78: The Framework Effect: Michael Tunnell on Linux, Laptops & Open Hardware | SUDO Show 78

Join us on this episode of SUDO Show as we explore the intersection of Linux, laptops, and open hardware with special guest Michael Tunnell. We dive into Framework’s groundbreaking approach to modular laptops, the philosophy behind open hardware, and Michael’s journey as a Linux advocate and content creator. Whether you're a developer, tinkerer, or just curious about the future of tech, this episode is packed with insights on innovation, sustainability, and the power of community-driven tech. Show Links: Framework Official Website https://frame.work TuxDigital Official Website https://tuxdigital.com Michael Tunnell’s YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/michaeltunnell Framework Linux Support Page https://frame.work/linux Special Guest: Michael Tunnell.

SUDO Show 77, “The Promotion Paradox,” is all about what happens when the best nerd in the room gets handed a calendar full of 1:1s, budgets, and “peopleware” instead of terminals and tickets. Bill, Neal, and Noel swap stories about micromanagers, open office nightmares, open source maintainers, and why learning to lead humans is way harder—and ultimately more rewarding—than just being the fastest person at fixing servers. Show Links: The Manager’s Path – Camille Fournier https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/ An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management – Will Larson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45303387-an-elegant-puzzle Linus Torvalds & Dirk Hohndel – Open Source Summit North America 2026 keynote https://youtu.be/fi29pfLcW4I Connect with the Hosts: Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 76, “ABCs of CVEs,” breaks down how modern Linux vulnerabilities go from scary headlines to real-world fixes. Bill, Neal, and Brandon start with conferences and Neal’s new Framework 13 Pro running Fedora, then dive into AI‑assisted security research and what tools like Claude and others are actually doing in the CVE pipeline. Neal walks through recent high‑profile issues like Pack2TheRoot in PackageKit, the copy.fail kernel optimization bug, and the Dirty Frag vulnerability, explaining how disclosure, embargoes, and coordination really work from a distro maintainer’s perspective. Brandon then focuses on CVE patching best practices, testing and release strategies, tools like Foreman and Uyuni for managing updates, and how to interpret CVSS scores and risk without panicking, before the crew wraps with advice for new grads who want to get into security without setting their hair—or their clusters—on fire. Show Links: Foreman – https://theforeman.org/ Uyuni – https://www.uyuni-project.org/ Pack2TheRoot – Linux local privilege escalation write‑up https://github.security.telekom.com/2026/04/pack2theroot-linux-local-privilege-escalation.html copy.fail – kernel copy‑on‑write vulnerability https://copy.fail/ Dirty Frag – universal Linux LPE PoC https://github.com/V4bel/dirtyfrag#dirty-frag-universal-linux-lpe Connect with the Hosts: Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 75, “I Don’t Know How to Make Coffee,” is a full‑on April Fools special where “business meets Linux” takes a back seat to pranks, retro war stories, and questionable life choices. Bill, Neal, and Noel start with open source airplanes, HDMI‑to‑floppy adapters, and whether airplane wings actually flap, then quickly descend into cargo‑class containers, VM‑matrix jokes, and vintage Linux desktop pain with FVWM95 and XFree86. From decaf‑only coffee stunts, BashRC logout traps, PC speaker torture, and ping‑flooded LAN parties to PACMAN.BAT in the school lab, Gentoo use‑flag accidents, OpenStack root‑password “oops” moments, and a threat to invent Fedora.js, they share their most devious tech and non‑tech pranks. Along the way, they talk MSP coffee culture, two‑pots‑a‑day network engineering, Kubernetes as “all YAML,” and close by reminding you not to try any of this at work—no matter how good that April Fools itch feels. Show Links: FVWM95 – https://fvwm95.sourceforge.net/ ReactOS – https://reactos.org/ Kata Containers – https://katacontainers.io podman – https://podman.io Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro – Off the Rails April Fools 00:00:55 Open Source Airplanes and HDMI-to-Floppy 00:01:50 Do Airplane Wings Flap? 00:04:28 Cargo Class and the VM Matrix 00:05:22 Best Tech and Non-Tech Pranks 00:08:49 FVWM95, XFree86, and Fake Windows Desktops 00:14:22 ReactOS and Retro Linux Adventures 00:15:01 Going Vintage in the Future 00:18:09 Bill’s Decaf Coffee and BashRC Pranks 00:19:56 PC Speaker Torture and Random Beeps 00:20:58 Old-School LAN Parties 00:23:05 Ping-Flood LAN Parties and ZipSlack 00:24:21 PSA System Rollback – April Fools 00:25:58 Noel’s PACMAN.BAT and Lab Ban 00:32:02 Linux ISOs and School Network Quotas 00:35:07 Office Built from Old Optiplex Cases 00:39:28 First Home PCs and Gateway Cow Boxes 00:42:06 Serial Mice Still in Production 00:42:56 Gentoo Use Flags and history 00:46:22 OpenStack Cluster and Lost Root Password 00:48:41 Ranking Pranks and Coffee + Desktop Combo 00:50:45 Noel Hates Coffee 00:52:26 MSP Coffee Culture and “I Don’t Know How to Make Coffee” 00:55:51 Weaponized Iced Coffee 00:58:52 /30 Subnets per Phone and Two Pots of Coffee 01:01:10 No Rails 01:02:06 May Your BBQ Sauce Be Watery 01:03:36 Kubernetes Is All YAML 01:04:04 Fedora.js 01:04:57 Disclaimer – Do Not Try This at Work 01:06:01 Ball Pits, Ball.js, and Bouncy Balls 01:07:29 Outro – Where Business Meets Terrible Jokes Connect with the Hosts: Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

