WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:10.640 So, next we have Krishna Brown, and it will discuss about it, it's really not a slide, 00:10.640 --> 00:13.520 so I don't have to say it, but I don't want to give it a try. 00:13.520 --> 00:16.520 Being different takes ails at this of the endless RC. 00:16.520 --> 00:18.320 Thank you very much. 00:18.320 --> 00:21.280 So, yes, first who the heck am I? 00:21.280 --> 00:27.320 Well, I'm Richard, I've been doing open-source stuff for like 20 years now. 00:28.080 --> 00:33.600 This is like my 13th first, then I build a distro, and I'm going to be talking about the latest one that I've built. 00:37.240 --> 00:40.680 After you've got a little introduction about what the heck is this A-on thing? 00:40.680 --> 00:46.800 Anyway, I'm going to be talking about the long roads that it's traveled, it's five years old now. 00:48.080 --> 00:51.880 Some of the sort of pain points we've had as we've been putting it together. 00:51.880 --> 00:57.080 Some little sort of inside baseball stories of what's gone on behind the scenes in the community and stuff as well. 00:57.720 --> 01:07.760 And then talking about what we ever actually released the dumb thing and some kind of points to share and maybe discuss when it comes to your own projects. 01:07.760 --> 01:14.280 Or just like any open source project generally, I think some of this stuff actually can be applied quite generically. 01:15.280 --> 01:17.160 So, what the heck is A on anyway? 01:17.160 --> 01:26.280 Well first, like way back when I suddenly woke up on morning and realized all this stuff that Susan was paying me to do in my day job with enterprise Linux 01:26.480 --> 01:27.480 isn't actually good enough. 01:28.080 --> 01:33.200 You know, traditional Linux, we've been building it for years and we've built it like it's a Swiss army knife. 01:33.200 --> 01:36.760 It's great, it's flexible, you can change all the bits and pieces, it's wonderful. 01:37.560 --> 01:40.520 But it's great, it's flexible, you can change all the bits and pieces. 01:40.520 --> 01:51.080 So everybody does and they all end up with something different and it breaks and it breaks inside itself and it breaks when you start looking at other bits, just massively complicated. 01:51.560 --> 02:06.080 And the funny thing is, like as this has been done more and more people have been adopting Linux around the world anyway, you kind of see people realizing these inherent problems with that open source to the next flexibility anyway. 02:06.760 --> 02:10.160 Because what do users do when they start running Linux? 02:10.160 --> 02:20.840 Well, they take this wonderfully complicated, do everything mega flexible platform and then they tear it down into some tiny little VM image that only does one thing. 02:20.840 --> 02:48.400 Because, you know, they don't want all that change, they don't want all that complexity, making it all VMs, putting everything in containers, you know, ignoring the fact that we spend all our time in traditional digital and coming up with my life's life cycles and then they just don't patch the dumb thing and then replace it with the next version eventually, you know, you know, spending tons and tons of effort on automation and configuration management and yeah. 02:49.400 --> 03:00.400 So, you know, people know these weaknesses in Linux but we've all kind of just trained ourselves into, you know, avoiding them rather than actually really fixing the distribution at the heart. 03:00.400 --> 03:06.400 So, my view, you know, the perfect Linux should just work. 03:06.400 --> 03:12.400 It shouldn't need these sort of complicated steps of taking it and then ripping it down and making it smaller. 03:12.400 --> 03:17.400 Shouldn't need complicated policies, shouldn't need complicated configuration management. 03:17.400 --> 03:24.400 All of this stuff should just be baked in so out of the box, your Linux does the thing that it's meant to be doing. 03:24.400 --> 03:34.400 So, it should be optimized for basically what everybody's doing these days anyway, you know, it should be optimized for single purpose installations. 03:34.400 --> 03:45.400 Small amount of services on their as possible have the updates automatically happen have recovery when the updates go wrong automatically happen. 03:45.400 --> 03:54.400 Use it at scale because especially on the server side of things, you know, everyone's deploying more than one instance these days and have the whole thing ready to be orchestrated. 03:54.400 --> 04:05.400 And, you know, maybe centrally administered, but not necessarily need it because, in fact, you don't need it off the stuff that ends up working anyway. 04:05.400 --> 04:13.400 And in addition to doing all of that thing, it should be avoiding needing any manual maintenance ever being in a inconsistent state. 