https://thelinuxcast.org/Recent content on The Linux CastHugoen-usThis website is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2026/hardware/trackball-vs-mouse-which-is-better/Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2026/hardware/trackball-vs-mouse-which-is-better/Like most people, I was a mouse user for most of my computing career. Then I discovered trackballs, and my life changed forever. I vastly prefer a trackball over a traditional mouse. I want to talk about why. Accuracy I’m more accurate with a trackball. I know that this will not be true for everyone, but once I got good with my tracker, I found that I had more control and more accuracy when I used it.https://thelinuxcast.org/links/2026/rage-quiting-windows/Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:51:02 -0500https://thelinuxcast.org/links/2026/rage-quiting-windows/If you’re always finding the next reason not to switch, you’re not looking for solutions, you’re looking for excuses to stay complacent. I was that person, so I would know. And I didn’t really want to switch either, because who wants to re-learn how their computer should be operated from scratch? What I really wanted was for Windows to work, but Microsoft didn’t. I love this post. Microsoft is doing this to themselves, and Linux is benefiting.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2026/whatisit/what-is-a-makefile/Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:52:02 -0500https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2026/whatisit/what-is-a-makefile/If you’ve ever built something from source, you’ve probably seen a makefile. If you’re anything like me, you probably wonder what exactly is a makefile? The answer is quite simple actually. It’s a todo list for the make command. The make command does what it says on the tin: it makes things. Or really it builds things. But in order to know how to build something it needs instructions, which is where the makefile comes in.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2026/sitenews/a-new-year-a-new-design/Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:03:45 -0500https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2026/sitenews/a-new-year-a-new-design/So, if you’ve been here before, you may notice there’s a new coat of paint. Okay, sure, I used the same colors, but the design is new. I’ve been working on making the code for this blog a little better, while making the front page a little more useful. I’ve created a new about page, a new support page, and a new contact page. I’ve also added in a page that will always display the latest videos from the channel.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/my-return-to-qtile/Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:26:09 -0500https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/my-return-to-qtile/For the vast majority of 2025, I was a very happy Hyprland user. In fact, there is so much about Wayland and Hyprland specifically that I really enjoy, that if you’d asked me a few weeks ago if I’d ever switch back to X11, I’d have said absolutely not. The thing is, this is Hyprland we’re talking about. And while it has gotten way better than it had been when it comes to stability, it isn’t perfect.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/pro-tip-create-a-floating-workspace-on-hyprland/Fri, 24 Oct 2025 20:34:13 -0400https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/pro-tip-create-a-floating-workspace-on-hyprland/If you’re interested in having one (or more) workspace(s) on Hyprland that is floating only for any window that is spawned there, simply put this into your hyprland.conf: windowrule = float, workspace:5 windowrule = size 800 600, workspace:5 windowrule = center, workspace:5 Note that this works for Hyprland v 0.50 and above, before that the option would be windowrulev2 I have this set up for my workspace number 5, as you see above.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/i-had-ai-make-me-a-file-manager/Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:29:37 -0400https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/i-had-ai-make-me-a-file-manager/I love file managers. The first post on this site was about a file manager. I’ve made many videos about file managers over the years. I’ve actually been going through a bit of upheaval with file managers on Linux lately. For years, I used Krusader. I love Krusader, it has a ton of features, and is just about everything I would ever want in a file manager. Lately, however, I’ve uninstalled all the graphical file managers on my system and have been using Ranger instead.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/nextcloud-disappointment/Sun, 07 Sep 2025 01:06:24 -0400https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/nextcloud-disappointment/Back a few months ago, I was truly awed by Nextcloud. It does a lot, has a ton of extensibility, looks nice, and has so much potential to replace so many Google products. I thought, at the time, that I’d be using it constantly for all sorts of things. I thought I’d use it in place of Google Photos, Keep, Google Drive, pCloud, Google Forms, and maybe even Google Docs.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/i-miss-native-email/Mon, 25 Aug 2025 01:02:57 -0400https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/i-miss-native-email/I’ve been using Proton mail for almost a year now. For the most part, it has been great. I’ve thrown myself into the Proton ecosystem, using Pass, Calendar, and of course, Email. I also had tentative plans to move my VPN needs to Proton instead of re-upping Mullvad in the fall. On one hand, the ecosystem is fantastic. It all works well together, and does almost all the things I want it to do.