shipping at hellofresh.com/linuxafterdark16 using the promo code linuxafterdark16

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 100 devices.

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Dalton spent 3 hours having fun playing with open source DJ software Mixxx, and wonders if the rest of us have had a similar amount of fun with FOSS. Plus a great idea for a challenge, and one that’s a terrible idea.

Check out the new LNL show called Ask The Hosts. The first episode is available on Patreon now.

Tailscale

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We try to imagine what the future holds for our young kids, and realise how much the tech world has changed since we were young. Plus building a dirt cheap NAS, and more.

ServerMania

ServerMania offers a wide range of fully customizable dedicated, cloud, colocation, and IP Transit services, and free initial consultations. Go to servermania.com/lad and use the promo code linuxafterdark to get 15% off dedicated servers – recurring for life.

HelloFresh

With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep.  Get 16 free meals plus free shipping at hellofresh.com/linuxafterdark16 using the promo code linuxafterdark16

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 100 devices.

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The times we’ve spent far too long troubleshooting simple problems – from permissions issues to unplugged cables and CDs in the wrong slots. Plus Dalton realises that he’s a happy Btrfs user.

ServerMania

ServerMania offers a wide range of fully customizable dedicated, cloud, colocation, and IP Transit services, and free initial consultations. Go to servermania.com/lad and use the promo code linuxafterdark to get 15% off dedicated servers – recurring for life.

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 100 devices.

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Whether the idea of “lightweight Linux” is outdated, your feedback about taming Windows and workspaces, a quick look at Bodhi, and digital waste – all the useless data that sits on hard disks and is never even accessed.

We mentioned Linux Matters and Linux Lads Episode 100.

ServerMania

ServerMania offers a wide range of fully customizable dedicated, cloud, colocation, and IP Transit services, and free initial consultations. Go to servermania.com/lad and use the promo code linuxafterdark to get 15% off dedicated servers – recurring for life.

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 100 devices.

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Windows is much better and so much worse than Joe remembers, and it makes him very grateful for desktop Linux. Plus what preparation (if any) we’ve made for our untimely demise.

simplewall

Tailscale

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As companies tighten their belts during these uncertain times, could there be a silver lining for open source and self-hosting? Plus our brief thoughts on workspaces.

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A year on from our episode about Ubuntu, we still have concerns about the direction of the project. Or should we just call it a product at this point? Plus your feedback about challenges, and Raspberry Pi alternatives.

Our previous episode about Ubuntu

zimaboard

Tailscale

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We are joined by Jorge Castro to talk about immutable filesystem Linux distros.

Check out his project uBlue and his YouTube Channel.

Corrections from Jorge: “I mentioned hyperreal when I really meant to say Hyprland, and one is a person working on a ublue, the other is a wayland compositor.”

Tailscale

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What counts as a boutique distro, and do we recommend them? Plus Gary tells us about his experiences at the recent Fosdem conference.

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 20 devices.

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It’s the nested virtualisation challenge! How many levels of VMs can we get running at once? Plus we get the inside story from Lenovo about running Linux on their Arm ThinkPad.

Challenge

Red Hat article about nested virtualisation

Linux on Lenovo’s Arm ThinkPad

Mark Pearson from Lenovo joins us to talk about running Linux on their X13s ThinkPad.

Lenovo forum Linux section

Instructions for flashing and installing the Debian installer on the X13s

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 20 devices.

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Who has the most compute cores, how many are we actually using, and how many of them are running Linux? We finally find out who has the biggest stack of laptops in our core index challenge. Plus Dalton tells us about hacking a Wii U with open source software.

Tailscale

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We look back at what we wanted to happen in 2022, and look forward to what we want to see in 2023.

Episode 8 where we talked about our 2022 hopes

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. Go to tailscale.com and try it for free on up to 20 devices.

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It’s almost impossible to buy a Raspberry Pi for a reasonable price at the moment so we talk about alternatives, why a lot of Pi users would be better off with a cheap low-power x86 machine, and why sometimes the Pi makes the most sense.

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With the holiday season upon us, we talk about all the tech that we have to have with us when we travel.

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The Linux setups from the past that we miss the most, and why they are all ones that gave us the freedom to tinker and learn.

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Why do we stick with Linux and FOSS, even when our faith is tested?

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It’s our Halloween Spooktacular! What scares us about Linux, what we find spooky, and what seems like witchcraft.

