Jill:
[0:00] Welcome to Destination Linux, your scrappy Firefly-class ship soaring through the verse of open-source tech. I’m your captain this week, Jill, a Linux enthusiast and open-source historian, steering the crew with expertise in every Linux subject to keep our ship shiny and free. Out here in the black, we’re fighting the good fight for open-source freedom.

Jill:
[0:28] Ryan, our resident hardware security geek, is our Zoe-like ship mechanic, tough as nails, locking down systems, and hacking through any alliance-level threats with precision. Michael, our software geek and slick marketer, is our wash, master of code navigation and always ready to pull a crazy software stunt or marketing gambit that leaves us all gobsmacked. This week, we’re diving into VirtualBox, pulling a hero’s run to save the day like a daring reaver, chase escape We’ll unpack Ubuntu’s pseudo-upgrade with Rust, smooth as a smuggler’s cargo run and built to last Plus, Michael’s cooking up something wild, could be a software hack or a marketing caper And we aiming to find out So buckle up, sync your repos, and keep flying with us. In the verse of open source, the codes are freedom, and proprietary alliances can’t clip our wings. This is Destination Linux.

Michael:
[1:40] Nice.

Michael:
[1:48] This week, our feedback comes from Cecil, who says, on episode 418, that joke about the Siberian word for root is dapaluka, and dapaluka means higher than the kernel level. Is the best laugh that I’ve had while listening to this show nice one. That was pretty good. I don’t remember when I looked it up, and I don’t remember what language had an actual translation for it, but I found another one just based on this, you know, prepping for the show. And it turns out that, uh, in Indonesian Doppeluka means can get hurt. And it’s true because if you use root incorrectly, you can get hurt.

Ryan:
[2:28] So to give everybody who hasn’t listened to that episode yet, some history here, I made up a word literally just blad out.

Michael:
[2:39] Yeah. He just, he just like let it fall out of his mouth. Yeah.

Ryan:
[2:43] Like, and turns out that word actually meant something in another language, and it actually fit the topic we were talking about, which was root access. And it just shows the genius of of my brain, Michael, like unparalleled genius. Like even when I try to be stupid.

Michael:
[3:03] It’s genius, you know? You’re accidentally running into a good thing while trying to be stupid, which I’m not trying. That’s fine.

Ryan:
[3:14] It just comes natural. It’s amazing. It just naturally comes out like that. We also have David that writes us and says, oh, lazy Michael.

Michael:
[3:24] What?

Ryan:
[3:24] I like David already. David gets me and gets the show.

Michael:
[3:28] I don’t so far.

Ryan:
[3:30] You should try Graphene OS on a Pixel. No more Android privacy nightmares. Oh, just don’t look into the iOS privacy nightmares with their on-device AI.

Michael:
[3:43] There’s a lot to talk about this comment.

Ryan:
[3:46] That’s a lot to unpack there.

Michael:
[3:49] First of all, I don’t know if putting Graphene makes it have no more privacy issues. I mean, it’s still Android. Maybe it’s a little better. Sure. But that’s I’ll let Ryan talk about that because I’ve only played with graphing a little bit. But the iOS privacy nightmares thing doesn’t really make any sense to me because, first of all, it is on device, meaning it doesn’t send it anywhere. And who cares if it’s on my access? Right. But also you can choose. It’s by default. It’s on device only. You have to choose to send it off. But you also have to choose to even have it working on your phone. which i do not so the apple intelligence stuff doesn’t even function on my phone so i don’t care if they have privacy issues with that particular feature that i don’t use.

Ryan:
[4:34] Yeah so that’s an interesting point michael or thought so let’s let’s break this down a little bit they started with uh would they start with the apple they.

Michael:
[4:47] Started with the graphene os.

Ryan:
[4:48] Thing okay so let’s talk about graphene os so graphene os by default definitely more private not saying security here because there is a big difference i’m not saying it’s not secure just saying we’re focused on the word private that they used here privacy right so if you’re looking at privacy definitely more private than stock android that’s not hard to do uh in anything because stock android is terrible for privacy probably one of the worst privacy invasive operating systems that’s ever existed, And yes, that’s comparing it to even Windows. I would rather use Windows than stock Android from a privacy standpoint. So when you look at Graphene OS, the way that it keeps itself so private is that it does not connect to Google services properly. by default however you.

Michael:
[5:39] Can choose to activate that.

Ryan:
[5:40] There is when you start to activate the google play services there’s a big pop-up warning that you have to read that says hey we do our best to try to keep your stuff private but you’re connecting to google services and there’s going to be data collected here doesn’t say that exactly but if you read it that’s really what the theme of that thing is so i highly recommend if you’re going to use android, definitely graphene os or something like that eos are much better options but do not kid yourself into thinking that just because you have that you’re automatically private because now you’ve got other potential issues to worry about in fact all over the news this week they’re talking about an android hack that’s really righteous as beau would say that has to do with sideloading apps which a lot of people who utilize these alternative OSs go to these app stores and they’re like, well, it’s not Google Play Store, so I trust it more. But some of those apps in there are absolutely malware viruses and things that you have to check. So the point is, there’s nothing truly fully private.

Ryan:
[6:47] That doesn’t mean you don’t do anything, but you also don’t just assume because you’re on Graphene OS that you’re safe. Second, with the Apple piece, Apple does do a lot of processing on the phone itself. Now, there’s the skepticism of that saying, do you really trust that Apple’s keeping all that data? And there is some data that they’re attaching even to the stuff that’s processing on your phone to you personally that they’re using to enhance their AI. The reason why I don’t feel that Apple is particularly egregious in privacy invasion is because of how bad their AI is. If, in fact, they were stealing our data en masse, Siri would not be the pile of garbage that it is today, which is the absolute worst assistant out of every assistant that’s out there on phones. So that gives me some faith that they’re truly not stealing all of your data. Secondly, they do make it very clear. And I would say Apple has done from the big companies a much better job of being transparent of what they send and when. And they give you the option, as Michael said, of if you want to process it outside of your phone, it’s going to chat GPT.

Ryan:
[8:01] And they do make it clear that ChatGPT has different privacy policies. Although they state they have a deal with ChatGPT that they don’t store them, we know that companies like OpenAI don’t always follow the rules. So I think all in all, David makes some interesting points here. But don’t throw rocks in a glass house, I think is the whole statement.

Michael:
[8:21] A good point. Don’t throw rocks in a glass house, especially when that glass is even more brittle than you would imagine.

Ryan:
[8:29] The sad thing is we really don’t have a fantastic solution uh in the android world even though graphene os and eos are amazing you know you don’t there’s special focused people who are in this industry or in cyber security who know of their existence and know how to utilize them but it’s very difficult your average user is not going to go through that your average user is not going to use it, your average user is not even going to know it exists. And so it’s a very small niche group of people who utilize these alternative OSs.

Ryan:
[9:03] And until we get privacy for people to realize how important it is and what you’re giving up without it, it’s going to be hard to get people to put pressure on these companies to really change the way they act. Something terrible has to happen with people’s privacy before they wake up. Unfortunately, those terrible things are actually already happening like people don’t know when you buy a brand new car and you’re paying you know sixty thousand dollars for a car like six years ago that we’d pay thirty thousand dollars for that those cars have deals with insurance companies a lot of big manufacturers now and now you remember insurance would say hey if you put this device in your car we’ll lower your insurance and you had the option of putting in your car well now now they put it in by default and so they had deals with insurance companies you buy this brand new car when you’re signing your paperwork you may not notice there’s a page in there that says there’s a little box that’s going to be sending all your data of how you drive to insurance companies and your insurance rates are going up because of this type of stuff but people don’t care enough and until they do until it really hits their pocketbooks we’re going to keep seeing this type of crap.

