Episode: 1399
Title: HPR1399: Interview with Ben Everard https://www.linuxvoice.com 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1399/hpr1399.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:49:20

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Well, wait, that's not the right music.
In September of this year, on the TuX Radar Podcast, which was the corresponding podcast
to the Linux format magazine, a few of the hosts announced at the end of the show their
departure from Linux format.
This was sadly the end of the TuX Radar Podcast as well.
However, much to my relief, a new podcast and crowdfunding campaign was launched.
The campaign, which you can contribute to through Indiegogo, is for a new magazine called
Linux Voice.
And the new podcast, which is currently underway, you can find at linuxvoys.com.
And tonight I have with me one of the founders and contributors of Linux Voice, Ben Everard.
Ben, how are you doing?
Hi, I'm good thanks for having me.
Yeah, no problem.
Thank you for coming.
So if you don't mind, can you give us a little bit of background as to what you did at
Linux format?
Sure.
When I first started, I was the digital media editor, which is a fancy way of saying I created
the DVD that came on the front of the magazine each month.
But then I became a technical editor, which meant that somebody else did the DVD and I did
more of the writing and just sort of reading through everything to make sure it was all
technically OK.
Very good.
And so what is your role within Linux Voice when you start to move over to that?
And it would be pretty much the same?
Yeah, pretty much.
We'll have more sort of flexible roles.
Initially, we'll probably have to do a lot of writing ourselves.
So it'll be mostly doing that and working with the other guys, obviously, it'll be
sort of chief cook and bottle washer.
Everything needs to be done.
One of us will have to do.
So as far as Linux Voice goes, the actual magazine, can you kind of describe to us what
the difference is between Linux Voice and the other Linux magazines that might be on
the market today?
Sure.
Linux Voice, if you've read Linux format before, the same sort of structural carry-through
to Linux Voice.
So it'll be a mix of tutorials, features, interviews and some news and all of stuff that
we think will be interesting to most average Linux users.
The biggest difference, really, between us and most other Linux magazines is we're trying
to get the community involved and to support them as well.
So it will not only be written by Linux users for Linux users, that'll be the only people
at the matter.
We won't have management and shareholders or whatever trying to dictate anything.
It'll be purely down to us and the readers.
What goes into it?
All right, all right.
So as far as the giving back part to the community, of course, that's a big thing with Linux users.
They love giving back to the community and stuff.
And so in that process, how are you going to determine where that money goes back to?
There's going to be a few ways we're going to give back.
Just publicly, we've pledged to give 50% of our profits to free software causes, whatever
they may be, whether they're software projects that need money for hosting or whatever,
whether it's bug bounties, we'll let the readers decide that.
And the second thing is we'll be making all of our content available under a Creative
Commons license nine months after it's published.
So that work will be there for other people to take, to build upon and to use however
they like.
Oh, very good.
So besides you, and I think there's Andrew Gregory and Mike Saunders as well, is there
anybody else that's actually going to be on the magazine so far?
Yeah, it's me, Mike and Andrew at the moment.
Some listeners may know Graham Morrison also left at the same time.
He's bound by a no compete clause at the moment.
So he can't join us.
That'll be running out later on in December.
And we're hoping I'll decide to join us then.
There's certainly the offer there for him, but he can't take it at the moment.
That'd be great.
It would be great.
So I know that I mean, starting up a new project like this and a crowdfunding project,
and you know, just going through the whole thing of just picking up and just dropping
your job and starting a project like this has had to be kind of nerve-wracking.
So what kind of challenges besides the initial impact of it all that you've find starting
a project?
It's a good question.
It's the biggest one, personally, it's been incredibly stressful to do a crowdfunding
campaign.
The first week, particularly, we're all just glued to our computers, pressing F5,
just seeing how OK, you know, if there's an hour gap between funders, we'll be sweating
and we've got an IRC channel and we'll be talking what's going on, what's going on.
And it'd be really easy to underestimate how difficult that was for us.
We'll pass the worst of it now and we'll sort of relax a little bit.
We hear the challenges.
We're quite a disbursed team, both in the UK and Mike's in Austria, so there's been
this sort of communication and logistical challenges there, but nothing too serious.
Other than that, everything's gone worryingly straightforwardly, I think we're still waiting
to find out the biggest challenges, but I'm sure up to them.
The content that will be free after a maximum of nine months, it's going to be a digital subscription
as well as a paper subscription.
Yeah, yeah, you can get digital subscriptions on the Indiegogo site as well, so yeah, whichever
you prefer.
All right, so that's going to be straight through the Linux Voice website as far as,
I mean, all right, now it's through the Indiegogo site, but is it going to be any like Google
Play or any other type of format that way as far as submitting the, getting the subscriptions
or is it just going to be like a PDF download?
To start with, there will be a PDF download from our website.
We will be looking into it with a format, so I know people have been asking for ePurban
and I don't think we'll have too many issues getting those out.
In the longer term, we do want to get into iTunes and Google Play, but they won't even
talk to us until we've got a magazine on the shelf, so I don't think it'll be a problem,
but there might be a slightly delay in getting onto those places.
