Welcome to Take Control of Your Tech

0:00 [Will] Welcome to episode one of Take Control of Your Tech, a brand new podcast by me, Will Smith. [Will] About making your technology work for you instead of, well, faceless multinational corporations. [Will] Today we're going to talk about, well, what this new show is, why I'm doing it, why you're here.

0:15 [Will] Listening to it, and what you're going to get from it. And then we're also going to dig into the very. [Will] Bad day that IT folk around the world had this week when there were multiple exploits happening. [Will] All at the same time that impacted servers and clients and phones and browsers and pretty much.

0:31 [Will] Everything on the internet. We're going to talk about that, explain what it is and what you need. [Will] To do to deal with it if you haven't already. We're going to talk about what's going on with. [Will] My switch to Linux since the dual boot diaries ended earlier this year. And I'm going to answer.

0:44 [Will] Some questions. Let's get started. Let's do it. Let's take control of your tech. [Will] Well, that's theme. I'm Will. Hello, welcome. We're here. It's a brand new show. I feel I. [Will] Got that new studio smell in here, but it's an old, it's the same. I'm always. [Will] This is where I always am, it turns out. Hi, this is Take Control of Your Tech. I've been working on.

1:29 [Will] This off and on for the last, well, for the last few months, but really for the last two years. [Will] Because this is a project about something that speaks to me. It's important to me. It feels. [Will] An important thing to do at this time in the world. We've talked a lot. Let'see, I'm not going to.

1:46 [Will] Say the word because I don't want to get YouTube delisted immediately, but we've talked a lot about. [Will] On the tech pod and on dual boot diaries and on the full nerd and the other places you might see me. [Will] About big giant technology companies that have turned us, the users from customers into just.

2:04 [Will] Revenue lines and the degradation of services and products Google and Adobe. [Will] And Microsoft and all the work that they've done where the OS and the tools we use and the. [Will] Software we use has just gotten consistently worse over the last several years, especially. [Will] This isn't a new thing. This has been going on for a long time. A friend of the show, Corey Doctorow.

2:27 [Will] Has been writing about this since the early part of the century, honestly. But it's accelerated in. [Will] The last few years as we've reached saturation points where billions and billions of people have. [Will] Phones and they're connecting their phones to these shared services and then pair that with the.

2:46 [Will] Rise of AI technology and both the increasing hardware costs that's caused and also. [Will] The willy nilly torching businesses that have been around for 20 years by companies. [Will] Google and Microsoft in order to drive AI revenue growth. And it's all come to a head in the last. [Will] Year and a half. This podcast, Take Control, is a culmination of two different things that started.

3:11 [Will] Last year for me. I started a newsletter in the early part of the year and I learned a couple. [Will] Of things in that. One of them is that doing a weekly newsletter is way more work than I. [Will] Anticipated it was going to be. But the other, the newsletter was What's Next for Folks Who Don't Know.

3:26 [Will] The idea was we're going to talk about how, it's the same idea. It's a little bit narrower scope. [Will] And I quickly outgrew what I felt was to talk about there? It. [Will] Started out as, hey, we can make Windows good. And then I used, I did that for a while and I was. [Will] Man, if we can make Windows good. And then I started using Linux when Adam.

3:48 [Will] Patrick-Marie over at PC World and I started doing the dual boot diaries. And well, it turns out that. [Will] Switching to Linux was both viable and interesting and gave us a lot of stuff to talk about on a. [Will] Weekly basis and was quite good for me personally. It , moving away from these.

4:13 [Will] Services that treat me the product rather than the customer made me enjoy, helped me enjoy. [Will] Computers again. I hadn't, I realized midway through this process that I hadn't been. [Will] Having fun futzing around with computers for a long time and learning to use Linux, switching to. [Will] Linux on desktop, experimenting with all the different stuff that's out there made me realize.

4:37 [Will] That could be fun. And I got back into it and I started digging in and I learned about all. [Will] Sorts of crazy stuff tiling window managers and , a bazillion other things. I also. [Will] Realized that I have notifications on, I'm going to turn on do not disturb on my near install and. [Will] Hopefully the little dings will stop and I won't have to go through and edit a bazillion of them.

4:58 [Will] Out in the background. But , no, I getting in and learning how to, I both learned how to make. [Will] Linux work for me, but I also as part of that process learned a ton about how computers. [Will] Work. I learned about how bootloaders work and how file systems work and all this other stuff. [Will] That'super gratifying for me to understand about these tools that remain despite the kind.

5:20 [Will] Of overarching crappiness of the current, late stage capitalist AI nightmare we're in. [Will] They're still transformative technologies and I'm excited about that's where we started. [Will] The mission here is really simple. It's, now in a lot of cases you're working for. [Will] These technology companies. They're constantly bombarding you with marketing messages. They're.

5:43 [Will] Trying to get you to sign up for services that you may or may not need and may or may not be useful. [Will] And they're doing all sorts of varying levels of shady stuff from the dark patterns that show. [Will] Up in your Snapchat or Instagram notification page where they just keep inventing new types.

5:59 [Will] Of notifications that you have to go in and turn off every few months to things Google's AI. [Will] Search that is frequently wrong and low value. And we're going to talk about replacements. [Will] For stuff that can't be tweaked. We're going to talk about adjustments for things that can be. [Will] Improved. We're going to talk about wholesale replacements. We're going to have a wide variety.

6:19 [Will] Of topics that are everywhere from as drastic as, yo, maybe it's time to drop Windows and. [Will] Switch to Linux or Mac OS or something else, all the way down to here'some simple. [Will] Registry keys that you can change that will give you access to Windows the way it used to work. [Will] And versus the way Microsoft wants it to work now. That's the mission. And also.

6:42 [Will] There's a whole other world of this stuff as well because there's hardware that's in the same. [Will] Category too. I look at all the projects that people do with Raspberry Pis and. [Will] ESP32s. I look at the work people are doing in home labs to self-host alternatives to things. [Will] Google Photos or Apple Photos. I look at the little Internet of Things that people are.

7:04 [Will] Building with ESP32s. And there's a whole world of opportunity to find amazing, cool, transformative. [Will] Things you can do with technology still that don't require you to pay $5 a month to Microsoft. [Will] Or Google or Meta or whoever it happens to be. We're going to get into that. We're going to.

7:26 [Will] Look at making reasoned, thoughtful decisions about this stuff. I realize that. [Will] Everybody can't stop using Windows all the time. It's not a practical thing for most people. And. [Will] For a lot of people, it's the wrong choice. The answer is to make Windows work for you. [Will] Not to throw out the baby with the bath water, I think is the metaphor for that.

7:48 [Will] We're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about stuff games. [Will] One of the neat things that's happened in the last couple of years, especially it's again. [Will] This is one of the things that's been in the process for 10 years at this point. [Will] But the last few three, four, five years have been incredible for running, getting games to work on.

