395: Interview with Artyom Zorin of Zorin OS
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On this weeks episode, we're gonna be interviewing R T, M. Zorn of zorn O S, who is right here.

You welcome .

to destination linux, where we discuss the latest news, hot topics, gaming, mobile and all things open source in linux. But today we have a very special interview. Yes, once again, with R T M.

Zorn azora s. My name is jill, and joining me are my students who excel in their use of negative space. Ryan and Michael.

I just knew a teacher would get me one day gel. And the fact your professor and found something good to say about my work, good use of negative spaces is really special to me.

Thank you.

I I actually do know how to use negative space is not just A. But yes, thanks. Thanks, jill. thanks.

I love you too, Michael, and we love you. R. T. M. Now let's get the show on the road to destination linux.

This week, we would like to welcome back to the show, R, T, M, zorn, the CEO and cocreate or of zorn OS. R. T, M. Thank you so much for joining us today is so lovely having you on.

yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

It's always a pleasure. Yeah, wo I think we're gonna get right into IT. First off, in case we have any new listeners to the show, tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved. An open source software?

Yeah, absolutely. Guess the best way to do that is to go back all the way to the beginning summer of two thousand and eight, back when I was twelve and my brother Carol was fourteen. And that's when we first started using linux.

And we just came across different videos of a bonn to and some of the fancy effects that had had, uh, some of the all time members. I'm sure we remember camps. You like the cube in the burning windows.

So as kids, not really excited us. So we decided to start using linux on our computer. But then we saw IT was a lot more than just those fancy effects and features. That was also the big advantages of, you know how much more security is than windows, how how much faster IT run. And just in general, the user experience was so much more solid and seem less.

And we kind of fact ourselves, why isn't this more popular? Why aren't a lot more people using linux? And so we decided to show um we going due to our dad who is a regular computer music, who was a translator by trade. And uh we got the answer pretty quickly why linux wasn't as popular.

And we saw like that, you know, a Normal computer user like him would structure to, you know, relearn the muscle memory to use the test top of the fact that the start menu and the task far is not where IT is on most computers was kind of daring. And we saw that linux didn't have that level of user friendliness and designed for this that I would really need to have if IT were to be a general purpose Operating system for the general public. So we kind of set ourselves the mission to bridge that gap, if we could.

There was A A science project competition that was happening around that time. And we thought let's enter into this um competition. And as our project, let's try to make a linux distribution that would be really use a friendly and seem less. And so that was the beginning of journals.

Very nice. You know, it's interesting in your story like that your dad was in the computers and because I was thinking it's really Young to get in the computer as a Young teenager and to be like, I want to try this new thing, linux, and know, what was your influence to be involved in technology at that level back then? Mean, like my brother and I.

we've always been interested in science and technology like grown output. Watch the discovery channel documentary. And we we were really fascinated by, and just that whole world, and we kind of thought ourselves, it'll be cool to get into that industry someday.

And the fact that our imagination was captured, bio linux, and we were really enthusiastic about read APP, really motivated us to start early and focus on what we were really interested in, which was making linux more accessible. And IT was a great learning experience that we've never programmed in our lives before. So we learned a lot along the way. And so that's .

the thirteen, fourteen year old. You would be very proud of how things turned out. Pretty cool. Yeah.

yeah, it's pretty awesome. I got started in tech early for the same like my siblings were into tech and they got mean in the tech and that sort of thing. So I have feel like a similar vive there. But let's you're talking about the area s and how you can you were inspired to make IT IT. So let's talk about zorn A S and who would you say it's designed for like you talk about a little bit with the um you know your dad in the beginners in start of of that is is that the .

main focal point yeah I would say so like since the very beginning, the main aim was about how do we make a linux environment more user friendly and really ready for you know the general public which by and large, or windows users.

So how would we make the system more familiar to windows users? And since the very first version of the most like the main focuses on, you know, the death top experience and the design of IT and just making IT as simple and intuitive to use for a Normal windows user. And that's always been sort of the north star that guided our decisions on how we build southwest and for all those years since makes total sense.

I mean, we were talking in the pre show earlier about the fact that i'm still utilizing zoo OS, which audio is a miracle, not because zorn O S. Or other things aren't great, but because i've stayed on a destroy for longer than three months.

Um this is you should feel a massively accomplish stadium and 也 in order for him to stay on a system for any longer than even a couple of weeks is crazy。

And this was going on eight .

months yeah, yeah, yeah.

yeah. And and you know, one of the things that they teased me about audio is that I never seen stuff to the point where, like Michael tells a story about coming to my home and I had a base X, F, C. Install, and I kept IT base default, never change anything but the wallpaper.

And what's great about one of us is I don't have to be good at the me, because IT does IT all for me. And I look like a professional. I look like i've customized the heck out of my destocking. The of us look so good out of the box. And so IT works out that way.

So I love that you can pretend.

thanks. I know what i'm.

And zoro s has the best implementation of the X, F, C, E S top with zoro s light. It's beautiful.

Yeah yeah you can make X F C beautiful. You're doing something really well. Yeah you know speaking of which, we talked about a little bit about this that expert, what do you think majora stand out against the giant disrobe out there that um you know like you said, even when you're Younger, you came across a bunch first a lot of people's first destroy might be a bunch or debby and or one of those um what is IT about the ora less .

that you think makes you stand out from those yeah I think it's just our laser focus on making IT as you as friendly as possible to that target audience that I just mentioned and making sure that we're always taking decisions that support the user base that you know we're really focusing on. We've been really fortunate that we've been able to keep this project running for over fifteen years.

And we can see that there are a lot of um specific ways on how we think about you know how do we develop new features, how do we design things that really resonate with the audience. So it's just making sure that you're totally focused and you know exactly who you're building the Operating system for and and those users will gravitate towards the system that your building. Um so he really is sort of a sin biotics relationship. We take a lot of ideas from and the suggestions we get from our users and as well that we make sure that if there are any you know use their experience issues or paper cuts, you can kind of say, and that make the system not as user friendly and pleasant to use as IT should be that know we attend to those issues and uh make sure the Operating system reflects the needs and the ones of the users as much as possible.

