Jill:
[0:00] On this week’s episode, we’re going to discuss how Arch is getting a big resource boost from Valve, woo-hoo, and what it means for Linux. Welcome to Destination Linux, where we discuss the latest news, hot topics, gaming, mobile, and all things open source in Linux. My name is Jill.

Ryan:
[0:18] I’m Ryan.

Michael:
[0:18] And I’m Michael.

Jill:
[0:20] Also this week, we’re really, seriously going to have a story time with Michael. Woo-hoo!

Michael:
[0:27] We will see.

Jill:
[0:29] Plus we got some Linux gaming and our software spotlight and more Now let’s get the show on the road toward Destination Linux.

Ryan:
[0:44] Our feedback this week comes from Oscar They have this to say In listening to episode 388 My Google speaker answers the question correctly in my iphone which was playing episode 388 sent me a correct link to the question both are older versions of said devices so neither oscar’s calling us a liar michael and saying that we didn’t or or he’s saying the older version’s better i’m thinking he’s thinking saying the older i don’t think he’s.

Michael:
[1:15] Saying liar i think he’s more of saying well hey i tested it maybe they They fixed it or something like that. But it could be other. I was teasing Oscar. It’s more likely other things than that.

Ryan:
[1:25] I know what you meant, Oscar. I’m totally joking. First of all, Oscar, we love you because you actually put the episode number in there. And that helps us so much.

Michael:
[1:35] We were discussing what we were talking to before the show. Where did we do this? We couldn’t remember. And then Jill said, well, he put it in the notes. Oh, right.

Jill:
[1:46] Yeah. Thank you.

Ryan:
[1:48] Oscar helped us do the research we needed for the show. So we’ve been told that Microsoft engineers listen to this show, actually at Microsoft as part of their workday, apparently.

Michael:
[1:59] We’ve been told by Microsoft engineers, yeah.

Ryan:
[2:01] And I’m quite certain Google folks, employees, listen to this show as well, but we’ve never had that confirmed. If you’d like to send us one, and you don’t have to give your name, just be like, yeah, I’m a Google employee and I listen. That would be cool. See, on Saturday, September 21st, I did the same test again. And, uh, you know, we did the test live on the show and it failed miserably. And so, uh, we didn’t edit that or anything. It was just, it was live.

Michael:
[2:28] We just left it.

Ryan:
[2:29] Spontaneously did it. Uh, and so I did the test several times after I got Oscar’s email and it, Funny enough, all of a sudden, it was working with that specific word, which was cognizant. And so, you know.

Michael:
[2:42] It’s proof that they watch our show.

Ryan:
[2:45] That’s it. Or that’s what I think it means, too. And, you know, it knew the answer. It read it out from Wikipedia. So I think that Google listens to us, which in that case, the next thing we would like you to do, Google, is remove all of your privacy sucking.

Michael:
[3:02] Violating issues. Yeah.

Ryan:
[3:04] If you could do that, then we’ll love you very much. But you wouldn’t be Google at that point.

Michael:
[3:09] I guess, though.

Ryan:
[3:10] But something else happened, Michael, that before we were doing the show.

Michael:
[3:15] Well, so, OK, I think what we should do here is first, I think this is super interesting because it does give us a sign that they did it. But or maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it just randomly works sometimes. times so we need to test it live again and.

Ryan:
[3:33] See if.

Michael:
[3:33] They have actually fixed it.

Ryan:
[3:35] Okay here we go hey google what is cognizant ko is an abbreviation for knockout it’s commonly used in sports like boxing and martial arts to refer to a situation where a competitor okay.

Michael:
[3:47] Maybe try again but this time just over pronounce pronounce everything.

Ryan:
[3:53] Like over articulate it hey google what is cognizant technology solutions corporation is an American at least it got the word this time.

Jill:
[4:07] Yeah.

Ryan:
[4:12] That’s good.

Jill:
[4:13] Yeah. Okay.

Michael:
[4:14] So maybe it was a fluke.

Ryan:
[4:16] I mean, I have no other sound going on in this room. Like it is completely silent for a podcast. So like it has the perfect ability to hear my words and be able to a proper so listen google engineers you fixed it for like a day but this is clearly a regression bug and it’s come back so uh get back in there and get working yeah you just gotta get cognizant to work that’s the that’s our test if it’s artificial intelligence if it’s if it’s reached the pinnacle of what do they call it when it becomes human michael like where it’s like sentience yeah sentience yeah uh that’s that’s when we’ll know ai is sentient when it can tell us the proper definition for cognizant of one word yeah that’s it that’s that’s the new turing test right there very interesting you know um, ai i think clearly has been overblown in its capabilities in some areas and in other areas it’s great um but these assistants are unbelievably annoying and people don’t use them, because they rarely ever work and yeah yeah it’s cool but.

Michael:
[5:25] These have always been a massive annoyance like when you when you basically want to just set up a like a alarm that even in itself is a pain sometimes and you’re like, oh, you have to unlock your phone first. Why? Why do I have to unlock my phone to set up an alarm?

Ryan:
[5:42] Yeah. Yeah. I think I asked it to do that recently to set an alarm or something. And it gave me something like that. Well, you don’t have this setting set to allow me to set an alarm for you. And then so I’d had to go into settings and find that setting and then whatever it was and do that to use it. And it was just easier to just manually go in and make the calendar reminder which was far shorter and so yeah there’s a lot of work to be done and i’ve heard i’m not seeing uh the proof of this but i’ve heard the new ai in the iphone 16, hasn’t been doing so great either like it’s not doing so not surprising no i haven’t updated.

Michael:
[6:21] My i don’t know what os if i if i can even get that i do have an iphone but i don’t know what am i going to get the update or anything but the funny thing is is there are some times you just can’t do certain things with your phone locked, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, I just wanna open the podcast app and it won’t let me without giving extra permissions. Like, just open the app. But if you unlock the phone and then say open it, then it will do it. It’s just so weird.

Ryan:
[6:48] At that point, it’s quicker for me to click the button.

Michael:
[6:50] Yes, exactly. So these voice assistants are a cool idea, but they are far from helpful. They are good for tiny little things, setting reminders maybe. What’s the weather? Yes, what time is it if you’re doing something like riding a bike, you don’t want to pull your phone out or something like that. There are times where they have some value. It is just a very small amount of time that it has value.

Jill:
[7:16] Yeah.

Ryan:
[7:17] Jill, do you use the AI assistance at all?

Jill:
[7:19] No, not at all. Because of mistakes. And I just, yeah.

Ryan:
[7:24] It gets more frustrating. It’s more frustrating.

Jill:
[7:26] I’d rather type it in.

Ryan:
[7:28] If you use Samsung, which if you do read their privacy policy and then throw it away. But if you use that, then let us know if Bixby is any better.

Michael:
[7:38] There’s no way. There’s no way Bixby is better.

Ryan:
[7:41] If you actually use, well, they may because they gather all your information and sell it.

Michael:
[7:46] I mean, that’s true, but also Samsung is known for doing really weird stuff anyway. So I don’t think they’re going to be solving the voice assistant problem anytime soon.

Ryan:
[7:57] It really stinks, too, because Samsung has some of the nicest looking hardware out there, period. I really want to get my hands on an S24 Ultra or play with one of their flip phones because I really like the flip phones. But because their privacy policy is so bad, literally the worst I’ve ever read, I just won’t touch their phones. And it stinks because I look at them like, man, I’d really like to play with you, Samsung, but you don’t want to be nice to me in the privacy world.

Michael:
[8:22] You don’t even want to be nice. You don’t want to have just reasonable options to the user. Like, yeah, it’s so absurd. Like, the funny thing is I used to have a Samsung before I switched to the iPhone. And the time I learned how bad their privacy was on this show when Ryan was telling everyone, I was like, oh, wait, huh? And then you could probably go back and look at the episode. I don’t remember which one it was, but it was hilarious because he’s like, wait a minute, I have one of those. Let me go look. Oh, okay. I need to get rid of this.

