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Welcome aboard the System76 Transmission Log. The space station orbiting the Linux computer manufacturer, System76: home to handcrafted Open Source hardware and the makers of Pop!_OS.
3, 2, 1.
0.
Welcome aboard the System
76 transmission Log.
Our broadcast is about to begin.
This is the latest on System 76
computers, manufacturing, and pop OS.
Now for your in-orbit crew.
The marketing team did an escape room.
We did do an escape room.
And we escaped.
I think they helped the sound of it.
Whatever.
We escaped.
We got out of there.
Our soul has escaped.
Our bodies are actually
still trapped there.
Yeah.
It was really fun, though.
It was a pirate-themed escape room.
Arr.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the The System 76
transmission Log podcast, where you get
System 76 updates like hardware
news, software news, sale news.
And just random nerdy stuff.
We just finished wrapping
up our back to school sale.
So all of you should be at school now.
We had a little bout
of science during that.
We ran an experiment with the desktop
accents because the Walnut wood accents
have been our most popular, but
they're also the default configuration.
I've had a question for a while now of,
were they the most popular just because
they were the default, or how many people
getting these are actually
wanting the Walnut versus another color?
For the back to school sale,
we had some seasonal etched accents.
There was one with the tux penguins,
one with some physics formulas, and one
that was a DNA helix design.
We left the helix on default.
The The results of this experiment
are that the Walnut is still on top.
People really love
the Walnut accent, Emma.
That's pretty interesting.
But I think we need a cosmic-themed one.
Yeah, for sure.
I did love the Tux one, though.
That was super cute.
It was cool to see that
the Helix and the Tux accents
were towards the top of the list.
Yeah, definitely.
Speaking of cosmic, we
released the Alpha last month.
Yeah, that was a big deal.
The community had a lot of
positive things to say about it.
Our latest blog highlights some of
the favorite quotes from the press
and community coverage.
My favorite quote was
from the Linux experiment.
He said, The foundation seems very solid,
and I wouldn't be surprised if in a year
or two, this thing was considered
the default desktop environment
that you would recommend to anyone.
We've been hearing a lot of similar things
from around the Linux community.
There's a lot of excitement
around where this thing is going
to where it's going to end up.
We've been hearing about a lot
of cosmic spins on different distros.
Fedora has one right now.
Arch has a looser one.
Opensuce, Serpent, Redox, Nix, Cashi.
I've been hearing mint is on the way.
But the question that's been ringing
in my head is, once Cosmic
is officially released, are we
going to see it on a main Linux distro
replacing what they currently have?
Yeah, that'll be interesting to see.
To celebrate in August, we flew in
a bunch of remote employees
to System 76 HQ here in Denver.
We immediately went to work on having fun,
doing some karaoke, some bowling.
I think there was ping pong there, too.
And pool.
Pool, lots of good food.
The engineers had their own summit,
so there were a lot of updates shortly
after the Alpha release as well.
A lot of focus on and discussion
around accessibility.
What's interesting, too, is Cosmic
and POP have come a really far way.
When I started in 2018, being a Mac user
at the time, I was really happy
to see that there was something
out there with the potential to be
a true third option to Mac and Windows.
With Cosmic, it feels like that's
closer than it's ever been.
I showed the pre-alpha to a friend
shortly before the Alpha release.
I was talking about the level
of customization in cosmic listing off.
You can customize the panels,
you can customize this and that.
He's like, Well,
my laptop can do that, too.
Then I showed him the theming,
and quickly, he just
got so much more interested.
He was asking
for a Colorado Sunrise theme,
and I had to make him Colorado Sunrise.
He was asking for a sunny winter,
and I had to make him sunny winter.
There was a penitentiary
one in there, too.
I don't even know what that was.
Very strange request,
but that's why we're friends.
But it's just exciting to see that
even people He's a Windows user, so even
people who don't really have Linux on
their radar are starting to show interest
in it, and that's very exciting to me.
You'll see that we released
an official, still work in progress,
design system for Cosmic as well as
an app template and an applet template.
And that will help people, even
though it's still an alpha,
it'll help people develop for Cosmic
in a way that looks like Cosmic, ranging
from the fonts used to the widgets
used in certain circumstances.