That's good, nice. And um i'm very curious about one thing you were talking about how you had the the beginner focus and stuff like that and ryan was talking about how well IT looks and like the the design is so great and I just poked in my head this is based on name and looks nothing like no me in any way and I have to ask why did you choose no over the other desktops when you're gna change so much?

Yes, it's a variety of reasons. Um I think the fact that we're able to customize IT and and changed around so much is a teston to how extensible and extendable genome is. I don't think IT gets enough credit for that. Like the extension and eco system is really viBrant and the fact that you are able to you know uh over right certain this stop uh elements uh just through essentially java script extensions, I makes IT so flexible even to a point where you know a lot of other day top environments might not have that ability you know to IT customize the system so much as well as that like genome is obviously a very you know uh, popular project and it's very wide supported.

So if there are any new hardware features, uh, there's a huge community around IT that develops to make sure that you know those hardware features are supported as was that like there's a lot of there's a big effects on, you know making the design very intuitive and user friendly um and taking you know new users into a camp when making decisions. Um you know sometimes in open source software, there's the temptation to you know add a lot of features. A lot of talk was to the point where you know IT might even get a bit overwhelming for new users.

And we find that like some of the design decisions that they know team and the new community make um do take new users into account to make sure that no software that they're making is designed to be as intuitive as possible. We don't agree with absolutely every decision that you know the upstream genome developers make a, but the fact that is such an extensible dest of environment means that you know we have the ability to tailor the zone test top p to the needs of zara's users. And that a really exciting thing.

nice. I mean, that you are talking about how you're not necessarily agree with everything. I think ryan can appreciate .

the fact that media, but they do make a lot of great decision. So completely agree with you, especially from a user interface. I think that makes sense.

What you're saying about, hey, if we're trying to make a new user experience, great. And let's say you started with the basic K D, which is very flexible. There's lots of talks, there's lots of switch is a change stuff. But if you don't turn all that off and new users is going to get lost or can be moving their panel in the middle, the screen know how to get IT back all this type of stuff where um what's interest literally I didn't even think of what I didn't think of is like the fact that genome is flexible on the back end. Because no, it's not flexible. It's not super customizable on the front, really what you are able to do on the back and makes IT so that you can customize IT without having all those taboos or switches or put the things in that you know your users one such as up indicators yeah.

that's that's something I talked about before like the back in part of IT. Like I know it's built on java script and that would be a lot easier to manipulate and stuff if you are familiar with that kind of thing. And but in terms like the users, there's there's a quite a few barriers to get to extensive like to get just even install extinctions is kind of those are barriers for that. Uh, but for someone who just wants to manage change IT in modified to be a certain way for the users, just start using yeah that makes sense yeah .

thanks yeah and and I think you had a really nice baLance of of users coming from macos and windows. You know you still have the bottom a task bar, but you know .

you .

can use a dog like theme, and I would like .

them exactly everything as you can change the theme, which is you you are one of the best gesture that does that.

definitely.

So um R T M, we when we did our review of soros of the latest released just a few weeks ago, we had asked uh the community and ourselves um how you give back to the larger ecosystem and you got back to us. R T M actually got back to us and let us know how you contribute to linux and uh the linux ecosystem and all the things you do. And we talked about IT here on the show. But just a maybe reiterate or or tell us again about, yeah in your own words .

absolutely. So like a lot of the work that we do for, you know, building the zorn, my experience can end up being quite useful to all their projects. Other distributions.

So say, for example, back in twenty sixteen was uh when we started to switch over from our own desktop environment to a known shell bed desk up environment and we felt that you know the known uh shell environment was quite mature and uh had a lot of no advantages towards using IT h and of course, that extensible extension ecosystem. And but some of the interface elements that we really needed in zoan was just weren't there. So uh, we didn't have a suitable task bar start menu, which are quite important, especially windows uses.

That's what they're familiar with. So um that's when we began developing some of our own test top extensions for gnoo show and like this organ menu or in task bar. And that ended up actually being a basis for some pretty popular ome shell extensions like dash to panel and original source code behind arc menu, which we find some other distributions also use.

And so it's really cool to see that you know the work that we're putting out there is also um you know being used and being off by users outside of tournant. Uh even just more recently um on a less glamorous note, there was A A regression with how u borne to handle. I think IT was the NVIDIA the latest available and video drivers.

Unfortunately some G D K four ups would not open and IT was just a bug there. But we helped the uh going to team to to find the source of the issue and and to resolve IT. And and that of course helped both our users because zorn voices is based on a bunt u but also um all of the bunt twenty two or four users uh that patch made its way out to them. So that was, I believe, there was around a month ago. Um and if it's cool to see that you know on an open source ecosystem like the linux test top, you're able to see that cross pollination of of work that is being done in by some project over here make its way out uh a completely different audience that the original developers might not thought of and not just only possible because of the open source way.

Yeah so fundamentally, you feel like when we were talking on the show, when we are talking about this in general, that IT is important, that destroys that whether they based themselves on another, destroy what not are giving back. And you guys clearly are. But is that that something that you felt compelled early on that you wanted to make sure zoro s was about? Is that a big part of, you know how you guys think can .

look at these projects? Yeah I think that you know the fact that we've been able to stand on the shoulders of giants and and of the open source projects that came before us you know like Dylan ux, carreno, they were gone to project um you know we thought I was important to you know make our code out uh unavailable to to everyone else. So if anyone else wants to start a new project and they can build on our shoulders and make a new, you know, experience that we hadn't even thought of. And I think that's that's that's a really cool thing that's just not possible with proprietary systems and proprietary software.

IT is unique ly open source of that.

