00:00:00,000 [Matt Dark1]
Welcome back to Linux Out Loud, where we chat about Linux open source and tech. You guessed it, Out Loud. I'm Matt, finally back in the driver's seat after a few episodes away. It feels like coming home after a long trip to find the home lab has a few extra lights blinking.
00:00:15,940 [Matt Dark1]
Nate, you know well about that. Today, I am joined by Wendy and Nate as we unpack topics that have been sitting in our drafts for way too long and what's going on in our lives.
00:00:29,560 [Matt Dark1]
Let's roll into episode 124.
00:00:44,310 [Matt Dark1]
Alrighty, what is going on, folks? It has been a while since I've been on anyway. I know the person that is wearing the glasses in this. Kind of frame, but and all the guys.
00:00:58,430 [Matt Dark1]
Down there, I don't know about him. He's a bit sus. Not sure. He's a bit sus.
00:01:03,970 [Matt Dark1]
Like. You know, just that kind of sus.
00:01:07,850 [Matt Dark1]
What is going on, guys? It's good to be back.
00:01:11,120 [Wendy Hill]
Well, you are joining us for our second use of Video Ninja. Yeah, we actually get to see Matt. I think we were talking before the show started. Was 121 the last time that you were able to be on? Obviously, schedules have been all over the place for all of us, but this is our second go with Video Ninja. And last time it actually worked, I would say, fairly well overall. So the biggest issue that I ran into is when this. This exports what I get is a web P, I think is what the file is. And so then, in order to use that inside of my editor, I have to use FFmpeg and transcode it into something else. The biggest issue was the file size when I did that was like massive. I think 70 to 80 gigs per person. And then. because those file sizes were so large, rendering took like two hours because it had such a huge file to read at the time. So I'm going to be playing with.
00:02:13,020 [Wendy Hill]
FFmpeg a little bit more, and kind of deciding how I can get the best of when I transcode it, still having really good quality, but at the same time I'm not having file sizes so massive that I'm going to fill my terabytes, and render times are absolutely huge. So there's some give and take there. Overall, I think it worked fairly well. I tried to get everyone's files to automatically sync to an online drive and then be able to pull it. It didn't necessarily work for Nate, and I actually think that his file that he sent me was better than Bill's that auto-sink. So we're just going to go with not sinking.
00:02:57,120 [Wendy Hill]
5.
00:03:00,760 [Wendy Hill]
I don't know. Words are hard. English is difficult. Things mean different things.
00:03:08,860 [Nate Wolf]
I don't know actually what the proper term is.
00:03:12,150 [Wendy Hill]
The show turned out. Good. Obviously, it went out. There was individual video and audio tracks for every single person. And so we're back on.
00:03:22,380 [Wendy Hill]
Video Ninja giving this another go. Matt and I were kind of playing with it earlier before Nate was jumping on and I tried to click record all and then get it to stop. And there was some issues there. So I think they have some tweaking and stuff to do on the back end still. But I'm pretty sure as long as I remember to save this room every single time that I'm in it so I don't have to create a new room and we can use the same link. That's one of the things I really liked about Riverside was there was no having to create multiple links every time. You guys just knew where to go when it was time to do the show and I didn't have to forget. As long as I remember to save.
00:04:04,230 [Wendy Hill]
Yes, yes, absolutely. Overall, it's going pretty good, I think, for the most part. What did you guys think? Did you watch the finished show?
00:04:13,370 [Nate Wolf]
I did.
00:04:14,709 [Nate Wolf]
And it honestly it seemed about the same to me, like so I didn't notice any degradation. So I mean it was good and Yeah, I liked it.
00:04:22,870 [Wendy Hill]
I think the biggest difference was we went from 24 FPS to 30 FPS. So I think some of the things were a little bit smoother for the most part, but really not that big of a change. I know it was a pain in the butt to like change all of my timelines over to 30 FPS from 24, but. Otherwise.
00:04:41,500 [Matt Dark1]
I did notice one problem. Nate was there.
00:04:43,930 [Wendy Hill]
What?
00:04:47,110 [Nate Wolf]
I was, and that could be.
00:04:50,180 [Nate Wolf]
Well, it's a problem for you, I guess. No, it's not a problem for you. You know, you missed me. That's why you came back. I've grown on you. Like fungus, you know?
00:05:00,510 [Wendy Hill]
Mhm.
00:05:02,230 [Wendy Hill]
Most definitely.
00:05:03,910 [Matt Dark1]
Anyway! Wendy, what else you got going on?
00:05:09,040 [Wendy Hill]
Well, obviously, my FTC team had made it to Worlds, and we're getting ready to leave for this. So as this show drops, I'm packing, preparing, and getting ready. Ready to go spend a week in Texas. Unfortunately, not the same part that Nate visits sometimes when he has to go down there for work. Not that you're going to be down there anyway. So you can't come watch all of the the super cool robots. But otherwise, getting ready for.
00:05:35,000 [Nate Wolf]
Probably. You could. Probably, yeah. Come on over. I just got to justify it on paper.
00:05:43,760 [Wendy Hill]
Well, if you're able to make that work, let me know. You know where we will be at. Worlds has been held in the same place for I don't know how many years and is still going to be there through 2030-something. As far as I know, they re-signed a contract with the George R. Brown Convention Center. So we're going to be there for a while. Not saying that our team is going to make it every year. They did pretty good this year. They've done pretty good the last three years. But teams change, robots change, all of that good stuff.
