Because I get this question all the time. I can't
switch from Vim to Emacs because what if I'm
remote into some server that doesn't have Emacs?
It doesn't matter. You remote from your machine
that has Emacs on it from inside Emacs. And you
can still use your Emacs on this machine. And
I noticed that your headings in org mode are
bigger because I know a little bit about org
mode only. Is that a default thing in Emacs?
You can make the headings bigger? I don't know
if you have any thoughts on PewDiePie's video.
The headers of the table of contents and the
descriptions, these are all just part of the
literate config, the org document. I just want
to hear your thoughts on macOS. Let's go with
that first. So my thoughts on macOS is if I need
a terminal, I could do, in my case, space TV
as a key binding. I have to toggle on vterm.
vterm is one of the terminal emulators here inside
Emacs. And I assume you can also configure SSH
key -based authentication in Emacs, right? Sure.
You know, I'm pretty wordy as far as describing
things. Like I tell you, hey, this block, this
is what I'm doing, and that's why. Does it keep
growing exponentially once you reach a certain
point? Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember,
you know, really caring about my analytics in
the first two or three years. What are your thoughts
on Windows? Oh, so if I lose one of my three
storage servers, I have them here. Where are
they? VMs. These are my storage servers. Storage
one, two and three. Right. So I can lose one
of them and I can still keep it working. I know
I should be using something else like Seth. Yeah,
well, I retire from YouTube. I'm putting Debian
back on my computer. If you're listening to this
as a podcast, remember that it was originally
recorded as a video. If you're not following
along, you can go to my YouTube channel. My username
is Linkarzu. And if you want to support me to
keep this podcast going, you can donate in Ko
-fi. I'm going to leave a link in the description.
All right. So let's get started with this chapter
then. What do we have today? We have DT, Derek,
Mr. Tu on the call. How's it going, man? Man,
I'm doing just lovely. I'm on my third cup of
coffee this morning and I'm just trying to get
by. Appreciate you inviting me. We're going to
have a... I'm sure just a great conversation
about Linux, Mac, possibly some Windows talk.
Exactly. Yep. I have watched your videos, you
know, because when you look for Linux on YouTube,
what do you think shows up? A lot of folks show
up, but you show up most of the times, right?
I've made a lot of videos. I've spammed the YouTube
algorithm a little bit. When did you get started
with YouTube and why did that happen? I started
in October of 2017 with the DistroTube channel.
That was the first YouTube channel I'd ever had.
First time I ever made a video, period. I got
started making videos about Linux because there
wasn't a lot of Linux content back then. There
was some. But it was a much smaller space because
this was before there was no Steam on Linux back
then, which was a total game changer back when
that happened. There was a lot of the bigger
distributions that are around now, like Manjaro,
I think, was just getting started. Things like
that. Pretty much the only desktop Linux distribution
people really knew back then was Ubuntu. Still
very popular. But, you know, it was just much
smaller space. And a lot of the people that did
Linux content, the few that did, I didn't like
the way they did it because they didn't focus
necessarily on the free software and open source
software, you know, part of the Linux ecosystem.
Like, you know, they were just talking about
Linux like it's just another desktop operating
system, just like Windows and Mac. Like, no,
it's not really. You know, the philosophy behind
it all certainly is a much bigger part than necessarily
the technology, in my opinion. And a lot of people
didn't focus on that at all or they tried to
ignore it. And there were a lot of Linux content
creators that actively tried to downplay open
source. Like they didn't want to talk about it
that way because they thought that was a negative
thing, which I thought that's kind of weird.
So, you know, that was part of why I started
doing what I'm doing. Oh, when you started doing
the videos, then Linux wasn't too popular. It
wasn't as popular as it is now. We've probably,
I bet we've at least doubled our desktop market
share since then. Okay. It was smaller. Because
really, when you look at a lot of the numbers,
which you don't have any really reliable stats,
but if you look at... A global market share as
far as like with stat counter and things like
that. Or maybe around 4 % now. You don't know.
I know we weren't at 2 % though when I started.
I know that. We were under that number for sure.
Because we never had a rating above 2 % that
I can remember until just a few years ago. And
then it went pretty quickly from 2 to 3. And
pretty quickly from 3 to 4 now. So it's definitely.
There's a lot of reasons for that. Steam. was
a big reason. Uh, the steam deck now I think
is a big reason because obviously that's getting
factored into some of those figures. Um, so that
was, that was really a big deal was the gaming.
Okay. I see that you have around 264 ,000 subscribers,
um, 1600 videos. That's a lot. Um, What do you
talk about in your channel? Is it Linux only
or? As far as operating systems, it's Linux only
for the most part, because that's the only operating
system I use. It's the only operating system
I have used probably in 16 years, 18 years. It's
been a long time since I had a machine that ran.
Windows was what I was running before I moved
to Linux full time. I haven't used a Mac. I had
to use Macs in college, like computer labs and
things. That was in the 1990s. So it's not the
Mac you know. It's not modern Mac. So, yeah,
I don't know much about Mac OS these days. Okay.
Play with it in virtual machines. Same thing
with Windows. I've run Windows 11 and a VM a
time or two if I need to for whatever. If I need
to do something on camera, for example, because
sometimes I will do funny things with Windows
on camera. I spin up a virtual machine for that
typically. I had a call with Chasten. He has
a channel. He was called Tinkerbell Linux, I
think, and now he changed the name of his channel.
And he talked about this core utils, that they're
being rewritten. I know we're going somewhere
else right now, but what are your thoughts? I
haven't watched this video. What are your thoughts
there? He does not agree to that rewrite. Are
your thoughts the same? Well, it's just... There's
a group of developers that have rewritten the
GNU Core Utils using Rust. The GNU Core Utils,
of course, are written in C. I don't mind people
that rewrite things just because they're learning
a programming language. We all do it. We start
learning a language and we rewrite some simple
thing using that language. I don't mind that.
But when Linux distributions, especially big...
Server distributions, for example, like Ubuntu,
want to replace the core components of the operating
system for no reason. Why are you switching out
the core utils? That's like the major part of
the operating system, that and the kernel. I
mean, that's... I don't know. It's weird. Because
there's nothing wrong with the new core utils.
They're not switching because there's something
wrong with these core utils. I mean, the core
utils have been around for... 40 years, whenever
GNU first started back in the mid -1980s or whatever,
started working on what would be the operating
system. Nobody has ever complained and said,
oh, the GNU core utils, they're bad. We need
to swap them out. That's just weird. It's kind
of random. There's a vice president that works
at Canonical. He's a programmer. He's a fan of
Rust. And he wants to swap it out. Or reasons,
I don't know. Like, there's no real reason other
than he likes Rust. And that's it. It's like,
well, that's not a great reason to do that. Especially
these core utils that are written in Rust, they're
not 100 % drop -in replacement just yet. Some
of them still, when they test them, you know,
they still have failures. So it's not, there's
going to be some issues with it. You're not just
going to swap it out and it's going to, oh, magically
everything just works. Obviously, there's going
to be some breakage. So why go through that if
there's no real reason to go through that is
my thoughts. OK, there could be something, I
don't know, some hidden agenda there, conspiracy
theories. I don't know. I don't know what the
some of the conspiracy theories. I wouldn't say
it's a conspiracy theory, but the. Rust rewrite
of the core utils, the package is called the
uutils. It's licensed not under the GPL. It's
licensed, I believe, under the MIT license. I
could be wrong about that. Maybe the BSD license.
I think it's the MIT license. It's a permissive
license, though. It's not the GPL. And that's
a problem for some people. Because part of the
core component of our good news slash Linux operating
system is the fact that the core utils and the
kernel are all GPL software. And that's part
of why I think, in my opinion, why Linux has
lasted as long as it has, why it's become much
more popular in recent years on the desktop,
but obviously dominates the server space. And
a lot of that has to do with all of these millions
of contributors around the world over the years
that have contributed to the Linux kernel. And
the licensing is a big part of why they did that.
So we don't want to mess with that either. Again,
if something's working, you know, why mess with
it? Yeah, makes sense. Something out of topic.
I don't see a video here in your in your channel.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on PewDiePie's
video, which became. I haven't watched it. No.
I haven't watched it. It's not the kind of content
I would typically watch for fun. I know some
people wanted me to watch it just so I can make
a video about it, but I don't know. Just watching
somebody say, hey, I'm running Linux, that's
not something interesting to me. As far as PewDiePie,
though, I know he started... I've never watched
a single minute of any video of this guy, but
I know he's a gamer, right? I don't know. It
kind of makes sense why he kind of knows what
Linux is here with Steam and the Steam Deck.
