Ryan:
[0:00] On this week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about a new Zorin OS release and why Zorin might be better Ubuntu than Ubuntu. We’re going to get into that.

Michael:
[0:10] Shots fired.

Ryan:
[0:10] Welcome to Destination Linux, where we discuss the latest news, hot topics, gaming, mobile, and all things open source and Linux. My name is Ryan.

Michael:
[0:19] I’m Michael.

Jill:
[0:20] And I’m Jill.

Ryan:
[0:22] Also this week, we get story time with Michael. If it gets long-winded, then just think of it as ASMR. Might help you go to sleep. if it’s really short and to the point then we will enjoy whatever story time is jill and i don’t even know what story time is going to be we’re just gonna we’re gonna be there right with you like a campfire we’re gonna be sitting around it and listening to the scary story because it’s so in.

Michael:
[0:48] Some ways it actually is a little bit of scary story because i was without the internet for a.

Ryan:
[0:54] Month.

Jill:
[0:54] Yes.

Ryan:
[0:55] Oh my gosh. Man, they should make that into like the new, you know, Friday the 13th or something.

Michael:
[1:00] Yeah. As a nerd / geek, I mean, that’s a scary idea.

Ryan:
[1:05] The whole horror film is just internet goes down. That’s it. And then like, and then they get the internet back and then all of a sudden the internet goes down again and the people scream. It’s crazy. Plus, we got some Linux gaming, our software spotlight, and more. Let’s get this show on the road to Destination Linux.

Ryan:
[1:28] feedback this week comes from enrique they have this to say hi there this is enrique from mexico city sorry for my awful english and sorry if i pronounce your name incorrectly i think that’s correct but you know uh my tongue does not work well as michael will tell you with any names that are outside of bob or tom or sally that’s about it anything outside of that more.

Michael:
[1:51] Than two syllables Ryan’s out.

Ryan:
[1:53] Right luckily Ryan’s.

Michael:
[1:56] Name only has two syllables so.

Ryan:
[1:57] It worked out still took a year anytime he.

Jill:
[2:00] Has to roll ours beware.

Ryan:
[2:02] Wow Jill we didn’t need to add that in there Jill is just dropping some savagery man just two episodes in the world is this what happens when we get close to Halloween when Jill that.

Michael:
[2:15] Makes so much sense.

Ryan:
[2:17] Yeah it’s a full moon out there with Jill. He goes on to say, I just finished listening to the last episode talking about security. Can you talk about Telegram? is really the monster that USA and European community talking about. So I think you mean it’s this monstrous topic, and it surely is. And he also goes on to say, thanks for the fabulous podcast. I love getting messages from different places around the world. Mexico City, how awesome. We appreciate that. This show, if you didn’t know, is listened to in over 190 countries. So I love when you guys do tell us where you’re from. If it’s in the U.S., outside the U.S., doesn’t matter. We appreciate it. I like announcing it because it just shows the diversity of the audience that we have, which is beautiful. Now to the question, Michael, this one is really fascinating. What is your take on this whole telegram situation?

Michael:
[3:09] So it kind of depends on what they mean by monster. Your interpretation, I think, is a very valid way of looking at it because that is a monster of a story and that is undeniable. But also they’re referred to as being monsters as like a platform by some people. And then there’s also the aspect of like, is it really doing what they claim to do and all that sort of stuff. So I feel like it depends on how you define the monster in this case. But at the same time, arguably kind of yes on all of them because Telegram is a really interesting app because it’s really cool. There’s a lot of great features in Telegram. And I think that it is very arguably one of the best communication tools with all the cool features that it has and all that. But at the same time…

Ryan:
[3:58] Community organization is really solid.

Michael:
[3:59] Oh, yeah. It’s very nice there. And also the fact that you have voice memos and you can send videos and you can do video chat and voice chat directly in it and all that sort of stuff. There’s a lot of cool things in Telegram. But one thing it doesn’t have is my trust in terms of like…

Ryan:
[4:17] I knew it.

Jill:
[4:17] Yeah.

Michael:
[4:18] The privacy of this app is so sketchy in so many ways that people… And it’s weird because so many articles are written and videos and people talking about how Telegram is such a great privacy app or whatever. And then I look at it and go, based on what? Like, what do you mean? Because if you look at Signal, Signal is an app that is by default, everything is encrypted. And it’s not perfect, but at least you know that they are trying to be as private as possible. And then you have Telegram where they basically don’t try at all except for this one little tiny piece that sort of technically gives them the checkbox in saying that they have privacy in this small way because it’s really interesting because there’s this… one system called a secret chat and you have that as an option and they talk about it all the time well if you want security and everything privacy and everything you just secret chat and that that in theory works because they do claim it to be into and encrypted but you can only use that on your phone there’s no ability to use secret chats on last time last time i checked which was like Like two months ago, you still couldn’t do it. And the worst part is that I have, in the past.

Michael:
[5:35] Created a secret chat with someone and then also forgot I had a regular chat and went onto my regular desktop version, sent them a password and was like, oh, wait, this is the wrong one. But where is the secret chat? And that’s how I found out they don’t exist on the desktop or laptop. So that was a long time ago. But the last time I checked, it also still didn’t do it. And that’s just a ridiculous thing because they make it seem that it’s private. There’s so many people talking about it and even themselves talking about they provide encryption and all this other stuff, but it’s very limited. And also if you’re in a group chat of three people or more, or if you’re in like a channel or whatever, that’s not, you can’t have that encrypted. It’s just not an option. So there’s a lot of weirdness around that, but there’s also parts where people say, well, even that stuff, even it’s not secret chat, still is encrypted in some way. and then you go in to look in the details, and you see that, yes, technically, that they claim it to be encrypted, but they also have it on their servers. They store the data on their servers, and they also have a decryption key, on their servers so in theory they could look at it whenever they want they claim that no one has ability to do that but if why do you have the key to decrypt it if well let’s talk about why this is important because for.

Ryan:
[6:54] Those who haven’t heard about the story which i doubt at this point you haven’t but in case you haven’t uh telegram’s co-founder or actual founder was arrested in France, Pavel Durov, who’s a Russian born billionaire, which is another thing to bring up that I always kind of was worried about the origins of Telegram and trusting it from that aspect as well. But when they were arrested, essentially the concept behind the arrest was he was facing a huge amount of years in prison due to some laws that were passed in Europe and And also some heavy fines because of the content and things that can exist on Telegram.

Ryan:
[7:38] And so gets arrested. And then a little bit later gets released. And all of a sudden Telegram has a privacy policy update.

Ryan:
[7:48] And that’s where this story becomes really interesting, right? Because essentially, we know that Telegram held a lot of great content. There’s a lot of people, Linux community there. There’s a lot of people just talk about technology. There’s a lot of people using it for the right thing. We also know Telegram was a safe haven for many nefarious activities. Like some of the worst activities you can think of, they were there for sure. And so this becomes one of those situations where it’s a really tough to, I would imagine in if we owned telegram for instance and you’re being threatened with jail for 10 years and you have these fines and you’re thinking like they’re going to take everything away from me my entire livelihood everything i’ve built if i stick to my principles and i’m sticking to my principles to protect privacy but also protect nefarious people’s privacy what do i do and it you know i i I asked people, because I know a lot of people were mad about the CEO and him shifting and changing the privacy policy because you expected the privacy that Telegram offers. At the same time, put yourself in their position that you’re going to potentially lose everything, spend a decade away from your family in jail and stuff.

Ryan:
[9:15] And what would you do? So they updated their terms and conditions. and now essentially they’re saying, hey, legal content on Telegram can be reported to the authorities if they catch it. And the stuff that they can…

Michael:
[9:31] I just want to make a comment about what you’re saying. Like, it’s funny because before, like earlier, even in this show, when we were talking about it, I was kind of being like how annoyed at Telegram I am. And then this part, at first, I actually was very much on the space of like, how dare you change it and that sort of stuff. But the way you framed it, and I was thinking about like my personal, if I was in this situation, what would I do? 100% change the privacy policy so I don’t go to jail. Well, I mean, I’ll just be up front. I mean, I don’t want to go to jail either. So, like, I mean, that’s.