00:06:17,190 [Wendy Hill]
Probably won't be our last time going to Texas, but I'm.
00:06:21,270 [Wendy Hill]
I'm not necessarily looking forward to the heat, but my skin is definitely looking forward to the humidity because, you know, dry winter Idaho weather has got everybody a bit itchy. Now, Nate, you had a whole bunch of laptops for us last week and the way that you're installing them. And that was a pretty cool discussion.
00:06:45,350 [Nate Wolf]
It was, and I'm using two of them actively right now. And I did fix the— Oh, cool. Yeah, so both the Surface laptops, one at work, and then one I've kept at home that's too old to be used.
00:06:59,290 [Nate Wolf]
Kind of a consolation prize for, I guess, the company because, although I'm the IT manager, so I don't know why I'm even saying this, but it doesn't matter. We're going to throw it out anyway. But anyway, I still use it to do work on. I meant to do it just to play, but then I added work things on there so when I could sit, like, if I'm sitting and watching Star Trek or whatever.
00:07:15,640 [Nate Wolf]
Like I grabbed the surface and I just kind of. you know, check emails.
00:07:19,470 [Wendy Hill]
The nice thing is you can't deploy them at work using Windows because they can't take Windows 11. And to be honest, like.
00:07:27,960 [Wendy Hill]
I haven't used it myself, but some of the things that have been going on in the news, I wouldn't necessarily want it. Though you probably get to use it.
00:07:34,780 [Wendy Hill]
Get to use enterprise at work, but still, because it can't take Windows 11, it's not safe to use Windows 10 anymore. Right? Was it ever then you can use it for production because you're not leaving it open with those security gaps because it's not running Windows.
00:07:52,730 [Nate Wolf]
So instead, I'm running Tumbleweed on it. It's good. It's going pretty well. Although, I do, I did, uh, did some.
00:07:59,410 [Nate Wolf]
They did me. I'm a stutterball turkey.
00:08:04,320 [Nate Wolf]
I did. Find out or through the reading, essentially, some of the open SUSE packages for Tumbleweed are a little bit behind and they're looking for someone to work on that. And I really wish I was smart enough to, or had the patience to learn and understand what to do to help with that, because it would be useful. Although. I can't say.
00:08:22,950 [Nate Wolf]
I can't say I'd recommend a Surface necessarily. I think I would still go back to just getting a framework laptop 12, really, if I wanted to.
00:08:30,950 [Wendy Hill]
Having used one, I don't say that I necessarily hate the Surface. It's just not something I'd want to do. Like a ton of work on. So one of the biggest downsides of. My everyday laptop is the thing is huge and it's heavy. And so it definitely adds a lot of extra weight to my backpack. If I don't actually have. Any editing that needs to be done on the go, then a lighter laptop would be amazing. And that's where those Surface devices come in. Now, are they fixable?
00:09:01,770 [Nate Wolf]
No, they're not.
00:09:02,510 [Wendy Hill]
Not really. Ooh!
00:09:03,890 [Nate Wolf]
Is it the Surface? That does remind me. Which Surface is that? That's the Surface Book 3. Okay.
00:09:09,970 [Wendy Hill]
Okay.
00:09:11,390 [Wendy Hill]
So last week when we were talking, like minus Matt because he wasn't here, but when me and Bill were talking, I had that laptop. That had been stepped on and needed fixed. Well, because it was a few generations older and a ThinkPad on eBay, I was able to to get the entire top assembly for it, the entire lid piece all together. So it came with the frame already in the lid, the hinges and everything. Thing so swapping it out, I did it here a couple days ago was super super easy. I removed the back, pulled five screws, undid the cable for the monitor, undid the antennas for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stuff, removed that one, put the new one on, reattached the cables, put in the five screws, put back on the back plate, and it was done, like, absolutely done. So that was awesome.
00:10:11,190 [Nate Wolf]
So I think that, to me, the big thing is.
00:10:14,260 [Nate Wolf]
You know, it goes back and this is like an old, I'm going to beat this horse again, but like. Just being able to own your technology and being able to just repair things, I think, is pretty amazing. And I will actually, I'm going to give. This is the one only time I may do this, but I'm going to give Apple some kudos on their new Neo.
00:10:31,530 [Nate Wolf]
I know this is. Okay. We may have to content edit this out. I'm just kidding.
00:10:37,230 [Nate Wolf]
So I watched a teardown between the Framework laptop. Well, and the new Neo by, um, by the CEO, president. His name escapes me right now. I'm embarrassed by that. But anyway, he actually was comparing how they were put together.
00:10:56,779 [Nate Wolf]
And he actually says the ports are replaceable on the Neo. So if you bust the port, you don't need to sign them. They're actually replaceable inside.
00:11:05,390 [Nate Wolf]
It's a lot of work to get to them. But the point is they actually took the time to make it repairable, which is pretty amazing.
00:11:11,150 [Wendy Hill]
Make them replaceable. Do you think framework is part of the reason why they became repairable?
00:11:16,940 [Nate Wolf]
He actually addresses that in the video, and I will find the video and link it in here. But he Okay, perfect. But he actually said, 'He doesn't think so.' Nirav.
00:11:27,140 [Nate Wolf]
Patel is his name. In fact, it's actually up right here. He does actually address that and he says he doesn't think so. This is because a lot of the right to repair laws in the States and even in Europe are.
00:11:39,030 [Nate Wolf]
He thinks that Apple sees that, and they're kind of kicking the tires of making things repairable on the low-end side. Now, it's repairable, but it's not upgradable.
