Late Night Linux – Episode 377

This late-night Linux family podcast is made possible by our patrons.

Go to latenightlinux.com slash support for details of how you can join them.

Support us on Patreon for access to ad-free episodes and early releases.

That's latenightlinux.com slash support.

Hello and welcome to episode 377 of late-nightlinux.

We'll call you on the 9th of March 2026.

I'm Joe and with me are failing.

It's Patti to D's, not to T's.

Graham.

Good evening.

And well.

Hello.

I don't know what you're on about failing them.

It's St Patti's day.

It is not.

Librofist Online, a fresh start.

So Librofist Online as the name suggests was a web-based version of Librofist that they

were kind of working on a few years ago.

At some point they shelved it and now they've decided to unshelve it.

Take it out of the attic as they call it and start working on it again.

But of course, Calabra Online is an online version of Librofist and Calabra

company funds a huge part of Librofist development and they are not massively happy about this.

It seems there is a bit of drama and politics in the Librofist and Document Foundation

and Calabra world.

I find it a little bit tricky to care because it's a fucking office suite.

It's boring as fuck.

But I suppose we should acknowledge this.

I also find it difficult to care and I know that I shouldn't do it and office suites

are still important to a lot of people but not me.

However, I don't know what the reason for Librofist putting theirs on hold in the first place

was but it is true that Calabra invested a lot of time and effort into it and now they

are being asked to get on board with the idea of a direct competitor.

It is difficult.

It's kind of sucky all round.

I don't think it is a direct competitor as such because this is more about self hosting

your own version of it.

The Librofist online thing whereas Calabra, my understanding is the main point of that

is they will host it for you, charge you for the privilege but it's for less technical

people let's say.

So there is a version that you can download of the Calabra online called the Development

Edition so you can host it yourself if you want to.

Presumably, there are less stable code let's say in the version that you can download

and you won't get support etc.

But it exists.

So I think there is competition here.

There is certainly some competition here and I suppose it's not really direct competition

with Librofist and the document foundation that they worried about because they have clearly

said that they have no interest in offering it as a hosted service for people but if they

put it out there and develop it to a point where it is as good as Calabra, then other

companies may spring up offering that as a service.

So maybe it's the longer term that Calabra are worried about.

I don't know.

I think long term office suites are all going to end up in the browser.

It just doesn't seem sensible to me that you would have a full fat client based desktop

edition when you can just stick it in the browser and access your documents from any internet

connected device.

So I think that really my personal opinion is that offline office suites days are numbered

and I'm sure failing is now spitting at me but I just genuinely believe that this is

the future.

So while it is unfortunate that Calabra are potentially facing competition, I think it

is the right thing to do for Librofist.

I agree that it is definitely the right thing to do.

I agree that being able to have your documents on the web or at least in the web browser

is the future but not on someone else's computer on my own infrastructure whether that is

on an EPS that I've rented or whether it's on my own home infrastructure that I'm getting

back to via a VPN or something.

I do not want to do my taxes in Google Docs for example.

I use Google Docs for the shows but then all the shows end up public anyway like oh Google

finds out that I was considering a couple of other topics that we didn't get to like

I don't really care about that but my taxes get done on Librofist locally and I would

never do them because that's private shit man, fuck Google, they're not going to get

my private shit.

Yeah.

Back here in Turtsdown, yes I think web tech for local stuff is awful.

I think desktop applications are going to have a bit of a resurgence because I think

we're all getting a bit fed up with the old material design, crappy electron, eats half

the RAM and I mean let's face it, RAM is not fucking cheap these days so if you can

run something quickly on the desktop I think it finds an awful lot better than trying

to run web tech locally on a machine too.

So I think you're right, I think Calabra need to kind of suck it up a wee bit here because

I think you can't claim to be a fast development house and project running place and then

say well we can only be those things if we are the exclusive developer of it I mean that

is ridiculous.

They should be able to complement each other and go into different places with it and

you know I think this place for both to exist.

So I think Calabra get their nose out of joint or whatever is you know they need to look

at how things work and just be a bit realistic.