It's not that unusual that somebody like him
has played with Linux a little bit. It's not
like some random person like your grandmother
tried Linux. It's somebody that's a complete
tech noob. I'm sure this guy, he can make Linux
work. It's not a shock that he's playing with
Linux. What are your thoughts on him bringing
a lot of users or people to Linux. Are you okay
with that? What do you think? I have no problems
with Linux getting popular. I know some people
actually do for whatever weird reason. But for
me, I don't care as far as if we gain market
share, great. If we don't, that's great too.
I'm not running Linux because it's popular. I'm
just running it because it's what I like, what
works for me. I don't worry about, a lot of people
worry about how popular the software they run
is. Is my operating system popular? Is the Linux
distribution that I run, is it one of the more
popular ones? Do people talk about it? The text
editor I use, is it popular? I don't care about
any of that. If it works for me, if it's what
I like, I run it. I don't try to tell people
what to run either. I don't care. software you
use right i don't think some people do though
it's it's kind of weird there's always sides
right so they want us to take sides i think so
i'm on the same boat as well as long as it works
for me i don't really care you know and i have
people that talk about emacs in the channel you
know and we discuss emacs i want to learn emacs
you know i use new of them that's my main editor
but i want to learn about other stuff you know
i don't have to be on one side only you know
so People can find you on YouTube. That's where
I put everything. I do have a channel also on
Odyssey for people that want to watch me somewhere
that's not YouTube. Okay. So that's available
for people, obviously. But yeah, mainly YouTube
is where I'm at. Okay. I see it here. Odyssey
in the links. Well, everything is in here in
the links. Okay. Right. Wonderful. I want to
know more about your background. You know, this
is just to motivate people that is trying to
get started in all this and to get to know how
it all started. So why did you end up in tech?
How did all that happen? You want to share that?
Well, I mean, I guess I ended up in tech, if
you count being a YouTuber, being in tech, but
I'm not trained in any professional way. In any
tech -related field. I don't have college degrees
in tech. I actually went to college for music.
I have a bachelor's and a master's degree in
music performance. And, you know, went to school
for that. Jobs after that. Taught a little bit
because of music. Don't want to be a teacher,
though. Didn't like that. Or I don't mind being
an educator. I didn't like teaching public school.
But, you know, and after that, you know, I've
worked many years in retail, you know, and supervisory
roles, various retail companies until I started
my channel in 2017. I was still working at the
time, obviously. COVID, though, in 2020, when
the shutdown happened here in the U .S. I was
not going to have a job when I returned from
the shutdown because the company I was working
at was doing pretty poorly before COVID. They
were about to file bankruptcy. They were going
to scale back a lot of positions. And one of
the positions they were going to cut was the
position I held. So when COVID happened, I was
already doing YouTube. It was a side gig. It
just became the gig. So I've been doing this.
But I do like you. I do see YouTube as an extension
of me being a teacher. Yep. One of the things
I love is teaching people how to use some of
this software, how to use things like, you know,
many mags and various shell utilities, you know,
the new core you tools, how to do some scripting
programming, things like, you know, some basic
stuff that a lot of people fear until somebody
kind of explains it. And I'm pretty good at.
Talking in a understandable, deliberate way and
getting people through some topics that they
think are hard. So that's always been a strength
of mine. That's kind of what I was doing, even
at my jobs. You know, typically my positions
were usually HR or training related, you know,
teaching people, you know, whatever. So it's
always kind of been how I saw myself. So I think
YouTube is a great extension for. Again, just
educating people on anything. And anybody can
do this. Anybody, because I hear from people
all the time, you know, I've been wanting to
start a YouTube channel. It looks fun, but I
don't know what I want to do. It's like, well,
everybody has life experience. Everybody knows
something about something. And trust me, there
will be people that watch that content about
the stuff you know. So just start the camera
recording. Just put the first video out. It's
not going to be a good video. Your first video
is not going to, it's going to, the audio is
going to suck, right? Because that crappy $10
microphone you bought at Walmart, trust me, it's
going to suck. But put the first video out. Once
you get started, you know, then you'll quickly
figure out what works, what doesn't. And, you
know, eventually you'll figure out how this whole
content creation game works. Man, my first videos,
I recorded them with my AirPods, with my headphones.
Man, the audio sucks. You hear the echo. Still,
my audio sucks, but not that much compared to
the first videos. And I gave up, you know, I
recorded like, I don't know, 10 videos, a playlist,
you know, how to get started with Mac OS, like
advanced stuff in Mac OS. What I was expecting
success right away. No, it didn't happen. Gave
up, stopped for three months. And then I decided
I'll keep doing this, you know, but I'll do it
because I want to do it. And here we are like
a year after. When I started, I did have a proper
webcam. I had a Logitech webcam, which was OK.
And kind of like I think it's the C920, kind
of like a standard webcam that a lot of people
start using with YouTube. I happen to have one.
which was great because I didn't go into this
planning to do YouTube videos. I was just using
whatever I happened to have. I happened to have
that camera, which was good. The mic on that
camera, though, because it does have a built
-in mic, it's horrible. I had another mic and
it had no markings on it. It didn't even say
what brand it was. All it said was made in China.
And that thing was just barely. Better than the
camera audio microphones like it was the audio
on my first few videos was so bad. I was like,
man, if if I'm going to take this seriously,
you know, like I've got to do something like
I got to upgrade. I can't just be using whatever
random microphone I found in a junk drawer somewhere
that I pulled out. Don't even know what brand
it is. So I went and bought a blue Yeti. Oh,
I think I found a blue Yeti at. Best Buy. I went
to Best Buy. And they actually had, you know,
like for gamers, you know, they had microphones
and stuff. And I was like, oh, that one looks
all right. I paid a hundred bucks for it at the
time. And that was like a million times better
for audio. And then, of course, you know, as
you go along, you know, you got better equipment
and better equipment along the way. Would you
recommend someone starting a channel nowadays?
You said yes already, but. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because
I, a lot of people, I think a lot of people are
under this misconception that YouTube is kind
of saturated because there's, you know, so many
YouTubers and so many, you know, billions of
videos and billions of hours of videos that get
uploaded like every month. And it's, it's not
saturated because people are consuming that content,
you know, and a lot of it is garbage, automated
spam, AI crap. Unfortunately, YouTube is kind
of overrun with that kind of stuff. So people
like listening to a real human being actually
really talk and discuss things. So, yeah, I don't
think it's saturated at all. I think people just
need to get started. Anybody that has considered
it, you know, just get started. I mean, what's
the worst that can happen? You make a couple
of videos and you realize, oh. I'm not very good
at this or this is a lot of work, which it is
a lot of work. A lot of people don't realize
how much work goes into it. But hey, so you do
it. You make a few videos over a few weeks or
a few months. You realize, you know what? I'm
not really into that. OK, well, you didn't really.
What are you out a few hours of work? Yeah. So,
OK. Yeah. I think you have to know what to expect.
Right. Because I was expecting, you know. I don't
know what I was expecting. It didn't happen.
So you have to have the right expectations, I
guess. It's going to take time, right? How long
did it take for you to see results? Was it in
the first year? Did it take longer than that?
No, no. I was actually shocked because I wasn't,
when I started my YouTube channel, I knew what
YouTube was. I watched some YouTube. That's why
I knew there was some Linux content, but it wasn't
a lot. I didn't expect anybody really to watch
anything I did. And I became monetized, I think,
within three months. So I had to get, what, a
thousand subs and like four thousand watch hours
or something. The watch time was really easy
because I got a lot of views on some of those
early videos. More views than I thought I would.
And I was kind of shocked that people were interested
in Linux content. The subs were a little harder
to come by. But I got a shout out from another
bigger Linux content creator somewhere along
the way. That channel was called Big Daddy Linux.
He's not around anymore. But he helped get me
to the thousand sub mark, you know, within two
or three months after starting my channel. And
from there, I mean, by the end of the first year
of my channel, I don't remember. It's been so
long ago. I bet I had 30 or 40 ,000 subs after
a year. Oh, that's a lot. Yeah. So, and, you
know, it just keeps going. Okay. Okay. Does it
keep growing exponentially once you reach a certain
point? No. Yeah. Yeah. Because I remember, you
know, really caring about my analytics in the
first two or three years. I paid attention. I
mean, views did I get today? I mean, subs did
I get? I go check my dashboard. I haven't. It
has been. Seriously, years. I do go into my YouTube
dashboard to upload. I never check the analytics
anymore. I don't focus on it anymore. I don't
care if I get any new subs, new views. You get
burnout trying to play that game. Now I just
make the videos I want to make. People watch
them. Great. They don't watch them. That's fine,
too. I still made the video I wanted to make,
doing what I want to do. Yeah, I remember, I
think it was late 2020, early 2021, the second
time I came down with COVID. Because I remember
getting sick. And I remember the channel then
had like 160, 170 ,000 subs. And I was really
pushing myself hard, putting out a lot of content
all the time. Some of these videos, it took a
lot of effort. hours of prep work and learning
new things. And I think me pushing myself kind
of hard was part of the reason that I was getting
sick. Because I'm not somebody that gets sick
very often. It's rare. I come down with anything.