Michael:
[10:07] So the more and more i hear about these kinds of things this more and more sad i become.

Ryan:
[10:12] Yes, it is very sad. So, David, I really appreciate you writing this and bringing this in.

Michael:
[10:16] Yes, so if you want to make us sad, go to destinationlinics.net slash comments and send us some feedback.

Ryan:
[10:22] If you want to make us sad. There you go.

Michael:
[10:25] Or go to destinationlinics.net slash forum and you can make us sad on the forum. So, there you go. Or make us happy. If you have some good news, actually, please send us some good news.

Ryan:
[10:35] Yeah.

Michael:
[10:36] We have plenty of bad news to see. Send us some good news you found.

Ryan:
[10:40] That’s the challenge to the audience this week. You have to send us something happy. Think Jill.

Jill:
[10:45] Yeah.

Ryan:
[10:45] What would Jill send in an email?

Michael:
[10:47] Exactly.

Ryan:
[10:47] Something like that. It would just be giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle. Love you guys, giggle. And Jill.

Michael:
[10:54] Yes.

Ryan:
[10:54] Something like that. You know, there is hope though, Michael, because there’s companies out there like Sandfly who protect us.

Michael:
[11:02] Exactly.

Ryan:
[11:02] Protect our data. As Linux users, we know that security is non-negotiable. negotiable. But with threats getting smarter, your security tools need to keep pace without dragging your system down. Traditional agents, they slow you down, leave blind spots, and it’s time for a smarter approach. That’s why Destination Linux is proud to be sponsored by Sandfly Security, a revolutionary agentless platform designed for Linux. It’d be nice to have Sandfly on mobile too.

Michael:
[11:30] Yeah, that’d be cool.

Ryan:
[11:31] Because it really, that agentless idea is really a smart way to look at a phone device as well, because it could look for any anomalies happening within the device that would say, Hey, that app you’ve got, there’s something wrong with it because it’s acting differently. Send that over to Sandfly. Anyways, go to destinationlinux.net slash Sandfly and see how Sandfly can transform your security strategy. Sandfly doesn’t detect and respond or just detect and respond. It revolutionizes security with SSH key tracking, password auditing, drift detection, covering threats from every angle. Whether your systems are in the cloud, on-premise, embedded devices, Sandfly ensures they’re all secure without the headache of an agent-based solution. Listen to what Salinda Lakongi from Tate Communications has to say. Sandfly addresses a serious security gap in the industry. Intrusion detection on Linux platforms. The best part of Sandfly is its agentless nature, making it versatile application for any Linux environment. Experience security that’s not just effective, but gives you peace of mind. No agents, no downtime, just cutting edge protection.

Michael:
[12:37] That’s right. Right. And also by being a listener and part of the community for the Destination Linux podcast, you can get a discount. But on the home edition, you’ll get 50% off by using the coupon code Destination50. So if you want to get the home edition for Sandfly Security and get a discount, well, you get it by being a part of this community, Destination50 at checkout. And of course, you can just dive into the future of Linux security right now

Michael:
[13:02] at DestinationLinux.net slash Sandfly. That’s DestinationLinux.net slash S-A-N-D-F-L-Y.

Ryan:
[13:08] You know, Michael, when we went to the SandFly booth at Red Hat Summit and we introduced ourselves, the first thing, because it wasn’t with the typical folks we deal with at SandFly, they sent other employees down there for the booth, and we introduced ourselves. They go, oh my gosh, you guys are the ones that have all those people who are downloading our home edition. You remember that?

Michael:
[13:27] Yes, exactly.

Ryan:
[13:27] And so thank you to all of you who’ve gone there and checked out SandFly. And we also have some videos that show some of the cool things that it does.

Michael:
[13:35] Oh, yeah.

Ryan:
[13:35] Absolutely.

Michael:
[13:36] Check out Ryan’s video from Red Hat Summit. We had a whole section just about Sandfly and all the cool stuff you can do with it. So check that out.

Michael:
[13:43] We’ll have that link to the show notes.

Ryan:
[13:44] All right, Jill, take us into Ubuntu sudo, but with a twist.

Jill:
[13:49] The sudo command is a common Linux shell command that lets you run apps, tools, and utilities with root or super user security privileges. Sudo means super user do on Linux and is probably the most famous of Linux commands. What Linux user hasn’t heard of sudo? Well, we have a lot of new people in our audience who may not know that term. And there’s even, maybe we have a few advanced users who have never used it before.

Ryan:
[14:25] You just play it in a GUI?

Michael:
[14:26] I don’t know.

Ryan:
[14:27] It’s possible, Michael.

Michael:
[14:28] I don’t think so.

Ryan:
[14:29] It’s theoretically possible.

Michael:
[14:31] But she said advanced users.

Ryan:
[14:33] Yeah, you may be advanced and just use a GUI.

Jill:
[14:36] You’re just a GUI.

Ryan:
[14:37] You’re a GUI kitty.

Michael:
[14:38] I guess it’s possible.

Ryan:
[14:42] What’s neat about Linux these days that blows our minds is the fact that you can actually just stay in the GUI the entire time and accomplish everything.

Michael:
[14:52] That’s true. I was just wondering the definition of advanced in that sense. But yeah, I guess you could be a very high-end, tech-savvy person and you still just use the GUIs. I mean, you totally can’t these days, for sure.

Jill:
[15:06] Yeah. So, well, there is actually big news regarding sudo for Ubuntu users. And with Ubuntu 25.10 questing Quokka, which is coming out in October, actually will be using a Rust-based alternative sudo-rs for privileged escalation instead of the traditional sudo, which is written in C.

Michael:
[15:36] First of all, I hope you do not have to type out sudo rs or dash rs. It’s just sudo still.

Jill:
[15:42] Yeah.

Michael:
[15:42] But I haven’t looked into this to see if that’s actually how it’s going to be.

Ryan:
[15:46] I guess you could just do an alias.

Jill:
[15:49] I imagine too.

Michael:
[15:49] I imagine it’ll still be just sudo though because they’re probably going to have to replace it anyway.

Jill:
[15:54] Yeah. So Pseudo-RS is a memory-safe version of Pseudo and Su, which aims to improve security and eliminate memory safety vulnerabilities. Some of the benefits of Pseudo-RS include a more modern code-based, improved error handling, focus on long-term maintenance, and better security because of the use of Rust, which is a memory-safe language. It’s one of the reasons why so many of the functions in the Linux kernel are going to be coming to us with Rust.

Ryan:
[16:31] Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s been a little bit of a battle between the C and the Rust people that we’ve been covering within the kernel itself.

Michael:
[16:41] There’s been some drama.