I think there's more to this and I can see the two different kind of groups involved here,

the kind of Calabra go get it attitude, let's make money and drive development in that

way and what can sometimes feel a little bit like I don't know the document foundation

has had a long time to make Libra Office a success and I can't say I'm happy with the

slow progress that I feel it's made over that time I feel like they could have done a lot.

They do do a lot and I admit they're doing it under very limited circumstances with limited

resources but that's a bit of an excuse I think with Libra Office they had and have a huge

opportunity to really capitalize on it in the way that we've talked about KDE and Thunderbird

and I don't see them doing that. Calabra is kind of the other side of that coin and I can

see that this is causing some conflict and so I do question the document foundations motives

in this are they pure are they for the project itself or is just this just a reaction or

remove and I'd love to know more about it if only we knew somebody at the document foundation

we could speak to but we don't so there we go but what you mean there's not my progress

they've they've added mark down support in 2026 yeah yeah it's you know what I actually

that's really good I mean and that that to me was a standout feature because let's face

that I can't use all the formatting stuff because I'm fucking useless with document things

and I had to write a bit of documentation to help people do stuff on software I wrote

and I a he couldn't remember how I wrote it and b couldn't use a fucking writer to save

my life so yeah I was talking about Mike Saunders who works the document foundation and I

think at Fosdem Mike told me that they've had hundreds of millions of downloads of Libra

office Jesus so if that's the case the project should be like on fire they should be able

to easily support their I feel this is just my personal opinion I realize the reality

of their situation is a lot different but surely they should have enough backing and support

from their community to be far more ambitious and to move much more rapidly and for the

application suite itself to feel much more modern and reactive it's an open question I don't

know why it hasn't happened you're saying they should be more forward in asking for contributions

from their users essentially I really think so yeah I really think so yeah I'm inclined to agree as well

yeah I think it'd be good to get Mike on hmm I think we should get Mike on and ask him to explain

himself yeah explain yourself Saunders why have you not done this thing only hundreds of millions Mike

what are you doing wrong get out of your ivory and gold tower that you've built yourself from

people's funds maybe we could get Ben and Andrew on as well to reunite the old band do you know

what I have that Brad Sucks album on my phone and sometimes I listen to stuff on random and then

that comes on I get really excited oh my god there's a new dance better oh but you mean

I wonder what was the one before Linux voice it was Linux lifestyle Linux lifestyle the best name ever

Lenovo's t-series thinkpad score ten out of ten for repairability rights I fix it in what feels

like quite a puff piece to me but the bottom line is the company who shall not be named framework

fuck those guys seem to have influenced the industry or at least Lenovo and now this T14 Gen 7 scores

ten out of ten for repairability the rounds replaceable the SSDs and M.2 the batteries easy to get

out screens relatively easy to replace the thunderbolt ports you know USB-C they are modular and they

just kind of clip out this is good stuff this is what we want to see yeah be great if every of them

do it it's a nice looking piece of kit at pricey but yeah nice well the thing with thinkpads is

never buy them new unless your company's paying wait two years three years and then stop them up

dirt cheap well relatively dirt cheap on eBay well it won't be dirt cheap now that anybody can fix

them wherever they want them the price commodity but I can see these becoming like really popular

with Linux people there's quite a few things to like in that article the first one is that it sounds

like the iFixit team at least spoke to Lenovo during the development of the product which I think

is a really good step forward for repairability that manufacturers are showing interest in trying

to make things repairable as you say Joe I think that is a significant step forward not only is

this a return to replaceable RAM and replaceable hard disks which is really great news there's

even things down to the port level which instead of being a port soldered onto a board it's a

replaceable component which is slot into a slot in the board which makes the whole port easy to

change if it breaks yes you have to buy the I imagine Lenovo parts but that's a lot cheaper than

having somebody desolder and resolder something onto the board yeah but if you look at that part

it looks pretty easily cloneable yeah I'm sure there'll be Chinese coins of it because it's just

really breaking out the pins into what looks like a kind of lightning connector the old

iPhone connector so I kind of imagine that being more than you know a few quid to buy one of them

yeah and even if Lenovo charge your tenor it's probably fine but it does yes you're right it does

look like you could perhaps 3d print some of the plastic components yourself and drop them in

and the USB-C port is one of the things that breaks quite frequently especially if it's the one

where you're charging it yeah and I think the other major one at least in my experience is the