Ryan:
[8:55] Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. I was on Reddit and there’s a privacy, our privacy on there where a lot of people talk about the different privacy things. And the question came up about Samsung versus the Google Pixel and some other stuff because There’s a person who wanted to do Android. And it was so relief, relief. It was relief-filling to me to see that so many people were like, hey, Samsung’s privacy policy is terrible. Stay away from it. So I’m like, hey, the message has finally got out. Maybe it’ll get to Samsung. And they’ll fix it. Maybe. Probably not.

Michael:
[9:25] Maybe. Probably not. But for those who are curious what to get, the Pixel is not a bad one. I had to get an Android as well. And the Pixel is a good solution for that.

Ryan:
[9:38] Interesting thing is Google gives you the control to turn all that stuff on. Now, it’s all on by default, which is nonsense, Google. That’s true. It’s nonsense. nonsense but you do have control if you go through all 50 variations of their various apps and turn all that stuff better than nothing yeah better than nothing yeah yeah um by the way if you want to let us know if there’s a better uh phone ai assistant if you use the ai assistant all the time and it works beautifully for you please send us uh what you use and how you use it uh because i I would be curious because I don’t see any value in them to DestinationLinux.net/comments, or you can go on the forum DestinationLinux.net/forum, and you can be part of the show and let us know, Hey man, you got to check out Bixby. It’s jam. So I would be part of the show.

Michael:
[10:28] Let us know.

Jill:
[10:30] Yeah.

Ryan:
[10:30] It’s not Ohio dog water. Bixby’s not, or almost guaranteed.

Michael:
[10:35] It’s Riz.

Ryan:
[10:38] That’s it. Jill. Good one. It’s Riz.

Michael:
[10:41] Y’all are so buzzing.

Jill:
[10:43] Thank you.

Ryan:
[10:43] You know what’s really cool, though, Michael, is Valve. You look at corporations.

Jill:
[10:48] Yes.

Michael:
[10:49] Valve is really bussing.

Ryan:
[10:51] Yeah, they are bussing.

Jill:
[10:52] If they made AI, it would be awesome.

Ryan:
[10:55] Oh, my goodness. It would be so good. Just launch games. That’s it.

Michael:
[10:59] Yeah, and that reminds me of speaking of game-based voice assistants, then we have Cortana, and we completely forgot about Cortana. Maybe Cortana is the greatest.

Ryan:
[11:09] Jill, why are you laughing?

Jill:
[11:11] Sorry.

Ryan:
[11:15] I’d rather have.

Jill:
[11:17] Clippy even you.

Ryan:
[11:19] Know not completely functional but it’s it’s true it’s probably more useful man microsoft you’re not feeling that burn i don’t know you must not be human uh i love cortana the name because i love halo and i love cortana in halo and if cortana actually acted on my phone or computer or whatever like it does in the show oh, it helps Master Chief defeat the evil aliens, then that would be great. But it doesn’t. Anyways, Valve. Valve rocks. We all love Valve. And it’s one of those corporations. It’s hard to admire corporations these days because they always kind of start off with, hey, we’re your friend. Love us. Look, we’re doing stuff differently. And then as soon as they make a lot of money, they’re like, ah, I got you. And then it becomes like, that’s the whole thing. It happens with every company I start to admire, and then they kind of turn evil. But Valve’s never done that. Not that I know of, anyway.

Michael:
[12:13] No, no. They actually do a lot of cool stuff. I recently learned when I was researching them, I found out they were doing a lot of cool stuff in the sense that if you’re a developer, a game developer, yes, they do the 30% thing, but that’s only if someone purchased it on the Steam store. If you are given a key, which they give keys out to developers to be able to give to testers or press people or whatever, those they don’t make any money on they actually lose money there’s no any there’s no no value from steam they don’t charge for that there is and valve is they they do a lot of cool stuff that don’t get a lot of attention so uh i’m happy that we’re giving them attention for something else they’re doing that’s awesome well.

Ryan:
[12:57] When we started you know this podcast we used to get emails weekly talking about hey you guys make linux sound really exciting i would love to use Linux, but gaming’s a big deal for me and I can’t game on Linux. So we would have to deal with this on a constant basis. Or people will say, I’ll switch as soon as I can play games on Linux. And then there were people who were like, hey, I don’t care about gaming. Linux is cool and everything else. We don’t even want to hear your gaming section anymore. Yeah.

Michael:
[13:26] We had people yelling at us about having gaming section on our show.

Ryan:
[13:30] Which I get. Some people don’t game and that’s probably not your favorite segment if you don’t. but then we started telling chapters like four people listen uh if you look at gaming gaming is bigger than film all of television and all of music combined so it’s a really big deal when you have a operating system that can’t game so maybe you don’t game that’s okay that’s totally cool. But the vast majority of people do to some extent. And it’s clear based on that statistic that you can go look up right now. Don’t ask Google AI won’t know. But you can look that up right now. And you’ll see that that’s a fact. It’s bigger than all of those not individually, but all those combined gaming is bigger than so, We know gaming is a big deal and Steam, Wine, Proton, all combined made it so that we no longer really get any of those emails. I can’t remember the last time we received an email saying, hey, I would love to switch to Linux, but I can’t because of gaming. And I think that that’s incredible. And of course, there are companies that partnered with Steam and a lot of the work that the Wine team did and things that allowed Steam to make it happen. uh but you know the end result is we ended up not only with being able to game better on linux but we ended up with the steam deck which yes.

Jill:
[14:53] Jill’s ready to go with the.

Ryan:
[14:57] Steam deck she was ready for that the whole time she had that thing on her hip it was like hip-fired steam deck she’s ripped i don’t know like where did that come from that was, man that was good jill it’s almost like we planned it uh yeah we didn’t that’s.

Michael:
[15:14] What’s even more impressive the.

Ryan:
[15:16] Steam deck’s been an incredible story in itself because number one they took a huge risk by not going with the traditional windows and in fact every company that’s tried to copy them rog all of them and failed with their own portable devices all chose windows because they’re like doing windows we’ve got the secret here we’re going to do windows which which means we’ll have a couple more games that are compatible that we can run that they can’t, and no one’s going to want to play with the Steam Deck. And we’re going to make it better hardware.

Michael:
[15:43] They got the secret of using Windows, and they’re like, why do you think they didn’t use Windows? Like, there’s a reason. It’s like, we’re going to do one above you, but it’s a terrible experience because Windows is not made for that and doesn’t work very well. But it’s got other games that you can’t play. Yeah, that’s the problem.

Ryan:
[16:05] Yeah. And they make it look so good. Like the Steam Deck interface is gorgeous.

Michael:
[16:11] It’s very nice.

Jill:
[16:11] It’s wonderful.

Ryan:
[16:12] Michael, I have really, man, I got to tell you, like, I have really come to appreciate, the UX designers out there. And I know that a lot of companies have gone out and like, we’ll combine all the roles into one. You can be the backend coder, you can be the UX designer. And I think that’s why so much software nowadays is so bad because they’ve combined those roles. They didn’t really respect the power of a good UX design. And I’m going to use Power BI as an example of this. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Power BI, this is a really powerful tool. If If you run into the limitations with Excel, I think it’s like at 900,000 records or something is the max Excel can store. I don’t remember what the number is.

Michael:
[16:55] But something like that. That’s so little.

Ryan:
[16:58] And then, well, when you’re dealing with massive company, right, it becomes a big deal. And then, you know, Power BI becomes this tool that allows you to be able to create reports and create charts and all of this stuff and big dashboards and be able to manage this data. The UX is absolutely horrendous. And as usual, it’s big, fat, and bloated and is very slow. But I didn’t realize how bad it was till a peer of mine showed me Tableau. And Tableau is a big competitor of Microsoft. And all the stuff that I have to do 18 clicks to do in Power BI is just like one little button over there in Tableau. And the UX is so good, Michael, that I had no training on it, knew nothing about Tableau, opened it up, and was able to immediately start building my report without any instruction. Like, it just made sense. That’s good design. Icons made sense, where stuff was, was where it should be, and it was just there.