04:13.400 --> 04:21.400 I mean, you heard about reproduciable builds for early like, you know, whatever state it's in, you should know that's what you wanted to be and how you wanted to be. 04:21.400 --> 04:28.400 And you shouldn't need to have any of that complicated orchestration tooling even if you do support it. 04:28.400 --> 04:33.400 And I would say for servers that perfect Linux already exists. 04:33.400 --> 04:43.400 Micro OS from the Opensus project is that OS already, you know, it's a rolling release which may surprise some people when I talk about a rolling release for a server. 04:43.400 --> 04:49.400 But, you know, because it does all of that stuff I just talked about, you know, it does the automatic updates. 04:49.400 --> 04:51.400 It does the automatic repair. 04:51.400 --> 04:56.400 The fact is that we don't have a lifecycle where you have to worry about what made a version of running. 04:56.400 --> 05:01.400 Yeah, you don't need to, you just deploy it, it runs, it patches itself, it fixes itself. 05:01.400 --> 05:03.400 You contain us all run, your services all run. 05:03.400 --> 05:05.400 The footprint is nice and small. 05:05.400 --> 05:08.400 I mean, mine Micro OS servers now. 05:08.400 --> 05:12.400 I think the oldest one is, well, the oldest one is actually older than Micro OS. 05:12.400 --> 05:16.400 But, yeah, so it's seven years, it's been running on its own. 05:16.400 --> 05:19.400 I never need to touch the dumb thing. 05:19.400 --> 05:24.400 But it's still running, it's still a big thing, it's still a good. 05:24.400 --> 05:26.400 But I don't just want to serve it. 05:26.400 --> 05:30.400 I mean, you know, I'm a desktop user too, and desktop's a special. 05:30.400 --> 05:35.400 You know, they're not something that you can just hide away in a data center. 05:35.400 --> 05:37.400 You're physically touching the thing. 05:37.400 --> 05:41.400 You know, if anything goes wrong with your desktop, I'd actually argue it's worse than if anything goes wrong with your stuff. 05:41.400 --> 05:45.400 If anything goes wrong with your server, because you were going to use that desktop to fix the server. 05:45.400 --> 05:51.400 You know, you can't, you're not going to run around with two laptops and be able to roll over to the other side of the cluster. 05:51.400 --> 05:56.400 You know, it's got to be more reliable than your service would be. 05:56.400 --> 06:03.400 And yeah, if you don't think does it go wrong, you really need to be get back to a working state incredibly quickly. 06:03.400 --> 06:05.400 And that's why I made A on. 06:05.400 --> 06:11.400 So today, it is just like microS, reliable, predictable, and mutable. 06:11.400 --> 06:14.400 We're opinionated, you know, it's known only. 06:14.400 --> 06:18.400 I mean, very much more of a Chromebook like experience. 06:18.400 --> 06:20.400 I'm a lazy developer than I was 10 years ago. 06:20.400 --> 06:22.400 You know, I just want my laptop to work. 06:22.400 --> 06:25.400 I don't want to be spending my time messing around with it. 06:25.400 --> 06:31.400 Deploying it is an image, so I know I'm running exactly what I built and what I should be running. 06:32.400 --> 06:36.400 Keeping the footprint on the machine as small as possible, but not so small that it's actually a pain. 06:36.400 --> 06:41.400 You know, so printing, gaming, multimedia stuff, all of that's baked in. 06:41.400 --> 06:44.400 And all of it just working straight after the box. 06:44.400 --> 06:46.400 But that's today. 06:46.400 --> 06:48.400 Wasn't where we began at all. 06:48.400 --> 06:51.400 So the history lesson now. 06:51.400 --> 06:56.400 Started this first five years, almost five years ago now, which is really weird. 06:56.400 --> 07:02.400 As a user how quick projects, user gives employees a week, giving down again to mess around or whatever they want. 07:02.400 --> 07:04.400 So we already had microS. 07:04.400 --> 07:07.400 And I was like, okay, I want to have a desktop on top of microS. 07:07.400 --> 07:09.400 It's going to be awesome. 07:09.400 --> 07:12.400 And that's basically what I built. 07:12.400 --> 07:15.400 So the microS desktop did it as a system role. 07:15.400 --> 07:20.400 So basically alternative installation option when you're installing microS. 07:20.400 --> 07:25.400 Which meant it was basically a nice simple RPM pattern that would sit on 07:25.400 --> 07:29.400 top of all the other RPM patterns, which microS was already building. 07:29.400 --> 07:34.400 Which meant it was dependent on all the stuff that microS was already building. 07:34.400 --> 07:38.400 And we shared the same installer, we shared the same ISO. 07:38.400 --> 07:43.400 I thought I was saving myself time and effort to didn't really work out that way. 07:43.400 --> 07:48.400 Because that's where the initial technical problems were. 07:48.400 --> 07:52.400 Because microS is a very server-oriented operating system. 