Ryan:
[16:42] A little bit of drama, which I think is natural, right? I mean, you’ve got some incredible coders of C, which is just a very, very impressive language and things you can do with it. And then you’ve got this kind of new wave of Rust people coming in. And you’ve got to try to figure out which parts are we going to replace with Rust and keep and see and not break stuff at the same time. I mean, Rust… is really good because of the, you know, not having the memory related errors and things like null pointer crashes or buffer overflows. And in fact, this week there is a, you know, a bunch of news articles about a kind of overflow situation, allowing a memory overflow in Linux issue, allowing for people to get hashed passwords. And so because of these types of things, Rust is a really impressive language to use because it has very strict rules about data protection and who owns data and who can see data and, error handling and those type of things making it very reliable. C is very good too. It’s not like it’s a bad language. It’s just Rust is kind of, I think Rust fits a lot of what we want in Linux.

Michael:
[17:50] Rust is more modern in the sense of the reason why it’s memory-saving comparison to C is because C was made many, many decades ago. And when a new language when languages come out they can work on top of what existed and be able to learn from it and that sort of stuff. And that’s why Rust is better in that sense of the memory safety aspects. But just real quick, Ryan talked about the whole hash password memory core dump sort of thing. That is very difficult to do. I feel like we can’t just kind of like glaze over that part.

Ryan:
[18:22] That’s a fair point.

Michael:
[18:23] It’s a thing that’s happening and you’re going to see a lot of people make articles about it because when something happens on Linux, they’re always super excited to talk about the security issue in linux even though it is the barrier to use that thing is so high it is almost guaranteed no one’s going to have ability to do that it’s.

Ryan:
[18:43] Already been patched too.

Michael:
[18:44] Yeah and it’s been patched and all that sort of stuff so you will see people talking about it and overreacting and that sort of stuff but well whereas in comparison of windows it’s literally every day and you know it’s just you know it’s just a normal thing i talk about it you In fact.

Ryan:
[18:59] There are some really righteous hacks out there happening today on Windows and macOS that are very similar of stealing hashed information, so encrypted information. So I think what you’re seeing too is a lot of… governments are attacking each other and what happens is you can only use these tools once before they’re out in the open and so you’re seeing very sophisticated tools likely because of ai and governments not getting along in their five by five sandbox with one shovel and this is causing when they use these attacks against each other that hack is now out there in the wild and then eventually it makes its way into you know hacker into you know groups and other things that utilize these tools. So you see these sophisticated hacks, and then they get patched once they’re out there. I think the sad thing is a lot of these governments know there are some vulnerabilities in Windows, Mac OS, Android, whatever it is, and they don’t report them so they can keep their little hidden attack kit open.

Michael:
[19:58] I would be incredibly shocked if that wasn’t the case.

Ryan:
[20:02] Oh yeah, we know it’s the case. It’s actually several of these type of zero-day hacks that governments have used have been things where there was known vulnerabilities that they kept from software companies that they were supposedly partnered with that they knew existed but didn’t tell them and it kind of sucks because i mean they’re partnered to get.

Michael:
[20:21] The information exactly yeah.

Jill:
[20:22] But anyway let’s.

Michael:
[20:24] Talk about rust oh yeah.

Jill:
[20:25] Yeah sorry jill uh rust and pseudo happy.

Ryan:
[20:28] News happy news.

Michael:
[20:29] Happy news is it though because of the drama what about.

Jill:
[20:33] All the rust rustification.

Michael:
[20:34] Of the platform and everybody’s so mad about that and and then they’re now pseudo is being replaced with rust when is it gonna end people.

Jill:
[20:44] Yeah you’re right good point michael well ubuntu i feel like i was channeling some yeah drama there definitely well ubuntu is kind of the first distro to really you know take it on and include this and uh pseudo dash rs is is it’s not expected to bring over all the features of sudo as the developers are really kind of taking a less is more approach but don’t worry classic sudo will be around for the foreseeable future but sudo-rs will be the default so i think all you will have to do is type sudo but i’m not sure because then what would they call the original sudo the classic you.

Ryan:
[21:28] Have to type classic sudo.

Jill:
[21:30] Thanks.

Ryan:
[21:32] Something like that.

Michael:
[21:33] Pseudo classic, yeah.

Jill:
[21:34] Yeah.

Michael:
[21:34] I mean, so it’ll still be around, but I don’t think it’s going to be like… installed i feel like they’re going to have it in their repos you can switch to it if you want to but uh yeah i would imagine that they wouldn’t change because of all the things to change the mechanism to do something that is so fundamental to this basically using the command line is you mean.

Ryan:
[21:58] Changing the command line itself to something different.

Michael:
[22:01] Yeah like Yeah.

Ryan:
[22:03] It should be pseudo-vintage to launch the vintage version. And then pseudo-new.

Michael:
[22:09] Pseudo-vintage, pseudo-legacy. I like that, too. Both of those would be good. I like that. Pseudo-classic, that’s not enough. We need to give more prestige to the C-sudo.

Jill:
[22:19] Yeah. Well, you know, it’s kind of like, there was definitely a learning curve when we moved over to apt instead of saying apt-get-install. It was apt-install. I still do apt-get and still like a habit. Me too, because I just forget sometimes.

Ryan:
[22:37] Yeah.

Michael:
[22:38] Well, here’s the thing. This is a great point, because if they do change the command and the structure, that would be such a problematic thing because of the whole apt issue that you are talking about.

Jill:
[22:48] Yeah.

Michael:
[22:48] That happened in 2014.

Jill:
[22:51] Yeah.

Michael:
[22:51] That’s when they switched over from apt-get to apt.

Jill:
[22:54] That’s so true, Michael.

Ryan:
[22:55] I was 12 in 2014. That’s crazy to think about. Wow.

Michael:
[22:59] Sure, buddy.

Jill:
[23:00] Sure. Oh, wow. Well, Michael and Ryan, here’s a question. I think it’s going to be interesting to see if Fedora, Debian, or OpenSUSE switch to sudo-rs soon for better security.

Michael:
[23:16] Who makes sudo-rs?

Ryan:
[23:19] Who makes sudo-rs? Let’s ask our AI chat.

Jill:
[23:22] Yeah.

Michael:
[23:23] Yes, AI chat, as in the live chat. They were on Twitch and YouTube. Do you all know who makes sudo-rs? that would be very helpful.

Jill:
[23:31] Yeah also the Patreon room for sure because I know you can install it now.

Ryan:
[23:39] Uh pseudo old nope nope nobody’s come on pseudo ai chat get better like siri over here where’s our answer geez no.

Michael:
[23:49] Pressure or anything ask we’re asking we’re asking you on the spot with zero.

Ryan:
[23:53] Warning our patrons are worse than siri this is unbelievable nothing’s worse than siri nothing’s worse um so uh whether they will fedora debbie and open susa will they switch I think time will tell if there’s some known, like, I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything about this until now. Is there any known issues, bugs? Are they doing it too early? Are all the commands covered? All of these things, if those are in check, I think Fedora probably would. Debian, no. Not for another 25 years. And OpenSUSE, yes. Yeah. Pretty likely.

Jill:
[24:37] Well, I did find the GitHub, and it’s put out by Trifecta Tech Foundation.

Ryan:
[24:43] That sounds like a hacking organization.

Michael:
[24:46] It kind of does.

Jill:
[24:47] And they show you how to install it in Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora. DNF installs, sudo-rs, and Arch, Pac-Man.

Ryan:
[24:58] Yeah.

Jill:
[24:59] Yeah, Pac-S.