Michael:
[17:56] So this is something, this is actually, for those who don’t know, I am a designer, and more specifically, a UX designer. Technically, I also do graphic design, but my preference is UX. and this is a very important thing because there is actually like laws of design that exist that kind of guide you in terms of like it’s not to be like oh we’re following the trends it’s just that there’s certain things you need to do that you need to be able to design something that is intuitive someone like how ryan was able to just pick it up and go he understood how it was working that doesn’t mean that the software is good it means that the software is designed well enough that you don’t have to worry about you need to teach them how to use it. If you have to teach someone how to use it, then there’s a problem. Now, if you are doing something that you’re trying to be innovative and you don’t really care if it’s intuitive, that’s one thing. But there’s actually a law called Jacob’s Law that is provide the initial experience to be what the user is expecting. And it seems like Tableau did exactly that.

Ryan:
[19:00] Yeah. And it’s so welcoming. And I use that example because specifically, Power BI launched a new feature, dark mode, finally, right? So of course I turned on dark mode.

Jill:
[19:13] Finally.

Michael:
[19:14] Wow.

Ryan:
[19:15] And they advertise it, it pops up. It’s like, you want to try it now? I’m like, yeah, dark mode, finally. It won’t blind me when I open a report. So I click on open, it opens, it’s in dark mode. and everything looks to be fine until I get into the sub menu where I need to select multiple things and I can’t see if I’m selecting anything because the dark mode doesn’t is.

Michael:
[19:34] Not optimized for the dark mode so it’s a it’s a black text on a dark mode background yeah.

Ryan:
[19:41] So herein lies the problem now now I’m in dark mode but I’ve got to get this report out and I’ve got to get out of dark mode so that I can do the selection I need to build the report I have and you.

Michael:
[19:50] Don’t know where it is because it’s not going to ask you where to put it because it’s all.

Ryan:
[19:53] I go into file and settings and there’s this huge list of different various settings there nothing make nothing just says appearance or what you would expect it to say but i think it’s somewhere under global settings and at the very bottom there’s this little thing and i had more like power bs yeah oh nice one michael nice one i had to search on google to try to find how to turn it off which of course comes with instead of the instructions that I need says, here’s how you turn off dark mode on Android Power BI. Here’s how you turn off an iPhone. But because it was a new feature, there was no instructions. Anyways, my point to all this is Steam Deck, the US.

Michael:
[20:35] Oh, that’s what we’re talking about.

Ryan:
[20:36] Is amazing, isn’t it? Like you instantly know how to get to your games. You instantly know how to get into your settings. It’s very well.

Michael:
[20:45] And it’s also beautifully designed. It’s not like If you go back to 2019-ish and you look at the big picture mode, it was nice, but also it was clunky and a little bit cumbersome. But it was like focusing on the graphic side, not the UX side. This is effectively taking the value and the concept of the big picture mode and making an entire ecosystem, an entire interface that is where you don’t need to. Because I remember, oh, going into big picture mode. You want to try it? Sure. sure, this is awful and went back to the Steam client. This, like the whole, you enjoy it the whole time. The Steam Deck UI is just well done. It looks good and it’s intuitive and it functions how you want it to. And even the on-screen keyboard stuff is pretty good too.

Jill:
[21:32] Yeah.

Ryan:
[21:32] Now, if you compare this to like the ROG devices and other things, what you get is you boot it up and you get a Windows desktop. And then you have to use your little thumb stick to move your little mouse down to the start button to go find your game, go launch the game.

Michael:
[21:47] I mean, they got to at least have a touchscreen, right?

Ryan:
[21:49] I think some of them have like a UX kind of interface. But every time I go into Best Buy and they have one on display, it’s sitting on a Windows desktop. And that’s how people are interfacing with this device.

Michael:
[21:59] That’s gross.

Ryan:
[22:00] Gross so whether it has a ux that boots into first or not that’s the experience everybody’s getting when they walk in the best spot i don’t have one so i don’t know if you have one let me know but either way my point is valve did something amazing here but this is they’re not done so how could valve possibly get cooler well they could come on the show we could have gave me well here and then they would be like come on gabe come on gabe um you.

Michael:
[22:23] Know you want to be on the show You haven’t done press in years, but of all the press to do, this show.

Ryan:
[22:29] By the way.

Jill:
[22:30] Lord Gabe-in?

Ryan:
[22:32] Lord Gabe. Look at our interviews with some of the best in the industry.

Jill:
[22:36] Yes.

Michael:
[22:37] We’re not biased. We’ve been told this by the people who do the interviews with us. They love our interviews the most. So, think about it.

Ryan:
[22:47] So, Valve is very cool because they also used Arch to make the Steam Deck, which I remember a bunch of naysayers like, it won’t be stable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they found their way around that and they made it super simple.

Michael:
[23:00] I mean, if they went straight arch, then it would have been a problem. But they didn’t do that. And of course, they wouldn’t do that. They shouldn’t do that. So it’s great that they figured out their own solution and just used arch as the base. Arch is a good base. Is it the best base?

Ryan:
[23:15] Maybe.

Michael:
[23:16] Now that’s Fedora because Fedora is awesome. But like, it’s a good base. Yeah.

Ryan:
[23:20] I agree, Michael. Arch is the best. yeah and so like we’re.

Michael:
[23:24] Mixing signals here.

Ryan:
[23:25] And so you know, How could Valve be cooler? They’re using Arch. They made the Steam Deck. They made gaming even better on Linux. Well, how about if they contribute back to Arch? Like, instead of just using it and making it super cool for their device, what if they were able to give back with all of their awesome programmers, UX designers, and everything else and help out Arch a little bit? That would be pretty cool. That would put them in, like, top tier cool. Wouldn’t you think? Top tier?

Michael:
[23:55] I think they do already before. Yeah, they’re already top tier. I think they already do contribute to some degree I think they do send stuff here and there I.

Ryan:
[24:05] Don’t know to what degree.

Michael:
[24:05] But I know I think there is some they do.

Ryan:
[24:08] Open source stuff so oh really I haven’t heard this Paul yeah from Arch had this to say we’re excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve, is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution They’re going to do a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers. So, this allows them to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges that they’ve been facing for a while. And the calibration will speed up and progress what otherwise would have taken them a lot longer. Whatever.

Michael:
[24:55] Calibration is good, too.

Ryan:
[24:57] Yeah.

Jill:
[24:57] Whatever.

Ryan:
[24:58] Whatever, Mike. The point is, they rock. Right?

Michael:
[25:01] They do. Valve is awesome. And what they’re doing is just, it’s so cool that it’s not even just like that they are doing some kind of funding. They’re specifically contracting people that are Arch staff members, like Arch developers and Arch maintainers, to be able to work on specific features that will benefit all of Arch, all of the ecosystem that uses Arch, as well as themselves. Now, obviously, Valve is not dumb in doing this for no reason. This is going to help them because the Steam Deck and SteamOS is based on Arch. So, of course, it’s benefiting them. them so anybody who thinks like uh or like oh what’s what’s valve getting out of this improvements to their base so like obviously that’s they could have done this.

Ryan:
[25:46] On their own and not included arch they could have gone made the improvements uploaded it themselves and never gave it to arch they could.

Michael:
[25:53] Have they could have but also the thing is is that they’re what they’re doing is basically making arch at the arch linux project more like stable and i don’t mean stable Stable as in stability. I mean more like stable as like an organization because providing infrastructure is or providing the funding so that the Arch team themselves can build the infrastructure that they wanted to because they don’t have the time. Because all of the people who work on Arch have always been volunteers doing it in a free time and they don’t have time to build infrastructures and all these different like automated build systems and all these things. and basically Valve is hiring these people as contractors to give them the time to do all these things and that’s awesome.

Jill:
[26:39] Yeah, and paying them to make it better.

Michael:
[26:44] But paying them to do the things they’ve already wanted to do for a while.

Jill:
[26:48] Exactly.

Michael:
[26:49] That’s awesome.

Jill:
[26:50] Well, you know, when creating the Steam Deck, Valve actually worked, as we’ve been talking about, on Proton. They collaborated with AMD on hardware and worked with the KDE Plasma team to make Linux gaming a first-class citizen. So this even takes that further. They keep, you know, they keep fixing all those things that are required for the Steam OS to run better and the Steam client to run better. So awesome.