keyboard just stops working for whatever reason and the fan gets gummed up and those are all replaceable

as well so it looks great oh in the battery of course okay this episode is sponsored by auto marks

if you're evaluating endpoint management solutions the real risk isn't which tool you choose

it's choosing one without a proven blueprint for success because while most endpoint tools promise

automation next to none promise outcomes that's why auto marks introduced turnkey results turn

key removes the uncertainty that holds endpoint automation back it delivers a personalized results

blueprint so auto marks is configured and operated to achieve real outcomes from day one no trial

and error just clarity each blueprint is validated across millions of endpoints managed by auto marks

and tailored to your specific environment your risk tolerance and your operational goals instead of

guessing how aggressive to be with automation or how to configure policies safely start with the

plan you can trust and you can choose to implement the plan yourself or have auto marks do it for you

either way you get faster time to value lower risk and predictable endpoint outcomes

auto marks turnkey results know the plan trust the result learn more at www.automox.com

your pixel phone can now become a full Android PC via usbc so this is pixel 8 and upwards including

your pixel 9 pro fold gram of my pixel 10 pro fold and I have been trying this and it is a thing

it's a thing you can do but whether you'd want to do it or not I don't know so

gram says that you haven't got around to trying it then I haven't I didn't actually see this news

until you mentioned it I didn't know it was finalized I must admit I'm kind of excited about it

I mean a lot of what I do is typing I don't need much but I do like a bigger screen than the phone

screen I have a few Bluetooth keyboards that I sometimes travel with anyway and I can see

myself wanting to type something on a screen in some kind of word processor environment that

isn't my phone without having a computer with me I could see this being useful but I must admit

I think it's pretty niche yeah I feel like it's pretty niche I suppose ask me anything then like

as someone who's used this have you destroyed your phone yet with your keys no unfortunately not

Graham have you I need a proof of life of both of your phones no mine's still still great I'm

still really enjoying it why you can is it tiling Joe and it does multitasking work it is a proper

windowed desktop like a stacking windowed desktop effectively or you can do a sort of tiling type

thing with it but yeah you can move the windows around and or rest of it actually I don't know if

they are stacking I should have maybe I shouldn't say that because I don't know if they can

properly overlap each other but you can certainly move windows around and resize them and maximize

stuff because I do get a bit annoyed by background processes being put to sleep I know you can change

the configuration of them but I usually have a terminal open and you know having it open actually

on a on a screen so I can see that it's open and doing things while at the same time working in

another window would be really useful for me and having more than one browser window open which I

know we can do and I do use the split screen but I'd like to see it on a desktop metaphor yeah

unfortunately you have to have the phone screen on otherwise it stops working there's probably a

way to get it into some sort of screensaver mode I think was it daydream mode or something that I've

never used before I think you have to plug it in so you'd need some sort of dock that's got power

into it to do that I think does it keep the screen unlocked while you're typing away or do you

have to keep touching the bloody fingerprint sensor screen or whatever it uses on your phone

to unlock it all the time then if you have a short lock cycle I don't know because mine is half

an hour because oh for god's sake yeah it keeps nagging me oh you've got this long time it's

kidney battery I don't care I want it to be on like right now I'm timing this segment so I can

see how we're doing I don't want the fucking thing going to sleep and having to unlock it and

everything minus 60 seconds and I find it too long well that's fine that's choice failing and I

choose to have mine on the maximum I think everyone should use my choice I know you do we should

all just use KDE shouldn't we we should you're right we should get a KDE phone I knew it okay could

you use this in lieu of a licks laptop if you're traveling do you think I don't think that I could

I think one could just about probably okay what is it that you couldn't use on it like you don't

use games so it's not like you're missing out playing and things so what is it that you'll be doing

well audacity for example I said on holidays I didn't say I was a traveling work convention okay

I mean audacity I don't go on holiday and if I do I have to be on call I miss making my own

cicada background music yeah no but you know if if what if something is wrong and with one of the

the episodes and I need to fix it I need to have a laptop with me at all times I can never can never

truly switch off but then do I ever truly switch on arguably not but anyway yeah like proper work

stuff that I would do the laptop no I mean entertainment stuff yeah suppose I mean new pipe is a

little bit ropy because it's just not designed for keyboard and mouse I suppose if you had YouTube

premium that would probably be fine VLC worked fine and you could properly full screen that