Moving to the cloud was easy; getting out is the hard part. In SUDO Show 74, Bill, Neal, and Noel dig into “The Great Cloud Breakup” and why more teams are rethinking cloud‑first dogma as exit fees rise and data residency laws go live across the US, EU, UK, and beyond. They talk through how modern Linux, NVMe‑over‑Fabrics, and on‑prem hardware make repatriation realistic again, spotlight rclone and Nick Craig‑Wood for making data movement sane, and share hard‑won stories about ugly data transfers and hybrid architectures. The episode wraps with a tongue‑in‑cheek “repatriate AWS onto three Raspberry Pis” action item and a NetHogs quick fix you can run today to catch chatty services before egress fees blow up your budget. Show Links: Red Hat - https://www.redhat.com​ rclone - https://rclone.org​ rclone (commercial) - https://rclone.com​ restic backup - https://restic.net​ Oxide Computer Company - https://oxide.computer/​ nethogs (NetHogs) - https://github.com/raboof/nethogs​ Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro – The Great Cloud Breakup 00:02:11 Standup – Data Residency Laws and Exit Fees 00:06:36 Are We Ready to Repatriate? Linux and NVMe-over-Fabrics 00:15:37 Where Are the Future Jobs? 00:23:29 Supporter Spotlight – rclone and Nick Craig-Wood 00:30:17 Bill’s Nightmare Data Transfer Story 00:36:11 Main Topic – The Great Cloud Breakup 01:12:31 Action Item – Repatriate AWS onto MicroShift (on Three Pis) 01:14:12 Quick Fix – NetHogs to Catch Chatty Services 01:17:13 Looking Forward to the Next Episode 01:18:32 Outro – Where Business Meets Linux Connect with the Hosts: Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon Neal - @[email protected] on Mastodon Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 73 revisits the classic “Career Pipeline” topic with a fresh panel and an updated roadmap for building a Linux and open source career today. Bill, Neal, and Noel start with the “Wayland-only” future of the Linux desktop, spotlight Red Hat’s work on fwupd and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, then dive into education, certifications, homelabs, open source contributions, and soft skills that turn curiosity into real-world tech jobs. They wrap up with a practical systemd-analyze “quick win” you can run right now to understand and improve your system’s boot performance. Show Links: Red Hat – Company site: https://www.redhat.com fwupd project: https://fwupd.org LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service): https://fwupd.org/lvfs CompTIA A+ Certification: https://www.comptia.org/en-us/certifications/a/ AWS Certification: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/ RHCSA Training and Certification: https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certification/rhcsa SUSE SCA (SLES 15): https://www.suse.com/training/exam/sca-sles-15/ Linux Professional Institute (LPIC): https://www.lpi.org systemd-analyze documentation: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-analyze.html Commands discussed: systemd-analyze – “Odometer” (total boot time) systemd-analyze blame – “Leaderboard” (slowest services) systemd-analyze critical-chain – “Timeline” (dependency chain) systemd-analyze critical-chain --system systemd-analyze plot > boot.svg – “Visualizer” (boot chart)

Bill, Brandon and Neal have a discussion around AI. 00:00 Intro 01:08 AI Models and Jobs 07:52 Biased AI Training 10:47 Hardware for AI 12:42 Does the GPU matter? 15:03 ARM or RISC-V? 17:25 AI Terminology 20:28 AI and Open-Source 26:53 Citing Sources and Ethics 34:58 Open Washing 41:04 Outro

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nxo45zMY0Q Brandon has a conversation about OpenStack with Kevin Carter, Product Director of OpenStack Solutions at Rackspace. Check out Rackspace’s press release on RackSpace OpenStack Enterprise: Launch of Rackspace OpenStack Enterprise Rackspace.com 00:00 Intro 02:28 OpenStack: The Elevator Pitch 04:49 Kevin's OpenStack History 08:51 Cloud Repatriation or VMWare Price Hikes? 18:51 Large Company Migration to OpenStack 25:07 Rackspace OpenStack Products 28:50 Open Source First 31:16 Resurgence of other projects 34:28 WrappupSpecial Guest: Kevin Carter.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWeQ-U8k69Q Bill, Brandon and Neal discuss the recent IPO of Raspberry PI company. 00:00 Intro 02:11 Raspberry Pi: From Hobbyist Device to Everywhere 12:56 Opensource Ideology and Raspberry Pi 18:04 From Foundation to Company 31:19 Path to Continued Sucess 38:50 Future of Pi Hardware 44:00 Personal Pis 49:14 Outro