Open Source AI from Fujitsu & AI added to Nextcloud | Destination Linux
Welcome to episode number 340 of Destination Linux, your favorite video podcast. My name is Jill. I'm Michael. And I'm Ryan.
And on this week's awesome episode, Fujitsu makes some cool advances in AI for open source software. Then we're going to discuss a major update for Nextcloud. Plus-- Which might include AI, and there seems to be a lot of AI in this episode, Ryan.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a little bit of a theme there with AI, because AI is taking over the world. It's sky-packed. Oh, definitely.
It's sky-packed. Plus, we have our tips, tricks, and software picks, all of this coming up really soon. So let's get the show on the road toward Destination Linux. (upbeat music) Our feedback this week comes from Asa. Hey guys, and Jill too.
This is my first time writing in, but I have been listening to Destination Linux for a little over a year now, and really love what you guys do. It has helped me so much. I've been using Linux as long as I've owned a computer, but I never really started to understand how a lot of the system actually worked, and what I was doing when I was interacting with it until I started listening to Destination Linux. After every episode, I have had at least one thing that I have to research. So thank you very much for that.
This is such an awesome way to begin an email. Yes. That is a great way.
It's a really nice compliment because we try to cater to everyone a little bit in this show. I mean, we wanna be open and beginner friendly. And so sometimes people have been in Linux with years.
We wanna make sure they get something out of value from the show as well. And it's one of those situations where we get feedback like this. It means a ton because you also have to remember, Michael gets a lot of negative feedback. Just Michael. So much. Why? Why people? When he gets that negative feedback and then we get this positive feedback here, he's balanced.
He's yin and yang all of a sudden. He's back balanced, you know? Yes. Thank you for the yang. Which one's the which? Which is which? I don't know. I have no clue.
But I know they have the little symbol and they're opposite it. Yeah, sure. One's good, yeah. Yin's good and yang's bad maybe or something.
I think so. No idea. Yeah.
Now let us know in the comments. Which is which? We'll read it on the show if you start out with something as nice as this. (laughing) Also in episode 334, you guys were talking about the reaction to AI and open source.
And I just wanted to add that personally, I feel like this is a dangerous reaction from the organizations. If only select groups have access to a tool like this, it becomes a weapon instead. Looking throughout history, it is pretty obvious what the patterns of tyranny are and this reaction of closing source of AI seems to fit that pattern pretty well to me.
I know this kind of what you already said on the show, but I wanted to throw my vote in on that opinion as well. And absolutely like 100%, that was our take as well. We don't think putting control in any group, one group or multiple companies or whatever you wanna say it, having absolute control is not the best approach for sure. Also goes on to say, while I'm still on this episode, I wanted to point out a few things in your discussion about the internet, television and radio. You guys made some good points and what you said is pretty accurate from the perspective of a ham radio operator though. I wanna give you a small oversight that you had.
You said, wait, Spotify on your phone didn't replace radio? I know this was a joke, but I'd like to point out that the internet connection that you are most likely using to stream Spotify is also a form of radio to and from the cell tower or wifi router to your connection. It is the digital data of the stream essentially being converted to sounds, then being transmitted to your phone via radio where it is converted back to digital data that is then processed and converted to music by your phone, AKA radio, just more advanced than FM or AM broadcasts, but it's basically the same thing that people think of radio but it does work the same way. So radio, TV, internet, none of them really ever killed each other. They just changed the way we used each technology and to advance our lives for the better. - You know, this is a really good point.
I didn't think about it this way. I love when comments come in because it makes you think about something a different perspective. I kind of looked at it as this, you know, you get in your car, you used to always put on the FM radio or the AM radio if you like to talk news and that type of stuff or sports or whatever.
And that has been a part of my life growing up since I was a kid. And then CD players came along. I mean, we had tape players and eight tracks and stuff like that. Radio has always been a big part of that.
CD players came along and usually as a kid, I didn't listen to as much radio. It's still every now and then. I would pop in my own CDs and have one of those folders that had like the 100 leather bound CD kits where I would be dangerously flipping through the book to find the CD that I want while I'm driving to change.
- I recently found one of those in my moving stuff that I had not opened in a long time. And literally the binder is falling apart with the CDs in it. - Yeah. I mean, these are things that we used to do. It used to be a big part of that. And now my entire purpose in the car or my entire routine, not purpose, has changed to where I'll take my phone out, I'll plug it in to my car, and then I turn on Spotify and I don't touch the AM FM radio or anything there anymore.
And I'm not saying there are people still listen to radio. Radio is not dead. But I think probably there's more people headed towards that, right, the Spotify or Pandora, whatever you're using in stream music or even music you're just storing on your own cloud service than they are AM FM.
I would say it's continuing to move, but I never really thought, hey, this is kind of the same technology at the end of the day. It's just newer and podcasting even. Look how popular podcasting has become. And it's something that in the past, I did enjoy talk radio, especially during commutes in the mornings. I'm just an angry person, can't listen to music.
It's too happy. So I wanna hear people arguing about politics. Makes me really in a good mood. - Total rational thing to do. - Yeah. But now I can listen to podcasts on the way and I can choose where I want to listen to and skip to certain sections and all of that type of stuff.
And generally a lot less commercials and things, but really awesome point. At the end of the day, it's just radio waves and it's just a different way of using. - It's radio waves and you could say that Spotify is the new wave music.
(laughing) - Michael, please, Michael. It was such a good time. - You're welcome. You're welcome, people. - They have a PS in here. They said, "Ryan, how could you make poor Jill play a horror game when she does not want to? You horrible person."
