@dremcat4 Netgate has already made a replacement for Pfsense. They call it Tnsr. It is a router on Linux without a firewall. I would like to see a web interface built into Tnsr just like they did with Pfsense, or maybe take Pfsense and replace Free BSB with Linux.
Proper tree organization of files would help a lot.
People tend to pile everything in one place and spend a lot of time looking for it.
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The ack tool is your friend. 
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We are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame. Layer upon layer we add complexity thinking it will make our lives easier. Ultimately we spend so much of our time dealing with obscure interoperability issues that we stop making real progress.
Time and energy are our most valuable resources, so I think there is value in projects that reduce complexity, conserve energy and save time.
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Subject idea
Neither of these two are exactly what you’re talking about but it’s what I’m very interested in in the Linux space so I thought I’d share
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Mobile Linux
Since getting a pinephone I have been opened up a whole new “bleeding edge” side of linux. There are a few problems like lack of standards, hardware issues, and simply not enough people/attention. When the Pinephone Pro was announced we saw a jump in interest but since then development has slowed as there have been people losing interest. @ThatGuyB above talks about his challenges with linux and ARM which fits right in to this topic.
I think a video with either a phosh or postmarketos developer would be very interesting. Let them show off their set up, share where they think the weak points are, and talk about what they’re looking forward to. I know I would really appreciate it -
Ham Radio and Linux
Amateur radio is seeing a bit of a renaissance right now and there is a large overlap of new Hams and linux users. People are interested in the wireless technology and seeing how things tick. I know I’m getting into embedded devices for the first time thanks to ham radio. You could really get in to some interesting topics like setting up a radio as a network device on your machine. Another thing that’s kind of adjacent is mesh networking. I think that could really take off if more people were interested. This one is definitely less organized than my first point but it’s what I’m interested in right now
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Responding to latest fireside video
My Pitch : Forking QubesOS and make it user friendly (and support vGPU)
Most of the long term vision of security, sandboxing, snapshoting, is already supported in QubesOS.
If only it was designed for the average user in mind, and not, “security-at-all-cost” folks. Because the UX is currently a dealbreaker (even though I daily drove it for months)
I have a much longer breakdown on how this would be possible / would work here : Is there a lightweight QUBES like OS ( or should we build a "fork"? )
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I’d love to see more distributed VM systems / clustered filesystem content. In the Kubernetes space there’s Rancher’s Harvester software that builds an HCI platform with Kubernetes and KubeVirt. There’s also the Rook project for running Ceph on Kubernetes. I think there’s a lot of content potential for these “business production quality” platform as a service FOSS tools.
Whenever I hear fireside chat I can’t help but think of the “This is fine!” meme, that is, we stand there and casually chat while everything around us goes up in flames. Maybe this is because this is what the world feels like to me at the moment, but I digress.
I think it could be interesting to do something about Pipewire.
I switched to Pipewire and Wireplumber and tried to set it up for audio production. As a replacement for JACK with low latency and everything. I found the configuration to be really difficult and the performance left a lot to be desired. I think Unfa, an electronic music producer, experienced the same. I know this is a niche topic but sooner or later most of us will have to deal with Pipewire in some form. One problem I see with doing anything on it is that it is still changing quite a bit. Still, I think it would be nice to do an interview with some demanding user like Unfa or with one of the devs (I think the main guy works at Red Hat).
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How about linux on ARM? The purpose? A secure os, such as alpine linux, built on a reasonably secure architecture, that can be done on a student budget. The whole process seems woefully undocumented, at least from what I can find. Everything from the installation setup, the boot process, kernel specific knowledge, and virtualisation (given that lack of application support). While RiscV isn’t there yet, ARM has made leaps and bounds. Apple shouldn’t be the only ones who get to have a reasonably secure system, with their verified boot, secure enclave, and all the rest of it. Surely the opensource community can raise the bar to combine hardware and software in a secure manner. Who better to push this envelope?
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Check out my thread about Biky in ARMLand. I am documenting SBC boot processes, bootloaders and switching kernels. I tackled Petitboot, now I’m looking into u-boot.
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I don’t really know if this would transfer as a video. But one thing would be nice to have is some sort of general overview of things; Like if you need to do this, then that is good place to start learn.
If you want to setup networking / routing, look these up…
Want to setup containers, heres what you need to get started.
Bash scriptring - here’s good one for that.
General linux config.
and so-on.
Ps. might be bit late…
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I think it would be great if you could either get an interview with barnacules about being an OS dev
Or somehow convince him to put his skills to use making linux way more plug and play and making the/an OS way more user friendly. Like if we could get a windows xp/windows 7 UI/function wrapper pretty much that’d be amazing. Especially once my steam deck comes in…maybe focus on SteamOS too as it may become more mainstream.
People need to remember that engineering is the art of taking things away and still having a working solution, not adding more layers.
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Are Barnacules and Auxx doing any content lately only seen a few tweets, I think his back and meds are causing him pain again.
One linux question that I have is around the uefi shell and grub for virtual machines. I use qemu/KVM for VMs and most of the time, booting is seamless. Every once in a while, I do something unholy or unusual, and I get stuck in the uefi shell or the grub shell of the VM… like resizing/switching virtual disks, moving VMs, or encrypting disks. I recall I had to manually type in the UUID for a luks volume in the libvirt managerb window to set the root volume once.
I think a short primer of some rescue commands would be wonderful. I usually get unstuck, but I feel like I’m just flinging things from the internet at it until it boots. And of course, since I’m trying to do other things and the uefi/grub challenge is just a detour, I usually move on and never figure out why it worked.
I have a vague recollection that in grub, the commands are something like initrd, linux, start; and in uefi, you just start the grub.efi binary to get things going.
A slightly related issue stems from dual/multi booting several Linux distros… It seems like grub gets installed in multiple places, but it mostly works out since grub usually plays nicely with other Linux distros.
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He’s been doing livestreams again for a while
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That’s not my experience. The different grub installs fight each other as to who controls the boot.
You’re right, it mostly works, but then it doesn’t. Best to designate one install as the boss, and tell the others not to interfere. (One does this on debian distros by installing the grub -bin packages.) Or, install grub to it’s own partition or subvolume, and have none of the installs screwing things up, at the cost of some manual updating.
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That’s great. thank you.
Suggestion
How to centrally manage WSL2.
A great topic that’s become huge in the linux world over the past few years is eBPF. I’ve worked with it/on it for he past few years and think it’s a great piece of tech that more people should know about.
Another cool topic would be a deep dive into the linux kernel network stack. And the traditional strategies and techniques for scaling and optimizing for greater latency and throughput.
I can help bootstrap forum threads on the above two things if people are interested.
Bufferbloat and topics related to internet connection quality are something that deserve more attention. Would be cool to see a fireside with Dave Taht on the matter.
Plenty of people seem to love storage related topics. Not something I’m very familiar with, but there are big names in the linux kernel development community that are constantly benchmarking and improving storage and new tech like io_uring. Managing to get Jens Axboe on a video would be cool as heck.
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