It's all right there for you
if you want to get started on that.
Along with the Alpha, we launched
the Cosmic Ambassador program
for contributors and promoters, which has
different levels to earn swag items.
So submissions have ranged from
sharing links to cool themes
to a calculator, a weather app, dozens of
pull requests on GitHub, and bug reports.
Just so many contributions have been
pouring in, and everything is welcome
and encouraged, and we're super excited
to watch this program grow.
So if you're out there sharing anything
about Cosmic, or if you're
switching Switching people
to Cosmic, join the program,
get free stuff, you might as well.
We're also helping grow the community
by having in-person meetups
at the System 76 Factory.
We're meeting all types of nerds
every month and sharing our love
of open source with our new friends.
One of our most active groups,
though, is actually online.
It's the online community
for the POPOS Facebook Group.
It has Paul Arman as the administrator,
and they engage in dozens of
helpful Linux conversations every week.
Paul is so helpful just responding to
everyone's comments and getting people
to start talking about POP.
So thanks and shout out
to Paul for his great work
on the POPOS Facebook group page.
Also, We do have one event coming up.
It's the Software Freedom
Day celebration on September 21st.
Yeah, we're going to be
hosting at the factory.
It's going to be a really fun party
with food and prizes and also fun
I have here in my notes.
That's just some extra fun for you.
Even if you're not local to Denver,
you can host your own party through
the Digital Freedom Foundation, which is
the global host of Software Freedom Day.
They encourage people
to celebrate all around the world.
We're just continually excited to see
open source grow and very thrilled that
people are excited as we are for things
like cosmic and excited to help.
There's actually celebrations in Spain,
Portugal, Mexico, and tons of other
locations, all listed on digitalfreedoms.
Org.
If you're interested in throwing an event,
definitely get it registered on there
and join the community
of Software Freedom Lovers.
Now, Emma, we have a special guest
for the podcast today, don't we?
We do.
We have a System 76 customer and fan,
Dave Shaver, who is an IT director
at a local hospital and his local church.
It's a cool name, and it's It's
a fascinating interview to listen to.
So here we go.
Thanks so much for joining us today, Dave.
We really appreciate you coming
to share your Linux experience with us.
Can you tell us a little bit
about yourself and what you do for work?
Might take a minute.
Officially, I'm the IT director here at
a small hospital in Northern New Mexico.
I've actually worked
here for almost 28 years.
I started off as a tech support guy
and then moved into systems
administration And then a few years ago,
my boss left and I decided to take over.
So I've been running that for
probably over five years now.
So I still do a lot of CIS admin stuff
just because we're a small facility
and my CIS admin just left.
So I'm filling in for
that role completely now.
But we're looking to hire,
but that's what I do all day.
And also on the side, I run a web hosting
business and I do some websites.
One of the customers
does a 20-page full-color so I do
some graphic design work with that.
And I'm also an associate pastor at
our church, where I do all the IT stuff
there, and I'm in the band,
and a little bit of filmmaking.
We do some promotional stuff
at the church, and I have actually
worked on a full-length feature film.
It was an indie film that was a few years
back, but been around for a while and had
a few opportunities to do a few things.
So I'm engaged in a lot of graphic design
work and film stuff on the side.
What programs are you
using for your graphic design?
I was with Adobe for quite a while
until they changed their pricing.
So I found replacement tools, some of them
open source and some of them not.
Speaking of open source,
what has your Linux journey looked like?
I've been around for a while.
I actually heard of Linux way back
in the '90s, but I didn't really
get a start until probably
2000, maybe a little bit after that.
I actually purchased Red Hat
for like, $69, not knowing that
I could get it for free.
So it was several years after that,
but started incorporating it
into our environment just because
it was easy to set up and easy
to manage and it was reliable.
You just turned it on and let it run and
it ran for months or even years before
you had to do restarts and so forth.
So that was a real big plus.
And trying to save money
like I do in a small hospital,
found out that the licensing,
well, that's pretty convenient.
So it started off small,
some web servers and so forth.
But back in, was it 2013, I think we set
up a mail server using Zymbra and sentOS,
and that thing lasted all these years
until just about a year ago.