- Agreed. - No, not really. I'm mostly joking. Although I do sympathize with Jill on this one.
That's all I've got for now. Thanks again for the great work on the show and keep those penguins marching. Listen, I'm trying to find a way to make Jill as miserable as Michael and I are. And so I throw in a couple horror games, you know.
- Jill is too positive, people. - Yeah, Jill's too positive. - She's too happy. - She's too happy. We gotta break the cycle somehow. So throwing a horror game in there every once in a while brings her down to my friends.
- We're such great friends. (laughing) - You are. And actually, I've grown to appreciate the genre a lot more because of you, Ryan. So there's that.
- Thank you, Jill. Thank you. - And thank you, Asa, for coming to my defense. (laughing) - Everyone comes to Jill's defense. Let's be honest. - And thank you for being such a great viewer.
Your awesome feedback and nice words. And I loved hearing about the radio technology because that's one of my favorite industries is radio. (laughing) - Yeah, because Jill, you started out, you've been to radio. - Yeah. For 16 years, I played ambient and synth and space music on a local radio station here in Los Angeles.
- That's awesome. Of course you did, Jill. - Yeah. And when you look at this, because you have a history with radio, what is your kind of take on the technology? When you get in the car, do you still turn on regular radio at all? - Are you purely digital at this point? - No, both actually.
In fact, I was laughing earlier when you were talking about CDs, because me and my husband still have a 20-disc CD changer in our car. (laughing) - Of course you do, Jill. - And we're still heavily listening to AM radio, especially for the local news and commentary. And I like the morning talk shows, but then of course I like to have my music streamed from my phone, but my husband's a little old-fashioned, so he doesn't really utilize little stuff.
I've gotta set that all up and get it connected through Bluetooth and all that. - Yeah. - Nice. - Very cool. Well, I mean, I feel like you have jumped ahead of where I expected since you back up your passwords and stuff at the floppy desk we discovered.
- We expect you to only have eight track. - Yeah, I think that's what I was gonna say. I had a car eight track player.
My first car that I could never drive, my parents bought for me, it had an eight track player in it. And a CB radio. - You loved it. - But I was half blind and not supposed to drive, but my parents tried.
- They got you a car anyways, I like it. - I like they put the effort in. - And then they ended up keeping the car, so. - Did you see how Jill excited she got at that moment when she talked about that car and that eight track player? That was a moment right there. That's why you gotta watch the video version and see Jill turn into like a little kid again there talking about the eight track. Do you still have any eight tracks? - Absolutely, I have some very rare electronic music on eight track from the sixties and seventies.
- Does it still work? - Okay. - Well, as hard as that. - I know you have the vinyl, you have a bunch of like cool EDM vinyl stuff. - Yeah. The last time we were at scale, I was desperately trying to go to Jill's museum because of all the cool computer stuff, but also I wanted to check out all the cool EDM stuff too, and then we didn't get a chance. So disappointing.
- Scale is an hour from my house. - I've got hundreds of vinyl. And so, cause I'm a hipster, but I don't have any EDM. So Michael never wants to listen to my music cause it's all Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson, but you know. - I respect your choices, but yeah. - Most of our vinyl collection, like me and my husband have over a thousand vinyl records and I have at least several thousand cassettes and lots of eight tracks.
It's all on storage in the garage. Cause that's the only place we have space for it, but we do have some of course in our living room. - I've seen hundreds of records in stores. (laughing) - It's cool seeing them back in stores though.
You go to Target and things like that. - I know, I'm so happy it's made to come back. Cause people, you know, sounds beautiful. - And the fact that there's even record stores, you know, that record stores have come back. - Absolutely.
- I mean, not the ones that you would maybe like Sam Goody or whatever, those are long gone. But there's like some hipster stuff. - When you combine vinyl records again at Target, we're doing good. (laughing) - That's right, vinyl's making a comeback. You know, these darn rotten kids these days will never understand how hard we had to work to play a song we really liked.
We had to rewind fast forward, flip the tape over, find out where it's at, read tiny text written on a clear tape. - Oh yeah, also get one of those pencils that you can rewind the tape. - The album covers though are part of the charm.
And that's one of the things I think that's, has brought a younger generation back to see physical media and you know, look at that. - Also because the physical media is not bad. If you think about it, records were probably the most ideal physical media. - Oh, it was uncompressed. - CDs would deteriorate easily. Tapes would unwind and make this giant mess of nonsense.
Like basic or atrium, I've never actually used atrium. I have no idea, but the vinyl record came back, I think because it's just, it's also a good medium. - It's uncompressed audio.
There is no other medium today that uses uncompressed audio. I mean, you can, you know, with certain file formats like wave and flack and whatnot. But as far as physical media is, it's still uncompressed audio.
And in fact, a lot of the modern CDs and tapes and a lot of the digital stuff is mastered off the original vinyl. - There you go. - That's awesome.
Yeah, also the uncompressed audio digitally. - Yes. - Is gigantic files. You would not expect a CD to be uncompressed, to be 50 gigs.
- It is, absolutely. - Well, listen, I actually don't wanna move on from this topic, but we kind of have. - We kind of have, that's true.
- Maybe in the future, we could do a whole episode just about music. - Oh, that'd be cool. - I mean, if you want that, let us know in the comments. - Maybe it could be a Jill's treasure hunt in the future or something. - Oh, we could do an audio Jill's treasure hunt, which still brings it into the technology world. Yeah, let's do that, let's do that.
Now a word from our sponsor, oh, do the DJ for our sponsor thing. Can you do that, Jill? Like how a DJ would introduce a sponsor right before they cut in? - KXLU 88.9 Los Angeles. And up next is one of our best sponsors. And I've got to have you listen to this and put this in your ear holes. - This episode of Destination Linux is sponsored by Linbit.