07:53.400 --> 07:56.400 I ended up with a very server operated desktop. 07:56.400 --> 08:03.400 You know, I was having to work around all the issues of having extra drivers for the M's. 08:03.400 --> 08:06.400 I didn't care about in cloud tooling that I didn't care about. 08:06.400 --> 08:08.400 And embedded tooling that I didn't care about. 08:08.400 --> 08:10.400 And then not being able to run any of my graphics stuff. 08:10.400 --> 08:12.400 Because I wasn't on the microS image. 08:12.400 --> 08:16.400 You know, having to really have a hard time with the core configuration. 08:16.400 --> 08:19.400 You know, things like SE Linux policies. 08:20.400 --> 08:23.400 You know, that's your one policy for your entire system. 08:23.400 --> 08:29.400 And if that's written with a server in mind, it's going to bump up against a lot of desktop use cases. 08:29.400 --> 08:31.400 Really, really, really common. 08:31.400 --> 08:34.400 And you go to your security maintainers. 08:34.400 --> 08:37.400 And they're like, yeah, it could fix that. 08:37.400 --> 08:42.400 But then that's going to be way too much of a hole for everyone who's actually using microS as a server. 08:42.400 --> 08:44.400 Like it's meant to be, right? 08:45.400 --> 08:53.400 And also then we would have weird and wonderful interactions because microS has some of these additional patterns for things like cockpit and remote attestation. 08:53.400 --> 08:59.400 People will try and mix and match and play around with wood and wonderful combinations, which I guess is quite fun. 08:59.400 --> 09:07.400 But it just always broke and I was never in a position to really fix either because, you know, I'm not going to go fix cockpit to one on a desktop. 09:07.400 --> 09:10.400 It doesn't really make sense. 09:10.400 --> 09:22.400 And yeah, sticking with the same ISO and the same RPM installer, you know, we were stuck with some very basic common workflow. 09:22.400 --> 09:26.400 You know, on the server it makes perfect sense to always have a router count. 09:26.400 --> 09:29.400 I wanted to just have a user account with pseudo privileges. 09:29.400 --> 09:31.400 Could I tell the installer to not do that? 09:31.400 --> 09:32.400 No. 09:32.400 --> 09:37.400 You know, for a different product, maybe, but for the same product with the different pattern, 09:37.400 --> 09:41.400 it doesn't magically know that you press that one button to install that one pattern. 09:41.400 --> 09:47.400 So completely stuck there, completely stuck when it comes to deploying images. 09:47.400 --> 09:53.400 And then when I got the old thing installed, I couldn't actually tell if you've installed microS, the desktop or microS, the server. 09:53.400 --> 09:57.400 Which also then started causing weird and wonderful confusion. 09:57.400 --> 10:03.400 There's people started actually adopting this and talking about on forums and it's like, okay, I'm running microS or which one. 10:04.400 --> 10:07.400 Where does this book report actually go? 10:07.400 --> 10:12.400 And also we had sort of applied from the technical stuff, you know, community problems. 10:12.400 --> 10:17.400 Because it was a system role, which is an installation option in the asked. 10:17.400 --> 10:22.400 We had community members that kind of went, yeah, cool, I'm going to, you know, I don't like known. 10:22.400 --> 10:25.400 So I'm going to contribute my favorite desktop environment instead. 10:25.400 --> 10:32.400 And, in fact, what I kind of really did was I'm going to make Richard maintain the desktop environment because I'm going to disappear immediately afterwards. 10:33.400 --> 10:35.400 Which, yeah. 10:35.400 --> 10:40.400 And that's how microS desktop KDE was born. 10:40.400 --> 10:45.400 And where had to rename microS desktop to microS desktop, no. 10:45.400 --> 10:49.400 And that bought tons of problems. 10:49.400 --> 10:52.400 There was the technical ones. 10:52.400 --> 10:57.400 We, because, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's common between desktop, so you thought, okay, fine. 10:57.400 --> 11:00.400 Instead of having microS desktop as one pattern, 11:00.400 --> 11:03.400 you have a common pattern and a KDE, you want to know one. 11:03.400 --> 11:08.400 So suddenly, there's an argument of which package goes in which pattern. 11:08.400 --> 11:11.400 And, you know, where's the right place to actually put it, which was always pointless. 11:11.400 --> 11:17.400 Because it always ended up being being the same team, maintaining all three package patterns at one point. 11:17.400 --> 11:19.400 But, yeah. 11:19.400 --> 11:23.400 And then, you know, you put it in the wrong one and half the desktop's break. 