Ryan:
[27:22] You know, this is interesting because just last week we were discussing Zorin OS and how awesome their new release is. We also mentioned the importance of them giving back to Ubuntu. we’re talking about hey if they don’t give back to ubuntu they need to because it’s a project that they rely on and you know to me valve is showing exactly how that’s done uh they’re contributing back on top of the fact that they’ve already contributed so much but they’re continuing to contribute back and it becomes the symbiotic relationship just like venom you know venom becomes symbiotic with its host and the marvel thing the comic character michael.

Michael:
[27:59] You’re on board in the beginning venom was was not necessarily a good thing to have he eventually became good when he was attached to a particular character not spider-man when he was attached to spider-man he kind of was a bad guy when he was attached to flash then it was not the flash his name was nickname is the is flash and flash thompson for those who are curious how nerdy i am and when they were when they were when he’s attached to flash thompson he became agent venom and that then he was a good guy and yes then so it just depends on which venom you’re such

Michael:
[28:34] a nerd i love eddie brock was actually a bad version of venom too so but anyway we had the awesome folks.

Ryan:
[28:41] Apparently from zorin reach out to us to clarify some stuff.

Michael:
[28:45] That is true yeah it’s really interesting because i knew that i just assumed they were giving stuff back but i didn’t know what they were giving back until they give us he’s like he didn’t i don’t have a list of Thust, but here’s off the top of my head. He said they created the original code bases for dash to panel, which is a pretty big deal because a lot of people use that and a lot of distros come with that by default. Also, they created the original code base of the Arc Menu shell extension, which is another thing that distros come with out of the box. They also did a number of features for the XFCE desktop, like the dock style panel plugin. And they’ve also been contributing directly with Ubuntu to fix an issue with NVIDIA drivers for the 550 drivers that prevents like a GTK4 issue with Wayland. And they’ve already worked with Ubuntu to get that pushed out to users. So there you go.

Ryan:
[29:36] Man. So we got Valve up here. We’re putting that company up in top tier coolness. And Zorin, we’re moving you right up there. Your neighbors with Valve right there. You’re symbiotic. I love it. I love it. I’m very happy to hear that. Zorin, if they don’t already have this on their webpage, need to put a page of this is what we contribute back to Ubuntu. to i feel like.

Michael:
[30:00] I think that this is something this is a good point because i feel like all distros should prove this not because it’s like oh we don’t trust that you’re helping or whatever it’s because it allows people to know exactly how you’re helping and it also it’s not it’s it’s a marketing thing in some cases in the sense of like it’s letting people know this and they can share it and say like hey these are people who are giving back and all that sort of stuff but also it’s a sense of just showing how involved you are in the community and in the ecosystem. And there’s not going to be a bad thing by doing this. So I feel like all projects should do it.

Ryan:
[30:35] It’s okay to say we do this cool stuff back and we collaborate with these cool people and we all get on. I think it warms my heart to know that they’re all working together on stuff together. That’s a great thing. It’s so open source. That’s what we’re here for.

Michael:
[30:49] It’s like the philosophy and the idea and the essence of open source as it was meant to be. So, yeah, do it.

Ryan:
[30:57] Brag about it. We got your back. We’ll talk about it.

Michael:
[31:00] If you got it, flaunt it.

Ryan:
[31:02] That’s it.

Michael:
[31:03] As they say.

Jill:
[31:04] Absolutely.

Ryan:
[31:06] Oh, my goodness. No, I’m just, I’m really thrilled with what Valve’s done. I’m so happy of the success of the Steam Deck because it could have flopped. Yeah. It could have been a dead product. They had some product.

Michael:
[31:18] The Steam machines did not do very well. So, who knows? but the steam deck was great valve is great proton is really cool gta online not so good rockstar kind of yeah um check out the link in the video under the description about that but i wanted to say this what’s interesting about this is i feel like there’s a lot to this more so than just valve being awesome like yes good job valve uh we we’re glazing on you for For sure. See how we’re so Gen Z, you know, and everything. Man, so Gen Z. So Gen Z. So Valve is great. But what they’re doing, and for those who don’t know what these terms mean, let’s break it down a little bit. I want to scroll up so I can find the exact terms of like how they said it.

Ryan:
[32:07] Break it down, Michael. Yes.

Michael:
[32:08] The build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. That is very, very technical phrasing. So the build service infrastructure is basically an automated system to build packages for the distro.

Michael:
[32:24] And the secure signing enclave is a way to automate the process of signing packages so that once the package is built, it is confirmed that it is the package that you’re supposed to get. because obviously there could be corruption and i mean not like political corruption but like corruption in the sense of like the some of the packets don’t come through when you fully download it so it’s kind of broken and that sort of thing and these the signing if it’s still there then it means that it’s it’s totally good to go and you can use it and they the security thing as well right it’s also it’s technically like it’s.

Michael:
[33:01] Technically not meant to be a security but it’s like kind of like accidentally a security too so like it was meant to just be like consistent code and then they’re like well now you can also use this to prove that who you got it from and that sort of thing yeah but there’s also another element to it because they already had signing of packages they were doing it as open pgb pgp and each person had to sign it themselves manually and that meant that you had to know if each person was actually part of arch so you’d have to know like i don’t know how many people were in arch but last time i looked which was admittedly like a year ago or two i don’t even remember exactly but there was like a hundred people and you have to go and see like is this person still in the arch and all that sort of stuff so that’s a lot this is a way to create like an arch signing system so you’ll see it is from arch not just each individual person.

Michael:
[33:58] And it also makes it where they don’t have to do it manually. They can automate all of this and basically…

Michael:
[34:05] Eliminate a ton of extra effort and open up the possibility to do other things that they’ve already wanted to do for years and i’m very excited because one of the things they talked about was they could have support for arm and risk five because of this yes that’s huge they said that they’re not guaranteeing it’s happening but they said it’s definitely something they’re are looking at because as soon as they can if they can ryan is guaranteed it for you steam on arm, like that would be awesome and i feel like there’s probably i think valve is probably thinking you know you could bring the armor arm architecture of course.

Ryan:
[34:44] They are why would.

Michael:
[34:44] And uh right risk five and all that sort of stuff so like right now we do you can technically get arm for arch linux but it’s a separate third party unofficial project they have the blessing someone just I just deleted their YouTube comment.

Ryan:
[34:59] I’m like, dang it, he mentioned it.

Michael:
[35:02] Well, the reason I wanted to mention it is because I love their acronym as ALARM. It’s Arch Linux ARM. Oh, yeah. It’s so good. It’s so good. But anyway, Arch Linux themselves may in the future have ARM thanks to this. So I just wanted to bring that up because that is awesome.

Jill:
[35:18] That is wonderful. And Michael, you talked about on This Week in Linux and on a separate video you did about Valve contributing to Wayland. In what ways are they contributing to Wayland?

Michael:
[35:29] That’s a good point. It’s so interesting because they have people who are like contractors working on it, but there are people who are like directly Valve engineers also doing stuff. And one of them wants to improve the speed of the development of Wayland. And I didn’t know this, and it was kind of funny because as I was researching this, everybody talks about how, I mean, you’ve probably heard this phrase, when are we getting Wayland? Or why is it taking so long? And turns out, There is merit behind those statements. There has been stagnation for development of Wayland protocols for at least a couple years. As in, it’s still being done. It’s just being done much slower than it used to be. There were five, six years of period where it was super fast development, and all of a sudden, it started slowing down.

Ryan:
[36:24] It’s because they outsourced it to sloths.

Michael:
[36:27] Could be. With enough sloths and enough typewriters, you could… probably not get much of anything because it’s a sloth i.

Ryan:
[36:35] Just thought of that dmv.

Michael:
[36:37] Yeah the the zootopia zootopia.

Jill:
[36:40] It’s one of my favorite movies i love that.

Michael:
[36:42] Movie one of my favorite gifts to say i’m sorry wayland developers i don’t really feel that.

Ryan:
[36:45] Way it just.

