Wendy: [0:00] Welcome to Linux Out Loud, where we talk about Linux, open source, Wendy: [0:03] and the tech that keeps running, at least until the power bumps decide otherwise. I'm Wendy, back for take two after last week's full system power cut, rage quit. Joining me are Nate and Bill. Both assured me that it was definitely not user error. This time we're crossing our fingers, hitting record, and talking about the Linux experiments, upgrades, and small disasters that survived the reboot. Let's launch into Linux Out Loud 127. Bill: [0:44] I'd like to say here on the record that Matt is the victim of the power outage. So we figured out what happened with your power after some further analysis. Matt decided that he wanted to climb the pole to get- Oh. Wendy: [1:02] Gosh, dang him. Bill: [1:03] To see if lightning actually still worked. And needless to say, he's not on this episode. So I'm sorry about your power outage. Matt, you'll be fine. We'll check on you in a couple of days. Wendy: [1:14] The weirdest thing was it wasn't like a full-blown outage it was a bump and it happened like before we had started recording we were kind of visiting whatever power, power bumped kicked me out i was like okay that that's weird right got back in and i'd say what we were at least like 40 45 minutes into recording yeah something like that yeah. Wendy: [1:40] And i i had a power bump. Again, it was just one, right? But it was enough to take the whole system back down. And the downside about Video Ninja is when that happens, it meant that we lost the entire file. Like I had absolutely nothing as far as my recording went. We're still using Video Ninja today, just so you know. But it did completely take it down. Now, normally, we wouldn't have been thrilled about it, but we would have just picked up again. But Matt had to work that night. He's currently on, on night shifts and he had to work. So we only had like a half hour left until he had to leave for work. And I know how long winded we all were. And like, yeah, there was just no way that we were getting a show recorded. So we're, we're back. Um, We've been talking in the chat, I'll get to a little bit later about UPSs and stuff, but it really hit home that I absolutely need to get one, or two, actually probably two, but I'll get into that a little bit later. So Nate, I've heard this, start with one. Wendy: [2:49] I've heard this before, but Bill hasn't got to. Tell us about your resurrecting your netbook. It's pretty cool. Nate: [2:59] The neat thing is, I have a goldfish memory, so I don't even know what I said last time. Wendy: [3:04] Perfect. It'll be new for all of us. Bill: [3:05] Hi, Nate. Nice to meet you. Nate: [3:08] Have we met? Bill: [3:09] Wait a minute. I have an idea. Instead of 50 first dates, it's 50 first Nates. Nate: [3:15] Ooh. Wendy: [3:15] Ooh. Nate: [3:16] Except that sounds awful. I would... Bill: [3:21] I'll pay money to not watch that. Nate: [3:23] Yeah. I wouldn't even want to watch it. I mean, I think it'd be. Wendy: [3:27] So do I get paid for that? Because I'd be the one editing it. Bill: [3:31] Yeah, we'll take care of that. I'm sure I can ship you some stuff that I still owe you and haven't shipped. Because every time I look in my truck, I say, I need to get that to Wendy. And then I walk in my house and forget. Wendy: [3:41] Well, that's good. Because I might have to talk to you about that in a little bit. Because my oldest has decided she's building a computer. And I we lucked out because I already had RAM I already had a CPU and some of those like really really expensive components and then so she just had to pick up a few other things so, um and I have a few like SSDs for her but they're not like great but it's something right it's something to at least get her her started in the build but anyway netbook netbook netbook why, why Why? Nate: [4:18] Is that your question? Why? Bill: [4:19] Yes. Why a netbook? Nate: [4:21] Well, there's a couple of reasons. So a long time, ago, a few weeks ago on Linux alone, we tested something out called Quark OS. And it was kind of a quirky OS, but it was interesting from the perspective of the Trinity desktop, which is very KDE3-like. I'm familiar with that. It kind of had a very nostalgic feel to it, but it had some modern tooling and whatnot. It was neat. And I thought it was interesting and how peppy it was and useful and everything else. So the one caveat is, the dark theme wasn't kind of really a thing lx cute is um, is another one i'm looking at as well but so trinity neat desktop and then i thought to myself how does that compare to lx cute as far as or lx qt i don't really call it lx cute lx cute and i always say lx qt yeah, i do too it doesn't really matter it's kind of cute though and so so the the question is you said why you kind of have this like kind of semi-disgust look on your face like why am i resurrecting a um, what year is it a 16 year old piece of hardware that is it even 64-bit and why are you even bothering it's probably that was probably the what i'm getting from you is that is that fairly close no it's actually more. Bill: [5:46] Curiosity because i know we've always talked about how we upcycle hardware and, when i think of the small, extremely underpowered device. So I'm looking at this from the perspective of crazy challenge. And there must have been a reason you picked this device up. Nate: [6:05] I saved this device from e-waste when I was deployed overseas with the army, and they had a broken screen on it. It was going to get tossed like, I'll take that. This is before I did any, like, you know, before, before QL8 was a, was a thing of mine. I was very, actually at the time, I was very limit my digital footprint kind of a guy. So obviously that's kind of out the window. Wendy: [6:29] What I wanted to see. Nate: [6:30] Though, was this was never really a great device to use, but it was actually nice for, like, typing, taking notes, and so forth on different, basically, I used TiddlyWicke at the time, but now I'm using Obsidian. So just basically, just basic markdown at this point. And the way Obsidian does things, I'm going to get it myself. Anyway, the issue with this is just the response time was very slow. So I thought, you know, I had an SSD lying around, and I want to see how much better performance would be with an SSD in there. I reinstalled OpenSUSE of Tumbleweed because that's what I'm going to use. And then I'm going to compare just usability between Plasma, LXQ, and Trinity to see how they all kind of shake out. And the point is to see, can I use this thing? Sometimes I just want to sit and write something real quick and then go back. But that's it. I don't want to grab my laptop, set up, disconnect this, do all this, whatever malarkey. And I just want to write something very quickly and easily and then uh save it and move on with life and i can just toss the thing aside and not really worry about like if it falls these things are kind of like little toys but they bounce when they fall you know because they're so light, and so it's kind of nice in regard it's and it feels, relatively robust ish for a toy and so the question i'm trying to answer is can i make this thing useful and not annoying to use. Nate: [7:49] I don't know if i can or not but i'm in the midst of that right now i made I know progress since last time we talked. Other than going through my article where I'm using kwin as the window compositor instead of using openbox because openbox is just kind of. Nate: [8:04] Not great and I'm seeing there's a performance difference there for LXQ and then uh what I'm installing on it is just a very it's called um marklight.app marklight.app is where you can get it it's a lightweight markdown viewer editor very basic viewer editor for, uh for doing these edits and it's actually made by this guy Mike shilson who's part of lynx saloon community and he actually, he's actually added features to it just for me which is kind of cool anyway it's like the perfect little app for me to do this because it's a real low memory footprint which is perfect for this this use case and i was kind of sort of inspired like where this is coming from also it's something else too, is there's a there's a veronica explains video i don't know if i even said this last time where she took a laptop it was it was a system 76 laptop that she liked and just made it like boot into the terminal only and to me that's a little bit too minimal because I like, I do like a GUI. I like the terminal, but I like a GUI. I like it all co-existent. Wendy: [8:58] I do like a GUI too. Nate: [9:01] Yeah. I want them both. So, I'm at the stage right now where I'm testing it, and it's remarkably, on LXQ right now. I'm working on that one. It's remarkably performant, actually, and I did just configure the KWIN. I'm just using X11 KWIN, so I know that's out the door pretty soon here, but I know there's a wayfire that I can test for a Wayland and