11:23.400 --> 11:29.400 We ended up with lots of attention from the KDE user based in OpenSuser, which was great. 11:29.400 --> 11:35.400 But one extra contributor in several years doesn't actually help. 11:35.400 --> 11:39.400 And kind of muddied the water of what we're trying to do here. 11:39.400 --> 11:44.400 You know, meant to be this nice, simple, you know, we provide, you know, provide you a desktop. 11:44.400 --> 11:50.400 And suddenly, like, which one now, and, you know, you put instead of this nice vision of a perfect polish desktop, 11:50.400 --> 11:54.400 you would certainly do a more questions and more options in front of our users, 11:54.400 --> 11:58.400 which can't undermine the whole point of what we're trying to do. 11:58.400 --> 12:02.400 But I didn't just drop it. Well, I tried. 12:02.400 --> 12:07.400 The contributor, who originally made it, then suddenly appeared after disappearing for several years, 12:07.400 --> 12:11.400 and went to the OpenSuser Board and made a big stank. 12:11.400 --> 12:15.400 And even though the OpenSuser Board technically shouldn't be directing developers, 12:15.400 --> 12:17.400 we were directed to keep it in the project. 12:17.400 --> 12:19.400 So, we did. 12:19.400 --> 12:21.400 But it was unmaintained. 12:21.400 --> 12:24.400 We kind of hung around for years. 12:25.400 --> 12:29.400 We steadily went along with the known side of things, doing an alpha and a beta. 12:29.400 --> 12:35.400 And everybody scanned it a 12 KDE sort of, just stayed there where it is. 12:35.400 --> 12:39.400 So, yes, talking about alpha's and beta's and stuff. 12:39.400 --> 12:41.400 I realize it's a loaded terms. 12:41.400 --> 12:45.400 So, when I come to using them, these are my nice helpful, 12:45.400 --> 12:49.400 hopefully human understandable definitions of what I mean when I say an alpha. 12:49.400 --> 12:53.400 You know, when the microS desktop was an alpha, it kind of worked. 12:53.400 --> 12:56.400 It was mostly broken most of the time. 12:56.400 --> 12:59.400 When I started calling it a beta, it was almost complete. 12:59.400 --> 13:01.400 There was a few things I knew were missing, 13:01.400 --> 13:05.400 and it mostly worked, but they could occasionally be issues. 13:05.400 --> 13:07.400 And release candidates, which is where we are now. 13:07.400 --> 13:09.400 You know, it's complete, at least, 13:09.400 --> 13:12.400 complete as far as I believe it to be at that day, 13:12.400 --> 13:15.400 because definitions changes that you're going to see. 13:15.400 --> 13:19.400 But whatever it worked, it's reliable, but may have some rough edges. 13:19.400 --> 13:22.400 So, release really is just a complete sort of, 13:22.400 --> 13:26.400 it works, it's very, it's done. 13:26.400 --> 13:31.400 So, the first release in microS desktop known land was, 13:31.400 --> 13:37.400 well first, yeah, release candidate was early 2023. 13:37.400 --> 13:40.400 Pretty good state of things. 13:40.400 --> 13:43.400 You know, we had a very minimized no installation. 13:43.400 --> 13:46.400 No RBM applications in the base of OS, 13:46.400 --> 13:49.400 apart from software, stack, and terminal. 13:50.400 --> 13:52.400 Everything being flat-packed from flat-up, 13:52.400 --> 13:54.400 out of the box for GUI applications, 13:54.400 --> 13:59.400 distra box being out of the box for command line applications, 13:59.400 --> 14:03.400 desktop notifications for the background updates, 14:03.400 --> 14:08.400 and whatever possible we started avoiding the need 14:08.400 --> 14:10.400 for the shared microS installed. 14:10.400 --> 14:14.400 So, whatever possible we'd have in no initial setup do the work 14:14.400 --> 14:18.400 and try and kind of get ourselves away from being stuck in that workflow. 14:19.400 --> 14:24.400 MicroS desktop at the time is, you know, for, and still is today. 14:24.400 --> 14:27.400 But was it really an RC by my own definition? 14:27.400 --> 14:30.400 Well, kind of, those rough edges were a bit rough, 14:30.400 --> 14:33.400 than they should have made them maybe. 14:33.400 --> 14:36.400 You know, we were still dependent on the patterns 14:36.400 --> 14:40.400 and the policy kits and the system D presets and all that stuff. 14:40.400 --> 14:42.400 Thank you very much. 14:42.400 --> 14:45.400 So, we had a fair bit of croft in there. 14:45.400 --> 14:48.400 You couldn't run every flat-packed properly, especially like steam, 14:48.400 --> 14:51.400 because I see them as we get in the way and moan about it. 14:51.400 --> 14:54.400 You know, you had to still have a separate route password. 14:54.400 --> 14:58.400 Studio policy wasn't right, and all kit was constantly asking you 14:58.400 --> 15:01.400 to enter the route password when you wanted to change a printer 15:01.400 --> 15:03.400 and know which is fully annoying. 