Yeah, that is awesome. It's kind of a chAllenge to you get involved in certain kinds of projects if you're like, you know if you're not familiar with certain things. But i'm curious like how what kind of chAllenges if you had with zoro s just developing? And in general, like have you had any chAllenges that you've come across that maybe helped shape the development of IT in the future and like design or anything for the for the top?

Yeah I mean, if we go back to the very beginning, like I was twelve and my brother was fourteen when we started developing the and we had no experience in programing at all, just those first few steps were quite chAllenging. We had to learn pithum from the python for dome's book and a few youtube tutorials. And I I realize was going .

to go to the point of like what was the what was the biggest chAllenge that learning to program? Yes, that's a big step. I love IT. I mean.

like very first the very first step towards learning programme, at least in our case, was setting ourselves the chAllenge to you, make zones and make all of the features that we you know include in the system.

Um so we had to you know learn you know the programming craft to get ourselves to that level rather than you know the other way around where if you go to college, you'd learn the programme of first and then you would figure out what do I use those skills for. But also a safe, for example, the those genome shell extensions back in two thousand and sixteen when we decided to switch over to gome shell base and start making those extensions. There wasn't the level of documentation um that there is right now for economic and developers.

So in many cases, we have to sort of reverse engineer look at the source code of norm shell to see how IT worked and how we could implement certain features in our extensions. Um but you know even though that there wasn't that and level of documentation back then, the fact that you know genome shell and obviously wider open source ecosystem, you can see the source code behind that um means that anyone can see how that works and anyone can build on top of IT. Uh again, something that's unique ly open source possible here.

So I IT was a really cool way to learn something components and ultimately helped us to understand all of the inner workings of the test opened. How the Operating system works, allowed us to develop even more features. Um you know in the future .

that is awesome. I mean, like the five feature, you you started the project as a like a science project as a kid, and then you turning into a business and you're developing the skills to do IT and like that. That is like the fundamental, I don't know not post your child or whatever, but like like the great a great example of how open source is so powerful because you don't need to have anything, there's no barrier to get started. And you can take IT as far as you want to go, including making something like orn, which is that just the awesome .

it's amazing story. And I think about all the Young kids that we meet when we do scale and other conferences mico in the jail. And like the next item is sitting in that audience somewhere, right that, you know, get inspired by this instead of drolling over tiktok or youtube or instagram, they're over their building a new O S, which is just stop.

Yes, you need to do the open source chAllenge, not the tide pod chAllenge.

Exactly uh you know there is no shortage of opinions in linux um and open source. A lot of people very opinionated by IT about things and how things should work.

And so I was just curious when you when you look at all the feedback that that comes your way, whether it's on a new release or uh shows or news or other thing, how how do you use that feedback and development process? How do you read out? I'm sure you know, like anything else, when you get big enough, you get some really negative, harsh stuff.

You get some really kind stuff. You get a mixture of everything in between. How do you how do you guys handle that feedback and how do you .

use IT effectively? Yeah no. Like user feedback is a huge factor in how we go back developing zorn's even further. So where we always strive to listen to what you know people are saying about zn us and their experience is what they like and what they don't like.

And and just making sure that you know as well that the feedback that we're listening to uh can be used in a constructive manner and especially the lines we know the value is that we provide by, but also by the needs of the users and the target demographic that were um we're hoping to developed or the less for sometimes the features that are some people suggest are actually like really useful and we do end up including them and working on them. Sometimes IT might align more with a demographic that might be Better served by other distributions, maybe more technical users, but also one of the key ways that we develop new features and figure out how we can improve. So anyway, this is actually looking at some of them, you know customer support queries that we get uh and some of the you know issue is and chAllenges that people might be having like safe.

For example, if a new user um tries to installs on on on a computer that I might not be fully compatible with all of the drivers that are included in zorn st say for example, like an n video based computer a few years ago I was more of a chAllenge to get started on but dark gave was the idea of, hey, why do we just include the n video drivers in the default ISO? Uh and that was one of the features that I believe we introduce. This one was fifteen that uh really put down on you know the issues that some new users were having because all of those drivers were available sort of add of the box. Uh, so that's just one of the examples of how we you know take user feedback and and developed into actual features that uses see in the experts of great.

So what's one feature in zs that you think deserves more attention than IT gets? The the in video one was a pretty good one. Video drivers.

对 呀。 Yeah, I guess another feature that sort of was along the same lines as that in video one was, and the way that we handle what happens when someone double clicks on a windows dot E X E R M S I and stalls lar fire. So we noticed that know there were a lot of users who uh were very new to linux and zorn s they were trying to get some other favorite apps working and they were struggling because um you know maybe the windows up support component wine might not be fully comparable that up and when they double click on IT and try to install up with wine IT might not work well. But we also noticed that some of those you know negative experiences where when people are trying to you know download the windows version of apps that were actually cross platform and natively available for a linux.

So we thought ourselves, how can we sort of design the experience in a way that guides the easy to the right way of installing apps? So say, for example, someone might download the windows and staler for slack or zoom um or their favorite web brows or google chrome and they instead of you prompting them to install a wine or the windows apps for a component um instead he says, hey, I noticed that you're trying to install you know this up that's actually natively available on the software store or from this one page directly for linux. And if you do that, your experience will be Better.

Um so that's not as features that we implemented to that you users get steer towards the right wave and stalling aps so that you know as they go on the links external, they all know, hey, instead of downloading the windows A E X E, maybe lets check the software store to see if it's available there. And you know there might be a native linux version of that already there. And so after implementing that, we saw that there were and IT was a lot easier for those new users to get accustom to how you install up in linux and just ultimately improve the user experience.