there's I think you can use the X11 Wayland as well and so far I'm pretty happy with how it works I had to do some tweaks to the application for Marklight, I couldn't get it to load any of the files but it seems to load it just fine now that I worked on that with Mike so, that's kind of where I'm at with it using SSHFS to mount remote shares makes it real easy I can just mount the shares off my laptop or whatever because maybe it's just running or off the server, and then i can edit them and as soon as i save them it automatically updates everywhere else and that's it no no actual files are stored on here it's just everything's remote and so far, uh so far it's seemingly useful, i don't know and that's kind of where i'm at if this all works out i'm going to update my article on on the lx cute using kwin on my website right now it, has some instructions on it a little bit old, so I'm just going to update those and then go on with life and living. Remove the whole... Wendy: [10:25] So you almost made your own Chromebook that's running like real Linux? Nate: [10:30] I have one of those too. Bill: [10:31] But it's more than that. I think what's impressive here is that you... That you're using Tumbleweed only because everybody's moving forward with Wayland. Wayland is going to be where everybody goes. But to take a device of that era and find out that you can use a modern desktop environment on it, such as KDE Plasma or LX-Cute, or even what you're trying to do with Trinity is pretty impressive. I just don't know for how much longer you'll be able to do that because we're going to be forced into Wayland and faster compositors. Those use more RAM, those use more CPU resources. And I remember having to service netbooks when I worked in schools that were running Windows, and it was really not fun. People bought them assuming that they were going to get a full-fledged device when in fact they really weren't. Wendy: [11:22] Oh. Bill: [11:23] But what you're doing with it is really neat. It's sort of this hybrid, thin client that you're building using the SSHFS to connect to a remote share. Where what you're doing is helping people understand that the simplest tools sometimes are still the best. Nate: [11:39] Yeah. And I think too, is like maybe because I'm getting old and whatnot. I, my thought is just because it's old and slow doesn't mean it's obsolete. I'm not sure if I'm telling myself that too, that's um that's kind of is it can i still make something old and underpowered useful in a modern sense and just that one little, you know between sshfs and mark light i think i have something that i'm i think will be very useful and you know i basically i'll just have a little script that it runs right in the beginning when i show up well i'm beginning but like you know what after i boot up i run that little script manually, and then i have access to everything i can navigate the file system exactly how i need to, and that's it and so uh, i'm kind of excited about it actually we'll uh we'll see how it goes and then if it goes well, i'll share it if it doesn't go well i'll share it anyway because i already put that i already have like hours invested in this and the real question is will i continue to use it and i think one of the drawbacks is, the barrel jack plug on it not because i think barrel jacks are inherently bad but because, i have to have a bespoke charger for it so i'm kind of thinking if i can do like a usbc, thing on this which i could probably do like a thing for that i gotta see what i can find and even if it's even if it's weird and you know velcroed onto it i don't care but this way i can just plug in, my myriad of usbc charges you know chargers that i have available to me yeah and that would make why. Bill: [13:08] Don't you try to do power over hdmi with it. Nate: [13:13] What does that have hdmi. Bill: [13:15] What is that, VGA? Wendy: [13:17] Yeah. Bill: [13:18] So do power over VGA then? Nate: [13:22] Can I back feed VGA a power through the VGA port on this machine? No. Bill: [13:30] Got him. Nate: [13:33] I mean, you can run powered on any wires you want. I don't know if it's going to have the result that you want. Bill: [13:39] I'm sure if you take the power that you need and you break it out across five of the pins, you can probably make it work. Isn't that how that works? Wendy: [13:50] No? Nate: [13:52] Well, I know in Star Trek, if you reverse the polarity, sometimes things work. I don't know if that works in netbook land. Wendy: [13:58] Real life, yeah. Bill: [14:00] Try it and let us know in the next episode. Nate: [14:03] If I reverse the polarity. Wendy: [14:04] It definitely would be nice if everything was USB-C powered. I know my kids' laptops have a USB-C child-style charger and my larger charging brick back here somewhere right there. The top one has enough running through it on a proper cable so that when the kids bring me their laptops, like this morning, the cat walks across my daughter's laptop, turned on the accessibility features and when it was zoomed in and then somehow she managed to turn off like the follow me with the mouse and so you were just stuck in this top upper part of her screen and I was like, okay, I can just plug it into my charger really quick. No other cables because obviously it was almost dead anyway. Nate: [14:50] Right? Wendy: [14:51] And get the problem fixed. Nate: [14:56] Worse. Wendy: [14:57] Silly cats. Nate: [14:58] It's amazing that a cat knew how to do that, though. It's pretty impressive. Wendy: [15:02] I know. They somehow pause, and they've done it multiple times in weird things that they've done when they walked across laptops. It's the biggest thing. One of the clients I'm currently working for, inside of the multicamera, I think there's like 26 or 27 timelines in the multicam. The one cat, one morning, had decided she was going to come up and wanted some love, So she went to walk across my keyboard and I was like, ah, absolutely not. I do not. I do not need that to explode. Bill: [15:35] That would be new meaning to the meme keyboard cat. Wendy: [15:39] Oh, yeah. Yeah. That hours and hours worth of work could have potentially exploded, which then needed redone. Not. Yeah. No backups. Backups. Lots and lots of saves. Lots and lots of saves. Nate: [15:54] For sure. But still. Bill: [15:56] 100% I may have brought up backups on this show before Oh. Wendy: [16:02] I think you have Maybe just about every single time Yeah Yeah, backups are super, super important So anyway. Nate: [16:12] We'll see how it goes I will hopefully have something a little bit more Even by the end of the week I'm hoping, well Cool If the work things here don't kill me in the next couple days I shouldn't say that If the work things here. Wendy: [16:25] Don't. Nate: [16:26] Take up uh the time that i may have allocated to hobbies then um. Wendy: [16:33] Based on what you had described pre-show uh, something that you can't share on show i completely get it it might absorb a Wendy: [16:43] lot of your spare time throughout this week so whenever you get to it we definitely can't wait to to see. Nate: [16:51] So another round of good times, Bill, you are exploring ESP32, huh? What is this e-exploration? Or is that a pun? Bill: [17:02] I wrote it as exploration in the show notes because I put a pun on everything. But one of my coworkers keeps haranguing me that I should get into the SB32 and SB Homeworld. And mysteriously, a small SB32 board showed up at my house, along with one of these breakout boards that it sits on so you have better access to the pens. Wendy: [17:27] Oh, yeah. Bill: [17:29] Well, I don't exactly have very good motor skills when it comes to soldering. And my eyesight, as we've talked about on Sudo Show, is questionable at best. So, it stands to reason I need it to be rather easy. But I do have a couple of projects at home that are really more minor inconveniences. But this is exactly what the SB32 does and does well. So my garage door opener, I bought one off the shelf and most of the time it works. And when it doesn't work is always when it is raining, snowing, or any other inconvenient time. So I thought, why pay to have somebody else's proprietary solution when all, I need the thing to do is control the relay on the garage door opener that says open or close? And that's it. And on top of that, I do have a sensor already in the door from Third Reality. It's a little Zigbee sensor. And all it is, it's a tilt sensor. So it knows if it's horizontal or vertical. And it beeps when it goes up or down. And Home Assistant says, the garage door is open. So working on some automation with that, for instance, if the garage door is open past 930 at night, close it. Very simple. And that way the garage door is not left open all night long. I'm also looking at it for just some- Nate: [18:53] In the summertime, you might be having like a party, you know, and everyone is having their wobble pops coming in and out