Ryan:
[25:00] I don’t have any skin in this game. Like whatever you all experts decide to switch over to, I’m good with.

Michael:
[25:09] So first of all, I think that we can’t really find the answer because it’s not quickly accessible. But we do know that if these distributions are going to be switching to it, it’s going to be probably because that they are, you know, functionally working well. Maybe in the sense of Ubuntu, they might be testing it. If they release it with the next LTS, that will be a very strong sign that they’re committed to it. but if it’s just this one testing period because that’s what sometimes what ubuntu does is they’ll do they’ll do something because if you don’t know the interim releases only have nine months of support so they really use it like a lot of the times they’re using it for testing to see if it’s uh if they try something and if it works out really well they’ll they’ll keep it going and if it doesn’t work they’ll chop it off right before they do the lts i can’t think of.

Ryan:
[25:57] Tyler in our patron room makes a good point like i can’t think of a time where ubuntu really did some like cutting edge testing thing. That’s usually like Fedora that does that, not Ubuntu. So they obviously feel like it’s very stable. I mean, because Ubuntu is known for… you know, being a little bit more conservative.

Michael:
[26:15] I mean, they have tested things before in the sense of like they did Wayland Gnome back in 2017 for a one release to test to see if it was good. And then they dropped it right before the LTS. So it’s quite possible that they are doing this as a test. We don’t know for sure because there’s not enough information about that. But I do think it’s interesting. And also for those who are new to Linux and you’re just learning about what sudo is, i did make a video about the five uh five commands that every linux user should know and in that video sudo is in there so that might be something to check out you.

Ryan:
[26:52] Can’t know until you watch his video and.

Michael:
[26:54] You can’t know what the other ones are understand what he’s talking about.

Ryan:
[26:57] Unless you hit the thumbs up and if you want to hold on to the information for more than 30 days you have to become a patron.

Michael:
[27:03] That’s how it works all of that do that all you can do is tuxedo.com slash membership and you become a patron and that way you can like keep the information in your head otherwise it just kind of has a memory leak because it’s not based.

Ryan:
[27:15] On rust buffer overflow all right

Ryan:
[27:18] so speaking of new things uh normally we don’t really cover a lot of like virtual box releases it’s not really a hot have we ever covered virtual probably never covered a virtual box release but times are a changing michael you got to keep up with the times and the people demand more virtual box coverage.

Michael:
[27:39] I don’t think anyone has ever asked for this. What are we talking about here?

Ryan:
[27:42] All right. So this week.

Michael:
[27:44] VirtualBox is important because it does make it easy for people to get started with virtual machines and that sort of stuff. So we’re not really bashing it. It’s just not something you typically would talk about.

Ryan:
[27:53] It seems like you are bashing. It seems like you’re a VirtualBox hater. And you know what?

Michael:
[27:56] No, no, no. Here’s the thing. I don’t hate VirtualBox. I’m not a big fan of Oracle, but that’s a different topic.

Jill:
[28:02] Oh, Ryan has a very important reason, though.

Ryan:
[28:05] Yeah, I had a personal experience with VirtualBox that makes it something why I wanted to bring it to our audience. First, let’s start because we do have a lot of new listeners. Like, it’s been crazy the last few months, Michael, like the amount of new people who are listening to this show.

Michael:
[28:22] Oh, yeah.

Ryan:
[28:23] We didn’t expect that. Thank you. Welcome. And we also got some feedback that we need to also cover some stuff from the basics because there’s a lot of our new audience that are former Windows users that are wanting to come to Linux, which is really awesome.

Michael:
[28:39] Welcome to the wonderful garden.

Ryan:
[28:42] I feel like Pootie Pie had a big… part in this too.

Michael:
[28:44] I think it’s mostly us but not his million.

Ryan:
[28:49] Subscribers just that.

Michael:
[28:51] I mean just because we have like yeah we have 25 000 for the show and he has 110 million that doesn’t really make much difference right does it we’ve got hundreds of thousands.

Ryan:
[29:03] Of podcast listeners so.

Michael:
[29:04] That’s true overall we have a pretty pretty large we’re pretty important we actually we actually, seriously we have grown quite a bit there’s been like 10 000 new subscribers in this past like month so it’s pretty cool so thank you for everybody who’s who’s joining the the community and uh feel free to send your comments to us we are we always want to get feedback um but there’s a lot of cool feedback we are getting uh all sorts of stuff but not virtual box feedback but not virtual box stuff it could be depending on this particular that’s why you.

Ryan:
[29:34] May notice that we’re covering some when we’re covering these topics we’re trying to also cover some explanations of what they are. And I know for the experienced listeners, you’re like, why are you telling us what VirtualBox is? We know what VirtualBox is. Well, we’re trying to help out some of the new folks. So let’s start with the fact VirtualBox is mostly open source. Mostly I say, because its core is open source, but all of the extension packs and stuff are not necessarily open source. So mostly open source. There are alternatives for this, like KVM, QEMU, UTM, Parallels, VMware, Hyper-V. there’s so many uh alternatives for this.

Michael:
[30:09] Type of known boxes boxes is.

Jill:
[30:11] One of my boxes is.

Michael:
[30:12] Awesome too i like vert manager that’s another one but.

Ryan:
[30:15] Virtual box i would argue is one of the best known across all operating systems so people who are on windows mac linux virtual box is one that probably pops up very frequently.

Michael:
[30:27] Along with one of the most knowns that’s not like uh commercial like it’s one of the it’s definitely the most known that’s open source it’s been around for a very long time when sun started them uh and that’s why oracle bought it and anyway um it.

Ryan:
[30:40] Allows you to run virtual machines we should probably say.

Michael:
[30:43] That yes it does so if you want to run windows.

Ryan:
[30:45] But you want to also run linux in a virtual machine without having your whole operating system change over you want to test linux installs whatever you can use virtualbox if you’re in linux you can use virtualbox.

Michael:
[30:56] And test.

Ryan:
[30:56] Out other linux distro.

Michael:
[30:58] Or better yet if you do the reverse of doing the windows inside the virtual machine exactly because that is i actually used to do this for a very long time when i was um when i first switched over to linux i was in the i was still i was still a graphic designer so i’m still in graphic design but i was doing graphic design in photoshop on linux, Through a Windows VM, because that part is a little necessary because Photoshop has always been a little bit. Adobe is not the most friendly company, even to their customers.

Ryan:
[31:26] That was until you found PhotoP.

Michael:
[31:28] You know, that was until I found PhotoP. I use PhotoP now, but for a very long time, over a decade, I used virtual machine of actually it was VirtualBox, but I used a VM of Windows to be able to run Photoshop.

Ryan:
[31:42] From within Linux.

Michael:
[31:43] From within Linux. So I was 99% Linux, and Ryan would always give me a hard time about like, yeah, but not 100%.

Ryan:
[31:50] Yeah. Let’s end some shows.

Michael:
[31:52] Thank you, PhotoPay, first of all.

Ryan:
[31:54] Yeah.

Michael:
[31:54] Yeah. Luckily, we’ve got past that problem.

Ryan:
[31:57] Well, VirtualBox has a new version, 7.1.10, which has support for Linux kernels 6.15 and 6.16. It also has revamped UI and improvements for ARM virtualization.

Michael:
[32:09] Oh, that’s cool.

Ryan:
[32:10] And this becomes important to the rest of the story.