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/things-i-like-about-emacs/Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:31:02 -0400https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/things-i-like-about-emacs/If you don’t follow my personal blog, you may not know this, but I’ve been conned into trying Emacs again. Okay, maybe conned is the wrong word. More like suckered into a bet. Goaded into it. One of my friends on the Discord was talking shit about openSUSE. That somehow ended up with him using openSUSE and me using Emacs. The first person to give up loses the bet. I’ve now been using vanilla Emacs for over a week, and I have a few things I actually like.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/you-should-learn-markdown/Sun, 20 Jul 2025 03:15:44 -0400https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/you-should-learn-markdown/One of the most important things I’ve learned in my 40 years on Earth is Markdown. Now, I know that seems like a big thing to say, and it is. But I really do think that it’s true. I use this every single day. Now I do a ton of writing and all the stuff I do for work is written in Markdown, so maybe I’m just biased. But for everyday people, I think some knowledge of Markdown is very important.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/5-things-ive-learned-about-nixos/Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/5-things-ive-learned-about-nixos/As I write this, I’m on day 4 of my next 2-year Linux Challenge. First off, it has been very weird not to be on openSUSE anymore. I used it for what seems like forever in Matt years, and being away from it just feels odd. I go to update, and there’s no more sudo zypper dup. Kinda sad, really. NixOS is a different kind of experience than anything I’ve really had before.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/i-tried-niri/Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/i-tried-niri/I may end up making a video about this, but I honestly don’t know if I have enough content for that, so it goes here first. A few days back, as of writing this, I decided to finally try Niri, the newest Wayland compositor. People have been asking for a while, and I decided it was finally time to give it a go. Install and Pre Setup The installation wasn’t difficult at all.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/a-return-to-blogging/Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/a-return-to-blogging/So, if you do some serious Google work, you’ll probably find some of my earliest online work. I was a blogger for a while during college because everyone was a blogger in 2006. You new-gen guys think that’s an exaggeration, but trust me, it is not. Blogging was Twitter before Twitter existed. We had Geocities, and Tumblr before it sucked, and WordPress before it sucked, and Blogger, and so many more.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/antennapodisawesome/Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/antennapodisawesome/I’ve used Pocket Casts on Android for years. When I’m on the iPhone, I usually stick with Apple Podcasts. Neither app is all that great. It does the job, but nothing more. When Pocket Casts was bought by Automatic, I had hopes that they would take it open source and try to be good stewards. They didn’t do that; instead, they created a Plus or premium plan that is exorbitantly expensive.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/howtomountdrives/Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/howtomountdrives/In this article, I will show how to mount and unmount a drive on Linux. There will be a video showing how to do this up on my channel soon. In The GUI In the GUI, you’ll need an application like Gnome Disks. Select the disk you want to mount in the sidebar. Hit the play button. This will mount the drive in /mnt Note, that the drive does need to be formatted and have a file system on it in order to be mounted.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/tablets/Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/tablets/A couple of years ago, I bought a used iPad on eBay. It was a couple hundred dollars, and my plan at the time was to use it as an e-reader. I read a ton (check out my personal blog here) and at the time I was quite sick of doing all my reading on my phone. I thought that the iPad would make a good reader and would maybe help me keep my attention on whatever I was supposed to be reading.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/plasmaagain/Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/plasmaagain/You know me. I like to switch my environment up a bit from time to time. Okay. Once a week. Though admittedly, it hasn’t been that bad lately. I use Gnome and Qtile, mostly Qtile, and that’s it. I do have Plasma on my laptop, and while using it, I found that gestures may be the best thing ever. The idea of using a swipe to switch back and forth to different workspaces, or back and forth in the browser, or up to show an app switcher, all makes Linux feel like it finally arrived in the future.https://thelinuxcast.org/videos/Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/videos/Latest videos from The Linux Cast YouTube channel.