of your garage while you're eating a delicious smoked meat. And then the door starts closing on them. He's like, hey, party over. See you. Home assistant said so. Bill: [19:08] Oh, that's not a bad idea. The problem is if I leave both garage doors open, like the regular door and the actual garage door, they're kind of east-west facing. So the back door then slams violently and it spooks the dogs and it spooks everybody in the house. So I tend to not really leave that open. But another thing I want to do with some of the smaller SB32 boards, because mine is fairly big. I'd say it's probably, you know, two inches by one inch. But they make some really tiny ones from Seed, which I believe is S-E-E-E-D. And it has like eight pins on it and simple usbc programming yes exactly like one of those correct well. Nate: [19:50] This is this is an esp8266 so basically esp32 minus the bluetooth. Bill: [19:56] Oh okay see i'm still learning what a lot of the terms are with this because i've never really had to do anything with them before i don't know i said okay that's a little over the top But then I started reading about people making cool, simple, LED projects. So I went and saw my dad a few weeks ago, and now he can't hear out of one of his ears, which comes with age and whatever else. And so if I can give him something that visually tells him that something is open or closed or a reminder of something, then that makes his home just that much more accessible to him. Because to me, home assistant isn't just about home automation. It's about home accessibility. My goal with this was, is how long can I keep my parents in their house independent, using technology that is self-contained and not talking out to every cloud provider out there. So just some simple LED controls and some logic. I don't want to go really too crazy overboard to start, but YouTube videos have really been my friend here and it's making me feel motivated and energized about using technology again. Another popular project is Bluetooth release. So I recently had an issue at my house where my firewall blew up and I had to rebuild it from backup. But in order to do that, I had to. Bill: [21:22] Reset the firewall. Then I had to use my phone with Bluetooth on my phone to connect it back up to my UniFi setup. The problem was, is I don't have any cell phone service at my house. So by the time I go outside, I've lost the Bluetooth connection. So I ended up actually using a different phone that I have in a different carrier and, that i'm borrowing to make this work it's it's a work phone, so that was slightly frustrating because when signed into the ubiquity account and i had already reset it when i learned this and i don't have any cell phone service i had to go outside where i have 5g and then i had to sign in then i had to run in the house get my mfa off the other phone then just a whole production so, wow long story short a bluetooth relay can help extend your bluetooth range at your house between different devices. So this would have solved my problem where I could have at least been upstairs, and had further Bluetooth range. And the SB board that I have does have the Bluetooth radio in it. So that's next. Wendy: [22:28] Can I install one on Magneto? Cause he has an issue with Bluetooth devices and them not working. Bill: [22:34] Yes. In fact, you could probably take the one that I have and we can make a little socket for it and put it right on his brain. Wendy: [22:41] Perfect. Bill: [22:42] And then he just has to think and it works. Elon Musk, I know how Neuralink works now. We're going to open source that. I mean, I've got YouTube and I'm sure I've got some tools around here. We know my eyesight's impeccable. And I can probably do this myself. If anybody objects, write into the show. Nate: [23:09] Write to Matt at. Wendy: [23:12] Yes. Yes, definitely. Bill: [23:15] Matt, since you're not here, as a majority, we have volunteered you for said project. So you're more than welcome to stop by here. And like I said, I've got plenty of tools. I've got not so quite perfect eyesight and some YouTube videos. We'll be fine. And I have more than enough things to knock you out. You won't even know when we're done. You won't even know it's there. It'll just work. Wendy: [23:36] Yeah. Bill: [23:37] The actual interesting part I've found as I've been working with the SB32 system is that it tends to be faster than a lot of the store brand bot devices. And even the ones that don't talk out to the cloud that simply just use a direct Wi-Fi or Zigbee or Z-Wave connection, a home assistant, it just feels like there's less bloat, less junk, less stuff. And so I really want to learn more of this. The only thing I don't have, and I'm not sure if I'm going to get one, is a 3D printer to make my own enclosures. Wendy: [24:12] Ooh. Bill: [24:14] I don't really have a place to put a 3D printer. I don't really have a justification for a 3D printer unless I really get into this. Nate: [24:21] Right. Just over your shoulder. Yeah. Right there. Bill: [24:28] Oh. Wendy: [24:28] I'm pretty sure one could, yeah, go right there. Nate: [24:30] I see spot for at least three. That's how I see it. Bill: [24:35] And I have Ethernet jacks in that wall, too, but we won't talk about that. It's not there. Nate: [24:39] Ethernet jacks? Bill: [24:41] We won't talk about the fact that there's power and Ethernet on that wall behind me, ready to accept... Nate: [24:46] 3D printers. Bill: [24:47] 3D printers or whatever else, because when this particular space flooded a number of years ago and I had to have the whole room reframed and redone, I went a little overboard with the Ethernet cabling. And I won't tell you how many ports are in this room, but let's just say way, way too many. Wendy: [25:03] That sounds absolutely lovely. Yeah. Bill: [25:06] It's wonderful because my home lab is on the other side of that wall that none of you can see. Bill: [25:12] But on top of the SB32 stuff, I have decided to start tinkering around with some security software. And in my line of work, we oftentimes encounter something called SIM or SEAM, products. And they're basically security analysis tools. So SEAM or SIM just means security information and event management. And I said, there's got to be an open source version of this. I found one called Waza or Waza, whatever you want to call it. There's a link in the show notes for it. And so far it's pretty neat. I've only had it here running a couple of days. I'm just getting to know it. But so far, I'm pretty impressed with what yet again, open source is capable of doing. And I thought, okay, let's extend this a little bit. So now I've got this silo for Waza running. I have Libre NMS that does some network monitoring for me. And then I've got gray log that assesses some other logging functions. Now there is a way to integrate the system logs, or I'm sorry, there is a way to integrate the information that comes out of Waze into Libri NMS as a system log monitor. So there's a way to kind of start aggregating and compiling that data into one dashboard. And I haven't quite gotten it to work, I'm still monkeying with it. Bill: [26:35] And then using gray logs somewhere in between. Now, the problem with gray log is that if you're not careful with it, you get inundated with the logs. You get inundated with information to where it becomes not quite useful because you can't find the useful bits that you actually need. So when I roll out a logging system for somebody, I ask them, what's the purpose of this? What are you actually trying to know? And what are you actually trying to alert on? Because to me, those are two different things. What do you want to look for? What do you want to be notified about? So that's like flipping through the TV, finding a channel you like and saying, oh, hey, there's a James Bond movie on. I'll sit here and watch that. Versus a notification saying, hey, your favorite movie is on another channel. Do you want to go watch that instead? So i always like to tell people there's two layers of that there's the things you want to, know about on your time and there's the things that need to be notified to you so, that can be a little daunting if you're not careful in gray log prometheus grafano all these different aggregation and graphing tools can be really really fun, and you can spend hours and hours and hours making them look neat but at the end of the day it's about, making sure that you You have the information that you need when you need it. So as I play around more with the three systems working together, I'm going to dial it in smooth enough. And if I remember, I'll put it on this thing called Git that I've long forgotten how to use. Bill: [28:04] Or I'll put it up on the sudo show Git account when I actually make it, which I need to do that as well. That's for another day. Nate: [28:12] Have you looked at Mesh Central? Bill: [28:18] I've heard of it, and I looked it up, and then