8:06 [Will] Linux in a way that never has happened before. And a lot of that is due to the work that Valve did. [Will] To make the Steam Deck possible with Proton. And I think the we talked about this a little. [Will] Bit on the tech pod, but the rise of FEX or Fex, the arm to x86 translation layer that Valve made.

8:23 [Will] For the Steam Frame is going to enable a wild number of novel experiences on smartphones. [Will] And phone devices handheld gaming consoles and things that are really. [Will] Affordable and really accessible and are quite compelling, especially when compared to the ever. [Will] Increasing price of traditional PC hardware and Steam Deck handhelds. That's the show.

8:52 [Will] It means we're going to talk about a bunch of stuff that is interesting projects you can do. [Will] Things you can do to excise different bits of software from your life and companies from your. [Will] Life, companies that I just don't fool with. I don't buy meta stuff anymore. We're going to talk.

9:06 [Will] About that and probably not this week, but in the future. And that's where we're starting. [Will] I guess. That's take control of your tech. There's as always, everything I realized comes. [Will] With a subscription. I know we just talked about dropping subscriptions. I'm an independent creator.

9:24 [Will] I'm out here. This is a big part of my job as the games industry has changed over the last. [Will] Couple of years, making podcasts and making content with people has become a larger and larger. [Will] Part of my day to day work. And the reaction we got to dual boot diaries makes me. [Will] Made me think that maybe this is a big enough topic to become, a much larger chunk of my.

9:48 [Will] Of my full time job. And I would love that. The site's up now you can go to take control. [Will] Dot content dot town along with the website, along with the podcast there's. [Will] Also a website, unfortunately, because of the state of AI crawlers on the web, you have to create. [Will] An account to log in. I'm not going to sell your email address to anybody. I'm not going to.

10:07 [Will] Spam you with a bunch of email nonsense. I might occasionally send you a newsletter when I think we. [Will] Post something cool over here, whether it's a podcast or a blog post. But there are blog. [Will] Posts I have the I have for the first time since I left tested, I have the ability to post.

10:22 [Will] Blog post easily, regularly where people can see them. And we're going to do that. It's not going. [Will] To be a super regular cadence at first. But , as the number of people subscribing come. [Will] Up, I'd to bring in more contributors and more people to both work on the podcast. [Will] Maybe make some videos, and then also just post blog posts and newsletters for people.

10:43 [Will] If you once you create your account, you can choose whether you want to get emails for me at. [Will] All. It's in the account settings up there. You can also subscribe to the site. It'six bucks. [Will] A month. I'm running everything on as open platforms as I can. There's a blog post up. [Will] Explaining all that stuff. But I started on ghost. I was , I don't want to give Patreon money.

11:02 [Will] At this point. And I built a bunch of built and adapted rather a bunch of tools that let me do. [Will] Things sync ghost account status and discord account status. And I found a provider that will. [Will] Work with ghosts to provide private ad free podcast feeds for folks who are subscribing. [Will] If you want to listen to the podcast without ads, you can do that by going to again to take.

11:25 [Will] Control dot content dot down and signing up for any tier that's there. The six dollar tier gets. [Will] You no ads. I think I'm probably also going to drop those episodes early, although there's. [Will] Some technical stuff I have to work out before we I can promise that for sure. But. [Will] I want to drop those episodes as soon as they're available. And if we get enough interest, I'll.

11:44 [Will] Probably do video as well because It's easy for me to record video with just one person or one. [Will] Person and a guest doing video episodes is relatively straightforward. And I feel. [Will] That's an important part of promoting podcasts these days. That's take control. Again. [Will] The URL is take control dot content dot town. If you go over there and hit that subscribe button.

12:04 [Will] At the top of the page, I would really appreciate it. And I appreciate everyone'support. [Will] The couple of questions I'm going to go ahead and get out of the way up front on that. [Will] Why are we using discord if we're focusing on open platforms? And the answer to that is I looked at. [Will] The discord competitors out there matrix and some of the others, I can't remember the names off.

12:23 [Will] The top of my head. But they all were missing some key functionality, whether it was the discord. [Will] To whatever the other platform was access sync that we could limit those communities to paying. [Will] Members. Or it was that the hosting was onerous or whatever. They just didn't feel. [Will] There yet. I did. I got to say I looked at discourse and I looked at a couple of forum.

12:48 [Will] Type softwares and I thought, man, maybe we should just do a forum for this. That feels it's. [Will] Maybe the answer or message board. And I'm open to that idea as well. If people if that's. [Will] Something people want, I can definitely explore that. But , that's that. The rest of the. [Will] Stuff. Let'see the host for the podcast files is a company called Transistor, which the parentage.

13:07 [Will] There is not great, but they do provide the integration for the ghost private feeds, which. [Will] Makes my life a lot easier. And then we have the ability to do show notes and transcripts and stuff. [Will] That on the ghost site. They're all just embedded. I'm using a template there called. [Will] Signal, which the folks who make that have been incredibly helpful helping me get stuff set up and.

13:28 [Will] All that. And I'm really stoked about the whole thing. I didn't want to self host anything for. [Will] Obvious reasons. I want to make content and make podcasts and blog posts not be a system administrator. [Will] But I also did want to use stuff that was more open than just chucking this up on a normal podcast.

13:45 [Will] Host and using Patreon for the subscription side of it. That's take control. Please, if you have. [Will] Questions, send them to take control at content.down. I will put them in the queue. You can do audio or. [Will] You can just send me a text question and I'll be happy to read it. But , I appreciate you all.

14:01 [Will] And that is what the show is about. Now, let's take a quick second and we're going to talk about news. [Will] Today's episode of Take Control of Your Tech is brought to you by Fast Mail is a mail. [Will] Provider for people us. I use it every day. It's my absolute favorite mail provider. I wrote.

14:21 [Will] About it on the blog last year. But the reason I love it, there's a bunch of reasons I love it. [Will] The big one is that it's user configurable and you can hook it up to a whole bunch of different. [Will] Domains. And it means that creating new accounts on those domains for your podcast and your.

14:37 [Will] Twitch stream and all the different things you do for your Etsy store, for whatever, is as easy as. [Will] Opening up a menu and creating a new email alias there. You can filter those aliases that even. [Will] Before they hit your normal anti-spam filters and all the stuff, they all just get dumped into a.

14:51 [Will] Folder in your inbox. You can forward them to other addresses if that's what you want. And it. [Will] Makes it really easy for folks who own a bunch of domains to really get a handle on their. [Will] Email situation, get all of their emails in one place. I've been using it for several years now.

15:07 [Will] I'm a big fan. And if you want to support the show, you can go to join.fastmail.com. [Will] And sign up. I'll get a little bit of cheddar cheese. You get a great email service. Everybody wins. [Will] News! Now it's time for the news. Eventually, I'll have some news stinger that is. [Will] But we're still figuring that out. It's been, when I originally set out to do this.

15:32 [Will] My plan was to go down all of the news that has happened in the Linux world. [Will] Or at least the important stuff since we shut down dual boot diaries this summer. [Will] And then this morning as I set out to record this, there was a one-two punch of terrible. [Will] Terrible exploits and internet problems that I thought were probably more important and.