Ryan:
[10:07] You wouldn’t survive a day there. And you got to listen.

Michael:
[10:10] I would survive at least 152 hours.

Ryan:
[10:16] 150 to two hours is what I heard.

Michael:
[10:18] No, 152. 152.

Ryan:
[10:22] Specific. I think that this is a bigger topic than we could ever get into in a single show. And Michael, when we were talking about this in the pre-show, you said something I thought was really interesting. You’re like, listen, we’re not experts.

Michael:
[10:39] We’re not experts at this. We are people who are YouTubers and podcasters. We are big enthusiasts. We are fans of privacy and security and all that sort of stuff. And we are really into these topics. But at the same time, we’re not experts. We’re not cybersecurity experts. We’re not like that kind of thing.

Ryan:
[10:57] It’s so tough.

Michael:
[10:59] Yeah, I mean, we’re also not lawyers, so the legal aspects of this is like, you know, way beyond what we could talk about. So, I mean, we’re giving our opinion, but at the same time, there’s, you know… Not a grain of salt is what I’m saying.

Ryan:
[11:13] Yeah. Well, I think that everyone who’s because there are a lot of people who are so big and myself included in privacy because it’s been so abused that any time you have a company that comes out and says, hey, we’re going to be that company that’s not going to take it. We’re not going to take it. No.

Michael:
[11:36] Yeah. We’re not going to take it.

Ryan:
[11:38] They’re that company. and you get excited and you’re like yes and then the second the feds come knocking on the door most of these companies vpns whatever we’ve seen it over and over again they buckle they’re like okay fine we’ll change your privacy policy um but i would imagine sitting in that room right gets arrested you know you’ve seen those videos you’ve watched cops before or detective videos or whatever where they’re like just drilling this guy about hey there’s terrorists on your platform that we can’t catch. You have information to help us release them. Look at all the horrible things these people do. Do you really want to be associated with this? All of this conversation that if I was running the platform, even as a huge privacy enthusiast, and I’m seeing these horrible things, I’m also a dad, you know, and I’m seeing these terrible things that are going on in this platform. I might be like, you know what?

Ryan:
[12:29] Those people deserve to have their IP address, their phone numbers, and their information exposed so they could be arrested because they’re terrible human beings then there’s the other side of it that’s like but everyone else deserves to have privacy too like they deserve to be able to have conversations without people being able to read them and do whatever they do sell them to advertisers and all this type of stuff people deserve that as well and so i think that’s the kind of paradigm here so for telegram um i’m not happy about it but i really expected it okay because it’s number one if it happened to signal i think signal would hold out much longer they may eventually but there’s.

Michael:
[13:11] Also some cases of like some app some companies uh create a service or an app or whatever.

Ryan:
[13:16] It’s impossible where.

Michael:
[13:17] They make it where they have they they cannot be forced to give information because they don’t have the information to give.

Ryan:
[13:22] And that’s.

Michael:
[13:24] Basically the safest position to if you if you care about privacy. The only way to do that sort of thing is to just not have data to give.

Ryan:
[13:33] And of course, there’s all the proprietary platforms that could tell you everything you want to hear and then just make a backdoor and not even update their privacy policy and do it with the government’s blessing. And so they have no legality to hold to it and be giving your information anyway. So the point is, really what I want to bring back is this is interesting. It’s a monster story. If you thought your messages in Telegram were private.

Ryan:
[13:56] I would think twice about that. I would also think twice about that on nearly every platform, including Signal out there. Like, it’s good, but listen, we talked about Pegasus last week, where they can send a text message and have access to everything on your phone. If you think the government isn’t figuring out or hasn’t already figured out how to break some of this stuff or find a loophole in what Signal does or anybody else, you’re mistaken. In fact, there are stories out there, claims that people who are on Signal and things have gotten their messages taken. Uh, so like I, and it’s probably maybe not through their platform and maybe through some other hack they did on their phone or computer or whatever. But the point is there’s nothing that’s perfectly secure and I I’m big in privacy and all of this, but this also comes back something very personal to us, Michael, because when we were starting this network, we knew number one, we’re both privacy enthusiasts, but we also knew that our community is heavily in privacy. And so we started going to different platforms that were at the time considered the most private platforms. And one of those platforms we actually had our community on, and I think it was at our height, we had like 50,000 people or something on it in one of those rooms, was Telegram.

Michael:
[15:08] Yeah, Telegram was our biggest at the time, I think. Yeah.

Ryan:
[15:11] And so we had a huge community. And at some point, we decided we were going to move it. I don’t remember if there were rumors at that time, or it was just because Matrix came out during…

Michael:
[15:22] No, it was because of… It was because Telegram, there was some revelation of Telegram stuff.

Jill:
[15:28] Yeah. And we were starting to get tons of bad actors and spam.

Michael:
[15:33] Yeah, tons of spam.

Ryan:
[15:34] Yeah like there’s just so much stuff that was coming through and so you know this is the thing with these private platforms is that good people use it bad people use it um, we eventually moved to matrix and we had major problems there where again uh loss of control and stuff we’ve talked about it not worth bringing up but matrix tries to be a very private uh platform and then we decided to move to discord whoa like this is me and michael thought about this for a long time okay this was months of discussion and if you’re.

Michael:
[16:09] Curious what side we’re both on uh ryan was on the privacy side and i was on let’s just get this over networks and just pick a platform and go with it you know yeah.

Ryan:
[16:20] And so like discord at first so if you’re mad at this that’s.

Michael:
[16:25] It’s my fault just so you know.

Ryan:
[16:26] They’ll still say how much they hate me in the comments no matter what probably like i can’t believe ryan was so pro discord because that’s but I got broad shoulders. I could take it. All right. So we have this conversation and we kind of realized at this point that number one, we’re having public conversation with our community. And so there is no need to have encryption. We want anybody from around the world to join. We want people to have good, safe conversations. We actually don’t want people encouraged to send nefarious crap that they would be afraid for somebody else. Because if you hadn’t noticed, one of the things we try to avoid very heavily and purposefully is politics this is the one place you can come and we can just talk about linux and you can forget about all the crap on the news and have a good time so it all it met all the criteria that we wanted and it was very easy to use and new people could get on it whereas we were having problems onboarding new people into matrix and other things and.

Michael:
[17:21] The moderation system on discord was a lot.

Ryan:
[17:24] Easier than other ones yeah yeah it met our our terms there but also it was very important that That we don’t tell people, which is kind of what we were doing before, hey, come to these platforms because they’re really private and secure and we vetted them. Because then, outside of what you’re talking to us on, you’re trusting that we’ve done the research, that you can rely on us.

Michael:
[17:47] And as a reminder, we are not experts on this. Yeah.

Ryan:
[17:51] And so there was this responsibility of why we kept moving communities, losing thousands of people at a time, because not everybody would migrate, because we were trying to find the safest place. And then we kind of realized, like, wait a minute, that’s not what this is for. And so I think it’s very interesting to think about because number one, stop trusting these companies. It’s great to use them. What I’m not saying is go out there and give your information. Doesn’t matter. Everyone has it anyway. I hate that conversation. So that’s not what I’m saying.

Michael:
[18:21] Yeah that’s a terrible person what i’m saying is.

Ryan:
[18:23] Don’t trust that there’s any platform out there that you’re 100 secure in what you’re saying you should always be filtering what you’re putting.

Michael:
[18:33] Out there.

Ryan:
[18:33] As if it could at any point be taken and used against you uh in a court or somewhere else.

Michael:
[18:40] So it’s.

Ryan:
[18:41] Very that’s why i think discord is a perfect option because we’re not claiming it’s most private we’re claiming we want to hang out with you in a public space where we can.