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- So really that whole nostalgia with music and things is kind of a perfect transition to our main topic because the company we're gonna talk about, it was a little bit nostalgic for me, not that they ever went away, but I remembered some nostalgia with some items that I've had of them. And that's because we're gonna talk about Fujitsu and their advances in AI. And it's been a minute Fujitsu, it's been a little while and you've done some really cool things in the past. I remember having a laptop from Fujitsu.
I see them with- - Fujitsu has been around for a long time and there in, I was curious what I saw, I literally searched what is Fujitsu known for in basically everything, they make everything. TVs, laptops, tablets, services for enterprise companies, just IT, even internet services for various different infrastructures, like all sorts of stuff. And the only thing I remembered them for is TVs and those point and shoot cameras that you had to wind. - Oh yeah, yeah.
Well, they're one of Japan's largest companies, tech companies. So I'd for years have been using their old laptops, their lifebooks. Yeah, that was thing. - That's what I was thinking of Jill was the lifebook. I remember having lifebooks. I remember really liking Fujitsu's laptops.
You just don't see them. Maybe it's just me, maybe I haven't been looking. Maybe now that we have this story, I'll look around, I'll see Fujitsu everywhere. But it seems like they kind of went away in the American market in a big way.
I mean, the cameras are still there. Like you go through the stores and stuff, you can still see Fujitsu cameras and things, but I just don't see as much of their laptops and all the other electronics, printers and everything they produced in the past. As often. - You know, they merged with Siemens and then they, I think separated.
So this is Fujitsu limited. Yeah. - Oh, interesting.
Well, it's funny because there's still a massive company. So it's not really limited. - They're not really limited now. (laughing) - Well, what would happen if you took this company that makes all this amazing tech in Japan and you paired them with the Linux foundation and then you sprinkle the little AI Skynet in there, what would you get? - I think you'd get some really cool, awesome projects for open source.
- That's what's happening. So the two companies have announced the official launch of Fujitsu's automated machine learning and AI fairness technology. So you're getting both some of their AI technologies and their fairness technologies for open source software.
And this is ahead of the open source summit in Europe that they announced this partnership between the Linux foundation and Fujitsu. And the Linux foundation has approved the incubation of two new projects, the Sapien ML and then the intersectional fairness. So those are the two AI projects there.
And so your Sapien ML is really interesting. It focuses on developing automated machine learning technology that produces code for rapidly building learning models to be able to use for tabular data and those types of things and powers data science scientists out there. And data scientists can generate massive accurate models of AI and fine tune them for the generated code and all the cool things that you see out there being done with machine learning technologies, but they're also pairing in this intersectional fairness, which is really neat because they gave some examples of ways that they're gonna implement this, but essentially trying to find ways to remove some of the biases and things that would exist in AI and trying to make sure that the technology is still, you know, gated to a degree, not in the way of, you're not gonna be able to get to the results that you wanna get to, but in the way of just kind of putting some controls in place, which I know-- - So it's organized better, like it's automatically organized, yeah. - Yeah, it's organized better and it's giving you answers that aren't manipulated by other people trying to play with the algorithms and mess with the AI. And we've seen that type of stuff happen when AI has just been open to the community and publics.
- We've seen this type of thing happen with literally every technology it's ever created. - Yeah, so, but they're giving both to open source. They're open sourcing both, they don't have to.
Fujitsu could obviously do what ChatGPT did, which started open source and then closed it off because like money, cha-ching, they could have kept this for themselves. But they're open sourcing it. And that really made me like really proud of Fujitsu. Like maybe I wanna go out there and find a life book and put one on my desk.
Like that type of stuff means a lot to me. - It made me wanna go get a camera. (laughing) And I don't know why. - Yeah, now here's-- - But this is really cool. - What do you think of this, Jill? Cause you've used Fujitsu products in the past. You seem to know something about this company too with all the technology they created.
Is this exciting for you? - Yeah, actually again, just like you were saying, Ryan, about I was reading this article right when you posted it in the show and gave us the show notes. So I was really, you know, this is a company we haven't heard from much. I knew they were huge and of course in Japan and knew about their previous computers that of course we had access to easily here in the US, but they're a little harder to get ahold of now. Here in the US, but I was awestruck about the AI, but it kind of makes sense because if they're the largest tech company in Japan, they need some checks and balances on AI for their own country. - Well, I mean, it's just impressive because I mean, if you look at it, they don't really have that much incentive to do AI open because they're already a massive company.
They could easily afford to not do this. And this is a really cool thing for them to open source because they're allowing the Linux Foundation and everyone who wants to look at this code to be able to use it and also make their own machine learning models and all this other stuff to enhance the projects themselves, but also to enhance AI technology in a bigger, broader scale rather than having it just like the people who have the controls, like the puppeteers having the master controls of everything, like the chat GBT thing where they announced it is open and then all of a sudden it starts to be cool and then it turns to proprietary. That is what we were kind of worried would happen and Fujitsu is completely flipping the script, which is awesome. - Thank goodness.
You know, I've actually talked many times in the past here on Destination Linux about how the Linux Foundation should be the company to form an open source AI guardrails group to create a framework for AI. - And best practices in the industry and now they have the start with their partnership with Fujitsu. And I've been watching actually in the last few days, wonderful keynotes and talks from the open source summit, Europe Conference in Spain, put on by the Linux Foundation, which is still happening today. It ran from September 19th through the 21st and what's really cool is Fujitsu is a diamond sponsor. And so I was noticing that before this announcement was even made and I'm like, wow, there's something big there.