I forgot about it until now, and I'm going to look at it again. Nate: [28:26] Super easy to deploy. Bill: [28:28] Where would that fit in with this stack? Nate: [28:31] So that would be like your patch management layer. Bill: [28:38] I sort of control all of that through Ansible right now. Nate: [28:42] Okay. Well, maybe it doesn't help you. Bill: [28:45] But i'm intrigued because this may be something i could teach to others. Nate: [28:49] So what i think is neat about it and i'm not ready to go into detail on, linux out loud about this but so i'm i'm i was looking for a solution to manage, you know because hey you know computers and then once you say yes it's like um uh. Nate: [29:14] Vortex that pulls you into things and i have a hard time saying no so it's like well how can i say yes without increasing my technical liability to an extent that causes me, you know problems so what mesh central does is it it combines like, you know for instance at at my at work we use ninja one i don't want to spend ninja one prices for doing hash management you know getting all the statistics for machines and everything else so because you can get active like you know it's a cpu usage ram usage all that fun stuff and so i want to have those metrics so if i see something as is, crazy on somebody else's computer i can just see that they're crazy on their computer you know i can have it's just a it's a data point right, it's like well why is my computer so slow well what did you do at noon, like oh well i you know whatever they can actually dig into logs whatever so that combined with the, security information and event management portion of it and the extended data detection and response act uh portion of it you can then, you know also do other mediations you know do a remote login or actually do like terminal into it I know that's Windows you can do fan line. Bill: [30:25] All right, let me throw one back at you then. Since you're designing, since you're technically designing an RMM or remote monitoring and management solution in all of this, I'm going to throw one more at you. I'm going to give you the complete, this is how you're going to complete your package. Apache Guacamole. Nate: [30:44] Yes, but Apache Guacamole, that functionality, Mesh Central can do. Bill: [30:50] Some of, it. It can log you into, it can connect you to other workstations? Nate: [30:57] Yes. So I tested it, and it works pretty well. VNC connections are, of course, a little bit what they are. But RDP connections, what it actually uses on the back end for doing the screen sharing portion of it, you can do that as well. And that actually works remarkably well, actually. Even in Plasma, it works pretty well, too, with the RDP connection. Um so and it happens all and it. Bill: [31:29] Happens. Nate: [31:30] All like like guacamole apache guacamole it happens all in the in the in a window so there's not an additional application wherever you have to install it's all happening within within the window. Bill: [31:39] I'm checking this out now i'm trying to see if there's any screenshots of this, this is actually really well written it's not been updated in a bit but it's still worth looking at very impressive nate thank you for this. Nate: [31:54] Hey no problem so my challenge right now is where do i for me where do i deploy that and how do i properly secure it so that i don't have, you know problems. Bill: [32:11] Do you see this nvme drive nate. Nate: [32:15] Oh is that what you can do to me. Bill: [32:16] It was an nvme drive this could be you it was an nvme drive that literally burnt out, and i didn't label it as burnt out so i kept plugging it in and cursing at myself why does this stupid drive work and then because i left my labeler at work and i wasn't going to go get another one so then i just said well nobody's going to need this no, problem solved um. Nate: [32:42] Did how did that did all the little blue smoke come out of it when you did that. Bill: [32:47] No but the problem it wasn't plugged in but when I broke it all the data fell out and therefore it became lighter gosh. Nate: [32:59] It's true. That's a good reach for that one. Wendy: [33:05] Reference to earlier this year. Bill: [33:07] Go check out that episode of Linux Out Loud where Nate goes- Whichever. Wendy: [33:11] One it is, I'll go dig through the show notes and try to figure out which one that was. Bill: [33:16] Nate will never live that down. Nate: [33:19] No, it was a very silly day. Wendy: [33:22] I mean, every single day that builds on is a very silly day. What do you mean? Nate: [33:27] I bring. Bill: [33:29] Calm sanity and professionalism to this show. Nate: [33:35] So what I mean by silly is that sent me down a spiraling rabbit hole that kept me up way later than I should have been. Wendy: [33:45] And resulted in an article on cubicle. Nate: [33:48] Night.com and way past the time I should have taken my teeth out I'm just saying. Bill: [33:53] There's still a little oatmeal on your chin buddy. Nate: [33:59] It's way past. Wendy: [33:59] Your bedtime there dude. Nate: [34:01] It is i'm about to crack open a can of geritol here. Bill: [34:08] But speaking of less is more wendy you've had quite an adventure lately with, the vast vast world that is the arch user repository or aur and that has been all over the news. And I think our friend, Michael Tunnell covered it and some other shows covered it. And I'd love to hear what happened. Cause I know you've used arch or derivatives for a long time. So did any of this affect you? What did you have to do to work around this? Or did you find a different solution? Wendy: [34:40] Well, fortunately, like I do pull a few things when using, cause Manjaro, you've known all of you, like you've listened to the show for a long time. I haven't known that Manjaro has really been my home, my Linux home for a long time. Wendy: [34:55] And, um, I woke up one morning and I've got a friend that lives, you know, on the other side of the world. And when I woke up, I woke up to a message that was like, Hey, Hey, you are blown up. Have you seen this yet? And I was like, crap, no, but thank you. So I started digging into it. And obviously what has happened with this issue is that people were coming in, taking orphaned packages, claiming them, inserting this malware, and then sending them out. So people are like, oh, yeah, this package isn't orphaned anymore. And I wasn't using any packages that were orphaned on my system. So it wasn't something that I was directly affected by. But it's not something that I wanted to risk. Not only was my system running it, but my kids' gaming system was running it, and my daughter's laptop was also running Manjaro. And so my husband's like, hey, you want to go kayaking? And I was like, no, I get to spend this Saturday completely redoing my desktop and my laptop. Yay, I'm so excited. And I jumped from Manjaro to Fedora 44 is what I'm currently on. And, um. Wendy: [36:13] I have a love-hate relationship with Fedora. And yes, you can tell Noel that, as well. I think we've had some of those conversations along the road. And I mean, for the most part, I absolutely love DNF. DNF is probably one of my favorite package managers of all time. But at the same time, you have to bring in, you still have to bring in those extra repositories, right? In order to have everything that I need to edit on this machine, I still have to bring in those extra repositories. And thankfully, getting DaVinci working isn't too bad on Fedora. If anybody wants to know how that works, I'm more than happy to share all of those files. But the biggest pain point for me is it comes with Wayland. Wendy: [37:00] So at one point, because I didn't have, I'm running an NVIDIA graphics card, right? I need all of the CUDA stuff. And I can't remember if I got, like, I think I'd gotten through an update. And then things slowed down. Like my web browser, the only way it would update is if I dragged it from one screen to the other. Couldn't even scroll it because wayland was having a conflict with the nvidia and all that and i was like, yeah super frustrated and i still get once i had all the proper drivers and it was fine i still get some glitches and hangs hangups with wayland that i don't get with x i'm currently, i did install x as well so i do have x as a session on this system um because sometimes i just can't deal with the glitches and slowdowns that I still get, with Wayland sometimes. I do have to have the proprietary drivers. I do have to have CUDA stuff installed. It's just things I need in order to get the work done. And that is sometimes where Wayland and NVIDIA have issues. But I noticed that now there's some things on Fedora that if I go to use them, like OBS... Wendy: [38:21] And some of the screen capture things that then if I'm not on Wayland, it doesn't work. But Orca Slicer is working, which it didn't used to. I used to have issues with Orca Slicer would open, but then it would