15:51 [Will] Relevant to talk about. We'll do some legacy news next week, but this week we're going to talk. [Will] About the very bad day for system administrators and IT folks today. If you're in that category. [Will] Of person, I'm sorry and thank you for your service. This was, I said, two big vulnerabilities.

16:10 [Will] Affect pretty much an enormous number of servers and an enormous number of client devices across. [Will] The web, which is a real double whammy of bad news for folks who work in these spaces. [Will] Here's what they are. The eMudra, which is an Indian certificate company. [Will] Had some private key certificates that were, sorry, private keys for widely.

16:34 [Will] Distributed certificates are things that determine that the company you're talking to. [Will] The server you're talking to is the server it says it is. And those certificates all. [Will] Flow downstream. There'll be a high level certificate and it will authorize a bazillion. [Will] Other certificates. You'll pay this company and they'll generate a certificate for your machine.

16:55 [Will] That says, oh , this server is this server based on the authentication, the cryptography. [Will] And on the certificate. They had some top level certificates that were single character private. [Will] Keys. , how we always say make your passwords long, it's better to use a bunch. [Will] Of words than a character thing that's impossible to follow, impossible to remember.

17:23 [Will] They had a private key that the password was for, is my understanding. These are. [Will] Intermediate certificates. There's eight of them. And the fix for this is to just update a bunch of. [Will] Software and tell it to ignore those certificates from now on, which by the time you hear this. [Will] OS's, browsers, a ton of apps, a lot of other infrastructure is already taken care of. Now.

17:47 [Will] We're going to be finding stuff for weeks, maybe months, old Linux machines that are in a. [Will] Closet someplace that you forgot about and just run quietly to themselves. [Will] Docker containers, apps that hardly ever get updated. All of that stuff is going to. [Will] Have to be updated to block these certificates. It's bad. This is a bad one because it requires.

18:10 [Will] A whole bunch of people to do a whole bunch of updates on the provider side for the software. [Will] And then it also requires a whole bunch of people to update their devices. [Will] Which people traditionally are bad at. Now browsers are good at this. That's good. But. [Will] As I told my wife and daughter, as I was helping them update all of their devices this morning.

18:30 [Will] You probably don't want to use apps for things banking and stuff that until you. [Will] Pull down an update that fixes this problem. The browsers are safe at this point. [Will] Most likely assuming the servers have updated their stuff, which we'll talk about in a minute. [Will] Because everybody's doing server updates at the same time. This one, the doubt.

18:49 [Will] What can happen if you have this problem, if you're affected by this. [Will] The main thing is that man in the middle attacks where somebody puts a computer between. [Will] You and the person you're trying to talk to and it mimics both sides of that conversation to the. [Will] Other one, can sniff things passwords or bank logins or , I guess that'still a password.

19:12 [Will] But the stuff that you maybe don't want to share, credit card numbers, all that stuff that's. [Will] Encrypted with this certificate on the web, somebody can set up something in the middle. [Will] That grabs your stuff and then passes it on to the next person. You don't even know it's been. [Will] Grabbed. Again, this one's I said, this one's pretty bad and it can affect, I said, OS's.

19:36 [Will] Browsers, apps, Python scripts, Docker containers, IoT devices, all of that stuff. [Will] That's the eMudra. I'll put a link in the show notes to an Ars Technica article that's. [Will] Quite good explanation of what's going on. The Ars article directly by Dan Gooden. [Will] Directly compared this to Heartbleed, which was the previous biggest flaw, which was an actual flaw.

20:05 [Will] In the cryptographic library. Now, this isn'that this isn't a flaw in the cryptographic library. [Will] This is just somebody who had permission to issue high level certificates, making an incredibly. [Will] Stupid decision at some point along the way. It seems it's too early to know exactly what.

20:21 [Will] The no fault postmortem on this is. But , anyway, we should block all of the you should. [Will] Block all of these certificates. And this is one of those places that we've talked about in the past. [Will] Where if you're still running an old version of Windows, if you're running Windows 10, you.

20:37 [Will] You use edge on Windows 10, which for the love of God, don't use edge on Windows 10. [Will] It's those certificates maybe haven't been updated yet because Microsoft's a little. [Will] Slow updating Windows 10 these days. That's eMudra. The other one is arguably worse, but. [Will] Probably not for consumers, not for people us. A version of PHP that a ton of.

21:01 [Will] Servers use around the world for these services and a bunch of other stuff has a remote. [Will] Code exploit, which means that an attacker can open up a run a program attack the server, and then. [Will] Run whatever code they want. They can download a script that lets them gives them full. [Will] Ownership of the machine and on and forth. This mostly applies to servers, although if you do.

21:24 [Will] Have a home lab and run local services and stuff that, you want to update those to solve this. [Will] Problem. But it is available in the widely used versions of PHP. I've seen a bunch of websites. [Will] Go down and come back up as people have updated their PHP versions. Part of the challenge with.

21:41 [Will] This is a lot of the software is maybe poorly maintained now because some of it's quite old. [Will] Obviously, MediaWiki and WordPress are fine, but there's a bunch of PHP apps that are out there. [Will] There's a bazillion old PHP BB instances floating around the web that I'm sure haven't been updated.

21:55 [Will] Stuff that. You'll want to update any machines that you have that run that stuff. [Will] If you self host home lab stuff inside your house, this is definitely the time to update those. [Will] Those machines, especially if they have access to the broader internet. , I don't. [Will] Think Plex uses PHP. But if you're using services Plex that punch a hole in your.

22:18 [Will] Firewall and your ports open for them, you probably want to close those ports until you can update. [Will] Those services. How do you fix this stuff? The answer is unfortunately the same for both of them. [Will] You have to update your computers. By the time I recorded this episode, both in the afternoon of.

22:36 [Will] The day that this stuff was announced, Microsoft and Mac OS and most of the bigger Linux distros. [Will] Have already patched. My cache OS had a patch this morning when I turned on the computer. [Will] My wife's Mac had a patch by nine o'clock in the morning. The Windows 11 machine in my office was.

22:53 [Will] A similar situation. You also want to update your browsers, the browser, the main browser. [Will] Manufacturers were fast. And even the second tier, newer browsers helium and. [Will] Those were already had to fix as well for the certificate problem. [Will] You want to update your internet thing stuff. This is the more challenging one.

23:14 [Will] Anything that connects to the internet, or anything that uses certificates or anything that uses. [Will] That has the little check mark and the shield when you log into a website. [Will] You want to make sure that those SL certificates are current and the bad ones are blacklisted or. [Will] Disallowed. And you're going to have to do that by updating them. That means if you have.

23:35 [Will] Smart hubs, if you have bulbs, if you have all sorts of internet of things, devices, smart cameras. [Will] All that stuff has to get updated. And it's going to be I spent most of the morning doing. [Will] That in my house, it takes a fair amount of time, you have to really think about it. This is one of.