- Also, this is really cool because of the fact that I wasn't aware that they were as big as they are, but also I wasn't aware that they are so into AI being the largest AI related company in Japan and they listed how many patents they had. So they're not a 100% open source because patents are a thing, but also it's kind of like a necessity you have to deal with it because it is a type of logistical nightmare that you have to play around with. So it's not, but it's also cool that they're still using this to make the open source, but they said they have 970 patents just on AI related stuff.
- Well, think about it. You said this just makes sense and where I thought you were gonna go with it and partially I think you went there where I wanna kind of touch on it a little bit more is Japan's always been known for the robotics. - Oh, ever. - Oh, yeah. - Always.
- What was the most like-- - Asamo. - Asamo, that's it, that's it. - So when you think about it, they've got humanoid robots, animal robots, domestic robots, guard robots, like there are so many robots, they have cooking robots that do all the cooking for you from beginning to end. Robotics has been such a big part of Japanese culture.
Yeah, serving food in restaurants. And so when you think about Fujitsu holding 970 patents, the work in robotics and all the things in Japan, going on in Japan, like this is just, it's awesome to have that partnership with Linux and open source there. It goes on to say in April, they launched the Fujitsu Kazuchi, which is the code name Fujitsu AI's platform. Kazuchi enables users to rapidly and securely test advanced AI technologies, offered a wide range of customers and partners access to Fujitsu's most advanced AI technology. So they have more, and hopefully they'll keep making more and more of it open source, but any piece we can get, I'm happy with. And there's some quotes here that I think are interesting.
Offering AI technologies as open source software developers worldwide opens up new opportunities for innovation across various industries by lowering the barrier of entry. I mean, that's something we talk about loving with open source software to begin with, right? Lowering that barrier of entry for so many things. And that was from Fujitsu's CTO. And then they say, we're excited to work together with Linux Foundation and contribute to the further advancement and spread of AI by launching Fujitsu's AI technologies for the Linux Foundation, the Sapien ML and intersectional fairness. And then lastly here, we anticipate the offerings Fujitsu. This is from the Linux Foundation, automated machine learning AI fairness technologies as open source software will greatly contribute to the advancement and diffusion of AI.
So that's the director of the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemelin. Jim, by the way, you and your team, awesome job getting that partnership together. Also on the Fujitsu side, I don't know who was involved in the Fujitsu side, but thank you for coming together, those two companies to get this technology available for more people.
- And what's also cool is that again, because this was launched just before the open source summit, they did that on purpose so that people could test it out at the conference. So that's what I'm looking forward to. Our articles that are gonna come out soon about testing the software and how it works. So I'm looking forward to that. - And we'll keep you up to date on what's happening with the AI because we are fascinated just as much as you are. And this does not seem to be ending anytime soon.
- No, it's the most rapidly developing technology out there. You're going to have to deal with it. Even if you hate it, if you're one of those people that think it's the end of the world type of technology, you still gonna have to deal with it till the end of the world. It's gonna be here and it's rapidly growing.
So you're worried about it's gonna be the end of the world, but you're gonna have to deal with it until the end of the world. - You still got the time in between now and SkyNet comes alive. But listen, I think with responsible companies-- - This is forever the optimist. - With responsible companies like Fujitsu and Linux Foundation and things, I have some hope. We can put some guardrails-- - Oh yeah, absolutely. - For sure.
- Speaking of having hope, I have hope for open source file syncing and online document management. - Woo hoo. - And that's because thanks to Nextcloud, they have been making some big moves and they've made a ton of new changes to their new Nextcloud Hub 6. So they've been consistently amping up their offerings with their new Hub 6 going straight after Microsoft 365 and having the OSS or the open source software philosophy to have that behind it. At the Nextcloud conference in Berlin, they released Hub 6 and it has some pretty killer features. And to top off some of it, we're gonna talk about a few of them, but there's a ton, we can't list everything, just check the show notes.
But the first thing I wanna talk about is the integration of Only Office Productivity Suite. That is fantastic. - And that's been there before 6, that was maybe 5 they introduced that, but it was freaking, you gotta talk about it because, Michael, I'm gonna take you back. Two things first, before I take you back in time, don't go back in time. Before I take you back, stay in current time.
All right, Nextcloud just needs to sponsor the show because the way you did that intro, they just need to think about that, picture that in your mind, Nextcloud, and think about it, think about it. You could sponsor the show and you could get that every week. - How much value that would be is unsurmountable.
- It did sound like the ad read when you first started talking about it. It was so smooth, it was like an ad read there. Anyway, it made me think Nextcloud needs to sponsor us.
Anyways, all right, so now I'm gonna take you back. A few years ago, me and you decided, there you go, do a little ooh. We decided to try Nextcloud out and we were gonna use it for our business. Our little small business here, we call TuxDigital, which is all the podcasts and everything that we have. We wanted to utilize Nextcloud.
And we went in there, we had all the high hopes. I set up the server, Michael did all the website stuff, like DNS things and HTTP crap, because I don't touch that, but I do servers. So I do servers, Michael does web crap.
That's how our relationship works. - I like how you define my job in the position of web crap. - I don't like it, it's not that it's crap work, I just don't like doing that stuff. I like the servers stuff.
- I see what you're saying. - It's crap to me just because I don't like it and I got you to do it, which is why this mission works. - So you're saying you're doing the server crap, I'm doing the web crap. - Exactly. - Okay, I got it, I got it. - That's how it works.