Michael:
[36:46] Popped in my head not that bad at all but like this and also because sloth is uh the sloth in that movie is called like uh 100 yard dash flash or something yeah yeah it’s so good anyway so what they’re What they’re doing is trying to build out this new branch, which kind of shocks me that there wasn’t already this branch, but they’re wanting to add an experimental branch to be able to work on protocol changes and updates and then move that to staging and then when it’s ready, go to stable. And apparently… There’s only been staging and stable before. And it’s kind of like, how? Like, how do you, how have you been doing it this whole time?

Ryan:
[37:29] They’re improving the process. They’re making the process more efficient.

Michael:
[37:32] Making it faster and giving you more. It’s more of like giving more flexibility, in the development stage. So you don’t have to worry about like, oh, nothing can ever have any breaking point. And when you’re doing innovation and development, you’re going to create bugs. You’re going to have some kind of issue that you need to resolve in order to push something forward and make new code and all that sort of stuff, there’s going to be something that happens. And they previously, like, this is just my understanding. I could be wrong.

Ryan:
[37:59] Michael, we’re about to do story time with you. I need you to work on your conciseness of you two.

Jill:
[38:07] I don’t understand what that word means. It was my fault because I asked the question, but we needed to know.

Ryan:
[38:14] It’s great.

Michael:
[38:14] That’s true.

Ryan:
[38:15] Let’s summarize this because we’re running, we’re already 38 minute run and we haven’t got the story time. I’m sorry, everyone. and we’re gonna have to skip story time but not.

Michael:
[38:24] Again okay fine i’ll i’ll sum it up with valve is helping with arch linux but they’re not just helping with arch linux they’re also some of their engineers are also trying to help with wayland and this is very important because we need wayland to ramp up as soon as possible because there’s already kind of like deadlines for some of the distros to remove x and it’s only like a couple to a few years away for that to happen so we need whalen to get to that point and there’s still a lot there’s a lot of awesome stuff about whalen if you if you don’t know you’re you might actually be using whalen and there’s ways to test but anyway you can look up that online but there’s so many good things but also it’s missing quite a few still too yeah.

Ryan:
[39:11] Well after hearing this the whalen devs are definitely gonna speed up they’re They’re like, click, click.

Jill:
[39:19] Not like a sloth?

Michael:
[39:20] No, no, no, no. They’re going to be like, click, click.

Ryan:
[39:25] Oh, wow.

Jill:
[39:26] There we go. There we go.

Ryan:
[39:29] Oh, why did I bring on the wrath of the Weyland Doves? I don’t know. Yep.

Michael:
[39:34] My fault. My name’s Michael, by the way. It was Ryan’s fault that that happened.

Ryan:
[39:41] All right, Michael, now’s your chance. it’s story time with Michael so if you’re at home right now don’t do this if you’re in the car, grab a blanket, your favorite snack get on the couch put your headphones on close your eyes.

Michael:
[39:56] It is not that kind of story oh.

Jill:
[39:59] Okay my bad this is.

Michael:
[40:02] ASMR at it’s best also not that kind of story either it’s a story it’s a horror story that ends in niceness, okay?

Ryan:
[40:14] Okay. All right.

Michael:
[40:16] So… Once upon a time, you know, there’s there’s people who say all the time you can’t live without the Internet. And I can tell you that is kind of true. I went a month without the Internet, at least as a hookup on my house, you know, like that kind of thing.

Ryan:
[40:36] You didn’t have an official connection in your home.

Michael:
[40:38] Yes, I was able to use smartphone hotspots to have a semblance of Internet. But there is such a different experience. So it is kind of true, especially if you need it for work, which I do. And this was a very interesting experience because we did the show two weeks on a phone’s internet. And it was. I spotted it. It was fun. Let’s say that.

Ryan:
[41:04] It was very blurry, Michael. We had a very blurry Michael. The video you see, thankfully, it records it locally. So you all see good.

Michael:
[41:11] You couldn’t tell, but it was just a mess.

Ryan:
[41:13] We were interacting with like, you know, like the CIA or whatever, or somebody wants their face covered because they’re telling a secret on TV and they blur their face out. That’s how we saw Michael.

Jill:
[41:24] So we were doing a little talk over each other too.

Michael:
[41:27] I saw a moving mosaic painting. It was really cool.

Ryan:
[41:31] Yeah, exactly.

Michael:
[41:33] So I tried to get internet connected as early as possible. And I called them and they said, well, it’s going to be seven to ten days. Like that’s a lot longer than usual because every other time I’ve done it in my entire life It’s been like the next day or maybe two so like okay fine, you know, seven ten days, whatever and I, The install day comes, and unfortunately, they do not show up. It came and went.

Ryan:
[41:59] After seven to ten days.

Jill:
[42:00] Yeah.

Michael:
[42:01] After the tenth day, yeah. And I call them and see what’s going on. And the rep on the phone says, are you from the southeast? I’m like, yeah. Well, there’s a strike happening for our technicians. Oh, okay. Okay. So then I find out that this strike happened the day I scheduled the thing and no one bothered to say like, hey, they’re not going to show up because there’s no one to do it. I just had to wait 10 days and then reschedule another one for whatever. And thankfully, they did come after that. But I’m not even going to talk about the whole strike thing. If you want to go check it out, look it up, feel free.

Ryan:
[42:46] How many days later did it take after the 10 for you?

Michael:
[42:49] Oh, we didn’t get internet until like over a month.

Ryan:
[42:55] So it took 30 days almost to get.

Michael:
[42:57] 31 or 32. Yeah. Right. So it was quite a lot.

Ryan:
[43:02] Did you go to the picket line and throw stuff at the AT&T people for not?

Michael:
[43:07] I think they were just either picketing. i think they were just picketing at um headquarters for at&t which are nowhere near here or they were you didn’t see any of the picketers then no i didn’t see any picketers would you have gone and.

Ryan:
[43:22] Talked to one curiously because michael’s very.

Michael:
[43:24] 100 i would have just walked up.

Ryan:
[43:26] To him and been like hey i need internet bro like can.

Michael:
[43:28] You no no no i’ve been like an interview but i’ve done an interview for the show or something you know so i learned the hard way that life without the internet it is hard well if you’re a geek it’s hard for people who are not geeks and they don’t really care that’s not a big deal but they’re not listening anyways yeah that’s true, we’re gonna lose.

Ryan:
[43:48] The one wilderness survivalist out there that’s listening to the show that hates.

Michael:
[43:52] Computers that’s a good point i don’t want to offend you.

Michael:
[43:58] I don’t want to offend the person who’s not listening whatsoever so i i use my phone’s hotspot and i hit the limit pretty quickly now i technically have unlimited but unlimited is only so unlimited like after a certain amount of gigs then they start limiting you not in your total amount of data but in the speed that you get and they limit hard very hard usually and um so i went into research mode i was looking at all the different types of options okay i can get a home uh cellular internet plan i could get the starlink or i could get like a mobile hotspot device and all these things every single one of these options were terrible for whatever reason usually it was because they were just so expensive like getting a hotspot device in addition to the monthly plan you also have to get a device that they don’t just give you like you you order home internet that give you a modem and you just give it back to them when you’re done and with these you have to buy the hotspot and that’s it and those they go from like a hundred to like five hundred dollars like i don’t want it that much so um i didn’t do any of those i just used the mobile hotspot on my phone but i needed some other thing so i was thinking well okay i’ll just contact one of those MVNOs, the one that have super cheap options, and I’ll get those.

Michael:
[45:28] And I tried a couple. And it turns out most of these kinds of providers have a limit as well, but they are even more strict on it. So it’s typically 10 gigs and that’s it. And then they drastically cut it slower, even worse than the main companies and stuff like that. Yeah. So after digging and trying many different ones, by the way, earlier, I was talking about the fact that I need to get an Android phone. This is why. And I found two providers that I think are great solutions for anyone who needs to do this. Now, I was only doing it temporarily and you might be fine with it if you need to. But this was just my testing was like only for a month and now I have my normal setup. But Visible by Verizon has some really cool options and so does Boost Mobile. So the way that they both work are kind of perfect for what I needed to do. So the Boost Mobile thing is $35 a month and you get 30 gigs of data for your hotspot. But you also only get 30 gigs of data period and it’s shared between your regular usage and your hotspot, which is quite a lot and for having a good amount of speed for a temporary purpose or on a monthly basis if you need an extra set of set connection. You go online.