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/laptopdrama/Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2025/laptopdrama/So, I almost always purchase used tech. It just makes sense for me financially and from a moral perspective. If I can use something someone else is getting rid of, then it’s better for everyone. I’m savvy enough to usually get a lot of use out of older hardware for longer than other normies. But back in July of last year, my mom’s laptop shit the bed and needed repair. Dell jerked us around, sending three different technicians here to fix it, the first two actually making the issue worse, before the third one threw in the towel and just had us ship it to Texas to be fixed.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/curbingmytabhoarding/Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/curbingmytabhoarding/Becoming a Reformed Tab Hoarder I have talked a lot about how I collect tabs. My way of saving things for later is to stuff them into a tab and leave them there until I need them. I’ve been doing this for years, and while it’s not the most efficient workflow one could have, it works for me. I’m not the biggest tab hoarder I’ve met (Hi, Mom!) but I can get into the mid-100s from time to time.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/returning-to-linux-nerddom/Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/returning-to-linux-nerddom/Watching a smaller Linux YouTuber really made me think that I’ve gotten away from what I loved about Linux. At one point, I really liked to tinker with my system, write scripts to do cool things, and then show people in a video. Whether this was looking at a cool window manager or a terminal tool, it was fun for me and educational for others. Somewhere along the line, I got old.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/dactyl-manuform-review/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/dactyl-manuform-review/Everyone knows that I have a bit of a keyboard problem. I have spent thousands of dollars on keyboards over the years. I’ve built several of them, and I’ve considered getting a display case to show them off. I have a bit of an issue. My most recent purchase was a custom 3D-printed keyboard called a Dactyl Manuform (image below). It is by far the oddest keyboard that I’ve ever owned, even more so than the Moonlander that I had for a month last year.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/envy/Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/envy/Note This was written ages ago, well before the previous website took a crap and before I did finally move back to a Window Manager. I publish this here because patrons have had it for ages, so now you do too. Wouldn’t it be nice to use everything all the time? Maybe it’s just me, but I see other people trying out neat new things, and I have a bit of envy for their experiences.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/this-webiste/Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/this-webiste/So you may have noticed that there haven’t been many blog posts on this site in the last couple of months. And that was after me being on quite the roll. Well, it turns out that the static site generator that I had been using for a couple of years had shit the bed and I couldn’t get it to work no matter what I tried. It turns out the maintainer of the app, 11ty, pushed some updates that caused some conflicts and the only way to solve that issue was to wait until the next manor release.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/a-return-to-vim/Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/a-return-to-vim/About six months ago, I left Vim behind. My goal then was to have an easier IDE type experience while I learned Python without having to bury myself in a ton of plugins. I also found myself having a hard time transitioning my Neovim into Lua. I was, also at the time, using a DE and a GUI made more sense for me. My experiences with GUI text editors since then are far and wide.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/atrackballproblem/Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/atrackballproblem/A Trackball Problem For the last three years I have promoted the use of the Elecom Huge, a trackball mouse that I have adored from almost the moment I first bought one. I loved it so much, I bought another for my standing desk, and then bought a pack of four different size Elecom trackers from Amazon. It is an excellent trackball, with a design unlike any other and great customizability.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/snapshots-are-the-best/Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/snapshots-are-the-best/I have been a strong proponent of btrfs for years. I will argue until I’m blue in the face that it is the absolute best file system on Linux for most regular situations (RAID is obviously the biggest exception). The history of btrfs instability is overblown in my experience. Oh, it happened, but from my usage of it and those of my friends who have used it, it is just as stable as ext4 these days.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/window-manager-withdrawl/Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/window-manager-withdrawl/I’m a window manager guy. I cut my teeth on the likes of i3 and DWM, I even found myself liking Xmonad despite my dislike of Haskell. I adore almost everything about Window Managers. The workflow suits me, the customization and the thrill of building your own environment thrills me, and the community is highly enjoyable. But for the last month and a half, I’ve eschewed my true home. I’ve spent most of my time in Gnome (shudder) with a bit of time spent in the perpetually buggy, yet feature-rich, KDE Plasma.