- So we set this thing up, obviously Michael does the web stuff perfectly, I do the server stuff perfectly, because that's what we do. And I did not really like Nextcloud. I'm gonna be honest, it was not a good experience for us. Doesn't mean it's unusable, that doesn't mean it wasn't great for some people, but all the things we were trying to do, it just didn't work. - We were trying to make it the single project we were using for everything. And that's kind of how they promote this stuff.
And at the time, the hub system was pretty new, I think maybe it was like one or two versions in. And it had potential. - Yes, the foundation was there. - Yeah, the file syncing and the file storage and the organization and that stuff was very good and it's still good.
But there were some things that were hit and miss and mostly miss when you're looking at the farther outreaching, when the farther and farther you get from the file syncing, it got kind of clunky. Like the cloud in it, the calendar was kind of okay, but then it started seeing some issues. And but anyway, the cool stuff about Nextcloud is that it's constantly updating and constantly improving. And the latest version of Nextcloud has, I don't think we were even using Hub 6 yet, but we started testing Nextcloud again.
And recently we have come to a new appreciation of Nextcloud because-- - It's really good. - The file syncing is still good, but the other stuff is getting better and better. And also the UI has had a massive overhaul. - Oh my God. - So much better. - So much better.
- Whoever is doing their UI rework is just masterfully nailing it. Like they have really taken that UI from kind of bland and boring to next gen. Like it's really solid. - Previously it was good enough, but that's not really something to-- - There you go.
- This was now, it looks good and it looks like a modern tool. - Yeah, Jill, do you use Nextcloud? I use it all the time by the way now. Like I have my phone when it comes into contact with my Nextcloud server in my home. It automatically starts moving my photos over there. That's my sync for my photos and things. I use Nextcloud for my personal documents storage and things like that.
I've really come, I use the app on my phone as well for Nextcloud. I use the RSS feed to figure out what we're gonna talk about every week on the show, going through news stories and articles and stuff. I like their RSS feed plugin that they have. Like I'm utilizing it and with the only office integration, that to me was one of the real weaknesses before is like you could get other office suites technically to try to connect, but it was like you had to create another server or something. I don't remember how it worked.
There was something like you had to create another server. - A couple of hoops that you had to jump through for the other stuff. - And then that server for the word documents and stuff would connect to your Nextcloud server.
And now it's all integrated. You just click like install the app and it's there and you just-- - Well, you know, when we were using it previously, when we first started using Nextcloud here on Destination Linux, I was using it to store all my show notes and that was really good. And also we were uploading our backup sound files from our mics to it. And it actually is a lot faster now. Everyone's been telling me, oh, Nextcloud is the syncing is faster, everything's so much better now than it was. - Yeah, we set up our new Nextcloud instance, Michael and I, and we have been playing with it behind the scenes and for the show, for the business.
And there's some cool features though in the six that I kind of want to play with and try out. Like right now we use Jitsy for patrons to come watch us every Thursday here at six o'clock PM Eastern time, if you want to become a patron and watch us live, you should. But we use Jitsy. - It's central now, you're not Eastern anymore. - Listen, I need everyone to know something. I have a weakness.
- I'm not good at time zones. - I get lost and I'm not good at time zones. - He's lived in Eastern for so long that it's so hard for him to now remember that he's not there anymore. - Yeah, I'm not Eastern anymore.
All right, so some of these new features I think we could test out maybe even with the patrons here, like they have, of course, their new video chat tool, like maybe I can pipe in the data. - Oh yeah, I'd like to try that definitely. - They've done a lot of enhancements to it, like displaying the speaking time of individual participants.
- Oh, that's very cool. I wish I had that when Ryan was talking on DL. - Yeah.
- Michael. (laughing) - What? - Why would you need that, Michael? Just to see how little I get to say on the show. You know, barely ever talk. - We should have someone like take an episode of DL and see which one of us talks to us.
- Don't challenge our audience with numbers and things. You know, they'll go do it and I don't want to know. Okay, and then-- - I don't want to know either. Actually, you're right. Let's not do that.
- A warning when a meeting is approaching the 60 minute mark, my gosh. - That would be awesome. - That is very important. - No, it would be really-- - The idea of a hard out ever being a hard out, sometimes you get to leave most of the time, they're like, oh, I have, actually, I do this to Ryan all the time. We'll be on a phone call talking about business stuff or talking about other future episodes or something. And he's like, I gotta go.
I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. I got one more thing to say. And then after that one, he's like, oh, hold up.
Why got one more thing to say? - Yeah, I do that so much. - Two hours later, I'm like, listen, Michael, you got 15 minutes, two hours later. Whoa, whoa, whoa, one more thing.
- You know, it would be really cool to test out Next Cloud with our after show, because we've been using Jitsi for that for years. And Jitsi is wonderful open source project, but when it updates, it breaks. - It's, it's, it's, it's a project. - You gotta go through and relearn the JSON file for it. So. - That's a nice way of saying it, not wonderful, Jill.
- So anyways, we should try the Next Cloud solution for that. - To a point. - Cause I know. - I don't know what Next Cloud uses. I mean, they may use a form of Jitsi or something else, but I'm interested to try and see whatever it is that they utilize on the backend there.
But I like a warning when a meeting is approaching the 60 minute mark, because you know, we all have that coworker. That's just like, you're finally about to get to the end of the meeting. (Jiti laughing) You're almost done. You're like, ah, it's four o'clock on Friday. This is my last meeting. It just turned four o'clock.
It's the end of the meeting. And they're like, hey, since I have you all, let me ask you about egg. (Jiti laughing) I want this. So it's like, they get that, they need to do that right before the-- I feel like you're complaining about me.