Michael:
[32:13] Oh, now we know why we’re talking about it. Okay, gotcha.

Ryan:
[32:15] So here I am. You guys know I’m in college for cybersecurity, about 70% complete. It’s been a great journey. I get to pick an elective. And one of the elective choices I get is Linux and operating systems. And I’m like, of course I’m going to pick that as my elective.

Michael:
[32:32] That is the easiest elective you could possibly have.

Ryan:
[32:34] This is going to be so simple of a class to get through for me. That’s awesome. Now, I joined the class and imagine my surprise when the professor is like, hey, know your show. I actually submitted my first paper and they’re like, hey, know your show, really enjoy it. And I know you were at the Red Hat Summit because we watched the show. So that was fun.

Michael:
[32:57] That’s fun. You know, like, yeah. So that’s probably really good for you or really bad for you.

Ryan:
[33:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael:
[33:04] If they listen to the show and then you say something really ridiculous like Dopa Luca or something. And it might be like, does the guy really know what he’s talking about?

Ryan:
[33:13] This would be the fourth professor in my college that has known this show. And, you know, I think it’s like a little bit of a cheat code for me here. It could be.

Michael:
[33:24] It could be.

Ryan:
[33:25] But the first assignment was a really daunting one, Michael. It was install Linux. And it has to prove you installed Linux and write a paper on why you’re choosing which distro.

Michael:
[33:37] So you, of course, chose Slackware.

Ryan:
[33:40] What’s that slack word no arch of course i went.

Michael:
[33:43] Uh

Ryan:
[33:43] So i was like well i can’t do something too simple because they kind of know the show right and i.

Michael:
[33:51] Just got back from you’re putting yourself on a higher i’m putting myself on this pedestal that i shouldn’t no i mean in the sense of like not pedestal as in since you’re like talking yourself being good i’m talking about you’re putting yourself at that you’re you’re giving yourself expectation and obligation that they have for you when they might just be like, hey, this is part of the system. You just do whatever you want.

Ryan:
[34:13] Like we watch the show. We know you’re an idiot. Just do a simple Uvo Goons call. They could.

Michael:
[34:17] I mean, if they watch it, they clearly know that. Yes.

Jill:
[34:22] No, Ryan, you should be making your own distro with Linux from scratch.

Ryan:
[34:25] Yeah, that’s what I should have done because that would have really impressed them. And they would have asked you.

Michael:
[34:30] Why didn’t you spend a week and a half on this?

Ryan:
[34:33] All my machines already have Linux on it. So it was kind of like one of those things where they were really talking about VMs in the class for people to start with, because then it makes sense because they don’t want a bunch of people wiping their machines on accident or whatever. So I was like, I’m going to do something in a VM. And you know what, I’m going to use the MacBook Air M4. And I’m going to put Linux in utilize UTM as the base to as the virtualization software to install. And in the UTM. It has a library of distros you can choose. And one of those was Fedora 38. And so when you click that image, though, it’s already installed for you through the UTM gallery. So that didn’t work because, again, you have to do screenshots and things within the paper of showing your installation and prompts and things. So I need to install from scratch. So I was like, well, I’ll just download Fedora 42 and I’ll put it in UTM and I’ll use the same virtualization for video and other things and get this running. Now, as you guys know, I work full-time, plus we have a podcast network we run, plus I go to college.

Michael:
[35:36] So he has tons of time to do that.

Ryan:
[35:38] So I generally do my classes at night, late at night. So now I’m going through this install with UTM, and I get Fedora 42 installed after I did the gallery one and realized it’s not going to work. Download Fedora 42, go to do the install, and everything works. I get through all the installation screens, do my screenshots, and boom, no display. Get this no display error when it reboots, and it will not work. So I switch to, there’s like 15 different display options you can choose. I switch to all those, it doesn’t work. I start going through support forums and things and find that eventually there’s a bug in UTM with the latest Fedora and with the display thing, and here are these workarounds you can try. Tried all the workarounds. Now we’re like an hour in. For this simple class of installing Linux, okay? which I can do with my eyes closed. I do it 20 minutes before shows. I’ll distro hop and be successful.

Michael:
[36:33] It’s true.

Ryan:
[36:34] Well, this class I’m failing. It is now 1130 at night. Right. I’ve got work the next day. They’ve got to get this paper written. So I go download VirtualBox and I’m like, please, please boot, just please work. And so I take the ISO, throw it in VirtualBox, install it. It boots, it works. No display error, no having to play with different configurations. It’s just there. So really appreciate this new version of VirtualBox and the fact that they put. So sometimes these releases sound really simple and not interesting.

Michael:
[37:08] But in my case.

Ryan:
[37:09] That was a very important fix that they have in place.

Michael:
[37:14] And also virtual box sometimes distributions have like um some kind of kernel packages for the live iso that is like the vbox stuff so it’s automatically detecting that it’s coming in going into a virtual box so they come with packages for that and that might not be true for the other tools so like that’s very cool in the sense of like being able to uh you know detect that sort of stuff and have a better experience because i i mean i’ve i can’t remember the last time i ran virtual box and it didn’t work to any degree that was like it’s true not easily overcome you know like you could i’ve had issues obviously but in the sense of um most of the time you don’t really have to deal with it in any huge degree maybe you have to change a checkbox in the settings for a particular feature to work or something like that but for the most part it’s not that hard it’s interesting.

Ryan:
[38:04] You say that because utm has been kind of a mixed bag sometimes it works really well and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes it really works really well and then you try the virtual machine a few weeks later and it stops working really well i’ve had.

Michael:
[38:17] A lot of.

Ryan:
[38:17] Issues honestly with utm but a lot of, mac but it hasn’t been the greatest experience with stability in comparison now i have also played with parallels and vmware and a lot with kvm but that’s in linux so that’s different because everything’s stable in linux but parallels and vmware do a pretty good job as well with the stability piece of it but virtual box always works and you don’t have to pay for it and it was there and so there you go that’s my story and next time i will not get creative and not touch the Mac and just install it on a regular dang computer that already has Linux on it, like all my computers do, and just reinstall the stupid thing and be done. I learned my lesson.

Michael:
[38:57] It’s like, oh, ARM feature. I’m going to try this out, even though I don’t have to, and there is no reason for it. And I could solve this problem in 15 minutes and be completely done with this lesson. Now he’s learned another lesson.

Ryan:
[39:11] Yes. Don’t overcomplicate things. Keep it simple.

Michael:
[39:14] Don’t do the shoe on head thing, Ryan. Don’t do the shoe on head thing.

Ryan:
[39:18] Coming from you, that’s priceless because you are Mr. Shoe on Head themselves. So that’s cool.

Michael:
[39:24] For those who are new to this show, that’s a running gag in the sense that he says that I do things too complicated. It’s like, where do I put the shoe on your head, even though that doesn’t make any sense. However, I’m happy to report that’s Ryan now.

Ryan:
[39:39] Yeah. Well, there’s another lesson here. There’s an important life hack here. Anytime you taunt the universe, the universe smacks you down like the bug you are. And here I was when I took the class, bragging to my wife and friends that I’m taking a Linux and operating system course. And they’re like, oh, it’s going to be so easy for you. I’m like, I know, right? And then I’m up till midnight installing Linux like a noob.