00:11:49,640 [Nate Wolf]
Gotcha. So don't give them too much credit. But I did think that was pretty neat.
00:11:52,960 [Wendy Hill]
You can replace parts that are broken, but if you're thinking you can grab one and then upgrade RAM or anything like that, that's not going to happen.
00:12:00,980 [Nate Wolf]
RAM and storage are fixed. You cannot change those. Okay. Yep.
00:12:04,880 [Wendy Hill]
Um, Well, that still sucks.
00:12:06,530 [Nate Wolf]
But I do want to say it was pretty neat to see how they are making their machines a little bit more repairable. I mean, not great. I mean, it's not, I mean, Dell.
00:12:17,210 [Nate Wolf]
Delt latitudes from 10 years ago, whatever, still way better. But the fact that. There's some attempt at doing that. And he also made the point that it doesn't take engineering know-how to be able to make things repairable. Engineers know how to do that. It's the business decisions, the industrial designers and so forth that are making that difficult. It's not the engineers. So he did defend his former co-workers at Apple. Just go.
00:12:45,190 [Wendy Hill]
Well, I mean, that's good. Somebody's got to be making those decisions. Yeah.
00:12:49,110 [Nate Wolf]
That aside, surface, not repairable. So when that thing, when that battery goes, that battery goes and it's going to go into the.
00:12:58,340 [Nate Wolf]
Let's see if I can take this thing apart. Hi all. Do you have anything else on that you want to say?
00:13:02,470 [Nate Wolf]
Um.
00:13:04,190 [Wendy Hill]
No, no, I don't think so. I think like that was totally derailed. What you were actually going to talk about was working on your new home assistant server. But yeah. I got the laptop.
00:13:13,510 [Nate Wolf]
I did say I was going to build my own assistant server out of the NUC. I did say it to Bill. It was in the video. Actually, I ended up changing directions on that for a couple of reasons. One, The NUC irritated me.
00:13:26,550 [Nate Wolf]
So I said, 'And I had a Think Center, Lenovo Think Center, also sitting idly by with a 7th Gen i3 in it. Had an 8 gig of RAM and 128 gig of storage. So more than enough for home assistant.'
00:13:44,250 [Nate Wolf]
I've been actually having problems with my Home Assistant server for a while now. The MQTT just kept falling off. I kept just having these problems here and there. And I get these out-of-memory errors continuously. I'm like, you know what? It's probably time to like.
00:13:55,220 [Ryan DasGeek]
replace it.
00:13:55,920 [Nate Wolf]
So I think the problem was having more than 115 devices and growing was probably part of the problem for the Pi 3. and um.
00:14:04,980 [Wendy Hill]
Probably.
00:14:05,890 [Nate Wolf]
Yeah, so I'm Probably. And anyway, so I put Lenovo there in its place. In fact, actually exporting the configuration files, super easy, barely inconvenience. Importing them when I set it up, super easy. barely an inconvenience, and that was up and running very quickly. I just had to reset a couple of things here. They're very trivial, and I'm fully operational. It's like it never even happened, except utilizing Home Assistant now so much faster. I mean, it's pretty amazing how how big the difference is. It's like when I go to Home Assistant, it just pops up immediately. I didn't even think of it before that it was slow. And I'm like, holy cow. That's pretty amazing.
00:14:49,510 [Nate Wolf]
And no more memory errors. And also like logging it, like using some additional like functions in Home Assistant that I avoided because it would crash it, crash the Pi. I can use those now, no problem. Nice.
00:14:59,650 [Nate Wolf]
Yeah, so it's really great. And also, I do have one cloud interaction thing that I haven't taken out of cloud mode. There's Tuya lights and such that have all these canned lights in the house. And the reason was because I couldn't get the HACS, H-A-C-S, I think. It was basically a community plugin that basically captures those signals. And so it doesn't go, instead of going to, instead of going out to the, you know, the worldwide scary webs, whatever this cloud service, I can actually do it all locally, which is why I want to replace it anyway. But then it kind of forced my hand and said, 'No, I'm dying.' You have to replace me. But anyway.
00:15:35,510 [Nate Wolf]
Now I'm going to actually get that plugin working. So I can have local control over those and then, specifically, what I want to add is things like. When I say 'like,' I'm going to do some voice recognition stuff. Don't know how exactly I'm going to do that quite yet. I'm not sure what mechanism, but I do want to be able to say 'Computer red alert' and then have all the lights kind of pulsate red. You know, that's really. I'm spending a lot of money for something really stupid. I know this. And then it's going to have a sound effect and everything else. So I don't know how I'm going to do all those things yet. Maybe if you have any.
00:16:08,930 [Wendy Hill]
It's not stupid. But if you enjoy it and it's going to be really cool if you actually get it to work, like I want to know how that process comes through on Home Assistant to make that happen.
00:16:18,470 [Nate Wolf]
So what I'm going to do is I'm creating. Two scenes that will you know basically the scenes are going to be they'll be probably split up by room. I'm thinking, but basically it's going to be like high red, like red full on, and then dim full on, then dim kind of like that, and then I think I'm not sure if I'm gonna have to do all the lights or just the lights around the out, like some of the lights because it's still going to have like some regular light on, like like maybe dim the lights and have so you can see.
00:16:42,590 [Nate Wolf]
Otherwise, I'm going to stumble around like a numpty. And then I'll hear in the back of my head Matt pointing and laughing. You know, in kind of the, you know, That's just probably what's going to happen. Now, that is always what happens.