just be blank. And that at this point has been fixed. I am using the Flatpak version of Orca Slicer, favorite slicer, by the way. So that's currently what I'm running is that I've had a few printer issues with my Epson printers. I have to manually go pull the driver from Epson. Cups is pretty good as far as the drivers go. But with my particular large format Epson printer, if I want to be able to use large format, I need those official drivers in order to get all of that to work. And I do rely on the scanner. So then I have to manually go pull in and install those official drivers. But for the most part, it's been pretty smooth. Wayland and I are figuring things out. Bit of a rocky relationship, but we're getting there. Bill: [39:33] Something to note. Have you ever checked out Ultramarine Linux? Wendy: [39:38] No, I have not. Bill: [39:40] So Ultramarine is interesting because they are part of, and correct me if I'm wrong here, I believe it's the Open Game Collaborative or Open Gaming Foundation. And I happen to know several of the maintainers and founders of the Ultramarine Project. And I know for a fact that they're actively working on resolving these sorts of issues. So it might be kind of the best of both worlds for you where you're getting the Wayland stuff working out of the box just because they're trying to tailor this towards gamers, creators, people like that. You should check out that distribution if you want to know more and maybe, just maybe, it's a pragmatic tool for you. Wendy: [40:23] So it is still based on Fedora then is what it looks like. Okay. I do like that. I like how…, Fedora isn't necessarily cutting edge, but I think they're definitely more on top of updates than say something like an Ubuntu base is everything is light years ahead of Debian. Bill: [40:46] But you didn't even bring up Slackware. Wendy: [40:50] Well i mean it slackware is not one that i've personally used actually i've never actually personally used devian either i have played with some of the ubuntu based systems, and the the one friend of mine is on mint and and talks mint up all the time and i was half tempted to switch there but they don't have a plasma desktop and i was like no can't do that and one of the reasons, why I personally wouldn't go to Ubuntu base anymore is because I don't want snaps. I have had a worse time with snaps than I have had with Wayland. And so that's just not a road that I want to go down, especially if I'm in the middle of trying to get a job done and something going on. I don't want to be like, oh my gosh, why are these things not talking? Why do I have to... And I use flat packs on a pretty regular basis. I've got several flat packs, on this system. I just have had... So far really really bad experiences with snap and if it wasn't a production system then i'd be willing at this point to to throw it on something and play with it but not something that is a production system and i will definitely look more into this, ultramarine and check it out. Bill: [42:03] They have a. Wendy: [42:04] Plasma edition it has to i i can't at this point i can't live without plasma i know everybody has their own like favorite desktop environment and mine is definitely Plasma and there's certain like tools and settings inside of it now, that I have to have they they are just, ultimately part of my everyday workflow anymore so Plasma Edition and if I throw it on anything it'll probably be my, workstation my mobile workstation laptop first and kind of see what's going on with it. And then after that, be able to, to move it onto my main desktop, The hardest thing is it takes time, right? I've got enough going on with different projects that to just throw another system on anymore is hard. The days of just being able to distro hop are kind of out the window because I was like, oh, you know, I actually have stuff that people are expecting me to have done on time. Wendy: [43:07] And and part of the reason why i picked up a new keyboard here a few weeks ago so so here it is right now this is my new my new keyboard. Nate: [43:20] Oh you didn't have it really. Wendy: [43:21] Like. Nate: [43:22] Color dance though but i like it looks hot. Wendy: [43:25] It yeah literally um. Wendy: [43:29] Um one of the reasons why i picked this up because my my old cooler master i still loved it even though some of the lights had gone out, but the meta key stopped working. And I'm one of those people that launches the menu with the meta key and then just type what I want, right? Meta key, what do I want? Pops up. So we were having to use the Alt F1, which was a pain in the butt. I had trained Magneto to like use MediKey and just open whatever he wants. Right. And then he was like, why isn't this working? And I'm like, I don't know. It's not working. And the biggest downside of that Cooler Master keyboard is the switches aren't hot swappable. So you'd have to completely dismantle the keyboard, desolder it, and then put a new key in it. And obviously that takes time. And so I picked this one up. It's RK Royal Kluge is the name of the brand. It does have the hot stoppable switches. One thing that I wish this one did have was the tactile switches. It has what they're calling their cream linear switch. It's not wanting to focus. There we go. So it comes with some extra one of these and they're not bad, really. They're not bad. I don't mind them. The key caps sound nice when they hit the bottom. It does have a nice sound to it, but I miss that tactile feedback. I don't miss the sound of the blues. It was one of the things that after I bought it, I was like. Wendy: [44:58] I should have went with the browns. It didn't have the click, but still the tactile. And I do miss that. Yes, I have fully actuated the switch without having to have the switch bottom out. So if I was to get a new keyboard again, which I might, I really didn't pay that much for this keyboard at all. It would just be to then throw this one in as a backup and have those tactile switches again. Otherwise, I mean, because it's hot swappable, I could just buy a set of tactile switches, but then I have to have time to take it apart and put all the switches back in. So we'll see what happens. But I do like the fact that it comes with extra switches, as I am known to spill things on my keyboard. So it happens when when you essentially live at your desk. Yeah, it happens. It happens. But I like it. I will I will drop a link in the show notes for the one that I picked up. And obviously still on the hardware side of things. I've also been looking at the UPSs this week and Nate recommend APC. Is that what they are? Bill: [46:13] Yes, APC, a Schneider power, but I'll caution you. Not all APCs are made the same. They have different tiers of models and some of the lower tiers will give you trouble sooner than you expect. Meaning like the inverter will go and all of a sudden your UPS will fail, not at the battery, but at the device itself. So I would just caution you against that. You're using this to protect your most sensitive equipment. Wendy: [46:40] Right. Bill: [46:41] So I generally tell people, think of this as almost an insurance policy and it only takes one nasty bit of power to cause a massive disruption. And I remember having a problem when I worked at a school with another brand where I had bought in their lower end line. And every so often, the UPSs would just trip. Now, I didn't have any power blips. I didn't have any... Strange, weird activity going on, but I had no logging either. So the UPSs would just trip and then fail. And all right, go get another one, throw it in, it would trip and fail. And finally I had enough of this and I had four of the big rack mount 2U heavy, duty units and they're not light or easy to really replace in and out of a rack. So I finally got fed up. I bought four new ones from APC. I bought a higher end one, spent the money on it. And then something interesting happened. I was able to figure out that the entire leg of power feeding my server room was bad. Wendy: [47:49] Oh. Bill: [47:50] Because the UPSs would say we're on actual battery power. And because I had them plugged into devices that could grab the logs from them, either through USB or through the network, I was able to see, oh, there's voltage drops down from 120 to like 105 or 104 or even 99 at some points, which would then cause the UPSs to trip. We had an electrician come. He found a problem in the lines going to that room. That was all resolved. And then that didn't happen again. So you want to get ones where... You know, at least it's going to be built well. And I highly recommend hooking it up to either a Raspberry Pi or your NAS, or something with it's got the PCs in the back have either a USB type B plug, or they'll have a, Ethernet looking jack that then has USB cable on the other side. And you look at go, I don't need this and throw it out. Don't throw that out. Actually, your NAS, your Synology NAS will