Linux After Dark

How we get back to our home LANs when we are away travelling etc. It mostly involves WireGuard and Tailscale. We also get into blocking ads, mostly with Pi-hole.                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Chris ended up with a managed M4 Macbook Air at work with no sudo or root. So how does a Linux user get on with his first ever Mac? Turns out pretty well, thanks to lots of open source software and a terminal.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

May wants to make a space heater out of an old computer, and Joe is thinking about buying a new (used) laptop. The heater will be pretty straightforward but finding the right laptop will be much harder.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

We decided to give openSUSE a try. We had a great time. Honest.                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

May has actually been using her stack of laptops and learning that “legacy” distros make more sense, the Firefox flatpak performs better than other packages, Linux Mint is a fine distro, Linux has the best calculators, and GNOME’s scaling is really good now.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

The end of Windows 10 and the terrible state of Windows 11 are driving more and more people to Linux. How do we help people actually manage the switch and stay with Linux?           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

With the price of RAM and storage through the roof, what are we going to do when it comes to supporting people who come to us for IT advice?               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

How do you convince people to stop using unethical technology like generative AI?             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Some of the Linux and open source tech from our past that inspired where we are today.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.    

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           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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?         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

What Linux and FOSS technology should Joe learn next? Is it a case of waiting for a problem to present itself before even trying?       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

What do we wish had happened in the Linux and open source world? Successful mobile Linux, convergence, Snaps winning, and Amigas still being around.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

We look at postmarketOS on various devices old and new, Arm and x86, and are impressed.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

It’s the alternative open source OS challenge! May got OpenIndiana, Joe got ReactOS, Gary got GhostBSD, and Chris got Haiku.   Haiku Package Management         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.  

The search for the ideal cheap and small off-site backup machine, and our advice on learning the ins and outs of desktop Linux.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.     Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Our FOSS frustrations, and our satisfying open source wins.   ncspot py-spy OggCamp Distrobox BoxBuddy audio-visualizer-python         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes           See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes           See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Is a proprietary games company driving all the innovation on the Linux desktop, and is that OK?       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

How we learn, remember, and document new Linux and FOSS technologies.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

We all customise our phones and computers to one extent or another, but does it make sense to inflict our defaults on other people’s machines when we set them up? Or should we set them up with normal defaults on mainstream distros like Ubuntu?       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Having been given an Asus Eee PC netbook back, Joe wonders what to do with this ancient 32-bit machine. Plus the oldest machines we currently have in production. Batocera       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

We are joined by Florian Beijers who is a full time screen reader user to talk about how the accessibility experience differs on various operating systems and Linux desktop environments, and what open source software devs could be doing better.   Florian’s links: Mastodon YouTube channel Twitch IC_Null Twitch LinkedIn       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   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       See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.