23:52 [Will] Those places where I really wish I had a big giant database that just listed everything I have in the. [Will] House. I ended up loading up the web console for my network stuff. [Will] And looking to see what devices were there and see what I'd forgotten. I had to. [Will] Update my printer, which is that was new and exciting. Let'see, if you can't update anything.

24:16 [Will] The thing to do is to cut it off from the internet. Turn off this external services. [Will] Close those portals and just use it internally in your house for the time being. I spent a lot of. [Will] Time this morning updating my wife and daughter's devices. Funnily enough, it also gave me a reason.

24:31 [Will] To help my daughter manage the amount of space on our iPad, which good God, that's a terrible. [Will] Experience Apple, you all need to work on that's, that is what's going on. [Will] With the moodra and the PHP remote code exploit. Let's take another quick break, and I will be back. [Will] With updates on Linux, it's time. For folks who don't know, a year back and listen.

25:03 [Will] There's 40 some episodes of dual boot diaries that detail my journey from a day to day Windows. [Will] User to a let'say 90 ish seven days a week minus a couple hours a day, a couple days a week to play. [Will] Games that don't really work on Linux, because of anti cheat and stuff that. [Will] But , I've been using Linux for more than a year now, it turns out and I quite it. I'm a.

25:27 [Will] Cachey OS user, I'm running Neary, which is a tiling window manager. If you go hit that last. [Will] Episode of dual boot diaries, you can see on the YouTube channel, I'll put a link in the. [Will] Show notes, but you can see my desktop setup there. It's quite, it's been incredibly. [Will] Empowering, I'much more productive. I'm feeling really good about it. I quite enjoy what we're.

25:51 [Will] Going to continue talking about it. But people have been asking for an update on how things are. [Will] Going. And part of the Neary experience. Neary, I said, is a tiling. [Will] Window manager, which means your windows are instead of being scattered about on a. [Will] Desktop, and you can drag them on top of each other and stuff that, they just are a line.

26:12 [Will] A radinal line. And the line is infinite. You can use keyboard controls to scroll back and forth. [Will] Between the different applications open on your desktop, you can use other keyboard commands to. [Will] Switch between virtual desktops. And secondary lines of the programs, you can put. [Will] Different lines on different monitors, all sorts of cool stuff. It's incredibly powerful.

26:34 [Will] Metaphor for desktop computing. But you use Neary as the window manager, it just controls where the. [Will] Windows go. There's a whole other layer of stuff above that called a shell that is doing. [Will] Window chrome and giving you the little applets that control your Bluetooth devices and all that.

26:51 [Will] Stuff. Now, if you're a real Linux head, you can do that with the command line, you can. [Will] Just get into a terminal and control all of that stuff. I'm not quite there yet. And even if I were. [Will] I don'think I'd want that. I think I having a UI for, humane computing. And I use. [Will] A thing called Noctalia to help with that. Noctalia shell came out last June of 2025.

27:16 [Will] And they've iterated incredibly quickly on it. But at the end of the v4 cycle, they realized that. [Will] They'd hit the limits on the technology that they were using underneath Noctalia thing. [Will] Called quick shell, and wanted to rewrite some core functionality from the ground up. And they.

27:32 [Will] Started working on that this summer. And the v5 version, the current rewritten version just came. [Will] Out during this interim. And I made the switch over. It's fabulous. It's a huge. [Will] Improvement in terms of performance and speed. I quite it. And the configurability and. [Will] The options that they give you to make your desktop feel your own are.

27:56 [Will] Really a whole step ahead of what we had before. I think we've reached a point now where. [Will] Noctalia v5 is on par or better in terms of functionality and usability and features. [Will] From where were with the v4 version. And I would highly recommend if you're interested. [Will] In trying it out, you load up another instance and are put in a VM and give it a swirl.

28:20 [Will] The I said, I've been using it for a few weeks now. The migration was a little bit. [Will] Challenging. You configure near you with a text file called config dot kdl. It lives in your dot. [Will] Config slash near e directory. Usually you can put it as with anything Linux, you can put it. [Will] Wherever you want. But I had to go through and edit some stuff in that config file that controlled.

28:42 [Will] Things key bindings and things that triggered near features or Noctalia features. [Will] Rather. I had to rebind anything that used a quick shell qs space Noctalia shell. [Will] Which was how you triggered the old quick shell commands for something that was just. [Will] Noctalia msg and then the same command. It was having a text editor open and having.

29:06 [Will] The web browser open with the new commands and updated rewriting the maybe 15 or 20. [Will] Commands in my near e config that connect directly to Noctalia shell. I did also at the end of the. [Will] Noctalia of the near e config file, there's the thing that launches the Noctalia shell. I had. [Will] To change that to point to the new version. The nice thing about this is you can keep.

29:30 [Will] Both the old version and the new version on the same machine. There's no conflicts. The only thing. [Will] That you do is change the version of Noctalia that launches the new one is just Noctalia and the. [Will] Old one is Noctalia space shell or dash shell. I could go back and forth while I was while.

29:48 [Will] I was doing the transition when I messed something up. The let'see I did that the first thing I did. [Will] Was made a copy of that config file and named it v4 and then I made a whole bunch of changes. [Will] And then I accidentally rewrote overwrote those changes because I was a doofus and I did it all.

30:04 [Will] Again, which would have taken a little bit less time had I not made the basic had I not. [Will] Started typing without thinking about what I was typing. [Will] That got not near e and Noctalia set up, but I then had to reconfigure Noctalia to do the. [Will] Settings that I wanted and to look I wanted. I picked things color theme and how it.

30:25 [Will] Presents the bar. This is for people who don't use Linux. This is the place that Linux. [Will] Really shines. You can make your operating system work exactly how you want. If I want. [Will] To have a dock on Mac OS, I can put a dock down if I wanted the bottom of the screen, I can. [Will] Put at the bottom of the screen. If I want on the left side of the screen, I can put on the left.

30:44 [Will] Side of the screen. If I just want a taskbar type interface Windows, I can configure that. [Will] Using the built in Noctalia configuration stuff. If I want a top bar that is the. [Will] Best of both worlds, it's the Windows taskbar and also the Mac OS menu bar. [Will] I can do that. And you can configure all of this stuff with built in widgets and tools.

31:08 [Will] There's a bunch of extensibility, you can grab plugins from the Noctalia community. [Will] And you can build your own plugins. They'relatively straightforward. [Will] And I was able to configure all that stuff in Noctalia, get all my wallpaper set up the way I. [Will] Wanted, get the clock to read the time format and all that stuff. And then.

31:28 [Will] This is I think new, I was able to go into the Noctalia settings page and export that. [Will] Config file. I we talked about this in the dual boot diaries, but I saved my. [Will] Neri configuration in a GitHub repo that I can make changes one computer, upload them to. [Will] GitHub, and then pull them down on my laptop or any other computer I happen to be using.