That's awesome. I mean, that's actually you know, i've always said that zoran is in the the top five options for the for like the beginner destroy. And with that feature, i'm more learning to number one because that is such a good feature even if you don't have this software is to tell them that there's here's a thing you can do. Here's another option you can get IT from the website or however, if you have like specified for a particular application, do you have like a data base of that sort of thing that just like scans to see if they are .

trying to install? Yeah so every copy of zone as has the sort of inbuilt database of some of the common windows or exe and dollars and IT checks against that to see hey um you know your double clicking on an E X E and that much as this up, maybe you should take a look at the installed in the software storm. I mean, it's it's not a very like sugar, glamorous or technical. It's a ugly feature, which is .

sadly the most important to some people. And I think it's great that you have that sort of thing. Another thing that's also good for like beginners is having compatibility of the hardware like you're talking about with invidia stuff like that. But there's also the element of like the kernel updates and that sort of stuff. And the latest blog post or the latest release, the black post for that released of seventeen point two IT says that IT has hard work compatibility with the harder in element from the bunt u uh is how does that work when IT comes as or and .

like how do you implement the viewers might not um know all of the background about zora. It's based on born to L T S releases, which means that you know the system gets a lot more security uh updates for a longer period of time and IT gets more widely tested. Um but at the same time by defauts, you know the official are going to R T S release might be stock with the same corner for many years if you get the an initial release of that L T S version.

And however, do want to team also released hardware enable ment updates for those L T S releases. So roughly every six months and they get you know the coronal version as well, some of the graphics hardware stack uh from the latest non L T S releases, which typically come around every six months. And so we make sure that you know new point releases of the U S. Get those hate W E hardware enable ment packages on the updates out of the box so that you know if you are using A A newer piece of hard where maybe with a newer M C P U or graphics card that I will have much newer drivers that I would be able to support that, uh, out of the box. And so we make those point releases roughly every six months as well .

because that sounds like you have so much user feedback. Could say they get a new laptop, they get a new deathtrap and maybe it's the new invidia driver, maybe it's the new a AMD processor that wasn't supported in the lts. How do you guys handle those compatibility? Is because really my biggest issue.

And when I say issue, I mean, it's my it's the thing I would love to see you want to improve on the most, which is their hard work, are compatibility because six months a long time in the hardwork world, a lot releases in six months. Um and so you have a new user, which is one of us attracts, they buy the new computer at best buy. They come home.

They didn't do the proper research, say they tried to installed orn or ubuntu. IT doesn't work because even though we have a currently out there that has that hardware enable meant in IT, we're using an older kernel in those versions. Do you guys try to do something with those or you just tell them you'll have to wait or it's not compatible? Or how do you handle those situations, whether is new hardware is not compatible?

So you know typically those newer hardware drivers get releasing newer coronal versions, which and you know the bund team have been you know working to improve the release, kate and serve them especially recently. Uh, IT is a thing.

IT is a factor where you have to take into a camp the baLance between, you know the latest feature is an hardware support as well as how well tested the corner because if you you know release a brand new version of the kernel to all the existing users, there's always the risk that there might be regression and and you know and sometimes the the system might crash because those ultra new versions of the corneal might have those kinds of the issues that don't get widely tested upon release. So IT is a baLance between those factors, you know, but we're always looking at ways on how to you know include newer drivers out of the box. And so is the bone to team.

And you are starting to see that a lot of those hardware vendors that contribute their drivers to the linux coronal are starting to do IT you know earlier and earlier. So say, for example, if intel is planning to release a new CPU, they uh often you know in include those drivers uh in you know versions uh in in their patches for that they submit the linux coronal team before the launch date of those uh components. So um you're starting to see that like a lot of the hardware that you know might get released immediately might actually be supported in the latest version of of you might want to out of box because they did IT so earlier ahead of time.

So you know security is a very hot topic on people's minds a lot, especially in every day you open the news and it's another data reach and another data reach and more of your .

information out there, right? Try you're talking.

I have no doubt that probably fifty data breaches while I was talking. And you know, honestly, a lot of people with things like windows releasing there, what does IT snap back? Recall, recall, recall features and things like that are starting to come. The linux, you know I see them uh going on redit forms asking about linux, hey, i'm not happy with I don't want to switch from windows ten, which I think lose is support this month.

There are really soon. Next year.

I think actually is the next year. Yeah, it's soon. And so people are really starting the inquire, wanting to come over to linux for the first time. So talking about security, let's talk about how zoora less does security. How do you make sure that the environment that are setting up is secure for your users um above and beyond what already you built into the foundation?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, and one of the important decisions that we talk early on in the project was do we build our in west sort of as an entirely independent linux distribution? Or do we base ourselves on another existing one? And we ultimately decided that know for R U case ubon do is actually a really good base and and a lot of that does have to do with the fact that you know the security patches that you know fixed vulnerabilities are released very often, very quickly, uh, because it's such a large distribution that's used in sorry, for a supercomputers, I O T devices sort of all over the world uh by so many different kinds, companies and and organizations that there is that level of um support that they provide upstream that if we were to bed so on west on new bond would make its way down to zorn west used as as well.

So that's why we decided to go down that route. And you know they want to team been doing a really great job to make sure that those patches fixed fonder ability, do make their way out all of those users on a really timely manner and and you know that helps to make so unless really secure at the box because of all of the work that's being done by not only they are going to team, but also the upstream developers uh on the linux team on other open source projects that are included in, you know they going to your um so all of those those patches also make their way into journals um and also as you are mentioning about you know windows and some of the decisions they've been taking. And over the past few months in the years on on a security standpoint, um IT is definitely affected that we see is starting to you know increase the user base of linux in general.

And of course, by part 比克 users are starting to see that， hey, i'm not so certain that microsoft has, you know, my intentions in mind. You know, developing new features like windows. Recall a they .

one hundred percent do not have their good intentions behind them for the people.

I think what I think is not about bad intentions always, as IT is to what R D. M. Saying is they're not thinking about the end user because like the idea of being able, if you just look at IT from the you know high level, superficial level, the idea of being able to recall what you've worked on or throughout today actually sounds kind of cool, right? Like I forgot what I was doing over you earlier.