Michael:
[40:05] The first? The very first assignment.

Ryan:
[40:09] Yeah. Like, unbelievable. The universe smacked me down.

Michael:
[40:14] I mean, it’s a good story and I appreciate it. I mean, I’m happy this happened to you because we got a good story for the show. but also also you’ve learned a valuable lesson yeah.

Ryan:
[40:26] Thank you michael i appreciate.

Michael:
[40:28] That yes yeah.

Jill:
[40:29] And virtual box has really improved in fact it’s it’s update cadence is much better now than it used to be it used to be you had to wait a while before you could use the latest and greatest kernel and now they’re really on top of.

Michael:
[40:42] That’s true there usually be like a month period between the new kernel release and the new release of virtual box but now it’s actually been quite good these days i don’t like the fact that the usb stuff is inside that little extension pack but i mean yeah you know can’t really complain about you know get everything perfect i guess you.

Ryan:
[41:01] Can’t look a gift goat in the mouth you know.

Michael:
[41:03] A gift goat yeah i wouldn’t say virtualbox is the goat what would be the virtual machine tool kvm kvm probably yeah yeah kvm.

Ryan:
[41:12] Is the goat.

Michael:
[41:12] Yeah vert manager plus kvm yeah.

Jill:
[41:15] Vmware is pretty good too because it has it’s always.

Michael:
[41:18] From the beginning was good yeah.

Ryan:
[41:20] Now you guys are confusing people we had decided kvm is the goat then jill comes in and says you.

Michael:
[41:26] Know well she’s she’s also in like the nostalgic version of vmware when vmware used to be good and it was its own company and they cared about their customers and that is not vmware now because they were bought by broadcom and they decided to uh get rid of everybody they i actually talked to some people at the red hat summit and they we were in the line waiting for the backpack which, by the way, very long line for the backpack. But there was still a good backpack, by the way. It’s fine. But in that line, I was talking to them about it, and this one guy said that they were there to learn about some virtualization features and stuff in RHEL. And then someone mentioned, like, hey, have you heard about the latest issue with VMware Broadcom? And I’m like, no. No. They’re apparently sending cease and desist letters to people who have perpetual licenses of VMware. And yeah, that seems like a good idea.

Jill:
[42:18] Yeah. Well, from the olden days, what I’m thinking is that VMware was one of the first virtual machines that supported discrete GPUs and drivers and acceleration using Linux.

Michael:
[42:33] The history of VMware is good.

Jill:
[42:35] Yeah, that was a big deal. I mean, I could run Skyrim, you know, on a Windows virtual machine on Linux. So they were the first to do the GPU acceleration. And VirtualBox was an early adopter of that as well. And theirs has gotten better and better over the years.

Michael:
[42:52] And they still are open source.

Jill:
[42:55] Exactly. Exactly.

Michael:
[42:57] All VMware was never open source, but at least VirtualBox is still like actually committed to being a good product.

Jill:
[43:04] Yeah.

Ryan:
[43:05] You know what? I want to do. I want to, I want payback for that little comment, Michael. Oh, you learned a lesson, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The next news topic you’re covering, payback. You’re going to cover something about Arch. Do it.

Jill:
[43:19] Yeah, here we go.

Ryan:
[43:21] Talk about your love of Arch. It’s so good.

Michael:
[43:24] Okay, fair enough. For those who are new to the show and don’t know, Ryan is an Arch fan, and I am a person who is also appreciative of Arch, but also likes to point out that Arch is not for beginners, and the amount of people who talk about it being for beginners is just unfortunate because it is great.

Ryan:
[43:42] Are you a good beginner or are you a lame-o beginner? Are you a lame-o supremo beginner? Then you can’t use Arch. If you’re a cool beginner, you can use Arch.

Michael:
[43:51] Ryan is joking. Just to be clear.

Ryan:
[43:54] Am I?

Michael:
[43:55] Are you?

Ryan:
[43:55] Yes, I’m joking.

Michael:
[43:56] Okay, good. Just to make sure.

Ryan:
[44:00] Use Linux from scratch as your first distro if you really want to learn Linux.

Michael:
[44:05] I mean, if you want to torture yourself, that’s a great option.

Ryan:
[44:09] If you hate yourself.

Michael:
[44:10] Yeah. Linux from Scratch is awesome, by the way. I’m not saying it’s just not for beginners. It’s also not for most people. It’s for people who want to learn how a distro is built. I mean, actually built from the ground up. If you want to learn that and you have a week to two weeks, maybe a month to do it, then that’s a great option.

Ryan:
[44:30] You have a month of PTO with nothing else to do.

Michael:
[44:33] Yes.

Ryan:
[44:33] Do Linux from Scratch. on the beach.

Michael:
[44:36] The funny thing is is that um the more and more you do a certain installation like uh refraying were to try this again on the virtual box and it could probably get he’d go do that lesson much faster now yeah yeah but uh that’s true for all of the distributions, except for linux from scratch it will still take forever it doesn’t matter how fast you never get better at it it will just take forever no matter what because of all the processing and the compiling everything like even Gentoo is a lot faster these days. And once you get used to it and stuff, it still takes like a day or so, but we It’s a minimum like a week for Linux from Scratch. Anyway, let’s talk about Arch Linux. That’s the whole point you’re trying to make me talk about. So Arch Linux is exploring a formal sponsorship process to support its growth, which is a good thing to hear. A new proposal aims to establish transparent guidelines for accepting financial contributions while preserving the project’s independence and values. This move reflects increasing interest from organizations and contributors in sustaining Arch’s role in the Linux ecosystem.

Ryan:
[45:38] Valve. Valve.

Jill:
[45:39] Yeah, I was just thinking of Valve.

Michael:
[45:41] They don’t mention that in the news, but yeah, it’s Valve. Because Valve themselves announced that they wanted to do stuff for or donate for Arch.

Ryan:
[45:50] Which is awesome. It’s freaking awesome, right? Yes. Like, Valve is huge, and their sponsorship could mean a lot to Arch. In fact, their partnership has already meant a lot. They’ve been working together on several things that have helped improve by proxy things within Arch because SteamOS is Arch-based. Michael?

Michael:
[46:13] Technically speaking, yes.

Jill:
[46:14] Absolutely.

Michael:
[46:15] This is a problem with things based on Arch.

Ryan:
[46:17] Don’t technically speak. It just is. And let it go and move on.

Michael:
[46:20] It is. But when people say that something is Arch-based and it’s super easy to use and then they go, well, does that mean Arch is super easy? No. There’s a reason they picked Arch is because it lets them, like there is no opinion in Arch. Like the way that Debian has no opinion, Arch is dissimilar, except Arch just moves faster. So if you want a distribution base that doesn’t do anything out of the box for you and doesn’t make any decisions for you, and you want everything decided by yourself, that’s what Arch gets.

Ryan:
[46:50] That’s right, because Arch users aren’t sheeple. We’re wolves. Grr.

Michael:
[46:56] Grr.

Jill:
[46:57] Grr.

Michael:
[46:59] That was anyway people uh ubuntu or something based on ubuntu is perfectly fine to get started with in fact that’s what i recommend but um, Anyway, let’s talk about Arch. We’re still talking about Arch, okay? We haven’t abandoned the Arch topic yet, right? So you’re still winning this battle right now.

Ryan:
[47:18] Okay, cool.