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Is FOSS the ultimate lifeboat? If things go wrong with a tech stack, can you always just fall back on FOSS?

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Our worst Linux cock-ups, and what we learned from them.

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Where do we draw the line when it comes to our ethics and our ability to put food on the table?

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If we could go back in time, what advice would we give our younger, less experienced counterparts about Linux and FOSS?

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How efficient are our whole setups – including servers, client machines, and VPSs? Could we be doing more to save energy and money?

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In a world of cloud and serverless, is there any point in most people learning the command line?

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Our smallest and our biggest FOSS wins.

Things we mentioned:

Homebridge

FOG Project

boringtun

vnStat

EasyTAG

HAProxy

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We all tried to live with a touch-only experience on x86-64 devices. It turns out that Linux is very close to offering a great experience.

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Do we use Linux to avoid being locked into proprietary systems and services, or is that just as possible using any OS? Plus we bully Dalton for making us read a very American book.

Digital Minimalism book

Vultr

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Kolide

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Part 2 of the challenge to do something useful with our lowest-end hardware, and two polar opposite customer support experiences.

Vultr

High-performance cloud compute, bare metal, and storage in 25 locations all over the world. Go to getvultr.com/lad to sign up and get $150 free credit to use in 30 days.

Kolide

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The first part of our challenge to do something useful with the lowest-end hardware that we own, and whether forking really is as much of an open source benefit as it’s often considered.

Links

MorphOS

Maru OS

Vultr

High-performance cloud compute, bare metal, and storage in 25 locations all over the world. Go to getvultr.com/lad to sign up and get $150 free credit to use in 30 days.

Kolide

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A new release of Lineage OS is out and we give it a go. Installing and running it, some of the issues we came across, why it’s getting more complicated to run custom ROMs, and why Gary just uses an iPhone.

LineageOS 19 based on Android 12 is now officially available

Vultr

High-performance cloud compute, bare metal, and storage in 25 locations all over the world. Go to getvultr.com/lad to sign up and get $150 free credit to use in 30 days.

Kolide

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Dalton tells us about using a Steam Deck for a month, and Chris has a solution for Joe’s Python problem.

audio-visualizer-python

distrobox

Vultr

High-performance cloud compute, bare metal, storage, and managed Kubernetes in 24 locations all over the world. Go to getvultr.com/lad to sign up and get $150 free credit to use in 30 days.

Kolide

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We need to talk about Ubuntu. The future, the present, the staff departures, slow snaps, and so much more.

Vultr

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Dalton tells us about daily driving the Framework Laptop for the last 6 months.

If you’re going to use proprietary software, why not just run it on a proprietary OS?

Where is the gate for the “Real Linux User”, and who’s keeping it?

Why Linux operating systems on small Arm devices almost all feel half-finished, and what we can do to improve things.

Links mentioned:

Pine64 should re-evaluate their community priorities

Test 15 different PinePhone operating systems with Megi’s latest multi-distro demo image

PinePhone: trying out a Linux-based smartphone

At what point is the FOSS solution more hassle and time-consuming than it’s worth? We confess our various compromises with non-free hardware and software.

What’s the best way to criticise FOSS projects?

What we all want to happen in the Linux and FOSS world in 2022.

What it’s really like to live with Fedora Silverblue on your main machine. The good, the bad, and why Dalton is still using it.

Kinoite London timezone bug

Development on Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kinoite

Distrobox, a way to use Toolboxes on other distros

Linode

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What’s the ideal desktop Linux business model? As a loss-leader for your cloud offerings? Pay what you want? Bundled software? Hardware pre-installations? Something else?

Linode

Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode’s Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and more easily. Go to linode.com/linuxafterdark and get started with $100 credit.

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Are distros like Fedora Silverblue with immutable filesystems the future of desktop Linux?

A list of resources for people who want to investigate image-based Linux desktops

Silverblue: pretty good family OS

Linode

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What exactly is desktop Linux? Does Chrome OS count? What about Ubuntu Touch?

Linode

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What it means for Linux to “win” and whether we even want that to happen, and why we talk about Arm so much.

Linode

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It’s not a great idea to wipe someone’s only laptop, install Linux on it, and then leave them to it. We talk about the responsible ways to get people started with Linux.

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In the first episode of a brand new show that’s part of the Late Night Linux family, Gary, Chris, Dalton, and Joe speculate about what will happen to Linux in the next 30 years.

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This is just a short episode to get the RSS feed going.

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