00:16:58,840 [Nate Wolf]
Sometimes actually when I do something really dumb, I can hear you laughing also. And I don't know why that is. It's either you laughing or Drill Sergeant yelling at me. I'm not sure. Maybe you've traumatized me a little bit. I don't know. Regardless.
00:17:13,020 [Nate Wolf]
That's a big thing I've been working on, and, and, um, along some other things I'll talk about later, but like, I basically, I think I touched that. I'm doing some changes in my house. I got my, my basement is no longer wet storage. And so I've been moving like my. I've been refreshing my basement. And then I moved all my vintage gaming stuff down there from my lab. And then so my old server rack that was downstairs is now in my lab. I got a new server rack in the basement. I've been moving a bunch of stuff around. But anyway. So I put the new Home Assistant on the old server rack, which is now in the lab. And I'm pretty excited. As things progress, I'm actually going to be moving that back over here, but I'm using these Insteon lights in my lab.
00:17:55,910 [Nate Wolf]
So I'm going to be retiring all of those, probably selling them on eBay because I'm not going to use them anymore.
00:18:01,540 [Nate Wolf]
But they're like USB'd into the Home Assistant server. So I'm going to do that because I need to, I'm going to switch everything over to another, there's another provider. That I found on Amazon that actually has already out of the box flash with Tasmota, you know, completely no cloud anything. They are. More expensive, but it's negligible and so it's going to have everything that I need. I don't have to do any extra steps to get there, and I'm going to basically replacing all the Insteon pieces with those. There's actually not really many switches. It's like four switches. I already bought one to install just to test out. I'm going to see how that goes and I'll let you know.
00:18:45,350 [Nate Wolf]
So we're doing a little bit of home assistant work this year on the house, making things better.
00:18:48,850 [Wendy Hill]
That sounds like it. So that's a year-long project to get everything upgraded and to get your red alert added?
00:18:56,030 [Nate Wolf]
So when it's nice outside, I like to actually go outside and work on my property more.
00:19:03,500 [Wendy Hill]
100%.
00:19:04,060 [Nate Wolf]
And when it's rainy, I work on inside projects. So Saturday and Sunday were kind of gross. So those projects went forward. This step one is basically replacing the let's replace the rest of the switches. Then you know, while I'm sitting kind of decompressing, I'm gonna worry about the red alert thing. Well after the getting the uh cloud lights basically you know control locally and then do that. So great. Yep, we'll get there. It's exciting. Cool. I'm excited.
00:19:35,900 [Wendy Hill]
Can't wait to see your Cubicle Nate article on it.
00:19:38,660 [Nate Wolf]
Yeah, I got to do that. I'm behind. I got so many half-started articles. I'm terrible. Like all your projects, half-started. Well, no, that'd be giving me more credit than I deserve. The articles are more than half-started. The projects that are pending are like: 10% started and then, oh, I got it. I have an actual emergency over here. So you're being shelved. Except for my framework bumper project. That's done. And I'm selling those things on cubicle8. com slash shop. So you can check out that. Not exactly a high ticket moving item. but enough has moved that I'm I'm probably about And I'll maybe a quarter of the way of paying the whole process off.
00:20:16,040 [Wendy Hill]
Wow. Yeah. Is that including the license for the CAD software?
00:20:21,690 [Nate Wolf]
Or no? No. Not that, because that hasn't kicked in until May. So.
00:20:26,180 [Wendy Hill]
Oh, okay. Gotcha.
00:20:27,450 [Nate Wolf]
That technically doesn't exist yet. Yeah. Once that kicks in, then no.
00:20:33,080 [Nate Wolf]
Then I got to get serious again.
00:20:34,500 [Wendy Hill]
Then definitely no. Ha ha ha.
00:20:38,220 [Nate Wolf]
Definitely not.
00:20:40,120 [Nate Wolf]
So check that out, cubicleight. com slash shop. I got things there. Not very many things, just a couple things. So speaking of exciting, Matt, it's so exciting to see you and it's so exciting to see that you're talking about game stuff because I have things I want to hear about and things I want to ask you.
00:20:57,690 [Matt Dark1]
And I will tell you how you're doing gaming totally wrong, as I always do.
00:21:02,310 [Matt Dark1]
Yeah, but.
00:21:02,890 [Wendy Hill]
Probably. Or no, you don't tell him he's doing it wrong. You just tell him that he's doing it the way it was done, like 20 years ago.
00:21:09,410 [Matt Dark1]
So, for him, it's two months ago.
00:21:14,900 [Matt Dark1]
But yes, so, like you, I have a lot of partial projects I have started, but, you know, time marches on and we slowly fall behind. And yes, you have a dual shock 5, no dual sense, whatever this works great in Linux by the way.
00:21:37,950 [Matt Dark1]
Yes. Does it? It has built it. The drivers are built into the kernel.
00:21:44,570 [Matt Dark1]
FYI.
00:21:44,970 [Wendy Hill]
That's cool. I know our kids use them for the robot, but I've never tried to actually use one on Linux. Though I'm more of a keyboard. Keep bored.
00:21:53,240 [Matt Dark1]
Keyboard and mouse.
00:21:53,860 [Wendy Hill]
Words, myself. Yeah.
00:21:56,130 [Matt Dark1]
But so I've had a media server project that I've been working on where I'm setting up a mesh network. Hmm. Two.