But we have a number of Linux servers
in operation today, several web
servers, and of course, a lot
of appliances that are needed.
So it's actually a significant portion
of what we have in our data center.
Cool.
And which system 76 laptop do you
have and what led to your decision
to choose system 76 for a laptop?
Well, actually, a few years
ago, I bought into Apple.
I always avoided Apple.
And then when I got into the music side
of things, I figured I needed Apple, just
the latency and all that stuff.
But I just don't like...
They have a lot of control
over the OS, and I don't.
And so Linux just fits that bill.
It gives me the freedom to do what I want.
I can jump from distro to distro
Anyway, so I wanted to have a system
that was dedicated to Linux that had
some power to it, but I didn't
want to buy into the other big companies.
So I started looking around and
came across both System 76 and Malibu.
When I came back to System 76,
I did the same amount of research,
and I was just impressed with everything
I saw, the attitude and the desire
for freedom to repair and just
all the ideologies that System 76 had.
So I wanted I also get a gaming system
because I do a little bit
of that on the side.
So I opted for the Adder, and
it's a pretty beefy machine, i9 with
the 4060 card in there, and I like it.
I really do.
It's got a lot of power.
I have not put it through
its full paces yet.
I do find it hard to find the time
to do all those things that I want
to do with it, but I have plans,
so I'll be working on that.
I have finally tested Shaders
in Minecraft using system, and it's cool.
That's awesome.
I like it a lot.
That's awesome.
Back to your workflow.
I know you do a lot
of different things with tech
since you're a smaller business,
but what does your day-to-day look like?
One of our key goals here is just to keep
everybody working without disruption.
They're taking care
of patients, and I appreciate
when they're taking care of me.
I know that I want to provide
that same level of support for our staff
so that they take care of my family
as well as all the patients the same way.
I think we have a good report here.
So there's nothing
consistent about our day.
We don't have a set plan.
It's fly by the seat of our pants.
And sometimes it's digging
into the servers and figuring out how
to update them or how to replace them.
And other times it's replacing a toner
and a printer, which isn't beautiful
or exciting, but it's necessary.
So this staff can keep working.
So And how about at the church?
What IT needs does the church need?
Thankfully, not a ton
because we're a small church.
We do have video surveillance.
There's a lot of shenanigans
that go on around the building,
but I've got the experience to know
how to run cable and do the installs,
and so actually installed all of that.
That's the big piece.
We also do live streaming
of our Sunday service, so we have
a system set up for that.
I've used OBS Studio and Tricaster also.
We have Tricaster live streaming system
set up here at the hospital.
That's way too much machine for what
we really need, but it's pretty nice.
We have a nice high-powered
workstation for that.
And of course, the office computer
and we also have another computer
for the overheads.
So I have that all linked together
with various video cables, and we have
a big TV and a projector so that we can
display all that information
for everyone at the church
and also livestream it simultaneously.
Also, then go and edit down the video
a little bit to post on YouTube.
Because we broadcast our music,
we can't use Facebook or YouTube
because of the licensing on that.
So I go back in later,
edit that down, and then repost it.
And just a few months ago, I
started translating it all into Spanish.
So using some AI tools for that, Da
Vinci Resolve lets me export all the...
Well, it does the description.
So I get it in English, then I can
jump over to a website called narakeet.
Com, and they will speak out
any language that you need.
So it generates an audio file,
then I can overlay that over top
of the video and post that.
And interestingly enough, we get
a lot more views on the Spanish feeds
than we do on the English ones.
So you've mentioned a couple
of the programs you've used.
What are some of the key tools
and software you rely on daily?
So the tools that I use,
I use Obsidian for notes.
There's other note programs
out there, but I like Obsidian because
it works across all platforms, so I can
put it on my iPad, take notes there.
I can set it up on Linux
or Windows and have notes there.
It organizes things for me.
I was using Bitwarden.
I use that in other places, but KeePass
is free, and I trust its encryption.
For browsing, I use Firefox,
brave, and Opera.
I use those simultaneously because
it allows me to have multiple windows
on screen and it allows me to be logged
in as administrator and as a user at
the same time, instead of getting kicked
out of one if I'm using the same browser.