support email alerts and tell you if it goes on battery power. Wendy: [48:56] Ooh, that would be good to know. Bill: [48:58] Yeah. So if you're at a robotics competition and you're, let's say, printing something at home, you're running your 3D printer and you happen to have a power blip, then NAS will tell you, Wendy NAS is now running on battery power. And then when the power comes back on, it will say, Wendy NAS is now running on main power again. So it's just a matter of setting up your email alerts and plugging that in. If you use TrueNAS, you use a QNAP, you use a Raspberry Pi. There's many different tools to interface with that. I've used APC UPSD. I've used NUT. There's a million different ways to make that work, but that's a really neat tool that a lot of people forget that you can actually grab helpful metrics. And Nate, to our discussion about ever cool things in Home Assistant, I have created a HomeLab dashboard, which I need to update. But at one point it was telling me what all four UPSs were doing in my rack, and how much power each UPS was actually consuming. And then calculating that against my electric rate bill. And then poof, I would know per day, per month, exactly how much my home lab cost to run per UPS. Wendy: [50:10] Wow. That is very cool information. And it's neat to see that you in the work environment, Nate in his home environment, and then the Discord in general, like the overwhelming consensus was APC, when it comes to, UPS for backup. So I'd be curious as to like what models particularly you recommend, because essentially I would like to have. Bill: [50:41] I'll put one in the show notes of the one that I always recommend for a setup like yours, the rock solid. The thing you do have to be mindful of is the batteries inside are lead acid usually, and they do have a finite life. So I always tell people whether it's working or not at three years, replace it because you don't want to find out the hardware. Wendy: [51:00] On a cycle. Nate: [51:01] Lead acid batteries are 100% recyclable. So you're there. Wendy: [51:06] There's actually a battery recycle place not too far from me. So that's where I could actually take them to have them recycled. They'll pay you to recycle them. Which is kind of nice. So that part is good. That part is good to know. So what I eventually decided that at least the first UPS would be my desktop tower and at least one of my four monitors. I'm a little worried about like if I had a render or something going right, I wasn't wanting to power all four monitors at the same time just so I could get as much battery extended from it as possible if we're recording well then of course like, my camera system would go, down and then i would like to keep my wi-fi up so i'd like my my wi-fi on a separate ups essentially just so that, if something happened right there there's still that is up and running, obviously i do have 5g at home so that's not terrible but like i said in the middle of a recording nate has actually recorded at home without power, like altogether before, like power has gone out during a show and we're like, Hey, we should probably wrap this up. And he's like, yeah, my UBS is about to die. So we should probably wrap this up. Wendy: [52:27] Well, we were able to finish the show. Right. And right now I can't, and we couldn't even get a show out this last week because it was down. So at least two would be necessary just to keep this system up and running. That's not including keeping the 3D printers running or anything like that. So I know it's something I need to get. The biggest downside of getting not only one, but two is they're not inexpensive devices, right? Bill: [52:59] They're not inexpensive. And the other thing you have to be careful of is you don't want to max out the power draw on the UPS. Wendy: [53:07] Right. Bill: [53:07] There's two... Issues that you'll have so for instance in this room if i turn on my laser printer even though my ups isn't plugged into it the ups still gets unhappy because of the power draw of the laser printer, If you plug in a Hydra device into the APC, such as a 3D printer, a laser printer, you may risk popping it. Wendy: [53:33] Does that include just on the, because there's the battery backup side and then there's the search protector side for a lot of these. Does that include like, them all together or just the battery backup side? Bill: [53:48] I never, as a rule, plug in any of those devices into that kind of UPS. And the reason being is that for some reason, by some accident, you can plug it into the wrong side and cause a major problem later. So I avoid all of that altogether. And I'll use separate devices for those high draw things. Because again, it's not necessarily with the device running. So a computer, monitor, tower, fine. It kind of keeps a consistent power draw. Maybe you're gaming and it goes up a little bit. Wendy: [54:19] But when- Or rendering, right, yeah. Bill: [54:21] Or even rendering it, that's a pretty predictable curve. But when you tell a laser printer or a 3D printer start a job and all those motors and everything starts heating up, it's a massive spike. And sometimes it just can't support the shock of that. Wendy: [54:36] Okay, that's interesting. So would a 3D printer be the same thing or no, because it's got a slow, more gradual heat up time? Bill: [54:46] I don't know because every 3D printer is different and I'm not an electrician, so I don't have the attention capacity to sit there and math it all out. I just say, printer, yeah, no, not going to do that. Wendy: [55:00] I would be curious on our 3D printer to put some sort of power draw measurement on it and do see what it does pull when it's doing a print and heating up and all of that stuff. Bill: [55:13] I could get a smart plug, plug your 3D printer into it. And as long as that smart plug supports reporting or data grabbing, you can ingest that into Home Assistant pretty easily. And it will tell you over a certain period of time what your power draw was just for that smart plug. Wendy: [55:32] Okay. Bill: [55:33] And that's a good quick way to measure, okay, over a week, I noticed that every time I printed even a different type of filament, maybe it heated higher than it did for something else. Wendy: [55:45] And that's i mean some do obviously depending on what you're printing but you do have certain materials that have to be printed hotter or or cooler especially if i'm doing the the nylon carbon fiber that that is definitely a higher heat print in general, it's definitely more susceptible to if things aren't i wouldn't say necessarily like perfect it's printed okay um as far as that goes, there's some that are more tricky than than others when it comes to temperature but yeah it's definitely something that has to be higher, higher heat in general so i would be interested, to see what that what that power draw is like when it happens and i know like when my my starlink first starts out um, wherever it is over there, when it first starts out it does have a higher spike like when it starts up and I can't remember exactly what those numbers are because I have looked at it when I was doing some of the research here that this previous week was, you know, what, what does that all look like? And as it's connecting and figuring out where it is in space and what satellites are available and getting its acquisition, it definitely does have a higher draw, but I don't think one, like a laser printer, that would be all of that, disruptive in comparison. Bill: [57:07] One more pro tip for you when you're hooking up the UPS for the first time, the battery does not come connected. So you'll need to look at the instructions, put the UPS down on its side, and there's a little tab to open the cover up on the side. Wendy: [57:23] Okay. Bill: [57:23] And you'll see two plugs. And obviously you want to do this when it's not plugged into the wall, but go ahead and plug those two cables together. That's what connects the battery to the device. Wendy: [57:33] Okay. Bill: [57:33] Put that side back on, plug it into the wall, turn it on, and you're good to go. Wendy: [57:37] Sweet. Bill: [57:38] Because otherwise you'll say, I'm not getting anything out of the battery. What's going on with it? Well, it's because you didn't hook it up. Wendy: [57:42] Yeah, what's wrong? What's wrong? Bill: [57:44] And it won't be necessarily intuitive where it is, but it does tell you in the instructions you need to hook up the battery first. I can tell you that on the one that I linked, which is the kind of the gold standard I use everywhere, you just lay it on its side, you kind of push down and forward with the cover and you're able to hook that up really easily and you're up and running in a matter of minutes. Wendy: [58:09] So I think the model that you linked is exactly the same one that, in my AI conversations is the one that's also been the most recommended. Bill: [58:25] And I also like the