15:03.400 --> 15:06.400 You couldn't actually turn off automatic reboots, 15:06.400 --> 15:08.400 so, you know, you left your laptop running, 15:08.400 --> 15:10.400 it would magically reboot in the middle of the night, 15:10.400 --> 15:13.400 just like a microS server, which really was not fun. 15:14.400 --> 15:17.400 Still couldn't distinguish between microS server and microS desktop, 15:17.400 --> 15:20.400 which was hard for me when I wanted to put a patch or a fixed adjust. 15:20.400 --> 15:25.400 One of them couldn't stop users from going into gas 15:25.400 --> 15:28.400 to the open-suset installer and completely messing with the potitions 15:28.400 --> 15:32.400 and making an installation that was completely nonsensical. 15:32.400 --> 15:36.400 Couldn't stop them from trying to install KDE and gnome 15:36.400 --> 15:38.400 and 20 other things at the same time, 15:38.400 --> 15:40.400 and then wondering why they didn't work. 15:41.400 --> 15:44.400 Yes, and we still had the sort of community confusion of, 15:44.400 --> 15:46.400 you know, why aren't you supporting KDE more, 15:46.400 --> 15:49.400 because none of us were working on it. 15:50.400 --> 15:53.400 So I decided to kind of throw the baby out with the birth order 15:53.400 --> 16:00.400 and the microS desktop project officially renamed in May 2023 16:01.400 --> 16:04.400 to A1 as it's now good. 16:05.400 --> 16:08.400 Partly an excuse just to have a nice reset 16:08.400 --> 16:11.400 and a clearer definition of, you know, this is a gnome 16:11.400 --> 16:14.400 only desktop only, you know, 16:14.400 --> 16:17.400 we're doing this and just this and this is the name for that. 16:17.400 --> 16:19.400 And if you want to do something else and take our code, 16:19.400 --> 16:21.400 you can do whatever you want with our code, 16:21.400 --> 16:23.400 but you know, call it something else, please. 16:23.400 --> 16:27.400 We started addressing the technical deaths that we'd build up 16:27.400 --> 16:29.400 with all of our previous choices 16:29.400 --> 16:31.400 and pursuing the kind of freedoms we had about, 16:31.400 --> 16:33.400 okay, this is a new thing and you start, you know, 16:33.400 --> 16:35.400 what do we do if we kind of, 16:35.400 --> 16:37.400 not starting from zero because we're still going to inherit 16:37.400 --> 16:39.400 everything we had previously, 16:39.400 --> 16:43.400 but we had not be tied to any previous decision we made. 16:43.400 --> 16:46.400 And so we kind of retroactively now call 16:46.400 --> 16:50.400 microS desktop as A1, but yeah, 16:50.400 --> 16:53.400 we then started working on our C2. 16:53.400 --> 16:57.400 And it took pretty much 366 days 16:57.400 --> 17:01.400 before we did A on our C2, 17:02.400 --> 17:05.400 where we have now a brand new installer 17:05.400 --> 17:07.400 that we wrote from scratch, 17:07.400 --> 17:11.400 using basically, it's a very fancy 17:11.400 --> 17:13.400 Zenity wrapper around systemly rebut, 17:13.400 --> 17:15.400 but, you know, it looks pretty. 17:15.400 --> 17:16.400 It takes an image, 17:16.400 --> 17:18.400 deployed to the disk, 17:18.400 --> 17:20.400 it's wonderful, it's modular 17:20.400 --> 17:23.400 because it's just a lot of bashing the installer really. 17:23.400 --> 17:25.400 So you can add your own install steps 17:25.400 --> 17:26.400 or repap the bits you don't want, 17:26.400 --> 17:29.400 which obviously I was having a lot of pain with. 17:29.400 --> 17:31.400 Complete support for ignition and combustion, 17:31.400 --> 17:33.400 because we've talked, you know, 17:33.400 --> 17:35.400 we're one of these affordable districts of nice having 17:35.400 --> 17:39.400 a tool chain where stuff takes care of itself on first boot. 17:39.400 --> 17:41.400 And it's a really nice party piece, 17:41.400 --> 17:43.400 I wrote a module in tick, 17:43.400 --> 17:45.400 which analyzes the operating system 17:45.400 --> 17:47.400 it's about to annihilate when it images. 17:47.400 --> 17:50.400 And if you happen to have a BTRFS home 17:50.400 --> 17:53.400 subvolume on there, like we do on all of our districts, 17:53.400 --> 17:55.400 then it copies that to the USB stick, 17:55.400 --> 17:57.400 because I made the USB stick rewrite 17:58.400 --> 18:00.400 and back up your Wi-Fi passwords, 18:00.400 --> 18:01.400 and your SSH keys, 18:01.400 --> 18:03.400 and everything that's remotely interesting, 18:03.400 --> 18:04.400 and then, 18:04.400 --> 18:05.400 you can see the image in them, 18:05.400 --> 18:06.400 but, like now, again, 18:06.400 --> 18:09.400 which is a nice factory reset, 18:09.400 --> 18:11.400 that can be really quite extreme, 18:11.400 --> 18:13.400 so I can totally change the layout on the disk 18:13.400 --> 18:15.400 without stopping my life, 18:15.400 --> 18:17.400 which is really quite nice. 18:17.400 --> 18:19.400 In A on itself, 18:19.400 --> 18:20.400 outside