Michael:
[47:19] But this is kind of interesting because I’m curious how they’re going to be handling this because Arch used to be connected to the SPI, the software in the public interest. I’m not sure, are they transitioning away from the SPI or that kind of thing? Because that would be interesting to know. But accepting donations is a really cool thing for them to do. But also, a lot of people don’t really recognize how like if you see a project like hey why don’t you let me donate to you and you know help uh do like some kind of fund bug tracking bug funding to get something fixed or whatever the reason is because it’s very complicated it complicates everything there’s like legal burdens there’s taxes you have to deal with because once you start accepting donations you’re introducing a new style of taxes like you become like depending on where you’re from and what country you live in there There could be like self-employment tax being attached to it and all sorts of stuff. It’s a complicated thing. So making a formal process is a fantastic thing to hear about because they’re working on making all of that make sense while also being able to get all the donations and everything.

Ryan:
[48:21] They’re doing it in a really cool way because they’re wanting every sponsorship to be publicly documented. Because there’s also the problem of you talked about the government issues and taxes and you’re right. That’s 100%. That’s 99.99% of the problem. And then the other problem is people start getting weird when you get sponsorships, right? They start questioning, are you being bought by them? Are you focusing all your attention on just their stuff and no longer what you used to?

Michael:
[48:49] That’s true.

Ryan:
[48:50] They start putting some ill intentions that they reflect on you. And because of past experiences, probably with companies that have done things. shady things you know yeah.

Michael:
[48:59] I hate it when people say like you know just because this one company is sponsoring this this project that means it’s bad or whatever when like you know there are certain examples where a company could be that and it wouldn’t be happy to see it being a project but there are a lot of times where it’s just they they have they use the software and they’re giving back to the software which is what we tell people to do as like you know big corporations taking advantage of open source and using these projects they should give money back to those projects for that reason to keep those projects existing but if there’s a catch-22 where people don’t want those companies to be doing that which way do you go.

Ryan:
[49:39] Yeah i mean our show wouldn’t exist without the patrons and sponsors right and earlier.

Michael:
[49:45] Ryan talked about being weird from all the sponsors exactly he got really.

Ryan:
[49:49] Weird yeah and and the the whole the whole sponsor thing is interesting because we have a lot of people especially uh with the growth of the show and things that come to us that want us to buy ad spots and ad spots allow us to pay for the servers allow us to pay for all the email all the stuff that goes in all the business taxes lawyers you have media production editing processing oh my gosh there’s so much that goes into it so sponsors are very important patrons are very important to it but we have to turn away a lot of these sponsors a lot of them are vpns, because we know if we mess up and we bring something on here that’s not tried and true you’ll never listen to us again so we find things like bitwarden and sandfly and all these cool companies that we brought here but that also puts us in a pickle because we need we need money no because you know you want to keep the business running you want actually funded he’s joking but But we need money. No, but what’s interesting about it is when you do things publicly like this, what Arch is doing is technically they could keep all this hidden, right? Just say we’re accepting sponsorships. But then people are going to be really curious, like, who? Who’s out there sponsoring you?

Michael:
[51:01] That’s true.

Ryan:
[51:01] And what kind of money are they utilizing? And what are they sponsoring? So making it public is really important. I think Arch did the right thing because the trust, at the end of the day, the point I was making with this show is it’s about trust. Trust with the audience that we have to build. And so we have to vet the people who we bring onto the show as sponsors. And Arch is doing that with their sponsorship here, I think. and making sure that they don’t have external influences that are impacting their decisions and what they do with their distro. So I applaud Arch for the two things. One is going for sponsorships because I want Arch to be around forever and you need money to be around forever and bring in the talent, but also doing it so publicly so that people can really make sure that it’s staying above water.

Michael:
[51:45] Exactly. It needs to be sustainable, but also, you know, I like the sustainable and transparent approach. It’s very good that they’re doing that. And also, we are very transparent about it because if someone sponsors us, we literally tell you about it every time we think.

Jill:
[52:01] Yeah.

Ryan:
[52:04] Absolutely.

Jill:
[52:05] I have a feeling Arch will probably use something like Open Collective. That’s a good place to start.

Ryan:
[52:11] Yeah.

Michael:
[52:11] It’s a good way to do it.

Ryan:
[52:12] You know what Valve could solve for us? Is the problem of getting money to all of the different projects. We’ve talked about that before, all the different open source projects, a lot of the stuff that’s behind the scenes. You know, maybe Valve could become… create some type of, you know, system to allow us to donate and get to those.

Michael:
[52:32] First of all, but before we go into that, another thing they could help, Valve could help us with is sponsoring us. Valve, would you like to?

Jill:
[52:39] Oh, yes.

Ryan:
[52:41] Wouldn’t that be cool?

Jill:
[52:42] Yeah, that’d be awesome. Lord Gaben, we’d love you for that.

Michael:
[52:46] And Ryan will agree to put the brain chip in and everything.

Jill:
[52:50] Yeah.

Ryan:
[52:51] I will. For the right sponsorship price, you know what? Sign me up.

Michael:
[52:57] Knows what could we lose you know exactly but but but real quick i do think that’d be a cool idea but i think the other thing is is that the the complication of that because the spi is kind of that in a way so um there are a lot of projects like debian is part of spi actually i think spi started because of debian like debian wanted to have something like this and then they started this and then a bunch of other projects jumped on and uh that’s pretty cool but i think that’d be the some kind of solution it may be not creating a organization or a project or whatever that does that sort of thing but someone creating like a framework explaining like how everything can be working and how it will make sense how to be transparent how to do all this stuff like if arch were able to like just provide how they did everything that’d be very cool too oh.

Ryan:
[53:47] Yeah for other distros and stuff to pick up yeah.

Michael:
[53:49] Exactly because.

Ryan:
[53:50] It looks like they’re really doing it in in a very above water way. And the way you do things above water is you have some land and then you add water to it and then you float on top.

Michael:
[54:02] That is such a terrible but also fantastic segue. Continue.

Ryan:
[54:05] Thank you. So our software spotlight this week is add water.

Jill:
[54:09] Yes.

Michael:
[54:09] Oh, really? Shocking.

Ryan:
[54:10] That’s so good. That segue was incredible.

Michael:
[54:13] It was good.

Ryan:
[54:15] People should sponsor us just for that segue.

Michael:
[54:18] Exactly. What’s funny is that no one knew what the segue was going because we knew what the next topic was, but… It just seemed like, why are you talking about water so much?

Ryan:
[54:28] What is this problem?

Michael:
[54:30] Are we bringing up the SeaMonkey project again?

Ryan:
[54:32] Oh, my gosh. SeaMonkeys. I’m surprised we haven’t got more email about the SeaMonkeys.

Michael:
[54:37] All you need to do is add water to the SeaMonkey.

Ryan:
[54:39] Man, that would have been a good transition there, too.

Michael:
[54:42] It would have been.

Ryan:
[54:42] But add water is about theming. And theming is very important to most people. Not me. But most people really care about theming. I remember Rocco on this show used to be mad when he was covering a distro if like a pixel was off in the window on the left corner of the window and it didn’t match.

Michael:
[55:05] To be fair, to be fair to Rocco, that was not exactly what happened. He was annoyed by four pixels.

Jill:
[55:12] Yeah.

Michael:
[55:13] It was four pixels off. And that was the problem.