Like, damn, I got COVID two or three times in
this year. This is a COVID year, though. But
it was like, hey, I shouldn't be getting this.
So I kind of backed off a little bit. I made
a You know, kind of in my head, I told myself,
OK, you know what? You're going to slow down.
You're going to keep working, obviously. But,
you know, we're not I'm not so concerned about
the analytics anymore. Let's just say that. Yeah,
that's healthier. Definitely. You want to share
two of your favorite music bands to get to get
to know you there since you're into music. Well,
my music degrees. Obviously, I was a classical
musician, so I'm mostly into classical music.
But as far as popular music. What piano or what
instruments? My main instrument is trombone.
Okay. I play a few different things, but trombone
was my main instrument. Okay. And people can
check out some of my trombone playing on the
YouTube channel. I have played it in the past.
Actually, I've played the recorder on the channel
in the past a few times. I might have played
the harmonica once or twice. I've got some music
stuff. Oh, and there's some rap videos as well,
me rapping. But you don't want to, don't view
those. But as far as popular music, some of my
favorite bands, for people that are into metal,
I'm not a big metal fan, but one of my favorite
metal musicians from the 80s and 90s is King
Diamond. Oh, yep. Yep. He is, you know, black
metal musician, but he is really interesting
just from his style. Very artsy. Like he actually
tells a story and basically writes a novel and
turns it into an album. Each track is a chapter
of the story. And he with his voice inflection,
he acts out various characters in the story through
music. And it's it's very interesting stuff.
OK, so I really like that for for that particular
genre. For me growing up, I was born in the 70s,
but, you know, I grew up in the 80s. So I'm a
big fan of 80s hair metal, 80s rock bands, bands
like Bon Jovi and Def Leppard and Journey. All
that 80s hair music was just that's the best
stuff ever. Do you like Skid Row? By the time
they came around, that genre was on the way out
because of the rise of grunge. Once Nirvana came
out, the hairband era was over instantly. So
Skid Row, their first album came out in, what,
like 89 or 90? So they barely had a couple of
years before all that was over anyway. But yeah,
their albums were great, though. They put out
some amazing music. Okay, so you're more focused
or you like more metal, rock type of music. All
genres. I was mentioning those because the audience
probably is familiar with those artists. Didn't
want to go down the classical route, but I mean,
I listen to, I don't like a lot of modern music.
So like with rock, you know, anything prior to
like the mid -90s is okay in my book. But once
we get into all the auto -tune, drum track BS.
I'm not like you can't hire a real drummer, really.
And you don't think I can tell that that's not
a real human being playing these instruments.
It sounds very soulless. It's just not it's not
good. But don't get me started on that. So I
listen to a lot of older rock country music,
again, older country, mostly because, again,
modern music, a lot of times not that great.
like some old reggae, like reggae, some of the
old rap, hip -hop stuff, you know, that when
I was, say, in high school or in college that
was popular. So the earlier stuff with folks
like Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and then, you know,
Tupac and Biggie, right? I love all that. The
new stuff, not as good. Again, maybe I'm just
a boomer, right? Yeah, I like old music as well.
You know, 80s, 90s music. 80s is my favorite.
I like listening to Earth, Wind & Fire, stuff
like that. Oh yeah, Earth, Wind & Fire was awesome.
Of course, being a trombone player, any group
that has a brass section. So Earth, Wind & Fire,
yeah, awesome. What is this other one? Chicago
is another one. You know Chicago? Yeah. Especially
from the 60s and 70s when, you know, actually
one of their founding members, Jim Hankel, is
the trombone player. He actually founded the
group. And what about Kool and the Gang? They
have a brass section too, right? Yeah, everybody
loves Kool and the Gang. You can't go to a party
without hearing Celebration. Yeah, definitely.
And what about movies? You like movies? You want
to share two with us? Yeah. You know what? Again,
I'm going to sound like a boomer, but movies
have gone way downhill, say, in the last 10,
15 years. It is all CGI all the time. And I can't
stand it. But movies that I actually like, as
far as favorite movies of all time, one of my
all -time favorites is Aliens. James Cameron's
Aliens. That movie, I just watch it all the time.
Anytime it's on, I've got to watch the whole
thing. And it's a longer movie. It's like a two
and a half hour movie. It's an investment. But
it's such a damn good movie. Just the acting.
It's hilarious. Some of the lines in it. Especially
Bill Paxton's character in that movie just cracks
me up. And then, of course, the action. A lot
of shooting, explosions, and the horror elements
as well. It's like the perfect movie. And it's
all practical effects. This was before CGI was
even a thing. Right. So like the creatures and
everything, they had to actually build those
puppets and those models. And it looks so good.
If they made that movie now, it would be such
a turd. Yeah. Because, you know, they wouldn't
build the first set and the first actual model.
You know, it would just all be computerized.
Yeah. And it wouldn't be nearly. And you can
tell. Yes. People from the old school can tell,
I guess. I don't know if younger generations
care about that or not, but yeah, I do care.
I think a lot of them do, because I've noticed
some young people, when they go back and look
at like classic sci -fi horror movies, anything
with a creature or a monster, they're like, oh,
that looks really good. You know, it doesn't
look like this Marvel movie I just watched that,
you know, you can tell. But, you know, when they
see. I don't know. Things like Alien or John
Carpenter's The Thing. I don't know if you're
familiar with it. But that thing, whoever did
the special effects on that, props to you, guy.
Because that's an amazing movie. I still sit
there and look at some of those scenes and wonder,
how in the hell did they do that? Because this
was definitely before computers and CGI were
a thing in movies. Yeah. Or like, like this other
one, the fly, it's horrible. Yeah. But the, the
effects, you know, man looks, I remember watching
it as a kid and it was disgusting, but it's,
well, that's more of a, yeah, well, it was supposed
to be disgusting. That was, uh, it was designed
to be body horror is what they call it. Right.
That's when, you know, somebody's body is. It's
scaring you because it's going through whatever
transformations or being infected by bugs or,
you know, I was never a fan of those kinds of
films myself. But The Fly, as far as the effects
in it. Yeah. Special effects are amazing in that
thing, too. Yeah. What about video games? Are
you into video games? What are your thoughts
there? I don't game much. And. Yeah, I'm not
really a hardcore gamer at all. I don't own a
lot of games. I have a Steam account. But I don't
really own anything. I own Cities Skylines. I've
played it. I've got a few other. I don't know.
I really don't own any games. I do play some
of the free and open source games that are available
on Linux. Just because for a long time, that
was all I had on Linux. We didn't have Steam.
We had no games. We just had a few mostly open
source first person shooters. I still play a
lot of those. I play a little bit of a game called
Sauerbraten. Fantastic game. Free and open source,
first -person shooter. Zenotic, another good
first -person shooter, open source. And I do
play a real -time strategy game called Zero A
.D. Also free and open source software. Just
a fantastic game. If you're a fan of the old
Age of Empires games, Zero A .D. is amazing.
Okay. This one? Yes. Okay. Okay. And you don't
play because of time or? Yeah, you're right.
I don't play because it takes a lot of time.
Typically, I'm always doing something. And when
I sit down to play a game, it's for like I'm
really wore out from doing everything else going
on. I just want to, for example, pull up a first
person shooter and frag as many people as I can
for 15 minutes and then get out. I'm not one
of these people that play like a. RPG game that's
like some of the massive multiplayer games that
are going to take me six weeks to complete and
I got to spend eight hours a day. Not doing that.
Yeah, you have to choose your time. Everything
I play is something that can be done in a few
minutes or like a game of Zero AD might run an
hour or so, depending on number of opponents
and whether I'm winning or not. If I'm losing,
it'll be over quick. Yeah, it makes sense. I
feel the same way. I'm like, I could be doing
something else. That's what I think, you know,
I should be doing something else. I feel like
I'm just not being, even though I'm not being
productive doing something else, I feel like
I'm just, I could be doing something better,
but that's just me, my personal feeling. And
moving on to other topics, what's your ID or
editor of choice? Is it Emacs or? Yeah. That's
where I spend most of my time in is Emacs. I
have Vim and NeoVim installed on my system. I
do use them often, too. It just depends. A lot
of times, whatever I'm doing on camera, if I'm
already in a terminal emulator and then I want
to open something, I'll typically use NeoVim
for it. If I'm specifically doing something already
using Emacs, I'll be in Emacs. But I could use
either one. But I mean, if I if I didn't do the
YouTube channel, typically I'd probably just
live in Emacs. I'd open Emacs full screen and
that would be my desktop environment. It would
essentially be my operating system because, well,
if I move to my screen here, I mean, a typical
kind of Emacs workflow would be you just, you
know, you open. Let me make sure I'm on the right
monitor here. Open Emacs. You know, and then
I could navigate to anything I want to view.
Maybe, I don't know, my Qtile config, which is
the window manager I'm in. It's my Qtile config,
which is written in org mode, by the way. I wrote
the config. It actually, you know, the source
code blocks, you know, you can say begin source
Python. So I've got the Python code in the source
code blocks. But, you know, the... the headers
of the table of contents and the descriptions,
these are all just part of the literate config,
the org document. They don't get written to the
proper config .py, but these source code blocks
do. They get written to the actual config later
when I save. But, you know, you'll work in something,
a text document. If I need a terminal, I could
do, in my case, space tv is the key binding I
have to toggle on vterm. vterm is one of the
terminal emulators here inside Emacs. If I need
a proper terminal, this is the term, using my
shell, the fish shell, using my fish config and
everything. So I've got a terminal inside Emacs
if I need it. I don't really need another terminal.
Yeah, you don't need to go out. And I noticed
that your headings in org mode are bigger because
I know a little bit about org mode only. Is that
a default thing in Emacs? You can make the headings
bigger? There's nothing default in Emacs because
you have to configure it yourself. So, no. Everything
you see here, yeah, I had to do a settings for.
Let me get into my Emacs config. I have a key
binding to get into that config. This is my Emacs
config. And if I go to the table of contents
here, I've got a section, org mode, bullets.
Here we go. So, org bullets is the package that
I installed to get the fancy bullets. Because
otherwise, these would just be asterisks. This
would be one asterisk. This would be two. But
it condenses it to one character. And then, you
know, the specific shape and color that I could
set. Same thing if I went down a third level.
You know, if I wanted a third level, right? Third
level, whatever. Obviously, I don't want to do
that to my config. But it would convert that
to whatever symbol. As far as why the heading
is bigger, that is in my fonts section. Let's
see, fonts. I did learn about this type of configuration
because Joshua Blaze mentioned it. I had a call
with him and he showed me around Emacs. So what
is this called again? Where you document and
configure at the same time, right? Literate.
Yeah, literate config. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's
basically where you write something that serves
as documentation, but it is also the source code
for something as well. The blocks, in this case,
what this does, the actual Emacs config is config
.el. This file is config .org, though. Now, what
it does is it writes all the source code blocks
that are. you know emacs list source code blocks
it writes that over to the config .el so it that's
but like the headers and all of this it doesn't
do anything to those which is great because if
i go to my gitlab go to my dot files repository
for example okay so all of your emacs config
is in your dot files in gitlab right It is. Go
to .config slash emacs. This is the folders where
your emacs config would be on a Linux system.
And if I go to config .org, you know, it's a
proper document with a table of contents and,
you know, nice formatting and everything. You
can actually read it. Now, these blocks are the
actual source code blocks for the file config
.el. Like, if you want to go read that, you could
go read that. But who wants to do that, right?
It's much easier to read the config .org, right?
Especially if you don't know anything about Emacs.
Because, you know, I'm pretty wordy as far as
describing things. Like I tell you, hey, this
block, this is what I'm doing. That's why I wrote
this block this way. This package, this is what
this package does. Yada, yada, yada, right? Some
of them, I even like write tables for like key
bindings and things, you know, things that are
not part of the actual source code, but, you
know, help people, you know. Right here. This
is a table. Like, hey, I installed this package,
org tempo. You don't know what it does? Well,
here's what it does. Type your less than sign
A and then tab, and it's going to add this into
the file. This block here. So, actually, I can
show you that. The source code blocks, if I want
to add one, let me do the less than sign S and
hit tab. Oh. There's my source block. Snippet.
Yeah. And then what am I writing? Well, in this
case, I would be writing emacs list, but I could,
you know, obviously do something like bash or
Python or Haskell, you know, whatever it is,
you know, whatever it is you're trying to write.
Let me undo all of that because this is my proper
config. Yeah, it seems extremely useful, actually.
And how did you make the heading speaker then?
Is this this? Oh, this is it. This block that
I was searching for. org level headers so there
is these variables here org level one through
seven and i set them to various heights 1 .7
for the top level so that would be top level
this okay and then you know org level two would
be these org level three which i don't think
i have a lot of third level uh things in this
document but i mean we could quickly add some
And fourth. And. Five. And so forth, you know,
six. Yada, yada, yada. Yes. Yeah. It makes this.
Yeah. Much easier to read. There's also similar
variables for those of you that like to play
in Markdown. You can also set the headers in
a markdown document in Emacs to be variable.
Oh, for markdown files. Okay. Okay. But that
is possible in Emacs because any of them people
have asked, I'm going to switch to my screen
real quick. Any of them, I can't, right? So,
or at least, I don't know, maybe it's possible.
I don't know. So I had to, you know, set. the
background for the different headings. That's
the way I can tell, okay, heading level two,
heading level three by the colors. I leave the
number on the left side of it, you know, but
having a bigger font is also pretty useful. Yeah.
And if you prefer, instead of doing the bigger
font, if you prefer doing background colors,
you certainly can theme things in that way. You
can actually see. Probably barely because it's
just a slight hinting. My source code blocks
are a little darker than the rest. Yeah, you
can see it. But you can also set that for some
people that have their cursor line, you know,
a different color. So it's obvious where the
cursor is. In my case, I have my cursor blinking
when it moves. That way I know where it's at.
Okay. It's all available. Okay. One thing with
Emacs, the reason I get this variable font size.
It's because Emacs is an actual graphical application.
It's a GUI window, not a terminal. Where a terminal,
unfortunately, the limitation of a terminal is
everything has to be the same size font. You
can't have variable font sizes in a terminal,
unfortunately. And if I used Emacs, Emacs does
have a terminal version. In case you're stuck
in a TTY. You can actually run Emacs inside a
terminal, but it would have the same limitations
of something like Vim or NeoVim. You're not going
to get the fancy bullets and everything in the
TTY. Okay, makes sense. But, you know, if you're
in a bind, you're stuck in a TTY, it doesn't
really matter. You're not worried about images
and things in a TTY. Why do you go out of Emacs,
though? Like, why not, like you said, right?
Why do you sometimes go out of Emacs and do stuff
in the terminal? Well, a lot of what I do on
camera is stuff I'm doing at the shill anyway.
And I'm going to spend almost all my time in
a terminal. I don't launch Emacs just to then
launch it. I'll just launch my terminal. Like
a lot of the videos I do. Just me launching a
terminal, zooming way in and discussing whatever.
I'm going to do a tutorial today on various.
core utilities, whatever it happens to be, LS
or, you know, CP for copy and MV for, you know,
I do all this in a terminal. There's no reason
for me to be an Emacs for this. I'm not ever
going to edit text. A lot of the other stuff
that comes with Emacs, I mean, it's got Git clients
and things like that. I'm not doing any of that
kind of stuff because Emacs really, once you've
configured it with all that crap, it's really
an IDE. And if all I need is a terminal, I'm
just going to open the terminal. In this case,
I'm using Alacrity for the terminal here. Alacrity.
Okay. That's a good point to touch. Why Alacrity?
Why haven't you moved on to something else? Because
everyone's like, now Ghosty. That's like the
trend topic. Ghosty. Before that, what was it?
Western, Kitty. Why Alacrity? I mean, I've played
with all of them. I did a video recently about
Ghosty. And it's okay. My thing with Alacrity,
a lot of times with my terminals, the way I use
them, I want an empty frame. I don't want any
title bars, headers, or anything. I just want
a plain terminal window that's simple to configure.
The Alacrity configuration file is really easy
to work with if you want to add key bindings
or theme, like with my colors. You know, you
saw the color scheme. Basically the same color
scheme I use in Emacs and everywhere else I've
got going on in Alacrity. But it's also, it just
works. One of the things with Alacrity, you know,
I first tried it out like four or five years
ago. I made a video about it. And Alacrity was
still kind of new at the time. I might have been
part of the reason why Alacrity has become kind
of popular because that video got a lot of views
at the time. And it kind of, you know, a lot
of people have tried Alacrity since then. It's
like the default terminal emulator on some Linux
distributions. Like it's really become kind of
a standard. One of the cool things with it was
Unicode support. I don't know if you use a lot
of weird Unicode glyphs and symbols in your terminal,
but some terminal emulators really suck at displaying
some of that. A lot of the older terminal emulators
that people were using before, things like Alacrity
and Kitty and Westerm came along. Xterm gets
installed. Well, it's not really installed with
the... X11 server, but usually you're going to
install Xterm. At least that was kind of a de
facto standard, say, 20 years ago on Linux. Xterm
sucks for Unicode support. There's going to be
a lot of weird things that you're going to try
to display in that terminal, and it just can't
display it. It can't render. URXVT is another
very popular terminal emulator that was really
maybe the most popular terminal emulator when
I got started on Linux, especially from like
the People that were tiling window manager users,
people that lived in the terminal, that was the
one they all promoted, URXVT. It probably has
the worst Unicode support of any terminal emulator
I've ever tried. Its claim to fame was it was
fast and it had a daemon associated with it.
So there was always this URXVT server running
in the background. So it's a server -client relationship
with your windows, which made your terminals
launch faster. Great. But it also made, hey,
when one terminal window crashed, and they're
all part of the server -client relationship,
all your terminal windows crashed. So you don't
like that aspect with it. So, yeah, Alacrity
just, yeah, it solved a lot of problems when
it came out, right? It was so much better than
a lot of the stuff that was around. And obviously,
it's very popular. It receives a lot of development.
And it doesn't come with a lot of the extra bells
and whistles I don't need. I know a lot of people
really like terminal emulators that have splits
and tabs. I've never needed, I've never, because
if you really need a split or a tab, you know,
we have things like TMUX and GNU Screen for multiplexing.
If you really need it, if you're in a TTY, most
of the time I'm not in a TTY. And I use a tiling
window manager. If I need a split, I just open
a second terminal. If I'm looking at my screen
right now. So if I need terminals, I've got all
the terminals available in my window manager,
which can manage those things just as good as
buffers and splits. And that's another thing.
If I'm in a terminal and I'm in either Vim or
Emacs, I don't need the terminal to manage any
of that stuff. But a lot of it is probably just
what you've grown used to. Like if you've always
used splits and tabs in a terminal, I guess that's
what you're used to. For me, I've always used
other things for that kind of stuff if I needed
it. Yep. I used tabs in the past in terminals.
I used a macOS terminal. It's called iTerm2.
Then I met other terminals, Alacrity. I installed
Alacrity. I loved it. But I had to use Tmux,
right? Because I'm in macOS. Tmux. So I'm a huge
Tmux fan. I use Tmux. What I love the most about
Tmux is sessions, right? Because that's what
allows me to switch between projects, right?
So here I'm in my notes with a single key press,
right? I'm in my .files, right? If I type that
other key press or I can jump back to my notes
or to my home directory. So that's... why I love
Tmux and I love the lacquerty. I used it for
a long time because I didn't need, like you said,
I didn't need tabs. I don't like tabs in the
terminal. I didn't need panes because I have
Tmux for that, you know? And that was with other
terminals that did come with that stuff out of
the box. I always turned them off anyway. So
it's just nice not to have to fool with turning
that stuff off, like scroll bars and all that.
I don't need any of that. Yeah, but I guess it's
really complicated for terminal creators because
Alacrity users will want tabs. And I know that
Alacrity is like, nope, no tabs, no pain. So
it must be really difficult to deal with that
in the community, right? Because people always
want the features that they want. Well, I thought,
yeah, I don't follow development. of alacrity.
But I thought, at least a couple of years ago,
there was some talk about them adding tabs. I
don't know if they had. They may have even added
it. I don't know. I wouldn't use it anyway, so
I don't know. But I know they'd been talking
about adding tabs as far as splits. I don't know.
But again, this is a problem that's already kind
of solved. Like on Linux, every Linux distribution,
for the most part, there's a few exceptions.
probably already installed tmux for you it's
there just like tmux in your terminal and hey
now you get your tabs if you want them you're
good to go what are your thoughts on thoughts
on tmux do you use it a lot i don't use it a
ton because again i don't necessarily need it
being in a tiling window manager most of the
time or being in emacs most of the time i've
already got multiplexers you know the tmux becomes
kind of redundant in that case if i'm in a tty
i will sometimes use it i don't actually use
it though for splits and tabs that's not why
i use it in the tty and the tty i use it because
i won't scroll back right because you don't get
the text scroll back in a tty but in tmux you
do so and you can select select and copy text
yep right makes sense For your configuration,
which is Emacs, your main editor, or NeoVim,
you know, either or, do you use your own config
or do you use a distribution as a starting point?
No, that's my Emacs config. Yeah, from scratch.
But I've used some of the various distributions
of Emacs and NeoVim. You know, people ask me
to try them out. I actually lived in Doom Emacs
for... At least a year or two at one point. And
that's a really good distribution of Emacs for
Vim users because it already will have things
like evil mode and everything already set up
out of the box. And it's not very different from
my config because my config, because I like Doom
Emacs so much, I basically made my Emacs do a
lot of the stuff Doom was doing anyway. Some
things are different, obviously. But yeah, Doom
Emacs is great for people that don't want to
start writing an Emacs config from scratch. Because
it can be daunting. You've got to write it in
Emacs Lisp. Okay, well, I don't know any Emacs
Lisp. You're brand new, right? So you can't do
that, right? But it's not as hard as a lot of
people think. If you've got any experience in
programming at all, Emacs Lisp is pretty easy
to wrap your head around. And there's plenty
of tutorials and videos. Hell, I've made dozens.
of Emacs configuration kind of videos to help
people. Same thing with Vim as well. People trying
to get into Vim and NeoVim. These things are
not as complicated. The great thing about Vim
and NeoVim though, I don't actually need to configure
them to use them. Like when I do a fresh Linux
installation, maybe setting up a web server or
something, you know, and if Vim or NeoVim is
there, I can just use it. I don't have to configure
it to you. Emacs is very different. You got to
configure. But the thing with Emacs, a lot of
people don't realize this because I get this
question all the time. I don't I can't switch
from Vim to Emacs because what if I'm remote
into some server that doesn't have Emacs? It
doesn't matter. You don't you remote from your
machine that has Emacs on it from inside Emacs.
And you can still use your Emacs on this machine,
but you're. So you can use it as an SSH client
as well, Emacs? It's already built in, and you
don't even have to configure that. It's already
there for it. If I give it an address, instead
of a file name, I give it an SSH address. Yeah,
and I've got the password, obviously. But if
you can, yeah, now when I look at DERIAD, the
file manager inside Emacs, I'm actually looking
at the file system of the remote machine now
and editing files on it. And I assume you can
also configure SSH key -based authentication
in Emacs, right? I would assume. Yep. Okay. Interesting.
Okay. What tool do you use in Emacs to push to
GitLab? Is the one that you use? I don't actually
use Emacs for my Git client. I can. I have used
it. I've done videos about it. The reason I don't
is because I've kind of got an exotic setup.
For my dot files, I use a Git bear repository
to manage my dot files. And the Emacs client,
Magit, M -A -G -I -T, doesn't like bear repositories.
It doesn't handle them well. So for my dot files,
I would have to go to a terminal and just use
my regular commits for that, which is mostly
what I push is to my dot files. I've got other
projects, too. But if I'm going to do that, I
just use the terminal and Git for everything
instead of Magit. If I didn't have that Git bear
repository managing my dot files, I'd probably
just do all of it in Git, in Magit inside Emacs.
So that's a really fantastic Git client. You
just learn the key bindings, you know, for adding
and commit. You type your message inside Emacs,
control C, control C, and it pushes it. You know,
it's just magic. Yeah, so it's really, it's a
nice Git client. I just, for what I have, I can't
really use it. Okay, okay. We've been here for
an hour. How much time do you have longer? We
can go a little longer. Feel free. Shoot away.
Okay. Yeah, because we're here to talk about,
I want some advice, you know. I just want to
hear your thoughts on macOS. Let's go with that
first. So my thoughts on macOS is I haven't used
it. It's like OS X. The modern versions of Mac
that have been around for a long time now. I
actually haven't used Mac OS X. Never had a Mac
computer. I've used OS X in a virtual machine
a time or two. But, yeah, I have no real thoughts.
The last time I used a Mac computer was probably
the late 90s. So I can't really speak on the
operating system itself too much. Other than
I know now, just like even then back in the 90s,
it's a very kind of walled garden sort of ecosystem.
You're not allowed to change much. It's kind
of very rigid, not very flexible. And that was
that case even in the 1990s compared to something
like Microsoft Windows, which has its own set
of problems, too. For somebody like me that loves
customizing every little thing about the operating
system, it would be totally the wrong operating
system for me to use just because I would start
with something that I've got to completely tear
down. Yeah. And there's Linux distributions like
that as well. Ubuntu, great Linux distribution.
I'm not going to use the GNOME desktop environment
or any of the... stuff that they ship with a
lot of the applications and stuff would they
ship out of the box why would i install that
right so i would install it to uninstall everything
i just installed well i could start with something
minimal for example like a boom 2 server right
and then install the window manager and everything
emacs and everything i want to use or a debian
server installation rather than the debian with
the gnome desktop or in my case where i'm most
comfortable these days, Arch Linux, just because
Arch Linux is for those people that want to customize
everything anyway. Instead of giving you something
already pre -configured on Arch, you don't get
anything except what you want. So there's nothing
on this operating system that I didn't want.
You touched Debian there and Ubuntu. I use Linux
all the time, but only in servers, you know?
SSH and... You know, no desktop environment at
all. My distribution of choice is Debian always
in servers. What are your thoughts there? Because
Ubuntu is the popular one and everyone uses Ubuntu
documentation, videos, everything is Ubuntu related.
What are your thoughts there? Yeah, Debian is
still a very popular server distro. It's just
Ubuntu adds a lot of extra tools that make things
so much easier than Debian as far as configuring
certain things. There's a corporation behind
Ubuntu, Canonical, and they know a lot of the
things people are doing. Like if you're setting
up a web server, they've already got their little
tools and things, little programs you can run
to help automate various things like setting
up, I don't know, your AMP stack or whatever
it is you're doing that, you know, use one command,
you're done, you know, kind of thing where in
Debian, you got to go through some work to install
various things, then work with those config files,
which, hey. You know how to do it. It's not like
it's a lot of extra work, but it does save you
some time sometimes if you want to just quickly
spin up something. Setting up a Ubuntu server
can be very quick. Also, not everybody loves
Ubuntu and Snap Packaging, but the reason Snap
Packages exist on Ubuntu is because of server.
Snaps on a server make a lot of sense. For example,
I use NextCloud. I use NextCloud file sync between
all of my devices and stuff. Been using Nextcloud
for a while. I run that on Ubuntu server and
I installed it using the Snap package in Nextcloud.
Why? It's because I could sudo snap install Nextcloud
and be done. Because it installs the entire web
server and all for you, all part of this container,
right? And otherwise, it's a much more involved
process. getting next cloud up and running yeah
that's the thing with debian as well you know
i use debian but what i do is i install docker
and every application that i need to install
is done through docker i install kubernetes as
well it was playing around with kubernetes and
i deploy applications so i don't rely on debian
too much you know because docker is there kubernetes
that is there i got the images already they run
quite well but i have had to install stuff manually
in the past as well in debian a lot of dependencies
a lot of issues yeah yes uh it's not as big of
an issue as it used to be but i remember years
ago uh because i was mainly a debian slash ubuntu
user most of the time i've been running linux
uh i've been primarily an arch user since i started
the youtube channel you know eight years ago
uh because For the kind of work I do on camera,
I wanted the latest packages for various things.
And there were programs that I needed that wouldn't
be in the Debian repos because Debian's too damn
old, right? So that's why I started using Arch.
And these days, I mean, if I didn't do YouTube
and sometimes need the latest and greatest things
sometimes for various things I'm doing on camera,
I'd probably just install Debian Stable or Ubuntu
LTS, very similar. And then my favorite window
manager on top of it, whatever, you know, emacs
and whatever. And I'd be perfectly happy. I don't
need a rolling release necessarily if I didn't
do this because I do this and I kind of need
it. Yeah. When you retire, then. Yeah, when I
retire from YouTube, I'm putting Debian back
on my computer. Okay. And, well, what I use is
macOS. You know, that's what I'm. What I'm recording
this on right now, you know, that's how I have
my phone connected. I don't have a camera. My
phone is actually my camera. It's my iPhone connects
to the computer. I open OBS, works. I update
macOS, even to newer versions. I update the apps
because I install all of them through Homebrew,
right? That's the package manager you get in
macOS. So I install them that way. I upgrade
the packages or apps. And it just works. It has
not broken on me, at least in the past, I don't
know, three years or so. And I've been thinking
about Linux. I want to try Linux, you know, because
like you said, macOS is great. It has gotten
a lot better. Now you get, you can install window
managers. There's a few options and they work
quite well. But it's very limited, the things
that you can still do. You can still customize
it a lot. If you look at my screen. It doesn't
look like macOS too much. It looks, I don't know,
like... Let me switch to it real quick. Somewhat
of a Linux distro or something. I don't know.
Something strange. There's something going on
there, people think. But I want that experience
in Linux. And I've been thinking about trying
it. You get a lot of advice. People tell you...
Arch, a lot of people mentioned Fedora, right?
And I've seen that Fedora is shipped with this
framework laptops. So I guess it must be stable.
What are your recommendations? What are your
thoughts there? Yeah, I mean, if you're looking
for something that's really stable, Debian stable
and Ubuntu LTS kind of where you want to be.
Fedora, it's much more of a... experimental playing
ground sometimes where they'll introduce new
features and things that aren't necessarily all
that well tested. So you will run into that problem
on Fedora. It's not a rolling release, but sometimes
they will push out some new features. And basically
you become the beta tester. It's not something
that I would say just breaks all the time. But
you can experience some breakage. I mean, you
can experience breakage on everything, I guess.
But yeah, I've run Fedora before. It's a fine
distribution as well. So which one would you
choose? Because Debian, well, I could get Debian.
I could install OBS there, I assume. I don't
know if it's going to be a really old version
or... Well, it will be at least two years old
now because is the new version of Debian dropped?
You're about to get a new version if you install,
what is it, Debian 13? What version are they
on now? The new version of Debian is getting
close for a release date, though. But yeah, if
it's not available now, then you've got to install
the last Debian that came out more than a year
ago. Yeah, that's not going to be the newest
version of OBS. But here's the thing. Things
like snaps, flatbacks, and app images have solved
that problem. If you need something on Debian
that you absolutely need to always have on the
latest version, just install Flatpak and install
OBS through the Flatpak because I believe the
OBS team actually builds the Flatpak. It's their
Flatpak. And that's typically what I try to do
if they have an official. package that they build
themselves. I really don't care what format snaps,
flat packs, app images, whatever. And if I know
the team behind it built that package, I'll go
grab that package. So I could, all of those have
the ability to auto update. So you don't have
to worry about updating the, the program. Oh,
it makes sense. Okay. So I could have Debian
stable and, and still the latest OBS. Okay. And
the latest of the packages. What's the drawback
of these flat packs? Are these like containerized
applications? That's why you can get the latest
is because they'll have all the libraries and
everything, all its dependencies contained within
itself. That way you don't run into the dependency
hill issue where you have to go compile things
from source. And then I also need to go compile
this other thing and the next thing. And then
all of a sudden you've got. This weird dependency
loop where this thing depends on this program
is no longer here, not available, not the right
version. And then you end up with a situation
where your system is essentially broken because
you can't update anything because all the dependencies
are screwed up. Yeah, makes sense. So are there
any drawbacks? Is there a drawback? I have not.
On some programs, I guess there could be if.
They need to break out of the container to interact
with certain devices or other programs on the
system. Sometimes it can be an issue for some
things. I can tell you OBS is not a problem as
a flatback. Wonderful. Okay. Because probably
most people that install OBS probably install
the flatback because it is an official package
that they maintain and that they push. They try
to tell everybody, go install the flatback because
we're building that. So if there's a problem
with that package, we built it, so we're responsible
for it. Don't come and complain that you install
whatever's in the Debian repo. Okay. Yeah, and
I'm not into distro hopping. If I'm going to
install something, it's just going to be what
I will use. I'm not going to go and try other
distributions. I don't care, to be honest. At
the end of the day, they're all the same under
the hood, depending on your workflow. For me,
if I'm spending most of my time, in a text editor
like emacs yep and the terminal yep and interact
you know for most things i just open terminals
and run various command line utilities i know
how to use anyway and no matter what linux distro
you install you're gonna have the shell and the
core utils and probably vim will be there you
go ahead and install neo vim or emacs whatever
else you want as what i like it becomes It becomes
pointless to distro hop if you're that kind of
user because you're getting the exact same experience
no matter what distro you're running. The only
difference is the repos of software. Does it
have all the programs you want and what version
are they on? On Arch, I'll have the thing that
came out this morning, which may or may not be
what you want. On Debian, you'll have the thing
that came out two years ago, which may or may
not be what you want. And then there's stuff
in between those two extremes. You could install
NeoVim as a flat pack as well in... I would imagine.
I would imagine you could. I'm not sure if it
would be something that's all that necessary.
But I'm sure you could. Okay. I mean, does NeoVim
have a lot of major changes you'd want to keep
up with? There's the latest release, 0 .11, I
think it is. It was, I don't know, a few months
ago. Yeah. I'm sure they probably have a... Flat
pack. I would bet they do. Because these days,
some distributions are trying to basically have
everything containerized. So even if they didn't
build a flat pack for it, somebody has built
a flat pack of neofilms. I'm sure you could find
it. Okay. Okay. And there's like a rivalry between
these two communities, Linux and macOS. Well,
people are switching between. mac os linux a
lot of the time because they're unix right yeah
i wouldn't say there's a real rivalry there i
think as far as for the linux community as far
as who they dislike microsoft because mac os
has never really tried to damage linux in any
way or attack it in any way microsoft has was
against Linux from the beginning and they tried
to kill it. And there's a lot, you know, how
Microsoft and some of their business practices,
how they treated various open source projects
over the years before they all of a sudden, we
love open source. Well, you didn't last month
when you ran this other open source company into
the ground, you ran them out of business and
you called Linux cancer. You know, that was,
was that Steve Ballmer? Linux is cancer. Yeah.
He said open source is cancer. He didn't like
the licensing, I think. Or maybe Linux, because
it was open source, is cancer. One of those.
WSL, right? They're all in for WSL. Now everything
they do is licensed under the MIT license. They
got on their little homepage, iHeart, Linux,
Microsoft, Hearts, Linux, or whatever. I'm like,
yeah. But you know what? I give them credit.
I give Satya Nadella and the new guys over at
Microsoft. I actually think that's a good thing.
And I don't mind when companies that I thought
were doing the wrong thing in the past start
doing the right thing, regardless of the reasons.
The reasons, obviously, is it makes them money
now, open source, right? They see money in it.
That's why they're doing it. I don't care about
their motivation behind it. I'm just happy that
they're on board. Obviously, they're one of the
largest contributors to the Linux Foundation,
the Linux kernel development. They have a ton
of people on Microsoft's paid staff that work
on the Linux kernel. Hey, that's all great. I
can't complain about any of that. What do you
think life would be? Because before they went
with their DOS thing, they were Zenix, right?
And it was Unix -based. What do you think if
they would still be Unix -based, like Microsoft?
It would probably still end up in the same place
it is now. I mean, Unix was a proprietary operating
system. This was before open source was even
a thing. You know, the old Unix -y days back
in the 1970s and 80s. Obviously, it wasn't really...
Until Richard Stallman in the late 70s kind of
started the whole free software thing. But really,
it wasn't until he founded the GNU project in
the mid 80s. That kind of. Codified this whole
free and open source software that we know today
with the GPO license and all of that, the GNU
manifesto. So, yeah, just because they would
have adopted like. a proprietary Unix operating
system instead of creating their own proprietary
operating system, Microsoft Windows would probably
still look and function exactly the way it does
today. Now, they still would have done all the
things they wanted to do. They just would have
started with a different base. Yeah. It would
be in no way compatible with any modern Unix
-like operating system. Yeah. Very similar to
Mac OS X. It's based on FreeBSD. It is in no
way compatible. with anything that FreeBSD is
doing these days. All right, they've gone completely,
you know, at some point you got to diverge a
little bit. And in this case, in your hypothetical
example of 40 years of diverging, yeah, they
wouldn't be, they wouldn't remotely look anything
like Unix. At least you could log into the terminal
in Windows and run DLS command instead of there.
Well, now, yeah. Actually, we do have the DIR
command. In Linux. In Linux? It's actually part
of the new core utils. Oh. Well, I don't know
why you would run it because it's basically LS
with a certain flag. It's a very simple LS. But
it's there for compatibility reasons, I guess,
because Windows users, I guess they don't know
about the LS command. What are your thoughts
on these other companies like System76 and Framework?
Because if I get hardware, I don't want to invest
the time into seeing what's compatible. Maybe
everything is compatible nowadays. It was not
back in the day when I played with Linux. And
I'm talking about, I don't know, 15 years ago.
It's a lot different now. Yeah. A lot different.
It's the Linux kernel and all the drivers and
everything that's baked into it. Of course, people
complain about the Linux kernel just being millions
and millions of lines of code. Well, part of
that is it's very hard to find a machine that
Linux doesn't run on. It's an easily operating
system that's going to support the most hardware
just by the nature of the size of the thing and
so many people are working on it. The fact that
it's built for... Servers and desktops, mobile
devices, IoT, it's built for everything. So yeah,
15 years ago, I guess it was possible to go find
machines that didn't quite work right on Linux.
Or a few things didn't work, like your Wi -Fi
or some small perks. Wi -Fi was the big one.
Wi -Fi was the big one. Because the Wi -Fi drivers,
the chips, the... What was the Wi -Fi chips?
RealTech. Yep. Those drivers were proprietary
because they were proprietary. They weren't in
the Linux kernel, so it's not something that
would ship out of the box that would just work.
You'd have to go get that proprietary driver
yourself and install it however you could install
it. And how do you download it? I mean, you don't
have Wi -Fi, right? So it was a pain in the ass.
But now there's not a lot of that. headache anymore
as far as like wi -fi chips and graphics drivers
and things you know like graphics drivers were
another problem especially like 20 years ago
um that's that's not a problem anymore but as
far as the companies you asked about system 76
uh i've never dealt with them i don't know i've
never had their hardware never tested anything
or so I can't comment on them. I think it's great
that companies are selling devices that already
have Linux pre -installed, and there's a lot
of companies that do that now. But I've never
bought from a company that specifically catered
to Linux. I won't say that. I have bought from
a few smaller boutique custom computer shops,
and they asked me what operating system to put
on it. I already know I'm going to wipe out Windows.
if they ship Windows. So I just, hey, don't put
an operating system on it because I'm going to
install Linux. Some of them might actually say,
oh, well, we can install Ubuntu on it. Okay.
You didn't do that. I'm probably still going
to wipe out Ubuntu because I'm going to put something,
you know, but it's less of a headache to hop
from another Linux than, you know, from Windows
because Windows, you know, you're going to have
to go in the iOS and, you know, hey, please let
me uninstall you. They try to make it impossible
for you to wipe it out. Okay. Last two questions
that I have for you. Last two topics that I want
to cover. One of them, well, three, real quick.
Let's try to keep it fast. What are your thoughts
on Windows? Oh, so Windows is another operating
system that I haven't really spent much time
in. In the last, say, 16, 18 years. The last
time I had a machine that ran Windows was, I
think, in 2008. And I switched to Linux on all
my machines as far as desktop computers. And
the little bit I played on servers, you know,
because I was kind of a nerd even back in the
90s playing with web servers, especially in the
early days of the Internet. The birth of the
World Wide Web, I wanted to be one of those people
that, man, building websites and things. And
even back then, a lot of web servers were Linux.
So I knew what Linux was going back, you know,
like the mid -1990s. I switched to Linux full
-time on the desktop in 2008 because I had a
Windows computer that was running Windows XP.
It was taken over by ransomware. The hacker took
over my computer. He wouldn't give it back unless
I paid him some money. He said, you know what?
Got this Ubuntu CD, popped it in. So you got
to thank that guy then. Yeah. I mean, I already
knew what Linux was. That's why I had the Ubuntu
CD anyway. Play with Linux anyway. But he gave
me a reason to, yeah, hey, I'm not paying you
money for your antivirus to remove your, like,
there's no way in hell I'm doing that. So, yeah,
I just. resolved myself to the fact, hey, everything
on this computer I'm losing. I'm formatting the
drive right now, put a boom to it, and went on.
Went on like it never happened. And that was
in 2008. And even back then, it seems like so
long ago, it was a really smooth experience for
me. I really didn't have any headaches or any
issues. A lot of the software I was using, though,
I was already using on... Microsoft Windows,
because even on Windows, I wanted to use open
source software. I was already using Firefox
as a browser. I was already using LibreOffice,
which wasn't LibreOffice then. It was OpenOffice.