31:50 [Will] And that was amazing when I wanted to make this switch because updating my laptop to use Noctalia. [Will] V5 was as easy as installing the appropriate Noctalia package for my distro, and then. [Will] Pulling down the new version of the config dot KDL file and from Git and GitHub and rebooting.

32:08 [Will] And when I came back up, I had Noctalia was just there ready to go, then Noctalia v5 was ready to. [Will] Go. But it was the default version. And I wanted it to look the same on all my computers. I. [Will] Grabbed that config file I exported from the desktop PC. And I chucked it in the I think it's.

32:24 [Will] Dot config slash Noctalia folder. And the moment I dropped that folder that file in the folder. [Will] Noctalia just switched to look exactly it does on my desktop PC, which is absolutely wild. [Will] To me. It felt legit computing magic was really neat stuff. And I. [Will] It's one of the things that Neary does that I didn't realize Noctalia did until I did that.

32:49 [Will] But Neary, when you make a change to the config file, it just parses the file and assuming the. [Will] File parses correctly, it just applies the change immediately. You don't have to log out or log in. [Will] Usually, it just starts working. And the Noctalia picking that change up as well. [Will] Was really good. , it placed my bars in the places, it named my it styled my.

33:11 [Will] Workspace names correctly, it arranged the system tray equivalent, and all of my little. [Will] Widgets that are up on the way on the menu bar, the same and , it's a really impressive. [Will] Really impressive tool. I've had a couple of weird bugs. They'relatively minor and cosmetic. The. [Will] Biggest one is that Noctalia v5 lets you black out the corners of your screen. If you.

33:36 [Will] Have if you want to make your screen look it has Mac style curved corners instead of. [Will] Square corners, screens usually have, you can do that. When I flip that switch on, they're all. [Will] The amount of space that's curved is fuzzed out in a weird way. And. [Will] Exactly what's going on there. I need to submit a bug for that. But that was the.

33:57 [Will] Big one. I also switched to Noctalia greeter, which is another new project from the Noctalia folks. [Will] It's a desktop manager in Linux is from a practical purpose, it's the login. [Will] Screen. It's the thing that it's the graphical UI that pops up that you type a password and. [Will] Username into. And it launches into the windows into the windowing manager. It.

34:24 [Will] Says, this person has authorization to use his computer, and then it launches, whether it's. [Will] Katie or gnome or near your hyperland or one of the other million compositors desktop. [Will] Compositors, a desktop environments, it launches that for you. They greeter because. [Will] It's really fast, it's integrated tightly with niri or with Noctalia rather, that when I.

34:44 [Will] Change my styles or theme or whatever in Noctalia, it'll automatically update the greeter post for me. [Will] It's a little bit more involved to set up. I'll probably talk about that next week or the week. [Will] After. But , definitely, if you're starting out with a new install, I would probably go ahead.

34:59 [Will] And start with that, especially if your distro supports it. But switching from SDDM to that. [Will] I had to do a fair amount of shenaniganry and command line work would have been, I said. [Will] Definitely if you're starting from scratch, you want to choose that if that's an option. [Will] Given you when you make the change. Let'see, I think that's probably a great time to take.

35:20 [Will] A quick break and hear from our sponsor again. And then we'll talk about my new server, which I also. [Will] Set up. I talked about this toward the end of the dual boot diaries and we can get into that a little. [Will] Bit. , this episode of Take Control is brought to you by Fastmail, the mail server, the mail.

35:42 [Will] Client, mail client, mail server, mail provider, their email for nerds us, they give you. [Will] Access to things infinite addresses on your subdomain. You can you hook up your domain. [Will] Your fast mail at a domain level. And then if you want to make tech pod at content dot town or. [Will] Take control at content dot town or whatever you want to put in those subdomains, you can.

36:03 [Will] It's really incredible. It's a really powerful tool for managing complicated email boxes. [Will] And if you they've been kind enough to sponsor the podcast. If you would to get access. [Will] If you'd to sign up for fast mail, it's thirty five dollars a year. It's an incredible. [Will] Service. You can do by going to join dot fastmail dot com slash will and I'll get a.

36:24 [Will] Little bit of money. You'll get a great email service. Everybody wins. Thanks. Fastmail. [Will] We're back. The game server, the Plex server. I have we've talked about home lab stuff on tech. [Will] Pod and on dual boot diaries before, but I have a couple of servers in the house. I have a Synology.

36:42 [Will] NAS that just is a big giant bucket you can dump files into. It's really convenient. [Will] And then I also have a small NUC, one of those I think Intel started calling those the. [Will] Nuclear unit of computing, but they're little hockey puck size computers that's from. [Will] Beelink. And that Beelink server has gotten it's gotten a little janky over the last six or eight.

37:05 [Will] Months. It started crashing occasionally and some heavier loads are causing it problems. It's a. [Will] Passively cooled it makes sense that it's having issues. But I had a dead laptop here. [Will] A laptop here with a broken hinge that's lunar lake. It's a really nice laptop with a hinge that.

37:23 [Will] Broke just after the warranty expired. And I was I wanted to set that up as the home server. [Will] Because it's got the appropriate video encoding cores for Plex. It's got a bunch of CPU cores for. [Will] All the other stuff that I doesn't do GPU acceleration and it has the Intel Xe. [Will] Video transcode for turning HDR videos into SDR videos and stuff that.

37:48 [Will] It was a little bit of a process to get this working. I at first the first thing I had to do. [Will] Strangely was open up the whole case and disconnect the monitor connection inside the. [Will] Inside the computer. Most laptops it turns out won't put a bio screen or UEFI screen up on an. [Will] External display. And this is definitely one of those. In order to get the bios and UEFI.

38:13 [Will] Stuff to display on the external monitor since the hinge for the main laptop isn't working. [Will] Anymore, I had to open up the computer and do some surgery. I got that done. And then it was. [Will] Really easy to install fedora server on this thing. I put just the fedora server with the. [Will] Little console thing on. They do the same dopey thing that Ubuntu server does where they.

38:38 [Will] Set up the base route partition as a volume on the file system. And it was only. [Will] 15 gigs. I had to do a little bit of work to easily to resize that by using LV extend. [Will] Which let me make the root partition. [Will] If you are running a computer with a whole bunch of VMs on it, and you want to have individual file.

39:04 [Will] Systems for each of those VMs makes a ton of sense to do this way. For a home lab machine that. [Will] I just want to be able to install some stuff on and have some Docker containers running or podman. [Will] Containers running or whatever. It's a little goofy. I extended to be half of the. [Will] Available drive space, which is a few hundred gigs. And then Installed podman on that route.

39:25 [Will] And I'm running podman containers for most of the other stuff. It'still contained and. [Will] Containerized and all the things you're supposed to do on a server these days. But I have enough. [Will] Space that if logs go crazy, or if I wanted to do some file caching later to make. [Will] Network performance a little bit better than I can. I used LV extend, which is the tool that ships I.