00:22:06,200 [Matt Dark1]
Make it so, basically, Netflix using a mini PC— it's a HP Elite one of their small Elite desks or whatever it is you know they're like the Think Centers, micro Think Centers, um. That is the server. But I'm using Ubuntu with Kasa OS as the gooey kind of front end for managing it because, uh, Kasa OS essentially has the containers as like a one-drop employment deployment. I don't, I don't want to deal with Docker containers and all the other nonsense. I I'm being lazy as crap when it comes to it, but. The nice thing is you can add media drives and all the other stuff right from the web UI and stuff with Casa OS. So, and I'm going to make that kind of a one-stop. For Jellyfin for all the devices that I'm going to make as coding machines in my house. That's the general gist of it.
00:23:07,970 [Matt Dark1]
There is another project that I'm working on that is essentially a self-hosted local Steam.
00:23:16,820 [Matt Dark1]
Now, this one is fun. It's called Game Vault. So there's two different ways to look at this. It doesn't use Steam. It uses DRM-free games as its base. Now that can be wide and encompassing as far as that goes. Oh, yeah. Because if you go to like itch. io or, you know, any of these other where it's just, oh, game install. GameVol is, for me, what I'm doing for it is using it specifically for GOG-based games. And I'm using it, and it allows you to set up user profiles, tracking stats, basically take all the things you would see in Steam and make it self-hosted.
00:23:59,780 [Matt Dark1]
So it is all local. You can set up user accounts for all local machines, pull them down from your server. It is super cool stuff. Wow.
00:24:10,060 [Matt Dark1]
Now they do offer kind of like a, I think it's game vault plus, which is like a monthly sub that has certain features that aren't available in like the open. Sourcey project of it, um, but they're like proprietary stuff anyway. So it's going to be like Steam integration into it, and so it becomes more of a um, there's another service on Windows currently called Play Night, which is very similar to to what this does um, as far as kind of the front end aspect of it. But to me, that is a super cool thing, especially because I've been really jumping deep into the DRM-free digital sovereignty, digital ownership kind of pool, where I actually like to own my stuff as much as humanly possible.
00:24:55,910 [Matt Dark1]
I mean, literally the drive that is sitting behind here has 653 GOG games installed on it. Wow!
00:25:04,330 [Matt Dark1]
That is a.
00:25:06,390 [Matt Dark1]
That is a 2010.
00:25:08,540 [Matt Dark1]
This particular drive back here is a 20 terabyte disk. I have a 26 terabyte disk there.
00:25:17,210 [Matt Dark1]
Nope. I have a 26 back there. I have a 14 up there. I have probably.
00:25:24,110 [Matt Dark1]
If I had to guess, over 100 terabytes worth of storage. Just kind of kicking around right now.
00:25:29,550 [Matt Dark1]
Wow.
00:25:31,250 [Matt Dark1]
So.
00:25:32,600 [Matt Dark1]
well, some of it's redundancy— so like the 14 backs up the 20, etc. So like, and the 26 is actually meant for the the media stuff.
00:25:40,246 [Nate Wolf]
If I may ask, do you have an accounting of how many games you have?
00:25:48,560 [Nate Wolf]
Like that I own? In total. In total? Let's just say there's, like, Steam or PC games. So when I say PC games, I mean anything that could be on Steam or GOG.
00:26:02,270 [Matt Dark1]
Here's the problem.
00:26:04,949 [Matt Dark1]
You also got to count other services. There's EA, there's Ubisoft. Those ones I couldn't tell you, but if you're just strictly talking between GOG and Steam, I have about 2,000 games.
00:26:17,890 [Ryan DasGeek]
Okay.
00:26:18,620 [Matt Dark1]
I think I have 1,400 something on Steam.
00:26:22,900 [Nate Wolf]
The number of games I have would probably be a rounding error for you.
00:26:30,500 [Wendy Hill]
Okay, now here's the question. You may have around 2,000 games between those two different services or platforms, whatnot. But what is your percentage of completion?
00:26:44,630 [Matt Dark1]
Generally across almost all of my platforms. It doesn't matter which one, it's about 25%.
00:26:49,800 [Wendy Hill]
All right.
00:26:52,060 [Matt Dark1]
Generally speaking.
00:26:53,820 [Wendy Hill]
I know there's a few games that I buy and I get them and I was like, 'Oh, this isn't great.' But usually I've bought them on a GOG sale and I've paid a couple bucks for them and then I don't feel bad, right? I'm not finishing it.
00:27:07,020 [Matt Dark1]
So generally, that's generally what happens. Or, you know, I have a lot of games from bundles that I'll buy where it's like two or three of the eight games.
00:27:17,520 [Matt Dark1]
Justified the price, and then I activate the other five games. I was like, 'Okay, I don't like it.' I literally had, yeah, in like in Steam, I literally have a category that says
00:27:27,640 [Wendy Hill]
'Not interested Oh, that is good. I should probably do that because I know every once in a while when I'm on Fanatical, I'll be like, 'Yeah, go ahead and throw the mystery games in.' And sometimes I'm like, 'Yeah, that's something I would play.' That's something the kids would play. That's something that nobody would play.
00:27:45,090 [Matt Dark1]
Um, so game vault is kind of that thing where I'm like, okay, this is super cool. Especially if you're getting into the self-hosting, if you're getting into local media and all that stuff. Okay. Your entertainment, like in my case, you know, movies, TV shows, all that stuff. I'm low. I'm looking at like less Netflix, more Jellyfin. Like that's my kind of. Right. So why wouldn't I do that if I have an option for like a Steam-like thing that I can do? Why not go that route? And then there's this. And then there's this nice, lovely open source project that will give you, over here. Is called Pegasus Front End. This is a flat pack actually, but it also plays on Android and Windows.