Yeah, I feel-- Maybe a little-- Michael didn't point to himself. (Jiti laughing) So we were thinking you were complaining about Michael. (Jiti laughing) Yeah.
I don't do it every time, just most times. But yeah, I knew you guys were playing with Next Cloud on the backend, but I hadn't heard the recent experience on how that was going. So this is nice.
It's been really good. Michael uses different apps than I use. And so we're gonna have to kind of compare notes and things, but the stuff that I use, I really like and enjoy. Michael's more of a shoe on head person anyway. So, you know, he-- So you might need to explain that phrase, Ryan.
Well, you know, most people just, I don't know how to explain shoe on head other than to say Michael makes very common, simple things overly complex. Like you may just put your shoe on your foot and walk around. Whereas Michael might start with putting his shoe on his head, walking to the couch, then sitting down and putting his shoe on his foot as he purposely makes things more difficult than they should be. I was wondering how you were going to.
Yeah, exactly. He's a web dev after all. I mean that in the most loving way. (laughing) Of course you do, Jill. (laughing) I was wondering where you were going with this.
And like, how would you explain the shoe on head thing? Because I don't think we've ever discussed it on the show, but he has said that to me so many times. And I forgot how you described it, because it's been like two years since you first started saying it. But it is fair.
Sometimes I do make things more complicated than they need to be. And I will admit that. But I also have the best workflow ever imaginable because of it. Now that doesn't, it doesn't matter that I change my workflow constantly, because it still becomes more and more perfect.
That's just how it works. But I have been using Nextcloud, and I think the Nextcloud file syncing and that stuff is just, it's great. I don't have any issues with it. The automatically uploading to it, kind of like how Apple people have iCloud automatic updates and stuff like that.
That's very cool. Also the fact that Apple makes you pay for a service every, like upgrade it based on your amount of data you use. And Nextcloud, you just put it on whatever server you want and you have as much space as you have. There's a benefit there for sure.
But there's also other tools that Nextcloud has, and some of them are fantastic. The calendar has improved a lot. And the contact system has improved a lot. There are some issues that I think that Ryan's likes the RSS feed system.
It does not work for me, because I want a lot more powerful filters and automation stuff I can do with the RSS feeds. And you're not, it's a simple, basic RSS feed. So all you need is the simple function, then it's great. But if you are someone who's used it for 20, I've been using RSS feeds for 20 years or so.
I've got a system where I want to be able to automatically filter out certain entries on certain threads. And I also have like 50 or so, maybe 70 different feeds that I get into. - Aren't you so fancy? Let me out fancy you here right now. - Look at that. - You know, when you get one of these phones, Michael.
- What's that? What is that? - So people who can't see this, I'm still gonna make you jealous through the words that are about to come out my mouth. And this is the Fairphone 4, look at it, look at it. - I what? - I respect it. And-- - I like how you said the people who can't see this, look at it. They still need to look at it.
Imagine a Fairphone 4 in your hand. - You were just rubbing it in their face that they can't see. And you could put the NextCloud app on this, because this is EOS. And let me tell you something. I got a video coming out about it. You're gonna have to wait for it.
Wendy's editing it. So you want to yell at her for when the video's gonna come out. We're gonna talk about this some more. - I like how you're not throwing under the bus. - Just throw Wendy right under the bus right here, yeah.
Wendy has the files. She has my beautiful video talking about this beautiful phone and device here. But you can put NextCloud on it. Put NextCloud on that. Fairphone 4.
- As a preview, I heard what Ryan was gonna say about this phone. And it makes me want to use that phone. - Yeah, absolutely. - So we actually got it sent to me, because this is something that's cool. People might not know this. The Fairphone has not been available to US people for the entirety of its existence.
You could not order it and ship it to the US, unless you jump through a ton of hoops. But thanks to Marina or the EOS team, the/E/OS team, they made it possible to purchase from them to get the Fairphone. And that's what we did.
And it was sent to me. And then I decided, you know what? Ryan's probably the better person to review this. So I sent it to him instead. - It was very kind of you. - And then I regretted it instantly as he's telling me. (laughing) - How much I love it.
Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Okay, back to next cloud. So you get, using emails and chat messages during a meeting.
This is a big deal. Easily distracted. Michael's the worst with distraction, by the way. The worst.
- What? - This is such a good feature. - I do not get distracted, except for the four or five times we've done in this particular episode. I'm not that bad.
I'm not. Okay, I get distracted pretty much. - I like this idea. But then it reminds you to re-enable it because a lot of people are like, well, you could do that in your operating system. You turn off notifications and stuff like that.
Then what happens when your boss is trying to get ahold of you for the next hour and a half and you remember, oh, I had turned off notifications because I want to get distracted in that meeting. - That is the worst thing. I accidentally turn, every day I turn my phone on silent so I don't get, or do not disturb, so I don't get calls or telemarket or nonsense or text messages or whatever in the middle of the night. And sometimes I forget to turn it back on.
So having an automated turn back on, that is very important. - Very important. And then you get transcripts of your calls. So if you need a transcript, you missed a meeting, which is, when we talked about Google and some of their AI stuff where they have your virtual assistant, you could send into a meeting and things, a little bit creepy for me, a little bit too much. But I like transcripts.
I like that idea a lot. And I have a lot of ethical AI elements that they're using here to help you do things like change the tone of an email. Like Michael sends me an email and he's like, "Hey, Ryan, I have this idea." And I start off with, "This is the dumbest idea I ever heard." And then I go to the next cloud and say, "Can you change the tone of this?" And it's like, "Hey, Michael, maybe we should consider doing this instead." And I'm like, "Oh, that's what friends should talk to each other like."