39:48 [Will] Think It was pre installed, I don'think I had to install that to just extend the volume. [Will] Of dev slash mapper slash the volume name, which was, I think fedora root or something that. [Will] I'm running Plex is the only thing I've gotten up and running there. I haven't put the. [Will] Linux game server stuff on yet on the recommendation of a bunch of people including Brad Shoemaker over.

40:06 [Will] The tech pod and folks in the tech pod discord. Instead of running Docker and putting portainer. [Will] Which is an enterprise software for running a whole bunch of Docker containers in. [Will] Big giant clusters and having them all talk to each other and stuff that. [Will] I went with something new, I did something a little different. And I set up pod man on this.

40:25 [Will] Fedora machine. I got it all running really easily the Docker and pod man containers and the. [Will] Language the language you use for launching them and configuring them is more or less the same. [Will] I didn't I'd use Docker compose, which is a thing where you set up a little yaml file a yml file.

40:45 [Will] With each dockers, variables and the things that they need and all that stuff we. [Will] Where you mount drives where you which ports you open, what variables get passed through stuff. [Will] That. I didn't use those, I just use the command line for this. And I was really pleasantly surprised.

41:01 [Will] At how easy it was I was able to get it as I was able to set up the pod man container. And then for. [Will] Plex, and then get it to open automatically by setting up a system control service almost. [Will] Immediately. And I'll post the guide that I used for that in the show notes for folks who.

41:18 [Will] Are interested in that or alternatively send it an email and we can talk about more of that later. [Will] But the performance has been incredible. I can run multiple streams at once and they can be trans. [Will] Coded and they can have subtitles and they can do str to HDR and all that stuff. It turns out my old.

41:37 [Will] N 100 powered beelink machine was maybe a little bit underpowered for modern Plex and this new one. [Will] Is really beefy and fast and quiet and uses a little bit more power but not much. Overall. [Will] A really good thing I next thing is to move the rest of the containers over I have my game.

41:54 [Will] Servers and all that stuff running one machine and can retire the beelink or at least. [Will] Pull it out of service for now. That's it. I'm I think generally speaking, this feels a much. [Will] More reasonable approach to containers than using something Portainer for this. [Will] There's a bunch of other topics that we're going to get to in coming weeks that I've done since.

42:18 [Will] We shut down dual boot diaries. The quest to get a fingerprint sensor working on Linux has. [Will] Finally been completed. I figured that out a couple of weeks ago. I want to get my Windows. [Will] Affinity apps working in Linux. I want to rework the partitions on my desktop to make more sense.

42:35 [Will] For the way I use the PC now since I'm pretty much Linux first and Windows second. [Will] And Windows really only for DRM games at this point and maybe an occasional Nexlander video. [Will] I need to figure out a better way to use Dropbox on Linux. I've been using the. [Will] R-Clone, which is the service that connects to the different cloud services and.

42:55 [Will] Just mounts on your file system. That's pretty good for everything except for Dropbox. The Dropbox. [Will] Latency is really bad. I can't figure out why. I haven't been able to fix it. I've. [Will] Spent a fair amount of time troubleshooting it, and I need to explore some other options. [Will] Because Dropbox, it turns out, is pretty important to my day-to-day workflow. I did manage to get.

43:15 [Will] LocalSend working, which owns. That's a utility that is an open source equivalent to. [Will] AirDrop that lets you send files around to other computers on your network and other computers. [Will] Nearby you. Then I've got some calendar syncing stuff to talk about, as well as Glance's app. [Will] Which we talked about on the tech pod, but I'm absolutely in love with this. It's a little.

43:40 [Will] Service you can self-host that lets you build a custom landing page for your browser. [Will] I've replaced my new tab screen with this, and it gives me the news that I care about from the. [Will] Sites that I want. There's YouTube videos, there's Twitch streams, I have different tabs. [Will] For games and tech and general news and all that stuff, and it gives me a really.

44:04 [Will] Finely tuned interface for farting around on the web, which I appreciate. [Will] It also tends to keep me off of the places that are maybe less good for me. Rather than digging. [Will] Into Google's AI-driven news feed now, I just get the news from the places I care about, which. [Will] Turns out is quite good. I spent some time learning how to use Proton tricks a little bit to get some.

44:31 [Will] Games running that don't necessarily work out of the box with Linux, that was quite good as well. [Will] We'll talk about all that stuff in coming episodes. But now is a great time to take. [Will] Some questions from the audience. If you have a question for Take Control of Your Tech. [Will] You can send it to takecontrol at content.town. The thing I told people to do worked really well. If.

44:55 [Will] You want to send an audio question, keep it under a minute and maybe give me a little bit of a summary. [Will] About what it is in the email I can sort them and categorize them. But just open up your voice. [Will] Recorder and hold it up to your mouth this and record it. You'll get a really nice, clean.

45:10 [Will] Audio signal and you can send me that file as a WAV or an M4P or MP4 or whatever. M4A, I guess. [Will] Is what Apple labels them as these days. And I'll maybe put it on the show. We've run a little long. [Will] Here today, but I have a couple of questions queued up. Our first one is from Dick and it is about.

45:30 [Questions] Hi, my question is, what would your recommendations be for a great first Linux futzing laptop. [Will] A futzing laptop. [Questions] I'm a Macbook Pro user since forever. Are there any that have the same build quality? 13 or 14 inches, preferably. [Questions] I put in a down payment on a preorder for a X7358H framework, but I'm not sure if I want to pay that much.

45:59 [Questions] I'm toying with the idea of learning the code, but I'm not sure how much hardware I need. [Questions] The new super cheap 13-inch Dell XPS 13 looks a banger. [Questions] Thanks much for all your hard work throughout the years. [Will] Thanks, Dick. , this is a good question. I this question a lot. Let me get this audio file.

46:22 [Will] Stopped. There we go. The futzing laptop is something we talked about on dual boot diaries. [Will] When I was learning Linux, when I was just starting out before I was confident enough to do this on. [Questions] Thanks for watching. [Will] The day to day, having a machine that was low risk that I didn't need for work, that I didn't need for.

46:39 [Will] The things that I do every day was incredibly powerful. And I was working at PC World all the. [Will] Time I could just grab something off of the hardware shelf in there and take it home and give. [Will] It a try. That framework laptop is lovely. It's a really nice laptop. It'super. [Will] Repairable and configurable by the end users. It's not necessarily the same build quality as a.

46:59 [Questions] You. [Will] MacBooks are closed boxes for all intents and purposes. You're not. [Will] Supposed to open. And the framework is the opposite of that. It is a machine that's meant. [Will] To be opened up and hardware swapped out and taken apart and changed. The new design is closer to a. [Will] Unibody Mac than anything they've done to date. But I haven't spent a lot of time with it in person.

47:23 [Will] But even from what I've seen, it'still not the same fit and finish you're going to get. [Will] From a Macintosh, I don'think. That XPS 13 is the latest in a long line of Dell XPS 13s. [Questions] You. [Will] They've done when I looked, it was a bazillion skews, 14 or 15 skews over the last decade.

