I just released a Panda3D tutorial on YouTube, and I thought it would be fun to show how I produce coding tutorial videos.

Hello World

The first step is to decide what the video will be about and who the target audience will be.

It isn’t easy to create a generic tutorial from scratch, so I almost always use documentation or a written tutorial from an authoritative source, such as the official docs!

Some people learn from watching or listening rather than just reading a tutorial, which has the added benefit of expanding on the pre-existing learning material.

Writing the script

Coding while speaking is extremely difficult, so I generally avoid it. Instead, I follow the docs myself to ensure everything works and is something I can repeat while recording.

I consider the “gotcha’s” and pitfalls the target viewer might run into while following the tutorial and make notes to highlight those.

Each script is different, and they don’t typically look or sound like the actual voice-overs I record because of my delivery style.

The Voice Over

Once I’ve written the technical details for the script, I write intro and outro pieces to help the tutorial flow together.

I use Audacity to record the voice over in a single take. I take long pauses between paragraphs and cut the whitespace out to make the voice-over sound cohesive.

I usually read the script aloud to myself first, and then again, to avoid sounding like I’m literally reading something.

Coding Footage

This part is usually the most challenging part of producing coding videos.

For Panda3D, each page of the tutorial was a segment. This made it easy to split up the clips.

I resized the Visual Studio Code window to fit in the middle of my desktop so that I could zoom in without worrying about text scaling.

While typing out the code, I had to be mindful to type slow so that it is easier to speed up the footage in editing if I needed to.

Before running the code, I always copy & paste the code from the tutorial because mistakes happen, and they can ruin segments of footage.

Editing

Editing the footage & voice over isn’t difficult, but it is tedious and is probably my least favorite part of producing coding videos.

Lots of footage is cut because my voice overs are much shorter in length than the amount of coding footage I capture.

Almost every clip needs to be zoomed in, and the video editor I use does not like having lots of effects on a single track.

Most clips need to have their speed modified as well, so that’s an additional effect layered on the track.

Another tricky part of editing is filler footage when I am talking about something tangentially related, such as history or related tools and frameworks.

Retrospect

I like to think that my formula for coding videos maximizes the value of the pre-existing tutorials and docs out there; I’m not trying to invent my own development course.

If you are thinking of producing a coding video yourself, let me know about your production style! Do you prefer to speak & code while recording, or do you have another method?

What’s Drauger OS?

Drauger OS is a Linux desktop gaming operating system. It aims to provide a platform for gamers to use where they can get great performance without sacrificing their security.

Based off Ubuntu LTS releases, Drauger OS is stable, secure, and gets updates thanks to the Ubuntu repositories for 5 years.

Summary

I performed the review entirely in the live session (see below), and I feel I got an idea of what the developer had in mind for the distribution.

Drauger OS aims to be a gaming-first Linux distribution, much like the venerable SteamOS aimed to be.

What little gaming I was able to do from the live session I was very impressed.

Install

Drauger has a heavy-weight live session complete with prompts to install Steam the moment the session starts, along with the welcome app and a “critical battery” alert or two.

The developers decided to use SystemBack instead of the far more usable and functional Calamares installer, presumably due to size concerns.

SystemBack is both unreliable and uncommon. In fact, out of all the Distro Delves reviews, only one other Linux distribution used it.

Unfortunately, the installer didn’t work at all. No matter how I tried to set up my partitions, the install would always fail.

Since Drauger OS is built with Linux Gaming in mind and all my Steam games live on an external SSD, we can continue this review in the live session.

Desktop & Apps

Drauger uses a customized Xfce 4.14 desktop with three panels: A top main bar, a left-side quick launcher panel, and the bottom panel for workspaces.

This desktop layout is awkward because it is not only more complex than the average desktop, but the panels and icons are massive, which clutters the screen badly.

Much like the Xfce desktop itself, widgets do not scale well. For example, the clock widget gets pushed to the left for each open application window.

The default theme is a dark theme with primarily red accents. The theme itself is good, but the contrast of the red text on the dark background makes it look oversaturated.

Despite DraugerOS being a gaming-first Linux distro, it ships with a surprising number of apps and is (probably) a quite capable is a regular desktop distro.

Network & Sharing

Sharing & Network support was spotty, possibly due to the live session.

I wasn’t able to connect my smartphone or get Bluetooth to work at all.

There are no built-in file/folder sharing options in the file browser, and Samba/Windows network discovery did not work.

I was able to connect to machines on my network directly using the smb and ssh protocols.

Devices + Media

I was impressed with the support for non-gaming related stuff such as archive formats and media codecs.

All of the common archive formats worked fine, and all of the popular media codecs and formats worked good too.