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/youtube-things-i-would-do-different/Sat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/2024/youtube-things-i-would-do-different/I like these types of lists, so I’ve done a couple of videos like this. But this one I thought would be more suitable for a blog post simply because it has nothing, really, to do with Linux. It all boils down to this question: If I were starting my YouTube channel today, what would I do differently? It’s a hard question, to be honest. Unlike all the other times I’ve done something like this, going back in time to when I decided to start the YouTube channel would have real consequences.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/this-is-a-blog-post/Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/this-is-a-blog-post/I know. There hasn’t been a blog post from me in literal ages. But, I’m back in the saddle again, and I want to see if I can get back into a habit of doing this before I have to make a New Year’s resolution to do so in six months. Not that I ever keep those, LMAO. Today I want to talk about saving money. Not really a topic that I’d normally talk about, but I think I can swing this into an actual Linux topic, let’s see how I do.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/todohardships/Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/todohardships/I posted on Mastodon about a month ago (as of writing this) about my quest to find the perfect to-do application. At the time, I was using the Todoist Electron app and had been for years. I’ve been a paying Todoist user for over a decade. I like Todoist. But the flatpak of the Electron app stopped working, so I thought I would finally make the jump to something free and open source.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/keyboard-challenge/Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/keyboard-challenge/So a little while ago, I made a video about how I was going to attempt to ditch my mouse as much as possible and just use the keyboard to do most if not all of my computing. I knew going in that there were going to have to be some exceptions for this challenge to work. Kdenlive, for example, is almost useless without a mouse. Yes, there are loads of keybindings, but the mouse makes it work just so much better.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-wasnt-wrong-about-wayland/Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-wasnt-wrong-about-wayland/So in recent videos (as of writing), I’ve been talking about how I have been trying out Hyprland, which is a Wayland compositor. It might be a bit confusing, given that a few weeks ago I made a video about how I was going to protest Wayland until the end of time. I still don’t like Wayland. But I need to at least try it; otherwise, I’m one of those guys who doesn’t like something for no reason.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/tutanota-is-bad/Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/tutanota-is-bad/So I’ve been meaning to switch away from Gmail for quite some time. In my quest to become more private, I always knew that switching away from Gmail was a step I would have to take. In response to a joke on a podcast, the guys mentioned having their own @thelinuxcast.org email addresses. So I thought that this would be a good time to switch myself away from Gmail. Especially since I’d have to deal with DNS anyway.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/legacy-media/Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/legacy-media/If you’re older than 30, you might be just like me: you probably have a shitload of legacy media laying around your house. I have CDs and DVDs, and worse I have VHS tapes and cassettes - a considerable amount of money from the past just laying around, completely useless. I mean, I don’t even have a VCR anymore and haven’t for at least a decade. Yet I have maybe 1000 VHS tapes sitting around on shelves and in boxes.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/less/Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/less/If have watched my channel for a while, you may have noticed that throughout the last few weeks, I’ve been posting fewer videos. For quite a while, I was an almost “everyday” poster. In fact, for almost 8 months I did do that, and for the better part of 2 and a half years, I posted 5 to 6 times a week. After I had covid back in March, my channel was nearly dead in terms of growth.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/diversification/Sun, 20 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/diversification/This past week (as I am writing this) I came the closest I have ever come to quitting YouTube. I know that sounds shocking, but it’s true. I was honestly so frustrated. It isn’t as if I do this for a living, so I don’t have to do it. I make content for fun. Any money I make is extra and very nice, but not something I need to live on.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/the-streamdeck-is-pretty-awesome/Sat, 05 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/the-streamdeck-is-pretty-awesome/I’ve always kind of wanted a Stream Deck (yes, Stream, not Steam). You know, those little boxes that sit on streamers’ desks that have a lot of buttons on them? They always looked awesome. But I’m not a streamer, never have been, really. Even once we started doing the podcast live, I didn’t consider myself enough of a streamer to justify the purchase. Then I found one on sale and I heard from one of my favorite Linux pods that there was a program that allowed you to use a Steam Deck on Linux.