Michael:
[18:49] All say very clear that we’re here to just have fun and hang out and if you want to be a part of it great if you don’t want to use discord also that’s fine too we’re not going to be like uh you know trying to be annoying about it you can use whatever you want but we are going to use discord because it’s it just fits all the stuff that we wanted and it also is a thing that a lot of people are already aware that it’s public they don’t pretend to be a private platform and it’s also a thing that people People are already using because it’s a super popular gaming solution. And also now everything it’s used by everybody now or not everybody, but a lot of people.

Ryan:
[19:25] If you were to ask me out of all the platforms, Matrix, Signal, all of them, which one do I personally trust the most? It’s Signal. I just think they have the longest, most trustworthy attempts to keep people’s data safe out of everyone. Are they perfect? Far from it. They have the most consistent track record, in my opinion, of keeping people’s data safe and trying to do the right thing.

Michael:
[19:50] Yes. And also, for anyone who’s listening or watching the show, leave a message in the comments whether or not you were expecting him to say Discord instead of Signal. Just because the way he presented it, it felt like… Yeah.

Ryan:
[20:03] The most private platform out there is the platform that claims nothing about being private.

Michael:
[20:08] And we just said it wasn’t. but it felt like it kind of felt like you were going that was like where are you going with this you’re like i don’t know if i can get on this bus ryan i don’t know exactly but signal yes i agree but also at the same time i feel like signal is one i trust the most but and also there’s stuff like that are based on signal like session i’m i would also say they’re they’re in the same kind of situation but at the same time i would say that, depending on what i’m sending i’m still not going to trust signal like completely if i’m going to send a password for example i’m not going to send all of it on any one platform i’ll send some of it on uh really does this.

Ryan:
[20:47] And it’s so annoying yes.

Michael:
[20:49] Like and part of a password and you’re welcome password and so and sometimes i’ll and if you give like i’ll do a small percentage on text messages just because i know ryan’s annoyed by that so so like but it’s only like you gotta piece this crap fraction yes and then i sent him and i sent another message on discord that says okay this is the first half on this platform this is the second half on this this is another piece it’s a puzzle.

Ryan:
[21:17] I’m not gonna tell you which part is which you have to figure.

Michael:
[21:20] Out no i do tell you which part is which i just do it on a different platform for than all the other stuff that’s.

Jill:
[21:25] So funny do you know i actually had stopped using telegram a while ago when we stopped using it for destination linux you know other than still reading and receiving messages you know from our community that that i still get on there every once in a while and i and i do go check our room on occasion and because we still have one in there we have a room in matrix we.

Ryan:
[21:46] Have a room in telegram.

Jill:
[21:47] Yeah we’re not necessarily there uh michael.

Michael:
[21:51] And every once not necessarily and we We just say we’re not there. If you want to talk to us, come to the Discord server, tuxdigital.com/discord. That is where we are. But we do technically have accounts on the other ones. We’re just not going to be there because… It’s just not worth the hassle. Telegram is by far the worst for spam. It is. The amount of random messages I get with some random person saying, hello, I know you from this channel that I personally haven’t been to in three years. Like, it’s just nonsense. It happens all the time. Like, at least every day I get one or two of those. And I don’t even use it that much. And I wasn’t that proactive in the first

Michael:
[22:31] place to get a ton of spam. But they still do it.

Ryan:
[22:34] Michael, you sacrificed a lot. I don’t want to undermine this. We had communities in Telegram and other things where we were part of other communities other than our own. For instance, Michael, if you don’t know, has a green thumb. He’s huge into plants and taking care of plants and building gardens and vegetables. In fact, if you look right now behind him, there is a plant on the floor that just shows you how green this guy’s weak thumbs are. and michael can you tell us a secret yeah uh you were part of a huge um you know gardening club in telegram and tell us what kind of plant you have.

Michael:
[23:13] At first i had no idea where you’re going with this but then oh yes i do so i have this plant so uh as far as my green my green thumb goes uh i am a big into plants because basically i was enlightened to add some greenery to my room so that i could have that that feel of nature they could just bring nature inside and enjoy it while it’s in the background i get and i can turn and look at and go nature and just enjoy it you know breathe the air that.

Ryan:
[23:42] That plant’s creating.

Michael:
[23:43] Right exactly just that the perfect scientific.

Ryan:
[23:47] Name for that plant.

Michael:
[23:48] Oh uh that’s uh that’s the infacicus it’s the infacicus it is uh it’s like a cactus but it’s uh fake it’s plant ai no actually it’s not it’s not an illusion jill it’s there for sure are you telling me hallucinating right now are you telling.

Ryan:
[24:10] Our audience that you.

Michael:
[24:11] Have a.

Ryan:
[24:12] Plant behind you that is in fact plastic i.

Michael:
[24:17] Don’t know if it’s plastic it’s definitely fake though i mean what why i’m not gonna like you put a fake plant.

Ryan:
[24:24] In your room.

Michael:
[24:25] Big okay because when you look at the content and you see that’s a nice plan it’s it looks that looks great i i appreciate that literally everyone there’s been at least one comment at some point during the time i added who knows i don’t maybe it maybe it was just my own imagination but i heard someone said it to me And it’s just because I had it And I thought, you know what, why not Why did.

Ryan:
[24:50] You have it? I need to go back to the origin story Of why you decided To spend money at some point On a plastic plant, I know, Ryan. Why, Jill?

Jill:
[25:01] I know why, because it’s Podcaster 101. If you watch all the videos on YouTube talking about podcasting and your backgrounds, they all usually include plants or fake plants. Even, you know what’s so funny? A couple of my friends have gotten me fake plants to put in here for Christmas.

Ryan:
[25:23] Where are they, Jill?

Michael:
[25:25] How did you use the plants, Jill?

Jill:
[25:27] Well, I have real plants in my living room. Oh, okay.

Michael:
[25:32] Well, that’s different.

Jill:
[25:33] I have a big shoot, Lafera, that is floor to ceiling. It’s beautiful.

Michael:
[25:38] Yeah, I know what that means.

Ryan:
[25:39] If you all want to talk to Michael, if you’re like plants like he is.

Michael:
[25:42] No, no, no. Before we move on, I just want to say, Jill, Jill, you make a great point. That is something I was going to say if you hadn’t said it, that there are people talking about how it brightens up the background. ground and it just makes it feel you know kind of more homey or whatever but your question was not why did you do it your question was why did you spend money on it and the answer to that is i did not it was free my sister gave it to me because she was getting rid of it and i was like sure why not and i took it and now it’s there so i spent no money on it but i still have uh adhered to the podcasting or YouTuber one-on-one process prophecy, I guess. And, uh, yeah, there you go.

Ryan:
[26:26] That’s the story comes in handy, taking care of that fake plant. Uh, by the way.

Michael:
[26:30] Michael took a lot of care.

Jill:
[26:33] But you’re the one with green in the background, not my fake plant.

Michael:
[26:38] But your thumbs are green because of the glow.

Jill:
[26:41] Yeah.

Ryan:
[26:43] Well, listen, uh, Michael has agreed that this week he’s going to stay in the discord chat for at least two hours a day to answer any questions you have about plants so come join us in discord ask your plant questions he’ll tell you how to take care of your plants how to water the best season to plant them anything you want to know about plants michael is a expert i mean so first of all um tuxedos.com.

Michael:
[27:06] Discord again that’s how you join the discord and ask any questions you want about plants i will not respond i have no idea if you have a question about, what kind of duster to clean off your fake plant then i can help there.

Ryan:
[27:21] Otherwise the swiffer 360 i’m guessing something like well it.

Michael:
[27:24] Depends like if there’s the wireless version and there’s the one that has the you know anyway.

Ryan:
[27:28] We’re moving on anyways yeah i have no idea about.

Michael:
[27:31] Swiffer at all.

