Bill Schouten 00:00:13

Hello, and welcome to The Sudu Show, where business meets Linux. My name is Bill, and joining me this evening are Neil and Noel. Nice to see you both here. How are you doing?


Neal Gompa 00:00:24

 Great. It's always a treasure and a pleasure, Bill. And we've got, you know, our new guy, Noel, here. It's exciting.


00:00:31

 How are you?


Noel Miller 00:00:32

 Absolutely. Doing really well. It's been a busy day, but I'm excited to talk about some cool stuff today.


Bill Schouten 00:00:39

 So what's on the radar, gentlemen? What do we got going on? Fill me in on... the activities of today.


Neal Gompa 00:00:46

 Ah, alright, so... Uh, I don't know if you've heard yet, Bill. So, but... This is the Year of the Wayland.


Bill Schouten 00:00:58

 Wasn't that supposed to be last year or the year before, the year before that?


Neal Gompa 00:01:02

 Yes, yes, yes, I know, I know, I know. But this time it's for real. We're even close to maybe the year of the Linux desktop, but we'll get into that some other time.


Noel Miller 00:01:11

 Oh, Lord.


Neal Gompa 00:01:15

 Hey. It's happening. But 2026 is officially the year. That's it.


00:01:22

 We're seeing Weyland.


00:01:24

 Essentially take over, right? So X11 is being sunset across the board. Um, the beginning of last... quite some time ago. Um... You know, Fedora Linux was kind of a pioneer in this. They did the first with Fedora KDE, with Fedora Linux 40, where they made... Um, KD Plasma, awayland, only experience, and then just with Fedora 43 that was released last fall— Fedora Workstation shipping the GNOME desktop— they did the same thing. These were essentially done.


00:01:59

 To prepare the relevant projects, you know, KD Plasma and the GNOME Desktop. For this world, and now we're seeing this coming to fruition— the very end of of last year. The KDE project put out an announcement stating that, starting with Plasma 6. 8, it is going to be a Wayland only experience. The X11 session is being retired, it is deprecated with 6. 6, which is releasing um at the time of this recording.


00:02:33

 It is January, so it'll be releasing next month in February.


00:02:37

 And that will be the first release where it is deprecated. And the expectation is that 6. 7 will be the last release to have it. 6. 8 will not include it. Um.


00:02:49

 Gnome has had a similar notice. They put their deprecation with Gnome 48.


00:02:55

 And it has been enforced with GNOME 49, and it is being removed with GNOME 50, which is releasing... uh, it later this spring with uh, you'll see it with like Ubuntu uh 26. 04 LTS as well as Fedora Linux 44.


00:03:16

 and other Linux distributions, rolling or otherwise, that will incorporate the GNOME desktop release as part of their regular processor cadence. So that's coming in with GNOME 50. And. You're going to see more Linux distributions, particularly maybe the ones that, you know, have longer views of how their software is maintained. They're probably going to start being a little bit more aggressive about eliminating the X11 session.


00:03:42

 Because of the limited lifetime that's coming into there.


00:03:47

 Now. There's quite a bunch going on all at the same time. Noel, what do you think about it from the ecosystem perspective? There's, you know, like you've got so many people already using it. Like I think 80% of Plasma is already on board. And of course, like it's somewhere similar for GNOME as well. What do you think about it?


Noel Miller 00:04:05

 I mean, speaking from the perspective of of people who play video games, because I'm involved with the project, X11 has really never been something that we've had strong desire to ship in any meaningful way inside of Bazite. It just doesn't, you know, have the features that we need. You know, the features that modern gamers are looking for. So that's a big reason why we, I mean, at one point, I think we shipped it. Like, as, you know, basically you could just RPMOS tree and install it yourself, you know, because it was available in the package repositories. But at this point. Like, you know, Bazite hasn't had the desire to do it. I know other, you know, downstream projects as well as ecosystem projects just don't ship, you know. 11 out of the box for any particular reason. I think the biggest concerns that people have had from the ecosystem and the complaints that I've seen about deprecating and removing X11 have just been related around accessibility issues.


00:05:09

 And I know that, you know, those things are definitely important, but at the same time. There is nothing that drives change like the imminence of, you know, you have to do it or it's not your thing is not going to work anymore. And so. From my perspective, I think this is a really good change. And I do think that at least our particular users of Bazite have not really seen a need for X11. And a lot of them don't even know what it is.


Neal Gompa 00:05:43

 So that's a wonderful world that's a wonderful world to be in to not know what that is. I can say, from my experience, again, I am involved in the Fedora Linux project for Fedora KDE, as well as Fedora Workstation, as well as in the KDE project upstream at GNOME, as well as other places, as part of the work I do in Velocity Limitless.


00:06:06

 This is a real... um, difficult pill for some people to swallow, but... It's also a pill that people are finally getting on board of swallowing. So I've been talking to lots of different groups of people and we've, you know, there've been identified concerns like. There's a surprising number of people that use desktops over the internet. So headless remote desktops, remote assistants, a number of those features. Features that just really haven't been a top-level concern for a while— those are now like top priorities within Plasma and GNOME already addressed most of the things that in in the way that they're that they want to. For I think it's like the GNOME 49 that most of this 48 and 49 that this came out um so for Plasma 6. 6 and 6. 7 We're going to actually start seeing those features also roll out the Plasma login manager that's coming with Plasma 6. 6 and going to be shipping with Fedora Linux 44. Is a starting point for solving these problems.


00:07:08

 Now, things around hardware is, I think, another concern that people have.


00:07:12

 My experience so far is that this is actually a problem that has essentially resolved itself, and now it's just... User experiences have to catch up with reality because perception often lags reality. And so this is, this is something that has. already been improving for a while and is in a much better place.


00:07:34

 But people first have to experience it to believe it.


00:07:38

 So from the point of view of like, hey, where are the main gaps left? The extensibility stuff, I think, is one of those continuous journey things. At least speaking from Katie Plath's most point of view, I think we're at parity with what we've had before in X11. We actually have a few features that didn't exist before. Um.


00:07:55

 So I think it's just now, how do we get to the next level of providing a better experience for? people who need assistance to use their computer and providing better interfaces to provide extensibility and flexibility for those people as well. And those are all things that are active conversations and active development going on within at least the KDE.


Noel Miller 00:08:21

 Absolutely. Yeah, no, I think that's great to hear. I mean, that's really the main complaint that I see in the Linux ecosystem community from my perspective is. complaints about, you know, you move my cheese. Now, how do I do this? You know, or this feature doesn't exist. You know, we always make the joke about spacebar heating and it's like, you know. Do you need it? I don't know.


Bill Schouten 00:08:46

 Ace bar heating. I haven't heard that one before, but I think about. The change from X to Wayland in my years of using Linux historically, I remember trying to make X11 play nice with... Not one, not two, but three 24-inch CRT monitors. These were so heavy that they actually warped my desk over time.


00:09:12

 And now such a thing would be trivial with Wayland. I think about a laptop I plug into my dock at this other station here next to me and poof, all my monitors just work. And that would have been. Nigh impossible with X.


00:09:26

 Unless you knew some sort of dark magic to tweak settings and create custom scripts and initialize all of that. But oh, my God, nobody wants to do that anymore. Nobody has time to do that anymore. And I think the takeaway that I have from our little stand up here is.


00:09:43

 One of the end goals that Wayland is going to help business is it's going to save time.


00:09:50

 Time is money.


Neal Gompa 00:09:51

 And it's not just that. It's going to be an enabler for new workflows and operations and capabilities that you're going to need to do. Um, in whatever use case you have or and or environment that you're operating, Yep, absolutely.


Bill Schouten 00:10:06

 Good point. On every episode of Sudo Show, we are going to have a section called Supporter Spotlight. And the goal of Supporter Spotlight is to highlight a company that is contributing back to open source and how they're doing it. And to kick off our supporter spotlight, we wanted to talk about. Red Hat, and maybe some of the stuff going on with FWAPD or FWAPD or LVFS, however you know about it. But those are letters and acronyms that I know. Expert on. You guys know more about this. So let's talk about this a little bit. What Red Hat is doing? What FWAPD is? What LVFS is? What does it mean? How does it help the business community?


Noel Miller 00:10:47

 Yeah, absolutely. So what I know about FWEPD and LBFS is that they basically make installing firmware simpler.


