Who are we?
Dr. Chris Zimmermann is a FOSS fanatic, communist (sometimes) and expert on esoteric software aspects how to configure Mail Transfer Agents while not carving in to insanity, troubleshoot computer networks without the use of recreational drugs and the advanced enjoyment of craft beverages. He mostly lives in Frankfurt, Germany. In contrast to Mr. Visser the size of his brain has a reverse correlation to the size of his head.
Martin Visser is a slightly less egocentric (actually far from egocentric) computer scientist and engineer, non-communist from Birmingham, UK. In contrast to Dr. Zimmermann, he has human interaction and social protocols down to a fine art.
Why another FOSS podcast?
For those who use any means of transport on a regular basis it is a great way to stimulate the brain.
Others have come before us, tried and failed to achieve this level.
What's in it for me?
Great entertainment
Invaluable tech tips helping with aspects of everday life including the proper recital of Vogon poetry in that worst-case scenario that Brexit finally shadows the Vogons’ landing and how to take care of the proper biological foundation for recreational drugs
A chance to feedback your comments. Glowing ones will be published, others ignored.
The opportunity to request expert knowledge and discussion on a topic of your choice!
What's in it for the Inlaws?
The impending fame and successful broadcasting careers (Martin’s vision) play a small part in this decision.
Which is of course totally overshadowed by the reason of world domination. Donations are encouraged. Ideally in liquid wheat brew format (of course rye, barley, spelt and other assorted grains go as well).
How to get up and running?
(this is how we do it, your mileage may vary)
- Pick an open source operating system of choice that features a decent package management system (unless you’re really technical and know what you’re doing) and is Posix-compliant. In this instance Ubuntu 19.10 was the preferred candidate
- Don't worry about Mumble. Many have tried, most have failed to use this piece of
software for synchronous podcast recording
- Get some really cool music licensed under CC-BY(-SA) from places like Jamendo
- Install a Synapse server on a publicly accessible server and use Riot-Web as a front-end for this instance
- Get Audacity and tty-clock (if you really want to accurate synchronise your system clock with an NTP server)
- Using Audacity and tty-clock, record your friendly podcast locally using Riot-Web's audio call feature to synchronise the hosts and guests
- For the post-production, simply mix the individual streams together and edit to your
heart's content.
- Stick to mono when producing the final ogg or mp3 file, adding music and other content as appropriate
- Upload the audio file to HPR
- Create associated website using some cool HTML/CSS framework
- Watch it go viral (the important bit!)
The kit?
- One home server running Ubuntu 19.10 with mumble-server and Synapse (a reference implementation) of the federated protocol known as Matrix for comms
- One cheap bit of kit running somewhere in Germany at a snails pace (Martin’s opinion before the D-Wave upgrade - little did he know :-)) => much patience is required attempting to use this
- Two laptops for remote access, running a Murmur client (typically Mumble itself), Audacity and various text editors in addition to riot-web or another Matrix / Synapse client
- One MPow USB headset and one interim Logitech 2 Pro (thank you MPow for the countless hours of debugging x-talk issues - we learned a lot! :-)
The Episodes
All episodes are hosted on the Internet Archive.
The following only represents the last ten episodes, you find the
full backcatalog of all episodes released so far here.
- S02E24: An Interview with Kris Moore
This episode is host to a BSD veteran by the name of Kris Moore. So for the hipsters among you, this trip down memory lane (and more!) explains to where distros such as FreeBSD and friends all come from (to some extend :-). Plus more insights on TrueNAS, why Linux preempted BSD (not only here:-) and long forgotten projects such as GlusterFS, PC-BSD and MacOS. Did I hear you ask: "MacOS?!?!?". Fear not, all will be revealed - just listen to the episode (lame attempt at episode marketing :-).
Links:
- S02E23: The Halloween episode
This year's Halloween episode has it all: Our two ageing heroes being together once again in a secret location and rambling about free, libre open source software, philosophy and other nonsense, The Darkside Tech Support Halloween sketch (the longest one ever in the history of Linux Inlaws), Moloch, God and her call center, Buddha, Vlad the Impaler and a cast of thousands of supporting characters (/usr/bin/bc just ran out of battery power, so this number may be wrong). Even if you're not religious - you don't want to miss this episode!