Ryan:
[27:32] Back to uh enrique’s question like first microfiber cloth.

Michael:
[27:37] Boom you get a microfiber cloth and then that’s.

Ryan:
[27:39] The best way to do it use it for the discord i wanted to answer that question.

Michael:
[27:43] For anyone who was just racking their brain like what is the solution that’s the solution you’re welcome.

Ryan:
[27:47] You’re so good uh enrique thank you so much for sending in this question obviously on the.

Michael:
[27:53] First topic yeah.

Ryan:
[27:54] Obviously we’re very passionate about what happened with this story it is a monster it’s taken over a monster portion of the show which shows you how good your question was uh to bring up here because this is a really interesting topic that you can go a million layers with, you know, about the privacy of these applications that claim they’re private, about the fact that these applications can change their privacy policy at any time. So even if they have the best policy in the world today, they could change it tomorrow. And everything that you’ve put on there is now up for grabs to be done with whatever. And so these are the battlefields we have to deal with in the privacy sector. But most importantly, these are our opinions. I want to know your opinions and thoughts on this situation. Let us know if you feel betrayed, If you feel like our take is completely wrong on it or our take is right, and here’s some additional information, whatever it is, send it to DestinationLinux.net/comments, or you can go to DestinationLinux.net/forum and post it there. Love to hear your thoughts and opinions on what’s happening with Telegram. And maybe a good question to answer is, if you were in that CEO’s shoes, would you face 10 years in prison and $10 million fine? uh to withhold or to uphold the privacy that you claimed you’re at and also.

Michael:
[29:08] Be honest with yourself don’t just because it’s not you’re.

Ryan:
[29:11] Actually not.

Michael:
[29:11] In the situation just yeah think.

Ryan:
[29:12] About not seeing your family for 10 years 10 years a whole decade and also if.

Michael:
[29:17] You want to send us comments about how you take care of your fake plants let us know.

Ryan:
[29:21] No don’t send those send those to michael not jill either also in the news a little more happier more upbeat and fun is zorn Zorin OS has a new release, 17.2. And as many of you have found out recently, I have found myself using Zorin OS for quite some time now. I don’t even know how long I’ve been using it. A long time, months.

Michael:
[29:42] Which is the most shocking thing ever. Not because you’re using Zorin. Zorin’s got a lot of cool things about it. It’s that you have not switched. You are on the same system you’ve been on for months. And for those who don’t know much about our show in the past, uh ryan has had this um you know people call it distro hopping he has like this uh addiction to distro hopping and it’s what it seemed like but for the past few months he’s been using the same one and that is just mind-blowing there are times where he would change his distro right before the show and that wasn’t rare that was just ryan being ryan normal and like i did it one time and he was like how could you do this like you do it almost every week what are you talking but the difference.

Ryan:
[30:29] Was when i did it it worked whereas when you did it we were down for an hour so that just.

Michael:
[30:34] Showed no it we were down for like five minutes and it was that was the whole chromium thing not loading and having to reboot problem that that was not on me that’s a weird bug that you found too and so in any case bill uh.

Ryan:
[30:46] Yeah i normally prefer, A cutting edge distro like Arch or Tumbleweed or something along those lines. So I think it would be interesting to talk about Zorin OS first about why, before we get into the Zorin OS updates, that Zorin OS.

Michael:
[31:03] Is a great- Why Zorin OS or why are you using Zorin OS so long?

Ryan:
[31:05] I think both. I think this answers both. I mean, Zorin OS, when I thought about it prior, I thought, and we’ve had them on the show, but my whole take was more of like, this is for schools. This is for businesses. where they want no fuss. I want something that’s really easy for the people who are used to students or my employees that are used to Windows 10 to be able to boot into Zorin OS and have, because one of its themes is a Windows 10-like theme, have a Windows theme that it just works like they wouldn’t even really know, honestly, if they were on Windows or they were in Linux. And so it’s got just a very easy user experience in there. And you don’t have to worry about learning curves as much. It comes pre-installed, the premium version, with tons of software. I mean like a lot of software. Everything you could possibly imagine, and they’re not all snaps too, which is an advantage. And it has a heavy focus on the wine integration.

Ryan:
[32:04] So if you’re relying on Microsoft products, again, I’m thinking about schools, I’m thinking about the small businesses and things, medium businesses, large businesses that want to use Zorin OS, that Microsoft product capability is very powerful because, you know, if you’re a lawyer or somebody else working in legal or very important documents, you’re not going to want to worry about, gee, if they open it up on the other side, is it going to translate correctly and not have the text all over the place? These are very important things. So its ability to integrate Microsoft Office, for instance, is one of its primary focus points of making sure that it works really well with its wine integration and stuff like that. Um.

Ryan:
[32:42] So for me, it’s an OS that gets out of your way. And because I have so much going on in my life now with college, two colleges right now, and because I’m taking courses for work and I’m actually going to college full time on my own as well, plus work and everything else and podcasting and all this stuff. I don’t have time to destroy. It’s the last thing on my mind. I need something stable that when it’s time to do the show or I need to test something out is just going to work and it gets out of my way. and you all know i’m not going to do anything but change the wallpaper on the distro anyways so which would be a batman wallpaper always exactly always so zorn os was like something i wanted to try say hey how reliable will this thing be and i’ve really enjoyed my time with zorn os like it has booted every time perfectly which is not unusual for linux so i mean that by itself is not extreme but it’s certainly very very stable um it absolutely the software that I need to get anytime we’re doing a show software spotlight, anything else, it’s always seems to be available in the software store. And the integrations and various apps and the sound stuff we do a time to time from piping and other things, it’s all there.

Ryan:
[33:53] And everything works really well. So Zorin is just a really solid foundation. It gets out of your way. It’s set up beautifully by default, the menus make sense, they work really well, the icons are really good. Like if Michael didn’t know I was on Zorin OS and he came to my house and turned on the computer, he’d be like, wow, you actually themed this really nice, Ryan. Now he would know it wasn’t me because I don’t do any of that.

Michael:
[34:15] First of all, I would know it wasn’t you. Secondly, I know what Zorin looks like. And third, I would never imagine you would change anything. There is a time, just for reference, if people don’t know how much Ryan does not change. I went to his house one time. This was, I don’t know, a couple of years ago. he was running arch and he was running vanilla xfce this is for those who don’t know xfce is not the best looking it is much better now than it was then but it’s still not that good now but back then it looked like it looked like windows 98 it was not good and he’s just using their normal i turn the computer and like what is this why do you have default xfce like why are you making me use this. So I went and customized it for him because I couldn’t take it.

Ryan:
[35:09] It was so nice after you left.

Michael:
[35:12] But the best part is I come back later, he’s got a whole new system with a whole new default. Yeah.

Ryan:
[35:18] I needed you to come over and fix the thing.

Michael:
[35:20] And then I said no. Once is enough for me.

Jill:
[35:25] Ryan, I want to tell you something. Now that you’ve stayed on Zorin and you know you need to get work done and it’s become your stable environment, that means that you have reached the pinnacle of a Linux user into the advanced area, meaning you’re not distro hopping anymore. You finally found a distro to stay on.

Michael:
[35:52] So this is what jill is referring to is is the is the progression process of a linux user like when you first start getting into it you really just want something that works and get out of your way and then you start getting into it and you start like distro hopping and going every distro on the planet you want to try everything and then you at some point in your experience you will get to the point where you’re like i just want to use something and just just be done with it and no no longer you’re just at that point but what’s funny is with ryan he’s only been using linux uh much shorter than jill and i so uh i think like six years or something something like yeah yeah so uh and and i have about 20 and jill has before it existed and then so jill’s uh also in a process where she is like trying all these different distros and stuff like that And I found out that at a certain point, once you get to that, that progress, you’re It does do a loop back. And now I want to distro hop again.

Jill:
[37:01] Yeah.