00:10:57

 updates specifically. And so one thing that was always frustrating in the past was feeling like you had to dual boot Windows on your PC in order to basically be able to have firmware updates. And so, because the tooling just doesn't... didn't exist or was specialized in a lot of cases, um, and basically would, would cause you to not be able to, uh, to update your firmware. And so, um, when I started using FWPD and again, you know, still like in comparison to these guys very new to the linux community, um, but like it was really nice to just have a tool that basically just allowed me to update my firmware when I needed it to. And so, learned recently that Richard Hughes is the one basically who primarily works on it, um, on the Red Hat side. And he has definitely been doing some amazing work and it's always nice to hear.


00:12:02

 You know, the company that I work for, which big reason why I work at Red Hat, is because of their desire to give back to open source. But it allows you basically to not have to use either specialized tooling. It provides kind of a centralized place for that.


Neal Gompa 00:12:21

 Well, I think it takes a little bit more than just that, right? So Richard Hughes, awesome dude, has done a lot in the open source community.


00:12:31

 You've heard of package kit and and handling multimedia codec, and a bunch of other things that he's he's worked on over the years. Um, he is.


00:12:43

 Basically, the guy who tries to make the bridge between hardware and software work. And he created.


00:12:52

 The Firmware Updater Service, or FUPD, and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, which is LVFS.


00:13:00

 Four. The purpose of making it easier to ship. All the ship firmware updates to get make people's systems more secure.


00:13:10

 In a very safe, straightforward and auditable way because it's all open source, the whole stack. And you know, the funny thing is. He made this originally because he made his own colorimeter.


00:13:24

 That he used to sell as a little hustle to have an inexpensive open source colorimeter that worked with Linux. He started all of this because of color science and And it just blew out beyond his wildest dreams. And it's amazing, right? And the big part about this, and this is why Red Hat is the spotlight for this, is that this was something that they didn't have to support. They didn't have to do anything to make this successful. They didn't have to do anything to encourage it or.


00:14:00

 or any of this sort of thing. But no, not only did they go, 'Hey, this is neat.' The thing you're doing is pretty cool. Can we make it even better? Mm-hmm. Basically, made it his shtick at Red Hat for the past, I don't know, what, 10 years now, I think? Um... And he has spent virtually all of his paid time on a thing that doesn't really directly give Red Hat any revenue or any of that other stuff. And it's primarily desktop-focused. It broadened further into the server space and all these other places embedded. Heck, I think, like, my mouse gets firmware updates from LVFS now, which is just mind-blowing.


Noel Miller 00:14:49

 It's super cool, though, because again, like when I talked about the idea of having to dual boot Windows essentially in order to be able to get these, you know, desktop firmware updates. I mean, I think it even handles BIOS updates, doesn't it? Well, it does.


Neal Gompa 00:15:05

 It can. I think currently it's EFI as well as a bunch of peripheral custom protocols. But also, FUFDI is pluggable. You can add another thing that it can handle easily enough. But, like... The whole, the point is, right, like this is something. That has turned out to be a tremendous boon for the community.


Noel Miller 00:15:28

 Mm-hmm.


Neal Gompa 00:15:30

 No one, Redhead, I don't think actually gets enough props. or recognition for the fact that they essentially were janitors of this project and, like, Richard Hughes definitely deserves more shout-out, support, and love for the stuff that he's doing in this space. And I'm very thankful that I've actually met him and, like, have a pretty solid friendship with him. And, like... If I'm ever managed to be in London again, at some point, I hope we get to sit down and have beers together. Cause it's been way too bloody long, but man. This stuff is amazing. And I hope that there are others that we get to cover that do just as all kinds of amazing stuff too. Like this is. This is the kind of thing that I think really does help show that the community is way bigger, way wider, and way more unexpected than you would ever think.


Bill Schouten 00:16:23

 And I think of the sysadmin that is just trying to maybe maintain a small fleet of Linux machines. HP, Lenovo, Dell will stick with their big three. And I know for a fact that when I plug my laptop into my dock or I'm just using it at home and I log into KDE Discover and I go to run updates, I see those updates baked right in. Whether it's for that docking station, whether it's for the laptop at the BIOS level. All of that matters because I remember a day when I would have to. Take the laptop offline. Open up the back of it, take the SSD out, put the Windows SSD in, reassemble it, turn it on, boot into Windows, run the firmware updates, shut everything down. Undo the process, take the SSD out, put the Linux SSD back in, reassemble the laptop, turn it back on, and run all of the updates.


Neal Gompa 00:17:17

 Unless you didn't have to boot into DOS. That's what I had to do for my machines. Tchau, tchau.


Bill Schouten 00:17:24

 I would have rather done that.


Neal Gompa 00:17:26

 So the servers that I had to maintain and some of the older workstations that I worked with— no, you had to get like a boot floppy. And by the way, these computers did not have floppy drives. That means I had to go find a USB floppy drive, configure the BIOS to boot the floppy drive.


00:17:45

 Have a boot disk, which means finding a floppy disk that works, which is really bloody hard. And again, this wasn't that long ago. This was 2015.


00:17:55

 So... And I was looking for boot floppies to put them in. And then I'm literally changing floppies as if I'm installing Windows 95 all over again to go and just do. And it's just like, this is silly. I should not have to do this. But this is what I'm doing. Now, this is no one does that anymore.


Noel Miller 00:18:13

 Mm-hmm.


Neal Gompa 00:18:14

 And that saves you time, money, and keeps you from doing weird things with your computers. Weird things is the big deal.


Bill Schouten 00:18:20

 Weird things is the big deal. I think we all want to avoid doing weird things to the computers. And I think we all want to avoid the computers ending up doing weird things to us. Because I can imagine you sitting in front of machines changing out floppies. Maybe, maybe falling asleep and then asking yourself. What floppy was I on? Oh, God.


00:18:43

 I remember my uncle installing SUSE Linux this way with a series of floppies over the years.


00:18:50

 And I remember the days that I had to use jumpers to configure where to make the PC boot from.


Neal Gompa 00:18:56

 So that I do remember doing too. Jumpers and IDE and figuring out what your interrupts were. I freaking hated figuring out interrupts. Those were the worst.


Bill Schouten 00:19:09

 Those are the best.


Neal Gompa 00:19:11

 I hate you.


Bill Schouten 00:19:11

 How do you keep somebody from breaking into a car? Make it a stick shift. How do you keep somebody from breaking into a computer? Use jumpers.


Neal Gompa 00:19:19

 No, no. Jumpers were not designed for good people. They were designed for insane people.


Bill Schouten 00:19:28

 I survived the jumper era, and look at me. I'm perfectly normal. I survived the jumper era. I think nobody can describe me as normal.


00:19:38

 Our normalcy is a topic for another show. Sure. But since we're kind of all talking about some fundamentals of computing, how we ended up updating BIOSes, me using jumpers. uh, Noel.


00:19:53

 is so new to Linux that he just downloaded his first ISO this afternoon.


00:19:58

 Yeah, pretty much. And then before that, he was downloading RAM. He was downloading RAM, all the RAM. And that must have cost him a pretty penny considering how expensive RAM is right now. Dude, RAM is ridiculous. I'm so glad you can download it for free.


00:20:13

 Let me know how that goes for you, okay?


00:20:18

 But RAM is part of a nuts and bolts part of a PC.


00:20:22

 And what we wanted to talk about, referring to beginnings and nuts and bolts, was kind of how we all got into our careers, whether it was through schooling.


00:20:34

 And yes, the School of Hard Knocks does count. Whether it was employer-based training, whether it was the day I built the first PC and it didn't catch fire and I felt victorious that day. And to kick this off, I wanted to go back to Sudo Show episode four, where originally Brandon and Eric had talked about this. Now, Brandon and Eric— or not— on the show anymore. And that's why I thought it would be good for us to revisit this with a little bit of fresh perspective, because the three of us all have very different backgrounds and how we got into the positions that we're in now and the work we do is very different.


00:21:14

 But that's what makes it so cool. And that's what makes it so neat. And because we're all in open source some way, we can all contribute back to those that are just getting into this career. So, Noel, I want to kind of find out from you first, since you're the newbie on the network here, about how you got started in Linux and technology and what parts of that learning are important to you.


Noel Miller 00:21:40

 Yeah. You know, it's probably a good idea to establish some level of credibility with with, you know, the people, not just any crazy Yahoo that is trying to give them career advice. Yeah. Are you sure?


00:21:56

 But you just started using Linux about an hour ago. That's so true. Just one hour ago. First time ever I installed. You're doing good. My favorite Arch Linux. No, I think.