Michael:
[46:55] Yeah, like a day, sure. But there’s another one that costs $25, and that’s visible. And they give you unlimited data, 100% unlimited. I tested this. It is unlimited. Nice. It’s also super capped at the speed. Like, it’s very slow. But it’s good enough. So you can get 5 megabit per second down. I have no idea what the up is. They wouldn’t say. Well, I just couldn’t find it, I guess. And it was five down, which is good enough for watching Netflix or YouTube and that sort of thing. But more than one thing at a time? No, not really. Or anything that needs a lot of speed?

Michael:
[47:40] Not really. But it is a good option. And I think that I accidentally found this experience to find two options for anyone who needs to have a lot of hotspot data, because I think probably Visible is the best one if you can deal with the speed. And then Boost Mobile is the best one to have the most hotspot available to you without getting like a full blown plan from somewhere. And I think that if I were to having to pick one for what I needed, well, that’s going to be Visible. because they have a 15-day trial period where it is free. And that means I did not pay a single dime to do the solution that I needed to get back to having a real internet for a month.

Ryan:
[48:27] Do what? There goes that sponsorship opportunity. Here’s how you use their service for free.

Michael:
[48:33] No, no, no. It’s only free for two weeks. Two weeks. For the unlimited. limited and they are very very clear about the the uh the the free when it free trial is ending it will end and you will have no option to start like and also the worst part is that if i didn’t have another phone to sign up i wouldn’t have been able to sign up because i didn’t have internet access to use the app in order to sign up oh here’s the thing that’s a little bit of a problem there’s a lot.

Ryan:
[49:01] Of cellular companies now offering home internet and depending on where you are is going to depend on the options that are best for you.

Michael:
[49:08] Yeah, where I specifically look for that and they also did not support.

Ryan:
[49:12] Michael is located in New York, so just use that as a reference. Yeah, exactly. You’re not in New York, Michael. Then why did you have a New York t-shirt on before the show? Oh, you think I didn’t notice and wasn’t going to bring it up that I love New York t-shirt? By the way.

Michael:
[49:29] First of all, first of all, why are you bringing up that I had a different shirt on before the show? What is the point of that?

Ryan:
[49:36] I didn’t get to bring it up because you walked away while you were on screen with an I love New York t-shirt.

Michael:
[49:40] You could have waited until after the show to say something. Why do you got to put it in the show for no reason? So to answer your question, it was given to me free and it’s a decent shirt.

Ryan:
[49:50] This is going back to the plant.

Michael:
[49:52] Everything i.

Ryan:
[49:53] Make fun of was given to you for free why can’t you just say you know what i i love new york man so i wear the t-shirt this is.

Michael:
[49:59] New york i have no idea how good it is i have a i have a theory about it but i have never been to experience it and it also doesn’t even say i heart new york it just says new york city on it that’s it but it had a heart in there no it didn’t i’m pretty sure it said that’s all it said it.

Ryan:
[50:18] Had a 3d uh like embezzled heart.

Michael:
[50:20] No No, that was this weird cartoon effect where I was so thrilled by this shirt that you could see a heartbeat like a cartoon.

Ryan:
[50:28] Bedazzled. You bedazzled it on your own time and then wore that shirt.

Jill:
[50:32] It did almost look like puffy letters or something outlined.

Ryan:
[50:35] Yeah, puffy letter shirt.

Michael:
[50:36] The way it’s designed, it is like, I don’t even know how to describe it. It is excessive.

Ryan:
[50:42] We’ll have a picture of it because you’ll send one to Wendy.

Michael:
[50:45] 100% will not be doing this.

Ryan:
[50:47] Amazing, I love New York t-shirt that Michael’s wearing. Anyways, the point is, Michael, this is an interesting story because you happened to move at a terrible time in which the company you needed to get internet from was on strike and you were able to find a solution. If you think not so long ago, there would have been no solution.

Michael:
[51:07] Without this kind of thing to set up that I had, there would have been nothing. And like, you know, some people can get the Wi-Fi connections that are like, though, what’s it called? not not whisper internet not not that it’s like wisp talking about wisp wisp but like the the ones that are like in field of view kind of thing i forgot what they what the wisp thing means but wireless something wireless internet service provider probably but wisp um those are not are only like certain rural areas and i didn’t move to a rural area i moved to a place that has fiber but just wouldn’t let me have it oh.

Ryan:
[51:48] New york’s overflowing with fiber so totally makes sense.

Michael:
[51:50] You know you know me and my love for new york you know by the way michael.

Ryan:
[51:56] Your story uh where you ostracized our one listener who hates computers liver king just canceled their uh patronage of our show so thanks a lot.

Michael:
[52:05] That’s okay liver’s disgusting Broadcasting.

Ryan:
[52:09] Well, thank you.

Michael:
[52:11] Raw or cooked. Who cares?

Ryan:
[52:13] Thank you for story time, Michael. We appreciate that. I wish, I really wish, though, if we could go back in time, you started the story with Once Upon a Time. Because that would have made it a better story time.

Michael:
[52:22] Hey, Wendy, edit this and then leave in the part where he says, I wish you would have done it.

Michael:
[52:28] So that they know that we went back and did it. Once Upon a Time.

Ryan:
[52:32] All right, moving on to our mobile news. More mobile news. I guess yours is kind of mobile news, too. michael so we got you get a double mobile news feature film here feature podcast double double dicker right there yeah uh you know we discussed the unfortunate drama going on with the linux kernel between rust and the c devs and one of the you know main lead rust developers left the linux kernel team because of drama that they didn’t want to deal with uh kind of going on there between the seed developers and the Rust developers. And we did the whole, can’t you just get a long thing? And it’s a prior episode, go watch it. But I thought this was interesting. After we covered that, I saw an article talking about Google, and how they don’t have drama with the Rust and C development team and how it’s working for them. So according to Google’s internal metrics, since focusing on Rust with Android, which is the Linux kernel behind the scenes, they’ve decreased vulnerabilities for memory vulnerabilities from 223 a year down to just 50. And with their new approach to safe coding, they’ve adopted interoperability between Rust, C, and Kotlin. C++.

Jill:
[53:49] C++.

Michael:
[53:50] Kotlin.

Jill:
[53:50] Yeah.

Ryan:
[53:51] In addition to focusing on memory-safe languages like Rust, they also realized that most of these memory vulnerabilities that they were dealing with happened to be created. They kept kind of reoccurring because of new code. So they also are taking this new proactive approach. They’re calling it their new safe code initiative, where they’re utilizing a whole bunch of different processes and tools to essentially make sure that when they’re releasing new code, they’re not introducing the same vulnerabilities again. Now, this is very, very critical because what has become a very popular way of exploiting devices these days is to actually look backwards into history for old vulnerabilities, even if they were patched, most of them were, and see if they work today. And so they don’t, what happens is these companies fix it and then throughout months.

Michael:
[54:49] Oh, that’s true. They can fix it and then the patch come out and then it still comes back because of new things.

Ryan:
[54:54] It comes back because of the new stuff that’s on top of it. And so this is what’s happening. You can look at some of these old code bugs and things and still be able to utilize those today, months, years later, because of this regression that happens at time to time. So I think it’s really cool what Google is doing here. I think it’s awesome that they have been able to create this interoperability. And I think Linux devs have some things to learn here about kind of creating a more welcoming environment for other languages because Rust is really growing in popularity. And I say that I was looking at Stack Overflow’s recent 2024 report. And Rust is in the top like 12 or 13 of 51 languages. And we’re talking all respondents. It’s in the top professional developers. It’s in the top 13, 14. And this one to me is the most important and where it’s the highest out of the list. It was like in the top 12, I think for this was learning to code. So that means your new developers who are coming out want to use Rust. So I think that you can bring a whole, well, we’ve already talked about this, but just a whole new exciting generation into developing the Linux kernel, which we want Linux to go on forever and ever.