the installer, 18:20.400 --> 18:23.400 we got rid of the root password, 18:23.400 --> 18:26.400 we got the pseudo permissions all changed, 18:26.400 --> 18:28.400 like Paul Keaton, Essie Linux, all tuned up, 18:28.400 --> 18:30.400 all with tons of views 18:30.400 --> 18:32.400 and help from the Caesar security team, 18:32.400 --> 18:35.400 because the fact that we were doing this under a new name, 18:35.400 --> 18:37.400 as a new thing, with a clear focus, 18:37.400 --> 18:39.400 was suddenly all the things they were worried about, 18:39.400 --> 18:40.400 like, it's a desktop, 18:40.400 --> 18:42.400 but, okay, we get it, we're fine, do it, 18:42.400 --> 18:43.400 it's like, hey, cool! 18:43.400 --> 18:44.400 I mean, okay, 18:44.400 --> 18:46.400 also, maybe we could package it separately too, 18:46.400 --> 18:49.400 so you're not going to accidentally get those policies 18:49.400 --> 18:51.400 on an open-suza installation, 18:51.400 --> 18:53.400 it worked out really nice, actually. 18:54.400 --> 18:56.400 We got rid of the automatic rebooting, 18:56.400 --> 18:57.400 and yes, 18:57.400 --> 18:58.400 like I said, 18:58.400 --> 18:59.400 identifiable as A on, 18:59.400 --> 19:01.400 not as much for us. 19:01.400 --> 19:02.400 And then, 19:02.400 --> 19:04.400 because feature creep is a thing, 19:04.400 --> 19:06.400 we also took care of a whole bunch of stuff, 19:06.400 --> 19:08.400 which we hadn't cared about a year before, 19:08.400 --> 19:10.400 so, 19:10.400 --> 19:13.400 using system D-boot as our bootloader, 19:13.400 --> 19:15.400 tidying up the boot process, 19:15.400 --> 19:16.400 so it's completely silent, 19:16.400 --> 19:17.400 there's no flickering, 19:17.400 --> 19:19.400 it just boots up, 19:19.400 --> 19:21.400 doing Z-RAM by default, 19:21.400 --> 19:23.400 and B-T-R-F-S compression by default, 19:23.400 --> 19:25.400 turning off SSH, 19:25.400 --> 19:29.400 being really fancy with X-864 B-3 libraries, 19:29.400 --> 19:32.400 and also updating D-Tboot's automatic. 19:35.400 --> 19:38.400 And life is good for a couple of months, 19:38.400 --> 19:40.400 and one of the things we wanted at the time, 19:40.400 --> 19:42.400 it took a little bit longer, 19:42.400 --> 19:45.400 was doing for this description by default. 19:45.400 --> 19:48.400 I talked more about this earlier today, 19:48.400 --> 19:52.400 where now A on offers two separate modes. 19:52.400 --> 19:53.400 One, 19:53.400 --> 19:55.400 if your hardware is good enough, 19:55.400 --> 19:57.400 TPM backed automatically and logging, 19:57.400 --> 19:58.400 so, 19:58.400 --> 19:59.400 yeah, 19:59.400 --> 20:01.400 it just works pretty quite nice. 20:01.400 --> 20:04.400 Make sure you're booting the system that you meant to be booting, 20:04.400 --> 20:05.400 and then, actually, 20:05.400 --> 20:07.400 means you can rely on stuff like your password, 20:07.400 --> 20:09.400 in Linux to be secure, 20:09.400 --> 20:12.400 because no one's accidentally booting you into a different shell. 20:12.400 --> 20:13.400 Or, 20:13.400 --> 20:15.400 if you have a really old laptop, 20:15.400 --> 20:17.400 you get lugs for the passphrase, 20:17.400 --> 20:19.400 yeah, just like every other district. 20:19.400 --> 20:21.400 It worked really really well, 20:21.400 --> 20:24.400 but that has basically been the rest of the store for 2024, 20:24.400 --> 20:26.400 because the technical part was easy, 20:26.400 --> 20:29.400 and then we realized there's lots of really different laptops out there, 20:29.400 --> 20:31.400 with lots of really different UEFI, 20:31.400 --> 20:35.400 and people mess around with different configurations. 20:35.400 --> 20:37.400 So it's taken as a little bit of the rest of the year 20:37.400 --> 20:39.400 to kind of bed that down, 20:39.400 --> 20:42.400 change exactly which bits were measuring into the TPM, 20:42.400 --> 20:44.400 and get it working, 20:44.400 --> 20:45.400 but it's kind of, 20:45.400 --> 20:46.400 it's actually, 20:46.400 --> 20:47.400 it's really kind of there, 20:47.400 --> 20:48.400 and ready now. 20:48.400 --> 20:51.400 Oh, I thought it was getting FW update 20:51.400 --> 20:55.400 to actually handle the fact that we used the system reboot, 20:55.400 --> 20:58.400 because FW update was completely confused by the fact 20:58.400 --> 21:01.400 we were a distro that didn't identify ourselves 21:01.400 --> 21:03.400 as a distro in our own bootloader, 21:03.400 --> 21:05.400 because we used system debugging. 21:05.400 --> 21:08.400 So it got very confused about where to do firmware updates, 21:08.400 --> 21:09.400 which, 21:09.400 --> 21:10.400 yeah, 21:10.400 --> 21:12.400 was a bit of a problem. 