00:28:40,320 [Matt Dark1]
A-will pull, so like, this will pull in Steam and this pulls in my GOG games that are on an external drive and it gives you a console-like interface that you can play with. And so everything's controller-driven.
00:28:57,950 [Matt Dark1]
All open source. Nice.
00:29:02,669 [Wendy Hill]
So, if you're working on your own DIY console kind of thing, this is one of those front ends that you could make that happen with.
00:29:10,590 [Nate Wolf]
Bingo.
00:29:12,300 [Nate Wolf]
So. This would take a place of like um Retroarch, or whatever, in some ways.
00:29:20,660 [Matt Dark1]
Yeah, so on the Retroarch, Batocera, any of those kinds of more full, full-bore solutions— this is more Steam UI that's uh customizable and not solely baked into the Steam experience.
00:29:41,030 [Matt Dark1]
So. Nice that's what I really like about this— it's also I like this.
00:29:47,239 [Matt Dark1]
So, well, Nate, the cool thing is a lot of these, there's themes that they have for it on the site that you can download and kind of re-jig and everything's like zip file, drag and drop into the themes folder. It's very, there's not a lot to it. As far as that stuff. So it's super cool. I like a lot of it. It's something to really keep an eye out for. This has been around for a while, but this is definitely something that I found as like, oh, that's awesome. So. yeah, heck yeah, and like I said, it can pull in Steam if you want Steam games, but like that's not what I'm looking for. This machine just happens to have Steam on it, so it just recognizes it um It gets a little wonky with some of the metadata, I will say that. There are some pros and cons, obviously. But if you download your games directly from GOG, all this info here, this one has the year it was made, a brief info, and a you know, screen preview for a current game.
00:30:50,370 [Matt Dark1]
Nice.
00:30:52,360 [Matt Dark1]
That is something that I'm looking at doing. So between self-hosting and your own console UI, so you're providing a Steam experience locally with a custom UI if you want it.
00:31:07,110 [Matt Dark1]
All.
00:31:07,770 [Wendy Hill]
Very nice.
00:31:08,770 [Matt Dark1]
The machine doesn't matter. That to me is super cool.
00:31:13,910 [Matt Dark1]
Um, so that's my current project. That is going to be a long, long road. Uh, that is not a short project.
00:31:21,770 [Wendy Hill]
Um, given my time frame of stuff, but uh and so is that like manually needing to pull in and install each game— is that what's going to take the most time or where's the time?
00:31:31,200 [Matt Dark1]
Um, it's just the getting it set up. Um, like actually finding the time to like, just like anything else. It's like, okay. Like when I had to redo all my backup data for stuff, it was like, 'Oh, I have 10 minutes. I will.
00:31:47,760 [Matt Dark1]
Do some of it now.'
00:31:49,860 [Matt Dark1]
You know, so it's picky at stuff like that. Super boring, super annoying. It's not, oh, I have three hours. I can sit down and just kind of do this thing.
00:31:59,100 [Matt Dark1]
But with all that being said, because I'm getting into the digital sovereignty stuff, essentially, or digital ownership, whatever you want to call it.
00:32:08,660 [Matt Dark1]
I'm looking at bringing back GameSphere. Which, with a different, with a different, similar lean. Where it was about budget gaming, because let's be real, this is the only generation of consoles and technology where the price has not gone down over the generation. It's gone backwards and it's gone up. Which is absurd.
00:32:29,000 [Wendy Hill]
Well, we can think RAM prices and hard drive prices, and all of that good stuff, for some of that. Speaking of which, if you find a really good deal on M. 2 SSDs, let me know. My kids' laptops need upgrades.
00:32:42,420 [Matt Dark1]
It's probably broken though. But anyway. So right now I want to look at kind of the digital ownership and budget stuff because.
00:32:55,320 [Matt Dark1]
The people that talk tech generally don't live in the realm of, let's be quite frank, reality, where they're like, 'Oh, a $1,200, $1,300, $1,400, $1,500 system is normal.' And it's like. Dog, most people don't live with those budgets. There are people that are looking for $500 catch-all systems.
00:33:16,510 [Matt Dark1]
You know, maximizing their bang for buck and what they're willing to compromise and that kind of stuff.
00:33:21,930 [Wendy Hill]
Yeah.
00:33:22,840 [Matt Dark1]
Um, And I'm saying that as someone who generally can afford some of those nicer things if I wanted to, but I don't because I like. Maximizing my money.
00:33:35,190 [Matt Dark1]
Right.
00:33:35,810 [Wendy Hill]
Yep.
00:33:36,490 [Matt Dark1]
So like, as an example, this particular machine I'm using. Wendy, it's similar to your Dell, just the HP flip of it. So I have the Quadro RTX 5000 on it with the 16 gigs of VRAM. And I have maxed out 128 gigs of memory and four terabytes of storage and a dream color display.
00:33:59,710 [Matt Dark1]
I paid.
00:34:02,040 [Matt Dark1]
But it's from 2019, 20.
00:34:05,360 [Wendy Hill]
Yeah, because I built this system in 20, which I mean, I've done a few upgrades like RAM. I should have fully upgraded it then. I was looking at GPUs. I can't. Remember if you were here or not when I was talking about a video that I was working on. It was a short-form video as a promo, but it was all in. 4K, green screen, all of that stuff and running four 4K monitors and then having a 3060. Yeah, I was running out of VRAM. I was running out of. Ram, Ram, 80 gigs of Ram.