AppImage support was solid and Drauger ships with both Snap & Flatpak support, and both integrate into the built-in software store.

The Flathub remote is not enabled, so the user would need to set that up before Flatpak is really usable.

Gaming Performance!

Since I was gaming in the live session, I was very constrained as to what games I could test.

The live session offers only about 3gb of system memory, and some games incorrectly identified my graphics card.

I was able to play XCom 2, SpecOps: The Line, and Metro: Redux. None of these games are particularly new or exciting, but I have used them in previous episodes, so we have a “baseline” of sorts.

I say with confidence that all of the games ran better on Drauger.

A particular standout was Metro: Redux, which usually runs rather poorly, averaging closer to 40 frames a second. Drauger averaged 60fps easily.

XCom 2 did quite well, keeping well above 30fps, which on most other distros, the average is closer to about 25fps.

SpecOps: The Line is capped at 60fps and remained there until the action started. It probably averaged about 45fps.

Final Thoughts

Drauger OS is a flawed gem.

The biggest issue by far is the desktop; Xfce isn’t the right choice. Something like Kodi or even a customized Gnome desktop would be a much better choice.

But Drauger (mostly) delivers on its promise: to be a Linux desktop gaming operating system.

Lots of Linux distros have claimed games worked and performed better with them, yet they never had facts or figures to back it up.

Drauger OS is the first Linux distro that delivers on the promise. And a significant amount, to boot!

Drauger OS 7.5.1 | Review was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s Linux Mint?

The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use.

Linux Mint is the ideal Linux distribution for new and seasoned Linux users alike being based on Ubuntu whilst following its own release cadence.

Linux Mint also developer a number of apps, maybe of which are portable enough to be used on other Linux distros and desktop environments.

Thoughts

Linux Mint is basically the same as it was in previous versions, besides some relatively minor changes that existing users may not even notice.

All of Mint’s desktops are very stable and relatively static so don’t expect much to change on the UI side. There’s a new icon theme and the welcome app got some improvements, too.

The biggest change is the hard removal of Snap support. It’s not pre-installed and you can’t easily install it from the repositories anymore. This was a purely dogmatic decision on the part of Linux Mint’s leadership.

Besides the lack of Snap support, a new application for network sharing called Warpinator makes a first appearance. It’s basically a super-simple way to share files on a local network. Linux Mint has always been good at network sharing and Warpinator takes it that much further.

Linux Mint 20 | Overview was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s Chakra Linux?

The Chakra operating system is a community-developed Linux distribution with a focus on KDE and Qt software, utilizing a unique half-rolling release model.

Based in part on Arch Linux, Chakra was one of the original Linux distributions with a focus on Qt and KDE as the sole desktop and GUI toolkit.

Thoughts

After reaching its zenith in 2017, Chakra Linux is largely a forgotten Linux distribution.

The project is seemingly still alive with packages being built weekly but the developers seem uninterested in maintaining usable install media.

The desktop itself is curious; pure KDE and Qt. Despite this, it doesn’t’ feel much different than KDE neon or even Manjaro KDE; Chakra doesn’t really offer anything new or exciting.

KaOS is probably the unwitting spiritual successor to Chakra, with its focus on KDE and history in Arch Linux.

Chakra Linux | Overview was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s CentOS?

The CentOS Project is a community-driven free software effort focused on delivering a robust open source ecosystem around a Linux platform.

CentOS is the community edition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The name CentOS comes from “Community Enterprise Operating System”.

In many ways, its the Red Hat equivalent to openSUSE Leap; both distros are built from enterprise-grade Linux distributions but are completely free & open source and do not require licenses to use.

Thoughts

Given that “enterprise” Linux distribution tend to be built for specific use cases, I did not have good expectations for running CentOS 8 as a workstation.

Much to my surprise, there’s a pre-defined role or package group for workstations in the installer which installs the Gnome desktop as well as numerous optional extras.

Overall, CentOS faired OK with only some minor issues, possibly due to my not installing the proper packages during the install (printer support, network sharing, etc).

CentOS 8 | Overview was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s Sabayon Linux?

Sabayon is a beginner-friendly Gentoo-based open-source Linux distribution. We aim to deliver the best “out of the box” user experience by providing the latest open source technologies in an elegant format.

Sabayon basically aims to be a beginner-friendly Linux distribution based on Gentoo, one of the (if not the) least beginner-friendly Linux distributions around.

Thoughts

Sabayon Linux has a slight existential crisis right now (June 2020). The latest “stable” iso is version 19.03 and not only is it several years old, but it is also completely broken; a single upgrade will brick the entire OS. It’s a known issue, too; the developers recommend people use the “daily” iso instead.