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-may-like-plasma-again/Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-may-like-plasma-again/Written a couple weeks ago. First off, it has only been a day, so I may change my mind about Plasma in the next few minutes (it has been known to happen), but as of right now, I may like KDE Plasma again. I’ve recently moved to Debian as my daily driver, after a week of the Linux gods hating on me (see the patron-only podcast this week for more info there).https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-bought-an-ipad/Mon, 26 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-bought-an-ipad/So, I bought an iPad. I, like many people, went through my Apple phase back in college. I fortunately grew out of it or my bank account would have severely suffered over the years. That doesn’t mean I don’t have envy every once in a while for those Apple folks who get to enjoy that awesome hardware. But that usually goes away pretty quickly. Honestly, I didn’t even think I’d ever own another non-iPhone Apple product again.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/begging-for-likes/Tue, 13 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/begging-for-likes/There was a Twitter thread a few days ago from some people who work at YouTube, and in that thread, it came out that likes on Videos are more important than watch time, which is what all of us have been told for years. Of course, we all knew likes were important, but watch duration was always supposed to be the king metric in whether or not your video got picked by the algorithm.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/early-thoughts-on-nano/Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/early-thoughts-on-nano/Editor’s Note: This was written just a week into me using Nano. Therefore I was still getting my sealegs. I am writing this in nano. I challenged myself earlier this week (as of writing this) to use Nano for a whole month, and I’ve stuck with it for almost a week. Almost. I’m not quitting, but I’ve come so close so many times. Actually, I come close every single time I open the damn editor.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/5-things-that-redcore-could-do-better/Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/5-things-that-redcore-could-do-better/This blog post was supposed to be done last week, but alas it got away from me. I still wanted to cover this topic, though, so I might as well go ahead and do it. I know it has been a while since I lost the challenge, but this is the last bit I needed to do before I can put it in the dustbin of history, as they say. So I want to talk about 5 things that I feel Redcore could do better.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/hoarder/Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/hoarder/I have a problem. I don’t think it’s actually a problem, but it feels like it’s a problem. I hoard tabs. Now I don’t think there’s anyone who watches my content that is all that surprised that I like tabs in every application, nor that I tend to use them an awful lot. I have always been very upfront about my love and devotion to all things tabulated. Okay, Matt, a little creepy there, but it’s true.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/an-obsession-with-gruvbox/Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/an-obsession-with-gruvbox/How many people do you think could write a blog post about their obsession with a color scheme? Well, you know at least one, because that is what I’m about to do. Now, I have in fact made a video about it already. I have considered making another video about it. I love Gruvbox that much. The funniest thing is that I didn’t used to like it at all. Brown isn’t really my color, neither is orange for that matter, and when I saw it for the first time I was not impressed.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/tiredofredcore/Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/tiredofredcore/I’m almost, almost, 2 months into the #6MonthLinuxChallenge. Almost. I’m sick of Redcore. It’s not as if there is anything wrong with it, though I’m having an issue keeping my clock appropriately set. Redcore has been fine, as I said in my video a few days ago. It’s stable enough, I have access to most of the software that I want, and it just works. But I’m astonishingly bored with it, to tell you the truth.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/pythongoals/Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/pythongoals/Note: This was written ages ago, so any time references will be way off. So, as I talked about in my goals post way back in January, I have decided to finally buckle down and learn how to code and I’ve chosen Python as my first language. Now, it is March, and I am finally getting started on that goal. Part of the reason it has taken so long is RL has just been kicking my ass since November with family health problems and other things going on.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/qtile/Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/qtile/So, last week I wrote about how I was commissioned to try xmonad for some time. I think, probably, y’all found that I was not so…shall we say, looking forward to it. Xmonad isn’t my favorite, and as I said in that blog post, me and that Window Manager have a history. So, is it at all surprising that I got sidetracked on the way to Xmonad? No. Not it is not.