Michael:
[37:01] For a long time, for years, I was just on the same one distro for two years. And I didn’t even update one of them. And then at one point, I was on the same one for five years. And now it’s… So, it turns out there is a cycle.

Ryan:
[37:15] So, I’ve got 14 years to wait. And then I’ll cycle back.

Michael:
[37:18] You have a significant amount of time before it’s done. It does not take… It’s not a very quick process. Once you get… It’s not that long to get to where you are. Then it takes a long time to get back.

Jill:
[37:31] Yeah, it definitely goes in phases. For me, what makes it easy is because I have hundreds of computers, I can install the different distros and all the computers.

Ryan:
[37:40] That’s what I’ve been doing wrong. I just need hundreds of computers.

Jill:
[37:43] The computer prices weren’t so high. I don’t have to call it distro hopping. I can call it doing research for the show.

Ryan:
[37:52] There you go.

Jill:
[37:53] There you go.

Michael:
[37:54] So Jill found a loophole.

Jill:
[37:56] Yeah.

Ryan:
[37:58] At the end of the day, I really like Zorin OS. I like what they’re doing in the market. I think there’s absolutely a place for Zorin OS. The only thing that would disappoint me about Zorin OS is if I found out the devs did not contribute upstream to Ubuntu because a lot of their great work would be not even possible. The foundation that they use is Ubuntu. And so they if they’re not, they absolutely need to be contributing upstream to Ubuntu because they’re selling what is essentially Ubuntu with a lot of beautiful work done on top of it. Then if we want to switch sides and say what would make me stay on Zorin OS forever, forever, ever is if they could get the hardware enablement faster than Ubuntu. to. So, you know, one of my, even though they’ve improved on this tremendously Ubuntu recently, I’m big on making sure that Linux is on the cutting edge when it comes to hardware enablement so that when a new processor comes out, a new GPU comes out, that the people who do happen to be getting a new machine that year and wanting to try Linux at the same time don’t have a terrible experience because their hardware doesn’t support it. So I would love to know that they did some some extra stuff there on top of that. But that’s my feeling with Zorin OS. I love it. I’m happy we have a new version. Jill, Michael, anything you want to add on the Zorin OS topic?

Jill:
[39:26] Yeah, so I’ve always been impressed with the look and feel of Zorin OS as well. Because, again, it does look like a desktop that would be familiar for a Windows user. And you can customize it to make it look like macOS.

Ryan:
[39:43] Oh, yeah, you can make it look like anything. We’re talking about Windows, but they’ve got tons of things.

Jill:
[39:48] They sure do. They have tons of themes. And one of my other personal favorites is actually Zorin OS Lite. Right. Speaking of XFCE, this version is a fantastic example of XFCE. Yeah, exactly.

Michael:
[40:02] This is what you can do. They don’t do it, but this is what you can do.

Jill:
[40:07] Yeah, this is the version for older computers. And it has, like Michael was saying, one of the most visually appealing implementations of the XFCE desktop. It looks like their GNOME version, where the panel is on the bottom. So it’s very Windows-esque. And it’s really, it’s customized beautifully. They’ve done their own enhancements on some of the apps to make it look like you’re, you know, coming from Windows. And it’s really great for keeping older computers out of the landfill. And I just installed Zorin OS 17.02. I upgraded from Zorin 17 on one of my old Intel iMacs. So, you know, it’s keeping those machines out of the landfill and happy and working. And I did my show notes.

Ryan:
[41:06] It’s really lightweight with the XFCE version. Yeah. I love that you always do the show notes on the topic that we’re covering. You have a computer with it, and that’s amazing. I absolutely love it. And Michael, you’re a fan of Zorin OS as well?

Michael:
[41:20] Yeah, for sure. I think that Zorin OS has a lot. The design is very, just to be clear, for people who are maybe thinking that we’re saying that it’s meant to look like Windows 10, it just has the same user experience interface. It doesn’t have, the layout is similar. it doesn’t it’s not trying to copy windows and make people think it’s windows it’s not doing that it just has that flow but i think it’s a very nice system i do consider it super weird that they use gnome to make this system because it just makes me confused like why what first of all why also how because you’ve modified gnome to such a way that it doesn’t look like a gnome basically at all and then i think but why would you do that you know so i’m very curious different platform.

Ryan:
[42:08] You mean and it would be been easier.

Michael:
[42:10] You already have like if you started with kde plasma not because i’m a kde fan but just if you did it kind of already has that flow in the first place so why not start there and it just makes me think like what’s the reason so we need to have Zorin back on the show so we can talk to him about why they started that yeah that’d be very interesting and also uh I you were talking about earlier about the contributions and that sort of stuff I did reach out to Artyom from Zorin to find out unfortunately he’s had there hasn’t been that much time so he hasn’t seen the message yet so uh in the future like a comment or an update or somewhere we’ll let you know what the answer to that is yeah but we did and if they’re not I just.

Ryan:
[42:48] Want them to like if you’re not giving a lot upstream you should uh and we’ll get into that in a second let’s talk about 17.2 real quick you get more theming options uh like ability to customize the theme of your cursor um that’s always fun i’m not going to do it the best yes uh easier to navigate to third-party theme installation guides so they also have third-party themes that people go and create if you want something different outside of the plethora of themes you get with zorn os to begin with um you can go and they’re basically making it easier for you to navigate. So you don’t have to be some insider that just finds the link and figures it out for you to get there. There’s now a window section and settings where you can customize behaviors of your individual windows, like window placement behavior, how title bars of apps.

Michael:
[43:34] Not windows.

Ryan:
[43:36] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You can now set the scroll bar to either always be there or be dynamic, which I think is the default is the dynamic scroll bar. So sometimes people People just always want that scroll bar there. They just want to know it’s there. It’s a safety thing. It’s like a safety rope. I know the scroll bar is there.

Michael:
[43:52] It’s like a binky, you know?

Ryan:
[43:55] It’s like a binky, yeah. Latest version of the apps, of course, were updated. It comes with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS kernel, so it comes with all the great stuff Ubuntu’s done in that.

Michael:
[44:07] It’s based on 22.04, but it has the kernel from 24.04 because of the hardware enablement and that sort of stuff.

Jill:
[44:12] Yeah. And I noticed that the software center is much quicker. They actually talked about it in one of their articles about speeding that up. And they really have. It’s impressive even on an old machine.

Ryan:
[44:27] It is snappy. Xorn OS 4 is heavy as you would think it would be with all the things that I just said, with all the apps and all the theming and stuff.

Michael:
[44:35] And being based on GNOME.

Ryan:
[44:37] And being based on GNOME.

Michael:
[44:38] Let’s be frank about it. For those that don’t know, the heaviest DE of all Linux is GNOME.

Ryan:
[44:45] And it’s snappy, man. It’s fast. It’s snappy. it’s responsive uh it’s what gnome should be it’s what windows should be it’s what gnome should be it’s like it’s because by the way there’s app indicators like right there i’m looking yeah right now i see discord is open you’re glazing.

Michael:
[45:01] Way too much.

Ryan:
[45:02] On the indicator uh i can’t help it man so good but i do want to ask a question and this is just an interesting parallel and i’m not making a statement here i’m just asking this question we all know the drama that happened with Red Hat and Rocky Linux, right? That we’ve, we covered that many times on the show. Essentially, Rocky Linux was alleged to just be kind of taking Red Hat’s product and reselling it as their own and not contributing much upstream. And so Red Hat made decisions, right or wrong. We’ve already covered that a billion times in topics, our take on it. Right or wrong, they made some things to make it a lot more difficult. Now, they never said we’re doing it because of Rocky, but we all kind of assumed it was because of Rocky. So, you know, these are our opinions. But either way, the timing was right there with our opinion to make it seem like that’s the situation. Companies like Rocky, you know, and there were a lot of things that they were doing, like claiming they’re better than Red Hat Linux and all this type of stuff. when in fact it’s just hilarious there’s just being better being.