So you're a pretty busy guy, besides doing the podcast for Linux Voice as well as
working on getting the magazine up and running.
You also wrote a book, learning Python with Raspberry Pi.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, I can, actually, I just sent in the manuscript yesterday, so even my editor doesn't
know I finished it, she doesn't check emails over the weekend, but yeah, it's just completed.
It's broadly speaking, it's an introduction into everything you can do with the Raspberry
Pi using Python, so it's not a traditional learned program using Python book that's
just sort of thrown on the Raspberry Pi as a buzzword, it's very much about the sort of
unique features of the Raspberry Pi.
So we look at things like using the Raspberry Pi Cam module, using the GPIOs, and sort
of general things we think will be interesting to Raspberry Pi users, say there's sections
on games, on using OpenGLES, and that sort of thing.
It's a very wide-ranging book, like I say, it's covering almost everything you can do
with the Raspberry Pi and Python, almost everything.
So is there a specific place that you're aiming the book at?
I mean, is there a book aimed at a certain group of people, or is it just anybody that's
interested type of thing?
I think I've always had, in my mind, the average reader is the sort of person who's interested
in computers, doesn't have a background in program, but they brought the Raspberry Pi, saying
it's a cool project, and they like the idea, and they're sort of stuck for what to do
with it.
They like the idea, but they don't know exactly how to use it, and this sort of takes you
by the hand.
It doesn't require any programming knowledge to start with, although a little would probably
be helpful.
You'd certainly be able to follow the book if you hadn't programmed before.
Yeah, anyone with the Raspberry Pi, I guess.
Right, right.
So you've done a lot of work with the Raspberry Pi?
Yeah.
Obviously.
So what do you find that's so appealing about the Raspberry Pi?
It's the form factor, I mean, I hear a lot of people talk about it, and it's an almost
describe it, just like it's a regular computer, but cheaper, but it's nice.
For me, the power of it is the shape, the low power requirements, the access to things
like the GPIOs, so you can use it in a much wider range that you could a regular computer.
You can embed it in stuff, whether that's the back of your TV, there's a media player,
whether that's in the middle of a robot, buzzing around the place.
And the fact that cheap enough, just to mess around with, is quite important.
I mean, when you sort of wiring up the back, GPIOs off the back, I've done that with
regular computers, and there's always this like thing, all, you know, if I touched the
wrong thing, I could trash my computer.
With the Raspberry Pi, well, you know, it's 30 quid, I'll get over it, I'll buy a new
one.
Right.
And it is that, and the low power as well, which means you can just power it off a couple
of batteries, or a solar panel or whatever, there's so many applications where that makes
a huge difference.
Yeah.
I could imagine.
So is there a particular reason why you chose Python to learn to, you know, learn Python
with Raspberry Pi as opposed to a different language?
To be perfectly honest, the decision was made before I got on board.
I got asked it.
Yeah, I got asked by the publishers if I wanted to write this book, I didn't decide on
the book.
However, having said that, Python probably would have been my choice anyway.
Surely, because it's, it's a nice medium of, it's a powerful language, you can get,
you can do so much with it with, you know, with all the modules and everything.
But at the same time, it's an easy language to learn and to pick up.
And yeah, you could have done it in plenty of other languages.
But Python just, it's hard to say exactly why it just feels about white for a new programmer
on the Raspberry Pi.
Good.
All right.
So in talking about just Linux and general, how long have you been using Linux itself?
Um, it's quite an easy question to answer, actually.
I started because I've got, just before I went to uni, we got a sort of letter through telling
us how to prepare for the course.
And one of them was a suggestion that we started using Linux.
Or we've got just got familiar with it.
And that would have been June 2000, so I can give you the month and, yeah, it's taking
a computer and it needed everything reinstalling.
So I thought, wow, it's all just throw Linux on it, rather than Windows, get familiar with
it.
And I've been using it as my main desktop ever since.
Wow.
So is that what kind of brought you to open source and Linux is that you just were handed
something and said, go for it?
Yeah.
I've heard of open source before, but I'd never really had much to do with it.
And I do remember a couple of years before I got a Slackware CD, I think it came on the
front of the magazine or something, but I've never even got it to boot to be honest, I
spent about a day, but yeah, that was, I don't know why, it just struck me as a good idea
at the time.
And then I started using Linux then.
Right.
So what do you find that probably the most appealing aspect of Linux and open source
software?
So I think I'm a born tinkerer.
I like sort of poking about inside of things, seeing how they work and sort of making
modifications to what happens.
And I think even if you're not a kernel programmer, the fact that, you know, everything's open
from the kernel app is, it just makes me feel better using it.
And the fact that, you know, it's all broken up, so you've got different, you know, you've
got X windows and you can use it or not, you've got different window managers.
That just all appeals to the tinkerer and me.
Right.
I could.
I'm right there with you on that one, so.
But so is there something about Linux itself, everything that encompasses it that you
feel probably needs a little bit more polished or more concentrated on?
There's a lot of things that certainly could be polished and tidied up.
But I think if it was all fixed, it wouldn't be Linux.
And I don't mean that in a bad way.