00:22:08

 Sorry, I had to make Neil cringe a little bit.


00:22:12

 Um, yeah, no, I, I think, um, so I tear my, my career is. Weird.


Neal Gompa 00:22:21

 I, you know, I'm not sure any of us can be considered conventional.


Noel Miller 00:22:25

 No, I don't know that. Yeah. After talking with these guys privately. Yeah. I mean, I don't. I don't think that there are a lot of conventional things you can do. Other than just get, you know, good advice. And so the way that my career started, essentially, was: I got out of high school. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was like, 'I like computers, but I, everybody told me that I had. I had to go to college and get a degree. And I was like, I was sick of school. I was done with school. I like that hands-on aspect of things. And also the cost of formal education is quite tremendous. And so I decided that... that I wanted to get more like direct job skills. And that was from a, from a private college, which it was specifically basically a.


00:23:29

 It wasn't like, well, it was accredited, quote unquote, but they're not in business anymore.


00:23:35

 Um, it was a lot of those. Yeah. It was one of like the ITT tech.


Neal Gompa 00:23:39

 I was going to ask if it was, it was not ITT tech though.


Noel Miller 00:23:45

 I went to a place called Art Institute International.


00:23:49

 You went to an art school. I did go to an art school to learn web design.


00:23:55

 You know, probably not the best decision. I would make, like, unless you're like really into the design aspect portion of it. Like, I think art school is great, but um, for what I wanted to do, it wasn't a good fit. I went there for about a year. Um, I did not enjoy it. It was a lot of traditional art classes. I was bad at art. Um, I played a lot of World of Warcraft during that time, which was, you know, not probably the best use of college funds. And so I decided to go and work for my father's company for about five years.


00:24:30

 That was not doing computer stuff. What I originally started doing was gumball and candy bending. That was how I got started. In my actual career stuff that I was doing to make money. It's my first W2. It shocked my coworkers when they found that out. They're like, 'Wait, you did what?'


00:24:53

 I mean, I'm a little shocked. You did what now? Yeah. We were one of the biggest gumball and candy vending companies in the Midwest area. We went at one point.


Neal Gompa 00:25:06

 I was so wondering that you were going to say you're the biggest one in the world. And I'm like, what the heck is going on in this dream?


Noel Miller 00:25:13

 Not quite. No. Um, but yeah, to kind of shorten that part, um, basically I didn't want to do gumball and candy vending forever. Um, I like computer. Too much. My dad, uh, the only computer that he had, um, was basically an iMac. I think he got a like, what did he even have? He had a Mac Pro at one point or something. He was a big Mac guy, but it would never be connected to the internet. He was terrified of connecting the computer to the internet. Even exaggerating it was— it was such a weird time in my life where I was like super savvy with the internet, like you know, getting him to use email and doing communications through that was like just holy crap. But anyway, I'm getting a little bit uh too long in the tooth here as far as how I got started. So, after that, my first technical I had started messing around with Linux, contrary to popular belief on this podcast, not just an hour ago.


00:26:13

 I have been working with it for... probably since about 2012. So I started messing around with Linux. Ubuntu 12. 04 was the first distribution I actually installed. I had an NVIDIA card. That was awful. It barely worked.


00:26:32

 But it did work eventually after much trials and tributes.


Neal Gompa 00:26:36

 So you've got first-hand experience for why no one likes NVIDIA.


Noel Miller 00:26:39

 Yeah, pretty much. I got the firsthand experience of why I so appreciate the work that we do now and the work that has been done. And so I started with that. I have jumped around from a lot of different distributions. And then I was like, well, I can't find a Linux job. What is a Linux job? I don't even know what that means. And so I got hired at a managed services company. I had a connection through my mom. Who, um, knew the owner or no? Knew a friend of the owner and, basically, she was like, you know, my son's looking for a job or whatever the case may be. I had no credentials whatsoever. I didn't know what Active Directory was when I first started, and I'm sure to this day, you don't want I was going to say, 'man,'


Neal Gompa 00:27:29

 I think you were a better person for that.


Bill Schouten 00:27:33

 Welcome to my hell.


Noel Miller 00:27:36

 Yeah, I know way too much about Windows infrastructure, and if anybody tells any of my coworkers that, I'm going to smack them. Well, I guess I am saying it publicly now, so I'm screwed. There but uh, but yeah, so I I started at um, managed services company as a they didn't have a level for me I was a level zero. Normally at managed services companies, they have like level one through four or they have like their different leveling. They didn't have a level for me because I was so green. I didn't know what Active Directory was. Was I didn't know what domains were. I was like the basic things that you needed to help, but they saw the potential and what I could learn because because I was able to talk about all this cool Linux stuff I was doing. And if I can learn that crazy stuff, according to them, I suppose I could probably learn Windows. And so... That's basically how I started. So you're a secret Windows guy.


Bill Schouten 00:28:33

 Yeah, pretty much. Hey, look, okay, we'll get into that later, but... That's okay to start there.


Noel Miller 00:28:41

 Oh, absolutely. And that's, and that's going to be my first, my first hot tip, essentially, is the fact that you are never too good for your first job because you learn a ton from that job and the thing is is that— and we'll go into this a little bit later after everybody kind of gives their own intros as far as what how they started. But that's where I started. I started as a help desk person, the guy who worked on the stock room, the guy who got all the cables, order for the text, who went out and actually did the real work, quote unquote, you know, all of like the, you know, the work basically that needs to get done behind the scenes. Cause I mean, I was really good at that stuff. I ran a warehouse, so I knew like how to organize things well, how to do all of those types of activities. I worked in managed services for probably seven years, I believe, was roughly how long. And I was like, I've had enough. Um, I really want to, I'm really passionate about this Linux thing.


00:29:45

 I want to find a job where I can do, whether it's cloud stuff, whether it's whatever. And so I bounced around a bunch. I don't have to give you my full CV, but needless to say, um, I finally, after God-like two and a half years, basically um was able to find a job that was an actual Linux sysadmin job. And the reason I got that job was because they had a contractor who was originally working that job. And then his contract didn't get renewed. I was contracted as a Windows guy at the time, and they're like, 'Noel, do you know anything about Linux?' I'm like, 'Yes, I do.' And here's why I have my RHC or RHCSA. I have, you know, a Linux certification. That is what allowed me to be able to jump at that opportunity. And that is the first thing that I, that I want to bring up is the fact that because of all of like this, just independent experience.


00:30:50

 That I had, that is how I got my first Linux sysadmin role, was because of the fact that I was willing to spend the time and the energy to be able to get the certifications. Because unfortunately, you have to prove that you know stuff, and certifications are one of the better ways as well as formal education. I will actually hand off you know my history over to Neil because I think he has a different perspective basically on how he got to where he is.


Neal Gompa 00:31:22

 Yeah, so... I had a talent for the technical and computer stuff. Basically, I think almost my entire life. So My dad helped me, nurtured me into... with computers, like basically taught me little bits and pieces of like how to do basic, how to do Perl, C.


00:31:44

 programming and doing all this stuff. Did science experiments using computer tech and things like that. And kept my passion alive, and like he supported my desires to like learn how to build computers and put them together and do customizations and things like that. So that part is probably somewhat familiar to a lot of people these days. But when I was growing up, that was a very uncommon thing. That was very rare.


00:32:10

 Computers were on the tail end of being considered a fad. And also like still too expensive to be something that everyone was going to be, you know.


00:32:21

 Able to work with and stuff like. The average price of a desktop computer in 1994 was, I think, like... $2,500, right? Like, and in 1994, that's a lot. Like today.


00:32:37

 That's what, Bill, I think it's like, what, 10 grand or something like that? Maybe about that, yeah.


Bill Schouten 00:32:41

 I'd say that's probably pretty close. Yeah.


Neal Gompa 00:32:45

 So, like, we're not talking cheap here at all. So, like, I'm very thankful for that part. But also... I was very... emotionally and socially stunted for most of my life. Basically because kids are cruel and we're going to leave it at that. And. I'm going to just say, like, going forward through the rest of my life into my primary and secondary school, like elementary, middle, high. Uh... That kind of stayed a consistent theme.


00:33:14

 But I went to college, so I went to a public school. I didn't go to some crazy, fancy whatever.


00:33:22

 Certainly didn't go to an art school. I already knew that wasn't going to be an area I was going to go into. But I went to... a state-funded college that was a university. And.


00:33:37

 I went into their software engineering track and I went in that. And one of the things that I benefited from that was.