47:41 [Will] Or . And this is the one that released this summer for $800 is what I assume you're talking. [Will] About. It is a Intel Core 5, 326 core, eight gigabyte of RAM, $800 machine is the. [Will] Base model. There was a really good level one techs forum thread that I found that I'll share. [Questions] You.

48:02 [Will] In the show notes that walked through different people trying it out. I also found Jeff. [Will] Geerling video about him where he put Fedora on it. And I don't have any experience with that. [Will] Particular XPS 13, but I did use the last the previous model quite a bit. And I was able to. [Will] Get they supported on that particular machine. One thing is Dell is reasonably good about listing.

48:29 [Questions] You. [Will] The hardware that they support. The arch wiki and the Ubuntu hardware here also good. [Will] For showing you which machines are supported and what you're going to have trouble with on. [Will] Different distros. Usually when I'm buying hardware to use with Linux, I cross reference.

48:48 [Will] A the manufacturer, especially if it'somebody system 76 or framework or Lenovo or Dell. [Will] Who has pretty good eight Linux support. And then I look at those user supported areas. The arch. [Questions] You. [Will] Hardware repositories especially good because they provide packages and tools that you need to get.

49:08 [Will] Things working. On that last gen XPS 13, I was able to get everything working but the webcam. [Will] And I need to wipe that machine and see if I can get it up and running again now. [Will] Because it's been a minute since I did anything with it's my experience with. [Will] Laptops and Linux is that the older the machine you have, probably the better off you are.

49:29 [Questions] You. [Will] The hard stuff to get working is often stuff fingerprint sensors and biometric cameras and stuff. [Will] That. The XPS 13 I specifically had a hard time getting the webcam working, but that was. [Will] Because they had a weird controller that turned power to the webcam on and off when it wasn't.

49:50 [Will] Being used. It would effectively disconnect and stop draining any power when that. [Will] Webcam wasn't being used, which is great from a battery perspective, but not great from a hey. [Questions] You. [Will] I want my webcam to work on the laptop perspective. And it looks I looked at the wiki for that.

50:07 [Will] To see if they'd solve that problem. It seems it probably is solved now. [Will] But , I would look at those different places when you're thinking about hardware. [Will] I would look hard at a used laptop out honestly, if you could find a two or three year old laptop. [Will] For a reasonable amount of money, you probably have better performance than that eight gig.

50:24 [Will] XPS 13. But that a XPS 13 reviewed really well, people seem to quite it's a it seems to. [Questions] You. [Will] Be a really nice machine. I don'think you would go wrong with that. I think you probably. [Will] Save a little bit of money if you bought a used machine that'slightly was a slightly.

50:40 [Will] Better skew at launch and is available now. That's that. The main thing is to just to. [Will] Have something that is not mission critical to you that you can that if you break it. [Will] It's not going to be the end of the world. You're not going to be up until three o'clock in the. [Will] Morning fixing something for the next day's work. Anyway, good luck and let us know how it's.

50:59 [Questions] You. [Will] Going. And keep us posted, Dick. Thanks for sending the email. And our next question comes. [Questions] You. You. [Will] From Fernando. [Questions] You. [Questions] Hey Will, this is Fernando Merland. I started my Linux journey in October with Dual Blueprint Diaries, and now I haven't logged into my Windows partition since January.

51:18 [Questions] However, I still feel lost in the day-to-day when it comes to browsing my computer through the console. [Questions] I also have ADHD, and it's hard for me to learn if the source material is not something I'm particularly interested in, which I would say disqualifies. [Questions] This is something I feel I need to learn, not something I'm excited to learn.

51:38 [Questions] Do you have any source recommendations for learning the basics of file structure, navigation, and other 101s that won't make my brain daydream of 30 seconds. [Will] I think this is a common this is one of those common Linux questions and. [Questions] Thank you. [Questions] You. [Will] We're not in the business of myth busting myths over here. But I feel this is.

52:03 [Will] One of those myth busting situations? I don'think you need to know the. [Will] Difference between the VAR slash opt and slash user slash lib and slash user slash local slash. [Will] Lib and all the different places. The main things you need to know are that your files should. [Will] The stuff that you're working on, the stuff that you use and the configuration files that are.

52:22 [Will] Specific to your user all should live in your home folder. In my case, that'slash home slash. [Questions] You. [Will] Will the slash file, there's a couple of confusing things about Unix OS is Linux. [Will] The big one is that there's two roots? There's the slash folder, which is the root. [Will] And then there'slash root, which is the root user's home directory. Now, you shouldn't really.

52:50 [Will] Ever fool with the root user's home directory. But that slash root is where everything else mounts. [Questions] You. [Will] Everything else connects to the machine. Your external drives, in a modern. [Will] Desktop Linux probably won't do this. But in the old days, they would show up in slash.

53:05 [Will] Mount slot and then a folder name. And that's how you'd access an external drive. Most for most. [Will] Users using desktop Linux, I think if how to CD, which is change directory, you type. [Will] CD and then the directory name and it'll change that directory. And that can be either. [Will] The directory that you're in currently or you can type the whole path. If you want to go to.

53:24 [Questions] You. [Will] Home slash Fernando slash dot config, you type CD space slash home slash Fernando slash dot config. [Will] And that'll move you into that folder. LS, which I think is short for list, but I'm not 100% on that. [Will] Gives you a list of all the files in that folder? And then CP is copy and MV is move and RM.

53:50 [Will] Is remove. And that's the bulk of what you need to know. Because realistically. [Questions] You. [Will] The file browsers for most distros and most desktop environments Nautilus for genome. [Will] And I guess what people use on KDE these days, but those file managers. [Will] Graphical file managers are pretty useful. And you really, for the most part, don't need to modify.

54:13 [Will] Stuff outside your home directory as an end user all that often. That's what I would do. And. [Will] Then the follow up is yes, for a resource. The resource is pick a project that you can do from. [Questions] You. [Will] The command line that you need to do from the command line. And then just look that stuff up.

54:30 [Will] As you're doing it, look it up as you're doing it, taking a course following a. [Will] Khan Academy guide about learning to use Linux command line isn't going to do what you want. [Will] The thing that the way that you'll learn this is by finding a project that requires this knowledge. [Will] And then working on it and repeating those tasks until you get to the point that you can.

54:50 [Will] Just remember the command line. At least that's how it works for me. Learning how to use. [Questions] You. [Will] System control, which is the it's the it is the services it runs background. [Will] Stuff in the background on Linux. And it's a core part of a modern Linux distro. Learning how to.

55:08 [Will] Restart stuff and list the things that are available and running and all that stuff is. [Will] Something that came over time just by repetition and what I the other Oh, here's the other here's. [Will] The other pro tip. Once the name of the command, which you can realistically generally. [Questions] You.

55:26 [Will] Just typing into Google or Kaji or whatever your search engine of choices, how do I do blank. [Will] And Linux copy a file, delete a file deleted directory, whatever gives you the command. [Will] Then you want to install a package called teal deer. It's t a l d e r, which is a clever. [Will] Abbreviation or extension of TLDR. And that will put a tool called TLDR on your computer. And then.