There was a website I was looking at, and I can't remember what you are allies and I can go back. When you care about your users, you start thinking, hey, what if a hacker got a hold of that? What does that start to look like?

What can I make?

This is not like maybe we shouldn't send IT to our servers and have everything that we said. We shouldn't do these things. That's a good point actually, when you were talking about know the way you're discovering that made me think that was a person who thought of this has like massive A D H D like me and I would forget things that i'm trying to work on at that moment and then like all that would be great but then I thought, yeah, that would be great and then everything else beside IT is awful.

So yeah, it's that looking deeper is just the best thing for the users even though it's a cool feature to implement. And I think there's a lot of that going on right now with A I and things, and we'll get to that in a letter question because i'm interested in you're take on that where you know we're looking at adding things without thinking about what's the overall impact. It's gonna on people's ety, whatever.

So very interesting. And you know one of things audio I want to compliment you on is the fact that throughout this entire interview, just been giving credit to all the projects that you all work with you know um and I think that speaks a lot. Sometimes projects trying kind of hide the fact they're based on something or that they work with other teams to produce something where you are a very transparent and IT sounds like a partnership which is our open sources supposed to be and that that makes me feel, uh, really great. Oh.

I love that you do. Yeah thanks. Like it's it's only been possible to make your own rise because of all of those open source projects out there.

So so we're enormously thankful for, for all the efforts that they put in, and we're always happy to you know support other projects where they might want to use our code. And you know as an open source project ourselves were really happy to say that you know other projects are building on top of what we're doing. So yeah, it's a all in biological perfect timing .

for the new venture movie, the sympathy .

for ship love IT. Yes, nice. Uh so what about like this? Are you any stories about um users who have switched to zoro s and tell you about their experience and then they be had like an impact for experience? Have any examples of that?

Yeah I think like sort of A A surprising example that happened a few years ago was there was a city in italy called for chances. It's a few kilometres west of Venus who actually decided to switch over all of their municipal computers from windows to zn west, like on an informal basis. What happened was that was an interesting story. There was a school in the area and they were having issues with um you know of the looming windows X P and the live date and they were left with the choice of, you know, do we have to buy a whole load of new computers just wrong windows ten, so that R I T is still support up to date and which would have been like really expensive for, you know, a school with limited resources.

H, but one of the parents in that school, and he knew about zone's and he thought that you know including, you know, install lingers on my son, the existing computers could save them from landfill and also saved the school a lot of money from having to buy loader new computers uh, and they switched over their computers to are in west and you know, uh IT turned out to be, you know, early Grace, uh, boom to the school and that city municipality. We are having the same issue where they had, I think I was like, over seven hundred computers across of the minus four offices running windows X P, that they would have to buy new computers just to run windows ten. And, you know, they saw that the school had a great experience with the zone us.

And they just decided to deploy zone us, some of their computers. And one was funny was that they just mailed us. I think that was two weeks before the deployment started saying we're back to switch our holy city over this and we are panicking because nothing like that ever happened before um but like we're really happy to say that you know the deployment went pretty smoothly.

Um there was a newspaper that came back to them around a year after the deployment and asked them haven't went and they were they were generally quite happy with IT. So and know we were really surprised on the you know the prime myself whole city switching our car system and sort of on an informal basis, but we're really happy about that. And we also want to give a bit of a share to some of the people that made IT happen. So share IT to albano bai Stellar and they have change the linux users group that basically made that employment happen.

I mean, that's amazing about a huge impact. They had kind of spread the fact they had that knowledge. They suggested this and starts with the school and moved on from there. Um IT really shows you, even if you want, you want to work, a lot of people in linux want to work in environment where there is linux, but we don't always have that option. But here someone was able to make that happen eventually, thanks to windows and the life, a situation you never know when you can move your organization.

And that's when you get the linux user within.

everything comes out.

Yeah absolutely.

And speaking of that, R T M, and since were on the top of topic of education, how does zoro s support educational initiatives or environments? We know that A A big mission for you to support those environments in this. You probably learned from of IT with the situation in italy.

Yeah no, absolutely. So since even the early days of zorn, as we were, we've always been releasing the education edition, which comes preloaded with a lot of software for a teaching different courses like math, geography, coating science, uh, all out of the box. And it's something that we've been working on since we were in school.

So we kind of thought ourselves like and how would we make A A test top experience that would improve the learning experience as well as we were going through that process. And you know, it's a project that we've been really passionate about for a very long time, and we're seeing that. You know, there are a lot of schools also in italy and all around the world as well making use of in my education.

And even a couple months ago, I saw a really cool project that's happening in malawi. There is a couple of charities, I believe they called k two tech and bridges to malawi a and they've been sending an old decommissioned windows laptops to mali, preloaded them with zs uh education, giving them up to schools and seem really cool to see that. You know, something that we've made here in our land and is making its way, places that we'd never thought they would be is making an impact. I help, uh, on the the school children there.

So kind of going back to what we were talking about, uh, a little earlier with the rise of ai. I'm just curious you .

thinking of making an impact.

thinking making impact, you know and changes things because recall obviously is kind of made possible by these type of technologies were talking about earlier. Um you see A I being talked about everywhere. So I have two questions for you.

My first one is what are you what are your overall thoughts on A I like, do you think it's as big as people making IT out to be? Is this gna be a life changing technology that's worth, what? Eight trillion dollars? Now with the video, you know, what are your thoughts on that? And the second well, house zorn O S handling A I, you guys looking to implement IT or integrated in any way in what your thoughts there?

So like the developments in A I over the past couple years of being, you know really interesting, really exciting in some ways, you know, somewhat scary. Uh, I am shared like your viewers would share some of those sentiments. But overall, I think like i'm quite optimistic in you know how A I will be able to you know help people and organizations to to do what they want to do with their technology.