00:33:44

 When you're a university student in many of the accredited universities in the United States and universities around the world, but again, I can only speak about U. S. ones. personally. Um, you're required to have not just your STEM coursework, which is, you know, science, technology, mathematics, that sort of thing. Um, you're also supposed to have philosophy, writing, speaking. You're supposed to have ethics. You're supposed to learn about communication.


00:34:19

 Learn about all these other things that are actually, I think, and and we're going to talk a lot more about this later on, but like the thing that was important to me was by being in college, I actually, you know, I found my people for lack of a better phrase here. There were other people who were also interested in stuff, and it gave me an opportunity to start building social skills and started building public speaking skills, started doing all these things.


00:34:45

 But also... I started learning about other people in person.


00:34:50

 Who also were interested in the stuff I wanted to do, which was tinkering with computers, building interesting projects, doing stuff. And again, open source as well. Like in this time frame, I've been doing open source stuff. I found open source projects, and I was contributing to them. As early as I think it was like, what, 13?


Bill Schouten 00:35:08

 What was the first open source project you contributed to and what made you kind of pick that? Like, how did you stumble upon that? That project.


00:35:19

 And say, this is something I want to do. Because, as a kid at that age, I would think you had that kind of 'aha' moment. That said, this has opened my mind into what is actually possible for a young person to be able to do with computers.


Neal Gompa 00:35:33

 It's a good question. I'll say, sadly, there was no 'aha' moment like that, but there was something very close to it. So... I told you that my dad taught me the basics of programming and stuff, and this was on DOS computers and things like that. Well. As part of that, like... I mean, I learned with Boardland Turbo C, and... As it turns out, that's really old, and people don't use it. Even when I was learning this, this was old enough. Borland Turbo C came out in 1989. Before I was born. And we're now talking about the year 2000. You're not using Borland Turbo C for any real-world programs in 2000, hopefully.


Bill Schouten 00:36:19

 Oh, do I have a story for you?


Neal Gompa 00:36:21

 Oh, boy. But what I did find was, again, this is burgeoning access to the Internet. You know, my dad would take me to his office. He was a math professor. And in his and when he was when it was, you know, both my parents were working. But when my when it was my dad's turn to, you know, basically take care of me while they were working, he would leave me in his office. He would go do his teaching thing. Well, I found this thing called DJ GPP. Which is... Hey.


00:36:50

 Port of the GNU toolchain to DOS.


00:36:54

 Compiler, Emacs, Unix utilities, the whole works. And so my first experience with a Unix-like environment was actually on DOS with that tool chain. And from there, like... with Windows, I use SigWin and so I experienced all this stuff and like, my aha moment with open source wasn't a 'Oh my gosh, this is a thing!' I contribute to it, I can make all the things, but it's like 'Oh my gosh!'


00:37:23

 I can do real stuff because I have access to real stuff. Because, again, we've got to talk about this. This is 2000. At this point in time, GCC hadn't yet made the compiler industry crash. It was still, for a box copy of Visual Studio, you were talking about, what, $700 to $1,000.


00:37:43

 Borland... the Borland C++ Builder, which was the name of the product at this point. Was I, don't know what 500 and they had a hobbyist version for $200, I think something like that. I actually forget what the prices are. This is illustrative. The point being, it was not something that was accessible to every man. And I certainly wasn't going to have money to buy those things. And having access to GCC, having access to open-source IDEs like Code Blocks, having SIGWIN to be able to access things like... I once cross-compiled— I once built KDE for Windows.


00:38:20

 using Cygwin. And I used it as my desktop shell because I could. And on Windows.


00:38:27

 Like, that's the kind of thing.


Noel Miller 00:38:28

 That's actually crazy.


Neal Gompa 00:38:29

 Yeah. And this was before KDE tried to do it as an official project as part of KDE 4. So, like, that's, again, that tells you how old I am, but also tells you, like, this is the kind of crazy stuff you could do. Anyway, all of this to be... The open source stuff.


00:38:44

 My aha moment was that I have opportunity. I have access.


SPEAKER_3 00:38:49

 Mm-hmm.


Neal Gompa 00:38:50

 The contribution part came later. That was when I got into finally using Linux. When I got into Linux... and went into support forums and chats and things like that.


00:39:01

 Fedora Forum, which is I think still around, is the old, is the third-party old forum. I think it's run on like some vBulletin software or whatever, but it looks old as old, very old, and it feels old. And that's that's the that was the forums that I was on and then I was in IRC chat rooms and things like that. And then, you know, I got into Ubuntu as well later on, you know, Red Hat Linux to Fedora to Red Hat Linux to Fedora and Ubuntu and all this other stuff.


00:39:29

 But interacting with those people is what gave me the idea of contributing to projects. But I was still a Windows guy still. And so the first open source project, I actually tried to do something. I did not succeed, but I tried.


00:39:40

 Was... virtual dub, which is this. Random little old windows.


00:39:48

 Video editing tool because I was actually into multimedia, like the reason I started really going into open source was doing AV work. Ahem. And so Virtual Dub was one of those. And. I played with it and whatever. I made an installer. Like, because the guy just distributed his zip file and you just plopped it down on your desk and you were good. But I wanted it to be fancy, shortcuts registered on the system. I could find it. It would be shown up. It would have file type associations. The whole works. So I made an installer. With it, using NSIS, the No Soft Scriptable Install System. Well... NSIS led me to my next open source project that I worked on, which was called the Experience UI. And we're getting here. This actually means something. So Experience UI was this overlay on top of the Nullsoft scriptable install system that made the installers have this nice fancy skin that made it look like, I don't know, back in the days, Bill, you might know this because, you know, you and I were existing in this era.


00:40:48

 Back then, the NVIDIA install Shield Wizard was super fancy.


Bill Schouten 00:40:52

 Oh, Lord.


Neal Gompa 00:40:53

 Like, they had all these weird graphics, and, like, they had colorful and... I'm themed. I mean, they were ugly and slow, but they weren't ugly, but they were pretty, but they were slow and kind of annoying. But... People liked that look. And so I found a project.


00:41:10

 That was doing this. On NSIS. It was made by a man that went by DanDemand32. On on there.


00:41:20

 And again, we're going to get... Yes, I know. Was he 32-bit? Oh, I have actually never asked him. I should ask him someday why he chose 32. But, like... But he was, you know, I reached out to him. I was like, here's a small little thing I found to fix or whatever. And he and I got to talking and we started working together. And that was my first open source project where I successfully contributed to something. Nice. And that project is important.


00:41:51

 Because that person, Dandaman32... TEN YEARS LATER! gets me my job at my second job, not my first job, but my second job, which was my start for real of my career in Linux.


00:42:11

 You never know how this is going to work out. Yeah.


00:42:16

 I also was the guy that got him into Linux. So that's even more fun.


00:42:21

 He was a Windows guy. I got him into Linux. He went and surpassed me, which is fine. Everybody goes at their own pace, and you all have your own levels of crazy that you deal with to get there.


00:42:36

 And he managed to go into a... Truly different direction than than me. Um and that's fine, that's how that works out, it's okay. BUT!


00:42:46

 So you never really know, like going into these projects, you connect with these people and you build relationships and you become, hopefully, you become more acquaintances and then friends.


Noel Miller 00:42:55

 Yep.


Neal Gompa 00:42:56

 But also this means that we got to be social. You got to know how to do these sorts of things. You also got to understand how to talk to people. You also have to understand how people influence code. So software architectures. are all about the people who make them. Like... The design, the structure, the modeling, the language that's chosen—all these things are reflections of the creator's personality. Um. And one of the things I have learned in myself is I have no personality. So it's super easy for me to acquire all these different skills.


Bill Schouten 00:43:30

 Oh, come on. I'm calling you out on that one, sir.


Noel Miller 00:43:34

 That's a little bit crazy.


Neal Gompa 00:43:38

 So, you know, anyway, to kind of take this more seriously, right? Like I wound up teaching myself how to read and understand other people's code. To be able to learn how to work with code that I've never seen before and in different languages and different stacks and things like that. And that skill has served me incredibly well in my career. It has helped me get involved in open source communities because I start thinking about these sorts of things. It helps me contribute to open source because then I can look at a code base. And if there's something that I want to do with it, I can pinpoint, make a... make a change, submit it, and be in there. And if you look at my GitHub or GitLab or whatever, you'll see that. That's definitely true. Definitely true. But I also credit a lot of my ability to do this. All of the non-science, science-y stuff that I took in college. learning about honor, learning about um communication, public speaking.