Ryan:
[55:16] Yeah. Me, I’m a little more forgiving. If you’re a theme junkie and you want everything in place and to look perfect, then you’re going to want to check out this app, Add Water. It is a utility app that’s super easy to install that basically takes Firefox, GNOME theme and makes them merge together so that they’re themed together, I guess.

Michael:
[55:42] It basically makes Firefox look better on a GNOME desktop. So if you’re using Ubuntu or using Fedora Workstation or using the GNOME version of OpenSUSE or whatever, that makes it look better with the libidwaita style and stuff like that, which admittedly, Firefox does kind of look out of place at times, depending on the distribution in the desktop.

Ryan:
[56:02] Never noticed.

Michael:
[56:04] I mean, of course, for those who don’t understand what Ryan is saying here, is that one of my favorite stories to tell, and if you’re new to the show, you might not have heard it before. One time I went to Ryan’s house, and I was always into theming and customizing and stuff like that just because I wanted things to look good, right? So I get to Ryan’s house, and I’m like, hey, I need to use your computer to set up for the stream. He’s like, okay, great. Here, you know, I’ll set it up for you, blah, blah, blah. Tara opens it. It’s Vanilla XFCE on Arch. for those who don’t know vanilla xfce feels like it hasn’t been touched since the 90s visually speaking and it probably hasn’t at the time it definitely hasn’t maybe now they’ve done some improvements here and there i know they did a lot of.

Ryan:
[56:48] Improvements since that time period but.

Michael:
[56:49] This was like before.

Ryan:
[56:51] Xfce had done an overhaul yeah.

Michael:
[56:52] Yeah this was like 2019 i think something like that so.

Ryan:
[56:56] Good it looked like an aol interface you know like.

Michael:
[56:59] Good old days that’s that’s being nice to AOL, I guess. But this is an interesting thing because with Firefox there are times where it does feel a little bit not seamless with the experience. Because if you look at Firefox on Windows and Firefox on Mac, they are seamlessly integrated and they look nice. But if you put it into Linux, it depends on the distribution in this desktop whether they’re going to have these things uh optimized some do they put in the effort to make it look great on whatever desktop they’re using and some don’t so i think this is actually really good because for one it’s basically just a flat pack you install to add it activate it and that’s very cool does it require the firefox flat pack to work.

Ryan:
[57:53] I don’t know because I didn’t use it because I don’t theme, but it does support light and dark style as well as accent colors. You can hide the tab bar.

Michael:
[58:03] Which are very important things for Ryan. He really cares about this stuff.

Ryan:
[58:07] Use an OLED-friendly pitch black for the interface, customize tab bar positions, controls, alignment, hide redundant microphone, webcam, screen share indicators, and it supports Flatpak, Snap, Liberwolf, and Florp variants of Firefox as well. So if you’re not using regular Firefox, but a variant of it.

Michael:
[58:25] I would imagine since it works on Flatpak and Snaps, it doesn’t require you to use the Flatpak. So there’s that. But it doesn’t specify whether it works on the traditional packages, which would be interesting.

Ryan:
[58:37] But here’s an easier way. I mean, use this if you want. But I can tell you from my experience in Linux, which is vast, that if you have a Batman wallpaper, everything fits in with your theme. so just get a batman wallpaper and you’re set.

Michael:
[58:52] For reference for those who don’t know uh literally every time i’ve seen a wallpaper for ryan it has been batman and this is forever i mean i don’t think he’s ever batman had that greatest.

Ryan:
[59:04] Character of all comics so.

Michael:
[59:06] It’s hard to argue with that i mean i would not normally but we’re we don’t have a comic book show maybe in the future in.

Ryan:
[59:14] The future will go.

Michael:
[59:15] But also, I was thinking it’s kind of funny that this tool is called Add Water because you don’t really want to put water on fire. So the Firefox that might… You know?

Ryan:
[59:26] Waterfox, though. Waterfox, you would.

Michael:
[59:28] It doesn’t specify Waterfox.

Ryan:
[59:30] Though.

Michael:
[59:30] It doesn’t say Waterfox.

Ryan:
[59:31] But it would make more sense if it was Waterfox, you know?

Michael:
[59:33] Yeah. I think we’re overanalyzing this at this point.

Ryan:
[59:37] Probably. Well, a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching and listening to Destination Linux and all the new listeners out there. We love your faces. And you can come join us on Discord. Go to tuxedigital.com slash Discord. In fact, when you become a patron, then you can join the Discord room and you can do all kinds of cool stuff like listen to the show live interact with us live you could be our ai and prove that our patron ai is better than siri didn’t happen this week but usually that is what happens it usually does and they.

Michael:
[1:00:09] Did respond after the fact but now uh but you can become a patron is by going to tuxus.com membership you get a bunch of cool perks we sometimes we’ve been testing live streaming the show but we’re doing an audio audio only live streaming uh for like youtube and twitch and we’re doing the uh if you want the video version live stream you can do that by becoming a patron touch digital.com membership but you can also get a bunch of other stuff like unedited episodes of the show so if there’s ever a time where we mess up or something then that will be there but also there’s extra bonuses because before we start the show and after we finish the show, there’s even more content that the patrons get that everybody else doesn’t. What that could be? I don’t know, but it’s awesome. Not enough to put on the show, but it’s awesome. So go to tuxdigital.com slash membership to get all of that and more, including discounts for our store. That rhymed on purpose. You’re welcome. tuxdigital.com slash store to get a bunch of cool stuff. We have hats, mugs, hoodies, and nothing that Ryan holds up ever.

Jill:
[1:01:20] Ever.

Michael:
[1:01:20] I don’t think he’s ever held up anything that is remotely on the store.

Ryan:
[1:01:25] We don’t have wireless blood-free sensors or motion detectors or Alexa or USB in our store?

Michael:
[1:01:31] The USB drive could be something to think about in the future. But the other stuff, I mean, it’s better than the random Rocktopus that you held up before.

Ryan:
[1:01:42] How dare you insult the Rocktopus? First of all, the Rock is my twin brother. For people who don’t know, you’re new to the show. Rock is my twin brother. We hang out sometimes. yeah you know i i like to believe we do and um sure you know i i printed this out in his honor it’s a rocktopus oh yeah exactly well.

Jill:
[1:02:05] We could have this in the store a kawaii strawberry shaped.

Ryan:
[1:02:09] Sipper cup that is so cute jill it’s so cute my teeth are rotting you know looking at it Well.

Michael:
[1:02:18] Those are not in the store, but…

Jill:
[1:02:20] Yes. And make sure to check out all the amazing shows here on Text Digital. That’s right. Yes, we have an entire network of shows to fill your whole week with geeky goodness. Head to textdigital.com to keep those Linux penguins marching.

Ryan:
[1:02:40] Jill, you’re hosting this week, so guess what? You get to close us out. I know Michael kept you from hosting for months, but I brought it back. I never forget anything. Yeah. So Jill, close us out with the greatest closing this show has ever had. No pressure.

Jill:
[1:03:01] Everybody have a great week. And remember that the journey itself is just as important as the destination on this Firefly starship.

Ryan:
[1:03:14] Good job, Jill. Good job.

Jill:
[1:03:18] I don’t know. Yes.

Ryan:
[1:03:28] Yeah. That’s true. See ya.