fact that there's USB-A and USB-C on the front of it, too. So it just makes it convenient if you need to charge a phone or a tablet or other device that uses one of those types of connections. Wendy: [58:37] Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. That is super handy. Bill: [58:41] That does have the data port on the back as well. So you can plug that into your, we'll call it monitoring system of choice, whether that's your NAS or a Pi or something else. Wendy: [58:52] Or something, yeah. Bill: [58:53] And then get nice, cool reporting metrics of, hey, I was trying to do a robotic show in California and my power kept flickering on and off, on and off, on and off. So I was able to SSH into my desktop because I have a Ubiquiti remote 5G hookup. So I was able to easily connect to my house and gracefully take a backup of my desktop real quick and then shut it down gracefully. Wendy: [59:20] Yeah. Yeah. Which for the most part, I turn my computer off when I'm done with it. It rarely stays on sleep mode just because I like to have it completely powered off. But yes, that would be a good... Feature to have as well when when i'm away from home. Nate: [59:37] Just had one thought so i don't know about your 3d printer but the uh she d that i used qidi max three max whatever it's called, it does tell me moment power draw, on there for what it's caught drawing for heat and everything else, so i know that that's i don't know if i know you have clipper and it uses clipper i believe as well so you may be able to pull some of those metrics because the board actually knows what yeah it might be but that won't tell you a total that also won't tell you but you might clipper might have a way to export that information and log it, as well it's just a thought i was just thinking as you're talking about all Nate: [1:00:14] these different solutions i'm thinking oh and anyway has that information. Wendy: [1:00:18] Yeah a lot a lot a lot a lot to think about when it when it comes to that and part of the reason another reason why i need this is not only to do shows, um it's because one of the jobs that i have picked up recently is to do a driver's ed orientation. And I thought when I'm doing it, because I do it from home, I'm doing it for another state. This system can't go down. And then at the same time, Firefox has been my favorite browser. It's my favorite browser of all time for a long time for many different reasons. Wendy: [1:00:55] And you can, I have been using the vertical tabs. I like the vertical tabs and you can make them go away. You can put it in full screen mode, but it literally has to be in full screen. And when I'm doing these presentations for others, Firefox just hasn't been the best because I need to have that window overall smaller because I've got the base presentation in the back. But sometimes I need to do stuff in the browser as part of that presentation. And Firefox just doesn't have it, right? I can't have it full screen and see everything in the back. And so I started doing some digging like browser wise where can I go from here and the first one I came across was Vivaldi and I'd never actually played with it before, and one thing that it did have is you could have it minimized but essentially like in full screen mode and so as you're doing a presentation and showing things you can have your tabs gone unfortunately for Vivaldi they're like off to the right-hand side and I've gotten so used to them being on the left-hand side in Firefox that I'd go over there and I was like oh no that's bookmarks and stuff and then go back over and there were the tabs but for the most part like, it looked good um it it did essentially what I needed it to um. Wendy: [1:02:19] But I wanted I wanted my tabs back on the right hand side. And so I did some more more digging and came across Zen browser like I've heard it before. I've heard it talked about on other channels and other like Linux people's stuff. But I was like, I'm not messing with any of that. I am so happy with Firefox that unless it's something like Pyrex, where I have to go to a Chrome base or in this case, Video Ninja, because of the things that Firefox doesn't allow, then yes, I still have to go to a Chrome-based browser, but. Wendy: [1:02:56] I just hadn't even touched it until I needed it for this specific application again. And so Zen is based on Firefox. It has still the vertical tabs that can be on the left hand side and they can disappear for you. It has this other really cool feature that I've been loving where you have, I can't remember what it calls it. It's quick panel or quick dial panel that's up on that side. So there's tabs and then my quick dial tabs or stuff that I use frequently. And it gets out of the way. It completes, it gets out of the way. You can change it from the full screen mode with a control S and you can have your tabs back and that kind of stuff. Or you can have it in this essentially full screen mode all the time. And I like it so much, especially with the way that it does workspaces. So I have like my specific workspace tab with all of my different things I need to quickly access and then one for, work, which I can have the files that I need to get to the different things that I need to hit with different orientation. And the best thing is, is it's just little like circles at the bottom and I can jump back and forth between the different workspaces without having to start a new version of Zen browser. Wendy: [1:04:22] I have absolutely loved it. It's actually, after this, it's become my full-time. Yep, it is based on Firefox, and it's now become my full-time browser. Vivaldi is based on Chrome. Zen is based on Firefox. Nate: [1:04:41] Gotcha. Okay. Bill: [1:04:42] I've never heard of this until now. And I'm reading about it. This is really interesting. Wendy: [1:04:46] I've, like I said, I love it. I love the features that it has. I love the way that it works. It's super fast and snappy. And then I will take, Oh, that's the other thing I didn't like is Vivaldi. Like all of the other Chrome based browsers, they have that feature that in producing this show and other things that I use all the time, which is the right click, and screen capture or screenshot inside of a firefox-based browser, that i was also missing so in this way if i go to take screenshots for a show, using zen there is nothing else in the way in order to make sure that i get that full website that i need those screenshots for the scrolling, yeah yeah that's how i get the scrolling is because firefox lets you do that you can right click and say hey just what I can see or take the full page sometimes the full page is so big that I actually have to break it up into parts or else Da Vinci is like, it's too much you can't scroll all the way to the top or the bottom you've reached your max, the y coordinates doesn't work so some some do have to be broken into shots but yeah that's how I get those like long scrolling movements, inside of the show is because Firefox and all of its amazingness lets you do that. And now it's that much better in Zen. Nate: [1:06:12] You know, I got to say, this is something I'm going to try Zen again. I did try it in the past and it was okay, but I didn't like, I just liked how Firefox, the interaction of Firefox better. The Zen team seems a little foreign in some of it. But if it works for you, great. Maybe just it clicks a few. Wendy: [1:06:30] Yeah, and I think for some people's workflow, it might be a little too much. I do. I like the way that the top bar and the side of navigation all gets out of the way. And like I said, I have now customized the side. So all of the stuff that I need to get to on a regular basis, my calendar, my email, all of those things are just a click right there in the top. So it's like having a bookmark, but instead of having this bookmarks bar across the top, it's off to the side. My only downside of Zen in general is that yes, you can use Firefox sync for your regular bookmarks and your passwords and that sort of stuff. Like though all of my passwords are actually saved in Bitwarden. Nate: [1:07:17] Yeah. Wendy: [1:07:19] It does. It does. Yes, it does work for that. But the different workspaces that I've set up don't transfer from install to install. So if you do a fresh install or whatnot, that is the downside. All of that needs set back up again. And I wish there was a way to say, hey, I do want this to sink. Otherwise, it's been working pretty gosh dang good for me. It kind of helps with my ADHD distraction stuff because everything is off the side. Another thing that it does, so if you click on a link and it would normally open up a new tab, instead of opening the new tab, you've got like this hover window, on top and you can interact with that and just click it away or you can actually click the one side button and expand it into a new tab and so say i'm i'm in a, a doc sort of situation i've got my list of documents i click