At the same time though, like from the business perspective, I see that there's a lot of boys and hype around at that in some cases might not be fully warrant ted. You know, maybe some of your your listeners and viewers might remember you the dot com bubble, for example. I was a little before my time, but there were similar hype cycles around technology trends that you over the long run, they might have materialized and made a big difference.

But maybe some of those companies that we're working on, tools that technology didn't end up surviving that high period because if there's a huge boom, there's probably going to be a bust sometime in the future. exactly. yeah.

And IT calls out some of the companies that probably shouldn't have gotten the hype that they ended up getting and maybe the investor dollars that they ended up getting. Um so it's like from our perspective, we see that whole trend in the industry around A I to be kind of open the air. I don't know exactly where it's going to go.

Um there might even be some you know developments in A I that might make current AI companies in many industries obsolete um next month, for example. Uh, it's just something that you can't really predict, you know A A A farm of time scale to see how IT ends up. Like from our perspective, we think about things a little bit differently.

We don't really try to look at this cool new technology and cy how to implement IT. We kind of think of IT the other way around what features and what experiences do we want to give our users and then how do we work our way backwards to the best technology to implement that use. Case like to that.

how you landed IT on implementing clippy.

of course, of course course yeah of course a major new feature. But yeah, it's um that's just one of those sort of mental models you can say that let us to wear we are today let us to the product that were able to put out that you know so many people use in and and love on their computers. Um so we don't see A I as something that we ought to implement for the sake of implementing A I.

There might come a time when you know there's an important feature that we think will benefit uses that might 你 use of AI。 But at the same time, we always want to make sure that those new features and lying up with our values around privacy and security and making sure that the user always has control over what's happening on their computers and that ultimately improves their experience. And like I see a lot of companies sort of implementing A I features because maybe investors like the sound exactly IT increases the value of the company, in our case, were entirely funded by our community. Um we don't have any investors behind us, uh, which makes IT so that you know we're always focused on the user and making sure that the product really lines up with terrifying.

I love philosophy. IT makes a lot of sense. And I love that you guys are sticking to your ultimate values. As you see so many companies, they start out with values. And then as they grow and get popular, those values go away and then the company changes that people don't like what IT becomes because they lose that special sauce that made them. And I I like the way you guys are looking at A I S.

Hey, when it's useful for our users and IT happens to be the technology that allows us to do that, the best then will implement IT and until then, you know where and watch IT. It's interesting because linus torvalds also uh just this week was quoted as saying A I is ninety percent marketing in ten percent reality. So I think that's an interesting way of looking.

I mean, that is definitely I think that is it's seems a reality is just like how useful IT is IT like the amount of people talking about IT. That's probably a good percentage because you when you now see people talking about like A A I devices that are so amazing, they are getting millions of dollars and funding and they are and to come out and they are complete garbage like it's you know it's basically hype at this point.

I so you know, he can get behind IT. There is some great things with A I there is you um lots of great features and then we featured this really amazing APP that let you use all the open source A I locally on your machine. Wish I could remember its name, but maybe when they will pop up up here uh, after are editing but I do .

not like on on a previous thing and a life stream and then I could remember either someone in the chat told me what I was wouldn't be great .

if I remembered what .

they said in the for all 也 也 i .

was giving ryan more time to look at， do IT. So this is a team effort, right?

There are some cool things out there that I could see, you know, having that because what I I find useful in A I is with fixing errors and code like i'm writing code which you know not that create to beginning with i'm not like you are you like i'm just very .

barely right code in the early stage .

when you were like fall yeah probably so when I right code though, it's very nice to be able to run IT through and IT just is like here here's your error. Here's the fix and you kind of learn to that process and I find IT very good at things like that um writing stuff from scratch not so much but layers on there answering questions not so much because IT IT who lose me a lot um but you know that stuff like you said could change next week we can have this new AI that put all the other A I out and stuff so in any case think is very, very interesting um linus to take in your take as well on A I so .

thanks sure that is out looking .

forward to our .

ai ppi run by lip part by lippy.

Yes, exactly, but really. So let's talk about like the transitioning that people have to go through from windows and mac to zone. There's obviously people who want to go to her. Going from windows to zone is like it's kind like the main thing is it's like the first default visuals that they see. Could you give some advice for the users who are considering switching to zorn and like what benefits they would get .

from some of the benefits we explain? Just even on our website, on our front page, we try to make IT as as clearing the front as possible, just a now increasing the speed of your computers so you could be more productive if you have old computers um that might not be comparable with know the current ter the upcoming versions of windows um that you know there are still life left in them. You can still use them just like they were new and uh especially over the coming year um I believe ryan, um I loaded to this, but windows ten is losing support um I believe around this yeah this time next year. So october twenty twenty five and microsoft been informing quite a lot of users that the only way to continue having a supported computers to just buy a new one, which I think is quite waste, uh.

especially for you. Fine, we're a lot of answer. The stuff and some of the stuff that they are deprecating with, the new versions and stuff are the computers that are perfectly fine. There are only like seven years old or .

something like that yeah even newer ones than not um like personally, i've been using a computer that's nine years old for you know quite a long time and it's been running just fine. In fact, like every time there's a new versions as no as a tends to run faster rather than slower. Nice just because of the efficiency of that. And you know now that I believe maybe tens, if not hundreds of millions of computers are become gonna be obsol this time next year, uh, I think is incredibly wistful.

But at the same time, it's something that you know linux and the rest can help bridge that gap and and keep you know people using the computers for longer, not only just as they were using IT before, but in a matter that you know more secure and faster, in many ways, a more flexible on and of course, privacy respecting. So um from a new years as perspective, I think now is a really great time to consider linux, even more so than even just a couple years ago. We're starting to see that a lot of apps and games that people use are now natively available for linux.

Um and in some cases, the absolute the use might be where based, which means they can run on any platform. So that up gap that was there back in the early days of zora kind of stop people from switching over from windows to linux is no longer as big of a problem as IT was before. Same thing goes with, you know, hardware support drivers.