55:54 [Questions] You. [Will] You can type TLDR CP space CP. And that will give you a human written, relatively easy to. [Will] Understand the most important functions of that copy command. And you can do that for a ton. [Will] A ton of different commands. It's one of my favorite tools. I use it all the time. It's been.

56:16 [Will] Incredibly powerful for helping me figure out how to do this stuff, honestly. There's my. [Will] Very long answer for your short question. Our next question comes in from grand exalted. Here it is. [Questions] You. [Questions] Hi Will. My question for you is what are some of the mind shift changes you had to make on your transition to a daily driving Linux.

56:40 [Questions] From watching you and Adam on Dual Boot Diaries or other YouTubers LTT who just did their second 30-day challenge, it's obvious to me that there are some areas where coming from Windows carries some baggage that can trip some folks up. [Questions] As an example, installing an application on Windows, you generally would go to a website, download the installer, and run it.

57:01 [Questions] On Linux, you should never do it that way. No matter which flavor of Linux you're on, there's always somebody who has packaged it for you and already solved the compatibility issues. [Will] It's a good question. The big thing for me was. [Questions] And a follow-up question is just other philosophical differences that really stand out that are different than a Windows mindset versus a Linux mindset. Thank you.

57:32 [Will] There's a bunch of things I realized as I was doing this. One of them is that distros really. [Will] Don't matter all that much. , the software that you run on top of the distro matters a ton. [Will] But for all intents and purposes, the difference in Katie and Kashi and Ubuntu is in the defaults.

57:43 [Questions] You. [Will] That they ship. But then if you don'those defaults, you can change them. It's a. [Will] Convenience thing more than a philosophical way of life or whatever. You don't have to worry. [Will] About that stuff as much as I thought you did. Installing applications is tricky because you're.

58:07 [Will] It is installing applications in Windows is really easy. You download a thing, you click the. [Will] Click it twice, and then it runs a thing that you click a couple buttons and it goes through. [Questions] You. [Will] When you're installing and then it shows up in your start menu and you can run it.

58:20 [Will] And do whatever it is you wanted it to do. When you're installing software on Linux, you do have. [Will] A bunch of decisions to make and the easy. Unfortunately, there's no answer for that. [Will] Stuff. Whether you run whether you grab something from a distro repo or you grab it from a user.

58:36 [Will] Repo or you grab it from the creators repo or you get a container a flat pack or a snap or a. [Will] Docker or you get an app package or an app image or just compile it yourself. There's a bazillion. [Questions] You. [Will] Ways to get everything. It's it is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of.

58:52 [Will] Desktop Linux is that you can do it however you want, but you also have to know what the. [Will] Way to do is for your particular use case. And you have to just develop a feel for that. [Will] Over time. Unfortunately, now the general guidelines I would say are that some things. [Will] Are definitely better in those packaged flat packs, the container packages. Flat packs on.

59:13 [Questions] You. [Will] Everything but Ubuntu and snaps on Ubuntu or also you can run flat packs on Ubuntu and. [Will] Realistically probably should. But that's a topic for down the road, I think. The running stuff. [Will] Out of the local repos makes sense for software that you want to be able to talk to other software.

59:32 [Will] I want OBS if I want OBS and audacity to be able to talk to each other, I don't but just. [Will] Hypothetically, then installing those both as native Linux applications running at the OS on. [Questions] You. [Will] Top of the OS probably makes a lot of sense. You can do things let those flat pack.

59:51 [Will] Containerized applications talk to each other. But you have to do some configuration, you have. [Will] To understand how all that stuff works. And it's a little complicated. Things discord, that I. [Will] Want to be able to have buttons on my stream deck control and stuff that, you probably want to.

1:00:04 [Will] Run those natively to programs that are difficult to get running. , DaVinci resolve has a. [Questions] You. [Will] Crazy number of dependencies and is pain in the butt to keep running. That's a great. [Will] Candidate for flat packing if it'll work on your machine that. And if you can get the.

1:00:23 [Will] Do the flat pack configuration to give it access to the GPU and all the stuff that it needs to. [Will] To run optimally. The biggest conceptual change for me about this whole thing was realizing. [Will] That all of the settings for everything are in flat text files that you can just open. [Questions] You.

1:00:45 [Will] If your machine if my nearing machine doesn't boot, I log into the shell commands the. [Will] The text shell I would have in 1985 on a unix machine. And I open up my text editor. [Will] And I navigate to the file that has the broken setting or first I get my realistically first I. [Will] Look at the logs, I see what was broken, I go search that on a phone or my computer.

1:01:08 [Will] And then I can edit the text file to change the setting that I messed up. And that's. [Questions] You. [Will] Amazing. That's a really powerful thing. You can do that for almost everything in. [Will] The in the OS, which is a lovely feature. The other stuff that's different is. [Will] Supporting things next level technologies around.

1:01:34 [Will] Making snapshots of your hard drive and stuff that. If something breaks. [Will] You can just roll back to a previous version of the snapshot. And we talked. [Will] About the new diaries, we'll definitely do some stuff about that in coming weeks for people who. [Questions] You. [Will] Missed that. But , it's not setting up snapshots that if you have a bad update.

1:01:52 [Will] You can just roll back to the previous one is really powerful. And Windows doesn't make. [Will] That , Microsoft has made a choice to sell you access to backup storage on the cloud, rather. [Will] Than build in technologies that make your machine easier to use and maintain. [Will] Anyway, thanks, everybody. I got many questions. There's no way I could get.

1:02:13 [Questions] You. [Will] Through them all this episode, I'm going to keep pulling from them. There's a ton of good. [Will] Evergreen stuff in there. And we'll definitely hit some more over the coming weeks. But I appreciate. [Will] Everybody for supporting the show. As always, my listener support is incredibly important to take.

1:02:28 [Will] Control of the of your tech. And you can go to take control dot content dot town and sign up. [Will] For six bucks a month, subscribe to the show, you get access to an ad free podcast feed. [Will] You also get access to the take control community, you'll be one of the first people in there, it's.

1:02:43 [Questions] You. [Will] Gonna be it's an exciting time to jump in there, because we're figuring out what our what. [Will] Our what our rituals are, how we do this and how we want to build this community. [Will] Because each community is a little different. And I'm excited to have people in there and excited.

1:02:58 [Will] To be chatting with people. Thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for just. [Will] Hanging out. If you're new, if you can't support the show, or even if you can, and you want to. [Will] Leave a review, go to the Apple podcast index, which is also linked on tank take control dot.

1:03:12 [Will] Content dot town and leave a review that helps me more than really anything you can do leaving a. [Questions] You. [Will] Review in your podcast. I have a choice helps let people know about the show and lets. [Will] People find the show and helps bring new folks into take control. Thank you all much.

1:03:27 [Will] We will be back next week with another episode. I'll see you on the discord and see you all next. Week. [Questions] You. [Will] I'm gonna black this out. [Questions] You.