on one i can open it up interact with it and then close it without it becoming its own tab yet. Nate: [1:08:33] My my son he actually really likes his end browser i don't think it's for the same reasons but that's one that he's also been using because it's firefox based you know like that and then um, but i i don't know i maybe maybe i my inner being doesn't like zen like just the idea of zen that could be it maybe. Wendy: [1:08:53] You're just not a zen kind. Nate: [1:08:55] Of no i think i like i think i think i like to um stoke the flame of the inner adhd in me, but i'm really interested in the whole idea of like workspaces within the browser that I find just really fascinating to me. Wendy: [1:09:15] So Firefox does have workspaces too, and you can choose a workspace. Like if you start setting them up, you can choose a workspace when you say, hey, open up Firefox, which is nice. Wendy: [1:09:29] But at the same time, it's nice to be able to switch between workspaces. So I was helping my husband with something here the other day, and I had things going on in my workspace. And then inside his he had some other stuff that that he was had going on, and that just kept all of those tabs separate now currently if a tab is open and I close down then if I open it back up then those tabs are still going to be there they're not loaded yet you can click them and reloaded but it saves where you are, which for me is really nice because I got to the point that hey I'm researching something. Wendy: [1:10:06] And then I drop these tabs into bookmarks and then I forget that I have them there and I go refine them again anyway. In this case, I can just drop all those in a folder and then if I want to load them back up, I can reload them up. And if I don't want them anymore, I can delete that folder and they're gone or whatnot. Or in the case of the work-related thing, I usually can have like three classes in orientation at the same time. And so I need their attendance and their drive schedule and all of that stuff pulled. I don't want to do that like right before. I want to be able to, hey, when I've got some time, take some time, load that all up. I can close it, go do whatever I need to. When orientation is about to start, can load that back up, reload the tabs and we're good to go. I can have everything pre-done early and then I'm off and running. So it's been really nice. Wendy: [1:11:03] I would say that I'm kind of wishing I would have played with it earlier. Nate: [1:11:11] That's really neat. I guess I need to probably go in and play with it again, and test those features out to really... In my mind, I'm thinking, wow, that sounds, like extra steps, but maybe it's not with using the workspaces the way you are. I think I literally just break them up into workspaces but I mean. Wendy: [1:11:41] Yeah. Yeah. So this way I've got, I've got the three workspaces down at the bottom. So I have the, what I would call the default one. I've actually have it. My, my husband's name. So if there's stuff he's doing or looking up then, cause he's been looking up a lot of parts recently. We traded my dad vehicles, a flatbed pickup we had for a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee that he had. It's going to be the new like desert vehicle. You go, we can go Baja out here through the desert and doing stuff, the play vehicle. And he's been fixing that up recently. It's had some wiring and door stuff that it's needed. And so he's been doing research on parts. And the nice thing is, is he can pull open the browser and in his specific workspace, find whatever he needs to do. And then, okay, now I'm sitting down at the computer. I can switch over to my workspace, not have to mess with his tabs. They're already there. They're saved. I'm not going to accidentally close anything and then do the things that I need to do. Then I have the separate workspace that's specifically for that job where it's got the folders lined out, the things that I always need to touch on that are always there. And then the things that I need to open for those specific classes, I can do it, throw them in the folders and it's ready to go whenever I start class. Wendy: [1:13:07] I think I like this so much that I'm pretty sure this is how I'm going to or what I'm going to install on the kids is main desktop. And each one of them gets their own workspace for the same reason. So for school, that way, if they're in their workspace for because, you know, you still have to use Google for some of the stuff that they're they're doing and the file sharing that they need to. It can be logged into their specific account because I know one of the struggles that we run into is it's like okay, I need to share this file but it's logged into so and so's other school account and I can't get this shared through yeah, it can become a mess and and the switching accounts and which one's dominant, this it just takes care of all of it it just takes care of all of it you're in your workspace you do your thing submit whatever you need to and then, somebody else they go to use the computer they jump into their workspace and it's logged into the stuff that, that they need without having double accounts on there that cause conflicts. Nate: [1:14:15] You know there's just not to backtrack a little but like i've tried vivaldi a few. Wendy: [1:14:19] Times. Nate: [1:14:20] And i don't know if it's a problem with me but it almost feels too like i know it's probably built for a specific user And I don't think I'm that specific user. Wendy: [1:14:30] I didn't mind it. To be honest, I really didn't mind Vivaldi. My biggest complaint about them is somehow when setting it up the first time, I got signed up for their newsletters. And they are annoying. They are annoying with newsletters. They show up every single flippin' day. And I was like, unsubscribe. Yeah. I don't, I don't need more junk mail. I've got, I've got a ton of it. If I want to know more about your browser, like I'd installed it in the first place. If I want to know more, I'll go find out more. Like stop feeling my inbox with, browser newsletters. I know I've never done Brave. Brave is not one I've ever actually played with. Um, I'd use Vivaldi again. I just would make sure that like stay away from the newsletters. Bill: [1:15:28] I made sure when I started with Vivaldi that I never had that problem. I never, ever had newsletter issues with them. And I remove, the first thing I do when I install a new browser is I remove all their default bookmarks that they like to include. Firefox is just as guilty of this. Wendy: [1:15:45] Oh, 100%. Yeah. Bill: [1:15:47] Undo all of that. And another way you can kind of get around that is if you're a fan or you use email aliases. So if I'm signing up for something and I don't really want to get spammed, I'll make an alias in my Proton account that I can undo at any time. And then I can just log in and reactivate it if I need to for logging into a service. But a couple of ways to get around that. Wendy: [1:16:14] I do use aliases in my mail fence, but they're more related to hate specific things that I want. I want stuff to go to. And then the nice thing about mail fence, I don't know if Proton does it too, but where I've got the paid subscription to them. If I own a website, right, and you have to prove that you own it with different register things. But then I can have an email come to my account from my specific website that I already own. Bill: [1:16:49] Got it. Wendy: [1:16:51] So I can use that as an alias also still going to my MailFence account. So instead of having to have, because I know like a lot of like Namecheap, I mean Namecheap charges an absolute ton for their like individualized mailboxes per month. And I was like, I pay yearly for MailFence and it's included. I don't have to pay that same amount monthly in order to get that service. Wendy: [1:17:22] The downside is it comes just to me. It's not like a mailbox in which I can have other people accessing, but I do have an alias in which it's related to all three robotics teams. Then inside of MailFence, I've set it up that if any email comes in from that, address, it automatically forwards to the individual team addresses at the same time, so they all get a copy of it. Wendy: [1:17:48] That's going to wrap up the second attempt edition of Linux Out Loud. If you're hearing this, it means the light stayed on, the recording is saved, and my lack of UPS didn't leave everyone in the dark. Before you shut down for the night, double check your backups, your search protectors, and maybe schedule those big updates for a time when thunderstorms and editors are off duty. Share this episode with a friend whose power goes out at the worst possible moment kind of like mine and until next time may your system stay up your takes not need a third try laters everyone. Nate: [1:18:27] I say live dangerously. Wendy: [1:18:29] Live dangerously that's what i'm currently doing.