00:44:38

 Even literature, right? Studying literature, studying how to do also good writing and reading.


00:44:47

 Being.


00:44:49

 Being a well-rounded person, even music. Lord, I love music. Music is amazing. I love music too.


Noel Miller 00:44:56

 Yeah.


Neal Gompa 00:44:56

 And so, like all of these things put together, making yourself a well-rounded person, making yourself a well-learned person.


00:45:04

 You know what? That also helps you in open source because it turns out you can't be a software developer that is effective unless you understand the problem space you're in.


00:45:15

 And it sticks to me all these years that I was told a software engineer is always a multidisciplinary person because you are not making software for software. You are making software to solve a problem.


00:45:30

 And when you're solving a problem, you're operating in a problem domain, which means you're operating in a space, and that space might not be one you've ever encountered before. But being able to get your feet wet quickly, being able to grok the situation, and being able to... Um, pick it up, learn it, and appreciate it. That's, that's how.


00:45:52

 That fluidity will make you successful no matter what. In that time that I was at that job, that started the career from that friend. That for the Experience UI project, I think I changed roles like four times, four or five times in that company. I basically got— I changed departments. I got promoted. I changed responsibilities. I expanded capabilities. I became essentially a thought leader. And a communicator and an ambassador.


00:46:26

 Over. Having because I did all these things and because I had all this stuff—and... That's, I think, the most important thing. You've got to be able— to- have critical thinking, critical skills acquisition, and personality.


00:46:43

 Balance out your personality. Be able to be more than just... A code monkey.


Noel Miller 00:46:49

 Be a T-shaped person rather than, you know, like that's, that's the term that I've heard for it before, where it's essentially, you have a lot of, you know, like you may have depth deep in one thing. But you also have shallower depth and other places too. Right. But you know, you can also make that T even wider, you know, in the sense where it's like, you've got. Don't be tubby man. Don't be tubby.


00:47:13

 I am a square. But Bill, we haven't heard from you. What was it like back in, you know, what?


00:47:22

 1980 something. Go ahead. Go ahead. Say yes. Go ahead. Go ahead.


Bill Schouten 00:47:26

 Do it. Go ahead. Throw the, you know, let me wipe the oatmeal off of my chin while I'm at it, you know? Gosh!


00:47:37

 Okay.


00:47:39

 Picture it. The year is... 1989.


00:47:44

 Whoa. Yes, 1980.


00:47:48

 and change, put a 1980 and then a number after. That's when I was using computers long before either of you ever existed.


SPEAKER_3 00:47:55

 Okay.


Bill Schouten 00:47:57

 MY FIRST FORM!


00:47:59

 BEFORE! Before either of you were a twinkle in the universe's eye... There I was in front of a Mac Plus.


00:48:09

 Okay, let's talk about that Mac Plus and what I made it do.


00:48:14

 I was doing word processing.


00:48:16

 I was doing drawings with Mac Draw.


00:48:19

 In fact, I was even using the precursor to PowerPoint, which was called. Hypercard. At one point, I was googling furiously, googling furiously, googling some history you should do because my headset is containing my Yoda-shaped ears at the moment. Okay.


00:48:41

 Upon stumbling into my father's office, who is now a retired geophysicist for a world-renowned research company, I found his Mac II and I said, 'Whoa.' That's in color.


00:48:55

 And I had my little disc to play Arkanoid. And I put it into the floppy drive slot only to find out that the slot wasn't actually a floppy drive. It was empty.


00:49:06

 So the disc just fell into the machine. And the words from my father were... That disc has now been eaten by my Mac and you shall never see it again.


00:49:18

 I was so distraught at that moment. Wow. So let's fast forward a couple years later. I get a Mac Classic. And, well, that had a thing called a hard drive in it. And that was pretty cool. Color Classic or Monochrome Classic? Monochrome Classic. And let me tell you, that computer got me. Just about through high school, which was in the 1990s. Thank you.


00:49:42

 But in the meanwhile, that little Mac classic. Got me.


00:49:47

 Hello. Shamefully admit at the time, it was America Online for internet access and yes, this was 1996. Okay, I remember those discs.


Noel Miller 00:49:56

 I used them as coasters. They were awesome.


Neal Gompa 00:50:01

 I was just watching Power Rangers, so I don't have any idea what the heck you're talking about.


00:50:07

 I mean, I do, but it's more fun saying that.


Bill Schouten 00:50:11

 Anyway, so as time kind of went on, and actually you could always find my dad, who had this thing called a MacBook, because as I was— me being a musician as a younger kid.


Neal Gompa 00:50:22

 Oh, right. The M68K MacBooks.


Bill Schouten 00:50:24

 Yes. And you would always know where my dad was because there would be a glow on his face in the audience because he'd be working while listening to a concert. And that's just how he was productive. So work from home was always a thing for him going that far back. But let's talk about the Linux bit for a minute.


00:50:44

 So now we'll picture it again. The year is 1998. And where am I? I'm at an event called a LAN party playing games. And one of the people that came to said LAN party had this new piece of software he had found called Linux.


00:51:04

 And how was his Linux setup? Well... For those of you that are unenlightened, at one point in the storage medium days, there was this thing called a zip drive.


00:51:15

 And a distribution made specifically for it called Zip Slack.


00:51:19

 So I could push the Zip Slack disk into my zip drive. I could reboot my computer, go into my BIOS, boot off of the Zip Slack, and be presented with this console, which meant absolutely nothing to me.


00:51:34

 Until I learned I could quickly destroy an entire LAN party with it.


Neal Gompa 00:51:40

 That must have been fun.


Bill Schouten 00:51:41

 When you're the bad gamer and everybody attacks your little base first and you get blown up and you've got hours of free time on your hands, you quickly learn that.


00:51:53

 Maybe I'm going to play with that little zip slack disk. Oh, hey, there's this cool command called ping.


00:51:59

 And then there's this... You DOSed all of them? I DOSed an entire LAN party with 64 meg game packets because we did not even have Ethernet hubs.


00:52:09

 And 10 base 2 networking with BNC cables and Terminators at the end of those cables.


Neal Gompa 00:52:15

 Oh, you were token rigged. So you just whacked everyone with packets.


Bill Schouten 00:52:19

 This was Ethernet. We did not have DHCP. You had to actually know what your IP address was supposed to be in the network. But it was more fun to ping flood the kid with the Pentium.


Neal Gompa 00:52:30

 I'm sorry? Is this what was a cross wire?


Bill Schouten 00:52:33

 No, we didn't have that. This was a round coax cable. That would hook into a... This is mocha. Teak? No, it's still Ethernet. It's called 10Base2 Ethernet. So do some Google foo on that for yourself. And we had a whopping 10 big.


Neal Gompa 00:52:49

 I mean, hey, the earliest for me was 10 base T with the twisted pair.


Bill Schouten 00:52:55

 Oh, there were no twisted pairs. A hub at that time cost around $400. And while we were high school students and didn't have that kind of money. So an eight port hub was out of the question. You had to buy the. The little T connectors from Radio Shack and then you would get those things.


Neal Gompa 00:53:09

 I didn't know what they were for.


Bill Schouten 00:53:10

 Yes, that everybody— so instead of you having a star type topology where everybody plugged into a hub or let alone a switch. Everybody was connected to each other and all the traffic went to all the workstations. So if you start— That is so cool. Well, no, you didn't. Connect the ends of the ring because, if you do that, nobody would be able to actually function. You know, well, one of the guys I hung out with went to a computer camp and this is where he learned about networking. He brought that information back to me and, in 1998, that turning point— that year where I learned about Zip, Slack, and got into Linux. I decided I was going to be rebellious and rebel against the status quo and try to use Linux full time.


00:53:56

 That is like trying to climb Mount Everest in the current shape that I'm in. And I don't recommend doing either of those things.


00:54:07

 Luckily enough for me, the following summer, I got a job at that computer camp, and I got a crash course from everybody in what Linux could do with this desktop called... Gnome and then there was another one called a window manager, called Enlightenment. Another one called Window Maker, and this thing called Mandrake, and another thing called Caldera, and this really cool-looking thing called Slackware, which kind of was assembled well, but the Slackware people didn't like the Debian people. I couldn't understand why. I thought it was just all the same thing.


00:54:36

 Until I started learning how to administer a Debian server that way. Oh, this is how we actually automatically assign IP addresses at this camp. But don't give anybody a public IP. We're going to teach you this thing called IP masquerading. Which was how I really got into networking. Oh my gosh, I can take a network and I can make multiple people use the same IP. Well, that could be real fun.