00:34:40,280 [Ryan DasGeek]
Yep.
00:34:41,020 [Wendy Hill]
Gone.
00:34:43,300 [Wendy Hill]
Yeah! I get it.
00:34:45,100 [Matt Dark1]
So, but like this particular machine was like a $6,000 machine in 2020.
00:34:51,790 [Matt Dark1]
Like it was super expensive.
00:34:54,389 [Wendy Hill]
And you don't even want to know what it would cost now.
00:34:57,070 [Matt Dark1]
In this rampocalypse time frame, I paid like $900 for it. Wow. It's DVR4. Wow. It, um.
00:35:08,350 [Wendy Hill]
Oh, okay. I catch it.
00:35:10,010 [Nate Wolf]
You didn't commit any like-crimes or anything— no getting it, no no.
00:35:14,620 [Matt Dark1]
Because the compromise to be fair.
00:35:17,220 [Wendy Hill]
My system's also DDR4.
00:35:19,500 [Matt Dark1]
The Compromise is an i7. I think it's a 97.
00:35:27,140 [Matt Dark1]
9850 or 9750 or whatever, somewhere in that. It's a 9th Gen i7. So my CPU is my limiting factor right now. It's only six cores and 12 threads instead of eight cores and 16 threads or whatever.
00:35:42,460 [Matt Dark1]
So there's certain things that. Pick and choose your battles. Right.
00:35:49,860 [Matt Dark1]
So that's my thought process about bringing back GameSphere is that it's living in the realm of reality that a lot of these access journalists that do tech don't live in.
00:36:02,730 [Matt Dark1]
I mean. Right.
00:36:04,650 [Matt Dark1]
As an exam, like, like.
00:36:07,080 [Matt Dark1]
The only guys that I see do this kind of stuff are like the toasty bros on YouTube. Where they like, oh, we'll actually do like a budget sane bill that more people will probably use. Not a lot of people, like in Nate's case. Nate, how many people are going to repurpose an old Think Center?
00:36:25,170 [Matt Dark1]
and use it as a server if they have access to a $10,000 fresh server? Probably not a lot of people.
00:36:33,880 [Nate Wolf]
I repurposed those essentially e-waste. I mean, not quite, not quite.
00:36:39,870 [Nate Wolf]
Not quite.
00:36:40,990 [Wendy Hill]
I mean, it is working and doing a pretty good job. So more people should.
00:36:45,290 [Matt Dark1]
Great job. So this is my thought process about bringing back kind of like GameSphere, where it focuses kind of on budget, reality, and expectations.
00:36:55,460 [Matt Dark1]
What you can actually accomplish and get out of actual ownership of your stuff.
00:37:00,420 [Wendy Hill]
Nice.
00:37:01,770 [Matt Dark1]
Very cool. So that's my thought process anyway for it.
00:37:05,810 [Wendy Hill]
Do you have a time frame in which you're going to relaunch it or it's still in the works?
00:37:10,110 [Matt Dark1]
It's still in the works. I still got a few things to factor and figure out there. Somewhere else? Yeah.
00:37:15,830 [Nate Wolf]
I saw a video, an interesting video about how St. Valve just doing what they did with steam— they essentially mostly eliminated piracy by just creating a better platform than pirating games. Yes.
00:37:34,340 [Nate Wolf]
Thank you. Do you think this is some grant? You just this can be a short.
00:37:39,840 [Nate Wolf]
Thanks.
00:37:41,580 [Nate Wolf]
Do you think it's some sort of grand conspiracy that Valve is trying to control gaming? Or do you think it's actually quite the opposite? They're actually a good company trying to preserve gaming.
00:37:50,910 [Matt Dark1]
I think it's dual nature. Like it's almost human. We're good and bad. At the end of the day, they are a company. They are looking to make money. Right. Right. All hail Gaben and all that fun stuff.
00:38:06,260 [Matt Dark1]
But at the end of the day, the dude has a yacht that has its own submarine.
00:38:13,209 [Matt Dark1]
He earned it, though.
00:38:15,480 [Matt Dark1]
I'm not saying he didn't earn it. What I'm saying is that at some point, you're going to have good and bad.
00:38:24,920 [Matt Dark1]
Valve, there's bad things you can mention about Steam. You can argue their 30% cut is too much if you're a developer. You can argue about the quality of some of the games. You can argue about the storefront. You can argue about uh some of the things that are available in general across the platform. There, there's— you know— the algorithm. You can talk about there. There's plenty of things to criticize Valve about.
00:38:59,009 [Matt Dark1]
Um, like my biggest gripe with a lot of the games that they sell as an example, and some of the older games just don't work, but they're still available on the store.
00:39:08,830 [Matt Dark1]
But then again, when you have 30, 40, 50,000 games or whatever they're currently at.
00:39:14,510 [Matt Dark1]
How do you really test every game?
00:39:17,520 [Matt Dark1]
For every iteration of OS and et cetera. So, you know.
00:39:21,300 [Wendy Hill]
Yeah, or have the funds to be able to pay somebody to go through and test every single game. It's just not possible.
00:39:28,420 [Matt Dark1]
I think in the preservation aspect, I think.
00:39:34,140 [Matt Dark1]
Velvet does better at pushing the technology.
00:39:38,850 [Matt Dark1]
For people to preserve.
00:39:41,770 [Matt Dark1]
There are games, so the example, there's games on.