21:12.400 --> 21:15.400 So will we ever actually release A on? 21:15.400 --> 21:16.400 Yes, 21:16.400 --> 21:19.400 but there's one thing that I've got left 21:19.400 --> 21:21.400 that I've really mastered rest is, 21:21.400 --> 21:22.400 you know, 21:22.400 --> 21:24.400 it does work technically speaking, 21:24.400 --> 21:25.400 but we can't prove that 21:25.400 --> 21:27.400 because I haven't got ran to write in the open QA test yet. 21:27.400 --> 21:28.400 So, 21:28.400 --> 21:31.400 if you want to contribute anything to A on right now, 21:31.400 --> 21:33.400 that's the number one burning issue. 21:33.400 --> 21:34.400 As soon as we have open QA tests, 21:34.400 --> 21:38.400 that we will throw into the open user pipeline for releases, 21:38.400 --> 21:40.400 then I'll probably be able to say, 21:40.400 --> 21:41.400 I'm released, 21:41.400 --> 21:42.400 because we can prove then, 21:42.400 --> 21:43.400 you know, 21:43.400 --> 21:44.400 it's always working, 21:44.400 --> 21:46.400 it's always building job done. 21:46.400 --> 21:48.400 However, 21:48.400 --> 21:50.400 that feature creep things still happening. 21:50.400 --> 21:51.400 You know, 21:51.400 --> 21:52.400 I mean, 21:52.400 --> 21:54.400 the first time this list has already got even longer. 21:54.400 --> 21:55.400 You know, 21:55.400 --> 21:56.400 so meanwhile, 21:56.400 --> 21:57.400 you know, 21:57.400 --> 21:59.400 I'm almost certainly going to start using UKI's 21:59.400 --> 22:01.400 for booting, 22:01.400 --> 22:03.400 because literally all the problems I was 22:03.400 --> 22:04.400 moaning about last week 22:04.400 --> 22:06.400 have been fixed in conversations in the court 22:06.400 --> 22:08.400 or this weekend. 22:09.400 --> 22:11.400 This self-healing improvements. 22:11.400 --> 22:13.400 I want to get rid of the TTY consoles, 22:13.400 --> 22:15.400 because the booting flick of three, 22:15.400 --> 22:17.400 but you do still like to see the TTY form 22:17.400 --> 22:19.400 for a split second before GDM kicks in, 22:19.400 --> 22:21.400 and I just want to get rid of that. 22:21.400 --> 22:22.400 And, 22:22.400 --> 22:25.400 ignases added a new feature into 22:25.400 --> 22:26.400 transactional updates, 22:26.400 --> 22:28.400 where we can deploy OCI images, 22:28.400 --> 22:30.400 and I kind of just want to use that as another way 22:30.400 --> 22:31.400 of reinstalling A on, 22:31.400 --> 22:34.400 because it just seems like fun. 22:34.400 --> 22:35.400 So, 22:35.400 --> 22:36.400 but to be honest, 22:36.400 --> 22:38.400 if we get the European QA testing first, 22:38.400 --> 22:40.400 I'll probably just call it A on release, 22:40.400 --> 22:41.400 and we can do all that stuff. 22:41.400 --> 22:46.400 I don't really think any of that's blocking the final release. 22:46.400 --> 22:48.400 So, 22:48.400 --> 22:50.400 lessons learned. 22:50.400 --> 22:51.400 I would say, 22:51.400 --> 22:52.400 you know, 22:52.400 --> 22:53.400 any project these days, 22:53.400 --> 22:54.400 in this day, 22:54.400 --> 22:56.400 and it really needs to be aware of, 22:56.400 --> 22:57.400 like, 22:57.400 --> 22:59.400 how well defined are your project goals? 22:59.400 --> 23:00.400 This was the mistake we made 23:00.400 --> 23:02.400 in the Minecraft desktop at first, right? 23:02.400 --> 23:03.400 Like, a great idea. 23:03.400 --> 23:05.400 Door wide open for anyone to contribute, 23:05.400 --> 23:06.400 anything they want, 23:06.400 --> 23:08.400 and then we literally end up spinning our wheels 23:08.400 --> 23:10.400 for two to three years, 23:10.400 --> 23:13.400 because other people dive in 23:13.400 --> 23:16.400 and kind of start mangling with that scope of the project. 23:16.400 --> 23:17.400 So, 23:17.400 --> 23:18.400 you know, 23:18.400 --> 23:19.400 know the scope of what you want to do, 23:19.400 --> 23:20.400 what you're prepared to work on, 23:20.400 --> 23:21.400 and, 23:21.400 --> 23:22.400 and, 23:22.400 --> 23:23.400 or, 23:23.400 --> 23:24.400 be prepared for, 23:24.400 --> 23:25.400 like, 23:25.400 --> 23:26.400 some way of redefining it, 23:26.400 --> 23:27.400 or aesthetically, 23:27.400 --> 23:28.400 if you really, 23:28.400 --> 23:29.400 really have to. 23:29.400 --> 23:31.400 It doesn't have to be so painful, 23:31.400 --> 23:32.400 we did it. 23:32.400 --> 23:34.400 Along with that lesson, 23:34.400 --> 23:35.400 you know, 23:35.400 --> 23:37.400 a one thing I really took away from this story, 23:37.400 --> 23:39.400 is don't always listen to your community. 23:39.400 --> 23:40.400 You know, 23:40.400 --> 23:42.400 it's great to have lots of people 23:42.400 --> 23:44.400 giving lots of really good ideas, 23:44.400 --> 23:46.400 but the ideas are great, 23:46.400 --> 23:47.400 the contributions, 23:47.400 --> 23:48.400 matter more. 23:48.400 --> 23:49.400 Yeah, 23:49.400 --> 23:50.400 you know, 23:50.400 --> 23:52.400 and if you've already got enough on your plates 23:52.400 --> 23:54.400 to get what you want done, 23:54.400 --> 23:56.400 focus on what you've already decided, 23:56.400 --> 23:58.400 you don't always need to add everything. 