SUDO Show 77, “The Promotion Paradox,” is all about what happens when the best nerd in the room gets handed a calendar full of 1:1s, budgets, and “peopleware” instead of terminals and tickets. Bill, Neal, and Noel swap stories about micromanagers, open office nightmares, open source maintainers, and why learning to lead humans is way harder—and ultimately more rewarding—than just being the fastest person at fixing servers.

Show Links:
The Manager’s Path – Camille Fournier
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/
An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management – Will Larson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45303387-an-elegant-puzzle
Linus Torvalds & Dirk Hohndel – Open Source Summit North America 2026 keynote
https://youtu.be/fi29pfLcW4I

Connect with the Hosts:
Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon
Neal - @neal@social.gompa.me on Mastodon
Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 76, “ABCs of CVEs,” breaks down how modern Linux vulnerabilities go from scary headlines to real-world fixes. Bill, Neal, and Brandon start with conferences and Neal’s new Framework 13 Pro running Fedora, then dive into AI‑assisted security research and what tools like Claude and others are actually doing in the CVE pipeline. Neal walks through recent high‑profile issues like Pack2TheRoot in PackageKit, the copy.fail kernel optimization bug, and the Dirty Frag vulnerability, explaining how disclosure, embargoes, and coordination really work from a distro maintainer’s perspective. Brandon then focuses on CVE patching best practices, testing and release strategies, tools like Foreman and Uyuni for managing updates, and how to interpret CVSS scores and risk without panicking, before the crew wraps with advice for new grads who want to get into security without setting their hair—or their clusters—on fire.

Show Links:

• Foreman – https://theforeman.org/
• Uyuni – https://www.uyuni-project.org/
• Pack2TheRoot – Linux local privilege escalation write‑up
  • https://github.security.telekom.com/2026/04/pack2theroot-linux-local-privilege-escalation.html
• copy.fail – kernel copy‑on‑write vulnerability
  • https://copy.fail/
• Dirty Frag – universal Linux LPE PoC
  • https://github.com/V4bel/dirtyfrag#dirty-frag-universal-linux-lpe

Connect with the Hosts:
Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon
Neal - @neal@social.gompa.me on Mastodon
Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

SUDO Show 75, “I Don’t Know How to Make Coffee,” is a full‑on April Fools special where “business meets Linux” takes a back seat to pranks, retro war stories, and questionable life choices. Bill, Neal, and Noel start with open source airplanes, HDMI‑to‑floppy adapters, and whether airplane wings actually flap, then quickly descend into cargo‑class containers, VM‑matrix jokes, and vintage Linux desktop pain with FVWM95 and XFree86. From decaf‑only coffee stunts, BashRC logout traps, PC speaker torture, and ping‑flooded LAN parties to PACMAN.BAT in the school lab, Gentoo use‑flag accidents, OpenStack root‑password “oops” moments, and a threat to invent Fedora.js, they share their most devious tech and non‑tech pranks. Along the way, they talk MSP coffee culture, two‑pots‑a‑day network engineering, Kubernetes as “all YAML,” and close by reminding you not to try any of this at work—no matter how good that April Fools itch feels.

FVWM95 – https://fvwm95.sourceforge.net/
ReactOS – https://reactos.org/
Kata Containers – https://katacontainers.io
podman – https://podman.io

00:00:00 Intro – Off the Rails April Fools
00:00:55 Open Source Airplanes and HDMI-to-Floppy
00:01:50 Do Airplane Wings Flap?
00:04:28 Cargo Class and the VM Matrix
00:05:22 Best Tech and Non-Tech Pranks
00:08:49 FVWM95, XFree86, and Fake Windows Desktops
00:14:22 ReactOS and Retro Linux Adventures
00:15:01 Going Vintage in the Future
00:18:09 Bill’s Decaf Coffee and BashRC Pranks
00:19:56 PC Speaker Torture and Random Beeps
00:20:58 Old-School LAN Parties
00:23:05 Ping-Flood LAN Parties and ZipSlack
00:24:21 PSA System Rollback – April Fools
00:25:58 Noel’s PACMAN.BAT and Lab Ban
00:32:02 Linux ISOs and School Network Quotas
00:35:07 Office Built from Old Optiplex Cases
00:39:28 First Home PCs and Gateway Cow Boxes
00:42:06 Serial Mice Still in Production
00:42:56 Gentoo Use Flags and history
00:46:22 OpenStack Cluster and Lost Root Password
00:48:41 Ranking Pranks and Coffee + Desktop Combo
00:50:45 Noel Hates Coffee
00:52:26 MSP Coffee Culture and “I Don’t Know How to Make Coffee”
00:55:51 Weaponized Iced Coffee
00:58:52 /30 Subnets per Phone and Two Pots of Coffee
01:01:10 No Rails
01:02:06 May Your BBQ Sauce Be Watery
01:03:36 Kubernetes Is All YAML
01:04:04 Fedora.js
01:04:57 Disclaimer – Do Not Try This at Work
01:06:01 Ball Pits, Ball.js, and Bouncy Balls
01:07:29 Outro – Where Business Meets Terrible Jokes

Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon
Neal - @neal@social.gompa.me on Mastodon
Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller