LINUX Unplugged

Latest Episodes:

356: Linux Hardware Love Jun 02, 2020

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From the low-end to the high-end we try out both ends of the Linux hardware spectrum. Wes reviews the latest XPS 13, and Chris shares his thoughts on the Pinebook Pro.

Plus a really cool new feature in Linux 5.7, and we get some answers to the recent GNOME patent settlement from the source.

Special Guests: Dan Johansen and Drew DeVore.

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355: Chris' Data Crisis May 26, 2020

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Chris' tale of woe after a recent data loss, and Wes' adventure after he finds a rogue device on his network.

Special Guest: Drew DeVore.

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354: Microsoft FINALLY Gets It May 19, 2020

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Windows is getting more competitive by adopting core Linux features, so we cover the latest Linux-inspired additions to Windows. Then review the new release of Pi-hole, sort through recent PINE64 updates, and read your feedback.

Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar, Drew DeVore, Neal Gompa, and Philip Muller.

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353: Feeling Elive May 12, 2020

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We're blown away by the Enlightenment desktop, and its little known features, and we share a quick way for you to try it out yourself.

Plus our experience with Pop!_OS 20.04, Telegram's recent embarrassment, and some feedback.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais, Drew DeVore, and Jill Bryant Ryniker.

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352: Three Course Battery May 05, 2020

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Manjaro has a new hardware partner so Phillip joins to share the details, and we have the Lemur Pro in house for a battery endurance test like no other.

Plus an Arch server update, and Chris orders the new Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais, Drew DeVore, Jeremy Soller, and Philip Muller.

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351: Lenovo Loves Linux Apr 28, 2020

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Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller joins us to discuss Lenovo shipping ThinkPads loaded with Fedora, and our review of the new 32 release.

Plus Ubuntu's Director of Desktop Martin Wimpress covers the details everyone missed in 20.04.

Special Guests: Martin Wimpress, Matthew Miller, and Neal Gompa.

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350: Focal Focus Apr 21, 2020

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The latest Ubuntu LTS is here, but does it live up to the hype? And how practical are the new ZFS features? We dig into the performance, security, and stability of Focal Fossa.

Plus our thoughts on the new KWin fork, if Bleachbit is safe, and a quick Fedora update.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais and Drew DeVore.

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349: Arm: A New Hope Apr 14, 2020

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We build the server you never should, a tricked out Arm box, and push it to the limit with a telnet torture test.

Plus what we're playing recently, community news, a handy self-hosted music pick, and more.

Special Guests: Alan Pope and Brent Gervais.

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348: OK OOMer Apr 07, 2020

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Today we make nice with a killer, an early out-of-memory daemon, and one of the new features in Fedora 32. We put EarlyOOM to the test in a real-world workload and are shocked by the results.

Plus we debate if OpenWrt is still the best router solution, and chew on Microsoft's new SELinux competitor.

Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar and Neal Gompa.

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Window Maker Version 0.95.9 Released
Microsoft announces IPE, a new code integrity feature for Linux — Microsoft says that IPE is not intended for general-purpose computing. The IPE LSM was designed for very specific use cases where security is paramount, and administrators need to be in full control of what runs on their systems. Examples include embedded systems, such as network firewall devices running in a data center, or Linux servers running strict and immutable configurations and applications.
OpenWrt - Opkg susceptible to MITM
Brent sits down with Daniel Foré, founder of elementary OS
Know when we're going to be live. Check out the calendar!
Keep the conversation going join us on Telegram
Fedora nightly compose finder
Fedora 32 Looking At Using EarlyOOM By Default To Better Deal With Low Memory Situations — The oom-killer generally has a bad reputation among Linux users. This may be part of the reason Linux invokes it only when it has absolutely no other choice. It will swap out the desktop environment, drop the whole page cache and empty every buffer before it will ultimately kill a process. At least that's what I think that it will do. I have yet to be patient enough to wait for it, sitting in front of an unresponsive system.
earlyoom - Early OOM Daemon for Linux — The oom-killer generally has a bad reputation among Linux users. This may be part of the reason Linux invokes it only when it has absolutely no other choice. It will swap out the desktop environment, drop the whole page cache and empty every buffer before it will ultimately kill a process. At least that's what I think that it will do. I have yet to be patient enough to wait for it, sitting in front of an unresponsive system.
rfjakob/systembus-notify: systembus-notify - system bus notification daemon
oomd — Out of memory killing has historically happened inside kernel space. On a memory overcommitted linux system, malloc(2) and friends usually never fail. However, if an application dereferences the returned pointer and the system has run out of physical memory, the linux kernel is forced to take extreme measures, up to and including killing processes. This is sometimes a slow and painful process because the kernel can spend an unbounded amount of time swapping in and out pages and evicting the page cache. Furthermore, configuring policy is not very flexible while being somewhat complicated.
low-memory-monitor on GitLab
low-memory-monitor — low-memory-monitor, as its name implies, monitors the amount of free physical memory on the system and will shoot off signals to interested user-space applications, usually session managers, or sandboxing helpers, when that memory runs low, making it possible for applications to shrink their memory footprints before it's too late either to recover a usable system, or avoid taking a performance hit.
Nohang — Nohang is a highly configurable daemon for Linux which is able to correctly prevent out of memory (OOM) and keep system responsiveness in low memory conditions.
Better interactivity in low-memory situations - devel - Fedora Mailing-Lists
EnableEarlyoom - Fedora Project Wiki
Nushell - The Unix philosophy of shells, where pipes connect simple commands together, and bring it to the modern style of development.
Timekpr - simple and easy to use time managing software that helps optimizing time spent at computer.