SPEAKER_3 00:54:56

 Hehehehe.


Bill Schouten 00:54:57

 So let's fast forward another year. We're now in 2000. And you'd think that 2000 would be the cutting edge, the Borland C that Neil talked about. But no, I went to a school where I had to learn computer engineering because IT wasn't a degree in 2000. No one knew what to do with me. And Noel, to your point, you had said certifications, but... Here I am. I didn't exist yet. Oh, there were certifications, but they were about $3,000 a pop.


00:55:26

 Nobody other than maybe big cities really looked for those certifications and coming from where I did and a rather touristy Microsoft certification. Exist yet? No. It was the CompTIA ones that had just come out, and there were some Cisco ones.


Neal Gompa 00:55:42

 And granted, we were, you know, right at the time that Windows 2000 and, Yeah, because I think they created it with the Windows 2000 stuff, because that was also when Active Directory came into existence and the MMC and all that other stuff. Active Directory was around for NT4. But not quite really. Yeah.


Bill Schouten 00:55:58

 It was more of a concept and not a practical thing. So I decided to stick to using Linux because again, I was a bit of a contrarian at that point in my life, and I have been using Linux ever since. But. That's great as a user. How do I use Linux at work?


00:56:15

 It took a long time and it was a very... Difficult. and painful journey.


00:56:24

 I, for life reasons, didn't get to finish that semester.


00:56:29

 And I had to take a job.


00:56:32

 And so I started working at a now defunct electronics retailer.


00:56:37

 Just trying to make ends meet. But I still gamed. I still LAN partied with my friends. I still used Linux.


00:56:43

 And at that electronics retailer, I learned. About how to deal with people, because I had this misconception that maybe some of our listeners do. Where tech is a tech job.


00:56:56

 And you don't interface with people.


00:56:59

 But that's just so not true. Tech is a people job and tech is the tool that you use to connect people together.


00:57:06

 And it took me a long time to learn that. I remember that first retail management job where I forgot what was important. I let the numbers get to my head and I forgot what mattered, which were the relationships that you make along that job. And I found myself managing a million-dollar business by myself at age 21 with very little experience and a lot of anger and resentment.


00:57:32

 Luckily enough, the person that I was... working for in my training days moved out to the area that I'm in now. And he offered me a chance to Maybe take a step back and I'll touch base on that in a second. Why that's so important, but to take a step back.


00:57:50

 Not manage a store for a bit. and then manage a store when it came along.


00:57:55

 And so I had a long time. In a rather gross living situation with very little access to heat, hot water, or electricity, or I had time to think.


00:58:06

 And I thought. How did I get myself here and how am I going to get myself out of it? And at one point I figured out that.


00:58:14

 I didn't start very well at the beginning. I rushed my progression. I didn't take the time to actually learn the lessons that I needed to learn and be patient with myself.


00:58:27

 To become a better manager. And in my present day, I manage a team of about 20 IT technicians at. My current job, Data Hal in MSP here in New England.


00:58:39

 And so I vowed I would never put myself in that situation again.


00:58:43

 But how is I going to get a tech job? Because at the turn of the century, there was a lot of animosity towards multinationals taking your job in the tech space.


00:58:55

 And that was a deterrent for many people of my generation to enter into a technology career. Well, it'll be here today and gone tomorrow because the dot-com bubble burst. And if it can happen then, it's going to happen again. Don't do that. Go find a place in corporate America.


00:59:11

 And so I did. And I hated every second of it because I just couldn't get used to the fact that I was just a number in a system. And there were so many layers that I had to go through for me to get into the technical space that I wanted.


00:59:27

 So I was actually a little bit older than both of you when I got my actual first professional real technology job, we'll call it, and it is actually the place I work now.


00:59:38

 What happened was: I was going back to school and I was learning a business skill because I figured that was my only shot. Now we're in 2005, 2006.


00:59:50

 I was working a corporate job. I hated it. My parents said, 'You really should go back to school, you know, finish out your degree.' So I was in the process of that.


01:00:00

 My math professor at the time said, 'I'm having a problem with this computer in the lab.' And I said, 'I can probably help you out with that.' You're okay with that? He said, 'Sure.' So I went and fixed the problem. And then after class, one of my classmates approached me and said, 'My brother owns an IT company and he's looking for somebody to join them. You should reach out to him.' And I thought, 'Here's my ticket.'


01:00:23

 So I reached out to him and met with him at his house and he told me about the job. And I said, 'I'll absolutely take it.'


01:00:32

 And so there I was. I started off on January 1st of that following year. This was maybe like a month in between.


01:00:42

 And.


01:00:44

 Again, I learned the hard way.


01:00:46

 I was in a help desk role.


01:00:50

 Which was okay, but I didn't.


01:00:53

 Take to heart those soft skills that I really needed to learn. I was a bit confrontational and difficult, black and white, hardheaded, my way or the highway, because that's the instinct that I had to survive at the time. And the message that I'm trying to give everybody is: it's okay to give yourself that space, but learn from it. Absorb the information that people want to share with you. Step back. Don't make a rush decision. Think before you do. Think before you speak.


01:01:27

 Plan. How you want to engage with people and figure out what you can learn from them.


01:01:33

 The client that I was assigned to at the time unfortunately fell upon hard times. They still exist today, but in a much, much smaller form.


01:01:42

 And from there, I... wanted to make a little bit more money, I went to go work at a school. And that's where I really learned to cut my teeth when I was by myself.


01:01:52

 No other team leads, no owners, no senior techs, no level three techs, no one to pick on and tap on their shoulder and say, 'Hey, how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do this?' I'm there by myself.


01:02:05

 And that's when I learned to build trust and confidence in my skills that I did know what I was doing. And that it was okay to make a wrong decision sometimes, but own that decision. Own it. I made a mistake. How do I fix this? I need some help. And for most people that are just getting into IT, those words— I need some help— can be hard to find sometimes.


01:02:28

 But trust yourself and trust the people that you work with in the community you build around you that that help will be there when you need it.


01:02:35

 But in the same token, part of the spirit of open source is also to give that help back when asked.


01:02:42

 Open source.


01:02:44

 For you, Neil, means in many ways software at your heart. And Noel, open source to you means community deep down inside you and the work that you do and the work I know both of you do.


01:02:56

 If I combine those two things, what open source means to me is lifestyle.


01:03:01

 It's not just about contributing code back in a Git repo. It's not just about necessarily managing a project. It's how do you look at life?


01:03:10

 And that's kind of the lesson that I've learned from all this.


01:03:14

 Not to bore our audience, but... Here I am now in 2026.


01:03:20

 And I'm still learning. I'm still making mistakes. I'm still falling on my face. I'm still exposing my vulnerable self to the people that I work with. But because I've learned to trust myself.


01:03:34

 Be humble, say I've made a mistake, get in the trenches with them still. I don't have to be as fast as they are pulling wire and racking servers and deploying tons of machines.


01:03:46

 I have a little bit of a physical mobility issue that prevents me from working at that speed, and that's okay. I don't have to be the best tech anymore. I just have to be the best manager at my stage. Because at the end of the day... I . T. And technology in general is still a people job.


Noel Miller 01:04:03

 That is like the biggest thing that I think most people do not understand when they first get into technology is the fact that, like, some of the. Best technicians I've ever worked with, like a lot of people, give this weirdness, like, I don't even know what I want to call it, like this weirdness about, like, working at something like a fast food joint, like a McDonald's or something like that, almost like it's beneath them. Almost like, yeah, like, or I have had other technicians that I've talked to in my career that are like, 'Oh, I don't want to work help desk because then I have to, you know, work with stupid users or whatever the case may be.' And that's what happened to me. I had said.


Bill Schouten 01:04:46

 Ugh, I remember the day. When I was at that particular client and I was in a meeting with their IT director and my boss and a ticket came in and the IT director said, 'Hey, can you take care of this?' And I went, 'Oh, not another end user issue.' And I stormed off to take care of that.


01:05:09

 How foolish I was in that moment. Because the issue ended up not being that big. But I wanted to be in that meeting so much. I wanted to not miss that information.


01:05:19

 But all I had to do afterwards was. Just say, 'Hey, what did I miss?' Yeah. That's all I had to do at that moment.


Noel Miller 01:05:27

 Now, at my point in my career, I'm like, 'What meetings can I avoid so I can't get back in the trenches to be able to do actual freaking work?'