Links:
- S02E22: OpenPGP
In this episode Martin and Chris take a closer look at the Gnu Privacy Guard and the surrounding software ecosystem known as OpenPGP, a public key infrastructure (PKI) powering software ranging from mail clients to popular office suites such as LibreOffice. So if you want to know more about this software which you're using on a daily basis probably without even knowing it, you don't want to miss this episode! Plus a Neanderthal talking about crypto software.
Links:
- S02E21: FLOSS and home automation
The focus of this episode is the use of free, libre and open source software in the lovely field of home automation, a sometimes much underrated sector. Especially if you're old and cannot be bothered with heating up the pad from afar, controlling the blinds from the other side of the planet and spying on your cat trying to empty the fridge when you're not around. If that's something that sounds interesting regardless of your age, then you don't want to miss this episode. Especially if you're interested in historical aspects of home automation a few centuries ago, whether used by peasants or not.
Links:
- S02E20: eBPF How to pimp your kernel
This episode is witness to a deep-dive into eBPF, the extended Berkeley Packet Filter (technical and non-technical) powered by no other than Bill Mulligan from the eBPF Foundation itself. If you ever wondered how to move user-defined code into the Linux kernel in a guarded fashion and how to get away this, you don't want to miss this episode.
Links:
- S02E19: FLOSS in the automotive industry
This episode scrutinises the use of FLOSS in one of the legacy industries (soon to be anyway) of the planet - yes, you've guessed right: cars! Or generally speaking: vehicles of all walks of life (starting with horse-drawn carriages of yonderyear, hence the episode length of just short of four hours :-). Plus bonus content on the details of Tesla's end user license agreement - if you manage to stay awake that long...
Links:
- S02E18: FLOSS at C24 a German neobank
This episode is host to Philip Kemmeter, CTO of the C24 Bank, a rapidly growing German direct banking company. Being an avid user of FLOSS code bases, Phil shares interesting insights into the use of FLOSS from a general perspective and the particular requirements deployments of such code has in this particular industry. Even if you're not working in banking this is an episode not to be missed if you're using FLOSS in commercial environments. Plus 20,000 reasons why should bank with C24 (maybe even more reasons :-) in addition to some smooth and inspiring guerrilla marketing for banks on podcasts. And even more bonus content: Bits on mobile security. If you can't get to sleep at all...
Links:
- S02E17: Large Language Models
In this episode Bard and Copilot discuss a FLOSS podcast named Linux Inlaws. Hang on, no, wait. It's actually the opposite: Our two heroes discuss what two major large language models (LLMs) know and think about the format. Plus feedback from other AIs on the show. So if you ever wondered if you're alone with your opinion on Linux Inlaws, you don't want to miss this episode. Plus Martin's opinion on the king and more future bank holidays in the UK. Never mind industrial actions in the UK, France and Germany.
Links:
- S02E16: OpenQA
In this episode, Martin and Chris - always having skipped quality assurance wherever possible - host some eclectic members of the OpenQA project team for an interesting chat about Linux distributions, politics, the world in general and last but not least also quality assurance of large, complex software systems. Like Linux distributions. So if any of the above sounds interesting, you don't want to miss this episode. Plus bonus content on
Links:
- S02E15: FLOSS in healthcare
In this episode our two FLOSS enthusiasts focus on free and open source software in the healthcare sector, a much debated subject as this can be close to life or death for some people. Even if you're not affected now, chances are you will be - whether that's a pace maker running on closed source software or some, in contrast, other medical device powered by a pure FLOSS stack. So don't miss out on this episode.
Links:
All content licensed under
The DarkSide Tech Support (DSTS)
The DSTS is loosely inspired by the Bastard Operator From Hell,
where a somewhat misguided support specialist tends to break all hell loose on innocent callers who expect help
and guidance on various computer problems. In contrast to this purely fictional prototype, the DSTS deals with
real-world problems such as rewriting history aided by computers, how American presidents tackle virus issues and
how an ancient Egyptian pharaoh tries to remedy the seven plagues inflicted on his empire by talking to God herself.
More episodes in the making - stay tuned!
Similar to other parts of the show, DSTS welcomes listeners' suggestion about topics they would like
to see covered. So if you have a plague you cannot get rid of or need divine intervention otherwise, don't
hesitate to send us a mail.
Contact
Joking aside, we do appreciate feedback. So please email us at feedback@linuxinlaws.eu
Or you can follow us on Mastodon (fosstodon.org)
Or talk to us at various open source events!