It was before the fork. But open source software,
I was using GIMP instead of Photoshop and things
like that. So a lot of that stuff I was using
on Windows. When I got to Linux, oh, they already
installed all this. For me, you know, like this,
their default programs for the most part. So
it made it a little easier for me or a lot of
people will have proprietary software that they're
used to. A lot of times it's Windows only software,
where if you primarily use open source software,
there's always a Linux version. Like usually
they develop it for Linux and maybe they'll port
it to Windows because Windows has all the market
share they got eventually. But, you know, we'll
always have it on Linux usually, though. There's
just a handful of things I think I've ever come
across that were open source software that only
had a Windows version and didn't have a Linux
version, oddly enough. Proprietary software,
you run into that problem all the time, but free
and open source software. Matter of fact, off
the top of my head, I can only think of one really
popular program that's free and open source software
that doesn't have a Linux version. It's Windows
only, and that's Notepad++. Oh, it doesn't have?
I guess because it's so tied into the Windows
operating system in some way. It's designed to
be a replacement for their text editor and their
notepad. But it's GPL software and it's Windows
only. Which is really weird. But that's kind
of the oddball. We don't need notepad++ on Linux.
We got a million text editors. True. And do you
have a special keyboard or what do you use for
your keyboard? Well, on this computer, I use
the ZSA Moonlander. Okay. I've got videos about
a lot of the ZSA keyboards because I bought a
few of them. I use the Moonlander on this computer
here, the workstation here at my office where
I record. At home, I've got the ZSA ErgoDox,
which I use. Okay. um behind me you probably
can't see it in this frame i have a zsa plank
which they've since discontinued it's a little
uh 40 keyboard i use it sometimes to travel with
it's actually really great to just plug into
your phone if you want a real keyboard oh i see
it here let's see this one okay yeah they don't
make that one anymore um the latest one they're
on They do a lot of split keyboards. I really
like their split keyboards. The Moonlander and
the ErgoDox, great. They have a new split keyboard
that they're pushing now that looks really awesome.
I haven't had the opportunity to buy one yet
because I've already spent more than $1 ,000
on these things. The Voyager. Yeah, the Voyager
is the new. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But great keyboards.
Cool company. The people there have always been
nice to me. I made some videos about their products
in the past, so they know who I am. They like
that I like their keyboards. I send them some
business. As a matter of fact, I guess they like
the fact that I made videos about their products
so much. One year, I think it was two years ago,
they sent me a Christmas card. A Christmas card,
a thank you, and a little gift with it or something.
It's a small little gift. nice i was like oh
that's nice that you know because companies don't
really do stuff like that anymore but you know
it's a smaller kind of company i guess and okay
okay and oh well what layout do you use you use
qwerty or you use one of the exotic you know
keyboard layouts qwerty because obviously with
the vim motions and everything i don't want to
mess all of that up Yeah, me too. Because, yeah,
I'm not going to move to something like Dvorak
or Colmac. Because now HJ, KNL, that doesn't
make any sense anymore. And, you know, I would
have like a million key bindings in Emacs to
go back and change. And it's not worth it. Okay.
What are your thoughts on homelabs? That's the
final question that I have. Are you into homelabbing?
I don't have a... Home lab myself as far as,
you know, this whole home lab thing, I guess
it's kind of a recent phenomenon. I didn't even
know the word until about a year or so ago when
it was like the new buzzword people were talking
about. It's basically I've got some servers at
home. Yep. Like, well, I mean, I kind of play
with that kind of stuff anyway. But now a lot
of people that do the home lab stuff, I understand
why they do it. Things like media servers, which
I'm not really interested in. It doesn't really
do much for me. Setting up a NAS would be cool
because of video storage. I wouldn't mind doing
something like that. Or, I mean, would I really
want to host my own Nextcloud server? I'd rather
host that on a proper web host, you know, instead
of doing that myself. And there's not a lot of
things I would want locally. What do I do in
the NAS server, though? NAS server would be cool.
Yeah, I do have Homelab. It's not complicated
stuff. I have three. of those micro computers
that they'll micros let me see if i these are
pretty small they don't make noise they're wonderful
so i have three of those and uh 128 gigs of ram
in total and i do have my storage server set
up that way i have a cluster cluster Cluster,
basically. So if I lose one of my three storage
servers, I have them here. Where are they? VMs.
These are my storage servers. Storage one, two,
and three, right? So I can lose one of them and
I can still keep it working. I know I should
be using something else like Ceph, but man, that's
too complicated for me. I just went with cluster.
Works fine. I use it just as a Samba server,
basically. So just to store my videos, right?
Just keep them there. Right. To keep, you know,
just to store information, basically. But, yeah,
that's something I should do some some days.
It's something I've been thinking about really
since starting the YouTube channel is having
file server and some storage for my videos. I
just use Amazon. Oh, AWS. It's reliable for sure.
And it's so damn cheap. Yeah, I've got, you know,
terabytes and terabytes of video sitting there.
And what do they charge? Like a few bucks a month
for like something crazy small. I was like, you
know what? There's no, no reason not to use it.
Yeah. You're right. They're reliable, you know,
much more reliable than I would be. Yeah. So
that's for sure. Definitely. That's one of my
fears, you know, that I'm not as reliable as
Amazon. So it could all be gone in a couple of
minutes, you know, compared to Amazon. Yeah.
I like storing that stuff. Every video I make,
I always, you know, when I upload it to YouTube,
upload it to Amazon just as a backup in case
YouTube deletes a video for unknown reason, deletes
my channel for some weird reason or just YouTube
goes away completely. You know, I want all that
stuff. That's one of the reasons why I'm on Odyssey.
Oh, it makes sense. It's just I've got all of
my videos in two different places just in case,
you know. It's there online for people to go
watch. YouTube, though, these days isn't too
bad about accidentally taking videos down for
no reason. They used to be much worse, especially
in the Linux space. When I first started, Linux
was smaller. It's a community of hackers, right?
It's evil people. No, but I had there was one
year in the first or second year of me after
I started the channel. Where I had probably 100
straight videos that were instantly demonetized
as soon as I uploaded them. For no reason. As
soon as you upload it, it's demonetized. And
you got to go appeal. And then they'd always
overturn it because there's no reason for these
things to be. What am I doing? Writing some bash
script, writing some Python. Configuring a tiling
window manager. Ooh, evil. So you got to appeal
and they always overturn it. Like two or three
days later, take them a couple days. Well, what
happens when you upload a video? When do most
of the views come in? Yeah, when you upload it.
Yeah, first day or two. So after a couple days,
you monetize my video. Well, thank you. Everybody's
already watched the damn thing. Yeah, definitely.
Have you had any strikes in YouTube? Nothing
that was a real strike, but yeah. There's some
things you appeal and they get overturned. So,
I mean, that's unfortunate that you get some
false strikes on occasion. I had two or three,
again, that weren't anything. Hell, I don't typically
use like foul language or anything on my videos.
Nothing to actually really strike me for. But
I've had a couple of, I guess, something tripped
up the algorithm in some way. And it's like,
hey, you can appeal. They give you a little link
and you just say. Whatever it is you're saying
I did here, it really didn't happen. And then
I guess a human being is supposed to go look
at the video. And if they do, they always overturn
it. It's like, yeah, they take them off then.
Yeah. OK, great. All right. Any anything else?
I already took a lot of your time. And, you know,
thanks for all this. This was fun. Yeah. I mean,
I had a busy morning this morning because I had
a. I actually run a second YouTube channel that's
not Linux related. Oh, really? You want to share?
Trading related. Yeah, it's DT Options. DT Options.
It's about options trading. Oh, this one? Yeah,
I hold a little group session there on most days,
Monday through Friday, in a trading Discord group
that I run. I was doing that this morning, and
then I was also working on... Trying to get the
latest ISO of the Linux distribution I've been
working on here recently, DTOS, which essentially
you saw on camera is what I'm essentially running
here. Oh. Trying to work on that. Oh, yeah. I
had a lot going on this morning. I know it probably
was running a little later than what you wanted
as far as jumping on this call and getting this
done. No, it was. Hopefully it worked out. You
know, and I really want to thank you for your
time. Really appreciate it because I know it's
a lot of work. You must be pretty busy. So thanks
for taking the time and joining the call. Any
final words, anything you want to share before
we finish the call? Just thanks for having me.
This was a fun discussion. And if you ever want
to do it again or want to come on my channel,
you know, we expose you to a bigger audience.
Oh, that would be awesome. Well, hit me up. You've
got my email now. Yeah. Appreciate it, Derek.
All right. All right. Nice talking to you. Bye.
Bye.