Jeremy Garcia, Stuart Langridge, Bryan Lunduke, and Jono Bacon present a new Bad Voltage, in which we discuss:
Tech conferences -- which ones are good, which ones are not, and why?
Desktop machines versus laptops, and a review of Stuart's new gorgeous desktop computer from PC Specialist
Whistleblowing. In the light of the Snowden and Manning revelations, is whistleblowing a good idea, what's available to protect whistleblowers from problems, and do we need to protect against those motivated by malice?
Miguel de Icaza, head of Xamarin and past founder of the Gnome and Mono projects, talks about why he was singled out as a "traitor", what he's doing now, and how to best work in the open source world
The winners in the Bad Voltage Selfie Competition! See the forum for more details and all the entrants
A Bad Voltage community update covering growth on our community forum, the formation of our gaming community, the IRC channel, the Bad Voltage app, Bad Voltage at SCALE12x, and interesting post-show discussions.
You can take my desktop with two monitors and mechanical keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.
On the other hand, I would love a 13" Macbook Air or Pro Retina. When Iām using a laptop, I want it to light, boot quickly, be able to sleep and resume, and most important, have a good battery life (> 5 hours).
My desktop is built in an Antec 902 case, with thick steel panels. The thing weighs 25 lbs empty. Despite this, I have carried it and a suitcase on the train. It was horrible.
Great show again guys! Itās really melding well I think. I had no idea Miguel was the guy behind Midnight Commander. Tried using MC once, though it seems like more of a gray beard type of toolā¦ heheh
I think Iāve found the perfect solution. My current Laptop is an old Lenovo, upgraded with an SSD and a bit of RAM and Linux. And the rest of my tech budget goes on my desktop. Simples.
Oh yeah and I totally agree with @bryanlunduke. The recliner, bed and throne room factor is the exact reason to have a laptop! Nothing like releasing at the toilet while writing up and email to your boss.
Top 10 rules of public speaking (or pod-casting):
10. Forget 1 through 9 and just speak with British accent!
@sil could say anything and it would be hilarious!
I have to kind of agree with the laptop vs desktop argument. Iāve tossed bits and pieces into my desktop over time because I could and I wanted to and it made it more awesome (or at least still relevant).
But I use my laptop much more because I can take where ever I want (usually the couch, with my feet up). I also tend to use my laptop much more on a whim, whereas when I go down of the āofficeā where the desktop is I know Iām going to be there the entire evening.
And now if I was to buy a new computer it would be a laptop because 1) the only way to āupgradeā a laptop is to buy an entirely new one; and 2) I use my laptop more so I feel Iāll get more āvalueā for my money.
The last time I buoght a computer about 4 and half years ago I was taking to college and taking notes on it in class in the library using there a lot both on campus and at home. Also I like usb mice more than touchpads. Middle click does cool things like make xclip work.
I agree with @sil about desktop importance. I like the whole thin client idea and Iām kinda bummed out that netbooks went out of fashion and that no real emphasis on remote desktop software seems to be happening. I have a gargantuan desktop that I use during the day but like @bryanlunduke I too like to āown whilst on the throneā. I think that the key is to have a powerful mothership of a computer and a whole bunch of cheap devices, tablets, netbooks that just act as thin clientsā¦ but we donāt seem to be going in that direction, yet.
Iām still patiently waiting for the day I can take my tablet off my desk and my whole desktop environment on my desktop machine just knows to display itself on my tablet or laptop with low latency and pixel perfection. Iām hoping wayland/mir might get us there since the whole X11 server/client model got borked.
Just caught the last episode and it was a great way to hit episode 10 for the podcast (like episode 6 for Bryan). Though I have to admit it was a little kitten heavy and you guys werenāt suppose the leak my GMO Kitten Army story until episode 12 and it is in New Mexico not Nevada. Seriously though, great show.
On laptop vs desktop, it depends on what your greatest need is. If performance isnāt one of them (youāre not running Visual Studio, AutoCAD, mining BitCoin or a gamer) then for many people (including me), the laptop/second screen combo is fantastically versatile. I currently have a 24" second screen as well as the laptop screen so I can have three windows (of whatever Iām working on) simultaneously open. As far as screen space goes the more the merrier, but performance is not my top priority. If it was, maybe I would get a desktop. Desktops will always be about a year ahead of laptops of similar price range but in 5 years youāve still got a desktop, whereas if you bought the laptop, youāve got a portable device thatās 6 years off cutting edgeā¦ but itās still portable which equates to usability for me.
Thereās also the issue that even if I mostly do my work at a single location but occasionally want to do that work somewhere else, I can take it all with me. I just have to disconnect and go. No juggling external hard drives or thumb drives or cloud storage, et al. Nice and simple.
To be fair sometimes I take my laptop out on the couch with me and put it on a coffee table and a few times I take it out to the garage. My desktop is still much older and only has 512 mb or ram and a pentium 4. Performance might not be everyones top priority espicially if they prefer a lightweight interface like lxde or xfce anyway for what they think looks the best of any environment. I do wish for vmx cpu flag on my laptop sometimes if I am doing iso testing.