They've gotten quite a lot Better than back in the early days. So a lot of those road blocks that we're there stopping people from using blocks are in no longer as big of in the issue. So um yeah I say it's it's a really great time to start using linux.

never Better time really yeah especially .

with the recall coming.

So, R, T, M, if you could describe the future of linux in one word, I know this. This might be a little tRicky one word. What would you be? And how is R N O S part of that future?

And why is that one word tox digital?

What if he comes back with this?

So i'm going to, i'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm gona use two words, not not just like talk digital, but inflection point. I think, as I was saying earlier right now is a really interesting time for linux, where you know it's becoming way more viable of a general purpose Operating system than it's ever been before.

On the decent time, you know, the changes that are happening to windows and the end of life of windows ten is, we think, going to be quite a big factor in getting a lot of new users uh, over to linux. And uh, I think is a huge opportunity uh, as well as that the fact that you know the quality of the linux test top and the experience that new users would be going through this is just so much Better than I was before. And I genuinely think that like on the technology side, I think generally the linux would be ready for the general public as IT is today and at least the vast majority of users.

I think the interesting opportunity to help make that happen, make that big migration happen, is to start focusing on distribution. So I know for quite a long time the general consensus we could get more people using linux if you know the manufacturer of laptops and desk top s started reloading IT and and you know there have been some interesting examples over the last few years where um safe for example, um some of your viewers might be familiar with another distro code endless OS. Uh they've generally been focused on uh emerging markets, terrible countries.

And I believe a few years ago they actually reach number one market chair for the Operating system on new computers being sold in indonesia, which was kind of mind blowing to me. And but unfortunately, that didn't really last very long because you know some of the major manufacturers that they were partnered with um from what I heard ah they essentially received the call from microsoft saying, no, if you want to continue working with them, we might have to you know altered our deals when IT comes to you know windows licenses in other markets. And that was kind of a risk to to their business.

And I ended up not really um allowing embers, OS and linux to really thrive where IT should have been. Um so we're kind of thinking of different ways on how would we bridge that up, how would we get more people am able to use linux on a day today basis. And we kind of thought that actually focusing on businesses, enterprises, organizations would be an interesting, interesting way to go.

Um say that example of Victor the city and italy that switched over to design less was a success story in its own right and and we thought that why aren't more businesses and organizations using you know linux uh on their computers and well one of the bits of feedback that we did hear from um for enza was that they were generally happy with the west. The main downside was managing all of the computers was a bit of a pain. So once they installed or west on their computers, if they wanted to make some sort of IT change, like changing a setting or installing and upper updating software, they would have to send someone around to each computer individually.

That was clearly a big downside. That sort of stopped organizations from being able to make that change just because I was too difficult to manage. So one of the projects that we're working on uh is called zar and grade.

And that essentially bridges that got I T administrators uh would be able to you know manage the entire flight of computers just from A A centralized council. Um so if they want to you know deploy and you are or change setting on all the computers, they're be able to do that just from a single council. And we think that would be quite a big game changer when IT comes up.

You know allowing businesses and organizations to actually usually looks on a day to day basis. Therefore, the I T managers in those organizations, uh are able to choose what software that they use rather than say, the hardware vendors um so they can pick whatever too is best for them. And hopefully john less and linux would be the best two of uh, a lot of them, especially now that they have to deal with the windows ten end of life tobacco.

You will grad be ready before windows ten, fully ready before windows ten officially ends its support?

yes. So we're working really hard to make sure that IT we'll be ready by then. We think are you .

and I would be a perfect time in .

to be able to switch over everybody and stuff like, yeah, that's awesome. Um I just had a couple of more questions that I thought of on the fly. Um you're the currently or no as seventeen point two is based on twenty two or four of ubuntu, when do you think the next base the base for twenty four or four will happen?

Yeah so we develop new versions as on west and also just our software in general on a release win ready basis. Um so we don't have A A set release data in mind, but uh, we're expecting IT to be ready in either the second or third quarter of next year. So again, uh, just to be ready for the windows ten end of life period. We think it's it's interesting time and we want to make sure you exhorting is on its best foot to a take on those new users. And we think so on one I think would be quite exciting for that.

That's awesome. Especially sense a linux coronal six thousand eleven will be available for a bunch with the hardware enabled ment then and that's that's gonna be relate wonderful.

absolutely. And also I saw um I mean, maybe the rumor, I don't know, but I saw something people talking about how zorn light might be going away. Is that a thing?

yes. So like that was a decision that we came to um that take quite a lot of deliberation. We wanted to make sure that like the road map firm new features and new products around O S, we'd be able to execute upon that um and provide the best use their experience we possibly can. Um at the same time on the desktop side um you know we were seeing a bigger and bigger miss much between um the features that would we would be able to shape in, you know the non lighted stations vers the lighter distance going forward and as well as that from a performance aspect. We've been seeing that like with every new release of and so on right over the past few years, the non light edition have been getting faster and faster to the point where on quite a lot of hardware combinations and the performance of those non light editions are actually exceeding uh, delighted stations.

And so if we were to think to ourselves like we're a small team with limited resources, um how do we provide the best possible user experience and as many new features as possible on a timely basis, what's the best way of going around IT going forward? So um we did end up coming to the decision to eventually sunsets or no as light ah in twenty twenty nine, we wanted to make sure that you know the existing user yeah we wanted to make sure that the existing users would have uh a lot of time and uh we didn't want to rush any decisions um add of respect for them. So um you know from zone us nineteen onwards. So that's a couple of releases from now. Ah we will be focusing on um just the noni editions of journals that's interesting .

and also IT doesn't when I first heard about that, I thought maybe this is like, um you know this might be an issue but IT sounds like if the non light version you like, if it's the same speed as same efficiency and same resource or or close to that and IT kind of makes the point where the light doesn't need to exist rather than if not you know just not just being going away. So I think if that's the case, you also list five years from now that makes a lot .