Gimp and Inkscape, I use at work here.
I don't have to Well, Affinity doesn't
work on Linux, so maybe someday.
But GIMP and Inkscape work, I can
use those well enough to do the graphics
that we need for the hospital.
I use a bit of Midjourney for some of the
graphics that I create for our websites.
We We have three websites, actually
four, an outside website that
all the patients can see when
they want to find out about our hospital.
We have a staff website that
staff members get, and then we have
an IT one that just us IT guys use.
I do a lot of graphics
and work with WordPress on that.
Wordpress is another one
of those tools that I use.
On the more nerdy side with the servers,
I've built both Apache and NGINX servers
with MySQL and MariaDB,
and of course, WordPress.
I used Drupal back in the day,
but I found WordPress, if you just
need a website, boy, you can
fire up WordPress and be good to go.
Drupal is a bit more of a deep
dive, and I haven't actually
touched it for several years now.
Yeah.
Just because of the
convenience of WordPress.
I love WordPress.
Yeah.
What do you think is the most significant
advantage of using Linux in your IT work?
Well, probably one of the big advantages
is that I feel because I'm separated
from the Windows environment, that
if something sweeps through the Windows
systems, that I won't be affected.
Or if my machine is infected
for some reason, that it
won't immediately jump across.
Most of the infection tools out there
are OS-specific and don't really have
the ability to jump across that much.
So that's one of the things
that I look at as a positive.
I also like the ability that I have
to lock lock things down quite a bit.
With all the security that
we have to deal with and the compliance
and all those rules coming down,
I like that I can really tighten down
my machine and make it pretty much
invisible to the rest of the network.
So with that, I can then
run a virtual machine of windows
if I need to do those things.
And because it's netded behind
virtual boxes network or whichever
other virtualization tool I want to use,
I know that machine is somewhat
protected as well from the network.
So if anything ever happens,
I know that I can just sit down,
fire up my machine, and I'll be ready
to handle anything that's necessary.
So security is a huge deal for you guys.
Yeah.
We've always taken security seriously,
but it's really taking a front seat.
It would be nice if we had somebody
dedicated specifically for security.
I'm not a security guy, but I've been
thrust into that world, and it's just
part of what we deal with day to day.
And with the information
that we have in a hospital, we can't
letting that information get out.
So we do take it very seriously, and we've
made big strides over the last couple
of years to improve our situation.
Cool.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
Did you have anything else
you want to add about your journey
and your experience with System 76?
I'm sure I'll have more to say
in the months to come, but so far
I'm enjoying it, and I'm looking
forward to really digging in there
and trying some new things.
Okay, that's awesome.
All right.
Thank you.
Okay, Alex, let's play a game.
Are we playing a game?
I see a tin can.
Yes.
Inside this tin can is an object
that I took from System 76.
It's smaller than this can, obviously.
I'll give you one hint after I...
I'm going to shake it.
Here, listen to this shake.
Okay.
Now, the hint is the System 76 logo
is printed on this item.
Printed on this item.
Is it the bottom panel
of a launch keyboard?
That would be larger than a can.
Let me try that again.
Yeah, I don't think.
It wasn't even a good guess, Alex.
It's a very large can.
Okay.
Do you need another shake?
Yeah, let's do...
Is it a coaster?
No.
That's your only guess.
It is tricky.
The Same thing I did that one other time.
I was thinking you would think.
It's a flash drive.
It's a System 76 pop USB.
All right.
I was hoping it would
be my wildest dreams.
Oh, well, I'd say good job,
but you didn't do a good job.
Sorry.
I know.
Thanks for joining us today, everybody.
We hope you join us next month
for the System 76 transmission log.
And now we exit the spaceship.
Wait, that was a crash.
Did we just blow up?
Oh, I just meant...
We're fine.
Okay.
That was my door sound.
That Okay, bye.
3, 2, 1, 0, remember.
This This has been the System
76 transmission log.
For more inspiration, check out the
website and follow us on social media.
On your descent back to Earth,
please keep your hands and feet
inside the transport beam at all times.
Captain sign off in transmission.