Michael:
[56:12] I think this is really interesting. Now, there are some takes that are also interesting. Linus gave a take. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but about how it’s okay that people are aging and stuff like that in the average age kind of thing. And that’s true. But also, you want to have more. It doesn’t matter what the age. You want to have more coders. And Rust is the new hotness. like it is the most hyped up programming language is so.

Ryan:
[56:39] Hot right now.

Michael:
[56:40] It’s so hot right now yeah yes so many apps.

Jill:
[56:44] On uh flat hub are rust based as we have tested before.

Michael:
[56:48] And the new cosmic desktop is completely rust based exactly yeah and there’s there’s so many things coming out and rust is also a cool language it’s not like it’s a terrible language that people are just adopting and it’s it’s good that they talked about having interoperability between rust c++ and kotlin but this also means that except for is it i mean pretty sure it’s kotlin but um but ryan doesn’t it make you sad though because it means that the original language that android was made with is no longer like the new language the new hotness and aren’t you just so sad about java Oh.

Ryan:
[57:28] Gosh.

Jill:
[57:29] Yeah. I know that Java overlay.

Ryan:
[57:31] I feel like Kirk, you know, when he screams Khan, but I’m screaming Java because I’m learning Java right now.

Jill:
[57:38] Yeah.

Ryan:
[57:40] It’s just so frustrating at times. Like, it’s good. Some things it does is good. It’s good when you get it to work. It’s so miserable and it’s so torturous. But when you get it to work, you feel the award of the torture ending, basically.

Michael:
[57:54] That’s like, you’re just describing like sea and assembly. You’re like, it is, yes, like Java was supposed to be a solution to all these more complicated languages. And it’s slightly easier, but still a mess, a big old hot mess.

Ryan:
[58:13] And I know some Java devs out there are going to be like, I love Java. I make my living off Java. Java is amazing.

Michael:
[58:18] If you are a Java dev and you are listening to this show, please let us know in the comments or on the forums. Let us know what you like about Java. If you are making a living off of it, like professionally with Java, let us know how much you enjoy the money versus how much you hate Java. Let me know about that too.

Ryan:
[58:37] That’s a great idea. Oh, my goodness.

Ryan:
[58:40] Well, speaking of the latest hotness, I hear Hades is pretty hot, Jill.

Jill:
[58:46] It sure is, Ryan. While not a new game, this is a very popular game that has over 247,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews. And yes, the game is called Hades.

Michael:
[59:01] That’s all? That’s it?

Jill:
[59:02] Yeah, that’s it.

Ryan:
[59:03] 247,000.

Jill:
[59:04] The game is called hades and it was released back in in 2020 but ryan just just uh got a hold of it on a steam deck it’s.

Michael:
[59:15] Only been four they’ve had four.

Jill:
[59:17] Years and.

Michael:
[59:18] Only got 247 i.

Jill:
[59:20] Know i was really surprised too because it’s it’s a huge game i mean i’ve watched game streams of it and and played a little bit of insane amounts of.

Ryan:
[59:28] Overwhelmingly positive reviews it’s funny because most of the.

Jill:
[59:31] Games we do.

Ryan:
[59:31] It’s like this one’s got three overwhelmingly positive.

Jill:
[59:34] People are really loving this this.

Michael:
[59:36] Nine positive reviews video game.

Jill:
[59:39] We’re talking about yeah so hates describes itself on steam like this, Defy the god of the dead as you hack and slash out of the underworld in this roguelike dungeon crawler from the creators of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. And I love Transistor. I really enjoy that game. That’s a different style of game, but it’s wonderful.

Michael:
[1:00:03] I’ve never played Transistor or Pyre. Never even heard of those. But Bastion? Yeah. Okay, this is going to be a good game. That makes sense why there’s so many positives.

Jill:
[1:00:13] Yeah. And Hades is actually certified to work on the Steam Deck and is a great game for the portable gaming system. It runs beautifully on it and it’s easy to pick up and put down if you have limited time to play.

Ryan:
[1:00:31] Which is me.

Jill:
[1:00:32] Yeah. Just like Ryan. And I thought this was a nice description. It’s a picture across between Diablo, Gauntlet, and Hordes of Enemies, but with lots of upgrades and, of course, lots of loot.

Ryan:
[1:00:50] Loot. You got to have the loot, man. You draw me in with the loot. Yes.

Jill:
[1:00:55] And Hades actually has really beautiful graphics, fast-paced action, a great story, and a very thematic Greek mythological underworld and is the best example of a godlike, roguelike dungeon crawler. it’s got it’s got couple a couple niche uh gaming terms in there absolutely yeah but they’re they’re awesome and they it works together so beautiful and the art style.

Michael:
[1:01:22] Is very cool.

Jill:
[1:01:23] Yeah it’s very well done it’s it’s very you know anime style yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s definitely uh, And it’s easy, the colors are vibrant, and it’s actually, for me with low vision, it’s really easy to see the characters.

Michael:
[1:01:43] Anime-style Diablo is a cool concept. I like this.

Jill:
[1:01:47] Yeah, yeah. And Hades is actually well worth the price of $24.99 on Steam. That’s pretty good for a game that’s almost like AAA rated.

Ryan:
[1:01:58] Yeah, four years later, still $24. four years later.

Jill:
[1:02:01] And it did so well that there is now a sequel Hades 2 that came out in May of this year so Ryan will have something to go to after he’s done with.

Ryan:
[1:02:11] Hades yeah I listen you know with my schedule lately I only have very limited time to play games but I still want to play games and Hades is a perfect example of a game that I can pick up I can play in short bursts it’s very easy to learn the controls of and so you don’t have this huge learning curve and upgrading your Your character, as you go through the various dungeon crawls, is very simply done. I’m not sitting there with a spreadsheet figuring out mathematical equations of what build to use. It’s just like, hey, do you want this boost or this boost or this boost?

Ryan:
[1:02:45] It’s just very simple, and it’s fun, and you feel like you’re making progress with your character as you go. I’ve died a lot in this game. When I first started playing, I didn’t die right away. I thought, oh, it’s going to be like Diablo, where I can play all the way through Diablo and not die at all. sometimes there’s certain modes and stuff for that but in haiti like super easy mode is that what is that with my skill level in haiti’s maybe uh the younger ones out there can play it without dying but there is a mode i think for that uh but i die frequently in the game but it doesn’t really punish you all that much when you’re dying you go back into the world and you got to see your father again and you know they’ll make little comments about you being a failure and then you go back out there and fight in your dungeons and you know it’s just it’s a lot of fun you can pick it up quick uh i really enjoy it and you get to learn a lot about greek mythology because you know they have all of these different they have all of your standard ones your zeus athena upside and all that stuff but there’s a lot of gods and things i hadn’t heard about uh before that are pretty neat as well so check it out it’s very i think.

Jill:
[1:03:46] It’s a great picking uh it’s a great single player game uh i i kept getting confused with this one playing with friends and another one i played made by the same uh developer but it wasn’t hades.

Ryan:
[1:03:58] Gotcha so.

Michael:
[1:04:00] Yeah i always like it i think it’s cool when when games or any kind of not like a medium takes the like you know some kind of mythology and adds it to a game to kind of play with it i always have fun with those and uh also it reminds me of the wonderful Egyptian mythology. tv show that was very uh very loved and that is stargate.

Jill:
[1:04:25] Stargate is awesome it’s classic stargate i’m just like love.

Michael:
[1:04:32] Like i love stargate because it was very clever it was written well.

Jill:
[1:04:38] And it was super cheesy.

Michael:
[1:04:39] It’s so good.

Ryan:
[1:04:40] The cheesy part i agree with.

Jill:
[1:04:42] You know you know when i was working for the company that that runs most of the star trek conventions here in the united states i I also did Stargate conventions as well.

Michael:
[1:04:51] Of course you did, Joe.

Ryan:
[1:04:52] Who has the better hands?

Jill:
[1:04:55] Star Trek.

Ryan:
[1:04:56] Oh, yes. I didn’t even think you would answer that one.

Michael:
[1:04:59] Jill is biased here.

Jill:
[1:05:01] Yeah, but honestly, they’re the same. It’s the same group of people. It’s the same people.

Michael:
[1:05:06] Yeah. It’s the same people.