23:58.400 --> 23:59.400 All the time, 23:59.400 --> 24:00.400 because otherwise, 24:00.400 --> 24:01.400 you'll just spend all your time 24:01.400 --> 24:02.400 coming, 24:02.400 --> 24:03.400 and commenting all these cool new ideas, 24:03.400 --> 24:04.400 like I've been doing, 24:04.400 --> 24:05.400 it's a year five, 24:05.400 --> 24:07.400 and I'm still in a release candidate stage. 24:07.400 --> 24:08.400 You know, 24:08.400 --> 24:10.400 this future creep thing is a blessing, 24:10.400 --> 24:12.400 because my laptop's awesome, 24:12.400 --> 24:14.400 and I'm really enjoying the OS on there, 24:14.400 --> 24:17.400 but it's still not quite released yet. 24:17.400 --> 24:18.400 So, 24:18.400 --> 24:19.400 yeah, 24:19.400 --> 24:20.400 just, 24:20.400 --> 24:21.400 it's kind of, 24:21.400 --> 24:22.400 keep worth keeping in mind at some point, 24:22.400 --> 24:24.400 I guess you need to say no. 24:24.400 --> 24:26.400 But also, 24:26.400 --> 24:27.400 like, 24:27.400 --> 24:28.400 there's no absolute tennis, 24:28.400 --> 24:30.400 like we've gone from being really strict 24:30.400 --> 24:32.400 to then constantly redefining it. 24:32.400 --> 24:33.400 Yeah, 24:33.400 --> 24:34.400 this district development stuff 24:34.400 --> 24:38.400 is always a little bit nebulous and fun. 24:38.400 --> 24:42.400 And I have shot through that perfectly time for five minutes. 24:42.400 --> 24:43.400 So, 24:43.400 --> 24:44.400 any questions, 24:44.400 --> 24:45.400 open discussion? 24:45.400 --> 24:46.400 I've got a couple of prompts. 24:46.400 --> 24:47.400 There's one in the corner. 24:47.400 --> 24:48.400 Perfect. 24:48.400 --> 24:50.400 I think the guy that's responsible for that now, 24:50.400 --> 24:51.400 where there's just some people, 24:51.400 --> 24:53.400 and obviously there's some more. 24:53.400 --> 24:54.400 Okay. 24:54.400 --> 24:55.400 So, 24:57.400 --> 24:58.400 so, 24:58.400 --> 24:59.400 you're the guy who's responsible for 24:59.400 --> 25:00.400 system D-booting. 25:00.400 --> 25:04.400 So, 25:04.400 --> 25:06.400 before I put in solid, 25:06.400 --> 25:08.400 but it wasn't really complicated. 25:08.400 --> 25:09.400 So, what was the question? 25:09.400 --> 25:10.400 Could you just say it in the microphone? 25:10.400 --> 25:11.400 I don't say it. 25:11.400 --> 25:12.400 Sorry. 25:12.400 --> 25:13.400 I said, 25:13.400 --> 25:14.400 are you responsible for that system D-boot 25:14.400 --> 25:15.400 works on obscenity? 25:15.400 --> 25:16.400 There are almost just there. 25:16.400 --> 25:18.400 There are more people than me 25:18.400 --> 25:20.400 who have made that magical thing happen. 25:20.400 --> 25:23.400 I'm one of the heavier consumers of their work. 25:23.400 --> 25:24.400 Yeah. 25:24.400 --> 25:25.400 But yeah, 25:25.400 --> 25:27.400 because there's various, 25:28.400 --> 25:30.400 depending on the scope of what you want with system D-boot, 25:30.400 --> 25:31.400 in open-suser, 25:31.400 --> 25:33.400 there's various different options. 25:33.400 --> 25:36.400 You can have a very vanilla installation, 25:36.400 --> 25:39.400 or you can have one with FD-boot-U-Tool, 25:39.400 --> 25:41.400 where it does all the funky ploughing 25:41.400 --> 25:44.400 with all of the open-suser B-T-R-Fest snapshots. 25:44.400 --> 25:45.400 Yeah. 25:45.400 --> 25:46.400 All that cool stuff. 25:46.400 --> 25:47.400 Anyway, 25:47.400 --> 25:48.400 I'm not a criminal. 25:48.400 --> 25:49.400 If you want me to tell you about your talk, 25:49.400 --> 25:50.400 it was great. 25:50.400 --> 25:51.400 It was a lightning. 25:51.400 --> 25:52.400 Thank you. 25:52.400 --> 25:53.400 Thank you. 25:53.400 --> 25:54.400 Some phrase. 25:54.400 --> 25:55.400 Anyway. 25:57.400 --> 25:59.400 Anything from anybody else? 26:01.400 --> 26:03.400 Anyone have any thoughts on these topics? 26:03.400 --> 26:05.400 Anyone think I'm completely wrong 26:05.400 --> 26:07.400 when saying you should ignore your community? 26:07.400 --> 26:09.400 No. 26:09.400 --> 26:12.400 Yeah. 26:12.400 --> 26:13.400 Yeah. 26:13.400 --> 26:14.400 And that's part of it too, actually. 26:14.400 --> 26:15.400 Someone just said, 26:15.400 --> 26:17.400 depends on how many you're working on the project. 26:17.400 --> 26:18.400 Yeah. 26:18.400 --> 26:19.400 This started as a passion project. 26:19.400 --> 26:20.400 Yeah. 26:20.400 --> 26:21.400 Okay. 26:21.400 --> 26:22.400 We have 300 people in the telegram group. 26:22.400 --> 26:24.400 So we're not a tiny project anymore. 26:25.400 --> 26:26.400 But yeah, it's still, 26:26.400 --> 26:30.400 we have a still only a limited number of people working on this sort of stuff. 26:30.400 --> 26:32.400 Well, okay. 26:32.400 --> 26:34.400 And so, thank you very much.