Michael:
[46:03] Better at rail than rail makes no sense.

Ryan:
[46:05] But yeah i did in any case the question i have is products like zorin do you feel since they’re selling this product now they have a free version but they do sell this product the premium version of it and it’s heavily relying on ubuntu that it’s fair for them to do that.

Michael:
[46:24] What do you think jill.

Jill:
[46:25] Absolutely i i really ubuntu does does have their paid for versions on server side and and whatnot and also for for the end user you can you can pay for support, and uh to me it’s it’s i when we were talking earlier i was talking about how, you know ubuntu is a lineage from debian and you know debian is you know a completely free operating system that ubuntu is now you know makes money off of in a way and in a way yeah so they give so much back to debbie yeah that’s that’s i.

Michael:
[47:09] Think that that is like debian is so So benefited by Ubuntu. Like, let’s be honest about it. If Ubuntu did not exist, do we think Debian would be as big of an important distro as it is? Because before Ubuntu, I tried Debian and it was not fun.

Michael:
[47:31] And Ubuntu made Linux easy to use. For those who, you know, are coming into Linux just now, it was not a great like we’ve we’ve been around.

Michael:
[47:43] Jill and I have been using Linux for years before Ubuntu existed. And there’s a very different like era. Like when Ubuntu came out, the era went from pain to easy. And that’s what Ubuntu offered. So and that’s true for all of it. the only one that ever was in comparison was mandrake and that didn’t last very long so like there was a period of time where just using linux was not fun it was i mean it was fun in the sense of you’re learning kind of hacking you’re figuring out something unique but there are there’s elements if you are that kind of person but if you just want to get the system going and just use it it was not that there was even parts where back in the day if you installed the system and chose knows the wrong monitor hertz in the config, you could break your monitor. That doesn’t happen anymore, thankfully. But there’s different elements. Like when Ubuntu came out, it changed the landscape of Linux, like undeniably. Whether you like it now or not, that’s up to you, but it cannot be denied that they changed how people look at Linux. And that’s why I feel like if Ubuntu didn’t come out, Would Debian ever make the changes to do what was necessary to get to that point? I don’t feel like it because they haven’t done it now. So I don’t feel like they ever would have.

Jill:
[49:06] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like you were saying earlier, being able to use XFree86 and not blow up your monitor was an achievement. That’s crazy.

Ryan:
[49:19] That’s crazy.

Jill:
[49:20] Yes. Those of us in the early years of using Slackware and Debian know.

Michael:
[49:25] I found out that process accidentally.

Jill:
[49:29] Oh, my goodness.

Michael:
[49:30] I was in an IRC chat room and I was just talking to some people. And then they found out how old I was, which at the time I was like 13 or something. And they were like, oh, wow, that’s great. So how did you figure out, like, how did you know what hertz your monitor was? And I was like, what? What? And then they’re like, wait a minute.

Jill:
[49:47] I guessed it.

Michael:
[49:48] How did you? I just guessed it. And then they said, you are so lucky. If you, your parents would have been so mad if you had broken your monitor because you chose the wrong thing. And the reason I chose it is because for those who don’t know, it was 59.9% or 60, not 59, Hertz or 60 Hertz. And if you chose the wrong one, you would mess it up. i chose 60 because i just thought it would be better if it was a more faster monitor which it happened to be but thank goodness if i had the and the revelation was like terrifying and massive relief at the same time yeah but now so michael no one cares his crt.

Jill:
[50:31] Around and look at the little label and it actually it does.

Michael:
[50:33] I didn’t even know i had to do that that was the thing oh interesting yeah so.

Ryan:
[50:38] I mean bringing it back though like ubuntu Ubuntu did amazing things for Debian. Debian’s done amazing things for Ubuntu. So it’s a very symbiotic relationship. And Zorin has created this incredible product we’re talking about here that we really like that’s based on a lot of the work that Ubuntu’s done. And the question is, you know, really back to what you asked the team there, Michael, is are they giving back? Is it a symbiotic relationship like Ubuntu and Debian? And I like to think the answer is yes. And I’m guessing it is. And I really hope that’s the case. But if it’s not Zorin, you need to fix it. You need to fix it. That’s all I’m saying.

Michael:
[51:19] I agree. If it’s not, they should definitely do something. I feel like there is definitely some level of pushing back upstream stuff because they are also releasing everything as an open source thing. So they have a pro feature, but all the pro thing is more of like you’re supporting the project and you’re getting extra stuff, but it’s all cosmetic stuff like themes and whatnot. you’re not getting you get all that stuff on.

Ryan:
[51:42] Your own if you.

Michael:
[51:43] Yeah yeah and and you you this is just more like they’re packaging it easier for you and that sort of stuff so you’re doing it more of like this is a making it lowering the barrier of getting started but you don’t actually have to, do it in order to get everything that’s in there it’s just they’re doing it for you and i think that’s a perfectly fine position to have a premium version four if you want to have like an easier starting point you can do it if you just want the regular out of the box you get it and it’s just It’s a great out of the box. You know, there’s that. But your question is really interesting because it’s relating to the Rocky Linux versus Red Hat thing. And I think that there’s a parallel there in the sense of like, it’s a distro based on another distro, but there is a huge difference because Zorin is based on Ubuntu and modifies basically everything. Like the appearance, the presentation, they add extra features, they build their own stuff. And then you have Rocky Linux, which is literally marketing itself as a clone, a one-to-one, or they called it a bug-for-bug clone of Red Hat. that is like i think that that’s not fair is it fair what zorn is doing absolutely because they’re making an adjustment they are actually in their opinion and in my opinion in some ways they’re improving the experience and i feel like if you’re doing something on top of it you are modifying in some way providing your own experience your own implementation the very.

Ryan:
[53:08] Hacky open source.

Michael:
[53:10] Way yeah that’s the open way and there’s no and ubuntu wouldn’t even be bothered by that because there are so many other distros that are doing the same thing so they don’t as long as you’re doing something of merit of some value are you doing something even if it’s just changing the desktop use that’s what the flavors do like they basically just change that and they’re and ubuntu is totally fine with that because of course they would be whereas the difference is, red hat has people who are making exact clones and all they do is there is basically changing the logo and they pretty much say that they’re bug for bug compatible which is a terrible marketing term but still they say that and that in itself in my opinion is not fair yes it’s open source technically speaking you have the right to do it but it’s still not a good thing to do it’s not a cool thing to do like in my opinion like it’s it’s not a i agree it’s a bad it’s a bad action that the only reason you’re doing is to make money like that that is in itself, I think offensive anyway yeah.

Ryan:
[54:13] Yeah so offensive to the open source.

Michael:
[54:16] Like essence i don’t know how to describe it that’s that’s how i feel.

Ryan:
[54:21] It’s a little bit definitely awkward i think when you look at the story if you’re looking at it unbiasedly even if you’re a big rocky fan it’s a little bit awkward the position that they they took and red hat’s response to it was also awkward let me say that but um in any case Nice. Zorin OS 17.2. It’s beautiful. If you’ve not checked out Zorin, I highly recommend you check it out. Even if you’re an experienced user who’s been using Linux forever, I think you’ll find things you absolutely love about it.

Ryan:
[54:54] Either way, definitely check out Zorin OS 17.2. Very excited about it. We’ve got a problem, Michael. The problem is we have so much content.

Jill:
[55:03] Yes.

Ryan:
[55:03] We have so much content and no time. And this is the problem we run into every week, by the way, people that uh our gift of gab and going off on tangents is unparalleled in the universe like.

Michael:
[55:16] You’re welcome for the content because there’s a lot of extra content that gets cut out of the show so if you’re a patron you can go to tuxdigital.com/membership and you can get extra content and in this particular yeah in this particular episode there was a couple things that had to be taken out just for time and now we still have a lot left and we don’t have so much.

Jill:
[55:35] Show over half Half the show left?

