It seems like in the last month or so, I had to explain to several people, several times in a couple of venues why Dan and I do not immediately release a version of the show once we are finished recording. I thought I should repeat the explanation here for everyone’s benefit.

Linux Outlaws was never meant to be a news show. When I came up with the concept, I was modeling it very much after MacBreak Weekly and to some extend This Week in Tech itself. That is to say LO is designed to be discussion of and reflection on the Linux and open source / free software news of the week in a friendly, often lighthearted atmosphere. It should not be your primary source of these news. As such, LO was never designed to present a comprehensive, authorative or even reliable selection of what has happened in the last week and because of that I had never thought it to be a big issue that we have a pretty long lead time with the show (usually at least three days from recording to release). You could say that Linux Outlaws isn’t optimised to bring you information quickly, instead we concentrate pretty hard to maximise the quality of the show. This extends to content (both serious and humorous) and also audio quality and general listenability (cutting out the uhms, ahhs and pauses) which is especially important to both Dan and I. This takes time and we know that. The whole concept of the show is build around it. We realised pretty early into it that some people rather prefer the show very raw and quickly delivered. That is why we started experimenting with streaming it live and have kept that arrangement up since then. We now provide you with exactly the recording of it all as it happens live, both in video and pretty high quality audio formats. I even save the video to the Ustream site when I don’t forget to record it. This is our compromise for those of you who want the show immediately and/or in its raw state. We are, however, not willing to sacrifice the quality of the actual podcast because of this. There will be no raw, TLLTS-style, fresh-off-the-tape release of Linux Outlaws. The editing and releasing of the podcast will always take time and I am acutely aware of the fact that it has been taking longer lately. I will take steps against this (more on that in a minute) but I will not compromise the core values of our show for it. As long as this is still a hobby for both Dan and me, there will be no way that I can release the podcast much faster than we have done in the past couple of years. If you want it faster, either pay me to do the editing or watch the live show.

As the show has been getting longer and longer, and with the original mission in mind, I have come up with a plan to re-focus Linux Outlaws a bit to adjust for this. Starting with the next show (#136), we will stop listing all distro and software releases that we pick up on. We will only talk about the ones we find noteworthy for some reason or another. You are of course still free to send us feedback (which we always appreciate a lot) and tell us if you think we missed something important, but please respect our decision if we do not mention stuff you send us. By now, we are getting a lot of email and everybody has something else that he or she finds important. In the same vein, I will take it upon myself to more radically cut down the actual news items we talk about. I always do this in some kind of fashion or another, but I will try to be more ruthless with it now since I think we really need to focus on the important things and make the show a little less complicated again. If I do this correctly, chances are you won’t even notice but if you do, please remember: we are human too and humans make mistakes. With any luck, this will speed up the release of the show again and keep it fresh for many, many more episodes to come. Our purpose always has been and always will be to produce the most relevant while still entertaining Linux podcast in the highest quality possible out there.

Again, by all means send us feedback on all of this, we are always interested in what you think and how we can make the show better for all of you. Just one more thing: Before you send us email, think about what you are doing. Maybe read it over again before you push that “send” button. As I said, we are starting to get a lot of email and we take a chunk out of our personal free time to read it all (and we do read all the mail we get) — so please make it worth our while. If you do that, I am happy to read all of your feedback, a lot of it warms my heart every week and totally makes it worth it to do this show. We are grateful for all the intelligent rants, funny insults, well-worded criticism, witty jokes and random “I really like your show” comments we get. Please keep that up!

Hello once again. I trust everyone has had a nice Christmas? I thought I’d provide a quick update to wrap up the year on this blog as well…

I just released the last episode for the year on Tuesday — we had a lot of fun with this one, recording special sound effects and all. I even drove over a road bump very fast in my Twingo to make it authentic! So that wraps up the podcast itself for 2009, but a few other things have developed that I wanted to talk about on here as well. First off, you might have noticed the Sixgun Productions bumper at the beginning of the show and in the file tags. The site itself explains what we have in mind with this pretty well, so I’ll leave it at that, suffice it to say that we are looking to put Linux Outlaws on a much more solid foundation for the future. Do not despair, we aren’t looking to sell out or have suddenly developed delusions of grandeur like some other podcasters, we are simply trying to make sure that the production of the show can be sustainable for us in the long run so that we can deliver many, many more episodes to you. In the same vein, you will notice the adverts on the main page. This is an experiment to see if we can generate a revenue stream for the show. Both Dan and myself will most likely undergo some changes in our lives in 2010 and this will hopefully help to keep us afloat. I’ve personally never had ads on any of my sites and I’m curious to see how this shapes up. As always, we welcome any comments and feedback in general on this via the usual channels. We have also talked about supporting the show via ads in the content itself a few times, but so far nothing has transpired. No matter what happens, we have quite firmly agreed on never having more than one ad on the show itself. I have seen first hand what more than that will do to a show like TWiT and I don’t want to go down that path. Again, if you have any comments on all of this, please leave them here on the blog or send us an email.