Despite the current state of Sabayon Linux, the project is ambitious. Most of the work to make Gentoo feel “beginner-friendly” is handled by special Sabayon tooling to make updates and app installs feel “normal” and comparable to any other Linux distro.

I think the idea of a Gentoo-based Linux distribution having a “stable” branch is just silly. I could see Sabayon being the Gentoo equivalent to Manjaro with a semi-rolling release model.

But Sabayon has some major hurdles to jump before it is anywhere close to being ready to install as a desktop daily driver.

Sabayon Linux 3.19 | Overview was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s Arco Linux?

Arco Linux is a rather odd Linux distribution in that, I couldn’t find an actual self-description or a traditional “about” section on the website.

From Arco’s website and forums, it's pretty clear that it seeks to be a distro focused around learning; teaching people about Linux. So in that way, I think I would categorize it as an Educational or perhaps Academic Linux Distribution.

Thoughts

With its huge installer and a wide variety of pre-installed apps, I think Arco Linux appeals to people looking to learn about everything Linux has to offer or someone who just wants to try everything all at once.

Even though you can customize and install almost any app you’d ever want to from the installer, Arco comes with an obscene number of applications pre-installed.

Admittedly I didn’t try every desktop environment on the list but let’s just assume they all work decently with sane defaults. This is the perfect way for people to try out different things without having to jump to a whole new distro!

As an actual distro you would stick with as a desktop, it is pretty underwhelming. But for a distro for just checking out everything the Linux ecosystem has to offer, it is more than adequate.

Arco Linux | Overview was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s KDE neon?

KDE neon is a rapidly updated software repository. KDE believes it is important to work with many distributions, as each brings unique value and expertise for their respective users. This is one project out of hundreds from KDE.

KDE neon is a software project from KDE that happens to resemble a traditional Linux distribution but isn’t.

It’s based on Ubuntu LTS but rolls-in updates to KDE applications and libs like a rolling-release distribution would; a bit of a hybrid distribution.

Thoughts

KDE neon is in the awkward position between Kubuntu LTS and whatever the latest Ubuntu point release is. It’s based on Ubuntu LTS but it has the latest & greatest KDE goodness just like the latest Kubuntu point release does.

So, is KDE neon basically “just a repository” like people say? Well yeah, it actually says that on the website:

KDE neon is a rapidly updated software repository.

So why use KDE neon over Kubuntu or practically any other Linux distro with KDE? Despite being a KDE Project, KDE neon is actually super trim and lightweight with fewer KDE apps pre-installed than even Kubuntu.

In short — KDE neon is for people who want the most basic KDE desktop they can find. And Neon delivers that quite well.

KDE neon 5.19 | Overview was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a recent Distro Delves episode, I made the incorrect assumption that installing Nvidia drivers on Fedora Silverblue is an ambitious and difficult endeavor based on blog posts and instructions I had read.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

How-To

Starting with Fedora Silverblue 30, the method of installing Nvidia drivers is functionally the same as on Fedora Workstation with a couple of minor changes due to Silverblue’s file system.

First, enable the RPM Fusion repos for Silverblue:

rpm-ostree install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Since this modifies the file system layer, you need to reboot to “activate” these changes.

Next, install the Nvidia driver:

rpm-ostree install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia
rpm-ostree install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

And lastly, blacklist the nouveau driver (this part might be optional):

rpm-ostree kargs --append=rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau --append=modprobe.blacklist=nouveau --append=nvidia-drm.modeset=1

That’s it?

As of June 8th, 2020, this is all that is required to get Nvidia drivers working on Fedora Silverblue.

Your mileage with these steps may vary depending on your hardware but for the majority of use cases, this should get you set up with the latest Nvidia drivers + CUDA support.

The steps in this article were lifted from the RPM Fusion instructions here.

The original Distro Delves desktop machine was cobbled together by the spare parts I had laying around, mostly 2014-era components.

I didn’t really know where Distro Delves was going to go when I built that PC so many of the components were mismatched and just kind of weird.

For episode 20, I decided to “upgrade” or standardize the Distro Delves rig a bit. Most of the components are the same, but here is the new standard rig now:

• CPU: AMD A8–7600 “Kaveri”
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 750 ti (used to be a GT 730)
• 8GB Patriot Viper 3 (used to be 16gb)
• ADATA 120gb ssd (used to be a 2019 era Samsung ssd)

The product links in this post are affiliate links because — why not?

The goal of this “upgrade” was to make the Distro Delves rig more aligned to what a regular desktop user would be using in 2015ish — a very average desktop PC.

Distro Delves PC Update was originally published in Distro Delves on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.