DLN Xtend - Episode 11

Shows Linux Out Loud
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DLN Xtend - Episode 11

This week Nate talks about his admiration for Kdenlive and even using it to editing audio. Who knew? Eric gets back to making YouTube videos, in particular one on AppImageLauncher.

The community segment is on a topic Eric started about the best dIstro and DE combo for workstations. He ended up giving openSUSE Tumbleweed a try much to Nate’s delight. We discuss the magic of Tumbleweed snapshots.

As a reminder in case you missed it, last week we had Wendy Hill as a guest to tell us how she uses darktable as a professional photographer. Absolutely worth a listen if you have any interest in photography.

Destination Linux brought up the issue of elitism in Linux this week and we give a few thoughts on both sides of the argument.

The subject of backing up settings and deploying them on KDE Plasma came up this week on Destination Linux. Nate explains how this works by installing an SDK.

We talk about our Linux “hopes and dreams” for 2020. Eric hopes for good Linux options for mobile devices, especially on tablets and Nate wishes that more companies develop professional software for Linux.

There is a special Destination Linux Network announcement this week in the form of a new podcast. Hardware Addicts will focus on hardware that works with Linux, from single board computers to high-end AMD systems. Look for the first episode to land in the coming week.

That’s all for this week. Be sure to stop by DLN’s Discourse, Telegram, Mumble and Discord servers to continue the discussion. More information about this show and other Destination Linux Network shows and creators (like Eric and Nate for example) is available at destinationlinux.network.

Until next time, see yas!

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@CubicleNate A comment you made in passing resonated. My wife spent years working for HAL as an SAP interface architect. I recall @kernellinux saying something about “why SUSE exists?” I sent along information about how pervasive SAP is and how, possibly because both companies are German and their teams worked together, SAP and SUSE tend to be installed together. Silence.

Several years ago, as I introduced Linux into my workplace hoping to skip the force migration to newer generations of expensive Macs, we added Synologies. The run Linux. They’re darn easy to administer and have robust backup options.

The newest ones (Intel processors) added last year offer setup choices: BTRFS or ext4. Synology recommends BTRFS and it’s the default. I’m sorta’ familiar with ext4 after several years using Linux, but BTRFS is terra incognita. Noah’s rants about BTRFS, and I found others on the 'net who have the same POV, led me to choose ext4 since I don’t understand enough about BTRFS to see any advantage in our workplace where we use Synology’s Hyper Backup to send snapshot backups to another Synology and also to version backups on external USB-C drives. The ext4 drives plug right into a Linux computer and with the right password can be read. The Fat32 drives work on either Linux or Mac, there’s no Winders here. Once an initial backup is created, subsequent versions are very quick -

I’ve delved as deeply as a computer literate who doesn’t read code probably can into the differences among ZFS, ext4, and BTRFS. What I’ve concluded is that ZFS and BTRFS are really more appropriate for severs than desktops or laptops. No matter how many and how carefully snapshots etc. are used in ZFS / BTRFS, if a laptop’s drive dies, so does the snapshot. Phoronix tests show ext 4 runs faster on NVMe than ZFS. No idea about BTRFS.

It all seems about context. The advanced features of ZFS or BTRFS are undeniable. Seems they’re much less useful on a laptop I carry around that’s disconnected from the LAN most of the time it’s in use.

Do wish I understood more about BTRFS as deployed and advocated by Synology.

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@EricAdams I had the Nokia N900 phone which was pretty much a state of the art device running Linux (Maemo 5). As Nokia continued to lose market share, the N900 slipped away until we can say it was “embraced and extinguished,” although not extended.

The Pine devices sound great. I’d even be happy for a good tablet running Android minus Google. With it apparently being so easy to go to China and order custom assembly, why’s there no LineageOS tablet with F-Droid pre-installed available to order?

ARCH
@dasgeek is very much interested in bleeding edge hardware and maximum performance. I’m glad he’s out there testing for the rest of us, but here in the real world where I’m doing accounting, I have zero need for that AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT that the 'buntus 19.10 don’t support. I did buy an Intel Hades Canyon NUC in 2018 because I thought (far too optimistic) it would greatly speed processing of RAW photos, and had to wait for Martin Wimpress to have its blend of Intel / AMD Vega included in the kernel and HWE. In the meantime, I tried Manjaro and ArcoLinux as (ha!) supposedly easy ways to be out on the bleeding edge. Yes, the Hades Canyon worked, but it didn’t take long for the OS variants to break, leading me to long for the stability of an Ubuntu or Mint.

Confession: I delved into the AUR trying to get my new computer to work, and ignored these warnings from Manjaro:

AUR, as a community maintained repository, present potential risks and problems.

Possible risks using AUR packages:

* Multiple versions of the same packages.

  • Out of date packages.

  • Broken or only partially working packages.

  • Improperly configured packages which download unnecessary dependencies, or do not download necessary dependencies, or both.

  • Malicious packages (although extremely rare).

Community
In 2015 when I decided to start using Linux for real I bought a set of “Linux friendly” Intel NUCs for the office. I even waited for a new release, having no idea that I was buying gear ahead of what the kernel / HWE would support.

It was very frustrating. The Intertubes were filled with glowing reports how well NUCs run Linux. I didn’t (easily) turn up that the hardware sitting in my office wouldn’t run until the kernel / HWE updated.

As I tried to search for help on the 'net, the Goog directed me to a lot of forum posts asking the questions I needed answered.

But many of those posts were dismissed with “Asked and Answered.” Great, but there sure didn’t seem to be a way to find the initial question and answer I needed. Perhaps I’m now better able to define my search term, but I think in the nearly four years between now and my 2015 inability to launch those NUCs, there’s a truly more helpful attitude prevailing.

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I am so glad you posted here. Yes, SAP + SUSE are like peas and carrots! I use BTRFS on my laptop but with just the snapshot feature for when I do updates. There have been incredibly rare occasions when an update didn’t go well so rolling it back is a fantastic feature. I will say that BTRFS maintenance on a traditional HDD can cause slow downs but SSDs is completely unnoticed. My main workstation uses a RAID 10 with 6 drives using BTRFS and I can’t say I’ve noticed any BTRFS maintenance slowing that system down but it’s only been running for about 3 months.