Anyway, the Linux Outlaws wish you all the best for 2010 and the new decade! Here’s to many, many more shows in the new year. I am going to leave you with our Libsyn download stats for the year (as of this morning) and as you can see, the show is really going places. We hope to improve on that even more in the new year!

Libsyn Download Stats for 2009

Lenny Is Looming

Hey folks, just wanted to update you on what’s happening with the show and also give you a sneak peek at what you can expect in episode 77. We recorded the show tonight and it went really well I thought, it was packed, man was it packed. There was so much content cram in we had more stuffing than a Bernard Matthews turkey and we still managed it in about 80mins. So what can you expect to hear this week? Well for this I have to break out the bullet points so stand back everyone, nobody tries to be a hero and nobody gets hurt:

• We spare a thought for our brothers and sisters Down Under, we’re thinking of you
• All the usual releases, will there be another mention of SystemRescueCD? You’ll have to listen to find out
• More news than you can shake a stick at, no matter how big it is
• A full Microwatch section with some added gaming news
• An interview with Debian Project Leader Steve McIntyre about the release of Lenny
• Fab reviews Cruncheee on his eeePC and also the new revision of Crunchbang 8.10.02
• We discuss the future of linuxoutlaws.net and ask for your input
• We have a full mail bag as ever, will there be an Aussie accent? Again you’ll have to listen and see
• We play a great public domain song by a famous band you wouldn’t expect, trust me it’s a cracker

All this in 80mins or so, that’s not bad going. Hopefully the show will be out this Sunday,  it needs a fair bit of work and Fab has a big party on Saturday night so he’ll probably be wrecked but you didn’t hear that from me ok? Hope you all enjoy it and we’ll be back next week with even more new stuff, I’m not exactly sure what yet but as usual we keep rolling like Cypress Hill on a tour of Holland.

Take care everyone, see you soon

Dan

Just a quick heads-up to let you all know we just released Episode 75 which is our interview with Miguel de Icaza. It’s over an hour long, so we made it a special episode. I think it turned out really well and as Dan said after editing it, it might well be the difinitive interview with the man. OK, enough touting our own horn here, I already have enough delusions of grandeur as it stands.

Fire up your podcatcher, check out the episode and then tell us what you think of it. Enjoy!

Welcome to the completely revamped Linux Outlaws Blog! This is the first step (well, first-and-a-half really) in my plans to slowly redesign the whole site based on my Podjango project. The theme you see here will form the foundation of the new look, which means a redesign of the forums and linuxoutlaws.net will follow later in the year. I hope you like it, I may still tweak it here and there and feedback is always welcome, as you know.

But the blog has not only been redesigned, I also moved all the content over to a fresh WordPress installation. I have always loved WordPress, but boy is the new admin interface in 2.7 slick! It is my hope that this move will increase usability for Dan and me in an effort to rejuvenate this blog since it has been a bit quieter lately than I’d liked.

I hope you enjoy the new look as much as I do. I am looking forward to a fresh new Linux Outlaws in 2009 with many cool things yet to come!

As a first effort in cleaning up the visual design of the podcast, I’ve created  some comic-style portraits of Dan and myself (in part inspired by the ones the TWiT Network uses) and used them in conjunction with the logo I developed some time back to create a new iteration of our cover art — which will be used from the first episode of 2009 onwards. You will notice that the font is much clearer and more readable on small screens (I had some feedback requesting this) and that there’s again some Linux command line goodness in there. It’s also a bit of an homage to Security Now, which was the podcast that got me into podcasting in the first place (the first one I listened to, so in a sense Leo and Steve started all of this). I hope you like the new artwork, please share your thoughts on it in this forum thread. This is the first of a bunch of visual changes coming to Linux Outlaws in 2009…

Since Dan and I have gotten many requests by listeners for more merchandise and alternative retailers, especially based in Europe, we are currently investigating how to ramp up our swag offerings. We are very happy with Cafepress, especially the quality of their stuff is amazing and they have great customer support from what I can tell, but ordering from them from outside the US can become very expensive very fast due to enormous customs fees levied by your local customs office. Therefore, we are looking into retailers with the same kind of setup and quality that are based in the EU. If you have any suggestions, please let us know via the contact form.

As for more designs and items in general, I definitely have plans but I’d like to hold off on that until we have the European distribution sorted out. I hope you understand that. Until then I will play with some cool ideas for new stuff so that we hopefully have a lot of new merchandise to offer in the EU as well as the US very soon.

As I’ve mentioned on the show before, I will be attending CeBIT, the world’s biggest technology tradeshow, which takes place in Hannover March 4 – 9. They were so kind to provide me with a press pass for the whole show and I’m looking to get some Linux and F/OSS related interviews as well as a “live” report or two from the show floor recorded. I’ll be there at least two whole days, so if you are looking to attend CeBIT and want to meet up or if you have any suggestions for stuff you want us to cover, please contact me or post in the forums.

We will most likely include these segments in Episode 27 as Dan will edit 26 while I’m at the show (if everything works according to plan) so you can look forward to that.