293: Netflix's Gift to Linux

Developers at Netflix are creating the next set of super powers for Linux, we'll get the details straight from the source.

Plus some good Debian news, our tips for better battery life, and we play a little Hot SUSE Potato.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais and Ell Marquez.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Google Stadia announced, a game streaming service for Chrome, Android, and TVs — Powered by Linux, it supports the Vulkan graphics API and Google partnered with Unreal to fully support the Stadia platform.

• Chris on Instagram — We found a great spot to work for the day, great signal. Just one problem. We sorta got taken hostage for a few hours.
• Debian Project Leader Elections 2019: Candidates — We're now into the campaigning period. We have 5 candidates.
• Linux Laptop Battery Optimization Tool TLP 1.2 Released — TLP 1.2 was released today after being in development for more than a year, and it brings support for NVMe, and removable drives like USB and IEEE1394 devices, support for multi queue I/O schedulers (blk-mq), and other significant enhancements.
• TLP – Configuration
• Suse is once again an independent company — Few companies have changed hands as often as Suse and yet remained strong players in their business. Suse was first acquired by Novell in 2004. Novell was then acquired by Attachmate in 2010, which Micro Focus acquired in 2014. The company then turned Suse into an independent division, only to then announce its sale to EQT in the middle of 2018.
• SUSE is now an independent company after being acquired by EQT for $2.5 billion | Packt Hub — As the company has been owned by EQT, so according to few users it’s still not independent. One of the users commented on HackerNews, “Being owned by a Private Equity fund can really not be described as being “independent”.
• MATE 1.22 released — Wanda the Fish now works properly on HiDPI displays
• Albert Vaca Cintora on Twitter — KDE Connect has been removed from @GooglePlay for violating their new policy on apps that access SMS. The policy has an explicit exception for companion apps (like KDE Connect), but it was removed anyway and *there's no way to talk to Google*
• Use of SMS or Call Log permission groups - Play Console Help
• Full-system dynamic tracing on Linux using eBPF and bpftrace — What if you want to trace what happens inside a system call or library call? What if you want to do more than just logging calls, e.g. you want to compile statistics on certain behavior? What if you want to trace multiple processes and correlate data from multiple sources?

  In 2019, there's finally a decent answer to that on Linux: bpftrace, based on eBPF technology.

• Learn eBPF Tracing: Tutorial and Examples — eBPF can be used for many things: network performance, firewalls, security, tracing, device drivers, and more!
• IO Visor Project — The IO Visor Project is an open source project and a community of developers to accelerate the innovation, development, and sharing of virtualized in-kernel IO services for tracing, analytics, monitoring, security and networking functions. It builds on the Linux community to bring open, flexible, distributed, secure and easy to operate technologies that enable any stack to run efficiently on any physical infrastructure.
• IO Visor Project on GitHub — Organization that hosts the repos for bpftrace, bcc, and other tools.
• BCC - Tools for BPF-based Linux IO analysis, networking, monitoring, and more — BCC is a toolkit for creating efficient kernel tracing and manipulation programs, and includes several useful tools and examples.
• bpftrace: High-level tracing language for Linux eBPF
• Install bpftrace for Linux using the Snap Store
• BCC Tool Diagram — Diagram that breaks down useful tools in BCC
• eBPF Perf Tools 2019: Slides
• eBPF Perf Tools 2019: Video (resynced by Squigly)
• eBPF Perf Tools 2019: Video (original)