And you could use- - So that's how you do it. - Oh. - That's how I do it. (laughs) So you have formal or relaxed, different verbiage AI things.
There's so much to love about Next Cloud, file sharing, file comparisons, mobile app integration, third-party application support. - This transcript thing is pretty cool in the sense of like, you could look at it as a way to do auto notes. The whole meeting notes that you used to have to do manually, now you can just have it automatically done. That's great.
So whoever is on the team that does the notes for you on those meetings now doesn't have to. So that's good for them. - Yeah, Next Cloud is really killing it actually. And they're a bit ahead of the game.
I think Microsoft and Google should be scared because they've already been starting to integrate the AI already in production. (laughs) - They should be heard. - Yeah, scared. - I'm gonna quote one of my favorite movies here.
Microsoft, Google, looks like someone just walked on your grave. - Very good, right? - Name that movie. - I have no idea. - You're lame, Michael. - Most of the time when you make references of movies, I don't know what they are.
- Tombstone. - The greatest movies of all time. - Oh, I've seen that. I'll be your huckleberry.
(laughs) - Someone just walked on your grave jumping on you. - I just don't remember that particular one. - No, that's because you're lame. All right, but violence is not always the answer. - No.
- I go to violence first, but violence is not always the answer. - Walked on your grave, but it's not always the answer. - It's not always the answer.
- Well, you know, Next Cloud is happy and great with AI. And this next game, you know, it actually could be. (laughs) So our game this week is proof you don't need over the top violence or jump scares to make a great game. Ryan. (laughs) - Oh, my bad. - So actually this is a fun, quirky game that will make you happy and lift your spirits that I have been playing since it was released in January of 2019.
And it has over 6,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews. Pika-niku. - Say it Jill, how do you say it? - This is my attempt. I think it's Pika-niku, because it's Japanese. And I think part of that I got correct, but I'm not sure.
- Pika-niku is what I would go with. No idea. - It's a game everyone in the family can enjoy. Pika-niku is spelled P-I-K-U-N-I-K-U. (laughs) - Link in the shadows. - So, and this game, actually I really like what the developers said about this game.
Pika-niku is an absurdly wonderful puzzle exploration game that takes place in a strange but playful world where not everything is as happy as it seems. Help peculiar characters overcome struggles, uncover a deep state conspiracy, and start a fun little revolution in this delightful dystopian adventure. I just love-- - Oh, so you start a revolution. It does get violent. - I like how it's overcome struggles and uncover a deep state. - Yeah.
(laughs) So Pika-niku is a delightful Kawaii aesthetic. That's one of my favorite things in games and in computer. - It's a delightful revolution. - Kawaii aesthetic. It's actually a 2D platform with puzzles, fun characters, and a chippy soundtrack, and happy colors, which I love. And you play as a very kind, two-legged creature who has to try and find a way out of each level but encounters many obstacles along the way.
It's on sale for 80% off for only $2.59 on Steam. - So here's the problem with that. We can't say that it's on sale because literally episode comes out when it's not.
- That's your fault, Pika. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's not the show out before the sale ends on the 25th. No, it's our listeners fault for not being here live to hear that the game is on sale right now when we're recording this.
- So before, one of my weird, we recorded on Sunday. It was, we always wanted to make this announcement for our patrons listening. - Well, I mean, it's still the same problem because when we say it in the show and we release it, it's still gonna be a big issue. - Yeah, but if they were here to listen to the show live, they would have gotten the game for 80% off.
- Now they're a patron because they can watch the unedited version. They can still get this information. Okay, I'll give it to you. - There you go.
- But even at full price, this game is so worth it. And it's fun, it's a fun and casual game and it plays beautifully on the Steam Deck and has been Linux native since it was released in 2019. And it's got some awesome downloadable content. In fact, I just downloaded it.
The downloadable content comes with a comic book and the whimsical fun soundtrack. So, and that's on sale right now too. - Well, Jill, if you're not listening to the soundtrack of this game here, but you wanna listen to music elsewhere, how can I do that in Linux? - Ah, so. - And will it use radio, babe? - Yes, yes, you can stream radio with this app and podcasts, by the way. So, did you know that you can install the Spotify app via Flatpak on your desktop? That is so cool. - It's also so crazy that we talked about Spotify and the community feedback and now all of a sudden it's a spotlight.
It's like you plan this. - Man, it all comes together. - We're not saying to use Spotify, but we know many in our community do. And it's just so nice to have a stand alone music, the stand alone music app so that you don't have to go and open a browser to access your library.
I love using it. - Is it hard to install Spotify, Jill? - No, not at all. You just go to Flathub and download it. I actually just installed it on the PopOS shop because Flatpak's are building it. - Well, a lot of times our amazing community goes out there and makes things that people utilize like a Spotify or other applications available to Linux on themselves, they do the work.
Here, Spotify actually created the app. The Flatpak. - They love Linux. They hard finish.
- I didn't know that. That's cool. - Yes, they actually hard finish. - I think they created a version a long time ago as a dad, but I didn't know they made the Flatpak.
That's really cool. - They made the Flatpak too. And-- - I'm really happy to see that because I have been using the web version of Spotify. - Oh, okay. No, I've been using the Flatpak for a while.
- You learned something, Mikey. - Yeah, I did. - And I think I would love to see them, Michael and Ryan open source this code in the near future and really gain the love of us Linux users and the open source community. That's kind of their next step.
- Imagine how many of the community would switch over to Spotify if they open sourced that code. Like, you know, I like Spotify. I like it a lot. It has a very good algorithm and it has an AI DJ, by the way, which is actually pretty decent. Eventually it gets pretty decent. It doesn't start out decent, but eventually it gets really decent.