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/xmonad/Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/xmonad/I have a long and bloody history when it comes to the Xmonad window manager. I hate Haskell with a passion. Mostly, it’s a me problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with Haskell or Xmonad, I just don’t feel smart enough to actually use them. Every time I try, I get frustrated by them. But, it’s time to try them again. One of my upper-tier patrons has asked, and I have agreed to do so.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/gentoisscary/Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/gentoisscary/So, if you haven’t been paying attention to the channel, you’ll have missed that I started a challenge that has grown quite popular. I called it, creatively, The 6 Month Linux Challenge. The goal is to use a new distro for 6 months without hopping a single time on your main computer. Being the idiot that I am, I let others choose for me. I ended up on Redcore Linux. For those not in the know, it is based on Gentoo of all things.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/browser-anxiety/Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/browser-anxiety/I talked about this a bit in a recent video, but I’ve been thinking about my browser situation. A lot of the stuff Mozilla does pisses me off, and the new extension menu thing is one of them. I know it’s dumb to complain about, and I know with some work it can be disabled, but I hate it with a passion. Not only did it break userChrome (at least mine), but it just adds several extra clicks if you want to get to an extension that you didn’t have pinned before or it seems to.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-miss-window-managers/Tue, 07 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i-miss-window-managers/So I’ve been using XFCE for two weeks now (when I wrote this post a week ago). Overall, it has been a wonderful experience. Very satisfying and very educational. But the workflow is entirely different than what I’m used to. Not different as in bad, but different as in, it’s taken me a while to get used to. And I have gotten used to it. I’ve gotten used to knowing where my windows are in the pile of windows that I always have.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/noscratchpads/Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/noscratchpads/So as I’ve been talking about both in the Patron Exclusive Pod (available to all tiers) and on the channel, I’ve switched to XFCE. My plan is still to be on XFCE for 2 months (As I write this, I’m only a week in). I do miss my window managers, that’s for sure. I’m going to be itching to go back once this experiment is over, I have a feeling.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/pixel7proreview/Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/pixel7proreview/I have been on a bit of an adventure when it comes to my mobile phone. For the last year, I’ve been on the Galaxy S22+, which I purchased used off of Amazon (or refurbished). It served me well, but as the year went on, the battery life got progressively worse. So bad, in fact, that it would only last about 2 hours on a charge. So, I decided that I need to upgrade.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/goals/Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/goals/Happy New Year. I know it has been a while since my last blog post, so sorry about that, but the holidays and RL were happening, so it just kind of fell by the wayside. Blogging weekly is something I hope to get back into this year. I hope everyone had a great holiday season. Mine was quite good. Spent a lot of time with family, which makes all the headaches worth it for sure.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/nanowrimo/Fri, 09 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/nanowrimo/So, I’m going to talk about writing today. I know it’s not something that everyone is interested in, so I’ll just keep my thoughts constrained to a blog post instead of making a video about it. I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo since 2012. It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years, but it has. It is one of the events that I look forward to every year. For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, though I think that it has become international at this point.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/dvorak/Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/dvorak/If you managed to catch this last week’s pod, you know that Tyler was challenged to use Dvorak for two weeks. As the friend I am, I decided that I would take up that challenge alongside him. The one thing Tyler has at least discovered about this is that I’m a crappy cheerleader. Also, not much of a friend, since I abandoned him 6 days in. But you know how that goes.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/fedora/Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/fedora/Four months with Fedora. I think part of my reason for writing this post and making as many videos about Fedora as I have in the last four months is that part of me wants to prove the nay-sayers wrong. See, I’m still here. I didn’t distro hop. But, that’s only a small part. The rest of it is that Fedora has just been so good. I have had a lot of luck when it comes to Linux.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/q1review/Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/q1review/Anyone who has followed me for any amount of time knows that I’m a keyboard nerd. I collect mechanical keyboards, and while I don’t go crazy like some people in this space, I have more keyboards than I should. I got a new one. LOL. I decided that with the increased use of my standing desk that I was sick of the blue switches on my Vortex Race3. That board isn’t hot-swap, so I was kind of stuck.