Neal Gompa 01:05:36

 Oh my gosh. When you open your calendar and you see all those blocked off meetings and a piece of you just blocks on your, on your calendar, just make you sad. Yeah.


Bill Schouten 01:05:45

 Like if I see my day like that, a piece of me just dies. Like part of my soul is just crushed for the week.


Neal Gompa 01:05:52

 But I think, you know, coming back to the serious point here, I think the most important takeaway that people should have is that there's no such thing as a tech job. It's just... It's just what kind of social environment are you going to be in? And what kind of problems are you fixing in that environment? So it's always a people job. It's always about communication. It's always about relationship management. And it's about building success with those qualities.


Bill Schouten 01:06:26

 And I think, Neil, you kind of personify that. You do a lot of public speaking at conferences. You're always giving talks. You're always engaging someone from some vendor or some partner or some person. I can't begin to tell you the amount of people that I've met through you and the connections that we've made. I can think of somebody that I met through a big computer manufacturer that you've worked with. When I was going to buy one of my laptops and you said, 'Hold on.' Because I remember the day we were hanging out together at my mother-in-law's house at Thanksgiving, and I didn't want to buy this laptop because I wanted to be sure I got the right one. A connection that you had made and you had said, 'Hold on, I'm going to reach out to this person and see if that particular laptop you're looking at is perfect for Linux.' Lo and behold, we get into a video call with said person. And he, oh, what? No way. But that little connection you made through those conferences and through meetups was important.


01:07:30

 And Noel, I know that something that's mattered to you is also just helping friends and family. Family can be hard sometimes. We all clash with our family once in a while.


01:07:41

 And even this week, my dad asked me for some help with his Mac and recovering files from it. And I just laughed because I think all of us as kids were, don't touch the computer. And now it's just touch the computer and make it work, please.


01:07:56

 So you went from wanting to do the help to now hating it.


Noel Miller 01:08:00

 Yeah, it's, it's quite the, it's quite the change. Yeah. I mean, and I think, I think, like the biggest takeaway from, from this segment, in my opinion, or at least, this discussion, rather, is that like there is no like prescriptive journey that I think anyone can give uh to how you got into a tech job like, like, I can give you like the nuts and bolts of, like, you know, here are the things you should probably do in order to be able to build the skills that you need to do it. But like, that's kind of the thing. Like it's, it's, you know, I was a gumball and candy vendor. Neil went to college and Bill went to the school of hard knocks. Like.


Neal Gompa 01:08:44

 You know?


01:08:46

 I will say, though, that the most important thing, the common thread here for all three of us, is that you've got to develop your people skills, your soft skills. And that means, like, from my perspective, the way I did is... 10 years ago, I was nowhere this good. I was not good at talking and things. I was not good at public speaking. I would have been super gun shy about being on something like this. Me too. Oh, yeah. One of the things I did for myself was I went to my local Linux users group. Yes. Every month.


01:09:22

 For two years, I found a topic, made a presentation, and talked about it there, and led— led discussions. Every month. For two years. I still have an archive of every presentation I ever did. And that allowed me to— build a flow and build an understanding of how I can function for public speaking. And this is something that's unique for everybody. Everyone's got a different style and a different way of preparing, presenting.


01:09:53

 And, and.


01:09:55

 and persevering over these kinds of things that you have to do.


01:10:02

 Know these days, I think many people consider me some kind of architect or whatever. But like, you don't get there without being able to communicate effectively, and to be able to lead conversations in which people take your idea seriously.


01:10:20

 And center their desires based on the discussions and thoughts that you're offering. So, you know, like this is often trivialized as the phrase thought leadership, but it's— it's a big deal. It's important in order to do those sorts of things. You have to put yourself out there. You have to be well learned. You have to be well researched. And you have to also be able to take criticism and be able to incorporate it into your mental model.


01:10:47

 Especially if you can't do that, then you're pretty much toast. You need to be able... to handle when you're wrong. And I know that they're like— I have met many people. in my long, long career.


01:11:02

 where they... could not handle being.


01:11:07

 and That is, if you're going to be learning, if you're going to be growing. You're gonna be wrong. And that is something you're gonna have to accept.


Noel Miller 01:11:16

 I think help desk, um, going back to like, is, is something that people don't realize. It's like, what's so cool about help desk as, as kind of cringes. that sounds a bit for some of you who may be like, no, I don't want to do that ever. You learn the soft skills of being able to talk with people. You learn a problem. problem-solving methodology in order to be able to isolate, troubleshoot, and resolve.


01:11:42

 By interacting with these people, you learn what, how, and what is effective in being able to help someone versus someone else. In the sense of, like, are they a no-nonsense kind of individual where it's like, know you can't be like chummy with them or whatever, like, just get to the point. Sort of thing. Are they more of the type of person that will talk to you for an hour? Like, you're their therapist, pissed about their dog. I've had one of those before, that was quite an interesting call. Like, I've had the gamut of different types of interactions. Like, even just outside of like social circles, like Neil is talking about in regards to like going conferences or doing public speaking or going to your Linux users group. Like, all of these things are beneficial in whatever type of role that you're taking, you know, and, and from like more of like a software development kind of role, in my opinion, like you're probably not going to be. Going into help desk, that's more of like you know kind of an IT sort of thing, but like even if you've met people that have been in the support org, and then, you know, like help desk, you know, type of role essentially, and then moved into software engineering and been very successful because it's


01:12:53

 like, they're able to work with people and they are also able to learn things and so it is so important like you have to have a passion for learning, um in order to be successful, um in either IT or any tech job really.


01:13:09

 And that's the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway for me, I think, that is so important to remember is that there is no obvious one-size-fits-all path that's going to work for everybody who's getting into tech. Everybody has their own backgrounds and challenges and things that they're good at and things that they're not. And then, but, you know. There is a common thread, like Neil said, which is, you know. Having good people skills, having presentation skills, having that passion for, desire for learning things, which getting through certifications or through formal education is going to get you there. You know, problem solving and planning, you know—like, it's it's just one of those things, again, where I I feel so fortunate to be able to impart this knowledge on people. Who are just starting because, like, I do feel like some of us didn't even have those things to begin with either. Like, my parents never went to college, and they're also bloodites when it comes to computers.


01:14:13

 Like, I grew up, and like, my parents were like, 'Here's a computer. Have fun.' I had no like real mentorship while I was growing up, from like anybody other than like just friends. Sometimes, you know, and so, um, yeah, I'll just close with that. That I think for me, it's just such a such an important thing to keep in mind is that, you know, everybody's journey is different.


Bill Schouten 01:14:39

 And for our audience, we'll put in the show notes some common certifications that you can look through. And determine whether there's something you want to learn more about. But we specifically curated some entry-level ones that are useful across anywhere in tech.


01:14:57

 CompTIA A+, Amazon Web Services, the RHCSA. SUSE also has their SCA certification and LPI. Linux Professional Institute is another great resource. I would say if you're just getting into this, don't focus on vendor certifications right away. I think they're great to have, especially if you want to get more into networking, the Cisco's, the Fortinet's. If you are going to enter the Microsoft space, they have their own span of certifications that work. But just like when you're in college and you're taking your first year classes, those are all very generic. We specifically wanted to provide you guys with some generic certifications that you could use to learn and kind of grow your career.


Neal Gompa 01:15:43

 And for what it's worth, right? Like, for example, the RHCSA and the SCA, most of the... the skills that you are going to learn on those are universally applicable and in fact, yeah, that's like that's a um, one of the things I like about these particular certifications compared to many of the others that exist out there in the space is that they're regularly refreshed with the latest technology that's actually being used. In the space. So you're not going to feel super out of date or any of those things. And there's things like book references and whatever, which will include some decent suggestions for like... hey, here's some reasonably affordable ways to get your learning going if these are goals you want to go towards. Having these as pathways to your... success there is going to give you a much stronger grounding, especially in spaces where these certifications are like prerequisites. Like there are actually multiple.


01:16:41

 Entry-level jobs. Like, there's a serious shortage. There's multiple entry-level jobs. where they are gated on specific certification, specific skills requirements, these sorts of things. And so there's always some opportunity. As long as you get your soft skills in place, you're reasonably presentable to yourself and others, and you know what you're talking about. You can probably make it anywhere in anything.


Bill Schouten 01:17:11

 I want to touch base on one piece that I think we kind of forgot, and that is the home lab. Now, a home lab can mean many things to many people, and I'm sure we're going to do an episode at some point specifically about home labbing.