of it's gonna say that uniquely open source right there. What projects like k we're going na get rid of this thing in five years. So uh, that's really nice that you guys continue to support IT for that long for respect of the user .

and also just telling people that is happening. You know .

that's nice to zest light uh won't be sort of like a curated version of the west from twenty twenty nine on words, but you will still be able to install the X F C test of environment. You'll still be able to, you know, have all of the features of that, that stop environment on a zona space system. Uh, o so IT would be still possible to have a similar experience going forward indefinitely. We just wanted to give the heads up like very early on that if they still wanted .

that they could do IT, they just wouldn't be like an ice. So that was prepackaged for yeah.

yeah, yeah that that .

that makes a lot of that dog that doesn't sound like a bit a dooming gloom removal thing that just sound transition .

you know and and that was particularly near dear to my heart because I runs or on a light on lots of old computer but but I also know that gonee um the performance of gonne has gotten so much Better. And you know you'll be able to install the other this top manager. So and in fact with zar and I often install window maker along with .

IT as well.

Window maker just fits in right right in there.

Yes.

yes.

my go to it's really .

cool to see how you know different users might use journalists in different ways that we wouldn't have been able to anticipate that they might. You install different window managers and dest up environments. And we think it's really cool that you know you are able to do that. You're able to tater your system to your own needs and desires. That's something that's again, uniquely open source, uniquely lenox, and it's just really cool to say so at .

some point you're going we're going to expect to see the O S. Red poison in addition.

Yeah another one know gill .

cases is really unique that with all of her hardware museum we got the hardware museum but he has thousands of computers uh and a lot of them very, very old that SHE features on um a special segment that we have uh for jills museum and you know harvard museum. And in the fact that jill, you rely a lot on zora n is really, I think, a testament right for getting IT running those older machines that you have. I we're talking really old machines and nowhere once two but you have some really old machines that you yes, use this on which is awesome you know .

yeah and um in fact I wanted to tell you our R T M uh um i'm part of a local organization called the links chicks of los angles. And for one of our linux install ice about a year ago, we featured a zona s um and and showing people how to install in x using zoran. So that was a really awesome that's that that's really cool because one of the reasons we choose IT is because you also had the educational version, which is really good for the kids, and we have kids that come to our install us.

That's really, really cool to hear. Really glad to hear that. So, R.

T, M, you have made IT through this garment of questions on the street. But the real hard part happens. Now, this is the lightning round where we asked lots of arithmetic, uh, questions all time.

Talking about calculus. Trig, yeah.

And so you, no paper? No, no, no. A I GPT .

ready right now.

Kit, clippy, open your quick and see how that helps. We're going have a lightning round this. Just a couple of questions.

We're going to ask the first thing that comes to mind, uh, there is a really, uh, nothing serious here in these questions. So we just want to have some fun let people get to know you a little bit as well. You mention being a programmer. Someone start with the first question, which is, if you could use only one text editor for the rest of your life, which would IT be nano vim or something else.

I mean, i'm a bit weird in that eysies g adit .

number text .

editor in zones I just want that is just simple, gets out of your way, so use the .

default vella. Have plug ins for I D just .

have a little one. I just like simple. I know it's very strange, but I I now wants .

you to do like a live stream coating session so we can see how the salt works.

yeah. R, T, M, what you go to stack that you can't live without, especially when you're coating and your your buildings are now, yes.

I mean, i've tried to be a bit healthy over the past few years. So I generally reach for like an apple, a banana. I know it's a boring answer, but I know I like IT.

He didn't tell us that is dipped in caramel with nuts on IT.

That's my secret, right? That still means do we have a very .

deep and now it's like imagining you're onest a deserted island. You can only take one piece of tech, which also comes with a battery that you can charge or somehow there's it's a deserted and also has power utilities so you can charge IT. What is that .

going to be an s SOS locator beacon so I .

could get the .

heck out of that? That's alright. What's the last open source project that really impressed you? Be software destroy anything?

I come across a lot of them, just even just on flat hob h, just some of them up that show there. I think there was like one where I was an A I generated sort of photo generated kind of thing and just playing around with IT the fact that I was like really simple user friendly um you know I really spoke to me that I could just open IT type IT in. I don't have to log into any service. I thought that was pretty cool.

Nice if remember what it's called.

Let a ryan notes that he can use IT because he definitely ds that for done us on youtube.

Hey, how are you? I looked up and let you know.

So coffee or tea while coating, what's your preference? Which one do you like the best?

Uh, I generally go for tea. The unfortunately is my crypto onions. I won't bet what to sleep at night night. So even though I do like the taste of IT, ah I I go for the tea.

What about D, K, F?

Even decaf is too much for me, undeclared.

So for the tea. Is IT or old grey hot?

Just like card .

from star check? I like .

a very dear cat again. yeah. yeah.

So if you could talk with any person in the history of tech, how would IT be?

No, I think nicola tesla would be an interesting person.

What a beautiful choice.

That is a good one.

I feel like there's so much to his story about how, you know he was kind of astros zed, and he was a genius as creating so many amazing things. That's a good one. I love to talk to him.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's awesome. You made IT through the lightning round. We got nothing else left. Got nothing else left.

Do have one special one that ryan forgot. Which do you choose? Cupcakes or .

muffins? yes.

Probably melt .

ins simple again as someone .

installing after this.

So, R, T, M, thank you so much for coming back to destination linux. You know, we appreciate all the hard worker in your team does bringing linux to more people around the world. We would love to have you back on again at the next major zorn release.

Let's talk about the next door. really. We have you back. You don't talk about IT. I were all the great features and stuff we ve got to have you back on for that.

What would be this long? We just we had it's been so long to you on the show, we had so much to ask you, but you do IT in shorter increments. So we don't have to our interviews now. Thank you audience. We appreciate IT.

Yeah, no. Thanks so much for having me on IT. It's a blast as always, and i'm always happy to come back. Thanks so much.

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