Ryan:
[55:37] You know, I talked about the ASMR story time with Michael.

Michael:
[55:42] Okay, first of all, we’re not cutting my segment. How dare you?

Ryan:
[55:46] I think we should move on and save that for next week. Even though… Michael, listen, this is how special I feel like your segment is, that we don’t want to rush it. We want to give people time to absorb the brilliance of your presentation capabilities. And if we rush it, which now we’re over an hour of content already, then they’re not going to get the full experience. I like giving our listeners the best.

Michael:
[56:17] Like before, you framed a situation in a different way, and it made me change my opinion. Or at least you gave me food for thought. And in this case, you changed the frame again, and you just said the honesty of how important this segment is. So I appreciate that, and I agree. We’ll put it off to next week. It’s fine.

Ryan:
[56:37] Next week, you’re going to get Michael’s special story. It is really, actually a really interesting story, and I think you guys are going to enjoy it. and sorry for hyping it at the beginning and not giving it to you. But that’s how show business is.

Michael:
[56:51] And also, it’s not ASMR. Just so you know, for those anyone who’s worried about that, it’s not going to be ASMR.

Ryan:
[56:57] Michael’s at the mic like…

Michael:
[57:02] This is what happened.

Ryan:
[57:03] Yeah. Okay. So real quick, because this story is interesting, but we’re not going to spend a lot of time on it because we’re going to have to get through the rest of this pretty quick. um we’ve got mobile news is huawei released a trifold phone i mean at the end of the day that’s the big story is that this thing folds out three times instead of two you’ve got the pixel fold two that just came out uh it’s cool uh i had a pixel fold i liked it i really like the concept of it i found myself rarely using the folded out version of.

Michael:
[57:31] The phone uh.

Ryan:
[57:33] Because it just wasn’t that convenient all that much and.

Michael:
[57:36] When you have a mobile interface a phone interface think about this how many people like if you were watching the show and you’ve you’ve had a tablet whether it’s an ipad or an android tablet how often do you go for that tablet versus going for your phone or a laptop you’re probably almost never is going for the tablet right i have i’ve had tablets there’s a tablet right here it’s there for show right now just because for this this this particular topic to make my point I don’t remember the last time I turned that thing on I have no idea but I, If you had a phone that was a tablet, would you open it? Probably not. It’s actually not.

Ryan:
[58:18] Not as much as I thought I would.

Michael:
[58:20] That big a deal.

Ryan:
[58:21] The funny thing is the times I would open it was when I was wanting to show somebody else, share content.

Michael:
[58:27] Then it could do it.

Ryan:
[58:28] Well, that. But also, let’s say I wanted to share a YouTube video. It was very convenient to open it.

Michael:
[58:33] That’s true.

Ryan:
[58:33] And when I was sharing with somebody and show them the video very large. Or if I was playing a video game, which is very rare, honestly, because I don’t have any time. But when I would, it would be nice to open it and have it big. Other than that, I didn’t use it that much. I agree with you. There are people I know, though, that do use their tablets religiously, but I was never one of them. I’m very much like Michael.

Michael:
[58:54] I feel like if you’re a person who has a tablet, you use it all the time, you either don’t spend much time on your phone or your laptop. It’s like you don’t need all three of those. Yeah, I think the tablet would be a replacement for the laptop is what I would feel like.

Jill:
[59:06] Yeah.

Michael:
[59:06] Well, here’s the way I look at this particular thing, though. This trifold thing, I just… I feel like, okay, I’ve never gotten the appeal of having a folding phone. Just even the ones you talk about, the ones you showed me, I was like, okay, that’s kind of cool. The one that Brandon has from Pseudo Show with the Microsoft. Yeah, that one’s cool, but also the same kind of thing. I don’t know if I would actually use it. And it just gets the screen bigger. And how often would I use that? But also it makes it super bulky when you fold it and that sort of thing. So how much would I use that full size? It’s always been the question of like, I don’t know if I’d ever get it. And then I saw this and I have no idea if I would ever use this, but for some reason I want it and I don’t know why.

Jill:
[59:55] I feel the same, Michael. Me once. The screen is so beautiful. So cute. Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:00:02] Me once.

Michael:
[1:00:04] Me once trifold.

Jill:
[1:00:05] The trifolding format could be the Swiss Army knife converting from phone to tablet that every phone manufacturer should adopt. And I think they should adopt this.

Michael:
[1:00:17] Also, yeah, it’s because the twofold is not a very big tablet. You still have a very small device at the same time. Exactly. It’s like a middle ground of like a phablet, you know?

Jill:
[1:00:28] Yeah. And I would like this for me because I am visually impaired and being able to blow up the text bigger would always be nice. And I was even thinking, you know, let’s take that form factor actually a step further and include a fold-out keyboard so it can become a laptop. So you might as well have three of your devices in one that fold-out.

Ryan:
[1:00:49] Where do we end, people? Four, five, six screens? what are the next the next sam.

Michael:
[1:00:54] Song will.

Ryan:
[1:00:54] Be 10 screens you’re unfolding okay.

Michael:
[1:00:56] I think that this is a great i i i would think a combination just just real quick combination of the trifold plus a keyboard that also folds i think would work out pretty nice don’t put a keyboard on a phone that has a trifold like we don’t need that just to be clear but you’ll say folding keyboard with I don’t want to have like three palm trios slammed together.

Ryan:
[1:01:23] You know, back in the day, the old transformers are really hard to figure out how to transform them.

Michael:
[1:01:28] Oh, yeah.

Ryan:
[1:01:28] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:01:29] When I was a kid at some of the transformers, I never transformed because I couldn’t figure it out. I don’t care.

Ryan:
[1:01:37] So this phone has OLED screens, very beautiful OLED screens. It starts at 6.4 inches. If it’s all three folded, you unfold once. you got a 7.9 inch screen you unfold three times you have a 10.2 inch tablet uh has a massive 5600 milliamp battery 66 watt uh wire charging 50 watt wireless charging triple camera setup like 50 megapixel 12 megapixel ultra wide all that stuff is expected there it’s not in the u.s though if you don’t know uh huawei used to was making a huge come and uh move in the market with the U.S. They had laptops and everything here, but then they got sanctioned and their stuff wasn’t allowed in the U.S. And so, well, now they’re no longer allowed to use Google services specifically in the U.S. because of the sanctions. So you probably aren’t going to get one in the U.S. And if you do, it’s not going to really be Android. It’ll be some.

Ryan:
[1:02:30] It’s their harmony os is that yeah uh but it’s 2800 bucks so all these extra screens we keep adding keep adding up the ticker to the price as well uh but i agree with all of you i think it’s interesting i think it’s if you need that form factor the most useful it’s way more useful than the twofold i personally like the folding down version like the razor phone i think that’s the the most convenient it’s very pocketable makes it very usable uh phone uh i like that type of folding but if you want this folding out style phone then uh huawei’s kind of got it down and it’s listen whether you get a tri-fold.

Michael:
[1:03:08] That fold down so it’s like it.

Ryan:
[1:03:10] Goes down and then it goes like that pretty cool yeah oh.

Jill:
[1:03:13] That would be cool.

Ryan:
[1:03:13] But they showed this phone folded three times is the same thickness of the new samsung galaxy fold that folds yes so i’m like whoa Whoa, Huawei. You got serious engineering chops to pull that off. Very impressed. If you do get one of these, send us pictures in our Discord, please. I would love to see the phone actually in use from one of our listeners out there, if you grab that.

Ryan:
[1:03:39] Jill, what’s our gaming spotlight this week?

Jill:
[1:03:43] So our game this week is one that is weird, which I like because Ryan always gives me fun and weird games.

Ryan:
[1:03:52] It’s like a specialty.

Michael:
[1:03:53] Actually, this particular game feels like Ryan specifically looked for something weird.

Jill:
[1:04:01] Yes, he absolutely did. It had to.