01:17:27

 Home labbing for an entry-level person could be as simple as a Raspberry Pi. running Linux.


Neal Gompa 01:17:33

 It's so much easier now than it was when I was doing the whole thing.


Bill Schouten 01:17:37

 Yeah. And less expensive. Oh my gosh, yes. You need RAM. And then it is not.


Neal Gompa 01:17:45

 You're just screwed. If you need RAM or SSD, you're just toast.


Bill Schouten 01:17:50

 So once in a while, I think we come across these problems as we've... evolved our technology careers that just frustrate the crap out of us.


01:18:01

 They become these aching pain points. That we hate.


01:18:06

 And we're going to have a segment on our show called Action Item. And Action Item is going to be where we task someone with the... Absolute impossible.


01:18:19

 But. Relatable.


01:18:23

 As your beloved host of The Sudu Show. My first action item is pointed at you, Neil. And it's something that Noel and I talked about today, but it is something that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, brought me to flashbacks of my earlier days in help desk. And that is something called Citrix. Um, Citrix is the pain point that... frustrates many sysadmins out there, whether you're entry-level or extremely experienced.


01:18:53

 Side effects of taking up Citrix can include hair loss, loss of sanity, delusion, delirium, insanity, and other undesirable side effects. So Neil, your action item is to please make the Citrix client in Linux just work. And I'll check in with you next episode to make sure that it's done. We'll touch base next week, but I'm sure, I'm sure you'll be fine. Don't worry. You will be fine.


Noel Miller 01:19:20

 Just give me an RPM that works, man.


01:19:24

 That's all I ask.


Bill Schouten 01:19:24

 Neil's an experienced packager. It shouldn't be that bad, right, Neil? That's true. Action item, Neil. Make the Citrix client work in Linux. I think this is doable.


01:19:34

 Bill? No, it's impossible. We all know it's impossible.


Neal Gompa 01:19:36

 I hate you. I know. This is terrible.


Bill Schouten 01:19:40

 That is a really brutal one. But, you know, I wanted to start off the season with not a flashbang, but a hashbang.


Neal Gompa 01:19:46

 I mean, that was quite a gut punch.


Bill Schouten 01:19:48

 That was a gut punch.


01:19:52

 Well, let's talk about at least things that we can do.


01:19:57

 And that we have some control over, because Citrix is certainly one we don't. But one of the most... underappreciated. Quick tips that we can take advantage of. As Linux people, are the tools that are included with SystemD.


01:20:15

 So for this month's quick win, I wanted to talk about.


01:20:18

 SystemD. But a specific tool called SystemD Analyze.


01:20:24

 And I feel like maybe not people know what it is. So think about it. We've all been there. You reboot a Linux server and it feels like it's taking forever to come back online.


01:20:34

 Most of us, myself included, will walk away, grab some sort of caffeinated beverage, and assume it's just one of those things. Maybe the drives are running out of life.


01:20:44

 Maybe the weather's bad.


01:20:47

 Maybe I'm going nuts. I don't have that problem because I use Arch Linux.


Noel Miller 01:20:51

 So why would I need this?


Bill Schouten 01:20:53

 But you've only been using Linux for a couple of hours and we'll get into that. Bye. Thank you. Um, But we all know as sysadmins, I don't know— isn't a great answer when your boss asks why the downtime took so long. And nor is running away from your boss an option. That works for a short period of time.


Neal Gompa 01:21:12

 I don't think that's ever worked.


Bill Schouten 01:21:13

 Oh, it works for me.


Neal Gompa 01:21:16

 Aren't you the boss? Yes.


Bill Schouten 01:21:18

 So then it doesn't work. I run away from myself, but that's— you can't, you can't do that. I can't talk about that on the show. That's a good trick. So no, there's a better trick here. There is a hidden gem built into almost every modern distro called 'system D' analyze. And instead of digging through all those lines and journal CTL and all those logs, you just run 'system D.


01:21:40

 hyphen analyze space blame'. And yes, that is exactly what you do. So what it does is it prints a list of every service on your machine sorted by exactly what took too long to start. So this is your system booting up and pointing and saying it's that service's fault. That did it right there.


01:22:02

 So now this is kind of...


Neal Gompa 01:22:03

 Whoa, I just ran it. I'm impressed.


Bill Schouten 01:22:07

 But you invented System D, so...


Neal Gompa 01:22:09

 Oh, no, no.


Bill Schouten 01:22:11

 Contrary to popular belief. Contrary to popular belief, Neil did not invent System D, but he does have a System D t-shirt, and it is pretty cool.


01:22:20

 I actually do have a System D t-shirt. I know you've worn it over here. Yeah. So, but this is where it gets straight. You often find that there's a random forgotten service, maybe like some piece of software installed or some weird database that you spun up somewhere because you forgot to put it in a container and now it's running and you've, you didn't know it was there and slowing the machine down.


01:22:41

 And it's adding 10 to 20 seconds of boot time. Your users are complaining because now there's a queue at the coffee machine while everybody's trying to access that service. If you want to see the why behind the what, run systemd-analyze space.


01:22:59

 critical-chain. And we'll put links to those commands in the show notes. But it shows you a tree of dependencies so that you can see if service A is slow. only because it's waiting on service B. So if there's a dependency of services and it's stuck at the top level one, it's going to kind of show you where in the chain that's not working. So all in all, this is a five-second command. It makes you look like a performance wizard. Stop guessing why your servers are so slow. Blame the right services. And that is your quick win for the month.


Neal Gompa 01:23:30

 I will also point out that it actually goes a little bit further than services. Enlighten me.


01:23:36

 So... The architecture of SystemD is actually pretty neat because it represents every resource on your system as a unit. So you have devices. You have paths. You have mount points. You have, obviously, services and targets and timers and all these other things that all exist.


SPEAKER_3 01:24:00

 Well...


Neal Gompa 01:24:01

 They take time to initialize, right? All of them do. So, if you actually use system to analyze critical changes, with a tac-tac system dash dash system for those of you who are not old fogies like Bill and I—Um. You'll actually see... All the things, including... How long does it take?


01:24:23

 For a device to be brought up? How long does it take for a mount to activate? How long does it take for the file system to become online? Pivot root, boot up, start services, set up networking, all the things. So, what if it turns out that the problem is, hey, a drive is taking too long to come up? You will be able to pinpoint it from system to analyze as well.


Bill Schouten 01:24:48

 Oh, so that means that the system that I'm on right now, which is using a spinning rust 80 gig hard drive running EXT2, that would tell me. Why that's running so slow?


Neal Gompa 01:25:00

 It won't tell you the why, but it will definitely tell you that it's running very, very slow. Okay.


01:25:06

 The why goes into more debugging, which you could have another quick win about, right?


Bill Schouten 01:25:12

 But what if I had one more tip? Oh, that could make this a little bit more visual. So let's do. Yes, this is a bonus.


01:25:20

 Systemd TAC Analyze space.


01:25:25

 Plot.


01:25:27

 Space. Greater than.


01:25:30

 boot . svg So this gives you a visual.


01:25:36

 That creates a chart you can open in a browser. Wild.


SPEAKER_3 01:25:41

 Oh my gosh, you're not kidding!


SPEAKER_4 01:25:46

 That's cool.


Bill Schouten 01:25:49

 I feel vindicated.


01:25:51

 I feel overjoyed.


01:25:55

 It even has my computer's name on it, which is pretty neat, too. I'm just impressed with the fact that I could give you something you hadn't seen before. Oh, no, I've seen this before.


Noel Miller 01:26:07

 But it is really cool. It is. That doesn't change the coolness factor.


Bill Schouten 01:26:11

 Yeah. And on that deflationary note, it is time for us to wrap it up.


01:26:19

 Please follow us on YouTube. Like, subscribe, get those notifications. Subscribe to us through your favorite podcast service, whether it's Apple Podcasts, whether it's Spotify.


01:26:29

 We are working on getting our social media platforms back up because again, just going back to our trailer, we are now an independent podcast. So we need to kind of put that structure in place. We just haven't gotten there yet. It's been a very crazy week, but we will give you the mechanisms to get in touch with us, to give us some feedback.


01:26:48

 We can't wait to see you again on our next episode of The Sudo Show. Thank you again for tuning in where Linux meets business. Have a good day.


01:26:58

 Bye-bye.


Noel Miller 01:26:59

 Bye, y'all.