We follow up on episode 104 from September last year when we promised to tackle some Linux projects including moving to Immich and Jellyfin, learning about Docker Compose and Python, and ditching Synology.

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We look back at what we wanted to happen in the Linux and FOSS world in 2025, and talk about what we want to happen in 2026.

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We tell stories from some of the tech support nightmares we’ve found ourselves in. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.

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How far you can go with eliminating global variables, forcing everything you ever need to be passed in as arguments.

Tailscale

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Some of the Linux and open source tech from our past that inspired where we are today.

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How we’ve all set up our backups including GUI distros vs doing it the hard way, ZFS vs Borg, and why it’s tricky to chose the right offsite location.

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Some of our Linux hot takes including the LTS release model being broken, Linux media being out of touch, social media being the root of most evil, and people being too angry and defensive about the software they use.

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We’ve done various challenges in the past where we’ve bought Linux machines on a seriously low budget, but what if we had an unlimited budget? What would we buy in this hypothetical situation? It turns out we all struggled to come up with anything and are pretty satisfied with the machines we already have.

Note that this episode was recorded before we found out that Framework supports problematic projects.

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Florian Beijers joins us again to give us an update on the state of accessibility in Linux and whether things have improved since we last spoke.

Florian’s YouTube Channel

Techy Twitch streams

Accessible gaming Twitch streams

fireborn’s blog posts about accessibility in Linux

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We cover some of your emails, questions, and comments. A challenge suggestion of not using a package manager, donating old hardware, why we don’t use custom ROMs on our phones, whether low end laptops with soldered eMMC storage are worth buying (they aren’t), and tips for using Home Assistant with Apple gear and Jellyfin on Android.

The terrible laptop we mentioned

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Summer is officially over. As the nights draw in it’s time to hunker down and work on our technical debt. We all have Linuxy projects that we are planning, so we commit to doing them by Christmas – when we will record a follow-up episode. Docker Compose, Immich, Jellyfin, learning Python, moving away from Synology, Home Assistant, and more.

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A lot of key open source software is paid for by large companies. That has some advantages, but it can also cause some issues. Maybe it would be better if more FOSS development was paid for by smaller companies and contributions from users.

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It’s the £20 Linux machine challenge! This time the rules are stricter: no adding storage and RAM. It turns out that if you try really hard, you can buy a really nice Linux computer on a seriously low budget.

Check out part 1 and part 2 of the £50 challenge that we did previously.

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It’s our annual episode where we need to talk about Ubuntu. This time most of us are broadly indifferent about the distro itself, so we end up mostly discussing our concerns about Canonical.

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Gary has been using a Framework 12 laptop for a few weeks and gives us his impressions of it. Are the upgradability and repairability worth the premium price he paid for it?

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It’s our 100th episode spectacular! We look back at some of the memes and themes of our first hundred episodes including our obsession with old hardware, our silly challenges, our move away from custom phone ROMs, our disappointment with Arm desktop Linux, composable/immutable distros, how we’ve changed as people, and more.

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It’s part 2 of the £50 Linux machine challenge! This time: actually using them, what upgrades we did, what we’ll actually use them for, and more.

Listen to part 1 here.

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It’s the £50 Linux machine challenge! We all had a budget of 50 GBP (~65 USD) to buy the best computer we could find to run Linux.

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Some of our hot takes and some from other people. Your OS is a passive gateway to apps and services, OSTree sucks, when you need to reboot Ubuntu is a mystery, stop hiding things from users, Chris needs an “I use Debian by the way” t-shirt, and more.

Zak’s post on Mastodon

Luke Miani’s video

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We recently talked about the lowest-end hardware we’d be willing to use as a daily desktop machine, but what about headless boxes? It turns out that it depends on what exactly it’s doing and to what extent we have to actively interact with it. Ultimately we could probably use slower hardware than we actually do if it came to it.

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What Linux and FOSS technology should Joe learn next? Is it a case of waiting for a problem to present itself before even trying?

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What do we wish had happened in the Linux and open source world? Successful mobile Linux, convergence, Snaps winning, and Amigas still being around.

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Two years after we talked about the lowest-end hardware we’d be willing to daily drive, the Web has bogged machines down to the point where our thresholds have gone up significantly. We channel our inner Linux Luddites, but don’t really come up with any solutions.

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We look at postmarketOS on various devices old and new, Arm and x86, and are impressed.

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A dreadful backup box mistake was made but then rectified, whether to take on the technical debt of an older Ubuntu LTS, and why there are more important battles to fight than advocating for FOSS.

2.5 Admins episode where Joe talks about his ZFS setup

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It’s the alternative open source OS challenge! May got OpenIndiana, Joe got ReactOS, Gary got GhostBSD, and Chris got Haiku.

Haiku Package Management

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The search for the ideal cheap and small off-site backup machine, and our advice on learning the ins and outs of desktop Linux.

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When a certain task has both options, what do we only do with the command line and what do we only do with a GUI? Plus May’s Linux win that wasn’t quite enough to avoid going back to the Windows desktop.

Boomstick

Vesktop

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We share the stories of our various tech wins and fails over the holiday period including updating Ubuntu, getting mad at Docker, trying to recover Microsoft passwords, building a PC over a video call, wireless access points that mostly just work, and more.

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We look back at what we wanted to happen in the Linux and FOSS world in 2024, and talk about what we want to happen in 2025.

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Gary observes that non-FOSS people don’t understand or care about licences. Chris admits that he too is somewhat clueless in this area so we try to explain the basics, and then get to the bottom of why “normal” people aren’t interested.

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Our FOSS frustrations, and our satisfying open source wins.

ncspot

py-spy

OggCamp

Distrobox

BoxBuddy

audio-visualizer-python

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1Password

Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Support the show and check it out at 1password.com/linuxafterdark

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We all compete to create the worst possible RAID array and network storage device. The mantra here was “what would Jim and Allan from 2.5 Admins NOT do”.

Guess who won with this monstrosity.

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1Password

Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Support the show and check it out at 1password.com/linuxafterdark

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Where do we draw the line when it comes to being made to use software that we don’t want to at work? Plus why only half of us use Linux on the desktop.

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We revisit our home networking setups including using MoCa (network over coax), Chris searching for a unicorn, and relying on an Apple TV for home automation.

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Framework sent Joe a 13 DIY edition (for free and to keep) so we do our best to talk about it honestly. It’s a great machine, but you pay a premium for the ability to repair and upgrade it.

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1Password

Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Support the show and check it out at 1password.com/linuxafterdark

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Social media was a mistake that has caused polarisation through the spread of misinformation by grifters. We try to come up with some ideas for what to do about it.

Dalton mentioned cohost to shut down at end of 2024.

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What is it about Linux that draws us to it as a development platform? Plus why we choose the specific distros that we use.

1Password

Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Support the show and check it out at 1password.com/linuxdevtime

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Is a proprietary games company driving all the innovation on the Linux desktop, and is that OK?

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1Password

Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Support the show and check it out at 1password.com/linuxafterdark

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We need to talk about Ubuntu (again). The updates situation is a confusing mess, a lot of enthusiast users have had enough and are starting to move to other distros, but ultimately millions of normal users will quietly carry on and not care.

Ubuntu Security Updates Are a Confusing Mess

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We once recorded an episode about GNOME that was so negative that we decided to delete our recordings and not publish it. Our opinions of GNOME have changed significantly since then so we explain why.

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1Password

Extended Access Management: Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Support the show and check it out at 1password.com/linuxafterdark

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