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/changingsetups/Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/changingsetups/Over the last week or so, I’ve been working on improving my setup. I’ve already written about the new Microphone and the new audio interface (both of which I’m really enjoying), but I’ve not talked about a couple other changes that I’ve decided to make. First, the monitor on my standing desk died. As you know if you’ve read the previous blog posts about this, I’m working on getting my standing desk set up so I can do some voice overs and some videos from there.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/twitterpopularity/Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/twitterpopularity/I have been a member of Twitter since 2009. I will be completely honest and say for the first, oh, I don’t know, 5 years or so, I was mostly the type of Twitter user who posted things like “I’m home” and “Here’s my dinner”. Very exciting stuff, let me tell you. But even then, I had high aspirations. As anyone can attest who was around in those early days of social media, it was a common dream to have a large following of people who waited with bated breaths for your next amazing post.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/newmic/Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/newmic/So I’ve purchased a new microphone. I’ve spent the last few days researching and in the end I decided to go with the Shure SM7b. I know that it’s a cliche podcaster/YouTuber microphone, but I don’t care all that much. People use it for a reason. It’s really good. The other option was the EV RE20, which is the slightly cheaper brother to the microphone that DistroTube uses. I really liked that mic, but it requires a shock mount that is another $100 on top of the cost of the microphone.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/workspaces/Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/workspaces/I think anyone who has watched my content for any period of time knows that I have a workspace problem. I use a ton of them, so much so that it has kind of become a meme. Often times I have content on 14-15 workspaces at a time. I’ve talked about this and the reason why I work this way in several videos, so this isn’t news to anyone who has watched my videos for some time.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/mobileandroidemailsucks/Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/mobileandroidemailsucks/Most of my email use is actually on my phone. I’ve never found an email client on Linux that I really like (I use Thunderbird, but it has so many issues). When I’m on iOS, the email clients are great and plentiful. And while there are many email clients on Android, there aren’t many good ones, or at least not any good ones that don’t also come with a huge caveat (which I’ll talk about later).https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/ideas/Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/ideas/I don’t know if you guys have noticed or not, but sometimes the videos that come out on the channel are a bit lackluster. I do try to come up with and produce good content. But nobody can create good content all the time. Sometimes there are stinkers. I’ll admit that the absolute hardest part of doing this is the ideas behind the content. Coming up with new ideas, especially when you put out as many videos as I do, is really effin’ hard.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i_love_fedora/Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/i_love_fedora/So a couple of weeks ago, my Arch system sh^t the bed. Most of the issues where were my fault. Turns out uninstalling Plasma from a Plasma Distro is not a great idea. Who knew? Or maybe I knew, and I did it anyways, because I do what I want, b*tches. Sorry, too much South Park. Anyways, after that happened, I decided that I needed to move away from Arch. I know from some of the snarky comments I received on YouTube that a lot of people had no faith that I would leave Arch behind for good.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/in_defense_of_ricing/Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/in_defense_of_ricing/I get a lot of comments about how dumb it is to constantly change the look of my setup, that I spend too much time customizing the look and feel and not enough time working. Almost every video I’ve ever done that has something to do with ricing has at least one comment like that. The thing is, I like ricing. I’ve talked about this in a video before. I know that I do spend too much time customizing my window manager, but I don’t care.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/updating_site/Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/updating_site/It has been a bit since my last blog post. The website was such a pain in the bum to update, I just didn’t bother writing. Luckily, thanks to Joris, that is a think of the past. Joris has spent time setting me up with a brand new website back end based on Eleventy. It means I can write my posts here in Markdown and not have to use pandoc to go to html and then update the site manually through it.