00:39:45,580 [Matt Dark1]
That I have on Steam that I can't run on Windows, but I can run them on Linux.
00:39:51,600 [Matt Dark1]
Because of Proton. That's cool.
00:39:53,820 [Matt Dark1]
Because I don't have the headaches that I have to jump through on Windows.
00:39:58,540 [Matt Dark1]
Right.
00:40:00,190 [Matt Dark1]
I don't view Valve in a negative light. I view them as everything's business driven. That just happens to have a very consumer mindset instead of what is the best aspect for our customer. And sometimes they do some dumb stuff. I'm not going to lie. And there's some improvements that they can need. But they don't do what people like your mutinate.
00:40:20,290 [Nate Wolf]
Can any of us here say?
00:40:23,060 [Nate Wolf]
That we haven't done dumb stuff.
00:40:25,610 [Nate Wolf]
Exactly.
00:40:27,130 [Nate Wolf]
So.
00:40:28,020 [Wendy Hill]
I could say that, but it doesn't mean it would be true.
00:40:31,440 [Matt Dark1]
So my take on it, generally speaking, though, is Valve, I don't think it's a grand conspiracy that they control everything. I think nobody's made a better product.
00:40:44,630 [Matt Dark1]
At the end of the day, and for all of Tim Sweeney's whining and complaining about, you know, Valve being a monopoly, bro, you had 20 plus years when you put out EGS. For those that don't know what EGS is, it's an Epic Game Store. When you put out EGS, why did it take your client like four years to have a shopping cart? You put out a worse product.
00:41:09,950 [Nate Wolf]
But I mean, they're not a monopoly by any means. I mean, GOG is there and I don't see Steam doing, I don't see Valve doing anything, excuse me, I don't see Valve doing anything to try and take out GOG. I don't see any legal maneuvering against other organizations.
00:41:24,890 [Matt Dark1]
No. And the thing, again, there's, you know, there's business aspects to it that you sure you can, might not agree with, you know, and that kind of stuff. But generally, I think Valve is a better proponent for consumers as a whole than a lot of other companies. In that regard.
00:41:46,070 [Nate Wolf]
The only thing that I would say that bothers me about Valve's business decisions that they made like this is literally the only thing— the one is my library, I can't pass that on. I can't gift my library.
00:42:01,040 [Nate Wolf]
That's the only one thing that I don't like that they've done.
00:42:04,230 [Matt Dark1]
And so. I know you're talking like digital legacy. Yes.
00:42:11,230 [Matt Dark1]
And a lot of that isn't even anything Valve can do about it. It's a lot of us— what me or you will click— we just click next. See the stupid pop-up for, you know, end user license agreement, whatever. It's all legalese BS anyway.
00:42:27,270 [Matt Dark1]
Unfortunately, when we agreed to it, most of those licenses aren't transferable because they're digital. This is where the perk of either DRM-free or physical is best at because. I can still transfer because there's a physical product or a thing I'm giving you. Digital currently, they don't allow it. Because of those EULAs, which is super annoying.
00:42:51,770 [Nate Wolf]
They could change that. I'm sure they have to get buy-in from the different.
00:42:56,790 [Nate Wolf]
It's the publishers that I'm saying right so— but it would be nice if, like, I could just say, you know, if my essentially, if my um, account had like a kill switch on it so, like, after you know, you can you can say, who who inherits my stuff or whatever. I'm just saying it'd be nice because you know, someday, you can inherit other things, right?
00:43:20,070 [Wendy Hill]
You can pass along other things, but that's part of the physical and not the digital. But your GOG games, technically, you still can.
00:43:27,350 [Nate Wolf]
Right. That's why I do like GOG a lot, but I really like Steam a lot.
00:43:32,770 [Nate Wolf]
And I think the fact that Hello Matt, were you here when we were talking about how GOG was hiring a Linux developer? Part of that, yeah, so I think so, yeah. So I think this is a lot of like. I think you know, amongst all the bad stuff out there in tech or whatever, all the all the doomsday doomsday, um, negativity and uh, dystopian futures, there are there is still some good things happening.
00:44:00,140 [Wendy Hill]
There's some good stuff too.
00:44:01,960 [Nate Wolf]
And not even just on the hardware front, with framework, but also what Valve's doing with the Steam Deck. And even like GOG and yeah, there's a lot. There's there's little pockets of hope and freedom amongst the darkness out there.
00:44:15,630 [Matt Dark1]
That's going to wrap up this homecoming episode of links out loud. It's good to be back in the cockpit. Even if Wendy and Nate let the self-hosted robots rearrange the toggles while I was away. Stop. Blinking lights.
00:44:27,640 [Matt Dark1]
We'll be back next time after we've broken in some more models, rebooted a couple of systems. And maybe convince at least one surface-level AI, Michael AI maybe, that Linux is not just a kernel, it's a lifestyle. And hey, just don't like the episode. That poor little button has been through enough.
00:44:52,419 [Matt Dark1]
Really, Wendy?
00:44:54,160 [Wendy Hill]
Yes, yes, yes.
00:44:58,110 [Matt Dark1]
Treat it like a tired server. Gently reboot it until it's healthy and green again. Take the subscription button, add it to your mental inventory. Like it's a new node at a home lab and then pretend you've decommissioned it so you can surprise it by still being there next week. If you spot a share button, don't tap it or sync it to a friend who keeps asking which cloud AI to use. We both know the real answer is the one running their own Linux box.
00:45:36,970 [Ryan DasGeek]
Thank you.