I mean, there's certain things that are tidy.
I mean, he's Kramer S's Android, which take Linux as the base and and tidy them up in
a way that's right for certain class of users.
But the fact that it is all sort of cobbled together for one of a better word is part of
what, what makes Linux Linux, if it was perfect, it would attract a different class of
people and the sort of tinkress like myself would probably move on to something else.
Right.
Yeah.
So is there something in that's happening right now within Linux and maybe even open
source software or, you know, and floss or anything like that that has that you find
real exciting and something that's happening right now?
I mean, for Linux in general, I think the most exciting thing is what Valve are doing with
Steam.
I know it's not open source, but I think it will, I think it will be a massive, massive
impacts on the desktop while in the general stage of the software in general.
But personally, I'm not actually a gamer, so it doesn't really affect me.
It's something I'm sitting back and watching, right.
The things that have really excited me recently, even though, well, they're not necessarily
that new, is the more hackable hardware, the open hardware, things like the Arduino.
I only got into the Arduino this year, really.
And I'm loving it.
So, you know, just playing about with hardware and, well, yeah, and building up the little
circuits and the same with the GPIOs and the Raspberry Pi.
And it's that, I mean, the cool word for its physical computing, but that's what I'm
enjoying at the moment.
Yeah.
Sounds good.
I really need to learn more about the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino really get into that
loop, where I think it's be a whole lot of fun.
I could see myself spending a lot of hours doing that.
So during your employment of at Linux format and writing for them, what was it that was
probably the most exciting thing that you got to write about?
Wow.
That's quite a good question.
I think the thing that I think that I enjoyed the most was the hacking, where some people
think we should call it cracking the sort of malicious, but not necessarily, she was breaking
into computing and sort of attacking servers.
And we did, we did some articles on maths, sort of going through things like MetaSploit
and in a fairly straightforward stuff, but probing computers for weaknesses and looking
at how to exploit those.
And it was quite a good fun just to set up a little test lab and see what we could do.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
That does sound like fun.
So going from here into the future, what would you like to see open source go?
What kind of adventures?
I think there's a few sort of big things.
For me, open standards are almost as important, possibly more important than open software.
And I'd really like to see open standards on things like Office software become much,
much more prevalent.
And if that means people using Microsoft Office, but saving it in a format that's compatible,
we're completely compatible with LibreOffice, then that's fine.
Provided that they use that open standard as a format.
Particularly in public institutions, where it's our money that's being paid to lock it
away in proprietary formats, that really annoys me.
Yeah.
Beyond that, I mean, just greater level of adoption really, I mean, open source, so Linux
desktop is really my sort of area, that's what I enjoy using.
And I'd love to see that become more popular.
Hopefully, the Steam Box or Steam OS will help us get there.
Yeah.
I'm in the same boat that you're, I'm not a gamer, but I think that having Steam come along
is going to be a really good benefit, just to get some more people that's interested
in the programming and the supporting of Linux and that kind of format.
Yeah.
And just to have Valve behind it, I mean, there are obviously these companies like IBM
and Google already behind it, but it's just another massive company that's sort of backing
Linux.
It just sort of, it makes me think that this is definitely, it's not going to stop.
It's the ball just sort of keeps picking up speed and rolling faster and faster.
Yeah.
I agree.
So it's really thing else that you'd like to tell us about the magazine, the campaign,
podcast, your book.
Well, the magazine's going to be awesome.
Check out Linux Voice.com or there's links there to the Indiegogo campaign.
We really do all the support we can get because if we don't reach the goal, we won't make
the magazine.
It's as simple as that.
This isn't, you know, plan A with plan B and plan C. This is just the only plan.
And we'd really want, because we think the community would really benefit from having
this sort of, the magazine to support it, the community supports magazine, the magazine
supports community.
It's a natural reinforcing each other.
And we think it's going to be great.
The book should be out February, hopefully February might not be out till March.
And if you're interested in the Raspberry Pi and Python, please check it out.
Right.
So where can we find the book, where can we order the book from?
But the moment it's available from pre-order on Amazon, it's being published by Wiley.
So there should have it in all good bookshops.
Very good.
Very good.
So what we need to do is go over to Linux Voice.com and click on the big button that says
support our Indiegogo campaign, chip in some bucks and get the, get the goal reached
right now.
We got 22 days left at the time of this recording.
And you're making a good progress, but there's still a little bit of area there that we need
to fill up.
So hopefully some of the listeners will jump on over and make a nice contribution to help
the cause.
I hope so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I greatly appreciate you taking the time out of your day to stop by and talk and love
to have you.
Oh, thanks for having me here.
It's been good fun.
Yeah.
Hopefully, and we'll talk to you soon.
Bye.
At time of recording in this show on December 1st, there were 22 days left at the Linux Voice
crowdfunding campaign.
And by the time that it does go public, there will probably be maybe 10 to 11 days left
of their campaign.
So if you would please go over to their website, links voice.com, click on the support
our IndigoGo campaign or you can go to indigoGo.com slash projects slash Linux, dash voice.
Thanks a lot.
Bye.
Bye.
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