Linux After Dark – Episode 129

Sean wonders about the best way to build a new platform and how opinionated it should be, and then Aaron and Shane think about buying a UPS.               Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes     Subscribe to the RSS feed.

What to read into a study of long-term Backblaze hard drive failure data, why the difference between TB and TiB matters, and what to do about an overheating host bus adapter.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes ZFS vs Ceph: Choosing the Right Storage Architecture   News/discussion Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives ranks HGST most reliable and Toshiba the least — Analysis of 1.66 million drive-years finds Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST Changing Language for Storage Capacity   Free consulting We were asked about an overheating host bus adapter.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

KDE has a new proper LTS and Joe is very interested, the Steam Frame is (really) nearly here, the Epic Games Store is coming to Linux, Nintendo continues to play whack-a-mole with Switch emulators, and GitHub’s serious scaling issues are getting ridiculous.   News/discussion What a real LTS looks like: Kubuntu 26.04 Kubuntu Focus, Techpaladin Software, and KDE e.V. Announce the ‘bullet-proof’ KDE Software Initiative New Frame welcome videos pushed to Steam Store assets Epic Games Store Will Support Linux “Soon” Nintendo Wipes Out 400+ Switch Emulator Repos in Single-Day GitHub Sweep Fairphone 6 + PostmarketOS working main camera! The August 17 GitHub outage, and the work ahead                 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. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

It’s the ten year old computer challenge! Can we daily drive a desktop or laptop from 2016? There’s only one way to find out! Mike’s shitpost                     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.

A TV station struggles to retrieve its data from the data centre company that a defunct intermediary used, why we don’t want AI to manage our networks (even if Microsoft thinks we should), and understanding vdevs, and datasets in ZFS.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes OpenZFS User and Developer Summit 2026 CfP is open until September 11 FreeBSD Security in Production: Vulnerability Response and Operational Best Practices   News/discussion Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data The patch window is collapsing: Why security needs a new control plane   Free consulting We were asked about pools, vdevs, and datasets in ZFS.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

To celebrate 400 episodes, we look back of the last (almost) ten years of positive Linux and FOSS news.   Plugs Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 5th September from 5pm until late Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes   9.5 years of good news Thunderbird Is Thriving: Our 2022 Financial Report (May 2023) Asking for donations in Plasma (Aug 2024) I think the donation notification works (Dec 2024) Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions (Jun 2025) An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal (Jun 2025) GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend” (Nov 2025) KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future (Nov 2025) Give Fedora Silverblue a test drive (Sept 2018) KDE Linux Alpha has been released (Sept 2025) Introducing a new version of Steam Play (Aug 2018) Steam Deck Launching February 25th 2022 Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve (Nov 2025) Canonical Builds Steam Snap For Ubuntu ARM64 Leveraging FEX (Jan 2026) Announcing WSL 2 (May 2019) How one volunteer stopped a backdoor from exposing Linux systems worldwide (Apr 2024) Linux has made it to Mars (Feb 2021) Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will fly no more (Jan 2024)                   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

Macros: are they a superpower, a necessary evil, or a mistake?                   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

Shane wants to make his homelab less janky so needs to decide on how to split up his compute and storage, plus some of the KVM over IP devices we own and how we use them.             Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes     Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Microsoft claims that Windows 11 will work well with 8GB of RAM, some of the innovations coming to high end SSDs, the arguments for TP-Link Omada over Ubiquiti UniFi.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes FreeBSD Support: Greatest Hits   Discussion Microsoft says 8 GB of RAM should be enough for anyone running Windows 11 Windows quality: an update on the commitment we made in March   Free consulting We were asked about the arguments for TP-Link Omada over Ubiquiti UniFi.                   See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Guest hosts Chris from Linux After Dark and Sean from Hybrid Cloud Show tell Joe and Félim about bootc desktop Linux distros, how they build, deploy, and update them, and why this modern approach is so powerful. Plus another system information tool, cutting edge upscaling on the Steam Deck, and why Chris has switched to the KDE Plasma desktop.   Bootc desktops bootc Using Bootc to Manage Ubuntu Hosts ubuntu-summit-26-demo ubuntu-bootc  Mono repository for all bootcrew images How Steam Play/Proton makes Gaming on Linux Awesome   Discoveries HWall ProtonPlus KDE Plasma desktop             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. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here