Jill:
[1:05:07] They’re just nerds who love sci-fi. I mean, you know.

Ryan:
[1:05:11] It’s all nerds. That’s like saying chai tea. Nerds that love sci-fi. Just nerds or sci-fi. Same thing.

Jill:
[1:05:20] Oh, in fact, they even, one of the very first Stargate conventions, they even had it in conjunction with a Star Trek convention. And you pay for one and you could get into both. Perfect.

Ryan:
[1:05:35] I like the idea of having a Stargate conference and a Star Trek conference in the same place. But then I want to battle the Stargate people. Like, I want to have war with them.

Jill:
[1:05:46] Like that well they just open a portal and.

Michael:
[1:05:48] Leave and you’re stuck yeah that’s fine but.

Jill:
[1:05:51] Then you can the transporter and you know go to the other side and then but the but the stargate when you walk through the stargate it doesn’t kill you it just moves you across.

Michael:
[1:06:00] The thing whereas.

Jill:
[1:06:01] Transporters kill you and just kill you i mean.

Michael:
[1:06:06] It’s not supposed.

Jill:
[1:06:07] To but the transporters literally just kill you and then re recreate you again this is true this is true i’m 100 positive Positive.

Ryan:
[1:06:15] If there was an all-out brawl between Star Trek fans and Stargate fans, the Star Trek fans would win.

Michael:
[1:06:21] Based on what hands down star trek fans are.

Ryan:
[1:06:24] Are more athletic they they.

Michael:
[1:06:26] Train regularly in fighting what are.

Ryan:
[1:06:31] You why are you laughing michael.

Michael:
[1:06:34] That entire entire stargate fanboy what are you talking about what basically it’d be a fight against each other i mean ourselves we just like look in the mirror and start going oh yeah it’s all the same way more buff Buff.

Ryan:
[1:06:49] Way more buff than Star Trek.

Jill:
[1:06:51] Speaking of Star Trek and being on the USS Enterprise in space, our software spotlight is about astronomy.

Ryan:
[1:07:00] Nice.

Jill:
[1:07:01] Nice. Whoever writes these shows.

Ryan:
[1:07:03] Genius.

Jill:
[1:07:04] Yes.

Michael:
[1:07:06] Jill just did that off of the cuff. What are you talking about?

Jill:
[1:07:08] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:07:09] Well, the fact the whole show flows so perfectly, it’s like.

Jill:
[1:07:14] Yes.

Michael:
[1:07:15] That was purely accidental because I brought up Stargate.

Jill:
[1:07:19] I don’t know what you’re talking about. So the astronomy app we’re going to talk about is called Ciril, S-I-R-I-L. This app is an image processing tool for reducing noise and improving signal to noise ratio in your photos. The main use case for photos taken off this planet and faced towards the stars, whether it be the moon or Mars or Jupiter or a beautiful asteroid that might be hitting Earth.

Ryan:
[1:07:53] Jeez, Jill.

Jill:
[1:07:54] It wouldn’t be beautiful then, would it?

Michael:
[1:07:56] That escalated quickly.

Jill:
[1:07:58] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:08:01] Beautiful vision, then all of a sudden I’m dying. Like what?

Jill:
[1:08:06] Let’s make it more simpler, like the Leonids that we can look up and see every year, which are beautiful. So Serol supports multiple image formats and even movies and SCR files. It can also automatically align, stack, and enhance your images and… Cyril is available as a handy flat pack or app image. And it’s really a nice piece of software. So if you need a piece of software to clean up those images that you’re shooting through your telescope, this would work great. And right now I was trying to think of there’s different types of telescopes and my husband could give you a whole class on that. Because we have several telescopes here.

Ryan:
[1:08:54] We’re going to have Steve come on the show and give us a whole class on how amazing he would love that.

Jill:
[1:09:01] He would love that.

Ryan:
[1:09:02] Listen, write into the show and let us know if you want to hear a segment from Jill’s husband. We’ll have it recorded and we’ll play it in a future episode. But you have to let us know you want it. You have to let us know you want it.

Michael:
[1:09:14] You have to let us know you want it cereal-lessly.

Ryan:
[1:09:17] Cereal-lessly.

Jill:
[1:09:19] That was good, Michael.

Ryan:
[1:09:21] All right. so Michael gave you a tip of the week for how he went over internet so we’re not we don’t have time for the tip of the week we gotta we gotta end the show we’re over we’re over again by a lot we can’t stop you just you have to wait till next week you don’t get a story with Michael but you’ll get another tip of the week the tip

Ryan:
[1:09:37] of the week was supposed to be this week anyways a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening however you do it we love your faces join us on discord go to tuxdigital.com/discord cord and go hang out with every member of the show that loves this show too and you can talk about star trek and you talk about stargate too or you can ask michael about his plants and how to take care of your plants you can’t even.

Michael:
[1:10:02] See the plants in the background now.

Ryan:
[1:10:03] Sad.

Michael:
[1:10:06] It’s called exactly exactly but if you want to do that you can go to tuxdigital.com/discord and you can join us and talk about whatever you want but you can also go to tuxdigital.com/membership become a patron and you’ll get patron access to a special discord channel that only patrons can access and you’ll be able to talk to all of us and everyone else in the the server and as well as getting extra access because we get notified about the patron only section anytime you say something versus uh the other ones occasionally you know it’s it’s it’s you get you you can pay us to show that you appreciate the content and we will show you we appreciate you paying us pay us and then support jill there you go and also to save her penguins because as you know that if you don’t become a patron we actually haven’t got a new patron in the past two weeks and without getting a new patron we’re gonna we’re gonna take one of those penguin penguins in the back and we’re going to sacrifice it okay maybe maybe maybe that’s a little too harsh we’re gonna move it out of the room yeah.

Ryan:
[1:11:17] Imagine jill being in that room with no penguins you’ve done that you’ve.

Michael:
[1:11:22] Done that don’t let that happen you’re.

Ryan:
[1:11:24] A bad person if you let that happen a bad person for.

Michael:
[1:11:28] Everybody who’s already a patron uh thank you very much you’ve saved them for now but in the future we’ll see what happens so go to tuxdigital.com/membership wow or you can go to tuxdigital.com/store and get some sick merch we got t-shirts and hats and mugs and hoodies and all sorts of stuff we got more coming not ryan’s batman figure that’s not there. I don’t know why he does this every single time. tuxdigital.com/store

Jill:
[1:11:56] And make sure to check out all the amazing shows here on TuxDigital. 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. Also, make sure to check out Michael’s This Week in Linux for your source for Linux gnoos. Twill is now live on YouTube Fridays at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. No, I’m busy, right?

Ryan:
[1:12:20] I’m really busy.

Michael:
[1:12:21] For the past two weeks, I have been live, and it has been an interesting experience.

Ryan:
[1:12:28] Going live always is.

Michael:
[1:12:29] Feel free to join. Yeah, exactly. So, it’s always Fridays, except for last week. It was Friday and Saturday, because Friday, I lost all of the content. Everything was destroyed.

Ryan:
[1:12:42] Isn’t that awful?

Michael:
[1:12:42] Even my four backup local copies, all gone.

Jill:
[1:12:47] Oh, no.

Michael:
[1:12:48] But I fixed it. So join me next week or this week. Yeah, this. Yes, this week.

Ryan:
[1:12:54] This week.

Jill:
[1:12:56] Everybody have a wonderful week. And remember that the journey itself is just as important as the destination.

Ryan:
[1:13:04] Thanks, everyone.

Michael:
[1:13:05] See you next week.

Ryan:
[1:13:07] That’s the penguin we’re going to sacrifice.

Michael:
[1:13:09] That’s the one. Yeah, exactly. Look at the cute little eyes.

Ryan:
[1:13:11] Looks delicious.

Jill:
[1:13:12] This is a Genshin, a plushy version of a Genshin Impact Penguin. One of my favorite games. Genshin Impact, and it’s mechanical. It’s a robot.

Ryan:
[1:13:22] It’s really cool.

Michael:
[1:13:23] Apparently delicious, too.

Ryan:
[1:13:27] You ever had penguin soup? Delicious. See you, everyone.