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0005/Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0005/I’ve been creating videos now on YouTube since September 2020. While that doesn’t seem like all that long, in that time I’ve created over 400 videos, had over 1,000,000 views, and I’m really close to 10,000 subscribers. So, I think that I am qualified enough to talk about some YouTube stuff. I call it stuff because talking about Mental Health is always uncomfortable. Nobody likes doing it, and nobody likes listening to it because it makes us all think about our own struggles with emotions and the everyday grind of life in the Real World.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0004/Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0004/On this past Sunday night (or a week ago Sunday if you’re not a patron), I had a huge plan. I was going to rice i3wm over and over again, creating several themes. It’s something I did for DWM and wanted (and still want) to do for i3 now that i3wm is my daily driver again. The problem is that once I got streaming, no one could hear me. And I was like what the F$#k?https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0003/Tue, 07 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0003/My love affair with the AUR is well documented. It’s so bad I can’t use anything that’s not Arch-based on my main computer. Without the AUR, I just feel lost and without all of my lovely programs. (I’m really not without them, of course. The repos on Debian/Ubuntu/MX are great for the most part) Even with that love affair still going strong, I find myself enjoying Flatpaks more and more. Some of this is some recent problems with building some apps from the AUR.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0002/Mon, 06 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0002/In an effort to start to move around more and become more healthy, I decided that I would do the nerd thing and buy a gadget to keep track of health and fitness metrics. Because I switched to the iPhone - and from everything I read, Android watches suck - I decided I would pick up an Apple Watch. I’ve been using this thing now for a week, and I thought I’d write about my experiences so far.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0006/Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0006/A few months ago, I talked about how I switched to iOS after having used Android for almost 3 years. As I said then, that switch was one that I usually do every 3 years or so, if only to see what the other main platform has come up with. For the last few months, I’ve been using an iPhone 11 Pro Max, and to be honest, I love the hardware but I can’t stand iOS.https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0001/Thu, 05 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/posts/0001/I’m a nerd. Kind of obvious, of course, but there is no place where my nerd-dom shines more as when I start talking about file managers. It’s ridiculous, really. I have spend dozens of hours over the last two years looking for the ‘perfect’ file manager. Thunar didn’t have dual pane mode, so I switched to Nemo, which had that feature. Nemo didn’t remember close state, so I switched to Dolphin.https://thelinuxcast.org/about/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/about/About The Linux Cast The Linux Cast is a podcast and YouTube channel dedicated to exploring Linux, open source software, self-hosting, and digital independence. We break down complex technical topics into accessible discussions, review the latest Linux distributions, and share practical tips for everyday Linux users. Our content ranges from beginner-friendly tutorials to in-depth discussions about privacy, de-Googling, and building your own self-hosted infrastructure. Whether you’re new to Linux or a seasoned veteran, we aim to inform, educate, and occasionally entertain.https://thelinuxcast.org/contact/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/contact/ Name Email Message Website Send Messagehttps://thelinuxcast.org/old_podcasts/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/old_podcasts/Season 10 11. Manjaro and LibreOffice Have DRAMA! 10. Arch Linux in 2026 - Still Worth It? - With DistroTube 09. Most Underrated Linux Tools 2026 08. What Is the Hardest Thing You’ve Done on Linux? 07. Zed Editor Review 06. Note Taking Apps Tier List 05. Should Old Tech Make a Comeback? 04. Wayland Window Managers and More with TheBlackDon ​ 03. What Should be Default on Linux? 02.https://thelinuxcast.org/support/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/support/Support The Linux Cast Your support helps us create more content and keep the podcast running! Monthly Support Patreon Join our Patreon community for exclusive perks and early access to content. Support on Patreon LiberaPay Support us through LiberaPay with recurring donations. Support on LiberaPay One-Time Support Ko-fi Buy us a coffee! One-time donations are always appreciated. Support on Ko-fi Official Merch Show your support with official The Linux Cast merchandise!https://thelinuxcast.org/stuff/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://thelinuxcast.org/stuff/My Gear (Affilliate Links) Shure sm7b - https://amzn.to/42jvata LG Dual Up Monitor - https://amzn.to/42h7m9e Sceptre 32 Curved Monitor - https://amzn.to/40CHoeY Edifier R1280T - https://amzn.to/4gValbW Elgato Stream Deck MK2 - https://amzn.to/4ga1MJa Universal Audio Volt 276 - https://amzn.to/4jd8ukh iPhone 15 Pro Mac - https://amzn.to/4jmxdT2 Logitech Brio Webcam - https://amzn.to/4aqoRFZ Weilisi Desk Ring Light - https://amzn.to/4aqp1gz Logitech MX Master 3 - https://amzn.to/3Wm5A2E Elecom Hugo Trackball Dactyl Manuform Keyboard Computer 3800x Ryzen 6750xt AMD GPU 64GB RAM NZXT H500 Case Software NixOS Hyprland * Ranger Discord Emacs Rofi-Wayland My Dotfiles