Ryan:
[1:04:05] Jill likes weird, Michael, so it worked.

Michael:
[1:04:07] Oh, I know, but I’m just saying it still feels like you tried. You’re like, you know what? I did. Let’s find something weird today. Yeah.

Jill:
[1:04:15] So are you one of those people that sees bubble wrap? Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And can’t keep yourself from popping the bubbles?

Ryan:
[1:04:25] I think you are, Jill. You just popped virtual bubbles that didn’t exist.

Jill:
[1:04:29] Jill is definitely a bubble wrap fan. The irony of this is I just did it today with an Amazon order that came with the bubble wrap. Pop, pop, pop. Yes. I love it. So, and is… Your spouse, sick of you wasting precious packing material because you can’t control those popping urges. I know I’ve annoyed my Steve husband before.

Michael:
[1:04:52] Yeah, Steve bothered by us.

Jill:
[1:04:53] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:04:53] By the way, Steve, her husband, is one of the greatest packers, packaging packers I have seen. When he sends you something, it is packaged to perfection. So I could imagine when he pulls out the roll of bubble wrap and Jill has popped most of the bubble wrap for his perfect piece of art he’s about to send through the mail. I’m sure he gets frustrated. But Steve, I’ve got you. We fixed the problem.

Jill:
[1:05:18] Absolutely. So our game this week might be just the solution for those popping urges. Check out bubble wrap. Yeah, of course. Bubble wrap on Steam. For just $2.99, you get endless bubble wrapping, popping, simple controls. All you have to do is just click and drag to pop the bubbles. And controllers are also supported, which is cool.

Michael:
[1:05:46] For reasons.

Jill:
[1:05:48] For reasons, yes. And no more angry spouses. In this game, you can earn trophies for popping, bubble wrap, and achievements. achievements there’s also confetti for special milestones yay and you can customize the bubbles and backgrounds however you want and it supports steam workshop mods for fully custom bubbles, michael i i expect to see some some new mods next week uh.

Michael:
[1:06:18] That oh okay um yeah michael i built some So you’re challenging me, Jill.

Jill:
[1:06:23] Yes.

Michael:
[1:06:23] Okay. Unfortunately, I’m too busy for Till Next Week.

Ryan:
[1:06:28] Michael, if we could get a Hux Digital or Destination Linux themed.

Jill:
[1:06:32] Oh, that would be cool.

Ryan:
[1:06:34] You know, like if someone created that.

Michael:
[1:06:36] That would be awesome.

Ryan:
[1:06:37] It would be amazing.

Michael:
[1:06:39] Also, you can customize the sound when it pops. So I wonder what you’d make the sound for DL. Would it be like just, oh, I know what it is. A Jill giggle would be activated when you pop this thing.

Ryan:
[1:06:52] Oh, yeah. A Jill giggle every time you get the bubble done. I love it.

Michael:
[1:06:55] That’s perfect.

Ryan:
[1:06:55] I love it.

Jill:
[1:06:56] I would play that game.

Ryan:
[1:06:57] That’d be fun. This is really fun. And $2.99, by the way, is far cheaper than bubble wrap these days.

Jill:
[1:07:04] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:07:04] Because if you haven’t bought bubble wrap lately.

Michael:
[1:07:06] That’s true.

Ryan:
[1:07:06] Holy moly.

Michael:
[1:07:07] I had to move recently and we had to get some bubble wrap and it was not cheap. Not cheap.

Ryan:
[1:07:12] No. Not anymore.

Jill:
[1:07:14] Yeah. Yeah, so bubble wrap is actually a really fun and relaxing top-down mouse clicker game. And you can turn the volume down so you don’t bother your spouse when they are nearby. So this is a good way to not irritate them with in IRL bubble popping. And it actually has some really nice ambient music while you endlessly pop the bubbles and a great popping sound effect when you pop them and then proceed to the next sheet to pop. It’s never ending and it auto refreshes.

Michael:
[1:07:48] I think I figured out the solution of why they have a controller. I was thinking like, why would you want a controller? They could add vibrations for haptic feedback. So when you pop it.

Ryan:
[1:07:59] You get a thing.

Jill:
[1:08:00] Very, very smart, Michael. Yeah, that’s a good reason. That’s absolutely a good reason. And there’s also a free demo on Steam and it supports our Linux penguins out of the box.

Ryan:
[1:08:12] Thank goodness. Thank goodness it does. By the way, how much confidence do you have to have in your bubble popping game to have a free demo of it? Like, why would you just keep playing the free demo? But it’s so good. they’re so confident that they have found this niche here with people who want to pop bubbles that you’re like the demo’s not good enough i need more i must have more i need to have custom toast that i can pop or whatever oh my gosh i love their confidence the arrogance of the bubble popper is amazing and they deserve it no it’s something brilliant it’s.

Michael:
[1:08:45] Not arrogance if it if it if it’s if it’s backed up you know.

Ryan:
[1:08:48] That’s right well listen we are so far past an hour in this show so far that we’re going to have to cut it short and skip the software spotlight and stuff. We’re going to have to wait till next week.

Jill:
[1:09:00] Next week.

Ryan:
[1:09:01] And the tip of the week. The tip of the week and beautiful stuff. Our tip this week is relax. Listen, politics, all this crap going on right now. You need some bubble wrap in your life.

Jill:
[1:09:10] Relax.

Ryan:
[1:09:10] Get the bubble wrap game.

Michael:
[1:09:12] Enjoy the bubble wrap.

Ryan:
[1:09:12] Turn off the news and just enjoy some bubble wrap and some ASMR story you’ll have next week to go along with your bubble wrap. That could be it. They could take your story to play in the background. We have the theme of Destination Linux. And Jill’s giggle when you pop the bubble. That’s the new game there. Yeah, except it won’t make it happen.

Michael:
[1:09:31] It won’t be ASMR, but the rest of it sounds good.

Ryan:
[1:09:33] Yeah. All right. So a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening to Destination Linux. However you do it, we love your faces. Come join us on our Discord, tuxdigital.com/discord. And if you want to watch the show live, become a patron of Destination Linux. And you get to watch us do all of this weird stuff live. It’s a blast. It’s more fun than bubble wrap even.

Michael:
[1:09:55] I mean, that is a strong statement there, Ryan, and 100% true. This show is fantastic. Becoming a patron by going to tuxdigital.com/membership is even more fantastic because you get extra content. This episode will be edited. For those who are curious, 100% we edited this. And if you want the unedited version for all the extra content that we still kind of covered but weren’t able to get to in terms of putting in a show, Like we’re skipping some segments, but we still did some other stuff that just, we just don’t have time to put in the show. That’s going to be in the unedited version for our patrons. tuxdigital.com/membership to get that and so much more. And if you want to support the show in other ways, you can get some cool merch that we have at our store. tuxdigital.com/store. Sure, we have hats, T-shirts, mugs, hoodies, and so much more. And stickers, apparently, because Ryan just cannot help himself from doing it. We do actually have stickers. You should go check those out. But tuxdigital.com/store. And there’s even more coming. We don’t have the webcam covers. That was a scale-only thing. Anyway, go to tuxdigital.com/store to get all of that stuff and more.

Jill:
[1:11:07] And make sure to check out all the amazing shows here on Tux Digital. That’s right. We have an entire network of shows to fill your whole week with geeky goodness. Head to tuxdigital.com to keep those Linux penguins marching.

Ryan:
[1:11:20] Listen, you bubble poppers. I want you to have a great week. And remember, the journey itself is just as important as the destination.

Michael:
[1:11:29] You said that so weird. It was like you were being antagonistic and then also super nice right in the same sentence.

Ryan:
[1:11:36] You listen here, bubble poppers.

Michael:
[1:11:38] Bubble poppers. thanks for coming to the show everybody we’ll see you next week.

Jill:
[1:11:46] See you most of you.

Michael:
[1:11:47] I might get my story out next week we’ll see yeah.