I found file management to be not great like I use ES file manager and that just seemed to crash

quite a lot as something it was used to being on a desktop do you use froid on your phone right yes

do the froid apps work with this or not well new pipe I get from froid okay and yes it does but

the maximize button for some applications has an immersive mode which is basically proper full screen

versus just maximize with window chrome and stuff so new pipe even when it was playing a video wouldn't

go properly full screen so I don't know if that's because it's from froid or what I doubt it I think

you probably could code that in I would imagine it would be nice I guess it can't but it'd be nice

if the screen's on to at least be able to use it as a touchpad so you could just have a small keyboard

and then use the phone as a touchpad yeah like with can you connect that's one of the best things

you can do with that yeah so it's what you're running on the phone screen reflected on the monitor

at all or they're two totally independent screens so when you plug it in it asks you do you want a

mirror or do you want desktop oh so you've got the choice if you go for desktop and say you've got

signal open and you track to someone and then you open signal on the phone then it kills signal on

the desktop so you can't have them both at the same time and another annoying thing is sound would

only come out of my monitor because my monitor's got like really shit thin speakers yeah and so

plugged in via HDMI it wouldn't do Bluetooth like you know I was listening to a podcast I plugged

it in and then suddenly the podcast coming out of the speakers not of my Bluetooth headphones so

that was a bit weird do were you able to convince it to go back to that though I didn't try very hard

to be fair but no I had a quick look in the settings and there just wasn't anything in audio

or whatever so seemingly not nice but shit I wonder if you could run this as a remote desktop you

know so you don't have to plug it into a screen I can see that being useful if you're traveling

for example with just a work laptop and you don't want to use that for personal stuff but you'll

feel comfortable opening up a remote session on your phone I don't know I think that you need that

physical connection to yeah kind of launch it we need something that acts as like a USB video

just conveniently carry a 4k monitor on your backpack it'd be fine yeah well I've got a next

dock that I could carry around with me which is but I may as well carry a fucking laptop at that point

I saw a laptop advertised from I think mwc this morning which looked like a normal laptop but when

you took the keyboard off underneath was another screen which you then folded out and the

keyboard was wireless so you had a screen that was twice the size of the laptop and a normal side

keyboard oh good god so all in all I would say it's cool but it's kind of a bit of a novelty at

this stage but it's definitely not bad for a first release and clearly the motivation behind this

is this is what Chrome OS is going to ultimately become and so it's kind of a glimpse into that

future I suppose and yeah it's cool it's a cool gimmick but will it ever be truly useful

they'd have to solve some fundamentals for me and I'm not sure if they can do that because I remember

back with maru OS which for people who don't remember it was basically an Android open source you know

a osp rom that was just a normal rom as far as the phone was concerned on the Nexus 5 but then you

plugged in I that was micro USB to HDMI I can't remember what the connector was called they were

quite expensive though but anyway you plug that into a screen and it launched a Debian desktop

in a container I think with XFC even and that was fucking great but again it would only run when

the screen was on on the phone which suggests to me that that might be some fundamental hardware

issue or something with an Android phone that when you turn the screen off video out just won't work

maybe that could be software I don't know but if google really gets the right together on this

it could be really cool and speaking of Android just a quick update on the verified developer's

thing where if you're a developer you have to register with google otherwise your applications won't

work on stock rums essentially well I got a notification from new pipe this week that said new

pipe is going to stop working once this comes in but there was a link to solutions which I'll link

to in the show notes and the bottom line is you'll be able to use ADB to install and update

applications which yes is a fuck about but at least it will be possible so I'm not going to be

deprived of new pipe it's just going to be every time there's an update I'm going to have to get

the laptop out where I'll get in ADB more rest of it you can pretend it's a modem like the 90s

of your I'm I'm jacking in yeah exactly yeah I'm hacking the mainframe so that's a little bit of

hope there I suppose we'll see how long that lasts before they close that local hopefully they never

will but we'll see right while we better get out of here then we'll be back next week when

who knows what it'll be but until then I've been John I've been felon I've been Graham

and I've been well see you later

you