And sometimes when up at the gym, I just choose the AI DJ and it will create fantastic music selection. And I learn new music and things like that. - There you go with more AI stuff. - It's like Pandora. - If you want to learn.
- Pandora, but even more, it's got the podcasts. - Except good. (laughing) - Michael, that's ugly. That's ugly, Michael.
- Okay, hey, Ryan, when was the last time you used Pandora? - It was ugly, Michael. That's all I'm gonna say. What I do wanna mention- - It was the last time you used Pandora, right? - Pandora works on my channel. So I am happy about that. (laughing) - You don't even wanna pretend to answer that question.
- Listen, one day Pandora may open source their app and then we're just gonna go be all Team Pandora. - Okay, that's- - You sure? - I'll switch to Pandora if they open source their stuff because to me that makes a big deal with Spotify. Hey, they made an app available for us. But we're gonna create a Destination Linux playlist on Spotify where Michael, Jill, and myself are gonna be part of it. Look for Destination Linux playlist on Spotify if you're part of it.
And then we're gonna put our favorite songs in there and then you can actually go in there and check out some of the music that we listened to. You can't open it up so other people can add music to it. Plus, I'm not so sure. We'd want all of the different types of music from like 10,000- - Yeah, who knows? - Whatever people in there. - I think they would probably troll us and put some random stuff in there.
- From hip hop to 60s ambient music, that would be interesting. - Every other song would be a Rick Roll, something like that. - Also some soundtracks from silent movies. - Yeah, there we go. - But we're gonna put Michael and Jill like EDM and those type of things. Me, I'm a huge country music fan.
I'm kidding, I'm not. But we'll put our music out there and you could check it out. I actually do like some country though, but we'll put our stuff out there. - There's exceptions to every rule. Also there'll be a link in the show notes to make it easier to find the playlist because that's gonna be a lot easier than searching on Spotify.
- No, search on Spotify, do some work, put some effort in. - The link in the show notes. - Be the hardest worker in the room. (laughing) - For a playlist? All right, the tip of the week this week is a tool that helps you show the progress on the command line. And you might be thinking, what's the name of this tool? Well, it's progress. This tool can be described as a tiny C command that looks for CoreUtils basic commands such as CP, MV, DD, TAR, CAT, G-ZIP, and more that are running on your system and displaying a percentage of the copied data.
So it can also act as a monitor sort of like top where it can show you the estimated time and throughput of these commands. And this can be very, very useful if you utilize this on a slow computer or if you have very large files, you can check this tool out as something for, actually if you have both even more so more important. So you can check this out to see if you're installing stuff and show off the terminal skills that you have if you want to as well, tons of value to it. And this has been renamed, right Jill? What was it used to, what it used to be called? - Yeah, so it used to be called CoreUtilsViewer or CV. In fact, recently I was thinking of installing this utility to see the progress of an ISO copy using the DD command to a flash drive, but couldn't remember the original name of it. So I was so happy they changed the name to Progress.
- Yeah. - But it is kind of disappointing that the person who made it couldn't put the CV on their CV. (laughing) - Cute, cute. Well, on top of all of that, we have some exciting news to share with you. Scale 2024 is scheduled for March 14th through the 17th. That's in 2024.
- What? - It's gonna be 2024. - Oh my gosh. - That's right around the corner, Ryan. (laughing) - The Pasadena Convention Center.
- Right around the corner. - And the Pasadena Convention Center is conveniently located in Pasadena, California. - Oh, that's good. Oh, yeah, it's really nice, yeah. - Yeah, and this is where you can go and hang out and meet the entire DL crew, plus all the amazing vendors, presenters, open source enthusiasts every single year. It's our favorite conference, and it's really the only conference now that you can go and see the whole crew and hang out with us.
And it's a lot of fun, and Jill's there, not alone. - That's enough. You could just end the segment just by saying, "Jill's there."
- Jill's there. - Yeah, that's it. That's all you need to know. - Now they are looking for presenters, and those applications are currently open.
So you've got really until November, 2023. That's the deadline to get your submissions in. So start thinking about talks and things.
It'd be interesting to cover there. Who knows? Maybe Jill, myself, and Michael will show up to your talk, hear it out there, if we can get away from the booth, that is. - Yeah. - And you can share your project passion or ideas at scale this year. So get your proposals in there now.
- And speaking of scale and all the love and all the hard work we do for scale, my Steve husband just popped in to our Jitsy room. (laughing) - Steve! - I saw him like pop up. - Nice, Steve. - And I'm hoping, yeah, I'm hoping he's able to listen, but he, our-- - It's another reason. - Yeah, our boobs would not happen.
- You get to meet Steve, exactly. That's a whole other reason. And you might be wondering, just imagine a counterpart for Jill.
And it's exactly what you think. Steve is exactly that awesome. - It's even sweeter than that, because Steve dotes on Jill, like you would see in a movie.
It's like a Disney movie. The way he looks at her, the way he talks to her, it's just this love. And it's just so hard for me to watch all this pure love happening. It's unbelievable.
- It's so adorable that it's sickening. (laughing) - Oh, I love him so much. - All right, so a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening to Destination Linux. However you do it, we love your faces. You can come join us on Discord, go to tuxdigital.com/Discord, come hang out with the community.
You become a patron, that's where you're gonna get your patron link every week on Thursdays, six o'clock central time. - Yes. - All done.
- It's very well done. - You're gonna watch us live. - And watching live is just one of the aw
2023-09-30 22:25
